‘We will all live, all of us,’ said Terascouros. ‘If you don’t want to go there, we won’t.’
‘No. We have to go. It’s there, and I must find it – whatever it is. The Gate, I think. Nathan’s Gate. Only something within me is like a child afraid of the dark.’
‘Well, if we are going, let us go as we would be remembered.’ Medlo dismounted, unlashed his pack and began to dress himself in his holiday tunic, ignoring their protests. When he had fastened the jangle on his fringed sash and wiped his boots with the dirty tunic, he mounted once more, a figure glittering in embroidery and stiffened satin, the honour cape of Rhees fluttering at his back. ‘If I go to my fulfillment, whatever it may be, I go as the scion of Rhees, Medlo of Rhees at last.’
He started away down the hill, letting them follow as they would.
They caught up with him halfway down the long slope. Except for the wind in the grasses there was no sound, no murmur of insect or bird, no cry or clatter, nothing to speak of life. The horses slowed of their own accord, began almost to tiptoe across the turf, ears forward. Away to the left a cluster of great grey stones thrust up through the turf, ragged growth around their bases looking like eyebrows. As they went past, they felt the stones turn, felt that something watched from beneath the earth. Among the stones a darkness quivered, reached out a clot of shadow, recoiled into itself.
‘It knows,’ whispered Jaer. ‘Whatever is here, in this city, waits for us. It knows we are here.’
In Orena the long-awaited attack began. On the western heights the quiescent mists began to move, coiling toward the cliffs. In the city, bells rang to summon those few still outside the walls. Black robes moved away from the great structure near the northern ramparts to disclose it at last-a drum, a drum so enormous that Leona gasped in disbelief.
‘What have they made the head of? No animal walking the earth is large enough.’
‘Perhaps they found one beneath the seas,’ said Hazliah, thrusting in beside her to peer into the depths of the far-seeing device. ‘By the most marvellous Lord of Fire, a troop of horsemen might parade upon it!’
‘Not for long.’ Grimly she pointed to a frame beside the drum, a tall scaffolding in which hung a sledge, a mighty hammer, its head taller than a tall man. Far below on the stony ground ropes tightened and twanged as capstans moved in circles of straining Gahlians. The red robes of Sybil and Lithos glowed against the dark bulk as the hammer jerked upward in tiny increments. Ropes jammed and snapped. The red-robed figures gestured in agitation.
‘Will our weapons fire upon that drum?’ Leona was answered by tight mouths and shaken heads.
‘We can see it, not fire upon it. The ridge is between.’
‘Can we fire upon the ridge, destroy it?’
‘If we had much time, and no other targets. But there are other targets.’ He indicated the shadowy bulks which stumbled slowly forward, the metallic monsters clicking incer feet as they reared up to the ramparts turning ideous heads to one side and the other.
‘Hazliah …’ He had been with her in her brief time in Orena tight as tick to dog, so he said, and she had laughed at that, a strange laugh in which he seemed to take delight. He had not said what hopes he had, what dreams of kindred and kindred. He had put nothing into words, but she had seen his face. At odd moments it had made her long for something long lost. There was no time for it, whatever it might have been. ‘Hazliah, if the battle goes against us, I will take the boy, fly away from the city.’ She thought fleetingly of Mimo and Werem who could not be carried, then refused to think of that. ‘Will you follow me, you and your people? There may be refuge elsewhere in the wide world.’
He shook his head gently. ‘We will go. But you have not seen what will await us.’ He moved toward another of the flickering glassy surfaces of the seeing devices with which the tower was furnished. It seemed to show nothing except open sky above the valley, but then she saw wings, serpent necks with narrow, fanged heads, tails with curved blades of chitin upon them, deadly as scorpion tails.
‘When did these come?’
‘The red-robed ones rode in upon them. Others came then, larger ones. We do not know how many.’
‘The Remnant? Your people? Did they …’
‘They got away unseen, Lady. Went like the wind, east and north to Tchent, there to stop from purpose of their own, then perhaps to go even beyond the Concealment. No, these air serpents came after, we think.’
‘The sky is full of them.’ She brooded over the sight, then turned again to the great drum. The hammer was inching upward once again. Behind them in the valley rose the song of the massed Choirs, a music as much felt as heard. One of the people watching on the devices in the tower room said ‘Ahhh’ in satisfaction as the mists on the western cliffs grew quiet. The haihmer came up a bit more.
‘You did not tell me about the winged things. They are half dragon, half scorpion. Hideous. You did not tell me.’
‘There was nothing we could do. If it had been important, you would have known of it. The Crown would have told you.’
Leona shook her head, felt a boiling mixture of laughter and tears threatening to come bubbling out of her throat. ‘Oh, Hazliah, I do not believe it is the Crown of Wisdom at all. Either that or no one can be wise in such a trap. I would trade all its wisdom if we might only be invisible.’
And she turned again to watch the hammer inch upward toward the top of its
