Master of the Cauldron (55 page)

The mounted troopers rode through the straggling line, knocking down the invaders before they could form a shield wall. Horses won't charge home against a hedge of points, but trained cavalry mounts had no hesitation in using their weight and shoulders against individual men the way they'd have ridden through brush. Rowning reined his horse around to return to the temple, but many of his troopers continued their charge up the twisting street and out of sight.

The Blood Eagles dismounted at the temple steps and ran upward, hacking to death pairs of People as they met them. Sharina was a hair slower because she needed to hand Tenoctris to the ground. When she jumped down herself, the older woman was already climbing the steps, avoiding the sprawled, manlike bodies pouring their blood onto the worn marble.

Sharina curved her left arm around Tenoctris but didn't actually touch her. The support was there if the older woman stumbled, but at the moment, Tenoctris appeared to be as vibrantly alert as Sharina herself. The Blood Eagles bunched briefly at the entrance, four of them trading strokes shield to shield with an equal number of People.

A Blood Eagle dropped dazed to his knees, his helmet falling to the temple porch, but then the People were thrashing in their death throes and the Blood Eagles were through into the sanctum. Sharina and Tenoctris followed. Behind them the sixth guard was wobbling forward again also, though he'd forgotten to retrieve his helmet.

The interior was just as Sharina'd left it when she'd leaped to safety with Bolor and his fellow rebels. Stronghand's body, half-preserved by decades in a sealed coffin, sprawled hideously in Valgard's armor; Hani had decayed to a scattering of dust in his tunic and sandals.
How old had the wizard really been before he roused the ghost of a vengeful warrior against him?
she wondered.

Wilfus and Mogon lay on their backs, their eyes open and their faces distorted; both dead by Sharina's hand. The world was better off without them…but she'd pray to the Lady on their behalf if she survived this day, as she prayed for others already.

Two more People strode through the portal, swinging their swords at the Blood Eagles waiting for them. Both went down, but one had split Lires' shield from the rim to the boss. Lires stepped back, giving his place to a fellow, and traded his broken shield for the bronze buckler of a dead invader.

More movement through the portal. Swords and armor clashed, People went down. Eventually, though, the humans' blunted swords and tired arms would take their toll.

Tenoctris sat cross-legged and scooped the fallen ring from the dust of Hani's finger. She held it bezel upward between her left thumb and forefinger while she rummaged in her satchel, still open beside the figure she'd drawn before Hani returned Sharina from the island.

Sharina drew the Pewle knife, as much for comfort as because she might need to use it. She glanced out into the street. Rowning's men had dismounted and formed an arc in front of the temple. They stood shield to shield, their horsehair-crested helmets a gay contrast to the People's smooth bronze.

A few humans were down, but for the moment the troop didn't seem seriously pressed by the People who'd turned to recapture the temple. The fact that the cavalry mounts were wandering loose, excited by the blood and clangor, showed how bad the situation really was, though: Rowning didn't think he could spare every fourth man as a horseholder.

Tenoctris began chanting. The figure she'd drawn in cinnabar on the floor had spun into a red smear when Hani opened the portal. It was spinning again, but this time sunwise. Wizardlight made spiteful blue crackles around the edges of the opening, but People continued to stride through and slash at the Blood Eagles before being cut down. The pile of leaking
corpses grew, driving Sharina's guards back as invaders climbed over the tops of their dead fellows.

Ascor's foot slipped. He shouted a curse and went down. One of the People vaulted from the bulwark of corpses and stabbed him through the lower body. Lires hacked the invader from behind, knocking his helmet off but not felling him.

Two more People appeared at the top of the pile. The wounded one raised his sword to cut at Tenoctris, seated at his feet.

Sharina swung, judging the stroke as she'd have split kindling. The Pewle knife sheared through the invader's wrist. Hand and sword flew sideways. Lires finished the job by decapitating the creature with an angry curse.

Tenoctris hadn't flinched as the sword rose to strike her; Sharina wasn't sure she'd even noticed. She continued chanting, her eyes on the vellum codex on the floor beside her. A strip of lead held the pages open. The ring in Tenoctris' left hand snapped sparks of wizardlight toward the portal as she gestured with the split of bamboo.

Two People started through the portal. Ascor and two of his men were down, and another of the Blood Eagles wavered. He hadn't dropped his sword, but it hung at arm's length, pointing to the floor.

The portal flashed vividly azure like a sun-struck tile. The invaders in it vanished, flung backward by the same forces that'd been bringing them from Hani's island to Valles.

The portal were still shimmering wizardlight instead of the wall of polished granite it'd been before Hani started his incantation. The light sizzled, and the ring continued to spit blue sparks toward it.

