When they had walked into the middle of the huge enemy camp, Nicci and Nathan trusted in the general’s legendary honor. But what was he planning now? How did he think he could breach the city’s defenses or fight the many gifted who would defend the city?
As she watched the blackness and the vault of stars overhead, Nathan emerged from the grand villa to join her, dressed in his ruffled shirt, black trousers, and boots instead of his white wizard’s robes. He even carried his ornate sword, as if to remind himself how much he enjoyed being an adventurer as well as a wizard. He looked up at the unrecognizable constellations, a vault of night like another kind of shroud. “Out to gaze at the stars, Sorceress? They’ve changed, but someday they will become familiar to us.”
After the star shift, Nicci had paid little attention to the patterns in the sky. “If General Utros is as honorable a man as your history claims he is, I hope we can find a way to save Ildakar and also let him save face. We can resolve this, if he wants to.”
The sparkle in Nathan’s expression was unsettling to her. “You wear your optimism as easily as you wear that black dress, and it fits you just as well. Next thing, you may be creating rainbows out of the ruling tower.”
He was teasing her, but she was not amused. “I was a Sister of the Dark and I gave myself over to the Keeper, then I served the dream walker Jagang. I brought enough despair to the world before Richard showed me a different way to succeed through cooperation, friendship, and faith. He opened my eyes to the stain of the Imperial Order and made me realize how I myself had been spreading that poison.” Her voice grew softer. “Richard taught me hope, and that’s a lesson I don’t ever intend to forget.”
She walked along the path that led past other lighted villas toward the immense sacrificial pyramid, Ildakar’s center of power. That structure was where the bloodworking apparatus had been set up, where hundreds of slaves would have been massacred to raise the shroud of eternity, but Nicci, Nathan, and other rebels had defeated Sovrena Thora and ruined the structure.
Nicci felt drawn to the place now. If the pyramid was the heart of Ildakar’s magic, she wondered if she could use that magic against the siege.
The wizard realized where she was going. “Elsa and I have climbed through the rubble already looking for any viable remnants. Alas, we found nothing that would be of use to us.”
Nicci didn’t slow her pace. “We have to keep searching. You found the well of the sliph. Who knows what else Ildakar holds?”
“Elsa and I completed our search of the other sealed ruins, but I’m afraid all we found was a lot more dust.” The wizard frowned. “A barrel of forgotten apples that must have been there for centuries, tools and bits of iron-hard leather in what was once a cobbler’s shop. Nothing, alas, that would make Utros tremble in his sleep.”
Jogging footsteps crunched on the path behind them, and she turned to see Bannon, his long red hair loose, his shirt untucked as he ran with his sword in hand. Grinning, the young man called, “Where are you going? Let me join you, in case it’s dangerous.”
Nathan gave him a paternal smile. “We will risk it ourselves, my boy.”
Bannon was out of breath but excited. “Today I went to see Jed and Brock. Believe me, I had words with them.” He huffed.
Nicci frowned as they reached the largest stone blocks at the base of the pyramid. She had never liked the two young men or their ringleader Amos, knowing how badly they had treated Bannon, who was desperate for friendship. Since the first time she had rescued him from robbers in a Tanimura alley, she had felt responsible for him. She had held little hope that the eager young man would amount to anything or survive this long, but he’d surprised her after all. She admitted that he had proven himself useful in some of their adventures.
“I would probably have killed them both for what they did,” she said. “But you have your own way of fighting your battles.”
“Let me come with you now,” Bannon suggested, sounding altogether too excited. “Maybe I’ll offer some ideas. A different perspective.”
Nicci kept walking into the wreckage of the pyramid, letting him tag along. “You’ve earned it. You fought well many times, and you helped us free the slaves.”
Bannon blushed. “You aren’t often generous with your compliments, Sorceress. Thank you.”
“It was a fact,” Nicci said, “not meant as a compliment.”
