Red Tide (75 page)

A final breath, then she turned to face him and adopted a suitably disdainful look. That, at least, came easily enough. Hex stood a prudent distance from the portal, his image misted by the dust on the air. The walls of the corridor were similarly indistinct, overlain by a boundless rocky plain streaked with orange light. Romany's robe flapped in the wind, but the Augeran's cloak was still. Behind him was a swarm of the oversized hornets. His expression was indecipherable in the murk.

Romany said, “I seem to have found one of those exits you forgot to block.”

The Augeran's gaze scanned the realm beyond the gateway before coming to rest on the priestess. When he spoke his voice was a mere whisper above the wind. “You think you are safe because you have passed through a portal? I have worked my power through gateways before.”

“You want to try? Go ahead.”

One of the hornets buzzed toward Romany. She raised a hand as if to deny it entry. With or without her intervention it wouldn't have been able to journey through the portal, but if Hex thought that some conscious effort on Romany's part had denied it passage, he might also think that her resistance could be overcome. The hornet moved close enough to the priestess for her to see the gleam of its eyes, and for an instant she wondered if she had made a mistake.

Then the creature melted from sight as it flew along the Alcazar's corridor and past the opening to the portal.

“My turn,” Romany said. She spun her threads about one of the hornets, tangling its wings. It fell twitching at Hex's feet. “Or how about this?” Extending her senses toward the wall on the Augeran's right, she pierced a hole through the sorcerous skin. A circle of white stone appeared amid the diseased flesh. “See? That wasn't so hard. Perhaps you should have another go.”

Hex edged forward.
Yes, come closer.
He looked pensive, but not angry. A shame. Anger would have been easy to play on. He raised a foot and brought it down with a squelch on the hornet Romany had snared.

“Curious,” he said. “This portal is one you opened, yet did not create or define. Meaning your destination beyond is one of convenience, not design.”

He'd taken the first step toward realizing the precariousness of Romany's position, but she wasn't about to let him go the rest of the way. “How perceptive,” she said. “In return, it seems only fair I share with you some of the things
I've
learned about
your
world.” She pointed to the white circle on the wall. “Spreading your dreamworld over an entire wing of the Alcazar has left it vulnerable to attack, particularly since it doesn't restore itself once it is breached. Imagine what other wounds I might inflict from this side of the portal where I am free to experiment beyond the reach of your power. Of course, there is little damage I can do while you remain here to contest my will, but if you are
here,
you can't also be where the fighting is. And if your kinsmen should lose to Mazana's and Avallon's forces, how long do you think it will be before your sleeping body is tracked down?”

Hex shuffled forward again, and this time Romany responded by stepping back as if she feared him. If he thought her afraid, he might think he still posed a threat to her, and that he might thus be able to reach her beyond the gateway. A smile split his patchwork face. “No portal has ever resisted me before.”

“So you've already said. If you keep saying it, maybe that alone will be enough to crack my defenses.” Romany pretended to hesitate. “In any case, even if you
were
somehow to breach them, what's to stop me from closing the portal?”

“And still affect my dreamworld from beyond?”

“And wait until you go elsewhere before reopening it,” she corrected him.

“How would you know I'd moved on, pray tell? How could you know I wasn't waiting to bid you a last farewell?” His feet tap-tapped as he capered to within an armspan of the portal. He reached out a hand as if to test the boundary between the two worlds, then thought better of it and lowered his hand again. Clearly his confidence was back, yet he had the sense to remain beyond the borders of Romany's realm.

And there he might have stayed if the priestess had previously opened the portal to its fullest extent. She hadn't, of course. But she did so now, and the gateway snapped open.

To bring Hex within the glare of that dying sun.

At the same moment, Romany lunged toward the Augeran, not with physical fingers, but with spiritual ones. Her target was not his body, but the soul inhabiting it. So great was his surprise that he didn't try to evade her. She seized his wrist.

And collapsed the portal, isolating his spirit on this side of the gateway.

