The Mirror of Worlds (46 page)

He laughed again, but the sound trailed off into wheezing.
He's going to die shortly whether we kill him or not
, Ilna thought.
Though of course we'll kill him
.

"Do you know the Messengers?" Neunt asked when he had control of his voice again. "You do not, I suspect. I did not, I could not—"

Suddenly anger snarled in his broken voice.

"No one could foresee you! No one!"

Ilna looked at Temple. "Kill him," she said. "I'll determine what we do next."

"I will tell you your course," the wizard said calmly. "That's why I waited for you instead of ending my own life as I'd planned. I will tell you how to reach the Messengers, who will give you the power you desire. Every power that you demand, they will provide."

Ilna stared at the ancient Corl, absorbing his words. From the floor below, Karpos called, "Mistress? We've taken care of the females. What do you want us to do now?"

"You can come up here," Temple said, surprising Ilna both with what he'd said and the fact that he'd spoken at all. "This is where we'll be leaving from, I believe."

Ilna looked at him angrily, then snapped to the wizard, "Do you think we'll spare you? I won't. I won't let you believe a lie even if I didn't tell it."

"Of course, animal, of course," Neunt said. "I've failed, which means I deserve to die."

He made a sound that might've been the start of a laugh, but it choked off a moment later. "I failed millennia ago, when I forced my way into the Messengers' presence and didn't protect myself against you. Do you think you will be wiser, animal?"

"I don't care about wisdom!" Ilna said. She heard the hunters mounting the steps behind her. Without looking around she shuffled forward to give them both room to stand safely on the platform. "I want to kill every one of your race, every murdering beast. Do you understand that?"

"What is that to me?" said the wizard, coughing again. "I'll already be dead, will I not?"

He pointed to the floor of the platform. He sat in the middle of a circle etched into the coarse, glassy surface; around the inside were the curving forms of letters in the Old Script.

"Stand within and speak the words," he said. "Nothing more. The powers are focused here as nowhere else."

"We'll have to find a different way," Ilna said, glancing aside to Temple. She was as much relieved as disappointed; Neunt was disquieting in a fashion she couldn't fully explain. "I can't read those letters. I can't read anything!"

"I can," said Temple. He didn't raise his voice; she'd never heard him raise his voice. "Will my voice be sufficient, Chief of the Coerli?"

"Even a child would be sufficient in this place," the wizard said. "It will be as easy as stepping off the edge of this, my sanctum."

He ran his fingers over the grooves of the words of power. "Every bit as easy."

Rousing from his reverie, the wizard turned his milky eyes on Temple for the first time. "But you are scarcely a child, are you?" he said. "I did not foresee you either. My, what a fool I was when I thought myself so clever, so powerful."

"Mistress?" Asion murmured from behind her. "Shall we . . .?"

He didn't finish the question, but there was no doubt what he was asking. Even the Corl knew.

"You need not kill me, creature," Neunt said. He rose to his feet with more grace than Ilna'd expected from his difficulty speaking. "I do not wish to be defiled by your touch."

With a final bark of laughter, the ancient wizard stepped off the platform.

"Watch him!" Ilna said, expecting a trick. She looked over the edge.

Neunt crashed into the top of a partition which framed one of the rooms. His ribs crunched, and though his broken body flopped down on the side nearer the stairs, sprays of blood dripped slowly down both.

Karpos cleared his throat. "I don't guess either of us gets his scalp, right?" he said.

Ilna ignored the hunter. "What do we do now, soldier?" she asked Temple.

"Now we all stand within the circle," Temple said, as calm as a frozen pond. "And I read the spell."

He gave Ilna a faint smile. "Then it's up to you, Ilna," he added.

* * *

Sharina used her fingers to spread a gap in the brushwood screen so that she could look out. The citadel of the Last glowed faintly yellow in the darkness, a little brighter along the edges where the pentagons joined. The color made her think of fungus but—

She grinned at herself.

—that was only because it had to do with the Last. She'd seen walls distempered the same pale shade and found it attractive.

