“Where is Wolfram?” Markal cried over the racket.
“I sent him away,” Chantmer said.
“You sent him to die?”
“Not to die. Not the paladins.”
“And the others? The rest of the Eriscoban army?”
Chantmer’s expression turned grim. “I saved who I could. Many . . . yes, many couldn’t escape in time. The protective cocoon was not big enough. The others will reach the border if they keep running. I did what I could to strengthen them, but some may falter.”
“What about the griffin riders?” Markal asked.
“They fled. They survived.”
“And the enemy?” Nathaliey demanded. “What about the dark wizard? The marauders? The dark acolytes?”
“The enemy troops died,” Chantmer said. “The dark acolytes and marauders made it a little farther, but they won’t have reached the garden walls. I don’t know about Toth.”
One of the lesser apprentices spoke. Kreth. “I followed the dark wizard with a seeker. The shadows had touched him. His bones were turning to dust. The desolation will catch him, and he will die.”
Markal nodded. It was clever thinking on the young apprentice’s part.
But a small satisfaction. The destructive spell was tearing the land apart; it would leave nothing behind, the very soil poisoned. Only two things would survive, he thought, apart from the people protected by Chantmer’s magic: the vault with the books, and the Tothian Way. One the work of wizardry, the other sorcery. Too much magic bound them to the earth, and not even the desolation would destroy them.
All around, the wind kept howling, pressing in on the bubble, and they gathered what strength remained, fortified their tiny sanctuary, and hunkered down to wait it out.
By morning, the howling was still going strong, but the buffeting winds seemed to have died, and a thin, pale light filtered through from the rising sun. One of the keepers shared out a little bread and cheese she’d carried on her person—the last food from the gardens any of them would ever eat—and this strengthened them enough Markal thought they should make an attempt for the Tothian Way.
“The highway will shield us from the desolation,” he said. “We’ll work our way east.”
“Why east?” Nathaliey asked.
“Because I’m not ready to find Wolfram and explain why we killed thousands of Eriscobans,” he admitted. “And I don’t want to see Yuli, either, assuming she gained the mountains ahead of the storm. How are we going to explain what we did? How am I going to explain it?”
“Someday you’re going to have to explain to us, too,” Nathaliey said. There was something in her voice that he hadn’t heard before. Something hard. “Why you destroyed everything we’ve ever worked for, why you annihilated our homeland.”
“It wasn’t only his decision,” Chantmer said. “We spoke together.”
“That is not a comfort,” she said coldly. “Not in the slightest.”
“It was the only possible way to save the order,” Chantmer said.
“The order is destroyed anyway,” Nathaliey said. “The master is dead, half our number killed. Some of them probably by your destructive spell. The books are unrecoverable at this point. We have nothing, Chantmer. Nothing.”
“We have our lives,” Chantmer said.
“Yes, well. For now.”
Markal had no answer for her. All he could do was organize them to escape from this hellish landscape. They threw their magic into Chantmer’s magical bubble and carried it with them north toward the Tothian Way. The landscape was unrecognizable, and their feet kicked up dust and bones. Once, they came upon a single blackened trunk of a tree, which Narud thought was a sentinel tree that had stood near the north gate. They must be leaving the gardens, or what remained of them. But there was no sign of the garden walls. Markal’s stomach turned over, and he thought he might be sick.
They reached the Tothian Way that afternoon. The fortresses that lined it were in ruins, and there wasn’t a soul on the road itself; anyone who’d found themselves here when the desolation rolled across to the other side must have fled east. They found supplies among the heaps of abandoned gear, though, including food and drink.
Later that afternoon, they encountered a donkey in the middle of the road. It brayed and rushed to nuzzle them. Markal scratched its head while Narud whispered in its ear to ease its trembling fear. As Nathaliey was loading it with salvaged food and gear, Markal met her gaze over the animal’s back. She sighed and looked away. He thought her expression might have softened slightly, but couldn’t be sure.
They continued east, with more evidence of abandoned camps along the way. Veyrians were superstitious sorts, and must have thought the world was ending as the desolation spread. Their army seemed to have vanished, either dead or melting away to the east and their homelands. Once word reached the khalifates, Markal guessed that immediate revolt against Veyrian rule would be the result.
It took two days for them to get clear of the desolation. It didn’t end all at once; the destructive wave had rolled through, scorching grass and killing trees, but the ground no longer had the blackened, barren look, and when they stepped from the road, they didn’t face a choking, poisonous atmosphere.
Markal began to give thought to what was next, how to rebuild from this catastrophe. The journey had been a quiet one, with almost every conversation relating to immediate practical matters: how to protect themselves on the road, what to do if they met with Veyrians or bandits, how to be sure that the food and drink scavenged from the abandoned supplies hadn’t been contaminated by the rolling desolation. Nobody had broached the subject of how to carry on.
They reached the outskirts of Syrmarria. The desolation had stopped several miles to the west, but the city was destroyed all the same. Fire still smoldered deep in cellars or beneath piles of rubble, leaving a pall over the ruins. They entered through a rubbled stretch of the western wall of the city, and stood in the shade of a watchtower that leaned drunkenly to one side. There was no road visible anywhere, but some areas had been so thoroughly scorched as to open wide channels through the wreckage, all the way to the palace hill.