*   *   *

Ebon blinked against the gloom in the stairwell. The edges of the steps were rounded with wear and made more treacherous by splinters of rock left by the falling catapult stones. Vale had already disappeared from sight below, and Ebon pounded after him, his bones rattling, the edge of his shield scratching against the wall. Echoing shouts. A stab of light from an arrow slit, a glimpse of sea beyond. Then a flash of orange smeared the walls, and he felt a blast of heat. Yells and screams came from below, followed by a pop and crackle of sorcery.
Fire-magic.
But from someone on Ebon's side or the enemy's?

The orange glow faded, and Ebon squinted for the next stair down. The clash of weapons started up. He was gripping the handle of his shield so tight he suspected someone would have to pry his fingers free when this was done.

The wall on his left gave way to an arched doorway, movement beyond.

Ebon plunged through.

Fractured images of a huge chamber, all blurring into one: a shield spinning on the floor; Twist leaping to engage two stone-skins; flames flickering in the enemies' eyes. Protruding from the wall to Ebon's left were blocks of stone into which the chains had been set. Beneath them stood a robed man with hands wreathed in black sorcery, two guards beside him. Ahead, more stone-skins were drawn up in an inverted U. The warrior at the bottom of the formation had golden spiral tattoos on his arms and cheeks. Three Revenants lay motionless on the ground, another burned and shrieked.

A sword whistled down from Ebon's right, and he brought his shield round to take the blow. The impact set his arm trembling. He surged forward behind the shield, making room for the Revenant at his back. Beyond the stone-skin who had attacked him, Breakers poured through the archway from the seawall. Red-cloaked warriors turned to face them, and their ranks rippled as if they'd been struck by an invisible force. Air-magic? The force of that sorcery must have struck Ebon's attacker too, for she bundled into him, sent him stumbling back. His feet tangled, and together with his assailant, he crashed to the floor.

The female stone-skin landed on top of him. There wasn't space for her to wield her sword, so she dropped it and grabbed Ebon round the throat instead. They clawed and strained and wrestled. A bead of her sweat fell onto his cheek. He tried to lever her off, but her weight bore down on him. He focused his power for a strike at her face. The blow was weak, though, and she rolled her head with it, then came down on him with redoubled fury. Her nails dug into his neck as if she meant to rip out his windpipe.

Click.

The top of her skull disappeared to a sword stroke as a gray-cloaked shape—Ebon's savior—hurdled the prince. The stone-skin's blood washed into Ebon's nose and mouth. He turned his head, gagging and spitting, then wiped a sleeve across his eyes to clear them. The stone-skin was even heavier dead than she had been alive, and it took all his strength to push her away. He clambered to his feet, recovered his shield. There had been no chance to thank the Revenant who had saved him. Ebon couldn't pick him out now amid the chaos and the gloom.

The room wobbled. For an instant, he thought it was just his legs quivering. Then a grinding sound reached him, a scream of metal, and he realized something had hit the chains outside. A stone-skin ship? A dragon? It didn't matter so long as it hadn't got past.

Where was Vale? To Ebon's right, one half of the enemy U formation had disintegrated under the attack from the Breakers. The stone-skins there now fought in pairs against an ever-increasing number of foes. As yet none of the bodies on the ground wore red cloaks, but it was just a matter of time before the Erin Elalese overran their adversaries. When that happened, the other stone-skins would be forced to surrender, wouldn't they? But how could they do that if it meant condemning their fleet to the mercy of the dragons?

Ebon's gaze was drawn to the stone-skin with the golden tattoos. Wielding two shortswords, the man was whip-quick. His right blade appeared to pass through an opponent's parrying weapon as he dispatched the Revenant he fought. Ebon could see Vale now, bearing down like a whirlwind on the tattooed man. The stone-skin stood calm before the Endorian's furious motion, his swords flickering out with a speed that seemed—impossibly—to match the timeshifter's.

Then Vale was falling.

Ebon's throat constricted. No, it couldn't be. The Endorian must have just slipped. But the strings of blood whipping from the stone-skin's blade told a different tale, and the timeshifter crumpled to the floor.

“No!”

