by Marc Turner
He raised the glistening stones so they hovered in front of the battlements, keeping them bunched together so the stone-skins wouldn’t know what he planned to do. Maybe they’d think he meant to hurl the rocks at their section of wall. He turned the stones over so the flattest side of each faced upward where a foot would tread. Then he counted them. Fifteen. Not enough to reach across the Neck, so he started adding to their number from the stones protecting the base of the harbor wall. The more rocks he used, the smaller the gaps he’d have to leave in the makeshift bridge.
From across the waterway he heard raised stone-skin voices, saw figures rushing along the battlements. They couldn’t know what he planned to do, but they’d know something was in the offing. Doubtless they would call to their kinsmen in the tower below, summoning them to the wall.
He had spent as much time on this as he could allow himself.
He pushed the stones out in a line toward the opposite parapet. The spaces between them looked ominously wide until he told himself those spaces were better suited to a running stride.
Twist spoke. “Come on lads, line up. Shields to the front. No pushin’, now—you ain’t queuin’ for your pay.” Then, to the Gilgamarians, “Those that are stayin’ behind, keep up a coverin’ fire on the stone-skins—”
“We know our business,” someone interrupted.
“Course you do. And if any craven in a gray cloak gets too precious about crossin’ them stones, you have my permission to shoot him, y’hear? Can’t have anyone holdin’ up those comin’ after.”
Across the Neck, red-cloaked warriors were gathering at the point that Ebon’s stones led to. Whoever was first across would be greeted by a sizable welcoming committee. Vale was in his peripheral vision. Without taking his gaze from the stones, Ebon reached out and put a hand on his friend’s arm. “You don’t have to go first this time. Let Twist have the honor.”
Vale grunted and drew his sword. He already held a shield in his other hand. “If we’re doing this, we may as well do it properly. I can take twice the care and still cross as fast as the next man.”
As he moved toward the parapet, though, Twist blocked him off. “Not so fast there. Recruits!”
The twins slunk forward.
“Yes…”
“… O Great One?”
“You’re up!”
“Yes…”
“… O Great One!”
Ebon frowned. The twins, really? The only ones in the Revenants’ ranks who weren’t wearing armor? Did Twist mean to use them as arrow fodder? If so, the sisters didn’t seem daunted at the prospect, because they grinned as they accepted a shield each from one of their companions.
Ebon’s line of stones was ready. The first twin sprang to the parapet, her shield held out before her. She extended a foot and prodded at the closest rock like she was testing the temperature of water. “Will these things…”
“… bear our weight?”
Ebon shrugged. “Step on one, see what happens.”
The sister leaned forward to put her weight on her front leg. Ebon tensed, expecting to feel her burden as a pressure in his mind.
Nothing. The stone appeared as solid as if it were anchored in mortar.
“Let’s go!” Twist said. “Every moment we waste gives the stone-skins another moment to prepare.”
The first twin nodded.
Then she went bounding across the rocks like an alamandra, apparently unhampered by her shield. Her sister followed, ponytail bouncing.
“Go, go, go!”
Vale was next over the parapet, and Ebon watched his friend start along the line of stones. The Endorian crossed in a series of bounds, putting two feet down on each rock before jumping to the next. Yet still he was able to keep pace with the twins. Of all those who would make the crossing, the Endorian was least likely to fall, but he was no less likely to catch a stone-skin arrow. Even as the thought came to Ebon, a missile clanged off Vale’s shield. A stone-skin rose above the parapet to fire another shot, only to take two Gilgamarian arrows in the neck. He dropped out of sight.
Twist climbed to the wall behind Vale, while ahead the twins approached the midpoint of the Neck. The stone-skins had assembled to meet them on the opposite battlements. How many did they number? A dozen? Fifteen? The twins’ moment of greatest vulnerability would be when they jumped down from the stones and found themselves assailed on three sides.
An idea came to Ebon. Dare he risk it? Yes, the twins had already shown they had the agility to make his plan work.
Focusing on the stones closest to the enemy battlements, he began altering their alignment so the second half of the crossing followed a gentle curve that would deliver the sisters to the left of the stone-skins’ position. The first twin had time to see the rocks move and change course. The red-cloaked warriors tried to shift across, but before they could reset their formation, the woman reached the parapet. She launched into a somersault that took her over the head of the nearest stone-skin and onto the tower beyond.
Her sister leapt to the battlements behind her, Vale following.
A dozen Revenants were on the stones now. One man took an arrow in the shoulder that half spun him round and sent him toppling. Another lost his footing on the greasy rocks. As he fell he managed to catch the next stone along, only for the woman behind him to step on his hands. She lost her balance, and both mercenaries dropped shrieking into the water below. Ahead, Twist gained the battlements, but the next man tripped as he cleared the parapet and fell into a swinging enemy sword that took half his head off. The woman behind him had made the crossing with a small loaded crossbow in one hand. She fired it point blank into the face of her companion’s killer.
