And the uwagi that had spoken was suddenly rigid, shoulders flung back, the ghastly features straining upward, howling at the clouded sky, the taloned hands opening and then clenching as the body shuddered and seemed to shift, another image imposed over its brutish form: the shape of a Jesseryte warrior, the veil of his helmet thrown back to reveal a face, indistinct, beastly and human, both, that smiled malign mockery.
Calandryll stared, scenting the odor of almonds mingling with the reek of the creatures, seeing the form of the Jesseryte imposed on the flickering shape of the uwagi, one then the other, dreamlike, like the shifting, darting movements of a fish glimpsed through rippling, sun-lit water.
He braced himself, favoring his bruised leg, the straightsword extended, knowing beyond doubt what—who!—possessed the were-thing.
And Rhythamun chuckled and said, "A tidy trap, no? Use that blade and you die, leaving me the victory. Do not use it, and my pets rend you limb from limb. You've seen their work, I think—shall you enjoy that fate? No matter, for I take the day. The day and the Arcanum, both, with all the world to follow when I raise Tharn. And for you, suffering beyond your imagination."
The warlock laughed, or the uwagi laughed, for they both occupied the same temporal space. Calandryll snarled, not now unlike the ferocious growling of the were-beasts, for rage burned in him, and hatred, exiling all fear, all sorrow, leaving only wrath.
"Which do you choose?" Rhythamun asked. "The one death is, perhaps, swifter than the other, but whichever—your quest ends here. In a lonely place, with none to mark where you fall. Does that sit bitter, Calandryll den Karynth? Do you see now how foolish it has been to oppose me; to oppose Tharn's raising."
“No!”
It was a challenge and denial, together, and met with mocking laughter. He saw the armored shoulders of the Jesseryte, and the hulking width of the uwagi, shrug.
"No? How say you, no? What shall you do, save die? Die knowing your quest comes to naught, that I am victorious. That in time your allies shall die. The Kern and the Vanu woman, the upstart sorcerer who aids you—all of them! While I go on to raise my master and stand at his right hand, favored. And you? Your body shall lie here, riven by your own sword or by my creations, while your spirit suffers tortures past your comprehension. Yet, at least; though you shall find them soon enough." Again, the horrid laughter, confident and contemptuous. "Was it such a gift your feeble goddess gave you? It seems to me a curse now—the instrument of your death, if so you choose."
"Save I strike you," Calandryll roared. "What then, warlock? Dera set holy magic in this blade, and I think that do I plunge her power into that body you use, then your pneuma shall feel the blow."
The uwagi that was Rhythamun in his Jesseryte form howled horrible mirth. Slaver fell on Calandryll's face, distasteful; ignored as he waited, poised.
"You take lessons in sorcery, eh? Doubtless from the mage who came to your aid before. My pneuma, you say? You think to harm me within the aethyr? You pride yourself, boy. Think you a scant handful of lessons, a smattering of that lore I've studied down the ages, can aid you or harm me? I say you again, no! Strike and discover!"
Calandryll held back, his mind racing, delving frantically into all Ochen had told him, into all the lessons—few enough, Dera knew!—he had received. Aloud, he said, not sure whether he believed his own words, or merely looked to buy more time, "You send your animus into this thing you made—you meld with it—so do I strike it, I strike you. What then, Rhythamun? Are you greater than the Younger Gods?"
"I am," said the shifting thing, with awful conviction. "Ere your blow can land, I shall be gone, and that blade your puking goddess blessed strikes the flesh of my creation—which shall be your destruction, and the ending of your quest. Tharn's blood, boy, you've seen what magic does to these things! You've lost, and all you've done comes to naught. So strike,- or do I set them on you? It matters little to me."
"I think you are afraid," Calandryll said.
"Afraid?" The obscene laughter filled the clearing, howling off the trees. "I afraid? Strike, then, fool!"
"Aye!" Calandryll shouted, and sprang to the attack, the blade carving swift at the mocking face.
10
CALANDRYLL was emptied of fear in that moment: the rage that gripped him left no space for any other emotion. He knew only that Rhythamun's animus dwelt in the uwagi, and hoped— trusted to Dera and all her kindred gods—that his blow should land ere the warlock might quit the body. That he would be consumed in the occult devastation was no longer a consideration, a matter of scant importance were he able to slay the sorcerer. Even did the blow serve only to banish Rhythamun's pneuma to the aethyr it might still prove a victory—Pyrrhic, but what matter that, if Ochen, if the wazir-narimasu of Anwar-teng, were able to hunt the warlock there? It seemed a small enough sacrifice, his life against the sorcerer's defeat: he put all his strength into the cut.
