Table of Contents

Book One: The Red Sword

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Book Two: The Black Shield

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Book Three: The Emerald Crown

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

The Red Sword Trilogy

by Michael Wallace

Book 1: The Red Sword

Book 2: The Black Shield

Book 3: The Emerald Crown

Cover art by Miguel Coimbra and Jeff Brown

Book One: The Red Sword

Chapter One

Markal was tending the severed head of his master when a knight stepped into the garden with a drawn sword. Sunlight reflected off the knight’s gleaming breastplate, blinding the apprentice wizard, who stood staring, his work covering the dead man’s head forgotten.

There was violence in the intruder’s posture, and fear rose in Markal’s breast. The man’s sword gleamed red, blood dripping from the tip to splatter the flowers, and from there falling to pollute the sacred ground of the gardens. Clods of dirt fell from the spade gripped in Markal’s suddenly sweating hands.

By the Brothers, he’s slain the keepers.

The knight could not have reached this inner sanctum without attacking and killing the keepers who protected this space. And what of the other apprentices, Markal’s fellow students in the gardens of Memnet the Great? Had the knight butchered them, too? The acolytes? Was there nobody left to oppose the intruder but Markal?

He searched his memory for a spell that would turn aside this murderous figure. Even a bit of trickery. But how had the man found the gardens in the first place? He should have been stopped at the bridge, should have been turned away at the north gate. And Markal was surrounded by wards and runes that should have destroyed any enemy who managed to make it inside. Yet somehow this man seemed invulnerable.

“Where is he?” the knight asked, voice sharp, demanding, and Markal received his second surprise. The intruder was no man. She was a woman.

She stepped toward Markal and turned in such a way that the sun stopped reflecting off the armor and cast its warm, bathing light against the brick wall at her back, at the fruiting vines that snaked to the top of the wall, and across the woman’s face. The woman had pale skin, light blue eyes, and a long braided knot of golden-colored hair that trailed down her back.

She was beautiful and strange and terrifying all at once. Markal had seen blue eyes before, even wheat-colored hair in the markets of Syrmarria on those who were said to carry the blood of those who lived beyond the western mountains, but nobody like this, and he knew he was facing a full-blooded barbarian warrior.

The woman was tall, lean, and muscular, but her two-handed sword was at least four feet long, and wielding it would have taxed the strongest of warriors. Yet she carried it lightly, as if it were a rapier or spear.

“I asked you a question, boy.” Her accent was strange, her vowels elongated, the ends of the words swallowed. “Where is he?”

“Who?” Markal forced himself to remain calm. “There is nobody here but me. Why have you come, to kill me?”

Her eyes hardened as she stepped toward him. “If I must.”

“Like the others? Were you forced to kill them, too?”

“What others?”

“The keepers, the acolytes. You murdered them, didn’t you?”

Markal nodded toward the sword, but he’d been mistaken and it wasn’t dripping with blood after all. There was only a clean, gleaming blade. Some trick of the light? No, he’d seen red drops splatter on the flowers. But there was no blood there, either, only perfect blossoms lifting their cool yellow faces gratefully to the sun.

Another step forward. “Where is the wizard?”

Markal lifted his spade defensively, even as he recognized the foolishness of the gesture. He didn’t look at the freshly turned soil at his feet. It was damp and dark, worms still burrowing back into the ground. There were defenses in this walled garden, including the tree beneath which she stood. He could awaken it, test her abilities. Yet he was stunned that she’d made it this far, and afraid she’d shrug off any attempt.

“What wizard?” he asked.

“Don’t toy with me, boy. I will kill you if I must, kill them all, if it is the only way to force your master to face me.”

Markal thrust his spade into the soil and wiped his hands on his already filthy robes. “There is no wizard here, not in these gardens. Here you will only find apprentices such as myself, and the keepers of the gardens. We all have some small measure of magic, but there are none who can claim the title of wizard. Not here, and perhaps nowhere in Aristonia. Do you have a name of someone in particular? I might send you on your way.”

A frown crossed her brow, making her seem more severe than ever. “The great one—I do not know his name. But he is here.” She waved her sword. “In your gardens. I have been called here. I know who he is and what he does.”

“Do you? I’m not sure I know that myself.”

A smile crossed the woman’s face, as if she had caught him in a lie. “So you do know of the wizard.”

She lifted the sword above her shoulders, but it was only to slide it into a long scabbard at her back. Markal studied the woman more closely, and noted the road grime on her face and hands, the unfastened strap of her bracer, and the scuffed appearance of her breastplate. That first impression of a knight stepping gleaming from the sunlight had been very wrong indeed.

Moving deliberately, Markal stepped up to the fruiting vines growing against the brick wall to his left. He was in one of many small interior spaces in the larger gardens, but perhaps the most potent, and that could serve him well. He plucked a round, ruby-red fruit.

“You’ve been long on the road. This plum will refresh you.”

She didn’t take it. “Plums grow on trees, not vines.”

“Not this kind. Eat it. It will help.” To show her that it was harmless, he took a bite. A sweet, juicy flavor exploded in his mouth. He picked a second one and held it out.

She took the plum and turned it over in her hand. “What is this, some spell, some trickery?”

“Not at all. I told you, I’m an apprentice—I have little magic. It is the power of this garden—it will restore.”

“Where is he?” She cast the fruit aside. “The great wizard? You have admitted he is here.”

“He was here.” Markal let his own fruit drop. “These were his gardens. But you are too late to see the master. Another assassin has beat you to it.”

“How was he killed? Poison, strangulation, magic?”

“Why does that matter?”

“It matters, as well you know.”

“The assassin cut off my master’s head, threw his body over a horse, and escaped into the desert.” This was all true, and yet only one small part of the story.

“What did the assassin look like?”

Markal shook his head. “I didn’t see him. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. There have been many would-be assassins over the years—they always failed in the past. This time, a man cut his way to my master’s side and finished the business for good.”

“Tell me. Did the assassin have a gray face and dead eyes?”

Markal blinked. Yes, that was precisely what Nathaliey had told Markal, but how would this barbarian know that? She looked and sounded different from the previous attacker in every way imaginable, yet there was so much violence about her that they were clearly on the same mission, to destroy Memnet the Great.

He must have given away his answer in his expression, because she pushed on. “You have a shrine, a temple, do you not?”

“The Golden Pavilion, yes. But you won’t find him there. I told you, he’s dead.”

“And where is his body?”

“Carried off. I said that already.”

“His head?”

“Burned, as is the custom in Aristonia.” The lie tasted like dust on Markal’s tongue, and from her sharpened gaze, he thought she’d sensed he was lying as well. “Leave this place. You will only find your death in this garden.”

“One moment you profess weakness, the next boast of your strength. Who will kill me, you?” She smiled at this.

“Memnet the Great may be dead, but magic infuses his land. The gardens themselves will reject you.”

“They tried already. I battered down their defenses.”

“Indeed.” That was the great and terrible mystery. Such a thing had never happened before.

The woman thrust out her chin, and her eyes glinted. “I am Bronwyn of Arvada, a paladin of Eriscoba, and I carry the red sword. No wizard, warrior, or garden can bend me from my purpose.”

She turned away from him as if he were of no consequence and inspected the walled garden. Fruiting vines covered the walls, and beds of flowers lined the stone walkway, their blossoms attended by honeybees. Birds warbled from the branches of the fruit trees around the edges. Water burbled from a fountain in the middle of the enclosed space, and though the bulk of the khalifates were in the midst of a crippling drought, the wells and streams of Aristonia still ran clear.

Bronwyn of Arvada, as she’d styled herself, studied the other three paths and finally fixed on the one flanked by a pair of peach trees, as if drawn there. How had she known? It led to a woodland path, and beyond that, the Golden Pavilion on the edge of the lake. She set off in that direction with long, confident strides. One hand reached over her shoulder to touch the pommel of the sword strapped on her back. She passed through the trees and disappeared.

Markal let out his breath and looked down at the fresh dirt at his feet. Movement caught his eye from the shaded wall to his left, but this time he wasn’t surprised by the figure stepping toward him.

It was a tall man in a robe, who pulled back his cowl as he stepped into the sunlight. His lips pinched together in a thin, displeased line, and he let out a long, exaggerated sigh as he peered down at Markal over a hooked nose.

“How much did you hear?” Markal asked.

“Enough,” Chantmer said. “Were you so frightened you had to blurt every secret, give her every advantage?”

A defensive tone entered Markal’s voice. “I told her nothing.”

“Indeed? You told her about the assassin, about the magic of the gardens, even our master’s name.”

“Nothing of consequence.”

“These are the things that break our disguise, that reveal us to the world.”

“We were already revealed. She crossed the bridge and entered the gardens. How did that happen? Why didn’t the runes and wards cast her out?”

“They must have weakened since the master died,” Chantmer said.

“The master’s death wouldn’t change that, not so quickly. They defend the land, the order. Many are older than Memnet himself.”

“If you knew the answer to the question, why did you ask it? Besides, I think you’re wrong. What other explanation is there?”

Markal had no answer for this, and Chantmer looked down at him with eyebrows raised.

“Well then,” the taller apprentice told Markal. “What spell did you cast on the fruit?”

“I didn’t. I was afraid she would detect it—did you see her gaze? By the Brothers, she could nearly read my thoughts. I thought the plum itself would be enough.”

“Anyway, she wouldn’t eat it. A worthless attempt.”

Markal’s face felt hot. “What would you have done?”

“Magic,” Chantmer said. “Our master praises your knowledge—very well then, put it to use. Make the barbarian sleep, set her mind on fruitless paths. Send her east on the road until she is far from here. Something. Or are you only an archivist after all?”

Are you only an archivist?

When Memnet the Great had put the question to Markal, it prodded him, inspired him to work harder. From Chantmer’s lips, it was an insult. Yet it was true enough. Apprentices fell from the path when their magic or knowledge failed. Those who couldn’t master the knowledge became acolytes. Those whose power fell short became keepers or archivists. Of these, the archivists were the weakest, all knowledge and little magic. An ability to read ancient texts, to hold the slippery spells and incantations in one’s head, but no capacity for calling up the reserves that would bring them to life.

“We have to stop her,” Markal said. “She knows too much, she senses. She didn’t go to the pavilion first, she came here. Somehow, she knew about the master’s head. And how did she find the gardens, anyway? She’s no mage, she’s a paladin. Not even the high king can find us anymore, so how would Bronwyn? Someone must have sent her.”

“We agree on that much. She must be stopped.” Chantmer stared at the mound of dirt at Markal’s feet, then looked up and held his gaze. “Well?”

Markal picked up the spade and held it protectively. “No. It is too early.”

“You looked?”

“I lifted the dirt. His eyes are closed.”

“And below the severed head?” Chantmer asked. “What did you see?”

“The soil holds its magic—we must trust it.”

“In other words, you didn’t look.” Chantmer held out his hand. “Give me the spade. It’s time.”

“It’s not time, and you are not in command.”

“And neither are you,” Chantmer said.

Indeed, that was a critical lack in this garden. Who would lead? Some of the older keepers had been here the longest, a few more than half a century. But they had once been apprentices themselves, only to fall aside as their magic reached its limit, left to age and mature in wisdom, but not skill. How would they command the garden’s magic? Yet the apprentices were not ready, either. Otherwise they wouldn’t be apprentices.

With Memnet’s death there was no leader of the Order of the Crimson Path. Perhaps Chantmer would assume that role someday, perhaps not, but for the moment Markal had no intention of obeying his companion’s ill-informed whims.

“Where are the others?” Markal asked.

Chantmer let his hand slowly fall, but didn’t look away from the mound of dirt holding the master’s head. “Nathaliey left this morning for Syrmarria.”

“She won’t find anything new.”

“So you have the entire library committed to memory now?” Chantmer’s left eyebrow arched. “I think not. As for Narud, he is communing with mice again. Or maybe it was voles. He’s of no use to us.”

Markal wasn’t so sure. Chantmer dismissed the other apprentice as being of little practical value, and his curiosity about the natural world as being a strange, pointless eccentricity, but there was a wild, uncontrolled magic pulsing from Narud that was as strong as Chantmer’s not-inconsiderable native abilities.

“We’ll have to enlist the keepers,” Markal said.

“And do what with them, precisely?”

“We distract the enemy while the keepers raise the wards. The keepers could conceal the entrance to this inner garden until we can get rid of her.” Markal nodded, beginning to imagine the spells they could use: sanctify, disorder, and disconcert. It would be costly. “Cleanse the very memory of its existence from the woman’s mind.”

“This entire garden was supposedly hidden,” Chantmer said. “Yet the barbarian strolled in unopposed.” He stroked his beard. “She’s a barbarian, which means she came through the mountains, where the king’s men are building their fortifications, yet that didn’t stop her. She broke down the wards, and now she’s in the gardens. No, your plan won’t work. She won’t be put off by defensive magic.”

“And your idea?”

“Kill her.”

Markal blinked. “Here?”

He looked around. The air hung heavy with the scent of fruit and flowers, and bees the size of his thumb filled the air with their gentle buzz. Honey from the gardens was said to cure leprosy, and the peaches that grew from the trees sold for ten silver dinarii in the Grand Bazaar of Marrabat on the far side of the southern desert.

The master was dead, and the thought of bringing violence to his garden filled Markal with horror. This was a place of learning, of healing. And he had no evidence the woman intended to finish what her predecessor had nearly accomplished. Perhaps she wanted something else.

Chantmer thrust a hand within his robe where his silver-threaded belt encircled his waist. He withdrew his hand, but not before Markal caught a glimpse of something lumpy shifting within the folds. What was that, a coin purse? A meditation stone? Strange.

“Don’t look so disturbed,” Chantmer said. “This place has seen violence before, or there wouldn’t be so many wards and runes.”

“You think we can do it without the master?”

“Of course,” Chantmer said. “You and I alone could manage. You will hold the incantation in your mind, and I will draw it forth with my strength.”

“Did you see the red sword?”

“Yes.”

“There’s magic in it,” Markal said. “More than you or I possess. Anyway, this woman has done us no harm.”

“Other than violating the sanctity of the gardens.”

“And we won’t fight her until we know her intentions.” Markal shook his head, more determined now than ever. “No. We won’t do it.”

“You forbid it? Ha!”

“We agreed already—there are four apprentices. Three of us must agree on any major departure from Memnet’s command, and this certainly counts. Nathaliey is in Syrmarria. Go for her if you wish. Then try to convince Narud.”

Chantmer reached for his waist, then stopped and clenched his hands together, and Markal thought of what he’d spotted in the folds of the man’s robes.

“What are you hiding?”

“Nothing.”

“There’s something in your robe, what is it?”

Chantmer reared to his full height and peered down at Markal. “This . . . Bronwyn,” he said, the barbarian name spitting off his tongue, “has come to the gardens for one purpose, and you know what it is.”

“Then help me rid it of her.”

“Do it your way, when you tell me to, is that it?”

Markal only hesitated a moment. “Yes. Without violence.”

“The Harvester take you.” Chantmer’s jaw clenched, then slowly relaxed. “Very well. But when your way doesn’t work, we will resort to stronger measures.”

Chapter Two

Markal and Chantmer made their way out of the walled enclosure where they’d buried the head of Memnet the Great. The path to the Golden Pavilion led through two more courtyard-like gardens, down a stone staircase to the pond and fountain, then over a footbridge that spanned another pond, this one long and narrow, before turning into a forest path. It then branched toward the little stone cottages in the woods where the members of the order lived.

Bronwyn had left evidence of her passing along the way. Here and there she’d departed from the path, her boots trampling moss and kicking up mats of leaves. She’d hacked her way through a thicket of vegetation that grew along an old stone wall and left severed vines oozing sap.

“Curse her,” Chantmer said, slowing to study the wounded plants. “Pointless destruction.”

“Hardly pointless,” Markal said. “There’s a method to it.”

He pulled back the vines and exposed the wall. A rune had been carved in the stone, a word in the old tongue, it edges eroded with time, but the impression still deep. It was cool to his touch, not warm, as he’d have expected had it still been active. Yet Bronwyn had discovered it and damaged it before it could harm her. How had she spotted it?

“I see,” Chantmer said. He bit his lip and looked troubled. They continued on.

Visitors were not unknown here, although the gardens couldn’t be found, couldn’t even be remembered. The high king himself had once lived here many years ago, and even he had forgotten how to find the place once he’d left the order and moved to Veyre. But outsiders could be led to the garden and visit safely. So long as they were welcomed.

Earlier in the year, after a spring rainstorm on the western plains carried the false promise of an end to the drought, Markal had brought an engineer from the king’s road building detail to the gardens upon request of the high king. The engineer badgered Memnet about cutting the king’s highway through Aristonia instead of skirting its northern border as had been agreed. When the wizard denied the request, as the observing apprentices had known he would, the engineer sputtered and threatened.

“Damn you, stubborn old man. I could send ten soldiers and take this whole blasted garden. Cut off your beard and sell you to the nomads.”

“You left your horse and entered on foot, did you not?” Memnet said. “Where was that?”

The engineer didn’t look at the paths, as most men would, but glanced at the sun in the sky, then smugly pointed in a direction vaguely northeast. He had correctly identified the direction of the stables outside the gate.

“Very well,” the wizard had said. “Find your way there. Bring me the king’s order from your saddlebags by sundown, and I will grant you leave to build your road where you wish.”

Two days later, the dazed engineer staggered past the Golden Pavilion when Markal was meditating in the shrine. There was water everywhere in the gardens—it flowed from fountains, coursed through stone-lined waterways, and collected in ponds, before draining into the lake alongside which the man now walked, but his lips were cracked and bleeding from thirst. Markal had felt sorry for the poor fool and broke from his meditation to show the engineer to the stables and send him on his way.

There were two entrances to the gardens, one in the north, and the other in the south. Neither had a watchtower. There were no armed guards, no barricades to impede an enemy’s progress, no visible defensive fortifications of any kind. Nevertheless, the gardens were a fortress in their own way. And that was assuming one could find them in the first place.

Yet Bronwyn of Arvada had found her way inside and was methodically overthrowing their defenses, battering their gates and scaling their ramparts. Markal wasn’t surprised to emerge from the forest into the meadow and see the paladin sitting on the steps of the Golden Pavilion on the far side. Her sword rested across her lap.

The Golden Pavilion had been built by Memnet the Great’s own master, who had founded the order of wizards to which Markal and his companions dedicated themselves. Its gold leaf gleamed in the sunlight, and red pillars supported the roof, which overhung a porch encircling the building. Through the open doors, a great brass bell dominated the inner platform; when rung, the sound reverberated for miles, all the way to the stone bridge over Blossom Creek. That platform was their shrine and the holiest spot in the gardens, dedicated to mastering the knowledge left them by the Brother Gods. The only spot to rival it in Aristonia was the Sacred Forest that guarded the length of the northern border of the khalifate.

Behind the Golden Pavilion lay the backdrop of the graceful curves of the lake and its tiny islands covered with twisted, carefully cultivated trees. A path curved around the lake, entered the woods on the far side, and finally left the gardens via the south gate.

“Unbelievable,” Chantmer said to Markal as the two apprentices crossed the meadow. “She’s desecrated our shrine.” Indeed, Bronwyn had been busy, as evidenced by the shards of wood lying on either side of her.

Markal stared in horror at the two pillars on top of the stairs that supported the roof on this side of the pavilion. They had been carved and painted with fire salamanders, writhing dragons, and the heads of mammoths from the snowy wastelands of the north, but Bronwyn had hacked loose chunks of red-painted carvings and exposed the bare wood below. The wounds ran several feet up and down the columns, destroying nearly all of the subtle art limned into the surface. Those figures had concealed more protective wards. Why hadn’t any of them stopped her?

Five other people stood in the meadow leading to the lake-side pavilion. Two were keepers, their scythes still in hand from when they’d been cutting grass. Two more were acolytes, younger than Markal and his companion, and the fifth was Narud. He spotted the newcomers and walked over to join them, waving for the other four to stay where they were and keep an eye on the intruder. The apprentices stood about fifty feet from the pavilion.

“Who is she?” Narud asked.

“A barbarian,” Chantmer said, tone disgusted. “What else is there to know?”

“What is she doing now?” Markal asked.

“Says she is waiting for the master,” Narud said. “I warned her not to move, but told her nothing of the master. I guessed the two of you would arrive soon enough.”

“And she agreed to stay put?” Markal asked.

“She neither agreed nor disagreed. I don’t think she follows orders.”

Narud was the youngest of the three apprentices present, only twenty-five, but due to the curiously inconsistent aging of those who embraced magic, he looked at least ten years older, while Markal and Chantmer looked considerably younger than their years.

Markal often thought that their role as students left the apprentices stunted in youth emotionally while magic filled them with knowledge and power. He’d always known they’d need to emerge from their master’s long shadow to complete their growth, but never guessed that an assassin would force that so suddenly. Memnet the Great was dead these three weeks, and Markal desperately needed his wisdom and power.

Narud glanced first at Markal, then Chantmer. “What do we do?”

“Curse this woman,” Chantmer said in a low voice. “We’ll send her miserable soul to the Harvester.”

“No,” Markal said. “We do not fight her.” He glanced at the woman, who watched with a sharp expression. Not exactly hostile, but there was violence lurking below the surface.

“We must fight,” Chantmer said.

“Not in the way you mean it. We don’t kill her—is that even possible?”

Chantmer glared. “Oh, it’s possible. It’s most definitely possible.”

“Then what?” Narud asked, not Chantmer, but Markal.

Markal had been turning over a strategy since leaving the walled gardens, and now explained to his two companions the mixture of incantations he intended to use to rid them of the intruder before she could do further harm. Skepticism deepened on both of their faces.

“We need Nathaliey,” Narud said when he’d finished. “Where is she?”

“She left for Syrmarria this morning,” Markal said.

“To see her father?” Narud asked.

Chantmer shook his head. His eyes were deep and thoughtful beneath his heavy eyebrows. “The libraries. She’s searching for information that might help us with the master’s head.”

“That’s only a day’s ride,” Narud said. “She might be back by tomorrow. Could we wait?”

Markal glanced back at the paladin, who was still watching. “She might be back then, or she might be in the libraries for days. Weeks. It’s hard to say.”

“So we send for her,” Narud said.

“No. We don’t have time. Who knows what damage the paladin might do before then?”

“Markal and I are in agreement on that much,” Chantmer said. “We must drive her out, one way or another.”

“You can’t manage this,” Narud said. He glanced at Chantmer. “Either of you. Me, either. Not without Nathaliey.”

“Markal only needs to hold the words,” Chantmer said. “You and I will do the rest. And when Markal’s scheme collapses, we’ll resort to stronger methods.”

“You keep saying that,” Narud said. “With our strength spent? How would we manage that? Bleed ourselves to death?”

Markal had laid out his plans, but that didn’t mean he was disinterested in Chantmer’s thoughts. But before the taller apprentice could speak, Bronwyn rose to her feet and stepped down from the stairs where she’d been perched since Markal and Chantmer arrived. She reached over her shoulder and sheathed the two-handed sword. Again, it seemed so light in her hands as to be almost insubstantial.

The keepers and acolytes that Narud had left in place moved to block her, and the muscles in the woman’s shoulders tensed. “Stand aside,” she told them. “I’m warning you.”

“Let her through,” Markal called.

The others parted at Markal’s command, even the older keepers, many of whom surely held more knowledge in their heads than the raw, untested apprentice now giving them orders. Doubt washed over Markal, as corrosive as hot tea poured on a cone of hardened sugar.

“Give us space,” he told Narud and Chantmer. “I’ll try once more with gentle words.”

“I hear you, boy,” Bronwyn said.

She reached a hand over her shoulder to caress the hilt of her weapon, and when she stopped walking, she was within striking distance of Markal’s head. One swift motion and the sword would strike him down.

He held out his hands, palms up. “No harm has been done. Nothing that can’t be repaired.”

“Where is he? Where is the sorcerer?”

“You must be tired from the road. Sit in the pavilion and we’ll bring you water from the fountains and fruit from the orchards. Bread—I baked it this morning, and it is still fresh. Take it with honey and dates and you’ll be restored. Surely you have heard the reputation of food from our gardens and kitchens.”

“I know what this means, to confuse and distract. Black wizardry—I won’t take your poison.”

“Flour, egg, salt, leavening. There’s no poison in it. Just bread with honey. Fruit, water. It’s the soil of the land that makes them potent, and it’s no black magic, I promise. Be reasonable. You haven’t killed anyone, and the damage to the shrine can be repaired.”

“Where is he?”

“I told you, the master is dead. You’re too late.”

“He’s not dead, that is a lie.” Her hand tightened on the hilt. “I will kill you all if you don’t tell me. And then I will put this garden to the fire. No two stones will stand one atop the other, no living thing shall grow, no patch of ground will remain unbroken until I find him.”

Markal didn’t need Chantmer to tell him it was time to act, that his attempt at reconciliation had failed. His two companions stood behind him, one at either shoulder, and he could feel them gathering strength. Magic crackled beneath Chantmer’s skin, controlled, tense, like a drawn bowstring. Narud’s was wilder, less precise, more like water building behind an irrigation dam, ready to flood loose. Markal’s own magic was beneath the surface, strong enough in its way, but unharnessed. He would lose it all if he tried to call it.

And so he wouldn’t. But he could act as archivist for his two companions. He’d be their own library of incantations in the old tongue, recollecting the words that refused to fix themselves in the other apprentices’ heads.

“Animum, ut obliviscatur.” Turn her mind, make her forget.

The words were slippery on his tongue. They wanted to drip off his lips, to be swallowed, to be chewed like gristle between the teeth until they were incomprehensible. It took great concentration to pronounce them correctly.

Neither of the other apprentices could yet hold that particular spell in their mind, not even after lengthy meditation, but as Markal spoke, Chantmer repeated them as he lifted his hands and fixed the intruder with a hard stare. A great drop of blood rolled down each of Chantmer’s forearms and fell to the ground.

Bronwyn blinked. Her hand slid from the hilt, and her arm went limp. She turned and looked about her with a dazed expression. She faltered as if she would fall, the weight of her armor suddenly more than she could bear.

“Quickly, Markal!” Chantmer said. He was panting, his face flushed, and a violent shiver worked through his body. “The other spell.”

Markal turned toward Narud. “Indicem ire uiam hinc abierit.”

Narud repeated these words. The magic uncoiled from him like snakes and buried itself in the already confused and staggering woman. Blood ran down Narud’s arms and dripped off the end in tiny rivulets. Bronwyn turned sharply toward the path leading away from the pavilion and back toward the north gate.

Chantmer let out his breath. “What was that last incantation? You told me before—I can’t remember.”

“I sent her home,” Markal said. “Or started her toward it, at least.”

Narud had bent over double, gasping, but now raised his head. “And how long will it last?”

“Long enough.” Markal glanced at the woman, whose pace was picking up. “A day, perhaps two, before she shakes it off. She’ll ride west toward the mountains. By the time she comes to her senses, she’ll have to find us a second time. That will be even harder, and we’ll have time to rebuild our wards.”

He gave Chantmer a sharp look. “What were you intending? You had something else in mind.” His eyes fell to the man’s waist. “What are you carrying in there, anyway?”

“Never you mind.”

Suspicions were growing in Markal’s mind. “Tell me, Chantmer. We have no secrets between us.”

“Are you hiding something?” Narud asked. “Markal, what is it? What did Chantmer do?”

Chantmer crossed his arms and turned away. “It is nothing. An idea, a thought is all. We have work to do. Explain to the keepers what you—” He stopped and his eyes widened. “Why Markal, you fool!”

Markal followed his gaze. Bronwyn had stopped some two hundred feet distant, between the white trunks of two enormous beech trees that flanked the path as it entered the forest, forming an arcade with their limbs. What was she doing? Why didn’t she continue?

By the Brothers, don’t stop. Go!

The paladin reached for her sword, slid it carefully from the sheath, and held it in front of her. One hand took the blade, and she turned around to face the meadow again. She was a few hundred feet away, her face caught in the dappled light coming through the leaves overhead, but Markal swore he could sense her mind clearing simply by watching the change in her posture. She suddenly strode toward them, her face a mask of cold fury.

Markal desperately searched for some incantation. But both his companions had spent their power, literally bleeding it to the ground, and there was nothing strong enough to turn her aside that he could manage on his own.

“Did you think you could cheat me?” she called. “Did you think me a weak-minded fool from your slave markets?”

Bronwyn came at Markal with her sword. He could only flinch, his feet rooted to the ground. The blade glinted red. The keepers and acolytes came running from the Golden Pavilion, but they could do nothing. Narud stared in horror.

Only Chantmer was active. He reached into his robe and withdrew a small round object. A glass ball, one moment the color of cream streaked with amber, the next translucent, glowing from some internal light.

You devil, Markal thought. Where did you get that?

Yet a wild hope rose in his breast. Chantmer had got his hands on Memnet’s orb. For years their master had filled it with the strength that he bled from his pores. The apprentice wouldn’t be able to draw on the great wizard’s power, even if the master had been alive, but Chantmer must have learned how to use it, must have stored some of his own strength in its depths or he wouldn’t be rolling it in his palm with his eyes narrowed in concentration.

The woman, focused on Markal, didn’t see it. Holding the hilt of her great two-handed sword in her right fist, she grabbed his tunic in her left and jerked him toward her.

“I will cut you down, boy. My sword will tear your very soul asunder if you do not tell me the truth at once.”

“Yes, of course.” Markal cast a desperate glance at his companion.

Chantmer mumbled under his breath, and light grew inside the orb. He had memorized some spell, it would seem, and was trying to get the words right.

Bronwyn shook Markal. “Tell me!”

“Tell you what? I’ll tell you anything! By the Brothers, don’t kill me.”

Chantmer! Hurry, damn you!

At last the other apprentice straightened with a triumphant look. “Uitio uersurum sed volans malleis percutite eos.”

It was volans malleis, a spell to cast a pair of flying hammers, and Chantmer had done it well enough to raise a single hammer that seemed to coalesce out of the very air until it became a glowing, swirling weapon that picked up speed as it hurled toward the barbarian intruder.

Bronwyn’s back was turned; there was no way she could see the hammer before it struck. It would hit her from behind and crush her skull. Markal had wished to turn the woman aside without bloodshed, but he no longer cared. He wanted her put down.

Then, as if someone had shouted a warning in her ear, Bronwyn turned with startling speed, her sword at the ready. The hammer struck the blade. There was a terrific crash, a flash of light, and icy grit sprayed against Markal’s face. When the light cleared, Bronwyn and her sword stood unharmed and there was no sign of the magical hammer. She sprang at Chantmer with the sword drawn behind her shoulder for a killing blow.

Chantmer may have drawn power from the orb, but some had come from his own body. He staggered backward and dropped the smooth glass sphere, which rolled away, smeared with the apprentice’s blood. He sank to his knees before Bronwyn could reach him, head falling forward, exposing his neck like a horse thief before the executioner’s ax.

But the first of the keepers had reached the fight. She was an old woman named Eliana, her back crooked from the relentless punishment of the passing years, but also from decades of bending to pluck weeds that grew as eagerly in the soil of Memnet’s gardens as any other plant. Eliana had a keen eye for anything that grew unnaturally among the flowers and fruiting vines, and now she’d turned her attention to a newcomer who was as unwelcome as any weed. For years, she’d worn a pendant made of green stone in the shape of a tree around her neck. Magic flowed from the object, and her lips formed a spell.

Again, as if warned by a hidden ally, Bronwyn turned from Chantmer, and her sword swung in a wide arc. It caught Eliana a terrific blow, cleaving the old woman’s collarbone and severing her hand and pendant. Bronwyn wrenched out the sword before the woman’s body hit the ground.

All movement stopped, except for Chantmer struggling to stand and failing. The other keepers and apprentices stared at the dead woman as her life’s blood flowed into the ground she’d nurtured since her childhood.

Bronwyn stood with her sword dripping blood. “She would have killed me.” The words sounded hollow in the air. “There was magic—I could feel it. My bones would have broken. The grass would have swallowed me.”

Memnet’s Orb lay at Bronwyn’s feet, and she plucked it up. She wiped the blood off on the grass and then stared into its depths. She glanced at Chantmer, who had regained his feet at last and stood wobbling, his eyes bloodshot and his face pale as a shroud. Narud moved to his side and draped Chantmer’s arm over his shoulder to keep him from falling.

“You all would have killed me,” Bronwyn added. “I had no choice, you see.”

“You are the only killer in this garden,” Markal said. He stared at the dead woman and the horrible look on her face, then looked up. “You have done your harm. Now go. By the Brothers, leave us alone.”

Her face hardened. “No. I have only proven the truth of my words, that I will see this garden and all of you destroyed if it is necessary to find the wizard. Will you test me again?”

“I told you before. He is dead.”

“So you’ve claimed. An assassin cut off his head, threw his body over a horse, and rode into the desert. So you told me, and maybe you’re even telling a truth to mask the lies. So where is the head?”

So she knew, or at least suspected. Cutting the wizard’s head from his body had killed him, of course it had. But then what? An ordinary soul would have fled the body to wander mindlessly across the land until the Harvester collected it in his bag of souls. But Memnet the Great had no ordinary soul, and his gardens were no ordinary land.

“Well?” she demanded. “I am armed. I have proven I will kill, and you have proven yourself unable to stop me. I even have your bauble now.”

What choice did Markal have? His companions had spilled their magic. All the keepers and the acolytes together wouldn’t be able to stop this woman, who seemed possessed of godly strength, reflexes, and senses. Markal could add little through his own magic.

He had one chance, that Memnet’s eyes had opened at last. Markal thought about Chantmer and Narud, and something else occurred to him. No, he had two chances.

“I will show you the wizard’s head,” Markal said. He gave what he hoped was a significant glance to the others, but of course Bronwyn picked up on it too, and a flinty look entered her expression.

“And?” she said.

“Your instincts were correct. It’s buried in the walled garden where you first found me.”

Chantmer’s eyes widened in alarm. This, the barbarian didn’t seem to notice.

“I thought so,” she said. “Cunning boy, you sent me away, and I almost believed you.” Bronwyn glanced down at the dead keeper, then turned toward the path with a grim expression. “Come. I won’t go alone.”

“No,” Markal said to the others when they started to follow. “Don’t follow. Look to Eliana. There are rituals for a dead member of the order, and they should be honored.”

He put his right hand behind his back as he fell in behind Bronwyn, who strode away without making sure he would follow. A spell came to his lips. It was a simple incantation. His skin burned and felt slick as blood rolled toward his fist. But even as he finished whispering the spell, he felt the strength of it dissolving into the warm breeze flowing through the garden. What emerged from his efforts was nothing but a trickle compared to the gush of power that had come from Narud’s and Chantmer’s.

Yet it was enough. Markal glanced behind him, and his fellow apprentices nodded their understanding. They had heard the suggestion he’d whispered into their minds.

Chapter Three

Nathaliey knew that the manuscripts of the library at Syrmarria were protected from fire and water. Even the frailest, most worn scroll, unrolled and rerolled a thousand times over the generations, had a ward that would allow one to throw it onto a bonfire only to discover it lying in the ashes hours later, unharmed. She could only imagine that the brass plates and the vaults of clay tablets were at least as well protected.

Yet Nathaliey couldn’t shake the feeling of danger when she passed through the hidden entrance and into the Vault of Secrets with a candelabra in hand. It only grew as the archivist lit the oil lamps in their sconces on the walls. All those stacks of paper, all that ancient learning—it felt fragile, tenuous.

That feeling had been growing in her breast all day, since she’d crossed through the gate and into Syrmarria. Men from Veyre and Delitha packed the streets, along with sweating laborers with rough accents and even rougher expressions as they studied her. The high king was spending lavishly to build his road to the mountains, and even more lavishly on the castles that would guard its passage through the high passes. Much of the wealth flowed through Aristonia’s capital city.

Nathaliey had been born in Syrmarria; her parents still lived here, and her father, in fact, still served the khalif. She could almost find her way blindfolded through the alleys climbing the hill as they folded over each other toward the palace. She knew the souks by the sound of their shouting merchants; she could be carried back to the markets with a single smell on the wind.

But Syrmarria was changing quickly. Every time she returned, something was new: a tower under construction, the expansion of the city wall, a new manor house or a street of low mud houses. The western wall of the city was coming down, to be replaced several hundred yards farther out and thus expand the city.

Everything seemed different until she reached the vaults beneath the palace. Here, nothing had changed. Nothing would ever change.

The archivist, a man of indeterminate, but advanced years, had led her into the Vault of Secrets. His eyes were red and watery, heavy with bags, but he watched her steadily, and his gaze made her uncomfortable. There was a question in it.

“What is it, friend?” she asked, ashamed to realize she couldn’t remember his name with any certainty. Jethro? Yes, that was it.

“Is it true about the master?”

A knot of pain had resided in her gut since the assassination, never fully unwinding, and now it flared to life. Still, the question surprised her. The four apprentices had agreed to keep it a secret within the walls of the garden until they were sure.

“Where did you hear that?” she asked sharply.

“Peace, it is not widely known. I, too, am a member of the order.”

“Yes, of course,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean that. But how did you hear, being in the city?”

“My brother is a keeper of the gardens—well, he is not my brother by blood, but we were apprentices together under the master for twenty years. He sends me a basket of wolf peaches every fortnight. There was a note with the most recent shipment, very cryptic, but I understood its meaning. Is it true?”

“Ah. Yes, I see.” She nodded sadly. “Yes, old friend. It is true.”

The creases and lines on the man’s face deepened into a look of great age and sorrow. “The last of the great wizards. I wonder what shall become of us now.”

“Bring me the Veyrian scrolls,” she said, “and the tome with the bloodstain I was looking at before. Do you remember that?”

He turned to the nooks and shelves on the wall behind her. Nathaliey set down the candelabra, took off her satchel from over her shoulder, and set it on the table. She removed two sheets of parchment and her inks and quills. The information she was searching for had to be here.

Markal was the most learned of any of them, and the longest under the master’s guidance, but even he didn’t know the answer. Could they continue to study and learn on their own, progress and master the arts without a teacher? There must be answers here. Memnet the Great hadn’t sprouted in the forest one day like a mushroom after a heavy rain—he had been taught himself, by an older wizard, a woman about whom Nathaliey knew very little, except that she had founded the order and begun the gardens. And who had taught her?

And was the master truly dead? Markal and Chantmer thought not. Narud refused to offer an opinion, but there was doubt in his eyes when the other two buried Memnet’s head in the walled garden. Nathaliey thought the master was gone forever. Too much time had passed between when the enemy cut him down and when she brought his head to the gardens.

Nathaliey and Memnet had been at the end of a lengthy trip to the sultanates when the assassins found them. Master and apprentice had spent three months away from the gardens, first traveling south with a caravan of Veyrian merchants, then spending two weeks in Marrabat and Nevanah consulting with kings and ministers to prevent a destructive war between the two cities. Only when Memnet threatened to curse the springs of Marrabat and turn them brackish did the sultan order his army to abandon their siege of the rival city.

“Can you really do that?” Nathaliey had asked when she was alone with the wizard. “Destroy a city’s entire water supply?”

“Only a monster would condemn a city of two hundred thousand souls to die of thirst.”

“You didn’t answer the question, Master.”

“You are right, I didn’t.”

Memnet and Nathaliey passed through columned arcades and through courtyards of red stone to reach the fluted tower that contained the sultan’s library. They climbed a dizzying spiral staircase to reach the top of the tower, where they enjoyed a glorious view of the low-slung, tent-like city of Marrabat. It was a city of contrasts—incredible beauty in its slender towers and gleaming cupolas next to filthy quarters filled with slaves, cripples, and beggars. Master and apprentice had spent most of the next five days at the top of the tower, poring over old manuscripts, scrolls, and other writings.

The collection was a fragmented jumble compared to Syrmarria’s library, and most of what they found the master declined to study in depth. But there was an archive of baked clay tablets plundered from a tomb in the desert wasteland, and Memnet was keen to study these at length. Some resisted deciphering, and others still carried the scent of magic around them.

After some negotiation with the sultan’s mages and viziers, Memnet arranged for a caravan to carry the tablets north at the cost of eight hundred silver dinarii, plus two bushels of raisins, ten casks of wine, and twenty-eight jars of honey from Memnet’s gardens in Aristonia.

Nathaliey and Memnet left Marrabat one hot morning, passing through the iron gates and their weird reliefs of fire salamanders and dragon wasps and onto the Spice Road. The pair had one camel laden with supplies, and after traveling through the olive groves and date palm groves north of the city, they attracted unwanted attention.

Two young men on ponies followed them all afternoon, then set up camp that evening on an adjacent dune, perhaps scheming robbery, or perhaps looking for safety in proximity to other travelers. Nathaliey enchanted a stone to act as a ward to protect their camp, and slept easy knowing they wouldn’t be found.

Two days later, while traveling through hill country covered in scrubby, pungent sage, five Kratian raiders came howling out of a dry gulch on camels, whooping and waving scimitars. They surrounded Memnet and Nathaliey, cursing and threatening the travelers. Their demands: the camel, provisions, and money. In return, the travelers would be permitted one waterskin each and their lives.

Memnet spoke an incantation, and the nomads’ camels scattered, bellowing and trying to throw their riders. When the Kratians reappeared later that afternoon, swearing revenge, the master warned them to depart, and then, when the warning went unheeded, confused the attackers with another spell that had them fighting each other. Two men lay dead before the survivors recovered their wits and fled into the desert.

“We could do travelers a favor by taking stronger measures,” Nathaliey pointed out when they were alone again.

“You mean kill bandits on sight?”

“We wouldn’t take pleasure in it,” she said. “I don’t even like to kill the mice that get into the oatmeal bin. But bandits are like any other vermin—if you don’t deal with them, they multiply. Every year, there are more. Any worse and it will take an army to clear the Spice Road. Sultans and khalifs on both sides of the desert would thank us if we killed a few.”

“That is true. At first. But when the threat is gone, and the kings think about who else seems to be above the law, where will their attention turn?” Memnet shook his head. “We will defend ourselves, yes, but only to the extent it is necessary.”

“Otherwise, we hide?”

“Well, yes. Secrecy is our best protection, both here and in the gardens.”

She grumbled at this. “Not much different from mice ourselves, are we?”

Nathaliey was tired of hiding, tired of coaxing reluctant rulers to avoid war, convincing them to build aqueducts instead of siege engines. Chantmer had once opined that the typical man or woman, with a lifespan measured in decades, made a poor ruler. Put a wizard on the throne and he would build irrigation canals and roads, clear forests and settle new lands. A king sought glories he could grasp in a year or two; a wizard straddled the centuries and had the perspective to match.

That was strictly forbidden, of course. When Memnet’s old friend had left the order to take the throne of Veyre, his magic had failed. He’d lost the very ability to find the gardens that had once been his home. Forgotten, even, that such a place existed.

The high king wasn’t alone in his ignorance. The city of Syrmarria was a day’s travel from the gardens and knew nothing of them. Instead, it was believed that the magic wielders of the Order of the Crimson Path lived in a hidden desert oasis beyond the borders of Aristonia.

In spite of Memnet’s words, it wasn’t easy to stay hidden on the Spice Road, not with so many eyes watching. For the next two days after facing the Kratians, Memnet and Nathaliey cloaked themselves in magic as they traveled through the most isolated stretches, normally traversed only by large, heavily armed caravans. The only caravanserai were walled compounds, small fortresses, really, that charged dearly for the privilege of watering at their wells and sleeping unmolested.

Beyond that was the true wasteland, the empty quarter of sand and stone. The ground belched smoke, and it was said that a dragon slumbered in a subterranean cave. There was a sleeping dragon, Memnet confirmed, but that wasn’t the origin of the smoke. The surface of the world was thin there, and giant pools of molten rock lay beneath its skin, inhabited by fire salamanders and other creatures of the fiery deep.

After that came the country of dry grass and desert lions, whose roars awakened them at night. The lions and other beasts were attracted by the camel, and had to be driven off with fire and magic.

In all this time they had only met with a single southbound caravan, and Nathaliey had grown sleepy in her vigilance. Her feet ached, and she longed for her stone cottage along the forest path of the gardens. She missed the other apprentices, especially Markal: his self-deprecating wit and his frank conversations about the order, magic, and life in general.

And she also missed trips to the libraries of Syrmarria, missed fruit from the gardens’ trees and vines, and bread from the ovens. Missed her morning meditations in the Golden Pavilion. Even missed the bleating of sheep on the far side of the stone bridge that marked the border between the mundane world and the magical realm where they lived.

“We’re being followed again,” Memnet said unexpectedly at the end of a long day. “Two men in gray cloaks.”

Nathaliey looked around, confused. She didn’t immediately spot the pursuers. “For how long?”

“Five, six hours. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

“I wasn’t looking,” she admitted. “I thought we were safe now that we’d entered the wasteland. Go ahead. I’ll send them off and catch up with you.” She stopped and placed her hands palm down.

“No, not yet. These ones are . . . different. Keep moving, we’re safer together.”

She soon understood what he meant. The road was flanked by tan, lichen-streaked boulders, the route of packed sand twisting to get through them to the point where caravans had to thread single file. It was a place for ambush, and Nathaliey sensed lurking magic. These were no ordinary bandits.

“Straight ahead, Master. A snare.”

“Keep going.”

“The camel will break its leg.”

“No, it’s a trick on top of a trick,” Memnet said. “We were meant to find it.”

He waved his hand and said a word. The landscape suddenly became more clear.

Ah, there it was. The first snare was meant to be discovered so as to conceal the second. Avoid the obvious trap and they’d fall into loose sand, which would bury them up to . . . well, completely. They’d suffocate. How was that? The strength of the trap rivaled the defenses of their own garden.

Memnet’s incantation had also revealed two figures lurking on the edge of her awareness, one to the right, the other straight ahead and at a distance. They were still dim, hard to sense. Cloaked. That’s how it seemed. It was how the wizard and apprentice must have seemed, had anyone been looking for them. And apparently, someone was.

The master fed Nathaliey the words to neutralize the smaller trap so they could step over it. She did so, and they were shortly past.

“Who are they?” she asked in a low voice.

“I still don’t know.”

“How could you not know? They’re mages or wizards of some kind. Don’t you know them all?”

“I don’t.”

That seemed strange, but Memnet didn’t speak much of the magic outside the Order of the Crimson Path. The other magic wielders Nathaliey had met were simple sorts like midwives and fortune-tellers. Those who made love charms and dabbled in alchemy. Those who read entrails and claimed to speak to the dead, but made sure that crickets hung in cages at every doorway to ward against wights. But there was sorcery in the world, and ancient knowledge that even Memnet the Great had not yet recovered.

The mysterious figures followed them for the rest of the day, and while Nathaliey set up camp, Memnet disappeared into the darkness to lay down defenses. He looked tired when he came back. He must have placed some potent snares.

“There’s evil magic about them,” he said. “Possibly necromancy.”

Nathaliey voiced the concern that had continued to plague her. “Surely you know who they are by now.”

“I told you, I don’t know. I wasn’t being coy.”

“You must have some idea, Master. Who is capable of such a thing?”

“There are mages in the sultanates. Some live as monks or hermits in the wilderness. Others practice their arcane arts in secret, more alchemists than wizards. But there are no other great orders left in the world. This reeks of necromancy, and there are two enemies.” He shrugged. “I have no more answers than that.”

This was not comforting, and it sapped Nathaliey’s confidence as she settled in next to the campfire to meditate. Memnet sat cross-legged to one side, his orb cradled in his hands, and she felt magic flowing from him and into it, and that comforted her somewhat. A reminder of the master’s power. But she determined not to sleep. Instead, she would keep her attention on the surrounding desert.

Nevertheless, she was drifting on the edge of consciousness several hours later, head nodding against her chest, when the master woke her. He did this with a thought placed into her mind, nothing spoken.

The fire had died to glowing embers. A great swath of stars spread overhead, glittering in the thin desert air. The master taught that the world was a speck of dust hurtling through a vast, eternal universe, something that had struck her as implausible, but now felt real. The stars seemed so close that she felt as though she were clinging to the skin of the world. Insects buzzed in the night, and a desert owl hooted in the distance.

There was magic hanging around her, something cast by the master. A seeking eye. Memnet had given it to her to search their surroundings. Nathaliey closed her eyes and groped for the seeker until she made contact. She sent it into the desert, floating above the sand and rock.

The first man was easy to find; one of Memnet’s wards had trapped him. While he’d been squeezing between two boulders, they had shifted and pinned one of his feet. He grimaced in pain, pushing at the rocks in a vain attempt to free himself. Each of the stones was the size of an ox cart, and there was no way he’d be able to move them.

At first, she thought he was alone, that the other man had fled. After searching for several minutes in a series of expanding circles from their camp, she came in close for a final look. There he was! Only thirty feet away from the campfire, back pressed against a boulder. His cloak blended into the rock, and he’d somehow evaded several traps and charms that shimmered behind him. He drew a weapon that was somewhere between a long knife and a short sword and shifted into motion.

Memnet’s voice whispered in Nathaliey’s mind.

This task is yours. Use your skills.

Yes, but which incantation? The intruder carried magic about him, and she was unsure what could penetrate his defenses. Yet it was comforting that Memnet didn’t think it necessary to intervene. He must believe his apprentice could manage on her own.

Nathaliey put her hands out, palms down, and cleared her mind. She found the spell, made sure she could hold the words in her mind, and waited until the man came around the final boulder with his dagger in hand. She spoke the incantation slowly, deliberately, enunciating each word as she raised blood to her pores.

Muros hos instauraretis ignis ardebit aspiciet inimica mea.

The smoldering embers of the campfire flared to life. Soon, it was as though someone had dumped in a flask of oil, and flames roared up. They coalesced into a ball of fire that reflected off the surrounding rock and cast the master’s face in red and orange. The heat crisped the tiny hairs on the back of Nathaliey’s hands. The camel had been slumbering with its legs tucked beneath it, but now bellowed and struggled to its feet.

The ball of fire roared toward the man now stepping into the camp. He swung his cloak up as it hit. It struck him full on. A pressing weakness struck Nathaliey in the aftermath of her incantation, but she held her head up, determined to see the man engulfed in flames.

That didn’t happen. Instead, the fire seemed to turn to burning water and rolled dripping off the man’s cloak, then dissolved into smoke as it hit the sand. The intruder was still upright, unburned and still armed. He ignored Nathaliey and came at the master.

Memnet sighed and held out one of his own hands. Words danced across his lips, so quickly and fluidly that Nathaliey couldn’t quite catch what he’d said, let alone grab the incantation to study later. The already-dry air suddenly felt oven-hot, every drop of moisture baked from it.

The intruder lifted his hands to his throat. He gasped and bent over, coughing. Sand and dust swept from the ground and into his lungs with every breath. His eyes bulged, and he gagged. Within moments, he lay on the ground, wheezing, even as sand flowed into his mouth to fill his throat. His death came seconds later.

Nathaliey looked away. Her palms were slick with her own blood, and she wiped them on the towel at her belt. A shudder of exhaustion worked through her limbs.

“I’m sorry, Master. I thought the fire would work.”

“There was nothing wrong with your spell. He was a strong enemy, and he countered.” Memnet sounded as weary as Nathaliey felt. “Well, then. What now? We can’t leave the other poor devil trapped between the stones.”

“It would serve him right. Let him cut off his own foot if he wants to escape. He came here to kill us—why should we show him any mercy?”

“We don’t know who sent these men or why. For all we know, an enemy threatened to slaughter their wives and children if they didn’t make the attempt. Or perhaps these men were under some enchantment.”

This stopped her anger. When she looked back at the gruesome figure of the dead man, with sand clogging his mouth and nostrils, whatever was left of it dried up and blew away. Killing was ugly business, and she’d been wrong to relish it, even for a moment.

The seeking eye was still active, albeit fading, and Nathaliey sent it out again to confirm that the remaining enemy was still trapped. He was, and so she and the master set off to find him. She still didn’t know what Memnet intended to do, let the man go? Kill him to save him greater torment later? Could she do that if he ordered her to? Yes, she thought she could. Not to get pleasure from it, but to take the necessary hard measures.

The seeker remained above the trapped man as they made their way to him, but when Nathaliey came around the corner, leading Memnet, she came to a halt. There was nobody there. The seeker had put a clear image of the man in her mind as he struggled to get his pinned foot free from the boulders. Yet he was gone, if he’d ever been there in the first place. They’d been tricked.

“Master?”

“Careful!” Memnet said sharply.

He reached into his robe and out came his orb. Power swelled in it. Nathaliey exposed her hands, though it was an empty gesture. She had no magic left to draw.

All this happened in an instant, and at that same moment, she caught movement in the corner of her eye. She looked up as a blurred shadow dropped from the top of the boulder in front of her. It wasn’t until he’d struck the master and knocked him to the ground, sending the orb spilling uselessly away, that the illusion broke. The shadow became a man in a gray cloak, armed with a long, gleaming knife. He grabbed Memnet’s hair and jerked his head back to expose the man’s throat.

“No!” Nathaliey cried. She threw herself at the enemy.

The cloak came up, and when she hit it, it was like stone. She flew backward, stunned. The master—Memnet the Great, an ancient wizard who was the head of the Order of the Crimson Path—let out a terrible, animal-like scream. There was pain in that cry, and surprise as well.

The scream only lasted a moment, and was followed by a shout of triumph. Nathaliey lifted her gaze to see the horrifying sight of the master’s head cut loose from his body and hoisted in the air, blood and gore dripping from the end. The killer’s eyes were wild, and an insane cackle came out.

Yet killing the master was not enough. A wizard was not so easily separated from his soul. Get Memnet back to the gardens and Nathaliey had a chance. The apprentices could put head and body together and bring the master back to life. He was scarcely dead, and already a wild hope rose in Nathaliey’s breast.

Yet the assassin seemed to know this as well. He tossed aside the head and grabbed Memnet’s body, which he hoisted with abnormal strength. Magic rolled off him, and a message meant for other ears reached Nathaliey’s mind: To me! Now!

A horse stomped into sight. It tossed its head and snorted, but didn’t balk when the killer threw the master’s body over its haunches. Blood drained from the master’s severed neck in horrific quantities. The assassin hauled himself into the saddle, kicked at the horse’s haunches, and disappeared into the darkness with the body of Memnet the Great.

Ten minutes later, Nathaliey was riding her camel north at all speed. The gardens were still two days’ ride away, but all hope was not yet extinguished. She had collected Memnet’s head.

Only later did she remember that she’d forgotten to retrieve the master’s orb from where it had fallen in the sand.

#

Three weeks after the master’s death, in the library deep beneath the palace of Syrmarria, Nathaliey was calmer, her thoughts collected. The assassin had been strong and cunning, and he’d had powerful magic to fight his way past the master. His cloak had proven a match for the greatest wizard of their age. But what about his gray skin?

“Wait,” she said to the archivist, who was setting scrolls on the table. “Bring me the Book of Gods.” She took a chance as he turned away. “You are very helpful, Jethro.”

“You remember my name.”

“You sound surprised,” she said, smiling. “Of course I do.”

“Thank you! I will get the book at once.”

Nathaliey cringed to hear the obsequiousness in the old man’s tone. What a blow to fail as an apprentice and be turned to lesser tasks. To study, to copy, to catalog, but with no ability to practice. In his most vulnerable moments, Markal had confessed that this was his great fear, to suffer the same fate.

But Markal had his own skills that Nathaliey had yet to master, and feared she never would. As she opened the thick tome with its heavy vellum leaves of calfskin and its worn leather cover, her eyes struggled to focus. The letters shifted across the page, and even when she could hold them, changed form, altering their meaning even as she stared.

It was especially discouraging knowing that the book was best understood here, in this archive, where magic clarified her mind, left her alert. Apart from that, the book couldn’t be removed from this room—it was too valuable to spend one moment away from the layer upon layer of protective spells that guarded the Secret Vault—but if Nathaliey could find the right part of the book, she could copy a few lines and phrases to show to Markal. He could read it and help analyze the meaning.

An illuminator had decorated the margins of the pages with magical creatures like griffins and fire salamanders, but also with the mundane: dogs, mice, lizards, wine bottles, flowers, daggers. It had been several years since she had opened this book, and the last time, Markal had patiently worked with her as she copied and memorized. The lessons of that period of intense study had fled her mind, but she remembered one image in particular.

It was a scythe and a heavy satchel with a drawn cord. Those drawings opened a chapter on the eldest of the Brother Gods, known among the common people as the Dark Gatherer. Those who understood his purpose called him the Huntsman or the Harvester.

Many of the illustrations in the book used vibrant reds and golds, but the illuminator had used black ink for the scythe and satchel. Her index finger tingled where it touched the ink. When Nathaliey turned the page, the flames of the candelabra danced, and the oil lamps smoked in their sconces as if touched by a hidden breeze.

Nathaliey began to copy, recognizing a word here and there, but otherwise needing to concentrate simply to render each letter of the old tongue before it slipped away. By the time she finished the first page, the candles had burned down, and Jethro was lighting new ones. She looked up while he did so and rubbed the back of her neck with ink-stained fingers.

The chapter on the Harvester was the shortest by far in the Book of Gods, but she remembered at least ten more pages, written on each side. This would take days, perhaps weeks. It might be faster for Jethro to send a courier and bring Markal to the library. She guessed he’d be reluctant to leave the master’s head, but perhaps he would come if she explained the importance.

Nathaliey turned the page, determined to copy a few more lines before she stopped for food and drink and to empty her full bladder. Bright colors on the opposite page drew her eye. A white-headed griffin flew through the clouds, with a fierce, armed rider on its back. No, that was wrong. That was the header for the chapter about the Mountain Brother.

Where were the rest of the pages about the Harvester? Had she misremembered? She ran her finger down the interior spine. A ridge of carefully cut leaves met her touch.

“Someone cut this book!”

Jethro had been standing quietly in the corner, waiting for her command, but now rushed over and peered down.

“Blood of the Path,” he cursed. “That’s impossible.”

“Look at it. Don’t you see?”

“I can see, but . . . it’s impossible. How could this be?”

Anger and worry warred within her, but she fought to suppress them from her voice. “You tell me, Archivist. You’re the only one with the key to this vault, are you not?”

“Of course I am. No other can handle it except the master of the order, and he is dead. Now that Memnet is gone, I suppose that makes Markal—”

“Markal is not the master of the order. Anyway, that is not the point. No member of the order would ever do this. Someone else entered these walls.”

“How? There’s no other entrance to the Vault of Secrets but the one I control. The Book of Gods hasn’t emerged from its shelf in fourteen months—it couldn’t even be found by an outsider, were one to penetrate this space. Which is itself impossible.”

“So you’ve said.”

And so she’d always thought. And yet. Nathaliey had seen an assassin trick the master, bypass his wards and snares, and cut off his head. She no longer believed that their spells were inviolable. Nevertheless, a thief cutting pages of ancient wisdom from irreplaceable books was another blow. What else was missing from this room?

The gray-faced assassins. Two men—the one who’d faced Memnet and died, and the one who’d tricked the seeking eye and killed him. There had been something about them in the Book of Gods. Her memory was slippery, but she remembered that much. And now the pages were gone.

Chapter Four

Markal led the barbarian along circuitous routes, hoping the wards would baffle her, send her wandering away like the confused emissary of the high king. They passed beneath an archway covered in flowering vines, and at their passing, the flowers sighed a heavy perfume into the air. Bronwyn’s expression clouded, but she touched the hilt of her sword as if to steady herself, and her eyes cleared.

“I’m growing tired of your games, boy. Don’t toy with me.”

“They are no games. I have never been more serious about an endeavor than I am at this moment.”

“Call it what you wish. You won’t turn me aside with your little tricks. You wish to see this garden destroyed? Its people slaughtered? No? Then take me to the wizard at once.”

“He is dead, I told you.”

“He is mostly dead.”

“Are you so enamored of death and slaughter?” Markal asked. “We wish you no harm, we seek no revenge for the murder of the old keeper. Leave us alone and you may go in peace.”

“Liar.” One hand rested on her sword hilt, and she pointed through an arched doorway bisecting a vine-choked brick wall with the other. “There it is. Go, lead the way. No more tricks, boy.”

The runes were powerful enough that she should never have seen the doorway, but she’d found her way there once already, so Markal wasn’t surprised. He had delayed her long enough. By now Chantmer and Narud would be riding from the garden for Syrmarria. By nightfall, they’d be in the city with Nathaliey. They would return before dawn, perhaps accompanied by a company of the khalif’s palace guard.

Markal only needed to keep the barbarian from destroying Memnet’s head until then.

His spade was still where he’d left it, and Bronwyn demanded that he pick it up.

“I knew,” she said as he took it reluctantly in his hands. “I should not have turned aside, but I saw nothing here, and my eyes deceived me. If I had trusted my other senses, this would already be settled.”

“What senses do you mean? What kind of magic guides you?”

“Dig.”

“I am digging.”

“You’re playing around. Get it out of the ground.”

“I won’t drive the spade into my master’s head.”

“It’s not a rare jewel, it’s a severed head. Anyway, you’ve insisted he’s dead. Now get it out of there and let me have a look.”

Refusing to be rushed, Markal kept digging at his own pace. Bronwyn paced back and forth, her hand returning again and again to the sword hilt over her shoulder, but when he exposed Memnet’s auburn curls, she stopped and stood over the excavation. Markal dropped to his knees and brushed away the dirt from the wizard’s closed eyes, his nose, and his mouth. The head was not decayed, even after three weeks. There was hope in that.

“Pull it out,” Bronwyn ordered.

“I don’t, I—”

“Do it!”

Markal thrust one hand into the soil beneath the wizard’s chin, gripped the man’s hair with his other, and pulled. The soil resisted. His fingers dug deeper into the dirt, and touched the soft flesh of the neck. It was warm. Markal’s heart skipped.

Can it be? Is it true?

He could scarcely hope. He had buried the head in the ground, not based on knowledge, nothing from books, per se, but on the general understanding that some souls were harder for the Harvester to gather after death than others. That, and knowing that Memnet had nearly been killed several times over the two centuries of his life and had recovered from wounds that would have killed any other man or woman. The wizard’s deepest magic lay in the soil of this garden, and the fruits and honey cultivated here had remarkable restorative powers. The four apprentices had agreed to bury Memnet’s head in the ground and see what happened.

And it had worked! Another week, maybe two, and it would be done. Why had the barbarian come now? And how would Markal keep her from hacking the master to pieces? He had to delay her.

“Well, then?” she demanded.

“You have seen it.” Markal stood slowly. “Now let us discuss this matter like reasonable people before we do something that cannot be undone. Take off your breastplate, unstrap your sword—they must be heavy. Tell me what you want. Maybe I can help.”

Bronwyn drew her sword with a slow, almost languid movement. It glinted a deep blood red in the light of the dying sun. One sweep of her blade and he’d be dead on the ground like Eliana.

“You either pull it out of the ground, boy, or I will add a second head to your excavation.”

Markal fought a tremble as he dropped to his knees. He tugged on the head, but it remained in place.

“Use the shovel if you must,” she said.

Memnet’s eyes opened. Markal fell back with a cry. Bronwyn cursed, drew back several paces, and planted her feet with her sword at the ready.

The wizard spit dirt from his mouth and lifted his eyes to the barbarian. “An intruder? Markal, we have been lax in our efforts. What is to be done about it?”

“Do not speak!” Bronwyn said. “Dig him out. Quickly.”

“Strike me down if you must,” Memnet said, “but I think you would rather know the truth.”

“I told you to be quiet! I won’t have you bewitching me.”

“Confounded worms.” Memnet spat again, then addressed the woman. “I have no magic. You see that, of course. I’m barely alive.” He frowned and concentrated. “Markal, I can’t feel my arms. What did you . . . ? Wait, no, there they are. Yes, two arms and two legs. That’s a relief.”

“What about hands and feet?” Markal asked.

The wizard frowned with concentration. “Perhaps. I think so. Very numb, though. Not so sure about fingers and toes. I need more time.” A long, deep yawn, and his eyes blinked shut. “And a long nap.”

“You’ve been napping for three weeks already. Could you maybe help me here? There’s been some trouble, and it would be helpful if . . .”

No good. Memnet had fallen asleep, and though Markal poked at him, he would not be roused.

Markal climbed warily to his feet, still afraid, but marveling at what he’d seen. He remembered when Nathaliey, pale and stricken, had pulled the head from her saddlebags. The master had worn an expression of pain and fear in death, his last thoughts etched on his face. And now he was alive, at least partly.

“You see,” he told Bronwyn. “The wizard is no threat. He’ll stay buried here.”

“Dig him out. I don’t care if he’s as pale as a grub and burns up in the sun, I want him out where I can see the whole of him.”

“That will kill him.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“At the very least, he’ll be crippled and maimed. Believe it. The garden is restoring him, but he needs more time.”

Bronwyn fixed Markal with a penetrating gaze. “Why do you think I came here, boy? To kill him, of course.”

“Did you? Is that all you are, a murderer?”

“I killed the old woman. Doesn’t that convince you?”

Markal didn’t hide his grimace of pain. “I won’t forget that. There was no need for it.”

“I had no choice. She would have destroyed me. There was potent magic in that pendant. I was warned.”

Warned? By whom?

“Eliana was defending this garden and meant you no harm,” Markal said. He took the spade and heaped dirt over the master’s head.

“What are you doing? Stop that at once. I’m warning you, boy.”

“And that’s another thing. I am no boy. I am an apprentice of the Order of the Crimson Path. We dedicate ourselves to study, to peace, to healing the land of drought. We seek no enemies. Now cut me down, if you must.”

He didn’t turn around, but kept working, bracing himself for a crushing blow. He’d seen her wield the sword; one swing would smash his bones and sever his spine. He’d feel a moment of terrific pain, and then it would be over.

The blow didn’t come. When he turned around, she’d put the sword away and stood watching. One hand played with the belt at her waist.

“The man who murdered my master had gray skin and a magic cloak,” Markal said. “He and a companion ambushed the wizard and an apprentice in the desert.” His eyes ranged over her. “He was not a barbarian, like you, and I don’t think you’re one of them. So who are you really, and what do you want?”

“What is your name?”

“Markal.”

“Markal of what?”

“Just Markal. Of Aristonia, if you must.”

“That is the name of this kingdom? Aristonia? Who is your king?”

“Khalif Omar. There is a high king in Veyre who claims dominion. How did you cross the mountains? Were you attacked by griffins? What about the king’s engineers, building through the pass? Did you see them, did they try to stop you?”

“They tried. More than once.” She smiled, but it was without humor. “They were no more successful than your sorcery.”

She looked like she wanted to say more, but something was holding her back. Markal wondered if sharing some of his information might pry some loose from her in turn.

“My father was a merchant,” he said, “killed by Kratian nomads on the Spice Road. He tried to buy salt from them, but they cut his throat instead. My mother was already dead. When the master found me, I’d apprenticed myself to a tile layer in the khalif’s palace.”

“These things mean nothing to me. I am a stranger in these lands.”

“Why did you cross the mountains? Was it only to find my master?”

“Yes, and to kill him. To put down the sorcerer and destroy his seat of power.”

“There is no sorcerer here. Only Memnet the Great, who is wise and good.”

“So you claim.”

Markal gestured at their surroundings. “Does this look like a place of evil to you?”

“Appearances deceive.”

He plucked a piece of fruit from the same vine he’d picked from earlier. “Tell me, would an evil place produce such a thing?”

“I won’t eat your food.”

“You think a plum would harm you when all our magic was unable to throw you out? Take it.”

She accepted the fruit and stared at it thoughtfully for a long moment before she lifted it to her mouth and took a tentative bite. Her eyes widened. Moments later, she’d devoured the whole thing and looked down at the pit in her hand, then gazed longingly at the vine, still heavy with fruit.

“That was . . . what is it?”

“Would you like another?”

“No, I need to keep my wits about me.” Bronwyn studied him. “That’s why you gave it to me. To turn me aside.”

“Why do you keep touching your sword hilt?”

She removed her hand from over her shoulder. “A reflex, nothing more.”

“Is it?” Markal had doubts. When she didn’t answer, he pressed. “Is the fruit evil? You tasted it, you should have an idea. You know what is good and what is wicked, Bronwyn. There was pain in your eyes after you cut down the old keeper.”

“I told you—”

Anger rose in him. “Don’t do it, don’t justify it. You came in with violence. You could have set down your weapon at any time. I was willing to talk to you from the moment you entered, and you turned from that path.”

“No, the fruit is not evil. And I don’t think your master is, either. But I was called here. I was told to come, and there was a reason for it.”

“By whom?”

She stared at him, but her gaze was unfocused, her thoughts elsewhere. She reached over her shoulder again.

“Called by the sword?” Markal pressed.

Her hand dropped. “How long until you can pull the wizard from the ground?”

“A week, maybe two.”

“You won’t have it. I give you three days.”

“More threats?”

“Not from me, not this time. You have enemies.” Bronwyn looked about her. “I will need help finding my way around this garden. Where are guests lodged?”

“You’re staying?”

“You’d rather face the enemies alone?”

“What enemies?”

“Markal of Aristonia, you are a fool. The wizard is known on the far side of the mountains—his reputation reached me all the way in the king’s court in Arvada. I could feel his presence from twenty miles away.”

“Impossible. The gardens are hidden.”

“Not from those with the will to search. Your assassins will return when they realize the wizard is alive. Who will stop them? Obviously, not you.”

“Five minutes ago you threatened to kill my master. Now you claim you’ll defend him?”

“I won’t leave until the wizard is awake and lucid. Then I mean to question him to find out if he is the sorcerer I’ve been searching for. He is either my enemy or he is the enemy of my enemies. If the former, I’ll kill him. If the latter, then he must not die.”

“Who are these assassins?” Markal asked. “Who sent them? Who sent you, for that matter? I don’t understand any of it.”

“Obviously not. Where do you house guests?”

“Five miles up the road toward Syrmarria. There is a caravanserai that lodges travelers of all kinds.”

This was an untruth. There was an inn for travelers, but it had nothing to do with the gardens. But once he got her out, he could see to it that she stayed beyond the bridge.

“No, I’ll stay inside the garden walls.” Again, she touched her sword. “Where is the wizard’s own home? I will stay there.”

“Impossible.”

“If you won’t show me, I will find it myself.”

Markal thought about protesting as she forged off in a random direction, stomping over the flagstones. Always on a quest, this one. But he’d successfully turned her from hacking at Memnet’s head as he lay buried in the soil. By now Chantmer and Narud would be well on their way to Syrmarria. Bring back Nathaliey from the palace, and the four apprentices could face Bronwyn together.

And so he led the paladin to Memnet the Great’s small stone hut, a few minutes’ walk down the woodland path, at the base of the largest oak in the forest. A few minutes later, she was swinging open the door and peering into the gloom inside.

“It’s dusty and full of cobwebs,” she said. “Send one of your keepers to clean it out for me.”

“They’re not servants, they have duties in the gardens.”

“Also, bring my saddlebags and see to my horse. As for food, I prefer fresh meat, not too heavily seasoned. Beef, if you have it, but I am not particular. Duck or goose will do fine, or even wild fowl. I will take whatever fresh fruits and vegetables your garden provides, but no bitter greens. Bread and beer. Butter and cheese. Candles or a lamp to read and write by.”

“Anything else?” he asked sarcastically. “Perhaps fresh linens for the bed?”

“Yes, of course. But that can wait until tomorrow. Today I am exhausted and must sleep.” She looked him up and down as if assessing his worth, or lack thereof. “As for you, I would give some thought to fleeing this place should your defenses fall.”

“I’m not leaving. If you mean to kill me, I can’t stop you, but I won’t abandon my master or these gardens.”

Bronwyn gave him a toothy smile. “The threat’s not from me, Markal. There are others on the way. You cannot yet feel them, but I can—I know they’re coming. Go, find your friends and set yourself to work. Repair your runes if you wish. Set your traps. They will be of little use when your enemy arrives.”

And with that, Bronwyn went inside and shut the door in his face.

Chapter Five

Nathaliey’s palms were slick and warm as she approached the throne room. The sensation was familiar, as if she had cast a spell and blood were running down her forearms. She took the cloth from her belt to wipe it off before she realized it was simply nervous sweat.

Before his death, Memnet had spoken to the khalif as if the man were a nephew or cousin. The relationship between the wizard and the young ruler of Aristonia was intimate, and Memnet could be persuasive when he needed to be, forceful when that didn’t work.

It was the power radiating from the gardens thirty miles to the south that protected Aristonia from griffin riders, from hill bandits, and from raiders screaming from the desert. None knew of the gardens, not specifically, but all felt their influence, and all depended on their strength. If the great dragon slumbering in the wastelands were ever to waken, it would be Memnet who turned it aside. If Marrabat ever marched an army north, it would be Memnet who organized the defenses. And so Khalif Omar might argue, might claim that he must obey the high king of Veyre, but in the end, he had no choice but to submit to Memnet the Great, as had his father and grandfather.

But Nathaliey was not the wizard. She was a young apprentice whose father still served as vizier in the court of Khalif Omar. Her father was already in the throne room, standing with three other ministers, all dressed in green robes and wearing jeweled pendants indicating rank of office. Her father looked up, frowning, when she entered, but she avoided his gaze.

As for Omar, the khalif sat on a bed of pillows, reading a sheaf of papers. Two golden-plumed heaven birds chattered in a cage behind him, their bell-like voices chiming pleasantly. A monkey with red fur and a wizened face like an old man watched from a perch atop a pole. It bared its lips at Nathaliey in a grotesque semblance of a smile.

But it wasn’t the animals or the viziers or even Omar that drew Nathaliey’s attention, but rather the two men dressed in the black and crimson of Veyre who sat cross-legged on pillows in front of the khalif. Emissaries of the high king of Veyre.

The man on the left was about fifty, with iron-gray hair. He worked an abacus, writing figures on a piece of paper. Nathaliey guessed he was an engineer from the king’s road builders. The second man wore a leather breastplate studded with iron buttons, and had a scimitar that he’d unstrapped from his waist and set in front of him. Even without the armor and sword, she would have taken him for a soldier. He wore his hair in a bun behind his head and had a cool, dispassionate look that accompanied a rigid military carriage.

Nathaliey waited until the khalif acknowledged her with a nod, then moved to take her place with the viziers. She needed to see Omar alone to question him about the library, but had no desire to speak with her father at a time when so many concerns pressed on her mind, and was positioning herself away from him when the khalif held up his hand.

“Wait right there.”

“Yes, Khalif?” she said.

Omar nodded at one of the two Veyrians. “This is Pasha Malik, general of the high king’s western armies.”

The military man sprang to his feet and put his right arm across his breast in greeting. He was a handsome man, but she immediately distrusted the sly smile that crept across his face as he took her in.

“Are you one of the mage’s apprentices?” Malik asked.

“Yes, my name is Nathaliey Liltige.”

“He was a great wizard and a friend of my master’s. I had hoped to consult him on a few matters, and was horrified to hear of his demise.”

He didn’t sound horrified, he sounded pleased, the villain. And no wonder. Memnet had refused to allow the high king’s new road to carve through the heart of Aristonia. Instead, the road was pushed north, where it would skirt Syrmarria and then bend in a great arc through the khalifate of Starnar on its way toward the mountain passes.

“Who might have done such a wicked thing?” Malik asked.

“An enemy of peace.” Nathaliey stared hard. “There are many, aren’t there?”

“Indeed,” the pasha said, with no hint of irony. “They are everywhere.”

“Your men will die in the mountains without the master’s protection. Griffins will kill your horses, and griffin riders will plunder your caravans.”

“Our archers will drive the beasts from the sky.”

“Then there are bandits, giants. Tall, pale-skinned warriors from over the mountains. Who will negotiate with the barbarian kingdoms?”

Malik waved his hand dismissively. “The new fortifications will be more than sufficient.”

Nathaliey avoided looking at her father and instead addressed the khalif directly. “There are no Veyrian troops billeted in the city. Our yearly levy has been paid. Why is this man here?” Her eyes narrowed as she remembered something Omar had said. “What do you mean, general of the western armies? I didn’t know there was a western army.”

Omar gave a casual shrug, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. He snapped his fingers at the monkey and pointed to a silver bowl of dates that lay just out of reach. The monkey scrambled down the pole, chattering excitedly. He handed the bowl to the khalif and received a date as recompense.

“Well?” Nathaliey demanded.

The ministers were buzzing, and now Nathaliey’s father spoke up. “You forget yourself, apprentice. You will speak to your lord with proper deference.”

“He is not my lord, Vizier. I answer to Memnet the Great.”

Omar looked up from the dates. “The old wizard is dead.”

“But the order is not. My loyalty is to the Crimson Path, not to you, nor to any other worldly power. You are not my king or master.”

Omar’s face reddened. “You will speak to me properly. If I tell you to bow, you will bow.”

“Don’t be absurd. I don’t bow.”

“This is outrageous. I’ll have you in the dungeon.”

Nathaliey blinked. She’d known Omar since they’d played together as children in the palace gardens. She was two years older and had found the boy amusing and foolish in turns. Yet he’d been far more pleasant than his obnoxious sisters, the princesses. Until she found out Omar was destined to be her king some day and she to serve as his vizier—then she’d soured on the friendship. How could she take him seriously as her ruler? She had literally seen him put sticks up his nose. Once, he’d licked a bright orange frog on a dare and thrown up on his tunic when it made him sick.

Apprenticeship in the gardens had offered Nathaliey a different path, and she’d sensed Omar’s resentment ever since. Not only of her, but of her master and the privileges of the wizard and his gardens. Members of the order came and went as they pleased. Where they lived, no one knew. They were answerable to no one but their own order.

Could it have been the khalif who sent the gray-faced assassin? No, impossible. Omar needed Memnet’s power, the strength of the gardens and apprentices. It was the master who had kept Aristonia from the grasp of stronger powers to the east and north. Resent the order or not, losing their support would be disastrous.

Aristonia was the smallest of the khalifates, a mere fifty miles wide and a hundred long. The Great Census five years earlier had numbered her people at a hundred and ten thousand souls, with more than half living in the capital of Syrmarria. While drought in surrounding lands had surely swelled those numbers with refugees, the khalifate was still too small to defend herself. Even a large enough tribe of Kratians might be tempted to ride in from the desert and sack Syrmarria, seeing it as rich and vulnerable.

Vulnerable except for the Order of the Crimson Path and the powerful wizard at its head.

Nathaliey bowed her head and forced the anger from her face. When she looked up, Omar had settled down and looked almost ashamed at his outburst.

“My lord,” she said, forcing the words out, “may I speak with you in private on an unrelated matter?”

“The khalif does not take counsel without the presence of his ministers,” one of the viziers said.

“Whatever it is can wait until later,” her father added.

There was a warning in his tone, and Nathaliey glanced at him, surprised and confused. His brows knit together and he gave a barely perceptible shake of the head. What did that mean?

“Not counsel, vizier,” she told her father. “I have questions. As I indicated, it has nothing to do with the visitors.”

“No,” he said. “Impossible.”

She had been merely irritated by the presence of the engineer and pasha, but now studied them more closely. “What is happening here? What do these Veyrians want?”

Pasha Malik had remained standing throughout all of this, and now he took a step toward her. He was several inches taller than she was, and at one time would have left her intimidated as he approached so closely. Now she felt only annoyed, and refused to take a step back.

“We are changing the course of the road,” Malik said.

“Through Aristonia?” She directed this question at the khalif, not the high king’s pasha.

“There is no reason why it should not pass through,” Omar said.

“Memnet forbade it. That is reason enough.”

“A foolish, shortsighted move,” Omar said. “Increased trade will enrich our land, strengthen Syrmarria, and make us invulnerable to attack.”

“What fool told you that? This one?” Nathaliey hooked her thumb at Pasha Malik. “You know what it will do—it will flood our lands with travelers. Merchants will move to our cities, and bring their families, their servants, their slaves. It is already occurring—what happens when the trickle turns to a flood?”

“The world turns,” Pasha Malik said. “If you stand in its way, you will be crushed.”

Nathaliey turned back to him. “What course would you have the road take?”

“Instead of cutting north and adding fifty miles of unnecessary travel, the highway will pass through the gates of Syrmarria, then directly west toward the mountains.”

That was even worse than she’d thought. “Your course would take it near the Sacred Forest. That, we will never allow.”

“Directly through it, in fact, unless I am mistaken,” the pasha said.

He glanced at his engineer with a question in his eyes, though surely this was something he would know without confirmation. The engineer nodded.

“Yes,” the older man said. “Through the forest.”

“Impossible,” Nathaliey said.

Malik gave a dismissive wave of the hand. “There is nothing sacred about those woods. They are only trees—if they ever served a religious purpose, those days are over. Anyway, it is a small thing, a ribbon of road through a vast woodland. What is the harm of it?”

Nathaliey made her way to the khalif and squatted in front of him. “Omar, listen to me. The king’s highway is twenty-five feet wide, with guard posts every three miles. Fortifications, barracks, castles. The high king’s troops will be stationed right in the heart of Aristonia, with powerful fortresses held by the king’s own army. Syrmarria will fill with Veyrians and other Easterners.”

“Aristonia will remain,” Omar said. “It won’t disappear.”

“As a name, as a smudge on a map. As a nation, no. What is a nation but the people who live in it? You know what this means, you have to know. Why would you agree to such a thing?”

The khalif’s smile looked strained. “What choice do you think I have?”

“Of course you have a choice. You can tell him no. The order survives. Our power remains. The master—”

Nathaliey stopped herself. She’d been on the verge of admitting their greatest hopes, that Memnet was not yet dead, that he would be restored by the miraculous soil of the gardens. But considering who had benefited by the master’s death, she harbored strong suspicions that the assassin had been sent by someone in this room.

“Your khalif is right,” Pasha Malik said. “There is no choice. The griffin riders grow more bold as their flocks migrate south. They swarm the mountains by the hundreds. And the barbarians are growing stronger with every passing season. We must build the road first, or one day we will wake to find an army of white-skinned devils roaring down from the passes.”

“If the barbarians are our enemies,” she said, “why build a road to them? If the griffins are a threat, why antagonize them by building castles and fortifications among their mountain aeries?”

“They must be driven off, of course.”

“Use the griffins as a buffer to protect us from the barbarians,” she said. “If you approach the griffin riders, they may even agree to an alliance.”

“There is a drought,” Pasha Malik said, as if that were answer enough. “The cities of the plains must be fed. Why should the barbarians hoard the bounty of their fields?”

“This is ridiculous!”

The heaven birds stopped their bell-like singing at Nathaliey’s raised voice. The monkey screeched and pulled on his perch until it swayed. It bared its teeth at her.

The khalif looked up at the monkey with an annoyed expression, then back at Nathaliey with a deepening scowl. “Someone get this girl out of my presence. Pasha, forgive me, I did not know she was in the palace, or I would have warned you.”

“I understand,” Malik said. “You have a dangerous element in your midst.”

“We can both agree on that much,” Nathaliey said. “Why don’t you leave this city before you are thrown out?”

“Nathaliey, please,” her father said. He stepped away from the other ministers and reached for her wrist, but she shrugged him away.

“So now it is open treason?” Pasha Malik said.

“Treason?” she scoffed. “You are the foreigner here, not I.”

Malik nodded grimly. “I was prepared for this. Men!”

Three Veyrians with black capes burst into the room, scimitars already in hand. Blood of the Path! Veyrian soldiers? Where the devil was the palace guard?

Malik pointed at Nathaliey. “Take her at once.”

Nathaliey pulled back her sleeves as the three soldiers turned on her. She placed her hands palm down. The three hesitated, even as the words came to her tongue. Blood rose from the pores on her arms.

“Labi et cadere. Lapidem te percussit.”

An illusion, but a powerful one. The three soldiers flailed as if the entire room had been tilted to one side. They lost their scimitars, which clattered to the floor as the men tried to keep their balance and failed. One man struck his head on the flagstones, but the other two landed less awkwardly and were already grabbing for their weapons as Nathaliey picked up the hem of her robe and fled for the open doorway. The khalif’s monkey shrieked at her as she ran.

All she had to do was reach the arcades outside, then she had another trick that would get her across the courtyard. Once on the other side, she’d disappear into the shadows and they’d never find her before she escaped the palace into the streets of Syrmarria. From there, she would flee the city, get to the gardens, and warn her friends.

Pasha Malik’s hand shot out and seized her wrist before she could get past. He twisted it around, and her arm wrenched painfully in its socket. But Nathaliey had the presence of mind to call up her other spell. It was a simple one, but it would confuse him long enough to let her get free.

It was on her lips when Malik struck her hard on the face with his free hand. Her head rocked back, and the words died as she fell. He kept hold of her wrist, and something popped in her shoulder, but she felt nothing yet over the blow to her face.

Other men grabbed her legs and arms. Someone stuffed a rag in her mouth that tasted of stale sweat, while another bound her hands behind her. Her head was still ringing in any event, and she was incapable of defending herself. A man kicked her in the ribs, cursing. Another man pummeled her head.

“Don’t hurt her!” a voice cried. Her father? The khalif?

The commotion had set the monkey shrieking in earnest, and it was the last thing she heard before the lurking blackness reached up and dragged her down.

Chapter Six

Nathaliey was already semiconscious by the time they threw her into the dungeon, but it took time for her head to clear. The throbbing in her temples didn’t help, and neither did the ache in her ribs. Her shoulder hurt, too, but the way her arms were twisted behind her, she couldn’t tell if it was merely wrenched about or if her right arm was dislocated.

Blood filled her nose and ran down her throat, and it was all she could do to breathe through the gag they’d bound around her mouth. For several minutes she fought the sensation of suffocating until she forced calm on herself by using meditation techniques learned in the garden. That helped, and once her breathing slowed, she found she could get enough air.

It then took about an hour to chew through the gag and get her mouth free. She maneuvered herself into a sitting position and slid across the damp flagstones until she found the wall in the darkness. She leaned against it, trying not to groan from the pain.

It was quiet down here, the only sounds being her own breathing and a drip of water that fell from the ceiling into a puddle a few feet away. Every eight or ten seconds another plop. It must be draining through the floor at roughly the same rate, because the puddle hadn’t spread to where she sat, thankfully, although the stone was damp and the air moist and unhealthy.

Nathaliey turned over ways to free herself. She didn’t know the dungeon, but had heard the door slam shut with a definitive clang, so she had to assume it was secure enough. If she could get her hands free, she might be able to concentrate against the pain long enough to use one more spell before she drained out too much blood. But what?

There was magic strong enough to splinter doors like this one to kindling. For that matter, Memnet could shake the whole castle down were he determined enough. But Nathaliey was only an apprentice, and possessed a limited arsenal of tricks and flashy surprises.

A message to her father? Could she put a thought in his mind to send word to the gardens?

“That’s the sort of thing he should think of himself,” she said. Her voice echoed hollowly in the darkness. “For that matter, he could get a key and let me out.”

Otherwise, what was the benefit of being a vizier in the khalif’s court if you couldn’t even get your own daughter out of the dungeon? She’d committed no crime, unless you counted arguing with an arrogant Veyrian general an act of treason. What did her father think of her behavior? Did he assign her any guilt in this matter? Kandibar Liltige hadn’t precisely disowned his daughter, nor she him, but when Memnet selected her as his apprentice, she’d been divided from all other loyalties as surely as a lamb separated from a flock of mindless sheep.

Spells began to suggest themselves to her mind, including one or two whose incantations she might be able to remember without Markal’s help. Nathaliey edged around the room, feeling for a rough bit of stone on which to work at the ropes binding her hands behind her back. The stone was smooth all the way around, but she found an iron ring in the wall, presumably for chaining prisoners, and here she rubbed the cord back and forth. She kept at it for some time, until her injured shoulder forced her to stop. So far as she could tell, there had been no real effect on the rope.

Instead, she worked at the one binding her feet, and here found more success. The knots weren’t as tight as those around her wrists, and once she got the hem of her robe out she was able to twist and work at the extra space until she’d extracted one foot, and then the other. Now at least she could stand, thank the Brothers, but nothing was to be done for the cord around her wrists. The infernal thing was so tight it seemed a part of her skin.

Nathaliey slumped to the ground and meditated until she slipped into an exhausted sleep. Thirst and pain brought her awake again. Hours seemed to have passed.

“Is there anyone out there? Jailer? Will you at least remove these cords? By the Brothers, have mercy.”

There was no answer, and she was dozing off again when a noise caught her ear. It was the sort of sound that only the ears of a beast or a wizard could have heard, distant footsteps that were so soft that Nathaliey immediately identified them as belonging to a child, and a barefoot one at that. Someone was descending the stairs into the hallway outside her cell.

Had she heard a guard’s boots or the slap of sandals, she’d have cried out, but she was curious now. There seemed to be no other prisoners in this dungeon, which meant that the child could only have been looking for her. But Nathaliey was at a loss. She had no younger siblings and knew none of the children who lived in the palace.

The footsteps continued until they reached her door. Then a curious noise, what sounded like someone scratching or climbing the door. A rattle of a key in the lock, followed by a click. The door was unlocked.

“Hello?” Nathaliey whispered. “Who is it? Speak to me, child.”

No answer.

She struggled to her feet, ears straining, eyes staring into the blackness. There was no torch or candlelight coming through the keyhole. She backed into the door and felt with her bound hands for a handle, but of course there wasn’t one on the inside surface, and the child hadn’t pushed the door open. She found where the door met the stone, and her fingers dug in in an attempt to ease the door open.

When that failed, she felt along the bottom of the door with her bare feet, and here she found success; there was a small slit in the center through which food and water might be passed to a prisoner. Hooking it with her foot, she pulled the heavy door toward her. It swung into the room with a groan of old timbers.

It was just as black in the corridor. She saw nothing.

“Hello?” she called. “Who is it?”

Again, the padding of bare feet on the stone, this time moving away from her. Afraid of stumbling through the dark, but even more afraid of staying behind, Nathaliey had no choice but to follow. She struck her shoulder on one wall, nearly got turned around, and then found her way again. How the devil did the child know where to go?

How do you know you’re not going deeper into the dungeon?

She didn’t. Nor could she be sure she wasn’t following a wight—it would explain how the child could see in the darkness. For that matter, there might be nobody there; maybe she was following an evil spell leading her to her death. But what choice did she have? Wait in the dungeon for her fate?

Moments later, Nathaliey stumbled into a stone staircase that curved up from the dungeon. She took the stairs, following the footsteps ahead of her, and as the stairs rounded the corner, the first glimpse of light reached her eyes. She spotted her rescuer. Very small, a tiny shadow moving ahead of her in the gray. The child couldn’t be older than three or four, and so small that he needed to climb the stairs on all fours.

Finally, an ajar door that opened to a lit room. The child pushed it open and stepped out, and Nathaliey followed, eyes blinking as they adjusted to the light.

“Where—” she began.

Then, in spite of her pain, her bound hands, and her residual anger at the wretched way she’d been assaulted in the khalif’s presence, she began to laugh.

Her rescuer was Omar’s monkey. Trained to fetch bowls of dates and raisins, flagons of wine, and other items at the whim of the khalif, this time it had carried a heavy iron jailer’s key, which it still clenched in its teeth.

At her laughter, the monkey looked up at her with its wizened face, a question in its eyes.

“I don’t suppose Omar sent you, did he?” she asked. “No, I thought not. A monkey is braver than our fearless leader. I suppose that leaves only one person who could manage this, unless the master has come back to life, all evidence to the contrary. Take me to him, will you? Wait. Are you clever enough to untie my hands?” She showed them to the monkey, but it only bared its teeth around the iron key. “Very well, lead on.”

The monkey seemed to understand this much, at least, and turned to go. They’d emerged into a narrow hallway with a short ceiling of ribbed arches, and she had to duck to get through them. The light, which had seemed so bright at first, was only the late afternoon sun filtering in through small windows spaced every third arch. Dust motes danced in the beams.

The hallway opened into a full room, and here Nathaliey spotted two guards standing watch, facing away from her with polearms in hand. Nathaliey shrank against the wall with a silent curse. The guards wore the red and black of Veyre. Had the whole bloody palace been overrun by Pasha Malik’s men?

The monkey kept walking forward, and was about to reach the guards, the jailer’s key still clenched in its teeth.

Get back here, you silly thing. You’ll get yourself killed.

Which would be followed almost immediately by Nathaliey’s own death. The moment they finished spearing the poor thing, they’d look down the corridor from which it had come and spot her. She desperately tried to get her hands free from behind her back.

The monkey strolled between the two guards and seemed to fade. Even staring right at it, all Nathaliey saw was a blurred shadow gliding across the floor, and then it was gone. The guards paid it no attention.

More wizardry at work. This particular incantation had better hold for her, too. She clenched her teeth and walked forward as silently as possible.

The guards had the relaxed posture of men placed on watch far from danger. The older man on the right spat a wad of khat to the floor. He took fresh leaves from a small pouch at his waist and stuffed them into his cheek.

“Filthy habit,” he said cheerfully, “but it cuts the hunger between meals.”

“I figured you was just bored,” the younger man said.

“That, too. When you’ve crossed the desert as many times as I have, you need something to take care of boredom and hunger. The khat don’t help much when you get cut up by camel riders, though. You need poppy milk for that.”

Nathaliey passed between the two men, but neither looked at her. She spotted the monkey now, across the larger room, where it waited in the shadow of one of the fluted red-and-white pillars holding up the ceiling.

“I’d rather not find out,” the younger one said. “Hoping to get sent to the mountains.”

His companion chuckled and spoke around the wad of khat. “You think that’s safer? The Dark Gatherer will fill his bag with souls before the year is out, mark my words.”

“If I’m going to die either way, may as well be where it’s nice and cool and it still rains.”

Nathaliey wanted to stop and listen, see if they would spill any secrets as to what the Veyrians intended for Aristonia, but as soon as she reached the pillar, the monkey continued. It was still little more than a shadow in the bright light, and she had to follow or lose it.

A wide doorway on the far side opened into a larger corridor, and for the first time since leaving the dungeon, Nathaliey was able to place her position in the palace. Off to the left lay the khalif’s apartments. Straight ahead would bring her to the staircase leading to the libraries, and below that, the Vault of Secrets. But the monkey didn’t go in either of those directions. Instead, it took an open doorway to the right that led to a small patio. She stepped onto it and out of view of the guards, then quietly closed the door behind her.

The patio overlooked the palace as it descended the rocky hilltop in a series of terraces, courtyards, and hanging gardens. Below the palace, the city of Syrmarria clung to the hillside in a dense warren of whitewashed buildings and narrow, winding streets, the steepest being little more than staircases impassable to carts. Beyond the city walls lay the ancient ziggurats and obelisks of the Tombs of the Kings, bisected by the River Nye as it entered the fertile plain of Aristonia to the west.

From Palace Hill, one could see all the way to the distant peaks of the Dragon’s Spine if the weather were clear, but the air today was thick with dust from the sandstorms blowing off the drought-cursed khalifates to the east. The dust combined with the cook fires of the city to send the setting sun down in a ball of blazing red glory as it dipped toward the horizon.

Closer at hand, within the palace itself, servants hurried along the paths between buildings, while palace guards strolled on their evening rounds. Viziers and lesser ministers sat with their wives at stone tables, drinking tea and watching the setting sun. There were more than a few Veyrian soldiers about, as well. Nobody had yet looked up and spotted her on the narrow balcony, but she was well exposed where she stood. Where had that monkey gone?

“Press your back to the wall,” came a familiar voice that seemed to come from nowhere. “You are standing outside the range of my spell, and someone will see you.”

Nathaliey stepped back against the wall, and there she found Chantmer and Narud, hidden within the same magic cone that had concealed her escape. The taller apprentice looked pale and drawn, and the cloth at his waist was damp with blood. Narud looked stronger, but that was probably due to more time passing since he’d cast his own spell. The khalif’s monkey sat on his shoulder, eating slices of an orange that Narud fed it.

Chantmer untied the cords binding her wrists, and she groaned as her arms came loose and she brought them in front of her.

“Better?” he asked.

“You have no idea. Thank you. How did you get here so quickly?”

“We were already on the road when your trouble began,” Narud said. “Markal sent us.”

He set down the animal, which scrambled over the railing and grabbed hold of a vine-covered trellis. It climbed down halfway, leaped into a nearby fig tree, and disappeared.

“How did Markal know I was in trouble enough to send you in advance?”

“No, your friend didn’t send us,” Chantmer corrected. “And he could not have known.”

Nathaliey didn’t miss the emphasis on “friend,” as if her closeness to Markal were somehow a defect. And why shouldn’t she be close to Markal? She’d been stripped of her old identity when she joined the order. Eventually, everyone she knew and loved would fade like the dying leaves of autumn while she carried on, virtually unchanged. But that didn’t erase the longing one had for close companionship.

So who would it be? Memnet the Great was a mentor and a wise teacher, but not a friend. The acolytes, keepers, and archivists were beneath her in power and ambition. That left the other three apprentices—her peers and companions. Chantmer was obsessed with his studies, his pride in his growing power, and his struggle for what he saw as his rightful place in the Order. Narud was absorbed with the natural world, with mushrooms and mice. He could spend days or even weeks in as mundane a task as studying honeybees. He claimed that the tiny creatures spoke to each other in a sort of dance, and had estimated how many thousands of hours bees needed to work to provide a single spoonful of honey.

Only Markal had the humanity, the humor, and the sensitivity to provide the companionship her heart craved. It wasn’t merely friendship, nor even the bond of family, and it certainly wasn’t anything so foolish and transitory as romantic love that she felt for him, but a deeper connection.

“Anyway,” Chantmer continued, “the master has not returned. He may never do so—we must be prepared for that eventuality. And we have other troubles.”

Chantmer shared the alarming news of an attack on the gardens. A barbarian warrior had penetrated their sanctuary, broken through their protective wards, damaged the Golden Pavilion, and cut down Eliana, one of the keepers. Chantmer and Narud had slipped away and left Markal to deal with the woman.

“A barbarian?” she pressed. “Are you sure? Does she have gray skin?”

“She does not,” Chantmer said. “She is pale and pink as a babe, and her hair is the color of wheat. Sky-blue eyes. Calls herself a paladin, a holy warrior of some kind.”

“She is a killer,” Narud said. “She murdered Eliana, and will kill again.”

“It goes beyond slaying old women,” Chantmer said. “This barbarian can handle a sword like no one I’ve ever seen. And there’s magic about her, too.”

“But no gray skin.” This wasn’t a question. Rather, Nathaliey was confused.

The hunch that she had been following in the Vault of Secrets, that some order of knights had delved into necromancy so they could destroy the master, dissolved. This woman was something else entirely. And yet there were the missing pages from the Book of Gods. What of that?

Nathaliey shared what she’d discovered in turn, and then the two men wanted to hear how she’d been taken prisoner, what had happened with the khalif, and whether she knew who had cut the book.

“I don’t. An enemy of ours, that is for sure. I think those pages revealed the secret of the assassins and their magic.” She shook her head. “Someone doesn’t want us to know.”

“It would seem that the Vault of Secrets is no longer hidden,” Narud said.

“It never was, not truly,” Nathaliey said. “The khalif and his ministers may not be able to find it, but they know it is there. They know we spend long hours in the vault, that it is the source of our knowledge.”

“We have more immediate concerns,” Chantmer said. He’d regained much of his color in the few minutes they’d been talking, and now stood with an open, confident posture. “Obviously, the assassin who killed our master was sent by the khalif.”

“Impossible,” Nathaliey said. “Omar is incapable of such a thing.”

“He is complicit, at the very least.”

She studied Chantmer’s face. He seemed to know something. “What do you mean?”

“I would assume that the killers themselves were Veyrians. The high king sent them—he will have his highway, and the master was the only one stopping him. As for the khalif, Omar knew of your mission to Marrabat and must have told the king how to find you on the Spice Road.”

“We have met the high king,” Nathaliey protested. “He is no murderer, either.”

“The king was a friend and ally of the master,” Narud said. “A wizard himself, at one time. Why would he do such a thing? For his highway? I don’t think so.”

Chantmer shrugged at these objections. “He had magic once. Now he hates and fears it.”

“Hates and fears it, yet sends assassins wielding magic?” she asked.

“Very well, then he hates and fears the magic of his former order. He was forced to renounce it, and would see it wiped from the land.”

“You have no evidence of that,” Nathaliey said. “The high king met with the master only six months ago to seek his wisdom about the griffins in the mountains and the barbarian kingdoms on the other side.”

“They argued about the road, if you’ll recall,” Chantmer said.

“There was no heat in it,” she insisted. “The king conceded in the end.”

“As you wish. I withdraw the suggestion. But even so, the high king may well profit by the master’s death.”

“He might, but it’s too soon to make his move. It’s only been three weeks since the master died. The king can’t have acted so quickly, not even if a swift horse had galloped to Veyre with the news, and an equally swift horse galloped back. There’s been no time to order the pasha and the khalif to move against us.”

“Very well.” Chantmer waved his hand, but there was no real concession in his gesture. “Then his generals have taken initiative. This Pasha Malik, eager to please his king and frustrated with the pace of construction, set about the task himself. The entire business is his idea. He hired the assassins and bid them kill our master. And what is the result? The road will cut through Aristonia and gash open the Sacred Forest.”

Chantmer’s refined theory had more merit, she conceded. Yet it still didn’t answer how the pages had been cut from the book in the library, nor why the barbarian had come.

Narud had been staring toward the setting sun, a sliver on the horizon and fading quickly. Now he spoke up. “It is almost time. We can reach the gardens by morning if we leave at once.”

“Morning?” she asked doubtfully. “Do you have horses?”

“We don’t need horses,” Narud said.

“Safer on foot,” Chantmer said. “Easier to hide.”

“I suppose so.”

Nathaliey was reluctant to leave Syrmarria without putting things right in the khalif’s palace—expelling the pasha and his soldiers and having hard words with Omar and the viziers, as well as finding the pages stolen from the Book of Gods. But more selfishly, she blanched at the thought of putting her sore, battered body onto the road.

Narud had an uncanny way of sensing fear and pain in animals, and he must have exercised the same ability with her, because he took her injured shoulder and massaged it as if she were an injured dog or mule. A few words came to his lips, and the pain eased. As her most serious injury faded, she suddenly felt the bruises in her face, the painful marks on her wrists, and the ache in her ribs where they’d kicked her. Narud touched each of the injuries in turn.

“There is work to be done here,” she pressed, even as she submitted to Narud’s healing touch. “Are you certain I have to leave? Couldn’t you go on without me?”

“We need you,” Chantmer told her. He sounded pained at the admission. “Markal wants you, and even if we were to leave you behind, this business of getting you out of the dungeon has left us drained. We need your magic to see us safely out of the city.”

“But there’s scheming in Syrmarria, and I hate to leave it festering. I can’t let Pasha Malik ensconce himself in the city.”

“Actually, the pasha rode out with a small force earlier this afternoon,” Chantmer said. “Whatever he meant to accomplish in Syrmarria, he’s done it.”

“His army, then. Look below you—there are Veyrians inside the palace.” Nathaliey turned to Narud. “Do you agree? Should I leave the city?”

Narud held her gaze. “If the garden falls to this barbarian, nothing that happens in Syrmarria will matter.”

#

They escaped the palace easily enough. Nathaliey knew side corridors and semi-concealed passageways that led to the gates, and a simple spell baffled the inattentive fools at the guard towers. It helped that nobody seemed to have noticed her absence from the dungeons, and so the palace was not yet on alert.

Once in the narrow cobbled streets of Syrmarria, however, Narud stopped and sniffed at the air. “Someone is searching for us.”

“How do you know?” she asked in a low voice.

“Strange magic. Don’t you smell it?”

Nathaliey and Chantmer exchanged frowns. She shook her head, and Chantmer shrugged.

“It’s there,” Narud insisted. “Be careful.”

What did Narud think they were doing, strolling down the alley banging a gong? Anyway, she wasn’t convinced. Narud didn’t often come to the city, and perhaps he was confused by the accumulation of minor spells to be found in any great concentration of people: merchants and moneylenders using charms to cheat each other, the devout with talismans blessed in the name of one of the Brother Gods, even midwives using their simple magic to ease childbirth and aid the flow of milk in a new mother.

Belying Narud’s fears, they passed unchallenged through the snaking alleyways of the souks, which were emptying of merchants and goods as night fell, even as the smell of cardamom and incense hung heavy in the air, mixed with the rich scent of baking bread from communal ovens. Soon the apprentices reached the city gates, which remained open at night, barring a threat from nomads riding up from the southern deserts, and they joined the outgoing carts and foot traffic on the road.

And then, as the stones gave way to a rutted dirt track cutting into the Aristonian countryside, Nathaliey sensed it. Just a whiff, barely detectable above the background magic that was ever-present through this small khalifate. The smell was . . . wrong, that’s how she would describe it. Almost rotten. It was like walking into a kitchen and smelling a rat that had crawled into a dark corner and died.

“An enemy,” Chantmer said. “Yes, I sense it now.”

Narud nodded. “Now you know. You understand.”

“If we’ve smelled them,” Nathaliey said, “then they’ve smelled us, in turn.”

She rolled up her sleeves. There was a little tightness in her shoulder and a dull ache in her side, but otherwise she felt strong, almost heady with her own strength, and ready to test it against whomever or whatever was pitting itself against them.

“Ready, boys?” she asked.

“Give us your magic,” Chantmer said solemnly. “Make us swift.”

Nathaliey nodded. “Let’s run.”

Chapter Seven

Markal roused himself from sleep a few hours after dusk. Mice crawled in the rafters of the small thatch-roof cottage, and outside, an owl hooted in the distance. His ears were not as sensitive as Narud’s, but if he listened carefully, he’d be able to hear a dozen other creatures snuffling through the woods outside, even catch bits of their thin, unfocused thoughts if he were especially attentive. He could smell them, too.

It was remarkable how his senses had sharpened over the years. That was the first, most noticeable change after Memnet selected him. He’d never considered himself particularly observant, but rather the sort of boy who let the world drift by as he lost himself in daydreams. As the years passed, however, the improved senses made him take notice of all manner of curious things.

He pulled on a tunic instead of his robe, tied it off with a leather cord, and put on leggings. When he was dressed, he unlatched the door and stepped outside, where a cool breeze prickled his skin. He turned his attention toward Memnet’s cabin a few hundred yards deeper into the woods on the forest path, where Bronwyn of Arvada had installed herself. It was tempting to whisper a spell to the wind and send the barbarian deeper into slumber, but he didn’t trust his magic, worried the spell would wake her instead. She’d battered through every other attempt to turn her aside, after all. Greater magic than his own.

No, it was better to let nature take its course. Bronwyn had been on the road for many weeks, as evidenced by the state of her horse and provisions. There was no need for magic when a good bed and a supper of roast chicken, potatoes, and carrots served the same purpose.

Markal followed the path in the opposite direction largely by feel until the trees thinned and the moon glimmered on the forest floor. He picked up the pace and shortly emerged from the woods at the edge of the lake. The moon reflected from its flat, mirrorlike surface and shimmered off the golden pavilion tucked against its shore. It looked so peaceful and beautiful that it was hard to remember the violence that had visited the shrine only a few hours earlier.

There were still runes in place, symbols carved on flagstone paths and hidden behind vines on the walls. Even tree branches had been carefully pruned into the shape of wards to conceal or protect. To weaken enemies should they penetrate so far into the gardens.

But the paladin with her red sword had destroyed much of their protection. The end result was like walking through a dilapidated fortress, with walls breached and iron-bound doors broken from their hinges.

A few minutes later, Markal reached the mound of dirt in the walled garden where he’d been working when Bronwyn found him. Only then did he realize he’d left his spade in the shed next to his cottage. So he hiked his tunic, dropped to his knees, and used his hands to shovel away the dirt. The soil was warm and living against his skin. He shortly found his master’s head and cleared the soil more gently.

“I have been sitting here thinking,” Memnet said the moment the dirt was clear from around his mouth.

“You’re awake.”

“Yes, and it’s quite boring down here. Can’t see a thing, can’t hear, can’t even take a breath—not that I need to breathe, curiously. But when I’m awake, there’s plenty of time to reflect. Not much else to do, to be honest.”

“I could dig you out, or is it too soon?”

“Not a wise idea. I’m as limp as an earthworm down here. Not sure I even have bones yet.”

“How much longer will it be?”

“Hard to say, this being the first time I’ve ever suffered decapitation. Let’s see. A week? Maybe two?” He lifted his eyes. They gleamed in the moonlight, and there was a familiar mischievous twinkle in them. “Is the Eriscoban gone?”

“You mean the barbarian? No, she’s still in the gardens.”

“Have you put her off her misguided attempt to finish the job our other friend very nearly managed?”

“I think so. For now.”

“I am relieved to hear it. After the indignity of being caught unaware in the desert, I should at least like the opportunity to defend myself this time. Tell me what you know.”

Markal explained, starting with the details of Bronwyn’s attack on the gardens, and finishing with how she’d settled into Memnet’s cottage with a warning that other enemies were on their way. Markal thought she was sincere. The only part he didn’t share was how Chantmer had tried to use the master’s orb and lost it.

A scowl crossed Memnet’s face when he finished. “No, I don’t like that at all.”

“Do you mean Bronwyn, or are you worried about these other supposed enemies?”

“Not that. I mean, yes to both of those things, but that isn’t what I mean.” He flinched. “There’s a blasted mole digging by my—get away from there!” He muttered an incantation, but his scowl only spread. “No good, I can’t—oh, thank the Brothers, it’s going away. You don’t want to know where the nasty thing was headed.”

“I can guess.”

“I swear, if he tries, I’m going to squeeze my buttocks together and crush the little blighter.”

Markal laughed, before remembering why he’d come. “Master, what should I do?”

“The garden feels weak,” Memnet said. “Can it resist another attack?”

“It didn’t exactly resist the first one,” Markal pointed out. “Bronwyn strolled right in. The keepers will do what they can to repair our defenses. Narud and Chantmer went to Syrmarria to retrieve Nathaliey. She was in the libraries. When they return, they’ll help me hide the bridge. The barbarian’s crossing has left us vulnerable to discovery.”

“If you collect all your magic in one place, you’re still not strong enough, the four of you together. Not to deflect a determined attack. It will take more than four apprentices.”

“Three,” Markal said. “Three apprentices and an archivist.”

“You are more than an archivist, my friend.”

“Am I?” he asked. “I’m no better than Jethro, my head stuffed with knowledge and no power to call it forth.”

“Don’t dismiss Jethro. He is stronger than you know. But anyway, you are. An archivist has no power. He contains the knowledge of the thing, but not the substance. That isn’t you, Markal. The magic flows through you in a great flood. You only need to learn how to control it. That will happen sooner or later.”

Oh, really? When? Thirty years had passed, three full decades. What did he need, another thirty years? Maybe it would happen when Markal hit a hundred—is that what Memnet thought? And how soul-crushing would it be to reach an age when every non-wizard he’d ever known had died and yet still be an apprentice, still striving, still waiting to come into his strength? Better to abandon his dreams and settle for the role of archivist.

“Have you been meditating?” the master asked. “Repeating your mantras?”

“You sound like my mother, asking if I’d prayed to the gods before bedtime. Have I hung the cricket cage by my door so the Harvester won’t gather my soul?”

“Well, have you? Do you go to the shrine every morning? Do you ring the bell to clear your mind?”

“Not always,” Markal admitted. “We have no leader, no master.”

“You are a leader. You are far more than a keeper, you are as knowledgeable as an archivist, and you have more power than a dozen acolytes.”

“It does little good if the power can’t be controlled.” Markal got up and brushed off the dirt.

“I can’t lift my head, you know. Come back down where I can stare into your eyes.” When Markal had obeyed, Memnet continued. “You are like a man with a stutter. There is a thought in your head, perfectly lucid, but when it reaches your tongue, it fumbles. The words break apart one on top of the other.”

“I knew a man with a stutter,” Markal said. “He never lost it. Plagued him until the end of his days.”

“And I knew a man with a stutter, too. Me.”

“You, Master? Do you mean that literally?”

“Quite literally—I stuttered when I was a boy. Long before you were born. My great-aunt was a famous poet, an orator, and my father sent me to her to rid myself of the stutter. She taught me to master my tongue through concentration and practice until others were unable to sense the difference. That’s why you’ve never heard it.”

“My lack of control is a stutter? I don’t think so.”

“Give me a better metaphor, then.”

Markal thought for a moment. “I’m a man on a swift horse, galloping down the road at breakneck speed. It is night, always night and pitch-black. The horse can’t see, and neither can I. The road is straight and flat and of good repair, but there are occasional holes in the surface. I might ride five minutes, or I might be almost to my destination, but the horse always steps in a hole. Down it goes, crying in pain and its leg shattered, and down I go with it.”

Markal had invented the comparison on the spot, but it sounded right. This was how he felt releasing even the most basic spell. The power was there, he could feel it on his tongue and in the blood rising from his pores, but it always fell apart. A hint of doubt, of worry, of uncertainty. Of disbelief. Then it was gone.

“Three apprentices or four, it doesn’t matter,” Markal said, not wishing to dwell any longer on his failings. “You say we’re not strong enough to fight.”

“You would manage fine if they were the usual sorts who have tested us over the years—thieves, those curious sorts who search for the seat of our power, and the like. But the enemies who attacked Nathaliey and me on the road were different.”

“Is that who we’re facing? These attackers Bronwyn warned me about?”

“I believe so.”

“Who are they? Who is sending them?”

“I wouldn’t speculate.”

“I know you’re speculating,” Markal said, “at least privately. Could you speculate aloud for a moment?”

“Speculation wouldn’t help you defeat them, might even put more fear and doubt into your heart.”

“In other words, you have information and you’re deliberately withholding it because you don’t think I can handle it.”

“That is why I call you ‘apprentice’ and you call me ‘master.’”

“And this is a lesson to teach me patience?”

“Not at all. It’s to keep you from running around in a circle, screaming and waving your hands in the air. But enough of that. Your paladin friend is awake, and she is thinking about you. Soon enough, she’ll come see if you’re still in bed or if you’re up to mischief.”

“How do you know that? I thought you couldn’t use your magic.”

“Who said I used magic?” There was a shrug in Memnet’s tone, or maybe it was a wink.

“So you’re speculating after all.”

Memnet chuckled. “Very well, I shall indulge a little. Whatever brought Bronwyn of Arvada over the mountains, she’s very determined. And she has magic about her or she wouldn’t still be alive. The gardens would have destroyed her.”

“I need her out of here before the attackers come,” Markal said. “At the very least, she’s going to distract me when I’m fighting for my life. Worse, she might throw in her lot with whoever appears.”

“Or, you could ask her to fight by your side.”

“Why would she do that?”

“It’s amazing how cozy it is, lying here in the dirt,” Memnet said. “The ground is warm and comfortable—it’s only when the vermin dig their way in to take a look that I wish I could move my limbs and shoo them off.”

“Well?” Markal pressed. “She’s already killed one of the keepers, so she’s no friend of ours. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“If she meant to kill you, she’d have done it. She’d have murdered us all and burned the garden. It seems to be within her power. Talk to her, explain your predicament.”

“No need to explain—she’s the one who told me. Seemed rather gleeful, if you ask me.”

“Some people need to be wanted, that’s all. Find out what Bronwyn has come for and convince her you can give it to her.”

“You mean just ask her straight out? Why would she tell me now?”

“Until you’ve asked, you’ll never know, will you?” Memnet yawned. “Here it comes. Time to bury me again and let me sleep. And do try to keep the enemies off me for a few more days. It would be very helpful to my own personal goal of not dying.”

“Wait,” Markal said. “What about Syrmarria? Could we ask Omar for help?”

“Are you sure it’s not our illustrious khalif who is sending these assassins in the first place? In which case, I wouldn’t advise it.”

“You really don’t think . . . ?” Markal began, but it was too late. The master’s head had slumped to one side, and he began to snore loudly. “Oh, come on, wake up, will you? Don’t tell me you can’t if you want to. I know you can hear me in there.”

In response to this, Memnet only snored louder than ever. The master might look like a young man, but Markal hadn’t heard a snore that loud since the final years of his grandfather’s life. The old man could ring a bell from a mile away.

That was one good thing about covering the master back up, Markal thought as he scooped dirt over Memnet’s head. It would muffle that infernal snoring.

Chapter Eight

It was around midnight when Nathaliey felt the first stirring of exhaustion in her limbs. The three apprentices had been running for hours. They had crossed the orchards outside Syrmarria, climbed a gently rising plain to the wheat fields of the Narpine Valley, and run through Temple Vale, with its shrines and monasteries nothing but silent shadows at this time of night.

A full moon guided their path, and their sharp eyesight revealed ruts, dips in the road, and even a broken and abandoned wagon wheel to be dodged and sidestepped. Nathaliey’s spell had strengthened their muscles, fortified their hearts and lungs, and toughened their bare feet against the constant pounding of the road. With her magic, they traveled faster than any horse could have managed in the darkness.

But the spell wouldn’t last forever. Not even the four hours she figured it would take to run the thirty miles from Syrmarria to the master’s gardens. The last stretch they would have to travel on their own strength, even as the cost of her spell began to take its toll in aching muscles and burning lungs.

By her estimation, they were still five miles from home, as they had not yet reached the hills leading to the bridge over Blossom Creek and the final descent to the gardens. The bridge was safety. Before the barbarian’s arrival, no enemy had ever crossed it. It was a hidden doorway, a drawbridge, and a battlement, all in one. But after running twenty-five miles over rutted, uneven roads, how could they manage another five without magic to aid them?

Chantmer was the first to pull up. Here, the River Nye spread across several square miles of flat, marshy ground, and during the rainy season, the road above its bank was often flooded and impassable. The river wasn’t carrying as much water these days, and the marshes had subsided, leaving clumps of dry, dead grass. Ghost lights danced in the distance.

Nathaliey came to a stop by Chantmer’s side, bent, and took deep, gulping breaths. The air was damp and smelled of rotting vegetation.

Narud trotted to a stop. “We have to keep going,” he said.

Chantmer wheezed and shook his head. “First, rest.”

Nathaliey straightened her back. “Are we still being pursued?”

This was to Narud, but rather than answering straightaway, he cocked his head, sniffed at the air, and peered at the road behind them. He looked undecided.

“We have to assume we are,” Nathaliey said. “Keep going until we reach the bridge. We’re not safe here.”

Chantmer shook his head. “We’re not safe until we’re inside the garden walls, and perhaps not even then.” He stopped talking to gasp for more air. “But I can’t keep running.”

On this, they were agreed, and so they set off walking. Nathaliey’s legs burned and her heart was hammering away. Narud kept looking behind and sniffing the air, but when pressed, admitted he didn’t detect pursuit. Chantmer, after a brief period where it seemed like he’d sit in the middle of the road like a balky mule, picked up the pace, and they were soon striding along at a near trot.

“I can’t go on much longer, either,” Nathaliey confessed. “I feel faint, and my stomach is churning like I’m going to vomit.”

“I’ve recovered some of my magical strength,” Chantmer said. “I might be able to cast that spell again, if you can help me recall the words. It will be weaker the second time around, but it might be enough. Could you lend me what you have?”

“I have nothing to lend. I’m still spent from the first time I cast it. Narud, what about you?”

“We’ll need our magic to fight the enemy, not to run faster,” Narud said. He glanced behind. “Our pursuers draw near.”

“I thought we’d lost them,” Nathaliey said.

“I never said that. I didn’t detect them before. Now I do. Look.”

The road behind was a silky black ribbon through the marshes, illuminated by the full moon and the flickering swamp lights. Two of the lights were larger than the others, and growing. No, not growing. Coming closer.

“Blood of the Path, what is that?” Chantmer asked.

Nathaliey only knew one thing that looked like swamp lights. “That can’t be. They look like . . .”

“Wights,” Narud said.

She saw them now, two glowing blue figures coming up the road toward them. Two figures on horses. Undead spirits riding on undead horses.

“Wights don’t hunt the living,” Chantmer said.

“All the same, we’ll be in trouble if they reach us,” she pointed out.

“What is the spell for chasing off wights?” he asked.

“Something about immortui.” Nathaliey almost had it, but the incantation slipped away before she could grasp it. Damn slippery words. “Narud?”

“I don’t know, either.” He shook his head. “What else do we have?”

“Volans malleis,” Chantmer said.

“Not your hammers again,” Nathaliey said. “That won’t help. What else?”

The tall apprentice pressed his fists to his temples, as if trying to squeeze something out. “Nothing! I don’t . . . I can’t . . .”

The wights were close enough now to see their features. They were dressed in silver-blue armor, their horses armored, too. It was curious workmanship, decorated with filigree and studded with knobs, like no armor she’d ever seen, and it occurred to her that these were not the recent dead. The two men wielded maces bristling with spikes. They paused in the road, the animals stomping, and then nudged them into a trot toward the three companions.

Nathaliey had second thoughts about Chantmer’s whirling hammers. “Do it!”

He lifted his hands out and chanted the words of the incantation. Narud spoke in a lower tone, his words different, but augmenting those of their taller companion. Lending his strength. Two hammers materialized in the air, spinning rapidly about until they were a blur.

Even before the hammers rushed off toward the wights, Nathaliey pulled up her sleeves and put her own hands down. She had little strength left—after bleeding herself a few hours earlier and running for several hours, she could scarcely spare the cost. But they couldn’t outrun these ghostly figures on their own; they needed the power of the Crimson Path.

The hammers whirled through the air, one after the other. They smashed into the ghostly figures and blasted apart in a shower of white sparks. The two knights rocked back in their saddles, but neither was unhorsed as Nathaliey had hoped. The horses though, being separate wights, reared and tried to throw their riders, before snorting and tossing as they broke from the road.

Nathaliey’s spell hit her and her companions. There was more to it than she’d guessed, but it was pitiful, a shadow of the power she’d called up in Syrmarria. Would it be enough? The three apprentices turned and ran for home.

Moments later, pounding hooves sounded on the road behind them. The wights had given pursuit.

#

Markal had his doubts as to the wisdom of Memnet’s advice. True, he always had doubts, but this time they were legitimate. The wizard wasn’t in his right mind. Right now he was a head and a partially formed body buried in the dirt, asleep most of the time. It was nonsense to approach Bronwyn and ask for her help. She was a barbarian from a strange order of knights, who’d come to the garden with the express intent of murdering the master.

But he was at a loss as to what else to do and wondering whether she was really awake at this hour or if that had been the master having fun with him, and so he made his way quietly along the forest path, past his house and toward Memnet’s cottage. The forest was quiet, the protective spells wary.

He was surprised to see the cottage door open and the barbarian standing on the stoop with a lantern at her feet. Markal remained in the shadows, curious.

Bronwyn was already dressed in boiled leather armor, and now hefted her breastplate over her shoulders and tightened the straps. She went back inside and returned with her helmet and her sword in its sheath.

“I know you’re out there,” she said. “Preparing another attempt to chase me off? Go ahead, if you feel you must try.”

Markal approached cautiously. “How did you know?”

“I was warned.”

“Are you leaving?”

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” She slung her sword over her shoulder and fastened the buckle holding it to her breastplate. “I wouldn’t be putting on my armor to ride away from here. No, I’m going to battle.”

“Battle? What are you talking about?”

“I told you, enemies are coming, and I’ve been preparing myself. What have you been doing since we last spoke?”

“Sleeping. I thought you were, too.”

“Oh, were you? Pleasant dreams, I hope.” Her tone was sarcastic. “Well, I haven’t been. I was meditating and praying to the Brothers to guide my hand.”

“Don’t you sleep? Weren’t you tired after so long on the road?”

“Exhausted. But I’m a warrior, Markal. A daughter of a king and a paladin of Eriscoba. When enemies present themselves, I will not be found in my bed.” She tucked her helmet under her arm, hefted the lamp in her other hand, and came to him. “What did the dead wizard tell you?”

“How did you know that’s where I was?”

“What did he say?”

“He told me to ask you to help us.”

She smiled. “I suppose I am helping, in a way. I might return to kill your master when I’m done, but for now, yes, I will help.”

Markal stared. “Who are you? And I don’t mean daughter of a king, paladin of Eriscoba, and all of that nonsense. Why did you come here? Why do you want to kill my master? Memnet the Great uses his magic to maintain the peace, to heal the land and its people, so why would you harm him?”

“Don’t deceive yourself, Markal. There is no other reason to become a wizard than a vainglorious lust for power. Isn’t that why you follow your master? You wish to rule and reign over the peasantry, don’t you?”

“No, that is impossible.”

“Ha. You do not consider the common folk to be weak-minded fools, driven here and there by their appetites? Like blind moles, they think their tunnel is the extent of the world. They must be led by their betters or they will destroy themselves. You believe this, don’t you?”

He thrust out his chin. “And you don’t?”

Bronwyn chuckled. She reached back to her sword hilt as if assuring herself it was still there, and her expression darkened. “I must go. Stay or follow as you wish, but there will be battle. You may not survive if you come—only the Brothers know for sure.”

She set off, and he followed. In spite of her boasting and her apparent ability to watch Markal from afar, the barbarian paladin’s eyesight was not so keen that she could travel the darkened forest without difficulty. Even with the lamp in hand, she picked her way slowly along the path until they’d reached the open ground beyond. Once there, however, she turned off the lamp and quickened her pace, moving only by moonlight.

By the Brothers, did this woman never tire? She must be carrying forty pounds of armor and sword, but Markal had to trot to keep up.

They reached the north gate a few minutes later. The keepers had concentrated their efforts here, being as it was closest to the road, and the wards were partially rebuilt. They strengthened Markal as he approached, then seemed to slam shut as soon as he’d passed through the opening in the brick wall and into the countryside beyond.

It was darker here, and Bronwyn handed Markal the lamp, but he stubbornly refused to light it. Let her stumble in the dark if she insisted.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“There are enemies coming. Can’t you feel them?”

“What kind of enemies?” he asked, skeptical.

“They’re out there.”

“So you say. They’ll never reach the gardens, they’ll never even cross the bridge.”

“I did, didn’t I?”

“You were the first. Anyway, if they did somehow make it across, we’d be safer within the garden walls. The magic will protect us inside. Out here, not so much.”

“You will be protected. I won’t. Your gardens are trying to reject me with every step I take, thanks to your infernal sorcery. I feel stronger with every step up the road.”

“You feel even stronger? Well.”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Bronwyn said.

“Ah, yes. Well, if you would prove yourself a friend and not an enemy, that would change. I could include you in their protection myself.” He couldn’t help sounding a bitter note. “You might need to stop slaughtering innocent keepers, of course.”

“The old woman is quite safe for now. Rest easy, I’ve spoken with her, and she holds no anger in her heart.”

“Are you mad? You killed her!”

Bronwyn stopped and drew her sword. A faint red glow worked along the surface, then it was gone, replaced by the gleam of cold steel in the moonlight.

Markal was no longer intimidated. “Is this a threat? Will you hack me down, too?”

“Shut your babbling mouth and listen.”

The chickens in the wire-enclosed coops built along the outside wall lay silent, and the horses were quiet in their stables. Darker shadows on either side of the road marked fairy forts some fifty feet ahead of them. These had nothing to do with fairies, if such a thing existed, but were tumbled over stone from ancient burial mounds. By custom and superstition, peasants throughout the Western Khalifates left the mounds untouched, allowing brush or trees to grow uncut. Last time Markal had stepped outside the garden at night, a large owl had been hooting in the trees growing on one of the forts. Not tonight. There wasn’t so much as the rustle of a breeze in the leaves.

Markal shook his head. “Nothing.”

“You hear nothing? Isn’t that warning enough?”

Ah yes, he understood. He hadn’t noticed at first, but there was a sound conspicuous in its absence.

“The crickets,” he said.

“Aye. Two cages on hooks at the entrance to the garden—I saw them when I entered. So unless someone removed them at dusk . . .”

Markal glanced behind them. “No, they’re still there. And the crickets should be chirping. You do that in your country, too?”

“We do. They are harbingers, warning sentinels. The pair at the gate have warned us of approaching enemies.”

“You mean wights? But what would bring the undead here? The garden is fertile—it reminds them of their ultimate fate. The crickets are only custom—no wight would come within a mile of the walls.”

“The silence of your crickets is not the only warning I’ve received, only a confirmation,” Bronwyn said. “Come. I may have need of your vision. Quickly, now.”

Without waiting to see if he would follow, the paladin strode forward along the narrow road that made its way between the tree-covered mounds and into the meadow beyond. Markal was inclined not to follow. Let Bronwyn wander off to battle wights. No sword could fight the undead; they’d rip her soul from her body.

But in spite of his earlier proclamation, a niggle of doubt remained. Why were wights approaching the garden? Would they try to enter?

Moving swiftly, the pair followed the road through the mounds and up a small hillock. From there, a moonlight vista of misty, knee-length grass stretched down toward the bridge over Blossom Creek.

Bronwyn reached under her breastplate and pulled out something that gleamed in the moonlight. “I will return this.”

He took it. “Memnet’s Orb!”

“I trust it will help.”

Markal rolled it over in his hand. It was as cool and inert as a smooth stone plucked from the riverbank. The truth was, he had no idea how to use it, or even if it had any power left after Chantmer’s abortive attempt. If Chantmer had learned its secrets, he’d not shared them with Markal. But he wasn’t about to return it to the woman, so he stuck it in the pocket of his tunic.

“Is the bridge defensible?” Bronwyn asked, gesturing ahead of them.

“More than defensible, it cannot be breached. It cannot even be found.” He glanced at her and had second thoughts. “You were the first.”

“I didn’t cross the bridge. I took my horse through the water. Quite an illusion you managed. It looked as though a waterfall was about to sweep us over, yet the animal’s hooves were barely wet when we reached the other side. Tell me about the bridge.”

“It’s much older than the gardens. There are old runes on the stones. They’re nearly worn away now, but the bridge has long been thought worth defending. The illusion of the waterfall was only part of the creek’s defenses—the current should have risen and swept you off.”

It had once been swift enough to manage without magic. The creek was over a hundred miles long, flowing out of the jagged desert mountain range on its way north to join the Nye, and from the height and span of the bridge, the river had once been much larger before the desert had encroached from the south. Blossom Creek—surely in those days known by a different name—must have even been navigable, as attested by the rubble of a tower a few hundred feet downstream, the kind still built on waterways to collect tolls.

“Anyway,” he added, “the bridge is narrow enough, and there is some magic in it.”

“Then we will make our stand there,” Bronwyn said.

Against what, Markal was about to ask. Wights? But before he could voice this question, three figures caught his eye, hurrying up the road on foot from the far side of the creek. They were still a half-mile out, and even with his keen vision, he couldn’t pick out faces or even clothing. But one of them was noticeably taller than the other two.

Chantmer? It must be, and his companions Narud and Nathaliey. Narud and Chantmer had set off for Syrmarria to fetch Nathaliey only that morning, meaning that they’d traveled nearly sixty miles in fourteen or fifteen hours. If they’d been running since Syrmarria, they must have used magic.

Bronwyn was striding ahead once more, but Markal stayed where he was to survey the scene, searching for the threat. There! Two riders followed some hundred yards behind the runners. They glowed a faint blue. Wights, curse them, pursuing Markal’s companions. But why were the wights keeping their distance instead of riding down the three fleeing apprentices?

The answer came a moment later. Four more mounted figures materialized farther back, riding hard, moving so swiftly and silently they appeared from a distance to be floating above the road. More wights. They continued up the road until they overtook the lead pair. All six stopped in the road, and Chantmer, Nathaliey, and Narud began to pull away. Then the wights formed ranks on the road, two across and three deep, and broke into a trot, followed shortly by a full charge.

Markal ran after Bronwyn, who pulled on her helmet as she approached the bridge.

And then a breeze lifted from the grasslands ahead of him. It carried a rustling, as of dry leaves, and a whisper, a clawing in Markal’s head. Something was hunting, sniffing for him. A current, an entire river of blue light flowed down the road from behind the hard-charging ghostly riders. It was a small army of wights, scores of them, all jumbled together and surging toward the bridge.

Chapter Nine

Nathaliey and her two companions ran down the road with the two undead knights riding after them. She kept expecting the pursuers to fall away as their attention wandered, yet these ones kept coming.

Impossible. Wights cannot hunt the living.

Did she believe that? Did she really? As a child, she’d hung a cricket at her door at night to turn away the undead. Later, the master assured them this was the folly and superstition of the unlearned. A wight could certainly kill a living soul, he agreed, but this was happenstance. The souls of the dead hated the living, but they didn’t have the capacity to purposefully stalk them.

The dead had only one thought passing through what remained of their minds: to hide from the Harvester before he and his hounds collected them in his bag of souls. Take reasonable precautions, and wights posed no threat. They certainly wouldn’t pursue the living down a country road.

But when Nathaliey looked behind her, there was no denying it. As fast as the three apprentices ran through the night, the glowing figures were pursuing at a relentless pace and slowly drawing closer, now only a few hundred yards behind.

The road left the swamp and its flickering lights and passed through a copse of pine trees and into a broad meadow. Almost there. Hope rose in Nathaliey’s chest. The bridge came into sight, arcing gracefully over Blossom Creek in the moonlight.

The ghostly riders had been pursuing them now for some time, so close that one last charge would have overtaken the three apprentices. But as the bridge came into sight, the riders pulled up short.

Nathaliey had nothing left, had already dug into her reserves and dug again, but somehow she kept her legs pounding forward. A wind blew up the road, swirling her robes, and she glanced over her shoulder.

“Go!” Chantmer gasped. “They are scared of the bridge. If we can only make it . . .”

No, that wasn’t why they’d stopped. Instead, they’d been holding for four more riders to join them, and now there were six ghostly figures. They gathered in formation and began their charge. And then Nathaliey’s pounding heart nearly stopped in fear.

The blue light behind now spread up the road for a good half-mile. Two had become six, and six had spawned dozens. They blurred one into the other, but here and there the haunted, miserable expressions came through: a woman with her face cut open, her teeth and jaw exposed, a dead soldier with his throat cut and his helmet cleaved nearly in two, an old leper in rags and covered in weeping sores. A dead child, limbs mangled. They pushed forward as if driven by an unseen whip.

Nathaliey saw all this in a single, horrifying glance. And learned that, indeed, she had not yet tapped the bottom of her reserves. She turned back to see that Narud and Chantmer had seen it as well. Their faces stretched into grimaces nearly as awful as those of their pursuers, and all three apprentices ran for their lives.

The bridge loomed ahead. Cross to the other side—that was all Nathaliey could hope. From there, the first whisper of power would reach them from the gardens. It would give them strength. And the inhabitants of the garden would sense the three apprentices, as well. They would send help.

But by now the first of the wights were so close that their screams entered her mind. She glanced back to see a long ghostly spear in the lead rider’s mailed fist. The wight reared back to throw.

“By the sword be damned!” a woman’s voice rang out.

A figure stood on the bridge in front of them, a two-handed sword gripped tightly in her hands. Red fire seemed to dance along the blade. She wore a breastplate that gleamed in the moonlight, and there was an unnatural fury in her eyes, visible even from a distance, that seemed to Nathaliey to belong to a god or a demon, not a woman.

The barbarian. Chantmer and Narud had warned Nathaliey of the woman. The one who’d come to destroy the master, who had murdered one of the keepers. She must have called the wights, sent them hunting on the road from Syrmarria. And now she blocked the path.

The woman came toward the three apprentices, sweeping her long sword ahead of her. Nathaliey had pulled into the lead and would be the first to face the blade. Stumbling forward, her strength exhausted, she was unable to do so much as lift her arms to shield her face before the barbarian was upon her.

But the woman shoved her aside, muscled past Chantmer and Narud, and swung her sword at the wights behind them. Nathaliey staggered on, reached the first flagstones of the bridge, and fell to her knees. Narud and Chantmer stumbled into her, one after the other, until all three lay in a heap.

A second figure loomed above them. It was Markal. He’d pulled back his sleeves and placed his hands down, and was chanting a spell. Her first thought was that he meant to renew the strength of his fellow apprentices so they could run to the safety of the garden, but the incantation was directed at the wights and the barbarian warrior.

A great pulse flowed through Markal’s limbs, like a maelstrom ready to roar free, and Nathaliey braced herself for its impact. Here it was. Her friend had found his power at last. But as Markal finished the spell, the bulk of it boiled harmlessly into the air. What remained flew past Nathaliey’s shoulder, as timid as a sparrow, and it entered the battle to some unknown effect.

She raised herself to her hands and knees and looked behind her. The barbarian was brawling with the mounted knights. They were spectral, nearly without form. They could do a mortal soul harm, but could not be harmed in turn by anything but powerful magic. Certainly no sword could touch them. Or so Nathaliey thought.

But the woman broke an enemy’s spear, cut through his glowing armor, and sent him crashing to the ground. She plunged her sword into his chest and tilted back her head with a growl. The wight was gone, destroyed. The ghostly horse sped off into the night and vanished into the mist.

Other riders came at the barbarian. She danced between their swords and spears, hacking them down one at a time and dispatching them the moment they fell. If not for the terrifying vision of an entire army of the creatures swirling down the road to join the fight, Nathaliey would have stared in amazement at her fighting ability, a combination of grace and power.

“Get back!” the barbarian yelled.

Her sword lashed in a blur as she fought her way back to the bridge. Markal helped the other three apprentices clear a space for her to enter. Once at the narrow opening, the barbarian stopped once again to face her enemies. Wights came at her with weapons, with teeth and fingernails. The long red sword hacked and slashed. With every swing, she battered through them, cutting and maiming as the wights fell apart like wisps of blue flame.

But they kept coming, and soon she was faltering. Markal tried to raise another spell, but he failed. The other apprentices had nothing. But they couldn’t retreat and leave the woman to her fate.

A long pike thrust forward from the mass of writhing, clawing enemies. The barbarian swung to counter it, but it was a sluggish parry from an exhausted defender, and it failed to turn aside the blow. The point struck her shoulder above the breastplate. The woman cried out in pain and fell back. Another wight came at her, and somehow she managed to bring her sword around for another blow. It decapitated the wight.

But this was the woman’s last effort, and she collapsed on the bridge. The wights had been faltering under her ferocious defense, their attacks weakening, but now they gathered in triumph and surged forward.

A collective howl rose from the mass of wights. Nathaliey braced herself to be overrun. The wights would tear them apart, and the four apprentices and the warrior would soon join the mindless rabble of undead.

But at that moment came a single long, haunting note that rolled through the night air. A hunting horn. The baying of distant hounds followed in its wake. The Harvester had come to claim his own.

The wights, so close to victory, fell back from the bridge. They scattered, screaming, from the road as the horn blew again. That call was not meant for her, Nathaliey knew, yet a mindless terror rose in her breast to hear the dark god’s horn, and she cowered with her hands covering her face.

A hand grabbed Nathaliey and yanked her to her feet. It was Markal, looking drawn. Chantmer had regained his feet, too, and tried to help Narud up. The woman lay groaning from her wound, the long sword at her side.

“Go!” Markal cried. “Run!”

#

Somehow Markal got them all moving, even the barbarian. His companions looked nearly dead, and both Nathaliey and Narud stopped to retch as soon as they got to the far side of the bridge, though there seemed to be nothing in their stomachs. Bronwyn moaned and clutched at her shoulder, blood streaming through her fingers from the pike wound.

Nevertheless, she had the sense of mind to reach her other hand over her shoulder to grope for her weapon. “My sword.”

Markal glanced behind him, half expecting to see wights streaming over the bridge after them. But the Harvester’s horn kept blowing, and now the baying hounds sounded closer. Whatever evil magic had driven the wights forward was apparently gone, as they fled from the dark god.

“We’ll get it in the morning,” he said.

Bronwyn drove her feet into the ground to keep from being dragged along. “No, I will get it now.”

“We need to reach the gardens. The Harvester will take us all.”

“If the sword falls into the enemy’s hands, we are doomed.”

Bronwyn fought clear. But she hadn’t taken two steps when she staggered and nearly fell.

Markal went to her side. “You go. I’ll retrieve the sword.”

“Do you swear it?”

“By the Brothers, I’ll try.”

Bronwyn managed a grim nod and turned back to stagger after Markal’s companions lurching down the road toward the gardens. Markal’s heart pounded in fear, and his body was shaky from blood loss after the magic he’d sent to strengthen the paladin in her fight. Every fiber of his being balked at going alone over that bridge to where the Harvester and his hounds were hunting souls, but somehow, he kept his feet moving forward.

Bronwyn’s sword lay glinting in the moonlight where it had fallen. There was no red gleam—the blade looked like nothing but an ordinary piece of steel—but Markal was not fooled. There was magic in the weapon. Bronwyn might be a great warrior, but no mere sword could have hacked apart those wights, and Markal knew it wasn’t his own feeble spell that had done it.

Another blast from the horn. Close. The baying hounds, even closer. But Markal saw nothing, only a flat, grassy field, with blue lights still fleeing in all directions.

Quickly, he bent and grabbed the sword. It had some heft to it, which made it all the more impressive how Bronwyn had been sweeping it around, parrying and cutting down enemies. When his fingers wrapped around the pommel, a voice whispered in his ear.

Who are you?

Markal whipped his head around, thinking the voice had come from over his shoulder. But there was nobody there. Other voices entered his mind, both male and female. It was like walking into a room where a dozen hushed conversations were taking place, none of which he could pick out. And then the voices fell silent.

He hurried to join the others. They’d continued to trudge forward, but the instant Bronwyn saw him, she stopped again. Her left arm hung limp, the shoulder bleeding heavily. Bronwyn reached for the sword with her good arm.

“Give me that.”

“I’ll carry it. You’re in no condition.”

“Give me the damn sword!”

“Fine, you cut off your leg for all I care.”

Markal handed it over and pushed past her to catch up with the other apprentices. They reached the opening in the wall that led into the gardens. Still no sign of pursuit, and when he looked back and saw that the paladin was far behind, he was tempted to leave her to her own devices and look to his friends. Let’s see if she could get in now, the stubborn fool.

Nathaliey grabbed Markal’s arm with a trembling hand. “Help her, we’ll take care of ourselves.”

“You’re sure?”

“She saved our lives, and that’s worth something. I’ll send keepers to help. See that she doesn’t die before they find you.”

That was easy enough to say, he thought as the other three hobbled off while he waited for Bronwyn. There was restorative magic in the gardens, but Bronwyn was no wizard like Memnet, and she’d taken a brutal injury that would have been dangerous enough from a mortal weapon. From a ghostly pike, who knew what effect it had? Markal knew very little about such things.

He went back and threw her arm over his shoulders to help her through the gate. Runes carved into the stones whispered strength into his bones. Cool, restorative air filled his lungs. He shifted more of Bronwyn’s slumping weight onto his own body. The sword dragged in the dirt, but she wouldn’t relinquish it.

Two keepers found him before he’d made it out of the outer gardens. They helped him prop Bronwyn against an oak tree, where she sank, head slumping against her chest.

“Bring me a flagon of fresh wine from the south vineyards,” he told them. “And a round of bread and some honey. That will help, too.”

“I’m not hungry,” Bronwyn murmured.

“Quiet.” Markal took off her helmet and kept speaking to the keepers. “Bandages, and a poultice with the mud from the lakeshore. Herbs—you know the ones I need.”

The keepers set off, and Markal looked back to the injured paladin. The first hint of dawn stained the sky and combined with the waning light of the sinking moon to cast her face in gray. Her eyes rolled back as she appeared to fall senseless.

Markal removed the woman’s breastplate, which failed to rouse her, but she groaned when he took her padded cloth shirt and pulled it over her shoulders. He removed the blood-soaked linen undershirt beneath it. Linen bindings covered her breasts, but her torso was bare. A small pendant in the formed of a silver crescent moon hung from a chain around her neck.

Bronwyn’s complexion was paler than any he’d ever seen, which made the multitude of bruises stand out more. Some were an angry purple, but most were old, fading yellow. He guessed they matched divots in her breastplate, and wondered who she’d been battling in the not-so-distant past. These bruises were nothing compared to the big, ugly wound left by the enemy pike. It had torn open muscle and perhaps broken the bone.

A figure came up behind Markal and handed him a flagon of wine.

“Thank you,” he said without looking. “What about the poultice?”

“It’s coming.” It was Nathaliey. “The bread and honey, too. I just happened to have the wine in my cottage, which was a lot closer.”

Markal glanced at her. “Go get some rest.”

“Not a chance. What if the wights attack the gardens? I’d rather not be in bed when that happens.”

“Why not? You may as well die peacefully in your sleep.”

“Ha!” Nathaliey eased herself to the ground with a groan. “Oh, my muscles. They are not pleased.”

Markal lifted the wine flagon to Bronwyn’s lips and muttered encouraging words until she’d taken a little. Some of it even went down.

He tried to hand the flagon back to Nathaliey. “You could use this, too.”

“I already did. Why do you think it’s half empty? Go ahead and drink some yourself.”

Markal took a long drink. It was fresh wine, not yet aged in barrels, and it had an unfinished taste that nevertheless warmed his mouth and throat as it went down. He didn’t drink it all though, saving the rest for Bronwyn. The woman’s eyes opened when he put it to her lips the second time, and she gave him a bleary, not-altogether pleased look.

“How bad is it?” she asked.

“The muscle is cut open, the tendons too,” Markal said. “I can’t see the bone, but it might be broken.”

“I’m finished. A paladin with a crippled arm—what use will I be?”

“You let us worry about that. You are in the gardens of Memnet the Great.”

“I’ve seen wounds like this before,” Bronwyn said. “It’s no use.”

“Then you should be asking why you’re not unconscious from loss of blood. That you are awake should tell you something.”

This stopped her, and she took more wine when he offered it. Her eyes closed again.

“Thank you for coming for us,” Nathaliey said to Markal. “How did you know?”

Two keepers arrived before he could respond. One held a round of yesterday’s bread and a clay jar of honey, the other the mud and herbs in a jug, and a roll of fresh linen for a bandage. He took them, then sent the keepers to rouse the rest of the garden. He wanted keepers posted at the entrances to the gardens, readying whatever small bits of magic they possessed until daylight arrived.

“I didn’t know,” Markal said as he pressed cool mud into the barbarian’s injured shoulder. She groaned and tossed her head. “Bronwyn knew. Or rather, her sword did.”

Nathaliey glanced at the sword lying in the dirt and raised an eyebrow. “How can a sword know anything?”

“I have no idea. But the sword tells her things, or perhaps it is a message being passed through the sword from some other source.” Markal explained how she was always touching the hilt, how when he’d picked it up, he’d heard voices. “Someone must be using it as a conduit to send her information.”

“Seems that a good deal has happened to both of us since yesterday,” Nathaliey said. She bound the wound as Markal held the healing mud in place. “What about the master? Is he all right? He wasn’t . . . you know?” She glanced at Bronwyn.

“No, she didn’t kill him. He’s alive. I even spoke with him.”

Bronwyn opened her eyes. “You know less than you think. Both of you.”

“Why don’t you tell us, then,” Markal said. “Why are you here?”

She closed her eyes and yawned. The wine and poultice seemed to be taking effect, and now she was merely pale instead of gray. They eased her onto the bed of leaves at the base of the tree and pulled off her boots to reveal feet wrapped in linens. Bronwyn’s breathing came slow and easy, but even as she fell asleep, her hand fell on her sword hilt and tightened.

“Shame she didn’t stay awake long enough to eat the bread and honey,” Nathaliey said. “Would have done her good.”

Markal tore off a chunk of the flatbread and used his thumb to break the wax seal on the honey. “The bread and honey is for you, actually. I knew you wouldn’t stay in bed.” He drizzled honey on the piece of bread and handed it to her.

“Thank you, Markal. You’re a good friend.”

Warmth touched his face. To disguise his embarrassment, he turned back to the food, tearing off his own piece and dipping it in the honey. It was restorative from the first taste.

Markal had already been fifteen years under the master when Nathaliey arrived as a girl. Memnet had gathered everyone by the pavilion to introduce the new apprentice, and she’d greeted them with a lofty expression that Markal now knew was an attempt to cover anxiety, but it had seemed smug and overly precocious at the time. It was winter, and Markal had just returned from Syrmarria having taken on some illness that left him with a wet cough and sneezing up mucous.

When Markal finished offering a greeting, Nathaliey had eyed him solemnly and asked, “Why do you have such a nasal voice?”

“I have a cold,” he shot back. “Why do you have such a high, strident voice?”

This brought laughter from the others, even a chuckle from Memnet, and Nathaliey had glared, her face flushed. But she apparently forgot the incident, as she took to following Markal through his daily efforts, peppering him with questions until he invented what he called “the working meditation,” which meant “shut up, kid, and pull weeds.”

It was hard to believe that they’d become close friends after such a start. These days, an outside observer would have taken them for the same age, and within the order itself they were equal in status, if not ability. She’d long since outpaced his feeble efforts at the craft.

“What happened in Syrmarria to make you come running back in such a hurry?” Markal asked between bites.

“Oh, you know. Thrown into the dungeon and chased by wights. That sort of thing.”

Nathaliey told how she’d gone into the bowels of the library to investigate the gray-skinned assassin, but Markal was still unclear about what she’d hoped to find. When Jethro brought out the Book of the Gods, Nathaliey had discovered pages cut out by an unknown thief or vandal.

“That’s . . . curious,” he said. “How would someone have got to the book? The Secret Vault is well protected.”

“It’s only one of many implausibilities, don’t you think?”

“Yes, true. Go on.”

When she went to confront the khalif, she’d discovered the high king’s pasha and one of the king’s engineers in the throne room, and matters had escalated until she was seized and thrown into the dungeon. Chantmer and Narud had freed her, but the three were soon running for their lives toward the gardens. He knew the rest.

Markal shared his own story. The struggle with the barbarian, and what little he’d learned about her purpose for coming. What had happened to Memnet’s Orb.

“I should have guessed,” Nathaliey said. “Chantmer went into the desert after the master was killed. He said he was looking for a magic trail left by the assassins, but apparently he wanted to get his hands on the orb.”

“I don’t know which was worse, that Chantmer fumbled it away or that I couldn’t so much as coax out a spell to wipe my nose when it fell into my hands.”

Nathaliey smiled at this. “Go on.”

He told her about the strange business with the sword, and how Bronwyn claimed to have spoken with Eliana after killing her. And about Memnet’s revival—or partial revival. The master had been in an odd humor and was mostly asleep, but the combination of his remarkable life force and the healing power of the garden was indeed bringing him back from the dead.

“I wish he’d get on with it,” Nathaliey said. “Might be helpful to have him around at a time like this. We don’t even understand what’s going on.”

“Surely we’ve got enough between us to piece it together.”

“Hmm, yes. I should fetch Chantmer and Narud, and we can discuss it.”

She made as if to stand, but Markal put a hand on her wrist to stop her. “They need their rest.”

“Chantmer, at least. He’s clever, Markal—he’ll have ideas.”

“I’d rather not have an endless argument before we’ve even found the bottom of this thing.”

“Ah, now I understand.” Nathaliey settled back into place. “What do you suppose the barbarian meant about Eliana not being dead? You didn’t bury her body in the gardens, did you?”

“That wouldn’t have worked—she’s not the master.” Markal glanced at Bronwyn to make sure she was still sleeping. “Eliana’s body is on a tower of silence outside the western walls. I’m sure if you looked, you’d see the crows picking over her flesh. Whatever this woman meant, it wasn’t that Eliana had come back to life.”

“She must be insane. She’s a paladin of some sect or cult, and you know what kind of fanatics they are. She wants to cleanse the world of unholy magic, and somehow the master’s name was added to her list.” Nathaliey studied the pale-skinned woman. “She certainly is beautiful, in a strange sort of way. And did you see her with the sword? It was wonderful to watch. And terrible, at the same time.”

It had continued brightening with the coming of dawn, and now the first rays of the sun came gleaming through the branches of the oak tree. With daylight, the fear of wights faded like a quickly forgotten nightmare.

“There’s one thing I’m confident of,” Markal said. “Bronwyn has nothing to do with the assassins who killed the master. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have driven off the wights, she’d have let them overrun the garden.”

“Who says she has to be consistent? Like I said, she’s a fanatic, and who knows what tortured stories she’s told herself. Anyway, she killed a keeper, she tried to kill the master—that makes her an enemy.”

“Forget the paladin for a moment,” Markal said. “You don’t suppose that the wights and the assassins and the missing pages in the library are tied to the high king’s road, do you?”

“The thought crossed my mind when I was in the dungeon. Pasha Malik was certainly taking advantage of Memnet’s death, and the khalif is too craven to oppose him. But it’s impossible. This is a magical attack, so the king couldn’t be involved.”

Yes, that was true. The high king of Veyre had once been a wizard himself, a peer and ally of Memnet’s. But he’d renounced the order to take the throne of Veyre. Political power and magic could not—would not—be mixed, and he’d chosen to pursue the former and abandon the latter.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the high king had grown wary of all forms of magic once it had been taken from him. He’d banished it from the Eastern Khalifates and, later, pressured khalifs in the west to do the same, until the use of magic was largely confined to its traditional homeland of Aristonia and foreign lands across the desert or over the mountains.

As for the high king, his knowledge of the craft quickly fell away, and when he’d met with Memnet and the apprentices to argue for the passage of his highway through Aristonia, Markal was shocked to see how he’d aged with the passing of years. He’d become only a man, one who relied on generals and armies, and feared and hated magic.

“Then we still know nothing,” Markal said, frustrated. “Who is attacking us and why?” He hooked a thumb at the sleeping paladin. “Not to mention her.”

Nathaliey dipped the last piece of flatbread into the honey. “I suppose we’ll have to wait for her to wake up.”

Markal’s gaze fell once more on the sword. Bronwyn’s hand remained tightened around the hilt, even while the rest of her relaxed in a deep slumber. A thought occurred to him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked Nathaliey.

“Better. Exhausted, of course, but nothing that more food and a few hours of sleep won’t cure.” She popped the bread into her mouth and licked her fingertips.

Markal handed her the flask of wine. “Better take another swig. You’re going to need it.”

She took the flask and studied him. “What are you getting at?”

“I’ll need your magic if I’m going to get my hands on that sword.”

Chapter Ten

Nathaliey looked intrigued, rather than skeptical, and that emboldened Markal. “I almost tried this last night,” he said, “but it seemed likely to go wrong.”

“Because of the sword itself?”

“Exactly. I had my suspicions the way she kept touching it, but now that I’ve picked it up and heard it myself, I’m sure. It’s the sword telling her, and she’ll be warned.”

Nathaliey frowned. “Her hand is on it right now. The blasted thing might be listening to us.”

“Probably is. It knows all sorts of things, right down to the fact that you’d be running down the road pursued by wights. But Bronwyn isn’t awake yet—the poultice and the wine and her wounds put her to sleep.”

“So grab the sword and see what happens.”

“I’m not so confident as all that,” he said. “I could use your help to keep her down.”

“Keep her down with magic, in other words.”

“Can you manage?”

Nathaliey sighed. “What’s a little more blood from the pores? My head is full of sand, though. Could you help me remember the incantation?”

Sure, that was the easy part. Not that he had mastered even a tenth of the knowledge in Syrmarria’s library. The larger spells, the more arcane knowledge, remained slippery, and threatened Markal with decades, even centuries of study to master. But it was curious that his friend couldn’t remember something as simple as a sleep spell, yet could execute it with such precision when fed the words.

She exposed her palms and bowed her head. There was a weariness in her posture, and Markal reminded himself that it had only been a few hours since she’d thrown her strength into the flight down the road. He shouldn’t expect her best effort.

Markal spoke the whole incantation once to spur her memory, then started over, feeding the words to her one at a time. She stared at the ground with a look of intense concentration, and as she began to speak, Markal sensed the power rising in her. It seemed as easy to her as bending to touch her toes.

Not all of the magic reached the surface, however. A few droplets of blood trickled down her palm, and for a brief moment it looked as though the spell would fail. What came out was more of a breeze than a blast of wind, but it was enough. As it washed over Bronwyn, the barbarian’s breathing stopped completely. Several seconds later, her lungs drew in air, but slow and deep, a breath every eight or ten seconds.

Nathaliey wiped her damp palms on the cloth at her belt, which was already caked with dried blood. She lay down in the oak leaves with a groan and covered her eyes with her forearm. Markal went to her with the flask of wine.

She turned her head away when he tried to place it at her lips. “By the Brothers, no. I’ll be sick if I try. Just get the blasted sword, will you?”

Bronwyn’s hand, if anything, seemed tighter on the handle than ever. This, in spite of the fact that the rest of her couldn’t have looked any more relaxed if she’d been floating in water. Markal took one of her big toes and squeezed. No response. He poked her leg, then jabbed her hard in the ribs. Finally, he made his way to the wound, bound beneath linens, with its mud poultice underneath, and pressed a thumb on it. The woman didn’t move, didn’t groan in her sleep, didn’t even stir.

