TWELVE

 

God at war

 

 

1

 

On being wakened by a howl of alarm from Kadie, Inos had realized that Rap was not in bed at her side, where he belonged. When she had calmed her daughter, she learned that he had gone, returned, and then disappeared again by sorcery. On this ominous day, she was disinclined to go back to sleep after that news.

Breakfast presented a problem, as there was no food in the cabin and no resident sorcerer to produce any. Mother and daughter set out for the Commons. They found nobody there, which was definitely odd. Had the entire College been abandoned? Something vital must be happening, somewhere.

“We’ll try the Meeting Place!” Inos said firmly, and they set off through the woods again.

In a few minutes Kadie exclaimed, “That sounds like the sea!”

The Meeting Place was nowhere near the sea. There was certainly something noisy ahead, though. “Or a large crowd?”

Kadie jumped and uttered another howl, the second of the day. The poor girl’s nerves were in terrible shape, Inos thought, and then stifled a scream of her own. A monstrous mushroom-colored giant was grinning at her from the bushes. It was browsing on a banana tree and it had no clothes on. It… she… mumbled something incomprehensible through a mouthful of juicy leaf.

“Er, good morning to you, too,” Inos said politely, and walked quickly past, towing Kadie by the hand. “Only a troll,” she whispered airily, as if trolls had always been commonplace in her life. Trolls in Thume? Behold the millennium! She sniffed. “And there are gnomes around somewhere. Come on! This is becoming exciting!”

“Exciting? I don’t want anything else exciting!”

“History being made? Would you rather call it ‘romantic,’ then?”

Kadie smiled wistfully. “I think I would rather be at home in Krasnegar and never have another adventure as long as I live.”

“Now you are making sense!” Inos said, but it was not the sort of sense a fourteen-year-old should make. She was sickened by the change in her daughter. The old Kadie would never have made such a remark.

Hand in hand, they emerged into the Meeting Place. It was full of people, all the way from the encircling woods down to the little lake in the center — pixies, of course, but also clumps of bright-clad folk, clumps of drab-clad folk, and groups showing much bare skin.

“See?” Inos said with a calm that belied her thumping heart. “I expect they’re all sorcerers. Your father has been collecting allies. Elves over there? And imps, of course…”

“Inos!” Shandie came running through the crowd in a resplendent doublet of imperial purple, bedecked with several jeweled orders and strewn with chivalrous sashes. He swept her into a hug. “And Princess Kadolan!”

Kadie curtseyed low. The imperor pulled her up and hugged her, too. He put an arm around both mother and daughter, laughing and trying to speak at the same time. His excitement was much at odds with his very formal dress. “Rap told me you were here, and my wife, too, I understand, and of course old Raspnex —”

“Things are going well, obviously?” Inos said. Those brown bushy-haired people must be the anthropophagi Rap had mentioned. They seemed to be wearing nothing but paint and bones.

“Things are going marvelously!” Shandie said. “I was worried about you, but Raspnex swore you’d be safe enough with the caliph.” His eyes were asking questions his mouth wasn’t.

Inos would not inform Shandie of her experiences with Azak, even were Kadie not present. Raspnex ought to lose his warlocking license. “I assume that Rap is busy at the moment?”

“Very! This is a historic occasion! There are sorcerers here from all over the world, all gathered to combat the Covin.”

“Fauns? And goblins?” There were more pixies than anyone else, of course. They must be terrified by this invasion.

Then Inos located the center of the action, halfway around the clearing, with Rap himself towering over a group of assorted races, probably the leaders of the various factions. Certainly that was Warlock Lith’rian at his side, looking no older than he had twenty years ago. The male troll was even taller than Rap and twice the width, and there was a brown man with a bone through his nose. Another anthropophagus? That small, white-cowled figure was probably the Keeper, but fortunately Kadie had not noticed her yet.

“I don’t see any jotnar,” Inos remarked. “Except Jarga.” She returned a smile and a wave from the big sailor, who was conspicuous within a group of two or three dozen dwarves.

“No, she’s the only jotunn,” Shandie said.

“Mama!” Kadie cried. “Down by the lake — those are merfolk!”

“Where? Good Gods! Shandie, are those… Kadie, how do you know about merfolk?”

“Don’t worry about them,” the imperor said confidently. “They’re sorcerers, so there’ll be no trouble.”

“I’ve never seen merfolk before!”

Shandie scowled. “Remember Ythbane? He was part merman.”

Inos decided that merfolk were odd-looking fish, with their pale skins and blue hair. She did not think she could ever find any merman attractive, whatever the legends said. She was still staring at them, and hence at the little lake, when a Nordland longship materialized upon it with a crack of thunder. Waves leaped shoreward, crashed into the banks, drenched the closer bystanders with silver sheets of water — merfolk and djinns, mostly. Others, all the way from the elves to the dwarves, were sprayed. Cries of alarm echoed through the glade, and half the pixies winked out of existence.

