Every wall of the octagonal lookout chamber had an expansive window, which would allow sentinels to watch in all directions. Each such window had been filled with a broad pane of deep red glass. Three of the eight windows had been shattered by time or brute force, and now shards of broken glass protruded from the window frames like crimson daggers. The other five windows were miraculously intact despite their obvious age, which led Nathan to guess that the glass had been enhanced by magic somehow. The wind whispered more loudly, whisking through the broken windows.
Standing in the middle of the open platform, he turned slowly as he tried to determine what had happened here. Sprawled on the iron-hard floor were more skeletons, all clad in ancient armor. Dark stains on the stone wall blocks marked a varnish of blackened blood, and long white grooves seemed to be scratches, as if desperate fingernails had gouged the quarried stone itself.
Nathan walked across the wooden boards, and one plank gave an alarming crack, as if it was about to give way. He instinctively lurched back, and his boot came down on the femur of one of the fallen warriors. Stumbling, he lost his balance, fell into the wall, and reached out to grab for balance.
His hand caught on the open sill of a lookout window where broken red glass protruded. He hissed in pain and pulled back, looking at the deep gash in his palm. Blood oozed out, and he grimaced.
Looking at the blood, he muttered, “It would be such a simple task to heal myself if I had magic.” He was embarrassed by his clumsiness even though he was alone. Now he would have to bind the gash and wait until Nicci could take care of the wound.
Just then he realized that the sound of the wind had taken on an odd character. The tower itself thrummed with a deep vibration. A bright, scarlet light increased inside the observation room, throbbing from the splash of blood Nathan had left behind.
The five intact red panes began to glow.
CHAPTER 29
Continuing down the path, Nicci moved through the forest, and Bannon hurried after her. “Don’t worry, Sorceress, I can keep up. A woman traveling alone on an empty trail might attract trouble, but if any dangerous men see me and my sword, they will think twice before they harass you.”
She turned her cool gaze on him. “You’ve seen what I can do. Do you doubt my ability to take care of any problem that might arise?”
“Oh, I know about your powers, Sorceress—but others may not. Just having me here with a sharp blade”—he patted his sword—“is sure to prevent problems. The best way out of a difficult situation is to make sure it doesn’t arise in the first place.” He lowered his voice. “You taught me that yourself, after you rescued me from the robbers in Tanimura.”
“Yes, I did.” Nicci gave him a small nod of acknowledgment. “Don’t make me rescue you again.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
“Don’t make promises, because circumstances have a way of making you regret them. Did you promise your friend Ian that you would always stay by his side? That you wouldn’t abandon him in times of danger?”
Bannon swallowed hard, but he kept walking beside her. “I had no choice. I couldn’t do anything about that.”
“I did not accuse you, nor did I say you had a choice. I just point out that if you had made such a promise, it was one you could not have kept.”
He pondered in silence for a dozen steps. “You know that my childhood wasn’t as perfect as I wish it had been. That doesn’t mean I can’t hope for better.” He moved aside an aspen branch that dangled across the path. Nicci ducked and kept moving. “And what about you, Sorceress? Did you have a terrible childhood? Someone must have hurt you badly to give you such a hard edge. Your father?”
Nicci stopped in the track. Bannon took several more steps before he realized she had paused behind him. He turned.
“No, my father didn’t hurt me. In fact, he was rather kind. His business was making armor, and he was quite well known. He taught me the constellations. I grew up in a village that was nice enough, I suppose, before the Imperial Order came.” Nicci looked up, finally admitting aloud what she had known for a long time. “It was my mother who made my childhood a nightmare. She scarred me with lessons that she called the truth, made me think that my hardworking father was the evil one, that his beliefs were oppressive to all people. And the Imperial Order reinforced those beliefs.”
She strode ahead at a faster pace, not caring whether Bannon kept up with her. “She made me live in terrible, dirty places. Again and again I was infested with lice, but it was all for my own good, she said. It was to build my character, to make me understand.” Nicci sneered. “I loathe my mother for it now, but it took me a century and a half to realize it.”
