The owl landed about ten feet away. It stood motionless in the darkness. Darik had no idea an owl could be that tall, it stood as high as a man. No, he realized it was a man, not an owl at all. He looked around but the owl was nowhere to be seen. Or were the owl and the man the same person? Darik bent and picked up the book and walked toward the man to get a better look, too surprised to be afraid.
The man leaned against a thick walking stick. His hands, grizzled with age, gripped it firmly. He eyed Darik for a moment, then turned, shambled his way into the trees and disappeared.
Darik returned to the aerie, putting the book away with no temptation to read it ever again, then made his way to his bed. He lay awake for some time, trembling at how close he’d come to betraying his friends and his queen. At last it faded, like a bad dream.
#
Clouds marred the sky the next day, threatening a late-summer thunderstorm. Flockheart went outside and sniffed at the air for a few minutes before declaring that they would fly. He’d made an early morning excursion to leave Scree, the griffin fledglings, and the steel tome, the latter at Darik’s urging, in the care of another griffin rider who lived nearby. They ate a hurried breakfast of cold venison stew, then saddled up the griffins.
“Whelan is riding Joffa,” Flockheart told his daughter. “If you want, the boy can ride on Brasson with me.”
“He can ride with me,” Daria said, quickly. “I don’t mind.” Her father looked at her with a curious expression and she blushed and looked away, worrying herself over Averial’s saddlebags.
Flockheart turned his attention to Darik, fixing him with an uncomfortable look that was vaguely predatory. Then the moment passed, and Flockheart looked to his mount.
They flew down the mountainside, low to the trees to avoid detection. In a few minutes, they entered the hills, passing over farms and small villages. Faces turned from fields and pastures to stare. Darik waved. A young boy, no older than seven or eight, ran through a pasture, abandoning his goats to wave and shout in excitement. Darik leaned forward to Daria. “You don’t come this way often, do you?”
She shook her head. “Father keeps us in the mountains where it’s safe. Have you been down there? Have you been to the cities?”
“I was born in Balsalom, the greatest city in the western khalifates.”
“You were?” Her voice was full of wonder. “Tell me what it’s like.”
Darik remembered what Whelan had told him last night about Daria’s innocence. “It is filthy and full of people. Some people are slaves, told what they must do and where they must go. Others seek after money every day, ruining anyone who stands in their way. You don’t want to go there.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “I would still like to see it some day. Maybe not to live, but to visit.” She grinned. “Do you want to fly?”
“What? I can’t fly her.”
“Sure you can.”
“But what about your father?” Darik asked. Whelan and Flockheart soared ahead, rarely giving a backward glance.
“Oh, he won’t like it. But I’ll be behind you and take over if anything goes wrong. Do you want to try it?”
Darik laughed, a little nervous but excited. “Yes, let’s.”
Averial dropped like a stone to the ground, lurching Darik’s stomach. She swooped upwards just before she hit, then came to a soft landing in an empty field. It took Darik and Daria a moment to switch places. Darik felt too exposed sitting in front with nothing to hold onto but the thin tether, hardly proper reigns at all. Daria checked the cords tying him to the griffin, before securing herself behind Darik.
“Ska!” he shouted, digging his heels into the griffin’s haunches. She jumped into the air with a flap of wings. The ground dropped away below. Darik shouted with joy. The griffin lurched to one side.
“Let up on the tether!” Daria said.
He relaxed his grip and nudged the griffin along. In a few minutes, they’d caught up with the others, soaring a comfortable distance behind.
Daria wrapped her hands around his waist and leaned close. He heard her breathing in his ear as she looked over his shoulder and felt the press of her body against his back. He’d never felt anything so wonderful as soaring through the air atop this powerful beast, with a beautiful, wonderful girl holding him tight.
All too soon, Flockheart turned around and spotted them. He slowed Brasson until Darik and Daria caught up to him, then gestured toward the ground. Daria shook her head in a protest.
“We don’t have time for that,” Flockheart shouted.
