The Wayward Knights

Chapter 22

With the strength of fury, Wilthur flung spells at his defenses. The spells contained the stolen vitality of the dead of Suivinari. Fed into the defenses, that vitality would render them invincible.

Instead, the spells went astray, some of them, or reached the defenses but bounced off them, like arrows off the finest plate armor. As the spells scattered, so did the stolen, hoarded vitality. As the vitality failed to enter the defenses from within, and the enemies tore at them from without, the defenses weakened.

At last Wilthur rested. He would have to find the point in the defenses (or points, perhaps as many as three) where the enemy sought the final penetration. He would strengthen the defenses there, and there only, however much he could.

He might not break the bodies of all his foes, human or minotaur. But he might do enough harm to break their spirits.

It was a sad decline in hopes, from being ranked near to the gods to merely disheartening foes who were close to victory, but the only alternative was still flight. And that alternative was as futile as ever.

Wilthur girded himself with spells against despair and for greater concentration, and prepared for the final battle.

Horimpsot Elderdrake did not dare make more sound than came from tugging at Gerik's sleeve. When that failed to draw the young lord's attention or even make him turn his head, Elderdrake felt as close to despair as a kender can.

He still wanted to find out what would happen next; a kender's curiosity dies only when he does. But he did not expect that next event to be something he would enjoy. Not if a second band of enemies came down on Gerik's rear while his attention was fixed so completely to the front.

They would have to do something about that themselves, he and the kender who had brought the news.

Elderdrake slipped out of the bushes and back toward his comrade. The other kender greeted him with a sour smile. "What took you so long?" the other kender asked.

"Trying to keep us from having to do this all by ourselves?" was Elderdrake's reply.

The smile grew even more sour. Then the other kender nodded. "His name was Fujindor Staffbinder," he said.

It took a moment for Elderdrake to realize that he had just heard the name of the priest whom Gerik called "the Shorn One." He had only known the dead kender as "the priest of Branchala."

"You are as likely to get free of this as I am," Elderdrake reminded his comrade.

"Or as unlikely," the other replied. "But all the others of our woods band know, too. Our friend's name will not die unless all of us do."

It took the two kender no more than the time for hard-boiling an egg to slip through the trees to within reach of the second enemy band's trail. Indeed, it was more of a series of gaps between the trees them a proper trail, but the ground was damp, soft, and moss-grown in places; the horses' hooves made little noise.

Elderdrake briefly wished that they had a few more packets of Staffbinder's horse-allergy powder. But there was little breeze to scatter it, and what there was might bring it down on Gerik's band as well. They didn't want that. Gerik's enemies could still win even if on foot, while Gerik needed to be able to mount and ride.

There was no time for subtlety, so the kender used none. Elderdrake's friend simply whipped his hoopak over his head, flinging a stone from the sling-thong. The stone struck a rider in the forehead, dropping him from the saddle. Then the first kender flung himself out of shelter, striking or stabbing with his hoopak depending on which end was closest to an enemy. Elderdrake followed, considering that neither he nor his friend would likely tell anyone much of anything-but if they did, it would be a far better story than just the priest's name, as deserving of memory as he was.

Something struck Elderdrake hard in the right arm, and all sensation and use left it. Fortunately a hoopak was one thing he could wield with either hand. He dived to retrieve his fallen weapon, rolled under the belly of a horse, and prodded the belly as he came up on the other side.

The horse reared, throwing its rider. The rider landed on his head, leaving his neck at an impossible angle to his shoulders. Elderdrake wasted no time, because a rider who hadn't seen that his friend was dead was coming in. The kender held the hoopak up with his good left arm, then twisted aside as the shaft deflected a sword cut, whirled the hoopak like a sea barbarian cutlass-dancer, and rammed the spear into the rider's thigh as he swept by.

The thigh was armored, but the spear point had not lost its sharpness, nor Elderdrake's left arm its strength. The man shouted, swore, and twisted in the saddle. He was left-handed, so he had to bring his battle-axe around and over.

As the axe blurred downward toward Elderdrake's skull, he heard something that sounded like a kender's death cry. He heard a hideous din that sounded like the death cry of many humans. He even heard, for a single heartbeat, the whisper of cloven air as the axe completed its downward arc.

Then he heard a sound that was not a sound, but the end of all things, as the downward arc ended in his skull.

