“I failed him,” she said. “I let Bannon down. He is dead because of me.”
The hazy sunshine of midday warmed the top of the plateau. Nicci stood outside the ruling tower with the shadow of the high structure stretching away from the river and the sheer bluffs. Drained from the battle the night before, Nicci had not allowed herself to consider all the emotional consequences yet. She intentionally blocked those feelings and tried to remain analytical. Her heart was hard, cold … black ice, and she clung to that.
“Hundreds of people died last night, not just Bannon,” Nicci said. The more she tried not to think of the young man’s face, his eager smile, his good nature, the more clearly she saw him in her mind.
Lila remained unconvinced. “True, many died, but I didn’t fail the rest of them. I did fail Bannon. His training must have been inadequate, and my protection faltered. I lost track of him when I fought beside my morazeth sisters, and the enemy soldiers swept in, cutting me off. I didn’t even see him go down, so I don’t know what happened to him.”
Nicci had not seen it either. During the frenzied battle, the arena fighters, city guards, volunteers, and duma members had been on their own. “Bannon was a good fighter,” Nicci said, and then her voice dropped and the words came out before she could even think about it. “He was my friend.” Nicci found it strange to admit the fact, but there was no other word. Bannon Farmer had become more than just a temporary companion on their journey. “If you failed him, then so did I. There is nothing we can do to help him now.”
The dead were still being counted. Oron had lost his son Brock during the battle, and Lady Olgya reported with more anger than grief that her boy Jed hadn’t returned either. Nicci could not fully comprehend what a parent felt over the loss of a child, even worthless and disappointing sons such as Jed and Brock, but then she thought of the girl Thistle, and the heavy ache made her understand.
“Unless Bannon’s not dead,” Lila said, startling Nicci. “I will not give up hope until I know for certain.”
Nicci hardened her heart, not wanting to waste time on unrealistic imaginings. “There is very little chance. You know that.”
Lila crossed her arms over the black leather wrap. “Unless you want to surrender right now, we must cling to hope wherever we find it. All of Ildakar has very little chance, but we won’t give up.”
Nicci realized the young morazeth was right, and she knew that Richard Rahl would never simply give up, otherwise he would have surrendered to the Imperial Order before the first battles. “Hope may be our greatest weapon. Don’t forget your hope.” She looked into Lila’s determined eyes. “Thank you for reminding me.”
As the morazeth sprinted away, Nicci didn’t ask what the young woman intended to do. Instead, she had her own decisions to make. General Utros and his army would be in turmoil after the attack, but Ildakar itself also rang with speculation, questions, and uncertainties. The defenders had struck a powerful blow, and the duma would revel in what they had accomplished, for a few hours at least. Neither side would be in any shape for a major operation, but only a fool would assume the siege would be over soon.
Thora was confined again, but in a different dungeon cell. She seemed changed now, as if something fundamental had broken inside her. Nicci still didn’t trust her.
The duma members had gone back to their homes to recuperate before they met to discuss what to do next. When Nicci entered the quiet ruling tower, she found the main chamber silent, the thrones vacant and the stone benches unoccupied. The chamber echoed with her footsteps.
“Ah, I thought I might find you here, Sorceress,” Nathan said, startling her.
She turned to see the wizard in his scuffed robes, his white hair tangled. She was surprised he hadn’t cleaned himself and changed his garments since the night before. Nathan had always been vain about his appearance and his comforts, but the previous night’s battle had shaken him.
“I wanted a place where I could contemplate,” she explained.
Nathan came closer, his expression drawn. “I know. I grieve for the dear boy, too. It’s a terrible loss.”
Nicci didn’t want to admit her own feelings. “There is no time for grieving or foolish hope. We need to consider our next actions while we have a brief respite. It might last only a few days.” She glanced at the stairs behind the throne dais. “Come with me to the top of the tower, where we can get a broader perspective.”
