“Jethro is a martyr,” Markal said, thinking to raise their spirits. “Without him, we’d be dead, and these books consumed in fire.”
Karla lifted her hand and gave him an appreciative look. “Yes, that is exactly what I thought.”
“He recruited me into the order,” Markal said. “I never really thought of it before, but that’s how I made contact.”
Chantmer was up front by the horse and glanced over his shoulder. “I thought the master recruited you. I thought he recruited all of us.”
“My parents were dead, and I was apprenticed to a tile layer in the palace. But my father had been a merchant, and he’d taught me figures, which I used to calculate the quantity of tiles we’d need for a room. A vizier spied me doing figures one day, and someone brought me to one of the palace tutors, who tested me with letters and numbers.”
“And that was Jethro, I suppose,” Chantmer said.
“The archivists do that sometimes,” Karla said. “Or did it. Tutored the children of viziers and other high officials to keep an ear to the goings-on in the palace.”
“Jethro taught me writing, advanced arithmetic, and even a bit of the Kratian language. He was testing my abilities. When I’d proved them, he brought me to the master, and I became one of the lesser apprentices.”
“It’s interesting to hear you tell it,” Memnet said. He was on the other side of the cart, rolling the orb from palm to palm, and Markal hadn’t been sure he was even listening. “My earliest memory of you is not as a tile layer’s apprentice, but a promising young student in the palace.
“But when you put it that way, the story sounds familiar, because I found Jethro in much the same way. He was also an orphan, also from a family where he’d learned a bit of knowledge, and apprenticed to a glassblower. I discovered his native intelligence, his memory, his curiosity about books and reading, and brought him with me to study.”
“It sounds like a good way to identify future archivists,” Chantmer said.
Markal ignored the comment, with its implied commentary about his magical limitations. Anyway, given how Jethro had sacrificed his life for them, calling him a mere archivist didn’t sound like an insult.
He was curious to hear more about Jethro and how the master chose apprentices—and maybe even pry into the origins of the order itself, a subject the master rarely discussed—but Memnet hushed them. He felt sorcery on the wind and wanted to go ahead to sniff it out before they brought the cart forward.
Memnet returned about twenty minutes later looking concerned. “There are traps on the road. The work of dark acolytes. I don’t believe it’s the work of Toth himself, but it would be safer to go around.”
That led to a laborious struggle down a dirt track into someone’s cow pasture—there were no cows, but there were plenty of ditches intended to keep animals from wandering, which led to a lot of muscle work to get the horse and cart across. Chantmer suggested magic to speed the way, but Memnet wouldn’t permit anything beyond concealing spells.
It wasn’t the first time they’d been forced to detour from the Syrmarrian road, but it felt different this time. The scent of sorcery was in the air, and Markal sensed marauders, too. Near. Perhaps within a few hundred paces, each side cloaked from the other, but one side hunting, the other hiding.
They skirted the edge of the fertile Narpine Valley, but the surrounding farms and villages seemed abandoned, and the master led them straight through, churning up fields of wheat, tall, green, and ripening. Wheat that would never be harvested.
Night had fallen, and a full moon had risen in the sky by the time they came to a causeway crossing the flat marshes of the Nye River, some five miles from the bridge over Blossom Creek and the final descent to the gardens. Memnet stopped them.
“We have no way home except through these marshes,” he said. “There’s an enemy army to the south, another to the north along the Tothian Way, and it would take three more days to hook around from the west. That’s time we don’t have. And marauders are pushing toward us from the burning city, so we can’t even go back the way we came.”
“How do you know all this?” Chantmer asked.
“The land is speaking to me. The lines that run beneath the Aristonian soil.”
Chantmer stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Oh, yes. Of course. I suppose that is obvious enough if you know how to read the signs.”
Markal had no reason to distrust the master’s knowledge, but didn’t know what he meant by lines beneath the soil. And he doubted Chantmer did, either, though he was nodding solemnly, as if it was all clear.
