Thorn didn’t look back, didn’t want to think about what was happening behind him, grateful that most of his focus and energies were needed simply to keep himself and his companion mounted. He heard a moan from Elora, a hurried reassurance from Geryn.
“Looks all right t’me, Thorn,” the trooper said. “More she’s havin’ a nightmare, like.”
Thorn knew the cause, felt a resonance from her as the Deceiver’s flames claimed her garden. There was a pricking behind his own eyes that had nothing to do with her, as he thought of the two brownies. Good friends, boon companions, they had kept company for years when his own family had been lost from him. What a shame to lose them when he had finally regained Elora.
The whole of Castle Mount was alight, illuminating the city with such intensity that it seemed as though the moon itself had landed among them. Thorn had never seen so pure a radiance; it painted the night in absolutes, defining objects wholly by the shadows they cast. Around them, the world appeared to lose substance and become nothing but increasingly abstract silhouettes.
He thought the streets would be thick with people fleeing the fire, but while they encountered a fair number, it was nowhere near what he’d expected—no more in fact than they’d find on a normal workday—and they negotiated their passage without much trouble. Even those who ran didn’t appear to have the stomach for it, and Thorn knew with heartsick certainty that none would escape. It was as if the whole city understood that it was doomed and people were merely going through the motions, a purely backbrain response, no different than the primal, mindless urge for survival felt by the riders’ horses.
And every other animal in the city. Thorn saw cats and dogs, household pets and beasts of burden, vermin of every description, horses and mules, sheep and cattle. A veritable stampede from the stockyards as an entire herd burst forth from the slaughterhouse. They came through the streets like a flash flood, with as little concern for whatever lay in their path. The Evil that sapped strength from every human resident acted in their stead to galvanize their collective will. Death was preferable to those icy flames, and since they knew a head-on fight was useless, they showed resistance and defiance with the only means left them: flight.
The rats were first to reach the gates, swarming in a furry tide over the bodies of the freshly slain, ignoring what only hours before they happily would have feasted on. The gates themselves were closed tight, but that didn’t even slow them down as they rushed up and over the wall. Those able to follow, did so; the rest were left to fill the plazas that backed every entry to Angwyn, milling about in ever-greater agitation, giving passionate voice to their distress.
Angwyn was built on hills, and they in turn grew from land that gradually rose from the shore toward higher ground inland. From where his horse stood, Thorn had a commanding view of the entire city; only the King’s Castle Mount stood higher. He could just bear the sight for a span of heartbeats, but even that brief glance showed that the conflagration was spreading, and more rapidly with every passing moment. A fair distance still separated them, but that wouldn’t last long.
“We’ll have to find another way!” yelled Geryn, in a mostly vain attempt to make himself heard over the din.
“The other gates’ll be no better,” was Thorn’s reply. “You’ll find animals everywhere you turn; this is as good as it gets! And the more time we waste trying, the greater the risk of being caught by the fire.”
“No offense, Peck, but tha’s of damn-all use.”
Thorn didn’t answer. Instead, he took tighter hold of the reins and gave his horse a silent nudge. The challenge wasn’t getting her going, it was keeping her from trampling anyone along the way, not to mention keeping her two riders safely in place on her back.
The mare’s nostrils flared wide with every breath as she picked her way delicately through the crowd of beasts. She drew in air with such force Thorn could hear her, even over the frightful, wailing hullabaloo that filled the square. Sweat was likewise caked thick across her chest, as though she’d been running full tilt, and his arms ached well past his shoulders from the strength needed to hold her in check. He was breathing just as hard, in sync with her, and was sodden with his own sweat. In addition, he felt as though a barbed, iron spike was being driven with exquisite deliberation right between his eyes and through to the back of his skull. He was beyond nausea but, fortunately, also beyond the capacity to imagine what he’d feel like when this was done.
“Khory,” he called to his companion, “are you all right?”
There was no reply.
Newborn, remember, he told himself acidly, and Demon to boot. Why in the blessed, bloody hell should she have the slightest clue what I’m talking about? Especially when I’m not altogether sure myself?!
“Is this fear, Drumheller, what they are feeling?”
He craned about for a look at her, but she was between him and the awful majesty atop Castle Mount; it took away her every feature and turned her into a cutout silhouette, a shape without identity. If she moved aside, the glare would do the same to him, only in reverse.
“Your speech has improved.”
She shrugged. “The words come naturally.”
“The people are afraid,” he told her. “The animals are mainly angry. They want to fight, their every instinct tells them that’s the right response. But at the same time those instincts tell them just as strongly that fight is hopeless. This isn’t a foe to be brought down with tooth or claw; best simply to get out of its way until the threat is past, then take up your lives again. One force of nature speaking to another.”
“Drumheller?”
“Yes?”
“The warrior in the cell sought our lives. Why did you keep me from taking his instead?”
“Some say the moment and manner of a person’s birth sets the tone for the rest of their life. I didn’t want yours stained with blood. It’s a hard thing, killing. Not a thing you should rush to learn. Or that should ever come easily. Help me down, please.”
