The Shadow of Tyr

by Glenda Larke

  Tarran, Tarran! His breathing sped up. He wasn’t in danger, was he? Was the ward too weak? Oh, Tarran, please come. I need to know what to do…

  Foran called more power into his cabochon and shot at one of the riders. He tumbled off his mount. The two legionnaires behind saw the flash of red light and swung their beasts in Foran’s direction. Foran blasted the second out of his saddle, then the third.

  What’s happening?

  ‘The legionnaires are attacking us!’

  Why are you warded?

  ‘Foran did it! I can’t get out! Can you help our soldiers?’

  Arrant, don’t be a tadpole. You know I have no power here. I’m just in your mind!

  Foran’s help gave the fleeing soldiers courage. They turned back to aid him, facing the gorclaks with only their axes and hammers and swords. Arrant watched, his mouth dry. Foran threw shaft after shaft of power, but each beam was paler. Legionnaires died, one after the other, but Ligea’s soldiers died too. Several of the wounded men pulled themselves up to join the fray, desperate to help. They grabbed up their weapons and staggered away to do what they could.

  Arrant, incapable of aiding them, was almost in tears. ‘Tarran, I can’t get out to help.’

  A Magor can send power through a ward.

  ‘Only through their own wards! This is not mine,’ he wailed. Anyway, he didn’t have any power.

  Foran shot off another blast of red Illuser power at a rider. At the last moment the legionnaire swerved his mount and it was the gorclak that died instead, pierced through the eye. Its forward momentum carried it straight on, right to where Arrant was trapped. The animal plunged to its knees in front of him, somersaulting its rider over its head, and skidded onwards, ploughing a furrow through the soil. Instinctively, Arrant leaped back as far as he could in his warded bubble.

  The legionnaire slammed into the ward headfirst. The beast met the warding head-on a split second later, and the magic bent. Arrant watched in horror as the horn of the gorclak stretched the ward, and visible crack lines like a dew-wet spider’s web blossomed out from the impact point. Appalled, he watched as the magic began to splinter. Tiny pieces of the ward turned opaque and then vanished. The breakage started slowly, then spread faster and faster.

  I’ll be Ravage-blasted, Tarran said.

  The ward popped out of existence, leaving Arrant standing in the open, vulnerable and alone. He shot an anguished look at Foran, but the Illuser was in no position to help. Another legionnaire was ramming his gorclak at him, and the man was furious.

  You got your wish, Arrant. You wanted to help. Seems to me you’d better get to it, right away.

  ‘How?’ he asked, anguished.

  That gorclak might be dead but the legionnaire at your feet is definitely not. Be quick! The others are pulling me back. We are in trouble in the Mirage.

  ‘I need you!’ Arrant drew his dagger from his belt. The legionnaire was only two paces away, and he was groaning and trying to push himself up.

  I think you had better hurry.

  ‘And do what?’

  Kill him, what else? Before he wakes up enough to kill you.

  Arrant was horrified. ‘I can’t kill him! He’s a legionnaire and—and—and I’m only nine.’

  If you don’t do something pretty quick, you’ll be dead aged nine. Hurry, you idiot, before he comes to his senses. If you don’t kill, he will.

  ‘I don’t think I can stab a man to death…’

  You’re a Magoroth! Use your cabochon.

  The legionnaire scrambled up, groping for his sword as he did so. There was no more time. Wildly, Arrant held out his hand with his palm outwards and thought about power, thought about killing, thought about a beam of yellow destruction.

  And blew the man’s head to pieces. The body remained standing for a fraction of time. Headless, as if it didn’t know it was dead. Then it toppled.

  Tarran warned, They are dragging me back…

  There was blood in Arrant’s eyes. Red sticky globs of it on his neck. Bits of brain on his tunic. The bits were like the curds Narjemah used to make for him from goat’s milk, whitish and soft.

  Tarran, I can’t…

  A piece of bone was stuck in his arm. It didn’t hurt. He plucked it out and flung it away. He started shaking, great shudders racking his body so hard he almost fell over.

  Tarran…

  But Tarran wasn’t there.

