The Killing God, page 70
By agonizing increments, King Bifalt tried to obey his wife.
At once, Klamath and Elgart raised him. With their help, he stood, tottering. His left hand clutched his side. Dark fluid leaked between his fingers. His right hand groped, empty and helpless.
Estie turned away. We have no time. She did not know what she was supposed to do. She knew what she could do.
Now Queen Estie of Amika did not resist her fears. She used them. She needed every scrap of passion to shout at Rile.
Butcher!
She did not try to match Magister Avail’s force—or her own extremity when she had first screamed Bifalt’s name. One blow would not be enough. She had to deliver more.
Rile’s head jerked as if he had been slapped.
Tyrant!
He staggered back a step, caught himself. With one hand, he rubbed at his forehead.
Coward!
He looked around wildly. She thought that she saw a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. With a frantic gesture, he sent two more priests to his books.
You kill your own servants!
He tottered.
Estie gathered herself for one more shout, but she could not do more. At that instant, her world was flipped on its head. Her power left her. Without it, she could hear.
* * *
As timorous as prey, Beatrix Threnody clung to the inner wall near the edge where the balcony had been broken. Bits of stone still slipped from the torn rim and fell out of sight. Fright was her only enduring gift. It seemed to be the only one she had.
But she did not lose her grip on her two wielders of the seventh Decimate. On her left, she clutched the older man, Magister Able. On her right, she held the young woman, Apprentice Evensong.
She expected to cower where she was until she was killed. What else could she do? Her bond with the library and all of its knowledge was useless here. Magister Rummage had tried the final Decimate and failed. She was doomed to be the last steward of the Repository.
But then Magister Oblique called to her.
“Librarian! There is a devotee of Spirit among the rubble! Lylin, I think. She has a rifleman with her. He may be Prince Jaspid.
“He has fired at the Great God! Now he waits.”
Abruptly, Magister Threnody’s concern for her books and her people thrust every other fear aside. Her other Decimate-wielders could do nothing. They were too far from the enemy. But if Prince Jaspid could shoot the Great God? If his bullets could pierce the Shields that covered him?
If an ordinary man had so much daring?
The time had come for Magister Able and Apprentice Evensong. They were the librarian’s last, desperate gamble. They would suppress all theurgy in the Repository, and in the battle raging below the lower plateau. They would make every sorcerer powerless. But they might also clear the way for the Prince.
If the Great God was not too strong for them.
Beatrix Threnody had to try.
“Come!” she snapped at Able and Evensong as if she had become a different woman, a librarian driven by certainty. Dragging them with her, she forced her way through the crowd to the parapets.
There she waited until she saw the Great God struck by a power like Magister Avail’s. By Queen Estie’s voice.
At that moment, Magister Threnody became what she was meant to be, the steward of the Last Repository.
“Now!” she commanded. “The seventh Decimate! Make those priests impotent!”
Magister Able blinked at her, confused, paralyzed by alarm.
Apprentice Evensong did not hesitate. She was said to be as strong as Facile. As soon as she finished her training, she would be made a Magister. Bracing her hands on the parapet, she summoned her gift.
At first, she was not enough. Waves of weakness ran through the shimmer of Shielding. It flickered in places, faltered. The priests looked around in alarm, unsure of the threat. Quickly, they renewed their sorcery.
A moment later, Magister Able collected his wits and joined Evensong.
The haze vanished as if it had never existed. The priests wielding it staggered in confusion. They struggled to raise their power again. But they could not. It had been locked away within them.
Over the clamor of fighting, Magister Threnody heard the devotee, clarion and clear.
“Now, Prince! Now!”
Sure of himself, the rifleman took his time, steadied his aim.
Fired.
But not at the Great God.
Instead, one of the rubies in the god’s cross shattered.
Yes! thought the librarian. The gems! The instruments of his Decimate. Magister Rummage had described them for her. Until this moment, she had not understood that they were vulnerable.
The Great God did not react. He appeared rigid with shock.
Casual and confident, the rifleman recocked his gun, aimed again.
At his next shot, another ruby burst into splinters.
Abruptly, the Great God howled. Fury contorted his perfect visage. Snatching up his staff, he whirled it around his head. The golden hue of his power grew brighter, stronger, as he forced his coercion through the remaining gem.
“Look!” someone shouted. “The infantrymen! They have stopped fighting!”
Magister Threnody did not look away from her enemy.
With an air of unconcern, the rifleman shrugged. He took more time to settle his aim.
His third bullet broke the slender shaft of the staff. Its cross fell away. Clattering, it landed on the table among the books.
The rifleman nodded to himself. His next shot destroyed the last ruby.
Like a man standing secure in the eye of a storm, he removed the clip from his rifle, dropped it in his satchel, took out another and slapped it in place. Then he began firing at the books. His bullets tore through the pages, scattered them like dead leaves.
People around the balcony cheered as if the battle had been won. Magister Threnody did not. The Great God was unharmed—and growing brighter. She could hardly bear to look at him. His howling sounded like the end of all things.
