“We are not safe, beloved Utros,” Ava said. “I don’t know if anyone is left alive in our army.”
“I need to see!” he demanded. “Now.” He pressed the gold half mask against his face.
Exhausted, Ava and Ruva sagged. When they allowed their magic to dissipate, the transparent shell flickered away, and Utros stared out upon a nightmarish landscape so hot that the ground had turned into glass. Lumps of rock smoldered, still glowing dull orange. Smoke fouled the air like black bloodstains. Nearby, the landscape was a forest of blackened bones, curved ribs, charred skulls exploded as the brains boiled in the flash of heat.
He and the twin sorceresses were the only ones alive nearby. The entire front ranks of his gigantic army had been wiped out.
Utros had always segregated his thoughts, walling off emotions from logic, tactical plans from historical knowledge, but now those compartments in his mind began to crumble with the horror of what he saw. Staring at the vacant black scar that had recently been crowded with loyal troops, he guessed that at least thirty thousand men had been caught in that instantaneous funeral pyre.
As he stared at the roasted world and thought of all those soldiers who had unquestioningly followed his command, he let out a bellowing roar toward Ildakar, demanding revenge.
And as he watched, the city itself shimmered and disappeared before his eyes.
* * *
Nathan tumbled through the air, heartsick as he watched the inferno rush across the battlefield, enclosed by the boundary runes the other teams had inscribed. Safe beyond the flames, he crashed onto the grass and rolled.
Other Ildakaran defenders tumbled beside him: Rendell, the two morazeth, the soldiers and arena fighters who had kept Elsa safe while she completed her magic. Elsa had used her last energy to hurl them all to safety. Lyesse and Thorn sprang to their feet and prepared to fight without even bothering to brush themselves off. Nathan, Rendell, and the others gained their feet and prepared to face the ancient soldiers.
But the outburst of fire from the transference magic was overwhelming. Nathan saw that this one blow, this one spell, had killed tens of thousands of the enemy.
And one dear Elsa.
In his anger at seeing the half-stone soldiers on the perimeter still moving toward them, Nathan flung out more wizard’s fire, destroying any enemies who dared to come close. The blast gave him and his companions a moment to catch their breath. “We have to get back into the city,” he called in a hoarse voice. “Fall back to the gates.”
They turned toward the towering city of Ildakar, their only safe haven now. They had all sacrificed so much to defend it. But before they could move to rush back home, the entire city flickered, then vanished entirely.
“Dear spirits!” Nathan cried. He knew what had happened.
Rendell’s jaw dropped open in disbelief. “Our city! Ildakar is gone.”
The other survivors stared in dismay. “Our homes!” cried one of the city guard, who bled from a long gash down his left arm.
The two morazeth were still ready to kill, but their faces were stricken. “Our Ildakar…”
With the shroud restored, the city and much of the uplift were simply erased. The beautiful buildings, the orchards, the layered gardens, the merchants’ district, the craftsmen’s district, the warehouses … everything was gone, as if it had simply been shaved off the plain, leaving a drop-off to the river, but no city.
Ildakar had vanished again, sealed away in time.
Nathan groaned. He remembered the first time he had seen Ildakar from the high mountain pass of Kol Adair. His life book had guided him here, and he had indeed found what he needed, the heart of a wizard—Chief Handler Ivan’s. He felt pain in his chest now and knew it was in response to the shock of seeing that the city was gone.
But the same prediction in his life book had declared that the sorceress would save the world. He didn’t even know where Nicci was.
The “sorceress” … Had the foretelling meant Elsa?
“The shroud may be permanent, or it may be temporary,” Nathan said to his shocked companions as they picked themselves up. Standing just outside the blackened devastation, he suddenly felt vulnerable. “Either way, Ildakar will give us no protection now. We have to get away from the battlefield, and swiftly, before Utros issues commands—if he survived. Either way, I imagine they will want revenge.”
