[Cenotaph Road 06] - Pillar of Night

by Robert E. Vardeman - (ebook by Undead)

  Lan snorted at that. “Claybore’s imagination is vivid. You might be better off not knowing.” But he understood the woman’s concern. Only because he had advanced to a stage almost matching Claybore’s had he been able to detect the geas forcing him to protect Kiska. Lan needed to surpass Claybore in ability to be able to counter the spell. He wondered if the answer lay locked within the beguiling Pillar of Night.

  “Lan?” called out Kiska. “What happened?”

  “Rest,” he said. “I’ll be here. There’s someone coming to examine you, to make sure your injuries aren’t worse than I thought.”

  Brown eyes moved past Lan to fix on Brinke. Lan saw the calculation working in Kiska’s expression. He made no move to introduce the two.

  “She is very lovely,” said Kiska.

  “I will fetch the chirurgeon,” said Brinke, moving from the room with a liquid grace that reminded Lan of Inyx stalking game.

  “She likes you. I can tell,” said Kiska.

  “I used a small healing spell on your leg wound. All that saved you was the odd flow of time between worlds. An artery had been severed by the beast’s fanging. Only when we emerged back onto this world did the wound begin to bleed.”

  “The Pillar of Night is near?” Kiska asked. “Never mind. It must be. I recognize this world. It was here that Claybore and I—” Kiska abruptly cut off her words and smiled wickedly. “That is no concern of yours, dear, loving Lan.” The words burned as if they had been dipped in acid.

  Brinke returned with the chirurgeon, who performed a thorough and nonmagical examination. All the while Lan and Brinke stood to one side, quietly talking.

  When the chirurgeon left, Lan said, “I should stay with her.”

  “No, darling Lan,” spoke up Kiska. “I would rest. He gave me a sleeping potion. I… grow drowsy. Go and swap spells with her.” A tiny smile curled the corners of Kiska’s mouth. Lan couldn’t help but compare the difference between the two women. On Brinke a smile brought sunshine; on Kiska it chilled to the bone. “Go and leave me alone. I would sleep now.” Kiska pulled a blanket over her shoulder and turned her head away.

  Lan and Brinke silently left the room and made their way back to Brinke’s study. Another of the magically powered cleaning devices scuttled about to clean the beast’s blood from the flagstone floor. Lan went and stood in front of the archway.

  “It doesn’t appear to lead anywhere now,” he said. “What spells do you use to activate it?”

  “My magics are not so predictable,” Brinke said. “I know few spells. I sit and sometimes everything seems right. Then I perform what strike me as miracles; but, on a consistent basis, I have no control.”

  “You plucked me from the nothingness,” said Lan.

  “I sat here reading and a mood came over me. I felt… apprehensive. I spoke, you answered. If I used some spell or another, I know nothing of it.”

  “Purely instinctual,” Lan mused.

  “I have made no real effort to learn formally.”

  Lan’s heart accelerated as he looked at Brinke. Her beauty was unmatched on any of the worlds he had walked. He told her so.

  “What will Claybore’s militant pawn think of such flowery words?” Brinke asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  A sinking feeling gripped Lan Martak. Kiska had almost chased him away, knowing full well what it would lead to. Why? What part did this have in Claybore’s plot? Any?

  His and Brinke’s eyes locked. He moved closer to her.

  “I should thank you for all you’ve done.”

  “No thanks is necessary,” Brinke said. Her tongue slipped the merest fraction from her mouth, wetting her lips. Lan kissed her.

  The kiss became more, much more. Through the long, passionate night, Lan never once thought of Kiska.

  But he did think of lost Inyx.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Tell me all you see,” Ducasien said earnestly. He bent forward, his arm around Inyx. “There must be details you can ferret out with this wondrous talent of yours, Julinne. Show me. Show us.”

  “It,” said Nowless, “does not work that way with her. Not always. Julinne’s wondrous fair talent is limited, even at the best of times. What hellish horrors she has been through makes it all the more difficult for her.”

