The Emerald Crown (The Red Sword Trilogy Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  He cast another glance at Markal, who was still hoping for an explanation. “It was one failure, my friend. Next time, you’ll be better prepared. Go to the kitchens for food and drink—the fight is upon us, and you need all of your strength.”

  #

  There were three griffins in the patrol, with Yuli riding Ageel in the lead—Nathaliey sat behind her, clenching her waist—and two young riders on mounts flanking them on either side. They flew east from Wolfram’s camp, low enough to taunt Veyrian troops, who fired volleys of arrows that always fell short of their targets.

  It was a dangerous game. There might be dark acolytes among the troops, or even King Toth himself. A simple enchantment would send those arrows higher. Or worse, the dark wizard would pummel them with fireballs, and that would be the end. But when a well-positioned ballista over the road hurled a projectile with such force that it easily reached their height, the griffin riders barely flinched. It was one thing to gain sufficient altitude, and another to hit a swiftly moving target.

  They were two or three miles from the gardens when Yuli released a series of short piercing whistles, and the three griffins angled into a coordinated dive. Nathaliey had been squinting her watering eyes against the buffeting wind, but looked down to see a small encampment of enemy soldiers stealing hay from a barn to feed their mounts. The horses were tied off, and neighed in terror as they spotted the diving griffins, and this drew the attention of the soldiers, who scattered.

  One man ran for his sword, propped against his saddle, which he’d removed from his horse and set on the ground. Others dove through the open doors of the barn, while another man sprinted for a weed-choked ditch to take cover.

  Yuli’s companions went after the man going for the sword. The first griffin knocked him from his feet. The second slammed him down and pinned him in place. The man died screaming while talon, paw, and beak tore him to pieces.

  Following Yuli’s urging, Ageel went after the man fleeing for the ditch, caught up to him before he could dive to safety, and dragged him off the ground. They flew skyward with the enemy soldier clenched in the griffin’s talons. The other two griffins were already flying east after the brief, savage attack. Ageel was now burdened with both an extra rider and the man he’d swept off the ground, who screamed as the griffin’s back paws raked him.

  Yuli turned her head. “Not strictly necessary, but if the enemy thinks we’re attacking behind their lines, it will slow them. Make them afraid to move—they’re all just sheep, after all.”

  Nathaliey was rather more distracted by the injured man being mauled to death below her even as they continued east. Surely, Ageel wasn’t going to eat the man, was he?

  She was tapping Yuli on the shoulder to ask her to make Ageel put the man down, when the griffin did so on his own. The Veyrian fell forty or more feet and slammed into the ground. Nathaliey shuddered and shook her head in answer to Yuli’s questioning look. These griffin riders were predators—deadly, and unconcerned about their prey, which included any flatlanders unfortunate enough to make of them an enemy.

  The extra burden had left them behind the other two riders, and Yuli pushed Ageel to catch up. They were still several seconds of flight to the rear when something charged in from above and to their right. A spear flew toward them, and Yuli was already banking hard before Nathaliey could so much as flinch, let alone figure out why other griffin riders were attacking them.

  A second spear came in at a different angle and struck Yuli a glancing blow on the shoulder. The griffin rider rocked backward, but kept her grip. She gave a long shrill whistle, and the griffins ahead immediately arced into the sky.

  Nathaliey craned her neck as Ageel swept around, with pursuers giving chase, and she caught her first good look of the enemy.

  They weren’t griffins, they were young dragons with leathery wings, burnt-red scales, and black horned heads. Long and sinewy, with twisting, snaking tails. Bare-chested men rode on their backs, armed with spears and scimitars. Two more of the creatures came circling in from above, making five in all.

  Yuli took a good look and cursed. “What devilry is this?”

  “Dragon wasps!”

  “What?”

  “Enemies!”

