‘Did those three have anything useful for us?’ Komier asked.
‘Not much,’ Bergsten replied, hauling himself back up into his saddle. ‘There’s an army of some kind moving into place somewhere to the east of Argoch. There was a lot of superstition mixed up in what they told me, so I couldn’t get anything very accurate out of them.’
‘A fight then,’ Komier said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.
‘I sort of doubt that,’ Bergsten disagreed. ‘As closely as I could make out from all the gibberish, the force up ahead is composed largely of irregulars – religious fanatics of some kind. Our Holy Mother in Chyrellos didn’t make many friends in this part of the world when she tried to re-assimilate herself with the branches of Elene faith in western Daresia during the ninth century.’
‘That was almost two thousand years ago, Bergsten,’ Komier objected. ‘That’s a long time to hold a grudge.’
Bergsten shrugged. ‘The old ones are the best. Send your scouts out a little further, Komier. Let’s see if we can get some kind of coherent report on the welcoming committee. A few prisoners might be useful,’
‘I know how to do this, Bergsten,’
‘Do it then. Don’t just sit there talking about it,’
They passed Argoch, and Komier’s scouts brought in several prisoners. Patriarch Bergsten interrogated the poorly clad and ignorant Elene captives briefly, and then he ordered them released.
‘Your Grace,’ Darellon protested, ‘that was very unwise. Those men will run back to their commanders and report everything they’ve seen.’
‘Yes,’ Bergsten replied, ‘I know. I want them to do that. I also want them to tell all their friends that they’ve seen a hundred thousand Church Knights coming down out of the mountains. I’m encouraging defections, Darellon. We don’t want to kill those poor misguided heretics, we just want them to get out of our way.’
‘I still think it’s strategically unsound, your Grace.’
‘You’re entitled to your opinion, my son,’ Bergsten said. This isn’t an article of the faith, so our Holy Mother encourages disagreement and discussion.’
‘There isn’t much point to discussion after you’ve already let them go, your Grace.’
‘You know, that very same thought occurred to me.’ They encountered the opposing force in the broad valley of the River Esos just to the south of the Zemoch town of Basne thirty leagues or so to the west of the Astellian border. The reports of the scouts and the information gleaned from the captives proved to be accurate. What faced them was not so much an army as it was a mob, poorly armed and undisciplined.
The preceptors of the Four Orders gathered around Patriarch Bergsten to consider options. ‘They’re members of our own faith,’ Bergsten told them. ‘Our disagreements with them lie in the area of Church Government, not in the substance of our common beliefs. Those matters aren’t settled on the battlefield, so I don’t want too many of those people killed.’
‘I don’t see much danger of that, your Grace,’ Preceptor Abriel said.
‘They outnumber us about two to one, Lord Abriel,’ Sir Heldin pointed out.
‘One charge should even things out, Heldin,’ Abriel replied. ‘Those people are amateurs, enthusiastic but untrained, and about half of them are only armed with pitchforks. If we all drop our visors, level our lances and charge them en masse, most of them will still be running a week from now.’
And that was the last mistake the venerable Lord Abriel was ever to make. The mounted knights fanned out with crisp precision to form up on a broad front stretching across the entire valley. Rank after rank of Cyrinics, Pandions, Genidians, and Alciones, all clad in steel and mounted on belligerent horses, lined up in what was probably one of the more intimidating displays of organized unfriendliness in the known world.
The preceptors waited in the very center of the front rank as their subalterns formed up the rear ranks and the messengers galloped forward to declare that all was in readiness.
‘That should be enough,’ Komier said impatiently. ‘I don’t think the supply wagons will have to charge too.’ He looked around at his friends. ‘Shall we get started, gentlemen? Let’s show that rabble out there how real soldiers mount an attack.’ He made a curt signal to a hulking Genidian Knight, and the huge blond man blew a shattering blast on his Ogre-horn trumpet.
The front rank of the knights clapped down their visors and spurred their horses forward. The perfectly disciplined knights and horses galloped forward in an absolutely straight line like a moving wall of steel.
