One boy, dressed as a beggar, lifted his head for the blink of an eye, the mindless grin on his face slipping to reveal a shining flash of excitement. Clutching his bowl, he ambled up the road, closer to the palace.
The music soared on ever higher and lapped against the high walls of the palace where the Gryphon’s guards heard it and readied themselves — just in case.
Zukhara paused once in his preparations and recognized the horn music for what it was. The puny loyalist force had somehow evaded his gryphon and come knocking at his door. Let them knock, he sneered. His army and his gryphon would soon annihilate them. He had more important things to do this day of days.
In her room high in one of the palace wings, Kelene flung open her window and leaned out on the sill, “Listen, Mother!”
Gabria joined her on the window seat. Her smile lit even her dark-ringed eyes. “They’re coming,” she murmured.
Kelene stared down toward the gates, hoping to catch a glimpse of something or someone, but all she saw were the sandstone buildings marching down the slope to the distant wall, where smoke drifted above a few rooftops. A winged shape floating over the lower city caused her to catch her breath, and her fingers gripped the sill. “The gryphon. He’s set the gryphon on them,” she cried, torn between her fear for the attackers and for the gryphon. She hadn’t seen the wild creature since Zukhara locked her and Gabria in their room, and Amara only knew what he had done to the beast since then.
“She will be unharmed,” Zukhara’s voice said from the doorway. “I would not endanger a thing so precious without some protection.”
Kelene spun around, ready to heap four days’ worth of frustration and anger on his head, when she saw him and nearly choked on her words. The counsellor stood in the doorway in front of a retinue of priests, officers, and supporters. He wore ceremonial robes of royal blue velvet tipped with white fur and decorated with hand-sewn pearls and silver threads. A silver mantle draped his broad shoulders, and a simple crown ringed his jet-black hair. Tall, slim, and elegant, he looked to all who beheld him the quintessential monarch. Only the icy glitter of his impersonal eyes gave any hint of the cruelty beneath.
“Are you ready, ladies?” he said without preamble. He held out his hand to Kelene.
Kelene forced back her temper and did not demur. She was dressed now in a red gown trimmed in gold, ready for whatever would come. The sorceresses looked at one another in silent understanding, and Kelene gave her mother an almost infinitesimal nod. She ignored Zukhara’s hand and took Gabria’s arm instead to help her mother out the door. They walked down several flights of stairs and to the south end of the palace, where the throne room sat in sunlit splendour.
The room was part of the oldest wing of the palace, built nearly three hundred years before Zukhara’s time. Its architect had used white stone to build the walls and designed the floor into a mosaic of tiny tiles of lapis lazuli, agate, and marble. Delicately carved buttresses held up a vaulted roof tinted black and ornamented with paintings in blue, white, and silver to represent the firmament — from whence came the name, the Celestial Throne. Between the buttresses were long, narrow windows that had been thrown open to the morning sunlight and wind. Light poured in brilliant bars into the room, reflecting off the gleaming floors and shining on the great sun throne of the Shar-Ja.
Hunkered over a broad dais, the heavy wooden seat was covered entirely in beaten gold that reverent hands had polished to a brilliant sheen. In the wall behind it was a huge, round stained-glass window that depicted a golden sun. Blue hangings were draped above the throne, and two men, dressed in the blue of the Shar-Ja’s personal guard, stood beside it. It wasn’t until Kelene had passed through the shafts of sunlight and stood at the foot of the throne that she realized the two guards were dead and merely propped there before they accompanied their slain ruler to his grave.
She closed her eyes. She didn’t know if the clan gods would be present among a people who did not believe in them, but she prayed fervently that Amara could hear her plea. “Help me find the right moment,” she silently begged the mother goddess.
Zukhara’s voice startled her out of her reverie. “Welcome, Shar-Ja. Come, sit on your throne.”
Three men entered from the big double doors. Two were garbed in the black and gold of the Fel Azureth, the other was the Shar-Ja, struggling to stay on his feet. They hustled the old man up the steps of the dais, set him on the throne, and tied his arms to the armrests.
