A Plague of Swords

by Miles Cameron

  Forty years before, in this same room, Harmodius made a gesture—

  Al Rashidi turned and raised an arm—

  Both men were suddenly hidden in glowing hemispheres of sparkling light. The master’s was the deep green of the true religion, and Harmodius’s was the sickly golden-yellow of pus. Or the bright colour of new-minted gold.

  All of the slaves and students threw themselves flat on their faces or crouched under tables.

  “Truly, I mean no harm,” said Harmodius.

  The master laughed. “You are most powerful,” he said. “Why have you come in this way? You had only to knock on the door and declare yourself.”

  “I have had a particularly annoying few days,” said Harmodius, annoyed and amused at once. “I had not planned to arrive as a beggar at your door,” he continued.

  He lowered his hemispheric shield, and the master instantly lowered his own.

  “Be welcome in my house,” said the master. “What is your name?”

  The young infidel smiled. “I’m called Harmodius,” he said. “I understand you have a copy of Maimonides’s De Re Naturae?”

  He shared the memory with Mortirmir.

  Mortirmir laughed. “We share this, Your Grace. I have many of his memories too. When he occupied me, he left a great deal behind, even though he was only here a little while.” The young man shook his head. “He was as young as I, when he came here.”

  “And laid the basis of the plot in which we are still raveled.” Gabriel shook his head. “The fate of the sphere hung by some awkward threads.”

  Mortirmir nodded. “And still does, my lord,” he said.

  The two of them reminisced about Harmodius and talked about how old the alliance to fight against “the powers” must be. Gabriel knew that the legendary astrologer Dame Julia had been born more than two hundred years ago, and Mortirmir had never read her works, a complete set of which occupied a whole wall of the Chamber of Secrets.

  The great magister’s Islamic funeral occupied the whole of the next day, and the sultan was unavailable, and so was Payam, and even Gabriel began to fray about the edges. But he and Michael and Giorgos Comnenos and Morgon Mortirmir put on their best western finery, minus the furs, and went. Morgon was stunned to find that he was called to help carry the master’s bier. And to see the number of mourners. They walked out into the desert, and walked back, in silence.

  Gabriel had the impression of vast wealth, of a riot of perfumes, of deep mourning for a man who had protected his people. Rather unexpectedly, he wept.

  After the procession, Ser Giorgos took him aside. “Walk with me,” he said, and the two of them, almost unnoticed, walked among the procession of thousands.

  “Why am I here?” Giorgos asked.

  “When I am dead, you will be emperor,” Gabriel said.

  Ser Giorgos stopped walking and stood perfectly still, and women, weeping and raising their hands to heaven, went around him as if he were a pillar of stone set in their way. He stood there for many beats of his own heart.

  Gabriel kept walking.

  His appreciation for the Garden of Gethsemane was increasing by the moment, and he didn’t really want to talk to anyone. Except perhaps Blanche.

  It was a very quiet evening in the home of the dead magister.

  The next day, Gabriel and Morgon practiced the great working they had been given. The understanding of it was the understanding of eons of history, and the casting of it was like moving the earth, and it had components that were themselves advanced workings, one of which was a sort of locator, except that having located even as much as a single entity of the Odine, it provided the caster with a kind of link that savoured, to Gabriel, of the same kind of link that bound him to Amicia.

  “What are we manipulating, here?” he asked young Mortirmir.

  Mortirmir shrugged. “You understand, my lord, that although we see them as foul little worms, as parasites in the physical body of a man or a horse...” The young man stopped.

  Gabriel sat back. He had seldom felt so empty.

  “That is but a metaphor. It is a metaphor we use to frame our attack, which is itself a set of symbols trying to inflict themselves on reality.”

  Gabriel leaned his chin on a fist. “Go on, scholar,” he said.

  Mortirmir opened his eyes, realizing he was being mocked. “I never know what you know and what you don’t know,” he said, accusingly.

  “If I told you all I know, you would beat me with whips of fire,” Gabriel said.

  “You are a most uncomfortable companion, my lord,” Morgon said.

