by Hugh Cook
Ohio had agreed readily enough that they could use him as a hostage to try and get his brother Menator to negotiate with them. Ohio had been tied up and put on a horse which had been led out onto some open ground in front of Lake Ouija.
A small party, including Hearst and Watashi, had waited to receive an equally small delegation from Androlmarphos, which had included Menator. The pirate commander had refused to make any bargain with the people from the Harvest Plains, but, thinking the threat to Ohio's life was real, had tried to rescue him, even though there had been bad blood between them in the past.
In a short fight, Menator and most of his party had been killed; Ohio had died when the horse he was seated on had reared, throwing him to the ground. With his hands tied, he had landed heavily, breaking his neck.
Hearst was now forced to use the death-stone. He did not have time to recapture Androlmarphos by siege: he had to march Farfalla's army east to defend Selzirk against the invaders from the Rice Empire. As it was, he
calculated they would barely reach Selzirk in time. 'Any smoke yet?' said Hearst. 'Nothing,' said Miphon.
Hearst wondered where Alish was at that moment -and what he was thinking. Did Alish suspect the death-stone was about to be used against him?
'How is the messenger?' said Hearst.
'The messenger?'
'The one from the south who brought the message about the army from the Rice Empire. I wanted you to have a look at his wound.'
'He died before I could see him.'
'Oh,' said Hearst.
So that was another death to take into account. One amongst many. Now Hearst was going to use the death-stone: but that in itself should not produce too many casualties, for he had calculated that, from where he stood, its effects should extend just far enough to destroy part of the city walls.
'Green smoke,' said Miphon.
There was indeed green smoke rising in the east. Ships anchored upriver would soon attack, expecting to find the walls of Androlmarphos breached. Hearst could have sheltered thousands of men in the green and red bottles, but, as no more than fifty men could be taken in or out of one of the bottles at a time, the fastest way to launch a mass assault on the city was by ship.
'Take your position,' said Hearst.
•Miphon sat cross-legged on the hard dry ground at Hearst's feet.
Hearst took the death-stone from a leather bag. The stone egg was cool. Heavy. He raised it above his head. The shadow of a buzzard flickered over the ground. The death-stone kicked in his hand like a human heart. He cried out, his battle-hoarse voice naming the Words. The death-stone warmed in his hand. His heart faltered, trembled, kicked three times in an odd, irregular rhythm.
There was a grinding sound in the sky, which grew steadily stronger.
As Hearst watched, the few pebbles he could see on the dry earth began to tremble as the grinding sound grew louder. In a moment of hallucinatory clarity, he remembered the desperate moments at Ep Pass - rocks shifting underfoot as he fled from Heenmor, his hands and face stinging from burns, his nostrils filled with the stench of burnt leather, his eyes watering from smoke.
Now, as he watched - the death-stone heavy in his hand, his arm trembling - the little pebbles, shape-shifting, began to move. Like insects. The air was turning grey. The ground ... the ground, outside a small circle he could have spanned with outstretched arms, was turning grey. As the ground turned to stone, the mobilised pebbles skittered across its surface like raindrops wind-driven across a pane of glass.
The air was turning grey.
And the death-stone -
'The death-stone's getting cold,' said Hearst. His voice sounded hollow, echoed back to him as if they were standing in a cave. 'Hold it,' said Miphon.
Hearst tried to look out across the countryside to see what was happening. He saw a buzzard in the sky, saw it suddenly stall - as if hit by an arrow. Then fall. Crashing down to earth with no flap of feathers: a stonemade bird falling like a rock. Beyond that, everything was blurred and obscured, like a landscape seen through heavy rain.
The death-stone was now frost-cold in his hand.
Hearst knew the grey death was now sweeping outwards almost as fast as a man can run. He remembered Looming Forest, remembered the wizard Garash treading on a stonemade face, breaking the stone curve of an eye to reveal an eyesocket empty but for a bit of stone the size of a pea. He remembered Prince Comedo's toy - a survivor living on with
stonemade hands and mutilating injuries to the legs and face.
And he remembered, again, Ep Pass - a raft and its crew freezing to stone then sinking. The wizard Phyphor. the big bone in his thigh shattered by a rock. A skin of stone forming on the river's surface, then breaking under its own weight and sinking. And later, months later . . . stonemade bodies of a defeated army that had tried to defend Runcorn against Elkor Alish.
'Rest,' said Miphon.
Hearst lowered the death-stone.
His arm was shaking.
The air was clearing now, sunlight sharpening to shadows, and he could see across a grey stonemade plain to Androlmarphos. As he watched, the walls appeared to dissolve as the stones they were made of took advantage of their freedom.
'The pyramid!' said Miphon.
And Hearst saw the pyramid to the east was similarly dissolving. He heard a strange sound, reminiscent of shattering ice. Was it from the pyramid? No - it was the skimrock surface of the rivers breaking up. The air was absolutely dry, like the freeze-dried air of winter in the Cold West, and sounds carried with precision for great distances. He heard a distant, inarticulate roar, like the far-off sound of surf beating against a beach or ice-cliffs breaking away from a glacier undermined by the sea.
