The Witches of Ne'arth (The Star Wizards Trilogy Book 2)

by Joseph Schembrie

  Matt touched the guard's neck. The guard rolled his eyes and slumped. Matt caught him, dragged him inside, rested him against the wall, kicked the door shut.

  “Where to?”

  “The steps.”

  At the bottom, Ivan ARed an arrow to indicate the cell door. Matt peered through the tiny inset.

  A man whose face was all but buried in bushy hair was sitting against the wall, staring straight ahead. The insipid expression was a duplicate of what had been portrayed in the stained glass windows. Or rather, Matt thought, it was their inspiration.

  Matt said, “Hello?”

  No reaction.

  “He appears to be in a trance,” Ivan said.

  “Sounds familiar. Let's see if that guard has a key for this cell.”

  “Matt. A person has entered the building. It is Savora.”

  Matt turned from the cell. Savora descended the steps. At the bottom, she stopped and smiled.

  “Hello, Matt. I'm glad you could make it. I like the facial hair. You look distinguished.”

  Matt attempted to dodge, but Savora streaked with hypermode velocity. He raised his arm to block, but her hand was already at his neck.

  “Matt,” Ivan said. “I sense a high voltage poten – “

  Matt didn't hear the rest.

  17.

  Nilla was in the kitchen when she heard the bell ringing from the upstairs rooms. Gwinol gave her the look that said, It's your turn, dear sister. Sighing, Nilla scurried up the steps to the Matriarch's bedroom. The Matriarch was still in bed, as it wasn't yet noon. She shot Nilla a scowl and said, “Where is my tea? I want some tea!”

  Nilla bowed and said in the most submissive tones she could muster, “I will bring your tea immediately, Matriarch.”

  The Matriarch slammed the bell on the side table, folded her arms, and set her jaw. “I don't see why I have to tell you to do things. My old servants knew when to bring me tea without having to be told.”

  “As you wish, Matriarch.” Nilla refrained from mentioning that the previous servants had quit at the first opportunity, and that only a few days before, the Matriarch had been ranting, Why are you bringing me tea when I didn't ask for it?

  Nilla hurried downstairs and made a cup of tea, but then stopped and stared at it.

  “What's wrong?” Gwinol asked.

  Nilla slumped. “I can never do it right. It's either too concentrated or too dilute, too hot or too cold. Yesterday she took one sip and berated me so much I thought she was going to throw the cup at me!”

  Mola patted her shoulder. “I'll take it up. I know how to smooth over these situations.”

  They listened to the old woman climb the steps, then they quietly went about the business of preparing for lunch. A moment later, they heard the smash of ceramic against stucco, and the hurried retreat of Mola back to the kitchen.

  “It's all right, it's all right,” Mola muttered, dabbing her stained dress with a washrag.

  After the lunchtime clean-up, Nilla did the laundry and was finally able to take a break in mid-afternoon. She stole out onto the deck overlooking the city. It was a beautiful day, but even in the worst weather, no one would ever mistake Kresidala for Rome. There was too much color and gaiety, with wide tree-lined boulevards filled with brightly-dressed men, women, and children strolling without the accompaniment of bodyguards. Where Roman windows looking upon the streets were small and unadorned, on every freshly-scrubbed house in Kresidala were window planters filled with explosions of colorful flowers.

  While the emperor's palace was the highest residence in Rome, the palace of the king of Kresidala, no less impressive with its golden domes and ivory pillars glistening, was situated centrally within the city, as if symbolizing the relative equality of its people and ruler.

  “I see you looking longingly at the theater district,” Gwinol said, joining her on the deck. “I hope you're not again thinking of running away to become an actress. We're very fortunate to be where we are. We shouldn't jeopardize what we have.”

  “You sound like Mola,” Nilla said.

  “Well, she's right. We're from Rome, the mortal enemy of Kresidala. We did well merely to gain entry to the city. To find positions in a house of status is a double-topping of ice cream.”

  Nilla crossed her arms in mimic of the Matriarch. “What I have isn't a position. It's a purgatory.”

