by Dave Smeds
While he waited, Omril stroked the vial. Eventually one end of the serum darkened nearly to blackness, while the other faded to a sky blue. As long as the wizard pointed in the direction from which the spell was coming, this stayed the case. If he pointed it another way, the liquid returned to a pure aqua. By the time they were ready to leave, he had calibrated the talisman so that he would not have to expend undue attention and energy upon it for the duration of the search.
He led the cohort around the shores of the lake. As expected, the hues of the serum became more intense. For the first time Omril's dispassionate attitude failed him; his body tingled. He felt an acid bite in his stomach, savage and appealing. This might be the night when he finally fulfilled his mission for his dread lord.
On the side of Rock Lake directly opposite Puriel's castle, the road branched. One fork continued along the shore, the other penetrated the forest. Omril halted the troops. The vial was hot in his hand. He beckoned both his lieutenants.
"The magicians are little more than a league from this spot, between the roads," he told them. "You'll each take a third of the men and follow the roads. One league along, cut into the wood. I'll go through the trees from here. We'll catch them in our pincers."
He let the flanking groups ride out of sight, then ordered his own contingent to spread into a wide column. They filtered into the trees, moving as silently as was possible for such a large group of men and oeikani. Omril cast a minor spell that would reflect the loudest noises toward the rear. The forest here was relatively open. Woodsmen often visited this land to harvest dead trees or plant new ones to accommodate the needs of Old Stump. They made good time, and seldom had to dismount to squeeze through tight places. Omril felt a tickle in his palm, where he held the vial. Soon it spread. After half a league he put away the talisman altogether. He could now directly sense the camouflage spell.
They were very near. He ordered the soldiers into a half circle.
"Charge!" he commanded.
Swords drawn, arrows nocked, they plunged between the trees. Omril followed close behind, with a small rear guard. They had gone only a few hundred yards before the wizard felt the camouflage spell snap out of existence.
There was no magic being cast ahead at all. The major spell was gone, too-and had been for who knew how long.
In the vanguard, men were shouting. Omril emerged from a thicket and found most of the troops gathered around a tree. They were silhouetted against an odd lavender glow. The sorcerer scowled and rode to the front.
He found Claric tied to the tree. The captain's naked body was covered by thin, luminescent tendrils, making it seem as if he had grown a coat of fine hair. The strands waved like miniature snakes, as if wafted by the breeze, but there was no wind that night. He was giving off enough purplish light to read a scroll by.
"Omril! Get this off of me! It itches like the five demons of Emin."
The wizard scanned the surrounding trees. "Where are the rebels?"
"Long gone," Claric spat. "They left after the bitch did this to me."
The statement confirmed what Omril had suspected. Still, there had to be one magician nearby. The camouflage spell, unlike the one on Claric's body, had to be actively maintained, and that could not be done from a great distance.
"Six men stay here," he ordered. "The rest fan out and search the woods." He was doubtful that they would find anything. He had not, as he had fancied, caught the rebels by surprise. They had deliberately enticed him. They had expected him to detect their magic.
"Ebrett!" Claric shouted to the sergeant standing next to Omril. "Cut me loose."
"No!" Omril snapped. The sergeant jumped. Claric opened his mouth to protest. "The spell on him is a trap. Touch him or the ropes and the demonhair will consume his skin, and yours as well."
"What?!" Claric burst out.
"What did you expect?" Omril asked. "That the princess would simply decorate you and leave you here to brighten the forest? She wanted revenge, no?"
"You're the wizard, undo the spell!"
"I can't. I'd have to unravel each thread one at a time. It would take me a week. You'll be dead before then of thirst. We can't even pass water to you." In actual fact, Omril could probably do the job in two days or less, if he went without sleep. But he had never liked Claric.
Claric looked like he was going to vomit.
"If you'd like, I can have the men shoot you with arrows," Omril offered. "It would be swifter. In another few hours the demonhair will start working its way into your, ahem, openings. If you think it itches now…"
"No, no."