Markal picked up one of Bronwyn’s boots and made his way to the sword.

“Well?” Nathaliey asked. She still had her arm over her eyes.

“Shh.”

Rather than touch the thing with his bare hand, he stuck his hand in the boot and used it to pin down the weapon while he pried off Bronwyn’s fingers with his other hand. When he’d eased her thumb free, he lifted her wrist and used the boot toe to knock the hilt away before setting her hand down on the ground. The paladin never stirred.

Nathaliey was sitting up and watching when he finished. Her face was pale, and she held the wine flask in hand, but didn’t drink from it yet. “Go ahead. Pick it up.”

“I’m . . . hesitant.”

“What are you afraid of? You did it once already, didn’t you?”

Markal licked his lips. Yes, he had, but that had been different. He’d been running for his life, the sword snatched up only to return it to its master. It had spoken to him, but he’d quickly got rid of the thing. This time, he was initiating contact. Taking it from its owner. And for some reason, that seemed like a terrible idea.

“Come on, Markal. I didn’t bleed myself for you to sit there licking your lips.”

“Maybe we should wait until Memnet is up and about.”

“Could be weeks. You think we have that kind of time?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Do you want me to fetch Chantmer?” Nathaliey asked. “I’m sure he’ll be all too eager to give it a try if you can’t bring yourself to pick it up.”

That was the right thing to say to get him moving, as surely she’d known. The thought of Chantmer using the sword to puzzle out the answer to this mystery, and then smugly relaying his discovery, was more than Markal could bear. He reached for the sword. The hilt was warm to his touch.

He slid the weapon from its sheath. It didn’t look red now, just ordinary steel, nicked along the edge from the battle. It was clearly a weapon of high craftsmanship, down to the hilt and pommel, but there was nothing to mark it as anything extraordinary.

And then something stirred. Magic, an awakening. A faint red gleam spread along the blade. For a moment, Markal felt as though he were in two places at once, a sensation not unlike what he felt entering deep meditation at the Golden Pavilion. He was both here, beneath the shade of an oak tree in the garden, and in some distant city. There was a breeze that carried the smell of sand and sage. Of camels and exotic spices. Where was he, the sultanates?

Who are you, my friend? The question was smooth, and poured from the sword like olive oil from a flask.

Markal of Aristonia, he answered. Who are you?

You are a wizard? Do you serve the master?

Something about the question raised his suspicions. What master? Who is this? Are you the sword, or do you live within the sword?

Laughter came in response. Unkind and mocking. Other voices whispered in the background, as if there weren’t simply one entity in the sword, but many. Dozens, even.

Markal put his other hand on the hilt, thinking to listen more carefully, but at that moment his hands tightened involuntarily. The sword yanked him to his feet. His arms lifted above his shoulders, blade held high, and then the thing jerked him back and forth.

“Markal, what are you doing?” Nathaliey demanded, climbing to her feet. “You’re going to—watch out!”

He fought with it. “It’s the sword. I’m not doing anything.”

“Put it down. Just drop it.”

“I can’t!”

Indeed, his fingers had hardened in place until they felt like they’d been melted to the hilt. He still had control of his muscles—mostly—but no matter how much he strained and pulled, the sword fought to lead, compelling him to obey.

And Markal wasn’t the only one fighting. There was another struggle going on within the sword itself. That first voice, the smooth and oily one, contended with others. The sword dipped down, then came point up again. Markal’s shoulder muscles tightened, and he drew back the sword and faced Nathaliey.

“Go!” he cried, terrified. The sword wanted blood. It wanted more than blood.

She stared, eyes raised in horror. Too late, she turned to flee. Markal brought the sword around to cut her down.

A strong hand grabbed Markal’s wrist. It was Bronwyn, her eyes cloudy and confused, but clearing quickly. The sword bucked and thrashed, and Markal found himself turning to get free so he could swing at Nathaliey.

His friend ducked out of the way, but the sword seemed to bend to meet her. Bronwyn leaned her shoulder into Markal and shoved him aside at the last moment. Markal kept fighting with the weapon, but before he could gain control of it, the sword turned slippery. It slid out Markal’s hands and fell to the ground. Bronwyn caught the hilt before it hit. The muscles tightened in her arm and shoulder, but she held herself still, and shortly relaxed her posture.

Markal stood panting. “By the Brothers, what is that thing?”

Bronwyn glared at him as she returned her sword to its sheath. “You, my friend, are an idiot.”

#

Markal arrived at Memnet’s stone cottage the next morning to find the paladin up and moving. She’d laid out her gear on the flagstones near the well. The sword lay on top of its sheath, the edge freshly honed. Bronwyn leaned against the well, polishing her boots. The pendant with the silver crescent moon hung outside her padded cloth shirt.

“Good,” she said, eyeing him and the leather sack he carried. “I’m starving. What have you got?”

“Bread, honey, fruit, olives, lamb pies.”

“I’ll pay for it, of course. I don’t know if you’d recognize my money, but it’s good silver.”

“You are a guest. This is a place of hospitality.”

“You say that now, but I’ll need a lot more than a few pies. I need provisions that will travel, plus there’s the care of my horse these past days, and the caring for my wound.”

“Yes, about the wound. May I look?” Markal dared hope that all of this activity and the comment about provisions meant that she would soon be leaving them. “I need to see if it is healing properly.”

“If you feel it necessary.” She unlaced her linen shirt and shrugged her left arm and shoulder out. “But it feels much better already. I could fight now, if it were necessary.”

Markal unwrapped the bandage. The mud was caked into a dry patty, and he pried it off. Bronwyn’s frown didn’t quite reach a wince as he exposed the wound.

“By the Brothers!” she said, looking. “That is truly remarkable.”

“There will be a scar. And make sure you keep it clean until it’s fully healed.”

“Your skill in these matters is unsurpassed, my friend.”

“That is the garden, not me.”

“Don’t belittle yourself. I know what you did for me.” Bronwyn sized him up. “I can tell you’re eager to send me off. See that my horse is ready, that I have provisions for a week on the road.”

Markal had brought new bandages and a fresh poultice, which he applied to the wound before rewrapping it. “I won’t lie and say I want you to stay, but I would be happier to put you on the road when the wound has turned pink. There is still a risk of contamination.”

“No time for it. This might be my chance, Markal.”

“How do you mean?”

“Only sorcery could organize wights into an army, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I would,” he agreed reluctantly.

“And I have a nose for such things. I will find the trail and trace it to its source. Then we’ll see an end of it.”

“An end of what, precisely?”

“Why should that trouble you? This is your sanctuary, isn’t it? Go ahead, stay in your garden, Markal. Throw up your wards and incantations. When your master finally crawls out of the ground, tell him to be more careful when he ventures out.”

There was disdain in her words, and Markal’s first inclination was to mutter his insincere best wishes and leave her be. A good riddance to her.

“Why have you come?” he asked. “What is this sorcerer to you?”

“I don’t give information to satisfy idle curiosity.”

“I might be able to help.”

“Go and see that my horse is fed if you want to help.”

Bronwyn had laced up her shirt again and was pulling on her boots. She looked at him and scowled. “Well?”

“When do you leave?”

“That is nothing to you, only see to my needs at once.”

Now he did bristle. “You’re not the daughter of a king here, Bronwyn of Arvada, and I am not your servant. You are a guest, and I deserve an answer to my question before I rush off to do your bidding.”

“Very well. I need to eat, gather my belongings, and see to my provisions. Is that enough? Saddle my horse and make sure it’s ready to ride. An hour, two at the most, and I’ll be on the road. Isn’t it obvious why? I’m going to find the sorcerer who sent the wights and kill him.”

Markal made a quick decision. “Very well, then. We’ll go together.”

Chapter Eleven

Markal sent keepers to do his preparations while he sought out his three companions. There was some irony to taking command. He’d chafed under Bronwyn’s orders, yet wasn’t he assuming his own position of authority that had not been granted him? Nobody had left him in charge when the master fell. Not over the keepers and acolytes, and certainly not over his fellow apprentices.

Chantmer, Narud, and Nathaliey sat cross-legged in the shrine at the Golden Pavilion, eyes closed and chanting in low voices. Markal climbed the stairs and waited, reluctant to interrupt. It was a mantra in the old tongue that translated roughly as:

The wise seek all knowledge, while a fool takes pleasure in his own ignorance.

No doubt Chantmer had chosen it, but it raised an uncomfortable question. Was Markal the wise man in this situation, or the fool?

It was Nathaliey who first noticed Markal. Her eyes flickered open between repetitions, and she gave him a wink and a smile, but didn’t stop chanting. They’d been going in a circle, one person droning the line solo, then the trio repeating it together, then the next person saying it, and so on. When it got to Nathaliey, she changed the phrase, as was her right.

“It is a lucky fool who escapes the drudgery of his lessons.”

She sang it like a mantra, and Chantmer lifted his head, scowling. His eyes fell on Markal. “Oh, it’s you.” He slid to the side to open a space.

“No, I didn’t come for that. The paladin is leaving.”

“Good. And may we never see her again.” Chantmer said it, but the sentiment was reflected in the expressions of the other two. “Now that we’ve faced the barbarian, we should be able to seal the garden against her return.”

“I want the gardens protected against wights,” Markal said. “That frightens me more than one misguided paladin.”

“The paladin broke her way into the gardens. The wights couldn’t even cross the bridge.”

“I don’t know if the wights will return or not, but Bronwyn isn’t the danger here. She’s a paladin on a quest for something related to this dark magic. I’m inclined to help her. We share an enemy.”

“But Markal,” Nathaliey said, “it was Bronwyn who entered the gardens, not the spirits of the dead. She’s the one who wields this infernal talking sword. And what about Eliana? Are you going to forget her death?”

“I think that was an accident. We were fighting the paladin, and she struck the keeper to protect her own life. Any of us would have done the same.”

Nathaliey frowned. “Eliana is still dead. We can’t turn our backs on this woman—she’s too dangerous.”

“I’m not turning my back on her. In fact, I’m going to travel with her to see what I can discover.”

He explained his thinking. Bronwyn claimed she’d faced all of the dangers of the mountains to find a sorcerer. This dark wizard was responsible for some unknown threat to her homelands or her religious order. And the apprentices had evidence that Bronwyn’s enemy existed—the wights who’d chased Chantmer, Narud, and Nathaliey from Syrmarria could only have been controlled by a necromancer, a sorcerer of considerable power.

Then there was the matter of the missing pages in the Book of Gods, the aggressive posture of the high king’s pasha in the aftermath of Memnet’s death, and the khalif’s treachery. Perhaps none of these things were connected, but Markal thought they were.

“So you’ve made a proclamation,” Chantmer said. “You aren’t asking our opinion. What if we disagree? Or what if we agree with the general thrust of your scheme, but think that one of us would be a better choice to accompany this woman? For that matter, we could send an acolyte if it’s only to return and report. Why one of the four of us at all?”

Markal didn’t precisely answer the questions. “The paladin is a solitary warrior. She keeps her secrets close and fights alone. But when I suggested accompanying her, she didn’t dismiss the idea.”

“I am uncomfortable with the entire plan,” Narud said.

“We all are, Markal,” Nathaliey said. “The master is asleep and recovering, and until he wakes, our duty is to obey his commands. We’ve been told to protect this sanctuary at all costs.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

Chantmer rose to his feet and crossed his arms. The other two rose with him. “You never answered me. Why should it be you?”

“It can’t be you,” Markal said. He chose his words carefully so as to feed his tall companion’s ego. “You’re too powerful, and your magic is needed to protect the gardens. Nathaliey escaped the palace dungeon—what if the khalif or the pasha is searching for her? She’s safest here, where she can’t be found.”

“Then what about me?” Narud asked in a solemn voice.

Markal turned to him with surprise. That suggestion was harder to dismiss. Narud had the sharpest senses of any of them, and he could read the natural world with uncanny accuracy, even listening in on the scattered thoughts of birds and beasts.

“Yes, why not Narud?” Nathaliey said. “The paladin seems to hold no special hostility for him, and Narud proved his stamina on the road the night before last. And he knows when to hold his tongue. He won’t give up our secrets.”

“That’s exactly the problem,” Markal said, seizing an opening. “We need to question this woman until we find out what information she holds. Narud isn’t the man for that, I am. Besides, I’m the weakest of the four, and the most easily replaced. You all know it—I can see it on your faces.”

Nobody contradicted him. Instead, they glanced at each other, frowning, as if waiting for someone else to speak, either authorizing or denying authorization. Their primary objection seemed to be Markal’s initiative in the matter, but that could hardly sustain an argument against the plan.

“Very well,” Chantmer said with a nod of finality, though it was no more his duty to give permission than to withhold it. “You may go.”

#

Bronwyn led the way up the road, crossing the bridge where they’d faced the wights, then continuing north toward Syrmarria. She rode confidently, as if she knew the terrain, and after about four miles, she took a small branch to the north that was little more than a sheep path.

Markal pulled his horse alongside of hers. “Have you taken this road before?”

“No, why?”

“Then why did you leave the road?”

“I’m following a trail. It’s heavy with the scent of wights.”

“Your sword told you this?”

She gave him a sharp look. “Yes, if you must know.”

“This doesn’t lead anywhere. There’s a small village by the name of Agria a few miles north. Shepherds and weavers and crofters. A hundred souls, more or less. But this little road stops at the village. After that, you’ll find the Sacred Forest. We’ll be forced to backtrack.”

“Nevertheless, this is where the trail leads. I must follow it.”

The thought that they might find the sorcerer in the tiny, indefensible village of Agria was laughable. If there was such a person, surely he would take up residence in one of the ruined castles that dotted the land, probably on a hilltop far from the road.

But Bronwyn would not be dissuaded, and so they continued north. By afternoon, they reached the hills outside of Agria, and soon went over the final crest and into the flatlands. The village spread along the road in a collection of twenty or so squat mud-and-thatch houses. Hedgerows divided the land into an irregular patchwork of green.

“The hill country west of your kingdom is dry and the grass brown,” Bronwyn said. “A traveler on the road told me that drought had crippled most of the khalifates. But it doesn’t seem to have affected this territory at all.”

“Aristonia is a blessed land,” Markal said. “The rains have been lighter the past couple of years than we are accustomed to, but enough has fallen to keep fields green and streams running. We are favored by the Brothers.” He nodded ahead of him. “There’s your village. You see there’s nothing to it. We’ll have to turn around.”

“Why not follow the road north?”

“I told you, there is no road, only the Sacred—”

He pulled up his horse and stared. The road, which had previously stopped at Agria, continued north, slicing through the pastureland and disappearing in the distance.

Bronwyn smiled. “I should wager that you do not pass this way often.”

“No, I don’t,” he admitted. “But there’s nowhere for the road to go. There’s nothing but forest in that direction, all the way to the border of Aristonia. That must be thirty miles, and it would take an age to fight our way through all of those trees. Some parts are so thick as to be nearly impassable.”

She reached over her shoulder to touch her sword hilt as if looking for confirmation. “Keep going.”

Markal intended on asking the villagers about this strange new development, but when they rode in among the humble buildings slouching along the road, they found Agria deserted. Not a soul in sight.

It didn’t seem that any violence had visited the village, however, as the doors were all closed properly, and the interiors neat and tidied up when Markal stopped to look, although it seemed that cookware and bedding had been carted off. It was as if the entire population had gathered possessions for the road and left in an organized, peaceful migration. Markal hadn’t noticed before, but the pastures were deserted too, without a single sheep, pig, or chicken to be seen. The meadows were overgrown, ungrazed for several weeks, at least.

Markal was more curious than alarmed as they continued north. The road stretched two more miles until it reached the edge of the woods, and then, even more surprisingly, it entered. Not much more than a footpath, it was true, but it was no mean feat to uproot and cut aside all those trees.

“Who did this?” he said. “Who would defile this place? These woods were planted by the Forest Brother himself, and have been untouched since the foundation of the world. Who would do such a thing?”

“We’ll find out.”

Bronwyn urged her horse to enter. It was now late afternoon, and Markal was reluctant to enter and be caught in the woods at night.

“Wait,” he called.

She held up. “I’m not afraid of forest creatures. Wolves, bears, gnomes and the like. Anyway, we have another hour or two until dusk, plenty of time.”

“Why aren’t you listening to me? There’s thirty miles of dense forest ahead of us. And look at those stumps and downed branches—the horses won’t be moving very quickly.”

“It isn’t thirty miles to the end of my trail. The sword is speaking to me—we’re drawing close.”

“Even worse. Something or someone lured those villagers in here. Some monstrosity that drew them to it and devoured them. If we enter with our horses, it might be the end of us, too.”

“What a vivid imagination you have, Markal. Look, you can stay or you can come with me, but it makes no difference. If the sorcerer is on the other end of this road, I mean to find him and see him destroyed.”

Nevertheless, her horse seemed reluctant to enter the woods, and Markal’s horse outright balked. He had to coax and plead to get her moving forward. For a moment, he heard the mare’s worried thoughts, but his connection with the animal closed before he could determine what had her alarmed. Was that just the natural jitters of entering a dark, close space, or did the animal sense the sorcerer?

Old sheep droppings on the trail indicated that yes, the villagers had taken their flocks, and here and there Markal caught other signs of passage: a child’s broken sandal, a scrap of torn clothing, a tuft of wool snagged on a branch. But it wasn’t much of a passageway through the woods, and travel was laborious. Meanwhile, the shadows lengthened, and the closed-in spaces were already nearly dark.

Markal was about to suggest they find a place of relative security to wait out the night—perhaps with their backs against one of the largest oak trees—when he caught a whiff of smoke.

He sniffed again. “What do you make of that?”

“I smell nothing. What is it?”

“Fire.”

She turned in the saddle and gave a satisfied-looking nod. “You see. And you claimed it would take us thirty miles to cross the forest. There, now I smell it, too. You have a sharp nose.”

She touched the sword hilt. “No sign of wights. Seems that they’re far away, if they ever passed this way in the first place. Perhaps we’ll find the sorcerer undefended.”

“That doesn’t seem likely.”

There was no longer any pretense that the sword wasn’t feeding her information, and Markal wondered if it was a good time to prod her for more about this supposed sorcerer. But the smell of smoke was growing stronger, and they urged their horses forward, guessing that they were drawing close to the camp.

Up to this point, the cut through the forest had been tentative, curving around the largest obstacles, with trees only felled when the cutting of branches would not suffice. Enough of the brush and other undergrowth had been hacked away to allow for the passage of humans and animals, but a cart could not have passed. But shortly, larger trees had been felled, and sometimes nothing was left but the stump, as if they’d been chopped up and burned as fuel.

The smell of smoke grew, until it was almost overwhelming.

“This isn’t just a few villagers,” he said. “It must be a major encampment.”

Bronwyn sniffed at the air with her eyes narrowed. “Smells like wildfire, like the kind that burns through the hill country during the dry season.”

“This forest wouldn’t burn. The undergrowth is green, the forest floor covered in a mat of wet leaves. The larger trees are simply too big to catch fire. And old magic hangs here—no wildfire would ever take hold in the Sacred Forest.”

Bronwyn had continued several yards ahead while Markal looked around him at the evidence of felled trees, but now she stopped the horse and stood in her stirrups to get a better look at whatever was in front of her. Her eyes were wide when she turned back to face him.

“Well now, Markal of Aristonia. It would seem that you have been wrong about a good many things.”

Chapter Twelve

Nathaliey was repairing one of the wards at the vulnerable north gate when she spotted a figure stumbling down the road. He led a horse that pulled and tossed its head, trying to turn around and get away from this place. Magic confused and baffled any creature, living or dead, that approached the gardens unbidden. The mystery was how the man and his horse had crossed the bridge over Blossom Creek in the first place.

The intruder was only two hundred yards away from the gate, but seemed to have difficulty staying on the road, let alone seeing the walls straight ahead of him. He scarcely lifted his head to look. A light drizzle fell from the sky, and he’d drawn the hood of his cloak about his face, and it disappeared in the long shadows of early evening.

Nathaliey beckoned for Narud, who was working a few feet away. He threw back his cowl and stared at the intruder with a deepening frown.

“First the paladin, now this fellow,” Nathaliey said. “What is wrong with our defenses? We need the master.”

She and Narud had been working all afternoon to shore up the damaged wards and runes. Keepers and acolytes helped, but it would have gone faster with their two companions. But Markal had left with the paladin, and Chantmer had turned up his nose at the work.

“Oh, no,” Chantmer had said loftily when Nathaliey tried to organize the three remaining apprentices for their labors. “You two will have to do that yourself. I must feed my strength into the master’s orb.”

Chantmer, that crook, had confessed with a sly smile that he’d pilfered Memnet’s Orb from Markal before their fellow apprentice left the garden. A spell, undetected by Markal, had both snatched away the object and temporarily taken the memory of the object’s very existence from his mind. By the time Markal remembered enough to check his bags for it, he and the barbarian would be many miles away. And now Chantmer meant to dominate it for his own use.

Wasted effort. Chantmer would never master the orb in time to aid their defense of the gardens. The last time he’d tried to wield it, Bronwyn snatched it away like a wooden sword from a naughty child who had been hitting his brother. Chantmer should have left it in the desert where it had fallen. The master could have recovered it when he was well.

“Chantmer will come if we tell him there’s an intruder,” Narud said, still studying the figure fighting his way toward the gate.

“We can manage this one,” she said. “He’s not even armed. And look at how he stumbles.”

Narud exposed his sleeves. “It won’t take much to send horse and master fleeing in terror.”

She put a hand on his wrist. “No, let’s see what he does. It might give a hint as to how he crossed the bridge. Come on, let’s take a closer look.”

The two apprentices quietly made their way through the gate and out of the garden, then settled in with their backs against the wall. The brick was warm from the sun. Nathaliey let the wall’s protective magic draw her into its shadow and stood watching as the figure approached.

The figure kept faltering, but whenever he seemed to have the urge to turn around, he reached into his cloak and touched an object hanging from a cord about his neck. A talisman of some kind. How curious.

At last, the man stood right at the gate. Two steps forward and he’d be inside. His horse was two paces behind, head pulled back, tugging at the cord. Nathaliey and Narud stood a few feet away, but the man paid them no notice, and the horse didn’t spot them, either.

The wards were strong here, like a current of water against which the man had been swimming, and now he’d reached the source. Three times he touched whatever was inside his cloak, ducked his head, and tried to forge ahead, but he’d take a step or two forward only to fall back again. The yanking, snorting horse didn’t help. Soon, he was ten feet back from the gate, then twenty. The threat, Nathaliey knew, had passed.

In a final, desperate attempt, he threw back his head and let his hood fall. She got a shock. “Natty, where are you? It’s me!”

“What do you know?” Narud said. “It’s your father.”

“I can see that,” she said peevishly.

“Is someone there?” Her father squinted and stared straight at her, but there was no recognition in his eyes. “Hello?”

She had no idea why he’d come or how he’d managed to get so close without permission, but she was inclined to ignore him. Let him struggle for a few more minutes before the garden defenses drove him away. She was still irritated that he’d done nothing to help when she was attacked in the khalif’s palace.

Nathaliey glanced at Narud, who stood with his arms crossed, looking more curious than alarmed. He shrugged at her questioning look.

She stepped away from the garden wall. “Father, what are you doing here?”

“Natty,” he said. Relief washed over his face, and he came to her with arms outstretched.

She fell into his embrace, and for a moment she was a child again, taking comfort in his strong arms, knowing he would protect her from the dangers and disappointments of the world.

“Thank the Brothers. I thought I’d die in the wilderness. There were lions, and the thirst . . . it was terrible.”

“You’re safe now,” she said. “The lions can’t reach you here.”

There were no lions, of course, no desert wilderness. No thirst, either, not really. All of that was an illusion to confuse and distract and keep the gardens hidden from the world.

Her father pulled back, and as she saw the wariness in his expression, the moment of familiarity passed. He was just another minister of Khalif Omar, while her loyalties were to the order, to the gardens, and to her master.

Nathaliey’s father, Kandibar Liltige, came from a line of viziers. His great-grandfather was the younger brother of the khalif of Aristonia, and in those days it was customary for siblings to retreat into exile so as to eliminate pretenders to the throne. But the two brothers were close, and so the younger became the khalif’s grand vizier. The position had then passed to the vizier’s daughter, and on to her son, Kandibar’s own father. Nathaliey had no living siblings, and so the hereditary position had been hers and hers alone. Except that she had chosen a different path.

Nathaliey studied her father, who was touching the object at his chest again. “What have you got in there, Father?”

He tugged on a leather thong about his neck and brought out a familiar worn sandal, the straps repaired many times. “This is how I found you.”

“Is that my shoe?”

“You left it in the throne room when they—”

“I remember what happened, there’s no need to remind me. You and Omar stood gaping while the pasha’s men grabbed me. So someone enchanted my sandal? I don’t understand.”

“One of your order touched your shoe, and it guided me to you.”

She stiffened in alarm, worried that her father had been tricked into leading enemies to the gardens. “What are you talking about? Who did that? Where is he now?”

“Easy, Natty. You know him, the old man from the libraries who comes and goes. What is his name?”

Nathaliey relaxed. “Ah, Jethro.”

“Yes, him. He cast a . . . a seeking spell, I think he called it.”

That was possible, although she didn’t understand why the old archivist would attach a seeking spell to one of her possessions and send her father off like a hound sniffing after its prey.

“Where are we?” Kandibar asked.

“This is where I live.”

“In these dunes?”

“There are no dunes, Father. We’re not in a desert at all. You came down a country road, crossed an old stone bridge, and now you’re standing in front of a brick wall about twelve feet tall and partially covered in ivy. There’s an opening straight in front of you, about six feet wide. The north gate into the garden.”

Her father looked around him, blinking, and she could see the illusion falling from his eyes. “The Harvester take me! I see it now. It’s green! A meadow, and garden walls. Look at that! I haven’t seen trees in weeks.”

“You weren’t on the road weeks, Father. It was only two days ago that I saw you in Syrmarria.”

He seemed to take this in better now that the original illusion was gone. The horse had calmed, and her father looked in the saddlebags, as if to confirm. “I swear, that waterskin was drained. And I’m not even thirsty. Look at all those provisions.”

While her father got his bearings in the reality that now confronted him, Nathaliey spared a glance at Narud, who returned another shrug.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to allow you inside,” she told her father. “You’re alone? I mean, there’s nobody following?”

“So far as I know. I left in the middle of the night. My servants met me on the road with the horse, and I didn’t tell them where I was going. Of course, you understand there’s no way to be absolutely sure. I myself have people followed on occasion, and they rarely know.”

“Understood. Leave your horse in the stables. A boy will see that it’s well cared for.”

“What stables? Oh, wait. Why didn’t I see that before? I swear, this was nothing but sand and rock. I couldn’t even see the trail. How do you do that?”

She didn’t have the inclination to explain it to him. “Come on, I’ll see you fed and your horse cared for. I want to hear about Pasha Malik and the king’s road. Then you’ll be on your way back to Syrmarria. I am very busy.”

Narud stayed behind to continue his work. Chantmer would be at the Golden Pavilion messing around with Memnet’s Orb, so Nathaliey led her father toward the great stone fountain. It was the part of the gardens that most impressed visitors after the pavilion itself.

He told her about the latest palace intrigues as they passed arbors heavy with grape vines. The news seemed dry and dusty and unimportant, and she only roused her interest when he mentioned the Veyrians. Pasha Malik had recruited dozens of stone masons from the city and surrounding villages and was buying slaves from the sultanates and shipping them through Syrmarria. Work had accelerated on the king’s highway.

“Here we are,” she said as they came down a winding stone staircase that led from a small hilltop shrine to the fountain pond.

The order diverted water from Blossom Creek and sent it through a clay-lined channel beneath the walls and into the garden. From there, it arrived at a small pond under great pressure. The head and upper wings of an enormous stone dragon broke the surface of the pond, and water spouted from its mouth thirty feet in the air.

But Kandibar was less impressed than she’d expected. He’d studied the paths, the beds of flowers, the beehives and orchards, but seemed glum. “It’s all beautiful. It would put the hanging gardens of Tirod to shame. But to what purpose?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who sees this place? Only a handful. What good is ethereal beauty if it is hidden and secret?”

“The gardens aren’t meant for the world, Father. They’re a refuge and sanctuary for the Order of the Crimson Path. A place of study, of learning. This is my home.”

“I know that, I understand. Memnet the Great told me as much when he took you. You’d be taken from me and raised by wizards. Hidden away from the world.”

“I’m hardly a recluse.”

“I know that. You’re seen in Syrmarria often enough, studying in the library. Or so I’ve heard—you don’t usually stop to see me.”

“And we travel as emissaries. I have been to Starnar, to Veyre, to Marrabat beyond the wastes. Someday I may even cross the western mountains to the barbarian kingdoms.”

“And what would you do there?”

“The same thing I do in the khalifates—collect books, pass information to scholars. Meet friends of the master, whisper peace in the ears of warmongers.”

“It seems a narrow life.”

“Narrow?” Nathaliey stared at him. “As opposed to the palace intrigues of a khalifate so small and inconsequential that it hasn’t even a standing army to protect its borders?”

“We never needed an army, what with wizards protecting our borders. Or so we have been reminded again and again.” He gave her a sharp look. “And now we’ve been invaded, my daughter, and where is our protection?”

“You mean Pasha Malik?”

“Yes, Nathaliey, that is exactly what I mean. Five hundred Veyrians are garrisoned in Syrmarria.”

“That’s no invasion. Omar invited the devil in.”

“Another small army of Veyrians guard the new road, and more come west every day. An army of workers is building the king’s highway, and it’s going to divide the khalifate in two. You think that is by accident?”

“It’s what the king always wanted,” she said. “It’s the straightest line to the mountains.”

“I know all the reasons,” Kandibar said. “Break the famine by bringing food from the barbarians. Control the spice trade. Secure the mountain passes against the griffin riders. The king and his generals have a hundred reasons for building the road. But don’t you see? One of those reasons is to break Aristonia.”

“Oh, I know what Pasha Malik was threatening,” Nathaliey said with a wave of the hand. “He boasted about it openly. That doesn’t mean it will happen.”

“But don’t you see? Omar has capitulated entirely. The pasha’s engineers forced a map of the road onto him, and he gave in on every point. The road will obliterate villages, destroy shrines and sacred groves. It will bisect the Sacred Forest. It may even go right through your gardens!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The highway won’t go through the gardens. They couldn’t find them, let alone destroy these old walls. As for the Sacred Forest, that will never happen. I swear to you, if they touch a single tree of those woods . . .” She broke off, suddenly uncertain. “As soon as the master awakens, he’ll put an end to it. You’ll see.”

“Then it’s true? Memnet is alive?”

“He’s . . . mostly alive. Recuperating, let’s put it that way. Who told you?”

“By the Brothers,” Kandibar said. “That is good news. Can I speak with him? There is no time to waste.”

“No, he’s asleep. Two, maybe three weeks more, and he’ll be up. Then he can put down this nonsense.”

“We don’t have that kind of time. I need help now, before it’s too late.”

“How urgent could it be? Malik only made his boast two days ago. It will take months, years even to build a road through Aristonia. Have you been to the forest? There are trees in the heart of the woods that are twelve feet across—how many men does it take to dig out a single stump? Ten men and a team of mules?” She smiled. “There is no need to grow alarmed.”

Nathaliey’s father took her by the shoulders. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen, Daughter. The road will be built. Aristonia will be destroyed.”

She pulled back. “Where was this passion when I was in the throne room? Not one vizier spoke out. Not you, nor any of your fellow ministers. The khalif himself was too timid to defend his own kingdom.”

“Where is Memnet the Great?”

“I told you—”

“You must wake him!”

“I can’t wake him, Father. He’s not asleep that way. He’s still partly dead.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” Kandibar said. “I spoke to the old wizard in the library and he promised help.”

“You mean Jethro?” Nathaliey frowned at this. “What kind of help? What did he tell you?”

“He told me Memnet the Great was still alive. Jethro has been studying the tomes and says to tell you to ask your master to . . . wait, no, that’s not right. Memnet needs to be awakened by someone else. Memnet can’t do it himself.” Her father scratched his head. “How strange. I brought a message for you. Why I didn’t I remember that before?”

“Any message written by our archivist can’t be held in your head. He’d have used magic. Where is the message?”

Kandibar patted at his chest as if searching for something. “Ah, here it is.”

He fished out a roll of vellum tied with a piece of twine from inside his tunic. Nathaliey untied the twine and unrolled it. Jethro’s familiar, elegant script slid across the page, each letter a small work of art in itself. It addressed Markal, then had an incantation or instruction of some kind written in the old tongue. Critical information for waking the master from his slumber.

Or so Nathaliey assumed. The instant she passed from one word to the next, whatever had come before vanished from her head.

#

Chantmer was on the platform of the Golden Pavilion when Nathaliey arrived. He held Memnet’s Orb to his forehead, but quickly tucked it away as she climbed the stairs. He unfolded himself like a giant insect and stood, one hand reaching over his shoulder for the bell so he didn’t hit his head.

She held out the piece of vellum. “Jethro sent this from Syrmarria. What do you make of it?”

“Jethro? Who is that, an archivist?” He took the sheet and scanned it quickly. “Seems clear enough.”

“Oh, really?” Nathaliey said, taking the sheet back. “Perhaps you could repeat it, then. What does it say?”

“Of course. It says . . . um, let me see that. I forget that last part.”

She allowed a smile and held the note out of reach. “A summary then. The general thrust of the text.”

“Why, I . . . let me see that.” She gave it back this time, and he stared, brow furrowed. “Blast it. I can’t . . . Blood of the Path! What is this?”

Narud was approaching the Golden Pavilion, barefoot and silent, and Nathaliey sensed, rather than heard him. “Perhaps you can read this,” she told him. “We certainly can’t.”

Narud came up the stairs and took the sheet. After a quick glance, he handed it back to her. “It’s not for me, it’s for Markal.”

“Confound it, we know that already,” Chantmer said. “That’s not the problem.”

“Oh, I understand what’s troubling you,” Narud said. “The words won’t stick. That’s because they aren’t meant for you.”

“Are you saying that Jethro cast a spell to keep it from us?” Nathaliey asked. “Why would he do that?”

“Not at all,” Narud said. “It’s addressed to Markal because Jethro knew we wouldn’t be able to hold it in our head. There are some texts that aren’t meant to be copied, that hold their secrets when taken from the library. This is one of them.”

“But Markal can manage?” Chantmer asked peevishly. “Dammit, he would run off at a time like this.”

Markal hadn’t run off. He’d presented a clear reason why he was the one who could be spared to accompany Bronwyn in looking for the supposed sorcerer. Chantmer hadn’t put up much of a struggle to keep him.

“Why didn’t Jethro bring it in person, anyway?” Chantmer asked. “He could have read it himself.”

“Presumably because he is keeping an eye on the libraries,” she said. “We have nobody else of his stature in Syrmarria, and someone infiltrated the Vault of Secrets—we need the archivist there to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Come on, let’s give this another try.”

Nathaliey lifted the hem of her robe and sat on the platform. The other two followed her lead and sat. She stared at the note again, concentrating hard. The words came easily enough, but each one melted away as she continued, and by the time she got to the end, she had nothing more than she’d begun with, only Markal’s name at the top. The other two took a turn. Chantmer mouthed the words, the frustration growing on his face.

“Wait,” Narud said. “I caught something just then. Something about”—his brow creased in concentration—“evigilare. Did you get that, too?”

“No,” Nathaliey admitted. “But that makes sense if we’re talking about an incantation to awaken the master. Read it aloud,” she urged Chantmer.

“My mouth doesn’t even want to form the words,” he said. “I’m afraid it will sound like nonsense.”

“Just try.”

He did so. This time she did get the word in question, and Narud picked up another. Chantmer passed it back to Nathaliey, and she gave it a try. Chantmer was right; it was hard to get the sounds right, let alone the substance of it.

But slowly they extracted the meaning of the thing. The first part was instructions for Markal, written in the old tongue to keep it from prying eyes outside the order—although it had nearly served to keep the other three apprentices from understanding it, too—and the second part was the incantation itself. They concentrated first on the instructions.

Apparently Jethro had discovered another case where a dead wizard had come back to life. His wight had remained attached to its body after the dead wizard was thrown into a swamp. Before the Harvester could find and gather the wight, fellow wizards had rescued the body and healed it, then bound the soul and body with the words of the following incantation. Memnet’s case was a little different, and it was clear that he was partially awake already, but Jethro didn’t think they’d be able to bring him fully back without magic.

“So we only have to master the incantation and the master will be healed,” Chantmer said.

“Oh, is that all?” she said, eyebrows raised. “How simple.”

“We don’t need an archivist to help us with the words, they’re right here in front of us.”

It was unclear whether he meant Jethro or if this was a dig at Markal. Either way, it was entirely dismissive of the difficulties in accomplishing the task. It might take them all night to puzzle out the incantation. Already, it was nearly dark, and fireflies were blinking in the nearby trees. By now Nathaliey’s father would be halfway to Syrmarria, and she wondered if she should have told him to send Jethro back to help. No, the remaining apprentices would have to manage alone.

“Well, then,” Narud said, rising to his feet, “unless we’re expecting Markal sometime soon, I see no point in waiting. Let’s get to work.”

Chapter Thirteen

Bronwyn dismounted from her horse, stepped forward on foot, and let out a groan of disbelief. Curious, and growing alarmed, Markal slid from the saddle and came up behind her. What he saw was so terrible that it took a moment before his mind even registered it at all.

A black gash cut through the forest, as if someone had taken a giant spoon and scooped it in a straight line, carving a swath of destruction fifty feet wide and stretching as far as he could see. The Sacred Forest had burned; the black was charcoal and ash, the last lingering fires of which still trickled smoke, as if venting the underworld. The coals of dying fires glowed in the gathering gloom of twilight.

Even the largest trees were gone, their trunks burned to the ground. Dead trees stood outside the center path of complete destruction, their leaves and twigs burned off and their bark blackened, their limbs bare and accusing. Beyond that, a final, scorched layer with withered leaves before the damp forest was finally able to resist the conflagration.

The whole thing made him think of a hot torch passed through green grass, except this was a forest of towering trees, thick with ancient magic. Markal couldn’t imagine the heat required to accomplish such a thing; some of the trees in this forest must have been hundreds of years old and were a dozen feet wide.

“Sorcery,” Bronwyn said.

He could only nod his agreement. “Yes. Yes, it must be.”

“Now you see.” Her voice crackled with anger. “Now you understand.”

Markal did. He’d considered the assassins on the Spice Road who’d killed the master, and even the wights on the road, as an aberration, but this was the third leg of a stool that could not be toppled. This was destruction organized on a scale nearly unimaginable. And its purpose was obvious.

The gash through the forest looked like nothing so much as a road. Not a complete road, of course—the first heavy rain would turn the exposed forest floor to mud—but get an army of peasants with shovels and carts, teams of mules and oxen, engineers and skilled stone workers, and what did you have? A highway more grand and glorious than anything ever built across the face of the world.

And where did it go? He followed the gash with his eyes to where it abutted the woods they’d just left. It would cut through the village of Agria. From there, straight toward the gardens. That was the western direction. What about the east? Where did it go from here? Toward Temple Vale, then on toward Syrmarria.

They went back for their horses.

“Now is your time to choose, Markal,” Bronwyn said. “Either follow me to the source of this destruction, or flee to your gardens. I would welcome your knowledge and whatever magic you can lend to my efforts. But this is my quest to complete, not yours.”

Markal swung himself into the saddle. “I’m going with you, of course.”

They continued east through what could only be described as a desolation. The smell of ash coated Markal’s mouth and throat. He couldn’t rinse it from his mouth, and was soon coughing. Bronwyn handed him a rag she used to polish her sword, and he tied it around his face. It smelled of metal, sweat, and clove oil, but kept the worst of the smell out of his nose and mouth.

It was soon too dark to keep stumbling along, risking one of the horses breaking a leg on the holes left by burned-out stumps or the rocks that thrust from the ground here and there, so they retreated into the woods to make camp. Markal normally would have balked at spending a night in the deep woods, but tonight welcomed the cool green smell that greeted them as they returned to the forest. They found a bubbling stream and used it to wash up.

Bronwyn soon had a small, cheery fire going, but Markal couldn’t look into the yellow and orange flames without thinking of their awesome destructive capability.

“It wasn’t any sort of natural fire,” she said, as if reading his thoughts.

“I know that, and yet . . .” He looked up to see her studying him. “These woods are sacred. The Forest Brother himself planted the seedlings of the oldest trees.”

“I know what you must be feeling, Markal. Our enemy destroyed many sacred places in my lands, too. This is an evil that must be stopped.”

They gathered water from a nearby stream and heated it in a small pot, adding turnips, carrots, salted beef, and herbs Markal had taken from the gardens. As the two prepared their supper, he found himself eyeing Bronwyn, sensing that now was the best time to extract the information he’d been digging for over the past few days. But direct questions only seemed to raise her defenses. What might be a better tactic?

“I was wrong, and you were right,” Markal said. He opened a small clay flask and tapped black grains of pepper into the bubbling liquid. “There is a sorcerer after all.”

“Aye.” She rose to her feet. “Make sure this doesn’t boil over. I’m going to bring the horses in closer.”

When Bronwyn settled back down a few minutes later, he pressed on. “We thought you were an assassin. That’s why we resisted you.”

“And I thought you were servants of evil. Seems we were both wrong. No need for lengthy apologies.”

“But what about Eliana? You killed her.”

“Only in defense, Markal. She was raising the garden against me. Don’t be naive—you know what that would have done to me.” Bronwyn took the spoon and tasted. “It’s ready.”

She went for her saddlebags, which she’d propped against the base of a tree, and returned with two small wooden bowls. Markal retrieved forks.

Bronwyn eyed hers doubtfully. “What’s this?”

“A fork. Use it to spear the larger pieces of meat and vegetable.”

“I know what it’s for, it seems unnecessary, is all. I have perfectly good fingers and a dagger I can use if need be.”

“That is why your people are known as barbarians. That and your lack of acquaintance with soap.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I thought barbarian meant ‘unbeatable in battle.’ As for soap, it’s rather hard to come by on the road. I’d have gladly bathed at the gardens if your people had been more hospitable.”

“Hospitality is a lot to demand of someone you’re hacking at with your sword.”

“Are you talking about the old woman again? I told you already, she’s not truly dead. For one, nothing truly dies. We are merely ground into dust and returned to the soil to be reborn again. Fear of death is no more rational than fearing a sleepless dream. Every soul will be reborn in some form or other.”

Markal had spent years reading ancient wisdom in the library of Syrmarria. “If you think you can educate me on the matter, go right ahead.”

“A fine boast. Yet you think Eliana’s soul is lost, and I’m telling you she’s still alive.”

“How do you mean? The sword?” He nodded at the weapon where she’d slung it over a low branch, along with her boots, breastplate, and helmet, all strung together with her belt.

“Tell me, what does this rune mean?” She set down her bowl and laid a few sticks together in a three-pointed star.

“Why won’t you answer my question?”

“Tell me, first. This is the one that caused me the most trouble at the gardens. It almost turned me away. Is it better to ignore it, to confront it, or to attack it with magic?”

“Why would I tell you that?”

Bronwyn scattered the sticks. “Precisely. You have your secrets, and I have mine.”

“The Harvester take you,” he grumbled. “I’ll go home and leave you to be killed.”

“I never asked you to follow.”

“Didn’t you? The moment you stopped trying to kill the master and destroy us all, haven’t you been enlisting us in your struggles? If not, why didn’t you just leave at once and follow your own whims?” He drained the last of his soup in a noisy slurp, then used the fork to shovel the last few bites into his mouth. “The only thing you’ve done so far is put us in even more danger than we already were in.”

“How do you mean?”

“You killed a keeper, you destroyed runes and scratched out protective wards. Our defenses are weaker than they’ve ever been.”

“Don’t forget the fight at the bridge. I saved your lives.”

“Doubtful. More likely, you put them at risk.”

“Ha.”

“The wights only arrived after you did,” Markal said. “I’ll bet you drew them. That makes you more to blame than to be thanked.”

“I didn’t draw them.”

“Who did?”

“I’ve told you many times. A sorcerer sent them.” She set down her bowl. “As for the keeper of your garden, I was in error. Is that what you want, my admission? Very well, the mistake was mine. Three weeks on the road, fighting bandits, hiding from griffins in the mountains, and then riding through a strange and hostile land in search of my enemy. I was exhausted and anxious to do my duty and return home. I thought I’d found the sorcerer.”

“Why have you come over the mountains to find him?”

“Wights chased your friends down the road. The souls of the dead are mindless things in my land and yours. They do not come together in armies to torment and assault the living. Only a sorcerer, a necromancer, could manage such a thing. I came to find this sorcerer and kill him.”

“Why you?”

“Why not me?”

Markal’s eyes fell on her weapon. “Because of the red sword. That is why, isn’t it?”

The paladin thrust out her chin. “Its name is Soultrup. It gathers the souls of those it kills. There, they are safe from the dark god and his bag of souls. Your friend Eliana is within my sword. That is what I mean when I say she is not truly dead—I can speak to her, if I wish. I’ve done it, in fact.”

Bronwyn held his gaze, a defiant expression on her face, as if she expected disbelief. But this was the least implausible part of the story, now that Markal had heard it. He knew of such things, and he remembered the voices when he’d touched the weapon.

“It must be a sort of sheol,” he said. “The sultan of Marrabat has a pendant that can do the same thing. His grandfather’s soul resides inside and whispers advice.”

“Sheol? I don’t know that word,” Bronwyn said. “And I have never heard of Marrabat or its sultan.”

“Sheol is place of refuge or punishment, depending on the nature of the thing. The souls of the dead retain their consciousness, and they can’t be gathered by the Harvester.”

“Then, yes. That is exactly what Soultrup is.”

“This is how you know things, isn’t it? The voices tell you. I heard them when I touched the weapon, but I didn’t trust them. It was an entirely evil thing that happened to me.”

“You were listening to the wrong voices,” Bronwyn said. “Anyway, you don’t have to touch the sword to hear them.”

“Then why are you always reaching for the hilt?”

She smiled. “That is one way, and the easiest. But believe me, if the sword wants your attention, it can get it whether you’re touching it or not. The voices can call into your dreams.”

“Forget the voices, it was the damn sword itself. I almost killed Nathaliey when it took hold of me. I don’t know what the cursed thing wants, but it’s nothing good. How do you know it isn’t trying to help the sorcerer?”

“You don’t understand. You couldn’t.”

“Then tell me.”

Bronwyn’s face darkened, and she stared into the fire. Markal was about to throw his hands up in exasperation, frustrated about butting his head against her stubbornness yet again, when she cleared her throat.

“You know of Eriscoba?” she asked.

“The kingdom on the other side of the mountains?”

“Not a kingdom, not as you would use the word. There are hundreds of tiny realms, each with its own ruler. Some call themselves kings, others barons or earls. Some are the lord of a hundred villagers, no more. They are proud, independent people, as one would expect. They are the descendants and heirs of the True People.”

“As opposed to the false people, like us?” Markal said.

“I don’t mean that,” Bronwyn said. “There were True People living across the surface of the world, and all of us are their children. But their last refuge was in the west, that is all I mean, before the end of the Golden Age of Men.”

“I’ve never heard this, but it sounds like myth. Don’t you follow the Brother Gods?”

“Of course we do,” she said testily. “Would you like to hear the story, or no?”

“Go on.”

“About twenty years ago, a disturbance in the frozen lands of the north sent down giants and mammoths, flocks of griffin riders and their mounts, and strange tribes of hairy men. They rampaged through the hill country, destroyed several weaker kingdoms, and raided all the way to Arvada. They cut down our sacred groves and burned our temples.

“My father founded an order of holy warriors to fight this threat. My uncle was the captain, and later, my oldest brother after my uncle was too old and broken to fight. I was my father’s only daughter, and didn’t fancy a marriage to some fool of a baron or prince to secure a political alliance. I convinced my father to release me to the paladins.

“We defeated the invading tribes. We killed the largest and most aggressive of the giants and drove the rest off. The cold retreated, and the mammoths returned north. Griffin riders stopped raiding so far into the lowlands and settled into aeries in the peaks.

“But a new threat appeared about three years ago. Strange, gray-faced warriors that rode down from the mountain passes on swift horses. Never more than a score at a time, yet the small baronies and kingdoms of Eriscoba were unable to stop them. We called them the gray marauders. Magic lay about them, sorcery that turned aside spear points and sword thrusts, warned them of traps, and raised them seemingly from the dead after they’d taken terrific blows.”

Bronwyn went for her sword and a whetstone. She removed the blade from its scabbard and went to work on the edge.

“You were saying,” Markal prodded.

She worked at a small nick and continued without looking up. “My brother Randall led a band of thirty paladins hunting these enemies. For six weeks we followed a trail of destruction through Alsance and Vilsylvan, until relentless pursuit pinned them at the end of a box canyon, where we’d earlier found a cave they were using to store their provisions. When the marauders entered the cave to take refuge, we piled brush and flasks of oil at the mouth of the cave and set it ablaze.

“Most of them burned alive, but four made it out. The four ravaged their way through our company. Understand that we were a highly trained group of warriors, imbued with confidence and the glorious knowledge that we fought for holiness and truth. Yet eight of our number fell to the enemy in that battle. Their captain killed my brother and turned on me.

“He was a large man, with a savage smile and a face stained with soot and blood. I still remember his taunting grin. He wielded a massive two-handed sword caked with blood and gore. My brother’s blood and gore.”

“The red sword,” Markal said.

“The what?” She looked down. “Ah, yes, Soultrup. You understand it now?”

“Not at all. Go on.”

“I knew I would die. I was a skilled fighter, but not as strong as my brother, and he had fallen already. The enemy captain knocked aside my blows and drove me relentlessly backward. Every man and woman in the company was already locked in combat, and there was nobody to come to my aid.

“But my opponent had lost command of his weapon. During the fight with Randall, it had seemed an extension of his arm. But in the seconds after my brother’s death, it took on a life of its own. When the enemy swung his killing blow, the blade turned aside and only grazed me. Soon, he was cursing and struggling to hold it. At last, he raised it over his head, muscles straining, the veins bulging on his neck, and brought it down with a scream. I lifted my sword to parry the blow.

“Soultrup—yes, that was his weapon—smashed through my own blade and drove me to my knees. But when the enemy lifted it again, it squirted from his hands. I’d feebly lifted my shattered weapon to ward against the killing blow, when suddenly the enemy’s sword threw itself at my feet.”

Bronwyn licked her lips, and her expression was distant. “I have no memory of lifting Soultrup, only remember staggering to my feet and swinging it. It was light in my hands, and there was strength and energy in my limbs that had not been there moments before. One blow, and the enemy lay dead at my feet. I felt his soul in that moment—I saw it! It was draining from his body into the sword.”

Markal nodded. “The red sword bound his soul.”

“That night I wrestled with Soultrup for the first time. Inside the sword, another fight was taking place, you see. And it still hasn’t been settled.”

She wiped the edge of the blade with a rag, then turned it over, letting it reflect in the firelight.

“It was the death of your brother that did it,” Markal said after a moment of consideration. “Followed by the death of the enemy captain.”

“Yes, so you do understand. Every soul bound to the sword becomes a part of it. Trapped within, the souls contend with each other. And the balance of power shifts.” She gave a bitter smile. “My brother is a strong man, a hero. He has rallied the forces of good inside the sword. Unfortunately, I have been augmenting the forces of evil from the moment I struck down the enemy captain.”

They fell into silence as Markal thought over what the woman had told him. He imagined the sword aiding or resisting its owner depending on the results of a different struggle within the weapon itself. When a paladin like Bronwyn wielded it, Soultrup rendered her so powerful she could hold a bridge single-handed against an army of undead. But every kill of an evil enemy brought closer the day when the sword would wrench itself free and throw itself into the hands of her opponent.

The struggle also happened in reverse. The captain of the gray-faced bandits had got hold of Soultrup and set about killing. Eventually, he’d killed Bronwyn’s brother, the head of a holy order of knights, and lost control of the weapon himself.

“When you picked up the sword,” Bronwyn said, “the dark forces tried to wrest control. They almost succeeded. Your keeper, unfortunate as her death is, has strengthened the good forces within.”

“What happened to the bandits?” he asked.

“The gray marauders? We killed the band at the cave. The other companies fled from Eriscoba and haven’t been seen on the west side of the Dragon’s Spine since.”

“Then they were simple bandits bent on pillage and murder?”

She shook her head. “No, Markal. I was disabused of that notion when the sword spoke to me. There are souls within who know. The marauders were sent over the mountains by a sorcerer. He seeks nothing more than the collapse of all law and authority on both sides of the Spine. More gray raiders will come if I don’t stop him, and in greater numbers.”

Markal would have been more skeptical of this a few days ago, but after the wights and the burned-out forest, he was no longer so sure. Nevertheless, something in this story troubled him.

“How do you know you can trust the sword?”

“What do you mean?”

“The voices are nothing but human souls, and humans lie.”

“My brother doesn’t. Don’t forget, Randall is in the sword—it was he who turned it to my advantage after he was killed. He has fought the servants of the enemy within the sword itself and knows their secrets.”

“What if it’s not Randall talking to you? How can you be sure?”

Markal expected an angry retort, or even surprise and worry, but her expression didn’t change. She’d apparently wrestled with this question already.

“This is a possibility. And there is error to consider, as well. I thought at first that Memnet was the sorcerer, after all. But I will say this. At least three different times in the mountains, warnings from Soultrup saved my life. Once again when I learned the wights were chasing your friends down the road from Syrmarria. And it led us here. What do you make of that?”

“So you’ll seek out the sorcerer and kill him?” Markal asked. “That is your plan?”

“Yes.”

“And when you plunge your blade into his chest and his soul is bound to Soultrup? What then? You’ll have a necromancer trapped within, someone who has proven powerful enough to mount an assault on Memnet the Great and his gardens. You’ll lose the sword.”

Bronwyn nodded grimly. “It means my death, Markal. Indeed, I am planning on falling on my own sword the moment the task is done.”

“You are? Why?”

But even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. Once trapped inside, the sorcerer would turn the sword to evil. The sword would fling itself into the hands of an enemy. Only an equally powerful soul could prevent that from happening.

Bronwyn of Arvada intended to carry on her struggle against the sorcerer, and that meant her own death and imprisonment within the red sword.

Chapter Fourteen

The three apprentices were exhausted by morning. They’d passed the night sitting in a circle in the shrine of the Golden Pavilion, heads bowed, reading the archivist’s writing by moonlight. Whenever they parsed out a new line, they spent an hour, sometimes two, chanting it in unison, using their combined efforts to fix it in their memories.

As the first rays of sun crept over the woods to the east and gleamed off the small lake, one of the acolytes scaled the platform. He pulled back the sleeves of his saffron-colored robe, drew the beam suspended on ropes, and let it fall against the massive bell. It let out a deep, sonorous ring that echoed through the still morning air.

Still, the apprentices kept up their labors. It was an unusually slippery incantation, and even after an exhausting night of work, Nathaliey struggled to contain the words. At last, Narud lifted his head.

“I have it.”

“Do you?” Chantmer asked. “Repeat it, then.”

Narud did so. It sounded nearly perfect.

“Good. You will say the spell. Nathaliey and I will lend our strength.” Chantmer stood, rolled the sheet of vellum, and tucked it into his robe. “Come. We must hurry before it is forgotten.”

Nathaliey’s body creaked as she straightened herself. Her joints felt frozen, and her feet tingled when she put weight on them. She stumbled down the stairs to where Chantmer was already slipping on his sandals and did the same. The two of them walked ahead, while Narud brought up the rear, muttering the incantation under his breath.

“It will take our combined power,” Chantmer told her. “And that’s if Narud can hold the incantation.”

“We can manage.” Nathaliey gathered her confidence. The earlier she began to build her will, the better.

“I would even welcome Markal’s contribution,” Chantmer said. “Small as it is. But as he is not here, we must draw strength where we can. From unlikely sources, if you will.”

“You mean the acolytes?”

This brought a dismissive wave of the hand. “They are useless. No, I mean the gift left to us by the master.”

Nathaliey stopped and gave him a sharp look. “The orb again?”

“Shh, keep walking. You will distract Narud.”

“You never should have recovered it from the desert. Should have left it there for the master when he awakened.”

“What if our enemies had found it? It was lying there in the sand. Anyone could have scooped it up.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So simple? You walked up, and there it was, glinting in the sunlight.”

“Well, no. I searched for some time. It didn’t want to be found, I’ll admit. But with a bit of clothing from the master’s cottage and a seeking spell—”

“Something anyone can cast,” she said.

“Go ahead, be sarcastic if you want. But I saw fit to recover it, and I saw fit to study it, learn from it. That’s more initiative than any of the rest of you showed.”

“And what did that gain you? You tried to use it once already, and you failed miserably. You lost the thing to Bronwyn, remember?”

“The barbarian is long gone, and there is no risk now. I have sussed out the secrets of its use, and I’ve even stored a bit of my power in it. Not a lot, but more than Markal would add, were he here.”

“If Markal were here, we wouldn’t have exhausted ourselves trying to memorize the blasted incantation. That’s worth more than anything we’ll claw out of the orb. It’s the master’s, not ours. We were never taught to use it.”

“Neither were we forbidden.”

“That’s because it never left Memnet’s possession,” she said.

“And I shall return it the instant he awakens.” Chantmer smiled wryly. “Don’t you worry. Meanwhile, can I count on your cooperation not to disrupt matters at an inopportune moment?”

“Hmm.” Nathaliey considered. Would Chantmer successfully use Memnet’s Orb? Probably not, but she didn’t see the harm in it. “What is its secret?”

“Are you thinking to use it yourself?”

“How jealously your mind works. Of course not. I want to be sure there’s no danger, is all.”

“Rest your mind on that score, Nathaliey. The orb is quite simple, like a wine flask that can be filled and emptied, only the wine in this case is magical power. It’s the strength we draw from our pores. You fill the orb at your leisure and drain it when you need its strength.”

“I know all of this,” she said, growing impatient. They’d almost reached the inner gardens and Memnet’s buried head, and hopefully the rest of him, too. “But how do you fill and empty it?”

“There is a gate that opens both ways. A sluice to an irrigation canal.”

“I thought you said it was a wine bottle. Do wine bottles typically have gates?”

“Very well, it’s a cork,” Chantmer said. “When I take the orb in my hand, I can feel the cork with my mind. It takes some effort to open and close the orb, but once you do, you can fill it or drain it as you wish.”

This was all rather vague, but she guessed Chantmer was speaking in metaphorical terms for a reason. If there was one thing that fed his insecurity, it was jealousy of Markal’s command of the arcanum of their craft. In spite of Chantmer’s digs about Markal’s frailties—an accurate criticism, sadly—there was nothing Chantmer knew that Markal didn’t understand more profoundly.

Until now. Learning the orb’s secrets gave him an advantage over not only Markal, but Nathaliey and Narud, as well. Chantmer wouldn’t be pleased to surrender it to the master when the time came.

A keeper was manuring the flowerbeds when Nathaliey and her companions arrived, and the air was pungent with the scent. The old man leaned on his spade to watch as the three encircled the mound of dirt where Memnet was buried. Chantmer handed Nathaliey the sheet of vellum.

She glanced at the keeper, not wanting to have an audience in case they failed. “I am sorry to disturb your work, friend, but could you give us privacy? We have difficult magic to attempt and need full concentration.”

The keeper glanced at the mound of dirt, and his eyes widened. He gave a curt nod, gathered his spade and cart, and left the apprentices alone in the walled garden. Nathaliey turned her full attention to the vellum.

Even after a night of study, the words were swimming across the page, and it took intense concentration to bring them into focus. She read them, listened to Narud repeat the incantation, and helped Chantmer correct his pronunciation. It took a few minutes before they jointly agreed that it was time. Nathaliey dropped to her knees and scooped away the thick black earth from around the master’s head.

Memnet was moving even before she got the soil away from his lips and nose. He spit out dirt and lifted his eyes to take in the scene.

“Where is Markal?”

“He’s not here,” she said. “He rode off with the barbarian.”

“And you’ve come to raise me anyway? That is what you’re here for, is it not? What makes you think you can manage without him?”

“One of the archivists sent instructions, Master,” Chantmer said. “A spell from the Secret Vault. We have to try.”

“Which one?”

Chantmer opened his mouth, then closed it. He tried again. “Um, it’s . . .”

“Animach na regram,” Nathaliey said. She suppressed a smile.

“Ah, yes. To raise the dead. Of course. But I mean, which archivist? And how can you be sure you’ve got it correct?”

“It was Jethro, Master,” she said. “We have been practicing all night. Narud will attempt it.”

“Hmm, yes. Perhaps. I assume there is good reason for doing so rather than letting the garden bring me back in its own time.”

“Jethro found something in an old scroll that says it’s necessary to complete your rebirth.”

“Really? He said that?” Memnet yawned. “I would need to read the scroll in question.”

Nathaliey took the sheet of vellum from Chantmer and held it out for Memnet to read, but the wizard only yawned again and shook his head.

“No, my apprentice, I cannot read that now.” His eyes drooped shut, then opened again. “Why now? I am so sleepy. Can’t this wait a few weeks?”

Nathaliey started to explain about the wights, and how the paladin claimed that there was a sorcerer commanding them. But before she could get far, Memnet’s eyes closed again, and he could not be roused.

“Oh, come,” Chantmer said in a peevish tone. “Can’t he stay awake for five minutes?”

“We could wait,” she said.

“No, we cannot. Narud? You have it?”

They ran through the spell again, and this time Narud found the words more quickly. The three apprentices placed their hands palms down. Chantmer took a step back, putting himself at Narud’s shoulder. He held the orb in one hand.

Nathaliey suppressed a frown when she saw the orb. She gathered her will, and Narud began the chant. This time, there was magic to it.

#

Markal and Bronwyn saddled their horses and set off at first light. It had rained during the night, driving the smell of charred forest from the air, as well as putting out the last smoldering fires, but also turning the burned gash into a slurry of mud and wet ash. They slogged through the muck on the edge of the gash as it tore through the heart of the Sacred Forest.

About an hour later, Markal spotted movement ahead. He got Bronwyn’s attention, and they urged their horses among the trees for cover.

The paladin touched her sword hilt and shook her head. “Nothing from Soultrup. What do you see?”

“Some men on the highway,” Markal said. They’d taken to speaking of the destruction as if it were already a road and not merely a burned-out swath of forest. “Milling about. I see a spear or pike. I’ll wager they’re sentinels or scouts.”

“We’ll have to get past them, but I don’t want to waste more time in the forest. It’s too thick on either side. Be a lot quicker to go straight forward.”

Markal squinted and waited for movement from the men on the road so he could count them. “There are only three. Can you manage?”

“By ‘manage,’ you mean, can I kill them? Of course. It’s not a question of managing.”

“I don’t like killing either, but we might not have a choice.”

Bronwyn’s horse tossed its head impatiently, and she put a gloved hand against its neck until it calmed. “That is not what I mean. I don’t delight in the shedding of blood, but what I mean is that I don’t want Soultrup to do the killing. The last thing I need is to bind more souls to it.”

“You hacked up those wights easily enough.”

“They were the wandering dead, no more likely to be evil than good. The ones I destroyed had been forced to serve the sorcerer against their will.”

“I would say the same about whoever is guarding the road.”

“And the wights were peasants and foot soldiers,” she continued. “Weak-willed—they didn’t change the balance of power within the sword. Only the strong matter. These guards might be conscripts, or they might be something else. I’d rather not find out.”

Bronwyn reached over her shoulder and touched the sword hilt as she spoke, and Markal found himself wondering how many souls were trapped inside. A dozen? Hundreds?

“If that’s the way you feel, why is Soultrup your only weapon? And I don’t count that dagger you use as a fork. Why not carry another sword, an extra weapon for light duty?”

She gave an exaggerated sigh. “Markal, if you had a magical sword, what would you do? Would you pull out some other blade and risk your life? No, Soultrup is not going to stay in its bloody scabbard. What I try to do is avoid the fight in the first place. When I cannot, I fight to win.”

“And the sorcerer?”

“Oh, I’ll fight him. He is going to die.”

“And what makes you think he’s unguarded? Are you telling me you can’t kill any of his scouts, soldiers, and personal guards to get to him?”

“Why don’t you prove yourself worthwhile instead of standing there babbling? You clear the guards from the road. I assume your master has been teaching you something—put it to use, why don’t you?”

“You mean a flash of lightning, an earthquake, a fireball—that kind of thing?”

“Exactly. Or what about those hammers your tall friend sent flying my way? Knock in a few skulls and we’re done. Soultrup stays sheathed.”

“No, I won’t do that.”

“What kind of apprentice wizard are you?”

“When given a choice, you keep your sword sheathed, and I do the same with my magic. We each have our own reasons.”

“So you can’t. That’s what you’re saying. You are incapable of throwing hammers at our enemies. Well, then. How fortunate that you’ve joined me on the road. I’d hate to have one of your friends by my side with all of their useful spells.”

Markal bristled. Nevertheless, she’d set him to thinking. There might be something he could manage. He didn’t need to kill these soldiers, after all. There were lesser spells to call forth, ones that only required the trickle of magic he could control. But which spell?

Bronwyn studied his face. “Ah, yes. So you can manage. I thought so. You only needed the proper encouragement to stiffen your spine.”

That wasn’t it at all, but he was too busy turning over the words of the incantation to argue. Could he cast it from this distance? Probably not. He needed to get closer.

Markal slipped from the saddle and dropped to the ground. “Stay here.”

“What is it? What should I prepare for?”

“An opportunity to get past, that’s all. I can’t throw hammers, but I can make our enemies drop their trousers, so to speak. I’ll wave to you when it’s time. Bring my horse—we’ll only have a few minutes.”

He moved along the edge of the burned gash, where the charred trunks stood in skeletal lines. As he moved, he whispered a small spell to deepen the shadows around him. He seemed almost a part of them as he moved.

You managed that easily enough, didn’t you?

Sure, but that’s because it didn’t matter. It was a little thing, a trifle that had cost a single drop of blood. So minor that if the guards were unusually alert, they’d spot him all the same. But what about in a few moments, when the time came to work some serious magic?

He had to summon his confidence. Otherwise, the whole thing would fizzle, and he’d only alert the enemy to his presence. Meanwhile, Bronwyn was well behind and unable to help should he find himself in trouble.

As Markal drew closer, he caught bits of the Veyrian conversation. They weren’t just milling about on the road, they were discussing where to build a palisade to guard an encampment of soldiers and their supply wagons. The taller one, who wore a gray cloak instead of the scarlet and black of the other two, wanted a watchtower, as well. The other two didn’t seem to think it worth the effort. They were deep in the forest and had several hundred soldiers; no bandits would attack them here.

The conversation was intense enough that Markal came to a position on the edge of the gash directly opposite without any of the three glancing in his direction. He was tempted to sit and listen to see what he could learn, but the shadows around him had begun to soften under the sun’s penetrating rays, and he would soon be revealed.

Markal rolled back his sleeves and closed his eyes to concentrate. Self-doubt roiled to the surface. To focus, he whispered one of the master’s favorite mantras, about an immovable mountain. He resisted opening his eyes to check if he’d been spotted, knowing it would break his concentration.

I am not an archivist or a keeper. I follow the Crimson Path. My pain gives me strength.

Power rose in his pores like a thousand pricks from a knife, and blood rolled down his forearms to his downturned palms. He spoke the incantation in the old tongue.

Let your limbs turn weary. May sleep cloud your mind.

For a moment, one solitary instant, the doubt vanished. And then his old curse returned. Much of his power fell away, but enough remained that it left him tingling as it departed, a prickle on his skin like standing in the open sky beneath a dry thunderstorm. This was it, this was what the others felt.

Markal opened his eyes to see the first two of the soldiers going down. One fell so hard it was as if the bones had been dissolved from his body. The other leaned against his spear like it was a staff and tried to hold himself upright as his legs buckled. He collapsed in a heap against the other one, the spear head clanking off his helmet. Already, the two men in red and black were down and rendered senseless.

The tall man in the gray cloak put up the biggest fight. He staggered, tried to catch himself, and then fell to his knees. He grabbed for the sword at his side as he went down, but collapsed with the others before he could draw it.

Markal stepped into the gash and waved urgently to Bronwyn. He couldn’t pick her out against the forest because of the angle of the sun and the shadows in which she’d waited with the horses, and for the first time it occurred to him that she might not be able to see him at this distance. He might need to run back a bit and yell for her. They only had minutes before the enemy woke up.

A groan sounded to his back. Markal whirled to see the soldier in the gray cloak struggling to his feet. He tugged at his sword with a trembling hand, and he stared toward the apprentice with a glazed expression.

No. Too soon.

It wasn’t only the cloak that was gray, Markal saw now. The man’s flesh was drawn and pale. Not fair like the paladin, but the skin of an old man who is sick and dying. His eyes were . . . dead. Markal had seen the same look on the face of a poppy eater in the slave quarters of Marrabat, but not the gray skin.

Markal’s heart fluttered in his chest like a bird caught in a trap. He remembered what Nathaliey had told him about the gray-faced assassins in the desert. And Bronwyn’s gray raiders in the barbarian kingdoms. The same ones who had slaughtered Bronwyn’s brother and half a company of paladins.

The glazed expression cleared from the man’s eyes. He fixed on Markal, who now stood in the open, the last remnants of his hiding spell dissolving like old cobwebs. A knowing grin stretched across the man’s face. He drew his weapon, a long, curved scimitar.

“A clever move, my friend, but not nearly clever enough,” he said, and took a step toward Markal.

There was no way to resist him; Markal had drawn his strength to put the enemies to sleep. The spell had gone as well as he could have possibly hoped, yet he’d still failed. His legs wobbled, and he felt drained, exhausted.

But he stiffened and stared at the enemy without flinching as the man moved forward. He threw back his sleeves and lifted his slick, still-dripping palms. He forced confidence and authority into his voice.

“Stand back or you shall taste death. By the Brothers, your soul shall be torn apart by the Dark Gatherer’s hounds this very night.”

The gray-faced man’s grin faltered. He’d crossed half the thirty feet separating the two men, but now he hesitated and glanced back at his unconscious companions. But when he looked back, his face hardened.

“You have nothing, wizard. You are bluffing.”

He started forward again, this time his mocking smile replaced by grim determination.

“By the sword be damned!” Bronwyn’s voice cried from behind them.

The paladin came riding in on her horse, Soultrup in hand. She hadn’t put on her helmet, and her braided golden hair swept behind her. Righteous fury glowed on her face. Her sword gleamed red, seeming almost eager for combat.

The enemy ducked to one side as she swept past. He lifted his scimitar as she swung. Her blow crushed down on his weapon and knocked him from his feet. Bronwyn jumped down from the horse and came at him to deliver the killing stroke.

But the gray-skinned man moved faster than Markal thought possible. He was back on his feet and ducking out of the way as Bronwyn’s sword swept past his ear. He lifted his weapon, and soon the two were trading blows. The man fought with skill, speed, and a savage strength. He was tall and strong and would have enjoyed a reach advantage if not for Soultrup’s length. No doubt he would have quickly overwhelmed most enemies. But Bronwyn was not just any opponent, and her sword not an ordinary weapon.

She ducked beneath a vicious sweep of the scimitar and brought her sword around in a devastating counterattack. The blow struck the man across the ribs, and he fell onto his back. His weapon flew out of his hands. Bronwyn sprang on top of him, her blade still embedded in his side. Instead of trying to force it in, she desperately tried to wrench it out. The enemy tried to get free, too, and there was the bizarre sight of both of them trying to get the sword out, even as the blade itself seemed to be digging itself further in.

The dying soldier let out a long, shuddering cry, and his head flopped back. Bronwyn got the sword free, and also cried out. She tried to cast aside the bloody weapon, but it seemed nailed to her palms. Markal stumbled to her side, still wobbly from using his magic and the loss of blood.

“No! Don’t touch me. Get your horse!”

He remembered the unconscious soldiers. They might rouse themselves at any time.

Markal found his mare about a hundred yards back. When Markal lurched up, it tossed its head, alarmed, and almost ran off before he got the reins. He struggled to get in the saddle. But once up, some of the nausea faded, and he rode toward Bronwyn, feeling stronger every moment. She clutched Soultrup in her hands and looked up at him, sweat pouring from her face. Her horse had come to her side, where it stood, pawing anxiously.

“The marauder,” she gasped. “He’s joined the others. They’re fighting for it. They’re trying to—oh, the Harvester take me.”

“Put it away. Sheath it.”

“I can’t. Get me up.”

He jumped down, and somehow the two of them—Markal faint from using his magic, and Bronwyn still clenching the sword with two hands—got her into the saddle.

“What can I do?” he asked as he mounted his mare.

She clenched her teeth. “Nothing, just ride. Go!”

And with that, she slumped over the horse’s neck. The sword, now held by one hand, fell over the side until the tip nearly dragged on the ground. But she didn’t let go.

Markal cast a glance at the remaining soldiers. One was stirring. Markal brought his horse alongside Bronwyn’s and grabbed her reins. Go, yes, but where? Forward or back?

There was no question what Bronwyn would have said if she’d been alert. So Markal pointed them in the direction they’d been traveling, toward the enemy camp, and rode, leading Bronwyn’s horse and its senseless rider. Toward what he could only imagine was the camp of the sorcerer.

Chapter Fifteen

Markal soon worried that he would lose Bronwyn. She swayed back and forth in the saddle, sweat pouring down her face.

“Put the cursed thing away,” he told her. “Put it in the sheath.”

She groaned. “I can’t.”

He tugged the reins of her horse to bring it close to his. “Here, I’ll—”

“Don’t touch me!”

The panic in her voice jolted him, and he pulled away, just as she lifted the sword and swung it at him. Her muscles straining, she fought it down even as it sliced through the space where his face had been moments earlier.

“Please, by the Brothers, I beg you to stay back,” she said. The sword swayed in her hand.

He cast a glance behind. The Veyrian soldiers would be awake by now, would have seen their dead companion. And what would they make of their unnatural sleep?

“Bronwyn,” he said. “We should leave the road and go into the forest.”

“No, we’re too close.”

“There are enemies at our back, enemies in front of us, and your sword . . .”

Slowly, deliberately, she put one hand on the flat of the blade and closed her eyes. After a moment, she opened them again. “It is done.”

“Explain yourself.”

“My brother won. His control is tentative, but it exists. Soultrup is still mine.”

“For now,” he said, watching carefully as she swung the scabbard around to sheath the blade. “What happens next time?”

She wiped the sweat from her brow. “We know each other’s limitations, my friend. You hold the knowledge of your order’s magic in your head, but cannot control it. I have a sword that will cut down any enemy, but every time I do so, it risks slipping from my hand and killing me instead.” She glanced at him. “Or my companion.”

“So what do we do?”

“Avoid another fight. At least until I see the sorcerer. One final death, and I am finished with my struggle.”

Markal’s doubts had only grown on that score since Bronwyn shared her ultimate plan. Why was it necessary that she die?

“Let’s turn around,” he said. “We’ll enter the forest to get around the two men on the road and go back to the gardens to rethink this.”

“If you’re afraid, you can go. I would prefer you don’t, of course. Your magic might prove useful, no matter its limitations.”

“I’m not afraid. I should be. Should be terrified, but curiously, no.”

“Then we ride on. The sorcerer lives, and so we must continue. We are too close to turn around now. I cannot fail.”

“Turning around is not failure. Now, wait,” he said, cutting off her protest as it sputtered on her lips. “We haven’t killed your enemy, but we have new information. The sorcerer is real.”

“That was already known.”

“Not by me, it wasn’t. Not with certainty. And I now know the sorcerer is destroying the Sacred Forest so the high king can build his road. We’ll go back to the gardens and rally our defenses until the master awakes. Once he does, you’ll see what the Order of the Crimson Path can do.”

Her expression hardened. “No, Markal. The sorcerer is close. I can feel him.” She touched the sword hilt. “The souls of the great and wicked alike confirm it. I will cut down my enemy and then fall on my sword to finish it.”

“But why? Wait for the master. What is the harm?”

“Your wizard is no match for the sorcerer.”

“But you are?”

She thrust out her chin. “Do you doubt it?”

“Whether I do or not is beside the point. You don’t need to die to see it accomplished. Memnet will awaken, and he can do something about the sword, learn its secrets and how to suppress the evil voices inside.”

“Markal, this weapon is an ancient relic created by the gods themselves. Neither wizard nor sorcerer nor paladin can change its nature.”

He wasn’t going to give up, and opened his mouth to try a new angle, when a new sound caught his ears. It was a man’s cry, followed by the scream of a woman. There was pain and anguish in both of their voices.

Righteous anger flared in Bronwyn’s eyes. “By the Brothers, what fresh evil is this?”

She urged the horse forward, and Markal had no choice but to follow. The burned cut of forest came up a gradual rise that followed the natural undulations of the land, and as they crested a hill, a wide new panorama opened in front of them.

The gash in the forest continued down a gradually diminishing slope that stretched toward the northeast. Markal and Bronwyn had been passing through the charred forest since yesterday, but the vast extent of the destruction now became apparent as the burned swath continued for miles and miles, all the way to the horizon, where it dissolved into a yellow, hazy vista from the dust blowing off the parched khalifates to the east.

Closer to where they stood, hundreds of workers labored with shovels and pickaxes to excavate the soil to a depth of several feet. Behind them, other workers dumped sand into the trench, and untold numbers of carts and wagons piled stones into great heaps. Farther back, the great highway itself was completed, and trains of men and beasts traveled in both directions like tiny armies of marching ants.

Markal caught his breath. It was one thing to see the burned gash, but another entirely to see the highway rolling for miles through the forest. To witness the scope of destruction, the sheer number of workers and encampments. To know that the highway stretched across the land for hundreds of miles and would shortly stretch hundreds more, until it penetrated into the heart of the barbarian lands on the far side of the Dragon’s Spine. The enormity of such a construction was staggering.

A fresh cry dragged Markal’s attention closer. Two overseers had dragged a man dressed in rags from his company of workers and flailed him with a whip as he cowered. A woman lay groaning next to him, having already been beaten. The other laborers struggled on, barely lifting their heads to watch.

Markal stared with horror. “Slaves? This is Aristonia. We never had such a thing.” He watched the soldiers, the overseers, and the movement of goods and people along the road.

“And so we continue,” Bronwyn said. “Righteous in our actions, with faith and purpose as our shield and sword. If you have magic to calm suspicions of our arrival, cast the spell now.”

Markal had an incantation that would do just that. It was more subtle than the spell he’d used when hiding in the shadows, while costing less than the one that had put the soldiers to sleep. But the niggling voice was quick to raise new doubts.

Your last failure nearly cost your life. Why should this time be any different?

Because it would be. The spell was a trifle. It was a spell cast by the archivists when they came and went from the Secret Vault of the library, so as to hide its location. If Jethro or Karla could manage, then surely he could do so as well. All he had to do was extend its effects a few feet to encompass his companion, and the two of them would slip through unchallenged.

“Markal,” Bronwyn said. “Overcome your limitations. You can do it. I know you can.”

She’d guessed perfectly what made him hesitate. He nodded. “Yes.”

The words of the incantation came easily to his lips, but the blood was harder to draw. The spell might have been a trifle, but he needed as much power as he could get. He was already tired and in need of food, drink, and rest. But with effort, he raised the blood to the pores. When it trickled down his arms, he spoke the incantation.

Enough power came through to serve his purpose. When he looked around, their immediate surroundings had turned dim, while the people working on the road ahead seemed to glow with their own light.

Bronwyn looked about her and gave a satisfied nod. “Well done, friend.”

“It still isn’t very good. It won’t last as long as we need, and if anyone is looking for us, we’ll be spotted. As soon as that happens, the whole thing collapses and everyone sees us.”

A nod. “Understood. We’ll make do.”

No recriminations for Markal’s failings, but Bronwyn hadn’t coddled him with false assurances, either. Markal studied her face, with its strong expression, fierce eyes, and calm air of righteous assurance, and wondered if he’d encountered something truly rare: a hero.

“Speak softly going forward,” he said. “Keep the horses quiet. The spell will muffle sound, but not eliminate it entirely.”

They went down the burned swath of land and reached the first workers. Men, women, and children bent at their labors beneath the watchful eye of overseers, clawing at the earth with shovels and picks to force it to yield its stones, to surrender the roots of burned trees that remained tangled in the ground. Other slaves hauled away baskets filled with earth and stone. The man and woman who’d been thrashed by the overseer dragged their way back to the work and picked up shovels to renew their efforts.

When the two companions had pulled away from the slaves doing the backbreaking work of digging out the roadbed, Markal turned to Bronwyn and spoke in a low voice.

“It would seem that we’ve found the people of Agria. The king enslaved them to build his highway.”

“And the animals? What of their flocks?”

“No doubt slaughtered to the last lamb to feed workers and soldiers.”

“We will end this madness,” she said.

All was shortly a confusion of clanking hammers, breaking stone, men shouting, and animals bellowing as they strained against heavy loads. The roadbed was cut deep, with a base of sand, followed by crushed stone and gravel, and finally, enormous flat stones for the surface itself. Markal had never seen such a wide, expensive road.

Bronwyn gestured to their right, where a company of Veyrian riders trotted briskly from an encampment of tents and onto the road with clopping hooves. The two infiltrators fell in behind them and followed several paces back, taking advantage of the path the horsemen cleared through the work crews. They continued unobserved.

Markal pointed out the tent encampments of soldiers whenever he saw them, but Bronwyn touched the hilt of her sword and shook her head. They made swift progress, three or four miles in less than an hour. The work stretched on and on and on. Where the surface itself was done, workers cut drainage ditches on the sides. Watchtowers rose at intervals, some no more than foundations, others mortared nearly to the battlements.

Wherever a watchtower stood, men were in the heights with long brass trumpets. They blasted short notes, long notes, and sustained songs, seemingly improvised, though Markal knew otherwise. Using the horns for communication, the Veyrian army was able to pass messages long distances in a short period of time, as the songs traveled from one outpost to the next. It was a sophisticated language that contained orders, issued warnings, could even request supplies or reinforcements.

“It’s a road to last for a thousand years,” he said at last. “And an army to hold it.”

“No road lasts a thousand years,” Bronwyn said. “In the desert, the wind will cover it with sand. In the mountains, the earth will shake it to pieces. Here, imagine what will happen when the armies retreat, as they will. All armies eventually disband, all kingdoms collapse. The forest will approach, its roots will heave the stones and open fissures for new seedlings.”

“Not this road, Bronwyn. There’s magic in it. Sorcery. Can’t you feel it?”

She reached back for the sword hilt. “Yes, I do. What does it mean?”

“There are runes to protect the stones and powerful incantations that bind the highway to the land. This road will stand.”

Indeed, it was whispering to him, and there was a sensation like a twisted shadow radiating up through his mount and into his body. There were cries of pain in that whisper. Agony and suffering that were still fresh.

“It’s the pain of the dying,” he decided at last. “Like the blood I draw from my pores, but taken by the lash from those who have suffered and died building this highway.” He shook his head. “I must tell the master. Why didn’t he know already?”

“The sorcerer is adept at hiding his work,” she said. “Much like those soldiers are unable to see us, only with sorcery more grand and terrible. This road didn’t appear overnight in the heartland of your kingdom, Markal. Even while your wizard was denying the high king passage, his army was forging ahead. His sorcerer was destroying your sacred groves.”

“If Memnet didn’t know, how is it that you felt the sorcerer on the other side of the mountains?”

“We’re very close now.” There was apparently no answer to Markal’s question. Bronwyn pointed ahead. “There. That is where we will find our enemy.” She untied her helmet from the saddle and rested it on her lap.

Markal studied where she’d gestured. At first glance, it appeared to be another partly built watchtower, but as the two companions left the company of Veyrian horsemen to cut across the road, it became obvious that this would be a larger fortification. The initial stones of both an outer and an inner curtain had been laid, and workers filled the foundation with rubble. There was a partial ditch or moat, and other spots had been excavated for auxiliary fortifications. When finished, a castle would stand on the spot.

Markal and Bronwyn trotted up a dirt ramp and between what would become a pair of gatehouses, currently marked only by open pits. Two guards stood with pikes, chatting about some nonsense or another, and they didn’t seem to notice the two riders.

“Your spell holds,” the paladin said in a low voice when they were past. “Well done, Markal.”

A wooden palisade guarded what would eventually be an inner courtyard, together with a few temporary-looking buildings made of rough logs. Bronwyn slid from the saddle and pointed to the largest of these buildings. Guards stood in front of the doorway, these ones more alert, but they wore the simple black and red of Veyre, and there was nothing gray about their skin or eyes. Mere soldiers, thank the Brothers.

Bronwyn dismounted and set off without another gesture or word, and Markal dropped from his horse and followed. There was death inside that building. He could feel it in his bones the same way he’d felt the corruption and pain of the king’s highway outside. Something terrible was going to happen inside.

Get on your horse. Ride for your life. Escape into the forest. There’s nothing more to be done here.

But something compelled him forward. He was several paces behind Bronwyn when she reached the two soldiers blocking the door. She drew her sword with a cool, deadly grace. It whipped around from her shoulder.

The first guard hadn’t hit the ground before she’d cut down the second. The first fell with a groan, and the second didn’t manage even that before he was dead. It was a stunning, merciless attack.

Bronwyn pushed open the door and stepped inside. Markal came in behind her. She pulled up short and looked about.

“He’s gone,” she said. “He’s not here at all. I don’t feel him.”

But that didn’t mean the room was empty. There were two men standing inside. Bronwyn had spoken in a loud, clear voice, and the pair noticed the newcomers. One was dressed in red and black, a gold gorget at his neck, indicating a high rank. The other wore a tunic, rings on his fingers, and a chain with a pendant of green stone.

“By the Brothers, how have I been deceived?” Bronwyn said. “I felt him here. Didn’t you feel something? Where is he now?”

Markal grabbed her arm and gestured to the door, signaling that they should make their escape, even as he cast a look at the two men they’d startled on their entrance. The military man drew a long sword with a slight curve at the end. Bronwyn still held Soultrup, and no doubt could hack the man down with little effort. But Markal was only thinking of how to slip away without further bloodshed or notice.

And then Markal took a closer look at the pair and recognized them both.

The first was Pasha Malik, the high king’s general in the Western Khalifates. During the past year, when the khalif of Aristonia had buckled under pressure from the east, it was Malik who was the king’s emissary. He had risen from the rank of captain during Veyre’s wars with Sebiana and Delitha and had a reputation for cruelty.

But it was the second man who made Markal start. He had curly hair and skin the color of wheat, with a sharp nose like an Aristonian, though he appeared much younger than the last time Markal had seen him. For the briefest of moments, Markal thought he was looking at Memnet the Great.

The sorcerer might not be here in this building, but they’d found someone nearly as important. Markal was staring at the grand architect of the great highway slashing itself from one end of the world to the next.

It was the high king of Veyre himself. King Toth.

Chapter Sixteen

The three apprentices poured their magic into Memnet the Great. The master had been buried in the rich, magical soil of the garden for nearly a month now, until the miraculous had occurred: an entire body had regrown from the wizard’s severed head. But it would take a terrific effort to ultimately bind Memnet’s soul to the new body and bring the entirety of it to life.

Just when it seemed the thing would be accomplished, Nathaliey felt Chantmer faltering to her right. He held the orb in his hand, and blood was dripping off it as he drew his strength to join with what he’d stored earlier. Then suddenly, doubt seeped out from him, something that might have come from Markal, but was uncharacteristic of Chantmer. What had happened?

Then she felt it herself. The magic was reversing. It was flowing from the three apprentices not toward Memnet, but into the orb. The blasted thing was going to drain all of their power and leave them nothing.

Chantmer, you fool.

Anger boiled up in her, and she was about to break away and preserve what she could, when suddenly, it all rushed out of the orb in a single wave of power. Chantmer staggered back. The spell was finished.

“What was that?” Nathaliey demanded.

“I—I don’t know. I couldn’t control the gate.”

“You mean the direction of the power?”

“Yes, it wanted to flow downhill, like water. Into the orb, not out of it. I couldn’t stop it.”

“So what happened?” she asked.

Chantmer shook his head. “I really can’t say. The flow of magic flipped about again, and it went out again. I—I don’t know.”

She was angry now, not just with Chantmer, but with herself. He’d given a glib explanation for how the master’s orb worked. Like a wine bottle stopped up with a cork, as if it could be that easy. Take the cork out, put it back in. Fill and pour. Hardly.

Chantmer obviously hadn’t mastered its use, and why would she have expected him to? He was no wizard, only an apprentice. Nathaliey should have balked, should have demanded that he hand it over for safekeeping.

“And where did our power go after it left the orb?” she asked. “Did it flow into the master, or did you bungle that, too?”

Narud pointed at the ground. “Perhaps we should ask the master?”

She’d been exhausted by the night of preparation and the summoning of the spell, and frustrated and angry about how it had all played out, and hadn’t even thought to check to see if it had worked. Perhaps she’d never really believed that it would, had suffered her own loss of confidence at the end.

But Memnet the Great’s eyes were open. He looked up at them from the ground, eyebrows raised.

“I am struck,” he said, “by how ridiculous this situation must appear. There’s a head poking out of the ground, and three people are standing around it arguing.”

“You’re awake!” Nathaliey said.

“And look at you, muttering strange incantations, bleeding from your hands. And then bickering like children. Truly ridiculous. Yes, I am awake. I might have slept a while longer to some advantage.”

“But did it work?” Chantmer said. “I mean, are you all there now?”

Memnet frowned in concentration. After a few seconds, his expression relaxed. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

“You see!” Chantmer told the other two apprentices. “I knew it would work.”

“If you are referring to my orb, let me caution against exuberance,” the wizard said. “You very nearly drained my entire soul into it at the end. You do realize that, right?”

Nathaliey couldn’t help her laugh. Chantmer flushed and scowled at her, then turned back to Memnet with a more contrite expression.

“I didn’t think it would be so difficult, Master.”

“You thought you’d learn the orb’s secrets in a few weeks of tinkering, did you? But never mind that. There will be time enough to master it in the future.”

Chantmer nodded sagely. “Yes, of course. I will continue to study and learn.”

“By future, I mean ten or twenty years from now. You won’t be touching it again any time soon.” Memnet swiveled his eyes from one apprentice to the other. “Well? Are you going to leave me here with my head sticking out of the ground all day?”

“You want us to cover you up again?” Nathaliey asked.

“Good heavens, no. I want you to dig me out!”

The apprentices hiked their robes, dropped to their knees, and began to shovel with their hands as fast as they could until they looked like three badgers pushing dirt between their legs. Someone suggested fetching a spade, but these weren’t potatoes they were digging up, and nobody wanted to be the one to spear the master.

The efforts attracted attention, and soon the apprentices had two keepers and an acolyte laboring with them. Memnet’s flesh was white and his muscles almost nonexistent as he emerged slowly from the ground. He struggled until he’d free his shoulders and arms, but the effort seemed to exhaust him, and he closed his eyes while the others continued to work. When the diggers reached his waist and legs, Chantmer ordered them to try to wrench the master the rest of the way out. That failed, so they set back to digging.

At last, only the lower part of Memnet’s legs remained buried in the soil. It was hard to get down that deep, so they grabbed his arms and shoulders and waist and pulled. He came loose with a final tug, popped out of the dark soil like an extracted tooth.

The wizard lay on his side for several minutes, gasping for air, while the others stood back and waited, recovering their own strength. At last, he lifted to a semi-sitting position and looked himself over.

“I’m grateful for the dirt. Otherwise I’d look as pale as a grub and dead as a half-rotten corpse.”

“How do you feel, Master?” Nathaliey asked.

“More like the corpse than the grub, but a little bit of both, I should think.” He prodded tentatively at his legs and feet. “It all seems to be here, minus the fingernails and toenails, but I suppose those will grow back in time. Lift me up, will you?”

They all rushed to help him stand, but he couldn’t support himself. In the end, he stood with one arm draped over Narud’s shoulder and the other over Nathaliey’s. His legs trembled, and there was no strength in his arms, either.

“On second thought,” Memnet said, “the dirt wasn’t so uncomfortable after all. Go ahead and put me back now.” They all stared, uncertain whether or not he was joking, until a deep chuckle rose in his chest. “Look at you all, gaping. Well, then. I suppose it’s time to get to work.”

He didn’t seem self-conscious about his nakedness, but he was so covered in clods of dirt that it didn’t really matter. Still, it bothered Nathaliey that they hadn’t thought to bring a robe, a flask of wine, or even so much as water for the master to wash his face.

The apprentices were themselves exhausted from their ordeal, but they weren’t about to turn his care over to others. The gardens had a bathhouse built above a natural hot spring, but it was on the far side of the lake. It took nearly an hour, with frequent rests, for the three to bring Memnet there.

The climate was mild enough in Aristonia that there was no need to enclose the building against the winter chill, not with the heat continually rising from the pool, and the building was nothing more than an open pavilion with a roof over a single large cedar basin. Steaming water poured in through bamboo pipes, flowed about thirty feet across the basin, and drained through a small channel lined with clay tiles on the opposite side. Memnet took a seat on a large stone above the channel and bent over nearly double. The others filled buckets with hot water and poured them over him. The water ran black as it carried away the dirt.

When he was at least mostly clean, he made his way into the bath. He eased himself into the water and sat on the bench, letting out a groan that turned into a sigh as the water washed over his shoulders.

“Ah, this is much better. By the Brothers, that feels good.” Memnet glanced at them. “Go ahead then, you must be exhausted, too. We have much to discuss, and this is as good a place as any.”

Soon, the three apprentices had joined their master in the large basin. The heat drew away Nathaliey’s tension, and her mind returned to a calmer, more tranquil place. There was nothing strange for Nathaliey in being the only woman present. It was the custom in Aristonia for families to bathe together, and these three men were like father and brothers to her.

“Chantmer, where is the orb?” Memnet asked. “In your robes?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Good. I will be taking it back, of course.”

There was a hint of reproval in his tone, and no doubt he would have additional words with Chantmer about the matter. But before Nathaliey could feel too smug, Memnet turned his attention to her.

“This is a spell you should have called, Nathaliey. The substance of the matter is within your realm of power.”

“We had only the night to learn it, and Narud held the words better. It would have been clumsy if I’d done it, the words inarticulate. I’m afraid we’d have failed.”

“Good that you recognize your weakness, but I wonder at the cause. Failure of concentration, or something else? Give it some thought, and we shall discuss it later.”

“Yes, Master.”

“As for you, Narud. Well done.”

Narud blinked. “Well done? That is all?”

“Yes, well done.”

“But I struggled, Master.”

“Of course you did. This spell was not within your realm of power. It had nothing to do with the natural world, nor the creatures who live on its surface. But you executed it well, nonetheless. The mark of a wizard is his ability to work fluently beyond his realm.”

“Thank you,” Narud said.

“Yes, indeed. It might be time to reconsider your position in the gardens. You cannot remain an apprentice forever, after all.”

Narud bowed his head modestly, but the other two apprentices exchanged displeased glances. A hot coal of jealousy burned in Nathaliey’s breast. No, jealousy wasn’t quite right. She didn’t envy Narud, so much as criticize her own failure.

She’d spent hours reading and chanting the incantation Jethro sent from the library. Now, only a couple of hours after she’d stopped repeating it, she couldn’t remember the first word of the blasted thing.

Why couldn’t she hold the incantations in her head? By the Brothers, she’d tried hard enough last night, thrown every bit of concentration and effort into it. Yet, she had failed.

Markal would have managed effortlessly, that was the irony. He might already know the spell by heart. Probably read it a couple of times and there it was, ready to recall at a moment’s notice. But its execution would have been another matter. Her friend would have failed as surely as if he’d attempted to take a heap of bones, wagon wheels, and old boards, throw some mud on them, and make them fly like a dragon.

“Now let me consider my own failures,” Memnet said. “And my present weakened condition.”

Some color had come into his face, but when he lifted his thin arms from the water to rest on the edge of the basin, they were the color of the belly of a fish. Almost gray, in fact, like the assassins who’d attacked them in the desert.

“My first and most obvious failure was allowing the enemy to trick me on the Spice Road. I was arrogant and smug, and it nearly destroyed us all. I will address that shortcoming as I am able. Second, I seem to have missed some critical developments in the outside world. Now that I am lucid, will you share what has occurred since my demise? Nathaliey, you were in the library?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Tell me.”

She explained how she’d gone to Syrmarria to search for information about the assassins. Her studies led her to the Book of Gods. There were missing pages. Memnet stiffened at this, but when she stopped to hear his thoughts, he waved her on.

He was silent through the explanation of her capture at the hands of Pasha Malik and the details of the flight down the road pursued by wights. When she began to describe the battle at the bridge where Bronwyn drove off the spirits, he stopped her, and Chantmer shared the story of the barbarian paladin, and everything they knew of her. This mainly consisted of how Bronwyn killed one of the keepers, tried to attack Chantmer, and then set off with Markal to search for a so-called sorcerer. And then there was her magical weapon.

“What is this red sword, anyway?” Chantmer asked.

“A relic of the old days,” the master said, “like the oracular tomes or my orb. Creations of the gods during their war against the ancient elements. What this sword does, I cannot say. It is nothing I have heard about. No doubt Markal is considering the matter at length and will have more information when he returns.”

“But how did the barbarian get it?” Nathaliey pressed.

“Who knows? Perhaps it was given to her. This Bronwyn of Arvada told you she is a holy warrior from Eriscoba, a paladin. Claimed she is an enemy of the person who is sending the assassins and wights against us. She is seeking the sorcerer, as she says, and was confused by my presence in the gardens. I suspect she is onto the real trail now.”

“Then the sorcerer is real?” Nathaliey asked.

“Most assuredly,” Memnet said. “Only a necromancer could gather the souls of the dead and bend them to his will. No doubt he has additional powers equal to, if not greater than, our own.”

“I’ve never heard of such a person,” Chantmer said. “Who could he possibly be?”

“Oh, that is the easy part. We all know who he is.”

Memnet was not above a little bit of theater, and now he leaned back with his head nearly submerged, while the other three looked at each other in confusion. At last, he rose from the water with a smile.

“We have enemies already, do we not? Rather, they were opponents before, who made themselves hostile when they disagreed with our judgment.”

“You mean the high king?” Nathaliey began tentatively. “Because of the highway?”

“Yes, of course. He uses the threat of griffin riders and the drought across the plains to compel the khalifs to surrender sovereignty as he builds his highway. We alone have resisted. Aristonia is not crippled by the drought, and we do not need the king’s armies to protect us from bandits and griffins. But the king wishes to bring the whole of the world, even Aristonia, under his power. That is the way of kings when they begin their wars. And this war has begun.”

Nathaliey still didn’t understand, and she could see from the confusion in Narud’s and Chantmer’s faces that they didn’t either. “Then the king has found a sorcerer to do his bidding?”

“King Toth hasn’t found a sorcerer to do his bidding,” Memnet said. “King Toth is the sorcerer.”

This pronouncement hung in the air. For a long moment, there was no sound but the flow of water into the bath.

“That is . . . impossible,” Nathaliey said. “Toth lost his magic when he left the order.”

Memnet’s expression turned grim. “Yes, I understand the contradiction inherent in that claim. When my old friend—and he was a friend, not merely a companion in wizardry—ascended the throne, he denounced the magical realms, and his abilities eroded and vanished. One cannot wield power over men and power over the natural forces of the world at the same time. They do not exist within the same realm, and such a thing, were it possible, would lead to a tyranny of wizardry. The laws of nature and of men rebel against it occurring.”

“You’ve told us it’s possible and impossible in the same breath,” Chantmer said.

“Natural magic is impossible for him. But necromancy is a perversion of the natural order. Toth wasn’t evil—I knew the man for many years, and I can swear to his character. I was displeased when he abandoned decades of study to return to what I consider the mundane world, but it is only natural for one man to question the path of another. Toth seemed sincere. I believe he was. When pestilence struck Veyre, he went to the city to use his healing powers. The red death carried off the royal household, and the city fell into chaos. Toth was the only one related to the royal household who the people would accept, a brother of the king’s great-grandfather, who had been much beloved of the people in his day.”

“Then what happened to him?” Nathaliey asked. “Why would he do such a thing?”

“I can only speculate. It probably started with the war against Sebiana.”

Nathaliey knew this story. After Toth ascended the throne of Veyre, the Sebianan army took advantage of the city’s weakness and invaded. Toth had hurled them from the Veyrian gates, then forced Sebiana to capitulate entirely. Since then, the Sebianans had paid a heavy annual tribute as penance. More than twenty years under this burden had left the rival city weak and decaying, almost a personal possession of the high king.

“When the Sebianans laid siege to Veyre,” Memnet continued, “King Toth must have dearly wished for his former powers to repel them. He sent for me, begging my help, but I declined to throw my strength behind him, instead attempting to negotiate peace. Perhaps it was a mistake. It would seem that Toth found assistance in other quarters.”

Not long after the new king’s first war ended, other cities in the Eastern Khalifates began to fall under Veyre’s suzerainty, and Toth began to call himself not merely a khalif, but the high king. A king of kings.

King Toth seemed overly puffed up to Nathaliey, vainglorious even. That was the way of kings in all lands and times. But she’d never thought his motives evil. Not even when the drought that had held the khalifates in its grip these past five years gave the king pretext to build his highway. The road was ostensibly to protect the land from marauders and griffin riders, to bring food from the green lands on the other side of the mountains, but as the Tothian Way spread west, year by year, so did Toth’s power over the cities of the plains. The boast of being the high king was no longer mere puffery.

“Master, did you know already?” Narud asked.

“That my old companion had delved into the dark arts?” Memnet lifted himself partway from the water. “No, my friends. I am ashamed to say that I did not. I no longer trusted him, and I knew that Aristonia would suffer should the high king’s road pass through these lands. But I didn’t suspect him of necromancy. I have been blind.”

“And now?” Nathaliey asked. “What do you make of it?”

A shake of the head. “I don’t know the extent of his strength, but it’s obviously significant. He controls the souls of the dead—that is not something to be done lightly. He has assassins who can baffle and defeat our magic. They might even find the gardens if they are determined. And yet . . .”

Nathaliey seized on this. “And yet?”

“He has not been able to finish his business, has he? I am still alive. You are all still alive. And while I slept, a paladin and four apprentices fended off an attack. I expect another assault—very soon, in fact, and of increased ferocity—but we now recognize our enemy. We are not defenseless.”

“And now you have returned,” Chantmer said. “You’ll crush this sorcerer and send his miserable soul to the Harvester, where it belongs.”

“Me? No, my powers are crippled and may be for some extended period of time.”

“What are you saying?” Nathaliey asked.

“Simply this. If the enemy returns, I can guide and advise, but you must defend these gardens yourselves.”

Chapter Seventeen

Unlike Pasha Malik, who stared warily at Bronwyn without seeming to notice the second intruder in the room, King Toth’s eyes found Markal’s and held them. It was a compelling gaze, not unlike the master’s, and Markal found it hard to look away. A smile crossed the king’s face, an acknowledgment, and a promise.

You will be dealt with in time.

Then the king looked back to Bronwyn. “You have returned the sword.”

She didn’t look at him. Her eyes focused on the pasha, fixed in place, not noticing her surroundings. When fighting wights on the bridge, and again when battling the marauder in the road, she’d seemed to take in everything in a glance, seeing threats from all sides. There was something wrong with the intense focus on her face.

It was a ward or sorcerous device. Magic in this room affecting her. Something she’d been unable to batter through as she’d done with the protective spells of the gardens. The sorcerer must be near, must have anticipated her arrival. But where?

The pasha had drawn his sword and remained at the king’s side. But now Toth nodded at him. “Kill the barbarian.”

Malik frowned. “But the sword. You said—”

“Kill her!”

Malik was renowned as a swordsman who rode personally at the head of his troops, but he didn’t attack at once, instead studying his opponent warily. She studied Pasha Malik in turn, seeming to recognize a worthy foe. Neither paid the king or the apprentice any attention.

Markal found his voice. “No, Bronwyn. Not this one.”

She didn’t acknowledge him, but took a step toward her opponent. Soultrup shifted in her hands. It was a living, moving thing.

“Listen to me,” he urged. “You don’t want Malik’s soul in the sword. By the Brothers, you’ll have a fight if you do.”

“She doesn’t hear you,” the king said. “You are as beneath her notice as the spiders in the rafters.”

Markal grabbed Bronwyn’s arm. The paladin shoved him with a shoulder, and he flew back. Before he could regain his balance, she sprang at her enemy. Pasha Malik had been readying himself, but her attack was so swift that he barely raised his blade up in time. She drove his weapon down, but he ducked beneath the blow and came up swinging.

And then the two were fighting in a fury of clashing swords, shouts, attempts to drive the other back, to fight free or pin the enemy against the wall. Bronwyn fought in silence, but Malik cried out in fury every time he closed for an attack. He was a strong swordsman, but he couldn’t get past the paladin’s defenses, and she nearly caught him with a brutal counterattack before he battled his way clear.

And then she drew blood. It was only a nick on the arm, but he staggered back toward the king. Toth had stood passively, but now he scrambled aside as Bronwyn came forward, swinging at Malik.

The furious combat had momentarily distracted Markal, but he had a sudden moment of clarity. Finally, he understood. Yes, the necromancer was near. Very, very near.

“It’s the king!” he shouted. “Kill the king.”

Bronwyn’s eyes had a glazed, almost drunk look. “What?”

“King Toth is the sorcerer. Strike him down!”

She looked around, as if seeing her surroundings for the first time. Her eyes swept past the king. Markal searched for a spell that would dissipate the cloud that seemed to have come over her mind, but could find nothing he was capable of raising.

Malik used his opponent’s momentary distraction to hurl himself back into the fight. Bronwyn, her golden braid swinging about as she blocked and dodged, fell back before a flurry of blows. For a moment, it seemed as though she’d be overwhelmed, but she quickly regained the initiative. In an instant, she went from the defensive to battering her enemy while he fought desperately to turn aside her blows. Bronwyn drew blood a second time, this time a cut across Malik’s upper thigh.

Two soldiers burst into the room, perhaps drawn by the noise. They rushed past Markal, drawing swords as they charged in. Markal stuck out his foot and sent one of them sprawling. The other man leaped into the fray with a cry.

Bronwyn turned, blocked his blow, and brought Soultrup around in a devastating counterattack. The sword caught the soldier across the neck. He fell dead. She leaped over his body and thrust her sword tip into the second man’s back before he could rise from where Markal had tripped him. He cried out in pain as she jerked the sword out again.

Malik tried to take advantage of her distraction, but he was tired and wounded, and the paladin was ready for him by the time he returned to the fight. She smashed against his sword and drove him to his knees.

“Don’t kill him!” Markal cried as she lifted her weapon.

“Help me!” the pasha cried. “My lord!”

King Toth lifted his hand. Malik cried out and clutched his wounded thigh. Blood streamed between his fingers. The second guard, grievously wounded, but not yet dead, writhed in agony. Magical power swirled around the king. He was drawing it from his injured men.

“Markal,” Bronwyn said. She took a step back. “He is here. I feel him now. Where? By the Brothers, where is he? Where is the sorcerer?”

“Right in front of you! It’s the king. Swing your sword. Quickly!”

She stared past King Toth, clearly not seeing him, but she readied her stance, stopping only to shove her boot at Pasha Malik’s chest when he struggled to regain his feet. The pasha fell away. Bronwyn pulled back her sword to swing.

If there was any remaining doubt, it vanished when King Toth lifted his hands. He muttered words, dark and oily, that made Markal’s flesh crawl. The air blackened in front of him. It struck Bronwyn and threw her back.

She recovered quickly. Physically, anyway. There was a wild, confused light in her eyes, and Markal cried out in despair, trying to grab her around the waist as she turned her attention back to the pasha. Malik regained his feet. He hefted his sword and staggered toward the paladin. She wrenched free from Markal and swung her sword at Malik as he approached.

The blow cut past her enemy’s sword and hacked into his neck. He went down, spurting blood. Dead.

The instant Bronwyn rose again, her eyes were clear, and horror spread across her face. For the first time, her gaze fell upon the king. Rage replaced her confusion. She let out a cry and took a step toward him. Doubt flickered in Toth’s eyes. But Soultrup began to struggle in her hands as she lifted it to attack. In an instant, she was turned around, and she swung wildly toward Markal, sending him scurrying back to flatten against the wall.

“Bronwyn! Fight it.”

“I—I can’t! It’s the pasha—he’s got it now.”

“By the Brothers, you are a paladin of Eriscoba. You can do it.”

Bronwyn spun back toward the sorcerer. She lifted the sword with a cry, momentarily in control. Soultrup twisted in her hands, bending and curving as if it were a living thing. It slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground. She bent for it, but it rolled away.

The door burst open, and more soldiers poured into the room. There were six this time, panting, raised by some alarm. They’d already drawn swords, and if they’d come right at Bronwyn, she’d have been finished. But they stopped to take in the scene in front of them: two dead guards, their pasha slaughtered, the high king standing to one side, a barbarian struggling to pick up a massive two-handed sword. And still, nobody saw Markal.

“Bronwyn!” he warned.

She danced backward as the first, most alert of the guards came at her. She nearly tripped over Malik’s body, and grabbed the first thing she could find. It wasn’t Soultrup, but the pasha’s own sword, with its long blade curved at the tip. In a moment, she was fighting all six men.

Because Soultrup was out of her hands and she was already tired from her fight, Markal expected her to fall at once. But she wounded the first attacker and killed the second before her enemies had a chance to regroup. Two more men entered the room as the survivors from the first group tried to encircle her.

One of the newcomers tried to push his way into the fight, but the other spotted Soultrup, which was almost pulsing with red. His eyes widened, and he dropped his weapon and bent for the red sword.

“Do not touch it!” the king roared.

The soldier paid Toth no attention. There was something about the sword that seemed to compel him, and soon his hands closed around the hilt. Markal saw the thing as nothing but a malignancy. Pasha Malik’s soul was trapped inside now, and he’d thrown his strength to Bronwyn’s enemies. Already, control had been tenuous; what chance did Bronwyn have now? It had been turned to evil purposes, and it would be deadly in the soldier’s hands.

But Markal understood at once why the king wanted the sword left alone. If the Veyrian soldier picked it up and killed Bronwyn, her soul would join her brother’s in the fight to control the weapon. The sword might be turned once more.

The soldier lifted the weapon with a triumphant cry. The king lifted his hands, eyes flashing with rage. The wounded cried out in agony as he drew their pain.

Meanwhile, Bronwyn was still on her feet, still uninjured, but tiring. She was more than a match for any one of these men, but without Soultrup, it was only a matter of time.

Now was Markal’s chance. Quickly, while the king was distracted.

Put Bronwyn’s opponents to sleep.

It was the only spell Markal could think of. He’d cast it earlier that day, and a second casting would be weaker—especially with his exhausted condition—but it was a spell he could manage, and if he made their enemies sluggish, they might yet escape. He put his hands palm down and drew his strength.

Or tried. There was nothing left. He was drained. Not so much as a single drop of blood rose to the surface.

By the Brothers. You can do it.

A spear of shadow thrust from the king’s hands. It struck the wayward Veyrian soldier in the chest and threw him across the room. The soldier’s face twisted in anguish, and the flesh seemed to be sucked out of his body as he hit the wall. He slumped facedown, a withered husk. The sword clattered at Markal’s feet. The king staggered backward, weakened by the effect of his own magic.

Bronwyn cried out in pain. One of the swordsmen had got past her defenses and cut her right arm. She ducked from another attacker, but this one struck her a terrific blow on the breastplate and knocked her against the wall. Her sword fell from her wounded arm. The enemy swarmed her, and she went down. Sword points stabbed again and again. Bronwyn cried out once more, then fell silent as they continued thrusting. Markal stared in horror.

Soultrup lay at Markal’s feet, vibrating. Shadows curled along the surface like black mist rising from water. It was the remainder of the king’s sorcerous power, bleeding away. He snatched up the sword and ran for the door.

“Stop him!” the king cried.

Soultrup moved and twisted in Markal’s hands like a snake. For a moment it was a snake, writhing, biting, sinking its fangs into his hand. He nearly dropped it. There were voices, too.

Throw me down.

No, you must fall on the sword. Let it take your soul.

Do not listen to them.

You will die, boy.

Worship me.

A hundred voices, most of which never rose above an incoherent wail. The Harvester take him; how many were there? Above them, came a calm, sane voice. For a moment he thought it was Bronwyn, but then he remembered seeing her fall to the Veyrian soldiers while Soultrup lay smoking at his feet. But it was a voice very much like hers, calm and yet commanding at the same time.

Hurry, Markal. There isn’t much time.

More Veyrians came running. Other soldiers staggered, bleeding, from the building at his back. There was confused shouting, and King Toth was pushing through them, trying to get outside.

Yet nobody seemed to see Markal. Was it the remnants of his spell, the red sword itself, or something else entirely? He didn’t know, but there was his mare, still standing next to Bronwyn’s horse. Nobody paid either animal any attention.

He gained the saddle even as the confusion gathered all around. Soultrup kept fighting him, but he got control long enough to thrust it into his saddlebag. The tip speared out the bottom. Soldiers kept appearing, now joined by laborers with mallets or stones wielded as brickbats. He turned the horse toward the gates, certain he would be swarmed, but nobody challenged him.

A warning tickle raised the hairs on the back of his neck, and he turned to see the king standing apart from his men, some of whom had started staggering toward Markal as his horse broke into a trot. Toth raised his hands and pointed. Men cried out as a lance of shadow formed at the king’s hands. Once again, Toth was drawing pain from his own men. He hurled the shadowy lance toward Markal, who braced himself to be torn apart.

But the distance was too great. Or perhaps the king, powerful as he was, had spent too much of his power. It lost strength as it flew, and was like a blast of sandy wind driven off the desert when it hit. When the attack passed, Markal felt nauseated, but remained in the saddle. The horse picked up speed as they cleared the gates and ran down the dirt path toward the king’s road, some twenty yards distant.

As Markal reached the road, workers and soldiers turned away, their attention dragged elsewhere. Even donkeys pulling carts shied away.

It must be his spell from earlier, still hanging about him. It had to be. It was stronger than he’d thought, but by all that was holy, why had the magic failed him at the last moment? He’d needed one last incantation, one last surge of strength to make the enemy soldiers weaken before they overwhelmed Bronwyn. He hadn’t managed, and now she was dead. He’d seen the sword thrusts, heard her dying cry.

He angrily fought down the lump of pain in his throat and the tears that came to his eyes. He had no time for it, couldn’t afford to lay blame on himself, not now. He had to escape with the sword before it fell into Toth’s hands. That was his only purpose now.

Markal galloped up the road. He was tempted to touch the sword hilt to see what it said. Blood of the Path, that would be stupid.

Instead, he rode for a quarter of a mile or so, then cut left, toward the forest. There was a natural opening in the trees, not very wide, but enough to allow horse and rider through. No doubt he’d have to make his way on foot at some point, but the longer he could ride, the better.

He picked his way along for nearly an hour before he smelled smoke filtering through the damp green woods. Soon, the air was thick with it, and the roar of crackling and splitting trees drowned out all sound.

It seemed the enemy was hunting him with fire.

Chapter Eighteen

The fire drew closer for a half hour, until Markal was afraid he’d have to abandon his poor horse to outrun the flames on foot, but then he happened upon a deer trail. He picked up speed, and the choking smoke receded.

The horse was trembling and exhausted when he stopped at a stream an hour later to let it drink. He took a little wine and ate a piece of cheese. He was almost faint with exhaustion and hunger, and the food and drink helped.

He patted his mare on the neck. “There, you’ll be all right. I think we’ve escaped—not like our friends, eh? At least your friend is still alive. Probably doomed to carry some arrogant pasha, but it’s a warhorse, and they’re too valuable to pull a cart.”

Markal wasn’t Narud—he couldn’t communicate directly to the mare—but speaking aloud calmed him. He was still alive, and that was a start.

He eyed Soultrup. The sword tip had worked further through the hole in the bottom of the saddlebag. He couldn’t wait much longer or it might slip through entirely. No doubt the cursed thing was purposefully working to saw itself free.

Markal found a spare shirt in the opposite bag, wrapped it around his hand, and gingerly touched Soultrup’s hilt. Nothing, not even a whisper. He lifted it out and set it on the ground. It wasn’t gleaming red, but dried blood caked the surface, making it look ugly and vicious. He found a needle and thread in Bronwyn’s gear and stitched up the hole in the leather saddlebag.

“That should keep my supplies from falling out,” he said. “Now what about the blasted sword?”

The horse had calmed a little, and found a patch of weeds sprouting where the forest opened to let a shaft of daylight to the forest floor. It looked up from cropping at the plants.

“Go ahead,” he told it. “Don’t let me disturb your supper.”

Markal drank the rest of the wine from the skin, then tore the spare shirt into strips. Using the empty wineskin like a mitten to hold the sword while he worked, he wrapped the linen strips around the blade until he had it covered in a makeshift scabbard. Then he used a length of rope to tie it to the saddlebags. It would be more secure there, so long as he didn’t do something stupid like reach out to touch the hilt.

“Ready to go?” he asked the horse. “You’re tired—I won’t make you carry me—but if I can walk, so can you. Come on, we’ve got a long journey ahead of us.”

It was late afternoon, and he didn’t want to spend the night in the forest. He remembered a small brook that cut through the forest, and he guessed it connected with Blossom Creek. Did this stream lead to the larger brook? If so, he could find the brook, follow it by moonlight until he reached open country, and from there locate Blossom Creek. That would lead him home.

But shortly, the stream fell over a series of cataracts that he couldn’t descend. When he tried to go around, he lost its path. It was soon late afternoon, and the light flickering through the forest canopy turned dim, spreading a carpet of shadows across the forest floor. Markal kept groping forward looking for the stream, but growing increasingly frustrated.

Suddenly, the hairs stood up on the back of his neck and arms. He grabbed the horse’s reins.

There was something moving off somewhere to his right. He couldn’t see it, and it made no sound that rose above the chatter of birds, but when he turned his head, the breeze carried the sharp tang of magic. It was distant yet, but definitely there. The horse shivered and tossed its head.

“Quiet now,” he whispered.

Moving more carefully, his senses on high alert, Markal bent to the left. He needed to go generally right, in a southeasterly direction, but he couldn’t do that until he got around whatever he was sensing. Unfortunately, that course carried him back toward the Tothian Way, and when the wind shifted again, he smelled smoke.

It was then that he stumbled across the brook, burbling along. Never mind the small stream he’d been searching for earlier, he’d found its destination and could follow it out of the forest. There was better light here, too, and a gravel riverbank to follow. He urged the horse to hurry so he could take advantage of the dying sunlight.

A crash in the brush and movement to his left caught his attention. He froze and listened for voices, but heard nothing. But it wasn’t his imagination—the bushes were still quivering. It must be an animal.

As if to confirm his thoughts, a snarl rumbled from the brush. By the Brothers, a wolf? There were no wolves native to Aristonia, although nearby khalifates had seen starving packs come in off the drought-stricken northern highlands. It could be that. But what of the scent of magic he’d caught earlier? This might be no ordinary predator.

The horse was trembling violently, and he loosened his grip on the reins. It pulled him into motion. They’d traveled at least a dozen miles since dawn, but the horse had plenty of energy now that they were threatened. Markal trotted to keep up.

The beast kept pace in the trees and brush at their left. Every once in a while, a long shadow showed itself, and when he paused to catch his breath, there was another growl, more sinister sounding. Finally, man and horse came around a bend in the creek to find a large shape blocking their way.

At first glance, it looked like a massive wolf, nearly the size of a lion, but when it stared at them, eyes gleaming in the darkness, there was something strange about the head. No, not a wolf. A dog. A wolfhound. A huge animal with massive jaws. There was cunning intelligence in its eyes and magic hanging about its body that mingled with its musky scent.

Markal’s heart pounded in fear. He jerked the horse’s reins and crossed the brook to get away from the beast and onto the far bank. It splashed after them, and he whirled, lifting his arms to protect his face and neck, but it didn’t spring at him. Instead it veered into the brush and vanished.

The right bank was steeper, with large gnarled trees bent over the water, and he could no longer easily follow the brook. He brought the horse up the bank and into the woods, and soon couldn’t hear the gurgling water. Only his sharp eyes allowed them to move forward at all, as it was now quite dark.

The enormous dog was on the move again. Twice, it came crashing along in the brush, once from the left, the other time keeping pace to the right. A sinister growl sounded deep in its chest. Markal had been following another deer path, but suddenly a fallen tree blocked their way, and standing on it was the dog. It snarled and sprang at him.

Somehow, both Markal and his horse got into the trees and left the dog behind. It was toying with them. No, it was driving them. North and west instead of south and east. The sorcerer must have sent the creature to track Markal down and force him back toward danger.

Markal tried several times to push in the opposite direction, but every time he did so, the dog came snarling out of the brush to drive them back on course. He must have retraced most of his steps by now, although the prevailing wind pushed the smoke away, so it was hard to tell for sure. Once, Markal tried to raise magic to drive the animal away, but he still had nothing.

And then, moonlight. Markal and his mare came staggering out of the woods and into an open, grassy valley. Where the blazes was he?

The dog emerged from the woods behind them, pacing back and forth and growling when Markal tried to retreat to the forest. He thought briefly about mounting the horse and making a run for it, but there was no way the mare could carry him, as tired as it was. His eyes fell on the sword. What if he tore off the linen strips and swung it at the dog? No, that was madness.

Markal felt suddenly compelled to look over his shoulder and away from the animal. There was nothing there. When he turned back around, the dog was gone. In his place was a man standing naked beneath the gibbous moon. Narud.

“You!” Markal said. Relief flooded through him. “That was you all along?”

Narud cocked his head. “What a strange sensation. My mind was clear enough, but I couldn’t seem to control my thoughts. It was . . . different.”

“Blood of the Path, what were you doing?”

“You wouldn’t believe the smells. I sensed the horse at two miles, you at a mile. It’s like seeing something right in front of your face, only it’s a scent. Come on.”

“Narud, will you explain yourself? I’m exhausted and have no time for games. Where are we?”

“Agria. Don’t you recognize it? You came through here yesterday—can’t you smell it? And the barbarian. She was here with you. I can smell her, too.”

“How is that possible? Isn’t Agria in . . . ?”

Markal started to point in the direction he’d been trying to travel, but caught a glimpse of the position of the moon and the stars in the sky. They were all wrong, and he felt spun around and disoriented. He cursed.

“I don’t know where you thought you were going,” Narud said, “but you were following some stream that was going to take you north to the king’s highway. Markal, he’s a wizard. King Toth is a sorcerer, a necromancer. It was him all along.”

“I know.” Markal felt suddenly weary and depressed.

“Where is Bronwyn now? I smelled blood on the sword, but it’s not the paladin’s. Was she captured?”

“She’s gone, Narud. She slew Pasha Malik, but couldn’t get to the king. Then Veyrian soldiers overwhelmed her. Thank the Brothers I recovered her weapon. It has turned against us.”

“I see.” Narud’s voice was grim, and for a long moment, neither man spoke. “The master is awake, Markal.”

“Ah, so that’s how you shifted to a dog. Memnet did it.”

“Memnet is weak, recovering. No, it was another wizard who turned me.”

“Another wizard? Who?” Markal asked, bewildered.

“Come on, we have to hurry. I was pushing you, forcing you through the woods. There are enemies searching for you, and there’s no time to waste. That’s why I menaced you back there—I had to make you think I’d tear your throat out or you’d have stopped moving.”

“You couldn’t have found some other way to communicate? Use your paw to scratch a message in the dirt or something? Bark and stare in the right direction? Hell, even sniff my crotch in a friendly way?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Narud said solemnly. “My thoughts were not so coherent. You should try being a dog sometime and you’ll see what I mean.”

“No, thanks.”

“Listen to me, Markal, the enemy is going to find your earlier trail and track you back to the gardens. And it will be men this time, and maybe even the sorcerer. We have to get back and prepare the defenses.”

“All right, I get it. Come on.”

They soon reached the abandoned village of Agria. Now that Markal knew what had become of the villagers, enslaved to work for the high king, the place had a dismal, forlorn air. The huts and cottages looked like tombstones beneath the moonlight, a long row of them on either side of the rutted path that served as the village road.

They stopped long enough to break into a crofter’s hut and steal a pair of worn sandals for Narud and a tunic to throw over his naked body. Narud was more taciturn than the other three apprentices, preferring the company of sparrows and earthworms to humans, but tonight he was energized by his transformation into a dog. In spite of the danger and their haste to return to the gardens, he couldn’t stop sharing observations: what things smelled like, how his sight differed, what it meant to think like a dog, the thrill of running flat out.

“Next time, I’ll try something different,” Narud said. “There’s no end to it—you only need a slight modification of the incantation. I could turn into a hedgehog if I wanted, or a badger. How about a meadow vole? Imagine what that would be like. Such bright, sharp thoughts, although regrettably, not very clever.”

“Not much point in it,” Markal said, “unless you fancy being scooped up by an owl.”

“Very well then, I’ll turn myself into the owl. Surely you can see the value of that.” Narud frowned. “Of course, that might take more power, I’m not sure. It took plenty to manage a dog, I can tell you that.”

Markal’s exhaustion had only grown with Narud’s appearance. He’d been as taut as a bowstring during the flight from the wolfhound, and with the dissipation of that energy, he felt every mile he’d walked. He was footsore, muscles aching, body demanding sleep to recover from the expenditure of magic. He’d been happy enough to let Narud prattle on, but now he studied his companion.

“Yes, about that power. Who is this other wizard? Someone from Memnet’s old order? How did he find us?”

The corner of Narud’s mouth lifted mischievously. “Quite strange. I never expected it. Thought it would be Chantmer or Nathaliey. I’ll bet you did, too.”

“Narud, I am too tired for this. Will you stop babbling and tell me straight out so I can put my thoughts to other matters?”

“Would you believe that I’m the wizard? It’s me, Markal! Of course, I have decades yet of study ahead of me, but I’m no longer an apprentice. Memnet proclaimed it. I’m really a wizard.”

Narud explained how he’d worked with Chantmer and Nathaliey to master a spell Jethro sent them from the library, but Markal scarcely paid attention. He fought down an annoyed shrug. So what? Why should it take all three of them an entire night?

Bringing up the magic to do it was another matter entirely. Markal didn’t know the spell in question (though he was sure he could hold the thing in his head after an hour or two of intense study), but guessed at its classification. An impressive feat for three apprentices to gather the power. Even more impressive for the one who channeled it. That was Narud. The master had apparently been impressed, too. Raised from the dead—who wouldn’t find that impressive?

But what did it mean? Memnet could proclaim Narud a wizard, but that didn’t make him more powerful, any more than placing a crown on a man’s head made him more wise and kingly. King Toth’s horrific turn to necromancy attested to that. Declaring Narud a full-fledged wizard wouldn’t fill the former apprentice’s head with more arcana, nor raise the blood any faster to his pores. It wouldn’t make the incantations any less slippery in his mind or on his tongue.

And what did it mean for the other three apprentices? Were they supposed to defer to Narud now? That was hard to imagine. Never mind Chantmer’s pride, Nathaliey’s self-confidence, or Markal’s own knowledge, for that matter, Narud lacked the authority to impose his will.

So he was a wizard. When it came to it, weren’t they all wizards, after a fashion? To an outsider, even an archivist like Jethro had the ability to come and go without being seen, to muddle the thoughts of enemies, and to read books that would not even open for other men and women. That was wizardry.

So why should it matter that Memnet had given Narud a title? And yet it did matter. Markal could not convince himself otherwise. Narud had changed himself into a dog, a clear manifestation of power. Perhaps he wasn’t a great wizard like Memnet yet, but he was a wizard nonetheless.

How long for the others? That’s right, it wasn’t only Narud. Clearly, Chantmer and Nathaliey were on the cusp of such a transition themselves. None of the three would rival Memnet the Great, but they would earn the right to stand by his side.

And Markal? Relegated to the libraries. Of course he would be.

Chapter Nineteen

Nathaliey was working at the north gate just after dawn when Markal and Narud appeared leading an exhausted, stumbling horse. She was relieved to see them both, but especially Markal, and she threw her arms around his neck before she remembered herself. He returned a weary smile.

“I was worried,” she said. “I have to admit I—wait, where is the paladin?”

His smile vanished. “Bronwyn fell.”

The news was a blow, and it was all Nathaliey could do not to stagger back. But fresh hope rose when her eyes fell on the long, straight sword tied to the saddlebags. Its scabbard was gone, and someone had wrapped it in linen strips, but there was no doubt it was the same weapon.

“Don’t touch it!” he said sharply as she reached for the hilt.

She jerked back her hand. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“It is not under our power.” His tone was frightened; the weapon seemed to terrify him.

Nathaliey dragged her eyes away. “And the sorcerer?”

“Still alive.”

“I see.”

The paladin dead, the sword turned against them. Markal’s journey had been a disaster, but at least he was alive. She was grateful for that much.

They left the horse at the stables, where one of the hands led the exhausted animal in to be groomed, fed, and watered. They emptied the saddlebags, but left the sword attached. Narud carried the bags by the leather strap so no one would have to touch the weapon. The three of them entered the gardens and crossed toward the Golden Pavilion, where the master was meditating with Chantmer.

As they walked, Markal shared the details of the disastrous assault on King Toth. Bronwyn had killed Pasha Malik, but at the cost of her own life and the loss of Soultrup. Markal seemed bitter about his own failures.

“None of this is your fault,” Nathaliey told him. “Bronwyn wanted to confront him, and you couldn’t have stopped her.”

“But if I’d been stronger, I could have helped.”

“You kept Soultrup from the enemy. That is something.”

“I suppose.” Markal paused. “Your father returned to Syrmarria?”

“He left last night. The khalif has bowed his head to the high king and allowed Veyrians to occupy the city. My father is a vizier and now subject to King Toth’s whims. He had no choice.”

“Kandibar will leave a trail. One more path for the enemy to find us.”

“I know that,” Nathaliey said. “But if we get him back to the palace, he could be of use.”

Markal looked doubtful at this, and to be honest, that hadn’t been her primary motivation. They already had eyes and ears in the palace in the form of Jethro, Karla, and the other archivists. But it was a kindness to return her father to Syrmarria. His actions constituted treason, and if he were caught, the torturers would get first claim on his body before he was killed.

It was a beautiful day in the gardens, and the air was filled with buzzing honeybees, the scent of flowers, and a cooling breeze that sighed through the boughs of the peach and cherry trees. But though the flagstone paths were solid beneath her feet, it felt as though she were walking over rotting timbers. Every step threatened to break through.

The oldest runes in the garden, those grown into the trunks of ancient oaks and carved in the stone beneath creeping tendrils of ivy, seemed fragile and faded. Nathaliey paused and ran her fingers over a stone pillar carved with three entwined snakes. The pillar was a sentinel, and its runes a powerful defense. But the snakes had almost retreated into the stone, the scales worn away, the heads and bodies undetectable except by touch.

“I don’t understand,” she said, hurrying to catch up to the others. “I could see the snakes a few weeks ago. They must have been there for generations. Why now?”

“That stone was placed by an old order of wizards,” Markal said. “Memnet was its last member. When he was killed, it began to disappear. A few more weeks and it would have been gone entirely.”

“Then we should be able to reclaim the old magic,” she said. “As Memnet recovers, the defenses should strengthen. We only need to turn aside the enemy for a few more weeks and all will be right again.”

“Ah, yes,” Markal said. “Merely that.” He patted Narud’s shoulder. “Good thing we have a second wizard, right? Otherwise, we’d be doomed.”

She thought Markal’s comment unfair. Good thing Narud wasn’t insecure about his abilities, because that surely would have set off a crippling sequence of doubts. Instead, he merely looked thoughtful.

“Anyway,” Markal said, looking thoughtful himself, as if regretting his words, “our defenses can be strengthened. The more time we have, the better, but we’re not helpless, even now.”

The prayer bell rang from the shrine as they left the woods. The deep, sonorous note rolled across the open space between the lake and the forest. It rang a second time, and then a third.

The Golden Pavilion gleamed on the edge of the lake, beckoning, and the three companions quickened their pace as they approached. The sound of chanting voices carried through the air. Narud set the empty saddlebags holding the sword at the base of the pavilion, and the three of them climbed the stairs.

Memnet and Chantmer faced each other cross-legged on the raised platform in front of the prayer bell. The seven acolytes sat in a circle around them, except for the one who had been ringing the bell, who stood poised with the beam to ring it again. The others chanted a mantra of tranquility and protection.

Here we are, Nathaliey thought. Gathered to protect our order from destruction. Will it be enough?

#

The garden had been strengthening Markal as he crossed its sunlit paths and green meadows, and the chiming bell now raised his spirits. It rang one more time after he had scaled the steps with his two companions. And there he was, Memnet the Great, sitting with Chantmer, the pair surrounded by acolytes. It was a scene that had played out hundreds of times, but seemed almost startling in its normalcy after the past weeks of violence and struggle.

Memnet opened his eyes as the ringing dissipated and smiled at Markal. “Well met, friend.”

“Master. I am so happy to see you awake.”

“Awake, but rather enfeebled, alas.”

“You look like an emaciated corpse, frankly.”

Chantmer scowled at this, but Memnet chuckled. “That is probably understating it, unless said dead person had first fallen into a deep, sunless cave and starved to death.”

“Bronwyn was killed, Master.”

“I sensed you and Narud entering alone and guessed as much. Still, it is a blow. Come, all of you. Sit down.” He shook his head as the acolytes parted, and the three newcomers began to take their seats. “Not there, Narud. You will sit by my side.”

“Yes, Master.” Narud slid over.

“Listen, all of you,” Memnet said. His voice was quiet, barely above a whisper, yet there was something penetrating about it. “Mistakes have been made. No, let me take responsibility. I have made mistakes. Yet you have persevered, hiding the gardens, searching for new information, and fighting off enemy attacks in my absence. Well done, all of you.”

There were a few murmurs at this.

“Our defenses held, but they are weakened. Perhaps fatally. The enemy, in his restless searching, has never found this place. A month ago, I’d have said no enemy ever could. Now I believe it is only a matter of time. Perhaps days. He moves unopposed through the land, and he commands the spirits of the dead. They, too, are sniffing for us. The wards that protect this garden are insufficient. They will fail. They have already failed.”

“What can we do?” Nathaliey said. A rough edge of frustration marred her tone. “We could work day and night and it wouldn’t be enough. We need more time.”

“Time is something we don’t have,” Memnet said. “The enemy is too close. He’ll surely discover us and throw his full might against our walls. Meanwhile, we’ll do what we can to keep the gardens hidden as long as we can. Every hour, every day is important.”

A thought that had been planted in Markal’s mind upon his flight from the high king now bloomed in full. “What if we were to abandon our attempts to hide?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Chantmer said. “If we do that, the enemy will be at our throat.”

“The master says that is inevitable.”

“Are you saying we should invite them in?”

“Yes, exactly that.”

Memnet studied Markal. “Why do you say that?”

“The sorcerer is a formidable foe,” Markal said. “His magic has burned a gash in the Sacred Forest. You would have to see it to appreciate the destruction. Then there are the wights. That’s magical power, but Toth also commands an army of Veyrians. And he’s only growing stronger.”

Chantmer shook his head. “And you want us to reveal ourselves? The Veyrian army is three days’ march from here. There is some untold number of wights ready to swarm us. And these gray-faced warriors—you forgot about them. What happens when they arrive together, with the high king among them, raising his sorcery?”

“Patience, Chantmer,” Memnet said. “Go on, Markal.”

Chantmer had raised a good point. Markal was more uncertain now, and licked his lips as he glanced at Narud and Nathaliey and then the acolytes, all of whom were studying him with some mixture of worry and hope.

“King Toth is overeager,” Markal said. “That is his weakness. His reach exceeds his grasp. We can turn that against him.”

“Your evidence, Markal?” Memnet asked.

He explained. The order had been blind to the threat developing to the north. Toth had not only concealed his true nature, but his road-building effort was more advanced than they’d guessed. The high king had been entirely successful to date, so why hadn’t he continued until his efforts were discovered, and then attack Memnet? Why had he sent assassins to kill the master on the Spice Road?

“An attack of opportunity,” Memnet said. “Nathaliey and I were outside the gardens and vulnerable.”

“She escaped, though, and escaped again when Pasha Malik had her thrown into the dungeons,” Markal said. “When Bronwyn failed to kill Toth, the high king still did not secure the sword. He is not invincible.”

“You caught him by surprise,” Memnet said. “You salvaged a small victory through luck. Even then, the paladin is dead, the sword turned against us.”

“I escaped into the woods, but King Toth found my trail,” Markal continued. “He tried to burn me out. I was tired, I thought I’d escaped. He had every opportunity to catch me, but he threw fire at me. With more caution, he would have snared me, but I smelled smoke, and I got away. And that was on top of an error he made killing one of his soldiers, who tried to pick up the red sword. He used excessive force, and didn’t have enough magic to finish me before I escaped.

“My point is, I would be dead if not for the sorcerer’s errors. We all would be. King Toth lunges too hard and too fast. That is his weakness, and I see no reason we couldn’t encourage it.”

“I think I understand,” Nathaliey said. “May I speak, Master?”

Memnet nodded. “Go ahead.”

“We let slip the runes that hide us,” she said. “The enemy discovers us and attacks before he is ready.”

“We could do the same thing in three weeks when the master has healed,” Chantmer said. “We’ll be stronger then.”

“We don’t have three weeks,” Markal said. “You heard the master—we have days, at best. Let’s not be naive—every day that goes by strengthens the enemy more than it strengthens us, because he has more resources to draw upon. It gives him a chance to consolidate men-at-arms, wights, and magic into one unholy army.”

“So you invite the battle,” Chantmer said. “Is that your plan?”

The acolytes were murmuring, but Markal ignored them and continued.

“Yes, we invite the fight, but on the battlefield of our own choosing.” Markal gestured at their surroundings. “The garden is our sanctuary, our citadel. When it is assaulted, we hold the walls as long as we can. When the enemy breaks in, he will discover our true strength.”

“With nothing but apprentices, acolytes, and a handful of keepers?” Chantmer said. “Not much of a garrison for your citadel, is it?”

“We have a wizard,” Nathaliey said.

“The master cannot fight. He said so himself.” Chantmer glanced at Memnet, as if for confirmation, but the master stroked his chin with a thoughtful expression and didn’t say anything.

“That isn’t who I mean,” Nathaliey said, and nodded in Narud’s direction.

Chantmer shrugged. “Excuse me, I suppose we have one wizard, young as he is. Plus a few apprentices and some assorted others.”

“Two young wizards,” Memnet said. They all looked him, and he nodded. “Markal has now joined the ranks.”

It was as bracing as a bucket of spring water splashed in Markal’s face. “What? Me?”

“Yes, you. You have proven your wisdom, seeing beyond our enemy’s actions to his motivations. To his weaknesses. You have the knowledge, Markal, and you have put in the years of study and contemplation. You are ready to take your place in the ranks of wizards.”

When Markal had first heard of Narud’s elevation to wizard, he’d been surprised and a little resentful, perhaps. Markal was the older of the two, and had studied longer. He knew more, and that knowledge gave him insight into the other apprentice’s weaknesses. Knowledge was slippery in Narud’s mind and on his tongue. He had weak insight into human nature and was more comfortable with beasts and fowl than with humans. These were deficiencies that would take decades to correct—they might not even be fixable at all.

But at the same time, Markal had known the day was coming when Narud would become a wizard. He’d expected it to be Nathaliey first, or perhaps even Chantmer. But sooner or later, all three of his companions would become wizards.

But him? And before Chantmer and Nathaliey? What was the master thinking? Markal couldn’t manage a fifth of the power the others could summon, not unless the wind was fully in his sails thanks to some bit of lucky concentration or other unusual circumstance. How rare was it that he raised his full power? It might happen once a year, if that.

Memnet the Great must have seen the looks passing among the acolytes and the doubt on the faces of Markal’s three companions, because he pressed on with his explanation.

“There’s magic hanging about you now, Markal. Spells you cast while on the road with the paladin. A spell to put enemies to sleep, another to hide yourself. You used magic to confront a sorcerer of immense power, and you bested him.”

“I didn’t best him. Bronwyn fell, and the high king still lives. The sword has turned against us. If I’d faced the high king directly, I’d be dead.”

Memnet smiled. “I know what you’re thinking. You don’t feel any different, and you won’t. You have taken an incremental step, but it is a step. Someday, you will grow into more than you can imagine.”

That was doubtful. Markal could imagine a great deal. He could imagine castles floating on clouds. He could imagine controlling a dragon or making the earth open and swallow an entire city. He could imagine all sorts of things that he would never manage.

Markal now saw Memnet’s proclamation for what it was: an act of desperation.

#

“It’s ridiculous, and you know it,” Chantmer told Nathaliey.

“I’m not going to speak ill of Markal,” she said stubbornly. “Or the master.”

“Of course not. That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Why shouldn’t I be pleased for him? It’s a great honor, and it was delivered in front of the entire order.”

“Oh, I know. You and Markal are great friends. Practically brother and sister.” Chantmer wiped a bloody palm on the cloth at his waist. “But you and I both know he isn’t ready. He’s unlikely to ever be ready.”

Keepers were laboring all around them, five of them in this little walled garden alone, and Nathaliey squirmed to be discussing it in front of them. She turned away from Chantmer and felt along the wall, fingers poking through the ivy. The keepers were breaking down old runes of concealment, while Chantmer and Nathaliey worked to reinforce those whose primary purpose was defense.

“I understand Narud,” Chantmer said. “He has power in him, I’ll grant that. Turned into a dog—I certainly can’t manage that yet. Someday, he’ll turn into a goat or a toad and forget to change back, but at least he’s capable. Markal isn’t.”

Nathaliey couldn’t help herself. “We don’t know yet what Markal is capable of. He’s still growing into his powers.”

“Oh, please. Growing implies, well, growth. Are you seeing it? I’m not.”

An acolyte came in to lend strength to the keepers, and stopped to consult with Nathaliey about the wording of an incantation, which gave her an excuse to ignore Chantmer’s question. When the man left, she turned back to her fellow apprentice.

“Why don’t you ask Memnet yourself?”

“The master knows my thoughts,” Chantmer said. “He could have read my expression well enough. Anyway, he asked me about it earlier, before we started meditating.”

“What do you mean?”

“Asked me which of the apprentices would be ready next.”

This took her aback. Memnet hadn’t asked her any such thing. “And you said yourself, I’m guessing.”

“Naturally. There was no point in false modesty.”

“I wasn’t really looking for the ‘false’ variety.”

“Why wouldn’t I have said I was ready?” Chantmer asked. “I wouldn’t have claimed it a few days ago, not precisely, but that’s because I was comparing myself to the master. Compared to Narud, my skills hold up well. Yours do too, for that matter. I suggested elevating both of us, if you’d like to know the truth.”

“Oh.”

“Does that surprise you?” Chantmer asked. “Well, it shouldn’t. I think highly of your abilities.”

“Apparently, the master doesn’t agree.”

“It won’t be long. If Markal was elevated, surely we will be, too. Unless the master wants to teach us some lesson about pride and make us wait a few years. I don’t see the point in it. I’m confident, not arrogant.”

“If you say so,” Nathaliey said.

The two apprentices kept working until they had no more blood to draw. It was early afternoon, and Nathaliey was drained, bleary-eyed. The sun seemed too bright, the ground too hard beneath her feet. She retreated to her cottage, planning to sleep until roused for the evening meal.

The sunlight was slanting at a low angle through the open shutters when she woke to someone pounding for her to open up. Nathaliey opened the door to discover a young acolyte by the name of Alyssa, a Syrmarrian who’d grown up in the palace, as she had. Sweat dampened the young woman’s temples, and she was out of breath from running.

“What is it?” Nathaliey asked, frowning.

“Come quickly!” Alyssa cried. “We’ve been found!”

Chapter Twenty

Nathaliey’s first surprise on reaching the north gate was that it had become a gate in fact, rather than in name only. It seemed that carpenters from the stables had been hard at work making a single wooden door to shut the opening. What she saw was not particularly impressive.

She’d seen real fortresses before. A good gate was two feet thick, reinforced with iron, flanked by guard towers, and boasted an iron portcullis to fall in place. This gate was flimsy in comparison. It wouldn’t withstand a determined effort to tear it down with ropes and a few mules, let alone a battering ram like the kind Veyrian engineers could build.

The outer wall of the garden was simple brick, thick enough and high enough for privacy, but with little in the way of defensive considerations, at least physically. There was no wall walk above, no parapet behind which to hide. No arrow loops for shooting at enemies. It had none of the features to be found in a stout city wall or the outer curtain of a castle.

A pair of ladders had been thrown against the interior of the wall on either side of the gate, with a wooden platform affixed up top that served a similar purpose to a wall walk. A pair of keepers kept watch up above on the left side of the gate, and Chantmer was on the right. He gestured impatiently for Nathaliey to climb the ladder.

Alyssa was wringing her hands nervously, and Nathaliey put a hand on her shoulder. “Go to the master. He’s in his cottage.”

“Chantmer says the master is asleep. He says—”

“I’m not telling you to wake Memnet. But I think he’s alone, and I can’t have that.”

Alyssa hurried off, and Nathaliey climbed up. Moments later, she was kneeling by Chantmer’s side, looking out over the wall.

“I’m glad you sent off that silly girl,” Chantmer said. “She’s too young and excitable.”

“She’s afraid. That’s understandable.”

“I don’t expect her to amount to much. Eight months in the gardens and she has already been relegated to an acolyte—that indicates some limitations, don’t you think?”

Nathaliey had now had a chance to take in the scene outside the gardens. “What’s this? There’s only one man. You woke me for that? Chantmer, please.”

The intruder was a tall, strong fellow wearing a brown cloak, who staggered down the road from the direction of the bridge over Blossom Creek. He wore a sword, but it wasn’t drawn. His left hand held a shield, which dangled until it nearly dragged on the ground, and the right clenched a cord of leather wrapped around his fist. It was a clear afternoon, with the sun dropping in a blaze of orange and gold in the west, but the man squinted as if stumbling through the darkness.

“Are those reins?” Nathaliey asked. “What happened to his horse?”

“It threw him and chewed through the reins before it ran off. Watch. This is quite interesting.”

The man approached until he was about twenty yards away, struggling more with every step. At last, he stopped, turned around with a look of confusion, and staggered back up the road.

“Interesting,” Chantmer said.

Nathaliey sighed. “I’m sure it is, but I was asleep, and I’m still groggy. It was my turn to rest, and I meant to use every minute of it.”

“He gets closer every time. It’s definitely weakening—the protection that keeps us hidden, I mean. Next time, I imagine he’ll reach the gate.”

“One man,” she repeated. “That doesn’t look so difficult. Surely you could dominate this one fellow. He looks like a common soldier.”

Chantmer’s gaze sharpened. “This isn’t a game, Nathaliey. I wouldn’t have awakened you for one man. There’s an entire company of soldiers out there. Look, here comes another.”

Two were approaching, actually. And a third, coming behind. They came trudging down the road with the look of men who’d marched all night and day. The last man led a horse, who struggled and tried to run back up the road toward the bridge. The three met the first man, but they pushed past in opposite directions without seeming to see each other.

There was still plenty of magic keeping the gardens hidden. Yes, these men had breached the initial defenses at the bridge, but none showed Bronwyn’s ability to brush away incantations as if they were cobwebs.

“Do you suppose Markal was right?” Nathaliey asked as the newcomers faltered at roughly the same spot as their companion. “If we hadn’t weakened our initial defenses, they’d have never got this far.”

“As much as it pains me to admit it, yes. Markal was right. These are common soldiers. There is no magic hanging about them. When the sorcerer comes, he will no doubt batter down whatever is left and come straight at us. This is a probing attack, nothing more.” Chantmer glanced at her sideways, his eyes narrowed. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“You know what I mean. Markal. He’s no wizard.”

“Are you still going on about that? He’s a wizard if the master proclaims him a wizard.”

“Memnet the Great is the head of our order, and when he is healed, he will have more magic than the rest of us standing together. Entire libraries of knowledge reside within his head. But he is not so far above us as to possess the wisdom of the gods. And he cannot raise Markal to wizard-like power simply because he wishes it to be so.”

“Supposing you’re right,” Nathaliey said, “does that change anything? Does it harm us in any way?”

“What if it saps our will when we face the enemy?”

She’d been watching the three soldiers falter on the road, stumbling into each other, before turning around again. Two more were coming up behind them, and several more beyond that. Now she turned away from the scene and laughed.

“Your ego is so fragile that the mere suggestion that you’re less than Markal is enough to weaken you?” When Chantmer shrugged, she added, “Hardly. If anything, your arrogance will only grow.”

“Confidence is the word you are searching for, not arrogance.”

“Very well, confidence. You know you’re stronger than Markal, and you’ll set out to prove it. And so will I,” she admitted. “You and I are alike in that way.”

“Then it will give Markal airs,” Chantmer insisted. “He’ll step forward at the wrong moment, thinking he’s more powerful than he is. That could prove disastrous.”

“Markal won’t get airs, any more than you and I will lose our nerve. If anything, it’s likely to have the opposite effect. He’s no fool. He knows his magic hasn’t suddenly grown because Memnet said so. Markal will call up his power—and there’s plenty of it there, you know there is—only to have his doubts overwhelm him.”

“There you go!” Chantmer said. “It was a terrible idea.”

“You’re grasping for a reason because you don’t like it.”

“And you do, I suppose?”

“I’m confused,” she admitted. “Does this mean Narud and Markal will take their own apprentices? Will they leave the gardens and continue their studies on their own? And what does this mean for you and me? We can’t be far behind.”

“That’s true,” Chantmer said, sounding more hopeful.

She lightened her tone. “We’ll need titles, of course. How does Nathaliey the Clever sound? For you, let’s see. Chantmer the Tall and Relatively Snooty.”

“Ha!”

“Or how about Chantmer the Lofty? It implies tall and snooty—always speaking down at others from a great height.” She grinned at his scowl. “Oh, don’t look so sour. You’re not going to need a title anytime soon. The master is going to make you serve another decade as penance for playing around with his orb.”

“I don’t find that particularly amusing. A decade would be intolerable.” Suddenly, Chantmer stiffened and narrowed his eyes. “There, what do you think of that?”

She didn’t see what he meant at first, but then came a cloud of dust rolling down the road from the direction of the bridge. The company seemed to have organized itself and was marching and riding toward them.

“It’s coming now,” Chantmer said. “Let’s win this first battle together.”

Ah, so that was it. Chantmer apparently saw no need for Narud or Markal; the two apprentices could do it alone. Then they would return and calmly tell Memnet what had happened, let the master be impressed. It was a dangerous game.

“There’s more than fifty soldiers,” she decided. A nervous tickle started low in her belly. “No, closer to a hundred. A dozen men on horse, plus footmen. Pikes, spears, swords. Some archers, too.”

“Cast obliviscatur on the rear elements. That will turn them about again. Let, oh, about fifteen through from the front ranks. I’ll order the gate opened, and when they rush in, the acolytes can activate the defensive runes. That will settle matters.”

“Only fifteen? What about the rest of them?” Nathaliey asked. “They’ll find their way back soon enough.”

“When they do, I’ll hit them with my own incantation.”

Chantmer gestured to the acolytes on the opposite platform. One of them descended the ladder to stand behind the gate.

“I don’t know about this, Chantmer. Let’s raise the general alarm.”

“Too late for that.”

“You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?”

“I suspected. The men were getting closer. It was only a question of when they would figure it out. Now they seem to have done so.”

“I’d be stronger with more rest,” she said. “So would you. We’d be stronger still with Markal and Narud. With more keepers and acolytes. And Memnet should know.”

“No time to argue. Ready yourself.”

Chantmer was right about that much; men were already within ten yards of the gate. Soon, they’d penetrate the final curtain that made the gardens disappear into the landscape. When that happened, they’d spot the outer wall rising above them, and the gate would be revealed. Nathaliey rolled up her sleeves and placed her palms down. She focused her mind, and power came rising slowly from deep within. But she didn’t speak the words. Not yet.

One of the men stumbled out in front of the others—perhaps the captain. A hood concealed his face. He lowered his shoulder and pushed against the open air in front of him. There was nothing there—the barrier was pure illusion—but such was the power of suggestion that even to Nathaliey it seemed as though an invisible membrane was shoving him backward. He groaned and strained, and at last the obstruction gave way. He staggered forward, nearly falling before he regained his balance.

Chantmer signaled the acolyte on the ground, who grabbed the big wooden ring and pulled. The gate swung inward. The intruder stopped, turning his head this way and that, seeming to notice everything for the first time: the open gate, the wall, the lush gardens beyond.

Nathaliey felt a twinge of sorrow for him. This man would be the first to die. The magic welled up within her, and she prepared to call up the incantation.

The man threw back his hood. “Natty! Are you there?”

Her hands fell. It was her father again. Blood of the Path, what was he doing?

“I’m here,” she called down. “What are you doing?”

“We’re not enemies! Tell the wizard not to attack. Where are you? I can’t see you.”

“Stay right there, I’m coming down.”

“Blasted vizier,” Chantmer grumbled. “What could he possibly be thinking? Where are you going? Tell the man to leave before he gets himself killed. He never should have returned.”

Nathaliey was already on the ladder, scrambling down, and she called for Chantmer to hold and for the acolytes to leave the defensive runes dormant.

By the time she reached the open gate, Kandibar Liltige was turning from side to side, a look of confusion on his face, as if he were lost. He may have broken through the barrier keeping him from seeing the gardens, but there was enough magic still in play that a moment of distraction had left him baffled once more.

“Over here,” she said. She took his arm and turned him to look at her.

“Oh, there you are. I heard your voice, but . . .”

“Father, what are you doing, and who are these men?”

“Is this it? This is Memnet’s garden? It looks . . . it doesn’t seem real.”

“You’ve been here before, remember? The archivist sent you.”

“Oh, yes. Why, so I was. How did I forget it?”

He reached out his hand as if trying to touch a tapestry. He was still caught up in the illusion. Chantmer called a warning down to Nathaliey, and she glanced over her father’s shoulder to see the other men struggling forward, the first of them now pressing against the same invisible barrier that her father had broken through.

“Listen to me!” Nathaliey grabbed her father by the shoulders. “You led these men here, now tell me what you want. Quickly. If they keep coming, they’ll be destroyed, do you hear me? They’ll all be killed.”

He stared at her, blinking. The sleep seemed to fall away from his eyes. “No, don’t harm them. They’re the palace guard, from Syrmarria.”

“What do you mean? There must be a hundred men out there.”

“Ninety-three. Every last man-at-arms who serves the khalif. We escaped the city. They’re here to defend the garden, not attack it.” Kandibar peered inward. “Where is Memnet the Great? I must speak with him.”

“He is not here,” Chantmer said. He had descended, and now approached with eyebrows raised. “Tell your men to hold. They shall not enter. Indeed, let me suggest—”

“You must let us in,” Kandibar said.

“You are an army,” Chantmer said. “Uninvited and unwanted. To what purpose would we allow you to enter and destroy? To violate the sanctity of this place? Our defenses are made to keep people like you out, not let them in.”

“Is that why you think we’ve come? I’m the khalif’s vizier. Do you think he would have sent me to attack you?”

“I don’t know,” Chantmer said. “Your master bows to the high king.”

Kandibar gave a bitter laugh. “When Pasha Malik learns what the khalif has done, he will have Omar tortured and murdered, his head on a pike.”

“Pasha Malik is dead,” Chantmer said. “He was an enemy, and we had him killed.”

Nathaliey gave him a sharp look. That was certainly an interesting take on events.

Kandibar seemed taken aback by this, but only for a moment. “Then one of the other pashas. We are under King Toth’s boot now, and our rebellion will cost us dearly.”

“Father, what is this all about?” Nathaliey asked. “Why are you here?”

“Your wizard in the libraries sent me—sent us.”

“Jethro?” Chantmer asked. “The archivist?”

“You need defenders. Jethro insisted on it. You think this is a threat, these palace guards of mine? Wait until you see the army of Veyrians marching down the road.”

Chapter Twenty-One

By midmorning on the day following the arrival of the palace guard, a trio of advance Veyrian scouts reached the far side of Blossom Creek. Markal stood at the height of the gracefully curving stone bridge and watched as they wandered the riverbank while their horses grazed. The men walked past him several times, unable to find either the bridge or the road leading to it.

It wouldn’t take much to turn them. A few whispered words and they’d be gone. Even Markal could manage, and he was tempted.