“Recent information,” the imperor said, “hints that the Nordland contingent may have just reported for duty.”

Kadie screamed for the third time that morning, but this time she was indicating joy. The sinister craft was packed with oversize fair-haired, fair-skinned people, men and women both, but there was no doubt which one mattered to her. A lanky young man had leaped up on the gunwale and was balancing there, windmilling his arms as the longship rolled. He wore leather breeches like all the other men aboard, but he was the only member of the crew whose hair did not lie flat and he was grotesquely lank. He yelled, “Dad! Dad! I brought you some sorcerers!” and took a flying leap to shore.

He slipped on the muddy bank and disappeared amid the rushes with another violent splash.

Kadie squealed piercingly. “Gath! That’s Gath!” She vanished into the crowd like an arrow from a bow.

As a sodden Gath emerged and scrambled out. Rap came plowing through sorcerers and archons and warlocks. The two of them crashed into an embrace.

“Inos?” Shandie said reprovingly. “You’re weeping!”

True! The Meeting Place had disappeared in crystal mist and the pain in her throat was unbearable. She turned to the imperor and hugged him, burying her face in his velvet collar. “Rap safe, Kadie safe, and now Gath safe! Just a week ago I thought I’d never see any of them again!” She could hardly force the words out — sentimental idiot! This was becoming a habit. She stepped back, wiping away tears. Then she saw that Rap was holding his son at arm’s length with one arm, studying him, and his other hand was surreptitiously wiping his eyes, also. It was catching.

Shandie regarded her with fond amusement. “Well, from now on, you can brag about that boy of yours. He seems to have succeeded where you and I dared not even try! Congratulations!”

“Thank you.” Gath was taller than his father!

“If he ever wants a job, just send him to me.”

“I plan to leave him mine.” How strange! Inos recalled that not so very long ago, she and Rap had seriously doubted Gath’s talents and prospects for future kingship. Not assertive enough, they had thought. So now the lad had taken off on his own to the Nintor Moot — and that exploit alone would guarantee him the lifelong worship of all the jotnar in her kingdom — and come wandering back from the market with a few dozen sorcerers in tow…

“He must have been incredibly lucky!” she said.

“In my experience, luck is more output than input,” Shandie said dryly. “I understand my wife and daughter are safe, also?”

How much had Rap told him? “Yes, they’re well,” Inos said, intently watching her son and husband’s reunion, Kadie’s frantic progress around the lake, the jotnar disembarking, the panicky pixies’ efforts to distance themselves from those ultimate terrors, the white-haired demons.

“But not Ylo?”

“No,” she said, “not Ylo.” She glanced cautiously at Shandie.

His expression was bleak. The glint in his eye was a challenge to their friendship. “I must stay here. Can you bring my wife to me?” It was as close as he could ever come to pleading.

Kadie had reached her twin. Gath lifted her bodily into the air and whirled her around, the two of them screaming with excitement. Rap was grinning like a maniac. The jotnar crowded in around them, hiding the family reunion from view.

Things were under control there. Inos was not needed there. She would congratulate her son in due course. The imperor needed her more.

“Yes, I can fetch Eshiala here, Shandie,” she said. “But first let’s find somewhere to sit and talk. I have some things to tell you.”

 

 

2

 

“This is the leader of the Nordland sorcerers,” Gath said proudly, “Atheling Twist, son of Kalkor.”

Rap could not tear his eyes away from this astonishing young man who had replaced the boy he remembered. So tall already! Then the name penetrated… His heart missed a beat. He swung around to look at the little youth on his crutch. “Son of Kalkor?” And a sorcerer? Jotnar were addicted to blood feuds.

Twist leered up at him with a grotesque mouthful of crooked teeth. “Also brother of Drakkor, the war leader, a sturdy man with an ax — but we come in peace, Thaneslayer.” The cripple’s very pale eyes twinkled as he registered Rap’s apprehension.

“I am delighted to hear it, and you are all most welcome. The Keeper…” Rap glanced around. Where was Thaïle? And why had the jotnar chosen this unfortunate runt to lead them?

“We are having already done homage to you as leader of the righteous, Thane.”

“You have?”

“I accepted their oaths on your behalf, Father,” Gath said, obviously enduring agony from his efforts to appear humble. “But some of them preferred to swear to me personally. Of course my vassals and I are at your command! Did I do wrong?”

“I don’t recall delegating such powers to you, but under the circumstances I shall waive the usual death penalty for exceeding authority. How many of you. Sorcerer?”

“Sixty-four, Thane. Is this all of your army, though?”

Many of the pixies had departed but were now returning.

“Most of it,” Rap said. He had just realized that several of the jotnar contingent were women, and very few of them seemed to be sailors.

“How many?”

