The Shadow Isle (35 page)

“Ye gods, Lord Gerran,” Voran said, smiling, “don’t you ever sleep?”

“Oh, now and then, Your Highness. Did somewhat wake you?”

“Just my thoughts.” With a sigh Voran turned and leaned back against a merlon. “You know, Gerran, you strike me as a man who doesn’t repeat what other men tell him.”

“I do my best not to, Your Highness.”

“Do you know why I was appointed justiciar?”

“Most likely because you were the best man for the honor.”

“My thanks, not that I’d call it an honor. I suppose the king knew that I could do whatever the post demands. But in truth, it’s a sort of exile, not that anyone ever mentioned that word.”

“What?” Gerran was startled enough to forget the courtesies of rank. “I can’t imagine you doing some shameful thing.”

“My thanks again. I certainly did naught that shames me in my own eyes. Perhaps the opposite.” Voran rubbed his chin with one hand while he considered the problem. “I apparently made a great many enemies at court, and here I didn’t even realize it, just by refusing to ignore certain things and by speaking openly of other things. Every granary has its rats, as the old saying has it. The granaries in Dun Deverry are huge, and rats abound.”

“Rats of the same kind as Lord Oth?”

“Indeed, though they’d scorn a prize as small as a handful of coins from a woman’s dowry. There are mice as well, the kind that wait under the table in the hopes of falling scraps. They don’t have the guts to leap up and steal. They just flatter and beg instead.”

“Ye gods!” Gerran struggled to find words. “He sent you away to please a pack of courtiers? That’s vile.”

“I had a few thoughts that way myself. The kingdom’s changing. In my better moments it gladdens my heart that I’m out of Dun Deverry.” Voran glanced up at the sky. “Dawn’s here. I’d best go down.”

With a nod the prince began making his careful way along the catwalks. Gerran watched him as he climbed down the ladder to the ward.
Sent away by the high king!
Gerran thought,
I’m cursed glad now I swore to Prince Dar
. In the rising light Voran strode around the side of the temple, calling to his men to wake. Gerran lingered till the sun had come clear of the horizon, then went down to join his own squad.

Even with the priests buried, the smell of their evil deaths seemed to hang in the air inside the walls. As the morning wore on, the men spoke but little. Vantalaber and his archers, joined by Deverry men, kept a constant watch from the top of the walls. Near noon they finally spotted a cloud of dust coming down the road toward the temple.

“Coming from the south,” Vantalaber reported. “It’s too soon for anyone to reach us from Cengarn, Your Highness, so the cursed Horsekin must have circled round for some reason.”

“Unless it’s a second group of raiders entirely,” Voran said. “Gerran, have your men and Mirryn’s arm and man the walls. I doubt if these bastards have scaling ladders, but you never know, and we’d best be ready to push them back if they do. Caenvyr, put ten of our best right behind those wagons to guard the gates. Ridvar’s men should wait mounted just behind them.”

Gerran followed orders and for good measure told Mirryn to have his men saddle and ready their horses, just in case of a sally. He rejoined the Westfolk archers on the walls. In the hot sun the men stood between the merlons to catch what shade there was. Gerran arranged his small force with the archers closest to the gates. All the while, the plume of dust grew closer and closer. Vantalaber suddenly broke out laughing, and in a few moments the other archers joined him.

“The rose, the rose!” Van called out. “It’s Prince Dar’s banner, and I see Cengarn’s sun right behind ours.”

“It might be a trick,” Gerran snapped.

“Don’t be a dolt,” Van said, grinning. “I can tell Westfolk from Horsekin.”

As the dust resolved itself into men and horses, Gerran’s human sight confirmed what the elven eyes had seen: Prince Daralanteriel himself, riding with Ridvar and Calonderiel. When the news spread through the compound, the men cheered in a long wave of sound that lapped at the walls and rose above them to greet the relieving force.

As the reinforcements rode up the hill, Voran, with his mounted escort behind him, rode down to meet them. Gerran mounted up and followed until he saw Salamander turning his horse out of line. Gerran waited until the gerthddyn rode up to him.

“How by all the hells did you get here so quickly?” Gerran said. “The messengers can’t have reached Cengarn till sunset.”