And saw, as if time slowed, as if he stepped aside, occult and corporeal existences divided and he become observer of his own actions, the blade swing down, true, at the cranium of the beast that was Rhythamun.
He saw rank terror glint startled in the red eyes, triumph in the tawny Jesseryte orbs. Smelled fear sweat and almonds; heard mocking laughter. Saw the were-form flicker again, no longer possessed, but wholly uwagi; and knew he was defeated, that Rhythamun fled the body faster than his sword fell, and that as edge clove skull he was dead, the triumvirate broken, the quest doomed to failure.
The blade sang down its trajectory, sure as death, unstoppable, carving air that soon should be replaced by bone and brain, and then the explosion of opposed magicks. He saw his death draw remorselessly closer.
And a shape burst from the pines, fleet as flighted arrow, too fast his peripheral vision had chance to discern what moved. He saw the uwagi hurled aside, bowled howling over, the straight- sword crash against empty turf, driving deep, the wrath-filled force of the blow jarring his arms, his shoulders. He snatched it free, hearing the laughter falter, lost under the uwagi's scream as the were- beast was hauled upright, the hands that gripped its throat tugging back the neck as a knee drove against the spine. Time resumed its natural passage then, as the creature was bent, arched over until the horrid sound of snapping bone announced the breaking of its spine. Its scream pitched shrill and abruptly died. Calandryll saw it lifted and flung across the clearing, tumbling three of its kindred monsters like skittles, and then he was grabbed, spun round, and hurled toward the tenuous safety of the trees.
He landed on his face, winded and momentarily stunned, pine needles sharp, pungent, against his mouth. Bewildered, unsteady, he pushed up on hands and knees, retrieved his sword, and clambered to his feet, staggering, dizzy, back to the clearing's edge. And gasped in naked amazement as a second were-beast was felled.
Cennaire?
He wondered momentarily if he dreamed—how could it be Cennaire who stood there?
Yet it was; like a wildcat, furious, moving with a speed, a strength, he could scarce believe, ducking beneath a reaching paw to clutch the arm and snap it, to crush the windpipe and drive a fist against the gaping jaws so hard, so savage, the bones crumpled, lifting the bulky creature to hurl the thing as though it were no more than a weightless rag doll, at its confused companions.
Two of the monsters lay dead then. Others yammered rage and bewilderment. One stood, arms raised, its form flickering, possessed by Rhythamun, the scent of almonds growing stronger.
Calandryll shouted, "Cennaire!" and began to move out of the timber.
The woman shouted, "No, flee! I can hold them!"
And light, eye-searing, burst from the outthrust hands of the thing that was owned by the sorcerer. It struck Cennaire, smashing her down, blackening the grass where she stood as if foul poison sullied the night-dark green. Calandryll thought her surely dead then, but she rose, shaking long hair from her face, and moved once more toward the uwagi.
Calandryll raised his blade, unthinking now, intent onl
y on defending the woman. Four of the uwagi stood before her, while the fifth again raised its arms, though now the eyes looked not at Cennaire, but to where Calandryll came out from the trees.
"In Burash's name!" Cennaire screamed. "Do you get yourself to safety! Leave me, for the gods' sake. For your sake!"
Calandryll shouted, "No," and saw fresh light, bright beyond color, beyond belief, soul-searing, lance from the Rhythamun-uwagi.
It seemed then that an ax collapsed his chest, a garrotte wound about his throat. It seemed his eyes melted in their sockets, that all his limbs shattered. He did not know he fell, for a while knew only a darkness crimsoned by agony, as if all his organs burst and flooded his body with ruptured blood, and a dreadful tugging, like a cord drawn tight about his soul, about his spirit, seeking to drag his pneuma out into the aethyr, into a limbo of eternal suffering. Not knowing he did it, he once more mouthed the gramaryes Ochen had taught him, warding his animus against the occult attack, careless of his body, concerned only that Rhythamun not take his soul. Then he became aware that his mouth clogged, gagging on turf and needles, which mattered little, for he was choking and burning. The scent of almonds was pungent in his nostrils and he knew that he was dying, was killed.
