by Kari Cordis
“If you think your malevolent tongue is going to somehow magically persuade us to stop nurturing and supporting the Realms, you are wasting everyone’s time.” It was Marek, Vangoth making sounds reminiscent of choking fury in the background. “There is nothing you can do that will in the slightest way affect us; now return the way you came and leave things alone that are beyond your knowledge!” He ended in a cold sneer, Vangoth still apoplectic at the edge of hearing.
“I am not alone,” Selah said. “Nor is the destruction of the Sheelshard so vast that it has reached all the way to the room of the gods. I have brought someone with me.”
Silence fell again, even from Vangoth, whether from curiosity or because they were reloading, Ari didn’t know.
“This is Ari,” Selah said, thunderously quiet. “Son of Raemon.”
Even forewarned by Rheine, the words made Ari’s skin crawl. For a second, he fought the old wave of revulsion, newly supplemented by all his recent unwanted education in the subject. The memory of the months’ worth of feeling tainted, of being overwhelmed at the filth that was the core of his being, swam before him, clouding his vision and making his fingers tremble over the console…and then the wave of self-loathing bounced off the bright anvil of grace, immutable as a forge made of Light, dissolving into nothing.
A second of inarticulate comments filled the air, then Laschald said in disgust, “That man’s indecent lusts have brought us more trouble—”
“Quiet!” Marek snapped.
“There’s no way she can know…” Vangoth muttered, low and still angry.
“This is your last chance,” Selah said in a voice like a trumpet, but was interrupted by an icy Marek.
“This is your last chance! You are nothing but an arrogant, intruding, pathetic barbarian! YOU HAVE NO CONTROL HERE! We are so far removed from your puny, spiteful power that you cannot even conceive of it. There is nothing you can do to us. Now, for the last time, be gone!” He ended with contemptuous malice, and somebody huffed in agreement in the background.
Selah, eyes blazing, turned to Ari. He gulped and moved his finger over the little lever she’d designated. Taking a deep breath, he flicked the switch.
“No, don’t touch that,” Laschald said hurriedly. “We’re not ready for the fourth level, yet—”
The red light flashed one last time into Ari’s eyes, reading his bloodlines, then the voices went abruptly silent. The signs faded behind the strange black glass. The lights went out.
For a split second, nothing else happened. The quiet was so complete, Ari turned to look questioningly at Selah, illuminated now only by their greasy torchlight. He blinked at the look on her face—not angry, not victorious, not vengeful or satisfied…just achingly, endlessly, vastly sad. For the gods? Or for the people they’d condemned to misery for all these centuries?
His worry was cut abruptly short by a low rumbling. The ground began to quiver under his feet, making him suddenly and acutely aware of all the leagues of rock and Sheel looming above them. A very bad feeling crept into his bones. Not again! He and Selah glanced at each other, and without a word he grabbed her elbow and made a dash for the doorway. The room literally caved in behind them as the sound rose in a crescendo of deafening roaring. Almost, they made it through the doorway. A rock the size of Banion’s fist plunged right onto Ari’s calf, bringing him to his knees with both the force and the rupturing pain.
Selah hurriedly helped him up, stones and debris cascading around them, and they ran as fast as he could limp down the passage. They didn’t talk—the noise was so overwhelming they couldn’t have heard anyway—and there was so much dust in the air, Ari could hardly breathe, let alone see Selah. It was so sudden, all of it. They’d run hardly three paces into this abruptly chaotic world when just ahead of them, the whole passageway seemed to collapse. It was nothing but a wall of falling rock and choking dust and Ari frantically pulled Selah into his arms, crouching over her against one of the walls.
He just had time to think, burying his nose in her thick, soft hair, that if he had to die, dying embracing her was surely the way to do it. Then the air seemed to empty of oxygen and he couldn’t breathe, and he thought of nothing else.