  “I have my reasons.” Gabriel sat back.

  Morgon shrugged. “The Odine do not even exist on exactly the same...plane...that we do,” he said. “Their power over us...” He shrugged again. “To be honest, I think there’s another, entirely unexplored set of options for attacking them. Dragons are vast, dangerous predators, and they design vast, dangerous workings to overawe all other creatures. This working is one such. It is magnificent.” He shrugged. “I digress.”

  “Always,” Gabriel said.

  Morgon smiled. “Almost always. That’s what Tancreda says.”

  “Tancreda, who is masquerading as an archer on my ship. Does her brother know?” Gabriel asked. “I may not see everything, but the Comnenos family are soon going to be a very important family indeed, Morgon. And you aren’t hiding her very well.”

  “I am not? By Saint George, my lord, she is more arrogant than I!”

  “You have that in common, then. Ser Giorgos is her cousin. He’ll have to know, and soon. I recommend the two of you marry. In Venike.” Gabriel waved his hand. “Now tell me the answer.”

  “The Odine are not like us. They exist differently. Even the dragons used remarkable weapons against them. Will. Love. Hate. Not everything can be fought with a scholar’s rationality.” He looked into the distance. “I do not think they considered these ramifications strongly enough, nor did enough research on the emanations of...what I suppose we would call soul, or spirit. These are dangerous waters, my lord. I’m a hermeticist. This is for a theologian or a philosopher.”

  Gabriel sat back. He was thinking of his communication with Amicia. He was thinking of how the strength of his golden link to her allowed them to communicate...an emotion rendered in the aethereal that has power in the real.

  “Even dragons and wyverns and wardens cast wave-fronts in the aethereal...of fear and terror, of panic.” Morgon steepled his fingers. “It is my contention that humans can do the same, but we do not, mostly because of our more settled thoughts. I would have to experiment.”

  “But how would...” Gabriel had meant to ask the young magister how he’d use such a weapon, but he saw it.

  “We find Odine by projecting a web of emotional energy and seeing what gets eaten.” Gabriel could see it. Could see why so many creatures had evolved wave fronts.

  “That is a clever, gross simplification, my lord.” Morgon rubbed his beard. “What you call emotions are not always emanations of spirit, and I have no idea which ones the Odine...appreciate.”

  Gabriel sighed. “Let’s try again,” he said, and the two of them went back to casting.

  * * *

  The second day after the procession, magnificent clothes were sent from the palace, and when the four of them were fully dressed, they proceeded to the sultan’s throne room in palanquins, where Payam greeted them. With the sultan were a dozen men wearing swords, and in the harbour there were now more than twenty heavy galleys.

  “The sultan has declared a war of faith against the Necromancer,” Payam said, “and however unworthy I may be, I will command a portion of his army of the faithful against the common foe. And all the bone we can spare is being readied to ship to Harndon.”

  “This is glad news,” Gabriel said. “Gladder still if one ship at least is sent to Liviapolis.” Gabriel bowed. “I pray there is enough.”

  Days on dry land had healed Tom Lachlan’s seasickness. He grinned. “
I know where to get more,” he said.

  Every head turned.

  “Defeat the Necromancer’s army. Kill the not-dead. Grind their bones.” He grinned, eyes sparkling.

  A little hush fell.

  Gabriel slapped Bad Tom on the back. “Sometimes you make me doubt that we’re the side of light,” he said. “But...it’s a point worth considering.”

  * * *

  And when the preliminaries were done, Gabriel and his friends sat with Payam and a dozen officers of the sultan around a great table filled with charts and itineraries, and began to plan the invasion of southern Galle. He was introduced to Ali Ben Hassan, the Sword of the Sultan; his commander of ten thousand, and a veteran of fighting the not-dead.

  Thanks to a stream of birds from Liviapolis and Iberia, Gabriel was able to map out the progress made by Du Corse’s army, which was just crossing the spine of Rolandi, the great mountains that divided Galle from Iberia. He marked Du Corse’s progress for the Ifriquy’ans, and then, with M’bub Ali, they chose their own landing area.