Pirvan thought briefly that a few folk not eager to be in the vanguard would now be more help than the small army of those who were. The tunnel showed no signs of broadening enough to accommodate more than two humans and two minotaurs. Each folk wanted to have the greater numbers in the vanguard, and Pirvan and Zeskuk were too jostled, squeezed, and short of breath to take counsel and introduce a trace of order to this underground chaos.

It could have been as bad with the magicworkers, except that no one of either folk wished to deny Lujimar his place ahead of all warriors. Certainly not Lady Revella, who could not have kept up with the advance on foot and whose bearers took up the whole width of the tunnel where they were.

In his mind, the knight made gestures of aversion, that the tunnel not drop so low overhead that the bearers must set the Black Robe down. Trampling underfoot one of a host's two most powerful magicworkers was not a recipe for victory.

Instead of dropping, the ceiling rose further and the walls receded. Before Pirvan had fully realized it, the vanguard had spilled out into a vast underground chamber, taller than the highest tower in Istar and so wide that an entire regiment could have formed a line of battle across the floor. Or rather, they could have, if a vast expanse of white webbing hadn't stretched across the chamber from side to side. It hung a man's height off the floor, rose two men's height higher than that, and seemed to spread over at least half the chamber's area.

It also glowed, with a pearly light that recalled no kind of spell Pirvan knew of, and made him wish that Tarothin was alive or Lujimar not wholly lost in his own purposes. The knight was commander of this host; he needed to know his enemy.

One thing struck several fighters of each race at the same moment: the light made glowballs unnecessary. They dropped theirs and rushed forward. No one saw whether a minotaur or a human reached the webbing first, but everyone in the chamber saw what happened to the first of each.

It was not without reason that Pirvan had thought of spiders when he saw the webbing. What crawled out of the webbing had twelve legs instead of eight, and poison-dripping hooks on the inside of the foremost legs instead of fangs. They also had more eyes than Pirvan dared count, all glowing a diseased blue that might have been found in the coldest part of the Abyss or in some nightmare cave on Nuitari.

To these not-spiders, the minotaurs and humans charging them were as flies. In moments all were reeling about the chamber, clutching where the venom from the foreleg-hooks was eating into their flesh. Pirvan saw the envenomed slashes turning black and flesh crumbling as it turned the color of charcoal, pouring out blue smoke at the same time.

The victims fell to the floor, but their weapons did not clatter beside them. The tendrils of webbing had already wound themselves around the weapons and snatched them aloft. Now the same tendrils dropped to the chamber floor and began reeling in the dead and dying in an obscene parody of fishermen with their catch.

Pirvan kept his eyes firmly fixed on the horror, to not show weakness and to learn more of what they faced, if any untutored eye like his could see anything useful. To the side, Pirvan glimpsed Lujimar, standing as solid and as impassive as a boulder on a mountainside.

He wanted to shout at the minotaur to do something. He also wanted to shout at the murmuring humans behind him to show some pride before the minotaurs. The "Destined Race's" warriors were probably as uneasy about this deathtrap as their human comrades, but were certainly hiding it better.

It was then that Sir Niebar stepped forward, out of the ranks of the humans. He was wrapped in his cloak, all but his sword arm, and moved like a man just risen from a bed of near-mortal sickness. Behind him stepped Lady Revella-who had to be ten years older than the knight, but now walked as if she were twenty years younger-carrying only her staff.

A look passed between knight and Black Robe, of a kind that Pirvan knew he would never be able to describe. Nor did he wish to. Knights of the Rose were not supposed to share secrets with Black Robes, and there were those in the Keeps who would make a scandal if they suspected such.

Sir Niebar halted until the webbing had swallowed the last of the bodies. It now jerked and twisted, like blankets over restless sleepers, and Pirvan had the stomach-turning thought that it was digesting the bodies. Perhaps the spiders were only the servants-the hounds coursing prey for their master, the living web.

Niebar took the last three steps, to within reach of the nearest spider. For the first time, Lujimar seemed to notice what was happening. He raised one hand in an urgent gesture.

Before the minotaur could finish the gesture, Sir Niebar raised his sword. He raised it high overhead, held level, within easy reach of the nearest spider or the web. The spider did not take the bait. The web did. Tendrils as thick as tent ropes poured down and wrapped themselves around the web-and around Sir Niebar's sword arm. Pirvan saw his face twist in pain; there must have been something like acid on the tendrils.

Then the web lifted the knight clean off the floor. As it did, he came within arm's length of the spider. His free hand darted under his cloak and came out with a glowball. With an arrow-swift gesture, he thrust the glowball into the spider's gaping maw.