Midway through the charge the forest of upraised lances came down like a breaking wave, and the defections in the opposing army began. The ill-trained serfs and peasants broke and ran, throwing away their weapons and squealing in terror. Here and there were some better-trained units that held their ground, but the flight of their allies from either side left their flanks dangerously exposed.
The knights struck those few units with a great, resounding crash. Once more Abriel felt the old exulting satisfaction of battle. His lance shattered against a hastily raised shield, and he discarded the broken weapon and drew his sword. He looked around and saw that there were other forces massed behind the wall of peasants that had concealed them from view, and that army was like none Abriel had ever seen before. The soldiers were huge, larger than even the Thalesians. They wore breastplates and mail, but their cuirasses were more closely moulded to their bodies than was normal. Every muscle seemed starkly outlined under the gleaming steel. Their helmets were exotic steel recreations of the heads of improbable beasts, and they did not have visors as such but steel masks instead, masks which had been sculpted to bear individualized features, the features, Abriel thought, of the warriors who wore them. The Cyrinic Preceptor was suddenly chilled. The features the masks revealed were not human.
There was a strange domed leather tent in the center of that inhuman army, a ribbed, glossy black tent of gigantic dimensions.
But then it moved, opening, spreading wide – two great wings, curved and batlike. And then, rising up from under the shelter of those wings, was a being huge beyond imagining, a creature of total darkness with a head shaped like an inverted wedge and with flaring, pointed ears. Two slitted eyes blazed in that awful absence of a face, and two enormous arms stretched forth hungrily. Lightning seethed beneath the glossy black skin, and the earth upon which the creature stood smoked and burned.
Abriel was strangely calm. He lifted his visor to look full into the face of Hell. ‘At last,’ he murmured, ‘a fitting opponent,’ And then he clapped his visor down again, drew his warlike shield before his body, and raised the sword he had carried with honor for over half a century. His unpalsied hand brandished the sword at the enormity still rising before him. ‘For God and Arcium!’ he roared his defiance, set himself, and charged directly into obliteration.
Chapter 8
To say that Edaemus was offended would be the grossest of understatements. The blur of white light that was the God of the Delphae was tinged around the edges with flickers of reddish orange, and the dusting of snow that covered the ground in the little swale above the valley of the Delphae fumed tendrils of steam as it melted in the heat of his displeasure. ‘No!’ he said adamantly. ‘Absolutely not!’
‘Oh, be reasonable, Cousin,’ Aphrael coaxed. ‘The situation has changed. You’re holding on to something that no longer has any meaning. There might have been some justification for “eternal enmity” before. I’ll grant you that my family didn’t behave very well during the war with the Cyrgai, but that was a long time ago. Clinging to your injured sensibilities now is pure childishness.’
‘How couldst thou, Xanetia?’ Edaemus demanded accusingly. ‘How couldst thou do this thing?’
‘It was in furtherance of our design, Beloved,’ she replied. Sephrenia was more than a little startled by the intensely personal relationship Xanetia had with her God. ‘Thou didst command me to render assistance unto Anakha, and by reason of
his love for Sephrenia, I was obliged to reach accommodation with her. Once she and I did breach the wall of enmity which did stand between us and did learn to trust each other, respect and common purpose did soften our customary despite, and all unbidden, love did gently creep in to replace it. In my heart is she now my dear sister.’
That is an abomination! Thou shalt not speak so of this Styric in my presence again!’
‘As it please thee, Beloved,’ she agreed, submissively bowing her head. But then her chin came up, and her inner light glowed more intensely. ‘But will ye, nil ye, I will continue to think so of her in the hidden silence of my heart.’
‘Are you ready to listen, Edaemus?’ Aphrael asked, ‘or would you like to take a century or two to throw a temper-tantrum first?’
‘Thou art pert, Aphrael,’ he accused.
‘Yes, I know. It’s one of the things that makes me so delightful. You do know that Cyrgon’s trying to get his hands on Bhelliom, don’t you? Or have you been so busy playing leap-frog with the stars that you’ve lost track of what’s happening here?’
‘Mind your manners,’ Sephrenia told her crisply.