“It’s not obvious to me,” Markal admitted. “Is Toth mounting another attack on the gardens?”
“That is his plan,” Memnet said. “And this time there will be no overreach. No few hundred soldiers, no handful of marauders scaling the walls. It will be a full-scale assault with everything the dark wizard can bring to bear.”
Memnet rolled the orb in his hand while staring down the hillside toward the marshes, and the others followed his gaze. The ghostly flicker of burning swamp gas lit the gloom.
“So far, we’ve only seen marauders as far as the bridge,” Memnet continued. “But that is a question of intent, not capability. The simple soldiers—footmen, cavalry, siege engineers, and the like—struggle to move any closer than here. Our defenses repel them. They have to be coaxed through, and I suspect Toth wants them all in place before he expends magic getting them to the bridge.”
“I don’t see the problem,” Markal said. “We’re only five miles from the gardens, a straight trip across the marshes, no more detours. We cast a spell on the horse, build his strength, and we’ll be home in two hours.”
“I agree with Markal,” Karla said. “I want these books in the vault. Why are we hesitating?”
“Do you see the lights?” Memnet asked.
“The swamp gas?” Markal asked.
“It’s meant to look like swamp gas. They’re beacons for wights. Toth has bound an army of the undead, and he’s drawing them to the marshes.”
“Like the night we ran from Syrmarria,” Chantmer said, “when the barbarian defended the bridge with her red sword.”
“That was a close scrape,” Markal said, “but this time we have magic to disperse them. They don’t want to be bound, right? They want to flee so the Harvester doesn’t find them. All we have to do is give them a reason. Right, Master?”
“We could do that, perhaps. If there were thirty or forty wights. Maybe even a few hundred like the rest of you faced that night on the bridge. But look.”
Memnet lifted his hand and spoke a quick incantation. A drop of blood fell from his palm. When he was done, he waved the orb in the air.
The road and the low road stretching into the marshlands took on a light sheen, as if the moon were an oil lamp and someone had moved it closer to the earth. The ponds and marshes pulsed with a dull blue-gray light for a good mile up and down the road that bisected it.
“What is it?” Markal asked. “What makes them glow like that?”
“Ten thousand wights.” Memnet’s tone was dark, almost hollow. “Perhaps more. Forced into the mire by Toth’s sorcery and pinned in place by his dark acolytes.”
Markal shook his head in disbelief. “So many? Where would they come from? There shouldn’t be more than a few hundred across the whole of Aristonia, if the necromancer gathered every single wight and dragged them here. Why hasn’t the Harvester—”
He stopped, suddenly understanding, and Memnet nodded grimly. Chantmer touched his hands to his temples and closed his eyes.
“I listened for the Harvester when we crossed the burning city,” Chantmer said. “I didn’t hear the horn nor his dogs, and I didn’t understand why. All of that death should have drawn the Dark Gatherer.”
“I listened too,” Markal admitted. “All I heard was the roaring fire.”
Chantmer opened his eyes. “That explains why Toth didn’t hunt us down on the road. He was busy binding his
army.”
“I thought he was occupied with fire salamanders,” Markal said.
“So did I,” Memnet said. “Or even trying to steal a few volumes from the library before the salamanders devoured it. And perhaps he was, but that wasn’t all he was up to.”
“I still don’t understand,” one of the archivists said. “Will someone please explain?”
“The marshes are filled with the dead of Syrmarria,” Markal explained. “The thousands who didn’t escape the fire salamanders, the ones who died in pain and agony.”
“Sorcery kept the Harvester at bay,” Memnet said, “and sorcery dragged them here. They’re waiting to fall on us when we cross.”
Chantmer spoke in a low voice. “Ten thousand wights. So many.”
“They’ll awaken as soon as we approach the road,” Memnet said. “We carry the warmth of life, and no concealing spell will change that. Ten thousand wights will try to drag us into the swamp and drown us.”
