She looked for him then and found him moping on his own doorstep, grieving for the death of his foes. A dark cloud of impending loss hung over him and she turned away quickly. To pry into the future this night was to risk madness and despair—she would not, must not.
Almost a thousand years ago, Keef had foreseen this day. For almost a thousand years, Thume had waited for it. Now it had come and the cause seemed hopeless. Thaile gazed again at the dark, still pond.
Farewell, child I never saw! Farewell, Leeb, my only love!
The moon was near to setting. Dawn stirred in the east like a wakening ogre, lightening the sky, staining the ranges with blood. Thaile flew north and came to rest on a frosty peak above the long lake. Here she stood on the extreme limit of her realm.
In the shadowy valley downstream, the djinn army was forming up, blighted to her eyes by a shimmer of the Covin’s sorcery. The order of march left no doubt that it planned to advance into Thume. As King Rap had said, this was her only chance to avert the threat. Only here, striking from behind the occult barrier, could she hope to take the Covin by surprise.
She reached out to the trigger. Centuries ago, one of her predecessors had seen the deadly potential of this gorge and made it ready. It needed so little power to start the process that she had done it almost before she realized. A mountain began to move. Slowly at first, barely perceptible, then gathering speed and force, half a landscape fell away and plunged down:
A white cloud rushed out over the still surface, impossibly fast. The lake fled from the intruding rock, rising into a dark hill of water, which swelled into the far reaches of its basin and bulged upward until it leaped over the threshold where the little stream had carved its notch. No warning tremor of sorcery alerted the army, only a great wind coming ahead of the disaster, lifting men and tents and animals like leaves. Behind it came the giant wave, white now, surging irresistibly down the canyon, bringing trees and rocks and death, rending sixty-thousand souls, hurling a momentary occult agony searing across the world.
Thaile whimpered and curled herself small upon her vantage crag, blotting out the horror. Leeb, Leib, what would you think of me now?
When she looked again, there was nothing. The valley was a barren cleft in the hills, scoured to bedrock all the way to the sea. Landslides still tumbled from the walls. Waves were spreading far out on the ocean, staining it orange and masking it with spray. The caliph and his army had ceased to exist.
Far away in Hub, black flames of rage spouted up as the Covin realized how it had been outwitted. Thunder shook the ambience. Power slammed against the walls of Thume like a mighty boot, like a child’s tantrum. The barrier trembled, and held.
First the woman had been snatched away from the soldiers, now this. Now there could be no doubts. The Almighty’s eyes glared fury and hatred at this unexpected defiance from an unknown opponent. For a moment Thaile braced herself to resist all-out frontal assault on Thume. Then the danger passed—for the time being. The Covin settled back to consider its enemy, as a dog might study a cat on a fencepost.
Fire in the northwest proclaimed the sun. Longday came racing across the world.
10
Tiptoeing and carrying his boots, Rap was heading back to bed at last. Dawn was brightening the sky outside the windows. He was cold and damp with dew. Too late, he realized that Kadie was awake.
“Papa?”
“Morning, beloved,” he whispered. “Try to go back to sleep.”
“Where have you been?”
“Sitting outside. Thinking.”
“Thinking of what?” Kadie demanded crossly.
Thinking of tens of thousands of men screaming as they died
“About the war. I think it’s going to start today.”
“Have you talked with Thaile?”
Rap sighed and went to perch on a chair alongside her cot.
Kadie pulled the sheet up under her chin and stared distrustfully at him.
“Yes, I was with the Keeper for a little while.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. Just very busy.”
“But she hurts? The words hurt her?”
He sighed. “Kadie, Kadie! Thaile has an enormous ability to control sorcery! An incredible, historic ability. That’s what matters. She can live with five words when other sorcerers would be destroyed by them. Some Keepers have survived to be very old, so Archon Toom told me. Don’t worry about Thaile. She’ll outlive all of us, I promise you.”
“I want to see her!”
