“My Grieve!” Chalk screamed, and clawed his way forward, barely able to hold on to the sliding, tilted platform. He grabbed for Grieve, but Bannon swept one leg out to dislodge him, and the scarred shaman tripped and fell over the edge. He shrieked as he dropped toward the lower platforms.
In that instant, Grieve let out a shocked, anguished scream: “Chalk!”
Bannon struck him again, kicking so hard that Grieve’s head snapped back. His grip on Bannon’s boot loosened, and he, too, fell, roaring in anger.
Bannon scrabbled on the icy wood of the tilted platform, trying to hold on. Not far below, he heard a crash as Grieve and the pale shaman slammed into one of the other platforms and the swarms of climbing Norukai. Bannon clawed at the wood, dropping his sword, which slid and clanged off the platform and plunged down the bluff. His hands squeaked on the ice, and wood splinters tore open his fingers, but he couldn’t hold on.
Lila lunged down for him. She seized his wrist, and he grasped her, holding on with all his might, but his hand was covered in blood and water. His skin was slick. She anchored herself by holding one of the ropes, trying to maintain her grip. “Hold me!”
Bannon squeezed, but his fingers slipped. His bloody palm slid through hers, and gravity pulled at him. He couldn’t hold on. He snatched at the edge of the platform as he slid the last few inches.
Lila’s eyes were wide, her face filled with shock and horror and a long, whispered “Nooooo!”
Bannon fell, his fingertips just touching hers for a last instant. He tumbled from the platform, falling past the rough sandstone cliff, seeing the ice, the openings. He tried to grab for something, anything. For a second, he caught the edge of another walkway, but his fingers slipped again and he tumbled through the air.
Unexpectedly he crashed on his back among dozens of bodies—murdered Ildakaran defenders, as well as dead Norukai piled on one of the wide lower platforms. But some of them were still alive, their fall cushioned by the soft flesh. King Grieve was there, as was the white shaman, both of them climbing to their feet. Bannon flailed about, looking for his sword.
Grieve bellowed, “Take him.”
The Norukai closed around him and swallowed him up in a mob of hideous faces.
CHAPTER 82
The arena at the heart of Ildakar had become a slaughterhouse, but this was the only chance for the city to survive. Sovrena Thora knew it.
As the battle against the Norukai invaders continued and the fires of Elsa’s transference spell raged across the ancient army in the valley, Quentin and Damon pressed forward with their massive bloodworking. They didn’t have much time, and Thora urged them on.
Determined, the city guard marched lines of volunteers onto the open sands, many of them weeping. These brave people had come forward in a time of Ildakar’s great need, had offered their blood, their lives, convinced they must do something for their beloved city. But now the time had come, and the real sacrifice required more bravery than just writing down their names in a book.
Thora watched hundreds and hundreds of people with their throats slit, spilling their blood into the spell-form troughs fused into the arena sands. It was what Ildakar required, and these people had to meet their obligations.
Damon had shaped the troughs with his gift and added gathering magic, so that the blood pooled where it was necessary, not a drop wasted. The spell-form was broad enough and deep enough to hold the quantity of blood necessary to raise the shroud again.
It was what Ildakar needed. It was what Thora needed. She knew more than ever that she was the heart of her city. In her own veins flowed the true blood of Ildakar. She still felt a lingering heaviness of stone throughout her body, where the petrification spell hadn’t entirely worn off. Because Maxim had created the spell, and presumably canceled it to awaken the stone army, she guessed that meant he was still alive, which angered her. Otherwise that last magical thread would have been severed and she would have been restored to flesh again.
Adessa had failed, but Thora had to think of Ildakar now. Nothing was more important than Ildakar.
Damon and Quentin were sweaty and covered with blood, like butchers in a yaxen slaughter yard. The pair of wizards grabbed one victim after another, wrapped an arm around the chest and made a quick cut with their sacrificial blades before tossing the dying body to the edge of the trough, and reaching for the next dazed volunteer. They had killed hundreds already, and the two men were shuddering with the endless effort. But they moved mechanically, killing one more, then one more, then one more.
