Part 41 (1/2)

Alouzon planted herself before him. ”How? With thirty people, you want heroics again?” She wondered whether it was the hopelessness of the cause or her fear of the Guardians.h.i.+p that made her argue. If both the Tree and the Circle remained, even though Gryylth were enslaved, her services would not be needed in the future.

The thought was an obscenity, and she thrust it from her.

”Heroics be d.a.m.ned,” said Dythragor. ”I'm done with them. I don't want Mernyl killed.”

Light suddenly flared at the Circle, and they turned to see the Tree once again approaching the rings of stones. Tireas was moving the wagon up, keeping well away from the deadly focal axis of the monument. A group of soldiers dragged a small sledge into position, and Tireas floated the Tree to it.

Alouzon noticed that he showed no signs of the damage she had inflicted on him. His hair was white and flowing, as was his beard, and he moved as though his body had never felt a trace of a wound. The wine in her .

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belly roiled again when she compared him with Mernyl, a thin, wretched figure who used his staff as a prop to keep from falling over.

Tireas waved the soldiers back and picked up the rope that looped through the front of the sledge.

Dythragor worked on his knuckle. ”What the h.e.l.l. . . ? Does he think he's going to budge that thing?''

The sorcerer pulled. The sledge moved.

”d.a.m.n.”

Without visible effort, Tireas dragged the heavily burdened sledge toward one of the gaps in the peristyle. The force field that barred it flared brighter as he drew near, but he calmly raised his hand and allowed power from the Tree to flow into and through him.

The field gave a little. Alouzon understood. Mernyl had been without food since morning, without rest for some days, and he was weak and demoralized. By necessity, his control over the powers of the Circle was slipping, waning, becoming more uncertain with each pa.s.sing hour.

His hand a blue-white torch, Tireas moved a little farther into the gap, drawing the Tree after him. Mernyl was fighting, and had the Tree been at a distance, he might have succeeded in barring the way. But Tireas had brought the heavy artillery to his very doorstep, and at best, Memyl could only delay his entrance.

Dythragor's voice made everyone jump. ”Where's that f.u.c.king Dragon? Silbakor!”

It did not reply. When the phalanxes had overrun the Circle, it had disappeared.

”Silbakor!”

Alouzon grabbed his arm.”Shh! You want to have the whole d.a.m.ned army down on us?''

”What do you want me to do? Call collect?”

”Quiet.” She shut her eyes, framed the thought. Silbakor! I call you!

I come. Alouzon heard the reply in her head. It held, she thought, a shade of reluctance, but the Dragon appeared, gliding silently and almost invisibly over the hills.

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When it settled into the hollow, Dythragor stood before it. ”Silbakor, you've got to stop that Tree.”

”I cannot.”

”Memyl is going to get killed.”

”I am powerless. I have told you: I cannot fight the Tree or the Circle. By doing so, I would be attacking the very existence of Gryylth, and that I am sworn against by the same oath by which you have called me.”

Tireas was halfway through the gap by now. Mernyl was battling all the way, but the Tree's progress was inexorable.

Dythragor crouched down by the Dragon's head. ”Silbakor, what's going to happen? Please.”

”I do not prophesy.”

Alouzon was afraid that Dythragor was going to weep. ”And this is what I've brought Gryylth to,” he said. His voice was shaken, bitter. ”Everything I wanted, everything I dreamed of.'' He stood up and looked out toward the Circle. Tireas was through the gap, moving easily with the sledge, disappearing among the tall, standing stones. ”I threw it all away. Even ... even the Grail.”

There was a higher hill to the north. Leaving the Dragon, the survivors climbed to its summit so as to see within the Circle.

At its center stood Mernyl, bent and worn, his feet resting on an oblong slab of white stone. About him was a tightly knit hemisphere of force that shone like a small star. Tireas made his way slowly toward him, and, working his way carefully around the stones, positioned himself directly behind Mernyi.

His strategy was obvious: not only could the Tree now act without risking the focal path of the Circle, it could use that same path to attack.

Wearily, the sorcerer of Gryylth faced about and raised his staff.

The first exchange blurred the entire central region into a haze of light. Outlines became indistinct and details were lost as power was flung and parried, caught and redirected. Ringed by the might of the Circle, though, the pyrotechnics were oddly quiet: only a faint rumble reached the Gryylthans.

Dythragor was muttering. ”He's doing it ... he's d.a.m.ned well doing it.”

The battle went back and forth, the energies thickening the atmosphere within the peristyle into a pale, luminous soup. Standing waves of opacity and radiance formed nodes and peaks of brilliance. Silent blasts ricocheted off monoliths like billiard b.a.l.l.s, but Mernyl did not budge. He was feeding at the center of the world now, and Circle and Tree were evenly matched.

An hour crawled by, two hours, but there seemed to be little change in the situation. When, at last, the exchanges dwindled in intensity, slowed, and finally stopped, the haze cleared to show the two men still facing one another, unharmed, power crackling about them.

”Right on, Mernyl.” Alouzon found that she was gripping someone's hand tightly and discovered that it was Dythragor's. He met her eyes and looked away as quickly as she.

After some minutes, Tireas raised his hands, and Mernyl readied himself for a renewed a.s.sault. But, instead of a starburst of energy, there came a sudden, audible grinding of stone, that, though centered in the Circle, seemed to reach out to the distant horizon. The ground trembled and bucked, the monoliths shuddered, and Mernyl was almost knocked off his feet.

Now, instead of a surface battle of coruscating energies, the sorcerers were virtually struggling over the ground on which they stood. Mernyl was no longer fighting for his life: he was fighting for the Circle, for his source of power. The trilithons about him rocked, and the bluestones vibrated with the intensity of the energies that Tireas unleashed.

The Circle could not last. Alouzon saw the monoliths loosening. Tireas had merely to continue his efforts, and it would eventually fall.

Dythragor shook himself into action. ”We've got to move. We've got to get that Tree. If the Circle goes, I'm 364.

willing to bet that every bit of constancy in Gryylth goes with it.” She was still holding his hand. ”Something else goes, too.”

”Don't remind me.”

”And you're a.s.suming something that . . . maybe you shouldn't.”

He dropped her hand, shook a finger in her face. ”I know d.a.m.ned well what I'm a.s.suming, girl. And maybe you'd better start a.s.suming it too.”

”And how the h.e.l.l do you think you're going to get the Tree, anyway?” she countered. ”Mernyl can't do it, and he's got the Circle backing him. Weapons won't work. You might do something if you threw a monolith at it-” She started, looked down at the right upright of the trilithon directly behind Tireas, ”Jesus . . . that thing's buried less than a yard in the ground.”

”The trilithon?”