“How I assign blame is my business,” Nicci said. “But Bannon is not the one I fault the most. I see great rot in Ildakar. You wizards have ruled for so long that you are oblivious to the pain that resonates through the city. As leaders, the ruling council leaves much to be desired.”
Maxim touched the center of his chest. “Oh, that pains me in my heart! I’m so sorry you are disappointed in us.” He clucked his tongue. “But I cannot entirely disagree. My dear wife is as blind to the pain of others as she is cold to me in bed, although it has been many years since I’ve risked frostbite to my private parts. I can find many other softer and warmer places to indulge my pleasures.” He snickered.
He quirked his lips in a smile. “Admittedly the duma is understaffed at the moment, with Renn off traveling and Ivan being digested by arena animals, and even Lani petrified … but my lovely Thora always sets the tone and forces others to bow to her wishes, even when the duma is at its full strength. She is quite dominant. No one stands up to her, not even I.” He spread his hands. “What would be the use?”
“If you stood up to her, you would change the future of Ildakar,” Nicci said.
“If someone stood up to her. Yes, that sounds quite ambitious, but I don’t have such ambitions anymore. That isn’t to say someone else couldn’t stand up to her. In fact, a mere century ago, the sorceress Lani challenged the sovrena’s rule. Oh, Lani was a firebrand with a strong gift and a propensity for summoning rain and causing floods. Thanks to her, we were able to build and maintain our aqueduct system, the water-delivery tunnels that run throughout our bedrock.” He clucked his tongue again. “Lani was angry and she challenged the sovrena … but, alas, Thora defeated her.” He scratched the side of his head. “The entire duma was secretly disappointed, but no one could admit it.”
Maxim narrowed his eyes. “But I noticed what a great toll the battle took on her. My dear wife was very weak, and if I’d had the initiative myself, I could have attacked and defeated her right then. But I lost my nerve.” He shook his head. “At that time I still thought I loved her.”
Nicci remembered the statue of the sorceress in the ruling chamber. “But Lani was defeated and turned to stone.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“And why are you giving me this information?”
“To make a point, and to raise an example.” He bent over to smell the jasmine blossoms in the hedge, waving away the honeybees. He straightened, exhaling long and slow. “By the rules of Ildakar, and by all of our traditions, you can challenge Thora as sovrena. You could try to overthrow her. I thought you might be interested.”
“I have no wish to rule this city,” Nicci said. “I don’t want to stay here a day longer than I must.”
“I understand completely,” Maxim said dismissively. “But if you did overthrow Thora, you could set the tone of the wizards’ duma. You’d establish the agenda for any changes you want to implement, and no one would question you. I suspect several wizards would secretly agree with you … including me.”
Wheels spun in Nicci’s mind as she considered the possibilities. “If I defeated Thora, could I free Mrra?”
“You could do whatever you like.”
“And I could command that the shroud be taken down?”
“I wouldn’t complain about that a bit.” He waved a lumbering bee away from his face. “I rather enjoy the outside trade. Thora is the true isolationist.”
An avalanche of ideas tumbled through Nicci’s thoughts. And the Sorceress must save the world. This would be a way for her to achieve what Richard had asked her to do, what Red had predicted in the life book. She could free the people, make the city of Ildakar as great as legend claimed it was. “But when Lani challenged the sovrena, she failed.”
Maxim kept smiling. “Then you must not fail. Simple as that.”
Frowning, Nicci walked slowly around the potted citrus trees, came to the edge, and looked out over the stair-stepped layers of tiled rooftops, the flapping banners, the intricate labyrinth of streets, squares, and gardens. All those people, all those businesses, all those smothered hopes and dreams.
She looked up to see that several songbirds had flown into one of the dangling nets, where they were caught, fluttering and struggling, their wings trapped in the silken mesh. She realized that this might be her best chance … or a trap. “You are her husband. Why are you telling me this?”
