‘They are moving slowly. Perhaps some hours yet.’
Thewson shifted irritably. ‘You cannot take the people away from here?’
‘Where? How? We can send some to the ramparts, now that the mists are here. The children, perhaps, but only a few in the time we have.’
‘Then you get strong and sing these mists gone,’ he said to the Choir leader. ‘You must.’
The leader pressed her hands to her forehead in anguish. ‘We may not. We dare not. It has been forbidden.’
He struck the floor with his spear, resoundingly. ‘See this. You do not sing them gone. All die. You do sing them gone. Wa’osu – it may be all die. What is the difference?’
Leona laughed without humour. ‘Thewson, I will make you a gift. Long have you sought it, my friend. Long have I borne it. It is no help to me; perhaps it may aid you.’ Too quickly for him to protest, she took the circlet from her head and set it upon his. He put up a puzzled hand to take it away, then stayed, frozen in place, an expression of curious concentration knotting his face.
‘There,’ she said. ‘I need no longer feel responsible for this. Not for this, nor what is to come. You tell us what to do. You argue with the Choirs.’
Beneath the Crown, Thewson listened to a distant whirr of jewelled bird god wings, a jubilant whisper, ‘Thew-son, Thew-son.’
‘I will not argue,’ he said presently. ‘It is right what they do. They may not sing the mists gone.’
‘Well, so much for practicality. Then guide us. What shall we do now?’
‘West and south are mists; above are the winged things. If you fly there, they are many and you are few. Do not fly. Not yet. Wisdom says this.’
Hazliah made a mocking face. ‘Then so much for wisdom. What may we do?’
‘The people are many. They cannot flee. We cannot move ourselves. Other places, others move. Wisdom says this, and wisdom says we wait.’
‘If we must merely wait, may we do it upon the city walls?’ Leona could not remain longer under a roof. The gryphon within her lusted to be free of the walls, longed for the sky Thewson had forbidden her. ‘Let us go to the walls.’
Thewson nodded soberly. ‘We may go there. To wait.’
In Tharliezalor, Jaer let the black horse carry her while she clung to the saddle, using both hands. Within her, the multitude was silent, as though they had never been, but the pattern they had built stretched from edge to edge of her being, a single structure, an enigmatic, brooding potentiality which was as ominous in its way as the serim piled before them. Puckered tentacles of hunger and threat plucked at her. Whatever inhabited the dome had found er and now hammered at her with an almost physical force. Her skin flinched and her body shuddered; her eyes watered, her stomach heaved with nausea, but the labyrinthine pattern within her mind stood like a mighty fortress, impregnable, unmoved.
They had struggled step by step down the long avenue, sometimes pressing against a weight of serim which they could feel, though the beasts never came closer than the song-charmed circle they moved within. Now they came to a broad plaza from which a bridge sprang up and outward toward the distant dome. Among the serim moved edgeless bulks which drew the eye and thought as magnets draw iron. Medlo forced his eyes down onto the jangle, playing with concentration. Into his thought, unbidden, came the song heard within the curtain of the Concealment. ‘Camped on fear’s ground … in terror’s tents …’ Almost his fingers began to play it; almost his voice began to sing it. He bit his lips, thrust the jangle away while the words sang in his head. Something wanted him to sing that. He would not. ‘Drinking alone from horror’s cup…’ No! Grinly he brought his mind back to the song which protected them, a shackle song, a constraining song, millennia old, magically powerful, the same that was being sung in Orena, though he was not to know that.
Upon the walls of Orena, a muffled exclamation from Hazliah drew their attention to the sky where huge bat wings circled down toward the heaped and tumbling ghosts. One, two, five, a dozen. The venomous beasts landed just ahead of the mists, departed again to leave their burdens behind. Thewson drew a horrified breath as he recognized those figures.
‘Jasmine,’ he cried. ‘The child, the little ones!’
‘Behind them,’ grated Leona. ‘On the dragon beast. Sybil, and that other one.’
There on the plain before the city the mists drew into a towering wall, a marching wall, moving with slow, inexorable pace toward the city where the thousands watched. And before the mists marched those others, tiny at the distance, leashed by heavy chains to the two red-robed ones who drove them. There was Jasmine, Hu’ao, Po-Bee, Doh-ti, Hanna-lil, Dhariat.
‘Mum-lil,’ mumbled Thewson. ‘Lain-achor. Daingol. Sowsie? Where? Fox? Where? Gaffer Gumsuch?’
‘Do we still wait?’ snapped Leona. ‘Or do we rise and fight? Hazliah?’
‘When you will, Lady. As you will.’
‘No,’ cried Thewson thunderously. ‘Wait. Even now, wait.’
The tiny figures were driven forward, so close that he could see the tears on Jasmine’s face. ‘Wait,’ he muttered, putting his teeth into his hand so that the blood ran. ‘Even now, wait.’
In Tharliezalor the riders were almost across the bridge, almost at the domed building. Behind them was a towering wall of scrambling fury, but before them was only the building and the dome, glowing in rotten light. Still Medlo sang, Terascouros sang, the voices from far-off Gerenhodh sang, and Jaer rode as in a trance, remote and dreaming.
Open doors gave into a wide hallway. The black horse went forward to a central space, open above to the sky. They dismounted and went farther. It seemed
