Panic. Agony! She cried out. Love, then, and help . . .
It was over. Confusion from little Thaile as the word registered. Huge torrents of concern from Vool. Relief and peace and almost happiness fading as the old woman passed away . . .
“It’s done!” Frial wiped her eyes and tried to stand up. Her brother held her down.
“Wait, love,” he said. “You’re shaky still. It isn’t your Watch. Thaile will do fine, I’m sure. We don’t need to worry about Thaile. ”
Fancy Vool talking like that! She felt guilty at having thought poorly of him for so long. He did care.
“Yes,” she agreed, striving to relax. Old Grammy had passed on her word of power and gone to the last weighing, and the Gods would find much good in that kindly old soul, and very little evil. Her balance would join the Good, and . . . and . . . and Frial was weeping, which was silly and not like her. She ought to be concerned for her daughter, who had just had a shattering experience. But Vool was right; Thaile was fourteen now, and a young woman, really, not a child anymore.
It would be all right. There was nothing to worry about. No one in their family had shown any real Faculty for generations, she reminded herself sternly. Of course she did have Feeling, and Gaib had a wonderful gift for green things. But those were details, just talents. Everyone had some sort of talent, even if it was only for worrying. Nothing directly to do with Faculty.
They would have to wash the body now, and gather all the relatives for the wake, and . . .
Terror! Now what? Something new . . . Awful. “Mother! Mother!”
Thaile raced out of the cottage and came hurtling across the glade, long arms flailing for balance, close-cropped hair awry. Even at that distance, Frial could see the pallor on her face. She cried out and tore loose from her brother. She sprang up and ran to meet her daughter.
They collided into an embrace hard enough to knock the breath out of both of them. The child was sobbing, almost screaming. Hysterical. Terror and agony . . .
“Thaile! Thaile! What’s wrong?”
The thin body was shuddering with pain. Stricken young eyes huge with terror . . . “Can’t you Feel it?”
“Feel what?” Frial shouted. All she could Feel was her daughter’s own freezing dread, so close.
Thaile turned to stare at the towering ramparts of the Progistes. ”Death! Murder!”
“What’s wrong?” Vool demanded, arriving in blustering incomprehension. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“She’s Feeling something!” Frial said. “Tell me! Tell me!”
“Thousands of men!” Thaile cried. “Pain and death! A battle? Yes, it must be a battle. Oh, Mother, Mother! So much death! So much hate, and suffering!”
She buried her face in her mother’s shoulder, shaking uncontrollably. Frial and Vool gazed at each other in horror.
If Thaile was truly Feeling a battle, then it must be beyond the mountains, Outside, far away.
There were never any battles in Thume. May the Keeper defend us!
Frial could Feel nothing at all.
Blow, bugle!:
Blow, bugle, blow,
set the wild echoes flying,
And answer echoes, answer,
dying, dying, dying.
— Tennyson, The Princess, IV
TWO
Youth comes back
1
The well-named Battle of Bone Pass came three days after Karthin, and this time the outcome was never in doubt. The djinn army was cut into three portions and then systematically butchered, the caliph himself being wounded and many of his best generals slain. The legions herded away seven thousand prisoners, and no one counted the dead heaped in the wadis.
Pandemia was very big, and the Impire comprised more than half of it. Imperial couriers traveled faster than anyone else in the world, yet reports from outlying areas took weeks to reach the Opal Palace in Hub.
Sorcery was instantaneous. That same evening Warlock Olybino materialized in the imperor’s bedchamber and smugly told him the good news.
Many times throughout his long reign, Emshandar had been given secret tidings by one or other of the Four. Knowledge was power, and no one knew it better than he. He had often used such covert information to great advantage in the eternal ferment of Hubban politics, and only very rarely had he ever gone public with it before the mundane reports arrived—a good conjurer never shows all his pockets.
This time he made an exception. A man who will not see ninety again cherishes every minute the Gods grant him. Emshandar could not afford to wait a month or two. He considered holding off until his golden jubilee, just three weeks away, but even that seemed rash at his age. At dawn he summoned the Senate, and at noon had himself carried to the Rotunda to give it the news in person. He would not have been surprised to learn that it was the last time he would make such an appearance; he would have enjoyed the occasion anyway.
