Battle Magic

23

THE GOD-KING’S PALACE

GARMASHING, CAPITAL OF GYONGXE

Weishu looked glossy and pleased, seated on the God-King’s throne. He did not look like a man who had been fighting for weeks. Briar stared at the flagstones, wondering if there was dirt under them, and plants. Don’t try it, he warned himself. You’ll get someone killed. The God-King’s audience chamber was ringed with Yanjingyi archers, each with a crossbow pointed at a captive. The mages who flanked the throne had beads ready in case their foes among the captives got any ideas.

Like a vision from his ugliest nightmare, he saw that Weishu held a chain with the God-King at the other end. The boy sat on his heels two steps below the throne, his face unreadable. He showed no signs of a beating. Either the kid had gone along peaceably, Briar thought, or Weishu realized that hurting the God-King was a very bad idea.

Briar shook with rage. Parahan, Soudamini, and Sayrugo were badly beaten. Rosethorn had a bruise shaped like a hand on one cheek: If Briar had been awake when that happened, the one who dealt it to her would be dead.

“My good friends,” Weishu said in tiyon. “Did you enjoy your sleep? It lasted for three days. I trust you will forgive me. I had to travel for some time to sit in this splendid chair, and I did not wish you to wake until I could greet you. I hope you are not too stiff.”

“Where are my priests and priestesses, please?” the God-King asked. “The heads of the temples should be here.”

Dokyi, Briar realized. Is he dead?

“They are locked in their temples and still slumbering, boy,” Weishu replied. “I will not have this discussion interrupted with more religious babble than necessary.” He raised his right hand and beckoned with his fingers. “Hengkai, get them on their knees,” he ordered, his voice no less friendly.

The general walked out of the shadows behind the throne to stand at the emperor’s right. He held a rope of mage beads in one hand. He’d lost weight since that breakfast in the oak grove. Briar was interested to see a bright gold band of metal around the man’s neck. How could he command an army if he was one of Weishu’s slaves?

Hengkai looked over the prisoners assembled in front of the dais. When his eyes lit on Briar, and on Evvy nearby, he spread his mouth in an ugly grin. He rolled a pair of beads between his fingers. They weren’t wood: Briar checked them instantly, though he didn’t mean to try anything that might vex the emperor.

Suddenly Briar felt pressure — on his shoulders, head, and hips. The pressure grew and grew. He wasn’t sure when it got to be too much. One moment he was standing; the next he was on his knees. He looked around in panic. Rosethorn and some of the shamans were still up, including Riverdancer. Then they, too, were forced down. Only the mages had knelt. The guards beside Parahan, Souda, and Sayrugo shoved them or kicked their shins to force them down.

Weishu smiled. “Hengkai does know how to use magic on mages.”

Briar yawned. He raised a hand to cover it before Rosethorn tweaked his ear for bad manners, and heard the sound of a blade coming out of its sheath. No hand movements, he thought, and slowly lowered his arm. It was sore. Were we really asleep for three days? he wondered. That’s why I feel like I’m made of wood.

He smiled cheerfully at Weishu and Hengkai. Sooner or later they would leave an opening. They might know academic magic, but ambient magic was trickier by far. Briar could pass a river of it through the ground under Garmashing and these people would never feel it. He only needed a plan.

“Much more respectful to have you on your knees,” Weishu said as if they were all friends. “What a splendid gathering of talents. Soudamini, it is an honor to meet you at long last. I have heard tales of your beauty, but they were inadequate. You and your brother will make fitting ornaments to my throne.” He looked at Parahan. “And this time I will ensure the chains cannot be removed.”

Parahan leaned forward and lazily spat on the floor.

“You will give in,” Weishu said gently. “Or I will return you to your uncle and I will give your sister to my concubines. They can be very jealous, and very good with poisons when they sense a woman does not have my favor.” He looked at Rosethorn, Briar, and Evvy. His face darkened with anger. “I show you my hospitality; I welcome you to my palace; I shower you with gifts, and this is how you repay me,” he said, his voice expanding to thunder in the chamber. “You side with my enemies. You slaughter my soldiers. You will spend your lives working for me, each of you hostage for the good behavior of the others.

“And you,” he said, glaring at the God-King as he yanked the chain leash on the boy. “I sent a command of surrender to you and you defied me!”