  He vomited, the contents of his stomach splashing onto his feet. Tarran? Please come back.

  No reply. He spoke to himself instead, rummaging for sanity. Oh, Goddess, his head…Do something, Arrant. You have no ward and there are legionnaires all over the place still.

  That was an exaggeration: there were only three mounted guardsmen left. Five or six legionnaires on foot. None of them seemed to have noticed what Arrant had done. Five gorclaks were trotting around riderless and aimless.

  One of the mounted three battled five or six of Ligea’s soldiers. Another was riding his mount over the injured men Foran had been treating, crushing them to death under the hooves. The third rider was hit by a blast of red power from Foran. It splattered into his chest—but the man didn’t fall. He just swayed in the saddle. He glanced at where the beam had melted a hole in his armour, hefted his javelin and rode on straight at Foran. The Illuser looked horrified. He started to build a ward between them.

  Oh, Mirage hells, Arrant thought. His power, it’s gone. Frantic, he groped for his own power, trying to drag it into being. He raised his arm again, not knowing if anything would respond.

  Tarran, that man’s head, did you see?…Tarran? Silence. Emptiness. No one there to rely on. Just you, you fool. His cabochon responded and a beam of light left his hand. He misjudged the speed of the thundering gorclak, and missed the rider.

  That man’s head; gods, what did I do…

  The focused beam of power sailed on and hit the city wall fifty paces away, dislodging stones.

  The man’s head—it just…vanished.

  Tarran didn’t hear. Wasn’t there.

  The javelin hit Foran in the middle of the chest. The Illuser collapsed. Arrant, his mind screaming denial, tried again. This time his beam of power broadened out into a swathe of burning gold. It hit both man and beast, but didn’t stop. He hadn’t controlled the reach of his power. He hadn’t controlled its spread. He hadn’t controlled anything. Didn’t know how. The gold moved on with a remorseless mind of its own, broadening as it went, spilling power from its edges in reckless, destructive splashes.

  He glimpsed the other two legionnaires and their gorclaks just before they ruptured, torn into pieces, none bigger than a legionnaire’s helmet. Behind him he felt more disintegration. More cessation of life. The injured no longer moaned. And then the squelching splats of soft things falling. Blood and flesh rained down, red rain, bloodied bits of bone that bounced like hail, chunks of meat forming a circle of scarlet around him.

  He stood at its centre, like the stamen of a bloodred blossom that was forty paces across.

  The remaining soldiers near the gate fled. They were Ligea’s men and they fled her son, scattering into the field outside the city.

  And still he stood. Rivulets of blood snaked down his face, his back, his arms; blood dripped from his nose, his chin, his fingers. It soaked his clothes. Stung his eyes.

  He withdrew, shrinking himself into the quietness of a mind shut down. He no longer heard anything at all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Ligea found the Magistrium empty. She walked through the echoing marble halls with their extravagance of friezes and statues, to investigate the side rooms with their thick carpeting. She sensed no one. In Rathrox’s office, scrolls and ledgers and papyrus sheets scattered the floor like leaves after a storm. The message was clear. The man had taken what he needed and fled.

  Still trailed by Gevenan’s two men, she left the Magistrium and hurried on up to Rathrox’s villa, but of course he wasn’t there, either. Two of his slaves were
dead in the entry hall. She recognised them both. One had been his man of affairs; the other, his scribe. They knew too much, she thought. He was cleaning up behind him. And they’d be alive now, too, if I’d killed him in front of the Oracle that day.

  She sent the two soldiers to the port to stop him if he were trying to take a ship out, but she had an idea that they would find only a dead end. Rathrox was too wily to have left a trail behind him.

  She herself headed off for the North Gate, to see how Gevenan and her men there were progressing. Once again, she was delayed by the chaos of the streets, her purpose interrupted by her need to control looting, or stop the violence, or send rioting slaves back to their homes with orders to stay there. Maintaining her dominance over the situation was not easy: to do it without too much expenditure of power was almost impossible. The colour in her sword began to dim as her cabochon lost power. Fatigue dragged at her. She was going to have to be careful. She needed to retain enough Magor power for the rest of the day; her battle was not over yet. She grabbed some pastries and a handful of shelled pistachios from an abandoned bakery, and ate them as she walked.

