War of Powers

by Robert E Vardeman;Victor Milan

  'I don't know why,' he whispered. 'But I must.' He sat by the fire, his face averted. Desolation seeped like a blight into his soul.

  He felt Jennas beside him. He tensed, unwilling to face her. She didn't speak. She simply put her strong, smooth arms around him and held him close.

  After a time, he turned to her. Uncertainty about the coming battle formed a lump of lead in Moriana's stomach. She felt the age-old worries of a commander. Would she win? Would Synalon triumph and be free to loose the evil of the Dark Ones on the Realm once again? Either way, win or lose, many would die.

  'At times such as this, I don't resent my cloistering,' Ziore said somberly.

  'What do you mean?' asked Moriana, distracted momentarily from her worries.

  'The dilemma you face, child. If you act, you condemn thousands of men and women to death or disfigurement. Yet if you don't act. . .' She made a helpless gesture with her hands. 'Your sister will return the Dark Ones to the world and there is no Felarod this time.' She shook her head. The folds at the outer corners of her eyes deepened with sorrow as though her face was still flesh. 'We knew no such brutal questions in my convent.'

  'Perhaps that's reason enough to forgive poor Erimenes’ said Moriana. Ziore's mouth hardened, and she turned away.

  Moriana looked out across the valley. To the north stood a conical hill crowned with a gay pavilion, the one she shared with Darl Rhadaman. Her banner snapped from its staff in the crisp evening breeze. She pulled her gaze from it, unable to bear the thoughts welling up inside again.

  Her gaze swept back across the shallow, broad valley. A small stream, tributary of Chanobit Creek flowing on the far side of her army's camp, crossed it and nourished the still-brown grasses. To her right, a long bluff hid the enemy camp from view. Riders shuttled ceaselessly along it, keeping watch. The day's overcast had broken and light from Omizantrim turned the day to splendor.

  'My lady,' came a voice from behind her. 'Is it safe for you so close to the enemy?'

  She turned to see Darl standing ten yards away. Something in the way he held his head told her he'd been there unnoticed for some time, simply watching her. She felt strangely touched.

  'I'm not alone,' she said. 'Ziore is with me.' 'She won't be much help if the Highgrass riders come upon you.'

  'I can take care of myself.' The words came out more sharply than she intended.

  'You shouldn't wander off,' Darl said, a half stubborn and half indulgent look on his face. She was almost disappointed now that her words hadn't cut deeper.

  'The morrow weighs heavily on me,' said Ziore, swirling about her jug. 'I need to meditate. Will you please reseal my jug, Moriana?' The princess looked at her spirit companion in surprise. Ziore had never expressed an urge to meditate before.

  Then Moriana realized the spirit's motives. With a grateful smile she replaced the carved stone I id of the pot. The nun's figure wavered and became a formless pink cloud dissipating in the afternoon light. Moriana put the jug in her knapsack on the ground beside her.

  Darl stood close by. She felt his eyes on her. His gaze had become a burden she couldn't explain.

  'How are you this evening?' he asked quietly. Moriana almost laughed at the seriousness and formality of his words. A look at his face kept her from it. He was very solemn. And very vulnerable.

  She had an urge to reach up and stroke his cheek, but something caused her to hold back. After a moment, he stretched out his hands and she took them in hers. His skin was cool and dry.

  They simply stood there. The early evening sounds came slowly to fill the silence. The buzz of voices peaking sporadically into shouts, the bleating of livestock, hammers ringing off breastplates and blades at a dozen forges all provided reason enough not to speak.

  Darl released her hands. He turned away, walked to the lip of the hill, and drew a deep lungful of the brisk air.

  'When I was young,' he said, 'I saw my mother and father killed. It was on a day similar to this one, seemingly peaceful but actually seething with death and forces beyond human control. The Earl of Jav Nihen coveted Harmis - don't ask why. There's nothing there but mountains. At any rate, he invited my family to his summer palace for a revel. So we went, my mother and father, my uncle and 1.1 was only five then. We ate and I drank watered wine sweetened with honey. It was a great outdoor festival with pavilions by the score and huge bonfires roaring. We watched the players, mimes, acrobats. In many ways it was the finest night of my life.

