by Dave Duncan
“How long can you hold that invisibility trick?”
She shivered against him. “We’re not invisible. I just distracted that one. It won’t work if there’s more than one or two of them. Besides, there aren’t any more decoys to use.”
“You mean you—” Don’t ask! The old woman would have died anyway. “Then we ought to…” He looked around again to make sure no murdering Lancelot was heading their way. He could hear faint screams from the jetty. Some of the troopers had dismounted and gone in after the refugees. He looked away.
He blinked. He looked again and blinked again. It was real. “By Jove, I do believe that’s our bus coming!”
Four dragons running over the sand, coming from the gorge mouth. T’lin’s black turban and copper beard on the lead dragon. Julian waved and T’lin waved back, so he had seen them. How long had Ursula known? Never mind. Saved!
Well, perhaps saved. In a race on this terrain, the smart money would back the moas. Fortunately, dragons were hellishly expensive. No trooper was going to mistake a gentleman on a dragon for a penniless vagrant pilgrim. It would be like driving up to the scene of the crime in a Rolls—the bobbies would salute you and call you sir.
He saw the woman’s body, and the boy’s head lying in a puddle of water, a long way from the corpse. Murdering swine! Yes, artillery killed people too, but that had been on a battlefield, those had been soldiers. This was deliberate slaughter of unarmed women and children. Damn Edward Exeter and his bloody peasants’ revolt!
Their butchery at the jetty complete, the Shuujooby troopers had formed up and were coming across the plain at a slow lope. They would certainly pick off the two they had missed on the first pass.
T’lin and Starlight came racing over the sand, with Bluegem, Blizzard, and Mistrunner spread out behind. Julian bellowed a wordless welcome as the dragontrader went by, barking commands that hardly seemed needed. Dragons often showed surprising intelligence, and Mistrunner was already heading for Ursula. Blizzard came straight to Julian and skidded to a halt on his belly, ready to be mounted. He was obviously suffering from the heat, puffing hoarsely, his long neck frills flapping like wings..
Julian threw himself across the saddle and scrabbled wildly until he could grip the pommel plate with his good hand and swing his leg over. “Wondo!” But Blizzard was already heaving himself to his feet. Now where? Stand and face down the troopers or make a run for the hills? While Julian was still trying to make up his mind and find his left stirrup, he heard Ursula’s voice raised in command and a cry of protest from T’lin, “Dragons cannot zomph in this heat!”
But Mistrunner shot off in a shower of sand—heading for the temple.
“Domini!” Julian shouted in sudden understanding. “Dommi’s in there. zomph!” Good for Ursula!
Blizzard’s game leap forward hurled him back against the baggage plate. To make a run for it would likely have brought on pursuit anyway, and Dommi certainly deserved rescue if he were still alive. Edward Bloody Exeter did not! His crazy messiah delusions had provoked this bloodbath. Jumbo and the other antis had been right all along.
Ursula and Mistrunner were drawing out ahead. Poor Blizzard was managing no more than a varch and probably could not keep even that up much longer; he was blowing out more steam than the Flying Scotsman. T’lin drew up close on Starlight, the unladen Bluegem following.
“This will kill them!” the Dragontrader howled.
“It may kill us too,” Julian said cheerfully. Though he still had no weapon, there was something about being mounted that stiffened a chap’s spirit. Being the man on the ground when the cavalry charged was a ruddy poor show. That was what the Middle Ages had been all about, of course.
He passed the first dead moa, its rider sprawled nearby with his throat cut. The footprints showed where the Nagian victor had departed, taking his spear with him and apparently the trooper’s lance also, for it was missing, but one down did not change the odds very much.
