The Name Of The Sword (Book 4) (34 page)

Morgin stood beside her, put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Walk forward with me.”

They stepped forward into the shadow, and their second step took them out of the shadow cast by the lamp and cloak. Tulellcoe started, and Morgin said, “Disperse them as I bring them through.”

He turned around and stepped back through the shadow.

It was slow work, walking each whiteface through the shadow one-by-one. He took them alone, or with a horse or chakarra. After he’d walked about a hundred through, he found that he didn’t need to go all the way through himself. He stood half-in and half-out of the shadow on the crest of the hill north of the new course of the Ulbb, and all he needed to do was place his hand on the shoulder of a whiteface or horse or chakarra, and keep the hand on them as they passed into the shadow. By midnight he stood alone on the crest of the hill, so he stepped through the shadow into the forest south of Durin.

Cort said, “Amazing!”

In the night he saw hundreds of small camp fires dotting the landscape of the forest.

“What next?” Tulellcoe asked.

Morgin said, “Get some sleep, then be ready with this shadow at dawn. Time to get another army . . . or two.”

He turned and stepped back into the shadow.

••••

Riding Mortiss through the nether ways, Morgin returned to the top of the cliff to retrieve AnnaRail, Olivia and NickoLot. He found the three of them huddled about a small camp fire, the hellhounds resting on their haunches nearby.

Warming her hands at the fire, NickoLot said, “I’m hungry. Got any food?”

Morgin looked at the three women, then at the hellhounds. No rider in the clans would venture even a short distance from home without a minimum of trail rations in his kit. But in their haste, none of them had considered that the hellhounds didn’t carry saddle or kit. He rummaged through Mortiss’ saddle bags, retrieved what trail rations he had and split them four ways. They ate quickly, then mounted up and returned to the nether ways.

Morgin had come to realize that the deeper Mortiss took him into the netherworld, the faster she and the hellhounds could travel. They had to meet the Elhiyne and Penda armies in the shadow of Attunhigh at sunrise, and with only a few hours remaining before dawn, she had to go deep indeed to get them east of the Worshipers in time.

As he feared, the beast he’d encountered in the netherworld hammered at his protective cage even more forcefully, and each blow rattled his soul. He had a vision, saw again the being who’d sat upon the third throne in Kathbeyanne, a monster with the head of a goat, and blood-red eyes. But when he’d visited Kathbeyanne the creature had been no more than a memory clinging to the rubble of the great city. Now it felt all too real as it assaulted him, and hurt him . . .

“Morgin, wake up.”

At the sound of AnnaRail’s voice Morgin opened his eyes. He sat in the saddle, slumped forward on Mortiss back, the three witches standing beside the nether horse, his face sticky with tears. False dawn lit the landscape, though the sun had yet to rise. He sat up, wiped the tears from his face with his hand, looked at his hand and saw only blood.

AnnaRail put a hand on his knee. “You’re bleeding from the eyes. I sensed that the Dark God was close as we traveled the nether ways, but I couldn’t help you.”

He looked about. To the east Attunhigh loomed over them, and to the west the two armies marched their way.

Olivia said, “Wylow, PaulStaff and BlakeDown will be here shortly. They mustn’t see you looking like that.”

Feeling like an old man Morgin climbed down out of the saddle. He retrieved his water skin, AnnaRail poured water into his cupped hands and he scrubbed the blood from his face.

“How do I look?” he asked.

NickoLot said, “You look fine.”

Olivia shook her head. “She’s being nice. You look like netherhell, though there’s no blood visible, so that’ll have to do.”

A group of four scouts from the approaching armies rode up to them. “Thank the gods we’ve found you,” their leader said. He dismounted and bowed deeply to the three witches. “Lord BlakeDown feared you would not return.”

Olivia said, “Lord BlakeDown complained the entire way, I’d wager, and was hoping we’d give him an excuse to turn back to his castle.”

The scout leader lowered his eyes. He glanced at Morgin, but looked away and said, “He tried to go west, but the dreams stopped him.”

He sent two of his men back to the army to report that they’d found Morgin and the three witches, and that they were all well. The two scouts rode away at a gallop. A few heartbeats after they reached the army, a large contingent of mounted riders broke away from it and rode toward them. BlakeDown rode in the lead, and he reined his horse in a few paces from Morgin. “Blast your damn dreams! We can’t assault Durin with this army. It’s too small.”

