Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 (50 page)

When his vision returned he found himself being dragged backwards between two wounded palace guards. They sat him just inside the threshold of the throne room and swung closed the double doors and barred them. He struggled to his feet. ‘What happened?’

‘They bought us some time,’ one told him.

Neither of these was the female guard he’d spoken to. He nodded, accepting this just as they had. ‘Hold here,’ he told them. ‘I’ll check on the others.’

In answer they saluted him as they would a commanding officer. He returned the salute then jogged, or rather staggered, to find the others. The main entranceway to the throne room he found choked with thick black smoke and radiating a deadly gasping heat – somewhere within that maelstrom Smokey appeared to still be holding.

The crash of stonework sounded from further along and here he came to Mara, panting and sweaty amid a cloud of dust. The hallway before her lay choked by a collapsed heap of fallen blocks and crushed masonry. In the east he found Ho and his contingent of guards retreating towards the throne room. Next to him, Koroll held a barred set of doors. From far off came a resounding booming, as of heavy blows. He headed back to his position.

The two guards were pressed against the doors, which jolted beneath a steady pounding. ‘They’ve brought up a timber or something,’ one shouted to him.

Mara joined them. ‘Not long now,’ she muttered, sourly.

Silk glanced back to the frail filigree door that led to the tower stairs. Hardly defensible, that.

The pounding stopped. Silk listened, wondering what was going on, and dreading some new stratagem.

‘Hello inside!’ a voice called, its south Itko Kan lilt quite strong. ‘Is anyone there?’

‘What do you want!’ Silk bellowed with more defiance than he felt.

‘You have fought well in defence of your ruler. Chulalorn sends his respect. But it is over now. Surrender and we will allow you to keep your lives.’

‘And what of the Protectress?’

‘Exile.’

The heavy stink of smoke wafted over them and Silk turned to see Smokey approaching. His clothes were scorched and blackened, his hair smoking.

‘What guarantee can you offer?’ Silk demanded.

‘The word of our king. From one ruler to another.’

‘I don’t trust Chulalorn,’ Smokey growled to Silk, his voice so hoarse as to be near soundless.

‘Give us your answer,’ the voice warned. ‘If we must break in we will slay all we find within.’

‘Give us time to put it to the Protectress,’ Silk called. He whispered to Smokey, ‘How long until the dawn?’

‘About a quarter of the hour,’ Smokey mouthed, near silent.

‘Give us half the hour!’ Silk called.

They waited in silence for the Kanese response. After a brief time the officer answered, ‘Very well. The half-hour. But no more.’

Smokey offered Silk a wink, but Mara scowled, still dubious.

*

Dorin was crouched on his haunches on the rooftop, listening to the general panic gathering in the streets below. He’d heard some fighting up and down the river’s shore, isolated pockets mostly; the majority of both sides appeared to be waiting. The Hengans were exhausted, numbed by the invasion, and too heavily outnumbered to mount a counter-attack. The Kanese infantry remained firmly in ranks, obviously under orders to defend their frozen highway through the city.

Yet as time passed the fog was lifting, and Dorin wondered whether the sorcerous ice would melt with it. The Kanese would have to get moving if that were to happen.

‘It looks as if they’ve won,’ he opined to the female mage with him. ‘What is your name, if I may?’

‘You may call me Nightchill. And do not be too hasty.’

‘The Hengans aren’t even fighting. They’re beaten.’

‘They are certainly shocked and demoralized, I agree.’

‘What is everyone waiting for?’

‘Word from the palace, I imagine.’

He grunted his understanding. They believed the palace taken, the Protectress fallen. Why fight and die when the cause was lost already?

The citizenry, however, was not quite so pragmatic. Panicked mobs surged through the predawn streets and the Hengan guards now found themselves embroiled in crowd control.

‘It has taken too long,’ Nightchill suddenly announced, and Dorin peered up at her. She was studying the one tall structure of the city – the tower that rose so very high over the palace. He straightened to examine it as well. Something strange was happening there at its peak. ‘What . . .’ He realized that what he was seeing was the dawn’s oblique golden rays striking the parapet at the tower’s viewing terrace. ‘I don’t see what . . .’ He stopped again as an answering glow seemed to echo the rays. It was swelling, burgeoning, even as he watched. ‘What—’

‘Get down!’ the woman yelled, and, displaying astonishing strength, she yanked him to the ground and bent over him.

