War of Wizards (22 page)

Whelan had held his sword aloft during the dragon’s initial attack and was still studying the battlefield with such a look of intense, unchanging concentration that it was almost as if he hadn’t seen the beast. Now, he slashed the blade forward, a bellowing shout at his lips. His horse sprang into a gallop. Two hundred men rode behind him. Markal, Narud, and Sofiana joined them.

The collective roar was deafening as they galloped toward the city wall. Balsalomians and Eriscobans parted to let them through. Soon, they were at the breach. The city walls of Veyre were forty feet high and fifteen feet thick at the base, but the mine had collapsed a long section into a heap of rubble that had been slowly stripped away by Whelan’s army throughout the day and night of the attack.

The breach opened between two guard towers. One was ruined and half collapsed, the peaked wooden roof burning. The other remained intact, and the archers above were raining arrows down on the attackers. However, some of the Eriscobans had fought their way up the stone staircase and reached the wall walk, and shortly the archers were driven off.

Markal pushed forward with the king’s mounted force until the bulk of them were inside the city and in the midst of the raging battle. Smoke filled the air from windlasses, wagons, and surrounding buildings roaring with flames from the dragon’s fire. Dead and dying men were all around them. Burned, they all looked alike, blackened and horrible. The smell of scorched flesh was terrible, the screams, like something from a nightmare. The city itself was burning, a conflagration that spread east and south, with nobody to fight it.

The Veyrians tried to form a shield wall when Whelan’s cavalry came through, but they were already engaged in combat. The first thrust from the cavalry broke their ranks. The enemy gave way, and Markal braced himself to charge through, but Whelan held them up. He seemed to have spotted a new threat. Where was that dragon?

Two giants pushed through the enemy soldiers. Each stood fifteen feet tall, wore heavy armor, and was armed with clubs the size of a man and reinforced with iron spikes. A row of Veyrian pikemen formed ranks behind the giants, blocking the street with a second layer of defense. The way seemed suddenly impenetrable, and fresh enemy forces poured in from either side, threatening to trap King Whelan and several thousand of his men inside the city.

A bellowing roar split the air, and down came the dragon, descending from the sky. It landed atop the wrecked, burning tower to Markal’s right. The monster’s heavy bulk broke apart the roof and sent flaming beams thundering to the ground. The dragon thrashed its tail and swung its massive head from side to side to clear the rest of the rubble out of its way. Broken blocks of stone crumbled and fell away.

The dragon sat astride the broken tower, surrounded by fire and death and destruction. It turned its head toward the battlefield below, opened its mouth at Whelan’s army, and blasted fire.

Chapter Twenty

Early in the evening, it seemed as though Chantmer and his mages would finally shatter the army of wights and send them wailing back into the Desolation. The undead army had diminished in numbers night by night. Like a living army throwing itself into battle again and again, gradually expending its energy, the dead also suffered losses. Every time a spell broke them apart or sent them fleeing, those who returned were fewer in number.

Chantmer was in full confidence, Darik thought. The tall wizard strode up and down the walls, his robes flapping in the breeze, snapping orders to wizards and warriors alike. Darik obeyed without complaint, as did Captain Rouhani and Prince Ethan. Even the Marrabatti fought under Chantmer, with Daniel sending out sorties at his command.

The wights had been probing all along the walls and now renewed their attack via the Tombs of the Kings. They infiltrated the sewers, came in through the Nye River, and hurled themselves at the Gate of the Dead. But Chantmer had anticipated just such a move and had positioned three thousand Marrabatti, backed by a hundred of Ethan’s Eriscobans, behind the Gate of the Dead. Darik and two mages cast spells over the weapons of the defenders, and they came pouring out of the city in neatly formed ranks.

Such was the magic drawn from Kallia’s pain that the spells lingered on the swords, scimitars, and spears of the defenders, and they cut back the wights along a wide front. Soon, the enemy was in full retreat, scattering in every direction into the darkness. Defenders cheered along the city walls, and bells rang in the guild towers. Soon, they rang from one side of the city to the other and all the way to the palace.

“No,” Chantmer said. He had appeared suddenly next to Darik and stood wrapped in his cloak, his face hidden behind his cowl. “We aren’t finished yet, not tonight.”

