David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

"This is where we'll be leaving from, I believe." Ilna looked at him angrily, then snapped to the wizard, "Do you think we'll spare you? I won't. I won't let you believe a lie even if I didn't tell it." "Of course, animal, of course," Neunt said. "I've failed, which means I deserve to die." He made a sound that might've been the start of a laugh, but it choked off a moment later. "I failed millennia ago, when I forced my way into the Messengers' presence and didn't protect myself against you. Do you think you will be wiser, animal?" "I don't care about wisdom!" Ilna said. She heard the hunters mounting the steps behind her. Without looking around she shuffled forward to give them both room to stand safely on the platform. "I want to kill every one of your race, every murdering beast. Do you understand that?"

"What is that to me?" said the wizard, coughing again. "I'll already be dead, will I not?" He pointed to the floor of the platform. He sat in the middle of a circle etched into the coarse, glassy surface; around the inside were the curving forms of letters in the Old Script.

"Stand within and speak the words," he said. "Nothing more. The powers are focused here as nowhere else." "We'll have to find a different way," Ilna said, glancing aside to Temple. She was as much relieved as disappointed; Neunt was disquieting in a fashion she couldn't fully explain. "I can't read those letters. I can't read anything!" "I can," said Temple. He didn't raise his voice; she'd never heard him raise his voice. "Will my voice be sufficient, Chief of the Coerli?" "Even a child would be sufficient in this place," the wizard said. "It will be as easy as stepping off the edge of this, my sanctum." He ran his fingers over the grooves of the words of power. "Every bit as easy."

Rousing from his reverie, the wizard turned his milky eyes on Temple for the first time. "But you are scarcely a child, are you?" he said.

"I did not foresee you either. My, what a fool I was when I thought myself so clever, so powerful." "Mistress?" Asion murmured from behind her. "Shall we…?" He didn't finish the question, but there was no doubt what he was asking. Even the Corl knew. "You need not kill me, creature," Neunt said. He rose to his feet with more grace than Ilna'd expected from his difficulty speaking. "I do not wish to be defiled by your touch." With a final bark of laughter, the ancient wizard stepped off the platform. "Watch him!" Ilna said, expecting a trick. She looked over the edge. Neunt crashed into the top of a partition which framed one of the rooms. His ribs crunched, and though his broken body flopped down on the side nearer the stairs, sprays of blood dripped slowly down both. Karpos cleared his throat. "I don't guess either of us gets his scalp, right?" he said. Ilna ignored the hunter. "What do we do now, soldier?" she asked Temple. "Now we all stand within the circle," Temple said, as calm as a frozen pond. "And I read the spell." He gave Ilna a faint smile. "Then it's up to you, Ilna," he added. *** Sharina used her fingers to spread a gap in the brushwood screen so that she could look out. The citadel of the Last glowed faintly yellow in the darkness, a little brighter along the edges where the pentagons joined. The color made her think of fungus but- She grinned at herself. -that was only because it had to do with the Last. She'd seen walls distempered the same pale shade and found it attractive. Occasionally Sharina heard thebang! as artillery released.

When the fitful breeze was in the right direction, she could even hear the slap of bows and the rattle of swords when human soldiers closed hand-to-hand with the black invaders. The Last were extending their faceted fortifications around Pandah, moving only sunwise rather than in both directions as they'd done before the royal army arrived. They took terrible losses from the artillery's bolts and heavy stones, but slowly, panel by panel, their walls advanced. The Last undermined Lord Waldron's cross-walls, filled in trenches, and stolidly cut apart infantry sallying in attempts to demolish the fortifications from the inside. The army slowed the inhuman advance, but no human endeavor could halt it. At Sharina's decision-though with the enthusiastic support of all her officers-the army wasn't cooperating with the brigands of Pandah. Those renegades were barely able to defend their own walls, and they'd do that to the best of their ability regardless.

Sharina sighed. She was looking out at the citadel because behind her Rasile talked with ghosts and demons. Sharina knew what was happening, of course, and she realized it was necessary… but it made her uncomfortable nonetheless. The enclosure curtained Rasile's wizardry from the eyes of the troops who'd be distressed by it. They knew what was going on-and indeed, anybody who wanted to could watch through the coarse wicker as easily as Sharina now looked out. The troops had laced brush together in much the same way as they made great earth-filled baskets which formed the walls of the encampment. The Last weren't present in great enough numbers to attack the camp, not yet at any rate, but Lord Waldron was careful to prepare against unexpected dangers. There was nothing to be done against theexpected danger, however. In a few months, despite Waldron's efforts, the Last would complete a ring around Pandah. They could then wipe out anyone still in the city… and simply wait and prepare behind polygonal walls which the troops hadn't been able to breach. If the Last filled Pandah before they opened the sides of their glowing black fortress, they'd outnumber the royal army and any possible human army. Sharina remembered Tenoctris' vision of black monsters appearing on the lens of ice. Even arriving only one or two at a time in the fortified pool here, it wouldn't be long before the black not-men were in overwhelming strength. That would be the end of Mankind. Thinking that, Sharina turned to look at the Corl wizard. It's not as though watching the Last grind their way through my world is comforting, after all. She grinned again. Rasile stood in a figure drawn with yarrow stalks. She'd spilled them in what'd seemed an aimless fashion to Sharina, but the stiff yellow lengths had fallen into a real pattern: each stalk lay end to end with two others. There was light with her inside the figure, occasionally as bright as a desert sun but more often a dim hint like the moon through overcast. Now it was a faint blue glow coming from something spindly and inhuman. The creature's clawed arms gestured fiercely as it spoke to Rasile. No sound crossed the figure. Sharina could see the wizard's face it was as calm as if she were ordering lunch. The creature lifted its long jaws in what seemed to be a despairing shriek, threatening the sky with its claws; then it faded into darkness. Sharina expected another world, another denizen. Instead Rasile slumped. Sharina jumped to the Corl's side, careful not to disturb the yarrow stalks. She'd acted without thinking; she might've been jumping into a realm in which only a wizard could survive- But nobody was safe unless the Last were defeated, and Rasile had a better chance of accomplishing that than Waldron and the whole royal army did. Besides, Sharina wasn't one to worry about her own safety when a friend was at risk. By now the Corl wizard'd become if not exactly a friend, then at least a trusted confidante. "Their own strength works for me," Rasile murmured. She hunched with her eyes were closed. If Sharina hadn't caught her, she'd probably have lain scrunched together on all fours on the ground. "I could never have accomplished that if the Last hadn't concentrated so much power in this place." "Are you all right, Rasile?" Sharina said.

The Corl's body felt hot and her heart was beating quickly, but Sharina reminded herself that the wizard wasn't human. This might be normal for the catmen. "I'm tired, princess," Rasile said. She didn't open her eyes, but her voice sounded stronger. "I think even your friend Tenoctris would be tired after that. But I have an answer." The old Corl straightened. Sharina stepped away as she'd have done if she'd been supporting Tenoctris following wizardry. The initial shock to the system seemed to pass more quickly than would that of comparable physical effort, though sometimes Sharina got the impression that spells left mental scars that never healed. Rasile took Sharina's hands in her own and examined them closely. The Corl's fingers were short and the palms narrower but longer than a human's.