Chantmer’s wall of ice was nearly ten feet high, twenty feet long, and several feet thick. There would be nothing to keep Toth from going around it except Memnet’s magic, and nothing to stop the salamander from simply scrambling over the top except for Markal’s hunch that the monster’s elemental nature would force it to melt its way through the ice.
Markal ordered Chantmer to stop and the archivists to follow. A book and several scrolls fell off the stacks carried by the overburdened members of the order, and the salamander stopped to gobble them up one by one. It hissed and smoked in pain after each time, but it grew in size and heat as it fed.
Memnet sent a final blast of light, which hurled Toth against the balustrade, then joined them, snatching up abandoned books and staying just ahead of the writhing salamander. Jethro emerged dripping from the fountain, panting and gasping. His skin was red and scalded, and he could barely hobble along.
They’d gained the stairs when the fire salamander hurled itself into Chantmer’s ice wall. It gave a tremendous crack, and steam geysered into the air. Toth remained on the terrace above them, still throwing bolts of shadow at Memnet, even as he battled back from below with shafts of light. At the same time, the sorcerer snarled words in the old tongue to try to regain control of the fire salamander. The monster was inside the ice now—a fiery red light—squirming about and melting it from within.
The members of the order reached the cart and dumped their books inside. Karla and Erasmus were still in the cart, but there was no time for the archivists to organize the new shipment among all the other books, to give them one last bit of protective magic to keep them from giving off an aura during the trip through Syrmarria.
Memnet scrambled with some of the archivists into the back of the cart, while Chantmer ran around to take the horse’s reins. Markal waited for Jethro, who staggered toward them, still some distance back. Memnet hurled another bolt of light into the upper terrace. The orb was dimmer than it had been; the wizard had already expelled most of its stored magic.
“Master, the gates are shielded,” Karla said. “There are two dark acolytes there. I think they mean to bring down the gate towers as we cross through.”
Memnet lifted the orb. It seemed to inhale, drawing light into it, and then flashed. A wave of air exploded outward and struck the palace wall directly in front of them. Stones hurled up and away, giant blocks that came crashing back down again atop the stone houses below. A massive hole remained in the wall when the dust cleared, opening directly onto an alley that led into the city. No need to go through the gates at all.
Memnet sank back with a groan. The orb was dark in his hands. “Chantmer, the horse!” he wheezed.
Jethro still hadn’t reached the cart, but stopped about twenty paces back, doubled over. He clenched his trousers with his good hand and wheezed. His burns must be more severe than Markal had originally thought. The other archivists were calling for him, urging him to come up, even as the cart lurched forward. Markal was the only other one who hadn’t climbed into the cart, and it fell on him to help Jethro. He hurried back to grab his companion and drag him into the cart.
The fire salamander burst through the last of the ice barricade, and water showered down on them like steaming rain. The palace was on fire behind them, a wall of flame that illuminated the night sky. The white-hot salamander slithered down the steps from the upper terrace, melting the stone as it came.
The creature was moving too quickly, and the cart too slowly. It would catch them before they escaped through the hole in the palace wall. Fall upon the irreplaceable books from the library and devour them. And destroy the master and a good part of the order at the same time.
“My friend,” Jethro cried as Markal arrived. “Give me strength. No, not that kind—magical strength.”
Markal brought up his power and spoke an incantation at the same time. A whisper was all he had, enough to propel Jethro forward. The archivist straightened and inhaled.
“Remember me, Markal,” Jethro said. “Remember what I did.”
Markal didn’t have a chance to figure out what Jethro meant before the archivist had pulled away and run off, not toward the cart, but across the palace courtyard back in the direction of the fire salamander. The monster shot out its fiery tongue to envelop him. Jethro ducked away from it and kept running toward a staircase that led up to one of the terraces.
