“There, my lady.” Sarika pointed, her voice soothing.
He looked like an ant toiling up the mountainside. They all looked like ants. Her wardsmen, the Warders of Beshtanag, defending the mighty wall. Other ants in bright armor swarmed it, creeping along the top with their siege-towers and ladders, while the battering ram boomed without ceasing. Lilias sat back in her chair, surveying her crumbling empire. She remembered, now. She’d had a high-backed chair of office placed here, on the terrace of Beshtanag Fortress itself, to do just that.
Lilias.
Calandor’s voice echoed in her skull. “No,” she said aloud. “No.”
Her Ward Commander, Gergon, toiled up the mountainside, nodding as he went to archers posted here and there, the last defenders of Beshtanag. It was warm and he was sweating, his greying hair damp beneath his helmet. He took it off to salute her. “My lady Lilias.” He tucked his helmet under his arm, regarding her. His face was gaunt and the flesh beneath his eyes hung in bags. He had served her since his birth, as had his father and his father’s father before him. “I am here in answer to your summons.”
“Gergon.” Her fingers curved around the arms of the chair. “How goes the battle?”
He pointed. “As you see, I fear.”
Below, the ants scurried, those inside the wall hurrying away under its shadow.
A loud crr-ackk! sounded and a web of lines emerged on a portion of the wall, revealing its component elements. Rocks shifted, boulders grinding ominously. Lilias stiffened in her chair, closing her eyes, drawing on the power of the Soumanië. In her mind she saw her wall whole and gleaming; willed it so, Shaped it so, shifting platelike segments of mica, re-forming the crystalline bonds of silica into a tracery of veins running throughout a single, solid structure. What she saw, she Shaped, and held.
There was a pause, and then the sound of the battering ram resumed.
Lilias bent over, gasping. “There!”
“Lady.” Gergon gazed down at the siege and mopped the sweat from his brow, breathing a sigh that held no relief. “Forgive me, but it is the third such breach this morning, and I perceive you grow weary.” His voice was hoarse. “I am weary. My men are weary. We are hungry, all of us. We will defend Beshtanag unto the death, only …” The cords in his weathered throat moved as he swallowed, hale flesh grown slack with privation and exhaustion. “Three days, you said. Today is the fourth. Where are they?”
Lilias, you must tell him.
“I know.” She shuddered. “Ah, Calandor! I know.”
Before her, Gergon choked on an indrawn breath, a fearful certainty dawning in his hollow-set eyes. He glanced down at his men, his shoulders sagging with defeat, then back at her. “They’re not coming,” he said. “Are they?”
“No,” she said softly. With an effort, Lilias dragged herself upright in her chair and met his gaze, knowing he deserved that much. “I lied. I’m sorry. Something went awry in the Marasoumië. I thought …” She bowed her head. “I don’t know what I thought. Only that somehow, in the end, it wouldn’t come to this. Gergon, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
A sound arose; two sounds. They seemed linked, at first—the redoubled sound of the battering ram, Radovan’s rising shout. He plunged at her, his smouldering eyes gone quite mad, the paring-knife held high overhead. Somewhere, Sarika’s shrill scream echoed against Gergon’s belated cry of protest.
Lilias dealt with it unthinking.
The Soumanië on her brow flared into life, casting its crimson glow. Abandoning every tendril of her defense of the wall, she drew upon the Soumanië and hurled every ounce of her remaining strength at him, Shaping the pulse of his life-force as surely as she had Shaped the veins of silica. Radovan stiffened mid-strike, his free hand clutching at his throat; at the silver collar he wore, the token of her will circumscribing his life. Sunlight shone on the edge of the paring-knife, casting a bar of brightness across her face. When had he stolen it? How long had he planned this? She had known, known she should have freed him! If he had only asked, only spoken to her of his resentment … but, already, it was too late. Panicked and careless, Lilias forgot all else, concentrating the Soumanië’s power upon him, until his heartbeat fluttered and failed.
Lifeless knees buckling, Radovan slumped to earth.
At the base of the mountain, a great shout arose.
The crash resounded across the forests of Pelmar as a portion of her wall crumbled; crumbled, resolving itself irrevocably into shards and chips, rough-hewn boulders. There was a price to be paid for her lapse, for the act of will that had saved her life and taken his. A gap wide enough to drive a team of four through stood open, and Haomane’s Allies poured through it. For three days, Aracus Altorus had held his troops at the ready, waiting for such an opening. Now he seized it unhesitating, and a trickle of ants grew to a stream, swelled to a flood. A clangor of battle arose and, all along the wall, defense positions were abandoned as the wardsmen of Beshtanag surged to meet the influx. Siegeladders thumped against undefended granite. Haomane’s Allies scrambled over the wall by the dozen, their numbers growing. On the terrace, her Ward Commander Gergon shouted futile orders.
“No,” Lilias said, numb with horror. “No!”
How could it all fall apart so swiftly?
They came and they came, erecting battle-standards on Beshtanag Mountain. Regents of Pelmar, lords of Seahold, ancient families of Vedasia, and oh! The banners of the Ellylon, bright and keen, never seen on Beshtanagi soil. And there, inexorable, moved the standard of Aracus Altorus, the dun-grey banner of the Borderguardsmen of Curonan, unadorned and plain.
“No,” Lilias whispered.
Now, Lilias.
“No! Wait!” She reached for the power of the Soumanië; reached. And for once, found nothing. After all, when all was said and done, she was mortal still, and her power had found its limits. Radovan lay dead, a paring-knife in his open hand, his heart stopped. The earth would not rise at her command and swallow her enemies; the roots of the dense forest would not drink their blood. The Soumanië was a dead ember on her hrow. Somewhere, Sarika was weeping with fear, and it seemed unfair, so unfair. “Calandor, no!”
It is time Lilias. ,
She had fallen to her knees, unaware. In a rising stillness no one else perceived, something bright flickered atop Beshtanag Mountain. Sunlight, glinting on scales, on talons capable of grasping a full-grown sheep, on the outstretched vanes of mighty wings. No one seemed to notice. At the base of the mountain, Haomane’s Allies struggled on the loose scree inside the wall, fighting in knots, surging upward, gaining ground by the yard. Assured of her temporary safety, Ward Commander Gergon, striding down the mountain, shouted at his archers to fall back, fall back and defend. All the brightness in the world, and no one noticed.
“Please don’t,” Lilias whispered. “Oh, Calandor!”
Atop the mountain, Calandor roared.
It was a sound like no other sound on earth.
It held fire, gouts of fire, issuing forth from the furnace of the dragon’s heart. It held all the fury of the predator; of every predator, everywhere. It held the deep tones of dark places, of the bones of the earth, of wisdom rent from their very marrow. It held love; oh yes. It held love, in all its self-aware rue; of the strong for the weak, of the burden of strength and true nature of sacrifice. And it was like trumpets, clarion and defiant, brazen in its knowledge.
“Calandor,” Lilias whispered on her knees, and wept.