Coda, Chapter Fourteen: Battles

High above Arwic under a rose-colored morning sky, on the rim of the Orrery, two women sat waiting for the Shadow army. Both belonged to the Order of Dereth, but neither wore Kingdom Armor: the young Lugian had not yet achieved it, and the old Tonk had laid hers carefully aside, having crafted better armor for herself. Instead, both wore baldrics with the Order colors of white and gold, bordered with the colors of the other Kingdoms as a sign of inter-Kingdom cooperation. The Tonk's baldric also bore on the shoulder the sun and moons of the Realaidain arms, worked in pyreal thread of pale greenish-gold.

Fortress Arwic lay displayed beneath them, not merely ringed by walls, but made up of twenty different planes and levels, perched above steep cliffs, girdled by walls wherever Lord Sigurd had judged they could do good by excluding the enemy. Ring by half-ring the walls had been added like a chambered Niffis growing by taking on cell after cell --- except that it had all been done in two months.

"Will they be here soon?"

"I don't know about soon. Very likely today. Nalicana went out an hour or two ago to make sure the Northern Outpost was evacuated, and to close down the Ringway portals to keep them from taking the quick route here. When we see her, we may have news."

"Are we sure they're coming to Arwic?"

"It's likely," the Tonk said. "During the Fourth Sending Arwic was the first city destroyed by the Shadow Spires, and if Kellin doesn't know that, you may be sure the Kemeroi does."

"This will be my first battle," the girl said. "I hope I don't mess up."

"You're a Sage? They'll put you in a fellowship; concentrate on the health of your fellows. If one takes an injury, heal him. Don't go looking all over the field for targets. Oh, if someone comes up and starts bleeding on your feet, heal him; but your fellows are your first concern."

"Will you be doing that too?"

"Something like. I'll be in a fellowship of Order sentries, stationed here and there around the walls within line-of-sight, able to Call me if the Shadows break through at any point."

"You have a special Harm to fight them with?"

"Something like that. I don't know your name, by the way; I'm Tapuaua."

"I'm Ghanna."

"An auspicious name."

"Yeah, but I have to live up to it. Is that Nalicana down at the Ringway?"

"Yes, it is. Well, it was," for the Princess had vanished again and reappeared atop Arwic mount, at the foot of the Orrery ramp. The two Healers ran down to meet her.

"Yes, they're on their way," Nalicana said. "I spoke to Isin Dule half an hour ago; he has been watching them from a discreet distance. They had to go further to the east than we'd expected, further than they expected maybe, halfway to Lost Wish, before they could get over the mountains. But they've found a passage now; they should be here in an hour or two. Has the Raven arrived?"

"Yes; she's set up in the Allegiance Hall."

"Good; I must see her. You should come too, and be assigned into your fellowships." Nalicana gestured, and all three found themselves whirling through portalspace into the Arwic Hall. Inside, a kind of ordered chaos reigned: messengers reporting to the Raven; officers marshalling their subordinates in preparation for the formation of fighting units; two Lugians and a Yalaini taking down the Straw Drudge targets to make more room for the troops. A banner with a large red heart on it had been set up over the hut in the southwest, a station for the assignment of Healers to their fellowships, and Tapuaua and Ghanna went there. Ghanna was immediately seized upon by an officer forming a fellowship, and went away with him.

"Tapu, your people are already out on the walls," said the Sage in charge of assignments. "I think you're going to have to form the fellowship yourself and go out and pick each of them up. Sorry."

"No problem. I have nothing to do till they get here."

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Two Broodu Burun toiled up the slope to the Ithaenc Cathedral, carrying armloads of reeds. Rinauri met them at the top of the stairs. "Thanks," he said. "I think we have enough for the present; you can put them down over here. Are you tired?"

"Not tired," croaked one of the Broodu. "Scared."

"Where have the Great Ones gone?" the other asked.

"They went into the north," Rinauri said, "over the bridges, up into Moarsman country, up onto the highland beyond the East Outpost, and there they went into a portal; so Muurrgh has told us. From there they went further into the north, into Osteth, where they are going to fight in a battle. So my friends have told me." He had told them this before; but they were frightened children, and he was a healer and had learned patience. "Let's go find Muurrgh, and see how he's doing."

