Wizardborn, page 34
“Once I figured that out, and thought of setting fire to the plains, the rest was easy. Not a man will die!
“Knowledge!” he shouted. “Knowledge is better than a fine warhammer!”
Reavers threw themselves from the rock. Instead of merely climbing down, some dared to try leaping a hundred yards to safety, only to shatter legs under the impact.
From out of the smoking tunnel, the last few scarlet sorceresses and blade-bearers fled.
Averan had given Gaborn the weapons he needed to dislodge the reavers. A sense of horror welled up in her. She had not meant to cause such mindless slaughter.
A sound like rising thunder rose on the plains south. The surviving reavers formed into columns and began to retreat. The earth trembled at the sound of the stampede.
Gaborn glanced at her and jutted his chin toward the cliffs. “Let’s go see if we can find the Waymaker.”
44
PRAYERS IN THE DARK
When seeking the aid of higher powers, any place of power is suitable. Wizards of the Air will climb a mountaintop, sorcerers of Fire need only stare into the flames, wizards of Water bathe in a pool, while those who serve the Earth seek the touch of soil.
The higher powers often answer our petitions.
Men seldom listen.
—Except from The Child’s Book of Wizardry, by Hearthmaster Col
Raj Ahten and his men hurried along the Old Fortress Trail south of Maygassa. He’d hoped to get fresh horses, but rode his camel still.
The trickle of fleeing humanity had become a flood—a surging tide of bodies that could not fit within the confines of the trail, but which spilled out on both sides, so that hundreds upon hundreds marched abreast through the jungle. For long hours Raj Ahten had to ride slowly along the side of the road to make it through the throng.
Overhead, in the dark of night, monkeys leapt through the trees shouting in panic and hurling bits of fruit and leaves, until the very jungle seemed to shake.
On the banks of the Kelong River he stopped near a bridge an hour past midnight and watched his people all in one sweep. The Kelong was wide, with rice paddies planted along both banks, and afforded him a good view of the exodus. What he saw made him tremble:
The people hurried along the river by torchlight. At any moment, he saw tens of thousands of them—men with walking sticks and immense bundles on their backs, struggling forward like oxen, wearing only loincloths and a thick coating of sweat. Women carried baskets on their heads or babes strapped to their chests.
Too many men and elephants had tried to cross the bridge at once. Now the bodies of elephants lay among the shattered timbers in the shallows.
So the people slowed to wade across the river.
All of humanity was there—a proud lord rode beneath a silk canopy upon a white elephant, arrayed in a coat made of cloth of gold. His guards sported fine red silk trimmed with otter fur. They surged through a throng of peasant women adorned only in shifts of crudely dyed cotton. Wealthy merchants traveled as merchants will—in rickshaws pulled by poor laborers so blunt-faced and brutish that they seemed more animal than human.
Whole families rode in rugged flatbed wagons drawn by water buffalo. One man pulled a handcart, with his infirm wife loaded in the back as if she were a sack of gingerroot on its way to market. An old philosopher had students, their heads all shaved except for their scholars’ knots, carrying cases of scrolls. Elsewhere, caretakers used bamboo rods to herd madmen and fools who were naked and chained together at the ankle.
The waters of the Kelong flowed slowly. Burning torches reflected from its surface, while smoke hovered above it in a blue haze.
Fathers and mothers groped for a foothold as they bore their young. Raj Ahten spotted a small girl who looked much like Saffira’s eldest daughter, riding in a pack on her mother’s back.
The mother stumbled and slipped beneath the muddy waters of the Kelong. When she surfaced, her child was gone. Peasants nearby shouted and peered into the depths of the river. Some dove under the dark water, seeking the girl by feel alone.
But their panicked search yielded nothing. Soon the child would surface, Raj Ahten knew. She would float facedown for a while, perhaps, until she washed up on the shore with the others that failed to make the passage.
The people kept coming. The exodus stretched beyond the horizon.
