Shagot entered a low, square stone building that stood by itself. It had unglazed windows and doorways without doors. Svavar asked, “What’s this?”
“A well house. The women come here to get water.” Shagot looked down into the cistern. “They climbed down here.” An iron ladder going down into the cistern had had the rust worn away. Blood discolored its rungs.
A face appeared below. A Praman face. It betrayed astonishment and terror. It disappeared, shrieking a warning.
Shagot swung over the lip of the well and jumped down. Svavar cursed and followed more carefully. At first, the Braunsknechts refused to go down into the earth.
The Emperor entered the waterhouse. He grasped the situation immediately. He gave orders for troops to circle west of the city in search of a storm water outlet. Below, the soultaken engaged the hindmost of those Pramans who had chased the Episcopal raiders underground.
Hansel stamped out of the waterhouse. He swung onto War-spite’s back. For an instant he stared uphill, toward the citadel. He would aim the soultaken that way next.
As he flexed his wrists to shake the reins to urge Warspite forward, an arrow out of the darkness entered his open mouth. Its head severed his spinal cord as it exited the back of his neck.
35. With the Direcinn Combine Cold Spring
The winter was long and bitter but not inconvenient for the combined forces of Direcia, Platadura, and the Connec. They did little but stay warm and get to know the people of Calzir. They saw no fighting.
Brother Candle did not feel he was part of a real war. He had become part of the court round King Peter, in the castle al-Negesi, atop an eminence from which, on a clear day, the hills where al-Khazen lay could be discerned. Peter felt no need to move closer. The Pramans were unable to overawe the forces already facing them.
Brother Candle understood. Peter had tripled his territories at no cost. He had created — and continued to create — a network of personal relationships with foreign nobles and people like Brother Candle, Bishop LeCroes, Michael Carhart, and Tember Remak. The lack of danger, other man from the passage on winter seas, had lured the curious from Direcia and the End of Connec. Duke Tormond and his sister spent a month on Shippen, she enjoying her husband and he learning more about the world and the men who would stand beside him in the dark times to come. Tormond was impressed by how much Count Raymone Garete had matured.
“We’ll go home come spring,” Bishop LeCroes predicted. “This war is over. It’s just a matter of the Pramans figuring that out and laying down their arms.”
If Lucidia and Dreanger did not send reinforcements.
Brother Candle doubted the Praman world would blaze with passion for a countercrusade in Calzir. Not when wealthier and more romantic little kingdoms in Direcia were being devoured by King Peter’s Reconquest to resounding indifference across the remainder of the Realm of Peace.
Brother Candle was enjoying a leisurely breakfast. Bishop LeCroes stopped to say, “Loafing season may be over. Something major is happening at al-Khazen.” His voice was so strained Brother Candle went looking for a high place.
He used his elbows more than was appropriate for a Perfect. Everyone had gotten there before him, equally curious. When he got a good look in the right direction he saw what looked like a tower of black smoke rising from a huge fire a long way away. Only... It looked more like a small but intensely ferocious thunderstorm. “What is it?”
“The Night gone mad. Trying to devour itself. It was much gaudier when it wasn’t as light out.”
King Peter, Count Raymone, and a few others in a higher turret were engaged in an animated discussion. Brother Candle had a sense of portent. The world was about to change again. Chances were, the change would not be for the better. Peter and his cronies sent riders to find out what was happening. And couriers to alert the various garrisons that something was afoot Inasmuch as nobody to the east was inclined to keep their overseas allies posted.
Brother Candle had little sense of the Instrumentalities of the Night. Those who did, like Michael Carhart, assured him that rural Calzir had been sucked clean of every minor spirit The forces gathered at al-Khazen had drawn them in. The Calziran sorcerers were a mystery. The Patriarch’s forces included numerous members of the Collegium. No one knew what dark forces had been marshaled on behalf of the Grail Empire.
As time fled forward Brother Candle increasingly felt his world growing colder — for any whose philosophies did not match those of they who were convinced that they ought to rule the world.
