Once more he enjoyed the improbable good fortune of the truly wicked. He survived a hail of poisoned metal and limped to his lair feeling sorry for himself. He resumed his desperate effort to resurrect Asher.
He was very close.
But his new wounds further sapped his strength and hindered his work. He lapsed into sleep when sleep was too much a luxury. If an attack came during a nap, he was lost.
Any attack would come then, absolutely. Unseen eyes, of Instrumentalities great and small, heard his every breath and counted his every heartbeat. But they were goats to his tiger! Once he dispelled the last misty chains binding Asher … He would need just a handful more souls.
Those were out there in those people so eager to still his own soul. A grand ironic jest it would be, his most dedicated enemies offering up the final installment on the price of his dreams!
Only, those villains were truly, thoroughly, stubbornly committed to putting period to his tale first.
Er-Rashal’s present entourage was minuscule. It included three damaged resurrected sorcerer-lords of ancient Andesqueluz and three reanimated corpses that had been Ansa warriors. Then there were two live Ansa children, brother and sister, twins, seven, so deeply terrified they might never recover. They had escaped sacrifice so far because they were useful for physical labor. Lastly, and of least worth, were several dozen terrified and abused trivial Instrumentalities, none with more power than a hummingbird’s shadow.
Still, the Rascal’s servants might manage an inept guerrilla campaign still sufficient to tip the scale by collecting the remaining hearts, souls, and flesh their master’s triumph required.
Such was er-Rashal’s hope.
Too weak and too much in pain to leave the filthy pallet that had become his home, the sorcerer husked, “The night comes.” A statement, not a metaphor. “Our hour bestrides it.”
An ugly, deep chuckle erupted from the female twin, far too ancient and evil for a child. Her eyes glowed a baleful green. “The hour of the Night doth come, indeed.”
The glow faded. The child collapsed. Her brother stared in consternation. What was that?
The air quavered with a sense that some dreadful visitant had just departed. A musty, moldy earthen smell, and a chill, marked its passing.
Then the enemy’s falcons began to belch out songs of cosmic indigestion.
Stone shot rattled against tumbled walls and fallen roofs. A jagged flint bounded off a building block, took a reanimated sorcerer squarely on the side of the head. That exploded in a cloud of bone splinters and dust.
Desperately, fighting his own recalcitrant flesh, er-Rashal began his last forlorn hope of an invocation, leeching power from the lives of his enemies to turn against their physical forms.
* * *
Lord Arnmigal, with Hourli as Helspeth, slouched in shadow atop a short bluff overlooking what once was the temple district of Andesqueluz. Another dozen onlookers lurked nearby. Some thought the Empress and her number-one soldier were entirely too cozy. Close by, falcons and traditional artillery engines worked leisurely. Fires burned in the ruins, ignited by fireballs thrown by counterweight engines. The falcons barked just often enough to remind the world that they were there. Their propellant was immune to the seductions of the Rascal. They would sing in unison if the choirmaster required it.
Those with the Commander of the Righteous included leaders from most of the factions determined to thwart er-Rashal. Even Black Rogert had brought himself to the engagement. The price in pain of his journey through the Idiam and up the Mountain had won grudging respect from everyone.
Captain-General Pinkus Ghort quietly nursed a wineskin. Nassim Alizarin knelt beside Ghort. Alizarin had yet to show any sign of remembering Piper Hecht from Artecipea, let alone some scoundrel who might once have gone by the name Else Tage. Two Ansa chieftains known to Nassim muttered with the Sha-lug, less comfortable with so many foreigners than with the evil in the ruins. The Widow lurked by Pinkus Ghort, too, accompanied by the woman she called Hope and the feeble old man she kept handy with an invisible iron emotional tether.
Lord Arnmigal feared all tonight’s physical effort might be the undoing of that old one.
Madouc of Hoeles was not present. Having consulted the Ansa, Alizarin’s renegades, and his own Special Office thugs, he had created his own mission. He and his team were in ambush along the one flight route available to the Rascal if things went bad. Madouc was sure that er-Rashal would survive the worst and try to run with crucial relics that would let him commence fresh villainies wherever he went to ground next.
