* * *
Nicci awoke in a dank place that smelled of mist. She heard the gentle flow of water like a lover’s soft whisper. She blinked her blue eyes, tried to focus, and looked around to see narrow stone-walled passages lit by enclosed lanterns.
The tunnel was smooth and dark, as if some giant magical worm had burrowed its way through the sandstone uplift. Through the center flowed a stream of water, like an arrow-straight underground canal. The aqueducts! A stone walkway four feet wide extended into the darkness on either side of the water.
She lay on a wooden pallet softened by several layers of blankets. Her makeshift bed rested on the solid walkway near the water. She turned, expecting an explosion of pain from bruises and broken bones, but although she felt the raw ache of healing, she no longer seemed to be on the verge of death.
“Someone healed me,” she muttered, surprised by the realization. Someone gifted. “Where am I?” Her voice was dry and raspy, her throat parched, despite the moisture in the air. She lifted her head, saw figures in brown robes. They had shrugged down their hoods, not afraid of showing their identity here. The men and women watched her, looking pale and frightened, but defiant.
She propped herself up, which created a stir among the rebels. One ran down the tunnel to get help, while two came forward to assist her. “Ease yourself, Sorceress.”
An older woman handed her a shallow bowl filled with water, and Nicci drank greedily. It tasted clear, cool, and glorious. She drained the bowl and wanted more, but her helper refused. “Too much and you will vomit. Take it slow.” The woman handed her a soft knot of bread, and Nicci tore off a piece. “I baked this myself and stole it away from my master. The bread will give you strength. You still have much healing to do.”
“I’ve healed enough.” Chewing the delicious bread, she forced herself to sit up, swinging her feet off the pallet to touch the cool stone of the walkway. “Enough to contemplate my next actions.”
Her black dress had been removed and was folded neatly beside her. She gathered blankets around her, seeking warmth to offset the cold anger that sizzled through her. She took in the details of her surroundings. The air smelled of clean moisture, not the stink of sewers, not the sour stench of the alley behind the tannery. Sharp memories came back to her. “Thora … Adessa.”
“Shush now, you don’t need to worry about them. I am Melba. Recover here. Fight them later.” The old woman’s lips curved in a grim smile. “We are all ready to fight them.”
“Where are we? Who are these people?”
“You already know the answer to both of those questions, Sorceress,” said a male voice.
When she turned, pain shot down her back, but she faced the new figure, who wore hooded gray robes and a smooth silvery oval across his face. The reflective mask muffled his voice, but his words had a certain power.
“You challenged the evil in the ruling tower. You were defeated, alas … but you were not destroyed. We’ll help make you strong again.” Mirrormask paused. “So we can all be stronger and change Ildakar forever.”
“Yes.” Nicci felt a strange glimmer of confidence. “Let us find a way to destroy them. How long … has it been?”
Mirrormask came closer to her pallet. “You have been unconscious for more than a day. It is a good thing my followers found you soon after you fell, before the city guard did.” He let out a soft chuckle. “The fact that they can’t find your body has caused them great consternation.”
“We heard about your combat,” said Melba, offering another small piece of bread. “It sounded brave and admirable.”
“I failed,” Nicci said.
“Nevertheless, you shook them up,” Mirrormask said. “Just as we did when we released the combat animals to cause chaos in the city.” His followers had gathered around to listen to her words, joining Melba. In their shining eyes and eager expressions, Nicci saw that she added hope to their very existence … a hope Nicci wasn’t sure she deserved.
“We must keep doing damage until we have broken the old order,” Mirrormask continued. “The black society of Ildakar must be reshaped. The council has ruled for too long without change, and the people have suffered. That must end.” The secretive rebels gathered around and muttered their agreement.
“I will do everything in my power to help you make that happen,” Nicci vowed.
Mirrormask nodded, as if he had expected no less.
CHAPTER 59
Like a sculpture made of flesh-colored candle wax, the white-haired wizard lay stretched out on the rune-bordered table in the fleshmancer’s studio.