They found their first body just inside the gatehouse, nicely done to death with a slit throat. Only Sergeant Major Jalaby had managed to draw his sword, and from the state of the blades he’d given a fair account of himself before the Maizan took him down.
“Damn,” Thorn muttered sadly at the sight, and repeated himself much more emphatically when he saw the locking assembly.
The Thunder Riders hadn’t stopped with the massacre of the guards; they’d jammed the door mechanism as well, beyond any hope Thorn might entertain of setting things aright in the time left him.
“Damn!”
He strode back to the common room, his purposeful traverse shaken at the start by a startled squeak and a frantic set of staccato jiggle hops as he struggled to avoid stepping on any more critters underfoot. A fair struggle, considering they covered the floor like a thick-pile carpet.
He went to one knee before Jalaby and looked past his sightless eyes, wishing there was a way to wipe the shame of failure that was the last image imprinted on the old soldier’s soul. He looked for the man’s sword, turned his head when he heard the hiss of steel slicing air to find it in Khory’s hand as though each had been made for the other. With a shallow nod, he accepted the decision and took a lesser blade from the dead man’s other hand.
“With your blessing, old campaigner,” he said, “I ask this boon: a chance to set things right, to throw defiance in the face of treachery and perhaps plant the smallest seeds of a victory to come.”
“Do you believe that, what you say?” asked the DemonChild.
“Of course. It’s hope.”
He started for the door, then stopped when he heard Khory’s husky, resonant voice behind him.
“I ask a boon as well, old campaigner,” she said, expanding on his words but speaking them with the same intonations and accents, as though she possessed the raw knowledge but needed him as a template for how to put it all to pro
per use. “These weapons, and with them, a chance to set things right.”
“Why did you ask,” he queried with genuine curiosity when she was done. “He’s dead; it doesn’t matter what you do, he certainly can’t stop you.”
“Why did you?”
“It’s not the Demon way.”
“Am I a Demon?”
He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it with the clack of teeth brought smartly, sharply together, because he had no true answer for her.
There was an eerie stillness about the gate, and he realized it flowed outward from the guard post, as countless tens of thousands of eyes—none of them human—turned to him in mute expectation. Within the room, “hope” had simply been a word; here, it was a person.
“Neat trick, Peck,” called Havilhand.
“To say the least,” Thorn replied, watching the animals scuttle aside to clear a path for him. “How’s the child?”
“Still asleep, bless ’er. She’ll need clothes, an’ we ever get clear o’ this. What she’s wearin’, it’s mostly tatters. Damnedest thing, I tell yeh, cloth looks like it got scorched an’ froze, all inna same breath.”
“Something like that. Be ready to ride.”
“I’m a Pathfinder, little friend. We’re s’posed t’ be born that way. ’Course, it’s always better, havin’ somewheres t’ ride to, an’ yeh catch my meaning.”
“Be patient.”
“Be quick.”
“Drumheller!” Khory, from atop the wall, which made him stare in dumbfounded astonishment: How did she get herself all the way up there!
He would have said the same aloud, but she didn’t give him the chance.
“Riders, from the land, coming fast.”
“How many?” demanded Geryn.
“More than we can handle or afford,” Thorn replied for her, using InSight for a quick glance through her eyes, and waved her down, while he made his way to the gate.
There were no niceties to manner, word, or gesture; he was as focused as he was sure the old warrior had been. He slashed the blade across his palm, coating its edge with blood, then slapped the locking crossbar that held the great, looming double doors closed, leaving a blotch of darkness against wood that—like the people in the Elora’s hall—had been bleached by the Deceiver’s radiance of all color. A link established between the three key elements—himself, the blade, the target—he quickly marshaled his will, letting the grief and fury that had raged in him all evening crest unchallenged, unchecked. A tidal wave of force burst out from the heart of his being. Part of him thrust anchors deep into the good earth beneath his feet, so the power he was manifesting wouldn’t destroy him when he put it to use; simultaneously, another, far vaster aspect reached out across the plaza, drawing strength from the assemblage and using it to add to the force he was bringing to bear.
To Geryn, turning his head continuously from Thorn to the no-longer-distant flames and back again, the scene appeared to be the height of silliness. A modest little man-form, whose head barely reached the Pathfinder’s waist, waving his arms against a pair of gates that dwarfed the average town house in width and height and were said in the bargain to be proof against any assault, whether from battering rams or the forbidden black powder explosive. He had no idea what Thorn intended with his knife, and even less hope for any success. He knew from his own experience how impervious ironwood could be, had seen crossbow shots that had punched through proper armor with ease bounce off a plank. These doors were thicker than a stout man’s body. Couldn’t be burned, couldn’t be broken.
Force and fury came together in a rush as Thorn brought his blade up and around in a grand, sweeping gesture of uncharacteristic flamboyance, to bury it most of the way to its hilt in the center of his bloodstain. As it struck he unleashed a huge shout that to Geryn sounded like a formless bellow. Khory could tell the difference, her nostrils flared, her teeth baring ever so slightly in reflexive acknowledgment of the energies the Nelwyn was manifesting.
