overlaid the city like a wooly blanket. And there was something more. A steady hum, like the sound of an enormous beehive, filled the air. It came from nowhere and everywhere. Vixa felt a pang of fear. She had to know what was happening.
She jogged away from the palace, toward Pine Tree Gate, which guarded the western entrance to the city. The humming grew louder, funneled through the high canyons of houses and towers. Disoriented, she made several wrong turns into dead-end streets, but the noise steadily increased as she made her way west.
In the square above Pine Tree Gate, Vixa ran smack into a mob of Silvanesti. They were ordinary folk, standing side by side and holding the hands of their neighbors. The elven chain looped back and forth through the square and disappeared down the many side streets. All the elves had their eyes closed, their lips parted slightly. They were humming.
“What is it?” Vixa demanded. “What’s happened?”
The elves did not answer, but held their places and hummed. Vixa grabbed the last one in line. As her hand closed around his arm, she felt a shock go through her. An image flashed across her mind’s eye: the Thon-Thalas, wrapped from shore to shore in dense, white cloud. The cloud billowed and roiled, and gray shapes stirred inside. Though vague, they were somehow threatening-
She yanked her hand free and staggered backward. Vixa knew immediately what she’d seen. Through the eyes of thousands of Silvanesti, the image of the cloud was vivid and terrifying. Coryphene, or Uriona, had summoned up the strange white fog that had first carried
The Qualinesti princess shouldered through the lines, ducking under linked hands until she reached the base of the city wall near Pine Tree Gate. The sound of humming grated on her nerves and caused an ache in her head. Atop the wall she saw Silvanesti warriors moving about and hurried to join them. Two score young elves, newly pressed into the depleted ranks of the Speaker’s host, stood behind the crenelations that protected the parapet.
“Who commands here?” Vixa asked.
The elves were staring out toward the river. Without turning, a spear-armed youth replied, “Marshal Samcadaris, lady. He passed here an hour ago.”
Frowning, Vixa followed the direction of his rapt gaze. Her frown became an expression of shock. The shrinking Thon-Thalas was completely obscured by a sea of white cloud. The cloud stretched upstream and down as far as Vixa could see and overlapped the banks by several yards. The top of the cloud was level with the wall upon which she stood, and it looked as solid.
“When did this fog come up?” she demanded.
The spear-carrier replied, “At sunrise. It has been thickening steadily ever since.”
“Why do the people stand together humming?”
“It is the will of the Speaker, lady. The clerics of the high gods began to grow weak and fell as the mist closed in. The Speaker summoned the people to reinforce the magic.”
Vixa shook her head as she looked back toward the city, at the rows and rows of humming Silvanesti. Of course, they weren’t actually humming. The sound was in fact the rapid chanting of thousands upon thousands of Silvanesti voices. She shivered, and gooseflesh rose on her arms. The focused power of these eastern elves sent tingles racing along her spine.
Thunder rumbled overhead. Directly above the sea of snow-white cloud, a long serpent of blue-black thunder-heads coalesced rapidly in the still air. Lightning flashed inside the dark mass.
“Looks as though we’ll get wet today,” Vixa noted. The recruits divided their anxious gazes between the white fog bank and the gathering storm.
“Lady, what shall we do?” asked the spear-carrier, fear tingeing his words.
“Are you afraid?” He nodded, and the others echoed his gesture. Vixa said firmly, “Good. Fear will put iron in your arm and fire in your belly. Then we shall win.”
She walked on, past tired veterans and green recruits pressed into service to fill out their ranks. As she went by them, the Qualinesti princess offered low-voiced advice and encouragement in equal portions. Though not a Silvanesti, she still had two thousand years of royal blood in her veins. Her calm, expert manner garnered respect from the veterans and brought a measure of comfort to the frightened newcomers.
Vixa felt a fat raindrop strike her cheek. It ran down to the corner of her mouth, and she tasted salt. She stopped and looked up. The thunderclouds had expanded, filling the sky overhead. Several more drops landed on her face. They were salty as well.
The raindrops were made of seawater!
Hitching up her sword belt, she jogged to the tower ahead of her. On the open summit she found Samcadaris with most of his corps of dismounted cavalry.
“Marshal! It’s Vixa Ambrodel!”
He waved to his troopers to let her through. Rain was falling more regularly now. A boom of thunder rolled over the high tower. Samcadaris was standing on a wooden platform that allowed him to see over the crenelation. Vixa climbed up beside him.
“Where have you been?” he inquired.
“Asleep in the palace. I nearly missed everything!”
Thunder crashed once more, and the heavens opened up. A torrent of salty rain fell on Silvanost. “You may wish you had missed this!” Samcadaris shouted over the deluge and thunder.
“Coryphene summoned this rain to sustain his army!”
The marshal nodded. “I have only a few thousand regulars left. The rest are mere children, artisans, and idlers scraped up and given arms. I pray Eriscodera and your dwarven friend get back in time.”
“Gundabyr? Where’s he gone?”
“They sneaked across the river before dawn to round up what militia had already gathered. If reinforcements don’t arrive soon, I doubt we can hold the city.”
Weird bleating erupted from various points along the length of the white cloud obscuring the river. The Dargonesti were blowing on conch shells. The sound lifted the hairs at the nape of Vixa’s neck, but she realized the noise was probably meant to be practical rather than theatrical. It was likely that Coryphene’s warriors couldn’t see through the fog either. The noises were probably signals from the different commands.
A Silvanesti shouted from the wall. “They’re coming!”
“Stand to arms,” said Samcadaris sharply. Weapons rattled as the order was relayed along the city wall. “Archers, stand ready.”
“Sir,” said an officer at the marshal’s elbow, “the archers have only one quiver left per elf.”
“Then order them not to miss,” was the grim reply.
Vixa wiped salt rain from her eyes and asked, “Where do you want me, Marshal?”
“Royalty may choose their own ground, lady.” He smiled wanly. “And there are any number of weak areas on the wall. However, there”-he pointed at a spot farther along the battlement-“halfway between this watchtower and Pine Tree Gate, that’s our nearest weakness.”
She nodded briskly. “Give me twenty stout fighters, and I’ll hold the wall against all comers!”
He agreed. Vixa and her picked squad ran down the steps from the watchtower to the place he’d indicated on the battlement. Halfway between Samcadaris’s watchtower and Pine Tree Gate she halted her band. Salty rainwater pooled on the stone parapet, pouring off the wall through small openings in the crenelations. Vixa shucked her sodden cloak. The call of the Dargonesti conch shells abruptly ceased.
Despite the pounding rain, thick tentacles of white fog detached themselves from the main mass of cloud and crept up toward the battlements. Vixa found them uncomfortably similar to the massive limbs of the kraken, which had wrought such havoc on the fortress of Thonbec.
Under the astonished eyes of the Silvanesti, these foggy tentacles gripped the smooth stone walls just beneath the level of the parapet. They thickened and solidified. Now the rain splashed off their hardened surfaces and streamed down their inclined length. One elven warrior, smitten with curiosity, broke ranks and approached the odd growths. An instant later, he toppled from the wall, riddled with arrows.
Vixa cried out as more arrows flickered up from the fog bank. With shrill shouts, Dimernesti mercenaries, wielding captured Silvanesti bows, swarmed out of the mist. They ran up the solid tendril of fog to the top of the city wall.