“So we can’t get through,” Markal said. “But you told us there’s no other way. You say your magic isn’t strong enough to defeat them, but magic is the only possible defense we have.”
“My magic isn’t strong enough to defeat them,” Memnet agreed. “But it is strong enough to break the necromancer’s bond. To break his hold on them. And then you, Markal, are going to call for help.”
“Call for help from whom?”
“The Dark Gatherer. The Harvester himself.”
Chapter Twenty
Nathaliey swayed atop the bluff while the wind blew her hair around her face and made her cloak flap. She was three feet from the edge, but it felt as though one strong gust would lift her from her feet and hurl her into the rocky gorge below.
At least she was off the griffin, though her legs still trembled from the flight, which had been both terrifying and exhilarating. Ageel perched behind her, wings tucked and head down, presenting, she was sure, a smaller profile than she did.
Yuli squatted motionless at the edge of the cliff in front of Nathaliey, where she stared across the gorge to the granite spires of the castle. It was the only fortress along the Tothian Way as it passed through the mountains that hadn’t been built by the dark wizard, although his forces were firmly in command now. The paladins called it Montcrag.
“Hold your robes in,” Yuli said without turning. “They’ll draw the enemy’s eye. Better yet, sit down.”
“At this distance, who could see us?”
“I can see, for one. I have no problem spotting enemies walking the walls. Perhaps they can see us as well. Do you want to take that risk?”
Nathaliey sat. Her trembling legs thanked her.
Yuli glanced back, and her eyes narrowed, her gaze not so different from a bird of prey’s. “You look terrified. What’s wrong?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nathaliey said. “Maybe the hungry griffin at my back, or maybe the five-hundred-foot drop in front of me.”
“I estimate seven hundred feet.”
“Even worse.”
“Worse? Not really. Fifty feet is the worst it can be, even if you know how to roll and break your fall—which you, being a flatlander, probably don’t—and above that you may as well fall from the clouds. You’re dead all the same. The only difference is how much time you have to think about it.”
The wind picked up with a howl, both strong and cold. Yuli didn’t seem bothered. She’d bared her arms while flying, even as Nathaliey’s hands grew numb gripping the woman around the waist. When Yuli leaned casually, almost carelessly over the edge of her mount to study the mountainous terrain beneath them, Nathaliey had swallowed a scream and dug her knees into the side of the griffin, afraid that she’d lose her grip.
Yuli turned her gaze back to the castle below them. “There they are.” Her voice was hard. “The gray devils. May talons tear their guts from their bellies and beaks open their throats.”
Nathaliey hadn’t known the woman long, less than two days now, and this was the first time they’d spent more than a few minutes alone. The day after the battle, Yuli had returned on Ageel to perch atop the keep. There, Wolfram, Marissa, and Nathaliey had parleyed with her and come up with a plan to fight their way through the mountains. They would take and hold only the first and last castles, while cutting off the middle five from communicating with each other.
“I see your sorcerer,” Yuli said.
“Toth? Or do you mean the dark acolyte?”
“The woman who tormented you in the iron cage. The gray devils are consulting with her.”
“You know about the gibbet?”
“I studied you for days. If I’d known you were a companion of Markal’s I’d have rescued you earlier, but I thought you were another sorcerer, being punished for some reason. It meant nothing to me until the young flatlander told me who you were.”
Nathaliey started to respond, but Yuli hushed her so she could watch. The woman stared intently, motionless, never budging from her crouch.
“So many bows, so many ballistae,” Yuli said at last. “By now, they expect an aerial attack. But they can’t anticipate the full fury of our flocks. We’ll come down on them like a thunderstorm.”
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Nathaliey said. “You were always hostile to us. Your flocks attacked repeatedly when we tried to cross the mountains.”
“Defending our homes—the right of every free people. Anyway, they were warning attacks, nothing more. If we’d meant to exterminate you, we’d have done it.”
“We never wanted a fight, Yuli. We never even asked for your help. We only wanted you to stop harassing us. But now you’re helping? What changed? Was it meeting Markal? An arrangement with Captain Wolfram?”
