As she made her way through the village, she took stock of the bloody bodies scattered about. One old man lay near the ruins of a fish-drying rack. He had been stabbed deep in his side. He reached out to Lila as she knelt beside him, but from her time in the combat arena, she knew it was a mortal wound.
She gazed deep into the dark forest beyond the river, the low trees, the willow thickets. She saw more figures running deeper into the forest, surviving families taking desperate shelter. Good, maybe even more of them had survived.
“Norukai,” the man said, twitching his fingers.
She clutched his hand, because that was what he seemed to need from her. “I know who they are. I will kill as many as I can.” She had already made up her mind, but it was what he wanted to hear.
“Kill them all,” the man said, then died.
“I will.” She set off.
A landing boat remained tied to the only intact pier. A Norukai man stood at the prow, impatient to shove off. The other landing boats had already rowed back to the serpent ships. “Finish up!” he growled to his unseen companions in the burning village. “King Grieve won’t wait for us, and I don’t want to be stuck here with these vermin.”
Lila walked out of the smoke onto the dock as the man looked up at her in disbelief. Even though she held a bloody sword and carried a dagger at her hip, the raider seemed to think she was a gift, not a threat. He stepped out of the long landing boat and stood on the pier. “Did they send you to me?”
“The Keeper sent me to you. Now I send you to him.” Using both hands, she swept Sturdy sideways.
The startled man recoiled, barely avoiding the sharp tip. He lost his balance on the dock and fell into the river. He bellowed and splashed, grabbing on to the boards to haul himself up, cursing her. Lila struck down and lopped off both of his hands at the wrists. As he let out a deep-throated scream and flailed his stumps spouting blood, she thrust Sturdy through his neck. His body slid into the shallow water and floated away in the current.
Out in the middle of the channel, the three serpent ships raised anchor and set their dark sails. She wasn’t surprised that King Grieve would take his spoils and depart without even waiting for his last few men.
She stood at the end of the pier and watched the ships move. She intended to do exactly what the nameless dying man had demanded of her. She would kill them, and she would free Bannon.
CHAPTER 18
As the enemy army pressed through the foothills behind Nathan and his companions, they did not follow single file but spread out, trampling everything in their wake. The mass of warriors camped for only a few hours each night and moved again as soon as dawn suffused the sky.
Nathan’s band pressed on, but they had not gained a great deal of ground from the relentless march of the vast army.
“We’ve already killed so many of them, and they keep coming,” Renn said in uneasy awe. The two wizards stood together.
Nathan thought of his own loss rather than the enemy’s. “Elsa’s transference magic incinerated thousands on the battlefield, but even so, they didn’t pay a high enough price.” He shook his head, flushing with anger. “She was worth more than that whole damned army.”
The other wizard’s eyes were red-rimmed, and his mouth sagged in a frown. “And Lani? Did she at least fight well before she died?”
Nathan brightened. “Oh, yes! Dear spirits, during our first sortie against General Utros, Lani made the ground shake with her gift. All by herself she flattened entire enemy companies. She impressed me very much.”
The bedraggled wizard sighed. “Yes, my Lani was a good fighter. I wish I’d been at her side.”
Thorn and Lyesse frequently disappeared from the group, flitting back to prey upon more enemy scouts and stragglers. The morazeth women kept careful score of the enemies they killed. Though such losses did little to weaken the multitudes, the bodies discovered every morning caused great agitation in the large army.
General Zimmer did not have enough horses for all of them to ride, so many doubled up as the group made their way toward the hidden archive. He dispatched one messenger ahead to ride with all possible speed, so Cliffwall could prepare, although the scholars should already have known about the threat of General Utros; Zimmer had already sent word weeks ago, after they had wiped out an expeditionary army in an avalanche below Kol Adair. By now, Nathan hoped, the imaginative scholars might have found additional defenses to suggest.…
For his own part, Nathan had hard memories of the archive, the damage done by the Lifedrinker and the sorceress Victoria, but also the tragic loss of the dear girl Thistle. Nathan knew how much powerful magical lore was stored in Cliffwall, and he was sure that some of it could be turned against General Utros, but he also knew how easy it was for that power to grow out of control. He vowed to be vigilant when they searched the dusty library for defensive spells. What could their band of defenders do against an army that had withstood all the wizards of Ildakar?