Rap stood up. “I told you, she’s very busy. She’s queen of Thume, remember, and she has many things to worry about. I expect she’ll send for you when she has time. Now you try to—”
“Rap!” the Keeper said, her image flickering into view in the ambience. ”The dragons are rising! Come, please!” Seeing him start to fade, Kadie opened her mouth, but he was gone.
He staggered and dropped his boots. To his astonishment, he was standing in one of the little cabanas of the Meeting Place. There was no sign of the Keeper, or anyone else, either. Why had she brought him here?
The glade was heavy with shadow under a pale-blue sky, the grass dewy. Even the flowers seemed still asleep, but birds were waking in the forest. He sat down on a bench and reached for a boot.
Then he was whirled into the ambience beside Thaile. All of Pandemia opened before him. He saw the northern lands glowing under their unending daylight, Zark already baking in morning heat, the steaming jungles of Guwush. The towering sky trees of Ilrane were catching the first rays of the dawn. Beyond them darkness . . . and power, the alien taint of dragon.
He was overwhelmed. Suddenly he was a demigod again, as he had been in his youth, but he had never been this great. How could mortal mind stand so much? Thaile was sharing her omniscience with him, and he even thought he could feel hints of her torment, the torturing burn of too much power. Krasnegar—the town was still there! And Hub, roiling under the evil anger of the Covin. Azak . . . gone!
And Dragon Reach—power flaming. Conflict! ”What’s happening?” he demanded. ‘
“I hoped you could tell me. “ She was projecting fear and indecision, no longer hiding behind her impenetrable Keeper persona. Despite her might, she was still only a girl, little older than Kadie. “I have not seen its like before.”
“Nor I!” Rap thought. “Try this.” He conjured a vision of Tik Tok-tattoos and sharpened teeth and a bone in his nose. Thaile registered shock and then unexpectedly sniggered. She reached out to that confusion of forces. ”Ah! Yes. I see traces of him.”
Before Rap could tell her that was a good sign, all of Dragon Reach erupted with destruction. Waves of power rolled outward across Pandemia, lighting a myriad of momentary sparks like stars as individual sorcerers reacted to the shock. Hub blazed in black flame.
“The dragons!” Thaile cried. “The dragons are gone!” And so they were. Utterly.
Rap crowed in triumph. “It worked! Tik Tok and Thrugg! And the others! They did it! They must have set a trap . . .” Wonderful! Marvelous! First the djinn army and now the dragons! The Covin had taken two staggering blows. He yelled out his excitement like a boy, and the Keeper smiled.
Zinixo screamed in fury and hurled devastation upon Dragon Reach. Mountains reeled. Power flashed and roared. The world shuddered.
“Save them, Keeper!” Rap cried. “We need them!”
“You call them!” She thrust strength into him like coursing fire in his veins. “Bring them!”
Rap called.
“Thrugg! Tik Tok! Sin Sin! Murg!” One by one he declaimed the names of the band who had been his companions on Dreadnought. He knew that some had fallen to the Covin—Grunth in particular—but many must have survived to organize that incredible annihilation of the dragons.
“Rap?” A faint image of Tik Tok’s nightmare shape flickered into view. He was distant and clearly in distress. “You are indeed a site for psoriasis!”
“Come, friend! All of you! Come now!” Rap reached out in the metaphor plane of the ambience, feeling his hands grasped by many hands. He heaved; power surged across the world and a horde of sorcerers exploded into the cabana. Its flimsy wicker walls bulged and burst, spilling trolls and anthropophagi out into shrubbery. Roars of sorcery filled the glade. Water birds exploded off the lake in terror. Thaile gasped at the sight of these savage figures.
“Twenty-four?” Rap yelled. “No, twenty-six! Welcome to Thume! Well done, all of you!” He saw burns and wounds vanishing as the sorcerers healed themselves. Giant trolls lurched to their feet, growling. Jingling bones, a laughing Tik Tok hurled himself at Rap and enveloped him in a ribcracking embrace.