“But khalifa—may you live forever. Didn’t you send for me?” She glanced around, clearly frightened by the darkened room.
Kallia put her hand on the girl’s arm. “I have no time for that. Please, listen carefully. What I’m about to do, you must say was an accident. It is important. Can you do that?”
Chloye eyes widened in fear. She shrank back as if afraid that Kallia meant her harm. The khalifa picked up the brazier, carried it to the bedding and tipped it over on the blankets. Flames spilled out, nearly stifling in the blankets before catching hold. Kallia waited while the flames spread. Chloye looked terrified, but said nothing.
When the fire jumped to the curtain, Kallia threw her wash basin on the bedding, dousing some of the flames, then cried out, “Help! Fire!”
Men rushed into the room and attacked the fire with cloaks and swords. It had grown too large for simple measures, choking the room in smoke. Men ran for buckets of water. Others dragged the two women into the hall. Mol Khah came striding down the hallway, alerted to the news. He saw Kallia and drew his sword.
“It was an accident,” she pleaded.
He eyed her for a moment, then glared at the serving girl. “Well?” he demanded of her.
The girl shrank under his glare, and Kallia thought she would be betrayed. What a fool she had been to take such a chance.
At last the serving girl looked up. “I’m sorry. I tried to put in the herbs and tipped over the crucible, and then I couldn’t put it out in time, so the khalifa—”
Mol Khah pushed them aside in disgust and looked into the room. Kallia, surprised at the girl’s initiative, squeezed her hand in gratitude.
An oak beam crashed from the ceiling, scattering flames through the room. A soldier cried out, pinned in the smoke and fire. Mol Khah ignored him, but shouted instructions to the men arriving with buckets of water. Kallia slipped back from the chaos, then turned and ran.
She met soldiers in the hallways, running toward the fire, and shouted at anybody else she saw to run and help. Let the confusion spread and attract people as long as possible. When she reached the tower rooms, three men met her with drawn swords.
“What are you doing?” one of them demanded. “The pasha said—”
“Never mind what he said,” she said, panting. “There is a fire. He wants everyone to help.”
The man who’d spoken looked at her suspiciously. They made no move to leave, but put away their swords. “Fire? What kind of fire?”
She ran to the window and threw open the curtains. “That kind of fire, you fools.”
From the tower, they could see across the gardens, where smoke poured from two of the windows. Men and women rushed through the gardens with buckets of water, throwing them through the windows. Some staggered backwards, overcome by smoke. There was not yet any organization to the efforts in the gardens, unlike the order Mol Khah had imposed inside the buildings. Convinced at last, the soldiers turned and ran. Kallia stood panting for a moment.
“Well done khalifa—may you live forever.”
She turned to see Saldibar standing behind her. How he had climbed the stairs past the guards, indeed, where he had hidden while she ordered the men down to the fire, she didn’t know.
“Where did you come from?
“I can’t tell you all of my secrets. Look, there’s no way we’ll get out of the palace that way. Come. Five more minutes and Mol Khah will discover something worse than a fire.”
They hurried from the tower, making their way toward the gardens. A soldier spotted them, and recognizing the khalifa, rushed to intercept them.
“You!” he shouted at her. “The pasha—”
Before he could finish, Saldibar sprang forward, pulling a knife from his robes. The man grabbed for his sword, shouting in alarm. But before he could bring his weapon to bear, Saldibar plunged his knife in the man’s gut, then rammed it underneath his rib cage. The man stared in wide-eyed surprise, opened his mouth, and slumped to the ground. Saldibar pulled out the knife and they ran. Kallia’s stomach turned at the sight of the soldier still twitching where they’d left him.
Saldibar led her to a statue of a winged-horse, overlooking the rose garden. Kallia had sat astride the horse as a young girl, and pretended that she was riding to the cloud castles, escorted by a flock of griffins. “Help me,” Saldibar said, leaning his weight against the statue.
She pushed, and to her surprise, it rocked onto its side, revealing a dark gap underneath. They redoubled their efforts, and the statue tipped over. A staircase dropped into the ground. Lights flickered below, men with torches.