“A century and a half?” Bannon asked. “But that’s not possible. You, you’re—”
She turned to look at him. “I am over one hundred and eighty years old.”
“You’re immortal, then?” he asked, wide-eyed.
“I age normally now, but I still have a long life ahead of me, and I intend to accomplish much.”
“As do I,” Bannon said. “I’ll accompany you and do my best to help you and Wizard Nathan achieve your purpose. I can prove myself.”
She barely gave him a glance. “You may stay with us, so long as you don’t become a nuisance.”
“I won’t become a nuisance. I promise.” He realized what he had said and bit back his words. “I mean, I don’t promise, but I will do my best not to be a nuisance anymore.”
“And will you know when you become a nuisance?”
He nodded. “Absolutely. There is no doubt.”
Nicci was surprised at his confidence. “How will you know?”
“Because you will tell me in no uncertain terms.” His face was so serious she couldn’t help but believe him.
Though the wide path implied that it had once been well traveled, the downed aspens and oaks hadn’t been cleared after several winters, and she and Bannon frequently had to climb over or step around. If there was a village ahead, its people did not often come this way. She had seen no footprints, no sign of other travelers, and she decided they would probably end up camping again in the forest.
The young man broke the silence again. “Do you think anyone has the perfect life I imagine? Do you believe there is an idyllic place like that?”
“We would have to make it for ourselves,” Nicci said. “If the people create an oppressive culture, if they allow tyrannical rulers, then they get what they deserve.”
“But shouldn’t there be a peaceful land where people can just be happy?”
“It is naive to entertain a fantasy like that.” Nicci pursed her lips. “But Lord Rahl is trying to build a world where people live in freedom. If they wish to make an idyllic place, they will have the chance to do so. That is what I hope for.”
The path widened into a road, and the forest thinned into an open park, an expansive area where they could see homesteads with a patchwork of crops across the cleared land. The farmhouses were built from logs and capped with shake-shingle roofs.
Bannon said, “Those must be outlying farms for the village we’re looking for. See how the trees have been cut down, the land cleared? All those fences made from fieldstones?”
“I see no one about, though,” Nicci said.
Although the road remained a prominent track, it was overgrown with grass, showing no recent hoofprints or wheel marks. They passed stone walls that had fallen into disrepair; weeds and grass protruded from the cracks. Even the fields were wild and overgrown. The area seemed entirely abandoned.
Nicci grew more wary as the silence deepened. On one farm, a field of tall sunflowers drooped, their large heads sunbursts of yellow petals around a central brown circle. Bannon pointed out, “Those fields went to seed over several growing seasons. Notice how disorganized they are.” He shook his head. “No cabbage farmer would be so unruly.” He stepped up to the nearest sunflower, ran his hands along its hairy stalk. “These were planted in rows several years ago, but
they grew up and went unharvested. The new ones are scattered everywhere. Birds spread them out, and next year after those go to seed, the pattern disappears even further.” He glanced around. “And look at the vegetable garden. It’s entirely untended.”
Nicci felt uneasy. “This homestead has been abandoned. They’re all abandoned.”
“But why? The land looks fertile. See these crops? The soil is dark and rich.”
Hearing an odd sound, she spun, ready to release her magic in case she had to attack, but it was only the bleat of a goat. Two gray and white animals came forward, attracted by their conversation.
Bannon grinned. “Look at you!” The goats came forward, and each one let him pat it on the side of the neck. “You look like you’re eating well.” He frowned at Nicci in puzzlement. “If goats run loose, they’ll ransack the vegetable garden. My mother would never let goats come close to our house.”
They walked up to a log cottage, where the shake roof had fallen into disrepair. An overturned cart with a sprung wheel was covered with weeds. “No one lives here,” Nicci said. “That much is apparent.”
