by Dragon Lance
“Uriona —”
“Silence. My pavilion has been erected at the deepest point in the channel. I will be safe there. And with great Zura to aid our endeavors, I shall enter the city in triumph before the next sunset.”
To forestall further discussion, she left him and walked back to the depths of the river. Coryphene watched her go, the frown back on his face. Though an accomplished spell-caster, the Protector considered himself first a warrior, a soldier who preferred to win his battles by strength and cunning. However, he was also completely devoted to his queen. No matter his misgivings, he must bend himself to her divine will.
He called up his lieutenants and sent word to every company in his army to collect in the channel west of the city. The gathering of the Dargonesti was complete by sunrise, but since it took place underwater, no one in Silvanost had any inkling of it.
*
That morning, word of the Speaker’s grievous injury spread, casting a pall over the city. Despite their victory at the west wall, the Silvanesti had lost fully a third of their trained warriors. Barely two thousand fighters remained, though the ranks were being augmented by volunteers. These recruits were brave, but they were ill-matched against Coryphene’s veterans.
While Vixa slept, Gundabyr met with Marshal Samcadaris and other high-ranking Silvanesti officers. The marshal’s greatest fear was that the Dargonesti would launch serious attacks simultaneously at more than one point. He no longer had enough troops to cover multiple fronts.
“What about the levies?” asked the dwarf. “Shouldn’t they be close by now?”
“Some should. They were to gather at Ilist Glade,” said Samcadaris. “The levies from the nearer provinces should already be there.”
“Then let’s send word!”
“The city is surrounded,” objected a Silvanesti colonel named Eriscodera. “How can we get to the far shore without being attacked?”
“The blueskins don’t move during the day, remember? I say we send a small band across at high noon to find the waiting levies and bring them back, quicker than quicksilver.”
Samcadaris rubbed his pointed chin. “There is something in what Master Gundabyr proposes, only I would be even bolder than he. Go now, I say, and don’t wait for noon.”
He chose Colonel Eriscodera to lead the party. “Take twelve cavalry with you. Ride as though the Dragonqueen herself is after you, and bring back the levies that are already assembled.” He smote his thigh with his fist. “Make all the noise you want on your return. Let the Dargonesti think a mighty army is coming to terminate the siege of Silvanost!”
“May I go, too?” asked Gundabyr. “With this hurt wing of mine, I’m not much good in a fight, but I want to do whatever I can to stop the blueskins.”
“What do you say, Colonel?”
“An outlander riding with the cavalry of Silvanost?” said Eriscodera, eyeing the dwarf uncertainly. “I suppose it may serve to drive home how desperate things are.”
“Kind of you to say so,” Gundabyr remarked sourly.
“Master Gundabyr is brave and resourceful,” Samcadaris said. “And he knows the enemy better than any of us. I do you an honor, Colonel, by sending him with you.”
Eriscodera saluted smartly and departed with the dwarf. They went directly to the cavalry headquarters, Gundabyr not even taking time to have breakfast.
Chapter 23
BY SWORD AND SPELL
Ragged and bloodied, Vixa rested in a small chamber in the Quinari Palace. Once her shoulder had been bandaged, she simply found the nearest couch and dropped down on it. The Silvanesti quickly tired of whispering about her in the corridor. She slept, deeply and dreamlessly.
She awoke suddenly, sitting bolt upright on her couch. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep, but the sun was up, its rays slanting in the large windows on the palace’s east facade. All was silent. The usual sounds – servants’ soft voices, footsteps whispering on carpet – were absent. Yet, Vixa had the distinct impression she’d been awakened by a loud noise.
Slowly, her bandaged shoulder aching and stiff, Vixa got to her feet. Mud and blood had dried on her boots, flaking off with every step. She buckled on her borrowed sword and encountered no one as she walked through the sun-bright palace rooms. The audience hall was empty as well.
Where was everyone? she wondered. The streets outside the palace were vacant as well – not so much as a cat showed itself. The air fairly pulsed with power, the harnessed magic of the entire priesthood of Silvanost. It overlaid the city like a wooly blanket. And there was something more. A steady hum, like the sound of an enormous beehive, filled the air. It came from nowhere and everywhere. Vixa felt a pang of fear. She had to know what was happening.
