Iolus snarled at his own reflection in the mirror.
The bathroom was small, little more than a stall. It reeked of wood and urine. Everything in this damned village was made of wood, it seemed. He was getting so tired of these piss-pot holes in the ground. Today had to be the day.
He stood hunched over, his hands resting on the wooden sink, only half-listening to the muffled cries of the villagers being rounded up outside. His raiding party was now over a hundred strong, mostly men he’d recruited along the way. Today’s village was called Upsolon. Not that it mattered. Iolus was sure he’d forget the name just like all the others.
He reached down and turned on the faucet. A stream of water plunged into the bowl. He lifted his right hand and commanded the water to fill a ball of space before him. The ball hovered in the air for a moment, cloudy at its core with bubbles, and rose up as he moved his fingers. He closed his eyes and let the cool sphere break against his face, each water drop sliding off his chin and falling straight into the bowl as if it had a mind of its own. It refreshed him for only a moment. He clenched his teeth.
The mirror was stained and pitted, but it showed his features well enough. He looked at his face, the whiteness of it, the rust-colored hair that fell in waves before his wolfish eyes, the skeletal cheekbones. He looked at himself for a long time.
Then he stepped back, grunted, and punched the mirror as hard as he could. It crunched and shattered into a hundred glittering fragments.
A moment later, the bathroom was silent again. He heard something drip and looked down to see his own blood pooling on the floor.
“No, I’m not,” he told the voice. “I’m getting it back.”
He breathed in until his lungs filled and then he released. He walked out of the bathroom, crunching glass beneath his boots and enjoying the sound.
A spread of townsfolk had gathered before the school building, held back by a rag-tag team of soldiers carrying swords and crossbows. Unlike the soldiers, who had missing teeth and black fingernails and faces rough with beards, the people of Upsolon were well groomed. They wore their hair long and tied back, including the men, and their outfits were simple garbs made from the skins of animals. This village was poor but not without dignity.
“I hate this place,” Iolus said, stepping into the wintry afternoon sunlight.
The sound of crunching snow rose as Basher appeared by his side.
“With good reason,” he said. “They stink of poverty and self-importance.”
“It’s not that. It’s something else.”
“What?”
He glared at Basher. “You had a job to do.”
Basher scratched the side of his head like a confused, overly large boy trying to explain why he hadn’t done his homework.
“Uh—well, sir, I came up here to tell you there’s still no word on Hekesh. He hasn’t come forward yet.”
“He’s in this town somewhere. I can feel his fear.”
Basher shrugged. “We checked all the buildings like you said. Can’t find him.”
Iolus looked over the faces in the crowd. They were no longer ranting and shouting. Many were now staring in awestruck silence at Iolus’s face.
“It’s him,” a woman said.
“The battlemage from Theus,” a young man said. “He’s back.”
Several women in the crowd covered their faces and began to sob.
Iolus grinned at them. “Greetings. Today each and every one of you gets to meet your maker. Have you thought of something to say?”
The townsfolk began to boo. It was an ugly sound that reminded Iolus of certain past failures. Suddenly, he wanted to kill someone in cold blood. He gritted his teeth, narrowed his eyes into slits, and pulled luminether from the churning, boiling pool of hatred in his stomach.
One of his fists erupted into flames. The crowd fell silent.
The flames gathered into a ball. He tossed it from one hand to the other, keeping his eyes on the crowd.
“As you all know, I have your children.”
A hum sounded as people murmured to each other. Women pushed their men forward to challenge the sorcerer, but the men recoiled, horrified at the thought of confronting Iolus.
The sharp voice of a child split the silence.
“Mommy!”
Iolus turned to face the school. From the basement, a boy reached through the narrow, rectangular window by the ground. The fingers of his hand curled as he motioned to one of the women in the crowd.
“Lemme out,” he cried. “I want to go home!”