A dozen young Burun, tended by Lavanna and Tuamoa, huddled on piles of reeds in the cool shade of the Cathedral. Nagual had healed their Soulburn Plague, but they were only slowly recovering their vigor, and the sun's heat pained them. Muurrgh, the only Ruruk in the group, was the eldest among them and barely adult at that. He lay curled on a bed of reeds, his sharp-nosed face tucked into his elbow, but he stirred when Rinauri spoke to him.

"How do you feel?"

Muurrgh turned over and winced; his Soulburn-damaged shoulder was still regenerating, and might not fully recover until a healer more skilled than Rinauri could come to Ithaenc. "Better than I did. I think I'm hungry."

"That's what a healer likes to hear," Rinauri told him. "What do you people eat?"

Muurrgh's croak was a chuckle. "Practically anything."

"Mucor," suggested one of the young Broodu.

"No mucor for you," Muurrgh said. "If you prepare it one way," he explained to Rinauri, "it's okay. Prepare it another way, it gets you high. Prepare it wrong, it kills you."

"No mucor," Rinauri agreed. "Can you eat fruit? There's a grove of yola trees heavy with fruit, down by the waterfall."

"Sure," said the other Broodu. "Come on, you Kiree!" Four or five of the little Kiree got up and followed him. "And we can catch fish," they heard him saying enthusiastically as they trooped down the steps, "and Darkenfowl, and the big guys won't take it away from us ---"

"The resilience of youth," Tuamoa commented.

"Speaking of which," Lavanna said, and taking Rinauri by the arm led him down the steps and out of the hearing of the Burun. "Look, here comes Nagual. Did you find any other Burun, my lord?"

"Not alive," Nagual said. "Plenty of dead, but they are already going to dust, and so far as Asheron and the records can tell us, the Ayai Heauviri is contagious but not infectious. I think the Plague is quenched on Omishan. But other than those who went with the Hopeslayer, these dozen or so you have up in the Cathedral may be the only Burun left on Auberean."

"I was coming to that," Lavanna said. "I am worried about the Broodlings, down in the Clutch south of Ankoro. Have they been infected? What about the Brood-Mother? Is there anyone left to take care of them?"

The two men looked at one another. "At last report, there's still nothing happening in Arwic," said Rinauri.

"We'd better go and look," Nagual said.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"There, to the southeast," someone said, and everyone looked and saw a faint smudge on the horizon, incongruous against the sunlit sky --- which was beginning to glow a sullen red. "Call me!" Tapuaua screamed, but she was already in portalspace, and emerged next to the sentry who stood atop the tall new wall that now surrounded the Allegiance Hall. Like a cloud of oily smoke that moved against the wind, the Shadow army slowly moved up the valley, sometimes following the road and sometimes cutting across it. There were shouts from the Hall, and the sound of running feet, and the Raven and Pfeil joined the others atop the wall.

"Those seem to be the Burun in the lead," Pfeil said. "Area-of-effect fodder."

The Shadow army, at first spread widely across the valley, must squeeze down into a column of no more than ten abreast as the road on its narrow ramp rose from the plain, winding back and forth in its ascent of Arwic mount. Naturally defensible by virtue of the steep slopes beneath it, the town had become doubly so with the addition of its many new walls. If the Shadows attempted to storm the little north gate, they must first circle slowly around to the east, vulnerable to missiles and spells from the walls above.

Yet they attempted it. Soon the first of the panting Burun --- their hides stained sable either with the Ayai Heauviri or with their new allegiance, no one could tell --- came up the ramp to where the Lifestone had once stood, and broke down the Arwic town sign because there was nothing else to break. Some attempted to cast blades or spells upwards against the defenders, but gravity defeated them. Most plodded steadily up the ramp under a hail of spells, stones, and arrows. Some of them fell and lay still.

Behind them came shadow-Lugians, shadow-Empyreans, even a few of the original spike-crowned Shadows who had followed, long ago, the other Bael'Zharon who had been Ilservian Palacost.

"Look there," the Raven said quietly, pointing downward into the thick of the army far below. Tapuaua's eye followed where she pointed. The figure was tall, twice as tall as an Empyrean, the color of night, and bearing on its shoulders those two wide, bat-fashioned, tattered-edged filmy wings. It seemed to have paused at the foot of the grade, waiting to see how its Shadow Burun would fare.