Morgin nodded his agreement and said, “You’re right.” That made them all pause. He continued, “The entire Benesh’ere tribe is waiting for us in a forest five leagues south of Durin. We’re going to join them.”

BlakeDown spluttered, “But the Benesh’ere can’t— They can’t just—”

“They can now,” Morgin said. He turned his back on the Penda leader, walked ten paces east and looked at the approaching army. The sun was just beginning to break over the Worshippers, and it turned the wan light of the false dawn into a patchwork of shadows and brightly lit countryside. Morgin felt the enormous shadow of Attunhigh wash over him; it stretched for leagues.

He stepped from that shadow into the shadow in the forest south of Durin. Tulellcoe and Cort were seated at a small fire, and they both stood as he stepped out of the shadow. “Tell the Benesh’ere to break camp. We’ll be coming through shortly, so have everyone form up in the open land north of this forest.” He turned around and stepped back into the shadow of Attunhigh.

With Attunhigh’s enormous shadow enveloping the entire army, Morgin simply walked among them, touching them and sending them through to Tulellcoe and Cort. Only a few hours after dawn he’d moved the last of them to the forest south of Durin, so he and Mortiss stepped through to join them.

34
Ancient Friends

Rhianne’s Kullish guards escorted her down to the ground floor of the castle, then out into the castle yard to a carriage. The Kull lieutenant opened the carriage door and said, “Get in.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“You’ll find out when we get there. Now get in.”

She stepped up into the carriage and sat down. The Kull closed the door, leaving her alone in the dark interior. The door had a simple window through which she saw the Kulls mount horses, then the driver snapped his whip and the carriage lurched forward. A few heartbeats later the carriage raced through the gates of the outer bailey and into the city.

She hadn’t been allowed outside the walls of the castle since returning to Durin with Salula, which meant something was happening to make today different. As they passed pedestrians in the streets she looked into their faces, hoping to see some indication of an unusual event, but all seemed normal, just another day in the sprawling city.

The carriage pulled to a stop, the Kull lieutenant opened the door and said, “Get out.”

She ducked her head, stepped through the door and onto the cobbles of a wide square at least a hundred paces across. Something about it struck a chord of memory, but she couldn’t place it. Only when the Kull led her around the carriage did she realize they’d taken her to the main gates in the outer wall of the city. She turned back and looked again at the wide square, recalled that when she’d returned to the city it had been an open market, filled with stalls and vendors hawking their wares. And now it had been cleared, for some reason.

“Don’t delay,” the Kull lieutenant said.

She turned back to the wall and craned her neck to look up, saw smoke rising into the sky from fires outside the wall. The Kull pointed to a doorless archway in the wall to one side of the gates. It was filled with dark shadow.

“That way,” he said.

Inside the archway she found a spiral staircase of stone steps worn by centuries of use. She climbed upward step-by-step, wondering what she would find at the top, circled four times before reaching the top of the wall. She stepped out of an archway onto a wide parapet behind Valso, Carsaris and Magwa, who stood looking at something outside the wall, pointing and gesturing. Carsaris said something about “. . . the Benesh’ere . . .”

The Kull lieutenant stepped out of the archway behind her and said, “Your Majesty.”

Valso turned toward them and his eyes brightened. “Rhianne, my lovely Rhianne.” He crossed the space between them and kissed her hand with a flourish.

When he looked up she saw the madness in his eyes quite clearly.

Valso threw his head back and laughed. He leaned close and hissed in her ear, “I can see the awe and wonder in your eyes. You see the god within my soul, don’t you?”

He took her arm and marched her to the embrasures on the wall, and swept an arm outward. “Magnificent, isn’t it?”

A flat plain extended outside the city for a thousand paces, though just outside the walls lay a swath of ash and smoldering wood about three hundred paces wide. She had to think back to recall that there had been a bustling market of ramshackle stalls there.

“We burned the outer market,” Valso said. “Can’t have them in the way when the city’s under siege.”

Siege
, he’d said. For the first time she took note of the wave of people and horses emerging from the forest in the distance. They had spread out across the no-man’s-land and were slowly approaching the city. She leaned out and looked down to the ground, only now realized that the walls of the city stood more than twice as high as the walls of any castle she’d seen.

Carsaris said, “It appears he’s freed the Benesh’ere.”

“Still,” Magwa barked, “There can’t be more than twelve thousand, and I’m counting the children among them.”

Carsaris said, “Do not discount the Benesh’ere young.”

