The deer trail flattened into something that must have been an old road, now overgrown with trees, but flat enough to allow easier travel up the mountainside. The place seemed familiar, and he was pretty sure this was the path Memnet had led them up toward the stone circle all those years ago. It must be right ahead of them, no more than five minutes away. What about that giant?
He warned Nathaliey, and they continued in silence as the evening grew darker. An owl hooted, a small animal moved in the brush, and a wind shook the boughs of pine trees. All normal sounds.
Markal sensed the stones before he saw them, felt resistance in the air, something pushing them back toward the pine trees clogging the trail. It was old magic, grumpy and reluctant, but like the wards around the ruined watchtower, familiar at the same time. This was not Toth’s necromancy, it might even be friendly to them.
But what about the giant? Was it still sitting there, digesting its meal, perhaps even still hungry? And were marauders still hunting them? Most likely yes to both of those questions.
They reached the end of the road, and there was the ring of stones, standing in a meadow beneath the moonlight like sentinels, each fifteen to twenty feet tall. Unlike the overgrown terraces further down the hillside, some magic had kept the forest at bay. No trees sprouted in the middle of the ring, and no brush or climbing vines touched the individual stones. Even the grass had contented itself with growing to ankle height and no higher.
There was no sign of the giant. It must have wandered away to sleep off its meal, or maybe to find another giant so they could bash each other over the head with their cudgels. But it might still be nearby, perhaps squeezed into the dilapidated tower where the hermit had once lived, so it was best to remain wary, but at first glance, Markal was relieved. Something shifted in the breeze, and a voice whispered in his head.
We are here, wizard. Waiting.
Markal blinked, startled. It was the stones, speaking directly to his mind.
Something had changed in him since his last visit, something profound. He remembered their final day visiting the hermit, when Memnet sat across from his old companion, the two of them staring at each other for hours without speaking, while a fire crackled in the hearth and two mugs of mead sat untouched on the table in front of them.
Markal and Narud had sat fidgeting in the maddening silence, as neither of the others stirred except to feed the fire. Memnet finally turned to the two apprentices and suggested they put their time to use. Go and touch the stones, he’d said. Let them speak to you. Relieved, the apprentices left the two old men to sit and stare at each other.
Markal had touched the stones and sensed the runes and wards, felt something below the surface, lurking, waiting for a finer touch to raise them to life, but the glimpses were fleeting. Mostly, they were just stones. Narud shook his head, bewildered, reporting the same impression. That Markal could hear them now told him he had grown in power and knowledge. He must have. The stones were alive and calling to him, a source of both strength and danger. What secrets did they contain?
He was so busy listening to the old magic of the darkened ring of standing stones that he didn’t notice the figure standing against one of the taller stones until Nathaliey touched his arm and gestured. The man wore a cloak, hood drawn, and seemed to be staring right at them, though he’d made no move.
Nathaliey squeezed Markal’s arm with what seemed to be a question. Who was he? The old hermit, somehow taking the profile of a younger man? Or was it one of the marauders?
A twig snapped on the path behind them, and Markal was instantly alert for other sounds in that direction. Someone was coming up the hillside behind them. Multiple someones. Whoever it was made an effort to be quiet, but it was dark, and sticks and leaves littered the ground. There were eight or ten that Markal could hear, and his sensitive ears picked out individuals. One was heavier, one more slightly built. Another had the gait of a tall man. They were about thirty feet away and drawing near.
Nathaliey squeezed his arm again, this time harder, more urgent. He still had no idea who was standing on the opposite side of the stone circle, but the ones coming up from behind could only be the marauders they’d spotted through Nathaliey’s seeker.
Markal and Nathaliey were in no condition to fight multiple enemies, which left little choice but to go forward, enter the stone circle, and take their chances with the solitary figure waiting for them. Stay rooted any longer and it would be too late.
He nudged her, and they started forward. The solitary figure remained in place, but there was a subtle change in his posture. There was no doubt that Markal and Nathaliey had been spotted.
The circle whispered louder as they approached, and when they broke the plane between two stones and entered, a low murmur passed around them. Something was awakening to their presence. Old runes beneath the surface, wards of power—their purpose was unknown and perhaps unknowable.
The solitary figure still wasn’t moving. But the men pursuing from the hillside were. As Markal and Nathaliey cautiously crossed the open space in the middle, he heard the first of them arrive and come to a halt just outside the stones, as if prevented from entering. That wouldn’t last, and Markal could no longer hesitate. He stepped up to the figure, reasonably sure that it was the hermit in the form of a young man, but still cautious.
“I’m Markal from the gardens. The wizard’s apprentice. I’ve been here before, I—”
The man lunged for Markal with one hand and swept aside his cloak with the other, revealing a sword. Markal was not so unwary as all of that, and had already been leaning on his heels as he approached. He danced out of the way before the man could seize his throat.
Nathaliey dropped the saddlebag, put her palms down, and cast an illusion spell. The man drew his sword only to see it twist in his hands like a snake. He dropped the sword with a curse and grabbed for his dagger, only to find that this was another snake.
