The Sha-lug made camp on the seaward side of the coastal road. Their carts had suffered badly, traveling cross country. Else doubted that the band would survive the journey south to Dreanger.
Bone was concerned. 'What'll we do if a ship don't come?' Gordimer had vowed that warships would patrol the coast as far north as the roads of Vantrad until Else and his band were safely home.
'If no ship shows up I'll strap a mummy on your back. And like some black crow of an old woman, you can lug your baby around while you work.'
Bone was no more religious than Else. That was characteristic of Sha-lug. They had seen too much to be unquestioning in their conviction of God's Mercy. The old man made a sign warding the evil eye. He followed that with a gesture meant to invoke God's favor — if He so willed.
Bone did not like the dead. He bore a particular prejudice against those dead who had practiced their trade a long time. Of the ancient dead of Andesqueluz, the Demon Kingdom, whose sorcerer kings' accursed relicts Else's Company had pilfered from their tombs, Bone's opinion consisted of irrational hatred deeply awash in stark terror. These days the Demon Kingdom was lost in the backwaters of history, known intimately only to scholars, but echoes of the terrible truth lived on in myth and fairy tale.
But Bone was a good soldier.
Sha-lug was synonymous with Good Soldier.
There were no incidents that night. Nevertheless, Else did not sleep well. He could not help anticipating further deviltry from the night
Al-Azer claimed that the supernatural reverberations of the bogon's destruction had not damped out yet Anything might be attempted by sorcerers who wanted to spy on their neighbors during such unsettled times.
Else did not possess an imagination adequate to encompass the magnitude of his one cannon blast. None of the company but al-Azer er-Selim realized that the blast had changed the world forever.
Al-Azer would never speak the words. He would not write them down. Few mortals would realize the truth, even within the supernatural trades. But that one inspired blast had proclaimed the imminent end of Mankind's long subjugation to the Tyranny of the Night. Mankind now had a means to contest with the gods themselves, did Man but realize it for even the greatest gods were nothing more than bogons on a mightier scale, some with a dollop of intellect
The Wells of Ihrian vented concentrated magical power, the fertilizer in which the things of night flourished. The Holy Lands seethed with supernatural beings. The region was as critical to the Instrumentalities of the Night as it was to the religions that considered the Wells of Ihrian the Holy Lands.
There were dozens of other wells of magic scattered around the world but none were as potent as those found in the Holy Lands. Nor as concentrated. And all the wells, everywhere, were in a weakening cycle. Which meant a more difficult existence for the Instrumentalities of the Night, much harder work for sorcerers, and a lot more cold along the bounds of the inhabited world.
The greatest, least recognized power of me wells was that their magic kept the ice at bay.
Nothing about the wells was common knowledge. Changes in their flow were never obvious. Nor was the advance or retreat of the ice along the bounds of the world.
Both the Written and secular historical documents mentioned lions, apes, and wolves in lands around the Mother Sea. In antiquity. The lions had been hunted out by classical times. Apes survived only in the extreme west, in small numbers. Wolves could be found in the forests of the north and the mountains beyond the Kaifate of Qasr- al-Zed. Even the forests around the Mother Sea were, mostly, gone now.
And now a way had been found to tame the Instrumentalities of the Night.
Now a man like Else, with no mystical talent whatsoever, with not one of those delicate skills a sorcerer honed for decades so as to manipulate a few minor spirits, could butcher a count of the night as easily as he could exterminate his own kind.
Understanding left Az filled with stark terror. The falcon's blast might catch the eyes of the gods themselves.
The gods — pressed, al-Azer would admit that there were more gods than the One God, the True God, There Is No Other — were not known for indulging mortal behaviors offensive enough to be noticed. In particular, they would resent the threat to their own dominion.
Else did not know what he had done. A threat revealed itself. He did what he was supposed to do. He dealt with it based on hearsay and the tools at hand.
Al-Azer rested more poorly than did his captain.
A small warship showing the banner of Al-Mlnphet Appeared early next morning. The vessel brought a letter from Gordimer, meant for Else if the ship happened upon him.
Else gathered his men. 'The Lion has ordered me to report to him immediately, with the mummies and their accoutrements. He has another job for me. Already. Bone, that leaves you to take the company home. The galley only has space for maybe ten more men. One has to be Hagid. Bone, pick the others. There're other patrol ships out. I'll send them to cover you.'
Bone named nine names immediately. Each belonged to an injured or sick soldier.
Else nodded. Those men were likely to be more burden than asset. He said, 'It should be under a hundred miles to the Shidaun naval fortress. Abandon the carts. You'll make better time.'
Else hoped he was not whistling in the dark. The fortified harbor at Shidaun was at least a hundred twenty miles away. Probably more. And while the Kaif's enemies might not be fast enough to catch the Sha-lug from behind, their sorcerers had ways of reaching out to potential allies between here and Shidaun. Once the night returned.
Al-Azer looked grim. He would be the last man in the band allowed to board a ship and scurry away to safety. The Master of Ghosts was the company's most important protector.
Else made the ship's master put in at Shidaun. There he used his authority to compel the garrison commander to send marines north to meet Bone.
That was all that he could do for his men.
3. St. Jeules ande Neuis, in the End of Connec
Brother Candle reached St. Jeules ande Neuis after noon prayers, on the third day of Mantans, in the third year of the Patriarchy of Sublime V in Brothe. Man and boy, adult and child, the villagers should have been getting ready for the bitter long hours of spring planting.
They had been preparing, naturally. But with little enthusiasm. Word had come that a Perfect Master was headed their way. The peasants were eager to see a famous holy man, even if few of them were believers themselves. The people were eager to hear and debate the message the Perfect Master would bring.
Even poor farmers in the Connec enjoyed an active intellectual life. Many minds still could not understand the Maysalean divergences from Episcopal creed — but most Connectens were willing to argue.
The Maysalean Heresy had been around for decades but only lately had it begun to catch on. Though there was as much nationalistic fervor in that as philosophical conviction. The Heresy's growth was a response to the incessant outrages practiced by the illegitimate Patriarchs of Brothe.
One hundred and fifty-six years had passed since the election of the Connecten Ornis of Cedelete to the Patriarchal throne. Within hours the unheroic Ornis fled the Holy City, harried by a mob whipped into a frenzy by agents of the Brothen Five Families. Who considered the western religious Patriarchy a part of their birthright.
Legitimate Patriarch Ornis, taking the reign name Worthy VI, established himself in the Palace of Kings at Viscesment. Though legitimate in canon law, Worthy's Patriarchy in exile was impotent. His own countrymen in the End of Connec did not take him seriously. His successors made up a parade of ineffective, craven, and often quickly murdered Patriarchs. Meanwhile, the illegitimate line of Usurper Patriarchs in Brothe came to be recognized by most of the Episcopal bishops, archbishops, and Principals. The Five Families of Brothe could pay much bigger bribes. Only lukewarm support from me Grail Emperors kept the Viscesment anti-Patriarchy breathing.
