And then they crested a cloud, and Darik got his first, wondrous glimpse of the Cloud Kingdoms up close. The cloud stretched for several miles from one side to the other. Clouds bulged around the end, but from above, the rest of it looked like the ground, with rocks and dirt, and plowed fields. No other buildings stood on the cloud, except for the three windmills and the castle that jutted from a rocky promontory about a mile from the edge. The entire cloud made him think of an island, only an island sat in the middle of the sea, while this floated on a sea of sky.
The scope of the magic required to build these Cloud Kingdoms took his breath away. If it took the blood of thousands to bind the Tothian Way to Mithyl, what had it taken to lift kingdoms into the sky? He couldn’t even imagine who had such power.
Other cloud castles floated nearby. Darik saw six others, some larger or smaller, some with buildings and houses among the fields, but all floating at about the same level, windmills churning. Darik thought of the steel tome and its diagram of windmills.
Darik and Daria landed in a field and climbed off the griffins, breathing hard. While Daria turned her attention to Averial’s wounds, Darik touched the ground. It felt solid enough. Fog clung to the ground at ankle level in places, but other parts were clear.
The fields were corn and barley, lined with hedgerows, all of it incredibly green. A few sheep grazed quietly, paying no attention to them or their griffins. He saw nobody tending fields or animals.
They were discovered. The gates opened on the castle, and a cavalry rode forth. Dozens of white horses and white-armored riders. The gates issued forth not at ground-level, but some fifty feet above ground. The horses leapt from the gates and galloped across the sky.
Darik turned to Daria, amazed. “The horses can fly.”
“Winged horses,” she said, wonder in her voice.
The horses sped rapidly in their direction. “Are the griffins all right?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” She took Averial by the tether and instructed, “Hold Brasson.” She continued, “I’ve never seen a winged horse, but Father told me of them.”
Both horse and rider shimmered in pure white. The men were armed with white shields and gleaming swords or painted white lances. When they drew near, the griffins struggled to fly, but the two humans kept them on the ground. The cavalry circled overhead, then landed with a flurry of neighs and nervous prancing.
One man rode his mount to face the two companions. He wore a white helmet with sweeping wings that drew back from its crest. He removed the helmet to reveal a young man with white hair and a clean-shaven face. Drawing his sword, he addressed the two companions.
“In the name of Collvern, Lord of the High Kingdom, and his magistrate of justice, I place you under arrest. Throw down your weapons.”
* * *
Kallia had watched the three griffin riders with growing elation. They’d driven the enemy from defensive positions. The Veyrians didn’t spot her men charging from the gates until they drew within fifty feet. Some turned to fight as captains screamed for them to fall into position, but many simply fled. Balsalomian forces overran the bombard within the first ten minutes of battle.
Kallia stood on one of the towers overlooking the Gates of the Dead. Of all the defensive towers in the city, these were the oldest, dating from before Balsalom itself, when this was another city. Syrmarria itself had been destroyed in the wars, but the gates and the walls on this side had been intact enough that the founders of Balsalom had simply incorporated the old stone into the new defenses. These towers had been strengthened over the years and connected to the garrison quarters behind them.
Because the gates were shorter than the gates on the north of the city, and the guild towers blocked her view of the Tothian Way, she never saw the new army, never knew anything was wrong until Whelan’s griffin screamed into the city with dragon wasps attacking it on all sides.
Whelan brought his mount down near the Gates of the Dead. The dragon wasps kept attacking when he landed, but Balsalomians with swords and bows drove them away. Whelan’s mount bled heavily; he didn’t stop to care for the griffin, but ran to the tower where Kallia stood. Kallia and Saldibar hurried to meet him.
“Pull back,” Whelan gasped. “A huge army is riding toward the tombs. Several thousand horse and footmen. And camel riders.”
Kallia realized her mistake. Mol Khah had been smug, she’d noted, but her worry had not been another army, but that Cragyn himself would send help. She had known that if Balsalom couldn’t take the palace before the dark wizard returned, they would have no hope of holding the city.
Saldibar’s face paled. “Impossible. Reinforcements are several days away.”
