So it went. The Lords of Darkness are crafty.
There were not enough Reds to give Gathrid the strength he needed to face several Toal. And the Toal guarding the Raftery entrance was spiriting the few available inside.
Gathrid glanced down the Steps. Tracka continued his duel. The Toal appeared on his way to victory. The general did not possess the tireless energy of a Dead Captain.
He caught Rogala's attention, beckoned him.
Now, he thought, we'll find out where Suchara stands.
She was not yet ready to write him off. But she was tempted. Nearly a minute passed before Rogala plunged off the stairs. He scrambled up the slopes like some hairy rock ape.
Gathrid's antagonist pushed him hard, driving him to an edge of the veranda overhanging a precipice.
Rogala charged the Toal from behind. He hit as the Toal spun to face him.
Gathrid drove Daubendiek into the thing's side.
This time he avoided meeting the Toal on the nether plane. Having driven it from flesh sufficed. He could regain strength for a killing match while the thing sought a new body.
He pushed through oily smoke to survey the course of the battle.
Heavy bloodshed had not been avoided.
Tracka was weakening. But now the ballistae below were ready. That would be the Brigade's final victory.
A human wave had hit Ventimiglian positions along the line where rubble met housing the besiegers had not razed. Nieroda had ordered Bleibel back from the waterfront.
Gathrid turned to the Toal blocking the doorway.
There would be no passing the creature. It stood deep inside an entranceway too narrow for effective swordplay. It had discarded its own blade in favor of a fire-headed lance.
"Keep it busy," Rogala growled. "I'll fix it."
A roar drew Gathrid to the head of the Steps. Halfway down them smoke boiled up from a corpse porcupined with ballistae shafts. The Ventimiglians had disposed of Tracka's Toal.
The Thaumaturge-General staggered onto the veranda, looked at the doorway. "So close. So damned close."
The remnants of his Brigade were being battered by a mob. Gathrid supposed Nieroda had begun assembling them even before his departure from the Maurath.
She always seemed aware of his movements.
Rogala barely had time to complete his task, securing the Staff of Chuchain from Gathrid's horse as Bleibel's first armed breaker arrived. He had wasted time rescuing his boxed intimate, Gacioch. He barely outhustled the surge, which washed against the Pillars before receding. To Gathrid's eye it looked like every adult male in Sartain had come to relieve the Raftery.
The dwarf collapsed on his behind, gasping, after galloping up to the veranda. Attempts at speech gurgled through his foam-flecked lips. Retreating Ventimiglians cursed him as they tripped over him. Weakly, he offered Tracka the Staff. He communicated his idea by gesture.
Tracka caught on. He barked orders. Soldiers dragged a ballista around. They restrung and cocked it. Tracka tumbled the Staff into its trough. "Move!" the general growled at Gathrid.
The Toal saw what was coming, but had its orders. It could do nothing but try to turn the Staff with its lance.
It failed.
The Staff lightninged into its chest, smashing armor and bone. The Toal hurtled backward, clacking as it tumbled into the deeps of the council chamber. A wail of dismay rose inside the Raftery.
Gathrid whipped inside.
Down on the main floor the Toal thrashed like a cat with a broken back. The Brothers were fighting one another to get through exits to lower levels.
"Inside! Inside!" Tracka growled. A stream of Ventimiglians poured in. Bleibel had reached the Steps. The once strongest and proudest of Ventimiglian brigades had been reduced to a handful over two hundred men. More were fighting below, but they were doomed.
"Clear them out!" Tracka ordered, indicating the Brothers. His troops went after them. They were too panicky to use their sorcerous skills. Tracka told Gathrid, "Hell of a mess, isn't it? Now they get a shot at kicking the door in."
"Uhm." Gathrid stepped back outside.
Rogala, with Gacioch hooting him on, was tottering toward the doorway. Bleibel's face appeared over the marble horizon of the veranda. Combat clamor continued among the Pillars and Victories.
The lower slopes of Galen were carpeted with citizen corpses. The mounds of dead were only lightly freckled with bodies in Brigade uniform. Sartain would have much to mourn.
"You lied to me!" Bleibel panted.
"When? I didn't say I'd save the Raftery. I told you I'd get the Brigade to leave without fighting the Guards. But you wouldn't let me."
"Why did you do this?"
"Because Nevenka Nieroda is running this place."
"The Emperor sent orders to seize you. You have to answer for treason and the murder of Count Cuneo."
Gacioch guffawed. He made rude remarks concerning the intelligence of a prince who expected Daubendiek to swear fealty.
Gathrid smiled at the Colonel. "Did he tell you how you were going to arrest me?"
"Unfortunately, no."
"But, being as stubborn as everyone else, you're determined to get yourself killed trying."
"Who knows?"
"You're too late to rescue the Raftery. Tracka is cleaning it out. Tell Elgar that."
"I'm supposed to take Tracka in too. He's Ahlert's most likely successor. He'll have to answer for Ventimiglia's crimes."
