The Free Kingdoms (Book 2)

by Michael Wallace

  At last he killed the young man, his final foe, and broke down the door. Saldibar stood in front of Kallia’s bedding, dagger in hand, shielding the khalifa. Toth smiled through his bloody mask.

  “My bride. Have you been seeing another man?”

  The khalifa paled, but Saldibar threw himself into the attack. The man’s quickness surprised him, even after the battle outside the doors. Ducking to the ground, he thrust upward into Toth’s underbelly. Toth pulled back, but not in time. A sharp pain stabbed through his kidney. Had the blade been poisoned, it might have stopped him, forced him back to Cragyn’s body or worse. Instead he pulled back and brought his blade to play.

  But Saldibar had already rolled to one side, and brought another thrust to the ribs. Toth lurched away from this new threat and swung his free fist around to knock the vizier off balance. Kallia threw hot oil from her bedside lamp at his face, momentarily distracting him from the grand vizier. It was long enough for Saldibar to roll away from his blade again and return to Toth’s kidneys.

  But he had just defeated eight men in the hallway, and could move faster than this new enemy. Toth slipped away from this blow and landed a punishing strike with his left fist, that sent Saldibar flying. Saldibar hit the wall with an awkward crumple and slumped to the ground, his neck turned at an angle. Dead.

  Toth regretted the lost opportunity to bind the man’s soul. He would have been a powerful specter to add to his army, and would have given him additional power over Balsalom. But Toth had more pressing needs. Men shouted outside the khalifa’s quarters.

  Kallia pulled a dagger from her bedding, but he swept this aside and hoisted her over his shoulder. Toth threw open the curtains, and prepared a spell on his lips, a spell to turn him into a dragon wasp and fly him from Balsalom, quarry in tow.

  And then, a disturbing development came from the direction of Eriscoba. The worst possible thing that could happen.

  His power, the Box of Souls, sat in a swamp beyond the mountains, together with Cragyn’s discarded body. He’d thought it safe from the Harvester amongst the ungathered wights of the Estmor, and none of the pathetic wizards of the Order could detect his souls.

  But then someone attacked the seat of his power. He might still have time to rescue his prize before it was destroyed, a prize worth more than the khalifa at the moment. Time enough for her later.

  He no longer had time to travel as a wasp. Only the pure speed of a wight would do. He bled from Mol Khah’s nostrils and raced west.

  Mol Khah staggered from his feet, consciousness returned, picking up his sword. King Toth’s weight had lifted from his mind so suddenly that he was left half-stunned. Wounds pricked at his body, wounds that would soon prove fatal if the men throwing open the door didn’t finish him first.

  But one last task remained to him, a task that he had more than enough strength to finish. The khalifa, source of all of his trouble, stood before him, stunned, but alive. He took up his sword and drove it toward her breast.

  But Mol Khah—indeed, Toth himself—had overlooked one small detail. Saldibar had turned himself over, head caved in, one eye destroyed, but neck unbroken and still alive. He flicked his wrist and buried his dagger in Mol Khah’s neck. Mol Khah fell to the ground, mind rebelling at the injustice of a world that would deny him one final, deserved revenge. And so died the only man who could have sorted out what had happened that night in Balsalom. Nobody would mourn his death.

  #

  Kallia summoned the physics over Saldibar’s objections. They gathered around him with grim faces while the palace guard milled outside the doors. Kallia cradled his head in her arms while the physics applied poultices to his face. Suppressing the lump that rose in her throat, afraid to let him know just how bad the wounds looked, Kallia told him that he would be all right, and stroked the other side of his face.

  He couldn’t speak, but the look in his eye told her everything. For you, my queen. Anything to serve you.

  “No, Saldibar,” she whispered. “Not this much. I never asked this.”

  But yes, she had. Just as she had asked her people to give their lives to retake Balsalom. Kallia didn’t understand this power, but she had used it again and again, much as Cragyn had used his power to turn the eastern Khalifates to war.

  “Please,” she begged the head physic. “Help him, please.”

