The Sealed Citadel

by Edward W. Robertson

  At that same time, the Lannovians sped up, as if aware they were being pursued. With the afternoon wearing on, Cally was afraid they'd have to keep riding after dark, but the enemy packed it in before sundown, setting up tents and a pair of cook fires, one for their nethermancers and the other for their rank-and-file.

  Rowe took them off the road, walking the horses through the forest. The Lannovians were still making camp when Lady Minabar extracted a little jar of something from her luggage and dabbed a bit of its contents on herself. Perfume? She spoke briefly to Vassimore, then departed the camp.

  She soon came to a quiet, crystalline pool, beautiful enough Cally could believe it may have been the very reason she'd stopped the march early. With one smooth gesture, she stripped off her robe and stepped into the pool fully nude.

  In embarrassed horror, Cally raised his scout higher, until he couldn't make out any salacious details. Minabar poured water over herself with deliberate, choreographed motions.

  "Lady Minabar is…bathing." Cally hurried onward with his words. "It has the look of a purification ritual of some kind."

  "Can't find a better place to rob a person than in the bath," Rowe said. "Or to kill them." He grunted. "We're too far away. But could be useful if there's a next time."

  Within a few minutes, Minabar finished her ritual and returned to the camp. Rowe led them onwards until they were within a mile of the Lannovians. He asked Cally a great deal of questions about how the tents and sentries were positioned, along with the current location of Minabar, who they assumed was carrying the prize she'd taken from the slaughter she'd engineered at the Bowl of Seasons: Merriwen's book.

  Cally was able to confirm this assumption just a few minutes later when she removed the book from a satchel around her shoulder and used the last of the sunlight to start reading, jotting notes on another page as she went.

  "So we know she has the book, and we have also brought ourselves within striking range of her." Cally knew it was wrong to get excited about skullduggery and theft, but he couldn't help himself. "What kind of plan shall we concoct?"

  "Plan's done," Rowe said. "I go in. You stay here."

  "But aren't we going to discuss it first? Strategy? Tactics? So forth?"

  "Been on many raids before?"

  "Including this one? No."

  "Then you stay here. And I go in."

  "All right, we've established that you are the expert. What do I do from here?"

  "Sit as still as you can."

  "And?"

  "Wait for me to get back."

  "But you make it sound like I'm supposed to just…" Cally scowled. "Oh."

  "Got a problem with that?"

  He gestured searchingly. "Maybe I don't know how to plan a raid of an enemy camp. Or to…neutralize people. But I'm a nethermancer, if only an apprentice. Surely I can do something to help you." He stood a little taller. "After all, the book they're after was written by my people. It's my responsibility to bring it back."

  Unlike just about everything else Cally had ever said, this argument piqued interest in Rowe's eyes. "What can you do for us?"

  Cally didn't actually have an idea of what he could do, but Rowe was looking at him as if he was a tool of little use. Before the soldier could tell him to forget it, Cally blurted, "I can send in the crickets."

  "That ought to scare the Lannovians right out of their camp."

  "I'll be watching them from above, won't I? If one of them's about to stumble into you, I can have the cricket chirp to alert you."

  Now that he'd had the idea, he immediately expanded it to the prospect of using a cricket to guide Rowe the entire way, but Rowe scowled, dismissing this as far too complex. But he agreed the basic idea was sound. In the end, they settled on two patterns of signal chirps: one to tell Rowe that the way forward looked clear, and the other to tell him to get down.

  The execution of the plan required the execution of a cricket, but there were plenty about, and Cally soon had one reanimated. He spent a few minutes practicing making it chirp—fortunately, its carcass retained some memory of how to do so by itself—then Rowe pocketed it, meaning to carry it with him.

  During this, Minabar had continued to read the book and add more notes to her copious pile of them. Sunset came, then twilight. As Rowe had predicted, the scouts began to return to camp. Minabar lit a small lamp to allow herself to read on. It seemed inevitable that they would have to wait until she'd fallen fast asleep for Rowe to make his approach, but it wasn't much longer before she was approached by Vassimore, the thoughtful-looking man who Cally still wasn't sure was her husband.

