Angus Wells - The God Wars 03 (21 page)

           
Aloud, she ventured, "We've
much to face before then."

           
"You heard Ochen speak -of the
tensai?" Calandryll assumed a reassuring smile, gesturing at the armored
men around the fires. "Likely he is but cautious—we're well enough
protected, I think."

           
And
bandits offer me little harm
, thought Cennaire, affecting a shudder as she
played her part of innocent, favoring him with a nervous look, saying,
"I've encountered such men before, remember."

           
Calandryll, entirely unaware she
lied, smiled gallantly. "No harm shall come you while I live," he
promised. "And all Chazali's warriors stand betwixt you and any tensai so
foolish as to attack us."

           
For all she acted a role, Cennaire
was touched by his chivalry. Surely he was unlike any man she had met before,
and the thought that she might one day betray him was a thing she pushed away,
a thing she realized she preferred not to contemplate. It had been far easier
before she met him, when he had been only a faceless quarry and her purpose
singular.

           
Now her purpose clouded, as if his
presence cast a stone into the clear water of her intentions, and she felt
herself, in a way, lost, desultory as a rudderless vessel blown by contrary winds.
Her only course seemed to be go on, to play her part and wait to see which wind
prevailed. It was not a circumstance she welcomed; it was a measure of her
dissatisfaction that she allowed it to show on her face, scowling at the fire's
merry blaze.

           
Misinterpreting, Calandryll said,
"Surely we're too strong a party bandits will chance attacking. More
likely they'll hide from such as we, and seek easier pickings."

           
"Aye." Swiftly, Cennaire
transformed scowl to smile. "I am well protected, sir," she murmured.
"And fortunate to have encountered so brave an escort."

           
Calandryll felt his cheeks grow warm
at the compliment, trusting that the fire's light should hide his sudden
embarrassment as his tongue tied and foundered for want of some glib response.
Cennaire recognized his confusion—that awkwardness, she thought, rendered him
all the more charming, for it served to emphasize his innocence, his lack of
guile—and she chose to ease him, yawning deliberately, apologizing prettily,
and expressing a desire to sleep.

           
Calandryll agreed readily enough,
watching as she drew an unneeded blanket to her chin, her head resting on her
saddle, and closed her luminous eyes. She was, he thought, without doubt the
loveliest woman he had ever encountered, and possessed of admirable courage. He
cursed himself for his clumsiness, wishing his tongue more subtle, that it
might better express his feelings,- wishing he were able to better define them.
For a while, he continued to watch her, assuming her already sleeping, then himself
stretched out, drawing up his own blanket.

           
SAVE
for the crackling of the fire and the soft sounds of the horses, the night
was still. No nocturnal birds sang, nor insects buzzed; there was no hint of
predators ranging the darkness. The moon lay yet easterly, silvering drifts of
cloud in a sky that spread like a great indigo canopy pricked through with the
glitter of stars. It seemed that whatever magicks Ochen set about the camp
dulled the sensation of watching eyes, for while he still felt a vague discomfort
it was not enough to stave off the demands of weariness: he felt his eyes grow
heavy, closing, slumber's embrace welcome.

           
And then he thought he woke, roused
by some summons now echoed into silence. He looked about, and gasped, though
when he did he heard no sound, but felt terror grip him, for he looked down on
the still and silent form of a fair-haired man he knew to be himself, sleeping
soundly. Cennaire lay beside that shape, Bracht and Katya side by side across
the fire. He saw the sleeping kotu-zen, recognized Ochen and Chazali, the wazir
stirring as if he felt that bodiless observation, the dark shapes of the
guards, the horses. It seemed he rose, spectral, spirit and body separated,
helpless, for though he willed a return to physical form, he continued to
ascend, as if drawn up by some power beyond his understanding or comprehension.
Desperately he struggled, and in his struggling saw—if sight was what he
used—that he was formless, without material shape.

           
Panic threatened. He shouted Bracht's
name, Katya's, Ochen's, but still no sound emerged and none save the wazir
shifted, and that but restlessly, as might a man in dream's grip.

           
This, though, was no dream, and were
it nightmare it was one he knew, instinctively, contained a horrible reality,
drawing the essence of his being out from its fleshly shell. He thought then of
Rhythamun, and had he possessed his body he would have shuddered, but all he
could do was watch the forms of his comrades and allies recede as he rose,
upward like a feather or a drift of smoke borne on the faint wind, toward the
distant stars.

           
In moments they were only blurs,
indistinct about the pinprick glow of the fires, those lost as the wind, or
whatever force carried him, changed his direction, he flotsam on its breath,
drifting northward. Or so it seemed, for he watched pass below the flatlands,
breaking up into the corrugated terrain promised by Ochen. Fires shone there,
distant among wooded hills and watered valleys, and he saw villages, tilled
fields, the shapes of sleeping, pastured animals.

           
He moved faster, gathering speed all
the time, the land below blurring, the stars above seeming to shift in their
courses, trailing light like blown sparks. He saw a great fertile plain
dominated by a massive hold he thought must surely be Pamur- teng, standing
square, a vastly enlarged sister to the keep, all sparkling with the radiance
of myriad lamplit windows, all lost, left behind as he traveled on.

           
More lights then, thousands, far
below, tiny in the distance, and tents, horses, men: he guessed he looked upon
an encamped army. And ahead lay another, greater, fires lit along both banks of
a river that ran red with their light from a vast, moon- silvered lake.
Lake
Galil
! And that hold beside the water, where the
river ran out, must be Anwar- teng.

           
He drew closer, slowing as if
contrary forces tugged in opposed directions, permitting him a clearer view.

