Kadie had reached her twin. Gath lifted her bodily into the air and whirled her around, the two of them screaming with excitement. Rap was grinning like a maniac. The jotnar crowded in around them, hiding the family reunion from view.
Things were under control there. Inos was not needed there. She would congratulate her son in due course. The imperor needed her more.
“Yes, I can fetch Eshiala here, Shandie,” she said. “But first let’s find somewhere to sit and talk. I have some things to tell YOU.”
2
“This is the leader of the Nordland sorcerers,” Gath said proudly, ”Atheling Twist, son of Kalkor.”
Rap could not tear his eyes away from this astonishing young man who had replaced the boy he remembered. So tall already! Then the name penetrated . . . His heart missed a beat. He swung around to look at the little youth on his crutch. “Son of Kalkor?” And a sorcerer? Jotnar were addicted to blood feuds.
Twist leered up at him with a grotesque mouthful of crooked teeth. “Also brother of Drakkor, the war leader, a sturdy man with an ax—but we come in peace, Thaneslayer.” The cripple’s very pale eyes twinkled as he registered Rap’s apprehension.
“I am delighted to hear it, and you are all most welcome. The Keeper. . .” Rap glanced around. Where was Thaile? And why had the jotnar chosen this unfortunate runt to lead them?
“We are having already done homage to you as leader of the righteous, Thane.”
“You have?”
“I accepted their oaths on your behalf, Father,” Gath said, obviously enduring agony from his efforts to appear humble. “But some of them preferred to swear to me personally. Of course my vassals and I are at your command! Did I do wrong?”.
“I don’t recall delegating such powers to you, but under the circumstances I shall waive the usual death penalty for exceeding authority. How many of you, Sorcerer?”
“Sixty-four, Thane. Is this all of your army, though?” Many of the pixies had departed but were now returning. “Most of it,” Rap said. He had just realized that several of the jotnar contingent were women, and very few of them seemed to be sailors.
“How many?”
“With you, we must have almost five hundred.”
“Ah!” Twist sighed. “Jaurg?”
A blind youth at the back said, “Leader?”
“How many in the Covin?”
“Something over two thousand.”
Rap staggered. “What? You’re joking! How do you know this?”
“Because I was one of them. Several of us were enthralled. Athelings Gath and Twist contrived our release, but I know there were at least twenty-two hundred sorcerers in the Covin, and that was some weeks ago.”
Rap’s mouth was suddenly drier than the heart of Zark. He could not comprehend such numbers. Where had all those sorcerers come from? No wonder Zinixo had been displaying confidence! “We also have a demigod on our side.”
With his eyes still closed, Jaurg smiled at him over blond heads. “Then it should be a good fight.”
Gath was registering worry in the background. “We can win?”
Jaurg turned to the voice and smiled again. “No, Atheling my liege, we cannot win. But it should be a good fight” Odds of four to one? It would be a fight, but not. a very good one.
“We must coordinate our strategies,” Rap said, suddenly aware that even jotnar might be easier to handle than a mixture of touchy warlocks, archons, a demigod, sophisticated elves, and deadly cannibals
A scream of agony rent the morning, stilling the babble of conversation. Everyone stopped talking to stare. Over in the pixie sector, old Archon Neem had fallen writhing to the grass. Spectators were backing away hastily. In the ambience, he was enveloped in black flame. A moment later and a few paces away from him, Archon Puik erupted in black flame, also.
Each archon was attuned to the section of border he guarded.
The Keeper’s cry told the company what they had all already guessed. ”Rally!” Thaile shouted. ”Meld! The attack has begun!”
3
Thaile had not dared use foresight on the events of this fateful day, but she had guessed all along that the cause was hopeless. Had there been any chance of victory at all, her predecessor would not have capitulated so easily, for Lain had been no weakling; only certainty of failure could have driven her to despair. The testimony of the cobbler Jaurg had thus been merely confirmation. Overhearing it, Thaile had peered into the very depths of his soul, suspecting a deeply buried treachery. She had discovered only a peaceable young man, honest and sincerely obedient to the Gods and the Good. A very unusual jotunn, in fact.