CHAPTER 41
In between Aerach scout reports, Androssan slipped away for a few hurried moments of relief. The latrines were foul, even the officers’, but at least in the scant growth of shrubbery and saplings he had a few seconds of privacy to gather his scattered wits. Sometime today they would make contact with the Enemy…at least the Rach would. Kyr hoped they would be able to hold them off the front lines of the allied forces a full day or maybe two. Secretly, the General didn’t think the Rach was as committed to the idea of his forces slowly falling back as the rest of the Realm leaders were. In fact, when the talk had focused in on the plans of the Aerach cavalry, he’d gone so far as to say it out loud. He’d rubbed his smooth brown chin ruefully—most of the Rach didn’t have any facial hair—and said, “Rach really don’t retreat very well…”
“They’re YOUR men,” the Imperial cavalry officer had snapped. “They should do whatever you tell them!”
Kyr had sighed and said dryly, “You’d think it would work that way…”
A rustling in the bushes directly ahead of him snapped his head up. He peered into the undergrowth with no little interest, being in a rather vulnerable state. After a second, he could make out four slender legs down where the shrubbery thinned: a grazing deer or something. Then it lifted its head, and for a moment Androssan looked right into its startled eyes.
He froze, even his breathing suspended for that one fantastical moment. It had been a long time since he’d been on a hunt…but he wasn’t sure that even if his family was starving and he had a clear shot that he could shoot this animal.
It was small, an antelope, but with enormous horns that swept up in graceful black arcs from its forehead. Its coat was pure, glossy white, black nose and eyes glistening moistly in the dawn. In the foggy morning, with streamers of mist floating here and there through the small copse of trees, the creature was impossibly ethereal, so beautiful it was more dream than reality.
They stared into each other’s surprised eyes for one breathless second, a moment of quivering, tensed uncertainty, those liquid dark eyes seeming to see right into his soul, pools of all the unknown wonder and fear and joy of life itself.
Then, suddenly, it twisted aside and leapt, the tension too much to bear. Soaring almost its own height off the ground, the antelope came like a flash of light full into vision before it disappeared. Stripe of dove grey along its lower side…finer hairs of its underbelly making it somehow whiter even than its white coat…tiny, delicate, glossy black hooves, shining like onyx in the misty air…
Androssan blinked several times. Slowly, he did up his lacings, heart still thudding with the shock of that vision of glowing white, that explosive escape, like a pheasant breaking from under your feet. It must have wandered down out of the Silver Hills, he thought a little numbly.
His mind was forced onto other matters as soon as he stepped out of the thin grove of trees. Lt. Waylan was waiting for him, politely looking the opposite direction.
“Morning, Sir,” he said crisply. “Tent’s down and on its way. The Lord Regent has left with the Cyrrhidean command but Rach Kyr is here. He’s brought you an Aerach mount, Sir, for the campaign…”
The General stepped out briskly, Waylan punctiliously at his elbow with his constant updates. “Give him my thanks, etc., etc…” Androssan waved his big hand vaguely. He strode down the rutted road with his characteristic bold stride—today especially it was necessary to look confident and in control. Soldiers were sensitive to that sort of thing, and he was leaving the area. These local troops needed that positive picture in their minds once he was gone.
After their viewing of the other night—Androssan had found a nice, safe, quiet corner of his mind where he could stick that memory so that it didn’t interfere with his daily tasks—the alli
ed leaders had decided a more central location was needed for command. Kamitan Way intersected the Daroe much closer to the Silver Hills than to the western flank…well, what they knew now was the western flank. They’d not expected it to be quite such a…wide front. Androssan pushed his panic back into its corner.
They passed Merranic command, busy as bees in readiness—they would stay where they were, hopefully holding the left flank—and then Androssan was suddenly distracted by the view across the Daroe.
He’d expected the Rach to be bustling with activity this morning, too. They would ride in a few hours to intersect the forces of the Enemy; one would expect a sense of industry. But there was almost utter stillness along that whole line. The Rach were standing quietly, brushing their stallions as the sun tried to penetrate the gloomy mist, or a few of them sharpening last minute sabres. But most of them were on a knee, facing the battlefield, naked blades held up in front of them. Dozens and dozens all along the length of the Daroe were in this position of almost reverent, focused stillness.
