“Enough,” rang out from behind her. “This is a world of men, not of demons.”

The thing at the gate seemed to grow, towering over the city, its serpentine legs smashing buildings to ruin. A red mouth whirled open, filling the streets with a howling hot wind. Fires sprang up in the dry buildings. A roar shattered the air, driving all thought and consciousness from men.

Zenobia turned her head, a Herculean effort, for fear and despair beat down upon her like the blows of a blacksmith’s hammer. Ahmet stood in the gateway, leaning on a staff of pale wood, his scarred body barely covered by a clean cotton robe. White fire ringed him, a shuddering corona of a thousand rays. She cried out in pain at the light that shone from him.

“Azi Dahak, I name you, dark power of witchcraft and lies.” His voice rang like thunder.

The thing at the gate convulsed, steams and smokes billowing from it. A tentacular claw lashed out, sending a jagged bolt of flame licking across the length of the city. Ahmet raised his hand. The flame sputtered and died, falling into the streets as pale white smoke.

“Azi Dahak, the ten serpents, I name you.” The sun flared, a white nimbus, and shadows fell upon the ground in opposing directions.

“Azi Dahak, I bind you in the name of the Binder. I compel you in the name of the God that Died and has Risen with the Sun.” Zenobia, her ears ringing with a tremendous noise, fell back to the ground, nerveless and without thought. The whole universe around her seemed only to be the ragged voice of Ahmet, shouting against a gale of wind.

The thing that towered over the city reached down and dust spouted up as its claws dug into the earth, tearing aside brick and mortar and concrete like dry grass. Ahmet staggered forward to the top of the ramp. He made a sign in the air, something that flickered and changed and hung in the wind like a glowing star.

“Azi Dahak, in the name of the Lord of Light, the maker of the world, begone!”

Wind rose in a gale, tearing at the clothing of the people lying senseless within the palace grounds. Bricks and tile sheared off the roofs of buildings and flew toward the’thing. A whirling storm of wind hissed up off of the deserted streets and abandoned gardens. Timbers, wagons, the bodies of men, entire roofs of tile and slate, leapt into the air. The vortex hammered at the thing, raging with fire and crackling with lightning. It shrank, clawing at the air around it, tumbling palaces and temples. The columns that lined the great avenue tore from the earth and arrowed into the heart of the creature. Marble and agate burst into flames and were devoured, by the shape. The sun expanded, filling the whole sky. Men screamed and tore at their faces, feeling their skin dissolve and burn away.

An enormous clap of thunder shocked the city, breaking statues of long-dead kings into a thousand shards, shivering goblets and amphorae into dust. The thing that raged against the whirlwind folded in upon itself and then, with a hot spark of black light, vanished.

Silence fell upon the city. The wind died. The sun stood forth in the blue vault of heaven, a solitary disk. Dust fell in a fine rain from the sky, covering everything with a mourners’ pall.

Zenobia crawled from under the rubble of the winged lion. A great stone wing had fallen over her, shielding her from the flying debris. The lion’s head was gone, torn clean off. The other lion was scattered across the courtyard. Ahmet lay in the threshold of the gate, his tattered robe wrapped around his loins. She touched his face.

It was as cold as any stone. Trembling fingers pressed against his neck, but there was nothing. Tears fell, sparkling like dew on his haggard, dead face. The Queen of the city wept.

The General Khadames raised his head up, shaking broken roofing tiles from his helmet. Around him, before the gate of the city, thirty thousand men were stirring, amazed that they were alive. They rose, by ones and twos, covered with fine white dust, ghosts in a desolate world. Khadames stood and ran his gloved hands over his body. He was stunned to be alive, much less whole. He looked around, blinking his eyes to clear the grit from them.

The ladders had been torn from the walls, leaving hundreds of men writhing on the ground injured or dead. The siege towers were only‘ lonesome great wheels leaning against timbers torn in half like straws. Acres were covered with horses lying dead on the ground, their riders missing or crawling away, crying out in horror.

The gate of the city was gone. One tower had been smashed down into a great ash heap, while the other leaned drunkenly, its top half torn away. The massive doors themselves were nowhere to be seen. An empty street, lined with broken columns like the stumps of teeth, could be seen through the ruin. Men stirred in the rubble or wandered in the avenue, dazed and mindless.

Khadames cleared his throat, but then paused and looked around him in sudden fear.

The black wagon had slid off of the road, a hundred feet behind him. The black horses were scattered about it, dead, their corpses withered and desiccated. The host of knights who had surrounded it in such terrible panoply lay in rows, their arms and legs a jumble of cracked and broken limbs. Khadames breathed a short prayer, but it stuck in his throat.

A dark figure moved in the field of the dead. Cowled in sable, limping, one bony hand clutching a staff of ivory bone, his master came toward him. Cold dread crawled out from that figure, pooling in the hollows of the ground and lapping around Khadames’ boots with an icy touch. One of the knights twitched, moaning, hand scrabbling at the earth. The dark figure bent over it, ragged robes masking the boy who lay on the ground.

There was a soundless cry. The dark figure straightened, filled with momentary strength. It strode toward Khadames. He fell to one knee as it approached, his fist wrapped tight around the hilt of his sword.

“The way is open,” a voice hissed out of the black cowl. “We enter the city.”

Khadames nodded but did not look up until the dark figure had passed him.

“Take him away,” Zenobia shouted, her face streaked with tears. “Hide him in the cellars, someplace no one knows. Quickly!” Her handmaidens gasped at the weight of the dead man and raised him up upon their shoulders. The Queen clapped her hands sharply and they staggered off at almost a run. Soldiers were trickling up the ramp from the ruin of the city. One of the Tanukh, a crude bandage wrapped around his head, hobbled up.

“O Queen, the Persians have entered the city. There are thousands of them and few of us.”

Zenobia nodded, looking around quickly. Scarcely a hundred men had managed to reach the palace. A few more were running down the avenue. The long lines of columns had fallen, or their arches had collapsed. The Queen surveyed the wreckage of her proud city with dry eyes. She had no more tears to shed.

“Any man with a bow to the wall, you others close the gates. You, Tanukh man, did the Lord Al’Quraysh survive the battle at the gate?”

The Tanukh shook his head slowly, bowing it in sorrow. “No, O Queen, I did not see him. Everyone on the wall or in the towers is dead.”

“It is enough that he died bravely,” Zenobia said, her eyes glittering like steel. Her saber rasped from its sheath. The blade was still true.

“Begin building a wall,” she called out to the men who had ground the gate closed. “Here, at the top of the ramp. You and you, run back into the palace and find oil and wood, anything that will burn.”

She walked to the top of the ramp and planted her feet, legs wide. The saber gleamed in her hands. She said nothing, waiting, while the few men still at her command rushed to build a wall of fallen stones, bodies, anything that they could find. The Queen’s face was cold and filled with hate.