Lyrec

by Frost, Gregory

  “A scout of ours at the outer perimeter was given that message along with a warning for us to pick our champions in battle.”

  “He was given the message?” When she made no reply, he shook his massive fist. “Who gave him the message, damn you?”

  Now she was satisfied with his fury. “The new commander of the army of Secamelan, which, coincidentally, happens to be less than twenty steys away. They should be entrenched on the hill by dusk with enough men to blockade our farm routes and starve us to death if nothing else.”

  “Send for supplies. Despatch riders to the south immediately.”

  “I have done, already,” she replied. “But they’ll not be back before the way is cut off.”

  “What am I to do?” He stood, dropping his robe, unaware of his nakedness. “I haven’t prepared. This isn’t how he said it would go—it’s we who are supposed to ride into Secamelan and rout them. I must go. Go seek him out, no matter the consequences. He has to explain this.” He started to move, but Talenyecis kicked shut the door and drew her sword.

  “No,” she said, with utter coldness in her voice. “You are insane—you believe a god holds council with the likes of you. I have watched this for months. I’d hoped that perhaps some divine inspiration might actually make your stratagem bear fruit. But you’re simply nothing but a bloated mad fool.” The tip of her sword flicked up at his eyes. ‘We’re coming to war now and no quivering madman can lead us. You’re used up, I’m afraid, Ladomirus.”

  The fat king’s eyes showed fear, but he scowled, “You want the kingdom, traitoress.”

  She laughed in his face. “Would any sane woman work to rule this pestilent swamp? Ridiculous. Only a man could see this as a prize worthy of conniving.” She took a step toward him, forcing him back to the wall. “I care nothing for your kingdom. I want to survive.”

  “And you suppose I want to die? Let me pass, that I can find out from Chagri how to carry the day.”

  “You’re insane,” she repeated her verdict.

  Ladomirus moved then with more speed than Talenyecis anticipated; he batted her sword away in the instant before she struck. She tried to draw it back for a riposte, leaping away for more room to move; but her elbow struck the door, hampering her. The fat king slammed the top of his skull into her jaw and smashed her between himself and the door. Dazed, she pounded at his head with the pommel of her sword. Ladomirus grunted, grabbed her arm and bent it back, then reached up and closed his hand over hers. Close enough to see the freckles on her nose, he snarled, “Did you think I was totally unaware of your greed for my kingdom, heh? And, knowing, do you think I’d be unprepared?” He produced a large dagger, seemingly out of thin air. “I’ve expected your treachery for weeks. Months.” He nicked her throat with the tip of the blade.

  She strained to pull her neck away, struggling fiercely. He pushed harder, mashing her against the door. It was all she could do to breathe. He chuckled.

  Something whipped through the air and shattered over the back of his head. Ladomirus’s forehead bounced off the door beside Talenyecis and he slid down, hands pawing her for support. A dozen cuts spouted blood on the back of his bald head. He rolled over onto his side, crushing a piece of fruit that squirted its juice halfway across the floor. The dagger spun in place beside him.

  The concubine sat on her knees at the foot of the bed and watched her oppressor lying among the shards of bowl and pieces of fruit.

  Half-conscious still, Ladomirus saw her there, as if in a dream. He watched her get up and plant her bare foot beside his face. Her toe rings glittered. A mist drifted between him and the world. The concubine’s face hovered high above him. Her mouth moved and made noises, but they made no sense to him, like the buzzing of an insect. He closed his eyes for what seemed no more than a minute.

  When he opened them again, the gelatinous hem of a painfully bright robe hung where her foot had been. He studied its odd, leathery contours, his brain awash with fuddled ideas, none of which made much sense.

  “Sit up,” a voice hissed. He recognized it and came awake as if cold water had been splashed over him.

  “God,” he muttered.

  The figure above him was not Chagri. It had no face. His attention was drawn to its one visible feature—its hand. Strange rough flesh, black as if it had burned. The hand sparkled as if flakes of gold were embedded in it.

