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The starlight came back first, to Farrell’s great joy. He had intended to watch very closely this time, to see whether it was truly bound up in Sia’s hair or emanated from somewhere outside the room. But when it was there, it was simply there, making the room float on its foundation, and Farrell too happy to do anything but whisper a welcome and hold Julie’s hand. The scent of flowers grew warmer around them as the light spread—plumeria, the gods smell like Hawaiian plumeria—making him think of Sengen, beautiful as blossoming trees. Micah Willows, or the king within him, began to moan softly again with inconceivably fearful anticipation, and Farrell had a moment to wonder, is this how it is for Egil Eyvindsson, each time? Far above them all, Sia’s face was rising like the moon: golden and weary, battered into human beauty by endless stoning. Farrell could not bear to look to her.
Then she said something in a language like soap bubbles that could only have meant, no, damn it, damn it to hell, and, as if some celestial wrecking crew had gone to work, jagged pieces of night came plunging through the walls and ceiling of the living room. What Aiffe and Nicholas Bo
In a detached way, he was aware that Julie was crying out, somewhere nearby, “Ka
Julie said later that she had simply stepped through a hole in space, pulling the endless, meaningless night apart with a hundred of her five hundred pairs of arms and letting it close behind her, but not before Julie had glimpsed the bluegreen shores of heaven and the dragons. But to Farrell, it seemed that she came slowly from a long way off and that she entered that place where they were through the one of Sia’s masks that had never sprung to nasty life, but was somehow hanging in perfect serenity on no wall, over no fireplace. It was a Kabuki mask, white as plaster; and as Farrell watched, it began gradually to stream with Ka
He always insisted that he had heard them talking together, Ka
—Old friend—.
—Old friend—.
—I ca
—I will help him—.
—You are younger than I and more powerful. You have many worshipers, I have none—.
—Illusion. We do not exist—.
—Perhaps. But the child called you, and you came—.
—Of course. How not? I know her grandmother—.
—Yes. Thank you, old friend—.
But Sia swore that they had never spoken at all, that there could be no need for speech between them; and Julie drove him wild by describing how Ka
Micah Willows opened his eyes and said, “Julie? Man, who are these people?” Farrell stood quietly where he was, listening to the first birds, and to the sprinklers coming on at the house next door, and thinking entirely about Ka
Chapter 16
The war was not optional. Nearly every knight of the League, saving only the combat master John Erne and the King, was expected to take part in it, though the degree of a fighter’s activity was for him alone to choose. Farrell knew only that he belonged on Simon Widefarer’s side and that he would do something humane and encouraging on the home front. He asked Simon whether making hero sandwiches and teaming with Hamid ibn Shanfara to improvise morale-boosting songs for the troops entitled a man to noncombatant status. Simon guaranteed nothing, but recommended climbing a tree.
The rules of the war were simple and very few. The tangly thirteen-acre island in the middle of Lake Vallejo—a bay and a county away from Havelock—had been ceded a
Combat was conducted as in any tourney, with the outcome being determined largely by honor and eight floating referees, four from each side. In the one departure from ordinary League procedures, each party was allowed the use of a weapon customarily forbidden. Simon Widefarer chose the longbow, Garth the morgenstern. In practice, as William the Dubious pointed out, it always came down to swords; but Simon’s choice committed the invaders to helmets and serious body armor, despite the special blunted arrows. “That adds up fast, on a hot day. They never write about it, but plain exhaustion must have accounted for as many armored knights as anything else, in the old wars. Look for them to start dropping around two o’clock, three maybe.”
“Can we hold them off that long?”
William beamed a bit muzzily. They had been helping to work on the wooden castle all afternoon, aided by a siegeworthy stock of Mexican beer. “Easiest part of it. The thing is, Joe, the defenders always have the edge. There are only three good places to land on this whole island—there used to be more, but Garth spent all week one year bringing in these huge rocks, and he dropped them around so they ripped the bottom out of anything that tried to beach. It’ll take them till noon just to get a foothold, and they’ll lose a lot of men doing it. They’ve only got till sundown, and we can keep them away from the castle till late afternoon sometime, with any luck at all.”