The Emerald Crown (The Red Sword Trilogy Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  With Wolfram’s mounted troops still scattering the initial force, the newcomers held position against the Veyrian surge while more Eriscobans joined the battle every moment. The fighting grew hot across a broad front. After five minutes of furious fighting, several hundred barbarian foot soldiers had forced their way into the meadow and staked a position against the enemy furiously trying to dislodge them. More troops from both sides arrived with every passing moment, and there would soon be too many for the meadow to hold.

  For the moment, the two sides were evenly matched. Foot soldier for foot soldier, and paladin for marauder. Except that Nathaliey knew King Toth’s army outnumbered Wolfram’s eight to one or more. The weaker the gardens grew, the more the sheer weight of numbers would favor the dark wizard.

  In fact, for all of Wolfram’s efforts, at least a thousand Veyrian troops were still marching on the Golden Pavilion. It took both Vashti and the marauders to keep them moving against the tricks and confusion that the order and the gardens were throwing their way, but their progress and eventual arrival at the trench and then the shrine seemed inevitable.

  Memnet rose to his feet at last. The orb glowed in his hand. “I’m ready to fight.”

  Nathaliey couldn’t help herself. “It’s about time.”

  “By the Brothers,” Markal said. “What do we do?”

  Memnet nodded at Nathaliey. “Ring the bells. Strengthen our friends and weaken our enemies. The rest of us will scatter this army to the wind.”

  Nathaliey hurried up the steps to the upper platform of the Golden Pavilion and approached the massive brass bell that hung from a cord beneath the pitched roof. The bell dangled until it was only a few inches off the ground, and a stout wooden beam hung next to it—the bell hammer. She grabbed the hammer, ready to pull it back and let it fall. The bell would release its deep, sonorous note to roll across the battlefield. Magic would strengthen their friends and weaken their foes.

  But something in the room felt wrong.

  It was something bitter, something spoiled. Something rotten. And there was an odd clarity to the light. With the sun dropping swiftly toward the horizon, it should be darker in here, with the nighttime gloom already settling where the curved roof blocked the sunlight.

  Nathaliey lifted her eyes even as the wooden beam fell and a deep, booming gong rolled out from the bell. The light came from a man-sized hole in the roof. Someone or something had attacked the pavilion from above, torn through the tiles, and hacked through the wooden structure beneath to get through.

  Only a dragon wasp could have approached from above, so heavily cloaked with sorcery that nobody had spotted it descending, distracted as they were by the marauders landing in the meadow outside. And if someone had landed on the roof and come through, that could only mean . . .

  Nathaliey had only let the hammer fall once, and she released it and took a step back. Hands out, palms down, blood to the surface. She spoke words in the old tongue.

  “Reveal that which is hidden. Show mine enemies.”

  Shadows cleared from rafters. A dozen marauders clung to the wooden beams above her. As their disguise dissipated, they released their grips without a cry or signal and dropped to the platform in front of her like giant gray spiders.

  One landed directly in front of Nathaliey. He fixed her with his dead-eyed gaze and drew a sword from over his shoulder with his right hand. He had no left hand. Red fire danced along the blade.

  Hamid. Captain of Toth’s marauders. In his hand, Soultrup, the soul-stealing sword.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Markal stood next to Memnet as the master drew power from his orb. Narud approached, and Chantmer was falling back from the lakeshore with the others, the enemy army temporarily bogged down in swamps.

  Whatever Memnet drew would be powerful—he sensed it, felt it vibrating in his bones—and would smash the enemy army in an awesome display of power. Markal needed to watch.

  The bell rang behind him, and power, confidence, and strength flooded his limbs and sang in his blood. He braced himself for another gong, but it never came. Memnet continued his work, the orb glowing ever brighter in his hands, but something seemed off to Markal. Why only ring the bell once?

  He turned around as Nathaliey staggered back from the central room. Her robes and hair billowed from magic, and blood fell streaming from her hands.

  Markal raced up the stairs, not understanding the problem, but knowing that something had gone wrong on the upper platform. He grabbed Nathaliey, who whirled on him with wild eyes, as if he were attacking her, before she gave a start. He dragged her back toward the stairs.

