Sorcerer's Moon

by Julian May

  Somebody spoke up in derision. ‘We know what that must mean.’

  Conrig called for silence and bade Vra-Odos to continue.

  ‘The shaman at Tarnholme is a most competent adept. He windsearched the shores of Terminal Bay. The devastation was obvious but no Salka warriors were visible to his mind’s eye. The monsters are surely concealing themselves with powerful sorcery, just as we suspected.’

  ‘Curse them!’ Conrig groaned. ‘Too bad Karum’s idiot magicker never thought to send the news to Tarnholme in the first place, rather than Dennech. The Diddly blockhead! We should have learned of this earlier.’

  ‘I think the man might have done his best under most trying circumstances, sire,’ Vra-Odos said mildly. ‘Another point: the spearhead force of the Salka horde will likely fall upon Dennech-Cuva sometime before nightfall. I was told that the civilian inhabitants are fleeing and the old duchess and her grandson Egonus are preparing the citadel for an attack. The place is very well defended. This is all I have to report.’

  The Sovereign sat his tall stallion, eyes hooded and lips pressed into a tight line, as if he were fending off both anxiety and physical pain.

  ‘Sire, what are your orders?’ inquired the new Lord Constable, Wanstantil Cloudfell.

  ‘We go back, Wanstan.’ Conrig’s reply was colorless. ‘There is no alternative.’ He turned to Vra-Odos. ‘Brother, please relay this command to High Sealord Sernin, as well as to Earl Marshal Parlian and Lord Hale Brackenfield: Every unit of the army must return to Direwold at a forced-march pace. Once there, we’ll reconsider our strategy.’

  The military windspeaker bowed, then urged his mount into a more sheltered position to send the orders.

  ‘What about Valardus Mallburn?’ Rugged old Munlow Ramscrest’s harsh voice dripped contempt. ‘His Diddly army is still lounging at Lake of Shadows. King Somarus won’t weasel out of fighting the Salka this time! Not with monsters pouring into his country via the back door.’

  ‘But would it be wise to order the Crown Prince to march against the Salka ahead of us?’ Corodon ventured somewhat shyly. ‘Valardus is no tactician and yet he refuses to cede authority to his wiser generals. He’d likely make a balls-up of any action and his troops would end up butchered to a man.’

  ‘The Prince Heritor makes an excellent point,’ Cloudfell stated. ‘I propose that we instruct Brother Odos also to bespeak Chumick Whitsand, the Archwizard of Didion. He’s a person of some sense – which is more than one can say of Somarus and his son. Let Whitsand apprise Somarus of the grave situation. Only His Majesty of Didion can order Prince Valardus to hold off attacking the Salka until we decide the best way to counter their advance.’

  The others spoke their agreement and Conrig said, ‘Well thought. We can’t afford to waste the life of a single warrior – not even Diddlies.’

  The grim laughter that came from the group was almost drowned out by an increasing clatter of hooves and irritable snorts and whinnies from their horses. One of the generals remarked, ‘The animals are restless at having to stand still in this bitter cold. We should move on soon, sire, before their blood – and our own – freezes solid.’

  Deveron Austrey raised a diffident hand. ‘Your Grace, may I make a suggestion?’

  ‘Speak.’ Conrig’s voice was almost a whisper. His weariness and discomfort were all too evident, and Deveron was not the only one who realized that at some point the king would have to be persuaded to rest – at least for a little while.

  ‘Once we reach the pass’s summit again, our alchymists will be in the best possible position to scry conditions in the vicinity of Terminal Bay directly, rather than through a relay of Tarnian adepts. Altitude enhances the ability to windsearch. Might we not halt briefly at the derelict frontier post up there? It could be extremely important for us to observe what the Salka do when they reach Dennech-Cuva. If they make a fight of it, perhaps the enchantment that conceals their numbers and their route of penetration from our oversight will falter or even be temporarily extinguished. Information on the disposition of their troops is vital to our future planning.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ growled Ramscrest. ‘What if the filthy great boogers intend to advance on more than one front?’

  ‘Sire, after the windsearchers have ascertained the situation, ’ Deveron continued, ‘you and your general officers can perhaps discuss potential defensive action for a time, giving you all a welcome hour or so of respite from the saddle and the cold.’