They ascended the spiraling stone steps and emerged onto the open rooftop, where the sunshine was bright and carefree larks flitted about. Even from up here, she could feel and hear the monotonous pounding against the walls.
Nicci lowered her voice, though there was no one but Nathan to hear. “It wasn’t enough, and Bannon died to defend a city that wasn’t even his own, on a foolish and arrogant strike that served little purpose. How long can Ildakar withstand this siege?”
Nathan raked his fingers through his long hair in a gesture that reminded her of Richard. “For as long as we must. I don’t believe any army is invincible. Emperor Jagang and the Imperial Order fell. Sulachan and his undead army were defeated. General Utros will fall, too.”
Nicci listened to the drumbeat of coordinated blows outside the wall. “A drip of water will eventually carve a bowl in solid rock. I don’t think we have that much time, and Ildakar is only one target for General Utros.” Together, they looked across the great valley. The rolling hills on the northern boundary were a blackened scar from the grass fires, and a low pall of smoke hung in the air, but even after the losses they had suffered, the enemy seemed infinite. “His army could threaten the whole world.”
Nathan stretched out his hands, sketched a rectangle in the air, and pulled the air taut to create a new magnifying window. Many of the general’s soldiers were working hard to rebuild the camp, but they also saw columns of soldiers, thousands at a time, splitting off in different directions, marching away from the valley like separate invasion forces, any one of which could conquer a whole city.
Nicci felt cold inside. Looming grief over Bannon wrapped her like a blanket that could not warm the black ice of her heart, but Utros posed a far greater threat. “If those expeditionary forces are meant to conquer more territory, then that ancient general can take over the land that Richard told us to save.” She looked at him. “The danger goes well beyond Ildakar. Utros could conquer the entire Old World. And from there, what is to stop him from surging upward into D’Hara, just like Jagang and the Imperial Order? We have to stop him here.”
Nathan stroked his chin where pale stubble had sprouted after the long night. She had never seen him so disheveled. “Now that we’ve shown him our fighting spirit, should we demand to speak with him again? Suggest that it is in his best interest not to pursue this war further?”
Nicci shook her head. “How could we convince him of that? He has already sent out many armies.”
Through Nathan’s magnifying window, they watched a group of the general’s engineers working with tall trees, cutting the wooden trunks into components that included a long throwing arm. Working like bees, they assembled a single catapult, which they wheeled close to the towering gates.
“Even if they hurl boulders, the reinforcement spells will protect our walls and gates,” Nathan said. “What is he up to?”
The sentries on the outer walls sounded an alarm, and the guards braced themselves as the catapult moved into position. Nicci narrowed her blue eyes. “I think he has something else in mind.”
The two watched uneasily as the ancient soldiers cranked their ropes and ratcheted back the throwing arm. The catapult hurtled forward until it smacked the halting block and flung the cargo from its basket. A dozen corpses sailed through the air over the high wall and pelted the streets of Ildakar, landing on tiled rooftops and falling into water cisterns. The Ildakaran soldiers who had died during the nighttime raid. All of the heads had been chopped off, the bodies mutilated.
Even as the first rain of corpses fell across the l
ower levels of the city, the ancient warriors wound back the catapult again. Carts came forward, loaded with even more bodies.
Nicci set her jaw. “General Utros is not in a mood to negotiate.”
She felt the coldness in her heart, the tingle of both Additive and Subtractive Magic. This fight was about more than just Ildakar. She knew what she had to do. “All of the Old World and the entire D’Haran Empire must know about this threat. I will make my preparations.” The breezes on top of the tower fluttered her close-cropped blond hair. “Tomorrow, I intend to use the sliph.”
* * *
That night, trying to rest before she departed on her swift journey, Nicci again traveled with Mrra on the outside of the giant camp. The darkness looked different through the eyes of the sand panther, but she could see the devastation, smell the acrid char of the burned hills as well as blood from the great battle. Mrra had emerged from hiding among the trees in a distant hollow, but now she approached the army of General Utros. The big cat knew the ancient soldiers had weak night vision, even worse than most humans’, and now she ventured even closer to the camp.