“Sharina,” Tenoctris said. Her voice was hoarse, but there was an unfamiliar febrile brightness in her eyes. Normally a major spell left the old wizard drained almost to the point of being comatose.

“Yes, Tenoctris?” Sharina said, squatting to put their heads on a level. She hoped she was hiding the concern she felt.

Lires turned and looked at them. Toward them, rather, because his eyes were staring a thousand miles away. His helmet had taken several hard blows, and the shield he'd snatched to replace his own was hacked and battered into scrap.

“I said Hani's portal wouldn't take me anyplace I wanted to go, dear,” Tenoctris said, forcing the human syllables through lips that'd twisted
around words of power. “I was wrong. It'll send a person to Volita. I don't know why Hani created that passage, but I doubt it was something we'd approve of. I think your brother's in danger.”

“What can we do?” Sharina said.
“What?”

“I think the portal still focuses enough power to take us through,” Tenoctris said, nodding toward but not looking at the quivering blue field. “If you'll carry me, I'll try—”

“Yes,” said Sharina, wiping the Pewle knife clean on the tunic of the invader she'd dismembered with it. She sheathed the blade, then put her arms around the wizard's back and thighs. It was like lifting a bird, frail and much lighter than she unconsciously expected.

“Lires!” she said, speaking loudly to cut through the soldier's black reverie. “Pull some of these bodies out of our way!”

Lires dropped the ruined shield but he didn't let go of his sword. He gripped the topmost invader by an ankle and jerked him off the pile. He did the same with two more People, using a wrist and a throat for handles.

The other Blood Eagles were either wounded or helping their wounded fellows. They looked at what was happening, but they didn't have energy enough to speak.

Sharina mounted the bottom layer of twitching corpses. Behind her she heard human cheers and the brassy triumph of a dozen horns and trumpets: Lord Waldron's forces had broken the line of People and fought their way into the city, coming to the rescue of the survivors of Captain Rowning's troop.

“Ereschigal aktiophi berbiti…”
Tenoctris said in a husky whisper. A fat spark spat from Hani's ring. The wall of blue fire went blank.

Sharina had no thought but that she would do what she could, for Garric and for the Isles. She stepped into the emptiness as Tenoctris in her arms spoke the remaining syllables of the spell.

Mab stood facing Cashel in the center of Ronn's great rooftop plaza. Around them, none quite close enough for Cashel to touch with his staff, stood the assembled citizens. They filled the open area, all but the immediate circle.

Mab spread her hands, palms down. All sounds stilled, not naturally but with the suddenness of a vault door closing between Cashel and the crowd. For a moment Mab's fingernails blazed, spots of color brighter than the noon sun; then they went black, and her body became a figure of wizardlight, flaring red and blue alternately in a rapidly increasing cycle.

She raised her hands, her mouth working. Cashel couldn't hear the syllables Mab spoke, but the scene beyond the two of them pulsed in his vision as she spoke.

The world flip-flopped. Cashel still faced Mab, but instead of being on the sun-drenched roof of Ronn, they were in a city amid the ruins of buildings thrown down by earth shocks. The sky above was black and the air choking with sulfur. A few double paces away hunched men in armor, facing the distorted monsters who climbed and crawled from an acres-broad crater.

A wind, cold as the Ice Capes, howled across the land. Humans were screaming also.

Mab turned to face the crater and the thin line of soldiers standing against the creatures it spawned, then stepped into what'd been an arched entranceway. To either side was a square column base; the rest of the building had collapsed. Fluted columns lay on top of roof tiles, marble sheathing, and the brick core of the walls. Dust still rose from the wreckage.

“Very well,” she said crisply. “Cashel, protect me as you did before. It may be harder this time.”

“All right,” said Cashel. He moved in front of Mab, planted his feet, and began to spin the quarterstaff sunwise.

Cashel didn't mind things being hard. This was one of those times when a man needed to stand up for what was right, no matter what it cost.

Mab raised her hands, gesturing in a pattern that thrilled Cashel when he glanced over his shoulder. He didn't understand what the wizard was
doing, but he could see and feel the art of it. It was so pretty to watch that he had to remind himself that his business was looking out for Mab, not gawping like he had the first time he saw a city.

He guessed this was Erdin; he'd been here a year ago.
Duzi! but it was in a bad way, though.

A whole herd of creatures bubbled from the crater and came on down the street toward the waiting soldiers. They were white like the Made Men, and their weapons were pretty much the ones the Made Men carried, but none of
these
things could pass for human. Some were even legless, with flipper hands sticking out below their snarling faces. They used the whole length of their slimy bodies to swing their weapons.

Bolts of red and blue ripped from between Mab's weaving hands to strike the overcast. They slashed it like swords through dirty burlap.