  “Julinne,” said Inyx, reaching out and holding one of the woman’s hands in both of hers, “this is a turning point in history. With your vision of the grey-clads’ base we can eliminate them. We can drive them from this world once and for all time.”

  Julinne nodded, a bleak expression on her face. “I am unable to choose between my sight and the seeing.”

  “Try,” urged Inyx. “For all those you’ve lost to those accursed butchers, try.”

  Julinne turned a shade whiter; it made her look less healthy than many corpses Inyx had seen along the Road. Julinne had lost four children and a husband to Claybore’s troops and along with the heartbreak came a boon. The shock of the loss had broken the woman’s spirit and, ironically, had given her the gift required to defeat the grey-clads.

  “How many?” asked Ducasien, his voice low and soothing.

  Julinne’s eyes glazed over. “Four hundred and some.”

  “When will they all be together? When will the commandant muster his troops?” Ducasien and Inyx exchanged worried looks. Julinne turned even paler and her entire body trembled like a leaf in a high wind. Even her teeth chattered in reaction.

  “A fortnight from now. They gather to… to…”

  “Yes?” Inyx held the woman’s hand and squeezed reassuringly. “What is their plan?”

  “I see it so clearly,” Julinne said. “But the words. The words refuse to come.”

  “This is harmful to her,” protested Nowless. “We cannot go on.”

  “We must!” snapped Ducasien. “I tell you this is the only chance we will have to destroy them, gather them in one spot and close the trap around them.” He clapped his hands together. Jaw set and face grim, Ducasien brooked no argument.

  “So many of us have died,” moaned Julinne.

  “More will unless you tell us the plan.” Inyx listened carefully as Julinne’s lips barely moved. The whispered words began to make sense and she passed them along to Ducasien and Nowless. When the woman’s vision of the future had come to an end, she slumped forward. Inyx caught her and gently laid her down. Julinne slept deeply.

  Ducasien motioned for them to leave the woman. He, Inyx, and Nowless walked the perimeter of the guerrilla camp, discussing all Julinne had seen.

  “They feel they have committed enough outrage,” said Ducasien. “The time is ripe for them to systematically eliminate us.”

  “The countryside is properly dispirited,” admitted Nowless. “Even our finest victories do little to help when the farmers know that the bedamned grey-clads might descend on them at any time and burn them out.”

  “They have no confidence in us,” said Inyx. “But we need that. Without full support by the time the soldiers gather at the fort, we are lost.”

  “You have a plan?” asked Ducasien.

  Inyx nodded, brushing away her long, dark hair. Her blue eyes sparkled as she launched into it.

  “A resounding defeat for a small group of them will set us up nicely,” she said. “We show the countryside we can prevail. That will align them with us. But the victory cannot be so great that it alerts the greys.”

  “You’re thinking thoughts of Marktown?” asked Nowless. “The garrison there is undermanned, yet it is a key position for them.”

  “It will be our most dangerous raid yet,” said Inyx, “but if we succeed, we will have won.”

  “Not quite,” said Ducasien. “Their mage will have returned from his circuit. The fort will boast both soldiers and ward spells. The mage is not overly good, but he is better than none at all, which is what we have.” Ducasien clasped his hands behind his back and walked on. Nowless said nothing as he turned and left.

  Inyx watched Ducasien,
thinking that they ought to have a mage.

  “Lan,” she said softly, then hastened after Ducasien.

  “We are too few,” complained Ducasien. “This raid cannot work as you laid it out. We must regroup, plan some other foray.”

  Inyx laughed. “You are too caught up in the overall scheme to appreciate the subtle moves. Look, Ducasien, we go yonder and down. The greys rush out to meet us. Nowless and his group sneak in from behind and we have them caught in a pincer. They cannot run and we will outfight them because they are undermanned.”

  “Too pat,” said Ducasien. The man chewed on his lower lip and looked worried.

  “There is something more bothering you. This is not that daring a plan.”

  “You,” Ducasien said finally. “I do not want you in the party. Stay with Julinne and the others.”

  “Why this sudden change of heart?” Inyx frowned. This was unlike Ducasien.