Thora knew it needed to be faster.
She extended a finger toward the shivering sacrifices lined up in front of the blood troughs. She used her gift to create a razor edge of air and slashed her fingernail in a line. Her invisible knife sliced deep, cutting through the throats of the victims, ten at a time. They were astonished as their necks unexpectedly yawned open and blood gushed out. They toppled forward, pouring their lifeblood into the channels, paying the necessary price. Everyone had to pay the price.
Watching the vicious but extremely effective slice of the sovrena’s magic knife, Damon and Quentin looked startled and disturbed, but they nodded. More victims groaned and shuddered as they were dragged forward. Suddenly, ten of the captives lost their nerve and broke free. The city guards gave chase and stabbed the victims in the back, driving them down to the sand like fighters in an arena exhibition.
Alarmed, Thora shouted after them, “Cut their throats before it’s too late! Don’t waste the blood.”
The guards lifted the heads of the dying cowards and bled them into the channels of the spell-form.
Now that they had begun the bloodworking, Thora felt fully alive again. Her true dream had returned, and she was saving Ildakar as she had always promised to do. History would remember Thora, Sovrena Thora, and she would no longer be disgraced. Her name would not be spoken with shame. She was the person fundamental to this final bloodworking to save the city.
Best of all, Nathan and Elsa were outside the city walls, and even treacherous Nicci was gone. They would not be saved. After the city was safely hidden beneath the shroud, Ildakar would have a real chance to become the perfect society she had always envisioned. Despite her normally implacable attitude, Thora felt a warm joy as she watched more victims fall and more blood flow.
Using her invisible knife again, she caught others unawares, cutting their throats and using a shove of magic to knock their dying forms toward the troughs. The blood flowed together in streams, but Thora knew the spell needed the lives of at least a thousand. The tedious, gory task would take hours more, unless they could find powerful, gifted nobles to give their lives.
“It’s not fast enough,” she groaned, looking up at the gray skies.
Seeing the sovrena coldly kill dozens at a time, some of the volunteers in the arena quailed, grabbed their families, and pushed their way toward the upper arched entrances, trying to escape.
Thora glared as she saw citizens shirking their responsibilities. “Stop them!”
The panic was spreading. Many weren’t actually volunteers, merely people the guards had rounded up against their will. Thora had suspected the lists of volunteers would not be enough, and many who were brave on paper would renege on their commitment when the time came to actually pay the price. So they had to be forced. Those reluctant sacrifices sat bound and struggling at the base of the killing sands, but they fought against the guards.
In the struggle many unarmed sacrificial candidates were struck down away from the spell-form, where their deaths served no purpose, their blood spilled uselessly onto the sands. The cowards outnumbered the guards, who were mobbed, relieved of their swords, and killed. Swiftly, the volunteers began a mass exodus.
“But this is for Ildakar!” Thora cried. “If you don’t die here, then the whole city will fall.” She wondered if the Norukai had breached the tunnels yet, or if General Utros had returned to smash the gates after Elsa’s transference magic.
&n
bsp; The people weren’t listening, though. They simply ran for their lives, taking their spouses, joining their friends. It had been a brave thing to do when they signed the ledger Damon and Quentin offered, but most hadn’t believed the time would actually come. The guards barricaded the arena entrances, fighting those who tried to push free. Outside in the streets, guards were indiscriminately rounding up anyone they could find.
Such cowards didn’t deserve Ildakar. Their blood would be too weak to serve the magic. She used her knife of air again, swinging it hard, expending a great deal of magic. The blow was so sharp that she completely severed the heads of thirteen sacrifices. They toppled, spouting jets of crimson from the stumps as their heads rolled.
Damon and Quentin kept cutting, but now their victims fought back. Hundreds were leaving like panicked sheep. Thora knew they had killed only about half as many as were needed to raise the shroud.
“No!” She felt like weeping.
