by Roland Green
She said nothing, made no other movements, and indeed stood as if turned to stone. But behind the Abyss-fire in the spider's eyes, something glowed that had not been there before. It was a warmer color—almost the color of one of the glowballs, Pirvan realized, in the last moment before fire erupted from the spider's mouth and joints.
For a long moment, the spider seemed to be a wheel of fire: orange, crimson, wine-hued, and even a virulent green. Then the fire touched the web—and the spider vanished in a whirlpool of flame as the web burned.
Half-dazzled, Pirvan saw Sir Niebar's partly-consumed body fall to the floor. He was not too dazzled to see Hawkbrother and Eskaia dash forward to recover it. Nor did he fail to see Haimya drop her sword and run to join the younger couple.
Pirvan caught up with them by the time the web was fully ablaze. He never afterward recalled any of the details, nor at precisely what moment he heard Eskaia scream, nearly stumbled over a half-melted sword that seared through his boot, and caught a lungful of smoke of such gagging vileness that his breath wanted to leave his body for fear of another such.
Somehow, they found themselves standing behind Lady Revella. She now stood with her staff apparently planted in the solid rock, her arms crossed on her chest, and an implacable look on her face.
Her features softened as the four companions laid what was left of Sir Niebar down. Pirvan took only long enough to see that Eskaia was only burned about the arm and neck, before he faced the Black Robe.
"Did you send Niebar to his death?" he shouted.
"Take your hand off your sword when you ask one of my age a question," Revella shot back.
Pirvan did not move. Haimya came to stand beside him and practically spat, "Was he Rubina's father?"
The Black Robe's answer to that was an almost girlish shriek of laughter. "Oh, I wish he had been. But he was not." She sobered. "Only a man who saw that his time was near, and wanted to make his death worthwhile.
"The web could have stood off fire from outside for longer than we could stay here. But fire inside its defenses, inside a spider—neither Lujimar nor Wilthur could halt it."
"Lujimar?" Pirvan exclaimed. That had sounded remarkably like an accusation of treachery against the minotaur. But Lady Revella had not heard, nor would she listen.
Instead, she turned toward Lujimar and cupped her hands to shout, "Magic brother! Crack the roof, for the love of all gods and your own true death, before we stifle!
The ambush of the first enemy band reminded Gerik of a tale he had heard about the Silvanesti. Once upon a time, an ambitious human king had claimed part of their forest. He could send ten thousand fighting men to enforce that claim, he blustered.
"They will be shot down like deer," the Silvanesti emissary replied.
"What if I send twenty thousand?"
"Then each of our archers will shoot twice," was the elven reply, or so the story ran.
Gerik commanded twenty archers against somewhere around eighty foes. That meant shooting four times—or would have, if his archers had been the Silvanesti of legend.
They were not. But four arrows apiece still did enough work to earn victory in moments. By the time Gerik's people had shot that many, they had killed, wounded, or dismounted a good half of their opponents. At least ten had died before they could have fully realized they were in danger.
The quivers were half-empty when a sell-sword Gerik recognized as one of the horse-holders ran out of the trees. He had an arrow through his forearm, and ran first to Bertsa Wylum, who pointed at Gerik.
The man came up to Gerik and said bluntly, "We're for it, young lord. They had a second band behind us. The kender sprang that trap, but they've ridden off."
"Are the horses safe?" Gerik asked, and felt a fool the next moment, knowing he should have asked about the kender.
"Aye. The other fellows were too hot to be off on the trail of our folk, when they knew they'd been heard."
Gerik slammed his fist against a tree. From behind her own tree, Wylum shot another arrow, then called, "Hoy, good sir. Don't break your sword hand. We're not even finished with these fellows yet, let alone chasing down the others."
Finishing the House Dirivan band at Forge Vale proved swifter than Gerik had dared hope. A few more arrows were all it took to start the men holding up swords hilt-first or unstringing their bows. Bertsa Wylum led five of her band down, to collect weapons, take oaths of neutrality from those sell-swords willing to swear, and bind those of the House Dirivan fighters who would not.
