Viyeki stepped to the side of the path as a procession of brutish carry-men lumbered past pulling an empty supply wagon, silent but for their steady breathing, muscles bulging and straining. Even their overseer made no noise as he teased the creatures’ thick skin with the barbed tip of his crop. The carry-men’s hairless heads bobbed in rhythm with each step, as though they were one many-headed beast.
When they had passed him and gone trudging down the hill toward the main camp, Viyeki suddenly wondered where they were coming from. Why would a supply wagon be here, at the farthest edge of the camp, if not to bring someone supplies? But the supply train itself would have come in on the opposite side of the camp, trailing the soldiers’ advance.
Viyeki ordered his new secretary Nonao and the clan guards back to camp because he didn’t completely trust any of them, then he began to climb the slope in the direction from which the empty wagon had come. When he reached the hilltop he had time only to stand in the swirl of wind and spattering rain for a half-dozen heartbeats before a pair of Sacrifice guards appeared as if from nowhere and ordered him to remain where he was.
“What are you doing?” he asked as they approached with their spears lowered. “Could it be that you Pledged value your heads so lightly? I am High Magister Viyeki, Lord of Builders.”
They looked at him with more curiosity than they had before, but kept their spears lowered. “These useless slaves beg your pardon, Magister,” said one of them. “But we have orders from Host General Kikiti to let no one pass. We were told of no exceptions.”
“If one of Queen Utuk’ku’s high magisters is not an exception, then the queen herself will hear of it,” Viyeki said, and his cold fury was only partly for effect. “I do not doubt the punishments will be dreadful. Do you know of the Cold, Slow Halls?”
Both soldiers remained stolid, but Viyeki could see by the narrowing of their eyes that his threat had struck home. “Yes, Magister,” they said in ragged chorus.
“Well, then I suggest you think very, very carefully. I wish to pass. Will you try to stop me, or will you seek out your superiors and avoid a terrible mistake?”
Neither guard looked at the other, but he could feel the tension that gripped them both.
“I will go and ask our troop chieftain,” said one finally. He turned and within moments had vanished down the steep slope on the far side of the hill. His companion now assumed an even more fixed and determined look, as if he hoped to redouble the threat to make up for the other guard’s absence. Viyeki tamped down his anger and humiliation. These were ignorant Sacrifices, mere minions—Hikeda’ya, yes, but only a step or two up from Tinukeda’ya slaves. Letting himself feel anger at them was like hating the watchdog chained to the barn door.
It was League Commander Buyo who came back with the guard, his broad face creased in dismay. “High Magister Viyeki, what are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? I go where I please, Commander. Why am I being stopped as if I were an interloper?”
“I am sorry, Magister, but the Host General and the Host Singer gave strict orders. We did not expect you.”
“I suppose that you mean Kikiti and Sogeyu. Take me to them now.”
Buyo hesitated for a moment, but wherever his ultimate loyalties might lie, there was no possibility in any sensible Hikeda’ya world that a mere commander could dispute with a high magister. “Of course, great lord. Follow me, please.”
At first it looked as though the missing officers and Singers had built a small, separate camp for themselves on the east side of the hill, in a forest of rocky outcroppings just below the summit, but as Buyo led him down the winding path from the hillcrest, Viyeki realized that it was not just a camp but a sentry post, positioned so it could look across the wide valley at the Forbidden Hills and the great Oldheart Forest beyond.
Sogeyu greeted him there, her face solemn and her manner ingratiating. “My deepest apologies, Magister Viyeki! We would have sent for you within the matter of an hour or so even had you not come looking for us. Please forgive us.”
“I cannot forgive you until I know what you have done, Host Singer,” he replied with stiff formality. It was a dangerous thing to be left out of important meetings—a bad sign at best, and usually a token of fatal mistrust. “Why have I been ignored?”
“Not ignored, Magister. We delayed to summon you only to make certain that our forward position was safe for visitors.”
Viyeki doubted that—he could now see the others present, several more Singers and several important Sacrifices as well, including Host General Kikiti, and they all looked quite settled. “How thoughtful,” he said.
