by Thomas Locke
She repeated the words, as much from memory as his instruction, and felt her own confidence return as the wands became traced by lingering ribbons of power.
Then Alembord pointed to the north and cried, “There!”
Hyam watched the arrow fly from Selim’s bow and create a thin river of fire across the dawn. The scrolls he had found in the cave had contained segments of several spells. Hyam had built his plan upon the hope that he might rework them into one. Join them all, and in so doing compound their force.
It all came down to this. Doing the unexpected. Surprising the enemy right out of their safe little holes.
But as Hyam watched the arrow fly through its golden arc, all his logic and plans and hopes seemed paltry indeed. The light seemed a trivial force, blazing merrily against the backdrop of another hostile day.
“Is that it?” Selim demanded.
All four pairs of eyes atop the hill squinted against the sunrise and watched the fire arrow rise.
Alembord muttered, “Did his spell fail?”
Shona felt her own heart sink in agreement. The arrow’s trailing flames were a trifling, of no importance whatsoever.
Beside her, Fareed said, “Patience.”
Meda asked, “You know what Hyam is doing?”
“No, mistress. But I am coming to know the sahib.”
And at that moment, the dawn erupted.
The remaining spell came much easier, which was good, because Hyam had little time to cast it. Just the space between the arrow’s fiery zenith and striking the earth. Call it three heartbeats. Hyam shouted the words in a fluid rush, weaving his hands so fast that the magic’s lingering trace formed a ribbon, then a knot, in the air before his face.
His hopes proved correct in a quite spectacular fashion.
To Shona’s mind, it seemed as though the arrow suddenly became a fist. One fashioned from flame and fury, and a force great enough to dim the desert sun.
WHUMP!
The fist slammed into the earth.
The earth shuddered such that Shona might have toppled from the summit had Alembord not gripped her arm.
The impact threw up a dust cloud that caught fire. A circular wave of flame swept over the entire city of Alyss. The blaze lapped against the tower and hill both. Shona felt the heat scald her face and hands. Then it vanished.
The silence that followed was as deafening as the blast.
Meda spoke in a conversational tone. “Well, I never.”
Fareed laughed out loud and pointed north. “The sahib, he is just warming up.”
From the ruined tower came a faint cry, but Shona could not make out the words. “What is he saying?”
“I expect,” Fareed replied, “the sahib is introducing himself.”
“My name is Hyam,” he shouted. “I am human. I am Milantian. I serve as emissary to the Ashanta. I am crowned by the last Elven king. You have stolen something precious from me. I want it back.”
He turned to the grinning Selim. “Loose another arrow.”
“With pleasure.” Selim lifted his bow and aimed to the right of his first shot.
Hyam cast his series of partial spells, the words coming now with swift ease.
WHUMP!
He waited until the tidal force had broken against the tower’s base. Into the silence he shouted, “Return to me the vial holding my mate’s life-breath. Grant my company safe passage to and from the harbor. Vow never to set foot in any human or Elven or Ashanta settlement. And I will let you beg me for your lives.”
WHUMP!
“Respond or perish!”
WHUMP!
Selim loosed another arrow when the first enemy appeared. The arrow became a fiery fist that pounded the earth a hundred paces from an opening where warriors climbed forth. Hyam cast the spell and sent out a further circular flame. When the wave subsided, it appeared to him that the impact had not affected the warriors. He could see where several more openings had appeared, where before there had been nothing except yellow dust and ruins.
“Here they come!” Selim notched another arrow.
“Hold,” Hyam said, waving the caravan master to lower his weapon. “We may need those.”
“What are we to do?”
Hyam was wondering the same thing. For the dozens of warriors had become hundreds, and still more climbed out and formed into ranks and marched with weapons drawn. All of them headed straight for their tower. Hyam doubted they were actually Milantians. If so many real foes existed, then all was lost. For him, his company, and the entire realm.
“Hyam?”
“I’m thinking.”
As if in response, the two mages atop the distant hill struck.
43
Shona watched as the warrior horde rose from the parched earth. They were all dressed exactly the same, in white robes with a crimson belt and tall boots of polished red leather. They carried a round shield in one hand and curved scimitars in the other. They marched in silent unison. Every step struck the earth precisely in time with the soldiers to either side. Thousands of warriors advancing in deadly synch.
Meda declared softly, “They are not human.”
Shona glanced over. Meda’s face had tightened into hard angles and fierce determination. She studied their foes with an unblinking gaze. Shona found an odd sense of comfort, two women and two men against thousands, but knowing she was in the company of such a fighter.
Meda sniffed as though searching for a scent upon the heat-drenched breeze. “My guess is these are golems in human form.”
“Look at their precision,” Alembord said. “They march like machines.”
“How do we . . .” Shona’s question went unformed, because a cry rose upon the wind, this one coming from somewhere deep inside the city.
A charge ran over the horde, a flickering wave of force that blocked the army from view. When the marchers reappeared, the horde had grown. Not in number, but in size.
Another cry, and another flickering shroud passed over the soldiers. It came and went in two frantic breaths.