Doubts swirled in him, and for once they weren’t about his magical abilities. It was his plan that left the gardens exposed to discovery, that would have the Veyrian army assaulting their sanctuary. Why not stay hidden instead, and hope the high king forgot about them? Let Toth build his great highway, let him have power and control over cities and kingdoms. If the order didn’t prove a threat, they’d be left alone, wouldn’t they?

No, that wouldn’t do. There was no staying neutral and aloof. Not when sorcery burned through the heart of the Sacred Forest, when gray marauders murdered kings and wizards on both sides of the mountains. Bronwyn had given her life in the fight against King Toth, and Markal was ashamed of the cowardice that made him want to hide.

The Veyrian scouts were not so determined as Kandibar Liltige and his Syrmarrians, and they rounded up their horses a few minutes later and rode off. But the wall of secrecy had been weakened at the river—Markal could feel it shuddering—and the scouts seemed to know they had found something. They rode directly back up the road, before cutting left across fields and disappearing over the rolling hills.

Markal returned to the gardens, where he found Memnet the Great leading several keepers and acolytes through the grounds. The master used the tip of his staff to scratch at the ground and reveal long-buried stone paths, or to gesture at old brick walls.

“A strangling ward,” he told one of the keepers, pointing to the exposed roots of an oak tree. “It’s in the roots themselves. Here is how to activate it—”

“Master,” Markal interrupted, approaching. “You were right. Three scouts east of the creek.”

“Did they cross the bridge?”

Markal shook his head. “They stopped just short. But they rode off in a hurry.”

“It won’t be long now. Tonight, perhaps, or tomorrow.” Memnet sighed. “Come, we have something to discuss in private, one wizard to another. I need your counsel. The rest of you, carry on. I’ll return with more instructions.”

Memnet led him out of the woods and toward the pavilion. “Where is the sword?”

“Lowered into the well like you suggested. I hope it doesn’t rust.”

“It would save us a lot of trouble,” Memnet said. “But such weapons do not decay.”

“And you think it will stay hidden down there?”

“Not if the garden falls. If that happens, get the sword before you flee. Take it far from here, keep it out of the enemy’s grasp.”

The idea that the garden could fall shocked Markal. “Will it come to that?”

“Quite possibly. I’d even say it is probable. As for the sword, if you can’t take it, at least make sure it is destroyed. Nathaliey or Chantmer can do it if you can’t manage.”

Now that they were alone, there was no nonsense about Markal being a wizard, and Chantmer and Nathaliey being merely apprentices. Memnet must have seen the look of dismay on Markal’s face, because he put a comforting hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

“You know your limitations, and that is not a terrible thing, my friend.”

“Everybody knows my limitations,” Markal said. “All of them, even the stablehands, and what magic do they have except to calm a horse or make a cow give more milk? Master, it didn’t make me stronger to declare me a wizard, it only weakened Narud. Now people think his elevation was fraud as well.”

“It wasn’t a fraud, and neither was yours. Some day you’ll understand that. The truth is, you’ve been ready for some time. More so than the other three.”

“I wasn’t ready before, and I’m not now.”

Memnet stopped and leaned on his cane. They’d come into the open, and his face was even paler in the direct sunlight than in the dappled forest. “Tell me, Markal, am I a wizard?”

“You are Memnet the Great. If you’re not a wizard, who is?”

“I don’t mean, am I a wizard in general terms. Am I one right now? Look at me. Am I a wizard? If I called up a spell right now, one of the hundreds of incantations I know, my bones would snap and blood would stream out of my ears and nose. I’d likely kill myself in the attempt. By what rights am I a wizard?”

“But that’s different. You’re temporarily weak. I’m permanently disabled.”

Memnet made a dismissive gesture and set off hobbling again. The Golden Pavilion lay ahead of them, and they were crossing open meadow, where the dew dampened their feet and the hems of their robes.

“Well?” Markal pressed. “Am I wrong? It isn’t knowledge that makes one a wizard—knowledge merely makes you an archivist. It isn’t authority. Any baron, khalif, or sultan possesses that.”

“It isn’t magical power, either.”

“No, Master?”

“Otherwise, Bronwyn of Arvada was a wizard—the red sword contains as much magic as anything else in this garden. But she wasn’t—she was a paladin.”

“So I am a wizard? You continue to insist, in spite of all evidence to the contrary? You’ve proclaimed it, and that makes it so?”

“Markal, you’re not a wizard because I proclaimed you one. You are a wizard because you are a wizard. I’ve met a fair number over the years, and I’ve grown adept at identifying them.” He grinned. “Congratulations! Use your powers wisely.”

#

Markal took his place that night in the tent encampment near the north gate, among the palace guard. Half the guard was posted at the north gate, and the other half at the south. These two entry points had been intentionally weakened to lure the enemy to attack here. Of the two gates, Markal thought the attack was likely to come from the north, following the road over the bridge. The king’s army lay in that direction, together with the highway and the road to Syrmarria.

Used to the quiet of the forest, where the only sounds at night came from owls and other creatures about their nighttime business, Markal had trouble falling asleep in his little tent. Every nearby snore, mumbled conversation, cough, and fart reached his ears. A man in a tent a few yards away whispered a prayer to the gods, begging that someone named Doriella would be protected from the Veyrians. A wife? A lover? A daughter or sister? Markal’s ears brought it all in.

He didn’t consciously remember falling asleep, but realized at some point that he was dreaming. He was walking through the steep, twisting streets of Syrmarria, on his way up the hillside toward the palace. His parents lived somewhere nearby, in a house tucked into a prosperous alley. It was almost dusk in the dream, and he hauled a handcart laden with small wicker cages, each one carrying a chirping cricket. Men, women, and children came out, and he gave them cages, but declined their money.

“I won’t take your coin,” he told them. “The souls of the dead are abroad in the land, and you must be protected.”

He handed out the last of the cages at the gates of the palace itself, handed it to a guard, then took up his cart and worked his way back down toward the souks and marketplaces. But as he retraced his steps, the street was quiet. Where were the crickets he’d handed out? Why weren’t they chirping behind every door and shuttered window?

Markal jerked awake from his dream and sat up straight on his bedroll, forgetting where he was until his head scraped the ceiling of the tent. He found his sandals, laced them up, and crawled outside. A cool breeze whistled over the top of the brick wall.

The camp was strangely quiet. The warmth of sleeping bodies radiated out from the tents, and when Markal strained, he heard steady breathing. There must have been fifty men sleeping around him, plus a handful of acolytes and keepers helping Markal keep watch. Yet nobody rolled in his sleep or snored. Absolutely nobody.

Markal moved toward the wall and touched the brick with his fingertips. It was still warm from the heat of the day, having baked for hours beneath the sun. But that wasn’t all he felt. His fingertips tingled, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. The wall was trying to warn him.

He wasn’t yet sure enough to raise the alarm, so he scaled the ladder on the right side of the gate and looked down at the mist-draped meadow beyond the garden walls. Overhead, clouds cloaked the half moon, and he peered into the darkness, looking for anything amiss.

The road leading out from the gate was quiet. No sound or movement. Certainly no army of Veyrians marching toward them. But his senses were even more heightened now, and the sense that something was wrong vibrated through him like the unsettled air before a storm. He caught a whiff from the air, too, something carried on the breeze that felt wrong. Not a real scent at all, or at least not a natural scent, but something masquerading as something else.

There! To the right. A tiny flicker of light, a pinprick, really. Then another and another. They gathered against the wall a few yards distant, no larger than flickering fireflies.

It was only when he stared, concentrating, that he realized that something had thrown off his perspective. They were farther away than he’d thought at first glance, and therefore, larger.

Markal pulled his sleeve up and lowered his left hand palm down. He turned and faced the gardens as a simple spell came to his mind.

“Sumas ascendit. Periculum est super nos.”

He whispered the words and cast them over the tent encampment and beyond. He sensed, rather than saw, the acolytes and keepers waking, moving, as his spell jolted them from their slumber. He had sent it wide, but there was no way to tell how far it had traveled. In theory, such a spell could speak into the mind of someone a thousand miles away, standing on the blistering sands of the southern coast, but that depended on the strength of the caster. Markal hoped for a half mile. That would rouse Nathaliey in her cottage, who could in turn alert the others.

When he was sure the acolytes and keepers wouldn’t slip back into their dreams, but were crawling from their tents, Markal climbed off the ladder and onto the wooden platform that had been affixed below the top of the wall. He crawled on his hands and knees toward the blue lights. The platform was new, and only partially completed, and he was soon forced to climb onto the wall itself and scramble along the top. Fortunately, the platform resumed before he reached the lights, and he was able to get onto it and peer up and over.

They were wights, the thin, ethereal souls of men and women, their blank eyes the color of milk, their faces contorted into the grimaces they’d worn at death. They scratched at the brick wall with long, grasping fingers. There were only a handful at first, not like the hundreds who had pursued Nathaliey, Chantmer, and Narud down the road from Syrmarria, but more came slinking out of the mist, adding to their number.

Markal’s heart was pounding so hard that he thought it must be audible, but none of them glanced up in his direction. The mindless things had only one goal it would seem, and that was to claw apart the wall. Little risk of that. Their spectral fingers might normally manage such a thing with ordinary brick or stone, but not here.

An enemy who tried to climb the wall would find the bricks too slippery for purchase. One who tried to tunnel through would find the center as hard as a solid block of granite, the mortar like tempered steel. A ladder thrown up on the exterior would slide and fall. Even if the wights spotted him, there was nothing they could do from where they stood a dozen feet below. No, they’d eventually be forced to the gate, and there they would face the carefully laid traps and snares.

Knowing that his companions would be roused from their sleep by now and rushing toward the gate to help him in its defense, Markal willed himself to remain calm. There were twenty wights, and they concentrated on three different spots. They clawed and scratched, but accomplished little more than roughening the bricks. At this rate, it would take months, years even. They’d have better luck burrowing through a mountain.

A new figure came out of the mist. He moved swiftly, purposefully, and as he drew near, the half moon glimmered through a gap in the clouds to illuminate his features. It was a man, his face gray, his eyes glinting. His gaze fell immediately on Markal atop the wall. He reached for his side and, in one smooth motion, drew a knife and flung it toward Markal.

It was no easy thing to throw a knife up into the darkness at a man peering over a wall, and at first the aim looked too high, as if it would sail far overhead and land harmlessly in the garden. But at its height, the flight of the blade bent, as if it were enchanted, and it came whistling down toward Markal’s head. He ducked away, but the weapon turned to meet him.

And then the spinning dagger seemed to hit an invisible wall that extended up from the real one. It stopped dead and fell straight to the ground at the base of the wall. The enchanted garden had saved him. The marauder picked up his knife and sheathed it. He looked up at Markal, and a nasty grin split his face.

“I know who you are.” His voice was ugly, like rusty nails scraping together at the bottom of a metal pail. “You’re a tinkerer, a man who has read a few books and thinks he is wise. Who thinks he controls the ancient words of power. But you’re no wizard, are you?”

“I never claimed otherwise,” Markal said. “But one doesn’t need magic to know that you will surely die if you enter the gardens. Assuming you can manage. It seems doubtful, doesn’t it?”

“Such false modesty. You’re as arrogant as the rest of them, and it will be a terrible shock for you when I thrust my blade through your heart.” He touched the hilt of his sword.

“Then it’s a good thing for me that you’re down there and I’m up here. I don’t think your sword will reach that high, do you? Unless you want to throw it.”

The wights moved aside for the man, falling back as he approached the wall. He put a palm on the brick, but immediately jerked his hand back with a hiss, as if burned. The next time, he approached more carefully, touching it quickly and pulling back again.

“Not very pleasant, is it?” Markal said. “Imagine if you could get up where I am. Then you’d see something. It’s hard to say for sure, but I believe you’d find the sensation like stabbing knives.”

“I’ll be up there soon, and then we’ll see, won’t we?” The man had both hands on the brick now, and without pain. Another unpleasant smile crossed his face. “I felt your little spell, you know, when you called for your friends. A weak, quavering thing. Like a trembling mouse in the talons of a hawk. You’ll be no match for me.”

“Go ahead then. Make an attempt. This should be amusing to watch.”

Markal didn’t feel like bandying words. He wanted to hurry back to the gate and rally their defenses. There seemed little risk here. The wights had been clawing away and yet had accomplished little more than making a little brick dust. The marauder had no way to enter or attack and could only hurl taunts or knives that struck an invisible barrier and fell harmlessly. Yet Markal wanted to keep an eye on the enemy until his companions arrived. What was taking so long?

Then he realized something. If Nathaliey had received his message and passed it along, wouldn’t he have heard her warning in turn? His own words coming back to him, like an echo, but in Nathaliey’s voice? She’d apparently either not heard it or failed to send it again to wake the others. He had the sudden, terrible feeling that his warning hadn’t made it beyond the camp of guards and acolytes.

The man groped at the wall until his fingers seemed to find purchase. Then he lifted one leg and dug the toe of his boot into a gap between two bricks. Markal shrank back. What was that? Why didn’t he fall?

Horror blossomed as Markal came to a full understanding. The wights hadn’t been attempting to break through with all of that clawing. They were weakening the exterior defenses was all, scratching away the protective membrane that kept someone from getting a grip on what, beneath it all, was just brick and mortar.

Wake up! Danger is upon us!

It was Nathaliey’s voice in his head, entering with all of the urgency of a clanging bell. He stiffened, and a flood of energy lifted his spirits. It wasn’t merely a warning, but something more: the same spell Markal had cast, but with Nathaliey’s strength to back it. That message would be flooding the entire garden.

But now? Now she was sending his message? Ten minutes had passed since he’d cast his spell. Maybe longer. And Nathaliey was only now passing his warning to the others?

The marauder let out a triumphant cry. He’d gained purchase and was off the ground. He climbed his way inch by inch up the wall toward Markal. Wights came up after him.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Nathaliey was already awake when Markal’s warning entered her head. She’d been turning over something her father had told her earlier that day. She’d been showing Kandibar the beauties of the gardens, and he was exclaiming over every vista, noting the smell that hung heavy in the air by the peach trees, which were flowering again, though it was out of season. He even marveled at the size of the honeybees.

“I would die for this, Daughter,” he said, his voice solemn.

“You’ve never seen it before.”

“This is Aristonia. It is the most fertile stretch of a small and fruitful land. The essence of our country.”

“Centuries of magic and care have made this, Father. You couldn’t simply build a garden like this elsewhere in Aristonia. Otherwise, the palace gardens in Syrmarria would be as beautiful.”

“The palace gardens are beautiful. Travelers come from distant lands to see them.”

“But not beautiful like this.”

“No, not like this,” Kandibar said. “But my point is, you could only have gardens like these in Aristonia. It is a magical country, unlike any other. The land is fertile, but not indestructible. Its people are few, and they are sheltered and peaceful. The Tothian Way will change everything. The flood of merchants and slaves and armies will alter it forever. That is what I’d die to protect.”

She studied him, surprised. Viziers, as a rule, weren’t known as the most bold of individuals. Those who advised tyrants were craven, servile parasites, for the most part. They told their ruler what he wanted to hear. Even with the slightly more enlightened khalifs of Aristonia, rulers like Omar and his father before him, a vizier gave counsel within narrow parameters. Whether the khalif wanted a new aqueduct or a war with a neighbor, the vizier’s task was to advise the best way to successfully realize that task.

Nathaliey’s father had explained this to her when she was only a girl. A vizier who took bold risks was a vizier who found himself without his job, if not his head.

Yet Kandibar Liltige was willing to take terrible risks to fight for Aristonia. She’d not thought him the type. Perhaps she was wrong in other assessments, as well.

Later that evening, Nathaliey was turning over these things in the darkness of her cottage when Markal’s voice entered her head. It was an intimate whisper, yet so clear that she sat up, stiff and alarmed, thinking for a moment that he was in the room with her.

Wake up. Danger is upon us.

She was out of bed in an instant, her bare feet on the cold stone floor. She had her robe over her shoulders before a thought occurred to her. Markal was encamped at the north gate with half of the palace guard. If he’d sent his message from there, it might not have reached Narud and the remainder of the Syrmarrians at the south gate, two miles distant. Might not have even reached Chantmer or Memnet, sleeping in their cottages further south along the forest trail.

She could resend the message to make sure the others got it. But if she did that, Markal would hear, too. He’d know that she didn’t trust him. There he was, fighting enemies at the gate, and he’d hear her doubts in his head. And perhaps she was wrong; Memnet had elevated Markal to wizard, and that might have strengthened her friend. It might be wasted effort on her part.

Nathaliey came out of the woods and crossed a meadow path flanked by elm trees standing like shadowed sentinels. Here, a second thought struck her. Markal knew his weaknesses—he accepted them and had learned to live with them. What if he’d sent the warning in her direction with the explicit plan of her passing it along to finish ringing the alarm? Far from weakening him by resending the message, she might be harming him through her inaction.

This decided it. She stopped short, put one palm down, and raised the same spell that she’d received. She thought it might take some concentration to recall the words, even though it was a simple incantation, but there they were, as if summoned by her own private archivist. It was startling, but not unwelcome.

Even better, when she spoke the words, something else came across with the spell that was more than a mere warning. Strength, encouragement for the recipients. The effect of a stirring speech by one’s king or captain. Where had that come from? And the whole thing cost her very little, only a single drop of blood that rolled down her forearm. She wiped her hand on the cloth at her belt and straightened proudly as she set off again.

There, Master. Hear that and tell me that I’m not a wizard.

Yes, she was proud, even a bit arrogant like Chantmer. And why shouldn’t she be? She was ready. And what was the alternative to pride? Uncertainty, like Markal, or distraction, like Narud?

Nathaliey strode toward the north gate, confident in her abilities, ready to add her power to repel the enemy, to destroy him. What incantations could she recollect? She passed through an ivy-covered archway and into a small walled garden, so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t see the figure standing in the middle of the courtyard until she was nearly on him.

A man bent over a well, hauling something up with ropes from the depths. She could tell just by his posture that he wasn’t a resident of the gardens, a member of the order, and he wasn’t one of the palace guards, but someone else. He reached out his hand and brought up something that glinted red in the moonlight as water dripped off it.

It was Bronwyn’s sword.

#

The marauder was nearly to the top of the wall, grinning at Markal, and wights scrambled up behind him. Other wights kept clawing at the brick, as if to open other avenues of attack.

Markal pulled back his sleeves and stared with a look of concentration.

“Let’s see it,” the man said. He was only a few feet below now. “Your feeble magic, what is it?”

Words came to Markal’s lips, a spell that would hurl the man off, but it would be costly, and there was something about this man, some magic hanging about him that seemed ready to repel attack. He remembered how the other marauder had resisted his sleep spell.

So he didn’t cast it. Instead, he formed a look of intense concentration and mumbled some nonsense under his breath. The enemy flattened himself against the wall, fingers digging into the cracks. His cloak wrapped tighter about him, as if drawn in by a man sheltering himself against an icy wind.

As the man tucked his face against the brick, Markal scrambled from the platform onto the wall itself. He swung one leg over the edge, struck the enemy’s head with his foot, and shoved. The man let out a startled grunt as he lost his grip. He fell backward, clawing at the air and passing through the wights as if they had no more substance than clouds. It wasn’t a huge drop, but a dozen feet was enough to break bones. Markal’s hopes were dashed when the cloak spread out, wing-like, and broke his fall.

There it was. The magic was in the cloak. Someone, probably the sorcerer himself, had imbued it with protective powers. But could Markal attack the cloak itself?

The wights fell out of the man’s way as he sprang to his feet with a snarl. He grabbed for the brick again, and began clawing his way back up, cursing and threatening. This time when Markal gathered his magic, it was a real incantation that came to his lips.

Green globules of fire bubbled from his hands and fell toward the man. The cloak drew tight again. But Markal wasn’t aiming it at the marauder, but rather at the man’s garments. The fire hit the material and caught hold. Soon, its owner was engulfed in flames.

The marauder stripped off the cloak and threw himself to the ground. When he got up, his hair was smoking, and he retreated into the darkness, howling with rage, his burning cloak abandoned. The instant he was gone, the wights turned aimless. They fell back from the wall, milling about in confusion, and finally disappeared into the night.

Markal stared, breathing heavily. His shoulders slumped in exhaustion, and his hands trembled when he wiped the blood from them. The spell had been costly, its cost all the greater knowing that if he’d been able to deliver its full effect, he’d have destroyed the marauder, as well. But never mind, he’d won. The enemy had fled.

He was still turning over what he’d learned about the attack as he came around the platform on the inside of the wall. He traversed the gap and found his way to the ladder propped next to the gate. There were two acolytes up top when he arrived, and they greeted him with relief.

A slower developing, but more concerted attack had fallen on the gate. Wights pressed against the door and clawed at the wood until it groaned on its hinges from the weight of them. There were probably thirty or forty in all, bunched up and heaving. Markal searched the darkness for their masters, but didn’t see anything. He felt them though, shadowed in malignant magic roughly a quarter mile up the road from the gardens.

The Syrmarrian palace guard gathered behind the door. While they didn’t appear as organized as the Veyrian troops Markal had spotted along the Tothian Way, neither were they armed rabble, civilians with spears and swords thrust into their hands. These were professional guards, and though they flinched every time the door rocked inward, every man held his position.

“The Harvester take me, we’re going to die,” one of the acolytes said.

“We’re not going to die if we stay calm,” Markal told the young woman. “We only need to hold them back until the others arrive. The master will come, too.”

“But how? The palace guard can’t fight the undead. None of us can.”

The young woman was named Alyssa, and her eyes were bugging until it looked like they’d pop right out of her pale face. The other acolyte was her brother Drevor, taken from his family at the same time Alyssa joined the order. Drevor was older, but looked equally frightened. His hands trembled where they gripped the stone wall, and he crouched on the platform, barely peering over. The two had grown up in the palace like Nathaliey, but had none of the confidence and mastery of magic she did.

“Listen to me,” Markal told them. “It can be done. I scattered some wights only a few minutes ago. They can’t be killed—they are already dead—but they can be driven off, even temporarily broken apart.”

“You fought them?” Drevor asked. His eyes fell to the bloody cloth at Markal’s waist. “You spent your magic already, didn’t you? So what do we do? We’re only acolytes, we can’t manage such a thing.”

“Not outside the walls, you can’t. But once the wights gain the gardens, anything you do will be strengthened. This is our home and sanctuary—you are strong here, and they are weak.”

“How do we defeat them?” Drevor asked.

“Don’t attack them directly. Enchant the weapons of the Syrmarrians.”

“That’s active magic,” Alyssa protested. “We’re only acolytes, we can’t hold the powerful incantations. They slip away.”

“I know that,” Markal said calmly. “But I can hold the words, and if you listen carefully, I will feed them to you when the time comes.”

The groaning, aching gate drew his attention. He peered into the darkened plain beyond, searching, hunting. Marauders were out there, dominating these wights and forcing them to attack. There was one, he thought, straight up the road toward the bridge. He sensed the man’s presence like a blight on the landscape. But where were the others? And what about the one Markal had driven off earlier? Was he removed from the battle completely now that his cloak had burned, or would he return?

A shriek of metal marked the giving way of one of the hinges. The door leaned in precariously, and the wights behind screamed in mindless anger.

“Master?” Alyssa asked, voice tense. “Now?”

Markal looked at her, wondering. Master? And then he remembered. By the Brothers, he was a wizard now.

“Wait,” he told her. “It’s too soon, yet. Let them come in.”

“All right, if you’re sure.” There was doubt in her voice and on both of the acolytes’ faces.

Markal suffered his own doubts. He wanted to order the door strengthened. The acolytes could manage that much, and there were others on the wall platform opposite who could lend additional magic. Buy a few minutes while Nathaliey and the rest joined the fight. But the gate was destined to give way regardless of what they did. He’d only waste magic shoring it up.

The door bent inward at the missing hinge. The remaining supports holding it to the wall groaned and popped loose, and the door crashed to the ground, the Syrmarrian men-at-arms springing back to avoid getting flattened. A mob of wights massed in the gap in the wall, a tangle of limbs and bodies and haunted, mindless faces. Something pressed at their back like a foul wind, urging them forward, but they hesitated. The guards braced themselves.

“Now?” Drevor asked.

“Let them enter,” Markal said.

Slowly, driven forward, the wights pressed against the opening. The garden was still resisting, and for a long moment it seemed as though it would throw the wights back a final time. But then one wight fell through, followed by a second, and then the whole mass came streaming in.

The enemy had entered the gardens.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The man turned from the well with the dripping sword clenched in his hands, and Nathaliey got a fresh shock. She’d doubted from his posture that he was one of the Syrmarrian guards, known at once that he wasn’t a wizard, apprentice, acolyte, or keeper, and so had assumed he was an intruder. One of the gray marauders infiltrating the gardens to steal the red sword.

But it was her father.

His mouth hung open, his face was slack. His eyes had the milky-white glaze of the dead, although he was still breathing. Some sort of enchantment was upon him.

Nathaliey’s first thought was that he’d deceived her. His arrival with the defecting palace guards had been a feint, and his goal all along had been to find and steal the paladin’s magic sword. But she dismissed this thought as soon as it entered her mind.

For one, the captain of the guard had seemed entirely too sincere. He’d divided his forces to fortify opposite ends of the gardens and had spent time drilling with them and consulting with the vizier. As for her father, Kandibar had shared what he knew about the high king’s armies. He’d produced a map and showed where Toth had placed several thousand men along the highway and how they might come to attack the gardens.

King Toth’s pashas were readying for war, both to subdue the restless Western Khalifates and to mount a campaign through the mountains and into Eriscoba on the other side. Finally, Toth meant to connect his highway with the Spice Road to cross the desert and bring the sultanates under his sway. The high king had declared his intention to unite the entire world. Kandibar thought this would end in disaster, but not before it brought about Aristonia’s destruction. Win or lose, the small country stood to be crushed by invading armies.

And there had been no sorcery hanging about him then. Of that Nathaliey was sure. Memnet had been there too, and surely he would have detected it even if nobody else had. But something had changed; some dark magic had possessed her father and led him here. He stank of it.

The vizier didn’t look up as his daughter approached, but busied himself with the sword. They’d left it wrapped in linens tied off with cord, but these had swelled in the water at the bottom of the well, and his fingers struggled to get it untied.

“Father!”

Nathaliey grabbed his shoulder, but he threw her off with a snarl. “Don’t touch me!”

She came at him with more determination. He fought back as she tried to knock the sword from his hand. He was taller, but approaching the age of sixty, and not the strong, middle-aged man of her youth. Nathaliey was strengthened by the gardens that surrounded her, giving her the advantage.

She fought off his attempts to drive her back and got her hands on the hilt. Her father had the blade, and tore off some of the linens as she pulled. The blade dragged across his palms. He cried out in pain, but didn’t release the linens, coming up with a long strip in his bloody hand. The other end of the strip was still attached to the sword, and the two engaged in a tussle until she finally tore the weapon loose. Her hand touched the bare hilt.

Worship us, girl. Take the sword and you shall be the mightiest warrior in the realm.

Nathaliey tried to cast it aside, but to her horror, it was glued to her palm. She grabbed the hilt with her second hand, thinking to pry it loose, and it stuck, too. Voices clamored in her head, and the sword yanked her this way and that. One moment, it seemed determined to hack off her foot, the next to charge at her father and thrust its tip into his chest.

Kandibar cast aside the linen strip and came at her. The sword twisted to meet him. She turned her shoulder, and the sword slid harmlessly past his face. He threw his arms around her and wrestled with her for the sword.

“Stand back!” she said. “It will kill you.”

“By the Brothers, throw it down!” Whatever had possessed him was gone, and he seemed in his right mind. “Natty, listen to me!”

“I’m trying!”

Her muscles were rigid, every one straining as she fought for control of her limbs.

“Put it on the ground,” he said.

Nathaliey bent double, and the moment the blade hit the dirt, her father pinned it with one foot. She wrenched free with a cry. Her father dragged her back to the well, where the two stood panting. They stared at the thing lying flat on the ground, glinting in the moonlight.

“It looks red in this light,” her father said.

“What happened? What possessed you to do such a thing?”

He shook his head. “I-I don’t know. One moment, I was climbing into bed, exhausted and ready for sleep, and the next I was awake here, wrestling with you for the sword.” A frown crossed his face. “No, that’s not quite right. I remember some things—like a dream, you know? I was walking here, and someone was whispering in my head. Many someones.”

Nathaliey studied her father, looking for deception. She saw none. So what had done it, the sorcerer, or the sword itself? The sword, she decided. Memnet had instructed them to hide Soultrup in the well, and she saw no way that King Toth could have found it on his own. But the sword, possessed of its own intelligence and magic, had made an attempt to find its way to the hands of the king by itself.

“Natty, what is this thing? Where did it come from, and what does it want?”

“Nothing I can explain now. I’ve been called to the north gate, and I must go at once.” She unfastened her cloak. “That leaves you with the sword.” She thrust the cloak into his hands. “For picking it up.”

He eyed her doubtfully, the cloak held in front of him as if he wanted to hand it back. “Shouldn’t we just put it back at the bottom of the well and I can go with you?”

“No, it can’t be left alone, or it might take control of someone else.”

“But what if that someone is me? What if it . . . what if I . . .?”

“You’re awake now, and that will make a difference. Keep your wits about you. Don’t let it touch your skin. Can you find the Golden Pavilion in the darkness?”

“Yes, I think so. It will be easier when I get out of this courtyard.” He glanced about. “It’s too close in here, I can’t see anything. You’re sure about this?”

“I’m sure,” she lied. But what choice did she have? “Let the garden guide you. You’re a friend, and it will lead your way. So long as you don’t do something stupid like touch the sword.”

“I won’t if I can help it.”

“Good. Get up to the shrine and put it under the big prayer bell. That’s the safest, most protected part of the gardens, even better than here. It will be our last refuge if things go badly, and the hardest place for the enemies to defeat us. I’ll send keepers. You’ll be safe for now.”

For now. There was an ominous tint to those last two words.

Nathaliey helped him get the cloak wrapped around the sword, then pointed him in the right direction before she hurried on toward the north gate. She didn’t leave her father without a good deal of trepidation. He’d almost run off with the sword, and would have no doubt made his way straight for the enemy. Pasha Malik was inside the weapon now, apparently in command, and it seemed that he still served the king.

Nathaliey soon came up the gravel lane that led to the north gate. She arrived to find that the wooden door had been knocked down, and the spirits of the dead were pouring into the gardens.

#

As soon as the wights broke through the final barrier, Markal turned to the two acolytes. “Now!”

“What is the spell?” Alyssa said, her voice tight. “Help us with the words.”

He’d almost forgotten that they were incapable of remembering. It was a simple incantation, and they were repeating it from his lips even as the wights fell upon the first ranks of defenders. The guards formed a bristling row of spears, but they wavered as the undead threw themselves forward in a swirling, howling mass. The first handful of wights pressed through the weapons, unharmed. Two men fell, torn apart by the spectral hands and teeth, and there was a horrifying glimpse of men’s souls being ripped from their bodies, like smoke draining off a snuffed candle. These newly created wights came screaming out through open mouths and nostrils and joined the battle on the side of the enemy.

But then the spell took hold. A breath of warm air blew out of the gardens. Spear tips shimmered with gold fire in the darkness, reflecting off the faces of men suddenly brave and confident. The defenders thrust and stabbed, and wights bled away into the air and vanished.

Markal hurried down the ladder. The guards had retreated several paces in an attempt to regroup against the suicidal ferocity of the enemy, and Markal pushed through them. Men and wights were falling all around him.

Once through, he made for the ladder on the opposite side of the gate. He had to get up to the acolytes and help them cast more incantations. The fight could go either way, but with a bit more power, their side could win in a rout. But as he grabbed for the rungs, the acolytes came hurrying down the ladder toward him, crying out for help.

A figure swung himself up over the wall and crouched on the platform abandoned by the acolytes. It was a man in a gray cloak, sword in hand. Wights flowed over the wall behind him, having successfully bypassed the bottleneck at the gate.

Markal jumped back to let the acolytes down, then shouted across to Alyssa and Drevor above the opposite side of the gate. They were looking down beyond the walls, no doubt at another attempt to scale them.

“Get down from there!” he yelled.

A hand grabbed him, and he turned, alarmed. It was Nathaliey. She was alone; no sign of Narud and Chantmer.

“Tell me what to do,” she said. She looked up at the wall, and her eyes widened as she took in the figure standing on the wall and the wights pouring over the top.

“It’s a maurauder,” Markal said. “Burn off his cloak. It’s holding the magic.”

She nodded and rolled back her sleeves as Markal grabbed the two acolytes the marauder had driven down and gave them a shake to get their attention. The guards were faltering again, their lines on the verge of collapse.

“Listen to me. We need to throw them back now. Do you understand?”

Markal was feeding the acolytes the words of an incantation when Nathaliey’s powerful incantation rose up beside him. The acolytes barely got the words off before her spell cleared the air.

Fire erupted from Nathaliey’s hands and floated up the wall. It was the same scorch spell Markal had cast earlier, but this one was a single large ball of green fire—slower moving, and more powerful; the heat from it rolled down in a blistering wave.

The marauder tried to duck away, but Nathaliey moved her hands, and the fire followed, as if pushed from a distance. It engulfed the man in green flames, and he fell screaming. He hit hard and kept writhing as the fire devoured him. Unlike Markal’s enemy, this one did not escape.

Unfortunately, the wights didn’t revert to their natural mindless state. They kept pressing forward instead of wandering off in confusion as one of their captains was killed. More wights streamed over the wall and leaped down to join the battling throngs.

Markal found Nathaliey hunched over, gasping. She looked up at him. “Too much, more than I needed. I couldn’t hold it back, it all came out at once.”

On the one hand, her awesome display of power left no doubt which of them was the more powerful, the so-called wizard, even as Nathaliey remained merely an apprentice in the master’s eyes. On the other, the enemy’s dead body was still burning with green fire. If she’d controlled her magic, she’d still have power left to call up.

“You did what you needed to do.” Markal took his towel and wiped her hands clean of blood. “We can’t stay here. Come with me.”

He threw her arm over his shoulder and led her back through the faltering mass of Syrmarrian guards. At first, it was all he could do to keep her upright, but Nathaliey’s staggering gait straightened as she walked. Chantmer and Narud came hurrying up the path.

“Where is the master?” Nathaliey asked. She shrugged off Markal’s arm, as if embarrassed to be seen so weakened.

“Coming up behind,” Narud said. “He’ll be here in moments.”

Chantmer eyed Nathaliey. “What happened to you?”

“Killing enemies, what do you think? Where have you been?”

“I could hardly leave the south gate defenseless.” Chantmer waved his hand as Markal started to question him further. “No, there’s no attack from the south yet, but that won’t last. They’re out there, you can sense them. I saw to it that the Syrmarrians were awake and armed, the keepers and acolytes in place with instructions for throwing back any attempt to scale the walls. Ah, here is the master.”

Memnet the Great labored up the path, leaning on his stick and wheezing. He still had the thick, curly hair and smooth face of a younger man, but there was something old and exhausted in his expression that went beyond physical weakness. It was a glimpse of the centuries that weighed on his mind and spirit, if not his body.

Meanwhile, the fighting raged on in front of them. Markal’s acolytes had cast fresh spells on the men-at-arms, imbuing their weapons with the power to send the wights shrieking into the night. The enemy was a mindless mass, and fell in steady numbers, which further strengthened the resolve of the defenders. But the wights had not yet broken and fled from the battlefield.

Memnet studied this for several seconds without speaking. A cry had gone up from the keepers and acolytes at his appearance, and they turned to see what he would do or say. More than a few of them, including Markal, would be hoping to see the great wizard bare his palms and send out a fountain of magic to annihilate the enemy. It was impossible, of course.

“Chantmer and Narud,” Memnet said at last. “You will guide the retreat, make sure it doesn’t become a rout.”

“Yes, Master,” the two said in near unison.

“Retreat?” Markal said, stunned. “We’re on the verge of victory. The marauders are key—if we can destroy them, the wights will vanish. I don’t know how many remain, but—”

“No, Markal. We are on the verge of defeat, not victory. We must pull back at once. Take Nathaliey—the two of you will organize a defense at the walled gardens. It will form a bulwark while we assemble at the Golden Pavilion.” Memnet gestured for keepers and acolytes to come to him.

Markal and Nathaliey glanced at each other and shared a look of confusion. What was this? The wights hadn’t even broken fully through the north gate, and Memnet was talking about falling back to the walled gardens and the Golden Pavilion itself. Surely it wasn’t so dire as that.

Markal was about to object again, when shouts and renewed fighting drew his attention to the gate. There, pressing through the souls of the dead, were six more figures cloaked in gray, swords in hand. The moment they joined the fight, the defenders faltered.

And then, from the distance, a Veyrian war horn sounded. Another horn blared, this one closer, followed by a third, which must be no more than a hundred yards distant. Each horn represented a company of soldiers. There was a small army out there, approaching the gardens.

Memnet pinned Markal and Nathaliey with his gaze. “Hold the walled garden, but do not die in its defense. By the Brothers, I expect to see both of you at the shrine. Now go!”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Markal dragged Nathaliey deeper into the gardens. She was exhausted, wanted nothing more than to sink to the ground and gasp for breath, but he wouldn’t let her.

The shouts of men fighting and dying mingled with the shriek of wights at their backs as they left the battle behind. Eight others briefly joined them—three armed Syrmarrians Chantmer had plucked from the battle, Alyssa, the acolyte, and four keepers. But these quickly left Markal and Nathaliey behind.

“I don’t understand,” Nathaliey said when he finally let her stop and catch her breath. “You cast the same spell as I did, didn’t you? I can smell it on you.”

“More or less.”

“But I can barely walk, and you’re practically carrying me.”

“I’ve had more time to recover.”

“Not that much longer.”

He flashed a smile. “What would you expect? I’m a wizard, and you’re a mere apprentice.”

“Shut up, you. No, it’s because I called up too much magic. Why did I do that?”

“You did what you needed to do.”

But Nathaliey couldn’t let it go. So much wasted. “What good am I now? My magic is spent, and the battle has only just begun.”

“You’ll recover. You are home—the gardens will sustain you. And they will weaken the enemy with every step he takes.”

A brass horn sounded from the direction of the gate. Markal glanced back, then gave her an impatient look, but didn’t say anything. She forced herself to move.

“What if they don’t keep pushing in?” he asked a moment later.

“How do you mean?”

“Say we retreat, what is to stop them from tearing holes in the outer walls and encircling the gardens? The Veyrian army could bottle us in while King Toth himself leads the marauders and wights in a final attack.”

“You didn’t think so before. This was your plan all along, to let them in.”

“But what if I was wrong?”

“You’re not,” she said firmly. “You proposed a plan, and the master agreed. Memnet knows the enemy’s mind. They were brothers in magic for many years.”

“Yet Memnet missed the treachery to begin with. What if he’s wrong again?”

She remembered her father, slack-faced, eyes glazed as he hefted the dripping sword from the well. It had called to him, tried to seize control of his body so he would carry it to the enemy. If it had called to the vizier, why couldn’t it have called farther, to King Toth himself?

“There might be another reason for the enemy to attack,” she said reluctantly. “The red sword. It is crying out to be rescued.”

They reached the walled garden as she said this. Inside, one of the older keepers gave commands to the three Syrmarrian guards, while the other keepers pulled stones from a small retaining wall and placed them across the path near one of the strongest runes. The acolyte, Alyssa, sat cross-legged, eyes closed, gathering her focus.

Nathaliey leaned against the arched entryway and told Markal what had happened with her father, the sword, and the well. He stiffened in alarm, then relaxed when she explained how they’d regained control of the weapon.

“Kandibar is safe if he got Soultrup to the Golden Pavilion,” Markal said. He paused, chewing on his lower lip. “Of course, I would have thought it hidden and protected in the well.”

“But you agree with me?” she asked. “That it is calling to the sorcerer to be rescued?”

“You might be right. The allegiance of the sword was already turning, even before Bronwyn killed Pasha Malik. It wants to fight for King Toth. Only, I wonder . . .”

“What is it?”

“Nathaliey, what if it was all a trick from the beginning?”

“How do you mean?”

“The barbarian paladin got her hands on the weapon. It immediately set about trying to find the sorcerer again. It convinced her to go on a quest to kill him.”

“You’re saying it was the sword’s plan all along?” Nathaliey asked. “But she only got her hands on it because it threw itself from the marauder’s hands. Bronwyn picked it up and killed the captain with it. And then she still had to wrestle for control after the captain joined the evil forces inside. Isn’t that how you explained it all?”

“More or less. I know it certainly seems that she was in command of Soultrup all the way to the point where she killed Pasha Malik. But maybe the control was an illusion.”

Nathaliey was still confused. “How do you mean?”

“The sword is not a single entity, and never has been. It’s a dozen voices, a hundred, struggling for control. There’s a small war inside that never stops raging. Neither side can fully win. Sometimes, one side is stronger than the other, but that doesn’t mean the weaker side is helpless. Imagine if Bronwyn had a thought, to track down and kill the sorcerer. The good side agrees, the evil side sees an opportunity. It exerts just enough influence to be sure that she attacks at a certain time and in a certain way, knowing that she’ll face Pasha Malik. If she loses to Malik, the sorcerer gets his sword back. If she kills him, the sorcerer gets it back anyway.”

“It isn’t just strength that matters in a fight, it’s cunning,” Nathaliey said.

“Exactly. The evil in the sword was more cunning than the good. Now Pasha Malik is inside, and he might be the most cunning of all.”

“There’s no way to be sure it was the sword,” Nathaliey said at last, but she was troubled by the implications.

If Markal was right, how could they be sure of anything? Maybe it was part of the sword’s plan all along to get itself to the Golden Pavilion. Be there when the sorcerer attacked.

They joined the others in preparing the defenses. The magic was strong in the walled garden, almost overwhelming, as they dug up old stones and exposed the roots on trees. The ones who’d expended magic in the fight at the north gate—Nathaliey, Markal, and Alyssa—plucked and ate plums from the vines as they worked. With every passing moment Nathaliey felt more alert, more alive.

This garden was truly their fortress. How much faster could they recover here than beyond its walls? She’d drawn up blood in such quantities that her robes were stained with it, and her hands still sticky where it had dried. Outside, she might have needed a full day, maybe longer before she could draw from her magical well. Here, she might be ready to fight by the time the enemy arrived.

A horn blared, and she realized suddenly that it was within the walls. Another sounded its answer, this one farther away. When the wind shifted, it brought with it the sound of clashing weapons, of men shouting, dying. The Syrmarrian guards murmured among themselves. A keeper had placed them here, but Markal ordered one of the three back to guard the rear entrance in case an enemy came from that direction.

Nathaliey made her way to Markal’s side and found herself standing on the mound of dirt where Memnet had spent several weeks buried.

“They’re coming quickly now,” Markal murmured. “I can feel them. Soon . . . any moment.”

One of the guards whirled toward Markal. “Wizard! Here they are!”

And there he was, an invader, a marauder in a gray cloak. He almost burst into the gardens, but stopped at the archway and looked overhead, suddenly wary. It was almost dawn, and his face looked especially pale in the thin light. His gaze flickered over Nathaliey, then fell on Markal, and he smiled.

Nathaliey was tensed, ready. They had a plan—let the walled garden defend them first, then follow up with some combination of magic and force of arms if the defenses failed. But now the man withdrew without attempting to force his way in. In a few seconds it became apparent that he’d disappeared.

“I’ve faced this one before,” Markal said. “He is cloaked again, rearmed. That disturbs me.”

She had more immediate concerns. “Where did he go? Are they bypassing us?”

“They won’t bypass the walled garden. The path, the walls, and the hedges are a funnel, like an ant lion’s burrow. They can never reach the Golden Pavilion without overrunning us first. He’ll be back, and soon.”

Markal proved right. Shouts came from the other side of the wall, harsh orders and curses. Two armed men in the crimson and black of Veyre came through the archway. The first wore a gash on his forehead which bled copiously, and the second held his non-sword arm tucked against his body as if it were broken. They were young men, little more than boys, and were wounded and frightened. Two more came in after them, but one of them staggered and fell.

Nathaliey didn’t have time to wonder what the attackers had already faced, or how many had made it through the gauntlet of defenses to reach this point. More men pressed through, the marauder among them, shouting at the soldiers to drive them forward.

“Now,” Markal said in a quiet voice.

One of the keepers lifted his hands. “Estrangula vides.”

There were runes carved into the stone over the archway, and they poured out their magic as the keeper awoke them. Vines as thick as a man’s wrist dropped from the brick, twisting like snakes. One fell onto the shoulders of a Veyrian. The instant it touched, it flung itself around the man’s neck, wrapping again and again and tightening. The vine choked off the man’s scream, and he flailed, eyes bulging.

Other vines snatched swords, yanked men from their feet, and dragged Veyrians against the wall, where they disappeared, writhing and struggling, into a mass of leaves and vines. One vine grabbed at the marauder, but when it touched his cloak, it withered, leaves curling and blackening.

At least six enemies fell to the initial attack, but several others made it through unscathed, including the marauder. More Veyrians pressed forward, and it seemed there were dozens trying to get into the small courtyard. They swung swords and scimitars to hack at the vines before they could be engulfed.

All three palace guards had come to face this threat, and now threw themselves at the enemy while they were distracted. A keeper raised a cloud of dirt, which drove itself at the eyes of the attackers. Alyssa stood to one side, repeating words fed to her by the keepers to keep the vines lunging and twisting.

Nathaliey stood over one of the heavy stones they’d unearthed from the soil. An ancient etching lay exposed on its surface. It was in the shape of a cartouche, like the symbols carved in the columns outside the Tombs of the Kings in Syrmarria, with birds and animals in the center. How long had this stone been buried in the soil, waiting patiently until the day it would be needed? Decades?

She only needed a hint of magic to awaken it. “Leva et idola comminuite.”

The stone was massive, and had taken four keepers to heave it out of the soil. Now it lifted off the ground as if it were weightless and began to spin. Soon, it was moving so fast it was a blur. Nathaliey pushed it toward the struggling enemies.

Markal cried a warning to the others. “Stand aside!”

A keeper threw himself out of the way. The guards leaped aside just in time. The stone hurled past them and plowed into the mass of Veyrian soldiers still jammed at the entrance. It sent one man flying, knocked over a second man, smashed into the face of a third, and disappeared through the archway. Men cried out in pain as the stone disappeared out of sight, continuing to exact a toll.

The marauder wasn’t one of those hit. He hacked down one of the guards and broke free from the fighting. He spotted Markal and Nathaliey and sprang toward them. A keeper spoke incantations that made the flagstone path as smooth and slippery as ice, and enemies fell. The marauder almost lost his footing, but leaped from the path onto the grass and regained his balance.

But as he did, he came beneath the limbs of a peach tree. Nathaliey awakened the ward carved into its trunk, and a limb lowered and caught the enemy under the chin. He fell on his back. Markal spoke a few words, and a root tip broke the ground. It pushed aside dirt and rocks as it emerged, wrapped around the man’s ankle, and pinned him to the ground. The man cursed and hacked at the root with his sword but to little effect.

“There’s another one,” Markal warned.

“I see him!” Nathaliey said. A second enemy in a gray cloak was entering the garden, forcing his way through the Veyrian soldiers. “Finish this one.”

A vein throbbed on Markal’s forehead. “I’m trying.”

He kept talking to the tree, coaxing it with incantations in the old tongue. The roots were loosening, and the marauder had nearly freed himself. Markal spoke again with more urgency, and this time the tree responded. The roots tightened, twisted, and there was a loud snap, like a branch breaking. The man’s foot and ankle twisted at a wrong angle and he screamed.

Markal doubled over, gasping, and Nathaliey looked briefly from the second marauder, worried. It shouldn’t have been so hard. The tree was imbued with power already, had been waiting patiently all these years to have its magic called up. Was that Markal struggling, or the magic in the marauder’s cloak fighting back?

She hurled a second stone, this time trying to direct it at the marauder. It flew straight at him, then bent away at the last moment and smashed harmlessly into the wall. The enemy fought with one of the palace guards while keepers tried to trip him, snare him, and blind him. The two remaining guards were wounded, but still fighting, strengthened by the magic around them that simultaneously sapped the strength and concentration of the Veyrians.

Nathaliey took in the scene. They’d killed or incapacitated at least fifteen enemies already, plus an untold number who’d disappeared into the mass of vegetation growing against the wall. Yet there were more than twenty Veyrians inside the walled garden, and dozens more pushed their way through the vines that continued to grab at them as they entered.

And now a third marauder entered. He didn’t immediately press into the fray, but set about hacking at the vines. They struck him again and again, but slithered off his cloak, charred. Markal and Nathaliey hurled more stones, but while they killed enemy soldiers in the attempts, they couldn’t hit either of their primary targets. The stones simply refused to make contact, and the defenders had nearly exhausted the resources of the walled gardens.

The screen of vines on the walls and over the archway were only twitching now, either severed and burned by the third marauder or losing the magic that had called them into action. More and more Veyrians poured through the archway. One speared a keeper, and another killed one of the remaining guards. The attack became more organized by the moment.

“Should I prepare the retreat?” Nathaliey asked Markal.

The first rays of dawn came peeking over the wall, and his face was flushed and sweating, as if he’d been laboring beneath a baking sun instead of in the cool air of early morning. She threw out an arm to steady him, even though he’d been the one supporting her not so long ago.

“Not yet,” he said. “There is one thing left to do.”

She bit her lip. Most of the defenses of the walled garden were already spent, but not all of them, not the final recourse.

“You know what that means, don’t you?” she said.

“I do.” A grim pall hung over his voice. “We have no choice. Make it happen.”

Nathaliey placed her palms down and called up the words she’d been taught by the master himself. They were spoken in a form of the old tongue so ancient that it seemed almost a special dialect. Even Memnet struggled to read it, the master had admitted. Yet she knew the meaning, and the incantation, once learned, stayed fixed in the mind. The words tasted like death on her tongue.

The pure land sacrifices in its own defense.

Magic boiled from the ground as she called it forth. The most ancient of the walled garden’s defenses came to their aid, and it was both powerful and destructive.

The marauder beneath the peach tree cried out again. The roots had taken hold of his legs now, his arms. They pulled him into the soil, as if it had become liquid. He flailed and clawed, trying to get his head and shoulders off the ground. The soil churned and frothed, and the man disappeared inch by inch. Moments later, he vanished, swallowed entirely.

The ground had turned liquid all around the attackers, and they slowly sank, screaming and struggling. One of the remaining marauders leaped onto the flagstone path, but he slipped and fell, and when his hand touched the soil, it seized him and dragged him off the path.

The final marauder saw the ground softening all around him and leaped for the wall. He grabbed a handful of vines and hoisted himself up even as soldiers were trapped in the mire and pulled down all around him. His feet were off the ground, and he was scrambling to safety even as he shouted at the Veyrians on the opposite side of the archway to stop fighting their way in.

But this final marauder was undone by his own actions of the past few minutes. The vines that might have sustained him before had been hacked and burned away. Weakened and dying, their clinging roots tore loose from the brick, and he fell.

When he hit, the ground swallowed him. Moments later, the only ones standing were the surviving defenders. One keeper and two of the three guards had fallen. The dead enemies were nowhere to be seen, but must have numbered well over a hundred by the time Nathaliey called forth the final defense.

But the spell had not come without a cost. The grass was gone, replaced by dirt and stone. Flowers withered and died in front of her eyes. The vines turned yellow, and the leaves of the peach tree curled brown and dry. The bark sloughed off, and a branch cracked and fell. The tree was soon nothing but a skeleton. Mortar crumbled from the wall, and bricks fell. Even the honeybees fell from the sky as if burned. Nathaliey looked down to see a dead bird at her feet. An odor of decay and death hung in the air.

This walled garden, only minutes before one of the most fertile, beautiful parts of this, the most fertile and magical corner of Aristonia, was a blasted waste from one side to the other. Thank the Brothers it was confined to these walls.

Markal and Nathaliey looked at each other, and she thought the sick look on her friend’s face must be mirrored on her own.

Markal nodded. “Now we call the retreat.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

At first, Markal didn’t know if he’d make it out of the ruins of the walled garden. The very ground seemed poisoned, and he’d used more strength than he’d hoped during the battle. Nathaliey had done her duty, as had the keepers and the young acolyte. Even the three palace guards had fought bravely.

So what was wrong with him? Doubt had fixed him with its jeering gaze once again, and he’d struggled with every task.

“Markal,” Nathaliey said. She stood at the archway on the opposite side, looking worried.

“I’m coming,” he wheezed.

His feet were as heavy as stones as he dragged them along. The devastation seemed to suck the breath from his lungs. He staggered and lost his balance.

This is it, he thought as he fell. My death comes here.

But Nathaliey caught him and held him up. “We’re close now, friend,” she whispered in his ear, and he managed a nod.

Somehow, he gained the archway and stumbled out. And there he was transformed. Clean air filled his lungs. The nausea passed, and strength returned to his limbs. The other survivors of the attack were about a hundred feet ahead, hurrying down the path, and Markal and Nathaliey followed. They passed a raised bed of roses, reached the stone staircase that curled down toward the dragon fountain, and descended.

“What was that?” Nathaliey asked. “What happened to you?”

“I don’t know. The destruction seemed to enter my bones. I would have died if I’d stayed, I know that much.”

A man’s scream carried through the morning air from behind them. There were shouts, orders, swords clashing. More fighting, perhaps. Or maybe the invading army was facing more traps, more killing defenses.

These defenses whispered all around Markal. Here was a rune carved into one of the flagstones, there a root that would send an invader sprawling. A ward would send men turning in the wrong direction on the staircase and pitch them over the edge. Men would fall on these stairs and break ankles, wrists, and necks. The entire garden was a lethal series of traps and pitfalls for the uninvited.

Many defenses needed to be activated. Keepers had done some of this as they’d passed ahead, but Markal and Nathaliey found older, more subtle and challenging wards and runes when they reached the forest path, and they stopped long enough to bring them to life. Trees whispered awake, and strange sounds came from the boughs above. This work delayed their flight toward the meadow and the pavilion. Markal was bent over a moss-covered boulder, whispering an incantation, when Nathaliey hissed a warning.

Several Veyrian soldiers came limping through the forest, faces scratched, sniping at each other. One of the soldiers spotted them and shouted a warning. Markal and Nathaliey stood still, waiting to see what would happen next.

One man didn’t see a branch, and it knocked him from his feet. A second man tripped over a stone that he seemed to deliberately walk into. Another stumbled into a bush, where he disappeared, thrashing and shouting for help. Suddenly, the remaining men screamed and turned as a dark shape came hurtling out of the forest with a roar. It was an enormous black bear, and it knocked one of the Veyrians from his feet with a massive paw and threw itself on the screaming man, jaws snapping.The others fled in the direction from which they’d come. The bear lifted its dripping muzzle, eyed Markal and Nathaliey for a moment, then disappeared.

They stood gaping. “We have bears?” she asked.

“Maybe it was Narud.”

Nathaliey laughed, but soon turned serious. “Come on. We haven’t seen the last of the Veyrians.”

They came out of the woods. The meadow was a fresh green beneath the morning sunlight, with the Golden Pavilion gleaming on the far side, mirrored against the lake behind it. The air hung heavy with the smell of clover and the buzz of honeybees. If not for the commotion by the shrine itself, it would have seemed another peaceful, glorious day in the gardens that had been his home for three decades.

But the action at the pavilion quickly caught his eye. The vizier was organizing palace guards into ranks. There were at least thirty men already, with more joining them from the meadow or running around the path from the far side of the small lake. Some of the guards limped or held arms in slings, but most appeared uninjured.

Several keepers and acolytes worked in front of the Syrmarrians, tearing up the sod with spades to make what looked like a rudimentary moat. It was a few inches deep, no more than two feet wide, and just long enough to stretch in front of the pavilion. Other acolytes and keepers worked down by the lakefront, preparing additional defenses.

“What is the point of that trench?” Nathaliey said. “A turtle could cross that thing.”

“It’s more than it seems.”

“I sure hope so, because it seems like nothing at all.”

Three figures stood on the raised platform at the heart of the shrine with the prayer bell at their backs. Each was easily recognizable by his profile. One was the tall, straight figure of Chantmer, standing on the right side of the master, who leaned against his staff. On the left was the shorter, stockier figure of Narud. The trio stared out toward Markal and Nathaliey as they hurried down the path toward the pavilion.

Some spell lay heavy over the meadow, and suddenly the open grassy stretch seemed to grow. The pavilion was a distant pinprick of reflected light, and the lake a gleaming puddle on the horizon, all miles and miles away. Markal shook his head to clear it, and the illusion disappeared.

Another deception awaited when they reached the shallow trench. As Markal went to step over it, the whole thing yawned into a chasm, twenty feet wide and fifty deep. He flinched back, afraid of falling to his death, though he knew it was another trick. Nathaliey hesitated, too. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her over. One of the keepers, panting and leaning on his spade, grinned as they crossed, obviously pleased with his work.

“Well met,” Memnet said as Markal and Nathliey scaled the steps of the pavilion. “What happened at the walled garden?”

A cold hollow burned in Markal’s breast. Had the survivors of that battle not informed him already? Why did it fall on Markal to tell it?

“Destroyed, Master. I rendered it desolate.”

Pain flickered across Memnet’s face. “I thought you might. Yet I had hoped . . .”

“I did it,” Nathaliey said, her voice leaden. “I called up the spell, not Markal. Perhaps I did it wrong. Maybe it was too much or too soon.”

Markal couldn’t let her take the blame. “You did what you had to. Anyway, it was my decision.”

The master nodded. “It was a final resort. You had little choice.”

“There were too many,” Markal said. “We raised every defense and still they kept coming. There were three of the gray ones who assassinated you and scores of Veyrians.”

Chantmer straightened his robes and sniffed. “Let us hope you exacted a toll on the enemy for all of your trouble.”

Markal fought his irritation at the implication. “That doesn’t deserve an answer, but if you must know, we killed the three marauders and at least a hundred other enemies as well.”

“And delayed them so you could prepare here,” Nathaliey said.

“Do you suppose that we’ve been waiting around idly chatting?” Chantmer waved his hand. “We have fought our own battles, suffered our own losses. Taken our own victories. And they have come at a lower cost than the destruction of the walled garden.”

“Please tell us,” Nathaliey snapped. “Let’s hear about all of your heroic exploits.”

“We have no time for this,” Memnet said in a quiet voice that nevertheless carried an edge. “Our nerves are tense, and we’ll say things we might regret later.” A half-smile. “Assuming any of us survive. If we don’t, we can carry on the argument later, while we wait for the Harvester to gather our souls. Narud has been seeing to our defenses. He will explain.”

Narud had been quiet during all of this, his gaze distant, directed toward the forest on the far side of the meadow, but now he explained what Memnet, Narud, and Chantmer had done at the pavilion, and how they hoped to control the flow of the battle. Markal had either known or guessed most of this already, and he studied the master as Narud spoke.

Memnet the Great was only a shell of his previous self, as weak and frail as an old man. He gripped his staff with both hands, his back bent. An occasional grimace crossed his face when he shifted posture. Was the pain and stooping and hobbling less than it had been yesterday? Hard to say, but to Markal’s eyes there was modest improvement at best. If the gardens fell and they managed to escape, would he ever heal outside the walls of the garden? Would he ever regain his power?

No, Markal decided. Most surely, he would not.

If only Memnet were better, if only he had a few more weeks to heal, then victory would be more certain. Without him, it seemed desperate. Their great hope was to tempt King Toth to press his attack before he was ready, but so quickly had the enemy overwhelmed the outer defenses that Markal was suffering great doubts on that score.

“Where are they?” Nathaliey asked when Narud finished describing the preparations. She stared across the meadow. “Can we dare hope they’ve abandoned the attack?”

“Don’t be a fool,” Chantmer said. “Why would they do that?”

“They’ve taken losses,” she said. “Maybe one of their leaders fell. They might have left the gardens to regroup.”

“We don’t want them to retreat,” Memnet said. “We need a complete victory.”

“It doesn’t have to be here on this spot,” Nathaliey said. “Most never reached the woodland trail, right, Markal? Could be the rest of them are wandering around in there, lost and dying. Maybe they’ll never make it out.”

“We can hope,” Chantmer said. He didn’t sound convinced in the slightest, but neither had Nathaliey.

“The majority will reach the meadow,” the master said. “Every battle, every struggle to this point has weakened them. But it hasn’t stopped the inevitable.” His eyes narrowed, and he sniffed the wind. “Indeed, here they come.”

One of the acolytes working below heard this, and news passed through the defenders in whispers and mutters. Soon, even the palace guards were tense and watching. The keepers at the trench tossed aside spades and took up position by the guards.

For a long time Markal didn’t see anything, and he wondered if the master was wrong, but then movement caught his eye. Several soldiers staggered out of the woods opposite the meadow, followed by a handful more. Soon there were at least thirty men, and still they kept coming. From a few dozen, they soon had at least a hundred, and then there were two hundred, then three hundred. Still, they kept coming.

“By the Brothers,” Nathaliey said. “How many are there?”

“An army, it would seem,” Markal said.

The Veyrians had come just far enough into the meadow to put space between themselves and the woods, and now they formed into rows, each under a banner: a red star, a yellow crescent, a red shield on a white background. One man was on a horse. He rode back and forth in front of the footmen, tightening their ranks, organizing fresh companies whenever enough newcomers had emerged from the forest.

“Look around the lake,” Chantmer warned.

All attention had been turned to the forest, and heads turned to see what he was pointing at. A solid line of men marched swiftly up the lake path that followed the water’s edge. They crossed a wooden bridge over a stream, passed beneath drooping willows, and traipsed onto a path of boards and stones that crossed a marshy stretch populated by cattails and reeds. A man at the lead shouted, and their pace quickened.

Here, the lakeside Veyrians met their first opposition. They’d apparently been trying to cross the causeway and take up position on a grassy rise on the opposite side. From there, it would be a quick run downhill to the pavilion. But as they reached the middle part of the swampy stretch, they stumbled from the boardwalk and tripped on stones that were flat and meant for easy walking—easy for those who were welcome in the gardens, of course.

The men who fell from the path sank to their knees in the mud. The more they flailed, the more it engulfed them. At the same time, clouds of black flies rose from the reeds and descended upon the soldiers in a giant, choking mass.

“First bears, now flies,” Nathaliey said. “Where do these things live when they are not needed?”

“They are not real flies,” Markal said. “Watch.”

Men flailed at the biting, stinging creatures, and more stumbled into the mud, where they went down with the rest. Dozens were now fighting in the bog. The cloud of flies dissipated, and not in the way of insects flying off in all directions, but like a black fog evaporating in the sun. The whole thing was an illusion to drive men from the path and into the mud.

“Was the bear an illusion, too?” Nathaliey asked.

Narud turned his head. “Big black bear in the woods, brown muzzle? Oh, no, that’s Wilford. I’ve known him since he was a cub.”

There were shortly so many men floundering in the bog that newcomers who stumbled off could step on the heads and shoulders of their drowning fellows and get back onto the path. A handful began to reach safety on the far side, with more joining them as the magical defenses exhausted themselves. There were hundreds more behind them, a long, continuing stream of Veyrian soldiers. The bulk of them would make it across, that much was clear.

Meanwhile, the enemies emerging from the forest had not been idle. They’d been straightening their lines and forming companies of spearmen, men to form a shield wall, and others with swords, pikes, or maces. Several more horsemen had made it through, too, and these wore the now-familiar gray cloaks. Hard to tell how many other marauders were on foot, but it was safe to assume there were several.

“Blood of the Path, there are a lot of soldiers,” Nathliey said. “There must be a thousand.”

No, Markal thought with dismay. Far more. Even as hundreds marched forward, their lines straightening, their commanders barking orders, more Veyrian troops kept pouring out of the woods. How many lay broken on the paths and woodland trails between them and the north gate? Many. Perhaps even most of the king’s army. Yet the force that remained was formidable enough.

“They are fools to attack us here and now,” Nathaliey said.

“Perhaps,” Chantmer said. “But they are fools with an army, which makes them dangerous.”

“Not as dangerous as they could be,” she said.

Markal glanced at the master, but Memnet was staring fixedly at the approaching enemy, so he asked Nathaliey instead. “How do you mean?”

“We won’t be facing wights—daylight scattered them. Reaching this point left the enemy weakened. If they’d waited, they could have pulled down walls, come in slowly while we were trapped. Or sent wights in when night falls.”

“That’s the entire point,” Chantmer said. “The enemy’s reach exceeds his grasp. This garden will break him once and for all.”

“I wouldn’t be so confident,” Markal warned. “You didn’t see the fire that burned through the sacred forest. Those woods were old and powerful. And damp.”

“We’ve got the lake at our back,” Chantmer said. “It will quench any fire, right Master?”

“Here they come,” Narud warned.

The lead forces across the meadow were only a couple of hundred yards distant now, and they broke into a trot. But before they could work up much speed, the front ranks staggered to a halt, and the ones behind crashed into them, creating a mass of confusion. The whole army was suddenly staggering about, going nowhere.

One of the young acolytes at the base of the stairs looked up at the wizards and apprentices. “What’s happening, Masters?”

Markal had the answer to this. “The pavilion is no longer so close. They started running, thinking they were near, and now we look miles away.”

“But that’s an illusion, right?” the acolyte asked. “You and Nathaliey crossed it easily enough.” He looked at Memnet. “I don’t understand, Master.”

“If an illusion is powerful enough, it becomes reality,” Memnet said. “Watch and see. Narud, keep an eye on the men at the lake. An opportunity presents itself.”

The enemy at the lake had continued pressing forward, until the bulk of them were across the causeway that led through the swamp. The survivors were panting and staggering, and several dozen broke from the army while waiting for the rest to cross the causeway. They went to the lake to splash water on their faces and drink.

Narud strode across the platform to face the lake. He exposed his hands, and his voice rose in a low chant. Memnet called up a pair of keepers to join him. Their three voices became a rhythmic, harmonious chant.

The magic awakened ancient protective wards submerged offshore. A spout of water erupted in the middle of the lake and formed a wave that rolled outward. Small at first, a foot or two high, it gathered strength as it rushed toward shore. A crest formed.

The Veyrians noticed too late. They scrambled back from the shore, but couldn’t avoid the reach of the giant wave, which swept them from their feet and carried them inland. The water rolled over the causeway and threw dozens more into the mud. When the wave retreated, it dragged men into the lake. The survivors were thrown into chaos.

Shouts from the palace guard in front of the pavilion alerted Markal to their faltering defenses in the meadow. The illusion should have kept the enemy army struggling indefinitely, but it was already dissolving. A dozen or more marauders had broken clear, and they shouted and encouraged the regular soldiers, who were slogging forward one sluggish step after another, reforming ranks as they marched.

“It’s the cloaks,” Markal said to Memnet, who watched this with a frown. “They deflect our spells. There’s magic in them that helped the marauders over the walls and through the gate.”

“It isn’t the cloaks,” Memnet said. “Or rather, not solely the cloaks. Something else is strengthening them. Or someone.”

Markal’s mouth felt dry. Was that so? Was it possible?

The Veyrian army in the meadow parted to allow a mounted figure through. He was small at this distance, but the man drew Markal’s attention like none of the thousands of others whose feet were tramping toward the pavilion. The light seemed to bend around him. A wind caught his cloak from behind and sent it swirling around his shoulders. When the wind reached the pavilion moments later, it was warm and foul smelling.

“Markal,” the master said. His voice was tight and stiff. “Ring the bell. Thus begins the final defense.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Markal grabbed the rope on the stout wooden beam and swung it hard. The beam hit the bell with a heavy, booming gong. A deep, sonorous ring penetrated to Markal’s bones as it rolled out from the shrine. A dark, evil magic had saturated the air, emanating from the dark wizard riding across the meadow toward them, but the ringing bell drove it out. Markal rang the bell a second time, then a third.

By the time he turned away, its effects were taking hold of the defenders. The palace guards lifted their weapons and shouted, defiant though their numbers were tiny compared to their enemy’s. Keepers and acolytes stiffened, eyes bright and alert.

Even on top of the platform, the wizards and apprentices seemed stronger, more resolute. Memnet himself straightened and looked ready to cast aside his staff, as if it were no longer needed. Hope rose momentarily in Markal’s breast, but the master seemed to think better of it, and clutched the stick close to him.

Meanwhile, the two armies closing against the shrine faltered. The one on the lakeshore came to an abrupt halt, while the larger force across the meadow slowed noticeably. The marauders rode back and forth, shouting at the men to get moving, and the king raised his hand and said something that didn’t reach Markal’s ears. Discipline once more reigned in the Veyrian army, and the entire army was soon moving at a steady pace across the meadow. A battle chant rose into the air. As it carried to the forces on the lakeshore, they resumed their own march.

Markal’s eyes fell on the sword, which lay on the wooden planks directly beneath the bell. He’d nearly forgotten about it. They’d brought Soultrup here, where it could no longer work its mischief, and there it sat, immobile, looking entirely harmless wrapped in linens, its lethal shape concealed. Certainly, it did not look or feel magical at the moment, but he was not fooled. If this sanctuary fell, there would be nothing to stop King Toth. Memnet and his order would be destroyed, and Soultrup would fall into the enemy’s hands.

Markal turned around to find Memnet the Great studying him. “Markal, you will lead our defense from here.”

“Are you sure, Master?” he asked. Uncertainty flickered on the others’ faces, even Nathaliey’s.

“You must. My thoughts are muddy, my vision still cloudy. I will advise where I can, but you are the one who will direct our efforts.” Memnet laid a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “You are ready. Find your power and wisdom.”

“Yes, Master.”

Markal considered his options. The force on the meadow was the bigger threat. It was led by the king himself, and several times larger than the one struggling along the lakeshore. But that didn’t mean he could ignore the smaller force.

“Vizier!” he called down to Nathaliey’s father. Kandibar turned toward him. “Leave a dozen men here. Get them ready for knife work. Direct the rest toward the lake.” When the vizier passed along the orders, Markal turned to his companions. “I’m going to ring the bell again. Nathaliey, shield the lead Veyrians. Let’s say the two companies under the banner of the red star, and the pikemen to their right. I don’t want them hearing the bell.”

She frowned. “You don’t want them to hear it?”

“No, I don’t. Do you know the incantation?”

“Tueri a nocentibus? But why?”

“You’ll see. Chantmer, if the rest of them break through, you’ll have to use obliviscatur. Turn them around. You know that one?”

A grim nod from the tall apprentice. “Yes, I can see. Of course I can manage.” He was serious and grim-faced, no arguing now, and Markal thought he’d already grasped the essence of the plan.

“Narud, prepare the wards in the meadow,” Markal said. He glanced at the approaching enemy. Almost here, another minute, perhaps. “Here we go. Nathaliey, shield them now.”

She placed her palms down and closed her eyes. Markal made his way back to the bell. He whispered one of the master’s sayings, calming his mind with the mantra as he took up the beam. He swung the rope hard, and the bell boomed.

A weird echo returned, bounced back from where it struck the men that Nathaliey had shielded. Behind them, the bulk of the army faltered once more, hesitating even as the marauders shouted and cursed for them to keep going. The lead formations, shielded from the effects of the bell, came running forward, swiftly outpacing the bulk of the army behind them. There were three or four hundred in this advance group.

They were only yards away now. And here they ran into the trench dug by the keepers.

It was only a few feet wide and a couple of feet deep. Had the army been fresh, the men could have leaped it. Had they seen it for what it was, they could have stomped through without so much as turning an ankle. But to their eyes it suddenly loomed like a vast chasm.

They stumbled into the trench, flailing and screaming. When they landed in the bottom, they writhed as if broken by a great fall. Men cried out, begging for help. There was no injury any more than there was a chasm; it was all illusion. Soon enough, they would recover if given a chance.

Palace guards leaped upon them, thrusting with daggers and swords. Again and again as hundreds of Veyrians died, defenseless.

Markal rushed down from the platform. “Get the bodies out of the trench! We need it clear.”

Keepers and acolytes dragged the dead out, and Markal hurried to help. He had a body by the leg and was pulling it out of the trench when the Veyrian war cry started up again. The rest of the army was pushing forward once more.

“Markal!” Chantmer shouted down to him. “I am ready. Tell me what to do.”

The bell had done its job without requiring obliviscatur, which meant that Chantmer still had his strength. And Nathaliey’s shielding spell hadn’t been very costly, either. It might be worth trying a second time. Two or three more slaughters in the trench and King Toth would have nothing left with which to overrun the shrine.

Unfortunately, the first of the lakeside enemies had fought their way clear of the bogs, the crashing wave, and the confusion cast by the path, and they surged at Kandibar’s defenders. The Veyrians looked tired and uncertain, having witnessed the slaughter of several hundred of their fellows. But they also outnumbered the small group of Syrmarrians by at least ten to one. The first swords and spears clashed.

Markal pointed at the developing battle on their flank. “Throw them back,” he told Chantmer.

“Master,” Chantmer said, turning to Memnet, “I need an overwhelm spell. Do you know the one I mean? I can’t remember the words.”

Memnet nodded and began to feed his apprentice the spell. Markal turned his attention back to the main fight, where he joined his efforts with the keepers in raising more wards. They slowed the pace of the attackers long enough for the defenders to finish clearing the trench. These bodies they heaped in a grisly pile to one side.

Two acolytes cast a spell to dry the grass, and Narud set it on fire. It swept back across the meadow, a fierce, quick-burning conflagration that scattered men and made horses rear in terror. King Toth stood apart, watching, and now he cast a spell. It killed the flames.

Facing the smaller, lakeside force, Chantmer let out a cry of triumph. Blood streamed from his palms and his face was drawn. But the attackers from the lakeside were bent double, vomiting. Some sank to their knees, and others dropped their weapons and staggered away. Kandibar’s palace guards sprang at them, slaughtering at will. The guards would have chased the fleeing enemy right back to the lake path if Kandibar hadn’t called them back. He left a handful in place, then brought the rest around to join the main defenses.

Markal didn’t have a chance to savor this small victory. More magic was brewing in the meadow, a malignant energy gathering around the king, so powerful that even the Syrmarrians could sense it, as evidenced by their drawn faces and wide eyes.

The air smelled of blood, and the shouts, screams, and clashing weapons mingled with the chant of wizards, keepers, apprentices, and acolytes. Above it all, the king’s power continued to swell.

Markal raised his voice to be heard over the din of battle. “Beware the sorcerer. Raise our defenses!”

Nathaliey ran to the bell to ring it. Narud flattened his palms. Memnet stared out, hands buried in his sleeves, expression grim.

The meadow heaved, the ground splitting open. The soil spit stones into the air, everything from fist-size rocks to small boulders. They climbed high in the sky and swirled about overhead, hundreds in all. The stones came flying toward the Golden Pavilion.

They rained down from the sky, striking the roof and the ground all around. Falling rocks crashed into defenders and attackers alike. One enormous boulder struck a formation of Veyrians trying to force their way across the trench by running atop the bodies of their fallen companions. It left a dozen men dead or maimed in its path. But another stone, even larger, smashed through the roof of the pavilion. It hit the bell, which gave a terrible screeching gong.

Defenders and attackers alike were flinching, crying out, throwing themselves clear of the bombardment. A marauder leaped the trench on his horse, heedless of the destruction raining from the sky. He swung his scimitar and cut down a keeper with a brutal slash across the throat, then charged for the stairs to the pavilion. A stone struck his horse, and he went down, pinned beneath the animal.

King Toth had dismounted in the meadow. While his army hurled themselves against the defenses, he lifted his hands overhead. Power gathered in him a second time, a swirling vortex of it.

More stones uprooted themselves from the meadow. The ones that had already fallen joined them, lifting into the air once more. King Toth lifted his hands higher. More stones raised themselves. The air hummed with power. A massive boulder half the size of the Golden Pavilion itself came loose with a tremendous boom that made the ground shudder, as if it had been torn from the very heart of the world.

The whole mass of stones swirled overhead, directly above the shrine of the Golden Pavilion, over the vizier and his palace guard, over the heads of the members of the Order of the Crimson Path. When the rocks fell, all would be destroyed.

“The pure land sacrifices in its own defense,” Memnet said.

It was said in a low voice, barely a whisper, but Markal heard it clearly. When he looked up, the wizard fixed him with his gaze.

No!

He couldn’t. He remembered the desolation Nathaliey had called up, destroying the invaders but consuming the walled garden in the process. And now Memnet wanted Markal to do the same thing here. It would be the end of the gardens if he did. Only a wasteland would remain.

“No, Master. No.”

“Then you must stop it, Markal. You must find your power, must eliminate your doubts. Quickly, now. It is our last chance. You know what to do?”

“Yes.”

Markal closed his eyes and placed his hands palm down. He didn’t need much. Only a flicker, power he could summon easily if he had the presence of mind. This was a place of strength, the heart of their defenses. If not here, then where?

“Sumas ascendit. Periculum est super nos.”

He raised all his power and sent it flooding out, or at least as much as he could direct, which was enough, he thought. Wake up! It was the same spell he’d cast earlier that night to rouse Nathaliey and warn her of the attack on the north gate. But instead of sending it to the minds of his companions, he directed it to the bell. It had taken a blow, but was not broken.

The bell boomed hard enough to shake his bones and make his ears ache. The stones were falling from the sky at the same moment. They came straight down at the shrine and its defenders, but this time they bent away as if there were a shield over the top of the shrine. Some bounced off and splashed into the lake with tremendous geysers of water. Others struck the attacking army. The largest boulder, the one that could have demolished the pavilion by itself, slammed into the Veyrians and rolled across the meadow, leaving a trail of destruction.

When the hail of rock had ceased, all was silent except for the groans of the dying and the last, reverberating sound of the bell. The Golden Pavilion was battered, but still standing. There were still hundreds of Veyrians, perhaps as many as two thousand on the battlefield, but hundreds lay dead or crippled. They lay in great heaps, in front of, behind, and within the trenches. Slaughtered at the feet of the Syrmarrian guards.

Meanwhile, King Toth had fallen to the ground, and now rose shakily to his feet and leaned against two of his men for support. He’d called up his strongest magic, an awesome display of power, only to see it cripple his own army. As the Veyrians seemed to notice the same thing, they turned and fled. Nathaliey and Narud had the presence of mind to call up incantations to speed their flight. Soon, the enemy was in complete disarray, fleeing toward the woods or running back around the lakeside path.

Only the marauders remained. They gathered in a knot of about fifteen gray-cloaked enemies around their king, half of them mounted, half on foot. One of them threw his cloak around Toth’s shoulders, and this seemed to strengthen the king. He found a horse and climbed into the saddle.

Markal hurried up to the platform to get a better view. His companions stood, tense and ready for what came next.

“He’s finished,” Chantmer said. His voice was tight. “Look at him, he’s drained his magic. That spell with the stones took everything.”

“That was more than a spell,” Nathaliey said. “Who could manage such a thing?”

“It wasn’t as powerful as all that,” Chantmer said. “Markal turned it aside with a simple trick.”

It could have been taken as a dismissal of Markal’s role in the battle, but it was simply fact. A deflection, nothing more. It was the sorcerer’s own hubris that led him to this point, and Markal had taken advantage of it.

“What now, Master?” Markal asked.

Memnet had dropped his staff, and he leaned against one of the support beams holding up the roof of the shrine. The scars remained in the wood from when Bronwyn had hacked off the runes. The beams themselves were split and battered from the attack with the stones. Splinters lay about their feet.

“He is finished,” Chantmer insisted.

“So are we,” Nathaliey said.

She was right. Their magic users were spent, hands bloodied from the youngest acolyte to the oldest keeper. The enemy had survived their runes and wards. Only the bell and the trench remained, and these wouldn’t stop the king and his marauders. The vizier was doing his best to rouse the palace guard, but no more than twenty uninjured men remained. These were exhausted, leaning on spears or bending over and tugging at tunics while they gasped for air.

The marauders chanted and shouted. King Toth stood tall in the saddle in the center of them. He let his men carry on for several moments, growing louder and louder, then lifted a gloved hand and pointed to the shrine. The company moved forward. The horses broke into a trot, and the men on foot into a run.

By now the last of the regular soldiers had disappeared into the forest or fled back around the lake into the woods on the far side. An entire army, destroyed. But King Toth had other armies, rich cities, and kingdoms at his command. There was no other garden, and no other order of wizards to oppose him should this one fall. Once again Markal thought of the pure land spell that would leave all in ruins. Was now the time?

“Master?” Nathaliey asked, her voice thin with worry.

“Let them come,” Memnet said. “We have one last trick to play.”

He reached into the sleeve of his cloak and removed a smooth sphere of glass. Nathaliey gasped. Hope sprang forth in Markal’s breast. The orb!

“Hold them!” Markal cried down to the defenders. “Our master has awakened!”

“The wizard!” someone shouted, and then the cry went up through all of the defenders gathered around the Golden Pavilion.

Narud went to the bell and rang it. There was a discordant note in its song—it had taken damage in the stone attack—but it wasn’t entirely without power. The song did nothing to halt the enemy gathering speed in their charge, but the shouting palace guard cried out with renewed vigor, until they sounded like a hundred men.

Light flared on the platform. It was the orb, glowing in Memnet’s fist. Soon it was too bright to look at directly, and if Markal had been standing any farther away, the master’s face would have been washed out in that light. But alone of the ones on the platform and the battlefield, he was within the cone of light, not squinting into it. And what he saw destroyed hope.

Memnet the Great was not speaking an incantation. His lips were not moving. Indeed, it was all he could do to hold the orb without dropping it. He’d called up a very bright light, but that was all. If there was magic in the orb that Chantmer hadn’t squeezed out in his aborted attempt, Memnet was not drawing on it. Apparently, he couldn’t. This was a flash of light, and nothing more.

The marauders reached the trench. Everything depended on that last defense, but it didn’t hold. A few stumbled, and one man fell, but the rest came across. They struck the wall of defenders waiting for them, and there was a terrific clash of weapons. Men screaming, dying, falling back, thrusting forward. Strengthened by Narud, who kept banging at the bell, the Syrmarrians fought bravely, but were no match for their enemies.

King Toth reached the trench, and there he stopped. He gathered himself as if to send the horse leaping across, but either horse or rider balked at the last moment. Light flared out from the pavilion, brighter than ever. Brighter than the sun.

The king seemed to lose his nerve. He turned his horse, and as he did, he cried out, “To me! Defend me!”

His marauders fell back from the battle, fighting free of the remaining palace guards, who moments earlier had been on the verge of annihilation, but now let out a great shout of victory. Marauders on horses hoisted their companions into the saddle when possible. The group of them fled across the meadow.

There was little question of giving pursuit, and the vizier called back those who made as if to chase their enemy out of the gardens. The light died in Memnet’s hand, and the orb disappeared into his cloak.

Nathaliey hugged Markal and then Chantmer, and Narud stood to one side, looking both puzzled and pleased, as if he could hardly believe that they’d won. Markal knew how right he was. A moment longer, a little more nerve by the enemy, and total defeat would have been the result.

As his companions rushed to help with the wounded, Markal looked at the master, who was bending shakily to retrieve his stick. When he stood, he caught Markal staring and winked.

“You had nothing?” Markal asked in a low voice.

“Nothing whatsoever.”

Markal chuckled. “You had me fooled.”

“But not entirely. Not at the end.”

Markal glanced at the others, but they were caught up in the general celebration, even Chantmer, who descended the stairs to clap Kandibar on the shoulder and pump his hand. Markal turned back to Memnet.

“No, not at the end,” Markal told the wizard. “I was terrified when I realized. I suppose I thought all along that you’d summon some great magic when things were darkest.” He thought about it for a moment. “And I suppose you did. Because the sorcerer was expecting the same, and that was nearly the same as being real.”

“Now you see, my friend,” Memnet said. “Now you understand. There is more to this than brute power. And that is why you are now a wizard.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The wights made a final attack that night, when the sky was dark and the gardens quiet. Nathaliey thought that if the king hadn’t been so grasping, had made his attack after sunset, the souls of the dead might have turned the tide. As it was, they nearly overwhelmed the demolished north gate, and the members of the order and the remaining defenders only barely turned them away.

Nathaliey was only sure the fight was won when she heard the distant horn of the Harvester. It carried like a ghostly wail through the misty night air. Following in its wake was the faint baying of hounds. The Harvester had come to gather souls, and the necromancy that controlled the wights was faltering, their protection from the dark gatherer weak. They fled in terror, and that was the final, inglorious end of King Toth’s assault on the gardens of Memnet the Great.

But that didn’t mean that the king himself had fallen from power. Nor was Aristonia out from underneath the Veyrians occupying Syrmarria and building the king’s highway through the heart of the khalifate. When the wind blew in the right direction, Nathaliey could smell smoke from the Sacred Forest.

Memnet returned to his cottage in the woods and promptly slipped into a deep, nearly unwakeable sleep. The others started to rebuild their defenses, starting with the bridge over Blossom Creek. The first layer of protection was concealment, and that meant hiding once more. Within the gardens themselves, ancient wards had been spent, and these would take months, even years to restore, but if they could keep from being found, they could buy time to see it accomplished.

And then there was the walled garden. The soil had been so rich that it brought Memnet the Great back to life, but now this most fertile corner was desolate. Markal ordered the soil cleared away, the dead trees cut down, the stone path uprooted, and all of it buried in a pit on the far side of Blossom Creek. He brought in fresh soil and had it laid down, but no plant would take root. The land was poisoned, dead.

It was a terrible blight in the heart of the gardens, and they worried it would spread. Markal ordered the entrances bricked in and placed runes on the surrounding walls to keep the dead spot contained.

When that was done, Markal took Nathaliey aside and told her to take her father away. Kandibar and the palace guards were traitors against the high king and could not return to Syrmarria. But neither could they stay. The Syrmarrians had depleted the food stores, and outside trade to secure more was difficult.

On the fourth day after the attack, Nathaliey and the surviving Syrmarrians left through the south gate. She used her magic to hide them as they passed through farming villages and grassy vales filled with shepherds and their flocks. They picked up the pace as the land dried. The drought had touched the southern border of Aristonia, and here they came across a pair of abandoned villages, where the crops sat unharvested and blighted. The bones of cattle lay where they’d been scattered by scavengers.

The next morning, they reached the Spice Road, and the day after that encountered a caravan of Kratian salt traders who’d sold their cargo in Syrmarria and were returning south laden with silk, indigo, and khat. Kandibar paid eighty dinarii and Nathaliey gave sixteen jars of honey from the gardens to pay the Kratians to transport the Syrmarrians across the desert to safety. The great Sultanate of Marrabat awaited on the other side, with its sultan in his palace of red stone. Nathaliey would not be joining them on the road.

Her father embraced her and spoke in her ear against the din of bellowing camels and shouting Kratians. “Come with me, Natty. I’ve never been south, I don’t know their ways. You can show me around Marrabat, introduce me to the sultan.”

She smiled. “I’m not fooled. I know what you’re trying to do.”

“Well, why not? It’s a father’s duty to protect his daughter.” He held up a hand. “I know you’re not a child, but it’s not safe for you here.”

“The Brothers have granted me a gift, Father. I have worked and studied to develop that gift further, and I’m too important to this struggle to step aside.”

“You’re important to your father, too.”

“Don’t worry about me, just get yourself safely across the desert. Do what you can to raise allies—I have a feeling we’ll need them.”

He nodded. “Take care, don’t do anything foolish. I expect to see you again.”

“I will, and thank you.” She kissed his cheek. “I expect to see you again, too.”

Nathaliey had thought about traveling with them for a few days to make sure that they escaped completely. Veyrian scouts might spot them, or bandits might attack when they reached the dry hill country to the south. Or the Kratians might abandon the Syrmarrians in the desert at the first opportunity. But these were minor worries compared to what awaited Nathaliey at the gardens, and she was anxious to return and do her share.

She couldn’t help a bit of spectacle as she left. The Kratian chieftain was shouting for the caravan to get moving. When her father glanced that direction, she cast a spell to hide herself. When he turned around, he looked past her, blinking in confusion. Nathaliey smiled to herself as she walked up the road.

“First we hide,” she said to herself. “And then we ride out to battle.”

#

Markal was working at the north gate when a figure approached. He didn’t look up at first, thinking it was one of the acolytes, and kept giving instructions to the archivists who’d traveled from Syrmarria to chisel runes. Jethro himself had come, and he had copied three new symbols that Markal had not known before. Two were for the forest, but one seemed to have something to do with stone, if only Markal could be sure.

He stared down at the scrap of parchment, trying to work out the symbols and the writing that scrawled down the side to explain them. He might have been able to read them had he encountered them in the library, but here they were gibberish. And if he couldn’t understand them, then neither Chantmer nor Narud would be able to, either.

“I’m almost certain we should put it in the brick,” Markal told the acolyte. “We can bind it to the wall, if nothing else. When the master wakes—”

“When he wakes, he’ll say you should have put it on the underside of a flagstone,” the newcomer interrupted.

Markal turned, surprised. It was Memnet. He was still pale, but not so skeletal in appearance, and he’d set aside his staff and stood without support. He smiled when he saw Markal’s expression.

“Well met, wizard,” Memnet said.

“Well met, Master.”

Seven days had passed since the battle, and three since Nathaliey set out. During that week, he’d only seen the master twice, and one of those times the elder wizard had been stumbling along the path under the starlight, sleepwalking. The rest of the time, Memnet had remained in a deep slumber.

“Have you eaten?” Markal asked.

“Indeed. Two loaves of bread, a whole chicken, several pounds of cheese, figs, grapes, and a half-bushel of assorted greens and vegetables. But I’m hungry again. I suspect I will be for some time.”

“Can you . . . ? I mean, has it returned?”

“My power?” Memnet said. “A little. Enough to know that I’ll have full control eventually.” He smiled, and a glimpse of his boyish look returned. “No more need for back-alley tricks—I should be able to do the real thing next time.”

“I was hoping there wouldn’t be a next time.”

“You’ve bought us several months, I would think. Perhaps longer. There’s little we can do about the Tothian Way—the highway will continue toward the mountains—but we can hide our garden, build our strength, look for allies. All thanks to you.”

Markal blinked. “Me? You mean that spell to deflect the stones? That was nothing. Any of the others could have done the same, and better.”

“No, they couldn’t—we were about to be killed, and only you had the presence of mind to cast it—but that’s not what I mean. You led the gardens in my absence, dealt with threats, and saw that we were in a position to defend ourselves when the enemy came.”

That was hardly true. If anything, Markal had put them at greater risk. He’d allowed the barbarian paladin to enter the gardens, and then, when she set off to kill the sorcerer, had failed to stop her.

“Look at these people,” Memnet continued, gesturing at the keepers working on the wall and in the courtyard. “They trust you.”

“They trust you, Master. If you hadn’t still been alive, I don’t know what we’d have done. We were all waiting for your return, trying not to get killed until that happened. By the Brothers, you know I don’t have the magic to defend the gardens against a sorcerer, and neither do any of the others.”

“Oh, nonsense. Anyway, I know your limitations, and they don’t trouble me. Your time will come. Might take a century or two, but it will happen.”

“That soon? How comforting.”

“Let me ask you a question, Markal. If you were going to overthrow the king, how would you do it? Armies? Magic? An invasion of nomads from the desert, an assassin in the night?”

“Is this hypothetical?”

“We can’t do it from here, that’s for certain.”

“I have the curious sensation that you’re about to send me off on some business or other. Where to, Marrabat? You want to enlist the sultan in our fight?”

“That would certainly help.” Memnet rested a hand on his shoulder. “But there is a small matter of a magical sword to settle first. Nathaliey is back—this is a task for the two of you.”

#

The next morning, Markal and Nathaliey led two horses laden with supplies and passed through the north gate. The red sword had been wrapped in a leather apron and tucked into its own saddlebag. Layered spells kept it hidden from prying eyes, both physical and magical.

Markal was still aware of its presence, sleeping, waiting. Would those incantations keep it from reaching out for the enemy? He didn’t know.

Memnet the Great accompanied them as far as the bridge. He whistled and hummed to himself, sometimes strolling into the clover-filled meadow before returning to the road. Markal had presumed that the master had something to say to the two travelers or he wouldn’t have left the gardens, but apparently he just wanted a walk. Nathaliey caught Markal’s eye and raised a questioning eyebrow, to which he could only shrug.

The horses hesitated at the bridge, confused, and Markal and Nathaliey had to coax them onto the stone path and up to the height of the arch as it curved over the gurgling waters of Blossom Creek. The water level was lower than Markal had ever seen, but it was still flowing for now.

Memnet stopped them at the top of the bridge. “Stay south of the Tothian Way. Avoid Veyrian scouts, and most of all, don’t let the marauders spot you. I don’t know what they are, or the extent of their powers, but they have magic about them, perhaps equal to your own.”

“Understood,” Markal said.

“Jethro has been digging in the library for information. If he finds anything, I’ll seek a way to get it into your hands.”

“How will you do that?” Nathaliey asked. “We’ll be hidden, and we’re leaving Aristonia behind.”

“There’s nothing west of here but army camps and bandits,” Markal added. “And in the mountains, griffins, giants, and other dangers. You can hardly send word by mounted courier.”

“If it’s necessary, I’ll find a way,” Memnet said. “Now,” he added, clapping them each on the shoulder, “I bid you best wishes. Find the order of paladins. Get the sword into their hands and make sure they know its lore.”

He left them. As he came down off the bridge on his way back to the gardens, something glittered in his hand with reflected light. The orb. Was he playing with it, or had he started to rebuild his magic?

“Well then, here we go,” Nathaliey said when she and Markal had led their horses down the other side and off the bridge. “Say goodbye to soft beds and hot meals. To feet that don’t ache and to uninterrupted sleep.”

“It could be worse,” Markal said. “Last time you crossed the bridge you were running for your life.”

“And I’m with you—that’s an improvement over my former company.” She grinned. “And by that, I mean, thank the Brothers that I’m not traveling with Chantmer.”

“Imagine a journey of three hundred miles with Chantmer as your only company.”

“Imagine it? I’ve done it!” Nathaliey said. “Well, maybe not alone, but close enough. We went to Veyre three years ago, just the two of us and a pair of acolytes who were well cowed and stayed out of his way as much as they could. That left me to suffer Chantmer’s attention, such as he granted me.”

“Narud isn’t such great company, either,” Markal said. “Not unless he spots a bird with unusual plumage or some unknown insect, and then he won’t shut up.”

She grinned at this, and he felt a flood of affection for her. So much had changed between them, from Nathaliey’s growing power to Markal’s supposed elevation to the rank of wizard, but their easy familiarity had not dimmed.

“All right then,” Nathaliey said. “On we go. Griffins and marauders and who knows what else await us. Should be delightful.”

And with that, Markal and Nathaliey continued up the road, on their way to the barbarian kingdoms of the west. The gardens of Memnet the Great receded in the distance behind them.

-end book #1-

Book Two: The Black Shield

Chapter One

Early spring, four months before the slaying of Bronwyn of Arvada on the king’s highway.

The paladins were two miles east of the village of Gronhelm when Sir Wolfram spotted the dead animal in the road. Or rather, his horse did. Wolfram was riding next to his sister at the head of the company, and had been squinting at the sky so intently that it was a surprise when his mare pulled up, shaking her head and balking.

The villagers had warned of griffin riders in the hill country, and so the paladins had kept their focus on the sky, eyes drawn to every crow, hawk, and eagle. They had nervously cleared their throats and eyed each other whenever the wind shifted and the slate-colored clouds began to drift lower. Perfect cover for griffins.

“Well,” Bronwyn said as she and Wolfram eyed the dead animal. “That isn’t a good sign.”

There was so much blood and carnage that it took a moment to identify the carcass as belonging to a horse, and not a cow, goat, or sheep. Its throat was torn open, and its innards lay in a sloppy mess outside its belly. Blood had drained out and collected at the bottom of cart ruts, where it had yet to congeal, and there were few flies. No crows or other scavengers, either. The kill was fresh.

A saddle lay to one side, the leather bloody and shredded, and Wolfram eyed the scrub country surrounding the road. No sign of the unhorsed rider. A glance overhead. No circling griffins, either, thankfully.

Bronwyn motioned for the others to hold position behind her. “Crossbows,” she told them. “If it’s a lone beast, you fire your bolts and drive it off. If it has a rider, let him see your arms, but do not fire at him or his mount.”

“And if we’re attacked anyway?” Wolfram asked. “Do we fight to kill or to drive them off?”

“These griffin riders are brave enough, but they’re not suicidal. A lone rider won’t attack a company of twenty armed paladins.”

“It’s not the lone griffin that worries me,” he told her. “The Gronhelmers said the griffins have been attacking eight or ten at a time—slaughtering entire flocks of sheep.”

“We’re not sheep, Brother.”

“They’ve killed people, too.”

“Herders and farmers, the lot of them. Anyway, they might be exaggerating.”

The road was already rising toward the mountain passes, and Wolfram looked east, to the snow-covered peaks of the Dragon’s Spine. Three years had passed since the first griffins were spotted flying over the hill country of Eastern Eriscoba, and now the mountains were infested with them.

Whatever had driven them from their homelands had also brought wolves—starving packs from the northern mountains—followed by giants and other strange beasts. And it wasn’t only the icy wastes of the north that were in upheaval. Packs of gray marauders came pillaging and killing, and only Captain Bronwyn and her paladins were capable of resisting them; anywhere the paladins were not, the marauders slaughtered at will. More terrifying still, a dragon of the vast southern deserts, as big as a house and huffing smoke, had flown the length and breadth of Eriscoba. Thank the Brothers it had vanished again over the mountains.

Meanwhile, the griffin riders, while not exactly numerous, had settled into aeries all throughout the central portion of the massive mountain range that divided the Free Kingdoms of the west from the decadent city states of the eastern plains known as the khalifates. While they’d strangled travel through the high passes, they didn’t usually descend this low, and the paladins hadn’t made open war with them as they had against the marauder bands.

“And the villagers might not be exaggerating,” Wolfram said. “What if we have to face an entire flock of the beasts?”

“If it’s a flock, we make them pay dearly. We’ll wipe them out to the last beast, the last rider. That is our way. Am I right, Sir Wolfram?”

Her voice was firm, and she was no longer speaking to him as a brother, but as one of her paladins, and he responded in kind.

“Yes, Captain.”

When Wolfram was a child, his sister had given him affectionate nicknames: Wolf Cub, when he was a scrappy boy, the youngest of six; later, Wolfie. The name carried affection, but also dismissed him as a child, someone coddled by his parents and his hard-fighting older siblings.

“Someday, you will be a wolf,” Bronwyn used to say when she was a knight in training and he would carry her breastplate and shield, “but for now you are only my little cub.”

That had changed when he’d joined the paladins, and changed again when his older brother, Randall, fell to a gray marauder wielding the red sword. Bronwyn was captain now, the red sword hers and hers alone, and he’d become Sir Wolfram. But he wondered if she still saw him as her little cub.

Now he felt a twinge of his old pride and love as she turned about in the saddle and waved the others forward with a gloved hand. She sat strong and confident in the saddle, her face severe and yet beautiful at the same time. There was a painting of Mother in the great hall of the keep that looked like that. Their mother, a warrior queen of the small kingdom of Arvada, rising in the saddle, a sword in hand.

They were brave and proud, the barons and baronesses of Arvada, and sometimes hard and unyielding. Too much duty, and not enough tenderness. His mother shared that trait, as did his father, his uncles and aunts, and his older brothers and, of course, his sister, Bronwyn.

On the surface, Wolfram was much the same as the rest. Strong and tall and a ferocious swordsman in combat, even at the young age of twenty-three. But sometimes, he wanted to be Wolfie again.

Bronwyn ordered him to remain by her side as the two led the company of paladins onward. Abandoned pastures lined the road, shaggy with knee-high grass and six-foot saplings that would soon turn the meadows into forest if the shepherds and their flocks didn’t return. A stream flowed by, but its millrace was empty, its windmill still and silent. A few minutes later, they passed a pair of crofter’s huts with collapsed sod roofs and a sad, abandoned air.

A bony dog exploded onto the road, barking furiously, and Wolfram flinched at the unexpected racket. A woman’s furtive voice hissed at it from a copse of trees growing atop an old burial mound, and the dog went slinking back to its hiding place with its tail tucked between its legs.

“Should I dismount and collar the owner of that dog?” Wolfram asked.

“To what purpose?” Bronwyn asked.

“To question her about what happened here.”

“Seems obvious enough.”

It wasn’t though, when the possibilities might include everything from griffin riders to gray marauders. Maybe nothing more than bandits, taking advantage of the collapse of law and order.

“There are more than twenty of us,” Bronwyn added. “I have Soultrup”—she dropped a hand to touch the hilt of the massive two-handed sword strapped to her saddlebags—“and the rest of you are a match for whatever enemies face us on the mountain passes.”

Suddenly, a frown crossed her face and she gripped the sword hilt more tightly. She studied the surrounding terrain with narrowed eyes. Her lips pulled into a tight line.

Her reaction alarmed him. “Sky or ground?” he asked.

“Ground. Prepare arms, Sir Wolfram.”

Wolfram lifted a hand and gave a sharp chopping motion. Paladins drew their swords and unstrapped helms and gauntlets from their saddlebags. Shields came up next, with their gleaming array of painted fists, crossed swords, sunbursts, and other symbols of the baronies, earldoms, and free kingdoms from which they hailed.

Bronwyn glanced over her shoulder, gave an approving nod to see the fourteen men and six women of her company armed and ready for combat, and pulled her horse into the lead. She loosened her sword in its sheath, but did not yet draw it. She raised her shield, which had the same silver moon painted on its gray surface as Wolfram’s, and placed her helm on her lap to get it in position to put it on in a hurry.

The company traveled for the next few minutes without speaking, although the jostling, tromping horses made enough noise that there would be no sneaking up on whomever their captain had sensed.

The road ahead passed through a narrow defile tucked between two hillocks, which seemed a perfect place for ambush, and Bronwyn gestured for Wolfram to leave the road and circle up to the right while another young paladin by the name of Sir Marissa made her way around the obstacle from the left.

Wolfram didn’t question the order. Bronwyn had an uncanny ability to sense danger from afar, an ability granted her by the sword she’d used to kill the marauder, Wolfram knew. Sometimes, Bronwyn had confessed one night over ale in a Vilsylvan tavern, it lied. Other times, it gave her bits and pieces of information without putting them together in a reliable way. Knowing this, and remembering the warning of the Gronhelmers earlier in the day, he kept glancing at the leaden sky even as his horse crested the hillock with the road below him on the left.

The road dipped briefly toward a river channel flowing down from the mountains. A wooden bridge wide enough for a single cart crossed the river, but the center span had collapsed, or, more likely, had been torn down by marauders to keep people from crossing. A squat stone keep sat on the near side, where it had long collected bridge tolls, but it had been sacked. Its oak door hung from a single bent hinge—the other hinge torn out of the stone—and the thatch roof had burned off. The whole thing—bridge, ruined keep, and weed-infested road—had a sad, forlorn air.

Ironically, the river was so low at the moment that neither keep nor bridge were necessary to accomplish a crossing. The bridge was probably sixty feet wide from bank to bank, but two thirds of its posts jutted from muddy ground, with only the middle, deepest third of the channel carrying water. It was said that drought had ravaged the eastern plains, and while Eriscoba remained green and lush, the river levels were all low as they flowed west from the mountains to join the Thorft running through the heart of Eriscoba.

But it wasn’t the destruction of the keep and bridge, or even the low level of the water that drew his eye, but rather a huge figure sitting on its haunches in the middle of the river with its back to them. A blasted giant.

The creature had shaggy red hair, not only on its head and beard, but curly and almost pelt-like on its massive forearms. It wore a vest made of deer hides and a necklace of skulls and other bones that clanked as it moved, and it had jammed the end of a crudely carved club into the riverbed, with the top half emerging from the surface of the water like a totem. The giant was eating something, tearing off chunks of meat with its teeth and grunting like a huge boar as it chomped and smacked its lips.

But why eat in the water? Seemed a strange place for a meal. Maybe the brute had clubbed its prey as it tried to cross and been too lazy or hungry to dress it and cook it properly, instead sitting down to eat it raw, even if that was right in the middle of the river.

The giant tossed aside part of its meal, which splashed, bobbed up, and floated downstream, trailing bits of torn, bloody clothing. Wolfram’s stomach clenched as he realized it was part of a human. Most likely, the rider from the dead horse. A traveler, unwisely wandering alone in the lawless territory east of Gronhelm, had come under attack from a hungry griffin, who’d killed his horse.

The traveler had escaped that attack only to be spotted by a giant, who had chased the tired, desperate man into the river and caught him where the water was deepest. A knock over the head, and the giant had his meal, which it was now enjoying.

An hour earlier on the road and we’d have saved the poor fellow.

Or been killed themselves. A giant of that size could tear a man’s limbs from his body as if they were the legs of a grasshopper.

Wolfram slipped his left hand inside his tunic and touched the silver crescent moon on its chain, given to him by his father when he’d joined the paladins. It had two small bits of magic. One was to let the former holder of it—in this case, his father—know that its new owner was still alive. The second bit of magic whispered courage to its bearer. Wolfram heard that whisper now, and a small surge of confidence tightened his muscles and made his fingers twitch to grab for his sword.

He glanced across the road to where Marissa was watching the giant silently from the opposite hillock. He waved a hand to get her attention and gestured back toward the company of knights. They turned around while the giant carried on with its meal, back turned, unaware that it had been spotted.

A few minutes later, they were reporting to their captain. Bronwyn’s face hardened as she took it in.

“This lawless hill country is in need of a purifying crusade. We could gather the other companies and sweep the area in force. Clear out these beasts and giants, all the way to the griffin redoubts in the mountains.”

“What about the sorcerer?” Wolfram asked.

Bronwyn strapped on her helm. “I haven’t forgotten him—stopping him is the only thing that matters in the end. Until he’s gone, the attacks and raids and lawlessness will only spread.

“But I never thought we’d lose the road through the mountains—if a giant can sit in the middle of the river picking over some poor fool’s bones with impunity, the road is as good as closed to anyone but a company of knights or a small army.”

“There are other ways through the Spine,” another paladin offered.

Bronwyn glared at the man. “The sorcerer will never subdue this land. Eastern devils, all of them. Meanwhile, the old road must be reopened.” She drew her sword. “Let’s send this giant’s soul to the Harvester. It will be a good start.”

They unloaded saddlebags and other spare gear—anything that would weigh them down in battle—and began their move, with Bronwyn up front, and Wolfram joining her at the head of the paladins. There was no leading from behind in Bronwyn’s company of holy warriors. She was the fiercest of all of them, the first into battle, and the last to withdraw, and she expected the same of her brother.

The only thing that seemed to give Bronwyn pause was the red sword itself. Soultrup had the power to bind a man’s soul, and killing enemies strengthened the evil forces inside. Someday, she claimed, she would take one evil soul too many, and the sword would fling itself from her grasp and into the hand of an enemy.

But Soultrup didn’t trap the souls of beasts, so she could kill this giant with impunity. And no doubt would, brutally and without mercy, if she could get her blade through the creature’s thick hide.

Sir Andar joined them at the front of the company. He was a thickset man, about forty, with a heavy jaw and a scar that bent from his forehead to his cheek like the curve of a Marrabatti scimitar. He had a thick mustache, turning gray, that completely covered his mouth when he frowned. One of the first to join the unnamed order of paladins formed by Wolfram’s brother, Randall, he had ranged up and down western slopes of the Spine for years, fighting, killing, and nearly dying on several occasions.

His helm was old and battered, his bent, oft-broken nose matching it in appearance, but Andar’s shield had been freshly painted, sky blue with a trio of gold stars in the center. The stars represented the three fortifications at the perimeter of his fiefdom of Greymarch, on the north bank of the Thorft across from Arvada.

“I’ve never killed a giant before,” Andar told Wolfram as the company set in motion. He stated it casually, though the same nervous tension had to be coursing through his veins.

“Since the giant is unlikely to have killed a paladin, either,” Wolfram said, “one of you will soon enjoy a new experience. I wonder if it’s still hungry.”

Andar chuckled. “It’s fresh meat it wants, not a tough old warrior like myself. One glance at that smooth boyish face of yours, and the brute will feel its stomach rumble. Juicy and tender.”

“Quiet, the both of you,” Bronwyn said. “This is no time for banter.”

That not only silenced Wolfram and Andar, but the rest of the company, which was now squeezing between the hillocks that had made the captain fear ambush. When they emerged onto the open slope leading down to the riverbank, the giant was still squatting in the middle of the river with its back turned, sucking on something and picking at it with a long dirty fingernail. It grunted as it ate, and muttered to itself in a deep rumble. It lifted whatever it was gnawing at, and Wolfram saw with disgust that it was the skull of its victim, mostly picked clean, but with strands of skin and hair still clinging to the scalp. An object for its necklace of bones, apparently.

Sir Andar’s horse balked suddenly and let out a frightened whinny. Other horses followed its lead, until eight or ten were stomping and pulling at their reins. Trained warhorses, all, experienced in battle, but the massive smelly thing ahead of them had them terrified.

The giant cocked its head slowly and stupidly, and only gradually turned its head to look for the sound. Its eyes widened slowly, almost comically, as it took in the company of armored knights already gathering into ranks for a charge. It rose to its feet, and water streamed from its body, its dangling beard, and its pelt of animal skins. Thirteen, fourteen feet tall, from the looks of it. A massive, meaty fist grabbed for its club and wrenched it from the river bottom. Mud dripped from the end.

By the Brothers, what an ugly beast. And huge, too, more than twice the size of Sir Gregory, the tallest man in the company, and several times as massive. Must weigh two thousand pounds, and it was said there were giants eighteen, twenty feet tall in the northern wastes; they would dwarf this one.

Wolfram had his sword in his right hand and his shield in his left, or he would have touched the crescent moon pendant for courage. It rested against his chest, a comforting weight, and he felt its whisper.

Bronwyn’s eyes seemed to glow with righteous anger. She pointed Soultrup at the giant. “Charge!”

The paladins had faced down marauders, had battled griffin riders swooping in on the backs of their horse-size mounts while swinging their slender blades with deadly skill. Last fall, forty of Bronwyn’s warriors faced off against the barony of Estmor, held a bridge for four hours against repeated mounted charges, and decisively beat an army of eight hundred men, forcing the king of Estmor to allow the paladins to pass unimpeded through his lands.

But a giant . . . this was a new experience for all of them. A thrill of fear raced through Wolfram’s body as he joined the charge and saw the creature’s features harden into rage as it drew back its club for a mighty swing. Club? More like a tree trunk. One blow could kill a horse and rider alike. Bronwyn, Andar, and Wolfram entered the shallow waters, with their companions pouring in after them.

Crossbow bolts flew through the air from behind. Some sailed wide or high, while others pinpricked the giant’s flesh, barely penetrating its tough skin. But the shots were enough to distract the creature, and it made a wild swing at the riders while trying to duck the bolts. Wolfram flattened himself against his horse, nearly dropping his sword as the club whistled above his head.

Andar came in from the other side and took a big, hacking swing at the giant’s wrist. The blow would have severed a man’s arm, but barely drew blood against the giant, who turned with unexpected swiftness and punched at the paladin’s horse as he went past. The horse went down and threw Andar into the river, where the giant tried to stomp him to death.

Before it could find the downed, flailing paladin, Bronwyn launched herself from the saddle. She slammed into its chest with such force that her shield drove under its chin, and Soultrup—a two-handed blade that she wielded lightly and expertly with one hand—thrust into its chest. The giant fell back with a roar of pain.

Bronwyn fell into the river with a splash, but quickly regained her feet in the knee-high water, and she took another swing even as Wolfram and a growing collection of paladins surrounded the giant and attacked from all sides. One man hurled himself from the back of his horse in an attempt to do from the rear what his captain had done from the front, but the giant slapped him away.

Blood streamed from the giant’s chest where Soultrup had penetrated its cloak of skins, and its rage turned to fear. It forced its way through the attackers in an attempt to reach the deeper water beneath the bridge. Bronwyn scrambled onto her horse and shouted for the paladins to follow her. They plunged after the giant, and the swirling waters rose almost to the horses’ chests as they approached the bridge, already too deep for some of the smaller mounts to fight through.

Bronwyn and Wolfram caught the giant first, followed by Marissa and a man by the name of Lucas, who wore a patch over an eye taken by a marauder’s dagger. The four of them hacked and chopped. Lucas landed a blow on the giant’s hand, and it dropped its cudgel, which floated harmlessly downstream. Now weaponless and bleeding heavily, but not mortally, the giant grabbed for one of the large wooden pillars that held up the center of the bridge.

Wolfram’s mare was in up to her neck and struggling against the current. Bronwyn’s horse was stronger and taller, but the captain, too, had a hard time getting closer. Behind them were the rest of the paladins, horses churning, men and women trying to close with the enemy. The water was too deep and the current too swift; they couldn’t get at it.

“Pull out!” Bronwyn shouted. “We’ll attack it from upstream.”

Wolfram cast a final glance at the giant as he let his horse fall back. It clung to the post, wounded and bleeding heavily, trembling and seemingly terrified. If he hadn’t seen the creature sucking the flesh from a man’s skull, he’d have felt almost sorry for it.

No, he realized belatedly. Not terrified, and not clinging or trembling. It was wrenching. Pulling at the pillar and yanking it this way and that. Before he could shout a warning, the massive wooden column came loose from the riverbed. The heavy planks and posts of the partially collapsed bridge tumbled onto the giant’s head and splashed into the river. A wave of muddy water heaved up and threw Wolfram and his horse backward, followed by debris from the river. A chunk of it slammed into his shoulder, and he grabbed at the horse’s neck to keep from being thrown from the saddle. A plank struck a nearby paladin, and both horse and rider disappeared under the water.

“Brother!” a voice shouted. “Help me.”

Bronwyn was dismounted again, half wading and half swimming, but still fighting the giant, who’d been swept back with the debris. Blood streamed from its head where a falling beam had struck it, but it was still struggling. Wolfram pulled his horse toward his sister and the flailing creature. By some miracle, he still had his sword, and was able to position himself behind the giant as it fended off Bronwyn’s blows. He drew back his sword, waited for the right moment, and swung with all his might at the giant’s neck. It was like hitting a post, but the blade bit through its hide and drew blood. The giant roared, slipped in the water, and came up again with another roar. Grievously wounded now, struggles weakening, but not yet finished. The current had carried them back to the wider, shallower part where Wolfram had first spotted the giant picking over the bones of the murdered traveler. The paladins surrounded their enemy, and swung again and again while the giant lifted its arms in a weakening attempt to fend them off. It staggered, fell, struggled to get up, and fell again, even as the attacks continued. At last the giant lay facedown in the water, a small island in the middle of the stream, surrounded by beached logs and other debris from the bridge. They stabbed it repeatedly until they were sure.

Exhausted, shoulder aching from where he’d been struck by a piece of the collapsing bridge, Wolfram dismounted and waded toward the shore, leading his mare, her sides heaving. He and his companions struggled onto the bank, one after another, where they lay gasping or looked to injured companions.

A nearby paladin drew in her breath sharply. “By the Brothers, will you look at that.”

Wolfram followed her gaze to the far shore. Three riders on horseback stood on the riverbank, watching the aftermath of the battle. As word rippled through the paladins, the riders turned without a word and rode up the road that led deeper into the hills. But not before they’d given the paladins an eyeful. The three men had dead eyes and faces the color of ash.

Gray marauders.

Chapter Two

Wolfram stirred the campfire with a stick and rested a hand on his belly. Not full—one was never full on the road—but the dull ache of hunger had retreated, and he was satisfied. Men and women coughed and turned in their sleep in the surrounding tents. He and Bronwyn sat in the open, huddled near the flickering warmth of the fire, one half of the first night watch. The other two paladins on watch were in the darkness somewhere to their left, about a hundred feet out from the camp, where they could keep an eye on the road.

Six small warding stones had been placed at intervals around the camp to provide additional warning against a night invasion. Wolfram could sense the nearest one, about fifty yards to his right, pulsing with a subtle, comforting magic, like a rumble from the chest of a faithful watchdog.

“That was the last of the beef,” he said. “And there are no more villages to buy supplies between here and the high passes, so we’ll be eating lean through the mountains. Maybe longer if they won’t accept our coin on the other side.”

“We’re down five warriors,” Bronwyn said. “That will help the food situation some.”

“You sent the wounded back without provisions?”

“I assume the good people of Gronhelm will give them a hearty meal and a bit of flour for the road. It’s the least they could do—those paladins saved a good number of Gronhelmers today when we defeated the giant.”

“Gratitude will be hard to come by from that village,” Wolfram said. “Griffins have eaten their flocks, chased the villagers from the fields, and the children already looked pinched and hungry.”

“They have no choice. If the villages of the hill country won’t keep us fed, we’ll fall back, and they’ll be overrun. Then what? They’ll be dead or slaves or worse. And that will be a good lesson for the rest.”

“You are a hard woman, Sister.”

“Hard times call for hard people.” Bronwyn’s sword lay across her lap, and she touched the hilt. Her tone turned even darker. “As several of our paladins discovered this afternoon.”

Thankfully, only one had died in the battle, a woman from Alsance who’d only joined the paladins two months earlier. The other four had suffered broken bones or other wounds that would necessitate extended rest. Of these, the most grievous loss was Sir Andar, his sword arm broken, and his horse lamed, both of them struck by debris when the giant pulled down the bridge. He was going to return to his homeland of Greymarch to recover.

“How many marauders will we face?” Wolfram asked.

“I’d hoped to face none. Had hoped we’d slip through the mountains undetected. Once down in the plains, we’d be hard to catch. Turn the tables on the enemy as we surge and then feint, and all the while making our way toward the sorcerer.”

“Yes, well . . . we were detected. So how many do you figure?”

“Might be only those three—a scouting party, nothing more. But I wouldn’t count on it. Could be an entire company, their twenty against ours. Against our fifteen, since we’re down five.”

“Sixteen,” he corrected. “You’re not counting yourself.”

“I’m not counting myself for a reason.”

Wolfram frowned and studied Bronwyn, who looked down at her sword, her hand on the hilt as if she wanted to draw it from its battered leather sheath. The dying campfire shimmered and reflected off her face.

“Add a few more sticks to the fire, Sir Wolfram.”

“Bronwyn?”

“Please, I’m cold.”

He obeyed, and the sticks crackled and popped and flared into life as the fire caught hold. They gave off a cheery warmth, but it was small and temporary, and the chill would return soon enough. He didn’t stop studying his sister, and her troubled look lingered.

“Are you leaving us?” he asked.

“The road is as good as closed already. Gray marauders, giants, and griffins in the higher passes. Gronhelm should be evacuated. A dozen marauders could carry off the entire population in chains.”

“We’ll mount an expedition. Gather the other companies and apply maximum force. Sir Andar’s brother is the baron of Donevale, not three days’ march from here—he could lend us archers to drive off the griffins. We’ll clear the road. Rebuild the watchtowers, the bridges.”

“You do all of that, Sir Wolfram.”

“While you . . . what? Go it alone?”

“This won’t stop until the sorcerer is defeated.”

“Which is why we are sending a company of paladins through the mountains.”

“We fought a giant and lost five of our number. There are marauders on the road, and they know we’re coming.” Bronwyn kept staring into the fire. “A lone rider stands a better chance of getting through.”

“Maybe,” he said, dubious.

“And there is something else.”

She drew Soultrup slowly from its sheath. In contrast to the worn, battered leather sheath, the sword had a clean, beautiful line to it, with hilt and pommel of impeccable workmanship, yet not in a showy way. The edge of the blade glinted red, and whispers sounded in his head. Voices.

“Take it,” she said.

“What? Me? No, I don’t want the thing.”

“I mean hold it, that’s all.”

“Oh.”

“Did you think I was giving it to you?” A smile played at the corner of Bronwyn’s mouth. “No, but I want you to touch it so you’ll understand. Soultrup will talk to you.” She held it out. “If your muscles begin to move of their own volition, don’t fight for control, put it down at once. There’s a war inside, always a struggle for command.”

He put his hand tentatively on the hilt, and the whispers grew urgent. So many voices—dozens it seemed, or hundreds. Had this blade killed so many? He set it across his lap, and his sister took his free hand, spread his fingers, and placed it palm down on the flat of the blade.

“Good, now close your eyes and let your mind go blank,” she said. “When it’s clear, ask the sword to show you the sorcerer.”

“I’m not much for meditation, you know that.”

“No need to meditate. Just open your mind, and the sword will do the rest. Believe me, you’ll see things whether you want to or not.”

Wolfram did as she said, still skeptical he could calm the anxiety, the worry about the sword, and the memory of the battle, of dragging the dead paladin out of the river and turning her over to see where the beam from the falling bridge had caved in half her face. The thought of Sir Andar cursing his broken arm and complaining that they should have bypassed the giant—the stupid thing never would have known they were there—and continued up the road without fighting. All of these worries and more crowded his mind.

But almost instantly, a clear vision swept everything aside. The camp was gone, and it was daytime, not night. He stood in the middle of a forest, surrounded by the largest trees he’d ever seen, their trunks as wide as houses, rising like towers into the sky. One massive tree had fallen and battered a path of destruction through the forest where it had crashed to earth. Ferns and giant, finlike mushrooms grew along the side of the fallen tree, which also sprouted saplings, these alone the size of a maple or birch from the forests he knew. Somewhere nearby, a woodpecker was hammering away in its endless search for insects.

Wolfram opened his eyes in shock, and found himself once again in front of the little campfire. His eyes took a second to adjust to the change in light, as if he’d really moved from a forest in daylight to the foothills of the Dragon’s Spine at night.

“You were in a forest, right?” Bronwyn asked.

“How did you know?”

“I can feel it coming off you. And I’ve seen the place before. That wasn’t long enough. Close your eyes and try again.”

“But what is it? How did I . . .”

“It’s not real. It’s a vision sent by one of the more powerful souls trapped in the sword. Now close your eyes until you see the garden.”

Bronwyn’s tone was impatient, and he obeyed.

The forest reappeared, but only for an instant, and then he found himself walking a road as it bisected a stretch of fertile farmland. But not any road. This was made of finely cut and fitted stone, its surface even except for a slight rise in the middle so water could drain off the sides. He had never seen a road so precisely built, except perhaps over the stone bridge crossing the Thorft east of Arvada, and that was only thirty feet long and ten feet wide. This massive construction seemed to continue for miles.

“The work of the sorcerer,” a voice said.

It wasn’t his sister, but a man walking next to Wolfram in the vision. The man wore a robe with its hood drawn, and carried a walking stick of pale carved wood. A gnarled hand with bent knuckles emerged from the sleeve to grip the staff.

“This road will soon penetrate your own lands unless something is done to stop it,” the man said. “The sorcerer’s highway will cross all lands and kingdoms until his dark hand controls every land, every people.”

“But how?” Wolfram asked.

“Thousands upon thousands of slaves. And evil magic to bind their pain to the stones.”

“He must be stopped. Must be killed.”

The old man’s stick clicked on the paving stones. “It might not be possible.”

“We will do it. By the Brothers, we’ll cut him down. Where is he? How do we find him?”

He caught motion out of the corner of his eye, something shadowy slinking along behind his right shoulder. A chill raced down his spine as he turned, expecting to see an assassin coming up behind him with a dagger. But there was nobody there, only a breeze that gusted dust onto the road from the ditch on the edge of the farmland. When he turned back, his companion was gone.

Wolfram glanced behind him once more to be sure that whatever he’d spotted was gone, too, and then suddenly he was gone. Gone from the road, gone from the forest, gone from the campsite in the foothills of the Dragon’s Spine where he’d been talking to his sister.

Instead, he was in a small garden. Vines with flowers and ripe fruit snaked up the surrounding walls. Birds with crimson plumage and long iridescent tails chattered in the boughs of orange and lemon trees. Bees the size of his thumb hummed past his ear. The air smelled rich and alive and yet deadly; the threat of it surrounded him. Indeed, the entire place throbbed with sorcery.

The stones beneath his feet murmured angrily at his presence. A breeze ruffled the vines, and they seemed to bend toward him, the leaves curling and beckoning, and he knew that if he stepped closer the vines would strike like snakes and drag him in. If he took a single step, the ground would heave and throw him down, and the roots of the trees would break from the ground and pull him under.

A hand on his shoulder, a voice. His sister’s. And then he was blinking in the darkness again, sitting in the chill air of an early spring night in Eriscoba. Bronwyn removed his hands from the blade and returned her sword to its sheath.

“The garden wanted me dead,” he said. “Thank the Brothers it’s not real.”

“Oh, it is a real place, I’m convinced of it. That sorcery you felt would have killed you, too. Or tried to, at least.”

“Is that the seat of the sorcerer’s power?”

“I believe so, yes. The sword can be . . . tricky. The visions are real, but not always what they seem.” Bronwyn snapped a stick and fed the pieces into the fire. “I’m going to find this place.”

“How?”

“The sword will show me.”

“You said it was tricky.”

“I will be cautious.”

“You’re going alone?”

“Yes. And I doubt I will return.”

“Don’t talk like that. Why wouldn’t you?”

“The only thing that can kill him is Soultrup,” Bronwyn said. “And once I’ve bound his soul, the blade will turn against me. The sorcerer will inhabit the sword, and he will overwhelm the others living inside.”

“But it won’t matter if he’s in it or not. The sorcerer will be dead. You can rid yourself of the blasted thing and return in triumph.”

“You think the sorcerer is alone in this war? That he doesn’t have lieutenants whose hearts are every bit as dark as his own? One of them will pick up the sword, and it will obey him. And whoever that is will renew his master’s fight.”

“So you’ll kill the sorcerer, the sword will fall into the hands of an enemy, and you’ll be killed in turn?” Wolfram asked. “In that case, what will you have accomplished but your own death?”

She put a hand on his forearm. “No, Wolfie. You still don’t understand. I’m going to fall on the blade as soon as I’ve killed the monster. I will be inside, too, and I will resist.”

He lost his resolve when she spoke his childhood nickname, and found himself blinking back tears. Bronwyn was a hard woman, filled with resolve and purpose, but she hadn’t always been that way. She’d been his older sister, protective and sometimes even tender.

“You must be strong,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “Yes. I will be.”

“Because you are the captain of the paladins now.”

“No, I’m not that strong. Give it to Andar, to Marissa.”

“You are that strong, Sir Wolfram. You will be their captain, and you will continue our crusade against these invaders.”

“I’m too young—”

“Young, yes. But also the brother of Randall and Bronwyn, and they will respect you in turn as they respected us. Act the captain, and you will be the captain.”

He hesitated. “All right. But only until you return.”

Bronwyn took him by the shoulders. “Listen to me. I’m not going to return. I will do this or die trying.”

“You might,” he insisted. “The Brothers will guide your path, and the time may come when you find another solution.”

She released him, and a bitter looked crossed her face. “What other solution?”

“An ally, a hidden path that you haven’t yet discovered . . . something. Anything but allowing yourself to die.”

He slipped the pendant with the silver moon from around his neck and gave it to her. “Wear this.”

“When did you get this?”

“Father gave it to me before I joined the paladins. It has a small bit of magic in it. If you are still alive . . .”

“I know what it is, and what it does. Mother used to wear it, too, before she could no longer fight. But how did it come to you, little brother?” There was a smile in her voice as she said it. “Always the coddled one. Everyone’s little wolf cub. Here, take it back—you need courage more than I do.”

He refused to accept. “It’s become a crutch to lean on. Anyway, I’m a different man than I was three years ago.”

“You were a boy three years ago.”

“Exactly my point. I’m a man, not a boy, and I can stand on my own two feet. Besides, you’re forgetting its other purpose.”

“Ah, that. So you want to know the precise moment when I’m killed? That sounds like torment. Why do that to yourself?”

“Not at all. I want to confirm that you’re still alive so that I can come look for you when you need help.”

“You can’t come look for me, because I’m not coming back.”

“Like I said, anything can happen. Put the chain around your neck. Please.”

Bronwyn did so, but seemed grudging as she tucked it beneath her shirt. Then she rose to her feet holding the sheathed sword and glanced at the moon as if to gauge its position in the sky. When she spoke, her voice had hardened once more.

“Our watch is up, Sir Wolfram, and it’s time to wake our replacements and get some rest. We each have a long day ahead of us. You, leading the paladins as their captain. And I, riding through the mountain passes on my way to the khalifates on the other side. Alone.”

She made for her tent without another word. Wolfram tossed more sticks on the fire so it would still be burning when the next watch came, picked up his own sword, and started after her. Bronwyn. So bloody stubborn, and so dismissive. He was just little Wolfie, after all, her wolf cub who had once carried her shield and breastplate.

No, Sister, you are wrong. I am not a cub anymore, I am a wolf. And I am as tenacious and stubborn as you are.

Chapter Three

A road west of Aristonia, several weeks after the assault on the gardens of Memnet the Great.

It was a simple trap that lamed the horse. One moment it was walking at a good pace, an older mare leading a younger, less sure-footed one at dusk, while the two humans kept their attention on their surroundings, and the next it went down with the distinctive groan and rolled eyes common to injured horses.

The two travelers coaxed the animal onto its side, and it was there that Markal found a two-inch nail speared through to the soft part of her hoof. Nathaliey calmed the horse with gentle words and a whispered spell while Markal pulled out the long bloody piece of iron. He searched where the horse had gone down and found the trap a moment later.

“Someone dug this hole,” he said, “and lined the bottom with nails.”

Nathaliey muttered an oath. “Marauders?”

Almost two weeks had passed since they’d left Memnet’s gardens, long enough that the road seemed to have become their entire life. Every day the same exhausting slog, beginning with a bit of cheese and bread, followed by a long morning crossing open plains and abandoned farm roads through drought-blasted fields, with a bit of rest taken at nearly dry streambeds or wherever else they could get water and forage for the horses. More walking in the afternoon until finally exhaustion and nightfall brought them a few precious hours of rest. When the enemy was close, they hid during the day and traveled at night.

They’d paid for two nights’ rest in dusty farm villages along drying, nearly empty canals, and spent eleven nights sleeping under the star-choked skies. Markal had expected to reach the mountains by now, but the magical scent of hunting marauders had sent them on several detours, and the jagged peaks of the Dragon’s Spine remained nearly twenty miles to the west.

Memories of the chaotic weeks before their departure had taken on a hazy, dreamlike quality. First, Nathaliey riding into the gardens in anguish, carrying Memnet’s head after he’d been murdered by marauders in the desert north of Marrabat. Markal led the burial of the master’s head. Then, the arrival of Bronwyn of Arvada, followed by her brutal slaying of the elderly acolyte, followed in turn by Markal accompanying her to search for the sorcerer.

He’d witnessed the horror of the sorcerer burning the Sacred Forest and Bronwyn’s attack on King Toth in a battle that had killed the king’s pasha, Malik, before Bronwyn herself fell. Finally, Memnet’s awakening from his death—or near death, as it turned out—and the defense of the gardens against an army of marauders, wights, and Veyrian soldiers trying to destroy the order and recover Bronwyn’s sword.

Markal unstrapped Soultrup from the injured horse’s saddlebags. The sword was carefully wrapped in linen and bound with leather thongs so that nobody would accidentally touch either blade or hilt. He set it aside and worked to remove the saddle and bags while Nathaliey stroked the animal’s neck and encouraged her to stay down.

“I don’t think it’s marauders,” Markal said. “I haven’t felt them for the last two days, and they’d be more likely to ambush us from the road than try to lame our horses.”

“Except that we’ve slipped several ambushes already,” she said. “They might be wise to us by now, and set a conventional trap instead.”

“Fair point. You’d better send a seeker just in case.”

“Why don’t you let me see to the horse,” she said, “and you can send the seeker.”

“I suppose I could. Better you, though.”

“Why? Are you testing me? A wizard and his apprentice—there should always be a lesson somehow.”

“You’re not my apprentice, and I’m barely a wizard.” He shifted the horse to get the other side of the saddlebag out from where her body was pinning it down, then eyed Nathaliey, who studied him with a questioning frown. “You don’t really think I’ve been testing you, do you? I thought you were joking.”

“When is the last time you spoke an incantation?” she asked.

“I cast spells every day.”

“A real spell.”

Markal sighed and admitted the real reason he’d asked her. “I want you to send a seeker because yours are stronger than mine.”

“Is that all?” Her frown turned to a smile, and she shook her head. “And I don’t want to cast the spell because I can’t remember the words. I knew it this morning but . . . well, the blasted thing has slipped my mind again.”

Now it was Markal’s turn to smile. “In other words, your insecurities and mine are clashing. How about I help you with the words, young apprentice, and we both ignore the fact that the student is stronger than the master?”

It had been a source of low-level tension since leaving the garden, usually manifested through banter and gentle teasing, that Memnet the Great had officially named Markal a wizard after decades of study, while Nathaliey, much younger, but with greater power, remained an apprentice. If only she could hold the slippery incantations in her head, she would far outmatch his meager abilities, and they both knew it.

Markal fed her the words to the incantation, and magic flowed out of her, together with blood from her pores that ran down her forearms to her palms. The seeker materialized. It was a small invisible eye that floated above the ground in whichever direction she sent it. Nathaliey wiped her bloody hands on the towel at her belt, sat cross-legged in the middle of the dusty road, and closed her eyes as she guided it out. Markal let her work while he saw to the injured horse.

He cleaned the wound with water and vinegar—much to the horse’s distress—and applied a poultice of herbs and honey so that it wouldn’t get contaminated, but when he raised the animal to her feet, she stood awkwardly with her hoof raised. He brought her forward, but she refused to put weight on it.

“I’ve found them,” Nathaliey announced. “Four men coming this way from the east. And this isn’t the only trap they’ve set. In fact, it seems as though we’ve passed two or three traps already, and neither saw them nor tripped them. Good fortune, I suppose, but it was only a matter of time before it ran out on us.”

“What about the men?” he pressed. “Are they enemies?”

“Of course they’re enemies—they just lamed our horse. But not marauders, if that’s what you mean.”

Markal breathed a sigh of relief. King Toth’s gray-skinned champions had magic about them, mostly contained in their gray cloaks, which had been imbued with power. They were formidable foes. It had been a marauder who cut off the master’s head, and marauders who led wights into the garden. Markal had witnessed Bronwyn fighting a marauder, and she’d overcome him only with difficulty and some magical help.

“Look at this!” Nathaliey exclaimed. “They’re carrying something—they must be something more than mere bandits.”

Markal released the reins of the horse, closed his eyes, and followed the tendril of light from his companion until he found her seeker, west on the road where she’d pushed it. It was a full half mile from their current location, yet strong enough to show the four men in bright relief, with a gray spot on the road where they were bending to attend to one of their traps. Had it been Markal’s seeker, and not Nathaliey’s, it would have begun attenuating in strength at five hundred feet, and faded entirely a few thousand feet after that. Yet she held it in place effortlessly, and he knew she could send it for many miles more before she lost control.

The bandits had a donkey with them—no doubt stolen from some other traveler—laden with bundles and bags. Using Nathaliey’s seeker, he took a closer look and saw that the bundles hid clothing, a pair of brass candlesticks, and other objects whose forms could be seen, but not exactly sussed out. And there, within them, was something glowing cool white. An object of power.

“Stealing magic,” Markal said with an ironic cluck of the tongue. “You’ve been very bad, my friends.”

“What is it? It’s not one of our books or scrolls, is it?”

“Not a book, and not something of ours—the feel is all wrong. I think it’s a charm of some kind, most likely a vizier’s chain or a ring for a wealthy merchant who wants protection from bandits.”

“It can’t offer that much protection if these four got their hands on it,” she said.

“No, I suppose not. They’re coming this way—I was going to suggest hiding, but now I’m curious.”

“You’re always curious, Markal. Besides, isn’t a magical sword enough trouble without adding someone’s ring of non-protection?”

“It should be. But it’s not.”

#

Markal told Nathaliey to send the seeker farther down the road to make sure nobody else was lurking and using the four bandits as a shield to hide a more nefarious attack. But the road looked clear, and the surrounding brush held no additional secrets that either of them could see, and so they tied the horses to a drought-killed tree by the side of the road and settled down to wait.

One of the four men came strolling up the road with his donkey a few minutes later. It was laden with the goods that Nathaliey’s seeker had spied earlier, but Markal noted that the nature of the bundles had been carefully disguised with wool blankets tied down with twine.

The supposed traveler was an older man with a gray beard, idling along as if in no hurry, and even though drought had strangled the land west of Aristonia, there were still enough people holding on at scattered oases and watering holes that most travelers wouldn’t have thought much to see this solitary older man approaching, even after an obvious trap had lamed their horse. Probably, they would even ask his help. But Markal and Nathaliey were not most travelers.

The two companions were forty miles beyond the western edge of the Sacred Forest, and eight or ten miles south of King Toth’s new highway, where massive crews of slaves were building not only the road itself, but a series of watchtowers and heavier fortifications. Although this country was nominally outside of the borders of Aristonia, most of the people were of Aristonian stock, but a fair number were either darker skinned descendants of some ancient migration from the south or showed barbarian influence in their fair complexion, auburn hair, and light eyes.

This man was one of the latter. Both hair and beard were largely gray, but there were streaks of wheat color among the gray, and his eyes contained flecks of blue. The deep tan of his skin and a certain turn to his nose indicated eastern heritage as well.

The man pulled up short with his donkey to study the travelers and the horses. He looked over the saddlebags and Bronwyn’s weapon, well-bundled but obviously a sword from its shape and size, sitting on the ground where Markal had set them. The man looked suitably wary, as any innocent traveler would be coming across such a scene, but his eyes lingered too long on the sword.

“Funny place to make camp for the night,” the man said. The accent was more Aristonian than not. “No water and rough territory, especially after dark, which it will be shortly.”

“One of our horses is lame,” Markal said, “so it’s hard to press on at the moment.”

“Oh?”

“Stepped on a nail,” Nathaliey added. “Went right up into the hoof.”

The man frowned and looked her over, then turned back to Markal. He seemed momentarily confused, and Markal knew he was trying to suss out who these two unexpected people were. The companions would appear to be of indeterminate age. They had a sword, but didn’t appear to be warriors. Neither did they seem like merchants. All this flickered across the man’s face in an instant, and then it was gone, and he was a simple man again, who’d come across two travelers in need.

“I see. Well, you don’t want to be caught out after dark. Several men have taken up residence atop an old fairy fort south of here, and they come out looking for trouble once the sun goes down. They’ve robbed a number of travelers and even killed a man once, if the rumors are true. I wouldn’t be surprised if they purposefully lamed horses like yours to make it easier to rob their victims.”

“Neither would I,” Markal said. “Not surprised at all.”

“Either way, we’d be better off elsewhere when it gets dark,” Nathaliey said, nodding. “Where do you suggest we go?”

The man gestured over his shoulder. “There’s an inn about a mile up the road, nicely fortified, too, with a good stout oak door. Easy enough to find. I’d accompany you if I weren’t worried about being caught out myself.”

“Ah, so that’s the plan,” Nathaliey said.

The man blinked. “Huh?”

Markal nodded. “He sends us toward his so-called inn, pretends to continue on his way, then turns around and follows us from a safe distance. We run into his companions in the road, and this fellow is behind to rush in to help if we prove difficult.”

“Meanwhile, we don’t suspect a thing,” Nathaliey said. “This man offered help, but said he couldn’t accompany us. The bandits sound threatening, but not too threatening. That way we don’t make a run for it, we try to get our lamed horse up the road.”

Even in the failing light, it was easy to see the man flushing. “Now listen here—”

“And that bit about the fairy fort was a nice touch,” Markal added. “Gets the superstitious thinking about wights and other old magic. Gets them worried, makes them extra susceptible.”

“I didn’t think of that,” she said, “but I’ll bet you’re right. Such an innocent-sounding detail, but clever. This is a good tactic for an undersized band of men when you don’t know exactly who you’ll be laming on the road. If it’s someone dangerous, you circle around and warn your friends, and the four of you vanish into the night.”

“The Harvester take you both if the bandits don’t first,” the man said with an indignant huff. He jerked on the reins of his donkey and made to push past them.

Markal held up a hand and blocked the man’s way. “Before you go, there’s something in your bags I’d like a look at.” He reached for the bundles. “It’s a ring or a chain or some other small token. Something you stole. It will save us both time if you hand it over instead of making us search.”

The man shoved him back with a forearm. There was a good deal of strength in it, and while Markal had spent years building muscle and toughening sinew while laboring in Memnet’s gardens, he suspected this one would best him in a fight. Assuming that Markal had been alone, which he was not, and if it were a purely physical conflict, which it would not be.

The man pulled out a knife when he saw that Markal wouldn’t stand aside. It wasn’t a crofter’s knife, something with a wood handle tied with leather cord and a blade that had been sharpened and resharpened over the years, but a fine little dagger with a small jewel at the hilt.

“I’m warning you,” he said. “I have friends.”

“The friends who are not lurking up the road?” Markal said. “Who are not bandits intending to knock us over the head and rob us of our horses and possessions? Nice knife you have there—looks like a merchant’s dagger. Did you murder him or just rob him and leave him for dead?”

The man glanced over his shoulder. He looked worried now.

“I’ll tell you what I told Memnet on the Spice Road,” Nathaliey said from behind Markal’s shoulder. “You kill a few of these robbers, and you do your fellow travelers a big favor. And not just travelers. It would be a service to any honest folk who live in these parts.”

The bandit made a lunge for Markal. Nathaliey waved her hand, and the man made a futile stab in the wrong direction, got himself turned around, and spun about several times, like a dog going after its own tail. He shook his head, as if to clear it, and took a step back in alarm.

“There’s a drought here,” Markal told Nathaliey. “Farms have blown away in the dust, entire villages have been abandoned, and the alternative to thieving might be selling yourself to the king’s road crew for a bit of daily oatmeal and a mug of sour beer.”

“And you think that bands of thieves roaming openly through the countryside is going to help the other drought survivors get along better?”

“A valid point,” Markal conceded. “But even if we were to kill them—and I don’t like bloodshed unless it’s absolutely necessary—our . . . methods for killing are likely to attract the kind of attention we’ve been avoiding for the past few weeks.”

“Also a valid point,” Nathaliey said. “But before you send this one on his way with our blessing, I want whatever he’s carrying. Can you get it without killing him?”

“I think so. Probably.”

“Help!” the man cried, apparently tired of waiting for his companions to come looking for him on their own. “Thieves! Murderers!”

His donkey shied backward from the cries and brayed, which set off Markal’s and Nathaliey’s horses, who pulled at their tethers where they’d been tied up on the side of the road. Nathaliey went back to calm them, muttering something about Markal taking care of matters quickly, as she was hungry and the horses needed seeing to. Markal wasn’t ready to turn the encounter violent, and stayed in the middle of the small country lane, blocking the man from escaping, but otherwise doing nothing to engage him further.

Three more men trotted up the road a minute later, breathing heavily. One held a cudgel, another a dagger like the first, and the third a scimitar, battered but with an edge. The tallest of the three newcomers looked much like the older man with the donkey. The first man’s son, most likely.

“Only two?” the tall one asked. “They’re not even armed.”

“Look at the sword on their saddlebags.”

The son did so, and his eyes narrowed. He took in Markal and Nathaliey, and his expression turned dismissive. “We’re not killers,” he said.

“Good,” Markal said. “You never know in these parts. Neither are we.”

“Give us your horses and all your possessions and we’ll let you go.”

“Oh, so you don’t kill directly,” Markal said. “You let starvation and exposure do it. That’s a relief. My cost is lower. I want something in your baggage. Something you stole, and I’m going to steal it back.”

“Are you mad? Who are you anyway?”

“I’m the vizier of the khalif of Aristonia, and this is—” He glanced at Nathaliey, who had come up beside him. She frowned and shook her head. “—well, another vizier. Or she will be soon. Her memory is lacking, and she can’t hold the khalif’s law code in her head.”

Nathaliey snorted. “You’re terrible, and it’s obvious we’re not viziers. Anyway, they’re not going to hand it over. Just take the blasted thing. If you don’t, I’m going to use Chantmer’s hammers and knock some sense into them.”

“Don’t you dare cast volans malleis. If anyone is out there listening, they’ll be on us by morning.”

“Then do it your way, just do it quickly.”

The older man had pushed his donkey behind him while he kept the dagger in hand. The other three spread to the sides, moving as if to flank their two victims, who hadn’t moved. Neither did the bandits appear anxious to attack. Only four men—no margin for error even against two lone travelers. And it made Markal all the more convinced they were thieves by circumstance, not by nature. Probably all four had family of some kind to feed.

The other three glanced at the tall one Markal had identified as the first man’s son, as if waiting for a signal. The leader of this little band, apparently.

“Last chance,” the young man said. “Think long and hard if this is how you want to trade your lives.”

“We’re not trading anything,” Markal said. “I’m only trying to convince you to give us the trinket before there’s trouble. Look at us. Do we seem worried? Are we acting like people who are about to be robbed? Doesn’t that give you pause? Either we’re sun-touched after so many days on the road, or we’re more dangerous than we look. So I would suggest that you do some long and hard thinking if you want to survive.”

“They’re waiting for someone,” the young man said. “Take them before it happens.”

“No,” Markal said with a groan. “We’re not waiting for someone. That’s your tactic, not ours.”

But the men were closing now, and there was no time left to negotiate. He had already rolled back his sleeves as the men started to fan out, and now he closed his eyes to concentrate.

The last time he’d cast this spell, most of the strength had boiled away as his doubts crippled him. This time, perhaps because of the speed with which he’d called it up, he didn’t have a chance to worry—anyway, these were just hungry bandits, not marauders or Veyrian soldiers.

Blood rose from pores along his forearms and rolled toward his palms. The incantation came out in the old tongue.

Let your limbs turn weary. May sleep cloud your mind.

More pain than he was expecting. More magic, too. Too late, he tried to hold it back, but it was already rolling out in a wave. He opened his eyes to see the four men drop in place as if their souls had been sucked from their bodies.

The donkey fell too, going down with a frightened honk, and lay on its side, feebly trying to right itself before its head sank to the dirt. The horses collapsed on the side of the road with a pair of thuds.

Only Nathaliey was still awake, and she sank to her knees with a groan and looked like she was going to fall face-first in the dirt. Markal wiped his hands on the cloth at his waist as he hurried to her side and grabbed her. She shook her head, opened her eyes halfway, then shut them as her head nodded.

“No, don’t,” she murmured as he tried to lift her to her feet. “So tired. So very . . . tired.”

And then she was out. Markal eased her to the ground, rose, and looked around in frustration.

The sun had finally dipped below the horizon, and the sky had darkened to a blue-black, with stars beginning to speckle the night sky. No moon yet—it would rise above the plain to the northeast in about two hours.

Meanwhile, the air was humming with the aftereffects of Markal’s spell. So many, many times he brought up his magic only to waste its strength in the casting. This time, he’d had the opposite problem. Too much power—he’d have put down a small army of Veyrian soldiers with that spell—and that was its own kind of lack of control, wasn’t it?

The magic would be rolling across the surrounding countryside. No garden walls to contain it here. The right person, someone who knew how to listen, would hear it ten miles away, ringing like a gong. And it would continue ringing for some time, then cling to him as he traveled. Linger here, too, for hours.

“Well done, Markal,” he said aloud. “You have just called out a challenge to your enemies.”

Chapter Four

Markal didn’t have time for niceties, so rather than untie the donkey’s burdens, he took the dagger from the old man and cut the cords to the larger of the two bundles. Once they were on the ground, he pawed through the possessions looking for the object spotted with Nathaliey’s seekers. He only found mundane items: a belt, a man’s soiled shirt, an empty wineskin, well-worn boots, and some socks that had been mended again and again until they should have been thrown out. Also a small bag of flour, which he set aside to replenish their own stores, and a couple of moldy apples, which he didn’t. Where was the object he’d spotted earlier?

He wished he had Nathaliey’s seeker to hover above the goods and pluck it out by its magical glow, but he wasn’t sure it would work at such fine detail, not with the stink of his own sleeping spell still hovering about them.

She groaned behind him. “Oh, my head.”

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead.”

“What in the name of Memnet’s beard did you do to me?” She struggled to her feet and took in her surroundings. “Oh, I remember. Did you mean to do it like that?”

“Put them asleep for the next six hours, knock out my companion and my horses, and sound a trumpet of magic to the gray marauders who’ve been hunting us the last two weeks? Oh, sure. That’s exactly what I intended.”

“All right, all right. It’s not like I have great control, either. Move out of the way and let me in there.”

Nathaliey cut the cord on the other bundle while he continued his search. He rifled through the pockets of a pair of farmer’s trousers and moved on to a shirt folded into a bundle. A moment later, she drew in her breath.

“Look at this.”

She held up a barbarian-style breastplate with smooth lines and fine workmanship. Armor for a knightly type of warrior. It was battered and nicked, and the straps had been cut. Moments later, she pulled out a single gauntlet.

That side looked far more promising than the old boots and such Markal was searching through, so he joined her. More gear from a downed knight, and a prickle worked through him. There was something familiar about all of this. Before he could consider further on that point, Nathaliey straightened.

“Got it!”

She held a chain with a silver crescent moon on it, and he knew even before she handed it over that this was the magical object they’d spotted earlier. It was warm to the touch and emitted a low, comforting hum. What’s more, he recognized the talisman.

“Whatever it is,” Nathaliey said, “it can’t be very powerful. Because it didn’t keep this poor fellow from being run down by bandits and murdered for his armor and gear.”

“The bandits didn’t kill the owner of this pendant.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I’ve seen it before. And I know how its owner was killed. It wasn’t by four clumsy bandits, that’s for sure.”

“Are you saying . . .? Oh! Bronwyn! I remember—I saw it too.” Nathaliey lifted the breastplate. “And this was also hers, wasn’t it?”

Yes, and he knew why it was so battered, too. A swarm of Veyrian soldiers had knocked Bronwyn down after Soultrup slipped from her grasp. They’d stood over her, hacking and stabbing until they’d finally killed her.

“The only question is how these bandits got hold of it,” Markal said.

He rubbed a thumb over the silver crescent moon, and was tempted to slip the chain around his neck to see what would happen, but the last time he’d picked up a magical item—the red sword itself—it had gone badly. Better wait until he’d sussed out its powers, minor as they may be. Instead, he walked back to his saddlebags where they sat next to the sleeping horses and tucked it into a small coin purse he carried with him.

“The pendant was in this pocket.” Nathaliey held up a pair of trousers. “Weren’t these Bronwyn’s, too? It must have gone undiscovered all this time.”

“But how did they get her gear in the first place?”

Yet even as he asked, it wasn’t hard to imagine a scenario. After Bronwyn’s death, Markal had fled the king’s encampment carrying her sword and escaped into the woods before the enemy could catch him. They’d hunted him through the Sacred Forest, then quickly brought a massive force to bear on Memnet’s gardens. The king had had other things on his mind than the paladin’s body.

Once Bronwyn was dead, some low-level Veyrian soldier must have sacked her gear and sold it on the road to someone who was then robbed by these four men. Or maybe they’d been the ones to buy it in the first place, or . . . well, any of a number of possibilities, none of them overly strange.

“We don’t have time to question these fools,” Nathaliey said. “Not with as loud as you cast that sleeping spell.”

They did a cursory search through the rest of the thieves’ possessions, taking a little of the food, but leaving everything else, including Bronwyn’s gear, which was really just her clothes and a partial set of armor. It was more than the bandits would have done for them, and more than they deserved.

Nathaliey cast a small spell on the horses to wake them, and another to heal the lame mare’s injured hoof beyond what the poultice of honey and herbs could accomplish alone, and they set off again before the moon rose. They traveled carefully at first as they watched for more of the bandits’ traps, then picked up the pace when they were safely to the west.

“We should have killed them,” Nathaliey said some time later.

“Didn’t we already discuss that? When did you get so bloodthirsty, anyway?”

“Not for the reason you think. They’re fast asleep on the road—easy prey for whoever finds them. If that’s the marauders, they’ll torture those fools until they talk.”

“Hmm.” Markal hadn’t considered that. “And what could the bandits tell them? A pair of travelers with some magic, and not much else. But we’ve already fought the marauders, and it’s no secret that we’re on the road—they’ve been hunting us since we left the gardens.”

“But they don’t know we have the sword. Didn’t you see the bandits taking note of it?”

That was another good point. They’d cast some minor hiding spells on top of the sword before leaving the gardens, and had hoped to slip through the mountains and into the barbarian lands to find Bronwyn’s company of paladins before the enemy realized Soultrup had left.

“We could go back,” Nathaliey added. “We’re only twenty minutes down the road. What about that incantation we were studying in the vaults? Something about tarda memoria, wasn’t it? I’ve got enough strength left to speak the spell if you feed me the words. We’ll clean their minds, wipe the memory of the encounter.”

“Tarda memoria? I can’t remember the entire incantation,” Markal confessed. “It’s a tricky one, difficult to hold.”

“Well, then. Only one other way to be sure they don’t talk.”

“No,” he said firmly. “I don’t have it in me to cut their throats while they sleep.”

Nathaliey fell silent for so long that he looked over to make sure she hadn’t slipped away while he was lost in thought to take matters into her own hands, then catch up with him later. But she was still there.

“I suppose I don’t have it in me, either,” she said. “I should though. This is brutal business—if we’re too merciful, we’ll end up cutting our own throats.”

They continued in silence after that. Markal was tired. Bone-deep tired, and wanting to sleep, to settle into his bed along the forest path back home and let the magic of that place heal him. Between a lack of sleep—they’d only slept an hour or two the previous day—casting spells to strengthen the horses, and dealing with the four men, he was ready to collapse.

Fortunately, there was some honey and bread left from home, and they stopped to share it out, which strengthened them a little, but that was the last of it. From here on out, it would be provisions they’d either purchased on the road or stolen from the would-be thieves behind them.

They resisted the urge to cast another seeker as the night wore on, but stopped periodically to listen for pursuit. Marauders could travel quietly, but there was only so much you could do to silence a full company of riders, and they should have enough time to slip from the road and conceal themselves with magic if they heard anything.

Everything seemed safe enough. The only sounds were natural: an owl, hooting from the scrub oak on the surrounding hills; the snap and growl of a fox or a wild dog; a breeze sighing through the dry grass lining the road.

They approached an abandoned farmhouse—a rarity this far west, as this had been thinly settled land even before the drought—and stopped to see if the well would still draw water. The bucket raised a muddy, unwholesome residue that they declined to put into their waterskins.

The moon was up and gliding along the edge of the Dragon’s Spine, which loomed ever closer. A pair of jagged peaks forked the sky, higher than their neighboring summits. Snow crowned them throughout the year, but it was still too dark to see the heights.

“This is it,” he said. “The road we needed a week ago. It’s taking us straight toward the mountains. Not that we can take a direct route up and over. The high pass is where Toth is building his highway, and the master says the mountains are impassable to the north and south, as well.”

“Then how are we crossing the Spine?”

“I know a way. At least I think I do.”

“You’ve been this way before?” she asked.

“Once,” he said. His horse was beginning to limp again, and he gave it an encouraging pat. “Many years ago, when I was a new apprentice. Not much older than you, and merely twice as wise.”

She gave him a playful elbow.

“The master took Narud and me up where the air is thin,” he continued. “We were looking for the Mountain Brother, supposedly.”

“Did you find him?”

“He’s a god—you can’t find him if he doesn’t want to be found. Anyway, I don’t think that’s what Memnet was about, only an excuse to visit an old friend. There was a hermit living up there near an ancient circle of standing stone. A survivor of Memnet’s former order of wizards.”

“I’ve heard of the stones,” she said. “But isn’t that near where the griffin riders are building aeries?”

“Close to there, yes,” Markal said. “We found the hermit living in a stone tower he’d constructed stone by stone over the decades. It was cold and miserable, and the hermit was nearly naked. His beard was to his knees, and so much hair covered his body that he seemed as much animal as man.

“Which makes sense, as he spent half the time living as a bear or a giant badger,” Markal added. “We stayed there six weeks, and I don’t think he spoke fifty words to us the whole time. Mostly, he listened to the master talking. Nodded sometimes, smiled when Memnet reminisced about old times. But his mind . . . it was mostly animal, too.”

“You’d think Narud would take that as a warning to stay away from the shape-shifting business,” Nathaliey said.

“Narud wasn’t frightened by what the hermit had become, he was intrigued. He started talking to birds and mice not long after that.”

“Then he’s doomed.”

“Eventually, maybe,” Markal said. “This hermit fellow was three or four hundred years old, so Narud has a while.”

“Why did Narud choose a wolfhound for his first shape shifting? That thing smelled awful and left a mess in the garden before he went out looking for you.”