  The Earl's men circulated through the crowds. Finally, when I stood yawning and ready for bed, Earl Maunrish rose from hischairof state and bade my parents rise. He lifted a great, golden goblet-how it gleamed in the firelight! - and drank to their health. They raised their goblets to return the honor.

  'It was a signal. As they drank, they were seized from behind and cut down.'

  He turned to Moriana. She stared at him, speechless. She knew the story. Like the rest of his life, it had passed into legend, but she didn't know the details - or his reason for recounting them now.

  'I was seized, too. I was too horrified to cry out or even to struggle. Seeing my mother and father hacked apart made me feel as if I'd died with them.

  'My uncle Luu saved me..He used a stool to break the man's skull holding me. Seeing me free, he drew his sword and rallied our people. Then he cast a firebrand into the nearest pavilion.'

  Darl paced now, hands locked behind his back. She saw the veins standing out on the forearms below the sleeve of his green and silver tunic.

  'We escaped, my uncle and I, with me slung across the saddle of his war dog. Harmis-town fell shortly, betrayed. My uncle had to flee to the mountains with those remaining loyal. I was deemed too young for such a life. I suppose I was. I must have been in their way constantly. But how I protested when I was bundled off to Duth!'

  The sky turned to bands of slate and indigo while he spoke. A few rumpled clouds remained, dark above and dull red below. Darl clasped his big hands in front of him, each massaging the other as he stared up into the evening sky.

  'The treachery of that summer's night I never forgot. Nor was I blind to the evil in Duth. The lords of that city are harsh and proud and suffer no insolence, real or imagined, from their peasants. I saw wrongs done - fathers cut down for failing to doff their caps when some petty lordling rode by, daughters taken for failing to hide their loveliness from some baron. I came to feel each injustice as my own.

  'The end came quickly for Earl Maunrish. His mistress refused to be cast aside for a serving lad and poisoned the earl. The people of Harmis rose in revolt, and my uncle drove the invaders back across the border when I was thirteen. Within a fortnight of his triumph, Uncle Luu died of a cancer. Before I could lay claim to the throne, Harmis fell to a civil war. Kubil and Thrishnor invaded jav Nihen and Duth pledged itself to Harmis's security against invasion from outside. Yet none would intervene to restore order or grant me my birthright. I was too young to muster men to my cause. I ran away and went a'wandering.'

  He stopped and stood, head down, unspeaking. Moriana came and touched his shoulder. The watch on the enemy-held ridge was changing, riders in leather jerkins and the black and purple tunics of the Sky City replacing the mercenaries amid blaring trumpets and clanging of weapons. Moriana watched as she laid her head on Darl's shoulder.

  'That's how I came to be as I am, bright lady,' he said. 'I eventually returned to Harmis, put down the bandits who festered like pus pockets in the mountains and reunited my land. But I found myself different, my attachment no longer to my country but to an ideal. I couldn't bear the knowledge that ill is done, that evil prospers. Battle pulls me like a magnet draws iron; it is my excuse to war on the side of the oppressed. It will kill me one day. I'll fall in a ditch by the wayside and be forgotten before my corpse grows cold. Evil will march on like a procession of skeletons as if I'd never been.'

  'Poor Darl,' she said lamely, unable to find the words to comfort him.

  'It's what I've chosen. Don't pity me
.' 'I ... I hate to think that the cause you fall in may be mine.' His hand gripped hers painfully hard. She made no attempt to draw away.

  'My lady,' he said hoarsely, 'this time I've something to fight for beyond an abstraction. You are a cause for me, my lady. Were you a bloody-handed murderess, a lover of the Dark Ones, were you more vile than even Synalon, still I'd follow your banner.'

  'I do not ask this of you,' she said in a small voice.'You need not ask. I give it freely.' Premonition made her step forward, grasp his face in her hands, and kiss him hard. He kissed her back eagerly. Moriana felt nothing now, nothing but sorrow and self-hatred for using this man.

