death's knight 27

 

Chapter 27

 

Sobus Aren was the commandant of the garrison in Hals Ochuroma; and he had not been happy about the abrupt command from the pale-haired cult heroine to get ready to march to Mesolimnos at a moment’s notice. Now she turned up, coming out of the temple, with an abrupt order to get a place-keeping garrison ready to deploy immediately and be magically transported to Mesolimnos. The woman did understand logistics, Aren had to give her that, and realised that even the most prepared troops could not move in less than half a day; but carry heavy items like tents or take a baggage train through heroic transport, they could not. Mules or oxen drawing carts would not walk into temple walls with the faith a man might. And even so, some of the mules had better sense than some of the other ranks.

It may be said that Sobus Aren had rather set ideas about women, and their place in war; he could appreciate that a commander taking his wife to war gave the men a figurehead and a token, and, if she was kindly towards them, would even fight harder to protect her. But in Aren’s mind, women belonged first and foremost on their backs if they wanted to improve the morale of the troops. He did not dare say so, especially as ‘Drex’ was a surname which far out-trumped ‘Aren.’ In Aren’s mind ‘cult heroine’ was some trumped up title given to the spoiled pet of an exalted family. He had no belief in ‘heroic travel’ which was plainly some trick of the priests. Sobus Aren was a glyph-lord of Thanus, with no desire to be a gyph priest or have any truck with godly magic. He considered himself a man’s man, and resisted the taking of glyph spells as feeble.

“My dear little girl, you have to understand....” he began.

He was not expecting to be thrown against a wall with a very capable hand at his throat.

“Don’t call me your dear little girl,” said Thea, in a controlled voice, almost conversational. “It’s the sort of phrase which tends to get men killed, because I start misinterpreting your intentions towards me, and start thinking that you believe me to look better between sheets than in armour.”

Aren whimpered and worked on controlling his bladder.

“You were about to say that I cannot transport heavy things. Quite true. However, your priests can inscribe glyphs of movement on carts and on the hoofs of transport beasts, to make them go faster; do I have to do your job for you? Apparently. As for the advance guard, you will be sending your most able at improvisation; and they will carry axes and spades, and will build rude huts from the surrounding trees and saplings; there are plenty. They can serve as accommodation for the officers when enough canvas arrives for the camp, moreover, you can use those tents which survived the mess Thorus Mils made of things, which the current garrison will leave. I want fifty men just to get things set up, and they can carry two man tents between them as well. The latrines are set up and undisturbed, so that, at least is something which will not need doing. Now, jump to it!”

He was dropped to the floor; and went sullenly to choose men capable of building rude huts, not the easiest task since Sobus Aren did not believe in initiative in this man’s army. Aren believed in obeying the rules and going by the book; and the book might talk about undermining a besieged city but never the besieged undermining their besiegers. The damned city state was cheating, and he should not have to deal with things like that.

Thea Drex went to harry the priests into the use of the movement glyph, and wondered whether the garrison of Hals Ochuroma was the most hidebound city in the Empire or whether they were just work-shy. After all, initiates could carve the glyphs; and though any priest could only activate so many every day, needing to refresh their kormajaia, they could get an advance party started.

 

 

oOoOo

 

“They’ve set up a temple with heroic movement,” said Ralthur Kron. “I imagine Thea Drex is here. Or rather, back and forth.”

“It might be another hero,” said Harkon, scratching his beard in thought.

“No, the Blood Moon does not encourage heroes,” said Kron. “She stole heroes of various gods as her alternative pantheon, and therefore distrusts heroes as likely to disrupt the status quo, and to betray her. She has had the training of Thea Drex from an early age, to give or withhold favour, to show her who she should obey. She certainly would not encourage martial heroes; I was dissuaded from becoming priest as well as lord of Thanos; the myth is that it is unmanly.”

Harkon sniggered.

“Does that make you my boyfriend?” he said.

“Laugh; the empire encourages male lovers as secret police, because they have had to conceal it until they are powerful enough to flaunt it,” he said.

“Now that’s an idea to toy with, as spies,” said Harkon.

“Bold,” said Kron.

“Ralthur, my friend, bold plans work best,” said Harkon. “And speaking of which, if I dye my beard, when they have some of the new garrison through, and have not shifted all the old garrison, why don’t we wander forth, in Selenite armour, and disrupt plans a little bit?”

“Grand! You can be Fadabius Drex, and nobody will dare disobey you, and I shall be Aquilix Kron, because there is a familial look. If anyone asks for names, that is, and then they can look for the noble officers  Drex and Kron until they are black in the face.”

“What’s more, whilst the besieging force is depleted, we know they can’t send everyone by heroic travel, so we can send some people to Agorakome, and maybe even further east, to sabotage the supply trains overnight,” said Harkon. “It’s a valid tactic of kryptene warfare.”

“And there’s nothing to stop you, if we set out spies to heliograph us, tossing a few thunderbolts into the marshes, when they get that far, to stir up the d... marsh creepers, I mean, to attack them,” said Kron, recalling that Harkon was sensitive to marsh creepers being referred to a ‘ducks.’

 

It had stopped raining, so Harkon was able to use a temporary dye in his beard and hair, not wanting to frighten Chionea by looking different when he returned home.

Wandering around the milling troops with lists in hand, misdirecting them was child’s play.

Having the mess hall near the sewerage outfalls of the city would be less noticeable at this time of year; but in summer, would be very unpleasant indeed.

 

 

oOoOo

 

Kaz and the original band of friends happily took the hero path to the temple of Alethos in Agorakome; and then hopped on to Gefura, when it became apparent that the army was not so far advanced.  The movement glyph had speeded some as far as this city, and Kaz, who had grown yet again in understanding of how to be a goddess, had managed to produce a glyph spell of her own, bestowing darksense on others. With rings of darkseeing on Protasion and Evgon, and Kaz’s own spell on Svargia, Kuros and Lelyn, they worked happily under clouded skies when the blood moon was at her waning. Movement glyphs were of no help at all if wheels fell off.