And then he was lifted again and some measure of sense returned, enough that he realized Cennaire held him, her hair soft on his cheek, her arms incredibly strong, carrying him into the trees even as the uwagi howled and all around them the forest flamed, wracked by sorcery.
Trees toppled, felled by the blasts of Rhythamun's sortilege,- the night was loud with detonations, the crash of falling timber, the explosion of burning branches, the crackle of burning bushes. He felt himself laid down, softly, and for an instant Cennaire knelt beside him. Her eyes were huge and brown, moist as if she wept, but she smiled and touched his face gently, and said, "Flee! Better you survive than I. I will earn what time I can."
He shook his head, wincing as pain knifed his skull, and mumbled, "I cannot/' the words thick on a tongue that felt scorched and befurred.
"You must," she said urgently, putting her mouth close that she might be heard through the thunder of destructive magic. "They'll slay you else, and your quest be ended. Now go!"
He began to ask, "Why?" but she dammed the question with a touch, her fingers gentle, and rose, smiling briefly, and said, "Because. Ask no more,- only save yourself. Before those hunters come again."
Then she was gone, running back through the flames and the tumbling trees.
Calandryll rose awkwardly to his feet. The straightsword was still in his hand and he needed rest on it a moment as his head swam, sucking in deep breaths that, to his surprise, came clear and clean down a throat he thought was crushed. He hefted the sword, looking about, to find the way Cennaire had gone. He did not think of flight: that was desertion, betrayal; instead, he went after her.
It was easy enough to locate her, for fire burned where she went, the night air grown thick with the resinous odor of pine smoke, the howling of the uwagi an aural beacon. Sparks smoldered on the leathers he wore, in his hair,* his eyes watered, his hurt leg throbbed dully. He stumbled and staggered, dodging falling trunks, going after her.
He was not sure how he survived the devastation Rhythamun hurled at the forest, blindly it seemed, seeking to destroy by sheer overwhelming force what Cennaire had denied his subtlety, what Ochen's tutelage had denied his occult trap. Calandryll knew only that he did, that he lived and that he found the clearing again, and saw Cennaire, a little way inside the ring of flaming pines, a dead were-thing at her feet, three others circling her.
The fourth—Rhythamun—stood aloof, uwagi and Jesseryte warrior simultaneously, reeking of almonds, the man's mouth forming the arcane syllables that shaped the blasts, the other drooling and shrieking.
Then sudden silence. A pause, an immense stillness, as if the world's turning halted. The flames consuming the forest sputtered and died; Rhythamun's chanting ceased; the uwagi's howling faded away.
Soft, clear light, like the lambent radiance of the sun rising over the horizon at midsummer, or the perfect clarity of its setting, shone across the sky above the glade, folding the pines, the grass, within a dome of brilliance. The almond scent, somehow softer, gentler, replaced the acrid smell of smoke. A curse rang loud from the distorted mouth of the uwagi Rhythamun possessed and the creature's form shimmered, leeched of its Jesseryte shape, become again only a were-beast, falling to its knees, paws outthrust, head hanging as if a blow drove it down.
Inside Calandryll's head a voice without sound said, Ward yourself! Get down, and he dropped, flat, obeying the command without thought, aware through that part of his mind still attuned to the occult that an aura of benign power enveloped him.
Lucent bolts flickered then, lancing down from the sky, shafts brighter than lightning, dazzling. They struck the uwagi, and as they touched the creatures, the were-things exploded. Blinded, Calandryll yelled, "No!" thinking Cennaire consumed in that destruction, horrified, a void opening in him, gaping empty. But when his vision cleared he saw her standing still, swaying as if she struggled against tremendous wind, shaken by the gust- ing, but living still. Blood soiled her clothing and her hair was wild, one arm flung up to protect her eyes. Of the uwagi, or Rhythamun's animus, there was no trace, only little tatters of skin hung on scorched branches, tiny fragments of hair and clothing draped on burned bushes. But Cennaire lived!
Calandryll rose, limping clear of the sheltering trees, sheathing the straightsword as he went toward her. There was nothing left of the uwagi, nor any lingering hint of magic, save the dead patch of grass were Rhythamun had cast his first spell, the blackened trunks ringing the clearing. The light that had filled the sky was gone, the welkin again cloud-struck, a moody dark.
