The blue warrior was making all the noise. His technique seemed to consist entirely of fire-leaping swordplay, fast, aggressive, and showy. Every time he shouted, his voice cracked back from the cliff walls and more dirt rattled down from them. The echoes were deafening.
In contrast, his opponent fought in silence, using mostly water-flowing and wind-blowing evasions. Jame knew immediately that this was her brother. "Never make an unnecessary move," Ganth had said over and over when Tori had begun his training at the keep in the Haunted Lands, and she had crept close to watch as she did now. Tori had learned well. His style was as spare and elegant as any she had ever seen and made her remember with some embarrassment all the thrashing about she had done with Kin-Slayer, getting here.
Just then, the blue warrior seriously overextended himself in a lunge. Torisen slipped out of the way, caught the other's sword hand, and jerked him forward even farther into a sharp blow with the hilt of his own sword that drove the other's nasal guard back into his face. The man dropped without a sound. The ground mist swallowed him. Jame almost gave a whoop, but just then Torisen turned directly to her, or so it seemed, and gave a formal salute. She was startled into silence—luckily, as it turned out.
Something moved behind and to either side of her. As she flattened herself under the ferns, the mist withdrew slightly to reveal eight figures surrounding both Torisen and her. She had apparently crept between two without noticing them or being noticed. They were dressed like Waster elders, but something in their eyes gave her pause. If she had been Jorin, the fur would have risen down her spine. The odd thought came to her that this was all a trap that the woods had set for these Darkling creatures, using her brother as bait; but he didn't know how to spring it and neither did she. She edged carefully backward through the ferns.
On the far side of the circle, one of the creatures stepped forward, and Torisen pivoted to face it. It saluted, clenched fists held at waist height, crossed at the wrists—a derisive challenge from superior to inferior. Torisen responded silently with hands holding sword and buckler held uncrossed chest high, the challenge response to one whose rank is unknown. The other gave a scornful snort and picked up its weapon. Worked metal of any sort was rare in the Horde due to its constant movement and general lack of forges. The most prized weapon was a stone-headed axe with a long shaft made from the femur of one of the huge shaggy beasts that pulled their tent wagons. That was the sort of weapon this creature hefted and swung with sudden, murderous strength.
The axe-head glanced off Torisen's steel buckler, denting it. He retreated step by step before the onslaught, using water-flowing and wind-blowing moves to avoid any blow he could. The other followed, snickering.
Just then, Torisen's foot caught in a tangle of ferns. Jame gasped as she saw the killing blow whistle down on him. Unable to sidestep, he caught it full on his shield. The buckler shattered. He was driven down to one knee, his left arm at least momentarily useless. Before the other could recover, Torisen lunged. His blade caught his opponent in the abdomen and ripped upward. He disengaged and staggered back. The other dropped its axe and stood there swaying, arms wrapped around the terrible wound. Why didn't it fall? Instead, it began to laugh, a crazy, giggling sound. It spread its arms. The wound had closed. Torisen threw aside the remains of his buckler and went back a step, sword raised. The blade had been almost eaten through by the other's blood. It fell apart in his hand. Soft laughter rose from all sides.
Changers, Jame thought, horrified. They're all changers.
She gave a shout and threw Kin-Slayer: "Here, Tori . . . catch!" The mist closed around her as she ducked back into it, drawing the Ivory Knife from her boot.
He turned to see the blade flashing toward him, caught it, and swung. It caught the changer just under its chin as the creature rose. Its head flew off, bounced once and disappeared. Jame heard it some distance away, mewling petulantly under the ferns. The changer's body collapsed slowly, its gaping wound already sealed. Even as it sank under the mist and fronds, it kept moving like a swimmer slowly floundering. Its hand rose, clutched air, sank.
Torisen had sprung back, breathing hard. Now for the first time he looked at his weapon and saw with utter amazement not only that it was undamaged but what blade it was. He turned sharply to discover who had thrown it, but saw only the remaining changers, closing in around him.
