The Dean cleared his throat again, a bit more urgently this time.
‘Sorry, Dean Altus,’ Itagne apologized. ‘I’m running past time, gentlemen, so I’ll just briefly sum up one more development. Despite their crushing defeat, Cyrgon and Zalasta were by no means powerless. In a bold stroke, Zalasta’s natural son, one Scarpa, crept into the imperial compound and abducted Queen Ehlana, leaving behind a demand that Sparhawk give up the Bhelliom in exchange for the safe return of his wife.
‘Following the recess Dean Altus has been so patiently awaiting, I will take up Prince Sparhawk’s reaction to this new development.’
PART ONE
Berit
Chapter 1
A chill haze was rising from the meadow, and thin clouds had drifted in from the west to obscure the cold, brittle sky. There were no shadows, and the frozen ground was iron-hard and unyielding. Winter was inexorably tightening its grip on the North Cape.
Sparhawk’s army, girt in steel and leather and thousands strong, was lined up along a broad front in the frost-covered grass of the meadow near the ruins of Tzada. Sir Berit sat his horse in the center of the bulky, armored Church Knights watching the ghastly feast taking place a few hundred yards to the front. Berit was a young and idealistic knight, and he was having some difficulty with the behavior of their new allies.
The screams were remote, mere rumors of agony, and those who were screaming were not actually people -not really. They were no more than shades, the scarce-remembered reflections of long-dead men. Besides, they were enemies – members of a cruel and savage race that worshipped an unspeakable God.
But they steamed. That was the part of the horror Sir Berit could not shrug off. Though he told himself that these Cyrgai were dead – phantoms raised by Cyrgon’s magic – the fact that steam rose from their eviscerated bodies as the ravening Trolls fed on them brought all of Berit’s defenses crashing down around his ears.
Trouble?’ Sparhawk asked sympathetically. Sparhawk’s black armor was frost-touched, and his battered face was bleak.
Berit felt a sudden embarrassment. ‘It’s nothing, Sir Sparhawk,’ he lied quickly. ‘It’s just -’ He groped for a word.
‘I know. I’m stumbling over that part myself. The Trolls aren’t being deliberately cruel, you know. To them we’re just food. They’re only following their nature.’
That’s part of the problem, Sparhawk. The notion of being eaten makes my blood run cold.’
‘Would it help if I said, “better them than us”?’
‘Not very much.’ Berit laughed weakly. ‘Maybe I’m not cut out for this kind of work. Everybody else seems to be taking it in stride.’
‘Nobody’s taking it in stride, Berit. We all feel the same way about what’s happening. Try to hold on. We’ve met these armies out of the past before. As soon as the Trolls kill the Cyrgai generals, the rest should vanish, and that’ll put an end to it.’ Sparhawk frowned. ‘Let’s go find Ulath,’ he suggested. I just thought of something, and I want to ask him about it.’
‘All right,’ Berit agreed quickly. The two black-armored Pandions turned their horses and rode through the frosty grass along the front of the massed army.
They found Ulath, Tynian and Bevier a hundred yards or so down the line. ‘I’ve got a question for you, Ulath,’ Sparhawk said as he reined Faran in.
‘For me? Oh, Sparhawk, you shouldn’t have!’ Ulath removed his conical helmet and absently polished the glossy black Ogre-horns on the sleeve of his green surcoat. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Every time we’ve come up against these antiques before, the dead all shriveled up after we killed the leaders. How are the Trolls going to react to that?’
‘How should I know?’
‘You’re supposed to be the expert on Trolls.’
‘Be reasonable, Sparhawk. It’s never happened before. Nobody can predict what’s going to happen in a totally new situation.’
‘Make a guess,’ Sparhawk snapped irritably.
The two of them glared at each other.
‘Why badger Ulath about it, Sparhawk?’ Bevier suggested gently. ‘Why not just warn the Troll-Gods that it’s going to happen and let them deal with the problem?’