  “We have raided here many times,” M’bub Ali said without any apparent sense of irony. “We know the beaches and the ground to the north.”

  And again, it took a day: a day none of them could spare. But there was no point to planning badly; no point to an uncoordinated attack. And the Ifriquy’ans had the most experience fighting the not-dead, and defeating them, of all people, and much of the day was spent outlining tactics and strategies that had been used in siege and in battle. Gabriel had not considered that the not-dead did not always need to breathe, and could sometimes go through rivers or across lakes. He had not considered the collapse of morale that could happen when men faced what appeared to be their own friends. He had not fully appreciated how limited the Odine were by site and emanation of power alone, so that night attacks without magic could be very successful against them.

  Payam shrugged. “It takes a very brave man to attack the not-dead in the dark,” he said. “But in truth, we are better at fighting in the dark than they are.”

  And for the first time, he faced the question that would haunt the next four weeks.

  It was Mortirmir, looking at the careful drawing of Ibn Salim’s Perfect Battle, a carefully coloured picture of the kind of earthworks that could best funnel the not-dead into prepared killing fields—it was Mortirmir who first asked it.

  “How many of the people of Arles and Galle are we willing to kill to achieve victory?” He looked around. “I mean...even if the Necromancer or his lieutenants can be trapped onto one of these created battlefields—we’re not killing our enemies. We’re killing taken people.”

  Ali ben Hassan shook his head. “You must harden your heart,” he said sorrowfully. “Even if it is your sister’s husband or your own brother, he is dead, and must be killed.”

  Gabriel rubbed his beard. “Even leaving aside the question of killing the not-dead,” he said, trying to raise a smile, “our officer on the spot says there must be more than a hundred thousand people taken by the enemy. Killing them all could leave Arles and northern Etrusca too weak to be viable. The Wild...the real Wild...is still there, in the mountains. Hovering. Waiting for weakness.”

  Ben Hassan shook his head. “These thoughts will not help you,” he said.

  Gabriel nodded. He looked at Ser Michael.

  Michael could see he was planning something.

  “Very well,” Gabriel said. “I will come over the mountains from Etrusca and you will land at Massalia along the coast, and we will march to the relief of Arles.”

  “If it has not already fallen,” Ben Hassan said. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, but the Necromancer has every advantage in a siege.”

  “He may. But I think he has sent a mighty lieutenant to do his bidding, and he is still eager to break in here himself. Tell me, Payam; or ask the sultan. Is there a gate here?”

  Men looked away. Other men frowned. Pavalo Payam gave a wry smile.

  “Perhaps we do not know what you mean by a gate,” he said.

  “Perhaps you do,” Gabriel said. “A supernatural exit from this sphere to other spheres. Your master, Al Rashidi, would have visited it from time to time.”

  Payam went and spoke to the chamberlain and the sultan for some time, and then returned.

  “Come,” he said.

  He led them down under the palace. As at Lissen Carak, they went down a considerable distance through tunnels that rolled up and down as if carved by sinuous worms through the naked rock of the earth; the sides were often perfectly smooth, reflecting light like polished glass.

  And deep in the earth, where no natural light had ever come, Payam lit a hermetical lamp, and there was a great curtain of power, and set into the ceiling by it, lit by the golden glow of the hermetical workings, all crystals and jewels, was a night sky of constellations.

  Gabriel went to the curtain, found the lock, and inserted the key from Lissen Carak.

  It fit.

  “Eureka,” he said softly.

  Michael put a hand on his shoulder. “What does it mean?” he asked.

  Gabriel smiled, and there was no bitterness there. “It means we’re still in the fight,” he said. “It means we haven’t lost yet. In fact—” He shrugged. “In fact, I begin to think...”

  But he would say no more. He carefully copied all the jeweled constellations. And he whistled and hummed a great deal.

  * * *

  The next morning, as the ships were loaded, and after kissing Blanche enthusiastically and giving her a small fortune in silk and cotton, Gabriel mounted Ariosto. He had Morgon behind him, and Ariosto was none too happy with the double weight.