The God-King stumbled and fell on the throne’s steps. There was a rustle and a soft growl from the Gyongxin captives. The Yanjingyi archers and mages went very still, their eyes on the shamans. The archers fingered their crossbows.

“Of course I did. I still defy,” the God-King replied, his youthful voice breaking the tension. Everyone watched him. “You are greedy and foolish.”

“Stop!” Evvy cried. “Don’t make him angry!”

The God-King looked at her. “Don’t worry, Evvy. We’re having a talk.” To Weishu he said, “Shame on you for allowing what was done to her. Shame on you for what you have done to this land. You understand nothing about Gyongxe, but you think killing and burning will make it yours.” Weishu yanked his leash again, dragging the boy up a step. The God-King continued without stopping. “You will never rule this country. As well ask to rule the desert sands as you grasp them in your fingers. And if you try, your own lands will be deserts in the time of your grandchildren.”

“You will die horribly, where many of your people can see it,” Weishu said, leaning forward. “That will teach them who rules here.”

The God-King chuckled. “I don’t rule. I only speak for the gods. They will not speak to you.”

Briar was so overwhelmed by the boy’s courage or folly — he was still trying to decide what it was — that he didn’t notice the vibration under his feet until his teeth started to knock together. He glanced at the wall paintings. The people and the creatures in them leaned forward, their eyes fixed on Weishu. The paint actually bowed out from the walls. Most important of all, the large figures — the nagas, the winged lions, the giant spiders, and the huge vultures — were wriggling, as if they meant to peel themselves free.

“Stop it,” he mouthed at the walls. Too many guards were ready to kill the prisoners beside them. The paintings stared at him, but they settled down. “I don’t understand,” Briar said, to distract Weishu and because he really wanted to know. “How did you get here without us knowing?”

The emperor smirked. “For all your intelligence, you thought you couldn’t be beaten, is that it? Kings plant traitors in foreign cities like you sow plants abroad. Such traitors may live in a city for decades before their masters call on them. It is then that they drink a certain keep-awake tea so they can open the gates. I would have called on them earlier, but I wanted you five foreigners in Garmashing before I sprang my trap.” He smiled. “My mages put the rest of the city to sleep and my traitors let me in.”

The ground still trembled. Some of the archers were beginning to notice. Worse, Briar saw movement in the darkness at the top of the hall, on the very high ceiling in the rear. It was strange, disjointed movement.

“Since you are going to kill me,” the God-King said, taking a more normal seat on one of the throne’s steps, “would you answer a question for me? There are no tricks or mockery in it,” he assured Weishu, as if he were the conqueror’s elder and Weishu the captive. “It is a straightforward question. I hope you will be able to answer.” More than at any time before, Briar thought he did not sound like a boy at all.

“Ask it,” Weishu replied, all good humor.

“When you studied this realm before you began your conquest,” the God-King asked seriously, “did you wonder why so many religions begin in Gyongxe, and why so many religions have at least one temple here?”

If Briar had not turned his head to look at Rosethorn just then, he might have missed the glint of light on thin, silk-like strands behind the mages and the emperor.

Weishu chuckled. So did a number of his mages.

“Even some Yanjingyi gods have temples here,” the God-King went on. “But you don’t understand at all, do you?”

“What I understand is that all of these temples will surrender their treasures to me, and I will carry them to my palaces,” Weishu replied, still amused. “What do I care if people choose to haul themselves here to knock their heads in your dirt? Temples are places for priests to milk money from worshippers. I am the only god they need to worry about now.”

All around him Briar felt Rosethorn working on crossbows, drawing the strength from the wood until it was as dry and brittle as kindling. He quickly helped her, feeling scared. There was something in the air, a feeling like that before a thunder- or sandstorm. Power was building all around them that had nothing to do with the kind of magic he knew. He didn’t know what would happen if it got loose.

“I will explain,” the God-King was telling the emperor, “though you have said enough that I am fairly certain you will not believe me.”

Weishu yanked on the God-King’s leash. The metal cracked to pieces and fell on the floor. “People come here to be close to the gods,” the boy told the emperor. “Things happen here that happen nowhere else.” As the emperor straightened, ready to shout an order, something that looked like a metal snake with a skull for a head slid down the filament over him and dropped to his shoulders. Swiftly it wrapped itself around the emperor’s neck.

