On this day, however, everything had stopped. The river had turned in a moment to gla.s.s and a clearly defined edge was created: a small cliff of gla.s.s, standing half the height of a man, stretching ninety paces east to west. Occasionally, gla.s.s beads that once had been water droplets strained out of the gla.s.s, held back by a tiny sliver of hopelessness. A single moment more and they would have dropped to freedom and life within the lake, but they had been a splinter in time too late.
The water of the lake lapped disconsolately at this edge of gla.s.s, caressing it, murmuring to it, but there was no response. The river was dead.
The juit birds stayed well away from the gla.s.s river. Those who"d had their nests close to the mouth of the river moved them away, cradling either chicks or eggs in their oversized beaks as they stalked awkward-limbed through the shallows to safer abodes. No juit bird would come to within two hundred paces of the dead river and, in their daily meandering through the reed beds, constantly kept their backs to the north and the gla.s.s.
The juit birds knew what had caused this calamity and they cursed, not the One, but the Magi who had, so many thousands of years ago, raised the gla.s.s pyramid from the desert floor.
If it had not been for Threshold . . .
On this night the reed banks were quiet, as usual. There was occasional movement as birds resettled themselves in their roosts among the reed beds, or snapped sleepily at a neighbour, but mostly there was calm and stillness throughout the millions of juit birds who populated the lake.
Then, suddenly, every bird jerked its head upward, bright black eyes fully awake and aware.
Someone called.
"Ah!" Maximilian felt the breath pushed from his chest as he staggered against a stone wall, and he sc.r.a.ped several fingertips as his hand scrabbled for purchase.
He heard movement about him, felt other bodies stumble momentarily against his, heard others gasping for breath.
"We"re here," Avaldamon said.
"Where?" Maximilian managed to get out, momentarily disorientated and forgetting what it was he did, stumbling about in the unknown.
"Aqhat, I hope," Avaldamon said. "Are we all here? Ishbel? Serge? Doyle?"
Voices murmured a.s.sent, and Maximilian reached out for Ishbel"s hand. She gripped it tightly, moving against him for rea.s.surance.
Maximilian looked around, his eyes becoming more used to the dark. "We"re in a courtyard."
"In the great courtyard, to be precise," said Ishbel. "There is a gate over there . . . see it? It leads down to the river. DarkGla.s.s Mountain is in that direction," she nodded to the west, "over the river. It cannot see us here if we stay close to the wall."
Serge and Doyle had their swords drawn and had positioned themselves on the outside of the small group, looking for any danger.
"There is no one else," Ishbel said. "Not even an owl. Nothing."
"Everything would have been eaten by the Skraelings," Doyle said. "At least there don"t seem to be any of the loathsome wraiths here."
"They"re likely all headed for Elcho Falling," Maximilian said dryly.
"We need to find some shelter," said Avaldamon. "Then we need to talk while we wait for the dawn."
The One lay flat on his back in the middle of the desert, halfway between Sakkuth and Aqhat. His limbs were spreadeagled, and his obsidian eyes were wide, staring unblinking at the starry night sky.
The starlight twinkled deep within his gla.s.s flesh.
The One was not happy. He could feel movement and power and understood that the Lord of Elcho Falling and his bride from h.e.l.l had somehow transported themselves far south.
South to DarkGla.s.s Mountain.
"No!" the One whispered.
He knew what they wanted.
They wanted to destroy the pyramid.
And him.
They had their pretty tricky magics at their fingertips and they were going to walk into the Infinity Chamber and -- Suddenly the One remembered what he"d left in the Infinity Chamber.
The Book of the Soulenai.
He hissed, and all the sand surrounding his body began to roll and jump, as if it were being heated on a giant griddle.
Leaving that book had been an enormous tactical error.
"But not one that can"t be fixed," the One said, leaping to his feet. He stretched out his arms to either side, straining them until the tendons and muscles bulged.
Then, with a slightly worrying creak, the One began to grow.
On Lake Juit, the birds stared into the night.
Then, in the same instant, the entire population of juit birds lifted screaming into the air.
Chapter 14.
The Outlands.
Once river G.o.d and former Tyrant of Isembaard, Isaiah now led some one hundred thousand Isembaardian soldiers north from the Salamaan Pa.s.s, heading for Elcho Falling to aid its lord. Each night, with well-honed practice, the Isembaardians established a camp and settled down to sleep, either in tents or on bedrolls under the stars. This night, Isaiah moved restlessly about on a camp bed in his tent, the blanket twisting this way and that until it tangled uncomfortably around his legs. Finally he gave up. Pushing aside the blanket, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up.
He shivered a little in the cold air, then reached for his clothes.
There was no point in staying abed and, with any luck, one or two of the cooks would be up and have prodded a cooking fire into life somewhere among the myriad tents.
Isaiah looked to see if the manservant sleeping at the back of the tent had wakened -- he hadn"t -- then he pushed aside the tent flap and walked outside.
It was very quiet.
Armed sentries, scores of them, patrolled the outer rim of the sprawling encampment. They walked slowly, but they looked alert, and Isaiah breathed a sigh of relief. These past several days he had been filled with such a sense of dread . . . he"d never missed his power so much as he did at this point.
If only he could scry out with his senses and feel what had gone so wrong.
It could be anything -- Armat, the One, Maximilian, the Lealfast . . .
What was happening? What was wrong?
Isaiah"s power was gone, consumed by the One. If Isaiah had still had his power, understanding what was happening would have been easy.