  The robed figure made a clucking sound. “No one seems to be able to do anything these days. However, in your case that is fortunate—for me. Had you killed Talenyecis, my battle plans might have been severely curtailed. I suppose I could exact promises from you that you wouldn’t repeat your attempt to murder her, but I know you too well. As I have said oh so many times before. I think I shall make a symbol of you that will remind your soldiers of the alternative to fighting against Secamelan. Nobody likes you, anyway.” The hand reached down as if to help him up. The cowl came close enough that he thought he saw within it two faint points of light, like two stars seen through a black cloud of noxious vapors. The hand closed on his wrist.

  A moment later the halls of the entire castle echoed with a protracted keening wail. It raised the hair up the backs of a hundred necks and charged a hundred minds with distorted visions of the marrow of human torment.

  Chapter 24.

  “Wait!” shouted Pavra. She tugged sharply on the reins of her mount and the two men with her thundered past.

  They looked back at her, then with annoyance at one another. Ronnæm believed he might have abandoned his grandson to some terrible evil, although he could not have remained or defended Tynec from that force. Similarly, Bozadon Reket felt that he had run away from a confrontation which he should have been able to win. Instead he had allowed himself to be swayed by one little girl and her wild proclamations.

  Reading passages in Cheybal’s diary and having heard what Faubus said had convinced him of the unnatural circumstances pressing from all sides, but there were still moments when it was easier to believe that everyone else was just crazy. Nor was old Ronnæm someone he cared to be stuck with for days on end under the best of conditions.

  The two men rode back to Pavra. She waited at the crossroads to which they had paid little attention—it led north to Dolgellum and they wanted to go east after the army. At least, that was where they thought they were going.

  “What is the problem?” Ronnæm asked, barely civil.

  Pavra had shut her eyes as if listening to something. “He has separated from the army—the one called Lyrec took this road. Earlier.”

  “Now, what can that mean?” Reket muttered. “Faubus would never have allowed him to go free. Not by himself.”

  “Faubus is a child with his hands in a fire,” responded Ronnæm. “He has no control over his situation at all. He should never had been made commander over more seasoned veterans, any of a dozen I could name. Child, you’d better be right about everything or we two will be laughingstocks and Faubus will be swinging by his chin.”

  Undaunted, Pavra reiterated, “It’s this way, it is,” and nudged her horse onto the north road.

  Ronnæm could not make up his mind. He wanted to be with the army, in the thick of battle; on this point Reket could empathize. “Let’s follow her,” he advised. “If she’s wrong, at least we will be on the right road for Novalok.”

  The two men set off in pursuit of the child.

  *****

  Lyrec said, “We have to go immediately.”

  “We would come with you,” answered Malchavik, and he stood. He looked over his people and all of them agreed. Grohd made a sour, dissentient face and cast his glance elsewhere. He had minded neither the company nor the money delivered by the Kobachs, but magic was evil—he had decided.

  “I regret it isn’t all that simple,” Lyrec answered. “We won’t be moving through normal space, and I haven’t the crex enough for more than a few of you. Your powers would be useful to me, adding weight to my own. Might I instead call upon you to unify and direct them i
f necessary? Only if necessary.”

  “Of course. Gladly.”

  “Don’t agree so casually, Malchavik. You might die from this. You might all die from this.”

  “What?” said Grohd.

  Malchavik smiled ironically. “We recognized that before I answered. None of us would prefer to die, but we will not turn our backs on an avatar when he asks us to stand, for we want to join our own in the high places of Mordun, not in the pits.”

  “Avatar?” asked Grohd.

  “As you choose,” Lyrec answered the Kobachs, then turned to Grohd. “About your payment, my friend —”

  “No, no.” He hadn’t considered before that Lyrec might have been sent by the gods. And that weapon — who but a god could wield such a thing? “Lyrec, dear fellow. When you come back, we’ll talk about it.” He could not quite believe he had said this, but added, “And I’ll give you drinks in celebration of your … whatever it is you’re going to do.”

  Borregad gave Grohd a dreamy smile.

  “You heard what he said, Borregad—when we get back.”

  The cat looked the room over. “I detest long good-byes and this one has been going on for centuries. Let’s go.” He leaped into Lyrec’s arms.