  “I… I have lost too much,” said Ducasien. “I will not lose you.”

  “Oh? And you think I have not lost those I love?” she shot back. “My husband is worm food because of the grey-clads. What if I should lose you to their sword? Would my hurt be less than yours?”

  “This is a foolish argument.”

  “It is,” Inyx said hotly. “I plan, I fight. I must show confidence in my skills or none will follow.”

  Ducasien faced Marktown and the small garrison. He kept his hands locked behind his back, a gesture Inyx had long since interpreted as being one of defiance in the man. But she would not relent. Inyx knew she was right in all she did.

  “Leponto province was never like this, was it?” he asked.

  “Not in your memory,” Inyx said. “I left just as the soldiers poured over the borders from Jux and Chelanorra. For years they had been threatening such a move, but it was only when Reinhardt and his brothers were dead did they invade us.”

  “That was long years before I was even born,” said Ducasien. “The time flows between worlds in odd ways.”

  “Tell me of Leponto. The one you remember.” Inyx leaned back against the sun-warmed rock and closed her eyes. No longer stretched out at her feet was the village of Marktown on some world so far along the Road she had no clear idea where it lay. Ducasien’s words took her home, where she had been born and raised and loved and watched death stalk those dearest to her. Back to Leponto.

  “The summer I left was extraordinary,” Ducasien said. “The lin were in full bloom. Remember how the blossoms showed brown spirals?”

  “Only in the blue blooms,” said Inyx, remembering well. “The red blooms had black spirals. When I was a child we’d pretend we were bugs going along the spiral. We’d describe our path to one another.”

  “Pollen grains,” said Ducasien. “We’d always try to be the first to describe the pollen. As large as boulders.”

  “You played the game, too? Yes, I suppose all in our province would. The flowers were the mainstay of life.”

  Inyx sighed. Leponto had been famed throughout the world for the delicacy of its flowers, especially the lin. Some had curative powers, others were used in dyes. Nowhere in the world had a finer textile factory than in Leponto. And the flowers even had decorative value. The Council of Threes always opened with a flower from Leponto being presented to each of the representatives. Inyx had traveled to the court once for the ceremony. Seeing the three from her home given the lin had been a high point of her young life.

  “The autumn feast,” went on Ducasien. He chuckled. “I met my first lover at the feast.”

  “Under the moons of good harvest?” asked Inyx, startled. “So did I.”

  “Reinhardt?”

  Inyx smiled and shook her head. “Reinhardt was later, but not that much so. No, I had forgotten about the autumn feast until you’d mentioned it.”

  “You’re lying,” chided Ducasien. “No one forgets their first lover. Their second, perhaps, or their fourth or fortieth, but never their first.”

  Inyx swallowed and nodded assent. She had not forgotten. She had remembered how much he looked like Lan Martak. The brown hair and eyes, the quick movements, the quicker smile. They had met under the watchful eyes of the orange harvest moons. Inyx lifted one finger to a spot just under her left eye; he had kissed her there. The finger traced a line down to the line of her jaw and then forward to her chin. His lips had moved along so enticingly. Even now Inyx felt her heart beating faster. Her hand covered her lips.

  “It’s time to assemble our troops,” said Inyx. “We dare not put this off any longer.”

  “The patrols will not return until sundown,” said Ducasien.

  “We attack now.”

  Ducasien locked his hands behind his back and his lips thinned to a razor’s slash, but he did not argue. He went to give Nowless and the others last-minute instructions. Inyx gazed downhill and saw Leponto in autumn. She closed her eyes and when she looked again saw only Marktown.

  It was time to begin the attack.

  Inyx fingered her sword and worried. Something was wrong. She glanced around and noted the placement of her fighters. All waited nervously for the signal to attack Marktown garrison. The woman licked dried lips and forced calm on herself. She had to think. What wasn’t right? What was out of place?

  “Nowless and the others are ready,” said Ducasien. He dismissed the messenger, who trotted back to the ranks and waited for further orders. “Let’s get this done.”

  “No,” said Inyx.