Blazing ferocious radiance stabbed at his eyes and he groaned his pain, pressing his fists to his face. A deafening sizzling like the crackling of ten thousand fires erupted next to him and he howled, certain he was being burned alive. The very building shook and juddered beneath him as in an earthquake as something came grinding and thundering through the city. ‘
What is it?
’ he yelled to be heard.

‘Elder magics,’ the woman shouted, next to his ear. ‘Kurald Liosan, unveiled.’

‘Who?’

‘The Protectress, of course.’

The unveiling, or summoning, pounded onward in a sizzling growling as of a waterfall in flood rushing past his position. It went on and on, swelling, burgeoning until he was certain he was about to be consumed, then slowly, relentlessly, it passed, or faded, or he’d become deaf and blind from the punishment. He dared a glimpse by pressing the backs of both hands to his eyes and sliding them apart until he could glance between fingers. The vision dazzled and awed him. Twin sizzling firestorms of light each as tall as the sky. Each pounding its way along the river – one rolling to the east and the other to the west. Even as he watched, the westward one overran a huddled column of Kanese soldiery. Within the waterfall of brilliance they seemed to blur, dissolving, eroding. When the avalanche ground onward all that was left behind was a smear of ash and soot upon the rotting ice.

The power unleashed here appalled him. How could they counter such might? In short, they could not. No one could. Surely there must be an equivalent price to be paid for such expenditure. He was frankly rather overawed; he thought he’d known power before. But all he’d seen to date paled to insignificance next to this display. Nothing, it seemed to him, could ever be the same again.

Nightchill helped him up and he stood blinking as a glow filled his vision. The thundering roar scoured onward, but distant now. ‘I can barely see.’

‘It should pass.’

‘What
was
that?’

‘She has sent the fires of Liosan, or Thyrllan, down the river. Many are slain. I must go now.’

Dorin blinked his weeping eyes. ‘If you must.’ She did not answer – no doubt she’d left already. Blind, feeling as if he’d been roasted over a fire, he sat again then hissed, yanking his hands from the roof: the bricks had burned his palms and he could just hear them all about him, crackling and ticking with the radiated heat of the sorcerous onslaught.

*

The instant the brilliant light burst upon them Iko and her sister Sword-Dancers were blinded with everyone else. Blinking, hands extended, they encircled the king and began edging him back along the river, heading for the Outer Round. Panicked officers and messengers pulled and clutched to reach Chulalorn, but the Sword-Dancers, unable to tell who was who, fought everyone off.

Iko raised her forearms to her eyes and squinted through the narrow slit between. In this manner she could just make out some sort of towering pillar of pure white coruscating energy that appeared to be heading their way along the river. It was like a waterfall of light pouring down from the sky. It came pounding the surface, consuming all in its path. White flames licked its edges, turning blue and orange as they annihilated building fronts and wharves. The tumult was swelling to an unendurable howl.

She watched the approaching wave of brilliance wash over entire companies on the river. They dissolved in the fiery light like wisps of tinder in a furnace. Even wagons brought down on to the ice disappeared in the onslaught. It was as if they were ground to dust before her straining, aching eyes.

A closer company, an entire column, now sought shelter under wagons and she shouted to them to run but her voice was utterly inaudible even to her. The immense tower of light ground onward and the wagons disappeared even as the soldiers beneath squinted into the light as if seeking enemies. ‘
No!
’ she shrieked, but they vanished as if snatched away, blown to shreds of ash like leaves in a windstorm.

She tore her gaze away, blinking, dazzled by after-images. She set her lips to another Sword-Dancer’s ear: ‘We must flee the river! Now!’

This one nodded her understanding and passed along the order. Together they worked to redirect the shuffling protective circle, searching for any route up the shore. Feeling their way along, they came to a stone stairway leading up from the frozen surface. An access for washing perhaps, or collecting drinking water. They began slipping through two by two up the stairs. The king, held low among them, now struggled against such disrespectful treatment. They held him down despite this, hands at his back and neck.

