Meanwhile, outside the walls, dozens of people came surging up to the edge of the stone curtain to stare up and jabber excitedly at the griffin on the walls. The tumult below only made both Talon and Daria more skittish. By the time Whelan arrived, it was all the young woman could do to keep her griffin from launching himself skyward.
Whelan and Daria exchanged greetings from a distance before the woman climbed back onto her mount and lifted skyward. She circled overhead, shouting her goodbyes to Markal. Then she sped off to the west, chased by the stares of an entire army.
Markal was sad to see her go.
He turned back to his friends, who were grinning as they came in to embrace him. Whelan had a tired, grim look about him. His gray eyes, always penetrating, now carried an extra wariness. The sun had tanned his skin, and he was more lean than he had been, which gave his nose an aquiline hook to it. He was still handsome, but in a severe, regal manner that belied the warm, generous person the wizard had come to know over the years.
Hoffan, on the other hand, seemed to be profiting from the war. The mountain lord certainly hadn’t been skipping meals, although much of what Markal initially took for fat was really thick muscles about his shoulders and upper arms. That barrel shape reminded Markal of the barbarian tribes who lived north of the Free Kingdoms, much of their blood evidently flowing in his veins.
“We shouldn’t be so happy to see you, old friend,” Hoffan said. “You never bring good news. It’s always one disaster after another. What catastrophe has befallen us this time?”
Whelan’s eyes ranged over the wizard. “Maybe this time is different.” But his expression said that he didn’t believe this at all.
And there was no use holding onto the bad news. Markal gave a grim shake of the head. “It’s about your brother Roderick.”
Whelan’s face fell. “Dead?”
“Worse than that.”
Chapter Fourteen
As the ravagers left Yoth, the screams of children clutching their cauterized stumps reached Roderick’s ears, while bereaved mothers wailed a long, terrible dirge for their crippled sons and daughters. The smell of blood and burning flesh lingered in Roderick’s nostrils. When they reached the road, Pradmort inclined his head slightly and let his horse fall a half-length behind Roderick’s.
An unspoken signal passed through the ravagers, and Roderick sensed a new deference from both the speaking ravagers and the mindless alike.
“Where to, my lord?” Pradmort asked.
Now I am the captain of these men. I will lead the undead to war.
“We cannot risk the roads, so we’ll ride across the countryside. The master is calling us, and the enemy will seek to harry and delay.”
#
Outwardly, Roderick was a snarling, demanding captain as they continued east. Inside, he writhed in torment, horrified beyond measure by his own actions. He killed without mercy or quarter, he burned fields and slaughtered livestock to deny aid to those who had been his allies. Once, he even tortured a young goat herder to extract information about the best pathway through a stretch of badlands ahead of them. When he had what he wanted, he threw the boy off a cliff and left his broken body lying in the dirt at the bottom to be eaten by scavengers. He’d have sooner hurled himself off the cliff instead.
Word of their passage must have spread, because soon they found themselves under attack from the direction of the Tothian Way. First came probing advances from fifty or sixty men mounted on camel or horse. These riders would engage briefly, then melt away when Roderick turned to give battle. Wary of a trap, he refused to give pursuit.
He sensed an alert mind on the other end of this threat. Someone familiar. It was his brother Whelan. And the attacks served to delay his ride, which allowed Whelan to muster larger and larger forces to engage him. Soon, he was facing assault by eighty or a hundred, then two hundred, then entire armies. Forces large enough to surround and destroy him. Every one of his men was worth two Knights Temperate or ten common soldiers, but soon he was facing these kinds of odds and worse. In one narrow escape, he rode over a stone bridge crossing the Arnor River to discover fifty pikemen bracing themselves, while in the distance a force of several hundred horsemen came racing down the plain to give reinforcements.