  It took them a long time to climb away from the harbour, so they had time to savour the sun on the waves, to see the long spit with the ancient lighthouse, and the superb crescent of the harbour, with palaces and houses side by each, a display of tiles and golden opulence that beggared anything that Harndon had to offer. The beaches were superb, with fine white sand, and the sun glittered on a thousand minarets, and as they climbed, the voices of the muezzins climbed to the heavens with them.

  “Incredible,” shouted Mortirmir.

  He’s not that heavy after all, muttered Ariosto, wings pumping heavily, his red and green and gold pinions rippling in the morning breeze.

  The desert stretched away to the south, and the higher they climbed, the greater, vaster was its presence, a sea of sand. The grave ground to which they’d walked a few days before was virtually in the city, when seen from this high, and still the desert rolled away south to the very rim of the world, and air currents rose off its heat.

  In the aethereal, the city glowed with power, the same sort of ancient, nested workings that protected the palace in Harndon and the fortress of Lissen Carak, except that here they covered the walls from end to end and several outwalls and fortifications. Indeed, beyond the strip of farmland that sustained the city and ran forty miles in either direction and up the great river a few miles, there was no human habitation. There were no villages.

  “The Necromancer is close to victory here,” Morgon said. “Look at how vast the habitation of man once was.”

  They flew along the coast and saw whole cities washed by the sea, temples thrown down, piers empty of ships, all white marble and brown stone fading into the sand.

  And finally, high over the desert, Morgon began the opening sequences of the great working Al Rashidi had taught them.

  Gabriel concentrated on Ariosto. He had no idea what counterwork a titanic alien sorcerer might throw at them, so he wove shields and hung them on Prudentia’s outstretched arm and waited.

  And waited.

  This is as high as I can carry you, Ariosto said.

  They were as high as Gabriel had ever been. The sea appeared to be a dark blue sheet, and no waves showed, but a little sun-dazzle in the delta. The sand dunes were like lines graved by an apprentice, and trees were not even dots. The air was thin, and Gabriel, who was not exerting himself in a
ny way, found himself breathing hard.

  We are high enough, he said.

  He went into Morgon’s palace carefully, so as not to interrupt. Morgon was in two places; one watching a mirror, and one moving pieces on a chessboard that itself seemed like a labyrinth.

  “Ah,” Morgon said. “Either I’ve made a mistake, or the praxis does not work, or the Necromancer is not within the circle of our attempt. Of the three, the last seems the most likely.”

  Gabriel pondered this. “Several hundred miles?”

  Morgon shrugged. “At least a hundred in all directions. No army, no emanation.”

  “Damn,” Gabriel said.

  * * *

  They landed at midmorning. The sultan had come out to watch, and he embraced Gabriel, but Gabriel had to tell him, in stilted Etruscan, that they’d had no success.

  The sultan inclined his head. “It is no sorrow to me that the Necromancer has found other prey,” he said. “Six hundred years my people have borne his assaults. I will not waste this respite.”

  “What is on the other side of the desert?” Gabriel asked.

  The sultan looked south. “Once, there were other kingdoms,” he said. “Now nothing comes out of the desert but the not-dead. Someday, perhaps...”

  They embraced again, and the imperial ships departed without ceremony.

  * * *

  Four days more. Gabriel couldn’t raise Amicia or anyone else; the moments when all the powers aligned sufficiently to allow such a communication were rare. The thread that bound them was still there. It was heavy with potency, but something had changed and he’d missed it. He had no real idea what.

  Barring miraculous communication with Amicia, he went to his most precious asset: the imperial messengers. Blanche found him on deck talking to a dozen of the black-and-white birds, or waiting anxiously for the next one to arrive. She wanted to cry, because he was so tender; he stroked one bird for a long time, and then he began to speak. She hid herself.

  “You, my friends, are all that’s keeping me in the game,” she heard him say. “Did Livia have you from the first? Did Livia know what the stakes were?” He muttered something she didn’t catch.