The priests with Zukhara set quickly to work, lighting pots of incense and sprinkling the throne with water and sand to bless the proceedings in the name of Shahr, the Living God, and his prophet Sargun. Their chanting filled the room with their low pitched voices.
A small crowd of servants, Fel Azureth, and spectators from the city began to gather in the throne room near the entrance to witness the ancient rites. No one paid any attention to the boy in the stolen shirt and baggy pants who slipped into the rear of the crowd to see what was happening.
The priests ended their prayers and blessings for the throne and paused before beginning the next rite to purify the Shar-Ja for death. In that brief moment of aching silence, Kelene strained to hear something, anything, outside that could help her choose her moment to act. Her heart skipped a beat. She tried not to react, but her fingers tightened around Gabria’s arm. The chanting began again and drowned out anything she could have heard on the wind. But it had been there, she would swear to it. Faint and far away she had heard the unmistakable clarion call of the Clan horns.
The horns sounded again, although Kelene did not hear it that time, on the heights of the caravan road above the valley. Pure and sweet and powerful as the north wind, their music rolled down the dale and washed over the city wall. Those on the battlements and in the towers heard the horns and hesitated. Those on the ground locked in the wild melee could not hear the song over the clash of weapons, the frenzied shouts of fighting men, and the screams of the dying.
But Afer heard it. His great head went up and his ears swept forward. He neighed a trumpeting call over the noise of the fighting.
They come!
he cried to all who could understand.
Sayyed and the warriors of the Clannad took heart and passed the word to the Turics. “The clans are coming!”
High on the fortifying wall men shouted, and several horns blew a warning. Surprised, the Gryphon’s army hesitated and drew back a step to see what was causing the uproar. Nearly everyone who could snatched that pause to look out through the gaping holes in the wall.
A dark line of horsemen stretched across the valley, coming at a breakneck gallop. The sun glittered on their spears. Their numbers were obscured by the dust that billowed up from the horses’ pounding hooves, but Zukhara’s forces did not need to count. The colourful banners of the clan chieftains in the forefront and the four black Hunnuli horses in the lead were enough to make them blanch.
“Back!” bellowed Mohadan to his men. “Get out of the way!”
Frantically the Kirmaz and the Clannad grabbed their horses and their wounded and scrambled to get out of the way of the charging clan werods. The Fel Azureth pulled back too, and rallied their men to barricade the streets.
Abruptly the air reverberated with the heart-stopping war cries of all eleven clans. The ground trembled under the hooves of the horses. With lightning precision, the line lowered its spears and split into three
groups, one for each breach, and pounded through the gaps in the city wall. Lord Athlone and Rafnir led the horsemen through the ruined gateway and smashed head-on into the defenders’ lines. The Fel Azureth could not hold. Although the clansmen were fewer in numbers and weary from days of relentless travel, their ferocity and momentum carried them irresistibly over the enemy. The spears gave way to swords and battle-axes, and the battle was joined.
Mohadan gave a shout to his men, and the Kirmaz plunged back into the fight. The Clannad, weary from the magic they had wielded, followed close behind. Many of the Gryphon’s volunteers broke and ran under the combined assault of tribesmen and clansmen, but the trained fanatics of the Fel Azureth had their master’s orders: hold the city at all costs. They begrudgingly fell back before the werods and the Turic loyalists. They regrouped, fought, and regrouped again, struggling against every step they took backward. Yet even they could not withstand the power of the clan sorcerers for long. Backed by the riders of the Clannad, Lord Athlone, Rafnir, Gaalney, Morad, and Sayyed pounded their way slowly but steadily up the streets of Cangora toward the Shar-Ja’s palace.
Helmar rode with the clan sorcerers for a short while as the fighting swept into the streets; then gradually she began to fall back. A strange sense of fear and urgency settled in the pit of her stomach. She shot a look up the broad avenue that she knew led toward the palace, Lady Gabria was up there — a woman she had never met, but the only woman left in the entire population of Clanspeople who was of direct lineage to the Corin Clan. She was also a link in the tragedy of the Purge that had massacred so many magic-wielders. To Helmar, that link was vitally important.