A peasant who had nearly crossed the river spotted Raj Ahten’s camel. He pointed and began to shout, “O Great Light, protect us! O Sun Lord, we beg of you!”
Other men and women heard the call, spotted Raj Ahten in the darkness. They began struggling to reach him, staggering in the muddy water. Soon a vast throng began shouting, clasped hands raised before their faces.
Distantly, he could smell death—the familiar stench of reaver’s blight.
He ordered his men to bypass the throng, and quickly forged the river, while pleas for his aid rose up as if on dark wings into the night.
An hour later he reached a hillside that looked over the plains. Three miles off, the jungles and grasslands steamed, turning gray before his eyes.
Masses of humanity snaked over the road in a vast throng. Their lanterns shone like a river of light. They would never outrace the reaver mage’s curse.
On each side of the road, an ancient city carved of white stone lay like broken bones upon the jungle floor.
The air filled with hissing, as if wet flesh sizzled in a fire. Not half a mile downhill the reaver’s curses struck: leaves instantly curled inward, then fell from the trees, leaving branches naked. Vines and smaller limbs dropped or writhed under the onslaught. Entire trees cracked as if lightning had taken them.
Clouds of parrots, weavers, and finches rose up and wheeled above the destruction.
The horizon showed an empty landscape of blight for as far as the eye could see. He was still a hundred and eighty miles north of Kartish.
“There will be famines this year,” Bhopanastrat said, “no matter what we do.”
The enormity of the destruction overwhelmed Raj Ahten. It would take days to truly settle into his bones.
Raj Ahten swatted his camel’s nose with his riding prod, forced it to kneel. He climbed down. “Let the animals forage,” he told his men. “It might be the last food they get for days.”
The eyes of Bhopanastrat and his men bored into his back. He could tell that they all wanted to know what he would do. But no man dared ask.
All day long, his muscles had felt weak somehow. Now his left hand was trembling.
Despite all that he could do, despite his endowments, Binnesman’s curse threatened to destroy him.
He rode through the night, past vacant cities over a landscape that was a surreal horror.
Creatures still lived. Tarantulas crept through the ruins, feeding on mice and linnets. But the trees were down. From horizon to horizon, not a blade of grass survived. The stench of rot filled his nostrils.
His people fled, but not all could make it. Raj Ahten found the dead along the roadsides—men who had worn their hearts out in a single day of running, the old, the infirm. Some of the dead had had their throats cut for a morsel of bread or the use of an ox.
The utter desolation drove out all worries of Wuqaz Faharaqin crying for his blood in the streets, or of Gaborn plotting his downfall. Nothing that men could do would ever compare to the malice of the reavers.
Hours later, just before dawn, he came upon one of his armies—three hundred thousand common soldiers twelve miles north of the Palace of Canaries.
They’d camped in a deserted city for the night to chew their rations and make peace with themselves. Their sullen faces stared up as he rode through the city, men in straw hats or turbans, eyes clouded with despair.
Even if they managed to drive back the reavers, there would be no food for man or horse for more than a hundred miles in any direction. Judging by the grim expressions on their faces, the warriors knew that they went to die. Here and there he heard men muttering solemn prayers in the dark.
When they saw Raj Ahten, some raised a shout of triumph, but most just gazed at him with sullen curiosity.
Hovering over the midst of the camp was a silken balloon shaped like a graak.
Beneath it, his flameweavers sat cross-legged before a campfire, along with his Days. The hairless flameweavers gazed up expectantly as he neared.
“What news from the front?” Raj Ahten asked.
“Aysalla Pusnabish leads your men,” Rahjim answered. “All day yesterday he probed the reavers’ defenses. Many men died.”
“How many?” Raj Ahten asked.
“Most of the knights in your cavalry, O Great One,” Rahjim said.
Raj Ahten breathed out a curse. The mines at Kartish were an open pit with steep sides and tailings piled haphazardly. Such terrain favored reavers, not cavalry.
“How can this be?” Raj Ahten asked.
