by Julian May
“This is unbelievable! Where is Anigel going?”
She goes to the Emperor Denombo.
Kadiya blurted out to the knights what the talisman had said. They became very agitated, speaking all at once, begging her to bespeak the Queen and urge her to turn away from the imminent danger. The vanguard of the invasion now poured into the main entrance of the palace, while in the pleasance a deadly panic had broken out among the frenzied populace. But Kadiya was concerned now only with the safety of her sister.
“Gather closely around me,” she ordered the Oathed Companions. “I shall have to bespeak Queen Anigel. She is doubtless fearful and distraught, and it will be very difficult to catch her attention without the aid of a second talisman.” She crouched low while the four knights spread their feathered capes over her in meager shelter, then stared into the open brown Eye of the broken dark sword. “Talisman, let me descry my sister Anigel,” she prayed, “and let me bespeak her also, so that I may save her life. I ask this in the name of the Triune and the Black Trillium.”
For a moment she thought she had failed. Then the noise and confusion around her was cut off as if some door had slammed. She beheld a tunnel lit by the golden glow of trillium-amber, a place of hewn granite blocks dripping with glistening mold, where a rivulet of grayish water flowed underfoot and the air was oddly filled with drifting dust. Standing stock still with his mouth wide open in shock was King Ledavardis of Raktum, bearing Anigel in his powerful arms. Another man, having coppery hair and looking equally stunned, stood behind the King. At his side was Prince Tolivar.
“Lady of the Eyes!” the pirate croaked. “What are you doing here?”
Anigel smiled tremulously. “Dear Kadi! Have you come to join us in our tour of the Brandoba sewers? … Put me down, Ledo.”
Kadiya realized than that she had succeeded beyond her wildest hope. Not only did she descry and bespeak the Queen and her companions, but they in turn saw her image as well, in a magical Sending.
“How did you get down here?” Kadiya asked her sister. “Are you hurt?”
“Ledo and his friend snatched me from the very clutches of Orogastus,” Anigel said. “I am unharmed, save for an ankle sprained during my rescue that makes it hard for me to walk.”
The Pirate King said, “You are a welcome sight, Lady Kadiya—and your mighty talisman even more so.”
“I am not with you in the flesh,” Kadiya said with regret. “This is only a simulacrum of my true body, which actually remains above ground near the golden fountain. I have come with awful tidings. Orogastus and his army have stormed the imperial palace. You must turn back at once—”
“We cannot,” said the redheaded man calmly. He carried a weapon of the Vanished Ones, which he rested on one shoulder. “In order to foil any pursuit, we have from time to time blasted the tunnel behind us with this useful implement’s magical lightning. It is impossible for us to turn back.”
“In a few short minutes the palace will belong to the sorcerer’s warriors and Star Men,” Kadiya said. “The Emperor is already taken prisoner.”
“Poor Denombo!” The man bowed his head. “My sister will surely slay him. May Matuta grant him eternal peace.”
“This is Gyor, the Emperor’s younger brother,” Anigel explained to Kadiya. “The two of them played in the sewer system as boys. Coming this way, we had hoped to give Denombo warning of the sorcerer’s plot.”
Ledavardis added, “The sister of whom Gyor speaks is the Archduchess Naelore, a member of the Star Guild and a thoroughgoing she-devil, who has conspired with Orogastus to seize the throne.”
“Is there no other way out of the sewer,” Kadiya asked desperately, “save through the palace?”
The Archduke raised a tearstained countenance. “This is a storm drain, not a true sewer. The shafts ahead of us serve the hanging gardens and the downspouts of the palace roofs. But once we get below the north wing of the palace, we can enter another sewage conduit. It is a vile and noisome tunnel that I never explored, but I know that it eventually debouches into a canal emptying into the River Dob. Unfortunately, there is no egress from the tunnel aside from those within the palace until one reaches the canal, nearly half a league away from the fortified wall.”