Though his soul ached from the loss of Elsa, he knew she would have been satisfied with what she accomplished. Her transference magic had dealt a terrible blow to the enemy army. Even now, General Utros’s forces were barely recovering.
Nathan knew it was time to move. Now.
He looked in the blackened grasses, saw the other surviving strike teams, and realized they would be rushing for shelter, too. He drew his ornate sword and tossed his soot-smeared white hair behind him. “There may not be many of us, but we have to find a way to fight what remains of the army.”
“We cannot fight them all,” said the morazeth Thorn. “We are the only ones left.”
“Not the only ones,” Nathan said. “It is not over yet.”
Still, there was no city left to fight for.
Their group raced around the well-defined edge of the burn and reunited with Olgya and her surviving fighters. Their larger group kept moving westward to the rugged foothills, in the direction of the mountains and Kol Adair. They also reunited with Perri’s contingent, as well as Leo’s, farther down the valley. When they encountered the bedraggled remnants of the group that had shot the fire arrow, Nathan learned that Julian had been killed, but not before finishing the boundary rune.
Together they continued to withdraw from the unsettled and stunned enemy army. Nathan thought the wilderness in the direction of the mountains would offer them the best chance. Nicci was gone through the sliph, presumably far away in Serrimundi. How could she ever come back now? He doubted he would ever see her again.
And poor, dear Bannon. He had hoped to keep the young man safe in the city, which was now whisked away. Nathan gritted his teeth. In a thousand years, he had made many bad choices, and he had to live with them all. He would find a way to live with this one.
“Come, we have to survive,” he said. The remnants of all six strike force groups, the outcasts of Ildakar, also raced to the hills. The reeling enemy army was unable to count their dead, struggling to recover from what had happened. Was Utros even still alive? Nathan had seen the general and his two sorceresses well within the boundary of the inferno, but he couldn’t be sure. If Utros was dead, then who would lead what remained of this gigantic force? He could always hope the ancient army would break apart and disperse.
In the foothills, the Ildakaran defenders converged, tired, frightened, and confused. They had all seen their city vanish, and they knew they were cut off from their homes and families forever, stranded in the wilderness. As the refugees gathered in the hills, they came upon the fifth group of fighters, who had drawn the last boundary rune.
Nathan was surprised to see a familiar face—one he had never expected to see again. “Prelate Verna! Dear spirits, I cross half the world and the Sisters of the Light are still following me.” He had broken her jaw the last time she had caught up with him.
Verna looked wrung out. Her face was smeared with dust and dirt, her gray-shot brown hair a tangled mess. She had seven other Sisters with her, along with General Zimmer and a small group of D’Haran soldiers. He saw the wizard Renn, who had been sent away from Ildakar, and the two young scholars, Oliver and Peretta, whom Nathan and Nicci had dispatched as messengers from Cliffwall. “What are you all doing here?”
“We’re exploring the world,” Peretta said, “and committing all the details to memory. That is our mission as scholars.”
Verna said, “You and Nicci sent these two from Cliffwall and they made it to Tanimura, where they told us of the great archive. General Zimmer sent an expeditionary force to help protect that magical lore, and we met Renn. He was leading us to Ildakar wit
h news of Cliffwall.”
“What … what happened here?” Renn combined a thousand questions into that one statement. He nodded toward the devastated plain where smoke wafted into the air, toward the emptiness where Ildakar had been.
“We will have a long time to tell stories,” Oron said in an impatient voice. “First we have to get to safety and survive.”
Olgya sounded lost. “Are we all that remain of the wizards of Ildakar?”
“We may still be wizards,” Renn said, “but Ildakar is gone.”
From the shelter of the trees in the hills, Nathan looked back at the army far below and the emptiness where Ildakar had been.
As he stood wiping sweat from his brow and feeling the misery in his heart, he heard a stirring in the underbrush. Beside him, Verna, Renn, and the other refugees turned. When a rune-branded sand panther crept out from among the scrub oak and tall grasses, the Cliffwall scholars backed away in fear. General Zimmer and his soldiers warily raised their swords, preparing to fight off the predator.
