Storm and Steel (55 page)

Harxes, the house steward, was in the courtyard beyond the bars, with staff in hand and a pair of guards. As Alyra made her way through the crowd, she ran into Mezim. Horace's secretary looked as if he had barely survived a traumatic event. His clothing was torn and dripping wet, though he still held his leather satchel tight under one arm.

Alyra suddenly realized she didn't know much about him outside of his official capacity. Did he have a family? “Master Mezim,” she said. “Why aren't you at home?”

“Forgive me, my lady. I didn't know what else to do. The First—Lord Horace may be gone, but I believe he would want me here, assisting his loved ones.”

“Horace is alive, Mezim.”

The relief that filled his face at those words touched her heart. Nearby adherents looked at her with shock. Alyra leaned closer to Mezim and whispered, “We're leaving the city.”

He nodded with gusto. “Please, I would accompany you and the master, if you'll have me.”

“Of course. Come along. Make way please!”

Mezim helped her push past the people. When the steward saw them approaching, he lifted his staff as if to warn them off, but then he squinted. “Mistress Alyra? Pardon me, my lady! I did not expect to see you here. What are you doing out in the streets alone at a time like this? Haven't you heard? We're being invaded!”

Harxes produced a ring of keys and unlocked the gate. Alyra took his hand. “Thank you. I've come to make sure everyone is safe.”

“Of course, mistress. We're all locked up tight here. Anyone tries to loot this house will be in for a nasty surprise!”

“No.”

Harxes's bushy eyebrows lifted. “No, mistress?”

She didn't have time to explain everything. “All of you, guards and servants, must come with me. Right now.”

“Come? Wherever to, my lady?”

“Never mind the questions for now. Gather everyone. Pack a change of clothing and plenty of food and water, as much as you can carry. Leave everything else.”

The steward looked dubious. “I'm not sure I can—”

“Master Harxes, listen to me. The River Gate is falling as we speak. Soon, thousands of enemy soldiers may be marching through these streets. You don't have enough men to hold this position, so either you come with me, or everyone here dies. Do you understand?”

The steward stared at her for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Yes, yes. Of course. Everyone, listen up! Spread the word. Everyone must pack a bag with food and clothing.”

“And plenty of water,” Alyra reminded him.

“And lots of water! We're leaving with Mistress Alyra. Come, come! Get moving!”

Once the steward was convinced, he became a model of efficiency. Soon the entire household, including Mezim, was rushing about with sacks and sloshing gourds. Alyra went up to the solarium. After a quick look around, she rolled up Horace's meditation rug and tied it with a leather thong that would double as a carrying strap. Then she saw the three gigantic books on his desk. She could tell he'd been reading them, and there were even several pages of notation.
What are you trying to figure out, Horace?

Grabbing the notes, she yelled down for Harxes to send three people upstairs to fetch the books. Then she stopped by her old room.

It looked the same as when she had left. She dug out some clothes and an extra pair of worn sandals, and wrapped them up in a blanket that she tied off with another thong and slung over her shoulder. She was on her way out when she stopped at the vanity table. The wooden carving Horace had given her still rested there. Delving down into the catacombs under the palace, she'd been consumed with finding him and bringing him back to safety. That was
love, wasn't it? For better or worse, their lives were inextricably entwined. She tucked it into the belt of her tunic and rushed out.

Most the staff was gathered in the main atrium, including Dharma, who held a small boy who couldn't have been more than two in her arms and a girl a couple years older clinging to her legs.
This is going to be hard on the young ones, but what choice do we have?

Harxes tried to maintain order, but everyone was asking questions and arguing about what they should do. Alyra wanted to slink out quietly, but she had given the order. Now she was responsible for them. “Everyone, listen!”

No one looked to her. Instead, everyone continued to clamor at the steward. Harxes stamped his staff on the floor, but the noise only added to the chaos and started the young boy crying against Dharma's shoulder. Alyra gathered herself and shouted, “Listen!”

Her face grew warm as everyone turned to her. “Please. The city is under attack, and we have to leave before it falls.”

Her announcement produced a chorus of worried questions, but she lifted both arms to quiet them. “We don't have time to talk about it. I know a way out. A safe way. I'm going there now and I urge everyone to come with me.”

“Listen to her,” Harxes said. “Lady Alyra will watch over us.”

Unsure how she felt about being addressed as “Lady” Alyra, she nonetheless moved through the crowd to the door. Dharma touched her lightly on the shoulder and gave her a smile as she passed. Alyra returned the gesture with a squeeze of the hand. “All right. I need everyone to form a line. Single file. Captain Gurita and his men will walk on either side of us.”

She nodded to the guard captain, and he answered with a firm nod. “We're not going to run,” she continued. “Just stay together and remain calm. Is everyone ready?”

They surprised her by lining up quietly. The guards stood ready.
I can't believe I'm going to attempt this. I hope someone is watching over us
.

