To his awareness as he soared above it, the lines of force created on the surface of the palace were clear as silver bands. Silver steam described the city. Drunk on prayers, it murmured, sang, without sound.
He was prepared to give his life. He had been prepared to give it in battle. This was battle. But such thoughts were done. The cistern under the city was yielding up its vitality in thrusting surges, like a heart.
The city was all silver now. Far off, it struck a golden shadow, Rarnammon. . . .
And to the east a shadow like molten bronze—
Medaci was the Lowlander who held the gate in the Zor.
She stood at the entry to the mansion in the black night. Seeing her take her position there, knowing from some arcane tradition or instinct of tradition, her hair raying on the wind and the folds of her cloak, she was supernatural; a creature of the firmament. Yannul saw her, turned and went with the others to the chosen area two or three streets away. He had remonstrated at the beginning. He must remain at hand. Very well, the power of the planet would course upward, yet still some animal might come by and harm her. She was beyond him by then, and did not listen, he thought. She had gone so swiftly, he felt she had died. It was his younger son who explained, leading Yannul aside. There would be no animals, no interruptions. Medaci did not even have to bear the unleashing of Power. Safca was elected for this. Safca would bear it. But Medaci was the guardian, some ingredient or symbol of the balance.
Yannul knew, as they all did, when the Power of the city began to stir. It was a terrible, wonderful, unspeakable thing.
He tried to blind and deafen himself with it.
He did not want Medaci to have been “chosen” even for this. Had she not already suffered enough through the psychic use of others? And he recollected the plain under Koramvis, the silent harp-string plucked over and over.
All along the opposite bank, over their river, the villages of the Zor would be watching, offering their own rituals to the esoteric night. The city gleamed, maybe, for those who could see it. Yannul did not want to see it. He was tormented. Finally he walked off from all of them, and from his own son, into the city’s enormous shadow, and sitting down in shadow commenced to pray, as once long ago, only for life, except now it was Medaci’s life.
The Lowland woman, the golden Amanackire who was Medaci, held the gate, the mansion on the hill. The high place. It had put out its temporal fires.
Safca, circling somewhere in the roof (briefly amused, visualizing herself a pigeon), perceived the bronze light of the city’s aura start to wash away the gloom.
How did I come to this? Safca inquired. I am nothing.
But she recalled the bracelet on her left wrist, and what it hid, what had been hidden since birth—the other bracelet, abhorrent, or maybe beautifuclass="underline" A ring of fine pale metallic scales, incorporated in her dark skin. Her mother had not lived long in Olm. A Lanelyrian, she had still grown used to Dorthar and the luxury of the Koramvin court, which was extended to a favored slave. Freed, she had fled back to Elyr and Lan, when the Lowlanders came. She had caught Dortharian superstition, for an excellent reason, perhaps. Olm’s guardian saw her, made her his concubine, lost interest. The child was born, premature, unimportant. On her deathbed, Safca’s mother had tapped Safca’s bracelet and the deformity they had concealed beneath. “From your father,” she had said. That was the only time, and that was all. She never said who had had her in Koramvis, whose cherished slave she was, who had freed her to escape. Nor positively had she ever said she was with child already when she lay back for the guardian. Only dreams had guided Safca after. She was never sure.
But now she was strong, Her wings beat and bore her up, and as the gigantic flame began to rise, a paean of joy, a hymn, tore through her wordlessly. And she believed she might be what her mother had indicated, and that her destiny sprang from it. So it was, conception, birth, the second birth called death.
The fabric of stones and sky gave way. Medaci lay like a smooth cool bead within the inferno that lifted Safca upward.
But northwest, a white flower of fire steadied the ecstasy and madness.
Bronze and silver and gold, the weavings of the light wove them all to that whiteness, which was Koramvis and her hills and the eye of the sleeping lake.
It was, in this high place, the swarthy Thaddrian who held the gate, guardian, black feather in a balance of pallor. A priest, he was not quite unversed in metaphysical conduct, or the intangible. And he had his own talents. His terror was nothing, nor did he count it.
Below him, the fair men and women maintained their own equilibrium, facing up toward her where she was on the hill’s crest, a tiny figure like a little doll.
But the Thaddrian, though facing away from her, knew the light came up through her, and presently, mundanely, he noted his own shadow cast before him on the earth, jet black from the dawn of whiteness on the crest of the hill.
In all its quarters and corners, the night lay, to the human eye, deep as water over every inch of Vis. The stars followed their courses. The moon went down. The hour before true dawn came quietly across the sea.
The ships like sleeping birds anchored, wing-folded, five miles off the tip of Alisaar. Her clockwork patrols, if they had noted them, had noted also their diplomatic distance, and let them alone. Alisaar might, besides, have other more pressing business.
The beacon on the edge of the western jungle wilderness had been seen to blaze by those who took heed of it. Thirty-five galleys of Free Zakoris, emerging from nowhere like things born out of mud, had swung northwest, perhaps to harry Saardos, or to attempt the Corhlish and Iscaian beaches.
Report stated the greater fleet of the Leopard, which kept on toward the Inner Sea, had grown like a conjuring trick to one hundred and seventy-six ships. There had been bays along that chartless jungle coast, where uncountable vessels might shelter, and slip out to join the concourse, or carry its dealings elsewhere.
Word was, eastern Karmiss had been covered, as if by a swarm, bleeding and on fire, the smoke of Istris one more cautionary beacon.
The mountain Pass from Thaddra into Dorthar would be fluid with battle.
On the passes above Vardish Zakoris, where Yl’s men now ran at will, the Dortharians would use the mechanics of avalanche to block the way. Even if the device had been betrayed, the Leopard would be in difficulties to prevent it. To swamp the Okris delta must be easier. The last message from that region had all the river inlets in arms, the reeds on fire, the stone towers holed by catapults. The wind, blowing to Anackyra, bore ashes and the cries of men, which could not be a fact, and was only a parable of despair.
In Xarabiss, the troops of Thann Xa’ath had retreated from the port of Lin Abissa, leaving the docks alight. A Xarabian detachment had pulled out of Moiyah and marched back to the border, to the Dragon Gate and Sar. There were similar desertions elsewhere, men forging homeward.
In the hour before dawn on the sea once called for Aarl, those who waked or watched on the King’s ship, saw Raldanash go by, walking on the open deck. Here and there a low-voiced greeting was exchanged. His whiteness, clothing and hair, seemed nocturnally luminous, as was the sea itself in patches. At the rail above the prow, he spoke with the captain.
They stood awhile, gazing west.
At sunrise, the vessels would make on. Yl’s great fleet, nearly twice their numbers, would sail to meet them. The area of meeting had been established by some Amanackire priest. It had a religious purpose.
The goddess would, naturally, be with them. The captain, leaving his King to his final living privacy, went away along the deck. A man of Marsak in Dorthar, the captain had never credited Anack, though he had wisely given her lip-service and offerings. Over the black water, he saw now the ghostly Ashkar banners of the Vathcrian galleys. And, moved by a sudden fury, the captain spat in the ocean, in case after all She might be real and he could show her how he rated Her paucity.