Roderick ordered a charge across the bridge. Pikes might impale his men, but they couldn’t kill what was already dead. Only a beheading or immolation could stop a ravager. Even so, he lost five of his fifty-eight men in the fight. They narrowly slipped up the road ahead of the mass of cavalry, but Roderick was forced to ride deep into the night, even as they heard the Harvester closing behind.
The closer Roderick came to Veyre, the stronger he grew. When he turned his face toward the city, he could feel something like a warm, beckoning breeze flowing across the plain. It flooded through his body, eased his aches and pains, and seemed to give strength to their horses as well. It was their lord and master, King Toth, sending his magic out to aid their passage.
The extra speed helped Roderick evade two cleverly placed traps. The first, still a day’s ride from Veyre, caught him unaware. He crested a hill at the head of his company to discover a small army of slaves from the nearest city digging a huge trench lined with sharpened stakes, while several dozen riders were forming a line to intercept him. If Roderick had been moving at the pace of the previous few days, he’d have arrived much later in the afternoon and would have no doubt stumbled into well-defended fortifications. As it was, the ravagers slaughtered their way through the reinforced position and were fleeing east before the enemy had a chance to rally its troops.
The final time, Roderick was supposedly in Veyrian-controlled territory at last, but came trotting down the Tothian Way to see a mass of Kratian camel riders thundering out of a dry gulch where they’d been lying in ambush. There were several hundred of the dark-skinned desert warriors, perfectly placed to cut off Roderick’s men. The plan was no doubt to hold him in place while the enemy could bring additional forces to bear.
But there was so much power surging from the Dark Citadel this close to Veyre that Roderick simply angled his riders away from the road. Horses that should have been weary with exhaustion now flew like racehorses through the wheat fields opposite. The camel riders were unable to close the gap before Roderick slipped by to the south. The camel riders could do nothing more than pull up and aim their bows at the fleeing ravagers.
Roderick had ordered his knights to cast aside their armor two days earlier so as to speed their passage, and one of the arrows buried into his shoulder. Pain shot through his body, but he didn’t grimace or cry out. Left hand on the reins, he grasped the arrow shaft with his right and tore it out. More excruciating pain. But the wound didn’t bleed, and the flesh sealed itself shut. The pain passed.
There were no other obstacles before they reached Veyre. The streets of the city were crowded with hundreds of refugees and thousands of slaves and other prisoners of war. Ships clogged the harbor, bringing in supplies to provision the hundreds of thousands of people otherwise cut off by the combined armies of their enemies.
Soldiers, citizens, and slaves all parted from the path of the ravagers. Faces stared up at Roderick in fear and awe. One deaf old fellow didn’t seem to notice Roderick and his men bearing down on them, or at least didn’t have a chance to get off the road with his heavy bundle of cloth before the ravagers were upon him. Roderick ordered one of his lieutenants to lower his spear and clear the man by force. His lieutenant impaled the laggard, hoisted him off the ground, and tossed him against the stone buildings that lined the road. There was no additional need for bloodshed, and soon they were within the walls of the Dark Citadel itself, where the black tower loomed above them.
From here flowed the power that had called Roderick to Veyre and strengthened his ride. Why Toth didn’t simply give commands from afar, he couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he had been summoned and was to approach the tower alone.
#
I am dead. Let me suffe
r no more.
The words came to Roderick’s lips as he approached the steps to the black tower of the Dark Citadel, where it thrust into the sky above the city of Veyre. It was a looming, oppressive thing, like a massive, fire-blackened fist jutting defiantly toward the heavens. The former palace of the high khalif of Veyre—itself a massive building—had been dismantled and turned into a outer fortress to protect the tower and the inner courtyards.
A storm was brewing off the coast, and waves pounded the seawall of the citadel with the force of armored mammoths. The storming sea mirrored the turmoil in Roderick’s breast.
By the Brothers, let me go.
Again, the words were at Roderick’s lips, but unspoken. No sound came from his voice unless allowed by his dark master. And King Toth would not permit him to speak. Not yet.