Because Cliffwall was so cleverly hidden, the ancient army might simply march past without any scouts discovering the isolated canyons and the archive. He could only hope.
Crossing one forested ridge after another, they could see the rugged, snow-streaked mountains in front of them, beyond which were the canyons of the western slope. Zimmer and Prelate Verna rode ahead to climb into a sweeping meadow, a lush hanging valley amid the thick forests. Before them, the wide meadow was filled with a splash of flowers, as if some ambitious painter had used the high valley as an enormous palette. The plants had swordlike leaves and fleshy green stems; the deep violet flowers were shot through with crimson veins.
As the party emerged from the forest into the flower-filled meadow, Amber let out a cry of delight and slid down from her horse. “They’re beautiful!”
Oliver and Peretta joined her. “I’ve never seen so many blooms,” Peretta said.
Verna moved into the meadow. “They are indeed beautiful.” General Zimmer stared ahead as if searching for a path through the sea of blossoms.
“We should bring some specimens with us to Cliffwall,” suggested Oliver.
Out of breath, Nathan and Renn trudged up on foot as the troops milled in place before the great meadow. Nathan could smell the perfume of flowers in the air. Considering so many open blossoms, he expected to hear a buzz of bees, see a flurry of butterflies, but the meadow seemed oddly silent.
Laughing at the beauty, Amber and Peretta ran together toward the meadow, like children about to plunge into the ocean. Nathan felt a cold twist in his gut, and he shouted, “Stop! Dear spirits, don’t go there!” But the sounds of the horses, the muttering soldiers, the rustle of armor drowned out his words. Urgent, he drew a deep breath and shouted out with his gift as well as his voice, making a boom of thunder in the air. “Stop!”
The blow of the word was enough to bring the young people to a halt. Nathan pushed through the soldiers to reach the edge of the meadow and looked at all the blooms, aghast. “I know these flowers. They are deathrise flowers, the greatest poison ever discovered. A single blossom is deadly enough to kill a dozen full-grown men. I’m glad I stopped you in time!”
The soldiers pulled their horses back. Amber and Peretta retreated, and no one else ventured closer. Tossing his long white hair, Nathan cautiously approached the meadow, and Renn followed him, curious. “I have never heard of deathrise flowers.”
Oron rode up to them, tall in his saddle. He sniffed sarcastically. “We lived inside a walled city for fifteen hundred years, Renn. How much wild plant life would you expect us to know?”
Zimmer frowned in his saddle as he looked across the meadow. “It will take a long time to ride entirely around those flowers.”
Like a man approaching a poisonous spider, Nathan bent close to the nearest blossoms, studied their petals without touching them, the intense purple, the slash of deep red, the golden stamens. The mere touch of any one of these flowers would cause an agonizing death. “Emperor Jagang would grow fields of
these flowers and then test the poison on his prisoners. Even the smallest touch is enough to bring rashes and blisters, horrible boils. A little more will kill you.”
Renn scratched the stubble on his cheek. “There must be thousands of blossoms.”
Nathan hung his head, remembering the girl Thistle with her large dark eyes and her positive attitude. Thistle had eaten one of the deathrise flowers, and thereby forced Nicci to kill her to stop the agony. It had been one of the most terrible choices Nathan had ever witnessed.
“Keep the horses away,” Zimmer said, and gestured toward the edge of the meadow. “Follow the trees to the opposite side until you reach the stream, then keep to the forest.” He shook his head. “Thanks to you, Nathan, we dodged a dangerous thing. We would all have been dead before we crossed the field.”
The morazeth trotted up, wondering why the group had stopped. The two women were not impressed with the pretty flowers, but became much more interested when they learned about the deadly poison in the blossoms.