“Not that army,” Whelan said. “Kratians, from the south and riders from the Sultanates. The gates. We have to close the gates.”
Saldibar turned toward the gates, but Kallia held his arm. “Get our men inside first.”
“If they reach the open gates,” Saldibar protested, “we’ll never stop them. Some men must be sacrificed.”
“We won’t leave our men to die.”
Saldibar said, “Please, Khalifa. Close the gates.”
She looked at Whelan. He looked torn, but at last he shook his head. “We can’t abandon them. Give me a horse and I will lead a sortie to protect the retreat.”
“Yes,” Kallia said, relieved and frightened at the same time. For Saldibar was right. If an army breached the gates Balsalom would fall.
Whelan groaned. “The griffin. I can’t leave him untended. I have to look after his wounds.”
Kallia opened her mouth to protest, but had seen him ride down on the magnificent animal. It was more than a dumb beast.
Whelan said, “And my friends. I have to find them.”
“Your friends can care for themselves. I know a man who rode once with the griffin riders. I will send for him and he can look after the beast,” Saldibar said. “Kallia, go to Toth’s View and tell Pasha Boroah.”
They went their separate ways. Kallia hailed a horseman, who stopped in amazement to see his queen. She sent him from the horse and galloped toward the tower, which stretched above the north side of the city. She reached the tower in a few minutes, and gave the news to Boroah, who sent messengers and blew trumpet messages to assemble more men to guard the Gates of the Dead.
She stood in the tower next to Boroah. He was a large, older man with a bushy growth that spread from his sideburns to his mustache. He wore a blue turban and rubbed nervously at his smooth chin as he surveyed the battle. Most Selphan stayed in their traditional trades of money lending and silver working, but Boroah had risen amongst the ranks of fighting men, winning their increasing respect. Cragyn had deemed him too old to ship east to Veyre, but perhaps he had been overly hasty in his assessment of the man’s battle-worthiness.
The rain began to fall again. Overhead, jostling amidst the storm clouds, cloud castles positioned themselves over the battle. Kallia wanted to shake her fist at them, watching as if this were some jogu ball match instead of a battle for a great city teetering on destruction.
Whelan rode from the gates with his cavalry and headed north to intercept the enemy. The Balsalomians abandoned their attack on Cragyn’s Hammer. Saved by fortune only, the enemy in the tombs overcame their confusion and moved to retake the bombard. Kallia groaned, seeing victory snatched away.
Kratian camel riders howled like winds from the desert, riding hard to meet Whelan’s cavalry. And to the right flank, men of the Sultanates on fast desert horses, wearing flowing robes and carrying long, graceful scimitars. For a moment, the two sides met, and then the newcomers, several times as strong, pushed Whelan back. Kallia bit her thumb, wishing she rode among them instead of sitting up here, useless. At last, Whelan turned his forces to flee.
Whelan’s delaying tactics had only bought them fifteen minutes, but it was enough. If the Veyrians at Cragyn’s Hammer had been better organized, they might have better pressed their new advantage; as it was, K
allia’s footmen reached the gates safely, as did Whelan’s cavalry. Archers on the walls drove the enemy from the gates.
One of the men standing next to Kallia let out an alarmed shout. Pasha Boroah cursed. Kallia followed their gaze and her heart sank.
Mol Khah fought his way from the palace. His troops savaged the thinned positions guarding the palace. Had she kept adequate forces outside the palace, had she owned such forces, Mol Khah would have exposed himself. Instead, his men cut through the defenses and pressed toward the Great Gates. She had no forces with which to contain him. The nearest reinforcements were on the other side of Balsalom some five miles distant, and they were needed to stop the assault on the Gates of the Dead. Mol Khah fought his way west, ready to open the Great Gates to destruction.
And had the new army on the Tothian Way pressed its attack, that is exactly what would have happened. But she noticed an amazing thing from her perch atop Toth’s View. Instead of turning from the Tothian Way toward Balsalom, the enemy army continued west, toward the mountains. Even the Kratian camel riders and the cavalry rejoined the army once they’d freed Cragyn’s Hammer. She could see the small force that had guarded the siege weapon dismantling it.
