“There is somewhat more to making war, it seems,” he said sorrowfully to his aide-de-camp Nilgir Sumanand, “than merely proclaiming the righteousness of one’s cause.”
“It was only the first skirmish, my lord,” replied Nilgir Sumanand in a quiet tactful way. “There will be many more encounters on the field for us, and happier ones, before the task is done.”
Prestimion said dourly, “But look how badly we’re damaged already! Where’s Gialaurys? And Septach Melayn—I had a glimpse of him far across the field, in the midst of a pack of enemies. By the Divine, if Septach Melayn has fallen—”
“He is safe somewhere nearby in the forest, of that I’m certain, and will find us before long. The man’s not yet born who can lay a weapon to him, my lord.”
It was welcome reassurance. But Prestimion brushed it aside and snapped, with more anger in his voice than he would have preferred to display, “Enough of calling me ‘my lord’! It galls me to hear the phrase. Some Coronal am I, sitting here in the rain under these dripping vakumbas!” And then, quickly and in a softer tone, for he was abashed at having chafed this good loyal man with such harshness: “I’ve had to swallow down many an unpalatable thing, haven’t I, Nilgir Sumanand, since my fortunes changed? This was surely not the plan I charted for myself when I first set out to win greatness in the world.”
The rain seemed to be ending now. Through the huge heavy gray leaves overhead, leathery-skinned on their upper sides and furry below, he saw faint white shafts of moonlight peeping through. But the night was cold and the ground was sodden, and his thigh throbbed mercilessly; he had taken a sudden blow across the fleshiest part of it in one wild melee, one of Navigorn’s men galloping past and slashing him with a riding-crop as he went. Better that than the blade of a sword, Prestimion told himself, yet he was limping all the same.
“Do we have glowfloats with us?” he asked Nilgir Sumanand. “Tie them to these trees, if we do. They’ll guide others of our people toward us in the night who might be wandering hereabouts.”
“And if they guide Navigorn to us instead, excellence?”
“It would be a very rash general who led his troops into a dark forest like this by night, not knowing what sort of ambush is waiting for him. No, Navigorn and his men are getting grandly drunk in Arkilon just now. Put up some glowfloats, Nilgir Sumanand.” And soon there were globes of reddish light hanging from the lowest branches of the nearby trees; and in a little while, just as Prestimion had hoped, the lights began to draw the straggling fragments of his army, by twos and threes at first, or sometimes as many as a dozen.
It was midnight when Gialaurys appeared. He came alone. His sleeve was in tatters and a raw bloody cut showed through. His mood was so grim that even Prestimion hesitated to speak with him; shrugging off an offer to bind his wound, Gialaurys sat down by himself and took from his torn jacket the green fruit of a vakumba, one that he must have pulled from a low-lying branch or even picked off the ground, and began to gnaw and rip at it in a snarling frightful way, cramming the flesh of it into his mouth as though he were no more than a beast of the fields.
A little while after, Kaymuin Rettra of Amblemorn arrived, with a detachment of Skandars and some human men of his city, and then Nemeron Dalk from Vilimong, with fifty more, and almost on their heels was Count Ofmar of Ghrav, followed by many of his people, and some Simbilfant folk, and the three Sons of the vineyard overseer Rufiel Kisimir, leading a whole host of men of Muldemar, who surrounded Prestimion with loud cries of joy. And the noise of all these as they gathered in the one encampment under the fat vakumba-trees brought others, on through the night. So the army was not as utterly destroyed as Prestimion had feared, and he took some heart from that. There was scarcely anyone who had not taken some injury in the battle, and some of those serious. But all of them came before Prestimion, even the wounded ones, and earnestly vowed to go on fighting in his cause until the end.
Of Septach Melayn and Svor, though, there was no sign.
