Fall of Angels (The Saga of Recluce #6)(193)

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.