  Cally's damselfly was too high up to hear what they were saying, but there was a tightness to their gestures that looked quite serious. The woman looked to all sides, as if afraid they might be overheard, then closed the book, stashed it among her things, and left in the company of Vassimore.

  "The book," Cally said. "She's just left it behind!"

  He explained quickly. Rowe gazed through the forest, then gave a single nod. "Going in. She comes back before I get it, you make sure your damn cricket chirps."

  He loped away toward the camp, disappearing into the woods. Cally kept one damselfly above Lady Minabar's bit of the camp and guided the second to follow her as she walked through the woods. She and the man said almost nothing as they wound their way through the camp. Soon the light of the camp's two fires and the low murmur of soldiers' voices were behind them. The pair walked a little further yet, then came to a stop. Lady Minabar glanced at the distant firelight, then gestured in a "you may proceed" manner.

  Vassimore leaned forward, eyebrows raised as he resumed his earlier questions. Alone and nearly a mile away, Cally did not feel very heroic. Not at all, really. Then again, it wasn't the role of the Order to be heroes. If anything, their role was to be the opposite: quiet figures whose humility and ceaseless work to do good would inspire others and bring the world, step by step, back toward the lost glory of purer days. Back to the gods' original design for their creation.

  This was all well and good, but the woman who'd murdered his friends and mentors was currently involved in what seemed to be an important discussion. On top of that, before Cally's cricket suggestion, Rowe had been (and likely still was) under the belief that Cally was so worthless that he had nothing to contribute whatsoever. This had stung him more than he'd let on—and it had stung him because he was afraid it was true.

  Employing all the care in the world, he lowered the damselfly watching the duo from above. As it neared the tops of the old trees, he began to make out the sounds of their voices. He lowered it branch by branch until he discerned their speech itself.

  "…don't see why the calendar you have predicted is so…" Vassimore gestured searchingly. "Expansive."

  In the darkness, Lady Minabar's face couldn't decide whether to be amused or annoyed. "Just how long do you think such a project should endure?"

  "It seems to me that it should take no longer than it would to create them."

  "And it seems to me that you would happily see us all killed. I have done my studies and concluded that the creation is but the first step. Even with instruction, this will take time. Once that is achieved, it could take weeks or even months to learn how to command them—and, if necessary, to destroy them en masse."

  "Do you see them as that much of a threat to us? Their masters?"

  "If they pose such a threat to our enemies, we must prepare for the contingency that they are somehow turned against us."

  The man nodded, rubbing his jaw. "Thus the importance of sequestering ourselves."

  "Indeed."

  "What if the Gaskans catch wind of our plans?"

  Minabar looked to the northwest, the direction of the distant imperial capital of Setteven. "We've waited this long. We can wait a little longer to get it right." She grinned. "Besides which, you—"

  She jerked up her head, eyeing the boughs above her. "Do you feel that?"

  Cally's heart couldn't hav
e jolted harder if she'd punched him in it. He withdrew from the damselfly as far as he could, retreating like a rat into its tunnel. The two Lannovians examined the trees. Cally thought he could feel a presence like fingers of shadow brushing aside the leaves.

  A few more moments, and the shadowy presence withdrew. Minabar and Vassimore resumed their talk, gesturing to the northwest. As stealthily as if he were sneaking downstairs to steal a drink of cream in the middle of the night, Cally advanced back into the senses of his scout.

  "In the end," Minabar was saying, "they are all too predictable."

  She didn't move, but the same presence seemed to shoot from her like a grasping arm. It seized hold of Cally's scout. He was already cutting his connection to it, all its senses going black and dead.

  Yet through the senses of his second scout, he heard soldiers yelling across the camp—and saw the men leap to their feet to gather up their arms.

  10

  The camp, so quiet and sleepy just seconds before, burst into life.

