Previously, when she escaped, a kind of blindness had convinced her to abandon Ildakar. She had actually made up her mind to aid General Utros, the true enemy. Thora realized now that she had been mad. Despair and frustration had twisted her thoughts, tangled them like a mass of tentacles, and she almost made a terrible mistake, worse than any mistake she’d ever made.
Something had broken inside her, though, when she stood on that wall, ready to throw herself to the ancient army. Her heart had undergone a metamorphosis, like one of Olgya’s enhanced silkworms that was finally allowed to enter a cocoon after a lifetime of exhausting service. Thora knew that Ildakar would endure. It was still her perfect city, and she had to help preserve it, if the duma members ever allowed her to do so.
She was different from Maxim. Her treacherous husband had done everything possible to destroy Ildakar, not for any grand purpose, but simply because he was bored. She would not be like him. Yet she remained isolated here, as if sealed in a tomb.
When she heard whispering voices in the corridor, the rattle of the lock, she drew herself up, straight-backed and proud. She faced the door and shielded her eyes against the sudden flood of light as two men in wizard’s robes greeted her.
“Sovrena, we need to speak with you.” The gruff voice belonged to Quentin.
Though she had been contemplating possibilities in the dark, she summoned the bright glow again to light her chamber. Damon stood next to Quentin, looking uncertain, even frightened.
She narrowed her eyes. “You have come alone. No one else knows you’re here?” The two men looked skittish, like the larks Thora had kept in cages. “Where is Lani?” she demanded when they didn’t answer. “Why isn’t she here to taunt me?”
“Lani is dead,” Damon said, his frown enhanced by the long mustaches. “The general’s sorceresses killed her when she used a scrying spell to spy on them. She drowned in her own scrying water.”
Thora fought to hide her satisfaction. “And now you need me. How can I help? I want to fight.”
“Ildakar needs you.” Quentin scratched his round cheek as he and Damon explained the recent battle, how they had unleashed the two remaining Ixax warriors, how the dragon had come.
“But we have no more significant defenses, and the ancient army is still impossibly powerful,” Damon said. The bangs on his forehead nearly reached his eyes and he subconsciously brushed them out of the way. “We have to use every possible means to save the city.”
Thora was surprised. “And what of Nicci? I thought she was so powerful she could single-handedly save the world. Isn’t that what Nathan Rahl’s life book predicted? That she would save the world!” She snorted, but controlled her anger. She had been isolated so long she needed to hear whatever these two wizards could tell her.
“Nicci abandoned us again to go rally other cities, and she may never come back,” Quentin said.
“Why should she?” Damon asked. “It is only a matter of time before Ildakar falls. The other duma members are digging through magical lore and testing obscure spells. Elsa believes she has an innovative transference rune to present to the duma, but that plan is not certain and seems desperate.”
“It will never be enough,” Quentin interjected with a groan. “That is why we have to be realistic. That is why we came to you.”
Damon swallowed audibly. “Quentin and I have concluded there is only one sure way to protect Ildakar for all time, a way that we never need to worry about General Utros or any enemy again.”
Quentin nodded. “We have to raise the shroud of eternity again. And we will need your help, Sovrena, if you are willing.”
Thora had already guessed where the conversation would lead. “When I surrendered at the wall, I vowed to you that Ildakar was sacred to me, that I would do anything to save my city, if only you would let me. I meant that.”
Damon and Quentin looked at each other, relieved. “We can do much of the preparation work ourselves. In fact, we’ve already begun. While Nicci is gone and Nathan and Elsa are making plans for her transference-rune scheme, we have spread the word secretly among the citizens. We are collecting names. Some are volunteers, some are … suggestions.”
Thora touched her hard, cold cheek, feeling the infusion of stone there. “You understand how terrible the cost will be? How much blood will be required? You will need a great many people, and gifted blood is the strongest.”
“We know,” Quentin said. “So does everyone, but they can also see the enemy army outside. They think of their families. They think of the future. They know that if the general breaks down our gates, the city will be laid waste. Nothing will remain but rubble. All their families will be slaughtered. Even some rebels have offered to be sacrificed.”