Kaz also scattered some powder into the stores of flour.

“Dare I ask?” asked Protasion, when they got back to base.

“Certain fungi, powdered,” Kaz replied. “Should leave them with interesting dreams at worst, and a failure to realise if they are soldiers of the Selenite army or spiders with a wild desire to dance, using all eight legs, at best.”

“No, really?” giggled Lelyn.

“Well, that’s the effect it had on one trógling I knew,” said Kaz. “The contortions were hilarious. The fool ate medicine fungi, not food fungi. It’s used by darklings in controlled ways in religious ceremonies to open a better path to the blue moon, but if you go to sleep having eaten it, the nightmares are said to be terrible. And continue into waking.”

“That could lead to them fighting their friends...” said Lelyn.

“Exactly,” said Kaz. “Hey, let’s buy some expensive wine and run up to the next  Selenite waypoint; the officers will stay in the tavern. Let’s make it uncomfortable.”

“How do we do that?”

“Protasion goes into the tavern looking his expensive and haughty self, and offers them wine from his own vinyards for the liberating Selenite officers when they come,” said Kaz. “Full of fungi.”

“Might as well make use of him,” said Lelyn, giggling at her husband.

They did this, and Protasion made much of praising the Selenites to the skies as his two trógling slaves carried wine.

Then they went home.

Having the first two sets of travellers discommoded would hold up the rest and should plunge the whole supply line into chaos.

 

oOoOo

 

Kaz might have wished to have been a fly on the wall when the proud fourth heavy cavalry trotted into the waypoint. In the Selenite army, the heavy cavalry were the elite, if largely ceremonial arm of the war machine; younger sons joined the light cavalry, who were given the real jobs, and the real danger, but the heavy cavalry were impressive, on big horses said to have the blood of hell-horses in their ancestry.

The higher ranking officers – and it may be said that all the heavy cavalry were considered officers to any other unit – were appreciative of the wine.

Their horses were less appreciative of one of their number solemnly attempting to teach them to sing; and another of their number seeing not horses, but giant spiders such as the toróg bred for silk. The carnage was considerable, before the junior officers managed to rescue the remains of the horses, and heal those whose wounds were not fatal. The man seeing spiders was trampled to death, and when notified, his younger brother in the light cavalry wept for joy and went home to learn estate management.

 

It took five full days for the officers to recover; largely because they self medicated with the delicious wine. By this time, they had managed to whittle each other down to half their numbers, and a horse fed oats in wine went on the rampage, and the next tranche of the army turned up with Sobus Aren himself at its head, and extremely unamused by the antics of the overbred ninnies, as he dubbed the heavy cavalry. He had only sent them out to get out of his hair, hoping they would mount a charge on the rebel city and get themselves massacred. Massacring each other might be funny in a way, but hardly productive. Aren snarled at eight surviving hung-over, chastened ninnies who had soiled themselves from every orifice and were still only partially certain which way up was, and whether they were actually standing on solid ground. He hung two of them on general principles, and flogged the rest. It was very satisfying, but tied them up yet another day.

And the new officers were green, the flogged officers being reduced in rank to horsebrothers.

 

Catching up with the front-runners tried him still further.  They had ground to a halt trying to get by with a lack of nuts for the wheels and the effects of a movement glyph on cart which had had fine grit added to the roller bearings. They had not yet broken into the flour.

Sobus Aren divided the goods from the supply carts up amongst the heavy cavalry.

“You have heavy horses which can carry more and you might as well do something useful as sit there looking not particularly decorative,” he said.

The heavy cavalry hated him as well as despising him for not having an illustrious name.

By the time they reached the marshes, and the lightning bolts drove marsh creepers out of the swamps onto the road, morale was not good.

 

oOoOo

 

Thea Drex regarded the frontrunners of her army with dismay.

“Call yourselves soldiers?” she said. “What has happened to you?”

“It must be enemy action,” said Sobus Aren, “It’s the only reason I can see that suddenly wheels should start breaking, and sixteen men should go insane. I can’t blame the enemy for a thunderstorm in the marshes driving the ducks out, but the rest...it must be partisans.”

“You’ll be more likely to find someone in supplies is a crook and bought substandard equipment,” said Thea Drex. “It sounds like half rate excuses to me.”

“Well, we aren’t in a fit state to fight,” said Aren.

“No, I can see that, and I wonder if you ever were,” said Thea.

Aren seethed, silently. Being pushed around by this decorative piece of totty pretending to be a soldier was bad enough; it was worse when she had a point. He still thought it was enemy action.

“The only way we can get through this is to bluff,” said Aren. “Call for a parley, and tell them that as they can see that we are re-garrisoned with fresh troops and better equipment, they would do well to consider capitulation.”

“They’ll laugh in our face,” said Thea.

“We will say that we will be ready to consider breaking the siege if they hand over their leaders,” said Aren. “It will buy us time. They will go back to discuss it. And give us time to get sorted out.”

 

oOoOo

 

Two groups met at the end of the bridge.  Thea Drex, Sobus Aren, Priestess Arialla Larth, and some adjutants met with Chrysandion Lightfather, Pythas, and Harkon. Harkon had darksense cast on him, in case it was needed.

Thea stared at Harkon.

He was the one in her dreams. He was not looking in the least bit as if he desired her; in fact he was scowling. It pulled at her memory.

“You will have observed that we regarrisoned,” she began, brusquely.

“After a fashion,” said Pythas. “It gave us a good laugh, if nothing else; Thanos plainly doesn’t have the same level of discipline and self-discipline as Alethos to display such a rabble.”

“We were attacked by ducks,” said Aren, defensively.

“You look more as if you were attacked by chickens and came off worse,” said Harkon, offensively.

“Why you...” Aren clenched his fists, but was held back forcibly by Thea.

