He woke on stairs, sticky with blood, laboring to breathe. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious; he hoped not long, because he didn’t have that much time left.
Doggedly, he dragged himself to his feet, leaned against the wall, and put one foot in front of the other. He felt oddly stronger, as if the prayer to Dibella had actually been answered in some small way, although he’d never had that talent.
But he knew soon enough he was either going to bleed to death or drown in his own blood.
Letine must have known or guessed where the stairs were-they hadn’t been on his map. He doubted it was a coincidence that the steps began at a hidden door in Hierem’s chambers; the minister must have been thinking about this moment for a long time. Colin guessed the secret stairway was hidden just below the much broader, higher staircase that led up from the Emperor’s quarters to the summit of the White-Gold Tower.
He moved slower now, but knew he couldn’t stop again.
He heard her before he saw her, or in fact saw any light at all. She was talking to herself, but he couldn’t make out the words. Presently he encountered a flat surface, and after a little searching found the catch that opened it.
He’d expected to be on the summit of the tower, but instead saw a large, low-ceilinged room. Signs and sigils were painted all over the floor, familiar to him from the diagram he’d seen in Hierem’s chambers. Fires of strange colors flickered on some, while arcane objects of various size were on others. Letine stood in the center of the room, what was probably the very axis of the tower. Beyond her, a long, broad window showed him a little sky but mostly a vast rocky surface that resembled a mountain-except it was moving, steadily growing in size.
“Come here,” she was saying.
“You mean to steal its power,” Colin said, on his knees on the floor.
Letine spun to face him, surprise evident on her face.
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “I knew I should have…” She started to walk toward him, but seemed to think better of it.
“Should have finished me off,” he replied.
She shrugged. “I’m usually more efficient. I think I must have let my emotions cloud my judgment this time.”
“So you do love me,” Colin said with a rueful chuckle.
She took him seriously. “I might have,” she said, “under other conditions. But I know you would have tried to stop me.”
“Hierem tricked Umbriel, didn’t he? He planned to use all of this to siphon off the souls the city collects. And you used me to get it.”
“I didn’t know exactly what he was up to,” she said. “Not until a few days ago. Hierem imagined it would make him a god. I don’t know about that. But I do know I’ll have enough power to never be afraid again, to take what I want from this life, this world.” She looked out the window.
“It’s almost here, Colin. Once it happens, there is no need for you to die. I can fix your body.”
“Maybe,” he said, crawling forward on his hands and knees. “But the things I need fixed, you can’t do a thing about.”
“Don’t come any closer,” she warned.
“If you’re not right in the middle, it won’t work, will it?” he asked. “What if this isn’t right here?” He reached to move a crystal sphere with silvery wire wound about it.
Her eyes rolled back as she started to summon something.
He yanked the knife from his chest; blood from his wound gouted onto the floor. He sat back on his heels, cocked his arm, and threw.
Letine looked up at the ceiling and took a step back. He thought he’d missed, at first, but then she toppled back and he saw the hilt of the dagger standing from her eye.
He sat there, watching her for a moment. The air crackled, and rainbow colors flickered about the construct she lay in. He heard what might have been voices, calling from far away.
Outside, the rock face was so near he could almost touch it-then it seemed to turn sideways, before it vanished, leaving behind a boom like a thousand thunders at once.
“Attrebus,” he murmured. “Good for you.”
He managed to get to the window. It was solid, thick as stone, but transparent. He wondered idly if it was transparent from the other side as well, or if it appeared as stone.
He looked out across the city and Lake Rumare, to the green valley beyond, and watched it as his eyes dimmed.
He felt the breeze on his face, heard it sigh through the willows. He put his little boat in the stream and watched it carried away, and wondered where it would go, wishing he could be with it, share its adventures. He dipped his hands in the stream and took a breath that went on and on, filling him, at last, with peace.
They met up with what was left of the Twelfth Legion a few hours from sundown and pushed the wormies into the wall. They cleared the gate and set up positions to defend it from another siege.
Mazgar and Brennus found themselves on the western flank of the action, where little or no fighting was going on.
Umbriel was closer than Mazgar had ever seen it, blocking most of the sky, casting a shadow east that she couldn’t see the end of, the strange light of its soul-stealing filaments dominating her field of view. What would it feel like when she was beneath it? If she grabbed one of the things, would it pull her up? Had that been tried?
She heard a commotion off to the west, and Brennus swore. She started to ask what the matter was but then saw.
Wormies-thousands of them-were swarming from the west, pushing what remained of the cavalry before them. That wasn’t enough for the gods, apparently-more were pouring from the lake and from the east, as if every single one of them had been called to this one place on the wall.
“Why?” she grunted as they hastily tightened ranks.
“This is where Umbriel is crossing over,” Brennus said.
“So? There’s no gate here to breach.”
“Not yet,” Brennus said.
Mazgar growled, raised Blondie’s shield, and locked it with her companions on the left and right.
The wormies came at a dead-on run, in nothing resembling ranks. They reminded Mazgar of ants, converging on a bit of offal.
The first shock slid them back two yards, leaving a pile of the enemy like a low wall before them. But that didn’t deter the foe in the slightest; they scrambled up over each other and tried to run over the line, using the soldiers’ heads and shoulders as steppingstones. They needed spearmen, but those were mostly at the gate, where the main assault had been until moments ago.
Mazgar roared her battle cry and sent Sister chopping over her shield. Maggots and putrefaction spattered on her face; she could taste them on her tongue, and like a tide coming in, more and more of them rolled out of the water.
“The wall,” she heard Brennus gasp.
She had a second a moment later to spare a glance to see what he meant. Their left flank had collapsed, but instead of rolling up the line, the wormies were throwing themselves on the wall, building ladders with their bodies. Above, the sky was bright with eruptions and incandescences, making a strange semblance of daylight that revealed the rotting faces leering at her, making colored jewels of their filmed eyes.
Another wave of wormies hit, and they were pushed back almost to the wall itself, and more of them were ignoring her completely now as they tried to join their comrades in their insane climb.
The man on her right fell, and as four wormies poured into the gap, she felt a bright and terrible pain in her side. Howling, she swung her shield and decapitated one as she slung it off, then took Sister two-handed to slay other wormies.
Above, Umbriel passed over the wall, undeterred.
Brennus cried out and fell against her from behind. With a grunt she swept one arm back, found him, and retreated until his spine was against the wall. A semicircle of blue flame arced out around them, and she braced for the wormies to come through, but they didn’t. More likely they were just going around.