“Go,” Pradmort urged. “Take the stairs. Our master awaits.”
Roderick felt invincible, even as he screamed inside, fighting and losing every effort to control his limbs. With each killing since leaving Yoth, his chains had grown heavier. They now felt like the lead roof of a king’s manor as he trudged up the stairs of the tower.
Several dozen ravagers in armor milled in the courtyard below, looking up at him as he approached the heavy black iron doors, the metal hammered with ancient cartouches of power. There were no other guards or troops within the walls of the citadel; all other servants of Toth had fled when the undead knights appeared.
The tower wasn’t like the slender stone towers of its opposite in Arvada, on the other side of the Dragon’s Spine, on the far end of the Tothian Way. Instead, it was shaped like the ancient ziggurats whose ruins he’d spotted among the khalifates during his journey. It began with a massive base, a square made of tens of thousands of black bricks. This supported another, slightly smaller square of bricks, which supported another square, and so on up to the top, some three or four hundred feet high. In the khalifates, the ruined ziggurats he’d spotted had been scaled by external stone staircases climbing the sides, one level to the next up to the top, where there was usually a decaying temple.
This tower, on the other hand, had a single exterior staircase that only climbed the base level. There, Roderick found a pair of massive black iron doors. He put his hands on the metal, unsure how to open them—they were too big for one man, or even ten, to push open.
The doors grew hot beneath his touch. Soon, it was almost painful, but he couldn’t pull away. He could feel the spells testing him, protecting whatever was inside. After a few seconds, they swung open of their own volition. He stepped across the threshold. Oil lamps lit a long hallway that led into the interior of the tower. The doors banged shut, and he squinted into the shadows while his eyes adjusted.
A wizard in a gray robe stood in the hallway in front of him. Cartouches of power and the figure of a leering, naked man with gaping, bloody wounds had been embroidered into the fabric.
“Who are you?” Roderick demanded.
“Master Slevmort, head of the torturers guild, a servant of our lord and master. Go to the throne room. Our lord will see you there.”
“Where?”
“Keep walking until you can walk no more.”
Again, why didn’t Roderick know this already? He’d felt Toth ordering him to Veyre these past eleven days. He had no control over his body. Only his thoughts were his own. So why had he been compelled to ask these questions? Why didn’t he simply find the throne room without need for communication?
The hallway was long and narrow, lined with smoky, flickering torches. There were no windows, and at first no side passageways or rooms. Only stone, down a passageway the width of two men walking side by side, and twice the height of a man. It should have been cool behind and beneath all that stone, but instead it grew hotter and hotter until Roderick was gasping for breath.
A sound reached his ears, at first no louder than a lover’s sigh, but soon it became like voices calling from a distance. Then he realized that the calls were really screams, as of men and women in great agony. Shortly after that, he came upon the first cells. They lined the hallway on either side. Three or four prisoners were kept chained to the walls in each room, some with their arms stretched above their heads, while others were allowed to crouch miserably on the ground with manacles holding them in place.
Some of the prisoners moaned or called out for water, but none of them were screaming. The screams came from deeper inside. And soon they were so loud that Roderick wanted to slap his hands over his ears. He reached the throne room and the source of the noise.
The throne room was the largest interior space Roderick had ever seen, about three times as wide as a typical banquet hall and with a ceiling so high that it was lost in the gloom some 150 or 200 feet overhead. A huge pit of coals, maybe a hundred feet across, sat in the center of the room, filling the air with choking smoke. A heavy, sweating man fed charcoal into the fire from a wheelbarrow, while three others pumped bellows to keep the fire hot. Five other men, wearing long gray robes and red cartouches of power—wizards of the torturers guild like Slevmort—encircled the pit, chanting with their hands outstretched.