  “What is it? Is there—”

  He saw Soultrup’s glow before he saw the red sword or the marauder wielding it. Hamid stepped out of the bell room and onto the exposed upper platform. A malicious grin stretched across his face—rage, madness, and triumph all swirling together. Other marauders came after him. Hamid gave a tiny flick with his sword tip, and the marauders leaped at Markal and Nathaliey.

  A burst of light hit from behind, followed by a rolling shock wave. It struck Markal, and he staggered on the stairs and stumbled down, with Nathaliey tumbling after him. The blast drove the marauders backward, saving him momentarily. An instant later, the air vanished from his lungs, stealing his warning cry and turning it into a wheezing gasp.

  Still lying on the ground, Markal turned his head to see Memnet, Narud, Chantmer, and the rest facing the meadow as a wave of green and yellow light rolled across the battlefield, the cause of the double-fisted shockwave that had first knocked Markal down, then sucked the air from his lungs. The rolling light slammed into the Veyrian army and threw enemy soldiers into the sky.

  Or rather, it threw parts of them. They seemed to be coming undone at the extremities, with legs, arms, hands, and heads plucked off and cast about. A wretched, anguished shriek rose from the survivors.

  Memnet and the others still faced outward, studying the gruesome aftermath of the master’s spell, watching the shattered remnants of the enemy army try to pick themselves up and hold the line against the surging Eriscoban forces. None seemed to have noticed the marauders who’d infiltrated the Golden Pavilion. Markal still couldn’t catch his breath to shout a warning.

  Hamid leaped from the top of the platform, jumping over Markal and Nathaliey, who remained on the ground. He cleared them both and sprang at Memnet the Great with Soultrup in hand.

  Markal found his voice at last. “Master!”

  Memnet turned around, and Markal’s hopes vanished with the look of surprise on the master’s face. The orb was a dull piece of glass in his hand, the power expelled in a single crushing blast. Memnet lifted his hand and gave a flick of the wrist as Hamid brought Soultrup down with a grunt. The sword bent slightly and sliced Memnet’s arm instead of his neck.

  Markal was on his knees. He knew a spell. It would throw the marauder captain from his feet. That’s all he needed, and then his companions would regain their composure and destroy Hamid with a barrage of magic.

  “Labi et cadere. Lapidem te percussit.”

  The power was there; Markal spoke the incantation perfectly. Blood streamed down his forearms. But it was a weak effort, the sort of spell casting he thought he’d left behind. It was crippled with doubt. The strength of it dissolved into the air like a pinch of salt dropped in boiling water.

  If he’d been facing a common soldier, he’d have hurled the man to the ground anyway, but this was Hamid, the marauder captain, and the feeble remnants of Markal’s spell hit his cloak and rolled harmlessly away. The enemy didn’t even stumble.

  Hamid pulled back Soultrup, leaned his weight forward, and thrust with all his might. The red sword plunged into the master’s belly.

  Memnet the Great opened his mouth in a silent gasp. Something moved, shimmered at his lips and nostrils. His soul. So tightly bound, it had even held when the master was decapitated. But not today. The soul bled from his mouth and nose, and Soultrup glowed with a hungr
y red fire as Hamid pulled it loose and let out a triumphant cry.

  Memnet the Great, the master wizard of the Order of the Crimson Path, slumped off the end of the blade and fell dead in a pool of his own blood.

  #

  Wolfram’s energy was finally fading, finally dissolving into the exhaustion of the road and the relentless pace of battle, when a bell gonged from the shimmering golden temple on the edge of the lake. Fresh energy surged into his limbs, and the paladins and foot soldiers around him gave a spontaneous battle cry.

  At the same time, the enemy blanched, turned weak against the Eriscoban spears and swords, as if the ringing bell were having the opposite effect on their morale. Formerly implacable opponents lowered their swords to be slaughtered, while others cringed against the blows while trying to fall back to safety.

