Forcing a smile, Kyria released Relys's hand, and as the captain examined it, eyes wide, Kyria saw the brief upwelling-immediately suppressed-of tears of grat.i.tude. "My . . . thanks, mistress sorceress."

"It was ..." Kyria's smile had turned brittle, tragic, but she cloaked her emotions. "It was nothing. Is there . . . anything else I can do for you, captain?''

Relys hesitated. She wanted to know. She had to know. She was afraid to ask.

Kyria nodded. In order to heal in heart as well as in body, Relys had to know. "Ask, my friend. What pa.s.ses between us will stay between us."

Relys's shame was a breaking wave, her voice almost inaudible. "Kyria ... I am afraid that . . . that I might be ... with ..."

"With child?" said Kyria softly.

"Aye." The captain choked. "That."

Kyria shook her head. "Fear not, captain. You are not pregnant. I am a sorceress. I know."

And, indeed, she did know. Relys stared with relief, her tears breaking free at last.

"Be easy," said Kyria. "Go now and rest."

And when Relys thanked her again and, weeping, turned away, Kyria sought out her beloved Santhe and curled up at his side. Sleepily, the councilor kissed her and folded his arms about her, but Kyria knew that she herself would not sleep. Nor were Santhe's arms such a comforting refuge anymore.

The kids. Why is it always the kids?

The Volkswagen shuddered and rattled along the Ventura Freeway, but Alouzon could maintain a speed of no more than forty-five miles an hour. Even so, the car was in the process of shaking itself apart, and she fought with the wheel, willing the vehicle to stay together long enough to reach the cemetery. Just a little farther, dammit, just a little farther.

In the back seat, Dindrane, bleeding and bruised, was holding off the Specter and the wounded Worm with blasts of healing; and Silbakor swooped and attacked from the air, keeping the police helicopters at bay, intercepting the Worm's descents and smashing it away from the Beetle with slaps of its huge wings. The Great Dragon was wounded, true, but now so was the Worm. Alouzon, in interfering with a confrontation that would surely have been fatal to Silbakor, had succeeded in her objective: she had evened the odds.

But only for Silbakor. She still had an impending confrontation with the Specter; and as she neared the cemetery, she wondered what Solomon's corpse, dead now these nine months, could accomplish.

No matter. She was willing to grasp at straws now, however flimsy they appeared. While Dindrane abruptly shifted her powers to the police cars that were closing in-confusing the officers to the extent that they missed the exit completely and, in fact, became unsure of what had happened to the Volkswagen altogether- Alouzon bowled down the Pa.s.s Avenue off ramp, shuddered and skidded around the turn, and headed south.

"We're almost there, Dindrane."

The priestess did not have the time or the strength to reply, but Alouzon, deciphering the blurred images in the vibrating rear view mirror, saw a nod as Dindrane sent another wave of golden light out toward the approaching Worm.

A turn onto a broad avenue that skirted the mountains, then, and in a minute, the gates of the cemetery came into view. Tall, st.u.r.dy, made of thick, wrought iron that lent a sense of peaceful gentility to the orderly graves within, they were at this early hour closed and padlocked.

Alouzon did not stop. Despite ethical questions of trespa.s.sing and sacrilege, she had to get into the cemetery. Shouting for Dindrane to brace herself, she floored the accelerator, aimed the shuddering wheels straight at the gates, and rammed them.

The wrought iron buckled, the chain stretched. But they held. Alouzon and Dindrane scrambled out of the wrecked car to find that their way into the cemetery was still blocked, and the police sirens, guided by the circling helicopters, were approaching once more.

The iron fence was over ten feet tall, the sharpened tips of the uprights bent outward. There was no time to climb, and though the Dragonsword had shown itself capable of splitting solid oak, Alouzon did not want to risk an attempt to cut her way through.

"Silbakor! Get your a.s.s down here!"

The Dragon responded, batting the bleeding Worm away with a quick slash of its talons and roaring down at the cemetery gates, its wounds scattering chunks of darkness through the air. Just before it reached the women, it leveled out, flared its wings, and extended its claws.

