Coda, Chapter 15: The Siege of Cragstone
The portal dropped the Raven in the Cragstone Hall, and her handful of aides right after her, and Nalicana right after them. She threaded her way dextrously between the aides and said to the Raven, "We need to talk about timing."
"Yes?"
"By your order, Pfeil is sending the reserves from Arwic here. There are the first of them, see?" And indeed, as she spoke, a unit of troops materialized on the drop spot and marched away to the staging area. They were followed by another.
"But I don't know how long this is going to take," Nalicana said, "and the Hopeslayer is coming. There will be a moment when I have to disable the portal between here and Arwic. I mean the one down on the Arwic slope that leads to the Cragstone green; the other one, that leads from the Arwic Hall into here can stay up unless Cragstone falls."
"I understand," the Raven said. "What about the other routes into Cragstone?"
"There are the Kehan and Millstone portals to the north, the Rithwic and Molwirth portals to the south. I want to start closing those down now. The Lifestone has already been moved within the walls, and I shut down the Cragstone Nexus yesterday evening. Ideally, there should be no other way of portaling into this city from anywhere on Osteth, except for those who have a Lifestone recall here. But I'll settle for leaving the Arwic portal open until the last moment, so long as I can shut it down at the last moment, so the Hopeslayer can't get into Arwic later, after all the trouble it took to keep him out."
"What about links from other continents?"
"One in Ikeras, as soon as they finish off the Queen, which I expect them to do. Another in Linvak Tukal, in the Allegiance Hall there. None at the Skyport, because Kellin may still have access there. I'll put one in to Fort Strathelar if you wish."
"Do that, please, Nalicana. The Linvak and the Strathelar portals to begin with --- put the entrances up on the platform there, next to the Binding Stone. We'll wait on the Ikeras portal till we know it's safe ---" she glanced around the circle of aides. "You, Tulakhe, go to Ikeras and come back and keep me informed."
"Yes, ma'am," the Tonk said, and raised her blade and disappeared.
"Then go to each of those other towns --- Rithwic, Kehan, and so on --- announce that you'll be closing the portal shortly; give them no more than half an hour to get to Cragstone if they want to be here when the battle starts; then close down.
"Buu, go to Arwic and tell Pfeil that I would really love to have an estimate from her on how long it's going to take her to send through all the troops that she's going to send me." The slender Lugian bowed and portaled away.
As the Raven finally made her way into her office and started reading reports, Prospero appeared at the drop spot, hit the ground running, and headed toward the exit. A grizzled old Lugian engineer caught up with him as he ran, saying, "Prospero! I have your throwing-arm for you to look at, if you have a moment."
"Come with me," Prospero said, without slowing down. "How big is it?"
"Oh, it's the size of your arm," the engineer said. "It's a model. I need to make a big one."
"Damn straight you do," Prospero said, as the portal took them.
The Raven put down the sheaf of paperwork and strode out of her office into the center of the Hall, where she could see the sky. The darkened moon was just beginning to show above the western wall. An hour or so till midnight.
Tulakhe was back. "Ma'am? Six maniples of Falatacot under Neq'ara have arrived in Ikeras, and they're attacking the Queen from one side while the Derethians attack from the other. But she's Lifestoned in Fort Ariaki, and no one knows how often they'll have to kill her before they kill her."
"All right. Go back and bring me news when there is any."
The steady stream of troops arriving at the drop point suddenly divided in two: unit after unit continuing toward the staging area, and Buu and Aracoeli, who dropped into sight together and headed for the Raven's office together, almost in step.
"After you," Aracoeli said. "Thanks," Buu said. "Ma'am, Pfeil says that it could easily take an hour to finish sending troops through the portal to you. And that almost certainly it won't take the Hopeslayer anywhere near that long to get here. And at last report Nalicana's taking down the other portals and it will be a while before she can get back to Arwic."