“With you, we must have almost five hundred.”

“Ah!” Twist sighed. “Jaurg?”

A blind youth at the back said, “Leader?”

“How many in the Covin?”

“Something over two thousand.”

Rap staggered. “What? You’re joking! How do you know this?”

“Because I was one of them. Several of us were enthralled. Athelings Gath and Twist contrived our release, but I know there were at least twenty-two hundred sorcerers in the Covin, and that was some weeks ago.”

Rap’s mouth was suddenly drier than the heart of Zark. He could not comprehend such numbers. Where had all those sorcerers come from? No wonder Zinixo had been displaying confidence! “We also have a demigod on our side.”

With his eyes still closed, Jaurg smiled at him over blond heads. “Then it should be a good fight.”

Gath was registering worry in the background. “We can win?”

Jaurg turned to the voice and smiled again. “No, Atheling my liege, we cannot win. But it should be a good fight.”

Odds of four to one? It would be a fight, but not a very good one.

“We must coordinate our strategies,” Rap said, suddenly aware that even jotnar might be easier to handle than a mixture of touchy warlocks, archons, a demigod, sophisticated elves, and deadly cannibals —

A scream of agony rent the morning, stilling the babble of conversation. Everyone stopped talking to stare. Over in the pixie sector, old Archon Neem had fallen writhing to the grass. Spectators were backing away hastily. In the ambience, he was enveloped in black flame. A moment later and a few paces away from him, Archon Puik erupted in black flame, also.

Each archon was attuned to the section of border he guarded.

The Keeper’s cry told the company what they had all already guessed. “Rally!” Thaïle shouted. “Meld! The attack has begun!”

 

 

3

 

Thaïle had not dared use foresight on the events of this fateful day, but she had guessed all along that the cause was hopeless. Had there been any chance of victory at all, her predecessor would not have capitulated so easily, for Lain had been no weakling; only certainty of failure could have driven her to despair. The testimony of the cobbler Jaurg had thus been merely confirmation. Overhearing it, Thaïle had peered into the very depths of his soul, suspecting a deeply buried treachery. She had discovered only a peaceable young man, honest and sincerely obedient to the Gods and the Good. A very unusual jotunn, in fact.

Mundane logic alone said that disaster was inevitable. Even were the two sides evenly matched in strength, the issue could not be in doubt, for the Covin’s thousands were united under the will of the Almighty. The diverse assembly in the Meeting Place had no discipline, no unanimity, no single vision. These ragtag revolutionaries had no practice in acting together. They even lacked an overall leader. Thaïle herself, for all her superhuman power, was a naive country lass, inexperienced in command. Rap was a midget sorcerer and too much a decent human being to be a successful general — he had a statesman’s vision, but he lacked the arrogance needed to impose his own will on everyone else. The two warlocks were so wary of each other’s distrust that neither dared exert himself lest he provoke a rupture.

At Thaïle’s command the company tried to meld and produced only a welter of confusion. Each of the twelve races making up the Thumian army rallied to its own leader first. Then imp clashed with jotunn, gnome with djinn, merman with anthropophagus, elf with dwarf. The fauns tried to argue. Trolls froze in horror and pixies shattered like glass.

In essence the Covin was hurling raw power at the barrier over the Qoble Mountains, where Neem’s sector joined with Puik’s. The contest held no more subtlety than two mountain rams battering heads together beside a herd of ewes. Normally the physical world would have paid no heed, but in this case the energies released were so great that the earth shook and avalanches tumbled from the crags. Soon streams were boiling and forests smoked.

The real battle was staged in the ambience. There, too, there was only insistence against resistance. Thaïle could observe the truth but mere sorcerers interpreted the ambience in metaphor. Different observers saw it in different ways, and she was overwhelmed by all the conflicting reactions around her. Many saw fire — white, red, and black. The jotunn mostly visualized a rampaging horde of warriors. Dwarves saw mighty hammers and merfolk giant waves. Struggling against this massive confusion, the Keeper fought to sustain the ancient walls and rally her supporters at the same time.

Every one of the five hundred seemed to be calling on her — advising, beseeching, arguing, lamenting, while Neem and Puik thrashed in terminal agony. The Meeting Place roiled with fear and anger. Reduce the perimeter, launch a counterstroke at Hub, divide the army into columns… Five hundred sorcerers clamored with five hundred plans and suggestions.

One tiny voice trilled on a different note. One small thread of emotion was different from all the others. Puzzled, Thaïle managed to spare a transitory fragment of attention for that one, and saw Kadie’s frightened mundane green eyes staring at her.

“You all right, Thaïle?”

Sympathy? That’s what it was! Someone cared for Thaïle herself.

“Yes, I’m fine!” she said aloud. She smiled gratefully and turned her attention back to the Qoble front.

Too late. The thousand-year sorcery collapsed, Puik and Neem dissolved utterly, and the Covin’s wrath raged untrammeled into Thume.