With a leap, Alouzon and Dindrane seized Silbakor's feet and were lofted over the fence and across the even rows of gravestones and memorial markers.

Alouzon peered down, deciphered the meandering avenues below, called directions to the Dragon. At her command, it descended and slowed once again.

They dropped to the gra.s.s, tumbling their momentum away. Dindrane had caught her arm on one of the razor-sharp talons and was bleeding freely from the crook of her right elbow, but Alouzon dragged her to her feet, thrust her staff into her hands, and set off up a gra.s.sy slope. At the top, surrounded by birch trees, was Solomon's grave.

But the Specter was already there, standing between her and the grave, waiting for her with drawn sword.

* Chapter 23 *

Why is it always the kids? Kyria's initial salvo, unleashed just at moon-rise, tore into the Gray face emplacements at the base of Kingsbury Hill like a tidal wave of violet pa.s.sion. Melting barbed wire, leveling sandbagged strong points as though they were made of cardboard boxes, flinging mortars and 155-millimeter artillery to the ground with such force that the weapons were bent and crumpled beyond use, the bolt drove on and on. It charred the ground halfway up the slope, uprooting and incinerating bushes and even tall trees as it surged forward; and only when it reached the earthwork defenses at the lip of the plateau was its incandescent fury finally spent.

Why is it always the G.o.ddam kids?

Within a few moments, the potencies had cleared the hill of Grayface defenses, and the Gryylthan and Corrinian infantry that had readied itself under cover of darkness and magic now attacked up the slope.

While they moved-running quickly, occupying the ruined Grayface positions, spreading out so as to offer less of a target to mortars and air strikes-Kyria, standing on a small rise to the north of the hill, struck the tears from her face, shoved back her sleeves, and prepared for the inevitable reprisal. Helwych, she knew, would counter strike, and not only with magic: he had more weapons and more Grayfaces stationed within the perimeter of the town-sheltered from her blasts by the presence of women and children.

Women and children. And why, she wondered bitterly, should that stop her anymore?

In a moment, dull thuds from the top of the hill announced the firing of mortars, and the occupied positions were raked by machine gun fire. Tracers were an orange rain in the darkness. Mortar rounds detonated in brief kindlings, puffs of smoke, and spreading pressure waves that made the stars shimmer with their pa.s.sage.

The kids . . .

Kids in the town. Kids on the hill. Kids in other parts of the country. With her own words-foreign, angry-ringing in her mind, Kyria countered, smashing her energies against the earthworks in a wave of lethal silver as the foot soldiers who had taken the base of the hill dug in, throwing up barricades of sandbags, refuse, and even Grayface bodies to shield themselves from the automatic fire that ravaged their positions.

A minute later, the scream of jet engines announced an imminent air strike.

Grimly, the infantry stayed put, hugging the earth, pressing themselves against soil that at any moment might erupt beneath them in a concussion of high explosive and a hail of razor-edged shrapnel. They were counting on Kyria to turn the weapons and the magic away.

Impelled by mixed sorrow and rage, the flow of power from the sorceress was a geyser of white heat that soared up from her lifted hands and flung itself at the fortifications. The machine gun emplacements exploded in violet flames and a rattle of detonating ammunition.

And how many did I kill that time?

There were a hundred possibilities that she tried to keep from her thoughts. Helwych was quite capable of herding the refugees into the trenches and the barricades, there to be slaughtered by the very magic de- signed to set them free. And perhaps there were infants-newborns, toddlers-strapped alongside the M60s and the mortars, screaming themselves black with each concussion, dying in the fire of magic that lapped about the plateau like a sea of magma.

And Relys's child . . . but Relys would never know. Never.