Pasha Boroah saw this lucky stroke of fortune at the same time that she did. Trumpets blared to order men from the Gates of the Dead to the Great Gates.
Pursued only by the remnants of the small force that had guarded the palace, Mol Khah’s garrison reached the Great Gates about fifteen minutes later. They seized the gate towers. This fighting raged below Toth’s View; the enemy could capture the khalifa and Boroah had Mol Khah not more pressing needs. His army threw open the Great Gates.
No doubt Mol Khah expected to see a friendly army, either at the gates or approaching quickly. What he saw instead was the empty expanse north of Balsalom, with only the tail end of his ally visible on the Tothian Way.
By now, Balsalom’s first reinforcements arrived from the Gates of the Dead. Mol Khah’s men met this new threat in the only way they could. They turned to fight, but even from where Kallia stood it was apparent that the sight of their allies fleeing had broken their spirit. Archers on the walls drove Mol Khah’s men back from the gates and slaughtered them in the gate towers.
Men on horseback drove a wedge through the Veyrians. Mol Khah stood by himself, shouting for his men to stand by his side. A man rode his horse at the pasha, but Mol Khah caught him across the breast and knocked him to the ground. A second man jumped from his horse to wrestle the pasha to the ground. Mol Khah rose a moment later and nearly decapitated the man with the force his blow. Two others fell before the pasha’s scimitar and Kallia feared that the battle would turn on the strength of his fighting alone.
But his army collapsed around him. Kallia’s guardsmen and the remnants of her army, only a ragged force that morning, had become a real army. They put Mol Khah’s men to the slaughter. The pasha found himself surrounded by twenty or thirty men, all pressing in to attack him. He threw down his sword and raised his hands. The surrender spread from the pasha to his men until there was no more fighting.
In the tombs, the enemy army carted away Cragyn’s Hammer. One victory had eluded Balsalom. But they had won the most important. Men seized Mol Khah and tied his hands behind his back.
Boroah turned to her with a wide grin. “Oh khalifa—may you live forever—shall we kill the mongrel?”
She shook her head. “No, I prefer to see the look on his face when he discovers that the dark wizard values his siege engine more than he values the life of his grand vizier.”
She kissed the grizzled old Selphan on both cheeks.
That night, every cricket in the city fell silent. Instead, the sound of baying hounds filled the air while the people huddled frightened in their beds. Always, the sound came from only a few hundred feet from the listener. Throughout the night, the Harvester feasted on the souls of the dead, of which there were many.
14
Markal’s magic was a shadow of Chantmer the Tall’s, but none understood the old ways like Markal. He read not only the common tongue and the ancient forms of the old script, but knew more cartouches than any wizard or scholar. Few suspected the depth of his knowledge.
Few suspected Markal’s knowledge because none knew his age. Even wizened old Narud was only a child when Syrmarria fell to Toth’s army. But Markal remembered the glory of that greatest of cities, and the slaughter that followed its destruction. Survivors had founded Balsalom, which had grown into its own power over the centuries, but Balsalom was nothing to Syrmarria and the rich lands of Aristonia.
Markal remembered those lands from before Toth turned Aristonia into the Desolation. Markal had studied with the Crimson Path before that order’s destruction, including Memnet the Great, who alone had defied Toth. Markal remembered when Toth built a tower to the sky to battle the Sky Brother.
Markal had seen Cragyn’s tower in his mind—the Dark Citadel, Chantmer the Tall named it—and he recognized the similarities. As for the dark wizard, Cragyn was a child by the reckoning of wizards, eighty or ninety years old, and would have no memory of King Toth or his tower. So why did he build this tower so much like Toth’s?
Because of Markal’s preoccupation with the Dark Citadel, he had overlooked the steel book he’d found in the Tombs of the Kings. He’d thumbed through the first few pages, seen diagrams of cloud castles and archaic siege engines, together with maps of long-vanished countries, then put the book away. The book would prove useful, he thought, perhaps containing a clue about the fate of the Lost Kingdoms, but it would have to wait.
