"Amber," he said in a quiet, winded voice. "Please, come with me."
Amber followed the old alchemist out of the room and down a winding set of stairs.
"Who are you?" Amber asked to break the silence.
"My name is Tungawa. I have to apologise for Mendak, he knows nothing of your people."
"He's rude."
Tungawa chuckled. "Yes, rude he may be. But he is also brave, and has volunteered to stay here in our chapter to the very end. When the enemy comes, which they will, he will ignite a device and ensure our knowledge is kept from the hands of evil."
"What about you? Will you stay to the end?"
"Most of my fellow Guild members have long departed. Some fight on the walls, while others have sworn to make the taking of our chapter a costly venture. A few, such as myself, stay because we need to learn more about our enemy. When the time comes, I will surrender, and I will keep my eyes and ears open. Perhaps the opportunity may come to learn this enemy's weakness and bring the knowledge to those who can best put it to advantage."
"Isn't that risky?"
The stairs wound down until Amber thought they must now be below ground level.
"Not as much as you may think. The Guild has knowledge this Lord of the Night doesn't possess. We did work for him once, before we knew his true nature, much as we've worked for gold for many others. He needed us then. He will have use for us now."
"Do you know what he is?"
Tungawa met Amber's gaze. "He is one of the Evermen, is he not?"
Amber sighed. "I'd been hoping to exchange that knowledge for something I need." She wondered how she would get the alchemist to help her now.
The stairway finally ended and Tungawa pushed open a door, gesturing for Amber to enter. As her eyes adjusted to the low light ahead of her she saw she was in a cavernous store room rivalling any of the huge storehouses she'd seen in Ralanast.
Shelves filled the interior from one end to the other. From where she stood Amber saw leather-bound books and brown-paper packets, bottles filled with coloured liquids and jars containing powders.
"Where are you taking me?"
Tungawa walked ahead of her. "Come," he said, "there is a passage from here that will take you out of the city."
Amber abruptly stopped.
Tungawa turned, surprised. "This is why you came here, is it not? You guessed we would have a way out of the city, and you came here hoping to share your knowledge for this secret."
"No," Amber said. "That's not why I'm here. I'm here because someone from your order built a device for our enemy. This device was not only explosive; it was built to release a poison as part of the blast. The device looked like a golden shrine, but in actuality was timed to explode at a certain hour of a certain day." Amber felt the anger rise to her cheeks and wetness burn behind her eyes. "That day was my wedding day, and that poison took my son. I'm here to find the antidote, and I won't leave without it."
"Why would he attack your wedding?" Tungawa whispered.
"You know about this?"
"I told you we did work for him once, before we knew his true nature. A man in a grey robe came to us with gold. He gave us his requirements and we accepted his money. We took the device down to the river and it was loaded aboard a ship. A man watched and waited nearby, staring at me with eyes that sent a chill through my body. That was the first time I saw Sentar Scythran."
"It was you!" Amber said.
Something inside her snapped, and her arm lashed out. She slapped the old alchemist across his face as hard as she could. A tear spilled out of her eye as she moved to hit him again.
Tungawa caught her wrist. "I suppose I deserve that." He sighed, rubbing his face with his other hand. "I know it is no consolation, but we've learnt our mistake. Please," Tungawa released her hand and turned away, "follow me."
He led Amber along one of the rows between shelves, and then turned sharply, the old man moving so quickly she had difficulty keeping up. He finally stopped at a shelf no different from the others. He took a flask from the shelf and handed it to Amber. From the sloshing sound, Amber knew it contained liquid.
"Here," he said. "Remember, everything is a poison, there is poison in everything. Only the dose makes a thing not a poison. Never more than one mouthful each day until his health is improved. When the spots leave his fingernails, cease treatment immediately."
Amber looked at the flask in her hand. She couldn't believe they'd come this far and now she had it. Please, let Tomas be alive to receive his cure!
"I would thank you," Amber said, "but I'll save that for when my son is well again. Can you show me how to get back to the city? I need to get to the walls."
"Are you sure that's where you want to be? Past this chamber is a way out of the city."
"Yes, I'm sure. I need to find my husband."
~
THE FIRST sensation Miro felt was pain as consciousness slowly returned. He ached from head to toe, but the strongest pain came from his temple and his left arm. His right eye was crusted shut, but he managed to open his left eye enough to see.
He'd awakened in a pile of dead bodies. He didn't know how he'd come to be thrown with the mangled corpses of the fallen defenders; someone must have pronounced him dead and thrown him in the heap.
He couldn't hear anything, just a constant ringing in his ears. He tasted the metallic flavour of blood in his mouth, and ran his tongue across a loose tooth.
An armoured soldier lay across his chest while another Gokani covered his legs. He tried to move but he knew it would be some time before he could wriggle out from underneath.
After a while the ringing faded, and he heard screams and cries, shouts of rage and moans of agony. Tilting his head back he could see the clear blue sky, and it wasn't until he turned his face further to the left that he could see part of the battle unfold.
