Authors: Vera Nazarian
Hestiam froze and took a step back.
“
Don’t be afraid, Your Grace,” said Lirr. “That is exactly what he wants you to feel. He has power where there is fear.”
Feale turned to face the Chancellor, and he in turn felt himself freezing suddenly, immobilized on the inside. “Do you not fear me?” his serpent voice sounded.
Lirr felt his skin crawl. But he said, “I am not afraid of you, no.”
Eyes watched him out of a face of shimmering darkness. “Then you do not see me . . .” said the hollow voice. “Look at me, Rollen Lirr, and be afraid.”
“
No!” said Lirr, while cold welled, took hold of him. “I will not!”
But the Enemy continued watching, and the gaze of his eyes was the source of fear itself, of immobility.
Something painful started to expand within Lirr’s chest. He fought it, fought the sense of a great rock pressing against his lungs, blocking out the flow of air.
“
Lirr?” said Hestiam. “Lirr? What is happening?”
But his voice had grown so remote, and the Chancellor no longer heard him, tiny beads of sweat breaking out over his gray skin, fighting that overwhelming boulder of granite, the cold pressing upon him, the inordinate cold.
It is not for you, Grelias, but for this City that I do this
. . . .
And because he continued resisting, to the very end, the cold had become paramount within him. . . .
The body of Rollen Lirr crumpled lifeless to the floor.
Hestiam cried out, panic rising, but the guards converged upon him, and he was held back within a painful grip on both sides.
“
He should have been afraid,” whispered Feale.
“
Oh, but I am! Afraid, yes! Please! Please, don’t!” whimpered Hestiam, tears beginning to run down his face into his beard.
In that instant, there was a fluttering movement somewhat in back of them, as the boy jumped up from his chair, and sprung forward like a cat.
Feale stood with his back turned, and Lissean’s blow landed in the very center, between the shoulder blades. He had been concealing a small razor-sharp knife in the soles of his shoes, and now that bright blade was embedded deeply within the dark form.
Alhveh, Lord of Empty Skies and Death, help me!
Feale went still.
Hestiam’s whimpering dwindled into shock, while guards released him, and also froze, watching the Twilight One.
Slowly Feale turned around and faced the boy who stood behind him with dilated eyes.
Lissean stared at him, and then said, “I am not afraid of you, monster! Die!”
And then Feale reached behind him with one slender dark hand, and pulled the small blade out of himself.
He did not even blink. In the place where the blade had entered, there was no blood, only a gaping sliver of darkness. And, as Hestiam watched it in absolute terror, the wound began to close, and even the clothing appeared seamless, as though nothing had touched him.
Feale stood facing the boy, holding the slim dagger whose blade was bright and clean.
Alhveh . . .
The boy’s expression slowly darkened, and he whispered, “What are you?”
“
I cannot die, you know,” said Feale, while a thin beautiful smile slowly grew on his lips. “Poor child. Nothing you can do may kill me.”
“
Who are you?” again whispered Lissean, and this time his brave voice cracked, while a tear began to roll down his cheek.
And Feale reached forward to place a slender finger of darkness against that tear.
“
Poor fearless child . . . Yes, you must cry now. . . .”
And Lissean drew back, weeping, while Hestiam watched, like an impotent coward, silent, afraid even to breathe.
R
anhé watched from the corner of her eyes as the Lord Vaeste, to her left, bared his sword from its sheath with one precise movement, and sat his saddle, waiting. Only for a moment she saw his shining terrible expression. Something tugged inside her chest, a painful connection, from her to him. Only for a moment—because her helmet restricted the visual field before her, a slow precursor to chaos. . . .
Up ahead, the Qurthe. A low gathering sonic rumble. A black wall of bristling scales of their beasts, and the long pikes, approaching, drawing nearer with each heartbeat. It seemed like a grand caterpillar rolling sideways at them, inevitable, with a million trunks that were beasts’ feet, a million protrusions, sharp angles, edges of blade, polygon and parabolic curves—all unforgiving darkness.
A deep primal depression arose. They could all feel it, encroaching, quite physical, with the advent of the Enemy.
Apathy . . . Uncertainty . . . Fear . . . That was the real first attack.
From the east, Marihke and the rest of the City forces moved into position, having reached them before the Enemy did. And now their ranks quadrupled, and the two divisions merged swiftly, with planned precision. Having turned about, they now faced the Enemy.
The Guildmaster was in the forefront. He sat his saddle motionlessly, not having made a move to draw his sword, staring straight ahead with an impassive gaze that Ranhé found stonelike and frightening, and new in him. For, she had seen him reflect many moods—demonic, bored, charming, sadistic, mercurial, astringent, even vulnerable—but never one of death.
She knew what the Light Guild had been instructed to do upon his signal, and was ready with her own small glass orb that she’d taken out to hold before her in the gloved palm of her hand.
The Qurthe war engine was so close now that it was possible to distinguish individual beasts and riders in the front ranks.
In their center came the giant.
Ranhé remembered him well, from the one occasion she had to see him, the swarthy muscular superman with utterly black eyes and a voice not unlike a ghost.
Lord Araht Vorn.
He rode now at the lead of the greatest black army this City had ever seen, just as he had once promised, the precursor to the Twilight One who came after him, the one whose name was not to be pronounced.
They were so close now. Only a hundred feet away. Heaviness emanated from them like a cloud of newly cremated ashes.
Elasirr raised a gloved right hand, palm upward. Wait, just a little closer. . . .
Despair. . . .