“You will have to continue on to the canal,” Kadiya decided. “My men and I will find a way to enter the sewer system ourselves, guided by my talisman, and eventually we will meet you. Find a safe spot and wait for us. Together we will find a way to travel down the river to the sea. Only God knows what will happen then. We had an aboriginal boat at our disposal, but its skipper was put into an enchanted sleep—”
They had all forgotten Prince Tolivar, who broke in, saying, “Jagun and Critch will awaken from my spell at dawn, Aunt Kadi. You can summon their boat then, and we can all sail away to safety.”
The vision of Kadiya stared at the boy in silence for a moment. Then she asked, “Tolo, where is your talisman?”
Queen Anigel suddenly spoke in a ringing voice. “My dear son gave it in ransom for my life, and the lives of his unborn brothers! Orogastus has the Three-Headed Monster now, but it will do us no good to bemoan the fact. We will speak no more of the matter.”
“Very well,” the Lady of the Eyes said through clenched teeth. “I dare not stay with you any longer. May the Holy Flower protect you and guide you true until we meet again.”
The Sending vanished.
Kadiya told the Oathed Companions what had transpired in the tunnel. They rejoiced that both Queen Anigel and Prince Tolivar were safe, and declared that they were willing to fight their way out of the pleasance at Kadiya’s side if she would but wield the Three-Lobed Burning Eye against their enemies.
“It is the poor citizens of Brandoba,” she chided them, “rather than the henchmen of Orogastus who hinder our escape. Look about you: almost all of those wearing the red or black disguises have joined the assault on the palace. The rampaging mob surrounding us is made up of ordinary people.”
She crouched low again, holding her talisman. All around them, the night was filled with screaming and a horrible rumbling sound; the crowd were trampling one another in their efforts to escape. “We must go into the sewer system as Anigel and her party did, and move underground toward a certain canal that flows into the River Dob. It is there that Anigel and the others will meet us. Let me ask the Burning Eye how to manage it.”
The knights waited grimly while Kadiya muttered her queries and listened to replies inaudible to ordinary men. But when she lifted her head again her face was bleak. “The sections of tunnel closest to us have been deliberately collapsed by my sister’s rescuers in order to prevent pursuit by the Star Men. To circumvent the obstacles, we shall have to make our way to the Northern Boulevard yonder and proceed along it for two city blocks. We gain access to the drain shaft by pulling up a grating in the front garden of one of the mansions.”
“That means penetrating the very heart of the riot,” Melpotis warned. “It may not be possible to shunt people aside gently, as you did before. There will be no place for them to go.”
“If only I were a more experienced sorcerer,” Kadiya lamented.
“Lady,” Melpotis said implacably, “you will have to blast a path with your talisman’s fire. There is no other way we can penetrate that crazed melee.”
“I cannot kill innocent people!” she cried.
Sainlat uttered a despairing curse and tore off his ridiculous pink costume, stamping it with malicious satisfaction. Then he drew his sword. “We cannot remain here dithering! I for one am ready to cut our way to the tunnel entrance.”
“And I,” said Melpotis, also removing his disguise and donning his helmet.
“I have it!” Edinar’s beardless young face brightened. “Lady, beseech your talisman to put the people hindering us into an enchanted sleep, just as Prince Tolivar did to Jagun and the Cadoon! They will fall, and we can leap over them.”
Kadiya was skeptical. “I have never done such a thing, but let
me try.”
Once again, as during the unexpected Sending, Kadiya used all her strength to summon a calmer frame of mind. She winced when a loud blast came from the direction of the palace and flames shot forth from several upper windows, causing a great roar of fear to arise from the mob. But then she steeled herself, concentrating on a single pathetic reveler clad in tattered feathers who sat weeping and gibbering at the fountain’s edge a few ells away.
Sleep, and wake only at dawn, she told him, holding the talisman high and at the same time closing her eyes to visualize him in peaceful slumber. When she opened her eyes the man lay prone in a shallow puddle of gray water, a faint smile on his lips.
“I’ve done it!” she exulted. She tried again, singling out a pair of brawlers belaboring each other in pointless ferocity. Keeping her eyes open this time, she imagined them both sinking to the spray-washed cobbles unconscious and again pronounced the spell. The pair folded as gently as children drifting off to dreamland.
