When the Heavens Fall (57 page)

“No,” the sorceress interrupted again. “This is personal.”

“And since when have your personal concerns taken precedence over my orders?”

Ambolina studied him for a while, then said, “I will hold him as long as I can.”

Ebon's eyes widened. Even with her demons flanking her the sorceress knew she was outmatched. And with Mottle hamstrung by the earth-magic, and Galea unwilling to assist … Ebon hesitated. If he were to step into the dwarf's path, perhaps the goddess would be forced to intervene.

And then again, perhaps not.

In response to the woman's words, Garat's eyes blazed in anger.

The king caught a flicker of movement in the forest behind the consel. Darkness swirled between the trees.

“Look to the shadows!” he shouted.

The Sartorian soldiers were already turning.

The gloom erupted.

Screams rang out as a pool of blackness flowed over three Sartorian horsemen before closing on one of Ambolina's demons. Its armor screeched and buckled, huge gashes appearing across the chest. The hapless creature was lifted squealing from its feet, its ax falling from its gauntleted hands.

That was the last Ebon saw of the clash, for his destrier turned and bolted from the clearing, whinnying in terror. The air flashed red, and a wall of heat struck his back. A shriek sounded, so close behind it seemed the screamer must be sitting on the destrier with Ebon. His throat closed up tight. He didn't know whether to kick his mount on or try to turn it to help those left in the clearing. He was dragged through a patch of brambles. Branches scratched him, thorns plucked at his sleeves.

The red glow faded, and darkness returned.

There were more screams now, all around him. Horses pressed in tight to either side like he was on a battlefield, and he was jostled as he fought to bring his mount under control. He looked for Vale and the others. They'd been behind him as he approached the clearing, so they should be in front of him now, but he couldn't make out faces in the gloom. Ahead a horse with its mane alight went down, throwing its rider. Ebon hauled on his reins, tried to slow his mount's rush, but he might as well have been trying to hold back a landslide. To the sound of crunching bones his destrier half leapt, half scrambled over the thrashing forms before veering right to avoid a tree. Ebon swayed and clung to his saddle horn.

Suddenly he was on the path the demons had cleared through the brush. There were horses in front and behind. The forest bounced and crashed round him, shadows rearing all about. He glanced back, saw nothing but more shadows and a skyline edged crimson as if the sun were setting in the south. A blubbering shriek sounded, followed by a chorus of squeals like someone had set loose a banewolf in a pigpen.

Ebon gave his destrier its head, and it fled into the darkness, following the tail of the horse in front.

It drew up finally in a pool of water, one hoof pawing the ground, its trembling flanks bleeding from nettleclaw scratches. Looking round, Ebon saw Vale farther along the trail. The Endorian kicked his mount forward, mouthing something that was lost beneath a sorcerous explosion. Fires now raged through the trees to the south.

Garat's horse came stumbling through the gloom, and Ebon seized the consel by the arm. He had to shout to make himself heard above distant bestial roars.

“Consel—”

“Get your hand off me!” Garat snarled, pulling away and wheeling his horse. “Sulin! Sulin, where are you, by the Abyss!”

Vale drew alongside Ebon. “Let him go.”

Before Ebon could respond a shadow came crashing through the undergrowth. The king raised his saber, but it was only a riderless horse, stumbling as it splashed through the muck. Another scream sounded, a stone's throw away at most. “Where's Mottle?” Ebon called to Vale. “Ellea? Bettle?”

The Endorian shook his head. “No time.”

“We can't just leave—”

“Think! We'll not find them in this light, and Watcher only knows what we'll run into instead.”

“And Ambolina?”

“Not our problem.” Vale's tone suggested he was glad to be rid of her.

The consel had gathered half a dozen Sartorian soldiers to him and was now striking west on a course at right angles to the path to the clearing.

Vale grunted. “Sense at last. We've got to get out of this valley. We can regroup in the morning.”

