PROLOGUE (82 page)

She went cautiously at first, but the way lay silent and pitch-black before her, a weight of still air stirred and lightened by their passing but by no other breath of life. All lay around her in the flickering gaze of the torches as she recalled it: the smooth walls, the beaten earth floor as though thousands had passed this way in some long ago time, the ceiling a hand's reach above. Now and again she heard the scrape of a metal spear point on the rock, and a low curse from its bearer, shifting it down. Her bow and quiver rode easily on her back. She held the torch in her left hand and her good friend Lucien's sword in her right. The torch burned without flagging, as did all the others. Erkanwulf walked on her left so the torch illuminated the way evenly between them. But after a while she began to forge ahead of him, sure of her path. Behind her, Lavastine strode swiftly, and his troops kept up by sheer force of his will if nothing else.

"Ai, Lord," whispered Erkanwulf. "It's sorely dark down here, Eagle. What if all that rock caves in on us?"

But she smelled only the metallic tang of earth, a distant whiff of the forge, and the dank moisture of a place long hidden from the sun. "Why should it fall now? If it's lain here for so long?"

"The torches burn so strongly," added Erkanwulf. "It's uncanny, it is."

"Hush," said Lavastine from behind, although the tramp of so many armed men through the tunnel could not be hidden
—or at least not by any gift she possessed.

They walked steadily and, like the torches, without flagging. She realized now that the journey out of Gent had taken so long for the most part because they had gone so slowly, and because the refugees had been mostly frightened children or the weak and the wounded. With forty robust soldiers behind her, she could lead at a brisk pace.

"What's there?" muttered Erkanwulf even as she realized that in the far distance ahead she could see a dull lightening cast of fire. And as they neared she saw that, indeed, it was fire: A wall of it stretched from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, leaping and burning in the tunnel with all the frenzy of a gleeful pack of fire daimones at their dance.

"Defended!" said Lavastine angrily.

Liath stared. Defended. But why, then, had the Eika not used the tunnel as a way to ambush Lavastine's army when it first arrived?

"Stay back," she said to Erkanwulf. She strode forward with her torch outthrust to make a barrier, but as she neared the wall of flame, it faded in her sight to become a whisper, a haze, a memory of fire, nothing more.

"Eagle!" She felt Erkanwulf dart forward to grab at her as she stepped into the blaze. He screamed. She stopped and turned round to order him back only to see the look on their faces, as much as she could see expressions in the torchlight. Only Lavastine watched impassively. Erkanwulf staggered back, a hand thrown up to shield his face from the heat. The rest murmured or cried out, or covered their eyes to hide them from the horrible sight of a young woman burned alive.

"It's an illusion," she said.

Erkanwulf fell to his knees, gasping and coughing.

Lavastine stepped up beside him. What courage it took him to do so she could not imagine. Would she do the same, if she had only another's word to go by? Around her, the ghost fire shimmered and leaped, burning rock no less than air.

"If Bloodheart has guarded this tunnel with illusion," asked the count, "doesn't that mean he must know of it?"

"Perhaps. But then why wouldn't he have used it for an ambush? Nay, Count Lavastine, I think there is fire above, on the plain, and his illusion is all of one seam. Have you ever seen an orrery? A model of the heavenly spheres?"

"Go on," said Lavastine curtly.

"As above, so below. His illusion may be one seamless part, and thus exists below the ground as well as above it. It's possible that these illusions would be seen by anyone attempting to approach the city, that Bloodheart cast them without knowing they would extend here, too."

"Or perhaps his soldiers wait for us, beyond."

In answer, she stepped through. A man shrieked, was brusquely ordered to be silent. Beyond the wall of fire lay the silent tunnel, dark and quiet. She turned and could not see the fire from this direction at all, only a misty haze and the men waiting on the other side.

"Nothing," she said. "Unless Bloodheart ordered his men to wait for us on the stairs. It would be very hard to fight up those stairs and win."

"Making it a better place to set an ambush, then," said Lavastine. "But what choice do we have but to go forward?" He nudged poor frightened Erkanwulf with the toe of a boot. "Come. She has the true sight. We must trust in her."

"We must trust in St. Kristine," she said suddenly, "for without her intercession we would never have found the tunnel. The heat will not burn you."

"I can't go through," sobbed Erkanwulf, still with a hand flung up to protect his eyes.

"Nay, boy!" said Ulric from the back of the group. "Think of Lord Wichman and his stories. They saw illusions at Steleshame, but that was all they were."

"I will lead." Lavastine gripped his sword more tightly and walked forward into the fire.

Even so, Liath felt him trembling slightly as he halted beside her. One by one, with increasing confidence, his troops came along after. Only a few shut their eyes as they passed through the illusion.

They went on.

After a time, she stumbled on a bottomless abyss, too wide across to jump. But even as she stared, the gulf of air solidified into the rock floor, littered with pebbles and scored by old footprints unstirred for months by the passage of wind or any other traffic, even the tiny creatures of the dark, over them.

This time, when she moved forward across the gaping abyss, Lavastine walked right beside her
—though when he took the first step out over the yawning chasm, she noticed that he shut his eyes.

She called back over her shoulder. "Shut your eyes! Shut your eyes and walk forward. Your feet will not lie to you."

In this way the soldiers followed, shuffling behind until the chasm lay behind them. With mounting confidence they went on. The torches burned steadily without consuming themselves.

"Are you a mage?" asked Lavastine softly, beside her. "Why do you possess this power to see through illusion? Where comes it from?"

How can I use it to my advantage?
He did not say the last words aloud, but she heard such calculation in his tone.