* * *
Gasping through his teeth, King Bifalt tried to recover his balance. He had lost it somewhere. He could hardly see. His surroundings swayed from side to side, and the unsteady labor of his heart seemed to beat in his eyes. He would have fallen again without Elgart’s support, and Klamath’s.
Moments passed before he managed to glance at his friends.
Then he wanted to weep.
They were grievously hurt. Elgart had a dirty strip of cloth tied over his left eye. The socket oozed blood. Another scar for the scarred man. The stump of Klamath’s right elbow was a lump of charred meat. A belt cinched his upper arm.
Bifalt’s friends—
He was hurt as well. Clamped below his ribs, his left hand seemed to grip a bundle of broken glass. It shredded his side. He had been cut there. The wound leached away his life.
But Estie had commanded him. Jaspid tries to give you an opening. You must strike now. He could not stop for pain, his friends’ or his own.
There was no one behind him. The infantrymen had driven Klamath’s riflemen and Magisters downhill. Only the King and his friends were close enough to obey his wife.
I love you!
He worked his throat until he had summoned a little moisture, enough for a hoarse whisper. “We must go up. To Rile. We have a chance.”
“Up there?” Elgart groaned. “How? I can hardly see.”
“I can see,” muttered Klamath. “I cannot fight.”
Bifalt told Elgart, “Then support me.” He looked at the General. “Give me your sword.”
Elgart’s was gone. Without a word, Klamath reached across his body, fumbled his blade from its sheath. Trembling, he put it in Bifalt’s hand.
The King hefted the saber as if he were capable of wielding it. “One last blow,” he promised himself. “Take me to Rile.”
After a moment, Elgart nodded. “If we come at his back, you may find an opening. He has no priests there.”
Klamath attempted a shrug.
Alone while the fighting below them lashed on, the three damaged men struggled uphill.
Bifalt heard rifle-fire from somewhere above the pavilion. Slow shots, carefully spaced. For no apparent reason, the clamor of killing diminished. He forgot it.
The lower plateau was not as far away as it seemed. He feared that he would never reach it until his friends half carried him onto level stone.
The Great God stood at the front of his ruined pavilion. He radiated heat and power like the ruddy core of a forge. The trestle-table near him was burning. The pavilion’s roof of oilcloth had drifted away in flames. A puddle of molten stone lay under his feet. His staff was ashes.
In gold and fury, he was too intense to regard directly. By will alone, he forced a number of his priests to shelter him with their shimmering. A wasted effort. The rifle-fire had ceased.
Brandishing his fists, he screamed up at the broken Repository.
“No, you whoresons!” His staff had been nothing more than a tool. He did not need it. “You craven pedants, no!” Ignoring his compulsion, some of his priests had scattered. None of the infantrymen came to his defense. “I will tear out your guts with my own hands and feed!”
“No,” muttered Bifalt through his teeth. “You will not.”
Limping, he and his friends crossed the outer rim of the plateau until they stood unsteadily behind their enemy.
He was too weak for this. But it was for Estie. I love you. And for all of the bloodshed that Rile had caused.
Somehow, the King shook off his friends. In his good hand, he raised Klamath’s saber like a spike, not a sword. Leaning until he almost fell, he lurched into a run.
He could not look at the Great God. Instead, he watched his feet until the heat scorching his face told him that he was close. Then he hammered his blade into Rile’s back.
The eruption of power from the wound tossed him away like a handful of flung gravel. If Elgart and Klamath had not caught him, he would have pitched over the rim of the plateau. But he did not feel them grab him.
His war was done.
EPILOGUE
THE LAST CHALLENGE
King Bifalt did not feel the passage of time. His absence seemed brief. In fact, he was gone for several days. The Repository’s herbs and drugs kept him sleeping.
While he slept in a clean bed, the open wound in his side was stitched and bound to protect his damaged ribs. His broken hand was set in splints. Poultices and powders were smeared over the fierce burns of Rile’s fury. When the physicians and shamans had done what they could, Estie spent hours every day at his bedside, mopping the sweat of occasional fevers from his face, replacing his blood-sodden bandages, lifting his head and stroking his throat to help him swallow healing elixirs. At intervals, she murmured encouragement.
When other duties called her away, or she needed rest herself, Commander Crayn or Apprentice Travail took her place. Healers visited regularly. Monks, servants, and Magisters looked in on him. The librarian herself spent an hour with him, simply keeping him company.
Later, he was moved to a different bed. There was not enough room for him in the Repository’s infirmary. Soon after the battle ended, and for the next two days, swarms of people emerged from the keep to scour the foothills for survivors. Servants, scribes, students, teachers, apprentices, Magisters, all labored up and down the slopes, looking for anyone whose life might still be saved. In that task, they made no distinctions. Horse-warriors and Bellegerins, Amikans and infantrymen, even priests were carried into the Repository and delivered to the physicians and shamans. Soon the infirmary was overwhelmed. A field hospital had been set up in the great hall, and still Magister Threnody scrambled to find more beds. The healers worked themselves ragged, and yet had more to do.
