Amourgin looked at the First Captain and swallowed hard, but Bren said, "Do what you must, corporal."
Amourgin drew his dagger and crouched next to the brazier. "Wait beside me and give me your hand, then, sir," he said. The two of them waited, while Father Solmin tossed powders and poured liquids from cork-stoppered bottles, and the noises from the camp grew louder. Frightened voices called back and forth in the darkness, and Amourgin felt a sense of impending doom beating down on him, even through the warding spells he'd done.
"Hurry," Bren said.
"Goin' as fast as I can," Solmin said—then, "Say nothing, now, until you must, sir, and if you must answer questions, tell only the truth. Don't guess, don't speculate."
Someone moved past them in the darkness, running. Amourgin, holding onto the First Captain's hand with the dagger point pressed against it, felt the other man tense and felt it, too, when Bren's balance shifted as he started to move after the runner, then checked himself.
Amourgin held his breath and hoped the captain could restrain himself from shouting.
More things went into the brazier. Father Solmin began his incantation. Amourgin, listening to the form and the pattern of it, couldn't help but be impressed by the grace and style of the priests work. A lot of the effectiveness of magic was tied up in that artistry, he mused. Solmin had the power of the gods, and the soul of a poet And to think of words of such beauty, to create such moving passages with demons attacking on all sides and the sounds of desertion and despair all around him—such was the mark of a master.
The priest reached over the brazier and sketched out the shape of a dome with his hands. As he drew back, Amourgin saw the first glimmers of light flicker within the shape of that magical dome.
He took the knife and slashed it across his captain's palm, and blood spattered into the brazier.
"Ow, dammit!" Bren yelled.
"Wait for it," Solmin muttered. "It comes now."
The three of them crouched around the brazier, watching as the lights within it flickered and swirled together, faster and faster, and filled and stretched the barrier the priest had shaped with his hands. With an abrupt tinkling sound, the barrier burst, and the spirit of the amulets swarmed free. It billowed upward in the night sky, glowing more fearsomely than the demon that had flickered in the flames of the campfire. It towered to the height of a hundred men, and then it looked down, and from that great height, there could be no doubt that its eyes fixed on the three men around the brazier. It reached one massive claw-tipped hand down and scooped them up in it. "You've called me forth:—I, who serve Shemro and those who serve Shemro. Shall I kill you then, little traitors?" it boomed.
They soared up into the sky until the fires below them were lost beneath the swirling mists of clouds, and the air became thin and bitter cold. Amourgin cried out. Beside him, Bren gasped. Only the priest stood fast in the face of this assault. He pointed his finger at the colossal form and said, "You, who are named Intirris, touch the blood we have given you, and see if Tornsaarin or if Morkaarin shall by rights succeed Shemro as heir. See then who serves faithfully."
The spirit guardian snarled and became for just a moment very still. Then it growled, "What treachery is this, that would betray a king?"
Amourgin and his two companions shot back down to the earth again in the spirit's palm, and scrambled gratefully to the earth. The spirit looked down at them. "One would rule by Yentror's choice; one by bloodright were the truth but known. And the Yentror's choice is tainted by foul magic." The guardian stared off into a great distance. "I cannot return to attack those who sent me, for my Yentror is with them. But I will not attack the right heir, or those who serve him." The guardian began to shrink, until it was the size of a man. "Go, with my continued protection," it said.
And then it was gone.
Amourgin's heart thudded in his chest, and his legs shook. We could all have died, he thought.
"Went better than I could have hoped," Solmin muttered. He bent and gathered up his things, men trudged back to his space on the ground without another word.
"You cut a bit deep," Bren said drily, studying the slash along the edge of his palm.
"Sorry, sir. I wasn't sure how much blood Father Solmin required—and I didn't want to take a chance on spilling too little."
Bren nodded. "Under the circumstances, the worry seems justified."
Around them, voices called to each other—and dark, shadowy forms crept back out of the lines of trees and back to the makeshift camp.
