Chains of Blood

by M. L. Spencer

  But he had no courage left.

  He couldn’t draw the dagger.

  Gil saw pity and forgiveness in Ashra’s eyes. She knew he was defeated. One of the Khar mages stepped forward, a dark gray man with long, silvery hair. He held up the empty chain.

  “Put it on.” His voice was rough, like old, hard leather.

  Gil shook his head. “No.”

  The man’s companion, a black-haired woman with blue-gray skin, came forward to stand at his side.

  “You must put it on willingly,” she said, smiling kindly. “It’s not as bad as you think it will be. You will learn to love it.”

  “If you put on the chain, we will let her go,” the man said, pointing at Ashra.

  Gil sucked in a sharp breath, suddenly flooded with hope. “You’ll let her go?” he asked, not daring to believe it.

  The gray man nodded. “Yes. If you put on the chain willingly.”

  Gil’s pulse rang like a kettledrum in his ears. He stared at the chain being offered him, overcome by a heady mixture of hope and despair. With a sigh, he let go of the dagger’s hilt and extended his hand. “I’ll do it. Give it to me.”

  “Stop!” Ashra cried, springing between him and the enemy mage. “If you let him go, I’ll put it on!”

  Appalled, Gil opened his mouth to protest.

  “He is worth more to us.” The female mage inclined her head toward Gil. “He is much stronger than you. I could feel the power in him from across the canal.”

  But Ashra was undeterred. “I’m the daughter of the Sultan!”

  Her admission rocked Gil to the core. “What are you doing?” he gasped. “Shut up!”

  But it was too late. To his horror, Ashra smiled. She said to the woman, “You can have two dead mages… or the Sultan’s daughter on one of your chains. Which would you prefer?”

  The woman looked at the man. They stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment. At last, the man turned to Ashra and offered the chain to her.

  “Then it is yours.”

  Gil wanted to scream. Or cry. Or both. “Why are you doing this?” he whispered.

  Ashra smiled at him.

  She smiled.

  She turned to the woman. “First, let him go.”

  The female mage stepped forward, halting close enough that Gil could smell her scent, a fresh odor that reminded him of a field after a summer rain. She reached up and stroked his cheek.

  “You may flee, this time,” she said. “But very soon, you will belong to us. And when you do, I will possess every part of you.”

  Gil shuddered at her touch. He shot a panicked glance at Ashra, his heart quaking.

  “Go,” Ashra commanded.

  He didn’t want to.

  But he had no choice.

  29

  Locked in Stone

  Another misshapen tower rose from the canopy to loom above them like a decrepit sentinel. Rylan stared up at it, taking in its contorted appearance, as though the stone had melted and run like candle wax. He wondered what purpose such a tower could have served. There were many like it all around the ancient city, perhaps a network of guard towers or lookouts.

  He turned his attention to the wide intersection ahead. In the center was a clover-shaped fountain with many tiers of basins. To the right of the fountain sprawled the statue of a woman who looked to have just fallen there, arms thrust upward, as though trying to shield herself from something falling from above. Rylan stared at the figure as they walked by, noting its composition. It looked to have been carved from a single large clump of charcoal. It was remarkably lifelike. He could see every fine detail of the woman’s dress. Looking at the statue filled him with a hollow feeling, its presence seeming to emphasize the uncanny emptiness of this place.

  They walked on in silence until they came to another statue, this one seated in the center of the road, a sapling growing out of the space between its arm and torso. This time, Rylan stopped and stared at it. He could think of no reason why someone would carve such an acute likeness and leave it sitting in such a position in the middle of a street. The longer he stared at it, the colder he felt.

  He asked, “They’re real people, aren’t they?”

  Xiana stood next to him, considering the figure. Her eyes took on a sad cast. “Yes. These are the people of Suheylu Ra.”

  “But they’re statues,” Rylan said, dropping to crouch next to the dead man sprawled in the road. He reached out to touch it, but Xiana caught his hand firmly, holding it back.

  “Don’t.”