“Would you have preferred a bunny or a kitten?”

“How about a squirrel?” she said. “They can jump from tree to tree. Very useful for forest travel—that’s where he found you, wasn’t it?”

“And yet squirrels aren’t generally known as trackers, are they?”

Nathaliey laughed at this.

“Anyway,” Markal continued, “there’s magic in the stone circle, whether we find the hermit or not. It will be a good place to rest before pushing south, where we’ll find an old trading road the barbarians used to cross the mountains.”

“I know the road you’re talking about,” she said. “Heard of it, anyway. I also heard it’s overrun with giants and griffins.”

“Better giants and griffins than marauders and wights.”

The trail continued west toward the mountains, but it had begun to dwindle, and was soon no more than a footpath. Twenty minutes later, it rose to the top of a grassy foothill and finally disappeared. An old watchtower squatted at the end of the road, occupying a third of the hilltop.

The companions tied the horses to some brush while they took a closer look at the hill and its watchtower. Markal thought at first they might continue down the back slope, but it was too steep for the horses, dipping eighty or ninety feet before beginning an even steeper climb up the other side. In fact, there were enough poorly placed trees, boulders, and loose rocks to make it challenging even without animals, and given the poor light, it was hard to see what the terrain looked like beyond that, even if they should find a way across. Nathaliey walked around the ruined watchtower and touched the foundation stones. “There’s old magic here,” she announced. Her fingers traced the joint between two blocks. “Right here—do you feel this? A ward like one of our concealers in the garden.”

Markal studied the place in question. There was nothing left of the old tower but its foundation, and the highest parts of it only rose to his waist, so the stones alone offered little defensive value. But she was right; there were still runes and wards, nearly eroded, but ready to be awakened. The ward she’d drawn attention to felt so familiar that if he didn’t know better he might have thought he’d placed it himself.

“This isn’t like one of our concealers,” he said. “It’s exactly the same. I wonder if Memnet’s old order endowed this tower.”

“Maybe someday we can ask him. Meanwhile, what do you think? Is this a good place to bed down for the night, or should we keep going?”

“We’re exhausted, and so are the animals. Bring the horses inside. We can figure out the terrain in the morning when the light is better.”

Once they had the horses within the ruined foundation walls, Markal cast a spell to calm them for the night, and then they spent a few minutes raising the concealing ward before curling up with their blankets and bedrolls.

The sun was already high in the sky and Nathaliey up and grazing the horses when Markal rose the next morning and got a better look at their surroundings. They’d nearly reached the Dragon’s Spine, which dominated the western sky. Green forests blanketed the foothills ahead of them, which rose higher and higher until they touched the massive snow-topped peaks to their rear.

He looked back to where Nathaliey was grazing the horses, and at the olive-green hill country below her that stretched toward the east. They’d already climbed perhaps two thousand feet above the vast eastern plains, and he could see not only into the khalifates, but south into the desert, brown and hazy in the distance. The Spice Road lay in that direction, where it crossed the sandy wastelands of Kratian camel traders on its way to Marrabat and the sultanates.

Nathaliey looked exceptionally grim. Almost haunted, in fact. She stared in the direction of Aristonia, which wasn’t visible apart from a bit of green on the horizon, as if she wanted to abandon their quest to find Bronwyn’s paladins and go home.

“I know the mountains look daunting,” he encouraged, “but we’ll make it through.”

She stared at him. “What?”

“It won’t be easy, but we have supplies, and we have magic to open our passage. Anyway, it’s too late to turn around, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You don’t understand. Look around you, Markal.”

He’d been so focused on the path already traveled and the route ahead that he hadn’t paid attention to the hilltop itself since rising. The grass was torn up all around the ruins, hoof marks in the sod, and horse dung, too. He bent and touched the ground, where he found the imprint of a boot. Another boot mark, this one of a different size. Fresh markings.

“Someone came up while we slept,” Nathaliey said. “Men on horses—your spell must have drawn them.”

“I never heard a thing. They could have killed us in our sleep.”

“Thank the Brothers those old runes kept us hidden.”

“How many?” Markal asked.

“I’d say at least a dozen riders, possibly as many as twenty. Marauders?”

“Had to be,” Markal said. “We’d have heard anyone else.”

“So our magic kept us hidden, and their magic kept us from waking to defend ourselves. It could have been worse.”

“A lot worse,” he agreed.

Nathaliey returned to the edge of the hilltop and stared east into the khalifates. “Markal, look.”

He joined her. A small cloud of dust rose two or three miles to the east on the same road they’d been traveling since before meeting the bandits. Riders, moving steadily in this direction, and he figured they were the same ones who’d nearly found them during the night. They must have retraced their steps, confused by the concealing runes activated in the ruined tower, realized their mistake, and doubled back to renew the hunt with greater determination.

“So, master wizard,” Nathaliey said, “you’re telling me there’s a way to cross the mountains?

Markal glanced toward the ravine on the opposite side of the hill. If he’d hoped that daylight would reveal a better way across, a closer look disabused him of that notion. It was just as steep and brush-clogged as he remembered, and the woods above were too thick for horses anyway.

“Because if there is a way,” Nathaliey continued, “I suggest you find it and find it in a hurry. Otherwise, we are about to be captured or killed by Toth’s marauders.”

Chapter Five

Chantmer approached the Veyrian soldier until he was close enough to see the pores on the man’s nose and a tiny blood vessel that had burst in his right eye, leaving it bloodshot. The soldier’s breath smelled of mutton and garlic, and Chantmer, who was nearly a head taller than the fellow, could count the gray hairs emerging on a crown of otherwise black hair.

I could kill him, Chantmer thought. Reach a spectral hand into his chest and squeeze his heart until it stopped.

That was, if he could remember the incantation. When he tried to recall the words, they appeared briefly, then darted away like butterflies on the wind, one after another. Fine, then grab the man’s pike and ram the tip through his belly. Meanwhile, the soldier stared, oblivious to his presence, guarding the chamber against just such an intrusion as stood in front of him, but which he was incapable of seeing.

Memnet tapped Chantmer on the shoulder and gestured. Chantmer nodded and followed his master past the soldier and through a scalloped stone archway painted with alternating white and black stripes. Geometric designs everywhere; the architect of this wing of the palace must have been a Marrabatti.

“I was looking him right in the eye,” Chantmer said, “and he never even blinked.”

“It’s a useful spell,” Memnet said. They walked past another Veyrian soldier, this one also oblivious to their presence.

“Narud cast the same spell, but his isn’t nearly as powerful.”

“That is because Narud is a young wizard and I am the master of the order.” Memnet’s tone was mischievous.

“He wasn’t any kind of wizard when he cast it, he was a mere apprentice.”

“Ah, then perhaps he could do better this time around. Maybe I should have brought Narud to Syrmarria instead. That way I wouldn’t have to expend my feeble magic.”

“And leave me to defend the gardens?” Chantmer said. “I’m still a mere apprentice.”

Memnet either missed the edge in Chantmer’s words, or chose to ignore it. His beard had been growing in since they’d pulled his body from the soil of the walled garden, and now he scratched at the stubble.

“We haven’t seen a single Aristonian guard since reaching the palace,” Memnet said. “They’re all Veyrians.”

“Given that most of the palace guard deserted to defend the gardens, I imagine the remainder shortly found themselves without their jobs, if not their heads.”

“That isn’t what surprises me,” Memnet said.

The wizard paused as they entered an arcaded courtyard. He touched a stone in the archway, nodded, and turned right. The library was so well hidden in the palace that even those from the order needed to study the signs to find it.

A trio of servant girls carrying silver platters with mint tea and date pastries hurried toward them, and the pair pressed their backs against the stone wall until they’d passed.

“The servants are still Aristonians,” Memnet said when they were alone again. “As is that fellow cleaning the fountain in the center of the courtyard,” he added with a nod to the gardener. “Why do you suppose that is?”

“All guards do is stand around and try to look alert,” Chantmer said. “If there’s an attack, they’ll rush to the palace gates, and they have the power to challenge people entering places they shouldn’t, but neither of those things require much knowledge of the palace.”

“Go on.”

“Servants, on the other hand, have to find the larders, acquire supplies from the markets, dispose of night soil, and do a thousand other things to keep the palace running.”

“Exactly right. Guards are disposable, but servants are indispensable. And what is a vizier, after all, but a servant?”

Chantmer looked at him. “You think the new pasha has kept Omar’s ministers?”

“There was only one trophy hanging above the city gate.”

A grisly sight had greeted them upon their entry to Syrmarria an hour earlier—the skin of the khalif himself. Rumor in the souks had it that Toth’s torturers had skinned Omar slowly, almost tenderly, over two days, keeping him alive until the last moment. They’d cured Omar’s skin and hung it from a pole above the east gates, where a good wind made it flap like a war banner.

The streets and markets of Syrmarria were as busy as ever, although crowded now with workers, merchants, and slaves from the eastern khalifates, many of them Veyrians. Someone whispered furtively to Memnet and Chantmer that slavers had carried off a few troublemakers, but there had been no massive purge after the khalif’s palace guard joined in the defense of Memnet’s gardens against the high king’s army.

“Yes, but the viziers?” Chantmer asked. “Why would King Toth trust them?”

“I’m sure he doesn’t. But he’s expanded west so quickly that he might have no choice. He needs ministers to raise taxes, conscript men for the army, and ensure that the city functions as it always has.”

“Syrmarria is more than functioning, it’s booming.”

“And why shouldn’t it?” Memnet asked. “Aristonia is the farthest west of the khalifates, the crossroads of Toth’s new highway. Wait until he builds south to the Spice Road.”

“More strangers from foreign lands—the city is changing quickly enough as it is.”

“Syrmarria is only half Aristonian now. Give it ten years, and it will be something else entirely. The entire khalifate will be transformed.”

“I wonder how the Aristonians will feel when they’re only a remnant in their own lands,” Chantmer said.

“Has any people anywhere ever been consulted by their invaders?” They reached the south side of the palace hill, and with it the stairway to the lower levels. “Go ahead, Chantmer. Find the library from here.”

“A test?”

“Practice.”

Chantmer frowned in concentration. On past visits, he’d either relied on Markal to find the library or been greeted at the gates by an archivist. He led the master to the bottom of the stairs, took a wrong turn, and shortly found himself atop the stairs where he’d started. Chantmer tried again, took a left where he’d taken a right before, and somehow found himself in exactly the same place.

He threw up his hands. “But . . . I went the opposite way this time.”

Memnet leaned against his staff and looked on with an amused expression. “Not really, but I see how you might think that.”

No offer of help was forthcoming, and Chantmer refused to ask. He tried again, and this time didn’t double back. But there were several more embarrassing detours before they finally approached the simple oak door that marked the entrance to the library.

“There,” Memnet said, rapping the door with the end of his staff. “Remember that for next time.”

The library door swung open, and an elderly archivist greeted them with a solemn bow. He clasped Memnet’s right hand with both of his own, and a broad smile broke over his face.

“Master. Well met.”

“Jethro,” Memnet said warmly. “Very well met indeed.”

Chantmer struggled to respect the lesser members of the order, who were failed wizards after all, apprentices who had never risen above their limitations, but they had their purposes. The keepers tended to the magic of the gardens, maintaining their citadel against the outside world. The acolytes stored magic that could be called forth by their betters, and the archivists held tremendous amounts of magical knowledge in their heads, even if they lacked the power to summon it.

Jethro was the most important of the five archivists who maintained the library beneath the Syrmarria palace, and he led the master and apprentice through the doors and into the expansive first room of the library. High bookshelves held thick leather-bound volumes, while niches in the wall contained scrolls and clay tablets.

An archivist sat at a table with a piece of cut glass pinched to her eye and a quill gripped between stained fingers, with an open book on one side and loose leaves of parchment on the other. She was so intent on her work that she didn’t look up when Memnet and Chantmer approached.

Fire was the enemy of most libraries, but here candles burned freely, including four lighting the copyist’s work as Jethro, Chantmer, and Memnet walked past her on their way to the Vault of Secrets. The runes and protective wards were so strong, even in the outer rooms of the library, that the copyist could have taken the leaf from her book, dipped the edge in camphor, and thrust it into the flame without it catching fire.

They passed through an archway and into the small chamber at the rear known as the Vault of Secrets. The ribbed ceiling was low enough that Chantmer had to duck until he reached the center of the room, and not only was the vault smaller than the outer room, but to the untrained eye, the small number of books, scrolls, and tablets on shelves and in niches would have appeared unimpressive. Not that any untrained eye would ever see this place; the air fairly shimmered with protective magic. A palace guard or servant would never even spot the door leading to the library, wouldn’t even find the stairs that had given Chantmer such trouble, but if a guard were somehow dragged in by a member of the order, he would immediately double over and vomit before fleeing in unnamed terror.

A table sat in the center of the room, with a massive book lying open across it. Curious, Chantmer approached and bent over the pages. Several leaves of the thick vellum had been removed, leaving a neat ridge where they’d been cut.

“Is this it? The Book of Gods?” he asked.

“How many cut books do you suppose we have?” Jethro said, and there was more than a touch of defensiveness in the old archivist’s voice.

“I don’t know, you tell me. Once the necromancer sent one enemy to steal from our library, why not another? The first thief slipped in right under your nose, after all.”

Memnet laid a hand on his shoulder. “Gently, Chantmer.”

“Apologies, archivist. The protection in this room is as strong as ever. I didn’t mean to imply you had been neglecting your work.”

“It’s stronger than it was, actually,” Jethro said. “Such little magic that we command has been set to strengthening our defenses. We’ve done little else these past weeks.”

“The defenses certainly feel adequate,” Memnet said. “But they are obviously flawed, or the enemy wouldn’t have gained entrance.”

Jethro winced, and it was apparent that Memnet’s words stung more than Chantmer’s open challenge.

“Now that we’ve lost the walled garden,” Memnet continued, “there is no better-protected spot in the order than this. But we’ve seen these past months that our defenses can be breached. And I don’t like having our library sitting literally beneath the enemy’s feet. They know it’s here, and it’s only a matter of time before they make another attempt.”

“What are you suggesting, Master?” Jethro asked. “Move the archives to the garden?”

“It would be safer,” Chantmer agreed.

“That is not an assumption I would make,” Memnet said. “It isn’t the distance from the enemy that gives a fortress its strength, but the height and width of its walls. And the walls here are higher than back home.”

“But Master,” Chantmer protested, “it isn’t merely the size of the fortress that matters, either. It’s the strength of the army within its walls. Our army is at the gardens, not here.” He waved his hand at the archivist. “With apologies, friend.”

“I understand,” Jethro said. “We maintain a guard post, nothing more.”

“Read for me from the Book of Gods,” Memnet told Chantmer.

“Which section?”

“Anything will do.”

Chantmer bent over the volume and touched a finger to the page. The vellum was warm to the touch, humming, almost alive. An illustrator had decorated each leaf with snaking vines, animals fancifully drawn, and strange, magical beasts, all done with vibrant colors of azure, emerald, and crimson. The letters themselves were neatly formed and artistically sculpted at the same time, yet when Chantmer tried to read the words, they swam in and out of focus.

He got one word, skipped another, backtracked to repeat it, fumbled the next three, and started over. Finally, he gave up in frustration.

“You know I can’t do it like this. I need to meditate first, and it helps if someone feeds me the words one at a time.”

“Would you like my help?” Jethro asked.

“No, I would not.”

Memnet scooted Chantmer out of the way. The wizard bent over the page, traced the words with his finger, and began reading in a clear, steady voice with no assistance or preparation whatsoever.

“You make it look so easy,” Chantmer said when the wizard had stopped. “But I suppose that was the point, right? To show how much better you are at it than I am. Which is why I’m still an apprentice.”

“Chantmer, I’ve been at this for centuries. Of course I’m better. If I weren’t, you’d be the head of the order, not me. But that isn’t the point.”

“Then what is, Master?” he asked, somewhat mollified.

“If we were to take the Book of Gods to the garden, my reading would be more like yours. I could do it, but only with a good deal of preparation. Meditation and the like, as you said.”

“And I suppose that it would be pure gibberish to the likes of me.”

“Yes, exactly.” Memnet closed the book and nodded at Jethro, who hefted it and carried it to a shelf. “This room functions as more than a mere fortress. What I could accomplish here in a week would take me a year outside this room. What would take you a month would cost a full decade. This library is its own center of power, the work of not only the Crimson Path, but the order that preceded it.”

“So it must be protected at all costs.”

“Yes, Chantmer.”

“And that’s why you’ve brought me here, isn’t it? To care for the library.”

A smile touched Memnet’s lips. “And this is why I know you will be a true wizard someday, and not an acolyte. You are too clever to be held down.”

Chantmer wasn’t amused by Memnet’s teasing. He could only think about Narud and Markal, whom the master had declared wizards. If they’d been better than him, he could have stood for it, but his power was greater than both of theirs put together.

Yes, but what about your knowledge? a small, bitter voice asked. How many spells have you mastered without Markal or an archivist feeding you the words?

And that, he realized, as Memnet turned to question Jethro about the goings-on in the palace, was the master’s unstated purpose. Chantmer would be here, guarding the library, and at the same time, would be surrounded by all these books. Memnet must know that, spurred by his jealousy of Markal and Narud’s accomplishment, Chantmer would redouble his efforts to master the incantations and other arcane knowledge needed to progress from apprentice to full wizard.

Jethro asked a question that Chantmer didn’t quite pick up, lost as he was in his thoughts, but he heard Memnet’s definite answer.

“If that happens, you do whatever it takes to save the archives. The stone walls themselves are nothing. The order itself is only slightly more important. If necessary, we will sacrifice our very lives,” Memnet added. “Because whatever else happens, the works in this room must be preserved. The walls of a library can be rebuilt and new wizards trained. But knowledge, once lost, is gone forever.”

Chapter Six

Late spring, two months before the slaying of Bronwyn of Arvada on the king’s highway.

Captain Wolfram waited outside the barbican while his servants assembled themselves. Some of them had rushed forward after he’d been announced, eager to embrace him after his long absence, including his old nursemaid, nearly sixty and grandmotherly in appearance these days, but they stopped when they saw that he was mounted, with his shield in hand and his sword sheathed, but at the ready. The other servants looked more circumspect as they emerged from the small chatelet and studied not only their master but the men and women he’d brought with him.

Six other paladins had accompanied him. They were dirty from the road, and grim-faced after a long brutal struggle in the mountain passes that had seen the loss of several of their companions. The others waited until he gave the signal, then joined him in dismounting.

Because he’d been away for so many months, he was able to study the family’s chatelet with a fresh eye, and what he saw did not please him. The gate towers needed repair, and ivy covered the wall behind the moat, giving an appearance that had once seemed homey and garden-like, but now presented nothing so much as an easy way for enemies to scale the walls and gain entrance to the courtyard of the small castle. The water in the moat was low, and outbuildings crowded its banks, and the wall walk was too narrow, with short, ineffective crenelations.

An army could sack the place without much trouble, and his father’s castle on the opposite side of the kingdom was nearly as bereft of effective defensive structures. Situated far from either the hill country or the northern marches, the villagers and lords of the small free kingdom of Arvada were fortunate to face few threats of attack.

He took in the crowd. “Is this everyone? Where is old Franklin?”

“He passed away, Sir Wolfram,” one of the kitchen girls, Franklin’s niece, said. “A bad ache in his tooth, and then he took the chills. Two days later, he was gone.”

His tone softened. “That is a shame. I am sorry to hear it.”

Franklin had worked the family stables for thirty years, and while he’d grown too old to shoe the bigger draft horses, he was a mature and calming force among the younger hands. There seemed to be other changes, too, he realized as he saw one young woman with a babe in her arms, and another—that was Jameson’s wife, wasn’t it?—with a hand over a swollen belly. It made what was coming all the harder.

“The stable hands will see to the horses. The kitchen staff will bring the biggest kettle you can find out to the courtyard and light a fire underneath it. Bring up a barrel of vinegar from the cellar, too.”

This brought quizzical looks. “My lord?” the baker said.

“See that it’s done, and quickly. As for the rest of you, bring everything out of the manor. I want it emptied.”

“Empty the manor, sir?” a man asked.

“Yes. Food from the cellars, crockery from the kitchens. Clear the armory, the treasury, the chapel. Take down the tapestries and haul out the furniture and bedding. Everything must come out. Everything.”

“I don’t understand,” the same fellow said. “Is there an enemy approaching, sir? And what shall we do with it all?”

“Bring it here to the gates and heap it up. Far away from the building. I’ll give you more instructions when that is done. Quickly now, do what I asked.”

“As for you,” he said to the other paladins, “keep your shields and your swords, but leave the rest of your gear. My grooms will see that it is well cared for.”

“You’re not going inside first?” Sir Marissa asked when the servants had scurried off and the horses had been led away. “One last time to see it how it was?”

Wolfram’s stomach clenched. “No, that would make it worse. You’ll understand when it’s your turn.”

Her eyes widened. “My turn?”

“What is this all about?” Sir Andar said. He propped his shield against an oak tree that grew on the edge of the moat. It was painted with the sky-blue field and trio of stars representing Greymarch. “Are you really going through with this?”

“You thought I was exaggerating last night?”

“I thought you said it for effect, yes. I didn’t think you would go so far as to . . . well, this!” Andar swept his arm toward the chatelet, where servants were already emerging laden with bundles of clothes and stacks of dishes.

“The manor and the entire estate was a gift from the king—my father—and it’s mine to dispose of as I see fit.”

“And yet I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean this,” Andar said. “In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that your campaigning is only possible because of the bounty this property provides. Without it, you are nothing.”

“Without it, I am a paladin and a defender of this land.”

Wolfram took off his shield and propped it against the tree, next to Andar’s. The crescent moon of Arvada gleamed on its field of gray, and that reminded him of his pendant, and that reminded him that he’d given it to Bronwyn, and he couldn’t help but close his eyes briefly to look for her.

The moon pendant he’d given her contained two pieces of magic. The first strengthened the courage of the wearer at the moment of maximum danger, when fears turned to hesitation, which then became either cowardice or paralysis. And after surrendering the pendant to his sister, Wolfram had struggled in battle, fighting trembles in his hands, anxiety in his belly. He’d learned to overcome it with time, but still wished for something to calm the terror in those last seconds before one’s sword clashed with the enemy’s.

The second piece of magic showed the one who’d handed over the pendant if the recipient was alive, and where she might be. But only in very general terms. It was like staring at a bright candle flame in the darkness and then closing his eyes. An afterimage of candlelight flickered on the edge of his vision—this was his sister’s soul, still burning out there somewhere, although much more distant and faded than it had been in the first few days—and when he turned his head, the light maintained its location relative to his position.

She was east, always east. And like looking at a mountain from a distance, no matter where he rode, campaigned, or battled, that little light, that afterglow of the candle of her soul, was always in roughly the same direction. She must be over the Spine by now, in the khalifates and searching for the necromancer. Had she seen the extent of the sorcerer’s highway, already thrusting through the mountains and almost to Estmor?

The other paladins set their shields next to his, until a ring of them encircled the oak tree. So many colors, so many proud little kingdoms, baronies, and freeholds represented by just these seven shields. Among the nearly hundred paladins who’d survived the spring campaigns, there were more than fifty different designs: snarling bears and rampant lions, crossed swords, and clenched fists. A green eye, a white crown, a golden hammer. Dragons, griffins, and giants, representing ancient battles, triumphs, and defeats.

Wolfram turned back to watch the servants sacking his manor house, and the other paladins came up alongside him.

“Why are we here?” Marissa asked

“I need witnesses. You will report to the others what I’ve done.”

“So that everyone will know that our captain has lost his mind?” Andar said, to a few nervous chuckles.

Wolfram fixed the older man with a hard stare. “When we rode to Sylvan Heights, Sir Jerome refused to fight. Refused, even, to give us advice on how to assault the castle.”

Andar shifted from one foot to the other, and his mustache bunched down over his mouth. “It would have taken a hard man to do otherwise—the marauders were keeping Jerome’s family hostage. You couldn’t expect him to turn on his own land, his own people, not when the enemy would have butchered them all.”

“And yet now Sylvan Heights has fallen,” Wolfram said, “and the gate is opened to Estmor—the enemy has a base from which to attack the whole of the north country—and we are unable to dislodge them. That was the result of Sir Jerome’s refusal.”

“Sylvan Heights was his homeland,” Andar insisted. “What man could fight against his homeland?”

“Exactly right. What man could?”

“For that matter,” Marissa said quietly, “Jerome still rides with his company even while his wife, children, sisters, and mother remain under the thumb of the sorcerer’s gray marauders.”

“Are you suggesting he’s a traitor?” Andar said. “That is a hard accusation.”

“I’m suggesting he may not be fully invested in throwing the enemy out of Sylvan Heights,” she said. “Not if it means watching his family be slaughtered by a retreating army.”

Marissa seemed to understand what Wolfram was getting at, but the others could use a demonstration. The kitchen workers had hauled the largest kettle into the courtyard and lit a fire beneath it, which had outgrown the kindling and turned into a small blaze. Wolfram grabbed his shield, told the others to follow, and set out across the bridge, beneath the barbican, and into the courtyard.

“Where is the vinegar?” he asked the servants.

“Over there, Sir Wolfram,” the head cook said. “With them casks of wine.”

“Bring it over and fill the kettle.”

“With vinegar, sir?”

“Yes, with vinegar.”

“What is the point of vinegar?” Andar asked when the cook had set off. “And the Harvester take me for saying it, but you should not abandon your manor. What would your sister say?”

“You’ll understand soon enough,” Wolfram said.

He took in the others and singled out Sir Gregory. Gregory was the tallest of the bunch, with muscles like a bull. A tremendous fighter who seemed to know no fear, and loyal too. Because he was so quiet, Wolfram had initially taken the man to be simpleminded, nothing but a warrior, a sword, but Bronwyn had told him once that Gregory could read and write.

A few weeks ago, Wolfram’s right arm had been badly bruised in a fight, and he’d dictated a letter to Gregory to be sent to another company of paladins asking for reinforcements. Wolfram read over the letter before sending it, and had been surprised to see that not only was Gregory’s handwriting fluid and neat, but that he had subtly rephrased the captain’s words to make him sound more clever. Wolfram had used the man in this way several more times since then, and to the same result.

“Gregory, in your opinion, what is our weakness in battle?”

“My opinion, sir?”

“Yes, what is our weakness?”

Gregory scowled. “I would rather not say. It isn’t my place.”

“I want your opinion. By the Brothers, will you give it to me?”

“Insufficient forces. When we lose, it is always because we do not have enough paladins relative to our needs.”

“How many do we need?”

“Again, I would rather not—”

Wolfram sharpened his voice. “Gregory!”

“Five hundred.”

“Oh, five hundred,” Sir Andar said sarcastically. “What a nice, round number. Why not five thousand? Or fifty thousand? We could march all the way to the eastern sea with fifty thousand.”

“Because it would be impossible to raise fifty thousand men on horse with sufficient skill and devotion to call themselves paladins,” Gregory said.

“I know that, you dolt,” Andar said. “That’s my entire point. Finding paladins is not like raising footmen. You can’t drill them for a few days, throw a pike into their hands, and march them into battle. A paladin needs to be an expert fighter to begin with, own an excellent horse or two, and be devout enough to surrender material comforts to live on the road for weeks or months at a time.”

“Exactly right,” Wolfram said. “There are only so many of these people across the whole of Eriscoba—probably not even five hundred in total. But there are more than a hundred—our current number—that’s for sure. Most of them won’t join us, and it’s not because we ask too much. It’s because we ask too little.”

“I understand,” Marissa said quietly. Two of the others nodded their agreement.

“Oh, do you?” Andar said. “That’s good, because I don’t. You think that to recruit more paladins, we need to make the ones we have suffer more? That’s what will do it?”

“Yes,” Wolfram said. “I noticed it after that first battle at the river, when we fought the giant.”

“That wasn’t the first battle,” someone said. “We’d been on the road three years already at that point.”

“It was the first battle where I was paying attention,” Wolfram said. “Let’s put it that way. Sir Bronwyn told me that night that she was leaving and putting me in charge of the company. Andar and the other injured paladins had already returned home to recuperate. Two of them never returned.

“I thought we’d been going too hard, that people were exhausted, so a few days later, after we fought the skirmish against the gray marauders, I spent twelve days encamped at the edge of the beaver lake to rest.”

“I remember that,” Marissa said. “We were idle—it was terrible.”

“Bored, but getting necessary rest,” Andar said. “You all looked much healthier when I returned to the campaign.”

“Yet we lost three more paladins,” Wolfram said. “They returned to see to matters at home while we were idle, and they never returned.”

“And you picked up five more shortly after,” Andar said.

“Not the right kind of men, though, were they?” Gregory asked. Everyone turned to look at him.

“No,” Wolfram said. “No, they were not. Too soft, too nervous about battle. They lasted a few weeks, then were gone. And those ones I encouraged to leave.”

“You can’t just throw them into battle,” Andar said. “They need to be trained.”

“They need to come trained,” Wolfram said. “You made that point yourself. We can perfect their swordsmanship, teach them bushcraft for surviving in the wilderness, but they need to be paladins from the moment they arrive. We’re recruiting warriors, not would-be warriors.”

Wolfram continued. “After that, I started going harder—longer rides, more aggressive tactics—and that’s when I saw a change. We lost a few, gained a few more.”

“We’re back where we were, more or less,” Marissa said. “Since Bronwyn rode off, I mean. But the ones we have are stronger.”

Wolfram nodded. “Strong in the mind, and that’s where it really matters.”

The vinegar was bubbling now, and he ordered one of the servants to bring him a pair of the big tongs they used for pulling clay pots out of the ovens. While he waited for her to return, he removed the straps from his shield.

“What the devil are you doing with the vinegar?” Andar asked.

Wolfram turned over the shield and looked at the crescent moon on its field of gray one last time. The same crest flapped from a flag atop his father’s castle and had adorned his brother Randall’s shield. Bronwyn had carried the glowing moon emblem on her shield when she left for the khalifates to find the sorcerer. To deface it now seemed like disloyalty. He picked up the tongs and hefted the shield over the pot of bubbling vinegar.

“Captain?” someone said. “Are you sure about this?”

Wolfram let the shield slip into the vinegar. It bubbled across the surface. He forced himself to turn away, tongs still gripped in his hands.

“My sister said that hard times call for hard people. These are very hard times, and we must be equally hard.” He looked over the others. “I’m convinced we haven’t been hard enough. We collect paladins, we lose them. They return to their homes, they rejoin us when they feel the call. Meanwhile, there are dozens, maybe even hundreds, across the free kingdoms who would be fine additions to our order.”

“You can’t force men and women to join,” Andar said.

“No, but once they join we can force them to stay.”

The older knight made a scoffing sound. “How?”

“By forcing them to abandon everything before they join. Do that,” Wolfram added, “and they will flock to us—we won’t need to recruit.”

“How old are you, anyway?” Andar demanded.

“Twenty-four as of the last full moon.”

“You are twenty-four,” Andar said, “and commanding paladins ten, fifteen years older than you. Bronwyn is a fine warrior, but she’s not much older than you are, and now I’m questioning her judgment in naming you captain when she departed—”

“Be quiet, Sir Andar, and let him finish,” Gregory said. The tall quiet knight spoke in a low tone, but there was an edge to it, and Andar shut his mouth.

“Men and women need a banner to flock to,” Wolfram said. “One true banner. One true path, and one leader. A mission and a quest. And that is what we’ll give them. No divided loyalty, no ability or need to return to the family manor, only the company of paladins.”

He dipped the tongs into the pot and pulled out his shield. Hot vinegar dripped off the end. The silver moon was gone, eaten away, as was the field of gray. Left behind was a black patina on the steel surface.

“Our banner is the black shield,” he continued. “And no shield will contain any other insignia or color.”

“We can’t give up our family crests,” Andar protested. “Those crests represent everything we are—our independence, our loyalty to family and farm and home. It is why we are the free kingdoms and not under the tyranny of the eastern despots.”

“We can and we will,” Wolfram said. “The ones we need will come to us with their shields already darkened, all other ties renounced as they pledge their swords to the Blackshields.”

“The Blackshields?” Andar said. “Is that what you’re calling it? You’re mad, boy. It will never happen.”

“It already has.” He tapped the shield, still hot from the vinegar. “This is the beginning, right here.”

Wolfram glanced at the other five paladins, and was pleased to see the skepticism fading from their faces, replaced by hardening resolve. In perfect timing, the steward approached with a nod.

“The manor is emptied, Sir Wolfram.”

“Good. Take lamp oil and spread it through the building. Anywhere there is a wooden floor, I want it soaked with oil. Then I want a big pile of oil-soaked wood placed in the dining hall where the table was.”

The steward blinked. “Are you . . . is this real? It isn’t some sort of test?”

“You will divide the possessions and money from the strongbox as you deem appropriate. Those who wish can approach my father and tell him that my desire is that he hire them as he is willing and able.”

“But Sir Wolfram, I couldn’t possibly give this order.”

“The manor will burn,” he said steadily. “If you will not spread the oil, I will be forced to do it myself, and I have urgent business at hand. Do this, my friend, and the Brothers will bless your soul.”

“Yes, Sir Wolfram.” The steward hurried off to obey the order.

“As for you, my fellow paladins, you are my lieutenants. It falls on each of us to raise and organize a minimum of thirty Blackshields, starting among the existing companies of paladins—I expect most of them to follow, but some will leave us.”

Andar snorted loudly.

“After that, another pass through the free kingdoms to gather men and women to our side,” Wolfram continued. “There’s no time to waste—the enemy is growing bold, and it’s time to move from the defensive before they overrun us entirely. But first . . . you will return home, rid yourselves of your possessions, and renounce any titles you may hold.”

Andar turned without another word and stomped off toward the stables, his shield in hand. The others stared after him, and Wolfram braced himself for at least one more defection, possibly two. Like Sir Andar, they all came from families of wealth and privilege and titles. One of them, Sir Corlyn, was already the earl of Westerly.

“I’m with you,” Gregory said.

“Me, too,” Corlyn said.

The other three hesitated.

“Sir Marissa?” Wolfram asked.

Marissa removed the straps from her shield, took the tongs from him, and dropped it in the bubbling vinegar. She turned, put her hands on her hips, and held the captain’s gaze. He acknowledged her gesture with a curt nod. The rest of them worked to remove the straps from their own shields.

Sir Andar stomped into the stables, out of sight. Wolfram sighed. Andar was a warrior and a leader. Why couldn’t he have seen the vision and understood the urgency of the situation?

It took some time for the steward to organize enough servants to spread lamp oil through the manor, and as the rest realized what was going to happen, they ran back inside, apparently not having cleared out everything of value as they’d been instructed. At last, the steward approached, grim-faced, and said that the deed was done.

Wolfram stuck a piece of kindling into the fire beneath the pot of vinegar, which still contained the last of the shields to be blackened. When the end of the kindling was ablaze, he carried it toward the manor house, a heavy, dead feeling in his chest.

This was necessary, but that doesn’t mean it would be easy. He climbed the steps and entered the building, remembering his pride as his father had given him the small castle on his nineteenth birthday, explaining its history, how Wolfram’s third great-grandfather had built it to secure the rich farmland on the northern edge of the small kingdom of Arvada during a period of threatened war.

The chatelet had never been attacked or besieged, but had provided an excellent base for developing the farms and vineyards of the surrounding countryside. There was wealth to be had here, his father had promised, and more wealth to come if the king’s son proved a wise steward of the land.

And now Sir Wolfram was going to destroy it. The others followed him to the edge of the dining hall, but didn’t enter as he set the flaming bit of kindling onto the oil-soaked pile of firewood placed where the table had been. He felt sick as he watched it spread through the firewood, then take hold of the wooden floor. Once he was sure, he led the others back outside, making sure that his face was smooth and impassive.

Even with all the oil and firewood, it took several minutes until flames burst through high glass windows in search of fresh air. Smoke poured out, driven by hot gusts.

Andar emerged from the stables, mounted and with all his gear. He stared with openmouthed horror at the burning manor, then gave Wolfram a look of searing disgust that bordered on rage, before he gave a hard jerk on the reins and turned up the road. By the time the flames burst from the roof of the manor, Sir Andar was long gone. Off to his home in Greymarch. Off to a life of comfort and ease, Wolfram supposed.

And a good riddance, too. Only pure paladins of the newly formed Blackshields remained.

Chapter Seven

The company of gray marauders rode toward the ruined hilltop watchtower while Markal and Nathaliey made hasty plans to escape. The ravine facing them was so daunting that Nathaliey suggested they hunker down in the foundation and try to cloak themselves behind the wards and runes. It had saved them during the night—perhaps it would work a second time. Go inside, wrap themselves in blankets, and remain perfectly motionless until the enemy had departed.

Yes, Markal pointed out, but if the marauders were returning for a second search, they must already know that their quarry was ahead of them. Would the spells hold a second time, during daylight, after their pursuers already knew they’d been tricked? He doubted it. And what about the horses? Wrap them in blankets, too?

There was no way across the ravine without abandoning the animals—that much was clear—and so they rifled through the saddlebags and carried off only what they could carry: food, waterskins, a pair of knives, and some small items like a fire-starting kit and a needle and thread. Finally, Markal grabbed the linen-wrapped sword and hefted it under his arm. Nathaliey stuffed the rest of what they would carry in a saddlebag and threw it over her shoulder.

They were down the ravine and into the brush just in time. The company of horsemen thundered to a halt not fifty feet above them on the recently vacated hilltop, and one of them immediately spotted Markal and Nathaliey. Two gray-faced men whipped out crossbows, fit bolts, and fired.

Markal waved his hand with a quickly muttered incantation as they fired, and the bolts bent wide. More bolts zipped toward them, and when he repeated the simple incantation, the bolts corrected mid-flight. The marauders had their own magic. But Nathaliey threw up her cloak with her own spell, and the bolts struck it and fell harmlessly to the ground.

The pair took refuge in the scrub oak and juniper that clogged the bottom of the ravine, and the natural obstacles proved even more effective in stopping crossbow bolts than magic. The marauders tried several more times before giving up.

A line of brush crept up the far side, as well, and Markal used it for cover as they climbed. It kept them safe, but at the cost of scratches and scrapes. He grabbed a branch to use as leverage to get up a steep stretch, and it gave way, sending the sandy soil tumbling down. He almost dropped the sword, and when he glanced back, he saw six or seven of the marauders off their horses and picking their way down the hillside after them. Other marauders directed them from above.

“Do you have any strength left?” Markal asked, gasping.

“You mean magic? Of course. Most of it, in fact. Don’t you?”

“No, blast it. Those little spells with the bolts cost me some blood.”

“Oh,” Nathaliey said between her own heaving breaths. “I thought maybe you were tired from climbing straight up this cursed ravine.”

He glanced back again. “They’re gaining on us.”

“That’s because they’re climbing down, and we’re climbing up. Wait until they hit the bottom.”

“No, really. They’re moving faster. No supplies, and they’ve got direction from above. Plus they don’t have to stick to cover.”

A hooded figure on a horse moved to the edge of the ravine and gestured with sharp, barked orders. The others seemed to defer to him, and Markal caught a sense of magic emerging, as well. A whisper of power that was strengthening the men in the ravine.

Markal fought his way through more scrub oak. “Even if we reach the top, that only buys us a few minutes.”

“We have to do something,” she said.

He cast another glance at the one on horseback above the ravine, more certain than ever that he was the marauder captain. If only he could peer behind his hood to see the captain’s face, he might be able to see if it was one of the ones he’d fought in the garden. Instead, Markal studied the man’s posture, tried to hold the scent of his magic so that he could recognize him later.

“I have an incantation,” he said. “It won’t last long, but it might be enough.”

“Is it the one about passing through the forest? I was trying to remember the words just now, but I can’t find them all. Do you remember it?”

He turned it over, thought through each part of the incantation. “Yes, I have it.”

Nathaliey fought her way to a place where she could brace herself against the gnarled trunk of a scrub oak. He was below her now.

“Give me ten seconds to clear my head,” she said, “then feed me the words.”

She closed her eyes, and he waited while a calm look came over her face. The marauders had reached the bottom of the ravine and started up the other side. Moving too swiftly. It was dry here, and he considered a different option: a fire spell. It would set fire to the grass first, racing from there to heavier brush. The juniper trees would go up like flaming torches, and they would set fire to the scrub oak in turn.

But that might cook Nathaliey and Markal, too, might burn for miles, destroying all of the drought-stricken hill country, killing people and animals alike. And the marauders wore their cloaks, which had protected them from magical attack in the gardens. No, he wouldn’t win this fight with fire.

Ten seconds had passed. Maybe more. Nathaliey nodded, and he gave her the spell.

“Flectere cuncta terrae virentia ante nobis. Figura terram.” Bend the vegetation ahead of us. Shape the land.

She fumbled the words, and had to gather herself again when the magic evaporated before it came up. At least she hadn’t bled herself yet, so she could try again. Provided she hurried. Trying not to panic, and more, not to feed Nathaliey’s fears, Markal slowly repeated the words of the incantation.

This time she got it right. And her magic was strong, too. It flowed up and away from them toward the crest of the hill above the ravine.

When they resumed their climb, the hillside was just as steep, but whereas before they had fought their way around every obstacle, stumbled in every patch of loose soil, and clawed their way through every patch of brush, now the land and vegetation conformed to their wishes, instead of eagerly attempting to thwart them.

Where there had been crumbling shelves and rocks waiting to tumble, the ground seemed firmer. They didn’t need to flail their way through clumps of brush and weeds with burrs, as the vegetation parted to let them through, then closed tightly behind them.

They were still tired, still laboring, but it no longer seemed a desperate struggle, and when they finally reached the top of the ravine, Markal glanced behind to see the marauders still near the bottom, and if anything, farther away, as if they’d come up a fruitless path and been forced to backtrack.

“Looks like we finally had some luck,” Markal said.

“If by luck, you mean they’re fighting my spell, then yes, I suppose,” Nathaliey said. “I bent your spell at the end. Turns out you can both open the way ahead and close it behind you at the same time.”

“How did you do that?”

“You tell me. You’re the wizard, and I’m a mere apprentice.”

A few bolts sped toward them across the ravine, and though they fell short, it was a reminder not to linger. The magic wouldn’t last forever, but the scent of it would cling to them for a good long time. They set off along the ridge to find a way up and over the next set of obstacles, and the ones after that.

Their pace was laborious now that the road was gone, the horses were abandoned to the enemy, and they were forced to carry what remained of their supplies. Markal removed his belt and fashioned it into a sling to hold the sword. He thought about unwrapping some of the dirty linen covering it to use instead, but he didn’t like handling the weapon, and even well wrapped and positioned on his back, he could hear it whispering whenever he stopped to catch his breath.

They were in the mountains finally, albeit only the lower stretches, and Markal stopped about an hour later to study the rocky spires that rose above them like the jagged scales on a dragon’s back. He indicated two of the peaks and said he thought that was above where the hermit lived. Two mountains further south they would find the road that would carry them through to Eriscoba. Or maybe it was the third mountain down, which wasn’t currently in view; they’d have to investigate the various canyons along the way until they found it.

“Unless you want to continue north and try to slip through the mountain pass where King Toth is building his highway.”

“Didn’t we already discuss this?” she asked.

“I’m laying it out as an option one last time before it’s too late. It would be quicker, but more dangerous.”

Nathaliey rubbed a dirty hand at the back of her neck, which was sweating from the exertion. “I like quicker. I don’t like more dangerous. We aren’t without resources, but now that the marauders know we’re trying to cross, they’ll be watching every step of the high passes.”

“They could easily search the old road, too,” he pointed out.

“But without a Veyrian army and five thousand slaves to help them look.”

“We rescued maybe two days’ worth of food,” he said. “Three if we stretch it. It might take us twice that long to reach the southern road. That means foraging, which is harder than it sounds.”

“I know how to forage. I once survived three weeks in the desert on nothing but lizard eggs and roasted bugs. Here’s a tip—pull off a scorpion’s stinger before you pop it in your mouth.”

“The south road it is!”

They continued doggedly, and seemed to have lost their pursuers, at least for the moment. The marauders had apparently decided against abandoning their horses, and were probably riding along the lowlands, looking for another way up. Or maybe they’d already decided that there were only two ways through the mountains, and had sent riders north and south to guard them.

The marauders wanted the sword, wanted the two members of the Crimson Path who carried it, and Markal wasn’t so deluded as to think that the pursuit wouldn’t continue until those objectives were obtained in the most brutal manner possible.

Still, he allowed himself to relax into the journey, enjoying Nathaliey’s company while the food held up, but missing their four-legged companions at the same time. It was easy before setting out on a journey to think solely of the human portion of an expedition, with horses being along to carry the bulk of the weight, and the heavy sword was reminder enough of that aspect as his back was already sore.

But animals provided companionship, as well, and brought along their personalities. Donkeys, patient and plodding, and willing to eat anything put in their way. Camels, cranky and irritable, but with endless stamina. And finally, horses, with their lively curiosity, their ability to be helpful or stubborn depending on mood. More than a little naughty, too—Markal’s mare had never missed the opportunity to trot off in search of good grass or a roll in the dust. If she was carrying goods that you didn’t want wet, you’d better shift them to the other horse when crossing a stream, because the mare was liable to throw herself down for a good wallow.

The blasted marauders had his horse now. If the mare thought Markal had been too much of a taskmaster, she was in for a cruel awakening.

“Find cover!” Nathaliey said suddenly, breaking him from his thoughts.

They were hiking through a stretch of mixed pine and grass, and he hurried to one of the trees and flattened himself against the trunk, with the sword swung around to clench against his chest. Nathaliey pressed herself in next to him.

A shadow darkened the sky, flickering as it hit the tree branches and turning into a solid shape when it passed away from the trees. He risked a look and caught sight of a huge animal, as big as a warhorse, with the tawny back legs and paws of a lion, and the front talons, wings, feathers, and beak of a white eagle. It swooped overhead, beating its wings with such power that the branches of the pine tree shook as if caught in a gale. The griffin was already out of sight when it let out a piercing cry that rolled over the hills.

“Did it have a rider?” Nathaliey asked when they finally shook off their fear and stepped away from the tree.

“I couldn’t see.”

“And were we spotted?”

“We’d better hope not.” Markal propped the sword against the tree and picked off bits of sap from his palms. “I was wishing for our horses a minute ago, but maybe it’s a good thing we left them behind. They’d have been spooked, and the griffin would have gone after them. Maybe us, too.”

“We’ve got magic for controlling animals, though. Cast it at the griffin, scare it off . . .” She shrugged.

He gave her a look. “Really? You think that would have worked?”

“Hmm, maybe not. Without Narud here, we’d be lucky to dissuade an angry badger. That monster would have torn us apart.”

“Like a pair of juicy rabbits,” Markal agreed.

They’d been studying the land below them as they climbed, more worried about marauders than anything they’d find in the mountains, but their near encounter with a griffin had altered that worry, and they turned their attention to the sky and the higher peaks as they set off again. A few hours later, they spotted a trio of distant shapes that might have been only hawks or eagles—the scale of things against the sky at a distance being difficult to determine—but were more likely griffins given how they were flying together. The animals spent a half hour or so soaring in front of the mountain. They eventually vanished to the south, moving with purpose and speed.

“Hopefully far, far to the south,” Markal said. “We don’t want them lingering by the old road.”

And yet the trio had returned within an hour, and with two more companions. No question now that they were griffins, not simple birds of prey. Markal and Nathaliey were closer now, and the five animals were circling about more methodically in an east-west direction, and though they were still several miles away, drew near enough for the companions to spot riders on their backs.

Markal and Nathaliey shortly approached another difficult ravine to cross, and by nightfall they would reach a set of higher, forest-covered hills, which Markal had determined would be a good place to cut south toward their goal, but he debated whether to stop here for the day or to forge on.

Continuing would mean crossing the ravine, but he was afraid to leave the shelter of the trees to study it while griffins were still wheeling about in the air.

“What are they doing, hunting?” Nathaliey asked.

“With five griffins?” Markal said. “If they are, it must be something big. A moose maybe?”

“I was more thinking people. Specifically, hunting us.”

He hadn’t considered this before, but it was a worrying thought. Nobody quite knew why the griffins and giants had migrated from the north country, but he’d assumed that it had nothing to do with King Toth, or at least that they weren’t his allies.

But what if the griffins had been warned, and were watching for intruders? There was so much open cover between here and the barbarian’s southern road that it was hard to see how they would cross it all with griffins hunting them from above and marauders searching from below.

“Send out a seeker,” Markal said.

“And look for what?”

“Find whatever they’re hunting. Five griffins—that’s a lot for a moose. It must be humans, so if you don’t find anyone, that will mean we’re the humans in question.”

“A seeker will leave a magic trail. If the marauders are still following . . .”

“If they’re still following, they’ve got plenty of physical signs to track already,” he said. “As well as the remnant of the magic you were tossing about in the ravine. That’s still hanging onto you.”

“Is it?” She sniffed at the air as if it were an actual physical scent, rather than something to be detected through her magical perception. “I can’t smell it.”

“We always smell worse to others than to ourselves. Which is both a metaphor for your magic and to be taken literally—neither of us has bathed in a week. We’ll be lucky if the griffins don’t track us by the stench of our body odor.”

“All right, enough with that. I’ll send a seeker. Help me follow it.”

They sat on a bed of pine needles, and Nathaliey called it up. They needed it to range at a distance, and so Markal strengthened it as much as he was able. He trailed along, and the two of them followed the seeker toward the mountains. It wandered up and down precipitous terrain that they would soon need to cross, and then came upon what wasn’t precisely a plateau, but had straightened into a meadow. Markal recognized the spot.

“Go to the left. No, more to the left.”

Nathaliey sent the seeker where he instructed, and they found the stone circle he’d once visited with Memnet and Narud. The stones were splotches of shadow through the dim vision of the seeker, more visible from the ancient magic they contained than anything else. The old hermit’s home used to be nearby, and Markal wondered if Memnet’s former companion still lived there, or if he’d transformed once and for all into a bear or mountain goat.

Nathaliey stopped the seeker suddenly. There was a giant sitting in the circle of stones, with his back against one of them for support as it gnawed at a deer carcass. That must be what had the griffin riders worked up; it made sense that they’d want a small flock to drive it off. Nathaliey moved the seeker north again, and it sped over the terrain.

“Slow down,” he told her. “It’s all a blur—I can’t see anything.”

“The seeker detected something. I’m only giving it its lead.”

It soon slowed, hovering above the trees and moving back and forth as Nathaliey tried to find whatever had alerted her magical eye. And then the seeker entered a clearing on the hillside, where a group of men had gathered, not more than a mile and a half from Markal and Nathaliey’s position.

The men were on foot—no way to get horses through this terrain—but heavily armed and wearing hooded cloaks. It was a look that was all too familiar. Seen only through the dim vision of the seeker, the leader’s features weren’t clear, but Markal thought this a different group of enemies than the ones who’d chased them out of the ruined watchtower. They were too high in the hills and too far south to be the same ones.

Nathaliey shifted the seeker and turned its vision skyward to the peak of a fir tree with a trunk at least twelve feet in diameter. A griffin perched in its heights, with a rider on its back, held in place with a complex arrangement of tethers and harnesses. He held a slender sword in hand. The tree swayed from their weight.

The griffin flapped its wings, as if anxious in the company of so many strangers. One of the men on the ground pointed south in roughly the direction of Markal and Nathaliey. In turn, the rider gestured at the sky with his sword.

The seeker dissolved, and the vision disappeared with it. Markal and Nathaliey exchanged glances.

“A company of marauders below,” Markal said, “and another above. With griffins to hunt us from the sky.”

“What do we do?”

Their options had narrowed into a handful of bad outcomes: hide, run, or fight. All of them destined to end in disaster. Only one thing gave Markal any hope, and it was barely a pinprick of light against an otherwise bleak landscape of possibilities.

“We’ll run for the standing stones.”

Chapter Eight

“There is a problem with your plan,” Nathaliey said in a low voice as they cowered in yet another clump of trees while a pair of griffins circled overhead.

“You only see one?” Markal said. “I stopped counting at five.”

“Apart from the griffins, the two companies of marauders, the red sword calling to the marauders—I’ll bet you forgot that one, didn’t you?”

“Forgot the sword? My throbbing back muscles remind me every step of the way.”

“It’s the small problem of a giant sitting in the stone circle, casually gnawing on a deer carcass.”

“That’s not a problem, that’s our hope.”

One of the griffins screamed, and the other answered. Markal thought they were a little farther away, and to the east. Nathaliey shifted the saddlebag with their provisions from one shoulder to the other.

“Our hope is that there’s a giant?” she said.

“Yes. We find the giant, we cast a little magic to hide ourselves, and we hope its presence dissuades griffins.”

“It won’t scare off a company of marauders, though. They have the numbers to drive it off or kill it.”

“The giant will give them a good fight, and we’ll slip away while they’re otherwise engaged.”

“That’s a crazy plan, Markal.”

“You have a better one?”

“I was hoping the old wizard would help us.”

“He’s not an old wizard, he’s a crazy hermit. I don’t know if he’s turned himself permanently into an animal or even if he’s still alive, but even if he’s still there, he’s obviously disinterested in these things, or he wouldn’t have let a giant take up residence under his nose.”

“Admittedly, that’s a good point,” she said.

“You’re not entirely wrong, though. The stones are a place of power, and we’ll be stronger there. Possibly, the marauders will be, too—I’m not sure. But there’s a giant, and maybe a hermit, and old magic in the stones, and almost anything could happen.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I am not remotely convinced, no. Most likely we die and the enemy carries Soultrup back to King Toth.”

“If they’re going to get the sword anyway,” she said, “we could always ditch it, see if it draws them, and make our escape while they’re looking for it.”

“And when a marauder enters the gardens with Soultrup in hand, I’m sure the master will tell us, ‘thank the Brothers you threw it away to save your own skins!’”

“I didn’t say we should do it,” she said defensively. “I’m only pointing out that if you think it’s so hopeless, why aren’t you suggesting we get rid of the thing that’s got them hunting us in the first place?”

“All right then, so we’re agreed. We stay alive as long as possible with as little cowardice as we can manage.” Markal listened for the sound of griffins and heard nothing. “Let’s keep moving.”

It would soon be night, which seemed encouraging on the surface. No need to keep to cover in the darkness, and Markal and Nathaliey had good enough eyesight to travel by starlight. But it wouldn’t stop the marauders, who had the senses of a wizard, with the ability to raise wights to hunt them.

The two companions had been going up and down hills since their initial flight from the ruined watchtower. They’d rested little and eaten less. The casting of the seeker had drawn blood and left them weaker still. Markal shifted the sword, which seemed to weigh a hundred pounds, and he swore the air was getting thinner the more they climbed.

He caught a glimpse of Nathaliey in the twilight gray as they emerged from a copse of mixed pine and hardwood, and her face was slack with exhaustion. She met his gaze and shook her head.

“We’re almost there,” he encouraged.

“Wonderful,” she said, tone sarcastic. “Let’s hope the giant’s belly is full and he’s sleeping off his meal.”

They were crossing a bare, rocky stretch of ground, when motion in the sky caught their attention. There was nothing to do but freeze in place and wait in terror as the griffin swooped overhead. To their relief, neither animal nor rider seemed to spot them, but instead flew higher into the mountains, apparently abandoning the hunt with nightfall. Markal felt a stirring of hope.

“Look, a trail,” Nathaliey said.

It was little more than a deer path, but it was an improvement over the struggles of the last few hours, and they picked up the pace. Minutes later they came upon a single standing stone squatting toad-like next to it. Heavily eroded lines spiraled around the stone from the top to the ground, and when Markal bent to scrape the dirt around the base, he discovered that the stone wasn’t short, so much as buried by an accumulation of leaves and sticks turned to soil over the centuries. He rested a hand on the crown, curious as to what magic it held. A tingle on his fingertips, and then it was gone.

“Feel anything?” Nathaliey asked, sounding hopeful.

“There’s magic there, but it’s too eroded. We’d never raise it.”

“It must be very old.”

“It was already ancient when Memnet was a boy,” he said.

“Someday they’ll stumble over the ruins of our gardens and call it something out of antiquity.”

“I never thought of it, but yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“So what was this place?” she asked. “It must have been something important.”

Markal studied his surroundings with fresh attention, and noted something artificial about the landscape. Could it be that what he’d taken for rows of trees and brush were the edges of ancient retaining walls, and the entire hillside had been terraced at one point?

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 because 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?”

“Listen to me, Chantmer the so-called Tall. I came upon you unawares. I caught you struggling with your spell and crushed it to dust without your even noticing.” Zartosht held up his palms. “And I did it without wasting a single drop of my blood. I could have killed you if I’d wished. Made your blood flow until you collapsed from the loss of it. And then, while you lay there, barely breathing, cut your throat. But I didn’t.”

“How generous of you. What do you want?”

Even as he asked it, Chantmer was sizing up his opponent. An enemy in the khalif’s palace, an invader—he should be destroyed, not conversed with. Chantmer could smash him with the hammers, or burn him up, but he’d already expended a good deal of his strength in the failed incantation. The enemy had thwarted his incantation, but that didn’t mean that he had real power; it was too early to say.

“I am here to destroy you and your order.”

Chantmer scoffed. “Indeed.”

“And I’m not alone.”

“Neither am I.”

“Yes, I’m aware of those pathetic old fools in the library.” Zartosht smiled. “I’ve met them . . . in their lair. And was unrecognized.”

“It was you who defaced the Book of Gods. A destructive, blasphemous act.”

“And I’ll do it again. I come and go as I wish.”

“Now who is it telling pointless lies?”

The dark acolyte’s lips curled into a sneer. “I’ll see your books burn. Your library in ash.”

“Those books will be here long after your necromancer is dead and the Harvester has gathered his soul. And why would he destroy them anyway? Steal them, yes. He is incapable of gathering his own knowledge.”

“I said burn them. Why does Toth have need of such pathetic scribbling? He has power over the dead, and when his highway is built, he will bring all kingdoms under his control. Even the Harvester will not dare molest him. What are a few worm-eaten scrolls and dusty tomes to that?”

“What delusions you have,” Chantmer said, and Zartosht’s face darkened in rage.

This one was easy to work into a frenzy. A little more anger, and he might reveal what he was doing in the palace. One more prod would likely send him into a rage.

“Is stark madness a prerequisite for becoming a sorcerer’s acolyte,” Chantmer said, “or does that come with years of intensive training?”

Zartosht’s expression unexpectedly smoothed, became thoughtful. “We don’t have to be enemies, you and I,” he said. “We could be allies in a great venture.”

“Wait, are you trying to recruit me? Is that what this is about?”

“Those archivists in the library—would you rather be allied with them? Chain yourself to their feeble skills? Their leader—Jethro, isn’t it?—stood over my shoulder while I cut the book with my master’s knife. He saw nothing, detected nothing wrong.”

“So you can find your way to the library any time you wish? Are you still making that claim?”

“As for the others, they are not your equals. You know this, Chantmer. Only the wizard himself, and Memnet is no more capable of defeating Toth than you are capable of defeating me.”

“We already defeated him,” Chantmer said. “An entire army of your gray warriors and your Veyrian troops were slaughtered in their assault on the gardens. Wights, too. What did that cost your master?”

“It cost him nothing. A trifle. Syrmarria is ours, your Sacred Forest burns. The Tothian Way continues its march west. The number of ravagers increases day by day.”

Ravagers. Is that what the enemy called the gray marauders?

“Yet our gardens stand, as strong and defiant as ever,” Chantmer said.

“Are they?” Zartosht asked. “Or did you destroy the strongest part of your defenses to win a temporary reprieve?”

“That is rebuilt as well,” Chantmer lied. Nothing would take root in the walled garden—it was a withered patch of ground that Markal had bricked over so the blight wouldn’t spread. “Come with me, and I’ll show you if you’d like. You might not return to report your findings, of course.”

“I felt your magic just now, Chantmer. It was strong and wild, but fatally weakened by the limitations of your body, the blood you draw from your own pores. My spell to counter it cost me nothing.”

“It is easier to destroy than create,” Chantmer countered, “so that is no testament to your skill or power. Where did you draw your power, if not from your own body?”

“I drew it from the dungeon. A few choice enemies who resisted Pasha Izak’s rule are languishing below.”

“Choice enemies such as those loyal to the rightful sovereign of Aristonia? Will your pasha wave their flayed skins above the gates alongside the khalif’s?”

“Perhaps eventually. It would be a good lesson to the viziers.”

“I was under the impression that Omar’s viziers, being a cowardly lot, had capitulated to the unlawful and villainous usurpation of the khalifate.”

“All but one. There was that fool who led the palace guard in a revolt.” Zartosht raised an eyebrow. “Did you think he’d escaped, or that his treachery had gone undetected?”

Zartosht must be talking about Kandibar Liltige, Nathaliey’s father. After the battle, Kandibar had gathered the surviving palace guards and set off on the Spice Road for Marrabat, hoping to enlist the aid of the sultan by warning of Toth’s designs on the south. Nathaliey had accompanied them for a stretch, only abandoning them when she’d seen them safely into a camel caravan of Kratians. But Kandibar had apparently been betrayed or ambushed before he could reach his destination.

“I can sense your desires, Chantmer—”

“Doubtful.”

“—and you do not belong with this inferior order of magical dabblers. None of them recognize your power or potential. Come with me—I’ll present you to the others. Then you will meet the high king himself.”

“I know Toth already. I’ve met him, and was unimpressed.”

“That was before he came into his power. Wouldn’t you like to come into your power some day? I am giving you that opportunity. It won’t be offered a second time.”

“No, it won’t,” Chantmer said. “Because I’m tired of this conversation, and it is time to destroy you.”

He put his hands palm down and brought the words to his lips. His opponent had been standing in front of him with his legs apart, his posture arrogant, and he stiffened quickly and raised his hands in a defensive posture, eyes widening in alarm. The man had been caught unprepared.

Had Chantmer been at full strength, he could have crushed the dark acolyte, either smashed him or burned him, but he’d already bled off most of his strength. So instead, he cast a simple concealing spell. Everything turned to shadow around him, and as the magic was still taking hold, he made to run for the staircase that led down from the terrace toward the gate towers, as if attempting to flee the palace entirely.

The ruse worked; Zartosht’s eyes followed where he supposed Chantmer was going based on his initial feint. Instead, Chantmer shrank back among the statues lining the walkway, wrapped his arms around the lion, and became one with the stone.

Zartosht hissed something into the darkness, and another figure appeared, this one a woman, also gaunt faced and bony. Didn’t the sorcerer feed his apprentices? Or did they burn off their own flesh when casting their spells? Yes, most likely. How else would Zartosht have gathered the vizier’s pain all the way from the dungeon if not with a small bit of magic to initiate?

The two of them chanted in unison, and Chantmer paid close attention. There was power there—real, raw strength—but he measured it when it emerged, and was not overwhelmed with what they’d called up. It was a seeking spell of some kind, although he didn’t recognize its exact nature, but it wasn’t strong enough to penetrate his disguise. Not if they set off toward the lower gardens instead of searching first among the statuary.

Hands outstretched, they peered into the gardens, heads turning this way and that. Sniffing, touching the ground, looking for his trail. There wasn’t any trail, the deluded fools, because he’d only moved three steps to disguise himself against the stone lion. Their seeking magic had completely failed.

I am a match for either one of them.

Which reminded him that he was more than a match for Nathaliey, Narud, and Markal, too—especially Markal, the glorified archivist—and that two of the three had already been named wizards, with Nathaliey sure to follow. For some reason, Memnet the Great was holding Chantmer back, refusing to grant him the position that was rightfully his. No doubt trying to teach him a lesson, but by the Brothers, he couldn’t imagine what that would be.

And for the first time, he was actually tempted by Zartosht’s offer. Not by the thought of serving the sorcerer, but by getting out from beneath Memnet’s whims. To learn fresh magic, unbounded by the rules of the order, the false humility that was forced upon him at every turn.

Don’t delude yourself. You wouldn’t be unfettered serving under the dark wizard; you would be his slave from the moment you accepted until the moment you died. And perhaps not even death would release you.

He shook his head to rid it of treasonous thoughts, angry that he’d even considered such a thing. Knowing he’d bested the dark acolytes, especially Zartosht, cheered him. He’d gained knowledge, first that Kandibar Liltige was a prisoner beneath the palace, and second that the enemy was raising more gray marauders. Or rather, ravagers.

Now, a plan. Find Nathaliey’s father in the dungeons, break past whatever physical and magical protections guarded the place, and free him. Then, when that was done, Chantmer would present his accomplishment to Memnet the Great and openly suggest it was time he be named a full wizard of the order.

If not, well, what more could he do to prove his worth?

Chapter Ten

Nathaliey had been caught by surprise when the enemy emerged from behind the standing stones. She’d been too intent on the ones hunting them from behind, fighting her exhaustion, wondering if Markal could draw power from the stone circle. The situation seemed beyond desperate, and that was before the marauder stepped out from behind the stone and smashed Markal in the face with his shield.

Now they had him, and men grabbed her, as well, with more enemies rushing into the stone circle from the trail behind. The attackers wrenched Soultrup from Markal’s grasp, and one of them held it up and shouted in triumph.

“I have it! I have the sword!”

Markal kept struggling, trying to free his hands and raise magic, but they stuffed his mouth with a rag and hit him with closed fists. The sword had drawn attention, and the one who’d grabbed it tried to undo the leather thongs holding the linens in place, even while someone else snarled at him not to touch the blade.

The sword and the assault on Markal slackened the attention they were paying Nathaliey, and she took advantage. One man had her by the wrists, but not firmly enough to keep her from turning her hands palms downward. She had an incantation on her lips before someone noticed she was calling up magic and shouted for help.

“Labi et cadere. Lapidem te percussit!”

The ground heaved, and the marauders flailed for balance and fell all around her. It was the same spell she’d used to escape the Veyrian soldiers when Pasha Malik had seized her in the khalif’s throne room, and the result was greater than she’d hoped. They rolled about as if caught in an earthquake. The one holding the sword dropped it as he went down, and the ones hitting her friend collapsed as well.

“Markal!” she cried.

But her companion was groaning from the blows, and either didn’t hear her or couldn’t respond. Already, the enemies were struggling back to their feet, shouting instructions to each other. Nathaliey froze for a split second, torn between her desire to escape and her need to help Markal. But she’d help more if she stayed free of the enemy’s grasp, so she fled, just ahead of grasping hands.

Nathaliey didn’t expect to get far before they hunted her down, but her spell was strong, as if the stone circle had strengthened it, and the ground kept shaking and tilting. She staggered past the stones and into the darkness, where she doubled over to catch her breath. She was too exhausted to continue, worn out, beaten down by the hard day of travel on an empty stomach and the cost of the magic she’d called up.

“One more spell,” she whispered. “One more.”

One more incantation to hide her in the wilderness so she could rest a few minutes and then double back to rescue Markal. Somehow. She would find a way.

She scratched through her memory until she found a spell to conceal her from her enemies. But when she held out her hands, there was no power there, no reserve. No way to raise blood to her pores and draw it out again, and if she tried she might only succeed in killing herself.

If only she hadn’t dropped the saddlebag, she could have rummaged through it and found some last scrap of bread or oatcake from home. Something from the gardens would give her strength.

The ground stopped shaking, and the men grabbed for Markal, who was trying to rise to his feet and come after her. Others looked around, and someone spotted her and shouted. She forced herself to move.

Something growled from the darkness ahead of her, and a large dark shadow loomed in front of her. Nathaliey’s heart gave a frightened thud. The giant!

No, it wasn’t big enough. A pair of gleaming eyes studied her from chest height, and she saw its snout and heavy body. A smell, thick and musky, hung in the air. It was a large male black bear. And no natural bear—of that she was suddenly sure.

“Narud?”

No, it wasn’t him. Nor could it be the hermit. It didn’t smell right, not like a shape-shifting wizard, but an actual bear. She remembered the bear in the gardens who’d surprised the Veyrian soldiers.

“Wilford? Is that you? Did the master send you?”

Shouts came from behind, and the bear growled again and turned away. Nathaliey was afraid of every option that presented itself, but this seemed the least bad of any of them, so she followed. The bear rumbled up the hillside, surprisingly deft as its paws padded forward, and she was equally surprised to discover a hidden reserve of strength that propelled her up and after it. It was nothing more than fresh hope—that was all it took to get her moving again.

The men came crashing after her in the dark. Their search seemed disorganized in the aftermath of her illusion spell, but already their captain was shouting orders, and it wouldn’t be long before they were coming in numbers. The bear had better be something more than a dumb animal, or she was doomed.

The bear stopped and turned its head, as if waiting for her to catch up, and that eased her doubts. Could it be the hermit after all? At the very least, it was imbued with unnatural intelligence. More hope came with that realization, and she found the strength to continue.

She struggled another eighty feet or so up a hillside that was growing steeper and more brush-clogged, and then she came to a rocky cliff face, roughly sixty feet high with no visible means to scale it. The bear lifted its head and rumbled deep in its throat, as if telling her to go up.

Nathaliey gasped for air and shook her head. “I can’t climb that.”

It rumbled again, more insistently. Maybe there were handholds, and maybe in daylight, freshly rested, she could find them, but not now. And it would be slow going even if she could find a way up, with the marauders overtaking her before she was ten feet off the ground.

The bear nudged her with its nose. She pushed back, and the bear pushed harder, turning her halfway about. She could see the cliff to her right, and down the hillside on her left. The marauders were shadows in the night, moving with purpose and armed with swords. The bear nudged her again; it seemed to want her to look right. She obeyed, and saw only the cliff, as impassable as always . . . no!

It wasn’t a cliff at all, it was a tower. Yet when she glanced at a different angle, it looked once again like a rock face leading to higher terrain. Only when she saw it from the corner of her eye, saw it sideways, did it appear to be a tower. The disguise was so clever that she’d been standing right in front of it, searching for a way up, and still hadn’t spotted it. The bear moved toward the tower, and she followed, walking at an angle, and then there was a doorway, with light on the other side, a fire or a candle—she couldn’t see exactly what.

Nathaliey stepped through and turned around, momentarily disoriented to find herself in a small room. A fire crackled in the hearth, with a bubbling pot suspended over it on chains and hooks, but the tower had no door, and the fire did little to cut the chill. There were clay pots, empty wine jugs, and other tools and implements in niches, but they were all dirty and unused except for the pot over the fire. A wooden staircase rose on one side of the room toward a second floor, and a thick coat of dust covered each rung, as if it hadn’t been used in months, or even years. A pile of animal skins in the corner may have served as a bed, and there was a plank-like table, with a tree stump for a stool.

Voices sounded to her rear, and she whirled back around. A figure stood directly behind her, not five feet away, on the other side of the threshold, staring right in at her. This marauder was a woman, not a man, but she carried a sword and had a hard glint in her eyes as she peered inside. Nathaliey stood frozen in fear, waiting for the marauder to step inside and challenge her, knowing she’d have no recourse when it happened.

“There’s no way up from here,” the woman told someone behind her. “No handholds, at least none that I can see, and no vegetation to cling to, either.”

“She came this way, all right,” a man’s voice said. “I saw her standing there just a moment ago.”

“Then she got up by magical means, not with her hands and feet.”

Nathaliey realized that the woman wasn’t staring in at her, she was staring at the cliff face—or what she thought was the cliff face, anyway. It was the same view Nathaliey had faced moments earlier, and if the woman put out her hand, she’d feel that there was a way through. To her relief, the marauder continued on. A man followed her, and the voices faded as the search moved away. The danger seemed to have passed.

She turned back around to see the bear standing on all fours in front of her, looking up with its wild gaze. It rumbled deep in its throat, something that sounded like an attempt to communicate.

“Who are you, and where is your master?” she asked. “Wait, you’re not”—Nathaliey searched her mind, and realized she had no name for the old hermit from Markal’s story—“the master’s friend, are you? A wizard from the old order? You are, aren’t you? I could have sworn you were a real bear. You even smell like one.”

It must be the hermit, because all of the pieces matched, down to the tower that Markal had mentioned. This was a full-fledged wizard in front of her . . . of sorts. The twenty or so years since Markal and Narud met the man had surely done little to improve his sociability. But he was staring at her intently and making a variety of coughing, chuckling noises in his throat.

“My friend is down there and needs help. You know him—Markal, he’s one of the master’s apprentices, like me. Well, not anymore. He was made a wizard before we left. The gray marauders have him—they’re servants of the sorcerer. You probably know the sorcerer, too, he was . . .”

Nathaliey stopped. It was too much all at once, and very little of it mattered.

“I have to rescue my friend. Can you help me?”

The bear let out a low moan, and a miserable expression passed over its face, as if frustrated by its inability to communicate, although she was certain that it could understand her. It turned toward the fireplace and nodded at the pot held over the fire with hooks and chains.

The smell of wild leeks, other mountain vegetables, and some sort of gamey meat made her stomach rumble anxiously, and her mouth watered at the thought of a hot meal after so many days on the road eating cold stale food. It seemed heartless to sit down for supper when Markal was in the hands of the marauders, probably suffering torture, but she realized that the bear’s suggestion was the best possible one.

Short of the soil and sustenance of the gardens, nothing would help her regain strength so quickly as food. She found a slightly less dusty wooden bowl on the shelf, but all the spoons looked filthy except the ladle already sticking out of the soup pot. She’d have to use that to eat. She scooped herself some of the meat, broth, and wild vegetables, and sat down on the tree stump, which wobbled as she put her bowl on the table.

The broth was scalding hot, and she blew furiously to cool it down, then sipped and slurped so as not to burn her mouth. The meat wasn’t rabbit, but most likely squirrel, dark and strongly flavored. Hopefully, squirrel; some of the other possibilities were unpleasant to contemplate.

When the bowl was empty, she rose to get more, and that’s when she saw that the bear was gone. In its place was a very hairy man squatting on the skins in the corner with his knees pulled up to his chest. He seemed to be naked, but there was so much body hair, and his beard was so long, that it was hard to say for sure.

“Hello, I’m Nathaliey.” Speaking to him felt even more awkward than addressing the bear. “I am, um, Aristonian, born in Syrmarria, the daughter of the vizier. I’m Memnet’s apprentice, like Markal and Narud, who you already know. You’re Memnet’s former companion, aren’t you? What is your name, Master?”

He didn’t answer, only watched her, face blank and expressionless.

“Your voice must be rusty after so long living by yourself,” she said. “But try it—I’m sure it will come back.” He didn’t respond, and so she prodded with what she hoped was an encouraging tone. “You tried to speak as a bear, and now you’re back in a human body. That must be easier, right? Could you at least try?”

He only stared, and she grew impatient. She had to get back to Markal, and this old hermit wasn’t helping in the slightest. He must have plenty of magic about him; even the bear form would be useful. Send him roaring through the stone circle, and maybe she could use the shock of his passage to free Markal.

“I know you want to help,” she said. “You saved me from the marauders, you fed me—there was something in the food, wasn’t there? It wasn’t just soup, was it? I feel stronger than I have all day.”

He remained silent.

“Tell me what to do,” she urged. “Should I stay and rest? Should I go down and make an attempt now? Will you come? Tell me.”

She clenched her teeth in frustration. The hermit had seemed more alert in bear form than he was as a human. In fact, now that she thought about it, maybe that was more true than she’d guessed. The old wizard, closed off, as mute as stone when in human form. In bear form, he was alert, sentient to his surroundings, but unable to do more than grunt or growl in communication. It was as if the animal were human, and the human an animal.

“It’s already been too long—I’ve got to do something. Come with me or don’t, but I’m going.”

Nathaliey went to the doorway and gave a final glance at the hermit, hoping he’d returned to a bear form while she wasn’t looking. But he remained sitting on the deer skins, legs tucked up, and now he wasn’t even looking at her, but staring into the fire. Oh, come on. He couldn’t be completely gone in the mind. A bear could hardly build a fire and make soup, after all.

But whatever help he’d offered seemed to have come to an end. So what now? The only thing she could think of was to creep back through the dark and spy on the marauder camp to see what they’d done to Markal. She slipped outside.

Nathaliey hadn’t gone more than ten paces when she found a sentry. If not for the heightened senses endowed to her by the Crimson Path, she’d have stumbled into him in the darkness, but instead she slipped past, holding her breath and hoping that the magic in his cloak wouldn’t allow him to spot her. She got past undetected.

Nathaliey reached the ring moments later, several stones around the circle from where she’d departed. The marauders had set up camp in the center, tearing up the meadow with their boots and campfires, and throwing down bedding they’d hauled into the mountains. They had a surprising amount of gear, as if they’d been prepared to hunt the two fugitives on foot for an extended period of time.

She spotted Markal. He was alive. And in fact, seemed largely unharmed.

They’d bound his hands behind his back and put him on the far side of the stone circle next to a cook fire. His back was to her, but he held himself upright and stared into the flames. She couldn’t see his face to be sure, but it didn’t seem that the beating he’d taken had done any serious damage. The red sword sat in front of him on the ground, still wrapped in linen and cord.

Most of the marauders were about their business setting up camp and preparing supper, but a pair were questioning Markal: a man squatting in front of him and a woman leaning against one of the standing stones with her arms crossed. Nathaliey thought the woman was the one who’d approached the hermit’s shelter and stared inside without seeing, although it was hard to be sure given the distance and poor quality of light. The pair spoke to Markal in low, harsh tones, and Nathaliey strained to hear over the wind, the crackling fires, and the sounds of marauders preparing their supper and making camp.

The man squatting in front of Markal snatched up the sword and rose to his feet. He gestured at the weapon with a question, and Markal shook his head, which brought an angry remark from his interrogator, something about shoving the sword through the captive’s heart. Markal responded, and while she couldn’t hear his words, she caught their meaning from his tone.

Go right ahead. Kill me with the sword.

Yes, and bind his soul to it. May as well, if he were going to die anyway, and once inside he could join the struggle for control. Except he didn’t know that Nathaliey had returned. She willed him to hold on for a few more minutes before he threw his life away.

Nathaliey remained behind one of the standing stones on the opposite side, lurking in much the same way the marauders must have done while waiting to spring their ambush, and the cool stone whispered to her as her hand grazed the surface. Old magic, ancient magic, but as recognizable to her touch as ginger or peppercorn would have been to her tongue.

The magic of this place had much in common with the master’s gardens. It wouldn’t surprise her, in fact, if Memnet had studied the stone circle before crafting his defenses. Just in this single stone she felt runes to break bones and wards to confuse, and when she moved to the next stone, she felt enchantments to maim, to kill, and to drive an enemy mad. The standing stones had more than enough power to destroy an entire company of marauders.

But Nathaliey wasn’t of the order that had built this place, and there was an aggressive note to the magic, as well, a warning that it would attack her like any other intruder. Slipping silently to the next stone, she let her fingers trace an engraving in the surface. This one could open the ground and swallow their enemies alive, much like what had happened during the fight for the walled inner garden. But the more she touched it, the greater the warning became, until it was almost hostile. She could bring it to life, yes, but the ground would devour her, too, and Markal, as well.

The enemy captain shifted the sword to one hand and slapped Markal across the face with the other. “You lie! Where is she?”

Markal didn’t answer, which brought more shouts. The captain handed Soultrup to the woman and drew his own blade. All the commotion drew the attention of other marauders, and Nathaliey used the distraction and the darkness to slip from stone to stone, working her way around the ring from the exterior. She ran her fingers along each stone as she passed behind them. There must be something here to help her.

Some seemed entirely dead, their strength spent years or generations ago. Others were only a ghostly whisper, magic faded like oil evaporating from an uncorked flask. The ones with stronger magic were either shielded, and harder to wake, or openly hostile like the one with the devouring spell she’d touched earlier. Finally, she came in behind the stone nearest where they were holding Markal. She paused to listen, to feel, and her hopes took a leap forward at what she sensed. The stone murmured to her, welcomed her touch, promised to obey her command.

Nathaliey reached through the stone, figuring that she was on the opposite side of the woman who’d been leaning against it, listening to the interrogation. She should be able to feel the woman from here, using the stone as a conduit for her senses, but something blocked her, and strangely, the sound was more muffled than it had been, as well, as if the circle were acting as a barrier, a membrane that was stronger on this side of the ring than the other. A part of the circle’s defensive structure, perhaps?

What first seemed a frustrating development, blocking her from listening in on the enemy, soon struck her as an important aid to her efforts. The membrane would give her cover as she worked, and it was clear that work would be necessary as she ran her fingers over the stone, searching for the magic that had drawn her attention.

What are you? What do you have for me?

And more importantly, where? Her fingers found carvings in the stone, but they were either worthless or resistant. Yet something was still calling to her, promising help.

Nathaliey found it at last, a rune near the base of the stone, a powerful incantation partially buried in the earth. She studied it as her fingers brushed away the soil to fully expose the markings.

The magic was strong and useful. Calling it would draw enemies toward her, and then send the stone crashing onto its side, crushing them as it fell. How many marauders could she kill? Most of them, perhaps, if she did it right. If only the rune weren’t so eroded, and the magic were closer to the surface. It would take at least ten minutes to coax it out.

Nathaliey sat cross-legged with her eyes closed and her hands against the stone. She felt stronger, more confident and serene, and remembering the mute hermit in his hidden sanctuary and his soup, she silently thanked the Mountain Brother for bringing her aid.

Now, she thought. Come to the surface, my friend. Wake from your slumber, and help me defeat my enemies and yours. Break their bones and call the Dark Gatherer to collect their souls.

Chapter Eleven

Markal had been in a panic as his captors dragged him across the stone circle with his hands bound behind his back and a rag stuffed in his mouth. Several of the marauders had rushed off to hunt Nathaliey, who’d momentarily escaped their grasp. She’d had more presence of mind than he had, and cast a simple but deceptively powerful spell to slip away. Even as enemies were beating him, he spotted her fleeing from the stone circle and vanishing into the night.

The attackers shortly returned from their hunt, breathing heavily and shouting with frustration, and a serene feeling washed away his fears. Their agitation and anger told him everything. Nathaliey had eluded their grasp. It was a small miracle, but there was hope so long as she was free.

The marauders should have fled the stone circle—surely they were sensitive enough to recognize that this was a place of danger for them, but a center of strength for Markal and Nathaliey—but instead they put themselves to making camp. Markal’s hopes rose.

Men and women lit a campfire and brought out kettles and other cooking gear. Venison appeared, a grouse. Some vegetables, a bit of dry meal they mixed with water to make flat cakes. It was all a reminder that the marauders were only men after all. They needed to eat, to rest.

The marauder captain and one of his companions—a woman—approached. The captain stood over Markal, while the woman moved to lean against a nearby stone. The captain’s back was to the fire, his face hidden in darkness, except for a glint from his eyes, an angry glare.

“Are we safe here?” the woman asked.

“There is nowhere safe for us in these parts. Is the watch out?”

“Sentinels in the usual locations,” she said. “But if the other one comes back, she might slip past our defenses.”

“She’ll be miles away by now,” Markal said. “Changed into a bird and flying for help.”

The captain turned to him. “If your friend had that kind of power, surely she’d have done it long before we hunted you to this place.”

“She was reluctant to abandon me. I begged her to change earlier, to fly away and save herself, but our types are loyal, you understand.”

“You are an ineffective liar,” the man said.

“And since you are well schooled in the art of deception, you would be trained to recognize it, wouldn’t you?”

The captain left him, conversed in low voices with some of his comrades, and returned a few minutes later carrying the linen-wrapped sword. He squatted and placed Soultrup on the ground between him and the wizard.

“And how did you come by a magical sword?” the man asked.

“Is it magic? I didn’t know.”

“Now you’re not even trying. How did you get it?”

“I’m not even trying because it’s pointless to answer a question whose answer you already know. Surely your master told you before sending you off on the hunt.”

“I don’t know the answer. That’s why I’m asking.”

Was that possible? They carried enough supplies that they must have been mounted at some time, which meant they’d likely come from the Tothian Way, possibly from the direction of the mountains. It might be that they’d been given vague instructions to retrieve a magical sword, but knew nothing of Bronwyn’s death, or even the attack on the gardens.

“Answer my question,” the man said.

“Could you loosen these bonds on my wrists, first? They really hurt.”

“Yes, naturally. Let me free your hands so you can wave them about and cause trouble. Tell me, how did you get the sword?” The man’s voice was calm, but there was an edge to it. “I’ll beat it out of you if I must.”

Markal gestured at Soultrup with his chin. “Let me suggest you take the sword and kill me. That will solve both of our problems.”

The captain turned to the woman. “If he does not answer, tighten the cords until his wrists bleed. It will weaken his magic and perhaps clarify his mind at the same time.”

Markal decided to answered truthfully for a stretch. That might confuse the marauders more.

“The sword was in the possession of a paladin by the name of Bronwyn of Arvada.”

“Yes, it was. Tell me more.”

Something darkened in the man’s tone, and Markal sensed danger. He kept his tone calm as he continued.

“Bronwyn went looking for the sorcerer, determined to cut him down with the red sword and then fall on the blade herself.”

“Now you’re telling the truth. You will suffer less if you continue to do so.”

“You threaten me whether I’m telling the truth or not.”

“Oh, excuse me,” the man said sarcastically. “Please, do go on. I will refrain from the threats. And then I will kill you either way once we’ve finished. Does that suit you better?”

Markal took a deep breath to calm himself. “Bronwyn found her enemy in the Sacred Forest, where he was burning thousand-year-old trees to build his highway. But the sorcerer is cunning, and Bronwyn didn’t recognize him. She fought Pasha Malik instead, killed him, and the sword slipped from her grasp.”

“And then what?”

“Then she found another weapon and fought on.”

“Continue.”

“There were too many enemies. She fell, cut down by Veyrian soldiers.”

“Now you’re lying again.”

Markal blinked. “What?”

“You heard me. She didn’t die at the hands of Veyrian soldiers.”

“I was there. I saw it. There were too many soldiers, and they surrounded her. She’d lost Soultrup, but she kept fighting to the end. They stabbed her to death.”

The captain opened his fist. He held Bronwyn’s pendant with the silver moon. “And this?”

“You found that in my bags.”

“How did you get it?”

“We recovered it from bandits in the hill country west of Aristonia.”

“You claimed to have witnessed the paladin’s death. Yet somehow you got her pendant from bandits?”

“I don’t know how they got their hands on it. They had some of her other gear, too. Her breastplate, her trousers . . . we left the rest of it behind, but the pendant seems to have some small magic, and I took it with me.”

“You season your lies with truth. I see what you are, servant of the enemy. Now tell me, where is she? Where did she go?”

“I told you, she turned into a bird and—”

“Not the girl, you idiot, the paladin. Where is Bronwyn of Arvada?”

“I told you, she was cut down by Veyrian soldiers. Why don’t you know this already?”

The man leaped to his feet. “You lie! Where is she?”

His voice was a shout, and others looked at them from around the stone circle. The man stepped closer, face raging in reflected light from the growing campfires, and Markal noticed something strange. He might have noticed it earlier, had he not been exhausted and hungry, hands bound, and facing his own death while thinking desperately on Nathaliey’s escape.

The young man facing him wasn’t a marauder.

He didn’t have gray skin, and his eyes weren’t dead. Markal glanced at the woman, and she didn’t look like a marauder, either. Neither did any of the others. What’s more, their gear was different—their cloaks, their tunics, even their swords—than that of marauders he’d faced before.

It was all so obvious now, but he’d put the pieces together and crafted a narrative. Marauders below, marauders above. Griffins in the sky. All allied to hunt down the pair of fugitives from Aristonia, kill them, and recover the red sword.

“Who are you?” Markal asked. “You’re not marauders.”

“Tell me what happened to the paladin. Where is she?”

“I’m telling you the truth. I wasn’t her enemy—I thought you knew that—I was her companion.”

“More lies.”

Even the man’s accent was different from that of the east side of the Dragon’s Spine, with the ends of the words swallowed and the vowels elongated. If Markal hadn’t been deaf, as well as blind, he’d have noticed it at once.

“Are you Bronwyn’s companions?” he asked. “Is that who you are? Paladins from the barbarian kingdoms? I’ll tell you what happened. Bronwyn attacked our gardens, thinking she’d found the necromancer, but she hadn’t. We are an order of wizards who have always sought peace and harmony while protecting our native land. We’re enemies of the necromancer, not his allies.

“I accompanied Bronwyn to hunt the sorcerer, and I helped her along the way. Using my magic and her strength, we fought our way to the necromancer’s side. I was with her at the end. When she fell, I carried the sword back to the gardens, and stood by my master’s side while Veyrians, marauders, and wights tried to take it. Soultrup had cut down Pasha Malik, and his malignant soul is bound to it. The enemy wants the sword, he thinks it will fight for him.”

The young man was silent, and Markal continued, giving details of the battle, then backtracked to the destruction of the Sacred Forest and the fight against the marauder on the burned road through the forest. If Markal had guessed wrong, and these men and women were King Toth’s servants, he was giving away all manner of information. But they had him already, had the sword in their possession, and he could only fight to prove he wasn’t an enemy before they killed him.

The captain stared at the pendant in his hand as he spoke. When Markal told how Bronwyn died, tricked by the necromancer, he closed his eyes, then opened them again when Markal trailed off. His face was as hard as ever.

“I gave this to Bronwyn before she departed Eriscoba,” he said. “It created a bond between us. When I close my eyes, I sense her spark of life. It’s like standing in a dark room and seeing a candle in one corner—it glows on the edge of my vision at all times.”

“You were seeing the pendant, not the paladin,” Markal said. “Thieves plundered her body and carried her gear into the hill country, which is where we found it. I’m sorry, but your captain is dead, and you’ve been chasing a ghost.”

“You are either lying or deceived.”

“I saw her go down, I swear it. I heard her cries. I wouldn’t have left her if she were still alive, you must believe me. They killed her.”

“No, sorcerer. You are wrong.”

“My name is Markal. I’m no sorcerer, I’m no liar, and I haven’t been deceived. I am a wizard of the Crimson Path, and I witnessed Bronwyn’s death. I swear it by the Brothers.”

“Very well, Markal of the Crimson Path. I believe that you’re trying to tell the truth. But let me explain something to you. My name is Wolfram of Arvada, and Bronwyn is my sister. This pendant has been in my family for generations.” He held up the chain, and the silver crescent moon dangled from his palm. “It’s more than a charm. It shows me two things—first, where the pendant is, and second, if the bearer is alive. The rightful bearer, not you.

“I led my company through the mountains following the light. I faced unbelievable hardships, the death of beloved companions, and the only thing that kept me going was knowing my sister was still alive. She was coming east again, but slowly. Was she hurt? Had she completed her quest, or did she need help?”

Markal fell silent. He didn’t know what to say.

“Now what do I do? There are marauders on the move, and they know we’ve crossed over to the east. We can’t stay in the mountains because of the giants, and griffin riders have threatened us, as well.”

“We saw you. We thought you were marauders and sharing the hunt.”

“We were sharing the hunt. They’d spotted interlopers. The griffin riders agreed to aid us in the search if we would leave the mountains when we were done. There’s been some trouble between us already, with two of our number dead, and one of theirs badly injured.”

Markal nodded. Wolfram studied his face. “You claim my sister is dead, but I believe otherwise.”

“I only know what I saw.”

“And where were you going, you and the girl?”

“The girl is a fellow apprentice. Not a fellow . . . what I mean is that she’s a companion from my order. We were carrying the sword across the mountains to give it to . . . well, to you, apparently.”

Wolfram blinked. “To me?”

“Bronwyn told me how she got Soultrup. It killed her brother—that would be your brother, too, wouldn’t it?—and the sword threw itself into her hands. She told me you were a loosely bound group of warriors fighting to rid Eriscoba of invaders.”

“Not so loosely bound anymore. Not since the Blackshields formed. So you thought you’d bring me the sword, and I would carry it into battle? How would we do that, if it’s turned against us?”

“My master thought you might have a wizard to advise you, someone who knew the sword and could pull it back to our side of the war. But mainly, your wizard would keep it safe on the other side of the Dragon’s Spine so it wouldn’t fall into the hands of the marauders. If not him, a king to unite your people.”

“We have no wizard. No king or enlightened ruler. And there’s no safety in Eriscoba, believe me. The sorcerer’s road is already crossing the mountains, growing faster than I’d thought possible.”

“The sweat and blood and pain of twenty thousand slaves hurries it along,” Markal said.

“The sorcerer has castles in the high passes, sharp as dragon’s teeth, and an army advancing at the vanguard. They’ve reached Estmor already. The fool baron of that land allowed them in, and then rebelled when he realized that the sorcerer king meant to take the whole of it. The enemy broke Estmor’s dam, smashed the levee, and now it’s a swamp.”

“Not so different from what happened to my own homeland,” Markal said. “The khalif let him in, and now Veyrians occupy the country.”

“Only a fool would ally himself with a necromancer,” Wolfram said.

“Some khalifates resisted. The high king burned them to the ground and enslaved their people.”

“Then they didn’t resist hard enough,” Wolfram said.

“That makes no sense.”

“I need to find Bronwyn. I’ve reorganized the paladins, built their strength, and given my warriors a holy oath. We are strong, and we will fight, but I need her to take command if we are to defeat the enemy.”

“It sounds like you’ve done well since she left.”

“As well as could be expected. But it’s not enough. If you’ve met my sister, then you understand. She is something rare in this land, a hero.”

“I understand.”

“She’s the only one who can lead us to victory. Now, I will ask you a final time. Will you help me find her?”

“I told you—”

Wolfram threw up his hands and turned away with a disgusted expression. “Marissa, cut the wizard’s cords. He may be a deluded fool, but he’s not our enemy. In fact, Markal, you can keep the sword. Carry it with you over the mountains, if you wish, and dispose of it in Eriscoba. Or throw it from a cliff top into some deep ravine.”

“Wolfram, listen to me—”

But the young captain was already giving orders, even as Marissa came to cut Markal’s cords. Wolfram sent a man down the path to where a second company of men was apparently keeping vigil. A scout approached and reported griffin aeries in the hills above them, and Wolfram discussed where to put men with crossbows in case they were attacked from the sky at dawn.

Markal listened to all of this as he sat rubbing the circulation back into his hands and wrists, and it was then that he noticed something curious. The Blackshields were drawing toward this side of the stone circle. It was slow and subtle, and didn’t happen all at once. Instead, someone stood to check the big pot of soup or the biscuits cooking on hot stones, and when he sat down again, did so closer to Markal. Another paladin joined Marissa in leaning against the stone at Markal’s back, and a third paladin joined them moments later. A fourth set his black shield atop his bedroll and strolled around the circle before sitting down a few feet away.

It took a few minutes, but one by one the paladins gravitated to this side of the ring without any one of them seeming to make a conscious decision, until roughly fifteen men and women, the captain included, sat, leaned, or stood in the shadow of a single nearby stone. It was as if someone had been swirling pebbles around a bowl while gradually tilting it to one side. A handful had departed on other tasks, but the rest were right here, vulnerable. If Markal had still been trying to escape instead of plotting how he could retrieve Nathaliey and help these men fight the dark wizard, he could have . . .

Suddenly he understood. Nathaliey! Markal sprang to his feet.

Something forced him back, like a blast of air, and he staggered away, even as the paladins tripped, stumbled, and rolled, seemingly pulled toward the standing stone as if they were being drawn in by the inhalation of some great beast. The stone wobbled, and Markal managed to cry a warning as it began to topple.

“No, Nathaliey! Stop!”

Chapter Twelve

It took longer than Nathaliey expected to raise the magic from the standing stone, but she could feel it down there, pulsing, awakening, strong and eager to come forth and destroy. Both defensive and offensive at the same time, it would draw in marauders, then crush them. She only had to bring the magic to the surface and keep it from turning on her and Markal.

Voices murmured on the other side of the membrane that shielded her from both Markal and her enemies. She heard Markal’s voice, raised, protesting. The marauder captain responded, angry and demanding. As she brought the magic to the surface, the voices faded in the background, and she sensed the marauders coming to stand beneath the stone.

The stone began to move. It was a slow wobble at first, resisting, waiting for her final permission. She gave it, pushing magical power through her hands.

Go! Fall, crush. Save the wizard. Destroy the rest.

Twin pulses of magic pushed from the long-dormant rune. One, to expel, to knock Markal clear, and the other a powerful calling spell to suck in the marauders and place them beneath the massive, fifteen-foot-tall stone as it dropped on their heads.

Triumph rose in her. She would get them all. Destroy every last enemy.

Now you come into your power. Now you will be a wizard.

“No, Nathaliey! Stop!”

It was Markal’s voice, crying a warning, and it almost broke her concentration. Was it him? Was it a trap? She had a split second to decide. Keep the magic pushing forward, or break her hold on the spell and let it dissolve. If she did that, if she’d been deceived, all of her work would vanish, and the marauders would take them both.

But it was Markal’s voice calling to her, not a trick. She was sure of it. The connection between them was too intimate to be simulated by an enemy. Not only his voice, but his tone, the mixed fear and worry and warning all at once.

The magic was like a rope between her and the stone, with the power of the rune glowing fire along its length. It was powerful and fragile at the same time, like the surface tension of a drop of dew, and it only took the slightest relaxing of her concentration to let it burst.

A wave of spent magic rolled over her and knocked her from her feet as it dissolved noisily into the air. The stone rocked on its foundations and seemed ready to topple anyway from sheer momentum, and then it settled. The magic continued to roll away from them in a shock wave, until all that was left was its shimmering afterimage in the air.

For a moment, Nathaliey sat on her backside, stunned with the force of it. Right there at hand, only to vanish in an instant. And only a slight relaxing of her hold had done it. That must be how Markal felt when he called up his magic. There was always power there—he had as much as any of them—but he couldn’t control it, and the majority of it burned off without being directed into his spells.

Too late, she remembered the marauders on the other side. Someone grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet, and another shoved her, stumbling, into the stone circle.

Markal stood there, staring up at the standing stone with alarm, as if still waiting for it to fall. He wasn’t bound, though he looked pale, and there was dried blood at his nose where the marauder had smashed him with his shield. But free; what was going on here? And why hadn’t she crushed the marauders when she had her chance?

“Let her go,” a man said. “This one isn’t an enemy, either.”

“She’s no friend, either,” a man growled. “She nearly killed us.”

“What is this?” Nathaliey asked. “What is going on here? Why are you giving orders to the marauders?”

“They’re not marauders, they’re paladins. Bronwyn’s companions.” Markal moved to the standing stone and put his hands on the surface. “It seems to be stable enough. That was close. Captain, gather your paladins and prepare them for battle.”

Nathaliey looked around and wondered how she hadn’t noticed before. It was dark, certainly, but not so dark that she couldn’t see these men and women had wheat-colored hair. Barbarians, not gray-skinned marauders with dead eyes.

“What do you mean, prepare for battle?” the young man asked. He’d been studying her with a sharp expression, but now looked to Markal.

“There was power in that stone,” she explained, “and when I stopped it from killing your men, it needed to go somewhere. Think of a boulder that falls off a cliff and lands in the middle of a lake. There’s a giant splash, followed by a wave.”

“I felt nothing,” the man said.

“You might not have,” she said, “but others will. Marauders. The wave will roll for miles before it dissipates. If the marauders feel the wave, they’ll have no trouble following the ripples back to their source.”

This got the captain and his paladins in motion. While they bustled about, she made her way to Markal, who lifted his hands from the stone.

“It’s gone,” he said. “You spent it all. And a powerful rune, too.”

“I’m sorry, I thought . . . how was I supposed to know?”

“Thank the Brothers you didn’t kill them. It was stupid, really.”

Her face flushed. “I was trying to save your life!”

Markal looked up, blinking. “No, Nathaliey, that’s not what I mean. This is my fault. As soon as they cut my bonds, maybe before, I should have called out to you. But I thought you’d be miles away.”

“I wasn’t going to run,” she said, bewildered. “Why would you think that?”

“Why wouldn’t you? They’d caught me and taken the sword. If they really had been marauders, there would have been nothing to do except save yourself.”

“What kind of nonsense is that? I was about to save your life and kill them at the same time. It would have worked, too.”

“But you couldn’t have known that ahead of time. Most likely, you would have come back here and failed, or taken out a few of them, but been killed anyway. The wise thing would have been to get as far from here as possible.”

She threw up her hands. “Unbelievable.”

“Don’t be angry. I’m grateful, I really am, but I’d never want you to die on the small chance of saving my life. You’re too important to me for that. Don’t be angry, please.”

Nathaliey’s anger deflated, but not her frustration. “It’s not that, not really. This was going to be my moment—saving your life and killing the enemy at the same time. Instead, I burned through the magic of this stone and shouted an invitation to our enemies at the same time.”

Markal smiled. “A couple of hours ago we were running for our lives, pursued by griffins and marauders. Then I was taken captive, and marauders had the sword—or so we thought. Now I’m free, they’re not marauders, but paladins on our side of the fight, and the sword is still in our possession. We might even survive the night if the Brother Gods favor us.”

“If only I hadn’t wasted it. There is so much power in these stones, but we can’t use most of it.”

The paladins gathered gear, strapped on swords and hefted shields, and the younger one who’d been interrogating Markal approached. There was something familiar in his posture and the hard set to his eyes as he studied the two companions. His shield had no crest, only a black patina.

“This is Wolfram of Arvada,” Markal said.

“Just Captain Wolfram.”

“Of Arvada?” Nathaliey said. “Isn’t Bronwyn . . .?”

“Bronwyn is my sister, and I’m here to find her. If these marauders have taken her prisoner, I’ll kill them all to free her.”

Nathaliey looked at Markal, who shrugged and said, “I tried. He . . . well, I’ll explain later why he thinks she’s alive.”

“You’ve drawn enemies, all right,” Wolfram told Nathaliey. “Wights, anyway. One of the scouts spotted several blue lights down the mountainside, coming this way.”

“Wights wouldn’t come unless something was driving them,” Markal said.

“Precisely my thinking,” the captain said with a sharp nod. “Which means marauders. My question is, do you think this is the best defensive position? Marissa is uneasy—she says the circle wants to reject us, and there was that matter of the stone that tried to crush us. But the pair of you seem to have some control over the place. So . . . should I be worried or hopeful?”

Markal looked to Nathaliey. “Give him an answer.”

“There’s power in the stones,” she said, “and it’s more favorable to us than to the enemy. But the magic is old and it’s bottled up. No easy task to call it out. The longer we have, the better. Do you have magic? Can you hold off the wights while we work?”

Wolfram shook his head. “We have a few rings and charms, but nothing that could turn them if they’re being driven by sorcery.” He cast his eyes to the left, where Soultrup remained on the ground, bound in its linens. “Unless . . .”

“No,” Nathaliey said firmly. “You can’t touch the red sword. It serves the enemy now.”

“I told him that already,” Markal said. “But our friend is full of doubts . . . about a good many things.”

“My sister’s light is still burning, wizard. I know she’s alive.”

Paladins kept arriving from below, and Markal asked for an assessment of the Blackshields’ strength. Wolfram had brought three companies through the mountains, during which time they’d lost ten paladins—two killed by griffin attacks, three dead fighting giants, and five more who’d been injured or taken ill, and were forced to retreat to Eriscoba. One of the companies had established a redoubt at the end of the old road, where they kept the horses and most of the gear; that was roughly fifty miles to the south of here, and would be of no help. That left Wolfram with two companies and forty-seven paladins in total.

It was a good number, Nathaliey thought, almost a small army. If the approaching enemies were the marauders they’d spotted that morning at the ravine, Wolfram had double their numbers, and if these men and women fought with a fraction of Bronwyn’s skill and confidence, it was a battle they should be able to win. The presence of wights complicated matters, of course, but so did the standing stones.

When the captain set off on other business, Nathaliey turned back to Markal.

“You didn’t tell Wolfram his sister is dead?”

“Of course I told him. He doesn’t believe it—something to do with the pendant we took from the bandits. It’s apparently telling him she’s still alive. He followed it over the mountains, and it apparently helped him find us with some sort of seeking spell.”

“But he’s seen that it’s just us, that there’s no Bronwyn.”

“He’s convinced she’s still alive. And . . . well.” Markal shook his head. “He’s convinced. What more can I say?”

“What do you mean by that?” she said. “You saw her die, didn’t you?”

“I thought so, yes.”

“You thought so? What exactly happened that day?”

“She went down under a swarm of Veyrians. They weren’t trying to take her captive, they were trying to kill her.”

“So you saw her go down, and then what? You fled? Could it be they just took her captive?”

“No, I didn’t flee. Not right away, not without seeing the end of it. I’m telling you, I saw her go down. They disarmed her, knocked her to the ground, and kept stabbing her even when she’d stopping struggling. Maybe the master could have survived that, but nobody else would have. And the enemy had her body—if there had been any spark of life, they’d have extinguished it.”

“Then Wolfram must be wrong,” Nathaliey said firmly.

“I need something to eat,” Markal announced. “Even a scrap of bread or a bit of that venison stew they were cooking, if there’s any left.”

The paladins had turned the cook fire into a small blaze, seeming to prefer as much light as possible. Probably a good idea; the marauders’ night vision seemed to rival that of Markal and Nathaliey. No sign of any food, but Nathaliey had an idea.

“I know where there’s something to eat. And it has a little magic in it.”

“Did you find the hermit? Is that where you were?”

“He’s in a tower off in that direction.” She gestured toward the south side of the circle. “He gave me some soup, and it very nearly brought me back from the dead.”

“I was wondering—you seem fresh enough, and you dug the rune out of the stone. No way I could do that in my current condition.”

“Was he always like that?” she asked.

“He’s a strange fellow, isn’t he?”

“He’s a naked, hairy hermit who can’t speak a word.”

“I don’t know about naked, but he can speak. He just chooses not to.”

“Maybe twenty years ago he could,” Nathaliey said. “But he can’t speak now, or the choosing not to is so strong it makes the same difference. He was a bear at first, and I swear the bear could communicate better than the man.”

“So long as I can eat some of the soup,” Markal said. “Can you bring me some? I’m going to tickle these stones and see what I can find. But hurry—the enemy is coming.”

Nathaliey felt it too as she crossed the ring of stones. A stirring to the north and from below them. A whisper at first, carried on the breeze, of motion and a malignant presence similar to what they’d felt that morning upon leaving the ruined watchtower. With everything that had passed, that felt like a week ago, though it couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen hours.

She hadn’t felt that same presence when entering the stone ring, pursued by Wolfram’s paladins, which should have told her they were someone other than marauders. She’d been exhausted, terrified, and the stones themselves carried such an aura that she hadn’t noticed what should have been obvious.

Nathaliey reached the rocky ledge a few minutes later, or what looked like a ledge. With no time to waste, she picked her way to roughly the correct spot and turned her body at the precise angle the bear had shoved her into earlier. When her head was positioned just so, she looked for the tower doorway out of the corner of her eye.

No, this wasn’t right. It must be back a few feet. She stepped back and tried again, but still couldn’t see the fire burning on the hearth or any other sign of the tower. Growing frustrated, she tried in the other direction, but had no luck there, either, and so she returned to her original spot.

You’re too anxious. Clear your mind.

This time, she felt along the ledge to aid her search, going back and forth, groping for the door by touch. But after a few more minutes of searching, Nathaliey began to suspect another possibility: the hermit no longer wanted to be found. For whatever reason, he’d revealed his tower and offered his hospitality when she hadn’t been seeking it, but now that she was actively trying to find him, he’d gone into hiding.

And if that was the case, she’d never force her way inside. She had too much experience turning away unwanted visitors from Memnet’s gardens to think she could overcome those kinds of wards with non-magical means. For all she knew, the illusion was so complete that she was groping along a tree trunk, or still back at the ring, only thinking she’d come up here in the first place.

Nathaliey was ready to abandon the search, when a shout came from below, and a clank of steel on steel. Already? She’d hope for more time, but it seemed that the enemy had arrived.

Chapter Thirteen

Markal was waiting with Captain Wolfram and about a dozen of his warriors when there was a clash of weapons and a few shouts from the trail below them, and eight paladins came running up the hillside from the darkness below. They were breathless, shields dangling from their arms as they sheathed their swords, but unharmed. Markal stepped aside to let them past, and they stumbled to a halt in front of the captain.

One of the newcomers wheezed out a report. “There’s at least . . . twenty . . . marauders.”

“More,” another said. “And wights.”

“How many wights?” Wolfram demanded.

But the paladins didn’t have an answer to this, only that they’d spotted glowing blue forms moving among the enemy. The captain had positioned the eight at a defensible position on the overgrown trail below, with orders to skirmish and test the enemy’s strength. Then the wights appeared, and they’d fled for their lives.

Nathaliey had gone to search for the hermit, hoping to secure help, or at least some of his magical stew, but there was no sign of her yet. Markal couldn’t afford to wait; he moved to a pair of standing stones that he’d investigated earlier, and felt for the runes and wards chiseled there. They whispered to him again, louder this time, as he felt the cool hard surface. Some of the magic was inscrutable, but he recognized other parts. One rune, in particular, held promise, with the ability to blind approaching enemies, but the endless wash of seasons, the rain and wind and snow, had eroded its surface and buried the magic so deeply that he’d need days to bring it up again. He searched for something more suitable.

The whispering stones were noisy, distracting, and he gave up at the first glimpse of blue light entering the trees below. Markal stepped away from the circle and made his way toward the trail leading down the hillside, ready to fall back if needed, but anxious to observe the enemy’s approach. He stepped to one side in a little hollow carpeted with pine needles.

A line of fir trees stood on the side of the trail like silent witnesses to the lights that came flickering toward him. He counted four wights in all, bunched in a mass and slinking forward reluctantly, as if driven. Shadowy figures in gray cloaks followed, easing toward the stone circle so furtively they might have been ghosts themselves.

In spite of his exhaustion, Markal felt calm, his fear banished as the enemy approached, some fifty feet away now. They were within charging distance, and he prepared to flee, but they hesitated right when Markal thought they would break into a run.

To what purpose, he didn’t know. Perhaps they felt the power radiating from the stone circle, threatening them, much as he felt the malignant magic of the wights and the dark auras of the marauders themselves.

He sensed rather than heard Nathaliey coming up behind him. She held out something, which he took, then turned over in his hand.

“A biscuit?”

“It’s a kind of unleavened bread with wild berries and suet. Paladin food.”

“What about the hermit?”

“He has withdrawn his assistance,” she said. “Or maybe he’s going to appear in our midst as a raging bear and tear these marauders limb from limb.”

“In other words, you couldn’t find him.”

“I swear I went to the same spot, but I couldn’t find the tower.” Nathaliey nodded at the wights and marauders. “Why are they stopped? Why don’t they charge?”

“Gathering power, I suppose.”

Meanwhile, he may as well do what he could to regain his own strength, so he took a bite of the paladin biscuit. It was terrible. Greasy and overly salted, and the berries were tart, not sweet. Also, it was small. When he finished, his stomach was rumbling harder than ever.

“I don’t suppose you have another,” he said.

“Were you expecting to make a meal of it?”

“How about a little wine to wash it down?”

“Strangely, I thought I should get here as soon as possible, rather than rummage about until I could serve you a proper feast.”

His amusement was short-lived, as it seemed that the enemy was gathering to charge. There were four wights and roughly twenty marauders, including a hooded figure directing them into ranks who had to be the captain. His posture was familiar, and Markal thought it the same man who’d chased them into the ravine that morning. The marauders began a low, wordless chant, filled with grunts and snarls, and the wights added a long, miserable-sounding moan that made the hairs stand up on his neck.

Markal and Nathaliey fell back toward the circle. Wolfram met them just outside it. The captain cast a glance down the hillside. His face showed nerves, but his voice was steady.

“Not so many.”

“Every marauder is equal to three regular soldiers,” Markal said.

“And every paladin is worth five.”

“Have you faced marauders before?”

“Several times.” The defiant edge softened in the captain’s voice. “And I won’t lie, they are daunting enemies. Implacable and untiring. But we outnumber them, and we have a position of power. I have only one question of you.”

“You want to know if we can handle the wights.”

Wolfram nodded. “We can turn them aside with our charms and trinkets, but not if marauders are driving them forward. The wights are already dead—our swords pass right through them.”

“We have magic for that,” Nathaliey said. “An incantation to give your weapons the power to puncture wights and send them fleeing in terror.” She must have caught Markal’s doubtful look, because she added, “I suppose I could do it if you’re not ready.”

“You’ve regained your strength?” he asked.

“I . . . I’m not sure. Maybe.”

He thought about one of the stones he’d identified while she was searching for the hermit. “I might have something else. Enough power for the both of us.”

Something changed in the tone of the marauders’ chanting, and all three of them glanced in that direction to make sure they hadn’t begun their final push.

“Nathaliey’s spell won’t last long,” Markal said. “Watch for the gold fire on your blades, Captain, and make the most of it.”

Given the length of the marauders’ hesitation, Markal expected them to approach warily, pushing against the resistance of the stone circle, but they suddenly broke into a charge. If the enemy hadn’t been running uphill, Markal, Nathaliey, and Wolfram might have been caught out, and as it was, they barely had time to fall back to join the paladins before the first three marauders forced their way between two stones and entered the stone circle.

They found the Blackshields braced for combat. Wolfram, Marissa, and three others attacked with swords, while a second group slammed into them with a shield wall to pin them against the stones. More paladins waited, ready to pounce on any who escaped or broke through.

Any other enemy would have crumpled under the ferocious defenses, but the three marauders held their ground. Each man faced multiple attackers, and paladin swords broke through to batter helms and slash arms and shoulders, but the marauders held just long enough for more of their comrades to come pouring between the two stones.

Markal and Nathaliey had withdrawn several paces until they were safely positioned behind the swords and shields of their new allies, but maintained a view of the fighting. Markal was watching for the blue glow and anguished faces of wights.

“Have your spell ready,” he said. “The wights are coming.”

And yet for a moment, he dared hope it wouldn’t be necessary. The stone circle was resisting the intruders, and Wolfram was overwhelming those few who’d broken through. One marauder was down already, two more faltering, and most of the enemy company was blocked outside the circle, unable to force their way in to join the fight.

And then a cloaked figure burst through and gave a shout of triumph. The enemy captain. He raised his sword, and a dark aura surrounded him. Others came streaming in after like a current through a breached dam.

Wolfram shouted for a counterattack, and his reserves hurled themselves into the battle with shouts and clashes of steel on steel. Within seconds, the center of the stone ring became an all-out battle. Markal and Nathaliey fell back to keep from being caught up in it.

“Where are the wights?” she said.

Markal scanned the battlefield. No sign of their ghostly light, but it wouldn’t be long. “Keep ready—they’re out there.”

“Markal, I’m not sure I can . . . you said you had something else? What is it?”

“Follow me,” he said.

He led her to one of the promising stones he’d identified while she searched for the hermit. They put their hands against the cool surface.

“I felt this one before,” she said, “but I don’t know what it is or how to call it.”

“It’s a well of power.”

“Oh,” she said. Then, more fervently, “Oh! Like the master’s orb. But it’s corked up down there. How would you break it free? It’s too strong . . .”

“It had to be strong to keep the power bottled all this time. I can’t free it entirely, but look, there’s a trickle that’s come out already. Do you feel it? If we can get it out, we’ll have more than enough power to finish this fight—fire, shaking earth, a rain of stone—whatever we need.”

She closed her eyes. “A thread, just a . . . I can’t get to it. Grab it and help me pull it out.”

Markal bent his will into the stone and felt for the tip of the thing. He could brush the edge of it, but couldn’t quite get his will so deep into that ancient magic as to seize hold of it, not with the sounds of paladins and marauders fighting and dying only feet away. A man screamed, and Markal looked up and saw four ghostly blue lights flowing into the stone circle.

The wights were old, twisted, decaying souls—a near-formless mass of grasping limbs—who must have been languishing among the ruins of the hill country for generations, hiding to avoid the Harvester and his hounds. Their long, rotting faces were barely human, and their eyes burned with anguish and hatred as a pair of marauders drove them forward with lashes that glowed with a sickly sorcerous green light.

The wights fell on a paladin and dragged him down screaming. The screams continued as they enveloped him in a blue-white light. More light poured into his mouth and nostrils and ears, and he threw aside his sword and shield, writhing and clawing at his face as if trying to tear it off.

“Markal!” Nathaliey cried. “Pull it out. I almost have it—help me!”

He turned his attention back to the standing stone, and reached deep into the rock to tease out the thread of power. But it was too deep; he couldn’t get hold of it. And then Nathaliey caught hold of it and gave a tug, and he lent her his will. The magical power began to emerge, but it resisted, fighting every inch, like a viper being pulled from a hole by its tail.

Meanwhile, more screams as the wights found another victim. Wolfram shouted, tried to regroup his forces to hold their ground, but the enemy was driving the paladins across the circle and pushing some of them out the other side.

Nathaliey had a good hold of the thread now, and gave it a final yank. A flood of magic was there, ready to boil out and correct any deficiencies of the two magic wielders, but just before she had it out, the thread snapped, and the bulk of it recoiled, burying itself deeper than ever. She only had the tip of the thing, and it was weak, tenuous. It would have to be enough.

“The spell,” he said.

“I . . . I can’t remember. I had it, but now it’s gone.”

“Quickly!”

“No, you do it. Markal, for god’s sake!”

The power pulled out of the stone hung in the air, ready to dissolve if they didn’t use it quickly. He drew it to him, and it warmed his hands and forearms as it flooded into him. It was the same warmth he got from drawing blood, but there was no pain with it, no resulting weakness.

He knew the spell, and couldn’t understand why Nathaliey had forgotten it. The words were simple to remember and command, and he’d used it effectively in the past, feeding the spell to acolytes when wights broke through the outer gates and penetrated Memnet’s gardens. Now it was his turn.

Minis mortui incantare arma perdere.

Nathaliey added her power to what they’d drawn from the rock, and it all poured away from him as he turned to face the battle. Marauders had pushed the Blackshields to the far end of the stone circle and squeezed several of them out. Wolfram’s forces had not broken ranks, but were faltering.

It was a conscious assault by the enemy, Markal recognized, to force the paladins from the circle, away from this place of power, and push them into the darkness of the woods beyond, where they could be slaughtered.

Several bodies lay strewn across the center of the circle already, most of them paladins. Another man lay in the campfire, crying in pain as wights held him in the flames. When several of his companions tried to come to his aid, marauders forced them back.

Markal’s spell rolled across the stone circle. He held his breath until it hit, then sagged in relief when a golden light flickered along the blades of the defenders. It would only last moments; the paladins had better make the most of it.

“The wights,” Nathaliey cried. “Attack the wights.”

Wolfram lifted his blade skyward and roared a command to his men. “Shield wall, forward!”

Shields slammed into place until the front ranks formed an armored turtle. The paladins surged as one and drove a punishing wedge into the marauders. They must have been conserving strength, for they drove marauders backward.

Watching the battle play out, Markal recognized that all the marauders had to do was hold their ground long enough for the spell to wither and die, but the enemy commander either didn’t understand or couldn’t resist the powerful shield wall. They parted to let the wights through just as the wights finished off their victim in the fire and came slithering to meet the Blackshields in battle.

Wolfram’s forces fell upon the ghostly figures with their gleaming swords. Wights screamed, light faded and dissolved, and the dead creatures departed the battlefield as wisps of smoke, one after the other until there was only one left, and it was fighting desperately to flee.

“Where is the red sword?” Nathaliey asked.

Somehow, Markal had forgotten about Soultrup in the chaos of battle, and he scanned the circle for the weapon. Wolfram didn’t have it, and it wasn’t lying on the ground, forgotten by the combatants, either. Could a marauder have it already? Not that he could see or feel.

The enemy commander had fallen back as the Blackshields surrounded the final wight. The commander stood apart from his men, weapon in hand, and looked about, searching the shadows. The intent behind that hooded gaze was clear: the marauder captain was hunting for the source of magic that had destroyed the wights.

Markal was suddenly aware that they stood alone, with the enemy between them and the paladins, and he stood perfectly still, willing the shadows to swallow them into the standing stone at their backs, with Nathaliey motionless beside him. It was no good. The marauder turned toward them and pointed with his sword.

“There they are! The wizards.” To Markal’s surprise, it was a woman’s voice behind the snarled command.

Several other marauders disengaged from the main fight and joined their commander in rushing at Markal and Nathaliey.

Chapter Fourteen

Wolfram thrust his sword through the chest of the final wight even as the gold fire on the edge of his weapon began to fade. The wight dissolved with a howl of rage and pain, and a smoky blue light fled from the stone circle. His men shouted and pushed forward to renew their attack on the marauders.

The enemy captain shouted a command in turn, and several marauders tried to fight clear. Wolfram hoped that they’d won, that the enemy was disengaging to abandon the battlefield. Marauders were relentless fighters until they broke from a fight, and then they were vulnerable like any other opponent. If the Blackshields turned the fight into a rout, they’d destroy this company of marauders as a coherent fighting force.

But the enemy captain wasn’t sounding the retreat so much as redirecting the fight. He stood off a pace from his companions, gesturing with his sword at something on the far side of the circle. The shadows were deeper there, and Wolfram wanted to look away, as if his attention were called elsewhere. It was magic telling him not to look, and even without seeing the two wizards, he knew they must have drawn the marauder’s attention and were desperately trying to hide.

Markal and Nathaliey had just saved Wolfram’s life and the lives of all of his men by endowing their weapons with power, and he swore he wouldn’t let the enemy have them. He shouted at Marissa, fighting nearby, and she in turn got Gregory’s attention. Gregory swept his massive sword like a scythe among the wheat, clearing a path to the other two.

Two other paladins followed, and they caught the rear elements of the charging marauders and forced them into battle before they could attack the wizards, now visible with their backs pressed against the stone. He stabbed one marauder in the back, and Marissa brought her sword from over her shoulder and nearly severed the man’s head from his shoulders to finish the task. Gregory leaped into the fray with a roar, and at last the enemy captain himself turned around, forced to fight.

It was five against five, a furious knot of swirling swords, battering shields, thrusts, and parries. Another marauder went down, and Wolfram shouted, thinking they had won. Then Marissa’s sword shattered under a tremendous blow from the enemy captain, and Wolfram and Gregory had to fight to her side to allow her to retreat.

Once Marissa was clear, Wolfram and Gregory brought the captain under their combined assault. They had him now. Another blow or two and the enemy would be dead. But their opponent fought like a possessed demon, unbelievably quick and seemingly tireless. A jab and cut, and Gregory took a slash to his thigh. He staggered and nearly fell, and his opponent came forward with the killing blow.

Wolfram threw himself between Gregory and the marauder captain. He lifted his shield as the enemy sword came crashing down, and it rocked under the blow.

“Get back!” he told Gregory.

The big knight staggered away from the fight, bleeding from his thigh, pursued by another marauder. Wolfram had no chance to see if Gregory had escaped before he was fending off a vicious follow-up swing from the enemy commander. He parried blow after blow, absorbing them with sword and shield, but finally took a glancing strike on the right shoulder. The chain beneath his tunic held, but he rocked on his heels from the strength of it, and his defenses nearly fell at a fatal moment. He got his shield up just in time.

Somehow he fought off the attack and briefly returned to the offensive, but the enemy was too strong; Wolfram couldn’t get past the man’s defenses. He could only hope that Marissa or one of the others joined him in time, but they were locked in their own life-and-death struggles.

“Beast of hell,” he swore between clenched teeth. “The Harvester take you.”

“The Dark Gatherer will not have me,” the enemy commander said. It was a woman, not a man—between the darkness and the hood of her cloak, he had somehow missed it all this time. “And neither will it have you. Because tonight you will join me in service of the dark wizard . . . wolf cub.”

And now he heard it. Heard her voice, heard her old nickname for him like poison on the tongue. Wolfram stared in horror as the enemy threw back her hood to reveal his sister. Or, rather, a cruel mockery of who she had once been.

Bronwyn’s face was gray, her eyes dead. Her mouth turned up in a sneer that made a cruel parody of the strong, proud woman she had been. Yet everything else about her appearance was the same, right down to her brutal fighting style. He had witnessed it a dozen times, but had never faced her devastating skill himself until now.

“The Brothers save me,” he whispered.

“Not tonight, Wolfram. Tonight, nothing will save you.”

All those weeks crossing the mountains, seeing her soul still burning with life every time he closed his eyes. The certainty he’d felt when denying Markal’s assertion that Bronwyn was dead, even though the wizard swore he’d seen her fall.

All of his beliefs now bled away into horror. Here Bronwyn was, facing him, neither dead nor alive, but something else entirely. Something terrible.

Markal hadn’t been lying, and he hadn’t been deceived. The wizard really had seen her go down under the Veyrian attack, and perhaps she had truly died. And then, as the warmth of life was expiring from Bronwyn’s lips, the sorcerer must have taken her body, bound her soul to the dead flesh, and reanimated her. Some terrible sorcery had her leading the enemies she’d once fought. She was trying to kill her former companions, her own brother.

Bronwyn renewed the attack. Paladins cried out that Wolfram was in trouble and attempted to fight their way to his side, but marauders were regrouping as well, and they beat back all attempts to reach his side.

“Where is the sword, Brother? Give it to me. Give it to me now. I will have it, and I will have your soul, too. You will ride beside me, and together we will destroy these lesser beings and press them to the service of my master.”

Wolfram was tiring, and couldn’t answer. One of the standing stones loomed at his back, and Bronwyn pinned him against it, stabbing, thrusting, and battering. His shield shivered under blow after blow. His arms felt like dead weights; he could barely raise his shield one more time as she raised her sword for what was to be a killing blow.

A brilliant white light flared to his left. Another light flared to his right. Voices rose, chanting in some strange tongue. Bronwyn snarled and whirled about, facing first one light, then the other. The wizards had taken up positions, flanking her, and were throwing magic onto the battlefield.

And as the stone circle was illuminated, Wolfram saw his victory materialize. Men and women lay dead across the battlefield, stretching from one side of the circle to the other. The number of fallen on each side was roughly equal, but at least ten marauders had fallen, which gave him the clear advantage. Only a small knot of enemies remained, and paladins crowded them from every side. And now, the wizards had apparently raised more magic from the stone circle.

The Blackshields were going to win, and Bronwyn knew it, too. Dismay and rage crossed her face, now more pale than gray under the light flaring from the wizards’ hands.

“I will have you,” she snarled, and then she burst past him, leaving the circle and entering the darkness.

The rest of the marauders fell back, cursing and shouting. They swept their cloaks around them as they moved, and a black energy radiated outward as they rushed past, some sort of magic to aid their escape. Some clenched wounds, and one ugly brute held a sword in his right hand while tucking the bloody stump of his left hand against his body. He snarled a curse at Wolfram as he fought his way clear. Others swore they would drink the paladins’ blood as they vanished into the darkness. And then they were gone.

The light flickered and faded, and Wolfram hesitated rather than call for his exhausted, wounded forces to pursue. He was certain that final bit of taunting as the marauders fell back had been to draw his forces out of the protective stone circle. Instead, he raised his black shield and shouted victory. A ragged cheer rose from the survivors.

#

It was a bloody aftermath. Wolfram ordered the fallen marauders beheaded to be sure they wouldn’t rise again later, then set about numbering his wounded and dead. Nine paladins killed out of forty-seven, with two others so close to death they wouldn’t survive the night. Eight others had suffered wounds sufficient to render them helpless.

As for the wizards, Markal collapsed in exhaustion in the center of the circle, looking nearly corpse-like himself, but the woman tracked Wolfram down a few minutes later as he attended to Sir Gregory. The wounded paladin lay on a blanket, arm draped over his face. They’d removed his trousers, leaving him in his braies, and he shivered with cold and shock from the grisly cut across his upper thigh. Wolfram doused the wound with wine, and Gregory grimaced but didn’t cry out.

He was getting ready to bandage it when Markal’s companion told him to step aside so she could see to it herself. He obeyed, curious and hopeful. She brought out a small clay flask, from which she removed a dab of brown ointment that smelled first of eucalyptus, and then of something bitter and eye-watering. Gregory gasped in pain when she touched the ointment to his thigh wound, but his gasp became a long sigh of relief.

“Good,” the woman said. “Now hand me the bandages.”

Wolfram nodded to a paladin who’d been standing by with linen strips. The young woman took them and began to expertly wrap Gregory’s wound.

“My name is Sir Wolfram, captain of the Blackshields. I’m glad to have you with us. You have some skill.”

“I know who you are.” She kept at her work. “You, standing there. Has that knife been cleaned with wine? Good, cut the bandage right here.”

“And what is your name, wizard?”

“Nathaliey of Syrmarria, and I am not a wizard, only an apprentice.”

He studied her more carefully. She seemed young at first glance, and he supposed she’d escaped his grasp in the ambush because the paladins had dismissed her and focused on taking Markal. But now he reconsidered her age. Her face was smooth and unlined, and she was an attractive woman in a strange, eastern way, but her eyes had depth that could not have possibly belonged to a young woman. Her skill in both magic and healing was impressive and spoke to years of training.

“And Markal? Is he an apprentice, too?”

Nathaliey glanced at her companion, sprawled and exhausted in the middle of the stone circle. Someone brought him a waterskin, but he waved it off and asked for wine.

“Markal is a wizard, a master of the order.”

“But you fought as his equal. During that last magical attack, your light was brighter than his. And the stone you almost dropped on our heads . . . are you sure you’re only an apprentice?”

Nathaliey rose to her feet. “I need to see the rest of them, starting with the most gravely injured.”

Wolfram led her to Doran and Liliana. Doran had suffered a brutal cut to the head, and was lying senseless with a gash straight to his brains. Liliana had lost an arm at the elbow and taken stabs to the chest, and she was pale and barely breathing.

Nathaliey bent over them, and her face fell. “I am sorry, Captain. I can’t help these two. They will die soon. Give them a soporific if you have it, and ease their passing.”

Wolfram nodded, feeling lightheaded. “I understand. I hope you can help the others, then.”

“I hope so, too,” she said.

They found another injured paladin, this one with a painful shoulder wound that might leave him disabled, but wasn’t life-threatening. Nathaliey made hopeful comments as she applied her balm.

“The light you saw had no power behind it,” she said as she worked. “The marauders have their strengths—they never tire in battle, for one—but they have their weaknesses.”

“It was only a trick?”

“We were exhausted, our magic spent. The light? It was only a trick. The marauders fell for it because they don’t tire, and so they forget that others do. Let someone else bind this wound. Who else do you have?”

Wolfram led her to another injured paladin. “Trick or real magic, it worked.”

“It was your paladins who won the fight, not us.”

“It was a costly one.”

Wolfram looked across the churned-up meadow between the standing stones. Marissa had the paladins dragging the decapitated marauders outside the stone circle while she tossed their severed heads into a pile near the fire. The injured Blackshields gathered in the center, and healthy men and women took position around the edges of the stone circle in case of a fresh enemy assault. The ground was torn, stained with blood, and the smell of charred flesh hung in the air from the man who’d burned alive.

Markal rose to his feet and made his way over. The wizard nibbled on a piece of hard cheese given to him by one of the paladins, and looked a little stronger.

“Where is Soultrup?” he asked.

“I’d hoped you could tell me. I don’t think the marauders got it. She was still trying to get it from me at the end.”

“It’s still nearby. I can feel it.” Markal’s face turned grim. “We were both wrong, weren’t we?”

“Yes. Terribly wrong. My sister is both alive and dead at the same time.”

Wolfram had removed his torn, bloodstained cloak after the battle, and his hand went to the wool vest he’d put on to fight the evening chill. He pulled out his sister’s moon pendant and rubbed his thumb over the cool silver as a wave of grief threatened to drive him to his knees. When he closed his eyes, the spark of light was still there, showing that Bronwyn was alive, but what a horrible existence it was. The sneer, the hatred in her expression.

Markal touched his arm, and he opened his eyes to find Markal and Nathaliey studying him with expressions of concern.

“I misjudged you, friends,” Wolfram said, returning the pendant to his pocket. “And I’m especially sorry, Markal, for mistreating you.”

“That isn’t really your sister,” Markal said. “It’s something else. Don’t forget that.”

Wolfram’s anguish was too raw, and he couldn’t speak of it any more, so they set about attending to the rest of the wounded. The two wizards—he continued to think of the woman in those terms, in spite of her statement to the contrary—had a delicate touch, and the ointment from their gardens had special properties. Wounds didn’t magically heal themselves when it was applied, but the ointment eased suffering, slowed bleeding, and closed up even the nastiest gashes.

Nathaliey and Markal also knew something of broken bones, when they should be handled, and when they should be splinted and left alone. What these people most needed was rest, Markal said when they’d finished their work.

“Impossible,” Wolfram said. “Every paladin needs to be on his feet by morning. We can’t stay here—you know that.”

“Understood,” Markal said. “Now, about the sword . . . where did it go?”

“The marauders didn’t have it,” Wolfram repeated. “My sister was still trying to get it when you chased them off.”

“Oh,” Nathaliey said, and pointed. “It’s right there!”

Wolfram looked, incredulous, but she was right. There was Soultrup, only a few feet away and still wrapped in its linens, as if it had never moved. Impossible. Scores of combatants had trampled the meadow, and the grass was bloody and churned up with mud. Not only were the linens relatively clean, but Wolfram must have crossed the stone circle a dozen times since the battle ended. The sword had not been there, he’d swear to it.

Markal picked it up gingerly. He looked thoughtful.

“Someone had it,” Wolfram declared. “They took it during the battle and brought it back.”

The wizards exchanged glances. “What do you think, the hermit?” Nathaliey asked.

Markal nodded. “He must have taken it for safekeeping during the fight, then returned the weapon now that it’s safe.”

Wolfram looked between them, confused. “What do you mean, hermit?”

“He could have helped us, don’t you think?” Nathaliey said. “I don’t know, changed into a bear and torn apart a few of those marauders.”

“Or called up the magic from the stones,” Markal said. “He’s been here so many years—if anyone knows how, it’s him.”

“Will someone explain?” Wolfram said, more confused than ever.

“There’s an old wizard living nearby,” Markal said. “Half crazy. He’s a bear more often than not. That’s how Nathaliey got away from you at first.”

“Ah, I was wondering. We were right on her tail.”

“He has a stone keep,” Nathaliey said. “It’s disguised to look like that cliff you were searching. You walked right by without spotting it.”

That answered one mystery, but opened the door to another. “So why didn’t he help?”

“He’s not entirely in his right mind,” she said. “One too many transformations to animal form and back again. I don’t know why he didn’t help more, but he kept your sister from recovering the red sword, and that’s something.”

Markal held out Soultrup, and Wolfram took it reluctantly. It was heavy, and a whisper passed through his mind, then disappeared.

“No, take it back. I don’t want it.”

“It’s yours, though,” Markal said. “It came from Eriscoba, and it needs to go back.”

“What am I supposed to do with it? I can’t use it.”

“Not recommended, no.” Markal shook his head. “Leave it wrapped. Take it deep into your country, to whatever wizards you know and trust. And be aware that your sister will follow and try to get it back. You say you have another company of paladins waiting for you with horses? How long until you reach them?”

“Markal, listen to me,” Wolfram said. “I told you already, we don’t have wizards. So far as I know, there are none of your kind in the free kingdoms.”

“Someone must know how to deal with the sword.”

“Someone does,” Wolfram said. “You do.” He tried to hand back the sword.

Markal spread his hands. “Oh, no. The master told us to carry it over the mountains and give it to you. We were fortunate enough to find you on this side of the mountains, so here you go. Now we’re going back to the gardens to rejoin the order.”

Nathaliey cleared her throat. “Um, Markal? That isn’t precisely what Memnet said. He told us to find Bronwyn’s order of paladins, give them the sword, and make sure they knew its lore.”

“And that’s just what we’ve done.”

“But he didn’t say we were supposed to come back when we finished.”

“What else were we supposed to do?” Markal asked.

“Near as I can tell, Memnet wanted us to join forces with the paladins.”

“He never said that.”

“It was implied. Memnet would know that Bronwyn’s people don’t have wizards of their own. That’s why he sent us.”

“The Harvester take me,” Markal said with a scowl. “But I don’t want to cross the mountains, I want to go back to the gardens and help the master.”

“We can’t leave Wolfram while he’s still facing his sister, Markal. I’m sorry, we can’t go back yet, not while Bronwyn is still trying to regain the sword.”

Wolfram looked between the pair. “I thought Markal was the wizard and Nathaliey the apprentice.”

Markal sighed. “Yes, supposedly.”

“My friend suffers a lack of confidence,” she said, “and sometimes I have to take over.”

Wolfram tucked Soultrup under one arm and pulled out the moon pendant. “Here, Markal. I think you need this more than I do. It’s just the sort of thing for a lack of confidence.”

Markal eyed it skeptically. “I suppose.” He slipped the chain around his neck and tucked the silver crescent moon into his shirt. “Unless you want it,” he told Nathaliey.

“Not unless that confidence thing works in reverse. I’ll do a little spell in front of the master, and he’ll think I know what I’m doing.”

“Too bad you didn’t tip the stone on the marauders instead of calling it up to fight paladins,” Markal said. “That would have earned his respect for sure. Such a waste.”

“I was trying to save your life!”

Markal gave a mischievous smile. “I’ve got an idea. The hermit can vouch for you. You can bribe him with honey from the gardens.”

Nathaliey scowled, but there was no anger in it. It seemed these two had a long history, and he found himself instinctively liking them both. And they were allies, something in short supply these days. He’d be glad to have them by his side, even if only for a few days or weeks.

Wolfram’s thoughts turned dark again. Nine paladins dead, two more unlikely to survive the night. And his sister, Sir Bronwyn of Arvada, neither alive nor dead, but something in between.

“What is your plan from here?” Markal asked him. “Ride to the king’s highway? Return to the encampment where you stashed your horses? Cross the mountains on the old road to raise the defenses of Eriscoba?”

“Eventually, Eriscoba, but first I’m going to find my sister. She was the fiercest warrior in all of the free kingdoms, and if she is in command of the gray marauders, the only possible result is disaster.” A cold feeling settled into Wolfram’s belly. “We have to find Bronwyn, force her into a fight, and kill her. This time for good.”

Chapter Fifteen

Two days after his confrontation with the dark acolytes, Chantmer was in the library vault with a book of arcane knowledge, laboriously copying an incantation while trying to fix it in his memory, when he sensed a strange presence. A change, a scent on the air.

The library was drenched in magic already—runes and wards and the minor charms of archivists, all mixed with the deep, knot-like magic protecting the books and scrolls themselves—and if he hadn’t placed a special ward at the doorway against intruders, he might have missed it. The smell was like lemon. Tangy, distinctive. The ward had released it to his senses when it detected an unknown presence entering. Whoever it was carried magic with him, rich with power, and Chantmer sensed danger.

He didn’t rise from the desk over which he’d hunched. Instead, he slowly set down the quill on its cloth, turned his hands palms down, and brought up a spell. Spectral hammers. They might not destroy the intruder, but they would weaken him long enough for the library’s own defenses to activate. He began to speak the words.

“Volans maleis again?” came a familiar voice. “Aren’t you tired of that old spell?”

The half-spoken incantation died on Chantmer’s lips, and he turned. “Oh, it’s only you.”

Narud opened a satchel and set down a jar of honey, two bottles of wine, and a wheel of cloth-wrapped cheese on the table next to Chantmer’s open book. The former apprentice and freshly ordained wizard raised one bushy black eyebrow, seeming to enjoy looking down on Chantmer for once.

“And why should I change it?” Chantmer said. “Had you been an enemy, volans maleis would have been effective in this closed space.”

“Would it? I’m not so sure. The hammers rotate as they fly, and might have smashed apart on the vaults. Anyway, how about radicatus?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Which proves my point. If you didn’t lean so much on volans maleis, you’d have a wider repertoire.”

Chantmer gritted his teeth at Narud’s tone. It didn’t help that Jethro and Karla were in the library, studying the clay tablets from Marrabat and openly listening in on the conversation.

“I suppose you’re a wizard now,” Chantmer said, “and that means you can lecture me as you see fit.”

“I didn’t mean it as a lecture.” Narud shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “The master told me to check on your progress, to see what new spells you’d learned.”

“Never you mind, I’ve been studying hard.”

“And who were you expecting just now when you tried to smash my face?”

“His name is Zartosht of Starnar. There was another, too. They call themselves dark acolytes, and they serve King Toth.”

Chantmer explained to Narud how he’d been approached in the palace gardens, how Zartosht had bragged about entering the library and defacing the Book of Gods, and how he’d tried to recruit Chantmer to serve the necromancer.

“What a fool,” Narud said. “As if that could tempt one who follows the Crimson Path, no matter his position in the order.”

“Indeed,” Chantmer said dryly. “Who wouldn’t prefer to be an apprentice forever if it came right down to it?”

“Quite right,” Narud said, missing the sarcasm. He pulled up a stool to the table, where he glanced at the open book and then at Chantmer’s copy. “You have an excellent hand. I wish I could form letters so neatly—it would help my memory, I think.”

The compliment was cheering, and Chantmer’s irritation at being reminded that Narud had been elevated to wizard faded.

“It doesn’t help enough,” he said. “I copy and copy, and the words don’t stick. But I suppose if they did stick easily, there would be nothing special about being an archivist. Any old fool with no magic and an excess of patience could manage it.”

Jethro and Karla grumbled from the nearby table where they worked with clay tablets, and Chantmer waved a hand to dismiss their concerns. He obviously meant no offense by it.

“What brings you to Syrmarria?” he asked Narud. “Surely the master didn’t send you all the way just to check up on me.”

“Not just to check up on you. I’m here to help you strengthen the library defenses against fire.”

“Against fire? How much stronger could they possibly be?”

To illustrate his point, Chantmer took the sheet of parchment he’d been writing on and stuck the end in the candle flame. Not only did the parchment not catch fire, but the flame died in a wisp of smoke.

“And that’s a loose sheet,” he said. “A book is that much stronger still.”

“We went to the Sacred Forest a few days ago,” Narud said. “Memnet is improving day by day, and felt strong enough to leave the gardens to see the burned stretch for himself. He thought we might do something with the trees to strengthen them against the enemy’s desecration. It was too late. The Sacred Forest is cut in two, and the road is already built. It’s a long, blackened gash, uglier than you can imagine. And it was all done with fire.”

“How? How is such a thing possible? Those trees can’t burn any more than . . .” Chantmer’s voice trailed off, and he looked around him. “The enemy would never burn this library, even if he could. He might take the books, yes, but never destroy them.”

“Strengthen the library against fire. That is the extent of Memnet’s instructions.”

“Is the highway moving toward the gardens?”

“No,” Narud said. “It passes three miles from the garden gates, but no closer. Enemy riders have approached the bridge over Blossom Creek, but they haven’t crossed.”

“They did it once before. It’s only a question of time before they make another attempt.”

“This time they’ll find Memnet the Great awake and with his full array of power.”

“Good,” Chantmer said.

Narud bent over the open tome. “I remember this book. We studied it before, though I can’t remember the half of what I read. Something about bending pain.”

“Bending pain for the sake of power. Blood from the pores is arbitrary. We could have easily chosen another method. A cut across the hand, or burning our skin. Painful tattoos, or thorns in the flesh.”

“If we did that, we wouldn’t be the Crimson Path.” Narud traced the words with an index finger, and his lips moved silently.

Chantmer studied his companion as he read. He was still baffled by why Narud had been elevated to wizard so quickly, but the man had strength, there was no question. A bit on the odd side, with his obsessions about plants and animals, but they all had quirks.

“Nathaliey’s father is locked in the dungeon,” Chantmer said. “They’re torturing him.”

Narud looked up, and his heavy eyebrows knit together in dismay. “They’re not flaying him, are they? I saw the khalif’s skin flying above the city gate.”

“Gruesome and unseemly,” Chantmer said. “I shudder every time I see it. But no, not yet. I crept down to observe, and they have Kandibar chained to the wall, his arms stretched from their sockets, but they have not yet physically broken him. It’s the work of the dark acolytes, not Pasha Isak’s torturers. I believe they intend to break Kandibar’s mind and see if he’ll lead them to the gardens.”

“The poor man.”

“And poor us, if they succeed.”

“How did they get their hands on him?” Narud asked. “Nathaliey personally saw him to the edge of the desert.”

“They must have ambushed him on the road and dragged him back.”

“Did you try to free him?”

“No, this Zartosht villain is watching for me. I didn’t dare try it on my own, but I thought about slipping Kandibar poison to ease his suffering—surely I could manage that much. But now that you’re here . . . it might be worth an attempt.”

“Much better than poisoning the poor fellow.”

“He was going to die anyway,” Chantmer said. “I was only going to save him from torture.”

“If we get him free, I’ll take him to the gardens. He’ll be safe there.”

“The master sent him to Marrabat to raise the sultan against King Toth. We should put him back on the Spice Road.”

“The enemy already caught him once—what makes you think he’d manage now, when he’s beaten down and without the palace guard to protect him?”

It was a good point, but Chantmer still didn’t want Kandibar in the gardens. With as much damage as they’d suffered in the attack, Memnet needed to concentrate on repairing the defenses, not healing invalids. If Markal and Nathaliey hadn’t run off to get rid of the red sword—pointlessly, Chantmer thought—they’d be around to fill in the more trivial duties.

Narud flipped the page and began tracing letters again, lips moving like a child learning to read. Nevertheless, he was progressing more rapidly than Chantmer could manage, and that was grating.

“I have another idea,” Chantmer said. “We free the vizier from the dungeons, but keep him in the palace.”

Narud looked up. “He can’t show his face around here. They’ll kill him.”

“You’re not understanding the wider situation. Kandibar, for all his limitations, inspires loyalty in these parts. He turned practically the entire palace guard against the Veyrians.”

“That was Omar, actually, and his skin is flapping in the breeze as a reward. Besides, there are no more palace guards. They’ve either fled Aristonia or been enslaved on the king’s highway. There’s nobody left for Kandibar to inspire.”

“Nobody left at the moment, true. But that could change. And down the road, he might very well prove a loyal vizier to whomever we install in the place of Pasha Izak.”

“Go on,” Narud said.

“Omar had three sisters. Two of them went east—probably to serve in Toth’s harem. The third is still in the palace. There’s talk that Izak will take her to wife, and he will be installed as khalif, with Omar’s sister as khalifa to legitimize his rule.”

“I thought the pashas were military generals. Why would he stay in Aristonia?”

“An arrow blinded Izak in one eye,” Chantmer said, “and he lost the toes of his left foot last winter in the mountains. Hard to campaign with one eye and hobbling with a cane. It is time for him to retire and take his reward for all of the heads he’s taken in the king’s service.”

“And you think this girl will marry him? What’s her name?”

“Sadira, and she might. She is young and beautiful—or so they say—and under normal circumstances, I couldn’t imagine her marrying the fat old pasha. But she might see few other options at the moment. I will approach and offer her one.”

“You?” Narud looked doubtful. “Perhaps we should send someone more diplomatic.”

“Don’t worry, I know how to handle this sort. Spoiled princesses respond well to flattery.”

“If she’s a spoiled princess, how is she going to be of any use?”

“She’s spoiled, but she seems to be clever enough.”

“Hmm.”

“I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong,” Chantmer admitted. “I don’t understand women or their motivations.”

“Neither do I. If only Nathaliey were here to advise us.”

“Nathaliey is not precisely a woman,” Chantmer said. “Not since she left the mundane world to study the arcane arts.”

One of the archivists snorted, and he looked up to see Karla walking by with a book, one corner of her mouth turned up in a smile. Chantmer didn’t see what had her so amused. Surely he’d said nothing she could object to.

“I’m not sure I see the distinction,” Narud said, bringing Chantmer’s attention back around. “Anyway, Nathaliey is the closest we’ve got.”

“She and Markal must be in Eriscoba by now, so that option is out.” Chantmer gave it some more thought. “How about the vizier himself? We pluck him out of the dungeon, explain our plan, and bring him in to talk to the woman. Kandibar tells her what we need from her.”

“And that is what, precisely?” Narud asked.

“That when the order comes to move against the enemy, the pair of them—the new khalifa and her grand vizier—raise Syrmarria in revolt and take control of the armies of Aristonia.”

“The only armies in Aristonia are the ones brought here by the enemy.”

“Then we’d better find one,” Chantmer said, “or the whole of this country will be destroyed. The first step is to free the vizier. We’ll figure the rest of it out later. How do we get him out of the dungeon?”

“Are there monkeys in the palace?”

“They killed Omar’s pet for sport. I don’t know about any others.” Chantmer turned to Jethro. “Archivist?”

“There are still wild monkeys living on the hill behind the palace,” Jethro said. “They come over the wall and raid the fruit trees.”

“That’s right,” Chantmer said. “I’d forgotten about that. It shouldn’t be hard to enchant one to carry down a key, like we did with Nathaliey. Except,” he added, as something occurred to him, “Kandibar isn’t only locked up, he’s chained to the wall. We’d have to train the monkey to unfasten the chains as well.”

“That’s beyond a monkey’s ability to take orders,” Narud said. “And possibly its strength as well, depending on the chains.”

“Change yourself to a monkey, then,” Chantmer said. “Go down and see what you can manage.”

Narud looked doubtful. “I’ve only changed myself to a dog before. A monkey is something else entirely—I don’t even know the incantation.”

“Whatever it is, we’ll find it here in the books. You can study first, and when the time comes, I’ll lend you my strength.”

“That would take days, maybe longer. If it works at all. Meanwhile, every day that goes by in the dungeon makes the vizier that much weaker.”

Frustrated, Chantmer rose from the table and gestured at the book and writing implements so that one of the archivists would take them away. “Then we’ll have to make a more direct assault on the dungeons. Are you strong enough, or do you need to rest?”

“I have all my power. I haven’t drawn any since leaving the gardens—I didn’t want to drag a trail of magic into the city.”

“And I haven’t cast a spell since my confrontation with the dark acolytes. Only a little here and there to conceal my passage. We’re both nearly at full strength.” Chantmer looked at the food and drink that Narud had carried from the gardens. “You may share out the cheese and honey,” he told the archivists, “but save the wine. It will refresh us on our return.”

Chapter Sixteen

A web of magic grew as Chantmer and Narud made their way toward the dungeon. The enemy had placed fresh wards and protective spells along the various approaches, and more than once the pair found themselves turning around as if compelled to travel in a different direction. Distracted, Chantmer thought it would be a good idea to listen in on the pasha as he spoke to his viziers, and Narud suggested going to the kitchens to look for food.

Once they realized what was happening, Narud suggested a concentration spell, but neither had one at hand. That sent them back to the libraries to find one. Jethro brought out two books to present them with different options, and they located a spell simple enough that an hour of study was enough to fix it temporarily in their heads. An incantation was always easier to remember inside the library than out, so they cast it before leaving again.

Chantmer’s head remained clear as they approached the dungeons a second time, and Narud maintained a dogged focus as well. But a malignant feeling descended on them when they passed through a covered arcade, and it continued to grow as they slipped past a pair of Veyrian guards armed with hooked pikes. They entered a long corridor with a ribbed ceiling of variegated white and salmon stone, and Chantmer had to stop and lean against the wall to catch his breath. Narud doubled over, looking faint.

It was still afternoon, and the light was strong, but a shadow seemed to hang over everything. Chantmer’s heart thumped furiously, and fear prickled along his spine and the back of his neck.

“I can’t shake the dread,” he said. “Something is squeezing me from the inside, and it feels like shadows are going to go down my throat.”

“The shadows are illusion,” Narud said through clenched teeth. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his face flushed as he straightened. “But this confounded heat is going to make me faint.”

“That’s illusion, too,” Chantmer said. “There’s no heat, not behind all this stone.”

“I know that, but it doesn’t help me shake it off.”

Chantmer pushed himself from the wall, determined to press on. “That’s it, right ahead. We round the corner, face two more guards—no doubt idiots—and then take the staircase down. This is exactly where I came before . . . only it wasn’t so hard.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“Be alert, keep focused on the concentration spell. If Zartosht or the other dark acolyte is down here, you’ll spot him even if he’s concealed himself.”

“Yes, Chantmer, I know.”

Narud sounded uncharacteristically peevish. Must be the heat.

They started forward. The stones beneath their feet seemed to soften with every step, until Chantmer felt like he was wading through thick mud. At the same time, the ceiling grew lower and lower, until the ribbing bent around his head and shoulders. He ducked to get under it, unpleasantly reminded that he was a good deal taller than his companion, and would be crushed first.

“It isn’t real,” Narud said. “The ceiling isn’t going to fall on your head.”

Chantmer shook his head to clear the illusion. When that didn’t work, he closed his eyes and reached for the wall with his left hand to find his way by touch. It was burning hot, and he withdrew his fingers with a gasp. And his feet . . . they simply could not slog through this mud, which was now mid-calf, and growing deeper with every step.

“You’re going the wrong way,” Narud said in a sharp whisper.

He opened his eyes and was startled to see it was true. His right hand was on the wall, he was moving away from the final turn that would take them to the staircase into the dungeons, and the corridor seemed to slope upward behind him at an impossible angle. What’s more, his concentration spell was fading. Already, random thoughts were crowding his mind, begging to be addressed. How long had they been in this corridor? The light coming through the slit windows seemed different.

Narud came back to him. His teeth were clenched, and sweat ran down his temples. “We need more than a concentration spell. Their wards are too strong.”

“You’re right,” Chantmer said reluctantly, with a final glance down the corridor. “Those villains—I’ll break them, I swear by the Brothers.”

They froze at movement ahead of them, and shrank against the wall as a figure appeared. It was only a servant girl carrying figs, grapes, and cheese on a tray—food for guards, obviously, not prisoners. The girl didn’t notice the two intruders as she hurried past, but it reminded Chantmer of their precarious position. They didn’t want to be here when the guard changed, or when the dark acolytes came around to see if any of their wards had been tested.

Narud seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Let’s go outside.”

Chantmer reluctantly agreed.

The instant he’d made the decision to turn around, the need for fresh air and sunlight was almost overwhelming, and even though he knew it was the enemy’s protective spells doing it, he was practically running as he lifted his robes and hurried through the maze of corridors and chambers until he was in the fresh air, with Narud following on his heels. Once outside, the two of them looked at each other with rueful shakes of the head at how easily they’d been defeated.

“Is that what the enemy faces when they try to find the library?” Chantmer asked. “It must be.”

“We’ve been building our defenses for decades. What we faced was the work of a few days. It will only get harder for us.”

Chantmer frowned. “This is supposed to be friendly ground for us, enemy territory for the dark acolytes. They are chipping away at our advantage.”

“So what now?” Narud asked. “Return to the library and study until we find something to clear away their spells?”

“No time for that.”

“We need the master. Or even Markal,” Narud added. “He’d know what to do.”

“We don’t need Markal,” Chantmer said, irritated. “If all we need is knowledge, there are plenty of archivists at hand. And we have no time to ask the master for help, either. If we’re going to save the vizier, it will have to be soon. Another day or two of torture, and it won’t matter if he’s alive or dead—they’ll have shattered him body and spirit. We either have to find a way through or accept that Kandibar is doomed and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“The servant girl got through easily enough.”

“Of course she did. The spells are only designed to repel us, not those who work for the Veyrians.”

“But that’s not how our defensive wards work,” Narud said. “They repel anyone not specifically invited. Remember when Kandibar tried to approach the gardens? He got lost, confused. Only members of the order can come and go. The same holds for the library—no servant could possibly find it, either by design or accident. But the servant was clearly no wizard or acolyte, and neither are the guards whose food she was carrying.”

“Ah, I see. Then the wards are specifically targeting us, is that what you are suggesting?”

“I believe so,” Narud said.

“So all we need is to get our hands on the servant girl and bend her to our will. A little enchantment . . . not so different from what we did to that monkey.”

Narud bunched his thick eyebrows as if turning this over, then shook his head. “As soon as you enchant her, the wards will attack her, too. Anything carrying our magic—even a monkey—would trigger them. It has to be someone who enters willingly, someone who already has privileges.”

Chantmer took in his surroundings. They stood on a square terrace open toward the city in front, with private apartments opening from the other three sides. The apartments had once belonged to stewards and other functionaries of Omar’s palace, but since the khalif’s overthrow had been given over to the pasha’s lieutenants, those responsible for military control of the city.

The open side of the terrace gave a view down toward the city, with the rural countryside beyond. The orange sun burned up the horizon as it dipped toward the hazy edge of the Dragon’s Spine, just visible in the distance. Was it already so late?

Somehow they’d exhausted the entire day searching for the dungeon, memorizing their concentration spell, and then fighting the enemy’s traps and snares. A simple corridor, turned into a fortress.