A woman darted forward, dressed in the simple white and blue clothes of a schoolteacher. Iolus watched her cross the snowy courtyard, with its granite fountain drooling icicles, and its bent and wilted trees. He brought the fireball up to his collarbones like a baseball pitcher and took aim.
His arm catapulted forward, hurling the fireball over the fountain. The woman hadn’t even reached the school when the flaming orb—which had grown to the size of a basketball—crashed into her, showering her with sparks and light and heat.
When the smoke lifted, the only part of the woman visible was a sooty leg sticking out of the snow, still wearing a blue boot from her uniform.
The boy let out a terrified shriek as the other children pulled him away from the window. The townspeople in the crowd huddled closer together, many of the men holding a sobbing woman in their arms. They watched Iolus, waiting to see what he would do.
“Alonso Hekesh,” he announced. Another fireball blinked to life on his upturned palm, the flames like white and yellow rags of cloth shivering upward. “Some of you know where he’s hiding, and I want him now. Or the children inside this building will eat fire for dinner.”
He tossed the fireball up into the air and caught it. The crowd watched the hypnotic movement. In that glowing ball lay the possible extinction of an entire future generation of their village.
“I’m Hekesh,” a man’s voice said.
He stepped out of the crowd, covered neck-to-foot in a simple brown robe.
“I’m the mayor of this town and the leader of its people. I was hiding because I know who you are, Iolus. I know you’re here to kill me for supporting the rebellion. If that’s the case, go ahead. Make a martyr of me, but don’t kill our children. Even you are above that kind of villainy.”
The smile on Iolus’s face never wavered. It grew in size like a wound gaping open.
“It’s been a long time, soldier. It saddens me to see you in such a pathetic state. Fat, bald, wearing what appears to be a potato sack. Tsk, tsk.”
Hekesh let his head droop forward. “Zandra Banks escaped from the king’s castle yesterday afternoon. If you hurt any of us, she’ll come for you. She’ll bring the whole rebel army down on your head.”
Iolus walked the short distance across the school’s front yard until he was standing before Hekesh. The crowd backed away, though Hekesh stayed where he was. The fireball grew in Iolus’s hand and was now the size of a volleyball.
“Is this really what you want?” Iolus said. “To incite my anger with lies? I could easily kill the lot of you, right now, without a moment’s hesitation. I wouldn’t be making a martyr out of you because everyone who knows your name would be dead. Is that what you want?”
Hekesh looked up at Iolus. His eyes were wide and defenseless, the eyes of a priest facing a demon.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t hurt them. It would be a waste of your time, my lord.”
Iolus snickered and looked back at Coscoros and Leticia, who had emerged from the school building and were walking down the front steps.
“My lord?” Iolus said. “That’s pathetic.”
He turned toward the school building, motioning for Hekesh to follow.
“Move,” he said.
The inside of the building smelled more like a farm than a school. But it was well built and sturdy. The rooms and hallways were wide and accommodating. A cool breeze ran through the halls, and the windows let in showers of wintry sunlight.
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Iolus kept his distance from Hekesh, a fireball hovering dangerously above his palm.
Basher emerged from a classroom, licking his fingertips, which were stained with blood. He looked wide-eyed at Iolus and Hekesh.
“Unh?” he said, and let loose a watery burp. There were splatters of blood on his beard.
“Did you eat one of the children?” Iolus frowned at him. “I thought I told you to wait.”
The words sent a jolt through Hekesh. He gave Basher a look so full of hatred that his eyes seemed ready to pop out.
“My apologies, sir,” Basher said. “I was feeling dizzy, had to eat something.”
Amusement tugged at the corners of Iolus’s mouth. Soon he was smiling and trying to hide the smile from Hekesh, whose face had turned a deep shade of pink.
Iolus was about to speak when Hekesh sprang toward Basher and grabbed him by his armor. There was a loud crash as Basher flew sideways into the wall and broke through into the classroom beyond. Dust shot through the hole, filling the hallway like smoke.
