“King Ledavardis of Raktum! The beings you see are called the Sentinels of the Mortal Dictum. They are not illusions. They are real, and they are putting to death those of your warriors who harbor thoughts of killing in their hearts. In this hall there are fifty sentinels. There are many others outside the keep, equally deadly. Surrender, or you and all of your people will die.”
The quailing young monarch managed to say: “You are lying!”
She pointed her talisman at him. “See for yourself.” And into his mind sprang a horrific scene: Tall pale forms with golden skulls tucked under their arms were gliding through the battling throng in the palace grounds, leaving death and stunned bewilderment in their wake.
Do not falter, Ledo! I am here!
Orogastus appeared at the western door, his silvery star-mask and robes gleaming and the Three-Lobed Burning Eye held high.
“Kill those things!” shouted the King frantically to the sorcerer. “Kill them before more panic spreads among the men!”
But a rout had already begun. The invaders inside the great hall were racing out of the main entrance, shrieking: “Demons! Demons are coming! Run for the ships!” Their terror spread swiftly, infecting the throng of invaders outside.
Orogastus lifted his talisman and cried out a command. A tricolored beam of light struck one of the sindona and it exploded with a deafening report, the fragments of its rock-hard body peppering the fleeing pirates with tiny missiles and making them scream and run even faster.
“Stop!” Orogastus admonished them, in a voice like thunder. “Come back, you fools! Look—I am killing them!” And he slew a second living statue.
At the death of the first sindona, the others had turned and gazed impassively at the sorcerer. Now they pointed in unison at him, and Haramis cried out in spite of herself and felt her heart plummet.
But no dissolving puff of smoke appeared. The skull of Orogastus remained secure within its flesh, wearing its awesome star-mask. He cried out in triumph and began to blast them to shards, one after another. The noise of the explosions was stupendous, and it served only to demoralize the invaders still more.
The knights of Laboruwenda, on the other hand, now came stampeding down the staircase, led by Lord Penapat, to pounce upon King Ledavardis and the thirty or so men surrounding him. Trapped in their alcove, the Raktumians put up a fierce resistance.
All of the sindona within the emptying great hall now converged upon the sorcerer, seeming to ignore the extermination of their fellows. Haramis remembered that the spirits of the destroyed statues passed into those still whole. The detonations were deafening as the sorcerer slew sentinel after sentinel; but they still marched inexorably toward him, now holding the golden skulls before them with both ivory hands. Orogastus waved the talisman wildly, killing one after another. Still they came closer—and more now appeared at the two open doors, also advancing.
“Iriane!” Haramis cried. “Can you lend me some of your strength?”
“Well, I could give you a little,” the Archimage of the Sea replied, “but certainly not enough to restore you completely.”
“I only need sufficient magic to transport myself one single time.”
“Let’s try it.” The Blue Lady took Haramis’s head in her hands, drew her down, and brought their brows together. Haramis felt a burst of blue light behind her eyes. A new vigor infused her mind and body.
“Thank you! Now pray for me!” And with that, Haramis clasped her talisman and vanished.
“Dear me,” Iriane murmured, shaking her pearly coiffure. “What can she be planning to do?” She gazed upward with eyes momentarily blank. “Denby? Are you watching?”
But there was no reply from the aloof firmament.
“So much the worse for you,” said the Archimage of the Sea.
She lifted her skirts and began to trot along the encircling balcony toward the western side of the great hall, where Orogastus was still shattering one sindona after another. The view of the final confrontation would be much better from over there.
32
The strongroom behind the thrones in the presence room was intended to store the great treasures of the royal regalia, and to provide a convenient withdrawing room for the monarchs during tedious court functions. It was all but impregnable, but it was also small and crowded with coffers of jewels, and had only the one door, and was freezing cold. No one could remain within it indefinitely.
Lord Penapat had hustled Anigel, Janeel, and the old Nyssomu nurse Immu into it when the keep doors were sundered. It was not a place the Queen would have chosen. Anigel realized that she could not fight, but it was maddening to be so helpless, and not to know what was happening.