Nathan felt a rush of relief, though. “It’s Mrra.” He turned to the others. “No need to worry. That is Nicci’s sand panther.”
“Where is Nicci?” asked Rendell, sounding miserable. “She left us when we needed her most.”
The big cat twitched, and her lips curled back to show curved fangs. She sniffed the air, obviously upset with all the fire, blood, and smoke in the air, too much death. Nathan held up a hand, trying to calm the big cat. “Mrra, you know me. You know our friends.”
Everyone in the party remained hushed, feeling the tension. Mrra’s long tail twitched, rustling the underbrush. Her golden eyes flashed and she turned her head as if hearing a distant sound.
“You are with us now, Mrra. Ildakar’s gone,” Nathan said, trying to sound soothing. “I don’t know where Nicci is.”
The sand panther made a low growl, then suddenly pricked up her ears. She looked up at the sky and curled about, as if she had sensed something, a connection. With a brief roar, Mrra bounded away, running into the hills to vanish in the deepening twilight. Nathan wondered what calling the panther had felt, but he had no answer. He couldn’t begin to guess where Nicci might be.
Nor did he know what he and his small band of surviving fighters could do against the gigantic ancient army.
CHAPTER 84
After weeks of searching, Adessa finally found the wizard commander. Maxim had been quiet, hiding, keeping a low profile, but the morazeth doubted he would grow complacent. Neither had she.
Maxim surely must know that she would continue to follow him to the end of the world and the end of time. He was smart and powerful, but sometimes he was also a fool, and Adessa was no fool.
Over the long and hard pursuit, she realized that what had started out as a simple hunt was much more than that. This was an actual war between her and the wizard commander, with battles, tactics, and an ultimate goal.
She had lost his track for twenty days, but she kept moving down the river, sure that was where Maxim would go. In certain ways, he had little imagination, and he had no more knowledge of the river’s geography than she had. They both knew the Killraven eventually widened into the estuary, then spilled into the great sea. She simply needed to find him.
With such mastery of the gift, Maxim could have claimed a place to hide, even created a small protective shroud to hide himself from time, and if he just waited long enough, Adessa would never track him down.
But the wizard commander was arrogant and lazy. Although he had grown impatient with Ildakar’s hedonistic extravagances, he was not a rugged man, and he preferred his comforts. That was why Adessa knew he would find some other town, a cozy shelter where he could force someone to take care of him, as he had done at Tarada.
As she approached a river town named Gant’s Ford, she decided to inquire about him there. In her distinctive black leather wrap and with countless protective runes branded on her bare skin, Adessa would be too memorable, and she didn’t want to be recognized, didn’t want word to reach Maxim, if he was indeed here.
She watched and waited, keeping to the reeds at the riverside as she observed the traffic coming into Gant’s Ford. As dusk turned to deep purple, a lone man wearing a patched hooded cloak paddled past her in a canoe. A wicker basket filled with crawfish was balanced in the back of the canoe.
Adessa was already standing in the water, knee deep. As he approached, not seeing her in the twilight shadows, she waded out into the current and pounced on him as he paddled by. The man yelped as if afraid she were a swamp dragon attacking him, but she was worse than a swamp dragon.
Adessa dragged the man out of the canoe and into the water, wrestling him. She punched the nerve cluster on the back of his neck, rendering him helpless. Immobile, he looked terrified as she dragged him into the mud and reeds. There, she stripped off his hooded cloak, knowing it would be a good disguise she could use. She hung it on some tall reeds, then bent over him.
He shivered. “Who are you? I have nothing for you to steal.”
“I am not a bandit,” she said. “But I am the one who’s asking questions.”
He squirmed and choked, and she was losing patience. Holding him down in the soft mud, she removed the black handle of her agile knife and poked the sharp, stubby point into his thigh. It was a minor wound, but when she released the magic, agony careened through his body.
