[Cenotaph Road 04] - Iron Tongue

by Robert E. Vardeman - (ebook by Undead)

  “Jacy Noratumi is with them,” he said. Lan didn’t mention Inyx’s accompanying the small band. The less Iron Tongue knew of his personal life, the less power the ruler of Wurnna had over him.

  “Bron is lost. I shall enjoy seeing Noratumi sweating in the power-stone mines. He has taunted me in the past. Now I shall laugh.”

  “We need them—and not in the mines. How many were killed during Claybore’s last attack?”

  “No mages.”

  “No mages,” agreed Lan, “but fully half the population of Wurnna perished.”

  “Slaves. A few citizens.”

  “Many,” insisted Lan. “You need even a paltry handful of refugees to swell your ranks. Defending the city requires men and women acting because they want to and not because they fear being enslaved.”

  “We will talk with them,” came the soothing words. Iron Tongue used the full power of his tongue. Lan paled slightly, then countered the effective magics with deadening spells of his own before he agreed with Wurnna’s ruler.

  “Noratumi wants us to meet them outside the walls,” Lan said.

  “How do you know this?” demanded Iron Tongue.

  Lan didn’t answer. That he had received this communication from Inyx came as revelation and relief for him. His new powers showed him that they wouldn’t have to be apart again. While distance might separate their bodies, their minds could remain in contact. The flow was blurred and indistinct now, but he knew it would grow with practice. He wanted it to grow. He needed the dark-haired warrior woman more than he had thought possible.

  A small hand signal from Lan stopped Inyx a dozen paces away. She flashed him a puzzled look, then studied Iron Tongue. Understanding slowly dawned on the woman. This was the man Claybore sought; this was the man with the magical tongue; this was the source of the misery and suffering on this planet.

  “Iron Tongue,” said Jacy Noratumi without preamble. “I seek asylum for my people.”

  “Only thirteen of them.” A sneer twisted Iron Tongue’s lips. “The mighty ruler of Bron governs only refugees.” He laughed cruelly and the sound echoed off the mountains and rumbled down the canyon toward the spot where Claybore’s troops had once made their camp. Only death remained there or beyond, where Lan’s ebony dragons had devoured human flesh.

  “You do little better,” snapped Noratumi. “Wurnna crumbles bit by bit. How many of your citizens are left?”

  Iron Tongue started to lie, then tempered it when he saw the expression on Lan’s face.

  “Enough to survive.”

  “Inyx claims we can unite against Claybore.”

  Iron Tongue turned his attention to Inyx. The woman returned his bold stare without flinching, even though something curled and writhed deep within her. Iron Tongue was a man of infinite cruelty. His very gaze threatened to strip away her humanity. When he spoke, he humbled her. She wanted to fall to her knees and worship him.

  Only Lan’s level tones pulled her out of the spell cast. Her vivid blue eyes widened as she grasped the full importance of both name and power possessed by Iron Tongue.

  “She is my friend,” said Lan, glad that Rugga had remained behind in Wurnna. Still, Iron Tongue would make certain this datum got into the other woman’s hands. He played political games constantly, jockeying for advantage—it wasn’t enough to possess supreme rhetorical skills in a city of mages.

  “So? She is welcome in Wurnna.” Iron Tongue smiled insincerely as he said, “and so are our brothers and sisters from fallen Bron.”

  “For them, I accept,” said Noratumi. “For myself, however, I prefer to stay outside the walls of your city.”

  “Jacy, we need you. We need your talents. You are the tactician we need,” pleaded Inyx, gripping his sleeve and tugging slightly. He never looked at her.

  “I will not enter that city. Not while he rules it.”

  Lan and Inyx exchanged looks. The nonverbal link between them formed but their confused thinking prevented any but general emotion from flowing. Inyx inclined her head slightly, indicating she desired a private conference. Lan nodded. While it wasn’t vital that Noratumi close ranks with his mortal enemy, it suited Lan’s own plans if he did so.

  Plot. Counterplot. He was beginning to conspire with the best. He and Inyx walked away a few feet to talk.