He saw soldiers fighting revenants, their faces filled with fear as they battled decayed corpses with white eyes, corpses that needed to be hacked into pieces to keep down. Miro heard a great crash, like a wooden door slamming open, and suddenly the wall he watched was filled with revenants, too many of them to count, easily outnumbering the defenders.
A man in black robes ran forward, an alchemist by the emblem on his breast. He threw a flask into the midst of the revenant warriors and flame rolled forward in a searing red cloud. A revenant came from behind the alchemist and a sword suddenly protruded from the black robe, jutting out from the man's chest and then pulled out again, releasing a gush of blood.
Miro struggled, but still couldn't find the strength in his limbs to get up.
The horn blared, two long blasts coming from the soaring tower in the middle of the city. "Back to the next wall!" soldiers took up the cry. "Retreat to the next wall!"
The few soldiers Miro could see on the section of wall turned to flee but were cut down from behind. Miro turned his head to watch the Gokani falling back. Some brave men at one of the cannon posts stayed to the end, sending shot after shot at a distant target below. When the revenants arrived, a final explosion ensured they destroyed both the cannon and themselves rather than let it fall into their enemy's hands.
The retreat was now nearly complete. The enemy now held the thick outer walls, and some of the surviving cannon were turned and pointed back towards the city.
Miro froze when a steady stream of white-eyed warriors ran past the pile where he lay unable to move. He fought to give his eyes the steady look of death as revenant after revenant ran past.
Amber was inside the inner walls, while Miro was now on the outside of the remaining defences. He wondered what to do.
~
THE GATE posts were unmanned now, and Amber ran through the deserted residential district of Fairview, desperate to find Miro on the walls so they could flee this terrible place.
She passed through the gate leading to the area of merchant stalls, where the barricades had been set up to be one of the last defences against the enemy.
They were already fighting at the barricades.
Amber stopped running and put her hand to her mouth. A handful of Gokani soldiers held back an unstoppable tide of the enemy. At a mutual signal they turned and ran from a barricade to regroup and form a defence at the next. Soldiers were cut down as they fled, and now there were that many fewer defenders to man the next station.
High on the walls on both sides, archers shot arrow after arrow into the horde. Alchemists in black robes threw explosive flasks into the attackers' midst; these seemed to have a greater effect than the arrows.
As Amber watched transfixed, the defenders fell back to the next set of barricades, directly ahead.
"Miro," Amber whispered.
The tall outer walls had been overrun more quickly than she would have thought possible. Miro was one of the best swordsmen she'd ever seen. Surely he was all right? But swords couldn't stop cannon. Nor could they stop…
"Revenants," Amber breathed. "Lord of the Sky, no."
"What are you doing?" a soldier manning the final barricade cried at her. "Run!"
Amber drew the thin blade from her boot. She would have given anything for her green silk dress and an enchanted blade.
The soldier who told Amber to run was decapitated by a barbarian warrior; the revenant's decayed lips gave him a permanent grin.
With a surge the barricade was overrun, and with moan-like cries, the revenants swarmed ahead.
Amber turned. The gate she'd just passed through was behind her. She needed to close it, and give the defenders whatever chance she could.
She started to run, sensing the rushing attackers behind her, feeling their stench on her neck. The gate was fifty paces more, then forty. Amber turned to look back.
She wasn't going to make it.
A snarling woman was the first of the horde to reach Amber. The woman's throat had been sliced open, probably when she was first killed, for the cut was old and strips of skin were dry.
Amber held her stiletto in front of her, preparing to strike, noting her hand was shaking.
She thrust out, piercing the woman's breast, and the force of the revenant's momentum took her further onto the blade.
But the white-eyed woman displayed no reaction. Amber tried to withdraw the blade to strike again, when she felt a club strike the side of her head with a force that belied the woman's thin arms. Stars burst behind Amber's eyes.
Amber went down.
34
BY LATE afternoon the battle was won. Sentar Scythran had conquered the great city of Wengwai in a single day.
The defenders fought bravely from gate to gate, ring to ring, inflicting a heavy toll, with each defender fighting to his last breath. But the numbers of the indomitable revenants were too great, they were too hard to kill, and support from Veldria never came.
With one final gasp of defiance, the innermost circle of red stone where the Alchemists' Guild had their chapter exploded as it was overrun, taking thousands of revenants in the blast. The detonation filled the sky with smoke and thunder rolled across the plains below the city. The soaring tower called the Eye slowly leaned, and ponderously toppled, before coming crashing down on the city below, crushing still more of the enemy as it fell.
Wengwai, the beating heart of Gokan, was no more.
During the final stages of the battle, Miro managed to free himself from the pile of corpses, finding his sword in the process. Checking himself for injury, he found his left shoulder was stiff and sore but he was surprisingly unscathed. Wiping his crusted-over eye, he managed to clear the blood away and could now open both eyes.
He found a place to hide, high on the wall in a mountain of rubble, where he could watch the happenings in the city as well as below on the plain. He saw men in silver robes enter the city, coordinating the revenants as they rounded up the living and the dead alike. He frowned as he saw the symbol of the withered tree on their robes; these were Akari necromancers. Miro now knew how Sentar had built his army so quickly.