"The first time I ran from Arwic to Cragstone it took me less than ten minutes," Aracoeli added. "Granted, fear lent me wings; I was being chased by six Phyntos Wasps each stronger than I was, and it felt like hours, but it still took less than ten minutes. It will take the Shadow army longer than that, but not an hour."
The Raven got up and went to look at the map of Osteth pinned to her wall. "If they come by the road, which I expect they will because of the terrain, they'll have to cross the Prosper at the island just above the Great Falls. I'll post someone just this side of the island, another near the Arwic portal. When the Shadows get to the river, Pfeil must stop sending troops through that portal. If Nalicana isn't there by then to shut it off, Pfeil will have to station everyone she has at the other end, to keep the Shadows from going through the other way. And that will give the people already on Cragstone green time to get across the bridge --- Light willing. Where's Prospero?"
"Gone back to Ikeras."
"All right; have the corporal of the guard post an Alchemist at every bridge, ready to blow them as soon as the last troops are across. I need two volunteers for the island and the portal ---"
"I volunteer," said Aracoeli and Buu in one breath.
"Fine. Go."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"I'll take the island," Aracoeli said as they ran out the north gate and over the bridge. "I knew Kellin."
The logic behind this statement was obscure to Buu, but she didn't stop to argue. She ran to the Arwic portal and, after a moment's thought, climbed the ridge behind it. Here, the distance between a point at which she could see the portal, and a point at which she could see the river, was no more than a hundred paces. She could walk back and forth between the two, which was easier than standing still.
Aracoeli ran up the road to the north, between deserted cottages (the inhabitants had been evacuated the day before). The dark moon with its patch of mysterious lights soared high overhead, and a few sleepy birds were singing in the willow trees. She took her place on the last stones of the road before it plunged beneath the river. Starlight glittered on the surface of the water. Stars overhead stretched eastward, till they were obscured by the mist of the Great Falls. Stars stretched westward between the cliffs, till they seemed to blend into the waters of the Prosper. But to the north there were no stars to be seen. The enemy was on the march.
In her black armor she must be almost invisible, she thought, except for her pale face. Perhaps she should have found herself a black scarf to act as a mask ... but there was something coming now, a little pale shape hirpling down the road, no Shadow-creature, surely. It leapt into the stream on the further side of the island, swam and ran toward Aracoeli, and before it reached the nearer stream she had recognized Reggik, the tallest Drudge on Auberean.
"Hey Blondie!" Reggik whispered, hugging her around the waist (he could reach no higher). "They're coming. Five minutes maybe."
"All right. Tell Buu, who should be at the Arwic portal drop, and then tell the Raven. Run fast, Long-ears."
"I can run, no sweat. It's you got problems. Wait, I think I got one left." He pressed something sticky, the size of her thumb, into the palm of her hand. "Onyx Honeycomb. Make you run like the wind. Make you a little silly too, so watch it." The Drudge ran off.
Now she could hear them, confused noises, the tramp of many feet, the rustle of wings. Reggik might not have reached Buu yet; certainly no one could have summoned Nalicana to close the portal. Red eyes flickered in the darkness. They were at the further bank. She commended her spirit to the Light and took a deep breath. "Kellin!" she shouted.
For an instant there was silence. Then a deep voice spoke, as if from far away: "Do not call me by that name."
"True, it's not your rightful name." An idea was making its way into her mind; she had no time to examine it for warts or wrinkles. "Cashtal Ronain, last gasp of the Haebrous: have you any notion what you're getting yourself into?" As she spoke, she bent down and unfastened her boots, pulled them off and laid them aside.
"WHO DARES?" the great voice boomed, and she laughed and pulled off her helmet. Her pale face, her golden hair gleamed under the stars.
"Aracoeli," the dark voice said. "Have you come to join me at last? There's still time."
"Oh, no," she said. "I serve a better master than you. Come and meet him!" And she ran off into the darkness, not northward along the road, but eastward along the riverbank. Her bare feet were silent against the soft grass. As she ran she stuffed the Onyx Honeycomb into her mouth and chewed it, letting the bitter sweetness slide down her throat. Her ears began to sing as the wind rushed past them.