The first of the Burun reached the gate, which had been reinforced with Helethiska's binding spells as well as with oak and dramastic. They strove against it for about a quarter of an hour, shouting incoherent insults for other species, ranging from "Rock pushers!" to "Milk suckers!" They made no headway.

Isin Dule had portaled into Arwic several minutes ahead of the attackers, and now stood beside the Allegiance Hall, surrounded by members of his Kingdom, visibly uneasy. The Raven, seeing that the Shadow army was getting nowhere at present, left Pfeil in charge atop the walls and went down to talk to her former lord.

"I don't want to see him," Dule said simply. "Of course I know it's not Ilservian, my old master. I still don't want to see him, and I can smell the taint of the Kemeroi from here. It grieves me."

"Then go somewhere else," the Raven suggested. "Go to Ikeras, or Linvak, or Strathelar, or Knorr. You're in no state to fight here; go somewhere else where you can fight another battle if one presents itself, or else rest until one does." Dule shook his crowned head in protest. The Raven put her hands on either side of the Shadow's, being unable to touch them. "Most honorable Lord. Prince of Shadows. That's an order."

"Thank you," Dule said, and bowed, and disappeared.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Deep in the caverns of the Burun Clutch, Nagual and Rinauri followed the right-hand path, jumped through the portal, dropped into the gaggle of Grutts who were inexplicably there, and ran into the Brood Chamber. The sickly green light of fungus lit up the walls and the great toad idol at the back of the chamber. They could hear the chirping of the little Broodlings --- but where were they? Rinauri shivered suddenly, though the room was warm, and searched through his pouch for the Light of Alb'arel. In the cool light of the moon-globe they saw the Brood-Mother, fallen and strangely shrunken, cold and dead. She certainly had not died of the Soulburn Plague ---

"Light aid us," Nagual said. From beneath the Brood-Mother's withered arm a little head poked out, and the Broodling followed its nose out into the chamber, to hop around them, happy and curious. Rinauri gritted his teeth and walked closer. Yes, it seemed, as far as he could tell, that the huge Burun had died not of illness, but of starvation; her arms and neck were withered, her huge belly a hollow shell. More and more of the little Broodlings were wriggling out through the opening they had made: they had eaten her from the inside out.

"See if there are any eggs left," he said. "Look inside the toad idol too, behind that pool. It's hollow." He waited in silence while Nagual did this, counting the little Broodlings that hopped and chirped in a circle around him. Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. That was all.

"No eggs anywhere," Nagual reported. "These must be the last hatching. There was only this, in the far chamber." He held out the Fetish, in shape halfway between a carnivore's fang and a fertility symbol, and Rinauri took it and hid it away in his pouch.

"We need to get these little guys to Ithaenc," he said. "I wish we had Nalicana here, or some of Orlen's nets. I'm afraid we'll have to make several trips."

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

After the Burun had striven against the north gate for what seemed a long while, the Hopeslayer called them back. One of the tall old crowned Shadows came up to the gate, examined it, and turned away. Slowly the army made its way down the ramp to the plain, re-formed, and began to move toward the west.

"Kellin knows Arwic," Pfeil commented, "though he may not have been here since the fortifications were strengthened. Just the same, he knows that he can't get any further around eastwards than the little north gate; he's going to have to go all the way around to the west, which would take you or me five minutes, but with this mob of his it'll take an hour or so."

"Right," the Raven said. "See to our wounded, if we have any, and get the commissariat to find the troops some food, even if it's just sandwiches and Darkenfowl-onna-stick."

Carrying a sandwich in one hand and a mug of tea in the other, Tapuaua walked the walls sunwise around Arwic, keeping an eye on the Shadow army. The Raven had put troops several units deep behind the little west gate, but the attackers did not even go near it, but marched west and north into the valley of the Armadillo Ancestor Head and out again, heading toward the great ramp that led down from the portal drop to the great west gate of Arwic. Tapuaua took up her place on the Orrery again, and watched them go.

The sky overhead was darkening, as had been told of the days of the Fourth and Fifth Sendings of Darkness, when sky and sea turned the color of blood. She had mentioned this to the Raven, who had ordered supplies of water to be stored in the cities and outposts. Light grant it would be enough.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Nagual and Rinauri returned to Ithaenc for the third time, the last of the Broodlings squirming in their arms. They turned them over to their older siblings, to play with them while Muurrgh (still unable to rise from his bed) told them stories. Scarcely had they herded the last of them inside when a young Tonk appeared at the drop point, looked around wildly, and turned to Nagual and Rinauri as if they were his long-lost parents who had promised to give him a tree-house full of gold. "Ikeras!" he cried. "Ikeras is under attack, the portal's opened up again ---" and had to stop to catch his breath.