Occasionally Sharina heard the
bang!
as artillery released. When the fitful breeze was in the right direction, she could even hear the slap of bows and the rattle of swords when human soldiers closed hand-to-hand with the black invaders.

The Last were extending their faceted fortifications around Pandah, moving only sunwise rather than in both directions as they'd done before the royal army arrived. They took terrible losses from the artillery's bolts and heavy stones, but slowly, panel by panel, their walls advanced.

The Last undermined Lord Waldron's cross-walls, filled in trenches, and stolidly cut apart infantry sallying in attempts to demolish the fortifications from the inside. The army slowed the inhuman advance, but no human endeavor could halt it.

At Sharina's decision—though with the enthusiastic support of all her officers—the army wasn't cooperating with the brigands of Pandah. Those renegades were barely able to defend their own walls, and they'd do that to the best of their ability regardless.

Sharina sighed. She was looking out at the citadel because behind her Rasile talked with ghosts and demons. Sharina knew what was happening, of course, and she realized it was necessary . . . but it made her uncomfortable nonetheless.

The enclosure curtained Rasile's wizardry from the eyes of the troops who'd be distressed by it. They knew what was going on—and indeed, anybody who wanted to could watch through the coarse wicker as easily as Sharina now looked out. The troops had laced brush together in much the same way as they made great earth-filled baskets which formed the walls of the encampment.

The Last weren't present in great enough numbers to attack the camp, not yet at any rate, but Lord Waldron was careful to prepare against unexpected dangers. There was nothing to be done against the
expected
danger, however.

In a few months, despite Waldron's efforts, the Last would complete a ring around Pandah. They could then wipe out anyone still in the city . . . and simply wait and prepare behind polygonal walls which the troops hadn't been able to breach. If the Last filled Pandah before they opened the sides of their glowing black fortress, they'd outnumber the royal army and any possible human army.

Sharina remembered Tenoctris' vision of black monsters appearing on the lens of ice. Even arriving only one or two at a time in the fortified pool here, it wouldn't be long before the black not-men were in overwhelming strength. That would be the end of Mankind.

Thinking that, Sharina turned to look at the Corl wizard.
It's not as though watching the Last grind their way through my world is comforting, after all
. She grinned again.

Rasile stood in a figure drawn with yarrow stalks. She'd spilled them in what'd seemed an aimless fashion to Sharina, but the stiff yellow lengths had fallen into a real pattern: each stalk lay end to end with two others.

There was light with her inside the figure, occasionally as bright as a desert sun but more often a dim hint like the moon through overcast. Now it was a faint blue glow coming from something spindly and inhuman. The creature's clawed arms gestured fiercely as it spoke to Rasile.

No sound crossed the figure. Sharina could see the wizard's face it was as calm as if she were ordering lunch.

The creature lifted its long jaws in what seemed to be a despairing shriek, threatening the sky with its claws; then it faded into darkness. Sharina expected another world, another denizen. Instead Rasile slumped.

Sharina jumped to the Corl's side, careful not to disturb the yarrow stalks. She'd acted without thinking; she might've been jumping into a realm in which only a wizard could survive—

But nobody was safe unless the Last were defeated, and Rasile had a better chance of accomplishing that than Waldron and the whole royal army did. Besides, Sharina wasn't one to worry about her own safety when a friend was at risk. By now the Corl wizard'd become if not exactly a friend, then at least a trusted confidante.

"Their own strength works for me," Rasile murmured. She hunched with her eyes were closed. If Sharina hadn't caught her, she'd probably have lain scrunched together on all fours on the ground. "I could never have accomplished that if the Last hadn't concentrated so much power in this place."

"Are you all right, Rasile?" Sharina said. The Corl's body felt hot and her heart was beating quickly, but Sharina reminded herself that the wizard wasn't human. This might be normal for the catmen.

"I'm tired, princess," Rasile said. She didn't open her eyes, but her voice sounded stronger. "I think even your friend Tenoctris would be tired after that. But I have an answer."

The old Corl straightened. Sharina stepped away as she'd have done if she'd been supporting Tenoctris following wizardry. The initial shock to the system seemed to pass more quickly than would that of comparable physical effort, though sometimes Sharina got the impression that spells left mental scars that never healed.

