Sayeed pulled him down behind a fortification that was little more than a pile of burlap sacks bulging with potatoes. From there, they ducked into a confined space that projected out into the street, bordered by crates and occupied by eight other men, all wearing the blue and gold uniforms of the elite guard. When Sayeed entered the bastion, the men acknowledged his arrival with dips of the head, but that was all. Anything more would announce his value as a target. He shouted something in Malikari to a man with a leathery face who looked like he might be in charge. Rylan turned his attention to the sounds of battle on the other side of the barrier, uninterested in hearing the reports.
When Sayeed was done giving directives, he crouched down beside Rylan, setting a hand on his back. “They are preparing to assault us directly,” he said. “Their numbers are far superior, so we will surely be overrun. The best we can hope for is to slow them enough to cover the retreat.”
Rylan listened to his words without reacting; the situation was what it was—which was why he was there: to make an end, as the Sultan had put it. Looking around at the other men hunkering behind the barricade, he realized they were all there for the same reason. The thought made Rylan sad. Most looked like good men, men who didn’t deserve to die. Unlike himself.
Two more explosions jarred the ground, and fire erupted from a redan out in front of their position. Soldiers engulfed in flames rolled on the ground or threw themselves mindlessly over the breastworks.
“Here they come!” someone shouted.
The air was suddenly filled with the cries of men and the loud rattling of arrows striking helms and shields. There was an explosion. Close this time. The ground heaved, hurling Rylan off his feet, pieces of the street raining down to batter him. He rolled over, scrambling onto his elbows. The man next to him fell over dead, and so did the next one. The man after that was just a boy, who looked at him with tears in his eyes.
“Is it going to hurt?” he whimpered.
“No,” Rylan whispered.
The word barely left his mouth before the boy tumbled backward in a spray of blood. Rylan gazed sadly at the still figure, glad the arbalest’s bolt hadn’t made a liar out of him. He turned to find Sayeed lying on the ground, a crossbow quarrel protruding from his chest. His officers rushed to form a frantic ring about him.
Rylan reacted without thinking. He scrambled forward and crouched at the Sultan’s side. With a twisting motion, he worked the bolt out from between Sayeed’s ribs and flung it away. Then he placed both hands on the Sultan’s chest and sent a potent mixture of healing energies burrowing into the wound. He closed his eyes, feeling the flesh beneath his fingers start to mend, the wound shrinking and then closing entirely. When he opened his eyes, the Sultan was unconscious but alive.
He couldn’t stay that way, or he wouldn’t be alive very long. Rylan smacked his cheeks, shaking him hard to bring him back to his senses. Sayeed startled awake with a great gasp, hands groping at his chest. He blinked his eyes in confusion, looking up at Rylan groggily. The ground shook again, rocking their position. Rylan hauled Sayeed upright, supporting him with a hand under his arm.
“Your Grace, they’re breaking through!” someone shouted.
Rylan glanced in the direction the man pointed, to the other side of the intersection, where an explosion had breached the barricade. A group of city regulars were fighting a losing battle to defend the breach but were dropping faster than they could be replaced. Rylan transferred Sayeed’s weight to an officer and started toward the breach, weaving a light shield as he walked. A barrage of arrows peppered the ground around him, others ricocheting off his shield. Ahead, enemy soldiers overran the breach, hacking through the last of the struggling defenders. Rylan threw his hands up, and fire erupted beneath their feet.
Men screamed and ran, trailing flames after them. Most collapsed to the ground after only a few steps. The others he brought down individually. His chest tightened from the ache of knowing he had just sent more brothers to their graves. These could have been men fighting to defend him. They should have been.
But their deaths weren’t on him. They were on Shiro.
The street erupted in front of him, and then every building surrounding the square seemed to explode all at once. He was knocked off his feet by the concussions, the noise so deafening that it trembled his bones. He couldn’t hear after that, nothing but a high-pitched tone that whistled in his ears. It took him long seconds to recover, for the debris to settle. Then another barrage of flaming missiles rained down on the city, shuddering the ground and thundering the air.