Thunder slammed twice. Bright, clean sunlight flooded from the uncovered sky. Where it fell across the white creatures, they writhed like slugs on a griddle.

The monsters must be making the high keening Cashel heard. The human defenders who'd been falling back steadied and hacked their squirming opponents to death.

The black sky closed again over the sunlight. More of the white monsters lifted from the crater, moving toward the line of soldiers. Two humans had gone down in the attack just finished. Soldiers lay on the pavement in ones and twos, all the way back to the edge of the pit.

The barrier was growing thinner. Cashel could see companies of monsters setting off in all directions, not just toward the men directly in front of him. A few human reinforcements were moving up the road from the harbor, but only a very few.

The man on the far end of the line knelt, bowing his head. The smaller figure beside him, a slim spearman, who wasn't wearing armor, lifted the first man's helmet to let the cold breeze cool his scalp.

Mab's hands moved together with the whirling precision of hawks mating in midair. Wizardlight blasted from between them, throwing back the darkness to either side the way skin gapes away from a deep cut. The sun blazed down. Creatures of the false darkness shrivelled.

The spearman was Liane. She lowered the helmet back onto Garric's head. He rose and braced himself for the new assault, because despite the sunlight, the monsters still came on with the fury of the damned.

Blackness burped from the crater. Instead of streaking upward to heal the wound in the overcast, it coalesced into the shape of a two-legged reptilian nightmare. The thing strode heavily down the cracked pavement toward Mab.

It wasn't an illusion. The corpses of white monsters burst like foul grapes as the three-clawed feet crushed down on them. The lifting foot kicked a dead soldier; he hurtled several double paces through the air before falling again to the bloody pavement.

Cashel had his staff spinning at a moderate rate, alternating sunwise circles and widdershins to loosen all his muscles against the time he needed their full strength. He guessed that time was at hand.

The thing of darkness marched on. The only light on the sooty form was the eyes, searing orange-red blotches on either side of the narrow skull. The creature bore down on Mab—and standing in front of Mab, Cashel.

“Get out of the way!” Cashel shouted as he spun the staff faster—sunwise now, certain of every next move; certain of everything but the outcome. His voice was thick with rage. “Garric, get your men out of the way! This one's mine!”

Cashel couldn't tell if the soldiers heard him or not. The two in the center of the line edged a little toward either side. They raised their shields and cocked their swords back to strike if the lizard-thing bit down at them, but they didn't run.

The creature strode through the living ranks of white not-men, crushing and slashing them aside with the same disregard it'd displayed for the windrows of their corpses. Dying things, already stunned by the torrent of sunlight, mewled in horror; the stench of their gutted bodies was worse than a tanyard in hot summer.

“Move aside!” Cashel said.

The lizard reached the line of soldiers, breaking paving stones every time its feet smashed down. The two nearest men weren't cowards,
couldn't
be cowards to stand where they were; but they didn't throw themselves in the path of something they knew they could no more stop than they could stop an avalanche walking on two legs. The lizard-thing passed between the soldiers, heading for Mab with the unswerving assurance of an arrow. Cashel stepped forward to meet it.

His staff was spinning, scattering coils of blue wizardlight. He could
see every bit of the pattern—the way the creature would move, the way he'd move; the perfect arc of his quarterstaff and the point his leading butt cap would meet the creature's long jaw.

Cashel could see everything but what happened
then
: whether the creature went down or it snapped him up on its way to Mab. That depended on how strong he was and how strong the creature was. There was no way of telling that except by trying, just as in any other fight.

That didn't bother Cashel. He didn't start fights himself, but his size drew fellows who needed to prove they were better than him. Thus far they'd all been wrong; and if this lizard was right, well, Cashel had won too often to complain about losing once.

The creature seemed to slow down, but that was what always happened at times like this. Cashel was seeing everything with the eyes of experience, all the little pieces that were really happening at the same time.

The lizard was the same dull color all over, no shades or highlights. It was like a shadow wrapped around something that could've been a crocodile on two legs. The bright sunlight didn't make any difference. Cashel saw the teeth only when the open jaws were canted to silhouette them against something on the other side. The maw, the throat, the pits of the nostrils—all were the same black that was really no color.

The lizard's left foreleg reached for Cashel, but he stepped inside it as he brought the staff around. It was all the way he'd seen it in his mind, the movements working together just the way the gears of his grandfather's mill in Barca's Hamlet turned and made the grindstones spin. Everything was perfect.

His sunwise-spinning butt cap struck midway on the creature's long jaw.

Cashel expected a shock and a blue flash. Instead, time stopped. Cashel's heart didn't beat, and the stench of death and sulfur was only a memory in his nostrils. He saw Garric and Liane from beyond the creature's outthrust leg. Garric's mouth was open to shout, but Cashel heard nothing in this slice of forever.