Brother Candle told Michael Carhart and Tember Remak, “I can feel the ice coming to the Connec.”
They understood. Life was about to become less attractive for Maysaleans and pagans, Devedians and Dainshaus, Terliagan Pramans, and even those Episcopate daring enough to favor the Patriarch of Viscesment.
But none of them had an imagination dark enough, bleak enough, pessimistic enough, to guess how dreadful the future could become.
36. Enfolded in the Embrace of the Night
Else crouched in the dark cistern beneath Waterhouse Two, feeling like a cowering rodent, though hiding and abiding were Sha-lug skills equaling any involving sword or lance. A Sha-lug slave warrior was obligated to preserve himself, not to waste himself on heroic gestures.
Terrible fighting was going on in the drainage system. And in the city above, from the sound. Else could not follow its progress but it seemed that Imperial troops had entered the city. The combined efforts of Starkden, Masant al-Seyhan, and er-Rashal el-Dhulquarnen were inadequate to repel them.
There was sorcery afoot, for sure. Else’s nearly forgotten amulet hurt more than it had at any time since the encounter in the Ownvidian Knot.
Er-Rashal not being able to do as he pleased, when it pleased him to do so, was nearly beyond the scope of imagination. Er-Rashal el-Dhulquarnen had been a distant, almost godlike presence in the Dreangerean world for as long as Else could remember. Not being able to do as he pleased likely strained the Rascal’s imagination, too.
Over twenty-five years of training and wartime stress had gone into building Else Tage, the unflappable. But the unflappable Else made a noise like a startled little girl.
Something — that, initially, wore no shape familiar to the Sha-lug Else Tage... Something filled the overflow from the collection chamber below Waterhouse Two. Else felt something touch his soul, take cues from hidden recollections. Passing through several repulsive shapes first, it took the form of a woman... No. A girl. Heris... Sister of the toddler who became the Sha-lug Else Tage... But big. So big. Too big to push through the overflow.
That thing, whatever it was, winked. It raised a finger to its lips. Then it went away. A fog formed in the space it had occupied. The entrance became invisible.
Once his mind resumed function Else wondered how that thing fit the rest of the storm-water system if it could not get into this cistern... The amulet he wore reminded him that it was still there, this time blistering cold instead of hot and painful. Principaté Bruglioni’s ring seemed to weigh twenty pounds.
What the hell?
Hell might have plenty to do with it. That was no woman. That was something vast and potent, far beyond human, though probably designed by human hope and fear. It would be the thing he had been warned about. A something that could brush aside the determined efforts of er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen. One of the Instrumentalities of the Night. Possibly a goddess to some unbeliever who had not found the True God.
Cautioning Else Tage to remain calm, quiet, and still?
This was a difficult hour. He did not need a caution from the demon. Everywhere else was less safe than here. And there was little he could do to affect the situation, whatever he chose to do.
The thing left long silence in its wake. But only where Else remained hidden, behind the glamour she had cast. There was fighting in the streets above. There was fighting in the drainage system. A lot of widows would be made tonight. And Else Tage remained a blind bystander. He cou
ld not imagine becoming involved without feeling guilty. He would have to betray someone.
Eventually, he climbed back out of the cistern and deserted the waterhouse for the madness of al-Khazen’s streets. Imperial troops were still arriving. Pramans fought on in hopeless desperation. Their sorcerers had failed them again, as they had at every turn since the Brothen raid.
Being cautious, avoiding confrontation, Else used memorized maps to reach a section of wall overlooking the exit from the storm-water drain. He was alone on the battlements. The rest of existence seemed focused on the struggle behind and below. Except that the thing he had seen back there now was engaged in a ferocious confrontation with al-Khazen’s defending sorcerers — rather as an afterthought on her part, like a man swatting at a particularly agile horsefly.
Else stared at the moonlighted hillside below. He picked out landmarks he had seen coming in. He saw no sign of the reserve companies. Which was good. He would have been disappointed if he had.
