by Ronie Kendig
Her face blanched.
Fear.
Yes. Good. “You should be afraid.” How had he gotten close enough to smell her breath? Her foul breath. He pushed from his crouched position back to his feet, animosity tumbling through him.
“Ask her about the money you donated to them from your allotments as a student of the Citadel. Anonymously, I believe, but your money all the same.”
Heat stabbed between Drracien’s shoulders. How had Poired known about that?
“Does this hovel look like one your money has paid for?” the Dark One asked. “Where did she spend the money you sent?”
Anger, hot and violent, surged through Drracien. But he fought it. Knew Poired sought to drive his rage.
“Please!” Elara cowered. “I only—”
“Ask her where the children are now.”
Alarm pierced what little remained of Drracien’s control. Stricken at the fate they could have met, he searched the hovel. No children. No doll. No food. No sign of them.
Sobs wracked the woman’s skinny body. This was not his mother. This was not even the woman who raised them. This was a shell of a person. He straightened, the warbling strong and beating his cloak against his legs.
“End her. Now!” Poired commanded. “End her betrayal.”
“Where are the children?” Drracien demanded. “Dolin! Dati!” he shouted, looking toward the lone room separated by nothing more than a ripped sheet. With a lunge, he surged around Poired. Hurried to the room, angry he had not thought of the twins sooner. Not noticed their absence. Slapping aside the thin barrier gave him little pleasure. The space lay bare, save a pile of straw and a sheet with dark stains.
They’re dead.
“The Scourge has claimed many victims,” Poired explained casually.
“They’re dead ?” Drracien demanded as he stormed toward Elara, who shouted and threw herself backward. Only then he realized the flames roaring off his fingers. “Are they dead? Where are they?” he said, his voice a razor-sharp whisper as he crouched over her.
She only stared. Gave no answer.
He speared her with a vicious spark.
With a yelp, she flopped against the dirty floor, cradling her side. “I don’t know!”
“They are your children! How can you not know if your own children are dead?” Fingers clawing the air, he drew back. “Tell me! Tell me where they are!”
Wagging her head, she cried. “I don’t know.”
Screwing up his face, he drew his hand backward and pulled in a massive wake of heat.
Her green eyes widened, tears marking dark rivulets down her face. “No no no! I don’t know. I promise!”
“Your promises mean nothing!” He pulsed her, the heat slamming her head back against the boards with a sickening crack that yanked a yelp from her. “Tell me!”
“They were taken.”
“Taken?”
Curling in on herself, Elara surrendered to her pain.
“Where?” he growled, pulsing heat waves over her, reddening her cheeks and blistering her face. “WHERE?”
“The mines,” she wailed.
He stumbled.
Slaves. Children using their bare fingers to dig out near-molten rock to make more swords, more armor for Poired’s army.
His heart jammed against the thought. Rage roiled. “I gave you money! Every month!” Wielding focused, he hoisted her from the ground so he could look into her eyes. “I gave you every coin I had. And this—this is what you do to them?”
She sobbed.
“They. Were. Innocent!”
“No—”
Drracien unleashed his fury.
Spine arched over the floor, she howled as heat boiled through her.
7
NORTH OF CAORI
Brittle blades of wheat swayed, scritching against his trousers as Tili crouched in a narrow crook. ’Twas the only vantage that gave him the slenderest of peeks at both Hetaera in the northwest and Vid in the far northeast. This bump in the land, which the locals had named Lake Mountain, had neither lakes nor the height to be called a mountain. Not like those he’d grown up beneath. But the name had been given because the hill in this sad scrape of land was no more than a few leagues west of the Bay of Winds. Which was a lake. Not a bay.
Tili scrubbed his scalp and let out a sigh. He’d never understand thinbloods.
Propped against the rocky incline that spilled down onto the more even terrain of the plains of Vornesse, Tili squinted. Pressed his sight as if he could reach far beyond the Citadel, straight through Baen’s Crossing, the Black Forest, and up into Ybienn. He closed his eyes, forced himself to remember the chill, which was hard when sweat plastered his tunic to his spine. To recall the scent of pines and winter’s breath.