Mundane logic alone said that disaster was inevitable. Even were the two sides evenly matched in strength, the issue could not be in doubt, for the Covin’s thousands were united under the will of the Almighty. The diverse assembly in the Meeting Place had no discipline, no unanimity, no single vision. These ragtag revolutionaries had no practice in acting together. They even lacked an overall leader. Thaile herself, for all her superhuman power, was a naive country lass, inexperienced in command. Rap was a midget sorcerer and too much a decent human being to be a successful general—he had a statesman’s vision, but he lacked the arrogance needed to impose his own will on everyone else. The two warlocks were so wary of each other’s distrust that neither dared exert himself lest he provoke a rupture.
At Thaile’s command the company tried to meld and produced only a welter of confusion. Each of the twelve races making up the Thumian army rallied to its own leader first. Then imp clashed with jotunn, gnome with djinn, merman with anthropophagus, elf with dwarf. The fauns tried to argue. Trolls froze in horror and pixies shattered like glass.
In essence the Covin was hurling raw power at the barrier over the Qoble Mountains, where Neem’s sector joined with Puik’s. The contest held no more subtlety than two mountain rams battering heads together beside a herd of ewes. Normally the physical world would have paid no heed, but in this case the energies released were so great that the earth shook and avalanches tumbled from the crags. Soon streams were boiling and forests smoked
The real battle was staged in the ambience. There, too, there was only insistence against resistance. Thaile could observe the truth but mere sorcerers interpreted the ambience in metaphor. Different observers saw it in different ways, and she was overwhelmed by all the conflicting reactions around her. Many saw fire—white, red, and black. The jotunn mostly visualized a rampaging horde of warriors. Dwarves saw mighty hammers and merfolk giant waves. Struggling against this massive confusion, the Keeper fought to sustain the ancient walls and rally her supporters at the same time.
Every one of the five hundred seemed to be calling on her—advising, beseeching, arguing, lamenting, while Neem and Puik thrashed in terminal agony. The Meeting Place roiled with fear and anger. Reduce the perimeter, launch a counterstroke at Hub, divide the army into columns . . . Five hundred sorcerers clamored with five hundred plans and suggestions.
One tiny voice trilled on a different note. One small thread of emotion was different from all the others. Puzzled, Thaile managed to spare a transitory fragment of attention for that one, and saw Kadie’s frightened mundane green eyes staring at her.
“You all right, Thaile?”
Sympathy? That’s what it was! Someone cared for Thaile herself.
“Yes, I’m fine!” she said aloud. She smiled gratefully and turned her attention back to the Qoble front.
Too late. The thousand-year sorcery collapsed, Puik and Neem dissolved utterly, and the Covin’s wrath raged untrammeled into Thume.
And there, for a moment, it was balked. The stony eyes of the Almighty glared around, seeking an enemy. He found no army drawn up in battle, no fortresses to overthrow or cities to besiege. He saw only sleepy rustic countryside and a scattered population of herders, fishermen, and peasant farmers. Typically, he reacted with wanton spite.
Pixies began to die. Bolts of power struck them down as they reaped and tilled. Men at their labors, women tending children, the children themselves at play—a wave of death surged forward over the Accursed Land. Cottages exploded in flame, livestock fell lifeless. Watermills and beehives burned. Nothing in the War of the Five Warlocks or the innumerable wars before it had ever been more cold-blooded than this systematic annihilation.
The Meeting Place stiffened into paralysis. Horror froze the defenders as the destruction spread.
King Rap was the first to recover. ”Keeper!” he bellowed. ”They have found the Gates! Abandon the College quickly!” Abandon? . . . Then Thaile saw what the faun had seen. The Covin had just discovered that there were two Thumes. The mass slaughter was being inflicted on the real land, the home of the pixie folk. Above that, glimmering everywhere in a silver web of sorcery, lay the network of the Way, spreading out from the Chapel, linking Meeting Place with Library, Commons, Gates, Market, and all the facilities of the College. Innumerable threads led off to the humble Places where the sorcerers lived with their mundane partners.
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