  “That's a word Carrot would use.” Gwinol laughed. “But yes, we had it soft in the house of Archimedes. Mola has always been like a mother to us, but he was like an indulgent grandfather.”

  “Here, we're screamed at if we don't dust twice a day. Archimedes wouldn't have noticed if we had stopped dusting entirely.”

  Gwinol laughed again. “Jaros would have.”

  “Jaros,” Nilla said quietly.

  They both reflected in silence, until Gwinol said, “If we hadn't been rescued by Archimedes, Rome would have put us all to death. He risked his life to enable us to live here. Don't ever forget that.”

  The insistent ringing of the bell abruptly ended their break. By mid-afternoon, however, Gwinol tapped Nilla on the shoulder and handed her a shopping bag. They headed to market, and Nilla basked in what was a typical day of public life in Kresidala, with its street musicians, its elegant cafes where philosophers held court, its statues to scholars and artists rather than generals and emperors.

  The grocer's market was what to Nilla provided the starkest contrast with Rome. It covered twice as much area as the equivalent market of Rome, though Kresidala was only half the size. The variety went far beyond mere apples and potatoes, to exotic items such as bananas and watermelons. Almost everything was cheaper and fresher and always in abundant supply. No one starves in Kresidala, went the proud saying, and as far as Nilla had seen, it was very nearly true.

  Their ambling brought them to a bin with a certain type of orange vegetable, and Nilla said, “I wonder where she is now.”

  “I would hope that she has returned to Britan,” Gwinol said. “She loved city life, but often spoke longingly of her homeland.”

  “It's all forests and fields. I never understood the attraction.”

  “She said Britan was superior because there were no slaves.”

  “There are no slaves here.” Just badly mistreated servants.

  “I miss her too. You wish she would come live with us, don't you?”

  “And bring Matt and Archimedes. If they're still alive.”

  A silence ensued, which Gwinol broke by saying with forced cheerfulness, “Remember how Archimedes would speak of life as 'infinite possibilities and limitless horizons.' He'd say that to us – to servant girls!”

  “Now we have the Matriarch and Mola telling us to keep to our station,” Nilla replied gloomily. “After you're told that enough, you begin to think maybe this is all there is to life. At least, it is all there is for the likes of us.”

  “Oh, Little Sister.” Gwinol smiled and stroked Nilla's hair. “Don't surrender hope so easily!”

  The blueness of the sky and the fleece of the clouds belied Nilla's somber mood, but then she noticed that the market itself seemed to have suddenly changed, as if the atmosphere had become thicker and tinged. At first she thought it was merely a subjective impression. Then she noticed the worried looks, the low voices, the emphatic gestures. She and Gwinol simultaneously glanced at one another.

  Gwinol pointed to a park on a hillock. People were gathering beneath a cherry blossom tree. They were all facing the same direction, peering to the west. Their kites were coming down, and their expressions were of dread.

  Gwinol tapped her sister's arm, a little too sharply. “We have what we need. We'd best return.”

  The house was on higher ground, and from the street they turned to look upon the western vista beyond the high defensive walls. Kresidala was like Rome in that it was situated on the west end of its island, yet instead of a volcano it had only hills to the east. The seemingly mandatory municipal volcano was instead located a few kilom
eters to the west of the harbor, on the island of Kret.

  The volcano, rising to over a thousand meters from the beaches of Kret, was called Emerald Head because its slopes were swathed in rich vegetation. Unlike the now-and-then-rumbling Enta of Rome, Emerald Head was unequivocally extinct, its spirit revered by the people of Kresidala as 'Kreta,' a goddess of tranquility rather than anger.

  Normally one's westward-roving eye was captured by the prominence of the volcano, but that day, like everyone on the street, Nilla's attention was drawn to the triremes that flocked about the shores of Kret and covered the surrounding waters with a prickly blanket of oars and masts.

  Many of the ships had beached, and streams of men were disembarking onto the island. The polish of their armor glinted in the sun, but as with their ships, the distance of kilometers prevented Nilla from determining the most important question of all.

  “Are they Kresidalan?” she asked. “Or Roman?”