The others were crying for Markal to follow, and he turned around to find them almost to the hole in the palace wall. He ran after the cart, but couldn’t help himself and turned around again. Jethro reached the upper terrace, and there he stopped, confronted by a wall of flame. The salamander slithered up the stairs after him, hissing and spitting fire. Jethro couldn’t break through the heat and fire ahead of him, and he turned around to confront the monster.
“Markal!” Memnet cried.
Markal stood transfixed, unable to tear his gaze away. The salamander reached the top of the stairs, where the archivist waited, his arms outstretched as if in greeting. It launched itself forward with a blast of fire and smoke, and Jethro disappeared with a single, anguished cry. Horrified, Markal turned and ran.
He caught one final glance of the fire salamander as he scrambled into the cart and they made their way through the palace wall and into the streets below. It was white-hot, so bright that he could scarcely look at it, and it was slithering back down the stairs.
#
Heat stole the breath from Markal’s lungs as the cart clattered through the streets. Chantmer was up ahead, running alongside the frightened horse and directing it down one alley after another. He shouted back to Markal and Memnet when he detected a snare or trap, and the pair paused long enough to break them apart before Chantmer led them on.
There was fire everywhere, a conflagration that spilled through the city from the salamanders that had burst from the ground at the night market. Entire streets vanished in fire, and a hot breeze turned the alleys into choking, deadly traps. Yet somehow Chantmer kept them moving.
The city wasn’t deserted—there hadn’t been enough time to evacuate everyone—and screams came from burning houses. Voices cried for help from smoke-fouled souks. A terrified child wailed for his mother, and Markal grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him up to the cart.
Animals were suffering, too. Birds fell scorched and dying from the sky. A cat shot past them with its tail on fire, yowling in terror, and a camel burst from a side street with a dangling load of carpets and slammed into the cart, nearly upsetting it before running off again.
A dog gave a terrified howl from the smoke to their right, and when they went through the most dangerous part of the city, only a few blocks from the night market, another dog leaped into the back of the cart and threw itself in Markal’s arms, trembling alongside the child. He didn’t have the will to push the animal out again even though he knew that their priority had to be saving people, not animals.
Markal was seeing to the child’s burns when Chantmer stopped the cart abruptly. The horse reared up. A slithering molten form emerged from the smoke ahead of them. It was a fire salamander, and it had grown to monstrous proportions. It loomed above them, nearly the height of the houses lining the alley, and slammed its claws down on the roofs to either side. They burst into flames. Waves of boiling heat rolled from the monster’s open, flaming mouth.
Memnet rose to his feet in the back of the cart. There was no sign of the orb—he’d exhausted its stored magic during the fight at the palace—and he held out his hands palm down to draw strength from his own body. He spoke an incantation, something long and slippery that Markal couldn’t understand, and a shock wave of power burst from his hands, so powerful that it made his ears ache.
The ground shook and rumbled. Burning buildings collapsed into the street with a roar and spouts of flame and debris. They buried the monster beneath burning beams and chunks of stone. It was hissing and smoking down there, trying to claw its way out again, even before the buildings had stopped
shaking on top of it.
Memnet collapsed on top of the books and scrolls. “Go!” he cried. “Get us out of here.”
Chantmer got them turned around, and the horse laid its ears back and pulled with all its might until they were on the move again. A few minutes later, they arrived in a part of the city where the flames had not yet reached, and from there they were able to push through the scattered people still fleeing for their lives and reach the eastern gate of the city. By now they’d picked up two more injured people, rescued from burning homes.
Dozens more were screaming from behind them, where they remained trapped in the fire. Across the city, there must be thousands dying. Burning, suffocating, dying crushed beneath collapsing buildings. Markal listened for the sound of the Harvester’s horn—the Dark Gatherer could move freely through fire and across the battlefield with his spectral hounds—but he could pick out little above the roar of the fire, the screams, and the thunder of falling stone and timber.