'What's that noise?' said Hearst.
'The rocks,' said Miphon. 'Shouting.'
The death-stone still felt cold in Hearst's hand. So much power - which any coward or criminal could use. given the chance. Appalling wars could be fought by men who would never be faced with the necessity of meeting their enemies face to face. Given such weapons, war could become, for the victors, an abstraction, a game - they would be like gods, removed from the realities of hand-to-hand combat. They would never have to make the true warrior's commitment to death, but
they, standing at the centre of a circle of sanitary destruction, would wreck entire civilizations.
'I'm going to get the first batch of soldiers,' said Miphon. 'Stand clear.'
He turned the ring on his finger, disappearing into the green bottle. Hearst walked out of the circle of soil onto the plain of stone, leaving the green bottle behind, so the ground was clear for the first batch of soldiers Miphon would bring out.
Abruptly, the stonemade ground in front of him began to crack and split, like ice breaking up when a heavy man steps on it. But the centre of this disruption was twenty paces in front of him, and there was nobody in sight. For a moment he imagined that something gigantic yet invisible was standing on the plain of stone, some avenging hell-fiend or star-giant.
Then the ground erupted upwards.
A rock lurched free of the clutching earth. It was large as a ship. And it roared. A funnelling vortex shape-shifted to a thunder-black mouth, lipless gash grinding as it moved. Hearst staggered backwards, stumbled, fell.
And the monster lurched toward him.
Hearst held up the death-stone, his last resort. And the monster stalled, flinched, shied away, then fled, bellowing, running like a cockroach from flame.
Elsewhere, more rocks were breaking free from the earth. Suddenly fifty men materialised around the green bottle - Miphon and the first batch of soldiers.
'Miphon, no more soldiers!' shouted Hearst. 'Stay! We need you to command the rocks!'
They advanced, Miphon driving rocks before them.
As they approached Androlmarphos, ships that had come down the river began to disembark Farfalla's army. Organising the rocks into an arrow-head formation, Miphon urged them forward, and, as the monsters smashed into the
city, Hearst knew that Alish's army was doomed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Morgan Hearst opened his eyes and saw a dragon watching him. 'Hello,' said Hearst.
The dragon said nothing, but watched him, eyes unblinking. He could not outstare it. His head hurt too much. Hoping for a few mouthfuls of wine, he reached for the leather bottle that lay beside the bed - but it was empty.
'By the balls of hell,' muttered Hearst.
The woman in bed beside him moved, and murmured something as she dreamed away the last of her sleep. Hearst eased back the coverlet, exposing bum and back: Could he rouse himself to desire again? No: he had debauched himself so thoroughly by now that all his appetites were satiated.
And he had a headache. A bad one.
His mouth, which was dry, tasted foul, as if a stale sock full of dead blowflies had been sitting in it for a couple of weeks.
And his eyes winced from the light.
He had, in short, a hangover. Not the worst one of his life - he did, after all, finally manage to drag himself out of bed - but a pretty bad one.
He dressed, slowly.
The dragon, cunning as a cat, watched him, its eyes unblinking. The stare irritated Hearst: he reached up and tore the banner down from the wall, bunched it up and threw it into one corner of the room. Then he opened the shutters, letting in dazzling morning sunlight. A mistake! He flinched as the light chiseled into his eyes.
'Ahyak Rovac,' croaked Hearst.
Any expert on frogs would, from that croak, have diagnosed him as being rather sick.
He found a big stone jar full of water, dunked his head in it, then, without bothering to surface, drank in big, labouring gulps. Then threw up his head and gasped for air.
He felt a little better.
He felt, to be precise, like a man of seventy who has been dead for a day and a half, which was an improvement on feeling like a man of a thousand and three years who has been dead for the better part of a century.
'I'll never drink again, not ever,' muttered Hearst. Then, yielding to the promptings of a certain innate caution: 'Or not without provocation.'
He found that, by now, he could just about endure the light coming in through the window.
From this room, high in Farfalla's palace, Hearst could look out over the city of Selzirk. The streets were as quiet as the mouse the cat played with yesterday, which did not surprise him. Overjoyed by the defeat of the invaders, by the liberation of Androlmarphos and by the news that the army from the Rice Empire had turned back rather than contend against Morgan Hearst and the death-stone, the people of Selzirk had held a festival.
Hearst had thought that, after his years of war and travel, nothing could have surprised him - but never before had he seen an entire city participate in a six-day orgy. He thought it was probably over by now: for one thing, there was hardly a barrel of wine left in the whole city.
On a big table by the window were heaps of assorted rubbish: books, charts, battle-plans, orange peel, dirty clothes, weapons, faded garlands, wilted flowers, a torn silk dress - did he really remember what he remembered, or was he only imagining it? - remnants of
Alish's blood-red battle-standard, a copper bracelet, a silver bangle, a scattering of walnuts.
Hearst scooped up the nuts then rummaged the rubbish till he had recovered some cold chicken and half an apple, brown from exposure to the air but still edible.