“Rebels?” Thora scowled. “They broke down our traditions and the boundaries of the classes. Why would they help?”
Damon shrugged. “They wanted to be free. Now they need to understand the cost of freedom. If everyone wants to be equal in their new Ildakar, then they must accept equal responsibility.”
Damon’s voice cracked. “And they are agreeing! They understand. Some even quote the words of Mirrormask, vowing to fight and die for the future of their families and friends.”
Thora was surprised. “My husband was never sincere in his words. He made them up.”
“They were good words, no matter his motivations,” Quentin said. “What is important is how his followers heard them, not what was in the wizard commander’s heart.”
Thora wondered if he was still alive, since Adessa had been hunting him for some time now. She pointed out, “The pyramid is destroyed, the blood channels and spell-forms gone, the apparatus ruined. How will you work so much blood magic?”
“I can remake the equipment,” Damon said, “and we don’t require the pyramid. We just need a place for the sacrificial victims to gather.”
Quentin added, “And we need executioners to shed all that blood to work the magic and raise the shroud.”
Thora remained dubious. “Even with the best of intentions, I’m not certain you will find enough volunteers.”
“As I said, we have a large list of names,” Quentin said. “And we’ve compiled a second book of people we can take by force, if we need more blood. We can mandate one sacrifice from each family.”
Thora felt warm inside, a glimmer of pride for her city. “Then maybe Ildakar can be saved after all. I will help in any way I can. Come to me when your plans are ready.”
CHAPTER 70
Maxim found just the place to rest and hide while he gathered his strength, a cozy cottage in the forested hills above the Killraven River. He had traveled a great distance, covering his tracks all along the way. He’d abandoned his small stolen boat from Tarada at another river town and then moved on.
He had encountered many settlements on the banks, since the widening river provided food and work for so many people, but Maxim didn’t want to live in a town again, not yet. He did intend to build a new empire greater than Ildakar, but that would come in time, and Maxim had plenty of time.
His mistake at Tarada was that he’d been in too much of a hurry. He had waited nearly a thousand years for the downfall of stagnant Ildakar, and by now the city was surely destroyed by the stone army he had awakened. He couldn’t expect to create a comparable city in only a year or two.
Here, up in the hills above a small river town called Gant’s Ford, Maxim settled in to a time of impatient peace, maybe for months. The isolated cottage was spacious, with a main area and hearth. A large bed for the mother and father was blocked off by a hanging leather curtain, while a smaller room off to the side had three narrow beds for the children. In the fireplace, an iron hook held a cauldron for a pot of soup, as well as iron skewers for roasting fish brought up from the town market, or squirrels or hares caught in the forest.
In the larder behind the cottage, the father had hung strings of venison sausages. Chickens ran about in the yard, pecking at beetles and worms, taking care of themselves. Maxim, the
former wizard commander of Ildakar, was not a man to tend barnyard fowl.
Someday when he built a grand city again, he would have uniformed guards, servants to attend to his every need, practitioners talented in the art of massage after he luxuriated in a perfumed bath, young women for his bed. He would have clothiers create magnificent garments for him out of the finest fabrics, the softest weaves, the warmest furs. His jewelry would be crafted by the most skilled smiths in his domain.
He sighed, missing Ildakar more than he’d thought he would.
For now, this cottage was an acceptable home. The forest silence was comforting, enhanced by the sound of rushing spruce boughs in the breezes. The man and his wife had cut down the tallest trees, leaving stumps in the front yard. Blocks of firewood were stacked against the cottage, and an axe rested next to one of the stumps that served as a chopping block. When he ran out of split firewood for the hearth, though, Maxim didn’t deign to swing the ax, but used his gift to expand cracks in the logs, shattering them into pieces the fireplace could accommodate. He was resourceful, even self-sufficient.