On reflection, he was surprised that he could see much of anything, even with a moon up. False dawn had begun to creep in from the east. Already. How could that much time have passed?
Else was so completely alone on the wall that he considered complaining to God about being lonely. There was no one to stop him doing whatever he wanted.
He began to search for some means of getting down outside. Maybe he could escape without going through that claustrophobic drain again.
Fate conspired.
He found a coil of rope inside a guard station. It was long enough to reach the foot of the wall. It had been reworked for climbing. It was knotted at regular intervals. Someone had used it to go raiding or consorting. Or deserting.
After tying the rope off, though, Else settled down to watch. He would have no part in the events. Fortune had moved him out of the way before the excitement started.
His commandos left the storm-water drain in good order. He had no trouble recognizing Ghort, hustling Crown Prince Lothar ahead of the main party. Else wondered how Bronte Doneto would play the game now. Surely his ransom demands for Lothar would exceed those that Hansel had made for him.
Else could make out some members of the reserve companies, now. A few were too restless, too eager. But they gave nothing away. They could be seen from no other vantage point. Had there been witnesses to discover the trap, still it would have been impossible to warn its prey.
The Praman pursuit tumbled out of the drain in a mix with the slowest Brothens.
The first Pramans out, Sha-lug and Calziran royal lifeguards, showed little interest in the people ahead of them, except to mark what direction they ran before selecting an alternate line of flight
Something only marginally human came out of the storm drain. A huge man-thing, head lost in masses of tangled, filthy blond hair, hoisted an equally nasty mummified head on high and bellowed a challenge that stilled the morning. With his right hand he brandished a bronze sword that was, even to the uneducated eye, obviously enchanted. It was limned by a nimbus that could be sensed but not visually described.
There was power there, with that strange man, and with another of similar stamp who followed him into the light. Else saw no reason why anyone should run from them, though.
They must be the blond men who had caused the stir in Brothe. The men who had decimated the Brotherhood, who had subjected the Calziran pirates to such slaughter, who had turned up during his encounter with Starkden and Masant el-Seyhan. Principaté Doneto called them soultaken. They were living dead men serving the Instrumentalities of the Night. One of which had shielded him and suggested that he lie low.
Imperial troops raced out of the storm-water drain. Once in the light, though, they became indecisive. The Pramans had scattered. Pinkus Ghort and his cohorts had taken cover.
The two soultaken started toward the Brothen reserves. Then the one carrying the head and bronze sword halted.
Slowly, he turned. His gaze rose to Else Tage. Else felt the elation there. He felt the soultaken’s thrill of recognition. The man hoisted head and sword aloft. He screamed at the sky in an unknown tongue.
A dense, dark mist gushed from the storm drain. It coalesced into something huge, ugly, foul, and dark, one moment not unlike a classic harpy, the next a monster mantis. Frightened Braunsknechts followed the example of the fleeing Pramans.
The thing wore a new shape but Else knew this was the demon from beneath Waterhouse Two.
She loomed over the soultaken. The one armed with head and sword was not impressed. He beckoned Else down. Why? To kill him. And thereby destroy the knowledge he carried. What? That made no sense. It does to him. It does to those who sent him. They do not understand that knowledge discovered cannot be undiscovered. Today they will learn.
Those words were not quite a voice in Else’s head. They were knowledge that materialized there. He had been touched directly by the Night.
The harpy became mist again. That shrank, became a large blonde woman. She faced off with the soultaken. Both were confused and irresolute.
The Imperial soldiers knew what they were seeing. And did not want to believe that they were.
Else caught some of the buzz. Here was a legend come to life, a goddess risen from an abandoned faith. An Instrumentality no longer sustained by the world.
She squared off with the soultaken.
Else started to climb down the wall. Soldiers of various allegiances pointed and whispered. Had he made a wrong move? Circle to your right and rejoin your raiders. Else’s amulet burned and froze his wrist. Uncle Divino’s ring weighed a hundred pounds. He slunk like a rat making its getaway, darting from cover to cover.
