Part 33 (1/2)

A spurt of severed arteries, a gurgle of vocal chords that had lost all connection with the lungs that had given them voice, and Helwych's head dropped to the floor. The eyes .closed. The darkness evaporated.

Seena was curled up on the floor, fetal, sobbing, her hands pressed tightly to her head. ”My children . . . my children ...”

The captain fell to her knees beside her. ”My queen, Alouzon told us what Helwych did. We shall do everything we can. Kyria is a powerful sorceress, and I am sure that-”

But her rea.s.surances were cut short by the detonation of a sh.e.l.l in the street outside the Hall, and the wall nearest the blast buckled inward, showering the interior with thatch and filling the air with the dust of pulverized mud and plaster. Another blast followed quickly after. Splinters and stone fragments spattered down like rain.

Seena writhed free of Relys's arms, picked herself up, and stumbled towards the door that led to the inner corridor. ”Ayya! Vill!”

Beslimed with the sorcerer's blood, Relys struggled to her feet. ”Wykla, Manda: protect the queen,” she shouted, and then she ran for the door of the hall with Gelyya and Timbrin following.

Sh.e.l.ls were falling on Kingsbury, powdering the wood and mud of the refugee hovels. Between the detonations, Relys heard the sounds of grenades and machine guns, saw, inexplicably, tracers directed into the town.

A group of Grayfaces suddenly rounded the corner, gleaming shadows slipping through the darkness. They saw Relys and her companions and leveled their weapons, but when Gelyya let off five rounds in a chattering burst, they ducked for cover.

Calmly, Gelyya slung her rifle, slipped a fragmentation grenade from her belt, pulled the pin. The strength of her arm was no match for that of a man, but she gave the bomb plenty of loft. It plummeted to the ground just behind the soldiers, and as she and her comrades dropped flat, it mingled its detonation with that of a mortar round.

In the darkness, the town was bright with explosions and fire. Mortars were pounding their way along the street, sending houses and shops tumbling to the ground, burying whatever inhabitants-alive or dead- remained within them. A burst from an M60 chain-sawed its way through the wood of the palisade, and now the hounds were coming too, pouring over the street like a river of slime.

And now more Grayfaces. And planes. And artillery. From out of the distance came the sound of the detonation of five hundred and thousand pound bombs as the B52s began a pa.s.s. The earth shuddered. The Grayfaces and hounds closed on the Hall.

But a violet lance darted suddenly up from somewhere just inside the city walls and filled the night sky with the glowing fragments of bombers, and the approaching Grayfaces found themselves being ridden down by the First and Second Wartroops. Marrha's blond braid was as bright as Santhe's curls as, side by side, they led their men and women straight into the gas-masked soldiers, who, taken off guard, had no chance to lift their weapons before the horses' hooves crushed them and the riders' swords found their marks.

Relys was staring at Marrha. Wife and mother she was: she could have stayed away from the battle. But instead, she was here, in the middle of a town that was swiftly being destroyed by explosives and bullets.

Her eyes teared. Marrha. A woman. Maybe- Another wave of bombs began to track in along the distant fields, making its way straight for the hill.

Baying. Howls. Now Kyria was galloping along the street, heading for the Hall, pursued by a pack of hounds. Eyes the color of a gas flame were barely ten yards from her, eager and hungry; but she pulled her horse up short, wheeled, and pointed. The sea of white light that flowed from her hand submerged the hounds and left nothing behind.

The B52s were still coming, the hill shaking with the advancing detonations as though it would split.

”We have taken the walls of the city,” the sorceress gasped. ”But everything has gone mad!”

Marrha turned her gaze on Relys. ”Captain?”

Still dazzled by her former commander, Relys could not, for a moment, find words. ”Helwych is dead,” she said at last, and she remembered to spit after uttering the name.

Kyria sagged at the news. ”Then the Specter is in control now. And the Grayfaces will do as they please. And Alouzon ...”

The bombs were approaching, sweeping towards the town like a wrecking ball. Kyria dismounted and lifted her arms, but Relys sensed that it was going to be useless. This battle would go on and on, increasing in ferocity and bloodshed until there was nothing left.

But, abruptly, there was silence.

The bombs and the bombers vanished. The gunshots faded. The mortars ceased. The Grayfaces and hounds evaporated. In a moment, the only sound was that of the wind blowing through the splintered ruins. The town, the world, the heavens . . . all seemed hushed, as though poised between two futures, two fates. Even the screams of the wounded were no more. But there was no sense of death: only of waiting.

Waiting . . .

Kyria, shaking, slowly bent her knee and bowed her head. ”O most Sacred Cup,” she said softly, ”accept that through the blood of many has the soul of one been purified.”

Dindrane was still losing blood by the dishful, but she pulled Alouzon in the direction of the Tower. ”Come, G.o.ddess. Please ...”