Rahjim shrugged. “The reavers have built a fortress. The fell mage who guards it is mightier than the beast you faced in Carris. But all is not lost. Pusnabish has prepared well for the battle tomorrow.”
Raj Ahten stood rubbing his numb left hand, trying to increase the circulation.
The flameweaver Az nodded toward it. “You are feeling worse?”
“I’m well enough,” Raj Ahten said.
“I can heal you,” Az offered. But Raj Ahten wanted none of his healing—not at the price of his humanity.
Raj Ahten cast a cold eye on his army. These were troops of old Indhopal, dressed in simple breastplates with spiked helms on their heads, and round targets clamped to their left forearms. They bore weapons fit to kill reavers—oversized longspears, warhammers, and axes. But men without endowments would not fare well with such weapons. Even if a man could swing these warhammers, he’d tire quickly.
Three hundred thousand common troops would be ineffectual against the reavers. But Raj Ahten could think of some use for them. At the battle for Carris, when confronted by masses of men, the reavers balked. They could not detect which men might be Runelords and which were commoners.
The reavers’ ignorance might be his best weapon.
Raj Ahten called upon the powers of his Voice and his glamour, and shouted. “Honorable warriors of Indhopal, I salute you! Now is the hour we have feared. Desolation is upon us. Only your strong arms and brave hearts can save the day. Tonight the kingdoms of Indhopal live or die by our valor. Tonight I will lead you in a war like none that mankind has ever known! Ride with me now, ride for Indhopal!”
The power of his Voice surprised even Raj Ahten. The weary men raised their weapons and cheered like berserkers.
He leapt on his camel and raced before them so that even the wind could not catch him.
In the winter, snow fell heavily in the Alcairs, leaving the mountains white. It melted throughout the summer, feeding the rivers that tumbled over the green slopes. In the Valley of Om on the southern verge of Kartish, twelve waterfalls spilled down from the hills.
It was Raj Ahten’s favorite place in the world. Every year on the first day of the month of Poppies, he would journey to Om. Always the pecan blossoms were in bloom, and the new grass grew lush and fragrant, and the red poppies covered the valley while the waterfalls spilled from the freshets into languid pools, misting the air above the Palace of Canaries.
The grounds around the palace were pristine. No man or animal was allowed to trample them, and the palace itself was a gem.
Its walls were made of thin slabs of yellow marble, and at night when the lanterns were lit within, the whole complex shone like burnished gold beneath the starlight. On such nights the palace earned its name: for the palace took its name not from canaries, as some supposed, or even for its yellow walls—but rather from the songsters who vied for the honor of performing within its great arching acoustic hall.
Many were the pleasant nights that Raj Ahten had spent listening to songsters in the jasmine-scented hall, wandering the pristine poppy fields, gazing at the waterfalls and the palace in the moonlight, seducing young women.
He’d lain with Saffira here.
Raj Ahten shook the memories away. There was nothing for it. The joy of his life was gone.
Among the Jewel Kingdoms, blood-metal mines had always made Kartish the richest. The kaifs of the land had grown fat over the centuries. They had controlled the blood metal, and could set the prices they saw fit. Beyond that, they knew precisely how many forcibles each lord purchased over the years, and thus by regulating shipments ensured that no one ever built a force powerful enough to strike against them.
Over centuries they acted as puppetmasters, orchestrating the rise and fall of nations that they knew only by rumor. The fat old men had kept their knives to the jugular vein of the world, and congratulated themselves on their cunning.
Of course, they made mistakes. From time to time, shipments would fall into the wrong hands, and the kaifs of Kartish would be slaughtered wholesale. The world hardly noticed, for the sun set on one despot only to rise on another.
Raj Ahten had killed them all easily enough.
When Raj Ahten reached the Palace of Canaries, the palace itself shone as usual, and the falls tumbled like a silver mist in the starlight.
But on his pristine grounds, an army had settled, blackening the land with tents and bodies. The valley would never heal from the double curse of the reavers’ blight and the damage done by the troops.
