Guy Kay - Tigana

Wildly mind-scanning the valley and the hills around for a clue, Alberico suddenly came upon the third matrix of magic, and abruptly realized, with a glory flowering out of the morning's ashes in his heart, that the horned god was with him yet after all, and the Night Queen in her riding.

There were wizards of the Palm here, and they were helping him! They hated the Ygrathen as much as he! Somehow, for whatever incomprehensible reason, they were on his side against the man who was King of Ygrath, whatever he might pretend to call himself now.

"I am winning!" he shouted to his messengers. "Tell the captains at the front, revive their spirits. Tell them I am beating the Ygrathen back!"

He heard sudden glad cries around him. Opened his eyes to see messengers sprinting forward across the valley. He reached out toward those wizards, four or five, he judged, by their strength, perhaps six of them, seeking to merge with their minds and their power.

But in that he was balked. He knew exactly where they were. He could even see where they were, a ridge of land just south of the Ygrathen's hill, but they would not let him join with them or know who they were. They must still be afraid of what he did to wizards when he found them.

What he did to wizards? He would glory in them! He would give them land and wealth and power, honor here and in Barbadior. Riches beyond their starved, pinched dreams. They would see!

No matter that they did not open to him! It truly mattered not. So long as they stayed, and lent their powers to his defense there was no need to merge. Together they were a match for Brandin. And all they had to do was be a match: Alberico knew he still had more than twice the army in the field that the other had.

But even as hope was pouring back into his soul with these thoughts, he felt the weight beginning to return. Unbelievably, the Ygrathen's power growing again. Frantically he checked: the wizards on their ridge were still with him. Yet Brandin was still pushing forward. He was so strong! So accursedly, unimaginably strong. Even against all of them he was exerting his might, tapping deeper into his wellspring of sorcery. How deep could he go? How much more did he have?

Alberico realized, the knowledge like ice amid the inferno of war, the savage heat of the day, that he had no idea. None at all. Which left him only the one course. The only one he'd ever had from the moment the battle had begun.

He closed his eyes again, the better to focus and concentrate, and he set himself, with all the power in him, to resist again. To resist, to hold, to keep the wall intact.

"By the seven sisters of the god!" Rhamanus swore passionately. "They are regaining the ground they lost!"

"Something has happened," Brandin rasped in the same moment. They had erected a canopy above him for shade and had brought a chair for him to sit upon. He was standing though, one hand on the back of the chair for support at times, the better to look down on the course of battle below.

Dianora was standing close to him, in case he needed her, for water or comfort, for anything at all that she could give, but she was trying not to look down. She didn't want to see any more men die. About the screaming in the valley she could do nothing though, and every cry below seemed to fly upward and sheath itself in her like a knife made of sound and human agony.

Had it been like this by the Deisa when her father died? Had he screamed so with his own mortal wound, seeing his life's blood leave him, not to be held back, staining the river red? Had he died in this kind of pain under the vengeful blades of Brandin's men?

It was her own fault, this sickness rising. She should not be here. She should have known what images war would unleash in her. She felt physically ill: from the heat, the sounds, she could actually smell the carnage below.

"Something has happened," Brandin said again, and with his voice a clarity came back into the maelstrom of the world. She was here and he was the reason why, and if the others could not, Dianora who knew him so well, could hear a new note in his voice, a marginal clue to the strain he was enduring. She walked quickly away and then back, a beaker of water in her hand and a cloth to wet his brow.

He took the water, seeming almost oblivious to her presence, to the touch of the cloth. He closed his eyes, and then slowly turned his head from side to side, as if blindly seeking something.

Then he opened his eyes again and pointed. "Over there, Rhamanus." Dianora followed his gaze. On a ridge of land south of them, across the uneven, tummocky ground, a number of figures could be discerned.

"There are wizards there," Brandin said flatly. "Rhamanus, you'll have to take the Guard after them. They are working with Alberico against me. I don't know why. One of them looks like a Khardhu, but he isn't; I would recognize Khardhun magic. There is something extremely odd about this."

His eyes were a dark, clouded grey.

"Can you match them, my lord?" It was d'Eymon, his tone deliberately neutral, masking any hint of concern.

"I am about to try," Brandin said. "But I am getting near to the limit of the power I can safely tap. And I can't turn my magic on them alone, they are working with Alberico. Rhamanus, you'll have to get those wizards for me yourself. Take everyone here."

Rhamanus's ruddy face was grim. "I will stop them or die, my lord. I swear it."

Dianora watched him step out from under the canopy and summon the men of the King's Guard. In pairs they fell into step behind him and started quickly down the goat-track leading west and south. Rhun took a couple of steps after them, and then stopped, looking confused and uncertain.

She felt a touch and turned from the Fool as Brandin took her hand. "Trust me, love," he murmured. "And trust Rhamanus." After a second he added, with what was almost a smile: "He brought you to me."

Then he let her go and turned his attention back to the plain below. And now he did sit down in the chair. Watching, she could literally see him gather himself to renew his assault.

She looked over at d'Eymon, then followed the Chancellor's narrowed, speculative gaze south again, across to the cluster of people on that slope half a mile away. They were near enough that she could see the dark-skinned figure Brandin said wasn't really a Khardhu. She thought she could make out a red-haired woman as well.

She had no idea who they were. But suddenly, for the first time, looking around at their own thinned-out numbers on the hill, she felt afraid.

"Here they come," Baerd said, looking north, a hand up to screen his eyes.

They had been waiting for this, and watching for it from the moment the wizards linked, but anticipation was not reality and, at the sight of the picked men of Brandin's Guard moving swiftly down their hill and beginning to cross the ground between, Devin's heart began thumping hard. There had been war all morning in the valley below; now it was coming to them.

"How many?" Rovigo asked, and Devin was grateful to hear the tension in the merchant's voice: it meant he was not alone in what he was feeling now.

"Forty-nine, if he sent them all, and Alessan thought he would," Baerd replied, not turning around. "That is always the number of the King's Guard in Ygrath. It is sacred for them."

Rovigo said nothing. Devin glanced to his right and saw the three wizards standing closely together. Erlein and Sertino had their eyes closed, but Sandre was staring fixedly downwards to where Alberico of Barbadior was at the back of his army. Alessan had been with the wizards but now he came quickly over to join the thirty or so men spread out behind Baerd on the ridge.

"Ducas?" he asked quietly.

"I can't see any of them," Baerd said, with a quick glance at the Prince. The last of the Ygrathen Guard had now descended their hill. The vanguard were already moving rapidly over the uneven ground between. "I still don't believe it."