He went by more bodies: men, women, even small children, many of them horribly ripped by the force of the lances; blood-soaked sand. The fighting was still going on—he could hear shouts and screams from the ruins and he wanted to scream. There was nothing he could do to help. Now, if only Nextdoorian dragons were real fire-breathing monsters instead of hay-eating softies…
A whopper of a node, Exeter had said, and already Julian could feel his skin prickle at the awesome touch of virtuality. A great holy place, an ancient sanctuary…The temple remains were bigger than he had realized, so scattered and shattered that he could form no clear image of its plan. In places the original carvings still showed; in others the stones had been fretted into grotesque shapes; yet others had been polished smooth. Centuries of wind had pushed the sand into waves, leaving columns and walls sticking up at random from the dunes, many of them now bearing bizarre headdresses of refugees. There were people perched on every high surface. He saw one canted column with two women and a man on the top of it. How had they climbed up there? They looked as if one sneeze would hurl them all off. He sought vainly for a sign of Dommi’s red hair.
T’lin had disappeared. Blizzard was following Mistrunner through the labyrinth—around a corner, then another, over a dune, and almost into a squirming, bleating herd of moas, which had been packed into a dead-end corridor and were being kept there by two mounted lancers. Their job had probably been hard enough even before the dragons appeared, but then the moas began to panic. The soldiers reacted with roars of anger. Ursula turned Mistrunner and put her straight at a wall. Blizzard followed without waiting to be told. Julian’s hill straps dangled unfastened and useless behind him—he grabbed at the pommel plate with his good hand just as he was tilted onto his back and almost tipped off.
No human could have climbed that stonework and even the dragons took it slowly, their long claws scraping and scrabbling for purchase. He twisted his head around to see if he was about to be skewered, but the troopers had their hands full with the moas.
Then Blizzard reached the top of the wall, balancing precariously on the stony ridge at Mistrunner’s side and belching clouds of steam. Ursula did not even look around. She was watching the drama in what must originally have been a great hall and was now a shadowed courtyard. The sandy floor sloped down to a slimy green pool at the far end, making a sort of amphitheater, and above the pool rose a high wall, bearing a few stumps and buttresses that had once supported a ribbed roof. The rest of the walls were a jagged sawtooth, all the higher points loaded with Exeter’s pilgrims, feet dangling. More were perched on any ledge or sill that had a chance of being out of reach of lances.
The entrance was an archway blocked with drifted sand almost to its keystone. No moa could pass through that. Even men on foot would have to crouch to enter, so there the Nagian spearmen had been able to hold off the Joalians’ greater numbers. At least three had died doing so, yet all their lives had bought was a little time for their friends, for now they had been outflanked. Now the troopers were swarming in through window apertures and breaches in the walls. The Nagians had shields, but their spears were much shorter than the lances. They were hopelessly outnumbered. Brave defiance became instant rout. Soldiers yelled; onlookers howled; dying men screamed. It could not compare with the Western Front for sheer horror, but it was still bloody murder.
And there was idiot Exeter in his monk’s robe, floundering and splashing through the water of the pond, accompanied by two of his henchmen. The others were trying to cover his retreat and being cut down. Running away? Being unharmed, Exeter had little choice but to run away; even so, it was not what Julian would have expected of him. He watched in grim despair as the trio reached the wall, assuming they would now turn at bay. Instead, the larger, brawnier Nagian dropped to hands and knees in the water, the other jumped up to his back and pulled his leader up after him. He cupped hands; Exeter scrambled to the man’s shoulders and reached for a ledge overhead. There was a window opening higher up. He might even reach that, but did he rea
lly think he would be allowed to escape so easily?
The top half of his human ladder jumped down, the other man stood up. They had just time to grab up their spears again before the last surviving half dozen of their companions fell back and joined them in the water. Then the Joalian pack was upon them. The troopers came in a bristle of blades, offering no quarter. The pond became a bloody froth as the victims fell, most of them stabbed by four or five lances simultaneously.
Julian shuddered and looked away. Ursula’s face was haggard, her lips drawn back in a grimace. He glanced quickly around the watchers on their perches, hoping for a glimpse of Dommi’s red hair, but could not see it. He looked down at the cavorting, cheering victors and felt the cold familiar breath of mortality on the back of his neck. The civilians would be next, for the carnage at the jetty showed that someone had ordered a massacre.
“Think we’d better get the devil out of here. The show’s over for the Liberator now.”
