Working God's Mischief

44. Gherig, the Idiam, and the Lord of the Dead City

It was evening. The sun had settled to the horizon, behind the rearguard. The light got mixed weirdly in as-yet unsettled dust from an earlier windstorm, then painted Gherig an unflattering orange. Ugly when Lord Arnmigal had seen it as Else Tage, the fortress shone uglier still in that light. Lord Arnmigal scowled. Despite having suffered vast damage, still being repaired, Gherig looked even more formidable than it had back then.

Titus Consent rode on Lord Arnmigal’s right. Bold as death, Empress Helspeth rode to his left, with an ease and style that recalled her elder sister. Wife played a more mature, reserved, and dignified Helspeth than did Hourli but her Empress lacked the sly, warm good humor of Eavijne’s. Lord Arnmigal sometimes tried to pick his players to suit the moment.

The differences were fine but Titus had noticed. He had wondered aloud why the Empress had become so mercurial.

He remained uninformed of Helspeth’s condition. God willing, gods willing, he would never know.

Lord Arnmigal did not normally ride with the van. He did so now because he wanted to see Gherig while there was yet light enough and, further, wanted to escape the constant complaining of Queen Clothilde, whose battered company his scouts had taken captive that morning.

Only a few people remained with Clothilde. Most had deserted because she was so unpleasant. The few sterner folk had been depleted further while fighting off Gisela Frakier in the pay of a crusader noble with a grudge.

Lord Arnmigal cared nothing about that. That was past. Clothilde was inside his shadow, now. Future foul behavior would be punished.

Never had he encountered anyone with a greater sense of entitlement than Clothilde. She would fit well with the most self-absorbed pre-Revelation devil-gods. He asked Wife: “Is there a formula for dealing with her sort?”

Clothilde refused to recognize that she was at the mercy of her captors.

The Helspeth avatar smiled as though at a private joke. “Are you hinting that something be done? Murder works.”

“Now you’ve planted an ugly idea.”

“Ah. You’re too much of a gentleman.”

“Not an accusation often directed my way.”

She nodded. “Perhaps not by the true Empress. But she is mad, in her special way. I suppose something should be done just to rivet the Queen’s attention.”

“She’s no queen, now. Don’t let it be anything fatal, really.”

“Still the surest cure.”

“There would be repercussions.”

“Then fix the possibility in her mind. You don’t want her to become even more unbearable.”

Something did happen. Something actually rather small.

Clothilde lost her voice during a fuming rant at a hapless servant. The more she strove to rage and roar the more constricted her throat became, to the point where she could no longer breathe.

She collapsed. She never got another word out but kept right on trying. Three collapses were required to make her understand. She would smother herself if she insisted on being herself. She could end the attacks whenever she was ready.

So Clothilde did begin to hold her tongue-and swiftly became terrified. Insidious reality gnawed furiously at the roots of her universe.

It dawned at last. No one cared. She was at the mercy of this gang who had taken her everything. Many clearly would not be loath to make sure she became no threat in the future. The Commander of the Righteous had but to nod.

Clothilde was servility personified by the time the Righteous reached Gherig, but she did not deceive Lord Arnmigal’s strange women. They recognized every malevolent impulse as it spawned. The Commander of the Righteous restrained the malice of the Shining Ones but allowed them to make it crystal that Clothilde would own no power or significance other than that of a prisoner.

Empress Helspeth told her directly, “Discard any hope you have because your cousin awaits you. His situation mimics your own, though he tells himself that it is otherwise. He will be a hostage to your behavior. You will be a hostage to his. The Brotherhood of War could win great favor with Indala by delivering Rogert du Tancret.”

Indala’s attitude toward Black Rogert was secret from no one but Rogert himself. Du Tancret was willfully blind and cared nothing for the opinions of others.

Wife told Lord Arnmigal, “The woman has grasped the enormity of her situation at last.”

“And still you have a caveat?”

“A wolf never stops being a wolf. A wolf will remain a wolf even when it should become a lapdog in order to survive.”

“Meaning she won’t be able to control herself?”

“She will not. She is what she is. Point out any of her sort who ever changed their nature.”

He knew of no one, of course. “Then smart money wouldn’t bet on changes for the meeker.”

Wife chuckled. “Oh, naturally not. However, if you put your ducats down it wouldn’t be the first long shot you ever bet. But this one wouldn’t come up a winner. I still say smart money ought to consider a surprise viper bite or fatal accident.”

Easily arranged with allies such as her.

“Maybe someday. But not yet.”

The question she did not ask hung in the air.