She jogged away from the palace, toward Pine Tree Gate, which guarded the western entrance to the city. The humming grew louder, funneled through the high canyons of houses and towers. Disoriented, she made several wrong turns into dead-end streets, but the noise steadily increased as she made her way west.
In the square above Pine Tree Gate, Vixa ran smack into a mob of Silvanesti. They were ordinary folk, standing side by side and holding the hands of their neighbors. The elven chain looped back and forth through the square and disappeared down the many side streets. All the elves had their eyes closed, their lips parted slightly. They were humming.
“What is it?” Vixa demanded. “What’s happened?”
The elves did not answer, but held their places and hummed. Vixa grabbed the last one in line. As her hand closed around his arm, she felt a shock go through her. An image flashed across her mind’s eye: the Thon-Thalas, wrapped from shore to shore in dense, white cloud. The cloud billowed and roiled, and gray shapes stirred inside. Though vague, they were somehow threatening —
She yanked her hand free and staggered backward. Vixa knew immediately what she’d seen. Through the eyes of thousands of Silvanesti, the image of the cloud was vivid and terrifying. Coryphene, or Uriona, had summoned up the strange white fog that had first carried Evenstar away from land. But why? What would it do now? And why were the people of Silvanost behaving so oddly?
The Qualinesti princess shouldered through the lines, ducking under linked hands until she reached the base of the city wall near Pine Tree Gate. The sound of humming grated on her nerves and caused an ache in her head. Atop the wall she saw Silvanesti warriors moving about and hurried to join them. Two score young elves, newly pressed into the depleted ranks of the Speaker’s host, stood behind the crenelations that protected the parapet.
“Who commands here?” Vixa asked.
The elves were staring out toward the river. Without turning, a spear-armed youth replied, “Marshal Samcadaris, lady. He passed here an hour ago.”
Frowning, Vixa followed the direction of his rapt gaze. Her frown became an expression of shock. The shrinking Thon-Thalas was completely obscured by a sea of white cloud. The cloud stretched upstream and down as far as Vixa could see and overlapped the banks by several yards. The top of the cloud was level with the wall upon which she stood, and it looked as solid.
“When did this fog come up?” she demanded.
The spear-carrier replied, “At sunrise. It has been thickening steadily ever since.”
“Why do the people stand together humming?”
“It is the will of the Speaker, lady. The clerics of the high gods began to grow weak and fell as the mist closed in. The Speaker summoned the people to reinforce the magic.”
Vixa shook her head as she looked back toward the city, at the rows and rows of humming Silvanesti. Of course, they weren’t actually humming. The sound was in fact the rapid chanting of thousands upon thousands of Silvanesti voices. She shivered, and gooseflesh rose on her arms. The focused power of these eastern elves sent tingles racing along her spine.
Thunder rumbled overhead. Directly above the sea of snow-white cloud, a long serpent of blue-black thunder-heads coalesced rapidly in the still air. Lightning flashed inside the dark mass.
“Looks as though we’ll get wet today,” Vixa noted. The recruits divided their anxious gazes between the white fog bank and the gathering storm.
“Lady, what shall we do?” asked the spear-carrier, fear tingeing his words.
“Are you afraid?” He nodded, and the others echoed his gesture. Vixa said firmly, “Good. Fear will put iron in your arm and fire in your belly. Then we shall win.”
She walked on, past tired veterans and green recruits pressed into service to fill out their ranks. As she went by them, the Qualinesti princess offered low-voiced advice and encouragement in equal portions. Though not a Silvanesti, she still had two thousand years of royal blood in her veins. Her calm, expert manner garnered respect from the veterans and brought a measure of comfort to the frightened newcomers.
Vixa felt a fat raindrop strike her cheek. It ran down to the corner of her mouth, and she tasted salt. She stopped and looked up. The thunderclouds had expanded, filling the sky overhead. Several more drops landed on her face. They were salty as well.
The raindrops were made of seawater!