To ease their efforts in one small way, Queen Estie had her husband carried to her own quarters, where he was settled in the Commander’s chamber adjoining her sitting room. Crayn had lost his guardsmen when sub-Commander Waysel and the cannoneers were overrun. He had rooms and beds to spare. There Bifalt slept on, never alone. Especially at night, Estie sat near him.
At other times, the Queen was busy elsewhere, consulting with the librarian and Magister Oblique, or ensuring the comfort of riflemen, el-Algreb, and Magisters who needed nothing more than rest and good food. She also visited the infirmary and the field hospital to show her support for everyone there, whether or not they had once been her foes. And she spoke at length with General Klamath, Elgart, and Prince Jaspid. She could not hear them. Her gift had been restored. But with the aid of Crayn’s signs and gestures, she pieced together their explanations of how and why they had come to be where they were needed most. Later, she addressed Chancellor Sikthorn in Maloresse, telling him what had happened—and what to expect.
But her first thoughts every day, and her last, were for Bifalt. She knew now that he would live. Still, too much between them remained unresolved. She wanted him to wake.
* * *
When he finally opened his eyes, they refused to focus. He recognized the blur of lamplight, walls at strange angles, a chamber of some kind. Nothing else. There was an emptiness in his mind, a gulf that swallowed comprehension.
His arms lay outside whatever covered him. Blankets? He was not sure. Hoping for something familiar, he lifted his arms a little, peered at his hands. But they were little more than vague shapes. They told him nothing. He closed his eyes again.
Wondering what had been done to him, he became aware that his face felt parched. A familiar sensation. He had experienced something similar long ago, when Set Ungabwey had abandoned him in the desert. But this was worse. His face and arms had been scalded.
He did not understand.
He imagined touching his face, exploring it. The fingers of his left hand refused. They were trapped somehow. He used his right.
That was not his face. He recognized the pressure of his touch. The dull burning lingered. His fingers increased it. Nevertheless his features were wrong. He found slick patches covered with grains like sand scattered on oil. They had a peculiar smell. They did not fit him. And his beard—
He remembered his beard. He had kept it cropped short, but he knew it.
It was gone.
Trembling a little, he explored farther. Eyebrows? No. On his head? The same dull burning, but no hair.
Who am I now? He wanted an answer, but there was no one he could ask.
“Your hair will grow again, King,” offered a familiar voice gently. “Your flesh will heal. You may not resemble yourself for a few days. But the gifts of the shamans are remarkable. Soon you will recognize your reflection.”
A tug of memory encouraged Bifalt to reopen his eyes. Turning his head, he made out an indistinct shape that made him think of Third Father.
He tried to ask, Father? No sound came. The muscles of his throat were as useless as his left hand.
Someone he did not see slipped an arm under his shoulders, lifted him a bit, set pillows to support him. The lip of a flagon nudged his mouth. He tasted something ripe and soothing, tried to swallow it. One sip enabled another. It eased his raw throat.
Panting, he leaned on the pillows.
“You will live, King,” murmured the monk. “I am pleased to say it. And more pleased to acknowledge that you have surpassed yourself yet again. My expectations were high. You have flown higher.”
None of that made sense. But since Third Father mentioned expectations, Bifalt expected himself to ask, “And you?”
The monk seemed to smile. “It is not for me to say. But as it is you who ask, King, I will confess that I believe so. For a moment, I was more than I imagined myself to be.”
Bifalt may have nodded. But he had already lost the thread of Third Father’s reply. He had a more compelling concern.
With an effort, he cleared his throat. “Estie?”
Third Father sighed, a comforting sound. “The Queen is well, King. More than well. Her straits have been difficult. Yet she, too, has surpassed herself.
“She has spent many hours at your side. She will be saddened that she missed this moment of awakening. But she and the lib—”
The monk stopped himself. “Forgive me, King. You may not be aware that Sirjane Marrow is dead. The librarian is now Magister Beatrix Threnody. You will not call her arrogant.”
Then he resumed. “The Queen was called away. She and the librarian preside over a remembrance of the dead and a celebration of the living. It will be a lengthy ceremony. There are too many names, the dead and the living, and none should be forgotten.
“I was asked to attend. But I am near the end of my days, and my strength fades. I prefer to sit with you for a time.”
Bifalt retained parts of Third Father’s explanation. Other details slipped into the gulf where his recent memories should have been. But Estie was well. That was the important thing.
He went back to sleep.
* * *
When he awoke again, he had no idea how much time had passed. He lay in an unfamiliar bed. The lamplit chamber was strange to him. But he recalled a bit more of who he was. Scraps of events drifted at the edges of coherence. The same vagueness afflicted his vision.
Estie’s voice drew him toward her. It seemed to give him meaning.
“Welcome, my lord King.” She had lost none of her sweetness. “Third Father sent word that you have begun to rouse. I came as soon as I could.”
He blinked again and again. The blurring of his sight resembled the smear of sorcery that the priests had used against him. He hated it.