Father, that I could have yer counsel . . .
A word. Instruction. A laugh, even. Maybe a remonstration. He’d take any of it, just to hear a familiar voice. What would Father think of him slipping away from his detachment to seek solace? To find . . . direction.
Days passed without progress in reaching Haegan, then a week. Two. Three. Their band had twice come upon and absorbed stragglers who’d abandoned villages, and three times engaged small contingents of Sirdarians bent on pillaging the land. Praegur, the girl, and the Council members were still with them, to the chagrin of the soldiers, who grew tired of the councilwoman’s insistence on cutting north. Negaer, thankfully, had handled her. There seemed to be some history between the old pair. When Negaer lost his temper and shouted that they were doing their best and did she have a better way to deal with packs of enemy between them and their goal, she had finally taken his frustration for what it was: evidence of genuine effort.
The dangers of driving north—lack of food, lack of water, greater risk as they edged closer to the route Poired had used in his razing—grew with each passing day. Food stores were dwindling and their number rising. They’d gained two-dozen Jujak in the last week alone, a surviving remnant from hundreds, and countless civilians. How fared Ybienn and the Hold? There, he had looked to his father for counsel on all matters, as obligation demanded of the commander of the Nivari. Who commanded Nivar’s elite now? Aburas most likely, though the old goat hated command.
“I’m too mean. If it’s me orders I be shovin’ at them, they’ll hate me. But shovin’ yer orders—I can be mean and still do that.” Tili felt himself breathe through a smile at the memory. Truth told, he had never seen a man better suited for command than the burly colonel. So, it must be Aburas.
What of Relig? Did his bride yet carry a Thurig heir?
An ache wormed through Tili, bitter, sweet. Cruel. His gaze scanned the gnarled fingers of the leafless trees. Shrubs with prickly leaves that would probably survive a cauldron. Drought. Barrenness. Was this his life now? Where was the good, the beauty?
“The only time protecting the realm is pretty is when I’m with yer mother.” His father’s near-facetious words rang in his head. Tili may not have his father in person, but he would always have him—his words—within.
“May I do ye proud, Father,” Tili whispered.
A sound rattled, stilling him. He cast his gaze—and only his gaze—down and to the side, listening. He eased off the rock, his senses awakening, pulling out of the past.
That noise—a distant rumble. Riders. Many of them. The sound was distinct and worse, threatening. Who would be riding out this far and in this number?
Tili whirled up and around the rock he’d used for support, trained on the approaching thunder. He slunk along the shoulder-high barrier. Technically, they weren’t in enemy territory, but boundary lines had vanished with Poired’s decimation of the Nine.
He slipped down one level of the incline. Along another of jutting rocks and defiant shrubs. Between the scraggly branches, he spied movement a league off but not well enough to identify uniform or sigil. If there was one. Tili nested in a rock gap. He stared down the hill separating the mounted army on the north from his mismatc
hed contingent of Jujak and Pathfinders on the south.
It was a sea of red bleeding in from the east. “Sirdarians.” From Unelithia, Tili guessed. We are so close to their blades. So far from help.
Steps crunched behind him and Tili spun.
General Negaer climbed the path, his broad shoulders momentarily spanning their encampment below. Even as the general set boot on even ground, two shapes morphed from the shadows.
Adrenaline spiked at the sight of the two Pathfinders, Tili realized he had never truly been alone with his thoughts. He raked the two men with a glare, both in awe that they’d so stealthily paced him and in frustration that they had not granted him solitude.
Negaer nodded toward the clearing. “You’ve seen them, then.”
“Sirdarians. At least a hundred.”
“Seems they’ve infested every inch of the Nine,” he groused, his weathered face a stone mask. As usual. Where was his concern? His worry for those under his command? Those depending on him? Nearly seventy men were encamped at the southern base of Lake Mountain. Hands behind his back, Negaer eyed the north. Why was he not worried?
