“I like it, General,” said Loar Pilta, who had come off the ships with his men and had distinguished himself greatly in the battle. “By minimizing the threat of the karvats, your second line can begin to attack the other beasts more quickly.” Loar, who was a giant of a man, standing a full foot taller than Slurr, himself not small in the least, seemed born to be a warrior, both in his impressive physicality and in his demeanor. Several men reported hearing him laugh with glee each time he drove his sword through a Silestran or Siluman. Ironically, only a year prior, before the Army of Quadar had been formed, he had made his living as a silk merchant. Knowing this, Slurr had given his officer a fitting nickname.
“Exactly, Smooth,” he said in reply to Loar’s observation. “The main objective is to begin cutting down the Silestra, who, while imposing foes themselves, are all the more dangerous due to their great guile and intelligence. They direct the movement of the Silumans, as my wife’s match-mate has so aptly dubbed the hybrid beasts, at the same time waging their own unique and reprehensible mode of battle.”
“I hates them!” called out a man named Peel Farka. Peel was among those warriors who had remained with Slurr on the ice while the remainder of the army had sailed back to civilization with the human survivors of Surok’s slave collection. He was also a native of Niliph and bore both a deep and abiding hatred of Surok’s army, Silestra in particular, and an unhealthy amount of survivor’s remorse. He had lost many family members in the massacre at Armethia. His particular speech affectations took a little getting used to, but Slurr did not worry about the way a man spoke, only how he fought. “Even in the thick of the mix,” Peel continued, “they stops to bite. They rips off arms and they chews. I hates them!”
Slurr nodded, his expression dark. “I share your hatred. I cannot wait to sink my Riddue blade into their hearts. But my wizard friends have told me something interesting about the Silestra as well. It seems that at the sight of Cerah, they falter. At first, this confused me a great deal. Indeed, it perplexed Cerah herself. I have seen live Silestra only twice, but neither time did they show anything remotely fearful in their bearing. The four we killed on Melsa died defiantly, especially the last, who mocked Cerah when he realized that it was her brother Beru that they had murdered and devoured moments before.”
The men had all heard the story many times, and they nodded and grumbled as they recalled how the final assassin had told Cerah that Beru had been “delicious.”
“It is what happened to that final monster, I think, that has brought about this change in them. As you know, Cerah used a magic that no one had ever seen before to kill him. With no more than a word from her mouth, she caused his head to literally explode. Knowing that she has the power to do that, and knowing the prophesy of the Chosen One, they are now convinced that is precisely who opposes them.”
“But how could they know what Cerah did?” asked a commander from Rethmira named Maads Vestra. “There were none left alive to report the news.”
“We are now quite sure that the wizard Zenk, who led the Silestra to our hiding place, saw the outcome of their attempt on Cerah’s life and her response. We’re also convinced that when he fled Melsa, it was to the Frozen South that he went, offering his services to Surok. Obviously, Surok is no friend to wizards, after being bound for nearly a thousand years by Opatta. But Cerah believes that Zenk’s complete surrender to the darkness made him an attractive ally to the demon. She figures he was able to talk his way into Surok’s confidences and that he now flies with him into battle.
“She also thinks that Zenk must have told the entire story of the failed attempt on her life. After describing Cerah’s power, they have become convinced that she is the one prophesied to destroy their maker. And without Surok they have nothing.
“So, we must find a way to use that fear to our advantage, and we must take them out of the picture as quickly as we can, for as I said, they direct the actions of the Silumans, and it is this last branch of Surok’s filth that is causing the wizard advisors the most concern.”
Loar replied. “It bloody well causes me concern! These creatures make my blood run a little cold.”
Slurr laughed. “You, Smooth? But you fear nothing!”