Nathan Rahl looked well preserved and regal, full of the potential to be a great wizard, if he could be restored to the power he’d once possessed. Andre admired him, happy for the chance to perform such an experiment, like a sculptor working with the finest, rarest piece of marble.
Sometimes, though, in even the most perfect chunk of stone, hidden flaws could cause a statue to break. He wondered if Nathan had any such internal flaw that would prove to be his undoing.
“We shall see what you’re made of, hmmm?” He stroked his fingertip down the long scar on the center of the wizard’s chest, where Andre had split flesh and bone, pried his breastbone apart, and scooped out his still-beating, but ungifted, heart to replace it with Ivan’s. “Only time will tell.”
When he stepped back, Nathan didn’t even stir. His body was cold, his breathing slow and shallow. The eyelids looked like delicate parchment covering ageless eyes of piercing azure blue.
Nathan Rahl claimed to be a thousand years old, which made him an impressive anomaly among his own people, though the wizards of Ildakar had lived much longer than that, thanks to their shroud of eternity.
Andre himself had lived for nearly two millennia. He had been five centuries old, with his gift at its peak, when General Utros marched in with his astonishing army. Hundreds of thousands of men had depleted all the crops and orchards on their march over the mountains, razed any villages on the way just to keep the army going for another few days. Demanding surrender, they had arrived at Ildakar expecting to strip that city bare of its wealth. Utros had promised to feed his army with the spoils of Ildakar.
But Ildakar had defeated them.
Leaving Nathan in his healing coma, Andre walked through the wings of his mansion, thinking of how he and his fellow wizards had faced the great army of Emperor Kurgan. As a fleshmancer, Andre had been so strong then, so cocky, so ambitious. Faced with that threat, he had created some of his best work.
He entered the large separate wing, using his gift to increase the illumination. With a sigh of pride, he looked up at the three armored titans, his Ixax warriors, whom he had created to be the greatest defenders of Ildakar, invincible soldiers who could ravage thousands of the enemy single-handedly—if the war ever came to direct combat. Once unleashed, these gigantic fighting machines would attack like starving hounds in a henhouse, mowing down enemies as fast as they could move.
Andre stood with his hands clasped behind his back, admiring their mammoth armored forms, the brass-studded armbands and wristbands, the huge gauntlets covering fists the size of boulders. The three Ixax warriors stood straight, massive arms at their sides, boots together, thick metal helmets covering their heads and faces, leaving only a slit for their eyes.
“Ah, I always marvel at you!” Andre said. “I’m so glad I created you, but I’m also disappointed that the wizards’ duma stopped me from making more than three.” He sniffed. “We could have used an entire Ixax army, hmmm?”
He walked from the first titan to the second, gazing at the rippled muscles under the thick contoured armor. “Ready and waiting, and oh so devoted.” Smiling, he walked with a light step to the third gigantic soldier.
“I built you each from the raw material of a lowly soldier, a conscript who was doomed to die on the battlefield. Now look at you.” He raised his hands. “Look at what you’ve become!”
Andre clucked his tongue. “Ah, if only my magic could have given
you increased patience. It must seem a very long time to wait, hmmm?” He snickered. “In case you haven’t been able to keep track, you’ve been standing there motionless for more than one thousand five hundred years. Every day, frozen in place … awake and watching.”
The nearest Ixax warrior was so tall that his thigh was at the fleshmancer’s chest level, and Andre ran his fingers along the stippled surface of the pounded greave. “You have to be ready to fight, ready to be unleashed in an instant. No time to wake you if we need your might. I’m sorry it has proven troublesome for you. What grandiose thoughts you must have had while you stood here,” he said, but his voice took on a taunting lilt. “Oh, the great ideas you must have thought of, hmmm? Too bad you had no way to record them. An artistic man might have composed beautiful poetry, an epic thousands and thousands of lines long. I’m sure that’s how you devoted your thoughts over the years. What else did you have to think of?”
He raised his eyebrows.