  Yes, dragon wasps. One of the larval forms of a dragon, itself a monster eighty, ninety feet long that could scarcely be controlled by man or god. A dragon slept for decades beneath the desert sands, only to emerge for a brief spell of violence, followed by laying massive clutches of eggs and a return to slumber. Dragon eggs hatched into small lizard-like creatures that were as likely to eat each other as to hunt other prey. After a few years the lizards cocooned themselves and changed into dragon wasps.

  And apparently King Toth had captured them, ensorcelled them, and trained men of the southern deserts as riders. Such a thing had been done before, according to the old books, and the enemy must have studied the same lore. Nathaliey supposed Toth had done so to rid the mountains of griffins, and now one of his patrols seemed to have caught three riders unaware.

  The other two griffins were already turned around and approaching the battle at a rapid clip by the time the dragon wasps organized sufficiently to press another attack. The wasps seemed more agile than Ageel as they snaked and curved toward the larger griffin, but Ageel spotted an opening and charged for it, and with three powerful wing flaps had burst through and was leaving the enemy behind.

  If Yuli had been alone atop the griffin, or perhaps even in the cool mountain air instead of riding a mount fatigued by heat, Ageel could have outrun the pursuing enemy, but the wasps were already gaining on them.

  The flockheart’s two companions met her flying in the opposite direction. They blasted overhead with a rush of beating wings and slammed into the dragon wasps. A griffin grabbed one of the creatures in its talons while the young rider hurled himself toward his enemy, with only a slender cord around his ankle as protection from a fall. He landed atop the dragon wasp, knocked aside a clumsy sword thrust, and slashed the other man across the throat. The wasp rider lost his grip and fell.

  Yuli came around again and charged into the fray. Nathaliey had been scanning the ground, looking for a pool of water. The enemies were monsters of heat and sand—a full-grown dragon could even exhale blasts of fire—and to counter it she needed ice, which meant finding a source of water. There was nothing there, but another spell occurred to her.

  “Labi et cadere. Lapidem te percussit.”

  The magic struck two of the dragon wasp riders, leaving them disoriented and dizzy. One lost his grip and he fell with a cry. The other threw himself forward and wrapped his arms around the dragon wasp’s neck to hold on for dear life. The wasp hissed and spit and snaked its head around, trying to bite its own rider.

  Ageel slammed into one of the wasps and thrust his beak at the creature’s neck while Yuli leaned forward, stabbing and slashing as the two mounts grappled in the air. It was now Nathaliey’s turn to hold on for dear life as the ground spun below them.

  As she did, she looked down and saw that they were several hundred feet above the gardens. The wall stretched around the perimeter, roughly rectangular, enclosing a stretch of land that took a half hour to cross on foot, but seemed like a child’s model from this height. There was the east gate, with the bridge over Blossom Creek to the east. The meadow where they’d fought the enemy, the lake, with the gleaming roof of the Golden Pavilion and its red wooden pillars, freshly painted and covered with new runes.

  Beyond the meadow, the woods, the apiary, the kitchen gardens, the flower mazes, the fountains, the walls, and . . . a dark, ugly scar. It was the enclosed space where Markal had obliterated the very earth and everything growing in it. A desolation spell. They’d walled it in after being unable to heal the land to keep the desolation from spreading, but from above it was a blight on an otherwise green and lush landscape.

  Two of the five dragon wasps and their riders had already died. A third rider had fallen to his death, and his mount fled
south, toward the desert. The remaining two riders tried to organize a retreat, but Yuli’s battle lust, once awakened, could not be so easily calmed. She whistled orders and waved her bloodstained sword.

  Nathaliey leaned forward and shouted, “We’re here! Take me down first.”

  Yuli looked back, confused. “Here, in the forest?”

  “It’s not forest, it’s . . . just put me down. Right here.”

  “There are thorny bushes. And stones. Beyond that you have mudflats of the kind that gum up wings. Nowhere good to land.”

  “It’s not a forest, and there aren’t thorns or stones or mudflats. That’s all an illusion. Trust me.”

  Yuli still didn’t believe her, insisting that she could see them, but one of the griffins had taken a light wound in the battle, and Yuli was bleeding from her own shoulder where the spear had thrust into her leather armor, and she called off the pursuit anyway.