Toward morning Prestimion slept a little. Dawn was slow coming in this latitude, for Castle Mount lay straight eastward of here, and the rising sun had to climb above that thirty-mile-high wall before its light could penetrate the forest. At last Prestimion felt warmth on his face; and when he opened his eyes the first he saw was Duke Svor’s hooked nose and devilish toothy grin, and then Septach Melayn, as cool and elegant as if he were on his way to a banquet at the Castle, with not a single golden hair out of place and his clothes unmussed. The Vroonish wizard Thalnap Zelifor was perched pleasantly on Septach Melayn’s left shoulder.
The swordsman smiled down at Prestimion and said, “Have you rested well, O peerless prince?”
“Not so well as you,” Prestimion said, coming creakily to a sitting position and brushing the mud from himself. “This hotel is less gracious, I think, than the luxurious inn where you must have spent the night.”
“Luxurious indeed. It was all of pink marble and black onyx,” replied Septach Melayn, “with sweet handmaidens galore, and a feast of bilantoons’ tongues steeped in dragon-milk that I’ll not soon forget.” He knelt beside Prestimion, allowing the Vroon to jump down to the ground, and said in a less airy way, “Did you take any injury in the battle, Prestimion?”
“Only to my pride, and a bruise to my thigh that will have me aching a day or two. And you?”
Septach Melayn said, with a wink, “My thumb is sore, from pressing too tight against the hilt of my blade in the thick of the fray as I cut down Alexid of Sirave. Otherwise nothing.”
“Alexid is dead?”
“And many others, on both sides. There’ll be more.”
Svor said, “You don’t ask me about my wounds, Prestimion.”
“Ah, and were you fighting valiantly too, my friend?”
“I thought I would test myself as a warrior. So I went into the midst. In the veriest heat and turmoil of it, I came up against Duke Kanteverel, my face right up against his.”
“And you bit his nose?” Prestimion asked.
“You are unkind. I drew on him—I had never drawn in anger before—and he looked at me and said, ‘Svor, do you mean to kill me, who gave you the lovely Lady Heisse Vaneille? For I have lost my weapon and am at your mercy.’ And nowhere in my heart could I find hatred for him, so I took him by the shoulder and spun him around, and shoved him with all my strength, and sent him staggering toward his own side of the field. Did I fail you greatly, Prestimion? I could have killed him there and then. But I am no killer, I think.”
Prestimion answered, with a shake of his head, “What would it have mattered, killing Kanteverel? He’s no more a fighter than you. But stay behind the lines, Svor, in our next battle. You’ll be happier there. So, I think, will we.” Prestimion looked toward Thalnap Zelifor and said, “And you, companion of my prison-chamber? Did you do mighty work with your sword?”
“I could wield five at once,” said the Vroon, waving his many tentacles about, “but they would be no greater than needles, and all I could achieve with them would be the pricking of shins. No, I shed no blood yesterday, Prestimion. What I did on your behalf was cast spells for your success. But for me, the outcome would have been even worse.”
“Even worse?” Prestimion said with a little chuckle. “Well, then, you have my gratitude.”
“Be grateful for this too: I’ve thrown the divining-sticks to see the outcome of your next battle. It was a favorable pattern. You will win a great victory against overwhelming odds.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Septach Melayn.
And Prestimion said, “I would embrace sorcery with all my heart, my friend, if I could hear prophesies of that kind from my mages all the time.”
The coming of a warm bright morning and the return of his dear friends gave a great lift to Prestimion’s spirit, and he began to put the grief of the battle at Arkilon behind him. All day stragglers continued to arrive, until he had something of the semblance of an army again, weary and battered and muddied though it was.
r /> They would have to leave the forest quickly, Prestimion knew. It was rash to assume that Navigorn would let them camp here unchallenged for long. But where to go? They had no maps with them; and none of them had much acquaintance with the great open stretches of territory that lay west of Arkilon, but for the great and celebrated Gulikap Fountain just beyond the forest, which was well-known to all.
Some information came from Nemeron Dalk of Vilimong, a man of some years, who had traveled from time to time in those lands. He knew the names of rivers and hills, and roughly where they lay in relation to one another. Elimotis Gan, who hailed from Simbilfant, had some knowledge of the region also. And one of the skills that Thalnap Zelifor claimed was the casting of inquiry-spells that permitted the divining of correct roadways and routes. In mid-morning these three, with Septach Melayn and Prestimion and Svor, came together to draw up a route of march.
