by Robert Brady
When Jack began, however, the casters among them, Shela and Ancenon and Dilvesh, spun their heads toward him and all stepped back. The Green One was wide-eyed, the Uman-Chi clearly shocked, his mouth open like a ragged hole in his pale skin.
The Empress had already raised a hand, white with power.
Jack went right at her. “Benedicta tu in mulieribus,” he bellowed at her, pointing a finger at her breast, “et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus!”
The Andaran screamed and fell to her knees, her fists at her temples. Vedeen’s heart swelled for the power surging around her. She burst into tears.
Lupus pulled his sword and put his feet apart.
Jack stepped back from his and pulled a dagger from his belt. “Sancta Maria!” he cried out.
It was as if a giant had blown a great puff of air into the tent. It swelled at its walls, its roof expanded. Ropes meant to hold it to the ground and to the tent post started to twist against their braiding. The air pressure pounded the Druid’s temples – it was as if madness were made whole and then corked into a bottle with her.
Dilvesh put his thumbs together and pointed both fingers at Jack. He spoke a word of power, but nothing happened.
Thorn pulled his sword and stuck at the Man’s back, but the sword never touched Jack. It burned red and dropped to the ground, the woodsman swearing and holding his hands steaming before him.
“Mater Dei!” Jack cried out, taking a step toward Lupus.
The Emperor’s sword glowed white.
“Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc,” Jack continued, every word an accusation, spoken like a curse.
Vedeen’s blood burned in her ears. The Empress screamed, her fists at her temples. Ancenon fell to his knees, his hair wrapped up between his fingers, moaning. The Green One cried out in hoarse agony, his cheeks covered in tears, blood running from tiny tears at his hair line.
“—et in hora mortis nostrae!”
The tent collapsed, its pole lines popping in rapid succession, then expanded again. As one, the people under the tent were swept away screaming into its sides, as if scooped up by an invisible hand. The canvas ripped from its moorings at the top of the center post, sending the other tent posts and the whole collection of people and rope bouncing in a cocoon of canvas away from where it once stood. Only Jack remained standing with the dagger in his hand, beside the naked Druid still tied to the center pole.
Jack looked Vedeen right in the eyes.
“Amen,” he said.
* * *
The sky rumbled above them, black clouds gathered where there’d been blue sky before. Lightning struck the ground; horses both from the Theran Lancers and those they’d collected from the Andarans were screaming and rearing. Here and there she saw men and women either passed out or holding their heads, some beating the ground, some running. She could only assume these were the barely gifted among them.
Jack approached Vedeen with the dagger from his belt and cut the bonds at her wrists and ankles. Wolf Soldier guards were already sprinting to the spot where the pavilion had been.
Jack simply took her naked body over his shoulder and turned. He ran right at the charging Wolf Soldiers and informed them, “It’s an Uman-Chi magical attack—the Emperor’s down! Protect him and everyone in that canvas!”
The Wolf Soldiers responded without hesitation, turning to where the pavilion had landed, wrapped in a ball more than thirty yards from the center post. Vedeen could only hold on to Jack’s belt as he ran, waiting for the shout from the Emperor.
He ran right to his horse, Little Storm, already saddled and waiting. Hers was nowhere to be found. She whistled for the beast but Jack didn’t hesitate—he dumped her into his saddle and then leapt up behind her, pulling her into his lap. The old man was blowing like a whale, his beard wet with sweat and his face dotted.
“Hya! Little Storm!” he shouted. The stallion leapt from his picket, warriors trying to quiet the terrified horses scattering out of his way. Not far off, the white stallion Blizzard screamed a challenge after him.
Little Storm remained silent. Vedeen tried to right herself on the saddle, her breasts bobbing and her unprotected sex pressed uncomfortably against the saddle’s crest. Jack turned the huge stallion north as soon as he could clear the outer limits of the jess doonar where the Eldadorians camped, west of Hydro.