  For a time, Ironcrown said nothing. Then: ‘My lords, I think we should do as my Royal Intelligencer suggests…Wanstan, Munlow, get my army moving again. Duke Norval, be so good as to remain here until Brother Odos completes his windspeaking. Request that he also send an additional message to the Didionite Archwizard, setting forth the Lord Constable’s idea of holding back the force of Crown Prince Valardus. All the rest of you, follow me to the top of the pass.’

  She had no idea where Vaelrath had taken her, nor that such a place even existed in Didion – or anywhere else on the island.

  The cavern was so large that its upper reaches were lost in shadow. From its puddled floor rose a forest of pinkish stalagmites striped with fawn and dark green like the pillars of some fairytale palace. Their wet surfaces gleamed like polished marble in the radiance cast by thousands of pairs of emerald eyes.

  The conclave of Morass Worms surrounded Casya on every side. The uncanny gaze of the creatures never left her as she perched on an outcropping of dry rock that was covered with the thick pelt of a tundra-lion, beseeching them to join the Sovereign of Blenholme in his war against the Salka.

  She pleaded with all the eloquence she could summon. The issue was not Conrig Wincantor’s intent to use the despicable sigils, she said, it was the deliverance of their imperiled land from an onslaught of a merciless foe equipped with the same evil weapons. If the Salka defeated Conrig’s army and drove humanity from High Blenholme, would the great amphibians allow the Morass Worms and the Green Men – and even the Small Lights – to live in peace?

  Many minds responded: If we are attacked directly, we will defend ourselves as we did before. But we will never form an alliance with a depraved human sigil-user. Never.

  She tried other arguments but was unable to shift the great dragons from their intransigent position. A Watcher among them had perceived Conrig using Weathermaker. Before long, he would surely call upon the ultimate abomination. He would use Destroyer, just as the Salka had.

  ‘But if he doesn’t?’ Casya entreated the worms in desperation. ‘You told me the Sovereign Army hasn’t yet engaged the Salka in battle. Can you not postpone your decision, at least until you’re certain Conrig intends to wield that infernal thing?’

  The vast assemblage of creatures stirred, considering the matter, and finally the answer came.

  Yes. We can do that.

  As tears of relief sprang into her eyes, she heard Vaelrath say, The armies will clash very soon and we will know the truth. The Salka spell of dissimulation does not conceal them from OUR mind’s eye! You may remain here with us in good hope, Casabarela Who-Would-Be-Queen, until Conrig shows himself to be beyond all redemption. Then, with sadness, we must return you and your aged traveling companion to the shores of Black Hare Lake and look to our own affairs.

  Attack Force Commander Tasatawnn and his principal aide Omawnn studied the looming human fortress on the opposite bank of the Dennech River. It was about half a league away. Its numerous heavy guns and missile catapults were trained on the water, ready to rain tarnblaze on any Salka who were detected swimming to the attack. The cover-spell that hid the amphibian host from distant windsearchers was quite ineffective at close range, so the defenders of Dennech-Cuva knew well enough that the enemy was out there, waiting.

  The humans were also waiting – for the Salka to make the first move.

  The citadel was fairly new, dating to the time sixteen years ago when Somarus had assumed the throne of Didion after Salka raiders killed his older brothe
r Honigalus and his family. At the time, Azarick Cuva was naught but an outlawed robber-baron, the close crony of a disreputable prince who was little better than a brigand himself. Somarus rewarded Azarick with a generous amount of treasure and a ‘paper’ dukedom – a vast tract of the sparsely settled west country that was only nominally loyal to the Crown. The true rulers of the region were the ruthless corsairs of the coast; but Azarick was told by the king that the fiefdom was his if he could keep it.

  The newly minted duke assembled an army of ferocious misfits as land-hungry as himself and built a fortress that was huge, unlovely, and impregnable. Using it as a base, Azarick terrorized the pirates into ceding him dominion of the hinterlands, while they retained control of the shore.