And there, for a moment, it was balked. The stony eyes of the Almighty glared around, seeking an enemy. He found no army drawn up in battle, no fortresses to overthrow or cities to besiege. He saw only sleepy rustic countryside and a scattered population of herders, fishermen, and peasant farmers. Typically, he reacted with wanton spite.

Pixies began to die. Bolts of power struck them down as they reaped and tilled. Men at their labors, women tending children, the children themselves at play — a wave of death surged forward over the Accursed Land. Cottages exploded in flame, livestock fell lifeless. Watermills and beehives burned. Nothing in the War of the Five Warlocks or the innumerable wars before it had ever been more cold-blooded than this systematic annihilation.

The Meeting Place stiffened into paralysis. Horror froze the defenders as the destruction spread.

King Rap was the first to recover. “Keeper!” he bellowed. “They have found the Gates! Abandon the College quickly!”

Abandon?… Then Thaïle saw what the faun had seen. The Covin had just discovered that there were two Thumes. The mass slaughter was being inflicted on the real land, the home of the pixie folk. Above that, glimmering everywhere in a silver web of sorcery, lay the network of the Way, spreading out from the Chapel, linking Meeting Place with Library, Commons, Gates, Market, and all the facilities of the College. Innumerable threads led off to the humble Places where the sorcerers lived with their mundane partners.

It was all horribly vulnerable. As soon as the Almighty realized where his enemies were hiding, be could detach the web from the real world. He need exert a mere fraction of his power to do that, and in an instant he would hold Pandemia unopposed, for the College would be gone forever, and everyone in it also.

Thaïle blazed out a command: “To the Chapel! Archons, round up the mundanes and bring them, also. Now!”

Thunder rumbled over the sunlit Meeting Place. The sorcerers vanished, leaving an empty space of much-trampled grass and clumps of bedraggled shrubs. Half the cabanas were in need of repair and an incongruous Nordland longship listed, to starboard in the lake. Only the six surviving archons remained — plus the imperor, Queen Inosolan, Kadie, and Gath.

“Hey!” Gath said. “Where did everybody go?”

 

 

4

 

Rap had always known that the battle would be brief, for that was the way of sorcery, but he had not expected such instant catastrophe. For a moment the transition took his breath away.

Then he pulled his wits together. The five pixies were still in a state of shock. He slammed power at them with all the feeble strength he could summon.

“You!” he barked at Toom. “That way. You — take the west… Summon all the mundanes!” He distributed the four cardinal points and turned to the fifth pixie, Raim. “Adjust the Way!”

They nodded, and rallied.

Then he looked to the four mundanes. Gath and Kadie were already standing at his side, white-faced and bewildered. Inos and the imperor came running up.

“Where is everybody?” Shandie demanded.

“At the Chapel,” Rap said. “We must join them or —”

Temptation opened before him like a chasm. The war was as good as lost. The ancient barrier had offered a slim chance, but now it had fallen he could see no hope at all. Two thousand sorcerers! Odds of four or five to one — Zinixo was going to win in a pushover.

So…

So even if the Almighty did not detach the College from the real world. Rap himself and the archons might be able to do so. The alternative Thume would continue to exist. Assuming every sorcerer in the College had children and a wife or husband, it would be inhabited by a couple of thousand people. That was a viable population, and some of the sorcerers might manage to scramble back aboard before the severance was complete.

“There are two Thumes,” he mumbled, struggling with honor and conscience. “The Almighty may be able to cut us off from the real world. If he does that, then he can never recapture us.”

He stared in dismay at the wife he loved, his son and daughter. What would be their fate if Zinixo caught them? And what would be his own? Thume was a pleasant land. The four of them might dwell there in peace for the rest of their days. Kadie and Gath could survive to adulthood and find partners among the younger pixies. He and Inos would grow old in contentment, dangling grandchildren on their knees. It would be exile, but a safe exile.

It was the fate he had chosen for the fairies. When he had been a demigod and had banished their race forever from the real world, he had not doubted that he was doing them a favor. Why, now, should he not choose the same solution for himself and his loved ones? The alternative was defeat and probably the most horrible deaths a mad sorcerer could devise.

Shandie and the kids stared at him in bewilderment.

But Inos understood, and her green eyes flashed disapproval.

“Desert the cause?” she said.

“The cause is lost!”

“Duty?”

Duty. Once before she had given him that answer in similar circumstances. Long ago, the two of them had faced a decision even more tempting than this one. Rap had known five words of power then. Five words alone destroyed, but five words plus love made a God. Together they could have taken on immortality, eternal bliss, and infinite authority. Together they had chosen duty instead.

Gath and Kadie, then? Leave them? But they were not children any longer. What right had Rap to make this decision for them?