"My father laid a
—a mage's working on me," she said, hoping that she spoke the truth nearly enough that God would forgive her for lying.

Lavastine made no reply. She could not even imagine what he was thinking; she understood him less than any person she had ever met.

They went on, pressing into the darkness that would lead them to the crypt
—and to the Eika. And to Bloodheart.

Liath led them and did not look back.

PRESSED back and back, Alain held his place in the second rank of shields, keeping low so that the spearmen behind him could thrust over him. He braced hard with his feet to shore up those in the front rank who bore the brunt of the Eika assault. His strength was all he had, for surely it must be obvious to all by now that he could not fight.

The Eika sagged back, and in the brief lull, he surveyed the hill. The west and south lines still held at the wall, but to the east, facing Gent, and at the north gate where Alain had thrown in his reserves, the army had fallen back and now presented a wall of flesh and steel instead of earthen ramparts to face the Eika stone. Alain hoped that someone would take his place in the ranks so he could gain a vantage point to observe the field below and the progress of his father, but those with shields were already at the fore and none stepped up to relieve him.

The Eika gathered their strength. They, too, presented a line of shields, rounds painted with cunning blue or yellow serpents twined into interwoven spirals. Twenty paces separated the two lines. Aside from an occasional arrow or thrown stone, or the Eika stooping to stab some poor wounded man left behind in the retreat, or the dogs feeding hideously on corpses, the Eika remained still.

Lord have mercy. One black hound sprawled in an awkward heap and, even as he stared in horror, dogs leaped upon it to savage its corpse. Which one it was he did not know. He felt the press of the other hounds around him, but he dared not take his eyes off the enemy to count their number. Eika drummers had moved up to the second rank of their line and they beat a rhythm like a slow heartbeat. It quickened, and the Eika became restless, just as hounds would, scenting their prey but still held on a tight leash. The beating of the drums boomed louder and faster and then, like thunder, it broke with deafening claps as the Eika charged.

The soldiers around Alain braced themselves with wide stances. Spearmen shouldered up beside Alain, wedging spears in between the foremost shields, a line of points to impale the charging Eika on their own momentum.

The Eika hit. Alain staggered, caught himself, and sank back. He reinforced his shield with the pommel of his sword, but even so he, with the others, gave ground at a slow grind. Round Eika shields pressed into the fray, first overlapping him to his left, then to his right. He struggled as he caught an Eika shield with the corner of his own. If he could only draw the strength of the earth up through his legs...a hound leaned against him, adding its strength, but despite everything, his boots skidded on the dirt as he was forced back. The hound scrabbled and whined and retreated.

Over his head axes and spears did their work, but the huge shields of the Eika served them well. The line gave back, back toward the center of camp, back until the banner of black hounds on silver, placed near the top of the hill, vanished in the press.

Now the Eika overran the edge of camp and strangely this gave them some respite, since a number of the Eika would simply stop and pull back from the fighting to loot through chest and bag.

The east and north lines met and melded, and out of the din Alain suddenly heard the captain's voice as he shouted orders. The captain carried the standard, now that the banner was lost, and he rallied the troops with it by raising it high wherever the fighting was fiercest and the cause seemed lost.

"Hold the line!" Alain cried, but only those men right round him could hear, and surely they were already conducting themselves as best they could to keep their lord alive.

At last the standard signaled the captain's approach. "Lord Alain!" he cried. "Let him back, let him back! Now close it up, lads. Form up to the right
—" As Alain staggered out of the press into the dusty reserve ground—what little remained—the captain turned on him. "I lost track of you! Ai, Lord, what your father the count would say to me—

"Where's my father?" Alain shouted.

The captain waved vaguely to the east. "Out there. I saw Lord Wichman's banner, but a host of Eika ran between them and the hill and the sun shines so as to hide the land. We must trust to our swords and to the Lady."

From this vantage, Alain looked out over the plain. Eika swarmed like flies across the land. Off to the right a small band of horsemen carrying the raven tower of Autun formed up
—or made ready to retreat. Of Lord Wichman and the gold lion of Saony, of the Lavas banner, he saw no sign.

An unearthly dome of fire concealed Gent, as bright now as the sun that rode high above them. Already it had passed midday while they struggled on the hill, and the sun had begun its steady descent toward the western horizon. But a long afternoon and an endless high summer twilight stretched before them.

He whistled and even over the din of battle the hounds heard him and came to huddle at his feet: Sorrow and Rage, both cut and bleeding but whole, thumped their tails into his legs; Fear strained forward, barking wildly while blood streamed from a cut on his hindquarters; Bliss had an ugly gash on his back and one of his ears had been ripped to shreds; Ardent limped, old Terror's jaw dripped with the greenish-tinted blood that belonged to the Eika. Oddly, Steadfast had not a mark on her. But Good Cheer was missing. And Graymane was gone.

There was no time to mourn.

He gave them all a quick pat, and they licked him vigorously. Who was reassuring whom? As he straightened, he tried to make sense of the field.

The east and north lines were gone and those ramparts given up to the Eika advance. For the moment only flurries of fighting raged to the south and west, where the Eika had had little luck up to now. Here, down off the top of the hill, Alain and his company waited and watched as Eika looted Lavastine's camp. Where the night before the commanders had discussed strategy, the enemy now reveled. Alain could pick out individuals, Eika somewhat larger than the rest and clad in glittering gold and silver mail girdles that draped from hip to knee, flashing and glinting in the sunlight. Each of these
—and there were not many— walked through the carnage with an easy lilting step. Each
had a standard beside him, a grotesque pole festooned with feathers and bones and skins and other unknowable things. These were princelings like Fifth Son: Bloodheart's many sons.