“We left yesterday and met them on the road, that’s how,” Salamander said. “Thanks to the ghastly tedium of sitting around and watching over a fractious Neb, I scried for you at regular intervals. Thus I saw the battle.”

“I’m cursed glad you did. Do you know where the Horsekin are now?”

“I do, and it’s not good news. They’re north of here, besieging Honelg’s dun.” Salamander cocked his head to one side and looked away with curiously unfocused eyes. “Aha!” he said eventually. “Allow me to amend that. Only half of them are besieging the dun. The others are on their way here. Let me just go tell Dar. I suspect that you’d best get your men ready to ride.”

“They already are. And a blasted good thing, too.”

As soon as Salamander told the princes and the gwerbret what he’d seen, they gave their men orders to arm and draw up in battle order at the foot of the temple hill. Salamander left the military matters to those who understood them and rode into the temple compound. As he dismounted, Clae came running to meet him.

“Will you stable my horse for me?” Salamander said.

“Gladly,” Clae said. “But I need your help. Lord Gerran’s hurt, but he’s going to try to fight anyway. He can barely lift his shield ’cause he got hit on the shoulder yesterday. Can you make him keep away from the battle?”

“I can’t, not being one of the gods, but fortunately, we’ve got someone who’s almost as good as a god. Here, I’ll take care of my own horse. You run and find Prince Dar. Tell him that I sent you, then tattle upon our noble lord. I’ll take whatever blame may be. You’ve got time before the Horsekin get here.”

Clae grinned and bowed to him, then ran off through the gates and out. Salamander led his horse free of the confusion and tied him in the shade near the stables. In his scrying of the day before, he’d picked up traces of what had happened to the priests. With a sigh of deep reluctance, he went inside the desecrated temple.

He could tell by the etheric feel of the place that he was too late to help the murdered men find rest. The temple was so curiously free of the etheric traces of so many horrible deaths that he could hope that they’d already found it on their own. Perhaps their belief in their god had led them to the white river, or perhaps they’d chanced upon it as their souls fled from the scene of their bodies’ deaths. A glance at the bloodstained altar, where black ants still crawled, made him shudder. He hurried outside, grateful for the sunlight.

Armed men and horses filled the ward around the temple walls, men shouting, running back and forth, horses neighing and rearing, servants yelling at each other as they packed up the supply wagons. He could never have scried in such chaos. He climbed the ladder up to the catwalks, then walked around the top of the wall to a spot opposite the gates. He sat down, cross-legged for balance, with his back against a merlon, and let himself slip into trance.

His body of light, an enveloping silver flame, appeared at his call. He transferred his consciousness over to it and let himself drift upward in the silvery-blue etheric light. All around the temple compound the mist-streaked light quivered and shimmered with the growing force of the spring. The new grass, the leafing trees, the clover and wildflowers: all glistened red with their surging vegetable auras. Seeing clearly through so much bristling life proved difficult, but from his high vantage point he could discern a distant plume of dust—dead black against the blue etheric glow—coming down the road from the north.

Salamander glanced behind him and made sure that the silver cord that fastened his body of light to his physical body appeared thick and strong, pulsing with each slow beat of his heart. He thought himself toward the plume of dust and drifted away from the temple.

When he passed over a field of sprouting winter wheat, the reddish-brown auras of the burgeoning plant life swirled and seemed to bubble. Ahead lay a red mass of another sort, the color of blood, surging and leaping above Alshandra’s army. From the etheric, he could plainly see individuals through the bloodshot glow of their auras—a man who seemed to be a commander, riding at their head, the ranks of soldiers, falcatas in hand, and the heavy horses, their horizontal equine auras shot through with the greenish-gray of fear.

Behind them rode someone so surprising that Salamander instinctively flew up higher to avoid her gaze—a priestess, her aura a pure pale blue, riding a white mule led by a child on a pony. She had her head tipped back and her arms raised high.
Working dweomer?
he thought.
Couldn’t be!
Still, she was staring so intently upward that at first he assumed she was seeing his body of light. Then he thought to look behind him.

