Maybe the stone beast did beat me, he thought. I'm becoming the beast, hungry for destruction, hungry for human fear, impatient when I'm balked.
The beast hadn't surrendered everything. It had given him nothing but its power over the dead. Its Word it had retained. Ethrian now coveted that.
Sahmanan suggested, "We could use flyers to drop men in the woods behind them. Pick off soldiers one at a time. Send them back to their units... "
"They can tell the difference. Nor could we move enough men quickly enough. We've got to try something new. Anything in your bag of tricks?"
"Nothing I haven't already used. I have to keep my head down anyway. They're getting me figured. I won't survive another battle like the one at their fort."
"Go get the Great One, then."
"What?"
"Get the Great One. Go pry him out of his rockpile." He looked across the river. What would the Word do to those earthworks?
He grinned as wicked a grin as any a madman ever produced.
Darkness wears a thousand masks, evil a thousand shapes.
He did not think himself changed. Outwardly, he resembled every youth his age. But the dark rot was spreading within. The cancer had grown from the seed planted by the Pracchia and fertilized by the stone beast.
They called him Deliverer, those whom he drove to their deaths again and again and again. He was on the brink of becoming the thing they proclaimed. Deliverer of Darkness. Messiah of Evil. Prince of the Left Hand Trail.
But no, he would protest. I'm just Ethrian, requiting evils done me and mine.
Sahmanan sensed the cancer. She understood its depth. A mistress of wickedness herself, she was appalled by its potential. She knew his ancestry. His grandfather was the wizard who had destroyed Ilkazar. His mother was a woman of the Power. The same blood had run in his father's veins. He might become the greatest disciple darkness had known.
"Go get the Great One," he told her.
She looked round with furtive glances, as if expecting the beast to be peeping from the brush. "Don't ask me to return to slavery."
Ethrian studied the river's far bank. "Do we have a choice? We're dead if we stand still."
"Take a different path. Send the dead over till they're destroyed. Go with me somewhere. We can start over. Let the Great One rot. Let him slide back to the hell where Nahaman and I found him." Her passion amazed them both. She meant what she said. Like her sister, she had rebelled.
"So. You're turning on me." Ethrian's words were as chill as the corridors of time. "I thought it would be the Great One who betrayed me."
"Ethrian... "
"Get him. Or we fight amongst ourselves."
Sahmanan looked past him. Dead soldiers were coming out of the woods. He meant it.
"You idiot!" She flung herself forward. Her impetus smashed him against a prehistoric granite monolith. He kicked her...
She sang a spell.
The world went white. Heat blistered Ethrian's skin. He felt a big vacant place in his mind. Hundreds of soldiers had ceased to exist... He bellowed in rage. He had come close to killing himself.
The boulder and Sahmanan's spell shielded them. He cursed, said, "One of us was thinking. Thank you." Then, "I'm blind!"
"Your sight will return. Ethrian, don't let hatred control you like that."
After a time, "Sahmanan?"
"Yes?"
He said, "All right. It won't happen again. I'm sorry. You still have to bring the Great One."
She sighed. "All right. When the ground cools and we can leave the protection of the spell."
Ethrian stood on the hill alone. A scimitar of moon rose behind him. He leaned on a spear, staring at the fires on the distant shore. Soon now, Lord Ssu-ma, he thought. I'll break your will, you stubborn pig. I'll carve the heart out of your empire. I'll make it my own. I'll find my father's murderer...
But first he had to use the stone beast without falling under its control. And Sahmanan. What of her? How strange she had been this afternoon. What was that natter about escaping slavery?
She didn't add up. She sang too many conflicting songs.
The air behind him whispered to the approach of vast wings. The sound waxed. Soon it filled the night. A swarm of shafts streaked across the water. The sky burned behind Ethrian. A dozen shadows of him reached toward the river. He raised one hand, thought, This is me, Shinsan: A clawed shadow reaching for your heart.
The shafts dropped dragons and riders, though these were not the shafts of the desert battles. These hadn't a tenth of the power of those. They had a homemade feel, as though his enemies had exhausted the real thing and were making do with what they could concoct themselves.
He smiled. "The thing you fear pursues you. The thing you dread is upon you. Your time has come."
A dragon smacked down behind him. Sahmanan called a question. He did not turn.
She was beside him in a moment. He felt the immense presence of the Great One. "I brought him, Ethrian."
"And what does he think?"
He didn't have to ask. He felt the beast's joy, its eagerness, its lust for a chance to embarrass an enemy it hated because it refused to bend or be conquered, or even to fear.
The stone beast wanted to be taken seriously. These Lords of the Dread Empire no longer did so. They knew the situation as well as did Ethrian. They now perceived the Deliverer and his godling as fading nuisances they would eliminate within days.
Ethrian had drifted across the river and had seen the confidence there. They knew they would break him this time. They were abiding his attack, expecting him to destroy himself.
The stone beast said, "You did well to summon me, Deliverer. You had no other hope. Together, now, we will crush them. But I ask you, how do you plan to cross the river?"
Ethrian had given that no thought. He was worried about smashing his enemies, not about getting to them. He did not have a single boat. His troops hadn't built rafts or pontoons. The legions had destroyed all local craft during their retreat.
He cursed himself for being a fool. "Not much of a general, are you, Deliverer?" The stone beast's sarcasm stung. His own accusation had come home to roost.
"What would you suggest, Great One?" He tried for sarcasm himself. He glanced to the east, where the sun was about to rise.
"Sahmanan. I'll feed you strength. Freeze the river."
Ethrian gaped. "Freeze it?"
The beast laughed. And the youth shivered, knowing he had best take care.
Sahmanan performed some lengthy, darkness-hidden ritual. After a time, she said, "Aid me, Great One."
Ethrian felt the cold grow. It taunted his burned skin. It rolled down the hill. The woods became so chill that branches snapped. He closed his eyes, drifted out of his body.
There were scums of ice on the river already. The cold swept toward the nether shore. Over there they had begun to respond, ere ever the chill reached them. Their fires grew higher. Their drums hammered rhythms of warning.
Frost formed. The air grew misty. Snowflakes trickled down. Shinsan's soldiers calmly manned their earthworks.
If I had soldiers like these... Being the best would avail them not. A man's skill meant nothing once he heard the stone beast's Word. Ethrian knew. He had seen Sahmanan's visions of the war with Nahaman.
His spirits rose. Soon he would stand on the western shore, its master. The legion dead would rise around him, ready to move on... In a flash of whimsy he flung himself westward, through the wild forests, hunting the place they would try stopping him next.
It was a venerable city, an interesting city. It would delight him. He looked forward to taking it. He loved cities.
Refugees swarmed outside this one.
Here were the hordes that had escaped him earlier. He harangued them with a silent scream: I'm coming for you! There's nowhere you can run!