Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [49]
Lifting his gaze from the Gameboard, Prince Garald saw the true field of battle.
It was strewn with bodies. The Prince could not begin to count the number of dead. Cardinal Radisovik walked among them, his red robes of office fluttering about him in the winds of the approaching storm—a bitter wind that blew across the Field of Glory, sucking up the warmth of the sun and returning it with a breath of ice.
“If you are searching for those who might yet live, Radisovik, you are wasting your time,” Prince Garald started to advise the catalyst. Nothing lives out there…. Nothing…
It was only after watching Radisovik for several moments—moments that seemed to Garald to be increments of time that he could literally see and touch as they slipped by him—that the Prince realized the Cardinal was not searching for the living. He was granting the final rites to the dead.
The dead. Garald gazed out over the sunlit meadow that stretched before him. Once smooth and well-kept, the green grass had been torn and uprooted by some powerful force, blackened and burned as though the sun itself had dipped down and licked it. The dead lay all over the field, their bodies in various poses and attitudes according to the manner of their dying. On each face, however, there was the same frozen expression: fear, horror, terror.
Suddenly Garald cried out in anger. Stumbling across the grass, he slipped and fell in a pool of blood. Instantly the Duuk-tsarith were at his side, helping him stand, warning him to be careful, that the danger might still be present. Thrusting aside their hands, heedless of their words, Garald ran to Radisovik, who was murmuring a prayer over the body of a young woman in black robes. Grabbing the Cardinal by the arm, Garald jerked him to a standing position.
“Look!” the Prince cried hoarsely, pointing. “Look!”
“I know, milord,” Radisovik answered softly, his face so altered and aged by anguish and grief that Garald almost didn’t recognize the man. “I know,” the Cardinal repeated.
One of the fancy carriages that belonged to the wealthy of Merilon had crashed to the ground, its charred, smoldering ruins scattered over a wide area. The team of magical swallows that had once pulled it lay dead nearby, the birds still tied together by strands of gold, the smell of burnt feathers tinging the air.
A glimpse of blue fluttering silk caught Garald’s eye. Ignoring Radisovik’s remonstrances, he hurried over to the carriage. Grasping a piece of smoking wood that may have once been a door, he hurled it aside. Buried beneath it was a young woman, her burned and broken arms wrapped around a child as though she had tried, in her last moments, to shield the baby from death with her own fragile body. The pitiful attempt had not worked. The baby lay limp and lifeless in his mother’s grasp.
Near the woman was the body of a man, lying facedown amid the wreckage. From the manner of his dress and the elegance of his clothes, Garald judged him to be the owner of the carriage, a noble of Merilon. Hoping bleakly to find some spark of life, Garald turned the man over.
“My god!” The Prince recoiled in horror.
The grinning mouth and eyeless sockets of a charred skeleton stared up at the Prince. Clothes, skin, flesh, muscle—the entire front part of the man’s body—had all been burned away.
The world turned upside down. The sun fell from the sky, the earth slid out from beneath Garald’s feet. Strong hands gripped him, holding onto him tightly. He felt himself lowered to the ground and heard Radisovik’s voice coming from wherever it was the winds came from, somewhere far distant ….
“Theldara, fetch one quickly.”
“No?” Garald managed to croak. His throat felt swollen, talking was painful. “No I am all right. It was that poor man! What kind of fiend could possibly—”
Creatures of iron.
“I’m … all right?” Thrusting away the hands of his minister, Garald forced himself to a sitting position. Lowering his head between his knees, he drew in deep breaths of the chill air. Sternly he