  Now that she was over the gardens, Nathaliey was desperate to get down. She spotted keepers, hands shielding their eyes to stare up at the griffins, and a figure emerged from the woods to the north that might even have been Markal. One of the acolytes ran across the meadow toward the Golden Pavilion, probably to alert the master.

  Unable to wait any longer, Nathaliey cast a small clarification spell to open a window into what was really below them.

  “By the Brothers!” Yuli exclaimed. “What is this place? It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s the gardens, you fool, like I told you. Now get me down there!”

  The three griffins circled warily from above before landing in the middle of the meadow, where they could quickly spring into the sky if threatened. By now a dozen people had assembled to watch, and the griffins held their wings out and opened their beaks in a menacing display. There was no sign of Memnet, but Chantmer was there, looking tall and arrogant and rather displeased as she climbed down and her aching muscles inspired a long, satisfied groan to be on firm ground at last.

  And then Markal hurried from the woods on the far side, practically at a run. Two of the three griffins were already airborne, and Yuli looked anxious to do the same, but she waited for him to arrive.

  “Markal of Arvada,” Yuli said.

  His eyes widened. “It’s you!”

  “I suppose we’re not enemies after all. We might even be allies of a sort. Anyway,” she added awkwardly. “Here’s your friend. She’s . . . not bad. For a flatlander.”

  Ageel screamed and heaved himself skyward. Moments later, Yuli was flying west after her two companions.

  “Well?” Nathaliey told Markal. “I’ve crossed mountains, drank the sorcerer’s poison, and flown on the back of a griffin. Don’t I even get a ‘well met’?”

  “I’ll do better than that,” Markal said with a grin. He grabbed her in a fierce embrace and squeezed the air out of her lungs, until she laughingly pushed him away.

  Chantmer scowled, and the others looked amused, but Nathaliey didn’t care. She enjoyed the embrace and the warm surge of affection that rose to see her friend again. But her smile quickly faded, as did Markal’s.

  She’d faced horrors since they’d last met; no doubt he had, too. And there was more to come.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  There were no Veyrians when Markal led Nathaliey and Chantmer from the south gate toward the fairy fort, but there were signs that the enemy had passed this way, starting less than a mile from the walls. The grass was trampled, and the crofters’ huts and farmhouses had burned. They found the fairy fort and picked their way through the brush to the top.

  “What are we doing here, anyway?” Markal asked. “Chantmer?”

  Chantmer didn’t answer, but paced the hillside, muttering to himself. Markal met Nathaliey’s gaze, and she shrugged.

  Surely they weren’t going to sit here defending an empty hill while enemies closed in from other directions. By now, Memnet would be halfway to Wolfram’s army, accompanied by a pair of lesser apprentices, openly blasting his way across the countryside. Narud was at Blossom Creek with several other apprentices, acolytes, and keepers. Veyrian troops had arrived on the far side of the bridge after the Dark Gatherer swept the marshlands of wights, and were trying to force their way across the small river. Markal had expected to find the same activity here on the southern edge of their territory.

  “There’s nothing to defend,” Nathaliey said. “Let’s go back and see what’s happening at the bridge.”

  “Should we send a seeker?” Markal asked. “Make sure there’s no enemy making a move down here first?”

  “Why not use our eyes?” she asked.

  That was true enough. The fairy hill was the tallest feature on a gently undulating countryside of pasture and wheat fields that stretched south toward the desert and west toward the hill country. There was movement to the west. A pair of dragon wasps snaked through the air in that direction, and a general haze in the air indicated an army on the march. Eriscobans.

  Everything to the south, on the other hand, looked quiet. There might very well be enemies concealed in the dales or among the trees, but the air was clear of sorcery. And no army on the march.

  “I assume the master sent us here for a purpose,” Nathaliey said. “But he’s gone, and there’s no way to tell him there’s nothing here.”

  Chantmer had been pacing, and now bent to pull at the sod. Markal’s eyes narrowed. “Chantmer? Something you’re not telling us?”