  For what must have been a minute, neither spoke. They were content simply staring at one another. Lan reached out and tentatively touched Inyx’s cheek, almost afraid she might be an illusion sent by Claybore to torment him. If she were a wraith, Claybore outdid himself. The cheek flushed under his touch and turned warm. Strong fingers gripped his wrist and pulled him closer, her red lips coming to his. Eyes flashing with desire, she started to kiss him.

  “Wait,” said Lan. “This isn’t the time. Once we are in the city, then we can speak.”

  “Speak?” she mocked. “Is that all you want to do? It’s been an eternity since we saw one another.”

  The silent communication that had been sparked now flared into a full two-way flow of information. Along with it came emotion undeniable to the woman of what Lan Martak felt for her.

  “Lan my darling, I shouldn’t tease you like that. I… I know how you feel about me.”

  He swallowed hard and held her close when a tickling sensation started at the borders of his mind. Claybore launched a new attack.

  “We must get inside Wurnna’s walls soon. The power stone helps protect us.”

  “What of their mages?”

  “Most are dead. Most of the ordinary citizens—and slaves—are dead, also. I found in your mind the last moments of Bron. Are these the only survivors?” He indicated the haggard band of refugees resting in their saddles.

  “As far as I know, these are the only ones to escape. They had no way of deflecting the magics Claybore hurled at them. If Wurnna had been more sympathetic, there might still be two outposts against Claybore.”

  “How do we persuade Noratumi to join forces with Iron Tongue?”

  Inyx shook her head and said, “I see no way. He fears, and legitimately, that Iron Tongue will enslave him. The truce might cover the common survivors of Bron, but never a leader. Jacy is wary of all sorcerers, you included, Lan.”

  “I suspect there is more to it than that,” he said dryly.

  She looked at him sharply, but said nothing. Inyx almost blushed, something she had not done since before her marriage to Reinhardt. The bits and pieces of information she had read in Lan’s mind corresponded to those he had gotten from hers. She did not know if she was prepared for such intimacy. Of body, yes, but of mind? That was a step beyond any she had taken.

  “What will we do? I sense Claybore’s attack is close.”

  “You feel it, through me? Interesting.” Lan’s mind took in the datum and continued on, constructing various schemes and discarding them as he went. “I must talk with both Noratumi and Iron Tongue. They will either agree or cut one another’s throats by the time I am finished.”

  He and Inyx rejoined the others, upper arms brushing as they walked. Lan rejoiced in the woman’s nearness. They had been apart far too long. The brief sojourns with Rugga had counted only as political dealings in his mind, just as Inyx’s dalliances with Jacy Noratumi fell into the same category. He almost smiled to himself. He had outgrown petty jealousy, the jealousy that had precipitated his departure from his homeworld when one of the grey-clads had murdered his lover. But was this newfound maturity worthwhile? He had come to think in terms of temporary alliances, what was to be gained from the politics of the flesh.

  Lan decided it was. His love for Inyx only deepened. And, if the brief rush through her mind was any indication, the soft emotion was shared.

  “Noratumi, Iron Tongue,” he said. He motioned for the two leaders to join him. With small twitchings of his fingers, he wove a spell that dulled Iron Tongue’s persuasive powers. He found it impossible, as yet, to completely negate the tongue’s enhancements, but he didn’t need that at the moment.


  “I have decided. I will never set foot inside those walls.” Noratumi’s words fell monotone, determined.

  “What makes you think you would be welcome?” said Iron Tongue. “Your people are needed. You? Ha! You are a worthless leader who lost your city-state. What else but failure can you bring to Wurnna?”

  “All our skills are needed,” Lan said patiently. He tried to analyze why Iron Tongue’s words carried such magic. In dim ways he began to understand and use a weaker version of the spell. “Wurnna needs the numbers. Noratumi’s people need a new home.”

  “Only until Bron can be rebuilt.”

  “That requires Claybore’s defeat. Work for it, Jacy. With Iron Tongue.”

  “I will not be a slave in his power-stone mines.”

  “Who’d want a lazy snake like you? It wouldn’t be worth the whip leather to beat you.”