Hekesh stepped into the opening in the wall, a silhouette against the room’s windows. The edges of his cloak fluttered above his ankles. He kept his hands in tightly made fists.
Iolus laughed so hard that he had to bend over and clutch his stomach.
“Serves you right, Basher! Ha ha ha ha ha!”
Basher picked himself up, wiping dust off his face and regarding his surroundings with a comical look of confusion. He gaped at Hekesh, unable to speak. Then, in a burst of movement, he grabbed Hekesh by the front of his cloak and threw him backward against the opposite wall. It broke much as the other had broken, but Hekesh grabbed the sides in time to keep himself from falling through.
He kicked upward, catching Basher in the groin. As Basher staggered backward, eyes bulging from the pain, Hekesh performed an uppercut that caught the Berserker on his bearded chin. The force of it sent Basher several feet upward, where his head crashed through the ceiling and made a hole. He fell back to the floor with a meaty thump.
“You bastard,” he said, scrambling to get up while rubbing dust out of his eyes. “I’m going to get you, you Sargonaut son of a…”
“Enough,” Iolus said, stepping between them. He looked Hekesh in the eyes. “You still got it, huh?”
Hekesh drew back his fist.
“No, no, Sargonaut.” Iolus grinned, eyes cruelly alert. “You could hit me, maybe even kill me, but not without bringing down this entire building. The spells are all in place. The children would die with us.”
Veins stood out on Hekesh’s red face. He glared at Iolus, nostrils flaring as he breathed his rage in and out.
“Leave us alone. Take what you need—kill me if you must—but leave this place. These people don’t deserve to die.”
“But you do,” Iolus said. “I’m sure you haven’t forgotten all the fun we had, all the lives we took back in the good old days. You and I are both sinners, old friend.”
Hekesh closed his eyes and took several steadying breaths. The color in his face went back to normal, and when he opened his eyes again, Iolus saw that they were calm.
“I left that life, and maybe I haven’t saved my soul, but I left the violence behind and became a servant of Sargos. Who do you serve, sorcerer?”
Iolus narrowed his eyes at the man. “I serve the pages of history by being a hell of a lot more noteworthy than you, coward. Now, you better tell me where I can find Asceranon—and quick.”
“I don’t have that information.”
Iolus lifted his right hand. Fire blazed all around it—white fire, with dancing shreds of orange. “That’s too bad.”
“Wait.” Hekesh stepped forward, his hair almost catching in the flames. He was trying to prove he wasn’t afraid—but he was. He was terrified. “I have something better. I have your sword.”
Iolus let the fire die with a puff of white smoke.
“My sword,” he said, scowling. “You lie, Sargonaut.”
“I’m not lying. Look at my eyes. I know where you can find Aikon.”
Iolus studied Hekesh’s face for a moment, and then his eyes widened. He grabbed Hekesh by the front of his cloak and pulled him close.
“Take me there. Take me now!”
Chapter 56
The storytellers had good reason to call her Champion of the Breeze.
Alexandra cut across the sky, her wings stretched out like feathery boards, a fine mist of luminether keeping her body buoyant and warm. She left trails of it in her wake.
She hadn’t flown like this since the war. The air was cold silk against her skin, and the fluttering of her clothes reminded her of the flags she and Maximus had flown in the days when they had both been leaders of the Forge.
She was careful. Whenever a carriage full of the emperor’s soldiers came within sight, she would take herself skyward into the clouds and disappear in that misty whiteness until her intuition told her the carriage had disappeared.
She didn’t know how much time had passed when she finally saw the section of mountainside so familiar to her, just beyond the blighted spread known as the Nardgrillax Peaks.
A secret valley lay down there, in a crevasse—a valley of trees and bushes and grass that looked, in her memory of it, like an emerald of purest green embedded in all that rock, built to thrive and bear fruit even in winter. Magic kept it invisible from those flying overhead, but Alexandra knew that magic. She knew it well enough to see right through it.
There—just as she remembered it.