  Soldiers scrambled for blades and bows. Others rushed to the campfires, setting torches aflame. Priests strode about in their robes. The first of the Lannovians were already moving to the perimeter, ether glowing from their hands as they spread it across the ground.

  Hunting for tracks.

  Rowe was dashing through the trees, no more than a shadow in the night. Cally had missed whether he'd even gotten the book. The flames of the torches and the shine of ether were already spreading from the camp. They'd be on Rowe's trail in moments.

  Cally could stay put, as Rowe had ordered. After all, he was useless. Maybe he should just run off into the night. Put all this murder and madness behind him. Return to the sanctity of Narashtovik and the Order.

  With an inner quail, he took a deep breath and ran toward Rowe.

  At the camp, one of the priests gave a shout. His ether pulsed from a line of oval footprints. Soldiers took off in pursuit, torches snapping. Others who'd already run deeper into the forest veered to join up with them.

  Cally tripped, banging and scraping his hands and knees, but forced himself to get up and hurry onward as fast as he could. He was keeping his damselfly high enough to get a good view of the unfolding disaster and between that and all the branches in the way he sometimes lost sight of Rowe altogether.

  "Stop there!"

  A soldier called out from Rowe's right; the man and his two companions appeared from nowhere, though one of them was bearing a lit torch. Rowe ran on as one of the soldiers loosed an arrow. Cally couldn't see its flight, but it must have creased the air right in front of Rowe, for he stopped and turned toward them.

  "Throw down your arms!" The first soldier shuffled forward, bow trained on Rowe's center.

  "Sounds like a good way to get killed," Rowe said.

  "Not as good as thieving around our camp in the middle of the night. Now put down your weapons and let's get this sorted out."

  The three soldiers crept another step closer. Close enough that the light of the torch showed the anger and resignation on Rowe's face. In his mind's eye, Cally could see exactly what would come next: Rowe flipping his bow into his hand, doing his best to get off one last shot or two before the enemy's arrows brought him down.

  With his eyes wide enough to drag a wagon through, Cally moved his focus into the cricket and chirped, two short and one long.

  The signal to get down.

  Rowe hurled himself into the dirt. The soldiers yelled and loosed their arrows. Two of the arrows whumped into solid earth and the third rapped into a tree. Cally reached down into the shadows, into the eons of death collected in the soil of the forest floor. Aided by the eyes of his one remaining damselfly, and the light of the enemies' own torch, he sent the nether streaking toward the soldiers.

  All three of them had shot too high, but they were already drawing their next volley. Cally was still five hundred feet away from Rowe. Much further than he'd ever used it before. As the unshaped globs neared their targets, Cally spread them thin, wrapping them around the whole faces of the three men.

  "Rowe!" Cally's voice sounded thin in the night air. "Hurry!"

  Rowe leaped to his feet and dashed away from the soldiers, who were flailing about and doing the kind of panicked cursing men tended to reduce to when they'd suddenly gone blind. Cally took the moment to assess their general situation and concluded that it was awful. Soldiers were streaming through the forest, drawn by the cries of the momentarily blinded ones. Much worse, the priests were still trailing Rowe's tracks, closing on him. And these priests had no law against using their powers to kill.

  Rowe either didn't care about the hopelessness of their condition or knew there was no point in caring. He ran onward through piles of leaves, heading for the spot where Cally, not trusting himself to ride them alone in the dark, had left the horses. Cally caught up to him.

  "Did you get the book?" Cally said.

  "Didn't have time," Rowe said. "Shut up and run."

  Cally did so. A minute later, he felt the nether he'd blinded the soldiers with sliding from his grasp, too far away to maintain. But he and Rowe had opened up a bit of a lead for themselves, and soon arrived at the spot where Cally had left the horses. His pack was there. The horses weren't.

  He gawked. "The horses are gone."

  "Yeah."

  "But we need the horses."

  "Search for their tracks!"

  "Their tracks! Yes!"

  Cally leveled his shoulders and stood tall, taking on the columnar posture he believed best channeled the ether. He threw the light across the ground, exposing the horses' tracks, which were almost circular, with a small wedge bitten out of the rear. He jogged after them.

