'I see it,' Oracle murmured. 'If the Zr'gsz cavalry were not closing on the flanks, the knights would charge the foot soldiers. The lizard riders are bait of a sort, aren't they?'
'Of a negative sort, yes,' Fost said sourly. 'Shrewd of you to see it.' His mouth twisted. 'Shrewd of that damned serpent to think of it.'
It began as a tiny ripple along the line of conscript spearmen.
Men in the front rank turned in fear from the flashing stone-edged weapons of the Hissers. Poorly armored, they still had the advantage over the Zr'gsz, who wore none at all. But it would take men much better motivated to face the inhuman speed and ferocity of the Zr'gsz. The first rank turned and shoved back in panic on the men behind, who resisted and then sought flight themselves. In moments, the whole formation was beginning to erode like a dirt clod dropped into a fast-running stream.
A squadron of Imperial cavalry surged forward on the far right flank. Fost saw a black chalice on a white pennon at the fore and smiled grimly. Foedan led his Kolnith knights into Zr'gsz lines, knowing his fellows would have to cover him against a countercharge of Hisser cavalry. No sooner had the Kolnithin driven deep into the body of the Vridzish foot soldiers than the Imperial knights and the Zr'gsz lizard riders charged one another.
Moriana had seen the giant lizards the Hissers rode before, sprawling green monsters with a crest of long yellow spines running down their backs. Not even she had seen them in full charge. Awesome as the full charge of the Northern heavy cavalry was, the lizards' charge was even more awesome. The whip-tailed monsters raised their bloated bodies off the ground and sprinted with legs at full extension. Six thousand dog riders met fewer than half as many Zr'gsz, but the Hissers' lizard mounts gave them the edge in height and speed. At first contact, the Imperial squadrons on the right flank reeled and fell in confusion, while on the left the Hissers were brought to a halt. As the resounding surf-boom of the collision died, the battle degenerated into swirling melee, Zr'gsz and humans hacking one another with axe, mace and sword. Triangular lizard heads darted to snap knights from their mounts and crush them in sawtoothed jaws; dogs grabbed wattled throats of the dragons and clung, tearing out huge gobbets of flesh.
'Strike!' Moriana commanded, raising her arm. For hundreds of yards along the buffs, pageboys struck padded hammers against brass gongs. The Imperial treasurer winced at the expense of gongs and ridiculed them as an extravagance. But Moriana had got her way; the gongs were the most lethal weapon.
The reverberation of hundreds of gongs filled the air, dampening even the mad tumult of battle. Moriana closed her eyes and concentrated all her energy, her being, her very soul, on modulating the booming waves of sound.
With Ziore to help draw the memory from the depths of her mind, and Oracle to analyze the memories, Moriana had been able to determine the exact pitch which the undying toad creature Ullapag had used to induce torpor and death in Zr'gsz venturing too close to the skystone mines of Omizantrim. Now she altered the voice of the gongs until they cried out in the inaudible voice of the Ullapag.
Skyrafts began skidding crazily all over the sky, scattering their passengers like a farmer scatters handfuls of seeds. The relentless advance of the Vridzish foot soldiers in the center and the lizard riders on the right stopped as if it had run into a wall. The riding dragons uttered hissing squeals of fear and fled, their senseless riders dropping from the saddles.
The rout of the Imperial center was stemmed. Even the ranks of the regulars were being disrupted by the panicking conscripts.
With the upper hand already, the left wing cavalry squadrons ran the stunned lizard riders off the field. Fost was shouting and pounding in his saddle. 'You've done it, Moriana! You've won the battle for us!' Oracle noticed the black cloud forming above the battlefield.
'I beg your pardon, Your Highness,' he said to Moriana. Her eyes opened and glared at him. She needed every ounce of her concentration. He pointed to the cloud. Her eyes went wide. 'Get down!' she screamed.
Fost flung himself face down on the sod. His dog bolted and smashed into a silver dome that hadn't been there seconds before. As he lay blinking, he realized the jagged purple lines of afterimage were caused by lightning. The pewter dome above flickered and went out of existence. He looked at Moriana. Her face was drawn and pale. 'I don't know if I can do that again,' she said, her voice weak.
