"And crush the adder's head?" said Relys. "I would like that indeed."

Kyria still kept her eyes away from Relys for fear the captain would read the truth there. She would never tell. Never. But her eyes might betray her, and right now Relys's gaze, hot and bright as the new sword in her hand, might be able to see beneath her gracious veneer into . . .

No. Never.

"Entering a town under siege is a difficult matter," said Darham. "I do not wish to send anyone to certain death."

"It is certain death to allow matters to remain as they are," said Wykla. "But Gelyya has skill with Grayface weapons, and I am sure that she will go with us willingly.''

Darham blinked. "Us?"

Relys and Timbrin spoke almost together, their voices eager, angry. "Us."

"Us," said Wykla. She offered her hand to Manda. The maid took it.

Relys bowed formally to Wykla. "Will you allow me to command you, princess?"

Wykla was obviously uncomfortable with the t.i.tle: she almost grimaced. "In war, Relys," she said, "you will always command me."

Relys turned to Cvinthil and Darham. "For too long has a snake inhabited Hall Kingsbury," she said. "With your permission, lords, we will go and dispatch him."

"You have my permission, captain," said Cvinthil.

Darham nodded his a.s.sent almost reluctantly. "I pray you, cloak them well, sorceress. I do not wish to lose a daughter so soon after finding her.''

"I shall," said Kyria. "As well as I would ..." She caught herself looking into Relys's eyes, turned away hurriedly. "As well as I would cloak myself."

The Specter straightened and, slowly, as though to relish the terror and defeat it expected to see in Alouzon's eyes, lifted its blade. But Alouzon was paying no attention. Instead, she was held by the impossible sight of Solomon Braithwaite rising up out of his grave, shoving aside dirt and sod, climbing out onto the gra.s.s with determined jerks of his decaying body.

Staggering and lurching in the brightening morning, he stood up, and though the Specter suddenly became aware of his presence, it did not even have a chance to turn around before Solomon lifted his putrefying arms, clenched his fists together, and struck.

The Specter toppled to the side, nearly losing its grip on its sword. Before it could right itself, another blow from the corpse knocked it nearly senseless.

Alouzon, still stunned by what she was seeing, felt a dull surprise. Though the Specter was under attack, she felt no pain. A part of her own mind was being beaten by a reanimated corpse, and she sensed nothing.

But fascinated though she was by the scene before her-the Specter, gray and formal, picking itself up off the ground to face the shabby decay of a middle-aged man nine months dead-she felt at the same time detached. The Specter was hers, to be sure, but it was more than that. It had grown beyond her. Or maybe she had grown beyond it. She was not sure anymore.

I could have been the same way, I guess.

The Specter fumbled its way to its feet. Solomon's corpse fixed Alouzon with the same stare with which, at one time, Suzanne h.e.l.ling had been rooted in her chair during arguments about Romano-British civilization. "I told you I'd help," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Now get on with it."

She blinked, pulled out of her thoughts. "Get on?"

Dindrane was suddenly shouting, but Alouzon, confounded, did not understand, and the Specter was giving Solomon no time to explain. Seizing its fallen sword, it lifted the blade and struck the corpse, carving a slab of dead meat from Solomon's side.

Solomon stood his ground, turned his lifeless gaze on the parody of himself. "You d.a.m.ned fool," he snapped. "You can't hurt me. Nothing can. I'm already dead.''

The Specter was lifting its sword again, but Solomon moved quickly. With a leap, he launched himself, wrapped his arms about it, pulled it down. Clawing, fighting, struggling to be free, the Specter could not break loose from the embrace of the dead, and Solomon dragged it slowly towards the open grave.

"Alouzon!" cried Dindrane. "Alouzon! Look!"

Alouzon was transfixed by the struggle. With its sword proving useless at such short range, the Specter resorted to gnawing ferociously at the dead face inches from its own. Solomon, his features bared to the skull, inched towards the grave, and finally, with the gnash- ing of preternatural teeth and the harsh, shrill cries of frustrated desolation, Suzanne's dead professor and Alouzon's undead ant.i.thesis tumbled into the pit.