Noise and movement from behind. Several men were breaking into the stone circle, armed with swords and shields, and they charged across the open space with a collective shout. Nathaliey was murmuring again, and a green light spread between her open palms. Whatever she was calling up, she couldn’t have much strength left to cast it.
Better the stones, if Markal could wake them. The first man was still struggling with his dagger, seeming to recognize that the snake was an illusion and fighting to overcome it. Markal had only moments. He approached the nearest stone with his hands held out, and spoke out loud.
“Come to me. Whatever you are, whoever endowed you with power, lend me your strength.”
The standing stone gleamed with ghostly light where moments earlier there had been nothing but dull gray stone. Glowing blue letters in an ancient tongue rose to the surface. The stone whispered louder, more urgently, making promises and threats and warnings. Words left for him by an ancient order of wizards. The whispers were too much to fully understand, and he couldn’t tell what power this stone contained, or even if he could call it up, but unlike the squat, toad-like stone they’d discovered earlier, this magic was alive and ready to be used.
His outstretched hands were reaching for the stone, so close that the tips of his fingers were tingling, when two figures stepped out from behind it, one on either side. Several others emerged from around the stone. Markal found himself face-to-face with one of them, who grinned wolfishly at his shock.
Before he could so much as flinch, the man smashed him in the face with his shield. Light flashed in his head, and he went down, everything suddenly dim, sound muffled. Nathaliey’s incantation died in a cry of pain as someone got their hands on her, too.
Rough hands pinned Markal to the ground, flipped him onto his belly, and wrenched off the sling that had been holding Soultrup on his back.
“I have it!” one of them shouted. “I have the sword!”
This brought more shouts, and a slackening of the grip. His head was beginning to clear, and he raised his power and began to speak
—the same incantation that had turned the first man’s weapons into snakes would work in much the same way if he cast it against himself, making him slippery and hard to hold—but his head was throbbing, his concentration broken by pain and fear, and he fumbled the words.
Before he could try again, someone stuffed a rag in his mouth.
Chapter Nine
Chantmer had a new incantation he wanted to use, but he didn’t need observers, and so he invented tasks to distract the archivists. He put Jethro to work searching for references to one of the lost oracular tomes, had Karla and Erasmus copying clay tablets onto parchment, and instructed the last two to strengthen the library’s concealing spells.
One of the defining characteristics of an archivist was an ability to focus intensely for hours at a time. It was that ability to study and study and study some more that allowed them to hold so much knowledge, and if only that had been coupled with a command of power, each and every one of them would have made a powerful wizard.
So once Chantmer had put them to task, they were so single-minded in their work that they didn’t seem to notice when he left the library, and hopefully didn’t feel him gathering his concentration as he made his way up the corridor mumbling the words of the new incantation.
Chantmer climbed the stone stairs from the vaults and went outside to one of the terraced gardens overlooking Syrmarria. Khalif Omar—he whose skin now flapped as King Toth’s gruesome banner above the city’s west gate—had been proud of these gardens, declaring them one of the wonders of the world. And perhaps they did look appealing to the untrained eye. But to Chantmer, who’d spent the better part of two decades in the lush, magical gardens of Memnet the Great, they were a poor imitation of home. The vines looked sickly and diseased, the flowers pale and wilted, the honey bees small and feeble. He’d eaten food sweetened with honey from the khalif’s hives; it left a strange aftertaste and did nothing to strengthen one’s limbs like honey from home.
What did fascinate him were the statues of dragons and griffins and fire salamanders, of winged horses from the cloud kingdoms and hairy elephants from the north country. The statues were older than the gardens, possibly older than Syrmarria itself, and many were badly eroded. It was night, and they marked weird silhouettes against the surrounding vegetation. Chantmer found a quiet place behind a life-size statue of a lion, folded his long legs beneath him, and closed his eyes to meditate.
The incantation remained on his lips, and he didn’t dare let it slip for a moment. This was a new spell for him, and even though he’d been practicing it for the past two days, it would dissolve into the air the moment he stopped. He needed to call it up slowly, with maximum control, for it to be effective.
The name of the spell was summa sensu, and it had a strange connection with one of Markal and Narud’s favorites, magic which gave one the ability to pass undetected beneath the noses of others. That was the spell Narud had used to enchant the monkey that unlocked Nathaliey from her cell in the dungeon and then allowed her to slip past the guards unseen.
During the long, grueling years of training, Memnet had taught Chantmer that spells could be mapped onto a spectrum, grouped defensively or offensively, and then further divided into types—spells of earth, fire, and water, spells shifting the nature of a thing, and spells disguising its purpose. When you called up magic, it helped to know where the spell fell in relation to others.
But Chantmer had also learned something curious, that spells maintained an affinity for their opposites on the spectrum, as if they were connected by invisible threads that crossed entire groups of magic.
Like his companions, Chantmer could only master one bit of arcane knowledge at a time, although not always for the same reason—in Markal’s case, for example, it was a lack of command, while in Chantmer’s it was a lack of knowledge—and he’d largely shunned the defensive spells. Who cared for skulking about when one could fling magical hammers? Why change into a rabbit or sparrow when you could call lightning from the skies or make the ground swallow an enemy whole?