  The crex quivered in its sheath. Defying gravity, it poured up his side, breaking into hundreds of webs that spun around his body so fast that no eye could follow. The cat, too, began changing color as the webs spun to him. His fur flattened. Mercury-silver spread over him.

  The two figures became a statue of living polished silver. Lyrec’s eyes opened. They glowed a deep blue, like the tip of a flame. Then the air rushed past the Kobachs, tugging at their clothes and hair, and Lyrec and Borregad vanished. The tavern shook in a thunderclap that knocked people off their feet and split one table down the middle. One ceiling beam cracked along its entire length.

  Holding onto the bar, Grohd took stock of the damage. Then he shook one fist at the air and shouted, “God or no god, I expect you to pay for that!”

  Chapter 25.

  It began with a with a gentle flutter of the curtain at the back of the room. A wind blew around the dark unadorned chamber. Dust on the floor swirled up in a spiral, then burst away from the center as a thunderclap shook Castle Ladoman to its foundations.

  Soldiers drilling in the yard below looked up and wondered briefly if this were yet another omen. Their faces were set, their minds simmering in anticipation of their leader’s appearance. She had left them to drill. They wanted war, wanted it so desperately that they forgot the omens in their fury. The thunder clapped again, but the soldiers had ceased to pay it any mind.

  In the room high above, Lyrec and Borregad arrived.

  Lyrec opened his eyes. In front of him stood the black tripod as Borregad had described it—three legs ending in a single hand that cupped a silver globe. Now they had only to find Ladomirus and force him to summon “Chagri.”

  Behind him, something pattered forward. Lyrec swung about in a crouch, hands up to ward off a blow. Seeing who it was, he said, “You!” and found that she, Talenyecis, had said it at the same moment. She held her sword drawn, but had not struck. Lowering the weapon, her hands shook, but she spoke with great self-control, calmly, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. “I can’t say why, but I did expect you would return, although not like this—like some silver idol stolen from a shrine.”

  “Excuse our appearance—it’s necessary.” He glanced down at Borregad; the cat concentrated on the woman, content for once to observe a situation without climbing into it. “Why are you up here?” Lyrec asked.

  “Why, indeed?” She studied the tip of her sword. “What if I told you it was to kill you?”

  “Is it?”

  “What are you?”

  “The only hope you have against a power you can’t even imagine.”

  “You aren’t the robed one, then.”

  “No. We’re his enemies,” Lyrec said. “Long-standing enemies.”

  Talenyecis relaxed. She leaned forward on her sword, her head bowed against her hands as if in prayer. “I’d thought myself capable of defeating anything that stood in my way. Any soldier, any king. Any force at all.” She turned her head to see him askance; terror was in her eyes. “Gods, but this is beyond me. It has no care for life. Nothing. It came to me and promised me everything if I led the soldiers to battle: that I would never die; that all of Secamelan would be mine.”

  “He was lying.”

  “Oh, I know. I knew it as he said it. But he—you say ‘he’—believed what Ladomirus believed: that I was power hungry. As well, he knew how much I doubted those barbarians Ladomirus hired. He knew. I thought they would scatter and he told me I thought it. He caused a mist to rise in the yard. Every one of them was seized by such ferocity I thought their hearts would burst. ‘They are yours,’ he promised. ‘Yours to command. They will fight until the life has gone out of them.’ Then he—he laughed as if at some private joke and added that they could even fight beyond death, but that he would gain nothing if he let himself influence them that much.

  “I thought Ladomirus insane with his secret trips to this room, his conversations with nothing and no one. Hearing voices, always running to ask the gods for advice. All madness—what god would ever side with him?”

  “Where is Ladomirus?”

  She pointed at the curtain. “In the other room—look …” She could not finish.

  Borregad pattered across the floor and beneath the curtain.

  Lyrec trusted Talenyecis, but he wanted to know one more thing. “With all he promised, why are you here and not out there marshaling the army?”

  She laughed humorlessly. “I’m here to kill him, what else? I’ve been standing here in the dimness awaiting his reappearance so I could split open his head.”