Ebon made a sour face.
If we live that long.
The Vamilians could not have failed to notice the sorcerous exchange between Ambolina and the dwarf, and were doubtless converging even now on the depression. The earth-magic would keep them away for a time, but it would still be folly to wait here.

The consel's voice bellowed out, calling on more of his soldiers to rally to him. Behind Vale's horse Ebon saw a woman in Sartorian colors lying facedown in standing water, her back torn to bloody shreds. He stared at her corpse for a few heartbeats, then sheathed his saber. Perhaps Mottle, Ellea, and Bettle had stayed together, he told himself. Perhaps Mottle would be able to track him down once they moved beyond the range of the earth-magic's influence.

“Seek me out, mage,” Ebon said. “When these words reach you, get your head out of the clouds and find me.”

The consel and his soldiers were nearly out of sight, carving a path through the undergrowth with their swords. Ebon dug his heels into his horse's flanks and set off after them.

*   *   *

There was rain on the close, early morning air, and the dawn mist had given way to unbroken cloud, turning the sky the color of clay. A storm was coming from the west, Parolla knew, but the rain would not be enough to breathe new life into the dying forest round her.

Since leaving the battlefield of the Kinevar gods she had run without resting for three days and four nights. With every step the death-magic in the air had grown stronger. Running now only granted her limited respite from the dark energy building inside, and her skin burned as if a fire raged within. As the discomfort increased, she ran harder and faster, pushing herself to the limits of her endurance in an effort to suppress the urge to lash out at someone, something. The muscles of her thighs and calves now throbbed, and her every breath was a rasp.

Thus far it had been easy to evade the undead legions, bypassing any concentrations of death-magic she detected ahead. Soon, though, there would be no avoiding the Vamilians. Mayot's city was but a few bells away, and the forest in front was swarming with the
magus
's servants, the book's threads knotted among the trees like the tangled strands of a ball of wool.

No more so than in the settlement before her.

Standing beside the buckled flagstones of some ancient highway, Parolla peered through the trees toward ruined buildings a stone's throw away. A few tendrils of mist persisted, curling round the stones and the trunks. The ground between the boles was scarred with trenches, over a dozen in all, each five paces wide and fifty long. Mounds of freshly churned earth were piled up beside them, and covering everything was a layer of leaf fragments. A handful of ghostly white threads disappeared into the trenches, meaning some of the undead were still buried underground, trapped in darkness and unable to move, without even the promise of death to offer them release. The sight should have touched Parolla, yet when she searched inside she found nothing.

Tumbal Qerivan materialized beside her. He took in the scene, then said, “Among my people there are legends of a half-life, a world of shadow that existed before Shroud's realm—before any realm of the dead—was forged. The Rivenghast, we call it. A place of purgatory, of lost and tormented souls…”

He did not need to finish the thought. “What happened here,
sirrah
?”

“The Fangalar, my Lady.”

“They destroyed the settlement?”

“They destroyed
every
Vamilian settlement. Butchered every man, woman, and child. These are their graves.”

“Why?”

Tumbal spread his hands. “Would that I knew. It is one of the great mysteries of the Second Age. The Vamilians were explorers and seafarers, and for centuries the Fangalar tolerated their empire building. A fragile peace existed, though there was little in the way of trust or friendship on either side. Then toward the end of that Age…”

“War.”

“Genocide, my Lady. The Vamilians had no answer to the sorceries unleashed on them, yet the Fangalar showed them no quarter. They hounded their prey even unto the ends of the earth. Millions perished. Entire continents were laid to waste.”

Parolla's lips quirked. “Perhaps it is as well, then, that you have not discovered this secret,
sirrah
—the reason behind their enmity.”

The Gorlem frowned. “How so?”

“The Fangalar might not take kindly to your knowing.”

Tumbal sighed. “Thou may'st have the right of it. At times, the search for knowledge is a hollow pursuit, my Lady. What truth could possibly explain what the Fangalar did here? What justification could suffice?” He shook his head. “I fear the solution to this riddle, were I ever to find it, would bring only disappointment.”