But he had learned the concealer spells like disorder and disconcert favored by Markal and Narud, because one did need to slink about the palace unseen. And strangely, the spell he was now working on—summa sensu, a form of evigilare, an awakening spell—had an affinity with those hiding spells, even though it was on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Knowing that, he drew from a familiar source of power as he spoke his enchantment, and found that the incantation worked in pulling up plenty of magical strength. That power boiled out of him as he spoke the words, and blood rose quickly from the pores on his forearms and hands. He wiped the blood onto the cloth at his belt and rose to his feet behind the stone lion, curious and excited to see the results of his work.
The spell, if he understood the text correctly, would sharpen his senses. He’d be able to hear the ants marching in their lines. He would smell the bakeries of the city below, and tell which one was preparing flatbread, and which one fig pastries. If he walked through the spice markets blindfolded, he could not only pick out the cardamon vendor from the cinnamon vendor, but he could tell who had bathed in which soap, and when.
Or so he supposed. He emerged from behind the lion expecting that his already sharp eyesight would be able to see the gardens, the palace walls and towers, and the city below as clearly as if it were daylight. But everything seemed unchanged. He sniffed at the air and caught only the same array of scents as always, and with the same strength. His ears were sharp, and he had no problem picking out the low murmurs of servant girls behind a nearby wall, but he’d expected to hear their words as clearly as if they’d been whispered in his ear.
Chantmer muttered a curse. What the devil had gone wrong?
“You were expecting a different result?”
He avoided giving a start, and turned slowly to see a man standing next to a statue of a fire salamander. Chantmer had taken special notice of the stone creature before, its body writhing as it seemed to come burning out of the ground, and there had been nobody standing there before, he was sure of it.
His senses tingled, calling a warning. Chantmer kept his mind still and clear, ready to call up more magic.
“Who are you, and why are you in the khalif’s gardens?” he asked.
“What khalif?” the man said. “There is no khalif of Aristonia, only the high king and his pasha. Two hundred trumpets announced Pasha Izak’s arrival not ten days ago. Or are your senses so dull that you didn’t hear it?”
Chantmer ignored the insult and his growing fear that this man had been the one to disrupt his spell. “It doesn’t matter if a khalif rules the palace or a pasha, there is still the matter of keeping the peace, and a man who is not a vizier or a personal servant of the master of this place may not enter the gardens. You are neither of these things. So why are you here?”
This was something of a bluff, but from the man’s accent, he didn’t sound Veyrian, so he was unlikely to belong to the pasha’s inner circle. He sounded like he was from the khalifate of Starnar, a hundred miles or so to the northeast.
The man stepped out of the shadows. He wore a simple nut-brown robe, with no chain of office, which confirmed that he was not a vizier. He didn’t appear armed, either, so not a guard or military man. Yet he wore a ruby ring on his right middle finger and two heavy gold bands on the fingers of his left hand, so he appeared to be a man of some consequence, although that was apparent enough by his bearing and tone of voice. He had a slender, almost gaunt face, with deep-set eyes and sharp cheekbones, along with a penetrating gaze as he studied Chantmer. Indeterminate age—thirty, perhaps? Forty?
“What are you doing here?” the man asked.
“I am taking the night air. My chamber is stuffy, and I had too much wine with supper. Unlike you, I have a right to use these terraces.”
“Let me be more direct, and hopefully cut through pointless lies that serve neither of us. You were casting magic, my friend. It failed. I know this becaus
e I was the one who discovered your efforts and caused them to fail. But I couldn’t catch its purpose, not fully,” the man continued. “It was something to spy on my master, but the exact nature eluded me.”
An enemy. Of that Chantmer was now certain. There was something malignant hanging about the man, an aura of sorts, and he’d made a reference to his master, who could only be the necromancer himself, King Toth.
“Who are you? What is your name?”
“Zartosht of Starnar.”
Chantmer hadn’t expected the other man to respond to a direct question, and the answer caught him off guard. It took a moment to respond. “I heard the accent, and figured you were from Starnar. My name is Chantmer.”
“Just Chantmer?”
“Chantmer the Tall, if you wish.”
“Chantmer the Tall,” Zartosht said. “A title, even—you must be a full-fledged wizard.”
“Yes, and you see the bloody cloth, so you know my order. You know what we’re capable of.”
“I know that you waste your strength by drawing it from your own pores. So much easier to draw from another man’s pain and not one’s own.”
“That is a wicked thing to say. You sound like one of the king’s torturers.”
“Ah, is that what you think? I am not a torturer, and I far surpass their feeble skills. I am an acolyte of the dark wizard.”
“Oh, an acolyte. How impressive.”
“A dark acolyte, my friend. And that is far more powerful than a mere apprentice. Like you are.”
Zartosht’s tone was mocking, and Chantmer knew that his rival had seen through the lie and knew that he wasn’t a true wizard.
“In my order, acolytes have power, but no wisdom,” Chantmer said. “An acolyte is a tool for his betters to use. Is that how your dark wizard puts your skills to work? You stand by with a blank mind, waiting to be called upon when needed?”
The Black Shield (The Red Sword Book 2) Page 9