The wizard commander stroked his upper lip with a forefinger. “No doubt you want me to tell you that I’m determined to fight for the good of my people. Of course that’s a factor.…” He shrugged again, and Nicci felt annoyed with him. “But in reality, I’ve been bored with this stagnant city. Do I want to be trapped here for more interminable centuries? As far as I’m concerned, I would rather the shroud were down and full contact was reestablished with the outside. It’s much more interesting out there. Maybe I might like to see this mysterious Cliffwall archive that sounds so intriguing, or even attend a state dinner with your distant Lord Rahl. Those twelve slaves could certainly have been put to better use than to have their throats slit on top of the pyramid.”
The idea began to take root in Nicci’s heart, and it sounded better and better with each passing moment.
Maxim finally recaptured her attention. “And there’s one more reason. I also hate my wife and want to see her destroyed.”
CHAPTER 54
“Today you won’t be fighting me, boy,” Lila said as she led Bannon out of his cell. His morazeth trainer had a bandaged left forearm and stained cloths wrapped around her side where the spiny wolves had mauled her. Lila had killed the animals and survived. Now she didn’t seem to notice her wounds at all. “And don’t think it’s because I am weak or in pain. Adessa has another challenger for you.”
She handed Bannon his sword, and he felt his heart lift as he wrapped his fingers around the familiar hilt. The morazeth woman stood before him unarmed, wrapped like a bird with a broken wing. If he wanted to, he could simply swing the sword and kill her. He could strike her head off. He could run her through. She certainly deserved it.
Lila’s hard gaze bored into him. “Don’t even consider trying to harm me, boy.” Her voice was quiet, not threatening, but filled with a wealth of danger.
He realized that even if he did kill her, then what? He could fight like a madman and try to break free, but he would never defeat all the morazeth or their indoctrinated fighters. He would not battle his way out of the tunnels, single-handed. Even then, once out in the city streets where would he go? Could he find Nicci or Nathan?
No, the chance was much too small.
“I would never think of it,” he said to her.
She sniffed. “Of course you wouldn’t. You’re weak, but I’m working on that. I will make you into a worthy fighter yet.”
Bannon felt Sturdy’s weight in his hand, and he grew more confident, knowing how well it had served him in many battles. Neither Lila nor any other fighter in the pits could be more fearsome than the selka, the dust people, or the vicious forest women who had once been his own lovers.
Lila walked ahead, leading him away from his cell. He watched the muscles ripple under the exposed skin of her back, how the leather wrap around her hips rolled as she walked.
Instead of taking him to the practice pits where she had first fought him, Lila led Bannon to a communal area where the trusted fighters and morazeth trainers sparred in the open. Torches shed yellow light accompanied by thin curls of greasy black smoke. The sandstone walls of the chambers echoed with conversations, but not the clash of metal on metal. Bannon saw several morazeth standing against the rough walls near muscular male fighters. Normally, the trainees would be practicing with various weapons, but now the smooth sandstone floor had been cleared … empty and waiting.
Bannon tightened his grip on the sword. Everyone seemed to be waiting for him. He felt sweat prickle his skin and wished he had his normal clothes back, his homespun shirt, his canvas trousers. He felt exposed with only the ro
ugh cloth wrapped around his hips.
Adessa stood there like a spring-wound crossbow, even though she held no weapon except for the agile knife attached to her hip. “You are ready to fight.”
Lila answered for him. “Yes, he is.”
Bannon didn’t have any say in the matter.
“Good, because if he is not ready, then he will die.” Adessa turned her head and called out, “Champion!”
Bannon’s heart stuttered in his chest as a hard young man emerged from a side tunnel. Though he was only Bannon’s age, Ian carried the weight of years of misery.
“Sweet Sea Mother,” Bannon whispered, and his hand clenched around his sword as if strangling the hilt.
Ian stepped forward, blank-faced, his gray eyes cold as frozen steel. His bare chest and arms were a webwork of scars, straight slashes from blades, swoops and curls from ragged wounds, perhaps claw marks. His brown hair was cropped close. His lips were a firm line, neither a smile nor a snarl. Instead of a metal blade, he carried a wooden knout, a rectangular club as long as his arm. The four sides were smooth, with sharp edges, though bands of hard leather were wrapped around several places. He gripped the club, swinging it easily.