Tearing her eyes away from the sight of the grave that was glowing as if filled to the brim with white hot magma, Alouzon followed her priestess, at first blindly and in shock, then, as her awareness of what was happening increased, willingly. Finally, she ran, leading Dindrane, dragging her along until they reached the far side of the cemetery.

A wrought iron fence again barred the way, but Alouzon did not hesitate, and the Dragonsword cut through the iron bars effortlessly. And although she heard police sirens screaming up the normally tranquil avenues of the cemetery-racing to cut her off-she knew that the Grail would allow no mundane forces to interfere with what lay ahead. If there was to be a final test, it would be through the choice and methods of the Sacred Cup itself.

She clambered through the fence and drew Dindrane after her. The priestess' skin was as white as alabaster from blood loss, but she followed; and together the two women began to struggle up the slope towards the vision of golden radiance that had appeared above them.

Alouzon climbed, breaking a path for Dindrane, but the scrub oak and sage of the California mountains were gone, replaced now by twining thorns that dug into her clothes and flesh, ripping with points as sharp as sorrow, methodically stripping her of everything save the Dragonsword. But she struggled on, and when, naked, bleeding, exhausted, she felt that surely no more could be taken from her, the thorns dug even deeper: into her thoughts, into her memory.

Here was a thicket that took away Joe Epstein. Here a knot that rooted out the other faceless and nameless men who had shared her bed and had gone away with small pieces of her heart and soul. Here was a ravine- steep-sided and wide-filled with twisted branches and long, eager spikes: it grappled with her abortion, her despair, and the empty apartment that had been waiting for her on a rainy afternoon in Dallas.

It had hurt then. It hurt now. But she kept climbing, leaving past pain and old memory hanging in shreds on the reddened thorns.

In spite of her torment, she was mildly surprised that the thorns were not reaching for Kent. But after a time, after the anger had been taken, after the last shreds of resentment had been spitted like a shrike's victim, she realized that those memories of death were, in their own way, empowering her, strengthening her. And so, paradoxically, she struggled to the top of the thorn-studded slope and stood at last at the edge of the wide lawn surrounding the Tower, buoyed and fired by a belief and an urge for creation and re-creation that took for its roots the utter despair and sorrow that was Kent State.

There had been hope once. There would be hope again. She could not resurrect her cla.s.smates or undo the grief, but she could make a world live.

The Tower rose up: white, unblemished. Alouzon's skin was a tapestry of deep red wounds, and her hair was matted with blood and dust. Dindrane, who had been allowed to pa.s.s through the thorns unscathed, stepped up beside her, as pale as the Tower. ”I can heal you, G.o.ddess,” she said softly.

”Nah ...” Alouzon shook her head. ”We don't have the time. Besides ...” She tipped her head back, gazed at the single window of the Tower. ”. . . it's gonna have to take me as I am. None of this s.h.i.+t about white samite robes.”

And, with Dindrane, she stepped onto the lawn.

The sirens and the sounds of the helicopters cut off as though a switch had been thrown. The Dragon and the Worm, still locked in battle that could only lead to mutual negation, vanished. Los Angeles disappeared. The Tower stood on a sunlit hilltop surrounded by mist.

Dindrane was murmuring. ”A time that is not a time, and a place that is not a place ...”

The door to the tower was unfigured. There was nothing left for it to depict. Only a single carved word appeared in the middle of the expanse of dark wood: Listinoise.

Alouzon stared at it for a moment, traced it with her finger. What would this door say for the next Grail-seeker? Los Angeles? Probably.

Without a word, she turned the latch and pushed into the white marble room beyond. The air was filled with a golden glow like a mist, but the floor was stained with blood and with the pa.s.sage of muddy feet; and when she had climbed to the top of the stairs, she found the landing strewn with splintered wood and broken gla.s.s.

And from the door ...

Light. Light so bright, so radiant that it had long since pa.s.sed from the visible to the invisible, a flow of quintessential luminescence that, ephemeral though it was, formed nonetheless a harrowing torrent that flowed through Alouzon and blurred her vision with the pain of imminent fulfillment.

She stood at the threshold. She did not look. It was not time to look yet.

She took off her sword and put it into Dindrane's hands. ”Take it,” she said. ”I'm not going to need it anymore. Take it. It ... it might help you.”

”I shall guard it well, G.o.ddess.”

”I . . .” The Grail was within sight. All she had to do was look, enter, take. But she had responsibilities to those who loved her, to whose whom she, in turn, loved. This was the first. There were many others. And she would fulfill them all. ”I don't know what's gonna happen when I go in there,” she said. ”I don't know what'll happen to you. I . . .”

The door. And then the Grail. And after that her knowledge ended. All knowledge ended. She wanted to say something rea.s.suring, could think of nothing. She did not know. She could not lie.

”I'll try to make sure you get home, Dindrane.”