Rosethorn sighed. “Who let the cave snakes out?” She didn’t seem to expect an answer. She also didn’t seem surprised.

Guards behind the captives threw the doors open. More Yanjingyi soldiers poured into the throne room, filling the space behind the captives and joining the other soldiers along the walls.

Behind the throne a familiar deep voice boomed, “Try to kill anyone here and your emperor dies.”

Hengkai raised his hands. Immediately the filament above him captured them and bound his arms. It whipped like a spinning rope, fashioning a cocoon for him from shoulders to hips. He cursed, furious, then shrieked in terror as giant spiders lowered themselves to the dais on ropes of web, giving every mage who stood there the same treatment. Hengkai croaked something, seemingly the start of a spell, only to have a strand of web fall over his mouth. At last the spiders dropped to the floor behind the imperial mages.

Briar and Rosethorn pulled what life remained from the crossbows and the crossbow bolts of the imperial archers. Already dry and splitting, the weapons broke apart and fell from their holders’ grips.

Evvy had not been idle. In the hands of the mages beads made of jade, cinnabar, and quartz split, cutting the strings on which they were hung. The rest of the beads fell to the floor as the spiders bound the mages together in bundles.

Briar looked at the paintings on the walls. “You may as well help,” he told them. “You know you’ve been itching to.”

The paintings walked off the walls. The large ones, the gods and goddesses, grabbed those soldiers who ignored Luvo’s warning and went for their swords. The painted gods seized the weapons and threw them aside. Unnerved and undone by the sight of a painted, many-armed god or a very tall, red goddess standing over them, the soldiers fell to their knees and pressed their faces against the floor. The little creatures from the borders of the paintings swarmed the soldiers and mages who continued to fight, taking up positions on their ears or faces. Suddenly the humans went quiet, not daring to touch the alien beings perched so close to their eyes or ears. Many of the painted gods bore weapons.

Luvo came forward from the back of the throne room, mounted on the back of a giant peak spider. They climbed the dais until Luvo could step off onto the top. The spider retreated to the foot of the steps and crouched, waiting.

The God-King still sat on the steps by the throne as if this were a normal day in the palace, watching as crossbows and mage beads went to pieces and paintings came to life and battled. Now he stood and bowed to Luvo, the spiders, and the paintings. “I am honored beyond all words by this visit, Great Ones,” he said. “I am only sorry that you could not see the capital at its best.”

“Do you think you have the upper hand?” Weishu shouted. He had pried the cave snake a couple of inches from his neck so he could speak. “Have you forgotten my army? It will avenge me! Every one of Yanjing’s armies will cross your mountains. There will be no Gyongxe when they are done! Those of you who are not Gyongxin, my assassins will hunt you until the end of time! They will kill you, your children, and all you hold —”

By then the cave snake had changed its hold enough to tighten its grip on the emperor’s throat again. Briar was close enough to see that its body was in reality all backbone, made of metal and dirt like its skull. He wanted one.

“He has a point.” Parahan, Soudamini, and Sayrugo had left their guards to stand with Rosethorn. Briar and Evvy went to join them. “We have the emperor and his mages, but it will do us no good,” Parahan continued. “The army is still here. His heirs will want to finish what he began.”

Luvo walked closer to the God-King. “Your nearest army has its own problems at this time.”

The God-King sat up, eager. “Would you show me?”

The biggest spider of all slid down a flaxen rope to the floor. Everyone stepped back except Evvy, who bowed low and said, “Hello, Diban Kangmo. It’s very good to see you again.”

The great creature uttered several squeaks and touched Evvy’s cheek with the hard edge of one arm. Then she settled back and began to eject fluid from her spinneret. Evvy backed up then, too.

“Who’s your friend?” Briar asked Evvy.

“She’s Diban Kangmo. I told you about her. She’s a peak spider. She and her daughter helped heal me after Luvo brought me into his mountain,” Evvy explained. “The peak spiders are the gods of the highest parts of the mountains. I’m not going to look at that,” she added, turning away from the pool of spinneret fluid. “I know it’s perfectly natural, what they make the webs from and all, but I think that looks nasty.”

The milky pool spread over the floor until it was several feet across. Diban Kangmo straightened and stepped away from it. The peak spider that had placed Luvo on the dais now carried him down to the floor and set him at the pool’s edge.