"Whom do you mean?" Yes, the voice was following her. "Not that milksop Palerath!"
She laughed again. "Oh, no --- though he's a good man; speaking merely of men, he's a better man than you. Would you know whom I follow? Follow me!" And she ran on eastward, toward the rising arm of the Scythe, and it seemed to her as she ran that each word she spoke was a golden bubble that rose from her lips and drifted out on the wind behind her. Goodness; that honey was potent stuff. She must keep her head: there was one thing, and one thing only, that she must not mention.
Not taking time to look around, she knew just the same that they were coming dangerously near to the northern city portals --- only that ridge lay between; and when she crossed the channel above the Little Falls, she must come near the city. How wide a water could a Shadow swim? They had crossed from the Chaos Plains to Arwic North; but that stream was narrow. Here, she could see the further shore ahead, across the star-flecked water; this would have to do. She plunged in and swam. Reaching the bank, she risked a moment to turn and look behind her. They were following, a sprinkling of red eyes among the reflected stars. She ran again. Behind her, she heard a faint sound, as of thunder, and two more; and then a fourth close enough to shake the leaves in the trees. The bridges were down, then; good.
They passed the Blackmoor Memorial House, whose seven stories the Shapers had begun rebuilding before the war started; just as well they hadn't finished it, for it would have had to be evacuated. They passed the Excavations and the crevasse that housed the Gauntlet portal, and she heard some confused noises behind her; someone had fallen in perhaps. Now she bore southward, cutting through the ruins of Old Cragstone toward the lake and the Crater. The Shadows were still following; she could hear the rustling of the tall grass behind her, and the occasional squeak of anguish as a Vermin met sudden death. Here was the western windmill, its broken arms swinging restlessly in the wind. Lord Sigurd had hoped to have the Cragstone mills operating again by next year's harvest. Perhaps he might yet.
There was the eastern windmill, and now a quick run downhill to the Crater, and the broken spine of the Shadow Spire still lying there after so many centuries. Here she must stop; here she must face him; here she must delay him until --- until he killed her, she supposed, and after that they would see.
A pity she couldn't climb atop the nearest fragment, but she had tried it before and failed. She stopped atop a mound near the water's edge, and turned and raised her hand. "Here!" she cried. "Stop! Do you see it?"
The Hopeslayer pushed through the silent mass of Shadows and stood before her, perhaps a bowshot away. His eyes glinted; his wings veiled the stars overhead. "See what? What is that thing?"
"You don't know? You never took a few hours to learn what happened on Dereth while we slept in the Sundered Lands? Never investigated what happened to the last Bael'Zharon? Pity. You should hear Tapuaua on the subject, but I'll do the best I can.
"It was in the Moriqui Eipoth 585, the Portal Year 11 they call it here, that the last of the crystal array, the Shard of the Herald, was broken and the Hopeslayer walked the face of Dereth. It was in that same year that he was cast down, defeated by the strange alliance of Asheron, Isin Dule, the Virindi, and the Humans, and imprisoned once more beneath the Inner Sea. And it was in that year that the Shadow Spires, each one a shell of evil surrounding an imprisoned Gromnatross, came to hover over Arwic and Eastham and Tufa, and here over Cragstone, humming like a hive of unhappy bees.
"Then the great ones came against it: Elysa and her army of Advocates, Celdiseth and his pupils Evaen and Kei, and Asheron himself: they destroyed the Spire; they freed the Gromnatross; they drove the Shadows back.
"Here it was also that Bael'Zharon confronted Asheron, and fought him, and sought to torment him with his words; and Asheron said only, "I am sorry for your loss; I regret what my people did to yours ---"
"Have you brought me all this way, only to prate about Asheron? The wizard's dead!"
"He died," Aracoeli said, "and the Hopeslayer with him. But now ---" she shook her head, and the golden hair flew. No, she mustn't say that, mustn't say, not till it was time. The light was growing around her; she could see that the grass was green at her feet, the water deep blue in the Crater around the bleached bones of the Spire --- She looked upwards. "Look! Look!"