She tilted her wings and plunged downward with the quickness of an arrow. The ends of her hair whipped in the wind. Her feathers trembled. She was almost there.
Suddenly she was afraid.
What if the valley was empty? What if they had all left?
She crossed her fingers the way Emma had shown her once, for good luck. Sweet Emma, so innocent and small, and Milo with his bushy hair and brown eyes and his habit of looking down whenever a girl spoke to him. She was so close to being with them again.
But not yet.
The air became warmer as she glided into the valley in a zigzag pattern. It was darker, moodier down here. The mountain silence—broken only by the occasional hollow thump of a falling boulder—calmed her but also made her nervous. The place felt dead somehow, despite all the greenery.
She perched in the shadow of a small cliff overlooking the valley. The descending sun threw light in at an angle that reached halfway down the wall to her right. The valley itself was shady and quiet. She saw no traces indicating that men lived here, which might have been a good thing, unless they were all dead.
Maybe they were in the tunnels.
She tipped her head back, opened her mouth, and let out a primitive-sounding call that hadn’t come from her throat in decades.
“Aiiiiiiiiii-yaaaiiiiiiiiii-yaaaiiiiiiiiii-yaaaa………!”
Silence.
A shred of wind gusted down from the sky and bashed itself against the mountain, dislodging stones that fell somewhere she couldn’t see. Crack-crack-thud.
Then, in the distance, the white and gray figure of a man appeared from a grove of trees.
Alexandra didn’t recognize him. She didn’t expect to. In the nearly two decades she’d spent on earth, the men and women of her army could easily have experienced their own changes and setbacks. It was even possible that the little man in the gray shirt, who was too far away for his face to be anything but a small, featureless oval, was not a member of any sort of rebel cause. He could have been an invader, or a tourist of some sort who had found his way into the mountains and had gone back to spread the news of this beautiful, hidden little valley.
The man howled up at her, lifted his arms, and began to jump in excitement. Alexandra’s heart swelled.
She jumped off the cliff, letting her wings grasp the air. As she glided down to the valley and the man grew larger and larger with the shrinking of the distance between them, she saw—with a swell of pure, ecstatic joy—th
at the man was Arkanaeus Fellim, a man she had once trusted with her life. He had been a general in her army during the uprising and one of Max’s most trusted friends.
Her bare feet landed on wet grass. It was warm down here, almost tropical. Insects buzzed all around her. The smells of rock and moisture and living, breathing earth filled her nose. It was the closest thing to being home.
Arkanaeus clasped his hands together against his chest and approached her. She caught sight of his striped orange-and-black tail. His eyes were a pale orange, the color of a tiger’s fur. He had something strapped to his upper body. A conch. It dangled behind one shoulder.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “It’s a miracle. A miracle!”
“Arkanaeus,” Alexandra said. “Old friend.”
When they were only a few feet apart, the man formed a pyramid with the fingers of his right hand and touched his forehead. Alexandra smiled. It was a salute she and Max had created for the rebels—a tribute to that glorious thing which lets us all be like gods.
Our minds.
“Light guide your step,” he said.
“And yours. Rise, Arkanaeus.”
He rose, puffing up his chest and smiling at her. His tiger’s eyes were moist. Lines of age creased his face, many more than when she had last seen him. His hair was gray at the temples.
“We thought you were dead, Zandra.”
“I was,” she said. “But I came back. My husband, however…”
She looked down and away.
“I understand,” Arkanaeus said. “And your children?”
“You know about them?”
“We’ve all heard the rumors. A boy and a girl. Twins. Some say it’s in line with the ancient prophecies.”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe in prophecies, Ark, only the will to change things. We have to rebuild the Forge. We have to give the people of the empire hope. I believe my son and daughter can help us someday, but right now they are in serious danger.”
Arkanaeus saw the look in her eyes and stiffened. She could tell by the movement of his cheeks that he was clenching his teeth.
“Iolus,” he said.
She nodded.
Savant (The Luminether Series) Page 32