  But they could do nothing more than feed Saldibar poppy seeds for the pain. She pleaded for them to do more, but there was nothing more to be done. They lifted him onto her bed pillows, then left them alone. Kallia sent away visitors, asking only that the guard be doubled outside her room and the palace be searched for the men who had freed Mol Khah.

  She lit candles and incense, knowing that these actions had no power to bind Saldibar’s soul to a ruined body, but wishing to observe the ritual anyway. She stayed by his side all night to dab the sweat from his brow, stroke his arm, and whisper soothing words. His breathing grew shallow. The sky outside the window lightened with the rising sun. At last, when the merchants tower chimed seven bells, Saldibar took one last, deep breath, and then lay still.

  “May the Harvester gather your soul to his bosom,” she whispered, his hand clenched in her own. “And may your memory stay close to mine.”

  At last she wept.

  Chapter Seven

  Markal left Nathaliey and Narud to their scheming in the library in order to find King Daniel. The king had bathed and dressed and ordered his chambers cleaned, but he was still too weak to be out. Instead of resting, however, he sat in the King’s Room high in Sanctuary Tower. Daniel signed decrees and issued levies to raise money for the war, but looked up to wave Markal into the room with a weary smile. Markal removed his shoes and took his place on a stone bench across from the dais.

  The King’s Room was to the Brotherhood what the Thorne Chamber was to the Order. Here, Daniel met in council with the Knights Temperate; here, he had sent men to search for the lost cities, and here he had sent knights to clear the eastern Wylde of bandits or battle stone giants in the mountains. King Daniel could never command the Brotherhood, just suggest. By the vows of Sanctuary, the Brotherhood served no man but their own conscience. Not the king; not Whelan.

  The room itself was spare to match the austere granite surface of Sanctuary Tower. This high up, at the narrow point, the room was the same width as the tower, about twenty feet in diameter. Tapestries depicted the battles and deeds of the Knights Temperate. A painting of a thorn tree beautified the ceiling. The floor, however, was bare stone, and since all who entered were required to do so barefoot, including the king, it could be an unpleasant place to visit in winter.

  Daniel looked terrible: bony and pale, with trembling hands and sagging bags beneath his eyes. He got up and limped across the room, dictating orders, while leaning against an oak cane carved with a griffin head.

  Markal looked around in mock surprise. “Where is the Harvester? Is he shirking his duties? I told him two days ago that you needed gathering.”

  The two scribes who copied Daniel’s dictation eyed him with irritation, but the king managed a weak smile. Daniel said, “When the dark wizard himself sits on my throne, you’ll still be throwing out jokes, won’t you?”

  “I certainly hope so.” He eyed the scribes. “Privacy, my king?”

  The king dismissed the two men. When they’d left, Daniel slumped into his chair. “It won’t pass,” he said. “I close my eyes and I still see her hovering over me.”

  Markal studied the king carefully. “Perhaps you had better tell me everything.”

  He sighed. “I hate to keep repeating it. I already told Chantmer the whole story.”

  “Chantmer is a busy man,” the wizard said, neglecting to add that Chantmer was busy with things he shouldn’t be meddling with. “As are you, of course, but I need to hear what happened, and from your own mouth.”

  “Very well.” Daniel rubbed his eyes. “I’m sorry, Markal. I’m just so tired. I don’t know if I can go through w
ith this.”

  “Telling me about the wight, you mean?”

  “No, everything. I’m not fit to lead Eriscoba into battle. What happens if the blue lady reappears the night the Veyrians attack?”

  Markal didn’t have to answer that question, since they both knew the answer. News would spread and the Citadel would collapse.

  “All the more reason for you to share your story.” Markal walked to the king and sat down next to the dais. “And it’s not every day that I get to hear tales of half-naked women seducing you in the night.”

  Daniel forced a weak smile. “She first appeared about three months ago in a dream. I’d been out that day hunting boar on the edge of the Wylde. Have you been out there recently? No? Well the boar that range from the forest these days stand halfway up your thigh, with tusks that’ll open a man like a rotted melon.”