Ebon looked for Vale and saw a flash of his friend, before losing him again behind a merlon. Vale had been fighting with Mili and Tali on either side, not using his sword against his opponents, but merely twitching his shield from side to side as he collected enemy spear thrusts. And how did you get past the shield of a timeshifter intent on defense? Twist and another mercenary, meanwhile, guarded the point where the stepping-stones met the parapet, allowing their fellows to gain the battlements safely.
Sensing the numbers turn against them, the stone-skins backpedaled toward the tower’s stairwell.
Ebon risked a glance at the nearest enemy ship. It was difficult to be sure at this distance, but it looked like those on board were staring not toward the tower but east across the Ribbon Sea. A faint trumpeting sound reached the prince, yet he could not see the source. A signal between stone-skin vessels, perhaps? Would the foe turn their catapults on the tower now that their kinsmen were retreating? Would they try to bring more men over, or steer their ship closer to the chains so they could fire on the warriors crossing the stepping-stones?
The first of the Erin Elalese climbed to the parapet alongside Ebon. She made it only to the third rock before slipping and falling. The next man in line went off cursing and high-stepping like he was running on hot coals. After him came the woman with the eyepatch. As she started on her way, a rustling sigh sounded, and the links of the highest chain slithered out of the hole on the far wall like the coils of some monstrous snake. Coming free, it fell and slapped down onto the water before sinking from sight.
Ebon frowned. There went his safety net. How much time had passed between the first and second chains falling? Long enough for the defenders to prevent the third going the same way? He looked for Vale across the Neck, saw him lead a rush around the side of the stone-skin force, trying to flank them. When the battlements fell to the Revenants, Twist and his allies would face a scrap down a stairwell into the tower itself. And something told Ebon he had yet to see the best of what these stone-skins had to offer.
Assuming he got to see it all. If Vale had been with him, he’d have said Ebon had already done his part. That his abilities were best used in keeping the stepping-stones in place so more men could cross over the Neck. When had the prince ever been content to leave his fate in another’
s hands, though? Or let someone else do work that was rightfully his? He had chosen to help the defense of the city, and when you made a decision, you followed it through. You didn’t leave someone else to live with the consequences.
A dozen Erin Elalese were currently on the stones, and a dozen more waited to cross. Yet more foreigners climbed to the battlements from the stairwell to Ebon’s right.
He stepped in front of the newcomers.
“I’m next across,” he said to the first man. “And I’ll be the last.”
* * *
On returning to her body, the first thing Romany noticed was the perceptions of the senses she had been denied while in spirit-form: the texture of the blanket beneath her fingers; the smell of burned meat that reminded her of the immolation of Mercerie’s lepers six years ago. She swung her legs off the bed and stood up. Too quickly, as it turned out, for her spirit had not yet properly resettled in her flesh. A wave of dizziness swept over her. She staggered to the door. Her web told her there was no one outside, but when she tugged on the handle, she was still relieved to find the corridor empty.
It would not remain that way long, Romany suspected. Hex’s wink told her not just that he could see her, but also that he knew who, and thus probably where, she was. And while it was unlikely he would come for her straightaway—he’d told Mazana his priority was the Erin Elalese—what happened if the emperor died? The priestess wasn’t inclined to wait on the outcome of the fighting downstairs. With her web in its death throes, she felt decidedly vulnerable. If Hex did move against her, she wouldn’t get any warning. And how was she supposed to defend herself against a wave of creatures like the ones he’d unleashed against Mazana?
She set off along the passage, spinning sorcery about her to create an invisible weave of threads that would absorb the force of any weapon swing aimed at her. She passed an intersection before reaching a staircase leading down. Down was where all the fighting was taking place, so Romany stayed on the upper level.
It was getting hotter. Sweat beaded on the priestess’s forehead, and she wiped a hand across it. The feeling of being watched was strong, yet when she glanced back, she saw no one following. Above the muffled sounds of battle, she heard a rhythmic clacking noise like someone tapping a cane on the floor. One moment it appeared to be coming from in front of her, the next from behind. She drew her knife. The next intersection materialized from the darkness. A right turn would lead her to an exit.
She went around the corner.
And stopped. Her stomach tried to claw its way up her throat. Ahead the corridor was barred by a gate. And standing in front of that gate was Hex, smiling.
“Welcome,” he said.
Romany smoothly reversed her course and continued along the main passage.
He’d come for her. Spider’s blessing, he’d come for her! But why? Was the emperor already dead? And how had the Augeran known she would head this way? Most likely he hadn’t, she thought. He was a mere sending, after all, not flesh and bone, which meant he would be able to move about this otherworld as swiftly as Romany moved about her web.
This was not good.
She slowed her steps. No point in hurrying now. She hadn’t walked away from Hex because she thought she could escape him; she’d walked because she needed time to think. So close to freedom, yet so far! For while she’d had no trouble punching a hole in Hex’s sorcery earlier, somehow she doubted it would be so easy if the Augeran was there to contest her will. Did she have any choice but to fight him, though? Having gone to the trouble of intercepting her, he was unlikely to let her wander off.
