Hearst wondered where Alish was at that moment -and what he was thinking. Did Alish suspect the death- stone was about to be used against him? 'How is the messenger?' said Hearst.
'The messenger?'
'The one from the south who brought the message about the army from the Rice Empire. I wanted you to have a look at his wound.'
'He died before I could see him.'
'Oh,' said Hearst.
So that was another death to take into account. One amongst many. Now Hearst was going to use the death- stone: but that in itself should not produce too many casualties, for he had calculated that, from where he stood, its effects should extend just far enough to destroy part of the city walls.
'Green smoke,' said Miphon.
There was indeed green smoke rising in the east. Ships anchored upriver would soon attack, expecting to find the walls of Androlmarphos breached. Hearst could have sheltered thousands of men in the green and red bottles, but, as no more than fifty men could be taken in or out of one of the bottles at a time, the fastest way to launch a mass assault on the city was by ship.
'Take your position,' said Hearst. •Miphon sat cross-legged on the hard dry ground at Hearst's feet.
Hearst took the death-stone from a leather bag. The stone egg was cool. Heavy. He raised it above his head. The shadow of a buzzard flickered over the ground. The death-stone kicked in his hand like a human heart. He cried out, his battle-hoarse voice naming the Words. The death-stone warmed in his hand. His heart faltered, trembled, kicked three times in an odd, irregular rhythm.
There was a grinding sound in the sky, which grew steadily stronger.
As Hearst watched, the few pebbles he could see on the dry earth began to tremble as the grinding sound grew louder. In a moment of hallucinatory clarity, he remembered the desperate moments at Ep Pass – rocks shifting underfoot as he fled from Heenmor, his hands and face stinging from burns, his nostrils filled with the stench of burnt leather, his eyes watering from smoke.
Now, as he watched – the death-stone heavy in his hand, his arm trembling – the little pebbles, shape-shifting, began to move. Like insects. The air was turning grey. The ground… the ground, outside a small circle he could have spanned with outstretched arms, was turning grey. As the ground turned to stone, the mobilised pebbles skittered across its surface like raindrops wind-driven across a pane of glass.
The air was turning grey.
And the death-stone – 'The death-stone's getting cold,' said Hearst. His voice sounded hollow, echoed back to him as if they were standing in a cave. 'Hold it,' said Miphon.
Hearst tried to look out across the countryside to see what was happening. He saw a buzzard in the sky, saw it suddenly stall – as if hit by an arrow. Then fall. Crashing down to earth with no flap of feathers: a stonemade bird falling like a rock. Beyond that, everything was blurred and obscured, like a landscape seen through heavy rain.
The death-stone was now frost-cold in his hand.
Hearst knew the grey death was now sweeping outwards almost as fast as a man can run. He remembered Looming Forest, remembered the wizard Garash treading on a stonemade face, breaking the stone curve of an eye to reveal an eyesocket empty but for a bit of stone the size of a pea. He remembered Prince Comedo's toy – a survivor living on with stonemade hands and mutilating injuries to the legs and face.
And he remembered, again, Ep Pass – a raft and its crew freezing to stone then sinking. The wizard Phyphor. the big bone in his thigh shattered by a rock. A skin of stone forming on the river's surface, then breaking under its own weight and sinking. And later, months later… stonemade bodies of a defeated army that had tried to defend Runcorn against Elkor Alish.
'Rest,' said Miphon.
Hearst lowered the death-stone.
His arm was shaking.
The air was clearing now, sunlight sharpening to shadows, and he could see across a grey stonemade plain to Androlmarphos. As he watched, the walls appeared to dissolve as the stones they were made of took advantage of their freedom.
'The pyramid!' said Miphon.
And Hearst saw the pyramid to the east was similarly dissolving. He heard a strange sound, reminiscent of shattering ice. Was it from the pyramid? No – it was the skimrock surface of the rivers breaking up. The air was absolutely dry, like the freeze-dried air of winter in the Cold West, and sounds carried with precision for great distances. He heard a distant, inarticulate roar, like the far-off sound of surf beating against a beach or ice-cliffs breaking away from a glacier undermined by the sea.
'What's that noise?' said Hearst.
'The rocks,' said Miphon. 'Shouting.'
The death-stone still felt cold in Hearst's hand. So much power – which any coward or criminal could use. given the chance. Appalling wars could be fought by men who would never be faced with the necessity of meeting their enemies face to face. Given such weapons, war could become, for the victors, an abstraction, a game – they would be like gods, removed from the realities of hand-to-hand combat. They would never have to make the true warrior's commitment to death, but they, standing at the centre of a circle of sanitary destruction, would wreck entire civilizations.
'I'm going to get the first batch of soldiers,' said Miphon. 'Stand clear.'
He turned the ring on his finger, disappearing into the green bottle. Hearst walked out of the circle of soil onto the plain of stone, leaving the green bottle behind, so the ground was clear for the first batch of soldiers Miphon would bring out.
Abruptly, the stonemade ground in front of him began to crack and split, like ice breaking up when a heavy man steps on it. But the centre of this disruption was twenty paces in front of him, and there was nobody in sight. For a moment he imagined that something gigantic yet invisible was standing on the plain of stone, some avenging hell- fiend or star-giant.
Then the ground erupted upwards.
A rock lurched free of the clutching earth. It was large as a ship. And it roared. A funnelling vortex shape- shifted to a thunder-black mouth, lipless gash grinding as it moved. Hearst staggered backwards, stumbled, fell.
And the monster lurched toward him.
Hearst held up the death-stone, his last resort. And the monster stalled, flinched, shied away, then fled, bellowing, running like a cockroach from flame.
Elsewhere, more rocks were breaking free from the earth. Suddenly fifty men materialised around the green bottle – Miphon and the first batch of soldiers.
'Miphon, no more soldiers!' shouted Hearst. 'Stay! We need you to command the rocks!'
They advanced, Miphon driving rocks before them.
As they approached Androlmarphos, ships that had come down the river began to disembark Farfalla's army. Organising the rocks into an arrow-head formation, Miphon urged them forward, and, as the monsters smashed into the city, Hearst knew that Alish's army was doomed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Morgan Hearst opened his eyes and saw a dragon watching him. 'Hello,' said Hearst.
The dragon said nothing, but watched him, eyes unblinking. He could not outstare it. His head hurt too much. Hoping for a few mouthfuls of wine, he reached for the leather bottle that lay beside the bed – but it was empty.
'By the balls of hell,' muttered Hearst.
The woman in bed beside him moved, and murmured something as she dreamed away the last of her sleep. Hearst eased back the coverlet, exposing bum and back: Could he rouse himself to desire again? No: he had debauched himself so thoroughly by now that all his appetites were satiated.