Reluctantly, Darik brought Averial to the ground as soon as they found a suitable place. Daria shrugged as they changed places. “My father is distrusting of outsiders. I don’t know why.”
Darik thought he guessed why. Flockheart had obviously seen more of the outside world than had his daughter. “Thank you anyway. Maybe I’ll come back and you can give me lessons.”
She smiled shyly, then climbed in front.
They reached the Desolation of Toth. It looked even more bleak from above than it had from the Tothian Way. Perhaps because he could see just how far it stretched, bleak and gray. A smell wafted from the ground making the griffin snort.
After a few minutes, Averial flagged. Whelan and Flockheart’s mounts, too, lost speed and altitude at an alarming rate.
“What’s the matter with her?” Daria asked, sounding afraid. “What is that down there?”
“Take her higher,” Darik urged. “Hurry. We have to get higher.”
She nudged Averial hard, pulling back on the tether. The griffin drooped lower, failing to respond. Now visibly frightened, Daria leaned forward and whispered to her mount, rubbing its neck, urging it to gather strength. Invigorated by her love, the griffin found new strength and flapped its wings harder. They climbed slowly higher, at last rising so far that the foul stench no longer reached them. Whelan and Flockheart too, rose higher. Breathing heavily, Darik thought what might have happened had he still been riding Averial. They’d have dropped into the Desolation.
Flockheart rode Brasson back to his daughter. “Are you all right?” he asked, face pinched with concern. She nodded wearily, still looking frightened.
They flew east as fast as they could, at last drawing free of the Desolation’s grip. They had made incredible time, much faster than they could have on horse or camel. Still, they had ridden away daylight and the sun set by the time they reached Balsalom. Daria gasped at the sight of the city.
Darik also drew in a sharp breath, but in fear. Fires burned, boiling smoke into the sky. Even from this distance, he could see fighting, and dead bodies littering the streets. But before he could pick out details, they dropped to the ground.
They landed the exhausted griffins in the midst of the Tombs of the Kings. The animals heaved and the muscles on their backs quivered. Darik too felt worn, as if he’d spent the day on a galloping horse. He stepped away from the griffin and breathed heavily. Whelan and Flockheart landed nearby.
“Thank you,” Whelan said to Flockheart. “I won’t forget your help.”
Flockheart said, “How long should we wait?”
“Two days, no more. If you see danger, flee. We’ll find our own way back if necessary. Hunt your griffins only at night. There might be wasps in the city.”
Whelan grabbed a satchel from the saddle bags. He slung Soultrup over his shoulder, and buckled a smaller sword around Darik’s waist. “Let’s go.” Darik made to follow, staring at the smoke pouring from the city.
Daria touched his arm to get his attention. “Be careful, Darik.”
He turned belatedly. His worry about his sister and the city had overcome any other thoughts. “I will. Thank you.”
They turned. Balsalom’s walls beckoned.
Chapter Eleven
Kallia decided that the time had come to retake Balsalom the same day that Cragyn’s forces assaulted Montcrag. The dark wizard hadn’t left Balsalom undefended. On the contrary, he left hundreds of h
is best troops, giants, and several mammoths. What worried the khalifa, however, was the bombard. Mol Khah set it up on the west side of the city and spent the better part of a day testing it on the Tombs of the Kings.
His men, most of them Veyrians, sweated as they assembled and loaded the bombard, and not from the heat. They feared the tombs and the wights they worried might hide in the crypts and catacombs hidden beneath the sand. Mol Khah brought Kallia to the tombs to watch the destruction. She was not afraid of the dead kings.
Kallia remembered her tutor taking her to the tombs as a child. “Foolishness,” Gustau had told her all those years ago when she asked why the tombs had been built. They’d ridden atop sedan chairs carried by slaves, but even the modest effort of walking amongst the tombs had soaked Gustau’s robes with sweat. Perhaps if he’d eaten less and walked more, he wouldn’t have found the trip so arduous.
“What do you mean, foolishness?” she had asked.