Rasile took Sharina's hands in her own and examined them closely. The Corl's fingers were short and the palms narrower but longer than a human's.

"Can you swim, princess?" she said. "Yes, I see that you can."

Her eyes met Sharina's. They were both smiling.

"Yes," said Sharina. "I swim very well."

"The Last enter this region through the pool in the center of their citadel," Rasile said, her voice getting a saw-toothed edge to it. "At the bottom of that pool is the First Stone. It is the focus which draws them to this place rather than to another. You must fetch the First Stone up from the pool and bring it to me."

Rasile laughed. "It is well that you do swim, princess," she said. "Who else could we trust to do this thing without flinching? Your warriors are very brave, no doubt, but they—"

She moved her index finger through the air as though tracing letters. Azure wizardlight trailed away from the stubby claw, each spark taking the flickering form of an armored soldier.

"—wouldn't have stomach for what's necessary, would they? To deal with the Great Wisdom?"

"Cashel would," said Sharina. She tried to keep emotion out of her voice, for fear of learning what emotion she might show if she didn't. "He's not afraid of wizardry. But he's not here; and anyway, he can't swim."

She cleared her throat. "How will I get
to
the pool, Rasile?" she said. "There's only the two entrances and they're both guarded."

"You'll have to be invisible," the Corl said. "And that means—"

A catapult fired. The heavy stone smashed into ricocheting fragments almost as soon as the levers crashed against their stops. One and maybe several of the Last were surely dead, but an endless number of the creatures remained. Like water dripping against a cliff face, they'd eventually wear away the royal army.

"—that you will be blind. Therefore—"

"Blind?" said Sharina. She felt cold and nauseous, as though she'd been punched in the pit of the stomach. "I don't understand!"

"If you cannot be seen," Rasile said, "then you can't see. You will use my eyes."

She stretched. The old wizard seemed to have become more limber as a result of the exercise she'd gotten during the march.

"If you say so," Sharina muttered, looking out at the night again. The thought of being blind still chilled her. "Ah . . . . When will we do this?"

Rasile repeated her throaty laugh. "Not until the morning, princess," she said. "I must sleep and replenish my strength. And even then, I will be able to accomplish the spell only because of what the Last have created, this strong pillar that I will climb."

Sharina nodded. "I'll get to sleep also, then," she said.

And in her mind, she whispered,
Oh, Cashel. Please come back tonight
.

But she knew in her heart that she would sleep alone.

* * *

The tar lake was a jumble of blocks broken upward as monsters crawled out of it, and the air was thick with the stench of bitumen. Garric would've felt queasy if he hadn't been so angry at being carried like a baby through the chaos. He'd managed to twist in Kore's arm so that he was at least facing forward, but he couldn't pretend he was in control of what was happening to him.

The snarls of beasts rising from the lake were as loud as the howl of a winter storm. Torches were alight on the spit of hard ground ahead, twitching in agitation. No doubt Lord Holm's retainers were shouting, but mere human racket couldn't be heard in this cacophony.

A hairy elephant stood facing them at the end of the causeway. It was much larger than the others Garric'd glimpsed in this place, easily twelve feet high to the top of its humped shoulders. It curled its trunk between its great tusks and lowered its head to meet the oncoming ogre. To either side of the monster the surface glistened with pools of liquid tar; there was no way around.

"Drop me!" Garric shouted.

He'd made the demand repeatedly during Kore's run for the shore, but now the ogre had no choice. She skidded to a sparkling halt and decanted Garric to the ground, surprisingly gentle despite the necessary haste.

Shin was skipping down the causeway ahead of them. He turned a double somersault in the air, landed on his hooves, and sprang skyward like a stone flung from a trebuchet.

The elephant's trunk uncoiled to swat him—but too late. The aegipan landed on the beast's bulging forehead, then backflipped to its shoulders. He grinned at Garric and Kore as he pointed toward the asphalt.

Blue sparks shot from Shin's index fingers. Where each struck the tar, the surface bubbled. Saber-toothed cats hunched upward from both pools. The elephant started backward, swinging its head to one side and then the other.