Robert Silverberg - The Queen of Springtime

He needed only a moment to collect himself.

“A trick!” he bellowed. “An illusion! How can there be water in the desert?”

Indeed that titanic wave hung above them but did not descend. He saw the curling edge of white foam, the green impenetrable depths behind, the huge curve of inconceivable falling mass; but the mass did not fall.

“A trick!” Salaman roared. “The hjjks are attacking us! Form the wedge! Form the wedge!”

Chham, wild-eyed, rode up close behind him. Salaman shoved him fiercely back in the direction of the main body of the army. “Get them in formation!” he ordered. He saw Athimin already heading back, signaling, gesticulating, trying to keep the troops from scattering.

They seemed to realize that the sudden ocean wasn’t real. But now the ground itself was wavering like a blanket being shaken to free it from crumbs. Salaman, appalled, saw the Earth rippling all about him. He grew dizzy and sprang down from his xlendi. An actual earthquake? Or another illusion? He couldn’t tell.

The wall of water had become a wall of fire, enclosing them on three sides. The air sizzled and crackled and blazed. He felt heat pressing inward on him. Blue-tipped flames streamed upward from the quivering earth.

And now bright bolts of shimmering light were dancing in the sky like spears running amok. Salaman, whirling to avoid their blinding light, saw dragons advancing from the north, breathing fire. Ravenous mouth-creatures. Birds with fangs like knives.

“Illusions!” he cried. “They’re sending Wonderstone dreams against us!”

Others saw that too. The army was rallying, trying desperately to get into fighting formation.

But then in the swirling madness he caught sight of an angular yellow-and-black figure just in front of him, clutching a short sword in one bristly claw and a spear in another. A force of hjjks had come upon them under cover of these hallucinations and was beginning an attack.

Lashing out with his blade, the king slashed a breathing-tube, and turned and saw a second hjjk coming at him from the left. He caught it in its exposed knee-joint and sent it to the ground. On his other side Chham was thrusting away now at two other insect-warriors. One was down, the other staggering. Salaman grinned. Let them send dragons! Let them send earthquakes and oceans! When it came to hand-to-hand fighting, his troops would still slaughter them without mercy.

The illusions were continuing. Geysers of blood, fountains of coruscating light, whole mountains tumbling out of the air, sudden abysses opening a hand’s-breadth away — there seemed no limit to their ingenuity. But so long as you ignore it all, Salaman thought, and simply keep your mind on the task of chopping down every hjjk that comes within reach of your weapon—

There! There! Strike, cut, kill!

The joy of battle was on him now as perhaps never before. He fought his way across the field, paying no heed to writhing serpents that floated before his face, to jeering luminous ghosts issuing from sulphurous crevices opening on every side, to disembodied eyes swirling about his head, to stampeding vermilions, to tumbling boulders. His warriors, rallied by Chham and Athimin, had formed themselves into three fighting wedges arranged in a circular pattern and were defending themselves well.

But what was this? Biterulve in the outermost arc of one of the wedges?

That was against his explicit order. The boy was never to be exposed in that way. Athimin knew that. Let him fight in the secondary line, yes, but never in the prime row of warriors. Salaman looked around in fury. Where was Athimin? He was supposed to look after his brother at all times.

There he was, yes. Five or six men down the row from Biterulve, hacking away vigorously.

Salaman called to him and pointed. “Do you see him? Get over there! Get over to him, you fool!”

Athimin gasped and nodded. Biterulve seemed heedless of his own safety. He was striking at the hjjks in front of him with a ferocity that the king hadn’t imagined he possessed. Athimin was turning now, fighting his way across the confusion, going to the boy’s defense. Salaman came rushing forward also, intending to slay the hjjk closest to Biterulve and shove the boy deeper into the phalanx of warriors.

Too late.

Salaman was still twenty paces away, straggling through a zone of phantom monsters and murky black cloud, when he saw as though by a quick flash of lightning a hjjk that seemed twice the height of Thu-Kimnibol rise up before Biterulve and drive his spear through the boy’s body from front to back.

The king let loose a terrible roar of rage. It seemed to him as though a hot bar of iron had been thrust through his forehead. In an instant he reached the spot where Biterulve lay and sent the hjjk’s head flying across the field with one swift stroke. An instant later Athimin was blurting useless apologies and explanations into his ear, and unhesitatingly Salaman, turning on him the full force of the fury that possessed him, cut him down too with the stroke of his backswing, slashing him across his chest, deep through fur and flesh and bone.

“Father — ?” Athimin murmured thickly, and fell at his feet.

Salaman stared. Biterulve lay to his left, Athimin at his right. His mind was unable to absorb the sight. His soul throbbed with unanswerable torment.

What have I done? What have I done?

Everywhere about him the battle raged; and the king stood silent and still, purged in one stunning instant of all madness and bloodlust. To his ears came the sounds of sobbing wounded warriors and the moans of the dying and the savage cries of those who still lived and fought, and it was all incomprehensible to him, that he should be here in this place at this time, with two of his sons dead on the ground before him, and phantoms and monsters dancing all about, and huge-eyed shrieking insect-creatures waving swords in his face. Why? For what?

Madness. Waste.

He stood frozen, bewildered, lost in pain.

Then he felt a searing flash of pain of a different sort as a hjjk weapon went lancing through the fleshy part of his arm. It was astonishing, the agony. Sudden hot tears stung his eyes. He blinked in confusion. A heavy mist shrouded his soul. For a moment, under the shock of his wound, the years rolled away and he thought that he was the ambitious young warrior again, nearly as clever as Hresh, whose scheme it was to build a great city and a dynasty and an empire. But if that was so, why was he in this old stiff body, why did he hurt like this, why was he bleeding? Ah. The hjjks! Yes, the hjjks were attacking their little settlement. Already Harruel had fallen. Everything looked hopeless. But there was no choice but to keep on fighting — to keep on fighting—

The mist parted and his mind cleared. Biterulve and Athimin lay before him on the ground and he was about to die himself. And there came to him with complete clarity an awareness of the futility of his life, the years spent in building a wall, in hating a distant and alien enemy who might better have simply been ignored.

He turned and saw the gleaming yellow-and-black creature studying him gravely, as though it had never seen a man of the People before. It was preparing to strike again.

“Go ahead,” Salaman said. “What does it matter?”

“Father! Get back!”

Chham, that was. Salaman laughed. He pointed to his two fallen sons. “Do you see?” he said. “Biterulve was fighting in the front line. And then Athimin — Athimin—”

He felt himself being pushed aside. A sword cleaved the air in front of him. The hjjk fell back. Chham’s face was close up against his own, now. The same face as his: it was like looking into a mirror that reflected back through time.

“Father, you’ve been wounded.”