Amourgin tried to peer through the darkness to get a better look at the faces, but the captain rested his hand on the corporal's shoulder and shook his head "Don't look," he said softly. "We don't want to know who went—it wasn't their fault. If any remain gone by morning, we'll make note of that. But for now, give them privacy to come back."
He walked away, and Amourgin sighed and went back to check on the horses, as he'd planned to do before.
* * *
"You should have left me to take care of the siege," Brigadier Multin said. "Gods alone know what those damned loyalists will do while we're gone."
Grand Admiral Willek smiled bitterly; Left you in charge of the army? she thought. Oh, no, this Tornsaarin wasn't born yesterday. She'd known better than to leave any of her Inner Circle
behind; and while she had Shemro along—and back under close control, that had been careless of her—the loyalists didn't matter. If she got her hands on this Theophone, nothing would matter. With that, you might as well be a god. For the first time, she realized how the wizard-kings of the Old Empire had kept their rule for ten thousand years.
Aloud, she said, "They'll sit in front of the walls of An Tiram and build trenches and fire cannon. That's a sideshow, now. You'll notice that Darkist is making time south, just as we are."
He looked at her strangely—they were all doing that now. "Darkist's dead," he said.
"No, Darkist has just put on a new shell, like a beach-crab," Willek said brutally. "He'll tell us how, before he dies the real death and joins the One. I don't intend to end up like that." She jerked a thumb at Shemro, huddled in her coach and looking older than years.
Multin paled and swallowed, dropping his horse back. Didn't think through the consequences of your allegiances, did you? Willek thought sardonically. Multin hadn't been bred to the conspiracy as she had and still had some Three-worshiper scruples buried deep within him. Not that she intended to let him have the secret of eternal life. No, Darkist and the ancient wizard-kings had been right about that. One alone should live forever, while the others bred, died, and served, generation after generation. One alone.
Willek Tornsaarin.
Behind her the hooves of the horses were an endless muffled thunder on the arrow-straight road; good highways were a common inheritance from the Old Empire. A regiment of dragoons—Multin's Shillraki mercenaries, who weren't concerned with Tykissian internal politics—and two more of mounted infantry, Imperial Regulars to keep an eye on Multin's hired soldiers, some light galloper-guns, and a minimum of essential baggage on pack mules. Enough to fight through light opposition in the countryside, and as long as she avoided the river, that was all she'd face. Darkist-Colchob would be travelling by water, through the fortress-cities on the Tiram River. Water travel was fast, but you had to follow the river, and it curved widely out of the way. She'd cut across the arc of the curve and then scare up some sort of boat, rafts if need be. A few score sailors were with them, uncomfortably perched on mules, and they'd take care of any boating necessary.
I'll get there first. And whoever gets there first will rule everything, forever.
Darkist-Colchob made a sign with one hand.
The war-slave struck. His huge curved blade hissed as it swung through the air, ending in a meaty tkuck sound. The nobleman who'd argued with his Yentror barely had time to widen his eyes in alarm before the upper half of his body was toppling to the right.
Darkist's lips moved, murmuring in a langu
age dead seven thousand years. His fingers moved as well, in small precise motions more graceful than a dancers. The effort brought sweat to his frowning brow despite the cool evening breeze, much more than it should have—this new body was weak, weak in magic.
But the spell took hold. The legs and stomach stayed braced erect, despite the flood of blood, and the ropes of intestine that spilled around it like the long limp petals of some tropical flower. It took one tottering step, another—then it went to its knees and bowed. The remainder of the viscera slid forward out of the body cavity with a wet slushing sound.
"A reasonable question," Darkist answered the corpse, raising the bouquet to his nose to cover the hard latrine stink of death. "Reasonable but impudent—quite impudent."
The remainder of the city's nobles were on their bellies, beating their foreheads against the rose-colored marble of the royal docks. Behind them the riverport of Tol Tiram Kulnator raised itself toward the aching blue sky: onion-domed minarets of fretted marble topped with peacock-colored tiles, green copper roofs, gardens where flocks of spellbound glowflies danced in intricate patterns among the fountains and trees and orchids. Beyond lay the tarry workaday sections of the city, blocks of adobe buildings around tangled mud-paved streets, but his business was with the elite.