Towering above him in the light-shot etheric sky floated the image of Alshandra that he’d created to ease Rocca’s death. He recognized it by the details—the elven longbow he’d given her, the braiding of the long blonde hair, the sigil upon her quiver. Salamander realized that while he’d sent the image toward the white river to lead Rocca there, he’d never seen it actually cross, which would have destroyed it. Down below, the priestess smiled and stretched her arms out farther. Her mouth moved as she began to chant. The army riding before her roared in answer, their howl strangely distorted and echoing in his etheric consciousness but still recognizable:

“Hai! Hai! Hai!”

Oh, you really botched it, Ebañy, old lad!
Whether or not the warriors could see the Alshandra image, their priestess could, and they believed what she told them. The image floated to a position high enough above the marching ranks of cavalry to remain stable despite the magnetic effluent of their massed steel weaponry. Yet it stayed close enough to feed off their auras. Salamander saw slender tendrils of raw energy rising like lines of smoke to wrap themselves around the image’s booted feet. Alshandra’s simulacrum fattened, strengthened, until to his etheric consciousness it looked solid, clear in every detail. The priestess chanted again, and once again came the cry, “Hai! Hai! Hai!”

Salamander turned his attention back in the direction of the temple and saw the confused mass of auras in front that marked the presence of the Deverry army. Calculating the precise distance between the two forces lay beyond his state of consciousness, but a good stretch of ground remained between them. He waited, hovering above in the road, as the Horsekin rode closer and closer, and the priestess chanted, waving her arms, invoking the image that she believed to be divine. At last the Horsekin force rounded a bend in the road and saw the waiting warbands. Different kinds of cries rose—shock, sudden fear, confusion. Salamander realized that they’d been expecting to find a much smaller warband ranged against them.

Let’s make it worse!
Salamander called upon the Light and saw raw power like silver sheets of lightning appear around him. From within his silver flame he invoked the pentagram, that sigil of all things natural and true, by drawing it with sweeps of his right arm. Each motion left a solid-seeming trail of blue light behind it. Silver light flowed in to strengthen it until it hovered, as huge and bright as a second sun in the sky.

At each point and in the center Salamander drew and placed the sigils of the Elements. He called upon the Light once more, then gathered his will. As the light flowed into his etheric form, he felt it throb with power. He rose to a position right behind the pentagram and laid etheric hands, shaped like flames, upon it. With a last call to the Light, he thrust it forward straight onto the image of Alshandra.

Begone! I banish you in the name of the Light!
He seemed to hear his own voice echoing through the etheric like a tidal wave of sound. The image froze, then shattered, bursting into a thousand slivers like a glass bowl dropped from high onto a stone floor. He heard the priestess’ answering scream of pure terror, looked down to see her swaying in the saddle, lowering her arms as she screamed again and again.

She nearly fell, but clutched at the mule’s mane just in time to right herself. The child leading the mule nearly tumbled off as the pony reared in terror. The army paused in the road, their auras shrinking, turning greenish-gray, billowing again blood-red. The shards of the image were scattering, melting, falling in the etheric like transparent rain.

Another sound drifted up to Salamander: the shouts and war cries of the waiting Deverry and Westfolk men, the pounding of hooves on the road as the Horsekin charged. Salamander realized that he was utterly drained. He turned and followed the silver cord back to his body waiting on the walls of the temple compound. He hovered over the slumped form, then sank down, heard a rushy click, and felt sudden pain. He was back, aching in every muscle, panting as if he’d run a long, long way.

"I’d hardly call a bruise a wound, Your Highness!” Gerran said.

"I would when it’s that serious a bruise,” Prince Daralanteriel said. “Clae tells me it bled a fair amount.”

Gerran scowled at the page, who was studying the ground at his feet. “The skin just split or suchlike,” Gerran said. “It’s not like a proper cut.”

“Well, Ridvar brought a chirurgeon with him. After this scrap you’re going to have him look at it.” Dar leaned over his horse’s neck to speak to the lad. “Clae, my thanks. You’ve done your master a service today. Now get back into the temple compound where you’ll be safe.”

Clae bowed and ran back uphill to disappear into the gates.

“No taking it out on the lad later,” Dar said.

“I’d not stoop to such a thing, Your Highness,” Gerran said, “but truly, I’m—”

“
Truly,
you’re staying back here with me as part of my escort. Here comes Calonderiel.”