At a look from her, Harxes opened the front door. A gust of humid wind rushed into the house. Rain pounded the walkway outside. Alyra marched out into the storm with the train of servants and former slaves in tow.

Two dozen eyes watched their arrival from beyond the fence.

Heavy drops of rain pelted Horace as he trudged toward the plaza. The ground shook as bright flashes of light filled the street at the end of the block where two armies were locked in vicious battle. Broiling flames washed over the soldiers, decimating both sides. Their screams, thankfully, were short-lived. A building on the far side of the plaza collapsed as if a giant invisible foot had come down from the storming heavens to stomp it into a pile of debris. Then Horace saw the robes.

Bright crimson, they stood out in the mob like a tongue of living flame. The man wearing them was tall, or perhaps he only seemed so because of the fiery nimbus that surrounded him. His bare scalp was covered in the red tattoos favored by the Sun Cult's priests, with a large sun imprinted on his forehead like a third, glowing eye.

Horace reached for his power, but his
qa
refused to open. Frustration beat down on him. He had come to help, but he was useless. Powerless. Just a man.
But I've accomplished so much. Does it all end here? What's my problem?

He looked deep inside himself, and what he found was fear. It filled him to the core, infecting his every thought and action. And he knew the reason why.

In his mind he went back to the roof of the Sun Temple. The bodies of dead sorcerers lay around him, their flesh ruined by the powers he had invoked. He was on his back, fighting for his life. He remembered the pain as Rimesh's dagger pierced his shoulder, the warm flow of his own blood. He relived the sickening terror of what it meant to take a life. It seized his heart and squeezed, robbing the strength from his limbs. In that moment, as the menarch drove the knife down to finish him, Horace hadn't been able to tell which was worse. Dying or killing.

That feeling had haunted him since that night, always lying beneath the surface of his thoughts like a crocodile waiting to strike. It had crippled his ability to use the
zoana
, so afraid his power might kill again. Yet, as he looked
out into the plaza where people were fighting and dying, his fears seemed insignificant compared to the raw terror infecting this city. He thought of the pit under the old Sun Temple where he'd been interred to rot, and the cultists who had left Lord Mulcibar's corpse in the street. Then he thought of the queen, hounded at every turn by these zealots who hid behind the aegis of their gods. Like a mythical beast, every time he struck down one pillar of this cult, more sprouted up to confound him.

Horace clenched his fists as the rage trickled through him. If he did nothing, how many innocents would suffer? How much misery would result from his lack of conviction?
I can't let that happen
.

He lifted his right hand, open palm facing the sky, and called upon the power again. For a long moment it refused him, but he was no longer content to wait. He wrenched open the gateway inside him and wrested the
zoana
within.

The power was sluggish at first. He could sympathize. His legs trembled just from standing. His shoulders and back were one solid mass of aches, and all his joints were on fire. Pushing those troubles behind him, he took a deep breath and held it. For a moment, he thought it odd that he was going to try to stop this man—even kill him, if he must—without knowing anything about him. Not even his name. Yet the red robe said everything he needed to know. Whatever happened, he needed to stop this threat now, before it spread to the rest of the city.

He wove his first attack.

The Order sorcerer didn't hesitate. He reached out as if offering his hand in greeting, and instead a crack appeared in the scorched pavement in front of him. The crack ran straight toward Horace, growing wider the farther it extended with a tremendous roar as the clay split and separated. Flames erupted from the crevice, bright gold like molten lava. Horace fell back on a ground that was rapidly falling away beneath him. The extruding fires made him think of the icy power nestled in his right hand. Fire and ice. He slapped that hand palm down on the street at the end of the crack as he rolled to the side. The
zoana
burst from his hand for the brief moment it made contact, then he was rolling away.

Horace got back to his knees beside an overturned fruit cart, braced to leap away again if the crack continued toward him. Yet the splitting of the pavement had stopped, capped by a knot of blue ice. He glanced down the street. The sorcerer strode through the piles of smoking carcasses toward him.

Horace seized hold of his power and sent it out in two separate attacks. The first was a burst of raw fire aimed directly at his foe. Much as he expected, the sorcerer walked right through it without so much as scorching his crimson robes. Then Horace brought in his second attack from above. He used the Mordab dominion to collect as much of the falling rain as he could hold and funneled it directly into the street. The water fell in a startling cloudburst, overflowing the gutters instantly and filling the street within seconds. Then he added a flow of Imuvar, and suddenly everything froze.

The sorcerer jerked to a halt as he was encased in ice.

Breathing hard, Horace lowered his hands. He'd done it. He'd faced his fear and won.

The fighting had moved to other streets, leaving behind scores of bodies. Horace was preparing himself to follow it when a vise of living stone closed around his middle and picked him up. He glimpsed a massive shape approaching from the south. It had a head, two arms, and two legs, but that's where the resemblance to a human being ended. The knot of fear returned in his belly.

A
kurgarru
.

