The Masks of Sentinel

Chapter Five part 2 of 3

  
          Beneath the battlements, the pock-circled eyes above the bronze gate began to glow like monstrous opals.
          Bralud, unaware of what was taking place under his feet, gazed through half-closed lids at the dazzling shape of the Rimedawn. Moments before, it had risen to a point higher than the tallest of Erastor's towers. Now, stately as an iceberg, the ship was turning.
          From Kaihimma's vantage, it was a twisting blur against the sky. She watched fascinated as the stem angled into prominence. The white shimmer of the galley's flank narrowed, gave way to gold. Catching the lodestar's fire, ginger flames spiked the eagle's head.
          Meanwhile, a redness candent as the throat of a volcano was spreading out from the cliffs and over the waves.
          Abruptly, Bralud grew aware of it.
          For an irrational moment, he imagined that the insanity of the hour had so distorted natural events that while the sky shone with clear daylight, the pyres of sunset were reflected in the mirror of the sea.
          Kaihima glimpsed it, also, and realized that Xaltoran had at last roused himself to mount a counter-attack.
          The fireglow pulsed fanwise over the waves; at its core, two purple shafts, rooted in the cliffs, swept backwards and forwards, crossing and recrossing like giant blades.
          Overhead, the ship stopped turning. Its prow now blazed like a sunburst, gold rimmed with white. It was massive, yet somehow unreal.
          Then - shimmering, vague, fantastic - the vessel moved forward, faster than its rising or turning, heading directly for the central keep.
          Trying to grasp both visions - a luminous red delta, like the estuary of some hellish river, silting the bay with fire; a ship like a mirage, cutting through the sky clean as one of Sentinel's moons - Kaihima fell victim to a soul-piercing instant of purest beauty and fear.
          By leaning over the parapet, Bralud confirmed the origin of the purple shafts. They extended with peculiar solidity from the eyes of the time-ravaged face. So far as he could tell, the pervading crimson force emanated from the sweeping beams; the sand and the waves beneath it appeared drenched with blood .... And like a tide of blood, it lapped against the Skarnyr vessels, then flowed around them, while the rays themselves sliced through the six shells of brilliance as easily as swords through mounds of snow.
          Immediately, the fleet's original, mundane appearance showed through. Flames shot into the air. Great sails were transfigured from black to raging red. Clouds of oily smoke (marked by the fleeing souls of ships and men, perhaps) billowed against the innocent sky.
          Kaihima found herself imagining that a vast fountain of lava had jetted from the seabed. Yet she knew that Xaltoran's weapons had been the cause and the catalyst. She knew, also, that this time the destruction of the enemy forces was no illusion.
          Individual fires reached out to each other, even across wide spaces, as though engaged in a demonic galliard; the red light, nourished by the destruction, darkened and reared like some malefic entity.
          Tranquil as mountain peaks, the crystal towers soared free of the conflagration, their aura of timelessness cogently reinforced.
          The onshore wind carried trails of smoke inland.
          Errant spirals of ashen vapour clung to the shining flanks of the advancing eagle, feathered its dazzling figurehead.
          The Rimedawn threw a long shadow onto the battlements.
          Chilled by the eclipse, Bralud tore his gaze away from the heartening sight of the doomed fleet. Craning, he saw immediately that only the sides and prow of the eagle were armoured with light: that its beam was a vulnerable underbelly of dark wood still gleaming wet from the ocean. Cobalt energy erupted from the tip of Brand's lance. His men, roused by the flaring of the weapon, quickly followed his example. Moments later, the five custodians added to the storm, their brazen masks even more demonic in the play of blue lightning.
          Out over the sea, the purple beams froze, faltered, then shrank back to their source; a fraction later, the crimson glow shrivelled like scorched membrane.
          A sheet of red fire hung above the waves. Interwoven with the colours of burning tar, salt and flesh, hemmed with the shadowy forms of dying ships, crested with banners of black smoke, it brought to mind a vast, vampiric tapestry. The roar and the stench of it drifted landward.
          Kaihima covered her mouth with a scented handkerchief.
          Behind her, Nissuraj entered the room.
          "After Xaltoran's display," he said, "our own efforts will seem feeble."
          "But effective, I think," Kaihima replied, her voice muffled by the perfumed cloth.
          Charked wounds edged with orange flame sprang out along the eagle's keel as the ten light-lances maintained their bombardment.
          The Rimedawn's advance went unchecked.
          Bralud cursed fiercely as its dragon-shadow cleared the battlements.
          "Now!" the King's General ground out.
          Time passed, and nothing happened.
          Kaihima, her eyes dangerously bright, made ready to rise.
          Then she heard a wild, peremptory sound, as of a great wind tearing through a thick wood.
          Bralud heard it too, and turned quickly to see a dense flight of arrows streak from the middle ramparts, barbed points glittering like diamonds.
          Many of the shafts flew harmlessly past the warship; a few thudded into its figurehead; most curved down into the well.
          Kaihima smiled. "Fine archery, Lord Nissuraj."
          "Aye." A second volley followed, then a third.
          Each arrowhead was coated with rare spider venom. One scratch quickly induced sensations of extreme cold. The effect was akin to frostbite, only more devastating by far, being carried in the blood. Moments after the poison entered the body, its victim's heart and lungs and brain were frozen solid.
          Even as Kaihima wondered how Starkad would respond (she never doubted that he still lived) it began to rain.
          It began to rain black flower-buds sealed in crystal.
          Hundreds of shimmering globes no larger than pommels fell from the flanks of the Rimedawn.
          "What new deviltry is this?" Kaihima whispered.
          One of them sank past the window.
          It looked as fragile as a soap bubble.
          "Inside it," Nissuraj said in a dead voice, "something moved, like ... a reptile struggling to get out of its egg."
          Kaihima backed into the room, deserting the daylight.
          Only Bralud, who remembered an ancient legend, fathomed the true nature of the weird rainstorm.
          He whirled, fumbled with the handle of the door in the wall behind him, pulled it open and rushed through, then slammed it shut and locked it.
          Moved by an obscure instinct, Kaihima said, "We're not safe here."
          Nissuraj shook his head. "We must avoid panic."
          "As you wish." Kaihima turned and ran from the chamber.
          A word pierced Bralud's skull ... doomspore!
          From the battlements came the sound of breaking glass, followed by a noise like green wood burning. Then came a sonic explosion, an exultant cacophony, as of the flailing of a million whips. It almost drowned out the shouting, the screaming.
          Bralud tried hard not to imagine the scenes of horror taking place beyond the iron-banded door. He told himself, over and over, that if he had waited to warn his men, they would all have died anyway, as well as himself.
          The door shuddered as though assailed by a battering-ram.
          Bralud inched away.
          White tendrils shot from the portal's edges. At first, they looked as harmless as paper streamers. Then, identical growths gimletted through the wood - and even, in places, through iron.
          Fibrous roots, waving like antennae, hung from beneath the spiralling, lengthening tubers.
          With the laboured, detached movements of a nightmare, Bralud lifted his weapon.
          Proliferating tendrils probed wormlike through the air, urgently seeking anything that would provide nutrition. Sinuous as millipedes, they crawled over the walls of the corridor, taking root in the yellow stone. Leathery black buds sprouted along the white stems.
          Leprous shoots reached hungrily for Brand's warm, breathing body.
          Blue light cracked the gloom of the passage as the only survivor of the seaward watch trained his lance on the virulent growth.
          In a desperate litany, he prayed to his weapon: "Keep firing, keep firing, keep firing ... "
          Doomspore did not die easily.

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