“There’s another one,” Markal warned.
“I see him!” Nathaliey said. A second enemy in a gray cloak was entering the garden, forcing his way through the Veyrian soldiers. “Finish this one.”
A vein throbbed on Markal’s forehead. “I’m trying.”
He kept talking to the tree, coaxing it with incantations in the old tongue. The roots were loosening, and the marauder had nearly freed himself. Markal spoke again with more urgency, and this time the tree responded. The roots tightened, twisted, and there was a loud snap, like a branch breaking. The man’s foot and ankle twisted at a wrong angle and he screamed.
Markal doubled over, gasping, and Nathaliey looked briefly from the second marauder, worried. It shouldn’t have been so hard. The tree was imbued with power already, had been waiting patiently all these years to have its magic called up. Was that Markal struggling, or the magic in the marauder’s cloak fighting back?
She hurled a second stone, this time trying to direct it at the marauder. It flew straight at him, then bent away at the last moment and smashed harmlessly into the wall. The enemy fought with one of the palace guards while keepers tried to trip him, snare him, and blind him. The two remaining guards were wounded, but still fighting, strengthened by the magic around them that simultaneously sapped the strength and concentration of the Veyrians.
Nathaliey took in the scene. They’d killed or incapacitated at least fifteen enemies already, plus an untold number who’d disappeared into the mass of vegetation growing against the wall. Yet there were more than twenty Veyrians inside the walled garden, and dozens more pushed their way through the vines that continued to grab at them as they entered.
And now a third marauder entered. He didn’t immediately press into the fray, but set about hacking at the vines. They struck him again and again, but slithered off his cloak, charred. Markal and Nathaliey hurled more stones, but while they killed enemy soldiers in the attempts, they couldn’t hit either of their primary targets. The stones simply refused to make contact, and the defenders had nearly exhausted the resources of the walled gardens.
The screen of vines on the walls and over the archway were only twitching now, either severed and burned by the third marauder or losing the magic that had called them into action. More and more Veyrians poured through the archway. One speared a keeper, and another killed one of the remaining guards. The attack became more organized by the moment.
“Should I prepare the retreat?” Nathaliey asked Markal.
The first rays of dawn came peeking over the wall, and his face was flushed and sweating, as if he’d been laboring beneath a baking sun instead of in the cool air of early morning. She threw out an arm to steady him, even though he’d been the one supporting her not so long ago.
“Not yet,” he said. “There is one thing left to do.”
She bit her lip. Most of the defenses of the walled garden were already spent, but not all of them, not the final recourse.
“You know what that means, don’t you?” she said.
“I do.” A grim pall hung over his voice. “We have no choice. Make it happen.”
Nathaliey placed her palms down and called up the words she’d been taught by the master himself. They were spoken in a form of the old tongue so ancient that it seemed almost a special dialect. Even Memnet struggled to read it, the master had admitted. Yet she knew the meaning, and the incantation, once learned, stayed fixed in the mind. The words tasted like death on her tongue.
The pure land sacrifices in its own defense.
Magic boiled from the ground as she called it forth. The most ancient of the walled garden’s defenses came to their aid, and it was both powerful and destructive.
The marauder beneath the peach tree cried out again. The roots had taken hold of his legs now, his arms. They pulled him into the soil, as if it had become liquid. He flailed and clawed, trying to get his head and shoulders off the ground. The soil churned and frothed, and the man disappeared inch by inch. Moments later, he vanished, swallowed entirely.
The ground had turned liquid all around the attackers, and they slowly sank, screaming and struggling. One of the remaining marauders leaped onto the flagstone path, but he slipped and fell, and when his hand touched the soil, it seized him and dragged him off the path.
The final marauder saw the ground softening all around him and leaped for the wall. He grabbed a handful of vines and hoisted himself up even as soldiers were trapped in the mire and pulled down all around him. His feet were off the ground, and he was scrambling to safety even as he shouted at the Veyrians on the opposite side of the archway to stop fighting their way in.
But this final marauder was undone by his own actions of the past few minutes. The vines that might have sustained him before had been hacked and burned away. Weakened and dying, their clinging roots tore loose from the brick, and he fell.
When he hit, the ground swallowed him. Moments later, the only ones standing were the surviving defenders. One keeper and two of the three guards had fallen. The dead enemies were nowhere to be seen, but must have numbered well over a hundred by the time Nathaliey called forth the final defense.
