Miranda gave him a wan smile. “Thank you. If you send for me, I can be here in minutes.”
Alenburga cast his gaze in the direction of the Black Mount.
“I doubt we’ll be hearing from our new friends before dawn.
They may see in the dark like cats, but we’ve given them a lot to think about.” As he watched Miranda departing with the escort, Alenburga said to Erik and Kaspar, “That’s what I’m the most worried about.”
“What they’re thinking?”
“Yes,” said the General.
Erik said, “Something occurred to me during this last struggle.”
“Out with it then,” said Alenburga. “You don’t strike me as the shy type.”
Erik smiled. “I didn’t want to speculate until I saw if they were going to come at us a third time.”
“What is it?” asked Kaspar.
“Why make the second attack? All they have to do is hold us outside the river pass, keep us some distance back, and eventually that sphere is going to encompass this area and they can strike out in any direction. More to the point, why go to the trouble of creating all that slaughter in the first place? Why not just keep expanding the sphere?’
Alenburga ran his hand over his face. “My eyes feel like I’ve got a desert’s worth of grit in them.” He looked at Erik first, then Kaspar. “There are a lot of questions I have no answers to.”
He paused, then said, “How did the Kingdom defeat the Tsurani in the first place, is one.”
Erik said, “I’ve studied every record of that war, and the best answer I can come up with is, because the Tsurani weren’t serious about it.”
“A twelve-year war and they weren’t serious?”
“Seems it was merely a side ploy in some big political game they were playing here.”
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“I’d hate to see what would have happened if they had been serious,” said Kaspar.
“We’d all be speaking Tsurani from birth, I think,” observed Alenburga. He took a deep breath. “But none of the descendants of the Tsurani will be left to speak Dasati if we don’t prevail.”
“What next?” asked Kaspar.
“We wait.” The General looked around for a likely place to sit and found a large rock where he could lean back. He sat down and said, “The really bad thing is that I have no idea what to expect next from those monsters in the dome. The good thing is that come early morning tomorrow, we’ll have three times the soldiers to throw at them.”
“Something tells me,” said Erik, sitting down nearby, “we’ll need them.”
Kaspar remained standing and looked toward the sphere as if he could somehow see it in the dark. Softly he asked, “But will that be enough?”
Joachim of Ran was nervous. He was nervous every time it was his turn to watch the ten thousand motionless Talnoy. He was also nervous because the only other magician from Sorcerer’s Isle who was on duty was no older than he was—barely twenty-six years of age—and he had even less experience as a magician, and was sound asleep outside.
The Conclave had been taking care of these . . . things, for some time now, Joachim assumed. He didn’t really know much beyond his instructions, which were to watch them in shifts with other magicians who came and went from Sorcerer’s Isle, do nothing, but make sure someone knew if anything untoward occurred in this vast cavern.
Joachim was not entirely sure what exactly “untoward,”
meant, but he was entirely sure he wouldn’t like it if he knew.
He couldn’t help how he felt; these motionless things in the vast cavern below were unnerving, standing row upon row like monstrous toy warriors, each in identical armor, each as unmoving as the rocks surrounding—
He blinked. Did one of them move? He felt his heart pound 3 1 9
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and his skin puckered with gooseflesh. He looked hard, but he could see no sign. It must have been some trick of the night, a game of the mind, he decided, yet still his heart raced.
Should he call Milton, the other magician? Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Joachim thought he would only be mocked if he did. He applied himself to needlessly adjusting the single torch stuck in the makeshift sconce above him, and decided it was the flickering of the light that had caused the illusion. No wonder the mind played tricks. He was once more astonished at how far the illumination carried in this otherwise pitch-black hole in the ground. He took another deep, calming breath, and turned his attention back to the tome in his lap. After his first stint of guard duty here he had decided to at least keep current on his studies. He was not the finest scholar in the Conclave and needed to refresh his memory on the more convoluted cantrips, and he had particular trouble with the ones written in Keshian, as he was not a very good student of languages.
He turned his attention to the page and after a while became lost in trying to master an especially odd phrasing. Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw another flicker of movement and his head jerked up. In the front row of the long line of Talnoy . . .
He had to get hold of his imagination. Everything was exactly as it had been moments before . . . or was it? Heart thumping, unsure of what to do, Joachim waited, watching for any other movement.
The first of the TeKarana’s guards to spot Valko’s forces died before his mind could register what it was he saw. Pug had decided against subtlety at this point and simply used a very basic spell of physical control to throw the man as hard as he could against a distant stone wall. It had the same impact as if he had fallen five hundred feet onto hard rock. The sound of it, certainly, was bound to alert others down the hallway to the fact that something was amiss. The splatter of orange blood covered yards in every direction.
“Impressive,” said Martuch to Magnus. “I must remember not to annoy your father.”
“Good decision,” said the younger magician, a little sur-3 2 0
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prised at the Dasati’s dry humor in this situation. Of course, compared to the other Dasati they had encountered, Martuch was almost human in his outlook. But Magnus was equally surprised at his father’s outburst, and realized that Pug must have been concealing a profound amount of anxiety since they arrived in this realm. And since he knew that Pug never worried about himself, he must be anxious about Magnus, Nakor, and even that very strange young man, Ralan Bek.
