Leaping up and
standing astride the ogre’s convulsing body, Kisst-Haa shrilled a steam whistle
of victory, then wheeled to help Reacher and Katya hold the endangered doors.
One of the archers had fallen and another was wounded.
Gil and
Hightower had broken the sword wall at the foot of the dais and the fighting in
general subsided as they all turned to watch the duel that would decide their
fates.
Springbuck
couldn’t afford to meet the strokes of Flarecore squarely on, less so now that
it burned with occult flame; step by slow step he was being driven to the edge
of the dais behind him without even the hope of the mocking courtesy he had
extended his opponent.
Think,
think,
he exhorted himself.
You can’t stand against this sword; it’s
probably only Bar’s enchantment that keeps it from being severed or melted to
slag. You can’t beat the sword; beat the man!
Then it came to
him. He backed carefully until he was nearly off the dais, but not quite. He
was, however, off the embroidered carpet on which they’d stood and fought. As
he parried in quinte a stroke which would have opened him from crown to crotch,
he knelt and grabbed the end of the carpet with his free hand and yanked it.
But the trick
wasn’t successful. Though Strongblade went down on one knee, he kept his
balance and retained Flarecore. Springbuck desperately looped the end of the
carpet over Strongblade’s sword and right arm. The material immediately burst
into searing flame and the Usurper fell backward with a cry of woe, trying to
extricate himself but only managing to drag the carpet around and with him,
entangling himself in it still more as he fell down the steps of the dais
wrapped in a sheet of crackling death. His clothes were alight; and as the
Prince watched in horror, Strongblade died with his lungs filled with the
were-fire of Flarecore.
Even as
Springbuck called for those standing near to extinguish the flames, the light
in the sword was no more and the fire was gone. They knew that Strongblade’s
short, violent life was over.
Gil laid down
his sword and went to see if he could help Andre and Van Duyn with Ferrian.
Reacher and Dunstan stood away from the door they’d been warding and the King
of Freegate put aside the bar. When an officer of the guard entered at the
front of his squad, the Wolf-Brother said in a loud voice that all might hear:
“The true
Ku-Mor-Mai
is back and the false one dead. Bow your heads and
ask his amnesty, that you ever conspired with traitors.”
The officer,
not slow of wit, took in the scene quickly and, seeing which way events were
moving, did just that, bending his knee. So did his men. Instantly all the
courtiers and nobles still able to do so followed suit, paying homage to their
new ruler.
Dunstan, who
had some of the Berserkergang in him yet, was roving the crowd with his eye.
Suddenly he cried,
“There!”
He sprang forward, charging in pursuit of
Yardiff Bey, who’d slipped from the genuflecting throng at the side of the
room, Fania beside him. The sorcerer was moving toward the staircase which
would take him back to his sanctum. Van Duyn moved to block his way, raising
his Garand, but the magician pulled the Queen from behind him and a bullet
meant for the heart of the sorcerer found Fania’s white breast moments after
her son had died.
Yardiff Bey
brushed the appalled Van Duyn out of his way and dashed up the staircase, but
Dunstan was right behind like a coursing hunting dog.
“Don’t let him
get to the roof!” Gil shouted, snatching up Andre’s sword in the heat of the
moment and coming after. He was winded by the time he came to the sanctum, but
the sight that greeted him in that chamber made him forget his condition.
Yardiff Bey had
drawn Dirge and was fighting madly with Dunstan. Their blades licked at each
other and Dunstan, the better swordsman, pressed the sorcerer hard.
Then Dunstan
disarmed Bey with a quick twist of blades. Bey held his empty right hand out
toward Dunstan, and from his voluminous sleeve came a spurt of yellowish smoke
or fine powder. Dunstan fell to his knees, choking.
As Gil rushed
forward to help, Yardiff Bey stepped back and made a Sign with his hand.
Hellish flame leaped up in a ring, for Dunstan was in the center of the
pentacle. Trapped in the circle, Dunstan leaped up to hurtle through it to his
enemy, but something bounced him back. He tried to cut through it, but though
his sword passed it freely, he himself could not.
