The screams and shouts became a chorus, a minute part of the music of the world. The clash and clang of spears and swords made a timpani. He spun on his toes, his hands weaving intricate patterns as he turned. Wind-blown, tiny points of firelight, like living creatures, turned with him. They leaped, and he leaped into their midst, extending his arms like wings.
Suddenly, the rhythm changed. He gazed down at the battle, though his feet never stopped, his arms never stilled. The invaders had found their weapons, and they fought back as fear turned to fury. Most of Taelyn's chariots were broken hulks. Half his cavalry fought on foot now. Razkili was nowhere to be seen. A new cry went up at the edge of the plain as archers and slingmen rushed to join the fight, seizing up the spears and swords and shields of the fallen to use as their own. Again, he scoured the carnage, seeking the gleam of Razkili's polished shield. Another cry went up. Atop Parendur's wall, a growing crowd gathered. Innowen shot a glance at the city's main gate. It remained closed. But Taelyn had counted on reinforcements from Kytin's First Army. Where were they?
The wind blew, spinning him around. He arched to the side and kicked high, rolled through his spine, and drew himself spear-straight.
Then he stopped, suddenly deaf to the wind and its impossible music.
A huge knight charged through the combat on a black horse. Firelight rippled along the blade of a great bronze sword and on the metal studs of his leather armor. The dark crest of his helm streamed behind him as he rallied the unknown invaders and urged them back toward the open plain.
Innowen's breath quickened, and he clapped a hand to his mouth. His thoughts churned for an instant, then down the hill he raced, along the side of the next, and out toward the battle. At the border of the fighting, he snatched up a sword. The edge was badly notched, the blade bent. He pressed it over his knee and did his best to straighten it. With his weapon, he rushed into the fray.
The invaders, though, were in full retreat, and the dark warrior was nowhere to be seen.
"Vashni!" Innowen screamed as he ran searching among the burning tents. He had not imagined it, he told himself. It
was
the Witch's servant he had seen. It was Vashni!
He cast away the sword when he found a spear at his feet. It was a better weapon. The shaft was solid in his grip. The point glistened wetly.
He ran, dodging the smoldering remains of tents and bodies that blocked his path. Someone lunged out of the shadows. He blocked a spear thrust and brought the blunt end of his own spear up and around. The attacker crumpled with a groan. Innowen didn't take time to finish him. It was Vashni he wanted.
Suddenly, a horse blocked his way. He brought his point up, prepared to thrust, but a hand swept out, caught the shaft, and held it with an unyielding strength. One of Taelyn's officers peered down at him, frowning. "Easy, son," he said, removing his helmet. "This fight's all but over."
Innowen lowered his spear, and all the energy seemed to ebb from him. "A warrior in black armor," he muttered. "Huge sword. One of their leaders. You saw him?"
The officer shrugged. "You ask about one man out of two thousand. If he wasn't on the business end of my lance, I didn't see him." He leaned down and extended a hand. "Come up," he said. "I'll take you to the commander."
Innowen let his spear fall to the ground and climbed up behind the soldier. He braced his hands on the horse's rump for balance as they moved off across the field. The destruction spread everywhere around them. Here and there, tent poles still burned, though most of the fabric had been consumed. The smell of smoke and blood made a terrible perfume. The moans of the wounded and dying floated eerily as the clamor of battle faded.
They found Taelyn with a handful of his warriors. At first, Innowen thought he'd been wounded, but he soon realized the blood that covered the older man was not his own. The drummer, though he still rode behind his commander, bled heavily from a cut in his side. His rigid features betrayed his pain.
Taelyn glared with an anger Innowen had never seen in him. "He didn't join us!" he raged. "That bastard never opened the gates."
"Kyrin?" Innowen guessed.
"He let us die out here, so long as he was safe behind his damned walls!"
"But you won," Innowen reminded him, "without Kyrin."
This time the glare was directed at him. "Tell that to the dead men who followed me into this!"