Nagual smiled. "There's always something," he said, and drew the Sword of Light and portaled away, Rinauri close behind him.

The crowd at the Ikeras Nexus was so thick that the Virindi Adumbrator had risen another six feet into the air to avoid it, and the Agent of Punitheus had retired behind the pillar. Nagual, holding the Sword before him like a ceremonial mace, made his way through the throng, Rinauri behind him, casting protections upon the two of them. Suddenly the crowd ceased, leaving a wide space around the mass of purple bubbles that once again hung in Shi Dengori's usual spot. Two brick-red Olthoi, Swarm Royal Guards with crescent-shaped claws like the Adumbrator's sickles, had already portaled through, but the portal drop was still roiling and writhing as if it were struggling to deliver something enormous. The Royal Guards backed away from it, revealing a third invader, tall and slender, wearing shining green armor. Nagual's lips silently formed the name, "Ju'xatl," and then he cried aloud, with a command voice with years of practice behind it, "BACK! ALL OF YOU, GET BACK!"

The crowd backed away as best they could. Those who could reach a ramp took to the trees. And the portal cloud heaved, and gave up a huge shape that fell two feet to the ground, making the whole island shake.

The Queen raised her heavy head from the ground, and lifted one foreclaw, three-pronged, like a long finger with two thumbs, all needle-sharp; she set both foreclaws to the ground again and turned her head and forepart to look around her. There was no one within reach of her claws. Her eyes glittered with an evil intelligence. Then she sighted Nagual and Rinauri, and lifted her head higher and breathed upon them, and they went down in fire and pain into darkness.

And rose again at the Strathelar Lifestone. Rinauri cursed and started to beat a Nexus recall. "Wait," Nagual said. "Who's here who can --- Ah! Neq'ara! There's an Olthoi Queen in Ikeras, and Ju'xatl with her. How many troops can you bring there?"

"Two maniples of mine," Neq'ara said, "and up to four of yours, if you give leave. Where's Ikeras?"

"Hold on," said a big Lugian. He raised his staff and cast several heals upon Nagual and Rinauri, whereupon their armor stopped smoldering. "I have a Hakata portal tie; I'll cast it for your troops, m'lord Neq'ara. When they get there the Ikeras portal will be right across the green."

"Go back and say that we are coming," Neq'ara said, but Nagual and Rinauri were already on their way.

Halfway across the island, the Queen had her back to them. From the treetops archers and mages and spear-casters were attacking her, wounding her at times, but it was like chipping away at a mountain with a spoon. "This will take some time," Nagual murmured. Rinauri marveled at his optimism.

The Queen was moving along steadily toward the west, Ju'xatl at her side, toward the palisade that ringed the island. She stopped at it, measured it with her eye. and turned toward her left, to the footbridge that ran between the island and Fort Ariaki. Four guards stood before the bridge-gate. They raised their weapons; a moment later they were dead. Ju'xatl ran before her onto the bridge, then turned. From their position behind the bole of a large tree, Nagual and Rinauri could see his sudden indecision in his movements, for the Queen was too large to fit comfortably between the pairs of tusks that lined the bridge and supported its side panels. But the Queen did not seem disconcerted. She raised her first pair of legs into the air, then (with an effort) her second, and climbed atop the first pair of tusks. Carefully, she made her way along the top of the bridge, with Ju'xatl leading the way below, like a cautious trainer leading a frisky Ataur. The tusk points scored her underside as she went over them, but she paid them no heed, and like a wounded snake, dragged her slow length along until she reached the wall of Fort Ariaki and heaved her weight over the gate and fell to the ground inside. Ju'xatl unbarred the gates, which had been meant to resist entry only from the other direction, and followed her.

The fighters inside the Fort assembled to meet her. Their missiles and spells clashed against her chitinous armor, doing minor damage, but she crushed them by their dozens as if they, not she, had been the insects. They reappeared at the Lifestone, a bowshot further to the west. Some ran back to attack again, and were slain again, and reappeared at the Lifestone toward which the Queen was making her steady way. This time, most of them obeyed their commander's order to withdraw from the Lifestone and regroup.