A massive contraption of chains and pulleys stretched above the fire pit. Dangling from the chains were as many as two dozen iron cages. Naked men and women lay prone in these cages, which held their limbs outstretched. The cages sat in different positions above the fire, from high in the room to only eight or ten feet above the glowing coals. Those closest to the fire screamed and moaned as the shimmering heat roasted them alive, crackling and splitting their flesh like the sizzling skin of a pig on a skewer. One of the figures, skin crisped and sex organs burned away in the heat, had stopped screaming and lay there staring down at the fire through blackened eyeballs, moaning feebly as fat dripped from the flesh. One of the torturers waved at a slave operating a crank, and the slave hoisted the burning figure up again. The other torturers lifted their voices in a chant.
Roderick was unsure whether the wizards were extracting magic from the pain of the tortured, or if they were laboring to keep them alive. Either way, it was the most horrific thing he’d ever seen and his stomach churned and heaved. He tried to reach for his sword, crying in rage within his own head that he would hack down these torturers and throw them into the flames. He moved his hand to his sword hilt. There it froze, unable to move.
Meanwhile, he couldn’t so much as tear his gaze away from the atrocity. Bodies lowered and raised in turn, and all the while the bellows kept heaving while the torturers chanted and the victims screamed and screamed.
At last he was released, and he looked across the room. There he saw the dark wizard for the first time.
King Toth sat naked on a throne of smooth black iron, his hands clenching the arm rests. He had no hair anywhere on his body: no beard, no hair on head or chest, no eyebrows even. Apart from this strange hairlessness, there was something about the curve of his lips and his cheekbones that reminded Roderick of Markal or Chantmer the Tall. But his skin was a strange, shimmering color that confused Roderick at first. His eyes glittered as he stared at the scene of torture ahead of him.
The chains over the glowing coals clanked, lifting one victim from torture, and dropping another, begging for mercy, toward it. The pleas soon gave way to screams.
Toth sighed, and while Roderick watched, a glowing snake writhed across his bare arms. It curved around his shoulder and encircled his chest. The head of the snake seemed to burrow into the dark wizard’s chest, and soon it had disappeared. Toth sighed again.
This was the source of Toth’s power, Roderick knew, these voices lifting in pain and torment. It flowed into the dark wizard and fueled his magic. It was how he had drawn the ravagers across the Desolation of Toth and through the khalifates, how he had sent out his power to strengthen Roderick and his forces when the enemy sought to encircle and destroy them.
Toth turned his head and eyed Roderick.
“Come, my servant.” His voice was deep and layered, as if five
men were speaking at once through his mouth.
Roderick approached obediently. Equal measures of revulsion and adoration mingled in his breast. He fought a savage battle to reclaim his will.
He is standing before you, defenseless. Take up your sword, cut him down. End the war.
Instead, he heard his voice ask, “What is your will, my lord?”
“You are my captain, my champion.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“When I have regained my strength, you will lead my armies back across the plains. You will command giants, dragons. Even the wights of Aristonia shall obey your command. Together, we will throw down the enemy and cast his cities in ruin. The enemy taunts us from Arvada—this we will leave as a second desolation, to remain barren for a thousand years.”
“All that will glorify your name, my lord. This I will do.”
“First, we must drive off the enemy that assaults our gates. Pasha Ismail has gathered a powerful army that will sweep down from the north to drive a wedge between the barbarians and the Balsalomian traitors. Then, while they are divided, you will—”
Toth stopped and closed his eyes as another serpent of power writhed on his skin. From behind Roderick came screams and the smell of burning flesh.
Now! Kill him now!
Roderick could not move.
When the glowing snake had burrowed into his chest, and light shimmered across his skin once more, King Toth opened his eyes and smiled. “I can read your thoughts, my slave. Pradmort was wrong—you are not fully given over to my command.”
“My soul struggles, but I obey, my lord and king.”
“Yes, I know. And soon, what rebellion lies within your heart will be forever extinguished and you will serve as my champion forever. There is only one more thing you must do.”
“Anything for you. What is your command?”
The Warrior King (Book 4) Page 11