  He withdrew his hand and stood up, taking a step back. Looking around, he noticed there were more bodies scattered up and down the street. A breeze kicked up, trailing leaves across the avenue, past the petrified remains of men and women, frozen at the moment of their deaths. He looked around at the tall, abandoned buildings shadowed by the clouds. Suheylu Ra suddenly took on the aspect of an immense graveyard, listless and haunted.

  Xiana took his arm and guided him forward.

  When they came across the next figure, Rylan stopped and stared down at it. It had once been a woman who had died kneeling on the ground, her arms wrapped in front of her as though she had been hugging something. Or someone. On the street beneath her was a pile of dark sand.

  Rylan knelt and raked his fingers through the sand, scooping some up in his hand. It was moist and cold. Gritty. He turned his hand over and let it spill to the ground. Then he rose and scrubbed his hands clean on his trousers.

  “That was a person, you know,” Xiana whispered, gazing at him wistfully.

  Rylan winced. Looking down, he stared harder at the stone woman who knelt clutching only air, at last recognizing the horror on her face for what it was.

  Shaken, he let Xiana lead him forward again. Ahead, the avenue they were on angled downhill. At the bottom of the slope, the street was covered in water, a broad pool that stretched across many blocks. The withered shells of buildings protruded from the water; in places, only rooftops were visible. In the center, the lake appeared quite deep. It had swallowed a good portion of the area. Cut off from the road ahead, they turned down a side street.

  Xiana said, “In my time, Zahran mages learned their craft by making a pilgrimage to this place. Each of these statues was once a living mage who was locked in stone the day Keio Matu destroyed the Sky Portal. Their bodies were petrified… but some small part of them still exists, locked deep within the stone. Those with the Gift once came here. If you touch one of these statues, a small part of the person they once were becomes part of you. Not a lot. A few of their memories. But mostly knowledge.” She stopped and looked at him. “That’s why I brought you here. This is your pilgrimage, Rylan. This is where you will learn all you need to know to become what you must.”

  Feeling cold and suddenly weak, Rylan looked at the nearest figure. This one was a young woman shading her eyes against the glare of a sun she would never see again. He turned to Xiana, shaking off a chill he felt down deep in his bones.

  “So I’m supposed to do, what? Touch one of these statues?” he asked. “And then I’ll know everything they knew? That doesn’t make sense.”

  Xiana smiled. “Magic often doesn’t make sense, Rylan. You will become much greater than any Master of your Lyceum. You will become deizu-kan, a true battlemage in every sense, and you will have all the knowledge of ancient Shira.”

  He cast a worried glance up at the clouds. The breeze gusted to a wind. Clouds thickened overhead, cooling the air as the shadows fell.

  “It seems too easy.”

  “It’s not easy, Rylan.” Xiana’s voice was suffused with sadness and foreboding. “Trust me.”

  He frowned at her. “Why’s that?”

  “Look at me.” She raised her hand and touched his face. “Remember: you are who you are because that’s who you need to be.” She stared at him, her eyes searching his. “Tell me, Rylan Lauchlin. Who are you?”

  He opened his mouth to answer her, then realized he couldn’t. He stood
there feebly for a moment, unable to speak. At last, he said, “I don’t know.”

  She leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “And that’s why we’re here.”

  Her words scared him more than she could ever know. They dredged up the memory of the oath he had sworn, the same oath his father had taken. He was terrified that oath would someday come to summarize his existence.

  With a slight pressure on his back, she urged him forward. He walked automatically at her side, feeling dazed, down empty streets surrounded by buildings that seemed to sag with age and loneliness. Human figures littered the area, along with the piles of dust that seemed even more tragic. Vines hung from stone bridges, draping down to strangle their path. They walked through a thicket of shrubs and scrub grass that completely consumed the road in places. Rylan wondered how the plants could survive in this place, when every animal had disappeared. It occurred to him that maybe the animals knew better, that some instinct told them to stay away.