Involuntarily, the horned head lifted, the red eyes looked. The face of Alb'arel, till now dark except for its few mysterious lights to the southeast, had kindled like a lamp; from rim to rim the moon blazed like ten thousand stars, patches and lines and shapes of light laid out to a mysterious pattern, beginning to glow with the golden light that it had had of old. Bael'Zharon raised one mailed hand to shield his eyes; and when he looked down again, Aracoeli had disappeared.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Aracoeli materialized at the foot of the Lifestone, fell to her knees beside it, and laid her head on the fountain's rim. "Oh dear," she said.
"Where in the world have you been?" Tapuaua said, crouching beside her, "and what in blazes is that on your breath? It smells like love's regret."
"Onyx Honeycomb," Aracoeli said, and giggled. "Reggik gave it to me, it's a run buff --- but it also makes you silly. But I never said that Asheron had returned."
"I should hope not," Tapuaua said. "You'd better tell me what you've been doing."
"I nearly said something really dumb," she answered. "He said, Want to join me? and I could've said, Why? are you coming apart?" She giggled. "I'd like to see him come apart, in little, little pieces."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
As the blazing moon fell into the east, below the wall of the Cragstone Hall, reports began pouring in to the Raven's desk: the defeat of the Queen in Ikeras, and the arrival of the Shadows, who had made their way back from the Crater and now circled Cragstone moat from rim to rim, and Tapuaua's summary of Aracoeli's beguiling of the Hopeslayer. "She's lucky that stuff didn't poison her," was the Tonk's final remark. "Still, it could have been worse; most Drudge medications consist of live insects. I've poured her into bed; we'll see how she does in the morning."
"And she saved a good many lives," the Raven said, "and if she's certain she didn't say anything more about Asheron except what he did five hundred years ago ---"
"I think not," Isin Dule said, suddenly appearing as was his wont. "I can overhear some of their talk, and there's nothing about Asheron in it. They're still trying to figure out how to get across the moat. Some of them have tried to swim it, which of course they can --- it's not very wide --- but while they could have scaled some of the inner banks before the curtain walls went in, they can't do it now. One of Kellin's officers wants to examine the moat by daylight, to see if by any kind of chance the fallen rubble of the bridges can be crossed, or temporary bridges set up over them, so that they could attack the gates."
"They won't have much luck," another voice said.
"Rino! High time you got back!"
"Hey Tapu. I've swum all around that moat myself, back in peacetime. Most of it's so shallow the Hopeslayer, with his height, could practically ford it. But on either side of each bridge there are deep sinks, forty or fifty feet deep maybe. Most of the rubble will have fallen into them."
"All right. The Shadows --- I beg pardon, milord Dule, the other Shadows --- don't seem to be doing anything at present, so I'm going to issue a general order that everyone who's been up all day and night get some sleep. That means you, Rinauri; it even means me; I'm going to get a cot in here in the office and if anything serious happens, I'm the first person to be waked, but otherwise --- Ah! Nagual! --- and it means you too."
"Yes, milady," said Nagual, who in fact was leaning against the Raven's door-post, half asleep on his feet. "I already told Prospero to go to bed; he wants to test his new gadget but he can't till daylight. It's a great big arm for throwing things. Wait till you see."
When day came, they saw. But before that, the Raven met with all the division commanders in the back room, where a few still lay ill (but not with Soulburn) and told them, "The Child of Light has returned. Asheron is with us, not as living man, but as a spectre, fated to remain on Auberean until the Hopeslayer is destroyed again. He has commanded that Bael'Zharon is not to know of this, until Lord Master Asheron himself deems that it is time. No one is to let the besiegers know anything about it. Clear? The first person I hear calling out "You think you're so hot? We have Asheron with us," will be drowned by me in the Lifestone fountain, as many times as it takes. Tell your subordinates, let them tell their troops. Everyone inside must know today, so that no one outside finds out." And before day broke, all Cragstone was whispering the name of Asheron, but no one had seen him.