Nathan patted him on the shoulder. “Now we have to save the city from the siege. Any ideas are welcome.”
They worked their way up the broken stairsteps, layer upon layer. The apex had been blasted away in the battle, leaving huge chunks of rubble all around.
Nathan mused aloud, “I wonder how many people were sacrificed here over the centuries when Ildakar was trapped beneath the shroud. How much blood did they spill just to keep the shroud intact?”
Nicci spread her fingers and concentrated. “I feel nothing. The magic here is dead.” She closed her eyes and continued searching for any hint of the gift, but shook her head. “Nothing.”
Nathan concurred.
Then she felt a strange tingle emanating from herself, like a probing unwelcome finger inside her, a touch that stretched to her spine, then climbed to the back of her neck. Her head began to throb, her scalp crawled.
“Wait, there’s something else, something powerful.” Feeling the energy increase, she looked around in growing alarm. Her blond hair crackled with static electricity, wafting gently around her. She took a step higher on the pyramid steps. Overhead, the stars were diamond bright, and the lights of the city shone out like thousands of eyes.
Something wasn’t right.
Nathan frowned as he sensed the change in the air, too. “My dear sorceress, are you certain you’re not summoning it?”
“Not intentionally, but it’s coming to me.” Her long hair crackled and thrashed about as if in a brewing storm. She clutched a handful, wrapping her fingers around the golden strands. It seemed like something alive.
To her astonishment, she watched her hair grow between her fingertips. The blond locks lengthened like mad weeds. All around her head, the hair writhed out like living threads in a voluminous mane. She grabbed at it, but the strands whipped like probing tentacles. Her hair kept growing, out of control. She clawed at it, tugged, but the hair fought back.
Stepping forward with his sword, Bannon cried desperately, “What can we do?”
Nicci tugged hard on her own hair as it tried to wrap around her like a strangler’s garrote. The golden strands thrashed at her, already longer than her waist, some strands down to her knees, wrapping around her like ropes, twisting and clumping together. The hair wound around her arm like thin chains as she reached up to tug at it. Another clump circled her neck, wrapping tight and cutting off her flow of air.
Nicci struggled, choking. With one hand, she snatched the dagger at her right hip and hacked at the hair around her neck, severing a long clump, which she threw to the ground. More hair tightened around her wrist until she thought her bones would break.
Diving in to help her, Nathan swung his ornate sword, cutting at the thrashing strands. “Your hair is quite beautiful, but I’m afraid it has to go.” He hacked hard, lopping off a long hank of strands that continued writhing like worms, even when they were severed from her head.
Bannon sliced with his sharpened sword, careful not to hurt her, and then the hair lashed out at him, too.
When she shouted, another tentacle of strands dove into her mouth, thrusting down her throat. Gagging, she bit down with her teeth, grinding until she cut it off. She slashed with her knife, cutting her other wrist free, but more hair looped around her waist and lashed her legs together, drawing tight until she collapsed to the stone step of the pyramid. She sawed with her dagger, hacking off another hank of hair.
Still, it continued to grow like an infestation. Her hair struck out to snare Bannon’s sword arm. He yelped and fought back but couldn’t free his wrist. He tugged against her violent hair, whil
e more locks lashed out to catch his leg, winding around his left boot, and dragging him closer to the main mass. He couldn’t even swing his sword. “Help! Sweet Sea Mother.”
Nathan chopped more strands of hair, then sliced the locks that had captured Bannon. The young man staggered away, stumbling on the steps.
Nicci kept cutting, throwing severed handfuls of hair to the ground. Even so, the cut strands flopped and squirmed in search of more targets. They slithered forward to wrap around Nathan’s boots.
No matter how much they cut, Nicci’s hair kept growing, long past her feet, wrapping around and around her like a cocoon. Already exhausted, she realized she couldn’t succeed by hacking more away. She had to find a different answer, a smarter solution. She needed to turn her magic against the attacker, somehow.