The Vroon lit some little cubes of a brown stuff that looked like sugar, but which he said was the incense of sorcery, and wriggled his tentades and stared into the distance, murmuring softly to himself. And after a time he began to describe the lay of the land beyond them as he claimed to perceive it in his incense-visions, and Elimotis Gan and Nemeron Dalk provided amplification and correction, and Septach Melayn sketched out a rough chart of it from their words with the tip of his sword on abare damp patch of soil, smoothing out his errors with the toe of his boot.
“These hills here—hills, are they, or mountains?—what are they called?” Prestimion asked, pointing to a line on Septach Melayn’s map that ran boldly for a great distance from north to south.
“The Trikkalas,” said Elimotis Gan. “More mountains than hills, I would say. Yes, very definitely mountains.”
“Can they be easily crossed if we were to march due west from here?”
Elimotis Gan, who was a short wiry man with a look of great vigor about him, exchanged a glance with the robust, sturdy Nemeron Dalk. It seemed to Prestimion that it was a very pessimistic look that passed between them.
Nemeron Dalk said, “The Sisivondal highway runs through here,” he said, pointing to the lower end of the line, which marked the southern end of the mountains, “and this is the Sintalmond road, here, in the north. In the middle, which is where you say you want to go, the range is at its highest and most jagged, and there’s only the pass known as Ekesta, which is to say, in the dialect of the region, ‘Accursed.’”
“A pretty name,” said Septach Melayn.
“Not a pretty road,” Elimotis Gan said. “A rough trail, very steep, I hear, little to eat along the way, and packs of hungry vorzaks to harass travelers at night.”
“But direct,” Prestimion said. “This is what I ultimately want to reach, this broad river here, on the far side of the mountains. It’s the Jhelum, isn’t it?”
“The Jhelum, yes,” said Nemeron Dalk.
“Good,” said Prestimion. “We head westward and take your accursed pass through the Trikkalas, and throw stones at the damned vorzaks if they bother us, and when we come out on the other side of the mountains we cross the river after what ought to be a much easier march below the pass. And then we can sit ourselves down here, beyond the Jhelum’s western bank, in what I think is the Marraitis meadowland, where the best fighting-mounts are bred and schooled. Do you see my drift?”
“We will need a cavalry, if we intend to fight again,” said Septach Melayn.
“Exactly. We requisition a host of mounts from the Marraitis folk, and we send off messengers to any city that may be favorable to our cause, asking for volunteers, and we build and train a real army, not just the sort of randomly assembled horde that Navigorn cut to pieces yesterday. Eventually Korsibar will find out where we are, and he’ll send an army after us. But he won’t send it over the mountain pass, if it’s as nasty a place as these two gentlemen say it is. They’ll go south or north of the mountains instead, which will take them many months; and so by crossing by way of the Ekesta ourselves, we’ll get ourselves a head start, bringing us into the western country far ahead of them and giving ourselves time to prepare, at the cost of just the little extra effort of traveling the hardest route.”
“How do you see this pass?” Svor asked Thalnap Zelifor. “Can it be taken, do you think?” The Vroon lifted his tentacles again, and went through some sort of conjuring motions. “It will be difficult, but not impossible,” he replied after a bit.
“Difficult but not impossible: good enough,” said Prestimion with a smile. “I choose to believe that you have the true gift and I accept your findings as accurate and trustworthy.” He looked around at the others. “Are we agreed, then? Ekesta pass to the Jhelum, and across the river by some means that we’ll worry about later, and make our headquarters in the Marraitis meadows? And by the time we go into battle again, the Divine willing, we’ll have a proper army to throw against the usurper.”
“Not to mention the reinforcements that Dantirya Sambail will surely have sent us from Zimroel by then,” said Svor.