The giant man did not return his general’s laughter. “They seem to have all the cunning of the Silestra. They are smaller but may be even more lithe and stealthy. However, what really worries me is that nothing seems to deter or slow them. If one drops, another rushes to take the dead one’s place. I saw one, alone, surrounded by four of our strongest warriors. One of our men struck a blow with his sword which cut the beast’s arm to the bone. The Siluman just smiled and reached his hand into the wound. He took his blood-soaked hand and smeared it across his face, tasting his own blood as he did so, then turned upon the man who cut him, killing him by tearing out his throat with that same bloody hand. The other three made short work of him, but he died grinning, damn him!”
Slurr shuddered. “The wizards think it is their human side that makes them so dangerous. They say that the human spark is strong, stronger than the Silestra’s. But in the Silumans it is wholly corrupted. All the strength that Ma’uzzi bred into the spirit of humans, Surok has turned to darkness. So, they have the Silestra’s cunning and viciousness, and the same unflagging resolve that each of you have shown, only twisted and perverted. That is a frightful combination.”
“What is your plan then, General?” asked one of the officers, to a chorus of simultaneously voiced interrogatives.
Slurr looked around the circle at all of them. “What we need to do, and what we hope the enemy is less capable of doing, is to adapt. We are learning the strengths and weaknesses of Surok’s army. I want to begin to form divisions with these variables in mind. Quick and agile warriors to neutralize the karvats. Let’s try picking off the Silumans with ranged weapons. Archers, crossbows, and spears. Better to keep them at a distance when we send them, grinning if they wish, to the Under Plane.
“That leaves the Silestra. They may have changed since Cerah became a reality to them, but they are far from being a force we can overlook. Leaders, we need your most fearless warriors to battle these monsters. They are huge, and they are bloodthirsty. But they can be killed. Their throats are just as vulnerable as are ours, and a sharp sword driven into the chest will still pierce whatever it is they have in place of a heart.”
The men, upon this direction, began to talk amongst themselves. After several minutes of conversation, Loar Pilta spoke for all of them. “Organizing these platoons will be easy enough, general. Give us the rest of this day to revamp our divisions. By the time the sun rises on the morn, the Army of Quadar will be streamlined and eager to meet whatever Surok might choose to bring against us.”
“Very good, Smooth,” said Slurr. “Thank you one and all. I trust you will work quickly and keep in mind the things we’ve discussed.”
“Count on it, General Slurr,” said Maads Vestra as he and the remainder of the group stood to rejoin their men and commence the restructuring.
Slurr went to look for Cerah. He found her talking to the elder, Kindalei. Slurr had long since learned that there was absolutely no point in trying to guess how old an elder wizard was based upon her physical appearance. The wizard race, he knew, appeared to age at a much slower pace than did humans. Yarren, the young wizard who had saved him, looked no older than did Slurr himself, but was in his forties. It wasn’t until they’d passed their first century that their hair turned gray, and the map of their life experience could be seen in the lines on their face. But he also knew that a wizard of even that many years was still considered young and largely untested. There was something about a true elder—an honorific reserved for a wizard at least four hundred years old—something intangible but nonetheless undeniable, that set them apart. The true wisdom that comes with a quarter-score centuries of studying the craft and learning the history (and future) of Quadar always seemed to radiate from the eyes. Kindalei was such a wizard.
> She had long, well-groomed white hair, which she wore tied up to keep it from straying into her field of vision. Her back was ramrod straight, and her caramel eyes flashed as she spoke to Cerah. Slurr could see as he approached that Kindalei was extremely upset.
“Wert and his black dragon Ratha were an integral part of the reconnaissance flight that was patrolling the southern coast of Sejira. But he is a wizard who sometimes needs some time to himself, some time away from the routine, if one can call life on Quadar routine anymore. So, I was initially unconcerned by his absence. When he failed to return after several hours, however, I began to grow anxious. Then came the commotion from the dragons.”
“What commotion, Kindalei?” Cerah asked.
“The riderless and matched alike began to make mourning sounds, as they do when a wizard falls. But other dragons do not feel the pain a match-mate feels when his rider is lost. For them to react that way, as a group…well, I didn’t know what to make of that.”