  The king pulled up the leg on his pants to show a scar on his right thigh. “I tried to dislodge my javelin from the boar’s back while riding by on my horse. Not advisable. Knocked me off and would have killed me, had not a lucky throw from another rider finished him. That night, while I slept under a cloud of poppy seeds to dull the pain, my wife, or so I thought her at first, visited.”

  The king completed his tale. He’d awakened to a ghostly blue figure overhead. Serena na Brach, whose disappearance and drowning in the southern seas had nearly destroyed him. She had eased the pain in his leg, and made love to him in his dreams. He’d awakened the next morning shaken by the experience, but also craving her return. Over the weeks, she returned again and again. By the time that he realized that the woman was not his dead wife, but Tainara of Veyre, it was too late.

  “A troubling tale,” Markal said when the king finished. “Tainara Faal was a good queen, and it distresses me that her soul has come under the dark wizard’s sway. And what if she returns? Darik did some damage, but it was a temporary cure, I’m afraid.”

  The king nodded. “I should abdicate.”

  “No. Nobody else commands such allegiance. You’ve transformed the Free Kingdoms.”

  King Daniel funded schools of learning and art. His assistance turned Southron from an impoverished backwater to a land of skilled craftsmen and metallurgists. Trade burst the coffers of king and merchant alike throughout the Free Kingdoms after he standardized law and weights and measures.

  Daniel discounted his achievements with a shrug. “Anyone else could have done the same thing.”

  “But nobody did. All I’m asking is that you raise an army and defend us.”

  King Daniel said, “That’s what I’ve done all day, dispatching messengers. That, and expel spies from the city.”

  “Very good,” Markal said, satisfied with his answer. “As for the wight of Tainara Faal, leave her to me.”

  King Daniel turned his walking staff over in his hands, as if examining it for the first time. “Whatever happens, Markal,” he said, “promise that you won’t let my soul be bound by the dark wizard.”

  Markal rose to his feet, ready to address other business. But he turned as he reached the doorway. “I will never let him take you, my king.”

  #

  Darik stared at the corpse on the floor, then looked at Whelan, unable to believe what he saw. Sofiana looked similarly stunned.

  “What do you mean he was already dead?” Darik asked. “He just walked out here to the middle of the swamp, lit a peat fire on the hearth, lay down on the floor, and died?”

  “Or maybe,” Sofiana suggested, “he came with someone else. This other person killed him and fled.”

  Darik said, “I don’t know about you, but I swam to the island strictly by necessity. If there’d been another person, the boat would be gone.” He shook his head. “No, he died by himself.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Whelan said. He turned to shut and bar the door, then closed all of the windows. The sound of creatures diminished. “But look, what’s this chest?”

  Darik had forgotten the chest. Bound with brass, it was made of dark wood, scarred after years of use. It was a thick, ugly thing, cast in sharp relief by the flickering fire light. He’d assumed that it held Cragyn’s supplies, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  Whelan reached a hand toward the chest, then hesitated. “I don’t want to do anything dumb. Let’s suppose that this dead body is not really the dark wizard. His name is powerful. Speak it when he’s away, and the name can draw him to you, speak it while he’s here, however, and Soultrup binds his soul. If you had known the name of Tainara Faal when you attacked the wight that tormented King Daniel, then maybe you’d have bound her soul to the sword.” He shrugged.

  There was a long pause, and a frown crossed over Sofiana and Whelan’s faces. When Whelan spoke the name of the dead high khalifa, a chill draft blew under the door and the fire flickered. Was she close? So close that speaking her name drew her attention?

  “Open the chest,” Darik urged.

  Whelan nodded. He gestured them out of the way, then stood to one side, with his sword stretched gingerly toward the latch. With a flick of the wrist, he tilted open the lid. The fire roared in the hearth.

  A blue light shined so brightly in the chest that Darik squinted, unable to see. A cold blast lashed from the box and pushed him back. His eyes adjusted and he stepped forward just as Whelan let out a low whistle of recognition.