None of the three Ixax warriors twitched. They were like enormous statues. But he knew that living, conscious beings were trapped inside that armor. “How frustrating it must have been for you.” The taunting tone became richer, more prominent. “All that time, unable to move a muscle. Don’t you wish you could just … stretch your legs?”
He stepped in front of the middle Ixax, tapping the armor with his fingertip. “Can you feel that? What if you need to scratch your nose? Do you have an itch, hmmm?”
He strolled in front of them, reveling in his success at creating these giant warriors. Though the three flesh sculptures were long finished, the Ixax warriors were like clay in his hands. He could still break them if he wished, and he was bored.
He said, “Just imagine you have an itch.…” He snickered.
Through the slits in their massive helmets, the yellow eyes of the three motionless Ixax glared at him.
CHAPTER 60
As she recovered in the shadowy aqueducts of Ildakar, Nicci found the strength to use her own healing gift to repair the bruises and knit the cracked bones.
Someone had used moist cloths for tender ministrations while she was unconscious, cleaning her up, wiping the blood from her face. But, more mystifying, she knew that someone else had healed her enough to keep her alive. Therefore, someone among the rebels possessed the gift, which meant that not all of these rebels were mere slaves or members of the lower classes. The ability to heal injuries so severe was not minimal magic.
When Nicci asked Melba and the others about it, no one answered her questions, but she didn’t need to know the answers. She would rely on herself, gather her own strength. She was already making plans about how to challenge the ruling council members again, particularly Sovrena Thora.
As soon as she was ready.
Restless, she explored the aqueduct tunnels that wound throughout the city. One of the rebels who attended her, a soft-spoken middle-aged man named Rendell, accompanied her with a lit lantern. He knew his way around the maze.
He explained, “Our water supply flows in from creeks and streams across the plain, but the bulk of it comes from the Killraven River.”
“But the river is far below, at the bottom of the bluff,” Nicci said.
“The wizards use transfer runes to make the water flow where they wish it to go—uphill, downhill, it does not matter.” Rendell paused at an intersection, looked at the flowing water in the canal, and chose to go left. Nicci followed him. The light of his lantern shed a warm orange glow on the sandstone walls. “With their gift they distribute water throughout the city, filling the fountains, basins, and gardens of the gifted nobles.”
Nicci adjusted the skirts at her knees as she bent down and extended her fingers into the flowing water. “That must require a great effort.”
He looked at her. “Of course, and the wizards of Ildakar are not averse to making grand and unnecessary gestures to prove their strength.”
Nicci wiped her wet hand on her dress. “No, I suppose they’re not.”
Rendell was a household slave who had run away from the wizard Damon, had changed his allegiance to Mirrormask, and had hidden here in the aqueducts for more than a year. Damon had considered the man nothing more than an object, like furniture. Although Rendell’s expression rarely showed any emotions, his eyes flashed when he spoke about his freedom. Nicci could read the simmering outrage there, a power that Mirrormask had channeled. All of his followers felt the same way.
Nicci spoke to them in order to understand who they were. Some were escaped household slaves who had been in Ildakar for their entire lives, while others were new arrivals, sold by the Norukai in the last few years. Some visited the tunnels rarely, while others remained underground all the time, like beetles burrowing through the rotted hulk of a fallen tree. Mirrormask visited only every day or so, and even in the safe secrecy of the tunnels he never removed the reflective disguise across his face.
He found Nicci while she walked the tunnels with her guide. Her own distorted reflection greeted her where his face should have been. “There you are! I know you are growing impatient, Sorceress. Come with me. We have another guest down here in the aqueducts, and I think you will enjoy our conversation with him.” With a swirl of his gray robes, he strode down the tunnel. “It will likely be his last conversation.”
Nicci followed, wary and curious. They passed along the branched, low-ceilinged tunnels and crossed over narrow plank bridges the rebels had laid down. Near an intersection of canals, they came upon a small alcove which had become a dungeon cell.