“What are they doing?” Androssan asked, interrupting Waylan. His lieutenant was quiet for a few seconds. He cleared his throat; there were some things he seemed reluctant to talk about with the Rach.
“It’s a ritual, Sir,” he said.
“I gathered,” Androssan answered dryly.
“They call it the Sheening of the Blades, Sir, sort of a preparation for battle, a dedication of their steel to a fight of honor and justice …”
“They chanting a charm over them?” Androssan asked as they passed a young man who even across the width of the misty Daroe could be seen faintly moving his lips.
“Praying, Sir.” He was definitely reluctant.
“To whom?” Androssan had thought the Rach were heathen savages. Waylan hadn’t said anything about this.
“Most of them are Illians, Sir.”
“Illians? That Addahite cult? How’d it get down to the Sheel?”
“Their oral tradition has it as coming through the Empress.”
Androssan grunted. They’d come to the frostless, bare, wide stretch of flattened earth where his tent and the big command tent had previously claimed the ground. His horse was waiting, saddled and ready, for the ride west. He was just about to put his foot into the stirrup when sudden shouting made him pause and turn to look back the way they’d come.
There was some kind of uproar sweeping through the ranks of the preparing Rach. Where mere seconds ago all had been motionless, concentrated stillness, now warriors were a buzz of excited action, men leaping to their feet. Cries and shouts pierced the air and Kyr, across the river and headed to the bridge to cross to them, stopped and looked alertly down his line of men.
Growing waves of excitement and exclamations were washing down from the east—and then Androssan saw what was causing all the uproar. His eyes widened with the recognition.
“The White Gazelle!” Waylan breathed in almost rapturous surprise at his elbow.
“What?” Androssan demanded sharply. His lieutenant was staring, wide-eyed, with a strange, transfixed expression on his young face. He struggled to get control of himself.
“It’s…uh, it’s a legend, Sir, uh, a symbol to the Rach. An icon, really…” Both of their eyes were drawn across the river again—it was almost useless to try and talk anyway. The wave of ecstatic noise had swelled up from hundreds of Aerach throats, drowning out everything but their excitement.
Androssan saw it again briefly through all the moving, shouting bodies. Startlingly, pristinely white in the smeary grey morning, it leaped across the face of the Aerach army, running straight down all that long front. In the glimpse he had of it, it was pronging, back bent almost impossibly back on itself in brilliant, gossamer grace. The sun, as if on some theatrical cue, broke just then through the thinning mist, lighting the world with sparkling rays of silvery gold and making the gazelle look like it was almost on fire with light.
The wave of noise passed on, rising up and fading all along the stretch of Rach out to the west as they caught sight of it, but the sense of awe, of exultant energy, remained. Swirled and eddied, in fact, like a churning stream ready to pour over into a cataract. In front of them, Kyr separated from the electric energy of the hundreds of gathered warriors, suddenly leaping with that peculiar Aerach grace onto the back of his red stallion.
“NOW!” he thundered, and all eyes turned to him, drawn up in that riveting vitality. His voice rang across the country like a trumpet: “Now is the time of our tribulation! The Sign of the Empress has come! Great will be our losses this day! And great will be our gains! War is upon us—LET US BE ABOUT IT!!!!”
And a roar that made the previous ruckus sound like a playground cheer broke from the surrounding Rach in a deafening avalanche of sound. Almost as one, the hundreds of Rach within Androssan’s vision leaped to horse.
Kyr’s stallion reared under him, screaming a challenge and lashing at the air, and the sun caught his drawn blade in blinding reflection as it was thrust into the shimmering morning. He dropped it suddenly and the red sprang away into a full gallop, every Rach in sight plunging after him in such perfect precision it looked choreographed.
Androssan stood motionless in the exact same position he’d had for the last several minutes. Waylan gulped audibly beside him.
“They weren’t supposed to leave for a couple hours…” Androssan said. He glanced at his lieutenant, who composed himself with an obvious effort. The General frowned, returning to the mounting of his mount, who was a little restless after all the commotion. “Was that supposed to be an inspirational speech? Now we face our death? Hip hip hooray?” he asked sardonically.