One of the main reasons the Impire had prevailed for three thousand years was that the imps were united and their enemies were not. Other peoples tended to fight among themselves, a habit the Impire encouraged and exploited. The djinns were even worse than most. Throughout history, the emirates and sultanates of Zark had squabbled like starving rats and thus been easy pickings whenever the imps felt an itch to loot and oppress someone.
Back in 2981, one of the petty kings had proclaimed himself caliph and set out to change the ancient pattern. Many others had tried in the past, but this caliph had turned out to be a military genius. He had succeeded where they had failed, welding the innumerable principalities into one ominously coherent and hostile state. No one doubted that when he had finished making himself overlord of all djinns, he would carry the black banner of Zark against the Impire. The caliph’s ever-growing power had shadowed the closing years of Emshandar’s reign like a rising thunderstorm.
Gaunt and stooped, palsied but triumphant, the imperor proclaimed his victory from the Opal Throne. He went on to predict that Bone Pass had broken the power of the upstart forever. The caliphate would collapse within weeks.
The senators cheered the old fox as they had not done in a generation, and ordered the bells of the Impire rung for three days. They almost carried a motion conferring the title of “the Glorious” on Shandie, but the imperor interrupted to announce that of course he would bestow a dukedom on Proconsul Iggipolo. The Senate took the hint and dropped any idea of honoring the commander of the XIIth above his fellow legates. Subsequent speakers were careful not to mention Shandie at all.
There was no need to give the lad any highfalutin ideas!
Which pleased his grandfather.
2
In the ensuing days the sound of bells rippled out from the center, bearing the glad news to every corner of the Impire and eventually to lands beyond. By summer word of Bone Pass had traveled even as far as Nordland, in the far northeast. The jotnar had already made their contribution to the Year of Seven Victories, when a group of thanes had expanded the usual spring training into an ambitious looting expedition up the Winnipango and run into the XXIVth Legion by mistake.
The survivors badly needed an easier foe to restore their morale. Those who had not participated must demonstrate that they had not stayed home out of cowardice. Word of the caliph’s downfall caused them all to raise their flaxen eyebrows and contemplate the prospect that the defenses of Zark might now fall back from their recent regrettable efficiency. Not much was said, but several longships began loading supplies and an ominous buzz among the steadings told of axes being sharpened.
By the time the harvests were ripening in the south, word of the Battle of Bone Pass came even to the other end of the world, to the tiny kingdom of Krasnegar in the far northwest, on the shores of the Winter Ocean. There was nowhere more remote than that.
It was brought there by a Captain Efflio, master of a grubby little cog named Sea Beauty. Although jotnar were far better sailors than imps could ever hope to be, they could not compete with them in business, so the coastal traders of the Impire were often owned by imps. Usually there would be jotnar among the crew—never too many, though, lest they be tempted by ambition.
Efflio was elderly, lazy, and asthmatic, but shrewd, even by impish standards. He was also a fair sailor, a trait he could reasonably assume was due to some jotunn blood in his veins, for any family that had lived for long within reach of the sea was likely to have had unfortunate experiences with raiders.
Having delivered a cargo of garlic and onions to the city of Shaldokan at a good profit, he wheezed his way along the docks to the nearest impish tavern and began eavesdropping on conversations. Within the hour he picked up word of a potential hire. Some rural duchess wanted some horses shipped to a place he had never heard of. Her agent was having trouble arranging the matter, because livestock was about the most unpopular haul on the four oceans. The garlic had already made Sea Beauty detectable for two leagues downwind, so Efflio had little to lose in that regard. He also knew that the secret of transporting animals was to starve them to within an inch of their lives—what doesn’t go in can’t come out. He set off in search of the broker. TWo days later, when he was almost ready to sail, he summoned his bosun,` Krushbark, who stood half as tall again as he did and was very anxious to raise anchor before some of his recent shore activities caught up with him.