As Luvo waited, an image grew in the milky liquid. It was a view of the plain outside the main gate. Briar did his best not to gape. There were creatures out there. Horse-like ones with eagles’ heads, thin legs, and metal hooves fought the cavalry, their golden beaks and silvery hooves cutting deadly wounds on horses and riders. Lions that looked, impossibly, as if they were made of ice fought beside snow leopards, cave bears, and nagas, fully fleshed, not painted. Cave snakes shone as they slithered through the ranks of foot soldiers. Peak spiders walked among them, casting webs over several soldiers at a time. Giant vultures attacked from overhead. Whole companies of soldiers were giving the creatures the great bow, their foreheads on the bloody ground.

And it was very bloody, Briar saw. The creatures who fought for Gyongxe could die. The Yanjingyi soldiers were dying, too. The peak spiders had a stinger; it killed. But they were vulnerable to arrows or swords. Many of them lay sprawled in the dirt, their limbs and heads hacked away. The horse-like creatures bled dark blood when they were cut down.

“What are those horse things?” Briar asked, pointing.

“Deep runners,” Rosethorn answered, to his surprise. “They live far underground.”

“Sometimes my brothers and sisters get bored, and they make things,” Luvo said. “Sometimes things make themselves.”

There was movement in the pool. A company of soldiers, battered and limping, was struggling away from the field of battle. More turned to follow.

“Cowards!” Weishu shouted. “You will die for this!”

More soldiers saw what was taking place. They abandoned their flags and fled, the strange creatures pursuing them.

“Your army has abandoned you,” the God-King said, facing the emperor. “I think that if you want to live, you will have to make some arrangements, don’t you? Oh, hello, small one.” He reached down and lifted something from his shoe. It was a baby cave snake. The God-King looked at the one around the emperor’s neck. “Is this little one yours? I won’t hurt it.”

Briar could have sworn the skull on the serpent around the imperial throat looked cross. It nodded to the God-King. A moment later small cave snakes were crawling on many of the captive mages. Hengkai in particular was horrified and struggled to get away from the one that was tugging on his mustache. He fell over. Briar was in no way inclined to pick up the general.

“I’d kill him.” Souda eyed the emperor with intent. “He’s earned it a million times over.” She looked over at the mages. “And them.”

“But there are so many problems that come from his death,” the God-King reminded her. “If you two are to regain your kingdom, you can’t worry about imperial assassins, or imperial money going to pay every rebel who ever dreams of raising an army against you.”

I will never think of him as a boy again, Briar thought, staring at the God-King. How does he not go mad, with all those gods talking to him and giving him advice? I go crazy with my sisters, or Rosethorn and Evvy, telling me what to do, and none of them are gods.

“I don’t believe that.” The emperor pointed to the pool, which was vanishing into the cracks between the stone tiles. “Magic. I can buy a thousand illusions like it. Any of these hand wavers could have done the same.” His own wave of the hand dismissed the mages bound in spider silk on both sides of him. “I demand to look on the field of battle myself.”

The God-King shrugged. “Please yourself. Zochen Brul, would you be so kind?”

That appeared to be the cave snake’s name. It unwound from the emperor’s neck and slid down the throne to the God-King’s side in a clatter.

“I want a guard, as is my due,” Weishu said, shaking out his robes as he stood. His eyes glinted with his familiar arrogance.

Briar shook his head with reluctant admiration. It took a great deal to shake Weishu’s sense that he was entitled to rule over everything, it seemed. He could never feel that way — his teachers and his girls would never allow it.

“You may have whomever you wish,” the God-King said agreeably. Suddenly he looked much less agreeable. “But first, you will order your mage to wake my city. All of my city.”

“Your monsters hold him,” Weishu said, looking down at the cocooned Hengkai. He stared up at his emperor without trying to utter a word past the spider silk that bound his mouth.

“If you would?” the God-King asked the spider that lurked in the shadows behind Hengkai. It reached out a long leg and touched the cocoon. The silk shriveled and fell away from the general. Gingerly Hengkai sat up and looked around himself on the dais. He picked up several beads and held them in one trembling hand.

Parahan turned on the guard closest to him and grabbed his sword from its sheath. The guard didn’t try to resist. The big man strode up the steps to the throne and put the tip of the sword to Weishu’s throat.