"We are but worms beneath your feet, Lord of Ten Thousand Years," the city viceroy's vizier said. "Order and we obey, though you command us to bite out our own tongues and eat the flesh of our firstborn sons."
For a moment Darkist-Colchob considered it—beautiful irony—but there was no time for play, despite the way his organ grew erect at the thought. Mind you, Colchob's body did that at every opportunity, even when he thought about vinegar and crushed ice. He'd forgotten what a distraction it could be.
"True, the northern barbarians sit outside the walls of An Tiram," he said mildly.
The vizier shuddered slightly as his master's blood slid around him on the slick marble, but he did not dare to move.
"That is no concern of yours," Darkist went on. "My generals will see to that matter. Your Yentror has business in the south. I require of you your battlebarges, powder, shot, provisions, and jungleman rowing slaves. Immediately. Go."
Karah wiped sweat from her face and leaned far back against the cantle of her saddle, bracing the balls of her feet into the stirrups and straightening her knees. Windrush's hooves squelched in a patch of mud. He picked his way carefully down the steep, ruined roadway, stepping over tangled roots thick as thighs that plunged through the shattered paving blocks. Huge trees leaned overhead, almost blocking out the fading sunlight; lianas and vines and festoons of moss dangled from them. Birds flitted between the boughs hundreds of feet above her head, birds such as she had never seen—a flight of thousands yellow as gold and tiny as her thumb, like a shower of airborn coins; others blue and red and orange, wings broader than the stretch of her arm, great curved beaks like swords and crests even longer, gliding with raucous cries. Flowers grew in great tumbling banks down the rough bark of the great trees, carmine and ivory, or hung in single blossoms bigger than her head from the vines. Insects flew and buzzed and hopped between—sometimes the petals of a flower would close over one with a swift vegetable hunger—and slow spirals of glowflies crimson as dawn drifted up like thick smoke through the olive-colored haze of air.
It would have been wonderful, if it wasn't so hot and wet and eerie. Away in the distance, something huge trumpeted and crashed through the vegetation. Monkeys threw things at her and scolded from the branches. The smell was overwhelming, like spoiled beer and yeast and perfume all mixed together. She worked her itching toes in her boots and kept her eyes moving, bow ready. They'd already met one denizen of the forest a thirty-foot-long snake, a constrictor with a disposition to match and a taste for man flesh… or possibly horse. They'd had to hack it to pieces to get it to relax its grip on a pack mule and driver after it dropped down from the branch it'd been dangling on.
It had tasted like yardfowl, although a bit rubbery.
"The country sure changed fast," Karah said.
Dry savannah flanked the irrigated lands of the river valley; then the savannah turned lush, with tall grass and palms and patches of bamboo and unbelievable herds of beasts she'd never even heard of until the cultivated lands gave out and then… this.
Behind her, Amourgin and Eowlie were having more trouble with the roadway; their Tseldene horses were not as surefooted and well-trained as Windrush.
"Mountains," Amourgin said, checking the priming on his carbine. "The south shore of the Imperial Sea is dry because it's low-lying. The lands rising here, there are mountains south of us, and we've come four, maybe five hundred miles. And—"
He froze. Karah turned, careful not to raise her bow quickly.
The natives were grinning. At least, she hoped those were smiles—the teeth were intimidating, not fangs like Eowlie's, just big and yellow and sugarloaf-shaped. The faces behind them looked to be jungleman by breed, or at least partly so—shelf-browed and lump-nosed, covered in reddish-black hair, on bodies even squatter and browner than Tseldenes. Bodies and faces were painted in startling colors, red and yellow and electric green; it might even be camouflage, in these woods, or decoration like the stridently-colored feathers tucked into their topknots. All of them were men—emphatically so, with their manhood exaggerated by woven penis sheaths, their only clothing—and many of them had steel knives through their belts. Others carried stone-headed clubs, or spears with points of volcanic glass, or six-foot bamboo bows, or long slender tubes.