“Welcome, High Magister,” said General Kikiti, lean and long-legged as a black heron in his spiky armor. “Join us, my lord. We are making our plans, and although you need take no part in them at first, soon yours will be the most important part of all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Turn. Look.” Kikiti swept his long arm out to indicate the uneven plain that lay below them. “What do you see?”
The dawn was just beginning to creep up behind Oldheart Forest—Viyeki could see its warning glow all along the horizon—but night’s shadows still clung to everything but the very tops of the Forbidden Hills. Still, he could make out something on one of the slopes facing him, halfway down its purple-black side. He squinted. Something lay there waiting for the dawn to reveal it—a cluster of dim, boxlike shapes. “A fortress?” he guessed.
“More than just a fortress,” said Sogeyu, stepping up to stand beside him. She smelled of something Viyeki could not name, something sour that made Viyeki’s nostrils twitch and his mouth pucker. “What you see are the remains of what was once the infamous Slave Hold—the place the mortals call Naglimund.”
“But it belongs to the mortals now!” Viyeki said, astonished. “They took it back again when we lost the War of Return.” As the dawn light grew stronger he could make out the mortal settlement that stretched along the hillside below the fort. His sharp Hikeda’ya eyes could even see what looked like the movement of people and animals as the mortals’ day began.
“We did not lose that war,” said General Kikiti harshly, narrowing his own hawklike gaze. “Our queen was persuaded to put too much confidence in her chief ally, the undead Zida’ya princeling—”
This was an old argument, and clearly Host Singer Sogeyu did not want it to begin again because she immediately interrupted. “You are doubtless right, General, but that is not our concern. The task our beloved queen has set us is to take the fortress back, and then to hold it until we have done what we must.”
It was one thing to discover that the Hikeda’ya host of which Viyeki was a commander—although not the sort of commander who was kept informed of important matters, he thought angrily—had been sneaking across mortal lands because of a bargain with the mortal king of Hernystir, but it was another entirely to learn that they were supposed to attack and overthrow a fortified military outpost that belonged to the mortals’ high king and queen. “But why?” he asked. “For the love of our queen and the Garden, why? What purpose does it serve us to start a war here?”
Although Viyeki outranked him, General Kikiti barely disguised his contempt. “The war has already started, Magister. The Order of Sacrifice has known that since the queen first awakened from her sleep, already planning revenge against those who tried to destroy us. In fact, it would be more proper to say that the war never ended. But now our long retreat will truly and finally come to an end.”
If Viyeki had not been so shocked he would have felt gravely insulted. “I do not understand what you are saying, General. All this way simply to attack a mortal fortress? Then why bring me? Any host-engineer of the House of Walls can lay a siege.”
“Ah, but taking the fortress is only the beginning,” said Sogeyu, black eyes glittering in the depths of her hood. “You see, there is a far greater tas
k coming after the siege—one more than worthy of your eminence, High Magister. Because beneath the ancient Slave Hold, hidden under countless tons of rock, lies an object of great power. In all the years they have held their ‘Naglimund,’ as they call it, the mortals never knew what lies beneath. When we briefly held the place during the War of Return, the Order of Song used the power of a certain object hidden there to aid the Storm King Ineluki in his doomed quest, but we did not have the time or knowledge to find it and bring it to the surface before we were forced to retreat.”
“‘It’? What is this object?” Viyeki demanded. “What could be worth resuming war with the numberless mortals?”
“The armor of Ruyan the Navigator,” said Sogeyu flatly, “the greatest of all the Tinukeda’ya. In that armor, he helped our people flee the Garden on the Eight Ships, and brought his own race and ours here, across all the deadly dangers of the Ocean Indefinite and Eternal. But when we have found his tomb and recovered his armor, and it has been given into the hands of the queen and her great counselor Akhenabi, it will do something even more remarkable.”