But the spell had not come without a cost. The grass was gone, replaced by dirt and stone. Flowers withered and died in front of her eyes. The vines turned yellow, and the leaves of the peach tree curled brown and dry. The bark sloughed off, and a branch cracked and fell. The tree was soon nothing but a skeleton. Mortar crumbled from the wall, and bricks fell. Even the honeybees fell from the sky as if burned. Nathaliey looked down to see a dead bird at her feet. An odor of decay and death hung in the air.
This walled garden, only minutes before one of the most fertile, beautiful parts of this, the most fertile and magical corner of Aristonia, was a blasted waste from one side to the other. Thank the Brothers it was confined to these walls.
Markal and Nathaliey looked at each other, and she thought the sick look on her friend’s face must be mirrored on her own.
Markal nodded. “Now we call the retreat.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
At first, Markal didn’t know if he’d make it out of the ruins of the walled garden. The very ground seemed poisoned, and he’d used more strength than he’d hoped during the battle. Nathaliey had done her duty, as had the keepers and the young acolyte. Even the three palace guards had fought bravely.
So what was wrong with him? Doubt had fixed him with its jeering gaze once again, and he’d struggled with every task.
“Markal,” Nathaliey said. She stood at the archway on the opposite side, looking worried.
“I’m coming,” he wheezed.
His feet were as heavy as stones as he dragged them along. The devastation seemed to suck the breath from his lungs. He staggered and lost his balance.
This is it, he thought as he fell. My death comes here.
But Nathaliey caught him and held him up. “We’re close now, friend,” she whispered in his ear, and he managed a nod.
Somehow, he gained the archway and stumbled out. And there he was transformed. Clean air filled his lungs. The nausea passed, and strength returned to his limbs. The other survivors of the attack were about a hundred feet ahead, hurrying down the path, and Markal and Nathaliey followed. They passed a raised bed of roses, reached the stone staircase that curled down toward the dragon fountain, and descended.
“What was that?” Nathaliey asked. “What happened to you?”
“I don’t know. The destruction seemed to enter my bones. I would have died if I’d stayed, I know that much.”
A man’s scream carried through the morning air from behind them. There were shouts, orders, swords clashing. More fighting, perhaps. Or maybe the invading army was facing more traps, more killing defenses.
These defenses whispered all around Markal. Here was a rune carved into one of the flagstones, there a root that would send an invader sprawling. A ward would send men turning in the wrong direction on the staircase and pitch them over the edge. Men would fall on t
hese stairs and break ankles, wrists, and necks. The entire garden was a lethal series of traps and pitfalls for the uninvited.
Many defenses needed to be activated. Keepers had done some of this as they’d passed ahead, but Markal and Nathaliey found older, more subtle and challenging wards and runes when they reached the forest path, and they stopped long enough to bring them to life. Trees whispered awake, and strange sounds came from the boughs above. This work delayed their flight toward the meadow and the pavilion. Markal was bent over a moss-covered boulder, whispering an incantation, when Nathaliey hissed a warning.
Several Veyrian soldiers came limping through the forest, faces scratched, sniping at each other. One of the soldiers spotted them and shouted a warning. Markal and Nathaliey stood still, waiting to see what would happen next.
One man didn’t see a branch, and it knocked him from his feet. A second man tripped over a stone that he seemed to deliberately walk into. Another stumbled into a bush, where he disappeared, thrashing and shouting for help. Suddenly, the remaining men screamed and turned as a dark shape came hurtling out of the forest with a roar. It was an enormous black bear, and it knocked one of the Veyrians from his feet with a massive paw and threw itself on the screaming man, jaws snapping.The others fled in the direction from which they’d come. The bear lifted its dripping muzzle, eyed Markal and Nathaliey for a moment, then disappeared.
They stood gaping. “We have bears?” she asked.
“Maybe it was Narud.”
Nathaliey laughed, but soon turned serious. “Come on. We haven’t seen the last of the Veyrians.”
They came out of the woods. The meadow was a fresh green beneath the morning sunlight, with the Golden Pavilion gleaming on the far side, mirrored against the lake behind it. The air hung heavy with the smell of clover and the buzz of honeybees. If not for the commotion by the shrine itself, it would have seemed another peaceful, glorious day in the gardens that had been his home for three decades.
