Part 73 (1/2)
”But I swore to serve you,” he whispers, astonished, because he really never thought that this of all things would happen to him. He never thought that he would be the one to die on the battlefield.
”So you have served me.” The voice of the Lady of Battles, as low and deep as a church bell, rings in his head.” Many serve me by dealing death. The rest serve me by suffering death. This is the heart of war.”
”Adica!” He bolted up, struggling to sit, gaze blurring as the sun glared in his face. Familiar hands pressed him back.
”Hush, my love. Lie down.” Her tears fell on his face.” I feared for you.” She kissed him. For a moment, he saw two of her, his dear Adica sitting next to the Hallowed One in her antlered garb, haughty and aloof as she knelt before him.
Why wasn't the sun rising beyond the stones? He saw it, swollen and hazy, riding low over the indistinct palisade in a blaze of vivid red-gold. Smoke drifted in streamers among the distant trees.
Nauseated, he lay back, and after a moment, beyond the agonized throbbing in his head, he heard the clash of battle.” What happened?”
”You were hit in the head by a stone.”
It was a struggle to-recall what had happened.” They've broken through on the east slope, by the sacred threshold!” He got up to his feet before she could stop him and staggered, catching himself on one of the hounds before he could fall. It was hard to tell which one; he couldn't quite focus.
”Adica?” He turned, and saw her.
She had bound on her gold antlers and bronze waistband, the regalia of a Holy One, a woman of power. He could still hear the battle, but the sun now set in the west.
”How long?” he demanded hoa.r.s.ely. Where once had lain the birch shelter where they had slept, and made love, now lay smoldering coals and white ashes lifting on the dusk breeze.
”All day,” she said.” We've held them off all day.”
At what cost?
He saw, then, that what he had first thought was the setting sun was in truth the village in flames, all of it burning or fallen in. The palisade had been breached in a dozen spots; in some places fire had eaten it away. Bodies filled the ditches, pinned on stakes or simply broken. He could not see what had happened to the villagers, but what remained of the Cursed Ones still fought desperately along the tumulus, trying to break through. Yet as desperately as they fought, the White Deer people fought more desperately still. He caught a glimpse of Sos'ka down by the cleft.-Streaked with blood, she vanished in a hail of spears. The other hound ghosted in just as he sagged forward, and he caught himself on that strong shoulder.
”Are they all dead? Did I lie here all day, while they died?”
Behind him, she spoke.” Beor and the other fighters broke out of the village in the afternoon to try to reach this place. When the attack came, Weiwara led the children and old people into the forest. I made a prayer for them. I burned pine leaves, to grant them invisibility. I hope some made it. It will be safer for them there.”
”Kel? Tosti? Urtan? Beor?”
”I don't know what became of them.” Her tone sounded so distant, too calm, as though Adica had gone and the Hallowed One, a detached, unapproachable woman he didn't really know, had kidnapped her form and now walked the Earth in his beloved Adica's body.
The sun's lower rim touched the horizon.
”Alain.” Her voice, so sweet to his ears.
He turned. She had come forward. They stood alone on the height, with the stones behind her and the fighting raging all around. Every last soul had gone down to try to stem the Cursed Ones, just for this one final hour. That was all she needed now.
Weeping, he caught her by the arm.” Must you do this, Adica? Ai, G.o.d. How can I bear it?”
”Think how many will die if we do not succeed. Think how many have already died, protecting me!” Anger flared at last.” My heart grieves to leave you, Alain. You know how much I do love you. But don't stand in my way. Don't break the love we share by bowing to selfishness. My life does not belong to me but to my people. And it does not belong to you either.”
”You lied to me! You knew all along!”
Blinking back tears, she kissed him.” I couldn't bear to see you unhappy.”
She kissed him again. Hugged him for a long time, arms wrapped tightly around him. And left him, walking proud and tall, her antlers towering above her as though they would touch the heavens. She walked to the calling ground. She set her feet in that chalk circle, with her head raised proudly as the light waned and CHILD or FLAME twilight crept up the eastern sky, although the last purple-rose of sun's glow lingered in the west. The bowl of night began to fill up with darkness. The last glint of the setting sun caught and tangled in her s.h.i.+ning antlers, making her seem no longer human.
She had lied to him all along. But had her lie been any different than the one he had spoken to the dying Lavastine? She had only wanted to spare him pain and fear.
He broke forward to come up behind her.” So be it. Then I'll die with you.” Behind him, Sorrow and Rage whined.