Hitching up her sword belt, she jogged to the tower ahead of her. On the open summit she found Samcadaris with most of his corps of dismounted cavalry.
“Marshal! It’s Vixa Ambrodel!”
He waved to his troopers to let her through. Rain was falling more regularly now. A boom of thunder rolled over the high tower. Samcadaris was standing on a wooden platform that allowed him to see over the crenelation. Vixa climbed up beside him.
“Where have you been?” he inquired.
“Asleep in the palace. I nearly missed everything!”
Thunder crashed once more, and the heavens opened up. A torrent of salty rain fell on Silvanost. “You may wish you had missed this!” Samcadaris shouted over the deluge and thunder.
“Coryphene summoned this rain to sustain his army!”
The marshal nodded. “I have only a few thousand regulars left. The rest are mere children, artisans, and idlers scraped up and given arms. I pray Eriscodera and your dwarven friend get back in time.”
“Gundabyr? Where’s he gone?”
“They sneaked across the river before dawn to round up what militia had already gathered. If reinforcements don’t arrive soon, I doubt we can hold the city.”
Weird bleating erupted from various points along the length of the white cloud obscuring the river. The Dargonesti were blowing on conch shells. The sound lifted the hairs at the nape of Vixa’s neck, but she realized the noise was probably meant to be practical rather than theatrical. It was likely that Coryphene’s warriors couldn’t see through the fog either. The noises were probably signals from the different commands.
A Silvanesti shouted from the wall. “They’re coming!”
“Stand to arms,” said Samcadaris sharply. Weapons rattled as the order was relayed along the city wall. “Archers, stand ready.”
“Sir,” said an officer at the marshal’s elbow, “the archers have only one quiver left per elf.”
“Then order them not to miss,” was the grim reply.
Vixa wiped salt rain from her eyes and asked, “Where do you want me, Marshal?”
“Royalty may choose their own ground, lady.” He smiled wanly. “And there are any number of weak areas on the wall. However, there” – he pointed at a spot farther along the battlement – “halfway between this watchtower and Pine Tree Gate, that’s our nearest weakness.”
She nodded briskly. “Give me twenty stout fighters, and I’ll hold the wall against all comers!”
He agreed. Vixa and her picked squad ran down the steps from the watchtower to the place he’d indicated on the battlement. Halfway between Samcadaris’s watchtower and Pine Tree Gate she halted her band. Salty rainwater pooled on the stone parapet, pouring off the wall through small openings in the crenelations. Vixa shucked her sodden cloak. The call of the Dargonesti conch shells abruptly ceased.
Despite the pounding rain, thick tentacles of white fog detached themselves from the main mass of cloud and crept up toward the battlements. Vixa found them uncomfortably similar to the massive limbs of the kraken, which had wrought such havoc on the fortress of Thonbec.
Under the astonished eyes of the Silvanesti, these foggy tentacles gripped the smooth stone walls just beneath the level of the parapet. They thickened and solidified. Now the rain splashed off their hardened surfaces and streamed down their inclined length. One elven warrior, smitten with curiosity, broke ranks and approached the odd growths. An instant later, he toppled from the wall, riddled with arrows.
Vixa cried out as more arrows flickered up from the fog bank. With shrill shouts, Dimernesti mercenaries, wielding captured Silvanesti bows, swarmed out of the mist. They ran up the solid tendril of fog to the top of the city wall.
“Lock shields!” Vixa commanded. Her band of hand-picked warriors obeyed just as a hail of arrows raked them. “Swords out! Attack!”
They rushed the lightly armed Dimernesti and in short order pushed them back over the crenelations. All along the wall, sea elves mounted to the parapet on pathways of solidified vapor.
“We must disrupt their assault,” Vixa said quickly. “All of you! If you can shoulder a spear or swing a sword, follow me!”
The Qualinesti princess swallowed hard and leapt through a crenel toward the magical fog ramp. She wondered if it would support anyone, or only Coryphene’s chosen. Her feet landed on a surface hard as marble. She looked back. Her twenty warriors were with her. The other Silvanesti stood watching.