They went around to the side of the farmhouse, where they came upon two unexpected ornamental statues, a life-size man and woman dressed as farmers. The expressions on their stone faces showed abject misery. The man’s lips were drawn back in anguish, his face turned to the sky, his marble eyes staring. His mouth was wide open in a wordless wail of grief. The woman was hunched, her hands to her face as if weeping, or maybe clawing out her eyes in despair.
Bannon looked deeply unsettled, and Nicci could not help but recall the stone carvings Emperor Jagang and Brother Narev had commissioned in Altur’Rang, making sculptors depict the corruption and pain of humanity, rather than its majesty. Jagang and Narev had wanted all statues to reflect the most horrific expressions, just like what Nicci saw now. Was this some other follower of Narev’s teachings?
When she had lived with Richard in Altur’Rang, he worked as a stone carver and ultimately sculpted a breathtaking representation of the human spirit, a statue he called Truth. That was when Nicci had experienced a fundamental epiphany. She had changed.
That had been the end of her life as Death’s Mistress, as a Sister of the Dark.
But whoever had carved these statues had apparently not received the same epiphany.
“We should find another farmhouse,” said Bannon. “I don’t like those statues. Who would want something like at their home?”
Nicci glanced at him. “Obviously someone who does not share your vision of an idyllic world.”
CHAPTER 30
The wind whistling around the sentinel tower took on a deeper tone, like a lost moan. The intact panes of crimson glass in the observation windows shimmered, pulsed, awakened.
Nathan held up his sliced hand, cupping the drops of blood in his palm. “Dear spirits,” he muttered. As the upper observation platform of the watchtower throbbed with a deep angry light, he stared at the glowing red-glass panes with more fascination than fear. Though he couldn’t use his gift, he still felt the restless magic inside him, twitching, uncontrollable. His innate, uncertain Han felt attuned to what was happening.
A memory tickled the back of his mind, and he smiled with recognition. “Bloodglass! Yes, I have heard of bloodglass.”
The temperature around him increased, as if the glass reflected some distant volcanic fire, but this magic was heated by blood. Curious, the wizard went to one of the intact panes as the thrumming grew louder, more powerful.
Bloodglass was a wizard’s tool in war. Glass bound with blood, tempered and shaped with the spilled blood of sacrifices, so that the panes themselves were connected to bloodshed. In the most violent wars, the seers of military commanders could gaze through panes of bloodglass to monitor the progress of their armies—the battles, victories, massacres. Bloodglass did not reveal an actual landscape, but rather the patterns of pain and death, which allowed warlords to map the topography of their slaughter.
Nathan stood close to the nearest window and peered through the glowing crimson glass. From the top of this watchtower, he had expected to see for great distances—the old imperial roads, the mountain ranges, maybe even the vast fertile valley that lay between here and Kol Adair.
Instead, he viewed the inexorable march of memory armies, hundreds of thousands of fighters who wielded swords and shields, sweeping like locusts across the land. The bloodglass was so perfectly transparent that he could look through time as well as distance at a panorama magnified by the impurity of blood in the crystal.
The Old World was vast and ancient, allowing him to gaze across the sweep of invasions and pitched battles, a succession of armies, of emperors, of countless generations of bloodshed. Barbarians struck villages, killing men who tried to defend their homes and families, raping the women, beheading the children. After the wild and undisciplined warriors came another type of predator: organized machinelike armies that moved in perfect formation and killed without passion but with relentless precision.
Nathan followed the octagonal wall of the tower and peered through a second bloodglass window. This one blazed even brighter, and the armies in the image seemed closer. The glass vibrated, and the whole massive tower structure thrummed as if awakened … as if afraid.
Nathan spun upon hearing a sound—a rattle of hollow bones. He looked at the dismembered skeletons scattered on the iron-hard wood of the platform. Had they moved? The light filling the watchtower seemed uncertain, a thicker crimson. Outside, the afternoon sun dipped lower, but this murderous magical light was entirely independent of it. Nervously, he rested his hand on the hilt of his sword—his slick bloody hand. He lifted his palm to look at the scarlet drops that ran down his wrist.
