The Ippos King: Wraith Kings Book Three

by Draven, Grace

  He twisted in the saddle, then wheeled Magas around for a better look at this newest surprise. While the spot where they stood had cleared of morning fog hours earlier, dissipated by sun and wind, it still clung to a part of the cliffs in the distance—a gray shroud whose folds now parted in ripples and folds to expose a magnificent beam bridge of swooping arches, decorative spandrels, and graceful parapets constructed of ivory stone.

  “That one isn't on the map, is it?”

  Startled by the unexpected discovery but hopeful the gods had just bestowed a mercy upon them, Serovek bit back a smile at Erostis's almost forlorn question. “No, it isn't, but that doesn't mean it can't be crossed. We might as well scout it before we decide to take the longer route.” He didn't relish traveling through Chamtivos's territory, and if this new bridge offered a way to avoid that, he'd gladly take it.

  They set off toward the bridge, and Serovek felt a splinter of unease the closer they came to it. How a map maker could capture the details of a footbridge but miss a beam bridge of this size and majesty made no sense. Judging by the depressions in the cliff walls where the other beam bridge had been anchored, it was wide enough to accommodate all types of traffic, with a lane dedicated to each side crossing instead of having to wait for clearance.

  This bridge dwarfed the collapsed one, easily three times its size and wide enough to allow full battalions and cavalry to cross, along with wagons of every size. Tendrils of fog wound through the parapets and floated just above a bridge deck partially covered by a carpet of tightly twisted ivy. The greenery wrapped pilasters and spilled over the deck's edge in long garlands. More of it draped statues twice the height of a man that lined the bridge on both sides.

  Where bridge deck met cliff edge, a set of pavers carved in arcane runes marked the transition from ground to bridge. Their party halted, and Serovek dismounted for a closer look at the carvings. He stretched out a hand to trace one of the symbols in the air. The abrupt change in temperature made him step back before reaching out a second time to test the air.

  “What is it?” Anhuset had dismounted as well and came to stand beside him and Magas.

  “Put out your hand,” he instructed her. “Just over the line where the bridge starts.

  She hesitated for a breath before doing as he asked. Like him, she yanked her hand back. Unlike him, she didn't try a second time, electing instead to wipe her hand on her leg. “It's warm. Summer-warm compared to where we're standing.”

  Serovek had assumed the runes carved in the pavers were either wards or a greeting and was inclined to believe the former rather than the latter. Therefore he wasn't overly startled when his hand slipped across an invisible barrier that separated the hard cold of a lingering winter still gripping the land from the heat of a day in high summer. No wonder the ivy draping the bridge was so lush and green. An enchantment protected it from the elements.

  What made him pause was Anhuset's lack of awareness of or sensitivity to the sorcery. The Kai he'd known, blessed with a heritage of magic, could sniff it out when it was nearby. She'd said nothing nor given any indication she'd felt its presence, even when they stood at the bridge's entrance.

  “Did you not sense the magic as we got closer?” he asked her in a low voice, keeping his tone light and conversational.

  Her entire body stiffened, an infinitesimal tensing. If one wasn't watching her closely, they'd have missed it, but Serovek had been watching, and the reaction told him his question had touched a raw spot.

  Her expression as well told him more than she realized. Studied. Distant. An indifferent mask. “It's human magic,” she said in a bland voice. “The Kai don't always sense the sorcery your kind wield.”

  Your kind.

  Had she slammed her shield down between them, her message couldn't have been clearer. He trod where he wasn't welcomed with his question, and she warned him with those two words that he'd be wise to back off from any more inquiries.

  He held up both hands, palms out, in a gesture of surrender before turning his attention to Erostis and Klanek. “We don't know what these wards do or if the bridge's apparent stability is just an illusion. I'll walk it first...” Three sets of protests went up so that he had to raise his voice above them. “Then come back so we'll go as a group.” He scowled at Anhuset and the two men as they all readied to launch into another spate of argument. “I'm not asking you. I'm telling you.”

  “I'm going with you,” Anhuset returned his scowl. “My magic might have missed the first ward, but it may catch something else before you stumble into it.”