  “Yeah,” Nathaliey said. “What are you playing at over there? Looking for old runes?”

  “Aha!” Chantmer pulled up a lump of grass to reveal stone. “Here it is, just like the master said.”

  “What exactly did the master say?” Markal asked.

  “Go on ahead, you two. I’ll take care of this and catch up with you by the abandoned orchard. You know the one I’m talking about?”

  There was something furtive about Chantmer’s behavior, and Markal made his way over, suspicions growing. At first, Chantmer didn’t want to show him what he was uncovering, but Markal and Nathaliey ignored his protests and joined him in pulling up sod. They exposed a large flat stone humming with power.

  “What is it?” Nathaliey asked.

  Chantmer fended them off with a forearm. “Nothing to concern you. Let me work, will you?”

  “Blast it, Chantmer,” Markal said. “Will you stand back and let us see?”

  “Why, so you can take it from me?” Chantmer said irritably. “So you can claim credit when you activate it?”

  Markal was bewildered. “Claim credit for what?”

  “The both of you think you’re better than me. Well let me tell you, I’m just as good as you are, and I’m going to prove it. This is how the master wants me to prove my skills. This is what will make me a wizard. You thought it was never going to happen, didn’t you, just because you were first.”

  “Oh, please,” Nathaliey scoffed. “Of course you’re going to be a wizard. What does the timing matter, anyway, whether you were first or last?”

  “It matters a lot to me.”

  “You can be an ass sometimes, you know that?” Nathaliey said. “We’re on the verge of annihilation here, and you’re worried about your stupid pride.”

  “I’m the one who is proud?” Chantmer said. “Listen to you lording it over me. Trying to force your way in and steal credit for my work.”

  Markal leaned around Chantmer while he was arguing with Nathaliey and caught sight of familiar marks in the stone. “That’s a desolation ward,” he said.

  Nathaliey drew closer. “You mean like in the walled garden? Oh. Yes. I see it. A whole row of them.”

  “Stand back, you’re crowding me,” Chantmer said. He kept working, brushing away dirt.

  “And the master wants you to activate it?” Markal asked. “It will blast this entire hillside. Nothing will ever grow here again.”

  “You’re hardly one to cast judgment on what should or shouldn’t be destroyed,” Chantmer said. “You destroyed the walled garden. T
his is just a bit of meadow and an old fairy fort.”

  He was right, and yet Markal was taken aback that the master would plan such a trap. But if Markal properly understood what Chantmer was doing, activating the runes would allow them to fall back from the southern defenses and concentrate their forces elsewhere.

  “Here, let us help,” Markal said, “and then we can all leave together.”

  Chantmer grumbled some more and insisted that they not try to steal his credit. Nathaliey snapped back irritably, and Markal made soothing noises to calm them both. To a certain extent, he understood Chantmer’s anger at being left behind while the other three greater apprentices advanced in power and prestige. He’d have been humiliated, too, and how much worse for Chantmer, given his well-developed sense of pride?

  Markal recognized the markings in the stone, but there was something unfamiliar about the magic vibrating beneath the surface. At first he thought it was age, that the stone had been laid down by a precursor to the Crimson Path, most likely the order who’d built the stone ring in the mountains where the old hermit lived.

  But by the time they finished and covered it with sod, he decided that this was not the extent of it. There was magic down there that he’d have liked to have investigated, maybe even studied in the library. And that reminded him that the books where the lore would be found had most likely been left behind and devoured by fire salamanders.

  Once finished, they set out across the countryside and hooked around to the northeast to reach the bridge over Blossom Creek. Midway through the trip—a journey of a few miles—they discovered a patrol of mounted troops—not marauders, but regular Veyrian cavalry—and threw up concealing spells while they prepared an attack. When the riders reached them, Markal heaved the road and threw the men from the saddle, and Chantmer and Nathaliey drew a desiccation spell. In the matter of seconds, they killed twenty men and sent their horses scattered and riderless across the countryside.