The Guildmaster and Lord Vaeste had refrained from this first exploratory strike. Instead, Elasirr had pranced in a circle, observing, while underneath him his great ebony stallion strained like a pulled-back bowstring.
When all was done, in a matter of minutes, they regrouped, and again rode out into the square before the Inner City, into the great empty Markets area.
In the distance, through gray thick air, they saw movement approaching directly from the East where lay the Military Quarter.
“Marihke is advancing,” said Elasand, the skin of his face showing pale from beneath the dark steel helmet. “And it’s time for us to converge upon them.”
“Yes,” said Elasirr impassively. “It is time.”
Off in the other direction, from the south, past the Markets, past the Arata, lay Dirvan, the heart of the City, blanketed in dusk and ebony of the Gardens.
From there came nothing but silence.
All vaporous, still. Distant motionless silhouettes.
“Where is the Enemy?” whispered Ranhé, staring into the southern empty horizon, shielding her eyes from the constant weak sun-glow. “Why doesn’t he send his forces against us here, in the open? What does he wait for? What does he expect?”
“Good question,” said Elasand. “I think Feale waits for us to come to him. Or else—”
“Or else, he toys with us,” concluded Elasirr. “We constitute no threat. He has the upper hand, with several thousand soldiers camped outside the City, and as many patrolling the inside. Our resistance is no more than a joke for him. Even with the ability to forge color light, we are still outnumbered.”
“My lord,” said Ranhé, reining in her mount to draw closer. “If such is the attitude you hold and this army holds, then there is no point at all in fighting. We are fools! Let us turn back now, go into hiding, and come up with some other more constructive and indirect means to retake the City.”
“Thus speaks the mercenary in you,” said Elasand softly, his eyes coming alive with anger. “I am rather surprised at you, Ranhé. And yet, I shouldn’t be. For some time now I had grown to trust you, and you have proved your constancy to me. It has become too easy to rely on you always being there. But was any of it genuine? I should never forget your words to me once, long ago. . . . You are loyal to nothing and no one. Even now, it’s so hard to digest, this possibility. I wonder, how much do you honestly feel for this City of ours?”
“Does it matter?” she retorted. “I am still here, my Lord Vaeste, and will serve you while I may. You choose to misunderstand me. My suggestion was only in bitter jest. . . .”
“If so, it was poorly timed!” said Elasand, angry still.
But Elasirr turned to her, his eyes half-lidded as always, his gaze hidden, and he examined her blankly, without judgment, as she sat in the saddle, facing him silently.
The wind was strong here in the open space of the Markets, blowing in their eyes. Elasirr’s pale blazing hair was gathered behind him underneath his helmet, but the air currents tugged at the fine flaxen strands from behind.
She watched those pale soft strands of hair, flowing in the wind.
For a moment, Ranhé’s mind wandered, and she found herself disembodied, taken out of this time and place, simply looking at the man before her, and next to him his raven-haired idealistic brother with the pale beautiful eyes. Once, those eyes of Elasand Vaeste had touched her, wounded her. And yet, it was not he, but this one, the man with the secretive gaze of the assassin, who somehow appeared to understand her. He, and not the Lord Vaeste—who now accused her of something so far from her true intent—he was the one who now watched her, trying to fathom the true motives underlying her words.
“Actually, you’re right, we’re fools,” he replied blankly, looking into her eyes. “And yet, it’s too late to do anything else. We cannot turn back. This was meant to be.”
“But how can you know?” she tried again.
“I know, for I saw this come to pass. In the forest, at the old shrine. I saw some of it.”
“Then—you must know the outcome of this battle?”
But Elasirr turned away from her in that instant, and directed his stallion forward. Elasand meanwhile, still looked at her with reproachful eyes, and then said curtly, “Come along.”
“I am sorry. I will now be silent and humorless, unto oblivion,” she added, urging her mount to follow.
And then, she saw what it was that made Elasirr begin to move.