“That’s too much going the easy way. That’s the kind of thing that gives us men like Gordimer and er-Rashal.”

Wife stared with eyes gone entirely blank.

“All right.” He confessed, “You are correct. I have made some easy choices myself.” The transition might be an inalterable consequence of changes that came with the advance up the ladder of command. “Whatever, that isn’t our problem now. The Rascal is our problem. He is our only problem. The coming few days could shape the Holy Lands forevermore. They might shape the fate of the Shining Ones, too. Do we know what’s going on at Gherig?”

“They have no secrets. Aldi is there. The Master of the Commandery has gathered the Captain-General, the Widow, and a few renegade Lucidians more interested in smashing the sorcerer than in fighting westerners.”

“Who would they be? Pramans seldom look beyond today’s sunset. They’ve heard from birth that whatever happens will unfold the way God wills it.”

“There is an old Sha-lug general named Nassim Alizarin. Accompanying him are several longtime comrades and a grandnephew of Indala, one Azim al-Adil. He is young enough to have noticed Aldi.”

“That just means he’s still alive. Right?” Having suffered Aldi’s effect himself. “Do you all thrive on tempting mortals?”

“Yes. Yes we do. A goddess needs her fun. You know those names?”

“Nassim, I do. Our paths cross occasionally.” Though it would be effort wasted trying to hide from the Night, he offered nothing more.

Could this become another thread of complication?

Wife asked, “Rather than obsess, suppose we just see what unfolds?”

He sensed an implied suggestion that the direst threats could be resolved in a heartbeat. Or in the stopping of one.

He bobbed his head once, sharply.

It was a rare moment.

“Pinkus. You’ve found a local source for spoiled grape squeezings.” Then, “Bo. I heard you signed on with Hell’s Legion.”

“They threw me out, Boss. Too dirty for them. I’m just another rat in the shadows nowadays. Did Joe come with?” Biogna exchanged hand clasps with Titus Consent. They were never close but had known one another for years. Each held a grudging respect for the other.

Hourli, in Grail Empress guise, observed without expression, as did Ghort’s companions. Lord Arnmigal recognized Aldi despite physical changes and Holy Lands apparel. She winked, then wilted under a glower from Hourli.

Hourli’s irritation did not get past the old Seeker, nor the leathery hardcase Lord Arnmigal took to be the Widow. She stank of lethal power in a supernatural direction, as though she was halfway to ascendance via sheer violent inertia.

His gaze met hers.

The world stopped. His vision went tunnel. For a moment there was nothing but her eyes, fathomless darknesses. Then she reeled away.

Contact broken, Lord Arnmigal felt as though he had looked into some dark mystic mirror from the arsenal of the Old Ones. Or as if he had peered into the deeps of his own blighted soul.

The Widow was more shaken than he. She collapsed. The old Maysalean caught her, tried to sustain her dignity.

Lord Arnmigal thought the man seemed vaguely familiar. Where? When? But … there stood Nassim Alizarin. Madouc of Hoeles observed from farther back. People reentered his life, some again and again.

The stage of the world might be large but those pulled by similar threads of fate would inevitably collide when warp met woof as the blind sisters spun the thread and wove the tapestry of destiny.

Such heresy!

He looked down, turned slowly.

He did have a shadow today.

Needlessly, not apropos of the conversation, he said, “Keep an eye on those two.” Meaning Rogert du Tancret and Clothilde, who had left moments earlier, du Tancret supposedly intent on showing his cousin the quarters he had had prepared. Really, they hardly pretended that they did not mean to begin conniving immediately.

Head shakes all round, his people, Gherig’s, the Firaldians and the Connectens. He would win no friends trying to micromanage people here. These folks did not recognize his right to give orders in the first place.

Hourli said, “Suppose we focus on the matter that brought us together? On the lion roaring beyond the light of the campfire.”

Lord Arnmigal agreed. “You do the talking, Your Grace.” Unlike Helspeth, Hourli did not mind the honorific.

She bobbed her head in irritation recognized all round. She was the Empress. She needed neither permission nor instruction from any general.

The goddess stand-ins were touchier than the woman they played.

Having Helspeth do the talking was the plan. Lord Arnmigal did not want to be seen as bulling in to take over. Nurture of allied egos was as important as maintaining your weapons when at war.

So far he sensed real resentment only from Nassim Alizarin and, more strongly, from Nassim’s Lucidian mentee.

Young Azim did not want the old man’s thunder taken. Nassim, meanwhile, did not like the changes he saw in a one-time Sha-lug hero who had, somehow, reforged himself as a prince of the Unbelievers.