None. But he had no time to explain it all. The archons were calling out to the mundanes, their voices echoing along the web of power to the farthest ends of Thume. Men and women and children were answering the occult summons, hurrying to the Way. Raim had changed the settings, so the Way now led only to the Chapel and whatever was happening there. There was no time to explain and reflect, so Rap would have to decide, and Inos’ expression told him what his decision should be.

“We must go to the Chapel,” he said. “Come on!”

He grabbed Kadie’s hand and started to run over the grass to the white path. He sensed the others following.

Fool! he thought. Fool!

 

* * *

 

The Way sloped steeply through the forest now, and it was packed with refugees. Men bore toddlers on their shoulders, women and youngsters carried babies, and children milled around them all. Even the adults reacted with terror at the sight of demons, so Rap used sorcery to mask himself and his companions and clear a path ahead. The five of them ran, five people hand in hand, pelting down the slope Raim had just created.

The trees became larger, thicker, darker. The air took on the muggy scents of jungle. Shandie and Gath kept gasping out questions. Inos and Kadie were trying to explain — the Chapel was the center, the site of power, the heart of Thume.

And also Keef’s tomb. Rap thought, but the Chapel existed on both planes. Once there, they would be back in the real world.

Even before the ancient ruin emerged from the forest, he could feel the crackle of sorcery and hear its echoes. The battle had reached the Chapel already. A mob of mundanes milled in dark confusion before the entrance. Still towing Kadie — who in turn towed Gath, Inos, and Shandie — he plunged into the undergrowth.

“Back door!” he shouted over his shoulder. Swamp sucked at his legs, branches tore at his eyes. He fought his way through the tangled vegetation, around the corner of the crumbling ruin, and along to the little side portal. He arrived panting, covered in mud to his thighs. The handle resisted his efforts to turn it, so he exerted power again, ripping the door bodily from its hinges and hurling it away.

Gath murmured an appreciative “Wow!” in the background. Rap dived through, and his chain of followers followed.

Battle raged in the great chamber like a thunderstorm.

To the left, the torrent of mundanes had poured in through the two entrances and then congealed, barring any more from following. The vestry must be packed solid behind them, while those who had entered stared in bewildered terror at the contest in progress.

To the right, the few hundreds of the righteous were being driven steadily back on Keef’s grave in the far corner. Thaïle was in the front rank, with the leaders around her — Lith’rian, Raspnex, Thrugg, Twist, little Ishist, and some others. Fire and thunder clamored over them. Behind them the lesser sorcerers struggled to maintain their meld against the searing pain of manifest power.

And in the center stood the Almighty.

Of course it was only an illusion — Zinixo would never risk his own hide in a battle. But the human mind sought explanations and that vortex of raw power demanded form. Thus Rap saw the usurper himself, shining in black fire and three times the height of the tallest jotunn. Wielding the melded force of his minions, the giant dwarf hurled havoc upon the retreating defenders. The Chapel trembled in the blasts of power.

Disaster! Rap gazed in despair upon the unequal struggle and knew that he had arrived in time to see the conclusion, no more. The outcome was inevitable. Nothing could resist the Almighty.

Nothing Rap could do would make the slightest difference. For a moment he considered flight, but he knew he could never force his way back up the Way now. He released Kadie and took Inos in his arms.

“It’s all over!” he shouted through the echoing thunders. “We have failed!”

Shandie shouted, “No! Do something!”

Inos kissed her husband’s cheek and hugged him.

Gath said, “Oh, shit!” in a manly baritone.

Then his prescience warned him. He yelled, and grabbed hold of Kadie.

 

* * *

 

The resistance collapsed. All of the assorted freedom fighters tumbled helpless to the floor imps, gnomes, jotnar… Only Thaile remained, a tiny defiant figure wrapped in the angry blasts of the Covin’s power. For a heart-rending moment the demigod alone defied the overweening sorcery.

Then Thaïle also yielded. She cried out and was wreathed in fire. Brighter and brighter she blazed, echoes of her despair tearing at the onlookers. Despair and surrender — it was the inevitable fate of Keepers.

“Let me go!” Kadie screamed, struggling wildly in her brother’s clumsy embrace.

Rap’s heart was being torn apart. A God’s prophecy rang mercilessly in his ears: You must lose a child! This was what had been foretold. The fate of Pandemia swung in the balance now, and this was why the God had spoken. This was where duty led.

“Let her go!” he barked.

“But, Dad!” Gath protested, trying to avoid Kadie’s kicks. She was squirming and clawing like a wildcat Thaïle’s howl was a knife in the eardrums, her flames blazing ever brighter.

“Let her go, I said!”

“But, Dad —”

“I know! Let her go!” Rap grabbed the pair of them. For a moment all three of them wrestled together, until Rap hauled Kadie free from her brother’s grasp.

And released her.