He scanned the line of gongs – or where the line had been. Charred corpses remained behind where humans had once stood. He swallowed hard. Had it not been for Oracle's alertness and the quickness of Moriana's reactions, they would have shared the fate of those feckless pageboys.
'Why is the cloud going away?' demanded Erimenes. 'It could blast our whole army to rubble.'
'The Zr'gsz sorcerer – or sorcerers – must spend their life energies to cast spells, just as I must. They couldn't maintain the lightning cloud.' She smoothed hair back from her forehead. 'Its work was done, anyway,' she added bitterly.
The left wing's pursuit of enemy cavalry ended abruptly in disaster when the deadly vibrations ceased. The Hissers turned back on their pursuers while a living sea of footmen swamped the knights from the side. The dogs began to mill in confusion. Having lost momentum, the heavy riders were doomed. They could work destruction on their foes, but it was only a question of time before the last was dragged from his saddle and slain.
The center gave way to total flight. The Imperial ranks behind began to fall apart as the supposedly invincible regulars joined in the disorderly retreat. Behind them, the men of the border states waited, grim and firm.
When Moriana's force dome winked out, Fost's war dog had run down the face of the bluff where it was intercepted by the picket of Black March bowmen guarding the foot of the hill. 'I'll be back,' Fost promised, and began picking his way down.
Summoning her resources, Moriana began to fling forth spell after spell. None worked as well as the vibrations; that had been their best chance and she knew it. The Zr'gsz magic met her every spell and cancelled it. She felt the deadly frustration her sister must have felt during the battle for the Sky City, when the Heart of the People harmlessly absorbed her most potent magics. But one thing encouraged her. The Zr'gsz magic was all defensive. No lethal conjurations were loosed against the Imperial armies. On the other hand, the Zr'gsz were winning without them.
'Here, Marshal,' a grinning boy said, handing Fost the reins of his dog. Fost nodded, trying to look gruff and martial.
'Thanks, son.' He hoised himself into the saddle. The skitterish beast danced and growled.
The Zr'gsz foot soldiers advanced again, harrying the routed Imperial forces. The Marchers waited tensely, weapons ready, but the Hissers didn't come their way. The green tide swept past their knoll in pursuit of fleeing foes. Fost looked that way and tried not to wince. It seemed the end of the battle wasn't far off.
His dog turned and caught sight of the enemy. Fost's dog was a finer charger, a mount fit and trained to be ridden by a knight. And like the Imperial knights, it was bred to be headstrong, ferociously brave, and as dumb as a stump. The dog charged.
On the hill Moriana sank down sobbing as her legs gave way. 'It's no use,' she moaned. 'I can't go on!' 'Don't give up,' Ziore gently urged.
'Don't you understand? Every spell I try they counter before it's completed. It's over. I'm sorry I brought you into this.'
Hesitantly, Oracle touched her shoulder. She didn't feel it. He couldn't project a tactile illusion this far. He cleared his throat. 'If I might suggest something…' 'I'm telling you, I don't have any power left!' she shrieked.
'Highness,' Oracle said softly, 'that might be so, but you might be able to make them think you still have power. Or rather that another does.'
Moriana looked up at Oracle, the idea germinating in her brain. She slowly smiled and rose. The damned Hissers would never forget this day after she – and another – finished with them.
Fost tried valiantly to stop the animal but his lack of skill in riding betrayed him. His a
rms flailed wildly and it appeared that he urged on his troops. None heard his cries: 'No, you forsaken son of a bitch! No! Stop! Halt! Oh, shiiit!'
Shieldless, unhelmeted, Fost rode through the surging masses of Zr'gsz. He struck out in truly heroic fashion, left and right in great looping arcs, so fast his blade blurred like a hummingbird's wings. His usual berserker madness failed to take him. What gave Fost such superhuman strength was stark terror.
He swept among the reptile men. His blade lopped limbs, crushed skulls, stove in chests, and Fost did not tire. He didn't dare.
The low caste Zr'gsz were much less intelligent than the darker skinned nobility. They could cope well enough with normal battle situations: Find enemy, kill enemy. Nothing in their limited experience prepared them for anything like this.