The others were more inclined to defer to the man with the loudest weapons and nastiest resources. Lord Arnmigal suspected that Aldi had not offered them any real appreciation of the magnitude of the latter.

The gallery included Special Office brethren of stony mien. They would suffer this congress with the Night only until the horror in the Idiam was extinct.

Those humorless men had no true apprehension of what was spawning out there. Why should they take the word of Nassim Alizarin? The man was an Unbeliever, for Aaron’s sake!

Yet they were convinced that something dreadfully big was shaping.

Hourli said, “The Righteous have brought several mystic tools that will help.” She neither enumerated nor described those tools. The Special Office gentlemen were distressed enough. The Church insisted that those were imaginary toys associated only with rustic fantasies like the Shining Ones. Total fairy-tale stuff, they. “Most noteworthy is a new formula of firepowder. The sorcerer will find it uncongenial. It is much harder to set off from a distance.”

Lord Arnmigal caught a whiff of steaming unhappiness floating around that remark.

“The new firepowder won’t be proof against the sorcerer’s spells, just more resistant. Our falcons will be able to get close enough to gift him with some truly unpleasant weather.” She did not report that only limited quantities of the new formulation existed. What her audience did not hear, er-Rashal was unlikely to learn. Once the falcons started firing the sorcerer should be too busy dodging to find time to create inconvenient new spells. “He won’t get the leisure to look for ways around his new problem.”

Lord Arnmigal puffed up with pride. Pella, assisted by his artillery mentors, had reformulated the firepowder. His idea had been stunningly simple, if not obvious, but, alas, was also stunningly expensive. They added a minuscule amount of silver dust to make the firepowder spell-resistant. Less expensive, but of weaker effect and so necessary in greater volume, copper and tin also worked. Even lead might help.

The metals certainly caused colorful muzzle blasts.

Pella and his accomplices had not yet gotten close enough to the Rascal to test the new powder under combat conditions.

These people would understand that. Still, new powder would buoy morale, heading into the Idiam.

Lord Arnmigal also had a notion that it would be handy to head into unfriendly country with a clearer picture of what waited there.

The Shining Ones scouted reluctantly. They were disinclined to alert er-Rashal to the magnitude of what was coming.

Lord Arnmigal wondered if there was more to the story. He did not fully credit anything anyone told him these days. Sometimes he even doubted Titus’s reports, again having misgivings about Consent’s religious conversion. Pella he did not trust, either, though in the boy’s case because the kid was determined to do things denied him only because his mother would never forgive his father if something went wrong.

“General Alizarin, they say you know er-Rashal best. As Her Grace reported, the Righteous have some unusual resources. I’d like to hear your thoughts on how those might be used.”

He and the Shining Ones meant to use the Great Sky Fortress relics to bump the Rascal through the gates of Hell.

The allies would be encouraged to believe they were in charge but the real power would reside with the Shining Ones. The rest would serve to keep the villain from running away. He would stroke their egos, though.

He did not hide his thinking that well. The others began to suspect. They grew increasingly uncomfortable. The Righteous staff and the Shining Ones became least comfortable of all.

He strove hard against the quickening megalomania-seemingly with lessening success.

In his secret heart, stirring ugly, lay the dread that he had begun to walk the road already taken by Gordimer the Lion. Might he be unable to turn back even while aware of how he was changing? Could it be that the spite of the old women hidden in the shallows of Night made them weave inescapable evil destinies?

No sisters of fate at all, they, but sisters of malice instead?

The talk was done. Argument was at an end. Accords had been accorded, every participant with secret reservations. Negotiations with the Ansa, heavy on the “gifts,” had been finalized. A loose picket line slowly became a siege line as the encirclement of Andesqueluz shrank. A city’s noose, Titus declared it.

Skirmishes with er-Rashal’s resurrected sorcerer-defenders took place, brief encounters of pain dealt exclusively to the Rascal’s minions. Anxious rage inside the ruins grew steadily. Though the darkness inside Andesqueluz was supernatural rather than quotidian, those drawing the noose tighter swore that a black glow waxed and waned there, like the beat of a great slow heart.

The Shining Ones guarded against demonic outbursts while soldiers of the Righteous, the Brotherhood, the Vindicated, and Pinkus Ghort’s Firaldian volunteers, with the Ansa and even Black Rogert, labored unto dehydrated exhaustion hauling water and supplies, and dragging falcons to positions Pella chose. The boy picked his sites based on scouting done by the Shining Ones. His choices favored the finest lines of fire.

Pella proved the worth of his new firepowder right away.