“You think they’ll return?” Darik asked. “They looked broken to me.”

“Look more closely.”

Chantmer peered into the darkness, and Darik followed his gaze. He saw nothing. It seemed as though his eyesight had improved over the past few nights, but a few hundred yards beyond the city walls, everything was an impenetrable gloom.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Don’t look with your eyes.
Feel
. In fact, close your eyes. Your vision is deceiving you.”

Darik closed his eyes, and now he could feel it. A dark, shadowy presence in the distance, retreated, but not fleeing. There was something in that sensation almost like a bitter flavor on the tongue or a lingering smell, like the stench that hovered around the towers of silence with their rotting dead.

He opened his eyes to find Chantmer watching with a knowing look. “You understand? They are readying another attack.”

“Yes,” Darik admitted, discouraged. He was so tired and had dared hope that they had eliminated the threat, not just for tonight, but for good.

Chantmer grabbed a man wearing the cloak of the watchmans guild who had been running along the wall delivering some message or other. The man stopped still and looked at the wizard with wide, fearful eyes.

“Find your captain. Tell him the wights will return. Spread the word. I want every defender at his post. And stop those blasted ringing bells. We have nothing to celebrate, do you hear me?”

#

The weather took a strange turn around midnight. It was late in the year, coming on to winter, when monsoons rolled in from the ocean. The air had seemed heavy and damp, promising rain. But then, the wind shifted and came in off the desert, hard and driving and dry. Soon, it was a full-blown sandstorm.

Darik could not remember such a thing, not this time of year. The archers on the walls around him muttered darkly, and when Chantmer strode up a moment later, the wizard demanded to know if someone had cast a spell to cause the change. Darik was bewildered by the suggestion, as were the other mages gathered nearby.

“Just as I thought,” Chantmer grumbled. “Some evil wizardry is afoot. But I thought one of you might have meddled with the weather in an attempt to break the enemy’s will. Find Haydar and Sameer. I want everyone here. We must take stock of our powers.”

Two of the mages hurried off in opposite directions along the wall walk. Chantmer scowled at Darik and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“What is it?” Darik asked.

“You seem to have preserved some strength. You might be the most powerful magic wielder we have left, after me, of course. And probably Roghan—yes, him. But then you. I never thought I would say that. But there’s a good deal of power in your tattoos. Your concentration was better this afternoon than it has been.”

“I drew that power from the khalifa’s suffering, may she live forever. I didn’t intend to waste it.”

“Indeed. It remains to be seen if you will fumble your strength as you draw it, of course.”

“I won’t,” Darik said stubbornly. “By the Brothers, I swear I won’t waste Kallia’s pain.”

“There will be a good deal more pain for her before the night is over if you fail.”

“There won’t be. We’ll stop them.”

“Hmm.”

Some of the mages had begun to return, but Chantmer didn’t call them over yet. Instead, he moved to the edge of the wall and leaned against the battlement. He held out his hand, as if gauging the strength of the wind.

Darik’s curiosity pushed him to the wizard’s side. He drew his cloak to protect against the driving sand. “Why are they attacking Balsalom? Why are they so desperate to get in?”

“Why seize Balsalom? You see no strategic value in it?”

“I can hear condescension in your voice,” Darik said. “This isn’t about Balsalom’s strategic value, and you know it. Do you know the real reason?”

“Does Markal satisfy your idle questions? Does he let you prattle on about nothing? Is that why you are unable to restrain yourself when you’re with your masters?”

“Sometimes. He shares what he knows because he wants me to learn.”

“Whereas I don’t care if you do or you don’t.” Chantmer glanced at him. “If you have nothing to offer, then it is pointless to give you information in return.”

“Who says I don’t?”

“Very well, then you tell me. Why are the wights attacking Balsalom?”

“It isn’t because of the city’s supplies,” Darik said. “I know that much. If that was the extent of it, they wouldn’t bother to attack, they’d surround us.”

“Do you understand what kind of power is needed to control this enemy? A siege is out of the question. This army was raised to fight, and to fight quickly.”

“Then why here? Whelan and Markal are assaulting Veyre itself. Why not send the wights east to fight them? Why capture Balsalom?”

“Capture? Who said anything about capture?”