Rylan hauled himself to his feet and looked around. Behind the breastwork he’d abandoned, the ground was on fire. Dead men lay everywhere, some burning, others not. Enemy soldiers poured through gaps in the barricade, quickly overwhelming the defenders that were left. He didn’t see any sign of Sayeed. He trudged forward, fists balled, looking out at the world through bleary eyes that had seen too much.
“Back!” one of the last remaining officers shouted. “Move back!”
The man’s head snapped around as a crossbow quarrel plugged him in the mouth. He flopped to the ground, where he lay twitching. Rylan turned away. He strode forward, hurling fire at the advancing men. Behind him, more Khar soldiers spilled into the square through multiple gaps in the breastworks. Rylan finished off the last of the soldiers in front of him, then glanced behind to find the entire square overrun.
A hand caught his shoulder, and he whirled, reaching for the magic field. He recognized the Sultan an instant before he would have killed him.
“What can you do?” Sayeed demanded, nodding behind them to where enemy soldiers had engaged the last of his rearguard.
“There’s too many,” Rylan said. “And they’re too mixed in with our own men.”
“Damn our own men,” the Sultan growled. “Burn everything.”
And so Rylan did. Dropping the magic field, he reached instead for the Onslaught, drawing the tainted energy into him and then hurling it outward at the fighting. An explosion of green fire erupted in the midst of the square, eviscerating bodies and dousing the ground with boiling blood. The soldiers who survived fled and ran. He realized the Sultan was staring at him, a mixture of wonder and disgust written simultaneously on his face.
A large group of men raced toward them from the other side of the square. Rylan closed his eyes and drank in the Onslaught, saturating himself. Before he could release it, something plowed into him, tossing him to the ground like a ragdoll. He landed on his back and lay there stunned, his breath lost somewhere in his chest. He reached for the magic field.
It wasn’t there.
Startled, he fumbled blindly for the Onslaught.
It, too, was gone.
Rylan froze. Somehow, they had found a way to chain that part of him too. He heard a crunching sound beside his face. Looking up, he saw a man looming over him in layers of black robes, a bone-handled dirk thrust through the sash at his waist. Rylan let his gaze wander slowly upward. When at last he got a look at the man’s face, he winced in shock.
Shiro Nagato stood over him, arms folded across his chest.
44
Warlord
Gil had fallen back to the palace along with the bulk of the Sultan’s forces. Now he paced nervously along the wall-walk, watching the lights of explosions flaring in the distance. They came slowly at first, then all at once, one after another in quick succession, until they climaxed in a crescendo of flames and ground-shaking thunder. When the barrage finally stopped, all was still and silent, save for a smoke-fed breeze. The city of Karikesh had fallen with a gasp. He drew in a long, shuddering breath, knowing the enemy would soon be upon them.
What was left of the defending army had withdrawn with him to the palace. The gates remained open, admitting a panicked flow of people flooding in from the surrounding districts, seeking refuge from the enemy advance. They would find none. He’d seen the size of the Khar offensive force and had experienced first-hand the ca
pabilities of their mages. He knew that all the palace’s intricate fortifications wouldn’t be enough.
Andarapi Palace had been built for a siege. The grounds had been designed in a series of concentric courtyards, each with its own fortified wall. There were five courtyards in all, and each wall would have to be breached before the palace itself could be taken. Under any other circumstance, the Sultan’s palace would be a bastion of refuge, virtually unconquerable. But not before this army. Their linked mages would simply pummel them with fire strikes until they submitted.
He glanced across the courtyard to where the Prime Warden stood waiting, watching events unfold from the safety of a guard tower. The Outer Court below them was lit by many bonfires and bursting with terrified civilians. They had seen the climactic bombardment of fiery missiles, and they knew what it meant. The influx of refugees was quickly becoming unsustainable, the street in front of the gate overrun by a panicked horde.
