that prove insufficient warning, if any Carnadosan should be so foolish as to attack her a third time, I will lay waste that entire continent in a wall of fire that will dwarf its first destruction. I will burn out my own magic-a wild wizard’s magic-to power that destruction, and it will be ten times a thousand years before Kontovar rises from those ashes.”
Varnaythus was white. It had required the fall of the greatest empire in Orfressan history, the conquest in fire and blood of an entire continent, to drive Wencit and the Last White Council to strafe Kontovar. Yet as he looked into Wencit of Rum’s flame-cored eyes, he knew the wild wizard meant it. Even if it cost his own life, he would scour Kontovar down to clean, bare stone-kill every green and growing thing, every animal-if the Carnadosans dared even to attack, far less kill, a single young woman. What could possibly…?
Those eyes told him that question would never be answered. There had to be an answer, a reason Wencit would make that dreadful promise for Leeana’s sake but not for Bahzell’s or for any other person he’d known and loved in all the dusty centuries of his life. Yet Varnaythus of Kontovar would never know it.
Wencit raised his hand, and a spray of wildfire erupted from it. It reached up, then flowed outward, coating the chamber’s stone walls, enveloping them within a glorious canopy of light that flickered and danced.
“My name,” the wild wizard said in ancient Kontovaran, “is Wencit of Rum, and by my paramount authority as Lord of the Council of Ottovar, I judge thee guilty of offense against The Strictures. Wouldst thou defend thyself, or must I slay thee where thou standest?”
A strange, shivering sort of calm seemed to fill Varnaythus. He wondered, for an instant, how many other wizards had heard that same challenge in that same voice over the centuries. He didn’t know…but none who’d heard it once had ever heard another voice again.
He bowed ever so slightly, then drew his own wand. He raised it, summoning his power, and hurled the most deadly spell at his command. A wrist-thick cable of green lightning that would have given even a creature like Anshakar pause, might even have blasted him back into his own universe, streaked across the scant twelve feet between him and his foe.
It had no effect on Wencit of Rum at all.
The ancient wild wizard simply raised one hand, almost negligently, and that vortex of ravening destruction shattered on his callused palm. It splintered into all the colors of the rainbow, and then it was gone, banished as if it had never even existed.
Varnaythus staggered, sick and emptied of power, and stared at the white-haired old man with the terrible wildfire eyes.
“So be it.” Wencit’s executioner voice was colder than Hopes Bane Glacier. “As thou hast chosen, so shalt thou answer.”
The terrible flash of those flaming eyes was the last thing Varnaythus ever saw.
Epilogue
No one had ever seen a gathering quite like it.
Bahzell Bahnakson and his wife stood on the battlement of East Tower and looked down into Hill Guard Castle’s main courtyard as the next contingent of unlikely visitors clattered through the main gate. The newcomers seemed oddly undersized in comparison to their escort of armsmen in the colors of the House of Bowmaster. Pony-mounted dwarves had a tendency to look that way when they were flanked by Sothoii warhorses, but the visitors’ sartorial splendor and the banners cracking above them in the brisk north wind made up for any deficiencies of stature.
“I see old Kilthan’s after arriving,” Bahzell said. “The bald fellow yonder, in the orange tunic.”
“Under the waterwheel banner?” Leeana asked, and Bahzell nodded.
“Aye, and that’s Thersahkdahknarthas dinha’Feltalkandarnas next to him.” Bahzell had paused for a moment before bringing out the full name of the head of Clan Felahkandarnas. Brandark himself couldn’t have done it better, and Leeana looked up at him and batted her eyes in admiration.
“I hadn’t realized I’d married such a sophisticated man,” she said, and Bahzell chuckled and laid an arm around her shoulders to draw her in against his side.
“Now that you haven’t,” he told her, bending to press a kiss to the top of her head. “It’s naught I am but a backwoods boy from Hurgrum, lass, and you’d best not be forgetting it.”
“I’m sure I won’t, given the pains you take to keep reminding the rest of us what a bumpkin you are. You’re not really fooling anyone, you know.”
“No?” Brown eyes twinkled down at her for a moment, then he shrugged. “I’ll not say as there isn’t maybe a mite of truth in that, but only think how lost poor Brandark would be finding himself if I was to suddenly come all erudite on him. It’s a dreadful mischief he might do himself.”
“Oh, we couldn’t have that! ” Leeana agreed, and looked back down at the courtyard as the latest covey of visitors drew up before the great keep and a fanfare sounded.
“I wonder where Mother’s going to put them all?” she mused as the Baron and Baroness of Balthar emerged from the keep to greet their guests. “King Markhos already has the North Tower, and your parents already have the South Tower, and the West Tower’s running over with war maids.” She shook her head. “I know Mother’s always enjoyed entertaining, but this is getting ridiculous, Bahzell!”
“Well, we’ve a month or so yet before first snowfall,” Bahzell pointed out philosophically. “I’m thinking pavilions on the parade ground might be working.” He smiled. “And now I’ve thought of it, I’ll wager it would be fair speeding things along, wouldn’t it just, with a Wind Plain winter coming on and them under canvas?”
“That’s an awful thing to suggest,” Leeana told him sternly. “Not that you don’t have a point.”
“Dreadful practical, we Horse Stealers are,” Bahzell assured her, and she snorted. Then her expression turned rather more serious.
“You’re not the only ones,” she told him. “Or perhaps I should say we’re not the only ones, since I’ve married into the family this way.” Her lips quirked another smile, but her eyes were grave as she looked down into the courtyard once more. “I have to say, though, it’s a good thing. Not that I ever thought practicality or-even worse! — reason would dare to rear its ugly head where Sothoii were concerned.”
“Best be striking while the iron’s hot,” Bahzell responded with a shrug.
“Oh, indeed,” a third voice said, and the two of them turned as a fiery-eyed, white-haired man stepped out onto the battlements behind them. He was far more simply, even drably, dressed than any of Hill Guard’s other visitors.
“And it’s wondering I’ve been where you’d gotten yourself to,” Bahzell said.
“Listening with bated breath while Sir Jerhas beats the speaker of the Kraithalyr about the head and ears- figuratively speaking, of course-about the Crown’s new attitude towards war maids,” Wencit of Rum said. He shook his head. “I’m getting just a bit tired of sitting around ominously while he does that.”
“Sure, and I’m thinking that’s what you’re after getting for being such a figure of legend, and all,” Bahzell told him, and the old wizard snorted.
“‘Figure of legend,’ is it, Bahzell Bloody Hand? At least no one’s trying to call me ‘Devil-Slayer’!”
“And if it’s all the same, I’d sooner no one would be calling me that, either,” Bahzell said in a much grimmer tone, and Leeana laid one hand on his forearm.
“No one’s forgetting all the others who died on the Ghoul Moor, Bahzell,” Wencit said much more gently. “And no one’s forgetting what happened at Chergor, either, Leeana.” He inclined his head slightly to her, although his eyes remained on Bahzell’s face. “But the truth is-and you know it as well as I do, Bahzell-that it’s what happened there that makes all of this possible.”
He waved one hand at the courtyard, where the Dwarvenhame delegation was in the process of being ushered up the steps into the main keep, and after a moment, Bahzell nodded.
As Sir Kelthys had observed that dreadful day, no one had truly seen one of Krashnark’s greater devils since the Fall of Kontovar itself. Indeed, their appearances even in Kontovar had been more matters of legend than confirmed fact. But with twenty thousand witnesses, not even the most skeptical Sothoii was inclined to doubt that was exactly what Trianal’s army had faced.
The price that army-and the Order of Tomanak-had paid to stop them had been horrific. Vaijon was only one