“He’s right,” Valso said. “My halfmen can tell you the spawn of those crazy desert men have separated more than a few of them from their demon counterpart. But Magwa is right in her own way. It doesn’t matter, even if it were twelve thousand fully-blooded warriors, that’s nothing against these walls.”

Rhianne had to admit that, while she was not trained in the science of war, even she could see that Morgin’s army was too small to breach the walls of Durin.

Carsaris said, “It bothers me that he didn’t use the nether ways to get them here. How did he get them here?”

Valso turned and vented his anger on the skeletal wizard. “It doesn’t matter. He can’t breach these walls.”

He changed in an instant, went from angry to happy and exuberant. “I almost regret that your husband is such an idiot. What fun is there in stepping on the toes of a fool?”

Rhianne considered his words carefully. “But my husband has never been a fool.”

Valso looked her way and his eyes narrowed, and for an instant she thought she saw fear there. She continued, “And every time someone thinks him the fool, it is they who learn the fool’s lesson.”

Valso’s eyes flashed with open fear, and he let that thing into his soul. It spoke in that voice that was not Valso’s, “I care nothing for this city, for it is the Mortal Plane I will rule.”

He loomed over her, his eyes flaring with the red fires of his hatred. She tried to look away, but he reached out and gripped her throat, lifted her and held her with her toes barely brushing the stone of the parapet. Holding onto his wrist she struggled to breathe as he pulled her face close to his and forced her to look into his eyes. In them she saw armies of tormented souls, broken and twisted by his hatred. In them she saw her fate, and that of the entire Mortal Plane.

He tossed her like a rag doll onto the stone of the parapet. Her head slammed against the battlement and she lost consciousness.

••••

“There’s no bloody way we’re going to take those walls,” BlakeDown said.

Morgin looked past BlakeDown at the walls of Durin as Olivia responded. “I’m sure my grandson has a plan. After all, he defeated Illalla nicely at Csairne Glen when we were heavily outnumbered.”

Morgin left BlakeDown and Olivia to their argument. The two were so wrapped up in their mutual animosity, and their constant struggle to gain the upper hand, that neither paid him the least bit of attention. Still holding Mortiss’ reins he walked forward to the edge of the ash-charred ground. The impenetrable walls of Durin loomed three hundred paces distant, and well out of bowshot.

He’d considered bypassing the walls, sending warriors through shadows directly into the palace. But he now had enough experience to know it would take hours to transport the entire army. At best, he’d get a few twelves into the palace before Valso realized what he was doing, and a few more into the inner bailey, but that would put them in the midst of an overwhelming force of jackal warriors and Decouix armsmen. Morgin couldn’t fight Valso with the odds stacked so heavily against them. He needed an army at his back, with Valso and Magwa’s armies neutralized, and to accomplish that he’d have to take the city step by step. But first he had to take the walls, and he knew he couldn’t breach them with an army of twelve thousand, needed four or five times that, plus engines of war, ladders, and all the paraphernalia of a siege.

Standing at the edge of the ash-covered ground, he could make out a small group of people on the parapets at the top of Durin’s wall just over the main gates, though the distance was too great to discern any detail. For several heartbeats he sensed the enormous well of power Valso had shown him, and that told him the Decouix king stood there looking down at him. He sensed Rhianne there as well, guessed Valso was delighting at the paltry size of the invading army, was probably bragging how he would crush it. It would be so like the Decouix to drag her there to listen to his gloating.

At the thought of Rhianne Morgin recalled her words.
There is no power in the blade. It is but a thing of steel . . . It was the power in your soul, and you needed to learn to control it.

He gripped the sword’s hilt and pulled it from its sheath. He held it up to look at it, let the sun glint off the old blade. He’d never looked at it through the eyes of a SteelMaster before, realized now that somewhere deep inside he had feared doing so, had feared the truth he might find. He examined the old steel from tip to hilt, then lifted his left hand, snapped a fingernail against the blade, and the ping of the metal rang in his ears. He took up the sound, strengthened it, listened to the steel sing, and it did so with a single voice, then he let the sound die. The blade had clearly been forged by a SteelMaster, forged by him. He said to it, “You are my self-forged blade.”

Like a fool, all his life he had sought to control the power in the blade, and it took Rhianne’s insight to show him the truth. He looked at Mortiss standing quietly beside him. “She was right.”

She neighed,
Of course she was.

While he’d been focused on the blade, NickoLot, AnnaRail and France had come forward to stand beside him. He noticed his Benesh’ere friends had gathered around to watch. They stood about him in silence, though he was thankful he saw no reverence in the looks they gave him, just determination, and expectation.

