Yet for every muridach warrior the defenders killed, ten more could take its place. The gray elves had no such advantage. If the fighting lasted long enough, if the muridachs did not break, the enemy might win through sheer attrition.
Then Calliande looked skyward. Tamara followed her gaze and saw a winged shape circling high overhead.
“That’s an urdhracos, isn’t it?” said Tamara.
“Yes,” said Calliande. “It’s the Scythe.”
“The Scythe of the Maledicti?” said Seruna, startled. “You have faced that creature?”
“Yes,” said Calliande, voice distant.
Tamara thought about mentioning that the Scythe had apparently killed her several times and decided against it. “Could you use your magical lightning to blast her from the sky?”
“Not from this distance,” said Athadira. For once, the High Augur did not sound condescending. “The Scythe is powerful enough to block anything I could throw at her from this far away.”
“What is she doing?” said Kalussa.
“Scouting, obviously,” said Calliande. “She can take to the air and report every detail of our defense to her masters…wait.” Her gaze snapped across the field, behind the advancing column of muridach infantry.
There was a sudden flare of blue light behind the muridach lines.
“The muridach priests!” said Calliande, and her staff began to blaze with white fire. “They’re casting a spell.”
“We must move!” said Rhomathar. “If they strike the Augurs, we shall lose our strongest wizards!”
“No!” said Calliande. “I can ward you here. If you move, they’ll kill you.”
“Do not presume to command the Augurs of the Liberated!” snarled Athadira. “We…”
“Mother, she is right!” said Rilmeira, who had joined her magic to that of the Augurs during the attack, flinging blasts of lightning at any muridachs who drew too close. Despite her relative youth among the gray elves, Rilmeira seemed one of their stronger wizards, close in power to the Augurs themselves. “Mother, look!”
The blue light brightened, a vortex of shadow swirling around it. Tamara thought the blue light was at least a mile away, far enough that the muridach priests would not be within the range of the engines upon the towers. Yet even across that distance, she felt the immense dark power drawing together, grim and potent.
Calliande shouted and struck the end of her staff against the rampart. White fire blazed up its length and then exploded from its end to form into a shimmering dome of light. An instant later a howling lance of blue fire and shadow, as thick as one of the kalocrypts, screamed across the battlefield. It struck the dome of light with a thunderous crack, blue light and white fire flashing madly around them. Calliande stumbled back with a cry, her face a rigid mask of concentration, and Kalussa caught her elbow. But the Keeper stayed on her feet, and her concentration held against the storm of dark magic.
The blue fire winked out, and the Augurs struck back. All five of them cast a spell in unison, the power centering on Athadira. The High Augur thrust her glittering staff towards the sky with a scream, and a bolt of lightning howled down. It struck the staff and coiled around it, and Athadira pushed her free hand forward with a grimace of pain. A sphere of lightning a dozen feet across expanded from her hand and hurtled over the wall, across the battlefield, and towards where the muridach priests had cast their spell.
Even from a distance, the resultant explosion was impressive.
The muridach priests did not try to attack again, and Tamara, Calliande, and Kalussa turned their attention to the waves of kalocrypts and the muridach infantry.
###
Ridmark stepped back, breathing hard, his shoulders and knees aching, sweat hot against his face and temples. His eyes swept the ramparts, looking for his next target, but he couldn’t find one.
Nor could he see any additional fighting on the ramparts, though the archers were still sending flights of arrows over the battlements.
“I think,” said Third, staring over the ramparts, “that the enemy is withdrawing.”
She was right.
Ridmark looked over the wall. Hundreds of dead kalocrypts and thousands of slain muridachs littered the slope, blood and ichor seeping in the soil. In a few days, the stench would be intolerable. Ruined and broken siege ladders lay scattered at the foot of the wall. The surviving muridachs from the most recent wave retreated in a mass towards the muridach army…
No. Not the muridach army.
The muridach siege camps.
Ridmark had not paid much attention to what was happening outside the walls while he and the others had fought for their lives against the muridach soldiers and the kalocrypts. The rest of the muridach hosts had been busy. Thousands of muridachs dug ditches, raising earthwork walls. Others assembled catapults and ballistae, and still others were busy on devices that looked like siege towers.
“Unless I miss my guess,” said Krastikon, “they have numbers enough to surround the entire city while staying out of ballista and catapult range.”
“You’re not wrong,” said Ridmark, staring at the vast host outside the walls.
The gray elves were trapped within their final city…and so were Ridmark and the others.
Chapter 11: A Younger Woman
Very little happened for the rest of that day and all that night.
Third listened with half an ear as the Augurs and the Lord Marshal talked about the city’s defense. They had slain thousands of muridachs in the first attack, but over three hundred gray elves had been killed, some from wounds, others dying from the strain of fighting through the exhaustion of the plague curse. Third made a circuit of Cathair Caedyn’s walls, taking a quick mental count of the muridach horde encircling the city.