           
More than campfires illumined the
night, he saw, for from the great press about the hold, even from the surface
of the lake, where shapes too dark to define floated, there came streamers of
gold and crimson, incandescent, rising in sparkling, fiery arcs to crash
against the walls of Anwar-teng, to descend beyond the ramparts, in explosions
of searing brilliance. Almost, he thought to hear cries in the night, or feel
the emotions of the folk below. It was as though tides battered him. Anger,
fear, outrage, hatred, lust and hunger for what the city meant, what it
represented; no less the determination of those within, solid purpose
underscored with fear of defeat, rapine, and worse.

           
He felt his soul assaulted then,
that terrible out- wash more than he thought he could bear, and struggled, as
dreaming men do, to return himself to the normality of sleep. He could not, but
briefly, like a promise shouted from afar, he glimpsed the sleeping shapes of
Bracht and Katya, saw Cennaire, her hair spread raven-lit about her face, Ochen
starting up from his blanket, pushing silver locks from a face that creased in
a multiplicity of wrinkles, each one a beacon of concern.

           
Then, helpless, he was dragged
onward, over a bleak wasteland of grey and silent stone like a sandless desert,
toward the wall that bulked massy ahead, white-dressed, craggy and sharp as
dragons' teeth. He knew that barrier for the Borrhun-maj, and knew with a
dreadful certainty that some thing beyond it, past its physical limits, within
the occult realm, called him, summoned him. Knew, too, that were his pneuma
drawn there it might never return, that soul and body would be sundered, the
one trapped, the other locked in eternal sleep until it should waste and die.

           
He fought the driving pressure of
the psychic current and it was akin to swimming against a fearful tide. The
night whispered that he should give in, that he could not resist, that he was
weak, too weak to fight a power so much greater than his poor resources, and
though he did his utmost, still it was as if his limbs grew lax, his muscles
ached and screamed for respite, to drift and let the tide carry him, that he could
do no more, only succumb.

           
He saw the mountains come closer, so
high they melded with the sky, the sheen of snow and starlight, moonglow,
become one, as if land and heavens coalesced in occult haar, the world ending,
giving sway to another place. The fulgent misting shimmered, trembling and
glittering with horrid appetite, and he knew in his soul that beyond it lay
that limbo where Tharn resided; and that did he pierce that barrier, he should
be forever lost, the quest damned, the Mad God free to await his resurrection.

           
He weakened, tugged onward, driven,
and it seemed he heard laughter, confident and mocking, horribly triumphant. He
recognized the sound—it was imprinted on his memory. He had heard it before, in
Aldarin, when he and Katya had stood in the private chambers of Varent den Tarl
and seen the contemptuous shape of Rhythamun appear from the discarded talisman
that he, duped and all unwitting, had carried to Tezin-dar that the warlock
might seize the Arcanum. Then—in the lost city and in Aldarin, both—he had felt
a vast and righteous anger, a conviction wordless and beyond doubting that he
had no choice, nor wanted any, save to oppose the chaos the Mad God would wreak
on the world. Now that same anger gave him strength, enough he was able to fight
the awful psychic current sweeping him toward the argen- tal barrier.

           
He fought. In the names of all the
Younger Gods; in the name of humanity itself. And his progress toward the
aethyric haar slowed a little.

           
But not enough. Still he was drawn
and driven, a swimmer caught in the buffeting of occult tides, grown soul-weary
beyond physical comprehension. Had he existed then on the mundane plane, his
limbs should have been leaden, his lungs aching, his eyes red-weary, his
muscles screaming protest and surrender. But he refused that: he fought on.

           
And still was washed ever closer to
the curtain betwixt the worlds of men and dreaming gods. The silver shimmering
pulsed, hungry. The laughter increased: a crescendo of victory. It numbed his
ears, threatened to drain his waning strength.

           
Then faltered.

           
His progress toward the occult
barrier slowed. He hung a moment, suspended; with a tremendous effort turned
the eyes of his pneuma back from the haar, toward the place of men.

           
He saw only the bleak, night-black
steppe of the northernmost reaches of the Jesseryn Plain, no light there save
what the moon and stars cast, lonely.

           
Then, far off, a beacon. A warm,
golden glow like the sun rising through chill mist, calling travelers home,
promising warmth and food, friendship and safety.

           
Like a swimmer treading water, he
fixed his gaze on the light, only dimly aware that the laughter faded, more
intent on summoning the last reserves of his strength to make the final effort,
to go back.

           
Something, someone, called him. Not
in words, but in terms of pure emotion, lending strength to his own outrage,
encouraging his efforts, urging him on. It seemed impossible, hopeless, and a
seductive whisper from beyond the fog, from somewhere else, told him it was so,
that he had best surrender, or be forever lost. That voice hinted at reward, at
pleasures undreamt of; and dreadful punishment did he continue to resist. The
other, the voice of the golden light, cried
Lies,
and
Strength,
and
Courage,
and he struck out, reversing
his direction, moving away from the haar, that, like the laughter, fading
irresolute. Had he looked back then, he would have seen the jagged peaks of the
Borrhun-maj become again no more than mountains, impressive, vast, but only
snow-clad stone now. But he did not look back, too intent on return, feeling
himself drawn by different pressures, benign. The laughter became a memory
tinged with disappointment and frustration, and that lent him resolve as he
felt his passage speeded, his pneuma winging southward again, steady toward the
light of the beacon.

           
He crossed the steppe, saw
Lake
Galil
; felt Anwar-teng beneath him, the hold
seeming to emanate a gust of warm and comforting wind that strengthened his
passing, like a friendly draught filling the sails of a homebound ship.