And by the time the sun was well up, the great big arm for throwing things was set up on the ramp on Cragstone's south side, between the inner and outer walls. That was because the day had also revealed, in addition to the ring of Shadows outside the moat, the Hopeslayer standing atop the bluffs south of the moat, with two other Shadows beside him. "I think," Palerath said, "based on her size and shape, that the one to his right is Valind. I don't know who the other is."
Now the Raven, in her scarlet cloak, came down from the inner walls to stand beside the throwing-arm. "How heavy a weight will it throw?" she asked.
"Depends on how far you want to throw it, Prospero's engineer said. "It'll throw up to about a hundredweight, and maybe get as far as the other side of the moat. Maybe not. One of Prospero's puddings, now, I could throw all the way across the moat and across the flats and maybe hit the Hopeslayer where he stands. Or maybe not."
"Hm," the Raven said. "The road to Molwirth starts up there, doesn't it? You, go get a portal to Molwirth and warn them that if the Hopeslayer's thrown back here he might head on south toward them. You're tied to the Lifestone here, right? Good. Go."
"Can we throw something now?"
"Wait," the Raven said; but the Hopeslayer had spread his broad wings and they could hear his deep laugh from where they stood.
"You fools!" he shouted. "Do you think you're safe in there? I can choose now whether to batter your walls to the ground, or to leave you inside till you starve!"
"Oh, this is too good to miss," Prosper said. "Someone run get me a haunch of Levannath."
The Raven smiled and said, "All right, go ahead. Does he really not know we have portals to the other continents?"
"He knows the northern portals are shut down, and the Nexus," Palerath pointed out. "He may not know we have others. But all the history he learned, all his military training (such as it was, because we were at peace until the Olthoi came), is based on a technology that lacked planar magic."
Two cooks came running up with the haunch of Levannath; they loaded it into the sling that hung at the end of the long arm, and released the latch. The counterweight swung down sharply, the long arm whipped forward, and the chunk of meat sailed gloriously across the moat and landed squarely among the Shadows on the other side. There were shouts and what must have been a cry of pain, though no mortal throat could have uttered it.
The Hopeslayer roared, and now the battle began in earnest. Arrows, stones, fireballs, and the occasional pudding soared back and forth across the moat. The air below grew misty with smoke and the pale orange effluvia of spell-casting. Sentries on the walls reported that the Shadows on the other sides were beginning to drift toward the south, more to be in on things than because large numbers of them had been slain. Many fell on the defenders' side as well, and returned to the Lifestone, where they discovered (perhaps because Kellin had been a man) that they must wait five minutes to receive a Vitae heal. It gave them a chance to rest, and the floor around the Lifestone was soon crowded with fighters patiently or impatiently waiting for their chance to recover life-force and go out on the walls again. Only two showed the black marks of Soulburn, and Nagual, now awake again, healed these with the Sword.
"But there's a limit to how many times one can die, even with Vitae heals, before growing weary," he said, "as we discovered at the Lyceum. I shall go to the Raven and suggest to her that she rotate some of her forces, as soon as a few more of us are awake."
But even Nagual was shaken when he stood beside the Raven and saw the Hopeslayer standing upon the bluff to the south. "The arm of the Living Shadow," he mused. "Is it the same that slew the Old Ones, that drove us from our world so long ago?"
"One of the few things we know about the Kemeroi," the Raven said, "is that, as it told your people long ago, it is legion; singular and plural number don't apply to it. It has, or they have, used different names from time to time, Jhirvall and Wharu, but that appears to be a matter of whim."
"I fear it," Nagual said. "I thought a warrior of the True Falatacot should fear nothing; but I fear this thing. Is it because, before, I could do no worse than die with honor, but now I could live again and again, to be trampled underfoot by it?"
"Don't be ashamed of fear," the Raven said. "Only of letting it rule you. Yes, Buu, what is it?"