  Still, when they broke apart, he said the words she had tried to dam up. 'I love you, Moriana.'

  It was so easy to say and yet those were not the words she wanted to hear from him. Her eyes turned bleak and bright with tears.

  'Thank you for your loyalty, Lord Harmis,' she said, turning away. She walked away forcing her spine to stay straight, her shoulders braced and her sobs unvoiced. She hadn't felt this way since her dagger drove through the mail on Fost Longstrider's back on its way to his heart.

  She picked up her knapsack and ran down the hill heedless of falling in the dark. She felt Darl's despair following her like a shout and knew that even a brief look back would ease his torment. But she couldn't make herself look back.

  It was a longtime before he followed her down the hill. Count Ultur V'Duuyek rode along the ridgeline overlooking his camp. At his side rode Destirin Luhacs, her heavy face grim, her hair swirled into a pale yellow helmet atop her head. Sentries hailed them. The count acknowledged the challenge with a nod and rode on. The sentries were only Bilsinxt rabble.

  The count was troubled. He had agreed to this expedition because he thought Moriana would be leading only a mob of criminals, misfits and fools who thought war a glorious adventure. With the admitted genius of Rann to guide it, the smaller army should have had little trouble routing the larger.

  But Rann wasn't leading the army. And command hadn't gone to V'Duuyek. Rann had sent his second-in-command, a thin neurotic man named Chalowin. Perhaps, as Rann believed, the colonel was the best possible replacement. Nonetheless, he had not been a happy choice.

  V'Duuyek saw his army fracturing, turning to dust. Rann would have been acceptable as commander to V'Duuyek's nine hundred heavy riders simply because of his renown. Chalowin was unknown, an alien speaking in abrupt, disjointed bursts. V'Duuyek had accepted this commission and taken the City's coin. He wouldn't criticize his employers. But his second-in-command felt no constraints. Twice he'd cautioned Luhacs and her tirades against both Chalowin and the Sky City had a poor effect on morale. That in itself bothered him. Luhacs lacked his reserve, but she seldom required such chastisement.

  A small animal broke from the bush under the forefeet of V'Duuyek's mount. The dog gave an excited bark and sat on its haunches. Luhacs's red set off in pursuit.The hare fled with all the strength in its powerful hind legs. Cursing and shouting, Luhacs finally controlled her mount. Without a word, she turned its head to camp and rode down the face of the ridge. Even in the evening dimness, V'Duuyek saw that her neck burned with anger.

  Another man would have sighed. Perhaps this was an omen. A Grassland soldier's mount was supposed to be better trained. Not even the lowliest trooper's dog should have bolted in pursuit of a rabbit.

  Count Ultur felt more apprehensive than he had before his first battle as a boy of thirteen. The enemy was camped only two miles away on the south side of Chanobit Creek. Tomorrow would see battle. And Count Ultur feared the result.

  He did not fear for his own life. The stories telling of his ice-hard courage did not lie. He was afraid for the one thing that mattered to him, the thing he had created twenty years ago and nursed as lovingly as a gardener.

  He feared that the regiment to which he had dedicated his existence might not survive.

  A cold wind blew, carrying the thick smell of rain. The count allowed himself a grimace of irritation. It had rained the last seven days out of ten, and on such days the Sky City eagles could not fly. They rode in cages wrapped in oiled cloth, swaying in the beds of wagons, their yellow eyes glaring from the darkness in accusation. That was an inconvenience. If it rained again tomorrow, it would be disaster.

  Damn Rann! Chalowin went with the army because political considerations demanded that a Sky Citizen lead it. But his function was to see that the plan of battle conceived by Rann back in the City was faithfully executed.

  V'Duuyek had little enough faith in running a battle from a hundred miles away. But what would Chalowin do if rain made the plan unworkable?

  There was nothing to be done now. The morrow would bring what it would bring. Pausing to smooth his moustache back into symmetrical spikes, he nudged his own mount's ribs and cantered down to camp.