After fleeing through the swamps for days, avoiding predators as well as the maddeningly determined Adessa, he was glad to have a safe and quiet place to reside. He knew she wouldn’t give up, although if Adessa had any sense at all, she would realize she could never defeat a wizard commander! The protective branded runes would save her from an overt attack of magic, but she had no powers remotely comparable to his own. He’d been shocked at how strong the morazeth was when she tried to kill him, and he wondered where that enhanced strength came from. Had Thora found a way to trigger some manifestation of the gift in Adessa? It was annoying.
As he moved through the silent home, he plucked at the clean linen shirt that had been the husband’s. The trousers were too large, and he needed a rope belt around the waist to hold them up, but that was part of his disguise. His Ildakaran garments had been beyond repair, and he’d discarded the gray robes he had worn as Mirrormask. At Tarada, he’d been forced to flee so swiftly he had been unable to bring extra clothes. At least he no longer looked like a beggar.
After he used a small glamour spell, people in Gant’s Ford gave him what he needed. He just had to lie low for now, like a bear hibernating for the winter, and eventually he would emerge with detailed plans to conquer the world. The solitude was the hardest part. After living for so many centuries in Ildakar, Maxim was not accustomed to being alone.
Once every two or three days he would make the hour walk down the forest path to the river town. He called no attention to himself in his rough-spun clothes, and people assumed he was one of the many woodcutters, farmers, and hunters who lived in the wild. Maxim ate food from the inns, and he especially liked the catfish pie. Sometimes he spent coins he’d found in a jar inside the cottage, while other times he just worked a forgetting spell and left without paying. He drank the town’s sour ale and grimaced, even tried some wine that came from barges upriver. Once, he asked if the tavernkeeper possessed any bloodwine from Ildakar, and the portly man had just laughed at him, explaining that bloodwine was an extravagance no one in town could afford.
Maxim convinced himself that he was getting to know the poor people, the hardworking ungifted types. When he played his role as Mirrormask, he had pretended to understand the plight of the lower classes. He had learned the right words to say and watched how easily people reacted to his promises. He could incite them with honeyed words about freedom, although the people in Gant’s Ford were already free, and they knew their lot in life would never change for the better.
Later, after he had his fill of people, Maxim would walk back up the path to his cottage in the hills, where he continued to dream of greater conquests.
One afternoon, the silence and boredom weighed heavily on him, and he left the cottage. Out in the yard the wild chickens clucked and fled, though he had no intention of killing them. That would be too messy, too much work.
The family kept a garden plot with onions, beans, and a squash plant whose vines sprawled across the ground. Behind the cottage, a line of brambles held sweet berries. He had enough food to last a while, but he was growing impatient with all this waiting.
He strolled past the garden patch and saw the five stone figures, exactly where they had been since he first arrived here. The broad-chested husband, and his wife who was not old, but not pretty either. Her petrified hair was tied back, covered with a scarf. A drab skirt hung from hips widened by childbirth. The mother held the hand of one of her children, a boy of about eight. The father grabbed the smallest one, a girl no more than five. An older boy of eleven ran between them. Their expressions had turned to panic when they realized how much danger Maxim posed. They had tried to sneak away into the night, but hadn’t gotten far. Maxim had emerged from the door and saw them running. Without bothering to call out, he released his petrification spell. They froze in midstep, their skin and bones hardening into stone. They would always keep that expression of fear, their eyes wide, but they would never take another step. He regretted his impetuous move, because now they couldn’t help him, couldn’t serve him, and Maxim needed someone to do the work around the cottage.
When he first arrived, the family had welcomed him as a traveler, fed him, let him spend the night, but they became frightened when he forced them to do things, and he’d been too tired to use much finesse.
Now he walked past the statue family, looked at the mother and father, whose blind, staring eyes didn’t move, didn’t see him. Sarcastically, he wished them a good day, since he had no one else to talk to.
He walked along the hilltop, listening to the whisper of tall spruces, until he reached an overlook from which he could see the Killraven River far below. He stood on a rock promontory, drinking in the view, seeing the noon sun sparkle on the current. Gant’s Ford filled the bank, the tiny people going about their daily business.