There were at least a quarter of a million muridachs laying siege to Cathair Caedyn, maybe as many as three hundred thousand, and it was entirely possible there were more within the jungle or in the tunnels of the Deeps that she could not see. Third knew very little of muridachs, save what the Traveler had mentioned and what she had picked up during her travels, but she did know that the muridachs bred at a prodigious rate. It was not uncommon for a muridach woman to have between thirty to fifty children during her lifetime, born in litters of five or six. Frequently the muridach children killed and ate their weaker siblings, but many of them survived to adulthood.
The muridach population could grow to prodigious heights, contained only by their love of internecine warfare and the limits of the available food. Yet if a strong ruler could stop the feuding and direct the rapaciousness of the muridachs outward, they could become a force of terrible power.
It seemed that Great King Nerzamdrathus, backed by the power of this mysterious prophet, had done just that.
Third saw no way to stop the destruction of Cathair Caedyn and the annihilation of the gray elves.
What was worse, she saw no way to save Ridmark and Calliande and her friends, no way to fulfill her mission from Queen Mara and High King Arandar. Third wondered what she could have done differently. Every step since they had left Kalimnos had seemed to land them in deeper trouble. Should she have insisted they try to fight their way east through the foothills of the Gray Mountains? No, if they had tried, they would have been surrounded and overwhelmed. Or perhaps they should have avoided the ruins of Cathair Avamyr entirely. Yet if they had, no doubt the muridachs would have found them on the steppes. Maybe they should have refused to accompany Arliach’s patrol to Cathair Caedyn. But the city was the closest thing they would find to a safe haven in the Illicaeryn Jungle, and if they had not come here, almost certainly the muridachs would have killed them.
In the end, Third supposed, it was simple ill fortune. They had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. If not for the trap of the Maledicti in the Tower of Nightmares, they would have left Kalimnos several days earlier and departed the foothills long before the muridach armies emerged. Third could not think of anything she could have done
differently, anything that would have kept them from Cathair Caedyn.
It was as if the hand of fate was against them. Though Third did not believe in fate. She did believe in God, though. Perhaps the hand of God was against them.
That was an unsettling thought.
The woman in flames…
The Augurs said the Sylmarus showed them visions of the future. Had it showed them a vision of the inevitable destruction of the gray elves? Perhaps it was unavoidable.
But Third would not perish without a fight.
Neither would Ridmark and Calliande or the others.
She remained near Ridmark as the Augurs and the Lord Marshal discussed the defense of the city. Athadira was a pride-blinded fool, but fortunately, it seemed that while the High Augur led the city, the Lord Marshal had the final say over matters of defense, and Rhomathar was wise enough to listen to his guests. The Unity let the gray elves fight in perfect harmony, but they could not share experiences that none of them possessed, and Third suspected none of them had any experience in siege warfare of this scale. The gray elves were excellent skirmishers and ambushers, fighting and retreating into the depths of the jungle, but a siege like this was something else entirely.
Rhomathar drank up Ridmark’s and Calliande’s suggestions like a sponge, and even the High Augur remained silent, though she glowered often. Perhaps she realized that the Shield Knight’s suggestions gave the Liberated a greater chance of survival.
Not much, but some.
As they talked, Third found her eyes drifting to Kyralion again and again. He didn’t deserve this, either, to die fighting for a leader who clearly despised him as a threat to her authority. Still, at least the warriors of Cathair Caedyn respected Kyralion. She had seen that during the long, bloody afternoon upon the ramparts. Again and again, Kyralion had charged into the fray, and his presence had hardened the morale of the wavering, exhausted warriors. Third realized that the elves of the Unity could sense each other’s fear in battle, but Kyralion’s expression had remained impassive as he fought. To see one of their own charging so boldly into the fray stiffened their resolve, and Kyralion had rallied defenders that might otherwise have been overcome.
Third looked at him, and she saw Rilmeira staring at him as well.
Rilmeira…
Third found that she could not dislike the gray elven woman. She seemed impulsive and rash, and like so many of the gray elves, she wore her emotions upon her sleeve. Yet none of those emotions had the cruel arrogance of her mother.
And one of those emotions was that Rilmeira was in love with Kyralion. It was as evident as words upon the page of a book.
Third thought that Kyralion was in love with Rilmeira as well. Her mother had forbidden it, no doubt, but it was plain to see. Did that anger Third? No, it just made her weary. She hadn’t asked for this. She had come to Owyllain to find her friends and bring them home again.
Not to meet a gray elven warrior who sometimes dominated her thoughts.
Rilmeira saw her gaze and flinched.
The next morning the muridachs still worked like a mound of ants, assembling catapults and siege engines. Third had not slept well, and she walked alone through the streets of the city, listening to the noise as the women and children brought more bundles of arrows to the wall, as the guard shift upon the ramparts changed. She found it easy to avoid the gray elves. They were all focused on their tasks, and there were many empty houses in Cathair Caedyn.
Third suspected Cathair Caedyn had housed a much larger population until recently.
At last, she came to a courtyard behind four houses. It had once contained a garden with a flowering tree, but no one had tended it for years. The garden was overgrown, but it was still a beautiful space. There was a stone bench beneath the tree, and Third sat down with a sigh.