“Should we not make for the trees again?”
“No need.”
“No—” Wait. Tili took in the general. Hands behind his back. Keen hazel eyes assessing. He stood like one monitoring sparring matches, as Tili had over the Nivari training yard. So what did Negaer know or see that Tili had not? He set aside his discomfited response and turned his attention north.
Sirdarians flooded down the lip of the valley toward stone ruins that littered the ground. Great buildings had been brought to their knees beneath the ravages of time.
“Little Hall,” Negaer said. “It was the last trade stop south of the mountain and before Baen took back Wicalir from Unelithia. Named Little Hall because it was commissioned by the Baron of Ironhall, Glomain the Great.”
“Ironhall—I read of it.” Tili bit his tongue, refraining from sharing the true histories, which many of the Nine did not adhere to. But Ybienn, Baen’s daughter and the one from whom Tili’s line had been born, commissioned the building of Ironhall for her husband.
“That will break your heart,” Negaer said. “One of the first cities Sirdar attacked—and with a vengeance. It has long been in ruins. I remember visiting as a lad.”
“Ye were there?” Disbelief coiled around Tili’s mind.
“Careful now, young steward. That sounds like you’re saying I’m old.” Negaer pointed to Little Hall. “There are hundreds of refugees hidden in the catacombs and buildings.”
A scream stabbed the hot air as someone shot across the path of the Sirdarians. Blinding white, a streak spiraled from the contingent and struck the woman. Smoke and fire consumed her.
“They have an incipient,” Negaer muttered. And for the first time, concern creased his brow.
“A Silver?”
“I think not.” Negaer considered him. “Silvers are always incipients, but incipients are not always the Dark One’s elite fighters.”
Tili nodded. “Should we go—”
“Nay. Watch.”
Screams and shouts went out as the Sirdarians leapt from their horses and swept across the ruins. Tili’s gut cinched. “I pray yer mercy, but I was not made steward to watch innocents slaughtered.”
“Look at them,” Negaer said, a curl in his lip, “so blazing arrogant. Confident they will not be opposed, let alone defeated.”
As if obeying the general’s command, the Sirdarians dismounted, formed lines in the crumbling city, and waited as their leader trotted down the center on his mount, then swung around to face his horde.
“Oppose them?” Tili scoffed. “They have no chance. Few would dare.”
“And today,” Negaer said, “you will meet those few.” He nodded. “Watch, Steward.”
Anger surged through Tili, but as his gaze hit the ruins, rocks came to life. The organized brutality of the Sirdarians fell away. Cloaks tumbled, looking like blood filling the streets. Glints flickered and glared through the hot afternoon, more than one searing Tili’s gaze and forcing him to look away.
Tili leaned closer, confused. “What . . . ?” The Sirdarians—“Half lie dead!” How? It had been but two heartbeats. Bright bolts of light shot up. Then went wild, straight into the heavens. Another bolt. A glint. Then the focused light suddenly came straight toward Tili.
“Down!”
It happened in the space of a blink. Tili crashed against the wall of rock at the same time it rumbled and chunks fell at his feet. He widened his eyes at Negaer, who was smiling as he craned his neck out the gap again, then smiled even bigger.
Tili followed his attention. The Sirdarian commander was no longer mounted. He stood on the steps to what had once been a palace or government hall. Beside him a black-and-red cloaked incipient. And in the street, wading in the blood of the Sirdarians, a half-dozen men with enormous curved blades. “Tahscans.”
“Aye, as they ever be,” Negaer said.
Even as the general spoke, one of the Tahscans climbed the steps. The incipient wielded, but three other Tahscans strode with the leader, brandishing blades that somehow deflected the fiery darts and defied logic.
“Impossible,” Tili muttered. “Accelerant flames melt steel.”
“Not Tahscan steel,” Negaer said with a grin. “They have the steel. They’re fierce and skilled—organized. They fight better than any army I have seen, even my Pathfinders. I’ve used many of their techniques, but they never share all of their trade craft.”