The brooding malice in Andesqueluz grew blacker by the hour. His dead operatives lost, er-Rashal came out himself. Cockily, he anticipated inflicting misery on the Righteous by exploding their firepowder inconveniently.

Once more he enjoyed the improbable good fortune of the truly wicked. He survived a hail of poisoned metal and limped to his lair feeling sorry for himself. He resumed his desperate effort to resurrect Asher.

He was very close.

But his new wounds further sapped his strength and hindered his work. He lapsed into sleep when sleep was too much a luxury. If an attack came during a nap, he was lost.

Any attack would come then, absolutely. Unseen eyes, of Instrumentalities great and small, heard his every breath and counted his every heartbeat. But they were goats to his tiger! Once he dispelled the last misty chains binding Asher … He would need just a handful more souls.

Those were out there in those people so eager to still his own soul. A grand ironic jest it would be, his most dedicated enemies offering up the final installment on the price of his dreams!

Only, those villains were truly, thoroughly, stubbornly committed to putting period to his tale first.

Er-Rashal’s present entourage was minuscule. It included three damaged resurrected sorcerer-lords of ancient Andesqueluz and three reanimated corpses that had been Ansa warriors. Then there were two live Ansa children, brother and sister, twins, seven, so deeply terrified they might never recover. They had escaped sacrifice so far because they were useful for physical labor. Lastly, and of least worth, were several dozen terrified and abused trivial Instrumentalities, none with more power than a hummingbird’s shadow.

Still, the Rascal’s servants might manage an inept guerrilla campaign still sufficient to tip the scale by collecting the remaining hearts, souls, and flesh their master’s triumph required.

Such was er-Rashal’s hope.

Too weak and too much in pain to leave the filthy pallet that had become his home, the sorcerer husked, “The night comes.” A statement, not a metaphor. “Our hour bestrides it.”

An ugly, deep chuckle erupted from the female twin, far too ancient and evil for a child. Her eyes glowed a baleful green. “The hour of the Night doth come, indeed.”

The glow faded. The child collapsed. Her brother stared in consternation. What was that?

The air quavered with a sense that some dreadful visitant had just departed. A musty, moldy earthen smell, and a chill, marked its passing.

Then the enemy’s falcons began to belch out songs of cosmic indigestion.

Stone shot rattled against tumbled walls and fallen roofs. A jagged flint bounded off a building block, took a reanimated sorcerer squarely on the side of the head. That exploded in a cloud of bone splinters and dust.

Desperately, fighting his own recalcitrant flesh, er-Rashal began his last forlorn hope of an invocation, leeching power from the lives of his enemies to turn against their physical forms.

Lord Arnmigal, with Hourli as Helspeth, slouched in shadow atop a short bluff overlooking what once was the temple district of Andesqueluz. Another dozen onlookers lurked nearby. Some thought the Empress and her number-one soldier were entirely too cozy. Close by, falcons and traditional artillery engines worked leisurely. Fires burned in the ruins, ignited by fireballs thrown by counterweight engines. The falcons barked just often enough to remind the world that they were there. Their propellant was immune to the seductions of the Rascal. They would sing in unison if the choirmaster required it.

Those with the Commander of the Righteous included leaders from most of the factions determined to thwart er-Rashal. Even Black Rogert had brought himself to the engagement. The price in pain of his journey through the Idiam and up the Mountain had won grudging respect from everyone.

Captain-General Pinkus Ghort quietly nursed a wineskin. Nassim Alizarin knelt beside Ghort. Alizarin had yet to show any sign of remembering Piper Hecht from Artecipea, let alone some scoundrel who might once have gone by the name Else Tage. Two Ansa chieftains known to Nassim muttered with the Sha-lug, less comfortable with so many foreigners than with the evil in the ruins. The Widow lurked by Pinkus Ghort, too, accompanied by the woman she called Hope and the feeble old man she kept handy with an invisible iron emotional tether.

Lord Arnmigal feared all tonight’s physical effort might be the undoing of that old one.

Madouc of Hoeles was not present. Having consulted the Ansa, Alizarin’s renegades, and his own Special Office thugs, he had created his own mission. He and his team were in ambush along the one flight route available to the Rascal if things went bad. Madouc was sure that er-Rashal would survive the worst and try to run with crucial relics that would let him commence fresh villainies wherever he went to ground next.

The Shining Ones thought he might flee to the Hu’n-tai At, hoping he could hornswoggle Tsistimed into thinking he might be useful.