Directly south of them, at the bright reflective strip of the Arata, a blackness began to form.
It was moving directly for them.
Black poured forth from Dirvan along the bridges over the canal, and obscured the pallid marble. Black took shape in the distance and solidified into a cavalry, like a moving wall, with the great scaled beasts moving in the forefront, and mounted upon their backs were the Qurthe warriors.
Sun fell upon them and was dissolved in the swarthy armor, their cold iron, the sea of great pikes, their crested helmets.
All dull hueless, shapeless. All uniform, a flowing river of boulders, of mud, of volcanic ash. Twilight moving upon them, deepening into true night.
The Enemy was moving directly north of Dirvan, toward them.
Heading straight for the Inner City.
Gray dull sky outside. The sun, an orb of insipid glow, floating near zenith.
Hestiam Grelias stood near the window, looking out. Next to him, Chancellor Lirr was pacing tiredly, with folded hands, stepping gingerly between the two black guards standing near the door, and the other three lined up near the north wall.
In the corner, in a large comfortable chair, drowned a small figure of a young boy. He sat huddled in the chair, his feet propped beneath him, arms wrapped around his knees tightly. He had longish soft hair of an indeterminate shade of darkness, and deathly pale skin. His eyes were dull, empty of any expression.
“How are you holding up, Lissean?” said the Chancellor gently, pausing to look at the boy.
The boy’s eyes focused momentarily, as though his soul was pulled into his body only at the sound of his name being called. “I am fine, sir,” he replied softly, and then grew vacant again.
Hestiam turned back to stare at him nervously for a moment, before again resuming his observation of the sight outside. “Any moment now,” he whispered. “Any moment, and he will walk in to torture me.”
“You must have strength, Your Grace,” responded Lirr.
“What’s the point? He said we will all die today. That’s why he brought the two of you here . . . So that he can torture me with death—yours, mine—”
“I am not afraid,” said Lissean suddenly.
At that moment, the door opened.
Feale came inside softly, a figure of sable elegance. Slim he was, like a slender demon, and tall.
Chancellor Lirr watched impassively the smooth blackness of his skull, the beautiful shape of the brows above the eye sockets.
Hestiam froze and took a step back.
“Don’t be afraid, Your Grace,” said Lirr. “That is exactly what he wants you to feel. He has power where there is fear.”
Feale turned to face the Chancellor, and he in turn felt himself freezing suddenly, immobilized on the inside. “Do you not fear me?” his serpent voice sounded.
Lirr felt his skin crawl. But he said, “I am not afraid of you, no.”
Eyes watched him out of a face of shimmering darkness. “Then you do not see me . . .” said the hollow voice. “Look at me, Rollen Lirr, and be afraid.”
“No!” said Lirr, while cold welled, took hold of him. “I will not!”
But the Enemy continued watching, and the gaze of his eyes was the source of fear itself, of immobility.
Something painful started to expand within Lirr’s chest. He fought it, fought the sense of a great rock pressing against his lungs, blocking out the flow of air.
“Lirr?” said Hestiam. “Lirr? What is happening?”
But his voice
had grown so remote, and the Chancellor no longer heard him, tiny beads of sweat breaking out over his gray skin, fighting that overwhelming boulder of granite, the cold pressing upon him, the inordinate cold.
It is not for you, Grelias, but for this City that I do this. . . .
And because he continued resisting, to the very end, the cold had become paramount within him. . . .
The body of Rollen Lirr crumpled lifeless to the floor.
Hestiam cried out, panic rising, but the guards converged upon him, and he was held back within a painful grip on both sides.
“He should have been afraid,” whispered Feale.
“Oh, but I am! Afraid, yes! Please! Please, don’t!” whimpered Hestiam, tears beginning to run down his face into his beard.
In that instant, there was a fluttering movement somewhat in back of them, as the boy jumped up from his chair, and sprung forward like a cat.
Feale stood with his back turned, and Lissean’s blow landed in the very center, between the shoulder blades. He had been concealing a small razor-sharp knife in the soles of his shoes, and now that bright blade was embedded deeply within the dark form.