The infantry struggled a few yards forward and dug in again, cheering as Cvinthil and Santhe led a picked troop of cavalry up the slope, leaping craters and dodging the scattering of fire that attempted to track them. The Skyhawks were lining up for a bombing run, though, and Kyria shifted spells, altered potencies, and battered the warplanes away. Tumbling to the ground in long arcs of burning fuel, they exploded in fireb.a.l.l.s that lit the hill like torches. Smoke mushroomed into the air and obscured the faint moonlight.

Cvinthil and his troop climbed further towards the fortifications, and for a moment, aside from the crackle and snap of burning jet fuel and melting aluminum, there was silence about Kingsbury Hill. But the lull was abruptly shattered by a deep groaning, a rumbling and a tumult that struggled up from the earth and stone, gathered itself into a roiling cloud of unlight, and, with a sound as of shouting voices and a flash of blue-black void, launched itself through the air.

Helwych had turned to direct magic, the magic of the Specter, of pure, heedless destruction. Had his spell been aimed to follow the contour of the hill, it would have instantly scoured it clean, stripped it even of topsoil and left it a gleaming, fused monolith of naked bedrock, a vitreous waste more permanent and barren than that which now const.i.tuted most of Gryylth. But it was not directed at the army. Helwych was, instead, striking for Kyria, unleashing powers against which he was sure she had no defense.

Had he acted a day before, he might have been right, but despite all her worry and doubt and grief at what she had done and what she could not do-and, maybe, she admitted, because of them-Kyria, the real Kyria, now had full access to all her powers, glorious and tragic both.

Lifting her arms, she called up the memory of her dead children, the hopelessness of her former life, the utter despair of the dirty warehouse and the bloodstained table, and, eschewing rage, rejecting even the faintest shred of anger, she forced herself to find in those symbols of death and powerlessness the promise of something better.

It could be otherwise. It would be otherwise.

She felt something give within her, a snapping as of corroded heartstrings, perhaps; and as Cvinthil and his cavalry continued their charge straight up to the edge of the earthworks, defying the darkness that towered above them like an angry fist, the rise upon which she stood was suddenly enveloped in light the color of a hand held up to the sun, and-shining, throbbing like a live thing-it rose up, seized the cloud of un-light, and squeezed it into nothingness.

Kyria sagged, weeping, as Cvinthil's voice rang out, calling upon the Gryylthan soldiers within the walls of the town to renew their allegiance to him and join the fight against the usurper. There was no answer, but a burst of fire from an M16 cut his horse out from under him, and he had just enough time to drop behind the carca.s.s before the dead flesh was shredded into a b.l.o.o.d.y froth.

Mouth set, Kyria stilled the gun with a flicker of white heat. Santhe dragged Cvinthil up behind him and, with a shout, led the cavalry back down the slope, leaving Helwych's wartroops to their realization, their horror, and their treason. In the brief lull, the infantry advanced a little further up the slope and dug in again.

Now came the sound of helicopters and jets. Braced for another blow from Helwych, Kyria prepared her spells as, out on the dark hillside, points of golden light and the incongruous sound of chiming harpstrings testified that the healers and harpers of Vaylle were caring for the wounded.

The first jets streaked in, low and fast, and dropped their napalm. Kyria quelled the fire. Missiles streaked at the infantry. She knocked them aside. Helicopters dropped to the ground and disgorged gray, gas-masked figures; and as Kyria worked her magic against them, another bolt from Kingsbury soared through the air, threatening to incinerate her.

She looked within, confronted once again the despair, turned the bolt aside. And the battle continued.

"Give it up, girl. You can't take me."

The Specter, lean and swaggering in a three-piece suit, stood before Solomon's grave, daring Alouzon to approach. Its words were nothing new to her. You can't take me. You can't beat the system. You can't escape the draft. The war in Vietnam is impossible to win, but losing is unthinkable.

And here it was again. Futility. If Alouzon won, she lost. If the Specter won, she lost. And about Kings-bury, a battle that had perhaps become a moot contest over the ownership of a desert was raging. As in Vietnam, no one could win.

