The Hidden City (46 page)

The perfect man was so overcome with horror that he did not even hear the plaintive sound of a shepherd's rude pipe playing a Styric air in a minor key somewhere off to his left. He gaped for a time at his worst
nightmare, and then he desperately drove his spurs into his horse's flanks, rushing to spread the alarm.

General Sirada was the younger brother of Duke Milanis, and he commanded the rebel forces in Panem-Dea. King Rakya had so arranged it that most of Scarpa's generals were Arjuni. Sirada knew that there were risks involved, but the younger sons of noble families were obliged to take risks if they wanted to get ahead in the world. For them, rank and position had to be won. Sirada had endured the years of association with the crazy bastard son of a tavern wench and the discomfort of camping out in the jungle waiting for his chance.

And now it had come. The madman in Natayos had finally sent the order to march. The campaign had begun. There was no sleep in Panem-Dea that night. The preparations for the march went on through the hours of darkness, and the undisciplined rabble Sirada commanded was incapable of doing
anything
quietly. The general spent the night poring over his maps.

The strategy was sound; he was forced to admit that. He was to join forces with Scarpa and the other rebels near Derel. Then they would march north to the Tamul Mountains to be reinforced by Cynesgans. From there, they would march on Tosa in preparation for the final assault on Matherion.

General Sirada's own strategy was much simpler. Scarpa would crush any resistance at Tosa, but he would not live to see the gleaming domes of the imperial capital. Sirada smiled thinly and patted the little vial of poison he carried in his inside pocket. The army would capture Matherion, but it would be General Sirada who would lead the final assault and personally run his sword through Emperor Sarabian. The younger brother of Duke Milanis expected an earldom at the very least to come out of this campaign.

The door banged open, and his adjutant burst into the room, his eyes starting from his head and his face a pasty white. ‘Good God, my General!' he shrieked.

‘What do you think you're doing?' Sirada demanded. ‘How
dare
you? I'll have you flogged for this!'

‘We're being attacked, my General!'

Sirada could hear the squeals of terror now. He rose quickly and went out the door.

It was not yet daylight, and a clinging mist had crept in out of the tangled forest to blur the ruined walls and houses of Panem-Dea. There were fires and flaring torches pushing back the darkness with their ruddy light, but there were other lights in the weed-choked streets as well, pale, cold lights that did not burn or flicker. Creatures of light, pale as wandering moons, stalked the streets of Panem-Dea. The general's heart filled with terror. It was impossible! The Shining Ones were a myth! There were no such creatures!

Sirada shook off his fright and drew his sword. ‘Stand fast!' he roared at his demoralized men. ‘Form up! Pike-men to the front!' He bulled his way into the milling mob of terrified troops, flailing about him with the flat of his sword. ‘Form up! Make a line!'

But there was no rationality nor fear of authority in the panic-stricken faces of his poorly trained men. The screaming mob simply diverged and bypassed him on either side. He ran at them again, swinging great strokes with his sword, cutting down his own men.

He was so desperate to restore order that he did not even feel the knife-stroke that went in just below his ribs on the left side. He could not even understand why his knees buckled or why he fell under the trampling feet of his soldiers as they fled screaming into the trackless forest.

* * *

‘Are you sure this map's accurate, Tynian?' Patriarch Bergsten demanded, peering at the miniature world under his feet.

‘It's the most accurate map you'll ever see, your Grace,' Tynian assured him. ‘Bhlokw cast the spell, and the Troll-Gods put their hands into the ground and felt the shape of the continent. This is it – down to the last tree and bush. Everything's here.'

‘Except for Cyrga, Tynian-Knight,' Engessa amended. The Atan general was completely healed now, and he looked as fit as ever. His face, however, was troubled. His Queen had greeted him almost abruptly when she had first arrived, and she was now quite obviously avoiding him.

Sephrenia was seated on one of the benches in Aphrael's alabaster temple with the rainbow light from the impossible sky playing over her face. ‘We'd hoped that Schlee might be able to feel Cyrga when he recreated the continent, your Grace,' she said, ‘but Cyrgon's illusion seems to be absolute. Not even a Trollish spell can break it.'

‘What's the best guess we can come up with?' Bergsten asked.