"The alternative is leaving you to rot."
Claric moaned and gave no indication as to which he would prefer. Omril turned his attention to the sounds that had been coming from the trees to the north. Soon one of the lieutenants rode up. The first of the pincer groups had met the main party.
"Did you see anything?" Omril demanded.
"Nothing," the officer replied, so fascinated by Claric's outlandish appearance that he almost forgot to salute.
The wizard turned his back to Claric and the spectators and paced. The rebels had more in mind than revenge on Claric; if that had been the extent of it, Omril would have stood back and admired their handiwork. It was a handsome bit of thaumaturgy, requiring considerable patience, concentration, and discipline. He had not thought the female twin, with her hot-headedness, had the temperament necessary to spin demonhair. It was another facet of his enemies to remember. But they had surely not lured him to the site merely to provide an audience for their victory.
The night was growing distinctly darker. First Urthey had set, then the Sister, then Motherworld. Now only the recently risen Serpent Moon was left to shed light over the countryside. It was still several hours until sunrise. A good time, Omril realized, for a military assault.
And here was he, the single strongest weapon Lord Puriel had, out in the woods, leaving the fortress defenses short by a full cohort of men.
"Mount your steeds!" he shouted. "We're going back to the castle! Now!"
The soldiers had never seen Omril so agitated. They obeyed him even faster than if he had threatened them. They left their former captain to his fate, ignoring his outraged cries and whimpers, and raced back the way they had come. When they reached Rock Lake, they heard the din of battle echoing off the water. The noise came from the governor's keep.
XVII
HIEPHORA AND A DOZEN of her minor queens, hidden in the trees near Lord Puriel's fortress, watched Omril's cohort of men ride out through the barbican. The little people remained motionless, quiet as the flutter of butterfly wings. It was said that a rythni could stand on a man's shoulder and the man would be unaware of it. The riders crossed the moat, turned down the fork of the road leading along the shore of Rock Lake, and vanished into their own dust. If all went well, the wizard would not realize he had been tricked until it was too late. The rythni waited until the horizon concealed first the light of little Urthey, and, soon after, the bright glow of the Sister. Motherworld hung low in the sky, preparing to follow, displaying only half her face. The shadows grew long and dark.
"Now," Hiephora sang in her lilting, melodic mother tongue. Her queens darted off on gossamer wings, leaving her with her handmaiden, Cyfee. After exchanging a nervous glance they, too, launched into the air.
They circled three times, and in response, the leaves shook and fluttered. Hundreds upon hundreds of rythni women flooded out of the trees, a queen leading each wave. Carrying coils of rope, they sped into the open air above the moat, the twilight obscuring them to human eyes. They staggered their formations so that their flitting shapes would resemble the bats that dwelled among the corbels and rafters of the fortress.
The castle loomed, high and intimidating, full of stone and tile and mortar, emanating none of the sweet, nurturing music of the forest's living wood. Hiephora pierced the structure's sphere of influence and faltered, suddenly weak, pitched from straight flight. Many of he
r subjects, unable to endure the bitter kiss of the air, turned back, terror-stricken, including one of her queens.
"Courage!" she cried. "It fades!" Already the initial shock was lessening, as with the waters of a pond-cold on impact, but increasingly tolerable as one continued to swim. The edifice would do no permanent harm to her people, as long as they did not linger within it. The queens echoed her words of encouragement.
Two-thirds of her women, though they veered and emitted tiny cries, continued gallantly on.
Hiephora and Cyfee landed on a battlement, slipping into an embrasure in order to hide from the sentries. They commanded a view of the entire landward side of the fortress: the moat below, the desolate swath of land beyond that, the trees in the near distance. The last of those who had been daunted vanished into the foliage. She couldn't blame them. They had not been present when she had prophesied this battle a quarter century ago; they could not directly feel, as she did, why it was necessary to risk taboo, and aid Alemar and Elenya.