“The kings tried to hide from the Harvester. They built towers and mastabas and wrapped them in spells, made traps and secret passageways for their spirits to escape while the Harvester slept. And should they be discovered, they buried themselves with treasure to bribe their freedom.” He snorted. “All the treasure did was attract grave robbers.”
Kallia didn’t know whether Gustau knew what he was talking about or not. She suspected there was some truth to it, but certainly that wasn’t the entire story. The tombs had captured her imagination in any event. Remnants of the old city: the vast expense of the tombs hinted at wealth rivaling the khalifates.
And now, Mol Khah showed off his new toy by destroying these tombs. The siege weapon—Cragyn’s Hammer, the pasha called it—took several hours to assemble. It consisted of two thirty-foot iron troughs, bound together with iron hoops. Half a dozen giants and twenty men hoisted the upper half of the weapon onto the lower half. Two blacksmiths heated the hoops to expand them, then slipped them around the troughs and doused them with water. When finished, the weapon looked nothing more than an enormous iron pipe sitting on a carriage, the cart also built on the site.
“So what is it?” she asked.
Mol Khah smiled in that wolfish way of his. “Watch and you’ll find out.”
Men busied themselves about the front end of the weapon, but she stopped paying attention. Her father once had a man at court who spent years building a massive ballista that could fire arrows powerful enough to cut through three men. It could hurl its missile over a city wall. But it proved difficult to load, prone to break-downs, and thus of limited effectiveness. Yes, several of these might do damage to massed troops, but in most cases massed troops didn’t line up for the two or three days necessary to put the ballistas together.
A terrific explosion thundered across the plain. Black smoke bellowed from the end of Cragyn’s Hammer. An instant later, something whistled overhead, then struck the obelisk behind them. Black stone sprayed outward; the obelisk teetered for a long moment, then collapsed to the ground, with a cloud of dust.
“It works!” Mol Khah exulted.
“What happened?” she asked, overwhelmed by its power.
“Magicks beyond your comprehension, woman.” He clenched a leather-gloved fist in triumph. “No castle or city wall can stand before Cragyn’s Hammer.”
No, she thought with mounting concern. Nothing could. And that included Balsalom. Mol Khah wouldn’t leave the weapon unguarded. If she moved tonight, a sizeable garrison and this weapon would remain outside the city to cause mischief. It had taken long enough to put together the infernal weapon that he might well leave it here until the time came to move it west along the Tothian Way.
Mol Khah spent the rest of the day shooting his weapon, rejoicing like a child with a new toy. It took two hours after every use to clean out the tube and ready it for another shot. The iron balls cast by the weapon demolished some of the most beautiful monuments in the Tombs of the Kings.
Afterwards, Kallia retreated to her rooms and considered. One of Saldibar’s spies, an old slave woman who came to empty her chamber pot in the morning, passed along the news of a second army of several thousand men and horse marching west from Kilgalah. They would arrive in a few days. Saldibar didn’t know if they would bolster Balsalom’s garrison or continue west to join Cragyn, but Kallia didn’t dare let them draw close enough to throw themselves in the fray. No, she would have to risk Cragyn’s Hammer, hoping Mol Khah left insufficient men to guard it.
After she took dinner, Kallia opened the curtains and lit a single candle, the signal to act. And then she waited, counting the bells from the merchants tower. It was eight bells. Two more hours.
The city was quieter than a few days earlier. Mol Khah’s men had released all of the crickets in the palace. They silenced street musicians in the city, even going so far as to destroy instruments and banish them from Balsalom. Cragyn’s army craved silence. They had not yet, however, quieted the guilds’ bell towers.
Nine bells chimed and her heart began to pound. Another hour and Saldibar would come for her, the signal would go out to begin the revolt. Her stomach churned in anticipation. Once things happened, they would happen quickly.
Mol Khah had allowed her use of the tower apartments again. The garden rooms kept her from seeing the city, but they also stood amidst dozens of other rooms: apartments, kitchens, state rooms and servants’ quarters. But the tower rooms sat on the fifth and sixth level of a tower with a single entrance to guard. Here she would stay until Cragyn’s pasha summoned her.