Though she could barely breathe, her entire body caught in a strangling vise, she called upon her gift, unleashed fire that threw lightning around her skin. The blast singed and curled her hair, burning it away, but it grew back in seconds and wrapped around her again.
Nicci could barely move her arms. Concentrating hard, she could feel the power of the magic attacking her, and the lightning strike left a tracery in her own aura, like an intrusive vine growing throughout her Han. The magic was centered on her hair, attacking her hair. She could feel it.
There must be some vulnerability, a window through her defenses that she had not detected. But, no … it wasn’t all her hair, it was just one strand of hair! Yes, that was the focal point, the link that her attacker was using, one hair, out of countless strands.
The locks wound tighter, crushing her ribs, squeezing her waist, cutting off all circulation in her legs. She collapsed to the ground, like a fly wrapped up in a spider’s web. She had stopped struggling, stopped cutting, in order to concentrate. It was her only chance.
Dimly, she heard Nathan yelling at her, demanding that she not give up, but Nicci would never give up.
She sent her thoughts out, tracing her Han just as the Sisters had taught her. At last she found the single connection that tied the evil magic to her like a fisherman’s hook and line. That was what connected the spell to her!
She had to find it, break it. She followed her thoughts, closed her eyes, paying no attention to the fact that she couldn’t breathe, that her bones creaked, about to crush inward. Fighting to move her trapped fingers, she stirred through the wild, combative strands, working upward, trying to reach her scalp. She followed the bright line inside her mind, the key single strand, a broken hair. The other half of that blond strand was somewhere else, in the hands of her enemy, an evil wizard or sorceress.
Twin sorceresses!
Nicci found the hair, just a short strand that had not grown fantastically like all the others. This was the strand that bound the spell to her, half still connected to her head, the other half in the hands of her enemies. She couldn’t separate that single hair from the thicker strands all around it, but she twisted the clump of hair with her fingers and gave a sharp yank, ripping out a bloody swatch—which included the single broken strand.
Once she pulled that strand out by the root, the spell connection was broken. The evil magic recoiled like a taut rope suddenly cut. Her ravening hair curled, then fell limp. The bindings sagged around her body, giving her a chance to heave a huge breath, filling her lungs. Her ribs ached and several were likely cracked. Her throat was bruised from the strangling locks.
Yelling her name, Nathan and Bannon cut at her hair, tearing the severed strands away from her face and her mouth, freeing her.
She breathed heavily and blinked her blue eyes up at her two companions. “Thank you.”
Bannon clawed the dead ropes of hair from himself, untangled his legs, kicked the mass away. He looked around warily and tugged his hair back, as if afraid his own ginger locks might also spring into deadly life. “What caused that, Sorceress? Was it some wild magic still left in the pyramid?”
“No.” Nicci turned her cold gaze toward Nathan.
The wizard looked exhausted and battered, confused. “Dear spirits, then what—”
“You know what it was. General Utros doesn’t want to negotiate. His two pet sorceresses attacked me, tried to murder me. There will be no honorable solution.” She brushed strands from her black dress as she stood in a pile of curled, blond hair. “And now, I am angry.”
CHAPTER 21
After being attacked by the sorceresses’ twisted spell, Nicci spent the following day with Nathan and the duma members, deep in angry discussions about how to respond to the threat of General Utros.
Bannon was not part of that debate, and instead he went into the city the next morning, accompanied by Lila. Even with an ancient army camped outside the walls, he knew that Ildakar had more than one enemy, and the city’s populace would have to fight together. The revolt was over, but not settled, and when the duma called upon them to make extreme sacrifices, the lower classes would not forget their generations of oppression under the gifted nobles. He himself had been held prisoner in the combat pits, and his friend Ian had been transformed from an idealistic boy into a killing machine.
As he headed down into the lower levels of the city, he didn’t invite Lila along, but she accompanied him nevertheless. Her skin was marked with countless protective runes, but she had an animal sensuality that was as terrifying as it was attractive.