The horde had grown larger still.
Shona now watched an army of giants on the move.
They roared with one voice, a single unified blast that caused Shona’s chest to quaver.
Fareed stepped up close, where Shona was forced to look at him. Gone was the young acolyte eager to help train her. Gone too the former desert waif who had helped her adapt to the yellow realm. In their place was a young wizard whose mage-force was etched into his features. “We must strike.”
“But so many, how . . .”
He lifted his wand so that its gleaming tip was directly before her eyes. “The sahib needs us. Remember the fire-blade spell?”
Shona drew her own wand. “I . . . Yes.”
“You strike right, I shall go left. Avoid the tower! Ready? One, two . . .”
As she chanted the words, Shona felt a change. Power surged through her as though her entire body was merging into the wand. The force rose through her feet and up, up, passing through her frantically beating heart, along her arm, through the wand, and . . .
She did not speak the final word. She screamed it.
The flames shot out in blinding ferocity, thousands of sickle-shaped blades that spun outward. They sliced through the army. The giants blasted apart into dust the color of dried blood. Their remnants spun in the soft wind, then vanished.
“Golems,” Meda repeated.
Alembord lifted his blade over his head and shouted a war cry all his very own.
The sound seemed to galvanize the giants. The entire horde wheeled about, taking aim directly at them.
They shot out another spell. Fareed screamed with her. They cut down dozens of the giants. Hundreds. But still more of the blank-faced warriors poured from the holes in the earth and were caught up in another of the magical veils, became giants, and filled the ranks. In half a dozen breaths, Shona could not even see where their force had struck.
Steel snickered as Meda d
rew her sword. She stepped midway down the hillside, took a two-handed grip upon the hilt, and crouched. Ready. “Alembord! By me!”
Then Shona remembered the sword.
The giants seemed to take the two warriors as a challenge, for they spurred to greater speed. Shona drew the Milantian blade from its shoulder holster, reached out, and cast the spell a third time.
When she reached the final phrase, she touched her wand to the milky blade.
The effect was blinding. Shona had to wait through several breaths to even see what had happened. When her vision finally cleared, she saw that a broad channel had been cut through the golem force, fifty paces wide and stretching all the way back to the city’s distant border.
The army faltered, a single moment of hesitation. But it was enough for Fareed and Meda and Alembord all to shout their exultation to the midday sun.
In response, the giants regrouped, tightened their ranks, gave a unified bellow, and surged forward. The hilltop trembled at their stomping progress. They even ran in unison.
Shona started to cast another spell, only to realize the orb at her wand’s point had gone dark.
“Here, here, take mine!” Fareed snatched away her wand, gave Shona his, and began casting the recharging spell.
Shona turned back to the army, lifted her arms, and fired off another round.
Hyam and Selim stared in astonished delight as the spell-waves tore through the giants. Each strike resulted in spumes of dust that filtered up and vanished. Hyam assumed Fareed recharged a wand while Shona applied the other to the Milantian sword. It was a brilliant idea, one he should have thought of himself. Part of him fretted over what else he might have neglected. But mostly he knew a biting satisfaction. Things were holding to his strategy. Hyam was afraid to name what he felt as hope. But he hoped just the same.
His plan, his company’s survival, relied on him having solved one key mystery.
The Milantians were few in number.
There was no other reason Hyam could find for why a lone enemy would have attacked his home. Or why the next assault came from a golem guarding a deserted valley. Or why a single witch hunted Selim all the way to Emporis, then lingered in solitude and attacked the Ashanta banker’s residence, then stole Joelle’s breath.
The answer he had hoped for was now clear as the desert light. The Milantians sought to weaken Hyam because they themselves were weak.
The master’s pet, the Emporis witch had said to Shona. The master commands. Which led Hyam to the most crucial element of his mystery. Where was the one they called their master, this senior Milantian mage?
The only answer that Hyam could see, the only solution that worked, was this:
Not here.
Hyam watched the giants’ dust settle and the silence grip Alyss once more. The only sign the giants had ever existed were the holes that dotted the ruins.
Selim asked, “Is it over?”
Hyam remained too caught up in his internal dialogue to respond. These meager remnants of the great Milantian army had returned here. Once again they gathered the golems. Hidden behind battalions of enslaved ghosts, they built a new force of giants. They had hoped for enough time to uncover the missing scrolls and rise up to their full power.
But Selim had come and disturbed their secret strategy.
As a result, the Milantians chased him, both for the scroll to create the miniature orbs and to keep their secret from reaching human ears.
Up to then, no citizen of Olom had tracked the golems to Alyss. No word of the Milantians’ return had reached the realm. Until Selim arrived in Emporis. Then the enemy had been forced to reveal itself. Hyam stood by the tower’s ruined outer wall and realized this was why they had come after him in Falmouth. The unseen master had assumed Hyam would be alerted. The enemy had sought to destroy him before he realized the foe had returned.
But their attacks had failed. And now Hyam stood at the border of their hidden lair. With powers they assumed were theirs and theirs alone.
