Gram growled, but before he could respond Moira spoke up, “He’s right, Gram. You don’t even remember the fight. You didn’t see what that thing could do.”
“I won’t take my armor off until this thing is done,” said Gram. “There’s no way…”
Moira held up a hand, “I saw it Gram. The weapon it fired at me would destroy your armor and kill you before you even knew it had hit you. The only reason I survived is because it missed after it destroyed my shield.”
“And what’s your plan?” he returned, letting his frustration seep into his words. “Go talk to the king and get thrown into his dungeon again? I doubt he’d let you escape twice.”
Anger flared in Moira’s breast, “I wouldn’t have to step foot inside the gate. If I wanted to I could kill every man, woman, and child in the city without even showing my face.” Or enslave them, she thought bitterly. She tossed her head, letting her hair fall back while the firelight showed the determination in her features. “But I won’t do that; I’m going in there to get my father.”
“How?” asked Gerold earnestly, worry etching a frown on his visage. “How would you do that?”
The smile she gave him chilled his heart. Holding up one hand, a glowing firefly appeared on her palm and then began to grow before his eyes. It changed as it grew, becoming a small cat and then a lion-like creature with fierce claws and long teeth.
“With an army,” she answered as the lion beside her grew steadily larger. Responding to her emotions, it raised its head and a gave voice to a low growl that seemed to roll down the hillside.
Chapter 19
“This isn’t right,” said Gerold as they looked down the road. The main gates of Halam were only a mile or so distant now. “It’s treason for me, at the very least.”
They were sheltering in a gentle dip in the landscape that hid them mostly from view of the city walls by virtue of distance and a slight rise in the land between. It wasn’t a good hiding place for a large force or an army, but for a few people, and even a dragon in their case, it was sufficient, so long as they didn’t approach any closer.
“The thing controlling your nation isn’t your king,” said Moira. “I agree, though. This isn’t right. I finally understand what my father used to tell us.”
“What was that?” asked the baron.
“War is never right. It’s a double edged blade that cuts both ways, destroying the lives of the innocent and the wicked alike—an instrument that kills the patient as often as it rids the body of disease. It’s a product of our failure to find a better solution, but sometimes—it is necessary,” she told him.
Gram grunted, “That sounds like him.”
Gerold nodded, “He must be a wise man, but my meaning was different. As a peer of Dunbar I hold my power in trust—in good faith to the people. Your assault today will likely result in many civilian casualties.”
Moira reached up, patting the rough stubble of the conflicted nobleman’s cheek, “Dear Gerold, you are a kind hearted man. You don’t have to do this. In fact, it would be better if you stayed out. They will need you after this is done, and you only risk death by accompanying us.”
“They…?” asked Gerold, “… or you?”
She caught the romantic overtones in his remark easily enough, in fact the man’s entire being was shouting them at her. Any woman would have noticed his infatuation, but as a Centyr wizard she nearly had to wall up her mind to find peace in the face of his swirling emotions. The time for kindness was over, and she would do him no good service by allowing his feelings to grow. Her tone was cold, “They. I am here to save my father and since his enemy is also oppressing your people, I will eliminate it for you both. You are here to save the people once I have accomplished that.”
“From what?”
She looked at him archly, “From me.”
“That makes no sense,” protested the baron.
Gram coughed, catching his attention, “I think I see what she means. We are foreigners, and if things go well, your country will soon be leaderless. They will need someone to unite them afterward, against their common enemy, someone familiar.” It was just the sort of thing his mother would have understood instantly.
Gerold frowned, narrowing his eyes, “I am not that man. As I told both of you yesterday, there are at least seven men and three women in line for the throne before me.”
Moira reached out, putting a hand on his arm while simultaneously stroking his aura, reinforcing the nobleman’s confidence and smoothing his fears. It wasn’t the permanent sort of mental alteration she had made the week before to some of the prisoners when they were escaping, merely a temporary form of emotional support. It just happened to involve a tiny amount of aythar. “I trust you more than any of those strangers, Gerold,” she told him.
Chad had remained silent throughout the conversation, but his jaw clenched then, “Stop that.”
Moira felt the condemnation behind the ranger’s words as an almost physical rebuke, but she kept her features smooth. Removing her hand from the baron, she glanced back at Chad, “You have some misgivings about our plan?”
The hunter glared at her, letting his eyes drift to the baron for a second before returning to settle on her hand, “That ain’t what I’m talking about, and you know it, so just stop it. It’s disgustin’.” Turning, he walked away before she could respond.
“What’s wrong with him?” wondered Gerold.
“I think it’s just tension,” commented Moira.
That didn’t feel quite right to Gram. He didn’t like seeing Moira show such familiarity with a foreign nobleman, and he reasoned that Chad might well feel the same. “He just feels protective of you, Moira—since your father isn’t here,” he told them, letting his eyes drift toward Gerold. “No offense, my lord.”
The baron could understand that reasoning easily enough, “None taken, Sir Gram. I assure you I have no dishonorable intentions where Lady Moira is concerned.”
