In Tharliezalor, Medlo’s horse had reached an outlying street of the city: cracked and fissured pavement, dusty growth furring the breaks with nettles. Ancient arches gaped at them, windows stared after them, ghosts of movement caught at the corners of their eyes. They heard spirits of sound down empty streets, a high keening which made the skin ache but barely reached the ears. Jaer and Medlo rode with naked blades in their hands, Terascouros between them. Two of the horses trembled, but Jaer’s tall black beast looked calmly at the world from yellow eyes and paced steadily forward.
At some corners, the black horse would not move in the way Jaer desired. It backed away, turning into other streets. Jaer allowed herself to be taken, hearing behind her in the streets they had not entered a humming sound, as though some monstrous harp string had been plucked.
Terascouros reached out to them blindly, her eyes unfocused. ‘Shhh, they are coming. Lead my horse.’ She began to sing in her high, whispery old voice, very softly.
They did come, pouring out of every opening like serpents from a burst sack; grey, fanged, silent. They came very near, just outside the circle of Terascouros’s song, eyes burning with hunger. They heaped upon one another, scrambling toward the trio. The horses moved within a circle scarcely two man heights wide, walked among fiery eyes and dripping teeth and shrill screaming, but they did walk while Terascouros sang.
Medlo thought, ‘This is impossible. Her voice is only a whisper, and yet I hear it in harmony, strong as though it were many voices.’
The answer came from Jaer. ‘Old Aunt. The Sisterhood of Gerenhodh. They are here, singing us forward. They have sent their mind to watch over us. They will not abandon their Ahl di. I am to go find them their way, will I ornilll.’
It came to Medlo as a revelation. This was why Terascouros had come, of course, to serve as an outlet for those voices, a focus which they might use. Well, he could help them. He brought the jangle from his back to rest it on the horse’s neck, setting his mind and heart into the song, joining it, remembering all he had learned in the vaults under the Hill.
They turned into the wide avenue which led to the bridge. Medlo bit back an exclamation of horror, for it stretched ahead of them in a living carpet of serim which the song must hold at bay. They went forward, slow step by slow step, a distance of hours – a distance of forever.
On the ramparts above Orena the hammer reached the top of its cradle. A red-clad arm gestured sharply downward. The hammer fell upon the great drum to cry DOOM upon the cliffs, in echo repeating and growing across the valley to return once more; DOOM to crash among the pillars of immemorial stone which stood at the gates of the valley, making them crack and shatter, raining boulders upon the walls and the gates of the highway, echoing back once more; DOOM against the high tower of the Temple so that it shivered beneath the sound, reverberating within in the place the Choirs were assembled; DOOM upon the voices of the maidens and the Sisters; DOOM upon the song of the Choirs of Taniel so that they were deafened and made mute – so that silence came.
Then the ghosts of Gahl upon the cliffs were restrained no more but boiled into hideous life, pouring over the cliffs like a rain of bats onto the valley floor. Lithos and Sybil turned aside from the great hammer, mounted upon two of the winged beasts and swept away to the north. Behind them on the heights, the Tharnel worms reared into towers of segmented, grisly death. Along the walls, guardsmen shouted and screamed, ran for the safety of the enclosed towers. Doors slammed shut, weapons masters sweated and swore in the half light of the screens, rays of red light flicked from the towers. Where the worms were directly hit they glowed, burned, and died, but between the worms and die weapon intruded those bulks of shadowy darkness, shapeless and edgeless, into which the burning lights fell as dew into a pond. Into these shadows were guardsmen sucked up and lost as though they had never been.
Leona watched it all, heartsick and unable to turn aside from it. This vaunted Crown does not help us,’ she whispered to Hazliah, ‘except to make me sure we must not be taken by those shadows while we live.’ Behind them in the valley the song of the Choirs rose once more, faltering and hesitant. Still, it was enough to slow the advance of the mists on the valley floor, to slow the shadows on the heights so that weapons could fall upon the worms and their masters once more. To the rear of the massed hordes of Gahl, a curious turbulence began, a whirling movement, a troubling upon the ramparts as in a confusion of ants when their nest is destroyed. ‘Hazliah? Are they being attacked? Have we guardsmen behind them?’
‘You know we have not, Lady. No man, however armoured, can stand against the worms or pull them down.’
‘They are being pulled down, nonetheless. Look for yourself.’ She thrust him toward the screen of the seeing device where the distorted, jerking images swayed and spun. Even through the thick walls of the tower they could hear a change in the sounds outside. Then they heard nothing, for the great hammer had fallen again, DOOM reverberating across the shivering valley, the song from the Temple shattered into silence once more, and away to the west the mists piled into tottering towers which fell and rebuilt themselves and fell again, forward, toward the city.
The song rose once more, haltingly. For the moment the bulks of darkness which had swallowed the ramparts to either side of the tower were dissipated. Leona eased through the door to peer at the