Azim al-Adil was absent, too. Nassim had sent him to Shamramdi to bring Indala up to date-hopefully before that city fell. Rumor had it on the lip of the precipice, with no relief expected. Lord Arnmigal thought, and hoped, that al-Adil would broach the peace notion he had tried to fix in Nassim’s mind, in such ways that the Great Shake would see it as his own fabrication. Quiet nudges from the Shining Ones should help bring him to the right frame of mind.

The Old Ones were able to reach Shamramdi now. They got up to divine mischief there all the time. It was they who reported the city so desperate that resistance could collapse given one seriously fierce thump.

“Time to hit it,” Hourli whispered. “And let’s be careful.” She gave Lord Arnmigal’s arm a nervous, possessive squeeze missed by no one but him.

Only Aldi understood that Hourli was not Helspeth. And she was not pleased by Hourli’s familiarity.

Lord Arnmigal rose. He seemed to stand taller, wider, more starkly than usual. His shadow, prancing in firelight from below, stretched deeper and longer than any other. An illusion? A trick of the light?

His shadow was missing a hand.

Lord Arnmigal slung a coil of rope down the precipitous slope. The stub of an old stone post anchored its near end. The rest floated out and down, uncoiling slowly.

Lord Arnmigal hefted a weird hammer left-handed, rigged its handle into the same harness that held a long sword across his back. The hammer moaned eagerly. He used both hands to loop the rope around himself before he began a quick, sometimes rappelling, descent from the height.

His weight was on the rope, which thrummed and shook, but the Empress picked it up and looped it around herself, then followed. She carried a light backpack. She used only one hand on the rope. She hefted a spear with the other.

The gallery gawked. What they saw could happen only through the intercession of the Night.

The Widow said, “Dawn, you’re next.” Words wasted. Hope was gone. No one had seen her vanish.

The old man peered eastward. “Of course.”

“What?” Kedle asked.

“A full moon rising. It wasn’t up before but it had to be.”

“I give up. Why?”

“Asher is the Mountain. He comes with Ashtoreth, Bride of the Mountain. She was a moon goddess. So I’m told.”

“Oh.” The Widow made a raspberry sound. Who feared dead gods?

The old man would never say that the only real fear Kedle actually knew was of normal human relations-though she did seem to be tempted, perhaps unconsciously, to start making an exception for the Captain-General.

Moon shadows danced with those from fires started by the artillery. The former had no power. The Shining Ones were all over the Mountain. No other side of the Night would interfere.

The Widow elbowed past Pinkus Ghort, snatched up the rope. It seemed as lively as a snake. It lacked any tension because of the weight of the people on it. She looped it around herself easily. A pulse in the cable encouraged her to move.

This was sorcery, indeed.

The old man, muttering prayers to the Good God, started down behind her, eyes squeezed shut.

Pinkus Ghort lined up for his turn.

Lord Arnmigal watched Hourli disengage from the rope. She joined him in a clot of darkness. He secured a fat candle from her pack. She said, “Light it before any witnesses show up.” The rope’s end lashed like an injured snake.

He willed the candle to life.

Nothing happened.

Hourli snarled. The candlewick burst into flame. Time slowed. She grumbled, “Stay close. We’ll end up sorry if I stumble outside the light.” He would carry the candle in the hand that had no shadow.

She did not suggest that he might suffer a lethal trip himself.

What a cosmic anticlimax that would be, clumsily breaking his neck moments before er-Rashal could be conducted to his doom.

“Through there.” Hourli indicated a gap between memorial stelae. Those leaned against one another like drunken comrades. Flickering firelight splashed their inner faces creamy yellow and occasional orange. “Careful. He could smell us out even like we are now.”

The earth trembled underfoot-despite the candle.

The leaning stelae shifted slightly. Detritus fell from where they met. Lord Arnmigal watched a small chunk, guessed that it would take a minute to reach the ground. Time was moving slowly but it was passing.

“He does feel us coming,” Hourli grumbled. The Commander of the Righteous heard nothing. She swore. “Damn! The big devil is stirring.” The falling chunk, behind them now, was halfway to the ground. “We walked into a trap. Not us. Not you and me. The company. He doesn’t know about the candle. Oh. And he isn’t expecting us two, after all. He just feels the threat from those behind us. He is vampirizing them somehow. The middle-worlders. Not us. But he is weakened by the presence of the Shining Ones, some. He wasn’t watching the right way. We got close. He should have noticed. But we weren’t part of his calculations. Even so, his human trap is working. We could end up sorry if we don’t distract him quick.”

She kept moving as she chattered, as briskly as she thought they dared. Her speech seemed awfully slow.

Time constantly moved a little faster as they neared their goal.