“Why are you saving me?” Vedeen insisted. Finally she’d decided to crawl backwards into his lap. Jack wrapped an arm around her middle, a hand under her left breast, to keep her in place.
“Because I’m not going to just sit there and watch that bastard kill somebody,” he said. “I made a promise before I got here. ‘Stand beside her, and give her what she needs. She cannot stand alone.’”
“What—to Raven?” Vedeen’s mind was racing. She heard no pursuit. Either the Emperor had been incapacitated, or he’d taken off in the wrong direction, neither of which seemed likely.
Lightening crashed into the ground to either side of them. Without warning the skies opened up in a deluge. If they could keep going then the Eldadorians couldn’t use their dogs to track them and Little Storm’s hoof prints would be lost. The rain soaked her hair and slicked her body. Jack tightened his grip on her.
The old man shook his head. “That’s what I thought at first, too,” he said. “But Raven never needed me to stand beside her. Raven needed me to let her be, so she could be who she was brought here to be, and not have me get in her way.”
“Then who—what?” Vedeen had thought she’d embraced her role as prophet for this new prophecy—now she heard something that didn’t fit in that template.
“You, Vedeen,” he said. “I thought it might be Lee, or Shela—but they don’t need me, they have protectors. I was brought here to be guardian protector, but I’m not here for the fight.”
She turned in the saddle to face him. She looked into the weathered face, the old, wise eyes. Jack had the look of a man who’d worked a long time at a hard task, and finally accomplished it.
“I’m here for the clean up after,” he said. “The war’s been fought, and the battle lost. I’m here to help you pick up the pieces.”
Little Storm pounded out across the plains, and finally to the road to Vol, slinging mud behind him. By then, Vedeen had no doubt they had eluded any pursuit, had there been any to begin with.
* * *
Glynn Escaroth had seen more changes in her life in the first eight months of the 95th year of the Fovean High Council, than she had in the 167 previous, combined.
From promising Caster to prophetic singer, to traded hostage, to hunted revolutionary, quickly to war lady and now, finally, to prisoner of those whom she had considered to be her allies.
She’d seen Angron Aurelias collect the mightiest army Fovea had ever seen, and then abandon it on the battlefield, herself with them. She’d seen that army fall apart under the bravest Man whose foot had ever touched Fovean soil, and seen him driven off by his own king, her protégé and their dog with them, but not her.
She’d been crushed under the platform that had fallen during the battle—a testament to the incompetence of Volkhydran craftsmanship. Her legs and left arm had been broken, and no healer had been able to affect her. The fingers of her left hand were lost, and her beautiful face scarred.
They carried her on a litter now, naked under a sheet, because she couldn’t be relied upon to control her own wastes. Outside of the city of Hydro, to the west of the invading Eldadorian army under the command of Lupus the Conqueror, she could barely cast the spells that would minimize the stink around her.
Chaheff had taught her, when she’d been a child of barely one hundred, that when all is lost, then do not press on, but start again. An Uman-Chi is long of life, and should never fear a new beginning. In that philosophy, Glynn did not try to find a way to fight with her allies, who intended to do nothing more than use her body to trade to her King for renewed support.
Glynn closed her eyes, and stilled her mind, an
d began the ritual meditation she’d had learned so long ago, to collect her energies, as if a neophyte.
Once again, she stood by a little stream, and once again she poured the water from a pitcher she carried, and symbolically cleared her thoughts by pouring them like fish into that stream, where a huge, white one with sharp teeth devoured them all, looking up at her hungrily for more.
In the past, she’d nourished the fish, and it had left her. This time she knew she needed a new beginning, and tried something so unorthodox that no other Caster likely would consider it.
“What do you need, you ugly, white monster?” she asked it.
Of course, the fish existed as an image in her mind. To speak to it was irrelevant—she would simply manufacture conversation and waste her time. Every beginning Caster was tempted down this path, and every mentor discouraged it.
So why not find out why? Certainly time was hers to waste.
The fish poked its head up out of the water, and it looked at her with oddly intelligent eyes. “It’s you who need, if you could know it,” it informed her.