“There’s a wicked look in your eye as you say that,” said Septach Melayn. “Do you doubt that the Procurator’s armies will come?”
“There’s always a wicked look in my eye,” Svor answered. “It’s not my fault I was born that way.”
“Spare us this byplay, if you please, both of you,” said Prestimion crisply. “The Divine willing, the Procurator will keep his word. Our task now is to get to Marraitis and make ourselves more ready for war than we were yesterday. What may come afterward is something to fret about in its appropriate hour.”
* * *
At midday their baggage-train came into the forest, such of it as remained intact, bearing the belongings and weaponry that had been following them through the foothills cities. It was good to have fresh clothing, and such other things that they had lacked in their night in the woods. Another few hundred stragglers found them also; and then, when it appeared certain that there was no one else who would be rejoining them here, Prestimion gave the order to begin the westward march toward the Trikkala Mountains and the Jhelum River beyond.
Beyond the forest all was ordinary farming land for a while, but soon the landscape grew strange, for they were approaching the famous Gulikap Fountain. First came the bubbling up of warm springs, which scalded the ground into moist brown bareness, and then spouting geysers, and chalky terraces, like dustered bathtubs, holding sheets of water pervaded by algae of many colors, red and green and blue and all mixtures thereof.
Prestimion paused in wonder to watch black steam spouting hundreds of feet from a purse-shaped fumarole. Then they crossed a dead plateau of glassy sediments, zigzagging to avoid gaping vents that were giving off foul rotting gases.
“Beyond doubt I could acquire a belief in demons in a place like this,” said Prestimion, and he was near halfway to being serious. “This countryside is like a piece out of some other world, brought here by some dread enchanter’s whim.”
Svor, who had been here before, only smiled, and told him to wait and see what lay ahead.
They were passing now around an intricate array of thermal pools that gurgled and heaved and moaned and seemed about to deluge them with boiling fluids. The sky here was gray-blue with smoke even at midday, and the air had a bitter chemical reek. The sun could not be seen. Their skins were covered quickly with dark grimy exhalations; Prestimion watched Septach Melayn draw his fingernails lightly across his cheek and leave pale tracks in the murk. Yet this place, horrid as it was, was inhabited. Many-legged slithering things with shining rosy hides moved about everywhere, close to the ground, looking up and studying them warily through rows of beady black eyes that bulged above their foreheads.
A shelf of blunt rock closed in this place of geysers and hot pools at its farther end, stretching off to north and south. They scrambled qulckly up it, despite myriad loose stones that made footing tricky, and descended on the cliff’s western face into a zone so extraordinary that Prestimion knew they must be at the domain of the Fountain itsel
f.
By the deep light of the smoke-filtered sun he sawa coinpletely naked fiatland: not a bush, not a tree, nota rock, only a level span of land running from the extreme left to the extreme right, and curving away from them over the belly of the world. The soil was brick-red. And straight ahead of them on the plain rose a tremendous column of light bursting from the ground and rising with perfect straightness, like a great marble pillar, losing its upper end in the lofty atmosphere. The column was half a mile in width, Prestimion guessed, and had the sheen of polished stone.
“Look you,” Svor said. “It is the Gulikap.”
Not stone, no, Prestimion realized: an upwelling of sheer energy, rather. Motion was evident within its depths: huge sectors of it swirled, dashed, tangled, blended. Colors shifted randomly, now red predominating, now blue, now green, now brown. Some areas of the column appeared more dense in texture than others. Sparks often detached themselves and fluttered off to perish. The column at its uncertain summit blended imperceptibly with the clouds, darkening and staining them. There was a constant hissing, crackling sound in the air, as of an electric discharge.
Prestimion found that single mighty rod of brilliance in the midst of this forlorn plain an overwhelming sight. It was a scepter of power, it was a focus of change and creation; it was an axis of might on which the entire giant planet could spin.
“What would happen to me, do you think, if I were to touch it?” he asked Svor.
“You would be dissolved in an instant. The particles of your body would dance forever in that column of light.”