Smoke trailed into the sky from the kitchens, below and to the left, while more smoke rose from the right side of the palace. That was a furnace room, which heated water from the palace spring, forced it through pipes, and sent it into a number of bathing rooms for the viziers, the khalif’s harem, and other higher-level officials. Chantmer had been studying the former khalif’s sister ever since hearing about her proposed marriage to the pasha. She liked to be washed, perfumed, and freshly dressed before she took her supper. Most likely, she would be in a bathing room now.

“There’s one place that won’t be guarded by enemy magic,” Chantmer said. “The baths.”

Narud had been staring down toward the city and its bazaars, which had their own haze of smoke rising from a thousand cook fires, and now turned toward him with a quizzical look.

“Come with me,” Chantmer said. “I have another plan.”

#

The concentration spell was gone, but Chantmer had grown adept at moving about the palace undetected, and it was no trouble to deepen the incantations shielding him and his companion from unwanted attention. They passed a stout, dark-skinned eunuch from the sultanates, armed with a spear and a curved, sheathed sword—a holdover from before the palace takeover—and entered the women’s baths.

Chantmer had never been inside before, although he’d spotted the princess entering and leaving most evenings, and didn’t know precisely where to find her, but guessed Sadira wouldn’t be found in the common baths up front. So he only glanced in at the initial chambers, where ten or twelve women at a time washed in large steaming basins while others dressed or groomed themselves to one side. The next room back was larger, and also shared, but by only four women, these ones attended by servant girls who scrubbed them with soap and pumice stones, or rubbed them down with oils.

Farther back lay the private chambers, small and intimate, with no outside windows, but lit by oil lamps, and perfumed with burning incense. From these chambers came the murmur of women speaking to servants and the soothing trickle of running water. The water from these initial basins would be reused by the servants in the latter chambers.

The companions passed all the way to the farthest of these rooms without being detected. Narud distracted a eunuch with a small spell, and they entered the final chamber unchallenged. A nude young woman was stretched out on a small table above a stone basin of steaming water. Two fresh-faced slaves, one a boy and the other a girl, dribbled olive oil onto her back, buttocks, thighs, and calves and rubbed vigorously at her muscles.

“Are we safe?” Narud asked. Neither Sadira nor her servants looked up at his voice.

“I feel nothing except the magic we’ve brought with us,” Chantmer said. “Do you?”

“No, nothing.”

“Still, we might have been followed.”

“I can put up a ward,” Narud said. “It will warn us if one of the dark acolytes approaches.”

Narud returned to the doorway to work, and Chantmer approached the princess, still undetected. He would let the spell fall in a moment, but first wanted to study Sadira and her slaves to better understand what he was dealing with. The pair attending her seemed to have been chosen for aesthetic purposes. The girl was dark skinned, of a complexion found only in the southernmost of the sultanates beyond the desert, and the boy had flaxen hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. A barbarian. Both were beautiful in appearance, as was the princess herself. Chantmer recognized this in a distant, objective way, as if he were observing the skill of a craftsman carving a chair or a sculptor working his stone.

Had he ever experienced such animal desires as another man might feel looking upon the naked princess Sadira and her two beautiful young slaves? He couldn’t remember, but if so, those impulses had long faded.

Sadira’s long black hair was already wet, so she must have bathed already, but she would likely enter and leave the water several times before she was finished. The servants would bathe her, massage her with oils, then bathe her again, before finally rubbing ointments and perfumes into her skin. The whole process could take two hours, based on Chantmer’s observations of her coming and going. A pampered, spoiled child.

And she was hardly alone in her appetites. The ruling families of the east were a decadent lot, spoiled by generations of wealth and privilege. None of these ruling families had seen personal hardship, and their wars had largely taken place in foreign lands: clashes with the barbarians, expeditions against Kratian nomads, or skirmishes with sultanate troops on the Spice Road. It was no wonder that a few punishing years of drought had crippled the khalifates and allowed King Toth to sweep them into his growing empire.

Chantmer unfastened the clasp at his throat, which opened his robe slightly, and thus unveiled him to the three people in front of him. The slaves massaging the princess drew back with startled exclamations. Neither was armed, and neither shouted for the eunuch at the door, who wouldn’t have been able to hear the warning against Narud’s spell anyway.

“I would think, Princess,” Chantmer began, “that any slave of yours in these troubled times should double as a bodyguard.”

Sadira turned her head and looked up at him. Her eyes widened slightly, but she controlled her reaction, and Chantmer could only guess at what she might be thinking.

“There were more than a hundred men in the palace guard, and they couldn’t protect my brother,” she said. “What use is a pair of slaves? I am still here by the grace of King Toth, may he live forever, and my existence depends on the good will of the king’s pasha. A noble, enlightened man, I assure you. No, I have no need of guards.”

Was that irony in Sadira’s tone? It wasn’t obsequiousness, as he might have expected.

“What about the eunuch at the door?” he asked. “Isn’t he a guard of sorts?”

“For show. So that the palace gossipers will not question my virtue.” A slow, languid smile. “Except for with my beautiful slaves, but that is to be expected.” Sadira reached out and caressed the hand of the young woman, who was kneading the small of the princess’s back. Then her voice turned demanding. “Remove the oil—I wish to enter the bath again.”

The two slaves took a pair of wooden paddles and scraped the oil from her skin. Narud returned as they were finishing, but the princess merely glanced at him before she slipped into the hot water with a gasp that turned into a sigh.

“I am Chantmer, and this is Narud. We are representatives of the Crimson Path.”

“I am aware of who you are. Nathaliey Liltige’s companions. The traitor’s daughter.”

“Is that what they call the vizier? A traitor?” Chantmer looked down on the princess with disdain. “A strange choice of words for one who risked his life to defend the khalifate from enemies.”

“Kandibar fought the high king. That makes him a traitor in the deepest sense of the word. And from what I understand, you are traitors, too.”

“We don’t serve the so-called high king, and we never will. The Crimson Path never bent its knee to Omar, either, so there is nothing and nobody we could have betrayed.”

“Why are you here?”

Chantmer hadn’t known whether Sadira would prove to be a half-wit, a cunning striver, or something else entirely. He hadn’t answered all his questions, but she was not stupid, that much was clear.

“You know why we’re here. Or you are clever enough to guess, at least.”

Sadira laughed and slipped lower in the water until it rose to her chin and steam enveloped her head. “You are fools, the both of you. Don’t you know they’re hunting you? Why stay in the palace? Flee to your gardens and prepare yourselves for death. My king will find you and end your little order of pretend wizards soon enough.”

Narud tugged on Chantmer’s sleeve. But he wasn’t ready to give up yet. “Send away your slaves so we can speak frankly.”

“I am speaking frankly, you pompous excuse for a man. But if it will make you leave me alone more quickly, so be it.”

Sadira snapped her fingers and made a waving motion toward the private door behind them. The slaves bowed and backed their way out of the room. When they were gone, the princess lifted herself to the stone lip of the basin, and water ran down her skin, which still gleamed from the oil.

“They are beautiful,” she said, “but I didn’t choose them for their appearance. I needed them simple—that was intentional. They’ll relay what they heard, how loyal I seemed. How I rebuffed you in clear terms.”

Chantmer nodded. “I thought it was an act.”

“But was it?” Narud asked him. “You haven’t proven otherwise.”

“No, he hasn’t proven it,” Sadira said. “And he won’t, either.”

“Is it true that you’ll marry the pasha?” Chantmer asked.

She didn’t answer the question. “Would either of you like to enter the water? That work you do—hunched over books, skulking about—must leave you stiff and aching.”

“Thank you, but I just arrived from the gardens this morning,” Narud said. “We have baths there. Water from hot springs—it is cleaner and more refreshing.”

“And you, tall proud one? Chantmer, is it?”

The truth was, Chantmer hadn’t bathed properly since leaving the gardens, and wouldn’t mind a good soak while they continued to talk. But he’d been wary since his encounter with Zartosht a few days ago, and there was no way he would lower his defenses here. The two slaves might not be so simple as the princess claimed, or the eunuch might wake from the stupor Narud had left him in. Or the dark acolytes might sniff their way down here looking for them.

“Very well,” Sadira said when he didn’t make a move. She slid back into the water. “As to your question, why wouldn’t I marry him?”

“The pasha is old, fat, lame, and blind in one eye, for a start,” Chantmer said.

“Very true, but I wouldn’t marry him out of love or passion. What do you mean, for a start?”

“He also had your brother killed.”

“That was King Toth.” None of that “may he live forever,” nonsense now. “Izak wasn’t even in Syrmarria when it happened.”

“But Izak was complicit,” Chantmer said. “Once Pasha Malik fell, Izak became Toth’s general in Aristonia, and that means that the torturers work under his command. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that Izak is a gentler soul than his predecessor.”

Sadira let out a bitter laugh. “How could I think that? If I stand on my balcony, I can see my brother’s skin flapping in the wind. They brought me to the dungeons once, and let me see the vizier in chains.”

“Oh, yes, the vizier. The traitor. Isn’t that how you put it? And how did his screams sound to your ears?”

“They terrified me, wizard,” she said. “What else would they have done?”

Chantmer glanced at Narud, who stood silently with his hands clasped in front of him. He couldn’t tell if his companion had already given up hope on the princess, or if he was thinking other thoughts.

“It didn’t arouse any compassion?” Chantmer pressed.

“Compassion is a virtue I cannot allow myself. If I feel compassion, then I start thinking about how to free the man. And then maybe I talk to someone—maybe the pasha, maybe only my slaves—and then what do you suppose happens?”

“I see.”

“They’re going to kill Kandibar Liltige,” Narud said. “He’ll be dead in two days if we don’t free him.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Why would they do that?”

Chantmer lifted an eyebrow at the naivety of the question. “As an example to others, of course.”

“My brother Omar is example enough. You can’t enter the city without seeing what’s left of him. The vizier is a different sort of example.” Sadira rose from the water and took a folded towel from the edge of the table where her slaves had left the oil and combs. “They want him down there languishing, with occasional reports of his pain and suffering, for as long as possible. Weeks, months. Maybe years.”

“Even if you’re right,” Chantmer said, “you’re still abandoning him to suffering at the hands of the enemy.”

“Your enemy, not mine.”

“What is wrong with you?” Chantmer asked. “Don’t you want the vizier freed?”

“The pair of you came here hoping to bend me to your will. You would make me promises of the kind that could never be fulfilled in return for my help. That I would organize a palace uprising, or maybe step forward when you brought Syrmarria to revolt. We’d free the vizier from the dungeon, and with a loyal minister at our side, the people of Aristonia would rise in righteous fury. Somehow they would accomplish what the whole of the khalifates haven’t yet managed, and that is to defeat King Toth—his pashas, his armies, and the gray-skinned warriors who make people afraid to leave their homes whenever they are in the city.”

Chantmer had no response. This was, in fact, more or less what he and Narud had discussed, what they had hoped to accomplish.

“Against this plan of certain and catastrophic defeat,” the princess continued, working the towel at her hair to absorb the excess moisture, “I have been given the option of marrying the pasha, lending legitimacy to his rule as a loyal servant of the high king in return for a life of ease and pleasure in his palace.”

“A coward’s path,” Narud said in a low voice.

She twisted the wet towel between her hands. “They’ve turned my brother’s skin into a kite, damn you. A banner to flap in the wind. They skinned him so slowly and lovingly that he was still alive when the last of it came off. They made me watch—did you know that?—and I heard the torturers chanting their evil spells to keep him from dying. I wouldn’t be surprised if his skin was already flying in the wind before he finally died.

“Now go,” she snarled. “Leave me and never come back. If you do, I swear by the Brothers that I will tell the pasha and do everything I can to make sure he catches you. Then maybe it will be your skins flapping in the wind.”

This time, when Narud pulled on Chantmer’s sleeve, he didn’t resist. They retreated from the presence of the princess, who muttered angrily as they left. The eunuch sat at the door with his legs pulled up and his head between his knees, snoring lightly, and they pushed past without waking him. A few minutes later, they were outside the baths in the open air. Night had fallen, and crickets chirped from their cages.

“I think she wants to help,” Narud said, “but she’s just afraid.”

“Sadira is a spoiled child who has never sacrificed for anything or anyone,” Chantmer said. “The part about not killing Nathaliey’s father was her excuse, nothing more. A way to ease her conscience.”

“I’m not so sure.”

Chantmer stopped Narud in the middle of one of the courtyards. “What should we do about him? Trust the princess and let him languish down there?”

“I’m not sure what else we could do. We can’t get through the enemy’s wards, and we can’t turn Sadira.”

“We could probably poison the vizier’s food,” Chantmer said. “Put him out of his misery.”

“That’s . . . hard.”

“So is letting them torture him over an extended period of time. We poison the food and release him from his suffering. Then you return to the gardens and tell the master what we did.”

“I’m supposed to stay here and help you strengthen the library against fire.”

“The library isn’t going to burn,” Chantmer insisted. “It would take dragon fire, and one could never squeeze through the corridors to the vaults.”

“Nevertheless . . .”

“I won’t be defeated,” Chantmer insisted. “Zartosht and his ilk are fighting us—they’re the ones who put those wards outside the dungeons. If we can’t get through, if we can’t rescue the vizier, they’ll bring the fight to us instead. And that will be far more dangerous to the library than any risk of fire.”

“And how is poisoning the vizier going to help with that?”

Chantmer waved his hand. “We’re not going to poison him. That was me thinking aloud. I have a better idea.”

“Very well,” Narud said after a long moment of hesitation. “What do you propose?”

“I propose we find these dark acolytes and crush them.”

Chapter Seventeen

It was midmorning on the third day after the fight at the stone circle when a flock of griffins attacked. Markal and Nathaliey were up front with Captain Wolfram, with the rest of the company strung out on foot behind as they followed a ridgeline, the mountain heights frowning down on them from their right.

Nathaliey seemed to have an instinct for finding the gentlest paths, for carrying them wide of ravines and impassable ledges, while Markal had the better eyesight, and so it was his duty to watch the skies, while the paladins kept vigil for threats from the ground.

And yet the griffins seemed to come from nowhere. One moment Markal was staring up at blue sky, shielding his eyes against the sun, and the next, huge winged shapes the size of horses came hurtling downward. He could only think that they’d been lurking near the mountain heights, approached with the sun at their backs, and used its brilliant light to hide their approach until they swooped for an attack.

There were more than a dozen griffins in all, wings tucked into a dive, and as they dropped, they opened their beaks and screamed in unison, a long, terrifying cry that sent a shudder down Markal’s spine.

On every griffin was a rider, men and women with lithe muscular bodies and long braided black hair. Some clenched slender swords, others spears. Cords and tethers held them in place. At first, they flattened themselves to the backs of their mounts, but as the griffins pulled up, they leaned, acrobat-style, for maximum reach.

Wolfram shouted at his paladins, who drew into four distinct knots of defenders rather than waste time trying to gather into one force. The paladins around the edges of each group raised their black shields, while those in the middle worked at crossbows or raised swords to form a hedgehog-like thicket. Wolfram had drilled his forces every morning before setting out, and the Blackshields had nearly formed ranks before the first griffins fell upon them. Markal and Nathaliey found themselves in the center of the forward company.

The lead griffin rider, a woman whose fierce glittering gaze matched that of her mount, gave a sharp whistle, followed by two short blasts, and the entire company changed course just before they slammed home. They blasted overhead with a rush of wind from flapping wings, and charged the second collection of paladins, who were slower in gathering. The lead paladin in this group was Marissa, who seemed to be Wolfram’s closest confidant among his lieutenants, and she gave a warning shout just before the enemy struck.

Griffins slammed into her shield wall. There was a flurry of swords from both sides, coupled with talon and claw attacks from the half-lion, half-eagle beasts pressing down from above. And then, as quickly as the battle had begun, a whistled signal had the griffins pulling away. The whole thing had lasted ten seconds, no longer. The griffins had knocked several paladins from their feet, and one man had an ugly gash across his cheek, but miraculously, nobody had been killed.

Markal shielded his eyes. The griffins were wheeling in a big circle overhead, positioned to renew the attack. When it came, they’d only have seconds.

“Hold your men, Captain,” he said. “Brace for another attack.”

Wolfram told his fighters to maintain a defensive posture, an order that was shouted from group to group. Markal and Nathaliey pushed out of the cluster of paladins to get a better view. The flock of griffins was still climbing, now several hundred feet overhead. They were drifting gradually west. One of the griffins broke off from the rest and made for the highest peaks.

“Do you suppose it’s injured?” Nathaliey asked.

“The way it’s racing out of here?” Markal said. “Doesn’t look like it. The rider looks fine, too.”

“Then what? Fetching reinforcements?”

“Most likely, yes.”

They went back and reported what they’d seen to the captain.

“I’ve seen it before,” Wolfram said. “A probing attack to test our preparedness, followed by a serious assault.” He shoved his sword into his sheath. “We’re only three miles from Lucas’s encampment. It’s a box canyon—they’ll have a harder time hitting us there.”

“Assuming we can make it in time,” Markal said. “How many riders can they muster?”

“I’ve seen flocks as big as thirty.”

“That sounds . . . intimidating.” Markal glanced at Nathaliey and tried to think of what spells they might throw into the sky when the griffins returned. “They’re creatures from the north country, from a land of ice and snow. They prefer the heights, where it’s cold. We can add heat to the battlefield. That might help.”

“I’d like to avoid an open battle,” Wolfram said, “especially without our horses.”

“And you’re sure it’s a fight they want?”

“They don’t want us dead, just gone from here. But they’ll fight if they have to.”

Markal feared the griffin riders, but he didn’t hate them. From what he’d learned these past two days, the flocks were enemies of anyone who entered the mountains, including King Toth. Maybe more so, given that the king was building castles to control the mountain passes.

“You’ve spoken to them before,” Markal said. “Couldn’t you explain? Tell them we’re leaving?”

“This might not be the same flock. Anyway, it’s not like they came down and asked what we were doing here.”

“That’s true,” Markal admitted. “Hard to parley for a truce when the first encounter is all sword, beak, and talon.”

Now that the threat of imminent attack seemed to have passed, Wolfram called up the rest of the paladins until he had them in a single group. It would take longer to travel bunched up, but it would be safer so long as they were exposed on the ridge. They’d follow the ridge, he said, which continued another half mile or so, but instead of climbing the grassy mountainside beyond as had been the plan, they’d skirt the edge, sticking to the cover of the woods. A longer, but less exposed route.

The paladins were tired after nearly a week of traveling on foot, carrying their own supplies and gear, not to mention hungry, as their already slim rations had run out that morning. A few people suggested they should stand on the most exposed part of the ridge and lure the griffins into a battle. Kill a few of the beasts and teach them a good lesson.

Wolfram merely listened, then reiterated his earlier command. First the ridge, then the forest, where there was cover. There was no more argument.

They were almost to the woods when the griffins returned in greater numbers, at least two dozen this time, though Markal didn’t stop to count, instead joining the general scramble into the trees. The scream of a score or more griffins and the piercing whistle of riders communicating at distance was enough to put the fear of death in them all. And as the griffins swooped overhead, their powerful wings making the treetops shake, there was no more nonsense about taunting the riders into an attack.

“I feel like a hunted rabbit every time I step into the open,” Nathaliey said. “I can’t wait until we get to the old road.”

Markal glanced at her. “There may or may not be griffins in the high passes, but if Wolfram is right, the road is infested with giants and marauders.”

#

Markal waited until the company was pressing through the thickest part of the forested mountainside before he told Wolfram that he wanted to make another search for Bronwyn. The Blackshield captain called for a rest, and Markal and Nathaliey retired some distance from the company so they could have solitude to practice their magic. A few minutes later they were seated across from each other on a cushion of pine needles, with only the sound of birdsong and a trickle of water from a nearby stream to break the silence.

“We’ve seen very few signs,” Markal said. “I think we’re losing ground.”

“If the marauders are too far ahead, the seeker won’t reach,” Nathaliey said.

“I don’t think it’s come to that yet, but we can’t keep sweeping in a circle, either.” He’d been thinking about this since morning. “From here, the enemy either needs to drop into the plains south of Aristonia, or start climbing toward the old road. If they descend to the plains, we’ll lose them anyway.”

“Toward the mountains is where Wolfram has his horses and the other paladins,” she said. “You don’t suppose Bronwyn wants to kill them and steal their mounts to keep her brother from crossing back into Eriscoba?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Wolfram seemed confident she wouldn’t be able to find where they’re hidden. Could be she’s just trying to reach the road herself.”

“And invade Eriscoba with all of fifteen marauders? Doesn’t seem likely.”

Yet Markal was sure Bronwyn had come this way. They’d searched before leaving the stone circle, and spotted the former paladin and the surviving gray marauders picking their way south on foot. Three more searches over the subsequent days had turned up nothing, but this morning they’d stumbled over the remains of a campfire, the ash still warm.

Nathaliey spoke the incantation, and an invisible eye formed overhead. Markal attached his perspective to the object as it floated up from the trees and moved south. The seeker was naturally drawn to movement, and they passed above a black bear foraging for berries, and then a partially constructed stone tower atop a rocky ledge, where four slender figures were building an aerie while their griffin mounts squabbled over a deer carcass. That was useful to know; even if Markal and Nathaliey didn’t find the marauders, they’d at least veer lower on the mountainside when going that way, so as not to alert more griffin riders of their presence.

The seeker moved in jerky movements, covering a good deal of ground at once, and then slowing to hover as Nathaliey regathered her will to push it into motion again. They moved over cliffs, deep gorges, rushing mountain streams, and thick woods.

“Keep going south,” he murmured. “The road should be just ahead of us.”

“The seeker is fading. I can’t carry it much farther or it will break apart entirely. Surely they haven’t reached this far south. They were only a few miles ahead when we spotted the campfire. Maybe they’re taking cover from griffins, like we are.”

“Didn’t the seeker hesitate a little ways back?” he asked.

“Just past the griffin aerie, you mean? I was trying to get control again, that’s all.”

“No, I felt something. Bring it back this way a little, but send it lower to the ground.”

Markal’s eyes were closed to follow the seeker, and he sensed Nathaliey’s doubt, rather than saw it on her face. As she brought the seeker closer to their position, her control improved, and its vision sharpened. Suddenly, the seeker came to a halt above a stony hillside, where only patches of scrubby brush had taken root. One of the larger rocks moved, and then he saw that many of them were not rocks at all, but people lying flat against the ground with their cloaks drawn up about them. He counted eight, but several of the other rocks might have been people as well.

They seemed to have solved two mysteries at once. First, that the marauders were indeed going toward the old road, rather than dropping into the lowlands. And second, the enemy was making better time than the paladins because they had the ability to cross open terrain without fear of attack from the air, thanks to their cloaks. Whenever Bronwyn spotted griffins, she and her men could flatten themselves and hide, as they were doing now.

Markal told Nathaliey to search the sky, expecting to see griffins overhead, but there was nothing. So why weren’t the marauders moving? The seeker dropped lower to study the enemy warriors more carefully, and that’s when one of the marauders threw off her cloak and looked directly at the seeker. It was Bronwyn. She clenched her jaw and narrowed her eyes, and her thoughts were almost audible.

I see you. I know you’re spying on me.

Nathaliey broke apart the seeker and let out her breath slowly as the two of them stood and brushed off pine needles.

“That was . . . unexpected,” Nathaliey said. “A seeker’s vision isn’t supposed to flow both ways.”

“It did this time.”

“Yes, apparently.”

They returned to the paladins, who were anxious to resume their march. Markal told Wolfram what they’d spotted. The captain listened thoughtfully, and didn’t seem thrown off that his sister had detected their presence and knew they were following.

“It’s a trade I’m willing to make,” he said. “Once we reach Lucas’s band, we’ll have mounts and more paladins with which to fight. Any battle on the road will be to our advantage. We’ll catch Bronwyn in the mountain passes and put an end to her.”

#

It was well after dark when Wolfram led them, stumbling and exhausted, into his hidden encampment not far from the old road, which had been abandoned by all but the hardiest bandits and large groups of armed men, thanks to giants infesting the passes. Towering cliffs rose on three sides of the narrow box canyon, leaving only a narrow slit for the stars overhead, but the canyon walls very nearly concealed them from overhead and left them invulnerable to ambush from below at the same time.

Before traveling north to the stone ring, Wolfram had left roughly twenty paladins to guard his horses and supplies, and their lieutenant was a barrel-chested man named Sir Lucas, with a red beard shot with gray, and a patch over his right eye. There were relieved greetings all around, and Lucas’s paladins set about putting up tents and bringing out food for the newcomers.

Markal and Nathaliey took their place at one of the campfires, and cold, weary paladins settled in all around with coughs and groans and murmured relief. Food and drink soon materialized. The rest were already eating by the time Wolfram settled in from inspecting the camp. He took a round of flatbread and a piece of cheese on a wooden plate, and took a swig from a wineskin as it went around the fire.

Lucas approached a minute later and sat down by the captain, but not without first fixing his good eye on Markal and Nathaliey with a suspicious gaze that gradually faded as Wolfram explained who they were and summarized the fight at the stone circle. Lucas expressed dismay to hear of Bronwyn’s dark transformation, then reported in turn.

He’d stayed hidden this past week, even when a scout reported a dozen marauders coming up the old road to cross west into Eriscoba. He’d very nearly led his company after them in an attempt to ambush the marauders from behind, but it was a good thing he hadn’t, as a much larger group of enemies was following in their wake. This was another company of marauders, plus some three hundred Veyrian soldiers on foot.

“I hated to let the devils go through unimpeded,” Lucas said. “I wanted to ignore orders and give them a fight.”

“Twenty paladins against three hundred men?” Markal said doubtfully.

“We’re mounted, and they were on foot,” Lucas said. “We’d have killed or scattered the lot of them.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Markal said. “Veyrians are brave enough in battle.”

“Like leaves to the wind,” Lucas said, and slammed a fist into his palm. “But the marauders are another matter. There were twenty in the second company.”

Wolfram looked troubled. “Twelve ahead and twenty behind. And three hundred regular soldiers on foot.”

“Plus Bronwyn’s fifteen,” Markal said.

“My scouts didn’t see her pass,” Lucas said. “I had a man watching the road all day, and he reported nothing.”

“If she came through after dark, you’d have never spotted her,” Markal said. “Not if she didn’t want you to.”

“That makes fifty marauders, give or take,” Lucas said. “Plus three hundred foot soldiers. It’s enough to cause trouble, but they can’t take the whole of Eriscoba with it.”

“Could be they intend to grab a toehold long enough for a full army to come in behind them,” Wolfram said. “What do you think, wizard? Does the invasion come here, in the south?”

“I don’t think so,” Markal began carefully. “Toth already holds the northern passes, and his army there numbers in the thousands, not hundreds. Plus tens of thousands of slaves, and a new highway to carry supplies quickly from across the khalifates.”

Nathaliey leaned around him to join the conversation. “He already has his toehold in Estmor, doesn’t he?”

Wolfram nodded. “Right where his highway comes down from the passes. He flooded the land, killing hundreds with flooding and disease, and enslaved or drove out the rest. Enemy troops hold the castle, but the kings, earls, and the like have bottled them up with an army.”

“How about here, in the south?” Markal asked. “Which lands are on the other side of the mountains?”

“Mostly freehold farms. Some towns left impoverished since the road closed. A barony that collapsed after marauders sacked its keep and killed the baroness. It wasn’t far from there that my sister took the red sword.”

“Did you say you’d got it back?” Lucas asked.

“We’ve got it,” Wolfram said, “but I don’t dare to use it. Not if it’s turned against us, like our friends here say.”

“It seems to me that the enemy has done well attacking from both the new road and the old,” Markal said. “He’s got a castle in your lands to the north, and left the hill country to the south lawless and infested with bandits.”

“Only near the mountains,” Wolfram said. “Go twenty, thirty miles west from the hill country and you’ll find everything in order.”

“But now they’re making a serious push with marauders and foot soldiers,” Markal said. “The marauders will raid and kill and force the Blackshields to chase them across the land while the Veyrian troops burn fields and sack the towns and villages.”

Wolfram glanced at Lucas, and the two men shared a troubled look at this assessment.

Markal continued. “And then, when the kingdoms near Estmor try to raise more troops for the main fight, the lands to the rear will refuse because they’re pinned down with an invasion of their own.”

“My sister is the key to all of this,” Wolfram said. “With fifty marauders under her command, she’ll be difficult to defeat.”

“We’d better catch her before she gets through the mountains,” Markal said. “But then what?”

Wolfram sounded more decisive. “Once we finish her, we’ll take the fight to the main invasion force and wipe them out.”

Markal glanced around the camp. “You’ve got sixty, seventy paladins in fighting condition. Before you’ve bloodied yourself against Bronwyn’s company. And then you expect to destroy a small army of marauders and foot soldiers?”

“This isn’t the entirety of my forces,” Wolfram said. “Not even the half of it. We’ve doubled our numbers since Bronwyn left, and the ones who’ve joined the Blackshields are more dedicated, better warriors on the whole than the ones we left behind.

“I’ve got another hundred and twenty paladins gathering near Arvada,” he continued. “When we get through the mountains, I’ll send a rider to fetch the rest of my forces, and we’ll end the threat once and for all.”

“All right,” Markal said. “But when you’ve destroyed Bronwyn and defeated the diversionary attack, the enemy will still be pressing through the mountains to the north. What then?”

Wolfram lifted his chin, and a passion Markal hadn’t seen before burned on his face until he looked like Bronwyn when she’d been standing on the bridge over Blossom Creek, sword in hand, facing down an army of wights. Just like his sister before, a holy warrior facing evil.

“And then, with victory at our backs and triumph on our tongues, we ride through Eriscoba, sweeping up all who would join us. Kings, knights, peasants with spears—all will join our army. We will meet these decadent eastern warriors and heap their dead upon the field of battle.”

Firelight reflected in Wolfram’s eyes as he turned his gaze on the companions from the Crimson Path. “And you, my friends, will stand at the head of our army, calling down the power of the Brother Gods to sweep this necromancer from the face of the earth.”

Chapter Eighteen

Nathaliey was still yawning and blinking back sleep early the next morning when they reached the old road. They’d given her a horse, but it carried supplies, and she was on foot, leaning against the animal for support as they both plodded along. She missed her old horse, and couldn’t help but wonder how it was faring in the hands of the marauders. But this was a good animal, with stamina enough to carry a burden, while still being strong and swift enough to carry a rider into battle.

They were moving toward a gash between two of the largest peaks, and Nathaliey could clearly see where passing Veyrian troops had come through and trampled the grass sprouting up in the middle of the neglected, seldom-traveled road. Once she was more awake, she thought she’d grab Markal and they could push ahead to study boot and horse prints to confirm the number of marauders versus men on foot.

But they’d been on the old road for less than an hour when a scout came pounding back down the road, anxious to report to the captain. Nathaliey and Markal brought their horses up to listen as the scout warned Wolfram that a giant blocked the road where it forded the river.

“How big is it?” Wolfram asked. “Bigger or smaller than the other one?”

The scout shook his head. “Not sure—I only saw it from a distance.”

“We fought one of these creatures just before Bronwyn left,” Wolfram explained to Nathaliey and Markal. “Lost a woman in the fight, with five more paladins wounded. That giant was about twelve feet tall, but there are bigger ones out there, and this might be one of them. I hate to leave it on the road menacing travelers, but I’d rather not suffer any more losses, either.”

“Is there another ford?” Nathaliey asked. “Another way to cross?”

“Not generally, but the river was low a week ago when we came through. It might be possible to find another crossing downstream and hook around to rejoin the road above the ford. It would help to know how big the giant is and if we need to stay away from it.”

Wolfram looked at the young scout. “Ride on ahead, see if you can get a closer look without being spotted. Don’t approach too close or try to cross the river.”

“Yes, Captain.” The young man turned his horse around and made to ride off.

“Henry, wait,” Wolfram said, as if something had occurred to him. He studied the two companions from the order. “What about one of your magical eyes? Could you send it ahead and see what you find? That would keep my scout out of danger.”

“I’d rather not use a seeker,” Markal said. “If Bronwyn is in the area, she’ll see we’re drawing closer. And then she’ll realize we must have picked up horses to carry our gear.”

“What if we go in person and investigate under cloak of magic?” Nathaliey suggested. “That way Henry doesn’t have to get too close.”

Wolfram liked this option, and so Nathaliey and Markal took a pair of horses and rode up ahead of the company. After traveling with the Blackshields these last few days, she welcomed the chance to leave them behind for a stretch, to leave the noise and smell, and the feeling of being crowded among nearly seventy paladins and their mounts.

But mostly it was nice to be back in the saddle and giving her footsore body a chance to rest. The scout led them. A second scout was concealed in a copse of trees off the road about a mile forward from the main company, and he stuck his head out long enough to indicate clear riding ahead. That allowed the trio to pick up the pace.

“Here we are,” Henry said some time later. “Another few minutes and you’ll reach the ford.”

“Stay here with the horses,” Markal said as he and Nathaliey dismounted.

They continued without Henry, and once he was out of sight, they stopped long enough to cast a concealing spell. Markal did the incantation, accomplished with a few drops of blood. A strange shadow seemed to settle on Nathaliey’s surroundings as the magic altered her perceptions.

“You did that well,” she said.

“It’s the pendant. Gave me a hint of confidence at the right moment, and I didn’t bleed it all off.” Markal tugged on the chain around his neck and pulled the silver crescent moon out from beneath his shirt. He ran a finger along the curved inner surface. “Such a little charm—could it be that’s all I needed?”

“Well there goes my advantage,” she said. “You’ve got both knowledge and power now.”

It was said in a joking tone, but as they continued, she found that she really was bothered. Not that Markal had overcome his doubts—she was happy for him—but by what it meant about herself. Markal was a wizard, while she was still an apprentice, and whenever that made her feel glum, she reminded herself of his limitations. There were clear ways in which her talents exceeded his; if he was a wizard, some day she would be, too.

It was petty to want Markal to keep his doubts just so she’d feel better about herself. If a simple pendant could break his lack of faith, so much the better. But then she would have nothing to console herself with, nothing to distract her from her own delays in advancing within the order. If she ever got back to Aristonia, she told herself, she’d go to the palace library and study texts until she’d pounded every last incantation into her head.

The air was more crisp the higher they climbed, and the pines grew thickly along the road and up the sides of the mountains to their right and left. The river churned below and to the left of the road, swift and deep, and even if they could have figured a way to cross, the opposite bank of the river was too steep for horses and paladins to scale.

Nathaliey and Markal came around a bend to where the road changed angles and hooked higher toward the mountain passes. But first, it passed through a meadow, where the ground was flat and wide, and the river spread its banks to become a shallow ford. Most of the meadow was on the near side of the river, but it stretched for maybe another hundred feet on the opposite bank, too, before changing into a pine forest that climbed the mountain on the opposite side of the canyon.

A jumble of downed pine trees clogged the near riverbank. If the weather hadn’t been dry, and Wolfram hadn’t already made a comment about looking for low spots in the river, Nathaliey might have thought them uprooted by flooding, then swept downstream in a torrent where they’d come to a rest as the water turned shallow. But the riverbanks were dry and overgrown with grass, and the pine trees were still fresh and green, as if recently uprooted. There were maybe fifteen or twenty in all, pushed up in a heap where the road met the river.

“What do you make of that?” Markal asked.

“The giant’s shelter, maybe? Is it sleeping under that?”

“So close to the river? And if that’s the giant’s doing, it must be a brute to tear them up by their roots.”

They left the road and pushed through the meadow, thinking they could get around the jumble of trees to see what was on the other side. Nathaliey scanned the peaks overhead, still wary of griffins, and then down along the riverbank, wondering where this giant had gone off to since the scout spotted it. It wasn’t until Markal directed her attention to the meadow that she noticed the clear signs of use ahead of them. Horses had cropped the grass, and they came upon an abandoned campground, with fire pits, latrines, and a makeshift defensive palisade. It was a few days old, at most.

“What would you say, three hundred soldiers and thirty or forty horsemen?” Markal asked.

“Looks about right.”

“If we’re right, that confirms Sir Lucas’s report.”

Nathaliey glanced toward the heap of pine trees, but saw no movement in that direction. No giant, certainly. “So they marched west,” she said, “and shortly thereafter the giant arrived? Or did the marauders chase it off so they could cross?”

Markal pulled one of the sharpened stakes of the palisade from the ground. “Nobody who was worried about a giant attack would put up this flimsy fence as a defense, which means the giant arrived after they left.”

“And Bronwyn?” Nathaliey said. “She wasn’t with the main army. In fact, she must have passed this way only a few hours ago.”

“With fifteen other marauders. Too many to sneak past the giant.”

“Maybe she charmed it harmless. If Narud were here, we could do the same thing.”

“Narud can only charm animals, and a giant is . . . well, some other creature entirely.”

“Could we put it to sleep, at least?” Nathaliey asked.

Markal looked skeptical. “Maybe. But if we try and fail, we’ll have trouble.”

“Whatever we do, let’s not stand out here in the open. Sometimes these concealment spells break up at an unexpected moment.”

They left the abandoned Veyrian camp and warily approached the heap of uprooted pine trees, searching for an entrance that might lead into the shelter, if that’s indeed what it was. They were still fifty or more paces distant when a terrific crash sounded from the opposite riverbank. A pine tree shook violently in the woods, rocking back and forth like it was caught in a gale. Another terrific crash, and it disappeared among the other trees.

A giant emerged on the far riverbank, dragging the uprooted tree out of the woods with grunts and growls. It was a brute, at least sixteen feet tall—much bigger than Nathaliey had feared. Massive shoulder and arm muscles bulged beneath a crudely sewn cloak of deer and sheep skins.

Nathaliey and Markal stood frozen while it waded across the river with the uprooted tree in tow. Once on the other side, it wrestled the tree onto the bank, heaved it into the heap of trees blocking the ford, then waded back across the river, where it disappeared once more into the woods. Trees waved about, as if the giant were searching for one with a shallow root system.

“It’s not a shelter, it’s a barricade,” she decided. “The giant is heaping up all these trees so the Blackshields can’t cross the river.”

Markal looked dubious. “Did you see its eyes? I’ve seen more intelligence in a horse.”

“I’ve known some clever horses. Remember how your mare used to steal fruit from the saddlebags?”

“Nathaliey, this thing is a brute, and it will kill without warning, but it’s not capable of defending a river. Lying low and springing an ambush, sure, but purposefully tearing up trees to block a road?”

She gestured at the pile of trees. “How else do you explain this?”

“It didn’t come up with this idea on its own, that’s for sure.”

“That’s even worse.”

They retreated from the meadow and found Henry waiting down the road with the horses. The young scout led them east, and a few minutes later, they met up with Wolfram’s company, still coming up the road, but now mounted. The companions reported their findings.

“Sounds like my sister’s doing,” Wolfram said. “She must have enchanted the giant and made it defend the road to slow us down.”

Nathaliey nodded. “That’s what I think, too.”

“And can you break the spell?”

“We could probably break it,” Markal said, “but that wouldn’t drive the giant off.”

“He’s right,” Nathaliey said. “Giants are stupid, but they’ll fight with objects at hand.”

“I know that,” Wolfram said. “One pulled a bridge down on us.”

“Most likely it sees us coming and hunkers behind the trees,” Nathaliey said. “We’d have to come up the riverbank to get at it, or worse, climb over the barricade.”

“Unless we catch it while it’s on the far bank pulling up trees,” Wolfram said. “We could take the near side before it even realizes we’re there. Then when it comes across the river, we have the advantage.”

Nathaliey glanced behind her, at the men and horses traipsing up the road. “There are too many of us. Even if we keep the paladins quiet, it’s going to hear the horses.”

“Giants have excellent hearing,” Markal said.

“Understood. Let me discuss with my lieutenants.” Wolfram raised his voice. “Company, hold position.”

Wolfram tugged the reins and fell back to speak with Marissa and Gregory while the rest of the company milled about on the road. He looked grim when he returned a few minutes later.

“Sixteen feet tall, you say?”

Nathaliey glanced at Markal for confirmation. “At least,” she said reluctantly.

“Even bigger than the one we faced at the bridge. And this one has built himself a barricade.” He let out his breath. “Well, there’s no way up the road without going through the giant.” He raised his voice. “Blackshields, prepare yourselves for battle.”

#

The paladins entered the meadow in two forces. The first, larger force comprised nearly fifty paladins, led by Wolfram and Marissa. Sir Gregory led the second, which numbered close to twenty and would be held in reserve. These ones left their swords sheathed and carried spears. Gregory’s task, should it come to that, was to ride down the wounded giant before it could flee the meadow and stick it full of holes.

That was the optimistic assessment, Nathaliey thought. If the giant started to get the upper hand, Gregory’s forces would ride in to guard the retreat. She eyed the giant, who stood glowering in front of the mound of trees, a massive cudgel in its hands, as the paladins assembled with their stomping, anxious horses. Its eyes were yellow and baleful, its beard a black thicket that hid its mouth, and veins stood out on its trunk-like neck. Each of its bare forearms was as thick as a man’s waist. It would take a fight, that much was clear.

Nathaliey and Markal pulled back from the others and dismounted. They tied their horses to a tree at the edge of the road and walked discreetly around the side of the meadow to better position themselves for the battle.

“This could get ugly,” Markal said.

“They don’t need to kill it,” she said, “only drive it off. How much pain can a giant tolerate?”

“I have no idea, and probably the giant hasn’t given it much thought, either.”

She glanced behind her at an opening in the woods where the giant seemed to have been pulling up pine trees, before apparently finding trees with shallower root systems on the far bank.

“You know, if it does run, this looks like a pretty good escape route.”

Markal raised an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting that we’re the final line of defense?”

“I’m suggesting we should get the hell out of the way if we don’t want to be stomped by a wounded giant who has decided to make a run for it.”

“When you put it like that, you don’t make us sound very brave.”

“There’s a fine line between brave and foolhardy,” she said. “Is that what the pendant is doing to you, making you foolhardy? I’m going to take it away, if it is.”

“Don’t worry, my knees are trembling the same as yours.” He gestured. “What about over there? That looks like a more promising site.”

Markal moved away through the tall grass, and she followed. They stayed as close to the tree line as possible, trying to get around to the far side of the battlefield, where they could throw magic into the mix without drawing attention to themselves. But what magic, precisely? Without the strength of the gardens, or even the stone circle, it would take all their combined power to make a difference.

Wolfram gestured with his sword, and the fifty paladins at his command urged their mounts forward. It was a powerful force, and the giant shook its cudgel and bellowed, but looked about uncertainly. With any luck it would stay out front where it would be vulnerable to a coordinated charge, instead of taking refuge behind the barricade it had been so laboriously building.

Wolfram came to a halt about fifty feet in front of the giant. Nathaliey worried that he’d lost his nerve, but he seemed to be giving instructions. Horses tossed their heads, and paladins slapped palms against their black shields.

“Do we have something ready?” Nathaliey asked Markal.

“I’m thinking.”

“What about an illusion spell?”

“The giant is too big to be toppled by an illusion. It might confuse it for a minute, that’s all.”

“Not just an illusion. You cast that spell while I soften the ground. We’ll throw it off its feet, and Wolfram can do some damage while it’s down.”

“A soft ground will hit the horses, too. They’ll fall.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted. “What about . . . I don’t know. Volans malleis?”

“Now you sound like Chantmer. You really think a couple of flying hammers is going to do much?”

She eyed the giant, which was still staring insolently from behind its heavy brow. Markal was right; a few spectral hammers would be like striking a boulder with a stick.

“Fire,” she decided. “Look at its clothes—those animal skins will burn readily enough.”

“Now you’ve got something. Come on, let’s get closer.”

Wolfram shouted. The main force dug in their heels to urge their horses into motion. The captain himself was in the lead wave, and he ducked beneath a sluggish blow from the giant and thrust his sword at the creature’s ribs. It didn’t seem to penetrate the cloak of animal skins, but the giant tried to grab Wolfram as he rode past, and this allowed two more paladins to come in from the other side. One thrust a spear at the giant’s bare calf, and the other hacked at its hand with his sword.

The giant whirled about with a sweep of its cudgel, and the blow smashed into the horse of the rider with the spear. It crumpled and threw its rider, who lost his weapon as he went down. The man struggled to his feet as the giant lifted a massive hairy foot, ready to crush him to death. Others charged in to defend their fallen comrade. They hacked and slashed, and the stomping foot missed. The man scrambled backward and escaped through the mass of horses.

“Look to the sky,” Markal warned.

A solitary figure wheeled in the air high above the battlefield. A griffin and rider. Was it a sentry, trying to stir up trouble, or merely curious about the battle taking place at the ford across the river? Nathaliey suddenly felt vulnerable. If the griffin spotted the dismounted pair far from the battlefield, they’d be hard pressed to defend themselves.

The giant stood over the body of the dead horse and swept its cudgel from side to side, forcing its enemies to maintain a healthy distance. Wolfram seemed to be trying to lure it out, but the giant was having nothing to do with that, and kept its back to the heap of downed pine trees. A dozen paladins broke from the main force and edged around as if trying to get behind the giant. Drive it into the open, and it would be more vulnerable to attack, not to mention a charge from Sir Gregory’s reserve force, still waiting at the rear.

The griffin was still alone and remained far above them, so Nathaliey and Markal kept most of their attention on the battlefield, creeping closer until they stopped some sixty or seventy paces distant on the east side of the barricade. It was a vulnerable position if the giant spotted them, but any farther away and their magic would lose its effectiveness.

“I’ll cast the spell if you feed me the words,” she said. “Which one are you thinking?”

Markal shook his head. “No, a fire spell is wrong.”

“What’s wrong with it? The animal skins will catch fire easily enough.”

“Set its clothes on fire and the giant is going to jump into the water to put it out, and that is the opposite direction of where Wolfram is trying to push it.”

Meanwhile, the giant had spotted the attempt to get behind it, and swung its cudgel at the threat, smashing the ground and stomping forward menacingly, until it had driven back the small cluster of riders. Wolfram didn’t let the distraction go to waste, and he charged in with several paladins, then fell back just as quickly as the giant whirled around with a roar. A handful of paladins fired crossbows from the wings. Bolts bounced off its skin and zipped past its face, and the giant swatted at them like they were biting flies, but held its position.

“We have to do something,” Nathaliey insisted. “Wolfram has barely even drawn blood—that thing’s hide must be as thick as boiled leather.”

“Maybe they’re trying to tire it out.”

“Someone is going to be tired,” she said, “but it’s not going to be the giant.”

Indeed, with all the flailing about, the feints and withdrawals, it hadn’t been much of a fight after that initial skirmish. Wolfram seemed reluctant to engage, and the giant resisted any urge to draw it away from the barricade.

And then a lucky crossbow bolt hit the giant’s ear and lodged in the cartilage. The giant turned on the offending party, who came from the knot of riders who’d been working to wedge themselves between the giant and the pile of downed pines. They scattered with their horses as the giant thundered toward them, bellowing in rage.

Wolfram’s forces had been milling about, seemingly disorganized as they stayed out of the giant’s reach, but they broke into a charge the instant the giant set off after the offending crossbowman. Swords slashed and horses slammed into the giant to knock it off its target. It was about to overtake the crossbowman and his companions, whose horses were bucking in terror, when Marissa threw herself from her mount with almost suicidal bravery and landed on the giant’s back.

The giant roared and reached around in an attempt to grab her. She’d be squeezed to jelly if it got hold of her, but she flattened herself on its back, holding onto the animal skins with one hand and stabbing with the other. The only effect of this was to further enrage the giant.

It was turning about now, tormented on all sides, an enemy still clinging to its back, and seemed to spot an opening. This was directly toward Markal and Nathaliey, and the ground shook as it pounded in their direction. Its eyes rolled back, and it whipped its head from side to side as if trying to shake off a pack of hornets. The thing seemed to have gone completely mad.

Gregory’s force came charging in from the wings to block the giant, and Wolfram ordered his paladins to give chase, but neither group would arrive before the giant overtook Nathaliey and Markal.

“Now,” Markal said calmly. “Now, is when I would suggest that we call up some fire.”

“You say the words,” she said, “and I’ll feed you my strength.”

Nathaliey placed her palms down and reached inside for her power. A familiar tingle moved along her arms and presaged the pain and the bleeding as Markal began the incantation.

He was only halfway through when the giant drew up short. Marissa fell off its back, her grip broken by the abrupt halt, and she rolled clear of its stomping feet while somehow maintaining her grip on her sword. The giant turned about suddenly, no longer in a panic, but calm and murderous, and swung its cudgel at the nearest paladin charging in from the side, who lifted his shield and spear. The cudgel was as thick as a small tree trunk, and it splintered the spear, smashed into the shield, and sent the paladin flying from his horse. He landed in a roll and tried to unstrap his shield from his injured arm while crawling away to safety.

The giant reached down and hoisted the paladin up by his jerkin. The man flailed, and two other paladins hacked and slashed, but the giant was full of rage. It lifted the man above its head and slammed him to the ground. The paladin didn’t move again after that.

Markal had cut off the incantation the instant the giant stopped running toward them, and Nathaliey turned toward him in confusion.

“What’s wrong? I’m ready to feed you my power. Say it.”

“It’s a fireball,” he said. “I can’t cast it or I’ll hit the paladins, too.”

She took in Wolfram’s forces, who surrounded the giant and tried to keep it from returning to the barricade, but with little success.

“Why did it stop?” Markal said. “What happened? What changed?”

It was a good question. The giant had been running pell-mell across the meadow, all discipline lost with a crossbow bolt impaling its ear and a paladin clinging to its back. Markal’s fireball would have won the battle; set on fire, the giant would have fled the meadow and left Wolfram’s company free to clear the obstacle and cross the ford. Then suddenly, the giant had pulled up short, as if an even bigger giant had yanked on an invisible rope tied around its waist.

“It’s the enchantment,” she said. “Whatever told it to build the barricade—Bronwyn, probably. Whatever power she had over it still has effect. We need that fireball.”

“Then we have to get in closer.”

“It’s almost back to the riverbank. That puts us back where we started. It’s just going to jump into the water if we set it on fire.”

Markal threw up his hands. “I don’t know . . . do you have a better idea?”

She didn’t, and so they set off after the giant as it battled its way toward the heap of uprooted pine trees. The wind changed, and carried with it a whiff of something foul, like there was a dead animal rotting upstream. Except this was no physical smell, but rather something that made her magical senses recoil in disgust. She searched for the source, and that’s when she saw the marauders emerging from beneath the boughs of the heaped-up pine trees.

Chapter Nineteen

The first part of Captain Wolfram’s attack had gone better than expected. After some initial skirmishing that cost them a horse, a crossbow bolt impaled the giant’s ear, and it fled the barricade of uprooted trees. Wolfram gave chase, and Gregory brought his reserve force thundering to join the battle.

The giant made straight for Markal and Nathaliey, who maintained an easy stance. Nathaliey held out her hands, palm down, while Markal’s lips began to move as he ducked his head in concentration.

Hopefully, they were throwing some real magic into the fight, and not a flash of light or some other gimmick. Either way, the Blackshields had the brute on the run, and it seemed like they’d be able to chase it into the woods long enough to clear the obstacle and cross the ford.

And that was when things went wrong. First, the giant hauled up short, throwing Marissa. It whirled about and clobbered one of the pursuing paladins, knocking him from his horse and crushing his shield arm, and before the injured man could be rescued, the giant hauled him into the sky and slammed him to the ground, killing him with a single blow. The giant stomped back toward the barricade, swinging its cudgel to clear a path.

If Wolfram didn’t do something, they’d be back where they started. He had lifted his sword to shout orders, when Lucas cried a warning from near the barricade.

Wolfram turned to see marauders emerging from beneath the branches of the giant’s barricade like rats boiling out of a hole. They kept crawling out until there were roughly fifteen in all, and an ugly, sneering cry went up from them as their captain took her place at their head.

Bronwyn lifted her sword, and Wolfram felt her power and confidence radiating forth. That gesture had once called paladins to battle; now, it was used to strengthen the enemy.

She met Wolfram’s stare, flashed him a malicious smile, and then her gaze fell to the linen-bound sword strapped to his saddle. Afraid of a trap, he hadn’t wanted to leave Soultrup with the handful of paladins guarding the supplies and spare horses while he led the rest into battle, and now he kicked himself. It had never occurred to him that Bronwyn, with only fifteen marauders at her disposal, would lie in ambush against his sixty-seven. And his forces were mounted, while hers were on foot. Except that Bronwyn had something else under her command: a sixteen-foot-tall giant with a club the size of a tree trunk.

The marauders surged away from the pine tree barricade and charged on foot toward the giant, which came stomping back to meet them, clearing paladins with every swing of its cudgel. The creature was bleeding from its legs and forearms, but it showed no signs of panic. Bronwyn seemed to be controlling it.

A small knot of paladins surrounded Wolfram, and it would have been easy enough to fall back and regroup, rather than be pinned between the giant and the marauders. But he couldn’t let the enemy forces unite, or they’d clear their way to the barricade, and it would be a devil of a time dislodging them.

He raised his sword. “Blackshields, to me!”

Paladins rode in from all sides. Gregory, with his company of reserves, pounded across the meadow from where he’d nearly reached Markal and Nathaliey’s side in the initial charge. As the paladins arrived, they banged shields and roared their defiance.

The giant loomed above Wolfram, close enough to see the blood congealed to its beard from its last meal and smell its odor, something like a mix between a sweating bull and a rotting blanket. Close enough to see its yellow eyes and the boar-like bristles of its eyebrows. Its nostrils flared, and its breath huffed. It lifted its cudgel.

A wall of Gregory’s riders slammed into the giant from behind. Spears thrust at its back, swords raked its legs, slashed at its arms, and stabbed for its belly. The creature stumbled and nearly fell, but its cudgel was already coming around and clearing a path.

Wolfram had no chance to fight the giant, because the first of the marauders charged into him from the rear, led by Bronwyn. A pair dragged a paladin from his saddle and stabbed him repeatedly before he could defend himself. Others hacked and slashed at the horses in an attempt to dislodge riders. The entire company of enemies formed a brutal wedge that forced its way through the paladins to reach Wolfram.

One of them was almost on top of him, a tall gray-skinned fellow with an ugly expression. He held a long sword in one hand, with the stump of his other hand against the hilt for support. It was the man who’d cursed at Wolfram as he fled the standing stones, his hand hacked off in the battle. Wolfram leaned in the saddle and the two of them clashed swords. The flow of battle separated them before either could land a decisive blow.

More Blackshields arrived with every passing second, mounted and disciplined, and the mass of them shortly forced Bronwyn and her company back toward the pine barricade. Wolfram gave orders in a final, desperate attempt to keep the giant separated from the rest, but it was too strong, and they couldn’t keep it pinned. It forced Gregory’s paladins to fall back, then charged at Wolfram’s riders with its cudgel swinging. They could only stand aside as it lumbered through their ranks.

Wolfram reluctantly called for his forces to fall back from the barricade and regroup. They recovered three bodies and several wounded before they retreated into the meadow. Another horse was down, and they had no choice but to abandon it, wounded and struggling to rise.

Three paladins killed and two horses lost, but Bronwyn had suffered her own losses. He counted four marauders down out of sixteen, counting herself. If only they’d taken out the giant. The ground in front of the barricade was already churned up and bloody, and there would be more blood spilled before the battle was won.

He glanced at the meadow to where Markal and Nathaliey remained at the ready, then called in his lieutenants. “Lucas, carry the wounded to the wizards. Gregory, prepare for a full-out assault. Marissa, follow me.” He spotted Henry, who was an agile rider and one of Wolfram’s favorite scouts. “You, too. Come with us.”

The three paladins edged forward to study the enemy, who had taken a defensive posture in front of the barricade. The giant spotted Wolfram and his companions, stomped its feet, waved its cudgel, and bellowed. It was so much bigger and stronger than the giant that had caused them such trouble at the ruined bridge on the other side of the mountains that he felt his guts turn cold as he contemplated another fight.

“He’s a brute,” Marissa muttered. “How are we going to do it?”

Without warning, half of the remaining marauders surged out from the rest. Four of them formed a defensive ring in case Wolfram, Marissa, and Henry made a charge, and the other two recovered two of the downed marauders. The rescued pair was hacked up and unable to walk, but alive.

“I took down that tall one myself,” Henry said, a measure of pride in his voice. “He won’t last long.”

The surging marauders fell back against the overturned pine trees, still dragging the wounded, and they disappeared behind a cluster of their comrades. Wolfram was shocked when, moments later, the injured marauders pushed their way clear, shouting for weapons.

“The Harvester take me,” Henry said. “I hit him in the neck. Nearly took his head off, I’d swear to it.”

“Nearly is not good enough,” Wolfram said. “Next time, finish the job.”

“And what about the giant?” Marissa insisted. “Our swords just bounce off its hide.”

Wolfram’s eyes dropped to Soultrup, still bound in linen and strapped to the side of his saddle. What would it be like to carry it into battle? It was a massive blade, but light as a dagger in the hand of its wielder. If anything could cut through the giant’s skin, it was the red sword.

And the moment you draw it, the sword will throw itself into Bronwyn’s hands, and she’ll cut you down.

A rider approached from the main company of paladins. “The sorcerers are ready, Captain.”

“Wizards,” Wolfram corrected. “Not sorcerers. What do they intend to do?”

“They said to assault from the west side of the barricade so they can attack from the east. Otherwise, we’re going to get warm. Once they use their magic, they said we’ll know what to do.”

That sounded like fire. He’d overheard Markal and Nathaliey discussing their collection of magical powers during one of their long marches. It all sounded impressive—fire, rumbling earth, spectral hammers, spells to confuse and conceal, and the like—but the wizards had a more dismal impression of their own abilities. Nathaliey claimed to lack knowledge, and Markal said his command was weak. Perhaps they were downplaying their abilities, comparing themselves to their master, who was apparently a formidable wizard.

As for fire . . . that could work, he decided, looking over the enemy formation. The giant was hairy, with animal skins to set ablaze. A big target, too, impossible to miss. Light the giant up and set it running. Then Wolfram could charge in and kill Bronwyn and the rest. Horses and numbers would carry the day. He led the others back to share information with the rest of his lieutenants.

“Gregory, your forces are the freshest. You’ll lead the charge. Lucas, I want a second company readied. You’ll be the reserve force—plug any gaps in Gregory’s lines.”

“Yes, Captain,” the two men said, and rode off to give orders.

“What about me?” Marissa asked.

“You ride with me. We’ll take the rest of the Blackshields and hunt down the giant once it runs off. If it keeps running, we let it go. If not, it’s our job to stop it from rejoining the fight.”

“That’s more or less what we already tried, only it didn’t work so well.”

“This time it will,” he insisted.

Wolfram gave the signal, and Lucas and Gregory moved their companies together, each roughly fifteen riders, and brought them in a big loop along the riverbank from the west. Bronwyn’s marauders watched warily, and shifted in case they needed to block riders from attempting to enter the water behind the barrier where the road met the ford. But Bronwyn didn’t leave the barricade.

Nevertheless, the enemy’s attention was all fixed to the west, and neither Bronwyn nor her men seemed to notice when the two wizards put their hands palms down and lowered their heads. Wolfram forced himself not to stare.

A glowing sphere of fire formed above Nathaliey’s head and floated toward the heap of uprooted pine trees. It hadn’t traveled ten feet before one of the marauders shouted a warning. The fireball drifted slowly, and Bronwyn seemed to be watching its progress while still keeping an eye on the riders approaching from the west. She had not yet given orders, but had plenty of time to make a careful judgment. Wolfram looked on in frustration.

By the Brothers, can’t you make it move faster?

The ball of fire wobbled and expanded the farther it traveled from the wizards. The two companions had their hands up, and it looked like Markal was pushing the ball with his palms out, while Nathaliey kept her palms facing each other, as if she were squeezing it into shape. Wolfram guessed that they weren’t moving it any faster because they couldn’t without losing control.

Bronwyn sent the giant west against Gregory and Lucas’s threat, while forming the marauders into a line facing the approaching fireball. Once they stood shoulder to shoulder, they lifted their gray cloaks into a single wall. Bronwyn, standing behind them, barked something that Wolfram couldn’t understand, and the cloaks darkened until he had to glance skyward to confirm that a cloud hadn’t passed over the sun.

If any of the paladins had been in position to charge, they might have disrupted the gathering marauders or even attacked the giant while it was alone in an attempt to drive it away from the barricade. But the wizards’ vague instructions hadn’t accounted for this possibility, and it hadn’t occurred to Wolfram, either.

The fireball was approaching roughly ten feet above the ground, high enough that it should have floated over the marauders, but it wobbled as it approached and lost altitude and speed, as if Bronwyn’s magic were sucking it down. Even before it struck, Wolfram knew that the fireball would splash ineffectively against the marauders’ wall of gray cloaks and fizzle.

And then Nathaliey pushed up and to her left. The fireball moved in the direction of the river, and there was no resistance to it there. No, not toward the river so much as toward the giant’s barricade. Their target wasn’t the giant, he realized—it never had been—it was the heaped-up pine trees. Too late, Bronwyn seemed to understand the same thing. She shouted, and the cloak wall shifted.

The fireball struck the pine barricade, flashing into sparks. It gave a sharp smell like burning resin, and the whole thing burst into flames. Within seconds, it was a raging inferno, with fire shooting fifteen feet into the air. The marauders fell back from the conflagration, and the giant bellowed in fear and seemed on the verge of bolting.

Wolfram lifted his sword. “Blackshields! Charge!”

Lucas and Gregory’s riders had been stomping about on the riverbank to the west. At Wolfram’s command, they broke into a gallop, riding straight at the giant. Wolfram brought thirty more paladins across the meadow from the south. He charged toward the marauders retreating from the raging fire as its flames shot ever higher. It was a wall of heat and smoke.

Wolfram slammed into the fleeing marauders, followed by Marissa and several others behind her. A marauder snarled up at him, face scorched and eyebrows burned off. Wolfram swept down with his sword and battered through the man’s feebly raised weapon. He staggered forward, and Marissa struck him hard across the back of the head as he fell.

A marauder came up on Wolfram in the smoke and seized his leg in an attempt to drag him from the saddle. Wolfram smashed the man in the face with his shield, then came around with his sword. Filled with righteous fury, he rained blows, hacking the man in the shoulder, neck, and chest, until he too fell. Other marauders were dying all around him, and the paladins were forcing the survivors back toward the fire.

He spared a glance at Lucas and Gregory, who were struggling to hold back the giant. The creature had already unhorsed two paladins, and it caught a paladin with a full blow across the head with its cudgel. The man slumped, and his horse fled the battlefield, still carrying his limp form in the saddle. Gregory charged in, fearless, and paladins raced to his side, emboldened. The giant flailed about, looking for its escape, hemmed in by the fire at its rear and the attacking cavalry in front.

Bronwyn and several others had somehow broken free and reached the giant. She waved her hands and chanted in a strange tongue as she tried to bring the creature back under control. She met Wolfram’s gaze across the battlefield, and a poisonous look crossed her face—fury and fear jumbled together.

Something flickered, a new emotion. Was that despair? Did some essence of her remain, crying in horror at what she’d become?

Wolfram could only stare. What sorcery held his sister in its grasp? She had become a mangled, tortured version of the proud and honorable paladin she had once been.

He could not let it stand. He must cut her down and release her soul from its tortured existence. Let it be gathered by the Harvester, broken down, and sown into the land to be reborn anew. Not this horrible living death. As if reading his thoughts, Bronwyn threw back her head and screamed in incoherent rage.

He lifted his sword. “Your torment comes to an end, Sister,” he cried. “Blackshields, to me! Cut her down.”

The marauders were almost all dead by now. Only Bronwyn and a handful of her companions remained, fighting alongside the giant in an attempt to break free from the forces strangling their escape. Gregory’s paladins in front, an inferno at their rear. A river on one side, and Wolfram sweeping in from the other.

He reentered the fight. The giant was swinging with the cudgel, knocking aside mounted paladins while stomping at those who’d become unhorsed. The surviving marauders moved to block Wolfram and reached to drag him from the saddle, even as Marissa and others hacked at them to clear a path. He fought his way to Bronwyn’s side, and then his horse stumbled, and he went sprawling.

He’d barely risen to his feet before Bronwyn was on him, a whirlwind of fury as her sword lashed at him again and again. Only the giant’s swinging cudgel, which forced both of them to take evasive action, and the mass of charging paladins on horse kept him from being overwhelmed. Unfortunately, the chaos also pushed him farther away from his sister. He ducked another flailing attack from the giant and fought his way toward her again.

But before he could reach her a second time, Bronwyn threw down her sword, grabbed one of the sewn-together skins serving as the giant’s clothing, and hauled herself onto its back. Another marauder, seeing her example, did the same. A third marauder, the man who’d lost his hand at the stone circle, reached up and grabbed a fistful of animal skin. The remaining marauders threw themselves at Wolfram to block his way. By the time the paladins had broken their resistance, the giant was looking for an escape route with three marauders clinging to its back.

The giant stumbled backward, shaking its head and knocking into the flaming barricade, which sent up a plume of crackling sparks. And here it found a gap between the burning trees and Gregory’s paladins, and it blasted through the gap. It emerged from the fire roaring in pain, and staggered into the river with a tremendous splash. It came up wading, moving swiftly toward the opposite bank while the three marauders climbed higher to get clear of the water.

Gregory and his paladins swung wide to get around the fire, but by the time they reached the water’s edge, the giant was already halfway across. The burning pine trees still blocked the ford, and the water was too swift and high for the horses. The Blackshields could only fire a few crossbow bolts.

Part of the burning barricade collapsed with a roar, and flames shot skyward as the fire found fresh sources of fuel in the smoldering limbs below. Wolfram ordered the paladins back from the inferno and watched in frustration as the giant gained the opposite bank. Bronwyn and her two surviving companions jumped down and followed the giant as it lumbered up the road and disappeared into the woods.

Wolfram had lost track of his horse in the battle, and was relieved when Marissa rode up leading the animal. Marissa’s face glowed with excitement.

“Thirteen marauders dead!” she exclaimed. “Only three survivors.”

“And our own losses?”

“Four killed, and a number of others injured. We won, Captain.”

Wolfram leaned against his horse and closed his eyes, thinking of his dead comrades and not wanting to hear their names. Not yet. He let the roar of the fire wash over him, felt its heat.

He opened his eyes again and took in the battlefield, where the paladins were gathering the wounded and dead. Riders galloped away to inform the handful of paladins who’d remained behind the meadow, guarding their supplies. Markal and Nathaliey approached on foot. They looked tired, and blood stained the cloths that hung from their belts. Wolfram nodded his acknowledgment of their contribution.

“Captain, we crushed them,” Marissa insisted. “Once we bring word of the victory to Eriscoba, knights will flock to the Blackshields from across the free kingdoms.”

“Bronwyn escaped.”

Some of the fire went out of Marissa’s eyes. “We’ll track her down, don’t worry. There are only three of them—they’ll never make it out of the mountains.”

He glanced at the burning barricade. It was still too hot for them to get through and approach the ford. With every passing minute, Bronwyn and her companions would be harder to catch.

Markal looked pointedly at Wolfram’s horse. “Captain, where is the red sword?”

Wolfram looked. The linen-wrapped sword was no longer tied to his saddle. It had been there when his horse stumbled; he remembered it nearly striking him on the side of the head as he fell. Yet, it was not there, now.

“I tied those knots myself,” he said. “It didn’t fall—I’ll swear to it.” He felt along the saddle. “But there’s no sign it was cut loose, either.”

“The sword has its ways,” Markal said. “Quickly, let’s look for it.”

A search of the battlefield didn’t turn up the weapon, and neither did they find it among the dead, or among the weapons, shields, and other gear being piled into a heap. Wolfram questioned his paladins, but nobody could recall seeing it.

The conclusion was inescapable: Bronwyn must have stolen it in the chaos and somehow taken it with her.

Chapter Twenty

Markal instructed Nathaliey to see to the wounded while he followed Wolfram in an increasingly desperate search of the battlefield, looking for the lost sword. He’d said little to the young captain, but felt more and more grim as the truth of the situation settled in. There was no point in hectoring; if anyone understood what losing the red sword meant, it was Wolfram.

As their hopes faded, Markal followed Wolfram to the riverbank west of the still-burning pine trees. The river was swift and deep here where it flowed out of the ford, and it was equally impassible further upstream in the meadow. They had no choice but to wait for the fire to die before trying to cross. The flames had settled enough that an attempt might soon be made to douse it.

Wolfram stared at the road on the opposite side. “I don’t see how she stole it. I saw her clinging to the back of the giant, and she didn’t have it. Saw her jump down on the other side, and she didn’t have it then, either.”

“That’s easy enough to explain with a little bit of magic. The cloak could have concealed it.”

“We were fighting face-to-face—she carried a regular khalifate-style sword.”

“And you saw her the whole time after you were thrown from the horse?”

“Most of the time, yes, but we were separated there at the end. Then I saw her jump on the giant’s back.”

“It must have happened then,” Markal said. “She spotted the sword, distracted you, and got hold of it.”

“While trying to tame a giant and fighting for her life with her back to a raging fire? How is that possible?”

“The sword was probably helping. Ever since your sister killed Malik, it’s been trying to get into the enemy’s hand. It practically threw itself to her, I’ll bet.”

“I wanted to use it, Markal. I imagined it in my hands, imagined it striking Bronwyn down. Putting an end to her nightmare.”

“That’s exactly what the sword wanted you to do. I don’t doubt it put the idea into your head in the first place.”

Wolfram gave him a look. “I wasn’t going to draw it. I’m not so weak-minded as that.”

“The strength of one’s mind has nothing to do with it.”

“But what if I had, Markal? If I’d drawn it, controlled it somehow, and killed Bronwyn, that would have freed her from the necromancer’s spell. She’d be trapped inside Soultrup with the rest of them.”

“So not exactly freed.”

“That was Bronwyn’s plan all along. Kill the necromancer, then throw herself on the sword so she could contend for the weapon from the inside.”

“Facing off against King Toth,” Markal said. “I’m not sure who has the stronger will.”

Wolfram crossed his arms. “Bronwyn does.”

Markal didn’t want to argue the point. “We’ll never know for sure, and it doesn’t matter. You never could have drawn Soultrup and used it against her in battle. It would have found its way to her hands earlier, when she still had a chance of winning.”

“We can’t let her keep it,” Wolfram said.

“No, we can’t.”

“If Bronwyn reaches the Veyrian army and the marauders with Soultrup in hand, she’ll be unstoppable. We have to hunt her down before she reaches Eriscoba.”

“She’ll have several hours head start by the time we can cross the river,” Markal said. “And the marauders can keep up a pace the rest of us can’t manage.”

“And what about that giant?” Wolfram said. “We can’t stop the brute.”

“That’s one worry you can put behind you,” Markal said. “It isn’t easy to dominate another’s mind with magic. Even Toth uses whips to drive his slaves.”

“I guess I saw that,” Wolfram said. “The giant kept trying to break free.”

“Each time it cost Bronwyn to bring it back under her control. She can’t hold it indefinitely. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s already left it behind. There are only three marauders left if it turns on her unexpectedly.”

Wolfram looked encouraged at this bit of news.

“Of course, there’s still the matter of stopping Bronwyn before she reaches Eriscoba,” Markal added.

“How well do you know this road?”

“Not well,” he admitted.

“Let me sketch it out for you.” Wolfram squatted on his heels at the riverbank and drew a finger through the gravel. “This is the road. We’re roughly here, at the Khalifate Ford, on the eastern slope.”

He took a pebble and put it on the far end of the line. “And this is the bridge on the opposite side of the mountains, where we fought the other giant, the one we killed. The bridge is a ruin now, already partially wrecked by marauders, and pulled the rest of the way down during the battle.”

Wolfram tapped the pebble. “Once Bronwyn crosses at the ruined bridge, she’ll be into Eriscoban territory, and she can go anywhere from there. I expect the Veyrians to sack the village of Gronhelm, then set out to pillage the countryside. Once they’re loose, only a pitched battle will stop them. But getting over will be tricky without the bridge. There are other crossings, but hard to find if you don’t already know the countryside.

“Now, look at this,” he continued, placing another stone at roughly the midpoint of the mountain road. “Here we have the ruins of Montlac. I assume you know of them.”

“I’ve heard of the place,” Markal said. “An abandoned town on the trade routes, right?”

“More than a town—it was an entire barony at one point. In the old days, it was the baron’s right to collect tolls in return for clearing bandits from the high passes. Then trade declined between east and west, the winters turned harsh in the mountains, and the lake silted in, robbing the barony of the fish that kept it fed. That happened back in the day of my grandfather, back when the old road was more than just a trail.

“Up until a few years ago, there were still a few families living at Montlac, led by someone who still called himself a baron. An unrecognized claim, and no Eriscoban would pay a toll, but they did buy supplies from the fellow and sleep in his caravanserai, which at least provided a hot meal, fodder for horses, and protection from the elements. Then came giants, griffins, marauders . . . the people who lived there are long gone.

“The point is this,” Wolfram continued, tapping the stone that marked the spot, “we entered the mountains somewhat overburdened. I didn’t know how long we’d be in the east, how difficult it would be to resupply, and I wanted to cache supplies somewhere that wouldn’t require a complete return to Eriscoba. The baron’s caravanserai is a burned husk, but the cellar beneath was untouched, and I stuffed it with food, spare clothing, extra armor, and the like.”

Markal nodded, beginning to see what the captain was getting at. “Go on.”

“We leave the injured, the weakest horses, and almost all of our gear here at the ford, together with enough healthy paladins to ensure they won’t be slaughtered if more enemies come this way from the khalifates. They’ll continue at whatever pace they can manage.

“The rest of us travel as light as we can. What faces us is a brutal up-and-down climb, but pushing hard, we should reach the ruins of Montlac in two days. If we haven’t caught Bronwyn by then, we’ll grab what we can from my cached supplies and keep going.”

“There are only three of them,” Markal said. “What’s to keep Bronwyn from hiding in the woods until you’re past?”

“I have two wizards, don’t I?”

“That point could be disputed.”

“I know your limitations, but all I need is the same sort of magic you used before. Send out magic eyes to track the marauders. That’s the only thing I need from you.”

“Every spell has a cost,” Markal said. “And I don’t only mean a blood cost. If we send a seeker, Bronwyn will know we’re following. She’ll sense it coming, and most likely gauge the distance of its caster.”

“My sister is no fool—she’ll know we’re following already. She has the sword and knows we’ll be desperate to stop her from reaching reinforcements with it in her possession. She’ll travel as fast as she can, knowing we’re going to chase her every step of the way. Most likely, she won’t hide, but if she does, I need to know.”

“And after Montlac?” Markal asked. “Say we don’t catch her before then. How long until we reach the ruined bridge where we need to have stopped the enemy or else?”

“It’s another two days from Montlac to the bridge, if we make good time. But that’s terrain where we’ll have the advantage over marauders on foot, since it’s mostly downhill from Montlac until you reach the foothills on the other side of the Spine. And the last stretch is flat—perfect for horses. Even if we don’t gain an inch on her before Montlac, we’ll be sure to run her down before she reaches the ruined bridge.”

Markal cast his gaze across the river to where Bronwyn and the other survivors had fled into the woods. It seemed incredible that marauders could outrun paladins on horses, but these were no ordinary knights on foot. They could move at a relentless pace, which they’d already proven on several occasions.

Still, they needed to eat, didn’t they? They needed to sleep. Bronwyn and her companions had little more than their cloaks and their swords, and neither food nor rest would come easily.

He wasn’t as confident as Wolfram that he and Nathaliey could track the marauders with seekers, but if he could occasionally locate the enemy, they could at least get ahead of them on the road and double back for a more methodical hunt.

What about the red sword? Bronwyn had wielded it before, and would surely not hesitate to do so again. He remembered her heroic defense of the bridge over Blossom Creek against an army of wights. The thought of facing her as an enemy, Soultrup in hand, was terrifying.

Time enough to worry about that. The first thing was to clear the burning barricade, which was still throwing off heat, but beginning to die down. A little longer and paladins could attack it with waterskins.

And then cross the ford. The hunt on the road. The fight against Bronwyn and Soultrup. Paladins would die. Maybe wizards, too.

Chapter Twenty-one

Markal, Nathaliey, and forty-four paladins arrived at Montlac on the second morning after the battle at the ford. Markal studied the small alpine valley as he dismounted, muscles complaining.

Massive rocky peaks with ice-covered crowns rose in a bowl around them, and the air tasted clean, cold, and thin. The ruins of Montlac spread around the perimeter of what was once a lake, but was now a vast bowl-like meadow speckled with a handful of small oxbows where the mountain stream began its trek toward the eastern plains.

Near the center of the valley was a ruined castle on a hill that must have once sat on an island, but now seemed to be guarding nothing in particular. Only one of the towers was still standing; the rest had collapsed, along with two of the four walls.

Closer at hand, the nearby meadows were lumpy with the ruined foundations of the old town, punctuated with lichen-covered boulders—nature’s standing stones—perhaps carried from the mountain heights in ages past by flowing ice fields.

Wolfram sent scouts up the road, positioned several men to the rear, and sent a few paladins on horse toward the old castle to verify that enemies hadn’t taken up residence. The rest he ordered to dismount. Exhausted, ravenous horses began to crop at the tall green grass. Nathaliey groaned and slid from the saddle to join Markal, and they let their mounts join the other grazers.

Wolfram rode by, studying his surroundings with a sharp expression. “Keep your eye out for griffins, will you? It’s hard to imagine a better place for one of their flocks to make its home.”

“I thought he wanted another seeker,” Nathaliey said when Wolfram was gone. “So which is it? Track Bronwyn, or search for griffins?”

Markal raised an eyebrow. “It’s just magic, just blood from your pores. Why can’t you do both? And maybe make our horses fly while you’re at it. We all agree that would be extremely helpful.” He smiled at her grimace.

“And we need a seeker?” she asked.

“We need one.”

Since the battle, Nathaliey had already sent two seekers to track the escaping marauders, and Markal had sent a third. The first had found Bronwyn and her two companions still in the company of the giant. By the second seeker, she’d abandoned the giant, who’d rumbled off into the mountains. Bronwyn and her two companions raced west, moving with impressive speed and stamina up and down through the mountains. They slept little and seemed to eat nothing.

The last seeker had found the enemy already in Montlac. They’d stopped for an unexpectedly long time, and when Markal relayed this information to Wolfram, the captain had considered this news gravely. If there were other marauders making camp in the abandoned barony, they might have a real fight of it. But then Bronwyn and her companions moved on, and the valley had seemed empty when they arrived.

Given Bronwyn’s speed, Wolfram had been right to leave his supplies behind. Traveling light, his riders made steady progress, and had very nearly reeled in their quarry. Wolfram hoped to catch her by noon tomorrow.

“I’ll watch for griffins,” Markal told Nathaliey. “You find Bronwyn.”

“I had a feeling you were going to say that. All right, go do your thing, and I’ll do mine.”

She climbed one of the lichen-covered boulders and sat cross-legged up top, where the wind gusted through her hair. To Markal’s eye, she looked like a morsel set down for a griffin to snack on, but already her native abilities had her blending into the stone, and the longer she remained motionless, the harder she would be to spot.

Markal found the horses, removed their saddles, and led them away from Nathaliey to graze them so he wouldn’t be tempted to pester her about the seeker. His stomach rumbled.

“You’re the lucky ones,” he told the horses, who were engrossed in their meal. “The rest of us have been subsisting on suet cakes for days. The captain had better pull something tasty out of his stores or I’m going down to the river to fish.” The horses paid him no mind. “Go on, then. Keep smacking your lips. Not that it’s rude or anything.”

He sank into the grass, relieved to be off his aching feet, and looked up at the sky. It was clear, with no sign of griffins. In spite of his hunger, it was hard to be in a sour mood with the warm sun and cool breeze and the beauty of the soaring snow-covered peaks surrounding them.

He lay there for about ten minutes before he heard the sound of someone calling his name and sat up. It was Marissa, still on horseback. She spotted him and rode over.

“The captain needs you to come at once.” She gestured back toward the road. “Look for him in the old caravanserai. Hurry.” She tugged on her reins and rode off.

Markal left the horses and made his way back toward the road. Nathaliey, apparently finished with her seeking, fell in beside him.

“What was that about?” she asked.

“The captain wants to speak with me . . . urgently, it would seem. Did you find Bronwyn?”

“She’s still on the move. I’d guess about three miles from the valley, more or less.”

“That close? Wolfram will be happy to hear it.”

“It’s far enough, and the longer we sit here, the farther behind we’ll be. But there’s good news, too. One of the marauders is flagging, and Bronwyn is shouting at him, threatening him with Soultrup if he doesn’t get moving.”

“The tall one with the missing hand?”

“No, he’s plenty strong enough. It’s the other one. I don’t think he can keep up—his body seems to be breaking down from the pace.”

“It’s good to see evidence that the marauders aren’t invincible,” Markal said. “We’re close. We’re going to catch them.”

They came upon the ruins of the caravanserai, a stout building by the side of the road. It was built of whitewashed walls constructed in a square about eighty feet on a side, with a thick, bulging base on the lower level and thin windows above that doubled as arrow slits. The building had a fortress-like appearance, not strong enough to repel an army, but sturdy enough to dissuade bandits or resist the demands of unwelcome companies of travelers.

Nevertheless, a determined assault had overthrown the caravanserai in the end. The roof had burned and collapsed, and gaps in the walls showed where enemies had undermined it during their final attack. Marauders, Wolfram had told him. They’d sacked the building and murdered the last self-styled baron of Montlac and his family.

A few paladins stood guard where the missing gates had once opened, and Markal and Nathaliey made their way into the central courtyard. Here there had once been stables, baths, a well, and communal dining, but it was all rubble and weeds now. Wolfram stood with Marissa, who turned over a jute sack. Moldy wheat poured out of it onto the ground.

Wolfram spotted the newcomers and gave a grim shake of the head. “This is what all of our supplies look like. There’s a whole cellar full of it—all rotten.”

“Is it wet down there?” Markal asked.

“It’s perfectly dry. And even if water had entered the cellar, it’s only been a couple of weeks, not long enough for it all to rot.” He tossed aside the sack with a look of disgust. “I could tell something was wrong even before I went down. We’d heaped doors and broken furniture over the spot to conceal the entrance, and it was all disturbed. I thought my sister had found it, raided some supplies for her own party. Turns out she did a lot more than steal.”

Nathaliey touched Markal’s arm. “I feel something, do you?”

He sniffed at the air. Yes, there it was. A hint of something foul. It was radiating from . . .

“Is the cellar through there?”

Wolfram frowned. “How did you know?”

“There’s sorcery hanging in the air, mostly in that direction. Show me.”

Wolfram led them through what seemed to have been the kitchen, with a big clay oven collapsed beneath a beam that had fallen from the ceiling. Behind the kitchen lay a small room with broken shelves, smashed crockery, and an open trapdoor in the floor with a ladder that descended into a basement larder. To the side of the opening lay a shattered door, another ceiling beam, and an overturned bench, presumably the debris that the Blackshields had heaped over the top to conceal their supplies.

A paladin climbed up the ladder from below. “Even the wine is bad, Captain.”

“Turned to vinegar?” Wolfram asked.

“Worse than that. Smells like horse piss.”

Daylight streamed into the dusty cellar from above, and Markal and Nathaliey descended to have a look for themselves. The smell of rot and sorcery was almost overwhelming when they reached the bottom. Jute sacks lay open, with moldy wheat and oats spilling out. More sacks containing suet-and-berry biscuits had suffered a similar fate, as had provisions of dried, salty beef.

There were other destroyed supplies, too: crossbow bolts, snapped in two, spare bedding that had been torn, linen bandages as rotten as the grain, and frayed ropes. Hunting knives and snares for foraging—bent or rusted. Hundreds of pounds of food and gear hauled laboriously into the mountains, then stashed here to resupply the paladins over a campaign that might last months, all destroyed.

Markal glanced at Wolfram, who was climbing down. “It’s sorcery,” he told the captain. “A despoiling incantation.”

“Those blasted cloaks the marauders wear,” Wolfram said. “They have all sorts of powers, don’t they? First controlling the giant, now this.”

“This is different,” Nathaliey said.

“How do you mean?” Wolfram asked.

“That was endowed power,” she said. “This is summoned magic.”

Markal sniffed the foul odor lingering about the place, and wished he could disagree. But the evidence was all about them.

“The sorcerer has endowed the marauder cloaks with certain powers,” he explained. “Concealment, deflection, the ability to control wights and giants and perhaps other creatures. Magical strength and stamina—the wearers become something other than human.

“But this smells different,” he continued. “It leaves a sharp odor, flowing outward. It’s not like the smell of a rune or the moon pendant, or even Soultrup, which are more . . . closed, I think you’d call it?”

Nathaliey nodded. “That’s a good way to put it.”

“I still don’t understand,” Wolfram said. “Maybe you’d have to be able to sense it to understand.”

“Think of a freshly cut pine bough,” Nathaliey said. “It has that sharp, distinctive odor, right? And if you throw a pine log on the fire, it also smells like pine, but it’s not the same smell.”

“That’s the difference between endowed magic and summoned magic,” Markal said. He gestured around him. “This is summoned magic. Someone came down here and cast a spoiling spell to destroy all of your provisions. Something burning, something consumed—let’s say it’s more like burning camel dung than pine logs, but the same idea.”

“So you’re saying that my sister can command sorcery, too?” Wolfram asked.

“No,” Markal said. “It wasn’t Bronwyn, and it wasn’t her marauders. It was someone else. There is apparently a sorcerer with her now, and that’s even worse.”

#

Back up top, with the scent of the enemy’s magic still in their nostrils, Markal and Nathaliey were able to follow the trail to the road, where it continued west. Wolfram followed them. While they studied the road, Markal told him how Nathaliey’s seeker had found Bronwyn three miles west of the valley, almost within their grasp.

They followed the magical trail a quarter mile or so away from the paladins at the caravanserai. The western rim of the bowl-like valley loomed craggy and snow-covered ahead of them, and the road began what would soon be another punishing climb before it began its initial descent toward Eriscoba on the far side of the Dragon’s Spine.

“I’ve seen enough,” Markal said. “Seems the sorcerer continued toward Eriscoba. At least he’s not lurking around here anymore.”

“Is it the necromancer?” Wolfram asked.

“No,” Markal said. “This isn’t King Toth.”

“Then there is more than one sorcerer? You’re sure?”

“It’s the same type of magic as Toth’s, but it isn’t his,” Markal said. “Not as powerful, not as much command or mastery.”

“So an apprentice or acolyte,” Nathaliey said. “Which is disturbing enough, when you think about it. It means Toth is training his own order.”

Markal bent and touched the road where their new enemy had stepped. “Whoever it was has some power with him, but he’s sloppy. This stink is two days old.”

Nathaliey gave him a sharp look. “Are you sure?”

“Feel this, and you’ll see.”

“How can the trail be two days old?” Wolfram asked. “Bronwyn just passed this way a few hours ago. . .”

Markal glanced skyward, briefly searching for griffins, before turning back to Nathaliey and Wolfram. “The sorcerer must have come alone, and departed before Bronwyn arrived.”

“If you’re right, that means the sorcerer knew we were coming,” Wolfram said. “And somehow figured out we had supplies—the Veyrian army didn’t know, or they’d have stolen them already.”

“I think he’s right,” Nathaliey said. “Could it be that Bronwyn told the sorcerer somehow?”

“My sister might have guessed where to look,” Wolfram said. “If she had a way to pass that information along.”

Markal gave it some thought. “Some sort of seeker might do it. A sorcerous version we don’t know. They’d have needed to communicate at a great distance, sent it all the way over the mountains to get the sorcerer here in time.”

“Don’t the magic eyes have a limited range?” Wolfram asked.

Markal shrugged. “Ours have a limited range. The enemy’s sorcery has different capabilities and limitations.”

Another glance skyward. There was still no sign of griffin riders, but that might not last. There might be more giants ahead of them, too. Marauders, Veyrian armies . . . and now a new enemy, a servant of the dark wizard.

“I trust you can handle this sorcerer?” Wolfram said.

“He is only an acolyte, and we have a wizard,” Nathaliey said.

Markal’s supposed wizardry had become a joke between them, but there didn’t seem to be irony in her voice this time.

“Acolyte, sorcerer—whatever he is—can you handle him?” Wolfram asked.

“We can handle him,” she said. “Can you handle your sister?”

“You say she was only three miles ahead of us?”

“Four miles by now.”

“She’ll get farther ahead still,” Wolfram said. “Those bastards destroyed our food supplies, and we can’t ride into battle half-starved. I’ll send out foragers—there must be deer in this valley if the griffins haven’t eaten them all. And if not, there are waterfowl by the oxbows, and probably tubers and such we can collect in the marshes. We’ll let the horses rest and ride out in the morning. We’ll lose the better part of a day, but we made excellent time getting here, and that should still give us plenty of leeway to catch her before she reaches Eriscoba. And then, well . . . they are only three marauders. Red sword or not, we’ll have them in our grasp.”

“Captain,” Markal said slowly, “you’re missing one critical part of this whole debacle. The sorcerer was able to communicate with Bronwyn across a great distance. A small army of Veyrians passed through here a week ago, and there was another company of marauders with them. I would assume that the sorcerer was accompanying them, and that’s how he happened to be near Montlac in the first place.”

Wolfram stared. “Are you saying . . .?”

“If the sorcerer can call east to Bronwyn, he can call west, to the Veyrians and the marauder companies accompanying them. I’ll expect the sorcerer has spotted us already and called for help.” Markal let out his breath. “Prepare your men to ride on empty stomachs, Captain, if you have any hope of stopping Bronwyn before she reaches Eriscoba. And make sure they’re prepared for a serious fight. Not three marauders, but a whole company of them.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Early the next morning, when Markal slumped in his saddle during the gloom of predawn, half dozing after a few fitful hours of shivering sleep on the road, Nathaliey rode up beside him, glanced around as if to make sure there weren’t any paladins within earshot, and said in a low voice, “We’re only two miles behind them now.”

“How many?”

“Four. Bronwyn, her two companions, and Toth’s acolyte. They’re all on foot, but moving quickly. It will take the better part of the day to run them down, and that’s only if we can keep up the pace.”

“And the enemy reinforcements?” Markal asked.

“Riding hard in this direction. They should meet up with Bronwyn by noon. Twenty-five marauders.”

“So presumably Bronwyn could turn around and meet us in battle any time after that.”

“You think they’ll do that?” she asked.

“Hard to say. If they’re wise, they’ll continue toward Eriscoba, now that Bronwyn has what she set out for.” Markal tightened his hands on the reins. “But Toth’s forces don’t always pick the wise course.”

“Not when there’s a bloodier path, no,” Nathaliey said.

“Well done. It can’t have been easy finding them all.”

She gave a modest shrug. “It wasn’t hard. The acolyte is spending his magic speeding them along, not trying to hide.”

They slowed their horses to allow one of the paladins to pass them. Ghostly fog crept across the forest road, and the paladin was a shadowy figure in the gloom as he disappeared ahead of them.

“Markal, are we going to die?”

“We all die, sooner or later. We die, and the Harvester gathers our souls, grinds them to dust, and scatters them to the wind to refresh the land.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sooner or later it happens to everyone. Only the Brothers know the day or hour.”

“Markal, I’m serious.”

“We’re not facing a giant. That’s a point in our favor. As for this sorcerer”—he drew a breath—“he’ll challenge us.”

“And the new marauder company?”

“I like Wolfram’s chances. The Blackshields outnumber them two to one.”

“Wolfram arrives exhausted.”

“The enemy is riding hard, too. Neither side is likely to be fresh.”

“What about Bronwyn?” Nathaliey asked. “And Soultrup?”

An image of Bronwyn standing on the bridge and fighting an entire army of wights came to his mind. “Yes, that is a problem.”

“Markal, I’m afraid.”

“So am I. But if I die, let it be to Soultrup. And don’t make me go in there alone. If I’m stuck inside a sword, I want a friend by my side.”

“How . . . kind of you to say so. ‘If I die, please let my friend die, too.’”

“Think on the positive side,” he told her. “We can carry on the fight from the inside, turn Soultrup back to good.”

“Thanks, but all the same, I prefer it out here.” After a moment of silence, she added, “We need the master. He’d blast these enemies off the face of the earth.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“The knowledge Memnet has, the power . . . this piddling sorcerer’s acolyte would have no chance against a real wizard.”

“As opposed to a fake one like me?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I have my limitations—I’m not pretending otherwise.”

“Better a limited wizard than an advanced apprentice. That’s where I am.”

“A good point,” he said. “Nathaliey Liltige, you are henceforth a full-fledged wizard. There, that should help.”

Nathaliey snorted. “As if you could.”

“Why not? That’s all the master did. He said I was a wizard, and I became one. Apparently.”

“Yes, well, you’re not the master.”

A slight tension to her voice now, like a bowstring being strung, and he knew he was touching on her most sensitive insecurities. He had no intention of drawing that string tighter. On the contrary.

He dropped the light tone. “I can declare you a wizard if I’d like.”

“Why, did you attend a secret wizard initiation ceremony that gave you that right?”

“What do you think being a wizard is, anyway?”

“Markal, we discussed this already. If you don’t feel like a wizard just because Memnet said so, why should I feel any better to hear the same thing from you? Wizard or not, you aren’t the master.”

“Your point?”

“My point is that when we get home—assuming we are so lucky—Memnet will ignore your proclamation and give me twenty more years of study.”

“No, he won’t. He’ll respect my decision.”

“I notice you didn’t address my other point. If you don’t even believe you are a wizard, how can you make me one?”

“I didn’t address the point because you didn’t make one,” Markal said. “I am a wizard, and I feel like one, too.”

“That’s Wolfram’s moon pendant talking.”

“Hogwash. The pendant does nothing until I call up magic, and then it’s a small boost at best. I won’t claim that I feel like a powerful wizard, more like a novice. But I’m not an apprentice anymore, that’s for sure. There is no master here guiding my decisions.”

“Hey,” she said, “some of those decisions were mine.”

“Exactly.”

Nathaliey sighed. “I can’t accept that . . . Markal, I’m not a wizard just because you say I am!”

“It’s all right if you don’t accept it right away. I didn’t at first, either. In any event, I’m not worried about Toth’s acolyte. We are a pair of wizards of the Crimson Path. May the Brothers guide us to victory.”

#

The gray sky of predawn brightened into blue as the sun rose behind them, peeking through the cliffs. Birds chattered in the trees, and the mist began to clear as a warm breeze rose from the lowlands.

And then they emerged from the woods onto a ridge, and Markal got his first view of Eriscoba stretching vast and glorious toward the horizon, a green quilt of forests and meadows in the hills below them, and a patchwork of fields and farms in the distance. A river turned, slow and lazy through the lowlands, and villages dotted its banks. Huge, pillowy clouds moved across the sky, giving depth to the sheer scale of his view.

Several days had passed since they’d left the dusty foothills on the eastern, rain-starved shadow of the Dragon’s Spine—even drier than usual in the grip of a long drought—and he’d seen plenty of meadows and forests, but he caught his breath at the full scope of it. So green and beautiful—like a corner of the master’s gardens, but stretching for mile after mile.

After the chill of night, of forest and mountain valleys, the morning sun felt wonderful, and he turned his face toward it like a sunflower, eager to soak it in. It was then that he spotted the flock of griffins dropping from the sky.

There were at least twenty in all, hurtling so silently from the clouds that for a split second he thought his mind was playing tricks on him, finding something in the sky that was not there. The griffins tucked their wings into a dive, and their riders had their swords drawn while they leaned against their mounts, both for speed and to lower their profile. They came charging directly at the company of paladins.

Markal shouted a warning even as he slid from the saddle, lowered his palms, and searched for an incantation. A spell materialized at once, as if his own private archivist had retrieved it from the mind’s library. Nathaliey was at his side, asking his help, but he ignored her to concentrate on the task at hand.

Marissa galloped up from the rear with several other paladins, and Wolfram pulled back from the vanguard. They gathered around Lucas, who had been holding the center, and within moments were assembling a bristling hedgehog of upturned swords and spears, with shields to guard against claw, talon, beak, and sword. Unfortunately, the paladins had become strung out in the night, both behind and ahead, where the scouts kept a wary lookout for ambush, and maybe a third of them were out of position as the griffins swept above the ridge.

One of the riders released a piercing whistle, followed by two shorter blasts, and the entire formation of griffins changed direction to target a trio of paladins desperately trying to reach Lucas’s force. The paladins galloped past Markal and Nathaliey, who were suddenly isolated.

“Markal, watch out!” Nathaliey said.

He cast his spell just as the shadow of the griffin flock passed overhead. A vortex of air gave a tremendous whoosh and shot skyward, where it blasted into the heart of the flock. Griffins spiraled out of control with riders dangling from their tethers. One skidded to the ground a few feet away and screamed as it beat its wings and shoved off with its back legs to get airborne.

A handful of griffins at the front of the formation had raced past before the air hit them, and they hit the straggling paladins. A man went flying from the saddle. A second paladin’s horse stumbled and threw its rider clear. A griffin seized the third paladin, lifted her several feet off the ground, and dropped her. The woman landed with an awkward cry.

Markal wiped a trickle of blood on the cloth at his belt and readied another spell. Nathaliey had found something to suit her purpose and had her hands palms down with the power rising quickly to the surface. But to Markal’s relief, the griffins were already retreating from the short, aggressive charge and lifting higher in the sky, chased by a few ineffective crossbow bolts before Wolfram shouted for his paladins to hold fire.

The entire encounter had only lasted a minute, maybe less, from the moment Markal spotted the griffins to their retreat. The griffins circled overhead for another few minutes while Wolfram gathered the company in a defensive position to the side of the road. Finally, the griffins wheeled about and retreated toward the mountain heights.

Wolfram brought the wounded paladin to Markal and Nathaliey. “Those blasted buzzards,” he growled. “Someday, I swear . . .”

Markal felt along the woman’s upper arm and shoulder. “Your shoulder bone is fractured.”

The woman cursed. “How bad is it?”

“The bone’s not separated. Nathaliey will give you a spell to start it mending, but you need to get it in a sling. And no fighting.” Markal turned to Wolfram as Nathaliey looked after the woman. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you more warning.”

“It was an ambush. Obviously well prepared. We’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

“I thought you had an arrangement. Why do they keep attacking us?”

“You mean when you spotted me talking to the rider? That was no arrangement, it was a meeting to discuss a shared threat. To make a temporary truce. That’s obviously done with, and they’ll gladly tear off our limbs if we let them.”

“It would be nice if they’d make an effort to tear off marauder limbs, too,” Markal said.

“As soon as we defeat the necromancer, I’m mounting an expedition into the mountains,” Wolfram said. “I’m going to drive these buzzards out and send them back to the northern wastes where they belong.”

“Seems to me that they’re trying to drive us out,” Markal said. “They’ve made a claim to the mountains and intend to defend it.”

“We are already leaving, dammit. And now I’m down another good fighter. Not to mention losing more time. Do these fool griffin riders think the necromancer will leave them in peace? Because they’re doing their best to help him win.”

Wolfram left for his horse, still fuming, and took the injured woman with him.

“You don’t suppose the griffin riders are actively helping Toth, do you?” Nathaliey asked Markal.

“We’d better hope not. There must be hundreds of them living in the Spine.”

Marissa rode up as the company was remounting and preparing to move out again. She unwrapped a clay flask with a stopper.

“Good work, wizard. We’d be facing a lot more than a broken bone or two if you hadn’t spotted them and sent them flying off course with that magic of yours. Here,” she added, handing him the flask. “Every victory deserves a toast.”

He pulled out the stopper and took a tentative sip. “Brandy? Is this what counts as essential supplies?” He put it back to his lips for a longer pull.

Marissa grinned. “I have to keep up the strength of our wizards. Hey, that’s enough!” She retrieved the flask and handed it to Nathaliey. “Go ahead, but no guzzling.”

When Nathaliey handed it back, Marissa took her own swallow, then put it away. “Forgive the captain. He hasn’t eaten a thing since we left Montlac, and he needs to kill his own sister.”

“Bronwyn is already dead,” Markal said. “A walking, sneering corpse, soul bound and enslaved. What he kills will not be his sister. Not really.”

“Which makes it all the more horrible.” Marissa glanced between the two companions. “Conserve your strength. We’re going to need it again, and soon.”

“That settles it,” Nathaliey told Markal when the other woman was gone. “If claiming to be a wizard is what it takes to get a swig of brandy after a day and a night in the saddle, then yes, call me a wizard, a master of the Order of the Crimson Path.”

“Now you’ve caught the vision.”

The Blackshields followed the road along the ridge, their pace accelerating, moving faster than they had since late yesterday afternoon. The horses were tired, but seemed to feel the determination of their riders, and pressed forward relentlessly. They reentered the forest about fifteen minutes later, descending sharply before they climbed an even steeper stretch to emerge onto another ridge. Here, they caught another glimpse of Eriscoba. The lowlands were still at a discouraging distance, with many miles of torturous terrain to cross before the road emerged from mountains. Soon it was back into the woods for an extended spell.

“Do you remember when Toth came to Syrmarria a few years ago?” Nathaliey asked as they stopped to drink from a mountain stream.

“When he tried to convince Omar and Memnet to bring the highway through Aristonia?”

“He claimed it would cut the travel time in half from the old roads, a straight shot through the mountains instead of all of this up and down.”

“Almost makes you sympathize with his plan, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Except for the sorcery, the wars, and the armies of slaves, it really kind of does.”

Markal splashed water on his face, then climbed back onto the horse. His backside ached at the contact with the saddle.

It was midafternoon before they emerged from the woods onto another exposed ridge, where the Blackshields ground unexpectedly to a halt. Markal pushed through the company to find Wolfram on a curve of the road as it skirted the edge of a sharp embankment, very nearly a cliff. The road bent and twisted to follow the ridge line down, before disappearing into the trees again as it curved around to the right.

“You have better eyes than I do,” Wolfram said. “Follow the road and tell me what you see.”

The road emerged from the trees directly below them. From there it dipped through a valley, went up over a hill, and passed in and out of the woods. Markal worked his way slowly down by sight, moving toward the foothills ahead of them.

And there, maybe two miles by the curve of the road, he spotted a plume of dust. The wind changed and carried the faint sound of clomping hooves. Moments later, the first of them emerged into clearer view. Even from a distance, Markal could tell by the gray of their garb that he was looking at a marauder company.

“Marauders,” he said. “Twenty or thirty in number.”

Wolfram’s face was grim. “Coming or going?”

“Coming.”

“No more fleeing into Eriscoba, apparently—they’re going to ride up to meet us in battle. Trying to finish the Blackshields once and for all.”

“And no doubt Bronwyn is in command.”

“Good.” Wolfram’s tone was sharp. “Then she has given me the right to choose the field of battle.”

Chapter Twenty-three

The game wasn’t cat and mouse, Chantmer thought, so much as cat versus cat. Or better still, spiders in a maze, each trying to ensnare and devour the other. Chantmer and Narud both hunter and hunted at the same time.

Zartosht’s traps hung like invisible webs across doorways, meant to vibrate for their owner should someone with magical ability pass through. Chantmer detected them easily; sometimes he triggered them on purpose, then doubled back and triggered them in the opposite direction. Other times, he bent their magic to serve his own purposes or slipped by without touching them at all.

The traps that worried him were not the ones he sensed, but the ones he didn’t. Certain flagstones were dangerous, and to be avoided, but what about the orange groves near the pasha’s apartments? There was something strange hanging in the air nearby, but Chantmer couldn’t pin it down, couldn’t identify where, if anywhere, the enemy had left his wards and runes.

Meanwhile, Chantmer and Narud left their own marks, cast their own incantations. They spun webs to ensnare the dark acolytes, constructed funnels to force them down corridors where Chantmer and Narud waited, and as always, clouded the air near any approach to the libraries. He sensed the enemy about, felt them tickling the edges of his traps, or worse, meddling with them, but he had yet to confront the acolytes again face-to-face.

On the third day of the hunt, he and Narud slipped past a pair of Veyrian guards on their way toward the khalif’s harem, a center of labor, as the harem was expanding into nearby apartments to take into account the larger number of slave girls being brought in by Pasha Izak and his lieutenants. The bulk of the residents of the palace, from the lowest serving boys to the pasha himself, seemed unaware of the struggles for dominance among the two rival magical orders, and there were no attempts by the pasha’s servants to search for them or to set guards where they might trap the intruders in their midst.

“If it were me,” Chantmer said, “I would tear this palace to its foundations until I found it.”

Narud stopped beneath an arched arcade. Olive trees grew in the small courtyard to their left. “To find what?”

“The library, what else? Toth knows it’s here, and so do his acolytes. Zartosht penetrated the vaults once already, and it must drive him mad searching for them again. So why not start at the top, remove the stones one by one until they have uncovered the library, and steal all the books and scrolls that way?”

“I’m not so sure it would be that easy.”

“Maybe not, but I would try,” Chantmer said firmly.

“And how long would it take? How would Toth or his pasha control Syrmarria without a palace? And how would they control Aristonia without the city? This is more than magic. It’s marauders and paladins and armies. And the king’s highway. Always the highway.”

“I disagree,” Chantmer said. “Nothing else matters but this. He who wins the magical battle wins the war.” He looked around. “What about these olive trees? Do you think we could enchant the roots?”

“To do what?”

“Like in the gardens, make them trip an enemy. We’ll leave a whiff of magic, like a spell carelessly left exposed. Say that Zartosht passes this way, stops to investigate after sensing the magic, and then steps up to the tree. The root snaps his ankle—that will at least slow him down, make him easier to track.”

“That kind of work takes preparation,” Narud said. He left the arcade to walk around the gnarled trunks of the olive trees, prodding at roots rising knee-like from the ground. “We could bury a stone or brick here with a chiseled rune.”

“Complicated,” Chantmer said, “but it might work.”

“Do you know the incantation? I don’t.”

“One of the archivists would know where to search. Could even help us with the letters. We could shape a brick without ever leaving the library, then bring it up here when it was done.”

“Let’s figure out where we’d bury it,” Narud said.

They were still discussing the matter when Jethro entered the arcaded corridor running around the edge of the courtyard. He had his hood drawn and a shroud of concealing magic around him. He flattened against a wall to let a pair of young harem women pass, and Chantmer took the moment to study him.

Jethro was a decent fellow, in spite of his limitations. He held tremendous quantities of knowledge in his head, and was hardworking and loyal. And he was also respectful of Chantmer and Narud, rather than resentful of having his space commandeered as some might have been. He called them both master, even though Chantmer was technically still an apprentice.

That is only a formality, he thought with a glance at Narud. I am the better of any of them, except Memnet. And the archivist is clever enough to see it.

Someday, when the time came to found his own order, Chantmer might bring Jethro along, and possibly Karla, too, assuming they were wise enough to take the opportunity. It would take a good deal to lure them out of Syrmarria. No pasha ever loved his harem the way these archivists lavished attention on their library.

Jethro looked about, clearly searching for Chantmer and Narud. As a member of their order, he would sense their presence, but the pair were traveling heavily cloaked.

“Are we safe here?” Chantmer asked.

“I don’t feel the enemy,” Narud said.

Chantmer pulled back his hood and let the concealers slip a fraction. Jethro spotted him and approached. His eyes were less bleary than usual, the bags not so pronounced, and Chantmer guessed he’d been moving about the palace rather than hunched over his books and papers.

“I found one of them, Masters. I know where he’s gone.”

“You have?” Chantmer asked, surprised. “And how have you managed, where we have not?”

“I was at the palace gate, refreshing the rune of warning, when I felt him come past.”

Chantmer was still confused. “They’re both heavily cloaked.”

“This was outside the gate.”

“Ah, that explains it. Hmm, I wish there was something we could do with it. Even knowing he left the palace doesn’t particularly help. The city is big enough—he could be anywhere.”

A hint of a smile touched Jethro’s mouth. “Except that he brushed a rune as he passed—he’s been marked.”

Chantmer stiffened. Now this was news. He couldn’t remember the precise nature of the ward at the gate, but it was old, put in place by Memnet himself, and he knew its sort. Those runes were useful for tracking the comings and goings of viziers and khalifs, who were always scheming something or other. Aristonia hadn’t remained peaceful all those years simply because of the goodness of its leaders; the wise, guiding hand of the order had snuffed any number of plots and secret treaties before they could cause trouble.

“He might very well be dragging a trail of it through the city with him,” Chantmer said.

“Down where there’s no protective wards to hide him, either,” Narud said. “What do you suppose he’s up to? A stroll through the souks, or something else?”

“Either way, he’ll be easier to track down outside the palace walls,” Chantmer said. “Let’s hope he’s alone—he’ll be easy prey. Come on.”

Narud glanced at Jethro. “You, too, friend. We might need your help with the dark acolytes.”

Chantmer doubted Jethro’s skills would amount to much, and he almost protested that they would be too busy staying cloaked while tracking the dark acolytes to worry about hiding the archivist as well. But he supposed Jethro had earned the opportunity with this information, and as they slipped past the guards at the gatehouse a few minutes later, and he confirmed that the ward at the door had been disturbed, another possibility occurred to him.

Jethro could serve a useful purpose in battle. None of the archivists commanded much power, but they all had a good deal of knowledge in their heads, Jethro more than any of them. He rivaled Markal in that regard, and could feed Chantmer and Narud incantations.

They descended the cobbled street from the palace and into the neighborhoods where the more prosperous class of merchants lived in their sturdy stone buildings with glass windows and strong oak doors. Armed servants manned guard posts at the larger homes, and one alert fellow with a pike even spotted the trio approaching and stepped out of his fortified position to challenge them before the magic they carried distracted him and they slipped away.

“You stand out,” Chantmer told Jethro. “Can you master a concealing spell? Good, do it now.”

Once that was accomplished, they continued following the trail left by the dark acolyte for another few streets, then it seemed to either dissolve or double back on itself. Chantmer touched the sun-warmed stone of the buildings lining the street, searching for it, and decided that the trail was confused because it divided in two.

“Zartosht must have brought his assistant,” he said. “And they split apart here.”

“Are you sure she is the assistant?” Narud said. “Perhaps it’s the other way around.”

“She had better be,” Chantmer said. “I fought the man, and he has some power to him. If the woman is his equal or better, we might have some difficulties.”

“Her name is Jasmeen,” Jethro said.

Chantmer gave him a sharp look. “How do you know that?”

“I’ve been observing, asking questions. I have contacts in the palace, and some of them are not so discreet as they might be.”

“You should have said something,” Chantmer said. “It would be another angle for us to get at them.”

“I tried, and you dismissed me.”

“Yes, well. Next time, mention it with more confidence. Is Zartosht stronger, or is it this Jasmeen character?”

“Neither answers to the other. They seem to be equals.”

“Ah, that makes sense. Like the two of us.” Chantmer gestured between himself and Narud. “I should have guessed it would be the same.”

“Not precisely the same, no.” Jethro frowned. “Narud is a wizard and you are still an apprentice.”

“Except that Narud isn’t commanding me,” Chantmer said irritably, “so the comparison holds true.”

What was that thought he’d had about recruiting Jethro to a new order of wizards? The man was practically taunting him.

Have yourself made a wizard, and his respect will return.

Perhaps true, but irrelevant. There was no need to prove himself—that sort of thinking was for Nathaliey, perhaps, but not for him—his qualities would make themselves known sooner, rather than later.

“Is there a way to know which trail belongs to Jasmeen and which to Zartosht?” Narud asked.

Chantmer stepped up to the house where he’d noticed the trails diverging. He found one of them, but the other was too faint to pick up. A donkey cart clattered by, filled with baskets of dates and dried figs, and the wheels stirred up the magic further.

“This one is Zartosht.” Chantmer glanced down the alley. “He’s headed for the souks.”

“What for?” Narud asked. “Alchemy? Potions?”

“Could be. I wish I knew where the other one went.”

But Jasmeen’s trail—if that was indeed who it belonged to—disappeared somewhere on this street. She seemed to have picked up a little bit of the rune Zartosht had activated on his way out of the palace, but not enough to follow independently.

“Never mind,” he said. “We’ll find Zartosht. That’s more than enough for tonight.”

A few minutes later, they entered the twisting souks, with their carpet sellers, ironmongers, money changers, and spice shops. Chantmer expected Zartosht to linger among the shops selling exotic spices from the south—nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon—as some of the necromancer’s magic seemed to use physical components. Or maybe he would buy salves and elixirs sold in the apothecaries to mix his own potions and poisons; Chantmer had been careful in how he procured his food, aware that the enemy, frustrated in an attempt to reach them via magical means, could just as easily assassinate them via a tainted pastry or flagon of wine.

But the dark acolyte had stopped at none of these places, and instead weaved his way through the souks in seemingly no pattern at all. Chantmer sensed where the man had touched a doorway or scraped a stone with the toe of his sandal, but he hadn’t lingered in any one place.

“What the devil is he is up to?” Chantmer asked. “Why all this back and forth?”

“Possibly searching for our traps, nothing more,” Narud said.

“Something else just occurred to me. Why hasn’t King Toth come to Syrmarria to search for the library himself?”

“Like I said when you suggested tearing down the palace, why do you assume it would be that easy? He might have no more success than his acolytes, not quickly enough to matter. He has a road to build, and kingdoms to conquer and enslave.”

“The knowledge in that library is irreplaceable.”

“He has his necromancy already,” Narud said. “Veyre is the land of the torturers guild—they have their own books, their own dark arts, and it seems that Toth is satisfied with their mastery.”

“Exactly my thinking,” Chantmer said. “He doesn’t need our books, not like we do, anyway. The dark acolytes cut a few pages from the Book of Gods, but they haven’t made their way back in, and seem more intent on fighting us than finding the library. Why?”

“To distract us from defending the gardens, most likely,” Narud said.

“Maybe,” Chantmer said, but he wasn’t convinced. “Or maybe it would serve the enemy just as well to destroy the library as to capture it.”

Jethro narrowed his eyes. “May the Brothers kill them if they try.”

“Easy, friend,” Chantmer said.

Chantmer understood the archivist’s sentiment; the first time he’d heard that someone had cut pages from the Book of Gods, it had made him physically ill. To imagine someone cutting all the books, tearing up scrolls and smashing ancient tablets, was almost too horrifying to contemplate.

They reached the end of the maze-like souks and emerged from the canopies that marked every stall and storefront. He lifted his head to take in the warmth of the sun, but it had already dipped to the west, and shadows crept across the streets. The trail continued ahead, but it was growing faint; much longer and it would disappear entirely, and they’d be forced to return to the palace in defeat.

The alley emptied into a large square. During the day, the square was an intersection of a dozen different alleys and roads, and foot, cart, and animal traffic made a chaotic jumble in the middle, with every individual swimming through opposing currents to get across.

Now, night market people were chasing off those still trying to use it for transit. Men shoveled away the dung of horses, donkeys, and camels, as well as other rubbish that had accumulated throughout the day. Other people erected stalls and threw down carpets. Men lit enormous brass lamps around the edges, while women shuffled in with enormous baskets balanced on their heads, dropped them in place, then spread their wares. A man walked by clinking with copper mugs that festooned him like a jongleur’s bells, wheeling a larger kettle of water that he would sell by the cup to the thirsty people of the market.

Another man sat on a rug and built a pyramid of molars, together with a row of pincers, pliers, and other tools for digging out infected teeth. Men and women stoked fires for cooking spits of meat, and the pungent odor of burning charcoal filled the air. Two men with turbans and dark, khat-stained teeth opened baskets and pulled out adders and cobras, which they began to charm with flutes while curious children watched. A man with monkeys gathered another crowd a safe distance from the snakes. One monkey teased and cavorted with the crowd, while the second collected coins in a bent metal cup.

The whole market seemed to have materialized in minutes, and the three companions from the order looked through the growing crowds with frustration. There was no more trace of the dark acolyte, at least nothing that could be picked up against the background of charms and potions of card readers, fortune-tellers, and others using bits of weak and whispered magic that filled the air with a scent every bit as pungent as the smell of cook fires.

Chantmer was about to suggest that they turn back when he noticed a curious clearing on the far side of the square in the middle of all the pressing mass of people. He was a good head taller than nearly everyone standing in his way, and he used his vantage to scan over the crowds. There was a second hole about a hundred feet west of the first. People bumped against both clearings, changed course, and skirted the edges without seeming to be aware that something was pushing them away.

“I may have discovered our dark acolytes,” he said, “but I don’t suppose you can see from down there, since both of you are rather short. Follow me.”

“Wait,” Narud said. “We need another cloaking spell.”

“Yes,” Chantmer agreed. “Something more profound. Jethro, there’s one I know, something about umbra videtur, but the full incantation eludes me at the moment.”

Jethro got a faraway look in his watery eyes, as if he were searching his own personal archives. A curt nod. “Yes, I know the one. I’ll feed you the words.”

“But not here.” Chantmer looked about for a suitable place. “There, do you see the man with the wine casks? That will give us shelter.”

When Chantmer, Narud, and Jethro reemerged from behind the casks a minute later, they were deep in a protective shield of magic, and the crowd bent around them, with people instinctively veering away or suddenly finding something interesting to look at on the far side of the night market. Chantmer could no longer see his own companions, but felt their presence easily enough. Narud was leading the other two, slow and cautious, but at a pace that allowed the movement of the crowd away from them to seem natural.

They reached the first of the two empty spaces Chantmer had detected from the side of the square. People continued to stream into the night market, and he wondered why a young acrobat or juice seller didn’t notice the clear spot in the crowds and try to stake his claim, but apparently, they were all too weak-minded to attempt such a thing.

To be honest, if the square had been empty, he’d have also walked past without a second thought. There was nobody visible, and no magic scent that he could detect. The dark acolytes had their skills in concealment, he had to admit, nearly equal to those of the order, and it made him wonder how many times they’d crossed paths in the palace with neither side detecting the other’s presence. Still, it was startling to see it play out right in front of his face.

And disconcerting to stare at the center of the clearing and see nothing except a shimmer, like heat rising from a sun-baked stone. That shimmer must be the dark acolyte in the center doing . . . well, what, exactly? And which one was it, Jasmeen or Zartosht?

Chantmer turned his hands palm down and let his power rise to the surface until his pores tingled. One incantation and he could sweep away the concealment.

A hand closed on his wrist, and Narud whispered in his ear. “Don’t look for the enemy. Study the ground instead.”

Chantmer stared at the paving stones, concentrating, and spotted movement. There was a sharpened quill scratching at the stone, suspended in the air by an invisible hand. The stylus scraped a rune into the stone, digging through caked-on dirt and dung and other filth to make a simple figure of some kind. When it finished, it began anew, repeating the strokes. A rune, something to call up magic here, in the center of the night market. It must be important to go to such effort, but what was it, exactly?

Chantmer stepped forward, ignoring Narud’s warning hiss, and pressed against the buffer surrounding the dark acolyte. When he touched the edge of the clearing, his head felt suddenly light and distracted, and his feet wanted to carry him elsewhere. He resisted, but there was a physical presence, too, a firm and insistent hand, that pressed against his chest and tried to push him backward. He kept resisting until the feeling subsided, then dropped to his haunches a few feet away from the center of the empty space to watch.

The quill made the same scratching mark, over and over. Very simple, nothing complex about it: a line, a circle at one end, and two crosshatches in the middle. Ah, no, that wasn’t the whole of it; there was also a complex rune, something in the old tongue, but it was already deeply embedded in the stone. Old, and dirt-caked; it was not new. So the acolyte had found this preexisting rune and was now adding a final touch to give a specific incarnation.

What the devil were the acolytes doing? Raising something, he thought. Preparing a doorway for something to enter. The rune was the doorway, and the line, circle, and crosshatches represented what would pass through. There was danger here; he felt it radiating through his feet, into his legs, and then down through his arms to his trembling hands.

Chantmer was losing control, and if he didn’t back away, his concealing magic would slip, and the enemy would spot him. He rose slowly and took a step back. And with that motion, the need to escape the dark acolyte’s protective bubble came upon him with a vengeance, and he wanted nothing more than to turn on his heel and run. He forced himself to slow, and continued walking until he’d stepped beyond the enemy’s magic shield.

“What is it?” Narud’s voice whispered urgently from Chantmer’s right. The wizard was still invisible. “What did you see?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But whatever they’re doing, it’s something terrible, something that has the potential to destroy this city. We need to stop them.”

He took in the crowded night market, now jammed with people. Probably one in every ten Syrmarrians was in this square right now, along with hundreds of foreign merchants and travelers. It was hard to imagine a worse place to fight a battle. Innocents would die.

“We know where they are,” Chantmer said, “but we might not find them a second time if we return to the palace. We can’t let this opportunity pass—we have to destroy them now.”

Chapter Twenty-four

Nathaliey worked alone as the sun went down, moving methodically along the ridge as she placed her defenses. Her tools were dirt, stone, and wood. An outside observer might have thought her actions trivial and random: two sticks crossed here, a line traced in the dirt with circles on either side, five pebbles arranged in a line with another stick at the end, and finally, ancient letters laid out in leaves, sticks, and scribbles in the earth. It may look like nothing, but each was a mirror of runes and wards she had spent years building in the gardens of Memnet the Great, and she left a drop of blood on each one to endow it with magic.

You are a wizard, she told herself. Markal knows it, you know it. There’s no need for the master to confirm. You have power, you have knowledge.

And after telling herself this for the past hour, she nearly believed it, too. At all costs, she needed to avoid a crisis of confidence when it came time to face the enemy. She’d seen doubt overcome Markal at critical moments, and the effects were debilitating.

The marauders were drawing near, only a turn or two below her, and the sound of their approach carried up the hillside: horses huffing for air, hooves thumping against the dirt road, and the boots of marauders, on foot so the animals would be fresher for battle. The enemy was close enough she could have called out a challenge. And yet she still had a few moments remaining if she continued to work in silence.

Bronwyn had slowed her pace since Wolfram spotted the marauders from above, and she must have either sensed or seen the paladins in return and known the Blackshields were preparing for battle on the ridge. Dusk had arrived, and they’d have to fight in the dark, where the enemy would have an advantage. However, Bronwyn wouldn’t want to come charging the last miles and then fly into battle against the paladins, who’d been resting and preparing.

There was another presence along with the marauders and their captain. Their new enemy, the one who’d despoiled the paladins’ supplies at Montlac. A whisper of magic rose from below and lingered in the air. He was imbuing Bronwyn and her forces with a dark power. Nathaliey redoubled her efforts, anxious to finish.

She heard Markal before she saw him. He stood behind her, watching while she traced one of her runes in the dirt, running over it again and again, chanting its associated incantation as she did so. When she finished, she rose with a groan, wiped her hands on the cloth at her belt, and put her hands on her lower back, which was stiff from stooping.

“There, that’s as good as I can manage for now.”

“It’s excellent work,” he said.

She looked him over. “You seem well rested.”

“I won’t be for long,” Markal said. “Our friend is approaching—do you sense him?”

“Yes. He’s fed power to the marauders and their horses, giving them strength.”

“He’s ahead of the rest now. On foot and alone. A hundred feet below us, just through the trees and around the bend.”

Nathaliey looked down the hillside. The road hooked around a granite outcrop with a stunted tree sprouting from a fissure like a gnarled hat, then passed over bare rock and disappeared into the trees. She didn’t see the sorcerer, couldn’t sense whether or not he was on foot, as Markal could, but he was there, all right. A malignant energy, very close now.

“Why is he alone?” she asked.

“Maybe the same reason we’re waiting here instead of taking shelter with the Blackshields. He wants to test us personally.”

Nathaliey gestured at her handiwork, which the entire company of marauders might have stumbled into without noticing, but which Toth’s acolyte would detect without trouble.

“He can test my work.”

“Your subplanto is weak,” Markal said. “See that twig? It’s out of alignment with the leaf and the longer stick.”

“The twig with the bent tip?”

“No, the one after that.”

Now she saw what he meant and winced. “Too late to fix it now. I bound it pretty hard.”

“The rest of it looks good, though. Some of it very good. You’ve got a good memory for these defenses, and you bound them well, considering the tools at hand and how little time you had to work.”

Nathaliey shrugged, pleased by the compliment, but mildly embarrassed at the same time. “I’ve done these things a million times in the garden, that’s all it means.”

“Study the incantations a million times and you’ll have them, too.” Markal’s gaze sharpened, and he stared down the path. “Here he comes.”

A man emerged from around the bend, wearing a gray cloak, but too slender and furtive for a marauder. Bony hands emerged from his sleeves, and he threw back his hood to show hollow, deep-set eyes, a gaunt face, and thin lips. His skin was pale, not as gray as a marauder’s, but sickly.

He approached until he stopped in front of the stumbling ward Markal had called out earlier, roughly ten paces short of the two companions. His eyes scanned her work, then he studied Nathaliey and Markal in turn.

“I have found a pair of worms from the wizard’s garden,” he said. His voice was oily, and made her skin crawl. “Put them in the sun, and they shrivel and die.”

“Better worms than filth from the bottom of the king’s boot,” Nathaliey replied. “Scraped off on a rock and washed away in the first good rain.”

“My name is Vashti, and I am an acolyte of the dark wizard. You don’t know the extent of my power, or you would be more circumspect in your insults.”

“Oh, an acolyte,” she said. “Excuse me for my disrespect. We are wizards of the Crimson Path—I suggest you turn around before you die.”

The dark acolyte pointed a bony finger at the stumbler. “Killed by the likes of this? Doubtful.”

Vashti mumbled a word. The stick snapped, the leaf blew away, and the twig flipped end over end. The ward dissolved like a pinch of salt dropped in a bucket of water.

Markal turned to Nathaliey with a casual, almost bored expression. “He passed the first test, so I suppose he has some modicum of power.”

The dark acolyte’s lip curled back. “I’ll sweep away all of your feeble magic, and then I’ll feed your souls to my ravagers.”

“Oh, so they’re yours?” Nathaliey said. “Did anyone tell Bronwyn?”

“Ravagers,” Markal said, still talking to Nathaliey. “Is that what they call the gray shambling corpses?”

“Go on, then,” Nathaliey told Vashti. “Enough boasting. Knock away my protective spells if you can.”

The man looked livid now. He began to speak under his breath in a harsh guttural tone that sounded like metal scraped against metal. His power rippled beneath his skin, and there was a lot of it. Too much. Markal was raising his power, too, and she sensed his readiness. If the dark acolyte swept away her wards and runes in a single blow, he would be ready to fight the man off so they could retreat in safety.

Dark magic poured out of the man’s hands and blasted the ground where she’d been working. A ward broke apart, and a rune—one she’d thought of as her best work—cracked like a splitting stone. Two others boiled off most of their strength as they responded to the threat. The others held, some untouched.

Vashti snarled a curse. He drew his hood and took a step back. Nathaliey looked at him, eager. Now was the time to strike, when he’d thrown off most of his magic and couldn’t raise his defenses. Markal grabbed her arm.

“No. Hold your strength.”

There was something hard in his voice, and she didn’t resist as he pulled her back. Vashti had seemed ready to break and run, but it was only as she peered closer that she recognized what Markal had already noted: the dark acolyte had shielded himself with protective spells of his own, expecting a counterattack. Bleeding herself now would only waste her power in the same way he’d wasted his.

“Hurry, now,” Markal said. “Bronwyn is coming around the bend.”

Vashti cursed at their back, but couldn’t pursue them or send magic chasing them through Nathaliey’s wards and runes.

“So much work, blown apart with a single spell,” Nathaliey said.

“It cost him dearly,” Markal said. “And most of your defenses held. Meanwhile, we have plenty of strength to summon magic.”

“That’s true,” she said, feeling better.

They were almost to the paladins when a shout drew her attention. She glanced over her shoulder to see the first of the mounted gray marauders arriving at her barricade. It was Bronwyn, and her voice rose above the general din, shouting at the dark acolyte to clear the way if he didn’t want to be impaled on her sword.

The Blackshields had also been busy, constructing a palisade of sharpened stakes stretching from the cliff edge up the hillside. A narrow opening in the center was wide enough for either a single horse or two people on foot, and paladins challenged Nathaliey and Markal as they approached.

Nathaliey recognized one of Wolfram’s lieutenants. “It’s only us, Sir Lucas.”

He wore a patch over one eye, and cocked the other at them, birdlike and suspicious as they pushed through the opening. A dozen more paladins waited on foot, ready with spears to skewer anyone trying to force their way in.

The suspicion faded from Lucas’s face. “Only making sure you aren’t marauders, hiding behind sorcery. Have they reached your magical . . . whatever it is?”

“You mean the runes and wards? Yes, they’re fighting against them now.”

“And how long will that hold them?”

“Twenty minutes, if we’re lucky,” she said. “With any luck, they’ll come through already tired and battle weary.”

“Good, let’s hope for maximum damage,” Lucas said. “We’ll make them pay a second time when they charge the palisade.”

“Only ten minutes to break the runes and wards,” Markal said. “And this little barricade won’t survive the first charge, either. Warn the captain, make sure he’s ready.”

Lucas sent a rider, and Nathaliey and Markal took position behind the palisade and stared through the gaps in the sharpened staves at the enemy pushing against her work down the hillside.

“How do you figure ten minutes?” Nathaliey asked, feeling a little indignant. “The sorcerer’s acolyte wasted most of his power in that first strike. The rest will have to hack their way through with brute force.”

“Vashti would have been better off attacking them one at a time,” Markal said. “But he’s collecting more magic. Listen.”

A man’s high-pitched shriek rose above the shouting and clamor from below. There was pain in his cry, agony even. The injured man didn’t sound like a marauder—did they even feel pain the same way as a fully living person? He had to be a prisoner, most likely a captive from the lowlands of Eriscoba.

“What are they doing, torturing him?” she asked.

“It’s where the dark acolyte gets his power.” Markal’s tone was grim. “The pain of his victims. The more that poor fellow suffers, the more Vashti has to throw against us.”

There was a crack, like the sound of a tree snapping in the wind, and a blast of magic washed up the hill. One of her wards had just exploded under attack.

“The sorcery can’t get them all,” she said stubbornly. “Not in ten minutes.”

“No, some of it will linger,” Markal said. “And I imagine it will cling to the marauders when they come, slowing their movements and sapping their strength. But these aren’t the gardens—they’re not even the stone circle. What you did is a gimmick, an annoyance.”

“So why didn’t you tell me to put them up here where I could build them into the palisade?”

“Wait a few minutes and you’ll see why.”

She would have pressed him, pointing out that she was supposedly a wizard, and he was speaking elliptically, as if he were her master and she his apprentice, but movement from behind drew her attention. Wolfram had mounted two dozen paladins at the top of a rise about a hundred feet behind the barricade, positioned to charge from higher ground. A cluster of riderless horses waited behind them, saddled and waiting for the paladins with spears and staves to fall back after the initial clash.

The sun had fallen, and only a red smear remained on the horizon to the west. Darkness enveloped the hills and mountains behind them, and the sky was blackening, with the first stars winking above the peaks. Aided by their cloaks, the marauders had better eyesight than the paladins, and to negate the advantage, Wolfram had lit bonfires around the hilltop. They’d better hope there weren’t any giants lurking about who would be drawn, curious, to investigate the fires.

Or griffins, for that matter, Nathaliey thought as the woman with the broken arm went from fire to fire, heaping in more fuel. The smoke and light would make a great beacon to swoop in for another attack, and that was all they needed, harassment from the sky while they were trying to hold off the marauders on the ground.

Another blast of magic came from down the hillside, and Nathaliey turned to see more of her traps snapping and exploding in flashes of light. A breeze blew against the palisade, forcing air between the staves, and it carried Vashti’s foul magic mingled with her own. She clenched her teeth at the waste of her efforts. It hadn’t cost her much, only time, and that was time she’d have otherwise spent idling nervously, waiting for the enemy, but seeing the enemy sweep it effortlessly aside left her feeling helpless.

Two mounted enemies broke through her barricade. The first was the villain with the missing hand, and the second was Bronwyn, who gestured with a massive sword held casually in one hand. It could only be Soultrup, though it wasn’t yet gleaming red.

“Already?” Nathaliey said with a groan.

“Like I told you,” Markal said. “It wasn’t twenty minutes.”

“It wasn’t even ten. More like five.”

“That’s good news, not bad,” Markal said. “If there’s one thing we can count on from the enemy, it’s impatience—each and every marauder who forces his way through is going to carry your magic with him.”

What was left of Nathaliey’s wards rebuffed the second wave of marauders, who tried to surge in after Bronwyn and her one-handed lieutenant, only to be driven back with their horses stomping and throwing their heads. Bronwyn shouted something, and Vashti attacked the runes again. More screaming from behind as someone tortured the captive to feed the dark acolyte’s power.

The marauders made another attempt. Two more broke through. Then another trio, and finally, the whole mass surged and broke down what was left of Nathaliey’s work. They came riding up the hillside, gaining speed as they approached the palisade.

“How will Vashti do it?” Markal murmured. “Fire, I should think. He’ll set it ablaze, force us back, and trust the marauders’ cloaks to keep them from harm.” He glanced at Nathaliey. “That’s why I didn’t have you protect the palisade itself. It’s not going to last long enough to matter.”

Nathaliey sensed a gathering strength from the acolyte. Power swelling, growing. And something carrying on the wind, an incantation, a twisted version of something she’d heard before. It wasn’t fire, it was . . .

“Get back!” she cried.

Her ears ached with sudden pressure, and her limbs felt heavy, as something seemed to compress the air. Nathaliey, Markal, Lucas, and the others staggered back from the sharpened staves, which suddenly bent as if under a tremendous weight and then snapped in a single, roaring explosion. Shards of wood shot in every direction. One went singing past Nathaliey’s ear, and another piece struck her leg with the force of a stone hurled from a sling. Two paladins went down, one with the sharpened edge of a stave through his throat, the other impaled through the leg. The first died instantly. The second cried out in pain as his companions dragged him back. Others struggled to free themselves from the wreckage.

The first of the marauders reached the palisade ruins and forced their horses through, over, and around the broken, shattered sticks. There was nobody to slow them; the dark acolyte had wiped out the defenses in a single blast.

Yet most of the initial defenders had survived the attack, thanks to Nathaliey’s timely warning, and they reached Wolfram’s massed cavalry and made for their horses. Nathaliey and Markal climbed the hillside behind them, where they could throw magic into the fight without coming under direct attack from enemy swords. She searched the marauders as they broke down the rest of the barricade, taking stock of their strength and watching how Bronwyn asserted herself at their head, shouting orders and jostling with her horse to get the others in line.

The marauders gathered into a wedge above the wreckage, while the dark acolyte took position below them between the two halves of the destroyed palisade. A naked man lay facedown on the road in front of him with his hands bound and bloody, barely struggling, and Vashti bent with a dagger and slit his throat. He tossed aside the dagger and held his arms up, his palms out. Shadow flowed into them from the gathering darkness.

The prisoner stopped moving, yet shadow continued to flow into Vashti’s hands. A pair of grievously injured paladins cried out from beneath the wreckage of the palisade, and Nathaliey realized with horror that the dark acolyte was feeding on their pain as they died.

Vashti’s cloak had emerged battered and faded after his struggles with the runes and wards. He’d seemed weaker, too, trembling and wobbling on his feet. But he seemed to strengthen as shadow flowed into him.

“The longer the battle rages, the stronger he’ll be,” she said. “We’re doomed.”

“We are wizards of the Order of the Crimson Path,” Markal said. “We are not doomed.”

Bronwyn took position in front of the marauders. She lifted Soultrup, and a red spurt of flame shot down the edge of the blade from hilt to tip. She waved it forward, letting out a hoarse shout, and the marauders surged up the hillside toward the waiting Blackshields.

Chapter Twenty-five

“The spell is desiccation,” Jethro said. “There are only six words, and three of them you should know from the runes on the bridge over Blossom Creek, the one that makes an unwanted guest think he’s dying of thirst in the desert. Do you know the one I’m talking about?”

Chantmer nodded. “I’ve worked on that rune several times—I know the words.”

“The other three you’ll recognize from various incantations. Put them together, and they form the desiccation spell. You understand what that does, right?”

“I do, and it’s perfect. Well done, Archivist.”

“Good,” Jethro said. “I don’t want you to say it all, not yet. Spoken together, they might draw the attention of our enemies, whether you’re bringing up your power or not.”

“Yes, I know all of this,” Chantmer said. “Will you give them to me?”

Narud stood to his right, holding the edge of their concealment spell against the crowds pushing through the night market. There were so many visitors now that they pressed in on them, and soon it would be too hard to hold the concealment in place, and it would slip.

Which of the two acolytes was working in front of them? If it was Zartosht, and they managed to kill him before he could counterattack, they’d land a critical blow against the enemy’s forces in the palace. He didn’t know how powerful Jasmeen was, but she might well be equal to or greater than her companion.

“Before I give you the words,” Jethro said, “remember that desiccation will only incapacitate the enemy, it won’t kill him. What is your follow-up spell?”

“Volans malleis.”

The archivist raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, I know,” Chantmer added irritably. “It’s hammers once again. But I know that spell, and know it well. Calling up desiccation is going to cost me—I might not be able to summon much else of use.”

“Actually, I was thinking that your hammers are a perfect choice in this situation.”

“Ah, yes, of course.” Chantmer nodded, mollified. “Once I throw the hammers, I’ll be spent, and forced to fall back. Give Narud whatever assistance he requires. I expect the second enemy to come running.”

“Are you ready? Listen the first time, say them silently, but not aloud. Ab eo excoquatur.”

Chantmer repeated them silently, or tried to. Such simple words, yet they were slippery and tried to escape his memory. “Again.”

Jethro spoke them again, and this time, Chantmer repeated the three words aloud. There was some fumbling, mostly due to nerves, but it wasn’t terrible; all three of the words he’d said before, although he couldn’t remember the context. Jethro offered some suggestions on pronunciation, then calmly repeated them himself. This time, when Chantmer spoke them, they sounded right to his ear, and the archivist nodded approvingly.

“Now give me the first three words,” Jethro said. “I understand that you know them, but I need to hear. If they come out wrong . . .”

Jethro didn’t need to explain further. Many a spell died through improper execution, and Chantmer needed this one to be right. Fortunately, Jethro seemed satisfied with his rendition. He waited a few seconds, then said the last of it one more time to make sure he hadn’t forgotten them already.

“Ready, Narud?”

“Yes, I’m ready. Bring glory to the Crimson Path, my friend.”

Chantmer flipped his hands over, closed his eyes, and felt for his power. It was rippling beneath the surface, a nearly full well of it, but he couldn’t draw it all. A small reserve must remain to let fly the hammers.

Chantmer said the whole incantation in his head first. Then, a deep breath, a reach for the power lying below the surface, and he spoke aloud. As the words emerged, he felt his blood flowing, and he sent the magic flowing toward the dark acolyte.

Narud moved toward the empty space as Chantmer cast his spell. People melted out of his way and left a clear path toward their enemy. Chantmer’s spell hit the enemy’s buffer and punctured it like a dagger through a wineskin. The enemy’s illusion burst and drained away, revealing the dark acolyte squatting on the ground with his robes drawn about him.

The dark acolyte gripped a black crow’s feather in one hand, the tip sharpened into a point, and a clear glass bottle in the other. He’d just dipped the quill into the bottle and was drawing the substance to trace his markings yet again. He was muttering, too—with the concealing spell punctured, his voice was clear enough to hear.

The dark acolyte was so intent on his work that he didn’t look up, even as Chantmer’s spell washed over him. There was no response, and his quill continued scratching. Chantmer blinked, fear rising in his belly that the incantation had failed.

And then the dark acolyte coughed. Once, twice, then a barking, wheezing fit. He threw back his hood and clawed at his throat. His tongue lolled like a dying dog’s, and he gasped for air. The quill fell, and the glass bottle dropped and broke. The man scooped dust from the paving stones and shoveled it desperately toward his mouth as if he were standing in a pool of water.

The water was an illusion, but the thirst wasn’t; the spell had sucked the moisture from his body, and he would be burning up like a man crossing the sandy wastelands.

“Hammers, Chantmer!” Jethro said.

Chantmer had already wiped dripping blood from his hands, and now he groped at his supply of power. He felt weak and wobbly, and if it had been a lesser-known incantation, he might not have had enough to manage, but this was volans malleis.

He reached deep, pulled hard, and his power came out even as he was speaking the words. A pair of spectral hammers materialized in front of him. They began to spin in the air in front of his face, growing brighter and stronger with every passing instant.

Meanwhile, the dark acolyte was recovering from the shock of the desiccation spell. He looked shaky, as if he were on the verge of dry heaving, but he’d clearly recognized what had happened to him. He looked around, spotted Chantmer, Narud, and Jethro, and snarled a curse, even as he lifted his own hands. Chantmer threw the hammers. They struck the enemy and threw him violently to the ground.

The man lay on his back with his forehead caved in and blood pooling from his mouth. His eyes stared blankly at the sky, and something oily slithered from his mouth and dissolved in the air—the man’s wight, escaping his corpse.

Chantmer’s triumph vanished when he got a good look at his opponent. It was neither Zartosht nor Jasmeen, but some unknown dark acolyte. The man’s hair was shot with alternating streaks of black, white, and gray, but he had a young, almost boyish face. Thin lips, a thick nose—not a handsome individual, that was for sure.

The fight had drawn attention, and men and women surrounded the dead body. Narud pushed through to Chantmer’s side and pulled him back. The crowd parted around them. A pair of Veyrian soldiers on patrol approached. One poked the corpse with his spear, while the other scanned the crowd with a sharp, searching gaze. Thank the Brothers for the concealing spell. It kept them hidden until they reached Jethro.

Chantmer suppressed a curse. “Who was that?”

“A new enemy,” Narud said. “But more importantly, are Jasmeen and Zartosht both still here?”

Chantmer wobbled, legs trembling. “I’m spent. We have to go back.”

“What about the second rune circle?” Jethro said.

“Damn the runes. We have to regroup and rethink this.”

The crowd parted in the direction of the other circle, and Jasmeen pushed through, throwing back the hood on her robe and letting her concealment slip. She grabbed the shoulder of a man standing over the dead acolyte’s body, and he screamed and fell, blood squirting from his ears. Power crackled along Jasmeen’s body as she absorbed the man’s pain.

Others cried out and tried to flee, until there was a near riot of people running in all directions. Someone knocked over one of the braziers cooking spits of lamb meat, and it collapsed in a cloud of sparks and flames. A woman stumbled or was pushed into burning coals, and the hem of her robe caught fire. More screams, and the panic spread.

The two Veyrian soldiers pushed along with the crowd, trying to separate fights breaking out over collapsed stalls and canopies. Jasmeen ignored them, ignored the panicking crowd, and stalked toward the companions from the Crimson Path, radiating fury.

“Stay clear,” Narud told Chantmer and Jethro. “I’ll deal with this.”

Another pair of Veyrian soldiers came pushing in from the rear, even as the panic continued to spread through the crowd. It was almost out of hand already.

One of them spotted Chantmer, one of the few not running or shouting. “You! What’s this about?”

Chantmer drew himself to his full height. “I’m the pasha’s vizier. That woman is a wizard, an enemy of the high king. One of the ones the pasha has been looking for.”

The soldiers took in the dark acolyte, and their eyes widened. Narud, as yet, had not dropped all of his concealment, even though Jasmeen was facing him now from twenty paces away, clearly seeing through his magic.

“Go!” Chantmer urged the soldiers. “I demand that you stop her.”

His ruse worked. The men stared, clearly seeing the death swirling like dark, oily shadows around the woman, but they lowered their spears and advanced on her warily. Jasmeen was so focused on Narud, who was now gathering his own power, that she didn’t see the soldiers until they broke into a charge.

Jasmeen turned toward them and brushed her hands in front of her from right to left. The smoking charcoal from the overturned brazier flamed to life, and she swept up the mass of fire and coals and hurled it at the soldiers. Each individual piece exploded as it struck, and the soldiers went down engulfed in flames and screaming.

Jasmeen had expelled her power to attack the soldiers, but her weakness wouldn’t last long. Already, she was drawing their pain, as well as taking from the others being trampled, struck, or burned in the chaos that had become the night market. Crowds heaved this way and that, trying to force their way into alleys that had been barricaded to keep out carts and other heavy traffic, then surging back across the square when they couldn’t break free. People, mostly children, fell beneath the trampling feet, and Chantmer felt Jasmeen drawing their pain. But not only her; there was someone else in the crowd doing the same. Another dark acolyte, coming toward them. It must be Zartosht.

Narud spoke his incantation and slapped his hands together. A collection of debris raised itself from across the square: the burned soldiers’ spears, baskets, the wheel of a cart, even abandoned shoes and bits of broken crockery. The mass of it lifted into the sky and came raining down on Jasmeen. The dark acolyte replied with a swift incantation, raising an invisible shield. Most of the debris bounced harmlessly away, but there was too much to deflect it all, and a butter churn struck her on the forehead and drove her to her knees.

Chantmer watched this display of Narud’s power, impressed and jealous at the same time. He had no idea what incantation his companion had called up, but it had been effective. What’s more, Narud still seemed to have power in him; Jethro was already feeding him another incantation by the time Chantmer pushed to their side.

“Save your strength,” Chantmer said. “Zartosht is coming, and you’ll need it.”

“I feel him, too,” Narud said. “But I need to kill the woman, first.”

“If you do that, we’ll have no way to fight Zartosht,” Chantmer said.

He looked back through the crowd, where the riot was still spreading. Veyrian soldiers poured into the square from one of the alleys, and they were jabbing people with spears and swords to move them out of the way. Panicky Syrmarrians pushed back, fighting with stones, broken bottles, and fists. A soldier went down, pummeled by an angry mob, and his comrades charged with lowered spears to clear them away. They reached their companions and kept surging, skewering anyone who was slow to get out of their way.

It was a horrific scene, and the enemy was putting it to use. Zartosht was collecting pain as he pushed through, and Jasmeen was at it again, too. The butter churn hadn’t knocked her down for long, and dark, swirling energy collected once more around her shoulders and head as she rose to her feet.

“Narud!” Chantmer said. “We can’t win this fight. By the Brothers, we have to flee. Use what you have left and get us out of here.”

Narud glanced at Jasmeen, who stared at him, grim-faced, with blood running down her forehead, and then looked to Jethro. “Help me.”

“Do you know the cleansing spell?” Jethro said. “It will clear people from your path.”

The uncertainty faded from Narud’s face. “Yes, I know that one.”

Jasmeen turned, hands waving about to gather coals and fire from an abandoned cook stall, and Chantmer braced himself. But before she could hurl fire at them, Narud spoke his incantation, and the crowds parted—rioters, the injured, and soldiers alike—and closed again behind them as they ran.

Chantmer had felt strong enough while standing, but now that he was on the move again, his legs trembled, and a bone-deep exhaustion overtook him. His head felt light, dizzy, and he thought he might pass out. His hands were still damp from blood, and he’d wiped off so much that his cloth was soaked, and his robes were so bloody it looked like he’d been stabbed. All of it had come from his pores and run down his arms, drawn out as he was weakening himself to cast the desiccation and flying hammer spells.

Narud pushed ahead, but Chantmer fell behind, and was nearly swallowed up by the crowds that reformed behind them. He called out for help, and what came out was feeble, an old man’s voice. Jethro turned and spotted him, and came back for him.

“Chantmer, watch out!”

“No, I’m fine. I just need a little help to—”

A hand seized his wrist from behind. It was Zartosht, who’d caught up with them. The dark acolyte gave him a malicious smile.

“Look at you, spent. Weak. Helpless.” His grip tightened, and pain flared in Chantmer’s wrist. “You should have taken my offer. Now you’re going to taste the power of my lord and king, and understand what a mistake you have made, even as you die.”

An incantation came to Chantmer’s lips, a spell to squirm free of Zartosht’s grasp. But there was no power left to draw, and the words came out sounding like a breeze ruffling dead leaves. Zartosht began to speak.

The words were of the old tongue, but twisted and broken. Harsh and guttural. His grip tightened, and then it was ice, a sharp, stabbing cold that spread to Chantmer’s wrist, and from there sent shards of freezing pain up his arm. Chantmer gasped and his knees buckled. Shadows wreathed Zartosht’s hand, and black tendrils crept up Chantmer’s arm, toward his shoulder.

Jethro appeared out of nowhere, slamming into Zartosht and breaking his grip. Warmth flooded into Chantmer’s arm, along with a thousand needlelike pinpricks as his hand came back to life. Jethro threw his arms around the dark acolyte, who cursed and struggled, but couldn’t break free.

Zartosht’s hand still looked like a glove of black shadow, and he seized Jethro’s right hand with a snarl. The shadows that he’d sent into Chantmer’s arm exploded into Jethro, who crumpled with a scream. Then Narud was there, an incantation on his lips, and Zartosht cast the archivist aside to face him.

A fist of air slammed into Zartosht and threw the dark acolyte backward, where he landed in a crowd of jostling, pushing Syrmarrians. Veyrian soldiers came in behind them, stabbing and spearing, seemingly bent on clearing the market in the most brutal way possible. Zartosht fought to get free of the mob, but they swept him along in their panic.

Chantmer and Narud hauled Jethro to his feet. The archivist cradled his injured arm, his face a mask of pain, and as Chantmer pulled him along, he saw that his hand had withered until it looked like a chicken claw plucked out of a fire. All of the shadowy, icy pain that Zartosht had been spreading up Chantmer’s arm had exploded into Jethro in an instant, and it was obvious the man would never use that hand again.

Enough of Narud’s clearing spell remained active that they were able to get clear of the soldiers, who served as an unwitting rearguard against Zartosht and Jasmeen. The dark acolytes were together now, but still struggling against the mob.

At last Chantmer, Narud, and Jethro reached the far side of the square and entered the alley. They fled toward the palace, leaving behind the bloody chaos of the Syrmarrian night market.

None of them spoke. There was no need. The result of their attack had been a disaster in every way possible.

Chapter Twenty-six

Wolfram hurled his spear into the mass of charging enemies, and then his sword was in hand without memory of having drawn it, and he urged his own horse forward. He clashed blades against a pig-faced marauder with the blackest, deadest eyes he’d ever seen. They traded several blows before the surging, chaotic battle separated them again. Wolfram joined another fight, and struck an enemy so hard that he knocked the man from the saddle.

He lifted his sword for a follow-up swing to finish the man off, but a marauder charged in from the opposite side, and it was all he could do to get his shield up before he was unhorsed himself. By the time he disengaged from that fight, the man on the ground had escaped. Two more skirmishes, neither conclusive, and then he finally had enough space around him to search for Bronwyn.

His sister was about fifteen feet away, Soultrup in hand. The red sword slashed and thrust, nearly a blur as she battered through a young paladin’s defenses. Her opponent’s sword dropped, and Bronwyn delivered a brutal strike across his breastplate, which sent him flying from the saddle. He got to his knees and tried to hoist up his shield as Bronwyn leaned in the saddle. Soultrup gleamed with fire as she swung.

Bronwyn’s blow caught the man across the shoulder blade and cleaved his armor. He fell without a sound and landed on his back. Something shimmered along the dying paladin’s neck and throat, a bluish wisp of light that seeped from his mouth and bled off toward the sword. Bronwyn threw her head back and seemed to wrestle briefly with the weapon before she renewed the fight.

By the Brothers. Soultrup had drunk the paladin’s soul. And then Bronwyn had struggled to reassert control. How tenuous was it? Would she weaken as the battle continued?

He didn’t have a chance to consider this further before a charging marauder forced him to fight for his life. Swords clashed, horses jostled, they pulled apart again, and Wolfram finally got a good look at his opponent.

It was the one-handed marauder, a survivor of the battle at the stone ring, and one of only three who’d escaped the conflagration at the ford by crossing the river clinging to the giant’s back.

“You took my hand,” the man said. “Now I’m going to take your head.”

The marauder had a reach as long as Sir Gregory’s, and power to his swing. For the next minute, Wolfram was in a fight for his life, before Marissa and Henry came to his aid, two marauders joined the enemy, and the clash devolved into a melee.

The marauders were fewer in number overall, but seemed fresher than Wolfram’s forces, and they began to force a wedge into the Blackshields. Another twenty feet and they’d have the two sides divided, which he had to prevent at all costs. Nothing but disaster would follow if he couldn’t hold formation.

The survivors from the failed palisade defense had retreated to their mounts, and Lucas had held them in place until they’d formed ranks, rather than throwing them piecemeal into the battle. This small, but organized force now slammed into the marauders just when it appeared that they’d break through. They held long enough for Wolfram to plug the gap with his own paladins.

Wolfram was still trying to get to his sister when another marauder forced him into battle. Fighting around two dead men and a fallen horse, Wolfram met his new enemy with a flurry of blows. He turned aside a counterattack, got over the top of the man’s defenses, and slashed his sword arm. The man recoiled from his injury, and Wolfram spotted an opening. He leaned from the saddle and thrust hard. The sword tip penetrated the marauder’s ribs just below his armpit. The enemy cried out and tried to squirm free, but Wolfram shoved the sword home.

The marauder slumped and fell, nearly dragging Wolfram out of the saddle before he could get his sword free. He turned in the saddle as a knot of marauders hurled themselves at him. There were four in all, including Bronwyn, the one-handed marauder, and two others. Two paladins rushed to block their path before they could overwhelm him.

Bronwyn swung the red sword, and it slammed into a paladin’s shield with a tremendous crack. Another marauder smashed the paladin hard across the skull, and he fell and was trampled underfoot. The second paladin retreated under heavy attack from the other two marauders. Wolfram cried out for help and tried to fight his way to help the man. No help was forthcoming, and suddenly he found himself facing Bronwyn and three other marauders alone.

A clap of thunder rent the air, simultaneous with a flash of light that illuminated the entire hillside. The ground heaved, his horse stumbled, and he nearly fell. Marauders and their mounts dropped all around him, including Bronwyn.

Markal stood above them on the hillside, his hands outstretched and dripping blood. Nathaliey was about ten paces behind him, facing the other direction, where she was pushing back against a shadow that rolled up the hillside and attempted to smother the light from Wolfram’s fires. A figure stood near the wreckage of the palisade, pushing shadow out of his hands in pulses that attacked Nathaliey’s defense.

Wolfram’s sister rose to her feet, Soultrup in hand. The other marauders struggled to free themselves from their injured horses. Gregory and Lucas closed in from the side to attack them before they could reach Bronwyn’s side. The two Blackshield lieutenants cut down one marauder and injured another, and forced Bronwyn to confront them.

Wolfram urged his horse to carry him closer to the fighting, but before he could get around the injured animals to join the fight, something grabbed Wolfram from behind. He turned, thinking it was marauders, but thick cords of shadow snaked around his waist and tightened.

His horse continued forward, but he didn’t. As the animal pressed on, the shadows dragged him from the saddle and slammed him to the ground, and even when he was down, continued to tighten. He struggled to catch his breath. The shadow was like a snake, and he was the mouse suffocating in its coils.

Markal shouted something. Shards of light flashed from the wizard and flew at Wolfram like glowing knives, where they struck the coils and sliced them in two, and soon nothing was left but tendrils of shadow, twitching as they dissolved. Wolfram regained his feet and collected his sword.

Bronwyn had unhorsed Gregory, and the paladin was fending her off with shield and sword. Lucas and two other paladins fought nearby, but had their hands full with other marauders and couldn’t reach his side. That left Wolfram and the young paladin who’d joined him just as Bronwyn and her companions began their charge. A marauder came in on a horse, and Wolfram attacked him desperately, anxious to fight past the man to reach Gregory’s side.

Gregory was both strong and skilled, and withstood Bronwyn’s initial thrust, then traded her blow for blow, using his reach and his shield for maximum effect. But she was too fast for him, too powerful, and shortly began to wear him down. The one-handed marauder fought his way clear and joined her in the attack, doubling Gregory’s danger.

Wolfram threw back his head. “Blackshields! To Gregory! Defend our own!”

Paladins came fighting in from every side. Gregory battled, shield held against the one-handed marauder while he clashed swords with his gray-faced former captain. Blood streamed from a cut in his temple, and he’d lost his sword tip. Bronwyn’s sword glowed a fierce, thirsty red. But he was somehow holding off her blows and keeping the one-handed marauder at bay at the same time, even as they drove him back. He only had to hold on for a few more seconds, and then Wolfram and others would come to his aid.

Gripping Soultrup with both hands, Bronwyn slammed it against Gregory’s sword, and his blade snapped at the hilt with a tremendous crack. A vicious return swing hacked his arm. As he stumbled, the one-handed marauder came in under Gregory’s shield, thrust his sword up under the paladin’s breastplate, and shoved it into the man’s belly. Gregory groaned in pain and slumped facedown as the marauder jerked his blade free with a jeering snarl.

Wolfram stepped over a dead marauder, slapped aside a weak attack from another, and found himself facing Bronwyn and her lieutenant, who turned toward him, grinning fiercely, blood dripping from their swords and Sir Gregory dead at their feet. Wolfram cried out in anger and pain and hurled himself into the fight.

