The Dark Lord

chamber, filled with shining, dark machines. Glimmering lightning flared in the shadows and something huge bent over a slab of mirrored black stone. Glossy rust-colored wings shifted, one pair, then four rising and falling around a ridged circumference. A tiny creature squirmed and writhed on the gleaming table, screaming endlessly. Bright red blood smeared silky fur. Stubby-fingered hands groped mindlessly at the air. Delicate white cilia descended, adjusting minute jewel-like tools.

Mohammed jerked back, horrified. Raha was watching him from the darkness. The vision faded, the vast city falling away into dimness, buried by the relentless ice. The terrible cold lingered, pricking his skin as the tiny knives had worked in the living body of the furred creature.

'Did you think the birth of the race of men was pure? No—even in the beginning there was imperfection.' Raha drew close, her hands radiating a faint heat. The light between her palms glowed through her skin and Mohammed could see the outline of delicate finger bones. 'From base flaw rose wonders unlooked for. The power, which presses the Sun and the Moon into its service, encompasses all things, men not least of all. Do not seek certainty, my lord. How can love grow, among such cold geometries?'

'Was—' Mohammed's horror choked the words in his throat. 'Was this the face of the Wise One, who created men from dust, from a little germ...' He could not continue, stunned.

'Is the face of a newborn the face of a grown man?' The woman's voice was faint in the darkness. 'Is the face of the grandson, the face of the grandfather? As the wheel turns, even the foulest act may plant a seed of joy. All things transform...'

Raha opened her hands, letting stuttering, flaring light spill forth. Mohammed staggered back—in the flashing light, in the dark spaces between the warm golden flare, Raha filled the world; enormous, blue-black arms like wheel spokes, reaching from earth to sky, myriad faces looking upon all directions and compasses. A thousand hands moved as one, a bending forest pressed by hurricane winds and delicate feet danced on the crown of the world, ringed with whirling, blazing suns. The man became aware of a tone, a singing single note, vibrating in the void. His eyes widened, and the last of his body cracked and crumbled into ash, rushing away in the wind from the abyss.

The woman closed her hands and the vision collapsed into a burning fire-encircled mote, then a shimmering cruciform letter, then into nothing. The golden light faded and the trembling tone faded away into the sighing branches of the fig tree. Even the sky snapped back into focus, a flat curtain of blue arcing overhead.

'Do you see?' Raha said. 'You must let go of this shell. You must go onward.'

Mohammed could only feel the thud-thud of his heart. Even the woman's voice was very faint and far away. Glorious visions blinded him, and most of all, he heard a familiar, beloved sound, echoing in the spaces between his heartbeat, in the spaces between Raha's words.

It is the sound of the morning of the world, he wondered, overcome with fierce emotion. The wind blowing in empty spaces. The tide. The moon. The roar of the surf on a barren shore. It is the voice from the clear air.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Above the Harbor of Phospherion, Constantinople

Iron shoes clattered on stone paving, drowning the jangle and clank of armor and shields. Khadames jogged wearily up a sloping, narrow street, shoulder to shoulder with a mass of Persian grivpani. The soldiers were clad in lamellar mail from head to toe, vision reduced to a pair of reinforced eyeholes in a conical helm. For the moment, while the column rattled into an octagonal plaza overlooking the Golden Horn, Khadames' helmet bounced on a strap over one shoulder. Sweating heavily in the bulky armor, the general needed to see more than he needed protection—at least for the moment!

A steadily increasing din echoed back from the three- and four-story buildings; a sustained hoarse shouting and the ring of booted feet on stone. Khadames, though he was bone-weary, gathered himself and pushed ahead, jogging through the mass of his column. The other diquans tramped on, one foot in front of the other, but Khadames knew they were exhausted. The heavy overlapping armor and plated shoes of the Persian nobleman was not made for marching on foot. They were designed for fighting from a powerful horse. But here in the confines of the city, in these narrow, twisting streets and overhanging lanes, among the rubble, their chargers were of little use.