She was overjoyed when the strongroom door opened after a short time and Kadiya entered with Nikalon. Immu made a quick examination of the boy and pronounced him healthy enough except for a few bruises. He was crushed by shame for having forced his aunt to rescue him.
Kadiya gave her sister a lively account of how she had gone invisible, with the aid of her Black Trillium amulet, and collected the Crown Prince from the fallen barracks. Not wanting to deprive Anigel and the others of hope, Kadiya did not mention that she had found the area behind the keep crowded with hundreds of enemy troops. But the Lady of the Eyes knew full well that there was no chance at all of Antar being able to bring in his reinforcements through the postern gate of the fortifications.
And unless Haramis produced a miracle, those of them hiding within the strongroom would soon have to choose between surrender and a slow death by starvation and thirst.
They settled down to wait. Kadiya sat by the door, sharpening her sword, while the others wrapped the ornate coronation robes around themselves to keep warm and huddled in a close group.
“I am more grateful than I can say for your having restored Niki to me,” Anigel said to Kadiya. “At this terrible time it is a comfort to know that at least two of my dear children are safe.”
“Dumb Tolo’s probably safe, too,” Princess Janeel said disgustedly.
“We will not speak unkindly of him.” The Queen was mildly reproving, but her eyes suddenly misted at the thought of her youngest son. “Tolo is too young to know the terrible thing he did. If he were restored to me, I would clasp him to my bosom and forgive him with all my heart. And so should we all.”
“Without even punishing him?” Niki was scandalized.
“Yes,” said the Queen.
The Crown Prince muttered at that, and Princess Janeel began to speak callously of Tolo’s bleak future in the clutches of the awful sorcerer until Immu bade them both to be still, and think of better things.
“What better things?” the little Princess asked. “There are none.”
“Of course there are!” Immu scolded. “Silly child!”
“The pirates will capture us … and I shall have to wed the Goblin Kinglet after all!”
“Now, sweeting, hush. There is still hope. Things may not be as bad as they seem … Ah, they were much worse during the terrible battle for Ruwenda Citadel. What situation was more hopeless than that? Yet we won out—and Black Trilliums bloomed in Ruwenda for the first time since the withdrawing of the Conquering Ice.”
“I remember.” Queen Anigel tried to smile. But Immu’s mention of the ice made her shudder.
“Yes, it was the greatest battle ever fought in Ruwenda,” Kadiya said. “Perhaps the greatest ever fought in the known world! Humans and Folk and even Skritek were the combatants, and good magic and bad made even the Three Moons themselves tremble.”
“But the three Petals of the Living Trillium brought about a great victory,” Immu said to the Prince and Princess. “Your mother and Aunt Kadiya and Aunt Haramis won the battle and won the war even though it seemed hopeless.”
“Tell us the whole story again,” the Princess begged, nestling further into her extravagant covers.
So Immu did. She spoke of how the Archimage Binah arrived just in time to help the Triplet Princesses of Ruwe
nda be safely born, and then related how each girl grew up and went on her quest and found her magical talisman.
The old Nyssomu nurse was just about to tell how Ruwenda was saved when the Archimage Haramis opened the strongroom door.
“Sisters … come with me.”
Kadiya sprang to her feet, her face alight. “Hara! Is there good news?”
“Put down your sword, Kadi. You will need another weapon for the fight that we now face.” The Archimage was nearly as pale as a sindona. Silhouetted in the door, her cloaked form had a faint rainbow radiance shimmering about it. She looked unfamiliar, even fearsome.
Queen Anigel cried out, stricken. “Then we have not won the battle?”
“The pirate army is in full flight toward the harbor,” Haramis said. “Antar and his men are in hot pursuit of the stragglers. Ledavardis, King of Raktum, is at this minute the captive of Lord Penapat and his knights—”
Niki and Jan let out a happy cheer.