She ran. Gath tried to follow. Rap hung on to him, and then it was Gath who was the wildcat, righting, kicking, screaming warnings. Inos, also, dived forward, and Rap somehow won a hand free from his other struggle to grab her arm. Again there was a three-way tussle.

Kadie raced across the empty floor, skirted the towering triumph of the Almighty, and hurled herself upon the blazing demigod. Inos screamed and turned her back. Rap still struggled with a son frantic to go to the rescue of his twin. Gath was taller, but all bone and sinew, and he could not break free of his father’s muscle. There could be no rescue.

For a moment princess and pixie clung to each other in incandescent embrace. White inferno roared in the Chapel. Clothes, hair, flesh dissolved in brightness greater than the sun.

Sobbing, Gath slumped limply to the floor.

There was nothing left. They had gone. The vision faded, except for green after-images. Darkness flooded back into the Chapel, stillness and sorrow.

“You knew!” the boy howled, staring up at his father in disbelief.

Rap turned away, unable to meet the awful accusation in his son’s face.

He had known ever since Gath came safely back to him that Kadie was the one he must lose, and he had been fairly sure how it must happen.

“Yes, he knew!” Inos said, and her glare was worse. “I hope he thinks it is worth it.”

Kadie, Kadie!

The sorcerers were scrambling to their feet and bowing to the obscenity that rejoiced in the center, the exultant mirage of the Almighty. They were all votaries now. The ice on Keef’s grave had melted.

The battle was over. Zinixo had won.

His monstrous image turned to look at the mundanes. Especially at Rap.

 

 

5

 

Dawn had long since reached Hub. Lord Umpily had not the faintest idea how long he had been crouching in his seat in the Rotunda. His limbs were cramped, his clothing clammy with sweat. He could guess that the decisive struggle of the war was being fought and that he was trapped in the middle of the enemy’s army. He suspected he was liable to be destroyed with it if his own friends won; he would certainly be executed as a spy if he were detected, but the worst part of his torment was that he had no idea how the battle was going! Ignorance was driving him crazy.

Ever since the Almighty had stopped the standing ovation with a single gesture, the Rotunda had been eerily silent. Everyone but Umpily had remained locked in a trance. Once in a while an involuntary sigh or murmur would rustle through the great hall, but that was all. He felt like a blind man watching a gladiatorial contest with his head in a bag. At first most of the Covin had looked south, then northeast. Then their faces had swung around to the southeast, but every eye had stared blankly at things he could not see.

To begin with, he had stared where the others were staring, but eventually his neck grew agonizingly stiff and he just crouched down low, as if somehow that position might hide him from so many sorcerers. Once in a while one of the congregation would cry out, and sometimes one of the older ones would crumple as if overcome by too much effort; most of them revived in due course and joined in the struggle again. He had wondered often whether he might try to slip out unnoticed, but he had never found the courage to try.

Besides, in his humble fashion he was one of the players, so he may as well stay and see the ending. He might be saved if Shandie won. Otherwise he would die forgotten, but that was any soldier’s duty.

In the center, the Almighty sat motionless, glaring southeastward. Apart from that one change of direction, he had not moved for an hour. The vast bulk of the Opal Throne could make even an imperor seem small; Zinixo looked like a child in it.

Suddenly he came alive. He jumped down and raised his arms overhead, waving his fists in triumph. The audience recovered at the same instant — it surged to its feet and roared.

They were back into standing ovation again.

 

* * *

 

That one probably did not last more than fifteen minutes. Of course Umpily knew then who had won and who had lost, but he banged his bruised hands together and screamed with the worst of them. Why? he wondered. Why bother to hide any longer? Why not just cock a snoot at the little horror and die with honor?

Again the Almighty gestured for silence. Again it came instantly. His votaries resumed their seats, grinning and panting with excitement.

Three seats away, the young faun turned to Umpily, smirking and raising an eyebrow. Asking a question?

“Oh, yes! Marvelous!” Umpily said, forcing his mouth into a rictus of smile.

The rustic frowned, puzzled. Then threateningly. His gray eyes widened in astonishment. Power had nothing to do with age or employment — quite likely the kid was capable of analyzing the fat imp’s enchantment and seeing that it was not a loyalty spell, that the man inside it was not a sorcerer…

Then everyone’s attention flicked back to the center. Zinixo had risen, and now he spoke for the first time all night.

“Bring them in! Welcome your new associates!” His voice was the deepest Umpily had ever heard.

The floor of the Rotunda shimmered and was suddenly crowded. Towering blond jotnar, hulking trolls, dozens of tiny gnomes, elegant elves. In sorcerous wars the losers were not necessarily destroyed. Sometimes they joined the ranks of the victors, and this must be Shandie’s army.

He had done very well, Umpily decided. There were hundreds of them. But in the end the odds had been impossible — Zinixo had gathered four or five times as many. So now the rebels were kneeling to him. Probably every sorcerer in all Pandemia was here, loyal to the Almighty. The war was over. Never in the history of the world had anything like this happened before.

