The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) (83 page)

“Lissen Carak was the home and sacred ground of my people,” Mogon said.

“And before that the Odine, and before them the Kraal, and so on and so on.” Harmodius raised a hand. “If we do nothing, the cycle continues forever.”

“Fascinating,” Gabriel allowed. “But not immediately affecting my dispositions.” He made a face. “Except that it’s clear that he wants to fight at Albinkirk—he or Thorn or whoever controls that horde. And because he wants to fight here, I’m tempted to fight somewhere else.” Gabriel leaned forward. “Does your Ifriquy’an know more gates? I would give a great deal to understand the geographia of this
aethereal
battlefield. If I’m understanding this at all.”

Harmodius nodded. He withdrew a second sheet of the memory parchment. “Lissen Carak, as we all knew or at least guessed. In the Citadel of Arles, in Arelat.” He nodded to the Queen.

Gabriel flinched as if he’d been bitten. “Of course!” he said. “I was there. The King of Galle tried to take Arles by treachery—a long tale. But I was there. I knew something felt—hollow.”

“Hollow?” the Queen said. “I, too, know a place that feels hollow in my soul.”

“I believe there’s a lost gate under the palace in Harndon.” Harmodius exchanged a long look with the Queen.

The Queen leaned back and let go a breath. “There is something there. An emptiness.”

Harmodius nodded. “Let us say Harndon. Assuredly there is one in Dar as Salaam. I have felt it myself. In fact, it set Al Rashidi on his investigations, almost a hundred years ago. And of course, once you understand the game and the pieces, the whole of the Umbroth Wars make sense. The not-dead are just someone else’s tools to take the gate.”

Gabriel began to rock back and forth like a small child.

“Arles. In Arelat. Where the King of Galle has just, according to the Etruscans, been badly beaten by a mighty army of the Wild.” Gabriel steadied himself.

Prior Wishart’s face grew still, though even in the
aethereal
his fear showed.

The Queen looked from one to another.

“Umbroth Wars, gentles?” she asked.

“Almost a hundred years of attacks by the not-dead and the one we call Necromancer on the people of Dar as Salaam, the Abode of Peace,” Harmodius said. “Before the attacks started, there were green fields. Now there is desert.” He looked at Gabriel. “Rashidi says there are seven gates in this sphere. Or, to be complete, he says there are at least seven gates. And to that I must add that the terrain of today need not be the terrain on which the gates were set. This contest is so old that there might be gates under glaciers, inside volcanoes, or under the sea for all I know.”

Prior Wishart drew a deep breath. “How long ago were the gates built?” he asked.

Harmodius didn’t answer at first. He looked from one to another to another, around the circle. None flinched. The Faery Knight grinned and showed his teeth.

“You might have been a mountebank,” the Faery Knight said. “Jussst tell them!”

“At least thirty thousand years,” Harmodius said.

The bishop sighed. “My scripture tells me that the earth is between six and seven thousand years old,” he said.

Harmodius shrugged. “It might simply be wrong.”

The bishop acknowledged this with a nod.

“It might refer to somewhere else,” Gabriel said. “We are no more from here than the Duchess Mogon.”

“Thirty thousand years is a long time,” the bishop said.

Lord Krevak nodded. “Even to my people, that is too long.” He shrugged. “Too long to take seriously.”

Desiderata glanced at her captain and then leaned towards Harmodius. “I see how this could forever alter everything. But I do not see how it alters the next few days. Is there a weapon? A way to prevent this manifestation?”

Mogon now spoke. “No—I see it. Manifestation is power and weakness.”

Harmodius nodded. “If Ash is here,” he said, “he is not anywhere else, and when he is entirely here—” He paused. “Then I think he can be destroyed. Only when they distribute themselves are they immortal. And less powerful.”

Gabriel nodded. “Now I am not yawning. You want to kill a god.”

“It will be very difficult,” Harmodius said.

Gabriel winced. “We’re going to be pinched hard to win a simple field battle to protect our crops against heavy numbers and better levels of
ops
.”