But now . . .
There was only one thing Isaiah thought he knew for sure, and that was that Lister was dead. He knew it instinctively, having shared companionship with Lister over so many tens of thousands of years. Now the companionship was gone. Lister was dead.
Isaiah wondered who had done the deed, and hoped it had been either Ishbel or Maximilian.
G.o.ds alone knew, both had had reason enough.
Isaiah was not terribly upset by the loss of Lister; they had never been close emotionally, but he was wracked with concern about what else might be happening up north.
None of the Icarii had stayed with Isaiah and the hundred thousand men he commanded (the former renegade general, Lamiah, being pragmatic enough to return to the role of second-in-command fairly happily) and Isaiah regretted this. If the Icarii had stayed, then maybe he could have sent them scouting, or maybe, maybe, if one of them had been an Enchanter, he could have communicated directly with Axis, or StarDrifter, and discovered intelligence.
But no, here he was, left with only mortal ability, and Isaiah resented it now more than ever before.
He looked toward the tent where slept Hereward, the former kitchen steward from Isaiah"s palace of Aqhat. He"d hardly had any discourse with her on this hard ride north toward Elcho Falling. Isaiah still harboured some bitterness toward her for the loss of his power, despite what he might say to her. If it hadn"t been for Hereward . . . if he hadn"t surrendered his powers in order to save her life . . . well, then both he and everyone else would have had a far better chance at life than they did now.
Was it better to save Hereward and lose a hundred thousand because of it?
"What is wrong?" Isaiah muttered, tearing himself away from thoughts of Hereward and staring into the dark sky for some inspiration. What is wrong?
They were so vulnerable here. There was no terrain they could hide in or exploit for defensive (or even offensive) purposes. There were no trees to hide behind.
There was scarcely even a shrub to p.i.s.s behind.
Just gently undulating, gra.s.s covered plains.
They were north of Margalit now, and Isaiah and Lamiah had sat down last night to estimate how long it would be before they reached Elcho Falling. Without any distractions -- attacks from forces far more powerful than they, which was, considering the circ.u.mstances, more than likely -- they had perhaps two weeks of hard riding to get there.
Two weeks, and G.o.ds knew what might happen to them in that time.
Isaiah also wished he knew what had happened at Elcho Falling. Something had happened; he was sure he could sense some disturbance, but what?
"d.a.m.n it," Isaiah said, and started to look for any campfires that burned brighter than usual, which would indicate -- hopefully -- the start of breakfast.
Before he could move to take a step in any direction, Isaiah found himself suddenly crouched in a defensive huddle on the ground. The air above him, and on all sides, suddenly seemed to be filled with noise and the warmth of thousands upon thousands of bodies . . . and feathers.
Feathers.
Everywhere.
Isaiah thought he would choke on them.
Lealfast! It was his first thought and automatically he reached for the dagger on his hip.
Something thudded into him and reflexively he grabbed at it, trying to wrestle it to the ground so he could stab it in the -- Something rather large, and very irritated, pecked him viciously in the upper arm.
"Ommph!" Isaiah said, spitting out feathers. He recognised the peculiar musty smell of the creature now stalking in a tight circle around him, looking for an opening to strike again, but his mind simply refused to accept it.
Isaiah could hear men stumbling from tents, crying out in surprise.
The bird pecked again at his arm, but with less intent this time.
Isaiah held out his hands in supplication. "I am Isaiah," he said. "Isaiah!"
The juit bird fluffed out its feathers in affront and looked away.
"Shoo," Isaiah said, rising carefully to his feet and flapping at the bird with his hands. "Shoo!"
The juit bird took several high-stepping paces away, looking at him carefully with its large red-rimmed eyes.
Men were rushing everywhere now, and Isaiah risked shouting to them (heavens forbid if he set the birds off!). "Shoo them to the perimeter of the camp! It is all right, they will not harm us --"
Much.
"-- just shoo them to the perimeter of the camp! They are juit birds ... juit birds!"
Initial panic now gave way to muted laughter. Most of the Isembaardians had heard of the juit birds, if not seen them firsthand. Now they began carefully to herd the creatures toward the outer edges of the camp.
Lamiah had by now appeared at Isaiah"s side, still blinking sleep and confusion from his eyes.
"What the f.u.c.k .?" he said.
Isaiah raised his hands. "I have no idea, Lamiah. I am as stunned as you. But . . . it appears as if the entire population of Isembaard"s juit birds have just appeared in our camp.
"How?" Lamiah said.
"Magic . . . power . . . luck . . . a sudden southerly gust of wind . . . who knows? They are just now . . . here."
"There must be . . . " Lamiah stopped, peering through the slowly lightening sky.
"Millions of them," Isaiah said, chuckling. "Look, the entire encampment is coated with pink feathers. They must have just fallen straight down from the sky."
"But . . . but . . . " Lamiah was still struggling to accept the fact that a few million juit birds had suddenly appeared in camp.
Isaiah laughed. "Shall we not be a sight, Lamiah, marching north in all our arrogant militancy, surrounded by squabbling pink birds."
"They are not going to stay with us, surely?"
"I very much doubt they are going to leave, Lamiah. I think they are here for a reason."
Lamiah grunted, watching in silence as soldiers everywhere tried to direct reluctant juit birds out of tents, beyond the range of cooking fires, away from the lines of half-panicked horses, and toward the perimeter of the camp.
"What reason?" Lamiah said finally.