Taelyn led them through the wreckage toward a cluster of hoplites. Little by little, all that remained of his army began to gather. Men drifted out of the smoke and darkness like bloody ghosts, taking substance as they drew closer. Few spoke. Some looked around for comrades and clapped them silently around the shoulders, too weary or too numb to utter greetings.
It moved Innowen deeply, and shame filled him. He had danced while Isporans lost their lives. How could he have done that? What kind of man was he?
A hand touched his thigh, and he looked down at a weary-looking soldier. "Veydon?" he said, as recognition took hold. He sprang off the horse and caught the young officer as he started to collapse. His arm slipped around Veydon's back, and he felt a slick wetness. "Oh gods," he muttered, and Veydon's breath hissed as Innowen lowered him down.
"Just let me rest," Veydon whispered. Others gathered close to see to him. "It isn't bad, but it hurts like the hells."
"He's taken a thrust under the shoulder blade," someone said, turning him on his side, examining his back.
Veydon gripped Innowen's hand. "What are you doing here?" His words came through clenched teeth. "Razkili's gone into the hills to get you."
"He left you like this?" Innowen said in disbelief.
"He didn't know," Veydon reassured him. "I didn't tell him. It didn't seem so bad at first."
"We've got to get him inside the city," said another officer as he knelt down by them.
Taelyn scowled angrily. "We've got to get a lot of men inside. And by damn we will if I have to pull those gates down myself!"
Several men picked Veydon up out of the dirt, but he refused to release Innowen's hand. "We won," he said with a weak half-grin. "It was the wind. It carried the archers' fire through the camp faster than we could have hoped. It was as if the wind was on our side."
The wind
. It still blew down from the Akrotirs. Innowen felt it on his face when he looked up. But it held no music for him now. He gazed away into the darkness, walking beside Veydon as his friends carried him. He didn't know where, but he went just the same, pulled along by the hand that held his.
It was a black hell he walked through, a place of lamentation and death, of smoke and fire and gloom. What a fitting place to find Vashni, a man he had first thought a demon. And if Vashni was here, surely the Witch of Shanalane was close by.
He wiped a hand over his lips, then licked them. The salt taste of blood blossomed in his mouth.
Chapter 9
Innowen could smell the tension as Taelyn's force at last rode through the city's main gate and into Parendur. He leaned back against Razkili and flicked away a bead of sweat that threatened to sting his right eye. Rascal's arms tightened around him, and they swayed together in rhythm to the horse's stride.
Throngs of Isporans lined the streets, eager for a glimpse of their liberators. Their cheers swelled through the city. Men hurried forward with buckets of water and ladles, offering drink to the victorious soldiers. Others pushed closer to touch them, to run one hand quickly along a leg or foot, before vanishing with a small gasp back into the crowd.
Innowen felt nothing when they brushed his limbs, but he was still grateful to be on a horse. The height and the size of the animal gave him some safety from the human mass. He pitied the poor footmen when they entered the gate.
Though the crowd roared its gratitude, Taelyn's men kept almost silent. Not even the people's jubilance and the spontaneous celebrations that filled every alley and street corner along their course dulled the collective edge of the army's smoldering anger. Beside Innowen and Razkili, Taelyn sat rigidly on his mount, his face a grim mask. He stared straight ahead, not seeming to blink at all, oblivious to the citizens and all their noise.
Once before, Innowen had seen the palace at Parendur. His heart quickened as he approached it now. In all his travels, he had seen only a few structures to match its grandeur. It stood two stories high. Banks of columns painted red and white supported its porches and parapets. It was not fortified, but sat atop a central hill whose summit had been leveled by the great labor of slaves and workmen. The rest of the city sprawled below it.
As they reached the road that led upward toward the palace, a squad of soldiers from Kyrin's First Army pushed the crowd back. A mounted captain of the guard blocked their way. Taelyn drew back on his reins and raised one hand to signal for his own men to halt.