Jame, hidden in the mist, heard the sound of renewed combat. She was neither equipped nor trained to help Tori out there in the open, so she must do what she could here on the fringe, in the shadows—like a proper sneak, as Graykin would say. But this sneak bit with the tooth of death.
A changer stumbled back into the mist, clutching a bloody sleeve. Before its wound could close, Jame slipped up behind it and drew the Knife lightly across its neck. The creature whirled, snarling. Then a startled look crossed its stolen face, and it toppled, dead. One down, seven to go.
She claimed two more, catching glimpses of the main battle each time. Kin-Slayer, reforged in Perimal Darkling, seemed as proof against the changers' blood as the Knife, but Torisen couldn't go on wielding it forever against foes who could heal themselves of practically anything. Damn her bungling anyway, to have gotten the sword to him without the ring.
Meanwhile, Torisen did indeed begin to feel his strength fail. He hadn't realized until now how badly that forced march had drained him. No, don't think about that, he told himself. Concentrate on weaving the Senethar patterns of evasion and attack, sword against axes, and remember that too many direct blows will shatter already weakened armor. Damn. There went his helmet, carried off by a glancing blow that made his ears ring.
"Good," grunted his opponent, applauding his own strike, the Highlord's evasion, or both.
Torisen struck in reply and missed.
"Not so good."
The sword was shaking in his hand now and the air burning in his lungs. He had almost reached the end of his endurance. According to legend, Kin-Slayer was supposed to strike true as long as its rightful owner wielded it. Ganth had hinted at some further secret to its use, but had been too jealous of his dwindling power to reveal it, especially to one whom he already suspected of wanting to usurp his position. A fine time this would be to learn that his father's curse actually had taken effect, that he really was disowned and not the rightful Highlord after all.
Lunge, parry, turn . . . too slow, damnit.
He saw the blow coming, a white blur of stone and bone. It hit him in the stomach. He heard armor crack, saw Kin-Slayer spin away, all in the split second before he found himself doubled up on the ground, gasping for breath. There was no blood, ancestors be praised: The chain mail byrnie under the hardened leather had stopped the axe's edge. Now, if he could just breathe . . .
Hands scooped him up. The largest of the changers was holding him aloft as one might a child and grinning up at him through freshly broken teeth.
"Come to daddy," it said, and let him drop into its full embrace.
Torisen heard his armor shatter, felt the chain links dig into him. He struck at the other's eyes and ears, but the changer drew folds of flesh over them. Its arms tightened. He . . . couldn't . . . breathe . . .
Somewhere, someone screamed. The sound merged with the roar of his own blood until both faded into black velvet silence.
Jame saw her brother fall and rise again in the changer's grasp on the far side of the mist clearing. She started to run toward him, only to fall barely ten feet across the open space. Something had grabbed her ankle. It was the headless changer, still wallowing sluggishly under the mist. Its grip felt strong enough to break bone. The other changers were turning toward her but she ignored them. She saw her brother strike at his captor, first with strength, then more and more weakly. Pieces of his armor rained down. In near panic, she threw the Knife, but it wasn't balanced for such use and she had no skill. It missed. Torisen went limp, and still the other squeezed. Blood ran down from his nose and mouth.
Jame screamed.
The sound echoed piercingly off the cliffs, bouncing back and forth, seeming to grow—just as the rathorn's death scream had in the Anarchies. Almost without thinking, Jame pitched her cry to that terrible sustained note. The sound lanced through her head. The imu vibrated in her hand as if it too screamed, and perhaps it did. Above, other imus of diamantine emerged along the cliff heights, spitting earth from their frozen, gaping mouths. They were less well defined than the ones in the Anarchies but, it seemed, no less deadly.