  Her suggestion gained an enthusiastic nod from Erostis. “It's a good idea, margrave. Better than you going alone or me and Klanek with you. The sha would know what to avoid if there's anything unseen lurking on the bridge.”

  Serovek's faith in Anhuset's sorcerous senses had been tested one too many times now. It was no longer as strong as Erostis's, but he didn't argue the point. He passed Magas's reins to him instead and motioned to Anhuset to do the same. “Leave your horse. We'll keep the risk to a minimum.”

  When they stepped onto the bridge, a tilting sensation made him sway, and his ears popped as if he dropped suddenly from a greater height. He widened his stance to keep his balance and saw that Anhuset did the same. The sensation passed as quickly as it struck, leaving behind a cloying heat and the scent of decaying vegetation.

  Dressed for winter, the two shed their heavier layers of clothing, but even down to a thin shirt, he still broke a sweat. Beside him, Anhuset wore a sleeveless tunic. A fine sheen of perspiration already glossed her arms, defining long muscles, and she squinted without the protection of her hood. She'd unsheathed one of the knives she wore at her belt, the blade catching the dull gleam of sunlight on its edge.

  She stretched out her arm, inviting him to lead. “Ready for a stroll, margrave?”

  Up close, the bridge was even more dilapidated. Age and abandonment had left their marks, as had the purposeful defacement by long-vanished vandals. Even half choked in the creeping ivy, it was still a magnificent structure of lavishly carved stone. The statues he'd seen lining the parapets towered above him, standing on plinths engraved with epitaphs in an unknown script. The sculptor or sculptors had rendered the rich texture of silk and delicate embroidery from stone in the garb worn by the effigies, and the crowns they all wore told all who looked upon them that these were kings and queens. Larger than life in both marble and flesh and blood, they loomed over their lesser subjects with haughty majesty.

  Anhuset's voice beside him startled him from his contemplation. He'd been so distracted by the sight of the statues he hadn't heard her approach. “I can forgive a mapmaker for overlooking a bridge, even one as grand as this, but an entire city?” She pointed to the other side of the ravine where the mist hung thick as a barrier wall, obscuring everything at the bridge's opposite end. Until now.

  The impenetrable gray had fractured in spots, creating gaps in the mist wall to reveal a true fortification complete with imposing gate, battlements, and turrets. Towers claimed by more of the ivy soared skyward behind the walls. The crumbling remains of graceful sky walks once connected a few of the towers, their spans dismembered. In the sun, the city gleamed alabaster pockmarked by lichen and mold.

  As much of a ruin as Haradis, this nameless city perched on the cliff's edge in equal silence. Serovek fancied he still heard the faint echo of voices and the creak of wagon wheels as they rolled over a bridge deck clear of ivy and crowded with people.

  Unease crawled down his spine. What lay behind the mist and fortifications? Was the silence born of a place devoid of inhabitants or one that simply hid a quiet predator? A galla waiting to ambush the unwary if they walked through the gate?

  He turned to Anhuset. “Have my eyes changed?”

  Alarm flashed briefly across her face. She glanced over the parapet to the Absu river, a pale blue ribbon winding a path at the bottom of the ravine. Water. The barrier which no galla could cross unless there was a
solid bridge. Just like this one.

  “No,” she replied. “Only one part of your eyes is blue, and that is the blue you were born with. Deep water, not eidolon.”

  They both looked back to where Erostis waited with Klanek and the wagon carrying Megiddo. No strange light leaked out from the blanket covering the bier nor shimmered around the wagon itself.

  Serovek exhaled a relieved sigh, returning his attention to the city. “If there were galla here, we'd have known it by now. So would half the countryside. I don't know why the map doesn't show the city or the bridge, but one looks sturdy enough to cross and will get us to our destination quicker.”

  “Not a sound from the place,” Erostis called to them. “A dead city, or an abandoned one.”

  “Old ruins are as plentiful in this country as freckles on my favorite pub wench's skin,” Klanek argued. “I'm surprised we've only come across this one and Haradis so far.”