“Superficial appearance despite, the new garrison is fresh, and well supplied,” said Thea.”We wish to discuss surrender terms.”

“Willingly,” said Pythas, a glint in his eye. “But we have not the space to accommodate more than your executive levels as prisoners of war; we would have to arrange an affidavit for your men to sign pledging under the new Alethosi spell Oath-Zone that they will not wage war against us again for ten years.” Kaz had had the idea some years ago; and Pythas, his wife, Arana, and Harkon had worked with Alethos to make the glyph spell. “It sends spirits of retribution after anyone who breaks their oath in its zone.”

“I was speaking of your surrender,” said Thea. “We feel that we come to negotiation from a position of strength, and will be able to rapidly rotate troops from now on, and easily resupply ourselves; and you are left in a position of weakness. We are prepared to leave, if we can re-occupy our temples, and take captive the war criminals Pythas and Harkon.”

“I thought we were here for serious talks, not comedy,” growled Harkon.

Thea was frustrated, and smoothed back her hair in agitation. Harkon froze in sudden recognition of a gesture.

“Sjurgi!” he roared. “How you have the nerve to come here! Torval died  looking for you! Our father died of a broken heart; I had given up searching slave coffles, trawling through Selenite brothels, and killing slavers to find you, and all the time you had thrown in your lot with the enemy! You traitor! Get out! Get out and take your rabble of toy soldiers and their whatevers with you! Out, out!”

Thea... Sjurgi... stumbled back, almost falling over in terror, in a wash of memories, in a backlash of the emotion she believed she had burned out of herself. She turned and fled for the first time in her life; and the other negotiators fell back, and followed her.

And Harkon fell to the ground sobbing.

 

End of Book 2, Death’s Knight

Next book, Destiny’s Queen.

 

I haven't finished writing it. I've had a complete M.E. collapse with the heat wave on top of all that stress. I am ploughing on. What I want to know is, shall I post what I have, from tomorrow, in the knowledge that I may run out of chapters for a while, to resolve the cliffie?  

death's Knight 26

 woke at half eight; thought 'another half an hour.' er... 

 

Chapter 26

 

“Oh, Alethos, be with me, give me courage to face the Trickster,” prayed Kaz, in her heart. As a hero of the cult, her prayers were not blocked by being in another temple, as she counted as a temple herself. She felt her god’s startled acknowledgement of her prayer.

“I do not recognise you, but I know you are one of mine; have courage. You will do what you have to do,” he said.

It was enough.

Kaz straightend still further. She knew what to say. On close inspection, Daze was grotesque, fish-belly white skin, with a scarlet gash of a mouth, and a liver-coloured mark over his forehead, eyelid and onto the cheek on one side.  She knew he could seem fair, but she saw his true visage that day.

“You! You ill-begotten chaos monster!” she cried. “I did not come back far enough to stop you pronouncing the curse that makes my people stunted and weak!  You are an abomination, and one day, one of my kind will kill you!”

Daze stared; then laughed.

“Oho, managed to get sent through time?” he said. “You can’t go back, you know; but perhaps I’ll keep you as a pet, and let you watch the misery of the toróg, and the most helpless of them, your kind.”

“At least I will not survive long in your snare, and can go to the rest of death,” said Kaz.

“You shall not have that comfort!” He flung out an arm and pointed at her. “You, I curse you! I curse you that you shall live forever and desire Death!”

The chime rang in Kaz’s head.

“Is that it? Can I go now?” she thought, silently, at Fate,

“You can go now, dear one,” said Moraia.

Kaz turned, and fled, apparently blindly. Daze laughed.

“Oh, you cannot escape,” he called. “I can close off the ways and trap you.”

Kaz was banking on him letting her run and then toying with her.  The shaft which had lifted her reversed to go down; presumably those who reached the temple were allowed to leave. There were no riddles to get out, but walls started closing in. Stone to sand cantrips gave her time to get through, and finally she was out of the enclosed portion. Kaz jumped, and managed to pull herself up on top of one of the walls; and took a direct path towards the exit, leaping gaps using the acrobatics Alethos had taught her.

“Ooh, my slave is cheating; but you won’t do so well on my thorny hedges!” gloated Daze.

“Into thy hands, Alethos, beloved lord, alive or dead,” prayed Kaz. Her feet were hard from having grown up barefoot; and she had been made, as a punishment, to run on sharp stones, or hot coals, so she could face the pain, running, jumping, and finally, as Daze screamed in anger and frustration, diving off the hedge and head first into the still circling rings. There was a flash, and Kaz landed hard on the blue floor of the sky dome, her feet bloody and sore, half swooning with reaction.

Alethos scooped her up in his arms, and she laid her face against him, and knew no more.

 

oOoOo

 

“Am I alive, or dead?” asked Kaz.

“Alive, sweet one,” said Alethos. “I took you to my sister, and she has treated the poison from those thorns which ripped your feet so cruelly. You are brave, and I salute you.”

“I had to get back to you,” said Kaz. “If I died in our now, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

“But you live, in our now,” said Alethos. “Go back to sleep, little one; Pythas knows, and has told your friends, and he broke out the aged mead he was keeping for a special occasion.”

“Not as sweet as your kisses, though,” said Kaz, snuggling down obediently.

 

oOoOo

 

“Get to Mesolimnos now! Or faster!” Selen screamed into Thea Drex’s sleeping mind, knocking aside the feeble attempts of Zeandine to control the narrative of the heroine’s dreaming. Thea sat up.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Allenna Dren is dead! Of old age! She was cursed by a Sun-Seer, and my daughter has vanished, I consumed an ice spirit to lay with Ombros and make a child of winter to menace Mesolimnos! The only consolation is that they won’t have her as an asset for long as I laid the chaotic feature of rapid ageing on her, so she won’t live more than another seven years at most.”

Thea was long capable of keeping parts of her mind invisible to anyone, even her goddess, and shoved all pity for the child into this closed space, expunging it from her conscious mind.