Another contingent of guards raced into the arena, and Thora was relieved to have reinforcements, but they had not come to help fight. Instead, they looked stricken, terrified. “The Norukai are climbing the cliffs! Many have already penetrated the tunnels. Soon there will be thousands within our walls.”
Thora wanted to scream. “There’s not enough time!”
If the shroud wasn’t raised within the next few minutes, if the protective invisible walls didn’t whisk her beautiful city out of the flow of time, then all would be lost. Her hopes were dashed.
“More, kill more of them!” She struck again with her magical knife, butchering others who tried to flee. She had nearly exhausted herself.
Damon and Quentin were frantic. They slashed throats and then simply began stabbing victims nearby. The towering quartz prisms slowly rotated, spattered with blood, and hazy sunlight shone down on the curved mirrors, drawing magic and energy into the curved silver crucible from which the lines of blood magic extended.
Thora howled at the evacuating crowds. “Why won’t you save Ildakar? Why won’t you do what your city needs?” These cowards didn’t deserve her beautiful, perfect city. She hated them.
All around, the air smelled of fear and the sour iron of blood mixed with the stink of death. Bodies were piled high, like a siege wall of human corpses.
Thora felt despair. “Why won’t they pay the cost? There must be some way.”
Damon and Quentin turned to her, exhausted, soaked with blood. She was so furious she failed to notice the desperate gleam in their eyes. With hardened expressions, the two wizards approached her, holding knives in their slick red hands. “There is a way, Sovrena, and you know it yourself,” Damon said.
“Everyone must pay the price,” Quentin said.
“We can complete the bloodworking,” Damon added with a glance at his partner, who nodded. Both of them closed in on Thora. “And you know the magic it requires. We have already sacrificed hundreds, and the magic is building. It only needs the nudge to push the bloodworking over the limit.”
“It’s not enough,” Thora said, shuddering with anger and frustration. “You know it’s not enough.”
“But you can do the rest,” Quentin said. “You said it yourself. Gifted blood is so much more powerful. You are the sovrena, the most powerful sorceress in Ildakar, and the blood magic is stronger in you than in hundreds of ungifted victims.”
Damon added, coming even closer with his knife, “You can finish this. One sacrifice. You said we must each be willing to pay the price.”
Thora felt cold inside. “You are fools if you think you can do this without me.”
“Not without you. We need you. We need your blood,” Damon said. His mustaches were caked with gore that had splattered his face.
Quentin tried to sound reasonable as he also closed in with his knife. “You were found guilty and disgraced. You said you wanted to buy your way back into history. In this way, you can atone for everything.”
Thora lashed out, calling upon her gift. She sliced through the air with another invisible razor, but both Damon and Quentin raised shields and blocked her. “You are powerful, Sovrena, but we are both wizards, and you aren’t strong enough to fight two of us.” Damon lunged with the sacrificial knife, and she drew upon all her strength to blast him backward, a fist of air mingled with threads of lightning.
The blow knocked Quentin reeling, but Damon, the shaper, summoned the soft arena sand at her feet, which writhed up around her legs and waist like a smothering blanket, trapping her. Thora flailed, glared poison at him. “Stay back!”
Quentin pushed toward her. “Your blood can save the city. You know it. Don’t fight us—we have no more time.”
“No!” she shouted as both wizards rushed her with upraised knives. With her gift, Thora shattered the sand that cemented her legs, but a blast from Damon knocked her backward. She collapsed into the blood-soaked sands, paralyzed as she tried to get up.
Quentin and Damon fell on her, using their gift to hold her down despite her struggles. She was almost powerful enough to hurl them away—almost—but Damon stabbed the point of his knife into her throat, pushing hard, breaking through her tough skin.
She clawed at his hand, tried to drive the dagger away; then Quentin’s blade also cut into her neck, sawing. Her scream was muffled, then drowned out in a gush of blood—the potent, gifted blood they needed.
As her vision faded, she saw the red river flowing toward the center of the symbol. Though her rage built hotter even as her life faded away, she knew with smug satisfaction that her powerful blood would indeed be enough. The warm spray spilled into the channel, completing the spell-form.