“Companions,” Kadiya said, drawing a deep breath, “we are ready to venture forth.”
She removed her own costume, revealing her scale-mail cuirass emblazoned with the Eyed Trefoil, and donned the helm she had carried in a bag at her waist. Then she lifted the talisman. The droplet of trillium-amber inset among the lobes shone warmly.
“Stay close to me,” she ordered the knights. “I will try to make a broad enough swath so that we need not tread upon the sleepers.”
They set off through the falling water toward the same small bosquet where Anigel and Tolivar had gone to ground, at first penetrating the fringes of the throng with relative ease. Kadiya swept the talisman back and forth, back and forth, her gaze pausing only for a split second upon each obstructing person. Rioters who had been screaming hysterically or flailing about in demented rage began to topple. Those who remained upright, untouched by magic, drew back in terror as others dropped around them. Someone shouted, “A sorcerer!” A great wailing arose, punctuated by more cries of “Sorcery! Beware!” The crowd shrank back on all sides of Kadiya, struggling madly to get away, believing that the felled ones had been slain by enchantment.
Kadiya and the Companions marched on, stepping over bodies. She used every whit of her concentration to bring on the magical sleep, trusting in the knights to keep her moving in the right direction. After passing the small grove of trees they headed for the boulevard, where the mob was packed thicker and in an uglier mood. The handsel floats had been overturned, sending the draft-beasts into foaming fits of terror. Looters had seized the coffers containing the imperial gifts and now battled over possession of the boxes, scattering colored favors everywhere as they pummeled each other. One of the giftgiving maidens lay unmoving, covered in blood, where a maddened volumnial had stamped her. Other injured and dead people were everywhere on the pavement now, but Kadiya and her knights could only continue down the seething boulevard, leaving unconscious bodies in their wake and fending off the occasional deranged attacker.
The mansion that was their goal now lay less than thirty ells away, just beyond a side street jammed with a howling rabble. Paradoxically, those on the lesser thoroughfare were striving to return to the pleasance rather than to flee it. At first, there was no clue to the anomalous movement.
As Kadiya and the Companions attempted to breast this mass of humanity their thus-far-successful maneuver began to falter because of the sheer numbers surrounding them. No matter how many people fell, others surged forward to take their places. The inexorable pressure of the advancing throng was making it impossible for Kadiya to perform the magic. Her justified fear that the enchanted sleepers would certainly be crushed to death destroyed her mental focus.
Edinar and Sainlat, at her right hand and subject to the strongest onslaught, found that even their swords were useless to fend off the human flood. They could advance no further. Helpless, they were being swept across the boulevard and back toward the pleasance.
To the north, down the jam-packed side street, there came the loud chirping and buzzing sounds of ancient weaponry being fired, bright flashes of colored light, and the anguished cries of burn victims. Kadiya knew then that a secondary force of invaders was advancing from that direction, herding hysterical people ahead of them, clearing the way of laggards with nefarious efficiency.
“Star Men!” Edinar howled into Kadiya’s ear. “And other villains in red, mounted on fronials! Turn your talisman’s deadly lightning upon them—”
The young knight’s words slurred to a scream. He was torn away from Kadiya’s side and disappeared in a dark welter of bodies. An instant later Sainlat also vanished, and the brothers Kalepo and Melpotis stumbled and were sucked down beneath her feet.
“Talisman!” Kadiya cried in despairing appeal. “Help!” She held the broken sword high, but at the same instant felt herself falling. The Three-Lobed Burning Eye slipped from her fingers. She saw a blinding green flare and heard someone shriek. Tossed and buffeted like a leaf in a torrent, she was stunned into insensibility before she struck the cobblestone pavement.
She revived, half suffocated beneath a great weight and unable to move. The maddening din of the rioters had receded and the only sounds coming from nearby were moans, weeping, feeble calls for help, the whickering of fronials, and the grunting and cursing of men exerting themselves mightily.
They were pulling corpses off her.
One of her knees throbbed, but her armor—or the talisman’s magic—seemed to have saved her from worst hurt. She still wore her helmet and lay facedown on something. Or someone.
