He wished his predecessor had killed her when he had the chance. But even the best efforts of the spirits thus far were not enough to destroy his demons. The feya-kori were made strong by the blight that spread through the land, even as it weakened their opponents. Perhaps they were too strong to be stopped by any force left in Saramyr. They had only to get to Lucia, and it would all be over, the Empire's last hope gone.
Behind his Mask, Kakre's ruined face twisted in an idiot grin. The rumbling became unbearable, and the earth split.
The noise was colossal. The ground was shaking so violently now that the soldiers were falling over, grasping at each other for support. The artillery juddered out of position; mortars went toppling. On the north side of the Ko, a vast slice of land suddenly dropped away, plunging downward with a grinding roar and a billow of dust. Hundreds of Aberrants pitched squealing into its depths; an instant later a great fan of magma blasted out, high into the night, a pyroclastic fury of black smoke and flame.
Mishani, near-mad with terror, could not be sure if the fearsome cackling visage she saw in the fire was real or imaginary.
The smoke of the explosion spread across the battlefield, whipped and torn by the wind. As the magma splashed to the ground to scald and kill, Mishani thought she saw shapes moving in the smoke, swift darting things like monkeys. At first she imagined they must be skrendel, but they moved with a jerky flicker, never seeming to be quite where she thought they were. They passed among the Aberrants, springing upon them, bending to bite and springing away again. The Aberrant predators were in a panic: even the Nexuses could not control them now. And still the earth shook and smaller rifts spread across the downs, slumped trenches of broken grass and turf.
The smoke blew clear in one patch, and the purple stutter of lightning illuminated the uncovered scene for a moment. Nothing moved there. It was as if the Aberrants had all frozen in place. It was only when she saw one of them crumble that Mishani realised they had been turned to earth, sod effigies of themselves, by the bite of the nimble spirits.
The ground split again, this time beneath one of the feya-kori. With a wail, the demon toppled, and the chasm swallowed it with another fountain of magma.
The armies of the Weavers were being slaughtered. The wind had turned to knives and was cutting the predators and their handlers to pieces. The land was bucking and heaving, and within the smoke that belched from the chasms deadly spirits moved. Lightning played, killing dozens wherever it touched. Only the Weavers remained safe, their defences too strong to be easily tackled.
But through it all came the feya-kori. One of their number had fallen, but they had reached the River Ko now, which seethed as fleeing Aberrants were drowned by the spirits there.
She cannot hold them back! Mishani thought wildly. All this, and she cannot hold them back!
Lucia was motionless, unaffected by the rain or the wind or the shivering of the land. Her face was still uptilted, her eyes now closed, her arms hanging limp at her sides. It took Mishani a moment to notice that her feet were not touching the ground, but that she hovered an inch above it. Only the Xhiang Xhi moved, its fingers flexing as if it were a puppeteer, its wispy body writhing slowly above its host. The moons glared down upon them from behind the churning mess of tattered cloud, as lightning raked across the feya-kori again.
Then the demons halted, right on the bank of the river. Behind them, their army was being decimated. Many were scattering as their handlers died and they reverted to their animal instincts. The demons paid no attention. Their burning eyes were fixed on a single spot, something invisible which had arrested their progress.
Mishani squinted against the storm, and she could see something there. A strange glittering in the rain on the south bank of the Ko, a shimmer in the air as if the veils of droplets had turned to crystal. The soldiers were retreating from that spot as the phenomenon became more pronounced. It separated into three, the light tightening and hardening into form and shape.
Mishani knew what was happening before it was finished. She had heard this tale from Kaiku, long ago.
They were the mad spirits of the moonstorm, the offspring of the goddesses that ruled the night sky. The Children of the Moons had come.
They towered over the soldiers of the Empire. In Kaiku's story they had been twice her height, but now they had manifested themselves as giantesses, forty feet tall, the same as the demons they faced. They wore the form of women, clothed in decayed grandeur. Their robes were of exquisite finery that had fallen into ruin, and from their wrists and elbows hung ancient artifacts that swung gently as they moved. A cold glow exuded from them, like the brightness of their parents, casting a grim and unforgiving light, and their hair was like feathers. But it was their faces that were most terrible, for their features were smooth like partially melted masks of wax, and they blurred and shifted. Only their eyes were stable, holes of utter black through which might be caught a pulverising glimpse of eternity.
The discipline of the soldiers broke at last and they ran from the monstrous entities. But the spirits were not interested in them. Their abyssal eyes were turned upon the feya-kori, and from beneath their robes they drew thin blades which shone with a cruel luminescence.
Lightning flickered and the sky shrieked as the demons and the spirits faced each other across the river. Then, as one, they plunged in.
The clash was brutal and short. The feya-kori had greater numbers and strength, but they were ponderous in their movements, and the Children of the Moons flowed around them like liquid. The feya-kori swiped and swung, beleaguered by the insignificant attacks of the river spirits, but they could not hit the Children. When the counterstrikes came, the effects were devastating. Mishani saw one of the whirling spirits cut the forelegs away from a feya-kori, so that it toppled face-forward into the river. Another was sliced in half along its midriff and fell into two pieces, the water steaming and bubbling as it toppled. In moments, the five feya-kori had sunk, and the Children of the Moon stood alone.
But they were not alone for long. Scalding vapour rising from their back and flanks, the demons rose out of the Ko with defiant groans, their bodies whole again, rejoined where they had been sundered. The water was turning black with the poison of their presence. The Children, their reactions unreadable, stood motionless.
Then the feya-kori attacked: five of them lunging at the same enemy. Though two of them were cut to ribbons and splashed once again into the befouled river, their target could not avoid the rest. The feya-kori slumped onto one of the Children and it was borne under with an earsplitting shriek. Its brethren were upon the remaining feya-kori instantly, chopping them apart with surgical precision; but when the spirit got back to its feet again, Mishani noted how its movements were jerky, its outline indistinct and its aura less bright. The feya-kori had wounded it.
And the demons were reforming and emerging anew, sloughing off the small spirits of the river that were making futile attempts to drag them under again.
The entities met and matched. The splashing of their combat was like dull explosions under the cries of the storm. Rain-wet blades flickered and darted through the vile muck of the feya-kori, and the demons fell to pieces at their touch; but the spirit that they had hurt was slower now, and one of them caught it with a swipe of one club-like stump, smashing it hard so that it staggered. It guttered like a candle and then stabilised, but its light was noticably dimmer than before. As if it were not quite there as much as the other two.
As this was going on, the remaining spirits had not been idle. The Aberrant army had all but disappeared beneath the maelstrom. The ground was scored with chasms, smoke rolled over everything, small tornados roamed and lightning stabbed from the clouds; yet no move was made by the Weavers to retreat. They knew they would not get far if they turned and ran. Their only hope now lay in getting to Lucia, and that meant going through the Children. So they bent all their will to the feya-kori, and the Sisters did their best to harass and distract the Weavers; but between them, there was still a stalemate, and neither had much influence here.