The battle would begin soon enough, she knew. Ridmark said that the muridachs would likely launch another attack by noon, and Third saw no reason to disagree with him. Her instincts spoke of the coming battle as well. She had seen war, centuries of war, and she feared that the next attack might destroy Cathair Caedyn and everyone within its walls.
Third felt weary enough that she wanted to close her eyes, but if she did that she might dream, and she didn’t want that. Instead, she gazed at the garden, letting her mind wander. It really was a beautiful place, and it was a beautiful city.
Her eyes drifted to the Sylmarus, the green glow shining beneath its bark despite the blights growing on its side. It was an ancient, strong thing, and it was sad to see it so sick, dying a lingering death. Third had never heard of such a creature, and she wondered where it had come from, if there were others of its kind somewhere in the world. Her mind interpreted its aura as a soaring song of beauty, but she heard the sickness in that song, the discord of illness…
A feeling of vertigo went through her.
She was looking at the Sylmarus…but she had the feeling that the huge tree was looking back at her, that she had the attention of that vast and ancient creature.
“My lady?”
Third blinked and turned her head.
The position of the shadows had shifted a little as the sun moved through the sky. Just how long had she been staring at the Sylmarus? It wasn’t like Third for her attention to drift.
She had failed to notice that Rilmeira stood in the alley between two of the houses, staring at her.
The battle-hardened part of her mind (which was most of it, really) wondered if Rilmeira had come to dispose of a potential rival for Kyralion’s affections, but one glance proved that idea ridiculous. Rilmeira looked nervous. She was wearing the golden armor of the gray elves, which should have made her look formidable, but Rilmeira looked as if she wanted to shrink inside it. She held her hands clasped in front of her chest, but they kept plucking at each other.
Third rose and offered a polite bow. “Lady Rilmeira.” She decided to excuse herself. “I must…”
“Please,” said Rilmeira. “Just call me Rilmeira. Mother is so insistent that we all use our ancient titles. But there are so few of us left. It seems ridiculous to care about such things now.”
“I agree,” said Third.
Nor, she feared, was there much time left to worry about such things.
“I wanted to talk to you, if that was all right,” said Rilmeira. “I’m afraid I may not get a chance again. Lord Rhomathar and the Shield Knight think the muridachs will come in force today. If they are…repelling them will hold all our attention.”
“As it should,” said Third.
“May I ask…I wanted to ask you something,” said Rilmeira.
Third nodded. “Go ahead.”
“I wanted to ask…I think I would like to know,” said Rilmeira. “I don’t mean to be rude, but it…it I really wanted to know, and it’s none of my business, but I have to ask, and…”
Third blinked. She didn’t often feel pity, but she felt it now. Likely Rilmeira was accustomed to asking complex and difficult questions through the Unity. Articulating an unpleasant emotion was likely an alien experience to her. Perhaps that was why she had lost her temper at her mother earlier.
“I think I know what you are trying to say,” said Third.
Rilmeira blinked, relief going over her face. “Oh?”
“You are in love with Kyralion and have been for years,” said Third. “You have seen us together, and you are wondering if I am in love with him or if he is in love with me.”
It was almost comical to see Rilmeira’s relief turn to horrified dismay.
“I…I…” she started. “How did you know? Are you a sorceress?”
“What?” said Third.
“Did you read my mind?” said Rilmeira.
Third laughed despite herself. “No. I am just very old and very observant.” She sighed. “Permit me to make another observation. You and Kyralion have been very close for a long time, but your mother has forbidden the two of you to marry.”
“Yes,” said Rilmeira. “Am I
that transparent?”
“From someone who is part of the Unity, that is a strange question,” said Third. “But to me, yes. I think the elves of the Unity are so used to reading each other’s mind that you never learned to govern your expressions.” She suddenly remembered something Jager had told her about the importance of keeping a straight face while playing dice games. “It is just as well you have never met my sister’s husband. He would invite you to play a game of cards or dice, and he would walk away with every gold coin in the city.”
“How would he carry them all?” said Rilmeira.
“Unimportant,” said Third. Though knowing Jager, he would find a way. “But how long have you and Kyralion known each other?”
“All of our lives,” said Rilmeira. “I confess I was a horrible child. I was the High Augur’s daughter, and I could use that to get whatever I wanted. But Kyralion…I could never influence him or control him. At first, it enraged me. Then it baffled me. Then it intrigued me. I saw how hard he worked. He became one of our best swordsmen and archers. He could not use magic, but he was immune to it. That gave us an advantage in many fights with the dvargir and the muridachs.”
“I imagine many a muridach priest died on the end of Kyralion’s sword, wondering why his spell did not work,” said Third.
“Yes,” said Rilmeira. “My mother thinks he is a threat to the harmony and consensus of the Unity. His opinions were often at odds with hers. Mother would have us hide behind the walls of the city and hope the world passes us by. Kyralion thinks that we need to have friends among the Nine Cities and the orcish warlords, that if we do not have allies, we will inevitably fall.”
Sevenfold Sword: Unity Page 18