Light erupted, pouring into the air like a torrent of blood. The earth shook. Solomon's voice rang out, hollow, echoing, reverberating like a struck gong- ' 'Go!' '-and then was lost in a roar of shattering stone.

Dindrane was screaming, pulling on Alouzon's blouse, shaking her, spattering her with blood from her wounded arm. "Alouzon! Alouzon!"

Alouzon finally lifted her eyes. Dindrane was pointing towards the Santa Monica Mountains that rose up immediately behind the cemetery. There, on the upper slopes, something was shining with a golden light, and Alouzon had to squint at it for several moments before she realized that she was looking at a tall white tower, its marble sides as smooth as molded gla.s.s.

The Tower of the Grail.

* CHAPTER 24 *

Cloaked as they were in magic so powerful that the moon and stars were distorted into shimmering wisps, the machine gun fire was dulled into a heavy but incessant thudding, and the shriek of jets sounded as though it came from out of an empty well, Relys and her four companions, undetected, made their way up the dry, brittle slopes of Kingsbury Hill.

Once, Relys might have eschewed such protection with the claim that it was unmanly; and she still remembered her prejudices against Mernyl, prejudices that now struck her as both valiant and foolish. If Mernyl was unmanly, how much more so was this woman named Relys, who had finally come to bend her head to her s.e.x and its strengths and weaknesses.

Yes, she would accept magic, would in fact, accept anything that might lead her to a situation in which she might confront Helwych with a sword in her hand. But children, never. Marriage, never. She had been bent, but she would not be broken. Marrha, perhaps, had allowed herself to dwindle into a wife and a mother, but not Relys of Quay. Her womb, barren, would remain so, and her arms would embrace only armor and sword.

It had to be. It had to be. She could not live otherwise.

A bare ten yards from the edge of the plateau, she lifted her hand. They were close enough to the wall of earth and timber to hear the detached murmur of Gray-face voices and the stammering quaver of a few boys from Helwych's wartroops. The latter sounded absurdly young, close to tears in fact, and Relys wondered if the sorcerer had been drafting children out of the refugee families in order to fill the ranks.

Children. The thought was a pang. She stifled it.

The party was in the open, but Kyria's magic was holding. Relys beckoned to Gelyya. The girl, carrying her rifle, slid noiselessly to her side.

Relys put her head to Gelyya's and whispered: a movement more of lips than of air. "Can you kill them?"

In between sh.e.l.l detonations from the far side of the hill, Gelyya whispered her answer. "Noise, captain. I doubt that Kyria's spell would hold against a grenade, and more Grayfaces would come."

Relys nodded in the faint moonlight. "Then it shall be Timbrin and myself.''

The party crept to the wall. Relys sheathed her sword and stuck a knife between her teeth. Timbrin did likewise and dropped a coil of rope over her shoulder. With Gelyya covering them from below, the two women put their hands to the wall at a shadowed place and began to climb.

Cautiously, they scaled the rough-hewn timbers, fingers digging into cracks and ledges, arms wrapped about an occasional outthrust beam, toes feeling for support; and when they gained the top, they were but a few feet from those who guarded this section of the wall. Three Grayfaces were there, their features invisible beneath the goggling masks they wore, and there were two men of Helwych's Guard.

Men? One was barely old enough to have a beard, though Relys recognized him from her time in the barracks and knew that he possessed more than a beard. The other was much younger-the straps of his armor had required several new holes to fit him properly.

She looked to Timbrin. The lieutenant nodded. To- gether, the two women dropped to the ground, their knives in their hands.

Timbrin had developed a deft and effective way of slipping a dagger beneath a gas mask, and two of the Grayfaces were down before the third was even aware of it. Given the cloaking magic, Relys had no idea what he was seeing as he tried to get his rifle up, but she knew that he would see very little more as Timbrin's blade found his throat in turn.

The two guards were another matter. Too terrified even to scream, the younger huddled into the shadows, his hands over his head; but the youth who had raped Relys tried to put on a brave face as he reached for his sword.

