David Drake: Master of the Cauldron

What Ilna'd said was true: striking down the New King had given her a rush of fierce joy. Ilna hadn't believed that the past could be retrieved, but the thoughtNever again! had warmed the soul which her loss of her friends had turned to ice.

The troll bent at the waist, lowering them toward the ground. Ilna examined the stone creature as she dropped past it. It didn't look human or even alive. Its head was a lump on its cliff-like torso; its right arm hung at its side and seemed a part of the greater mass. Eyes, nose and mouth were smudges in the rock, no more facial features than the whimsies a child invents while watching summer clouds.

But the troll lived and moved. There was no doubt about that.

Davus waved his free hand to them. The way the troll was bending put him head-down, but he showed no sign of strain or discomfort. He seemed a part of the stone, a flesh-colored statue carved from the underlying granite.

The troll's hand stopped. The silence as the stone arm halted its grinding progress was more noticeable than the fact they'd stopped moving down. They were in what had been a courtyard before the surrounding building had collapsed.

Sulfur and wind-blown grit made Ilna sneeze; her eyes filled with tears. The troll's hand was so thick that she'd expected to climb down rather than jump and risk a broken leg, but the rubble to every side was much the same height as the stone palm. The gap was arm's length or less, no more of a strain than hopping a mud-puddle.

"Quickly!" Ilna said, because Davus had sent them away for a purpose. Merota stayed with her; Chalcus already stood on the piled masonry, watching out for his female companions and checking for their closest enemies.

The troll straightened again in the same non-living motion. Ilna withdrew the hank of cords from her sleeve, but a swatch of wizard-made cloud plunged her into shadow for the length of a long, slow breath. She put the cords away and uncoiled the silken rope from her waist. Her art wouldn't work on anyone who couldn't see her patterns clearly, but a noose around an enemy's neck was almost invariably useful.

"Ilna," Merota said, trying very hard to be a stern-faced lady and not a frightened child. "What shall we-"

A pair of creatures with human heads and torsos climbed the rubble pile. One had two legs and the other six. Chalcus' incurved blade made a single diagonal stroke, through the neck of the first and the ribcage of the second.

He danced aside. The six-legged thing turned and sprang like a grasshopper back in the direction it'd come, but the almost manlike monster strode forward despite its head hanging from a tag of skin. It turned toward Ilna, holding a broad-bladed axe overhead in both hands. Before she could toss her noose, Chalcus cut the creature's spine from behind. Its collapsed in its tracks, its head toppling forward. Chalcus had slashed the tendons as well as the nerves.

Ilna saw soldiers fighting in the ruins closer to the crater, but the solid wall of defenders had been breached even before Garric withdrew his troops to give the troll passage. The creatures boiling from the pit would spread throughout the city and the Isles unless something stopped them-as men could not.

The troll bent toward the crater. White creatures continued to spill out, unaffected or even unaware of the mass of granite lowering over them. Their wizard stood beyond the lip of the pit, his arm pointing. Crimson bolts-bright, brighter, and finally hotter than the sun-spat from his athame. They vanished into the troll's broad chest.

Davus laughed through the stone lips, a sound as joyfully terrible as the howl of a tornado. The troll thrust its hands into the ground to either side of the crater. Its thumbs gripped the inner edge of the cavity, crushing some of the white creatures. Others continued to crawl away, squirming into the city over whatever obstacle stood in their way.

For a moment, nothing moved except that the earth trembled. The troll gave a deep, booming roar. It raised its right leg with the slow inevitability of a glacier, then slammed it down at the edge of the crater like a man kicking the jamb of a sticking door.

Buildings danced on the horizon. Ilna fell to her knees, holding Merota, and even Chalcus danced for a moment as he might've done on a storm-tossed spar.

Dust lifted in an expanding cloud, chokingly thick. Ilna slitted her eyes, then covered her nose and the child's with a fold of her sleeve.

The troll straightened; slowly, as it did all things. Dirt and rock cascaded from its hands. Only when it started to turn and the fall of debris slowed did Ilna realize that the troll hadn't gouged out handfuls of earth: it'd wrenched the crater's lining out of the ground.

The pit that remained was simply a hole filled with flying grit. Its walls fell inward, covering the bottom with lifeless rubble.

The troll raised the lining, a cauldron of shimmering purple light a furlong across, to the height of its towering shoulders. The wizard's pale monsters still climbed over the rim, but they burst bloodily like falling spleens when they hit the ground.

Davus and the troll he was part of laughed in one thunderous voice. The troll flung the cauldron seaward, spinning the great purple bowl through the air. The whole business seemed slow, but Ilna realized that the troll's size made its movements deceptive to eyes used to judging things on human scale.

Monsters continued to spill out, flailing until they hit. On land, they splashed; over the sea, it was water that splashed. The white bodies sank out of sight in the churning froth.

The cauldron landed in open water beyond Volita and exploded like all a storm's thunderbolts released together. Steam rose higher than the eye could follow.

Ilna, knowing what was coming, clapped her hands over Merota's ears and opened her own mouth. She couldn't cover her ears and the child's as well, so the choice was clear.

The blast lifted them and everyone in the city into the air like children tossed in blankets. They dropped back where they'd been in stunned amazement.

The sea drew out, baring the bottom of the strait: for a moment Ilna on her rubble heap saw fish flopping in the mud. When the water rushed back, it curled up the shore and deep into the ruins of Erdin. Spouting and foaming from cellars, it undercut the remaining walls as it withdrew.

The troll's laughter was so loud that Ilna felt it through her flesh though her ears were utterly deaf. The troll turned and leaned forward. Davus, a tiny figure on the granite head, waved.

The troll dived into the cavity it'd torn the cauldron from, striking with another cataclysmic shock. There was a white flash. When Ilna opened her eyes again, she saw that what'd been a hole in the middle of Erdin was now a mass of lifeless granite.

Garric got to his feet cautiously. He wasn't sure whether the ground was still trembling or if the shudders he felt were just his body reacting to all that'd gone before.

He squinted against the dust. Liane handed him a swatch of cloth she'd ripped from her tunic and dampened from the helmet she was using as a water bucket. Garric let his shield hang from the strap buckled behind his right shoulder and gratefully covered his nose and mouth to breathe.

Many creatures had gotten out of the cauldron before the troll tore it from the earth. Instead of attacking as their fellows had done earlier, they ran for hiding places like startled rats. The troops who'd been fighting all day let the pallid survivors slip through gaps in the line.

The battle was over. The men who'd fought it had their bellies full of slaughter; and besides, the rats still had their weapons. Let them crawl into cellars, if that was all they wanted to do…

Garric started forward. He swayed for the first few steps, but he was all right when he got moving properly. Erdin had been nearly flat. Now a mass of granite like the citadel of Carcosa rose in the middle of the city. He wouldn't climb it-he didn't think he could in his present condition, living on his nerves with no margin of physical or mental strength-but he could go around.