"The sentries on the north side report that the Shadows are continuing to move around to the south side," Buu said. "Because the channel to the sea's right there to the southwest, they have to come around sunwise, and it's taking them a while, but they're still gathering there on the other side of the moat."
"And yet they don't seem to be much thicker over the ground," the Raven said. "We must be taking some of them out, more than I thought maybe ---"
But before she could finish her sentence, the Hopeslayer raised his arms and called down a rain of fireballs from the sky. They struck the throwing-arm and shattered it; threw the Raven and Prospero to the ground; sent Nagual and Buu to the Lifestone.
"Blast," the Raven said. She and Prospero helped each other to get up. The Alchemist's left arm was broken, and the Raven called for a healer.
Across the moat, the Hopeslayer was crowing with triumph. "You cannot withstand me!" he shouted. "My Master's power is too great! I will smash your cities into rubble, grind your bodies to bloody paste beneath my feet!"
And behind them, the defenders heard a quiet voice say, "Now."
They turned. Isin Dule was standing atop the inner walls, a stark black shape in the light of the rising sun. Slowly he raised his crowned head to face the new Hopeslayer; slowly he raised his arms, in their long sleeves that were a part of the robe he wore, so that with arms extended he made a great square of darkness against the light. And as they watched, another figure stepped in front of him, who had been invisible in the sunlight: Asheron, his body and his robe and hood all made of light, so that he could be seen only when he stood before the Shadow. "Kellin!" he called, in a voice that had no need to shout, but carried across the smoky air like the ringing of a great bell. "I am here, Kellin. I could not leave Auberean until I could see you destroyed, and the Kemeroi driven off again. The time has come. Your time has ended."
Now people began running from inside the city to the Order and Shadow shrines high above the wall, and climbing onto the walls, weeping and cheering, to catch a glimpse of Asheron. Nagual emerged from the Hall, leapt to the wall-top, and drew the Sword, shouting, "Asheron! Asheron for the Light!"
Far below them, the defenders at the level of the moat picked up their wounded and their weapons and climbed the outer walls again to renew the attack. Across the moat, the Shadows milled and churned like a great pool of ink stirred by the brush. Some cried, with terror in their voices, the name of Asheron; and some, the name of Isin Dule. With a terrible cry the Hopeslayer leapt from the bluffs above, as if his filmy wings could bear up his weight; and indeed for a moment the watchers thought he might make his way across the moat and land within the curtain walls. But he fell short, not even into the moat but among his own Shadows, and he cried again and they renewed the attack. There was no repairing the throwing-arm within the time given them, but the Lugians brought out turrets and threw bolts and missiles into the Shadow horde. The air grew thick again; mortals fell, and returned to their Lifestone; Shadows fell, and went no one knew where.
And then, out of the east, out of the clouds that veiled the rising sun, still too bright to look at, where Alb'arel had set hours before, came a sound like trumpets. Bright shapes were flying out of the clouds, back-lit by the sun; like a drift of flower-petals, like a flock of birds, like a great winged army, they soared out of the east down upon Cragstone, and in their lead was the black Gromnatross Orulaan. Twenty of them, thirty or more: their beating wings blew away the smoke of battle; their mighty heads on their long necks seized the Shadows beneath them as seabirds skimming over the water catch incautious fish, and shook them till they dispersed into smoke and ashes. The Hopeslayer raised his fists into the air and disappeared. Many of the Shadows followed suit, and the rest fell to the Gromnatross; and all at once there were no Shadows left in sight, except for Isin Dule and the many in the crowd who proudly wore the Shadow colors, and the little flakes of ash falling everywhere through air scented like incense. The Gromnatross descended and perched on the top of every tower, and Orulaan himself settled upon the Order Shrine (the mortals hastily climbing down from it to make way for him) and stretched out his long neck to brush his head against the insubstantial shapes of Asheron and Isin Dule, as though he were inhaling the fragrance of a bank of spring flowers.