Aphrael walked lightly across the tiny world Bhlokw had conjured up for them. She stepped over the minuscule city of Cynestra and continued south to a mountainous region in the center of the desert. ‘It used to be somewhere in this general vicinity,' she said, gesturing vaguely over the mountains.

‘Used to be?' Bergsten asked her sharply.

She shrugged. ‘Sometimes we move things.'

‘Whole cities?'

‘It's possible – but it's a reflection of bad planning.'

Bergsten shuddered and began marking off distances on the miniature continent with a long piece of string. ‘I'm up here at Pela,' he told them, pointing at a spot
in central Astel. ‘That's almost three hundred leagues from the general vicinity of Cyrga, and I'll have to stop to capture Cynestra along the way. The rest of you are much closer, so you're going to have to hold off a bit if we all want to get there at approximately the same time.'

Aphrael shrugged. ‘I'll tamper,' she said.

Bergsten gave her a puzzled look.

‘Divine Aphrael has ways of compressing time and distance, your Grace,' Sparhawk explained. ‘She can –'

‘I don't want to hear about it, Sparhawk!' Bergsten said sharply, putting his hands over his ears. ‘You've already put my soul in danger just by bringing me here. Please don't make it any worse by telling me things I don't need to know about.'

‘Whatever you say, your Grace,' Sparhawk agreed.

Emban was pacing around the cluster of up-thrusting mountains in the center of the Cynesgan Desert. ‘We're all going to be converging on these mountains,' he said. ‘I'm no expert, but wouldn't our best move be to just stop in the foothills and wait until everyone's in place before we make the final assault?'

‘No, your Grace,' Vanion said firmly. ‘Let's stay out a bit from the foothills – at least a day's ride. If we run into Klæl's creatures, we'll need room to maneuver. I want a lot of flat ground around me when that happens.'

The fat little Churchman shrugged. ‘You're the soldier, Vanion.' He pointed toward the south. ‘There's our weakness,' he said. ‘We've got a good concentration of forces coming out of the east, the northeast and the north, but we don't have anybody covering the south.'

‘Or the west,' Sarabian added.

‘I'll cover the west, your Majesty,' Bergsten told him. I can position my knights and the Peloi to block off that entire quadrant.'

‘That still leaves the south,' Emban mused.

‘It's already been taken care of, Emban,' Aphrael
assured him. ‘Stragen's been spinning stories about a vast Church fleet off the southern coast, and I've been weaving illusions to back him up. How long is it going to take the Trolls to get into position north of Zhubay, Ulath?'

‘Just as long as it takes to persuade the Troll-Gods that we need their children there instead of in the Tamul mountains,' the big Thalesian replied. ‘A day or so, probably. Once they're convinced, they'll put their children into No-Time. If we didn't have to stop now and then to feed the Trolls, we could be in Zhubay before you could even blink. If I knew where Cyrga was, I could have fifteen hundred Trolls on the doorstep by morning.'

‘There's no need to rush.' The Child Goddess looked around with steely eyes. ‘Nobody – and I mean
nobody
– is going to move on Cyrga until I know that Ehlana and Alean are safe. If I have to, I can keep you running around in circles out there in that desert for generations, so don't try to get creative on me.'

‘Is the Queen of Elenia so very important to you, Divine One?' Betuana asked mildly. ‘War is hard, and we must accept our losses.'

‘It's a personal matter, Betuana,' Aphrael said shortly. ‘These are your positions.' She gestured over the miniature continent. ‘Bergsten will come in from the north and west to cover that side of the city; Ulath, Tynian and Bhlokw will bring the Trolls down from Zhubay and join with Betuana's Atans on their left flank; Vanion will come in from the east and be joined on
his
left by Kring and the Peloi; Stragen's persuaded that disgusting Dacite in Beresa that there are a million or so Church Knights landing on the coast around Verel and Kaftal, and that should divert most of the armies of Cynesga. We'll all converge on Cyrga. There are some discrepancies in the distances, but I'll take care of those. When the time
comes, you
will
all be in place – even if I have to pick you up one by one and carry you.' She stopped abruptly. ‘What
is
your problem, Bergsten? Don't laugh at me, or I'll take you by the nose and shake you.'