The sound of Thorn’s voice echoed across the plaza, and the scene was suddenly gripped by a silence that was as profound and all-encompassing as it was sudden. Not just the absence of sound, but of even the concept. Geryn hunkered his head as low as possible between his shoulders and hunched his body in turn protectively over Elora’s, against the shock blind instinct told him was to come.
It was a wonder.
The doors blew off their mountings, shattering under the impact of some monstrous and invisible wrecking ball that sent them flying outward from the plaza. This was a blast whose sound matched its fury, yet the noise was so far beyond human comprehension that Geryn had no true sense of what it was. Asked, he could never describe it. He might as well have been deaf.
Beyond, the Maizan riders were thrown and scattered by the titanic shock wave. Horses fell, others cast off their riders, while still others fled in total panic. Only Anakerie remained the mistress of her mount, but it did her no good, that skill and determination, as the animals that thronged the inner plaza took full advantage of the open way to freedom.
So, too, did Thorn and his companions. Khory needed no instruction; she scooped him into the saddle before the blast had begun to fade; he in turn urged his horse on its way the moment he was in place, with a silent command to Geryn’s animal to follow.
They were seen, but the Maizan hadn’t a prayer of stopping them. They simply couldn’t be reached through that awesome stampede; it wasn’t even worth making the attempt. The riders watched them go, and resolved to catch them later.
Anakerie, however, wasn’t interested in the fugitives. She leaped from her own horse, once it recovered a semblance of composure, and forged her way along the wall to the gate, plowing across the flood of wildlife with grim, implacable determination. She might be slowed, but never stopped.
She was exhausted by the time she reached the guardhouse steps. While she caught her breath, back to the wall, hands at her sides, gulping air through a mouth as gaping as a fish’s, she surveyed the torrent before her. She didn’t believe her eyes; there seemed to be no end to it. More animals than she could count, of every shape and description, anything of any size that could walk or crawl or fly, but not a person among them. Beyond raged the fire that drove them, ranging beyond her frame of vision in every direction, from side to side and up into the sky.
She stumbled through the door, as much to put a solid wall between her and that awful sight, casting off the fatigue that turned her limbs to lead and restoring their suppleness by sheer force of will. In its own way, inside was no better. She took in the entire setting with a glance, but truly had eyes only for Jalaby. His mail shirt was gone, his leather tunic as well, and all his weapons. He looked strangely small to her, crumpled against the wall with hands and feet splayed, and sadly old. That was the aspect she found most upsetting; she thought it obscene. He’d taught her everything, was more a father to her than the King, and she expected him to remain as eternal and unchanging as the walls themselves. Now he looked like any other man, done suddenly and violently to death.
Training made her sheathe her knife, grief pushed her forward, body sinking toward the floor, so that she reached him on her knees. She meant to gather him into her arms, as though her tears would wash away his wounds. But gloved hands closed on her shoulders and pulled her to her feet.
She knew Mohdri’s touch and tried to shake him free, determined to finish what she’d started. He had other ideas.
“Damn it, Keri,” he cried, presenting a passion that matched her own, “there’s nothing you can do here!”
“Leave me be!”
“There’s no time, woman. The flames are in the plaza, we have to go!”
She wasn’t in the mood to argue, so she hit him, a blow that would have dropped most men. He hit her harder, a pair of punches that took her wind away and left her hanging on to consciousness by her fingernails. He pitched her over his shoulder, none too
gently, and took hold tight enough to leave a bruise. He cleared the doorway at a run.
Anakerie had fought her share of winter campaigns, and roamed the highlands of World’s End for as late into the season as she could make a trail, but nothing in her memory prepared her for such a cold as this. She felt the mucus freeze in her nostrils and fumbled a scarf across her face to keep from burning her lungs. The skin of her face stiffened almost immediately and she knew only a few minutes’ exposure would guarantee her frostbite and probable disfigurement. She buried her face into Mohdri’s cloak and prayed he didn’t miss a step, for at the speed the flames were coming, a fall would finish them both. Yet somehow even then the unbearable light flooded her perceptions, as though the whole of her skull had been transformed to clearest glass, affording her not the slightest protection.
She heard the sound of horses, close and coming fast, and marveled at Maizan discipline—for warriors and their mounts—that allowed them to race to the maw of hell to save their Castellan. Mohdri flipped her onto one’s back, Anakerie scrambling with clumsy desperation to right herself, wondering sickly as she did what was the point. How could they possibly outrun so fearsome and impossible a fire?
“By the Abyss,” she heard in hushed wonderment, and tried to collect herself as the troop reined in their headlong flight almost before they’d properly begun.
“Mohdri?”
She didn’t want to look back; bad enough the landscape before her was lit bright as day yet transformed beyond recognition by the quality of that light.
“It stopped,” he said in a ghost voice, a man beholding a miracle.
“What?”
“See for yourself, Highness. The flames reached the city walls and stopped. They’ve gone no further.”
She didn’t try to turn her mount, but held its reins pulled tight to keep the animal from bolting as she lifted herself on her stirrups and pivoted at the waist.
There were no more flames, save for stray, residual flickers here and there, yet everything before her glowed, like a campfire that had burned down to coals. She thought of ice and diamonds, of every image that came to mind associated with winter and desolation, and found them all wanting.
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