  Gwinol stared for a moment, then abruptly replied, “Let's go inside.”

  Neither of them spoke of the matter. Nilla was surprised that she didn't feel anything in particular about it, either. It was too cosmic an event to viscerally accept that it had any bearing on their lives, though in the back of her mind, a conviction born of rationality told her that this was the sort of thing that didn't go away, and only got worse with apathy.

  At any rate, the Matriarch was napping and the Patriarch was at his shop, and the three young-adult children were elsewhere and Mola ruled in the family's absence and had a mental list of chores that she demanded be processed immediately. The dictates of empires and kingdoms seemed trivial next to Mola's clapped admonitions, “Come on, girls! Let's scrub the floor quickly so that it will be dry before they can notice!”

  The arrival of a navy and the disembarkation of an army is no instantaneous event. The girls went about their chores for the rest of the afternoon, sneaking peeks through the windows at the progress of the invaders.

  For by then, it was clear that the newcomers were not friendly, nor were they welcome. They grappled the great cable that stretched a meter above the water across the width of the entry canal, and severed it. Admission no longer restricted, the ships advanced in file. The defenders responded by sliding shut the series of towering doors that isolated the canal from the harbor.

  Simultaneously, other ships of the invaders made landing on the westmost beaches of the island of Kresidala proper, disgorging streams of soldiers that merged into a flood. The defending soldiers responded with a token resistance on the flats, soon retreating to entrenchments. The invaders amassed as hundreds more ships arrived.

  Catapults, battering rams, and siege towers were erected until there was no question as to the identity of the invaders. Only Rome was as accomplished in the mechanical arts of warfare.

  The defenders, badly outnumbered and outclassed in weaponry, fled within the city walls. And there the invaders halted, confounded by the legendary defenses.

  The walls of Kresidala were sheer and fifty meters high, constructed of hodgepodge layers of brick, stone, sand, and ironworks. Nilla had heard that every king of the city-state had expanded upon the fortifications, dating back to the age when Rome was a cluster of fishermen's shacks. Of late, the citizens boasted that the passive defenses had been complemented by a rail system on top that allowed heavy catapults to be glided from one end of the walls to the other wherever attackers might concentrate.

  Starting in late-afternoon, for every hundred meters atop the length of the walls, fumes rose from the chimneys of shacks where oil was being boiled to be fed into a valve-controlled pipeline that would drench the invaders should an attack became particularly intense. Romans or not, Nilla shuddered at the thought of what would happen to the soldiers should they attempt to scale the walls under such a scalding deluge.

  Of course, with such a deterrence, they wouldn't even try. So why worry? But still she did.

  Nilla concentrated on scrubbing and sweeping after that, but an hour or so later looked up to see that Gwinol was nowhere in the kitchen. Intuition brought her feet up the stairs and onto the deck. Gwinol was gazing at the impasse to the west.

  “Do you think they can break through?” Nilla asked.

  “I don't know.” Gwinol replied. Nervously she muttered,“Why would they come if they couldn't?”

  Mola, towel in hand, all but instantly materialized behind them and scolded, “Dinner needs preparing, and I find you two lolling about in the sunshine. To the kitchen!”

  “Mola,” Gwinol replied, gesturing toward the west. “Don't you see this?”

  Mola took a deep breath. “Of course I see it. And what I also see is that the people here know that we came from Rome, and we must work all the harder, or they will think the worst of us because of this.”

  They followed her into the kitchen and began meal preparations. Mola basted the chicken, Gwinol chopped the vegetables, Nilla set the table. Mola casually instructed her not to set the son's place, as he had been summoned that afternoon to duty in the Militia.

  “The household is taking this seriously even if Mola isn't,” Nilla whispered when Mola was rummaging in the pantry. “Gwin, what will happen to the city? What will happen to us? Do you think the Romans can break through?”

  “You've already asked me and I still don't know,” Gwinol snapped. Upon reflection, she added, “But if I were Mola, I'd have what remains of the silver that Archimedes gave us ready at hand. We may need it very soon to bribe our way through the city gates.”

  “The silver. Do you know where she keeps it?”