Tressida stood behind Cerah and was following the conversation, though she had remained silent until this point.
“Beloved,” she said to Cerah, “there are only two times a dragon will mourn: when he loses his match-mate or when another dragon falls. For the entire flight to react in such a manner most likely means that Ratha has been lost and Wert as well.”
Cerah drew a deep breath upon hearing this. “Kindalei, Tressida believes they mourned because Ratha has been killed. If she is correct, and I have never known her to be wrong about dragons, then Wert is most likely dead as well.”
“How?” Kindalei asked, her voice rising in despair. “There were no attacks, no sightings of the black sails.”
“But there was a report of the mysterious weather,” Cerah stated.
“Yes. A human watchwoman, the same day that Wert went missing, thought she saw a trace of the black boiling clouds, but they were far out to sea and lasted for only a couple of moments. It was so brief that in the end she thought she was mistaken. She reported it to me, but I thought she might have been eager to face the enemy and saw something that wasn’t really there. The dragons, however, told a different story.”
“I do not yet fully understand how Surok manages to control this phenomenon. I think it serves a purpose or maybe multiple purposes for him. There is no doubt that its appearance strikes fear in our warriors’ hearts. But it has also come to be a tell-tale beacon, clearly indicating to us that he is near. It does not seem to follow the black ships as they cross the ocean, unless he is flying above them. I am afraid that your watchwoman witnessed the location of Wert and Ratha’s end, far out to sea, as you said. Far enough for you to be unsure that is what she saw at all.”
“Well, I have obviously asked that no riders venture out alone anymore. We are making sure that our patrol flights are at full strength from this point forward,” Kindalei said.
“Actually, we are going to suspend the patrol runs. At least those along this coast.”
“Cerah, are you sure? Don’t you want as much notice as possible if Sejira comes under attack?”
“I know the attack is coming. There is no question about that. But I fear that even full patrol flights might suffer the same fate as Wert. I knew him, and I knew Ratha. He was a huge black dragon. For him to have been killed, apparently so easily and, judging by the short duration of the cloud phenomenon, so quickly, well, I believe it indicates that the beast that Surok rides probably was involved. If this dragon, or whatever it is, can dispatch as proud an animal as Ratha, then a few additional blue dragons aren’t going to present any problem for it. No, what I want is for all the dragons to muster here. They will still be called upon, but I want to avoid making them easy prey.”
“There are two flights patrolling currently.”
“Project to the riders. Call them back.”
“At once,” said Kindalei, and she walked to a point several yards from Cerah and then focused her thoughts to send the message to return, before moving on to attend to other matters.
“How did it go with your captains?” she asked Slurr, who had stood silent while Cerah spoke to Kindalei.
“Good. They are already restructuring into the battlegroups we discussed, designed to exploit the monsters’ weaknesses. When the attack comes, we will be far more efficient in meeting it.”
“Excellent. I’ve spoken to the wizards as well. They know what to expect, and they know what to focus upon when the time comes.” Her voice trailed off as she spoke the last words of the sentence. Slurr immediately recognized this as an indication that again his wife’s self-confidence was flickering dangerously.
“The time will come. A vision from Ma’uzzi isn’t like playing a hunch, Cerah. It’s the Greater Spark directing you. If you saw an attack upon Sejira, it will come.”
Cerah looked around at the tall fields of grass which grew everywhere, spreading out as far as the eye could see. The wind played along the tips of the blue-green blades, causing it to ripple like the ocean. The sun shone upon it brightly, feeding and nourishing it. The same breeze that moved the grass blew through her long brown hair.
“It is a beautiful day, Slurr. Could one so foul appear on a morning so fair?”
“Well, he’s certainly equally capable of showing up on lovely day as a lousy one,” he said. “And whenever he comes, we will be ready. Even if he were to appear right now, before the unit revamping is complete, I am confident that this army, bolstered by these wizards and all those riderless dragons that love you so, will be ready to give their all to defeat the demon.”