Her own words, as she recognized them.
“And what do I need, monster?” she asked it, already believing this exercise to be irrelevant.
“You need to fly, of course,” he said. “You need to lift yourself up, and raise your being as a shield over Hydro, as you did with Outpost IX.”
She shook her head. “I haven’t the strength,” she said. “And should I try, then the Empress would be alerted to my presence immediately, and I’d be undone.”
“You are undone already,” the fish informed her. It seemed almost to be grinning now. “You missed all of the answers, Glynn Escaroth, because you never asked the questions. I need you not to question now, and then all will be answered.”
Those were not her sentiments, she knew. Now she found herself intrigued. These actions, she knew, would end this life. A hard gamble to make on something that probably wasn’t real.
“Perhaps you prefer the long life of a victim bound to a chair with a hole in the seat, to the short one of a hero,” the fish informed her. “In that case, by all means, hover on a board over a pile of your own excrement.”
That got her. She prepared herself, her insufficient energy, and once again she attached her lifeline to the little imperfection on her shoulder. She raised her being up above the city, became thin, strong, absorbing the energy of the sun and blanketing the city of Hydro.
She sensed the Empress immediately, and other wizards inside and out of the city. She sensed her so-called brother, who had betrayed her, and her King, within the city, who had done the same.
She lowered her being, and she embraced the city as a lover.
A familiar embrace, to be sure; an embrace no different than she had enjoyed with Outpost IX.
A thrill ran through her, even as she sensed the Empress’ attack coming. She caressed the towers, the spires, the walls, the buildings and the roads. She knew now—she had it.
By Eveave’s thin smile—she’d finally gotten it.
The question was not, “What to do to fight the One.” The song answered that already.
The question she had yet to ask was, “What were they to do, once defeated?”
Shela’s attack came accurate and merciless. The revelation so stunned Glynn that she barely even realized when Life left her body.
* * *
Geeguh Digatish had suffered a humiliating defeat to the Emperor and his dogs, and then another when what few warriors who had survived him were all informed the bounty now on Swamp Devil horns would be paid in the issue of Blizzard himself.
Andarans from all over Fovea were beating a hasty path to Toor, there to hunt Swamp Devils. Not only had that touched off a conflict with the Devils, it would likely lead to war with Toor. The Toorians were jealous of their jungles and had no love of horses.
Now he simply wanted to give his good-byes to Gharf Bendenson before he followed after them. He found the King at the litter where the crippled body of Glynn Escaroth had lain.
Instead of Glynn Escaroth, however, they found a long, white staff with a huge, green emerald woven into one end. He’d seen some sorceresses do this—take a large bole and, over generations, force it to grow around a precious gem, to create a staff that incorporated two facets of Earth. Such staffs could hold great power.
Certainly, if anyone could grow one, it would be an Uman-Chi. They would see the seedlings of trees grow to hundreds of feet in their long lifetimes.
“Where’s the witch?” Geeguh asked Gharf. The Volkhydran appeared uniquely irritated.
“Who knows?” he spat back. “Her kin left, your kin left, Henekh’s damn son failed us—why should I expect more from her?”
“I’ve never seen her with that staff,” Geeguh commented.
Gharf looked him in the eye. “You want it?” he asked. “I was about to break it—I’m told your people have some magic.”
That had to be sarcasm, Gharf knew. Everyone knew Shela Mordetur’s heritage. He picked up the staff—the wood had been polished so smooth it was hard to feel.
“I’ve come to tell—” Geeguh began, but Gharf waved him off.
“You’re leaving,” he grumbled. “Go. I’m for Vol, myself. Dragor’s going to lose his city, just like I did mine. This army’s going to break apart, and I don’t have enough Volkhydrans to lift the siege, so I’m sending emissaries to the High Council and trying to get another army to throw at him.”