Moira growled, “I’m standing right here. If you apes want to talk about me, kindly go elsewhere or feel free to speak directly to me.”
“Shouldn’t we be doing something besides arguing?” interjected Alyssa, pointing toward Halam.
“I think this is close enough,” said Moira. “We’ll wait here.” Raising one hand, she snapped her fingers, and her ‘army’ began moving, a hundred spellbeasts trotted forward. Well, most of them trotted, ten of them had eagle shaped forms, and those flew ahead.
The hand gesture was purely for effect of course, Moira was connected to her magical allies mentally, which obviated the need for verbal or gestured commands. She had spent the last week constructing them and filling them with aythar. In the past it would have taken that much time just to construct their spellminds, but that wasn’t a problem for her anymore. Instead she had devoted her time to feeding her new creatures as much power as she could manage, until there were so many that the daily cost of maintaining them was as great as what she could put into them.
She didn’t bear Illeniel’s Doom, as her brother did, so she couldn’t be sure whether her tactic had ever been done before, but she doubted it had ever been attempted on this scale by any Centyr mage. She wondered what the shade of her original mother would think of what she had done. Over the past two weeks she had broken all the rules she had been taught regarding the special abilities of the Centyr lineage, and her army today was a flagrant abuse of them.
But if I follow the rules, a lot of people will die.
That was the crux of the problem. Normal spellbeasts were far more limited in what they could do with the aythar given them, not to mention crafting that many unique minds, even simple ones, would have taken her much too long. Using the mind-twinning technique eliminated that limitation and made her allies’ abilities more versatile.
But mind-twinning was forbidden, at least according to Moira Centyr, and she should know since she was literally the product of the original Moira Centyr’s decision to break the rules. Why it was
forbidden, she had never made entirely clear, other than the ethical problems invoked when creating an exact duplicate of oneself. She had been very direct though, when she had warned Moira of what the penalty for it had been in her day, execution.
Moira hadn’t made just one, though. She had made a hundred.
A hundred and one, reminded her still resident twin, who she was starting to think of as a sort of personal assistant.
Right, a hundred and one, and probably more once things start happening in there, agreed Moira silently.
She felt it when her flying allies made contact. Information began streaming back to her, channeled through her assistant to help keep from overwhelming her mind. Eight of them dove into the gate guards, possessed them, and moments later the gates began swinging open. The two other flying spellbeasts continued on, sharing their aerial view of the city. The rest of her army kept running, streaming into Halam through the rapidly widening gates.
Halam’s fall would be bloodless. It has to be, she thought.
“Are we sure this is a good idea?” said Gram, his eyes swiveling back and forth between the city and Moira. “Chad said you started having seizures after doing something similar when we escaped—and that was far fewer people.”
Moira gave him a smile that was more bluff than confidence, “I was injured then. Most of the problem was the feedback I suffered when my shield was broken. I’m actually not under much strain from this, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking.”
There was no resistance yet. The spellbeasts took everyone they found at first and then began splitting themselves, first once and then again. Civilians and guards alike were taken, so long as they had a parasite controlling them. The few who were still free, and so far they had found only a couple, were put to sleep and then passed over to conserve the spellbeasts’ strength.
When her spell-twins had divided themselves ten times they stopped, to avoid becoming too weak individually. There were around a thousand of them now, and they had taken control of somewhere close to six hundred people, all of them in close proximity to the city gates. The extras began working to assist those controlling a host with the removal of the metal parasites.
Hosts? People, I meant people, Moira corrected herself silently.
The minutes stretched out while she worked, but nothing was readily apparent to those who stood beside her. “What’s happening?” asked Gerold.
“Everything is smooth so far,” she assured him. “I don’t think they realize what’s happening yet.”
“Which they, the people or the monsters? How many are dead?” continued the baron unable to restrain his curiosity.
We need more, relayed her internal assistant. The parasite removals take too long. We need to double our numbers again, or we risk moving too slowly.
An important part of her plan involved cleansing most of the populace of their unnatural controllers before the enemy understood what they were doing. Moira wasn’t sure what the enemy might do once they figured out the threat, but she wanted to free as many people as possible before they had a chance to do anything. She began feeding her aythar to her spell-twins, but she knew her own energy would be nowhere near enough. Cassandra, I need your strength, she said, directing her thoughts to her dragon.
I am ready, came the dragon’s steady thought and with it a powerful rush of aythar.
The dragons that Mordecai Illeniel had created were originally constructed for the purpose of dividing and storing the immense amounts of aythar that he had taken from Mal’goroth, one of the Dark Gods. Her father had developed a rudimentary system of measuring magical energy, calling his first unit of measure a ‘Celior’, that being the amount of aythar he had originally taken from the Shining God of the same name. Consequently, an entire celior of aythar was truly a huge amount, and each of the twenty-three dragons held approximately one celior of power.
To keep his creations from being the same sort of threat the original gods had been, he had designed them in such a way that they were almost unable to use their own power. The dragons grew quickly, healed quickly, they could fly, and had great strength, and then of course, there was dragon fire; but for the most part their power was not directly accessible—to them.