Lord Arnmigal was so focused on being wary of supernatural pitfalls that he was not ready for more mundane dangers. Blessed be, he had the candle in hand rather than a blade when he stepped past a drunkenly leaning column and collided with an equally startled, bug-eyed little boy. A girl of the same age, size, and mien slammed into the boy’s back.

Hourli hissed a warning, too late. It would have been too late ten seconds earlier. Those children were in full charge mode, headed out to lay an ambush, unaware that invisible invaders were closer already than those they had been sent to murder.

Disarming them took but seconds. The children abandoned bellicosity instantly. They became completely pliable. The Widow caught up just then, and was amazed by the effect of the candle-which lost most of its impact once five souls crowded the space it warped. Lord Arnmigal was surprised by the gentle sympathy she showed the children, then recalled that she had her own she probably felt guilty about having deserted.

He felt guilty himself-and his children were growing into their adult lives.

The Widow said, “I have them. Go ahead on.”

Kedle’s in loco lasted only as long as it took her to find Brother Candle. She passed the twins along. The Perfect got no chance to refuse. He got the children and the Widow got back to sniffing after fresh blood.

Hourli eased past Lord Arnmigal, spear poised. “Stay close. And don’t step on my heels.” She was a hound on track. The cock of her head said she heard directions to which everyone else was deaf.

The Widow caught up somehow. The candle’s field had degraded seriously. Lord Arnmigal put down an urge to shove her out and run.

She had worth. She was receiving intelligence from elsewhere, too, he presumed from Aldi.

They pushed ahead. He failed to notice the move but the hammer was in his hand when they met the waiting dead. It flicked. The heads of dead sorcerers exploded, becoming dust and bone chips adrift in the moonlight. Heartsplitter glittered in Hourli’s hands. Once-fallen Ansa braves went down once again and returned to their rest. The spear groaned softly, like a woman trying to keep the kids from overhearing evidence of her culminating intimate moment. Witnesses outside the candle’s glow would have missed the destruction. It happened too fast.

Even inside the candlelight it happened blindingly quick.

Meanwhile, the ground indulged in slow rolls with an orchestral accompaniment of lesser vibrations, like something vast was drawing a long first breath.

Time to move a little faster.

Lord Arnmigal’s foot did not want to come off the ground. Suddenly, he was slogging through what acted like deep muck. Moments earlier the footing had been barren, slightly tilted stone.

He was ankle deep in dust deliberately clinging like mud, clumping on his calves and ankles.

Bone chips sparkled within that dust, reflecting moonlight.

The dead Ansa, at least, had lain down, abandoning the fight forever.

“Keep moving, you.” Hourli sliced the dust with Heartsplitter’s edge, weakening its power to clump dramatically.

Someone or something not far off definitely was not pleased.

The earth shuddered more vigorously.

Hourli positioned herself on Lord Arnmigal’s right, caught his elbow, slowed him slightly. Heartsplitter darted into and sliced an unnatural clot of darkness. Lord Arnmigal hoisted the hammer. It did not feel unnatural to use his left hand.

The darkness parted. He looked into a room he had visited years ago. Old Az had stood where Hourli did now. Bone had been on his left with a ready crossbow. The room had been home to fox families that had lived and squabbled there for ages, filling the place with an eye-watering stench. The Sha-lug had surprised them there in the holy of holies of Asher’s cult.

There were no foxes now. The fetor was gone. There had been one time-gnawed altar back then. Another had been added recently, crudely built from piled stone. A dried-up husk of an old man half sprawled, half sat amidst masses of rags once worn by people whose bones now lay scattered all round. Gnawed bones.

Carrion stench had replaced that of fox.

The shard of time the candle shaped was small. Time within was moving faster now but still dragged enough to let Lord Arnmigal see everything and fix it in mind before darkness slammed down again. He flung the hammer Bonecrusher. It groaned, produced a dry thunk, then a thud! of collision with stone, and, finally, a stinging thwack! as its haft slapped back into his open hand.

Hourli used Heartsplitter during Bonecrusher’s flight. The spear reached and reached, extending in a violet shimmer providing just enough light to show the Dreangerean being lucky again. He dodged the hammer well enough to suffer only a passing blow to his right clavicle, not fatal but enough to stifle that one arm. He also twisted so that Heartsplitter only scored his ribs instead of living up to its name.

He howled in pain and rage.

The violet light went away, but then the darkness flickered and went out as er-Rashal lost the ability to quell the light.

Lord Arnmigal prepared to throw again. Hourli shifted Heartsplitter for an overhand strike in the classic fashion.