#

Markal heard Captain Wolfram’s cry and turned from the dark acolyte to see Gregory slumped on the ground and the one-handed marauder standing over him with the dead paladin’s blood dripping off his blade. Bronwyn stood by his side, and the pair made a formidable sight, with more marauders joining them. Paladins came fighting toward the body of their fallen comrade.

Their faces were enraged or grim or determined in turn, but there was also exhaustion in all of them. The marauders, though fewer in number, looked fresher. Even the injured ones fought on with a tireless, unflagging energy that no mortal warrior could ever match, not even Sir Wolfram’s Blackshields. As the battle raged, the paladins’ initial advantages in numbers and positioning on the heights had decreased, and now one of their champions had fallen.

Bronwyn and her companion stepped over Gregory’s dead body and met Wolfram’s furious attack. The young paladin captain shouted a battle cry, and his face burned with righteous anger, but he stood alone, and his face showed the same exhaustion as the rest of his paladins. Bronwyn, in contrast, seemed stronger than ever as she struck back. Her sword burned with red fire.

But why? Why would she be getting stronger? She hadn’t grown stronger during the fight at the stone circle. It must be some fresh devilry. Markal looked behind him, to where Nathaliey was struggling to hold back the shadow Vashti pushed toward the battlefield. Sweat stood out on her forehead, and blood slicked her palms, but she was still fighting, still holding her own.

Vashti remained near the shattered palisade, and while shadows kept pouring from his hands, his arms were drooping, and it seemed that his strength was failing. A few more seconds and he’d be spent and Nathaliey could throw her remaining strength into the fray. But if it wasn’t Vashti who was strengthening Bronwyn, it must be someone else.

Markal closed his eyes and felt. Groped across the hillside, down the road, and . . . there! A second wave of sorcery, masked by Vashti’s shadow attack. A second dark acolyte. How had Markal missed him before?

The second enemy sent a slender tendril that hid itself among the gloom, the smoke, and the noxious odors of battle, and Markal felt along it as it climbed the hill. It hid itself among the first dark acolyte’s magic until it reached the battlefield, and then divided into numerous separate strands, each feeding a different marauder. The largest thread entered Bronwyn, who was ruthlessly pressing the attack against her brother. Wolfram had allies now, three other paladins who had entered the fight, but so did Bronwyn, and her side was gaining the upper hand.

The black tendril pulsed in Bronwyn’s chest, and every time it throbbed, she seemed to grow stronger, and as she did, the red fire spread along the blade of her sword.

Markal’s eyes remained closed, and he sensed all of this with his spiritual eyes, rather than visually. He felt along the tendril as it entered Bronwyn’s chest, and there he caught a glimpse of the true horror. Bronwyn’s soul. It was inside, a writhing, terrified, anguished mass, and trapped. Trying to escape, but unable to do so.

By the Brothers, by the blood of the Crimson Path. By the Harvester himself. Bronwyn had died that day in the camp on King Toth’s highway, slaughtered by Veyrian soldiers after Soultrup threw itself from her hands. And then, her soul departing, Toth himself had enslaved her soul, bound it to her body, and raised her to lead his marauders. And now, with Soultrup in hand, she had become the dark wizard’s champion. If Markal didn’t do something, Bronwyn would kill her brother and destroy the paladins she had once led, all while her soul cried out in horror.

“I have you now,” Nathaliey said through clenched teeth. Markal opened his eyes to see his companion still fighting Vashti. His shadowy attack was finally dissolving. “I’m going to break your bones and send your miserable soul to the Harvester.”

She placed her hands palm down, and power welled up within her. Markal’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.

“No, not yet. Look!”

Markal was too weakened by the fight to do it himself; he need Nathaliey to see and understand.

“What?” she said. “Look where?”

He corrected himself. “Not look, feel. There’s a second enemy. Another dark acolyte, and he’s feeding his power to the marauders.”

Nathaliey was quicker about it than he had been, and she drew her breath in with a sharp gasp. “How did we miss him?”

“I don’t know, but if we don’t do something, they’re going to win. Wolfram and the rest will die. And then they will become gray marauders, too.”

“Markal, I can’t. He’s too strong—I don’t have enough power left.”

“You don’t have to cut it. Cast the imbue spell.”

“What? Like in the gardens? But they’re not wights, they’re . . . oh, they are.”

“I’ll give you the incan—”

“I know the words.”

Nathaliey closed her eyes and brought her power to the surface.

Markal cast a desperate glance up the hillside. One of Wolfram’s companions fell. Another withdrew with a deep cut across his sword arm. The third paladin was contending with two marauders while reinforcements tried to join both sides. The one-handed marauder turned to face Marissa, who fought her way forward in a desperate attempt to reach her captain’s side.

And suddenly, Bronwyn and Wolfram were alone. The captain of the marauders and the captain of the paladins. One dead, one living. Sister and brother. She brought Soultrup around from her shoulder, and it slammed into his shield, driving him back.

Nathaliey spoke the words in the old tongue: Imbue these weapons with power, and take the spirits of the dead to render them frail.

Her magic descended upon the battlefield. Sword tips gleamed with gold fire, and paladins straightened, stiffened with renewed strength.

#

Wolfram let his battered shield fall to the ground. His arm throbbed with pain. He lifted his sword as Bronwyn came at him in a huge, sweeping attack. The bonfires were losing their strength, and his sister was a shadowy, relentless form coming at him in the gloom. And it wasn’t only her; the marauders all seemed to be growing stronger with every passing moment.

Gregory’s body lay at Wolfram’s feet, facedown in the churned-up grass, slick with the man’s blood. Others lay dead all around: paladins, marauders, horses. He turned aside one blow, then another. The third time, Soultrup got past his defenses and struck him a glancing strike across the ribs. He lifted his sword as she came after him again. This was it, this was the end.

A sudden, unexpected surge of strength flowed through his limbs. He straightened, then ducked away from Bronwyn’s sword, which whooshed past his neck, so close that if he’d moved an instant later it would have cut his head from his shoulders. He lifted his sword to parry another blow, and that’s when he saw the gold fire gleaming on the edge of his blade.

His sword met Bronwyn’s, and red and gold fire clashed and sparked. In the reflection, he saw fear and hate in her eyes. And torment. Was it possible she was still down there somewhere? She seemed to be both his sister and something else, something dark and monstrous. As if someone had captured Bronwyn’s proud nature and twisted it into an image of itself, a face staring back from a black pool of ink.

“Sister,” he said between clenched teeth. “Where are you? What have they done to you?”

“You must die,” she said. “Must . . . die.”

Bronwyn swung again, and he parried. Gold and red fire twisted where the swords clashed.

Wolfram didn’t know if he was feeling magic from Markal and Nathaliey, or the pure, distilled emotion of battle, but he was no longer scared. And as he came back around with a swing of his own, he was surprised to find that he could push the attack in turn. Soultrup met him blow for blow, but he was no longer merely in a defensive posture, awaiting the inevitable killing stroke.

Even so, he made little progress, could not get through. And Bronwyn was recovering her balance and confidence. She came up under one of his strokes and caught him on the ribs. The breastplate stopped it from cutting through, but the blow left him staggering, his sword momentarily out of position, and Soultrup came around again, this time at his neck. Another sword blocked it with a terrific clash of steel.

“Captain!”

Marissa had reached his side. Lucas was to her left, holding off Bronwyn’s one-handed lieutenant, and two more paladins were fighting their way over dying enemies.

Marissa blocked another of Bronwyn’s blows, and Wolfram took advantage of the distraction to launch an attack. His first stroke landed a hard blow against his sister’s shoulder. She came around with a snarl, a crazed light in her eyes. Soultrup swept aside Marissa’s sword, smashed her shield, and threw her back into the fight with Lucas, the one-handed marauder, and the rest. Alone once more, the strength fading from his limbs, Wolfram tried to land another blow, but Bronwyn turned it aside easily.

Still too strong. Still too damn strong. He couldn’t stop her.

“Bronwyn!” he cried. “For the love of all that is holy!”

She stepped back, took a deep, ragged breath, and opened her hand as if to let Soultrup fall, but it stuck to her palm as if nailed there. A visible shudder worked through her, and her fingers began to tighten around it again. Wolfram could only stare in horror.

“No!” she cried, and violently shook her arm.

Soultrup fell away. Bronwyn screamed and clenched her wrist as if it were broken, even as she fell to her knees with her back to Wolfram. The red sword—the blasted, cursed ugly sword—was moving, was crawling somehow across the ground toward her, and whatever had caused her to throw it down was gone, and she reached for it as it approached. Her fingers touched the hilt.

Now! He must stop her before she got it again.

Wolfram lifted his sword behind his shoulders and sprang forward. Bronwyn looked up and back at him. Her eyes were clear—briefly, horrifically clear. There she was again, his sister. His beloved sister, alive and free inside.

Bronwyn had Soultrup, and her arm muscles strained as if fighting against her, but she didn’t lift the sword as he brought his own weapon around to strike.

“Wolfie.” Her voice was strangled. “My broth—”

She never finished. The sword caught her across the neck and she went down.

And then Wolfram was caught up in a final, terrific struggle of marauders and paladins. Swords everywhere, a struggle to keep from being stabbed, hacked, chopped. The enemy was breaking free, fleeing, and some foul wind gathered about them, stirred the fires, dampened them to throw darkness across the battlefield. All was chaos, and most of the surviving enemy slipped away in the confusion. Slowly, gradually, his eyesight cleared.

Bronwyn was there, dead. And by his own hand. Wolfram’s heart felt torn from his body, and he looked away.

His gaze fell on Gregory, on young Henry, lying nearby. Other companions, also dead. Wolfram swallowed hard, fighting down his emotions. Now was not the time to break down. Later, yes, he would allow himself to feel it, but there was too much to do now.

More than a dozen paladins had died, together with two-thirds of the marauders who’d charged up the hillside into the fight. Horses, too. Caught up in the battles of men, and cut down just as ruthlessly.

Markal and Nathaliey came to offer aid to the wounded, and Wolfram told Marissa to organize the paladins for another defense, in case the marauders were simply regrouping.

He went back to Bronwyn’s body to collect the red sword. But it was gone, carried away by the enemy. Soultrup had vanished once again.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chantmer stumbled through the palace gates, dead-on-his-feet exhausted. Narud lurched after him, with Jethro behind, bent in agony as he cradled his withered hand. Their concealing spells were drooping, and a Veyrian soldier challenged them and gave chase with a spear when they didn’t answer. He soon had them trapped in a dead-end courtyard.

If the palace hadn’t been half-emptied of guards from the riots and fires in the night market, maybe they’d have been caught, but when the three companions shrank against the pillars of the arcade, just enough of the concealing spell remained. The guard retreated to search elsewhere, and Chantmer, Narud, and Jethro made their escape.

Soon, they were entering the catacombs that led to the archivists’ quarters and the library. The corridor was tomb-quiet, and a strange aroma hung in the air.

Narud stiffened. “Something is wrong.”

Jethro lifted his head and looked about, pale and frightened. “There was an attack,” he whispered.

It was true. Wards had blown apart, runes lay broken. Two traps in the floor had been triggered. A column that had once supported three different protective spells, two of them lethal, had a crack down the middle, and the carvings in the stone seemed to have eroded completely away. Someone had come here and challenged the strongest defenses of the library.

The destruction only grew worse as they continued down the corridor. It had been a sustained attack, and Chantmer’s heart was thundering as he approached the library, terrified of what he would find.

“It was a trick all along,” he said. “There was nothing in the night market—they only meant to draw us out.”

“No,” Jethro said. “There was something.”

Yet his foreboding grew as he saw the library door, and beyond that, the archivists’ quarters, and he knew what he would find. Karla, Erasmus, and the others dead. The books stolen or despoiled. He reached a hand for the brass door handle of the library, afraid to touch it.

“Open it, Chantmer,” Narud said. “We have to know.”

Chantmer’s hand closed around the handle, and a whispered challenge came to his mind.

Who are you? Are you friend or foe?

The challenge came from the door, and he let out a deep breath. The final wards were intact. Inside, beneath the ribbed arches of the library, was confirmation. A shimmer of protective magic hung in the air, on the floor, on the stone ceiling, in the flagstones. The enemy had broken to the very door of the library, but no further.

“Hello?” he called.

At the sound of Chantmer’s voice, the other four archivists poured out of the Vault of Secrets, their faces tense and afraid. Karla spotted Jethro clenching his ruined hand, and hurried to his side, but the old archivist pushed her away. “Get me the Abyss Codex,” he said. “Black spine, red letters. Shelved near the compendiums.”

As Karla hurried off to obey, Chantmer asked what had happened. The news was alarming. A magical attack had hit the corridor about an hour earlier, and the archivists had taken refuge as it smashed their defenses. Nobody had spotted the sorcerer behind the attack.

“This goes beyond the dark acolytes,” Chantmer said. “We’ve seen their work—they couldn’t have broken through so many defenses so quickly.”

Narud frowned. “You think it was . . .?”

“It must have been.”

“Thank the Brothers the library held.”

“Yes, but for how long?” Chantmer let out his breath. “Our defenses are fatally weakened. Years of work smashed, and Toth will regain his strength long before we can rebuild.”

Karla returned with a massive tome, and one of the other archivists swept aside papers and moved candles so she could put it down. Jethro, cradling his destroyed hand against his body, used the other to flip open the book and turn pages. The archivists read subsection titles and scattered words as all five worked to piece out their place in the book and find what Jethro was searching for.

Chantmer looked back to Narud. “This place is no longer safe.”

“And what do you propose? Flee? Leave the books?” Narud shook his head. “This is precious knowledge, ancient and irreplaceable. We can’t abandon it to the enemy.”

“We’re irreplaceable, too.”

“No, Chantmer, we’re not.”

“Fine, then,” he said, fighting frustration and fear. “Surely you accept that losing us and the books would be worse than losing the books alone.”

“Quiet, both of you,” Jethro snapped. “This takes a great deal of concentration, as you both well know.”

Chantmer drew Narud further into the library until they reached the Vault of Secrets. Books hung around them, thick and hoary, carrying their own deep magic. The scrolls, whispering, the clay tablets, reaching out to him. If Chantmer listened, he could almost hear the words in the old tongue, sense the hands that had written them. Narud was right—they could not be surrendered to the sorcerer and his dark acolytes.

“We don’t know for sure that Toth will be back,” Narud said. “The library fought him off. Our defenses bent, but they did not break.”

“For now. This was no subterfuge like Zartosht managed, stealing a few pages. This was a brute attempt.”

“But maybe he doesn’t know the result,” Narud said. “Only knows that he failed. He doesn’t know how much of the external defenses are left, let alone how strong we are in the libraries. And then there are the vaults themselves. The innermost sanctuary—it will resist to the end.”

“I found it,” Jethro announced.

Chantmer and Narud returned to the copying table. Jethro pointed to a page of the open book with his good hand while Karla wrapped the other in gauze, and another archivist whispered an incantation to ease his pain. There was no spell that would restore the hand.

“That is what they were doing in the market,” Jethro said.

The page showed various runes and symbols, together with words that looked solid enough until Chantmer tried to read them, and then they shimmered and twisted, carrying away their meaning. He bit down on his lip to force his concentration.

“Is that a . . . am I looking at a salamander?”

“Yes, I believe so,” Jethro said.

“What kind? Mud, oil, ice?”

The archivist traced one of the words with his ink-stained index finger. “Fire, my friend. It’s what they were writing on the stones. An incantation to draw fire salamanders.”

Chantmer’s stomach felt cold, his mouth as dry as a strip of parchment abandoned in the desert.

The master had always said that no fire could touch the library, no open candle flame or lamp harm it. But what he meant, Chantmer understood, was that no earthly fire could touch it. What about something from below the earth? A creature of molten rock?

Three dark acolytes: Jasmeen, Zartosht, and the one Chantmer killed with his spectral hammers. They’d been making marks in the night market, raising old runes while opening a gateway into the earth, down to the fiery depths where such creatures lived. And they were calling them up to Syrmarria. Meanwhile, the enemy had battered down most of the library’s defenses. There would be little to stop the beasts when they burned their way into the library.

#

Early the next morning, when the gray of dawn stained the eastern horizon, Jethro approached Chantmer and Narud in the highest palace gardens. Night flowers gave off their heavy, perfumed scent, and bats were still scooting about overhead.

Chantmer and Narud had maintained vigil here all night, searching the palace with their seekers. They had spotted enemies on the move—the dark acolytes, most likely, but perhaps Toth himself—and Chantmer had braced for discovery and attack. He was almost surprised to discover that they had survived the night.

Jethro’s right hand was bandaged and held in a sling. He was pale, but walking steadily.

“How do you feel?” Narud asked.

“Better. The archivists have cast spells, and Karla mixed me a soporific to deaden the sensation. It’s a shame I didn’t put the pain to some sort of magical use. A real wizard could draw a lot of power from a withered hand.”

“There’s a small chance you could regrow it,” Chantmer said.

“Such a thing could be done,” Narud said.

“But not, I’m afraid, by me,” Jethro said. “My hand is gone—I accept that. I am only grateful that it wasn’t my copying hand. An archivist who can’t write is not much use to the order.” He looked them over. “Have we weathered the attack?

Chantmer cast a glance over the darkened palace and down to the city. Smoke still rose from the direction of the night market, and he wondered how many dozens had lost their lives in the riots. But it hadn’t spread, thankfully. The city remained standing.

“I believe so,” he said. “For a few days, anyway.”

“Are we sure?” Jethro asked.

“Toth is a powerful sorcerer, but he is no god. We’ve seen him twice on the full attack now. First in the gardens, and now here. He didn’t have the strength to finish in either case.”

“So what do we do?” Narud asked.

Chantmer took a deep breath, proud that they looked to him for guidance, but feeling the weight of responsibility at the same time. Let the Brothers guide him, let his decision be a wise one.

“It will take Toth himself to summon the salamanders,” he said. “The runes themselves won’t be enough to draw them from the depths and force them to obey his will. And since he spent his magic attacking the library, we have time.”

“Time to do what?” Jethro said.

“The library has weaknesses that the gardens do not. First, we are in enemy territory. There are dark acolytes, Veyrian soldiers, the pasha’s cunning mind, and the sorcerer himself.

“Second, our gardens have had time to recover since the battle. The defenses there are weakened, too. The walled garden is a desolation, and the Golden Pavilion suffered massive damage. But the order has been rebuilding as fast as they can.”

“And then there is the master,” Narud said.

“Yes, and Memnet himself,” Chantmer agreed. “If the gardens and the library are our fortresses, Memnet the Great is our army. The greater part of it, anyway.”

“Are you saying the books will be safer in the gardens than here?” Narud asked. “That we should move them?”

“Safer in the gardens, maybe,” Jethro said. “But getting them there is another matter. You can’t just load up a few carts and haul them off. Hide them all you want, put as many concealing spells as you can manage, the enemy is watching for us. We’d never make it out of the palace, let alone cross half of Aristonia carrying all those books.”

“Of course we’re not strong enough to do it alone,” Chantmer said. “I never thought we were—I’m not so arrogant as all of that.”

“Good,” Jethro said, “because you had me wondering.”

Chantmer suppressed a scowl. “I’m going back to the gardens. Maybe Markal and Nathaliey will be back from the barbarian lands. No, we need the master himself to come.”

“The master is needed in the gardens,” Narud said.

“We must save the library,” Chantmer insisted. “And that means bringing him here.”

“But if the enemy attacks the gardens while he is away—”

“I know, Narud. By the Brothers, I know. But you said it yourself. We are replaceable. These tomes are not.”

Narud hesitated a long moment, then gave a curt nod. “Very well.”

But first Chantmer had to reach the gardens, a small matter of escaping the palace, escaping Syrmarria, and taking the road across Aristonia with enemies on his heels. He wasn’t the only one with seekers; once he got away from the protection of the palace, the dark acolytes would surely attack him on the road. Toth himself might even join the hunt.

“I’ll go with you,” Narud said, apparently coming to the same conclusion. “We’ll make another run for it. One of us to speed our passage, the other to hide it. And it must be done now, before the enemy regains his strength. Before he activates the runes in the night market.”

Chantmer felt cold. “I see no alternative.”

“And I’ll hold the library,” Jethro said.

Chantmer eyed him doubtfully. Jethro’s magic was slight; all five of the archivists together couldn’t raise enough power to match a single dark acolyte. They would have to rely on cunning and the greatly diminished powers of the library itself.

Jethro must have seen the doubt on Chantmer’s face. His expression hardened.

“We’ll give our lives to save those books, Chantmer. By the Brothers and by the Crimson Path, I swear it.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Wolfram wrapped his sister’s throat in linen before they carried her to the funeral pyre to join the other bodies. With the ghastly wound covered and the gray faded from her skin, he could almost convince himself that she was sleeping.

Two more dead marauders were also former paladins, missing since a battle last fall, when they’d been presumed slain. Wolfram added the pair to the pyre, making eighteen bodies in all. He ordered it set ablaze. The paladins stood in solemn silence as the flames licked upward.

Wolfram ached all over; he was hungry and exhausted. All of this faded when the fire reached Bronwyn’s body, and grief overwhelmed him. It wasn’t just Bronwyn’s death, but Gregory and all the others who had followed him, suffered, and struggled by his side.

Markal came up beside him, looking pale and drawn from his work. He glanced at the spreading flames, then stared into the darkness toward the vast Eriscoban plains, no doubt wondering how many enemies below had spotted the funeral pyre.

“How are the wounded?” Wolfram asked.

“They’ll recover,” Markal said, “but not all of them are in condition to take to the road. You’ve got wounded horses, too, and will be short several mounts.”

“I have thirty-one paladins, by my reckoning, counting the wounded. Not enough to pursue the enemy, regardless of injuries and loss of horses.”

“Nathaliey sent a seeker. The marauders are fleeing with the sword. It’s in the hands of that one-armed brute, who seems to have taken command since your sister fell. We think he’s trying to meet up with the Veyrian army.”

“We’ll go back for our supplies, paladins, and extra horses. They should be in Montlac by now.”

“And then what?” Markal asked.

“Then we find the other paladins, raise an army of footmen and knights if we can, and make war. We have to dislodge the enemy from Estmor and force them back through the mountains.”

Even as it came out of Wolfram’s mouth, it sounded like a desperate plan.

Markal reached into his shirt and pulled out the moon pendant. He removed the chain from around his neck and held it out. “Here, this is yours.”

Wolfram didn’t take it. “Aren’t you coming with us, Markal? You won’t abandon us to the sorcerer’s army, will you?”

“I’m not abandoning the fight, but my place is in the gardens. There’s power in our order, an army’s worth of it.”

“But Markal—”

“Once Memnet understands, once he sees that Toth can raise his own paladins from the dead—”

Wolfram’s face flushed. “They’re not paladins.”

“Gray marauders, ravagers, whatever you want to call them—he’ll know we have to join your war. We’re not going to hide, we’re going to attack his road and cut supplies. That’s more useful than anything I can do by your side.”

“What about the castles in the mountains? You’re a wizard—you can shake their foundations, blast the enemy from the walls.”

“Is that what you think? Maybe the master can do those things. I can’t. Here, take the pendant. It will tell me you’re alive and how to find you.” Markal raised an eyebrow. “Well, assuming you don’t go over to the other side, then it seems to get confused.”

Wolfram couldn’t help but look at the pyre, where flames leaped ever higher, engulfing the dead. Paladins threw in more wood to feed the flames. Sir Marissa led a prayer to the Harvester to gather their souls.

“Then you will be back?” he asked.

Markal pressed the pendant into Wolfram’s hand. “That’s my promise to you. Wear this. Raise an army and take the war to the king’s highway. I’ll come through the passes from the other side. With allies, if I can. Alone, if I can’t.”

Wolfram slipped the chain over his neck and let the cool silver pendant fall against his skin. A whisper of confidence entered him. A hint of courage, some strength to his bone-weary limbs. Even the hunger faded.

He put a hand on Markal’s shoulder, and the wizard looked back with those young-old eyes, a warm smile on his lips.

“So this is goodbye?” Wolfram asked.

“For now, yes.”

“In that case, travel quickly and safely. And get back as soon as you can.”

“By the Brothers, that’s a promise.”

#

Markal and Nathaliey were quiet as they left the Blackshield encampment at dawn to begin the long climb into the mountains. They were retracing their journey on foot, and Markal felt tired just thinking about all the miles to cover.

The silence grew between them over the next hour, until he sensed that something was bothering Nathaliey beyond what battle, hunger, and exhaustion could explain.

“So, you’re a wizard now,” he said. “How does it feel?”

“If this is what it feels like, all I can say is that it’s deflating.”

“We won the battle.”

“It doesn’t feel that way. Not with Soultrup still in the enemy’s hands.”

“And Bronwyn’s death—her second one, that is,” he added. “It was just as ugly as the first time. Wolfram was . . . well, he’s a strong man. He’ll pull through. But it was brutal to watch.”

“The moon pendant should help him,” she said. “How are you feeling now that you’ve coughed it up?”

“Not confident.” He sighed. “But it was only a moderate help to begin with, hardly a cure for my doubts. A trick, a small boost, but nothing to replace all the study and natural ability that makes a wizard a wizard.”

“Markal, if I could give you half of Chantmer’s swagger, you’d both be better off. No, make that a third. At half, you’d be insufferable.”

He laughed, and expected her to speak out on what was bugging her, but she fell quiet again. They continued as the road bent into ravines and climbed them again, working gradually higher. A pair of riders overtook them from below—paladins Wolfram was sending back to Montlac to make contact with the rest of the Blackshields, and the two sides hailed each other.

“I’ll be honest,” Nathaliey said when the riders were past. “I like it when Wolfram and the rest call me a wizard. I like it when you call me that, too, even though I know you’re being ironic.”

“I’m not being ironic. Well, it’s the same irony as when I call myself a wizard. We both have our limitations. So what? We look like wizards to the paladins, and we defeated Vashti and his friend.”

“Once I’m back in the gardens, I’ll be an apprentice again. I’m not looking forward to that.”

“What makes you think that will happen?”

“Markal, please. You and I both know it was temporary.”

“I’ll talk to the master, explain everything you did. You have more power than I do, and nearly as much knowledge. Not one of those paladins would have picked me out as the wizard and you as the apprentice.”

“Except for the fact that you were leading, and I was following.”

“Narud is even quieter than you are, even more likely to step back and let others make the decisions. He’s a wizard already, so why can’t you be one, too?”

“Markal,” she said, her voice much sharper this time. “You know that has nothing to do with anything. I’m not Narud, and I’m not you. I’m younger than either of you, for one.”

“Age is irrelevant. I shouldn’t have to explain that to you.”

“It’s a simple question of years spent in study. If the master says I haven’t put in the time, then that’s all there is to it.”

Now he was the one who fell silent. There was a chance she was right, that Memnet would smile at Markal’s declaration that Nathaliey was a wizard, continue to call her an apprentice, and wait for some arbitrary period of time before declaring her ready for that honor. That might be two weeks, or it might be two decades.

“You’re still a wizard as far as the Blackshields are concerned,” he said at last. “Do you want to stay with Captain Wolfram and his paladins?”

“We have to carry word to the gardens. The master needs to know that the enemy has the sword, how they create new marauders, and that we’ve made an alliance with the barbarians.”

“It only takes one mouth to pass the news.”

“And the master needs all the strength he can get,” she said.

“So does Wolfram. Maybe he needs it more. You saw how effective the dark acolytes were at the back of a company of marauders. You could give the Blackshields that same advantage.”

Nathaliey hesitated, and he knew then that she’d been thinking of this all along. “Do you want me to go back?”

“Do I want to travel the next three weeks alone instead of with my friend?” he asked. “With my only friend, you understand. That’s what you’re asking me. Of course I don’t want you to leave me.”

She squeezed his hand and gave him a pained smile. “I’m scared for you. I’m scared for me, too.”

“Then you are going back to Wolfram?”

“Yes. I’m going back, Markal. Thank you. Explain it to the master, and don’t make it sound like I was too proud to face him. I don’t want to be like Chantmer. Make it sound . . . well, you know.”

“I know. Take care.”

“You, too, my friend.”

Nathaliey left him then, returning the way they’d been walking since dawn. He stood in the road, watching, until she reached a stretch of woods below. She turned, gave him a final raised eyebrow and a tip of the head, then disappeared into the trees.

Markal sighed and eyed the brightening mountain peaks ahead of him. Aching feet and fresh blisters awaited. It would be a long, long slog through the mountains, down the foothills, and across the drought-choked plains to reach Aristonia and home.

The nearest food was miles away, in Montlac, and what he did get from the paladins would at best dull the edge of his hunger, not leave him satisfied. Any other provisions he’d have to forage himself. Meanwhile, there were griffins, giants, and possibly more marauders on the road ahead.

But Markal was a wizard of the Order of the Crimson Path. He could manage.

-end book #2-

Book Three: The Emerald Crown

Chapter One

Chantmer was two miles east of the bridge over Blossom Creek when he first detected sorcery on the road. It was a dank odor that wafted through the air as the small company of wizards, apprentices, and acolytes entered a copse of trees. When they emerged from the other side, Chantmer glanced at the master, whose eyes were narrowed in suspicion. Memnet’s hands had disappeared into his sleeves, where he kept the glass orb that stored his power.

Narud, one of the other companions, glanced behind them and sniffed, almost animal-like, at the air. They had two acolytes with them to help move the library—Alyssa and Stephan—and even they seemed to note that something had changed, that some danger had found them. It was still early in the day, though, and their power was untapped. Between the five companions, it would take Toth himself to challenge them, so they continued on without comment.

They entered the village of Calianne. The master had cast a small concealer about the group before leaving the gardens, and so none of the villagers seemed to notice the travelers among them on the road. They passed boys with sheep, a man carting cabbages from a field, a blacksmith shop. Just beyond the smith, a farrier worked trimming a draft horse’s hooves and shoeing them.

Water gurgled through a millrace on the far end of the village, with the big, moss-covered wheel making lazy turns in the current. The sun was bright, and farmers lined up with wagons of wheat for milling, chatting and gesturing as they waited. A woman sold them cheese and bread. The whole village presented a cheerful, busy scene, deceptively normal with the capital of Aristonia occupied by Veyrian troops and the high king making war against the barbarians, burning the Sacred Forest, and attacking the order of wizards that had protected the khalifate for decades.

A stream marked the eastern edge of the village, and Chantmer had just stepped onto the wooden footbridge crossing it when he felt something stretched between the pillars sunk into the streambed. A cobweb of sorcery, invisible to the eye, but a dank, sticky spot to his magical senses.

Chantmer turned. “Master?”

“I feel it, too.”

Memnet the Great stepped ahead of the others and extended a hand. After a moment, he fell back a pace and stroked his honey-colored beard. The master looked younger since he’d emerged from the garden soil, as if the ground had been a second womb, but at the same time, he was still moving slowly, deliberately, an old man in a young man’s body. That impression of aching bones was fading, day by day—Chantmer had spent a few weeks in Syrmarria and noted a definite improvement when he and Narud returned to fetch help for the library—but it left him wondering just how much power the master had regained. So far, there was little evidence that he’d recovered his full might.

Memnet turned to Chantmer. “You discovered it, so you tell me what this does.”

Chantmer felt at the thing with his mind. The weblike sorcery had power in it, and wasn’t merely a ward to alert an enemy of their passing, but neither did it seem to carry a destructive attack.

“It’s a trigger for something else,” he decided at last. “Beyond that . . .?” Chantmer shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“A good start. Anyone else?”

The acolytes leaned in, brows furrowed in concentration. They still looked confused after several long moments.

“I can’t even feel it,” Alyssa confessed.

Chantmer raised an eyebrow. It was obvious; how could one not feel it? But he supposed that was why they were acolytes, and no longer apprentices. Narud studied it longer.

“It will weaken us for a later fight,” he said. “Like a corrosive potion poured over armor.”

Chantmer scowled, thinking Narud was probably right, but wishing he’d made the observation first.

“Which means there’s another, stronger trap up ahead,” Narud added.

“Not a trap. Not exactly.” Memnet glanced about him. “I’d say it’s more personal than that.”

Chantmer stepped forward, his feet thumping on the boards running above the stream. “I’ll take care of it.”

“No, let one of the acolytes.” Memnet eyed the pair. “You,” he told Stephan. “Do you know the incantation?”

Stephan frowned. “I know a spell, but probably not the one you’re thinking of. It’s bound to be clumsy.”

“I’ll give you the words of a better one,” Chantmer said.

“No need,” Memnet said. “Stephan’s incantation is adequate.”

Chantmer was not in a position to judge the master’s decisions, but even before Stephan called up the words, he knew it would be noisy. He winced as a big gust of power blasted through the little web and rolled up the road away from them. It would be ringing for miles if there were anyone listening. Stephan didn’t look happy as he wiped the blood from his palms onto the towel at his belt.

“Well,” Chantmer said. “That was . . . interesting. And pointless.”

“The rest of you go ahead,” Memnet said. “Be on your guard in case the enemy is nearby.” He put a hand on Chantmer’s wrist. “You, stay with me a moment.”

Chantmer waited impatiently until the others were out of earshot. “You may as well have given Stephan a trumpet and told him to march up and down the road playing at the top of his lungs—he wouldn’t have made any more noise. Why didn’t you let me do it and leave him out of it?”

“Do you want to know why Narud and Markal and Nathaliey are wizards and you are not?”

“What? Nathaliey . . .?”

“Your weakness isn’t your command or your knowledge of the lore. It’s your humility.”

“Nathaliey? When did she . . .? Wait, what do you mean my humility? Are you talking about that wasted spell just now? I’m stronger than Stephan in every way. Why should I pretend otherwise?”

Memnet held up a hand. “I don’t mean false modesty. Of course you’d have done it better than Stephan. And I’d have done it better than you. Less power to do the same thing, and I could have called it from the orb. So why have you do anything at all?”

“Presumably to help me learn. But Stephan isn’t an apprentice, he’s an acolyte. He’s not going anywhere. He’s a vessel for us to use, but he can’t do it on his own. So why did you let him blast away with that trebuchet of a spell?”

Chantmer knew his tone was bitter. He was still reeling from the news that Nathaliey was a wizard. She and Markal had disappeared with the red sword several weeks ago, carrying it to Eriscoba to give it to Bronwyn’s order of paladins and keep it out of the hands of the marauders. She’d been an apprentice when she left, yet somehow she was now a wizard? How was that possible?

“I mean humility, Chantmer. You think you understand everything, and so you blunder forward on faulty assumptions because you refuse to stop and consider when you might be wrong.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Exactly. Stop and think for a minute. Why did I have Stephan break apart that bit of sorcery when you or I could have done it more easily?”

Memnet clomped off the edge of the footbridge and onto solid ground. Chantmer followed, forcing himself to swallow his pride and consider the master’s lesson. The others had walked down the road a couple of hundred paces before coming to a stop. Narud was explaining something to the acolytes, who were listening intently.

“The noise was intentional,” Chantmer decided.

“Yes.”

“You knew the spell Stephan would cast, knew that it was blunt and noisy, and wanted to see if someone was listening. But that still doesn’t answer my question. You or I could have cast the same spell and made the same amount of noise with the same effect.”

“But what if the listener were clever enough to sense the difference between my magic and that of an apprentice or acolyte?”

“You don’t want them to know you’ve left the gardens.”

“That’s right. I want them to think that whoever is coming up the road is a lesser member of the order.”

They’d almost caught up with Narud and the acolytes. “Are you hoping to provoke a fight?”

“Our biggest danger isn’t entering the city, it’s leaving it with the books from the palace library. If there are enemies on the road, it will be more dangerous still.”

“So you want to fight them now, rather than later.”

“Exactly right,” Memnet said. “If we can ambush a dark acolyte or two, it makes the return trip easier. I used Stephan as bait to make sure it happens.”

Stephan looked up from his conversation with Narud and Alyssa. “Wait, I’m bait?”

Memnet clapped the acolyte on the shoulder. “Cheer up. You’re not a worm on a hook—I’ll be at your side. But yes, that spell of yours was meant to draw out our enemies.”

“I was wondering,” Narud murmured.

“See,” Chantmer said defensively. “I wasn’t the only one.” Memnet raised his eyebrows, and Chantmer cleared his throat. “I was just the one who said it aloud. But it wouldn’t hurt to explain these things ahead of time, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Can we at least discuss what you think we’ll face on the road?” Narud said. “And how we intend to fight it?”

“Very well,” Memnet said. The orb materialized, and he rolled it across his knuckles before it suddenly appeared in his opposite hand. “I sense three marauders and two dark acolytes. Come on, we’ll plan the fight as we walk.”

Memnet explained as they continued. He didn’t know exactly how powerful their enemies were, but seemed confident in his ability to defeat them. While he fought the dark acolytes, Chantmer and Narud would hold off the marauders, using Stephan and Alyssa as reservoirs of power.

“There’s a chance that another acolyte or more marauders are waiting on the road, hiding and ready to spring an ambush. If so, let them come. The more enemies we fight here, the fewer we face in Syrmarria or on the return. And the fewer who attack the gardens at a later date.”

Chantmer nodded, encouraged by Memnet’s confidence. Maybe he’d regained his strength after all.

“And if it’s King Toth himself?” Narud asked.

“Toth won’t have left Syrmarria—all his efforts are focused on bringing fire salamanders up from the depths. Salamanders hate the cold of the surface realms, and will fight to stay below. Every foot closer to the surface takes effort from the dark wizard.”

Narud’s thick black eyebrows bunched together. “That assumes your trick worked. If he realizes you’re on the road, what’s to say that he doesn’t forget about destroying the library and come to kill you instead?”

“I’ve thought of that,” Memnet said. “Sooner or later I must face him. If that happens today, so be it.”

Chantmer found this encouraging. “So you’re confident you can beat him? Even out here, away from the gardens?”

“Out here? No. Not at all. Quite possibly, I die.”

Or rather, not so encouraging.

They continued up the road. Memnet ordered them to let slip the concealer, and he cast a small spell to heighten their senses. When the fresh magic had settled over Chantmer, the light took on a sharp clarity, and staring across the landscape was like looking into a magically polished mirror. The breeze prickled every nerve on his skin, while the scent of flowers, trees, and even the horse dung on the road sharpened in his nostrils. He heard animals moving in the ditches and among the trees, and could pick them out from their sounds: a mouse, a squirrel, a badger in its den beneath a hedgerow.

Here and there, he caught bits of enemy magic. Some of it had a familiar tinge to it—it was the sorcery of Jasmeen and Zartosht, his rivals from the palace, and the ones who’d driven him from the night market last week when he, Narud, and Jethro caught them working on runes to bring up fire salamanders. After that horrific battle, which left the market burning and dozens of innocents dead, he’d thought long and hard about how he would smash them when they next faced off. It seemed as though he might soon get his chance.

They ignored a band of Marrabatti traders with donkey-drawn carts, gave vague information to a pair of goat herders asking for news from the city, and stopped in another village only long enough to break bread and eat dried figs carried with them from the gardens, washed down with a jug of ale purchased from a local.

They’d made excellent time, and intended to travel deep into the night, assuming events on the road didn’t force a change in plans. Enough time had passed since Stephan’s noisy magic that Chantmer began to doubt whether anything would come of it.

They were still sitting near the village well, in the last few moments when everyone had eaten but nobody had yet voiced the need to get back on the road, though all knew it was pending, when Memnet stiffened and rose to his feet. His orb was already in hand. The others sprang to their feet, and Chantmer studied his surroundings, looking for the threat. The two village roads met here, next to the well. Several half-timbered homes clustered on one side, while a tavern and the stone house of the tax collector sat side by side on the other.

A pair of village dogs had been dozing in the road beneath the afternoon sun, practically daring a cart to come by and chase them off, and now climbed to their feet with their fur standing on end. They stared in the direction of Syrmarria, and growls sounded deep in their throats.

A malignant energy drifted down the road, stirring dust and whipping up a foul stench. It grew stronger moment by moment, and the growling dogs apparently decided they’d had enough. They tucked their tails and fled in the opposite direction.

Chantmer shivered, suddenly weak at the knees, and his mouth was dry, his heart racing. The enemy had sent a debilitation spell; someone was trying to cripple them ahead of the fight.

Memnet glanced at the acolytes and settled his gaze on Alyssa. “Raise your power. I’m going to give you a drawing spell. When you cast it, think about pulling on a rope. Do you have any questions?”

“No questions, Master,” she said. “I understand.”

“Good, do it now.”

There was no bothering with lessons now, Chantmer noted, only a direct instruction. Memnet’s worry, he guessed, was that whoever was pressing that debilitation spell would recognize him and withdraw rather than fight. So he was using Alyssa’s reserve to make them overconfident—a sort of reversal of the dark acolyte’s spell.

Alyssa held out her hands and closed her eyes. Memnet flicked his wrist, and the orb vanished up his sleeve. He fed her the words. The woman’s spell wobbled as it came out, but Chantmer was ready, and nudged it with magic of his own to send it rolling in the right direction. Memnet gave him a nod of acknowledgment.

Five figures in gray cloaks came walking up the road. The three in front were tall and strong, and though they were hooded, Chantmer knew from their posture that they were marauders. The other two were more slender, and one seemed to be a woman by her size and shape. He clenched his jaw. Jasmeen and Zartosht? It must be.

The enemies stopped, seemed to size up the five standing in front of them. Their emotions had to be warring between the evidence of danger in front of them and the overconfidence caused by Memnet’s spell. The marauders swept back their cloaks and drew swords.

Memnet spoke to his companions without taking his eyes off the enemy. “Chantmer, Stephan, and Alyssa, stay here at the well. Narud, come with me.”

What the devil? Chantmer understood why the master wanted to hold back the acolytes. Alyssa had just spent her magic drawing in the enemy, and Stephan had used a good deal of his earlier while knocking apart the ward on the bridge. The acolytes could only put themselves in danger. But what an insult to leave Chantmer behind, too.

He opened his mouth to complain, then shut it again. Later. For now, he had no choice but to hold his position with Alyssa and Stephan while Memnet and Narud stepped toward the marauders and dark acolytes.

Narud is a wizard, he thought bitterly. You are still an apprentice.

The dark acolytes cast sorcery on the marauders, who sprang forward with a shout, moving with incredible swiftness. They were upon the two wizards in three bounds, swords sweeping around as they closed the gap. Memnet had the orb again, and it flared with light. His other hand lifted in the air, just as the first sword slammed down on his shoulder. The blade hit the wizard and shattered. The marauder flew backward as if stunned.

The other two tried to pull up, and they hit Memnet’s stonelike form with less force. They flew backward, too, landing hard, but still had their swords as they rose to their feet. The first marauder cast aside the sword hilt and drew a dagger the size of his forearm. From behind, the dark acolytes lifted their hands, and sorcery boiled off them.

Memnet was forced to confront the marauders, who were renewing their attack, and it looked like he’d be blindsided by the dark acolytes’ attack. Chantmer was getting ready to hurl some spectral hammers into the fight when Narud threw a baffling spell first. The sorcery bled apart before the dark acolytes could cast it. Chantmer swallowed his magic . . . and his pride.

The master’s orb flared a second time. The marauders lifted their cloaks, and light splashed off them, but then the ground heaved beneath their feet, and the three men flipped into the air. Up twenty, thirty feet, and then Memnet let them drop. They slammed to the ground with a sickening crunch of breaking ankles and wrists, and cried out as they writhed in pain. Narud grabbed the dagger dropped by the first marauder and stabbed him in the back.

The dark acolytes had their hands up again, and black ropy shadows curled around them. They threw their heads back, and at last their hoods fell away. Yes, Chantmer was right. Jasmeen and Zartosht, the villains. He ground his teeth in frustration, anxious to leave Alyssa and Stephan and join the fight.

The dark acolytes were drawing power from the crippled marauders, and Chantmer realized Narud’s knife work wasn’t merely to eliminate a threat, but to kill them before any more of their pain was converted to sorcerous power.

Memnet lifted the orb, and light poured forth. It struck Jasmeen and drove her backward, but before he could finish her, Zartosht threw a rope of shadow and forced the wizard to contend with it. Jasmeen recovered quickly and hurled her own shadow into the fight. Memnet’s light and the dark acolytes’ shadow warred with each other, until it looked like a golden serpent fighting two black ones.

Narud knifed a second marauder and hunted after the third, who crawled toward his sword. His hips bent in a strange way, as if he’d suffered a bad break. Narud stomped a foot on him to hold him down, then came down hard with the dagger. The enemy cried out, and the darkness spread around the enemy sorcerers. The shadow serpents bit and wrapped their bodies around Memnet’s serpent of light.

Chantmer watched in frustration. “By the Brothers, I’m not going to stand here doing nothing.”

The acolytes made a feeble protest, but Chantmer ignored them and left them at the well. He turned his palms down and raised power. Not hammers—that was too obvious. He’d hurl a swath of dirt from the road; a little distraction would give Memnet the upper hand and allow him to quickly finish the battle. He reached the master’s side.

“What are you doing?” Memnet demanded. “Stop that at once, and get back there.”

Memnet wasn’t straining, Chantmer noted as he took in things from a closer range. A stream of light poured out of the orb, but the main reserves remained untapped. Memnet was testing his enemies, it seemed, gauging the strength of King Toth’s dark acolytes before destroying them. He didn’t particularly need help.

Narud approached, holding the dripping dagger. He turned it over, his thick eyebrows drawn together, as if searching for a way to enchant the knife.

“Don’t make me wait back there,” Chantmer pleaded. “I can help. And if not, I can at least observe.”

“You were helping, Chantmer. You were protecting the acolytes like I told you. I—”

Alyssa’s cry for help cut them off. Chantmer whirled around to see three gray-cloaked marauders on horseback riding into the square from behind. The hoods were swept back from their faces, and they wore sneering, hyena-like expressions.

Alyssa and Stephan stood alone, and they had spent their magic. With nobody there to feed them an incantation, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway—neither knew anything by memory that would help fight off three marauders. And that’s why Chantmer had been ordered to stay back. He understood now, but why hadn’t the master come right out and told him?

Memnet lifted the orb, and power boiled out of it. An incantation came to his lips, something Chantmer didn’t recognize. The air turned thick, almost liquid, and the shouts of the marauders, the snorting horses, and the cries for help from the acolytes all became muffled, like his head was submerged.

One of the marauders pulled in front of the other two, turned sideways in the saddle, and swept out the sides of his cloak. Memnet’s spell struck it and turned into a steaming cloud that tasted of sulfur and water vapor. The acolytes and marauders disappeared behind it.

Chantmer rushed into the vapor cloud, which choked and burned his throat and lungs. He pushed through, terrified of what he’d find, and shortly came across a downed marauder and his horse, both of whom were frothing at the mouth, dying. The victims of the master’s spell.

Narud and Memnet cried for him to come back, but he ignored them. This was his fault, all his doing. And the cloud was dissipating anyway. It wasn’t going to kill him; it hadn’t been intended for general killing or else the master wouldn’t have thrown it in the direction of his two acolytes.

He was afraid to find Alyssa and Stephan dead, cut down by enemy swords, but instead, the final two marauders had seized the acolytes and were hauling them, struggling, over the backs of their horses. Some sort of binding spell kept them immobilized. Chantmer already had his power near the surface, and he burned with righteous anger. An incantation blasted apart whatever was holding the captives in place, but the marauders were already turning their horses and charging away. Chantmer made a grab for the leg of one of the marauders, and only barely avoided a vicious swing of the man’s sword.

And just like that, the enemy riders had escaped with two prisoners.

Chapter Two

Chantmer was baffled that Memnet and Narud hadn’t come to his aid after that initial blast of magic from the master’s orb, but as he turned around, he saw that they were in a fight for their lives. When Memnet disengaged, the shadowy snakes had strengthened, and they were joined by a third shadow, thicker and blacker than the first.

Narud dropped to one knee and held his bleeding hands out. A translucent shield appeared in the air and blocked the shadow snakes, which jabbed and thrust in an attempt to break through. Such was the ferocity of the attack that Narud’s shield was already weakening, and the largest of the shadows had burrowed halfway through. The master was stroking the orb, chanting words, but he needed more time.

Chantmer had expelled most of his magic already in an attempt to free Alyssa and Stephan, but he threw what was left to Narud’s aid. The shield solidified and cut the burrowing shadow snake in two, and the half on their side fell, writhing to the ground. The remaining half stretched out once more and renewed the attack, aided by its two smaller companions. Where was it coming from?

He felt along the shadowy tendril as it passed through the dark acolytes and discovered a hidden form behind them. A sorcerous power swirled in the air, the taste of it unmistakable, and Chantmer’s mouth went dry. He’d felt that power before, during the fight in the gardens, when an enemy army penetrated to the steps of the Golden Pavilion itself. There, sorcery had rained down and nearly killed them all.

It was King Toth. The necromancer himself.

The shadow blasted into Narud’s shield, and a hole burst out the rear like dried mud crumbling under a hammer blow. The other two shadows tunneled through after it.

Light flared from Memnet’s orb just as the three shadows obliterated what was left of the shield. This time there was no false struggle on the master’s part; his golden, glowing snake was a rope as thick as a man’s leg. The three dark attackers twisted around the light, trying to strangle it, and at first the master could only hold them off. But light kept pouring from the orb, strengthening his defenses, and suddenly it seemed as though he were the one on the attack, wrapping the shadowy assailants in thick coils while they tried desperately to withdraw.

A vortex of dust and pebbles suddenly formed near the well behind them. More sorcery. Chantmer’s robes flapped, and a pair of windows on the tavern exploded into the street. The dead marauders lifted jerkily to their feet and shambled toward them, all three of the men Narud had knifed, plus the one the master had killed. Even the dead horse rose and walked at them with stiff-legged movements as its head lolled and its eyes rolled back in their sockets.

They hadn’t been brought back to life, but temporarily reanimated by the dark wizard, and Memnet was forced to face them.

He released the golden rope and threw magic into the square to blast apart the whirlwind. The corpses slumped to the ground. By the time he turned back around, the dark wizard and his acolytes were fleeing the battlefield.

Narud staggered, and Chantmer grabbed his companion’s arm to steady him. Memnet looked tired, but not exhausted. There was still power in the orb, and he hadn’t yet bled himself. That was an encouraging sign. But why weren’t they pressing the fight?

“Shouldn’t we go after them?” Chantmer asked.

Memnet turned a hard gaze on him, and Chantmer had to look away. “After who? The sorcerer? Or the marauders who took our companions prisoner?”

“We have to do something.”

“He’s right,” Narud said. “We can’t stand here while they all run off.”

“Have you forgotten why we’re on the road? We have to save the books of the library.”

“But, Master . . .” Narud said.

“We’re pressing on to Syrmarria before the enemy raises the fire salamanders. We’re too spent to hunt down Toth and his dark acolytes.”

“But what about Alyssa and Stephan?” Narud pressed. “They can’t be far. Are we going to let the marauders ride off with them?”

Chantmer was recovering from his humiliation. “What does the enemy want with them, anyway?”

Narud turned on him with a scowl. “Nothing good, you can be sure of that. We can’t let them get away with it.”

“You heard the master,” Chantmer said. “The library is all that matters. It’s worth more than any of us.”

Memnet pressed fingers to his right temple. “Please be quiet, Chantmer. I’m so angry with you that I’m likely to take whatever you say and do the opposite.” He looked back to Narud. “But he’s right. That’s why I can’t go after Toth. I might wound him, I might not, but I have to guard my power until we get the books out of Syrmarria.”

“I won’t leave Alyssa and Stephan,” Narud said. “They’ll be tortured and killed.”

“What do you propose?” Memnet asked.

“I’ll change into a wolfhound, track them down and free them.”

The master looked him over, seemed to take into account his weakened state. “They’ll be miles away by the time you are ready to cast another spell.”

“I’ll speak the words,” Narud said. “You give me power from the orb. Surely you could spare that much.”

A thoughtful look came over Memnet’s face. “What happens when the spell wears off—assuming you have tracked them down—what will you do then?”

Narud looked less certain. “I will do . . . something. Maybe only mark where they’re being held and come back for help. But we can’t let them vanish into the enemy’s clutches. You have to let me try.”

“I have a more effective spell than the one you know,” Memnet said. “A way to bend the incantation. You’d be a wolfhound longer—as long as you wanted, in fact.”

“That sounds better than the other one,” Chantmer said. “Why not always use it instead?”

“Because there’s danger in it. The longer Narud is a dog, the more dog-like his thoughts will be. Keep that form long enough and he might never return.”

“I’ll risk it,” Narud said quickly.

Memnet hesitated a long moment, but at last he nodded. “Very well. But not here.”

Now that the battle was over, villagers were emerging from the surrounding buildings and from up the road to examine the aftermath. As of yet they didn’t seem to have spotted the three from the gardens, drawn instead to the dead marauders and the horse. Blood was everywhere, including the side of the well, as the bodies had moved around a fair bit after death, and the whirlwind had even splattered blood on the sides of buildings.

Enough was left of the concealing spell to keep attention diverted as the three remaining companions continued warily in the direction that Toth and his acolytes had fled. There was a trail here as strong as any streak of blood, should one know how to follow it, but Chantmer didn’t feel any traps. They continued another few minutes until Memnet had them take shelter behind a hedgerow that marked the boundary between a grazing common and a farmer’s field.

Narud undressed and dropped to all fours. He was already rather hirsute, and Chantmer swore black hairs on his back were thickening even before Memnet raised his power and fed Narud the words. The urge to look away was great as the younger wizard began his transformation, but Chantmer kept his attention focused and watched the fascinating stretching of bones, the bending of the spine, the curling of hands and feet into paws, and the lengthening of Narud’s face into a muzzle.

It looked quite unpleasant, to be honest, but at the same time, Chantmer was envious. He’d never done anything like it, and didn’t think he was capable. Not yet.

Narud was soon gone entirely, and a giant wolfhound remained in his place. It had dark hair and eyes that gleamed with unnatural intelligence. Somehow the eyes were unchanged. Narud sniffed the ground, sniffed at Memnet’s hand, and then shoved his snout toward Chantmer’s crotch as if in greeting.

Chantmer pushed the dog’s head away. “Blast it, don’t you have somewhere better to stick that thing?”

Memnet pointed back the way they’d come. “Go. Find them.”

Narud gave something like a nod mixed with a growl and loped away in the direction of the village. What would the villagers think of a massive wolfhound sniffing at blood as he searched for the trail? If they were worked up by the carnage, the appearance of the huge strange animal in their midst might . . . well, raise some hackles, so to speak.

Chantmer and Memnet were alone when they returned to the road.

“It should be you hunting them down,” Memnet said. “If you had listened to me, you’d have been by their side when the marauders came through. You could have held them off long enough for me to come to your aid.”

Shame twisted at Chantmer’s gut. “I know.”

“This was your loss, and you should be the one freeing our companions.”

“Yes, it should be.”

“But unfortunately, you don’t have the ability to change form to a wolfhound and hold it long enough to track the marauders. You simply cannot manage.”

That was the cruelest cut of all, rendered all the more painful by the uncharacteristic anger in Memnet’s voice. An hour ago there had been five companions from the garden, and now there were two. Worse still, he knew that of all of them, Memnet would be least pleased about spending his final hours on the road with Chantmer, the one to blame for the whole debacle.

“Why, Chantmer? Didn’t you hear anything I said? I held you back for a reason, and if you’d given it two seconds of thought, you’d have realized why. But no, you were arrogant, you thought I held you back for . . . well, I don’t know what you were thinking. Something to do with your pride. But I needed you back there, protecting our rear. Wasn’t that obvious?

“I’m angry,” he continued. “Furious. I want to send you to the gardens to weed the beds for a year or three until this arrogance is gone, buried completely. You want to be a wizard like the others? Talk to me in ten years. No, make it twenty.”

Chantmer looked down at his hands. Bits of blood were drying around his fingernails, and he picked at them. He wanted to throw up.

Memnet sighed. “But I made my own mistakes. Some of the fault is mine. Some of the arrogance.”

Chantmer looked up. “Master?”

“I was toying with the dark acolytes. I could have defeated them at once and been ready when Toth appeared.”

“You wanted to gauge their strength. I understand.”

“The arrogance was in thinking that I’d come up the road undetected. That Stephan’s magic would be enough to convince the dark wizard that he’d be facing lesser members of the order. Not me.”

“What about the fire salamanders? Why doesn’t he stay in the city, calling them out of the ground? Isn’t that what you said he’d do?”

“He can’t raise them unless he’s there. But if he sensed me on the road, of course he was going to try to catch me out of the gardens. Let the salamanders wait.” Memnet sighed. “I didn’t feel him until it was too late. And I never sensed the three marauders circling in to attack us from behind. I was doubly deceived.”

Chantmer thought of when the marauders had attacked Memnet and Nathaliey in the desert and decapitated the master. They had used subterfuge then, too.

“So,” Memnet said. “We’ve both learned a lesson today. Let us pray to the Brothers that neither of us will need a repeat.”

Chapter Three

Nathaliey wrapped herself and her two companions in concealing spells and climbed the muddy slope toward the enemy encampment. It was only midafternoon, but the sky was dark with the thickest clouds she’d ever seen and a relentless, pouring rain unlike any seen on the east side of the mountains. Between her magic and the miserable weather, the three of them had no trouble slipping past the outermost sentries, a pair of Veyrian soldiers huddled beneath an oak tree that offered little protection against the rain.

Once they were past the sentries, Nathaliey and the two paladins crept up the muddy path toward the hilltop. A horse encampment sat to their left, the animals gathered in a miserable bunch against the weather. To the right, several men dug a trench and fortified it with a stack of sharpened staves being unloaded from a cart and driven into the mud as a palisade. Nathaliey held at a distance to observe.

“You did well,” one of her companions said. Sir Marissa, concealed in Nathaliey’s magic, her voice low and dangerous. “There’s horses. A moat. Seems like we’ve found them, all right. The rest must be up ahead.”

Nathaliey nodded. “Do we go forward, or return to camp?”

“How long will your sorcery hold?” Marissa asked.

“At least an hour. Maybe longer.”

“I want a better look,” Marissa said. “And maybe Geord gets his shot.”

Sir Geord, the third member of their scouting company, had brought a crossbow in case an opportunity should present itself. He hoped to fell the one-handed brute named Hamid who’d taken over as captain of the gray marauders after Bronwyn’s final death. The Veyrian pasha would make another excellent target, should they spot him.

“What about the wards or runes, or whatever you call them?” Marissa asked. “The dark acolytes will be busy protecting the camp, right?”

“Not in this rain, no, and not with this little time. They can only have just arrived.”

Nathaliey glanced at the trench, where the Veyrians stood knee deep in muddy water, doing as much bailing as digging. It was chilling work, and the enemy would be lucky if half their army didn’t come down with consumption.

This wasn’t the briny rain of the Veyrian coast, the cloudbursts of the central plains that gave way to brilliant sun, or even one of the not-infrequent rains that kept Aristonia green and her forests lush. It was a steady, relentless drumbeat of fat drops that turned roads to mud, swelled rivers until they overflowed their banks, and drove crofters and herders indoors. Day after rainy day. They’d spotted a few miserable sheep clumped on grassy hills in the barony of Deepenhelm, but otherwise the countryside seemed deserted.

It had already been raining for days when Captain Wolfram’s Blackshields fought a brief skirmish against a small Veyrian army along the banks of the Thorft south of Deepenhelm Town, which the enemy had sacked after a brief siege. Wolfram had been on the road twenty miles to the west, waiting for a band of twenty paladins carrying much needed supplies, when Nathaliey’s seeker found the enemy lingering in the ruins, weighed down with plunder. Wolfram rushed to engage before the enemy could escape.

The two sides fought a short, sharp engagement, and Nathaliey won her greatest victory. The enemy had been retreating north, and word had it that Toth was sending reinforcements from his base in Estmor, where his new highway entered Eriscoba. Desperate to stop the two enemy forces from joining, Wolfram sent Nathaliey, Marissa, and Geord north, and she had succeeded in bending the appearance of the road. The enemy had wandered up a sheep path and were bottled onto a bluff overlooking the river. It was a defensible position, but one from which they could not easily escape.

The only question was whether the marauders had slipped the trap or if they, too, were with the foot soldiers. The presence of so many horses seemed to indicate that Hamid’s forces had remained behind as well. That was both a threat and an opportunity.

Nathaliey allowed herself a moment of pride as the three of them picked their way up the hillside. Even with the passage of so many hundreds of feet, this sheep trail could hardly be mistaken for the Deepenhelm road, which was flat and had been cleared of ruts to handle the traffic of merchants to the Arvada wool fair. The Veyrians had been marching north, trying to stay out of the pincer movement of Wolfram’s paladins, when the road seemed to veer suddenly up this hillside, through muddy streams and around boulders, yet it hadn’t occurred to the enemy that they’d gone astray until it was too late.

That was the power of her magic. Between this example—more trickery than brute force magic, admittedly—and her shared victory with Markal against Bronwyn’s marauders, she felt more confident of her ability to defeat King Toth’s dark acolytes, even though Markal had returned to the gardens and left her alone on the barbarian side of the Dragon’s Spine.

Still, she was cautious as she led Marissa and Geord forward. The enemy might not have laid wards in the mud and rain, but they could have made simpler traps like mud-concealed holes with sharpened staves at the bottom, and it fell on her to sniff them out.

The trench was only partially dug, and so she was surprised there weren’t more soldiers guarding the footpath that had led the enemy to this dead end, but she supposed they were busy trying to make camp to get protection from the rain. She counted five soldiers: two standing in the rain and three squatting beneath a piece of canvas stretched over poles to form an open tent.

A physician was binding one man’s foot wound—an apparent casualty of the morning’s fight, when the Veyrians, finally recognizing the dead end, had tried to break free of the hill where she’d sent them. In fact, all of the men in the tent seemed injured. That left two legitimate guards.

Nathaliey turned to her companions, who were shadowy forms behind her, like streaks of rain on a windowpane. She picked out Marissa with difficulty, and leaned into the other woman’s space, where the lean barbarian face with her blue eyes and aquiline nose finally came into focus.

“Where are the rest of the Veyrians?” Nathaliey asked. “Up the bluff? The entrance is practically unguarded.”

Marissa spoke into her ear. “Whatever the reason, we can’t let the chance pass us by. I’m going back to tell the captain.”

Indeed, if the whole mass of Blackshields came charging up the hill, they’d overrun the trench and be into the heart of the enemy camp in an instant. Even a raid would be devastating. They could wipe out the wounded and the trench diggers and make off with all of the marauders’ horses without losing a single paladin. It wouldn’t be easy charging the hill in this rain, which was presumably why the enemy had risked leaving the entry to their camp undefended while they . . . what, exactly?

“Go tell Wolfram,” she told Marissa, again leaning in to speak directly into the woman’s ear. “My magic will shield you until you’re down.”

“And you?”

“I want a closer look at the camp.”

“Be careful.”

“They won’t catch me,” Nathaliey said.

“I’m more worried that you’ll be up here when we return.”

“A quick look around, and then I’ll be back down the hill.”

“Good. There’s going to be bloodshed, and you don’t want to be in the middle of it.”

The two paladins fell back, and soon vanished from sight. Still moving warily, Nathaliey continued past the tent, taking note of another makeshift pen holding horses, and stacks of supplies in stolen wagons, some covered with oiled cloths, others exposed to the elements. If it weren’t for the rain, she might have been tempted to hurl a fireball and flee. Let the Veyrian army hold out in a siege without their food and gear. But most likely, a fireball would fizzle, as damp as the wagons were.

Nathaliey had reached the top before she found the rest of the enemy force on the edge of the bluff. The Thorft curved around the hill below, overflowing its banks and flooding the surrounding farmland on the far shore, but the Veyrians were safe enough roughly eighty feet above the water, so she couldn’t figure out what they were doing clustered near the edge.

The Veyrians had pressed through the mountains with barely three hundred footmen and a couple of dozen gray marauders. Another company of marauders had waited for them in Eriscoba, and for a time, the man who’d taken command made a series of brutal raids through the free kingdoms that forced Wolfram to respond. Few villagers survived these raids, but they all spoke of the cruelty of the one-handed man who called himself Hamid of Veyre.

If the Eriscoban kingdoms had immediately gathered an army to oppose the foot soldiers while Wolfram’s Blackshields hunted down the marauders, they might have put an end to the threat from the south, but the response was weak; those earls, barons, and kings who had the will to fight had already sent their best forces north to Estmor. Three weeks passed between the battle when Bronwyn fell and when Wolfram at last gathered a force strong enough to press matters.

Still wary of traps, and watching now for the dark acolytes who’d remained a shadowy presence among the enemy force, Nathaliey continued toward the edge of the bluff to have a closer look. Hamid stood with a small knot of marauders directing regular soldiers, who pulled at ropes dangling over the edge. When the soldiers flagged, the big gray-faced captain shouted at them to work harder. Muscles strained, men grunted. Nathaliey leaned over and saw men clinging to the ropes.

Her first thought was that Hamid was attempting to escape by lowering his army from the bluff to the river. Did he mean to swim across, abandoning horses, wagons, food, and supplies? And what of the soldiers who couldn’t swim? Veyre may be a coastal port, but a good half of the army hailed from khalifates of the dusty plains, and surely those men wouldn’t be able to cross the swirling, flood-swollen river.

But when she edged closer, she saw that they weren’t lowering troops, they were hauling them up. Flat, barge-like boats poled downstream, laden with men wearing the robes and tunics of Veyrian soldiers. When they reached the base of the hill, men on board grabbed ropes dangled from above, while others held the barges against the current as those above hauled them up.

The boats were strung up the river as far as she could see, each laden with men. If they all came up, it would more than double Hamid’s forces. Give him six hundred or a thousand men to accompany his marauders and it would take a full-size army to root them out.

Nathaliey searched for the dark acolytes, knowing they were behind this somehow. She couldn’t feel Vashti or his companion, but they had to be near. There was no other way but via magical means that Hamid’s force had made contact with Toth’s army in Estmor to arrange for reinforcements.

As soon as that thought occurred to her, a darker, more niggling doubt entered her mind.

Are you sure you sent them here? What if they intended to come to this bluff all along, and from here get their reinforcements?

No, surely there were better spots to meet the barges. And better means than ropes. It was a tedious, exhausting process doing it by hand, and it would take hours to complete the task. Enemy commanders must have sent these reinforcements days ago, and only when Nathaliey tricked Hamid into bottling his forces atop the bluff had they improvised this method.

By now, Wolfram would be getting Marissa’s news about the poorly defended enemy camp. Give him another half hour to arrange his forces, and a half hour to come storming up the hillside from the Deepenhelm road. How many men could Hamid raise from the river by then?

Already, the first men to arrive were swapping out at the ropes and leaving their exhausted comrades to fall back toward the ditch and palisade. Give it an hour . . . she estimated fifty or a hundred soldiers might be manning the barricades. Plus four or five hundred up here by the time the Blackshields broke through, not the much smaller force Wolfram would be expecting. The attack would fail. Frustrated, Nathaliey prepared to return and warn him to call off the attack.

Hamid shouted, his voice rising above the rain and the grunt and heave of men pulling ropes. One of the rope lines was struggling, and suddenly the waterlogged lip of the hill gave way, and mud slid toward the river, carrying men with it. Mud, rocks, and men thundered down on the barge, whose occupants could only cower under the barrage. Several men went overboard and disappeared into the churning river, and the boat itself lost contact with the ropes above and drifted downstream.

Hamid’s warning had come just in time for those holding the rope, and most of the soldiers kept their grip, even as three men dangled over the edge, screaming for help. Ignoring the lost boat, the Veyrian sergeants and the marauder captain got them hauled up top before any more could be lost, and the operation continued apace, dashing Nathaliey’s hopes that the loss of a boat and several men would force Hamid to call a halt to the operation.

But fresh hope rose in her chest as she took in the whole scene. Hundreds of men above crowded the edge of the cliff. The barge-like troop transports gathered below waiting their turn at the ropes. And it had rained so heavily and for so many days that a man getting too close to the edge risked setting off a small mudslide that would hurl him eighty feet into the river, where he would most likely drown.

Meanwhile, Nathaliey knew of a spell that could make the earth shake. It wasn’t an earthquake, nothing to swallow a castle wall like the master commanded, but enough to throw men from their feet.

What would happen if she gave the hillside a little jostle? She didn’t need an earthquake today, not when the heavens had already liquefied the ground. All she needed was to force what had already begun. And then, when the hillside began to crumble, the weight of several hundred men standing so close to the edge would pull them down, throw them into the river, and obliterate half a dozen boats and their passengers at the same time. Even better, the marauders were in the thick of the action, working at heaving up a massive ballista from the river, and in the part of the hill most likely to collapse.

Her heart beating with excitement, Nathaliey checked her concealing spell and edged closer to the men working the ropes. She needed to get close enough to channel her power into the ground, instead of spilling it all crossing the distance, but not so close as to send herself plummeting to the river along with the enemy.

By the time she stopped, she was close enough to hear the muttering Veyrian soldiers with rope-burned hands cursing the marauder captain in low voices whenever he stalked away from them to rage at someone else deemed not working hard enough. Her spell held, and nobody had noticed her; if they looked her way, they would only see streaks of falling rain.

Nathaliey exposed her hands and placed them palms down. She closed her eyes and thought through the incantation to make sure she could get the words. Power rose from deep within her body, and blood came to her pores. She spoke the words.

A surge of magical power flowed from her hands and pressed into the ground. It burrowed into soft mud and continued down for several feet, where the soil was still waterlogged, but compacted. And there it gave a shake. If not for all of the water in the soil, it would have dissipated within a few feet, but the force of it going off down there was like a rock heaved into a pond, and a giant ripple radiated outward.

Men screamed, and Nathaliey opened her eyes to see the hillside sloughing away. Soldiers holding ropes and others recently hauled up from below flailed in the air as formerly solid-seeming ground disappeared beneath their feet. Others tried to scramble back, but the hillside was collapsing all around them, even as the first mud and rocks and men crashed down on the enemies below.

And then, just as Nathaliey prepared to run for her life, the mudslide stopped. Emerging from the mud was a ledge of stone, bedrock which supported the entire hill. Some more mud and debris slid around the side of it and rained over the edge, but most of the bluff remained intact. Some ten or twelve men had gone over, and though she was no longer in a vantage from which to see the river, she imagined at least one of the boats must have been hit and hit hard. But almost the entirety of Hamid’s army was intact. Meanwhile, the air vibrated with the powerful effects of her magic.

Mixed blood and rainwater dripped from her hands, and she took a few steps backward, thankful that the marauders—including their captain—were so intent on getting the men to safer, more stable ground that nobody seemed to have noticed that she was the cause of it all, not the rain. She hadn’t achieved the victory she’d hoped for, but she’d given them a setback.

If she hurried, there was plenty of time to slip from the enemy camp and warn Wolfram before he mounted a disastrous attack. Hopefully she wouldn’t need any more magic; she’d exhausted her strength.

Nathaliey turned around and came face-to-face with a dark acolyte. His face was gaunt, eyes sunken in their sockets. His mouth turned up at the corners in a cruel smile.

The dark acolyte held up his hands, and a fountain of sorcery flowed from his palms. Nathaliey barely had time to brace herself before it struck.

Chapter Four

When Markal first parted ways with Nathaliey, he’d hoped that in three weeks he’d be in his cottage on the woodland path. Sleeping in his own bed, his belly filled with bread and stew, and warmed with wine from the vineyards. All the problems of the war, the king’s highway, and the missing red sword would still be out there to confront him, but he’d be in the company of Memnet the Great, Narud, Chantmer, and the rest, with the stout magical fortress of the gardens to protect him.

That first day after Nathaliey left him had been challenging, traveling as he was on an empty stomach, but then he met some of Wolfram’s reserve force in the mountains, who gave him travel cakes and hard cheese. Strengthened by the food, he’d hoped to get through the Spine in two days, descend from the foothills to the plains in four or five more days, and then take another week to get home if he could secure a horse, and in two weeks if not. Either way, he’d be in the gardens before the rising of the twin dragon constellations marked the solstice.

Instead, it was the afternoon of the twentieth day of his return journey, and he was still in the mountains, picking his way slowly, laboriously north. He’d tried to descend three different times, only to be spotted and hunted by griffin riders. The only good thing about the griffins was that their relentless patrols seemed to have confined the Veyrians to the lowlands; whenever he got a view of the eastern plains, he could see villages burning and armies on the march, kicking up clouds of dust from the drought-choked khalifates.

Markal was attempting another descent when griffin riders spotted him from above and chased him into the deepest part of the mountain forest. Soon, a dozen or more griffins were screaming above the trees, waiting for him to poke his head out so they could tear it off.

The Harvester take them. He had to figure out a way down. But how?

Thanks to their relentless pursuit, he’d spent far too long either taking or sticking to cover. Casting concealing magic helped, but it drained his strength and slowed his pace. Meanwhile, he was at least a hundred miles from home, his feet never stopped aching, and his clothes hung so loose that he figured he must have lost a full stone since leaving the gardens in late spring. He had a scratch from a near miss with griffins that was turning into a knotted scar on his back, and a bundled forearm from when he’d slipped while crossing a ravine and torn up his skin trying to stop from plunging over a waterfall to his death.

He pressed himself against a tree trunk as the griffins blasted overhead and made the limbs shake. They clearly knew he was down here, could probably smell him, even, and the only question was whether they’d keep him pinned until nightfall or if they’d find a way in to attack him. The riders had swords, after all, and might be tempted to fight on the ground if they thought he was alone and helpless.

If they did, he swore he’d teach them a lesson they wouldn’t forget. He’d eaten a rabbit that morning taken from one of his traps, found a berry bush in the afternoon, and had been conserving his power all day. Let them try; he’d singe their feathers.

The griffins kept up their diving and screaming for another twenty minutes before vanishing. Still wary, Markal continued on his way. He needed to get lower, and hoped that the griffins would be less numerous as soon as he reached the foothills—they seemed to dislike hot, dry weather for one—but the trees gave way just below him. There was no way down from here without exposing his position.

The next best option was to press north. Eventually, he’d reach the Tothian Way, and surely the griffin riders wouldn’t dare attack the king’s road, with its armies, its archers, and the ballistae that could blast their mounts from the sky. Markal wasn’t exactly welcome on the high king’s highway either, but a little magic might ease his passage.

Even maintaining his elevation, he began to run out of forest by late afternoon. The trees thinned across a series of rocky promontories, with slashing, impassable gorges above him, and grassy, naked ridges below. By carefully scouting the terrain, he managed to keep going for another half hour or so, then ran into a large meadow-like hilltop that lay exposed for several hundred feet. Beyond that, more woods, but he’d need to cross open terrain to reach them.

Craggy peaks loomed ominously to the left. Inaccessible from the ground, their heights were ideal for griffin aeries, and unless his memory was faulty, he’d spotted them flying about up there when he’d come this way with the Blackshields several weeks earlier. If the griffin riders were watching for him, they wouldn’t even need to leave their aeries until he attempted to cross. Then they could swoop down and finish him.

He thought about waiting until dark, but there were still a couple of hours of daylight left, and he hated to waste them. Markal stood impatiently on the edge of the woods and stared across the hillside, thinking. The grass and wildflowers were high enough that if he’d only been hiding from marauders, he might have crawled across on his belly. And there were some strategically placed boulders. What if he ran from rock to rock, taking cover until he was sure he hadn’t been spotted?

Yes, but if he were spotted, what then? Griffins preferred to attack from above, but that didn’t mean they were confined to aerial combat. And the riders certainly weren’t, armed as they were with spears and swords. Those boulders might make good hiding places; it was the crossing part that was the problem.

Discouraged at the thought of either backtracking to search for another way through or of passing the rest of the afternoon here, Markal settled with his back against a tree to give thought to food and how to acquire it. Maybe if he weren’t so hungry, the other problem would resolve itself as well.

A familiar scream pierced the air. Markal remained frozen against the tree, ready to scramble into denser cover, even as he looked up the mountainside. An enormous griffin spread its wings, soared from the heights, and flew above the meadow. Markal couldn’t see the rider from this vantage, only the underside of the beast, with its front talons and back paws tucked against its body. The griffin had scarcely crossed the hillside when it came swooping back around.

To Markal’s shock, a man appeared on the ground next to one of the huge boulders dotting the hillside and sprinted toward another boulder, as if to take cover there. He wore a gray cloak, like a marauder, but he didn’t have the gray skin or dead look of one of Toth’s champions. Was he a regular Veyrian soldier, or someone else?

The griffin veered toward the man, and Markal caught a glimpse of the rider on its back, a woman with a long black ponytail streaming behind her in the wind. Her sword was sheathed, both hands on the tether, and she angled her beast at a precise angle to reach the man before he escaped. The griffin’s talons stretched out, grasping, the tips like curved daggers.

Markal was on his feet before he could think, and he brought his power to the surface, ready to cast an incantation. He didn’t know who the man was, but felt an immediate kinship with him. He, too, had been hunted relentlessly by these beasts and their riders. Save the man first, worry if he was an enemy later.

The man was still thirty paces from the boulder when three other men rose up ahead of him, armed with crossbows. The first man threw himself to his belly, and the three in front lifted their crossbows even as the griffin stretched to snatch its prey from the ground. The animal was fully exposed, and the men with the bows could hardly miss as they let fly their bolts. They struck it in the shoulder, breast, and wing.

Everything about the scene suddenly shifted in Markal’s mind—who was the hunter, and who was the hunted—and he strangled the incantation before it crossed his lips. His power remained beneath the surface, the skin of his forearms and hands dry and free of blood.

The griffin screamed, this time in pain, and thrashed its wings, trying to get higher. It flipped onto its side and crashed into a treetop not far from Markal. Branches shook, and the animal cried out again.

The first man rose to his feet and followed the other three in charging toward the forest. They cheered and slapped each other on the back as they ran, and paid no attention to anything but the violent swaying of the tree and the shower of leaves from where the wounded beast had landed in its heights. Curious about the men, still holding onto his power, Markal slipped in behind them as they approached the base of the tree, making sure to whisper a quick concealing spell to hide his presence in case they turned his way.

The griffin had lodged itself in the branches of a massive oak tree, tangled in its tether and hanging upside down. The slender rider dangled, half-wedged in the branches, a tether around one ankle and another wrapped around her thigh. The woman was twisted about, the tethers that had preserved her life while aloft now keeping her pinned. She didn’t have her sword; perhaps it was tied to the beast above her.

The men below stopped their cheering and eyed the situation warily. They’d treed the beast, but both it and its rider were still alive. Three held crossbows and the fourth, the one who’d played the role of bait on the hillside, gripped a curved Veyrian sword.

“I can’t get a shot,” one of the men said.

“Shoot the woman,” another said. “Kill her and let the monster bleed to death.”

“I can’t get her, neither. And I ain’t got so many bolts that I can just shoot up there and hit branches.”

They were Veyrians, that much was clear from their gray cloaks, their weapons, and their manner of speech. Markal guessed they’d been sent into the mountains with the order to hunt and kill griffins—the riders seemed to attack both sides of this war indiscriminately—and might have been lurking on that hillside all day waiting for their opportunity.

In fact, it occurred to Markal that he might have inadvertently drawn their prey for them. The griffin rider, searching for Markal, had put herself in perfect position for the Veyrian hunters to catch her in an ambush.

The Veyrians were wary, but enjoyed the advantage of having their quarry trapped. The griffin was wounded, unable to fly, and the rider couldn’t get to her foot around the tethers and branches. She was hanging upside down, but now lifted herself up with seemingly nothing more than her stomach muscles, and at last she got her hands on her sword and drew it from its sheath. Returning to her hanging position, she hacked at a tree limb in an attempt to clear it so she could get to the tether holding her in place, but the weapon was not made for chopping, and it was slow work. The men circled below.

“Hold on, I got a shot from here,” one of them said. “Soon as she gets that branch out of the way.”

“Me, too,” another said.

The man with the sword nodded. “Hold your shot until it’s gone. Then steady yourselves and make sure you aim true. You’ll have plenty of time.”

Meanwhile, the woman continued to hack at the branch, either oblivious to the fact that removing the obstacle would give the men clear shots, or so desperate to free herself that she was willing to take her chances. She’d seemed so fluid and natural in the sky—they all did, mounted on their griffins—but now that she was lodged in the tree, she reminded Markal of the rabbits caught in his snares each morning, and their desperate, panicked thrashing.

The woman almost had the branch hacked off, and then she could bend and twist to get at the cords holding her to the griffin. Once those were cut, no doubt her intention was to come down and fight all four of the men on the ground. Markal doubted she’d make it down before they filled her with crossbow bolts, but even if she did, these were trained warriors who outnumbered her four to one, and her expertise was in the sky, not on the ground.

This was not Markal’s fight. No, even better than that, it was one enemy fighting another. Why not just walk away and count that there would be one less griffin and rider to hunt and harass him?

Except that one enemy wanted to destroy the gardens, enslave Aristonia, and subdue the entire world. The other enemy was just a harassing pest.

You have an incantation. Take them out.

Yes, he did, didn’t he? He could save the rider and her mount. And probably should, as annoying as that realization was. Markal would have sighed loudly if not for the necessity to remain silent. He turned his hands over and drew blood to the surface. He spoke the incantation, directed not toward the Veyrians, but at their crossbows. One of the men glanced down at his weapon, as if noticing a subtle change, something moving or bending. From above, the rider finally got her sword through the branch, and it crashed down.

The three with the crossbows lifted their weapons and aimed into the tree, even as the woman squirmed around to cut loose her tethers. “Now!” the final man said.

Markal’s magic took hold at the last moment. The men lowered their crossbows from aiming at the heights and pointed them at a companion instead. Three levers pulled at once, three bolts blasted forth, and eyes widened in surprise and horror as each of the three men took a bolt to the chest or stomach. They fell, groaning and writhing.

The final Veyrian, the one holding a sword, cursed. He whirled around, as if realizing that whatever had gone awry must have been magic. The griffin rider cut the last of her tethers, and came swinging agilely from branch to branch, dropping at a rapid rate toward the ground.

The Veyrian took a fighting stance against her. The woman was still three branches up, a good twenty feet off the ground, when she launched herself through the air, sword in hand.

Chapter Five

The griffin rider twisted as she came down, almost birdlike in flight, but there was force in her as she struck the Veyrian with her legs and knocked him to the ground, and yet somehow broke her own fall at the same time. The woman rolled to her feet and came at him with her sword drawn, and would have cut him down immediately if she’d moved a little more quickly.

But she was slow to advance, and Markal saw her heavily favoring her right leg. Her trousers on that side were torn open to the knee, with a bloody gash in the thigh, something she must have suffered when her griffin crashed into the trees. By the time she reached the soldier, he’d risen to a knee and lifted his sword. He blocked her strike, got to his feet, and pressed the attack.

Now that he was back on his feet, the woman’s slender build and acrobatic style didn’t seem much help, and it was all she could do to fight him off. She retreated, limping heavily, until her back was at the tree, where she cast a desperate look up, as if wanting to return to the heights. But there was no way to reach the branches, not with the Veyrian eagerly pressing the attack.

Markal faced a second dilemma, but this scarcely lasted a moment. He’d intervened already; now was not the time to step aside and let matters follow their natural course. If nothing else, the Veyrian would kill the woman and then figure out who had turned his men on each other.

Markal raised a bit of magic, bent for a handful of leaves and dirt, and flung them at the Veyrian. They gathered more debris as they flew, and the soldier was struck with a small bombardment of sticks, leaves, rocks, and dirt.

The man raised a forearm to protect his eyes and face, and the woman, spotting her opportunity, ducked beneath his sword and slashed at his belly. The soldier went down with a cry, and the woman finished him off with two quick strikes.

She immediately fixed Markal with a hostile gaze. “I see you. That’s right, I know that shadow is you, trying to hide with your sorcery. Don’t take a step toward me or you’ll be next.”

Her griffin was still screaming and thrashing about above, and the woman cast an anxious glance into the upper branches of the oak tree. Still facing Markal, who had not spoken or moved, she moved to one of the men with a crossbow bolt sticking out of his belly. Alone among his companions, he was still writhing and groaning, and very much alive.

Markal wondered briefly if she intended to help the man, or maybe to demand information, but her motives were much simpler. She took her sword, already dripping with Veyrian blood, and hacked twice at the back of the man’s neck. It was as quick and brutal as an execution, and Markal stared at the violence of it, stunned, even though he’d been the one to put the man down with a crossbow bolt to the gut in the first place.

“Walk away, sorcerer,” she said. “You have until I’m ready to fly, and then we’ll be after you. If you value your life, you’ll use your time wisely, and leave these mountains.”

Markal’s concealing spell was already slipping, and it only took a wave of the hand to make it dissolve altogether. He kept his distance from the woman, who was obviously in a good deal of pain, and not in any condition to come running after him, but still had a sword in hand, and had just killed two men. He had no doubt she’d do the same to him if given the opportunity.

She had an unusual appearance, like nobody he’d ever seen. Her hair was as black as a Marrabatti’s, but her skin was pale like an Eriscoban’s—perhaps paler, in fact—and there was something penetrating and almost hawk-like about her dark eyes, which had a curve at the edges. She was slender, yet muscular, and had been almost feline in her grace while twisting about up there and dropping from branch to branch.

The woman wore a silver chain around her brow that seemed to be woven into her hair. A small green stone sat at the center, gleaming in the late-afternoon sun.

The rider studied him in turn. “So you’re the one we’ve been hunting.”

“I did you no harm.”

“You invaded our lands. That is the definition of harm.”

“I was only passing through.”

“And how would you take it if I showed up with Ageel, landing in your home country? Would ‘only passing through,’ count as an excuse?”

Markal thought about the gardens. “In these times, probably not,” he admitted.

“I am giving you time to escape,” the woman said. “I am injured, and so is my mount.”

“Ageel? Is that what you call it? And what’s your name?”

She glared. “I would suggest you use that time to get yourself far from here. As soon as I’m ready to fly, I will be after you. We won’t have sorcerers in our land.”

“Very well.” Markal looked up into the tree, where the griffin had worn itself out and was glaring down through the branches with a look every bit as hostile as its rider’s. “Although I have doubts about how soon you’ll be back in the sky.”

“We’ll be after you—don’t think this slows the hunt. There’s an entire flock out there, ready to tear you limb from limb.”

“That’s not precisely what I meant. What I’m suggesting is that I might be able to help.”

She kept up the ferocious glare. “With sorcery?”

“You keep misusing that word. Sorcery is what the dark wizard practices—you know, the one who is building the highway through the mountains? The one who sent these men to hunt griffins?”

“I know this necromancer. I know what he’s capable of. What is the difference? You are enemies of each other, of course—anyone can see that. But you both practice sorcery.”

“Do sorcerers heal injured legs?”

“I’ve had worse, and won’t be troubled by it for long. We have our own healers. Balms and herbs. Now leave at once or I will start whistling until someone hears me and comes to my aid.”

He’d heard riders communicating by whistle, and knew how shrieking loud it could be. But she clearly knew that nobody was around to hear or she’d have tried that already.

“And what about your griffin? One bolt in the wing, one in the breast. Where’s the third one? The belly, wasn’t it? I hope it didn’t hit something vital. A body is a fragile thing, and an iron-tipped crossbow bolt has penetrating power, as these poor fools proved when they shot each other.”

Her glare softened, and there was worry in her expression as she glanced once more into the oak tree. Her expression was more circumspect as she took him in.

“You claim healing powers?”

“I do.”

“And what do you want in return? Something, no doubt. I won’t let you pass through our lands unimpeded. That will not happen, now or in the future.”

“Yes, of course I want something. I want down from these mountains.”

“So you can come back with another company of knights like the ones you led from the stone circle?”

“I want to leave. Nothing more, nothing less. Fly me to the lowlands and drop me off near my home.”

“You can’t fly.”

“Not alone. By the Brothers, no. But if you carry me, I’m sure I’ll manage.”

“Ageel will tear you apart.”

“I’ll manage that, too. I have a way with animals. We all do in my order.”

She chuckled. “Ageel is no mere animal. He’s a griffin, and the moment you lay a hand on him, you’re going to lose an arm. No, it’s out of the question.”

“Very well, then I’ll leave. I hope Ageel will be all right. What do you do with griffins when they can no longer fly?” He waved a hand. “Never mind. That apparently doesn’t trouble you.” He turned to go.

“Wait.” She sounded resigned and rather put upon. As if he hadn’t just saved her life and was now offering to save her griffin, too. “I’ll accept your offer. Can you climb a tree? No? Well, then, fetch your gear. I assume you have a hatchet for cutting firewood?”

“No, I’m traveling light.” He drew back his cloak to show the small satchel on a strap at his waist. He’d been carrying it since leaving the Blackshields, and it only contained a few essentials. He also had a small knife with a blade no longer than the length of his palm, and he drew it from its sheath. “You can use this if it’s better than your sword.”

She grunted. “No, not really. Well, then, what can you do while I’m getting Ageel down?”

“I can lay down wards to make sure we aren’t ambushed. But let me look at your leg first.”

“First the griffin, then my leg. Go do your sorcery.”

Without waiting to see how he’d respond, she grabbed for the lowest branch, the one she’d been unable to climb while fighting the soldier. She lifted herself effortlessly, then stretched for the next branch above her, climbing without seeming to put any weight on her leg. It was like watching an acrobat from the sultanates, and he could only imagine her climbing skills had she not been injured.

The wounded griffin watched from above, and when his mistress drew near, it opened his beak and hissed, even acted like he was going to snap at her arm. Markal was glad he was on the ground rather than dealing with the wounded, frightened animal.

When he’d finished laying the wards—a few pebbles, sticks, and murmured words—the woman was still in the heights, trying to cut a path for her mount to climb down through the tangle of branches, so he took a quick look around to see if he could spot a rabbit trail, a mountain stream with trout, or a patch of wild berries. There was nothing, and his stomach growled in protest.

“Sorcerer!” the woman called from the trees. “Where did you go? Stop messing around—we’re coming down.”

A litter of leaves and branches lay at the base of the tree, and she’d cut a hole around the griffin, which would be enough to get him to lower branches where there was more space to maneuver. Now that Markal had a clearer view, he could see the crossbow bolts sticking out of the animal, bloody and painful looking. One was high on the shoulder, above the wing, another in the belly, and the third penetrated the wing itself just below the bone. All three looked serious enough to be life-threatening. He’d know better when he had a chance to examine it up close, assuming he dared approach the thing.

The woman descended a branch and pulled on the tether. “Come on, you silly thing. You stay up here and you’re going to die. Sorcerer—” she called.

“Wizard, not sorcerer. And my name is Markal. What’s yours?”

“What does that matter?”

“What is your name?” he pressed.

“Yuli. Listen, do you see that tree behind you, the birch with the split trunk? Go stand there, will you?”

“Do you think I’m spooking your griffin, and that’s why he won’t come down?”

“No, I think if you’re standing in the open like that, you’re not going to last long. Ageel can be a challenging griffin at the best of times, and injured who knows what he’ll do?”

The griffin lowered himself with a squawk and a flap of injured wings, and the branch it dropped to bent nearly double as it took the animal’s weight. Markal decided it wouldn’t hurt to stay clear, and he positioned himself behind the birch tree in question. Yuli coaxed and prodded, and gradually got the animal down, one branch at a time. It half fluttered, half fell from the lowest branch, and flopped on the ground, its body and wings tucked awkwardly as it gave a miserable look around and shrieked in pain.

It looked even bigger on the ground, the size of a horse. Its eagle-like head was big enough to swallow him whole, and the talons long enough to envelop his entire head. The back paws could eviscerate him with a single swipe.

Yuli touched at the crossbow bolts, lingering on the one below the rib cage, and worry clouded her face. She looked toward Markal. “Do you really think you can help?”

“I hope so. I want to help. But I’ll be honest—I’m terrified to come out from behind here.”

“You said you had a way with animals.”

“Yes, but . . . not like this. I have a spell that would soothe him—”

“Then why don’t you use it?”

“—but if I cast it, I’ll have no magic left for healing. I already spent a lot of strength making the Veyrians shoot each other and then throwing that debris at the last man’s face. I am sadly quite limited in my abilities.”

He expected another insulting comment, but instead Yuli nodded calmly. “That’s good to hear.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s good to hear that one’s enemies are not all-powerful.”

“We don’t have to be enemies.”

“You have invaded my land. That makes us enemies.”

“That again? How is this your land? You weren’t here until a few years ago, and suddenly you came swarming from the north country. Somehow that makes it yours?”

“The ice sheets are advancing, and our lands are overrun with wild beasts and giants—we had no choice. Anyway, nobody was living in the mountains when we came.”

“That doesn’t mean we don’t need to use them. The mountain roads—”

“Do you mean that monstrosity your king is building through the high passes, built on the backs of an army of slaves? You flatlanders are like swarms of ants, there are so many of you. Thousands upon thousands. And your sorcery can burn us out of the sky. So yes, I am happy to hear that you have limits.”

All this time, Yuli had been working. First, to soothe Ageel, who calmed under her touch. Or maybe that was sheer exhaustion on the part of the griffin. Markal didn’t know enough to tell for sure.

Once she had him calmed, she set about removing the bolts. The one through the wing was relatively easy; Yuli snapped it in two and pulled the two halves out from opposite sides. The one in the shoulder was trickier. She examined the head of the first bolt, running her fingers along the barb-like ends to see how it was constructed, then cut off the back end of the second bolt and shoved it the rest of the way through the shoulder muscle to send it out the other side. It emerged with a gush of blood, and Ageel keened in pain and whipped his head around to take a snap at her. She pushed away his beak, seemingly unconcerned that a single bite could take off her arm.

Yuli pressed one hand against the shoulder wound and reached for the last crossbow bolt with the other. Her face bent into worry as she felt around the base of the bolt where it emerged. The entire metal head of the bolt was buried in the animal’s belly, together with an inch of the wooden shaft. An ugly wound, and one that would have killed a man.

Yuli began hesitantly. “I don’t know what to . . .? Do you think this should be cut out? If it has penetrated the vitals . . .”

Markal stepped around the forked trunk and advanced a few feet. “Is it safe?”

“No, it’s not safe. I’ll hold Ageel, but he’s shivering. Not in his right mind. You said you have a way with animals. Time to prove it, flatlander.”

Markal swallowed hard and stepped forward. Yuli released the bleeding shoulder and held the griffin’s head. There was no question the animal, injured and exhausted though it was, could throw her sky high with a single thrash, turn on Markal, and tear him apart. He spoke soothing words, let his mind clear itself, thought about the gardens, about his warm feelings for flowers, trees, bees, and birds. He thought about Wilford, the black bear that lived in the woods at the heart of the gardens, and how he would leave him pieces of honeycomb as thanks for staying out of the blueberries.

The griffin couldn’t read Markal’s mind, per se, but would feel the soothing thoughts radiating off him, the love of plant and animal, and his way of living in harmony with all living things. It studied him as he approached, and the violent shivering seemed to wane. When Markal reached a hand for the tawny haunch near the belly, the griffin barely twitched. He breathed a sigh of relief.

“Interesting,” Yuli said. “You really do have a way.”

“I’m not Narud, but yes, animals seem to like me. Even the rabbits in my traps, right before I wring their unfortunate necks.”

“I don’t like killing deer, either, but one must eat to survive.”

“How about flatlanders?” Markal asked. “Do you like killing us, or do you feel a little sad when we die?”

Her tone hardened. “Can you remove the arrow or not?”

He prodded at the wound, a little harder when the griffin remained calm and showed no signs of attacking. A bad injury, but the flesh was cool, and there seemed to be no poison or contagion on the bolt itself. He wrapped one hand around the shaft, held out the other hand, palm down, and closed his eyes. He spoke words in the old tongue.

“Hunc alienum obiectum est franja dolor.”

Markal opened his eyes to find the bolt in hand and the wound nearly closed. There was more blood leaking from his own body than from the griffin’s. Ageel let out a low keen that sounded like relief, and Yuli stared, gaping.

Markal tossed the bolt aside and wiped blood from his hand. “Do you still think it’s sorcery?”

“That was . . . can you heal the wing and shoulder wounds, too?”

He was suddenly bone weary. “I can close the shoulder, but I can’t do any real healing until I’ve had a rest. And some food.” He nodded at her leg. “That includes healing your leg and ankle.”

“The ankle isn’t broken, only badly sprained. And the leg is painful, but it won’t stop me.”

“Don’t walk on it. Not until I—” He stopped, overcome by a yawn. He was drained. “I can’t do anything. I feel like I’m going to faint. Let me rest a bit, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’m not going to sit around here waiting.” Yuli rose to her feet, tested to see if she could put weight on her bad leg, and winced.

“Where are you going?”

“I won’t be gone long. But if I were you, I’d crawl back to that birch tree before you collapse. You’re not the only one who’s going to be hungry. And as for you,” she added, with a sharp look at Ageel. “This wizard just saved your life. Show a little gratitude and don’t eat him before I get back.”

Chapter Six

The dark acolyte attacked Nathaliey with water. All the falling rain, all the water pooling in puddles, and even the moisture still in the clouds twisted into a funnel around the man’s hands and blasted toward her. She tried to lift her hands to draw a counterspell, but the column of water struck her chest like a hammer, and she went flying.

She hit the ground hard, a rock at her back. She squirmed free of the current of water, but it found her again and caught her in the face. It continued to pummel her as it drove her across the ground, where she scrambled for a rock, a clump of grass—anything to grab hold of.

Water and mud filled her mouth and nose, and she couldn’t breathe. It felt like she was underwater and drowning. And such was the force of the current that it was pushing her toward the edge of the bluff. It was going to knock her off the hill and into the river, where she’d drown.

A hand grabbed her leg before she went over. A voice shouted. Another hand grabbed her arm. The water had stopped, but two marauders had her and flipped her onto her back. One man held a sword, which he was about to plunge into her chest. The dark acolyte shouted at him to stop, and her attacker obeyed.

She blinked mud and water from her eyes to find a familiar, hateful face peering down at her. It was Vashti, the enemy Nathaliey and Markal faced a few weeks ago in the battle on the old road. Nathaliey had defeated Vashti, in fact. Would have broken his bones by reversing his own shadow attack back at him, if Markal hadn’t stopped her. A second dark acolyte had been lurking on the edge of the battle, strengthening Bronwyn, Hamid, and the rest of the marauders, and it had taken their combined strength to fight them both off.

Vashti stared at her from hollow eyes, his thin, almost corpse-like lips curled into a cruel grin. She lifted her right hand, determined to blast the smile from his face, but one of the marauders shoved his sword tip through her hand and pinned it to the mud. She cried out in pain. The second marauder poked at her free hand with his sword tip as if daring her to try again so he could impale her a second time.

“You!” Vashti said to another marauder who had approached and was watching with dead eyes. “Get your captain.”

The man pinning her hand with his sword grunted as soon as the marauder had departed on Vashti’s errand. “Kill her and be done with it.”

“You are an idiot, and you will keep your mouth shut.”

“I don’t answer to you, little weasel,” the marauder growled.

He pushed down with his sword, and Nathaliey bit her tongue and closed her eyes against the pain, but refused to cry out again. She must have something that could get her out of this situation.

“What in Toth’s name is going on here?” a voice growled. “Oh, so you’ve caught a spy.”

Nathaliey opened her eyes to see Hamid standing over her. The massive form of Soultrup was strapped over his shoulder, and he wiped at his face with the stump of his left hand to brush away the rainwater that dripped from his limp, greasy hair.

This was the man who had taken command of the marauders after Bronwyn’s death. Already, in a few short weeks, he had slaughtered hundreds of Eriscobans, sacking villages and murdering men, women, and children, while promising the rest that he would return later to enslave the survivors.

Hamid peered down at her, eyes narrowing. “I know this one. She’s one of the wizard’s servants. We faced her in the mountains. Then I suppose she’s seen our operation, and probably reported it, too.”

“She did more than that,” Vashti said. “She sent those men over the edge, made the hillside break apart.”

The sword tip pressed harder on her palm, and the other marauder kicked her hard in the ribs. “I’ll kill the little rat,” one of them said.

“Don’t be a fool,” Hamid said. “She has more value than any number of you.”

“You’re going to set her free?” the other marauder said.

“One more word from you and I’ll throw you over the edge myself. I want ten riders, plus my own horse. As for you,” Hamid told Vashti. “You’ll accompany us.”

“Where to?” the dark acolyte asked.

“We’re taking her to the master.”

#

They bound Nathaliey’s hands behind her back, one bleeding from where it had been stabbed, and threw her over the saddle of a horse who seemed only slightly more excited about venturing into the rain than she was.

Within five minutes, Hamid had his ten marauders chosen and mounted to ride, and Vashti had conferred with someone—probably the other dark acolyte Nathaliey and Markal had faced in the previous battle—and then they were riding down the hillside from the bluff, where the work hauling troops from the river continued at a furious pace. Vashti climbed into the saddle of Nathaliey’s horse and had a marauder haul her into an upright position in front of him.

He struck her on the side of the head. “Try anything and I’ll make you pay.”

She said nothing, intent on keeping her wits while she figured out where they were going and what they wanted with her. Literally carry her to Toth, or did they mean something else? Maybe later she’d test Vashti, but for now that didn’t serve her.

Instead, she studied the enemy camp as they left. The newcomers from the river had been filtering down from the bluff toward the ditch and palisade, where work continued in the rain. The hillside was all torn up, quickly on its way toward providing a stout defense until the Veyrian troops and the marauders could get the bulk of their army in position and from there break out toward the plains.

Just as Hamid and Vashti’s small company crossed the partially dug ditch, a swarm of riders came pounding up the hill from below, several dozen strong. The newcomers had swords in hands and shields in front of them, with rainwater running down the black patina. Sir Wolfram was in the lead, flanked by Marissa, Lucas, and several more of his most powerful paladins.

It was bad luck that a force of marauders was mounted and in position to confront the paladins, and if the marauder captain had kept his nerve and met the charge, he might have held Wolfram there long enough to allow the rest of the marauders and the Veyrian footmen to grab weapons and run down from the bluff to make a fight of it. That was a fight that the hilltop’s defenders, with their overwhelming numbers, were sure to win.

But Hamid balked, clearly caught off guard by the charge. He led his small force off the footpath, onto the grassy hillside, and toward the makeshift paddock where the Veyrians had left their horses and supplies. Perhaps he thought the attack was a raid, and this was the best way to protect his forces. By the time he recovered and seemed to recognize his mistake, the paladins had surged past him, leaping over narrow parts of the ditch and hacking down Veyrians before they could snatch up spears.

Hamid drew Soultrup and shook it over his head. Red fire raced down the blade, and the weapon seemed to vibrate, greedy for blood. Paladins in the rear spotted him, and a number made as if to charge. Hamid hesitated, then shouted at Vashti, who brushed his hands at the air. Water and mud flew toward the paladins in a blinding sheet, and the marauders used the distraction to hook around the hillside to the north, and from there ride hard for lower ground.

Upon reaching the road, Hamid hesitated again, as if expecting to find a reserve force of paladins waiting to snare them. He seemed relieved to find the road empty, and ordered the small company to ride hard to the north. The sound of shouts and clashing steel came down from the hillside for several minutes before they were too far away for even Nathaliey’s sharp hearing to pick it out.

She said a silent prayer to the Brother Gods, in case any were listening to her plea. Let Wolfram win, and let him figure out what had happened to her. He could hunt Hamid down on the road, recover Soultrup, and free Nathaliey at the same time. But already despair was settling in as she considered the possibilities of escape and found them very low.

Vashti got her attention with another slap on the side of the head. “How did you do that?” he demanded.

How did she do what? Make the hillside collapse? She wasn’t about to admit she had no idea what he was talking about, but thought it might be a good opportunity to provoke him.

She didn’t turn in the saddle to look at him, but kept her tone lofty, thinking Chantmer-like thoughts to make her words arrogant. “If you are expecting cooperation, you’re going to be disappointed.”

“Oh, you’ll cooperate. My master will make sure of that. But we had your hands bound, and I felt nothing. Somehow you told the paladins to rescue you. How?”

Ah, that. She hadn’t, of course, but she could see why he might think so. Instead, Wolfram’s arrival was the logical conclusion of Marissa and Geord returning to tell him their discovery about the unprepared state of the enemy camp. Wolfram had arrived intending to cut down as many marauders and footman as he could. Nobody, so far as she could tell, knew that Nathaliey was a prisoner.

“I can communicate with them any time I wish,” Nathaliey lied.

Vashti grabbed the hand that had been pinned to the mud with the marauder’s sword and twisted it. She winced, but refused to struggle.

The hand was still throbbing, but she had natural healing ability thanks to her years of training in the order, pulling out her own blood, recovering, and repeating the process. Already, the wound was closing over, though the bone and muscle were throbbing, and a normal person might never have been able to use that hand again.

“Nobody can do that,” Vashti said. “Not even my master can do it any time he wishes, and his sorcery is beyond anything you can imagine. Certainly nobody from that pathetic order of so-called wizards to which you belong. How did you communicate with the paladins? Tell me or I’ll make you suffer.”

He squeezed harder when she didn’t answer, and this time she couldn’t help a small cry of pain. She flailed with her elbow, and Vashti bent her hand behind her back, grinding the bones together. A marauder spotted them struggling and came up beside them. He shoved Nathaliey back into place before she could hurl herself from the saddle, then punched her jaw. Her head rolled away from it, and her vision went momentarily black. When her head cleared, she renewed her fight to get free of Vashti’s grasp.

Hamid turned in the saddle. “We’re going to be in the thick of it any moment, and I won’t have distractions. If that woman doesn’t stop struggling, cut her throat and throw her in the ditch.”

“But the master said—” Vashti began.

“You’ll either cut her throat, or I’ll cut yours.”

“Understood,” Vashti said coldly.

Hamid’s tone left no doubt that he was serious, and Nathaliey stopped struggling. For now. They were riding up the road through the heavy rain, and came upon a man with a horse as they rounded a corner. It was only a farmer, and the horse was pulling a milk cart, but Hamid gave an alarmed shout that seemed out of proportion to the threat. Once he realized it was just a local and his milk, he snarled at the man to get his cart out of the way so the horses could pass, then ordered the man killed anyway after he’d obeyed. Nathaliey watched in horror as they threw the farmer’s dead, bleeding body into the mud and trampled it with their horses.

She was still wondering about the marauder captain’s disproportionate response to the man with the cart when they ran into a small company of mounted men, roughly equivalent in numbers to the marauders. Again, Hamid pulled up, expecting a major fight, but it was clear that the opposing force was even more caught off guard, and the captain ordered a charge.

These were not Blackshields, but regular knights with shields bearing the crests of various realms of the free kingdoms—a wolf, a snarling bear, an oak tree on a field of white—and while the Eriscobans made a fight of it, Hamid’s forces made quick work of them. Hamid cut down two with Soultrup, three more fell to other marauders, and then the entire company was through and riding hard to the north, leaving the surviving Eriscobans behind.

Nathaliey finally understand the marauders’ haste a few minutes later when they brushed the edge of a column of Eriscoban footmen armed with spears and traveling south at a good pace. The troops carried no baggage and were marching smartly, so they had to be well-supplied from the rear. And it occurred to her that the forces resupplying the Veyrians from the river must have warned Hamid that an army of barbarians was on the march. That would explain the hurry.

Unfortunately, this was information that Captain Wolfram didn’t possess. If he had, he’d have never attacked the bluff, but waited for reinforcements. Either way, she realized, with belated hope rising in her breast, Hamid had fled the scene, knowing that his army and its reinforcements were doomed.

The marauders were too few in number to fight the column of Eriscobans, and they cut from the road toward the river as soon as they were spotted. Hamid rode them hard along the bank for nearly a half hour before they came upon a bridge over the Thorft. She didn’t know if he’d intended to cross or not, but the bridge was swarming with Eriscobans, and scorch marks, piles of dead on the banks, and a damaged watchtower, with its witch hat roof still smoldering in the rain, indicated that the Veyrians on their barges had forced their way past.

Riders spotted Hamid and gave pursuit. There were maybe fifteen men chasing the marauders to start, and a few minutes later Hamid made contact with more Eriscobans, another scouting party riding alongside the main army. A good thirty mounted troops were shortly chasing Hamid’s men, and Nathaliey began to hope that they would force battle. She could get her hands loose in the chaos and make her escape.

But just as the Eriscobans were about to overcome them, Vashti cast a spell over the horses, who surged with fresh energy. They flew across the countryside, sure-footed and unflagging. The rain, mud, and uneven terrain slowed their pursuers, who fell behind and eventually vanished.

An hour later they came upon a hamlet of three or four mud-and-thatch houses. A woman poked her head out at the sound of horses. Nathaliey tried to shout a warning, but a marauder was already dismounting to take care of her. He dragged her out and killed her. Hamid’s men broke down doors and murdered the rest while Nathaliey watched in horror.

Once the occupants were dead, the marauders pillaged the houses for food, while Vashti and Nathaliey waited in the saddle. Hamid came outside, tearing into a loaf of bread so fresh it was still steaming in the cold, damp air. He stepped over the body of the woman who’d been baking it moments earlier without sparing her a glance.

“Aren’t you going to offer me any?” Nathaliey asked, bitter and sick from the slaughter. Hamid gave her a cold glance with his dead eyes and continued on his way.

“There will be no food for you today,” Vashti said when the marauder captain was back among his men, giving them short, growled instructions for the road ahead.

“I wasn’t asking for bread.”

“No bread today. Or tomorrow. Or any other day. You have eaten your last meal.”

“So you’re going to starve me to death, is that it?”

He didn’t answer. The marauders were on the road minutes later, and this time the pace was more measured, as Hamid seemed to think they’d evaded pursuit. The marauders stopped periodically to burn houses, murder, and otherwise spread mayhem as they traveled toward Estmor, safe territory for the Veyrians.

And as the miles piled up, Nathaliey felt the chance of rescue evaporating. Any hope of escape now rested entirely in her hands.

Chapter Seven

It was night when Markal awakened from his stupor, and an owl was hooting in the distance. A fire crackled about fifteen feet away, between the birch where he’d collapsed and the oak tree where he’d left the injured griffin. Yuli’s slender figure crouched in front of the fire, and she turned a chunk of sizzling venison on a makeshift spit. The smell was wonderful, and Markal’s stomach groaned in anticipation.

Ageel sat a few paces behind his mistress, his back to the oak tree, one wing tucked, the other stretched out as if it were painful to move. The griffin spotted Markal rising to his feet, cocked his head, and stared with that intense, eagle-like gaze.

“Don’t worry, he’s already had his supper,” Yuli said without rising or glancing at Markal. Sharp ears, that one.

“You’re sure about that?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Where do you think the rest of the deer went? Down Ageel’s gullet, bones, hide, and all. A griffin is not a picky eater.”

“What about you?”

“I had a bit of liver, but I’m not really hungry.”

“And you won’t be until I look at that ankle. You went out hunting on that thing?”

“Not much of a choice, was there?”

And how exactly had she brought down a deer, anyway, hobbling about on an injured ankle, with no bow that he could see, or a griffin to do the hunting? He hobbled over, thinking to ask, but the sight of the sizzling venison put it out of his mind.

Yuli used a forked stick to pick a bit of meat from the end, which she passed to him. He blew on it until it was just below tongue-scalding temperature, then gobbled it down. He picked off another piece from the end, but the rest was still too raw for consumption.

“It might be a little overcooked,” she said, “but they say you flatlanders like your food burned.”

“Actually, I’m going to wait on the rest of it. Don’t want to get worms.”

“You’re safe from worms. This deer seemed healthy enough.”

“All the same, I prefer it . . . well, not burned, but more cooked than that.”

“It’s not like I never cook my food,” she said. “Fish, for example, taste better cooked. Especially the heads.”

Markal raised an eyebrow. “Yes, raw fish heads are a little much, aren’t they?”

She shrugged. “It’s only a preference. I’ll eat it either way.”

He was still ravenous, but even the little bit he’d consumed was a relief. And his body had recovered some of its strength while he slept.

“Show me your ankle,” he said.

“I’d rather not have you touching me.”

“Don’t be stubborn. Off with your boot.”

She thinned her lips, sighed, and unlaced her deerskin boot. She winced as it came off. The ankle was purple and swollen.

“You should have been soaking this in a cold stream, not hiking around hunting deer.”

“Naturally, I would have preferred that.” She grimaced again as he took her foot in his hands. “Do you have to?”

“It’s going to hurt,” he said, shifting the ankle to make sure the bone was sound. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“A little pain doesn’t bother me. I don’t like to be touched, except by my mates.”

“You have more than one?”

“Not at the same time, no. And only a few weeks a year. We aren’t flatlanders, you know. We can’t all crowd into the same house, filthy and smelling each other’s body odor.”

“Only a woman and her griffin, I imagine.”

“I have three at the moment, but yes. Griffins smell much better than humans. Especially than flatlanders.” She sniffed at him. “You must have bathed recently—you’re not as rancid-smelling as I thought you’d be.”

“What about children? Don’t they live with their parents?”

“When absolutely necessary. My son moved out when he was seven.”

“Seven? Moved out where?”

“Oh, it’s not like that. He lives with his father, who is an excellent trainer. It was time for the boy’s solo riding. Anyway, I didn’t have time for the child, not with all of the moving about I have to do organizing the flocks. Up and down the mountains, both sides of the range, all the way south to the. . .” Yuli broke off and frowned. “Never mind that. What the devil is taking you so long? Can you heal it or not?”

Markal smiled. “I’ve already repaired the torn muscle and the stretched ligaments.”

“Then why are you still touching me?” she demanded. “Go see to my griffin. He’s in pain, and he can’t fly.”

“I need to manipulate your ankle or it will stiffen up and you’ll walk with a limp for weeks to come.”

“I can move it myself, you fool. Let go of me.”

Markal was losing patience. “Sit still and do what I say. You’re not in charge here, I am.”

Yuli folded her arms and gave him a cross look as he kept moving her ankle around. Already, the swelling was going down, although it would be tender for a while. It had only taken a little magic to heal her ankle, in what was, after all, a minor injury rendered serious largely by her need to put weight on it. When he was satisfied that her ankle wouldn’t go stiff, he released her with a nod.

“What about Ageel?” she said.

“Give me a minute. That’s going to take more effort. A little more venison will help. Do you have wine?”

“Wine? Where the devil would I get that?”

“Water?”

“There’s a brook a few hundred paces in that direction.” She gestured behind her.

“You have a waterskin, I presume? Fetch me water.”

“I thought you wanted me to stay off the ankle.”

“Not anymore, I don’t. Now it helps. And I need to drink after all the blood I lost.”

She pulled her boot back on, and was still grumbling when she recovered the empty waterskin from near the griffin and set off, hobbling. Markal removed the spit of venison from the fire and blew on it while keeping an eye on the animal, who stared back.

“You’ve already eaten, and now it’s my turn,” he told the animal. “Unless you’re hoping for a piece of me, and not this venison, in which case my answer is an even more vehement no.”

Ageel squawked. Markal was no expert in griffin talk, but the griffin sounded more curious than hungry or suspicious. He picked off a piece of meat, blew on it, and took it gingerly between his teeth.

“Needs salt. And vegetables. Even a turnip or two would be nice. Potatoes even better.”

“If you have any of those things, feel free to cook them up,” Yuli said, emerging from the woods with a full waterskin. “Otherwise, eat your venison and be grateful.”

“I’m plenty grateful, believe me.”

He took the waterskin. The water was cold and mountain fresh, and he was so thirsty that he kept drinking and drinking until it was nearly drained. He handed it back and started in on the venison again.

“Where are your riders?” he asked between mouthfuls.

“Huh?”

“Your companions, your flock. You went down, but nobody has come searching, at least not that I’ve seen.”

“Ah. Because nobody was expecting me to return. I was flying north, toward the king’s highway, when I spotted something. They’d given me word that a lone sorcerer—one of the two we spotted a few weeks ago leaving the stone circle—was coming north. I thought I’d do some hunting before I continued my journey.”

“Which is when you were caught in the ambush.” Markal nodded. “What were you doing? You said you fly up and down the mountain range?”

Yuli was still standing above him, and she folded her arms with a scowl.

Markal took another bite of venison and tried a different angle. “Are you someone important among your people?”

“I am Yuli Flockheart.”

“Should that mean something to me?”

“You don’t have flockhearts?”

“We don’t have flocks.”

“You know what I mean. Chieftains, clan leaders, lords of the air.”

“Are you some sort of queen?”

“We don’t have queens or kings. I am the flockheart.”

“I see,” Markal said, although he didn’t. “Is that what the green stone and the silver chain represent?”

“This is the emerald crown.”

“So you have a crown, but you aren’t a queen. You are a flockheart.”

“Yes.”

He had eaten about three-fourths of the venison, and it was sitting thick and heavy in his stomach, which also had a bunch of water sloshing around. The remaining chunk was undercooked, in any event. He rose to his feet with what was left, and approached Ageel.

“A peace offering?” Yuli asked. She shrugged. “It won’t hurt. Keep your fingers clear, though. His beak is sharp.”

“Sharp and big.”

He’d already had his hands on the beast once, but Ageel looked more alert now—injured yes, but no longer impaled with crossbow bolts. Yuli approached first, and wrapped her hands around Ageel’s neck with her fingers gripping fistfuls of white feathers.

“Now listen here,” Markal said, still at a safe distance. “We know each other already, so nothing funny, right? We’re good friends now, you and I.”

Yuli snorted. “Don’t get carried away. Ageel knows as well as I do that you’re no kind of friend.”

He ignored her. “I’m touching your wing first. Don’t be alarmed. I’m only going to help the pain go away.”

The injury to the wing had been the least dangerous of the three wounds in the short term, but carried the most risk now that the bolt was out of the stomach and the shoulder was no longer bleeding. If the delicate wing bone was badly shattered, he didn’t know if he could bring it together. The master could, surely, or possibly Narud—but they were miles away. What about the hermit at the stone circle? Could he and Yuli get the injured griffin there, and if so, would the hermit help?

The first time Markal touched the griffin it had been trembling with fear and pain. Now, a rumble started deep in its chest. A warning. It sent a shiver down Markal’s spine, but he kept his voice calm and continued to speak in soothing tones.

To his relief, the break was clean and simple. He pulled on it while speaking the incantation. The griffin squawked and gave a thrash, and then a long keening sound. Yuli let out her breath and relaxed her grip on Ageel’s neck as Markal stepped away from the animal.

“Did you get it?” she asked.

Markal picked up a handful of oak leaves and wiped off blood. “It shouldn’t have been so costly—that’s one of the simpler spells I command. I don’t know why so much of my power came up.”

“Healing a broken wing—is that what you call simple?”

“Maybe simple is the wrong word, but the body wants to be healed. Get the bones together and they practically do the rest. The other magic—pulling water out of the air, making the ground shake, throwing a fireball—is going against the natural order of things and requires much more power. Assuming you do it right,” he added. “Which I apparently did not.”

He returned to the griffin and felt for the damaged muscle where Yuli had broken off the back side of the crossbow bolt and pushed the rest of it through. Her instincts had been right, considering the circumstances, but it had left a good deal of muscle damage, which he could see plainly. When he touched the wound, he sensed deeper damage to the tissue as well. This would heal painfully, and with a good deal of permanent scar tissue, if he couldn’t fix it with more skill than he’d exhibited repairing the wing bone.

Markal closed his eyes this time and spent more time concentrating before casting his spell. He thought about the smooth, unbroken skin as it should be, about muscles connected in their proper configuration, veins carrying blood to the wings and back again to the heart. He pictured everything in order, nothing cut, ripped, or ruptured.

The magic felt right when it came out, and by the time he pulled back, drained, it was already taking effect. The bloody scab sloughed off the griffin’s shoulder, and angry red flesh closed back up again. Ageel cocked his head and looked at the wound as if scarcely believing that the pain had vanished.

“By the Brothers,” Yuli exclaimed. All of the disdain and pride was gone from her voice, and only marvel remained. “It is truly a gift of the gods you possess, Markal.”

He didn’t have the strength to answer, or even to clean the blood from his hands before he staggered to the hollow at the base of the birch tree and collapsed.

#

Markal woke in the morning to a shrill whistle. He sat up straight, head pounding as if hungover from too much wine, neck stiff where it had bent awkwardly through the night. His bladder felt like it would burst.

Yuli was dressed and clean, her dark hair glistening and damp, as if she’d bathed in one of the nearby streams. She worked over Ageel’s haunches, picking out burrs while the griffin groomed wing feathers with his beak. There was only a small bare pink spot where it had taken the bolt in the shoulder, and no marks for the other two wounds. It seemed active and feisty, ready to take to the air.

Once Yuli finished with grooming her mount, she worked on the cords and tethers, adjusting them here and there behind the head, at the neck, and across Ageel’s powerful chest. She’d trimmed the cord that she’d hacked through yesterday to get free of the tree, and now tied it off with fresh knots. When she finished, she gave two more blasting whistles, one short, one long, followed by a lengthy pause, and then three shorter blasts.

“Calling your companions?” Markal asked.

Yuli turned. “I’m telling anyone who might be listening that there may be enemies with bows. I don’t know if anyone is listening, but it’s prudent to issue a warning, just in case.” She looked him over. “You look terrible.”

He picked at the crusty blood on his hands. His eyes felt gummed up, and he still hadn’t emptied his bladder or slaked his raging thirst.

She gestured at the fire, which was nearly burned down, with a trickle of smoke rising from it. A trout lay across a flat stone in the middle of it, skin golden brown and fins crispy. “There’s your breakfast.”

“You’ve been up a while.”

“Hours. Hurry and eat, and let’s get out of here.” Her face darkened. “If I’m going to take you to the lowlands, I’d as soon do it before it gets too hot.”

He took care of necessities before eating, and by the time he returned, shivering, from washing up at the brook, he felt better. More awake, certainly; the water seemed to come from the coldest snowpack in the highest peaks.

Yuli had stuffed the trout’s empty cavity with wild herbs, and it was delicious. He ate everything but the head and bones, which he tossed to Ageel. The morsel disappeared down the griffin’s throat with a single gulp.

And then it was Markal doing gulping of a different kind as he followed Yuli’s instruction and climbed behind her onto the back of the powerful animal. She wrapped a cord around his waist and leg. It felt altogether insubstantial.

“That won’t keep you from falling off, but it will keep you from plummeting to your death. You’re sitting awkwardly. Move up closer. No, right behind me. Put your hands around my waist and hold on tight. What are you being so squeamish about? Grab on!”

“I just remembered what you said about not liking to be touched.”

“This is completely different. Now hold on if you don’t want to fall off the first thing.” She took his hands and moved them into position. “There, like that.”

She was slender, but all muscle, and the animal was like a strong warhorse, only more powerfully built, a predator of the skies. And the smell was nothing like the musky odor of a horse, but heavier, almost . . . savage, it seemed. A lion and eagle together. It walked awkwardly through the trees to the boulder-studded hillside where the Veyrian soldiers had mounted their ambush.

“Ready?” Yuli asked.

“No, not remotely.”

“Good. Hold on tight.”

The griffin beat its powerful wings, made a little jump, and they were airborne. Markal’s stomach lurched and he felt suddenly lightheaded. The griffin flapped harder and they climbed, with the hillside receding below them at dizzying speed. He gripped tighter, and for a terrifying moment thought he was falling, but that was just Yuli leaning on the back of the griffin as it swooped about.

Thankfully, the griffin straightened out again. It was already far higher than any archer could ever shoot, but kept climbing. Some of Markal’s fear faded, and he hazarded a look. His mouth dropped open. He was looking down on the mountains as they stretched in ripples and folds, peaks, and knifelike gorges. A beautiful, terrifying view.

The griffin continued to climb, and the wind was an icy knife through his clothes. He leaned in to be heard over the rushing air.

“It’s cold.”

She turned, and her hair slapped him across the face. “I know! Isn’t it glorious?”

No, it was numbing, is what it was. The morning had been chill enough on the ground, but up here, it took his breath away. And they were almost to the heights of the lowest peaks, where the air was too thin to breathe—or so he’d always thought. It didn’t seem to bother either the rider or her mount, though, and he figured if he just hung on they’d soon start to descend. He closed his eyes, which were watering from the stinging breeze, and tucked his head against Yuli’s back.

Just when he thought he’d faint from the cold and the thin air, his stomach lurched again, and the griffin was hurtling down. He opened his eyes to see the ground rushing up. With terror he realized the griffin’s injury must have opened up again. Perhaps the broken, partially healed bone. It had snapped in two, and they were going to slam into the ground and die.

But that was just his fear speaking, and the griffin pulled up when they were still well above the ground. They were already into the low, shoulder-like mountains at the base of the main peaks, and came down low between two hills, then climbed again once they came out of the little valley separating them. He had a brief, glorious sensation of a warm breeze and a hot sun, but it vanished as they regained the heights.

Yuli turned her head. “I thought we might be safer where we could fly low over the ground, but it’s too blasted hot down there. We have to get up higher.”

“If you say so.”

He tucked his head again as icy cold wind buffeted his face. Not quite so high this time, since they were over the lowlands, but still plenty cold. They flew on and on, and his hands turned numb, his thigh muscles ached from gripping the griffin’s back, and his neck was stiff from bending down. He lost track of time.

Finally, they descended again, this time for real. He wiped his watering eyes on his shoulder and took a look. There were farms below, even a bit of green. Trees to the north. The Harvester take him, had they really crossed all the way to Aristonia in a few hours?

The griffin landed in the middle of someone’s wheat field and pawed about, tearing up the plants. Yuli hopped off and walked over the top of the plants, too, as if they were no more than mountain grasses, not the tender early growth of a farmer’s livelihood. Markal eased himself down, wincing as blood flowed into his extremities.

It was a warm day, with the sun directly overhead, and he stood with his face turned skyward, drinking in the glorious heat. He sighed, then turned to Yuli. Sweat poured down her temples and dripped from the uncut emerald at her brow. Her face was flushed red.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “we’ll be gone before your people even know we’re here. Ageel only needs a moment’s rest. That was a long flight with two riders. Oh, it’s so hot. How can you live here without dying?”

“This is normal. Wait until the heat comes up from the desert in late summer, then you’ll see.”

“No, never. You flatlanders can keep your heat.” She eyed Ageel, who was still breathing heavily. “Here you are, Markal. Our bargain is completed.”

“More than completed. I’m only ten or fifteen miles from the gardens. How fast were we flying, anyway? I can’t believe we traveled so far, so quickly.”

“I’d have come faster, but with two riders . . . anyway, the distances pass quickly when you fly in a straight line.” She wiped the sweat from her forehead and glanced at Ageel again. “He’s ready. We’ll leave.”

Yuli turned without so much as a goodbye. She climbed onto her mount, wrapped herself in tethers, and positioned the griffin for another skyward launch.

“Wait,” Markal said. “Why don’t you join us?”

“Join you? Are you mad? I’m not staying down here a moment longer than necessary. We’re going to climb to where the air is fresh and sweet, and then we’re going back to the mountains. And if you’re wise, you’ll stay in the lowlands where you belong.”

“I don’t mean stay in Aristonia, Yuli. I mean help us fight the necromancer. You can drive him from the mountain passes, close his highway. Help us win this war.”

She snorted. “If that were possible, we’d have done so already.”

“But you were alone. Now you’ll have allies from both the west and the east.”

For a moment she looked as though she were considering his offer, but she gave a vehement shake of the head. “You’re not allies, Markal. You’ll never be. Flatlanders are our enemies. All of them. And that includes you.”

In spite of her hard tone and narrowed eyes, most of the hostility had left her voice, and he couldn’t help but press.

“I saved your life.”

“After putting it at risk in the first place. I’d have never been so low on the hillside if I hadn’t been hunting you.”

“What does that mean? If you hadn’t tried to kill me, you wouldn’t have put yourself in danger? How is that my fault? Anyway, I healed your griffin, too. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Yes, it earned you a flight out of the mountains to your own territory. That was our bargain, our deal.” Yuli wrapped a tether around her fist and squeezed her knees against Ageel’s haunches. The griffin spread his wings and ruffled his feathers. “You are a flatlander, Markal. I am a daughter of the Mountain Brother, a child of the sky. Stay among your own kind, and I will stay among mine.”

“Listen to me—”

Yuli dug her knees into her mount. “Ska!”

The griffin lifted skyward with a mighty heave of his wings, and then they were flying west, climbing higher with every wingbeat. Markal heard a sound and turned about to see a farmer, hoe in hand, cloth around his head to block the sun. He stared up at the departing griffin with a look of dumbfounded terror.

The farmer scarcely glanced at his torn-up wheat plants before his gaze fell on Markal. “Who are you?” he asked, a tremble in his voice. “An enemy?”

“I am a wizard of the Crimson Path, and this is my homeland. I have been away these past months. Tell me, friend, does Khalif Omar still reign in the palace at Syrmarria, or has the high king overthrown our sovereignty?”

The stricken look on the farmer’s face was all the answer Markal needed.

Chapter Eight

After questioning the farmer, Markal discovered that he was only about a mile from the outskirts of Woods Crossing. From the village, one could cut north toward the Tothian Way or east toward the gardens, the Apple Valley, and Syrmarria. Not even twelve miles from home across good roads—he figured he’d sneak or bluff his way onto a wagon to carry him the rest of the way.

But when he arrived at the crossroads that gave Woods Crossing its name, he caught a familiar scent of magic. He followed it to a well, then to a footpath leading between a stream and someone’s cow pasture, where he discovered a small ward made of leaves and sticks. It was one of their own; someone from the order had passed this way a few hours earlier and left this here. A ward to repel enemies and call for help from their own at the same time. It was this that he’d sensed.

Curious, Markal continued along the side of the stream. Massive rotten stumps twelve or fifteen feet in width lined the pasture, and a pair of wooden totem poles, one toppled, indicated that this had once been the southern edge of the forest that still grew to the north, albeit now carved in two by the king’s highway. He climbed a hillside where moss-covered stones were still visible, as well as a giant toppled tree that was only an outline in the ground where it had rotted over the decades.

A fairy fort sat to one side, covered with brush, and opposite that lay the site of a former shrine to the Forest Brother, where a sacred grove had once stood. It was reduced to a ring of tree stumps, each the size of a small house. Several stumps sprouted saplings from the old root system, some of these forty feet tall themselves, with silvery gray bark, and their limbs arched together to form a dark, gloomy roof.

Narud slept on a large slab of granite at the center of the ring. The wizard’s clothes were dirty, and the musky odor of dog hung about him as Markal entered the old shrine. Markal shook him awake.

“Huh, what? Oh, thank the Brothers, it’s you.”

“Were you expecting someone else?” Markal asked.

“A wolfhound has some stamina, but not like a marauder and his ensorcelled horse. I couldn’t quite make the gardens, and thought they’d catch me here and kill me.”

“The gardens are still standing?”

“Why wouldn’t they be?” Narud said. “By now, the master should be arriving with the first shipment from the library. But what happened to you?” He glanced over Markal’s shoulder. “Where’s Nathaliey?”

“I left her with the Blackshields. What do you mean the first shipment? Has something happened to the library?”

“What are Blackshields?”

“A company of paladins. Never mind that. I’ll tell you later, and you’ll tell me.” Markal glanced behind him. “If you’re being hunted, we should get to the road before . . . well, whoever is following you finds us. Who is it, who’s hunting you? Marauders, you say?”

Narud’s face darkened. “It’s Alyssa.”

“The acolyte? What happened to her?”

Narud turned over his forearm to show a long scorched piece of flesh running from his elbow to his armpit. “She tried to kill me.”

#

Narud’s story, told in the back of a turnip wagon while he and Markal were cloaked with magic.

There’s a rush of power when you change into a dog, Markal, and I was under its spell for the first several minutes. My muscles stretched and grew. My body was lean and hungry and swift. My eyesight was dimmer than it had been, but there was an explosion of smells like you can only imagine.

I could almost see the smells in my mind, where a skunk had passed three days earlier. Where another dog had peed against a farmhouse—a mean, hungry bitch with full dugs who would tear off your muzzle if you came near her pups. Horses, cows. Night soil tossed in the street, part of a rotten cabbage, a dead bird, dropped by a nasty-smelling cat. Moldy bread that some other animal had snarfed up, but not without leaving a scent.

And people. Lots and lots of people. Most had the simple odor of villagers. But I could smell the master, smell Chantmer, smell the acolytes, even smell myself—my human self—where I’d come through on foot less than an hour earlier.

And of course the marauders, their mounts, and their prisoners. The air stank with them, dead and fetid, and even their horses carried foul sorcery. It all but masked the smell of Alyssa and Stephan. I ran five minutes up the road before my mind began to come back. I was no longer a dog, I was Narud of the Order of the Crimson Path, and a dog was only a form I had chosen.

The marauders rode hard toward the Tothian Way, but I was swifter, and drew within several hundred paces, always out of eyesight, but so close that I could almost see them in my mind’s eye from their scent alone. If they stopped to slaughter our friends, I was prepared to roar in and tear out their throats.

I know what you’re thinking, Markal, that I would have been killed, and maybe you’re right, but I couldn’t let our friends be killed without a fight. Anyway, I doubted that’s what they intended. Most likely they’d stop at one of the dark wizard’s fortifications to torture their prisoners. To discover secrets about the gardens: how to find them, how to cross the bridge, and how to breach the defenses. Once I knew where they were to be held, I’d fetch the master, and we’d break down the castle walls to free them.

The marauders reached the highway, but didn’t stop at any of the castles or encampments. Instead, they followed the road west toward the mountains. It was then that I fell behind because I could hardly run down the highway during daylight, with all the wagon trains, chained slaves, Veyrian soldiers, and merchants.

I was eventually spotted and fled into the woods, where I hid until night before continuing my pursuit. The trail was still easy to follow, but I’d fallen well behind. For the next few days, I pursued during the night, retreated from the road during the day to sleep, and continued my hunt the next evening. I was getting farther and farther behind, but surely they’d stop soon. Why would they carry our friends all the way to the mountains?

I was on the western border of Aristonia when I smelled Alyssa and Stephan leaving the road. The scent carried along a farm road, crossed a shallow stream, and cut over a hill topped by an overgrown, abandoned apple orchard. The acolytes had separated from the marauders, who followed behind. It seemed our friends had escaped and made a run for it, with the enemy in pursuit. Or so I thought.

If I could only reach the acolytes before the marauders, I could change back into human form, cast magic on the three of us, and we’d slip away, concealed, before the enemy caught us.

I was anxious, moving too quickly, and had grown careless. A sharp scent that reminded me of the gardens drew my attention. There, coming from between two apple trees, was a smell that could only be the acolytes themselves. It was dark, but I saw shapes. My friends!

It was only a pile of cloaks, tunics, and leggings—the acolytes’ clothing. I nosed it, confused.

I didn’t see or smell the trap until it was too late. The ground gave way beneath me, and I flailed at the air with a started howl. A wolf pit. I landed at the bottom, with loose branches, sticks, and leaves raining down on me. If the enemy had put sharpened stakes at the bottom, I’d have been done for.

But they didn’t want to kill me, only take me prisoner. Two marauders appeared above, together with the dark acolyte—her name is Jasmeen. She has a dark heart and a wicked soul.

Jasmeen stood above the pit, hands on her hips. “Narud. I knew it was you. I felt you coming. How easy to turn the tables—the master promised as much, and it has come true just as he prophesied.”

I stared up at her, snarling, wondering how she had got ahead of me. She hadn’t left with the marauders, she’d fled with Toth and Zartosht. But Chantmer and I spent weeks hunting the dark acolytes in the palace and the city, and this wasn’t the first time she’d bested me.

“You came looking for your friends, but it’s too late.” Another cruel smile. “They’re still alive—but breaking. Alyssa is with us already, and Stephan will soon follow. And now we have you, a so-called wizard. A prize for my master. We’ll have your obedience, too.”

The marauders had ropes, and Jasmeen placed her hands together to bring up sorcery. Whatever they were planning, I wanted nothing to do with it.

I took a mighty leap from the bottom of the pit. I couldn’t get my paws up, but I got my snout above the surface and snapped my teeth on Jasmeen’s ankle. I dragged her into the wolf pit, intent on tearing out her throat.

And then my body went limp, and I collapsed. Someone had tossed a rope around my muzzle—an enchanted rope—and it had me paralyzed. Jasmeen attacked me with her fists and knees, until someone hauled her off me. I turned back into a man.

They trussed me and dragged me out of the pit, and then they put me in a wagon with bars at the door. My legs were free, but they’d bound my hands behind my back. The wagon smelled of piss and vomit and blood. There, curled up in dirty straw in the corner, was Stephan. Naked and bleeding, and whispering for water for his cracked lips. No sign of Alyssa. What had they done to her?

Peering through the bars into the early light of dawn, I saw that we were on the Tothian Way, passing through a stretch of burned farmland and gutted villages on the border of Aristonia.

I made my way to Stephan’s side. “It’s me, Narud.”

He stared at me through crusted eyes. “You’re naked. And your hands . . . does that mean they…?”

“Where are they taking us? Where is Alyssa?”

“She’s one of them now. I will be soon, too. And now, you.”

“Talk sense. Where is she? Where have they taken her?”

The wagon creaked to a stop, the door swung open, and a marauder grabbed me and dragged me out. He threw my back against the wagon and seized my throat. Another marauder appeared, holding a glass vial with a viscous yellow liquid in it. Jasmeen stood to one side, shadow bleeding from her hands. She chanted an oily incantation in the old tongue as they tried to force the liquid down my throat.

I struggled and flailed, but marauders have unnatural strength, and the need to breathe when a man has his hand on your throat is hard to overcome. The liquid was bitter, and burned the lips and tongue like a Marrabatti chili pepper. Some of it went down. Jasmeen watched with a triumphant expression.

“An elixir of thrall?” I said. “You think that will work on me?”

Jasmeen gestured, and Alyssa came up behind her. The whites of her eyes had turned yellow, and her lips were pale. They’d dressed her in gray robes, but her hands looked bony where they emerged from the sleeves, as if her flesh had wasted away. It had only been a few days since they’d taken her.

“Alyssa is a slave of King Toth,” Jasmeen said. “His dark acolyte. Her mind is gone, her free will burned out. She is like a ravager, a tool, and nothing more. Stephan will turn soon, too. And then you.”

“I can resist the elixir indefinitely,” I said. “You won’t compel me to do anything.”

“You are a wizard, and you might resist, perhaps as long as a fortnight, but starved, delirious, you will be too weak to hold out forever.” Hatred twisted her features. “The king has instructed me to make you an offer. Join us now, freely. Keep your will, and join as a servant, not a slave. Equal with Zartosht, with Vashti, with me.”

“Utter madness. I walk the Crimson Path.”

She gestured at Alyssa, who stood blank faced and yellow eyed behind her. “Your friend said the same thing.” Jasmeen nodded at the marauders. “Give him more elixir.”

More of it went down my throat this time, but it all came up again minutes later, when they put me back in the wagon with Stephan. My tongue and lips burned, my stomach cramped violently, and I was sick again.

Stephan crawled over to me. “Vomiting doesn’t help. You’ll go to sleep eventually, and then you’ll have nightmares. When you wake, everything will look gray. You’ll see wights. It’s madness.”

“Food? Water?”

“A little water, but no food. They say we’ll never eat again.”

I eyed him doubtfully. “Even marauders need to eat.”

“But dark acolytes don’t. They pull their sustenance from the bodies of those they torture. And eventually, they don’t need water, either. They draw it from the air.”

I turned this over in my head, this bending of the natural world. Would I be able to resist forever? Or at least until they grew tired of me and cut my throat? That would be preferable to going yellow eyed and dead like Alyssa. But it would be challenging enough without resisting while my belly was empty and my lips cracked with thirst.

“I won’t turn,” I said. “By the Brothers, it will never happen.”

“That’s what Alyssa said, too. She was stronger than me—when I first faced the nightmares and felt the shadows, I thought I was doomed. She told me to fight, to keep fighting. But I still have my mind, and she is gone. Something changed last night, and she went over to their side just before they captured you.”

The wagon was on the move again. Riders overtook us, regular Veyrian mounted troops. A few minutes later, we passed a long row of chained slaves trudging west with downcast eyes. They were mostly from the khalifates, but among them were dark-skinned slaves from the sultanates, barbarians with their pale skin, easily burned in the baking sun, and a variety of people from other lands, with other skin colors, hair, and accents. Aristonians, too. Hundreds of them.

I pulled away from the bars and scooted around until my back—and my bound hands—faced Stephan. “Untie me.”

“You can’t cast magic in here. I already tried. There’s some sort of sorcerous shield enveloping us.”

“I don’t believe it. Untie me.”

“They’ll punish you.”

“Let them.”

“They’ll punish me.”

I glanced over my shoulder, surprised by his craven tone. Was it only the light, or did his eyes have a yellowish gleam? Maybe that wasn’t cowardice in his tone. Maybe he was turning.

“In the name of Memnet the Great and by the authority of the Crimson Path, I order you to untie my hands, Stephan, Acolyte of the Order.”

Stephan gave a great shudder, and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. There was yellow around the rims. But when he looked back, his gaze was a little more clear, and he seemed more steady. He obeyed. Soon, my hands were free, and I was rubbing circulation into them while turning over my options for escape.

I put my hands on the door. Strips of iron reinforced it from the exterior, but apart from that, it was just wood. A simple spell would tear it apart, no harder than blasting a stump out of the ground in the garden. I’d cast a concealing spell on the pair of us first, turn the door to kindling, and we’d make a run for it. The only question was to do it now, or wait until night, when darkness would offer protection, but we’d be farther west into the hill country, and farther from home.

I explained my plan to Stephan. “If we leave, it means abandoning Alyssa. I hate the thought of that. But if she’s turned, there’s nothing we can do for her anyway.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ll never get through the door.”

“I told you—it’s only wood. I have mastery over wood.”

Stephan shook his head miserably. “I know that spell—it’s one of the few I can manage without someone feeding me the incantation. I tried it already.”

“You did?”

“I don’t have your power, of course I don’t. But look at the door. Do you see any damage at all? Narud, touch it. Feel it. You’ll see what I mean. The sorcerer himself covered this wagon with wards.”

I put my hand on the wood and brought up a small spell to feel through the wood, to see what might be blocking my escape. If not the door, I could break through the walls, or through the floorboards, to drop onto the road and let the wagon pass over top of us. Magical tendrils probed the wood, and there found the enemy’s sorcery. I pulled back with a startled cry of pain. Every nerve in my hand and arm jangled with pain.

“You see what I mean,” Stephan said. “We are doomed.”

“Don’t talk that way. We’re not doomed.”

I may not have been able to blast my way out with magic, but as I tapped at the walls and pulled up the straw to feel for a rotten board, for loose nails, something else occurred to me. The wagon was solidly built, but if I were strong enough, I could simply knock the door from its hinges. A human couldn’t do it, but what about a large beast?

I settled on a bear. That was an animal I knew well enough from my encounters with Wilford on the forest path of the gardens. Wait until nightfall, change to a bear, and smash our way free through brute strength.

I settled in to wait out the day. The wagon bumped along at a steady pace, now part of a general flow of traffic to the west. King Toth had barely subdued the eastern plains and was already gathering the might of the khalifates to hurl against the barbarian lands on the other side of the Dragon’s Spine. His road, once built, was indestructible, laid down with sorcery and bound with the pain, suffering, and death of thousands. And he felt compelled to extend it to the ends of the earth.

Stephan fell into a deep slumber, and when he woke in the afternoon, began muttering incoherently. The yellow had spread from the rims of his eyes toward the center, and when I shook him, he said something about serving the master, and it wasn’t Memnet the Great he was talking about. Alarmed, I explained my new plan.

“Leave me, Narud. I’m lost.”

“No, you’re not.”

“He’s in my head. He compels me to obey. When Jasmeen returns, I’ll have no will to resist.”

Once Stephan was free, I told myself, he would recover his wits. Once they were no longer pouring that sorcerous elixir down his gullet. And once free, I’d speed his recovery with magic of my own. But I had to get him out of the cage, or he would truly be lost. Even worse, I was no longer convinced of my own ability to resist. Not forever.

It wasn’t yet night, but nearly dusk, which was close enough.

I closed my eyes to think about a bear, and pictured Wilford as I’d last seen him. Black fur, brown muzzle. Thirty-five stone of brute muscle. Wilford could tear that door from its hinges, then brawl his way clear of the enemy forces to flee into the surrounding countryside, with Stephan following. Stay free just until dark; that was all I had to do.

But I couldn’t get it, couldn’t capture the essence of a bear like I had with a wolfhound. The first time I made that transition, Memnet gave me a bit of wolfhound’s fur, told me to hold it to my nose and smell it. If only I had a little bit of Wilford’s fur with me. Without it, I couldn’t get enough bear to be sure of completing the transformation.

“Master,” Stephan whispered. He squatted in the corner with his knees pulled to his chest. His eyes were yellow. “I am ready to serve you now.” He stared at me with a baleful gaze. “Turn, Narud. Turn and serve the necromancer.”

I stared in alarm. It was already too late for him. And soon it would be too late for me, too. Nothing would get me out of here.

It was then that I heard something moving in the wagon. I pushed aside the filthy straw and caught a mouse. The little thing fought and struggled, but I cupped it gently in my hands until it calmed. I glanced at Stephan—no longer to be trusted—then lifted the mouse to where I could whisper in its ear.

“My friend. My little friend. I need your help to escape this place. It is a prison for me, and I must borrow your essence to free myself.”

It sat very still, warm and fragile in my palms, heart beating rapidly. Its life force moved swiftly, as one finds in all such small creatures. Yet it seemed to understand, and when I placed it on my leg so I could expose my palms, it didn’t flee in terror. The words came to my lips.

Moments later, I was a mouse. It was time to escape.

Chapter Nine

“So you just crawled through the bars of the door and went on your way?” Markal asked.

The two companions were drawing nearer to the gardens, and it would soon be time to complete the journey on foot. They seemed safe from pursuit, but Markal had kept a wary eye on the road behind the turnip wagon while Narud told his story. The farmer up front kept trudging alongside his horse, unaware that he was carrying two wizards who didn’t have a shekel between them to pay for the ride.

“You have to think like a mouse, Markal. Would a mouse have crawled up the door where he could be spotted? What mouse would do that when there was a perfectly good hole in the floorboards?”

“You never said there was a hole. You said the floor was sound.”

Narud gave him a look. He wore a pair of trousers they’d pinched before leaving the village of Woods Crossing, but was still bare from the waist up, and scratched at the tufts of black hair growing on his chest.

“The floor was too sound for a human to break through. For a mouse, even the smallest holes are gateways. I slipped out and dropped onto the road, suffered a few near misses from boots and hooves, and reached safe ground by the side of the highway.”

Markal picked up a turnip, brushed off a dirty spot, took a bite, and grimaced. Raw turnip. Narud gave him a look.

“I’m hungry,” Markal said with a shrug. “Go on. You obviously didn’t get away that easily, or you wouldn’t have that burn on the inside of your arm.”

Markal had cast some magic on the wound, and it was nothing but a fading pink spot now, but Alyssa had inflicted damage in her attack, if that’s who had truly done it; Narud hadn’t reached that part of his story yet.

“I could have held the mouse form all night, but when you’re that small you have other things to worry about. Before I knew it, not one but two foxes were after me, chasing me here and there, and I was barely off the highway.

“I changed back into human form just as one of the foxes pounced on me. He was rather surprised, let me tell you. That chased off the foxes, but the enemy detected me at once. Then Jasmeen was hunting me, together with Alyssa and several marauders. And Stephan. Our old friend is with them now. I changed forms again. I had a series of near misses, some of them taking place while I was a wolfhound, some as a human.

“Once, I holed up for three days in a dry wash where bandits had stashed food and goods, while I waited for my trail to go stale. But Alyssa and Stephan have my scent—they can track me better than any of the other dark acolytes, and I fled for my life.” Narud pointed to the pink burn mark on his arm. “That’s when Alyssa gave me this. It was the last time she’ll ever hurt me.”

“How can you be sure?” Markal asked. “Unless you think the master can turn her, you might have to face them both again.”

“Stephan, maybe. Not Alyssa.” Narud’s voice sounded a grim note. “I killed her, Markal. Broke her bones and split her skull.”

Markal was taken aback. “Well . . . you had no choice. I hope you don’t blame yourself.”

Narud looked away. Markal was curious about Narud’s final flight toward Woods Crossing, and wondered if the wizard faced lingering effects from the elixir of thrall, but Narud seemed to be finished with the telling. In any event, they were approaching the crossroads west of the gardens.

The road hooking to the right would carry the farmer toward Syrmarria. To the left was the path to the gardens, all but invisible to normal eyes. When the farmer broke right, Markal and Narud hopped down from the wagon and bore left.

It was maybe two more miles from here to the west wall of the gardens. Having told his story, Narud was in no mood for conversation, which left Markal alone with his thoughts. Poor Alyssa, killed by a former companion as she tried to hunt him down. And Stephan, now tormented in the service of the necromancer, his mind in chains.

Which raised another question. Had Vashti and the other dark acolytes been trying to take Markal and Nathaliey prisoner during the battle when Bronwyn fell and the one-handed marauder escaped with the red sword? He wished there were some way to pass that information to Nathaliey, to warn her. But she was hundreds of miles away, riding with the Blackshields as they gathered an army to throw the enemy out of Eriscoba.

A few minutes later he caught sight of the garden walls. Relief flooded into him, followed by a sense of peace as they passed through the gate. The smell of honeysuckle and wisteria enveloped him. The air filled with the familiar buzz of honeybees, and when he saw keepers bent over their work, tying tomato plants and picking green beans, he sank to his knees and picked up a handful of rich, loamy soil. He lifted it to his nose and drank in its scent.

He was home.

#

Markal and Narud found the master in front of the Golden Pavilion where it gleamed above the shore of the small lake at the heart of the gardens. Its clean lines and gleaming roof reflected in the still water, a sentinel of peace and security. The keepers had dug a pit in front of the pavilion, about six feet wide and eight feet long, and roughly half as deep as a man was tall. The pit was lined with freshly cut stone, each one marked top to bottom with runes, sigils, and wards.

Several keepers were hard at work on more stones to one side of the excavation, tapping away with chisels and hammers, and speaking incantations in low voices, while something like green smoke trailed from their fingertips.

A wagon sat next to the stone-lined chamber, stuffed with tomes wrapped in oiled leathers. Acolytes and keepers passed the volumes down to Jethro, the head archivist from the Syrmarrian library, who stood in the chamber. He examined each volume and gave instructions about how to place the volumes relative to the others. Another archivist then carefully put them in place. Jethro’s right arm ended in a stump; Narud had told Markal that a dark acolyte had sent a withering shadow into the archivist’s hand and destroyed it.

Memnet the Great stood next to the others, rolling his orb from hand to hand. A green light swirled and twisted at the center of the orb. He spotted the newcomers and his face brightened as the orb vanished up his sleeve.

“Ah, thank the Brothers. Well met, both of you.” His smile faltered as he took in their drawn faces. “Where is Nathaliey? What happened with Stephan and Alyssa?”

“Nathaliey is with the paladins,” Markal said. “As safe as can be, I imagine. The acolytes are a different matter. I’ll let Narud explain.”

The arrival of the two younger wizards had disrupted the work, and Memnet said, “Keep working, friends. Narud, come with me. Tell me. Jethro, talk to Markal. Explain your system.”

The master and Narud walked away from the pavilion, speaking in low voices as the younger wizard reported the dismal news about Alyssa and Stephan. Jethro waved Markal over with his good hand.

“I’m glad to see you,” Jethro said. “Karla is in Syrmarria with Chantmer, and there’s nobody else here who can understand how I wish to arrange these books.”

“You’ve devised a system so complex that Memnet the Great can’t understand it?”

“The master is too important for such tedium. Not a patient laborer like you and I.”

“Ah, but didn’t you hear?” Markal said. “I’ve been raised up. I’m a mighty wizard now.”

Jethro broke into a broad smile, but he quickly turned serious again. “You look terrible. Half-starved and as gaunt as a dark acolyte.” He raised his voice. “Someone fetch our friend cheese and olives. And bring me two peaches from the south orchard.”

“And a flagon of wine,” Markal added as a keeper moved to obey.

“But not the strong stuff,” Jethro told her, then turned back to Markal. “Not until you’ve got food in your belly. I need your mind clear.” He snapped his fingers. “Give me the next book. One for Markal, too.”

Archivists were not always respected by other members of the order, even though knowledge was the basis of every great wizard’s strength. The acolytes were proud of their power, the apprentices were full of potential, and the keepers had some mastery of both power and knowledge. But an archivist spent his or her life nose pressed in a book, reading, collecting, but unable to raise any but the simplest of the spells they studied.

Here, however, Jethro was in his element and full of confidence as he explained his system. He’d organized the books going into the vault by the spectrum and type of magic they contained. It would save weeks or months of work when the time came to bring them out again. For the first several books, Markal could do nothing but flip the books open and stare blankly at their pages, trying to make sense of the strange markings crawling across the page. Markings he understood well enough when he’d studied them in the library. Here, they were inscrutable.

“Clear your mind,” Jethro said. “Not all of the runes in the vault are for protection and hiding—some simulate the mental acuity you feel in the library. No, not there,” he added, taking a book from Markal. “That should go with the lore of the Gods. Here, in this corner, by the lore and wisdom rune, see?”

It started to make sense, and Markal was soon able to work with less supervision. They’d recovered some of the most valuable tomes, but Jethro said there were at least three more shipments of books, scrolls, and tablets to completely empty the library. Then they would cap the vault with the stones still being worked on by the keepers, cover the whole mound with dirt, and use magic to raise a final concealing layer of turf above it all.

“If the Brothers favor us, we’ll have the books back in the library by the first midwinter’s frost,” Jethro said, “but this vault will protect them as long as is needed. A wizard’s lifetime and longer, if necessary.”

“And if the gardens themselves fall?” Markal asked.

“The vault could even survive that,” Jethro said. “Destroy it all, burn it, raise an army of wights to tear the soil out inch by inch, and this vault should remain. Should.”

The magic might be able to hide and protect the books for that long, but what about a simple betrayal? Did Alyssa and Stephan know what the master was intending and where? And what about all these keepers and acolytes? What about him, for that matter? If he were taken by the enemy, turned to a slave of the dark wizard, could he betray them, or would the knowledge of this vault evaporate from his memory?

A keeper arrived with food and drink. Markal had been puzzling over a book with a silver binding and an indigo-blue leather cover, and he handed it over to Jethro. He set the food and drink on the stone lip of the vault and took a break. He popped an olive into his mouth and closed his eyes at the rich, delicious texture and flavor. A sliver of cheese, a bite of peach—had it always been this wonderful? He eyed the clay flagon of wine, but remembered Jethro’s comment and refrained until the food had a chance to settle.

“What are Chantmer and the rest doing in Syrmarria?” Markal asked between mouthfuls.

“Fighting dark acolytes. The master strengthened the library defenses, attacked the salamander portals in the night market—they’re weakened, but still working to call up the beasts—and then we fled down the highway with our books, hunted by wights, marauders, and dark acolytes.

“The next shipment is the most important of all,” Jethro added. “We proved we could rescue the books and keep them safe on the road. Now, we’ll take the best of it, the strongest, the ones containing the most incantations. Everything necessary to form an order of wizards.”

Jethro continued to explain as Markal finished his light meal, finally allowing himself to indulge in the wine. It was rich and heady.

After Memnet’s bad encounter with the enemy, the master had stopped testing the enemy’s strength and gone for a direct attack. They’d blasted apart enemy defenses in the palace wherever they could be found and laid a track of protective wards along an alternate route to and from Syrmarria. They meant to follow this path back and forth until they had the library evacuated, then return to the city one more time to mount an all-out attempt to destroy the enemy’s work before Toth brought the fire salamanders up from the depths.

“If we don’t stop him, the city will burn,” Markal said.

“The city, the palace, and the library,” Jethro said. “These books are more important than anything, even the whole of Syrmarria. If the city must be sacrificed to save the library, that is only the will of the gods.”

Markal set down the wine and took another volume. This time he was able to identify its contents within eight or ten minutes, and he put it in the right position without assistance from the archivist. They had about twenty more volumes to place before the wagon was empty. Markal felt stronger and more confident with every book he touched, and Jethro seemed pleased with his work.

Memnet and Narud returned just as they were finishing with the final volumes. The master’s face was serious, and there was no sign of the orb he’d been playing with earlier. He said nothing about the missing acolytes.

“We leave as soon as you finish,” he said. “Narud will stay and lead the garden defenses. I will escort Markal and Jethro to the city and work to secure the road while you gather more books.

