Ширли Мерфи - The Castle Оf Hape. Caves Оf Fire Аnd Ice. The Joining Оf Тhe Stone

*

And across Ere, Kearb-Mattus came in silence down along the Owdneet. He followed Zephy and Thorn and the cultists, formed now into a nearly respectable fighting band.

Zephy and Thorn knew he followed, though the sense of him was garbled, often lost, as if Seers rode with him. Pellian street rabble, and untrained. Their own band moved slowly, for half their troops marched, only half rode, the horses in short supply. All the winged ones were gone, to fight in Carriol. Zephy and Thorn and their companions were exhausted from battling small bands of fighters. They knew they must rest soon, if for only an hour. “Then we must take what troops we can and ride for Carriol,” Thorn said, for the battling was desperate there.

No cultists among them now were dissident, for those dissident had already been sealed into the villa at Dal. It had been a battle hardly worth remarking, the awakened cultists seeing at last the true nature of their warrior queen, simply overpowering those who still clung to the ways of Kish, tying them, marching them through Dal to the villa that already Carriolinian soldiers had turned into an outlying prison, and sealing them in with scrap rubble from the sacking of the city that Kearb-Mattus had earlier begun and the heaving of the earth completed.

They had ridden then toward Carriol, through two areas in Farr held still by Carriolinian soldiers, skirted several Kubalese bands in their haste, then across farmland torn by the heaving ground and desolate with wounded and dead, from which the Kubalese had already departed.

*

Kearb-Mattus attacked the young Carriolinians as they slept; he was shielded by a mind-blocking held somehow steady by three rude street-Seers, came over a rise onto the handful of mounted men who guarded the camp, and saw the pitiful heap of soldiers beyond sleeping in the open.

Zephy leaped up at the sound of fighting, hardly awake, frightened. Thorn was mounted, shouting at her. She grabbed the bridle of the horse he had brought her and was mounted; all were mounted, weapons ready, the attacking troops everywhere among them so they were hard put not to panic. She lost sight of Thorn, thrust her sword against the belly of a huge Kubalese bearing down on her, ducked beneath his blow to strike again, heard the screams of horses, of men, took a blow across her shoulder, spun her horse around to strike; all was confusion, a melee in the near-dark. She wanted to cry out for Thorn and daren’t, felt another blow like fire across her neck, was jerked from her horse, fell, was caught and her arms pulled behind her, then hit again, and she went dizzy and sick.

*

All Carriol knew that Thorn’s band was in trouble—and knew that more Kubalese were on their way toward Carriol’s border. Carriol fought for her life, winged ones carried soldiers or fought free without riders, leaping from the sky to strike; the wolves fought as fiercely as they had fought at the battle of Hape and in the dark wood. Only the master Seers remained behind in Carriol, seated in the citadel with heads lowered in the prayer of concentration, massing their power more surely here to help cripple the Kubalese; for though the stone was gone, still some power clung inside the citadel itself, this place that once had known the power of the Luff’Eresi.

*

In the sky above the crystal dome, the battle was bloody, a winging, whirling melee of winds and confusion. Kish swept her band in again and again to attack the winged ones and Meatha, while Kish herself drove mercilessly at Lobon. And as Kish called on the powers of the creatures of darkness, those spirits reached out to give purpose to the winged lizards: made warring, lethal creatures of them, all claw and teeth and canny in their maneuvering, slashing and twisting away to divert Meatha. The white mare bore streaks of blood across her coat and wings, and Meatha’s arm was torn. Nearby the warrior queen parried and bore down on Lobon. She slashed, cut Lobon’s shoulder, and swept away beneath Lannthenn to come at him from behind with her ready sword. Lannthenn dove and doubled back; Lobon struck, but Kish was away, quick in the air, eluding him. As the forces clashed and the dark strengthened, the earth below shuddered, and the very boulders shifted, ringing out like death music, Along Pelli’s coast a protrusion of land broke loose and fell into the sea, gentle hills rumbled and cracked apart. What power was this, to so shatter the land? All took heed, but no one yet understood except Kish, and those who fought beside her.

In Farr, Kearb-Mattus let some of the cultists escape his troops in order to surround and take captive the young Carriolinian Seers; soon his troops were ushering Zephy and Thorn and five other Seers down from their mounts, to be bound, to be tied one to the other, then to be force-marched off ahead of the horses toward Dal, and toward the villa-turned-cell where they had left earlier captives. For that villa, too, had fallen to Kearb-Mattus’s men and was now a perfect place to give, with slow, increasing torture, the final death rites the Kubalese leader so anticipated.

Neither Thorn nor Zephy looked up as they marched, nor looked at each other, but their minds were locked as one—angry, desperate—seeking a plan of escape.

*

Lobon struck a telling blow across Kish’s face, another strike that drew blood from the lizard. He saw Meatha skewer a lizard then jerk her sword free as the heavy creature fell. Below them now bodies lay, dark splotches across the meadow and dunes, some lizards, some horses of Eresu, sprawled across the pale sand. Kish was on him again. He parried, forced her back; Kish’s lizard clawed air, she gripped its neck, off balance, and he thrust forward quickly—too late Lobon saw her strategy, too late cried out to Lannthenn and felt the stallion take her sword in a mortal spot.

They were falling, the stallion barely able to use his wings, blood gushing from his torn chest; he was like a crippled bird. Lobon’s heart filled with love for him, with sorrow, and with terrible fear for the stones. Lannthenn fell to earth in a twisting, crippled spiral, went to his knees and was down as Lobon leaped free.

From the crystal dome Jaspen watched, Feldyn and Crieba immobile beside her. She made prayer for Lobon, violent, strong prayer; she had done so constantly since the battle began. She was the child of Cadach, the tree man, the youngest child of five, though no two were born in the same generation or in the same place nor, for that, of the same mother; but all choosing to make right again the sins of Cadach. This was her gift, this guarding of the stone that now held all of Ere’s fate in balance.

Soon behind her, come at the force of her prayer, towering figures made of light rose from the stuff of the crystal dome as if that crystal were but air, figures unclear in their dimension, and their wings all woven of light. They watched the battle, watched the great horse Lannthenn fall and die; watched Kish, the warrior queen, descend to the meadow where Lobon stood awaiting her, holding the stone and the wolf bell as bait.

Kish’s eyes burned with hunger for the stone, but she remained mounted. Around her, lizards dropped out of the sky to slither in the grass, circling Lobon. Above, half a dozen lizards drove Meatha and the white mare back, attacking again, again.

Kish’s mount spun around, she jerked it savagely and brought it rearing over Lobon. He stabbed at its belly, ducked her sword, stabbed again; as the creature twisted away, he leaped and hit it, dodging Kish’s blows, forcing his power at her; felt her sword pierce his arm. And he felt a surge of power in himself, as if all the Seers of Carriol sent theirs flooding like a tide. He struck the lizard, struck again as it reared, slashing its trailing wing; as it tried to climb skyward, he struck once more down its side with all his weight on his sword. The lizard fell screaming. Kish beat it but it could not rise. She slid down, left it to die, confronted Lobon from the ground, her face white and twisted with lust for the stones he carried, with a rage that drew the dark fury of evil into a giant maelstrom, a force that continued to shake the earth. All across Ere the land moved and changed; in Carriol the warriors of light were driven back by the heaving earth, by the dark powers incarnate in Kish’s wrath.