The clacking noise stopped, and in its place she heard a jaunty humming. From the floor directly below came a retort of metal followed by a scream. This section of corridor was even darker than the others. She could make out the next turning as a square of gray in the wall—
The man came at her out of nowhere. Romany shouted in surprise. It was the freak with the claws for fingers and the head twisted round. Even with her assassin’s reactions, she could only half raise her knife to meet a sweep of one taloned hand.…
The claws tangled in the threads of her sorcerous wards and stuck there.
Of course, her magical defenses. In her panic she’d forgotten.
Her foe tried to gut her with his other hand, but Romany was ready for him this time. She swayed aside, then countered with a slash to her assailant’s throat.
Or where his throat would have been if his head weren’t the wrong way round. Instead Romany’s blade sliced into the back of his neck. The apparition hissed at her, and the priestess had to fight down an urge to drive her knife over and over into its chest, release the tension that had built up inside her.
As Mazana had done to Darbonna in Olaire, perhaps?
Romany willed herself to calm. When the freak struck out again, the priestess didn’t try to block, simply let his attacking hand tangle in her sorcerous defenses. Then she weaved strands about him, pinning him immobile. He struggled uselessly … and silently. Just like the Vamilians. Was this man flesh and blood as the Vamilians had been, enslaved and summoned to suffer in Hex’s cause? Or was he a mere conjuring of the Augeran’s tortured mind, no more sensate than the blood on the walls?
Romany stepped past the apparition. Upon reaching the next intersection, she looked to her right.
To find another gate blocking the corridor. Hex was in front of it, spinning about with arms extended as if he were dancing with an invisible partner. Romany glanced from the man to the gate beyond, wondering if the time had come to pit her will against the Augeran’s.
Hex must have read her intent, for in front of the gate, another portcullis came down, crack.
Romany turned and walked away.
An idea took shape in her mind.
Hex’s footsteps followed her. “Not wearing your mask this time?” he said as he caught up.
When the priestess spoke, she was impressed at the steadiness of her voice. “There’s no hiding anything from you, is there?”
It occurred to her the stone-skin was close enough for her to drive her knife into his throat, but the man walking beside her was just a sending, and the “real” Hex doubtless wouldn’t feel a thing if she stabbed him. She needed to keep him talking, because if he was talking he couldn’t also be unleashing his monstrosities on her.
Maybe.
“Haven’t you got anything better to do than dog my heels?” she said. “I thought your priority was the Erin Elalese.”
“The emperor dies now or he dies in a bell’s time, what does it matter? You are far more intriguing.”
That was the key to staying alive long enough to put her plan into action, Romany suspected: stay interesting. And yet how could she be anything less? “I wonder if your kinsmen fighting downstairs would agree.”
Hex ignored the comment. “What does your mask signify?”
“It signifies that I am a priestess of the Lord of Hidden Faces.”
“A priestess?”
The man sounded disappointed, and Romany remembered the Spider telling her the Augerans followed no gods. “That is what Mazana Creed knows me as.”
A staircase to the lower floor emerged from the gloom ahead, and Romany took the steps down. It should be a simple enough matter to steer a course around the site of the battle she had heard, but she would have to expect to encounter more of Hex’s freaks below. Sure enough, she’d barely cleared the staircase when an old woman in rags appeared in front. She held an ax in each hand and started swinging the weapons wildly.
Romany tangled her up in a knot of sorcerous threads and continued on. These puppets, she decided, weren’t half so frightening when you could sense Hex’s strings moving them.
“I have spent the last quarter-bell considering how best to describe your servants,” she said to the Augeran. “The word I settled on was ‘inept.’”
“They are not to everyone’s taste, it is true. But an artist must be allowed a degree of license in his creation. H
ee hee!”
More likely, Romany reckoned, they were inept because anything more would require the stone-skin’s constant input. “Just keep them out of my way.”
On the floor ahead was a severed foot. Romany could have stepped over it, yet she felt the need to give it a wide berth. The corridors on this level were less gloomy than they had been upstairs, but still dark enough to make it impossible to gauge where she was. Fortunately, enough of Romany’s web had survived to guide her course, and she surprised Hex with an abrupt left turn.
The Augeran trotted to catch up once more. He was not so much walking as tapping out a beat with his feet. Tap, tap, swish, tap, slap. Tap, tap, swish, tap, slap.
“Our powers have much in common,” he said. “The subtlety of our touch, the sweep of our awareness.”
“And what makes you think you’ve seen the entirety of my powers?”
“It is rare for anyone to detect my dreamworld before it is unveiled. Yet I sense that you did just that.”
Dreamworld? That explained a few things.
Hex added, “I might not even have noticed your web were it not for the resistance it offered to my expanding realm.”
Romany sniffed. “Resistance was not intended. If it had been, it would not have been so easily brushed aside.”
“Perhaps. I assume you constructed your web so you could spy on the others here? If so, it is curious that you extended it not just into the emperor’s quarters, but the emira’s too.”
“Isn’t it.”
In front, the floor of the passage was covered with blood right up to the walls. Not the flaky brown sort either, but the sort that sucked and slipped under Romany’s sandals. She suppressed a shudder.