  “Call it fortune.” Serovek took several steps across the deck. Only the heat bore down on him. “If no one's there, we won't be overwhelmed by beggars when we enter the gate or crowds when we travel through the city.” More steps and only the wind to whisper his name while the statues ignored him in favor of staring at each other with empty gazes.

  Solid beneath his feet, the bridge still vibrated under the hard gusts purling beneath its spandrels and joists. “Don't cross until I give the signal it's safe to do so,” he instructed the two men. More sure of the bridge now, he and Anhuset started a basket weave motion as they scouted the bridge, walking the sides, then crossing paths at the center to walk the opposite side, then do the same again and again, skirting tangled mats of ivy as they went.

  Serovek eyed the statues as he traveled the deck pausing at one unlike those on either side of it. The difference lay not in the sculptor's hand but in the vandal's. Hammer and chisel wielded by an enraged hand had savaged this particular king, hacking away at the face, breaking the crown, and defacing the epigraph on the plinth until the mysterious words were obliterated.

  “The others are mostly untouched,” Anhuset said as she crossed the bridge to reach him.

  Serovek leaned toward the damaged statue despite his better instincts warning him against such an action. “Whoever he was, he was hated.” He stretched out a hand toward the plinth.

  “Don't,” Anhuset warned.

  “I've no intention of touching it,” he assured her. The words no sooner left his lips than a tiny bolt of lightning arced from the stone to jolt his fingertip. Serovek leaped back with a yelp, narrowly avoiding trampling Anhuset.

  “I warned you not to touch it,” she snapped.

  “And I didn't,” he snapped back.

  He glared at her and she at him until a thought occurred to him. Something in his expression must have forewarned her of another one of his uncomfortable questions for the scowl disappeared behind that stoic mask she erected like a shield wall.

  “The statue is warded,” Serovek said. “I'm guessing they all are. Human sorcery or not, I'd think a Kai possessing even a drop of Elder magic would sense it, yet you didn't. Again.”

  He'd heard rumors in the months following the galla's defeat of Kai unable to capture the mortem lights of their dead. For a people whose history relied on the stored memories of the dead to record their history, such a calamity was catastrophic, unprecedented, and as far as he knew, unexplained.

  “You've lost your magic, haven't you, firefly woman?”

  Her lips thinned into a mulish line, while her yellow eyes lightened until they were almost white.

  Annoyance, he thought. Anger. The hostile emotions paled a Kai's eyes while the benign ones turned them gold.

  Her hand clenched on the knife she held before loosening, and her shoulders relaxed. When she spoke, her voice carried nothing of her momentary fury, only a faint thread of sadness. “I have.”

  “Will you ever tell me why?”

  “No.”

  Serovek had expected such an answer. She'd maneuvered around his oblique questions until he'd asked her outright. Still, she only confirmed what he'd already ascertained and nothing more. Sha-Anhuset was a woman judicious with her words and possessive of her secrets. This one he sensed affected far more than a single Kai. “If there's a way I can help you regain it, I hope you'd tell me.”

  Her posture slumped a little more, and the hard angles of her faced softened. “Ask me nothing else about it,” she said. “You know enough now to realize the galla was attracted to you, that while I can be an extra sword on the bridge, I can't sense sorcery. I inherited very little Elder magic to begin with, but my sword arm is strong, and I'm enduring. Let that be enough.”

  “It's always been enough.” He wanted to gather her in his arms, stroke her silvery hair and apologize for his prying. He bowed to her instead. “No more intrusions,” he promised. “I was wrong to meddle and beg your forgiveness.”

  “Done,” she said, eyes darkening once more to their citrine shade.

  Quick to bristle and just as quick to pardon, she was a creature of dichotomies in character and appearance: dark and light, harsh and merciful, dour and humorous, secretive and forthright. And he lusted for her mightily, even now as they traveled across an ancient bridge toward a strange and empty city.

  They continued methodically weaving toward the opposite side, reaching the deck's center Anhuset stopped to stare down its length. “What malice is this?”

  The mists veiling the city suddenly thickened to a dense, roiling mass before spilling like a waterfall onto the bridge, rushing toward them in a gray tide.