“Companions!” she managed to gasp. “It is I, Kadiya. How fare you?”
“Your warriors cannot help you now,” said a resonant female voice.
Before Kadiya could utter another sound the last of the bodies was pulled away and gauntleted hands took hold of her and hoisted her roughly upright. Vertigo dimmed her sight, her knee stabbed her with pain, and she would have collapsed had not two Sobranian warriors kept a grip on her.
Slowly she lifted her head. Her vision cleared and she saw that most of the mob had gone from the boulevard, leaving heaps of torn bodies in its wake. A troop of fronials all trapped in bejeweled damask encircled her, wheeling nervously amidst the carnage. The riders were armed head to toe in barbaric splendor and all wore scarlet feathered cloaks.
Their leader, gazing down at Kadiya with a fierce smile, was a woman wearing a magnificent bird-shaped crown. Her armor was black-and-silver, and hanging from her neck was a platinum Star. She said, “Bind the witch, Lucaibo, then secure the talisman. Do exactly as I instructed you, unless you would end up as Kiforo, Tedge, and those other luckless wights.”
One of Kadiya’s captors tied her wrists and ankles while the other held her. Then the man named Lucaibo unbuckled her scabbard and laid it on the pavement. Looking down, Kadiya saw that the Three-Lobed Burning Eye lay in an open space on the bloodstained stones. The amber inset in the talisman’s hilt was dull. Round about it lay a burly dead man with eyes wide open, and five incinerated husks that had once been human beings. Hostile persons had obviously tried to pick up the magical sword and had perished for their pains. But the unburnt body …
A pang of grief shot through Kadiya as she realized that it was Sainlat. The knight had not died through trampling; a two-pronged Sobranian sword was driven vertically into his throat.
“Go safely beyond, dear Companion,” she whispered, feeling tears spill down her cheeks.
She hardly noticed when Lucaibo used his steel-plated boot to nudge the scabbard over the dull-edged blade of the talisman, sheathing it safely. He then picked up the Burning Eye and strapped it to Kadiya’s back, winding many turns of rope around her for good measure and fixing her upper arms immovably to her sides.
“Now put her over your saddle,” said the crowned woman, “and we will proceed to the palace, where all is in readiness.”
“Where are my other three knights?” Kadiya asked in a low voice. “And who are you?”
&
nbsp; “Your henchmen are dead, witch, crushed by the mob. I am the Empress Naelore. It will be your privilege to see me ascend my throne—after I have turned your talisman over to Orogastus.”
28
The Archimage of the Firmament had ensconced Haramis in a handsome apartment near his enormous library, urging her to make free use of it. He also introduced her to the several kinds of sindona who would attend to her every need—bearers, messengers, servers, consolers, and sentinels—and showed her fixed viaducts that would enable her to travel from one Moon to another. Then, saying he would return to her when the time was ripe, he hurried away toward his study.
“Ripe for what?” Haramis had demanded to know, running down the hall after him. The old man only tittered and slammed the study door in her face.
When she used the trillium-amber on her otherwise useless talisman to gain entrance, Denby was not inside. He had apparently used the study’s viaduct to travel to an unknown destination, and this magical portal refused to activate when she spoke to it. Clearly, her amber did not consider the viaduct to be a true door.
Boiling with frustration, Haramis then went to the library and combed it for a clue that would enable her to escape. Three days passed, but she found no pertinent information about the working of the viaducts. However, one ancient reference, together with the schematic diagram of the Sceptre the Dark Man had given her, did seem to bear out what Orogastus had said earlier: The three talismans, put together, were capable of restoring the world to its original nonglaciated state if properly wielded. Unfortunately, the rebalancing would produce such horrendous changes in the climate and the continental landform that civilization would surely collapse—unless someone disciplined the terrified population with a will of iron and invincible magic.
A tyrant … like Orogastus.
After the dreadful confirmation, Haramis fled again to the Death Moon, crying out to the Vanished Ones who slept in limbo: “Is there no other hope? Must it be a choice between the Conquering Ice and the ruthless regime of the Star Guild?”