He arched his back and cried out, but his scream was swallowed up in the palm of her hand clamped over his mouth.
She let the surge of pain continue for a moment, then yanked the agile knife out. “I can do more of that, and I can do it all night, unless you tell me what I need to know.”
His body shuddered with sobs. Tears ran down his face. “Y-You haven’t even asked anything yet!”
She described Maxim, explained that he would have been a stranger only recently arrived in the vicinity. The canoe man was so desperate he would have told her anything she wanted to hear, though Adessa also knew how to identify lies. Fortunately, he had indeed seen someone who might have been Maxim.
“He comes into town every two days or so. He lives up in the hills. I think … I think the Farrier family took him in. Farrier is a woodcutter, and they have a cottage, but I haven’t seen them in weeks.”
She leaned closer. “What does this man do when he comes into town?”
“He … he eats. He drinks ale at the tavern. He listens. He is a friendly sort, but strange, won’t tell anyone where he’s from.”
Adessa imagined that Maxim was simply biding his time, building alliances and making plans. “This has been most helpful, but I can’t allow any word of my presence to whisper out.”
His eyes widened, and she killed him as quickly and painlessly as she could, then rolled his body into the reeds, where a swamp dragon would find him soon enough and dispose of the evidence. She made a small cook fire and ate a meal of the crawfish in his basket. Then she developed her plan.
Disguising herself in the cloak, Adessa glided into town, listening, watching for Maxim to appear. While she waited in Gant’s Ford, she learned as much as she could about his habits, the frequency of his visits. She learned the location of the Farriers’ stone cottage in the hills above the river, a small home surrounded by tall spruce. She stole a long, sturdy rope that she calculated she would need.
Yes, she could have challenged the wizard commander right there in the open, but she’d done that before and he had escaped from her each time. No, she would have to trap him, ambush him, and kill him.
As a morazeth, she preferred a straight-up, face-to-face fight against an enemy. Maxim was a powerful foe, and Adessa didn’t want to squander the powerful blood magic that still burned within her. She would have a final confrontation with him, and she would use up all of that power to defeat him.
But she had to be smart. Adessa did not dismiss the threat posed by the wizard commander. Maybe she couldn’t outmatch him in a direct battle with magic, but she could be more clever t
han he was.
Although Maxim was in hiding, he was neither a loner nor self-sufficient, and he often liked to sit in a tavern, complain about the local ale and the food, and play dicing games. She learned that he was likely to come into town that evening because the river inn was serving their catfish pie, one of his favorite meals. Adessa didn’t ask too many questions. She already had the answers she needed, and she already had her rope.
She waited discreetly until dusk, when she saw a man come into town and head directly for the inn. With just a glance she knew it was Maxim, and he walked without a care in the world. He worked his charm, grinning, adding a glamour spell so that people welcomed him, while she remained in the shadows.
Though she wanted to lunge out and kill him there, Adessa controlled herself, knowing that would likely fail. Instead, she knew Maxim would be in town for several hours drinking his fill of ale, and she would use that to her advantage. She had just enough time to make her preparations.
In the gathering dark, Adessa slipped away from Gant’s Ford and into the hills, following the dirt path. Knowing where Maxim lived, she approached the dark and empty cottage that a woodcutter had built for his wife and three children. She found the whole family as statues in the yard, petrified in the act of fleeing. Adessa stared at them, reaffirmed in her determination to complete her mission. Thora had ordered her to kill the wizard commander, and she would take his head before the night was over.
She might have waited until Maxim was asleep, then broken into his home and fought him with all her strength, but that would have been messy and uncertain. She didn’t doubt he would have left wards all around the cottage. He would know if she was coming. No, she had to be more devious than that.
Moving swiftly, Adessa carried her rope and circled the cottage, through the spruce forest, searching for what she needed. To one side, she found a large heavy log that had toppled to the ground, which the woodcutter hadn’t yet chopped into firewood. Augmented by her blood magic and the rope, Adessa had enough strength to lift it into place, planning ahead.
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