Wylum returned, wearing a grim smile and carrying an armful of captured weapons. "I left five daggers and a sword for the lot of them. If any of them change their minds, it won't do them much good until they rearm."
"They'll still be at our backs," Gerik said. In his mind a single dark thought thudded like a drum.
The enemy was between him and Ellysta. They would not have been if he had been alert or listened to Elderdrake.
"Perhaps, but a long way off and with no horses," Wylum said. "We're taking all the ones fit to ride to mount more of our people. Besides, if they break the oath of neutrality, they're dead meat if we see them again today, and no sell-sword company will have them."
"I suppose that's something."
"It's the whole cursed band off House Dirivan's roster, without our having to kill them all," Wylum snapped. "That could be half the battle right there."
She looked at Gerik sideways, then started to tousle his hair. She snatched her hand back when he all but bared his teeth at her.
"All right," she growled. "Have it your way. But don't fret yourself into uselessness. You've made one mistake today, but it's one every captain makes a few times. A nice fat target is hard to resist."
She was right, and too much worrying would be a second, less forgivable mistake. But Bertsa Wylum hadn't held Ellysta during her mercifully-few nightmares.
Gerik drew a deep breath and said, "Then let's go take another. Is anyone hurt past riding, but able to get about?"
"Two."
"Good. Let them find the kender's bodies and hide them. Everyone else, mount up."
Whatever Lujimar had done or left undone, he took Lady Revella at her word. He turned, lifted his staff, pointed it at the chamber's ceiling, and bellowed what might have been words.
He bellowed them loud enough to make Pirvan clap his hands over his ears. The bellow was a hush, though, compared to the sound of the rock splitting apart, then bulging and finally erupting outward.
Wind blew out of nowhere, into the chamber, and out through the ship-sized hole in the roof. It carried with it the charred remnants of web, spiders, and victims, half-melted weapons and unidentifiable bits of debris, enough ashes to turn the air black for a moment, and anything that anyone had set down on the floor and not retrieved or tied down.
Revella Laschaar might have gone with the wreckage, if her two minotaur bearers had not come up and each taken a firm grip on one arm. Pirvan saw her try to shake them off once, then seemingly resign herself to their help.
A few bits of rock, too heavy for the wind or the spells to lift, fell into the chamber, but struck no one. When the wind finally died, they could breathe in the chamber without feeling that they would choke to death in the next moment.
"Let us be off," Lujimar said, the moment even a minotaur's voice could be heard by half-deafened ears. "Wilthur is not far. Lady Revella, stand well behind me hereafter. This battle—"
"This battle needs both of us, and you know it, bull-brained oaf," Revella snapped. "I cannot—"
Zeskuk gave a wordless bellow, then shouted, "If you can't offer more than insults, old woman, then save your breath!"
"Yessss," a voice said. It was a voice that could not have belonged to anybody, even the giant serpent it suggested. It was a voice from beyond any realm where life had bodies; from everywhere and nowhere.
From Wilthur the Brown, Pirvan judged—and then saw his judgment confirmed by the looks on the magicworkers' faces. Human and mi
notaur both looked as if they faced having a tooth pulled with no healer's sleep spell or even a brimming cup of dwarf spirits to ease the pain.
In the next moment, Pirvan saw Lady Revella's face contort with—surprise? Horror? Something for which there was not a word? He did not know. He only saw her contorted face, the unchangeable impassivity of Lujimar's, and the sudden snap of the minotaur priest's arm as he threw his staff like a spear to the far end of the chamber.
Rock crashed. A throat neither human nor animal gave forth a scream that some who heard it would have given years of life to forget. The staff returned, wound like a vine or a constricting snake around a slight form in a faded brown robe.
The figure's face was hidden at first, inside the hood of the robe. Then the wind of the staff's passage tore the hood back. Pirvan was not the only seasoned warrior who swayed or cried out at the sight of what Wilthur had become. Some fainted outright.