“And that is?” What he had assumed was Sogeyu’s pride in her own importance, or in their vital service for Queen Utuk’ku, was something more, Viyeki suddenly realized. The sound of her voice and the look on her exulting face told him Sogeyu was a fanatic even by the broad standards of the Order of Song.
“The Navigator’s armor will help us to sweep the mortals and our traitorous relatives the Zida’ya from the very face of this land,” she declared. “That is all any of us needs to know until our queen wishes to tell us more. Hail to the Mother of All! Our queen will live forever, and her triumph will be complete and unending.”
“Hail to the Mother of All!” echoed General Kikiti. “All hail the queen!”
“All hail the queen,” said Viyeki, but his secret thoughts were fearful, and his heart heavy as black granite from the deepest quarries of Nakkiga. The terrible madness that had nearly destroyed them all was sweeping through his people again. And worst of all, Viyeki knew his only child was one of the young Hikeda’ya warriors who would pay the price of their masters’ folly.
The immense length of the serpentine creature scrambling down the hill stunned Nezeru as much as its daunting speed.
Her heart rattled in her ribs until it threatened to burst from her chest. The dragon they had captured seemed nothing beside this monstrous worm—like a model built in soft clay, some clumsy, miniature replica of the awesome reality.
The new beast was more slender than the captive but at least four times as long, with forelegs as exaggerated as the hind limbs of a cricket, so that it lurched from side to side as it descended, knocking loose sprays of snow and dislodging balanced stones, forcing Nezeru and her companions to dive out of the way. Even so, a tumbling boulder as big as a mine cart took an unexpected bounce and struck Goh Gam Gar on the shoulder before careening over the edge of the rocky shelf on which they stood. The giant windmilled his arms for balance, but to no effect: an instant later he had disappeared over the precipice. Another large boulder, sliding more than rolling, missed Nezeru by only a few paces and skidded to a slow halt behind her, just a short distance from the cliff’s edge.
The mortal Jarnulf raised his bow and loosed a stream of arrows toward the dragon; Nezeru saw some of them hit its bristle-covered hide and bounce away. One even flew into the creature’s gaping mouth, which was gray as rotted meat, but didn’t seem to bother the beast at all.
“Nakkiga and the Queen!” cried Makho, waving his sword Cold Root as he clambered through the snow toward the monster.
Kemme was just behind his chieftain, sword in one hand and a rock as large as his head in the other, as though he had simply grabbed what was closest to him. “The Queen!” he shouted. Even in this moment of sheer terror, Nezeru thought he sounded almost happy.
The larger dragon had a neck like the body of a great serpent; even as it wound downslope it kept the two Hikeda’ya at a distance by coiling to strike again and again, each time with a curious, hissing rattle of the spiny hairs along its back. Its head was long and ended in a bony, fanged snout curved like a hawk’s beak. The eyes, like those of the smaller beast that lay bound at Nezeru’s feet, were pale blue and seemed empty as a blind beggar’s.
The snapping jaws struck at Makho again, missing the hand chieftain by only a small distance, but this time as the head swung back it struck him in the leg and knocked him head over heels into the snow. Nezeru was shooting at it, but most of her arrows did not penetrate the creature’s thick skin, and those that stuck only became more bristles rattling against the white hide.
Nezeru struggled to think. Goh Gam Gar had tumbled off the mountain and was gone. Makho had fallen, and although Kemme was protecting him, attacking the creature’s head with a flurry of swordstrokes, the dragon seemed to have no problem evading his blows. Steam billowed from its hissing mouth, so that after a few moments Kemme and the beast seemed to be dancing in a fog bank.
None of this is going to save us, she realized. In only a few moments, they would all be dead and the mountainside would be silent again.
“Jarnulf!” she shouted. “Over here! Help me!”
Arrows spent, he tossed his bow to one side and hurried toward her, lifting his knees high as he struggled through the thick snow.
“Hold this,” she shouted, throwing him one end of her coil of Blue Cavern rope. He caught it, but was distracted by a hissing bellow from the creature above them and an answering moan from the captive dragon. She grabbed the rest of the rope and scrambled along the step to where the largest boulder had skidded to a halt a few paces from the edge of the mountain.