  “No, and she won't tell. She still regards of us as children who would spend it all on treats.”

  Nilla nodded slowly, with a pang of guilt. Until last summer, she had been exactly that kind of person. Jaros had given all the servants a haddie a week as an allowance, and she had spent every one of hers before the week was through. Thoughts of future needs simply hadn't occurred to her. Jaros and Mola took care of things like that. But now Jaros was gone and Mola was there in the kitchen, calmly humming, obsessed with a simmering soup and oblivious to a war coming to boil.

  Nilla recollected the horror stories she'd heard of war and thought, If I am raped, I will kill myself.

  The family arrived for dinner. The Patriarch took his place at one end of the table, the Matriarch at the other. The two daughters sat together on the same side. The son's side was empty. Nilla noticed how everyone glanced at the unoccupied chair but pretended to ignore it.

  The servants took their places at the dining room wall and stood in silence as the Patriarch gave thanks to the Lords of Aereoth and Kreta, Guardian of the City. Over the soup he remarked about the falling price of the Parsian rugs that he traded as a merchant. Over the main course, he suggested that they visit a hot springs resort during Winterfeast. Over desert, it was the youngest daughter who finally blurted the subject of barbarians at gates.

  “There is no cause for worry, dear,” the Patriarch replied. He smiled warmly. “Many years ago, before you were born, the Romans attempted to overcome the walls and despite their long siege, they had to return home in failure.”

  “If they cannot succeed, why are they here?” she demanded.

  “The news is that half their fleet has been destroyed and with the heel of Rome lifted from their necks, the captive provinces are festering with rebellion. This attack is likely only a desperate show, to impress that Rome is still a force in the world. But if they couldn't breach our walls before the disaster, they certainly aren't able to do so in their reduced state.”

  “Father,” the elder daughter said. “How is it that half the Roman fleet came to be destroyed?”

  “The story that I heard through my western distribution agent is that the new emperor neglected to make propitiation to Atafon, the god of the volcano who lives over their city. As punishment, the god poked his fiery mid-finger through the clouds and set the ships ablaze with his touch. See why we must be devout in prayer and ritu
al. As the proverb goes, 'Sing her lullabies and Kreta yet slumbers.'”

  Nilla wondered why Kresidalans prayed to a sleeping goddess, but it wasn't her place to speak.

  Before anyone else could speak, the Matriarch clanked her goblet onto the table, spilling wine.

  “A siege,” the Matriarch said loudly, slurring. “The old servants would have known to go to market and purchase supplies at first sight of invasion. These new servants – well, it's too late now. The market will be stripped bare.”

  “The royal storehouses are stocked for such emergencies,” the Patriarch replied calmly.

  “Yes, if you enjoy living exclusively on preserves and grain for months without end.”

  The Matriarch grumbled, but her glance stopped short of the servants. At meals, by a practice that apparently went back for generations, the family pretended the servants simply weren't there. Even impending war, it seemed, wasn't about to change that tradition.

  After dinner came clearing the table and the three servants returned to the kitchen for clean up. Mola worked at the same efficient speed as she always did, her face placid, a blank tablet. Gwinol was unreadable too, but Nilla readily sensed where her sister's thoughts were. She wondered if Gwinol's stomach churned as much as her own.

  In the evenings, the servants were expected to confine themselves to the lower floor, but Nilla's curiosity drove her to sneak upstairs to the deck. However, it was already occupied by the daughters. The eldest was surveying the eastern seascape with a spyglass while there was still twilight.

  “The Romans have the bulk of their troops carrying a great deal of material to the summit of Little Brother,” the eldest daughter observed. She meant, Nilla knew, the bulge on one side of Emerald Head the rose to a flat mesa about one-third the way up the volcano's slope. “I see no logical reason for their behavior.”

  “Might they be constructing a catapult?” the youngest daughter asked.

  “No catapult can strike the city all the way from the isle of Kret. Father is right, they have grown desperate, and descended into futility and madness.” The eldest lowered the glass and swept its gaze along the fortifications. “It's quiet below, but they are well-amassed on the beach as well.”