“Do you need me to find the child?” she asked.

“No, that gambit has vanished; let them kill her if they cannot use her,” said Selen, indifferently. “I need you to find out what has happened, why they are in disarray, why so many of my priests are dead and confused about how this happened. Go, go, go, and report to me!”

“Of course, my goddess,” said Thea.

She rose, and packed hastily, rousing Erlax Sorn.

“My goddess needs me to go to Mesolimnos now,” she said. “It is still dark, so I can travel by going to the moonsphere, below the sky dome, and down to wherever I choose.”

“It is fortunate that you are able to travel like that,” said Erlax Sorn, trying not to sound sarcastic. It was, of course, too much to expect that the cult heroine would remain with the men in their damp misery as the steppe rains continued longer than usual and froze overnight, not that snow would be much better. “Those ships which could be mended should be in Hals Ochuroma with the reinforcements.”

“I need to get a report from the garrison at Mesolimnos before I can issue further orders to the new garrison,” said Thea.

 

oOoOo

 

Kaz’s friends greeted her warmly, her feet fully healed, if a little tender, and she told them all, and Alethos as well, what had happened.

“And you don’t feel as if he has any control from all those riddles?” asked Protasion, anxiously. Kaz snorted.

“Mostly they are just childish,” she said. “The only profound one was more about contemplating the role of Fate.”

“That’s because you have been Fate’s pawn, my love, as well as my knight,” said Alethos. “My mother tells me that you are now free to form your cult as you wish.”

“Of course I’m not,” scoffed Kaz. “It’s an illusion of freedom, but my path is one of a hero of yours, and yet mother of the trógling. She can’t fool me, but it’s nice of her to let me think I earned my freedom. We are none of us truly free of Fate, or time.”

There was the familiar chime.

“She says that she wanted you to have a chance to relax,” said Alethos. “But she is proud of you for your understanding.”

“I’ll relax when we have brought down the Blood Moon,” said Kaz. “And it won’t cure all. I doubt humans will return to a yearly period of fertility, and the Blue Moon may have to adapt to marking time with showing different faces. That’s not part of my remit, however. But I would like to know if we can be together now? She asked Alethos.

“We can now get married and be together,” said Alethos. He kissed her, and her friends cheered.

Kaz kissed him back, enthusiastically.

“Thank goodness, we can now say, ‘Get a room,’ and they can without being bound by Fate to behave,” said Protasion.

Alethos wordlessly, and without stopping kissing Kaz, made a time-honoured gesture with one hand, and Protasion blushed and laughed.

“Oh, now I know I am favoured by my god, when he is able to be as rude to me as any brother-in-law,” he said.

Alethos lifted his head.

“You have let me into your lives, and as such, you are all as kin to me,” he said, seriously. “I love you all dearly as my brothers and sisters, younger brothers and sisters, to be guided and aided, but my dear sword-siblings, aye, and as siblings to Kaz, all my in-laws.”

“Or, according to the Selenites, outlaws,” punned Evgon.

“That, too,” said Alethos. “Harkon, Thyella, Protasion, Lelyn, Evgon, Kuros, Svargia, Rynn, Pythas, and Arana, and more recent members of the family, Polia and Vulk, Phaedros, and Ralthur Kron, my fourteen dear ones.”

“Can you steal people like Thyella and Phaedros?” asked Harkon.

“Of course I can,” said Alethos. “If they are willing to be stolen.”

“I’ve learned more from you and yours than from my father and his,” said Phaedros.

“I’m Harkon’s,” said Thyella.

“In-law,” said Alethos.

“In-law,” said Thyella. “Chionea will be waking  soon; I must go to her.”

 

Pythas officiated at the small, private wedding; and Harkon gave Kaz away. It was a triple wedding; Protasion married Lelyn, and Polia and Vulk regularised their situation to be official. Chionea was not yet mobile, but she was passed around, and cuddled, something she accepted with aplomb. She was not snowing, or icy, and Harkon and Thyella were much relieved.

“You know you will probably be quickly with child?” said Alethos, to Kaz, as they withdrew to his chambers in the underworld.

“And then Iphianira gets her chance at a happy childhood and to grow up,” said Kaz.

“It’s likely to be faster than most,” warned Alethos.

“So long as she feels loved, that’s what is important,” said Kaz.

 

 

“Daze! Do something!” Selen was almost hysterical, and Daze shook her.

“Yes, I felt Death’s satisfaction too, and we agreed any child of his would take time to grow and come into her powers.  There is no curse to be laid upon her when conceived inside her father’s realm, but once she comes out, perhaps before her powers are set, then we can see what we can do,” he soothed his sister. “Pull yourself together! It’s not the end of the world!”

“I have had so many setbacks... my daughter has disappeared, and I cannot feel her anywhere, because she does not love me or worship me. I... one of my most senior priests died before her time, and most of her underlings! I cannot get any straight answers from anyone! I have sent Thea Drex, but she has not yet reported!”

“Sister! Stay calm!” said Daze.

“It’s those wretched tróglings, I swear since they started coming to Mesolimnos, things have gone wrong!” declared Selen. “I wish you had never made them!”

“You laughed at the idea at first,” grumbled Daze. “Besides, I think you over-estimate their chances. They are little and weak, cowardly, and weak in kormajaia too... for the most part.” A near forgotten memory scratched at the back of his head. He ignored it. “Thea Drex will tell you what is going on, and how she means to fix things. It’s only a few mortals lost, and they breed fast. The Ice Child was always expendable.”

“Yes, I suppose so.... I hoped we might maintain the winter into their growing season at least.”

“It’s a setback. We might send the wolves in.”

“Just as they are planting. Yes, that’s a thought to hold in mind.”

 

oOoOo

 

Thea Drex was trying to get straight answers from a near hysterical Thorus Mils.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “This old Sun-Seer marched through your camp without once being challenged, despite being supposedly blind; cursed ageing on Allenna Dren, disappeared, which time also disappeared our goddess’s daughter, a child appearing to be some four years old, or possibly older, since she has an ageing taint on her, and then the campsite collapsed.”

