‘Mighty Cyrgon will protect us.’ Santheocles’ voice was set in a willful note of stubborn imbecility.
‘Why don’t you go talk with Otha of Zemoch, Santheocles?’ There was a sneer in Zalasta’s voice. ‘He’ll tell you how the Elder God Azash squealed when Anakha destroyed him.’ Zalasta suddenly broke off. ‘He comes!’ he choked. ‘Closer than we’d ever thought possible!’
‘What are you talking about?’ Ekatas demanded.
‘Anakha is here!’ Zalasta exclaimed. ‘Go to your generals, Santheocles. Tell them to call out their troops and order them to scour the streets of Cyrga, for Anakha is within your walls! Hurry, man! Anakha is here, and our deaths stalk the streets with him! Come with me, Ekatas! Cyrgon must be warned, and eternal Klael. The night of decision is upon us!’
Elron ticked off the count on his fingers and swore. No matter how he slurred or compressed the words of that last line, it still had one beat too many. He hurled his quill-pen across the room and sank his face into his hands in an artful pose of poetic despair. Elron did that frequently when composing verse. Then he hopefully raised his face as a thought came to him. He was nearing the final stanzas of his masterpiece, after all, and an Alexandrine would add emphasis. What would the critics say?
Elron agonized over the decision. He cursed the day when he had chosen to cast the most important work of his career in heroic couplets. He hated iambics. They were so mercilessly regular and unforgiving, and pentameter was like a chain around his neck, jerking him up short at the end of every line. ‘Ode to Blue’ hung in the balance while her creator struggled with the sullen intransigencies of form and meter.
Elron could not be sure how long the screaming had been going on or exactly when it had started. His mind, caught up in a creative frenzy, had blotted out everything external to that one maddeningly recalcitrant line. The poet rose irritably to his feet and went to the window to look out at the torch-lit streets of Natayos. What were they screaming about? Scarpa’s soldiers, ignorant, unwashed serfs for the most part, were running, bawling in terror like so many bleating sheep. What had set them off this time?
Elron leaned slightly out to look back up the street. There seemed to be a different kind of light coming from the part of the ruined city that was still buried in tangled brush and creeping vines. Elron frowned. It was most definitely not torchlight. It seemed to be a pale white glow instead, steady, unwavering, and coming from dozens of places at the same time.
Then Elron heard Scarpa’s voice rising over the screams. The crazy charlatan was shouting orders of some kind in his most imperial voice. The rabble in the streets, however, were ignoring him. The army was streaming along the cobbled streets of ruined Natayos toward the main gate, pushing, howling, jamming together and struggling to get through that hopelessly clogged gateway. Beyond the gate, Elron saw winking torches streaming off into the surrounding jungle. What in God’s name was going on here?
Then his blood suddenly froze. He gaped in horror at the glowing figures emerging from the side-streets of the ruin to stalk implacably along the broad avenue that led to the gate. The Shining Ones who had depopulated Panem-Doa, Norenja and Synaqua had finally descended on Natayos!
The poet stood frozen for only a moment, and then his mind moved more quickly than he’d have thought possible. Flight was clearly out of the question. The gate was so completely jammed that even those who had already reached it had little chance of forcing their way through. Elron dashed to his writing-table and swatted his candle with the flat of his hand, plunging the room into darkness. If there were no lights in the windows of this upper floor, the horrors that stalked the streets would have no reason to search. Frantically, stumbling in the darkness, he ran from room to room, desperately searching for any other burning candles that might betray his location. Then, certain that he was safe for the moment at least, the one known throughout Astel as Sabre crept back to his room to fearfully peer around the edge of the window-frame at the street below.
Scarpa stood atop a partially-collapsed wall issuing contradictory commands to regiments that evidently only he could see. His threadbare velvet cloak was draped over his shoulders and his makeshift crown was slightly askew. Not far from where he stood, Cyzada was saying something in his hollow voice—an incantation of some kind, Elron guessed and his fingers were weaving intricate designs in the air. Louder and louder he spoke in guttural Styric, summoning God only knew what horrors to face the silent, glowing figures advancing on him. His voice rose to a screech, and he pawed at the air, frantically exaggerating the gestures.
And then one of the incandescent intruders reached him. Cyzada screamed and flinched back violently, but it was too late. The glowing hand had already touched him. He reeled back as if that almost gentle touch had been some massive blow. Staggering, he turned as if to flee, and Elron saw his face.
The poet retched, clamping his hands over his mouth to hold in any sound that might give away his presence. Cyzada of Esos was dissolving. His already unrecognizable face was sliding down the front of his head like melted wax, and a rapidly-spreading stain was discoloring the front of his white Styric robe. He staggered a few steps toward the still-raving Scarpa, his arms reaching hungrily out toward the madman even as the flesh slid away from those skeletal, outstretched hands. Then the Styric slowly collapsed to the stones, bubbling, seething, his decaying body oozing out through the fabric of his robe.
‘Archers to the front!’ Scarpa commanded in his rich, theatrical voice. ‘Sweep them with arrows!’ Elron fell to the floor and scrambled away from the window. ‘Cavalry to the flanks!’ he heard Scarpa command. ‘Sabers at the ready!’
Elron crawled toward his writing-table, groping in the dark.
‘Imperial guardsmen!’ Scarpa bellowed. ‘Quicktime, march!’
Elron found the leg of the table, reached up and frantically began grabbing at the sheets of paper lying on the table-top.
‘First Regiment—charge!’ Scarpa commanded in a great voice.
Elron knocked over the table, whimpering in his desperate haste.
‘Second Regiment—’ Scarpa’s voice broke off suddenly, and Elron heard him scream.
The poet spread his arms, trying to gather the priceless pages of ‘Ode to Blue’ out of the darkness.
Scarpa’s voice was shrill now. ‘Mother!’ he shrieked. ‘Pleasepleaseplease!’ The resonant voice had become a kind of liquid screech. ‘Pleasepleaseplease!’ It sounded almost like a man trying to cry out from under water. ‘Pleasepleaseplease!’ And then the voice wheezed off into a dreadful gurgling silence.
Clutching the pages he had found, Sabre abandoned his search for any others, scurried across the room on his hands and knees, and hid under the bed.
Bhlokw’s expression was reproachful as he shambled back across the night-shrouded gravel. ‘Wickedness, U-lat,’ he accused. ‘We are pack-mates, and you said a thing to me that was not so.’
‘I would not do that, Bhlokw,’ Ulath protested.
‘You put the thought into my mind-belly that the big things with iron on their faces were good-to-eat. They are not good-to-eat.’
‘Were they bad-to-eat, Bhlokw?’ Tynian asked sympathetically.
‘Very bad-to-eat, Tin-in. I have not tasted anything so bad-to-eat before.’
‘I did not know this, Bhlokw,’ Ulath tried to apologize. ‘It was my thought that they were big enough that one or two might fill your belly.’
‘I only ate one,’ Bhlokw replied. ‘It was so bad-to-eat that I did not want to eat another. Not even Ogres would eat those, and Ogres will eat anything. It makes me not-glad that you said the thing that was not so to me, U-lat.’
‘It makes me not-glad as well,’ Ulath confessed. ‘I said a thing which I did not know. It was wicked of me to do this.’