“You’d…have to be a Rach, Sir,” Waylan said rather helplessly, going to the horse’s head to quiet it. Androssan gave him a hard look, correctly reading the longing on his open face.
“They’re just men, Lieutenant,” he said. Life was getting ready to become very hard and dark and ugly; that boy had better get his head out of the clouds. He turned the gelding and headed west so that he didn’t hear Waylan say quietly into the dawning morning, “No, Sir…they’re Rach.”
The Skylord, Khrieg, was waiting for him at Blackbird Bluff. More central to the expected battlefield, it was the highest spot of ground between the Prow and the modest foothills of the Dragonspine called the Saphilles, where Cornton lay. It was a couple days’ hard ride, but with a front like what they were expecting, a single man wasn’t going to be able to overwatch all the action by sitting in one spot anyway. Besides, Androssan agreed with the general consensus that the flanks were anchored extraordinarily well—the redoubtable Knights hinged solidly on the sheer face of the Silver Hills, and the masses of nimble Sentinels locked immovably into the foothills of the Dragonspine. All of which meant that the long length of the Imperial-held center was actually the most vulnerable.
Lord Khrieg greeted him with subdued courtesy at the top of the bluff. He was in Sentinel-colored uniform, that murky greenish-greyish-brownish stuff that disappeared against a forest background, his thin chest covered in hardened leather. Unlike the Regent’s, Khrieg’s cuirass was stamped with the delicate spreading gold tree of Cyrrh…and looked a size too big. His silver-haired form seem to slump forlornly amongst all the war leather.
“Forgive my tardiness, General,” he said graciously. “I was attending to the defenses of the Torques and arranging last minute affairs at the Palace. I doubt,” he said, turning his seamed brown face to the battlefield, “that any of us will return from this…”
Androssan’s jaw clenched. “We’re just happy to have you here now, my Lord,” he said with wooden insincerity. He took out his glass and scanned the southern horizon attentively. His belly was jumping with anticipation and dread. The Rach had made contact, but had done so well holding off the Enemy that neither were in sight yet—though it had been almost two days.
Spere came thundering up, reining in beside him. “All forces stood to, second stage alert,” he reported,
crisp and cryptic. Androssan nodded.
“Have some drink, take some refreshment, you and your men,” Khrieg offered, gesturing with a fine-boned hand behind him. Spere goggled when they both turned to look. A silken Cyrrhidean tent had been erected on the flat ground at the rear of the bluff, its billowing walls colored in the same eye-confusing pattern as the Sentinel uniform. In front of it sat, incongruously, a delicately carved table of…gold leaf? A tea set? Pillows???
“At least some coffee? You’ve been long on the road, my good General…come, I insist,” Khrieg said, as Androssan cast a half-desperate glance out at the empty fields to the south, wishing for some excuse to refuse. He was hardly in the mood for tea and biscuits. The Skylord dismounted and Androssan, sharing one brief, incredulous look with his Point, followed suit.
He sprang to his feet as soon as he heard Waylan come riding up, though his adjutant was at a walk. “An Aerach Wingtip’s been spotted, Sir. He’s been directed to head straight here.” He glanced at their little tea party, wisely made no comment, and said instead, “Sir, let me bring you the Sheel-bred stallion from Kyr.” It had been brought with the other baggage of the General’s entourage that was being hurriedly sorted out somewhere below them.
“It’s a dun,” Spere sneered, coming up beside them. Like most experienced sergeants saddled with officers still wet behind the ears, the two had their clashes. They’d work it out eventually, but Androssan didn’t think just now was the time to chip away at it.
“That’s not seen as an insult to the Rach,” Waylan snapped heatedly. Dun was the color of workhorses in the North, commoners’ horses.
“Drop it,” Androssan commanded brusquely. “I have an Aerach.” He could care less about such things. Frankly, as an infantryman, the color of the horse he rode was the last thing on his mind, especially now.
“Sir, it’s Sheel-bred,” Waylan almost pleaded.
