Almost in insolence as nearly two hundred lancers begin to trot forward, sabres at the ready, the angels wait, and loose another horseback volley. Only a dozen riders stagger in their saddles or fall, and the angels fall back. In fact, they gallop away as though demons were pursuing them, and the lancers charge over the hill crest, pressing their mounts.

The hill seems to shiver, ever so slightly. Then, a wave of screams, mostly horse screams, echoes down the hillside.

"What?" Sillek turns to Terek.

"A terrible hidden thing ..." stammers the wizard.

"You said that there were no pits, and that they had ridden over the entire hillside!" Sillek rides around his own forces, ignoring the wizard and heading over the hill crest, ignoring Koric and his own guards.

As he crosses the crest, he reins in, staring at the mangled remains of more than fifty horse impaled on the line of pikes that had appeared from nowhere, suspended on heavy cross poles from the so-called fence posts.

Arrows start to fall once more, centered on the foot trying to hack through or climb or slip through the pike wall. Behind the pikes, those foot levies not struggling to chop the wooden pikes clear of the stout frames are dragging bodies away from the pike line. Yet the arrows, the demon-damned arrows, sleet down from everywhere.

Sillek waves to the first rank of the foot. "Clear those pikes. Now! Clear them!"

Viendros, from the western side of the field, echoes the orders.

Koric, riding hard, has caught up with his lord, and he repeats the command.

By standing in the saddle, Sillek can make out a second line of posts, almost concealed in the high meadow grasses beyond the lower grass of the ridge crest.

"Stand down," hisses Koric. "You're making yourself a target."

Sillek lowers himself into the saddle.

"Charge again!" demands Koric.

"No! Not yet." Sillek twists in the saddle. "Terek! That second line of posts down the hill. Burn down the post on the end. The last one. Turn it into cinders."

The white wizard frowns.

"Do it. There are more of those demonish pikes attached there. You burn it, and we can sweep around those defenses on the left side away from the tower and the road."

"There are archers on that side," points out Koric.

"There are archers everywhere, it seems."

As Sillek and Koric talk, the two wizards concentrate. Then one firebolt and another flash toward the big squat post. The post remains standing.

"Well?" asks Sillek.

"It's green wood, ser, and it's infused with order."

Another volley of the deadly arrows sheets into the front ranks, and horses and men fall.

"You sure they are only score two?" rasps Koric.

"They're angels, remember?" counters Sillek. "Do you want to fight them when they've built up to score twenty?"

Koric shakes his head. "We'll get them."

Another set of firebolts flare at the post, and another.

As the wizards work to destroy the lynch post, as the foot levies and engineers hack away the barrier of pikes and bodies, the arrows keep falling, and horses and men scream.

Then one line of the crude angel pikes falls, and another, and the remaining lancers start forward.

"To the left!" yells Koric, riding forward, and sending his remaining messengers out.

The left end lynch post of the second pike line crumbles into ashes, but the next line of pikes springs up to the west of the last section, and a handful of angels sprint downhill from behind the posts. A half-dozen overeager lancers spit themselves on the second line of pikes, but one of the few crossbowmen slams a bolt between the shoulder blades of a fleeing angel, and the woman pitches headfirst into the grass.

"One less evil angel," mutters Terek. Sillek studies the field, watching as the remnants of the angels, a handful on foot, less than a score on mounts, draw up on the new paved road above a new stone bridge, a thin line between the advancing forces and the tower. "It's almost a pity," he murmurs. "A waste."

"Don't feel sorry now, My Lord," rumbles Koric. Sillek shakes off the feeling and sheathes the sabre. Then he pulls forth the great blade from the shoulder scabbard, a blade as near a duplicate to his father's as he has been able to have forged.

"Ser!" yells Terek. "The wizard's down there, in that little stone fort, and he's doing something."

"Well, undo it!" snaps Sillek. "That's your job." He glances over his shoulder to see that the last of his forces are clear of the demonish pikes and ready for the assault on the remaining angels.

The trumpet sounds, and the Lornian forces move forward, a trot for the lancers, a quickstep for the foot, ready at last to avenge all the hurts, the wounds, the deaths suffered on this campaign into the cold and unfriendly Westhorns.

Sillek raises his blade and rides forward. So does Viendros.