Despite tonight’s abuse and his previous debility er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen rose halfway up, climbing an old serpent staff he had brought out of Dreanger. His face was ghastly pale, twisted in disbelief. He could not fathom how this had come upon him-till he acknowledged the hand of the Night, and no faction of that which aspired to delight er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen.

A snake-dagger appeared in his left hand, blade its body and head its pommel. Its eyes burned, one lemon, the other a deep lilac rose. He extended that pommel toward his uninvited guests. Those eyes waxed brighter.

Bonecrusher flew. Heartsplitter thrust. Blinding light burst from those demon eyes.

But Death chose to avert its gaze from everyone.

The earth heaved ferociously at the critical instant.

The Dead City shook to a grandfather of an earthquake. Everything standing began to come apart. Brother Candle, minutes after having taken custody of the Ansa twins, went down hard. The youngsters helped him up, showing reverence as they did so.

He began a prayer to the Good God on their behalf. There was no point trying to flee the epic disaster about to come.

Kedle hustled, determined to rejoin Lord Arnmigal. Her leg did not hurt. The pain dwindled when she was sufficiently engaged. Then Hope was beside her, pleasantly warm despite the heat of the Idiam. She hissed, “Get thee down and cling to the ground, dear one. Now!”

The earth began to stir.

Pellapront Versulius. Pella wondered how he had come to have the same name as a fictional character. He wondered what had become of the blood sister he had not seen since he ran into the man he now called father. Would his life echo Piper Hecht’s when his own lost older sister resurfaced several decades down the road?

His past seldom occupied him. Mostly he did not care. Other than Alma, whose comforting arms he did recall fondly, there were few good memories. There were plenty from the years with Piper and Anna and the girls. But sometimes, when the waiting stretched, he could not help sliding off into bouts of wondering.

He did that while leaning on a ready falcon, trying to stay awake. That was a struggle common to the company. A plague of drowsiness had set in.

Then the ground heaved. Parts of the bluff slid down. Left of where he had been told to expect it a huge head began to emerge, shedding stone and adobe. It was a black of a sort that devoured light. It leaned back to consider the moon.

The falconeers did not stand around with their thumbs in, gawking. Weapons not charged with godshot fired immediately, whatever direction they were laid. Those properly charged quickly shifted and ranged-and the first to declare spoke fewer than forty seconds after the Mountain opened its womb.

Godshot hit the revenant at the nape of the neck. Two balls passed through what in a human would have been the brain stem. They exited through a piggish right nostril. The rest rattled around inside the devil.

It continued to emerge from the earth, ever more spastic, while trying to face the roaring that presaged its pain. Moonlight splashed an ugly, apish face drawn in both amazement and agony.

Gods were beyond challenge. Gods were the source of pain, not its object. That was the supernatural order. That was the Tyranny of the Night.

Crews stricken shaky by the magnitude of the demon nevertheless adjusted their aim. Another falcon bellowed. Shot hit the rising form with a wet, resounding splat! The demon swayed, groaned louder than any falcon’s shout. It freed a seven-clawed hand, reached for one of the nasty mortal engines. The soil around the devil, though hard to see in the moonlight, shivered, danced, boiled.

Every falcon with a clear sight line fired during the next twenty seconds. The Asher revenant was too close to miss. One blast tore the reaching hand off between wrist and elbow.

Nassim was ashamed. He suffered from a terror so deep that he clung to Old Az in a ferocious, moments-from-death hug. His faith had been murdered. The demon shrieked like a mortally wounded war elephant. It leaned toward its attackers, head lolling as though it was about to come loose altogether. The severed hand hit the ground with the impact of a man-size tombstone. The demon bellowed again, then grew a new hand equipped with even more daddy-longlegs fingers. It snatched up a falcon, pulled it in for examination.

Pella’s falcon spoke again. Silver-plated grapeshot hit the monster in the face. The meaty splat! was plain even to ears that had been near a falcon. Gangrenous pocks spotted that face. Parts melted, dripped away. The monster began to subside. The falcon it had meant to study dropped from its hand. A brace of unfortunate gunners fell with it.

Then the great face resumed rising and regaining its ugly original form.

Falcon doctrine was set. It was fixed, established, and acknowledged by the men who served the weapons. They pursued doctrine ruthlessly, now. Every weapon able to bear fired as briskly as it could. Those without a clear sight line moved to find one. Once godshot charges ran out crews used what they had. No Instrumentality had yet shown itself fully immune to physical law.

Every hit weakened the monster. That was the design. But it kept pulling itself together. Its enemies grew weaker each time it did.

Several invaders collapsed, too weak to go on. Rates of fire declined. The falconeers worked slower and slower.

