“Please, my lord,” a woman begged. “We were only trying to save our children. We meant no harm to the war.”
The woman clutched a boy of ten or eleven, who clung to her waist with his face buried in her robes. Toth put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and the child trembled.
“This one,” he said to his guards.
The woman wailed as the guards tore the child away from her. They pitched his flailing, screaming body over the edge of the tower. He fell two hundred feet and landed with a thud against the flagstones below. A surge of power flowed into Toth’s body, and he opened his mouth in a sigh at the pleasure of it. More power came from the screaming prisoners, their terror like wine on his lips, intoxicating and warming.
King Toth could not remember the time before he had become the dark wizard, and in truth, he was so much more than one person, he was the amalgamation of all of the wizards and warriors that had housed his soul throughout the ages, most recently Cragyn of the Order of the Wounded Hand, whose dabbling in necromancy had awakened Toth once again. He could feel their voices arguing within, vying for control of his body. But if he couldn’t remember what he had been, he knew what he must become: a god. The equal and even master of the Brothers, the one to find and defeat the Harvester himself.
He found his next victim. It was a young man, with a long, sorrowful expression. He was holding hands with a young woman with deep, brown eyes, a look of such pain in her expression that Toth could see that she had already suffered great loss. He could instinctively tell that she had lost a child or parent, and that the young man was her brother, and her only surviving family.
“This man is next,” he told the guards.
They seized the young man and dragged him from his sister, who begged and pleaded, offering the dark wizard anything he wished if he would only spare her brother. Toth was pitiless. The young man’s body soon lay broken and dead on the flagstones next to the child.
More power surged through Toth’s body. So close.
“I do this not out of cruelty,” he told the people when the screams had died into whimpers, “but out of love for my people. I will have the power to defeat death itself. There will be no disease, no famine, no bloodshed. The Harvester will be banished from the land, and all shall live forever. But first, I must defeat these enemies from the west. You and each of you must lend me what strength you are able. It is a terrible sacrifice, but I have no choice.”
He must have more power!
Whelan frightened him, as did the wizard Markal and his allies. Even Chantmer the Tall, who had turned against his order, was out there vying for power, not so much an enemy as a potential rival. Given time, Toth might have come to some understanding with the tall, arrogant wizard. But he had no time left. The khalifa of Balsalom, Kallia Saffa, carried his offspring, and though he had done his best to quicken its arrival and bring him a younger, stronger vessel, that would take more time still.
Then he had raised a mighty dragon in the mountains, only to see the griffin riders wound it and drive it into the desert. The dragon was now awakening, but could it both defeat the griffins and devastate Whelan’s army at the same time? Perhaps. But maybe not.
“I need more,” he said.
“My lord?” one of the guards asked.
“More pain. More suffering. I must have it all if I am to accomplish this terrible task.” He pointed. “Take that woman. And the old man with her. The baby there.”
More bodies pitched over the edge, one by one. The pain of the dying mingled with the terror of the diminishing number of survivors to fill him with power. He was wasting much of what they could give him—they could surrender so much more if brought into the throne room to slowly roast alive—but he needed power, and he needed it now.
As the pain of his victims surged into him, the Dark Citadel served the purpose for which it had been constructed. It focused his power and his reach, and he could feel across the Tothian Way. His gaze crossed the city gates, flew west over the remnant army of Pasha Ismail, trying to reach the safety of Veyre. He could have strengthened the weary men and horses to keep them out of Whelan’s grasp, but he couldn’t waste his precious strength.
His reach extended to Chalfea, Saltopolis, Effina, Kyf, Starnod, Ter, Balsalom. And then west, into the Desolation of Toth itself. Here lay the scene of Toth’s greatest victories—the murder of Memnet the Great and the destruction of Aristonia—but also the site of his most bitter defeats.
He could feel the blasted land all around him now, the ruins and the soil, once so fertile, but now dead and poisoned. He heard the voices of thousands upon thousands of wights, those lost souls who had been mindlessly wandering the desolation for four hundred years.
That remaining part of his consciousness that stood atop the Dark Citadel could hear the screams as his guards hurled one person after another to their deaths. Power flowed into him, greater and greater, so intoxicating that it made him swoon. The last of the fifty prisoners fell to his death, and the air was quiet except for the howling wind and the thunder of the waves crashing into the seawall.
Now. They have given me everything. It is time.
Atop the Dark Citadel, King Toth lifted his hands. “Suscitum mortuos. Educ illos iterum.” —Raise the dead. Bring them forth again.
The magic that had flowed into him these past minutes and weeks now gushed out like a spout of blood from a severed artery. It raced west to where his will lingered. And there his magic fell over that blasted, blighted land, where so many mindless spirits wandered in confusion.
And across the dead, ruined kingdom of Aristonia, a vast army of wights began to move as one. Men, horses, giants, mammoths—the dead of that land turned as one toward the eastern boundary of the Desolation of Toth. All of them marching to obey the command of the dark wizard.
-end-
From the Author
I hope you enjoyed The Warrior King. Book #5, War of Wizards, is now available for purchase.
Most of my books (and sales) are thrillers, but I enjoy writing fantasy novels as well. Of course, as a writer trying to make a living, I need to balance my interests with what people are willing to buy. If you would like to support my ability to write more stories in The Dark Citadel series, a quick review wherever you purchased the book helps new readers discover my work.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
The Warrior King (Book 4) Page 22