As they do, the hillside is bathed in red light-a red light that burns faintly, as though the sun had grown hotter, or Sillek had stood too close to the fire. The Lord of Lornth turns in the saddle, not slowing, to see Terek and Jissek, almost frozen in their saddles. Even Sillek can sense the immense forces that surge between the two wizards and the small fort on the flat below.

"Faster!" he yells to Koric.

Koric looks to the wizards, and then jabs the bugler, and the quick advance call rings out over the hillside.

Sillek gallops toward the angels, aiming himself toward the tall black-haired woman.

Another wave of red light flashes across the downslope, and Sillek urges his mount forward, knowing he must reach the angels quickly.

The ground trembles.

Sillek spurs his horse forward. Yet another two hundred cubits separate him from the angel forces, and the ground trembles again.

Then, a single shriek and a dull rumbling sound that lasts forever and yet is instantaneous cross the hillside, and Sillek feels as though a mighty blade of fire and destruction slams toward the hillside, toward him, as the heavens turn brilliant, burning white, as the air sears hotter than noon in the Stone Hills.

"Govern well, Gethen," whispers Sillek, and, as the incredible flare of whiteness flashes out from that focal point around Terek and Jissek, Sillek feels himself flaming, and he holds, for a moment, the images of Zeldyan and Nesslek, even as his great sword melts in his hand, and he with it.

The hillside shudders, and a dull huge clap echoes off the rocks and the surrounding higher peaks, echoes, and reechoes, like a chain of images trapped in mirrors facing each other, getting fainter and fainter, and stretching farther and farther away. The earth tremors echo each other, and flashes of light, like whole- sky lightning, blaze across the Roof of the World.

Then ... ashes fall like snow across the hillside, burning like fire as they touch the dry grass west of the devastation.

CXXVII.

CRUUMPPTTT!!!.

The building of intertwined chaos and order stretched and stretched through an endless and timeless moment, then ...

A miniature sun-a green and gold fireball-flared in the middle of the hillside below the ridge and east of Tower Black, transforming the soldiers and horses around it into statues of gray ash, then flattening those fragile shapes with its shock wave. The incineration and flattening effect flared through those Lornians farther away as the circle of destruction widened almost instantaneously.

For a fraction of an instant two white-clad figures seemed to stand out against the tide of destruction, as if standing on a crumbling cliff before a tsunami of chaos washed over them, before they too flashed into fire and ashes.

Nylan staggered, but continued to concentrate on focusing the laser even as he felt that wave of whiteness and mass death screaming toward him. With eyes already blind, knives stabbing through his skull, he forced the last ergs of power across the hillside, incinerating all that moved toward the road, raising instant funeral pyres-and the shock waves echoed and reechoed across the Roof of the World.

Perhaps a handful of riders pounded downhill toward the laser, toward the smith who wielded its dying hammer against the remnants of the Lornian forces on the hillside.

As Nylan shuddered under the first of the chaos waves that battered him, clinging to the laser, the five lancers charged the small fort.

For a moment, nothing happened, as the new guards stood stunned, eyes wide at the conflagration and shock waves that had roared across the hillside, at the swirls of ashes and flame, at the charred shapes heaped and tossed like burned limbs from a wildfire, then swirled into less than ashes. At the outskirts of the destruction, charred bodies tumbled into heaps.

"Fight! Frig it!" yelled Huldran, and her throwing blade cleared the wall and slammed into a lancer's shoulder.

Then the others, the white-faced guards, reacted, and three arrows flew, one striking another lancer.

Relyn jumped before Nylan, and the short blade he had once scorned flashed.

The lancer fell.

The smith-engineer sagged against the burned-out laser, and his body still shook as the waves of unseen whiteness hammered at him, as he twitched in the grip of chaos and terror unseen to those beside him and around him.

On the western fringe of the hillside perhaps half the Westwind guards stirred, but nothing else moved, except the fine ashes that rained across the Roof of the World, except the last dying flames.

The rapidly mushrooming storm cloud that had begun to cover the entire sky, growing blacker by the moment, swallowed the sun, and the dimness of an early twilight covered the Roof of the World.

Then Nylan's legs collapsed as he slid to the packed clay beside the tripod base of the laser.

The single remaining Lornian lancer spurred his horse northward and up the east side of the ridge. No one pursued, and ashes and rain fell across the Roof of the World.

Soon, so did thunder and rain and hail, the hailstones falling and clumping in piles, white as bleached bones, cold as death.

CXXVIII.