‘I wasn't laughing, Divine One,' he assured her. ‘I was only smiling in approval. Where
did
you learn so much about strategy and tactics?'

‘I've been watching you Elenes make war since shortly after you discovered fire, your Grace. I was bound to learn a
few
of the tricks of the trade.' She turned suddenly on Bhlokw. ‘What?' she asked irritably in Trollish.

‘U-lat has said to me what you have said, Child Goddess. Why are we doing this?'

‘To punish the Wicked ones, Priest of the Troll-Gods.'

‘What?'
Sparhawk said to Ulath in stunned amazement. ‘What did she call him?'

‘Oh?' Ulath said mildly. ‘Didn't you know? Our shaggy friend has a certain eminence.'

‘They actually have priests?'

‘Of course. Doesn't everybody?'

‘It is good to punish the wicked ones who have taken Anakha's mate away,' Bhlokw was saying, but do we need to take so many? Khwaj will punish the wicked ones. This is the season of Schlee, and we should be following the way of the hunt. The young must be fed or they will die, and that is not a good thing.'

‘Oh, dear,' Aphrael murmured.

‘What's happening here, Sir Ulath?' Sarabian asked.

‘The Trolls are hunters, your Majesty,' Ulath explained, ‘not warriors. They have no real understanding of warfare. They eat what they kill.'

Sarabian shuddered.

‘It
is
very moral, your Majesty,' Ulath pointed out. ‘From a Troll's point of view, wasting the meat is criminal.'

Aphrael was squinting at the priest of the Troll-Gods. ‘It is a good thing to do that which follows the way of the hunt
and
punishes the wicked ones at the same time,' she said. ‘If we hunt this way, we will cause hurt to the wicked ones
and
bring much meat to the young during the season of Schlee.'

Bhlokw considered that. ‘The hunts of the man-things are not-simple,' he said dubiously, ‘but it is my thought that the hunts of the God-things are even
more
not-simple.' He reflected on it. ‘It is good, though. A hunt that gathers more than meat is a good hunt. You hunt very well, Child Goddess. Sometime we might take eat together and talk of old hunts. It is good to do this. It makes pack-mates closer so that they hunt together better.'

‘It would make me glad if we did this, Bhlokw.'

‘Then we will do it. I will kill a dog for us to eat. Dog is even more good-to-eat than pig.'

Aphrael made a slight gagging sound.

‘Will it cause anger to you if I speak to our pack-mates in bird-noises, Bhlokw?' Sparhawk stepped in. ‘It will soon be time for the hunt to begin, and all must be made ready.'

‘It will not cause anger to me, Anakha. U-lat can say to me what you are saying.'

‘All right then,' Sparhawk said to the rest of them. ‘We all know how we're going to converge on Cyrga, but there are several of us who have to go in first. Please hold off on your attack until we're in position. Don't crowd us by trampling on our heels.'

‘Who are you taking in with you, Sparhawk?' Vanion asked.

‘Kalten, Bevier, Talen, Xanetia and Mirtai.'

‘I don't quite –'

Sparhawk held up one hand. ‘Aphrael made the choices, my Lord,' he said. ‘If there are any objections, take them up with her.'

‘You have to have those people with you, sparhawk,' Aphrael explained patiently. ‘If you don't, you'll fail.'

‘Whatever you say, Divine One,' he surrendered.

‘You'll be out in front of Berit and me then?' Khalad asked.

Sparhawk nodded. ‘The people on the other side will expect us to trail along behind you. If we're in front, it might confuse them – at least that's what we're hoping. Aphrael will take us directly to Vigayo and we'll nose around a bit. If the fellow with the next message is already there, Xanetia should be able to pick up your new destination. Sooner or later, somebody's going to have to give you the key to the illusion that's hiding Cyrga, and
that's
the one piece of information we have to have. Once we've got that, the rest is easy.'

‘I like his definition of easy,' Caalador murmured to Stragen.

Emban jotted another note on his inevitable list. Then he cleared his throat.

‘Must
you, Emban?' Bergsten sighed.

‘It helps me to think, Bergsten, and it makes sure that we haven't left anything out. If it bores you so much, don't listen.'