  Something flickered behind them. Something as fast and cruel as a falcon.

  "Down!"

  Cally flung himself behind a tree. Rowe dived over a shrub and rolled behind a trunk to Cally's left. The nethereal bolts rammed into the tree Cally had covered behind, cracking it hard enough to shower him with leaves and nuts and twigs.

  He peeked around the shattered bole. A man stood eighty feet away, both hands lifted. They were sheathed in black and in the darkness of the night the shadows sparked with silver and purple facets.

  Rather than waiting for aid, the priest had arrived alone. The Order warned its adepts against the arrogance that almost inevitably grew within the hearts of those blessed with the ability to wield light and darkness. It lured men into thinking they were something more than men, messengers or even avatars of the lords above. The Order taught at all times to remember that you were a mortal, nothing more. And this was true for all sorcerers.

  So it was with bitter irony that as Cally gazed on the murderous power swirling about the priest's hands, and saw the cold strength of the nether radiating from the great crack in the tree, he felt just as a mortal human must when brought to face the judgment of the gods.

  Cally grabbed at the shadows, flinging them toward the man's face, meaning to blind him. The man waved his hand, dashing them into ashes.

  The priest laughed. "Are you with the Order? To think you survived the purge at the Bowl only to die here."

  "Why did you do it?" Cally's voice rose beyond his control. "Why did you kill my friends?"

  "You ask me questions as if you are my equal. But that you and your kind know the use of the nether makes you lower than serfs: for at least the serf knows what he is, and the role in the world that he serves."

  The priest made a chopping motion with his hand. Three black bolts sped toward Cally. Cally uprooted the shadows, packing them together in his best imitation of the attack speeding toward him, but he'd been taught nothing of defense against sorcery. Even as he cast the nether forth, he knew his efforts were worth about as much as a boy's wooden sword raised against a knight's castle-forged steel.

  But it was the best that he had. He threw it in the black bolts' path, along with a shower of unshaped shadows he hoped might somehow serve as distractions. And then he ju
mped back for the cover of the tree.

  The bolts plowed into his hodgepodge defenses. One of the missiles was shredded apart bit by bit. A second swerved to follow a ribbon of the unshaped shadows, crashing harmlessly into the ground. The third attempted to bend around the tree and surely strike Cally's heart, but the last of his hastily-packed counters deflected it into the trunk. Splinters spun into the air. With a series of cracks, the tree gave way, crashing to the ground.

  Exposed, Cally stood to face the priest. He glanced to Rowe for help, but Rowe was long gone. The priest lifted his hand for a killing blow.

  A shimmering blade appeared at the center of the man's chest. At first Cally thought the man had summoned the ether, which would slice through Cally's pathetic nethereal defenses like they weren't even there, but as the priest's eyes and mouth widened and he began to stagger, Cally realized that it was a blade of physical steel.

  The priest gagged blood and drew the nether to him. Behind him, still hanging onto the sword's handle with his right hand, Rowe cocked his left fist and punched the Lannovian in the side of the head.

  The shadows fizzled away from the priest's grasp. Rowe yanked out his sword, then lashed out with a backhand stroke that sent the man's head spinning to the forest floor.

  He crouched to wipe his blade on the priest's gray robes, then jogged to where Cally was still agape at the beheading.

  Rowe eyed him. "Didn't know you could do that."

  "Neither did I."

  Rowe gave him a nod. "Horses."

  "Horses?"

  "Find them."

  "Yes! Horses!"

  Short as it had been, the terror and exhilaration of the battle with another priest had kicked Cally's brain over to another plane of existence. With effort, he returned to the far less heightened activity of tracking the wayward horses. He soon located them twitching their tails in annoyance at the bottom of a shallow draw.

  This almost surely meant that Cally hadn't tied them up after all, but Rowe didn't say anything as they mounted up and lit out. Or at least lit out as best as they could, given that they weren't riding spirited chargers or distance breeds, but rather simple farm horses.