She waited impatiently. Too soon, the door opened. She turned, half-expecting to see Saldibar come early. Instead, Mol Khah stood in the doorway, a long scimitar in hand. Blood clotted the blade.
“Come,” he ordered. “Quickly.”
Kallia’s stomach clenched. “What happened? What are you doing with that sword?”
He strode to where she sat next to the window and grabbed her by the arm. “Assassins, you fool. What did you think? Two men from Ter, angry that the master killed that wretched brother of yours. The second man is confessing everything on the wheel right now, the first, regrettably, did not live that long.” He dragged her toward the door “There might be others inside the palace. You’ll be safer in the garden rooms.”
So it wasn’t Saldibar’s blood staining his sword, as she’d feared. But this coincidence ruined everything. The revolt would begin, but she would be left inside the palace. And Saldibar, rather than leaving her to die, might foolishly call off the attack. Mol Khah would savage the city.
“No!” she said, pulling away. “If there are assassins, I’m better off here.” She made a quick decision that she knew she might regret. “The garden rooms are riddled with secret passageways. It’s more dangerous.”
He eyed her with a sideways glance, hesitating. In the distance, the merchants tower rang. She counted. One bell, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Eleven. One extra chime, unnoticeable unless you counted. And throughout the city, men did count. The signal had come, the revolt began.
Mol Khah decided. “No, I’ve got a hundred men guarding the garden rooms. Secret passageways or no, and you will show me where these are, all of them, you will be safer below.”
He dragged her away, and her heart sank. He led her down the stairs, where two armed men joined them. From here, the dark wizard’s vizier led her to the garden rooms. A second frightening thought crossed her mind. Mol Khah’s men would be on the lookout for more assassins. He would station someone in the tower rooms to see if anyone came. And someone would. Saldibar. She had to warn him.
A desperate idea came to her. Twenty or thirty men stood outside the doors of the garden apartments, ready to protect her from assassins. She counted them quickly in her mind.
As Mol Khah threw open the door to her rooms, she let panic slip into her voice. “No! Don’t kill me!”
“What?” he snorted. He glanced back at his men. “I’m not going to kill you.”
“Yes you are,” she c
ried, struggling against his grip. She appealed to the men standing outside the doors. “Don’t you see what he’s doing? He’s bringing me here so an assassin can find me and kill me. Then he’ll claim he tried to prevent it.”
The soldiers shuffled nervously at her theatrics. None would act, but that wasn’t her intent.
“Let me go!” she cried, striking at Mol Khah’s face with her free hand. And then, as she had hoped, his temper flared.
He jerked her around and threw her to the floor. She made no effort to protect herself, but let her face slam into the flagstones. Her vision blanked for a moment when her head hit.
“I’m not going to kill you!” he raged. He dragged to her feet and threw her toward the bed pillows. Lights swam in her head. “Now shut up before I change my mind.”
He turned to storm away, but she said, “Wait, please.” He turned. Blood trickled from her nose, running down her lip. “Tea. Please, have someone bring tea for my head. Medicinal tea, please.”
Mol Khah grimaced and clenched his teeth. She could see that he wanted to strike her again. “Very well,” he said at last. He slammed the door behind him.
She turned and looked at her surroundings. As she’d feared, and this had necessitated her plan, the room was stripped of furnishings, including candles, lamps, or anything else that might provide light. It was almost completely dark in the room, once they shut the door. Saldibar would reach the tower rooms within the next few minutes and panic when he didn’t find her.
Kallia waited anxiously for someone to bring her the tea. It came a few minutes later, and she was relieved at who brought it to her, not an unknown physic, but a servant girl.
She’d seen the girl before. Her name was Chloye. The girl’s mother’s sister had lived in Kallia’s father’s harem; both women were purchased from a caravan of slavers. Chloye had bright red hair, attesting to her Eriscoban heritage. She set down the tea and the burner and brazier on which to cook the healing herbs.
“Never mind that, Chloye,” Kallia said, rising to her feet as soon as the door shut behind them. They were alone in the room.
The Dark Citadel Page 18