  The two leaders glared at one another. Lan cut through the mounting hatred.

  “A truce. Temporary, until Claybore is routed. Iron Tongue, do you agree not to enslave Jacy?”

  “Only if he works in the mines of his own free will. Without the stone, we cannot triumph. You know that. You came to the same conclusion.”

  “Will you, Jacy, work freely in the power-stone mines if it means victory?”

  “Yes, but you are promising something that will never be delivered, Martak. The spiders prevent easy access to the mines. Even with my people, we are too few to fight and mine.”

  “If I grant free access to the mines, will that satisfy you both?”

  “A treaty with the spiders?” scoffed Iron Tongue. “Impossible.”

  “Will you agree to all we’ve talked about, if I can do it?” Lan wrenched the reluctant nods from both men. He heaved a deep sigh and indicated the narrow dirt path leading back into the safety offered by Wurnna. The magical pressures mounting indicated Claybore forged another massive offensive. He needed the vast reserves of power stone within the city to feed his own defenses.

  Juggernauts of prodigious power—all illusory—smashed against Wurnna’s defenses for twenty solid hours. By the time Lan, Iron Tongue, and the remaining sorcerers had reached the point of exhaustion, so had Claybore. The offensive slowed and finally vanished.

  “How long, Lan?”

  “I don’t know,” the young mage told Inyx. “Claybore might start up again at any minute. He is almost as powerful as all of us within the walls. The power stone is all that feeds our defenses now.”

  “Can’t you use that little grimoire of yours to find a new spell that will stop him?” She pointed to the brown leather, brass-studded book Lan had dropped on a nearby table. He had been given the book of spells by a dying mage atop Mount Tartanius.

  “I’ve looked. Some of the spells come easily now. I used several to send the black dragons into Claybore’s soldiers—and I hadn’t even remembered seeing them until Iron Tongue and the others worked with a modified version. I changed the spell slightly another time, but Claybore now counters it easily. There’s so much I don’t know!” He came to the point of frustration-caused tears. He had come so far, yet the path stretched to infinity before him. Claybore had spent centuries learning his magics. Lan Martak was a newcomer to this form of battle. He had unwillingly entered an arena where a strong arm and a quick sword meant nothing.

  “Try to relax. Don’t force yourself to the brink of exhaustion.”

  “And you have just the remedy for that, I take it?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Her lips crushed into his even as her hands wandered along his muscular body. For a moment tiredness seized him and he almost told her to stop, then he drew down and found almost limitless strength in the bracelet of power stone he wore. The change from lethargy to vitality took Inyx by surprise, but it was a nice surprise.

  Her fingers laced through his brown hair and he rolled over and between her inviting legs. The expression on her face as he began the ages-old rhythm added to his energy more than any magic locked within a power stone. They merged and became one in body and soul, using their newly found rapport, soaring, exploring new and exciting realms that finally exploded in a wildly satisfying finale.

  Long after Inyx had slipped off into sleep, Lan lay beside the woman, his arms about her gently breathing form. When he fell asleep, the dreams he had feared came. Once more Claybore invaded his innermost thoughts and brought evil visions.

  Laughing, the fleshless skull of the dismembered sorcerer taunted him. When Lan Martak awoke in the morning, he had slept but not rested. He had witnessed what Claybore plotted all night long.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I see no reason to go on this ridiculous journey. You will fail. I know it.” Iron Tongue stood with arms crossed tightly and a quizzical expression on his face. Lan Martak had felt the full magical force of the man’s persuasions and had turned them aside like a rich man ignoring the beggings of some street mendicant. Never had a human withstood the awesome power of the tongue resting in his mouth when he had turned it against him—before now.

  “I shall not fail. To show good faith to the spiders, the leaders of the groups involved must be in attendance.” Lan didn’t add that he wanted them with him to keep from sundering the fragile truce. While it was dangerous concentrating all resistance leadership in one small party away from the safety of Wurnna, Lan had decided that the risk of the alliance failing was greater. He wanted to be close to soothe ruffled egos and tend what might be a full-time job of working negotiated apologies acceptable to all when slights, both real and imagined, occurred.