Nathan kept staring at the meadow, stroking thumb and forefinger along his chin as he pondered. “This is the obvious route through the hills. At least part of General Utros’s army will surely come this way.” He gave Renn an intense smile. “With a little provocation, we could lure the enemy soldiers right across this meadow.”
CHAPTER 19
As she stayed among the Hidden People, contemplating her plans, Nicci recovered from the unsettling side effects of her journey through the sliph, and at last her gift felt strong again. Trapped inside during daylight hours, she explored the gloomy passageways that echoed with whispered footsteps. The silent population seemed as much in a trance as the ancient city was.
Asha, Cora, and other Hidden People offered only vague answers to her questions about their history in Orogang and how they had watched over the zhiss. As the old woman arranged drooping night lilies in a vase to add a splash of white in the torchlit gloom, Nicci asked, “Is this all you do every day? You just wait and hide? Do you do nothing else?”
“What else can we do?” Cora asked. “We don’t dare leave, or the zhiss will spread far and wide. We have to contain them, and they stay here because of us. That is our purpose.”
Agitated, Nicci brushed the soft stems of the lilies. “Is that enough after so many centuries? Will it ever change?”
“It will not change until the zhiss are destroyed.”
“And will that ever happen?”
Cora hung her head. “I do not know, and my grandmothers before me did not know. We can only hope that someday one of our children will rid the world of this scourge.”
“I can’t wait that long,” Nicci said. “I have other things I need to accomplish.”
Cora continued arranging flowers as pointless decoration. Frustrated with the woman, Nicci returned to her room and lay back, planning how to leave this isolated city without depending on the sliph. If Ildakar had hidden itself again beneath the shroud of eternity, then nothing would keep General Utros from sweeping across the continent. Meanwhile, Nicci was here locked in a building, hiding from daylight.…
She didn’t realize she had dozed off until she found herself among powerful, feral thoughts. In her dream state, her body shifted to become a tawny feline shape. She prowled along, seeing the world through a predator’s senses. Smells became a different language. Mrra!
Part of the sand panther’s mind, Nicci loped along, constantly moving, but she panted with exhaustion, and her large padded paws were sore and raw. She had covered countless miles, racing across the landscape toward a destination that was so clear in her mind: Mrra needed to find her sister panther.
Nicci had been separated from the sand panther when she traveled through the sliph to Serrimundi, but through the spell bond the two remained connected. It had been so long since she’d felt a clear contact that she’d feared Mrra had broken the bond. The big cat had been an excellent spy, roaming around the perimeter of the giant army, feeding information to Nicci through her feline eyes.
Now, Nicci expressed her joy through the spell bond. She felt a growing awe as she realized that Mrra had run overland, tracking her down over the mountains. The connection was faint, but she knew that the panther was not far away. Mrra could taste her presence in her mind.
“Come to me, sister panther!” Nicci whispered in her sleep.
The big cat growled as she bounded through the forest. With her enhanced senses, Nicci realized that other cats were accompanying Mrra. Long ago, when the sand panther had been raised by the handlers of Ildakar, she was trained to fight and kill in the combat arena. From the time she was just a cub, Mrra had been bonded with a pair of sand panthers, her troka, who fought together, moved together with shared hearts. But when the other two cats had been killed by Nicci and her companions, Mrra was bereft and mortally wounded, until Nicci became her sister.
In her lonely sojourn across the landscape, Mrra had encountered other big cats and brought them along as her new pride. Though the sand panther did not understand numbers, Nicci sensed there were at least six or seven cats loping along beside her across the mountainous terrain.
“Come to me,” Nicci murmured in the halfway land of sleep, and Mrra let out a roar in her mind. The other sand panthers roared as well, and Nicci fell into a deeper sleep, content that they would soon be reunited.…
When she awoke hours later, still groggy and stiff, Nicci went to the speaking chamber to study the relief map and plan her best route over the mountains to where Ildakar had been, or back to Serrimundi or Tanimura. She had tried to coax the sliph with the promise of information about Emperor Sulachan. Had the silver creature even heard her? There had been no response whatsoever.