Then the web jerked the knight upward again, so violently that Pirvan thought-and hoped-that the motion must have snapped his neck. His close-cropped white hair vanished into the web; Sir Hawkbrother cried out in rage and despair. Close at hand, Pirvan heard Haimya fighting not to do the same-and Lady Revella raised her staff.

She said nothing, made no other movements, and indeed stood as if turned to stone. But behind the Abyss-fire in the spider's eyes, something glowed that had not been there before. It was a warmer color-almost the color of one of the glowballs, Pirvan realized, in the last moment before fire erupted from the spider's mouth and joints.

For a long moment, the spider seemed to be a wheel of fire: orange, crimson, wine-hued, and even a virulent green. Then the fire touched the web-and the spider vanished in a whirlpool of flame as the web burned.

Half-dazzled, Pirvan saw Sir Niebar's partly-consumed body fall to the floor. He was not too dazzled to see Hawkbrother and Eskaia dash forward to recover it. Nor did he fail to see Haimya drop her sword and run to join the younger couple.

Pirvan caught up with them by the time the web was fully ablaze. He never afterward recalled any of the details, nor at precisely what moment he heard Eskaia scream, nearly stumbled over a half-melted sword that seared through his boot, and caught a lungful of smoke of such gagging vileness that his breath wanted to leave his body for fear of another such.

Somehow, they found themselves standing behind Lady Revella. She now stood with her staff apparently planted in the solid rock, her arms crossed on her chest, and an implacable look on her face.

Her features softened as the four companions laid what was left of Sir Niebar down. Pirvan took only long enough to see that Eskaia was only burned about the arm and neck, before he faced the Black Robe.

"Did you send Niebar to his death?" he shouted.

"Take your hand off your sword when you ask one of my age a question," Revella shot back.

Pirvan did not move. Haimya came to stand beside him and practically spat, "Was he Rubina's father?"

The Black Robe's answer to that was an almost girlish shriek of laughter. "Oh, I wish he had been. But he was not." She sobered. "Only a man who saw that his time was near, and wanted to make his death worthwhile.

"The web could have stood off fire from outside for longer than we could stay here. But fire inside its defenses, inside a spider-neither Lujimar nor Wilthur could halt it."

"Lujimar?" Pirvan exclaimed. That had sounded remarkably like an accusation of treachery against the minotaur. But Lady Revella had not heard, nor would she listen.

Instead, she turned toward Lujimar and cupped her hands to shout, "Magic brother! Crack the roof, for the love of all gods and your own true death, before we stifle!

The ambush of the first enemy band reminded Gerik of a tale he had heard about the Silvanesti. Once upon a time, an ambitious human king had claimed part of their forest. He could send ten thousand fighting men to enforce that claim, he blustered.

"They will be shot down like deer," the Silvanesti emissary replied.

"What if I send twenty thousand?"

"Then each of our archers will shoot twice," was the elven reply, or so the story ran.

Gerik commanded twenty archers against somewhere around eighty foes. That meant shooting four times-or would have, if his archers had been the Silvanesti of legend.

They were not. But four arrows apiece still did enough work to earn victory in moments. By the time Gerik's people had shot that many, they had killed, wounded, or dismounted a good half of their opponents. At least ten had died before they could have fully realized they were in danger.

The quivers were half-empty when a sell-sword Gerik recognized as one of the horse-holders ran out of the trees. He had an arrow through his forearm, and ran first to Bertsa Wylum, who pointed at Gerik.

The man came up to Gerik and said bluntly, "We're for it, young lord. They had a second band behind us. The kender sprang that trap, but they've ridden off."

"Are the horses safe?" Gerik asked, and felt a fool the next moment, knowing he should have asked about the kender.

"Aye. The other fellows were too hot to be off on the trail of our folk, when they knew they'd been heard."

Gerik slammed his fist against a tree. From behind her own tree, Wylum shot another arrow, then called, "Hoy, good sir. Don't break your sword hand. We're not even finished with these fellows yet, let alone chasing down the others."

Finishing the House Dirivan band at Forge Vale proved swifter than Gerik had dared hope. A few more arrows were all it took to start the men holding up swords hilt-first or unstringing their bows. Bertsa Wylum led five of her band down, to collect weapons, take oaths of neutrality from those sell-swords willing to swear, and bind those of the House Dirivan fighters who would not.