The captain saluted politely. "Welcome, Commander. The people hail you as the savior of Parendur." He smiled and indicated the throng that tried to press closer. "Kyrin sends you greetings and awaits you in his personal megaron. The rest of your men may quarter with the garrison. We'll feed them well and see to your wounded. You have the gratitude of the entire city."
"To the hells with your gratitude and with Kyrin's greeting," Taelyn snarled. "Who gave the order to keep the gates sealed last night? Or to keep us outside until dawn? Some of my wounded men died because they couldn't get the attention they needed."
The captain looked stunned, then averted his eyes.
"Don't bother to answer," Taelyn told him. "I don't blame the garrison, soldier. I know where the order came from." He turned to one of his own officers, the man who had found Innowen on the battlefield. "See that my men are cared for. The wounded first; they get first food and the best beds, you understand me?" The man nodded. Taelyn looked back at the garrison captain and gestured toward Innowen. "This is the son of Minarik, and the other is his companion. They come with me. I know Minarik is here. It's him I'll see first. Tell Kyrin he can wait until he shits an emerald. I'll not see him." He beckoned to Innowen and Razkili, and they rode up the hill past the shame-faced captain.
At the top, they passed another escort of honor guards who raised their spears in salute and fell in behind the three. They kept a strained silence, though, and wore a kind of beaten expression. "I think they wanted to fight," Innowen whispered to Razkili. "Kyrin must have held them back."
But Razkili's attention was on the palace. The look on his face was rapt. "It outshines anything in Osirit," he said quietly. "Even the palace at Taruisa is not so fine."
"The first time I saw it, I cried," Innowen confessed. "When I lived in my cottage in the woods, Shandisti seemed like a wondrous place to me. I had no concept of Ispor's greatness. Not even Whisperstone, as awesome a place as it is, prepared me for this."
At the beginning of a long, cobbled walkway, they dismounted. Razkili eased Innowen down and cradled him in his arms.
The captain of the escort stepped up. "Sir, if he's wounded, we can care for him." He beckoned two of his men forward.
"Get away," Razkili said, scowling as they reached for Innowen. "I take care of him. No one else."
"Do as he says," Taelyn ordered before the captain could protest. "Don't touch the boy."
Innowen frowned at that word but said nothing. He rested one arm around Razkili's shoulder as the two soldiers instead took their reins and led the horses away.
Taelyn beckoned for them to follow him, and they started down a path, flanked on either side by rows of tall fluted columns of painted stone, which led into the central courtyard. Smaller pedestals with bowl-shaped depressions in their tops stood between each pair of columns. From these came the smell of fresh oil.
The walls of the palace rose around them. At the far end of the courtyard, on the upper terrace, a pair of ladies stared briefly their way, then averted their faces and vanished quietly inside.
In the northwestern corner, a team of sweat-gleaming slaves worked with hoes and spades and buckets of water at the bases of a pair of lemon trees. Innowen watched them over his shoulder as Razkili carried him, then he glanced around at the rest of the courtyard. The drought had done damage even here. The green eucalyptus bushes were edged with brown and yellow. Most of the flowers were shriveled little weeds. The fruit trees bore small infertile nuggets of pulp that would never reach ripeness.
Only an odd kind of faded beauty remained. The air smelled of sweet herbs and citrus, but Innowen realized that was because pots of incense had been placed among the branches nearest the walkway. Wind chimes played a tinkling funereal music over the dying garden. The white cobbles and the sparkling sandstone terraces, the occasional marble benches, all made a powerful contrast to the parched and struggling greenery.
"I wish you could see this in bloom," Innowen said with soft regret close to his friend's ear. "On my first visit, this became my favorite place."
Razkili shifted Innowen in his arms as he nodded somberly.
The entrance walkway from the garden into the palace was also colonnaded. It took a moment for Innowen's eyes to adjust as they passed from the hot sunlight into the palace. It was very close and warm, and only a little of the outside brightness filtered through narrow slits in the upper walls.