Cragyn’s men didn’t follow Montcrag’s survivors into the mountains, perhaps afraid of griffins or wild stone giants, but more likely wishing to fortify Montcrag and forge west. Taking the castle had cost the dark wizard dearly: several hundred dead and wounded by Markal’s estimation. If each castle in the mountains cost the dark wizard as much, his army would be a shell by the time it reached Eriscoba.
To say nothing of the Teeth.
The Teeth were three towers built so long ago that nobody knew their true age. Markal thought that they predated the Tothian Wars by at least eight hundred years. Built of white granite, and protected by a tangle of magical spells, the towers were to the western passes what Montcrag was the east. But Toth had encircled the three towers with walls to form a powerful new castle to guard his new road thrusting through the mountains, and the castle could hold a much larger army than Montcrag.
A man named Lord Garydon held the Teeth. Garydon swore allegiance to King Daniel and kept the western passes free of bandits—for a fee, of course. But Markal didn’t trust Garydon’s shifting loyalties and couldn’t be certain the man would defend the Tothian Way against so powerful an army as Cragyn’s.
“Hurry up old man,” Hoffan shouted at him. “Moss is growing in your beard.” Surprisingly cheerful after the fall of his castle, the warlord stood at the rear of his men, who hiked a deer path along the spine of the crag rising to the mountains.
Markal followed Hoffan, joking with the men in the back, but kept one eye on the sky. He thought it unlikely for wasps to dare griffin country but wanted to be careful.
Ahead, Hoffan and Ethan struck an immediate friendship. Ethan was like his brother Whelan in many ways: strong, loyal, and murderously adept with the sword, but also fiercely independent. Those traits made the two men natural leaders of the Knights Temperate, who shared those traits. If King Daniel hoped to drive the dark wizard from the Free Kingdoms, he would have to command the loyalty of such men, and that meant forgiving Whelan.
Dark clouds gathered to the east, piling against the hills and slowly creeping up the mountains. A storm was coming. As of yet, however, the air in the mountains was clear and cool, with a hint of autumn. They stood at the cusp of two forests, the hardwood of lower elevations and the pine forests up ahead.
Markal noted a familiar sparrow chirping at every turn of the trail. The bird was following him, flying from its branch to s
oar to another tree or a rocky clearing as soon as he passed. Narud trusted birds more than humans, and Markal wondered if the bird was a messenger from the Order, but when he stopped to see if the sparrow had anything to say, it merely cocked its head and waited until he left, then darted ahead to repeat the process. Markal considered and then rejected the possibility that the bird was one of Cragyn’s spies and ignored the nosy little fellow.
The mood of Montcrag’s defenders improved as they climbed. There was something invigorating about the mountain air. Sofiana and Ethan shot a mountain goat and the men dressed it for dinner, starting a camp fire as soon as it grew too dark to travel.
A dream woke Markal during the night. In the dream, Darik hunched over the book from the tombs, while a blue light glowed from its steel pages. Markal floated over the boy’s shoulder. A face looked back from the steel page. Cragyn. Dreamily, Darik stood and walked toward the door, stepping into the night air.
Markal woke. He wondered what the dream meant. Jethro the Martyr, founder of the Order and the Brotherhood, had trained his followers to interpret dreams. “A dream is a window to the soul,” Jethro taught. Markal wasn’t sure if he agreed with the statement, some dreams were no more than random nonsense, but there were times when Jethro’s words rang true. This was one of them.
The interpretation came in a burst of insight so clear it stunned him that he missed it before. The Oracular Tomes. Was the book one of them? Didn’t scholars refer to leaves of hammered gold and brass? Why not steel?
References to these mystical books began in the cartouches carved in stone pillars and monuments that survived the war, throughout the khalifates and Eriscoba. References began some fourteen hundred years ago if Markal’s estimation was accurate. Oblique mentions and even direct quotes persisted into early forms of the old tongue. The Oracular Tomes, if they truly existed, imparted knowledge that gave power to create life and matter, to control death, to build mountains: in short, the very powers of the five brothers to create Mithyl itself.
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