  A low-hanging cloud did no more damage than get someone wet, but this was far more than weather, and Serovek wanted nothing to do with a repeat of Haradis. “Run!”

  He never had a chance to lift a foot. His command acted as a catalyst for invisible listeners. The ivy, wild and thick, turned into a writhing, whipping mass. Vines, slender as threads and stout as broom handles lashed upward and out with serpentine speed. Serovek fell to one knee as several leaf-covered ropes snaked around his ankles and calves, wrapping so tight his feet went numb.

  Anhuset's expletives singed his ears as more of the ivy coiled around her as well, even managing to encircle her wrist and yank her knife out of her hand before tossing it into one of the heaving mats of vegetation. The blade sank out of sight, devoured by the feral foliage.

  “That was my favorite knife, you pile of pig shit,” she snarled, straining against her bonds.

  Shouts behind them made Serovek's heart seize. He twisted enough in his shackles to shout at Erostis who'd mounted his horse to ride toward them. “Stay there, gods damn it!” His shout ricocheted off the cliff walls and echoed back to them. He turned his attention to Anhuset, her lips pulled back from her teeth as she growled and fought against her bonds. The vines climbed higher up her body, twining around her thighs and hips, weaving a cage of greenery around her lower torso.

  “Anhuset, stop.” She paused long enough to stare at him. “Stop,” he repeated. “The more you move, the higher they'll go and the tighter they'll get.” His own tethers hadn't traveled any farther up his body than his calves and were loose enough that he regained his footing and stood.

  Her eyes rounded at the sight, and she halted her thrashing. The vines stopped their creep as well, though they didn't retreat or loosen on her. “So we're stuck here while whatever that is...” She tilted her head toward the mist only a stone's throw away from them. “Consumes us.”

  “Pray that isn't so,” he said. He wouldn't offer any false reassurances. He had no more idea than she what lay in store for them.

  The preternatural mist had slowed its rush to a slow lap, dissipating in spots until it no longer resembled a ground-hugging cloud.

  Serovek's lips parted in a silent gasp. “Lover of thorns and holy gods,” he breathed in a whisper.

  He'd prayed never to see this very sight ever again, yet once more a vast crowd of the dead stood in front of him, their regard far heavier than t
he vaporous forms they wore.

  Icy fingers of panic closed his throat for a moment, rendering him mute. The necromantic magic he was sure still lingered inside him had somehow managed to attract restless ghosts without his knowledge or control.

  “Anhuset.” He forced her name past his teeth. She turned her head just enough to give him a quick glance without taking her eye off the host of apparitions watching them in return. “Have my eyes changed?”

  Her scowl darkened even more, not with anger but puzzlement. “No. They're still the same. Cold-water blue and just as strange as they always are.”

  He might have chuckled at her comment were they in different circumstances.

  The throng of spectral watchers rippled before him, tattered shapes whose details sharpened for a moment into men, women, and children. There were thousands of them crowding the bridge deck, some gliding away from the main group to flutter along either side of and behind him and Anhuset until they were surrounded.

  “Who are you?” He wondered if they'd speak as those who'd followed the Wraith kings into battle had done.

  One shape in the front and center of the shifting mist separated from the rest to drift toward him. A woman, lithe and nearly as tall as Anhuset. Her nebulous features hinted at a comeliness bordering on the sublime. In life she must have been breathtaking to behold.

  As she drew closer, Serovek inhaled sharply. He recognized her. One of the statues behind him wore her face. A queen, crowned in a diadem whose jewels had been pried out by a long-dead thief. As he'd done with the faceless king, Serovek had paused to admire her image. He hadn't expected to confront her specter.

  She didn't speak, but nonetheless a voice sounded clear in his mind in a tongue he understood. “A dark song is your spirit, Wraith king, a hymn of the broken. We heard its dirge across the ravine.” Her phantasmal gaze passed over him, leaving frost ribbons on his clothes where it touched. “A general of the dead with the taint of the damned on him.”

  There was no condemnation in her words, no judgment, yet Serovek briefly closed his eyes, sick to his soul at their truth. When he opened them again, she was still in front of him, and beyond her Anhuset watched him with a wary, puzzled expression.