Lujimar's staff carried its prey all the way back to its master. He reached for the free end, Wilthur spat in his face, and those who saw Lujimar swore that his eyes turned red.
Then the wind from nowhere blew again. This time it actually knocked minotaurs off their feet and flung humans against stone walls hard enough to crack bones. Two fighters who struck headfirst would have died had they not been wearing helmets.
Pirvan himself forgot knightly dignity and clung desperately to an outcropping of stone that he hoped was strong enough to save him. He would have been more ashamed had he not seen Zeskuk curling himself into a ball of hide and armor—except for one arm that clutched a human warrior's ankle to keep him from taking flight.
Curled up as he was, however, Zeskuk could not see what Pirvan was doing. He saw Lujimar and his opponent rise from the floor, blue fire crackling around them as Wilthur tried to fight free of the staff. He saw them soar toward the hole in the chamber ceiling, now moving faster than the wind itself. He saw them vanish skyward. In the same moment, he felt the rock under his feet quiver, almost innocently, like a stout tavern table against which a minotaur has quite innocently bumped.
The word "innocent," however, had no meaning in this place. Not now.
From elsewhere on Suivinari Island, and from the fleets offshore, it seemed that the Smoker had started to erupt. First stones spewed outward, to fall as the dead birds had, but with rather more impact where they landed. Man or minotaur needed both hands and perhaps one foot, to count those killed or maimed by the falling stones.
Then, moments later, what seemed to be a shooting star soared from the flank of the mountain. It leaped upward toward the zenith, and it blazed a shade of blue that no one had ever seen, or at least would admit to remembering.
Everyone remembered what happened next. Some sharp-eyed watchers had just said the star was actually a minotaur and a human, closely bound together, and received only scornful laughter, when the zenith turned the same shade of blue as the "rising star." It blazed across half the sky before it faded. Before it faded, it had also blinded a few watchers for life, and left many seeing blue spots before their eyes for many days.
The most frightening thing about the blue star, however, was that it came and went without a sound. The blazing light seemed to swallow even the sound of the two bodies soaring upward through the air.
Not so silent, however, was the rumble from the mountain soon afterward. Nor did the rumbling cease—and fear for those in or on the mountain spread through those who watched.
In the chamber, the rock above cut off all within from a view of the zenith. So the blue glare dazzled few and blinded none. It was being occupied with rallying his fighters that kept Pirvan's attention elsewhere, until he suddenly realized that the chamber was much more crowded than it had been.
His first thought was a foolish one, that Wilthur had left behind a further host of enslaved creatures, these with human form. Then he saw a human form he could not mistake—the towering one of Darin—and realized that the underground raiders had somehow joined his own party.
Darin actually picked Pirvan up in the course of their embrace, something the younger knight had never done before. Pirvan did not worry about his dignity, of which he had precious little remaining. He only hoped Darin would not drop him. The younger knight looked weary and filthy, Pirvan's legs were none too steady, and the floor was still hard.
"The Creation is dead," Darin said at last, then looked toward the skyward hole. "Is Wilthur—?"
"Gone," Pirvan breathed. "Lujimar with him, likewise Tarothin, Sir Niebar—this is a victory almost worse than a defeat."
"To the Abyss with your sorrow!" Lady Revella snapped. "Wilthur sought godhood. Lujimar knew that if the Brown One took in his strength, Wilthur might yet succeed. So Lujimar bound them together in such a way that what befell one must befall the other. Then he flung them both into the sky, so that if what came about was too violent…"
"Let no one ever say in my hearing that Lujimar was without honor," Darin said.
"My young friend," Zeskuk rumbled, "a minotaur should also say that. But it is enough for now that one taught by a minotaur has done so. We have more urgent matters, such as departing this mountain while we still can."
Pirvan noted that no minotaur used the word "flee" that day under the rocks of the Smoker of Suivinari, but they obeyed Zeskuk's command to depart with such alacrity that if they had been humans one would have said they were running for their lives.