Sparhawk rubbed reflectively at the side of his face, his hand making a kind of sandy sound on his unshaven cheek. ‘Sorry, Ulath,’ he apologized. ‘The noise from the banquet hall out there’s distracting me.’
‘I know just how you feel,’ Ulath replied wryly. ‘I’m glad you brought it up, though. The Trolls won’t be satisfied with dried rations when there’s all this fresh meat no more than a quarter-mile away.’ He put his Ogre-horned helmet back on. ‘The Troll-Gods will honor their commitment to Aphrael, but I think we’d better warn them about this. I definitely want them to have a firm grip on their Trolls when supper turns stale. I’d hate to end up being the dessert course.’
‘Ehlana?’ Sephrenia gasped.
‘Keep your voice down!’ Aphrael muttered. She looked around. They were some distance to the rear of the army, but they were not alone. She reached out and touched Chiel’s bowed white neck, and Sephrenia’s palfrey obediently ambled off a little way from Kalten and Xanetia to crop at the frozen grass. I can’t get too many details,’ the Child Goddess said. ‘Melidere’s been badly hurt, and Mirtai’s so enraged that they’ve had to chain her up.’
‘Who did it?’
‘I don’t know, Sephrenia! Nobody’s talking to Danae. All I can get is the word “hostage”. Somebody’s managed to get into the castle, seize Ehlana and Alean and spirit them out. Sarabian’s beside himself. He’s flooded the halls with guards, so Danae can’t get out of her room to find out what’s really happening.’
‘We must tell Sparhawk!’
‘Absolutely not! Sparhawk bursts into flames when Ehlana’s in danger. He’s got to get this army safely back to Matherion before we can let him catch on fire.’
‘But-’
‘No, Sephrenia. He’ll find out soon enough, but let’s get everyone to safety before he does. We’ve only got a week or so left until the sun goes down permanently and everything – and everyone – up here turns to solid ice.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Sephrenia conceded. She thought a moment, staring off at the frost-silvered forest beyond the meadow. ‘That word “hostage” explains everything, I think. Is there any way you can pinpoint your mother’s exact location?’
Aphrael shook her head. ‘Not without putting her in danger. If I start moving around and poking my nose into things, Cyrgon will feel me nudging at the edges of his scheme, and he might do something to Mother before he stops to think. Our main concern right now is keeping Sparhawk from going crazy when he finds out what’s happened.’ She suddenly gasped and her dark eyes went very wide.
‘What is it?’ Sephrenia asked in alarm. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I don’t know!’ Aphrael cried. ‘It’s something monstrous!’ She cast her eyes about wildly for a moment and then steadied herself, her pale brow furrowing in concentration. Then her eyes narrowed in anger. ‘Somebody’s using one of the forbidden spells, Sephrenia,’ she said in a voice that was as hard as the frozen ground.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely. The very air stinks of it.’
Djarian the necromancer was a cadaverous-looking Styric with sunken eyes, a thin, almost skeletal frame, and a stale, mildewed odor about him. Like the other Styric captives, he was in chains and under the close watch of Church Knights well-versed in countering Styric spells.
A cold, oppressive twilight was settling over the encampment near the ruins of Tzada when Sparhawk and the others finally got around to questioning the prisoners. The Troll-Gods had taken their creatures firmly in hand when the feeding orgy had come suddenly to an end, and the Trolls were now gathered around a huge bonfire several miles out in the meadow holding what appeared to be religious observances of some sort.
‘Just go through the motions, Bevier,’ Sparhawk quietly
advised the olive-skinned Cyrinic Knight as Djarian was dragged before them. ‘Keep asking him irrelevant questions until Xanetia signals that she’s picked him clean.’
Bevier nodded. I can crag it out for as long as you want, Sparhawk. Let’s get started.’
Sir Bevier’s gleaming white surcoat, made ruddy by the flickering firelight, gave him a decidedly ecclesiastical appearance, and he heightened that impression by prefacing his interrogation with a lengthy prayer. Then he got down to business.