As Nicci ran her hands over the sculpted map, finding possible routes, one of the gray-robed men entered the speaking chamber—dour Cyrus, who believed too much in the legend of General Utros. His expression shifted between anger and hope when he saw her. “Though you spoke ill of Utros, we are reassured to know that he is alive. He will come for us, just as the prophecy foretold.”
“You believe too easily in things,” Nicci said. “If you had seen the general attack Ildakar, you wouldn’t revere him so much.”
“Emperor Kurgan commanded him to attack Ildakar. What else would he do?” A scowl crossed Cyrus’s face beneath the fold of his gray hood. “Even if he chose the wrong leader to follow, Utros is a great military commander. Iron Fang is long dead, and Utros can be the true ruler that we have always needed. Our people will be part of his new army. He needs us! The Hidden People are a great army. We have waited so long for him.”
“Utros has more soldiers than you can imagine,” Nicci said. “How will you help him? Many mobs consider themselves armies until they face a real enemy.”
Cyrus looked at her defiantly. “Follow me. I will show you.”
Leaving the speaking chamber, Cyrus glided through the stone corridors until he paused before a sealed storeroom. Cyrus took a deep anticipatory breath and tugged on the door. The dark wood was so old it looked petrified, and the hinges creaked as they reluctantly swung open.
When the torchlight chased away the shadows, Nicci saw a vast chamber filled with gleaming swords in storage racks, enough weapons for an army of thousands. Spears stood in the corners like corn shocks. Curved helmets were piled on shelves. Stacked shields all bore Kurgan’s flame symbol.
Cyrus lifted one of the swords. “We keep these sharpened and oiled, ready to be used the moment General Utros calls us to war. We train at night, practicing our swordplay in front of his statue.” He looked eager. “We have waited long to be called to our duty, but it will happen. We know it will happen! Considering the stories of General Utros, we have no doubt.”
“You should have doubts,” Nicci scolded. Despite her skepticism about the man’s blind faith, she admired the blades and armor. “There is much you don’t know about your hero.”
Cyrus cut her off. “I know all I need to know, and we are ready for him.
”
After showing her the weapons, he ushered her out and closed the door behind them. She heard the Hidden People stirring inside the dim corridors of the shuttered buildings, their conversations building. Outside, the sun had gone down, and once again the people had the freedom to roam the city.
CHAPTER 20
Inside the enclosed hold of the Norukai serpent ship, the air stank of sweat, fish, and fear. Bannon hunched on the wooden bench, feeling the manacles like jaws around his wrists. The jangle of the heavy chains was softer than the groans of pain and anxiety from the nearby slaves. But he made himself stay strong. He had survived this long.
The oars creaked as the slaves strained to row, driving the serpent ship downriver. The dull heartbeat of the pace drum echoed inside the hold, where the captives struggled to keep up with the rhythm. They worked hard to avoid the whip of the oar master, who was all too anxious to start the day by making an example of someone.
Open hatches in the hull were designed to let in sunshine and air, but provided little of either. Instead, the reminder of daylight and freedom was merely another aspect of the Norukai torture. Gripping the sweat-slick oars, Bannon’s hands were covered with blisters. His voice was only a dry croak as he groaned. He couldn’t guess how long it would be before the hourly bucket of river water was passed around again, a ladleful splashed into their mouths.
Bannon’s muscles throbbed from his biceps to his bones. The current of the Killraven River would pull them along, and the dark sails caught breezes, but King Grieve insisted on greater speed, forcing the captives to sweat and bleed and die if necessary. While others begged, Bannon didn’t give the scarred raiders that satisfaction. The drumbeat pounded harder, and he strained to keep up.
The oar master was a surly man named Bosko, prone to flatulence, which only increased the stink in the confined space belowdecks. Tattoos and scars covered his face, but Bosko would have been ugly even without the mutilation.
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