“I want to meet them,” Tili said.
“Nay.” Negaer pushed away from the gap and started back for camp.
Tili stalked after the general. “They have tactics, steel—all would help us win this war against Poired!”
“If we want our heads on our shoulders come dinner, then we ride wide around them, be grateful the Lady saw fit to have those Tahscans deliver us from the hand of the Sirdarians—who would have discovered us—and forget this moment happened.”
“I never thought ye to be one to run and cower, General. Fear isn’t like ye.”
“This isn’t fear !” Eyes blazed as he spun and faced Tili. “This is wisdom. You know the Ematahri?”
Tili flinched. The general knew well the Ybiennese had had encounters with the Ematahri, that the leader had given shelter and who-knew-what-else to Tili’s sister.
“Tahscans make those forest savages look like children!” Negaer said, nostrils flaring.
“We have a common enemy.”
“No. Not a common enemy. We have the word in common, aye—but only because they see everyone not of Tahsca as an enemy. Outsiders are a threat, and their new queen is close friends with the Infantessa, who has made the young queen her puppet.”
“If they are outsiders, why are they in the Nine?”
Negaer cocked his head in thought as they reached the command tent. “That I don’t know.” He scratched his beard. “We are farther southeast than any Jujak or Pathfinder has been in a full cycle of the moons. But we don’t dare test their patience.”
“Ye do fear them.”
“I respect them, and their privacy. And you’d do well to do the same.” He grabbed a decanter of cordi juice and poured some into a tin cup. “Have you ever seen anyone cut down an entire contingent of Sirdarians so effortlessly? And you want to turn their eye here, to the only representative of the Nine left to speak of?”
“Haegan—”
“Is the Lady knows where.” Negaer threw back the drink in one big gulp and wiped his mouth.
“Give care with yer words.”
“There is great care in them, I promise you that,” Negaer said. “What I speak is not ill, but truth.”
“It’s true, then?” Tokar asked, rushing into the tent, flushed with excitement. “The Tahscans?”
Seated, Tili propped his elbows on the table and held his head. Light flickered and the air stirred as others entered the tent. He lowered his arms and sat back, s
taring out the open flap. Remembering the glitter of steel as the Tahscans so efficiently dispatched the Dark One’s horde.
“What will we do against them?” Tokar’s voice held anxious hope as he looked to Praegur, whose eyes seemed wider than usual. “The Tahscans.”
Rhaemos moved closer to his general and stood tall, proud. “We make for Vornesse?”
Negaer’s gaze flicked to Tili. “As planned.”
Tili shook his head at the thought of continuing the same futile effort to reach Haegan. They’d been pushed farther and farther south since this journey began. Yet they had potential right here, weapons capable of leveling the playing field. Warriors who could train them. Help them gain ground instead of lose it day after day.
And was not Tili Steward of the Nine? Should not Negaer consider his counsel and take it, regardless of his own personal feelings?
Yet Tili could not discount the wisdom. Nor the skill that had two Pathfinders pacing him on Lake Mountain. He was not so brash as to disregard the man’s experience. But . . .
“Is it not yours to do the will of the Steward?”
Tili peered up from his seat at Draorin. Though he was not as broad-shouldered as Negaer or the elder Grinda, who had remained behind with a contingent in Hetaera, he possessed an athleticism Tili knew not to undervalue. Though he must have at least forty or fifty cycles, his hair was as dark as Tili’s and his brown eyes, which shifted to Tili, radiated authority.
“The risk here is enormous. ’Tis my duty to advise the steward as I see fit,” Negaer said.
“Aye,” Draorin said. “No one of us doubts your intention, nor your ability.”
“Then what do you doubt?” Rhaemos growled.
Negaer steadied him by catching his forearm.
Again, Draorin turned to Tili, who somehow sensed the strength the man possessed course through his own limbs. Strangely, it brought Tili to his feet as the realization dawned that this was not Draorin’s fight. Nor Chauld’s, who was oddly absent.