Cennaire seemed stunned, unaware of his approach until he put his hands upon her shoulders and turned her round to face him. Then she moaned and fell against him, held him with arms that seemed once more soft, no longer imbued with the strength he had felt before. She shuddered, and he stroked her hair, her face, glad beyond dreaming that she survived. She looked up and in her eyes he saw a terrible desperation, a fear. Mistaking it for something else, he said, "They're slain. I know not how, save Ochen intervened, but they are gone."
She trembled against his chest, and he tilted her chin, lowering his face to kiss her, her lips responding eagerly, her body pressing hard, urgently, against him.
When they drew apart, their arms still comforting about each other, she said softly, "I feared you dead. I thought ..."
Tears glistened in her eyes and he shook his head. "No. I live," he murmured. "Thanks to you."
"Praise all the gods," she whispered.
"But you?" He raised his head, chin tilted to indicate the clearing. "When that magic struck, how did you survive? Ochen said the destruction of the uwagi should destroy the living. Yet—thanks be to Dera!—you live."
She nodded, her eyes clouding, and murmured, "Ochen said their destruction should slay the living."
"I do not understand," he said.
"No." Fear grew in her eyes and she bit a moment at her lower lip. "There is much to be explained."
Again she shuddered, and he held her tight, not understanding. "Do we find the others?" he suggested, thinking that the best reassurance.
For a moment she hesitated, holding him, not wanting to face what now must be told, what could no longer be hidden. Then she said, very softly, forlornly, "Aye. Do we find them and speak of all this."
CALANDRYLL'S bruised leg pained him, aching dully as they made their way back toward the road, so that he leaned against Cennaire, letting her help him over obstacles, avoid the hindrance of thickets and brambles, content enough to feel her arm around his waist, his about her shoulders. The forest was very dark now, the night aging toward dawn, and he found it difficult to discern the path, while Cennaire seemed not to hesitate, as if her eyes found the obfuscation no problem.
He wondered at that, and
then at all he had witnessed: her strength, the way she had faced and overcome the uwagi, that she was not destroyed with the were-breasts, and had stood immune to Rhythamun's magic.
But neither was I, he thought, so perhaps whatever gramaryes protected me protected her.
Perhaps, he thought, she is chosen by the Younger Gods, and they protect her.
And yet, had Ochen not said that the magicks that might destroy the uwagi must also destroy the living? That had been the trap Rhythamun set, so why—how—had Cennaire lived through that assault?
Her arm was warm where it rested about his waist. He smelled her hair, the scent of her skin,- could feel the softness of her as he held her,- had tasted the vitality of her lips. And yet . . . How had she slain the uwagi? How had she found him? How had she survived?
He did not understand, and when he turned his face to look at her, to voice the questions, he saw hers set grim, determined, as if she moved toward confrontation, not away from a victory. She seemed ... he was not sure . . . wary, fatalistic, and he left the words unsaid, the doubts unsettled, skirling troublesome about his mind. She had saved his life, preserved the quest—surely that spoke for itself, that she had risked her own life for his sake. There could surely be no doubt of her integrity. He pushed such thoughts aside, remembering the softness of her lips, her embrace, and without thinking nuzzled her glossy hair.
Cennaire started at the touch, glancing up, her eyes troubled. Her mouth curved in a brief smile and then she looked away, concentrating on the path. She was afraid—of what must now become revealed, and of how he might react, how his comrades would react. Perhaps Ochen—who had so far kept her secret—could sway them, could persuade them against . . . She was uncertain what they might do. Look to slay her? Banish her from their company? Demand the wazir bind her with his magicks? For an instant she contemplated deserting Calandryll, leaving him to make his own way back to the road. Then dismissed the notion: he could barely walk unaided and might lie lost within the forest, or Rhythamun might return in some guise to slay him. That thought she could not bear, so she stifled her fear and pressed on. She would bring him to the road's edge at the least, and then . . . Then she would decide. She could leave him there, safe, and follow after. Save then she must trek to Pamur-teng and likely onward to Anwar-teng, and all her gear lay in her saddlebags. Doubtless, did she simply disappear, the mirror Anomius had given her should be discovered, and with it her secret. Then, if she were gone, the questers must surely deem her enemy, and turn against her; and did that come to pass, she could entertain little hope of success, either of satisfying the strictures of her master, or of regaining her heart.
Angus Wells - The God Wars 03 Page 23