He did not appear to recognize the woman he had violated, but he was dead before his sword was entirely drawn, and Relys stood for a moment longer than was necessary, her blade in his chest, feeling his heart fluttering into stillness. And your master shall be next, youngling.

When she turned around, the boy in the shadows was staring up at the moon, his features slack, his throat open. Relys said nothing. Children. And only by luck had she- "Captain?" Timbrin's voice was a whisper. She wiped a b.l.o.o.d.y dagger.

Relys shook her head. "It is nothing." She took the rope from Timbrin, made it fast to one of the rough beams, and dropped it over the parapet.

In a minute, Wykla, Manda, and Gelyya stood beside their comrades; and silently, still cloaked, the party slipped across the fields behind the earthworks. When they reached the palisade that surrounded the town, Relys nodded to Timbrin: they would climb once more. Her knife was ripe with the metallic taste of blood as she stuck it between her teeth, and she wondered suddenly if in some way she were not now defiled as much by her rapist's blood as she had been by his s.e.m.e.n.

No matter: he was dead. And Helwych, the author of the atrocity, soon would be.

But as she and Timbrin examined the uprights of the palisade, there was sudden movement on the other side, and a rifle bolt slammed home. As a sudden roar of artillery and mortar fire drowned out the shout of warning, Gelyya kicked Relys and Timbrin brutally aside, dropped back, and fired her rifle straight through the intervening logs.

Gelyya lowered her weapon. The far side of the palisade was silent. The roar of artillery had covered the shots. "My apologies, my captain," she said. "Forgive me for striking you."

Relys sheathed her knife. "You did well, warrior."

They pried the damaged logs apart and squeezed their way into the town. The faint moonlight and the distortion from the magic turned everything into abstractions, but there was nothing abstract about the stench that flowed from the refugee hovels like a polluted river: a compounding of the odors of death, decay, and disease.

Hall Kingsbury. There was utter silence among the company now. Despite the cloaking magic, a single word could betray their presence. With hand gestures, Wykla and Manda volunteered to go over the outer wall. Relys nodded. Gelyya covered.

The lovers climbed, and, after a moment, Wykla opened a small gate from the inside. Her sword was dripping, but Relys found upon entering that only one Gray face had been guarding the gate. Helwych had obviously sent most of his troops to the outer defenses.

All the better for us. All the worse for him.

A jet streaked overhead, but a fireball from Kyria turned it into melted steel and aluminum. It left an afterimage of brightness as it plunged down toward the ground.

And then Kyria, as though aware that Relys and her company would now need additional cover, intensified her magical attacks. To the north, the night sky sud- denly burned with hues that shaded from violet into invisibility, and long arcs of energy sped away into the distance, seeking the artillery batteries that had been sh.e.l.ling the allied positions since late afternoon.

Helwych replied, and the air above the town turned b.l.o.o.d.y with energy as the company slipped across the courtyard.

Another door. Relys paused, listening. From within came voices: "... lord, please. I implore you to surrender." The voice young and frightened, was again familiar to Relys. Was this not the one that had giggled like a child as he had attempted to penetrate her, the excitement overcoming him and making him spill his seed all over her raw thighs? "That is our king out on the slopes," he was saying now, his laughter gone. "How can you order us to attack our king?''

"The enemy you face is very subtle, captain," came the reply. "Very subtle indeed. You saw what happened to Seena's children, and Captain Relys herself was ensnared in evil spells ... for which she paid."

Relys' brain was on fire with the nearness of the sorcerer. Her lips moved soundlessly. Helwych.

The first voice was close to tears. "Lord-"

"Shut up."

"Please."

"Guard."

There was a crack of a rifle b.u.t.t striking home. The young man cried out.

But a sudden a.s.sault would do nothing. Patience. Endurance.

She drew the new sword that Tylha had given her- "This will fit a woman's hand better," the commander had said, as though she understood Relys's motivations-beckoned to Gelyya, entered the Hall. Wykla and Manda followed. Timbrin positioned herself at the door.

