The death-stone was now frost-cold in his hand.
Hearst knew the grey death was now sweeping outwards almost as fast as a man can run. He remembered Looming Forest, remembered the wizard Garash treading on a stonemade face, breaking the stone curve of an eye to reveal an eyesocket empty but for a bit of stone the size of a pea. He remembered Prince Comedo's toy – a survivor living on with stonemade hands and mutilating injuries to the legs and face.
And he remembered, again, Ep Pass – a raft and its crew freezing to stone then sinking. The wizard Phyphor. the big bone in his thigh shattered by a rock. A skin of stone forming on the river's surface, then breaking under its own weight and sinking. And later, months later… stonemade bodies of a defeated army that had tried to defend Runcorn against Elkor Alish.
'Rest,' said Miphon.
Hearst lowered the death-stone.
His arm was shaking.
The air was clearing now, sunlight sharpening to shadows, and he could see across a grey stonemade plain to Androlmarphos. As he watched, the walls appeared to dissolve as the stones they were made of took advantage of their freedom.
'The pyramid!' said Miphon.
And Hearst saw the pyramid to the east was similarly dissolving. He heard a strange sound, reminiscent of shattering ice. Was it from the pyramid? No – it was the skimrock surface of the rivers breaking up. The air was absolutely dry, like the freeze-dried air of winter in the Cold West, and sounds carried with precision for great distances. He heard a distant, inarticulate roar, like the far-off sound of surf beating against a beach or ice-cliffs breaking away from a glacier undermined by the sea.
'What's that noise?' said Hearst.
'The rocks,' said Miphon. 'Shouting.'
The death-stone still felt cold in Hearst's hand. So much power – which any coward or criminal could use. given the chance. Appalling wars could be fought by men who would never be faced with the necessity of meeting their enemies face to face. Given such weapons, war could become, for the victors, an abstraction, a game – they would be like gods, removed from the realities of hand-to-hand combat. They would never have to make the true warrior's commitment to death, but they, standing at the centre of a circle of sanitary destruction, would wreck entire civilizations.
'I'm going to get the first batch of soldiers,' said Miphon. 'Stand clear.'
He turned the ring on his finger, disappearing into the green bottle. Hearst walked out of the circle of soil onto the plain of stone, leaving the green bottle behind, so the ground was clear for the first batch of soldiers Miphon would bring out.
Abruptly, the stonemade ground in front of him began to crack and split, like ice breaking up when a heavy man steps on it. But the centre of this disruption was twenty paces in front of him, and there was nobody in sight. For a moment he imagined that something gigantic yet invisible was standing on the plain of stone, some avenging hell-fiend or star-giant.
Then the ground erupted upwards.
A rock lurched free of the clutching earth. It was large as a ship. And it roared. A funnelling vortex shape-shifted to a thunder-black mouth, lipless gash grinding as it moved. Hearst staggered backwards, stumbled, fell.
And the monster lurched toward him.
Hearst held up the death-stone, his last resort. And the monster stalled, flinched, shied away, then fled, bellowing, running like a cockroach from flame.
Elsewhere, more rocks were breaking free from the earth. Suddenly fifty men materialised around the green bottle – Miphon and the first batch of soldiers.
'Miphon, no more soldiers!' shouted Hearst. 'Stay! We need you to command the rocks!'
They advanced, Miphon driving rocks before them.
As they approached Androlmarphos, ships that had come down the river began to disembark Farfalla's army. Organising the rocks into an arrow-head formation, Miphon urged them forward, and, as the monsters smashed into the city, Hearst knew that Alish's army was doomed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Morgan Hearst opened his eyes and saw a dragon watching him. 'Hello,' said Hearst.
The dragon said nothing, but watched him, eyes unblinking. He could not outstare it. His head hurt too much. Hoping for a few mouthfuls of wine, he reached for the leather bottle that lay beside the bed – but it was empty.
'By the balls of hell,' muttered Hearst.
The woman in bed beside him moved, and murmured something as she dreamed away the last of her sleep. Hearst eased back the coverlet, exposing bum and back: Could he rouse himself to desire again? No: he had debauched himself so thoroughly by now that all his appetites were satiated.
And he had a headache. A bad one.
His mouth, which was dry, tasted foul, as if a stale sock full of dead blowflies had been sitting in it for a couple of weeks.
And his eyes winced from the light.
He had, in short, a hangover. Not the worst one of his life – he did, after all, finally manage to drag himself out of bed – but a pretty bad one.
He dressed, slowly.
The dragon, cunning as a cat, watched him, its eyes unblinking. The stare irritated Hearst: he reached up and tore the banner down from the wall, bunched it up and threw it into one corner of the room. Then he opened the shutters, letting in dazzling morning sunlight. A mistake! He flinched as the light chiseled into his eyes.
'Ahyak Rovac,' croaked Hearst.
Any expert on frogs would, from that croak, have diagnosed him as being rather sick.
He found a big stone jar full of water, dunked his head in it, then, without bothering to surface, drank in big, labouring gulps. Then threw up his head and gasped for air.
He felt a little better.
He felt, to be precise, like a man of seventy who has been dead for a day and a half, which was an improvement on feeling like a man of a thousand and three years who has been dead for the better part of a century.
'I'll never drink again, not ever,' muttered Hearst. Then, yielding to the promptings of a certain innate caution: 'Or not without provocation.'
He found that, by now, he could just about endure the light coming in through the window.
From this room, high in Farfalla's palace, Hearst could look out over the city of Selzirk. The streets were as quiet as the mouse the cat played with yesterday, which did not surprise him. Overjoyed by the defeat of the invaders, by the liberation of Androlmarphos and by the news that the army from the Rice Empire had turned back rather than contend against Morgan Hearst and the death-stone, the people of Selzirk had held a festival.
Hearst had thought that, after his years of war and travel, nothing could have surprised him – but never before had he seen an entire city participate in a six-day orgy. He thought it was probably over by now: for one thing, there was hardly a barrel of wine left in the whole city.
On a big table by the window were heaps of assorted rubbish: books, charts, battle-plans, orange peel, dirty clothes, weapons, faded garlands, wilted flowers, a torn silk dress – did he really remember what he remembered, or was he only imagining it? – remnants of Alish's blood-red battle-standard, a copper bracelet, a silver bangle, a scattering of walnuts.
Hearst scooped up the nuts then rummaged the rubbish till he had recovered some cold chicken and half an apple, brown from exposure to the air but still edible.
As Hearst ate, he fingered a multi-faceted black gem inside which a red flame twisted, continually moving and changing shape as if trying to escape. He had found it the day after the defeat of Alish's army which, unable to defend Androlmarphos against walking rocks, had fled the city.
During bitter confused fighting on the quays of Androlmarphos, many rocks, escaping Miphon's control, had gone reeling into the water. There had been blood on Hearst's sword then: he had been in the thick of the fighting. It had seemed, once, that he would meet Alish face to face – then Alish had been wounded by an arrow, and dragged to safety by his comrades.