The burning city turned the night to day. The souks, the tenements crammed with poor laborers and servants, the mansions on the hillside, the palace itself—all burning. And beneath the palace, the library, with fully half of its contents left behind. By now the salamander on the hill must have found it, must be consuming the precious, irreplaceable volumes, one by one.
A hot stiff breeze blew out of the city, and ash rained from the sky, together with strips of burning linen that flapped past like fiery birds. Directly overhead, above the eastern gate of the city, hung the long leathery form of Khalif Omar, the former ruler of the khalifate and master of the city and all of Aristonia with it. His head was on a pike, with his flayed skin dangling behind, partially sewn back together to catch the wind.
While Markal watched, the khalif’s skin flapped, smoking in the firestorm. Behind it, Syrmarria burned.
Chapter Seventeen
Nathaliey watched soldiers preparing for siege from her gibbet overhanging the gorge. Roughly a hundred defenders were at work, putting up wooden planks to deflect projectiles, building railings to extend out from the walls to repel ladders and ropes, and hauling up stones and other objects to hurl down at the barbarians when they arrived.
After some initial alarm at the approach of an Eriscoban army, the Veyrians grew confident, and she despaired for Sir Wolfram’s chances. The castle was small, but well-built. It boasted thirty-foot walls of freshly cut stone and towers that could only be attacked from one side and against a steep, treacherous approach. The Veyrians had cisterns for water and food and supplies stuffed in the cellars, already gathered for Toth’s expected push into Eriscoba. And even if an enemy somehow starved the garrison and breached the walls, the defenders could retreat to the keep and hold out there for another indefinite period of time.
Wolfram’s army had apparently pushed up the Tothian Way into the mountains, forced the Veyrians to retreat, and were gathering for a siege, but how would they take the castle? And this was only one of several similar castles recently built along the new highway, a series of rugged little fortifications known collectively as the Teeth. If Nathaliey twisted in her cage and craned her neck, she could see another small castle to the west. That one sat on a thumb-like protrusion of stone with an even more forbidding approach.
More importantly to Nathaliey, if Wolfram’s forces couldn’t take the castle, there was no way they could rescue her. Surely the captain of the Blackshields knew this, and wouldn’t even attempt it, instead pushing past them toward the khalifates. But at the same time, without the castles, how could his army advance? So long as Toth held the fortifications, the enemy could endlessly harass the Eriscoban army, destroying supplies and slaughtering men from behind.
No, Wolfram had to take the castles. Had to take them one by one. Yet such a task seemed beyond any conceivable army that might march east out of Eriscoba.
Three days had passed since Nathaliey sent her seeker, and she was still hanging on to her sanity in spite of every attempt to break it. Wights and other spectral visions were present whether she had her eyes open or not, and their voices infiltrated her head, too. Sometimes she heard nothing but a long wordless moan. Other wights undermined her in low cunning voices, whispering about the glories of serving the dark wizard, boasting how her soul was leaking from her body, and taunting her with tales of roasted pheasant, thick beef stews, and hunks of hot bread slathered with freshly churned butter. So many days had passed since her last meal, and every thought of food was torture.
Jasmeen appeared twice a day and forced down vials of the bitter, burning elixir. When Nathaliey resisted, Jasmeen cursed and slapped her, told her to surrender, and threatened to break her fingers or cut off her nose.
During these struggles, Nathaliey hid an unpleasant truth: the elixir no longer made her violently ill, but warmed her body and steadied her shaking hands. She’d begun to anticipate it, to long for it even. When it entered her mouth, she swallowed quickly, not wanting to lose even a single drop. Before long, she feared, she’d be begging for it. And when that happened, all hope would be lost.
Now Jasmeen was pacing the walls, her bony hands almost skeletal where they emerged from her sleeves. Nathaliey could see the dark acolyte for almost the entire length of the wall walk as she completed a circuit every few minutes. They held another prisoner atop the wall on the far side—some slave, Eriscoban soldier, or peasant—it was hard to see which—and were whipping him methodically. Every time Jasmeen passed, she stopped to draw power from the man’s pain.