“What are you waiting for? The enemy is gaining the wall! Come on!” She plunged down the ramp and into the fog below. The lack of visibility was disorienting, but Vixa found the going easier if she didn’t worry about where her feet fell. She concentrated on listening for the enemy and on the sounds of the Silvanesti behind her.
Soon the brown mud of the riverbank appeared ahead. Vixa was vastly relieved when her feet splashed in the diminished Thon-Thalas.
The warriors arrived behind her. “Where now, lady?” one asked.
She turned. The city above was lost in the wall of white cloud, and none of them could see more than a few feet in front of their noses. Not even elven eyes could penetrate this magical fog bank. However, Vixa quickly discovered that the fog, though it veiled their eyes, did not affect their ears. She could hear the battle going on behind and above them. Ahead, Dargonesti were running to the fight, their wide, bare feet slapping loudly in the mud. The fog also seemed to act as a shield against the deluge of rain. Only a few raindrops splashed against Vixa’s armor. She pointed with her sword to the right.
“That way,” she said firmly. “The enemy seems to be coming from that direction.”
They formed in a close column of twos. Some thirty volunteers had followed Vixa and her original band, making a total of fifty warriors under her command. Surrounded though they were by several thousand Dargonesti, Vixa was unafraid. The fog was a two-edged weapon. It would screen them from Coryphene’s warriors just as well as it hid the sea elves from the Silvanesti.
Silently, Vixa and the Silvanesti made their way through the mist. Now and then, small groups of Dargonesti ran past, unaware. They also came upon sea elves who had crawled away from the city and died. Even as they tried to follow the edge of the river, it dwindled before them. Vixa called a halt when an odd odor reached her nostrils. At first sweet, then somehow sour and disagreeable, the odor was amazingly familiar. Where had she smelled it before?
Incense! It was the sour-sweet scent that had filled the temple level of Urione. The Dargonesti priests responsible for the strange fog and salty rain must be near.
She led her contingent of Silvanesti forward at a slower pace. To the left she spied a group of tall figures, standing close together. Whipping her sword in a circle overhead, Vixa signaled the attack.
They charged the enemy. Instead of evil priests, they found a band of Dargonesti warriors trying to slake their thirst in the rapidly shrinking river. Th
e sight of the attacking Silvanesti sent the sea elves leaping for their spears, which they’d left driven into the mud nearby.
A melee ensued. Vixa was unsure how many of the foe they’d flushed, but attack was their only option. The Silvanesti spread out, trying to envelope the sea elves. Unencumbered and unprotected by shield or helmet, Vixa eluded Dargonesti spear thrusts while striking home again and again with her sword. Panting from lack of water, the Dargonesti gave ground. In spite of the salt rain, the sea elves appeared to be in desperate straits.
Staggering with fatigue, one of the Dargonesti jabbed at Vixa. She dodged, spun, and drove her blade into his ribs. This exchange had taken her a short distance from the rest of her command, and when her opponent fell, she found herself looking at a circle of perhaps twenty gray-robed Dargonesti priests, facing inward, a seething cauldron in their midst. Sprigs of smoldering incense were woven into their long jade hair. The odor of incense was overwhelming, but above it rose the smell of death and decay. These were the undead priests of Zura.
“Silvanesti, to me!” Vixa shouted. “Slay the priests and break their spells!”
The fight was over in minutes. The mages were so engrossed in their incantation, they did not attempt to flee or fight back. Even when confronted by sword-wielding enemy, the faces of the Shades of Zura remained expressionless and devoid of life.
When the slaughter was done, Vixa stood with the remaining Silvanesti soldiers, panting with exertion.
“This is no work for warriors,” muttered one of the Silvanesti. “Slaying unarmed clerics!”
“They were armed more mightily than any of us,” Vixa retorted. She bent over, her hands resting on her knees, and panted. “By their spells Silvanost could be lost.”
From her bent position, Vixa saw the green Dargonesti blood staining the muddy water at her feet. She also noticed something else – she could see her own shadow. Vixa stood erect and looked at the sky. The mist was thinning. A freshening wind and the heat of the sun were shredding the evil fog. With the priests of Zura dead, their conjurations were being dispersed by the living force of Silvanost’s own clerics.