“Wait!” she said.
Exeter had reached his objective, a circular opening about fifteen feet above the pool. It must once have been a great window. He stood within it, outlined against sunlight, balancing himself with outstretched arms and feet. He had his cowl back. The wind was billowing and tugging his gray robe, as if trying to dislodge him. He was a perfect target, an X in a circle. The Joalians had seen him.
An officer began shouting orders, calling upon his men to clear a space and give him a fair shot. It would not be a difficult one, for although a lance was too heavy to be thrown far, in this case it need go only a few feet. He hefted the pole and prepared to run.
“Stop!” Exeter roared. “Don’t you realize what you have done, you fools?”
The scene shifted and shimmered as if a stone had fallen into a reflecting pool. Suddenly he was not a target anymore.
“Even Karzon forbids the slaughter of penitents and pilgrims! Have none of you read scripture? Have you forgotten your oaths?” His words echoed and reverberated, magnified into a knell of doom by strange acoustics and the intense virtuality. He loomed over the assembly like an avenging angel. The captain dropped his lance in dismay, staring up open-mouthed at his accuser.
“Repent, repent!” Even Julian, perched on a puffing gargoyle atop the far wall, could feel his scalp prickle at the power of the call—and he was only a bystander. Exeter lambasted the lancers, berating them for the massacre. He quoted their own Valian gospels at them: the Green Scripture, the sacred words of Karzon, god of war; the Blue Scriptures of Astina, goddess of warriors. He reeled off passage after passage to show the sinners how they had sinned, the laws they had broken. He even quoted the secret oaths of the soldiers’ Karzon cult, the Blood and Hammer. How did he know all that?
Julian glanced again at Ursula, but she was intent, as mesmerized as any. He ought to be making his escape or searching for Dommi among the living and dead, yet he could not move. The waves of charisma and authority streaming from Exeter were mind-numbing.
“So if those misguided teachings denounce your conduct, what then must the One True God think of you? The Undivided, the one who must not be named? Open your ears to the truth and tremble! Hear his commands….”
Why was the idiot speaking English to Niolians?
No, he wasn’t. It was Joalian. No, Randorian…Whatever it was, the audience understood. Julian watched the soldiers cringe lower; he heard them sob. He felt his own eyes prickle with tears, and still Exeter lashed the guilty. The rest of the troopers, the contingent from Shuujooby, came filing in through the arch, falling to their knees as they, too, heard this awful judgment. At last the anathema ended.
“Yes, there is forgiveness! Yes, you still have hope! If you truly repent, the Undivided may yet turn aside his wrath….”
This was the most incredible display of mana Julian had ever heard of. An hour ago—nay, much less than that—Exeter had been exhausted, able to walk only because he could draw strength from his devoted supporters. Now he blazed within that window like the sun at noon. He thundered with the authority of God.
“Will you accept my judgment?”
“Yes! Yes! Tell us!” The troopers howled agreement, reaching up their hands in supplication.
“Are there any among you who did not shed blood today?”
Six or seven men timidly raised their arms. The rest subsided.
“Then this be your penance. Go now. Find your mounts and ride with all haste to Niol. Take word to Queen Elvanife herself. Tell her to her face how she has offended against the people who were her children. Tell her that she must come here at once to weep on their graves—walking, barefoot, with her hair unbound. Tell her that only thus may she have hope for her soul. Go!”
The half dozen men reeled to their feet and fled from the courtyard, stumbling over the sand. The rest remained, waiting to hear their fate.
The Liberator had cowed a victorious army into a pack of sniveling penitents.
“And when you have gathered them up and prepared the graves…”
He was ordering the rest of the troopers to bury the dead.
But the greatest concentration of corpses was directly below him. There, in that scummy puddle of water, the last of his Warband had made their stand, defending their leader. There the Nagians had bled to death or drowned, and now only a few shields and lifeless limbs protruded from the bloody surface.