Who in the Name of Evil were those pointy-eared people?

Umpily shot a nervous sideways glance at the young faun, but he was entranced by the spectacle unfolding on the floor and had apparently forgotten the mysterious mundane. How long until he remembered? The three dwarvish women were muttering excitedly together.

A rustle of movement… The defeated sorcerers had risen to their feet. They bowed once to the throne and were dismissed. They vanished from the floor. The seats between Umpily and the faun groaned in protest as two enormous half-naked jotnar appeared on them; a pair of silken-garbed elves flickered in on his left. All over the Rotunda, places that had been empty were now filled.

And down on the floor their departure had revealed —

Warlock Raspnex and an elf, who must surely be Warlock Lith’rian. Those two were kneeling. A group of others stood nearby — Shandie! Impress Eshiala and the child. And King Rap, with a blond woman who must be his wife — Umpily could recall seeing her at court many years ago, back in Ythbane’s time. And a gangly jotunn youth in sailor breeches. Was that the boy Shandie had seen in the pool? Umpily did not know and probably never would.

A slight disturbance amid the seats at the far side and Witch Grunth appeared on the floor alongside the other two wardens. She knelt, also.

Ex-wardens.

Zinixo had resumed his seat and was leering joyfully at this ragtag collection of captives. An eager hush settled over the Rotunda.

“We are merciful toward those who were misguided.” The usurper rubbed his massive hands. “But We draw the line at wardens. You three We shall deal with at Our leisure! We wish to be entertained. You will devise the program yourselves. You will propose for Our consideration the longest, most painful deaths you can imagine!”

Lith’rian bent over in obeisance. “We shall be honored,” he announced in an elf’s sweet tones, “to provide Your Godhood with any amusement we can.”

Raspnex and Grunth proclaimed their agreement together.

Umpily shivered. They meant it! As votaries they would cooperate fully in their own executions if ordered to do so.

“Stand aside now!” Zinixo commanded with a wave. “Let us see what other fish we have caught in our net.”

The wardens scrambled to their feet and moved away. They chose a location beyond the Gold Throne, where Umpily could not see them very well. But that did not matter, because the dwarf had turned his smirk on the mundanes.

“Welcome back to Hub, Emshandar!”

“May the Gods rot your guts!”

Zinixo was too triumphant to be displeased. He probably welcomed Shandie’s show of resistance. “And your wife’s beauty was not exaggerated! I shall enjoy making her acquaintance.”

Shandie opened his mouth again and was apparently struck dumb.

“Your understudies have begun to find their tasks onerous,” the dwarf continued teasingly. “But we can dispense with understudies from now on, can’t we? Come and pay homage, Emshandar!”

Umpily could not suppress a whimper when the rightful imperor hurried forward and mounted the two steps to his own throne. As Shandie knelt to the usurper occupying it, Umpily closed his eyes.

Utter disaster!

 

* * *

 

“And dear Rap!” the hateful, sepulchral voice said.

Umpily opened his eyes. Shandie had finished his public apologies and protestations of future obedience. He had returned to the floor and was gazing up at the Almighty with starry adoration.

Zinixo had lost interest in the imperor. His manner implied that he had left the best till last.

“Will you plead with Us, King Rap? Plead for mercy? Plead for a quick death, relatively speaking?”

“It would be a waste of breath!” The faun did not seem to speak loudly, but his voice filled the hall. He was not dressed like a king. His garments were commonplace workman’s garb, bedraggled and muddy; his hair was a tangle. He had his feet apart and his arms folded; he held his chin high. He looked like a king.

His wife, in a white blouse and a green skirt, was a queen born. Her haughty gaze dismissed that upstart on the throne as unworthy of serious consideration. Consciously or not, the youth at her other side had adopted the same defiant, folded-arm stance as his father.

Again Zinixo rubbed his hands. “Will you plead then for your wife or the people of Krasnegar?”

“Never.”

Umpily shivered. How long could a prisoner defy a captor as ruthless as Zinixo? What price would the king be willing to pay for his pride?

“Indeed? Then let Us see how your son moves you. Come here, brat.”

The jotunn boy began to walk forward. He shot a look of horror back at his father, but he did not stop walking until he stood before the Opal Throne. There he spread his feet, folded his arms again, and raised his head to stare up at the dwarf.

The Almighty leaned forward. “We are going to kill you. Slowly.”

There was a moment’s pause. Then the boy said, “With the throne. Go ahead, toad.” And he spat on the steps.

The Rotunda buzzed with anger.

Umpily was speechless. He was speechless mostly because his mouth was as dry as a mummy and his tongue had shriveled to ashes. There was an excellent reason why spitting was a sign of contempt — only a very brave man could spit in the face of danger.