  Moments later, the air near the small knot of wizards and their ilk at the Golden Pavilion flashed with green and yellow light, and a wall of strange fire galloped across the meadow. It stuck the mass of Veyrians, tearing them apart and scattering their body parts, and pushing the survivors back toward the woods before it finally exhausted its strength. Marauders and foot soldiers alike died. By the time the carnage ended, only a thin wedge of trembling, retreating footmen stood between Wolfram’s army and sweeping the meadow clear of the enemy forces.

  There were still thousands of Veyrians out there, including a massive force slogging around the lakeshore, plus more already emerging from the woods, but Wolfram spied his chance. Before giving the order to charge across the meadow, he glanced at the temple to make sure the wizards weren’t planning a repeat of the fire attack. He couldn’t risk getting caught in the devastation.

  And that was when he saw that something had gone wrong at the very heart of the wizards’ defenses.

  There were only twenty or thirty men and women at the temple, and when Wolfram first arrived, it had looked as though they’d be overwhelmed by enemies. There were so many Veyrians and marauders that no amount of magic seemed adequate to hold them back.

  But the battle had continued, and he remembered Nathaliey’s comment about an army at the heart of Aristonia. The wizards’ shrine was as good as a fortress, nearly unassailable, and after the crippling wave of magical fire, he’d thought them nearly invulnerable.

  But suddenly there were enemies in their midst—marauders, recognizable in their gray cloaks. Where had they come from? They must have been hiding inside the temple itself. Weapons flashed in the late afternoon sun, and Hamid was at their head, with the red sword gleaming fire. One of the figures fell.

  Wolfram raised his sword and roared a battle cry. It seemed impossible that it would carry over the clash and shout of battle, but Marissa and Lucas were fighting by his side, and they raised his cry. It spread from there. Soon, a hundred Blackshields were shouting as one.

  He spurred his horse and charged across the meadow, with the others following in a thunder of hooves. He could only trust Baron Knightsbridge to hold the rest of the army, to brace them against the new enemies surging from the woods into the meadow.

  Wolfram rode through a shimmering, translucent curtain, and the landscape changed before his eyes. The temple was no longer close, but a tiny, gleaming dot on the horizon, the golden roof going dark with the fall of night. Then something else happened, some lifting of the spell, and he was once more only a few hundred feet away and closing fast.

  There was a trench in front of him, and it yawned, a gaping chasm. A hundred feet wide and as deep as a canyon. He remembered the illusion of the stretching horizon, and took a chance, ordering his horse to leap it. It jumped, and then he was over. The horses of his companions followed, landing one after another. He slid from the saddle and ran toward the stairs leading up to the temple platform.

  A horrifying sight greeted his eyes. The great wizard lay motionless at the foot of the stairs. Possibly even dead. No, it was unthinkable.

  Three other members of the order had also fallen, and lay in bloody heaps, their eyes glossy. The remaining members of the order fought back against the marauders with spinning ethereal hammers, fists of air, cracks of energy from the sky, and other magical attacks, but a dark energy poured across the meadow and flowed into the marauders to strengthen them against these attacks. The marauders swung their swords, but the wizards vanished when the blades struck, only to appear a few feet away.

  Hamid stood above them all at the top of the platform. He still held Soultrup, glowing with red fire, but the sword writhed and twisted in his hand, trying to tear itself free. It had turned against him; it would not fight. It was then that he knew for sure that Memnet was dead, and his soul inside the red sword. Memnet was inside, fighting for control of the weapon.

  A marauder threw himself at Wolfram, and he lifted his shield and blocked the attack. He brought his own sword around from the shoulder and landed a crushing blow on the marauder’s breastplate. The man went down hard. Then it was a whirlwind of thrusts, blocks, and hacks as he fought his way up the stairs. Marissa was to his left, also dismounted, and she launched a flurry of attacks to reach his side.

  She cut down another marauder, but two others moved to stop her, and there was some sort of sorcery pulling from the meadow, an attempt to influence the battle from afar, which drew the attention of Wolfram’s paladins and the surviving wizards.

  He was alone when he reached the top of the stairs. Hamid still held the sword and leered at him.

