Blades of the Banished - Robert Ryan Page 0,61

combined.” There was no tone of regret in his voice, nor was there one of happiness.

Conhain sighed. He dropped the shazrahad sword, but only the hilt clanged against the tiles. What was left of the blade drifted away as ash on the wind, though it seemed to Lanrik that he saw a figure in that residue: a cloaked and hooded form, but it dispersed before he was sure.

The otherworldly light about the great king dimmed. He turned to Aranloth. No words they spoke, but a look of understanding passed between them. He turned then to Lanrik, his form shimmering and losing whatever substance it had.

“Nothing lasts forever,” he whispered. “Not tyranny, nor despair, nor even great evil.”

A moment the king looked at him, and then he was gone. The world seemed dark without his light, but then the clouds parted and the sun shone again.

Lanrik turned to the massed crowd of Esgallien. Conhain’s sword was in his hand, still blood-wetted.

“The Witch-queen is dead,” he cried. “But our troubles are not yet over. An army comes from the south. It is a host such as Esgallien has not faced in a thousand years. We must prepare for war!”

A ripple of fear ran through the crowd just when they had embraced sudden joy. Lanrik had no wish to steal it from them, but they must know the truth: their peril was as great now as it ever was.

Had the crowd known of the prophecy embodied by the shazrahad sword, a deadlier fear would have run through it. For now a king of the north had held the blade, spirit though he was, and Lanrik saw the blessing and the curse of that.

Ebona was dead, killed by perhaps the one thing that she had never expected to exist: an artifact of the powers that formed and substanced the world, united as they had never been before or likely ever would again. The Guardian had planned it. Perhaps Aranloth had guessed it. But surely the prophecy must now quicken in response.

War was upon them, and Lanrik had little hope.

22. Who Speaks for Esgallien?

Lanrik gazed from the parapet of the tower. He was weary as he had seldom been before, and there was no hope of respite. Things would only get worse.

River Gate was below him, for he stood on the right hand tower that guarded it, looking out across the well-tended lands that lay between the city and Esgallien Ford. What he saw was peaceful. The grape vines were bare, their crops long since stripped away. The nut trees were stark also, their hoary branches holding few remnants of autumn color. The precious harvest of their many groves was long since gathered and stored within the cellars of the red-roofed and pale-walled villas.

It all looked as it should. But things were not as they seemed. The enemy had marched with near-impossible speed, or else, and Aranloth deemed this far more likely, a different army from the one they had seen on Galenthern had left earlier from the eastern reaches of the Graèglin Dennath, where the elug population was greatest. Either way, it had arrived soon after they had themselves crossed the ford.

Whatever the case, the enemy had come at the same time as Ebona was overthrown. The hundred men who held the ford were tasked with an enemy beyond their strength. Yet still they held their ground for several hours. It was not much, but it was dearly bought by the blood of seventy soldiers. Yet their sacrifice saved countless others, for warning reached the villas and the people dwelling there had an opportunity to flee to the city. But their homes, and most of their goods, and the wine and nuts and other harvest from their grand estates were left behind.

If he looked closely, he saw smoke on the horizon. That was the first sign of the sacking and destruction of the villas and the advance of the enemy. More would follow, and there was no point sending solders to contest the southerner’s march. Esgallien’s army was too few and too ill prepared. Moreover, every man saved now was one more to defend the walls later. And that was needful.

Lanrik was no military leader. He had not sought to head the defense, but trust was much diminished in the army, for some of the generals had sided with the Witch-queen. The soldiers only trusted him: he was a Raithlin, he had defied Ebona and he bore Conhain’s sword. Thus they served him, yet