  “We can’t retreat. You said so yourself. We must go forward.”

  “Something’s not right. How I wish Lan were here. He’d know.” Inyx agonized over her feelings. She had learned to trust them and they told her disaster awaited any frontal assault. But why?

  “We go.” Ducasien’s face darkened. Inyx knew the mention of Lan Martak triggered the rage and pulled a curtain of emotion over his good sense.

  “With caution,” she said.

  “In battle? Don’t be absurd. We go, we fight, we win! To Marktown!” he cried, lifting his sword high in the air. Sunlight glinted off the blued steel blade and signaled the fighters on either side. With a ragged cheer, they began moving, slowly at first and then with increased momentum as they ran downhill.

  Inyx sucked in a deep breath and followed. She would not be left behind. If this were a trap laid by the grey-clads, she wanted to be beside Ducasien when it closed around them. She had lost too many who were dear to her.

  “See?” panted Ducasien as they reached the outskirts of the village. “All goes as we planned.”

  Inyx agreed it was true. The garrison of soldiers had been caught unawares. The gates were still open and most of them lounged about outside their tiny fort. The front of the assault wave hit and engaged the soldiers, many of whom didn’t even have weapons. It was slaughter—and Inyx forgot her misgivings and joined in.

  The main body of greys rushed from the garrison, armed and ready for combat. By this time she saw Nowless and his select few skulking at the edges. When the soldiers rushed forth, Nowless slipped into the garrison proper. When the pitiful few survivors returned—if any did—they would find themselves trapped with a fresh, savage fighting team.

  Inyx met a doublehanded sword slash with a parry that made her sword ring like a bell. Her opponent was taller and much stronger. His biceps strained the seams of his grey uniform and his collar hung open because his thick neck had tensed and ripped off the fastener.

  “Filth,” he grunted as he swung again. Inyx danced away, knowing she couldn’t continue matching this man’s strength. The blade cut air a fraction of an inch in front of her face. “You killed Droy. He was my best friend.”

  A circular cut missed by a larger margin, but Inyx knew she could not hope to wear this one down. His great stamina would be enhanced by fighting rage and need to revenge his fallen comrade. Inyx almost felt sorry for him as she judged the range, waited for another berserk cut to miss and then launched a long, precise lunge. The tip of her blade spitted him in the
side.

  She danced back as the man stupidly looked at the blood gushing from between his ribs.

  “Slut. You won’t kill me. You won’t!” With a bull-throated roar, he lowered his sword and charged. Inyx felt as if she’d dislocated her shoulder as she parried his blade and then lunged as hard as she could. Her blade slid past the man’s belly, opening it in a giant bloody gash. The grey took three more steps, straightened, and tried to hold his guts inside and failed. He toppled like a felled tree.

  “Good work,” said Ducasien, sliding to a halt beside the woman. “I couldn’t get free.” Love shone in his eyes. “You are unique. Of all the women I have known, none matches you.”

  Inyx caught her breath and stared at the grey on the ground. “We’d killed his best friend. All he fought for was revenge.”

  “We wouldn’t have killed his friend if the grey-clads hadn’t tried to subjugate this entire world.”

  “They’re only pawns. They fight because they can do nothing else. Claybore uses them and tosses them away when they outgrow their mission.”

  “Stop them, stop Claybore.”

  “I think Lan was right. Stop Claybore, stop them. Without the head to direct the arm, they wouldn’t fight. And he wouldn’t lose his best friend in a guerrilla raid.”

  Ducasien didn’t share her concern. “They’re better off dead, then, than being puppets for Claybore.”

  Inyx didn’t reply. A stirring deep within caused her to stare at the open gates of the garrison. Her plan had worked perfectly. When the soldiers had seen they couldn’t outfight the guerrillas, they had retreated to the supposed safety of their fort. Nowless and his men cut them down as they entered.

  If she wanted to, Inyx could claim the garrison. But that wasn’t part of the plan. Patrols of considerable strength still roamed the countryside. This foray had been intended only to show a dagger aimed at the heart, not the actual thrust to the death.