“—but the battle is not won. Orogastus remains. I summoned the sindona, and they are contending with him. But he is speedily destroying them, and the time has come for us to confront him. Come with me now! The only weapons you will need are your amulets.”
Kadiya threw off her sword-belt. The Queen rid herself of an encumbering heavy cloak. They rushed through the empty presence room, past the antechamber, and out to the broad foyer at the head of the grand staircase leading down into the hall.
“Great God!” breathed the Queen.
Kadiya was incapable of speech, so strange and terrible was the scene spread before them. The enormous room, a full one hundred twenty ells long and equally as broad, was full of smoke. Wall torches flamed eerily among the ancient banners hanging on their staffs. Bodies were heaped everywhere, and dotted among them like red-stained white fruit fallen from some invisible tree were hundreds of human skulls.
From minute to minute blinding explosions came from the side of the hall to the west of the staircase. Kadiya and Anigel saw ghostly pale figures massed shoulder to shoulder there. Sindona—perhaps a hundred, perhaps less. The sorcerer was presumably among them, although nothing of him could be seen.
Haramis lifted her talisman with the trillium-amber glowing within. “Stand close to me,” she bade the others. “Take the Black Trillium in your hand. Abolish all fear, all hopelessness, anything that has ever diminished your love. Give yourselves freely to each other and to me. Trust … and then follow where I will lead.”
Kadiya and Anigel stood on either side of Haramis in the middle of the flight of stairs. The gloom and the smoke were suddenly gone and the great chamber seemed flooded with pitiless light. They saw Orogastus clearly. He wore his Star vestments and gripped the Three-Lobed Burning Eye by its dulled blade, but so tightly did he have hold of it that the dark metal had sunk into his flesh, and his hands were covered with blood. The lobes of the talisman’s pommel bore three glaring eyes that flared green and gold and white, and at each triple pulsation a sindona vanished in a great concussion of sound and light.
Fragments of destroyed statues covered the ground around the sorcerer like coarse snow. The sindona had formed a ring about him, three deep, with the innermost of the crowned sentinels about six paces away. Each held a golden skull before it. They were immobile, seeming helpless as he swung giddily about, blasting them on all sides.
The Queen and the Lady of the Eyes suddenly felt themselves soaring, even though they knew at the same time that they stood firmly on one of the wide stairs. They hung above Orogastus, together with Haramis, and looked down upon him.
He looked up and saw them. His face, half-hidden by the mask, was framed in the rays of a great silver star. His lips parted and he cried out a single word. “Haramis!”
I am here. We are here. We must end this.
Orogastus lifted the Three-Lobed Burning Eye toward them, ready to command the annihilation of the Living Trillium. But he hesitated, remembering what had happened before, how the talisman had failed—and in failing, forced him to drop it. If he dropped it now, the sindona would be upon him in an instant, crushing him beneath their heavy bodies.
Was his will strong enough to kill her this time? Before, his concentration had wavered, distracted by his cursed love for her. But now one or another of them was sure to die …
Or would he?
Soul-shrinking terror washed over him. No! She would not kill him. She would do worse: exile him to a living death in the Chasm of Durance, in the bowels of the earth. The Cynosure would draw him there, as it had drawn him to the Kimilon, and he would be imprisoned alone until he breathed his last breath.
“No!” he screamed. “You shall not!” Holding the talisman high above his head, he emptied his mind of all thought, then formulated the command.
The Archimage said: Kadiya, Anigel, now cleave unto me with all the loving strength you own, for we must turn back upon him what he would wreak upon us.
The pommel of the Three-Lobed Burning Eye seemed to swell to titanic size, hiding the Star Man beneath. The three women saw the brown human eye, the golden eye of the Folk, and the silver-blue eye of the Vanished Ones stare hugely at them for a brief moment. Then the eyes were slowly transformed. They became three golden Moons, orbs slowly eclipsed by darkness, becoming black globes fringed with a luminous golden corona. The globes changed in turn, blooming, becoming a great three-petaled Flower the hue of night. Standing within its golden center was a man, and upon the petals of the Black Trillium were three women.
