They were very near. He ordered the soldiers into a half circle.
"Charge!" he commanded.
Swords drawn, arrows nocked, they plunged between the trees. Omril followed close behind, with a small rear guard. They had gone only a few hundred yards before the wizard felt the camouflage spell snap out of existence.
There was no magic being cast ahead at all. The major spell was gone, too-and had been for who knew how long.
In the vanguard, men were shouting. Omril emerged from a thicket and found most of the troops gathered around a tree. They were silhouetted against an odd lavender glow. The sorcerer scowled and rode to the front.
He found Claric tied to the tree. The captain's naked body was covered by thin, luminescent tendrils, making it seem as if he had grown a coat of fine hair. The strands waved like miniature snakes, as if wafted by the breeze, but there was no wind that night. He was giving off enough purplish light to read a scroll by.
"Omril! Get this off of me! It itches like the five demons of Emin."
The wizard scanned the surrounding trees. "Where are the rebels?"
"Long gone," Claric spat. "They left after the bitch did this to me."
The statement confirmed what Omril had suspected. Still, there had to be one magician nearby. The camouflage spell, unlike the one on Claric's body, had to be actively maintained, and that could not be done from a great distance.
"Six men stay here," he ordered. "The rest fan out and search the woods." He was doubtful that they would find anything. He had not, as he had fancied, caught the rebels by surprise. They had deliberately enticed him. They had expected him to detect their magic.
"Ebrett!" Claric shouted to the sergeant standing next to Omril. "Cut me loose."
"No!" Omril snapped. The sergeant jumped. Claric opened his mouth to protest. "The spell on him is a trap. Touch him or the ropes and the demonhair will consume his skin, and yours as well."
"What?!" Claric burst out.
"What did you expect?" Omril asked. "That the princess would simply decorate you and leave you here to brighten the forest? She wanted revenge, no?"
"You're the wizard, undo the spell!"
"I can't. I'd have to unravel each thread one at a time. It would take me a week. You'll be dead before then of thirst. We can't even pass water to you." In actual fact, Omril could probably do the job in two days or less, if he went without sleep. But he had never liked Claric.
Claric looked like he was going to vomit.
"If you'd like, I can have the men shoot you with arrows," Omril offered. "It would be swifter. In another few hours the demonhair will start working its way into your, ahem, openings. If you think it itches now…"
"No, no."
"The alternative is leaving you to rot."
Claric moaned and gave no indication as to which he would prefer. Omril turned his attention to the sounds that had been coming from the trees to the north. Soon one of the lieutenants rode up. The first of the pincer groups had met the main party.
"Did you see anything?" Omril demanded.
"Nothing," the officer replied, so fascinated by Claric's outlandish appearance that he almost forgot to salute.
The wizard turned his back to Claric and the spectators and paced. The rebels had more in mind than revenge on Claric; if that had been the extent of it, Omril would have stood back and admired their handiwork. It was a handsome bit of thaumaturgy, requiring considerable patience, concentration, and discipline. He had not thought the female twin, with her hot-headedness, had the temperament necessary to spin demonhair. It was another facet of his enemies to remember. But they had surely not lured him to the site merely to provide an audience for their victory.
The night was growing distinctly darker. First Urthey had set, then the Sister, then Motherworld. Now only the recently risen Serpent Moon was left to shed light over the countryside. It was still several hours until sunrise. A good time, Omril realized, for a military assault.
And here was he, the single strongest weapon Lord Puriel had, out in the woods, leaving the fortress defenses short by a full cohort of men.
"Mount your steeds!" he shouted. "We're going back to the castle! Now!"
The soldiers had never seen Omril so agitated. They obeyed him even faster than if he had threatened them. They left their former captain to his fate, ignoring his outraged cries and whimpers, and raced back the way they had come. When they reached Rock Lake, they heard the din of battle echoing off the water. The noise came from the governor's keep.
XVII
HIEPHORA AND A DOZEN of her minor queens, hidden in the trees near Lord Puriel's fortress, watched Omril's cohort of men ride out through the barbican. The little people remained motionless, quiet as the flutter of butterfly wings. It was said that a rythni could stand on a man's shoulder and the man would be unaware of it. The riders crossed the moat, turned down the fork of the road leading along the shore of Rock Lake, and vanished into their own dust. If all went well, the wizard would not realize he had been tricked until it was too late. The rythni waited until the horizon concealed first the light of little Urthey, and, soon after, the bright glow of the Sister. Motherworld hung low in the sky, preparing to follow, displaying only half her face. The shadows grew long and dark.
"Now," Hiephora sang in her lilting, melodic mother tongue. Her queens darted off on gossamer wings, leaving her with her handmaiden, Cyfee. After exchanging a nervous glance they, too, launched into the air.
They circled three times, and in response, the leaves shook and fluttered. Hundreds upon hundreds of rythni women flooded out of the trees, a queen leading each wave. Carrying coils of rope, they sped into the open air above the moat, the twilight obscuring them to human eyes. They staggered their formations so that their flitting shapes would resemble the bats that dwelled among the corbels and rafters of the fortress.
The castle loomed, high and intimidating, full of stone and tile and mortar, emanating none of the sweet, nurturing music of the forest's living wood. Hiephora pierced the structure's sphere of influence and faltered, suddenly weak, pitched from straight flight. Many of her subjects, unable to endure the bitter kiss of the air, turned back, terror-stricken, including one of her queens.
"Courage!" she cried. "It fades!" Already the initial shock was lessening, as with the waters of a pond-cold on impact, but increasingly tolerable as one continued to swim. The edifice would do no permanent harm to her people, as long as they did not linger within it. The queens echoed her words of encouragement.
Two-thirds of her women, though they veered and emitted tiny cries, continued gallantly on.
Hiephora and Cyfee landed on a battlement, slipping into an embrasure in order to hide from the sentries. They commanded a view of the entire landward side of the fortress: the moat below, the desolate swath of land beyond that, the trees in the near distance. The last of those who had been daunted vanished into the foliage. She couldn't blame them. They had not been present when she had prophesied this battle a quarter century ago; they could not directly feel, as she did, why it was necessary to risk taboo, and aid Alemar and Elenya.
As Motherworld dipped sedately out of sight, reducing the night to as near darkness as Tanagaran ever saw other than on Dark Night, the cadres of rythni took their ropes and began looping the nooses around the merlons of the battlements, draping the free ends into the moat.
It was a dry moat, lined at the bottom with shattered rock and sharpened stakes, designed to thwart war mounts and siege engines, but negotiable by foot soldiers. One by one, men snaked across the swatch of cleared land, darkly clothed, faces smeared with black grease, their weapons tightly bound and padded, to join a handful of scouts who had come earlier. They rappelled down the embankment at preselected locations, crossed the moat, and fanned out to seize the ropes the rythni had just planted. Soon there were dozens of men scaling the stone walls.