“Yes,” said Mils. “The collapsing campsite was caused by undermining. Those damned trógling!” he added.

“You feel they are a true threat?” asked Thea.

“When directed by a military genius like Pythas Deathsinger, or Harkon the Barbarian,” said Mils.

“Harkon?” Thea was startled. It seemed as if she should know the name.

“He’s from the Great Depression beyond the northern mountains,” said Mils. “He has a reputation for raiding our slave pens and releasing slaves.”

“I see,” said Thea. “It isn’t a very common name.”

Mils shrugged.

“It might be a common name for the barbarians,” he said. “Who cares?”

“True,” said Thea. “Fine; you can pack up camp. I’ll have a replacement garrison ready in two weeks. They can’t move as fast as I can; unless you have a priest capable... oh, chaos take it, I’ll consecrate a chapel in a tent, and then I can bring the advance guard through the temple.”

“Thank you,” said Thorus Mils. “We all need some rest and recreation.”

“You won’t get any,” said Thea. “You’re on a charge for losing half your army, most of your officers, and didn’t you send word that the enemy wandered into your camp, released a prisoner, and kidnapped Lazar Kron, as well?”

Thorus Mils went white.

His career was over and he would be lucky to avoid being sent to the mines.

By the time Thea had set up a temple, he had fallen on his own sword.

 

death's knight 25

 

Chapter 25

 

Kaz stood on the blue floor of the vaults of heaven. Alethos had come up to be with her, and gave her a brief kiss. She leaned into him, then stepped away to the ritual area.

Chrysandion marked out a circle on the floor around Kaz, which glowed white. Then he inscribed another circle around the outside which glowed red. He began chanting, and the white circle of runes rose up and danced up and down Kaz. More chanting saw the red circle doing likewise, both circles passing each other up and down.

“Are you ready?” asked Chrysandion.

“As ready as I will ever be,” said Kaz. She locked her eyes on Alethos, pale, and with fear lurking in her big amber eyes, as if to lock his features in her memory. He mouthed, ‘I love you,’ and she managed to smile, as the scene around her changed, and she found herself halfway up a hill. She had come from the cold of Mesolimnos, to the un-temperature of the sun court, and now it was cold, though not as cold as Mesolimnos under its unnatural winter.

The hillock was covered in grass; at the top was a structure, and just above where she stood was a high hedge. She stood on a path which led to a gap in that hedge which seemed to stretch all the way around the hill. Kaz trotted off round the hedge, and circumnavigated the hilltop. There appeared to be no other breaks in the hedge.

The sun would be at its zenith in two hours; that was how long she had.

There was no other choice. She took a deep breath, and walked through the gap.

There were more hedges on either side; but there was a turn some way in, and gaps.

Kaz had heard of labyrinths of stone; this was a labyrinth of plants. And the plants had thorns which oozed sticky substances which unnerved Kaz.  Presumably it was to deter anyone trying to force a straight path through. She had seen it from above as she was sent down in the circling rings; and there had been a haze over the whole top of the hill, so nobody might fly over it and see the pattern. Kaz shrugged, and decided to try a logical expedient of turning first left. It was not long before there was an apparent dead end. Kaz moved cautiously right to the end, and her darksense told her that a portion of the hedge was further away than most of it, it merely looked contiguous to the eyes. She slipped through the gap, with a grim smile.

This made it likely that she was on the right path.

She made sure to see with sound, something Daze could not understand, and found other concealed entrances, hidden with perspective and by out and out illusion.

Then the hedges gave way to stone walls, and stone pavements under her feet. Darksense revealed hollow space beneath some stones, and one path had a pattern that was solid only in the pattern of the children’s game of hop-scratch, a single stone to hop onto, and a double stone to land with both feet. Something rang metallic at the edges of the double stones; it was, Kaz thought, like a spring, checking that both weights were equal. One could not stroll up the middle. Kaz hopped and jumped across the offending part, and turned left at the end.

Then the riddles started.

Instead of clear ways, there were doors with riddles inscribed on them.

“A man in a simple one-room hut painted the west wall white, the east wall green, the north wall black, and the south wall blue. What colour would he paint the stairs?”

“No stairs,” said Kaz, succinctly.

The door opened. Now she was fully inside a structure.

“What moves without legs, and runs without stopping?” asked the riddle on the next door.

“Time,” said Kaz, bored by the simplicity of the riddles. There were a couple more in similar vein. She hesitated at one which read, “I have no beginning, but I have an end. I am always ahead, but I am never behind. What am I?” Kaz scowled.

“The classic answer is, ‘the future,’ but it fits ‘Fate’ better, for Fate predates the beginning.”

There was a chime; but the door opened rather sullenly.

 

The next left turn had a mosaic on it, showing Daze triumphant; it read ‘Be well primed to pass.’

“Oh, Protasion, you are invaluable,” muttered Kaz, who had listened politely to a lecture on those numbers Protasion called ‘prime numbers’ which could only be divided by themselves or one. She counted the number of stones across the picture, which was twenty-five.

“Here goes, then,” said Kaz, reaching up to press one, two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, and twenty-three on the first line.

The door swung back, and Kaz pushed on.

The next riddle was a little more esoteric.

“Is a sound made by a tree falling if nobody is there to hear it?”

“Of course it is, because it still sends sound vibrations out,” said Kaz. “And the wildlife will hear it.”

She thought the door opened with a rather snippy plop. Sound vibrations were beyond those who did not use them to see.

Next, she came to a pair of doors side by side. To her left, the door was inscribed ‘I only go up.’ To her right the door was inscribed ‘I only go down.’

“Logic suggests the tried method of going left,” muttered Kaz; and spoke out. “Which one do I choose to get to the centre?”

The left hand door swung open.

