The Dark Lord

barely noticed now, his attention focused on staying alive for just another grain. His Sahaba were locked in a fierce, stand-up melee in the rampart breach. Roman soldiers crowded in on the roadway from either side of the gap, trying to pinch off their position. More Arabs scrambled forward over the rubble, but now Roman archers on the shattered ends of the rampart shot down at them as they ran.

A basso thwang echoed in the air and a six-foot-long bolt snapped out of the smoke, ripping through the ranks of the Arabs fighting in the breach. Khalid spun, then cursed. The jackal was writhing in flame and lightning, leaving the Roman bastions across the canal free to fire their siege engines into the crowd of Sahaba. We need more men, Khalid realized, stomach going cold. Or they'll crush us.

Blade firmly in hand, he darted off into the drifting smoke, running back towards the Persian lines.

—|—

The jackal swung round, tripartite eye blazing, and the air convulsed. Something sped at Nephet, a whirling disk of blue-black fire. Desperate, his hands slashed into a complex pattern. The shield of Athena flared sun-bright, threads of green fire leaping into the shimmering globe from earth, stone and sky. The black disk collided, shattering into ravening lightning with a howl of sparks. Nephet was thrown down, stunned by the blast. His shield wavered, splintered, then collapsed in azure rain. Shaking off momentary weakness, the old Egyptian surged up, staff stabbing at the enemy.

The colossal shape of the jackal plowed into the second wall, grappling with the weaker, newer, matrix of battle wards. Nephet wept to see how frail the anchors were, how weak the lattice vaulting up in the hidden world. He and the other priests had only worked on binding a ward of defense into the inner wall for a week. Surely not enough time to withstand this thing's power... Spirit flames roared around black limbs, the jackal's mouth gaping wide, spilling dirty gray mist. The god ground into the defense, brawny chest streaked with clinging fire, splintering stakes underfoot, massive arms smashing through golden veils.

Muttering old words, passed down from priest to priest from the time of the Drowning, Nephet slammed his staff into the earth, fist jerking in the air, clutching at emptiness, then opening in a hard, sharp motion towards the shifting, immaterial titan. A jagged arc flashed in the air, arrowing into the thing's side. There was an efflorescence of rainbow color—blotting out the sun, casting wild shadows in all directions—and the jackal screamed, overcome. The shape toppled over, crashing against the failing pale gold wall. Cracks rippled across the ephemeral surface, then the wards closed, adapting to the blow, sliding together again.

Nephet gasped, feeling his old heart race, and found himself on all fours, sweat pouring from his thin body. That was too much, he thought vaguely. Mud under his fingers smoked and steamed. He was glowing, shedding a hot radiance from every pore. The pit of his stomach was cramping, his spine burning like a star. I've got to rest. Just for a moment...

The jackal shuddered, splitting into three indistinct, wavering shapes for an instant, then rushed back together again. Those few Roman thaumaturges still alive attacked, whirling white sparks igniting in the jackal's shadow shape. Brilliant rays lanced out from each impact, eating away at the shadow. Again, the jackal convulsed, a broken mirror showing three distorted images. Nephet raised his head, snarling in delight. Clutching the staff, he forced himself to his feet, though the ancient, well-burnished wood charred at his touch. Now we have it! he exulted. It's not one monster, but three magi!

Nephet felt another priest of Horus strike, then beheld a rippling distortion blur across the field, sweeping around the faint patterns of watchtowers, walls, the hot spike of a scorpion winding back to hurl an iron bolt into the Persian ranks. Swiftly, seeing his chance, the old Egyptian slashed the air with his staff, glowing green traces shining in the void as he etched a sign of power. A viridian glyph formed, spinning out of infinity, a triangle broken into three, then into three, then into... Nephet wrenched his perception away from the abyss opening before him. He felt thin, attenuated, and realized the native power in the earth around him had guttered out, exhausted by the conflagration. Oh, great god Horus, fill me with your strength! Strike down your old enemy, the father-murderer, the eater of the dead!

The staff disintegrated, falling away from his hand as ash. His flesh withered, tightening to the bone.