  She didn’t get to the gate. The Via Pecunia leading to the North Gate started at the palace, slanting off in a different direction from the Forum Publicum, and the whole area of the Forum in front of the palace was jammed with fighting men. The public concourse had become a battleground, seething with individual conflicts.

  Ligea swore. Where the Vortexdamn had all these men come from? A glance told her they were a mix of Imperial Guards and Valorian’s Tyr legionnaires on one side, and on the other…well, she spotted men who had come with her from the Stronghold, there were Quyriot horsemen, she recognised some of Gevenan’s men from the barges, but there were also men and women wearing slave collars and hefting everything from roasting spits to blacksmith’s hammers. Apparently, her forces from the North Gate had pushed Bator Korbus’ men back to the centre of Tyr. The final battle for the city was being fought right here, in front of the symbol of Exaltarchy power.

  She enhanced her sight and surveyed the top of the broad flight of stairs at the palace’s main entrance. The Imperial Guard, with some of Valorian’s men, had formed up in rows on the marble portico in front of the huge wooden doors. Bator Korbus fought with them, in the centre. Valorian was there too, beside him. With their curved shields covering their torsos, and their long spears, this wall of experienced fighting men was proving impossible to dislodge. They had the advantage of the higher ground and were using their spears to deadly effect, jabbing at the attackers who repeatedly stormed up the broad set of stairs. Less than a hundred men, and they were able to keep a whole army at bay. If a guard fell, then there was another from the row behind to take his place. However, as far as Ligea could see, not many had died.

  She scanned the attackers. Gevenan was there, at the heart, rallying and directing his men. The relief she felt at the sight of him touched more than her desire for victory. Gev, she thought, I would hate to see your death, my friend. And wouldn’t you love the irony of that…Ligea caring, in a quite personal way, about your sarcastic hide.

  She took a deep breath. This was where and when it ended. This was the moment of victory—or defeat.

  She threw off her shawl and the white robe, discarding them together with her bag. Clad only in a brown tunic and leggings and carrying her sword, she began to wend her way through the fighting men. She kept every sense alert to danger, open to hostile intention from those around her, but a nondescript woman was of no interest to men fighting for their lives. Only when she had nearly reached the bottom of the steps did she hold her blade aloft, calling on some of the remnants of her Magor magic.

  The intense flare of light from her Mirager’s sword halted the fighting around her. Bator raised his shield in front of his face. Soldiers drew back, unable to see, raising their arms to block the light.

  Except for Gevenan.

  He used everyone else’s moment of disorientation to grab Valorian’s spear by the haft. One sharp pull and the Legate tumbled from the portico. Ligea’s lips curved up. Trust Gev. The two men grappled on the steps, ignoring all else. Ligea felt their satisfaction. Goddessdamn, she thought, for all like a pair of bantam cocks trying to rule the roost. Bloody men! One of them is going to end up dead, and they are enjoying themselves?

  Everywhere else, a shudder went through the armies. Men were stung by the prickles of pain, as sharp as thorns against the skin, that she had stitched into the Magor light. The cessation of combat spread outwards, following the ripples of that uncanny light as it dispensed its pain. Ligea heard the whispers spread too, old soldiers’ memories, imbibed by younger men around campfires: Numen. Goddess. Immortal. Witchery. Remember Kardiastan. Remember what they said about the Kardi Uprising. Remember the legends about the Rift. Beware: you cannot win this fight.

  But perhaps it wasn’t fear that stopped the battle. Most of these men had been fighting since dawn, and now the sun hung overhead, a hot blaze heating metal, baking men in their leather cuirasses or their bronze armour. Perhaps it was just the desire to rest that halted them. To have it all end.

  Except for Gevenan and Valorian.

  Cursing Gevenan for forcing her to use a portion of that last reserve of power, she built a ward around the two of them, making it so small neither could move. It was Gevenan’s turn to curse, his vocabulary so ripe she wasn’t sure she understood all the words he used. She glared at him. Valorian just looked stunned.