Kaz stepped forward, and was wafted upwards on a puff of air, another door opening as it stopped lifting her. She stepped out.

She was in a temple courtyard.

Kaz had shorn away her long hair, and bound up her breasts; in a simple tunic, made more comfortable with warming runes embroidered in it, and with bare feet, she might pass as a simple slave. Her eyes were too big in her scared face, and she could pass for being malnourished, rather than built on spare lines with whipcord muscles.

Daze was there, arms outspread, pronouncing curses on the toróg for their attempts to break his limits on them. His gaze fell on Kaz, who dropped to the subservient squat of a trógling.

“I curse you all that more births will be of stunted travesties, not even as tall as humans, born in litters to keep them weak, and outbreeding you with more of the same!” he roared.

There was a chime. Daze looked self-satisfied; he thought the chime was for him, and for his curse, which in a way it was.

But that was only half the battle. Kaz swallowed hard, rose to her full five feet in height, and walked forward, ready to face off to a god.

 

 

oOoOo

 

In the Selenite camp, which was in something of a disarray as soldiers searched fruitlessly for a child, and whispers were passed that a Sun-Seer had been murdered, a priest of Librax stiffened.

He had been known for true prophecy before, and some notice was taken of his pronouncements.

“Behold! Death’s tool unravels riddles and...”

He got no further as the ground suddenly gave way, and he found himself floundering in icy, muddy water. Allenna Dren found that her bed floated, after a fashion, but that she was wrapped in the clammy embrace of her tent, which had, like most of the command tents, collapsed with the ground beneath it. Allenna, ancient, no longer in the peak of fitness, and smothered in wet canvas, proceeded to have a heart attack from her efforts to breathe through the suffocating tent. Others were also dragged down into the fluid mud by the weight of canvas above them, and, unable to escape the canvas holding them down, drowned. Many would be sorted that day by Alethos in the halls of the dead, and Thorus Mils was only spared the ignominy of a muddy end by having left Allenna in her tent to call a war council. And nobody cared about the truncated prophecy of a rather wet scholar.

 

Protasion, on top of one of the towers of the wall, watching with an eagle-sight spell, was hugging himself in sheer delight at the scale of the mayhem. He had the mining trógling who had helped with him, to enjoy the fruits of their endeavours. Having spell-casting power to spare, he had cast the spell for each of them, too, and there was a party mood atop the tower.

“What now?” asked the trógling Kaz had rescued.

“Cake,” said Protasion. “Rich, dark cake, to celebrate the mud, and butter-icing between layers flavoured with those exotic beans from across the far seas.”

The Alethosi tended towards the frugal most of the time; and cake was always good as a treat.

They went back to the temple to get warm, and radiate smugness.

“Kaz not back yet?” asked Protasion.

“No,” said Lelyn. It was almost a snap.

“She’ll do it just fine,” said Protasion. “What, surely you don’t have any doubts? When has our Kaz ever failed to deliver?”

“She wasn’t sure she could do it,” said Lelyn, tears in her eyes for her friend.

“Lelyn,” said Protasion, “Do you remember when we went in search of the silver star plant?”

“Yes, of course! We were little more than children, then,” said Lelyn.

“Do you remember rescuing the enslaved plainsmen?” asked Protasion.

“Yes; and Kaz made a pretended circle of gating with made up runes,” said Lelyn.

“And before we crossed the road, under the eye of the guards, what did she say and do?”

“She told us to wait until the guard left and then cross the road; she set up a diversion to sound like fighting.”

“And did we go to see if she needed aid, if it was she who was fighting?”

“No. We trusted, and obeyed.”

“It’s a bigger trust today, but it’s the same thing,” said Protasion.

Lelyn cast herself upon him, and sobbed, in fear for her friend. Protasion was not averse to having an arm full of the girl he loved, though he hated to see her distressed.

There was a chime.

“Well, she’s done the first part,” said Protasion. “Let us pray to Alethos to do whatever we have to do, and that she is able to do so too.”

“Or that she already did it,” said Lelyn.

“I try not to think of that part; it makes my head ache,” said Protasion.

“Kaz reckons that time and space are the same,” said Lelyn.

“Yes, and that’s what makes my head ache,” said Protasion. “Trust me, if anything had gone wrong, the web of Fate would have torn, and there would be all kinds of anomalies of time happening, like hour glasses running backwards, and people ageing at the wrong speed, or disappearing because they were never born.”

“Would we notice, if we were in the reality in which they had never been born?” asked Lelyn.

“You spend too much time with Kaz talking about things mortals have no right to even think about,” said Protasion, severely.

 

oOoOo

 

Thorus Mils needed to establish some kind of order. The mud was getting shallower as it drained away, back through the other sluice gate, and he could see where the field had been undermined. If he had his way, they would wipe all trógling off the face of the earth.

“Get off this mud bath and move back!” he ordered. “Officers! Help out anyone trapped in collapsed tents! Any intact tents, take to the drier ground, and set up camp! Collect such firewood as you can to set up a good fire, and get soup and hot drinks on the go, and set up racks to dry bedding.”

He did not notice, but the desertions began, quietly, in ones and twos. The private soldiers had suffered less than the officers, but they were wondering if they were next to be tipped in mud, and packed what dry clothing and blankets they had, and stole tools, and vanished into the countryside, to move into the abandoned farm houses until they could surreptitiously make their ways home. A lay member of Librax’s cult, who had been drafted, would later amass a small fortune for forging passes, and discharges from the army for his fellows.

What Thorus did notice was that his army was diminished in size, and the reason for that lay, partly at least, face down in mud under heavy tents. He had lost fully two thirds of his officers; and an eighth of his common soldiery, even before the desertions began.

Thorus had not cried since he was a child, but he came close to it.

 

death's knight 24

 

 

Chapter 24

 

The boy, Epiphio, came to the Alethosi temple shortly after dawn on the solstice.

“He has gone,” he said, numbly. “Make it the best quest of your life, for his sake, Lord-Priest of Alethos,” he added, to Kaz.