Kallia and Saldibar climbed down into the catacomb, while the men pulled on an iron handle on the underside of the winged horse, pulling it back into place. They stood underground.
She looked at the passageway through which they walked. It stretched ten feet overhead and six feet in width. “No wonder assassins find it so easy to infiltrate the palace.”
Saldibar looked embarrassed. “I built the staircase and hid it beneath the statue myself. But the passageway is far older. Part of the old palace. Come.”
She followed, but her interest still wasn’t satisfied. “What old palace?”
“Syrmarria also had a palace on this site.”
“But I was always told that nothing remained of the old city but fragments of the old wall and a few broken towers,” Kallia said.
“Nothing remained on the surface, no, but many of the old roads and foundations lay buried beneath the rubble. Balsalom was built on top of this rubble. When I excavated the statuary garden for your father, my workmen discovered this passageway; I ordered it covered at first, realizing that it led in and out of the palace and provided a risk to the khalif. But when I explored these catacombs, I discovered their true origin.”
He might be right. Kallia saw side doorways, some blockaded by rubble, others opening into dark holes. They entered what looked like a courtyard, partially excavated, with wooden beams propping up the ceiling.
They traveled by torch light for several minutes before emerging through a door into a small house. A man sat on the floor, weaving a rug. When they stepped into the room, he sprang to his feet, leaving his loom. It was Fenerath, the guildmaster. Somehow they’d climbed in elevation until they’d come against the back wall of a house.
“Hurry,” he said. Fenerath opened a chest on the floor, retrieving a nondescript brown robe that he tossed to Kallia.
She looked down at her robes of fine silk embroidered with geometric designs and knew she would be recognized immediately if she wore these clothes. The men turned their backs to give her privacy while she changed. But she still felt unclean from what had happened the night she had married the dark wizard. It reminded her too much of when Mol Khah had torn her old clothes from her body. So instead, she simply pulled the robe Fenerath gave her over her other clothing. They went outside.
The sound of battle filled the air. They stood in the midst of the Weavers Quarter, three hundred yards from the wall on the north side of the city. Men fought on top of the city wall with swords and maces. The Veyrians in black and crimson had the upper hand, better armed and equipped and commanding the better strategic position. Men from the watchman guild streamed up the stairways to the wall, but many were armed only with truncheons or short swords. And Cragyn’s men didn’t panic, but gathered into tight clumps that drove back the watchmen.
Four men battled a giant on the other side of the street. The watchmen were armed with pikes, but the giant swung a cudgel and kept the men at bay. He knocked one to the ground, then finished the man with a single, crushing blow. Three more men joined the fight, but another giant came running down the street.
The road on which they stood led directly to the palace, sitting atop the hill, where it could overlook the city. Several small battles raged in front of the palace gates. The garrison inside had already discovered the revolt and grappled with the watchmen, trying to force them out of the way so they could get into
the streets. Scores of watchmen rushed to plug the gates, but more Veyrians joined the battle every moment; unless the watchmen secured the walls soon and brought reinforcements, the enemy garrison would break from the palace and the battle would end in defeat.
A roar sounded in the distance. She recognized the sound immediately. Cragyn’s Hammer. So they hadn’t taken the siege weapon; it battered at the walls.
All around, she saw evidence that her plan failed. There were hundreds of watchmen, even people from the city who’d gathered old weapons and kitchen knifes to overthrow the hated enemy. But they had no leader, and in the face of Veyre’s overwhelming superiority in discipline and arms, the revolt was doomed. She saw the looks of horror on Fenerath and Saldibar’s faces, mirrored on the walls and the streets, on the faces of the people holding Mol Khah’s men inside the palace.
She knew what she must do. The time had come to stop hiding, to stop letting others sacrifice their lives while she kept herself safe. She stripped off the brown cloak that Fenerath told her to wear. Gathering her strength, Kallia ran toward the men at the palace gates. Behind her, Saldibar cried for her to stop.
