Page 60 of Chained Knight

In the distance, amid fresh wavering heatshimmer, the chained man appeared.

34

THE REAPING

A shout rosefrom the Bright King’s army, the Goldens’ metallic bugle-blares mixing with piping, forlorn moans from the ravening restless dead. No doubt the cry was massive, for the bright walls of the Mirrored City flexed and trembled at its throbbing.

Yet the hellish din was drowned in thunder. Down the Road the Underdark’s first knight rode, his steed’s footfalls reverberating to the very depths of his kingdom. Swept in his wake were half a dozen companions, their eyes agleam with fevered power, clinging to the reins of snarling, bare-fanged equines. None had elected to stay behind, though the risk of hearts bursting or bones shredding during wild career was very real; to their queen’s defense they rode, the Cupbearer and those who had remained in the woods near the Keep to harry the traitor’s forces, those who waited faithfully for they knew not what.

In that waiting, they would not bend to the Bright King’s corrupt Law. Another allegiance held them; the usurper’s fury at intransigence could overwhelm with death and rot, but notforce true obedience. Even the corpses of his enemies could only be puppet-pulled, mindless meat married to metal.

None would serve him willing.

The Sun leapt upward, its face the color of fresh blood. As daylight mounted the Bright King’s army surged forward, a flood of clockwork horrors and masses of sickening ghouls. Yet the prince did not halt, did not slow. Swift as doom, relentless as death, his companions formed a wedge, and the prince’s sword held aloft was a flaming column.

As the day’s red eye separated from horizon-line, a small group crashed into a swelling horde. Stabs of lightning spread, chain-leaping from one abomination to the next; the rapiers of the faithful burned with renewed force. Screaming undead, teeth bared and foam spattering, were granted peace. Smoke gouted upward; the sound of cavalry impact was swallowed in terrible, furious vibration.

Black iron snakes rayed in every direction, ripping through entire ranks of the accursed. The carnage was unspeakable, and if upon the nearby hillside a lady turned away from such a view, ’twas only natural. Gobbets of rotting flesh flew high and shattered metal hulks were tossed like straws in a hurricane, for in extremity even a fetter may be turned to a weapon. The bedlam intensified, yet still vanished into that fathomless hive-hum of pure rage threading through every part of the Underdark, from the shore of the wine-dark Dreaming Sea to the Spires, from the Whispering to the Hollow Cliffs, from the floor of the Breach to the tallest spire of the Keep, where a single bloody glitter burst into life after so long in dark abeyance. From the Mere to the Lonely Mountain every beast cowered, even the fearless pards and the wolves of the Cloudrush, for a greater predator was snarling.

Through the ranks of the Bright King’s servants the storm winnowed, and none escaped the reaping.

Before the Moon’s edge first caressed the Sun’s, the work was done. A battlefield smoked with desolation, no restless dead or Golden remaining. Piles of rotting ghast mixed with shattered high-horned helms and punctured breastplates lay heaped before tall walls of frozen quicksilver; pistons and gearwheels, cogs and gobbets of quivering, contagious corpse lay heaped together, sponge-rotten skulls and shorn metal limbs strewn in a vast carpet. Only the Road was free of wrack, for it burned every foul thing set upon it to nothingness.

Straight through vast carnage the Road ran, and with it the prince. To the great gate of the Mirrored City he passed, its glass flaming with morning. The chains hanging from him flexed and drove forward as the Moon drifted across her consort’s face; a great hushed gloom fell upon smoking, shattered wasteland.

Thrice they battered, those chains bent to purpose deep and vicious. Cracks spiderwebbed the gates upon the first blow, slivers rained down upon the second, and upon the third a vast crumbling noise of breakage almost managed to rival the deep vibrating hum of his fury.

Almost.

The wall was breached, the Mirrored City open. Yet he did not surge forward. The Moon hid half the Sun’s face, and from a hill to the side of the battlefield a single lone gleam showed, pale and perfect—the Carcanet, its light briefly piercing cloth.

Only then did the prince hesitate. For from the Spires, his lady came riding.

35

THE MIRRORED CITY

The momenttheir the equines reached the Road’s flaming golden surface, the cloud of rot and burning oil faded, replaced by a smoke-sweet, musky perfume.

Getting there, however, required threading between hills and piles of shattered robots or quick-rotting zombies; more than once Ari almost retched. Maybe some of the greater drink lingered, proofing her against the worst nausea. Darjeth swayed in the saddle, greenish-pale. Hannixe pressed her hand over mouth and nose, blinking furiously as her great dark eyes welled with tears.

Keners leaned aside a few times, his gorge plainly rising, but none of them outright vomited. Which was, so far as Ari was concerned, a victory as well.

And to think she’d been worried about the chained man facing all those monsters. Still, the Bright King could have something worse in reserve.

Her stomach didn’t settle as their weary equines trotted up the road, heading for the massive hole torn in the Mirrored City’s wall. She had no idea where so much glass could be foundor made, but it coated every surface—mostly in giant sheets, though plenty of the buildings beyond were covered in mosaic-chips of variable size. On a clear summer day it probably glowed fit to give any onlooker a migraine, and she wondered who in the hell would want to live like this.

The rumble-thunder underground was so thick it was like silence. The moon was two-thirds across the sun’s face, every shadow scalloped, and though she knew not to look at any eclipse unless you wanted to lose your retinas the temptation was well-nigh unbearable. The Carcanet throbbed steadily, heat spreading through her a little further with each wave.

Her heart leapt into her throat as she counted her companions, none missing—Jazarl, his hair purplish in the red-dyed gloom; Alzarien with a makeshift bandage around his upper arm and his dark eyes gleaming furiously; Sarle’s brown equine hovering protectively close to Leshe’s new mount. The mahogany-skinned woman in the middle of the group brightened as she saw Hannixe and Ari, opened her mouth as if to greet them, but subsided, her hands tightening on the reins as she glanced at the black-armored man who faced the shattered gate, his back to the rest of the world and the chains draped on his frame moving slowly, seaweed fronds caught in a slow irresistible current.

Majan nodded at Keners, his pale hair taking on a cupric cast to match Alzarien’s. Naithor, leaning on his saddle-horn, studied Darjeth, and the relief crossing his tanned face was transparent.

Oh, thank God. Ari tried to pull the reins, but the white equine had ideas of its own. It paced through the group until it reached the black one, and the chains parted to let it through.Oh no. This… Wow. Good God.

Smoke rose in veils and eddies, columns and whale-spouts. There were hundreds of bodies and shattered robots piled against the walls on either side, spatters of effluvia and reddishoil-ichor painted nearly to the glass-sheathed battlements. Distorted reflections twisted in the mirrors’ depths.

It hadn’t taken very long at all. The wreckage was not nearly so terrifying as the fact that the one who made it had refrained until this particular moment.

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