One of their number found a narrow alleyway bound by two tall brick buildings and they withdrew between, the king hidden.

The punishing roar had swollen to a landslide thunder and the stabbing radiance was somehow even brighter. Its intensity lanced Iko through her squeezed shut eyes. She imagined that this was what standing at the edge of an avalanche must feel like.

The crescendo roared up level with them. Tiles and bricks, shaken loose from above, came crashing down. A reflected kiln heat made her pull her hands from the brick wall as the stone burned too hot to touch. The waterfall thunder continued past like a mountain tumbling down a slope.

Eventually, in the relative silence, she straightened, tentatively. After a time, Yuna sent a sister off to investigate. A hot wind now blew from the river, heating Iko’s face. It carried the stink of smoke, and of roasted flesh.

By the time the sister returned Iko’s vision had half cleared, though floating dots of darkness obscured it. The sister was pale, her face strained, even sickened. She said nothing, only shook her head. Yuna gestured them onward to the west. They headed that way, restraining the king among them like a prisoner.

Luckily for them, Iko thought, no counter-offensive was in motion. The Hengans, guards and citizenry alike, appeared just as stunned by this unprecedented cataclysm as they. She and her sisters reached the inside of the Outer Round wall where it marched down into the Idryn and only then did it come to her that they were on the north shore. They would have to cross the river.

Mist obscured the wide expanse, but not the thick heavy fog of before. These hanging tendrils resembled more the steam of heated water. Yuna pointed a sister ahead and she eased out on to the frozen surface. It gave slightly beneath her feet, and water now coursed above the ice sheet, but it held. Yuna gestured two more to attempt to cross. They set out keeping a good few paces between them. Soon the mists swallowed both. Some tens of heartbeats later came a high whistle – one of their ‘all-clear’ signals. Yuna sent out two more.

In this manner, some few at a time, they crossed the river. Chulalorn went in the middle of the crossings, with guards established behind and before. Iko was among the last pairs to go.

It was unsettling in the extreme starting out. The ice sheet creaked and groaned beneath her feet. The mists obscured her vision – it was as if she were walking through clouds. Her footing was unsteady as the surface gave and yielded like soft clay. Her boots were sodden by the river water now coursing over the rotting ice.

Shapes emerged from the mists around her and she jerked her sword free, nearly falling as the ice rocked beneath her. They were Kanese regulars retreating from the city centre. They came as ghosts, some singly, some in groups, limping, supporting one another. All bore horrific wounds. Their surcoats and leather armour hung blackened and burned, some still smoking. Their faces and hands were cracked and scorched, their scalps bare, the skin broken and bleeding. The only sound was a low constant moaning as of intense agony dulled now by numbness.

Iko stood still as the army of near dead limped past her, sloshing and splashing through the shallow water above the ice. We’ve been destroyed, she realized. How many hundreds – nay, thousands – had they lost here this day? They no longer possessed a viable force. They had no choice but to retreat and hope to limit whatever damages may follow from this disaster.

It was as Hallens had feared. Sorcery had been answered by sorcery – power had drawn power. The sudden need to slap Chulalorn across the face for all these deaths washed over her like a physical force and she suppressed the urge with a shudder. He could not have known. Yet he should have.

She slogged onward, splashing, her feet now sinking into the softening dough-like ice sheet. She made the southern shore, pulled herself up the still frozen mud slope by yanking on tall grasses, and joined the waiting party. Here she dutifully took her place in the defensive circle about the king and they made their way south to the encampment.

Yuna was already giving orders to her sisters regarding the logistics of the retreat while the king said nothing. He staggered along at their centre, his brows crimped in complete incomprehension, his gaze on the ground, seemingly as stunned and numbed as his soldiers themselves.

*

The eruption of power that came with the dawn had knocked Silk and his fellow mages to the floor. He and Smokey had been negotiating for more time with the Kanese officer; the man had had enough and his troops were once more pounding on the doors. The doors were yielding and he and Smokey were readying themselves though Silk knew he had nothing left to give – he’d exhausted himself drawing upon his Warren and could barely summon it.