Gil tried to
pull him out by means of the blade, cutting his hands in the doing, but
couldn’t. Then the American realized that he had Andre’s sword with him.
He tore at the
pommel knob and pulled out Calundronius.
He tossed the
negator at the invisible wall and gave Dunstan’s sword another tug. Bitter cold
and searing heat seemed to travel down the blade and enter him, and stars
exploded in his brain. Both he and Dunstan tumbled headlong, the Berserker free
of the pentacle.
Gil sat on the
floor, dazed, but Dunstan raced after Yardiff Bey again. The American staggered
to the door and saw them both wrestling out on the broad flat terrace there,
near
Cloud Ruler.
Though Dunstan still appeared to be in Rage, Bey held
his own somehow. The sorcerer contrived to take the Horseblooded in an odd,
choking hold. Then he struck him on the side of the head, knocking Dunstan
senseless.
Gil pushed
himself through the door, but before he could get to them, Yardiff Bey had
taken Dunstan over his shoulder and disappeared into a hatch.
The blast of
Cloud
Ruler
departing knocked Gil sprawling again, and the accumulated punishment
he’d taken blacked him out.
And all
should cry Beware! Beware!
His
flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a
circle round him thrice,
And close
your eyes with holy dread,
For he on
honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk
the milk of Paradise.
samuel
taylor coleridge,
“Kubla Khan”
“IT’S difficult to tell just what
happened,” Andre said a few moments later, when several others joined Gil in
the tower. The American had just recovered consciousness.
“But Bey is
gone,” Andre continued, “and Dunstan with him. He obviously couldn’t use any
sorcery on you; he didn’t have time, because Calundronius was near. It’s our
bad luck that you didn’t get closer to his demon ship with it.”
The wizard
tugged his lip in thought as Hightower growled, “Is there no way we can stop
him, that treacherous he-witch?”
“There is a
possibility. Somewhere here is stored an artifact, a crystal which imprisons a
supernatural being of great might. One could exact a service for releasing it;
it might intercept Bey for us. I shall have to contain Calundronius before we
search it out.”
Reacher
interrupted. “No, there is something else that we must demand of this entity if
we find it. I want to be taken back to Freegate as quickly as possible to carry
word of our victory and end the siege.”
“Then it will
have to be that instrumentality,” Andre said, “for my sister and I are both
exhausted.”
Yardiff Bey sat
within his ship, the least part of his power used to control it.
There was no
sign of it in his features, but he, who had long since mastered pain and
exterminated any gentler emotion in himself, was in agony.
His supreme
Design shattered beyond recovery! Decades-long efforts brought to nothing! The
completion of Shardishku-Salamá’s most intricate plan had been torn from his
fingers. His minions and allies would founder, rudderless, in his absence.
As
Cloud
Ruler
sped from Earthfast, a new thought pierced the darkness that
threatened his mind: where to go? Mercy was unknown to his masters. He
shuddered as he thought what forms their retribution could take. He saw with an
awful clarity that there could be for him nothing but unending exile and the
bitter sustenance of ruined aspirations.
Then he thought
of Dunstan, whom he’d taken prisoner on the spur of the moment, thinking that a
hostage might be useful; the man seemed a close companion of the hated Gil
MacDonald. Might that fact hold some promise, or was he deluding himself?
He sighed and
hung his head, almost torpidly, and tried to decide if he wished to continue to
live.
In the throne
room, Springbuck had taken the Crown from his adversary’s brow and, wiping it
carefully on the dead man’s cloak, placed it on his own head. The raiders stood
silently while household troops, nobles and the rest of the courtiers knelt.
When he’d given
them leave to stand, the
Ku-Mor-Mai
looked out at them, squinting a bit
at indistinct features in the middle distance and beyond.
“It’s been the
subject of some humor in Court before-times,” he said, his voice firm and full,
“that my eyesight is not all it might be. Know, then, that today I see well
enough to reckon who is here and who is not, and who stood beside my brother
and who didn’t. You in this room and the others who conspired with Strongblade
are well known to me.”
At this many in
the chamber went sickly and pale. At least one pair of knees gave way, those of
an aging merchant who had to be steadied by his trembling wife.
