“I think we can dispense with titles now, Tilphosa,” Metra said; a tic at the corner of her mouth showed the insult had gotten home. “The moon will be full tonight, but you and I only have to wait for high noon.”
Metra looked down at Cashel. “While I waited…” she went on, “I performed a location spell. You had the ring all the time, didn’t you? If I’d known that…”
She shrugged and made a sound with the tip of her tongue against her palate. Two Archai bent over Cashel. He twisted, but one of them ripped his tunic cleanly with a forearm and the other clipped the silken cord which held the purse around Cashel’s neck. The Archa’s delicate, three-fingered hand passed the purse to Metra.
She took out the ring and held the tiny ruby to the light. Its facets scattered rosy blurs around the courtyard.
“Yes…” she said. “The Mistress has been waiting a very long time, but the wait is over now.”
Waiting like a spider in her web, thought Cashel; and he tugged at the ropes, but they were tight and had no more give than steel chains would.
Garric started for the corniche, tugging at the sleeve of Thalemos’ tunic to hustle him along. Vascay, his face bleak as Garric had never before seen it, was already moving. His step had a hitch in it; he hesitated each time his peg leg came down on the coarse soil.
“Wait!” cried Metron, looking up from his incantations. A litter of flaccid, bloodless animals lay at his side; his hands and ivory blade were red with the blood that hadn’t dripped onto his words of power. “Thalemos, it isn’t time yet!”
Thalemos didn’t turn at the wizard’s voice. His expression was calm, but his face was set.
“It’s time and past time, I think!” Vascay said. He poised at the edge, waiting for Garric to choose their path downward.
“This way!” said Garric from the notch where the recently fallen bank provided a steep ramp down to the sea which had undercut it. He pointed toward the rectangular shadow to the left where the catacomb lay open. He and his companions could pick their way across the slope, though they’d have to be careful not to slip into the sea.
Archai rose from the water like fishflies hatching. They clambered up the escarpment directly in front of them, regardless of the slope. Occasionally the bank gave way; the ones who’d pulled it down tumbled into their fellows, then rose and crawled upward again.
They brushed past Garric and his companions with no more regard than a creek has for the men wading in it. Their limbs were slick and cold, like marble statues touched in the evening.
There were hundreds of the chitinous warriors already. Garric supposed more would appear for so long as Metron continued his chant and sacrifices.
The wizard thrust his lips out and gave a fluting call. Archai gripped Garric, three of them before him and more from behind where he couldn’t see them. He heard Thalemos shout and Vascay curse.
Garric tried to pull away. The scores of cold fingers held him firmly. He tried to force his way forward, over the cliff in the hope that gravity would tug him free. All he managed to do was to cut his shoulder by shoving it into an Archa’s raised forearm.
Relaxing, Garric looked at his companions. Vascay stood with no expression, his head turned back toward Metron. His arms were pinioned, but he still held his remaining javelin. Though the chieftain seemed relaxed, Garric knew that if the Archai relaxed their grip on him for an instant, his javelin would skewer the wizard’s throat.
Thalemos was spread-eagled, his feet held off the ground and his arms straight out from his side. His face was set in aristocratic resignation, but a muscle at the back of his jaw pulsed.
Metron resumed his chanting. His athame thrust, then tore. The ivory edge wasn’t sharp enough to cut, but the point could pierce a vole’s body and a quick twist of the blade let out the little creatures’ blood and entrails in a gush.
Wizardlight blazed again. Another wave of Archai emerged from the sea.
The leading ranks of lizardmen spread sideways as they approached the Archai. The insect monsters were individually shorter and slighter than most men, but the reptiles were shorter yet. They had bronze helmets and swords, however, and a few of them carried small wicker shields covered with scaly leather.
The two lines made savage contact. The bronze swords were sharper than the Archai’s fanged forearms, but the insects could parry with one arm and hack with the other.
Lizardmen and Archai both continued to chop at their opponents when horribly wounded, their limbs severed or coils of their intestines cascading around their ankles. Even after falling they twitched and tried still to strike. More Archai came from the sea; but the column of lizardmen continued to pour through the distant notch in the hills.
The Intercessor hung in a chair suspended between a pair of reptilian quadrupeds like nothing Garric had ever seen before. The beasts had small heads, long necks, and even longer tails. Each of them was many times the size of the biggest ox in the borough.
Echeon held a long staff of amethyst or purple glass. He chanted, stroking his staff through the air in time with his words of power. The lines of his face had a eunuch’s softness, but the features underneath were identical to those of the Intercessor Echeus, whose wizardry had flung Garric’s soul forward to this time.
Metron squeezed the corpse of the last vole in his left hand, then tossed it aside. He trilled another order. Garric expected the Archai holding him to react. Instead, a group of warriors seized Ademos, who’d been kneeling in prayer ever since he realized he was trapped between the Archai and their reptilian opponents.
Ademos mewled and flailed like a newborn baby as the Archai dragged him toward the wizard. Vascay said in an expressionless voice, “All those times I thought of cutting the little weasel’s throat myself but didn’t…Maybe I didn’t do him a favor after all, eh?”
He chuckled, but it sounded like a death rattle.
Metron gripped Ademos by the hair and twisted the bandit’s head back. Garric looked down. He’d seen worse, but it wasn’t something he wanted to watch. Ademos’ scream became a bubbling gurgle.
Crimson radiance flooded the plain, penetrating stone and sky alike. For an instant all sound ceased. Garric hung in transparent red light, staring into the bowels of the earth where he saw buried treasures and the bones of creatures more ancient than man. Just at the edge of Garric’s vision was a moving thing: alive but not of this world. Its jaws slowly devoured the rock in which it swam.
The flash passed, and the images it had shown became dreams rather than memories in Garric’s mind. Their reality was specious, the sort of truth into which wizards delved by blood magic.
The sea boiled with Archai, climbing onto the shore for as far as Garric could see to right and left. Once the Archai had ruled the world. Their civilization and race had perished in the distant past, but Metron had the skill to recall the dead in numbers limited only by his power.
The wizard swayed; his efforts had drained him as white as the bloodless corpse of Ademos in the grip of four Archai. They tossed the bandit onto the litter of lesser bodies, all dead in the service of Metron’s wizardry.
The lizardmen had been pressing close against the diminishing rank of Archai. Now they gave back again as insectile warriors clambered over the cliff edge beyond both flanks of the Intercessor’s troops.
Echeon lowered his staff with a dazed expression. He hooted an order. The beasts carrying his chair had been cropping mouthfuls of grass from among the tombs as they waited. Their heads rose; they gave startled whuffs, circled in clumsy unison, and moved twenty paces back from the battle line.
Metron stood swaying with his head bowed, his left hand over his eyes, and his right pointing the athame at the ground. The line of fresh warriors marched by him, mincing on their spindly legs like automatons. They hurled themselves into the lizardmen, driving them back in an orgy of mutual slaughter.