Toal-sword in hand, Tracka tried to push past Gathrid.
"Easy, General. Colonel, did your orders come from Elgar himself? In person?"
"His messengers brought them."
"That's not the same. Doesn't tell me what I need to know. Tell you what. Give us fifteen minutes. Then we'll come with you."
Tracka protested.
Bleibel muttered, "I don't know . . . . "
"It's better than getting yourself killed, isn't it? All I want is a chance to find out why someone is so desperate to keep us away from here."
Bleibel surprised Gathrid. "It may mean my head. You've got fifteen minutes. No longer. I'll do what I have to when they're up."
Thirteen of Gathrid's minutes swifted past without result. He and Tracka swept through chamber after corpse-choked chamber on level after bloody level. There were a stunning number of rooms secreted beneath Galen. They contained nothing but the mundane. Tapping the walls turned up nothing but solid stone.
"I'm beginning to think you outguessed yourself," Tracka growled. "Or were misled. That's the woman's style."
"No. There's something here. She doesn't want it found. I'm positive."
The lowest level was a small, dank chamber footing a long, jagged stair. "This's got to be it," Gathrid said. "It can't just be a dead end. Look close."
Had the entrance not been left open by Brothers fleeing Tracka's soldiers, the downstairs itself might have gone undetected.
Tracka found the concealed doorway when he noted scrapes in the slime on the floor. Rogala then located a trigger mechanism hidden beneath a wrought bronze sconce.
"We're cutting it fine," Gathrid observed. "Just a minute left."
"You won't get back to Bleibel in time," Rogala grumbled.
A great slab of a door stuttered open. Its rusty hinges howled like a chorus of singing dragons. Light exploded from the other side.
Gathrid flung Daubendiek ahead of him and charged.
The sole occupant of the chamber was Gerdes Mulenex. The fat Fray Magister lay on his back on a stone bench, breathing shallowly. His bloated face was pale and without character.
"Let me," Rogala said, gesturing them back. He approached the fat man. After prodding Mulenex with a blunt finger, peeling back eyelids and smelling Mulenex's breath, he announced, "A Toal. With the demon on vacation."
"That explains a few things," Gathrid said. "And I think I know where the demon is. Hold it!" Tracka was about to use his blade. The youth pushed it aside. "She'll know what's happened if you do.
We can't let her. Not yet." Slowly, like a sleepwalker, he eased round Mulenex and stalked toward the source of the brilliant light.
"Theis, look at this."
Rogala grunted. "No wonder Count Cuneo was pushing us about betraying Anderle."
Gathrid probed the glow with his left hand. "He knew this was here."
"Undoubtedly. Yes. No wonder."
Gacioch had grown strangely silent. Till now he had been providing a barrage of unsolicited suggestions. Gathrid frowned. Gacioch silent was more an attention-grabber than Gacioch with his normal logorrhea.
"Misplaer would have known," Gathrid reasoned. "And Eldracher, Elgar and Ahlert. This was why the Mindak wanted Sartain so bad. Mulenex probably didn't know till the end." The youth's fingertips brushed what felt like solid, polished iron. "The Shield of Driebrant."
He found the Shield's handgrip and armstraps. Laying Daubendiek aside, he fixed the Shield on his left arm. The Sword protested. Gathrid said, "We'd better hurry if we want to get to Bleibel in time."
Tracka nodded. The Thaumaturge-General's face remained expressionless. It seemed nothing fazed the man.
"Theis, stay here. If Mulenex starts to come round, kill him. Give it half an hour. Then do it anyway."
The dwarf protested, but found himself talking to the Swordbearer's back. Gathrid last heard Gacioch trying to convince Rogala that this was the best strategy.
Bleibel met them in the council chamber, ten minutes past deadline. Tracka's soldiers had managed to stall him without further bloodshed.
The Colonel stared for a long time. Finally, "You'll come with me now?"
"Yes," Gathrid said. "I wouldn't miss it."
"Yes," said Tracka, distracted. He was lost in the nuances of sorceries he might need to survive this day. Gathrid had shared his suspicions during their climb from the Shield Chamber.
"Your weapons, then."
"Don't be silly."
Tracka's hand went to his hilt. "I know only one way to give a weapon, Colonel."
"We're going with you," Gathrid said. "But don't expect us to put ourselves at your mercy. The grandest fool wouldn't do that after all that's happened."
The right side of Bleibel's face twitched. His sword hand strayed weaponward. He thought better of it, spun, stamped up the stairs. Gathrid followed. Tracka assembled his men, followed too. Near the door, at Gathrid's gesture, he recovered the Staff of Chuchain.
Lines of ragged Guards Oldani formed to their flanks once they descended the Hundred Steps. Glancing back, Gathrid reflected that this tattered, limping parade was a microcosmic cross-section of the continent west of the Nirgenaus. It had been a bitter, demanding, devouring series of wars. A lot that was good had been destroyed.
To what purpose?
It was not finished yet. He might find an answer.
He hoped it would be acceptable, and feared that it would not be.
