Alle and Eadoin rallied around her, encircling Kiara with their arms so gently that Cwynn did not stir. “You’ll survive because you’re strong,” Eadoin said, meeting Kiara’s eyes. “And so is Cwynn. Neither of you will be alone. And I have no doubt that you—and Tris—will be home again to see this little one grow up.” She smiled. “Now, my dear, it’s time to let Cwynn sleep. You have things to prepare, and you’ll need your rest.”
Reluctantly, Kiara let the nursemaid take Cwynn. The baby stretched and turned, and a scowl darkened his face for a few seconds until he settled in the nurse’s arms. Kiara permitted herself a deep sigh, and then she straightened her shoulders and fastened the rest of her bodice. “Thank you. I’m sorry to be so overcome. It’s just—”
“It’s never easy to leave the ones we love, even when we have no choice,” Eadoin reassured her. “I’ve found that business is the best cure for heartache. Let’s get you ready to go.”
Chapter Nine
The problem is, Your Majesty, it’s damned near impossible to hold the whole coastline secure indefinitely.” Tolya, captain of the ship Istra’s Vengeance and leader of the Northern Fleet, leaned forward. He had come straight from his ship, and tonight, he wore none of his looted finery.
Instead, Tolya wore a loose tunic shirt smudged with soot and darkened in places with blood. His breeches were similarly marred, and his high boots were scuffed. The gold rings and gemstones he had worn on his first meeting with the king were absent, the better for him to grasp his cutlass. His dark black hair was plaited into a thick braid, and dark eyes glinted beneath heavy brows.
“Do you think their purpose is to break our line or to wear us down?” Tris looked from Tolya to Sister Fallon, one of his most gifted mages, who sat to Tolya’s right. “When our mages aren’t conjuring up storms and rough seas to trouble the invaders, they’re fighting back against the Temnottans’ magic to raise havoc here.”
“The last two weeks have felt like a test of strength,” Fallon replied. “We know from the spies and from the reports out of Isencroft that the brunt of the attack has been aimed at breaking through on the Isencroft coast. Whoever is behind this attack may be trying to keep us busy so that we don’t send our resources to Isencroft’s aid.”
“I wonder if wearing us down isn’t closer to the truth.” They turned to look at Pashka, the chief of the fishermen whose flotilla of small boats augmented the privateer vessels Tolya and his captains lent to the war effort.
Tris grimaced. “An expensive gamble, if that’s all there is to it.”
“Each salvo grows fiercer, as if the invaders originally thought to land their ships without challenge. I know little of battle magic, having experience only with the fishwives and hedge witches of our villages, but even they hesitate to use a greater magic when lesser power would suffice,” Pashka said. He was a man in his middle years, gray templed, with hands broadened and callused by hard work. “I wonder if, now that we’ve frustrated their intent to make an easy landing, it’s taken them some testing to determine what might be required to break our line.”
“The invaders can’t sit in the harbor forever,” Tris mused. “For one thing, it’s a tremendous drain on their mages to animate the dead. I suspect there are more soldiers in those boats, soldiers who are very much alive. Our troops and ships are on home territory. We can resupply easily. They’re limited to the food and water they brought with them, unless they can land and replenish.”
“And, undoubtedly, that’s what they mean to do,” Fallon said. “But have you noticed: The magic so far has been minor workings, nothing on par with what we might expect from the ‘dark summoner’ King Donelan warned about. Most of the attacks so far have been physical.”
“There are several ways to read that,” Tris thought aloud. “The Temnottans could be keeping us pinned here as a diversion. We don’t know how good their spies are, and they’ve been isolated from the rest of the Winter Kingdoms for over a hundred years. Perhaps they don’t realize the politics that keeps Margolan from marching its army to the defense of Isencroft.”
“That’s one possibility.” Fallon crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, staring at her empty cup of tea in thought. “Their dark summoner might not be as powerful as Donelan feared, or perhaps he’s doing his best to draw us out, to gauge how well we might withstand his attack.”