“Are we safe?” someone asked.
“The salamanders are gone,” Markal said. “Clawed their way back down to the depths.”
“The people are gone, too,” Chantmer said.
Indeed, apart from a single bony dog that came snarling from a hollow between two collapsed houses, then retreated, whimpering when they stood firm, they had not seen a single living thing since entering the ruins of Syrmarria.
Narud found a way up the hill toward the palace, and they continued in silence, with only the shuffle of feet kicking up ash to mark their passage. The donkey kept his head down, nostrils pinched.
The lower palace was nothing but lumps of brick and stone melted to a smooth, glass-like rock, but a handful of buildings remained intact on the crown of the hill, including an upper terrace, the vegetation burned except for a pair of lemon trees that had somehow survived the conflagration while shielded in a stone courtyard.
Once they reached this sheltered spot, Chantmer bent and dusted ash from a flagstone. “Here’s one of our old wards. Never triggered.”
“And here’s another,” Narud said. “Let’s see if they’ll lead us to the library.”
Using the surviving buildings and the lingering magic as guides, they picked through the ruins of the palace, trying to identify what landmarks they could. It was the archivists who eventually found the library, with Karla fetching Markal to tell him she’d located it beneath a mass of melted stone. Together, the four greater members of the order broke apart the stone with their magic. Beneath it lay a deep melted pit, and a light spell showed that it was a shaft burrowing deep into the hill.
“The library is gone,” Markal said, a hollow pit in his stomach. “The salamander must have burrowed his way back down after devouring all the books.”
That hope gone, they retreated to the upper terr
ace. It was late afternoon, and the sun descended in an orange haze to the west. Beyond the ruined city, the once fertile land of Aristonia seemed to have turned to desert, even before hitting the desolation. To the south, more desert. To the east, the land remained stricken in drought.
The others milled about as if waiting for Markal to say something, and he looked them over. There were eighteen survivors: Markal, Chantmer, Narud, Nathaliey, three keepers, two acolytes, five lesser apprentices, and four archivists.
“The order is dissolved,” he said. This brought gasps, frowns. “Not by me. By the death of our master, our home, our homeland, and the destruction of our library. Without those things, we’re not an order of wizards.”
“What are you saying?” Chantmer asked. “We all go our own way? Is that it?”
“No, we start building, we make something new.”
“Starting from nothing,” one of the lesser apprentices said.
“Not nothing,” Nathaliey said. “Not everything was destroyed.”
“That is true,” Markal admitted. “There is the vault with our books, the ones we saved from the destruction. We need someone to return to the gardens to recover them from the desolation. Not now, but as soon as it’s safe.”
“I’ll go,” Chantmer said.
“It won’t be easy,” Markal said. “You’ll have to cross the desolation, locate the vault amid the destruction, and find a safe place to store the books. That might take weeks, months. Maybe years.”
“Understood,” Chantmer said. “Give me the archivists. They can help. But where would I take the books once I’ve dug them out of the vault?”
“Here, to Syrmarria,” Markal said.
“There is no Syrmarria,” Nathaliey said. She’d grown up in the palace, daughter of a vizier, and as she looked around, the pain was etched in her face. “Only this ruin.”
That gave Markal another idea. “Syrmarrians still live. Aristonians, too. Nathaliey, you can bring them back. As many as you can find. Is Sadira still alive? She could be khalifa. Your father her grand vizier.”
She looked doubtful. “I don’t know, Markal.”
“It’s the only way to preserve a remnant of our people,” he said. “If you don’t, they’ll dissolve into the sultanates. Slaves, servants, a scattered, wandering people. Within a generation, they’ll be gone. Take the apprentices with you. Acolytes, too. The sultan of Marrabat is a difficult man—the best way to free our people is to show your power.”
“But where do I bring them? Here, to this dead city?”
“It won’t be so dead by the time you return. It’s only burned, it’s not poisoned. The keepers can set about clearing ash and seeing that what lives on this hill survives and grows. They’ll start here and spread down to the souks, bring it all back to life. Aristonia is dead, but this small part of it can continue.”
“And what about me?” Narud asked. “What would you have me do?”
“Go to the mountains. Find the woman with the emerald crown and beg her forgiveness for the near destruction of her people. Make friends with their animals, show that you are—well, not an ally, but not an enemy, either. While you’re in the mountains, you may as well look for the old hermit. Tell him about Memnet’s death, and ask how we’d go about forming a new order of wizards. He’s seen the dissolution of a magical order before—he might know what to do.”
Narud looked solemn. “Yes, I’ll do that. Assuming he’ll talk to me.”
“But what about you, Master?” Karla asked.
Markal winced. “I’m not the master. We have no master, and no order, do you understand? We’ll form an order some day, when we are reunited again. Bring honor and memory to those who died. Jethro—he died on this very hill—sacrificing himself to the fire salamander. That’s our legacy.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” Nathaliey pressed. “What will you do?”
