Angus Wells - The God Wars 03 (49 page)

           
It was a notion dismal as the sullen
sky, and it weighed heavy on Calandryll's mind even as Ochen tutored him
further, his responses abstracted enough the wazir called an early end to the
lesson, sending him thoughtful to his bed.

           
He woke to a world become pristine
under a blanket of snow. It lay thick over the ground, to his knees as he went
shivering out, the tents white hummocks, the black armor of the kotu-zen a
stark contrast; and the fall continued. The wind had died in the night and now
the flakes came vertical from a sky all forbidding grey, silent and thick,
promising to drift, to block the road. He cursed as he saw it, knowing they
must be slowed, that Rhythamun thereby win further advantage.

           
They blew their fire to fresh life
and took a hurried breakfast, tending horses irritable at such discomfort,
likely thinking, did they think at all, that the stables of Pamur-teng offered
warmth and better food than the grain doled out. And then Ochen surprised them.

           
They were mounting as the wazir came
up. "I've spoken with Chazali," he announced, "and we're agreed
we must make all speed to join the army. Therefore, I shall employ my magic to
clear us a path."

           
Cennaire spoke before any other had
chance: "What of Calandryll?" There was urgency in her voice, fear.
"Shall you not endanger him?"

           
"I think not," Ochen
answered her. "Not while we ride with the kotu-zen. Does our enemy
investigate the occult plane, he'll find a party coming from Pamur-teng, aided
by such sorcery as all the wazirs must now surely employ. Horul willing, he'll
look no deeper, but assume us only latecomers. All well, the size of this group
shall camouflage us. Even so." He paused, looking to where Calandryll sat
the chestnut gelding. "Do you employ those protections I've taught
you."

           
Calandryll nodded.

           
"Then we proceed," said
Ochen.

           
He heeled his mount to where Chazali
waited, moving a little way ahead as the kiriwashen formed his men in column of
twos. Then he extended a hand, his painted nails glittering even in that dull
morning, shaping sigils on the air, that redolent of almonds as he murmured his
cantrip. It was a powerful gramarye. The air shimmered, pale light forming an
aura about the slumped shape of the wazir, growing, the nimbus an ethereal,
golden mist that swept abruptly forward as his voice rose to a shout and he
pointed, as might a man send out a questing hound. It seemed then a silent
wind, hot, rushed before them. Snow swirled in whirling white clouds,
dissolving, a path clearing, a tunnel shaping, invisible save as the falling
flakes defined it, denied entrance by the spell. Ochen lowered his hand, urging
his horse forward.

           
They followed the glow, a friendly
will-o'-the- wisp, riding the path it plowed, the exposed ground hard, frozen
grass crackling under the hooves. Calandryll voiced the protective cantrips,
his senses alert to warning of occult attack even as he smiled reassurance at
Cennaire, where she rode beside him, concern writ clear on her lovely face.

           
Within the aegis of the gramarye it
seemed they rode through a spring day, almond-scented, the light that preceded
them leaving warm air behind, even though the snow still fell all about, the
land scape to either side carpeted deep in whiteness, the trail behind rapidly
filling. Chazali brought his mount alongside Ochen's and their pace quickened,
a hard canter once more. Calandryll, closer attuned to the occult by the spell
he wove, again caught the charnel reek that came from the north. He voiced a
second cantrip and the air was cleansed, but still he rode wary, knowing Ochen
gambled, that his soul was the stake, did the gamble fail.

           
By
noon
he felt more comfortable. No attack
materialized, and their speed seemed such that they must soon catch up with the
army.
But then,
he thought,
after—what thenl We five ride on alone, and
does the snow continue this gramarye becomes as much hazard as help.
He
pushed the thought away: let tomorrow take care of itself. Only let us halt
Rhythamun. Only let us wrest the Arcanum from him.

           
For two more days they followed the
light of Ochen's magic without attack or hindrance, and then, as if conceding
the struggle, the snowfall abated. The sky cleared, the miserable grey replaced
with a hard, steely blue. The sun shone silvery gold, offering no warmth, and
the wind got up again, a wolf wind that howled out of the north, knife sharp,
raising drifting clouds of icy particles from the deep-drifted snow. It was a
relief to all their spirits, to see the sun, to see clear again, but still the
wazir must maintain his gramarye, for the land was laden heavy from the storm,
and save he clear their way, they must flounder through chest-deep banks.

           
THEY found the army where the land
lay flat, a ridge line of low hills far off to the west, beyond them, Ochen
said, Bachan-teng. Ahead, the ground was trampled in a vast swath, a great roadway
chopped through the white blanket by magic and men, more men than Calandryll
had ever seen gathered in one place. They spread across the flat in a line of
darkness that reminded him of his first sight of the Cuan na'Dru, stretching
out to east and west almost farther than his eyes could see. Before them went a
sweeping cloud of golden light that shimmered brilliant in the afternoon sun,
snow shifted from the horde's passage as if by some inconceivable shovel. The
icy air was sweet with the perfume of almonds, so strong it almost overcame the
odors of horse droppings and metal, oil and wood, canvas and men's sweat; all
the myriad, mingled smells of an army on the march.

           
Cavalry—at least a thousand men, he
thought— formed the rearguard, more flanking the baggage train and the plodding
infantry. The vanguard stretched beyond sight, led, he assumed, by the
assembled wazirs, whose magic cleared the way. The sheer enormity of the
Makusen forces was imposing; the thought that this was but one army, from a single
teng, that it joined with another of similar size, that the rebels must field
equal numbers, was more than his mind could hold. It seemed as if half the
world must march to this war.

           
As if his thoughts were read, he
heard Ochen say, "Tharn must delight in the prospect of so much
bloodshed."