Then he spotted the ships on the river, a large and imposing fleet of at least fifty sturdy vessels with lines of long oars, midnight-blue sails, and a fearsome carved serpent at each prow. Maxim stared. The Norukai!
This was no simple trading fleet, not a ship or two delivering slaves in exchange for bloodwine and yaxen meat. This was a full Norukai invasion. In the past, the raiders had come to Ildakar pretending to be simple merchants, but now that he saw the dangerous fleet pressing upriver, he understood their goal. This wasn’t just a raid or two on vulnerable river villages. He smiled as he began to imagine how much havoc those fierce warriors would unleash upon Ildakar.
When the Norukai attackers arrived, Maxim had no doubt that the city would fall, if Ildakar wasn’t already destroyed in the aftermath of what he himself had done. He drove away a twinge of remorse and just watched for the next hour as dozens of serpent warships sailed upriver toward his former home.
CHAPTER 71
Even though Bannon didn’t have the gift, he wanted to help protect Ildakar. After being captured, he was less than enthusiastic about running out to face hordes of enemy soldiers with his sword, but when he learned that Elsa needed physical labor for her giant plan to unleash transference magic on the battlefield, he volunteered.
Crews gathered at the top of the sheer bluff above the river. The sky held a smear of dull clouds that hung like leftover dragon smoke, carrying a persistent drizzle. The air was cold, wet, and miserable, which made the cliffs treacherous. When Bannon looked uneasily down at the dangling ropes, the narrow wooden platforms and scaffolding, the workers climbing down with buckets of fresh paint, he almost lost his nerve. “Sweet Sea Mother.” But he sucked in a deep breath and nodded to Elsa. “If I can fight a thousand warriors, I am brave enough to paint a cliff.”
The older sorceress nodded. “If we succeed here, young man, this giant transference rune will defeat more enemy soldiers than a thousand Ildakaran swords.”
“Then it is worth a bit of vertigo,” he said. Lila had taken him down the narrow stairs, the wooden ledges, and the hanging platforms to the
river below. He knew he could do it. Elsa’s giant rune needed to cover the entire cliff face, an intricate design painted across the open sandstone, with no gaps, no errors.
The sorceress peered over the edge, studying the rock surface. “See that section over there, near the water sluice? No one is working that part of the cliff. It would be a good assignment for you.”
It seemed a very long way from any of the stable platforms or stairs. “I will have to anchor a rope from the top of the cliff here.”
“Either that, or you need to fly.” Elsa gave him a quirk of a smile. “Ropes are probably more reliable.”
“Need more paint down here!” called a deep male voice.
Below, Bannon saw a potbellied man standing alone on a rickety platform. He waved a thick brush so that droplets of red paint spattered his bare shoulders. Two workers from a nearby access tunnel tied a rope to the handle of a full bucket of paint and lowered it swiftly, hand over hand. The bucket swayed, spilling a little, but the potbellied man reached up and caught it. He set the bucket on the boards at his feet and began painting again.
On top, at the cliff’s edge, Bannon tied a harness around himself, assisted by other workers, who secured the knots and double-checked them. Elsa paced the edge of the bluff, watching the crews below.
She had crafted her intricate spell-form with numerous curling loops and connecting cross lines. She had tested the rune until she was sure she had perfected the design. While the duma members planned the desperate charge out onto the battlefield to complete the other half of her transference spell, according to her plan, Elsa had rallied more than forty volunteers who were willing to paint the anchor design across the sheer cliff face. Including Bannon.
Most of the painters were cargo loaders and river workers accustomed to moving along the steep stairs, platforms, and ladders. Standing at the top of the bluff, Elsa had used a different sort of transference magic. In the misty rain, she held the sheet of paper on which she had drawn her intricate rune and used her gift to magnify and project the image onto the rock, where it remained clearly visible. Up and down the cliff face, the precariously suspended workers could see the exact lines to paint.
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