“That part I leave to you,” Harmodius said. “Our battle will be fought here, in the
aethereal
, and it will all be about misdirection.”

“Mine, too,” Gabriel said. “I feel I need to remind you all of something.”

“Speak, man,” the Faery Knight said.

Gabriel looked around. “As a knight it is my duty to protect the weak. My first duty. You may be right, but please, old man, admit that you may have all this backwards. My duty is to protect the peasants in the fields, the merchants, the women bearing babies.” He looked around. “I agree that the game of gods should stop. I hate it. But men play it and wardens play it and dragons play it and wyverns and bears. It is not nearly as simple as killing a god. So let us focus, your grace and my lady and lords—on beating Thorn.”

The Faery Knight nodded agreement. “We may not even be on the right side,” he said. “We may be too puny to even understand the sides.”

Gabriel smiled at him. “I can tell a good company by riding through the streets of their camp—once. Let me meet one whore, one servant, and I know their captain.” His eyes narrowed. “I will not debate theology with you, my lords. But I know Ash by his works. I know two of these others—and whatever they may intend…” He shrugged.

“They run better companies?” the Faery Knight suggested.

“Just so,” the Red Knight agreed, and they shared a brief smile. “I only mean this, Harmodius. You want to destroy a race of gods so that we can be free. I say—a pox on it. I serve the Queen and the Emperor and my own interest—everyone serves someone. Let our lords be just and generous, and we prosper.”

Harmodius growled. “There speaks an aristocrat who has never known the lash.”

Gabriel spat. “You lie.”

“You—you, of all creatures, will forfeit your freedom?” Harmodius shook his head. “I think it is you who lies.”

“I say, fight one battle at a time and do not rule out any ally.” Gabriel put a hand to his head—a familiar headache.

“I say, they are false allies and will enslave us, generation after generation and you mortgage the future to win a battle today.” Harmodius was adamant. “They are all equally our enemies.”

Desiderata sat wrapped in thought. Gabriel could guess what had cut her. The others considered, each in their own way.

Gabriel took a deep
aethereal
breath. A meaningless symbol of a breath—a conversational habit.

“There must be other Powers,” he said.

Harmodius nodded. “The Necromancer is one. The being Rashidi identifies as Rot is another. Who I suspect is leading the assault in Galle. Or managing it.”

“Dragons?” Krevak asked.

“Not all Powers are dragons,” Exrech said. “At least one Kraal still bloats the earth.”

“Thorn seeks to become a Power.” Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

Harmodius nodded heavily. “And Sister Amicia is on the very verge of becoming one.”

“Like the dragons?” Gabriel asked.

“I don’t actually know,” Harmodius admitted slowly. “Al Rashidi doesn’t know either.”

Desiderata raised her head. “This is too deep for me,” she said. She looked at the Bishop of Albinkirk.

He smiled. “That God’s will and love extends to every level of the cosmos comes as no surprise to me,” he said. “Beyond that, I would not comment, except to say that to plot the death of a creature, however powerful, who has done you no harm is awfully like murder, however you may see the consequences for future generations. But then, I am but a priest, and I fear that even violence in the defence of the weak is—sin. Murder.”

The Faery Knight looked at him in wonder. “Are there other children of men who think as you do?” he asked.

The bishop nodded. “A few. We call ourselves Christians.”

The Faery Knight laughed.

Even Gabriel had to laugh.

Harmodius nodded like a man waking from sleep. “Your grace—I know this will be painful. But my sense—from stories I have heard, and your very presence—is that you have already faced our foe. Directly. In the
aethereal
.”

Desiderata appeared as she always had in the
aethereal
, as a beautiful
young woman in a kirtle of gold, barefoot, with a ring of daisies in her hair and a belt of them around her waist. In the
aethereal
, she seemed both wanton and matronly, the very embodiment of woman’s power.