Nicci’s thoughts guided the panther as she herself lay restless and half asleep in the grand villa. She was still disturbed by so many losses from the night before.
As they recovered throughout the day, the people of Ildakar tried to assess how much damage their attack had really inflicted on the enemy, but the mutilated bodies hurled by the catapults had caused great shock and dismay. The people struggled to find a sense of victory, but they couldn’t help but count their own fallen, even though they couldn’t identify the mangled corpses. Nicci didn’t even know if Bannon’s body was among them.
Through the sand panther, though, Nicci could now see the true damage General Utros had suffered. Many of the blazing fires were not bright campfires, as the Ildakarans assumed. Mrra smelled burning flesh, saw the piles of bodies, the charred skin and blackened bones falling into greasy embers. These were funeral pyres. Though the ancient warriors were hardened from the remnants of the stone spell, they still bled and they still died. Now the corpses burned, although it took a great deal of firewood.
In her partial dream state, Nicci guessed that the number of enemy dead was at least three to five times as many as Ildakar had lost, but even so it was not a cause for celebration.
Mrra moved like a shadow in the faint moonlight, circling the troops and funeral pyres, seeing the blasted trenches and the damage done. As she crept close to the general’s headquarters, Nicci felt her senses heightened, all sounds and smells intensified tenfold. Mrra sniffed and discovered several large barrels that reeked of blood. Nicci didn’t know why General Utros would store casks of blood, and Mrra didn’t care. Blood did not frighten her.
Nicci memorized all the details as Mrra continued to move around the camp, observing even though the big cat didn’t comprehend human warfare. But she had gleaned enough understanding through her association with her sister panther that she noticed something odd, familiar smells that didn’t belong among the ancient army.
Though unable to approach closer due to the movement of ancient soldiers, Mrra spotted one wooden shack with no windows and a barred door. She heard stirring, low voices, smelled a different scent. Other humans were inside, not these dusty-smelling ones, but warm-blooded men. Captives, perhaps? Hostages that Utros would use as bargaining chips?
There was certainly no way to rescue them in the midst of the gigantic enemy camp.
Before she departed through the sliph the next morning, Nicci would report the news to the duma. Thanks to her feline spy, she had a great deal of new information to share.
CHAPTER 43
Many cities in the Old World had suffered under the Imperial Order, but the threat of General Utros’s army was something entirely different from what they had experienced previously. Now that parts of his army were clearly on the move, Nicci had to spread the warning far and wide. She would travel to Tanimura, Serrimundi, Larrikan Shores, maybe all the way up to Aydindril or the People’s Palace, if the sliph could take her that far. She would tell her story, sound the alarm, rally them in any way possible.
But she needed to have proof. They would not just accept her wild story.
The following morning, after Nicci had delivered her report to the duma of what Mrra had seen, and told them her plan to spread the alarm to other cities, Elsa joined her and Nathan outside the ruling tower. She wore clean purple robes, and she had pinned back her gray-shot hair.
The older woman smiled and nodded slowly. “I think I have just the proof you need, a way you can take the ancient army with you. You can show everyone how great a threat Utros is, and they won’t be able to deny it.” She held up a small pane of glass she had brought with her. “We can use transference magic.”
With the sharp point of a dagger, Elsa scratched runes in each corner of the glass rectangle, then inspected her work. “I can transfer the image of what we see and capture it within the pane. The picture will live inside the glass.”
While Nicci and Nathan watched, she lifted the rectangular glass and slowly turned it, holding it at arm’s length and gazing through it to see the countless soldiers, the burned hills, the numerous tents, the immensity of the siege army. Then she touched the scratched rune in the lower left corner and handed the small pane to Nicci. “That should convince anyone who looks.”
Nicci held the glass, amazed that it had captured the precise image of what they saw from the tower, an undeniable and frightening record of the great army gathered outside of Ildakar. “Yes, this will help a great deal.” She wrapped the glass pane in a cloth. “Now I have to go to the sliph.”