Wylum returned, wearing a grim smile and carrying an armful of captured weapons. "I left five daggers and a sword for the lot of them. If any of them change their minds, it won't do them much good until they rearm."

"They'll still be at our backs," Gerik said. In his mind a single dark thought thudded like a drum.

The enemy was between him and Ellysta. They would not have been if he had been alert or listened to Elderdrake.

"Perhaps, but a long way off and with no horses," Wylum said. "We're taking all the ones fit to ride to mount more of our people. Besides, if they break the oath of neutrality, they're dead meat if we see them again today, and no sell-sword company will have them."

"I suppose that's something."

"It's the whole cursed band off House Dirivan's roster, without our having to kill them all," Wylum snapped. "That could be half the battle right there."

She looked at Gerik sideways, then started to tousle his hair. She snatched her hand back when he all but bared his teeth at her.

"All right," she growled. "Have it your way. But don't fret yourself into uselessness. You've made one mistake today, but it's one every captain makes a few times. A nice fat target is hard to resist."

She was right, and too much worrying would be a second, less forgivable mistake. But Bertsa Wylum hadn't held Ellysta during her mercifully-few nightmares.

Gerik drew a deep breath and said, "Then let's go take another. Is anyone hurt past riding, but able to get about?"

"Two."

"Good. Let them find the kender's bodies and hide them. Everyone else, mount up."

Whatever Lujimar had done or left undone, he took Lady Revella at her word. He turned, lifted his staff, pointed it at the chamber's ceiling, and bellowed what might have been words.

He bellowed them loud enough to make Pirvan clap his hands over his ears. The bellow was a hush, though, compared to the sound of the rock splitting apart, then bulging and finally erupting outward.

Wind blew out of nowhere, into the chamber, and out through the ship-sized hole in the roof. It carried with it the charred remnants of web, spiders, and victims, half-melted weapons and unidentifiable bits of debris, enough ashes to turn the air black for a moment, and anything that anyone had set down on the floor and not retrieved or tied down.

Revella Laschaar might have gone with the wreckage, if her two minotaur bearers had not come up and each taken a firm grip on one arm. Pirvan saw her try to shake them off once, then seemingly resign herself to their help.

A few bits of rock, too heavy for the wind or the spells to lift, fell into the chamber, but struck no one. When the wind finally died, they could breathe in the chamber without feeling that they would choke to death in the next moment.

"Let us be off," Lujimar said, the moment even a minotaur's voice could be heard by half-deafened ears. "Wilthur is not far. Lady Revella, stand well behind me hereafter. This battle-"

"This battle needs both of us, and you know it, bull-brained oaf," Revella snapped. "I cannot-"

Zeskuk gave a wordless bellow, then shouted, "If you can't offer more than insults, old woman, then save your breath!"

"Yessss," a voice said. It was a voice that could not have belonged to anybody, even the giant serpent it suggested. It was a voice from beyond any realm where life had bodies; from everywhere and nowhere.

From Wilthur the Brown, Pirvan judged-and then saw his judgment confirmed by the looks on the magicworkers' faces. Human and minotaur both looked as if they faced having a tooth pulled with no healer's sleep spell or even a brimming cup of dwarf spirits to ease the pain.

In the next moment, Pirvan saw Lady Revella's face contort with-surprise? Horror? Something for which there was not a word? He did not know. He only saw her contorted face, the unchangeable impassivity of Lujimar's, and the sudden snap of the minotaur priest's arm as he threw his staff like a spear to the far end of the chamber.

Rock crashed. A throat neither human nor animal gave forth a scream that some who heard it would have given years of life to forget. The staff returned, wound like a vine or a constricting snake around a slight form in a faded brown robe.

The figure's face was hidden at first, inside the hood of the robe. Then the wind of the staff's passage tore the hood back. Pirvan was not the only seasoned warrior who swayed or cried out at the sight of what Wilthur had become. Some fainted outright.

Lujimar's staff carried its prey all the way back to its master. He reached for the free end, Wilthur spat in his face, and those who saw Lujimar swore that his eyes turned red.

Then the wind from nowhere blew again. This time it actually knocked minotaurs off their feet and flung humans against stone walls hard enough to crack bones. Two fighters who struck headfirst would have died had they not been wearing helmets.

Pirvan himself forgot knightly dignity and clung desperately to an outcropping of stone that he hoped was strong enough to save him. He would have been more ashamed had he not seen Zeskuk curling himself into a ball of hide and armor-except for one arm that clutched a human warrior's ankle to keep him from taking flight.

