Part 46 (2/2)

I'm dead.

Then he remembered Esmenet. How could he forget? He looked to the ruined mausoleum, took fright that it lay so near. Then he saw her, her face small and boylike, peering through the shadowy recesses of the sumac that thronged about the foundation. She had seen it all, he realized ...

It shamed him for some reason.

”Esmi, no!” he cried, but it was too late. She had already leapt the foundations, had already started sprinting toward him across the browned and blackened turf.

He saw it twinkle twinkle first-a flash in his periphery. Then the Mark, gouged nauseatingly deep. first-a flash in his periphery. Then the Mark, gouged nauseatingly deep.

He looked up ...

”Nooo!” he howled. Gla.s.s cracked beneath his feet. he howled. Gla.s.s cracked beneath his feet.

Long-winged, black scales about molten limbs, scimitar talons, an eye-encircled maw ...

A Ciphrang, called from the h.e.l.lish bowels of the Outside. A sulphurous G.o.dling.

A gust swept up her skirts, knocked her to her knees. Esmenet turned her face skyward ...

A demon descending.

Iyokus ...

Proyas found himself on the roof of an ancient fullery-the only structure overlooking the Juterum's westward approaches that wasn't aflame. Though sunlight ringed the distances, all was smoke and twilight. If he looked at the sky overlong, he could feel himself spin, so he concentrated on the clay tiles beneath his feet. He scrambled across the shallow pitch, stumbled once, kicking free sheaves of rotted tile. He lowered himself onto his stomach, crawled out onto a south-facing pediment.

Gazed across s.h.i.+meh.

Streamers and veils of smoke lent the sky the perspective of city streets, making it easy to judge the relative distance of the hanging sorcerers and their warring lights. Below, all was black ruin and smouldering fire. Free-standing walls, as ragged as ripped parchment. Guttered foundations. The wounded crying out, waving pale hands. The charcoal dead.

Untouched on the heights, the First Temple observed with monumental repose.

There was a stupendous crack, and Proyas fairly toppled from his perch. He hugged the roof to the point of breathlessness, blinked the dazzle from his eyes.

Almost immediately below him he saw two crimson-robed Schoolmen, one old and decrepit, surrounded by headless pillars in the gallery of a destroyed temple, the other middle-aged and corpulent, balanced upon a crest of tossed debris. Their Wards shone, like silver in moonlight, or steel in dark alleys. Mouths flaring, they sang, and fires whooshed and thundered. Some fifty paces out, the ground exploded as if hammered by a rod the size of a great netia pine. Showers of smoking gravel rained across the wreckage.

Somehow, impossibly, a figure cloaked in saffron floated through it. Blue incandescence surged from his forehead, plummeted over over the ground, sweeping away pillars like sticks, breaking across the Wards of the old Scarlet Schoolman. Proyas threw a forearm across his eyes, so bright was the contact. the ground, sweeping away pillars like sticks, breaking across the Wards of the old Scarlet Schoolman. Proyas threw a forearm across his eyes, so bright was the contact.

The Cishaurim climbed skyward until he hung level with Proyas, flew out and around, all the while a.s.sailing the old sorcerer with gouts of blue-flas.h.i.+ng energy. Black clouds had boiled into being in the air behind him, discharging lines of lightning like cracks in gla.s.s, but the Cishaurim ignored them, intent on overcoming the Scarlet Schoolman below. The air hummed with cras.h.i.+ng reverberations, the clacking of mountain-sized stones. Against this tumult the screams of men could be no more than the chirps of infant mice. Or nothing at all.

Trailing thunder. Fading light. The hanging figure had relented, turning both face and serpents to the other madly singing Schoolman. His robes boiled a s.h.i.+mmering ochre in the wind. His asps fanned like iron hooks from about his neck.

Proyas didn't have to look to know the old sorcerer was dead, or that the other soon would be. He found himself standing windswept on the pediment, perched on the very ledge, ruined streets and blasphemous fire careering across the distances before him.

”Sweet G.o.d of G.o.ds!” he cried to the acrid wind. With bare hands he tore the Chorae from the chain about his neck.

”Who walk among us ...” He drew back his sword-weary arm, secured his footing.

”Innumerable are your holy names ...” And he cast his Tear of G.o.d, a gift from his mother on his seventh birthday.

It seemed to vanish against the iron horizon ...

Then a flash, a black-ringed circle of light, from which the saffron figure plummeted like a sodden flag.

Proyas fell to his knees on the brink, leaned out over the fall. His holy city gaped before him. And he wept, though he knew not why.

Again and again the thanes and knights of Ce Tydonn charged, but they could not staunch the breach. Soon they were engulfed in howling desert hors.e.m.e.n, beset on all sides. In an endless stream, silk-garbed Kianene galloped beneath the arches and into view of the Inrithi encampment. Hundreds of them climbed the teetering pilings, gained the summit of the aqueduct, where pitched battles were waged beneath the withering fire of the heathen horse-archers. Others charged the length of the stonework, into Earl Damergal and his hard-pressed Cuarwethi trying to roll back the flanks of the breach. Still others beat their horses toward the stunned crowds of onlookers about the rim of the encampment.

A shout was raised among the Nangaels, where a spear took down King Pilaskanda, and set his Girgas.h.i.+ reeling back in disorder. The mastodons panicked in the withdrawal, began stomping through their own lines. The Ainoni cheered Palatine Uranyanka, who rode along their lines holding high the severed head of Cinganjehoi, who had been trapped behind the Moserothi after being driven back by Lord Soter and his Kishyati.

But the doom of the Inrithi rode with Fanayal ab Kascamandri, who led his s.h.i.+mmering Grandees far behind the lines of the idolaters. To the north and the south, cohorts of Kianene spread across the Shairizor Plain, shrugging past clots of battling knights and hooking back to the east, to charge into the far side of the ancient aqueduct. Earl Damergal was killed by a block thrown from the arches above. Earl Iyengar found himself stranded with his household to the rear of his Nangaels. Howling oaths, he watched his kinsmen broken into warring clots. A Mongilean Grandee silenced him with an arrow through the throat. Death came swirling down.

The Fanim wept with fury, with outrage, as they cut down the Inrithi invaders. They cried out glory to Fane and the Solitary G.o.d, even as they wondered that the Men of the Tusk did not flee.

Think-think-must-think!

An Odaini Concussion Cant, knocking her clear of the thing's monstrous descent, back toward the mausoleum.

It landed hard and leaden, as though it had been wrought of twisted anchors, yet it moved as if its limbs floated in some unseen ether. The thing turned to him, hunched and slavering.

”The Voice,” it wheezed, taking one dread step forward. All life crumbled to tan dust about it. it wheezed, taking one dread step forward. All life crumbled to tan dust about it.

”It says, an eye for an eye.”

Waves of heat rolled outward, as dry as bone become ash.

”Then the hurting ends ...”

And Achamian knew this was no common demon. Its Mark was like light, concentrated to the point where the parchment of the world blackened, curled, and burned. The Daimos ...

What had Iyokus loosed?

”Esmi!” he cried. ”Flee! Please! I beg you! Flee! Flee!”

The thing leapt toward him.

Achamian began singing-the deepest of the Cirroi Looms. Glorious Abstractions knitted the air about and before him, a thresher of light. The demon laughed and screamed.

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