  Xiana drew to a stop. Ahead of them reared an enormous structure that looked like a fortress, but far greater and more magnificent than any fortress Rylan had ever seen. It had several towers that soared twenty stories or more into the sky. The building looked like it had been carved from a single, dark monolith. And it was intact, its walls smooth as glass, yet riddled with gaping holes that had at one time been windows. Each of its tall towers was capped by a golden dome. Vines webbed its sides like veins, and the branches of a great tree spread from one of the windows.

  “The Sanctuary,” Xiana whispered, her voice choked with awe. “The birthplace of all magic. The most enlightened center of learning that has ever existed in this world.”

  Standing in the long shadow cast by its walls, Rylan stared up at the building with an intense feeling of trepidation, feeling none of the wonder Xiana exuded. The dark fortress looked ominous, even sinister. Perched there in the middle of the sterile and decayed metropolis, it looked like a monument dedicated to everything evil.

  “It doesn’t look like a sanctuary,” he said.

  Xiana led him toward an entrance that consisted of a narrow arch several stories tall guarded by a drape of snake-like vines. Looking down, he saw the hardware of what had once been an enormous door. But if the wood had indeed ever existed, it had long since rotted away, leaving only its bolts and hinges behind.

  Rylan stopped as his feet crossed the threshold, a long shadow sliding over him. Before them gaped an enormous hall that spanned the entire length of the bottom story. Steps leading down from where they stood became submerged under water that looked like tar. There was nothing between them and the far end of the hall except that dark pool. If they wanted to go anywhere in the fortress, they would have to cross it.

  Xiana strode down the steps and, without hesitation, splashed into the pool until the water rose to her waist. Then she stopped and turned back, beckoning him forward. Rylan balked. They had no way of knowing what was in that water, and his imagination was already running rampant. There could be anything down there. Anything.

  “Don’t worry; it’s safe,” she called back to him. “There is nothing alive here that can harm you.”

  He looked around at the ancient and brooding hall and wondered if there was even the slightest chance she was wrong. Taking a deep breath, he waded in after her.

  The water was cool but not cold. The floor was mucky; it sucked at his feet, making the going harder. Drops of water fell at intervals from above, splashing down around him with soft plopping sounds, wetting the top of his head. He looked up, wondering where the water was coming from. He couldn’t tell; the ceiling was stories above their heads, lost in shadow.

  They came at last to the other side of the hall and climbed a short flight of steps out of the water. Rylan stood beneath an arching doorway, dripping onto a clay-packed floor. Xiana reached up and, gathering her hair into her hands, wrung the water from it. She threw the wet, heavy strands back behind her shoulders and smiled at him.

  Then she took him by the hand and led him through the doorway into darkness. The shadows swarmed thickly over them. Only feeble streaks of light cast from slits high up the rear wall revealed the shape of the room they stood in. It was octagonal, rising high into one of the fortress’s mighty towers. A curving stairway spiraled down into the floor, disappearing underwater. The rest of the stairs climbed the walls, corkscrewing upward. Another petrified person stood on the stairs, forever frozen between steps.

  Xiana looked upward, and Rylan followed her gaze. There was nothing above them but shadows. He had no idea where that winding stair led.

  “We’re going up there, aren’t we?” he asked, feeling no small amount of dismay.

  “We are.”

  “What’s up there?”

  “The reason we’re here.”

  She started toward the stairs, and he reluctantly followed. The steps were not steep, and they were wide, making the ascent easier. Xiana went before him, seeming unbothered by the climb. They followed the spiraling steps into the shadows of the looming tower.

  High above them was a large opening in the ceiling, illuminated by a gush of light. Rylan stared up at the gaping hole as he climbed, feeling a shiver pass over him. With vast reluctance, he forced himself to keep moving after Xiana, who climbed the steps at a pace that was relentless and unforgiving. Sooner than he was ready, they had reached the top of the stairs and made the transition from stone steps into a room with a tiled floor.