As Hearst ate, he fingered a multi-faceted black gem inside which a red flame twisted, continually moving and changing shape as if trying to escape. He had found it the day after the defeat of Alish's army which, unable to defend Androlmarphos against walking rocks, had fled the city.
During bitter confused fighting on the quays of Androlmarphos, many rocks, escaping Miphon's control, had gone reeling into the water. There had been blood on Hearst's sword then: he had been in the thick of the fighting. It had seemed, once, that he would meet Alish face to face - then Alish had been wounded by an arrow, and dragged to safety by his comrades.
The pirates had succeeded in getting only five ships to sea. Hearst had wanted to let them go, but seven of the ships captured in the battle on the quays had set out before he could gain control of the confusion. In an eighth ship, Hearst had followed.
At sea, it had seemed the better seamanship of the pirates must take them to safety. Then they had passed a pod of whales. Miphon had used his powers of control to make the whales attack Elkor Alish's ships, with devastating results.
With three ships sunk, Hearst had tried to persuade Miphon to let the others escape. But Miphon, intoxicated by success - and well Hearst knew that enthusiasm -had refused. Hearst had broken Miphon's concentration by throwing a bucket of seawater over him, and had then signalled the ships under his command to withdraw toward Androlmarphos, leaving Alish's surviving ships to pick up the men from the craft sunk by whales.
So Alish, as far as Hearst knew, had escaped. Hearst had let him go. And why not? Alish could do little damage now. Under Alish's leadership, his troops had lost the city of Androlmarphos and the fleet they had used to attack it; most of the men of his command were dead or had been taken prisoner. It was not the kind of record that would attract many enthusiastic followers.
All things considered, nobody had gained anything from the struggle for Androlmarphos. Men, ships and horses had been destroyed, together with the greater part of the city's eastern walls, and much good arable land outside the city was now sheeted over with stone. However, Hearst had obtained this trophy - the multi-faceted black gem with flame dancing inside it.
He had found it when inspecting the ruins of the pyramid east of Androlmarphos; it had been lying beside the golden coffin of the wizard emperor who had been buried there. Miphon had named the gem for what it was: a key to the tower of Ebber. Farfalla had insisted that it be thrown away, saying it was known that the tower was haunted by fearful danger; Hearst had kept the gem, mostly because his pride told him he had yielded to Farfalla's judgment too many times already.
He finished his meagre meal and left his quarters. In the rooms and corridors of Farfalla's palace, servants were cleaning up, repairing the damage done by the festivities. He was right: the holiday was over. And Hearst knew that soon he must go south, bearing the death-stone to the Castle of Controlling power. Having used it himself, he felt personally responsible for seeing that it was decently laid to rest.
He decided that today his first job would be to see how the wounded were faring. All had been transported to Selzirk in the red bottle or the green, and Miphon was supervising their welfare. Miphon would not have been distracted by the festivities, as Hearst knew - but he had allowed himself to neglect every single one of his responsibilities.
He still had a headache; his mind was limping along on crutches. He resisted the temptation to go and seek out a drink, suspecting that one would lead to another; Miphon had given him a severe lecture on drink recently, and Hearst, grudgingly, was beginning to think the wizard might have a point.
* * *
Late in the afternoon, Hearst approached the private apartments of the kingmaker Farfalla. A solitary guard stood aside to let him enter; no doorway in all of Selzirk was barred to the city's hero, Morgan Hearst.
Farfalla was sitting reading a pile of reports when Hearst found her. She looked up, smiled. He did not return her smile.
'Morgan,' said Farfalla. 'How good to see you.'
Hearst said nothing.
'Our interrogators have been at work while the city indulged itself. Look - we've charts which show the Greater Teeth in detail, and all the defences of the largest harbour on Stokos.'
Farfalla held out the charts for Hearst's inspection. He did not move, but stared at her, his grey eyes cold and hard.
'All right,' said Farfalla. 'Say what you have to.' 'You know what I've got to say,' said Hearst. 'Then it won't hurt me to hear it, will it?' 'No,' said Hearst, i suppose it won't.' And suddenly he felt tired, very tired, and sat down. 'Would you like s
ome wine?' said Farfalla. it might help,' said Hearst, despite his earlier resolutions.
Farfalla poured amber-coloured wine into glasses of cut crystal. The wine had a strange, penetrating, flowery smell.
'This comes from Vasserway, far to the north, in the Ravlish Lands,' said Farfalla.
'The wine or the crystal?' said Hearst. 'Both,' said Farfalla. 'You know we trade with the world.'
That, it must be said, was an exaggeration. Nevertheless, Hearst said: i know it.'
He watched Farfalla sip her wine, then reached out and took her glass from her hand.
'Are you afraid of poison?' said Farfalla, picking up the glass she had prepared for Hearst, and draining it. 'There. Safe, see? What kind of person do you think I am?'
'A liar!' said Hearst. 'I know that much, at least. I found the messenger, you see. The wounded man who brought the message saying the Rice Empire was invading the Harvest Plains.'