The Shining Ones thought he might flee to the Hu’n-tai At, hoping he could hornswoggle Tsistimed into thinking he might be useful.
Azim al-Adil was absent, too. Nassim had sent him to Shamramdi to bring Indala up to date—hopefully before that city fell. Rumor had it on the lip of the precipice, with no relief expected. Lord Arnmigal thought, and hoped, that al-Adil would broach the peace notion he had tried to fix in Nassim’s mind, in such ways that the Great Shake would see it as his own fabrication. Quiet nudges from the Shining Ones should help bring him to the right frame of mind.
The Old Ones were able to reach Shamramdi now. They got up to divine mischief there all the time. It was they who reported the city so desperate that resistance could collapse given one seriously fierce thump.
“Time to hit it,” Hourli whispered. “And let’s be careful.” She gave Lord Arnmigal’s arm a nervous, possessive squeeze missed by no one but him.
Only Aldi understood that Hourli was not Helspeth. And she was not pleased by Hourli’s familiarity.
Lord Arnmigal rose. He seemed to stand taller, wider, more starkly than usual. His shadow, prancing in firelight from below, stretched deeper and longer than any other. An illusion? A trick of the light?
His shadow was missing a hand.
Lord Arnmigal slung a coil of rope down the precipitous slope. The stub of an old stone post anchored its near end. The rest floated out and down, uncoiling slowly.
Lord Arnmigal hefted a weird hammer left-handed, rigged its handle into the same harness that held a long sword across his back. The hammer moaned eagerly. He used both hands to loop the rope around himself before he began a quick, sometimes rappelling, descent from the height.
His weight was on the rope, which thrummed and shook, but the Empress picked it up and looped it around herself, then followed. She carried a light backpack. She used only one hand on the rope. She hefted a spear with the other.
The gallery gawked. What they saw could happen only through the intercession of the Night.
* * *
The Widow said, “Dawn, you’re next.” Words wasted. Hope was gone. No one had seen her vanish.
The old man peered eastward. “Of course.”
“What?” Kedle asked.
“A full moon rising. It wasn’t up before but it had to be.”
“I give up. Why?”
“Asher is the Mountain. He comes with Ashtoreth, Bride of the Mountain. She was a moon goddess. So I’m told.”
“Oh.” The Widow made a raspberry sound. Who feared dead gods?
The old man would never say that the only real fear Kedle actually knew was of normal human relations—though she did seem to be tempted, perhaps unconsciously, to start making an exception for the Captain-General.
Moon shadows danced with those from fires started by the artillery. The former had no power. The Shining Ones were all over the Mountain. No other side of the Night would interfere.
The Widow elbowed past Pinkus Ghort, snatched up the rope. It seemed as lively as a snake. It lacked any tension because of the weight of the people on it. She looped it around herself easily. A pulse in the cable encouraged her to move.
This was sorcery, indeed.
The old man, muttering prayers to the Good God, started down behind her, eyes squeezed shut.
Pinkus Ghort lined up for his turn.
* * *
Lord Arnmigal watched Hou
rli disengage from the rope. She joined him in a clot of darkness. He secured a fat candle from her pack. She said, “Light it before any witnesses show up.” The rope’s end lashed like an injured snake.
He willed the candle to life.
Nothing happened.
Hourli snarled. The candlewick burst into flame. Time slowed. She grumbled, “Stay close. We’ll end up sorry if I stumble outside the light.” He would carry the candle in the hand that had no shadow.
She did not suggest that he might suffer a lethal trip himself.
What a cosmic anticlimax that would be, clumsily breaking his neck moments before er-Rashal could be conducted to his doom.
“Through there.” Hourli indicated a gap between memorial stelae. Those leaned against one another like drunken comrades. Flickering firelight splashed their inner faces creamy yellow and occasional orange. “Careful. He could smell us out even like we are now.”
The earth trembled underfoot—despite the candle.