“Oh, my brave, wonderful Slurr. How good it is to have you with me again. Parnasus and Kern constantly speak words of encouragement to me, but when I hear them from you, it is as though they come wrapped in gold and diamonds! A treasure, literally, to which I cling as a miser hoards his riches.”
“I merely tell you what I know to be true. You have foreseen our victory many times. Everything the inner spark has shown you thus far has come to pass, has it not?”
“It has,” admitted Cerah. Except for one, she thought to herself. Knowing that her dreams had often showed her things yet to come, she remembered the morning she awoke in a cold sweat, after seeing the mountain called Quarada, home of the wizards’ sacred cave Onesperus, vanish in a blinding flash, just as Kamara had.
“Well then, enough,” said Slurr with an air of finality. “It will come to pass again. The demon will attack, and we will be ready. He will not know what hit him. Cerah, this could be the final battle!”
Cerah looked into her husband’s eyes. “Ma’uzzi has not shown me the end. I wish with all my strength that you are right, but that is not a conclusion I’m ready to make. We will see what happens when Surok appears. I feel for the first time that we have the advantage, but is it the advantage which will spell the end of this war? That I do not know.”
Slurr turned his attention to Tressida, who stood near the couple, listening to everything being said. “And what do you think, Your Majesty?” he asked her. “What does the golden queen think about the coming hostilities?”
“Tell him this,” said Tressida. “I do not know how soon this war will end. I do not know if we will prevail should Surok come at us with a large enough force. I do not know how we will overcome this dragon-thing that he rides. But I know the Chosen One has long been anticipated for this very moment. And I know I believe in Cerah, and I believe in her Rock.”
Cerah smiled and gently patted the dragon’s long neck. She repeated what Tressida said word for word, then added, “I am learning it is wise not to contradict her.”
Slurr wrapped one of his strong arms around the dragon’s neck, giving her a warm embrace. “I, too, know better than to doubt you, Tressida. Either of you, for that matter!” he said.
The dragon cooed and lowered her great horned head, rubbing first against Slurr and then Cerah. “It is good to know that you can both be taught,” she said to Cerah, causing her to break into a loud laugh. When she told Slurr, he too laug
hed heartily.
Standing waist-deep in the tall grass, Cerah looked out at the ocean, straining, as she seemed to do constantly of late, for any sign of anything in the sky or on the water that indicated the forces of evil were approaching. She saw nothing and, for a moment at least, allowed herself to accept the comfort she was being offered.
“What do you mean, ‘he does not see her’?” Zenk asked the Silestran who towered over him.
“Is it your hearing or your feeble understanding that falters, wizard?” the creature replied.
Even after months in their company, Zenk was still uncomfortable near Surok’s black captains. Ironically, the demon himself made Zenk far less uneasy. But Surok never spoke directly to the traitorous wizard. It was always through this particular Silestran that he communicated. Although one Silestran looked more or less like every other, Zenk could recognize him by the long scar which ran from the right temple, across his face and ending at the jawline on the left side of his fearsome visage. In his mind, Zenk had come to call him “Mouthpiece,” although he never spoke the name aloud. Silestra did not, in fact, have individual names. They merely referred to themselves as “This Silestran,” and all others as “That Silestran.” It made for some confusion, but Zenk realized early on that individual identity was not important to them. They all saw themselves as an extension of Surok’s will, as extra hands with which the demon could spread extra death.
“But Surok has been able to anticipate the wench’s every move,” Zenk insisted. “She has not made one maneuver that he has not known about almost as soon as she had completed the decision to make it.”
“That is not now the case,” the Mouthpiece said. “She has gone dark.”
Zenk considered this. It seemed foolish to hold out hope that Cerah was not, in fact, the Chosen One. He had both seen what she had done to the fallen assassin back on Melsa, and he had seen the effect this news had had on the Silestra. For some reason, the fact that she could speak “the killing word,” as they called it, seemed to trouble them measurably. What other explanation could there be?
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