Her back stiffened, tensing as she heard his words. She did not answer, but neither did she tell him to leave. The first star winked alive in the dusk sky, brilliant Somorhas setting in the west, almost drowned in the last glimmer of the sun. With a shuddering breath, she raised her mirror to catch its light. Stars bloomed quickly now, as if in haste, and with her staff she wove them, one by one, into the loom. Through the soles of his feet he heard the keening of the ancient queens and the cries of anguish from the battlefield. Threads of starlight caught in the stones and tangled into a complex pattern made strong by the bright light of Mok s.h.i.+ning on the cusp between Healer and Penitent.
She had other names for the stars.
”Heed me, that which opens in the east.
Heed me, that which closes in the west.”
Did he hear other voices, an echo of her own, singing along the gleaming spell, tangled in the threads of light woven through the stone loom?
”Let the shaman's beacon rise as our weaving rises.
Answer our call, Fat One.”
As she wove, she wept. He saw it, then, the cl.u.s.ter of seven stars he knew as the Crown of Stars but which she called the Shaman's Headdress. As it rose in the east, she caught its light in her mirror. That light tangled around him, and he grew so dizzy that he would have fallen over if the hounds had not shouldered under him to hold him up. Above, stars wheeled slowly, ascending out of the east, climbing, climbing, until he realized that the spell had woven around him as well, that they were caught inside it as time pa.s.sed, as the night wheeled forward from dusk to midnight. The Shaman's Headdress crept up the sky. The battle raged on, torches blazing along the walls, the cries of the wounded m.u.f.fled by the throbbing ache in his temple where a bruise swelled. A child screamed, sobbing frantically.
”Let what we have woven come loose. *
Let each on our place hold the pattern.”
She sang their names, her voice unbearably beautiful as it echoed along the glittering threads of the spell.” Spits-last. Falling-down. Adica. Hehoyanah. Brightness-Hears-Me. Two Fingers. Shuashaana!”
It was midnight. The Dragon rose in the east, and in its wings rose Jedu, the Angel of War, near to the pale rose star of the ancient one, the Red Sage, known as Aturna. The Lady of Plenty, brilliant Mok, set in the west as the Penitent laid down his heavy burden, touching the horizon.
The Crown of Stars reached the zenith, high overhead, crowning the heavens. Below the earth, unseen, the sun reached nadir.
”Let the weaving be complete!” she cried, her voice joined to six others, resounding, triumphant.
Light flashed in her antlers and ripped through her like lightning.
”Adica!” he screamed, leaping forward, but the hounds knocked him flat or maybe it was the ground beneath his feet shaking and shuddering that threw him down before he could reach her. Light exploded before his eyes. A howl of fear rose from the throats of the Cursed Ones. Their attack faltered and they broke, running.
But it was too late.
Magic tore the world asunder.
Earthquakes ripple across the land, but what is seen on the surface is nothing compared to the devastation left in their wake underground. Caverns collapse into rubble. Tunnels slam shut like bellows snapped tight. The magnificent cities of the goblinkin, hidden from human sight and therefore unknown and disregarded, vanish in cave-ins so ma.s.sive that the land above is irrevocably altered. Rivers of molten fire pour in to burn away what survives.
Fire boils up under the sea, was.h.i.+ng a wave of destruction over the vast whorled city beneath the waves, home of the merfolk. Where once they danced and sang to rhythms born out of the tides, corpses bob on the swells and sharks feed. Survivors flee in terror, leaving everything behind, until the earth heaves again like a fish thras.h.i.+ng in its death throes. The sea floor rises. Water pours away into cracks riven in the earth, down and down and down, meeting molten fire and spilling steam hissing and spitting into every crevice until the backwash disgorges steam and sizzling water back into the sea.
The caves in which Horn's people have sheltered flood with steaming water. A storm of earth and debris buries Shu-Sha 's palace. Ma.s.sive waves obliterate a string of peaceful villages along the sh.o.r.es of Falling-down's island. Children scream helplessly for their parents as they flail in the surging water.
White fire spears up into the dragons which, launching into the sky in alarm, have barely gotten into the air above the fjall where Spits-last and his kinsfolk stand in the midst of their stone loom, one old wisewoman by each stone and the crippled sorcerer in the middle. Screaming rage and pain, the dragons plunge, but before they can reach the safety of the earth their hearts burst. Blood and viscera rain down on the humans desperately and uselessly taking shelter against the stones. The hail of scalding blood burns flesh into stone, melding them into one being.
A tsunami of sand buries the oasis where the desert people have camped, trees simply flattened under the blast of the wind. The lion women race ahead of the storm wave but, in the end, they, too, are buried beneath a mountain of sand. Gales scatter the tents of the. Horse people, Winds so strong that what is not flattened outright is flung heavenward and tossed roughly back to earth, so much fragile chaff. All the trees for leagues around Queens' Grave erupt into flame, and White Deer villagers fall, dying, where arrows and war had spared them.