“You look worried,” Nathaliey said the next time Jasmeen passed. “Are the barbarians winning the war?”
Jasmeen slowed as if she wanted to say something, but only cast Nathaliey a poisonous look before continuing on her way. Nathaliey tried again the next time the dark acolyte approached.
“It’s too bad Hamid’s marauders left you defenseless,” she said. “Now you’re going to die.”
Nathaliey had lost control of her seeker just before seeing the results of Wolfram’s ambush, but it must have gone well for the paladins. The castle gate had clanked open about an hour later, and horses came riding in. Yet far fewer than before, from the sound of it, maybe five or six animals in all. There was shouting, hard words and recriminations; Nathaliey recognized Hamid’s voice. He was still alive, curse him. Yet from his fury, she knew that he’d lost the encounter, and badly.
Hamid collected more men and rode through the castle gates a short time later. But this time, the sound of hooves moved east, in the direction of the khalifates. She hadn’t understood why at first, but the next morning saw preparations for a siege. It was then that she guessed Wolfram’s intention to attack the castle.
Jasmeen circled about again a few minutes later. Nathaliey made another attempt to provoke, and this time her efforts bore fruit.
“Estmor is under siege,” Nathaliey said. “The pasha’s army driven off or surrounded. If Estmor has fallen, what chance does this little rock have?”
The dark acolyte stopped. “Don’t listen to soldiers. They are gossiping fools, the lot of them.”
Her voice was loud enough that two nearby men paused from hammering at the wet hides they were attaching to wooden framework shielding the wall. They scowled, and Nathaliey enjoyed a small victory.
“So the castle is not under siege? And the pasha is not surrounded?” Nathaliey shook her head in mock sorrow when Jasmeen failed to answer. “Your master’s war has apparently collapsed.”
Jasmeen sneered. “The entire strength of the barbarian kingdoms amounts to a few thousand men. King Toth will muster fifty thousand, with tens of thousands more to support them. Entire cities will go hungry this winter to feed his army.”
“And yet the sorcerer is nowhere to be seen at the front lines,” Nathaliey answered. “His champions have withdrawn. Why? The east must still be troubling him. How is Toth going to subdue the whole of Eriscoba if he can’t manage a tiny little khalifate like Aristonia?”
“If you refer to your friends,
they are already dead. Your wizard—what was his name? Memnet the so-called Great?—begged for mercy, and your fellow apprentices screamed as we stripped the skin from their bodies. We tore down your garden walls, burned your trees, and slaughtered them all. No two stones stand one on top of the other.”
Nathaliey was not so feeble that she couldn’t manage a laugh at the obvious lie. “Then it’s truly strange for the sorcerer to abandon these castles to the paladins and their armies. After all, if my order is dead, there’s no reason to withdraw.”
Jasmeen bared her teeth. “This fortress will never be taken. Let the barbarians lay siege. They have no wizardry, no war machines, no engineers or incendiaries. We can hold the castle for months if necessary. Longer. By then my master will have his armies.”
Nathaliey had no ready retort for this, as she’d already had this conversation in her head, and Jasmeen’s boast seemed all too true. All she could do was stare back at the woman and ignore the vision of wights floating through the air between them.
“You’ll never break my mind,” Nathaliey said. “Your poison will fail.”
Jasmeen stared for a long moment with her gaunt eyes boring into Nathaliey. She reached over the edge and gave the pole a shake, which made the gibbet sway where it hung above the gorge, then continued around to where a Veyrian continued whipping the prisoner. The screams had ceased, and the poor fellow could only moan pitifully.
The sound of marching feet and horses’ hooves soon rose like a dull thunder to the west. Jasmeen had disappeared around the wall walk behind the central keep, and didn’t reappear. She must be standing above the gates, waiting with the garrison commander.
The Emerald Crown (The Red Sword Trilogy Book 3) Page 15