“But you have a
hope. I want no more strife and partisanship in Coramonde. Therefore, let any
who wish to gain royal clemency throw themselves with a will to ensuring
justice in the realm, and healing the hurts of war. A time will come soon when
I will personally look into the affairs of each and every one of you; let none
be slack or miserly. Now go, leave me. Spread the tidings: Springbuck has taken
the throne and a new day is come in Coramonde.”
The besieging
army at Freegate was mounting a major assault. A great sow had been built, a
ramming gyn covered with sturdy wood structured by iron and protected against
fire with layers of clay. They were pushing it onto the bridgeway in front of
them as the sun peered over the horizon.
Then a dark
figure passed across the sky and fear went through them, as a bat-winged shape,
manlike but larger than any man, alighted on the bridgeway before them. The
demon’s pinions swirled for a moment as it deposited its burden, carried these
many miles from Earthfast, and was away with a victorious scream, free at last
of indenturement to mortals.
Legion-Marshal
Novanwyn, directing the advance, recognized Reacher, King of the free city,
standing in their path with a long bundle over his shoulder.
“Strongblade is
dead,” the Wolf-Brother said in a voice extraordinary, in him, for its
weariness. “And Springbuck is
Ku-Mor-Mai.”
So saying, he
flung his bundle out and unrolled it. There was the charred body of
Strongblade, burned ghastly but recognizable in death. Word spread like sheet
lightning through the ranks. Novanwyn said nothing.
“You are commanded
to give up this siege and return to Earthfast,” Reacher continued, “and to
lift, too, the siege at the Hightower.”
The
Legion-Marshal had no intention of returning to answer for his conduct to a new
sovereign. “What illusionist’s foolishment is this? Whatever trick has brought
you here has mystified our eyes and caused us to imagine the body of the
rightful Suzerain. But I say we’ll never abide by your word. Freegate will fall
to us, fall to us this very day, and you’ll answer up to our questioning when
my inquisitors have their way with you.”
He was about to
say on when he went rigid and his eyes widened in surprise. He pitched to the
ground and from his back there stood the hilt of a long dagger. Behind him was
Midwis, his second-in-command, Midwis whose sons Kanatar and Deotar had been
incinerated on this same bridgeway by Yardiff Bey and who wanted nothing more
to do with the sorcerer’s affairs.
Midwis turned
to the deputy commanders. “Pull back the sow. Form the hosts for march; we are
for the Hightower and Earthfast as soon as we are able.”
In his new
quarters—formerly his father’s and briefly Strongblade’s—Springbuck toyed with
the bowie knife he nowadays wore under the bothersome robes of Court. His
Alebowrenian gear stowed in a chest, he still felt uncomfortable in fine
raiments.
Across from him
sat Gil MacDonald, nursing a tankard of thick beer, his face still carrying a
puckered, healing scar from the explosion of his carbine, and his cheek was
tattooed from the powder burn. He was meditative, often his habit these days,
searching down inside himself and examining feelings and thoughts.
On a small
study desk were quills, inks, paper and items of reference with which the new
Protector Suzerain was—partially at Gil’s instigation—working on journals and
poetry tentatively called
The Antechamber Ballads.
Part of his
latest poem ran through Gil’s mind:
Now hurting
others never was my pleasure,
Nor causing
wanton cruelty my aim;
But if what’s
worth preserving has a measure,
It’s our
willingness to see it through the flame.
Gil rather
thought it showed promise. It was a prejudice of his that introspective
writings be required of anyone in authority.
But just now
Springbuck was pacing the floor.
“So,” he was
saying, “I have decided to send Flarecore back to Veganá. There’s more than one
war being fought, and Flarecore may well spell victory or defeat away in the
south, at the tip of the Crescent Lands.”
His gaze
suddenly went far distant. “We barely know what’s happening there. What battles
are being fought that might bring safety or peril to Coramonde? It’s a
formidable mission, going well beyond our better maps. It may be the linchpin
of any further war with Shardishku-Salamá. Andre and Gabrielle agree it’s the
thing to do.”