“We’ll come under attack,” Memnet added. “Either in the city or on the road. Should anything happen to us, or should the enemy mount a full assault while we’re gone, Narud will seal the vault and defend the gardens. Each of us will sell his or her life as dearly as possible. Quickly now, it’s time to go.”

Markal laid the final volume into place, hoisted himself out of the vault, and helped the one-handed archivist ascend. He’d been home less than two hours, and was already forced to take the road again.

Chapter Ten

Nathaliey lay slumped over the saddle, faint with hunger and exhaustion, when Vashti jabbed her hard in the ribs and told her to wake up, they’d arrived at Estmor Castle. The company of marauders had been riding hard for days, burning and killing when they could, but mostly trying to reach the castle as swiftly as possible.

It had been slow going at first, fighting their way across the Eriscoban countryside, but then they had reached the Tothian Way, which already penetrated deep into the free kingdoms, crossed the Thorft at Sleptstock, and entered Arvada. The outermost works had been temporarily abandoned, as an army of Eriscobans had overrun the highway, but behind the Veyrian lines lay a series of partially built watchtowers and small castles to control the road, and there were enough soldiers, slaves, and others involved in the invasion that Hamid’s small force rode east without fear of ambush.

The highway rose on a causeway built above the soggy, flooded farmland, where abandoned farmhouses sat in dismal solitude, overwhelmed by rushes, sedges, and marshwort. Earlier, they’d passed an entire village of gaunt, broken houses in the middle of the marsh, with rotting bodies half-buried in the mud, the exposed part of their flesh picked over by birds and other wild animals.

And now, Estmor Castle, which rose above the flat countryside like a mighty stone fist. It was surrounded by an outer curtain, with a massive, frowning central keep. A barbican guarded the entrance, and dozens of men patrolled the wall walk and bastion towers.

Nathaliey didn’t know much of the free kingdoms other than what Wolfram had told her, but she knew enough about castles to see that this was no little castelet like many she’d spotted since crossing the mountains, but a mighty fortress built to survive an actual war. Even before the arrival of the high king and his armies, Eriscoba must have seen its fair share of conflict.

The castle stood at the center of a rise so slight that it could barely be called a hill, but was high enough to lift it above the dank marshes, although she couldn’t imagine that the air was particularly healthy with Estmor flooded. A thriving encampment had taken over the village outside the castle walls. There were barracks for troops, and she heard the clank of blacksmiths, smelled smoke rising from forges, and saw coopers, wheelwrights, alehouses, and other signs of camp followers. The people were a mix of pale-skinned Eriscobans—what she would have called barbarians just a few months ago—and people from across the khalifates and sultanates. Slaves, soldiers, and freemen. Not everyone was here under duress; plenty welcomed the high king’s war and saw profit in it.

The crowds parted as the marauders approached, and any who didn’t move with alacrity were shouted out of the way. Still riding hard toward the castle gates, Hamid led them past tents selling slices of goat meat served in flatbread, khalifate-style, and Nathaliey wanted to weep from the smell of it, she was so hungry.

“You’re going to kill me if you don’t let me eat something,” she told Vashti.

She didn’t expect a response—he had either ignored her or snarled for her to shut up whenever she asked for food—but this time he had an answer.

“You’ll get sustenance soon. A special elixir that will cure your hunger once and for all.”

And then they were riding through the barbican and into the heart of the enemy’s castle.

#

Vashti ordered Nathaliey hauled up to the wall walk, where she got a good view of the inner bailey. It had been turned into a repository for supplies flowing west into Eriscoba: armor, swords, barrels of oiled arrows, spare clothing, food, drink, partially disassembled siege engines, combustible oil, and other objects needed for Toth’s war.

Vashti stood to one side, consulting with another dark acolyte, a woman with snowy white hair, but an otherwise youthful appearance, while three Veyrian soldiers kept watch on Nathaliey. That gave her time to study the terrain outside the castle.

By the size of the barracks and the village, it seemed that there were no more than five or six hundred fighting men present. As many as two hundred more were inside the castle, but it was hard to tell for sure because riders kept coming and going. She wondered if the high king were present, and if not, which pasha was commanding this army. In any event, it seemed the bulk of the enemy forces must be elsewhere, which made sense, given what she’d seen and heard along the road.

Hamid trudged up the stairs, accompanied by two of his lieutenants. Soultrup was strapped over his back, ever at hand, and he reached over his shoulder with his remaining hand to touch the hilt. He cocked his head and gave a curt nod, as if in answer to some unheard instruction.

The marauder captain studied her with distaste and turned to Vashti. “What are you doing with this woman, anyway?”

“Her hands are bound,” Vashti said. “She can’t cause any trouble.”

“Except the trouble she causes with her eyes and ears. You’ve brought a spy up to the walls, you fool, and she’s making no attempt to hide it, either. Look at her studying the camp.”

“Let her,” Vashti said. “What harm could she cause?”

“Spoken like a man ignorant of war.”

“I fight and kill just as you do.”

“With books and sorcery,” Hamid sneered. “When have you felt another man’s blood spray your face? When have you felt the pain of a sword bite?” He held up his stump of a hand. “When have you suffered a real wound?”

Vashti fingered the marauder’s gray cloak. “Don’t forget you are a product of this sorcery. Without it, you would be dead.”

Hamid clenched his teeth. “Give her your poison, then. Turn her if you can.”

“Turn me?” Nathaliey said. “That is your plan? I will never turn from the Crimson Path. If that’s what you think, you’re both as stupid as you are ugly.”

Hamid drew Soultrup with a snarl. The edge of the blade gleamed red and eager. Vashti threw up his forearm.

“Don’t, you fool. Put her soul in the blade and you might lose it.”

“I’m not going to kill her. Just maim her a little. They took my hand—I’ll take her leg.”

Nathaliey didn’t think the marauder was serious, but at that moment, the thunder of hooves drew their attention. A large company of marauders, some eighty or more in number, came riding up the Tothian Way. They were cloaked in gray, and the majority of their mounts were the light brown, smaller horses of the east, with a number of powerful Eriscoban warhorses in their midst. A handful of Veyrians in the black and crimson rode along with them, carrying a banner which flapped in the wind.

They broke from the highway toward the castle, still approaching at a good pace, as if they’d come from somewhere in a hurry. They didn’t pull up in the village, but rode hard toward the gates.

“You see how she’s watching our movements, even now?” Hamid said. “If you plan to turn her into one of your number, you had better start soon before she finds a way to pass information to the barbarians.”

“She has no way to communicate,” Vashti said. “That is a gift belonging to our master’s servants, no one else.”

It was at that moment that Nathaliey noticed something curious about the approaching riders. The escorting troops wore the black and crimson, their banner unfurled, revealing the sunburst of Siraf, a port city on the coast south of Veyre. It was one of the first khalifates to willingly submit to the high king’s rule, and the Siraffi troops were permitted to march under their own banner and wear their traditional billowy pantaloons and turbans. These weren’t dressed that way, but as Veyrians. Why would Veyrians carry a Siraffi banner? And why were some of them armed with straight-edged swords?

The answer came to her. She froze, and forced herself to look away.

“Bugger me,” Hamid said, peering down. “Is that Ishmael?”

Vashti followed his gaze. “It must be. There’s no other force of ravagers that large west of the Spine.”

“I know that, you worm. But why? He’s supposed to be sweeping into Arvada ahead of the pasha’s assault. Why the devil is he back here?”

The lead riders had reached the barbican and begun to ride through and into the courtyard. There were maybe ten or fifteen within the walls when Hamid stiffened, and his face changed from irritation to alarm.

Nathaliey’s hands were still bound behind her back, stiff and numb and useless, but she’d been bracing herself ever since she figured out that the men riding toward the castle were not marauders. All of Hamid’s attention was on the riders, and he leaned toward the inner courtyard to shout his warning at the troops below, who stood around idly while enemies poured into their midst.

She lowered her shoulder and slammed into the marauder captain. He still held Soultrup in hand, and grabbed instinctively for Nathaliey to either hold himself up or pull her down with him, but that was the arm with the stump, and it pushed her backward, even as he went over the edge, flailing. He dropped twenty feet or more to the flagstones and struck hard.

The supposed marauders threw back their gray cloaks to reveal helms and breastplates, and they attacked the soldiers around them with long, gleaming Eriscoban swords. Wolfram was in their midst, hacking and killing, as a warning cry went up from the surprised troops within the castle.

“Captain!” Nathaliey shouted. “Up here!”

Wolfram turned about, found her on the wall walk, and lifted his sword in acknowledgment. By now, fully half the Blackshields were within the castle walls, with the rest galloping beneath the lifted metal gate of the barbican. They’d killed numerous enemies, cutting them down where they stood, and still the Veyrians seemed scarcely able to recognize that they were under attack.

Someone belatedly attempted to close the gates and seal the castle, but paladins seized control of the barbican before they could. Paladins peeled off from the main force, jumped from their mounts, and came storming up the stairs to seize the wall walk. Sir Marissa led the group, her sword a blur as she cut down enemies. Nathaliey was about to be rescued. She worked her wrists to get her hands free of the ropes.

Two Veyrian soldiers dragged her back before she could get loose of the ropes, seeking to gain one of the bastion towers built into the castle wall. They met Vashti, who stood overlooking the courtyard, his eyes closed, a twisted incantation rising on his lips. Nathaliey struggled desperately to free her hands, thinking if she could just get them loose, she could disrupt his spell before he cast it. The knots were too tight.

A wave of dark energy pushed out from Vashti, and the paladins tumbled back down the stairs. This bit of sorcery had gained the men on the wall walk some time, and Vashti joined the soldiers hauling Nathaliey into the tower.

There were several Veyrians inside the tower already, loading crossbows and firing through arrow loops into the chaotic battle that raged across the castle courtyard. As soon as the Veyrians released her, Nathaliey pressed her face to one of the slits in the stone to watch.

The attack had been a bold stroke, but it was already faltering. There were too many enemies above Wolfram’s forces, and Vashti’s spell, which had seemed a gambit to buy his own escape and nothing more, proved to have strategic consequences. By the time Marissa organized another assault, the defenders on the wall had moved to defend the staircases. They beat back two attempts to scale the heights.

At that moment, Wolfram seemed to recognize that his attempt to seize the castle had failed, and settled for the next best thing. Someone got a torch into the barrels of oil, and they went up with a series of thumping explosions, followed by blasts of heat and smoke. Using this as cover, he ordered the Blackshields to pull back, and the paladins were soon outside the castle, safe but having abandoned any hope of winning a complete victory.

Nathaliey rushed to the other side of the tower and pressed her face to another arrow slit. Wolfram hacked his way through the encampment outside the walls, even as the defenders threw men at the paladins. Half the village was on fire before the Veyrians had organized enough to force the attackers to retreat. The whole battle had lasted less than a half hour.

The courtyard was still burning when Vashti ordered Nathaliey dragged back to the wall walk. Bucket brigades had isolated the fire away from the wooden buildings in the bailey, while others dragged food supplies to safety, but much of the other stockpiled war materiel burned in an oily fire that shot flames fifteen feet into the air. More fires raged outside the walls as the village continued to burn.

And there were dead everywhere, the vast majority Veyrians. Wolfram may not have taken the castle, but it had been a brutally effective raid.

Alas, Hamid was not among the dead, but had survived the fall. The marauder captain limped up the stairs from the bailey, his face a glowering mask of fury. His sword arm hung limp and broken. Someone must have sheathed Soultrup for him, because it was strapped to his back.

And he’d suffered other injuries, too. Hamid’s lower lip was a bloody, dangling mass of flesh, and his right cheekbone had caved in from the fall. Blood streamed from a broken nose. His wounds were horrific, but his body already seemed to be healing itself, and Vashti muttered an incantation and cast it on the captain.

“There will be heads on pikes because of this,” Hamid said, his words slurred.

Vashti shielded Nathaliey with his body. “But not this one. She is mine by command of the high king. Anyway, she didn’t cause this disaster.”

“No, she didn’t. But this is a setback, and make no mistake. The pasha has already sent riders to recall the armies, and we’ll halt work on the highway until we rebuild the stores that were destroyed today. We must defend this castle at all costs. It’s our toehold in the barbarian lands. But the pasha won’t have your treacherous prisoner here.”

Vashti dug his fingers into the flesh of Nathaliey’s arm. “I’ll take her east. Jasmeen has other prisoners. This one can join them in the mountains.”

“That is your business, not mine. Only take her far from here, and do so at once. Let us deal with this setback.”

Everything Nathaliey had overheard sounded like more than a setback. The enemy had left itself exposed, and it seemed that Eriscoba was rousing itself for full-out war. Toth’s pashas could bring their forces to Estmor, but could the castle withstand a siege after Wolfram’s raid?

The marauder captain descended the stairs and stood in the courtyard talking to a man in flowing robes with a jeweled turban. The pasha, she supposed. Marauders dragged in several Veyrian soldiers and threw them to the ground in front of the pasha, who pointed at them and shouted. One of the pasha’s personal guard drew his sword while marauders forced the disgraced soldiers to their hands and knees. After the first head came off, the others screamed for mercy, but to no avail. A dozen men lost their heads in short order.

Still on the wall walk, Vashti pushed Nathaliey against the crenelations until she was leaning over the edge. The other dark acolyte appeared with a glass vial in her hand. A thick yellow liquid the consistency of mucus filled it halfway. She handed it to Vashti, who uncorked the vial and tilted it to make the substance ooze back and forth while he held it up to the light.

“I promised to cure your hunger,” he said. “And now I will.”

Nathaliey almost laughed. “With that? An elixir of thrall, is that what you have? That’s how you plan to turn me to sorcery?”

Vashti’s gaunt smile was chilling. There was no humor in it, only cruel mockery. And confidence. He seemed certain of his ability to bend her mind to serve the dark wizard. For the first time, she felt a twinge of doubt.

A soldier grabbed her by the throat. Another yanked her hair to force her head back. Vashti gripped her chin and pried at her jaw with a grip like iron. As he did so, he spoke an incantation, and her will to resist faded.

When he lifted the vial of bitter, burning liquid to her lips, she sputtered and spit, but most of it went down her throat.

Chapter Eleven

Captain Wolfram fought down his resentment as the four warlords rode into the captured Veyrian camp. His paladins were hard at work, caring for injuries, grooming horses, preparing breakfast, taking dispatches from scouts, and organizing a picket line defense using several dozen former Estmor soldiers who’d been rescued from King Toth’s slave gangs as the Blackshields overran the village outside the castle.

In comparison to Wolfram’s men and women, the four Eriscoban lords—two earls, a baron, and a baroness—were clean, their breastplates and helms shining in the late afternoon sun, their horses fresh. They hadn’t ridden up the captured highway alone, not with hundreds of enemy soldiers still loose in the countryside. Instead, a company of hard-faced riders attended them, numbering some fifty or sixty warriors in all.

If Wolfram had counted those riders in his company two hours earlier, he’d have seized Castle Estmor. He’d been so close to victory, so close to recovering Nathaliey; she was only a few feet away, guarded by a handful of enemies atop the wall walk, but he hadn’t brought quite enough forces to bear to complete the assault. The ruse had worked to get him inside, but as soon as the marauders and Veyrian soldiers retreated to their towers, he couldn’t hold onto his gains. As a result, the enemy still held its fortress in Eriscoban lands, with their highway and mountain castles offering an easy way to bring reinforcements forward.

He gestured to his scout to put away the map of the Estmor swamps and waited with his arms folded as the warlords arrived. Wolfram’s own father, Lord Arvada, was at their head, and there was pride in his eyes as he took in the captured encampment, with its supplies, defensive palisades, and the heaps of enemy dead being prepared for immolation.

“Word reached us of your victory,” his father said. “You have our congratulations.”

“It was no victory. The enemy remains in his castle, and we failed to rescue an important prisoner. Perhaps if we’d had your men . . .” Wolfram gestured down the road at the riders who’d accompanied Lord Arvada and the others.

“We had no way of knowing. Anyway, we had a fight of our own. We fought hard at Sleptstock against nearly two hundred enemy footmen.”

Wolfram nodded. That was something. That small enemy force had overrun the mill village on the river and had still controlled the crossing when the Blackshields battled their way across.

“I hope you left them good and bloodied.”

“We did a good deal more than that.” Arvada gave a wolfish grin that reminded Wolfram that his father was an experienced warrior himself. “Eighty enemy dead. The rest taken prisoner. Our troops are crossing the river even as we speak.”

Wolfram took in the others. He didn’t recognize the woman—a baroness from the far west, by her colors—but the other two were from Engelfeld and Renholm, and controlled rich farmlands with plenty of villages to draw from. If they had, indeed, fully entered the war.

“How many men?”

“Arvada pledges three thousand two hundred troops. Engelfeld a thousand, Renholm fourteen hundred, and Hillhold Terrace nearly two thousand.”

“Hillhold pledges nineteen hundred men-at-arms,” the baroness said proudly. “Including six hundred with horse.”

Now Wolfram recognized her colors. At least three of his paladins had come from Hillhold Terrace, an upland plateau near the western ranges filled with hardy hill country folk and known for its warhorses and skilled riders.

Now the earl of Engelfeld spoke up. “We may be smaller in fighting numbers than these others, but I count sappers and engineers in my army. You’ll want them if you lay siege to Castle Estmor.”

“It amounts to a proper army,” Arvada said. “I have the numbers, Hillhold the horse, Engelfeld the miners and sappers, and Renholm the archers. Baron Knightsbridge will arrive soon with five hundred more, and he’s respected by all.

“We only need a commander to lead them,” his father added. “A man who has proven his bravery, who already has victories over the sorcerer’s armies. A commander the Eriscobans trust and respect.” Arvada clenched his jaw, and Wolfram saw mixed emotions crossing his father’s face. “What better than a man who is willing to dispossess his own fortune to dedicate himself to the defense of his lands and people?”

“What about Knightsbridge?” Wolfram asked. “You said yourself that he’s respected. He could lead the army.”

“He can lead in battle, yes,” Arvada said, “but to hold them together, to inspire. That’s your duty, Son.”

Wolfram glanced at the other three. “And you’re all agreed? These aren’t the words of a proud father?”

The others gave firm nods. The baroness clenched her fist and touched her opposite shoulder, a sign of fealty in the westernmost kingdoms.

A year ago Wolfram would have balked at such a request, if it could be called a request and not a command. Even a few weeks ago he might have demurred, might have suggested that his war was with the marauders, and others would have to raise the troops and supplies to expel the Veyrian army and its hordes of road-building slaves from the free kingdoms.

But he had notched several victories, some mere skirmishes, and some regular battles, and while none had been decisive, he understood the strengths and weaknesses of the so-called high king of Veyre and his armies. The first stirrings of an idea came to mind.

“How soon will these forces arrive?” Wolfram asked.

“The first troops should be here by morning,” his father said. “They’re accompanying supply wagons, and I left a hundred men to hold the bridge, all of which constrains their pace, but I’m bringing them forward as fast as I can. It will take at least a week to have the bulk of the army assembled. Another few days for Knightsbridge to arrive.”

“My best engineer is with them,” Engelfeld said. “If we can surround the castle with Arvada’s men, we’ll start mining the walls right away.”

“I’ve got an even better idea,” Wolfram said. “Ride back to the army and bring me this engineer and some of his sappers. I have work for him, and I don’t want to wait.”

#

It was early afternoon the following day before Wolfram felt ready to march on Castle Estmor. Engelfeld’s engineer had been busy during the night, and the evidence of his work was already visible as thirty Blackshields, twenty other men on horse, and nearly four hundred men came marching up the Tothian Way toward the castle.

Water lapped at the edges of the highway in the lower spots, and in one place was deep enough to carry floating bodies onto the road. Remembering the pestilence that had devastated Estmor when the enemy first broke the dikes, the footmen, especially, were anxious tromping through the rising marshes, and expressed relief when the Tothian Way rose above the water level a few minutes later.

Wolfram wondered if the water kept rising and rising if it would destroy the highway, but Nathaliey and Markal had told him that the necromancer’s sorcery was too powerful, bound as it was with the lashes and suffering of thousands of slaves. He’d experimented already, ordering Engelfeld’s engineer to pull up a few stones before it became clear that such an effort was futile. The cobbles would not give way.

Estmor Castle had a gloomy, deserted air as they approached. The water was several feet higher up the hill than it had been, and had submerged the road beyond as it dipped before climbing into the foothills. The castle village had burned to smoldering ruins, and smoke trickled from the castle as well, collecting in a pall overhead.

Sir Marissa rode at Wolfram’s side as their horses trotted ahead of the noise and odor of four hundred footmen and a hundred riders and mounts. Only a pair of scouts led them, and these waited just outside the ruined village.

“You don’t suppose they’ve pulled out and left us alone?” Marissa asked. “We burned the village and set fire to their castle—there couldn’t have been much left to salvage.”

“That’s not what I see,” Wolfram said. “I see an intact fortress and a village that was allowed to burn—or maybe even encouraged to burn—so that we’d have nothing to use as cover to mine the walls.”

Indeed, as they left the highway and rode toward the castle gates, faces peered over the parapets. Some of the Veyrians had crossbows, so Wolfram ordered a halt at a safe distance. Sorcery might extend the range of a crossbow bolt, and he had no intention of being taken out by carelessness, so he kept his shield in hand just in case.

He raised his most booming voice. “I will speak to Hamid of Veyre.”

A man appeared on the wall a moment later and shouted down that it would be impossible to speak to the marauder captain, but that the speaker was the pasha in command, and what did the barbarian want? A parlay, Wolfram said, but not via shouts, at which point the man said Wolfram was welcome to enter the castle unmolested.

“Don’t go in there,” Marissa said. “They’re a nest of vipers—the next we see of you will be a head on a pike.”

Wolfram nodded. He lifted his hands to his mouth to shout his answer. “You are the one under siege. Come to me, and I will guarantee your safety.”

“I’ve seen your treachery already,” the pasha said, “and I won’t have you charging in the moment I open the gates. Order your forces to dismount and retreat to the highway, and I’ll come out once I’m convinced you’ll behave honorably.”

“That we’ll behave honorably,” Marissa muttered bitterly as soon as Wolfram had agreed to the terms. “Never mind their invasion, their murdering and pillaging, the extermination and enslavement of the entire population of Estmor, we’ve raised their ire by trying to take back one of our castles by subterfuge. Because that’s the treachery.”

“The pasha probably believes it,” Wolfram said. “The wicked often believe their own lies. Did you spot Nathaliey on the walls?”

“No. They’ve probably got her in the dungeon.”

Wolfram ordered the others to fall back from the gutted village and form defensive ranks. Unless the enemy had received secret reinforcements that belied how they’d turtled themselves inside the castle walls, he doubted they had enough strength to charge out and force a battle against the small Eriscoban army, but caution was a big part of mounting a successful siege.

The castle gates opened briefly and discharged three riders. Two were marauders in gray cloaks, and Wolfram sensed Marissa stiffening beside him.

“We have archers, we have paladins,” he told her. “They’ll die instantly if they try anything.” He studied the figures. Neither was missing a hand. “There’s no Hamid, and there’s no Soultrup to fear.”

The third figure  was a tall slim man in flowing robes. He wore a white turban with a ruby or other red stone gleaming at the forehead. Wolfram continued to study him as they approached. The man had some years behind him, perhaps fifty or more, but he was strong and lean and comfortable in the saddle. This was not a general who would lead from behind the lines, but a warrior. The trio pulled to a halt in front of Wolfram and his paladins, who had waited on foot.

The hillside was soggy from the rain and the rising water level, and the pasha’s boots squelched in the mud as he dismounted. After motioning for the marauders to stay put, he approached with a hard gaze. Wolfram was taller than average, and Eriscobans were taller, in general, than the Veyrians he’d encountered, but this one looked down on the Blackshield captain as he stepped forward.

“I am Pasha Kerem. Are you the one they call Wolf?”

“I’ve come to negotiate your surrender,” Wolfram said.

“What surrender? You can’t take the castle. I have enough soldiers to hold it, and enough supplies to keep them fed. The walls are too high to scale, and the towers too strong. How many men do you command, anyway?”

“I don’t need to scale the walls. I have engineers—”

Kerem smiled. “The fortifications will hold. Weeks, months, even. Long enough for my lord to send his army through the passes and break your siege.”

“I’m not planning to mine your walls,” Wolfram said. “Your hillside is half what it was—haven’t you noticed the rising water?”

Something flickered across the pasha’s face. Worry, perhaps? Then it was gone.

“Your engineers broke the dam,” Wolfram said. “Flooded Estmor and brought pestilence and famine. My engineers are rebuilding it, only downstream this time, below Castle Estmor. The water will continue to rise.”

Kerem glanced behind him at the castle with what looked like a forced smile. “We’re high enough. Your waters can’t reach the towers.”

“They don’t have to reach the towers. They’ll flood the lowest levels and seep into your cellars. Your food will rot, your waste will have nowhere to drain, and your men will breathe the miasmas of the swamp.”

“And you think I’ll surrender, become your prisoner?” Kerem scoffed. “You are deluded, Wolf.”

“Not surrender. In fact, I will allow you and your men to leave. With your arms, even. I only want prisoners freed and the castle returned.”

“I have no prisoners.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Any who fall into our hands join the work crews. That is the command of my lord and master.”

“I want the woman.”

“The wizard?” Kerem shook his head. “She is one of us now.”

“Hand her over, leave the castle, and you can live.”

“I don’t have her. The ravager captain and the high king’s acolyte carried her off in the night. Gave her a potion and compelled her to serve King Toth, and rode with her into the mountains. You’ll see her again, Wolf. She’ll be back when Toth arrives. A dark acolyte, her power increased tenfold in the service of the king.”

Wolfram studied the marauders who’d accompanied the pasha. For all the battles, this was the first time he’d faced them without coming to blows. Their faces seemed bent into permanent cruelty, but there was pain in their expressions, too, and he remembered that these were as much slaves of the necromancer as were the starved, whipped souls building his highway.

Could Kerem be telling the truth about Nathaliey? There was no sign of Hamid, and it seemed strange that the one-handed marauder captain wouldn’t have accompanied the pasha to size up his counterpart in the Blackshields. But even if the brute had carried Nathaliey into the mountains, Wolfram was sure that she would resist.

“I won’t be leaving the castle, Wolf,” Kerem said. “King Toth is gathering an army the likes of which the world has never seen. They will wipe your paladins from the land.”

“I have my own army now. We will fight you, and we will win.”

“This pitiful force? You have a few hundred, and you think you’re going to defeat the high king?”

“This is the vanguard. A full army is marching this way.”

“King Toth has gathered forces from across the khalifates and beyond. Kratian camel riders, mercenaries from the sultanates. By the time he arrives in these barbarian lands, his numbers will have swollen to tens of thousands against your”—a glance at the Eriscobans and a dismissive wave of the hand—“against your . . . whatever.”

“So this is your answer?” Wolfram asked. “You’ll fester and die in your swamp-fever prison?”

“I could have answered your summons with a hail of arrows. No, I’ve come to make an offer in return. Bow your knee before me. Kiss Toth’s ring when he appears. Swear your allegiance, and fight by our side.”

Wolfram’s only answer was a disbelieving shake of the head.

“Join us and you can put an end to this pointless war,” Kerem pressed. “Don’t you see what the king is going to do, what his highway will accomplish? Trade will flow from east to west, north to south. There will be no more petty wars between khalifates and kingdoms—there will be no need for them.”

Wolfram could no longer control his tongue. “At the cost of what? Bowing our heads to the whip hand of some eastern despot?”

“The lands will be unified whether you want them to be or not. But you, Wolf, can save lives. Convince the petty lords to lay down arms and submit, and the war will end.”

“Impossible.”

“Look to the khalifates for your example—surely these Aristonian wizards explained to you. Those lords who submit, who prove their loyalty, who join their armies to Toth’s, who keep the peace, who give tribute in gold and slaves, keep their crowns, keep their lands. Those who do not submit, die. Their people depart their homelands in chains.”

“That may be what has happened in your decadent eastern lands,” Wolfram said, “but now you find yourself in the free kingdoms, and we will never submit to your necromancer.”

Kerem had been speaking in a calm, reasonable tone, like a father explaining to his child why a favorite calf must be slaughtered, but now his tone hardened, and his lips turned upward into a cruel smile.

“You will submit, Barbarian. The day will come when you beg for mercy as they slowly, lovingly flay your skin from your body.”

Chapter Twelve

They were a mile from the gates of Syrmarria when the enemy attacked. One moment Markal was trudging along with his head bowed beneath a cowl, leading a weary cart horse, with Jethro pulling a handcart fifty or sixty paces behind, and Memnet somewhere behind that. The next, he felt a dark aura radiating from a low-slung pig shed by the road.

A dozen pigs erupted from the building with squeals and hurled themselves at the fence keeping them in their pen. One large boar dug furiously at the mud, trying to burrow out from beneath. Another overturned the trough and tried to get atop it and heave its bulk over the rails. And all the while they kept up a terrific, shrieking racket.

Markal raised a cone of light just as a shadowy coil unslung itself from the open door of the pig shed. The shadow hit the light and burst into a steam-like cloud. Jethro ran up from behind with a shout.

He grabbed Markal and dragged him back behind the cart as a rapid surge of shadow burst through his defenses with a shower of sparks. The shadow slammed into the side of the cart and splintered boards. The horse reared and tried to throw off its collar. More shadow attacks lashed at them, and they cringed behind the cart.

Movement caught Markal’s eye from the opposite side of the road as two armed men emerged from a warehouse whose open doors revealed bales of cotton, bundles of cloth, and other trade goods. There had been a good deal of foot and animal traffic this close to the city—more than Markal could ever remember seeing, in fact—and these little warehouses had guards on hand at all times, but there was something different about these two. Gray cloaks, gray faces, dead eyes. Marauders.

“Use the spectral shield,” Jethro urged. “Do you know the words?”

“I do, but—”

He was about to explain that when he’d called up the shield in the past, it had been too thin, too brittle to halt a pair of charging marauders, when a figure materialized by their side. It was Memnet, and Markal glanced behind him in confusion, sure that the master had been several hundred feet back, and there was no way he could have closed the distance so quickly.

Memnet’s orb pulsed purple and then a deep emerald green. It flashed, brighter than the sun, and left Markal blinking and stunned, unable to see. The marauders screamed. When Markal’s vision returned, the two marauders glowed with green light. It poured from their mouths, nostrils, and ears. Wreathes of emerald fire encircled their heads. Suddenly, the flames turned to curling roots, leaves, pine boughs, flowering vines: all manner of green and growing things sprouting directly from their bodies. The men sank to the ground, and their bodies disappeared beneath a mass of green.

“That is a gift from the Sacred Forest,” Memnet said grimly. “For those who violated its sanctity.”

He turned to the pig shed on the opposite side and lifted the orb. Twin flashes of light burst from his fist, accompanied by painfully loud thumps. The pigs let out a collective shriek as the balls of light raced toward them.

Markal braced himself for the mass slaughter of the terrified animals, but the first flash blasted a hole in the fence, opening a passage for pigs to flee into the street. As they poured out of the pen, the second flash of light struck the shed behind them. The entire building seemed to gather its breath, and it exploded upward with a giant thumping boom. Markal, Memnet, and Jethro cowered as beams and shards of wood showered down around them.

A woman’s torso landed on the road nearby, separated from her legs. Where the rest of the dark acolyte’s body had landed, Markal could not say. Pigs ran squealing past, and he marveled that Memnet had had enough presence of mind to save their lives before demolishing the shed hiding the dark acolyte.

“Master!” Jethro warned.

A dozen or more Veyrian soldiers approached at a run from the direction of the tax collector’s office they’d passed minutes before the attack. The men spotted the cart and the struggling horse in the road, together with the three figures standing near the dead marauders, and one of them shouted a challenge.

Markal was still working through his offensive spells when Memnet cast another spell. The soldiers threw down their spears and jumped and danced furiously, trying to keep their feet off the ground, as if they’d found themselves barefoot on a bed of hot coals. Their cries turned to screams, and they joined the pigs in mindlessly fleeing the scene.

This close to the city there would be plenty of soldiers about, not to mention more marauders and dark acolytes waiting in ambush, and Markal was anxious to renew their concealing spells and get out of this vulnerable open spot, but Memnet seemed in no hurry. The orb disappeared into his sleeve, and he took in their surroundings with a thoughtful expression.

“This was my fault,” he said. “I missed it when I came through not an hour ago. It took Chantmer’s warning to send me back.”

“I don’t understand,” Markal said. “An hour ago? And how did Chantmer tell you? You were behind us on the road.”

Memnet gave him a look. “Is that what you thought? No, I went ahead to clear the way to the city, and came right past here without noticing. Chantmer was waiting for me at the city gates, and warned me they’d set up an ambush. I hurried back and arrived just in time.” He glanced between Markal and Jethro. “Although the two of you might have managed perfectly well without me. We’ll never know for sure.”

Markal very much doubted that, and he was chagrined with himself for not noticing that the master had moved ahead of them on the road. He thought he’d been clearing the road.

“We should be safe now,” Memnet said. “I’m leaving you again.”

“Why not stay with us until we’re through?” Markal asked.

The master’s face took on a serious expression. “Now that you’ve cleared the danger, I’m returning to do some damage. We passed within a mile of the Tothian Way a few hours ago. There are a pair of half-built watchtowers begging to be overturned. The sorcerer is about—I can sense his power—but he’s not here. And we don’t want him to be. The Brothers willing, my attack on the Tothian Way will draw him to the highway and ease our return to the gardens once we have the books.”

Memnet waved his hand and spoke a few words, and the daylight dimmed momentarily, as if dusk had arrived. As he walked away, the air shimmered around him, and it took concentration not to lose sight of him entirely. To the villagers and merchants who’d been materializing since the end of the battle to stare at its aftermath, it must have seemed as though the man had vanished.

Markal stared after him, imagining the master alone and attacking a pair of enemy encampments. He wanted to be there, to witness Memnet the Great in his full power—even the glimpse of it in this skirmish had been a glory to behold—but at the same time it cast his own feeble abilities into stark relief.

Jethro tugged on his sleeve. “The road may be cleared of marauders and dark acolytes, but there are still soldiers about. Let’s get moving.”

#

Chantmer met them just inside the city gates, appearing from a crowd of merchants hauling in wagons of salted cod from the east. He loomed, tall and severe, and wore a look of such agitation that Markal could only guess that something had gone wrong in the short period since the master had met him earlier that afternoon.

“Is everything all right?” Jethro asked. “Where is Karla, is she guarding the library?”

Chantmer ignored him and focused his scowl on Markal. “How could you? By what right would you do such a thing?”

Markal blinked. “How many months since we’ve seen each other? Aren’t you supposed to great me with a hearty ‘well met’?”

“There is no ‘well met,’ Markal. I heard what you did—the master told me!—and I demand answers.”

They were attracting attention, and Markal was annoyed. He tugged on the horse’s halter to get it moving, and pulled away from the fish merchants, the soldiers at the gate, the wine and bread sellers, and others who were always eager to separate the traveler from his coin. The empty wagon clattered briskly across the cobbled street. One of the city towers cast a shadow from the left, and a stretch of ramshackle wooden tenement buildings were on the right.

“Do you think I just handed Soultrup away?” Markal asked. “That when the marauders came, I gave them the sword with my blessing? We were attacked, repeatedly, from the sky and ground. Griffins, giants, marauders. We’re lucky we kept our heads, and yes, they took Soultrup. I’ll imagine it’s in the hand of that one-armed bastard now.” He glanced at Jethro, with his withered hand from the fight with the dark acolyte. “Apologies, Friend.”

“No worries,” the archivist said with a smile. “It’s not the hands or lack thereof that makes one a bastard.”

Chantmer stalked beside Markal and the cart horse with long strides. “I don’t care about the bloody sword, and you know it. Let the barbarians and the marauders fight over it—what does it matter to me?”

“In that case, I have no idea what you’re babbling about.” Markal knew his tone sounded as snooty as Chantmer’s, but he was tired and irritated and no longer cared.

“It’s an injustice is what it is. I have more power than Narud, more command than you, and more knowledge than Nathaliey.”

“Oh, so that’s it.”

“Yes, that damn well is it.”

“I wonder why the master told you,” Markal said. “Just to work you into a lather?”

“And I’ll tell you what really chafes, what is so preposterous that I can barely stand to say it aloud. Why did you get to make the pronouncement? You’d been declared a wizard all of what? A month? And suddenly you could elevate Nathaliey on your whim? How is that remotely just?”

“How about if I do the same for you? Right here, right now. Then there will be nothing to fight about. You’ll be a wizard, too. How wonderful!”

Chantmer wheeled on him, his eyes flashing. “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. As if a pronouncement from you would carry any weight.”

“Seems to be having some effect at the moment.”

“You can’t simply declare me a wizard and have it mean something.”

“Everyone says that. Yet once it happens, it seems to take hold. So Memnet told you Nathaliey is a wizard, and that I made it so. And that he’s not planning to countermand my proclamation.”

“I protested, believe me. Quite vigorously. Memnet said that you were under great pressure, that it was a promotion on the field of battle, or some such rubbish. And that once it had happened, he wasn’t going to contradict you.”

“We’re more or less under battle conditions here and now. Here, how about if I just say it? Chantmer the Tall, you are hereby—”

“No! Don’t you dare.”

Jethro stifled a grin—none too effectively—and cleared his throat. “As someone who was assigned to the role of archivist—in spite of my desires to the contrary—I won’t claim that this argument is pointless. But wouldn’t the both of you agree that we have more pressing concerns at hand?”

Markal had been on the verge of goading Chantmer again, but now thought better of it. His companion in this ridiculous argument looked suddenly uncomfortable and stared straight ahead. Jethro glanced back and forth between them and sighed.

“For example,” he said in an exaggerated tone, “have there been any additional attacks on the library since we left?”

“One,” Chantmer said. “It didn’t get anywhere. I don’t think Jasmeen is still in the palace, and Zartosht has stayed cautious since Memnet’s visit. The library is stronger than it has been since the night of the first big attack. We’ve been hard at work, and the defenses continue to strengthen apace. It would take years to regain what was destroyed, of course, but we have a start.”

“We only need to hold long enough to empty the library,” Markal said. “If the library still stands after the dark wizard is defeated, we’ll return the books and rebuild the defenses.”

“And what about the night market?” Jethro said.

“All quiet since the fire, the massacre,” Chantmer said. “Since the master attacked the runes, the enemy has it well defended, so it’s hard to be sure what is going on there. In any event, no fire salamanders have burst out of the ground.”

Markal remembered the terrible burn through the heart of the Sacred Forest. The work of the fiery monsters. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Not yet,” Chantmer agreed. “When they do, may the Brothers preserve the people of Syrmarria.”

His face darkened, and Markal wondered if he was remembering that terrible struggle in the night market. Jethro had shared a bit of the horrors during the journey from the garden. Seeing the pain on Chantmer’s face softened Markal a little; his companion in the order could be an arrogant fool, but he was not incapable of compassion.

“The enemy is watching the palace gates,” Chantmer said a few minutes later as they climbed the palace hill. “The pair of you are altogether too visible—we’ll need to expend all of our collective power just to get inside.”

Ten minutes later, blood drained, wreathed in shadow on top of shadow, they brought their cart through the palace gates and entered the heart of the enemy’s palace.

Chapter Thirteen

Nathaliey hung in a gibbet on the edge of a wooden pole. A two-hundred-foot gorge yawned directly below the iron cage, with a churning mountain brook at the bottom, and craggy rocks threatening to dash her bones to pieces should she somehow manage to get it open. A soaring snow-crowned peak rose on the opposite side of the gorge.

Three days had passed since arriving at the mountain fortress, and nearly a week since the enemy had captured her at the bluff over the river. After so long without food, and with only a drop of water given her between doses of the poisonous yellow elixir, her stomach felt like a stone, and her tongue was thick, dry, and swollen.

When she slept, she dreamed of wights with dead, sloughing skin. She could see them now even when she was awake, any time she closed her eyes for a few seconds, and so she kept them open as much as possible.

She’d thought at first to study the enemy, making the most of her captivity to learn about the castle and its defenders. But when she looked back to the castle, a slender watchtower blocked the view of all but a narrow strip of the wall walk and a handful of guards armed with heavy crossbows, whose attention always turned skyward. Sometimes, when griffins swooped in too low, additional soldiers took shelter behind the battlements until the creatures and their riders flew off again.

This morning, Nathaliey awakened from an ugly nightmare to find the sun bright in the sky. Her head ached, and the sunlight was like a spike to the forehead. She groaned and closed her eyes, and a vision of a wight appeared.

It was a dead woman, her eyes milky white and her lips rotted away to show a horrible grin. The woman stared, and Nathaliey gave a frightened start, her eyes flying open. She’d been looking at her own face.

Her movement set the gibbet rocking on the edge of the pole, and the creak of metal bars made an eerie noise in the still morning air. The movement sent her stomach churning, and the last thing she wanted was another bout of the dry heaves, so she gripped the bars and remained as motionless as possible until it subsided.

But the rocking didn’t stop, and belatedly she realized that they were hauling her in. Vashti stood on the wall walk behind her, his sleeves pulled back from bony forearms, watching intently as a pair of soldiers hauled the pole around until it was no longer over the gorge. A second dark acolyte—a woman the others called Jasmeen —stood next to Vashti with a clear bottle of the hateful yellow liquid. She had a clay flask in the other.

Vashti snapped his fingers, and a soldier unlocked the cage and dragged Nathaliey out. Her legs buckled, and the soldier held her up. The dark acolytes studied her.

“Is she ready?” Jasmeen asked.

“Not yet,” Vashti said. “One more elixir, I should think. Perhaps two. Then she will change.”

“The master grows impatient. Why is she still resisting?”

“He will have her soul in the end,” Vashti said, “and she’ll be all the stronger for having resisted. I have a treat for you,” he told Nathaliey. “Someday you will pull water from the air, much as what you eat will come from the pain of those who feed your power. As you grow in strength, you will learn to consume their torment and agony.”

“You look starved,” Nathaliey said, her voice dry and scratchy. “If that’s how you stay fed, then neither of you is much of a sorcerer.”

The woman passed the elixir of thrall to her companion, uncorked the larger flask, and held it to Nathaliey’s lips. Nathaliey balked.

“It’s only water,” Jasmeen said. “We can’t have you dying of thirst.”

Nathaliey was still suspicious, but the smell of water was too enticing. She took a tentative sip and tasted nothing amiss. Only clean mountain water. She intended to stop there, knowing that too much on an empty stomach would make her sick, but the woman didn’t pull the flask away, and Nathaliey’s thirst was too great to resist. She kept drinking until it was drained.

Her stomach immediately began to clench, but the doses of elixir had taught her stomach not to reject liquids, and though she shortly felt violently ill, the water didn’t come back up. She was still struggling against the pain in her belly when Vashti grabbed her face and forced the elixir to her lips.

Nathaliey’s struggles had grown weaker with every attempt to force her to drink the bitter viscous liquid, and this time the dark acolyte got most of it in her mouth. She tried to spit it out, but her mouth, tongue, and throat conspired against her and gulped it down as readily as it had the water. She bent over double, now trying to force it up, but her stomach kept its grip on both the water and the elixir, and she didn’t vomit.

Vashti looked smug. “Good, good.”

“I grow tired of waiting,” Jasmeen said.

“Only a question of time. Get her back in the cage.”

They were pushing her into the gibbet when a soldier gave a warning shout from the tower, and the soldiers dropped her and grabbed for their crossbows. An eagle-like scream sounded overhead. Nathaliey looked up to see a griffin fly over the walls, a woman on its back.

The soldier who’d cried the warning got off a shot. The griffin shifted slightly mid-flight, and the bolt zipped harmlessly past its wing. Men were still scrambling for position, turning the crossbow cranequins to arm them, when the griffin and its rider wheeled about and flew directly at the wall. It pulled up short with powerful, wind-churning flaps of its wings, and the rider leaned over and studied them with narrowed eyes.

She was a young woman with dark hair and pale skin and the haughty look of a proud warrior. A silver chain was woven through her hair, with an emerald-green stone that sat on the woman’s brow. Her sword was sheathed, and both hands remained at the reins.

The soldiers were on their knees, furiously working at arming their crossbows, but the two dark acolytes remained in place, lifted their hands, and began chanting an incantation. Nathaliey stood next to them, leaning against the wall where the soldiers had tossed her after abandoning their attempts to force her back into the gibbet. Her stomach was still heaving violently, but nobody was paying her any attention.

Nathaliey had no love for the griffin riders, not after months of harassment both before and after joining the Blackshields. But at the moment, this rider was the enemy of the dark acolytes. She threw herself at Jasmeen and Vashti as shadows gathered around their hands, ready to be hurled at the griffin rider.

Nathaliey’s hopes were modest—disrupt their sorcery and let the rider escape—but as she crashed into them, they went flailing and struck the battlements overlooking the gorge. Vashti was out of balance, and Nathaliey got her shoulder under him and heaved up in an attempt to flip him over the top and send him to his death.

One of the soldiers, still on his knees next to her, seized Nathaliey’s ankle and dragged her backward. Jasmeen grabbed Vashti’s arm and pulled him away from the precipice.

More bolts snapped out from the small castle and its towers, but the griffin was wheeling away with a cry. The rider cast a final, disdainful look over her shoulder, and then griffin and rider soared down the gorge and out of range.

The dark acolytes and the soldiers threw Nathaliey into the gibbet, slammed it closed, and snapped down the heavy padlock. Moments later, she was dangling over the precipice as the elixir of thrall worked its sorcery.

#

By nightfall, she could see the wights whether her eyes were open or closed. When closed, she seemed to be walking through a wasteland of ruins and dark stinking mists. And the spirits of the dead were everywhere. When her eyes opened, wights crowded the edge of her vision, always there, lurking, until she turned toward them and they vanished.

“An elixir of thrall,” she whispered. “I am becoming the dark wizard’s slave.”

Vashti was right. It was only a question of time. For now, she maintained her will, wavering as it was, but for how much longer? The wights would be everywhere soon, and starvation and thirst and waking nightmares would bring her to her knees. And then the elixir would turn her.

Meanwhile, she was physically stronger because of the water, and began to wonder if she could raise a whisper of magic. She reached through the bars and touched the lock, curious about the strength of its wards. It was icy cold to the touch, which was a bad sign. Deeply ensorcelled. She had one chance, and even if she somehow managed to break the lock, she’d then be forced to shimmy across the pole to the wall walk, get past the guards, escape from the castle, and avoid pursuit, all while half-starved and drained of power.

Meanwhile, as the blue-black of dusk gave way to a star-studded night sky, her sharp ears picked up the sound of horses on the highway outside the castle. Two riders, she thought. They pounded up to the gates, which rose with the creak of chains to admit them. A few minutes later, some larger number left the castle and went riding into the night.

And shortly after that she heard soldiers on the wall walk opposite her gibbet, talking louder than was prudent. She stayed very still in her cage.

“I always said we should’ve built up ’fore we pushed them barbarians too hard,” the first man said. “Now we’re gonna pay for it.”

A second man grunted his response.

“Pasha Kerem—he’s a greedy striver,” the first man continued. “Tried to win favor with the king, and I’ll bet he loses his head for it, assuming he gets out of Estmor alive.”

Now the second man spoke up. “I’d keep that opinion to yourself unless you want to lose your own head. Kerem’s one of the king’s favorites, a cousin or something. He’ll be looking for someone to blame, and you don’t want to be that someone.”

“Kerem’s no Malik. That man was a brute, but he knew how to win his battles. Malik sacked Nasphur and forced Siraf to surrender without a fight. That’s the kind of pasha we need.”

“Malik is dead, though. Kerem is who we got.”

“I heard it, but I don’t believe it,” the first man said stubbornly. “Who could’ve killed Malik in a fair fight? No one I ever seen. Maybe a ravager captain. That one-armed brute fights like a demon, and they said the woman who ran ’em before was even worse.”

These two seemed to have missed a good deal of the story as second and then third hand information reached them in the mountain passes, including the fact that the same paladin who’d killed Pasha Malik had later become captain of the marauders. The soldiers could wander out of earshot at any time, and Nathaliey was growing impatient for useful information.

“The barbarians got themselves a proper army now,” the first man said. He was the talker of the pair, it seemed. “They got Castle Estmor surrounded, and the cellars are flooded. It’s gonna fall.”

“Estmor will be back in our hands soon enough. Twenty thousand men are on the march.”

“Meanwhile, that puts us on the front line, don’t it? I figure that’s why them barbarian scouts was spotted. They ain’t coming up the highway for any other reason than they figure to drive us out. Where’s the king, anyway? Why don’t he come up with his sorcery and put an end to this once and for all?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“So he’s got himself a feud. I say leave off with them wizards until we got the war won. Unless maybe the king don’t want to do the fighting himself.”

“Shut your hole,” the second man growled. “You’ll get us both killed if you keep spouting off.”

“Yeah, sorry.” He sounded more cautious. “Come on, it’s almost end of our watch. I wanna know if they catch those scouts or not. It’s a pair of holy warriors—won’t be easy.”

They moved out of earshot, and Nathaliey leaned back in her cage. The wights had retreated while she was listening, but now their blue light crowded the edge of her vision. It took effort to concentrate on the matter at hand.

She was surprised to hear that Wolfram had mounted a second assault on Castle Estmor after the first, sneak attack had failed. She’d heard rumors of the Eriscoban kingdoms gathering armies, and they must have finally brought forces to the front sufficient to seize the land around Estmor and lay siege. Was Captain Hamid trapped inside? She didn’t think so, as the soldiers would have mentioned it. He’d probably ridden ahead of the advancing enemy and escaped with the bulk of his marauders.

Wolfram must be confident of his position if he’d sent scouts to spy on the enemy’s strength in the mountains. Or maybe, she thought, he was looking for her.

That gave her an idea. Attacking the sorcery-bound lock wouldn’t work, and she didn’t have enough strength to mount a magical assault on the dark acolytes or they’d have never left her hands unbound, but there was one spell she knew she could manage. One she’d perfected through regular practice while accompanying Markal and Wolfram through the mountains. But in her weakened state she needed all of her concentration.

There was no room in the cage to sit and meditate, and so she remained standing. The instant she closed her eyes she came face-to-face with a rotting, leering version of herself. Standing next to her wight were two other ghostly spirits, Stephan and Alyssa, acolytes from the garden. Her eyes flew open, and the wights moved to the edge of her vision.

I am a wizard of the Crimson Path. Visions of sorcery cannot harm me.

She steadied her breathing, closed her eyes, and ignored the apparitions. A trickle of power come to the surface. She spoke the incantation before it drained away.

A seeker appeared in the air above the gibbet. Hovering overhead, it flickered around the edges, a thin tentative thing that would vanish the instant she relaxed control. She had no time to tighten her grip, however; if she didn’t push it away from her quickly, a dark acolyte or a marauder might spot it and figure out what she was up to.

She sent the seeker over the gorge, then above the castle, clinging to a rocky promontory, before she pushed it over the king’s highway and followed it down from the pass. The king’s highway sliced into the hillside, where thousands of tons of rock and debris had been hacked away by an army of slaves.

The seeker soon came upon the riders from the castle, some fifteen cloaked figures. Hamid was at their head, his remaining hand on the reins, Soultrup strapped over his shoulder. That answered one question. The rest of the marauders clustered near him, their horses moving at a good pace.

Nathaliey didn’t linger, afraid the sorcery embedded in their cloaks would alert them to her presence, but sent the seeker ahead. There, not a half mile in front of the marauders, she found a pair of riders. She dropped the seeker closer and saw that it was Wolfram and Marissa.

Under other circumstances, Nathaliey would have been pleased to discover the pair; her intention was to let the seeker go visible and hope they would recognize it as her handiwork. A signal, of sorts, that she was still alive, and a plea, hopefully understood, to attempt a rescue. But her former companions were in danger, and that thought left her mind.

Wolfram and Marissa were riding away from the castle, down toward what she supposed was a paladin encampment, but they were moving slowly in the darkness, and Hamid’s marauders would soon overtake them. They must not have realized that their scouting expedition had been detected.

Nathaliey dropped the seeker in front of them and relaxed her control. It flickered with a dim light, suddenly visible on the road as a glowing mass, with a brighter green light in the center like a giant eye. The paladins yanked on their reins to bring their horses to an abrupt halt and stared.

“By the Brothers, don’t stop,” she said. “Ride away from here! Go!”

Suddenly cognizant that she’d spoken aloud and there might be listeners on the wall, she choked off her words and kept her pleas silent. They still had time to escape, but only if they made a quick move.

Nathaliey pushed the seeker up the road a few paces and jiggled it back and forth, trying to draw a visible line behind the paladins to indicate danger to their rear. Then she moved the seeker below them, in the direction they were already traveling, and shot it ahead like a stone from a catapult before coming to a halt.

Speed. Hurry!

Or at least, that’s what she was trying to say. They didn’t seem to understand why she was flailing about with the seeker, but instead started moving again at the same cautious pace. They approached a deep cut in the mountainside, where Toth’s engineers had gouged through solid rock, leaving a twenty-foot-wide, canyon-like opening. It would be a terrible place to be trapped and forced to fight against a superior foe.

Afraid for the two paladins, Nathaliey looked backward to see how close Hamid and his men were drawing. She was already losing command of the seeker, but managed to make it invisible again. Here came the marauders, now close enough that the horses’ hooves should be audible to the paladins as they clattered across the hard stone road. But still, the paladins kept at their same pace, even as they were about to be overtaken.

Hamid drew Soultrup. Red fire danced down the blade. The paladins were in the middle of the cut now. Too late to escape out the far side before the marauders arrived. And now, at long last, Wolfram glanced over his shoulder.

Nathaliey’s seeker faded. She was going to lose it before she saw what happened. Then, in the last second before it dissolved, she spotted movement atop the cut through the rock. There were people up there. Could it be that Wolfram had set an ambush?

The seeker vanished. Nathaliey was back in her iron cage suspended over the gorge. Alone, blood drying on her hands, the haunting image of wights creeping in on the edge of her vision.

Chapter Fourteen

Markal, Chantmer, and the archivists worked casting concealers and marking wards that would see the books from the library to the wagon. It was mentally taxing work for Markal, and he relied on the archivists to direct the efforts.

A huge pile of tomes, scrolls, and tablets had been stacked by the oak door leading out to the corridor. Karla bent and double-checked each one, making sure that it was adequately protected, then bound certain volumes together with leather straps to help in the organization. When she found a trio of yellowing scrolls that seemed inadequately shielded, she ordered one of the younger archivists to carry them back to Jethro at the copyist table.

Markal felt a presence behind his shoulder, and he looked up, startled to see the master standing next to him.

“Take what we have and begin the transfer,” Memnet said.

“We’re almost done,” Markal said. “Six more tomes and these three scrolls, and that should fill the wagon.”

The master’s tone was brusque. “Which books are they?”

Chantmer rested a hand on a black leather-bound tome. “The history and lore of the Order of Char. Six volumes.”

Memnet touched a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes in a pained expression. “That’s the bulk of our elemental water spells. We can’t afford to lose it. But it’s not easily shielded, either. It’s brute work just hauling them to the wagon fully protected. And the scrolls? Which ones?”

“From the sultanates,” Markal said. “Sand and wind.”

“More time lost. Time we don’t have.”

Markal frowned. “Did something happen, Master? You went to the highway?”

“And fought the enemy, yes. The results were . . . unsatisfactory. Toth is gaining in power. I returned to Syrmarria and met the Veyrian army withdrawing from the city. All of them.”

“All of them?” Chantmer said. “The entire army? That’s excellent news. It means the barbarians are making a fight of it, and Toth needs all of the forces he can muster.”

“They’re withdrawing, Chantmer. They’re not marching to battle. They’re retiring beyond the city gates and hunkering down to wait.” Memnet shook his head. “I passed through the square. The salamander runes are fully active, the ground is vibrating. The monsters are squirming up from the depths—they must be close. There is only one reason for the Veyrians to withdraw entirely. It’s to stay clear of the fire. Fire salamanders are going to burst into the city and burn it. And it will happen soon.”

The news left a pall in the air. Markal swallowed before speaking, not trusting his voice. “How long do we have?”

“It will happen tonight, before dawn,” Memnet said.

“Then we have time,” Chantmer said. “Five hours until dusk, some time into the night. We can save these books, maybe a few more, then seal the library and hope it survives the conflagration.”

“No. We’ll rescue what is here by the door, and nothing else. Accept that we’ve saved some of it, but not all. There are other critical matters to attend to.”

Chantmer gaped. “More critical than the library?”

“We have sworn to protect the people of this land. There are thousands upon thousands living within the city walls,” Memnet said. “If we don’t get them out of the city, they will die in a fiery holocaust.”

The master looked around the library, taking in the half-emptied shelves, the chests with scrolls, the niches still stuffed with clay tablets. His expression changed from dismay to horror. The others all followed his gaze, and nobody needed to question what the master was thinking. He was picturing it all destroyed.

Markal couldn’t conceive it. People lived and died, but knowledge could be lost forever. Kings, merchants, slaves, and commoners died. Wizards. Even the master himself would die some day. But these books were irreplaceable.

His stomach churned at the thought of turning his back on the city, but he was forced to agree with Chantmer. Nothing was more critical than saving as much of the library as possible.

He was about to say this when Chantmer said in a grim tone, “If this is the decision of the order, then I have an idea. The rest of you stay with the library and do what you can. Markal and I will evacuate the city.”

#

“We need Kandibar Liltige,” Chantmer said as he led Markal up the stairs to the terrace gardens. “The vizier knows other ministers, knows merchants. Has powerful connections throughout Syrmarria. Veyrian troops have abandoned the city—that gives us a chance to raise the alarm and evacuate without interference. But only the vizier can manage it.”

Markal’s mind was still reeling with what had been said, what had been decided. A cool air blew from the north, keeping the day pleasant in spite of a late summer sun that left the khalifates baking this time of year. It was hard to believe that a fiery, molten threat was soon to burst through the stones of the night market.

The pomegranate and olive trees swayed in the breeze, and Markal imagined their leaves withering as flames consumed their trunks. Looking into their branches, he noticed they were empty of familiar occupants.

“The birds are gone,” he said. “Listen, there’s no birdsong at all.”

Chantmer looked around. “There’s usually a peacock here, too. I can’t believe that would fly off—where would it go?”

“The animals know. They feel it coming.” They couldn’t sit here indulging themselves. Markal shook his head to clear it. “I thought you already tried to rescue Kandibar.”

“Multiple times,” Chantmer said. “First Narud and I, then we made another attempt when Memnet returned to the city. The enemy’s dungeons are as well protected as our library. Even if the guards have fled, the dark acolytes are still around, and their defenses are as strong as ever.”

“So what is your plan?”

“I know someone. And she knows other people.”

Chantmer led him down from the terrace to a lower pavilion, where, to Markal’s surprise, his companion brought them into the women’s baths, already busy at this time of the afternoon. The pair had some modest concealment spells around them, and they easily made their way to the smaller, private baths in the rear.

There they slipped past the eunuch at the door and approached a young woman lying on a table while a pair of attractive young servants rubbed her body with oil.

“Sadira,” Chantmer said in a whisper. “Omar’s sister.”

The dead khalif had a large number of siblings and half-siblings from his father’s wives and concubines, and Markal didn’t recognize the woman, nor understand why Chantmer had brought them here. How would this pampered young princess help them?

They dropped their concealment, and Sadira slowly lifted her gaze. She didn’t seem surprised, and waved at the servants to keep rubbing her with oil.

“You again, Chantmer? But you’ve changed out your companion.” A slight smile touched her lips. “Is this the one my husband calls Markal?”

“I’m Markal. But who is your husband?”

Her smile deepened. “You don’t know? You haven’t heard?”

“I have more important things to follow than palace gossip.”

“She’s married to Pasha Izak,” Chantmer explained. “The king’s general and commander of this city.”

Markal took in the beautiful young woman. “Izak? The fat, lamed one? And I suppose you’ll tell me that you’re deeply in love.”

“I am alive. That’s more than can be said of many.”

Markal turned to Chantmer, disbelieving. “This is the one who is going to help us?”

“She’s not entirely what she seems.”

He was skeptical. “Are you sure?”

“Talk to her. Use your diplomatic language. It’s beyond me to convince her of anything.”

“What are you talking about?” Markal asked.

“You know, be persuasive. Flatter her. Whatever you need to say.” Markal only blinked, and Chantmer snapped, “Why do you think I brought you? It’s because you can manage with these simple sorts. You understand the kind of flowery language they seem to prefer.”

“He may have a point,” Sadira said. “I don’t know you, Markal, but you can hardly be more abrasive than your friend here. Do you have something to say?”

Markal wasn’t feeling flowery or diplomatic. “Where is your husband?”

“He left a few days ago. I would say that I miss him, but, well . . .” She tucked her head as one of the servants massaged her neck and shoulders. “The Brothers willing, he will stay away longer than a week this time.”

“The pasha isn’t the only one who left,” Markal said. “Aren’t you wondering about the palace guard?”

“Not particularly.” Sadira didn’t look up. “I assume there’s more trouble in the markets. This conversation is getting tedious. What do you want?”

“They’ve left the city, Princess. Every Veyrian soldier is outside the city walls. Waiting. I’ll bet you’d find the foreign merchants leaving, too. The birds certainly have—they’ve vanished completely from the palace gardens.”

Sadira looked up. She studied Markal’s face, then glanced to Chantmer as if trying to suss out whether or not they were lying. She sat up and snapped her fingers at the servant who’d been kneading her shoulders.

“Hand me my robe.”

“You’re covered in oil,” the young man protested. “And we haven’t perfumed you yet.”

Sadira’s tone sharpened. “Give me the robe. And return to my quarters, the both of you. If there are guards, wait for me there. If the guards are still gone, summon my private staff. You!” she said to the eunuch. “Fetch me the vizier of the treasury. No, wait. I’m not completely sure of his loyalties. Better would be Kandibar.”

“Yes,” Chantmer said, his tone a little too eager.

“Have the guards left the dungeon, too?” she asked.

“As far as we know,” Markal said, “but Toth’s acolytes are still in the palace, and the approaches to the dungeon are hidden with all manner of sorcery.”

Sadira looked confused. “I’ve seen people coming and going. Guards, serving girls, servants of the warden. Kitchen wenches and the like.”

“Yes, but we can’t approach,” Markal said. “Not without falling under attack, and there are other . . . well, important tasks that this would disrupt.”

“In other words, those others have been invited, and you have not. Not so different from when the vizier tried to find your gardens and thought he was wandering through the desert wastes.”

Markal nodded, as surprised by her intelligence as by her initiative. “Yes, exactly like that.”

The princess nodded at the eunuch. “Free the vizier from the dungeon—assuming it is unguarded, of course, and these two aren’t lying—and carry him to my quarters.” She looked thoughtful as the man hurried off. “My eunuch will know how to bring him out.”

Sadira grabbed for one of her combs and worked the knots out of her wet hair.

“I have been suffering under a moral dilemma these past few days. My husband”—the word sounded pained coming out of her mouth—“told me that your order of wizards and apprentices had become as troublesome to the war effort as the barbarian kingdoms, and that King Toth was going to destroy you. Very soon. I was debating whether or not to warn you. It felt necessary, and yet some of you are so unlikable.”

She cast a significant glance at Chantmer as she said this. Chantmer seemed either oblivious to this insult or untroubled by it. He met her gaze with a lofty expression.

“We’re not the only ones who will be attacked,” Markal said. “To clear us from the palace and library, they will destroy all of Syrmarria.”

“That much seems obvious,” Sadira said. “Or they wouldn’t have withdrawn from the city. How will it be done?”

“With heat and flame,” Chantmer said.

“But they’ve set no fires,” she said. “And the Veyrians have already left. Who will do the burning?”

“No ordinary fire can destroy the library,” Markal said. “The dark wizard and his acolytes are raising fire salamanders from the infernal depths.”

“Fire salamanders. This is a real thing? Not a myth or legend?”

“A monster of fire and molten rock, and very real,” Markal said. “The salamanders will burst from the ground in the night market and destroy everything they touch. Heat and fire like you cannot imagine. Anyone left inside the city walls will die.”

“And nothing can be done to stop it from coming to pass?”

“No, Princess,” Chantmer said. “If it were possible, our master would have stopped it already.”

She made her way to her clothes, lacy robes and bindings and veils, and fingered them roughly with a scowl on her face. “This clothing will never do. I should have had them fetch me a tunic and boots.” She tightened the sash around her robe. “So we withdraw from the city and then what? Watch it burn?”

“It’s the only way to save lives,” Markal said.

“Save lives? How will it do that? Do you understand nothing of how a city functions?” Sadira shook her head. “How long do we have, a few hours to clear them all? Sixty-five thousand people live in Syrmarria. What will they eat? They’ll scour the countryside like a swarm of locusts, and the whole of Aristonia will starve. In the end, they will beg the high king to enslave them, if only to get a mouthful of gruel and a piece of stale bread.

“In fact, this is probably Toth’s entire plan. Withdraw his forces from the city, watch you evacuate them, let them wander the land as a desperate mob, destroying Aristonia, before enslaving the entire khalifate as a mercy.”

Markal could only stare. None of this had occurred to him, but it made perfect sense now that he’d heard it. The order had battled dark acolytes in the night market, and the master himself had weakened the runes to slow the ascent of the fire salamanders burning their way up from the depths. And so the enemy had very visibly withdrawn its entire force from the city and forced the order to defend the population.

“I have an idea,” Sadira said. “My cousin is married to the sultan of Marrabat. A lesser wife, but she has connections in the city. I will empty the treasury and carry it with me. There must be merchants in Syrmarria with private guards, but if not, we can bribe the desert nomads as we travel the Spice Road. The rest of the treasures of the city will buy our way into the sultanates.”

“You’re going to relocate the entire population of Syrmarria across the desert?” Markal asked.

He tried to picture sixty-five thousand men, women, and children suffering under the blistering desert sun while Kratian raiders eyed them hungrily. Hyenas and wild dogs would follow the vast trudging hordes, feasting on the dead and dying. And then, after weeks on the road, the Syrmarrians would arrive in Marrabat half starved, begging for mercy.

“The slave markets of Marrabat will do brisk business when they reach the other side,” Markal decided.

Sadira looked grim. “Many will no doubt become slaves. Perhaps most. Maybe even all, myself included.”

“An ugly fate,” Chantmer said. “Yet the flesh markets of the south are not nearly so cruel as the high king’s road crews. There, you are meant to die. Your blood and suffering will bind the highway to the land.”

“My eunuch will be in the dungeons by now,” the princess said. “A few more minutes and Kandibar will be in my quarters. I must hurry if this is to be done.”

“I agree,” Chantmer said. “Any more waiting wastes precious time.”

The other two looked at Markal for confirmation. How could he agree to this cruel plan, condemning thousands to death and slavery? Yet it was better than any other option.

He nodded slowly. “Talk to the vizier. If he agrees, if he thinks he can evacuate the city to the south, then make it happen. Empty Syrmarria. You only have a few hours, and then it burns.”

Chapter Fifteen

Chantmer went with Sadira to her quarters with the idea of healing Kandibar after his long, agonizing stint in the dungeons. Now alone, Markal picked his way cautiously to the library. By the time he arrived, the first collection of books had been loaded into the cart, which was near the palace gates, hidden beneath so many layers of concealing spells that the first time he’d hauled a volume from the library, he’d bashed his knee against the cart gate while he was groping around to find it. He couldn’t see the horse at all.

Karla and Erasmus stood in the cart, taking volumes as they arrived and arranging them carefully. Markal dropped his book into Karla’s hands and hurried back toward the library for another. Tendrils of sorcery reached for him from every corner, groping, touching, prodding. It was strongest nearest the palace gates, but continued all along the way until he reached the final approaches to the library corridor.

Memnet had been following his same course, and now materialized out of the gloom. The two wizards, master and junior, pushed through the protective wards and into the library, where they faced the pile of material to be evacuated, scarcely diminished in size. Jethro remained at the copyist table with two other archivists, working to secure a final volume.

“If only we could bring the cart closer,” Markal said.

“Impossible,” Memnet said. “It was all we could do to haul it through the gates. It would be caught in a dozen snares before it arrived, and we’d have the enemy on top of us in an instant.”

“Or we could carry two books at a time,” Markal said. “They’re heavy, but if we finished more quickly, we might save a few more volumes.”

“One at a time,” Memnet said firmly. “We must save these books. If we’re careless, we could lose the entire cart.”

A bell was ringing in the city when Markal next emerged from the library. Moments later, another bell. Servants went running through the gates, and Markal braced himself, watching to see if dark acolytes would materialize and stop them. None did.

“Don’t worry about the enemy,” came a disembodied voice over his left shoulder. Memnet’s. “The sorcerer and his servants are in the night market. The creatures must be controlled when they come up from below or they will burrow back into the earth to return to the infernal realms.”

The shadowy magic was growing near the gates, a thick miasma that smelled of rot and decay. When they returned once more to the library and let the concealing spells slip, Markal voiced his doubts and worries.

“Are you sure they’re all at the markets, Master? There’s someone at the gates. Someone is trying to stop us from leaving.”

“Concentrate on your work,” Memnet said. “We will fight that battle if it comes.”

It was almost dusk, and the sun was a red smear on the eastern horizon by the time Markal returned to the open air. There was chaos in the streets to the west, below the palace in the souks and winding neighborhoods. Shouts and banging doors, and so many people and animals on the move that it was a continual rumble of noise. The princess and the vizier’s plan for evacuating Syrmarria was rapidly becoming a mass charge toward the southern gate of the city.

Markal handed another book to Karla and Erasmus and paused to sniff at the air. There was smoke, and not the kind from cook fires. More like burning swamp gas, with a strong odor of sulfur.

By the time he and Memnet reached the library anew, Chantmer was inside, pacing impatiently with a volume in his arms, as Jethro had been given strict instructions not to let anyone leave alone.

“How was the vizier?” Markal asked.

“His bones are intact, and so is his mind,” Chantmer said. “Other than that . . . not so well.”

“You used healing magic?”

Chantmer gave a dismissive wave of the hand. “I did what I could. What Kandibar needs is several weeks of rest, with food and drink from the gardens, but absent that, a little magic should keep him on his feet long enough to see the city evacuated.”

“Keep working,” Memnet said, coming up behind them. “Time is drawing short.”

They made several more trips to the wagon, and all the time the haze of smoke kept thickening above Syrmarria. The pile of books in the library dropped with agonizing slowness. Some time after darkness had fallen, there was a loud pop from the center of the city, and a geyser of sparks and smoke blasted skyward in a churning column. Screams came from the city below, and soon became a great cry that shook the air all the way to the palace. The next time Markal reached a vantage point, he looked down at Syrmarria.

People and animals were already pouring through the south gate to the farmlands beyond the walls, and great masses of them clogged the alleys and streets. Smoke poured up from the night market, and the nearby intersections had turned into a stampede that threatened to crush them all before they could be evacuated.

“By the Brothers,” Memnet’s voice said nearby. “Won’t somebody take command?”

And then, miraculously, the ministers, servants, and merchants organizing the evacuation seemed to regain control. Even as smoke continued to pour from the center of the city, and an ominous rumbling filled the air and shook the ground, the retreat turned orderly again. The city was not yet burning; there was still time.

“Master,” Chantmer said from nearby. Like Memnet, he seemed to be a floating voice. “Something is heating the ground.”

It was true, Markal realized. His feet were sweating in their boots. He bent to touch the flagstones and was alarmed to discover that they were scalding hot. The vines on a nearby wall drooped, withering before his eyes.

“The salamanders carry fire from the center of the earth,” Memnet said. “But I never thought it would reach all the way up here—we’re on top of a hill. Hurry. We must, must get those books out.”

The inside of the palace had turned hot and stifling since their last visit, but when they descended to the library level, the air was unchanged and the stones cool to the touch. The sweat on Markal’s brow turned chill, and he shivered.

“Forget what I said earlier,” Memnet said. “Pick up as many books as you can—we’re out of time. Leave what you can’t carry. Archivists, too. Everyone, move.”

“Some of these tomes are more valuable than others,” Jethro began. “Start with these ones here—”

“No!” Memnet said. “No time. It is upon us. Grab what you can and go.”

Markal joined the general scramble. In addition to all the scrolls, tablets, and books still on the shelves—an unfathomable collection of knowledge and lore—there were still a good dozen volumes left in the pile the archivists had carefully prepared while others had loaded the cart. Markal and the rest struggled under their loads, balancing books and scrolls as they emerged from the library.

Jethro was the last to leave, and he stepped into the corridor with an anguished groan. Chantmer hooked his foot on the oak door and dragged it shut with a clank. Even the corridor now tasted like smoke. Markal bit back a cough and followed the others up the stone stairs. A scroll fell from the top of one of the heaps carried by an archivist and bounced down. When someone stopped to recover it, Memnet ordered her to keep moving.

There were no concealers about them now, no subtlety. They simply ran with as much as they could carry, desperate to reach Karla and Erasmus at the palace gates. Somehow they had to get the cart, fight their way through the sorcery preventing their exit from the palace, and get out of the city before it was too late. Memnet led, shouting whenever someone lingered with his or her load.

They emerged onto a terrace to find flowers wilted and black. The leaves of a lemon tree curled and died before their eyes. A fountain on the opposite side of the terrace steamed like a kettle about to boil. A delicate arcade of fluted columns marked a gate of sorts above the stairs that led from the terrace toward the palace gates, and the vines growing across it twisted and smoked like live snakes dropped onto a hot skillet.

Memnet was almost to the columns when he dropped his books and scrolls and materialized the orb. It glowed white-hot in his fist. The ground in front of them heaved, and smoking, blackened flagstones blasted into the air, launched skyward by a geyser of smoke, followed by a wave of heat that rocked Markal on his heels.

A hole opened, glowing with heat. A long, snake-like snout appeared, made of fire and molten rock, followed by a clawed hand that buried itself into the flagstones, which melted to slag under its touch. More claws emerged, and a fire salamander pulled itself, writhing and burning, from its hole. Its tongue flickered—pure flame—and the lemon tree burst into flames. It wrapped its body around a column and it melted.

Memnet and the others had stopped dead some thirty feet away from the creature. The city was aglow with lights, fire shooting into the sky where the night market had been. Even as he stared in horror, Markal struggled to understand how this salamander had come up beneath the palace—through some rune, a portal, that they’d never detected? It must be right here, in a spot they’d crossed dozens of times just this evening.

This creature of the depths was heat and fire and smoke, and Markal was stunned into paralysis. The salamander was between them and the cart. The whole terrace was melting, the trees burning and fire spreading already to the roof of nearby palace apartments. And they had no way to escape.

Memnet lifted the orb and shouted an incantation. A shower of white arrows flew from the orb and struck the salamander, bursting into steam as they hit. The salamander whipped its head about with an angry hiss and crawled serpentine-like across the melting stones even as icy arrows kept slamming into its body.

The fire dimmed where the arrows hit, and the creature’s skin solidified and turned black and shiny like obsidian as it cooled. The salamander’s movements slowed, turned creaky as the bombardment continued. It was hissing and spitting fire, and steam kept pouring off it, but the ice turned it to stone before their eyes as the master thundered ice onto its skin and quenched its heat.

“I can’t kill it,” Memnet shouted over the din of shattering ice and cracking stone. “Only slow it for a moment. Get around it, go. I will follow. Markal, lead them down.”

Markal gathered his wits. It was boiling hot close to the salamander, and a wall of flame roared from the burning lemon tree that they had to fight their way past. It was so hot that the water in the fountain next to it was steaming. He was afraid their robes would catch fire from the heat. How did the master intend them to get past?

“Frigidalus,” Jethro said.

Yes, of course. Markal dropped his load, held out his palms, and raised blood and power to the surface. “Refrigescant caeli. Consolabitur nos ab æstus.”

A gust of cold air blew in from behind, drove through the smoke, and swept it clear. Markal scooped up the books and prepared to run past Memnet and the monster, leading his companions down from the terrace.

But as the smoke cleared, it revealed a man standing beneath the melting arch, with the flaming tree to his right and the steaming fountain to his left. He stood at the top of the stairs, where moments earlier there had been no one. Markal recognized him at once.

It was Toth, the sorcerer and necromancer. The dark wizard, the high king of Veyre.

Chapter Sixteen

The last time Markal had seen the dark wizard, he was in the partially built fortress along the Tothian Way, wearing the colors and garb of a Veyrian lord. Now Toth had shed his tunic in favor of a gray robe like those worn by his highest servants.

But he didn’t have the gaunt face of a dark acolyte, nor the dead eyes and waxy complexion of a marauder. Instead, his skin was the color of wheat, his hair dark and curly, his eyes flashing and very much alive. He lifted his hands, and his lips curled in an ugly grimace as he spoke his incantation.

A cone of shadow erupted from Toth’s hands, slammed into Memnet, and knocked the wizard backward. Somehow, Memnet kept hold of his books, but the orb went flying, and he landed hard on his back. The arrows of ice vanished, and almost instantly, molten red heat cracked through the salamander’s skin.

Memnet waved his hand, and the orb lifted itself from the ground and flew to him. Memnet snatched it from the air, and as he brought it around, light flared. Toth was already hurling a second cone of shadow, and the two forces met in the middle and exploded with a shock wave that struck the others. Shadow and light rippled along Markal’s skin and made the hairs curl on his forearms. His stomach churned with nausea as the shadowy remnants of Toth’s sorcery flowed into him.

More black ropes snaked from the enemy’s hands. Memnet blasted light from his orb and made them wither and die, but the darkness kept flowing outward. Toth was using similar magic to his acolytes’ during the battle on the old road, but there was a radiant aura of power that far surpassed anything Markal and Nathaliey had faced.

During the icy assault, the salamander’s feet had frozen in place, turned into trunks of stone that merged with the terrace, but they were melting now. Flames licked from the monster’s mouth and twisted along its spine. Bits of obsidian-like rock burst from the scales on its back.

Markal watched in horror and dismay. He and his companions could not go forward or they’d face Toth and the fire salamander. Neither could they retreat, not with the irreplaceable treasure they carried in their arms. He had to do something, but had already spent the bulk of his magic drawing that ineffective breeze.

The salamander pulled up one foot, then another. Dragging itself free, heat radiating from its body anew, it came toward them. Wizard and sorcerer fought with alternating blasts of shadow and light, fully occupied in their struggle, and the creature slithered unopposed toward the lesser members of the order. A trail of molten stone remained where it crossed the flagstones.

If it had come straight at them, they’d have been destroyed, along with their books, but Toth appeared to have lost mastery of the beast as he battled Memnet. The salamander spotted the wooden columns of a balcony above them, crawled in that direction, and shot out a tongue of flame, which wrapped around the columns and set them ablaze. It crawled halfway up the stone wall, stretched out a clawed forearm, which elongated like an uncoiling rope, and pulled down tiles from the roof, which caught fire.

Flames were spreading throughout the palace, bursting through windows and rippling across roofs. Trees across the terraced gardens swayed in the firestorm, and their crowns caught fire one by one. Even with the salamander distracted, there was too much fire and heat surrounding Toth at the top of the stairs to get down.

“I have magic!” Chantmer said. “What should I do?”

“The monster wants to destroy,” Markal said. “Wood, books, anything that will wither under its flames—that’s what attracts it.”

“The trees are up in flames already,” Jethro said. “We can’t use them.”

“The books—” one of the archivists began.

“No,” Markal said. “Not the books, never that.”

“Blast it,” Chantmer said. “Someone give me an incantation, now.”

“A wall of ice,” Jethro said. “It’s a powerful spell, but easily mastered. Chantmer knows it already.”

Yes, of course. The ice would cool the stairs and shield them and the master from the worst heat so they could get down. A thick enough wall would cool the salamander, even as it drew it.

“I can’t pull ice from the sky,” Chantmer said. “I need contact with water.”

Markal pointed at the steaming fountain not far from where Memnet and Toth kept battering each other with waves of light and darkness. “There’s your source right there. I’ll jump in, make a conduit, and you build the wall.”

“Is there enough water in there?” Chantmer said.

“The fountain is connected to the palace springs—it will fill as fast as you drain it.”

As for the water in the fountain, it would be hot, perhaps scalding. There was nothing to be done for that; he’d suffer burns if he had to. He made to charge into the fray.

“No, not you,” Jethro said before he could move. “You have two hands to carry books, and power left in you. I have one hand and no power. I’ll do it.”

Before Markal could object, Jethro pushed his books into the hands of the other archivists, already overburdened and fumbling, ducked his head, and charged toward the fountain. Memnet spotted him coming, pointed the orb at the ground beneath Toth’s feet, and sent a pulse of energy into the flagstones. The half-melted ground at the sorcerer’s feet heaved upward and threw him backward. This created an opening in the battlefield, and Jethro pushed through the clouds of shadow and crackling light and hurled himself into the fountain.

“Help me with the words,” Chantmer said. “Scutum glacies, and then what? By the Brothers, Markal, what is it?”

Markal fed him the incantation. The fire salamander was still on the move. When it had emerged from the ground it had been maybe fourteen or fifteen feet long, but it was growing, stretching as it burned and consumed, and was now thirty feet long, like a dragon of fire and molten rock.

The monster left a half-melted, collapsing wing of the palace behind as it slithered back down to their terrace. Omar’s old quarters, together with the site of his former harem, and all the apartments of his viziers were now ablaze. A woman and two children screamed for help from one of the terraced gardens above, trapped by flames; apparently, some had disobeyed Sadira and Kandibar when ordered to evacuate the palace.

There was nothing to be done for them now. They had to get the ice shield up. As the words came out, Chantmer closed his eyes, placed his hands in front of him with the palms down, and raised a torrent of magic. It was powerful, and lasting.

A spout of water erupted from the fountain and poured onto the ground. At first it just steamed, but a pillar of ice began to appear. Chantmer kept pulling water and throwing it against the ice pillar, which spread along the ground until it became a wall, which grew and grew.

The salamander reached a book that had fallen from one of the overburdened archivists. It cocked its head, licked at the leather cover and the sheets emerging from the side, and hissed smoke when it didn’t catch fire.

Markal knew the book. It came from an ancient city of the Selph people who had lived on the coast. Along with their lore, the book contained incantations of healing and purification. For removing contamination from spoiled food, for drawing poison out of a wound.

The salamander slammed one of its claws onto the book, and flames shot out. Protected by layers of magic, the book resisted the attack. The creature bit and gnawed at the cover, and the leather smoked, but didn’t catch fire. The salamander hissed and stomped, and the book smoked harder, but continued to resist the flame. Finally, the monster opened its jaws, giving a glimpse into the white-hot fire in its belly, took the whole thing into its mouth, and gulped it down.

At once, the salamander seemed consumed with pain. It writhed on the ground for several seconds, then finally opened up again and belched a huge jet of flame that roared past Markal’s head as he ducked in fear. He rose again to the smell of his own scorched hair and eyebrows. The salamander was glowing hotter than ever and came slithering toward them again, its meal digested, seemingly enticed by the rest of the books and scrolls carried out of the library.

Chantmer’s wall of ice was nearly ten feet high, twenty feet long, and several feet thick. There would be nothing to keep Toth from going around it except Memnet’s magic, and nothing to stop the salamander from simply scrambling over the top except for Markal’s hunch that the monster’s elemental nature would force it to melt its way through the ice.

Markal ordered Chantmer to stop and the archivists to follow. A book and several scrolls fell off the stacks carried by the overburdened members of the order, and the salamander stopped to gobble them up one by one. It hissed and smoked in pain after each time, but it grew in size and heat as it fed.

Memnet sent a final blast of light, which hurled Toth against the balustrade, then joined them, snatching up abandoned books and staying just ahead of the writhing salamander. Jethro emerged dripping from the fountain, panting and gasping. His skin was red and scalded, and he could barely hobble along.

They’d gained the stairs when the fire salamander hurled itself into Chantmer’s ice wall. It gave a tremendous crack, and steam geysered into the air. Toth remained on the terrace above them, still throwing bolts of shadow at Memnet, even as he battled back from below with shafts of light. At the same time, the sorcerer snarled words in the old tongue to try to regain control of the fire salamander. The monster was inside the ice now—a fiery red light—squirming about and melting it from within.

The members of the order reached the cart and dumped their books inside. Karla and Erasmus were still in the cart, but there was no time for the archivists to organize the new shipment among all the other books, to give them one last bit of protective magic to keep them from giving off an aura during the trip through Syrmarria.

Memnet scrambled with some of the archivists into the back of the cart, while Chantmer ran around to take the horse’s reins. Markal waited for Jethro, who staggered toward them, still some distance back. Memnet hurled another bolt of light into the upper terrace. The orb was dimmer than it had been; the wizard had already expelled most of its stored magic.

“Master, the gates are shielded,” Karla said. “There are two dark acolytes there. I think they mean to bring down the gate towers as we cross through.”

Memnet lifted the orb. It seemed to inhale, drawing light into it, and then flashed. A wave of air exploded outward and struck the palace wall directly in front of them. Stones hurled up and away, giant blocks that came crashing back down again atop the stone houses below. A massive hole remained in the wall when the dust cleared, opening directly onto an alley that led into the city. No need to go through the gates at all.

Memnet sank back with a groan. The orb was dark in his hands. “Chantmer, the horse!” he wheezed.

Jethro still hadn’t reached the cart, but stopped about twenty paces back, doubled over. He clenched his trousers with his good hand and wheezed. His burns must be more severe than Markal had originally thought. The other archivists were calling for him, urging him to come up, even as the cart lurched forward. Markal was the only other one who hadn’t climbed into the cart, and it fell on him to help Jethro. He hurried back to grab his companion and drag him into the cart.

The fire salamander burst through the last of the ice barricade, and water showered down on them like steaming rain. The palace was on fire behind them, a wall of flame that illuminated the night sky. The white-hot salamander slithered down the steps from the upper terrace, melting the stone as it came.

The creature was moving too quickly, and the cart too slowly. It would catch them before they escaped through the hole in the palace wall. Fall upon the irreplaceable books from the library and devour them. And destroy the master and a good part of the order at the same time.

“My friend,” Jethro cried as Markal arrived. “Give me strength. No, not that kind—magical strength.”

Markal brought up his power and spoke an incantation at the same time. A whisper was all he had, enough to propel Jethro forward. The archivist straightened and inhaled.

“Remember me, Markal,” Jethro said. “Remember what I did.”

Markal didn’t have a chance to figure out what Jethro meant before the archivist had pulled away and run off, not toward the cart, but across the palace courtyard back in the direction of the fire salamander. The monster shot out its fiery tongue to envelop him. Jethro ducked away from it and kept running toward a staircase that led up to one of the terraces.

The others were crying for Markal to follow, and he turned around to find them almost to the hole in the palace wall. He ran after the cart, but couldn’t help himself and turned around again. Jethro reached the upper terrace, and there he stopped, confronted by a wall of flame. The salamander slithered up the stairs after him, hissing and spitting fire. Jethro couldn’t break through the heat and fire ahead of him, and he turned around to confront the monster.

“Markal!” Memnet cried.

Markal stood transfixed, unable to tear his gaze away. The salamander reached the top of the stairs, where the archivist waited, his arms outstretched as if in greeting. It launched itself forward with a blast of fire and smoke, and Jethro disappeared with a single, anguished cry. Horrified, Markal turned and ran.

He caught one final glance of the fire salamander as he scrambled into the cart and they made their way through the palace wall and into the streets below. It was white-hot, so bright that he could scarcely look at it, and it was slithering back down the stairs.

#

Heat stole the breath from Markal’s lungs as the cart clattered through the streets. Chantmer was up ahead, running alongside the frightened horse and directing it down one alley after another. He shouted back to Markal and Memnet when he detected a snare or trap, and the pair paused long enough to break them apart before Chantmer led them on.

There was fire everywhere, a conflagration that spilled through the city from the salamanders that had burst from the ground at the night market. Entire streets vanished in fire, and a hot breeze turned the alleys into choking, deadly traps. Yet somehow Chantmer kept them moving.

The city wasn’t deserted—there hadn’t been enough time to evacuate everyone—and screams came from burning houses. Voices cried for help from smoke-fouled souks. A terrified child wailed for his mother, and Markal grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him up to the cart.

Animals were suffering, too. Birds fell scorched and dying from the sky. A cat shot past them with its tail on fire, yowling in terror, and a camel burst from a side street with a dangling load of carpets and slammed into the cart, nearly upsetting it before running off again.

A dog gave a terrified howl from the smoke to their right, and when they went through the most dangerous part of the city, only a few blocks from the night market, another dog leaped into the back of the cart and threw itself in Markal’s arms, trembling alongside the child. He didn’t have the will to push the animal out again even though he knew that their priority had to be saving people, not animals.

Markal was seeing to the child’s burns when Chantmer stopped the cart abruptly. The horse reared up. A slithering molten form emerged from the smoke ahead of them. It was a fire salamander, and it had grown to monstrous proportions. It loomed above them, nearly the height of the houses lining the alley, and slammed its claws down on the roofs to either side. They burst into flames. Waves of boiling heat rolled from the monster’s open, flaming mouth.

Memnet rose to his feet in the back of the cart. There was no sign of the orb—he’d exhausted its stored magic during the fight at the palace—and he held out his hands palm down to draw strength from his own body. He spoke an incantation, something long and slippery that Markal couldn’t understand, and a shock wave of power burst from his hands, so powerful that it made his ears ache.

The ground shook and rumbled. Burning buildings collapsed into the street with a roar and spouts of flame and debris. They buried the monster beneath burning beams and chunks of stone. It was hissing and smoking down there, trying to claw its way out again, even before the buildings had stopped shaking on top of it.

Memnet collapsed on top of the books and scrolls. “Go!” he cried. “Get us out of here.”

Chantmer got them turned around, and the horse laid its ears back and pulled with all its might until they were on the move again. A few minutes later, they arrived in a part of the city where the flames had not yet reached, and from there they were able to push through the scattered people still fleeing for their lives and reach the eastern gate of the city. By now they’d picked up two more injured people, rescued from burning homes.

Dozens more were screaming from behind them, where they remained trapped in the fire. Across the city, there must be thousands dying. Burning, suffocating, dying crushed beneath collapsing buildings. Markal listened for the sound of the Harvester’s horn—the Dark Gatherer could move freely through fire and across the battlefield with his spectral hounds—but he could pick out little above the roar of the fire, the screams, and the thunder of falling stone and timber.

The burning city turned the night to day. The souks, the tenements crammed with poor laborers and servants, the mansions on the hillside, the palace itself—all burning. And beneath the palace, the library, with fully half of its contents left behind. By now the salamander on the hill must have found it, must be consuming the precious, irreplaceable volumes, one by one.

A hot stiff breeze blew out of the city, and ash rained from the sky, together with strips of burning linen that flapped past like fiery birds. Directly overhead, above the eastern gate of the city, hung the long leathery form of Khalif Omar, the former ruler of the khalifate and master of the city and all of Aristonia with it. His head was on a pike, with his flayed skin dangling behind, partially sewn back together to catch the wind.

While Markal watched, the khalif’s skin flapped, smoking in the firestorm. Behind it, Syrmarria burned.

Chapter Seventeen

Nathaliey watched soldiers preparing for siege from her gibbet overhanging the gorge. Roughly a hundred defenders were at work, putting up wooden planks to deflect projectiles, building railings to extend out from the walls to repel ladders and ropes, and hauling up stones and other objects to hurl down at the barbarians when they arrived.

After some initial alarm at the approach of an Eriscoban army, the Veyrians grew confident, and she despaired for Sir Wolfram’s chances. The castle was small, but well-built. It boasted thirty-foot walls of freshly cut stone and towers that could only be attacked from one side and against a steep, treacherous approach. The Veyrians had cisterns for water and food and supplies stuffed in the cellars, already gathered for Toth’s expected push into Eriscoba. And even if an enemy somehow starved the garrison and breached the walls, the defenders could retreat to the keep and hold out there for another indefinite period of time.

Wolfram’s army had apparently pushed up the Tothian Way into the mountains, forced the Veyrians to retreat, and were gathering for a siege, but how would they take the castle? And this was only one of several similar castles recently built along the new highway, a series of rugged little fortifications known collectively as the Teeth. If Nathaliey twisted in her cage and craned her neck, she could see another small castle to the west. That one sat on a thumb-like protrusion of stone with an even more forbidding approach.

More importantly to Nathaliey, if Wolfram’s forces couldn’t take the castle, there was no way they could rescue her. Surely the captain of the Blackshields knew this, and wouldn’t even attempt it, instead pushing past them toward the khalifates. But at the same time, without the castles, how could his army advance? So long as Toth held the fortifications, the enemy could endlessly harass the Eriscoban army, destroying supplies and slaughtering men from behind.

No, Wolfram had to take the castles. Had to take them one by one. Yet such a task seemed beyond any conceivable army that might march east out of Eriscoba.

Three days had passed since Nathaliey sent her seeker, and she was still hanging on to her sanity in spite of every attempt to break it. Wights and other spectral visions were present whether she had her eyes open or not, and their voices infiltrated her head, too. Sometimes she heard nothing but a long wordless moan. Other wights undermined her in low cunning voices, whispering about the glories of serving the dark wizard, boasting how her soul was leaking from her body, and taunting her with tales of roasted pheasant, thick beef stews, and hunks of hot bread slathered with freshly churned butter. So many days had passed since her last meal, and every thought of food was torture.

Jasmeen appeared twice a day and forced down vials of the bitter, burning elixir. When Nathaliey resisted, Jasmeen cursed and slapped her, told her to surrender, and threatened to break her fingers or cut off her nose.

During these struggles, Nathaliey hid an unpleasant truth: the elixir no longer made her violently ill, but warmed her body and steadied her shaking hands. She’d begun to anticipate it, to long for it even. When it entered her mouth, she swallowed quickly, not wanting to lose even a single drop. Before long, she feared, she’d be begging for it. And when that happened, all hope would be lost.

Now Jasmeen was pacing the walls, her bony hands almost skeletal where they emerged from her sleeves. Nathaliey could see the dark acolyte for almost the entire length of the wall walk as she completed a circuit every few minutes. They held another prisoner atop the wall on the far side—some slave, Eriscoban soldier, or peasant—it was hard to see which—and were whipping him methodically. Every time Jasmeen passed, she stopped to draw power from the man’s pain.

“You look worried,” Nathaliey said the next time Jasmeen passed. “Are the barbarians winning the war?”

Jasmeen slowed as if she wanted to say something, but only cast Nathaliey a poisonous look before continuing on her way. Nathaliey tried again the next time the dark acolyte approached.

“It’s too bad Hamid’s marauders left you defenseless,” she said. “Now you’re going to die.”

Nathaliey had lost control of her seeker just before seeing the results of Wolfram’s ambush, but it must have gone well for the paladins. The castle gate had clanked open about an hour later, and horses came riding in. Yet far fewer than before, from the sound of it, maybe five or six animals in all. There was shouting, hard words and recriminations; Nathaliey recognized Hamid’s voice. He was still alive, curse him. Yet from his fury, she knew that he’d lost the encounter, and badly.

Hamid collected more men and rode through the castle gates a short time later. But this time, the sound of hooves moved east, in the direction of the khalifates. She hadn’t understood why at first, but the next morning saw preparations for a siege. It was then that she guessed Wolfram’s intention to attack the castle.

Jasmeen circled about again a few minutes later. Nathaliey made another attempt to provoke, and this time her efforts bore fruit.

“Estmor is under siege,” Nathaliey said. “The pasha’s army driven off or surrounded. If Estmor has fallen, what chance does this little rock have?”

The dark acolyte stopped. “Don’t listen to soldiers. They are gossiping fools, the lot of them.”

Her voice was loud enough that two nearby men paused from hammering at the wet hides they were attaching to wooden framework shielding the wall. They scowled, and Nathaliey enjoyed a small victory.

“So the castle is not under siege? And the pasha is not surrounded?” Nathaliey shook her head in mock sorrow when Jasmeen failed to answer. “Your master’s war has apparently collapsed.”

Jasmeen sneered. “The entire strength of the barbarian kingdoms amounts to a few thousand men. King Toth will muster fifty thousand, with tens of thousands more to support them. Entire cities will go hungry this winter to feed his army.”

“And yet the sorcerer is nowhere to be seen at the front lines,” Nathaliey answered. “His champions have withdrawn. Why? The east must still be troubling him. How is Toth going to subdue the whole of Eriscoba if he can’t manage a tiny little khalifate like Aristonia?”

“If you refer to your friends, they are already dead. Your wizard—what was his name? Memnet the so-called Great?—begged for mercy, and your fellow apprentices screamed as we stripped the skin from their bodies. We tore down your garden walls, burned your trees, and slaughtered them all. No two stones stand one on top of the other.”

Nathaliey was not so feeble that she couldn’t manage a laugh at the obvious lie. “Then it’s truly strange for the sorcerer to abandon these castles to the paladins and their armies. After all, if my order is dead, there’s no reason to withdraw.”

Jasmeen bared her teeth. “This fortress will never be taken. Let the barbarians lay siege. They have no wizardry, no war machines, no engineers or incendiaries. We can hold the castle for months if necessary. Longer. By then my master will have his armies.”

Nathaliey had no ready retort for this, as she’d already had this conversation in her head, and Jasmeen’s boast seemed all too true. All she could do was stare back at the woman and ignore the vision of wights floating through the air between them.

“You’ll never break my mind,” Nathaliey said. “Your poison will fail.”

Jasmeen stared for a long moment with her gaunt eyes boring into Nathaliey. She reached over the edge and gave the pole a shake, which made the gibbet sway where it hung above the gorge, then continued around to where a Veyrian continued whipping the prisoner. The screams had ceased, and the poor fellow could only moan pitifully.

The sound of marching feet and horses’ hooves soon rose like a dull thunder to the west. Jasmeen had disappeared around the wall walk behind the central keep, and didn’t reappear. She must be standing above the gates, waiting with the garrison commander.

Meanwhile, the sound grew until it echoed off the soaring peaks that rose above the Tothian Way. Soldiers stopped their work on the castle walls and turned to shuttling crossbow bolts, baskets of stones, and other missiles to the tower and battlements. Men lit fires on the wall walk, while others hauled up kettles, which they filled with oil and pitch.

Nathaliey waited in anticipation. She desperately wanted the Eriscobans to assault the castle and free her, but knew in her heart that any attempt would be futile. Hundreds of Wolfram’s men would die to little effect. Never mind the well-protected garrison; how would he even combat Jasmeen’s sorcery?

It took another hour before the advance units of the besieging army arrived. Much as she craned, Nathaliey couldn’t see them or any bit of the Tothian Way as it approached the small castle, but the army made plenty of noise, and it had to amount to several hundred men on foot and horse. Perhaps more. Someone outside the walls blew a trumpet, and a man hailed the garrison commander in a booming voice. This led to threats and demands shouted back and forth, followed by a volley of flaming arrows from the besieging army. They sailed over the walls and into the castle.

Unlike Estmor’s castle, this small fortress had never been a home or built with anything but defense in mind. There were few wood roofs inside, and these had been covered with wet hides. A handful of arrows struck, but the fire didn’t take hold.

The initial attack was followed almost immediately by return fire from crossbows and ballistae atop the castle walls. Jasmeen reappeared on the west side of the wall walk, where she paced among the defenders, casting enchantments into the bolts as they sped downward. The cries of wounded men rose from outside the walls, which brought jeers from the defenders. Two men trotted past Nathaliey’s cage, rolling barrels of oil, and their chatter was excited and confident.

The defenders must like their chances. An army amassed at the gates, with no way to storm the castle. The attackers could only suffer heavy losses, while the defenders would emerge from the battle unscathed.

So what the devil was Wolfram doing? It certainly sounded like a siege: pounding hammers, creaking cart wheels, men shouting about the assembly of siege engines. The Eriscobans seemed to be making camp on the highway and preparing for a protracted battle. They couldn’t see the hot oil waiting above, nor understand that Jasmeen could set it all afire as easily as she could snap her fingers.

Or maybe Wolfram wasn’t in command. He’d proven himself capable of spurring his forces to quick action, but only when he spied an opening. Otherwise, he was cautious, slow to commit the men and women under his banner. In other words, a good commander, not one likely to throw away lives.

There must be someone else leading the Eriscoban army, Nathaliey decided, a baron or earl mounting the attack while Captain Wolfram remained in command of the Blackshields, but otherwise remained apart from battle preparations. This attack was too hasty, too unlikely to succeed for Wolfram.

The Eriscobans continued on the move throughout the late morning and into early afternoon. Unable to see the action, and with no strength left to pull up a seeker, Nathaliey could only follow by ear. It sounded like half the foot soldiers and cavalry were piling up outside the castle gates, while the other half marched east, deeper into the mountains.

That gave Nathaliey some hope. Maybe they wouldn’t mount an all-out assault after all. Maybe their strategy was to lay siege to all the castles in the mountain passes, testing the defenses, bottling up defenders, but no more. Time would prove that the Veyrians were well stocked and invulnerable in their mountain redoubts, but at least the Eriscobans wouldn’t sacrifice their forces. When King Toth finally made his move, it would allow an orderly retreat to Estmor.

It was about two hours after noon when the sun dipped behind a crag in the mountains and an Eriscoban trumpet sounded from the highway. A voice shouted a command, and a great cry rose from the barbarian army. Feet stomped and spears banged against shields. The Veyrians stiffened on the wall, crossbows in hand, hot oil at the ready, while they waited for the attackers to make their move.

Another trumpet from the highway, this one high and clear—a single long note. Nathaliey watched, tense. Enough with the horns. The Eriscobans could blare and stomp and cheer, and it wouldn’t get them through the castle gate.

Arrows soared up to the walls, and this time it was a full volley, hundreds of them. The defenders ducked behind the battlements to wait it out, but it seemed that the attackers were prepared to keep shooting and shooting to no apparent purpose.

The sun, still moving across the sky, emerged from the other side of the crag and bathed the castle in clear brilliant light. Nathaliey squinted, unable to see. At that moment, there came a clanking sound and she squinted, disbelieving, as hooks flew up and snared the crenelations atop the battlements. Somehow, the attackers had timed their volleys to launch claw hooks disguised among the arrows just as the sunlight moved from behind a mountain peak and temporarily blinded the defenders.

And yet, what possible good could it do? The attackers weren’t spiders; they couldn’t scramble up the ropes fast enough to reach the top, not carrying armor and weapons. Indeed, Jasmeen had already spotted the attempt to scale the walls, and was shouting for hot oil and crossbows to repel it. One of the more alert Veyrians drew a dagger and severed the rope holding one of the hooks in place.

Nathaliey was starved, poisoned, and demoralized, and yet the wheels were turning, clanking away as they raised some internal portcullis in her mind. In one brilliant moment of clarity, she understood, she knew what Wolfram’s forces meant to do. She shielded her eyes and looked skyward.

There, from behind the mountain peak and with the sun at their back, was a great cloud silhouetted against the sky. It dropped silently and swiftly, then broke into a hundred individual components. Not a sound, not a whisper as they approached.

At the last moment, a Veyrian soldier cried a warning, and suddenly the entire flock of griffins let out an ear-shattering scream, dozens of animals all at once, joined by a full-throated roar from their riders.

A griffin blasted past Nathaliey’s gibbet in a rush of air that shook the iron cage. It seized a soldier on the wall, who only had time to stare in dawning horror as the talons closed around him and hurled him over the edge. He went flailing past her cage, making a final, desperate, and unsuccessful lunge for her metal bars before he fell screaming into the gorge. The rider angled her griffin along the wall and hurled her spear at a man with a crossbow. It hit the man in the chest. Another Veyrian down.

There were forty or fifty griffins in the first wave, and they had nearly swept the defenders from the wall by the time the second wave barreled in. Each of these griffins carried two people, one rider and one passenger. They landed just long enough to discharge the second person to the walls, and Nathaliey managed a rusty cheer when she saw they were paladins.

Wolfram was among them, and he spotted her in the cage. “Hold on! We’ll get you out.”

But first there was fighting to do, as Veyrians rushed up from below while crossbows and ballistae chased off griffins, and some of the newly arrived paladins were trying to fight their way to the castle gate to open it for the Eriscobans to pour in, while others hauled at ropes to hoist their comrades in arms up to the wall. Nathaliey could only watch, frustrated, as the battle raged without her participation.

Jasmeen came slithering around the edge of the wall walk. Paladins and Veyrians did battle all around her, but none seemed to notice her, and they even bent their movements in combat to allow her through. Sorcery swirled about her robes, and she seemed to be dragging multiple shadows. One moment her face looked dead, a rotting corpse, the next a blue wight, and the next, it was her own face, gaunt and starved. She came to the edge of the wall and stared out at the gibbet on its pole.

“I see you,” Nathaliey said. “You can’t hide from me.”

“That is because you are half-turned. My sorcery is your sorcery. And because we are the same, it reveals me, it doesn’t hide me.”

“Your elixir failed.” Nathaliey’s words came out cracked and hoarse, but defiant. “The castle is taken, and I’ll be freed.”

“Which is why you must die,” Jasmeen said.

The dark acolyte put her hand on the wooden pole, closed her eyes, and squeezed. The pole groaned. There was a crack, and a fissure opened down the wood. The cage sagged as the pole holding it up buckled, and Nathaliey grabbed the bars in sudden fear. The pole held one second longer, dangling, then cracked in two and broke free. Nathaliey’s stomach lurched as she fell. The cage dropped away, with the castle rapidly receding above her.

Something jerked her upward. A griffin’s talons held the gibbet and lifted her higher. The rider leaned over her mount and looked at Nathaliey through narrowed eyes. It was the woman with the emerald-green stone at her brow. Laboring against the weight, the griffin hauled up the iron cage and dropped it with a clank on the wall walk.

Nathaliey was face down in the gibbet and couldn’t see anything. But her ears worked. The castle gates clanked open, and attackers poured into the bailey. The walls seemed to be taken, and the remaining battle concentrated around the keep. Griffins swooped overhead with eagle-like cries and blasts of air from their beating wings, and more than one defender who’d survived the initial assault fell screaming to his death.

A few minutes later, the battle came to an end as the remaining Veyrians cried their surrender. Strong arms turned the gibbet over, and paladins set to work breaking her out. When she was hauled to her feet, trembling and weak and unable to hold herself upright, she found herself staring at Captain Wolfram’s confident face. He smiled and rested his hand briefly on her shoulder before setting off to finish securing the castle.

Griffins still swooped overhead. One landed long enough to retrieve a fallen rider, and two more emerged from the gorge hauling the struggling body of an injured griffin between them, which they carried up toward the peaks. A griffin landed atop the keep, its wings spread and its giant, eagle-like head cocked and fixing the Eriscobans below with a penetrating gaze.

The woman who had rescued Nathaliey sat on the griffin’s back. She held her long graceful sword in hand and stared down at Nathaliey from above, her gaze every bit as sharp as that of her mount.

“A debt acknowledged,” the woman called down in a high clear voice. She sheathed her sword. “Ska!”

Her griffin lifted skyward with a shrill cry. Other griffins swooped in after her, and together they flew in a massive flock down the canyon, away from the castle. Moments later, the griffins and riders were all gone.

Chapter Eighteen

Nathaliey was in bed in the keep, her head aching, her stomach churning from the bit of ale and bread she’d taken, when Wolfram knocked on the door and entered. He’d changed out of his tunic and breastplate and wore a simple linen shirt, with a bandage visible at the right shoulder blade. There was another cut on his hand, but he otherwise seemed healthy and strong. He looked around, taking in the bed, the single trunk, and the lantern on a roughly hewn table.

“These were the castle commander’s own quarters. Rather spartan, wouldn’t you say?”

Nathaliey fought off a violent shiver. “Whatever else this place is, it’s not built for comfort.”

Wolfram was partially blocking the light from the small window and moved into a different position to study her. “Your eyes are yellow.”

“That’s the least of my troubles.”

“Your strength will return with time. Food, clean water, and rest.”

“My body should heal quickly enough. I’m a wizard—we can live without food longer than you might expect.”

“They gave you nothing?”

“No food. A little water. And a poison—an elixir of thrall. I see wights. They’re standing over your shoulder right now.”

Wolfram cast a quick glance behind him. “Where?”

“I don’t know if they’re really here. I think not. It’s a vision, nothing more. I need time. And another wizard to heal me, time to eat and rest in the gardens.”

“I can’t give you that, I’m afraid. We’re rather short on wizards around here, and Yuli won’t leave the mountains to carry you down. I already asked.”

“Yuli?”

“Yuli is the flockheart, the queen of the griffin riders. I asked her to carry you home, but she refused. Said she already carried Markal to the lowlands and seemed shaken by the trip. Too many people, too hot. Thick, poisonous air. Her words, not mine.”

Nathaliey pushed herself into a sitting position with her back against the cold stone wall. “She knows Markal? When did this happen?”

“Sometime after he left us, but I don’t know anything more than that. The griffin riders don’t much care for us, and the feeling is mutual. When Yuli first approached, offering to help us drive Toth’s army from the mountains, my men almost caused a small war by trying to shoot their lead griffins out of the sky. We’re fortunate they missed.”

“What about Jasmeen? The acolyte, I mean. Did you capture her?”

Wolfram’s expression turned grim. “No, she escaped. As did Hamid and his marauders. We almost took him that night you sent a warning with your magical eye. I fought the brute myself, came face-to-face with Soultrup.”

“You bested him, though. You drove him back to the castle. I heard him return, and he’d lost men.”

“Aye, that we did. Hamid could have taken my life, though. He was defeating me at the time. He could have cut me down, but stopped, waited for someone else to do the killing.”

Nathaliey studied Wolfram’s face. “Because of the red sword?”

“Hamid was already struggling with the blade. Once, it tried to hurl itself from his hands before . . . well, whatever evil forces resumed control. Perhaps he was afraid that if he killed me, I would fight from within to take it from him.”

That sounded plausible. Nathaliey wanted to question Wolfram more, to hear the man’s strategy, to know if he meant to march all the way to the khalifates. And what about the griffin riders? They’d fought one battle, but would they be back to help overthrow the other fortifications?

But she was so tired, and her head was aching. She was thirstier than ever, and the wights were beginning to whisper. She found herself thinking about Jasmeen, wondering where the dark acolyte had gone once she escaped from the castle, and if she could follow. That was the nourishment she craved. The elixir . . . if she could—

Nathaliey clenched her eyes shut and sank back into the bed with a groan. If she didn’t regain her strength, she was afraid that she’d find a way out of the castle and track down Jasmeen. Not to defeat her, but to swear fealty to the dark wizard.

“I’ll let you rest,” Wolfram said, “and we can talk later. But if you wake up feeling weak, and need something to fortify your strength, try this.”

He set a bottle on the table next to a stack of enemy maps and dispatches that nobody had yet examined. Nathaliey peered at it through one half-opened eye.

“Wine? I thought you barbarians preferred beer and ale.”

“Captured from a wagonload of enemy supplies. There were rare spices, silks, wines, and brandies. Intended for Pasha Kerem, most likely, given the excess of luxury. This bottle isn’t just any wine, it appears to be from your gardens, by the wax seal on the cork.”

She heaved herself back up. “The Harvester take me, why didn’t you say so in the first place? Pour me some, and be quick about it.”

It took some searching to find a corkscrew, and she took the wine in a carved wooden mug that still smelled of beer. The first sip hit with such violence that she doubled over in pain, thinking she would vomit it to the floor, together with the bit of food she’d eaten earlier, but she held onto the contents of her stomach, and shortly the nausea passed. And almost at once, her head seemed clearer, the ever-present wights shuffling toward the edge of her vision instead of leering at her from directly in front.

Nathaliey held out her hand for the wooden mug, which Wolfram had taken while he watched her with concern. She took another sip. This time, there was no nausea.

“Sorry about my sharp words,” she said. “I didn’t mean to order you around.”

A smile touched the corner of his mouth. “The wine must be good.”

“Have you never tried it? Here, drink a little.”

He took a sip. “Well, that’s . . . yes, I understand.” Another sip.

“You don’t know how badly I needed it. I thought I was going to . . . never mind that. I’ll be better now.” She took the cup back and poured more. “Would you mind terribly sending someone for food? I think I can hold it down now.”

Wolfram left the room and sent someone with cheese and roasted game. By the time he returned, she’d eaten, napped for a spell, and awakened to eat and drink some more. The wights were still present when she closed her eyes, but they had receded, and were fading. From the captain’s satisfied look as he appraised her, she knew that she must look better, too. The light cutting through the narrow windows had faded to a dim gray, and he carried a lamp.

“I’ve beaten it,” she said. “Maybe I really am a wizard.”

Eriscoban soldiers had come in while she was eating and carried off the maps, charts, and dispatches, and Wolfram brought one of them back with him, which he unrolled on the table. Nathaliey roused herself from the bed, threw a robe around her shoulders, and joined him. They stretched the paper out and pinned the corners with the lamp, the wine bottle, an empty bowl, and Wolfram’s dagger.

It was a map of the mountains, the seven castles guarding the passes, and the Tothian Way between Estmor and Syrmarria. Apart from the city itself, Aristonia was only a vague splotch on the map, with a handful of villages marked, and the Sacred Forest itself made no appearance, as if the high king already considered it erased from existence. Numbers, figures, and notes had been lightly marked with a lead stylus.

“This eastern lettering tests my ability to decipher it,” Wolfram said. “Is this number a two? And this is a five, right?”

“No, those are shorthand for larger figures. This one is a ten, and that one is a twenty. This mark here is a fifty. I don’t know what the rest of it means.”

Wolfram looked troubled, and hesitated a long moment before he spoke. “Those are unit types. Cavalry, footmen, archers. Other things I can’t figure out. Most likely types of supplies, because it’s in a column by itself, and I know this means wheat, and this seems to be leather.” Wolfram tapped his finger on the numbers. “But this is what has me alarmed.”

Yes, if he were right that the numbers represented units. Forty . . . did that mean forty thousand? It seemed to be. Forty and ten and two. An army of fifty-two thousand . . . was that even possible?”

“I heard two soldiers talking,” she said. “They mentioned twenty thousand men. It seemed a vast number.”

“It is a vast number. If you have twenty thousand men-at-arms, you need a hundred thousand to keep them supplied.”

“A hundred thousand people is greater than the entire khalifate of Aristonia.”

“Or any of our kingdoms, for that matter.” Wolfram tapped the map at the fortresses west of Aristonia. “Twenty—that’s this force here. If this map is two weeks old, who knows where they’ll be? And then you have thirty thousand more troops strung in encampments somewhere along here.”

“How many troops do you command?” Nathaliey asked.

“Seven thousand, more or less. I’d counted on an enemy force of twenty, believed I could defeat them, or at least fight them to a standstill. Force the enemy into a battle on the terrain of our choosing, leave them bloodied, and hope that your high king withdrew to seek easier prey.”

“The sorcerer is not my king, and anyway, this war is more than Eriscoba. It’s all of the khalifates, too.”

“Your people should have resisted when they had the chance,” Wolfram said grimly. “Now they supply troops to his armies and slaves to his road building.”

She clenched her jaw. “Some of us are resisting. Why do you think you took the castle so easily?”

“You call that easy?”

“You know what I mean. You shouldn’t have taken it in the first place. You shouldn’t have been allowed to approach the gates. Toth had a toehold on the western side of the mountains, and if he’d kept it supplied with fresh troops, he’d still be slaughtering his way through Eriscoba.”

“And it’s your wizards forcing him to delay?”

“Yes.”

“Explain.”

“If Toth held Syrmarria, if he had Aristonia under his thumb, nothing would stop those fifty thousand troops from pouring into your lands. And then it would be the barbarians serving as slaves and foot soldiers. Probably that’s his plan all along. Conquer the free kingdoms and send a hundred thousand Eriscoban slaves into the southern deserts. Build his sorcerous highway on top of the Spice Road until he’s conquered Marrabat and the rest of the sultanates to add to his empire. And if the pale-skinned barbarians die beneath the blistering sun, so much the better. And why should I care if he does? You care nothing for my homeland, apparently. We didn’t resist, you claim, and so I suppose we deserve what we get. Is that about right?”

Wolfram drew in his breath, and Nathaliey was aware that she’d been shouting. After half a bottle of wine from the gardens, her head was light and her tongue loose. She needed to rein it in.

“I’m sorry, Captain. I’m not your enemy, you know that.”

“I know.”

“I want to save my home and my people.”

“I know that, Nathaliey. Don’t think me a coward. I took great risks to rescue you. First at Estmor, now here.”

She looked down, her throat suddenly tight. “I am very sorry.”

“You’re right. We’re in this war together. Even Yuli’s griffin riders, at least until we’re through the mountains. After that . . . I’m not sure.

“But I can’t throw my seven thousand against an army of fifty thousand and hope to survive,” he continued. “If the griffins help us clear the castles, we can hold the mountain passes while we drain Estmor’s swamps and fortify the castle. Maybe raise another five, six thousand troops. Harass and delay . . .” His voice trailed off and he returned his gaze to the map. “Fifty thousand men. The enemy cavalry alone numbers ten thousand. By the Brothers, they have nine thousand archers.”

“Plus siege engines, engineers, and above all, sorcery,” Nathaliey said. “If you face those fifty thousand in Eriscoba, they’ll be backed by King Toth and his acolytes, because it will mean that no one from my order remains to oppose him.”

“And what would you have me do?”

Nathaliey studied the map, looked at the castles, the placement of Syrmarria. The gardens were not on the map, of course, nor even Blossom Creek, but she knew more or less where it was. She didn’t know what Memnet, Markal, and the others were doing, but they must be resisting. And all those enemy forces were moving to encircle them.

“There’s a friendly army in Aristonia,” she said. “It doesn’t show on your map.”

“How many?”

“Fifty.”

“Fifty thousand men?” He looked incredulous. “Where would they have come from?”

“Not fifty thousand. Fifty. That’s the sum of my order—wizards, apprentices, acolytes, archivists, and keepers.”

“I see.”

“We fought Toth once and defeated his army.”

“I’ve seen what you can do. I wouldn’t discount it. But still . . .”

“You haven’t seen us in action, not truly. Memnet is more powerful than the lot of us, and our gardens are stronger than any castle you can imagine. Wights, marauders, sorcerers, and hundreds of Veyrian soldiers—we defeated them all, and by now the order will have rebuilt our defenses.”

“So you have a castle of sorts. And an army . . . of sorts. How will this help us win the war?”

Nathaliey touched her index finger to the map, to the gardens. “Bring your forces here. This is where we will destroy King Toth and his armies.”

Chapter Nineteen

They were passing through a stretch of rolling countryside, two days from Syrmarria, and still a day’s travel from the gardens, when Memnet tapped Chantmer’s shoulder and told him to follow him from the road. Memnet ordered Markal to take command of the cart, with Karla and the other surviving archivists accompanying him.

Intrigued, Chantmer followed Memnet into a meadow as sheep scattered ahead of them. This was it, he decided. This was the moment when the master rewarded him. He had battled dark acolytes, fought a fire salamander, and convinced a spoiled princess to rescue the vizier and save thousands of Syrmarrians.

True, he hadn’t done any of those things alone. Either Narud or Markal had been with him most of the time, but that was the point, wasn’t it? His magic and knowledge were equal to or greater than theirs, and so was his judgment. And now, knowing that Nathaliey had been elevated, and by Markal, no less, made him sure. All of his companions were wizards, and now it was his turn.

Memnet scaled a low hill and turned about as if trying to orient himself. “Here,” he said, pointing. “Help me pull up the turf.”

Chantmer frowned, surprised at the order. “Dig with my hands?”

“Unless you’ve got a shovel up your sleeve.” Memnet raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t think we were coming up to scout the countryside, did you?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Then let’s get working.”

Chantmer bent, his face red with embarrassment. Why had he thought this would be about making him a wizard? Memnet had had several opportunities to speak to him alone over the past couple of days, the first coming only a few hours outside the city, when Markal and the others set off to leave the rescued men and animals with a group of refugees fleeing south toward the Spice Road. Yet he hadn’t.

Chantmer gave a desultory tug at a clump of grass, and was surprised when it came right up. There was a flat stone just below the surface, and the pair of them had it exposed after a few minutes of work. It was roughly three paces wide and six paces long.

“There was an entire stone ring here at one point,” Memnet said. He brushed away dirt. “Knocked down in the war.”

“The war?”

“Not the war—I misspoke. A war. Many many years ago. There was a battle near here, one of several in this area.” He kept brushing at the dirt, and Chantmer followed his lead. “But even if the rings were knocked down, they weren’t destroyed. They maintain their power—weakened by time and neglect—but still there.”

“I didn’t know the rings had a functional purpose.”

Memnet looked at him with a smile. “You thought they were decorative?”

“I was told they were built to honor the Brothers. Holy sites or something, like an old shrine.”

“That, too.”

“But I can’t feel anything,” Chantmer said.

“It’s dormant. The ones you see, the standing stones, are exhausted, at least here in the lowlands. But go to the mountains and find a ring and you’ll see its magic is still active.”

“Hmm. Markal told me something about the battle at the stone circle.”

That reminded him that Markal had declared Nathaliey a wizard after their adventures in the mountains, and he scowled. When he thought how he’d expected Memnet to bring him to the hill to give him the same sort of news, his scowl deepened. This was only another lesson, nothing more. Would they never end?

“Is something wrong?” Memnet asked.

“No, nothing. Only that three others have been elevated to the station of wizard, and I find myself with Kreth and Roghan and the like, nothing but an apprentice.”

“That’s an unfair comparison, my friend. Kreth and Roghan are lesser apprentices. They have a long way to go before they reach your level of knowledge and power.”

“Lesser, greater. What does it matter?”

“It matters a good deal,” Memnet said.

Chantmer groaned. He turned back to his work clearing away dirt before frustration made him say something unpleasant. That would only convince the master to suppress him further. His fingers traced a familiar mark in the stone.

“This is a rune of desolation. Like in the walled garden.”

“Good, yes. Wake it up—I assume you know the incantation.”

Chantmer did. He spoke a few words, let fall a single drop of blood, and touched the stone again. It hummed with power.

“It’s far from the road,” Chantmer said. “You’d need to lure an enemy here for it to do any good.”

“Only if we were to activate it in isolation. But we won’t be. All this travel I’ve been doing up and down the road hasn’t been solely to clear it of enemies. I’ve been working the old stones and . . . here, I’ll show you something.”

Memnet picked up clumps of sod and shook the roots to scatter dirt over the surface of the stone. While he worked, Chantmer cast a glance back at the road. Markal and the apprentices were almost out of sight around the bend. There was a village up ahead, but it was most likely deserted, either because the enemy had swept up the inhabitants as slaves, or because the villagers had fled the countryside. It wasn’t just Syrmarria on the move, but most of the population of Aristonia, trudging toward the Spice Road with whatever they could carry. Soon to be a people in exile.

The sky to the east was still dark and ominous two days after they’d abandoned Syrmarria to its fate. The air carried the tang of smoke, and they awoke in the mornings to find a thin film of ash covering their blankets and collecting in their eyelashes.

There were dead people in that ash, Chantmer thought. Burned in a fiery holocaust, turned to bone ash, and then floating through the air to coat his mouth and throat. It had all happened too quickly; for every person who’d escaped, another had died in the fires.

“This represents Aristonia,” Memnet said, drawing Chantmer’s attention back.

What the master had traced in the thin layer of dirt over the fallen stone looked nothing like a map, but something resembling a wagon wheel, with spokes radiating from an inner circle to an outer ring.

“The outer ring is the Sacred Forest,” Memnet continued. “It was once so thick that only the centermost part of the khalifate—called a kingdom in those days—was free for human settlement. The old woods are still intact here along the northern realm where the Forest Brother once lived, but in the south the forest has either been cleared, died beneath the encroaching desert, or been reduced to scattered stands of oak and maple. Here to the west, you find the sacred groves of trees—more remnants.”

“What are the spokes?” Chantmer asked.

“Lines of power.” Memnet traced his finger along four of them. “The main strength is here—north, south, east, and west—we’re standing on the eastern meridian right now. They radiate from here, at the center.”

“The center . . . is that the gardens?”

“Yes, you understand. There used to be four more points of power here at the heart of the kingdom, each controlling a meridian, but two were long gone before I established the order.” He gave Chantmer a significant look. “And the other two . . .?”

That was easy enough to guess. “And the other two were located at the walled garden and the Golden Pavilion.”

Memnet nodded. “The walled garden fell, or, more accurately, was destroyed in order to defeat the enemy attack. It was necessary, and yet a terrible loss. But so long as the Golden Pavilion stands, this entire network of spokes can be activated.”

“To what purpose?”

“Ah, you’re jumping ahead.”

Memnet brushed his hands across the dirt and smeared away the wagon-wheel-shaped map. He put the clumps of grass back in place, then had Chantmer leave a concealing spell to hide their work until the grass and soil and rain had a chance to offer a more permanent disguise. The rune, Memnet said, would stay active for three or four weeks. If, by that point, it hadn’t been used, the threat would be gone or they would all be dead. When they were done, they rose and brushed dirt from their hands and robes.

“This is lore that only two people share, Chantmer. You and I. Jethro knew, too—he dug it out of a book that remained in the library. A book that has been consumed by a fire salamander.”

“But not Markal?”

“Not Markal. In fact, I hid it from him. You’ll understand in a moment and know why I’m telling you and not one of your friends.”

Chantmer had no friends. He had companions, but that was a different matter. There was no connection he shared like that between Nathaliey and Markal, who possessed a strange understanding that Chantmer couldn’t penetrate. Chantmer’s other companions were odd individuals, like Narud, or below him in stature, like the various lesser members of the order.

“Any one of us can activate these runes,” Memnet said. “Karla or Erasmus could do it, even though they’re only archivists. But to call up the magic from the stones will take a wizard, someone to stand in the Golden Pavilion and raise power, to speak and channel the incantation.”

“If you’re telling me, does that mean I am . . .?”

“If the time comes, then yes. But not yet. I’ll tell you if it’s necessary.”

“I see.” More disappointment. Was there no end to it? “And why me and not one of the others? The ones you’ve already made wizards while I sit here waiting?”

“This is a pure land, Chantmer. Not just the gardens, but all of Aristonia. Beloved of the Forest Brother, and imbued with power from the moment of its creation. It is pure, and it can sacrifice in its own defense.”

Chantmer stared, his stomach churning as understanding came to him. The master held his gaze as if waiting for him to speak, to acknowledge what he’d heard.

“I understand, Master.”

“Good. I thought you would.”

Yes, he understood all too well, especially with the destruction of Syrmarria so fresh in his memory. The master set off, and Chantmer cast a final glance east, where the last, lingering smoke from the burning city darkened the skyline.

#

Markal studied Memnet and Chantmer as they hurried up the road to rejoin the cart. Chantmer looked calmer than he had since greeting them at the city gates.

His first thought was that the master had taken Chantmer aside to tell him that he was being elevated to the ranks of wizards. But if that had been the case, Chantmer would have quickly found a way to tell Markal, no doubt with some lofty remark, acting as though it had been a foregone conclusion.

Instead, Chantmer strolled next to the cart with his hands buried in his sleeves, his chin held up, and his back stiff, making him appear even taller than he was, but with little arrogance. He seemed almost thoughtful.

Markal caught Memnet’s eye, but the master only returned an enigmatic smile. Fine, let them keep their secrets. So long as it put a lid on Chantmer’s belligerence, he didn’t mind being left out of their conversation.

There were seven of them walking alongside the cart—Memnet, Markal, Chantmer, and the four surviving archivists—but none were in the mood to talk. They passed a low-slung crofter’s house, its door hanging ajar, the animals carted off except for a single chicken that wandered aimlessly outside an open coop. Nobody commented, and they continued through the eerily deserted countryside, the clomp of hooves, the snorting horse, and the creaking cart wheels the only sound in the still afternoon air.

Unexpectedly, it was one of the archivists who broke the silence. “Jethro was researching a healing spell,” Karla said. “Something with the power to restore a withered hand. Does anyone know if that book made it into the cart?”

The other archivists looked confused. “How does it matter now?” Erasmus asked.

“Because Jethro thought it might be chained to a summoning incantation. He . . . never mind that. Now is not the time, I’m sorry.” She dropped her gaze.

“I understand,” Erasmus said. He put a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t look up.

The archivists were a close-knit group who’d worked together for years in quiet study, and they were more anguished about the loss of their companion than the destruction of the library and the city. Or at least it seemed that way from how they spoke his name.

“Jethro is a martyr,” Markal said, thinking to raise their spirits. “Without him, we’d be dead, and these books consumed in fire.”

Karla lifted her hand and gave him an appreciative look. “Yes, that is exactly what I thought.”

“He recruited me into the order,” Markal said. “I never really thought of it before, but that’s how I made contact.”

Chantmer was up front by the horse and glanced over his shoulder. “I thought the master recruited you. I thought he recruited all of us.”

“My parents were dead, and I was apprenticed to a tile layer in the palace. But my father had been a merchant, and he’d taught me figures, which I used to calculate the quantity of tiles we’d need for a room. A vizier spied me doing figures one day, and someone brought me to one of the palace tutors, who tested me with letters and numbers.”

“And that was Jethro, I suppose,” Chantmer said.

“The archivists do that sometimes,” Karla said. “Or did it. Tutored the children of viziers and other high officials to keep an ear to the goings-on in the palace.”

“Jethro taught me writing, advanced arithmetic, and even a bit of the Kratian language. He was testing my abilities. When I’d proved them, he brought me to the master, and I became one of the lesser apprentices.”

“It’s interesting to hear you tell it,” Memnet said. He was on the other side of the cart, rolling the orb from palm to palm, and Markal hadn’t been sure he was even listening. “My earliest memory of you is not as a tile layer’s apprentice, but a promising young student in the palace.

“But when you put it that way, the story sounds familiar, because I found Jethro in much the same way. He was also an orphan, also from a family where he’d learned a bit of knowledge, and apprenticed to a glassblower. I discovered his native intelligence, his memory, his curiosity about books and reading, and brought him with me to study.”

“It sounds like a good way to identify future archivists,” Chantmer said.

Markal ignored the comment, with its implied commentary about his magical limitations. Anyway, given how Jethro had sacrificed his life for them, calling him a mere archivist didn’t sound like an insult.

He was curious to hear more about Jethro and how the master chose apprentices—and maybe even pry into the origins of the order itself, a subject the master rarely discussed—but Memnet hushed them. He felt sorcery on the wind and wanted to go ahead to sniff it out before they brought the cart forward.

Memnet returned about twenty minutes later looking concerned. “There are traps on the road. The work of dark acolytes. I don’t believe it’s the work of Toth himself, but it would be safer to go around.”

That led to a laborious struggle down a dirt track into someone’s cow pasture—there were no cows, but there were plenty of ditches intended to keep animals from wandering, which led to a lot of muscle work to get the horse and cart across. Chantmer suggested magic to speed the way, but Memnet wouldn’t permit anything beyond concealing spells.

It wasn’t the first time they’d been forced to detour from the Syrmarrian road, but it felt different this time. The scent of sorcery was in the air, and Markal sensed marauders, too. Near. Perhaps within a few hundred paces, each side cloaked from the other, but one side hunting, the other hiding.

They skirted the edge of the fertile Narpine Valley, but the surrounding farms and villages seemed abandoned, and the master led them straight through, churning up fields of wheat, tall, green, and ripening. Wheat that would never be harvested.

Night had fallen, and a full moon had risen in the sky by the time they came to a causeway crossing the flat marshes of the Nye River, some five miles from the bridge over Blossom Creek and the final descent to the gardens. Memnet stopped them.

“We have no way home except through these marshes,” he said. “There’s an enemy army to the south, another to the north along the Tothian Way, and it would take three more days to hook around from the west. That’s time we don’t have. And marauders are pushing toward us from the burning city, so we can’t even go back the way we came.”

“How do you know all this?” Chantmer asked.

“The land is speaking to me. The lines that run beneath the Aristonian soil.”

Chantmer stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Oh, yes. Of course. I suppose that is obvious enough if you know how to read the signs.”

Markal had no reason to distrust the master’s knowledge, but didn’t know what he meant by lines beneath the soil. And he doubted Chantmer did, either, though he was nodding solemnly, as if it was all clear.

“It’s not obvious to me,” Markal admitted. “Is Toth mounting another attack on the gardens?”

“That is his plan,” Memnet said. “And this time there will be no overreach. No few hundred soldiers, no handful of marauders scaling the walls. It will be a full-scale assault with everything the dark wizard can bring to bear.”

Memnet rolled the orb in his hand while staring down the hillside toward the marshes, and the others followed his gaze. The ghostly flicker of burning swamp gas lit the gloom.

“So far, we’ve only seen marauders as far as the bridge,” Memnet continued. “But that is a question of intent, not capability. The simple soldiers—footmen, cavalry, siege engineers, and the like—struggle to move any closer than here. Our defenses repel them. They have to be coaxed through, and I suspect Toth wants them all in place before he expends magic getting them to the bridge.”

“I don’t see the problem,” Markal said. “We’re only five miles from the gardens, a straight trip across the marshes, no more detours. We cast a spell on the horse, build his strength, and we’ll be home in two hours.”

“I agree with Markal,” Karla said. “I want these books in the vault. Why are we hesitating?”

“Do you see the lights?” Memnet asked.

“The swamp gas?” Markal asked.

“It’s meant to look like swamp gas. They’re beacons for wights. Toth has bound an army of the undead, and he’s drawing them to the marshes.”

“Like the night we ran from Syrmarria,” Chantmer said, “when the barbarian defended the bridge with her red sword.”

“That was a close scrape,” Markal said, “but this time we have magic to disperse them. They don’t want to be bound, right? They want to flee so the Harvester doesn’t find them. All we have to do is give them a reason. Right, Master?”

“We could do that, perhaps. If there were thirty or forty wights. Maybe even a few hundred like the rest of you faced that night on the bridge. But look.”

Memnet lifted his hand and spoke a quick incantation. A drop of blood fell from his palm. When he was done, he waved the orb in the air.

The road and the low road stretching into the marshlands took on a light sheen, as if the moon were an oil lamp and someone had moved it closer to the earth. The ponds and marshes pulsed with a dull blue-gray light for a good mile up and down the road that bisected it.

“What is it?” Markal asked. “What makes them glow like that?”

“Ten thousand wights.” Memnet’s tone was dark, almost hollow. “Perhaps more. Forced into the mire by Toth’s sorcery and pinned in place by his dark acolytes.”

Markal shook his head in disbelief. “So many? Where would they come from? There shouldn’t be more than a few hundred across the whole of Aristonia, if the necromancer gathered every single wight and dragged them here. Why hasn’t the Harvester—”

He stopped, suddenly understanding, and Memnet nodded grimly. Chantmer touched his hands to his temples and closed his eyes.

“I listened for the Harvester when we crossed the burning city,” Chantmer said. “I didn’t hear the horn nor his dogs, and I didn’t understand why. All of that death should have drawn the Dark Gatherer.”

“I listened too,” Markal admitted. “All I heard was the roaring fire.”

Chantmer opened his eyes. “That explains why Toth didn’t hunt us down on the road. He was busy binding his army.”

“I thought he was occupied with fire salamanders,” Markal said.

“So did I,” Memnet said. “Or even trying to steal a few volumes from the library before the salamanders devoured it. And perhaps he was, but that wasn’t all he was up to.”

“I still don’t understand,” one of the archivists said. “Will someone please explain?”

“The marshes are filled with the dead of Syrmarria,” Markal explained. “The thousands who didn’t escape the fire salamanders, the ones who died in pain and agony.”

“Sorcery kept the Harvester at bay,” Memnet said, “and sorcery dragged them here. They’re waiting to fall on us when we cross.”

Chantmer spoke in a low voice. “Ten thousand wights. So many.”

“They’ll awaken as soon as we approach the road,” Memnet said. “We carry the warmth of life, and no concealing spell will change that. Ten thousand wights will try to drag us into the swamp and drown us.”

“So we can’t get through,” Markal said. “But you told us there’s no other way. You say your magic isn’t strong enough to defeat them, but magic is the only possible defense we have.”

“My magic isn’t strong enough to defeat them,” Memnet agreed. “But it is strong enough to break the necromancer’s bond. To break his hold on them. And then you, Markal, are going to call for help.”

“Call for help from whom?”

“The Dark Gatherer. The Harvester himself.”

Chapter Twenty

Nathaliey swayed atop the bluff while the wind blew her hair around her face and made her cloak flap. She was three feet from the edge, but it felt as though one strong gust would lift her from her feet and hurl her into the rocky gorge below.

At least she was off the griffin, though her legs still trembled from the flight, which had been both terrifying and exhilarating. Ageel perched behind her, wings tucked and head down, presenting, she was sure, a smaller profile than she did.

Yuli squatted motionless at the edge of the cliff in front of Nathaliey, where she stared across the gorge to the granite spires of the castle. It was the only fortress along the Tothian Way as it passed through the mountains that hadn’t been built by the dark wizard, although his forces were firmly in command now. The paladins called it Montcrag.

“Hold your robes in,” Yuli said without turning. “They’ll draw the enemy’s eye. Better yet, sit down.”

“At this distance, who could see us?”

“I can see, for one. I have no problem spotting enemies walking the walls. Perhaps they can see us as well. Do you want to take that risk?”

Nathaliey sat. Her trembling legs thanked her.

Yuli glanced back, and her eyes narrowed, her gaze not so different from a bird of prey’s. “You look terrified. What’s wrong?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Nathaliey said. “Maybe the hungry griffin at my back, or maybe the five-hundred-foot drop in front of me.”

“I estimate seven hundred feet.”

“Even worse.”

“Worse? Not really. Fifty feet is the worst it can be, even if you know how to roll and break your fall—which you, being a flatlander, probably don’t—and above that you may as well fall from the clouds. You’re dead all the same. The only difference is how much time you have to think about it.”

The wind picked up with a howl, both strong and cold. Yuli didn’t seem bothered. She’d bared her arms while flying, even as Nathaliey’s hands grew numb gripping the woman around the waist. When Yuli leaned casually, almost carelessly over the edge of her mount to study the mountainous terrain beneath them, Nathaliey had swallowed a scream and dug her knees into the side of the griffin, afraid that she’d lose her grip.

Yuli turned her gaze back to the castle below them. “There they are.” Her voice was hard. “The gray devils. May talons tear their guts from their bellies and beaks open their throats.”

Nathaliey hadn’t known the woman long, less than two days now, and this was the first time they’d spent more than a few minutes alone. The day after the battle, Yuli had returned on Ageel to perch atop the keep. There, Wolfram, Marissa, and Nathaliey had parleyed with her and come up with a plan to fight their way through the mountains. They would take and hold only the first and last castles, while cutting off the middle five from communicating with each other.

“I see your sorcerer,” Yuli said.

“Toth? Or do you mean the dark acolyte?”

“The woman who tormented you in the iron cage. The gray devils are consulting with her.”

“You know about the gibbet?”

“I studied you for days. If I’d known you were a companion of Markal’s I’d have rescued you earlier, but I thought you were another sorcerer, being punished for some reason. It meant nothing to me until the young flatlander told me who you were.”

Nathaliey started to respond, but Yuli hushed her so she could watch. The woman stared intently, motionless, never budging from her crouch.

“So many bows, so many ballistae,” Yuli said at last. “By now, they expect an aerial attack. But they can’t anticipate the full fury of our flocks. We’ll come down on them like a thunderstorm.”

“There’s something I don’t understand,” Nathaliey said. “You were always hostile to us. Your flocks attacked repeatedly when we tried to cross the mountains.”

“Defending our homes—the right of every free people. Anyway, they were warning attacks, nothing more. If we’d meant to exterminate you, we’d have done it.”

“We never wanted a fight, Yuli. We never even asked for your help. We only wanted you to stop harassing us. But now you’re helping? What changed? Was it meeting Markal? An arrangement with Captain Wolfram?”

“Wolfram is a flatlander. Markal, a flatlander. But neither is an enemy of my people.” Yuli glanced skyward, first looking up to the clouds, then turning her gaze to the surrounding peaks. What she saw seemed to satisfy her, and she nodded to herself. “These gray devils are enemies, and I swear on the blood of my ancestors, by the feathers of my griffin, that they will be destroyed.”

Yuli moved away from the ledge and approached Ageel, who lifted his beak from beneath a wing and studied his master. She plunged her hand into the feathers at his neck and whispered something in his ear. The griffin made a low keening sound.

“We came from the north,” Yuli said, “driven by frost giants and killing storms and spreading flocks of wild golden griffins that preyed on our hatchlings. We found a land uninhabited, with rocky cliffs for our aeries, abundant game, and careless shepherds in the foothills.”

“If there were shepherds,” Nathaliey said, “then they could hardly be uninhabited.”

Yuli continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “It’s true that the flatlands were infested with uncountable numbers of people. The larger settlements must have hundreds of people. From the size of your armies, there must be even bigger villages than what I’ve seen.”

Nathaliey nodded, thinking of Syrmarria with sixty-five thousand souls, and cities of the coast like Veyre with two, three times that number. “Your people are not so numerous, I see.”

“Flatlanders mean nothing to me so long as you stay out of the mountains. Your wars mean even less. But you didn’t stay out of them. We resisted the new road, made forays to try to stop this so-called high king from building his highway, and decided on a long-term campaign of harassment and attrition.”

“Why not all-out war?”

“Only a flatlander would ask that question.” Yuli touched the emerald stone at her forehead in what seemed an unconscious gesture. “You’re like ants going to war—how many thousands can you raise? My entire people number eight hundred souls, of which five hundred can fly at any time, and that counts those who are too young or old to fight. Of course we would win every battle, we would slaughter armies like so many sheep. Your generals make careless shepherds. But the cost would be brutal to my people. We would never recover.”

“And now?”

Yuli’s face, already severe, hardened to something frightening and deadly. “My home is in the mountains above the castle where we found you. I live sometimes alone, and sometimes with my mate and our young fledgling. Plus Ageel and his mate, together with their nest. We cut a terrace into the side of the mountain, where we grow potatoes and herbs. I chose the site because it is well positioned to reach the aeries to the north and south, and keeps me close enough to the sorcerer’s road to spy on his comings and goings. It is well disguised and inaccessible—or so I thought. What fool would approach a griffin’s aerie, where he could be thrown to his death?

“A week ago I came back from patrol to find my husband, my child, and Ageel’s mate in the sky, flying around the nest, trying to drive off attackers. Six enemies in all, dressed in gray robes, scaling the cliff.”

“Marauders. Or ravagers, if you use King Toth’s term.”

“Gray demons—that’s what we call them. They had sorcery in their cloaks. It allowed them to cling to the cliff face, and when we tried to snatch them from the rock, talon and claw would not take hold.”

Nathaliey remembered the assault on the garden walls and the sorcery embedded within the cloaks. “Go on,” she urged.

“I killed one man with my spear, but it was not so easy to get in next to the rock face to fight them with the sword. A griffin, for all his maneuverability, cannot hover in place like a kestrel. Instead, I told my mate we would land in the nest and defend it. It was then that I realized the men weren’t climbing up, they were climbing down, and they’d carried the two griffin eggs with them. The gray demons took refuge in a cave as night fell.

“Ageel was tired from a long patrol, so I sent my mate and his mount to summon help while we kept the gray demons pinned inside the cave. The enemy taunted me as I flew past. They were going to cook our eggs for supper, they said. It was no idle threat. To my horror, I smelled their campfire, smelled the cooking eggs. Ageel screamed in anger, and I could only curse.

“My mate arrived in the morning with twenty riders. We swore we would slaughter the intruders, but somehow the gray demons had slipped away during the night. There, in the ash of their campfire, were the broken shells of griffin eggs. It was then that I determined to wage war on this sorcerer and his forces. When my people learned of the atrocity, all agreed to join me.”

“What were the marauders thinking?” Nathaliey said. “Doesn’t Toth have enough enemies already without provoking more?”

“Does it matter his plans?” Yuli asked. “The sorcerer king is cruel and determined. He must be driven from the mountains.”

“But why provoke you now? Why incite open conflict?”

“To intimidate us,” Yuli said. “To frighten us into abandoning the high passes. In this he has failed.” She looked down at her hands. “Our griffins are no more common than we are. They might pass years or even decades between clutches. This was Ageel and his mate’s first laying.”

“I’m sorry about the eggs,” Nathaliey said. “It was an act of senseless cruelty. But I’m glad to have you on our side.”

“It’s not a friendship, Flatlander. Remember that. When this war is won we will expect you to keep to your lands, and we will keep to ours.”

“Understood.”

“This woman I spotted, the sorcerer. What is her name?”

“Jasmeen. She is a dark acolyte, a slave of the sorcerer. She was trying to turn me into another slave.”

“Then I suspect you feel the same way about this woman as I do about the gray demons.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Good. Then today we will both take a measure of revenge.”

#

This time there was no sneak attack. Wolfram’s forces streamed down the Tothian Way from the passes, fought a brief skirmish to seize the road leading from the highway to the castle gates, and sent the enemy scurrying behind the walls, where they hunkered down to wait. Dozens of griffins wheeled overhead, screaming, while riders dropped projectiles on the defenders: stones, spears, and flaming pots of oil. Hurled from two hundred feet overhead, even stones the size of a man’s fist could kill or maim, and the larger missiles demolished roofs and smashed crenelations atop the battlements.

But this was more harassing fire than anything, and watching with Yuli from the ledge, Nathaliey knew that it would take more than an aerial bombardment to force Montcrag’s capitulation. A whirlwind of griffins falling from above with armed riders on their backs would be a challenge to resist, but at the same time the attackers would be vulnerable to arrows, bolts, and sorcery. Yuli said she expected as many as twenty or more riders could die, and an equal number of griffins. By Nathaliey’s count, that amounted to nearly a seventh of the griffin army, a brutal toll.

Nathaliey proposed a different tactic. Yuli listened and quickly agreed.

Wolfram’s forces at hand numbered four or five thousand foot soldiers and a few hundred cavalry, including the Blackshields. Once they had bottled up the road-facing side of the castle, the Eriscobans put together a few small siege engines. These hurled stones and balls of flaming rags over the walls, but again, this was incapable of subduing the castle, only causing the defenders aggravation.

Once the defenders seemed fully distracted, Nathaliey indicated that it was time. She climbed on behind Yuli, let the woman loop leather thongs around her ankles and waist to keep her from plummeting to her death, and held tight as the griffin rider gave a shout and they shot into the sky. The ground receded, and Nathaliey’s stomach was in her throat. They kept rising and rising. Up and up and up, until they’d reached the highest peaks.

From above, the Dragon’s Spine looked even more impressive, the mountain range stretching in a massive row of ridges north and south. From this vantage it seemed like the backbone of the entire world, and she could see both east and west. East, an endless plain, dry and brown under the crippling drought. To the west, lush green hills and valleys. The world curved, bent toward the horizon in either direction.

The air was so thin that she was gasping for air, and so cold it felt like knives in her chest with every breath. Her lips chattered, her hands turned numb. The other griffins and riders swooped back and forth below, with the castle only a child’s toy on a ridge, insignificant against the deep canyon over which it had been built. Even the king’s highway itself was a barely visible line snaking along the mountainside, and it seemed to represent the whole of human existence. A triviality among the grand wonders of creation.

They were so high that Ageel struggled against the buffeting gales. Yuli turned around and said something, but Nathaliey could only shake her head, unable to hear and unable to catch enough breath to respond.

“I said we can’t go any higher!” Yuli shouted. “And you won’t find any stronger wind than this.”

Nathaliey nodded her acknowledgment. Gripping Ageel’s haunches with her legs until her thighs ached, and forcing herself to trust the leather thongs, she released her grasp on Yuli’s waist and placed her hands palms down. The swaying, bucking motion of the griffin flapping his wings and the howling wind made her lightheaded with terror. She closed her eyes and pictured the gardens, certain that serenity would be impossible to find. She would never raise power under such conditions; it was better to tell Yuli to bring them down again.

But there was a reason Memnet had trained her with daily meditation, year after year, and her mind cleared. Gone was the cold, the wind, the thin air. Gone was the heaving beast below her. The heights, the fear of battle. Everything vanished but her connection with the power rising from within. Blood came to the surface, and when she opened her eyes, incantation at her lips, magical power emerged from her palms and was swept away in the current.

The wind gathered itself and released a long shrieking howl, and suddenly Ageel was fighting for his life in the middle of a giant vortex. Nathaliey couldn’t breathe, couldn’t tell if she was up or down, could only hold on and ride it out. Yuli shouted something, but the wind destroyed her words.

They were going down, hurling toward the ground as if thrown by the hand of some vast, cloud-dwelling giant, and Nathaliey thought she’d made a terrible mistake. Her magic, carefully considered, was too much, and it would lead to their death.

And then, when she was bracing herself for the impact, Ageel broke free. The air was suddenly clear, preternaturally calm. The sun gave off unexpected warmth. Nathaliey, tears streaming from her face where the icy wind had buffeted her, looked down. Griffins scattered as a howling cyclone slammed into the castle. Witch-hat roofs lifted from their towers and flapped away like giant wooden birds. Men threw themselves to the wall walk, but were swept clear all the same.

The vortex thundered into the castle, and with nowhere to go, it burst out the top again. Those who hadn’t been thrown from the castle walls in the first blast were now hit by a massive column of air. It lifted them and threw them back down.

Yuli let out a piercing whistle, and Ageel dove for the castle, with the rest of the flock following. The towers rushed up on them, and the griffin swerved hard to bank around the main keep. Caught once more in the terror of unexpected, turbulent movement, Nathaliey held tight as Ageel alighted atop the wall walk. Yuli slipped off his back and untied Nathaliey’s tethers, then jumped back onto the animal’s back.

“Ska!” Yuli cried, and they lifted off again, leaving Nathaliey alone at the battlements.

She could scarcely believe the scene before her eyes. Veyrian soldiers lay motionless all about the castle. Some had fallen from the wall walk and smashed against the stone bailey, but many others lay motionless atop the walls or below, killed where they stood during the initial attack. Most had no obvious injuries. It was only when she looked at the man lying at her feet that she understood the results of her spell.

Blood streamed from his ears and nose. The man next to him bled from the mouth, too. The pressure of Nathaliey’s column of wind, confined by the castle walls, hadn’t only torn off roofs and lifted men from the ground, it had ruptured lungs and burst their ears.

Unfortunately, not all had died. Maybe a sixth of the defenders were gray-cloaked marauders, and they were already rising to their feet, finding their swords, and moving to defend the castle. Some of them spotted Nathaliey and made for the stairs or ran around the wall walk toward her. If Yuli had merely dropped Nathaliey onto the castle walls, the marauders would have been at her throat, and she didn’t have enough power left to defeat them all.

But the griffin riders hadn’t abandoned her, they were pressing a ferocious assault. They soared above the walls and around the towers to evade crossbow bolts, then dove in for rapid attacks whenever they found an opening. One griffin feinted to draw an enemy’s attention—darting away before coming into sword range—while a second griffin swooped in from behind. Another griffin snatched a marauder from his feet and raked him with talons before hurling the man to the ground from thirty feet in the air. A second griffin slammed into one of the marauders coming around the wall walk and knocked him into gorge on the far side.

There were still marauders trying to get at Nathaliey, and she began to feel like bait. Yuli and Ageel came down on one man from above and struck him on the shoulder in an attempt to knock him over the edge. The man twisted at the last minute and grabbed at Ageel’s leg. They went flying over the gorge with the marauder still holding the griffin’s talons with one hand while trying to stab his legs with the sword held in his other.

Yuli launched herself from Ageel’s back, and her sword slashed as she fell past the marauder. Tethers arrested her fall, and she twisted acrobatically in the air to stab twice more. The marauder lost his balance and flailed as he went down. Yuli dangled upside down, but somehow sheathed her sword, grabbed the tether, and hauled herself back up, all within a few seconds.

Nathaliey hadn’t been waiting passively. While ducking the swooping griffins and edging away from marauders, she’d pushed magic through the castle, sniffing for sorcery. It was weaker than expected, and she worried that Jasmeen had cast a concealing spell and slipped away.

Suddenly, she felt a dark presence behind her, and whirled about to see Jasmeen pulling back her cowl to show her gaunt face. Her eyes glittered dangerously from within deep-set sockets. The dark acolyte thrust out her hands, and shadowy ropes slithered toward Nathaliey.

Nathaliey had given the shadow attacks a good deal of thought since she and Markal had battled them together. A light spell would counter it, but she’d already expended too much power on the cyclone, and if she did that, she’d leave herself exhausted. Instead, she cast a different sort of spell, the kind of magic one used to deepen a concealment at night, to swallow shadows and make them too black to penetrate.

Jasmeen’s shadows hit her. The sun was suddenly blotted and vanished altogether. Everything turned black, into a night with no stars, no moon. Like standing at the bottom of a well inside of a deep cave.

The darkness only lasted a second, and then the shadow was gone. Jasmeen wore a look of triumph on her cruel gaunt face, but it vanished into rage when she saw that Nathaliey remained standing in front of her. Unharmed.

“You!” Jasmeen snarled. “How did you . . .?”

“Your elixir did it. Left me immune to your power. I simply swallowed your shadows. It was almost too easy.”

Confusion raged on Jasmeen’s face at Nathaliey’s bluff. Before the woman could recover, Nathaliey called up the rest of her power. Blood rushed to her pores and ran down her forearms.

Deminutum consummatio.

It was a spell to weaken an enemy in combat, to sap his energy. To give one swordsman an advantage over another. But Nathaliey remembered the associated lore from her study in the library. It was most effective with an enemy who’d been long on the march, who’d slept little, who was already suffering from thirst, and the writer of the tome had speculated that the magic worked by tearing sustenance from the body.

Jasmeen didn’t eat, ever. Or so she’d claimed, and her gaunt look gave credence to her boasts. Instead, she drew energy from the suffering souls who fed her sorcerous power. There was precious little natural strength in her body.

Nathaliey spoke the incantation in the old tongue. “Dry her bones. Starve her body. Render it brittle and weak.” She hurled the magic at the dark acolyte.

Jasmeen braced herself as the spell hit. Her defiant expression melted, replaced by terror as she swayed and trembled. She dropped to her hands and knees with a gasp and lifted one hand, as if trying to call up sorcery. Tried to wheeze a response, but no identifiable words emerged. She collapsed facedown.

The spell hadn’t killed the dark acolyte; this was a weakening spell that had no ability to kill, and Jasmeen was still gasping. Soon enough the strength she drew from dying men and women throughout the castle would bring her to her senses. Nathaliey cast a glance at the battlefield.

Griffin riders had cleared the bailey, fought their way into the gatehouse, and were opening the castle to Wolfram’s men, who rushed forward, eager to flood into the castle. Yuli’s forces seemed to have seized the keep as well, but the marauders had holed up in one of the smaller towers on the wall, where they continued firing bolts. That kept most of the griffins in the air and otherwise occupied, and there was nobody around to come in and kill Jasmeen.

Nathaliey had no weapons left to finish the job herself, nor were there any dead enemies nearby to loot. Between the cyclone and the deminutum consummatio spell, she’d used all of her magical strength, too, and was lightheaded and unsteady on her feet.

With no tools but her own hands, she grabbed Jasmeen by the hair and dragged her toward the crenelations. Pushing her into the courtyard might not do it, and Nathaliey couldn’t risk the dark acolyte surviving, calling up a quick concealing spell, and escaping yet again. She had to throw her into the gorge.

Exhausted by the struggle, Nathaliey was too weak to have pushed a soldier over the battlements, but Jasmeen was all bones and skin. Nathaliey got the woman up and partially draped over the top and was bracing herself for a final heave, when Jasmeen’s eyes flew open, and she grabbed Nathaliey’s wrist with her bony fingers.

Nathaliey shoved at the dark acolyte, grunting and trying to get her over. Jasmeen cursed and struggled, but though her tongue had regained its sting, the rest of her was weaker than Nathaliey, and little by little she went over, until her legs dangled, and her upper body draped across the crenelations. Her grip tightened on Nathaliey’s wrist, and her eyes radiated fury.

“I’ll take you down with me,” she snarled.

Nathaliey lifted her arm and slammed the woman’s wrist against the stone crenelation. Jasmeen didn’t release her grip. Nathaliey did it again, and the bones in Jasmeen’s wrist crunched as they hit. She screamed, and Nathaliey gave a final, violent twist of the arm to free herself. Jasmeen lost her grip.

Jasmeen’s eyes bulged. She twisted like a cat trying to land on its feet as she fell, but there was nothing to grab, nowhere to land, only the long, long drop to the rocks below. Nathaliey didn’t look away as her enemy went down, half expecting some final bit of treacherous sorcery. Jasmeen hit a boulder some hundred feet down, bent double the wrong way as she bounced off, and fell again. When she struck the bottom, she didn’t move.