  ‘Get down here and protect my side,’ she yelled at Gevenan and let the ward vanish. She was too weak to hold it in place much longer anyway. Across in other parts of the city, she felt her other wards wink into nothingness as well. She had to finish this before the legionnaires and Imperial Guards she’d had trapped behind those wards arrived.

  And she had expended all she had in that burst of gold, all but one last shaft she had saved for Bator Korbus, a pathetically weak bubble of power now latent in the blade of her sword.

  Gevenan sprang to obey her order, half tumbling down the stairway, Valorian’s spear still in one hand, his own sword in the other. She felt his men gather at her back to help. Valorian stayed where he was, not far below the Exaltarch’s feet, sprawled across several of the steps. He clutched his shield to cover his body, and his eyes gazed at her over the top. She felt his emotions, and smiled at him.

  Bator Korbus stared at her. His hate curled around the edges of his shield like surf swirling on a beach. She felt the slap of it, the raging, foaming intensity.

  He flung his javelin at her chest. One of Gevenan’s men raised his shield in front of her, deflecting the point. A hail of spears followed it, flung by the Imperial Guardsmen, as they recovered from the blast of light and pain. Every single one targeted her. One knocked her to her knees when it caught in her tunic and wrenched her off-balance. Around her, several men died because they had chosen to shelter her with their shields instead of themselves. She scrambled up, cursing the weak fluttering of her power.

  Please, let there be no more spears, or I am dead…

  She levelled her sword tip at the Exaltarch, knowing she no longer had enough power to kill him from more than a pace away. She ran upwards, taking the steps two at a time, her weakened sensing ability open to all the information it could garner.

  ‘Kill her,’ Bator bellowed at his guard. ‘She’s only a Kardi woman, not a damned goddess!’

  Gevenan leaped up the stairs alongside her. Others sprang to follow, cutting off the Imperial Guardsmen from either side as they moved down.

  She filled her sword with colour, showered herself with gold. Colour, she thought. There’s nothing much else there. I am about to fight a military commander with a sodding paintbrush…

  Yet it was enough to make the guardsmen falter.

  They had seen her power. They feared its mystery. They were brave men, but they feared to fight what they did not understand. They looked out over the crowd filling the concourse, and saw an expanse o
f upturned faces watching. Not fighting; waiting.

  And in that hiatus of time, Bator Korbus lost his command. She wondered if he felt it too, that wavering of spirit that went through his men.

  It’s kill me now, or lose, Bator…one chance to take back your command.

  He threw himself down the steps to meet her coming up. As he leaped, he flung his shield at Gevenan. The Ingean had to raise his arm to ward off the blow, but it toppled him nonetheless. His fall brought down the two other men closest to her.

  Bator levelled his sword at her chest. She had no shield. She was alone, and almost defenceless. All she had were her senses.

  ‘Valorian,’ she said in the split second available.

  And on the steps, the Legate tilted his shield just as the Exaltarch jumped over him to reach her.

  They spoke of it for years afterwards, those who had been there. Those who were close to the steps and who saw and heard what happened. The privileged ones, who could boast that they had seen the fall and the rise of exaltarchs.

  ‘She used her magic,’ one said. ‘She sent the old Exaltarch flying through the air to land with his head at her feet and his legs further up the stairs. He looked about as dignified as a whore in a brothel with her legs apart.’

  ‘She rolled him over with her foot,’ another said. ‘Alive? Oh, yes, he was still alive. She put that sword of hers to his throat and said, “Do you know who I am, Bator? Do you know why you are about to die?” He spat at her then, but she didn’t flinch. He said, “I should have killed you at the same time that I slid my sword into your mother’s belly.” That’s when she killed him.’

  They were wrong, those storytellers. She hadn’t killed him then. That was when she’d bent to say softly in his ear, ‘Everything you had, Bator, will be mine. A Kardi numen bitch is going to rule this land, and everything you built is going to be destroyed. Die knowing that your name is going to be forgotten, because there will be nothing anyone can point to and say: “Bator Korbus did that.”’

  That was when she killed him.