by David Drake
"I did that while I was dreaming?" Ansalem said, turning to face the others again.
"You formed one nexus," Tenoctris said. "I think your acolytes may have multiplied it in the fashion you see; but yes, it was your work."
"While I was dreaming!" the wizard repeated in a tone of delight. "Why, I don't think anyone else could possibly have done that. Not from a spell of encystment!"
"But can you undo it?" Tenoctris said. She spoke quietly and firmly, as though she were dealing with a child. "It's a great danger to other planes so long as it remains. A danger to all other planes."
"Yes, yes, it would be," Ansalem said, contrite again. "I'm so sorry, I never meant...."
His eyes suddenly focused on Dalar. "Why, my goodness," he said, losing the thread of his previous thought. "You're of the Rokonar, are you not? I didn't realize any of your folk had survived the catastrophe of the Third Age."
Garric saw Sharina wince. The bird merely nodded and said, "I am a warrior of the Rokonar, yes. I am far from my land and people, and I fear that I will never see my home again."
"Oh, sending you home isn't any trouble," Ansalem said. His surprise verged on irritation at the thought that he couldn't accomplish a task that seemed simple to him. "Is that what you want? I'll do that before I dissolve the nexi."
The sudden sharp focus returned to the wizard's face. He looked at Tenoctris. "That is... will it be all right if I do that? I've made such terrible mistakes, I know."
Tenoctris glanced at Sharina. Sharina hugged Dalar and stepped away.
"The Dragon told me that my friends and I would gain by my service to him," she said. "I would gain greatly if you helped Dalar, who kept me alive on a long journey."
"I could have had no better master than you, Sharina," the bird said, bowing low and rising. "But yes, I would like to return home."
"We'd all be indebted to you for that, Lord Ansalem," Tenoctris said formally. "And for removing the weight of this nexus from our world."
"Yes, yes, of course," Ansalem said with a flash of peevishness. His face fell instantly. "Oh, I'm sorry," he went on. "I know it's all my fault. I'll take care of it as soon as you leave."
He frowned. "You do want to leave, don't you? Though if any of you would care to stay...?"
"No," said Garric, breathing out a great sigh of relief. "We really want to return to our own world."
More than I could possibly have guessed, he thought, before spending the better part of a day in this Paradise become Hell.
"Lord Attaper," he called through the shattered screen. "Alert the troops for an immediate return to Valles!"
"It's dawn in Valles," Liane said as they approached the end of the bridge. "I've never been so glad to see clean light."
"Nor me," Garric said, feeling his heart lift at the sight. "Though I'm not going to cheer until I actually set foot on--"
Others were less inhibited. Chalcus, walking with Ilna and the child behind the leading section of javelin men, pointed his sword to the eastern horizon. "The sun!" he shouted.
Before the words were more than out of his mouth, a dozen throats echoed them. Instants later all the soldiers were shouting, the Blood Eagles no less than the skirmishers.
Attaper looked furious. Garric caught his eye, smiled, and cried, "The sun!" Attaper managed a lopsided grin.
Garric knew that Waldron would have drawn up the Royal Army along the streets facing the bridge, but the citizens packing roofs and balconies overlooking the troops were a surprise. When they heard the troops shouting, they too began to cheer hesitantly.
"They think we're cheering because we've won," Garric said, glancing from Liane on his left side to Sharina on his right. "They don't know we're just glad to have survived."
"We have won, Garric," said Cashel, beside Sharina and carrying Tenoctris in the crook of his right arm. Attaper had started to detail a pair of soldiers to build the wizard a litter from spearshafts and a cloak, but Cashel wouldn't hear of it. "Isn't that right, Tenoctris?"
"Yes, I think we did," she said, looking wan from her ordeal but satisfied nonetheless. Garric had to watch Tenoctris' lips to pick out the words over the cheering, though her smile would have been information enough. "We accomplished what we set out to do; or at any rate when Ansalem carries through, we will have."
Garric's hobnails clashed on the stone apron of the Old Kingdom bridge; the bridge of wood and masonry, not wizardlight. He drew his sword and waved it overhead. "The Isles!" he shouted. "To the kingdom and all her citizens!"
The cheers were as joyous as birdsong to ears returned from Klestis. Garric hugged Liane. If he didn't already have a bare blade in his hand, he'd have thrown her in the air like the climactic turn of the Harvest Dance.
Lord Waldron was at the head of the apron, in the midst of his staff and a dozen other noblemen. His face was as grim as a perched falcon's, showing neither fear nor hope. It was the face of the man who'd stood beside King Valence at the Stone Wall, certain the day was lost but untouched by the knowledge.
King Valence--the king's army--had ultimately won at the Stone Wall, just as Garric and his friends had succeeded in Klestis; but there were worse folk to have on your side than pessimists who'd die before they quit. Garric and the king inside his mind felt a sudden rush of affection for the old warrior.
Attaper hadn't let Garric be the last out of Klestis as he'd wanted to be. A final squad of Blood Eagles jogged off the bridge, bellowing and drumming their spears against their shield bosses. The crowd, even the ordered ranks of the army, gasped in a mixture of hope and terror.
Garric turned. The bridge sparkled like an outline of falling snow. Blue light that moments ago had been more solid than the limestone apron collapsed in on itself. Garric could see each bit rotating away in a direction that had nothing to do with ordinary distance.
The River Beltis, dark with silt and swollen from rainfall in the highlands, rolled toward the Inner Sea. The current roughened over the remains of the pier which once supported the Old Kingdom bridge.
Other than the ripples, the water and the air above it were empty. Garric slammed his sword home in its sheath.
"I suspect what's left of Klestis stands on the coast of Cordin again," Tenoctris said. "But I wonder what Ansalem himself will do...."
After a dignified hesitation, Waldron and the other members of the council strode toward Garric. Lord Tadai remained where he'd been waiting, in discussion with Ilna. Garric was briefly surprised to see Chalcus several steps away, entertaining Merota by making a gold piece vanish and reappear from first the girl's ear, then her nose.
"Your friend doesn't need help to make her point," Carus noted with a grin. "And when she's in the mood she is now, a wise man keeps his distance."
Cashel set Tenoctris down but stood with his staff crossways to prevent well-wishers from trampling her and Sharina. Garric laughed and stepped with Liane behind the same protection. People shouted questions and congratulations--and Chancellor Royhas was saying something about the Earl of Sandrakkan.
That would wait. Sandrakkan was a threat, and there would be other threats worse than Sandrakkan before the kingdom was safe; but for today, they could all wait.
"The Kingdom of the Isles!" Garric shouted to the people, to his people. "May she stand forever in peace!"
"And may her rulers always be willing to stand against the enemies of that peace," King Carus shouted down the ages. "As her ruler stands today!"
THE END