“I’m going west. I’m crossing the Dragon’s Spine. The war left Eriscoba in tatters. Thousands died, many because of my spell. I’m going to find Wolfram and his paladins and beg their forgiveness. If there are marauders still in Eriscoba, I’ll help him hunt them down. If any of the free kingdoms have fallen into famine and war, I’ll put things right.”
“And when you’re done?” she asked.
“Then I’ll come back.”
That seemed to settle matters, and they sat down to work out practical considerations. Someone lit a fire on the terrace, using dead, charred trees from the gardens. Markal fell silent and listened to the others talk for a while.
He’d been separated from the order for lengthy periods before. Most of them had. But this would be different. They might not see each other again for years. Was this the right decision? Maybe they should stay together, retreat to a sanctuary in the desert to rebuild their strength. Could it be that his decision was too hasty, that he should wait for a few weeks before deciding?
They’d left the bags next to the donkey, which rested beneath the lemon tree, and Nathaliey went to fetch a bottle of wine and two cups. She beckoned for Markal to follow her away from the warmth of the fire.
“Please tell me that’s wine from the gardens,” he said as she led him to the edge of the terrace.
“Alas, no. It’s sour Veyrian slop.”
“Ah, well. It’s wine.” He helped her open the bottle and pour.
“I want to show you something,” she said, setting down the bottle. “Look what I spotted.”
Nathaliey nodded out toward the city. There, to the north, some distance beyond the ruins of Syrmarria, was a tiny pinprick of light.
“Someone else is alive out there,” he said. “Veyrian soldiers?”
“It doesn’t matter who. Veyrians are human like any of the rest of us. And the war is over.” She took a deep breath. “I’m feeling better. I’m ready to stop blaming, to stop feeling like the world has ended.”
“I wasn’t ready . . . it was too much responsibility. Why me? Why couldn’t someone else make the decision?”
“Someone else did,” she told him. “Memnet the Great decided. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have shown Chantmer how to activate the desolation spell. Chantmer wasn’t even a wizard, but the master chose him.”
“Are we sure he’s not a wizard? Has anyone asked Chantmer about that? Maybe the master did it before he died.”
“What does it matter now?” Nathaliey said. “He’s as strong as the rest of us, and since you didn’t accept the title of master when it was offered, the matter is probably out of your hands.” She shook her head. “That’s not the point, anyway. The point is that Memnet told Chantmer, not you, because he needed to be sure it would happen, and he didn’t trust you with the key to destroying everything, because he wasn’t convinced you’d go through with it.”
“But I did go through with it. It was my doing, Nathaliey. I spoke the words, and I rang the bell. Aristonia tore itself apart because of my actions.”
“And because of that, we’re all still alive, and hundreds of Eriscobans, too. If you hadn’t, Chantmer would have, and he couldn’t have then protected those of us who survived.” She put a hand on his arm. “We won the war. It was a costly victory, but did you ever think that it would come easily?”
“It was more than costly. We lost the library, lost the master, lost Jethro, lost acolytes. Two-thirds of the order was killed before it ended.”
“And I thank the Brothers that you weren’t one of them.”
Markal looked away.
“I missed you,” Nathaliey continued. “When Jasmeen was torturing me, forcing me to drink that poison, I kept picturing you at the gardens. I imagined your crooked smile, the raised eyebrow you give me when you say something funny. When I was weakening, I imagined what you’d tell me so I’d hold on and fight a little longer. I didn’t turn into a dark acolyte because of you.”
Markal turned to look at her. His throat felt tight. “Don’t stay in the sultanates forever. Get your father, get the princess, and bring our people ba
ck.”
“Same to you. Don’t turn into a barbarian while you’re over there. Come back and help me rebuild.”
“You won’t be rid of me that easily,” he said.
“Good.”
There was nothing left to say, so they drank their wine and looked at the distant campfire flickering on the Tothian Way. From behind came the murmured voices of their companions sitting around their own fire, waiting out their final night together, after which they would break apart to go their separate ways.
They’d suffered their blows, and the cost of victory was terrible, but if that was the will of the gods, so be it. Tomorrow, they would begin to rebuild what had been lost.
-end-
Afterword
Thank you for reading the Red Sword Trilogy. As you might have figured out by now, this trilogy has a tie-in with the Dark Citadel Series, starting with book #1, The Dark Citadel. In fact, if you sign up for my mailing list that announces new releases, you can get the first book of that series for free.
In that earlier series, I allude to the events of the Red Sword numerous times, and I’d long planned to go back to the earlier war and write this story. How long? To give you an idea, I started writing The Dark Citadel nearly twenty years ago. It wasn’t the first book I ever wrote, but it’s the earliest work of mine that has been published.
I wrote the first two books of that series, and then nothing happened. Publishers expressed interest, nibbled, and declined. The books sat in a dusty corner of my hard drive, and I doubted they’d ever see the light of day.
When I finally revisited them in 2011, I saw that they were actually pretty good, albeit in need of some editing. I published the first two books of the series, and they found an audience, which encouraged me to finish the story. I want to give a special thanks to those readers who first started reading The Dark Citadel back in the day. Without you, this current series would have never been written.
The Emerald Crown (The Red Sword Trilogy Book 3) Page 29