For Uzhiro waved his arms, sweating, chanting cadences of power, sprinkling dust, sending ripples of fear through the throng. We all knew what he was doing. The guards chasing me would have left off doing that; they would be transfixed by the awful powers being unleashed in this place. Everyone craned to see, barely breathing, as Uzhiro chanted on and the corpse within the crystal coffin upon the catafalque grew in clarity and all might see the thunderous expression on that lowering face. That was a mystery, how plainly the face was visible, even to me, high on the balcony. At that distance the other people’s faces were mere blurs. But the ancient sorcerer’s face glowed with supernatural tyranny.
The foul stench of the incense puffed high into the interior of the temple. The dome opened, it seemed, onto infinity itself, although common sense said that the myriad specks of light were merely painted spots of mineral- glittering pigments. The long low moaning chants of the acolytes, the rooted swaying rhythms of the temple maidens, the cloying stinks of incense, all were calculated to tear away the senses from the brain, to impose false images, to induce a phantasmagoria of hallucinations.
San Uzhiro chanted and he had no doubts. His commands imposed themselves on the multitude, so that they saw with his eyes and heard with his ears.
Guiskwain, dead yet alive, sat up in the crystal coffin and looked about, that skeletal arm raised admonishingly.
No one fainted, no one passed out. All were transfixed, held scarcely breathing by the sheer occult power. And a sense of darkness gathered and coalesced under the dome. A brooding sense of power beyond the grave, of a stubborn life that two and half millennia could not quench, of perverse defiance of the natural order of life and death pervaded the temple and puffed upward in the rotting miasma of swamps and the fetid air of tombs sealed against the light.
“He lives!” screamed Uzhiro. “San Guiskwain lives!”
The cry was taken up in a tumultuous swelling cacophony of voices raised in rapture.
“He lives!”
Here was the miracle. Here the proof of the necromancer’s power.
“Through Guiskwain the Witherer shall the army become invincible!” screeched Uzhiro, flailing his arms.
“Through the greatest sorcerer dead yet living shall the Hawkwas gain all! Guiskwain lives!”
The long moment of triumph hung fire. The darkest pits of a Kregan hell had been opened. Now all, everyone present, turned to gaze with rapt adoration upon the lowering, vindictive, ashen face of Guiskwain the Witherer.
Transcendental, sublime, blasphemous — call it what you will. It was certain sure that all gathered here and held in this hallucinated trance believed with all their hearts. But — was this hallucination? Was this trickery? Or was a long-dead necromancer really revived, brought back to life, dragged once again into the light so as to destroy all I cared for in Vallia? Could the trick be no trick at all?
Did Guiskwain the Witherer, dead two and a half millennia, live?
Sixteen
Whether he lived or was dead made no real difference.
Whether he still moldered away in his crystal coffin or whether he had been blasphemously raised by necromantic power into a semblance of full-blooded life did not matter. What mattered was the belief, the impression, the effect.
These people believed.
The long low moaning shudder passed over them like a rashoon of the Eye of the World. They bowed. In a giant sighing rustle and the jangle of weapons and accoutrements they bowed their heads, crouched, extending their arms in swath after swath of ranked submission.
Was my daughter down there now, one of that hypnotized host? Did Dayra bow her head and tremble with all the others at the sight and stink of a long-dead wizard raised from the grave?
How in the name of Makki-Grodno’s disgusting diseased tripes could I know?
I was shaking. Sweat ran down my forehead and stung into my eyes. I blinked, swallowed, cursed — all the actions of an idiot without a thought in his thick vosk skull of a head. A girl in the russets and armor of a Battle Maiden ran lightly up past the half-naked temple girls. She spoke rapidly to Udo. His head went up; he gestured to Uzhiro. They conferred. Then Uzhiro swung back and called for everyone to rise and stare upon the sublime face and form of Guiskwain. Trylon Udo stepped forward. He held up a hand. He spoke with tremendous emotion, forcefully, jolting these people.
“Now are we invincible in battle. Now the potent force of San Guiskwain the Witherer is with us. He will waste away our enemies. Long and long have the Hawkwas waited for this time. And now it is here.”
His lifted hand gripped into a fist. “There is more. The army from Hamal landed in the south of Vallia has gained a great victory. The hosts of the emperor are withered away, his warriors strew the ground in windrows, their blood waters the dirt. This is a further sign! Guiskwain is with us and nothing can stand in our path.”
I had to stand peering through the stone bars of the balcony and listen, grinding down my nature that sought to burst out in bestial ferocity.
So the cramphs had come from Hamal, the bitter foe of Vallia, and not from Pandahem. An armada of skyships had brought them; that was a safe conclusion. And the emperor, Delia’s father, had been worsted. Had his bodyguard, the Crimson Bowmen, bought and paid for in red gold, betrayed him?
What of the men loyal to the emperor? What of the Blue Mountains, of Delphond, of my own Archers of Valka who had been sent for from Evir? What had happened down south?
And Delia?
Dayra. . Dayra. .
I had selfishly sought out my daughter here, and in that space of time I had been away from Vondium the empire might have fallen. Udo was shouting again, flushed, triumphant, overweening.
“Our own fleet of airboats will fly us south. We will join with our friends from Hamal. We will march upon Vondium and take that great city and utterly destroy all who stand in our path. All hail to San Guiskwain! All hail to the Hawkwas!”
Here once again was the hand of Phu-si-Yantong. I was convinced of that. He had extended the tentacles of his authority through Hamal, manipulating the pallans around the Empress Thyllis. He had provided the money and the weapons and now a fleet of vollers for Trylon Udo to take and sack Vondium. And, when the time was ripe, Phu-si-Yantong’s tools, in the guise of Stromich Ranjal and Zankov, would strike down Udo and take all for the greatest puissance of Phu-si-Yantong. It must be so.
“Sink me!” I burst out. “If you are alive, you necromantic kleesh, you’ll soon be dead again!”
The bowstave hissed from the cover, it seemed to string itself of its own will. The blue-fletched arrow nocked and the bow bent in a long sinuous flow of motion. The steel pile glittered. I loosed. The shaft flew sweetly. Clear across that wide space under the dome the arrow sped, piercing through the winding veils of incense smoke, drove hard and savagely full into San Guiskwain’s breast. I saw it. I saw the arrow curve upward. It ricocheted up with a high singing note of steel against crystal. It curved to fall away and be lost among the gathered host.
And San Guiskwain remained upright, unmoved, unharmed.
“By Krun!” I shouted. “Sorcery and more sorcery. I’ll have you yet, you cramph.”
Twice more I loosed and twice the sharp steel-tipped shafts caromed with that high crystal ringing from the unholy form of the dead wizard who yet lived.
Guards boiled along the balcony toward me. They were men. If I had to fight I had to fight. But, for the last time, and even as I loosed knowing the gesture was futile and useless, I cast a last shaft at the blasphemous form of Guiskwain.
Had I used the few brains I boast I should have shot at Uzhiro. Trylon Udo was a mere pawn. But my