Another explosion shook the palace, this time much closer. He looked up and down the length of the wall, at the battlemages he’d stationed along it, and felt a sinking dread. They were the only battlemages left, just the five of them. And when they were gone, there would be no others. Gil nodded at the man nearest him, a grizzled old warrior with a tattooed face named Cort. The mage spat a wad of leaf-juice out the side of his mouth and did nothing to acknowledge him.
“Warden.”
Gil turned to find three men drawing up behind him. Two were Zakai, the Sultan’s elite guard. The other was a man with a closely trimmed beard, a little younger than himself, wearing a richly embroidered tunic—not exactly battlefield attire. Probably a noble’s son, by the look of him. Gil frowned at the man as he approached, not having the time or patience for nobility.
“Warden Archer,” the young man said, inclining his head. For all his rich costume, he looked patently terrified. “My name is Selim. Please tell me how to instruct my men, so that their efforts can best support your mages.”
Gil stared at him for a moment, frowning as he studied the young man’s face. Selim’s hair was wavy and shoulder-length, his nose prominent in a way that served his face. It was his eyes, more than anything, that Gil recognized. He’d seen those eyes before. This was the Sultan’s son.
“Well met, Selim,” he said.
While the man fidgeted with his high collar, Gil glanced back down at the street below the gate, where the bedlam was becoming a crisis. The courtyard on the other side was full; there was no place to stuff any more people. Not that it mattered.
“Man the outer wall lightly,” he said. “We’ll let them take it, then stop them at the Second Court. Let’s pack them in here between walls, as thickly as we can. Once they’re pinned, we can take our time about killing them.”
The prince paled visibly, looking even more nervous than he had moments before. “What would you have me do with the people in the Outer Court?”
“Evacuate them to the inner wards,” Gil told him.
Beads of glistening sweat had broken out all across Selim’s brow. His gaze darted to the crowd below, then back to Gil. At last he nodded, puffing out his cheeks with a heaving sigh. “We’ll have to close the gate, then.”
With that, the prince turned and strode away, flanked by his retinue. Gil watched him as he took the stairs down from the battlements and descended into the roiling courtyard, his senior officers raising the cry of, “Close and bar the gate! Clear the ward!”
Rylan looked around the circle of men and women and felt torn physically in half. Many of them were mages who had shared the bond with him. He knew them all, if not their names, and knew them well. They were all beautiful souls with generous hearts. He longed for their forgiveness and their companionship. He yearned for the chain they had bound him with, that linked him heart and mind to the community. Now he was cut off from them, and the agony that brought was unimaginable. The only emotions he felt were his own, and that isolation was devastating.
He knew it was deserved. He had killed Xiana, his desan, along with dozens—if not hundreds—of others. He could already see his fate clearly written in the eyes of Shiro’s unchained mages standing across the circle from him. Their hatred of him was unmistakable and unbearable. Rylan couldn’t face them; he had to look away. He would end his own life if he could and spare them the trouble. But he could not. Somehow, they had shielded him not only from the magic field but also from the Onslaught. He was helpless, completely at their mercy. His life and death were now in Shiro’s hands alone.
The Warlord moved toward him and took Rylan’s face in his hand. His long-nailed fingers squeezed his cheeks, digging painfully into Rylan’s flesh. His eyes were like a black abyss, and they sucked him down. Within those eyes, he saw his own damnation, full of suffering and torment and every torture in between. Terrified, he tried to look away, but the iron strength of Shiro’s fingers denied him even that mercy. The Warlord increased the pressure until Rylan moaned, then pulled sharply away, retracting his hand. He moved back into the center of the circle, to view both Rylan and Sayeed at the same time.
“I’m sorry, Father.”
Ashra’s voice. Startled, Rylan turned as she squeezed between him and Sayeed, kissing her father’s cheek as she brushed past. She continued on into the center of the circle and there went to her knees before Shiro. Eyes lowered, she offered him the empty chain still attached to her wrist. The Warlord didn’t take it. Instead, he gestured behind him. Ashra obeyed, assuming a place in the circle of mages between two who welcomed her with a tight embrace.