“Which is exactly why I’ve avoided interceding in the magical attacks so far,” Tris finished for her. “But the men are growing restless. We can’t stay in the field forever. An army this size consumes a huge amount of provisions, and we have little enough to spare.”
“What do you feel in your magic, Tris?” Fallon asked.
Tris drew a deep breath. “I feel a storm coming. There’s power out there, holding back. I think they’ve been looking for a weak spot, and there’s no telling whether they think they’ve found one.”
“What about us? Have we found a weak spot?” It was Pashka who spoke, and Tris knew that the fishermen and his flotilla captains had spent the last two weeks harrying the invading fleet, easy targets for arrows and hot oil grenades.
Tris met Fallon’s eyes and nodded. “I believe so. I think that the Temnottans never expected to find an army in the field waiting for them. So our first strike was preemptive. They’ve hung back, having already revealed their intention to make war, but finding it harder to attack than they expected. It’s time for the next strike on our part.”
Tris looked from Pashka to Tolya. “Tonight, our weather mages will bring in a heavy fog to give your ships cover to withdraw. Pull back to safe harbors and wait. Once you’re clear, the water mages will cause a sea surge, driving the Temnottans in toward shore. At the same time, the land mages will shift and raise the sand bars. We plan to drive the ships into range of our catapults and trebuchets, or run them aground on the sandbars.”
“And once they’re wrecked or aground, my ships can help you make short work of them,” Tolya said with a wolfish smile. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all week, Your Majesty. We’re ready to fight.”
“Get word back to your ships right away,” Tris cautioned. “We move in five candlemarks.”
“I hate being this far behind the lines,” Tris grumbled to Fallon. They stood atop a wooden platform well behind the front lines. It was high enough to afford a view of the harbor but not so tall as to become a target. Tris tapped his telescope against his leg nervously. The spyglass might help with detail, but the tower afforded an adequate view without help of lenses.
“You’re the king, not a foot soldier,” Fallon chided. “And I don’t believe for a moment that you’ll weather the entire war without having a hand in the action. Right now, we can manage without your sword or magic. Be grateful. It won’t last.”
“I know. It’s just that—”
Fallon looked at him appraisingly. “Another premonition?”
Tris nodded. “I have a very strong feeling that we’ll break the stalemate today. I wish I know how or when. But I don’t. Magic can be damnably unclear.”
Fallon glanced at the swords that he carried. “You’re carrying Nexus. That alone tells me you’re expecting whatever happens today to be as much about magic as it is about fighting.”
In the scabbard at Tris’s belt hung the finely forged sword he preferred for combat. But in a back scabbard waited another sword, Nexus, the sword that had once belonged to the legendary summoner Bava K’aa, Tris’s grandmother. Nexus had a sentience and power of its own, and while Tris had not yet fully learned the extent of the sword’s capability, he knew its value in arcane battle firsthand. Even the warning that Nexus required a breath of the user’s soul in payment for its protection did not deter Tris from carrying the sword this night.
As planned, a heavy fog shrouded the bay. Below in the camp, Tris heard the bells strike nine times.
“Now.” Fallon’s voice was quiet, full of anticipation. And although Tris did not contribute any of his magic to this attack, he could
feel the power weaving warp and weft around him, wrenching violently against the tide.
In the distance, Tris heard the heavy thud of the catapults and the whoosh of the trebuchets as the bombardment began. From their post, they saw only shadows sailing into the fog from the heavy armaments that ringed the high ground. “There’s no way to see if we’re actually hitting anything,” Tris muttered.
Suddenly, the night grew bright as day as light and flames flared from the direction of the waterline. A wall of flames replaced the dark line of the shore, and Tris could hear the screams and cries of soldiers scrambling to get out of its way.
A curtain of seawater rose to douse the flames, but instead of extinguishing the fire, the water scattered the flames, which burned even hotter than before. Another wave of fire streaked through the night sky, landing even farther inland. Tris felt the buffeting of sudden winds, no doubt the response of the air mages to the assault, but like the water, wind only fed the flames.