  Field Commander Tasatawnn knew nothing of Dennech-Cuva citadel’s history, only that it was one of the largest fortifications he had ever seen, rivaling the Salka race’s own lamented stronghold in the Dawntide Isles, which had been blown to rubble by the cannons of the Sovereign Navy some years earlier. Bringing the place down would not be easy, even with the Destroyer.

  ‘Respected leader,’ the aide Omawnn pointed out, ‘this is a formidable target indeed – perhaps too formidable. If you command your Great Stone to annihilate it, the occult energies required could well cost you your life, or demand a pain-price that would leave you a helpless invalid.’

  ‘It’s certainly a lot more of a challenge that I thought it would be,’ the commander grumbled. ‘However, if I spare myself by using Destroyer’s lesser demolition command – the one Kalawnn employed to topple the sea-stack at the mouth of the bay channel – I might break through the walls, but leave enough of the fort’s weaponry intact to kill thousands of our troops. Tarnblaze bombs are hellish things. No sorcery can deflect or quench them. Now I understand why our strategic advisers at first wanted us to bypass the citadel.’

  ‘We could still do that, respected one. It’s perhaps the wisest course.’

  ‘But it would greatly slow our advance, Omawnn. Our force would have to move through the dense surrounding forest rather than easily through the water.’ Tasatawnn’s burning carbuncle eyes flared with audacity and his mouth split in a defiant grin, showing teeth like diamond carving knives. He clasped the paradoxically delicate wand that hung on a chain about his neck and erected his head-crest.

  ‘Bespeak my field officers,’ he enjoined Omawnn. ‘Let all our intrepid warriors assume positions of safety, then prepare to fall upon the town and raze it to the ground after the fortress is reduced.’

  The aide nodded. After an interval: ‘I have obeyed. And…if you should become disabled?’

  ‘You know what to do. Now take cover.’

  As the staff officer retreated behind nearby shore boulders, Tasatawnn enveloped the slender sigil completely with the digits of his right tentacle and visualized the target. Then in a loud voice he intoned the spell of annihilation.

  ‘SKRESS TUSA ROWD SHEN!’

  Omawnn cringed in stupefaction as a monstrous green ball of light obliterated the edifice across the river. A split second later came a sound louder than any thunder and a tornadic blast of wind. He fell shrieking with pain onto the stony riverbank, thinking, ‘He’s killed both of us!’

  But he was alive. A pressure wave rolled across the water, washed over him with soothing coolness, then receded. Faintly, his mind heard the ecstatic shouts of thousands of Salka.

  ‘Respected leader?’ Omawnn called. His ears registered no sound. He was completely deaf. Weak as a newborn seal pup, he squirmed toward the unmoving body of his commander.

  Tasatawnn’s saucerlike eyes were glazed and lifeless. His flesh felt strangely icy to the touch. The sturdy golden chain of Destroyer had snapped in his death-convulsion, flinging the brittle rod onto the rocks and breaking it in half. The fragments were milky-grey, possessed of no internal radiance whatsoever.

  Numb with the terrible knowledge of what had just happened, Omawnn screwed up his courage before bespeaking the Eminent Kalawnn. Out on the river, the waters swarmed with triumphant invaders who swept ashore into the doomed town, praising the name of Tasatawnn to the highest Sky.

  Vra-Erol Wintersett, Chief Windsearcher of the Cathran Army, Deveron Austrey, and a handful of other powerful Cathran alchymists who had been capable of overseeing the disaster at Dennech-Cuva, stared in wordless shock at one another.

  ‘Tell me!’ Conrig raged. ‘Tell me what happened, damn you!’

  So they did.

  There were some twenty men gathered with the Sovereign in the disused frontier post at the top of Frost Pass. The building had been officially abandoned years earlier at a time when Tarn and Didion disputed the border along the White Rime Range. Travelers still used it occasionally as a storm refuge, but every stick of furniture, every floorboard and wood partition, and every piece of interior framing had long since been burnt for fuel. Only thick stone walls standing on bedrock remained, enclosing a windowless chamber the size of a ballroom. It had an iron door and a timber roof weighted with rocks against the mountain gales. A few blocks of hewn granite served as seats and sleeping platforms, and others at the room’s far end made hitching posts for the horses. The place was dreary, dark, and as cold as the lowest of the Ten Hells.