Guardsmen looked up from their fighting as she approached. Murmurs of recognition passed through the combatants on both sides. Kallia grabbed the scimitar of a fallen man and pushed her way into the men at the palace gates.
Saldibar caught up with her, and took her by the arm. “You can’t do that. You’ll be killed.”
When she answered, it was as loud as she could speak. “I am going to live or die with Balsalom. Now move out of my way. Hold the gap!” she cried to the men ahead of her. “Don’t let them through.”
Shouts passed through the group. News of her presence passed to the walls, to the battles in the streets. Resolve stiffened all around her. Saldibar looked at her with a mixture of surprise and admiration.
She meant her words, pressing toward the front of the battle. But the guardsmen moved to block her from the fighting. She shouted for them to let her past, but they refused to obey.
Kallia had no illusions what would happen if she reached the fighting. She had been trained in swordsmanship, and had learned enough to know that she would be quickly overwhelmed by a larger, better trained opponent. And should she reach the fighting, she would be attacked immediately.
Mol Khah stood on the other side of the gates, snarling instructions to his men in the palace courtyard. The gates hadn’t been built with more than cursory defensive strategies. The road sloped steeply over flagstones, treacherous footing for horses mounting a charge.
Cragyn’s pasha cleared his men out of the way to bring something from the back. Mammoths. The beasts trumpeted in near panic at the din and the fire at their back, goaded toward the palace gates. In the darkness, it was impossible to see how many. Kallia didn’t have enough men to hold the gap against those beasts, and both sides knew it.
But at last, the battle on the city walls turned. Balsalomians took control of towers, and from here, hundreds more guardsmen poured onto the walls. Better arms and armor fell into their hands with every fallen Veyrian. Soon, sheer numbers overwhelmed the enemy. Victory secured, the guardsmen came down from the city walls to bolster Kallia’s force, fighting through the skirmishes continuing throughout the city streets.
Mol Khah moved enough men out of the way to march his mammoths. He had eight or ten that she could see, heads and trunks covered with armor, tusks capped with iron crowns. Mammoth drivers shouted and drove their beasts forward with handheld iron goads. The beasts lumbered toward the gates.
The Balsalomians blanched, and a ripple passed through the men in front. If they gave, the battle would be lost. Hundreds of well-trained Veyrians would fan through the city in phalanxes and cavalry units to crush all opposition.
But it was a critical time for Mol Khah’s forces, as well. The fire she’d set had served more purpose than a mere ruse. It still burned on the edge of the gardens, boiling smoke into the air. The enemy had turned his attention away from the fire and to breaking out of the palace before it was too late. Which meant, however, that if he didn’t break out, the fire might be too large to contain and burn the entire palace to the ground.
“Hold them!” Kallia cried. “Hold them!”
The cry passed through the men. “Hold them!”
Spears lowered, Balsalomians stood in the way. The mammoths trumpeted and charged toward the gap. The beasts were upon them.
Chapter Twelve
Mammoths scattered Kallia’s men like the wind scatters leaves. Breaking from the darkness, they swept guardsmen out of the way with iron-tipped tusks, trampled screaming foes beneath their feet. Men attacked with spears and swords, but these were gnats against the beast’s thick hides. Mol Khah’s men stormed into the gap left by the mammoth’s charge.
“Hold them!” she cried again.
Her words stiffened the men in the mammoth’s path. The lead beast met a solid wall of spears. It drove into them, enraged by the stinging attacks all around it and swinging its head. Crushing the men in front, the mammoth stumbled to its knees, a spear plunging into its right eye. Still fighting through the gates, the other mammoths slowed at this new obstacle. One of the mammoths further back trumpeted in rage and stormed past the others, and Kallia saw that the Veyrians on its back had been speared and knocked free, leaving the beast riderless. It tore through the ranks, widening the wedge.
“Kallia!” one guardsman shouted, raising his sword overhead. “For the khalifa!”
He charged at the mammoth, then plunged his sword into the creature’s underbelly. The mammoth lurched to one side, sweeping the man away with his trunk and crushing him underfoot. Emboldened by his display of courage, other men swarmed over the mammoth. It bellowed in fear and confused pain and fell.