Bannon’s throat went dry. He was reminded of the wooden axe handle his father had used to beat beaten his mother to death.
“I don’t want to fight you, Ian,” he said in a low voice.
Adessa laughed. “It does not matter what you want, boy.”
Lila pushed him, and Bannon stumbled closer to Ian, who stood like a tree carved into the shape of a man. “Fighters fight,” Ian said.
“But friends don’t,” Bannon said. He held his arms out, raising Sturdy with its point turned away. “I’m your friend, Ian. We were friends. Do you remember Chiriya Island?”
“No one wants to hear you talk,” Adessa said. “Demonstrate your skills, or your failings.”
“But…” Bannon looked at the morazeth leader. “I have a sword. I could kill him. He just has a club.”
“If you can kill my champion, then he is worthless to me, and I will just take another lover,” she said. “Do not be fooled. The knout can be just as deadly as a sword. Ian can batter you to death with a sharp edge, or just bruise you with the leather-wrapped parts. The choice is his—and yours, boy. Can you defend yourself?”
Bannon glanced at Adessa, then at Lila, seeking some escape while trying to find words. In that moment, Ian moved like an arrow launched from a bow. Making no sound or threat, he lunged, swept back his arm, and swung the knout with all the strength he possessed.
Bannon saw him just in time, twisted out of the way, and brought Sturdy up so that the sword blade deflected some of the force. The club’s sharp edge grazed his shoulder, and Bannon realized it would have been a killing blow if he hadn’t dodged in time.
He staggered backward, whirling to face his opponent. He heard the morazeth muttering, critiquing, some cheering, others jeering. Lila’s sharp voice cut through them all. “Fight, boy! Disappoint me at your peril!”
Bannon braced himself, and Ian paced back and forth, studying him. He shifted the knout from one shoulder to the other. His gray eyes darted.
“Ian, I’m sorry!” Bannon said.
The words seemed to trigger the other young man. Ian strode toward him, sweeping the knout down toward his head. Bannon swung Sturdy up to meet the heavy wooden club, and the blow rang through his wrists and arms all the way up to his shoulder. He yelled in pain, stumbled back, and Ian kept coming.
Bannon parried with his sword, using every skill that Nathan had taught him during their training sessions. “I don’t want to hurt you, Ian.”
The young man’s lips curled back. “Fighters fight.” He drew a quick breath. “Cowards die.”
“I’m sorry, Ian,” Bannon cried again. “I mean it. I shouldn’t have run. I shouldn’t have let the Norukai have you.” Anger flared across Ian’s face, and he swung the knout again, battering Bannon. Sturdy’s sharp edge shaved off splinters of the wood, gouged notches into the club, but the blows themselves nearly broke Bannon’s wrists.
“You talk too much,” Adessa called.
Her words only hardened the determination. “I talk because I have something to say to him,” Bannon snapped. He softened his voice even as the wooden club smashed against the sword. “Do you remember when we collected shells on the beach or picked crabs from the tide pools?” He watched for any flicker of memory on Ian’s scarred face. “Remember when we found caterpillars on the cabbages and raised them until they hatched into white butterflies?”
Ian swung, his face blank, and Bannon raised the sword to block the club. “Remember it, Ian! I know you remember it.”
“I remember the Norukai,” he said, and struck again harder. The knout slid down the sword and struck him on the right bicep, leaving what would surely be a purple bruise within days—if Bannon survived.
“Do you remember the stray dog we fed? How we collected scraps and gave them to him every night, until my father caught me?” Dark wings of memory fluttered around his vision. “I paid dearly for that.”
His father had beaten him so badly he could barely get out of bed for days. His body was so mottled with bruises he had been ashamed to show himself, and his father had told the other people in the town that Bannon suffered from a bad fever. Ian had come to check on him, worried about his friend.
The champion faltered. “I fed him for that week when you were in bed. Then he ran away.”
“I’m sorry,” Bannon said again. “When I learned you were here in Ildakar, I came to save you. I tried to get you free.”