Before he could react, he was hurtled through the air like a doll. He struck something hard, cracking the back of his head, and then everything went dark.

So this is what it means to possess the holy power
.

The ground trembled beneath them with every stride, the wet clay cracking as their heavy feet trod upon its face. Their sandals had fallen away, ripped to shreds by their stony heels until only tatters of the leather thongs remained, trailing behind them in the puddles. Abdiel/Mebishnu paused to
take a deep breath. As the moist air filled their lungs, which expanded slowly as if made of lead, they looked ahead.

The fall from the sky-ship should have killed them both. It would have, had Mebishnu not used his last instant of life to weave a final enchantment. He'd gasped as the power of Kishargal entered him, a seemingly endless wellspring of power and light suffusing every fiber of his body. His master's dying gesture. As it had turned out, he survived.

They both had, though Abdiel was less sure how he had been saved. He was inside Mebishnu's body, too. A silent passenger. His last memory of his own body was as he fell, certain that death awaited him when he struck the ground. Then suddenly he stopped falling to hang in midair like a puppet on its strings. And yet he could see his body lying on the street below, horribly broken. Then his vision flickered, everything too dark to see.

When his sight had returned, he was in this new body, joined with Mebishnu. He saw what Mebishnu saw, heard what he heard. When this body took a step, he felt the vibrations run up through their legs. He could not explain it, nor did he care to. If this was a dream, he was content to remain asleep forever.

They were transformed. Mebishnu's flesh had turned to living stone. Huge, cumbersome, and indestructible. In another time and place, Abdiel might have been struck with the wonder of this feat, but there was no time for wonder. They burned with fury, and only one thing would quench the awful fire consuming their brain. The destruction of this city.

They started toward the queen's palace, their great arms swinging back and forth with every stride, torso creaking as the hard flesh rippled. The storm continued to crash over the city. Lightning flashed in jagged forks. Rain fell in sheets that washed mounds of garbage and the occasional dead body down the overflowing gutters. None of it concerned them any longer. They could weather anything the tempest hurled down. At last, they had become the perfect weapon of their god. They had become death.

A troop of Erugashi soldiers approached from the north. As the soldiers stuttered to a halt of mass confusion, Mebishnu and Abdiel unleashed their wrath. Euphoria flooded their hardened veins as the
zoana
shot forth. Bright
ropes of Girru sizzled in the rain to wrap around entire squads of soldiers. They melted armor and seared away flesh in bloody rivers.

When a file of soldiers charged them, Abdiel/Mebishnu met them with open arms. Their huge, stony hands tore through mail, crumpled shields, and ripped off limbs. When the soldiers tried to flee, they chased them down and crushed their bodies underfoot. Screams filled the plaza with a beautiful music.

As they continued their rampage, spots of light flashed down the street before them. Abdiel/Mebishnu quickened their pace. They saw Brother Opiru in a plaza. A moment of elation filled them to see their brother-priest, but it was cruelly stolen away as Opiru was encased in a tomb of ice. Their eyes turned to the enemy who had done this. A lone
zoanii
standing between them and their righteous vengeance.

Abdiel/Mebishnu reached out with their power and seized the man in a fist of stone ripped from the ground. With a flick of contempt, they tossed the
zoanii
aside. He collided with the wall of a building and fell to the flooded street, unmoving.

They held onto the
zoana
for a few moments more just to feel the energy running through the hardened clay beneath their feet more keenly. Then they started off again, down the boulevard that led to their final goal.

“Are you certain this is the right way?”

Rain pounded the narrow avenue cutting through the Garden Quarter, filling the gutters with murky brown water. Alyra waved at Harxes, who stood a dozen paces behind her with the rest of the household staff, to be quiet. Their trek through the city had been tense up to this point, as sounds of fighting and the storm put everyone on edge, but so far they hadn't encountered any real danger. Until now, possibly.

She was leading a group of more than forty people, as many of those who'd been chanting outside Horace's home had accepted her invitation to join them. It hadn't been part of her plan, but she couldn't just leave them there.

When they'd finally found the street that would take them to the escape route, Alyra spotted a group of soldiers outside a gated manor house a few blocks down. The soldiers had pushed through the gate before she'd gotten a good look at them. Were they part of the Erugash militia or Nisusi invaders?

She took a few more steps down the avenue, staying clear of the gutter. The homes here were large, each enclosed within its own yard, most of them walled from the outside. They had decorative frames and deep stone gables. Elaborate scrollwork ran up the corners and across the overhanging cornices, depicting harvest designs such as grapevines and fishnets. This section of the city was home to the well-to-do citizens, those who had wealth but not the benefit of a noble title. As such, it attracted syndicate merchants, dealers in rare goods, and successful artisans. There was a reputable collegium nearby where many of these families sent their children. Alyra didn't know who lived at the manor down the street, or why the soldiers were there, but she didn't like the look of it. She was devising an alternate route in her head when Harxes called to her again.