Nathaliey pulled back from the edge with a gasp, scarcely aware of the sound of a ram slamming into the door of a tower a handful of marauders had taken refuge in. Wolfram’s forces were everywhere, running past her on the wall walk, down below searching for hidden cellars and enemies barricaded behind doors, and still she stood, too weak to do more than lean against the wall and wait for the fighting to end.

Sir Marissa found her a few minutes later to tell her that the battle was over, by which point Nathaliey had recovered enough to warn them to collect all the dead—including sending a griffin to recover Jasmeen’s body from the gorge. Cut off their heads or burn them—it was the only way to be sure they didn’t rise again.

Montcrag had fallen. The final castle before the eastern plains. From here, a straight journey east on the Tothian Way led to Aristonia, and from there, to the garden fortress of the Order of the Crimson Path.

Chapter Twenty-One

Markal remained still atop a clump of swamp grass. He and Memnet had picked their way from the road into the marshes by following a series of mounds, hillocks, and squishy, saturated ground that threatened to sink them into the mire. Their path had led them here, to the side of a smooth inky-black pool, one of the few bits of open water that wasn’t glowing with submerged wights.

They may not be visible, Memnet assured him, but they were still down there. Dozens in this pool alone. Thousands across the swamp.

The dead of Syrmarria, Markal’s own people. Just a few short days ago they’d been breathing, eating, laughing . . . living. King Toth had first burned them alive, then bound their souls and dragged them here. Their very existence was a torment, a terror held for the Harvester and his hounds. The dead feared the Dark Gatherer, even as they needed him to gather their souls and bring them peace.

As if to prove his point, Memnet bent and touched his index finger to the water. Almost instantly, bluish lights appeared in the depths and came swimming toward them. He withdrew and rose to his feet, and both wizards waited motionless until the lights dissipated.

“This spot is as good as any,” Memnet said in a low voice. “I’ll break the bonds and flee for the road. They’ll chase me, and once the area is clear, you’ll call the Harvester.”

Markal cleared his throat. “Call the Harvester. Yes, well. I’ll address that terrifying suggestion in a moment. But first, can you tell me why the wights won’t simply tear me apart once you free them?”

“Simple. My spell is going to draw them. You, being concealed, will remain invisible to their eyes. So long as you don’t so much as breathe, of course.”

“And you’re sure we can’t just throw up some more concealers and run like hell until we reach the bridge?”

“Markal, we discussed this already. There’s no way through without alerting the wights, so we may as well do it intentionally. They’re faster than us, and there are too many to fight. Once we triggered their release, we’d never reach the bridge, let alone the gardens. And even if we could, do you want thousands of wights throwing themselves against the garden walls? You must call up the Dark Gatherer and let him do the work for us.”

The air was growing brighter, and the scent of wights hung in the air, mingling with swamp gasses until it coated the back of Markal’s throat with a bitter film. He was anxious to do what they’d set out to accomplish, but at the same time not so anxious as to see the master run off while he stayed waiting for wights to boil out of the swampland surrounding the road. Which wasn’t even the most frightening part of the master’s plan.

“And I’m supposed to call the Harvester to me? Intentionally?”

“Yes.”

“Master, this is . . . you understand why I’m reluctant.”

“Your soul is contained within a living body. The Harvester gathers the souls of the dead.”

“He gathers all souls,” Markal corrected. “He only hunts the dead, but if the living are foolish enough to stand around watching, their souls will be stuffed into his bag all the same.”

“So don’t stand there watching,” Memnet said, his tone casual, as if this were the easiest part of the entire plan. “As soon as you hear the horn or the baying hounds, run for your life.”

“So, stand motionless while you free the wights, then call the Harvester, then flee in terror, avoiding both wights and Harvester, while I look for the rest of you on the road. And I imagine you’ll be running as hard as you can, not waiting for me or anything.”

“More or less.”

“How hard could it be?” Markal said.

Memnet’s tone turned serious. “I won’t claim the plan is without hazards. But we must reach the gardens safely, we must save what’s left of the library. Every one of us will face dangers.”

“What were you telling Chantmer earlier, when the two of you left the road?”

“Chantmer has his role. You have yours.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“What I told Chantmer was for his ears only.” Memnet’s tone lightened again. “There’s a reason you call me Master. I’m not all-knowing, but yes, sometimes I need to make the decisions.”

“Fine, then what is my role? What am I doing here, just being an expendable junior wizard?”

“There’s nothing junior about you, Markal. Someday I’ll be gone—that could even be today, if this goes poorly—and someone else will take my place. If things go poorly enough, the survivors might have to reformulate the entire order. We might all be dead except for one or two, and then what? Let all this magic vanish from the earth? When that day comes, I expect that you will be my successor.”

“Me? With my doubts and fears, me?”

“Maybe Nathaliey. But probably you.”

“So you die, or you wander off like the old hermit, never to be seen again, and I’ll declare myself the master of the order? Of course Chantmer would accept me, right? And Narud wouldn’t wander after you into the mountains or the wastelands?”

“I don’t know, Markal. I can’t see the future. If I could, I wouldn’t have let a marauder cut off my head. I wouldn’t have let Syrmarria and half the library burn. I can’t even see if the two of us will be alive twenty minutes from now.”

This was perhaps the most unsettling conversation that Markal had ever had. They were in the marshlands where the Nye spilled its banks, and the pools and ponds surrounding them were filled with the restless souls of the dead. Recently bound wights, their minds slipped into insanity, an army of unwilling, un-dead slaves ready to destroy the magical order that had once protected them.

“Are you ready?” Memnet repeated.

“No, not really.”

“Neither am I. But we could sit here chatting all night and in the morning we’d be no closer to home. Meanwhile, the enemy’s hunt continues.” Memnet glanced skyward. “Anyway, the moon is in the right position. Time to move.” He put a hand on Markal’s shoulder. “I’m sure we’ll see each other shortly, but in case we don’t, may the Brothers guide your path.”

“Wait, what spell am I supposed to cast?”

“You don’t know?”

“How would I know? I’m not in the habit of calling the Harvester.”

Memnet pointed skyward. “Hunt by the light of the moon, Markal.”

Markal shook his head, frustrated. “I still don’t understand.”

“You will. It will come to you soon enough. You have the knowledge, Markal, all you need is a little initiative. Oh, and faith. Doubt saps your strength at every turn. But it won’t hurt you tonight, I’m sure of that.”

#

Markal watched the master depart, and shook his head again. What was that little comment about doubt? What kind of timing was that? Remind him of his fears and doubts just at the moment when he needed to call the Harvester? He’d been feeling good about his power, or, at least, more worried about wights rising from the ponds, and then casting a spell and escaping before either they or the Dark Gatherer destroyed him. He certainly hadn’t been worrying about wasting his magic through lack of confidence.

Now he was. It was gnawing at him.

And he still hadn’t figured out what the master was talking about. Hunt by the light of the moon? Why hadn’t Memnet just come out and said what he meant?

“Really? Now?” he murmured. “Now is when I need a blasted lesson?”

Markal stood alone in a swamp, surrounded by wights, with nothing less than the fate of half the order and a good portion of the library resting on his shoulders, and Memnet refused to come right out and say what was expected.

He was still puzzling this out when something hummed in the air to the west. A familiar magical scent drifted through the air. Memnet the Great. A light breeze rolled across the marshland, followed by a cleaner, drier breeze.

The water vibrated near Markal’s feet, and bubbles rose to the surface like from a pot on the cusp of boiling. A glowing hand broke the surface, nothing but bones, and then there were dozens of arms and heads, wights climbing out of the water and dragging themselves onto the shore. There were scores of glowing wights—men, women, children. Soldiers and merchants and slaves and ministers.

Some were whole, and could have been living, if not for the ethereal glow and the haunted expressions of madness. These, he supposed, had suffocated in the smoke or died pinned beneath collapsing buildings. Others carried dangling arms or dragged crippled legs. Heads caved in, lower jaws torn away. But many others, perhaps most, carried the horrible evidence of the conflagration that had burned Syrmarria to the ground. Their bodies were half skeleton, half char. Muscles fell away like meat roasting off the bone.

Markal stood frozen in fear as the swampland glowed brighter and brighter. Thousands upon thousands, rising all around him. Soon, the moon itself was a faded white glow in the sky against their gleam.

At first, the wights didn’t seem to know what to do, but milled about, groaning in pain and fear. Their bonds had been broken, but they hadn’t discovered Markal’s hidden presence. The wight of an old woman approached, her face melted like dripping wax, and she threw back her head and sniffed at the sky. She let out a long, wailing moan.

The moan spread through the wights, and soon, a vast tide of groans and cries wafted through the air, making Markal’s hair stand on end and his heart pound with terror. The old woman turned toward him, and something penetrated the madness as she seemed to see him for the first time.

The light of the moon. Of course.

The dark wizard had his wights hiding in the marshes. In the darkness, beneath the water, with some of them submerged in the inky-black pools. Because binding them to his service was one problem, but Toth also needed to hide them from the Harvester and his hounds.

They were out of the water now, and would eventually draw that hunter of souls. But Markal could speed that up.

He spoke words in the old tongue: “Illuminate my foes. Show their hidden paths.”

The moonlight seemed to gather and focus its strength as if under the hood of a vast celestial lamp. It cast the rushes and sedges into sharp relief and made each and every wight glow until it almost seemed like daylight across the marshes.

The wights flinched and were already falling back when a horn sounded from the north, along the borderland between marsh and forest. The ghostly wailing turned into a shriek so loud and piercing as it was taken up by thousands of wights that Markal clamped his hands over his ears in pain.

The horn sounded again, and this time was followed by the baying of distant hounds. With that, the wights fled, great masses of them that brushed past him with a debilitating chill. Several charged straight at him, not seeming to notice his presence, but in position to run him down all the same, and he had no choice but to flee ahead of them. Another wight touched his hand, and he staggered to his knees, his breath dying in his throat. He got to his feet and somehow managed to duck aside before more wights knocked him down. If one of them wrapped its bony fingers around his throat, he would die.

The wights suddenly scattered in front of him. A dark figure loomed, two heads taller than Markal. A skull mask covered his face, with giant antlers sweeping out on either side. He wore a black robe that billowed under some unfelt breeze, and carried a massive two-handed scythe. No, not a scythe, but a strange, hooking sword. Or was it a spear? But then it appeared to be a scythe again, shifting before Markal’s eyes.

He was face-to-face with the Harvester, the Dark Gatherer himself. His eyes glowed like burning embers, and the air was so chill that a glowing, shimmering frost formed across the clumps of grass and rimed the standing water with ice that crackled as it spread and thickened.

The Harvester swept his scythe side to side, and dozens of wights fell into it. They withered under the blade, and he scooped them up in massive handfuls and stuffed them into a giant squirming bag at his belt.

Wights seemed drawn toward the scythe, even as they tried to flee. Others, farther away, broke loose and ran in mindless terror, and Markal followed, no longer even noticing when one of them brushed him. His only thought was to get away from the one hunting them all. The Harvester seemed to be at every turn, appearing and vanishing and sweeping that long, terrible tool. His bag grew and grew with the souls he stuffed inside, yet at the same time contained them all, and with room for more.

Finally, Markal reached open ground, and he staggered, relieved, onto the road. Wights came crawling, stumbling, and squirming up after him. Some fled east, others west, toward the gardens, and Markal ran in this direction. He sensed the master ahead of him, and another trail, too, that could only be Chantmer and the archivists, driving the poor, terrified horse with its cart toward the bridge and safety.

Just when he thought he would escape, several giant hounds the size of lions leaped onto the road on either side of him, growling and snapping. They had no fur, but were all leathery flesh and muscle. Their eyes glowed, and steaming drool fell from snarling jaws.

The wights retreated from the hounds and swept Markal with them. The dogs seized wights in their jaws and tore them apart while driving the rest backward. They cast their writhing victims to the ground, and the Harvester appeared once more, grabbing and stuffing with terrible speed, before lashing out with what changed from a scythe into a whip. It coiled around multiple wights with every strike and dragged them into the bag.

There seemed no way to escape. There were dogs on the road toward the bridge, dogs chasing wights out of the swamp, and the Harvester facing him, sweeping about him with his tool, lashing and cutting. Taking his harvest of souls and putting them into the bag. And Markal was pushed along with the wights toward him.

The Harvester turned his horned head toward Markal, eyes glowing more fiercely than ever, and he said in a deep, bone-chilling whisper, “I feel your soul, mortal. It wishes to come to me.”

The wights suddenly stopped screaming, and everything looked different. It seemed to be daylight. No longer were the wights a deformed, burning, maimed mass of dead, but Markal could see them as they’d been before death. They were men and women dressed as Aristonians, Veyrians, Marrabatti. Soldiers and children and merchants in their fine clothing. Their faces were bright and their eyes shining, and far from trying to escape, they were running toward the figure standing on the road, who was a being of pure light. The dead threw out their arms to embrace the light, weeping in relief when it touched them. They dissolved into it, and the light grew brighter.

Markal looked at his hand to see double. He felt as though he were lifting above his body, his soul pulling and stretching and trying to break free from the flesh. Trying, in fact, to join the mass of people hurrying toward the being of light, eager to be taken in its embrace.

“No,” he said. “No!”

It took terrific effort to look away. When he did, he was back on the road, and it was night. The moon was overhead, dimmer to his sight than it had been, and the dark figure in robes worked the scythe, dogs driving the terrified wights toward him as they attempted to flee.

“Go,” the Harvester said. This time, the voice seemed to be in his head. “Fly from this place, or this night I will gather your soul.”

Markal found his strength, turned, and ran. The dogs snarled and snapped as he passed, but none chased him.

He staggered twice, bumping into wights being drawn inexorably to the Harvester, but regained his feet each time. Moments later, he came crashing into the back of the cart, not seeing it until he was already upon it. The cart rattled up the road, with the others running alongside it. Erasmus spotted him first, and cried out to the others. Markal’s heart gradually slowed its frantic beat, and he took deep breaths as he fell in beside them. The cries and horns and baying hounds were far behind them now. He had escaped; he was safe.

Memnet dropped back from the front. “You learned something tonight about the human soul.”

Markal nodded, still out of breath.

“And what did you learn?” Memnet pressed.

“Not only human souls.” Markal paused to catch his breath. “Of all souls, right? Animals, too.”

“Yes, we are all made of the same substance. And the Harvester. He is no more to be feared than his brothers.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I was terrified.”

“So was I. But now you know that you shouldn’t be.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“No,” Memnet said. “It isn’t, is it?”

After that, it was all silent travel, with the land drying as the Nye took once more to its banks, and the road emerged onto hard ground. Finally, with relief, Markal spotted the stone bridge over Blossom Creek. When they reached the crest of the bridge, he hesitated. It was here, not so many months ago, that he’d stood with Bronwyn as another force of wights poured down the road, chasing Nathaliey, Chantmer, and Narud.

The stone bridge bristled with new runes and wards, having been the focal point of much of the order’s efforts to rebuild their defenses since the previous battle. Today, the bridge was dormant, its magical power asleep. The meadows on the east side of the creek remained dark and peaceful, with only the distant glow reminding Markal of the horror he’d so narrowly escaped.

The cart was already rolling down the far side of the bridge in the final approach to the gardens, and he hurried to catch up. The books were safe, the companions who’d escaped from the burning city safe, too. But all too soon, he knew, the enemy would begin the final assault on their sanctuary and home.

Chapter Twenty-Two

In the first several days after seizing the last of the castles through the mountains, Nathaliey thought Wolfram’s army would batter their way through to Aristonia without a serious battle. A small force of marauders had escaped, led by Hamid with the red sword, but they hadn’t rallied the Veyrian troops to halt the Eriscoban advance so much as thrown up forces piecemeal to shield their escape. The Blackshields, only a hundred strong, smashed a small army of three hundred footmen in the foothills and wiped out several hundred more the next day with a combination of ground charges and swooping attacks from griffin riders.

They captured a wagon train of supplies and seized one of Toth’s pashas before he could take refuge in one of the new fortresses on the Tothian Way. Baron Knightsbridge brought forward the main Eriscoban army to consolidate Wolfram’s gains.

But then they approached the western border of Aristonia and stalled. Here Hamid had set up an armed encampment centered at a watchtower. The Veyrians resisted a swift attack, killed several griffin riders and nearly a dozen paladins, and forced a delay. When a hard-marching force of Eriscobans came up the next day with five hundred men, Wolfram tried again. This time Nathaliey set fire to the enemy palisades and called up a dust storm to disguise a flanking attack from the south. Two dark acolytes fought back with sorcery, and killed her dust storm before Wolfram’s men could take advantage of the diversion. More hard fighting forced Wolfram to withdraw.

He ordered a retreat to the village of Tressily, where the bulk of the Eriscoban army was gathering for another push. Yuli and her griffin riders were getting restless, ready to return to their mountain strongholds, but they’d been flying aerial scouting missions, so high in the clouds that the enemy couldn’t touch them with arrows or sorcery. Yuli reported a hostile army on the road ahead, blocking the way and growing larger hour by hour.

An even larger army—its numbers “uncountable,” as Yuli put it—marched through the heart of Aristonia. Toward what, she couldn’t tell. Seemed that they were trying to encircle woods, sheep pastures, and abandoned wheat fields.

Nathaliey told Yuli to describe the topography of the surrounding land. Heavy forest to the north, bisected by the new highway. A creek flowing toward Aristonia’s main river, crossed by a stone bridge. Yuli was describing the terrain around Memnet’s gardens. Toth was beginning his final assault.

Nathaliey found Wolfram and Baron Knightsbridge in the village. Most of Tressily had been looted and torched by the retreating Veyrian army, its people enslaved or put to the sword, but the village inn remained standing. Wolfram and Knightsbridge stood at a big oak table, where they’d spread maps and dispatches.

A few months ago, Nathaliey and Markal had spent a night in the Tressily inn as they left Aristonia carrying Soultrup. The village had been weakened by drought and war, the wool merchants and other traders from the hill country that had once patronized it largely gone, but the inn had been welcoming, the food good and plentiful.

Now the inn was empty, looted, and every step crunched broken crockery underfoot. There was blood across the floor and splattered on broken ale barrels. Whose blood? The merchants’? The innkeepers’ and serving women’s?

The two men looked up as Nathaliey entered. “Where’s the griffin queen?” Knightsbridge asked.

The baron was a sturdy, barrel-chested man, balding on top and with a thick red beard. He was leading the regular Eriscoban soldiers, but Nathaliey suspected that he’d been chosen less for his fighting prowess or military acumen than for his ability to keep the men fed. She’d been surprised at how well supplied the barbarian troops were, and how efficiently they’d taken command of captured supply wagons, rather than leave them to be looted.

“Resting her mount between patrols,” Nathaliey said. “The griffins won’t enter the village—too hot, too many people. Yuli’s got them encamped on a hillside near the stream. There’s shade and cold water for bathing.”

“I wish I could take command,” Wolfram said. “Instead of them flying here and there, doing their own thing.”

Knightsbridge grunted. “I’m surprised they’re still with us. Hope you’re making plans for when they desert us and return to the Spine.”

A slim figure entered through the dangling inn door. “We are not deserting anything,” Yuli said in a curt tone.

“Of course not,” Nathaliey said.

Yuli’s face was red, and perspiration beaded along the silver chain where it wove through her hair. A drop of sweat rolled down her temple. She spread a glare around the room. “Why is it so infernally hot in here?”

From Nathaliey’s perspective, it was warm, but not oppressively so. In fact, she was enjoying the heat after so long in the sharp mountain air. Hanging in the gibbet, her body had seemed permanently chilled, and flying at elevation with the griffins was even colder. Numbing.

The two men looked uncomfortable as she approached, especially Knightsbridge, who turned subtly so that he was facing her full on. He shifted his posture subtly, as one might do with a potential enemy who has not yet drawn his sword.

“Ease off, Flatlander,” Yuli said. “I’m not going to eat you.”

“Maybe not, but your beast would love to get its talons into my horse.”

“If you’re referring to the incident at the abandoned well, those were enemy horses, and they were already dying. It was a mercy, both to the injured horses and to the shepherds in the area, who’d have otherwise given up their flocks to my army.”

Wolfram cleared his throat and dramatically stretched the corners of the map. Nathaliey had made a rough sketch of central and western Aristonia for him, careful not to mark the gardens and thus weaken their concealing magic, and scouts on land and air had filled in the positions of enemy troops and fortifications.

“It’s somewhere in here that we need to bring the army, right?” Wolfram asked. When Nathaliey answered in the affirmative, he added, “There’s no direct route from here to there.”

“That is by design,” she said.

“The enemy is weakest along the riverbank, which suggests that we hook south for a stretch, then cut north again. If the riders’ count is accurate, we’d face three or four thousand men. It would be a hard fight—assuming there are no ugly surprises.”

“How can we trust their figures?” Knightsbridge asked.

“Those are your figures, not mine,” Yuli said. “I have no way of counting flatlanders, not when they’re continually moving, feinting, hiding. You may as well number the pebbles rolling down a streambed after a hard rain. All I did was report what I saw, and you concocted the rest of it.”

The woman stood to one side, her arms crossed. She hadn’t even glanced at the maps and charts. All the world was a map, she’d said once. If you wanted to see, fly into the clouds, and it would stretch beneath you, clearer than anything scrawled on paper.

In Nathaliey’s experience, all mounted cavalry had disdain for the slow, deliberate movements of an army on foot, forced to march slowly and guard its own supplies, but Yuli and her fellow riders scoffed more than usual. The Eriscobans and Veyrians on the battlefield were weeks from home, whereas Yuli’s people could be at their aeries in a few hours. Men like Knightsbridge seemed to note it too, which fed the paranoia that the griffin riders would simply fly away when the war was no longer convenient.

That fear wasn’t grounded in anything Yuli had done; now that she’d committed to the war, she seemed determined to follow through to the end, and without fear. The only thing that seemed to scare her was the heat of the lowlands. It was hard enough for her here; what would it be like in the drought-stricken east or the blistering southern deserts?

“I wish there were some other way than cutting south,” Wolfram continued, tracing his finger against the map. “It will be slow going, lots of room for ambush. The more I consider, the more I think it better to regain the Tothian Way and push straight through, then come at the west gate of the gardens. It’s a larger army facing us in that direction, but a faster route—less chance for the enemy to get reinforcements.”

Knightsbridge studied the map with a doubtful expression. “I see eleven different fortifications, and two of them are full-sized castles.”

“We follow the same strategy as in the Spine,” Wolfram said. “Take some positions, using aerial and magical attacks when we can, and bypass the others.”

“Those were small castles, cut off behind our lines,” Knightsbridge said. “These have the full weight of the Veyrian army to reinforce them. And every fortress we bypass is an enemy to our rear. We’ll risk our supplies.”

Wolfram ran his fingers through his hair. “Then I see no way to break through. There are too many troops, too many fortifications. We could wait a few weeks, let our army pull forward, but that gives the enemy even more of an advantage. For every man we gain, Toth gains five, ten even.”

Nathaliey leaned over the map. Veyrian troops everywhere, and every day closing the noose around the gardens. No way to get the Eriscobans there to reinforce the order, and soon enough it would be impossible for her friends to escape. Would Memnet tell them to abandon the gardens, to flee? The order could regroup in the sultanates, raise new opposition against the dark wizard from the south.

But disturbing news had come yesterday from a captured Veyrian soldier, a man freshly arrived from points further east. The captive claimed that Syrmarria had burned and its people were fleeing into the desert. The palace itself had melted in a horrific fire. Some sorcerous fire that had consumed everything. The man claimed not to have witnessed the destruction personally—he’d been ordered out of the city just before it happened and had immediately traveled west with his company—and Nathaliey would have been inclined to dismiss it if not for the dark haze that hung on the eastern horizon. Last night, the wind had shifted, and she’d tasted the bitter tang of smoke.

If Syrmarria had burned, Memnet would have saved the library above all. He couldn’t have escaped into the desert with all of those books—not with Toth’s forces infesting the countryside—and surely would have brought them home for safety. So no, there would be no abandoning the gardens. They must make a final stand.

Wolfram and Knightsbridge had continued discussing possible points of attack and discarding them one after another, while Yuli remained aloof to one side. Wolfram’s ideas were bold, sweeping, while the older baron shot them down for their impracticality and risk.

Finally, the young captain of the Blackshields threw up his hands. “So there’s no way through. No way at all. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“We can’t stay here, either,” Knightsbridge said. “Or all those enemies will converge on our position. I say we retreat to the mountains and declare a stalemate.”

“We do that,” Wolfram said, “and the wizards die. Next time the sorcerer comes after us, he’ll have no enemies at his back. He’s a necromancer—it will be an army of wights and ravagers, and we’ll have no magic to counter it.”

“I can’t fix the map,” Knightsbridge said. “And I can’t materialize another ten thousand men, either.”

“There must be something we can do.”

“We don’t have to fight every inch of the way,” Nathaliey said, and the two men looked at her expectantly. “Not alone. What if you battled your way to this fortress right here?” She tapped a finger at the map, roughly two-thirds of the way to the garden walls, and somewhat to the north. “Can you reach this position?”

Wolfram grunted as he looked over the numbers written onto the map. “That would have us hooking around Hamid’s position. If we do that, we’ve got fifteen hundred enemy troops to fight, more or less. Barring surprises, that’s a battle we should easily win.”

“I don’t like it,” Knightsbridge said. “Taking that fortress puts us on the wrong side of the river. No way to fall back and retreat.”

“It’s safe enough, though?” Nathaliey asked him.

“Safe yes, but bottled up. That’s one of your old castles—if those griffin riders tell true. If you mean to take cover, we’d be better off falling back to the mountains.”

“I’m not talking about taking cover,” she said. “I’m talking about marching as far as we can and holding position while a path opens to the garden walls.”

Wolfram and Knightsbridge looked at her with raised eyebrows. Even Yuli looked skeptical.

“What path?” Wolfram asked.

“We’ll be blocked from further advance, but the griffins won’t be,” Nathaliey said. “And neither will Memnet the Great. He can move freely. Not even Toth can stop him.” She nodded, growing more confident in her plan as she voiced it aloud. “Yuli flies me to my master. He accompanies me back toward your army, which you’ve pushed forward as far as you can. Together, we blast open a path. Once it’s open, you’ll march to the gardens unopposed.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

With Jethro’s death, Karla was the most experienced of the archivists, and Markal deferred to her judgment as they arranged books, scrolls, and tablets in the stone vault outside the Golden Pavilion. She occasionally grew flummoxed by some placement or another and looked to Markal and the younger archivists for advice. They were almost finished when they reached a book that couldn’t be classified, and someone ran to fetch Memnet, who worked at the north gate with Narud and Chantmer, shoring up the garden defenses.

When Memnet arrived, he was studying the sky as if watching for rain, even though it was a dry and cloudless day. A tinge of haze obscured the view to the east, the last evidence of the burning city. Markal waited in the vault with Karla, barely able to contain his impatience. This was the last volume, and then they could seal the vault, cover it, and cast protective magic.

“Did you see shadows?” Memnet asked.

“What do you mean?” Markal asked.

“About ten minutes ago, like fast-moving cloud shadows, passing over the ground. But there were no clouds.”

Markal shook his head, not knowing what the master was talking about. Still standing in the vault, he held up the book. “Does this one go with the wisdom of the gods or with the lore and annals?”

Memnet bent to take the book. He turned it over in his hands, studying it carefully. No doubt if they were in the library, he’d have given it a quick glance and made a rapid assessment, but here, it was no easy matter. Even reading the words in the books proved laborious. Yet, if they didn’t arrange them correctly, it might cost a wizard or an archivist days or weeks to puzzle out a single volume when it was finally removed.

Memnet stared for several moments, then brightened. “Ah, yes. This is the work of the Blistered Monks. Put it with the lore and annals.”

When that was wrapped in oilskin and placed in the vault, Markal and Karla hauled themselves out, and the keepers set to work. They heaved massive flagstones into place, each one weighing at least sixty stone, the burden lightened by calling the magic of the gardens that endowed them with power to shape and manipulate.

Once the stones were in place, keepers arranged sod over the top, and grass twisted and grew before their eyes. Clumps of soil crumbled, sifted among the grass, and vanished. Within seconds, there was no visible sign that the sod had been dug up in the first place.

“So little preserved,” Karla said sadly. “So much lost.”

Markal remembered Jethro’s final words. Remember me, Markal. Remember what I did.

“What we saved was saved because of Jethro,” he said. “He sacrificed himself for the books in the vault. For my life, and the master’s life, too.”

The others looked solemn. The archivists more so than the others, almost stricken, their eyes damp. They turned to go, and Markal heard sniffles as they left him alone with the master.

“There is nothing to be done now except preserve and rebuild,” Markal said when they’d gone.

“Preserve, rebuild . . . and fight. We need to stop the enemy before he destroys anything more.” Memnet glanced skyward. “There it is again.”

Markal saw nothing. “Is it seekers? Is the dark wizard hunting us from the sky?”

“I don’t know, but if it happens again, I’m going to find out.”

“You’ll risk giving us away.”

“I know, but we can’t have them sending sorcery overhead.” Memnet took a deep breath. “You led an excellent defense of the gardens when the enemy last attacked. We lost the walled gardens with the desolation spell, but that couldn’t be prevented. I’d have done the same. As for the rest, our losses were light, and the enemy’s heavy. It bought us time. Several months, in fact.”

Markal detected something in the master’s tone. “However . . .?”

“However, that strategy won’t work a second time. There are too many enemies—thousands of them this time, not hundreds—and sorcery will strike us from all sides. If we were to invite them inside with the idea of making the gardens a killing trap, they would overrun us entirely. This time we’ll start the defense at the bridge, at the orchards, at the ravine—from our most defensible points outside the gardens, and contest every inch until they reach the walls. Then fight them there, too.”

“I’ve been gone,” Markal began hesitantly, uneasy at contradicting the master. “But from what I can see, ninety percent of the work has been within the walls, not outside. The gardens are filled with traps and snares. We’ve put wards and runes everywhere. Why do that if we’re planning to stop them at the walls?”

“I didn’t say we could keep the enemy from breaching the walls, only that we’re going to start the fight outside before it comes in.” Memnet furrowed his brow. “But I expect the dark wizard to break through. To enter the gardens with his armies. And unless the Brothers truly favor us, the enemy will eventually reach this very spot.”

He gestured at the Golden Pavilion and the calm, majestic beauty of the lake behind it. Grass and wildflowers waved gently in the breeze, and the trees on the far side of the lake stood in a silent green wall. Markal had seen enemies in this very spot, and yet it was still hard to imagine.

“So your plan is to weaken them before they enter?” Markal asked. “Is there enough power outside the garden to make a difference?”

“The entirety of Aristonia is riddled with defenses, and they grow more immediate, fresher, the closer you get to the gardens. Many have been activated already.”

“Is that what you and Chantmer were discussing?”

“I’m sending you and Chantmer south to the fairy fort—do you know the one I’m talking about? Narud will go to the bridge. When you get there—”

A chill touched Markal’s face, and the master fell silent. Both wizards looked skyward. Something shimmered overhead, a hundred feet or so above the spiraled peak of the Golden Pavilion, moving swiftly east.

Memnet’s orb appeared in his hands. A flash of power surged into the sky. It revealed three large figures flying above the garden, silhouetted against the sky, with the sun above them.

Griffins was Markal’s first thought. He’d spent so many days in the mountains casting fearful glances at the sky, searching for the half-eagle, half-lion beasts and their armed riders, but it had never occurred to him that they might hunt so far into the flatlands. Didn’t the heat affect them?

“Quick, Markal. A blast of ice. Pull it from the lake.”

Ice? That was exactly wrong. What they needed was fire against these creatures of the mountains and the frozen north. But he obeyed without question, drawing water from behind their lakeside shrine.

Unfortunately, he’d already felt a stab of doubt, and the incantation was feeble as it emerged. There was a flood of power, but it evaporated into the air. A few shards of ice flew skyward and pummeled the underbellies of the creatures, one of whom let out a strange shrieking growl unlike anything he’d ever heard from a griffin. They vanished.

The master was looking at him with a disappointed frown. Markal found the gaze uncomfortable, and looked away as he wiped his hands on the cloth at his belt.

“I’m sorry, Master. I lost it when . . . why ice? That isn’t what you’d use against griffins, is it?”

“Those weren’t griffins.”

“They weren’t?” Markal blinked. “The sun was behind them, and I didn’t get a good look, but . . . what else could they be?”

“You were looking with your physical eyes. If you’d been feeling for them, you’d have known.” Memnet scanned the sky before putting away his orb. “Not griffins, but their sworn enemies. In fact, I would wager that the sorcerer has enslaved them precisely to fight griffins, to clear the mountain passes. Unfortunately, it seems that we’ll be the first to face them.”

He cast another glance at Markal, who was still hoping for an explanation. “It was one failure, my friend. Next time, you’ll be better prepared. Go to the kitchens for food and drink—the fight is upon us, and you need all of your strength.”

#

There were three griffins in the patrol, with Yuli riding Ageel in the lead—Nathaliey sat behind her, clenching her waist—and two young riders on mounts flanking them on either side. They flew east from Wolfram’s camp, low enough to taunt Veyrian troops, who fired volleys of arrows that always fell short of their targets.

It was a dangerous game. There might be dark acolytes among the troops, or even King Toth himself. A simple enchantment would send those arrows higher. Or worse, the dark wizard would pummel them with fireballs, and that would be the end. But when a well-positioned ballista over the road hurled a projectile with such force that it easily reached their height, the griffin riders barely flinched. It was one thing to gain sufficient altitude, and another to hit a swiftly moving target.

They were two or three miles from the gardens when Yuli released a series of short piercing whistles, and the three griffins angled into a coordinated dive. Nathaliey had been squinting her watering eyes against the buffeting wind, but looked down to see a small encampment of enemy soldiers stealing hay from a barn to feed their mounts. The horses were tied off, and neighed in terror as they spotted the diving griffins, and this drew the attention of the soldiers, who scattered.

One man ran for his sword, propped against his saddle, which he’d removed from his horse and set on the ground. Others dove through the open doors of the barn, while another man sprinted for a weed-choked ditch to take cover.

Yuli’s companions went after the man going for the sword. The first griffin knocked him from his feet. The second slammed him down and pinned him in place. The man died screaming while talon, paw, and beak tore him to pieces.

Following Yuli’s urging, Ageel went after the man fleeing for the ditch, caught up to him before he could dive to safety, and dragged him off the ground. They flew skyward with the enemy soldier clenched in the griffin’s talons. The other two griffins were already flying east after the brief, savage attack. Ageel was now burdened with both an extra rider and the man he’d swept off the ground, who screamed as the griffin’s back paws raked him.

Yuli turned her head. “Not strictly necessary, but if the enemy thinks we’re attacking behind their lines, it will slow them. Make them afraid to move—they’re all just sheep, after all.”

Nathaliey was rather more distracted by the injured man being mauled to death below her even as they continued east. Surely, Ageel wasn’t going to eat the man, was he?

She was tapping Yuli on the shoulder to ask her to make Ageel put the man down, when the griffin did so on his own. The Veyrian fell forty or more feet and slammed into the ground. Nathaliey shuddered and shook her head in answer to Yuli’s questioning look. These griffin riders were predators—deadly, and unconcerned about their prey, which included any flatlanders unfortunate enough to make of them an enemy.

The extra burden had left them behind the other two riders, and Yuli pushed Ageel to catch up. They were still several seconds of flight to the rear when something charged in from above and to their right. A spear flew toward them, and Yuli was already banking hard before Nathaliey could so much as flinch, let alone figure out why other griffin riders were attacking them.

A second spear came in at a different angle and struck Yuli a glancing blow on the shoulder. The griffin rider rocked backward, but kept her grip. She gave a long shrill whistle, and the griffins ahead immediately arced into the sky.

Nathaliey craned her neck as Ageel swept around, with pursuers giving chase, and she caught her first good look of the enemy.

They weren’t griffins, they were young dragons with leathery wings, burnt-red scales, and black horned heads. Long and sinewy, with twisting, snaking tails. Bare-chested men rode on their backs, armed with spears and scimitars. Two more of the creatures came circling in from above, making five in all.

Yuli took a good look and cursed. “What devilry is this?”

“Dragon wasps!”

“What?”

“Enemies!”

Yes, dragon wasps. One of the larval forms of a dragon, itself a monster eighty, ninety feet long that could scarcely be controlled by man or god. A dragon slept for decades beneath the desert sands, only to emerge for a brief spell of violence, followed by laying massive clutches of eggs and a return to slumber. Dragon eggs hatched into small lizard-like creatures that were as likely to eat each other as to hunt other prey. After a few years the lizards cocooned themselves and changed into dragon wasps.

And apparently King Toth had captured them, ensorcelled them, and trained men of the southern deserts as riders. Such a thing had been done before, according to the old books, and the enemy must have studied the same lore. Nathaliey supposed Toth had done so to rid the mountains of griffins, and now one of his patrols seemed to have caught three riders unaware.

The other two griffins were already turned around and approaching the battle at a rapid clip by the time the dragon wasps organized sufficiently to press another attack. The wasps seemed more agile than Ageel as they snaked and curved toward the larger griffin, but Ageel spotted an opening and charged for it, and with three powerful wing flaps had burst through and was leaving the enemy behind.

If Yuli had been alone atop the griffin, or perhaps even in the cool mountain air instead of riding a mount fatigued by heat, Ageel could have outrun the pursuing enemy, but the wasps were already gaining on them.

The flockheart’s two companions met her flying in the opposite direction. They blasted overhead with a rush of beating wings and slammed into the dragon wasps. A griffin grabbed one of the creatures in its talons while the young rider hurled himself toward his enemy, with only a slender cord around his ankle as protection from a fall. He landed atop the dragon wasp, knocked aside a clumsy sword thrust, and slashed the other man across the throat. The wasp rider lost his grip and fell.

Yuli came around again and charged into the fray. Nathaliey had been scanning the ground, looking for a pool of water. The enemies were monsters of heat and sand—a full-grown dragon could even exhale blasts of fire—and to counter it she needed ice, which meant finding a source of water. There was nothing there, but another spell occurred to her.

“Labi et cadere. Lapidem te percussit.”

The magic struck two of the dragon wasp riders, leaving them disoriented and dizzy. One lost his grip and he fell with a cry. The other threw himself forward and wrapped his arms around the dragon wasp’s neck to hold on for dear life. The wasp hissed and spit and snaked its head around, trying to bite its own rider.

Ageel slammed into one of the wasps and thrust his beak at the creature’s neck while Yuli leaned forward, stabbing and slashing as the two mounts grappled in the air. It was now Nathaliey’s turn to hold on for dear life as the ground spun below them.

As she did, she looked down and saw that they were several hundred feet above the gardens. The wall stretched around the perimeter, roughly rectangular, enclosing a stretch of land that took a half hour to cross on foot, but seemed like a child’s model from this height. There was the east gate, with the bridge over Blossom Creek to the east. The meadow where they’d fought the enemy, the lake, with the gleaming roof of the Golden Pavilion and its red wooden pillars, freshly painted and covered with new runes.

Beyond the meadow, the woods, the apiary, the kitchen gardens, the flower mazes, the fountains, the walls, and . . . a dark, ugly scar. It was the enclosed space where Markal had obliterated the very earth and everything growing in it. A desolation spell. They’d walled it in after being unable to heal the land to keep the desolation from spreading, but from above it was a blight on an otherwise green and lush landscape.

Two of the five dragon wasps and their riders had already died. A third rider had fallen to his death, and his mount fled south, toward the desert. The remaining two riders tried to organize a retreat, but Yuli’s battle lust, once awakened, could not be so easily calmed. She whistled orders and waved her bloodstained sword.

Nathaliey leaned forward and shouted, “We’re here! Take me down first.”

Yuli looked back, confused. “Here, in the forest?”

“It’s not forest, it’s . . . just put me down. Right here.”

“There are thorny bushes. And stones. Beyond that you have mudflats of the kind that gum up wings. Nowhere good to land.”

“It’s not a forest, and there aren’t thorns or stones or mudflats. That’s all an illusion. Trust me.”

Yuli still didn’t believe her, insisting that she could see them, but one of the griffins had taken a light wound in the battle, and Yuli was bleeding from her own shoulder where the spear had thrust into her leather armor, and she called off the pursuit anyway.

Now that she was over the gardens, Nathaliey was desperate to get down. She spotted keepers, hands shielding their eyes to stare up at the griffins, and a figure emerged from the woods to the north that might even have been Markal. One of the acolytes ran across the meadow toward the Golden Pavilion, probably to alert the master.

Unable to wait any longer, Nathaliey cast a small clarification spell to open a window into what was really below them.

“By the Brothers!” Yuli exclaimed. “What is this place? It’s beautiful.”

“It’s the gardens, you fool, like I told you. Now get me down there!”

The three griffins circled warily from above before landing in the middle of the meadow, where they could quickly spring into the sky if threatened. By now a dozen people had assembled to watch, and the griffins held their wings out and opened their beaks in a menacing display. There was no sign of Memnet, but Chantmer was there, looking tall and arrogant and rather displeased as she climbed down and her aching muscles inspired a long, satisfied groan to be on firm ground at last.

And then Markal hurried from the woods on the far side, practically at a run. Two of the three griffins were already airborne, and Yuli looked anxious to do the same, but she waited for him to arrive.

“Markal of Arvada,” Yuli said.

His eyes widened. “It’s you!”

“I suppose we’re not enemies after all. We might even be allies of a sort. Anyway,” she added awkwardly. “Here’s your friend. She’s . . . not bad. For a flatlander.”

Ageel screamed and heaved himself skyward. Moments later, Yuli was flying west after her two companions.

“Well?” Nathaliey told Markal. “I’ve crossed mountains, drank the sorcerer’s poison, and flown on the back of a griffin. Don’t I even get a ‘well met’?”

“I’ll do better than that,” Markal said with a grin. He grabbed her in a fierce embrace and squeezed the air out of her lungs, until she laughingly pushed him away.

Chantmer scowled, and the others looked amused, but Nathaliey didn’t care. She enjoyed the embrace and the warm surge of affection that rose to see her friend again. But her smile quickly faded, as did Markal’s.

She’d faced horrors since they’d last met; no doubt he had, too. And there was more to come.

Chapter Twenty-Four

There were no Veyrians when Markal led Nathaliey and Chantmer from the south gate toward the fairy fort, but there were signs that the enemy had passed this way, starting less than a mile from the walls. The grass was trampled, and the crofters’ huts and farmhouses had burned. They found the fairy fort and picked their way through the brush to the top.

“What are we doing here, anyway?” Markal asked. “Chantmer?”

Chantmer didn’t answer, but paced the hillside, muttering to himself. Markal met Nathaliey’s gaze, and she shrugged.

Surely they weren’t going to sit here defending an empty hill while enemies closed in from other directions. By now, Memnet would be halfway to Wolfram’s army, accompanied by a pair of lesser apprentices, openly blasting his way across the countryside. Narud was at Blossom Creek with several other apprentices, acolytes, and keepers. Veyrian troops had arrived on the far side of the bridge after the Dark Gatherer swept the marshlands of wights, and were trying to force their way across the small river. Markal had expected to find the same activity here on the southern edge of their territory.

“There’s nothing to defend,” Nathaliey said. “Let’s go back and see what’s happening at the bridge.”

“Should we send a seeker?” Markal asked. “Make sure there’s no enemy making a move down here first?”

“Why not use our eyes?” she asked.

That was true enough. The fairy hill was the tallest feature on a gently undulating countryside of pasture and wheat fields that stretched south toward the desert and west toward the hill country. There was movement to the west. A pair of dragon wasps snaked through the air in that direction, and a general haze in the air indicated an army on the march. Eriscobans.

Everything to the south, on the other hand, looked quiet. There might very well be enemies concealed in the dales or among the trees, but the air was clear of sorcery. And no army on the march.

“I assume the master sent us here for a purpose,” Nathaliey said. “But he’s gone, and there’s no way to tell him there’s nothing here.”

Chantmer had been pacing, and now bent to pull at the sod. Markal’s eyes narrowed. “Chantmer? Something you’re not telling us?”

“Yeah,” Nathaliey said. “What are you playing at over there? Looking for old runes?”

“Aha!” Chantmer pulled up a lump of grass to reveal stone. “Here it is, just like the master said.”

“What exactly did the master say?” Markal asked.

“Go on ahead, you two. I’ll take care of this and catch up with you by the abandoned orchard. You know the one I’m talking about?”

There was something furtive about Chantmer’s behavior, and Markal made his way over, suspicions growing. At first, Chantmer didn’t want to show him what he was uncovering, but Markal and Nathaliey ignored his protests and joined him in pulling up sod. They exposed a large flat stone humming with power.

“What is it?” Nathaliey asked.

Chantmer fended them off with a forearm. “Nothing to concern you. Let me work, will you?”

“Blast it, Chantmer,” Markal said. “Will you stand back and let us see?”

“Why, so you can take it from me?” Chantmer said irritably. “So you can claim credit when you activate it?”

Markal was bewildered. “Claim credit for what?”

“The both of you think you’re better than me. Well let me tell you, I’m just as good as you are, and I’m going to prove it. This is how the master wants me to prove my skills. This is what will make me a wizard. You thought it was never going to happen, didn’t you, just because you were first.”

“Oh, please,” Nathaliey scoffed. “Of course you’re going to be a wizard. What does the timing matter, anyway, whether you were first or last?”

“It matters a lot to me.”

“You can be an ass sometimes, you know that?” Nathaliey said. “We’re on the verge of annihilation here, and you’re worried about your stupid pride.”

“I’m the one who is proud?” Chantmer said. “Listen to you lording it over me. Trying to force your way in and steal credit for my work.”

Markal leaned around Chantmer while he was arguing with Nathaliey and caught sight of familiar marks in the stone. “That’s a desolation ward,” he said.

Nathaliey drew closer. “You mean like in the walled garden? Oh. Yes. I see it. A whole row of them.”

“Stand back, you’re crowding me,” Chantmer said. He kept working, brushing away dirt.

“And the master wants you to activate it?” Markal asked. “It will blast this entire hillside. Nothing will ever grow here again.”

“You’re hardly one to cast judgment on what should or shouldn’t be destroyed,” Chantmer said. “You destroyed the walled garden. This is just a bit of meadow and an old fairy fort.”

He was right, and yet Markal was taken aback that the master would plan such a trap. But if Markal properly understood what Chantmer was doing, activating the runes would allow them to fall back from the southern defenses and concentrate their forces elsewhere.

“Here, let us help,” Markal said, “and then we can all leave together.”

Chantmer grumbled some more and insisted that they not try to steal his credit. Nathaliey snapped back irritably, and Markal made soothing noises to calm them both. To a certain extent, he understood Chantmer’s anger at being left behind while the other three greater apprentices advanced in power and prestige. He’d have been humiliated, too, and how much worse for Chantmer, given his well-developed sense of pride?

Markal recognized the markings in the stone, but there was something unfamiliar about the magic vibrating beneath the surface. At first he thought it was age, that the stone had been laid down by a precursor to the Crimson Path, most likely the order who’d built the stone ring in the mountains where the old hermit lived.

But by the time they finished and covered it with sod, he decided that this was not the extent of it. There was magic down there that he’d have liked to have investigated, maybe even studied in the library. And that reminded him that the books where the lore would be found had most likely been left behind and devoured by fire salamanders.

Once finished, they set out across the countryside and hooked around to the northeast to reach the bridge over Blossom Creek. Midway through the trip—a journey of a few miles—they discovered a patrol of mounted troops—not marauders, but regular Veyrian cavalry—and threw up concealing spells while they prepared an attack. When the riders reached them, Markal heaved the road and threw the men from the saddle, and Chantmer and Nathaliey drew a desiccation spell. In the matter of seconds, they killed twenty men and sent their horses scattered and riderless across the countryside.

The brief encounter, victorious though it was, slowed their journey. The Veyrians were close to the garden walls, and next time it might be the enemy springing an ambush. They slowed further when Markal caught a whiff of sorcery.

Nathaliey turned about in the road, sniffing at the air. “A dark acolyte.”

Chantmer’s face darkened. “I recognize that stench. Zartosht. Let him find us. We will have our revenge for Jethro’s death.”

But if there were dark acolytes about, Toth could easily be present, too. Except he would hide himself better, even this close to the gardens, where the order’s power was strongest. The three of them together couldn’t fight the dark wizard out here, whether he was in the company of his dark acolytes or not. Markal told them to pick up the pace.

They were moving at a good clip when they came through the orchards and into clear grasslands. They stopped long enough to deepen their concealing spells. Just as they set off again, there was a distant boom and a rumble like hundreds of clashing swords. Three dragon wasps raced overhead, hissing and spitting as they fought the reins of their riders.

The wasps flew in the same direction as the noise, which all came from the northeast, where the bridge crossed Blossom Creek. The three companions broke into a run.

By the time they approached the bridge, the meadow beyond had turned into a regular battlefield. Dozens of troops lay dead east of the stream, and the ground was pocked with holes surrounded by dirt and rock, as if a monster had clawed its way across the ground. Hundreds more men—most of them infantry with long, Veyrian-style hooked pikes—trudged across the meadow, bracing as if against a howling windstorm. There was nothing visibly opposing them, but they kept falling to their knees before dragging themselves up again. A few, overcome by exhaustion, went down and couldn’t get up again.

The ground exploded in the meadow, and several men flew skyward. Others staggered toward the new hole as if sucked into a vortex, and struggled to get out of it again to keep moving. Meanwhile, several dozen men drew near the stream, but turned as one from the road and charged, screaming, north along the stream bank in the wrong direction. They shortly veered back into the meadow, where their cries faded into scattered confusion.

Causing all this chaos was a small cluster of figures atop the stone bridge. The three companions approached from the safe side of the stream, and as Markal drew near he saw Narud standing at the head of the small procession on the bridge, with one of the lesser apprentices, a young man named Kreth, at his side, and three acolytes and a pair of keepers behind. Narud maintained an impressive, suitably wizard-like posture, while the others worked at the numerous markings chiseled into the bridge to call forth their power.

The three newcomers came up from behind.

“How long have you been under attack?” Markal asked.

Narud glanced up, as if to gauge the position of the sun. “An hour, perhaps a little longer.”

“You should have sent someone to fetch us.”

“I assumed you were busy. Anyway, we’ve been holding our own.” Narud glanced at Nathaliey and Chantmer, who were running their hands along the stone balustrade and discussing the state of the defenses, then back at Markal. “We had a bad moment early on. Eight dragon wasps attacked us on the bridge, and we weren’t prepared for an aerial attack.”

“How did you drive them off?” Markal asked.

“The acolytes threw up a vortex, and I was going to pull water from the stream and form ice spears, like the master instructed. Before I could, a flock of griffins came and chased them off.”

Markal scanned the sky. There were a handful of wasps far to the east, but lurking, not ready to throw themselves into battle, as if afraid of another griffin charge. He was glad they weren’t facing wasps on top of everything else.

Yuli had been so hostile the first time he’d met her. That was before marauders attacked her aerie and stole eggs from her griffins’ nest. Hamid—or Toth, if he’d been the one to order it—had blundered.

He was still thinking this over when several griffins came winging in from the north, pursued by a dozen or more dragon wasps, riders high on their backs, waving spears and jeering at their enemy’s retreat. Just when it seemed that the griffins would flee the scene entirely, they swooped around and charged into the startled wasps from every side. The griffins only numbered six or seven—it was hard to count either side given the speed and fluidity of the battlefield overhead—but three more griffins dropped from above and slammed into the dragon wasps as their riders attempted to regroup.

A griffin retreat had turned into a rout of the enemy forces in the course of seconds. Or so it seemed at first. But the battle was even more fluid than Markal first supposed. Before the griffins could seize victory, a fresh cluster of dragon wasps snaked in from the east. And then more griffins were arriving, and soon the sky was filled with screaming, hissing, clashing bodies.

He spotted Yuli and Ageel brawling with a wasp and its rider and driving it toward the ground. When they were eighty or ninety feet up, Veyrian soldiers began to launch arrows and crossbow bolts.

Yuli flung herself from the griffin and attacked the wasp rider atop his own mount, attached to Ageel by only a slender tether around the ankle. She cut his throat, slashed his tethers, and sent him plummeting to earth. Then, with an agile twist of the body, and still holding the sword, she hauled herself one-handed back to her own mount. Ageel disengaged and left the floundering, tattered wasp to come screeching down among the soldiers, who scattered in fear.

It made for a thrilling view, but a fresh push across the meadows quickly drew Markal’s attention. He was wary at the renewed energy, but there were fewer than four hundred men in total in the meadow, and it was nothing that the defenders couldn’t handle. Was this a diversion, a probing attack? Did Toth really have so many men that he could throw them away by the hundreds?

The enemy seemed to be organizing, no longer content to charge, retreat, and charge again. Roughly two hundred with pikes gathered around a man at the center shouting orders and herding them into lines. Once they’d clustered together, their lieutenant gave a shout, and they trudged toward the bridge. Narud drew power from an acolyte and activated one of the runes on the bridge, which went off with a loud pop. Rocks and dirt exploded from the meadow and hurled themselves at the enemy troops. Several men fell under the bombardment, but the rest continued with dogged determination.

As of yet, none of Markal’s companions seemed alarmed, but something about the situation felt different. Narud and Chantmer consulted behind him in low voices while acolytes and keepers leaned in to listen. Nathaliey made her way through the others and descended toward the meadow, where she bent to test the stones where they met the far bank.

Markal followed her down and sniffed at the air. He took in the scent of grass and wildflowers, the smell of clean water from the brook, and the odor of sweat and fear radiating from the troops marching this way. A dragon wasp slammed into the ground a few feet away, making him start, and as its snaking head drummed the ground, he smelled the desert heat in its burning blood. Magic from the bridge radiated out at the presence of this enemy, and the dying monster sank into the soil.

As it did, something emerged from it—the sorcery binding it to service. That was fresh magic . . . and recognizable. Now that he’d taken note of it, the smell seemed to permeate the meadow, radiating from the soldiers, the ground, and the sky. It wasn’t the sorcery of a dark acolyte, either. It was more powerful than that.

Nathaliey had left the bridge. She picked up a handful of dirt and pebbles and spread them in a half-circle in front of her. Markal came down and took her arm.

“Toth is here,” he said. “Get back to the bridge.”

Dirt spilled from her hands. “How can you be sure?”

“Help me find me a revelation rune.”

They felt the stone balustrade and shortly found what Markal was looking for. A quick incantation activated it, and a wave of magic rolled out from the bridge and across the meadow. Everything changed.

Toth’s magic had concealed an entire army. Each man in the meadow turned into a dozen. There had been a wagon inching across the ground, dragged by several men using it for cover, and this turned into a massive wall of wood planks. Two or three hundred archers advanced behind it. The two hundred pikemen became three thousand or more, still gathering in numbers as they surged toward the bridge.

And there was another enemy even closer at hand. What Markal had dismissed as the dead or wounded proved to be dozens of men crawling on their bellies through the grass, advancing so slowly that they hadn’t aroused notice. The nearest were only feet from the bridge, and none of the wards had blocked their progress.

In contrast, the defenders, numbering only ten individuals, had been calmly, almost casually blasting the enemies in the meadow while reserving their strength for a heavier assault. An assault they had almost missed entirely.

Keepers were hard at work, backs turned as they readied wards and runes. Markal shouted a warning, and they looked up.

At that same moment, a cry went up in the middle of the Veyrian army. Trumpets blared from across the assembled companies of troops. The men crawling on the ground sprang to their feet and broke into a run. Behind them, thousands of Veyrian troops surged across the meadow.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Nathaliey had been arranging dirt and rocks at the edge of the bridge when Markal told her that he’d sensed the dark wizard. Her work had been something to keep her occupied during the lull in fighting, nothing more.

The trap was simple. If a Veyrian soldier penetrated the outer defenses, the ground would twist beneath him and break his ankle. Nothing serious or battle-altering. She had mixed in a drop of her blood and was laying it down, somewhat bored and frustrated at the slow pace of battle, when Markal gave his warning.

He sounded frightened, and she knew enough not to question him, letting the rest of the dirt and pebbles fall from her hand as he dragged her back. He called up one of the spells on the bridgework, and suddenly the battlefield revealed itself as it truly was. Among the thousands of attackers, some of the enemy had already drawn very near to the bridge. The closest was a soldier crawling around the dying, flailing dragon wasp, and he reached his feet and broke into a sprint.

One of the keepers had been preparing a rune on the stonework at the edge of the bridge. He was slow to heed Markal’s shouted warning, and only belatedly lifted his gaze. His eyes widened in surprise at the charging soldier. They Veyrian brought his sword in a great arc from behind his shoulder.

It was then that he hit the bit of dirt and rock Nathaliey had been preparing. The trap was only partially placed, and not yet activated, but she’d already mixed in a drop of her blood. The soldier stumbled, almost fell, and caught his balance. In the split second Nathaliey’s work had bought them, the slow-moving keeper got onto the bridge.

The Veyrian swung his sword, but it was no longer at an unprotected opponent. The weapon twisted in his hand as he swung at the air over the bridge and struck the stone balustrade instead. It shattered on impact, there was a secondary snap, this time bone, and the soldier staggered backward with his sword arm hanging limp.

Keepers activated runes, and the meadow churned up dirt and mud. Great sinkholes opened in the ground, while in other places mud geysers shot skyward. Narud drew magic from an acolyte and hurled a fireball into the meadow to set the grass on fire. Chantmer brought up volans malleis—his beloved spectral hammers—and hurled them from the crest of the bridge while Markal strengthened them with another rune. The hammers spawned other hammers, which in turn doubled in size as they spun through the sky.

They slammed into the main force of enemies, churning and battering as they cut a vast swath. By the time the hammers stopped, they’d left a path of mangled bodies. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of men lay dead or wounded. Chantmer shouted in triumph.

“Your long-standing faith in the magical hammers has been rewarded,” Nathaliey told him.

Chantmer seemed so pleased that he didn’t bother to scowl.

The ground heaved in the center of the enemy army, but this time it wasn’t their magic at work. The dead and dying flew into the sky, together with their weapons, armor, and the rocks and dirt torn loose by wizardry from the bridge. All blasted high into the air. A dead soldier struck a griffin hard on the wing, and it squawked in pain, flipped over, and fell fluttering to the earth while the rider struggled desperately to free himself.

The battle overhead was going poorly even before debris hurled into the midst of the action. The entire griffin army seemed to be engaged in combat, outnumbered by dragon wasps, which harried them from every side and continued to flood into the aerial battlefield. Yuli and others whistled a warning as the mass of bodies, weapons, and armor blasted through them like missiles launched from catapults.

But Nathaliey didn’t have time to worry about their allies, as enemy sorcery now flung the dead and dying at the bridge, where they fell in a lethal rain. A body struck a keeper, and she went down without a sound. The others cowered and reached for magic. Two spectral shields went up almost simultaneously, and the rest of the bodies and weapons bounced harmlessly away.

By the time the bombardment had stopped, a hundred or more enemies had reached the bridge and were hurling themselves forward in waves in an attempt to break through. Some stumbled and fell, while others reached the bridge only to dive into the brook as if that had been their objective all along. Dozens fell face-first into the water, flailing and drowning in knee-deep water, unable to lift their heads clear from the magic holding them under. But other soldiers chopped and battered at the invisible barriers, and the defenses were already cracking.

Nathaliey’s fingers traced a rune on the balustrade, and she activated it with a word. The bridge became a fluid thing, like a waving blanket, and the figures on the far end were like bugs. She gave a mental jerk, and the end of the bridge seemed to snap. Men went flying backward. Then Kreth, one of the lesser apprentices, took the bold step of calling up one of the primary offensive runes. The ground above the riverbank opened with a loud crack, and a fissure raced across the meadow and through the army. Men fell into it or stumbled away as it reached them. Thinking quickly, Nathaliey activated two more runes, which strengthened the magic as it flowed.

The ground shook from the violence of the magic and the sheer size of the tearing rift. There was a rumble like thunder from deep in the earth below them. The surface of the brook churned like water at a boil, and a crack appeared in the stone at Nathaliey’s feet.

The bridge would hold, but the meadow wouldn’t. Her companions poured their magic into the spreading fissure, which become a gorge. Men fell into it by the hundreds, and the ground at the bottom churned and chewed like a vast biting mouth. The enemy formations were crumbling. Veyrian cheers turned to cries of retreat. Men broke ranks, turned to flee. If the order could keep the ground heaving a few more seconds, the entire army would fall apart.

And then a mounted figure appeared, with two gray-cloaked riders next to him. A dark pulse of energy radiated from the man and rolled across the meadow, where it quieted the rumbling ground before continuing west. It broke the crumbling magical perimeter at the bridge and washed over the defenders. Keepers, acolytes, and lesser apprentices sank to their knees, while Markal, Narud, and Chantmer clenched their temples and groaned in pain.

It had a different effect on Nathaliey. She felt Toth’s dark glamour, his charisma, a throbbing, eager thing, and it whispered in her head. “Worship me, serve me. Destroy them all, kill them.”

“Yes,” she whispered obediently, even as her stomach twisted in horror.

Her hands were flattened, palms down, and the power in her blood sang to her, begged her to use it and destroy the members of the order. They were vulnerable. A simple spell would annihilate them all, and then she could bow to her new master.

She knew it for what it was. The sorcery of the elixir of thrall. Even now, all these days later, after she’d been rescued, taken the food and drink of the gardens, and slept in their healing embrace, enough elixir remained to speak to her blood.

By the Brothers, she was fortunate that she hadn’t faced Toth while caged in the gibbet. She’d have bowed to him—she knew it in her heart. And she would be among the enemies coming across the meadow in attack.

But she hadn’t faced him, and she wasn’t an enemy. She wrestled with her rebellious body, and the voice receded, the dark wizard’s charisma dissolved.

It hadn’t been cast against her, she realized, nor even at her companions. They’d been caught in the current and pulled along. Instead, it was meant for the Veyrian soldiers. The enemy forces regrouped and resumed their attack. Meanwhile, the magical fissure was spent, collapsing in on itself, and the hundreds of enemies destroyed seemed like nothing compared to the mass flowing ever onward, their voices rising in a full-throated roar.

The griffins had lost their fight against the sheer weight of enemies, even as dragon wasps and riders kept falling from the sky. An occasional griffin went down, too, and those still alive when they hit the meadow were swarmed by men with pikes and swords. Other griffins and riders, burdened with lighter wounds, clustered near Yuli, who seemed to be organizing a retreat.

Nathaliey’s companions were stunned, disorganized, even as they kept up a haphazard defense, activating runes and wards to bring down the lead elements of the Veyrian army. More enemies had reached the bridge in a second, larger wave, and by now the invisible barriers were porous, tattered.

Nathaliey called up desiccation from her own store of magic. A row of men sank to their knees with a collective groan. Nathaliey glanced back to the garden wall, hoping to see the gate open and Memnet striding out, the orb blazing in his fist. No such sight greeted her eyes. Others followed her gaze.

“Stop looking for the master!” Markal said in a commanding voice. “There’s still magic in the bridge, and we’ll spend it all. And then we will mount an orderly retreat.”

This steadied their nerves, and they obeyed when he ordered Chantmer and Nathaliey to keep throwing back enemies while he and Narud pulled stones from the balustrade. The acolytes and lesser apprentices would kill any men who broke through. Narud lifted the first stone from the bridge, lifted it over the army, and blasted it apart. Fragments of stone cut the men down.

Toth sent a shadow charge against the bridge, and by the time they fought it off, still more Veyrians were reaching the bridge. They fell back, dying. Narud lifted another stone and blasted it apart. The explosion made Nathaliey’s ears ring.

Toth and his two companions had been advancing with his army, and were now only fifty paces from the bridge. Narud tried to blast him with one of the stones, but Toth waved it away, and it exploded harmlessly over the creek. A coiling mass of shadow appeared around the dark wizard’s hands.

Nathaliey had fought the shadow attacks on multiple occasions while facing the dark acolytes, and she was prepared when the shadows coalesced into ropes and slithered out from his hands. She drew the last of her power and threw a light spell to stop it. The shadows were too thick, too strong. Her feeble defense burst apart without slowing the attack.

The sky darkened, and the sun seemed to dim in the sky. The shadow, now thicker than a man’s waist, struck the bridge. The keeper standing at the front of the bridge opened her mouth in a silent scream and dissolved into something that looked like a swarm of black flies.

The shadow poured into the bridge, and it vibrated beneath their feet. Nathaliey grabbed for the balustrade as the bridge exploded beneath her and threw her into the sky. Her ears ached and everything dimmed. She found herself flailing in the air, so high above the ground that she could see a griffin rider’s startled expression as he whipped past her on his mount, trying to avoid the debris hurled skyward.

Even as she flew into the air, Nathaliey could see everything laid out below her: the shattered bridge tumbling into the brook; enemies, surging through the water upstream and down; the dark wizard, approaching triumphantly.

Somehow, she was still alive, unbroken in the explosion, eighty feet in the air, among her companions, among the shattered stones of the bridge. She reached the maximum height, seemed to hold an instant, and then fell. Her mind worked frantically to find a spell to save her life. Nothing came.

And then her fall slowed seemingly of its own accord. She was only thirty feet or so off the ground when she hit a thin shimmering film, like the edge of a soap bubble. It gave beneath her weight, resisting, but not stopping her, before it bounced her back up in the air. She fell into it a second time, and this time the giant bubble-like membrane threw her backwards, and she landed painfully, but alive, on the stream bank closest to the gardens.

Her companions fell around her, and as she rose to her feet, she was flabbergasted to see of the eight who’d been alive when the bridge exploded, all had survived.

“What?” she said, stunned. “How . . .? Narud, was that you?”

“It was the bridge,” Markal said. “One last spell.”

The bridge was in ruins, its protective power shattered. Rows of enemies slogged through the brook, with thousands more soldiers pressing them from behind. There was no defensive magic left to confuse their crossing, nothing to slow them as they gained the other side.

It was only upon reaching the far bank that they hit renewed resistance. Men looked around, confused. Some threw down their spears and waded back into the water. But the magic was greatly weakened between the stream and the garden walls, and with so many Veyrian troops pushing forward under the dark wizard’s command, those who tried to retreat were swept forward in the sheer crush of advancing troops.

Nevertheless, getting across the river had cost the enemy forward momentum, and the force of King Toth’s sorcery on their willpower had weakened significantly. The Veyrians gasped and sweated as they emerged and dragged themselves away from the water. Their captains shouted and snarled to form them into ranks again. It bought the order precious moments to regroup and escape.

The companions fell back roughly a hundred feet and gathered around Markal, where Nathaliey joined the others in looking to him for direction. Even Chantmer. Markal glanced toward the garden walls, then at the advancing troops. The gardens looked enticing, like safety, and Nathaliey desperately wanted him to order them to flee for their lives, but at the same time, guessed what he would decide before he said it.

“One more spell,” Markal said. “I need some way to hold them while the rest of us gather magic. Who can do that?”

“I’ll flood the river,” Narud said.

“Perfect.”

“What’s the last spell?” Nathaliey asked.

“Someone give me an idea—we need something good, and it can’t be fire or hammers. They’ll be weaker the second time around. And who still has power?”

One of the acolytes gave a warning cry. The enemy force parted, and King Toth and his two marauder companions rode into the stream. Dark glamour radiated from him, and nearby soldiers shouted with renewed fury and aggression. Toth spotted the survivors from the bridge, lifted his hands, and gathered a ball of shadow from the sky even before he’d reached the bank.

“Narud!” Nathaliey shouted. “The water!”

Narud cast his spell. The brook surged, and men flailed to keep their balance. The horses were taller, more easily able to withstand the suddenly rushing current, but not with so many men flailing about them. Soon, Toth and his companions were fighting as much against their own soldiers as against the water.

If there had been more water to draw, Narud might have swept them all downstream, but he hadn’t materialized it, after all; it had come from below the riverbed, from the water saturated in the ground next to the brook. This water supply was soon exhausted, and the stream drained into a familiar trickle. The water had pushed Toth and his companions about a hundred feet downstream, and the trio forced their way through the soldiers to reach the bank. Shadows coiled around the dark wizard’s hands.

One of the Order broke and ran for the gardens. It was Kreth. An acolyte joined him. Nathaliey wanted to curse them, but it wasn’t cowardice. All her companions looked terrified, even Markal, Chantmer, and Narud, who gaped with open mouths.

It was the aura radiating from King Toth, the same thing that had hit them on the bridge, and she was the only one who didn’t seem to feel it. Markal was wrong; there would be no final, destructive spell. The aura prevented it. They would either flee to the gardens or stand here and die.

“Go!” she cried. “Run!”

This jolted Markal and Narud from their stupor. A shove at Chantmer got him moving, too. They slapped the others, and soon, they were all running but Nathaliey. The dark wizard didn’t have his main attack ready, but sent out a coil of shadow to ensnare the sluggish ones.

Nathaliey searched, and was surprised to discover that she had blood, had power. Hadn’t she expended it all? The proximity to the gardens must be strengthening her.

I am a wizard of the Crimson Path.

She threw up a ball of light, caught the coil of shadow, and broke it apart with a ringing clash of sparks. It gave her companions time to escape, but the reprieve wouldn’t last long. Toth gathered more sorcery. This time, she had nothing left, and could only turn and run for her life.

The three riders came after her—Toth and two marauders—followed by foot soldiers at a run. The garden wall was just ahead of them, and an alert member of the order had opened it from within. Her companions were slipping through already. She was going to make it.

Something washed over her, and she stumbled. Her limbs felt like jelly. The ground turned to wet sand, clinging to her feet and hindering her progress. A marauder loomed behind her, sword out of its sheath.

Just when she thought she’d be cut down, several riders charged out of the gardens through the open gate. They carried straight barbarian swords and glossy black shields. Sir Marissa of the Blackshields led them.

And behind them, on foot, was a familiar figure with his amber-colored beard and piercing eyes. Memnet the Great. He held the orb in his hand, and it glowed like a giant burning opal of fire. Light and shadow warred above Nathaliey’s head. The paladins rumbled past her on either side, and weapons clashed.

Her companions had reached the open gate and safety, with only Markal lingering. He shouted for Nathaliey to run, tried to cast something to strengthen her, but her limbs were still heavy and feeble, and she fell again. A spear zipped past her from behind, just missing her head, and impaled itself in the dirt. She got to her knees, then to her feet.

Arms outstretched to take her in: Markal, Narud. She had almost reached them, when someone grabbed at her from behind, and she felt, rather than saw, the sword coming for her.

The attacker fell with a cry before he could strike her. Marissa loomed above, swinging from the saddle at enemies who seemed to be all around. Flashes of light, rumbles of shadow striking the ground and garden walls. Then Markal and Narud hauled Nathaliey through, and her strength returned. She turned to see Memnet falling back, the paladins retreating into the gardens.

By the time the gates closed, the enemy was already striking it with sorcery and force of arms. The final siege of the gardens had begun.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Once Markal brought Nathaliey through and closed the gates, he blocked the sound of sorcery and force of arms battering the iron-bound doors. Dragon wasps, no longer shielded from sight, raced back and forth overhead, but the gardens repelled every attempt to descend. The wasps had, however, succeeded in driving off the griffins, who had fled the battlefield and were nowhere to be seen. Yuli’s forces had suffered great losses. Markal had personally seen ten or more griffins knocked from the sky, and another dozen flee with wounds.

The gate boomed from a tremendous blow, and the metal bindings groaned as it sagged inward. The people on the inside flinched. Marissa’s horse reared with a terrified neigh.

“It will hold,” Memnet said. “For now. Nathaliey, fetch keepers from the Golden Pavilion. I need wards to keep the wasps in the sky where they belong. Chantmer, secure the south gate—you’re in command there. Narud, to the north. There will soon be an attack from that direction, too.”

It was a relief to watch the master take command. His knowledge and power were unmatched, but also his force of will. The others had deferred to Markal during the struggle at the bridge, and midway through the battle he’d realized that he’d somehow assumed command. The leadership felt natural. He’d felt in control, thought they were winning, even after revealing the entirety of the enemy army.

And then the dark wizard demolished the bridge. Even more demoralizing, when he was trying to gather a final attack, he’d failed to find a suitable spell in time, and the enemy nearly caught them in the open.

“The bridge is gone, Master,” he said.

“I know.” Memnet sounded tired. “I saw it from the walls.”

“You were watching? Why didn’t you help?”

“I did help. We got you inside, didn’t we?”

The gate shook from another blow. There seemed to be action along the exterior walls as well, marauders trying to come over. Acolytes and lesser apprentices atop the walls threw them back. Markal turned back to Memnet, and noted for the first time the master’s drooping expression and bloodshot eyes.

“Are you spent?” Markal asked.

“Very nearly. I opened a path to the west—left the enemy defenses in tatters—and an army from the free kingdoms is marching to reinforce us. There’s still scattered opposition, but the barbarians fight with energy.”

Something else seemed to be troubling him, and Markal pressed. “What is it, Master?”

“I faced an old friend. Stephan—now a dark acolyte. He wasn’t afraid to challenge me. We fought, he proved capable. I may or may not have killed him—I’m not sure. I’m not sure I want to know.”

“I see the Blackshields have arrived already.”

“Some of them, not all. Wolfram remained behind, together with several thousand troops marching under an Eriscoban baron. If we hold on until they arrive, we might just have a chance.” Memnet put out a hand to steady himself on Markal’s shoulder.

“But you’re not injured, are you?”

“Not injured, Markal, no. But I need time to rest, to refill the orb. That leaves you in command.”

“You can’t stay and give orders?” Markal asked.

“The best thing for me—for the whole defense—is for me to meditate in the Golden Pavilion while others bring me food and drink. I’ll feed power into the orb, and I’ll be ready when the enemy batters his way in.”

When. Not if.

“I see.”

“Good.”

Another booming attack on the gate punctuated their conversation. Nathaliey had been sitting in front of the gate, sending messages toward the keepers at the pavilion, and now scaled a ladder to the wall to take charge of the defense. She stripped power from an acolyte and sent out a fireball, and a collective howl of pain rose from the enemy army beyond.

“The common Veyrian soldiers serve multiple purposes,” Memnet told Markal. “They force us to defend several points of attack, they absorb our magic so we can’t use it to fight Toth, his acolytes, and marauders. And the enemy draws their pain for his sorcery. He is never exhausted, he simply waits for more suffering and renews his strength as it comes.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re fighting on our terrain, not his,” Markal said. “Where we’ve spent decades laying down our defenses.”

“Yes. The defenses are very strong.” A distant look came into Memnet’s eyes. “Markal, about that discussion with Chantmer when we left the road. I want to explain something to you so you’ll understand if the time comes.”

“Chantmer told me some of it when he activated magic at the fairy fort.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“There’s a defensive structure that extends beyond the walls. It’s filled with destructive power.”

“It’s a last resort.”

“Why not call it up now, obliterate the enemy before he’s inside the gardens?”

Memnet studied him. “It seems you don’t understand. Not fully. You remember the walled garden?”

“I know. It’s a wasteland. Nothing will grow. We carried away the poisoned soil.”

“And?”

“And if we call up the defenses Chantmer activated, the hill will turn into a wasteland. Or am I missing something?”

“And when carting off the dead soil didn’t work? We bricked in the walled garden so it wouldn’t spread. It can spread, Markal. Far and wide.” Memnet studied Markal’s face, and nodded when he seemed satisfied of what he read there. “Which is why it’s a last resort. But be prepared. If I call for it, if I request your help, it means all is lost. That there is no other way.”

#

Memnet retreated to the Golden Pavilion to regain his strength, and Markal joined Nathaliey atop the garden walls. It was already late afternoon, and the shadows grew long.

There was no sign of King Toth in the surging armies, and Markal wondered if he was circling the walls looking for weaker points to attack. Or perhaps he was rushing to combat the Eriscoban army and prevent it from joining the garden defenders.

Four keepers worked at the gates and around the interior wall below, while three lesser apprentices and a handful of acolytes paced the wall above, casting down marauder attempts to climb over. There were half a dozen of the gray-cloaked enemies working their way up at the moment, but it was a different sort of attempt now that Toth had no wights to damage the walls and give the marauders purchase. Even without Markal’s and Nathaliey’s assistance, the others seemed to have matters under control.

More concerning were the conventional attacks on the wall, simply for the sheer mass of manpower throwing itself into the fight. Much of the attack resembled a regular siege, with men hauling forward platforms covered with wet hides to shield them as they dug at the ground. Others assembled trebuchets at a safe distance, while carts brought up stones for hurling.

The magical defenses of the garden walls extended invisibly into the air—as witnessed by the dragon wasps’ inability to descend—and deep into the bedrock below, as well. Had the attempt been merely conventional in nature, Markal could have dismissed it without worry, but a pall hung over the enemy encampment. It wasn’t Toth’s sorcery he felt, thankfully, but somewhere out there a dark acolyte worked to support the enemy efforts.

Two or three dozen dragon wasps had been circling above the meadow on the far side of the bridge, and now broke suddenly and charged over the heads of the ground troops. They dipped low, barely above the height of the wall, and long, scaly arms reached down with grasping, lizard-like claws. Riders reared back and let fly spears as they approached.

The defenders on the wall ducked out of pure instinct, but there was no need. The spears slammed into an invisible wall, and the dragon wasps veered upward as if thrown by an invisible force. The failed attack turned into a confusion of twisting, writhing beasts, and riders hung on for dear life. One man lost his grip and fell, flailing, to the ground. The riderless wasp flew south, while the rest returned to circling over the meadow.

“The protection overhead won’t last forever,” Markal said. “It’s weakening, little by little, and if they ever knock down the gate or blast a hole in the wall, that will open a passage in the sky, as well.”

“I’m worried about Yuli and the rest,” Nathaliey said. “Where did they go?”

He’d been giving this some thought. “They took a beating out there. They aren’t so numerous that they can suffer those kinds of losses for long.”

She looked discouraged. “Are you saying they retreated to the mountains?”

“Maybe. Seems to me they were reluctant allies, at best. They hate the lowlands. The heat, the people.”

“They weren’t reluctant when I met them,” Nathaliey said. “When marauders went after their aeries, when the enemy began killing eggs and chicks, the riders joined the war. Yuli is in it until the end—she said so herself.”

“Then where are they?”

“Licking their wounds, arguing new tactics. They probably landed in a forest clearing where it’s cool and there’s water. I don’t know where, but I know they won’t have abandoned us.”

Markal wished he could be as confident.

Yet in spite of the forces arrayed against them, Markal hadn’t given up hope. Yes, there were thousands of enemies gathering around the wall, an army of a size he’d never seen before. Veyrians continued crossing the stream and spreading out to encircle the gardens. What’s more, Narud and Chantmer would be facing similar forces attacking from the north and south.

But Toth hadn’t breached the walls, not yet. He’d suffered hundreds of dead simply taking the bridge. Unlike the last time they were assaulted, they had Memnet, an army of griffins—assuming Nathaliey was right about Yuli—and a barbarian army marching to join the war.

The paladins had retreated with the master, but a dozen of them now came riding up, led by Sir Marissa. They dismounted and took position, ready in case any marauders came over the wall.

Meanwhile, a mass of archers was forming outside to the left of the gate. Wagons crossed the stream carrying arrows, which were heaped in front of the archers. The companions watched warily from atop the wall as two or three hundred men notched arrows, drew, and fired. The arrows zipped high into the air, and looked well placed to rain down on the walls and the keepers, acolytes, and paladins behind the gate. But when they hit the invisible barrier, they splintered and fell harmlessly to the ground outside the garden.

“Keep it up, men,” Nathaliey said. “Go ahead, waste as many arrows as you want.”

Markal had a contrary opinion. “That was a test. The next attack will have sorcery.” He called over a young acolyte. “Raise power,” he told her. “Nathaliey, take her power and strengthen the wall’s barriers.”

“There’s a ward right here that will do the same thing,” Nathaliey said. “Should I activate it instead?”

“Do both.”

The archers notched more arrows, and he wondered if he was wrong. Nathaliey had spent the ward and burned the acolyte’s stored power, and he worried he’d wasted it. Maybe that was the enemy’s intent, to draw out their magic before the real attack began. The Veyrians had no shortage of men and equipment, after all; what were a few arrows?

But the instant the archers let loose, he knew his hunch was correct. Sorcery radiated from somewhere near the ruined bridge, and the arrows hummed with it as they flew from hundreds of bows. The rune Nathaliey activated burst outward like a gust of air. The arrows struck it and broke into pieces. Markal shielded his head with a forearm as shards of wood, twisted metal arrowheads, and fletching rained down on them.

When it was over, Nathaliey looked at him in wonder. “How did you know?”

“It was a guess. These wards aren’t doing any good buried in the stone. I don’t want this wall to be like the bridge—when it fell, we lost a lot of power. Power we could have used, but didn’t. Same situation with the wall. Use the magic—all of it. Save nothing for tomorrow.”

Nevertheless, there were more arrows to fire than wards and magical defenses to knock them down. The enemy would surely feint and probe, so he had to be prudent and make accurate guesses. The archers notched more arrows. Markal had identified the location of the sorcery, and he reached out, testing, seeing if someone was out there gathering power. No, not that he could feel.

Unless there were a second dark acolyte present. In which case, holding back would be a mistake.

Markal had lost track of the dragon wasps while focused on the archers, and they’d cleared from the sky. He doubted they’d gone far. It was only when they began to rise from the far side of the meadow on flapping, leathery wings, that he began to understand. They formed a mass and flew once more toward the walls. Arrows zinged from hundreds of bows, but all attention was on the wasps.

“More sorcery,” Nathaliey said. “It’s on the wasps.”

Sorcery hung about the dragon wasps and rolled ahead of them like a poisonous fog. Markal and the others threw up wards and magical spells. Nathaliey reached all the way to the brook for water and turned it into a spinning icy vortex. Her power had grown, and he watched in amazement as she impaled two wasps with ice spears and blasted three others with a bombardment of giant hailstones.

Other wasps struck the fortified air above the wall and crumpled. A wave of arrows hit the barrier, and one of the trebuchets launched its first shot. More arrows, more wasps, more shots from the trebuchets.

Wasps died. Others broke through, carried by the sorcerous fog. Nathaliey cried a warning, and Markal turned to see a second force of wasps flying in from the southeast. The sky was suddenly full of them, and they were penetrating the garden defenses, dropping in low.

Several landed inside the gate, and Marissa and the others scrambled back to their horses, regained their saddles, and drew weapons. Markal pulled up a rune and attacked the first two dragon wasps to touch ground. They flipped end over end, and their riders went sprawling, but others landed unmolested. The wasps each carried a second rider—men in gray cloaks, with dead eyes and pale skin, who leaped clear of the beasts the instant they touched down.

Marauders. Waves of them being lifted in by air, over the walls, and dropped inside the garden. Already a dozen or more were on the ground, forming ranks against the paladins.

Other wasps continued toward the center of the gardens. All flying sluggishly, carrying passengers, burdened by the gardens’ defensive magic. Markal’s mouth was dry. There must be a hundred wasps overhead. A hundred wasps who’d broken through the barrier wall and were each carrying a passenger.

A hundred marauders. This wasn’t a small, probing attack. It was a swift, brutal assault designed to slaughter the defenders from within.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Wolfram wanted to ride. He wanted to ride hard. Even after so many days on the road, he was bursting with energy, and his horse chomped and stamped his feet, pulling, trying to break into a gallop.

Ever since the great wizard had appeared and cast his sorcery—no, not sorcery, since this was the good, earth-centered, gods-based magic, he reminded himself—the entire company of Blackshields, together with thousands of troops behind them, had been pressing eagerly up the road, magic filling them with strength and determination.

He’d sent Marissa and two score of Blackshields ahead with Memnet, and they’d have reached the gardens by now, might even be in the thick of the fight. Wolfram had stayed behind with more than a hundred other paladins. There were tens of thousands of enemy troops about, and he didn’t dare leave Baron Knightsbridge without a proper defense against marauder assaults. So close to the end of their march, he couldn’t risk losing it all.

Meanwhile, Memnet had carved a destructive path straight to the gardens, and Eriscoban forces moved unopposed. The wizard’s magic had left the road scorched. Even the grass to the sides was obliterated, fields turned up and blasted. They passed an enemy encampment, and dead enemy soldiers lay everywhere, together with their burned gear, overturned carts, war hounds, dead donkeys, camels, and horses, among the carnage.

Wolfram had caught a glimpse of Memnet the Great’s magical attack, and it had been awesome to behold. Light burned from a stone in his fist. The ground flung rocks, mud, and people skyward as if he were witnessing some colossal beast waking from a slumber far beneath the surface. Clouds formed in an otherwise clear sky and lashed the earth with lightning. When Memnet was done, death and destruction and an empty road remained. If only Wolfram could get the army moving faster and bring them to the fighting at the gardens.

Baron Knightsbridge caught up to the vanguard on horseback, escorted forward by Sir Lucas and two other paladins. His face was flushed, his eyes gleaming, and he looked several years younger, as if invigorated by the wizardry.

“The rear of the army is falling behind,” Knightsbridge said. “We’ve got four thousand men strung out between here and the abandoned village. And another fifteen hundred behind that.”

“What the devil is holding them?” Wolfram asked, frustrated.

“The magic was weaker, Sir Wolfram—they didn’t get the full effect. And the men are on foot, carrying arms and armor—they can’t run forever. We have to slow down or we’ll leave them behind.”

Wolfram had learned to rely on Baron Knightsbridge’s counsel. He was a steady, cautious warrior, and the troops instinctively trusted him. He’d held together a collection of men and women from throughout the free kingdoms, warriors who at one point would have been suspicious of each other, if not outright hostile.

Together, they had marched into the populated east, with its decadent khalifates, its brutal slave lords, and its hostile, drought-stricken climate. Wolfram and Knightsbridge made no promises to their forces about how long the war would last, how many Eriscobans would return home, and how many would see their funeral pyres burn on the wrong side of the Spine, their ashes scattered over unknown soil, and their wights wandering in strange lands. Yet still they had followed.

Griffins had departed for war that morning, and a fair number later retreated west, nursing wounds or riderless. He was shocked when giant winged reptiles flew overhead in pursuit, carrying riders with spears.

Someone said they were dragons. Wolfram didn’t think so; a dragon was the size of a barn and could breathe fire. But they were something akin to that, and fresh fear of aerial attacks rippled through the army. A small clump of griffins appeared and scattered the creatures before they could descend on Wolfram’s army, but it was clear that the beasts had met the griffins in battle and done them harm.

Over the previous twenty minutes, twenty or thirty griffins had flown back and forth over his army. More dragon wasps were spotted to the south, and the griffins set off in pursuit, then returned to patrol overhead.

“She’s protecting us,” Wolfram said.

Knightsbridge frowned. “What?”

“Yuli. The griffin riders. They’re keeping those monsters off us. We’d be under assault from above without her flocks. Without her, we’d have to turtle down and wait it out.”

“What does that have to do with our strung-out forces?”

“Everything. If there were armies marching to ambush us or attack our supply columns, don’t you think Yuli would have warned us? They’re up in the sky—they can see everything.”

“Not marauders. Not with the sorcery of their gray cloaks.”

“Maybe not,” Wolfram conceded, “but she’d have spotted regular troops.”

“And what do we do with this information?” Knightsbridge asked.

“The battle is waiting for us. We only need to join it.” He was growing excited. “So we drop the wagon supplies. Drop everything but a man’s sword, shield, and armor. Leave our supplies guarded with a few dozen men—enough to deter scavengers and bandits—and carry everyone else to the gardens at full speed. The wizard said we’re only a few miles out—the first troops could arrive in less than an hour. The slower troops will pour in as reinforcements.”

“Leave our supplies,” Knightsbridge said flatly.

“We’re close. I can hear the battle. And they need us. The wizard was spent when he cast that spell—he won’t have enough left to blast the enemy. Even the griffin riders have fought and taken losses, while we have yet to clash swords.”

Knightsbridge twisted his horse’s reins. “We’ve dragged those supplies through the mountains, fought off raiding parties. Carefully husbanded our resources for a long campaign.”

“We’re almost there.”

“And if the enemy lays siege once we’re trapped behind those walls? That’s all our food. We’ll starve without it.”

“The wizard can open a path to our supplies.”

“How will he do that? You said he was spent. And he hasn’t even faced the sorcerer yet. Sir Wolfram, this is a gamble. A gamble that this battle ends here and now. If it doesn’t, if it lasts, then we die.”

“We may die anyway, friend. Let’s make sure if we go, we do it fighting with our friends by our side. Not out here, isolated, arriving so late that we face the sorcerer’s full wrath alone.”

The baron hesitated, and Wolfram could see the man’s loyalty warring with his desire to protect his men and keep them fed. Knightsbridge’s instincts had brought the army safely to this point, and Wolfram was asking him to cast them aside in a single, desperate thrust.

At last the baron nodded. “I’ll make it happen.”

#

The army surged once they’d dropped their supplies, carried forward by lightened burdens and strengthened by the magic Memnet the Great had cast on them before departing. Men ran at a trot, horses needed to be held back from a full gallop. Trumpets sounded, and cheers and battle cries rang out.

They were climbing a slight rise when Wolfram caught his first glimpse of the garden walls. They seemed unimpressive, slender, of cut stone, with no towers or inner keeps rising above them. The gate was wood, reinforced with iron, but there was no drawbridge, no moat where an enemy would be forced to descend and climb again while suffering a hail of stones and arrows. There wasn’t even a proper wall walk with battlements to protect a patrol. Trees rose from the interior, large leafy oaks and maples, and there were even flowering vines spreading down the exterior, which seemed like an invitation to scale the walls.

Which Veyrian troops were attempting to do. A small army of several hundred men had thrown up ladders and were trying to get up and over, using the vines as leverage and urged forward by a handful of marauders.

The vines, far from providing easy purchase, were a living, writhing obstacle. Tendrils grabbed men by the ankles and dragged them, writhing, into the leaves. Other vines wrapped around ladder rungs and snapped them like twigs, or pulsed and threw the ladders down.

The Veyrians continued doggedly in the face of these obstacles, while others hammered the gate with an iron-capped battering ram. The door barely made a hollow, defiant thumping sound no matter how hard they threw themselves into it.

Wolfram looked up at the wall and was surprised to see no defenders. Apparently, no defender was needed, the way the wall and gate were repelling any attempts to get inside. Dozens of Veyrians had crawled back with broken arms and other injuries, leaving dead companions behind. It was one of these injured men who spotted Wolfram’s forces and gave a warning cry.

Somehow, the Eriscobans had approached within eyeshot before being noticed, even though he had a hundred riders and more than a thousand men within five minutes of him, and they were kicking up a thick dust along the scorched road. The sound of all those boots and hooves should have been audible for miles; Wolfram had certainly heard the enemy long before he spotted them. More of Memnet’s magic?

Wolfram lifted his arm and shouted for a charge. A roar rose from the Blackshields. His horse surged, and he drew his sword and lifted his shield.

The Veyrians attempted to form ranks against the charging riders, but the first wave of paladins crashed into them before they could take position. Wolfram’s force swept through with a whirlwind of swords and bashing shields. Enemies fell, heads split open, shoulders crushed by sweeping blows. Necks severed. By the time Sir Lucas charged in with a second wave of paladins, Wolfram had already opened a wide gash in the enemy force.

He rode on, almost stunned by the feeble opposition. Lucas’s paladins were gaining on him, then overtaking him on his right flank. All around them, the enemy fell under their blows.

There were only a few hundred Veyrians in total, not much of an army—he knew this, and knew that King Toth’s real strength was elsewhere—but a surge of righteous joy rose in his breast to see the enemy fleeing the battlefield after a few minutes of combat. Baron Knightsbridge’s foot soldiers began to press in from behind, and they pinned the Veyrians between their spears and the garden walls, where vines engulfed and strangled.

A determined knot of Veyrians broke free in a run, trying to fight their way around the edge of the wall toward the north, where the bulk of the enemy army was likely flowing down from the Tothian Way. A mixed group of paladins and regular Eriscoban cavalry rode after them, while Wolfram concentrated on mopping up the remnants.

The battle wasn’t yet over when the gate swung open. A single, solitary figure appeared on the other side and beckoned them to enter. Wolfram gaped. He’d assaulted multiple castles, fortified camps, and other set positions over the past months, yet this entire stretch of the wall seemed to have been guarded by one man.

Baron Knightsbridge was up ahead, his face splattered with another man’s blood. He rode through the gate and turned back around with his eyes wide, searching until he picked out Wolfram.

“Sir Wolfram! You have to see this.”

“No time for gawking. Get your men inside.”

As Knightsbridge went to work, Wolfram rode ahead to have a look for himself. He stopped just inside the gate, stunned by the beauty of what he saw. The interior of the gardens was like a vision of Paradise, the ancestral home of the brother gods. Fruiting trees rose from rolling carpets of neatly trimmed, impossibly green grass. Flowering vines with blossoms larger than dinner plates crawled up trellises. A fountain threw out cool, clear water. A rich, sweet scent wafted over him: flowers and clean water and a dense, green smell of life.

Shadows darkened this heavenly vision, and he glanced skyward. Dozens of long, lizard-like creatures came swooping low over the wall. More of the monsters that had menaced them on the road. Each creature carried two riders, and they winged toward the center of the gardens. Was this a spying mission, a flyover, or was this the start of an aerial attack like the ones Yuli’s griffin riders had mounted in the high passes?

The first few companies of Eriscobans had entered the gardens when riders returned at a gallop from their pursuit of those enemies who’d fled north from the battle. A paladin named Sir Yancy reached Wolfram’s side, gasping for air, his eyes wide and excited.

“Captain! There are several more enemy columns marching this way. We skirmished, and I fell back before they could encircle me. I think it’s the vanguard of a larger army.”

Another group of the flying reptiles flew overhead. Blast it, where was Yuli? The Harvester take her if she’d abandoned the skies to the enemy.

Wolfram looked back at the jostle of men and horses entering the gardens. They may have abandoned their supplies in service of speed, but it would still take them an hour, maybe two, to get the bulk of the army through that gate and close it against the enemy. He couldn’t very well leave them strung out and vulnerable to a counterattack.

But neither could he ignore the creatures flying toward the center of the gardens. There was no reason for them to carry that extra passenger unless they meant to deposit forces in the heart of the gardens. He made a quick decision.

“Baron,” he said. “Form ranks outside the walls. You must hold the line until our troops have entered. See if this wizard can help.”

“I’m only a keeper,” the man said.

“Keeper, wizard, you’re what we have,” Wolfram said. “Use the walls’ defenses if you can.”

“Where are you going?” Knightsbridge asked.

“I’m taking my paladins to find the great wizard.” Wolfram took a closer look at the various paths, interior walls, and groves of trees. “It’s a labyrinth,” he told the keeper. “How do I find your master?”

“There’s a rune,” the man said. “I’ll activate it. Then drop your reins—the horses will know the way.”

Wolfram gave a curt nod. “Work your magic, friend.” He lifted his sword and raised his voice to bellow over the din. “Blackshields! To me!”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Markal left for the Golden Pavilion at a run, and Nathaliey stood behind the gate, eyes closed, palms down, preparing a warning for Chantmer and Narud. With Nathaliey and Markal removed from the action, the east gate had been stripped of its most powerful defenders, and the acolytes, keepers, and lesser apprentices struggled against the might of the Veyrian army trying to batter its way in.

It took her several seconds to gather her will and power. She sent an incantation speeding south and north.

Danger! To the master!

Nathaliey had no time to wait for an echo to roll back and confirm that Narud and Chantmer had heard, so she gathered herself and ran toward the Golden Pavilion. An arrow sang past her ear and impaled itself in the bark of an orange tree. A wasp rider hurled a spear at her from overhead. The gardens turned the spear, and it missed.

And then she was on the woodland trail, protected beneath the canopy, running past cottages where the members of the order lived. She came upon two men next to a dead dragon wasp lying in the midst of leaves and broken branches. One was a wasp rider with a forked spear, and the other a marauder in a gray cloak, a curved, scimitar-like sword in hand.

She didn’t know what had killed the wasp, or what the men intended to do now that they’d crashed into the gardens, but they were standing in front of her own cottage. In front of her shaded fence, her door she’d painted a cheery yellow, when her companions had painted theirs green or red. It was a violation, and outrage washed over her.

Nathaliey picked up a green leaf that had fallen from one of the towering maple trees and lifted it overhead. She reached for the magic buried beneath the woodland trail and threw the leaf overhead, an incantation at her lips.

The two men had been arguing, but looked up as she spoke. The marauder shouted, and they lifted their weapons and came at her. Leaves had already begun to fall from the limbs overhead, slowly at first, then a flurry, then a whirlwind, swarming the invaders like thousands of green moths. The wasp rider went down beneath the mass of leaves, which stuffed themselves into his mouth and nostrils before he could scream. He writhed on the ground, buried in leaves.

The marauder kept coming, and the leaves that hit his cloak withered, turned brown, and crumbled into dust. He gave Nathaliey a wolfish grin as he waded through the swirling leaves, moving slowly, but steadily in her direction, now only twenty paces distant. She took a pinch of dirt from the trail, placed it on her palm, spoke a few words, and blew it in his direction. Dirt and moss and bark tore loose from the road and the surrounding trees and battered at him like a whirlwind.

The marauder staggered, tried to regain his balance, and fell. Before he could regain his feet, the leaves swept up in a wave and buried him. He thrashed beneath them, and they kept drying and breaking apart, but there were too many. Moments later, the struggles ceased.

A few minutes later, Nathaliey emerged from the woodland trail and entered the meadow above the lake and the Golden Pavilion. A heavy concealing spell lay over the shrine-like pavilion itself, and it seemed as though she were staring at it from a distance, across a vast landscape of hills and meadows, where it gleamed as a single point of light beneath its gilded roof. All illusion; the pavilion was no more than a few hundred yards away.

Dragon wasps had landed several dozen marauders in the meadow, and these men groped toward each other, seemingly lost and blind one moment, and the next pushed on by unseen magic that drew them together. Nathaliey felt sorcery; one of the dark acolytes must be near. She spotted him now, and felt his aura.

Her old enemy, Vashti. The one who’d taken her captive and left her starving in a gibbet hanging over the gorge in the mountains. Who’d handed her over to Jasmeen.

The only defenders she could see were three tiny figures at the steps of the Golden Pavilion. One was Memnet, no doubt still exhausted from his earlier fight, but she couldn’t identify the other two. If they were acolytes, the master could draw their power and blast at the enemy. That he hadn’t already, that he’d relied on this simple illusion to hide the shrine, told her that they were not. Most likely keepers.

Where was Markal? He’d been ahead of her, had disappeared into the woods before she could catch up. Shouldn’t he be halfway across the meadow by now, if not already there? Or had he fallen back when seeing the meadow clogged with enemies?

While she was mulling a way to cross the meadow, more wasps landed and dropped off their passengers, then lifted into the sky with flapping leathery wings. There were too many enemies, both wasps and marauders alike, not to mention the dark acolyte. Meanwhile, Nathaliey had called her strongest companions away from the wall’s defense, which would leave Toth—assuming he was still outside—without serious opposition to batter his way inside. He’d carry his army with him.

Nathaliey couldn’t do anything about that now, but she could inflict pain on the forces gathering in the meadow and open a way to the Golden Pavilion. She reached into the ground with her magical senses and felt for the stones buried beneath the sod. The keepers had been busy since the last attack, and there was plenty of power down there to draw. Somewhere beneath the meadow was the library vault, as well, but it was so well hidden that even knowing it was there, she couldn’t sense it.

A hand tightened on her forearm. It was Markal, cloaked in concealing spells, and he drew her into his protective zone.

“No, not here,” he said. “Not yet.”

“They’re going to attack the master. We have to stop them.”

“We’ll be stronger at the pavilion,” he said. “Narud and Chantmer will be on their way, too—I heard your call. Together, we can win this fight.”

She stared at him, and his eyes, cloaked in the shadow of his concealing spell, glittered back at her like embers. Did she trust his judgment? Yes.

“Lead the way,” she said.

They hadn’t gone more than fifty feet, creeping along beneath Markal’s concealing spell, when another swarm of dragon wasps descended on the meadow, the largest force yet. They must have finally shredded whatever defensive dome protected the gardens. There were scores of them, so many that they darkened the sky. It was a horrific sight, and they were all carrying gray-cloaked passengers.

So many marauders. Where had they all come from? Somewhere, back behind his lines, Toth had been raising an entire army of his half-dead warriors. Nathaliey felt like she would choke on despair.

And then a familiar piercing whistle shrieked from the west. A massive wave of griffins dove from the sky. They opened their beaks, and the air filled with their screams. Eager griffin riders leaned out with swords flashing in the late afternoon sun.

There were more dragon wasps than griffins, perhaps two to one. But the wasps were descending, not yet at the ground, and each was laden with a rider and a passenger. The creatures could barely lift their heads before more than a hundred griffins slammed into them from above.

The griffins were bigger, stronger, and more disciplined than the wasps, many of whom tried to throw their passengers and flee. Some winged south, and when the others saw them escaping, they tried to break, too. A dragon wasp slammed into the ground near Markal and Nathaliey, then tried to crawl away as its guts spilled out and its tattered wings hung limp. It dragged a dead rider with it, crushed in the fall. Seconds later, a griffin fell nearby, swarmed by three wasps, who bit and clawed at its wings. One of the wasps got hold of the griffin rider and carried him away in its jaws.

The battle was still raging overhead when Nathaliey and Markal reached the pavilion, but wasps were dying all around, plummeting to the ground, while the griffin losses were slight in comparison. By the time they scaled the pavilion steps and she looked behind her, the rout was on. Wasps fled in every direction, their numbers gutted, and there were more dead marauders littering the ground than live ones ready to charge the pavilion. Yuli had bought them a reprieve.

Memnet was alone with two archivists, Karla and Erasmus. She’d hoped to see the orb in hand, light flaring out, but it remained hidden. No surprise, as disappointing as that was. He’d exhausted its strength already. Exhausted his own strength.

“We have won some battles,” he said. “Lost others. But the overall war remains in play.”

He sounded remarkably calm, considering that more than a hundred marauders were making their way across the meadow toward them. The defenses in front of the shrine remained dormant.

“There’s a dark acolyte out there,” Nathaliey said.

“I feel him. Do you know which one?”

“Vashti. The one Markal and I faced. The one who tried to turn me.”

“We can handle Vashti,” Memnet said. “Where is the dark wizard?”

“He’s battering down the north gate,” Chantmer’s voice said. He threw back his cowl and materialized in front of the steps to the shrine. His expression was dark. “He was already almost through when I got Nathaliey’s call—we couldn’t hold him back. I would imagine his army is pouring in from the north already. Ten thousand men, and more marching from the Tothian Way.”

“Another army is hitting the east gate,” Markal said. “We killed a thousand, maybe more. I’d estimate another five or six thousand are on their way from that direction.”

These two bits of news hung grimly in the air, casting more of a pall over the pavilion than even the sorcery radiating from the meadow.

“We won’t abandon ourselves to despair,” Memnet said. “Narud is on his way, and others from the order. We’ve lost little so far. We’re alive, and we have our strength and the power of the garden. Griffin riders cleared the wasps from the sky, and paladins are riding hard for the meadow as we speak, with several thousand Eriscoban troops entering the west gate. They’ll be here, too, and we’ll make a good fight of it.”

Nathaliey studied the marauders, trying to figure out what they were up to. It wasn’t a straightforward charge. For a moment she thought they were lost, caught in the perception-distorting effects that she’d noted when coming out of the woods. And if regular enemy troops were on the way, surely the marauders would wait before attacking the Golden Pavilion. Vashti cast his malignant aura over them, but she couldn’t sense its purpose.

A small knot of marauders moved in a line across the meadow. They triggered one of the wards buried beneath the sod. It vibrated momentarily, then exploded with a blast of dirt and rock. The marauders flew backward. But the effect was muted, and the men quickly picked themselves up. Another ward went off a few dozen paces away, with similar results. One of the men who’d triggered it clenched his ankle as if it were broken, but the rest were on their feet again in seconds.

“What are they doing?” Nathaliey said.

“Weakening the defenses,” Markal said. “Triggering our traps, and Vashti’s sorcery is rendering them harmless. They’re clearing the meadow so others can cross without dying.”

That explained a good deal, but the marauders were the enemy’s shock troops, his champions. It was hard to imagine that Toth had gone to so much trouble to bring them into the heart of the gardens, leaving scores of dead marauders, wasps, and riders across the meadow, simply to clear the defenses for the regular troops. There must be some other purpose. She voiced this concern.

“You may be right,” Memnet said. “But we can’t risk waiting until they’ve battered the meadow and rendered it harmless. It’s time to attack.”

They groped outward for the buried defenses. Nathaliey sent the meadow rolling. Chantmer raised debris, heaving up the dead and injured, including dragon wasps, and making it rain on the enemies’ heads. Markal twisted the perspective, and a number of marauders turned around and disappeared into the woods. A smaller number of them emerged again a minute or two later, confused and stumbling.

Memnet stood at the edge of the raised platform and leaned against one of the wooden pillars holding up the roof. Keepers had repaired the damage from the enemy’s earlier, failed attack, and freshly carved and painted figures wrapped around the columns. He closed his eyes and materialized the orb. Meditating, it seemed.

The others were still harassing the marauders when Narud arrived with several acolytes, keepers, and lesser apprentices. Others from the order shortly followed from around the lake path, and they soon had over half their number at hand, with more arriving every minute. The gardens had hidden their passage and protected them as they made their way to the Golden Pavilion.

But the retreat to their final sanctuary left the gardens protected only by the magic imbued in the walls, trees, stones, and streams. The enemy was battering through. Smoke rose from the north. From the west and south came a booming sound like boulders hurled against the walls.

The first Veyrian troops appeared on the far shore of the lake. Only a few dozen hardy men at first, those who’d forced their way up from the south gate, but there were soon hundreds piling up behind them, all trying to circle around toward the pavilion. The path threw them into the lake or the surrounding marshes. Chantmer gathered a few lesser members of the order and set off to challenge them.

More troops emerged from the woods, the first of the army arriving from the north and east gates. They were battered and bloody, and many had likely fallen along the way, suffocated by vines, dragged under by tree roots. Drowned in pools and ponds that lured them in and held them under. Even so, hundreds were shortly streaming from the woods, and battle trumpets blared from the north, south, and east, marking the progress of more Veyrians through the gardens.

Since Memnet remained on the upper platform with his eyes closed, the others looked to Markal to organize the defense. Keepers had arrived with garden tools, and he set Narud to organize them digging a trench in front of the Golden Pavilion. It was a repeat of the tactic they’d used in the earlier battle, only Narud was stronger than he’d been a few months earlier. He loosened the soil with an incantation, and the dirt practically leaped out of the keepers’ shovels. Still, it was a stopgap measure, at best. The trench might drag people down, but there were so many enemies. Toth could fill the trench with dead and use them as a bridge for the rest to come over the top.

Nathaliey and several of the acolytes and keepers kept the enemy busy with the defenses buried in the meadow, but she’d already exhausted the runes and wards closest to the woods. There were more in the last few hundred feet before the pavilion, but she’d have to wait for the enemy to make its charge before activating them. Vashti remained in the meadow, casting his auras, clearing the minds of the troops so they could march.

“Toth is coming,” Markal said. “I can feel him, can you?”

Yes, she could. A dark heart of sorcery, somewhere in the woods, moving south toward them. It was so strong that it seemed to rise with the smoke from the burning woods. He’d arrive in minutes. Even before that happened, the enemies in the meadow might reach the Golden Pavilion. They trudged grimly forward, with Vashti’s sorcery spurring them on. She turned a desperate look to Memnet. The master was sitting now, cross-legged, with the orb on his lap. What was he waiting for?

And then, when Nathaliey’s hopes had sunk almost as low as they could, paladins galloped into the meadow from the west. The Blackshields. Captain Wolfram was at their head, together with several others she recognized from a distance.

Wolfram came upon a group of marauders on foot who were driving two or three hundred men on the west flank, apparently trying to bring them to the shore to meet the other army fighting its way around the lake from the south. The paladins hammered into them and quickly drove a wedge into their forces.

Nathaliey sent a small spell of confusion in that direction, targeting the Veyrians. The regular troops turned about, seemingly blinded even though it wasn’t yet dusk. Paladins cut them down to get at the marauders, who put up a good fight, but they were on foot, and few in number on that side.

If Wolfram had immediately pressed forward, he could have galloped across the meadow and reached the Golden Pavilion at the head of a hundred or more paladins. But he held position, even as massive numbers of enemy troops surged into the gap to hold him. The captain’s motive was soon evident: he was protecting columns of barbarian troops marching hard behind them. The Eriscobans rushed into the meadow and lowered a wall of shields and spears just as the Veyrian troops slammed into them.

With Wolfram’s mounted troops still scattering the initial force, the newcomers held position against the Veyrian surge while more Eriscobans joined the battle every moment. The fighting grew hot across a broad front. After five minutes of furious fighting, several hundred barbarian foot soldiers had forced their way into the meadow and staked a position against the enemy furiously trying to dislodge them. More troops from both sides arrived with every passing moment, and there would soon be too many for the meadow to hold.

For the moment, the two sides were evenly matched. Foot soldier for foot soldier, and paladin for marauder. Except that Nathaliey knew King Toth’s army outnumbered Wolfram’s eight to one or more. The weaker the gardens grew, the more the sheer weight of numbers would favor the dark wizard.

In fact, for all of Wolfram’s efforts, at least a thousand Veyrian troops were still marching on the Golden Pavilion. It took both Vashti and the marauders to keep them moving against the tricks and confusion that the order and the gardens were throwing their way, but their progress and eventual arrival at the trench and then the shrine seemed inevitable.

Memnet rose to his feet at last. The orb glowed in his hand. “I’m ready to fight.”

Nathaliey couldn’t help herself. “It’s about time.”

“By the Brothers,” Markal said. “What do we do?”

Memnet nodded at Nathaliey. “Ring the bells. Strengthen our friends and weaken our enemies. The rest of us will scatter this army to the wind.”

Nathaliey hurried up the steps to the upper platform of the Golden Pavilion and approached the massive brass bell that hung from a cord beneath the pitched roof. The bell dangled until it was only a few inches off the ground, and a stout wooden beam hung next to it—the bell hammer. She grabbed the hammer, ready to pull it back and let it fall. The bell would release its deep, sonorous note to roll across the battlefield. Magic would strengthen their friends and weaken their foes.

But something in the room felt wrong.

It was something bitter, something spoiled. Something rotten. And there was an odd clarity to the light. With the sun dropping swiftly toward the horizon, it should be darker in here, with the nighttime gloom already settling where the curved roof blocked the sunlight.

Nathaliey lifted her eyes even as the wooden beam fell and a deep, booming gong rolled out from the bell. The light came from a man-sized hole in the roof. Someone or something had attacked the pavilion from above, torn through the tiles, and hacked through the wooden structure beneath to get through.

Only a dragon wasp could have approached from above, so heavily cloaked with sorcery that nobody had spotted it descending, distracted as they were by the marauders landing in the meadow outside. And if someone had landed on the roof and come through, that could only mean . . .

Nathaliey had only let the hammer fall once, and she released it and took a step back. Hands out, palms down, blood to the surface. She spoke words in the old tongue.

“Reveal that which is hidden. Show mine enemies.”

Shadows cleared from rafters. A dozen marauders clung to the wooden beams above her. As their disguise dissipated, they released their grips without a cry or signal and dropped to the platform in front of her like giant gray spiders.

One landed directly in front of Nathaliey. He fixed her with his dead-eyed gaze and drew a sword from over his shoulder with his right hand. He had no left hand. Red fire danced along the blade.

Hamid. Captain of Toth’s marauders. In his hand, Soultrup, the soul-stealing sword.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Markal stood next to Memnet as the master drew power from his orb. Narud approached, and Chantmer was falling back from the lakeshore with the others, the enemy army temporarily bogged down in swamps.

Whatever Memnet drew would be powerful—he sensed it, felt it vibrating in his bones—and would smash the enemy army in an awesome display of power. Markal needed to watch.

The bell rang behind him, and power, confidence, and strength flooded his limbs and sang in his blood. He braced himself for another gong, but it never came. Memnet continued his work, the orb glowing ever brighter in his hands, but something seemed off to Markal. Why only ring the bell once?

He turned around as Nathaliey staggered back from the central room. Her robes and hair billowed from magic, and blood fell streaming from her hands.

Markal raced up the stairs, not understanding the problem, but knowing that something had gone wrong on the upper platform. He grabbed Nathaliey, who whirled on him with wild eyes, as if he were attacking her, before she gave a start. He dragged her back toward the stairs.

“What is it? Is there—”

He saw Soultrup’s glow before he saw the red sword or the marauder wielding it. Hamid stepped out of the bell room and onto the exposed upper platform. A malicious grin stretched across his face—rage, madness, and triumph all swirling together. Other marauders came after him. Hamid gave a tiny flick with his sword tip, and the marauders leaped at Markal and Nathaliey.

A burst of light hit from behind, followed by a rolling shock wave. It struck Markal, and he staggered on the stairs and stumbled down, with Nathaliey tumbling after him. The blast drove the marauders backward, saving him momentarily. An instant later, the air vanished from his lungs, stealing his warning cry and turning it into a wheezing gasp.

Still lying on the ground, Markal turned his head to see Memnet, Narud, Chantmer, and the rest facing the meadow as a wave of green and yellow light rolled across the battlefield, the cause of the double-fisted shockwave that had first knocked Markal down, then sucked the air from his lungs. The rolling light slammed into the Veyrian army and threw enemy soldiers into the sky.

Or rather, it threw parts of them. They seemed to be coming undone at the extremities, with legs, arms, hands, and heads plucked off and cast about. A wretched, anguished shriek rose from the survivors.

Memnet and the others still faced outward, studying the gruesome aftermath of the master’s spell, watching the shattered remnants of the enemy army try to pick themselves up and hold the line against the surging Eriscoban forces. None seemed to have noticed the marauders who’d infiltrated the Golden Pavilion. Markal still couldn’t catch his breath to shout a warning.

Hamid leaped from the top of the platform, jumping over Markal and Nathaliey, who remained on the ground. He cleared them both and sprang at Memnet the Great with Soultrup in hand.

Markal found his voice at last. “Master!”

Memnet turned around, and Markal’s hopes vanished with the look of surprise on the master’s face. The orb was a dull piece of glass in his hand, the power expelled in a single crushing blast. Memnet lifted his hand and gave a flick of the wrist as Hamid brought Soultrup down with a grunt. The sword bent slightly and sliced Memnet’s arm instead of his neck.

Markal was on his knees. He knew a spell. It would throw the marauder captain from his feet. That’s all he needed, and then his companions would regain their composure and destroy Hamid with a barrage of magic.

“Labi et cadere. Lapidem te percussit.”

The power was there; Markal spoke the incantation perfectly. Blood streamed down his forearms. But it was a weak effort, the sort of spell casting he thought he’d left behind. It was crippled with doubt. The strength of it dissolved into the air like a pinch of salt dropped in boiling water.

If he’d been facing a common soldier, he’d have hurled the man to the ground anyway, but this was Hamid, the marauder captain, and the feeble remnants of Markal’s spell hit his cloak and rolled harmlessly away. The enemy didn’t even stumble.

Hamid pulled back Soultrup, leaned his weight forward, and thrust with all his might. The red sword plunged into the master’s belly.

Memnet the Great opened his mouth in a silent gasp. Something moved, shimmered at his lips and nostrils. His soul. So tightly bound, it had even held when the master was decapitated. But not today. The soul bled from his mouth and nose, and Soultrup glowed with a hungry red fire as Hamid pulled it loose and let out a triumphant cry.

Memnet the Great, the master wizard of the Order of the Crimson Path, slumped off the end of the blade and fell dead in a pool of his own blood.

#

Wolfram’s energy was finally fading, finally dissolving into the exhaustion of the road and the relentless pace of battle, when a bell gonged from the shimmering golden temple on the edge of the lake. Fresh energy surged into his limbs, and the paladins and foot soldiers around him gave a spontaneous battle cry.

At the same time, the enemy blanched, turned weak against the Eriscoban spears and swords, as if the ringing bell were having the opposite effect on their morale. Formerly implacable opponents lowered their swords to be slaughtered, while others cringed against the blows while trying to fall back to safety.

Moments later, the air near the small knot of wizards and their ilk at the Golden Pavilion flashed with green and yellow light, and a wall of strange fire galloped across the meadow. It stuck the mass of Veyrians, tearing them apart and scattering their body parts, and pushing the survivors back toward the woods before it finally exhausted its strength. Marauders and foot soldiers alike died. By the time the carnage ended, only a thin wedge of trembling, retreating footmen stood between Wolfram’s army and sweeping the meadow clear of the enemy forces.

There were still thousands of Veyrians out there, including a massive force slogging around the lakeshore, plus more already emerging from the woods, but Wolfram spied his chance. Before giving the order to charge across the meadow, he glanced at the temple to make sure the wizards weren’t planning a repeat of the fire attack. He couldn’t risk getting caught in the devastation.

And that was when he saw that something had gone wrong at the very heart of the wizards’ defenses.

There were only twenty or thirty men and women at the temple, and when Wolfram first arrived, it had looked as though they’d be overwhelmed by enemies. There were so many Veyrians and marauders that no amount of magic seemed adequate to hold them back.

But the battle had continued, and he remembered Nathaliey’s comment about an army at the heart of Aristonia. The wizards’ shrine was as good as a fortress, nearly unassailable, and after the crippling wave of magical fire, he’d thought them nearly invulnerable.

But suddenly there were enemies in their midst—marauders, recognizable in their gray cloaks. Where had they come from? They must have been hiding inside the temple itself. Weapons flashed in the late afternoon sun, and Hamid was at their head, with the red sword gleaming fire. One of the figures fell.

Wolfram raised his sword and roared a battle cry. It seemed impossible that it would carry over the clash and shout of battle, but Marissa and Lucas were fighting by his side, and they raised his cry. It spread from there. Soon, a hundred Blackshields were shouting as one.

He spurred his horse and charged across the meadow, with the others following in a thunder of hooves. He could only trust Baron Knightsbridge to hold rest of the army, to brace them against the new enemies surging from the woods into the meadow.

Wolfram rode through a shimmering, translucent curtain, and the landscape changed before his eyes. The temple was no longer close, but a tiny, gleaming dot on the horizon, the golden roof going dark with the fall of night. Then something else happened, some lifting of the spell, and he was once more only a few hundred feet away and closing fast.

There was a trench in front of him, and it yawned, a gaping chasm. A hundred feet wide and as deep as a canyon. He remembered the illusion of the stretching horizon, and took a chance, ordering his horse to leap it. It jumped, and then he was over. The horses of his companions followed, landing one after another. He slid from the saddle and ran toward the stairs leading up to the temple platform.

A horrifying sight greeted his eyes. The great wizard lay motionless at the foot of the stairs. Possibly even dead. No, it was unthinkable.

Three other members of the order had also fallen, and lay in bloody heaps, their eyes glossy. The remaining members of the order fought back against the marauders with spinning ethereal hammers, fists of air, cracks of energy from the sky, and other magical attacks, but a dark energy poured across the meadow and flowed into the marauders to strengthen them against these attacks. The marauders swung their swords, but the wizards vanished when the blades struck, only to appear a few feet away.

Hamid stood above them all at the top of the platform. He still held Soultrup, glowing with red fire, but the sword writhed and twisted in his hand, trying to tear itself free. It had turned against him; it would not fight. It was then that he knew for sure that Memnet was dead, and his soul inside the red sword. Memnet was inside, fighting for control of the weapon.

A marauder threw himself at Wolfram, and he lifted his shield and blocked the attack. He brought his own sword around from the shoulder and landed a crushing blow on the marauder’s breastplate. The man went down hard. Then it was a whirlwind of thrusts, blocks, and hacks as he fought his way up the stairs. Marissa was to his left, also dismounted, and she launched a flurry of attacks to reach his side.

She cut down another marauder, but two others moved to stop her, and there was some sort of sorcery pulling from the meadow, an attempt to influence the battle from afar, which drew the attention of Wolfram’s paladins and the surviving wizards.

He was alone when he reached the top of the stairs. Hamid still held the sword and leered at him.

“Your wizard is dead, and I have his soul. I will have yours, too, Wolf.”

Wolfram studied the man. Muscles bulged in his forearm and shoulder as he fought to keep the sword from trembling. A sheen of sweat stood out on his forehead. A vein throbbed at his temple.

Wolfram held out his left hand. “Wizard,” he said, not to Hamid, but to the sword. “Deliver Soultrup into my grasp.”

Soultrup gave a violent twist and bent the marauder’s arm at the shoulder and elbow. He cried out and dropped it—no, almost threw it—and the sword slid across the wooden platform to stop at Wolfram’s feet. He dropped his shield and picked it up in his left hand. His own weapon remained in his right.

The red sword was alive. A storm of shouting, raging voices spoke inside Wolfram’s head, some telling him what to do, to obey the sorcerer, to kill himself, to kill Hamid, to put the sword down. To run, to fight, to cower, to give orders. A hundred contradictions, all in his head at once. A calmer voice spoke above them all.

I am Memnet the Great, and I have taken command of this weapon.

“Yes, wizard,” Wolfram said. “I hear you.”

Hamid launched himself forward with an inarticulate scream.

Wolfram meant to hold Soultrup back with his left hand while he killed Hamid with the sword in his right. The last thing he wanted was to put this twisted man into the weapon to fight alongside Pasha Malik and other malignant souls for control.

But the red sword had other ideas, and seemed to move of its own accord. The tip lowered and then his left arm thrust violently upward as Hamid threw himself at Wolfram’s throat. The marauder impaled himself on the sword, and his own weight drove him down onto the blade before Wolfram could pull back. A strangled cry. Something shimmered around Hamid’s mouth and nose, then slithered down the length of Soultrup’s blade. It was devouring his soul.

Wolfram braced himself for a struggle as Hamid’s soul joined the others, but to his surprise, his grip felt stronger, more sure. The weapon seemed lighter, even, in spite of its length and apparent weight. Another voice spoke.

I am Hamid, whom some call the Noble. You have released me from bondage, my friend. I join the great wizard. I fight against the sorcerer who enslaved my soul.

Now it was Wolfram’s turn to gape, even as he understood his error. His own sister had once been in thrall to King Toth and his necromancy, and it should not have been a surprise that others had been corrupted into service of the dark wizard. Men and women who were not naturally his enemy.

The rest of the marauders died seconds after their captain fell. Lucas took one, Marissa another, and Wolfram hacked down two in quick succession before he had a chance to think of what to do with Soultrup. The red sword wanted to fight. It would hardly let him stop. When the last of the marauders fell, he looked down at it in wonder and fear. The fighting had begun again within the blade, the struggle for control. Memnet was there, Hamid and others, and they continued to force aside the darker voices striving with them.

The surviving wizards gathered around their master, and it dawned on their faces that he would never rise again. Markal and Nathaliey were both still alive, as were two others that Wolfram’s eye marked as leaders of the order, one tall and proud looking and the other with dark eyebrows and an intense, almost wolf-like look to his gaze, and these four attempted to rouse the rest from their stupor, but Memnet’s death and the murder of others of their number had effectively crippled their strength.

Meanwhile, events continued to evolve in the meadow. Baron Knightsbridge had the bulk of his forces in position. They’d been pushing toward the woods, moving over the dead and dying obliterated by Memnet’s killing wave. Maybe three, four thousand enemies had perished in the assault, but already their numbers were being replaced by thousands more surging out of the woods.

The enemy stopped Knightsbridge’s advance and pushed him back. A large force peeled away from the Veyrian army and marched on the Golden Pavilion while their comrades pinned the Eriscobans in place. Three riders led them, and a dark sorcery rolled out from them. Wolfram had remounted, prepared to lead the Blackshields back into battle, and he nearly fell from the saddle as sorcery struck him.

Of the three figures, the one in the middle drew his attention until he could hardly look away. The very air around him shimmered, and night gathered into a pool of inky darkness over his head. Wolfram stared, and there could be no doubt.

King Toth had arrived on the battlefield.

Chapter Thirty

Markal was still reeling over Memnet’s death. Even as they fought on, bringing down the marauders who had somehow landed on the roof of the Golden Pavilion undetected, broken their way in, and then emerged to murder the master, even as Wolfram gave battle to Hamid and killed him, and even as Chantmer arrived and shouted that they must renew the fight, he kept looking at the master’s lifeless form. Kept remembering the way Memnet’s soul had bled from his mouth and nostrils to be devoured by the cursed red sword.

That sword had found its way to Wolfram’s hand, and fought on their side now. That was Memnet’s doing, he was sure, and in a sense, the great wizard was still alive in there. But that didn’t ease the terrible pain. Or change the fact that they were now leaderless, and King Toth was riding toward them at the head of an army with two of his dark acolytes by his side.

Narud spun him around. “Markal! Tell us what to do.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“By the Brothers,” Nathaliey said, “you must.”

Don’t you see? It was my fault. I could have saved him. I had the spell, I had the magic. And I fumbled it away.

But they were all looking at him: the other wizards, the acolytes, lesser apprentices, keepers, and archivists. Even Chantmer. Nearly thirty of them. Presumably, the rest were dead. This was everyone who remained of the Order of the Crimson Path. And they were looking to him to save them.

Toth and his acolytes threw sorcery at them, and his knees buckled. The Eriscobans in the meadow began to falter. The first troops of the second Veyrian army were almost around the lake, having slogged their way through swamps and clouds of biting, stinging insects. Through treacherous bogs and stinking mud. Thousands of foot soldiers stretched around its bank, all coming this way.

“Markal!” Nathaliey said.

“Ring the bell,” he said at last. “Knock back that sorcery. Don’t enter alone—there might be a marauder still up there.”

He turned to Chantmer, who looked strong and confident. Apprentice or not, he was as powerful as any of them. “Defend the trench. Take as many of the order as you need.”

“Send Narud instead.”

Markal gave Chantmer a sharp look. “That’s where the enemy will first hit. That’s where the glory is.”

“It’s Narud’s trench. He is the better defender.”

“What does it matter who dug the trench?”

Nathaliey reached the bell, and it rang deeply as the hammer struck. Another gong, then another. Each time it rang, powerful magic surged out. The bell drove back the enemy’s sorcery, and when it hit the Blackshields, who’d been milling about on their horses, Wolfram lifted his sword and gave a shout. Scores of paladins rode out from the Golden Pavilion to meet Toth and his forces.

“It’s what the master would have wanted,” Chantmer said. “Markal, you have to trust me.”

“Narud, go,” Markal said. “Defend the trench.”

The Blackshields met advance elements of Toth’s army and hacked them down, and such was their zeal and the ferocity of their assault that they made an army of thousands falter, which gave the main Eriscoban force a chance to advance into their flank. But the barbarians shortly came under attack by archers from their left and the dark wizard’s sorcery from in front, and the advance slowed. Keepers heaved up defenses from the meadow, battering Toth with stones, shaking the ground beneath the Veyrians’ feet, and making horses panic.

Toth cast a black thunderbolt at Wolfram. The Blackshield captain lifted Soultrup, and red fire appeared. The blast of shadow hit the sword, raced along the blade, and vanished, absorbed by the weapon.

Markal now stood alone with Chantmer at the base of the Golden Pavilion. “What do you mean? What exactly did the master want?”

“You have to listen to me,” Chantmer said. “And listen carefully.” He sounded more sincere than Markal had ever heard before, earnest and almost pleading. “This has to be done before Toth crosses the trench. Do you understand? Once the enemy crosses the trench, all is lost.”

“We’ll throw him back.”

“No, Markal, we will not. Look at the battlefield. Look at what is happening. By the Brothers, be honest with yourself. Memnet the Great is dead, and the battlefield looks like this.”

Chantmer waved a hand at the meadow, and Markal couldn’t help but look with fresh eyes. The Blackshields were already faltering. They’d scythed through the front rants of the enemy army, but lost fifteen or twenty paladins to blasts of sorcery from Toth and his acolytes. Wolfram was withdrawing to join the main Eriscoban army, which was already hemmed in on two sides, with enemy troops moving to seal them in on the other two. Even worse, there was no effective opposition to the Veyrians coming around the lake. At their current pace, they’d be at the trench in ten minutes, maybe less.

Nathaliey kept hammering at the bell, but the magic it sent was losing strength, each ringing note slightly weaker than the previous.

Markal had seen a battle over the trench before, when the enemy attacked in much smaller numbers. When the master was still alive. When palace troops were on hand to kill those who made it over. When King Toth lost his nerve in the final attack. And it had still been a very close thing.

“There’s still a chance,” Markal forced himself to say. “If we can hold Toth himself on the other side . . .”

He didn’t finish. And how would they do that?

“It will be night in fifteen minutes,” Chantmer said. “Then the wights come over the garden walls.”

Markal blinked. “Wights? But we finished them off in the swamps.”

“You can’t seriously think that tens of thousands of wights were all gathered by the Harvester in a single night. You know that’s impossible. Hundreds must have escaped—some number of the dead always do—and if Toth bound those souls once, he can gather them a second time. The garden walls have fallen. There is nothing to keep them out.”

“Then we’re dead.” Markal’s voice sounded flat, like something from the grave itself.

“We are not dead,” Chantmer said. “But . . . we need to take drastic measures.”

Markal stared at him. He began to understand. “This is what you were talking about? The lines radiating out from the temple?”

“Yes.”

“Like the walled garden, the desolation we caused.” It was no longer a question.

“Yes.”

“And you’re talking about destroying the whole of the gardens, obliterating it all. Leaving it a dead zone where nothing will grow, where nothing but wights will flourish. A blasted desert forever.”

“I am not talking about the gardens, Markal. I’m talking about Aristonia.”

Markal barely managed a whisper. “No.”

“It’s the only way to be sure,” Chantmer said. “If you only destroy the garden, Toth will use his sorcery to fight clear, probably taking marauders and dark acolytes with him. We’ll have destroyed an enemy army, destroyed our gardens and our strength, but left the dark wizard alive. Alive with his cities, his sorcerous highway, his fortifications. But if we extend the destruction, he will never outrun it. It will overtake him and he’ll die.”

“But . . . but, how?”

“Lines radiate from here to the walls, and from there to the fairy forts, the standing stones, the old shrines, the Sacred Forest.”

Markal put a hand to his forehead, which had a sheen of cold sweat. “Even the Sacred Forest?”

“The master showed me how to activate the stones when we were returning from Syrmarria with the books. Not all of the old places are active, but enough are, and they will shatter the spells holding the others in place.”

The ground rumbled. Nathaliey stood atop the stairs behind them with her palms out, blood flowing down her forearms. The meadow threw up boulders and dirt and sod. Veyrians screamed. Others were at the trench already, hurling themselves into it, forced through by the sorcery Toth poured into them. Narud and his companions killed those who made it across, drowning them in dirt turned soft as mud, or even picking up stones and bashing them on the head.

Close now. Very close. King Toth was on the verge of a total victory.

And as Markal took it all in, he knew that Chantmer was right. As horrible as it seemed, the only way to defeat the dark wizard was to destroy it all.

To destroy Aristonia. Yet hadn’t Aristonia already fallen? The population was either in chains, burned in the inferno of Syrmarria, or fleeing south into the desert, where they’d be a people in exile in the sultanates. And now the gardens were gone, too.

He managed a nod. “Make it happen.”

“No, Markal. You will make it happen. Go to the platform and call up the desolation spell.”

“And you?”

“I will shield what I can, save who I can. Make sure there’s someone left to retrieve the books from their protective vault.”

“What about the books? Will the desolation . . .?”

It was a last gasp attempt to turn away from the inevitable. But the remnant from the library was well protected in its vault. The master wouldn’t have put them down there, then given Chantmer instructions to destroy the whole of Aristonia if the precious tomes, scrolls, and tablets could not be preserved. Indeed, this final, desperate defense was as much about the books as anything else. The master valued that knowledge more than his gardens, the Sacred Forest, his own life, and the lives of his followers. More than the entire, precious realm of Aristonia.

He left Chantmer and climbed the stairs, his legs like blocks of stone. Nathaliey was on her knees at the edge of the platform, gasping with her head bowed in defeat. So much blood around her, a dangerous quantity. She’d used everything, had nothing left to give. She lifted her eyes as he moved past her, and a frowning question appeared on her face. He turned away.

The roof boomed, and the rafters shook. Bits of wood rained down from the hole cut by marauders, and the bell hummed with the vibration. Another boom, but this one trailed out like rolling thunder, and the whole building shook. Toth was bombarding them with stones.

He knew, even before he put his hand on the brass, that the initiating spell would be in the bell. As his hand met the cool metal, it hummed beneath his fingers, dark and terrible, ready to leap out at his command. He only needed to activate it. Only needed to destroy everything. Only that.

A scream from outside, and shouts. Veyrians were coming over the trench. Narud’s voice rose in the air, booming some incantation. The whole building shook, and a powerful spell blasted toward the enemy. Men screamed, horses whinnied in terror and pain. And still the attackers shouted and drove forward, and the bombardment against the roof carried on.

Narud had acolytes at hand to draw from, but whatever he’d cast to throw enemies back from the trench would have taken blood, must have taken the greater part of his remaining strength. Nathaliey was spent, and now Narud. Memnet was dead, his orb drained, and the meadow had given up its runes and wards.

What was left? Markal and Chantmer, that was all. Markal to destroy, Chantmer to protect. Markal wanted it to end, wanted to die before he had to witness the horrors that were to come, but knew he had to pull himself together and call up this terrible spell.

Both hands on the bell, he spoke the words in the old tongue. “The pure land sacrifices in its own defense.”

Pure, rich magic. It was in this shrine, and the meadow beyond. In the lake, the gardens, the forests and farmlands beyond. All of Aristonia.

The bell was humming, and the ringing echoed in his ears. It was no longer cool, but hot, and glowed with fire when he removed his hands. He pulled back the massive wooden bell hammer, hesitated when he held it drawn, and let it fall.

The single deep chime was unlike anything he’d heard before. It was a heavy, chilling ring that continued to reverberate and even grow stronger as it vibrated through the air.

No more warmth. In fact, the air grew cold and dry. And then everything went dark, and Markal’s legs crumpled underneath him.

#

Wolfram didn’t understand what was happening at first. It was almost dark, with the moon glowing cool yellow overhead, and he’d fallen back, unhorsed, lightly wounded, and exhausted. The Blackshields fought on, but many had died, including Sir Lucas, with a spear shoved through his shoulder that took him off his mount, and a dagger thrust under his breastplate before his companions could come to his aid. Wolfram had lost half his paladins already, along with hundreds of Eriscoban soldiers, either killed by Veyrians or torn to pieces by enemy sorcery.

Soultrup had cut down a score or more enemies. There were good, bad, selfish, and indifferent souls—all manner of people thrown into the weapon—and he kept control as the sword sang with the blood of its victims. Veyrians saw the red blade and fell back in terror, but others pushed them forward, and the killing went on. There were too many enemies. Far, far too many. He lost his horse. Found another. Lost it, too.

The only thing that kept his forces from being overwhelmed was the enemy’s ferocious assault on the lakeside shrine itself. Veyrians were attacking from all sides. They filled the trench with their dead, then scrambled over the bodies to get at the wizards fighting on inside. Just when it looked as though the temple would be overthrown and its defenders massacred, a single ringing note sounded from within.

It was a black note that rang and rang, and his guts turned to mush low in his belly, as though the Harvester himself had reached in his bony hand and torn out his soul. A collective wail rose on the battlefield, from enemy and friendly forces alike. A darkness deeper than night rolled across the meadow, and men, grass, and horses withered before it like handfuls of green leaves thrown into a fire.

There was a single pinprick of light around the shrine, and he saw those within as through a bubble, protected as others died across the battlefield. The blackness reached the woods beyond, and trees withered, leaves falling into dust and bark sloughing off.

The wave came toward him, and he stared grimly, ready to die. But it rolled past him, and he was still alive.

To his astonishment, he realized he was within a light bubble of his own, together with Marissa, several other Blackshields, and hundreds of regular troops. Others were on the outside, including many of his paladins, and they looked back at him with horror, reached out for him even as shadows curled around them. Their faces opened in terror, their cheeks shrank to the bone, and their eyes blackened and ran like tar down their faces.

Wolfram called a retreat, and the bubble moved with him. The surviving Eriscobans followed, and they fled the battlefield. Others were still alive outside, somehow eluding the destruction that kept spreading out as the bell continued to ring. They were marauders in gray cloaks and dark acolytes with horses dying beneath them. But they didn’t last long. They ran a few feet, sometimes farther, until their feet turned to dust and their legs withered into blackened sticks.

He kept running and running, terror carrying him along with his surviving forces. They reached the crumbling gate just ahead of the spreading desolation. There, they found other Eriscobans in full flight. Some found their way into the protective bubble. Others didn’t and died.

The destruction kept spreading beyond the gardens. Trees withered, the ground split. Hedges, grassy hills, abandoned fields—all crumbled to dust. And still they fled west.

A horse and rider overtook them a few miles from the gardens, pushing past the Eriscoban army, fleeing inside his own bubble. The animal frothed, nostrils flaring, as the rider drove it relentlessly. The man was wreathed in shadow, reflecting moonlight like black obsidian, but Wolfram could see inside, see the man’s wheat-colored hair and intense gaze—a man not so different from Memnet the Great. With a chill, he realized that it was King Toth, the sorcerer himself, escaping the destruction. Toth rode past them and vanished on the road ahead.

Except that King Toth didn’t escape. They came upon him a few minutes later, his horse gone, disappeared into ash and dust, while the sorcerer himself lay writhing in pain as the destructive shadow seeped through his spell of protection. The shadows pooled around him, slid over his body like dark shrouds. Toth threw back his head and screamed. His eyeballs melted, and his wight bled from his mouth and nostrils as he died.

Wolfram had hesitated to watch in grim, horrified fascination as his enemy finally died, and now hurried to catch up with the others, a staggering, exhausted army of survivors, before they left him behind and took the protective bubble of magic with them. After that, he ran and ran and ran, long past when he should have collapsed. The bubble, he realized, wasn’t merely protecting them, it was also carrying the survivors to safety.

Behind, the desolation continued to spread. Mile after mile after mile.

Chapter Thirty-One

Markal wished he hadn’t seen the desolation. He wished he’d either died, or stayed in a stupor, or been awakened by his companions at a later point, preferably in a land far away, only to be told of its aftermath. And told it in small portions until the entirety of events could be digested.

Instead, he witnessed its full horror.

He’d blacked out after striking the bell, but within seconds awoke to find Nathaliey and Narud dragging him across the upper platform to the top of stairs. A deep chilling note reverberated behind him, ringing and ringing.

His companions had exhausted their magic in the fight, and were barely able to stand themselves, let alone help him down the stairs, and he shrugged off their help. The paint blackened and peeled on the battered columns holding up the roof of the Golden Pavilion. The roof turned dark, the gold seeming to rust or turn to dull lead. The stairs warped and split beneath their feet.

Chantmer and the other survivors gathered in a shrinking bubble of light that expanded to envelop Markal, Nathaliey, and Narud as they approached. The pavilion itself remained outside the bubble and seemed to disappear into the blackness. Outside the bubble, everything was howling and black, like dust and shadow in a terrible, gathering desert windstorm. Bones fell from the sky, as if torn from the bodies of the armies and showered down as rain. They took refuge in Narud’s trench, atop a heap of dead enemy soldiers, while Chantmer worked to strengthen the protective bubble to shield them. The noise outside was terrible and unrelenting. Howling, moaning, shrieking.

“Where is Wolfram?” Markal cried over the racket.

“I sent him away,” Chantmer said.

“You sent him to die?”

“Not to die. Not the paladins.”

“And the others? The rest of the Eriscoban army?”

Chantmer’s expression turned grim. “I saved who I could. Many . . . yes, many couldn’t escape in time. The protective cocoon was not big enough. The others will reach the border if they keep running. I did what I could to strengthen them, but some may falter.”

“What about the griffin riders?” Markal asked.

“They fled. They survived.”

“And the enemy?” Nathaliey demanded. “What about the dark wizard? The marauders? The dark acolytes?”

“The enemy troops died,” Chantmer said. “The dark acolytes and marauders made it a little farther, but they won’t have reached the garden walls. I don’t know about Toth.”

One of the lesser apprentices spoke. Kreth. “I followed the dark wizard with a seeker. The shadows had touched him. His bones were turning to dust. The desolation will catch him, and he will die.”

Markal nodded. It was clever thinking on the young apprentice’s part.

But a small satisfaction. The destructive spell was tearing the land apart; it would leave nothing behind, the very soil poisoned. Only two things would survive, he thought, apart from the people protected by Chantmer’s magic: the vault with the books, and the Tothian Way. One the work of wizardry, the other sorcery. Too much magic bound them to the earth, and not even the desolation would destroy them.

All around, the wind kept howling, pressing in on the bubble, and they gathered what strength remained, fortified their tiny sanctuary, and hunkered down to wait it out.

By morning, the howling was still going strong, but the buffeting winds seemed to have died, and a thin, pale light filtered through from the rising sun. One of the keepers shared out a little bread and cheese she’d carried on her person—the last food from the gardens any of them would ever eat—and this strengthened them enough Markal thought they should make an attempt for the Tothian Way.

“The highway will shield us from the desolation,” he said. “We’ll work our way east.”

“Why east?” Nathaliey asked.

“Because I’m not ready to find Wolfram and explain why we killed thousands of Eriscobans,” he admitted. “And I don’t want to see Yuli, either, assuming she gained the mountains ahead of the storm. How are we going to explain what we did? How am I going to explain it?”

“Someday you’re going to have to explain to us, too,” Nathaliey said. There was something in her voice that he hadn’t heard before. Something hard. “Why you destroyed everything we’ve ever worked for, why you annihilated our homeland.”

“It wasn’t only his decision,” Chantmer said. “We spoke together.”

“That is not a comfort,” she said coldly. “Not in the slightest.”

“It was the only possible way to save the order,” Chantmer said.

“The order is destroyed anyway,” Nathaliey said. “The master is dead, half our number killed. Some of them probably by your destructive spell. The books are unrecoverable at this point. We have nothing, Chantmer. Nothing.”

“We have our lives,” Chantmer said.

“Yes, well. For now.”

Markal had no answer for her. All he could do was organize them to escape from this hellish landscape. They threw their magic into Chantmer’s magical bubble and carried it with them north toward the Tothian Way. The landscape was unrecognizable, and their feet kicked up dust and bones. Once, they came upon a single blackened trunk of a tree, which Narud thought was a sentinel tree that had stood near the north gate. They must be leaving the gardens, or what remained of them. But there was no sign of the garden walls. Markal’s stomach turned over, and he thought he might be sick.

They reached the Tothian Way that afternoon. The fortresses that lined it were in ruins, and there wasn’t a soul on the road itself; anyone who’d found themselves here when the desolation rolled across to the other side must have fled east. They found supplies among the heaps of abandoned gear, though, including food and drink.

Later that afternoon, they encountered a donkey in the middle of the road. It brayed and rushed to nuzzle them. Markal scratched its head while Narud whispered in its ear to ease its trembling fear. As Nathaliey was loading it with salvaged food and gear, Markal met her gaze over the animal’s back. She sighed and looked away. He thought her expression might have softened slightly, but couldn’t be sure.

They continued east, with more evidence of abandoned camps along the way. Veyrians were superstitious sorts, and must have thought the world was ending as the desolation spread. Their army seemed to have vanished, either dead or melting away to the east and their homelands. Once word reached the khalifates, Markal guessed that immediate revolt against Veyrian rule would be the result.

It took two days for them to get clear of the desolation. It didn’t end all at once; the destructive wave had rolled through, scorching grass and killing trees, but the ground no longer had the blackened, barren look, and when they stepped from the road, they didn’t face a choking, poisonous atmosphere.

Markal began to give thought to what was next, how to rebuild from this catastrophe. The journey had been a quiet one, with almost every conversation relating to immediate practical matters: how to protect themselves on the road, what to do if they met with Veyrians or bandits, how to be sure that the food and drink scavenged from the abandoned supplies hadn’t been contaminated by the rolling desolation. Nobody had broached the subject of how to carry on.

They reached the outskirts of Syrmarria. The desolation had stopped several miles to the west, but the city was destroyed all the same. Fire still smoldered deep in cellars or beneath piles of rubble, leaving a pall over the ruins. They entered through a rubbled stretch of the western wall of the city, and stood in the shade of a watchtower that leaned drunkenly to one side. There was no road visible anywhere, but some areas had been so thoroughly scorched as to open wide channels through the wreckage, all the way to the palace hill.

“Are we safe?” someone asked.

“The salamanders are gone,” Markal said. “Clawed their way back down to the depths.”

“The people are gone, too,” Chantmer said.

Indeed, apart from a single bony dog that came snarling from a hollow between two collapsed houses, then retreated, whimpering when they stood firm, they had not seen a single living thing since entering the ruins of Syrmarria.

Narud found a way up the hill toward the palace, and they continued in silence, with only the shuffle of feet kicking up ash to mark their passage. The donkey kept his head down, nostrils pinched.

The lower palace was nothing but lumps of brick and stone melted to a smooth, glass-like rock, but a handful of buildings remained intact on the crown of the hill, including an upper terrace, the vegetation burned except for a pair of lemon trees that had somehow survived the conflagration while shielded in a stone courtyard.

Once they reached this sheltered spot, Chantmer bent and dusted ash from a flagstone. “Here’s one of our old wards. Never triggered.”

“And here’s another,” Narud said. “Let’s see if they’ll lead us to the library.”

Using the surviving buildings and the lingering magic as guides, they picked through the ruins of the palace, trying to identify what landmarks they could. It was the archivists who eventually found the library, with Karla fetching Markal to tell him she’d located it beneath a mass of melted stone. Together, the four greater members of the order broke apart the stone with their magic. Beneath it lay a deep melted pit, and a light spell showed that it was a shaft burrowing deep into the hill.

“The library is gone,” Markal said, a hollow pit in his stomach. “The salamander must have burrowed his way back down after devouring all the books.”

That hope gone, they retreated to the upper terrace. It was late afternoon, and the sun descended in an orange haze to the west. Beyond the ruined city, the once fertile land of Aristonia seemed to have turned to desert, even before hitting the desolation. To the south, more desert. To the east, the land remained stricken in drought.

The others milled about as if waiting for Markal to say something, and he looked them over. There were eighteen survivors: Markal, Chantmer, Narud, Nathaliey, three keepers, two acolytes, five lesser apprentices, and four archivists.

“The order is dissolved,” he said. This brought gasps, frowns. “Not by me. By the death of our master, our home, our homeland, and the destruction of our library. Without those things, we’re not an order of wizards.”

“What are you saying?” Chantmer asked. “We all go our own way? Is that it?”

“No, we start building, we make something new.”

“Starting from nothing,” one of the lesser apprentices said.

“Not nothing,” Nathaliey said. “Not everything was destroyed.”

“That is true,” Markal admitted. “There is the vault with our books, the ones we saved from the destruction. We need someone to return to the gardens to recover them from the desolation. Not now, but as soon as it’s safe.”

“I’ll go,” Chantmer said.

“It won’t be easy,” Markal said. “You’ll have to cross the desolation, locate the vault amid the destruction, and find a safe place to store the books. That might take weeks, months. Maybe years.”

“Understood,” Chantmer said. “Give me the archivists. They can help. But where would I take the books once I’ve dug them out of the vault?”

“Here, to Syrmarria,” Markal said.

“There is no Syrmarria,” Nathaliey said. She’d grown up in the palace, daughter of a vizier, and as she looked around, the pain was etched in her face. “Only this ruin.”

That gave Markal another idea. “Syrmarrians still live. Aristonians, too. Nathaliey, you can bring them back. As many as you can find. Is Sadira still alive? She could be khalifa. Your father her grand vizier.”

She looked doubtful. “I don’t know, Markal.”

“It’s the only way to preserve a remnant of our people,” he said. “If you don’t, they’ll dissolve into the sultanates. Slaves, servants, a scattered, wandering people. Within a generation, they’ll be gone. Take the apprentices with you. Acolytes, too. The sultan of Marrabat is a difficult man—the best way to free our people is to show your power.”

“But where do I bring them? Here, to this dead city?”

“It won’t be so dead by the time you return. It’s only burned, it’s not poisoned. The keepers can set about clearing ash and seeing that what lives on this hill survives and grows. They’ll start here and spread down to the souks, bring it all back to life. Aristonia is dead, but this small part of it can continue.”

“And what about me?” Narud asked. “What would you have me do?”

“Go to the mountains. Find the woman with the emerald crown and beg her forgiveness for the near destruction of her people. Make friends with their animals, show that you are—well, not an ally, but not an enemy, either. While you’re in the mountains, you may as well look for the old hermit. Tell him about Memnet’s death, and ask how we’d go about forming a new order of wizards. He’s seen the dissolution of a magical order before—he might know what to do.”

Narud looked solemn. “Yes, I’ll do that. Assuming he’ll talk to me.”

“But what about you, Master?” Karla asked.

Markal winced. “I’m not the master. We have no master, and no order, do you understand? We’ll form an order some day, when we are reunited again. Bring honor and memory to those who died. Jethro—he died on this very hill—sacrificing himself to the fire salamander. That’s our legacy.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Nathaliey pressed. “What will you do?”

“I’m going west. I’m crossing the Dragon’s Spine. The war left Eriscoba in tatters. Thousands died, many because of my spell. I’m going to find Wolfram and his paladins and beg their forgiveness. If there are marauders still in Eriscoba, I’ll help him hunt them down. If any of the free kingdoms have fallen into famine and war, I’ll put things right.”

“And when you’re done?” she asked.

“Then I’ll come back.”

That seemed to settle matters, and they sat down to work out practical considerations. Someone lit a fire on the terrace, using dead, charred trees from the gardens. Markal fell silent and listened to the others talk for a while.

He’d been separated from the order for lengthy periods before. Most of them had. But this would be different. They might not see each other again for years. Was this the right decision? Maybe they should stay together, retreat to a sanctuary in the desert to rebuild their strength. Could it be that his decision was too hasty, that he should wait for a few weeks before deciding?

They’d left the bags next to the donkey, which rested beneath the lemon tree, and Nathaliey went to fetch a bottle of wine and two cups. She beckoned for Markal to follow her away from the warmth of the fire.

“Please tell me that’s wine from the gardens,” he said as she led him to the edge of the terrace.

“Alas, no. It’s sour Veyrian slop.”

“Ah, well. It’s wine.” He helped her open the bottle and pour.

“I want to show you something,” she said, setting down the bottle. “Look what I spotted.”

Nathaliey nodded out toward the city. There, to the north, some distance beyond the ruins of Syrmarria, was a tiny pinprick of light.

“Someone else is alive out there,” he said. “Veyrian soldiers?”

“It doesn’t matter who. Veyrians are human like any of the rest of us. And the war is over.” She took a deep breath. “I’m feeling better. I’m ready to stop blaming, to stop feeling like the world has ended.”

“I wasn’t ready . . . it was too much responsibility. Why me? Why couldn’t someone else make the decision?”

“Someone else did,” she told him. “Memnet the Great decided. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have shown Chantmer how to activate the desolation spell. Chantmer wasn’t even a wizard, but the master chose him.”

“Are we sure he’s not a wizard? Has anyone asked Chantmer about that? Maybe the master did it before he died.”

“What does it matter now?” Nathaliey said. “He’s as strong as the rest of us, and since you didn’t accept the title of master when it was offered, the matter is probably out of your hands.” She shook her head. “That’s not the point, anyway. The point is that Memnet told Chantmer, not you, because he needed to be sure it would happen, and he didn’t trust you with the key to destroying everything, because he wasn’t convinced you’d go through with it.”

“But I did go through with it. It was my doing, Nathaliey. I spoke the words, and I rang the bell. Aristonia tore itself apart because of my actions.”

“And because of that, we’re all still alive, and hundreds of Eriscobans, too. If you hadn’t, Chantmer would have, and he couldn’t have then protected those of us who survived.” She put a hand on his arm. “We won the war. It was a costly victory, but did you ever think that it would come easily?”

“It was more than costly. We lost the library, lost the master, lost Jethro, lost acolytes. Two-thirds of the order was killed before it ended.”

“And I thank the Brothers that you weren’t one of them.”

Markal looked away.

“I missed you,” Nathaliey continued. “When Jasmeen was torturing me, forcing me to drink that poison, I kept picturing you at the gardens. I imagined your crooked smile, the raised eyebrow you give me when you say something funny. When I was weakening, I imagined what you’d tell me so I’d hold on and fight a little longer. I didn’t turn into a dark acolyte because of you.”

Markal turned to look at her. His throat felt tight. “Don’t stay in the sultanates forever. Get your father, get the princess, and bring our people back.”

“Same to you. Don’t turn into a barbarian while you’re over there. Come back and help me rebuild.”

“You won’t be rid of me that easily,” he said.

“Good.”

There was nothing left to say, so they drank their wine and looked at the distant campfire flickering on the Tothian Way. From behind came the murmured voices of their companions sitting around their own fire, waiting out their final night together, after which they would break apart to go their separate ways.

They’d suffered their blows, and the cost of victory was terrible, but if that was the will of the gods, so be it. Tomorrow, they would begin to rebuild what had been lost.

-end-

Afterword

Thank you for reading the Red Sword Trilogy. To receive notice when my next book is released, visit my web page to sign up for my new releases list.

As you might have figured out by now, this trilogy has a tie-in with the Dark Citadel Series, which you can buy here in a single box set compilation, available also on Kindle Unlimited.

Warning: read on from here only if you’ve already read the Dark Citadel series. There are spoilers below!

In that earlier series, I allude to the events of the Red Sword numerous times, and I’d long planned to go back to the earlier war and write this story. How long? To give you an idea, I started writing The Dark Citadel nearly twenty years ago. It wasn’t the first book I ever wrote, but it’s the earliest work of mine that has been published.

I wrote the first two books of that series, and then nothing happened. Publishers expressed interest, nibbled, and declined. The books sat in a dusty corner of my hard drive, and I doubted they’d ever see the light of day.

When I finally revisited them in 2011, I saw that they were actually pretty good, albeit in need of some editing. I published the first two books of the series, and they found an audience, which encouraged me to finish the story. I want to give a special thanks to those readers who first started reading The Dark Citadel back in the day. Without you, this current series would have never been written.

By the time I picked up The Dark Citadel again with the third book, I’d changed a lot as a writer, become more focused. Instead of trying to go in every possible direction, I kept an eye on bringing the war to a conclusion, answering questions about griffins, wizards, and dragons along the way. There was so much fantastical material in the first two books that I fought hard to keep from getting into the weeds and exploring it all, making a decision in favor of an active, engaging plot.

Alert readers will note that some of the events mentioned in The Dark Citadel don’t always match 100% with what actually happens in The Red Sword. I’m happy if you tell yourself that this is because the details of the earlier war had become confused with the passage of time and generations, but I’ll be honest. It’s because I needed to stay out of the weeds.

The history of Soultrup and Memnet is certainly there, and we see how the destruction of Syrmarria laid the foundation for Balsalom to rise from its ashes. I also answered the questions about the Desolation of Toth. Hopefully, that was satisfying, even as it was horrifying to witness.

But as I started to think about Jethro the Martyr, I thought I would change these details. I also left off the cloud kingdoms because it was simply too much for this series, but that leaves plenty of ideas for a follow-up series to this one. I won’t give too much away on that score, apart from saying we don’t yet know how the cloud kingdoms were created, we have a lot of questions about the dragon wasps, and our order of wizards is in chaos.

So yes, I’ve got another trilogy in mind. How quickly I start work depends in large part upon the sales of this one. I’m writing these lines exactly one week before the release of the first book in the series, so I really have no idea how well it will sell. But peering in my own orb of power, I can see ways in which this happens more quickly, and that rests in part on your shoulders.

If you loved The Red Sword Trilogy, a review on Amazon really helps readers find the books, which speeds that process along. Just like those early readers of The Dark Citadel, you can do your part to bring about the books you love to read.

Meanwhile, thanks again, and I hope you’ll check out some of my other books while you’re waiting. If you’ve already read The Dark Citadel series, and are willing to venture a little out of your comfort zone, the three overlapping series of The Starship Blackbeard universe give you thirteen full books of adventure and imagination to explore. You can get the first seven books in a single compilation here!

Table of Contents

Book One: The Red Sword

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Book Two: The Black Shield

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Book Three: The Emerald Crown

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One