Ebon surged toward Vale. He took an elbow in his ribs, shook it off with a grunt. All he could think of was that he'd sacrificed Vale for Lamella and Rendale. Not deliberately, perhaps, but he'd known the risks of joining the city's defense. He'd known Vale would bear a greater part of that risk than Ebon himself. And why had Ebon just stood there stupidly while his friend fought the tattooed man? It didn't matter that the exchange had been over in heartbeats. If Ebon had struck out at the stone-skin with his power, he might have created an opening for the Endorian.

A red-cloaked warrior reared up. Ebon lashed out at him with his sword, hammered down at his opponent's blade before another sword—an ally's—plunged into the stone-skin's throat.

Ebon was past before the body hit the ground.

The next enemy was on to him. Ebon tried to barge the man aside, but he might as well have been trying to push over a wall. He was thrown a step backward, deflected a sword stroke with his shield, then lunged forward with his own blade only to find his assailant had been whisked off by the tide of battle. A woman was now in her kinsman's place. She unleashed a barrage of cuts that had Ebon huddling behind his shield and retreating all the while. He stepped on a fallen shield, felt it dimple beneath him. He stepped back again and kicked it toward the stone-skin as she pressed forward. There was a scrape of metal as it slipped beneath her foot. She staggered toward him, scorn showing in her eyes even as he slammed the rim of his shield into them. Her legs buckled.

Ebon had lost his bearings in the clash, but he spotted the tattooed man again, trading blows with the woman wearing the eyepatch. There was no doubt about it this time, his backhand cut passed
through
his opponent's sword before opening her throat, and the Breaker fell in a welter of blood. From somewhere came a voice—Twist's?—shouting for people to leave the tattooed man to him or else, but two Erin Elalese—a man and a woman—had already engaged the warrior. The woman seemed to breach his defenses, only for her blade to pass through his head. The stone-skin's counter carved open her stomach, and her guts tumbled out. Her friend thrust his shield forward, his sword stabbing under it, but the tattooed man was already gone, long gone, and the Breaker was suddenly down on his knees coughing blood. Ebon hadn't seen the attack that killed him. But then how did you defeat a warrior who was smoke one moment and steel the next?

With sorcery, of course.

Ebon cared nothing for revenge against the stone-skin. All he wanted was to reach Vale while there was still a chance he could heal his friend. The stone-skin wasn't just going to watch, though, as Ebon dragged the Endorian to safety, and so the prince advanced upon the man, his grief and rage building. The tattooed warrior noted his advance and turned to face him. In his gaze was a touch of sorrow as if he recognized Ebon's loss and regretted it. Ebon gathered his strength. In Mayot's dome he had drawn on every last scrap of himself to keep Mayot's sorcery at bay, and he now drew upon the same and more, drew it in until he felt an icy tingle in his extremities.

Then he released his power all at once, focusing it on the stone-skin.

There was a rush of wind, a rip and a roar as if he'd conjured up the Furies themselves in this place. The combatants around Ebon staggered and swayed. It was the tattooed man, though, who caught the worst of the attack, as it landed with the sound of a fist behind driven into a palm. He was hurled back. The wall of the tower behind him was a dozen paces away, but he covered the distance in an eyeblink to strike the stone.…

Except he did not strike it; he passed through it like a phantom. Perhaps he'd made himself insubstantial, or perhaps he'd been that way before Ebon's power hit. What was on the other side of that wall? The Neck? The harbor? Would he recover and return to the fight?

What would be the point? The battle was over, Ebon realized. Only a handful of stone-skins in the tower remained upright. As echoes of Ebon's sorcery continued to whistle about, a red-cloaked warrior was forced to the ground by two Revenants. A female mercenary stood with one foot on the body of the mage who'd been working on the chains, as if he were some big game she'd brought down. Had she got to him before he could bring down the third chain? Was the battle for Gilgamar over, or just starting?

Ebon let go his power, and the wind died away like a door had been closed on a storm.

Where was Vale? Ahead the twins were hugging each other. Ebon weaved around them, then stepped over a fire-charred corpse. Breathy whimpers came from a Breaker with a sword in his leg. Someone else was coughing like they'd had their first taste of juripa spirits. From the direction of the portcullis, a voice began shouting, taut with excitement. The survivors gave a muted cheer—more a tired exhalation.