As Motherworld dipped sedately out of sight, reducing the night to as near darkness as Tanagaran ever saw other than on Dark Night, the cadres of rythni took their ropes and began looping the nooses around the merlons of the battlements, draping the free ends into the moat.
It was a dry moat, lined at the bottom with shattered rock and sharpened stakes, designed to thwart war mounts and siege engines, but negotiable by foot soldiers. One by one, men snaked across the swatch of cleared land, darkly clothed, faces smeared with black grease, their weapons tightly bound and padded, to join a handful of scouts who had come earlier. They rappelled down the embankment at preselected locations, crossed the moat, and fanned out to seize the ropes the rythni had just planted. Soon there were dozens of men scaling the stone walls.
The majority of the rythni vanished from the battlements, for violence was imminent, and the emanations from that would be far harsher than the kind they had already endured. Hiephora, Cyfee, and the queens remained, along with a few of the very brave, whispering guidance to the climbers, letting them know the exact position and number of the guards. The fastest scaler was over half way up when one of Puriel's men noticed a rope. He shouted and drew his sword to hack at the noose.
Cyfee cringed as the blade struck stone, casting sparks, biting into the thick, resin-hardened fiber. Hiephora called for her flyers to warn the climbers. By the time the guard's chops severed the line completely, the men had shifted to other ropes. They continued to ascend.
Someone reached the alarm bell. Lantern glow beamed out of the barracks and from the windows of the keep. The fortress awakened.
The guards on the battlements, badly outnumbered, seeing death rising up at them, cut at the ropes with frantic haste. Two climbers did not shift quickly enough and fell, breaking legs on the jagged rock of the moat. A third landed on one of the sharpened stakes. Then the leaders vaulted the top and drew their swords. The courtyard rang with the sound of steel meeting steel. The first dribbles of reinforcements issued out of the buildings.
Hiephora darted toward the barbican, leaving Cyfee to assist with the high battle. Those rythni who could tolerate the psychic onslaught of men dying continued to replace ropes. As she glided, she saw the main mass of the rebel army bolt from the forest onto the roadway.
So many of them! The houses and farms of the region around Old Stump must have completely emptied, the residents rising to the cause of the Elandri prince and princess. Hiephora herself would have doubted it possible to gather so many, had she not foretold it.
She wished that she could determine the outcome of the battle, but the leaves of meditation, as with all oracles, had sung a twisted tale. She knew only what would happen if Gloroc were not stopped. He would rule for five thousand years. The land would be raped, the forests cut down within a few human generations. The rythni as a race would fade into history. Alemar and Elenya might be the only hope. That was why she had tipped over Lerina's cup of amethery twenty-five years earlier, and why she had committed her people this night.
But at the moment, the screams of men and swords tore at her determination, making her want to fly far away.
She propelled herself into the barbican just as the guard released the lever that would lower the portcullis and seal it off from the rest of the castle. His brow furrowed when the iron failed to drop. He strode to the portal, gazing up in perplexity, and cursed. The top of the portcullis had been bound into its bracket by hundreds of tiny, rythni-sized cords. He cast a worried look at the fighting on the battlements, then rolled a barrel under the archway, seized a pike, climbed onto the barrel, and began slashing at the cords with the pike tip.
Hiephora whistled, and dozens of her women appeared from their hiding places. They swarmed around the spindle at the center of the chamber. Their combined weight and the rapid beating of their wings were enough to spin the gears. The drawbridge began to lower, just as the first of the main throng of invaders reached the far side of the moat.
The guard shouted and leaped off the barrel. The rythni melted away to the far corners of the room. The man reversed the spindle's action. Meanwhile, some of Hiephora's minions tipped over the barrel and sent it rolling out the archway.
The last of the sentries on the battlements screamed as they were run through or flung from the heights. Dozens of the invaders were already rushing down the stairs. Not enough soldiers had emerged from the barracks yet to foil them from charging the barbican. The guard hissed and ran for the barrel, replaced it, and hacked at the cords again.