           
He answered softly, awed by the
incredible prospect spread before him, "Aye."

           
There was no need now for the wazir
to maintain his own gramarye: the massed sorcerers heading the army had cleared
the way well enough, and Chazali heeled his mount to a gallop over the churned
ground, hailing the riders who spun to meet him, they answering with shouts of
welcome.

           
His men, Ochen, and the questers
galloped after the kiriwashen, an escort forming about them, speeding them past
the long line of marching soldiers to where the commanders rode behind the van
of wazirs. Calandryll wondered if Rhythamun watched them go past, looking out
from the eyes of Jabu Orati Makusen.

           
There were fifteen kiriwashen,
Chazali the sixteenth, each representing a family lieged to the Makusen. Each
commanded a thousand kotu-zen— more kotu-anj and kotu-ji—all the clan warriors,
save those few left behind on the march. The din was tremendous, a cacophony of
hooves and thudding feet, creaking wagons, snickering horses, the braying of
mules, the clatter of weapons and armor, the voices of the men. Chazali must
raise his voice to a near shout to be heard as he introduced the questers and
advised his fellow kiriwashen of all that had transpired. He offered a succinct
report, the details left for later, when the army should make camp, and as he
spoke Calandryll was aware of the eyes that studied him and his comrades,
speculative, from behind the concealing veils.

           
In turn the commanders told of their
progress, unopposed as yet, while of the armies advancing from Zaq-teng and
Fechin-teng there was little news: those insurgents already stationed outside
the walls of Anwar-teng maintained the siege, awaiting the arrival of the main
forces, content until then to hold the citadel isolated. And that condition
extending beyond the physical, they said, for there was such a clouding of the
aethyr now that contact with the wazir-narimasu, or occult observation of the
rebels, was become impossible.

           
It seemed to Calandryll that to
locate Rhythamun's stolen form in so vast a horde was no less impossible. Had
the warlock elected to join the army he likely knew by now the questers had
caught up, and would therefore take measures to conceal himself, either by once
more shifting his shape, or by slipping away. Both seemed possible, even easy,
among so many men. More likely, Calandryll thought, he had gone by the army,
eschewing its slow progress to ride solitary to . . . Anwar-teng? Or farther,
to the Borrhun-maj? Did he attempt the former, then the questers must make all
haste to the citadel, hoping to overtake their enemy. Did he choose the latter,
then it still appeared their most favorable course remained the ride to
Anwar-teng. There, did they succeed in overtaking Rhythamun, they might find
the powers of the wazir-narimasu at their beck, and prepare a fitting welcome.
Did he attempt the Borrhun-maj, then they could go through the gate and set an
ambush in the world beyond. That they should come upon him along the way, and
defeat him there, Calandryll could not believe: they had dogged Rhythamun's
footsteps for too long that he might hope for so simple a solution.

           
He waxed impatient as the Makusen
horde continued its inexorable march, the kiriwashen unwilling to halt while
the day still granted sufficient light they might draw closer to their
destination.

           
He must wait, however, until the wan
sun descended behind the western ridge and shadows lengthened across the
snowfields. And then wait longer as the great mass of men and animals
bivouacked for the night. Only then, when tents and pavilions had been set up,
guards posted, fodder doled out, and fires been lit, did the commanders and the
sorcerers agree to hear in full council what Chazali and Ochen, the questers,
had to tell them.

           
They gathered in a pavilion that
might have housed a family, the wind setting the Makusen standards to crackling
overhead, the symbols of the clan emblazoned on walls and awning. Inside,
braziers were the sole source of light, the wood they burned aromatic. The
canvas of the floor was spread with carpets, and kotu-ji erected a long table
flanked by faldstools. Food and wine were served and the kotu-ji departed.
Aijan Makusen, supreme commander of Pamur-teng, sat erect at the table's head.
He was old, for all he sat stiff-backed, stern, and soldierly, his ringleted
hair white, his beard the same. He it was led the premier clan, to which all
others swore fealty, and it seemed to Calandryll he radiated a palpable sense
of authority. Chazali and Ochen sat with the questers at the table's foot, not
speaking until Aijan Makusen gestured his permission.

           
Kiriwashen and wazir introduced the
outlanders then, fleshing Chazali's earlier brief report with detail.
Calandryll, elected to speak on behalf of his comrades, was invited to describe
their quest to the crossing of the Kess Imbrun. When he was done and sipping
wine to assuage a mouth gone dry with the telling, tawny eyes studied him in
silence, that finally broken by a wazir he dimly recalled was named Chendi.

           
"This is a frightening tale you
bring us," Chendi declared, ' and did Ochen Tajen and Chazali Nakoti not
speak on your behalf I'd find it hard of believing. But ..."

           
He paused, slanted eyes pensive, a
hand stroking at the oiled beard he wore. Another—Dakkan, Calandryll thought
was his name—spoke into the gap: "But do we not all feel what stirs now,
fouling the aethyr? Is our aim not the securing of Anwar- teng against the Mad
God, in equal measure to the rescue of Khan and Mahzlen?"

           
Aye, so it is," said one named
Tazen. "And what Ochen saw we all have seen, in greater or lesser measure,
and this war, the clouding of the aethyr, all the signs indicate they speak the
truth."

           
"You'd have us examine every
kotu-anj of the Orati?" asked a wazir whose name Calandryll had forgotten.
"That should take two days or more."

           
"As long—or longer—to allow
this woman," a kiriwashen named Tajur grunted, eyes skeptical as they
rested on Cennaire, "to study their faces."

           
"And that with no surety of
success," said a wazir, "for be this Rhythamun what these outlanders
claim, he might well assume another's body while we search."

           
"Which should mean we must
examine every warrior in our companies," said another.