The pile of corpses where Miro had been thrown was taken away, and soon every dead body was on its way out of the city.
"Let the living walk," a necromancer called. "It saves us carrying them down to the plain."
Miro watched as a long train of terrified Gokani was marched in single file out the open gates. He felt tears in his eyes, but couldn't tell if they were from rage or frustration. There were many who'd hidden in their homes until the very end: old men and their weeping wives, white-faced young women with babes, and small children carrying toddlers smaller still. Any one of those children could have been Tomas.
Outside the city Miro saw an auburn-haired woman, her face scratched and bleeding, help an elderly man stand back up after a stumble.
Amber!
Miro wanted to scream, and his fists clenched and unclenched. He thought about the Emir's beliefs, and discussions he'd had with Ella and High Lord Rorelan. He thought about the gentle words of the long-bearded healer.
Miro now knew the value of lore, and he knew the power of violence. He would have given anything for a zenblade and armoursilk, anything in the world, and he would have fought like a demon to free his wife and these other people from the terrible fate that awaited them.
As it was, he could only watch and wait.
The prisoners formed an interminably long line, and Miro turned his gaze to the plains below the city so he could see where Amber was being taken.
The sun would set in an hour, and as the clear day ended in a radiant sunset more beautiful than any painting, Miro reflected on the last time he'd seen the sun set, casting its rays on this wall. He couldn't believe so much had happened in such a short space of time.
The army still occupied the area below the city, spotted with siege towers that hadn't even been used, but there was also a new encampment in the hills. A dozen strange cylinders stood beside a series of tents.
"He's taking the vats with him as he goes," Miro muttered as he saw them. "He's going to start the killing tonight."
The long file of prisoners led to the cluster of tents. Miro assumed that even with so many vats it would take time to process so many. They would probably deal with the corpses first, simply because the living didn't have rot to contend with.
Miro thought with a sickening feeling that extracting the essence he needed and raising more revenants to add to his army would delay Sentar's march more than taking a strong city like Wengwai.
Miro took a bearing on the prisoners' location as the sun went down. He then went back into the deserted city to find the items he needed.
He would try to free Amber this very night.
~
MIRO crept towards the vats. His only blessing was that with so many men at his disposal, Sentar was confident, and his necromancers were more concerned with the grisly tasks he set them than with placing sentries and devising watch rotations.
It was a dark night, and though the moon was up black clouds passed across it so that the night alternated between darkness and light. Miro was forced to time his movements to the periods when the moon's glowing circle was obscured.
Screams and moans filled the air, covering the sounds he made. Scurrying behind a hill he saw it on the other side: a tall cylinder, high as a tree; a vat.
Miro checked the items he had with him. At his waist he carried the fine but plain sword the Emir had given him, and over his shoulder was a small satchel. It had taken time, but he'd eventually found a thin quill, an empty glass jar, and a set of gloves.
Lord of the Sky, he hoped this would work.
He popped his head over the hill and quickly ducked back. If he sped over the hill he would be covered by the vat itself on the downward slope.
His heart hammering, Miro launched himself forward, slipping and sliding on the far side of the hill as it fell away more than he'd expected. He rolled to the earth with a thump, his scabbard hitting the bottle in his satchel and shattering the night air with a loud clunk. Miro held his breath as he
used the vat to hide himself, waiting to see if anyone had heard.
He waited several long seconds before he was satisfied no alarm had been raised.
Miro examined the vat. He wasn't interested in the lore that enabled it to extract essence from corpses, nor was he looking for the door in which they were thrown. He finally found what he was after: a thin tube that led to a small steel barrel.
The barrel was the size of a man's head. Miro wondered how many innocent people the self-styled Lord of the Night murdered to fill the vessel with essence. It must number in the thousands.
Miro took the gloves out of the satchel and put them on. They were made of cloth, which meant they would only prevent the slightest of spills from reaching Miro's skin, but they were all he could find.
He unscrewed the cap from the barrel, which allowed him to remove the glass tube.
Miro's hurt left shoulder gave a sudden spasm of pain. An infinitesimal droplet of black liquid fell from the end of the glass tube onto Miro's left hand.
Miro hurriedly pushed the tube away, letting it fall to the ground, before looking at his hand in horror. What should he do? Should he take the glove off? What if he took the glove off and made a second spill? What if he didn't take it off and the essence worked its way through the fabric, worming its way to his skin…
Miro hastily tugged the glove off his left hand, throwing it into a clump of grass.
He put his left hand behind his back to remove the temptation to use it. With his shoulder hurt, the risk was too great.
Miro turned to the barrel. He picked it up and felt its weight; perhaps half full. He took the wide-mouthed jar from his satchel and held it between his knees.
This was another dangerous moment. Miro tilted the barrel until its opening was over the mouthpiece of the jar. He tipped oily black liquid, the deadliest substance in existence, into the vessel he'd brought. He almost tipped too much, and brought the barrel back down with a quick moan of fear.
The Path of the Storm (The Evermen Saga, Book Three) Page 28
