He rose from the ground at dawn, beating at the air with his enormous wings, feeling the shifting world of the real. To the west, four long columns of ash rising into the already clouded heavens showed that four of the newly formed volcanoes were still spewing. The clouds of ash and effluvia so generated were already changing the quality of the light.
Far to the north, north of the Inner Sea, he had another army, but it was too far away to seize the Sorcerer’s Isle. He had set that force to laying siege to Mogon’s network of natural caves and fortifications, the heartland of the mighty northern wardens. But they had become bogged in an endless series of small skirmishes that demanded his near constant attention; and the albino warden, Lostenferch, his lieutenant, was skilled at the use of magic but not at the employment of archers, and was wasting Ash’s time every day.
Ash dismissed the northern arm of his efforts. Too little; they will be too late. They failed to distract Mogon even from the prize.
In the east, he had Orley. Orley had too much of what Lostenferch lacked; Ash was tired of the thing that had been a man and his constant demands. Orley had a force that might or might not be strong enough to retake the Sorcerer’s Isle. Ash was poor at self-examination, but he had to confess that the seizure had surprised him; the revelation that Lot was not only alive but newly empowered …
Ash raised his head. Orley could never stand against Lot.
And the time, the time, the time. Suddenly there was so little time.
I will have to go myself.
It may be a trap.
How has he done this, my enemy? How has he raised all these forces and disposed them all across all the paths?
They are all against me.
I must defeat them all.
But doubt was now nagging him; the doubt of embodiment, of entanglement. He could no longer see anything of the future; had trouble remembering the pitfalls he’d seen from the aethereal.
How did Lot escape me? Why are his slaves so loyal?
One part of his many compartmented selves was moving the main army along the north bank of the Cohocton while another directed foragers and a third prepared workings in the aethereal. Too many of his compartments were brooding; counting casualties, trying to understand how many foes there were, from too little information.
I will retake the well and kill Lot.
At some point I will face the will.
Then I will turn and take the gate.
But even that was a complicated future; the ally he’d made and the deal for control of the gate were both gone. He no longer knew what stood on the other side of the gate—friend, or foe.
One of his many busy, planning selves offered a suggestion—of plain treason.
Ally with Lot.
In the physical world, his whole frame shuddered with revulsion.
Never! he screamed.
But the idea was still there.
Arles—The Red Knight
Gabriel had ordered a grand review, but when he awoke the next morning to the sound of his wife retching in a basin, he had doubts. He wondered if it was a waste of time, and his waking thought was to cancel the damned thing. Everything seemed to accelerate toward the moment that the gates were open; everything seemed to be fluid.
Blanche finished her morning sickness and collapsed on the bed with a groan.
Master Nicodemus, with his usual perfect timing, appeared at the door with a cup of something that smelled like happiness; apples and cinnamon and peppermint and honey and lemons. The smell filled the inside of their closed bed hangings.
“Oh, you are wonderful,” Blanche said, and Master Nicodemus closed the bed hangings and she drank. “Oh …” She sat up.
Gabriel smiled.
“It’s not funny,” she said. “Not even a little bit.”
Gabriel did his best to keep his face smooth.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “If it’s tomorrow, then I will never lie beside you again. I don’t want to be pregnant. I don’t want to feel this bad. I don’t want you to remember me throwing up into a basin.”
Gabriel lay back and looked at her.
“It could be tomorrow,” he said. “I think this is what I was meant to do, and everything has been preparing for this.” He watched her a moment. “I don’t have time to hold a grand review. I need to tell Julius to copy out orders and cancel it. It’s a waste of time; vainglory.”
“Unless it is an important moment for building unity and good morale,” Blanche said. She obviously felt better; she polished off her morning drink with relish, put the cup outside the bed hangings, and rolled over toward him.
“I take your point,” he said. “But fifty thousand men; it’ll take four hours to get them on parade and four hours for them to file off. They could be …” He paused, because she moved closer.
“Shut up,” she said.
A surprising amount of time later, she leaned over him, her hair all around him. “They want to see you,” she said. “It’s not vainglory. It’s monarchy. Also, cancelling will start a lot of rumours. And it will keep everyone’s mind off … tomorrow.”
“I know what would keep my mind off tomorrow,” Gabriel said. He lifted his real hand and ran the calloused palm lightly across one of her nipples.
“Why, kind sir, what can you mean?” she asked.
He had new arming clothes. They were scarlet, dyed with the bodies of a type of small beetle found only in the east. Beautifully cut, carefully and lightly padded, they fit him like a second skin.
But in the way of tailors, some of the lacing points were in the wrong places for his new golden armour, and the solar was suddenly full of men and women. The grand review was less than an hour away, and Gabriel stood in his shirt and braes, drinking fennel tea and being besotted with his wife while she and Kaitlin and Gropf and her new maid Beatrice sat working eyelets through layers of linen and scarlet wool and velvet.
Master Julius brought him a stack of messages. The room was emptier than usual; most of his officers were out on the field of Arles, moving troops. Michael came and stood reading over his shoulder.
Master Julius was grinning from ear to ear.