Haramis! You cannot do this! Not to one you love!
The man held a dark sword. Beams of brilliant starlight shone from his eyes. He said very clearly: Smite them all. Smite the Living Trillium unto death.
And the magical energies flowed.
Out from the center of the Flower where the Star now blazed came a twisting funnel, a whirlwind of light. Before it engulfed all of them, they saw the Trillium itself divide into threefold form: golden, green, white, with a starry heart in each. A great roaring brightness surrounded them. They seemed to fall head over heels, flying through the air like leaves, a blizzard of coruscating tricolored sparks swirling around them.
The Archimage of the Sea said: “Love is not only permitted, it is required.”
The Archimage of the Firmament said: “It is also very inconvenient.”
There was a thing ahead of them in the rushing storm of light. It was hexagonal in shape and dead black. They pitched and reeled and tumbled toward it, and it grew until it was immense and the volume of mind-shattering sound insupportable.
The Archimage of the Land said: “Do not be afraid!”
But I am afraid! So afraid …
Haramis, Kadiya, and Anigel were stunned by silence.
Standing in a row on the stairs.
Haramis between her sisters, head bowed, arms limp at her sides, the amber in the talisman at her breast throbbing to the rhythm of her heart.
Their own amulets also luminous and pulsating.
Alive.
Kadiya uttered a great sigh. She descended the stairs with Anigel trailing after and made her way cautiously through the pathetic human remains of the battle to where the remaining sindona stood. There were less than two dozen of them left, still in a perfect circle, still holding the golden skulls before them and seeming to smile serenely.
Within the circle lay the Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and nothing else.
“It was my talisman,” Kadiya murmured. “Then it was his. Whose is it now?”
But the Sentinels of the Mortal Dictum did not answer. As the sisters watched, their forms became as insubstantial as mist, finally melting into nothingness.
“I suppose the sorcerer hid the star-box somewhere,” Anigel said. “We shall probably be able to find it, and then one day you will be able to use your talisman again.”
“I am not at all sure that I want to,” said the Lady of the Eyes.
Anigel’s eyes were watering—perhaps from the smoke that still filled the place. ?
??I’m certain that I don’t want to use mine.”
They looked back for Haramis, but she was gone. No other living soul was to be seen in all the great hall.
“Let us go out into the clean air,” Kadiya said, taking her sister’s hand.
Together they passed through the western door of the keep and into the courtyard. There they found the sun brightly shining, and the air astonishingly sweet and warm. A crowd of battered and bloodstained Laboruwendian knights and men-at-arms hailed the two women with cheers and merry shouts. Lord Penapat cried out: “The foe has turned tail to the last man—save one!”
And the throng opened to show King Ledavardis of Raktum seated upon a stone mounting block.
He rose, smiled sweetly, bowed, and said: “The Goblin Kinglet begs mercy of Queen Anigel and the Lady of the Eyes, and herewith he surrenders.”
“You treated my imprisoned children with kindness,” Anigel said. “I will treat you the same. It is my will that you now leave my country.”
“That—that is all?” Ledavardis regarded her with amazement.
The Queen nodded, then said to Penapat: “Take your men, and escort the King of Raktum to a ship, and see him gone.”
There was some murmuring, but then most of the warriors began to laugh, and they set out for the palace’s north gate. Queen Anigel seemed not to see the dead men lying all around, nor the blood, nor the ruins of Derorguila Palace. As if in a dream, she looked up into the blue heavens where a few white clouds sailed. It was a Dry Time sky, and a warm wind came from the sea. Finally she spoke.
“Kadi … I think the balance of the world is restored.”
“You may be right. Let us pray it is so. Haramis will know for certain, but I think we should wait until later to ask her about it.”
“Yes. She must be very tired.”
Kadiya straightened. “There is much work to do. We must tend to the wounded, and we will have to arrange food and drink for our victorious fighters. I will go to the upper levels of the keep and roust out the noblewomen and whatever servants can be found. Then we can—”