Magnus knew there were things going on that his father had not confided in him, and that Nakor and Bek were playing some role that he could not anticipate, but he had come to trust his father implicitly over the years. A prodigious talent even as a child, Magnus had always been given the opportunity to master his craft at his own pace, challenged, but never overburdened, and that training, despite his mother’s often impressive lack of patience, had given him a graceful approach to a very difficult practice. Magnus knew someday he might surpass his parents in ability, but that was still decades away, and right now there was a very real question if he would live minutes, let alone decades.
Pug turned a corner leading into a vast gallery, in which a company of Talnoy guards lounged, apparently a reserve squad detailed to go wherever they were needed at a moment’s notice, for the chamber had a dozen large passages leading out of it like spokes. A few had their helms off, chatting while they waited, and once again Pug realized how much of their advantage came from the illusion these armored figures were the Talnoy of myth, the nearly impossible killing machines feared by all.
Pug didn’t hesitate. He raised one hand above his head, and a massive display of blue energy—a huge pale globe in which lightning danced—appeared above that hand. He hurled the globe into the midst of the Talnoy Deathknights. Sparks of energy shot out first one way, then another, dancing from target to target, stunning each warrior they touched and throwing them into a momentary seizure. Some fell over twitching while others stood upright as if locked in paralysis: fully a third of those in the company were incapacitated by Pug??
?s spell.
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Valko and his men charged.
Taken by surprise, the two hundred Talnoy were unable to respond in any organized fashion. More than half the Talnoy were executed as they lay twitching on the floor or while attempting to rise, and those who had managed to put up some resistance were quickly overcome. Two or three warriors of the White assaulted each Talnoy still standing and suddenly it was over. Pug did a quick inventory and saw two of Valko’s Deathknights were dead and dozens had minor wounds, while the Talnoy lay dead to the last man.
Pug looked from tunnel to tunnel, wondering which way to move, and examined the markings above each entrance. In Dasati fashion, energy glyphs designating the tunnel’s use were inscribed within the stone, visible only to Dasati eyes, their equivalent to a road sign with destinations on it. Pug quickly scanned each and then he saw it, an energy glyph much larger than the others. It must be the mark of the TeKarana.
As if hearing Pug’s unanswered question, Valko pointed to that very glyph and said, “That way.”
Pug looked down the long tunnel. They were one long dash from the TeKarana’s apartment. He said, “Magnus should come up between us, for we haven’t seen a Deathpriest yet, and when we do, we may see quite a few of them.”
Valko said, “Your magic is impressive, human. If it can be used in a more selective fashion, that would be useful; it may be some of them are agents for the White. We have a few placed high within the palace, and they might have contrived a plausible reason to not be involved in the murder at the Black Temple. I trust some of them are still here in the palace, for as soon as we attack, they will join us.”
“One can only hope,” Pug whispered. “Still, we’ll assume none of them are until we know otherwise.” He motioned for his son to move ahead of Valko. “Keep me in sight but fall back to protect Lord Valko if you see the need.”
Magnus said nothing as his father hurried ahead. He waited for a moment, then set out after him.
* * *
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Nakor waited, listening, and then he heard it. “Come along, Bek.
We are going to go find you a fight.”
“Good, Nakor. I was very tired of standing still,” said the large young man.
They hurried along, half running, half trotting, toward the sound of battle.
“When we get there,” said Nakor, “can you kill all those wearing armor like yours and leave the others alone, please?”
“Yes, Nakor.”
“Oh, and you might want to take your helmet off so that Pug and the others know who you are.”
“Yes, Nakor,” said Bek, immediately taking off his helm and casting it aside.
As they neared the sounds of fighting, Nakor said, “Remember what I said?”
“Yes, Nakor. Can I go now?”
“Yes, go,” said the spry little gambler.
They rounded the hallway and at the far end could see a vast courtyard opening up to the heavens. Even from where they stood they could see that a fairly impressive fight was in progress. From the blinding flashes of energy and deafening sounds reverberating down the hall, Nakor judged that Pug and Magnus must be there, which was as he wanted things to be. He sensed that the time was fast approaching when all of his plans, plans that had been years in the making, were at last about to come together.
The only concern he had left was, would Ralan Bek, a total madman, play his part? Everything Nakor needed to have happen, the fate of three worlds, and the lives of everyone he had come to care about over the last hundred years, would come to nothing if Leso Varen did not do as Nakor expected him to do.
There were times, thought Nakor, when being a gambler was not necessarily a good thing.
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Chapter 20
return
Pug cast his spell.
An explosion of brilliant illuminations confounded the Deathpriests for a moment, which was all the time Magnus needed to lash out with another enchantment.
Sparkling lights exploded from the palm of his outstretched hand as if he had cast ten thousand minute gems—diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires. But the beauty of the spell was in stark contrast to its effect, for it shot through the Dasati Deathpriests like minuscule razors. Orange spots of blood appeared first on their faces and exposed arms, but such superficial signs were irrelevant, for to a man their eyes went vacant as dozens of tiny holes were ripped through their brains.