The leaning stelae shifted slightly. Detritus fell from where they met. Lord Arnmigal watched a small chunk, guessed that it would take a minute to reach the ground. Time was moving slowly but it was passing.
“He does feel us coming,” Hourli grumbled. The Commander of the Righteous heard nothing. She swore. “Damn! The big devil is stirring.” The falling chunk, behind them now, was halfway to the ground. “We walked into a trap. Not us. Not you and me. The company. He doesn’t know about the candle. Oh. And he isn’t expecting us two, after all. He just feels the threat from those behind us. He is vampirizing them somehow. The middle-worlders. Not us. But he is weakened by the presence of the Shining Ones, some. He wasn’t watching the right way. We got close. He should have noticed. But we weren’t part of his calculations. Even so, his human trap is working. We could end up sorry if we don’t distract him quick.”
She kept moving as she chattered, as briskly as she thought they dared. Her speech seemed awfully slow.
Time constantly moved a little faster as they neared their goal.
* * *
Lord Arnmigal was so focused on being wary of supernatural pitfalls that he was not ready for more mundane dangers. Blessed be, he had the candle in hand rather than a blade when he stepped past a drunkenly leaning column and collided with an equally startled, bug-eyed little boy. A girl of the same age, size, and mien slammed into the boy’s back.
Hourli hissed a warning, too late. It would have been too late ten seconds earlier. Those children were in full charge mode, headed out to lay an ambush, unaware that invisible invaders were closer already than those they had been sent to murder.
Disarming them took but seconds. The children abandoned bellicosity instantly. They became completely pliable. The Widow caught up just then, and was amazed by the effect of the candle—which lost most of its impact once five souls crowded the space it warped. Lord Arnmigal was surprised by the gentle sympathy she showed the children, then recalled that she had her own she probably felt guilty about having deserted.
He felt guilty himself—and his children were growing into their adult lives.
The Widow said, “I have them. Go ahead on.”
* * *
Kedle’s in loco lasted only as long as it took her to find Brother Candle. She passed the twins along. The Perfect got no chance to refuse. He got the children and the Widow got back to sniffing after fresh blood.
* * *
Hourli eased past Lord Arnmigal, spear poised. “Stay close. And don’t step on my heels.” She was a hound on track. The cock of her head said she heard directions to which everyone else was deaf.
The Widow caught up somehow. The candle’s field had degraded seriously. Lord Arnmigal put down an urge to shove her out and run.
She had worth. She was receiving intelligence from elsewhere, too, he presumed from Aldi.
They pushed ahead. He failed to notice the move but the hammer was in his hand when they met the waiting dead. It flicked. The heads of dead sorcerers exploded, becoming dust and bone chips adrift in the moonlight. Heartsplitter glittered in Hourli’s hands. Once-fallen Ansa braves went down once again and returned to their rest. The spear groaned softly, like a woman trying to keep the kids from overhearing evidence of her culminating intimate moment. Witnesses outside the candle’s glow would have missed the destruction. It happened too fast.
Even inside the candlelight it happened blindingly quick.
Meanwhile, the ground indulged in slow rolls with an orchestral accompaniment of lesser vibrations, like something vast was drawing a long first breath.
Time to move a little faster.
Lord Arnmigal’s foot did not want to come off the ground. Suddenly, he was slogging through what acted like deep muck. Moments earlier the footing had been barren, slightly tilted stone.
He was ankle deep in dust deliberately clinging like mud, clumping on his calves and ankles.
Bone chips sparkled within that dust, reflecting moonlight.
The dead Ansa, at least, had lain down, abandoning the fight forever.
“Keep moving, you.” Hourli sliced the dust with Heartsplitter’s edge, weakening its power to clump dramatically.
Someone or something not far off definitely was not pleased.
The earth shuddered more vigorously.
Hourli positioned herself on Lord Arnmigal’s right, caught his elbow, slowed him slightly. Heartsplitter darted into and sliced an unnatural clot of darkness. Lord Arnmigal hoisted the hammer. It did not feel unnatural to use his left hand.
