Their swords scissor-crossed between them. Drakanna pressed her weight down, and Dane’s muscles burned with exhaustion. The leather armor scraped his skin and gouged his flesh. He held tight as the warrior dame hovered over him, the hilt blade of the
vra’taar
curved down and aimed at his gut, or lower.
Electric frost rolled around them. Dane glimpsed more Blood Knights emerging from the open keep.
Adrenaline surged through him. He shoved the blades away, grabbed Drakanna’s hair, yanked her head back and smashed the hilt of his sword against her face. The mask shattered in a blast of metal and blood.
The Blood Knights were on top of them. Drakanna fell back, clutching her face. Dane grabbed his
vra’taar
and rolled away just moments before an axe-blade smashed into the stone where his head had been. He jumped to his feet and ran.
Dane only made it a few feet when a sharp cord wound around his legs. He flew forward and landed face-first on the stone. The air burst from his lungs, and blood seeped from his lips and ran down his nose.
He used the Veil to push his body up from the ground, then sliced through the cord with his
vra’taar
and spun around just in time to deflect another blow. Dane withdrew as a pair of Blood Knights closed in and tried to flank him. Their great
kan’aars
whirled through the air in a blur of motion. He ducked beneath a swing, slashed up and pushed his foe back, leaving himself open for a blade to slice into the meat of his right shoulder and nearly cleave through to the bone. He screamed.
He threw himself forward and brought his attacker to the ground. The
vra’taar
punched through the man’s chest as they fell, and Dane lifted the weapon and brought the hilt-blade down, nearly slicing the head clean away. Mind focused and heart boiling with rage, Dane brought his sword back over his head and deflected the second Blood Knight’s strike as it came at him from behind. He spun, hacked the
kan’aar
aside and dragged the long blade of the
vra’taar
up the assassin’s torso, slicing him open from groin to neck. The Blood Knight’s jugular sprayed Dane’s naked flesh with blood.
His legs felt like water. Waves of exhaustion pulsed through him. The Veil was the only thing keeping him going, and the cold void inside filled his veins with ice. He looked around and saw no sign of Drakanna, but he heard shouts of alarm as men approached from the keep. He moved deeper into the mist, towards what he hoped was a
cutgate
leading to Corinth.
He saw it – a pulsing doorway of rotting cold light. The gate was easily large enough to accommodate the passage of a sizable military force, and the ground had been stamped down by booted feet and pack animals, great lizards and a single giant.
There you are.
Dane turned to move back for one of the bodies, reasoning he should at least don a cloak before he stepped through the
cutgate
. Chairos likely had forces stationed near the portal on the other end, and it wouldn’t do Dane much good to show up in their midst totally naked.
Sharp pain exploded across his back. Blood oozed down his skin as he fell forward.
Drakanna stood over him, her face lovely and pale and streaked with blood. Her dark hair was unbound and her eyes glared down at him with hatred. She raised her blade to strike.
Dane growled and lunged at her with his
vra’taar
, driving her back. His vision faded in and out. Waves of sickness coursed through him. Drakanna took a defensive stance as men moved through the mist.
Naked and bleeding and clinging to life, Dane turned and jumped through the gate.
Fifty-Two
Corinth had once been a bastion of Galladorian civilization, a beacon of light in a land many considered brutal and uncompromising. The city had been built around a rare oasis of crystal clear water surrounded by palm trees and standing stones, and it became a spiritual center for a people who paid little heed to deities but instead worshipped the land itself. The sprawling city of spires had been a center of science and magic, with colleges of astronomy and some of the Empire’s finest museums and libraries. There had been little to no poverty, a rarity in the oppressive shadow of the Drage Kings – food and money were plentiful, the army was strong, and the bearded rulers were wealthy.
That time had passed. Corinth was a wrecked memory of the heights at which Gallador had once stood. Only the central core was even close to being intact, a cluster of half-collapsed buildings and oddly leaning towers. Blackened ash and bone drifts filled the streets, many of them higher than the shells of fallen buildings, and the broken shards of statues rested beneath oceans of sand and dust. Corinth stank of death even thirty years after it had been reduced to ruins, and the cloying air was thick with insects and sweat.
The cobalt sky faded to bleeding red as the sun struggled to claw its way through the clouds. The wind was thankfully dying down as dusk crept upon them, allowing Ijanna, Kath and their Red Hand allies to move unimpeded towards one of the many breaches in the city walls. Broken streets led them through a maze of ruined stone and steel. The lanes between the hollow buildings were wide enough for Kala Azaean’s mercenary forces to move about with ease, and the roads were hedged in by mounds of decades-old bones.
Ijanna saw the first signs of Kala’s forces at the outskirts of the crumbling city, where twisted brick buildings leaked dust and smoke. Soldiers were stationed along the scant parapets and towers, their bows and spears held ready as they stood sweating in the harsh Galladorian heat. They were grim and stoic figures in cowls and cloaks and light leather armor, and in addition to their ranged weapons they had chained glaives, axes with serrated blades, ballistae, even a mangonel, a brutish device buried behind ropes and piles of rock ammunition. In spite of the number of soldiers there seemed to be plenty of streets where one could move around undetected. It would be easy to get lost, for even in ruins Corinth’s sheer size was dizzying.
A small camp had been set up just beyond a gap in the city wall, and the half-dozen men stationed there made a show of their spiked maces and crossbows. They wore iron shields and Jlantrian armor discolored by ashes and blood. Those sentries watched Ijanna and the others with sadistic smiles on their dirty and unwashed faces, eying the Dream Witch in particular like a piece of freshly caught meat.