Michael and Gabriel whooped together. “Master Smythe is alive,” the emperor said. “It is confirmed.”
Blanche looked up. “The queen will be so pleased,” she said.
Gabriel nodded. “MacGilly, fetch me Magister Mortirmir.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” MacGilly said, and he went out.
“I need more red silk twist,” Blanche said.
Beatrice rose, but Kaitlin waved her off. “I’ll go; I’m up,” she said, and she pecked Michael and continued, looking in on her sleeping child and stopping at the window with a gasp. Then she came back with a bone thread winder full of scarlet silk thread.
“You must look out the window,” she said.
Gabriel continued reading.
“Aneas took Lake-on-the-Mountain right under Orley’s nose,” he said exultantly. “Nice work, useless little brother.” He nodded at Michael. “He was our mother’s favourite after …” He paused. “Never mind. Ash will be weakened now, and distracted.”
He read through another, and another, his expression changing. “I am … concerned about Lissen Carak,” he said. “The Odine are moving and the royal army is not yet in place. Even Alcaeus is moving; he’s taking the rest of the Morean reserves toward Middleburg as of yesterday.”
“All the eggs in one basket,” Michael said.
“What can the Odine accomplish without bodies?” Blanche asked.
Gabriel thought a moment. “I don’t know anything,” he said.
“You really need to look out of this window,” Kaitlin said.
Gabriel walked to the window, a cup in his hand, and looked out over the plain of Arles.
There, laid before him like a child’s collection of toy soldiers, was the army. The army. Almost fifty thousand men and women, a sizable proportion of them mounted; a vast wagon train, grain carts, wa
ter carts, knights, archers, light cavalry …
They filled the plain.
Michael came and stood by his shoulder. “The company had a good recruiting day,” he said with a smile.
“Fifty thousand,” Gabriel said. “Holy … Lord.”
The Wild—Bill Redmede
Bill Redmede stood looking at the morning mist rising over an autumn valley filled with beaver swamp and scrubby spruce trees that appeared dark and gothic against the golden brilliance of the foliage on the ridges above.
“We are more than halfway to the Inner Sssea,” Tapio said. “It isss very beautiful here. Thisss valley sssings to me. I wish for Tamsssin.”
Redmede frowned. “I wish there was more here.” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen a deer in a day. Nor a track of deer or moose.”
Langtree, one of the Golden Bears that had broken out with them, paused to distribute late-season blackberries. “We know this, grr, valley,” he said. He had a very expressive face; his big eyes were a golden brown. “Grrr. Strange, rrrr, valley.” He swung his linen bucket by the handle, a fearsome warrior turned into a bear drunk on berries.
“Strange how?” Tapio asked.
“Mrrrm,” Langtree said. “Witch-bears come, grr? Come here, rrr? Test their powers and grow them, mmmmrrrr?”
Kwoqwethogan ate a handful of the berries. “These are full of green potentia,” he said. He took a wooden cup carved from a maple burl and beautifully inlaid in gold and silver, and with a nod of permission from Langtree, he dipped a measure of berries and poured them into his beak.
“Ahh,” he said. “Ahhh,” he said again, as purple-blue fire played along his back. His red ridge crest engorged and rose atop his head. “Ha!” he exclaimed. “Damn. That cleared my head.”
Langtree nodded. “Witch bears say the berries here grow all year.”
Redmede handed his berries to the warden. “Be my guest,” he said. “I don’t fancy being turned into somethin’ unnatural.”
Tapio was still watching the mist. “I agree that isss odd. Where are the animalsss?”
Albinkirk—Shawn
The Grand Squire, now captain of Albinkirk, had withdrawn most of the population of the Albin north of the river into Albinkirk. His garrison was small; mostly recovering wounded from the great battle at Gilson’s Hole, reinforced by a trickle of volunteers and replacements for the western alliance army; two dozen Occitan knights under a famous troubadour, Ser Uc Brunet; a company of Occitan crossbowmen, all borderers, released by the termination of Outwaller raiding in the west country of Occitan, and a trickle of Morean cavalrymen. All told, he had almost five hundred men and women fit for duty; a far larger and better garrison than his predecessor had. In addition, he had all the farmers of the region; this time, unlike their response to Thorn’s incursion, they had come in immediately when ordered, and every man and strong woman had joined their militia company willingly.
Albinkirk was packed not just with men and women but with animals, because by Lord Shawn’s order, every animal larger than a house cat had been brought inside the gates. Since the alarm at Mistress Heloise’s manor house, the militia had been digging out the old moat and fosse; dozens, if not hundreds, of small garden plots were ruined to scrape the old brick clean and dig the ditch back to its original depth.
Shawn had two of Slythenhag’s brood—young male wyverns with too much courage and poor language skills—but he sent them out rather than risk his knights or his archers, and they brought back frightful pictures of a countryside suddenly denuded of life, interspersed with views of a field full of various animals: deer, cattle, wolves … all standing together. The Grand Squire emptied his roosts sending out warnings: to the queen, to Lissen Carak, to the Count of the Borders.
Leaning on a merlon and watching her daughter like a hawk, Mistress Heloise shook her head at the orderliness of the castle courtyard beneath her feet. “It is almost as if the last time was a drill,” she said. “Or a warning.”