"I never saw one so large," Nagual said, under his breath, slipping behind a barracks tent far enough out of the Queen's path to have avoided being crushed.

"Mature, and full of eggs," Rinauri whispered, and closed his mouth quickly as the Queen's head swung around in their direction. Then she turned back, and reached out with one foreclaw to touch the Lifestone.

It was as though a rain of soot had fallen from the sky, as if the legendary Black Rain of Ilservian's day had returned in that one spot, and then green bubbles arose through the blackness from the Queen's body, and all faded away into the sunlit air. The Olthoi Queen had tied to the Ikeras Lifestone.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The Shadow army were gathered at the great west gate, with the expendable Burun again in the lead. Again they had broken down the wooden posts holding up the big town-sign, apparently because they could, and now they battered against the gate, which amplified the sound of their blows like the soundboard of a lute, but held. Sentries atop the western wall could see the sweat gathering on their scaly heads, running in inky drops down their dorsal spikes and flying through the air, dark red under the reddened sky.

Under the urging of a big Immortal, expressed by blows from his fists and his pointed elbows, the Burun backed off a dozen steps, then all charged the gate together again. It thundered, and held. They backed off, and rushed forward again. Black blood was oozing from their noses and their hands. Behind the wall lay the Stonefield, filled with an arrangement of late Golden Age pillars in an imitated Empyrean style, and a ring of flat stones, and in the center a firepit which no one had ever seen used. The Yalaini had never known, and the ephemerals had forgotten, what the structure was for, but they had left it as they found it in case anyone ever remembered. The troops assigned to guard the outermost wall had found the flat stones useful for sitting upon while they waited.

Then another sound floated over Arwic, a thin high shriek that rode the wind like a vulture; and it was echoed by screams from the defenders below. While the Burun attacked the gate, behind the shelter of the hill the elder Shadows had somehow found a slope sufficiently shallow to be climbed, and had scaled the crag to the south, below the Orrery, and were leaping down into the Stonefield inside the wall. If the fall did them any injury, they showed no sign of it, and fell upon the defenders. A dark effluvium like smoke filled the air, and it was difficult for those above to make out what was happening or who would be the victors. Once, in a gap in the darkness, a flash of green could be seen for a moment; then the smoke closed in again.

The gates between the Stonefield and Orven's field were thrust open, and the army of Dereth poured through it. The darkness was thinning, now; the defenders could see the attackers, who seemed to have lost much of their Shadow-clothing. Not Shadow-Humans, Shadow-Lugians, warred in the Stonefield, but Humans and Lugians bewildered, looking about them as if for a vanished leader; Tonks and a few Empyreans and a very few Drudges fell, and their bodies withered and sank into the earth. Another cry cut through the air from above, and the Shadows ceased to leap into the Stonefield from above; instead they backed away and vanished behind the stone ridge that they had so stealthily climbed. Again the cry, and a loud clamor at the great west gate. The Derethian victors of the Stonefield climbed to the battlements to look at what was happening outside.

The Shadow Burun were losing their inky coating; spotted and mottled as in the days of their froglike youth, they were clutching at their throats, their breathing labored. One by one they dropped to their knees and fell to the ground and died. Far behind them, the Shadow army collected itself and turned back, antisunwards, toward the south. Inside and outside the gate, the dead were subliming away into ashes and dust. One withered old Empyrean lay in the shelter of the wall, his head supported by the arms of a green-furred Tonk who bent to hear his last words before he fell into dust.

The Raven left the battleground and mounted to the Orrery with Nalicana, watching the Hopeslayer lead his troops southward under the crimson sky. "Kellin always was the kind to break his tools when he was done with them, or when they served him ill," Nalicana mused. "And so is the Kemeroi."

The sun was falling into the west now, and the sky was like blood, and the clouds moving in on the evening breeze like clotted blood. Bael'Zharon looked up into them, and was comforted. Some things, at least, acknowledged his power. But the reins of that power were still loose in his fingers, and he was still learning to control it, still getting used to his new mode of life. He saw more clearly before, even through the dark mists that he generated all around him; he heard a wider range of sounds, from the bass grunts of the Armoredillos to the piercing shrieks of the Phyntos Wasps. But his skin felt numb, as though it had been painted with something thick and nerve-deadening, and the power that raged through his limbs was no more than was needed to move his new body, encased in strange invisible armor, so that it seemed he could no longer breathe --- nor needed to. His mouth tasted of dust. The power that drove him was within him, but it was not his own. Horned head high, filmy wings fluttering in the evening breeze, something like a burning coal smoldering where his heart had once been, he gathered his forces together and led them into the South.