  “Your wizard is dead, and I have his soul. I will have yours, too, Wolf.”

  Wolfram studied the man. Muscles bulged in his forearm and shoulder as he fought to keep the sword from trembling. A sheen of sweat stood out on his forehead. A vein throbbed at his temple.

  Wolfram held out his left hand. “Wizard,” he said, not to Hamid, but to the sword. “Deliver Soultrup into my grasp.”

  Soultrup gave a violent twist and bent the marauder’s arm at the shoulder and elbow. He cried out and dropped it—no, almost threw it—and the sword slid across the wooden platform to stop at Wolfram’s feet. He dropped his shield and picked it up in his left hand. His own weapon remained in his right.

  The red sword was alive. A storm of shouting, raging voices spoke inside Wolfram’s head, some telling him what to do, to obey the sorcerer, to kill himself, to kill Hamid, to put the sword down. To run, to fight, to cower, to give orders. A hundred contradictions, all in his head at once. A calmer voice spoke above them all.

  I am Memnet the Great, and I have taken command of this weapon.

  “Yes, wizard,” Wolfram said. “I hear you.”

  Hamid launched himself forward with an inarticulate scream.

  Wolfram meant to hold Soultrup back with his left hand while he killed Hamid with the sword in his right. The last thing he wanted was to put this twisted man into the weapon to fight alongside Pasha Malik and other malignant souls for control.

  But the red sword had other ideas, and seemed to move of its own accord. The tip lowered and then his left arm thrust violently upward as Hamid threw himself at Wolfram’s throat. The marauder impaled himself on the sword, and his own weight drove him down onto the blade before Wolfram could pull back. A strangled cry. Something shimmered around Hamid’s mouth and nose, then slithered down the length of Soultrup’s blade. It was devouring his soul.

  Wolfram braced himself for a struggle as Hamid’s soul joined the others, but to his surprise, his grip felt stronger, more sure. The weapon seemed lighter, even, in spite of its length and apparent weight. Another voice spoke.

  I am Hamid, whom some call the Noble. You have released me from bondage, my friend. I join the great wizard. I fight against the sorcerer who enslaved my soul.

  Now it was Wolfram’s turn to gape, even as he understood his error. His own sister had once been in thrall to King Toth and his necromancy, and it should not have been a surprise that others had been corrupted into service of the dark wizard. Men and women who were not naturally his enemy.

  The rest of the marau
ders died seconds after their captain fell. Lucas took one, Marissa another, and Wolfram hacked down two in quick succession before he had a chance to think of what to do with Soultrup. The red sword wanted to fight. It would hardly let him stop. When the last of the marauders fell, he looked down at it in wonder and fear. The fighting had begun again within the blade, the struggle for control. Memnet was there, Hamid and others, and they continued to force aside the darker voices striving with them.

  The surviving wizards gathered around their master, and it dawned on their faces that he would never rise again. Markal and Nathaliey were both still alive, as were two others that Wolfram’s eye marked as leaders of the order, one tall and proud looking and the other with dark eyebrows and an intense, almost wolf-like look to his gaze, and these four attempted to rouse the rest from their stupor, but Memnet’s death and the murder of others of their number had effectively crippled their strength.

  Meanwhile, events continued to evolve in the meadow. Baron Knightsbridge had the bulk of his forces in position. They’d been pushing toward the woods, moving over the dead and dying obliterated by Memnet’s killing wave. Maybe three, four thousand enemies had perished in the assault, but already their numbers were being replaced by thousands more surging out of the woods.

  The enemy stopped Knightsbridge’s advance and pushed him back. A large force peeled away from the Veyrian army and marched on the Golden Pavilion while their comrades pinned the Eriscobans in place. Three riders led them, and a dark sorcery rolled out from them. Wolfram had remounted, prepared to lead the Blackshields back into battle, and he nearly fell from the saddle as sorcery struck him.

  Of the three figures, the one in the middle drew his attention until he could hardly look away. The very air around him shimmered, and night gathered into a pool of inky darkness over his head. Wolfram stared, and there could be no doubt.