Geeguh shook his head. “Five years ago, even last year, I would have said that alone would guarantee your success against him. Now…”
“Now, if I were you I would get my Andarans out of Toor and back to Chatoos and Talen, because when he’s done here, he’s for there next,” Gharf informed him. “And you’re going to need more than that pretty stick to save you.”
Geeguh, as least, didn’t have that many warriors to collect before he left.
* * *
“Well?” Lupus demanded of his wife.
Shela shook her head. She’d detected the Uman-Chi presence over Hydro, and she’d attacked it. She’d defeated it too easily to know much about it.
“Gone,” she said. She motioned with the back of her hand to wipe the sweat from her forehead, however there wasn’t any.
“Any luck with finding Jack or the Druid?” Lupus asked.
Shela shook her head. She couldn’t imagine what magic this ‘Jack’ had learned, however it had left the lot of them unconscious and, by the time she had been in any condition to pursue him, Jack and his new woman were gone.
Shela looked into Lupus’ eyes. She hadn’t wanted to kill the Druid, so she had to admit she wasn’t all that upset that Jack had spirited her away. Yonega Waya, however, had been furious, and Vulpe devastated. She knew he missed his adopted grandfather.
She’d lost all contact with Central Communications, as well as with the wizards in Eldador. She’d tried some others she knew in Kor, now Lupor, however even these were inaccessible. They’d sent messengers, but these would take weeks to respond. Meanwhile, her husband had a city to conquer.
She’d decided to keep the harpoon she’d found. It was a pretty thing, and it fit her hand well. Her husband had his ‘Sword of War.’ Maybe, now, she had this.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Right Question
Raven watched their dog sprint across the plain before them, hot on the trail of an animal that looked like a jackrabbit. The dog moved too slow to catch it, of course, but then, Raven wondered if that was the point.
Sometimes, it was just the chase. She could understand that.
She and Karl had traveled straight up the center of Volkhydro for four weeks, keeping low, keeping to themselves, only speaking to passersby when they had to, and then only as briefly as they could.
Then they’d heard Hydro had fallen to the Conqueror, and been renamed Hydrus, just as Volkha had been renamed Lupha.
“He’s a cheeky bastard, that one,” the old Volkhy
dran trader had informed them. “Seems he likes ‘is own name, as he names all th’ cities he conquers after himself.”
“All of them?” Raven asked. Two wasn’t really ‘all.’
The old Man nodded. “He’s got those two in Volkhydro, and that one to ‘is east, Lupor, and anudder in Dorkan known as Luparran, as used to be Katarran.”
Karl and Raven looked at each other, then back at the old Man. “He’s already struck into Dorkan?”
“Jes the one city,” the trader said, then turned his wrinkled face to spit. “But you can see as them Dorkans, they be mad as hornets and are massing their armies to meet the Daff Kanaar. Them’s who’s taken their city, a’ways.”
Karl spat over the trader’s on the ground. “So now Lupus is committed to a two front war?” he demanded.
The trader shrugged. “An’ it seems,” he said. “But news from Andoran issat every long-haired buck of ‘em has lit off fer Toor and the Swamp of Devils, t’ fetch a bounty of ten pair o’ Swamp Devil horns, an’ the first as does’ll get hisself one o’ Blizzard’s get. That means as mebbe Sental and Conflu might come t’ aid, if the High Council calls ‘em, but as the rest o’ Fovea got their own worries.”
Raven actually had to take a moment to translate that. In nine months here, she’d come to think in the language of Men, and to be conversant in Uman. Her native English had become like a song she’d sung once in her life, but was in the process of forgetting. “Still, if Lupus has spread himself so thin—” Karl asked.
The trader shook his head. “You don’t know what happened down south then, do ya’?”
Karl frowned. Raven perked up and answered for him, “In fact, we came from there,” she said. “We were from Medya.”
The trader nodded. “Then Life smile on you,” he said. “But then you saw—Lupus outnumbered, not only victorious on the field, but as crushin’ his enemies as he did. No one wants to take that on.”
“So they die,” Karl spat. “Rather than fight him, they sit and hide, and let him come to them.”