  The magickers of Cathra had conjured fire in the crumbling hearth and a row of dancing flames along the mantel for illumination. Conrig sat on a rough stone bench, wrapped in furs and sipping hot buttered malt laced with honey. His generals crowded closely around him, as if willing their own vitality to strengthen their debilitated Sovereign. They listened in silence as each scrier in turn submitted his disheartening vision of the destruction of the citadel at Dennech-Cuva.

  Vra-Erol discussed the death of the impetuous Salka commander who had become visible to the mind’s eye after he perished. Others of the Corps of Alchymists concurred that the citadel had certainly been consumed by the sorcery of a Destroyer. The Great Stone itself, like all sigils, was unscryable whether dead or alive; but Erol had deduced what must have happened.

  Deveron, being last to speak, pointed out a phenomenon that had eluded the others, who had been too engrossed in the sigil’s amazing performance to take note of any side-effect.

  ‘At the moment of the explosion of green light, there was indeed a disruption of the closely woven spell of couverture that has thus far hidden the Salka host from our oversight. I discerned two great streams of invaders. Their principal route of advance is up the Dennech River, as we suspected. The second force is moving up the smaller Shadow River, somewhat to the south.’

  ‘How many?’ the Lord Constable asked.

  ‘The Dennech host includes at least thirty thousand monsters,’ the intelligencer said. ‘Another twenty thousand invading via the Shadow will approach the small settlement of Tweenwater tomorrow night. The fort there is little more than a den of bandits that won’t delay the Salka for an instant. Above Tweenwater, the river provides a direct route to Lake of Shadows…and ultimately to the lower Wold Road. The Dennech River route followed by the larger force snakes through uninhabited moorlands and bogs. Its headwaters rise near the upper Wold Road, approximately fifty leagues south of Castle Direwold. The Salka may intend to follow its entire length, so as to cut the highway in two places. Or, perhaps less likely, they might cut overland after reaching a great bend in the river and attack Lake of Shadows from the northwest.’

  Norval Vanguard inquired, ‘How fast are they capable of moving up freshwater streams?’

  ‘Very fast,’ said Brother Erol. ‘When they invaded the Green Morass, it took them less than a sennight to move from the sea to Beacon Lake. The distance from Dennech-Cuva to either of their presumed objectives on the Wold Road is much less.’

  ‘Saving a miracle,’ Ramscrest observed, ‘there’ll be naught to oppose them other than that poor devil Valardus at Lake of Shadows. Our troops and animals will be spent by the time we retrace our steps to Castle Direwold. They’ll be obliged to rest. Then it’s at least two days
’ hard ride for warriors with remounts to reach the lake and reinforce the Didionites. Our slower riders, foot soldiers, heavy ordnance, and supplies will take a couple of days longer. More if it rains or snows.’

  ‘Not good enough,’ said Duke Norval, who had been consulting a small map. ‘The distance from Tweenwater to the western end of the lake is only eighty leagues or so. Unless they run into serious trouble, the Southern Wing of the Salka force is almost certain to reach the lake ahead of us. We won’t roust them out of deep water easily, even with tarnblaze. They’ll be able to strike, then fall back into the lake to recuperate over and over again.’

  Duke Nettos Intrepid, the only Lord of the Southern Shore in the group, had been peering over Norval’s shoulder at the map. He gave a gruesome chuckle. ‘And if the northern mob of monsters come all the way up the Dennech headwaters to the Wold Road, they’ll be in a position to wriggle right up the arses of our rear echelons! Unless we want our marchers to be caught in a pincer-trap, we’ve no choice but to send a goodly part of our army into the heath, to meet the Dennech Salka head-on.’

  ‘But that’s the larger enemy force,’ Deveron reminded him, ‘and the region is a forbidding wilderness – less accessible to heavy cavalry than one might suppose from looking at a map.’

  ‘I’ve heard that section of the Great Wold is friggin’ trackless, ’ warned a one-eyed general named Chokar Bogshaw, ‘a maze of tangled brush and thickets and quagmires. It’s impossible for wagons or wheeled war-engines, and deadly dangerous even for our mountain-bred horses, who can move cross-country far easier than the pampered padnags of the Southern Shore.’