Another mammoth broke through the ranks, but its rider slumped to one side, dead. The other mammoths fell where they stood, taking many with them. Mol Khah’s men poured into the wedge cleared by the mammoths, attacking furiously to further open the breach.
But Kallia’s men had held the line until reinforcements arrived. The watchmen had freed those remnants of Balsalom’s army not yet led to Veyre in chains. These newcomers bolstered Kallia’s forces with courage and discipline, and many of them were well armed, with weapons seized from the prison garrison. Although weakened with hunger, they fought with a ferocity that stunned the Veyrians and watchmen alike.
Kallia’s forces drove the enemy back inside the palace courtyard. She thought for one, amazing moment, that they might win the battle outright.
“The gates!” Mol Khah shouted.
The enemy surged in a final, desperate assault, driving Kallia’s forces outside the courtyard. The gates swung shut, and those few Balsalomians still inside withdrew to avoid being trapped. A few minor skirmishes continued on the streets, and fires burned in the Slaves Quarter, but they had won. The city was theirs. Kallia’s men let out a great cry.
Victory had come at a terrible price. Hundreds lay dead on the streets and the city walls. Others had died throughout the city, including many noncombatants, slaughtered in their homes. But had the battle stretched into the night, Mol Khah would have destroyed half the city, she was sure of it.
Saldibar found her outside the palace gates. He looked ready to scold her, but she grabbed the older man in an embrace and laughed. “We did it!”
Saldibar’s robes were soaked with blood. He held a scimitar in hand, nicked and stained. He nodded grimly. “For now, yes, but we still need to take the palace.”
Cragyn’s Hammer fired again to the east. Kallia said, “And the siege engine. How many men guard that thing?”
“Maybe three hundred. They are well armed and have fortified their camp in the Tombs of the Kings.”
Kallia eyed the rising sun, “We’ll take the Hammer first, then the palace. If they destroy the city walls, we’ll never hold Balsalom when the dark wizard returns. Gather the pashas and the captains of the guardsmen.”
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By nightfall, Balsalom raised some four thousand men. Kallia guessed they had four days before Balsalom was attacked again, so she sent men to comb the city, hoping to put together twenty thousand more. These would be untrained and used only as a last defense should the city walls fall. Kallia had only to remind them what had happened when Syrmarria fell at the end of the Tothian Wars. She knew the story from her tutor and the old books in the library.
Syrmarria had stood for a thousand years on the east end of Aristonia. Its wealth was legendary. It was said that the khalif of Syrmarria bathed in asses’ milk every morning, and never drank twice from the same golden goblet. While the bulk of Toth’s army savaged Eriscoba west of the mountains, Syrmarria withstood a siege, protected by a wizard named Memnet the Great. After four months of siege, the enemy broke into the city by subterfuge, threw open the gates and let Toth’s army pour into the city. For eight days, the enemy sacked Syrmarria, murdering, raping, plundering, and finally burning it to the ground.
She spread this story wherever she went, hoping to stiffen resolve against a similar fate.
The enemy’s bombard pounded the city walls the next day. The walls stood the first several bombardments, but weakened by late afternoon. If they couldn’t silence the weapon, it would open a breach by the time Cragyn returned and if that happened, the dark wizard’s forces would overwhelm the city.
Kallia met with Saldibar, guild representatives, the three surviving pashas of her army, and four captains of the guardsmen. There was a surprise waiting for her when she reached Fenerath’s Hall, the guildmaster’s manor.
She recognized the tall man immediately. “Whelan.”
He smiled and she sensed something behind that smile: pain, worry, fear, but also relief. “We heard you’d died.”
Kallia smiled. “I’m still very much alive, although the dark wizard will soon wish he’d killed me when he had the chance. So, have you returned as my friend, or as a spy?”
Whelan looked pained. “I never spied against you, my queen. Only against the dark wizard. We needed to know how much he’d infiltrated the city.”
The Dark Citadel Page 19