  “Possibly we can accommodate one another. He would destroy you, alone. He’ll know your thoughts before he even appears. He’ll know you wait.”

  She stared morosely into the blue fires of his eyes. “He will destroy me anyway. I’m neither foolish enough nor greedy enough to be blinded by his promises of things to come. No one with him wins. Ladomir—”

  “Lyrec!” cried Borregad from the other room. “Quickly!”

  Talenyecis stood her ground, eyes downcast. Lyrec ran through the dark passage into the next room.

  Borregad stood rooted to the center of an otherwise empty chamber. Lyrec saw nothing to warrant the cat’s horror. A few tapestries hung flat against the walls. He said, “Where? What?” Borregad’s answer was to glance to the circular window, and just as quickly to turn back.

  From where he stood, Lyrec could see nothing unusual outside the window. He crossed past the silver cat. The point of a conical roof and the base of a flagpole came into view. He strode nearer, his curiosity building. More of the flagpole appeared, and something … he had to bend down to see. He stopped dead still.

  Flying from the flagpole was a thing so grotesque he could never have imagined it. A human skin, empty of bone and muscle and fat, flapped out almost horizontally on the breeze. Distorted empty eye-sockets glared reproachfully and a crumpled hole of a mouth seemed to howl at him. He looked away from the window. “Come on, Borregad, we’ll have to think of another way to get Miradomon here.”

  Back in the dim room, he found Talenyecis with her sword raised to strike above the black tripod. “No!” he shouted. “It’s our only remaining link.”

  She answered without daring to take her eyes from the tripod. “But it is shrinking.”

  Lyrec raced forward. The silver globe had dwindled to half its original size. “Borregad, hurry up, he’s withdrawing, he’s forcing us to chase him.”

  The cat charged back into the room and scrambled to a stop beside Lyrec.

  “Let me come, too,” said Talenyecis.

  “Not wise. If we fail then someone must survive who knows about him. And you might still have your chance to kill him here. When we met, you gambled on trusting me—now it’s I wh
o must trust you.”

  She understood. Then, quite suddenly, she smiled.

  Borregad smiled back.

  “A cat that grins and talks,” she said.

  “It’s a gift,” replied Borregad.

  From the center of Lyrec’s chest, a thin thread of silver shot out and attached to the shrinking globe. A harsh cold wind buffeted Talenyecis, stinging tears into her eyes. She squeezed them shut, and then heard the cat call out as if from a great distance: “We could still change our minds about this!” She rubbed her eyes and looked, but the two silver figures had disappeared.

  Down below a wild roar rose up—the madmen she was supposed to command had caught first sight of the approaching enemy.

  Talenyecis leaned on her sword, crouched down, and waited.

  *****

  At first he thought he must not have made the transition out of Ladoman because a dimness like that in the swamps surrounded him still; but Lyrec waved his hand and the dimness swirled—thick mist or cloud that had in some way been drawn to him as he arrived. He swished the air with both hands. The heavy cloud breezed apart, letting in a red light like none he had ever seen. With utmost caution he stepped out of the cloud.

  A red forest enclosed him. Ugly swollen leaves sagged on black branches as if no wind had ever cooled them. They dripped a gelatinous fluid that had coated the ground under each tree in a translucent mound. Overhead, the same leaves blotted out any view of the sky and what light there was filtered through them. The layer of mist around his feet, the occasional patches of dark ground, even his uniform had taken on the color like a layer of rust. Everything smelled of moist decay.

  Dispersing most of the thick cloud with his movement, Lyrec turned around and came up against a black wall. The wall was shiny, reflecting him; its heights rose above the trees, out of sight. In inspecting how it had pushed out of the ground, he realized suddenly that Borregad was nowhere to be seen. Lyrec circled through the mist. He imagined the cat arriving in a cloud and scurrying off blindly in a panic. He considered calling out, but stopped himself. What if Miradomon was nearby? If this was where the silver globe had brought him, it held that Miradomon might enter his world at the same spot. He dared not call—neither out-loud nor mentally. He and the cat would have to find each other as chance allowed.