"RYBA, THE LEAST of the rulers of angels, thus became the last of the rulers, and the angels, having fallen from the stars after the time of the great burning, came unto the Roof of the World, where they had descended on the winds from Heaven.

"There, in the tower called black, builded by the great smith Nylan at the behest of Ryba, there they took shelter and gathered their strength together, and abided until the winter should lift.

"Yet since then, upon the Roof of the World, as a memory of the fall of the angels, winter yet remains.

"When the first great winter had passed, then Nylan the smith builded yet another forge, a forge of men, not of Heaven, and with hammer and anvil, forged yet more of the black blades of death, the twin swords of Westwind, and after that, forged he the bows of winter, small enough to be carried on horse and powerful enough to split plate armor, and Ryba the angel was pleased.

"Then, as prophesied by the demons, then came those men who were the descendants of the ancient demons, and with their fires of chaos, fell they upon the angels, for the descendants of the demons were fair determined to drive the angels from the world, and to ensure that no woman should prevail, nor rule herself nor others.

"The lightnings were cast against the tower called black, yet that tower held fast against the lightnings of chaos, and against legions of armsmen more vast than the flow of the great rivers, more numerous than the locusts.

"When she determined that the men who assaulted Westwind were of the demons, with a great sigh, Ryba reclaimed the fires of winter and with those fires and with the black blades of Nylan that were sharper than the edge of night, she and her angels smote the demons. They destroyed all but one, and drove him into the east, leaving none upon the Roof of the World.

"So after that time, whenever angels departed the Roof of the World, whether unto the southlands or the western ways, they carried forth the message of Ryba: Remember whence you came, and suffer not any man to lead you, for that is how the angels fell..."

Book of Ryba Canto 1, Section II [Original text]

CXXIX NYLAN WOKE, BUT could not move. His face burned, and his eyes stabbed so much he could neither open them, nor see. He listened, and even the words fell on him like hammers, most rebounding, their meaning lost in the force of their impact.

"... not a mark on him ..."

"... more than that in him ... who else... strong enough to hold a thousand deaths ..."

"... it's all in his mind ... guards died ..."

Ryba's words-"guards died"-stabbed through his ears, and he would have lifted his hands to close them, but could move neither hands nor head, and again he sank, not into darkness, but into a sea of white chaos that burned his body and soul, into a river of fire that flared from the sky he could not see and singed his body like an ox upon a slowly turning spit.

An ox, he thought, a dumb ox... and then, for a time, he thought no more.

Cool cloths bathed his face when he awoke again, if indeed it were the second time, for that was what he remembered.

Blinding light flared through his eyes, tightly squeezed shut as they were.

"Are you awake, Nylan?" asked a husky voice-Ayrlyn's voice.

He started to nod, but white needles stabbed through his brain, and instead he rasped, "Yes," afraid to move his head. Even thinking hurt, each thought like a thin knife.

"You need to drink, or you'll die. I'm going to put a cup to your mouth. Don't worry if you get wet."

Nylan eased his mouth open, and swallowed, then opened and swallowed, ignoring the unseen white knives that slashed his face but left no marks, just pain. Some little of the blinding agony eased as he drank, as the water ran across his cheeks and chin, as Ayrlyn softly blotted away the dampness, a dampness welcome for its cooling.

"In a bit, you'll need more."

"All... right... now."

He drank more, and the dryness in his throat subsided, and he slept, still flayed with red-tinged white whips that left no marks, but scarred his sleep and soul.

Over the next uncounted days, he drank and slept and drank and slept, and finally ate, until one morning, he could finally leave the single lander couch with Istril's and Ayrlyn's help and sit in the rocking chair that had been moved beside the couch for him.

But the pain and glare were so bright when he tried to open his eyes that he nearly doubled over.

"Ooooo ... I even felt that," said Ayrlyn quietly.

"So did I," added Istril. "I think it will be a while before you want to try to see again."

"What's wrong?"

"We don't know," admitted Ayrlyn. "You ought to be able to see, but whatever you did with that laser had a backlash, and it's not exactly psychological-it had an effect on your entire nervous system. It should wear off, but it's going to be eight- days or longer, maybe years before the pain leaves totally."

Nylan didn't want to deal with that, not then, not ever, but it didn't seem like he had much choice. "Where am I?"

"You're on the other side of the sixth level. Ryba was afraid that Dyliess would disturb you, and here was the best place. Also, with her shattered arm-"