The darkness parted. He looked into a room he had visited years ago. Old Az had stood where Hourli did now. Bone had been on his left with a ready crossbow. The room had been home to fox families that had lived and squabbled there for ages, filling the place with an eye-watering stench. The Sha-lug had surprised them there in the holy of holies of Asher’s cult.
There were no foxes now. The fetor was gone. There had been one time-gnawed altar back then. Another had been added recently, crudely built from piled stone. A dried-up husk of an old man half sprawled, half sat amidst masses of rags once worn by people whose bones now lay scattered all round. Gnawed bones.
Carrion stench had replaced that of fox.
The shard of time the candle shaped was small. Time within was moving faster now but still dragged enough to let Lord Arnmigal see everything and fix it in mind before darkness slammed down again. He flung the hammer Bonecrusher. It groaned, produced a dry thunk, then a thud! of collision with stone, and, finally, a stinging thwack! as its haft slapped back into his open hand.
Hourli used Heartsplitter during Bonecrusher’s flight. The spear reached and reached, extending in a violet shimmer providing just enough light to show the Dreangerean being lucky again. He dodged the hammer well enough to suffer only a passing blow to his right clavicle, not fatal but enough to stifle that one arm. He also twisted so that Heartsplitter only scored his ribs instead of living up to its name.
He howled in pain and rage.
The violet light went away, but then the darkness flickered and went out as er-Rashal lost the ability to quell the light.
Lord Arnmigal prepared to throw again. Hourli shifted Heartsplitter for an overhand strike in the classic fashion.
Despite tonight’s abuse and his previous debility er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen rose halfway up, climbing an old serpent staff he had brought out of Dreanger. His face was ghastly pale, twisted in disbelief. He could not fathom how this had come upon him—till he acknowledged the hand of the Night, and no faction of that which aspired to delight er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen.
A snake-dagger appeared in his left hand, blade its body and head its pommel. Its eyes burned, one lemon, the other a deep lilac rose. He extended that pommel toward his uninvited guests. Those eyes waxed brighter.
Bonecrusher flew. Heartsplitter thrust. Blinding light burst from those demon eyes.
But Death chose to avert its gaze from everyone.
The earth heaved ferociously at the critic
al instant.
* * *
The Dead City shook to a grandfather of an earthquake. Everything standing began to come apart. Brother Candle, minutes after having taken custody of the Ansa twins, went down hard. The youngsters helped him up, showing reverence as they did so.
He began a prayer to the Good God on their behalf. There was no point trying to flee the epic disaster about to come.
* * *
Kedle hustled, determined to rejoin Lord Arnmigal. Her leg did not hurt. The pain dwindled when she was sufficiently engaged. Then Hope was beside her, pleasantly warm despite the heat of the Idiam. She hissed, “Get thee down and cling to the ground, dear one. Now!”
The earth began to stir.
* * *
Pellapront Versulius. Pella wondered how he had come to have the same name as a fictional character. He wondered what had become of the blood sister he had not seen since he ran into the man he now called father. Would his life echo Piper Hecht’s when his own lost older sister resurfaced several decades down the road?
His past seldom occupied him. Mostly he did not care. Other than Alma, whose comforting arms he did recall fondly, there were few good memories. There were plenty from the years with Piper and Anna and the girls. But sometimes, when the waiting stretched, he could not help sliding off into bouts of wondering.
He did that while leaning on a ready falcon, trying to stay awake. That was a struggle common to the company. A plague of drowsiness had set in.
Then the ground heaved. Parts of the bluff slid down. Left of where he had been told to expect it a huge head began to emerge, shedding stone and adobe. It was a black of a sort that devoured light. It leaned back to consider the moon.
The falconeers did not stand around with their thumbs in, gawking. Weapons not charged with godshot fired immediately, whatever direction they were laid. Those properly charged quickly shifted and ranged—and the first to declare spoke fewer than forty seconds after the Mountain opened its womb.
Godshot hit the revenant at the nape of the neck. Two balls passed through what in a human would have been the brain stem. They exited through a piggish right nostril. The rest rattled around inside the devil.