Somewhere behind him he heard Olivia and BlakeDown coming forward, heard them easily because they continued their argument unabated. Wylow and PaulStaff stepped up beside him, looking toward the walls of the city. Without looking at him Wylow said, “He’s right, you know. With what we have, if we try to assault those walls, they’ll crush us.”

PaulStaff said, “Aye, lad. What are you going to do?”

Morgin had considered using his shadows to attempt to open the city’s gates. If he knew a shadow near the gates, he could transport a small force of Benesh’ere there, and take the defenders by surprise from behind. With the gates open they wouldn’t have to throw themselves against the walls, which would be futile. But he didn’t know any shadows near the gates.

He considered stepping into a shadow he knew in the castle, then working his way from shadow to shadow to the city gates to identify a shadow there. But it had taken him hours to work his way across the city to find Tulellcoe and Cort in the inn, and they couldn’t afford to wait hours. At the moment they had the element of surprise. It hadn’t taken any preparation to send the city guard out to burn the ramshackle market outside the walls. But if he gave Valso enough time to organize sorties, the battle would be in the open fields outside the city. Badly outnumbered, they would lose that fight.

Morgin turned to Mortiss and said, “What do you think, an aerial assault?”

She neighed,
Excellent idea.

••••

NickoLot had begun to wonder at Morgin’s sanity. Several times now she had watched him speak to his horse as if it were human. He frequently asked the animal its advice, though all he ever got from it was a splutter or a neigh. But somehow that seemed to satisfy him, and now he looked up to the sky expectantly.

NickoLot looked up, looked where he was looking, and saw a flight of birds, tiny black specs against the bright blue of the morning sky, probably a murder of crows. They circled, descending slowly, gliding downward on a dry thermal without flapping their wings, just circling and descending and drifting closer. She began to discern shape and detail, and there was something wrong about these crows. Their bodies were distorted and strange, and certainly larger than crows, probably more the size of a vulture or an eagle. Then she noticed that each had a creature riding on its back. She squinted, and realized the birds’ riders were human shaped and human sized. Only when two of the strange birds settled to the ground in front of them, a smaller one carrying a rider and a larger one riderless, did she truly comprehend their size. She gasped and stepped back a pace, for these birds were not birds. Behind her she heard others cry out and utter sounds of amazement.

The animals in front of them were part eagle and part lion, odd misshapen creatures larger than any horse, coal black from head to foot, with blood-red eyes. The larger, riderless one bowed its head to Morgin and said, “Your Majesty.”

As more of the winged eagle-lion animals settled to the ground around them, the rider on the smaller one climbed down from its back and approached Morgin. She was the most beautiful woman Nicki had ever seen, but it was a sterile beauty without the warmth of mortality. She had a broadsword strapped to her side, and she carried a bow and a quiver of arrows. She dropped to one knee in front of Morgin and said, “Your Majesty, I brought all 11 legions.”

He said, “Ellowyn, please rise,” and she stood.

He asked her, “Will WolfDane be joining us?”

“Aye, my lord,” she said. “He has much to settle with the queen of the jackal court.”

Morgin turned to Olivia and BlakeDown, and indicating the beautiful woman he said, “I’d like to introduce the Archangel Ellowyn, commander of the second legion of angels.”

Olivia smiled, while BlakeDown stood dumbfounded, his mouth open like a simpleton.

The larger of the strange eagle-lions laughed and said, “You have changed since we last met, no longer the sad and lonely Benesh’ere warrior.”

“And this,” Morgin said, indicating the enormous half-bird, “is TarnThane, the griffin lord.”

Morgin turned to the smaller of the two griffins, bowed deeply and said, “Your Majesty.”

To BlakeDown and Olivia he said. “This is SheelThane, Queen of the House of the Thane. We met 12 centuries ago, in a dream.”

Nicki was sooo going to have a talk with this brother of hers.

••••

Rhianne regained consciousness laying on the walkway of the parapet. She lay there for a moment, trying to forget the horror she’d seen in Valso’s eyes. The power Valso—or rather his master—commanded was so overwhelmingly immense, she and Morgin had little chance of defeating it. Morgin would die on the battlefield below throwing his army against these walls, and she would die in this city at Valso’s pleasure.

As she struggled to her feet Valso rushed over to her and helped her up. “I’m so sorry, dear Rhianne, but when you taunt me, you must suffer the consequences.”