But unlike Vietnam, the issue here was not the saving of face or the victory of one political system over another. It was, rather, the fundamental existence of a world and a people. There was nothing for Alouzon to do but attack, and so she did. If it were humanly or divinely possible, she would extirpate this thing of reified destruction and slaughter from her inner self . . . and therefore from her world.

Caught off guard by her sudden rush, the Specter took a step back. Its polished oxfords made hollow sounds on Solomon's marker, crunching and sliding on the remnants of the flowers that, days ago, Suzanne h.e.l.ling had placed on the grave along with a drop of blood and an adjuration to the dead man to awake and live again.

But as police sirens drew closer and Silbakor locked the White Worm in t.i.tanic combat above the treetops, the Specter drove back in, smashed Alouzon's guard down with a heavy blade, then turned and ripped back towards her throat. She fell back and ducked, and before her opponent could react, sprang forward again and aimed a vicious cut at its head.

But the blue-black eyes were laughing. The Specter knew as well as she the results of a killing blow. As though amused by the joke, it parried her blow and kicked her down the hillside.

"What are you going to tell the police, Allie?" it sneered. "What did you tell the National Guard?"

She struggled to her feet. ' 'We told them they were murderers."

"And you know all about murder now, don't you?"

The Specter planted its feet and grew into a colossus the size of the trees that flanked Solomon's grave. Alouzon backed off, wondering how she was going to fight such a thing, but a golden wave of warmth and healing suddenly arose from behind her and drenched the Specter with a shimmer the color of warm honey.

The colossus vanished. The Specter was again man-sized.

Dindrane dismissed the energies and lowered her staff. The gash in the fold of her elbow was running with crimson, and the blood streaked her white skin as she pointed at the Specter. ' 'If there has been murder," she said, " 'twas you who taught us of it."

The Specter's eyes narrowed. "Are you a boy," it mocked, "or a girl?"

Dindrane sneered back. "I am something you do not understand. Something you can never understand." She lifted her staff again.

The Specter flinched. "That arm of yours will never clot," it said. "You will bleed to death."

And, in accordance with its words, the blood welling from Dindrane's wound began to quicken. The priestess examined it, shrugged. "Then I will die knowing that I helped my G.o.ddess."

"Helped her to what? To die?"

Dindrane replied with a raised staff, but the Specter batted the healing away and threw itself on Alouzon.

Swords met, clashed, parried, withdrew, clashed again. In the back of her mind, Alouzon knew that police cruisers were gathering in the parking lot while the cemetery attendants opened the gates, but she also knew that there could be no mundane resolution to this conflict. What could guns do against a being that was, in fact, all guns and all weapons and all destruction?

An unexpected kick from the Specter sent her reeling back across Solomon's grave, and she lost her grip on her sword as she fell heavily to the gra.s.s. Dindrane attempted another healing spell, but the Specter whipped around with a fist and sent her to the ground. As the priestess floundered, it turned back to Alouzon. "This is it, girl. You should have taken my offer in the temple. Now everyone's going to die."

Alouzon tensed for a quick lunge for her sword and a roll that might allow her to regain her feet. "Don't try to pin it on me, guy. You had this planned all along. You were going to make sure everyone died anyway.''

The Specter bent over her, eyes boring into hers. "Maybe. But you'll never know now, will you?"

Could it ever have been otherwise? The Specter was as it was, so locked into its need for destruction that it could not exist otherwise. And so single-minded and obsessed was it that it could not even comprehend that, in killing Alouzon, it too would cease to exist.

Alouzon shook her head. "Just like Nam," she whispered, and the uselessness and the sorrow of it brought the tears to her eyes. "And you don't even know it. You know, dammit, I kinda feel sorry for you, you dumb schmuck."

Dindrane was staggering to her feet, groping for her staff. But her attention was not really on the staff, nor, in fact, on the Specter. Rather, she was staring at the ground directly behind it, staring at Solomon's grave.

The stone was moving.

As in Suzanne's vision at the cemetery, the ground was buckling as though thrust up from below. Soundlessly, the marker rose, wavered, then tipped back and fell, upside down, onto the thick gra.s.s. Dull, fevered light streamed into the morning sky.