“He is free—free to be a fighter!” Adessa said.
“I am free to die in the arena.” Ian’s expression became wooden again, and he flashed forward, swinging the club.
Bannon braced himself, blocked the blows.
Lila removed her agile knife, holding the black handle in the hand of her unbandaged arm. “If you don’t draw blood, boy, I will make you feel more pain than you have ever before enjoyed.”
“I don’t enjoy pain,” Bannon said.
“Then fight!” Lila cried.
He drove himself forward, hoping to somehow render Ian senseless so this combat would end. He swung his sword, imagining not his warm boyhood friend, not the companion who had roamed across the island with him.
Ian swung the knout sideways like a mallet, trying to crush Bannon’s ribs, but he spun out of the way, his muscles oiled with the heat of the battle. Blow met blow. The knout was splintered, and Sturdy’s edge was dulled. Bannon thought of how he had chopped the testing block to pieces in the swordsmith’s backyard in Tanimura.
“I’m sorry, Ian,” he said again. He saw an opening, his friend’s head exposed, and he turned the sword, using the flat of the blade. He knew this was how it had to be. He could stun Ian, end this combat. He saw the sword descend with plodding slowness, moving through the air like thick honey toward the curve of Ian’s skull.
At the last instant, his friend somehow moved with the speed and grace of a coiled whip. The knout slithered up, deflected the blade, and twisted Bannon’s wrist. He gasped in pain, spun, and tried to dodge, unable to believe that he had missed his target.
Then the knout came up and around faster than Bannon could react, faster than his eyes could even process the blur. He had no breath with which to cry out. From the corner of his eye he watched the deadly club hurtle toward the side of his head. Only at the last instant did the square club rotate slightly so that the splintered edge turned and the leather-wrapped section smashed the side of Bannon’s skull, just above his ear.
The explosion of blackness engulfed him and sucked him down into a bottomless pit of pain.
CHAPTER 55
Full darkness fell over the city. When the duma members declared a rare nighttime session to discuss the damage done by the rebels, Nicci decided not to wait any longer. She chose her moment—this would be the time.
She was on her own here in Il
dakar, and she knew it, but she was never helpless.
Nicci had slain wizards before. She had proven herself again and again. Though she was wary about how Lani had failed in her challenge a century ago, Nicci knew she was more powerful than Thora, and she would demonstrate it.
“I am an enemy unlike any you have ever seen before,” she muttered to herself as she climbed the stairs of the ruling tower. When she reached the throne chamber, the sovrena and the wizard commander sat on their tall chairs while the remaining duma members—Andre, Elsa, Quentin, and Damon—had taken their places.
Nicci kept thinking of Mrra now imprisoned in a cage with the other combat animals. Nathan remained stretched out in the fleshmancer’s studio, breathing, but lost in his coma. They were trapped beneath the shroud that contained all the people of Ildakar, the shroud created when Thora had butchered those twelve poor slaves on the stair-stepped pyramid.
As Nicci walked into the open chamber with the tall windows that looked out to the glittering city buildings far below, she felt the fire within her.
And the Sorceress must save the world.
Perhaps the world didn’t need saving—Richard had already done that, far to the north. But the city of Ildakar certainly needed something. It needed her. She was Death’s Mistress. She would be sufficient.
Stepping forward into full view, Nicci concentrated on her gift, feeling all the powers and abilities she had gathered over the years, spells she had learned, tactics and techniques. The air crackled like an aura around her. The fabric of her dark skirts flowed and stirred. Her loose blond hair drifted faintly as if charged with a building storm.
The morazeth Adessa stood beside the raised dais, watchful, as if she guarded the sovrena like a pet hound. The hardened warrior woman looked at Nicci, did not seem impressed.
Wizard Commander Maxim perked up on his throne as Nicci arrived, and a satisfied smile crossed his face. Sovrena Thora scowled at the interruption, and her sea-green eyes drank in Nicci’s demeanor. “Sorceress, you are presumptuous to intrude on our meeting. You already interfered enough today.”
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