“What are those horse things?” Briar asked, pointing.
“Deep runners,” Rosethorn answered, to his surprise. “They live far underground.”
“Sometimes my brothers and sisters get bored, and they make things,” Luvo said. “Sometimes things make themselves.”
There was movement in the pool. A company of soldiers, battered and limping, was struggling away from the field of battle. More turned to follow.
“Cowards!” Weishu shouted. “You will die for this!”
More soldiers saw what was taking place. They abandoned their flags and fled, the strange creatures pursuing them.
“Your army has abandoned you,” the God-King said, facing the emperor. “I think that if you want to live, you will have to make some arrangements, don’t you? Oh, hello, small one.” He reached down and lifted something from his shoe. It was a baby cave snake. The God-King looked at the one around the emperor’s neck. “Is this little one yours? I won’t hurt it.”
Briar could have sworn the skull on the serpent around the imperial throat looked cross. It nodded to the God-King. A moment later small cave snakes were crawling on many of the captive mages. Hengkai in particular was horrified and struggled to get away from the one that was tugging on his mustache. He fell over. Briar was in no way inclined to pick up the general.
“I’d kill him.” Souda eyed the emperor with intent. “He’s earned it a million times over.” She looked over at the mages. “And them.”
“But there are so many problems that come from his death,” the God-King reminded her. “If you two are to regain your kingdom, you can’t worry about imperial assassins, or imperial money going to pay every rebel who ever dreams of raising an army against you.”
I will never think of him as a boy again, Briar thought, staring at the God-King. How does he not go mad, with all those gods talking to him and giving him advice? I go crazy with my sisters, or Rosethorn and Evvy, telling me what to do, and none of them are gods.
“I don’t believe that.” The emperor pointed to the pool, which was vanishing into the cracks between the stone tiles. “Magic. I can buy a thousand illusions like it. Any of these hand wavers could have done the same.” His own wave of the hand dismissed the mages bound in spider silk on both sides of him. “I demand to look on the field of battle myself.”
The God-King shrugged. “Please yourself. Zochen Brul, would you be so kind?”
That appeared to be the cave snake’s name. It unwound from the emperor’s neck and slid down the throne to the God-King’s side in a clatter.
“I want a guard, as is my due,” Weishu said, shaking out his robes as he stood. His eyes glinted with his familiar arrogance.
Briar shook his head with reluctant admiration. It took a great deal to shake Weishu’s sense that he was entitled to rule over everything, it seemed. He could never feel that way — his teachers and his girls would never allow it.
“You may have whomever you wish,” the God-King said agreeably. Suddenly he looked much less agreeable. “But first, you will order your mage to wake my city. All of my city.”
“Your monsters hold him,” Weishu said, looking down at the cocooned Hengkai. He stared up at his emperor without trying to utter a word past the spider silk that bound his mouth.
“If you would?” the God-King asked the spider that lurked in the shadows behind Hengkai. It reached out a long leg and touched the cocoon. The silk shriveled and fell away from the general. Gingerly Hengkai sat up and looked around himself on the dais. He picked up several beads and held them in one trembling hand.
Parahan turned on the guard closest to him and grabbed his sword from its sheath. The guard didn’t try to resist. The big man strode up the steps to the throne and put the tip of the sword to Weishu’s throat.
“Call me untrusting, God-King,” he said apologetically, without taking his eyes from the emperor, “but in case Hengkai does try something, I will take his master’s head. He was Weishu’s chief general because he can work battle magic very quickly.”
“The cave snakes have an eye on Hengkai, Parahan,” the God-King assured him. Briar looked at the general. A number of baby cave snakes and two of the larger ones lay at Hengkai’s feet, watching him. Perhaps that was why the man trembled so much. Perhaps he was steadfast enough in ordinary battle, but these strange beings were too much for him.
Hengkai handled the beads he’d gathered in a particular order, his lips moving. He passed his free hand over them. That done, he shifted the beads to his free hand and murmured, then passed the other hand over them. Briar felt a pressure on his ears, then a pop.
“Don’t you feel better?” the God-King asked Hengkai. “It can’t have been easy for you, holding such a vast spell for so long a time.”
The general did not answer him. He sank onto the top step by the throne and put his head in his hands.
Weishu did not even ask if he felt unwell. He ducked Parahan’s sword and walked down the steps, ignoring the God-King. He brushed past Rosethorn and Sayrugo, pointing to different Yanjingyi soldiers. The others moved out of his way.
“They will leave their weapons here,” Sayrugo called as Weishu was about to pass through the open doors.
“Very well,” the God-King said. “Weishu, you heard General Sayrugo.”
The emperor did not move, but the soldiers he had chosen did. They stripped off their sword belts and even their daggers, leaving them in a heap before they accompanied Weishu out of the throne room. Without discussing it, the God-King, Parahan, Soudamini, Rosethorn, Briar, and Evvy followed.
“Are you coming?” Evvy asked Riverdancer when they passed her.
The shaman shook her head. “I have see too much … death,” she said haltingly, proving that she spoke a little tiyon.
They kept pace with Weishu and his soldiers as they passed from the God-King’s palace onto the wall that encircled the city. From there they followed the wall down, level by level. All the way to the gate they saw that Gyongxe’s big and little gods had been fighting here, too. They found Yanjingyi soldiers in smothering bundles of spider silk and others bloated and face-black with poison. More were wounded or hacked apart by sharp edges. On and off Briar looked over the edge of the wall, inside the city and out. Quite a few soldiers had jumped to get away from whatever had attacked them up here.
Weishu pretended to see none of the men and women who had died for him.
At last they came to the main gates and the scene they had viewed in the spinneret pool. No inch of ground on the plain was untouched. The earth was dark from spilled blood. Parts of it moved. The creatures they had seen in the pool — cave snakes, peak spiders, the eagle-headed horses Rosethorn had called “deep runners,” nagas, ice lions and lionesses, and mortal snow leopards and cave bears — wandered everywhere, together with huge red, blue, green, and orange many-armed gods. Giant vultures wheeled in the sky together with mortal eagles and ordinary vultures. Some were busy killing those of the enemy who were still alive. The rest were pursuing the fleeing army. And it was fleeing.
Any sense of victory Briar felt over Weishu’s army vanished. These poor bleaters had no idea of what they might be walking into. They were used to fighting their northern neighbors’ armies, horse nomads, and imperial Namorn’s trained army in the northwest. The emperor had walked them into a storm of magic and creatures from their nightmares. He wondered if they had even been given a choice about joining the army. Knowing Weishu, probably not.