INTERLUDE

 

The long days lengthened in that dread summer of 2999, and men spoke grimly of the coming of the millennium.

Death Bird himself was dead, but the destiny the Gods had given him still echoed through Pandemia. News of the Bandor Massacre spread across the Impire faster than any mundane couriers could have borne it. No one could say where the rumors came from, but they were everywhere and never denied.

In Julgistro, Ambel, and Pithmot, armies of shocked and ragged survivors wandered the wasteland left by the horde’s passing. At first the wake was as sharply bounded as the trail of a tornado; of two towns that had once stood almost within sight of each other, one might be unharmed and the other only ashes. Inevitably the damage spread like a stain, for there were no legions to maintain order. Starving refugees began looting and destroying their more fortunate neighbors. In all the western Impire, no harvest would be gathered that year except the harvest of death. Famine and disease were the reapers now.

 

* * *

 

Shimlundox, the eastern Impire, had escaped the goblins. It was ravaged by the imps themselves. Refugees, starving and desperate, had swept out of Hub in a horde outnumbering the original goblins manyfold. They stripped the land like locusts.

West and north toward them came the many legions the imperor had summoned from the borders. As the armored columns trudged along the great highways, civilians stared in amazement and then turned to gaze back where all these troops had come from, wondering what enemy might enter by those now-unguarded doors.

Had anyone known the true situation, the legions might have stabilized matters enough to allow some sort of crop to survive to harvest. Only in the south was there contact between the army and the rabble, and some skirmishing broke out when individual tribunes attempted to restore local order. Before the main forces could collide. Imperial couriers broke through the swarm and delivered new orders — the goblin crisis was over, the legions were to return to the bases they had left months before.

The legionaries cursed and turned around to begin retracing all those wearisome leagues.

Doubtless that recall had seemed like a wise move to whoever issued it, but a legion consumed many tons of food a day. The Imperial Commissariat had worked miracles in assembling depots along the road to Hub; it had not anticipated the sudden about-face. Refusing to watch their men starve, legates turned off the highways to follow lesser roads and began to requisition what they needed. Soon great swathes of the Impire were being looted at swordpoint by its own troops.

 

* * *

 

Official mourning for old Emshandar had ended at last. The court was engrossed in preparations for the coronation. Fifty years had passed since the last coronation, and Shandie had decreed that his must be the grandest in the history of the Impire.

The aristocracy, which would normally have retired to its country homes before the hot weather turned Hub into a fever pit, had mostly chosen to remain in the capital. The city exploded in a riot of salons and garden parties, making up for the loss of the previous social season. Although Lord Umpily attended many of these functions, he was believed to be in poor health. Not a few of his acquaintances remarked on his pallor. He was certainly jumpy. There were even unconfirmed rumors that he had lost his appetite.

 

* * *

 

In Guwush the rebellion raged with ever-greater fervor. Oshpoo had been given a promise for the future, but he had not agreed to stop his war before the unlikely Imperial pretender made good on his side of the bargain — if he ever could. Triumphant gnomes swarmed on the depleted Imperial garrisons like piranha.

 

* * *

 

Ollion was a ghost city, haunted by fearful sentries waiting for the djinns. The Imperial Navy had every available ship patrolling the shore, ready for the Zarkian fleet’s attack.

 

* * *

 

The dwarf army had returned to Dwanish. Furious, the Directorate deposed General Karax and dispatched its forces down the Dark River to carry the war to Urgaxox.

 

* * *

 

Every raider on the four oceans was homing on Nordland, where the thanes had run out their longships. Every male jotunn who could find a lord to swear to was headed for Nintor, for the Longday Moot. No one doubted that this year it would be a war moot. Oarsmen chanted battle songs in time to the racing waves.

 

* * *

 

A strange occult campaign was being waged in Dragon Reach. Many of the anthropophagi sorcerers had been betrayed by Witch Grunth and those of her trolls who had been captured with her, but tiny bands still roamed at large, attempting to set their snares under the dread eye of the Covin.

 

* * *

 

Sir Acopulo reached a trading rendezvous off the western coast of Kerith and transferred to an impish merchantman bound for Zark, sending Seaspawn on her way with his blessings.

 

* * *

 

Rap climbed a sky tree, and then departed from Ilrane much faster than he had expected. Ylo and Eshiala wandered the hills of eastern Qoble, lovers in search of sanctuary, wishing only to be left alone.

 

* * *

 

The djinn army marched along the coast under the beetling crags of the Progistes Mountains.

 

* * *

 

In far-off Krasnegar the harbor had been free of ice for a month. Herds and workers swarmed over the hills in their customary summer business, but this year the merchants waited by the docks in vain. The world seemed to have forgotten Krasnegar. No ships came from the sea, nor traders from the woods.