“Whatever they’re using isn’t magic,” Fallon said as she strained to see. “It’s alchemy, and I wish our man Wivvers had invented it first!”
Behind them in the camp that stretched as far as the eye could see, something caught Tris’s attention. He stared into the night, unsure of what had alerted his mage sense to trouble. He caught a glimpse of shadow, followed by a man’s hoarse scream. “Come on,” Tris said, already starting down the ladder to the ground. “We’ve got trouble.”
The night was cold enough for Tris to see his breath, and a haze of campfire hung over the camp. The scream had roused the camp, and all the soldiers who had not been called for positions near the shoreline stirred from their fires and tents to see what was going on.
More shadows caught Tris’s attention. Moving fast, they swept in from the edges of the camp, shrieking as they came. The shadows shifted form as they moved, becoming the silhouettes of nightmarish beasts, with sharp fangs and long, pointed claws. The shadows swept across—through—two soldiers, and the men cried out in agony and then fell to the ground.
“Dimonns,” Tris breathed, readying his magic. He reached for Nexus, and as he drew the sword, runes along its blade burst into fire and the blade itself glowed.
Fallon leveled a barrage of blue-white mage lightning toward a swath of darkness that was heading toward them. Tris gathered his magic and stretched out his left hand, willing power out into the night. A glowing, translucent warding snapped into place, covering Fallon and himself. In the distance, Tris heard shouting and saw flashes of mage lightning, assuring him that more of the battle mages recognized this threat from the rear.
The shadows poured over their warding like black oil, shrieking and battering against the energy. Beyond the warding, Tris could hear the shouts of soldiers, and he saw torches blaze as the fighters realized that they confronted a supernatural enemy. In the distance, along the far edge of the camp, Tris heard more commotion and the sound of running footsteps.
“Something else is coming in from the Eastern edge of camp,” Tris said, leveling another blast of mage lightning at the shadows that swarmed over their warding, blasting them clear.
“Somehow, the wardings around the camp have been breached,” Fallon replied, using her magic to blast at the shadows that were flying low and swiftly across the camp. “The dimonns shouldn’t have been able to penetrate.”
“We can’t keep picking them off one by one. There are too many. But I have an idea. On the count of three, we drop the shielding, and instead of blasting the dimonns individually, we send out a sheet of lightning across the camp, over the heads of the men.”
“If that doesn’t work, we’ll be too drained to be much good for a while.”
“We can’t maintain the power to keep up the wardings and send lightning surges all night,” Tris countered. “And the men out there don’t have any wardings at all. I’m counting on the other mages to join their power when they see what’s happening.”
“Start counting.”
On the third count, Tris let the wardings fall and concentrated his magic along Nexus’s blade. The sword glowed white with power, its fiery runes blindingly bright. Tris held the sword over his head as the power thrummed through him, his own magic and Fallon’s combined, finding focus in Nexus’s blade and release in the lightning that exploded from the sword’s point.
Instead of streaking across the night, the lightning formed a blue-white canopy, crackling with power just over the heads of the soldiers. The observation tower Tris and Fallon had just deserted burst into flame. Dimonns shrieked and winked out of existence as the canopy lanced through them. Other dimonns, caught below the canopy, became easy targets for the battle mages that did not send their fire aloft. The night smelled of sulfur and of burning flesh. In the distance, Tris could hear the sound of fighting. The air around them was charged so thoroughly with the lightning’s energy that Tris felt his hair rise. Within minutes, the last of the dimonn attackers fled or vanished. Tris and Fallon warily dropped their defenses.
“Head for the rear. Whatever’s over there wasn’t affected like the dimonns.”
Tris lowered Nexus but did not sheath it. The sword no longer glowed, and its runes were the same dull gray as the rest of the blade, but Tris could sense the sword’s power awaiting his command.
