Now the Children of the Moons raised their swords together and screeched. The noise made Mishani shudder and cover her ears. She was sodden and frozen, huddled and filthy, insensible with fear. The Xhiang Xhi raised its own hands, the spindly digits of mist splaying wide, and from Lucia's mouth came an equally inhuman scream in reply.
The effect was immediate. Mishani could hear it even over the storm. The sussurus of the river, hitherto a background murmuring, increased to an angry hiss. She looked down from the hilltop and saw that the rain-speckled surface of the water, churned with spume, was flowing faster now, dragging the white foam and the dark pollution downstream. The noise intensified, underpinned by a low roar, until it had become a rushing torrent, breaking its banks. The river was in flood.
The armies of the Empire – who had settled at a wary distance from the Ko after the Children had appeared – scrambled to draw back from their positions, but they were too close-pressed to move quickly enough. Some of those at the fringes were caught up in the drastic rise of the river and swept away. Men fought to rescue their companions or fled for cover. The misfortune struck the Aberrants also, but there were none surviving so close to the bank on the north side, and the flood waters merely swept away the dead and those that had been turned to sculptures of earth.
In the river, the spirits and demons faced each other again. Both were noticably struggling against the flow, but they kept their feet. The Children screeched again, and then they struck, cutting through their enemies: five feya-kori went down in pieces.
But this time there was no quarter. The Children allowed them no time to reform. They chopped into the water where the demons had fallen, slicing through the black scum to the sludgy bodies beneath. They squealed in a frenzy, hacking with gleeful cries, their blades throwing polluted water and bits of burning muck in all directions. The river boiled around them, and the slim, ghostly eels of the river spirits thrashed and dodged in between.
Downstream, a small gobbet of filth bobbed to the surface and was carried away for a second before the river spirits enwrapped it and pulled it under. Then came more, chunks of varying sizes that gradually dissolved in the flow.
The Children of the Moons butchered the feya-kori over and over, and the river caught up the pieces and flung them away so that they could not reform again. For almost five minutes the appalling violence continued, until one by one the Children of the Moons stopped cutting, and the river ran clear.
They raised their swords again and gave a scream that could be heard all the way to Saraku, and in response the spirits that were attacking the Aberrant army renewed their assault with savage enthusiasm. The Weavers' defences crumbled as the feya-kori felclass="underline" they had invested so much in the demons that their loss tipped the balance. The Sisters took them apart rapaciously, and as they began to fall the spirits turned on the Weavers too, no longer afraid of their power. In moments, none were left alive.
The Weavers were dead, the Aberrant army scattered or destroyed. Gradually, the smoke dissipated and the extent of the carnage was laid bare to the eyes of the soldiers of the Empire. A cheer went up, swelling as it was joined by others, until the sound of it carried over the storm, over the restless tremors in the ground and the din of the moonstorm and the howl of the wind. The cheer gained shape, and became a chant:
Lucia! Lucia! Lucia!
They had stopped the Weavers, crippled their forces utterly. Even if the Weavers could muster another army now, the forces of the Empire would be able to hold them. For they had Lucia, the girl who commanded the spirits. At last, their saviour had revealed her power. With her, they could march into Axekami and take it back. With her, they could do anything.
But only Mishani was close enough to see that the droplets running down Lucia's face were not only rainwater. There were tears squeezing from beneath her lids.
Slowly, the Children of the Moons turned their dreadful black eyes upon the soldiers, and the chant faltered and died.
'Lucia!' Mishani cried. 'Lucia, what have you done?'
The first strike of lightning hit one of the artillery positions and annihilated it, destroying the hilltop and everyone on it in a tiara of flame. The second lashed down in the midst of the army, killing a dozen men instantly. The soldiers barely understood what was happening until the shaking of the earth suddenly intensified and it opened beneath them: a long, jagged split ripped the downs, and hundreds of men fell screaming. The wind turned to a localised hurricane, picking people up and flinging them into the river where they were drowned. The army broke down entirely. Soldiers fled, their weapons discarded, crushing each other in their desperate attempts to get away. Thousands upon thousands descended into complete disorder, every one interested only in preserving their own lives against the awful, unknowable forces that had suddenly turned against them.
The Children of the Moons stepped out onto the shore, surveyed the scene of abject panic all around, and began to kill.
The banks of the Ko ran with blood on both sides now. The Children swept here and there with their blades, scything through bodies. Men fell in uneven fractions. The river lapped hungrily outward, flooding ever more, sucking in those who could not escape the torrent. Blackened corpses still crackling with purple electricity lay in ragged circles where the lightning had hit. The smoke was rising again from the gash in the earth, and movement could be seen within it; when it passed, it left turf statues in its wake.
'Lucia!' Mishani shrieked from where she lay in the mud. 'Lucia! Stop them!'
But Lucia could not hear her, and the Xhiang Xhi paid no attention. It waved its hands above its host's head like the conductor of an orchestra. The Sister that had accompanied her as a bodyguard was looking from the carnage below to Lucia and back, uncertainty in her eyes.
A soldier came crawling up the hillside, fighting against the wind and rain, his eyes fixed on Lucia in supplication.
'Save us!' he cried. 'Save your people!'
But Lucia did not answer.
'Why won't you help us?' he demanded.
The Xhiang Xhi reached down to him, encircling him in its huge, spindly hands, and crushed him to a pulp with a cracking of bones.
Mishani screamed as blood spattered her. The horror and shock were too much. Her mind was frozen, her body paralysed.
Then Lucia jerked violently, as if some invisible force had punched her in the gut. The Xhiang Xhi shrieked, a long, drawn-out wail. And Lucia dropped, falling from where she hovered just above the ground. She collapsed as she hit the earth, crumpling like a ball of paper. The Xhiang Xhi, still attached to her, began to darken and attenuate, reaching toward the west, lengthening like a shadow at the end of the day until it stretched across the whole battlefield and over the horizon, to where the Forest of Xu lay. Then perspective twisted, and it was gone.
The effect on the spirits was immediate: they began to settle and fade. The river went quiet, its flow diminishing and retreating. The smoke from the chasm no longer hung in the air but sank and dispersed. The wind died, dropping from a hurricane to a light breeze. The lightning stopped.
Silence ached. Only the Children of the Moons remained amid the death that surrounded them. Their swords had lowered, and they looked up at the moons above. The clouds were coming apart; the unreal sensation in the air was passing. Even the rain had lessened to a drizzle, and finally stopped altogether.