The Gods Return (8 page)

A city elder turned to a soldier with a bow. When he moved, his gold chains clanked. "Shoot him!" he ordered imperiously.

"I'd waste an arrow from here," the soldier said. He was frowning toward the pirates instead of meeting the eyes of the elder.

"I'm ordering you to shoot, Sister take you!" the elder shouted. "I want him to stop what he's doing!"

"I got twelve arrows," the soldier said. "I'm going to keep them for better targets than that. It's our asses too, remember."

Another soldier turned and said loudly, "If you want to cashier us now because we don't jump through silly hoops for you, Master Comian, you do that and we'll be out the back gate before you finish the words. Otherwise, pipe down and let us get on with the business of keeping these pirates on the other side of the walls."

The pirate chief was talking, or anyway his lips were moving. He wasn't shouting to the city, though. It didn't seem to Cashel that the fellow was talking loud enough that anybody at all could hear him. His men gave him a wide berth; maybe they had more confidence in the defenders' archery than the soldiers themselves did.

"There!" said Rasile. Disconcertingly, she balanced on her right foot and scratched herself in the middle of the back with her left; she'd become a great deal more limber than she'd been when Sharina first brought her to her first council meeting. "
That
must be why I was drawn here."

"That" was the shimmer of light beside the pirate chief. It reminded Cashel of the way the sun glanced off the face of an iceberg, bright and cold and as thin as the surface of a mirror.

A curved hugeness the color of layered shale squirmed out of the air. "A Worm," Rasile said. Her nose wrinkled. "Perhaps
the
Worm which devoured all its siblings after they had scoured clean their world."

Sometimes Cashel could see beyond the creature to a waste of shingle and sluggish gray water. Violet cracklings in that background suggested momentary shapes, but they were the shapes of nightmare. The Worm shifted forward.

Cashel pursed his lips. He had trouble at first figuring how big the creature was; it was out of scale with everything. Its gray body was banded the way an earthworm is, but the mouth was nothing like. It didn't squirm like a snake. The front of the body stretched forward, stopped, and then the back hitched up to join it.

The creature loomed higher in the air than Cashel could've reached with his staff from where he stood on top of the gatehouse. He couldn't guess how long it was; the second time it hunched forward brought its head to spitting distance of the wall, but the body still trailed back to the window in the air beside where the pirate chief was standing.

Cashel stepped in front of the wizard by reflex: there was danger, so he put himself between it and who he was looking out for. Normally he'd have started his quarterstaff spinning but there was too many people around, he didn't have
space
. He said, "Rasile, ought we to—"

Rasile squalled something, a word rather than a full incantation. It was enough to shift her and Cashel up to the height of a tall tree in a dazzle of scarlet wizardlight. Most of the civilians were scattering from the walls and the gatehouse in front of the creature, but the soldiers didn't run and the city elders didn't either.

The fellow in the too-small breastplate drew a sword from which rust had recently been polished. He screamed, "Shoot it! Shoot it!" to the soldiers. That wasn't very useful, Cashel guessed, but neither would anything else have been.

The archers were already shooting as fast as they could. The arrows were too small to do real harm to something the size of the Worm, and they sparkled off the sides anyway. The creature might've been a gray granite tower sliding toward Ombis on its side.

Was it really alive? It moved, but so would a flow of lava
.

The Worm's mouth opened in a circle rimmed with teeth all around. The man in the undersized breastplate slashed toward it, though the tip of his sword passed through empty air. Cashel wondered if the fellow had his eyes closed.

Black smoke belched from the Worm's throat, coating men and stones alike. The elder's flesh shriveled and he dropped his sword. The silvered quillons had turned black and the blade glowed cherry red.

The Worm extended a long, ivory tusk and shoved forward the way water fills a millrace. The gatehouse burst inward. The jaws folded closed, swallowing masonry and the doors of iron-bound oak alike. Powdered rock puffed skyward.

The citizens of Ombis ran in shrieking terror, all but a few who stood transfixed on the battlements. The Worm hunched again, but this time its foreparts lifted high enough that Cashel brought his staff into a posture of defense again. The creature twisted and slammed down, flattening a section of the wall.

The Worm writhed sideways, grinding a swath of buildings into dust and splinters. Cashel thought he heard screams, but his mind might've been inventing them. People had run into those doorways when the Worm lurched toward the walls, some of them women clutching infants, but he doubted he could really hear their despair over the crashing ruin of the houses where they'd tried to shelter.

The Worm gathered itself to drive deeper into the city. Ombis had no citadel; it had trusted to the strength of its outer walls. Because the city was built up to three and four stories rather than sprawling, the circuit was modest in comparison with the population available to defend it. All order and discipline had vanished when the Worm engulfed the gateway, and with them was gone any hope of defense.

The pirate chief lowered the object in his hand; he shouted something also. Cashel couldn't hear sound, let alone the word itself, over the ripping destruction.

The creature's massive curves froze. Purple radiance gathered over its body, covering it the way fungus might cocoon a dead caterpillar. The Worm twitched once more and, twitching, vanished.

Only rubble remained of half a furlong of the walls, and not much of that. The creature's weight and iron-hard hide had crushed to powder ashlars which would've resisted battering rams for a week.

Shrieking in savage triumph, the pirates swept toward the breach in the walls. The Worm's progress had plowed a trench in the soil. Looking down, Cashel saw that the city walls had extended some distance beneath the surface, but the massive foundation courses had gone down the creature's maw as surely as the lighter masonry of the visible portion.

A soldier lay in the street where the Worm's impact had flung him. He'd been killed by the black smoke; his clothes were rotting and his upturned face had been eaten away to the bone.