“You know what I mean,” Darik said. “Destroy it, then. Why Balsalom and not Whelan’s army? Is it revenge?”

“It wasn’t revenge that led the wights to obliterate Starnar and Ter,” Chantmer said.

“I don’t understand that, either,” Darik admitted. “Was he training his army on weaker foes?”

“He was
building
his army.” Chantmer looked down on him. “He took an army from the Desolation and destroyed those two cities to build another army of undead. This final army is marching east to relieve the siege of Veyre. And when Toth sacks Balsalom, he will have yet another army. This one will go to Eriscoba and finish what the dark wizard began in the Free Kingdoms.”

Darik’s mouth was dry and gritty with sand. “Then Whelan and Markal had better defeat him at the Dark Citadel.”

“You think that matters? Whelan will stand astride Toth’s body and plunge his sword into the dark wizard’s chest, but he will no longer be there. His soul has another vessel right here in Balsalom.”

Darik cast a horrified gaze across the city, toward the slender towers of the palace. The khalifa was there, her body swollen with something that was not an unborn infant, not really. It had been growing inside her for months and now seemed ready to tear itself out. Even now, she might be writhing and screaming in agony.

“Now you understand,” Chantmer said. “Now you see.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Daria had no hope of defeating the dragon. It had grown too large, too powerful, and its fires were fully fed and stoked. If she tried, she’d be burned, torn apart. She and Talon would both die.

But the monster had given chase, and she’d realized she could accomplish her goal without fighting it to the death. Lure it away from the battlefield and give Whelan’s army a chance to break into the city and defeat the dark wizard. Then, freed from Toth’s control, the dragon might flee into the wasteland and trouble them no more.

Daria raced north along the coast, prepared to fly as far as the dragon would follow. But Talon had carried her all day and much of the night and was too tired for sprinting. The dragon gained on them with every beat of its powerful wings. Daria hadn’t flown a mile before she glanced back and was terrified to see it already so close that she could see the smoldering fire in its eyes. She dug her heels into Talon’s side, begged him to reach deep for his last reserves. The griffin turned his head and gave a little cry—understanding or protest, she wasn’t sure—and his wings beat harder. They began to pull away.

Movement caught her eye to the left. Dragon wasps swooped out of the darkness, a dozen or more, with dragon kin on their backs armed with spears and swords. They were about to cut her off.

Fortunately, Daria was several hundred feet over the ground and had room to maneuver. She pulled Talon into a dive, and they went hurtling toward the ground, wings tucked, the young woman flat against the griffin’s back. A spear shot by her shoulder, grazing her.

Daria dove until they were a few feet above the sandy cliffs that lay north of Veyre, and then cut back toward the city and the battlefield. The dragon angled to meet them. It blasted fire at her just as they flew over the top of King Whelan’s army, and if not for an agile, banking, twisting maneuver by Talon, would have scorched them from the sky. Alert archers on the ground fired at the dragon as they passed, but the arrows only clinked off its heavily armored underbelly.

Daria flew west over Whelan’s army and above the Tothian Way. She veered and swooped, but couldn’t get enough speed to shake the dragon, nor maneuver well enough to lose the dragon wasps that continued to harry her. Had she been flying any other griffin, they would have already caught her and killed her. Her only hope lay in reaching her mother and finding her fellow riders had a patrol in the air.

She shortly saw the army of wights. They had continued their hurried march along the Tothian Way and were approaching the outskirts of Whelan’s army several miles west of the city. This seemed to be nothing but a few hundred men guarding wagon caravans against raiders, and Daria saw nothing of urgency in their camp. Whelan’s men had picket lines near their watch fires, but no strong defensive lines.

Sofiana had given a warning to her father about the wights, and Daria had flown over advance riders galloping west to spread the warning; the outer edge of Whelan’s army was now moving into position to blunt the thrust of the undead army, but these men on the far western fringes didn’t seem to have received notice yet. Instead, they looked relaxed and calm. They must be counting their good fortune at being held back from the main battle. They had no idea they would shortly be overrun and destroyed. From Daria’s vantage in the sky, she could see over the next rise, where a good twenty ravagers rode at the front of the surging mass of glowing undead. Perhaps five minutes until they arrived.