Below, on the middle level, bowmen were ranging fire on the ground between the nearer trenches. While they loosed, their officers adjusted the positions of racks from which they drew their arrows.
On the upper terrace Guards bustled around ballistae, calculating fire lanes and survivability, ranging their engines on targets farther away. Carts laden with ammunition sat near each weapon.
Like the grass and mannered roadways, these preparations betrayed an obsession with order.
On the bottom level workmen had begun demolishing short sections of retaining wall. Baffling.
I spotted a carpet coming in, turned to watch. It settled to the roof. Four stiff, shaky, wind-burned soldiers stepped off. A corporal led them away.
The armies of the east were headed our way, hoping to arrive before the Rebel assault, with little hope of actually making it. The Taken were flying day and night bringing in what manpower they could.
Men shouted below. I turned to look... Threw up an arm. Slam! Impact threw me a dozen feet, spinning. My Guard guide yelled. The Tower roof came up to meet me. Men shouted and ran my way.
I rolled, tried to get up, slipped in a slick of blood. Blood! My blood! It spurted from the inside of my left upper arm. I stared at the wound with dull, amazed eyes. What the hell?
“Lay down,” the Guard captain ordered. “Come on.” He slapped me a good one. “Quick. Tell me what to do.”
“Tourniquet,” I croaked. “Tie something around it. Stop the bleeding.”
He yanked his belt off. Good, quick thinking. One of the best tourniquets there is. I tried to sit up, to advise while he worked.
“Hold him down,” he told several bystanders. “Foster What happened?”
“One of the weapons fell off the upper tier. It went off when it fell. They’re running around like chickens.”
“Wasn’t no accident,” I gasped. “Somebody wanted to kill me.” Getting hazy, I could think of nothing but lime thread crawling against the wind. “Why?”
“Tell me and we’ll both know, friend. You men. Get a litter.” He snugged the belt tighter. “Going to be all right, fellow. We’ll have you to a healer in a minute.”
“Severed artery,” I said. “That’s tricky.” My ears hummed. The world began to turn slowly, getting cold. Shock. How much blood did I lose? The captain had moved fast enough. Plenty of time. If the healer was not some butcher...
The captain grabbed a corporal. “Go find out what happened down there. Don’t take any bullshit answers.”
The litter came. They lifted me in, hoisted me, and I passed out. I wakened in a small surgery, tended by a man who was as much sorcerer as surgeon. “Better job than I could have done,” I told him when he finished.
“Any pain?”
“Nope.”
“Going to ache like hell in a while.”
“I know.” How many times had I said the same?
The Guard captain came. “Going all right?”
“Done,” the surgeon replied. To me, “No work. No activity. No sex. You know the drill.”
“I do. Sling?”
He nodded. “We’ll bind your arm to your side, too, for a few days.”
The captain was antsy. “Find out what happened?” I asked.
“Not really. The ballista crew couldn’t explain. It just got away from them somehow. Maybe you got lucky.” He recalled me saying somebody was trying to kill me.
I touched the amulet Goblin had given me. “Maybe.”
“Hate to do it,” he said. “But I’ve got to take you for your interview.”
Fear. “What about?”
“You’d know better than I.”
“But I don’t.” I had a remote suspicion, but had forced that out of mind.
There seemed to be two Towers, one sheathing the other. The outer was the seat of Empire, manned by the Lady’s functionaries. The inner, as intimidating to them as was the whole to us outside, took up a third of the volume and could be entered at only one point. Few ever did so.
The entrance was open when we reached it. There were no guards. I suppose none were needed. I should have been more scared, but was too dopey. The captain said, “I’ll wait here.” He had placed me in a wheeled chair, which he rolled through the doorway. I went in with my eyes sealed and heart hammering.
The door chunked shut. The chair rolled a long way, making several turns. I don’t know what impelled it. I refused to look. Then it stopped moving. I waited. Nothing happened. Curiosity got the best of me. I blinked.
She stands in the Tower, gazing northward. Her delicate hands are clasped before Her. A breeze steals softly through Her window. It stirs the midnight silk of Her hair. Tear diamonds sparkle on the gentle curve of Her cheek.
My own words, written more than a year before, came back. It was that scene, from that romance, to the least detail. To detail I had imagined but never written. As if that fantasy instant had been ripped from my brain whole and given the breath of life.
I did not believe it for a second, of course. I was in the bowels of the Tower. There were no windows in that grim structure.
She turned. And I saw what every man sees in dreams. Perfection. She did not have to speak for me to know her voice, her speech rhythms, the breathiness between phrases. She did not have to move for me to know her mannerisms, the way she walked, the odd way she would lift her hand to her throat when she laughed. I had known her since adolescence.
In seconds I understood what the old stories meant about her overwhelming presence. The Dominator himself must have swayed in her hot wind.
She rocked me, but did not sweep me away. Though half of me hungered, the remainder recalled my year around Goblin and One-Eye. Where there is sorcery nothing is what it seems. Nice, yes, but sugar candy.
She studied me as intently as I studied her. Finally, “We meet again,” The voice was everything I expected and more. It had humor, too.
“Indeed,” I croaked.
“You’re frightened.”
“Of course I am.” Maybe a fool would have denied it. Maybe.
“You were injured.” She drifted closer. I nodded, my heartbeat increasing. “I wouldn’t subject you to this if it wasn’t important.”
I nodded again, too shaky to speak, totally baffled. This was the Lady, the villain of the ages, the Shadow animate This was the black widow at the heart of darkness’ web, a demi-goddess of evil. What could be important enough for her to take note of the likes of me?
Again, I did have suspicions I would not admit to myself. My moments of critical congress with anyone important were not numerous.
“Someone tried to kill you. Who?”
“I don’t know.” Taken on the wind. Lime thread.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know. Even if you think you don’t.” Flint razored through that perfect voice.
I had come expecting the worst, had been taken in by the dream, had let my defenses fall.
The air hummed. A lemon glow formed above her. She moved closer, becoming hazy-except for that face and that yellow. That face expanded, vast, intense, swooping closer. Yellow filled the universe. I saw nothing but the eye...
The Eye! I remembered the Eye in the Forest of Cloud. I tried to throw my arm across my face. I could not move. I think I screamed. Hell. I know I screamed.
There were questions I did not hear. Answers spooled across my mind, in rainbows of thought, like oil droplets spreading on still, crystal water. I had no more secrets.
No secrets. No thought I’d ever had was hidden.
Terror writhed in me like snakes afraid. I had written those silly romances, true, but I also had my doubts and disgusts. A villain as black as she would destroy me for having seditious thoughts...
Wrong. She was secure in the strength of her wickedness. She did not need to quash the questions and doubts and fears of her minions. She could laugh at our consciences and moralities.