Selim handed him a full waterskin. Hyam drank greedily. As he handed back the skin, the earth gave a cautious shudder, as though the entire city vibrated.
Selim exclaimed, “What is happening?”
The thunder accelerated, and Hyam knew it could only mean one thing. He replied, “Monsters.”
44
The golems scrambled from the same holes that had released the giants. Their trunk-like limbs had difficulty finding purchase on the crumbling ledges. Their bellowed frustration shook the tower.
A beast far larger than all the others lumbered into view. Atop its back rode a glittering palanquin. Pillars of spun silver supported a golden canopy that shimmered in the sunlight. A Milantian mage gripped the front banister, riding the golem like a pasha on parade. At his command the beast halted.
A blast came from Hyam’s allies on the hilltop, the same streaking flames that had destroyed the giants. But the mage had already shielded them. Shona’s mage-fire spun and wove in brilliant currents, great streamers that flashed over and around the golems. When the flames dissolved, the golems and the mage remained untouched.
A command rose from the distant canopy, and Selim groaned as the golems all turned as one. Taking aim at the four standing upon the hill.
The golems marched in the same military unison as the giants, but their bellows carried an unhinged frenzy. Hyam felt the same frantic dismay he had known in the Ellismere Vale, where they had almost been defeated by just one of the beasts. Shona responded with another blinding flash from her sword-wand combination. But the mage’s shields held, and the golems accelerated.
Hyam understood the Milantian strategy now. One assault after another rose from unseen depths. Each wave learning from the one before. Each more deadly.
Selim cried, “Call the ghouls!”
Hyam did not waste breath on a reply. By this point the golems’ roars were so fierce he doubted Selim could hear him. Hyam had already seen how futile the spectral army had proven against just one such monster. These golems numbered perhaps two hundred—he had to assume they included all those missing from Olom. But they threw up so much dust it was impossible to see more than the first dozen or so.
He drew his dagger and began the shield incantation. The same spell had saved them the last time a golem had attacked. But Hyam did not drag the blade in the earth as the scroll dictated. Instead, he drew in the air before his face. The distant hill became a bull’s-eye at the center of a glowing circle. Hyam spoke as quickly as he could manage and completed the final swirling flourish just as the first line of golems reached the hill. He cast the spell forward, flinging it like a giant invisible loop, spinning it with his mind and his empty arms, attempting to shift it by will alone. He did not allow himself to think what might happen if his effort failed.
The Milantian mage rose from his embroidered cushions so as to better observe the assault.
Then Selim shouted in utter glee.
The first golems slammed into an invisible wall. Those behind either could not stop in time or were unable to break the magical commands. They piled on, more and more, until the hill’s base became a churning, bellowing mass of gigantic bodies. The dust rose until it consumed the beasts, curving around the shield wall, higher and higher, until it seemed as though the four humans stood atop a golden cloud.
Even before he turned away from the hill, Hyam knew the mage’s attention had refocused upon the tower. The Milantian’s languid air was gone now. Even from this distance Hyam could detect the fury and the speed with which the mage cast his new spell.
Hyam lifted his dagger, fearing he had left it too late. He only knew the attack spells he had combined in the arrow. He only knew the one shield spell. No doubt the mage had learned from Hyam’s previous successes and was ready to deflect both.
So Hyam sprang what he hoped was yet another surprise.
Hyam pointed the dagger and sent the shield spell out. To surround the mage.
Only this time he cast the
spell in reverse.
The circular enclosure surrounding the wizard and his golem would become a cage.
If it worked.
He completed the shield and willed it forward, just as he had to protect his companions. The shield scrolls had warned against mage-force. Anything applied to the shield would be shot back as an amplified destructive force.
The Milantian’s arms wove a ribbon of light that grew into a searing ball shot through with crimson flashes. The mage gripped the ball with both hands, drew it over his head, leaned back, then heaved it straight at Hyam’s tower. The globe seared the air over the golem’s head. The flames became refashioned into a monster’s face whose gaping maw revealed crimson fangs.
Then the mage beast struck the shield Hyam had fashioned. And exploded in a truly spectacular fashion.
The blast was so enormous the shield’s interior became a pillar of fire. The circular flames rose far into the heavens, for a moment outshining the sun.
Slowly, gradually, the blinding flash died away. When the fire dissipated, the shield Hyam had fashioned was empty. Of the mage or his golem, there was no sign. Not even dust remained.
45
By the time Hyam and Selim arrived at the hill’s base, the golems milled about in lowing confusion. Most of the dust had settled. Hyam thought the beasts now resembled mammoth cows. Except, of course, for the petal-like mouths filled with teeth longer than his arm.
Hyam said to Selim, “Speak to them. See if they’ll obey.”
“And tell them to do what?” But Selim did not wait for a response. Instead, he climbed far enough up the hill to look over their weaving heads and called, “Heed my voice! There are sheep waiting for you in Olom. And clans needing you to dig more tunnels!” He pointed back toward the long red hills. “Go! Now!”
Hyam climbed up beside Selim and repeated the words in Milantian.
To their vast relief, the golems departed.