A timely salvo melted more godstuff. The emerging Instrumentality stopped moving.

And the night filled with shrieks.

In Asher’s salad days the Choosers of the Slain would have been hornets to his tiger. Asher revenant was a shadow of the horror that had been. Its strange flesh sagged under the weight of the godshot it had absorbed. The poison of all that never stopped poisoning.

The flow of stolen life energy ceased.

And the Choosers, fattened in the Wells of Ihrian, went for the devil’s eyes. Other Shining Ones, equally well fed, followed on, wielding weapons gleaned from the Great Sky Fortress. They hammered, stabbed, slashed, and strangled. Seldom before had Instrumentalities ever joined in so malevolent, deliberate a plan to destroy another major Instrumentality for all time and ever, in all the worlds.

Lord Arnmigal and Hourli each lost their footing twice because the earth would not lie quiet. Both were down, facing a Rascal trying to get to his feet, when Hope and the Widow arrived. The latter tripped. She fell forward onto Hourli’s back. Hope had no trouble staying upright. She charged the bug-eyed sorcerer, who recognized her as a serious Instrumentality targeting him for some extremely special attention.

Er-Rashal squealed the first word of some prayer, invocation, or spell. Hope blurred. Her hands clamped on his throat.

The gale generated by Hope’s sudden movement extinguished Lord Arnmigal’s time candle. Almost anticlimactically, from his point of view, er-Rashal’s head popped off.

What?

The pretty girl had a grip that savage?

A man might ought to keep that in mind and not get on her bad side.

Reality wavered. Lord Arnmigal heard the roar of falcons. He had not, before. Their bellowing lasted a short while, then was replaced by the shrieks of Fastthal and Sprenghul. Other Shining Ones added their own ferocious commentary.

The confrontation between Instrumentalities ended before Lord Arnmigal and the Widow climbed back high enough to see the slag heap that had wanted to become Asher renewed. Aldi and Hourli had gone ahead, joining the assault by skipping the space between.

The Instrumentality carcass resembled newly excreted magma. Heat boiled off. Scarlet winked through cracks in its crispy black crust. Nearly invisible little Instrumentalities cavorted around the heap, jubilant. The monster would never claim dominion.

Lord Arnmigal settled on a broken block as close as the heat would allow, ignored the celebrating demons. He tapped the earth with the end of a broken Ansa spear, lost in thought.

Hourli, still in Helspeth guise, settled beside him, nearer than what was appropriate for the Empress’s reputation. “She knows I’m not her.” Meaning the Widow had seen more than she should.

He shrugged. Aldi would handle it. An errant bit of curiosity: how come nobody ever asked why Lady Hilda stayed in Vantrad instead of sticking with her Empress?

“That was some all-time weird shit,” Pinkus Ghort mused, from behind Lord Arnmigal. He took a long pull off a fresh wineskin.

Before Lord Arnmigal could reply, Pella said, “Totally weird.” He stepped out of shadow into the moonlight, which had grown thin. “The weirdest.” Then, “Dad, the girls are here. As usual, after all the heavy lifting is over. They claim they need to see you.”

Startled, Lord Arnmigal turned, stared past Pinkus and his liquid companion. Vali and Lila looked embarrassed, put out with their brother, more grown-up than he remembered, and worried. Heris stood behind them. She eyed Hourli grimly. He figured that none of those three, schooled by the Ninth Unknown, would be deceived.

Heris looked like she had survived some hard times recently.

He sighed. Likely sooner than later he would pay for his latest poor choice involving an Ege sister-though it was not a choice he would unmake even if the magic candle had the power to turn back time.

He might show more care about avoiding the natural consequences, however.

“What is it, ladies?” Resigned and ignoring the baffled, fearful looks of people who knew those three could not possibly be out here, half a world away from home.

Lila and Vali glowered at Hourli. Heris talked about Hourlr, Asgrimmur Grimmsson, the Ninth Unknown, Korban Iron Eyes, the road to Eucereme, spicing all of it with targeted snippets from the life of Anna Mozilla, waiting quietly in Brothe.

Humming a Connecten rondelet celebrating romantic love, Aldi seated herself beside Lord Arnmigal, to his left, opposite Hourli, and leaned against him. She showed no consciousness whatsoever of the ferocious disapproval steaming darkly off every woman in sight, Hourli preeminent. She held er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen’s head in her lap, stroking its hairless scalp as though petting a cat. Song sung, she whispered to the dead sorcerer, issuing prophecies for a journey into Twilight. She finished with, “He’ll find his shadow again. I will make that happen.”