To Cragstone.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The Queen crouched beside the Lifestone, spitting corrosive death at all comers, who died and materialized beside her and ran away while the blue Lifestone protection still shimmered over their skins. Rinauri cast Vitae heals till he thought the repeated rhythm would wear patterns across the head of his drum. Nagual and the Fort Ariaki commander conferred in low voices. Lacking a strategy, they developed an interim tactic: about twice each minute, a pair of volunteers ran out to attack the Queen, and die, and resurrect, and retreat --- and keep her busy, keep her from wandering away from the Lifestone to attack the rest of the Fort's complement. Each of them took a tiny fraction of her health away from her, but at that rate it would take till next Wintersebb to do her serious harm.

Now a great pale naked Alchemist ran up to them, a cloth-wrapped bundle in his hand. "Hey Nagual! It's me, Prospero. Hold those fellows off for a moment; I have something for Her Nibs. Just hold them back and let me deliver it." The commander obligingly raised his hand, and the latest pair halted; and Prospero ran up to the queen. "Eguin Quaguz," he said, and as the bundle began to smolder he threw it underhand to fall beneath her armored body, and died. He must have been lifestoned elsewhere, for he did not reappear where they could see him.

"Do we go now?" one of the next runners asked, and the commander aid, "No, wait; I want to see what that thing does." Scarcely were his words out of his mouth when a great flash of light and cloud of smoke went up, and a tremendous sound like a thunderclap at ground level. As the smoke blew away in the evening breeze, it revealed the Queen lying dead, her armor shattered, beside the Lifestone --- and then she appeared again, living, but badly shaken.

"Where's Ju'xatl?" Nagual asked. "He's there behind her," the runner said. "I've killed him twice already, but he just rezzes there again. Do you Falatacot have a Vitae heal, sir?"

"Of course not," Nagual said. "Up till a few weeks ago we didn't have Lifestone ties, and when we died we were dead. I wonder how Ju'xatl is feeling. I hope he's in misery. I know the first time I died, I rose up at that Lifestone feeling like the aftermath of a three-day liberty." The runners laughed.

Prospero ran up to them again. "Hello! Did it work? I see the Lifestone's still there."

"It worked fine, it killed her," Rinauri said, "but of course she just reappeared at the Lifestone. Do you have any more of those things? What do you call them?"

"I call them 'puddings' because they're cooked in a cloth like one," Prosper said, "and that was the only one I had. I can make more; it will take me about an hour."

"Go do it," Nagual said. "We'll hold out, somehow, till you do."

Prospero disappeared, and the next pair of runners went out. The Queen crawled toward them, despatching them with acid and claw before they could reach the Lifestone; they reappeared at it behind her and stood there, taunting her with voices and arrows, till she turned back to follow them. There they died again, reappeared again, and ran away to receive praise from their commander and double heals from Rinauri.

Night had fallen, and the darkened moon was rising in the west. Rinauri glanced at it, and then looked again, hard. "Look at that," he said. His companions looked. "Look harder," he said. "That patch of light down in the southeastern corner has been there for months, but look at it now! There are other lights, there on the limb to the far west. What do you suppose that means?"

Now there was some kind of movement around the Hakata portal to the north, and a messenger came running toward them, wearing the colors of the First Cohort. "Grand Paragon Neq'ara's compliments, sir, and he suggests that his people attack from that side and yours from this side, and see if we can confuse the old harridan, sir."

"My compliments to Neq'ara, tell him Yes, we'll be ready when he is." The messenger ran away. In the growing darkness, the Queen's eyes glowed like evil lanterns beside the shining green of the Lifestone.

Then they heard Neq'ara cry "Charge!" from the north, and the dimly seen troops attacked, and the Queen turned toward them, hissing and spitting, and the pale light of the spells he cast glinted from Ju'xatl's helmet. "Your call, sir," said the Ariaki commander, and Nagual bowed and raised his arm, and waited ... and when the Queen's back was toward them, snapped his arm down and said, "Charge!"