He whirled again at a louder clatter of bones, but saw nothing. Surely, the skeletons had moved. He hurried to look through two more of the intact crimson panes, and saw another army approaching. This one seemed more ominous than the others, more real.
The warriors had pointed steel helmets, scaled armor, and shields emblazoned with a stylized flame. Nathan remembered that flame … the symbol of Emperor Kurgan’s army. Through the sorcerous magnification, he discerned a fearsome warlord at the vanguard, and Nathan realized that he might be seeing General Utros himself, suffused through blood and time.
The wind howled louder around the broken walls, as if an invisible storm swept across the top of the bluff. Carried along with the breezes came the shouts of soldiers, the clatter of steel, and the pounding thud of marching boots. The red light grew more intense, as if it shone through a fine mist of blood.
Nathan drew his sword now, clamping his fingers hard around the ornate hilt, but his blood made the grip slippery. He turned slowly, but saw no movement from the scattered bones. He hurried over to look through another of the windows and saw the army of General Utros marching toward the high citadel, an inexorable flood of armed men converging on the watchtower. Somehow, the magic had brought them back: these ruthless soldiers seemed absolutely real. They stormed up the wide stone paths, approaching the tower from three sides. He stared at the bristling, relentless force closing in.
Another clatter tore Nathan’s attention away from the bloodglass. Whirling, he did see the bones of the long-forgotten defenders twitching, shuddering, reassembling. Bathed in red light from the eerie windows, the skeletons rose up as if they were marionettes.
The wizard raised his sword to fight them, but these were only a few clumsy threats. He was much more worried about the hordes of ghost soldiers pressing toward the tower. He could hear them below, a surging crowd of swords, armor, and muscles. A gruff voice—Utros?—shouted in an accented language that Nathan somehow understood, “Take the tower. Kill them all!”
Surrounded by suffocating red light, Nathan braced himself to fight the skeletons. A thunder of pounding feet came up the tower stairs. He struggled to find the magic within him, ready to release his recalcitrant gift, whether or not it caused a disaster. He was all a
lone here. Even if a backlash from using magic caused terrible damage and leveled this entire watchtower, at least he wouldn’t hurt Nicci or young Bannon. He might, however, destroy these spectral soldiers.
One of the reanimated soldiers clattered toward him, bony hands outstretched as if the skeleton thought Nathan himself was an invader. The wizard swung his sword and sliced through the neck vertebrae. The skull toppled off and rolled across the wooden floor, its jaws still clacking. The fleshless hands and arms flailed, clawing at him. He smashed them, splintering the wickerwork of bones. Then he spun to dismember another skeleton, this one wearing tatters of armor. He kicked out with a boot to knock apart the loose bones of a third rattling opponent.
Then the greater threat arrived. Armored spectral warriors with flame-emblazoned shields and wide swords pushed through the door to the tower chamber, two abreast. They shimmered in the deep red light.
Nathan backed toward a wall, hoping to find some protection with his back to the stone blocks. He had no place to hide.
A flood of long-dead soldiers flowed through the door, as if they meant to take over the sentinel tower and simply drown anyone there with their sheer numbers.
The wizard faced them, mustering all his strength. “Come at me, then!” He slashed his blade across the air, surrendering the hope that he could find the ragged thread of magic within him again. The flow of Han wouldn’t come to him now. He would have to make do with his sword.
Oddly, he wished Bannon were here. He and the young man could have slain dozens before they fell. “I’ll just have to do it myself!” His straight white hair flew as he hurled himself at the ancient attackers.
Crimson light from the bloodglass throbbed around him, and he felt as if he were in a trance. He swung his sword at one of the ancient warriors, bracing himself for the hard impact against scaled armor, flesh, bone. But his sword passed through, and the enemy collapsed. Nathan didn’t slow, but slashed at another, cleaving through misty armor.
Death's Mistress--Sister of Darkness Page 21