  'It won't work!' Moriana insisted, slamming her fists down onto the map spread across the table commandeered from a peasant's cottage. 'I'm telling you, it's what Chalowin wants you to do. His bird riders will tear you apart.'

  She stared at the faces ranged around her, reading expressions by the light of the lanterns and candles set about Darl Rhadaman's pavilion, latic Stormcloud, his face that of a dissolute angel, regarded her with the same smile he'd shown her since he had been recruited as Darl's co-commander in Tolviroth Acerte. The count-duke's other assistants looked at her with a mixture of impatience and something she thought with increasing anger looked like condescension. Darl was looking off at the wall of the tent, a light, pained expression on his face.

  'Come now, Your Majesty,' quavered an ancient voice. 'These are battle-seasoned knights. Surely . . . surely they can withstand the assault of — uh — of birdmen.'

  Moriana stared at the oldster, schooling herself to patience. Darl had been elated when the Three Notable Knights of the March had volunteered to follow Moriana's claw-and-flower flag. And they were notable knights whose deeds resounded as loudly as Darl's. Unfortunately, the days of their great deeds belonged to an earlier generation. The youngest of the three was a fussy and precise gray-haired man of seventy-six. The eldest was a remarkable one hundred and twenty-three. He spoke slowly, looking at her with his great, sad hound's eyes.

  'No one doubts the mettle of your knights, Sir Rinalvus. But mettle is small protection against arrows falling as thick as hail from above,' she said quietly.

  'Arrows.' Sir Tharvus spoke the word distastefully as though he had said 'offal'. He sniffed. 'We are not the sort to be afraid of such child's toys, Your Majesty.'

  In exasperation, Moriana looked to Darl. 'Can't you explain to them? Bunching together like this is asking to be slaughtered by the bird riders. It's exactly the formation our - the Sky City's - war college regards as ideal for attack.'

  Before Darl could speak, the third brother put in smoothly, 'But my dear, our knights fight best when used as a solid mass. If they lose cohesion they lose much of their effectiveness.'

  The speaker favored Moriana with a kindly smile. The middle of the brothers in age, he was still a handsome man and powerful of frame despite his ninety years. Moriana heard a voice within her begin to yammer in panic, but she answered him as reasonably as she could.

  'Sir Ottovus, your men will be perfect targets. How much effectiveness will they have when they're dead?'

  Ottovus only smiled. Lip twitching, Tharvus turned to Darl.'Is all this discussion necessary? This is speech for men, my lord.'Moriana colored. 'Now, sir,' latic said in his golden voice, 'we are pledged to serve the princess's cause. She has a right to join our councils.'

  'As I — um — understand it,' said Rinalvus, 'the good princess - or queen, I suppose I should say since we're trying to restore you to your throne, and begging Your Majesty's pardon -1 thought she was going to explain to us how her magic will aid us tomorrow.'

  'Yes,' said Tharvus, 'I'm certain that is a subject Her Majesty is amply qualified to discuss at length.'

  'I have told you before, lord
, my magic is not of a sort to be used in battle,' said Moriana.

  'But what is this?' Rinalvus asked. 'I ... I thought magicians threw fireballs and lightning bolts, that sort of thing. Should be quite useful. Yes, indeed.'

  'My sister would be able to oblige you with ease,' snapped Moriana. She tried to keep the edge from her words because she admired the aged knight. It was merely that he, and all of them, failed to understand that her participation in the battle was vital for success. They seemed slave to so many misconceptions about the nature of war waged by the Sky City that she had to try to correct them. 'It requires far more involvement with powers best left unnamed to become that facile in destruction.'

  'What can your talents accomplish then?' 'Healing the injured. Scrying - you've seen me look into the enemy's camp often enough. Manipulating the weather.'

  'That'll be fine,' nodded Ottovus. 'You can stay atop the hill out of harm's way and tend to the wounded. And if you can whistle up a few clouds to keep the bird riders out of the fight, so much the better!'