She fell into place beside him. “Where are we going today, boy?” She sized up his loose shirt, the sword he carried at his side. “Are we going out to fight?”
“My name is Bannon,” he reminded her. “I’m going to the old slave market.” He glanced over at her, narrowing his hazel eyes. “You’re a morazeth. The former slaves there won’t look kindly upon you.”
Her step didn’t falter. “I’m not expecting hugs or smiles, but you’ve proved that you need protection. I go with you.”
Bannon sniffed and kept walking. “I can take care of myself.”
“I can take care of you, too. It’s the best way to be sure. I would consider it my own failing if I let you get killed by some thug in an alley.”
Knowing he couldn’t convince her otherwise, Bannon headed to the open market. He thought back to the day the three Norukai serpent ships had arrived on the Killraven River, carrying more than a hundred and fifty captives for the slave market. Walking meat, the Norukai called them. Bannon had watched the sickening spectacle as the nobles bid on slaves like silk merchants haggling over bolts of cloth, and then the sovrena and the wizard commander had preempted the bids to buy the entire lot for their grand bloodworking.
Even though the slaves had freed themselves, they were not in a forgiving mood. They were bottled up inside the walls of Ildakar, forced to defend their city alongside the nobles who had oppressed them.
Bannon and Lila passed under an arched gate into the open square with stepped stone seats on the outer perimeter, where noble bidders had once sat to inspect the captives for sale. He had expected the slave market to be mostly empty after the uprising, but instead the place was a bustling bazaar, with tents and awnings, colorful Ildakaran silk stretched across wooden frames. Intricate tapestries were spread on the flagstones like rugs, likely torn from the walls of noble villas. Bannon saw chattering families around cook fires, grim-looking people in ragged tunics or drab brown robes, while others flaunted expensive finery looted from their masters’ dwellings.
After Mirrormask’s revolt, many of the freed lower classes abandoned their former domiciles and formed a community of their own, scorning the old order and old duties. But everyone needed to work in some capacity to keep the city functioning, to harvest the food they required in order to withstand the siege. Some citizens understood their duty, while others seemed reluctant to help any of the upper classes they still resented. Several more nobles had been surreptitiously murdered in the past few days.
As Bannon entered the square, hundreds of eyes turned toward him. He felt like a trespasser, but many of the slaves knew him on s
ight. He had fought at their side during the uprising, and he had been with them on the top of the plateau, freeing the sacrificial victims.
But mixed in with the general hubbub of conversation, he heard a grumble directed at Lila, though she seemed deaf to it. She walked ahead of Bannon as if clearing the way for him. She looked around and frowned. “Is this what you wanted to see, boy?” She raised her voice, scolding the former slaves who had occupied the slave market. “This is not your home. This is a public square. You shouldn’t be living here.”
“We don’t listen to any morazeth,” grumbled one man, his hand clenching a sturdy wooden pole that supported a stolen tapestry. “This is our home now. We no longer serve the nobles in their villas.”
“This is our city, too,” said an older woman who washed clothes in a fountain, and then spread them on the sunlit flagstones to dry.
Two laughing boys ran past, chasing each other, but they stopped to stare at Lila. When she stared back at them, they fled in terror.
“Yes, this is your city,” Lila repeated, “and you have responsibilities, too. You must help defend Ildakar against enemies.”
“Against all enemies,” said the man gripping the wooden pole.
Bannon came forward, trying to make peace. “We know that your society has to change. Nicci and Nathan will help when they talk to the duma members.”
“We have no one to speak for us,” grumbled the woman as she slopped a wet, soapy rag onto the flagstones.
Bannon searched for words. He was just a former cabbage farmer, not a politician, and he didn’t know how to fix social injustices. More people began to gather around them like a mob closing in. There were enough potential opponents here to tear Lila apart, but the morazeth would probably kill half of them before they took her down. She stood as still as a stone warrior.
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