The changer dropped Torisen and clamped hands over its ears. Its face distorted horribly. The others had already fallen and lay convulsed among the ferns. The hand gripping Jame's ankle let go. If this really had been a trap, she thought, lurching to her feet, she had just sprung it with a vengeance. She staggered toward where her brother had fallen, guided by the gem's glow under the mist. They must get out of here. The noise grew, shattering thought, and the imu exploded in her hand. She stumbled on—how far, she didn't know—until her legs seemed to melt out from under her and she fell into the cool ferns, under the glowing mist, into blessed silence.
* * *
ALL NIGHT, Harn had felt his berserker blood undercutting his randon discipline. He had briefly lost control once when he had attacked Prince Odalian; but when the charge began, he finally, deliberately, let go. Better that than to consider too closely what would happen to the pale boy who rode beside him. Besides, the battle had gone beyond anyone's control now. There was nothing left but to smash and smash and smash until it was all over, one way or the other.
So Harn rode over the Lower Hurdles borne on the crest of his battle madness, seeing the field laid bare for a moment before him by lightning, shouting with the thunder. For a moment, he thought Torisen was galloping beside him on a white horse, but that was a hallucination: Blackie would never ride white, the color of death. The pale horse disappeared, and Donkerri with it.
Death take you, boy. Go with honor.
Harn found the largest contingent of Wasters he could and smashed into it. His sword had gone with Donkerri. Now he again wielded his long-shafted axe, his Kencyr steel against the stone and obsidian of the enemy. The night stretched on and on in blood and thunder. All around him, lightning limned upturned faces, sharp teeth, wild eyes. He reaped heads. Hands clutched at him, and he lopped them off, too. His horse was splashed with gore up to the shoulders. It reared and plunged, striking, biting, finally screaming as Waster knives found its vitals. It crashed down. Harn rolled free and charged on into his massed foes until their sheer number stopped him. By now, he had outrun all but one Kendar, who had covered his back all the way. He fought on in savage joy, too deep in madness to count the odds. The Kendar behind him was chanting a war song full of the crash of steel, full of battle cries. Lightning and fire transfixed the night.
Then the scream began. It came from the woods to the right, preternaturally clear and piercing. Harn started, thinking it was the Knorth rathorn war cry, but it went on and on. A light shone in the heart of the forest. It seemed to spread. As that incredible scream continued, glowing mist drifted out from between the trees onto the battlefield. Where it went, the demon wind lost its strength, and the Wasters retreated. Suddenly they were all in flight. Startled out of his berserker fit, Harn watched them go in amazement. They scrambled out of the middle ground, into the lower meadow, onto the stairs.
"D'you see that?" he shouted to his companion. "Look at the buggers run. Look!" Getting no response, he turned. The Kendar was leaning on her spearstaff as if too tired to move. "Are you all right?" Harn demanded.
"No," said the other in a curiously husky voice, raising the haggard face of a haunt. It was Ashe. "I'm dead. I've been dead . . . for at least three days."
* * *
IN THE WOODS, the scream faded, and the mist began to disperse on the battlefield.
Just about this time, the Wolver, Lord Danior, and the combined war-guards reached the trees. They had been trying to get there for some time, but the currents of battle had swept them far south, almost into the lower meadow. Now they followed the Wolver into the woods, leaving their mounts, who still refused to enter. Here the mist still faintly glowed, lighting their way. The Wolver picked up Storm's scent. Not long afterward, they meet Ardeth leading the war horse and riding Brithany, also in search of Torisen. The Highlord's scent led them to the hollow. The Wolver crouched unhappily on the threshold while Ardeth and Danior went in with a handful of their guards to look by the light of mist, diamantine, and torch.
One of the guards gave a sudden yelp. "Something bit me!" He reached down under the mist and came up with the changer's severed head, which he held gingerly aloft by its hair. It made a hideous face at him.