Alhveh, Lord of Empty Skies and Death, help me!
Feale went still.
Hestiam’s whimpering dwindled into shock, while guards released him, and also froze, watching the Twilight One.
Slowly Feale turned around and faced the boy who stood behind him with dilated eyes.
Lissean stared at him, and then said, “I am not afraid of you, monster! Die!”
And then Feale reached behind him with one slender dark hand, and pulled the small blade out of himself.
He did not even blink. In the place where the blade had entered, there was no blood, only a gaping sliver of darkness. And, as Hestiam watched it in absolute terror, the wound began to close, and even the clothing appeared seamless, as though nothing had touched him.
Feale stood facing the boy, holding the slim dagger whose blade was bright and clean.
Alhveh . . .
The boy’s expression slowly darkened, and he whispered, “What are you?”
“I cannot die, you know,” said Feale, while a thin beautiful smile slowly grew on his lips. “Poor child. Nothing you can do may kill me.”
“Who are you?” again whispered Lissean, and this time his brave voice cracked, while a tear began to roll down his cheek.
And Feale reached forward to place a slender finger of darkness against that tear.
“Poor fearless child . . . Yes, you must cry now. . . .”
And Lissean drew back, weeping, while Hestiam watched, like an impotent coward, silent, afraid even to breathe.
Ranhé watched from the corner of her eyes as the Lord Vaeste, to her left, bared his sword from its sheath with one precise movement, and sat his saddle, waiting. Only for a moment she saw his shining terrible expression. Something tugged inside her chest, a painful connection, from her to him. Only for a moment—because her helmet restricted the visual field before her, a slow precursor to chaos. . . .
Up ahead, the Qurthe. A low gathering sonic rumble. A black wall of bristling scales of their beasts, and the long pikes, approaching, drawing nearer with each heartbeat. It seemed like a grand caterpillar rolling sideways at them, inevitable, with a million trunks that were beasts’ feet, a million protrusions, sharp angles, edges of blade, polygon and parabolic curves—all unforgiving darkness.
A deep primal depression arose. They could all feel it, encroaching, quite physical, with the advent of the Enemy.
Apathy . . . Uncertainty . . . Fear . . . That was the real first attack.
From the east, Marihke and the rest of the City forces moved into position, having reached them before the Enemy did. And now their ranks quadrupled, and the two divisions merged swiftly, with planned precision. Having turned about, they now faced the Enemy.
The Guildmaster was in the forefront. He sat his saddle motionlessly, not having made a move to draw his sword, staring straight ahead with an impassive gaze that Ranhé found stonelike and frightening, and new in him. For, she had seen him reflect many moods—demonic, bored, charming, sadistic, mercurial, astringent, even vulnerable—but never one of death.
She knew what the Light Guild had been instructed to do upon his signal, and was ready with her own small glass orb that she’d taken out to hold before her in the gloved palm of her hand.
The Qurthe war engine was so close now that it was possible to distinguish individual beasts and riders in the front ranks.
In their center came the giant.
Ranhé remembered him well, from the one occasion she had to see him, the swarthy muscular superman with utterly black eyes and a voice not unlike a ghost.
Lord Araht Vorn.
He rode now at the lead of the greatest black army this City had ever seen, just as he had once promised, the precursor to the Twilight One who came after him, the one whose name was not to be pronounced.
They were so close now. Only a hundred feet away. Heaviness emanated from them like a cloud of newly cremated ashes.
Elasirr raised a gloved right hand, palm upward. Wait, just a little closer. . . .
Despair. . . .
She could see the front angular formation, with Lord Vorn at the crux.
Wait. . . .
She saw Lord Vorn’s helmet, the flash of his great pike held aloft, perfectly vertical in his left hand, and his extended battlesword, only twenty feet away. . . .
Now!