‘He makes me tired. He’s been cuddling his hatred to his breast like a sick puppy for ten thousand years.’ The Child Goddess looked critically at the incandescent presence of the God of the Delphae. ‘The light-show doesn’t impress me, Edaemus. I could do it too, if I wanted to take the trouble.’
Edaemus flared even brighter, and the reddish-orange nimbus around him became sooty.
‘How tiresome,’ Aphrael sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Xanetia, but we’re wasting our time here. Bhelliom and I are going to have to deal with Klæl on our own. Your tedious God wouldn’t be any help anyway.’
‘Klæl’ Edaemus gasped.
‘Got your attention, didn’t I?’ She smirked. ‘Are you ready to listen now?’
‘Who hath done this? Who hath unloosed Klæl again upon the earth?’
‘Well, it certainly wasn’t me. Cyrgon had everything going his way, and then Anakha turned things around on him. You know how much Cyrgon hates to lose, so he started breaking the rules. Do you want to help us with this – or would you rather sit around and pout for another hundred eons or so? Quickly, quickly, Edaemus,’ she said, snapping her fingers at him. ‘Make up your mind. I don’t have all day, you know.’
‘What makes you think I need any more men?’ Narstil demanded. Narstil was a lean, almost cadaverous Arjuni with stringy arms and hollow cheeks. He sat at a table set under a spreading tree in the center of his encampment deep in the jungles of Arjuna.
‘You’re in a risky kind of business,’ Caalador shrugged, looking around at the cluttered camp. ‘You steal furniture and carpets and tapestries. That means that you’ve been raiding villages and mounting attacks on isolated estates. People fight back when you try that, and that means casualties. About half of your men are wearing bandages right now, and you probably leave a few dead behind you every time you try to steal things. A leader in your line always needs more men.’
‘I don’t have any vacancies just now.’
‘I can arrange some,’ Bevier told him in a menacing voice, melodramatically drawing his thumb across the edge of his lochaber.
‘Look, Narstil,’ Caalador said in a somewhat less abrasive tone, ‘we’ve seen your men. Be honest now. You’ve gathered up a bunch of local bad-boys who got into trouble for stealing chickens or running off somebody else’s goats. You’re very light on professionals, and that’s what we’re offering you – professionalism. Your bad-boys bluster and try to impress each other by looking mean and nasty, but real killing isn’t in their nature, and that’s why they get hurt when the fighting starts. Killing doesn’t bother us. We’re used to it. Your young bravos have to prove things to each other, but we don’t. Orden knows who we are. He wouldn’t have sent you that letter otherwise.’ His eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Believe me, Narstil, life will be much easier for all of us if we’re working with you rather than setting up shop across the street.’
Narstil looked a little less certain of himself. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.
‘Do that. And don’t get any ideas about trying to eliminate potential competition in advance. Your bad-boys wouldn’t be up to it, and my friends and I would sort of be obliged to take it personally.’
‘Stop that,’ Sephrenia chided her sister as the four of them moved through the corridorlike streets of Delphaeus toward the home of Cedon, the Anari of Xanetia’s people.
‘Edaemus is doing it,’ Aphrael countered.
‘It’s his city, and these are his people. It’s not polite to do that when you’re a guest.’
Xanetia gave them a puzzled look.
‘My sister’s showing off,’ Sephrenia explained.
‘Am not,’ Aphrael retorted.
‘Yes you are too, Aphrael, and you and I both know it. We’ve had this argument before. Now stop it.’
‘I do not understand,’ Xanetia confessed.
‘That’s because you’ve grown accustomed to the sense of her presence, sister,’ Sephrenia explained wearily. ‘She’s not supposed to flaunt her divinity this way when she’s around the worshippers of other Gods. It’s the worst form of bad manners, and she knows it. She’s only doing it to irritate Edaemus. I’m surprised she hasn’t flattened the whole city or set fire to the thatching on the roofs with all that divine personality.’
‘That’s a spiteful thing to say, Sephrenia,’ Aphrael accused.
‘Behave yourself then.’
‘I won’t unless Edaemus does.’
Sephrenia sighed, rolling her eyes upward.