They found other bodies under the mist, mostly by tripping over them, and carried them out beyond the hollow to where the ground had begun to clear. Of these, some were dead, some moving in slow convulsions with constantly changing faces and bodies. It was clear what the latter were, and also that their minds had been utterly destroyed. The Kencyr had collected two dead and three insane when Ardeth spotted the Kenthiar's dimming glow and followed it to the Highlord.
At first they thought he was dead for he lay so still. It wasn't until they had carried him out and laid him down under torchlight that they could see he was still breathing.
"But, my God," said Danior, staring. "What's happened to his armor?"
Ardeth wiped blood off the young man's face. "Who knows? Most of his adventures recently have been beyond me. Life used to be so much simpler. Ah, he's waking."
Torisen groaned. His eyes opened, and he stared at them, blankly at first. Then, "What happened?" he said weakly.
"God's claws and whiskers. Don't you know?"
"I-I remember the fight and being grabbed and not being able to breathe. Then someone screamed, and I passed out." He looked up at them, confused. "Who screamed?"
"Nothing human from the sound of it," said Danior. "Tori, you should have seen the Wasters run! I bet there isn't a clean breechcloth in the entire vanguard right now."
Torisen struggled up on one elbow. "The noise routed them?"
"Well, not entirely. They're on the steps again. We should have pressed our pursuit, I suppose, but, well, we were a bit shaken up, too. And now an attack is apt to bring them swarming back up. It's a stalemate of sorts. I don't like to think, though, what will happen when they realize we've got their precious founders, if that's what those things over there are."
"That's it!" said Ardeth. He rose abruptly and went over to look at the pile of changers, living and dead.
"That's what?" Danior asked, puzzled.
"Never mind, my boy, never mind. Let's just say that you've given me an idea." He gestured to his guards and gave them a low-pitched order. They bent to pick up the changers.
Meanwhile, Torisen had been trying to collect his scattered wits. He felt, on the whole, as if he had just been rolled down a mountain in a barrel full of rocks. Then he saw Ardeth standing by the changers and one thought at least leaped into his mind with startling clarity.
"Pereden," he muttered, and struggled to rise. Danior helped him. "Adric . . ."
Ardeth put his hands on Torisen's shoulders. "Now listen, my boy. Over the past few weeks, you've had insomnia, nightmares, bruises, cuts, bites, poison, and now probably assorted internal injuries as well. Let someone else have some fun for a change." He bustled off.
Torisen looked at the changers as Ardeth's Kendar carried them off after the old lord. He saw no familiar faces.
"Holly, do me a favor," he said to Danior. "Go back into the hollow and look for a sword with a smashed hilt crest. I-I think it's Kin-Slayer."
Danior stared at him. "Your father's lost sword? But . . . Tori, are you sure you're all right?"
"I feel," said Torisen, "like something the cat threw up, but I don't think I dreamed either that or . . . Holly, while you're in there, look for the—the changer that resembles Pereden. He'll be wearing blue armor. If he's still aliv
e, take him to my tent, bound and gagged. He's to speak to no one, understand? Not even to you. Swear it!"
"Yes, of course," said Danior, looking bewildered. He signaled to the Highlord's war-guard. "Now you'd better go back to camp yourself before anything more happens."
During most of this, the Wolver had been snuffling around in the undergrowth beyond the hollow. He came trotting back just as Torisen was leaving in the midst of his guard, who had no intention of losing him again.
"Tori, there's another scent here . . ."
"Not now," said one of the guards, pushing him aside. Torisen hadn't heard.
"Yes, but . . . but. . . ." But the war-guard had already left, bearing its leader captive with it.
Meanwhile, in the hollow, Danior had found both the sword and the blue-armored warrior lying close to where Torisen had fallen. Danior bound and gagged the warrior as ordered. When he emerged, he looked rather sick. Perhaps that was because he had never dealt so closely with a changer before, or perhaps because for all his puppylike bumbling, he was an intelligent young man and had begun to suspect the truth about his prisoner. At any rate, he was in no mood to gossip with the Wolver.
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