The bubble burst. Julian clapped his hands over his ears. His throat knotted in waves of nausea. Monster! Contemptible murderer! Hypocrite! The prophecy had warned Exeter that there would be killing in Niolvale. He had foreseen the carnage, and he had used it for his own ends. He had sacrificed his followers, the peasants—men, women and children—and especially his old comrades from Nagvale.
There was the source of his new mana.
The Liberator was no better than Zath.
No, he was worse. When Zath wanted human sacrifice, at least he did not slaughter his friends.
33
The wind dropped soon after sunset, letting the muggy air of the swamps drift in with its bugs and pungent leafy scents. Julian had wandered off alone, away from the ominous virtuality of the node. Having found a trunk of driftwood on which to sit, he watched unseeing as the sky turned bloody above Niolwall and then dimmed to black, and stars came out like a million shiny tears. The green moon would not rise for hours yet, but Ysh, Kirb’l, and Eltiana shed enough light to reveal the activity on that plain like a stark etching, ebony on silver. The troopers labored to gather the bodies and dig graves. They toiled in silence, dark gnomes in a milk-opal world, anxious to work the bloodstains off their souls.
T’lin and the dragons had been sent off to high ground, where the poor brutes could rest and graze, and would return in the morning. Ursula was still somewhere around the temple. Dommi was alive and well.
Exeter must have dispatched messengers to tell the rest of his followers that it was now safe to continue the pilgrimage. Probably some had chosen to flee back through the marshlands, but an amazing number had trusted his word, and they came trudging in over the riverbed—hundreds of them, hour after hour.
At dusk, two Nagians had appeared with their spears and shields, driving a small herd of sheeplike animals. Julian had wondered how those two lone survivors must feel, then realized that he knew exactly how they felt, because he had felt the same way on the Western Front every day for two years. They would be feeling enormously relieved to be alive when their chums were all dead, and guilty as hell because of it.
How did Julian Smedley feel? He could not put words to his disgust, his sense of betrayal, his shock, anger…. Power could corrupt, but the greed for power corrupted more. He would not have believed that any Old Fallovian could have sunk so low to gain it, let alone Edward Exeter. He wished he had left his former friend in the psycho ward at Staffles, back in 1917. A cell in Broadmoor would be even better, beside the rest of the criminally insane.
His reverie was broken by singing. The funeral service was under way. Irony! T
he last time he had seen Exeter before today, he had been conducting a funeral for some of Zath’s victims. Now he was burying his own.
This time Julian Smedley would not attend.
The service was brief. As soon as it ended, campfires flickered into life all around the ruins so the sheeplike things could furnish the funeral feast. Reluctantly admitting to himself that he was giddy from lack of food, Julian hauled his weary bones upright and set off in search of charity, but the scent of charred meat at the nearest campfire turned his stomach and he went on without stopping. Shunning the crowd, he wandered into the temple. He found the big courtyard, deserted now. The bodies had gone from the pool and only stars filled the empty window where Exeter had stood. The stonework was still warm, the air cool. Somehow the virtuality seemed even greater by moonlight, stark walls against the sky, black velvet shadows on the sand. It made his flesh crawl. Even the natives had sensed it and stayed away.
Except one. Tracking a flicker of light, he discovered a smaller courtyard and a man alone, lying prone before a small fire. He was obviously alive and conscious, because one of his feet scuffled busily in the sand, but his head and shoulders were hidden by a boulder. Curious, Julian walked over to him, silent on the ever-present sand. He recognized that what he had thought was a boulder was Dommi’s pack at the same instant as the copper glint of Dommi’s hair came into view. He was writing busily, his paper and writing board so close to the fire that they might become part of it at any minute.
“Hello.”
His houseboy let out a gasp of surprise. Then he recognized Julian and showed all his teeth in a beam of welcome. “Tyika Kaptaan!” He squirmed around and sat up cross-legged, clutching his writing board to his chest. “I am most joyful that you and Entyika Newton escaped the villainous event.”
“And I’m very glad that you did.” Julian wanted to know what was so important that it had to be written by firelight and could not wait until daylight. “I expect we’ll be returning to Olympus in the morning.”