As Nezeru scrambled up onto the boulder, trailing the length of cord behind her, Jarnulf saw what she was doing and did his best to keep the rope from getting snagged. Farther upslope Makho had climbed to his feet again, but now it was Kemme who lay sprawled and bloody in the snow. The worm’s long head lashed out again and again as Makho tried to protect his fellow Sacrifice, jaws snapping only inches from his flesh.
As Nezeru reached the part of the boulder lying nearest the cliff’s edge she almost overbalanced. For a moment the emptiness below seemed to leap up and surround her, but she managed to lower herself into an unsteady crouch until the wheeling dizziness passed, then continued looping her rope around the boulder.
“Make a noose!” she called to Jarnulf, but the Rimmersman had anticipated her and already held the knotted loop.
“Just tell me when you’re ready!” he shouted.
In a sane world she would have had time to tie everything properly, to make sure the rope was firmly in place and that the pull would be even. Instead, she slid off the boulder with the Blue Cavern cord merely looped several times around the boulder and knotted. “Go!” she cried.
Jarnulf scrambled up the slope with his head down and his body low. The steaming clouds of the dragon’s breath now made it impossible to see either Makho or Kemme. The only proof that at least one of them still lived was the continuous rising and dipping of the dragon’s immense head as it struck over and over at some invisible target.
The rope left in his hands rapidly growing shorter, the mortal clambered up the last rise and then had to duck as the dragon’s flailing tail appeared from the mist like some monster scythe, nearly crushing him. For a moment Nezeru could see the creature’s back legs as the mist swirled up, and Jarnulf saw them too. He waited until the nearest one had lifted so the creature could drive toward Makho again, then he threw his wide noose onto the snow where the clawed foot was coming down.
As the dragon stepped into the noose Jarnulf dove back beneath the returning tail. The rope pulled tight against the boulder and the worm roared in fury to discover itself partially immobilized, but it was too busy defending itself against Makho’s redoubled attacks to try to bite through the restraint. The smaller worm was awake and had broken its own r
ope muzzle. It screeched at the air as if imitating the larger beast.
Fog spread along the mountainside, whipped into streamers like the fluttering banners of a festival parade or the white streamers of a funeral procession. Nothing seemed entirely real. Nezeru set her back against the boulder and began trying to push the great stone the last couple of paces toward the cliff’s edge, but she could not budge it. “By the Holy Garden,” she screamed, “somebody help me!”
A moment later the mortal Jarnulf crunched awkwardly back down the snowy slope and began pushing beside her. The rope tied to the dragon’s leg was between them, and Nezeru could hear its plaits creak as the dragon pulled against it, but the monster was still fixed on Makho and Kemme, snapping at them with its long jaws. She prayed they could keep distracting the worm a few moments longer, and also sent a prayer of thanks to the weavers and the pale, tireless spiders of the Blue Cavern for making the rope so strong. Still, it was becoming clear that even if the restraint held it would not be enough to save them, because she and Jarnulf didn’t have the strength to budge the great boulder.
Just as despair washed over her like an icy stream, sucking away the last of her warmth and strength, Nezeru heard a scraping noise. An instant later two immense, hairy hands appeared on the edge of the precipice a short distance away; a moment later, the ugly, brutish face of Goh Gam Gar rose into view.
Nezeru did not think she had ever been so glad to see another living thing.
“Help us!” she called. “Help us push!”
The giant looked at the scene with disgust as he pulled himself up, then spat a gobbet of red onto the snow, but did not waste time arguing. His whitish fur was stained in a dozen places by dirt and streaming blood, and one of his fingers was clearly broken, jutting at an odd angle, but when Goh Gam Gar was onto the slope he crossed the distance in a single stride and set his shoulder against the huge stone. The bellowing of the two dragons had now reached a terrible pitch, the older one thundering so loudly that drifts of snow broke loose on the nearby mountains, while the younger one shrieked and honked with what sounded like genuine terror.