The Hissers' front ranks ran up against the lines of Borderland spearmen – and recoiled. The Border Guards and militiamen from the Marches had already stood firm in the face of their own fleeing comrades. Now they met the full force of the Zr'gsz charge and did not yield. But off to their right the surviving wing of cavalry was being pushed back slowly. It wouldn't be long before the lizard riders overwhelmed the knights. Then they would fall on the border men like an ocean wave falling on a sand castle.
A tall noble in whipping black robe and shiny green armor turned the wedge-shaped head of his riding dragon toward Fost and kicked it into a run. Still hewing frantically, Fost saw the lance drop to the horizontal. He had no shield and in the crush of reptilian bodies surrounding his dog he couldn't dodge. He was a dead man.
He stopped the wild flailing of his arms. Immediately, fatigue turned them leaden. He gripped his sword two-handed, trying to make himself believe he had a chance to knock the lancehead aside before it skewered him. He saw the Zr'gsz grin above the rim of the shield, saw the triangular lancehead streaking toward his chest…
With a scream of demonic fury, the nobleman was plucked from his saddle by sudden claws seizing his head from above. His plumed helm fell away. Black blood fountained from his punctured eyes. With a drumming of wings, Ch'rri bore the Vridzish up and away. Fost swatted the riderless dragon across its scaly snout with the flat of his blade. It turned tail and ran.
From five hundred feet in the air, the body of the Zr'gsz warrior plummeted down to smash into the ground not ten feet from Fost. The Vridzish bounced once, limbs waving like a rag doll's. Then it lay still.
The low caste Hissers scattered in all directions. Fost raised his eyes to the terrible apparition hovering above his head. He saluted Ch'rri with his bloody sword. It seemed an appropriate tribute.
But Ch'rri paid him no heed. Her blue slit-pupilled eyes stared toward the north where men of the Empire made their final stand. Fost followed the gaze. He couldn't believe the sight.
Jirre had come.
Tall as the sky she strode across the hills. Her hair blazed golden and her eyes were emeralds. Her flowing robes shone green and gold. In one hand she held a lyre, in the other a sword. Beholding her, men forgot their mortal peril to drop to their knees and worship.
Jirre had come.
Jirre, named by some priests the foremost of the Three and Twenty Wise Ones of Agift, Jirre, of all the gods one of the bitterest foes of the Dark Ones.
Vridzish hissed in dread. 'The devil-goddess! She comes again!' The lower caste foot soldiers knew Jirre and hated her, as they hated all gods of Light.
Half mad with fear, the nobles and officers tried to bring their troops into a semblance of order. Clouds of arrows were loosed at the apparition. She did not deign to notice. Skyrafts drove at her, through her. All to no effect.
Jirre struck her lyre. A pure, sweet tone throbbed in the air. The Zr'gsz skyrafts crumbled to dust beneath their crew's clawed feet. She swung her sword, and the Hissers fell. They fell without mark of violence on their bodies, but fall they did up to the very feet of the hard-pressed border men.
On the hilltop, Moriana raised herself on tiptoe and held her arms high above her head. Ecstatic, she felt the power pulsing through her. She blessed Oracle for his inspiration, for the idea of the illusion of one whom the Fallen Ones dreaded above all others.
'It's working!' she cried as the Zr'gsz armies disintegrated below her.
Fost flung his sword down so hard it buried itself to the hilt in the soft, blood-drenched turf. He jumped off the dog's back, letting it run off to drag down any fleeing Hisser it could catch.
He stood shaking on the now stilled battlefield. The Zr'gsz that still lived were in full flight back toward the River Marchant. Many wouldn't stop running until both their hearts burst from exertion. The armies of the North stared into the sky at their deliverer. Teom came to the door of his great pavilion and dropped to knees before the Goddess. 'Well done, Moriana! Well done, girl!' Erimenes cried. 'You've beaten them,' sang Ziore.
And the apparition turned to face Moriana. The princess turned white.
'Daughter,' boomed Jirre. 'We love you well but never again can any of the Wise aid you in this manner. Only because you opened a pathway was I able to come. I cannot come again. But know that we will do what we can, that Night shall not claim this world again.
'Farewell, most-favored daughter. Know that I love you above all.' And Jirre was gone.
'That's what I call verisimilitude,' said Erimenes with a knowing wink. Moriana couldn't control the shaking of her hands or the cold knot in her stomach as she continued to stare into the space recently occupied by Jirre.