The Warlord issued a nod, and another man stepped forward: one of the mages of Shiro’s inner circle, an old man of golden skin and thinning gray hair, who wore a gray yori robe. A mage of Xiana’s kin, Rylan supposed. All of Zahra’s mages had been captured by the Turan Khar. He wondered how long ago that had been.
The unchained mage went to stand before Sayeed. “You are the Sultan?”
Sayeed nodded. “I am.”
The mage motioned with his hand to indicate his master. “You stand in the presence of Shiro Nogato, Warlord of the Turan Khar. If you kneel and pledge fealty, your life will be spared.”
Sayeed looked at the Warlord. “No.”
He spoke the word firmly, without hesitation, his face showing no sign of fear. Nor did he show sign of malice. He stood straight and still, a proud man, but not an arrogant one. He gazed calmly straight ahead, his eyes pinned on something behind Shiro. Rylan followed Sayeed’s gaze and realized he was looking at his daughter.
“Father…” Ashra said softly, tears gathering in her eyes.
Rylan opened his mouth, wanting to beg him to reconsider. Shiro was not a man of mercy. But one look at the Sultan’s face stopped him from objecting. In Sayeed’s eyes, he saw a strong sense of peace and purpose that reminded him of why they were there in the first place: to make an end. He realized this was the end the Sultan had chosen for himself.
Shiro turned and stepped out of the ring. As he did, two unchained mages came forward and, taking Sayeed’s arms, walked him out to the spot the Warlord had just relinquished. They left him there, alone, in the center of the circle, facing his weeping daughter. Rylan’s breath caught. He knew what was coming. He didn’t want to watch, but he couldn’t look away.
Somehow, Sayeed conjured a loving smile for his daughter.
And then he burned.
“That’s the last of them!” Qoyle shouted.
Gil looked down at the Outer Court, relieved to find it finally emptied. All the civilians had been successfully evacuated to the palace interior, freeing the outer bailey to be used as a kill zone. Hundreds more civilians were trapped in the street on the other side of the gate, clamoring and pounding and bleeding to get in. They were trapped between a closed gate and an advancing army, and they knew it. There were mothers down there with children. It didn’t matter. He didn’t dare open the gate.
A sustained droning sound came from somewhere in the distance, softly at first, then risin
g gradually. He had no idea what it was. It sounded like a dozen gusts of wind howling through the city streets, each gust with its own eerie tone. The noise kept growing, multiplying, adding additional layers, until it seemed to be coming from every direction, reverberating throughout the city.
All at once, thousands of screaming people came pouring out of the side streets, smashing into the crowd already gathered in front of the palace gate. Chaos ensued. At the same time, a barrage of fire strikes streaked down from the sky, taking out whole buildings. One slammed into the street a few blocks away, sending a rush of broiling air gushing toward the palace. Another strike tore a portion of the castle wall apart, hurling burning men and smoldering stones into the street. The immensity of the noise was deafening. For seconds after, there was silence. No one moved.
Then the screams began. Terrified civilians erupted from the ground and lunged for the gate, jostling their way forward or climbing over each other, pounding and clawing their hands bloody on the portcullis.
Gil brought the talisman up and drew in as much power as he could. He flung a shield over the people battering on the gate. That was as good as he could do; the shield was stretched as thin as he dared. Anymore, and it wouldn’t take a direct hit.
The screams intensified. Khar soldiers were gathering at the far end of the street, waiting for the bombardment to stop before engaging. Gil felt suddenly ill, his stomach wrenching. Off to the side of the street, the burned body of a boy dangled from a tree limb. Below his feet, hundreds were being trampled or crushed. He couldn’t stand the sound of their screams.
He called down to Selim, “Open the gate! Let them in!”
There was no answer. He looked down to where the prince and his guards had been standing and saw nothing but a pile of rubble. He wanted to scream in frustration.
“Open the godsdamned gate!” he shouted to anyone who could hear.
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