Curled up as he was, however, Zeskuk could not see what Pirvan was doing. He saw Lujimar and his opponent rise from the floor, blue fire crackling around them as Wilthur tried to fight free of the staff. He saw them soar toward the hole in the chamber ceiling, now moving faster than the wind itself. He saw them vanish skyward. In the same moment, he felt the rock under his feet quiver, almost innocently, like a stout tavern table against which a minotaur has quite innocently bumped.

The word "innocent," however, had no meaning in this place. Not now.

From elsewhere on Suivinari Island, and from the fleets offshore, it seemed that the Smoker had started to erupt. First stones spewed outward, to fall as the dead birds had, but with rather more impact where they landed. Man or minotaur needed both hands and perhaps one foot, to count those killed or maimed by the falling stones.

Then, moments later, what seemed to be a shooting star soared from the flank of the mountain. It leaped upward toward the zenith, and it blazed a shade of blue that no one had ever seen, or at least would admit to remembering.

Everyone remembered what happened next. Some sharp-eyed watchers had just said the star was actually a minotaur and a human, closely bound together, and received only scornful laughter, when the zenith turned the same shade of blue as the "rising star." It blazed across half the sky before it faded. Before it faded, it had also blinded a few watchers for life, and left many seeing blue spots before their eyes for many days.

The most frightening thing about the blue star, however, was that it came and went without a sound. The blazing light seemed to swallow even the sound of the two bodies soaring upward through the air.

Not so silent, however, was the rumble from the mountain soon afterward. Nor did the rumbling cease-and fear for those in or on the mountain spread through those who watched.

In the chamber, the rock above cut off all within from a view of the zenith. So the blue glare dazzled few and blinded none. It was being occupied with rallying his fighters that kept Pirvan's attention elsewhere, until he suddenly realized that the chamber was much more crowded than it had been.

His first thought was a foolish one, that Wilthur had left behind a further host of enslaved creatures, these with human form. Then he saw a human form he could not mistake-the towering one of Darin-and realized that the underground raiders had somehow joined his own party.

Darin actually picked Pirvan up in the course of their embrace, something the younger knight had never done before. Pirvan did not worry about his dignity, of which he had precious little remaining. He only hoped Darin would not drop him. The younger knight looked weary and filthy, Pirvan's legs were none too steady, and the floor was still hard.

"The Creation is dead," Darin said at last, then looked toward the skyward hole. "Is Wilthur-?"

"Gone," Pirvan breathed. "Lujimar with him, likewise Tarothin, Sir Niebar-this is a victory almost worse than a defeat."

"To the Abyss with your sorrow!" Lady Revella snapped. "Wilthur sought godhood. Lujimar knew that if the Brown One took in his strength, Wilthur might yet succeed. So Lujimar bound them together in such a way that what befell one must befall the other. Then he flung them both into the sky, so that if what came about was too violent…"

"Let no one ever say in my hearing that Lujimar was without honor," Darin said.

"My young friend," Zeskuk rumbled, "a minotaur should also say that. But it is enough for now that one taught by a minotaur has done so. We have more urgent matters, such as departing this mountain while we still can."

Pirvan noted that no minotaur used the word "flee" that day under the rocks of the Smoker of Suivinari, but they obeyed Zeskuk's command to depart with such alacrity that if they had been humans one would have said they were running for their lives.

On the whole, the gods were pleased with the outcome at Suivinari.

Takhisis was the exception, but the other gods, including her consort Sargonnas, sat back and let Zeboim speak plainly to her mother. It was the sort of mother-daughter quarrel which, among mortals, takes a heavy toll among the crockery and other household goods.

Among the gods, the quarrel entertained most, except Mishakal, too kind to wish disharmony even where mutual ill will made it inevitable. Among mortals, there were storms at sea and portents on land, including rumors of dragons waking from dragonsleep.

Also among mortals-specifically, the mortals fleeing Tirabot Manor-Ellysta was not pleased. Gerik was taking too long to join them, and she was thinking of sending messengers to the other parties, to see if he had been obliged to join them. It would be as well to know what stood between them and their enemies.

She had just realized that there were few riders to spare for messenger work, when Grimsoar One-Eye approached her, with an ill-sounding message of his own.

"Riders on the road. Coming on fast, and too many to be Gerik's," he said. "We'll have to get the folk into the woods and let the wagons go."