“Wolfram is a flatlander. Markal, a flatlander. But neither is an enemy of my people.” Yuli glanced skyward, first looking up to the clouds, then turning her gaze to the surrounding peaks. What she saw seemed to satisfy her, and she nodded to herself. “These gray devils are enemies, and I swear on the blood of my ancestors, by the feathers of my griffin, that they will be destroyed.”
Yuli moved away from the ledge and approached Ageel, who lifted his beak from beneath a wing and studied his master. She plunged her hand into the feathers at his neck and whispered something in his ear. The griffin made a low keening sound.
“We came from the north,” Yuli said, “driven by frost giants and killing storms and spreading flocks of wild golden griffins that preyed on our hatchlings. We found a land uninhabited, with rocky cliffs for our aeries, abundant game, and careless shepherds in the foothills.”
“If there were shepherds,” Nathaliey said, “then they could hardly be uninhabited.”
Yuli continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “It’s true that the flatlands were infested with uncountable numbers of people. The larger settlements must have hundreds of people. From the size of your armies, there must be even bigger villages than what I’ve seen.”
Nathaliey nodded, thinking of Syrmarria with sixty-five thousand souls, and cities of the coast like Veyre with two, three times that number. “Your people are not so numerous, I see.”
“Flatlanders mean nothing to me so long as you stay out of the mountains. Your wars mean even less. But you didn’t stay out of them. We resisted the new road, made forays to try to stop this so-called high king from building his highway, and decided on a long-term campaign of harassment and attrition.”
“Why not all-out war?”
“Only a flatlander would ask that question.” Yuli touched the emerald stone at her forehead in what seemed an unconscious gesture. “You’re like ants going to war—how many thousands can you raise? My entire people number eight hundred souls, of which five hundred can fly at any time, and that counts those who are too young or old to fight. Of course we would win every battle, we would slaughter armies like so many sheep. Your generals make careless shepherds. But the cost would be brutal to my people. We would never recover.”
“And now?”
&
nbsp; Yuli’s face, already severe, hardened to something frightening and deadly. “My home is in the mountains above the castle where we found you. I live sometimes alone, and sometimes with my mate and our young fledgling. Plus Ageel and his mate, together with their nest. We cut a terrace into the side of the mountain, where we grow potatoes and herbs. I chose the site because it is well positioned to reach the aeries to the north and south, and keeps me close enough to the sorcerer’s road to spy on his comings and goings. It is well disguised and inaccessible—or so I thought. What fool would approach a griffin’s aerie, where he could be thrown to his death?
“A week ago I came back from patrol to find my husband, my child, and Ageel’s mate in the sky, flying around the nest, trying to drive off attackers. Six enemies in all, dressed in gray robes, scaling the cliff.”
“Marauders. Or ravagers, if you use King Toth’s term.”
“Gray demons—that’s what we call them. They had sorcery in their cloaks. It allowed them to cling to the cliff face, and when we tried to snatch them from the rock, talon and claw would not take hold.”
Nathaliey remembered the assault on the garden walls and the sorcery embedded within the cloaks. “Go on,” she urged.
“I killed one man with my spear, but it was not so easy to get in next to the rock face to fight them with the sword. A griffin, for all his maneuverability, cannot hover in place like a kestrel. Instead, I told my mate we would land in the nest and defend it. It was then that I realized the men weren’t climbing up, they were climbing down, and they’d carried the two griffin eggs with them. The gray demons took refuge in a cave as night fell.
“Ageel was tired from a long patrol, so I sent my mate and his mount to summon help while we kept the gray demons pinned inside the cave. The enemy taunted me as I flew past. They were going to cook our eggs for supper, they said. It was no idle threat. To my horror, I smelled their campfire, smelled the cooking eggs. Ageel screamed in anger, and I could only curse.
The Emerald Crown (The Red Sword Trilogy Book 3) Page 18