“Best shot of my life,” agreed Kaz.

 

oOoOo

 

Erytheon knew he was with the child, and his blind eyes saw that she was in some vile cross between a cot and a cage; and she would appear to human eyes to be perhaps four years old.

“Hello, little one,” said Erytheon, softly. “I am here to ease the pain, and to teach you about our father, the sun, who is no enemy of ice, but gives it a sparkle greater than any jewel.”

“Are you my father? They said my father does not care about me.”

“I am not your father; and your father does not know you exist. But you will have a new mother and father. I am here to tell you about them, so you will not be scared.”

“They will hurt you.”

“Of course. But it does not matter. I am here to help others right a wrong; and to give you a blanket with glyphs on it.”

“Will you take out the pins Allenna Dren has put in me? They hurt, and if I do not cry enough, she pulls on them to make them hurt more.”

Erytheon was now a priest of fate; which was to say, also of time. The bars of the cot-cage rusted and fell away to his touch; as did the pins, driven through the child’s flesh, and bent to form rough rings so she could not pull them out.

“Where it bleeds, rub it on the glyphs. That will activate them. Then, they will be a beacon for your new parents. Fear no more, Chionea. Sleep when you open the glyphs of Storm and of Truth. And let Fate herself remove from you the chaos taint of unnatural ageing.”

The child sank down in sleep, covering the glyphs.

“Poor child,” murmured Moraia, in her priest’s mind “With the chaos taint, she would have been an old crone by the time she had lived five years; but by then, Selen would have had no more use for her.”

“Moraia, can you give her back the age she should be if I sacrifice the years I might have lived, if I was not fated to come here? I could, after all, still choose to leave. If she was a baby again, not remembering all this pain and hatred...”

“You would do that for the child? Age as fast as she de-ages?”

“I would.”

“I accept your sacrifice, dear one.”

The child shrank and de-aged before him.

“Now, leave the tent. If you will give the prophecy, I will show you where to go.”

“I will go and do what I am here to do; and as I do, Thyella can take the child, and the Daykaz can go to her fate.”

Erytheon walked as he was guided, directly to the tent of Allenna Dren, and moved with an agility not to be expected of an old man right past the guards and into the tent before they realised his intention.

Allenna was going through papers, and looked up.

“I said I was not to be disturbed! Who are you?”

“I am Erytheon Sun-Toucher. I have been guided to you to speak a prophecy,” said Erytheon. He smiled as the guards followed him in. “If they strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine,” he said.

Allenna flipped a hand in dismissal.

“Leave us; what can old father time here do to me?” she sneered.

The guards reluctantly withdrew.

“Speak your prophecy,” said Allenna.

Erytheon let the words which he knew were hidden from him come to his unconscious lips.

“Behold! The willing sacrifice of years from Fate’s beloved shall be riven from him to punish the defiler of the child of winter. Let her look in the mirror to see how the fairest of features is ravaged by the age forced on the Snow White child.”

Allenna felt her skin changing, sagging, her breasts suddenly heavy and dragging. She glanced down at her hands, which were wrinkled and unsightly, with age spots. She snatched up the light shield she kept with her arms, and gazed into its mirrored surface, to see an old, wrinkled face, not the dignity or serenity of age on a face which has lived life to the full, but an ugly face full of discontentment, each sour thought echoed by a wrinkle.  And before her, Erytheon was de-ageing, becoming a vigorous man of indeterminate age somewhere around the right side of forty. His eyes cleared as hers dimmed with cataracts. She screamed in terror and rage, and picked up her dagger, and drove it home into Erytheon’s chest. His body sank to the ground... and dissolved.

“Guards! Guards!” screamed Allenna Dren.

The guards ran in.  There were some clothes on the ground but no old man; there was an old woman, however.  They looked at each other, and seized Allenna Dren.

“What have you done to Allenna Dren?” one demanded, roughly. “Who are you?”

Allenna Dren might sob for all she was worth that she was Allenna Dren; but they did not believe her. She was dragged off to the stockade for prisoners, and thrown onto a bundle of straw in the roughly covered, but open-sided prisoner pens. Then they went in search of Thorus Mils.

 

oOoOo

 

Moraia embraced her Chosen.

“Well done! I knew you would make all the right choices,” she said.

“I’m still a little confused; I don’t know what I said,” complained Erytheon. “Or why I felt my body burst with vigor before she killed me.”

“You know as well as I do that if made immortal, you keep the age at which you achieve it, even if not ageing any further,” said Moraia. “Well, I cheated. Because you made a sacrifice freely and willingly for another, I was allowed to pass that off onto Allenna Dren; and that was the prophecy. That her ill treatment of that poor child made it possible to exchange her ageing for yours. And I may have gone a teensy bit further than what you gave.” She kissed him. “Now, let us check that Harkon and Thyella do their job properly, and that the Daykaz is on track of when she is supposed to be, and then I’m going to shag you senseless. I’ve been waiting all eternity for you, my promised one, so it will wait a little more.”

 

oOoOo

 

Thyella was pacing back and forth.

“Love, you will wear yourself to bits,” said Harkon. “Come over here, and sit on my knee, and tell me how much you love me, and we can kiss and cuddle, and pass the time better than pacing like a cat on hot tiles.”

“I don’t know what to expect, and it unsettles me,” said Thyella. “Hark! That was a chime; is that for us?”

“Time to get involved,” said Moraia, in the thoughts of both of them.  “And Erytheon has made a choice which enables me to make Chionea into a baby again, and wipe her memory of pain, so you only need love her and bring her up as your daughter.  He has left the glyphs for you to follow; Chionea is essentially in your temple, Thyella. Go and get her.”

Thyella could feel a new temple; hardly more than a chapel, but it counted. She seized Harkon by the hand, and walked into it.

“What is this cage?” she cried.