Helwych was a bent, shrunken figure in a chair at the end of the room. To either side stood a half dozen Grayfaces, fully armed, their weapons at ready, and one was stepping away from a young man, hardly fifteen by the look of him, who was picking himself up off the floor, holding his jaw. Blood was seeping out between his fingers.

Helwych had not even looked up. "You and your men," he said, "will fight whomever and whatever I tell you to fight. You are ignorant, all of you. You would be dead by now but for me."

The boy was weeping. "Please ..."

But Relys was suddenly distracted, for, silently, from a door behind the dais, Seena entered the room. Small and slender, her dark hair plaited in a single braid down her back, she was as Relys remembered her, and with quiet, un.o.btrusive steps, she made her way towards the sorcerer.

Gelyya looked at Relys, eyes questioning. Relys shook her head.

Still silent, still unnoticed, Seena approached Helwych from behind . . .

"Get out," said Helwych to the boy.

. . . and drew nearer. Her face was pale and haggard, and the light of one whose patience had run out, whose endurance had been pushed far beyond its limits, was hi her eyes. Her gaze fixed on Helwych, she took something from beneath the folds of her cloak. It flashed in the torch light.

A sword. Relys's sword.

At the sight of her old weapon, Relys caught her breath, and at the sound Helwych's head snapped up. "Guards!" He struck his staff on the ground. Kyria's cloak began to dissolve.

But as the Grayfaces swung their weapons towards the door, Seena struck. Unpracticed, ignorant of swordwork, she might have been chopping wood as she lifted the weapon over her head and brought it down at the juncture of Helwych's neck and shoulder.

The sorcerer screamed, toppled. The Grayfaces turned back to Seena.

Relys screamed. "Seena! Down!"

Seena wavered for a moment, then, more in a faint than in accordance with Relys's orders, fell to the ground as Gelyya opened up with her M16. The slugs struck the Grayfaces and the captain of the Guard with a high-velocity tumble that ripped them open in a spray of blood and bone and punched straight through to leave exit wounds the size of a man's fist.

Helwych, bleeding, breathing in harsh, bubbling gasps, was dragging himself towards Seena. His wound was immense, a dark rift in his robes and his body that seemed to pulse from within as though something were trying to escape from the dying flesh.

Methodically, her face set, Gelyya was changing ammunition clips, but Relys was already running for Seena. Vaulting over the heaped form of the struggling sorcerer, she clasped her arms about the queen and dragged her away from the dark vision that, dying and yet undead, was closing in on her.

Helwych's eyes were enormous. Wide with shock and surprise, black with void, blue with the radiance of invisible flame, they filled Relys's sight, expanding to encompa.s.s the room, the city, the world. Well, little girl, what do you think of motherhood?

In her haste to aid her queen, Relys had dropped her sword, but even had she had it in her hand, she would have been unable to fight off the eyes or the words that formed a booming, echoing, G.o.dlike p.r.o.nouncement of all that she had feared.

And is it a boy or a girl that grows in your belly?

Wykla and Manda approached the wounded sorcerer, but were smashed back by a surge of dark power. They tumbled to the earth. Relys, dragging Seena away, suddenly found her way blocked by the back wall.

The eyes came closer. Well, little mother?

Helwych-or whatever he had become-was still tormenting her, attempting to prolong her agony beyond the hours she had spent shackled to a barracks bed, unreeling it like thread from a full spindle to enmesh the future.

It would not work. She carried no child, had never carried one. Kyria had said so.

Gently, she lowered Seena to the ground. One sword was out of her reach, but the other-the sword Helwych had taken from her-lay beneath the roiling pool of darkness that was the sorcerer, its hilt projecting just enough to be seized by a determined hand.

Endurance, Kallye had said.

Well?

Relys moved, diving for the sword, grabbing the hilt, turning the blade edgewise and jerking it up and away so as to split the sorcerer through the groin. Helwych screamed again, and the darkness was suddenly falling on Relys, but she bent once again and struck expertly, economically.