“I love you.”
He looked into her face. Framed in the folds of her headdress, it was partly hidden now as the wind fetched the cloth across her nose and mouth. Her eyes contained a hundred emotions he could not fathom.
“Melydia,” was all he could say.
“Do you believe me?”
He looked out again at the dust into which he had poured his army’s blood.
For what? came a small voice, barely heard. For what?
“Do you believe me?”
His gaze was drawn to hers.
“Yes.”
They embraced as a stronger wind blew his cloak around them.
Presently they became aware of a hush that had fallen over the battle. They parted and returned to the north side of the turret.
Melydia pointed. “Behold.”
Airborne objects approached from the northwest. Their flight was swift, and in formation — like migrating birds.
“What this time?” Vorn said. “What manner of hellish thing?”
“We will know soon.”
“Aye, we will. Too soon.”
“Are you afraid?”
He cast a dark look at her. “You think that deserving of an answer?”
“No, my love. Forgive me. I know you fear nothing.”
He encircled her within his meaty left arm.
The objects soon revealed themselves to be bowl-shaped, with appendages that at a distance could have been taken to be wings, but as the objects neared, took the form of pairs of human hands, disembodied human hands.
“Mother Goddess,” Vorn breathed. “What …?”
Each pair of hands bore a gigantic metal caldron that looked much like an ironsmith’s crucible.
Melydia stepped away from Vorn and stood against the battlement, hands on either side of a crenellation, leaning out, her face awry with strange, conflicting emotions. There was hope and expectation and fear and dread. There was hatred. And underneath it all, she knew but strove to suppress with every grain of her being, there was love.
She did not know that there was madness there as well.
“Yes,” she said as thunder rolled to their ears, dark clouds piling over the castle. “Yes!” she screamed over its roar.
A finger of cloud passed across the sun, plunging the countryside into shadow and revealing an eerie blue glow emanating from the castle itself. Webs of lightning shot from tower to tower and bright blue prominences arose from the keep. A storm wind lashed the citadel, but no rain fell. Dust devils whirled about, sucking up the debris of past battles.
The flying caldrons broke formation and descended, revealing themselves to be of immense size. They swooped, then reformed into a line, each caldron poised above a belfry. The hands that bore them were the hands of malign gods — huge, sinewy, and punishing.
A bolt of lightning hit the tower on which Melydia and Vorn stood.
The prince was thrown down. Struggling against the ever-rising wind, he got up and staggered to Melydia, who seemed unaffected. She was still screaming, unintelligible now over the crack of thunder and the howling wind.
“We must go,” he shouted into her ear, then tried to move her toward the hatch.
She was like a pillar of iron. He tried to shake her, but her body recoiled like a spring, her knuckles white against the stone, face uplifted toward the fearful apparition above the castle wall, the line of caldrons that now began to tip. From within the caldrons came a bright red-orange glow.
Vorn looked over the rampart. Men were bolting from the bottoms of the towers, fleeing in panic. He let Melydia go and hopped up on the wall.
“You!” he screamed. “Man your stations!” His voice was lost in the din.
“Back! Get back, I say! Return to your —” He broke off. It was useless. Too much to expect mortal men to face doom at the literal hands of the supernatural. Vorn looked aghast at the slowly tipping caldrons. Too much to expect even the bravest man to face that. For the first time in his life Vorn knew that he, too, was afraid. Yet he stood there.
Liquid fire poured from the crucibles, splashing down on the belfries in flaming cataracts. At once the belfries and the men in them were engulfed. Like animated torches, soldiers streamed from the belfries into the ward, some jumping to their deaths. Those who didn’t fell to the ground and rolled, or ran in panicky circles slapping at themselves in a frantic attempt to put out the flames.
Vorn’s heart sank. He had never tasted defeat, and now it sat on his tongue like a lump of brass, hard, cold, and bitter.
There was chaos in the ward. Weapons lay strewn about. Soldiers ran and scattered like coals from an overturned brazier. The belfries stood unmoving, mountains of flame, funeral pyres all.
Vorn could look no longer. He stepped down from the wall and walked to the opposite side of the turret. He drew his royal-blue cloak about him and gazed emptily out at lands of the Pale, lands he would curse till he drew his dying breath. He closed his eyes, his chin dropping to his chest.
Presently he felt a hand at his shoulder. He turned.
“You must see,” Melydia said.
He stared at her, his face ashen. He had no words to speak to this woman whom he thought he had known. Now it was as if she were a stranger. Her face was transformed.
“You must come,” she said, smiling as if inviting him to inspect the preparations for a grand ball. “Look what we have done.”
He stared at her for a while longer, striving to find in that delicately beautiful face some clue, some explanation to her mystery.
He found none.
She took his hand and led him across.
The men had stopped running amuck. They stood about, talking, exclaiming, gesturing at one another.
They were all still in flames.
Vorn shook his head, uncomprehending.
“They burn but they are not consumed,” Melydia told him. “Neither are the belfries. Look.”
It was true. The belfries’ structural members were still the color of fresh-cut timber; they had not blackened. Stranger still, no smoke came from the fires at all. The flames seemed to dance on the surface of the wood, furiously trying to penetrate but unable to.
“Soon the men will overcome their shock. The battle will then proceed. They need you now, Vorn.”
She traced a quick pattern in the air and spoke a word under her breath.
“There. They will hear you now. Speak to them.”
Color returning to his face, Vorn mounted the battlement and faced his troops.
“Soldiers of the Emp —” He stopped, tongue-tied by hearing his voice boom out louder than the thunder. Heads snapped in his direction. Arms raised, pointing.
Vorn spoke. “Soldiers of the Empire! We have faced the Devil’s minions and have fought bravely. Now we have come through hellfire itself unscathed.” He paused. “Can any man doubt that our cause is just and holy? Can any gainsay our righteousness? Behold the fortress of Evil itself. It looms before us in all its malevolence. Let no man fear it. We have come to vanquish it, and vanquish it we shall, though all its forces be arrayed against us. Return to your stations. Fight on, bravely, as you have up till now. The Goddess is with us, her blessings are upon us, and her victory will be ours.”
He withdrew his sword and raised it high.
“Fight on, for Goddess and Empire! Fight!”
A great shout rose up from the troops. They all saluted, then picked up their weapons and ran to the belfries.
Vorn sheathed his sword, looking up at the line of crucibles stilt hanging above. Now empty, they were beginning to fade.
He jumped from the battlement. Melydia waved her hand to abrogate the voice amplification spell.
“Why?” he asked her. “Why did you not tell what was to happen? Why did you not warn of this, so that we would know what to expect?”