  Rylan stopped, letting his surroundings soak into him. They stood in a large, circular chamber in the top of a high tower. The glass of the windows had shattered long ago, leaving the room open to the elements. Another stone husk of a man stood in the center of the room, arms spread out at his sides, fingers splayed as if in pain. His head was tilted back, as though he had been staring defiantly into the face of death the moment the backlash hit him. On the floor at the man's feet was a pile of scattered sand, the kind Rylan had become all too familiar with. Another person had died there, an ancient mage whose knowledge had already been plundered.

  His eyes scanned the panorama of windows. “What is this place?”

  A breeze tossed his hair, smelling deceptively fresh. He wondered how much of the air’s poison his body had already absorbed… and how much more he could withstand.

  “This was the command center,” Xiana said, walking toward one of the windows. “It's from here the Custodians of Suheylu Ra controlled the Watchers.” She leaned over with her palms on the window ledge, staring out across the fallen city. A ray of light angled down from the clouds, striking the side of her face and making her hair glow as if on fire.

  “What are the Watchers?” Rylan asked, moving to stand beside her.

  “See those towers?” She pointed across the ruins to the nearest of the tall, fluted towers that spiked upward, forming a ring around the perimeter of the city. The upper half of each tower appeared scorched by fire. Some looked partially melted.

  “The Watchers were the city’s defense system. They were built to protect Suheylu Ra from any form of magical attack. Unfortunately, the Turan Khar didn’t attack with magic.”

  “They attacked with the Onslaught,” Rylan surmised.

  “That’s right.” Xiana moved away from the window and paced back toward the center of the room, where she crossed a tile medallion depicting the image of an eight-pointed star set within a circle.

  Rylan took one last look at the defeated towers, then turned to Xiana. She stopped in the center of the star, beside the effigy of the man. Raising her hand, she moved as if to trail her fingers over his stone visage but paused just short of actually touching him. She stood and regarded the figure, her shoulders slumped as if carrying a great weight.

  “He is Keio Matu,” she said, her eyes lingering on the statue’s face with a mixture of sadness and awe. “It was he who summoned the wrath of the Watchers to abolish the Sky Portal. He destroyed Suheylu Ra in order to rid the world of the Turan Khar.”

  Rylan felt
an eerie feeling creeping over him, like tentative fingers stroking his spine. He peered deeply at the statue’s frozen face, wondering what kind of person this man had been in life. “Why did he do it?”

  Xiana turned to him and shrugged. “Because there was nothing else he could do.”

  Rylan shook his head, unable to fathom how it could be possible to justify the destruction of an entire city. Especially a city the size of Suheylu Ra. “I don’t understand.”

  Xiana offered her hand to him. Rylan stared down at it for a moment before accepting it.

  Gazing into his eyes, she said, “I brought you here for a reason. Keio Matu was the Custodian of the Wise Council, and also the greatest mage in all of Shira.” She squeezed his hand. “I brought you here to merge with Keio Matu. Not only to inherit his magical knowledge, but also to free him from this prison he has been trapped in for eight thousand years.”

  30

  Defeated

  Dead horses, burning wagons, and twisted bodies littered the center of Murkaq Square. Spilled blood slicked the cobbles, and the fountain ran dark with it. The sun was just setting as Gil trudged past the lines of exhausted men, the black cloak on his back granting him unquestioned passage through the layers of barricades.

  Murky twilight was settling in, dull with smoke and chill with mist. The flies had settled for the evening, but the birds were still at it, hopping from corpse to corpse, pecking and squawking. He’d expected the ravens, but the presence of the gulls surprised him. The seabirds were more bloodthirsty than he’d imagined, tearing greedily into flesh and driving their competitors away with raucous noise and flapping wings. As Gil wound his way toward the command tent, he found himself the object of the birds’ angry scolding.

  The soldiers working to clear the square went about their business with silence and efficiency, showing little sign of battle fatigue. Gil had heard rumor of the inhuman discipline of the Malikari soldiers in the field, but seeing it for himself was another matter entirely. In short order, they had cleared a wide swath of ground on the south side of the square and erected a new command tent.