She could see the front angular formation, with Lord Vorn at the crux.
Wait. . . .
She saw Lord Vorn’s helmet, the flash of his great pike held aloft, perfectly vertical in his left hand, and his extended battlesword, only twenty feet away. . . .
Now!
Elasirr’s upraised gloved hand exploded with
orange
lightning, while at the same time, all the Masters who were in the front ranks, held forth the orbs, and the other guildsmen in the rows just behind them, and so on—and like bursts of water in a great fountain,
colors
exploded everywhere, to fill the glass reservoirs with solid light.
Within a heartbeat, the front line became a great necklace of varied
color
jewels. It stood as a boundary between the rest of the resistance and the approaching dark.
Ranhé breathed deep, gathering from somewhere inside herself the still unfamiliar energy. And then she let it out through her fingers. Her glass orb instantly blazed violent scalding
yellow
, shining brighter than the controlled orbs of the other Masters around her. In her eagerness and adrenaline-laced panic, she had overcompensated.
Immediately, as they had been instructed, she turned behind her, and handed her burning orb to the Guildsman just flanking her, who in turn received her orb, shielding his eyes from its glare, and together with his own, passed it on backward, down the ranks. These orbs were meant for the rest of the army, the non-Guildmembers, those who could not make their own
color
light.
She and the Masters in the front row were to create light without orbs to contain them. . . . For, without
color
, the depression (which had now become a solid, rich, thick, tangible thing) would muddle all thought and make all resistance impossible.
But merely staring at the
colors
eased the apathy. It brought enough momentary clarity and truth to allow movement, action.
In that instant, the Qurthe struck.
Upon the appearance of
color
, they had paused for a span of heartbeats.
And then, they continued their approach.
As though nothing had happened.
How different were these warriors from the ones at the Gates of the Inner City.
Elasand, having handed over his radiant
violet
orb to someone behind him, raised his sword, and suddenly the whole blade was enveloped with
violet
light. With a cry, he moved forward, and was the first of them to meet the black metal of the Enemy.
Ranhé, watching his back carefully, moved in line behind him, like a shield. And in the next instant of flurry, a great faceless black rider was before her, and she struck his pike away by reflex, with the back of her sword. At the same time, her mount nearly reared up, for the scaled beast came crashing past, as all of their ranks mingled then, and it was one melee of jet vacuum and
color
brightness. . . .
Off to the side, past Lord Vaeste, who was parrying a Qurthe sword with his own burning
violet
one, she saw Elasirr. He, no longer human, two Bilhaar blades drawn—both of razor-sharp
irahi
steel—was striking another Qurthe, cutting through the dull ebony iron of his chest plate with dispassionate precision, cutting him down until the dark one actually fell, while his riderless mount stumbled, rocking upon its elephantine scaled bulk, and careered sideways and somewhere behind. . . .
All a few feet away from the great form of Vorn.
She could see him in flashes, as clearly as she saw Elasirr, and he was making his way directly toward the Guildmaster.
But in that moment, she could do nothing but stay seated in the saddle, and strike at the dark forms that came at them from the front, strike and parry, and be the living shield for the man whom she had pledged to serve. And she realized suddenly that she’d forgotten another weapon at her disposal—her ability to create
color
light.
And as all had turned into slow motion, all movements dull with apathy, mechanized, all but her breath, pounding in her temples, she had enough presence to draw forth the strange energy deep inside, and think of ripe fields of wheat underneath a blazing
topaz
sky. . . .
Dersenne!
Help me!
Upon which, her fingers ignited, while the blade of her sword began to burn.
With it, a sense of reality returned, and she could move again.
T
he man in ancient black armor, framed by a strange corona of
color
light, walked down the gently sloping steps of marble from the Mausoleum, and paused for a moment, hearing from the distance the sounds of battle.
He stopped, because only a few feet away, alien-shaped beasts rode the gravel path, and mounted upon them were sable warriors in impenetrable armor. They bore no banners to identify them, no markings on their armor. And yet he knew as surely as he knew his own name that they did not belong to this City, were somehow alien, an invader, an enemy. His enemy.
They did not see him. He stood, shielded by several tall ebony cypresses, and watched their hurried progress down the path of the Outer Gardens (which he recognized at last, and now knew exactly where he was).
And then, as the company moved out of view, he resumed walking, still unsure of his final destination, but drawn forward somehow.
His muscles felt stiff and heavy as old lead. But as he walked, they regained a portion of normal feeling, including the old pain in the area of his chest and abdomen.
He stopped again, remembering it, the pain. Yes, it was still there, the old illness that had first come upon him very gradually, it seemed, and had at last gotten so unbearable that he had sought the doctors. And the physicians of the Palace had all concluded it was a cancerous growth within him, and there was nothing much they could do. For that reason, they had promised to perform something which he had at first gravely resisted.
But the Council had insisted eventually, having voted him down, for they had all loved him so well—their young just King. . . . He was to comply, and he was to be placed in a suspended state.
They had called it Stasis. At least, that’s the term they used to describe it to him. He wouldn’t be dead, not really, they said. He would simply fall asleep, and then, be “suspended,” all of his living biological activity halted in a single moment of time, including the cancer.
And then, they told him, he would wake up in the future.
Some day, there would be physicians who would know the way to cure him, and then he would be brought around.
“
But for what?” he’d said. “Who would need an ancient anachronism for a King? I would rather die like all other men, and have my body turn to dust. I care not that I am still young. It is my time, and I bow to the will of gods.”