On the whole, the gods were pleased with the outcome at Suivinari.
Takhisis was the exception, but the other gods, including her consort Sargonnas, sat back and let Zeboim speak plainly to her mother. It was the sort of mother-daughter quarrel which, among mortals, takes a heavy toll among the crockery and other household goods.
Among the gods, the quarrel entertained most, except Mishakal, too kind to wish disharmony even where mutual ill will made it inevitable. Among mortals, there were storms at sea and portents on land, including rumors of dragons waking from dragonsleep.
Also among mortals—specifically, the mortals fleeing Tirabot Manor—Ellysta was not pleased. Gerik was taking too long to join them, and she was thinking of sending messengers to the other parties, to see if he had been obliged to join them. It would be as well to know what stood between them and their enemies.
She had just realized that there were few riders to spare for messenger work, when Grimsoar One-Eye approached her, with an ill-sounding message of his own.
"Riders on the road. Coming on fast, and too many to be Gerik's," he said. "We'll have to get the folk into the woods and let the wagons go."
Chapter 23
"Your Armor, curse you!" Serafina screamed at her husband. To Ellysta, she sounded more like a fishmonger with a scanty stock than a concerned wife. But Serafina was doubtless weary and frightened. They all were, here in the forest as they awaited the enemy's attack.
Ellysta pushed through a tangle of vines, to see Grimsoar struggling to lay yet another fallen branch atop the modest barricade they had built. It blocked the trail, and to the left the ground was marshy, while to the right a ravine would make mounted attacks difficult.
The barricade would buy time; they needed nothing more. Most of the enemy could not have their heart in this work, and Gerik would be up and striking their rear within minutes anyway.
Ellysta told herself this, as she hurried down the slope toward Grimsoar. She told herself this because if she believed otherwise she would be sitting under a bush, biting the back of her hand to keep from screaming or even whimpering. I am not of warrior blood, Gerik, she said to herself, as if she were speaking to Pirvan's son. Are you sure you want to breed up sons from me?
Being a warrior can be in the blood, she heard, in Gerik's voice. Or it can be learned. Don't doubt that you can learn it.
Meanwhile, there was a barricade to strengthen.
Ellysta had just wedged a third stone in behind one log, when the thud of fast-moving hooves swelled farther along the trail. War cries joined the hoofbeats,
and the trail seemed to rise in her face and hurl mounted fighters at the barricade.
Grimsoar snatched up Ellysta by the collar of her tunic and the seat of her breeches and flung her over the barricade. She landed sprawling, the breath knocked out of her, as the first rider set his mount at the logs and stones and took them without drawing rein. A hoof stamped down within a finger of Ellysta's skull, and she rolled desperately to one side, praying that it was the safe side.
The rider was lashing about him with a long-handled battle-axe, and two men and a woman of Ellysta's party were already down. She lurched to her feet, drawing her longest knife, knowing that she had small chance against the rider unless she could surprise him but sure that her friends had still less.
A scream behind her jerked her head around. Grimsoar had grabbed the second rider by the leg and bodily twisted him out of the saddle, shattering the leg in the process. The old thief and sailor had his sword up to greet the third rider, and crushed the skull of the rider's mount with one blow, before an arrow sprouted in Grimsoar's shoulder.
That was all Ellysta saw before she whirled again and ran blindly toward where the first rider had been. The space was empty, though, and an arrow whispered past her ear as she turned wildly, seeking the rider.
He and his mount were halfway to the trees, and a small dark-clad figure was clinging to the horse's bridle. The rider was flourishing the battle-axe like a wizard with a conjure-stick, but his mount was bucking and skittering; he could not aim a blow.
He also could not guard his unarmored thigh. His attacker leaped, slashing desperately, and the man's thigh opened in a long red mouth of a wound. The axe flashed down, but the attacker darted under the horse's belly. The man was reeling in the saddle when she caught the off stirrup, heaved herself up, and thrust the knife in again, below the rim of the man's helmet.