Elasirr’s upraised gloved hand exploded with orange lightning, while at the same time, all the Masters who were in the front ranks, held forth the orbs, and the other guildsmen in the rows just behind them, and so on—and like bursts of water in a great fountain, colors exploded everywhere, to fill the glass reservoirs with solid light.
Within a heartbeat, the front line became a great necklace of varied color jewels. It stood as a boundary between the rest of the resistance and the approaching dark.
Ranhé breathed deep, gathering from somewhere inside herself the still unfamiliar energy. And then she let it out through her fingers. Her glass orb instantly blazed violent scalding yellow, shining brighter than the controlled orbs of the other Masters around her. In her eagerness and adrenaline-laced panic, she had overcompensated.
Immediately, as they had been instructed, she turned behind her, and handed her burning orb to the Guildsman just flanking her, who in turn received her orb, shielding his eyes from its glare, and together with his own, passed it on backward, down the ranks. These orbs were meant for the rest of the army, the non-Guildmembers, those who could not make their own color light.
She and the Masters in the front row were to create light without orbs to contain them. . . . For, without color, the depression (which had now become a solid, rich, thick, tangible thing) would muddle all thought and make all resistance impossible.
But merely staring at the colors eased the apathy. It brought enough momentary clarity and truth to allow movement, action.
In that instant, the Qurthe struck.
Upon the appearance of color, they had paused for a span of heartbeats.
And then, they continued their approach.
As though nothing had happened.
How different were these warriors from the ones at the Gates of the Inner City.
Elasand, having handed over his radiant violet orb to someone behind him, raised his sword, and suddenly the whole blade was enveloped with violet light. With a cry, he moved forward, and was the first of them to meet the black metal of the Enemy.
Ranhé, watching his back carefully, moved in line behind him, like a shield. And in the next instant of flurry, a great faceless black rider was before her, and she struck his pike away by reflex, with the back of her sword. At the same time, her mount nearly reared up, for the scaled beast came crashing past, as all of their ranks mingled then, and it was one melee of jet vacuum and color brightness. . . .
Off to the side, past Lord Vaeste, wh
o was parrying a Qurthe sword with his own burning violet one, she saw Elasirr. He, no longer human, two Bilhaar blades drawn—both of razor-sharp irahi steel—was striking another Qurthe, cutting through the dull ebony iron of his chest plate with dispassionate precision, cutting him down until the dark one actually fell, while his riderless mount stumbled, rocking upon its elephantine scaled bulk, and careered sideways and somewhere behind. . . .
All a few feet away from the great form of Vorn.
She could see him in flashes, as clearly as she saw Elasirr, and he was making his way directly toward the Guildmaster.
But in that moment, she could do nothing but stay seated in the saddle, and strike at the dark forms that came at them from the front, strike and parry, and be the living shield for the man whom she had pledged to serve. And she realized suddenly that she’d forgotten another weapon at her disposal—her ability to create color light.
And as all had turned into slow motion, all movements dull with apathy, mechanized, all but her breath, pounding in her temples, she had enough presence to draw forth the strange energy deep inside, and think of ripe fields of wheat underneath a blazing topaz sky. . . .
Dersenne! Help me!
Upon which, her fingers ignited, while the blade of her sword began to burn.
With it, a sense of reality returned, and she could move again.
The man in ancient black armor, framed by a strange corona of color light, walked down the gently sloping steps of marble from the Mausoleum, and paused for a moment, hearing from the distance the sounds of battle.
He stopped, because only a few feet away, alien-shaped beasts rode the gravel path, and mounted upon them were sable warriors in impenetrable armor. They bore no banners to identify them, no markings on their armor. And yet he knew as surely as he knew his own name that they did not belong to this City, were somehow alien, an invader, an enemy. His enemy.
They did not see him. He stood, shielded by several tall ebony cypresses, and watched their hurried progress down the path of the Outer Gardens (which he recognized at last, and now knew exactly where he was).
And then, as the company moved out of view, he resumed walking, still unsure of his final destination, but drawn forward somehow.