Now Gabriel, who had healed her and knew her
aethereal
and outward self, looked at her and saw how clearly her ordeal in Harndon had marked her. In the
aethereal
, she still wore the form that she had had a year ago in the real. But pregnancy and torment had put crow’s feet at the edges of her eyes and a different colour in her face. She had more gravity—more presence—than she had a year ago. But he would never have noticed the difference until he saw her golden form in the
aethereal
.

She did not smile. But nor did she wince, or stumble.

“I have faced Ash,” she said quietly.

The
aethereal
was still.

“It was not a straight contest of powers. In which I would have been bested instantly. And I think—if I may pre-empt Master Harmodius—that he dwells in the
aethereal
and that our ‘real’ is very difficult for him. But for the battle of will—will, with
ops
as a weapon, to use your university terms—I built this.”

Memories can be very difficult in the
aethereal
—the memory palace lives only in the user’s mind, and the weakness of memory can make anything fluctuate. Living memory—actual events—can be subject to an infinite number of seductions and degradations, as every hermeticist knows—delusions of success or defeat, failures of will, troubles of image.

But for most casters, memories of direct manipulations of hermetical power have themselves a glow of solid experience, and the Queen’s memory of the climaxes of Ash’s assault on her wall were vivid, complex, and so fraught with emotion that Mogon groaned and Gabriel found himself weeping.

But when she was done, each of them built, under her instruction, one of the golden bricks—Mogon’s were a magnificent, lurid green.

“I made no attempt to strike him. I wished only to protect my unborn child.” She smiled. “Now, I wonder what was Ash and what was Ghause.”

Harmodius had seen the shadow of another in her memory. “And what was Tar,” he said.

“The Virgin would only protect me,” the Queen said quickly.

Harmodius frowned. “They only see us as slaves and soldiers,” he said. He looked pointedly at Gabriel.

Gabriel shook his head. “Harmodius—I would not be your foe. But I need my ally in order to win this battle—the more especially if your dark dragon manifests.” He looked around. “I have no idea of what it would be like to fight a dragon. Militarily, I’m not even sure it can be done. Based on two observations of my own ally in his draconic form—” He paused. “I’m not sure I can plan for that.”

Harmodius took a deep breath as if to make a passionate rejoinder. But he paused.

“We must win this fight,” he said.

“We know,” Desiderata said.

“Very well,” Harmodius said. “I will limit myself to Ash.”

Gabriel smiled at the Faery Knight. “You are content I should command?” he asked.

“No,” the Faery Knight said. “I am content we can aid each other. Command is too imperious for me, Gabriel. Let us merely be friends, and the rest will follow.”

“That’s me told, as my archer would say,” Gabriel said. He extended his hand. “I intend to fight in the woods, at Gilson’s Hole.”

“In the woods?” Desiderata asked. Her surprise leached into the
aethereal
.

“The army marches tonight, under cover of darkness,” Gabriel said. “Much of it, anyway. Not your knights. We’ve summoned a mass levy of farmers and peasants to dig, and cut trees. What we have that our opponents lack is organization. I’m trying to win with it.”

The Faery Knight put a hand to his forehead in mock salute—or perhaps genuine. “I am shocked. Perhaps he will be surprised.”

“Let’s find out,” the captain said.

One by one, the others left the old man’s palace.

Like a bad guest, Gabriel chose to stay. When they were all gone, he said, “Odd to be in your head, instead of you in mine.”

Harmodius smiled. “Are we at odds?” he asked.

“Please do nothing against Master Smythe,” Gabriel said.

“You mean Lot? You have my word. For now.” Harmodius looked at something that Gabriel knew he couldn’t see—but he’d been in the old man’s rooms in his own mind, and he knew what was there—the mirror.

“I’ve lost my protection,” he said.

“You think so?” Harmodius said. “Hmm.”

“How will this Ash manifest?” Gabriel asked. “And how will you strike?”

“I think he will use death—each death is a major event in the
aethereal
,” the old magister began.

“Really? I had no idea,” Gabriel said.

“I missed your sarcasm,” Harmodius said.

“And I, yours,” Gabriel shot back.