With her last thought, Thora felt the bright and triumphant magic surge in the air.
* * *
Damon stood exhausted. He had already seen so much blood and death today, but this was the last. This was the most important.
“Hurry!” Quentin said. He grabbed Thora by the shoulders, tilting her head, bending her limp body forward so the last of the crimson liquid gushed into the trough. It flowed together, filling the giant pattern, and pooled like oil crawling toward the central point.
Normally, all the members of the wizards’ duma would be here. Damon had hoped that Thora herself would guide the magic, but he and Quentin knew what was required. When the blood of the powerful sorceress mingled with the other sacrifices, they called upon the magic scattered in the air, through the lines that ran throughout the city of Ildakar.
Still fleeing, many of the volunteers paused, staring up into the sky as the air shimmered. The wave of magic flowed out of the arena, rocketing upward from the crucible and the rotating prisms. The expansive and complex spell-form glowed across the blood-soaked sands.
“The shroud!” Damon said, his voice an awed whisper.
“The shroud…” Quentin repeated.
The air around them changed as the entire city folded out of the flow of time into a protected bubble of its own, away from everyone and everything.
CHAPTER 83
With the release of transference magic, the inferno swept toward them across the battlefield. The thunderous explosion of heat appeared out of nowhere, and General Utros threw his arm in front of his gold half mask, but the concentrated blaze was more intense even than dragon fire. Utros sucked in a breath to shout his defiance, refusing to believe that he would lose so completely, so abruptly.
Ava and Ruva flung themselves on him, wrapping around him, each holding out a hand. Their scream was a raw sound of desperation in unison. The sound rippled the air, and their magic formed a shell of emptiness like molten glass, a curved shield that covered them at the last instant. The bubble clamped down and sealed with a suddenness that made the general’s ears pop, but even so, a tendril of superheated air was trapped inside with them. A single gasp of breath scorched his mouth and lungs.
Utros crouched beneath the fire that rolled as if someone had poured a crucible of molten iron over the top of them. He fell to his knees, squeezed his eyes shut
, and clenched his fists. As the heat thundered on and on, Ava and Ruva strained next to him, weeping, their lips drawn back to expose their teeth. They clutched at each other as if each twin had to steal energy from her sister just to survive.
He didn’t understand what had happened. When he had seen the six small groups that rode out from the gates, each led by a gifted wizard or sorceress, he knew the Ildakarans had some desperate plan. Utros had stayed by his command tent, assuming this was another foolish sortie that could be easily defeated.
When they saw what the Ildakaran groups were doing, though, Ava and Ruva had grown frightened. Ruva said, “They are laying down runes! This is part of a larger spell. Look at the positioning!”
Ava pointed out the knots of fighting, then the flare signals sent into the sky from where the gifted raiders made their mark. “It is a spell-form of some sort! They could encircle and cut off a large part of our forces.”
After the destruction caused by the Ixax warriors and the gray dragon, Utros knew he had to stop the Ildakarans. “Keeper and spirits, come with me. We will block that foremost group.” After he armed himself and wore his horned helmet, Utros had marched brusquely through his troops to meet the nearest strike force. He saw the wizard Nathan among them, as well as an older sorceress wearing purple robes.
Nathan and numerous fighters defended the sorceress while she marked a prominent rune on the ground. Utros had rushed toward them, but before he could get there, the older woman used her gift to blast Nathan and all the other defenders into the air, flinging them far away and leaving her to stand alone.
“What is—” Utros began to say as the sorceress completed her magic, triggering the spell. Transference magic.
Ava and Ruva screamed and held up their hands. So much fire came out of nowhere.…
* * *
When the inferno finally died down, Utros pushed himself to his feet again and stared through the rippling haze of the protective shield. The air was hot and scorched inside the bubble. He desperately needed to see what remained of his camp, his army. “Set us free. Let me out there!”
Siege of Stone Page 52