The silent Drazzek Ma’al led them past cracked sandstone walls and old structures collapsing under their own weight. Dark-skinned slaves clad in loincloths and sandals dragged stones and barrels of dark earth from a number of massive holes in the ground.
Kath stayed close to Ijanna. They walked near the end of the procession.
“I don’t like this,” he said.
“
I know,” she answered quietly, trying her best not to let anyone hear them, but when in the company of so many Bloodspeakers that proved difficult. She looked ahead at Drazzek Ma’al. The dark-clad figure might have been their only escort, but the show of arms made it clear Kala held the advantage. None of Gilder’s party spoke, but Ijanna was sure they smelled the stain of magic in the air as surely as she did. All of the Bonelands were suffused by an arcane taint – the place had been demolished by Vossian Veilcraft, after all – but there was a particular stench to the wisps of red smoke there in Corinth’s remains, something mercury-rich and coppery.
“
I don’t like this
at all
,” Kath repeated.
“
I know,” Ijanna insisted. “I know, Kath...I’m just not sure what you want me to do it about it.”
She had to meet Kala. They couldn’t have come all this way for nothing.
Ijanna felt Kath’s eyes on her.
“
You should have told me,” he said. His voice was laced with hurt. She didn’t know if he was referring to her knowledge of Malath’s involvement, or Kala’s.
It doesn’t matter. Either way, he’s right.
Ijanna was about to say something when Kath quietly took her arm in his hand and nodded at one of the sentries who watched them from a high wall.
“
A few of these troops are using expensive Jlantrian weapons and armor,” he said quietly. “Equipment of that quality is usually reserved for men being sent to fight Tuscars or defend persons of great importance.” He let that sink in for a moment. “People like Kala Azaean.”
“
Could they have bought it on the black market?” she whispered.
“
Maybe,” he said. “But it would be difficult.” He hesitated. “I think these are Jlantrian soldiers, or at least some of them are. I think Kala brought her honor guard, and that worries me. A lot.”
They walked through clouds of choking haze. Work songs rang loud through the budding night as blood rich sunbeams danced off the faded sandstone structures.
“I’m worried, too,” she said. “But I feel better knowing you’re here with me.” She smiled weakly and pulled him closer as they walked, looking up into his broad and youthful face.
You’re so young
, she wanted to tell him.
Too young to be here with me.
“Thank you,” she said out loud.
“
Don’t,” he said. “You and I both know I never had a choice.”
“
Kath…I remember what you said to me when we first met…about how you really
wanted
to help me, that it wasn’t just the magic. Do you remember that?” Kath looked away. He seemed terrified and angry, but he nodded, the stubble on his stony jaw laced with sweat. “I saw in your eyes even then that you believed that,” she said. “I remember hearing it in your voice.”
I should have let that sickness kill you. It would have been a kinder fate than being tethered to me.
“Thank you, Kath,” she said again. He didn’t reply.
They moved deeper into Corinth, passing between walls shaped like enormous teeth and towers leaning so far it was a wonder they hadn’t toppled. The earth turned dark and moist, not quite mud but difficult to cross, thick with flies and dank red fluid that smelled of decay.
Most of the remaining buildings had partially sunk into the ground, and the street was riddled with footprints and cart tracks and shallow trenches cut in the soil. Ijanna looked for some clue or indication as to exactly what it was Kala was doing there, but she still had no idea. She didn’t know much about the Imperial Crown Princess of Jlantria except that in addition to being well-loved and somewhat impulsive she was also intelligent and cunning. In any case, Ijanna hoped she’d prove easier to deal with than the Chul’s dreaded Witch Mother.
What are you looking for, Kala?
The size of the excavation was impressive. There were easily over two hundred slaves and a great deal of mercenary soldiers present in Corinth. Likely they dug for some hidden artifact or locale, or maybe even a shard of the Stone of Pain, since the ruins of Gallador were supposedly rife with items of magical lore and historical significance. It would have been easy for Kala to fund such an expedition – even as an outcast she was wealthier than most city-states.
The bloody and beaten slaves had been kept just healthy enough that they could continue working. Their dark muscles strained beneath the weight of stones and shovels as they ripped into the ground.
Drazzek Ma’al led the silent troop through Corinth’s torn streets. Ijanna saw ruined structures that had once been schools, homes, shops. She caught sight of a decimated doll, so blasted by time and the elements that little more than its head remained. She saw a shattered mandolin, a blacksmith’s hammer, a chair, the tattered remnants of a dress. All of it lay half-buried in the sand, torn up by pick and shovel.
Large chunks of stone had been piled next to the intersections. Open windows stared out as if possessed of some ghastly and malevolent force, and the shattered building interiors were stained by time and rust. The air was full with the sounds of shovels plunging into dirt and picks striking rock. Dissonant yet melodic work song filled the air, sad and distant, seeming almost not to come from the workers at all but from the city itself, a haunted dirge lifting up from the bone-addled ruins.
Drazzek led the Red Hand to a sort of central city square, an open and blasted area dominated by a huge open pit larger than the rest. Numerous temporary structures had been erected around the periphery of the hole: tents filled with tables and workbenches, cots and tools and buckets of water and gruel. A pulley system designed to haul massive buckets of soil and debris had been erected over the cavity, and the wheels and gears were badly in need of being oiled. Slaves worked in and around the pit with red and black dust caked to their bodies. Overseers in dark leather armor stood by with iron-clad whips secured to their wrists, shouting and cursing at the workers to move faster. The air smelled of brimstone and burning rock.
Twelve large discs of black stone, each standing at least ten feet tall, had been wiped clean of soil and secured by wire and chain to a series of iron posts. The discs were rounded around the edges and about a foot thick, wrought of such utterly dark material they seemed to suck the light from the air.