The soultaken paid no attention. They had lost interest.
Pinkus Ghort and his raiders, though, kept track. Ghort and half a dozen Brothens came out to cover him. “I appreciate this, Pinkus. But you should know better.”
“Not that big a risk. They’re totally infatuated over there.” Ghort poked a finger. “Chooser of the Slain. The Banished One. Who would’ve thought it possible?”
“Who indeed?” Grateful for the mythological cue, Else mused, “Arlensul, you really think?”
Ghort shrugged. “It fits. But who wants to find out? How about you talk less and hustle more?” By then, though, they were tumbling in amongst the crusaders, who were captivated by the heathen confrontation. “You know the hairball with the extra head?”
“No. He might be the one they were after in Brothe, though. Why?”
“It looked like he was trying to call you out.”
“It did, didn’t it? What was that about? What happened to our prizes?”
“Lothar and them? The Principatés sent them back to camp.”
“That figures.”
“Don’t it?”
“We’ll still be fighting the Unbeliever and they’ll already be trying to blackmail Johannes.”
“That’s politics. What the hell are they doing now?” Else and Ghort had just slithered into a position from which they could watch the supernatural confrontation.
Principaté Divino eased up beside Else, opposite Pinkus Ghort. He was a mess, wet and muddy. He was terrified. “The Instrumentality that controls those two souls is about to manifest. What happened in there, Hecht? We lost track of you.”
Was the man suspicious? Not obviously. Else told the truth, leaving out little but his exchange with Bone and his encounter with the woman yonder.
The elderly Bruglioni said, “Oh my! I’ve let curiosity murder me.”
“What?”
“I should’ve gone when I could. We all should have.”
The soultaken with the head and sword expanded slowly, till it loomed over the woman. She had acquired a brazen shield and golden spear from somewhere. The soultaken opened his mouth and bellowed, “Traitor!”
The woman responded, “Vengeance! All-Father. All-Evil. It is time to die the Endless Death.”
“Oh, for sure, I should’ve gone,” Principaté Divino moaned. “I
was such a fool! It’s real! It’s all real.” Ghort said, “Looks like times might get interesting.” The soultaken spoke two words. While those rattled around they took physical form, as two flapping black towels of darkness that transformed into something like a brace of black vultures. Each screamed one of the words the soultaken had spoken. Their names?
Else felt that the female apparition was pleased.
The flapping black things settled toward the soultaken. Uncle Divino murmured, “It’s been said that all religions are true. But how can this be?”
These events rattled the faith of everyone watching.
“For Gedanke,” Arlensul said, in response to a question unheard.
The possessed soultaken bellowed again, flung himself at his prodigal daughter. The fabric of reality creaked. It began to tear.
37. A Loving God, a Loving Father
Svavar’s mind was clearer and his thoughts crisper than ever. He watched the Godslayer rappel down the wall, unseen by Shagot Grim saw nothing but Arlensul. Grim did not understand that Arlensul had been with them from their arrival on that ancient battleground. He was not, in fact, Grimur Grimmsson now. He was the worldly avatar of the Gray Walker, come to finish dealing with a traitorous daughter.
The Godslayer had no place in his thoughts.
The Old Ones mirrored their creature Shagot crude, thoughtless, violent, ignorant of pity or remorse. And none too smart. What use smart if you were omnipotent and immortal?
The black flapping things came together in the gap between Instrumentalities, chased one another in a whirling mandala of darkness that spun in multiple dimensions. The Instrumentalities screamed at one another, proclaiming senseless rage and hatred. While the mandala grew.
Svavar stared at the thing his brother had become, unable to accept it although he believed it. Arlensul’s defiance had conjured the One Who Harkens... now armed with the hammer club for which his favorite son was famous. The mandala, shedding a ripping roar, revealed glimpses of horrors beyond. Glimpses of old corpses abiding an opportunity to rise up and serve deities who held them in trivial regard.