  It looked at first like a blue mist swirling at the bottom of a pit that was larger on the inside than could be possible from the size of the chest itself. Looking into the chest was like looking through a window into all of Mithyl. Darik almost pulled away to reorient himself to the house in which he stood, but the blue mist began clumping into individual images and he saw what Whelan had seen.

  There were people in the mist, a chain of men and women who marched in an endless circle, hands clasping an iron pole, and squinting against the mist. The figures shivered against the rain that fell on their heads. One of the figures slipped and fell in the mud, struggling to return to his feet while others climbed over his back.

  The pole snaked through the mist; from an overhead perspective, Darik saw that it merely returned to meet itself, but the grim little figures feeling their way through the mist didn’t appear to recognize it.

  “Do you know what that is?” Whelan asked. “We’re looking into sheol.”

  Sheol was not a single place, but rather a type of place. One of three things happened to a man’s soul after death. Most were gathered by the Harvester and, according to Darik’s mother, scattered across the sky or planted in the ground to bring new life to Mithyl. Other souls hid from the Harvester. But the last group, those bound by a wizard or even a sword like Soultrup, stayed in sheol until freed. Sheol could be a small, warm place like that kept by the khalifa of Serpia, who held her mother’s soul in an amulet around her neck, or a box like this one.

  “Now we know where the dark wizard binds his wights,” Sofiana said.

  Darik remembered the serpentine force that had attacked them in Balsalom. “There are only twenty wights down there. The rest must be about the wizard’s business.”

  Whelan leaned forward, placing his head as close to the blue mist as possible without actually immersing himself in it. He stood up, face stricken. “Look!”

  Darik leaned closer and was surprised to see the figures come into much sharper focus. It was as if the wights were really at the bottom of the chest and not further away, as they’d originally appeared. They wore fine clothing and gaudy jewels on their fingers, so out of place in the cold little hole.

  “Closer,” Whelan urged.

  He leaned closer and this time saw what Whelan wanted him to see. Faces. The first he saw was the wight of Tainara Faal, the high khalifa of Veyre. He recognized her easily from the harrowing encounter in King Daniel’s bed chambers. The next figure was Omar of Ter, the khalif of Ter and Kallia’s brother. Cragyn had done more than torture and murder the man for his treachery. Other figures trudged past, their clothing, jewelry, and emblems of power
marking them clearly as kings and queens. And then, two final figures trudged into view and Darik’s mouth dried.

  The first wasn’t as clear as the others, but transparent. If the man turned a certain way, the blue light failed to reveal him at all. The haunted, confused look on the man’s face was recognizable from those nights in his bed chamber. King Daniel.

  The second figure was even dimmer, so thin in the light that Darik wouldn’t have seen her if he hadn’t paid such close attention to King Daniel. Kallia.

  Darik touched his forefinger to his thumb. He whispered, “Is it true? Are they dead?”

  Whelan shook his head, but doubt clouded his eyes. “Not yet. Or so I hope. We kept Tainara from King Daniel in time. As for the khalifa, her—” He hesitated, before continuing with, “—her marriage to the dark wizard must have given the enemy partial control of her soul.”

  “Can a soul be divided?” Darik asked, never having heard or considered such a thing before.

  “I don’t know, but the time has come to finish this evil.”

  Whelan took the shovel next to the fire and shoveled hot coals into the open mouth. They disappeared into the blue mist, so instead, the three of them dragged the chest toward the fire. It was much heavier than it looked. They tilted it around until one corner sat in the flames, but as soon as it touched, the fire snuffed out, leaving the blue mist the only source of light in the room.

  “So it can’t be burned,” Darik said. “Now what?”

  “There is one sure way,” Whelan said, “but it will take time.” He lifted his sword. “Stand back.”

  Darik and Sofiana obeyed. As Whelan lifted his sword overhead, a bright yellow light streamed from the blade, warring in the room with the blue light that burst from the open chest.