Nephet forced his hands together and down, the triangular abyss compressing in an echo of his movement. Then, straining, his will fading, he shoved at the air, the blazing glyph leaping away, flashing across the field in an instant. Iridescent with power, the Eye of Horus slammed into the jackal, even as it rose, reformed, shadow shape solidifying into ebon muscle and sinew. The white sparks splashed away, unable to penetrate the revivified colossus.

Then the burning, lidless eye intersected with the dark god.

A half-sphere of darkness flared into existence as the glyph collided with a glassy surface. Then the glyph separated into three, then three again. In the blink of an eye, the sphere was engulfed in blazing green fire. Nephet held his breath, woozy, unable to stand. A shockwave ripped through the hidden world as the glyphs condensed with a ringing bang! Nephet was thrown back, crashing into a fragment of the battle ward. He slid to the ground, blinded by a blue-green flare.

The jackal was gone. The golden filaments of the battle ward scattered, driven by unseen winds. The old Egyptian blinked up at the sky, his eye drawn into the void behind the stars. Dizzy, his mind tried to grasp the totality revealed in the abyss, filled with whirling disks of glowing light, of great oblate spheres of fire, of endless darkness.

Fool—making a student's mistake! Part of his mind gibbering in fear, he wrenched his attention away. The chaos of stars faded and Nephet realized his face was wet. A ghostly, barely visible, hand rose to touch his face and his fingers came away slick with glistening blood. The shape of the Caesar Aurelian loomed over him, a white outline against the jewel-bright sky. A crown of translucent golden holly gleamed on the Roman's head and shades hovered close around the prince, guarding him from evil. They smiled down at Nephet, lambent eyes shining, teeth white and sharp.

Why didn't I see you before? he wondered, raising a hand to the mother wolf curling around Aurelian's insubstantial feet. A prickly tongue licked his fingers clean, her breath hot on his hand. Old grim-faced men, clean-shaven, hovered around the prince, ghostly javelins and swords making a barrier of steel. But the red-beard cannot see you, Nephet realized, his thoughts becoming vague, his limbs heavy with sleep. And I, only now...

The priest's heart stuttered, then stopped. Blood moved weakly in his body, but his mind was already falling into darkness. The shape of Aurelian pressed stout fingers against a frail, old neck—then shook its head. Nephet's physicality began to decay, even as he grew cold and still on the broken ground.

Across the ramparts, fires raged where the glyph had shattered through black glass. Even in the physical world, the dead lay in windrows, the fighting wall toppled, bricks sizzling with heat. Three bodies lay where one colossus had struggled. Arad crumpled in a crater of vaporized brick and mud, his powerful limbs splayed on the ground, Odenathus and Zoe cast aside, faces slack in unconsciousness. Steam hissed from the earth, silt and mud boiling.

The few remaining priests of Horus crept from the battlefield, wounded and exhausted, most barely able to move. Some—blessed with servants—were borne away in litters. Others lay fallen, struck down in the struggle or stunned by the tremendous blast. Only Zoe, sprawled on the slope of the rampart, head hanging over the lip of the canal, showed any sign of life, her breast rising and falling, hand moving weakly, as she tried to rise up.

—|—

Splinters dug into Sextus' hand, though the pain was barely noticeable against a rush of bloodfire coursing through him. Gasping for breath, he scrambled up the last section of ladder onto the mirror platform. The round, silvered disk was a man's height and blazed with a shimmering reflection of the noon sun. The metal surface was suspended in a wooden frame mounted on an iron wheel. Two Egyptian boys squatted on either side, faces wrapped with cloth, staring at him in surprise.

'You two,' the engineer snapped, 'swing the disk 'round to flash the dam!'

Stung by the fierce tone in his voice, the boys worked quickly, each working the arm of a screw mechanism to raise the disk. Sextus forced himself to lean back against the railing, out of the way, upper body hanging out over a dizzying sixty-foot drop. His knuckles turned white with strain while the boys rotated the screw, raising the disk a hand span. The metal ring at the base of the disk was freed from a locking pin on either side and one boy turned the disk—now rotating freely—toward the south. The other squinted across the muddy canals, over a huge, spreading swamp filled with glistening bogs, stands of green cane, acres of meandering waterway and drooping,