  If they could not persuade the spiders to allow open mining of the power stone, Wurnna was doomed. If they simply remained within the walls of the city-state, Claybore’s attacks would eventually wear them down. The potential for success was greater by taking this desperate gamble.

  “He will sense us. Claybore is inhumanly endowed.”

  “He isn’t endowed at all,” said Inyx. “Not physically, at least.” She glanced at Lan and smirked.

  “I referred to his sorcerous powers. I am fully aware of his bodily dismantling by Terrill,” said Iron Tongue. Lan scowled at this. Iron Tongue was quick to cite the mythic origins of the tongue he used, yet he claimed to know about Terrill and the gargantuan struggle across worlds that had resulted in Claybore’s dismemberment.

  “I can get us past his soldiers. There are small spells that he won’t bother to check for,” Lan responded.

  “Small ones are all you can summon,” Noratumi said bitterly. “Otherwise, you would end this battle here and now.”

  Lan ignored the jibe. His reunion with Inyx hadn’t been well-received in any quarter of the city. Jacy Noratumi resented him; so did Rugga. He had seen the pair together early this morning, dour expressions and impassioned gestures highlighting their meeting. That made him smile. He had maneuvered them together to discuss their mutual problems and to find that Iron Tongue presented a common barrier to understanding between Wurnna sorcerers and Bron miners. Politics depended mostly on “chance” occurrences being engineered in such a way that the used did not realize it. But an eventual alliance agreed on between Noratumi and Rugga mattered little to him at the moment; a supply of power stone counted for more. Lan didn’t know if an ample supply of it improved their chances or not, but he wasn’t going to attempt a frontal assault on Claybore without it.

  “We leave in one hour.” He didn’t wait for the protests. Let them cry on each other’s shoulders. That might forge a stronger bond than anything else he could do.

  “Sentries,” Inyx said quietly, pointing with the tip of her sword. Lan’s fingers moved restlessly in an effort to create the proper spell. He strove to achieve not invisibility, which was a potent enough magic to draw Claybore’s attention, but non-noticeability such as that used by Rugga on their journey into Wurnna. If properly cast, the sentries would see them but their eyes would report no danger to their brains. Their passing might be reported but it might also be ignored as inconsequential.
/>   “I do not like this,” said Jacy Noratumi. “Let’s kill them and make sure they do not report us.”

  “Silence,” snapped Iron Tongue. “The man is creating a delicate spell.”

  Whether Lan’s concentration flagged for a moment or some other element entered the arena, none can say. The nearest guard noticed them. Even as his frown wrinkled with the effort of recognizing them, Inyx acted. With a perfect fleche, she took four quick steps forward and skewered him. The guard’s death, however, shocked the others into action.

  “Escapees! Kill them!” cried the sergeant of the guard from his post higher up on the side of the mountain. Frustration at garrison duty, fights against insubstantial and totally deadly dragons and other illusory beasts, and the deaths of his fellows all powered the attack.

  Lan started to conjure up the spell that would bathe the grey-clads in flame. He held back at the last possible instant. Such magic would definitely draw Claybore’s attention. Unsheathing his sword, Lan waited for the soldiers to attack. The blade felt odd in his hand; only now did the young mage realize how he had come to depend on his spells. Before he had learned so much, the sword and he had been as one, flowing and thrusting, moving and parrying and lunging.

  He again fell into this rhythm of attack, skewering the first soldier to confront him. At his side, Inyx slashed powerfully to sever a wrist. The grey-clad gasped and stared numbly at the spurting stump. Turning pasty white, he pirouetted and slowly sank to his knees, more dead than alive.

  “Ha! This is more like it!” came Noratumi’s happy shout. The sounds of metal ringing against metal filled the small draw. Pent-up frustration at the destruction of his city boiled over and caused the man to fight like a small platoon.

  Lan’s muscles protested at first, then relaxed as he became used to the movement of his sword. Having Inyx at his side aided him more than he could put into words. A quick disengage drove his point into an exposed throat. The next man tried fancy footwork; an unexpected replacement carried Lan’s tip to its target in the man’s heart.