Half a dozen more Deathpriests now hurried into wrath of a mad god
the room. They paused, cautious, and then as one began an assault on the rear of the Talnoy guard. Pug noticed that each man wore a white sash that had hastily been tied around his waist.
Valko turned as another figure raced into the room: a massive Talnoy guard, but this one was not wearing any helmet.
“Wait!” shouted Pug. “That’s Bek!”
Valko hesitated for an instant, then stepped back as Bek hurried past him, an expression of demented glee on his face as he raised his massive sword and swung it like a woodsman chopping timber. A Talnoy who had been aiding another in pressing back two of Valko’s Deathknights was sundered from shoulder to crotch and the two halves of his body fell apart in an explosion of orange blood. Bek grabbed another Talnoy by the back of the neck, as if he were a fractious puppy, and turned rapidly, in almost a dancer’s pirouette, throwing him hard against a third warrior halfway across the room. With a sudden reversal of his spin, he completely cut through another Talnoy, his blade sundering the warrior’s armor with the shrieking sound of tearing metal and a shower of sparks from the blow.
Pug stood back, awed. Bek was now a force of nature, something worse even than the most terrible warrior Pug had ever seen. Pug had heard from Tomas what a challenge Bek had been when they had first encountered one another, but now Pug wondered if even the legatee of the Dragon Lord armor would survive an onslaught of this war god incarnate. Certainly there was more to Bek than he had ever suspected, for it seemed that whatever was hidden inside him was now coming to fruition.
Valko circled around to where Pug stood and said, “No mortal can do this. What is he?”
“I don’t know,” Pug said. He could see that the situation was rapidly approaching victory, as the knights of the White were disposing of those Talnoy guards who were not throwing themselves at Bek to protect the TeKarana. Taking a deep breath, he continued, “When we first found him, he seemed a strange young man, possessed by some . . . agency, and we thought perhaps we understood his nature, but since coming here . . . I don’t know. It’s as if he’s a Dasati soul in a human body.”
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“He’s terrifying,” said Valko, completely unaware of making the most profoundly alien admission possible for a Dasati Deathknight to utter.
Pug looked back and saw the others in the White company were also watching as Bek weighed into the fray, laying about with his sword as if he were a giant among mere men. He took wounds, but ignored them, and each time he struck a Talnoy guard fell.
Quickly the Talnoy began to do something unthinkable a moment earlier, turning to flee. Bek crippled two from behind before they could take a step, then set off in pursuit of the handful that were trying to organize a stand on the far side of the room. In a half-dozen strides, Bek was upon them and with the efficiency of a butcher in an abattoir he finished them off in moments. Then the room fell silent. Deathknights of the White stood in mute astonishment at what they had just witnessed.
Valko said, “This will not last long. No matter how much confusion exists in the palace and the city beyond, as soon as we pass through that door into the TeKarana’s inner chambers, every loyal Talnoy guard and palace Deathknight will come as quickly as they can. We must move decisively and without hesitation.”
He turned to his company, many of whom were barely able to stand, and said, “No one beyond that door is our friend.”
Valko looked at the Deathpriests who had joined them and saw Father Juwon, one of the first to begin his training to serve the White. He was as highly placed in the Brotherhood of the Dark One as any serving the White, and a powerful practitioner of magic. He hurried over and said, “Your mother and sister are well.”
He spoke rapidly. “We located the traitor, a Lesser who served in the kitchen. He revealed himself to be a Deathpriest and did not die easily. Everyone you left behind is safe and the Bloodwitch Sisterhood is intact, and ready to serve when needed.”
“How go things elsewhere in the city?” asked Pug, ignoring the odd expression on the face of the High Priest when a Lesser spoke up without permission.
“This is the human magician, Pug, ” said Valko. “And that Lesser there is also a human magician.” He indicated Magnus.
A voice from behind the priests said, “And I am, too.”
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They looked around, and there was Nakor. The little man said, “I mean, I’m human; I’m not a magician. I’m a gambler. But I know a few tricks.”
The Deathpriests did not seem to know what to make of Nakor.
Pug said, “We haven’t much time. How are things?”
“Madness, beyond anything we have ever encountered, or even heard about; what is happening now to the people of this planet makes the Great Culling we recently endured look like nothing more than ridding a tiny bush of pests. Now there is wholesale murder around the world, Valko.” Juwon closed his eyes for an instant, a gesture Pug found very human, then he looked at the young Deathknight. “While the Great Muster waits patiently to go to the human realm and die on another world for the glory of the Dark One, tens of thousand of Lessers are being slaughtered everywhere.”
“Everywhere,” said another Deathpriest. “It’s as if no living thing on Omadrabar is safe.”
“Nothing is,” said Pug. “I know more of the nature of rifts and magic portals than any man living on my world or on the Tsurani world. This thing that tethers this world and Kelewan is like nothing I’ve sensed before. I can’t be certain until I get closer to it, but the only thing I have seen that is remotely like it was the death rift used by a mad human magician to leave Midkemia for Kelewan.”