The Derethian units ran forward, moderately well-organized, so that Nagual wished the Raven could see them. Without mingling one fellowship with the next, without stumbling over their own or each other's feet, and particularly without any Hero or would-be hero rushing forward like a lunatic to attack the Queen in single combat, they pushed forward into range, and filled the Queen's relatively unprotected abdomen full of spears, arrows, and magical bolts that slipped between her overlapping dorsal and ventral plates and (one hoped) addled the eggs inside. "Withdraw!" Neq'ara called, and the Queen pursued the Falatacot for another dozen paces and then began to turn. In the brief light of someone's fireball, Nagual saw Ju'xatl materialize at the Lifestone and fall to his knees and slowly rise, clutching at his head with one hand. That would be at least three, no, four deaths for him. ("Good," Nagual muttered.) None of Neq'ara's Falatacot were appearing there; they must have Lifestoned in Hakata, able to heal and regroup before returning to Ikeras. Also good. But the Queen was no mere animal; it would not be long before she realized what they were doing, and pursued one side or the other to the death --- "Withdraw!" he called in his turn.

He could see her more clearly now, not only her glowing eyes but her sharp mouth-parts, some made for piercing, some for slashing, and --- He glanced upward again, and stared. He could hear scattered voices crying, "Look!" All over the darkened face of Alb'arel, from the patch of mysterious lights in the southeast to the few new lights along the western limb, the light was spreading, as if a thousand fires were being lighted on it; the light spread not randomly, but in geometrical patterns, lozenges and triangles, lighting up the whole face from rim to rim. Light streamed down upon battlefield Ikeras, and even the Queen paused in her attack to peer upward into the unaccustomed light. She lifted her foreclaws to her eyes, as if the light hurt them, pouring cool and white over torn land, lifted weapons, battered armor.

Nagual was silent. Rinauri stared at him; he seemed to be listening to something. The Ariaki commander ventured, "Sir, should we ---" but Nagual raised a hand for silence. Then he said, "Yes," and drew the Sword of Light from its scabbard, and raised it high over his head. There was silence; nothing moved; even the Queen seemed to wait for what would happen.

Shining Alb'arel, brighter now than it had ever been at the full, was directly overhead; and now it began to be obscured again, as if clouds were forming in front of it. Clouds were forming in front of it; a massive thunderhead built, and darkened, and little lightning-flashes flickered among its many lobes. Nagual still stood --- and the heavens opened, and a bolt of lightning did not fall, but appeared instantly, tying him to the cloud for a moment; and was gone. Stiffly, like a machine, he lowered the Sword and pointed the tip at the Queen.

And the lightning appeared again, not in a single bolt but in a widening cone that sprang from the Sword's point and bathed the Queen's armored body in levin-bolts from mandibles to ovipositor, and killed her, and spat out little drifting spheres of ball-lightning while she resurrected, and struck her again. Above the hiss and crackle of the lightning they could hear Ju'xatl screaming. Again and again they died together, Olthoi and Falatacot; and then there was a sound like a little rumble of thunder, smaller than the sound of Prospero's pudding, and the Queen blew apart into fragments, and did not resurrect again. The Sword flashed a last time, and the lightning left it.

Neq'ara, flanked by members of the First and Third Cohorts, approached the Lifestone cautiously, kicking aside chitinous fragments, and found there a shriveled skeleton, its armor blackened as with soot. He kicked it too, and turned away.

Nagual grunted, and moved his arm a little; there was a sharp ping! as if a silver harp-string had snapped, and he lowered the Sword.

"Light and Animae!" Rinauri cried. "How in blazes do you happen to be still alive?"

"The lightning went through my armor," Nagual said, dazed. "He said it might. It let me alone. But I think my vambrace is welded to my rerebrace; take my arm, will you, Rino, and see if you can bend my elbow?" Rinauri did so, and with a snap and a ping the spot-welded vambrace broke free. "Thank you. Now the other one." It took them half an hour to get Nagual loose from his armor, which had developed a bluish sheen the color of his eyes, while Ikeras danced for victory under the bright moon; and Falatacot and northerners slapped each others' backs and told no-kidding-there-I-was stories; and Prospero came up with his arms full of puddings, and laughed, and set them carefully on the ground to guard them between his feet; and the commander organized fatigue details to sweep the remnants of the Queen away.