The Grand Squire was watching the ground toward Southford. “The queen’s army should be passing the falls today,” he said. He shook his head. “I hope they are ready for this.”
N’pana—Ash
“Ah, my lord.” Orley went down on one knee as the vast presence filled the sky and then settled on the beach. The ruins of N’pana had provided enough bark and boards for a hasty camp, and three more invaluable canoes, sunk in the shallow bay, had been recovered, but Orley was afraid, deep in his soul, and angry at that fear. He knew he had failed, when his boats were burned; he knew that his dark master was angry, and he feared Ash as he had never feared Thorn.
Ash had no sooner settled his vast bulk to the sandy beach than he transformed, his enormity gone. A single dark-haired man strode up the beach, a long cloak trailing off his shoulders like a pair of sooty wings, and he limped heavily. He bore no weapon, wore no jewel.
Orley’s host stood silent, their tongues stilled with terror. Because the entire wave front of the dragon’s terror preceded the tall, dark-haired man like the prow of a great ship.
“How many?” Ash asked. His feet didn’t actually touch the sand. His boots were black, a deep black, like velvet or soot. His appearance had an artistic falsity to it; the breeze did not move his hair, nor did the sand stick to his clothing.
“My lord?” Orley asked.
“I ask you how many. How many what, you ask?” Ash’s derision was like the cut of a sharp sword. “Perhaps I mean gems, or beautiful damsels.” He paused, his face almost slack; thinking, working on something else. Then the life returned. “How can Lot stand to work in such a limited carcass?” His eyes met Orley’s, and they were circles of fire, as red and bottomless as the molten rock that burned under the Lake-on-the-Mountain. “Orley. How many useful fighting … things … do you have?”
“Almost four thousand,” Orley said proudly. “My lord.”
Ash nodded. His face was expressionless. “That is better than I expected. Open yourself.” He did not look away, and his eyes, lacking pupils, also lacked any semblance of humanity. “How did you permit Muriens to delay you?”
Orley stood silent.
“Answer me,” Ash said. His voice was quiet, and yet it carried through all the ranks of antlered men, twisted wardens, irks, and bogglins. The Rukh shuffled and looked uncomfortable.
Orley moaned. “My lord?” he asked again. “I …”
“Yes?” Ash said. He hissed the last syllable.
“My sentries failed me! And he had overwhelming strength of arms and ops!”
“Really?” Ash’s voice drawled contempt. “Your collection of things outnumbered him ten to one. Your powers are the equal of his; you have other sorcerers to call upon.”
“My lord, I …” Orley’s voice crawled with self-contempt and irrational anger.
“I hate men,” Ash said loudly. “I hate their vanity, I hate their promiscuity, I hate their selfishness, their endless greed, their pettiness, and most of all, I hate their failure to pay attention to details. When I have extirpated man, this world will return to its natural order. And the details will be properly attended to. Kneel.”
Orley stood silent under the lash of his master’s anger.
“You failed, and in your failure you exposed me to defeat.” Ash reached out suddenly and put a hand between Orley’s mighty antlers and forced him to kneel with a twist of his hand. “Open yourself, Kevin Orley,” he said.
Orley squirmed. “My lord, I …”
“Comply,” Ash said.
Orley complied, and Ash flooded him.
Orley tried to scream.
Ash left almost nothing of Orley’s personality, although he noted that there was little enough as it was—a poisonous mixture of hatreds and insecurities. He went through them ruthlessly, leaving only buttresses of himself.
Thorn should have done this, Ash thought. He restructured the writhing, silently shrieking mind’s internal processes and massaged the surviving consciousness into talent, replacing mos
t of the mental structures with one of his own, but even this activity was interrupted.
Something was happening in the south. He felt a dozen bogglins slip his control, then a hundred, and the mind he set aside for higher thought wondered if “he noticed even a bogglin’s fall” was humourous.
Ash reached out a hand without turning his head and beckoned at the line of dark, antlered men.
“Come,” he said. It was an excellent precaution anyway—to distribute his selves. Insurance against disaster.
Most of them fell on their faces, shrieking in terror, and the smell of their fear—musk, and urine and worse—filled the air. The terror was palpable, like a miasma; hundreds of bogglins fell beneath it.
Five of the antlered men made themselves go forward into the fear.
Ash gave them a lopsided grin. “But men are very, very brave,” he said. “Really, it is your only talent.”
He repeated the process with all five; he rearranged them and made them better, according to his lights, and he imprinted himself on their meat, leaving them very little self and a reimagined node that would function only to receive and transmit his will. Each received an entire imprint of him.
But he found there were aspects of Orley that pleased him—in spite of its debasement, or perhaps because of it—and he overwrote these aspects of Orley on them all.
He grinned with pleasure, and his grin caused the same terror as his grimmer face.
“Good,” he said. “Now you are all Orley. A triumph, of sorts.” He touched each of them. “No mortal weapon of steel or bronze will touch you, my children. You are my will.”
“Yes,” all six of them said instantly.
“It is almost like talking to a person,” he said.
“Yes,” they chorused.