Chapter Eighteen
Imperial Palace
The palace was more impressive than the Raftery. Like the Queen City itself, it had grown with the centuries. Its vast maze rolled down Faron's flanks like melted wax down the sides of a candle. In places it had begun insinuating fingers into the surrounding city.
The Raftery, externally, had remained little changed since the reign of the Immortal Twins. The Frays Magister, when unable to resist the desire to expand, had added new chambers underground. Not so the Emperors. They had insisted that their works be on public display. Many had built to overawe the memories of their predecessors.
Plain vanity was the raison d'être for most of the vast stonework crowning Faron. The palace had become a city within the Queen City.
Gathrid had no time to sightsee. He was busy learning the ways of the Shield. By concentrating he could compel it to remain quiescent. When not shining it looked like just another battered instrument of war.
The thing was as slippery as Daubendiek. He had to stay with it every second.
The route they followed was so jagged Gathrid stopped the guide they had collected at the palace gate. "Straight on from here, fellow. No more stalling. Unless you'd prefer the Kiss of Suchara to that of your wife."
The man gulped. Internal conflict revealed itself in stance and expression. "Yes, Lord." Two minutes later he opened a door on a vast hall with a floor of jade.
Daubendiek quivered, hummed softly. It remembered this place. There, near that alabaster throne, looming so huge despite distance, Tureck Aarant had slain Karkainen. The floor remained scarletly alive where the Immortal Twin's lifeblood had poured out.
Guards tramped, stamped. They formed a precise line shielding the preposterously bloated specimen ensconced on Anderle's throne. They were quick and dangerous, the cream of the Guards Oldani.
Gathrid advanced cautiously. He sensed the presence of Nevenka Nieroda.
She was in that disgusting man-mountain called Elgar!
In this hour when Anderle's dream waxed strongest, when circumstance had made the Empire the one force capable of reuniting the west, its soul had been vampirized. The last dreamer had been dragged down. Nieroda had cut them out one by one and had brought their fancies to an end.
I'm the last one left, Gathrid thought. And anything I do is futile. She's murdered the dream. In that sense she can no longer lose.
The loss of Anderle angered him as much as the loss of Loida or Anyeck. The Empire was the last of the realities of his boyhood.
A gravelly voice deep within him rumbled, demanding attention. The Empire was not dead, it insisted.
Yedon Hildreth remained a stubborn man.
Gathrid thought the chance too remote, too improbable, too dependent on the unknown quality of the Contessa Cuneo. She was just an Oldani girl, a soldier's brat, thinly lacquered with civilization. What could she do, battling the subtle rigors of imperium?
She is my flesh, Cuneo insisted.
Gathrid had not met her. He admitted he could not know. If she were her father's daughter . . . But what value will and stubbornness against such as Nevenka Nieroda?
Irritably, Gathrid brushed off an attack by the Guards.
Bleibel went berserk. He screamed. Hordes of Sartainians swept in. They hurled themselves on the bewildered Ventimiglians.
Gathrid felt removed from it all. He seemed to be an observer watching killing machines at work. The attackers kept coming. Their corpses piled in drifts. Their blood gathered in lakes on the vast jade floor.
He felt no sense of time. It just seemed that, finally, they stopped coming. He stood alone except for grim, pale Tracka.
He felt stronger than ever. Daubendiek had fed on countless lives. He felt no connection with place or event. He was the Instrument of Suchara . . . .
He began speaking the words she wanted said.
Something inside him monitored and adjusted them. "Now, Nieroda. Now we settle the accounts. Finally. Forever." He thought he used a tight-throated whisper. Why were the walls shaking? "For all that you've done, and been, this time you die the death from which there can be no resurrection."
That great mass of flesh twitched a finger.
From behind the throne came the surviving Toal. They bore Gerdes Mulenex. They dragged Rogala, chained, collared and stumbling.
"You've blinded him!"
A monstrous cackle filled the hall. Gathrid saw that one of the Dead Captains was not a Toal at all, but the demon Gacioch restored to a whole body. He held Rogala's lead chain, and mocked the dwarf with every step.
Outmaneuvered again, Gathrid thought. But not beaten. Far from beaten. As he would teach Nieroda.
Gacioch had been deceiving them. Crafty demon. He had done his spying well.
Gathrid felt no pity for Rogala. Perhaps Suchara's indifference to the welfare of her tools was leaking over.
He sprang at the Toal, destroying one before it could defend itself. The second took but a moment longer.
Tracka handled the demon. He attacked with that savagery unique to masters betrayed by slaves. Gacioch l
et out one great long wail of surprise and dismay. He cursed Nieroda as he faded.
Gathrid laughed, a peal like a long roll of thunder. The demon had not foreseen his own fate. The Dark Champion had tricked him. "Roast forever," he called after Gacioch. "May it be a solitary Hell."
Gathrid turned to the throne. The thing that had been Gerdes Mulenex began to twitch. The gross corpulence of the Emperor began to snore.