The humans bonded to them were another matter, though. The dragon-bond provided them with numerous benefits; better eyesight and other senses, as well as the ability to draw upon the dragon’s energy for enhanced strength and speed, but for a mage the aythar was even more useful.
Moira could, in theory, channel Cassandra’s aythar and use it to perform obscenely powerful things. A full celior of aythar was probably enough to destroy the entire city of Halam and possibly much of the rest of Dunbar, depending on how it was utilized, but as with everything, there were limits. In particular, the emittance of the mage in question.
Emittance was a term that scholars had at some point decided to use for the amount of aythar that a given mage, or a channeler, could use over a period of time. In general, mages never worried too much about emittance, because their capacitance, or the amount of aythar that they personally generated and stored within their own bodies, was usually not too many times greater than their emittance. They ran out of power too soon to be overly concerned about how much of it they could use at one time.
In this situation, that meant that Moira’s emittance was of critical importance. It would determine how quickly she could transfer aythar from her dragon to her magical allies. If she pushed too hard, she might easily burn out her ability to manipulate aythar forever, or even kill herself. Moira was slightly behind her brother and her father when it came to capacitance, but she was definitely a match for them in her emittance. She just had to be careful.
“Moira?” prompted Gerold, interrupting her thoughts.
“Mmm?”
“I asked how many are dead,” he reminded her, a worried expression on his face.
The air crackled around her as she began invisibly moving energy from Cassandra to her spellbeasts within the city. “None,” she answered. “I’d like to keep it that way, so don’t distract me.” Moira’s hair moved as if brushed by the wind, but the air was still around them.
“This is turning out to be the dullest battle in history,” opined the nobleman.
Gram and Alyssa both turned to him with warning looks. “Don’t say that!” cautioned Alyssa.
Gram merely agreed with a disgusted exclamation, “Ugh.”
Gerold looked at them questioningly, “What?”
Chad had walked back while they spoke, and he gave a knowing chuckle, “No warrior wants to hear that, Baron. War is mostly a lot of waiting, but the worst always seems to happen when things are quietest. Soldiers are a pretty superstitious lot about it.”
“Oh,” said Gerold. “Sorry.”
The ranger smiled wryly, “Ye ain’t botherin’ me none, Baron. I fully expect everything to go to shit, regardless of what you say. It’s just a fact of life.”
Moira’s minions had split again, now they numbered more than two-thousand strong. Close to a thousand people had been freed, and between them and the ones who hadn’t been infected there were nearly fourteen-hundred people unconscious. Her magical soldiers moved on, leaving their previous hosts once they had been ‘cured’ and taking the bodies of those who were only now responding to her strange assault.
She continued pouring energy into them. Soon they would be ready to double their numbers again. The baron had told her that Halam was home to nearly a hundred-thousand people, and she intended to make certain that every one of them was free of the strange creatures controlling them.
Minutes crawled by into a half hour. There were four thousand spellminds operating in the city now, every one of them a clone of her own. It was a strange sensation, being connected to so many copies of herself. Had they been normal spellbeasts she would have been overwhelmed, but instead it was a feeling of exaltation that filled her. Her twins were sharing the burden, becoming a gestalt that supported itself.
&
nbsp; I am not alone. I am not one. I am multitude. Over three thousand people had been freed, and she was spreading through the city like a plague. I am the sum of Man, and we will not be denied. She poured more power into her allies, and the air around her physical body began to burn, clothing her form in a nimbus of achingly bright power.
The enemy was responding now, killing her people wherever they encountered them, but she did not pause or relent. If her bodies died she took those of their attackers, turning them back on her foe. The city had become a chessboard, a battlefield between two minds. Her enemy might not be alive, but it was a mind. It thought, it controlled, and it reacted.
She was no longer human, not in the traditional sense. She was a composite being, with thousands of eyes and hands spread throughout the town. She began to see her foe in a new light. It was similar. The small metal parasites were part of a greater whole, and they reacted as one. It was losing wherever they made direct contact, as she took its pieces and made them her own, but it had many more pawns than she did.
The enemy was aware. It knew her now. It felt her in the same way that she had come to understand it, through a vast array of eyes. It had never fought a war like this, but it was old, it was legion, and it was incapable of fear.
The vast calculating intellect that opposed her altered its strategy. This was the war it had been created to fight. The cost of victory would be a delay in its plans, but victory was the only possibility.
It began to move.
Chapter 20
More than ten thousand people had been freed, most of them currently lying unconscious. Moira and her eight thousand selves advanced across the city, but the enemy was retreating now, withdrawing ahead of her. Archers and crossbowmen cut her people down whenever they crossed open streets, forcing them to create new spell-bodies when their hosts were killed, if there were no enemies close enough to claim.
She was beginning to falter.
The drain of aythar required to feed her magical army was enormous. Cassandra still had plenty to give, but Moira was at her limit. She was already channeling as much power as was possible for her. Trying for more would be beyond foolish, it might prove fatal. As it was she could feel herself growing tired. A mistake at this point, while she was moving so much energy, could be disastrous.