Light hit them first.
It washed over Amara's back and shoulders in a sudden wave of warmth and color, as if someone had convinced the setting sun to reverse its course and rise once again over the mountainside behind them. The light cast knife-sharp black shadows over the entire mountain, its luminance so brilliant that the glare of the enormous furylamps became utterly insignificant.
Immortals, Knights, and infantry alike, cried out in surprise. Brencis turned white, took a step backward, and lifted a hand to shield his eyes, releasing Amara and letting out a low moan of fear.
And then came a voice.
A voice spoke in a gentle tone that resounded from the stone and the sky, a voice that rang with a depth and richness of power the mountains had not known since their fiery conception-a voice that contained a certain amount of biting amusement as it answered the heir of Kalare's question. Gaius Sextus, First Lord of Alera, murmured, "Three."
Chapter 45
Reverberations of Gaius's deep, mellow voice rolled through the mountains and echoed from the hills. Though he had spoken in a murmur, it emanated from the very stones, and Amara felt sure it could have been heard several miles away in every direction.
In the wake of that voice, the brilliantly lit mountainside went totally still and silent. Hundreds of Immortals remained motionless in their tracks, shielding their eyes and crouching defensively. Brencis stared past Amara, his mouth gaping and working like that of a landed fish.
The Knight holding Bernard had backed away when Brencis did, and the Count of Calderon slowly sat up, his face white with pain, his shoulder resting at an odd angle to the rest of his body. He traded a glance with Amara, but neither of them spoke, not daring to draw the attention of the enemy to themselves.
It was odd, Amara thought, sitting there on the stony mountainside, exhausted, outnumbered hundreds to one by their foes-and yet for a single, endless moment no one moved, and no one spoke.
And then Brencis let out a sound partway between a scream and a moan, and yelled, his voice cracking into a falsetto in midword, "Attack! Attack! Kill them all!"
The moment was broken.
Hundreds of collared Immortals let out a furious cry and steel rasped in a deadly chorus as they drew weapons. They surged forward, the sound of their boots a sudden thunder.
Amara found herself at Bernard's side, unarmed and far too weary to take to the air. She felt his hand fumbling for hers, as the Immortals came for them, and she interlaced her fingers with his, squeezing tight.
They both looked away from the charging Immortals, at one another, and that was how Amara saw the First Lord, in the corner of her vision, raise a hand and murmur another bone-deep word that rose from the very mountain beneath them.
"No.".
There was a sudden noise, lower than the cries of charging Immortals, more piercing than the tread of their boots. It was a rippling staccato of a sound, somewhat like a saw going through wood.
Amara turned to stare as every Immortal, every single Immortal on the mountainside suddenly convulsed. Their necks twisted sharply, and the snapping bones were the source of the strange sound.
And then they fell dead.
All of them.
One second, a force the size of two or three Legion cohorts was howling for their blood. The next, the Immortals lay on the ground, twitching and dying, the strange metal collars now bent and misshapen, all deformed so sharply and suddenly that they had broken the necks of the men wearing them.
Amara turned to stare.
Gaius Sextus hovered perhaps ten feet above the mountainside, buoyed by a windstream so tightly controlled that it hardly stirred the dirt beneath him. He was wreathed in the orange-gold flame of an autumn sunset that turned his silver-white hair to bronze. The signs of strain and age that had come on as they traveled were gone. In his right hand was a sword of fire, and fire blazed on his brow in a blinding diadem. His eyes were bright and hard, his face hewn from granite, and such was the majesty and power of him that Amara found herself immediately bowing her head, her hand pressed to her hammering heart.
Behind her, Amara heard Brencis sob in terror. And then she heard the unsteady rasp of a sword being drawn into a trembling hand.
"Boy," Gaius said, his tone growing gentler, even compassionate, "you have a choice. You may choose to stand with your father against me. Or you may choose to live."
Brencis let out a few small, breathless sounds. Then he said, "I'm not afraid of you."
"Of course you are," Gaius said, "and should be."
And with those words, a blue-white shaft of lightning roared down from the clear night sky. and gouged a hole the size of a grave in the solid stone not five yards from Brencis's feet.
"I give you one final chance to live," Gaius said, and his voice was no longer gentle. "Choose."
Brencis sobbed, and his sword clattered to the stony ground. He turned and fled, his boots sliding and scuffing over the mountainside, vanishing into the distance.
Amara rose slowly, afterward, and had to help Bernard rise with her.
"Well," Gaius said quietly. "That's a relief." And with that, he dropped without ceremony to the ground. The blazing light around him-and the light of the furylamps on the mountain-vanished in the same moment.
"A relief, sire?" Amara asked.
Gaius's voice, from the darkness, sounded calmly weary. "By all accounts, young Brencis is quite capable at his furycraft-and I have enough to do tonight without putting him down, too."
"Sire?" Amara asked.
"Surely," Bernard said, his voice strained, "after killing so many men, one more…"
Gaius murmured something, and one of the furylamps began to give off a much-reduced amount of light, enough to let Amara dimly see the First Lord as a vague, tall shape, standing over one of the fallen Immortals. "These," he murmured. "These were not men. Men have wills, good Count. Men have choice."
His eyes turned toward Amara for a quiet moment, pausing just long enough to give his last words a subtle weight.
"Kalarus raised these creatures from childhood bound to these accursed collars," Gaius continued. "He took their wills, their choices, away from them. The men they could have been died long before tonight. These were animals.
"What he did was terrible, yet I cannot help but wish he'd done it to more of his legionares. Today would be much simplified." The First Lord's voice tightened, quickened. "Let us count ourselves fortunate that Kalarus had the collars all made from the same batch."
Amara blinked at him. "You mean… the Immortals could have…?"
"Killed me?" Gaius asked. He shrugged a shoulder. "Perhaps. In some ways, I am no more powerful than any other High Lord."
Amara blinked. "But, sire… what I saw a moment ago…"
"One needn't be omnipotent to overcome every foe, provided one can appear that way in the enemy's mind." He smiled faintly. "True, I have the means to have slain them all-but accidents happen, and the weight of numbers could tell against me just as surely as they did against my's-" His voice broke. He closed his eyes, cleared his throat, and rasped, "My son."
Amara faced Gaius, silent, watching his face. Not even his discipline could hide the pain in his features, and Amara suddenly ached for the old man.
Gaius shook his head briskly and strode toward Amara and Bernard. He put one hand on her shoulder, another on Bernards. Bernard let out a hiss of discomfort-then there was a wrenching pop that dragged a muffled curse from his throat.
"There," Gaius murmured. "Try to move it."
Bernard did, rotating his wounded shoulder slowly. "Tender," he said after a moment. "But it will serve, sire."
Gaius nodded and squeezed Amara's shoulder gently. In that simple gesture, relief and energy seemed to flood into her, weariness washed away before it. She shuddered at the pleasant sensation left when her aches and fatigue vanished.