By now, the battle at the shoreline bathed the night in flame. “Sweet Chenne,” Tris murmured as he and Fallon neared the action. The smell of rotting flesh and decay hung heavy in the night air. All along the eastern border of the camp, soldiers battled a gray line of attackers streaming from the nearby underbrush. Ragged figures shambled toward the soldiers, showing no fear of the swords and battle axes, or of the scythes and pikes. Even the glow of the firelight could not warm the pallor of the attackers’ faces as they surged forward. Swords swung through the air, severing limbs, but the attackers continued their silent press, undaunted. Only fire caused them to change their course, when a soldier thrust a burning torch close enough to illuminate the rotting features of the invaders.
“Ashtenerath?” Fallon murmured.
Tris shook his head. “Too emotionless. Ashtenerath are driven wild by pain and fear. They’re alive, at least when they attack, although the magic that drives them kills them soon enough. No,” he said. “These are corpses. Stolen bodies.”
“The work of a summoner?”
“More like a puppeteer. They aren’t even armed.” Tris’s features darkened in anger. “They were called from their graves to be a distraction, not a real threat. The souls are elsewhere. This desecration must end.”
Tris spoke a word of power and brought his hands together at chest height and then swept them to the sides, palms down. Like marionettes with severed strings, the corpses halted and then fell to the ground, still.
A cheer went up from the soldiers as they realized that their enemy was defeated. Tris dropped to one knee next to the nearest corpse and let his open palm hover over its decaying rib cage. “Just a shell,” he murmured to Fallon, who remained standing, alert for danger. “The soul is long gone.” He stood and looked over the corner of the camp where the fight had been. Hundreds of corpses littered the ground, felled in midstride.
“Someone’s been planning this,” Tris said, his voice tight with anger. “These aren’t soldiers. It’s not like at Lochlanimar, when Curane’s mages animated our war dead against us. Someone’s been raiding tombs, civilian graves, and gathering them for a strike like this.”
“Could there be more?”
Tris shrugged. He looked into the distance, into the scrubby vegetation and thin trees that stretched behind the camp to the horizon. He could sense no glimmer of magic, no indication that more animated corpses waited, hidden, for another strike. “It’s possible. Even though it doesn’t take the same kind of power to animate corpses as it does to actually force a soul back into a dead body, it still required a substantial amount of power to move that many bodies at once.”
Fallon nodded and began to wander toward the edge
of the camp. “Look here.” She pointed toward the ground and used her magic to allow the spelled boundary of the camp to glow dimly. “I’m guessing that while our attention was on the attack from the harbor, whoever controlled the corpses attacked the wardings. That’s what allowed both the corpses and the dimonns into the camp.”
Just then, a young man in a lieutenant’s uniform walked up and saluted Tris, snapping to attention. “Your Majesty, sir. What would you have us do with the bodies of the… things… that attacked us?”
Tris looked out over the ruin the attack had made of the southern corner of the camp. “Once it’s daylight, shovel them beyond the edge of camp and burn the bodies, so they can’t be disturbed again. That should be enough to keep disease down.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tris walked a few steps to where a soldier lay dead on the ground. This was a fresh kill, not one of the long-dead. The man lay in a pool of blood where the claws of a dimonn had torn his chest open. Again, Tris knelt and let his hand hover over the corpse. When he stood, he said nothing.
“You look troubled,” Fallon observed.
Tris took a deep breath. “It’s not the usual dimonn kill. I want to check the others, see if it’s the same for them. Usually, dimonns are content with blood. After a dimonn attack, the souls are freed at death to take their rest in the Lady or remain near the place of death.”
“And tonight?”
Tris turned and met Fallon’s gaze. “The souls are missing.”
The northern horizon was lit with an unnatural glow, as if the bay itself were on fire. The sounds of bombardment had ended, and Tris could see the outlines of the massive catapults and trebuchets standing idle. Cautiously, he and Fallon worked their way forward, until they could see that the flames still burning were from ships in the harbor stranded on sandbars. Sandbars that had not existed just a few candlemarks before, raised by the Margolan mages.
The Dread: The Fallen Kings Cycle: Book Two Page 13