"Blowguns," Eowlie whispered. "T'ose darts at t'ere belts—poisoned."
The savages hooted in amazement at Eowlie's teeth; more of them were coming out of the jungle, slipping noiselessly through the undergrowth. One of them, probably the chief from the rusty Tseldene scimitar he carried, opened his mouth and pointed at Eowlie to do the same. She barred her fangs at them, bringing more enormous grins and hoots.
"They're closing around us," Amourgin said.
Karah nodded. Besides the body paint, many of them had bones through their noses, or necklaces of bone—human fingerbones, mostly.
She gave a broad, false smile of her own and pointed north.
"Many," she said, opening her hand and closing it again and again. "Tykissians." She indicated herself and her companions.
"Let's not try to explain about Eowlie now. Tykissians, there, many, many."
After a moment, that got through. The savages growled and jabbered to each other when they realized there were more of the visitors; the chief barked orders, and a dozen or so slipped off through the jungle to check. Karah carefully returned her bow to its case at her knee and held up open hands.
"Friends," she said, in the most friendly voice she could muster. "Friends, you brainless no-neck apes, friends." At a sudden thought, she unhooked a flask from her saddlebag and took a drink, then handed it to the chief.
From the way he beamed when he sniffed his broad nose at it, he recognized brandy. He swallowed the rest of it down with a blissful flutter of the prominent adam's apple beneath his nonexistent chin. Then he turned and raised both hands to his followers, breaking into a prolonged musical jabbering.
"I think you made a friend." Amourgin said, as the others lowered their weapons to the ground.
"Godsall," Karah said.
The chief belched contentedly and rubbed his stomach. "Fwiend," he said, in a basso lisp.
It was a little cooler by night, away from the bonfire. It burned low now in the square of the ruined city, glowing like the firepits that had prepared the feast. All around were woven-leaf platters of the local delicacies: grubs fried in oil (edible, to Karah's surprise), barrel-thick sections of giant snake, whole roasted forest hogs, baked monkey (she hoped it was monkey), plates of giant oranges and bloodfruit and steamed breadplant, salads of palm hearts and peppers, fiery spiced stews of gods-knew-what, bananas, mangos, jungle gooseberries with their sweet red hearts. And palm wine, huge eart
hen jugs of it, frothy and sweet and cool, with a kick like a skinners mule.
Godsall. It's good to be full, she thought, hiding a small belch. And clean, best of all.
For a wonder, the jungle savages washed. They even had ancient hot springs still running into huge cracked tubs of granite in the overgrown ruins of what might have been a temple or a governor's palace, and a soapy root that lathered up well enough to wash all the grease out of even hair. The city was enormous, although most of it was barely distinguishable from the jungle itself—giant trees pushing up through roofless squares of tumbled stone, mounds of vines and brush across the lumpy remains of pyramids and avenues and statues. The woven palm and saplings of the tribefolk's longhouses seemed as natural as the undergrowth.
Right above her a broad-nostriled stone face loomed fifty feet high, with lianas and creepers for hair, its heavy features underlit by the flame flicker until they looked very much like the jungleman chiefs.
She leaned back on her elbow beside Bren and took another draw at the gourd of palm wine. There was an odd undertaste to it, almost like cinnamon, some spice or other. The Tykissians were taking to it as enthusiastically as the savages were to the barrels of medicinal brandy. Many had joined the local men and women in the capering dance around the central fire… even the grim Captain Tagog had thrown off her inhibitions and was leaping with the best of them right alongside the native chief. In fact, she was shedding more than inhibitions; a whoop went up as she tossed her jacket through the air. The chief roared with delight and danced over to her. The dance wasn't suggestive; it was a demonstration. Tagog kicked off her tattered uniform breeches and leaped forward.
Karah grinned, blushed, and looked aside. "Who'd you think built this place?" she asked Bren, for want of anything else to say. "Tseldenes?"
"Maybe," Bren said, shaking off whatever mood had kept him silent "Maybe the ancestors of our hosts." He indicated the statue above them.
"Junglemen?" Karah said incredulously.
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