“You have foresight!” the dwarf exclaimed.

“A little,” the kid admitted. “Prescience.” The husky adolescent voice was almost as steady as his father’s had been.

“And what do you foresee?”

“About five minutes left now. After that — I don’t know.”

Zinixo chortled. “Well, you will find out! This morning you predicted that your father would squash Us like a bug. Now you are going to plead with him to beg Us for your life.”

“Never!” But the word lacked the conviction his father had given it.

The boy’s legs collapsed under him. He sprawled to the floor and rolled over on his back. After a moment, he turned his head to look to his parents. The king and queen of Krasnegar each had an arm around the other and were watching the drama in silence.

The Opal Throne floated off its dais, carrying the Almighty. When it was directly over the young jotunn, it stopped. A dozen trolls could not have lifted that great monolith, but it hung rock steady in midair, less than an arm’s length above its spread-eagled victim.

It began to settle downward. Slowly, very slowly. Inexorably. Gradually the boy disappeared from Umpily’s view.

A minute.

Umpily could hear himself whimpering. He knew his tears would surely betray him, but he was past caring.

Two minutes.

The throne must be almost on the boy’s chest — it was hard to believe that there was still room for a living body in that gap. Only one hand and a wrist showed now. The boy himself had said five minutes. He had overestimated.

“Well, dear Rap?” The dwarf’s soft question seemed as loud as trumpets in that dread silence. “You still have your powers, such as they are. Will you stop his heart to spare him an agonizing death?”

The king of Krasnegar said nothing.

“You had better start pleading soon!” The dwarf seemed annoyed, as if his enjoyment was less than he had hoped.

“I shall never ask favor of you!”

“Inosolan, then? Will you not try to persuade your son to plead with his father to plead with Us?”

The queen said nothing, but she glanced sideways at her husband as if puzzled by his silence.

“Oh, well!” Zinixo growled. “Juice time.”

The throne sagged down another inch. A faint gasp came from under it…

“Stop!” a shrill voice screamed. All eyes swung around in astonishment. “Monsters! Do you not see that you serve the Evil?”

To his unspeakable horror, Umpily realized that he was on his feet, waving his arms, and that was himself he could hear yelling hysterically. “To crush an innocent boy? You are all guilty! Atrocity! Throw off his foul compulsion! He is evil, evil, evil…”

Something lifted him bodily, sucked him through the air, and dropped him stunningly on the floor in front of the throne. He sprawled helplessly, winded, dazed. Zinixo peered down at him in furious disbelief.

“Who… ? Well, well, well! It is the blubber man himself! Who removed your loyalty spell, worm?”

Umpily raised his face from the stone. His nose hurt like the torments of the cursed and was probably bleeding. Under the throne, the boy was trying to twist his head around to see what was happening.

“Well?” the dwarf thundered.

“Olybino,” Umpily mumbled. Oh, his nose! And his knees! And what crazy impulse of honor had ever moved him to try to be a hero? He struggled to rise and only managed to get his elbows under him.

“Olybino!” Zinixo screeched. “You have been spying on Us all these last three weeks? Foul slug! We shall devise an especially lingering… Or were you volunteering to take the brat’s place? You have left it too late! There is no room for one of your size!”

He smiled, showing his pebbly dwarvish teeth all around the Rotunda. His massed minions roared with obedient laughter at their leader’s wit.

A quiet whisper came from under the throne: “Thanks for trying, sir.”

Umpily gulped. “Couldn’t let you steal all the heroism, lad. You’re doing great!” Funny — he felt better. He really did. Clean again. He glanced around and saw Shandie staring at him with a very perplexed expression. He knew what it was like to be under a votary spell…

The laughter had faded away.

“We shall leave the mundane snoop for later,” the dwarf announced. “It would be a shame to waste so much tallow — turn him into a candle for the coronation, perhaps? But now… King Rap? Your last chance to save the brat!”

Umpily looked in horror at the faun. Everyone looked to the faun.

In silence, he sank to his knees. His wife joined him as calmly as if they were in a chapel service.

From under the deadly throne a muffled voice shouted, “Dad, no! Mom! Don’t!”

“We do not plead with the madman, Gath,” the king said. He raised clasped hands. “I direct my prayers to the Gods! Unworthy as I am, and acknowledging my past sins against Them, I call on Them now. God of Rescues, save us, I beg You!”

Zinixo seemed disconcerted. He frowned. “There is no God of Rescues!”

“There is now!” said a new voice.

The sun dimmed. Three thousand voices screamed in pain, six thousand hands covered eyes to shut out the wondrous glare.

A real God stood within the Rotunda.

 

God at War:

There saw she direst strife; the supreme God

At war with all the frailty of grief,

Of rage, of fear, anxiety, revenge,

Remorse, spleen, hope, but most of all despair.

Keats, Hyperion II, 1 92