EPILOGUE
The hills and meadows of the Black March shivered with joyous celebration. The night air rang with boasts and jubilation. Many brave men had fallen but others still lived. Foedan of Kolnith was there, his huge domed head swathed in bandages. And Sir Tharvus, one of the pitiful handful surviving the catastrophic pursuit of the routed Zr'gsz by the cavalry on the left, sat as far from Moriana as possible, giving her poisoned glances over the rim of his goblet.
But seated at the great table of honor inside Teom's pavilion, Fost and Moriana picked at the sumptuous banquet spread before them with neither joy nor appetite.
Emperor Teom had knighted Fost where he stood in the middle of the battlefield, and the battle-weary survivors had hoisted him on their shoulders, bearing him directly to the pavilion.
Moriana arrived in much the same way. Their eyes met. An infinity of meaning flowed between them.
'Now tell me, Your Highness,' said the knight sitting at Moriana's right, 'how did you get the Lady Jirre to answer your call?'
She slammed her fist down on the table. Heads turned toward her. 'I did not! It was an illusion,' she said.
Disbelieving, the heads turned away and returned to light conversation or serious consumption of food and wine. Fost laid his hand on Moriana's leg and gave it a reassuring squeeze. She nodded acknowledgement without looking at him. 'Erimenes,' he heard Ziore whisper. 'You were magnificent!' 'Of course.' Fost shut his eyes and shook his head.
At the head of the table, Teom pounded for silence with the golden pommel of a sword never drawn in anger. 'Silence! Let us have silence! I propose a toast!'
The noise died. He rose, resplendent in a gilded breastplate sculpted in the likeness of a muscular torso, with a robe of yellow lacebird silk thrown over his shoulders, the jewelled rings on his fingers shining with inner lights of their own. He raised his goblet.
'To the Princess Moriana,' he cried. 'Mightiest sorceress of the Realm, favored by the Lady Jirre, and… and…' His Adam's apple rode slowly up and down. Even the rouge and paint on his face failed to give him color. Tense silence gripped the revellers as all eyes followed his to the uppermost part of the pavilion.
'Greetings,' said Zak'zar, Speaker of the People. 'I foretold we would meet again, dear cousin Moriana. And so it has come to pass.' A corner of his mouth twisted. 'Not precisely as I predicted, I grant you, but this is after all no victory you've won. A petty respite, at best.'
He floated at the top of the tent-pole, his body radiating a cold b
lack light. Sputtering on a mouthful of wine, the captain of the Guard bellowed for archers.
'It will do no good. I am not here. Only my likeness. A trick your Oracle knows well.' He inclined his head toward the pale, round man beside Fost.
Fost found his voice and said, 'You're bluffing, Zak'zar. We whipped you from the March like dogs.' Zak'zar's laugh chilled him to the bone.
'See then, friends, what we were doing while you were whipping dogs.'
He stretched forth his hand. A globe of intense blackness formed. A point of light danced in the middle, expanded to become a picture. The City in the Sky floated over the slate roofs and boxy pastel structures of Kara-Est.
Fost wondered why he was showing them the conquest of the seaport by the floating City; this was old news. Then he realized no eagles winged over the City and saw the strange blackness that filled the Well of Winds in the center of the City.
A black vortex extended downward from the Skywell. Where it touched, stones, people, entire buildings were uprooted and drawn upward into the blackness where they… disappeared. 'Istu!' The name ran through the tent.
'Istu,' Zak'zar agreed. 'Do you see what the great victory you won today signifies, Pale Ones? Do you, my cousin?'
Moriana wouldn't look at him. Her eyes were fixed on her plate, her face hidden by her golden hair.
'Why do you name her "cousin," you wretched creature?' Ziore shrieked at him. Counterfeit surprise crossed Zak'zar's face.
'Why shouldn't I call her that, good Ziore? Surely, you cannot object if I call my blood kin by their right name?' 'You lie!' Fost screamed as he came to his feet.
'Ah, poor Fost,' Zak'zar said, a sad chuckle escaping his throat. 'Do you truly think you can change the truth by denying it?' He raised his head to address them all. 'Know you the truth: nine thousand years ago an Athalar-trained adept came to Thendrun to receive the secret of true magic, not the petty mental tricks which the Athalar knew how to play.' Erimenes sputtered in outrage.
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