Parolla looked down into one of the graves. Two threads of death-magic burrowed into the earth. She thought she saw the soil around them move, but maybe it was just the wind. “Your people's civilization dates back to the time of the conflict, does it not? Why did you not try to help the Vamilians?”

“We did, my Lady. Missives were sent to the Fangalar. Delegations. Endless requests for audiences. Some of my kinsmen chose to stand with the Vamilians, in the hope it might stay the Fangalars' hand. Others, like myself, came after”—he gestured to the graves—“to bury the fallen. To honor them in death as we could not in life.”

Parolla blinked. “You,
sirrah
?”
That must have been twoscore thousand years ago.

“We are a long-lived people, my Lady. Or rather we were. In a way, the death of the Vamilians also marked the beginning of the end of our civilization. The question of whether to aid them split our nation.”

“Would it have made any difference to the outcome if you had entered the war?”

The Gorlem rubbed a hand across his eyes. “No, it would not. A simple enough answer to thy question, yet many thought it the wrong question to ask. Ultimately the rifts that developed among my people proved irreconcilable.”

“Civil war?”

“No, never that, Ral be praised. Many of my kinsmen fled across the seas, fearing the Fangalar would retaliate for the actions of those who died alongside the Vamilians. Others turned their backs forever on their people, appalled that they had done so little in the face of such slaughter.”

“And you were among them?”

There was a weariness in Tumbal's eyes. “I stood aside once at the Vamilians' time of need. It pains me that I can do nothing to aid them now.”

“Yet you think I can, is that it? I've told you already, this isn't my fight.”

Tumbal tried to mask his disappointment, but there was no mistaking the slump of his shoulders. Parolla found herself wondering whether she would have felt differently about the Vamilians' plight if the Gorlem had told her his tale before she'd entered the forest. Dark energy had raged through her veins for the past six days. So much of herself had already been burned away in the blackness. Now she was finding it increasingly difficult to see beyond the shadows that stained her vision.

An image came to her, then, of the dead Fangalar she had seen at the Merigan portal a dozen days ago. “
Sirrah,
” she said, “would the Fangalar be able to detect what is happening here? The rebirth of the Vamilians?”

“I do not know, my Lady. Why dost thou ask?”

“I saw a Fangalar at the gateway to the Shades—not the rent where we met, but another entrance, farther west toward Enikalda. He had passed through a Merigan portal inside the demon world and died for his transgression.”

“Thou think'st he was a scout?”

Parolla shrugged. “The resurrection of the Vamilians is not a rebirth in truth. Perhaps the Fangalar were unsure of what they sensed. Perhaps they sent someone to investigate.”

Tumbal's ghostly face seemed to become paler still. “If thou art correct others will follow.”

“The demon that killed the scout said it might destroy the portal.”

“The Fangalar will find another way, my Lady. No doubt there are other gateways of which we know'st nothing.” The Gorlem looked round at the forest with new eyes. “Perhaps they are here already.”

“To finish what they started all those centuries ago? Or to punish the one who brought the Vamilians back?”

“Perhaps both.”

Parolla chuckled. “I wonder if Mayot appreciates the danger.”

Tumbal opened his mouth to speak, then froze.

Faint sounds reached Parolla: the tread of feet, the clink of metal on metal. The noises came from the south and east. She squinted between the trees, but could make out nothing through the undergrowth. Parolla did not need to see the Vamilians, though, to know they were there. Judging by the distant concentration of threads of death-magic, a large group of undead was but a quarter of a league away and approaching rapidly. Had she been spotted? She'd already sensed scores of Vamilians in the settlement now behind and to her right. Was this new group driving her toward them?

Parolla hesitated. Her best chance of evading the undead was to take cover in the ruins at the edge of the town, but if the Vamilians already knew she was here, there would be no hiding from them. Instead she would be walking into an ambush. Anything, though, beat standing here waiting for the newcomers to arrive, and she strode toward the settlement along the road that led between the graves.

It was only as she reached the first of the buildings that she heard a crackle of sorcery from the center of the town. Black smoke rose over the ruins.