A baby girl with hair as black as soot, skin as white as milk, and lips like rosebuds opened eyes as blue as ancient ice, surrounded by sooty lashes. She was partly in the clothes of a child of about four.

“Mamamam?” she said, putting up her arms; Thyella scooped her up.

“Come home with Mama and Papa,” she said, picking up the blanket with glyphs, which had constituted a makeshift temple. Harkon took them both in his arms to bring into the temple of Alethos, there not being a dedicated shrine to Thyella in the city.

“Mother! Let it rain!” cried Thyella. “And may my gentle sister, Zephyra, blow and carry away the snow and ice.”

The desultory snow had stopped, and presently a warm, western wind started parting the freezing fog, bringing with it heavy rain.

“And now, Protasian shall release the sluice gates,” said Harkon, happily. “Baby girl, you will be avenged!”

“And by the grace of Fate, she will never know that she needed it,” said Thyella.

 

oOoOo

 

Thorus Mils knew Allenna Dren’s family, and had no difficulty in recognising that the hysterical old woman was a Dren; and claiming to be Allenna under some ensorcellment was not a far stretch to make.

“But what is this about an old man, and where is he?” asked Mils, puzzled, once Allenna was back in her own bed, with a hot stone at her feet, and warmed mead to drink.

“He just walked in and said he had a prophecy to give,” said Allenna. “He said, ‘Behold! The willing sacrifice of years from Fate’s beloved shall be riven from him to punish the defiler of the child of winter. Let her look in the mirror to see how the fairest of features is ravaged by the age forced on the Snow White child’ and whilst he grew younger as I watched, I grew older. I stabbed him in rage and outrage, and he... he just accepted it, and his clothes fell to the ground, empty.”

“It’s something to do with the unnatural growth of the brat, isn’t it?” said Thorus Mils.

“I suppose so,” said Allenna. “I did what my goddess told me; hurt the child to make her produce bad weather.”

“I suspect you may have to pray for divine intervention,” said Mils. “I’ll go and check on the child.”

 

He was back shortly.

“She’s gone,” he said. “The side of her pen has been.... rusted away. I sent people out to look, but there’s worse.”

“Worse? How can there be worse?” Allenna Dren paled. “Our goddess will never heal me of this unnatural ageing if we’ve lost the brat.”

“I had an envoy with a letter from the city,” said Mils. “It reads as follows. ‘From Lightfather Chrysandion Lightspear, surnamed Chrysandos, of the Temple of Solos, to Thorus Mils, commander of the Selenite  camp, Greetings. It has come to my notice that Sun-Seer Erytheon Sun-Toucher, surnamed Chrysandos and own brother to me, Chrysandion, insisted on approaching your camp under the trance of true-seeing, with the need to deliver a prophecy. He has not returned, and we demand his return immediately in good health; or at least, his body if you barbarians do not recognise the sanctity of a seer and have caused him harm. He is in frail health being many years my senior. If he has been harmed, we shall, of course, under proper usage, require the perpetrator to be delivered up for justice.’ How in the name of Chaos can I deliver a man or the body of a man who has disappeared? And obviously I cannot deliver you up for having killed him, over such an infamous prophecy.”

“Write back that the impudent fellow used prophecy as an excuse and used some magic to vanish, leaving only his clothes, and has stolen a child, an innocent, who is dear to us, a little girl some four years old, with black hair, pale skin, and blue eyes,” said Allenna. “Chide him for pretending to believe in the old man’s motives when plainly he was bent on kidnap.”

“But what if he did not kidnap her? You said you struck him and there is blood on the clothing.”

“What else are we to suppose? Do you think she got out of that cage on her own?”

“No, and I suspect he had others – some of those damned trógling, no doubt, who sneak around seemingly freely. Who knows what toróg messes there are which can turn steel to rust.”

“Well, make a bluff of it and act outraged,” said Allenna.

“Well, I can try,” said Thorus Mils.

 

Thorus Mils did not expect much of an answer from the Lightfather of Solos, a position respected in all the Empire, as were Sun-Seers. Losing one was a serious breach of protocol.

Chrysandion was outraged, and half crazed with grief.

His brother was helpless without his guide, and he had directed his young guide, a nephew to both of them, to go to the Alethosi, leaving him to find his own way to and through the camp. There was no child of that description in his temple, and nobody he questioned had heard of her.

“We must make a sortie and punish them,” he said to Pythas. “Perhaps your people can scout...”

“Chrysandion, read this,” said Pythas, giving his old friend the letter dictated by Erytheon. The Lightfather read it.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“The child was a child of Ombros, and Erytheon had precise instructions from Fate herself to create a diversion for the rescue of the child; and he has ascended directly to the halls of Fate in reward for faithfully reporting all that she needed,” said Pythas. “I am sorry for your loss, but I rejoice for Erytheon. And the child is with the kin of Ombros.”

“We can’t let this slide, though.”

“We aren’t. Protasion thinks we have another hour before their camp collapses into muddy pits,” said Pythas. “And your duty is to Kaz. She is waiting for you.”

Kaz was indeed waiting, and went quietly with Chrysandion to the Solosi temple.

 “We ascend to the god-plane, to send you where and when you need to go, as sunlight can penetrate anywhere,” he said. “Do you know what you have to do?”

“Not in detail, no,” said Kaz. “I expect it will be one of those things like sudden chimes that I know without knowing,  which I will know when I get then.”

“Get then?”

“Well, isn’t the timing about more than the place?” said Kaz. “Then and there become the same thing.”

“Don’t give me more of a headache; I had enough of one calculating the ritual.”

“I am grateful,” said Kaz. “How difficult can it be, go back in time, confront Daze, make him think of trógling to start the being of my people, insult him enough to curse me, come home.”

“I suppose for heroes it is that simple,” sighed Chrysandion.

“No, it’s because I’m terrified and trying to kid myself that I’m not,” said Kaz.

“Ah, then I am more hopeful that you will succeed. I wish you good luck,” said Chrysandion.