Crackling blue wizardlight licked across the monster the way a downpour covers a statue. The living darkness flew apart as suddenly as chaff lifts in a windstorm.

Cashel fell backward, deafened and numb. The shattered dust of the lizard swept across him, bearing him down and smothering him. As he top
pled, he felt the ground lift with a shock far greater than any that had struck the city before.

 

Sharina stepped from the sanctum of the temple, brightly lighted through the open doors, onto the foreshore of Volita. The sky was covered by a black cloud almost as opaque as the block of stone on which she stood. She stumbled, more from surprise than because she'd just passed from one place to a distant other place in a single step.

“Ah!” said Tenoctris. “Set me—”

Sharina was already bending to put Tenoctris' feet on the ground. She lifted the wizard upright, then cautiously released her. Tenoctris' spirit was indomitable, but her friends had learned techniques to cope with the weakness of an elderly body. For Sharina and Cashel in particular, these were by now second nature.

The water was only twenty feet away. Sharina stepped off the stone. It was a thin, square slab with sides an arm's length across. It didn't seem to have come from the ruined mansions just above the tide line.

“Bolor's courier must've placed it here,” Tenoctris said, glancing at the slab approvingly. “It's sheltered by these pilings, so when someone appears here, he looks like he's just stepped into view normally.”

A trireme stood fifty feet out in the strait, broadside to the shore. Only the uppermost bank of oars was manned. Fully equipped soldiers were boarding by a pair of rope ladders. The warship rocked violently on its narrow keel, but the fact it didn't capsize indicated that its officers had men standing on the opposite outrigger to balance the weight of those climbing.

A few other vessels were beached nearby, but most of the royal fleet had crossed to the mainland. The trireme's sailing master stood in the stern, bellowing through a speaking trumpet, “Two more only! Any more and we'll bloody sink in the chop!”

Soldiers, many of them with signs of injury, stood on the sand in twos and threes to watch the loading. Civilians, apparently refugees from Erdin, formed in larger groups apart from the troops.

Sharina stepped out of cover. “Where's Prince Garric?” she demanded loudly. “Is he still here on Volita?”

Some people turned to look at her, though others continued staring in
numb amazement at the devastation across the strait. No one spoke.

“Where's Prince Garric?” Sharina shouted, pointing her finger at a soldier. He wore his cuirass but no helmet because of the bandage on his head.

Instead of the soldier, a barefoot woman in expensive robes answered, “He's at the palace, fighting the demons from below. He's there if he's still alive.”

“Hurry!” Tenoctris said. “We've got to get aboard the ship.”

There was no help for it, then. Sharina was tired, physically as well as mentally, but without hesitation she picked the wizard up again. She ran into the water shouting, “I'm Princess Sharina! Help me! I've got to reach my brother in Erdin!”

Those aboard the trireme probably couldn't hear her, but the soldiers waist deep in the strait waiting their turn to climb the ladders did. Three of them bellowed in unison, “Hold up for the princess coming aboard!”

The warship rode as close inshore as it could without grounding, but the sea would still be up to Sharina's chest. The troops at the back of the line saw the women's problem. One grabbed Sharina's arm and handed her forward. The next man did the same, not carrying her and Tenoctris but shoving from one man to the next so that Sharina didn't have the problem of trying to walk in deep water.

“You've got no business there, your highness!” the sailing master replied through his trumpet. If the captain—a nobleman who wouldn't be expected to know about ships—had an opinion, he kept it to himself. The sailing master turned, and ordered, “Crew, prepare to set off!”

Soldiers continued to pull and push the women toward the vessel. Aboard the trireme, a soldier handed his javelin to the soldier beside him, then drew his sword. He laid the point of it against the sailing master's throat. The sailor flung his speaking trumpet into the air in shock. He probably would've jumped himself if the soldier hadn't been gripping his shoulder.

“Come on, your princessship!” shouted the soldier holding the javelins. His unaided lungs gave up nothing to the sailor's orders through the speaking trumpet. “We'll wait for you!”

Sharina finished the journey to the ship with her face in the water half the time. She hoped Tenoctris was all right; the wizard's occasional sneezes were reassuring. When they reached the tarred black hull, a pair of men lifted them out of the water together and two more—the soldiers who'd convinced the sailing master of his duty—jerked them over the railing with about as much consideration as you'd give sacks of grain.

They'd gotten the job done. Delicate men wouldn't have. Sharina felt a rush of gratitude to them.

“Now you can get moving, sailor boy,” said the first soldier as he retrieved his javelin from his buddy. “And don't waste a lot of time, hear?”