Khadames jogged into the plaza, a spiked mace already in hand, small round shield strapped to his left arm. A crowd of men ran towards him, shouting in alarm. They were a disordered, panicky mob of Armenian mercenaries with braided beards and fish-scale armor. Part of the motley army the King of Kings had left to defend the captured city. Khadames cursed tiredly to himself, resting his mace on one shoulder. What did they see, a ghost? His voice, pitched to carry, rang out. 'Persia, to me! Bannermen, to me!'

Some of the fleeing men slowed, staring in apprehension at the column of armored diquans stomping up the street. Khadames clouted one of them on the shoulder, bringing him to a startled halt. 'Why are you running?' the general shouted. The Armenian blinked, panic fading as he saw stalwart men filling the plaza, then turned and pointed.

'The Greeks are coming!' he blurted, eyes wide. 'The spear wall is coming!'

One iron-sheathed hand grasping the man's leather collar, Khadames gestured in an arc with the mace. 'Triple line,' he bellowed, harsh voice reverberating from the scorched, soot-stained buildings. 'Prepare to advance at a walk!'

Persian grivpani spilled out into the plaza, rattling and clanking, forming up around the tall, golden standards of the house of Sassan. The generals' own battle flag arrived—a deep crimson sunflower on a field of blue—and Khadames took comfort from the familiar banner's presence. His forefathers had fought for nine generations under the watchful eyes of the tavgul. The Persian knights began to form their line, small shields braced, maces, longswords and spears at the ready. The older, more experienced men pushed up to take the front rank. Khadames paced west to the end of the formation, dark eyes scanning the men, looking for loose buckles, untied straps, anything to fail in the shock of battle, fouling a man's arm. The front of a temple, painted columns cracked and splintered by terrible heat, formed an anchor for their flank. Khadames was pleased to see his men were still game for a fight.

'You—what did you see?' The general turned to the hapless mercenary, now in the hands of two of his bodyguards. 'Where were you, and why did you run?'

The Armenian swallowed nervously, long neck bobbing like a crane dipping. His throat was chafed and red where iron armor rubbed against bare flesh. 'Great lord,' he stammered, 'we were marching to the port from the Gate of Gold. By your command, we were told!'

Khadames nodded, gesturing for the man to continue. As he had feared when Shahr-Baraz departed, the army left under his command was too small—particularly without the feckless, cowardly Avars—to hold the massive length of Constantinople's walls. Had the city been a friendly one, with a citizen militia to watch for attacks and handle simple patrols, he could have managed. As it was, with the gate of Charisus and several hundred feet of the double outer wall smashed to rubble by Lord Dahak's invocation, his paltry force of horsemen and mercenaries were simply not up to the job.

The evacuation of the city had begun as the dawn wind rose, with the first ships slipping away from the Golden Horn, heading for the wharfs and quays of the eastern side of the strait. Khadames had hoped the Romans would fail to notice the withdrawal of the Persian regiments from the walls. The mercenaries had been informed a few hours later. Khadames hoped they would make a sufficient screen for the departure of his own men. A faint hope, he thought wearily, and now crushed by circumstance.

'We heard the Romans entered the city,' the lancer hurried on, 'so our captain bade us march—at double- time—back down the western road to the harbor.' The man rubbed the back of a glove against his mustache. 'When we entered the big plaza with the arch we saw the Greeks. Our captains made us form a line, spears forward, with other companies gathering there. But the Greeks rushed with their spear wall and broke through the line. All we could do was run.'

Khadames nodded, though each word dropped into his stomach like a leaden weight. The 'big plaza' must be the forum of the Bull, only a few blocks away to the south, nearly at the center of the city. If the Roman army and their thrice-damned 'spear wall' were fighting there, most of his men remaining in the city were cut off. The evacuation was still underway down on the docks and time was running short.

'Very well,' Khadames said, stirring himself to action. He glanced across the plaza; more Armenian and