She glanced up the road again. The clansmen were moving steadily closer to the palace, but not fast enough. Someone should get there faster in case Zukhara panicked and disposed of his prisoners. A shadow swept over the ground, and she saw the gryphon winging toward the upper levels of the city where the palace lolled at the feet of the massive stone bastion.
Demira, Helmar remembered. Where is Demira?
“Marron, can you call the winged mare? Is she close?”
There. She is above the walls,
responded the white mare.
She follows the gryphon.
Helmar followed Marron’s directions and saw Demira not too far away. “Call her! Tell her I need her! Please, my beauty. She can carry me above the fighting to Kelene and Gabria.”
Marron understood and obeyed. She neighed a ringing call that reached over the battle and caught Demira’s ear.
Helmar cast an apologetic glance at Sayyed, who was fighting by Lord Athlone’s side, and swiftly ducked Marron down a side alley that was momentarily clear.
No one saw her go but Rapinor. Startled by the abrupt departure, he turned his horse to follow. From out of an open window, a man leaned out with a cocked crossbow and fired it wildly into the struggling men below. The swordsman, intent on following his chief, did not see the quarrel until it embedded in his chest. He looked down at it, feeling rather silly, and slowly toppled from his stricken Hunnuli.
Helmar went on, unaware of Rapinor’s fate. She and Marron found an open square wide enough for Demira to land. As soon as the mare touched down, Helmar explained what she wanted. Demira’s reply was immediate. The chief climbed onto her back, grabbed a handful of mane, and held on while Demira cantered forward into her take-off.
Marron watched the direction they went. Helmar had not told her to stay or go, so she scudded after them like a cloud blown on a stormy wind.
In the celestial throne room of the Shar-Ja, the spectators were growing restive. The breeze that wafted in the open windows blew a faint clamour of war from the city below that disturbed the sacred dignity of the rites. Only the Shar-Ja and Zukhara seemed unaware of the increasing din.
The ceremony had reached the moment that signalled the death of the current monarch. The sword for the beheading had been blessed, and the priests stood by with a basket for the head and wrappings for the body. A soldier stepped behind the Shar-Ja’s throne and pulled Rassidar’s head up and back to expose his neck. Zukhara grasped the hilt of the sword with both hands. It was a two-handed broadsword of great weight and antiquity, yet he handled it as skilfully as a master. His eyes on the Shar-Ja, he walked to the throne and raised the sword over his shoulder.
A boy, of no more than thirteen years, darted around the crowd. He drew back his arm and, with the accuracy earned from months of practice, fired a rock from a slingshot at Zukhara’s head. The missile missed the gryphon’s temple by a mere inch and hit instead just above his right eyebrow. The man staggered from the surprise and pain of the blow; the sword fell from his hand and clanged on the floor.
Swift as a striking hawk, Kelene snatched the moment. She took two steps away from Gabria, gathered the magic around her, and aimed a sphere of energy at the ivory ward beneath Zukhara’s robes. The power hit him hard and knocked him into the dead guard by the throne, but it wasn’t quite enough to break the ward. Furiously he lashed back, sending a fistful of lightning blasts at Kelene and the boy. The people in the crowd screamed and ran for safety.
The first blow took Kelene in the chest before she
could defend herself and sent her spinning against the wall. She sagged to the floor, unconscious. Gabria choked on a cry and ran to her side. A second ball of energy caught Tassilio and threw him skidding across the floor.
The priests and the guards looked at each other uneasily. Zukhara spat a curse. Blood dripped down his face from a cut on his forehead. He yanked out his dagger to stab the Shar-Ja, and another rock cracked into his arm.
Tassilio knelt on the floor, looking very much alive and very aware of what he was doing. He pulled a knotted piece of rope out of his shirt and jiggled it tauntingly at the Gryphon.
Zukhara recognized it for what it was. His face grew livid. “Sandrat!” hissed Zukhara.
“That’s right!” Tassilio yelled fiercely, sliding another rock into his slingshot. “A bastard, just like you! But now I am Shar-Yon and that is my father, the rightful ordained ruler of the Turic. You are nothing but a traitor, Zukhara, and I will see you dead!”