“Call me untrusting, God-King,” he said apologetically, without taking his eyes from the emperor, “but in case Hengkai does try something, I will take his master’s head. He was Weishu’s chief general because he can work battle magic very quickly.”

“The cave snakes have an eye on Hengkai, Parahan,” the God-King assured him. Briar looked at the general. A number of baby cave snakes and two of the larger ones lay at Hengkai’s feet, watching him. Perhaps that was why the man trembled so much. Perhaps he was steadfast enough in ordinary battle, but these strange beings were too much for him.

Hengkai handled the beads he’d gathered in a particular order, his lips moving. He passed his free hand over them. That done, he shifted the beads to his free hand and murmured, then passed the other hand over them. Briar felt a pressure on his ears, then a pop.

“Don’t you feel better?” the God-King asked Hengkai. “It can’t have been easy for you, holding such a vast spell for so long a time.”

The general did not answer him. He sank onto the top step by the throne and put his head in his hands.

Weishu did not even ask if he felt unwell. He ducked Parahan’s sword and walked down the steps, ignoring the God-King. He brushed past Rosethorn and Sayrugo, pointing to different Yanjingyi soldiers. The others moved out of his way.

“They will leave their weapons here,” Sayrugo called as Weishu was about to pass through the open doors.

“Very well,” the God-King said. “Weishu, you heard General Sayrugo.”

The emperor did not move, but the soldiers he had chosen did. They stripped off their sword belts and even their daggers, leaving them in a heap before they accompanied Weishu out of the throne room. Without discussing it, the God-King, Parahan, Soudamini, Rosethorn, Briar, and Evvy followed.

“Are you coming?” Evvy asked Riverdancer when they passed her.

The shaman shook her head. “I have see too much … death,” she said haltingly, proving that she spoke a little tiyon.

They kept pace with Weishu and his soldiers as they passed from the God-King’s palace onto the wall that encircled the city. From there they followed the wall down, level by level. All the way to the gate they saw that Gyongxe’s big and little gods had been fighting here, too. They found Yanjingyi soldiers in smothering bundles of spider silk and others bloated and face-black with poison. More were wounded or hacked apart by sharp edges. On and off Briar looked over the edge of the wall, inside the city and out. Quite a few soldiers had jumped to get away from whatever had attacked them up here.

Weishu pretended to see none of the men and women who had died for him.

At last they came to the main gates and the scene they had viewed in the spinneret pool. No inch of ground on the plain was untouched. The earth was dark from spilled blood. Parts of it moved. The creatures they had seen in the pool — cave snakes, peak spiders, the eagle-headed horses Rosethorn had called “deep runners,” nagas, ice lions and lionesses, and mortal snow leopards and cave bears — wandered everywhere, together with huge red, blue, green, and orange many-armed gods. Giant vultures wheeled in the sky together with mortal eagles and ordinary vultures. Some were busy killing those of the enemy who were still alive. The rest were pursuing the fleeing army. And it was fleeing.

Any sense of victory Briar felt over Weishu’s army vanished. These poor bleaters had no idea of what they might be walking into. They were used to fighting their northern neighbors’ armies, horse nomads, and imperial Namorn’s trained army in the northwest. The emperor had walked them into a storm of magic and creatures from their nightmares. He wondered if they had even been given a choice about joining the army. Knowing Weishu, probably not.

He glanced at Rosethorn. She was even whiter than usual. Only Evvy looked happy. There was a small, tight smile on her lips. She’s entitled, maybe, Briar thought. More than maybe, after what they did to her.

There was no expression on the emperor’s face at all.

The God-King had to reach up to put a hand on his enemy’s shoulder. “Let’s go back inside and talk about a treaty. You won’t even think of breaking it when you get back to Yanjing, I know. You can never tell what kind of spies will choose to come back with you.”

They turned back toward the palace. Briar chose not to mention the baby cave snake dangling from a silk thread — or a spider thread — on the emperor’s robe.

Rosethorn drew a deep breath. “I’m going to get my kit and go down there,” she said. “I won’t hold it against you if you stay behind.”

As if he would let her go alone! Briar looked at Evvy, who was shaking her head. “I’ll keep Luvo company,” she told them. “There isn’t much I could do down there. At least here we can help rebuild.”

Rosethorn nodded. She and Briar went in search of their medicines.