Female pirates were entering with the men. A bare-breasted redhead knelt to lift the hand of a citizen whose lower legs had been trapped by the collapse of a building. For a moment Cashel thought she was helping the fellow; then light flashed on her knife as she cut off his fingers to get the rings.

Instead of rushing into the city immediately, the pirate chief stood with his head bowed, then put his talisman away in a silk neck pouch. Finally he drew his swords and went through the breach. Even now he was sauntering instead of running.

Cashel looked at Rasile. He didn't say anything. The wizard yowled a phrase and swept her right hand like she was wiping something out of the air. She and Cashel were back in brilliant sunlight on top of the watchtower in Pandah.

The yarrow stalks were scattered where Rasile's gesture had flung them. The catwoman sprawled on the flagstones. She'd been keenly alert while they stood where she'd transported them, but now her body demanded to be paid for that effort.

Cashel didn't have a pillow or a rolled cloak to put down, so he cradled her head with his left hand. She shuddered, then opened her eyes and looked at him. She didn't try to get up yet.

"I've seen that sort of thing happen to cities before," Cashel said. "I'll watch it again if I have to, but
only
if I have to. And I figured we'd pretty much seen all we needed to see this time."

"Yes, we've seen enough," Rasile said, rubbing her ear against Cashel's palm. "We've seen things I never imagined to see, though he seems to have the Worm under control. He's not a wizard, you know, but he has a wizard aiding him. A wizard or worse."

"Master Cashel?" called an unfamiliar voice from the stairwell. Cashel hadn't barred the trap door giving onto the parapet, but the person speaking from the stairs didn't presume to lift the panel. "Prince Garric sends you his compliments and hopes you and Lady Rasile can join him for a council meeting at your earliest convenience."

Rasile gathered her limbs under her with a smooth motion, but she didn't try to stand. Cashel glanced at her, then shifted to open the door with the left hand which the wizard no longer needed. The quarterstaff was in his right, and he wasn't in any mood to put it down after the scene he'd just watched.

"We'll come as quick as we can," he said to the messenger.

"Cashel, I will not be able to walk for a time, I'm afraid," Rasile said; she gave a little growl of frustration deep in her throat. She still hadn't tried to get up.

"Shall I call for a carriage, master?" the messenger said. He was one of the fellows Liane kept around her, not exactly palace staff.

"It wouldn't do any good, but thanks," Cashel said. "Horses don't, ah, like the smell of catmen. I'll carry her myself when she's ready to go."

Rasile started to rise. Cashel had been squatting. He set his left arm under her thighs and scooped her up instead of simply helping her.

"Can you do that, master?" the messenger said. "It's a mile to the palace, you know."

"It's no trouble," said Cashel, grinning in a mixture of confidence and quiet pride.

It wouldn't be hard at all. The Coerli were lighter built than people, and Rasile was frail even of her own kind.

Besides, it made him feel good. Cashel or-Kenset didn't have any proper place in the council of smart, educated people, but he could look out for things. Since there weren't any sheep around, he'd look out for a Corl wizard.

* * *

Sharina heard a clash of hobnails. The guards lounging outside the door to Tenoctris' burrow were bringing themselves upright to receive visitors. She was already turning when Captain Ascor called, "All right, Colemno, what's your hurry this time? The princess or Lady Tenoctris?"

Blood Eagle officers were generally recruited from the minor nobility, so they were capable of ceremonial formality when they thought it was necessary. On the other hand, even the officers—the enlisted men entered the regiment solely because of proven skill and courage in battle. They were
not
going to use proper forms of address—were likely to be informal on most occasions. Ascor obviously knew the courier.

"Both, Ascor," Colemno said. Sharina, stepping out the door, recognized the fellow as a member of Liane's staff. Seeing her, he bowed and continued, "Your highness, Prince Garric has requested that you and Lady Tenoctris—"

Sharina felt the wizard beside her now in the doorway.

"—join him in his suite for an emergency council meeting."

"What's the emergency, Master Colemno?" Tenoctris said. She wasn't unpleasant about it, but she didn't sugar-coat the demand with flourishes like "if you please" or "if I may ask."

The courier glanced at Ascor and his squad, but that was reflex. Like the Blood Eagles, Liane's entourage took official rules as things you obeyed if they didn't get in the way of doing your job.

"Milady," Colemno said, "all I know is there's something happening in Palomir, the Empire of Palomir. One of the outside men named Aberus came in cut up pretty bad. I don't know what he said, but the prince heard it and didn't waste any time sending us to find you all."

"We're close to the palace here," Tenoctris said, to Sharina but without trying to prevent Colemno and the guards from overhearing. "Let me take a moment to learn more now. I think that'll be more useful than waiting for others to arrive from the ends of the city."

"Yes," Sharina said. She nodded to Colemno and the guards, saying, "We'll be with you shortly," before following Tenoctris into her room.

Sharina shut the door out of courtesy rather than because she was concerned about what the men might see. Wizardry made most people uncomfortable, even men as brave as those in the corridor. It was easier for them to ignore what was going on if a door panel stood between them and the incantations.

A slab of rock leaned against the room's back wall. Until Tenoctris stepped to it, Sharina had assumed it
was
the back wall. She looked carefully, shifting to the side to see the edge, and found that it was patterned chalcedony. The individual layers were hair-fine, and the whole assemblage was no more than an inch thick.

It'd make a very delicate cameo
, Sharina thought,
though what it's doing here
—

"
Torial boichua knophi!
" Tenoctris said and snapped the fingers of her left hand. Her now-youthful face wore a broad smile. Greater power hadn't made Tenoctris boastful or a show-off, but she took obvious delight in now being able to do things which most wizards could not.

Given that greater power hadn't cost Tenoctris the understanding and subtlety of touch that had set her above other wizards in the past, Sharina was delighted as well. The forces of good needed the most powerful allies they could get.