As the Specter bent over Alouzon, hands appeared at the edge of the hole. They were withered hands, their flesh slimy with the action of anaerobic bacteria and the inevitable dissolution that followed death: the hands of a corpse.

And then with a stiff lurch, Solomon Braithwaite stood up in his grave, his face glowing with a focused rage, his eyes-glazed and yellow and dead-fixed on the Specter.

By dawn, the forces of Gryylth and Corrin had managed to take most of the slopes of the hill despite constant air strikes, automatic weapons fire from the defenses at the lip of the plateau, and a brutal deluge of 155-millimeter sh.e.l.ls from Grayface artillery emplacements miles away from Kingsbury. But an impa.s.se had been reached. Because the town was inhabited by refugees-diseased, starving, but nonetheless alive-Kyria would not bring greater force to bear on it, and Helwych's weapons, falling in a constant rain of death, precluded any further advance by the infantry and cavalry.

The sun rose, but the battleground remained shrouded in darkness: a prolongation of night arranged by Kyria for the benefit of the men and women still holding the slopes. But though the jets were thereby restricted to infra-red scanners, flares, and navigation points radioed by the besieged Grayfaces at the top of the hill, they continued to arrive laden with napalm and bombs, and the artillery sh.e.l.ls continued to fall.

A few, inevitably, reached their targets.

After nearly five solid hours of work, the healers and harpers of Vaylle were nearing an exhaustion that was both physical and psychological. Priestesses sworn to peace found themselves confronted with shrapnel wounds, amputated limbs, and dismembered bodies; and harpers who had once made music by the quiet bedsides of the sick now plucked their bronze strings with blistered and b.l.o.o.d.y ringers, playing as loudly as they could in order to be heard over the shriek of jets, the coa.r.s.e ripping of M60s, and the mingled screams of falling sh.e.l.ls and the mortally wounded.

Kyria worked on, blasting the jets, quelling the outbreaks of fire from the defenses, incinerating the helicopters before they could touch down and release their platoons of Grayfaces. But she too was wearing down, and she knew it. The stalemate had to be broken.

Near noon, Helwych's attacks-mundane and magical-broke off, doubtless, Kyria thought, because the sorcerer was as tired as she. The infantry on the hill held its positions, ready for any chance to rush and breach the wall, but Kyria, still deep in her magic, detected riders approaching her. After a startled moment she realized that they were friends: Cvinthil and Darham, their councilors, and a few captains of the phalanxes and wartroops.

The men and women who dismounted were tired, dirty, and their eyes were full of the death and blood they had seen. But in the slump of their shoulders there was also a sense of futility: Helwych was holding against the might of three nations, and he showed no sign of any weakening.

Tersely, their voices heavy with fatigue, the allies exchanged reports. A Vayllen priestess told of the exhaustion of her people, and Kyria explained what she knew of Helwych's position.

"He continues, eh?" said Marrha.

"Indeed," said Kyria. "He is controlled by the same forces that formed the Specter, and he draws his strength from them. And more Grayfaces will be arriving from the east by morning."

Darham was frowning. "It cannot go on this way. The numbers of the wounded have already outstripped the Vayllens' ability to heal. Men and women are dying out in the open, and often the fire is so heavy that their comrades cannot reach them."

Marrha turned to Kyria. "It appears that, once again, we need a another way. And this time we cannot wait.''

Relys was calculating, her eyes hard. "I think I understand such things now."

Kyria stared at her for an instant, then turned away as though to reconnoiter the hill.

Wykla, standing at Darham's elbow as a princess of Corrin, spoke up. "Alouzon, Manda, and I entered Kingsbury unseen and made our way to the house of Kallye the midwife." She paused, lips pressed together, jaw clenched. Everyone knew .about Kallye. Everyone from Kingsbury had loved her. "The G.o.ds will hear her name," she said softly. "But could not some of us, with the help of darkness and magic, make our way into the town once again and-?"