Djarian replied to the questions tersely in a hollow voice that seemed almost to come echoing up out of a vault. Bevier appeared to take no note of the prisoner’s sullen behavior. His whole manner seemed excessively correct, even fussy, and he heightened that impression by wearing fingerless wool gloves such as scribes and scholars wear in cold weather. He doubled back frequently, rephrasing questions he had previously asked and then triumphantly pointing out inconsistencies in the prisoner’s replies.
The one exception to Djarian’s terse brevity was a sudden outburst of vituperation, a lengthy denunciation of Zalasta – and Cyrgon – for abandoning him here on this inhospitable field.
‘Bevier sounds exactly like a lawyer,’ Kalten muttered quietly to Sparhawk. ‘I hate lawyers.’
‘He’s doing it on purpose,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘Lawyers like to spring trick questions on people, and Djarian knows it. Bevier’s forcing him to think very hard about the things he’s supposed to conceal, and that’s all Xanetia really needs. We always seem to underestimate Bevier.’
‘It’s all that praying,’ Kalten said sagely. ‘It’s hard to take a man seriously when he’s praying all the time.’
‘We’re Knights of the Church, Kalten – members of religious orders.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘In his own mind he is more dead than alive,’ Xanetia reported later when they had gathered around one of the large fires the Atans had built to hold back the bitter chill. The Anarae’s face reflected the glow of the fire, as did her unbleached wool robe.
‘Were we right?’ Tynian asked her. ‘Is Cyrgon augmenting Djarian’s spells so that he can raise whole armies?’
‘He is,’ she replied.
‘Was that outburst against Zalasta genuine?’ Vanion asked her.
‘Indeed, my Lord. Djarian and his fellows are increasingly discontent with the leadership of Zalasta. They have all come to expect no true comradeship from their leader. There is no longer common cause among them, and each doth seek to wring best advantage to himself from their dubious alliance. Overlaying all is the secret desire of each to gain sole possession of Bhelliom.’
‘Dissension among your enemies is always good,’ Vanion noted, ‘but I don’t think we should discount the possibility that they’ll all fall in line again after what happened here today. Could you get anything specific about what they might try next, Anarae?’
‘Nay, Lord Vanion. They were in no wise prepared for what hath come to pass. One thing did stand out in the mind of this Djarian, however, and it doth perhaps pose some danger. The outcasts who surround Zalasta do all fear Cyzada of Esos, for he alone is versed in Zemoch magic, and he alone doth plunge his hand through that door to the nether world which Azash opened. Horrors beyond imagining lie within his reach. It is Djarian’s thought that since all their plans have thus far gone awry, Cyrgon in desperation might command Cyzada to use his unspeakable art to raise creatures of darkness to confront and confound us.’
Vanion nodded gravely.
‘How did Stragen’s plan affect them?’ Talen asked curiously.
‘They are discomfited out of all measure,’ Xanetia replied. ‘They did rely heavily on those who now are dead.’
‘Stragen will be happy to hear that. What were they going to do with all those spies and informers?’
‘Since they had no force capable of facing the Atans, Zalasta and his cohorts thought to use the hidden employees of the Ministry of the Interior to assassinate diverse Tamul officials in the subject kingdoms of the empire, hoping thereby to disrupt the governments.’
‘You might want to make a note of that, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said.
‘Oh?’
‘Emperor Sarabian had some qualms when he approved Stragen’s plan. He’ll probably feel much better when he finds out that all Stragen really did was beat our enemies to the well. They’d have killed our people if Stragen hadn’t killed theirs first.’
That’s very shaky moral ground, Kalten,’ Bevier said disapprovingly.
‘I know,’ Kalten admitted. That’s why you have to run across the top of it so fast.’
The sky was cloudy the following morning, thick roiling clouds that streamed in from the west, all seethe and confusion. Because it was late autumn and they were far to the north, it seemed almost that the sun was rising in the south, turning the sky above Bhelliom’s escarpment a fiery orange and reaching feebly out with ruddy, low-lying light to paint the surging underbellies of the swift-scudding cloud with a brush of flame.