Dingy fires guttered in the vale. No fewer than two million men bivouacked for miles around the palace. The stench of men, horses, and elephants was unbearable. All through the camps, horses whinnied and elephants trumpeted in hunger while men short of rations sounded loud and raucous in turn. So the valley filled with a noise of pandemonium.
Raj Ahten rode down through the hills while an army of three hundred thousand men raced to keep up.
As he did, heralds bore torches on either side of him, both ahead and behind. Men beheld his countenance, and were cowed by his glamour.
He shouted to the common troops huddled below, his voice a roar. “Men of Indhopal, how can you sit here idle while the reavers call us to war? Rise now! Grab your weapons and armor. We go to battle at dawn. I promise you victory!”
He met Warlord Aysalla Pusnabish at the palace gates. Pusnabish dropped to his hands and knees and did obeisance.
“O Great Dawn of Our Lives,” he said, “we thank you for delivering us.”
“My Dedicates are safe?” Raj Ahten asked.
“We hastened them away at the first sign of trouble, O Great One. By now they have reached the coast, and are sailing north for the Palace of Ghusa in Deyazz.”
Raj Ahten felt weak, disjointed. His left hand trembled.
“What of my forcibles?”
“They are in the treasury, O Sun of Our Morning,” Pusnabish said.
Raj Ahten did not want to hear more. His troops were preparing for battle, and he had enough men that he suspected he could swarm the hills, take the reavers in their lair.
He pushed past Pusnabish and strode through the gilded halls of the Palace of Canaries, up toward his treasury.
“I’ll need my facilitators,” Raj Ahten said, “and men to grant me stamina.”
Pusnabish snapped his fingers at a servant, and the man ran to get the facilitators.
“There is some good news,” Pusnabish insisted, running in his wake. “Our miners struck a new vein of blood ore. It is quite promising, as you will see.”
Raj Ahten smiled grimly.
45
THE NIGHTRIDERS
Many adventures await you upon the road of life. Enter these doors, and take your first step…
—From a placard above the Horn and Hound Pub, the first stop in the Room of Feet
Myrrima didn’t fancy being followed. It was doubly worrying that she wasn’t sure whether the creature tracking them was human or not.
Borenson did not speak as they rode. He peered about, his bright blue eyes alert. Each time she started to open her mouth, he would raise a hand, begging her to be silent. So she held her tongue.
She was a wolf lord now, with endowments of scent from a dog, and sight from a man. Borenson’s nervousness kept her wary, and she strained her senses, sniffing the air and keeping her eyes open for signs of danger.
In the Westlands, the barren plains gave way to woods where hoary trees grew among craggy rocks, limbs heavy with moss. The trees were tall and dark, with only a few ragged gray leaves clinging to them. The earth smelled of mold and fungus. Toadstools thrust up from the detritus in the fens.
It was not hard to envision the wars fought here against the Toth so long ago, or to imagine that the dark pools still held traces of blood.
She wanted to ride through quickly. But the muddy roads forced them to slow their horses to a walk.
It was a stagnant land. In spite of the yawning emptiness, time and again she found herself reaching for her steel bow, slung in its case on her saddle pack.
The forest was dead. No squirrels danced round the sides of the trees to hide when they passed. No deer were startled from the grass if they happened on a glade. Only once in a great while would she catch sight of some dark-winged bird as it darted for cover in a shadowed glen.
She strained for any sound—the buzz of a locust, the pattering of a woodpecker, or the caw of a crow.
But the woods held little in the way of life, and none of it was pleasant. Myrrima imagined that nothing much could live here. Biting flies and mosquitoes swarmed in clouds over brackish pools, and in places they seemed so thick that she imagined that they’d simply strip the hide off any animal that held still long enough.
She did not hold still.
Wights haunted this place, Myrrima knew.
That’s why Borenson shushed her every time she wanted to speak. Wights were drawn to sound, to movement. They hid in shadows. Their icy touch would kill a man.