A naked man was manacled to the rough wall. Iron bolts fastened the chains securely in place, and the prisoner stood stretched upright, so that his feet barely touched the ground. When the man saw them coming, he twisted and thrashed, hissing at them like a captive reptile.
The comparison was apt, Nicci saw, when she recognized the horrifically scarred face, the slashes from the corners of the lips all the way back to the hinge of the jaw, the scale tattoos, the pair of long thin brown braids that dangled from the back of his shaved skull. A glare simmered in the captive Norukai’s shadowed eyes. He twisted on the chains, throwing himself to the extent of the links. She watched the muscles ripple beneath his emaciated form. His ribs stood out, reminding her of the sea-serpent skeleton that she, Nathan, and Bannon had encountered along the shore of the Phantom Coast.
“That’s the Norukai who went missing.” She narrowed her eyes, trying to recall the man’s name. “Dar.”
“Yes, the others sailed off without him, which demonstrates how loyal they are to their own people,” said Mirrormask. “The Norukai wear the armor of arrogance, but that armor is no shield against freedom. Dar now understands what it is like to be a captive.”
“Walking meat,” Nicci said.
The Norukai snapped his jaws like a wild animal trying to bite its tormentor.
“Well, he won’t be walking very much.” Mirrormask stepped up to within a handsbreadth of the twisting prisoner. “His comrades left him here for us to play with. Many of my followers remember the gentle caresses of the Norukai before they were sold to Ildakar.”
Much of Dar’s body was an angry deep red. All along his arms, as well as rectangular patches on his thighs and the left side of his back, his flesh was raw and red. She realized that the skin had been flayed off of him.
Mirrormask saw her attention and said, “I have to give my followers something. I give them sharp knives and let them take their revenge, one narrow strip at a time.” He chuckled. “The waiting list is quite long.” He turned his reflective face toward Nicci, and although she could read no expression, she heard the tone of his muffled voice change. “It has been a challenge for me to keep the others from killing him. Such anger…” Under the hood, he shook his head. “Such anger could be so useful.”
“And has the pain been useful, too? Have you interrogated him?” Nicci knew how dangerous and loathsome the Norukai were, and she didn’t trust them to have no interest beyond mere trade. “Do you
know why they come to Ildakar?”
“To sell slaves.”
“And is that all? I think I can get more information from him.” Nicci actually relished the prospect. She remembered how the ruling council had seen no advantage in questioning the rejuvenated stone soldier Ulrich.
“We are fighting for freedom,” said Mirrormask. “We have little experience in interrogation.”
Nicci smiled. “Then allow me.” She recalled torturing captives for Emperor Jagang, and she had been very good at extracting vital information. “A flicker of fire in the lung, cracking one bone at a time, raising heat in the marrow, or maybe freezing one eyeball, then the other.”
Dar strained against his manacles again, and Nicci saw the raider’s strength in the rattling links. Given time and his refusal to accept the pain around his bloodied wrists, Dar could probably work the iron bolts free from the sandstone wall—if Mirrormask decided to keep him that long.
Dar hissed and snapped his grotesque mouth. “You will all die! King Grieve will avenge me.”
“King Grieve doesn’t know you are here,” Mirrormask said, “and since the shroud is back in place again, there’s nothing he can do.”
Grimacing in pain, Dar thrashed again. “Oh, he will be back the moment your shroud drops. He will bring all the Norukai. He is already building his navies and his armies.”
“You sound brave,” Nicci said, “but I know nothing about this King Grieve. He can’t be much of a threat.”
“You will know his name,” Dar snarled. “Grieve—named because that is what people do when they have seen him.”
Nicci realized that the Norukai was simmering. He wanted to boast about his people. “He is so eager to talk, I might not even need to use my techniques.” Disappointment was clear in her voice.
Mirrormask said in a bored voice, “King Grieve will get revenge. Yes, yes, we’re very frightened.” He turned to Nicci. “Sorceress, would you like to peel a strip of skin for your own satisfaction?” He withdrew a curved, golden-hilted knife from his gray robe.
Shroud of Eternity Page 39