The campfires seemed wan and weak and very tiny against the overpowering chill here on the roof of the world, and the knights and their friends all wore fur cloaks and huddled close to the fires.
There were low rumbles off to the south, and flickers of pale, ghastly light.
Thunder?’ Kalten asked Ulath incredulously. ‘Isn’t it the wrong time of year for thunderstorms?’
‘It happens,’ Ulath shrugged. I was in a thunderstorm north of Heid once that touched off a blizzard. That’s a very unusual sort of experience.’
‘Whose turn is it to do the cooking?’ Kalten asked him absently.
‘Yours,’ Ulath replied promptly.
‘You’re not paying attention, Kalten,’ Tynian laughed. ‘You know better than to ask that question.’
Kalten grumbled and started to stir up the fire.
‘I think we’d better get back to the coast today, sparhawk,’ Vanion said gravely. The weather’s held off so far, but I don’t think we’ll be able to count on that much longer.’
Sparhawk nodded.
The thunder grew louder, and the fire-red clouds overhead blanched with shuddering flickers of lightning.
Then there was a sudden, rhythmic booming sound.
‘Is it another earthquake?’ Kring cried out in alarm.
‘No,’ Khalad replied. ‘It’s too regular. It sounds almost like somebody beating a very big drum.’ He stared at the top of Bhelliom’s wall. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing.
It was like a hilltop rearing up out of the forest beyond the knife-like edge of the top of the cliff – very much like a hilltop, except that it was moving.
The sun was behind it, so they could not see any details, but as it rose higher and higher they could make out the fact that it was a kind of flattened dome with two pointed protuberances flaring out from either side like huge wings. And still it swelled upward. As they could see more of it, they realized that it was not a dome. It seemed to be some enormous, inverted triangle instead, wide at the top, pointed at the bottom and with those odd winglike protuberances jutting out from its sides. The pointed bottom seemed to be set in some massive column. Since the light was behind it, it was as black as night, and it rose and swelled like some vast darkness.
Then it stopped.
And then its eyes opened.
Like two thin, fiery gashes at first, the blazing eyes opened wider and wider, cruelly slanted like cats’ eyes and all ablaze with fire more incandescent than the sun itself. The imagination shuddered back from the realization of the enormity of the thing. What had appeared to be huge wings were the creature’s ears.
And then it opened its mouth and roared, and they knew that what they had heard before had not been thunder.
It roared again, and its fangs were flickers of lightning that dripped flame like blood.
‘Klæl!’ Aphrael shrieked.
And then, like two rounded, bulky mountains, the shoulders rose above the sharp line of
the cliff, and, fanning out from the shoulders like black sails, two jointed, batlike wings.
‘What is it?’ Talen cried.
‘It’s Klæl!’ Aphrael shrieked again.
‘What’s a Klæl?’
‘Not what, you dolt! Who! Azash and the other Elder Gods cast him out! Some idiot has returned him!’
The enormity atop the escarpment continued to rise, revealing vast arms with many-fingered hands. The trunk was huge, and flashes of lightning seethed beneath its skin, illuminating ghastly details with their surging flickers.
And then that monstrous presence rose to its full height, towering eighty, a hundred feet above the top of the escarpment.
Sparhawk’s spirit shrivelled. How could they possibly – ? ‘Blue Rose!’ he said sharply. ‘Do something!’
‘There is no need, Anakha.’ Vanion’s usurped voice was very calm as Bhelliom once again spoke through his lips. ‘Klæl hath but momentarily escaped Cyrgon’s grasp. Cyrgon will not risk his creature in a direct confrontation with me.’
‘That thing belongs to Cyrgon?’
‘For the moment. In time that will change, and Cyrgon will belong to Klæl.’
‘What is it doing?’ Betuana cried.
The monstrosity atop the cliff had raised one huge fist and was striking at the ground with incandescent fire, hammering at the earth with lightning. The face of the escarpment shuddered and began to crack away, falling, tumbling, roaring down to smash into the forest at the foot of the cliff. More and more of the sheer face crumbled and sheared away and fell in a huge thundering landslide.