They entered the southern wing of the extended city-building that was Delphaeus and proceeded down a dim hallway to Cedon’s door. The Anari was waiting for them, his ancient face filled with wonder. He fell to his knees as the light that was Edaemus approached, but his God dimmed, assumed a human form, and reached out gently to raise him to his feet again. ‘That is not needful, my old friend,’ he said.
‘Why, Edaemus,’ Aphrael said, ‘you’re really quite handsome. You shouldn’t hide from us in all that light the way you do.’
A faint smile touched the ageless face of the Delphaeic God. ‘Seek not to beguile me with flattery, Aphrael. I know thee, and I know thy ways. Thou shalt not so easily ensnare me.’
‘Oh, really? Thou art ensnared already, Edaemus. I do but toy with thee now. My hand is already about thine heart. In time, I shall close it and make thee mine.’ And she laughed a silvery little peal of laughter. ‘But that’s between you and me, Cousin. Right now we have other things to do.’
Xanetia fondly embraced the ancient Cedon. ‘As thou canst readily perceive, my dear old friend, momentous changes are afoot. The dire peril which we face doth reshape our entire world. Let us consider that peril first, and then at our leisure may we pause to marvel at how all about us is altered.’
Cedon led them down the three worn stone steps into his low-ceilinged chamber with its inwardly curving, white plastered walls, its comfortable furniture, and its cheery fire.
‘Tell them what’s been going on, Xanetia,’ Aphrael suggested, climbing up into Sephrenia’s lap. That may explain why it was necessary for me to violate all the rules and come here,’ She gave Edaemus an arch look. ‘Regardless of what you may think, Cousin, I do have good manners, but we’ve got an emergency on our hands.’
Sephrenia leaned back in her chair as Xanetia began her account of the events of the past several months. There was a sense of peace, an unruffled calm about Delphaeus that Sephrenia had not perceived during her last visit. At that time, her mind had been so filled with obsessive hatred that she had scarcely taken note of her surroundings. The Delphae had appealed to Sparhawk to seal their valley away from the rest of the world, but that seemed somehow unnecessary. They were already separate – so separate that they no longer seemed even human. In a peculiar way, Sephrenia envied them.
‘Infuriating, aren’t they?’ the Child Godde
ss murmured. ‘And the word you’re looking for is “serenity”.’
‘And you’re doing everything in your power to disturb that, aren’t you?’
‘They’re still a part of this world, Sephrenia – for a little while longer, anyway. All I’m doing is reminding them that the rest of us are still out here.’
‘You’re behaving very badly toward Edaemus.’
‘I’m trying to jerk him back to reality. He’s been off by himself for the past hundred centuries, and he’s forgotten what it’s like having the rest of us around. I’m reminding him. Actually, it’s good for him. He was starting to get complacent.’ She slipped down from her sister’s lap. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘It’s time for me to give him another lesson.’ She crossed the room and stood directly in front of Edaemus, looking pleadingly into his face with her large, dark eyes.
The God of the Delphae was so engrossed in Xanetia’s account that he scarcely noticed Aphrael and, when she held out her arms to him, he absently picked her up and settled her into his lap.
Sephrenia smiled.
‘And most recently,’ Xanetia concluded her report, ‘young Sir Berit hath been given further instruction. He is to turn aside and go to the town of Sopal on the coast of the Sea of Arjun. He hath advised the Child Goddess of this alteration of direction, and she in turn hath made the rest of us aware of it. It is the intent of the Troll-Gods to transport Sir Ulath and Sir Tynian to Sopal and to conceal them there in what they call “No-Time”. It is their thought that when our enemies produce Queen Ehlana to exchange her for Bhelliom, they might leap from their concealment and rescue her.’
‘No-Time?’ Cedon asked, his face puzzled.
‘Suspended duration,’ Aphrael explained. ‘Trolls are hunters, and their Gods have found a new place of concealment for them so that they’re able to stalk their prey unseen. It’s clever, but it has its drawbacks.’
Edaemus asked her something in that language Sephrenia had tried several times to learn but had never really been able to grasp. Aphrael replied, speaking rapidly in a rather dry, technical tone and making intricate gestures with her hands.
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