The rythni streaked to the spindle and began lowering the drawbridge.
The guard screamed and flung the pike. The rythni darted away, quick as wasps, avoiding injury. The guard abandoned the portcullis and returned to the spindle-permanently, since he knew that allowing the drawbridge to lower would mean at least ten times as many people to fight.
Hiephora ordered her women into hiding, ready to harass further if necessary. To her dismay, another guard arrived, then a third. The first yelled an explanation and the newcomers attacked the portcullis bindings. The rythni held back, unable to attack the men directly.
The portcullis creaked and began to wobble. Just then four rebels burst into the passageway. The lead man caught a pike in the shoulder. The other three mowed down the pair of guards and surrounded the man at the spindle. The scent of blood sent the rythni streaming out of the chamber. Hiephora, blessing mother forest that her people's role was ending, swiftly followed, closing her ears and refusing to look back. Three more invaders arrived at the barbican as she sped away.
****
Elenya leaped onto the drawbridge even before it was down, at the head of the first wave of invaders. They raced through the archway and into the great courtyard. A throng of guards poured out of the barracks to meet them.
The two sides clashed and blended. Elenya stood out in her white leather armor and greaves, her gauntlet a beacon to the opposition. She wanted it that way. Her preternatural speed made her the invaders' most effective weapon. It was imperative that she and the lead phalanx-all trained fighters in proper gear-break through to the interior of the barracks before their enemies could outfit themselves. Then the great mass of poorly equipped villagers in the rear ranks would have a reasonable chance.
A thick-shouldered mercenary with long, dark hair bore down on her. She twisted around him, found a gap in his unlaced chest armor, and sank the point of her rapier through his arm pit into his heart. Before he could fall she stabbed the man behind him. As allies closed in on either side, she used their protection to dance to a new area.
To her left an enemy soldier cut down a villager. He used his sword well, and kept his shield up. Two other dying invaders already lay at his feet. She bolted forward before more victims fell. He lasted through three exchanges, more than she liked, before she pinked him on the arm, and, with the opening created, drove a follow-up thrust into his chest.
They had already pushed the defenders half the distance to the barracks
. She dared a glance at the battlements. They were secure, though an archer was causing grief from one of the keep windows. She dived back into the fray, praying that there were few guards of the mettle she had just encountered.
Beside her a companion took a battle ax in the side of his head, spraying her with blood. She killed the wielder, even as she blocked a thrust from another opponent with the ward around her gauntlet. Iregg came to her rescue, though she was not in great difficulty, and together they surged forward another few steps. They stepped over a body-another fallen ally. Too many dead, Elenya cursed to herself. So far Puriel's men had taken the worst of it, but the men of the garrison were professionals. They would recover if given enough time.
"Elandri tu!" she cried, dodging a pike. The hilt of her weapon burned like a hot coal, sliding in her grip as if greased. She feinted, thrust, twisted, blocked, letting her sword lead and adapting her body as needed. In one of those brief, clear moments that sometimes occur in the midst of battle, she saw a young soldier, third in line to confront her, freeze at the sight of her skill, as she dealt with the intervening foes. He was unable to raise his shield or blade; she harvested him like wheat.
Only then did she realize she stood at the threshold of one of the entrances to the barracks. A sudden rush of guards propelled her backwards, but she grinned. The tide was shifting. The barracks would be theirs, and after it, the keep.
****
Outside the castle, at a safe distance, waited the women, juveniles, and elders of Old Stump and the surrounding estates, ready to support the invasion as best they could. Owl the tavernmaster sat on a wagon, trying to calm his jittery pair of oeikani. The trees hid the castle, but the sounds of armed conflict rang clear, violating the ears of the assemblage.
Owl felt a drop of sweat trickle down his face and into his collar, to further drench his inner shirt. His nephew was among those who had scaled the walls. He had not even known the boy was a rebel until a few hours earlier, when he, like so many other residents, had suddenly swarmed to the support of the Elandri twins.