“And we are going along with you,” Nathan said. “In case you need help.”
Nicci flashed him a quick, skeptical glance but withheld her comment. As she walked purposefully down the steep streets with Nathan and Elsa following, she thought of the sliph. “Though I can travel great distances swiftly, I will not be able to bring any help back with me. Ildakar is still on its own.”
Elsa took Nathan’s arm. “We have been on our own for a very long time.” She looked confident, even majestic as she walked along. “During so many centuries beneath the shroud, I did dream of the outside world. I read the histories of other cities, mining towns in the mountains, trade centers by the ocean. They seemed like magical places, and very few people in Ildakar remembered ever seeing them. If I’d known about the sliph and how easy it is to travel, maybe I would have explored.” They descended through the merchants’ district and into crowded residential levels where the lower classes lived. “But I suppose even the sliph couldn’t pass through a bubble in time. Our shroud would have been impenetrable.”
Nicci kept walking at a brisk pace. “That would not have been your primary problem. The sliph can only be used by someone with both sides of the gift, Additive and Subtractive Magic. Millennia ago, many wizards could access that magic, but now very few can use the Subtractive side.”
“Then how are you going to use the sliph now?” Elsa asked.
“I was a Sister of the Dark, and I served the Keeper. I can use Subtractive Magic because of the terrible price I paid.” She thought of the destruction she had caused, the people she had hurt, how she had tried to destroy Richard. Though she had forsaken that darkness, the scars were still within her, as was that poisonous strength. “I will be able to travel.”
They reached the lowest levels of Ildakar, and Nicci went directly to the low stone building that held the hidden sliph well. The door was open and unguarded, but people avoided the place. Though some had peered inside, the eerie darkness and the chill kept them away.
Nicci ducked and entered the enclosure, igniting a ball of light to drive away the shadows. Elsa and Nathan followed close behind. The air inside smelled like stagnant water and mold, with an undertone of rot. Green moss grew on the stone floor, but otherwise the chamber was empty, no furniture, no ornaments, no symbols.
Nicci knew how to s
ummon the sliph. She had used the strange method of transportation before, sometimes uneventfully, while other journeys had turned into ordeals. Now she saw no other way to spread her warning so widely and so quickly.
Her feet whispered along the smooth floor as she walked to the low circular well. With all the places the sliph could travel, she considered where to go, how she might best sound the alarm to other cities, whom she could rally. The people across the Old World would have to prepare their defenses, gather for war. As proof, she had Elsa’s cloth-wrapped rectangle of glass, which she secured next to one of the daggers at her hip. But she didn’t know if it would be enough.
Nicci looked into the bottomless well in front of her, a hollow blackness that exuded cold and utter silence. “Sliph! Sliph, I summon you. I wish to travel.” When she sensed no response, she shouted louder. “Sliph, I command you to awaken! I wish to travel.” She looked back over her shoulder at Nathan and Elsa. “I will need your help.”
“Are you sure the creature is still alive?” Elsa asked.
“Oh, I’m certain she lives, although she may have gone dormant after so much time,” Nathan said. “They are not natural beings. We must call her again.”
“I traveled within the sliph not long ago,” Nicci said. “It’s how we got back to the People’s Palace in time to fight Sulachan’s hordes.” Determined, she reached out with her gift, called with her mind and heart as well as with her voice. “Sliph, you know me. I need your services.”
The sliph was a woman who had been altered by ancient wizards in preparation for their war. She remembered the original sliph, a former whore transformed into a magical creature who existed to carry travelers from destination to destination, deriving great pleasure from doing so.
But the other sliph that had rescued Nicci and her companions when they were trapped within the cliff city of Stroyza was an entirely different creature, one who remembered her name as Lucy. That sliph had been less passionate, less desperate to serve, and far less cooperative, but Richard had convinced her to whisk them all away.
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