But the action at the pavilion quickly caught his eye. The vizier was organizing palace guards into ranks. There were at least thirty men already, with more joining them from the meadow or running around the path from the far side of the small lake. Some of the guards limped or held arms in slings, but most appeared uninjured.
Several keepers and acolytes worked in front of the Syrmarrians, tearing up the sod with spades to make what looked like a rudimentary moat. It was a few inches deep, no more than two feet wide, and just long enough to stretch in front of the pavilion. Other acolytes and keepers worked down by the lakefront, preparing additional defenses.
“What is the point of that trench?” Nathaliey said. “A turtle could cross that thing.”
“It’s more than it seems.”
“I sure hope so, because it seems like nothing at all.”
Three figures stood on the raised platform at the heart of the shrine with the prayer bell at their backs. Each was easily recognizable by his profile. One was the tall, straight figure of Chantmer, standing on the right side of the master, who leaned against his staff. On the left was the shorter, stockier figure of Narud. The trio stared out toward Markal and Nathaliey as they hurried down the path toward the pavilion.
Some spell lay heavy over the meadow, and suddenly the open grassy stretch seemed to grow. The pavilion was a distant pinprick of reflected light, and the lake a gleaming puddle on the horizon, all miles and miles away. Markal shook his head to clear it, and the illusion disappeared.
Another deception awaited when they reached the shallow trench. As Markal went to step over it, the whole thing yawned into a chasm, twenty feet wide and fifty deep. He flinched back, afraid of falling to his death, though he knew it was another trick. Nathaliey hesitated, too. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her over. One of the keepers, panting and leaning on his spade, grinned as they crossed, obviously pleased with his work.
“Well met,” Memnet said as Markal and Nathliey scaled the steps of the pavilion. “What happened at the walled garden?”
A cold hollow burned in Markal’s breast. Had the survivors of that battle not informed him already? Why did it fall on Markal to tell it?
“Destroyed, Master. I rendered it desolate.”
Pain flickered across Memnet’s face. “I thought you might. Yet I had hoped . . .”
“I did it,” Nathaliey said, her voice leaden. “I called up the spell, not Markal. Perhaps I did it wrong. Maybe it was too much or too soon.”
Markal couldn’t let her take the blame. “You did what you had to. Anyway, it was my decision.”
The master nodded. “It was a final resort. You had little choice.”
“There were too many,” Markal said. “We raised every defense and still they kept coming. There were three of the gray ones who assassinated you and scores of Veyrians.”
Chantmer straightened his robes and sniffed. “Let us hope you exacted a toll on the enemy for all of your trouble.”
Markal fought his irritation at the implication. “That doesn’t deserve an answer, but if you must know, we killed the three marauders and at least a hundred other enemies as well.”
“And delayed them so you could prepare here,” Nathaliey said.
“Do you suppose that we’ve been waiting around idly chatting?” Chantmer waved his hand. “We have fought our own battles, suffered our own losses. Taken our own victories. And they have come at a lower cost than the destruction of the walled garden.”
“Please tell us,” Nathaliey snapped. “Let’s hear about all of your heroic exploits.”
“We have no time for this,” Memnet said in a quiet voice that nevertheless carried an edge. “Our nerves are tense, and we’ll say things we might regret later.” A half-smile. “Assuming any of us survive. If we don’t, we can carry on the argument later, while we wait for the Harvester to gather our souls. Narud has been seeing to our defenses. He will explain.”
Narud had been quiet during all of this, his gaze distant, directed toward the forest on the far side of the meadow, but now he explained what Memnet, Narud, and Chantmer had done at the pavilion, and how they hoped to control the flow of the battle. Markal had either known or guessed most of this already, and he studied the master as Narud spoke.
Memnet the Great was only a shell of his previous self, as weak and frail as an old man. He gripped his staff with both hands, his back bent. An occasional grimace crossed his face when he shifted posture. Was the pain and stooping and hobbling less than it had been yesterday? Hard to say, but to Markal’s eyes there was modest improvement at best. If the gardens fell and they managed to escape, would he ever heal outside the walls of the garden? Would he ever regain his power?
No, Markal decided. Most surely, he would not.
If only Memnet were better, if only he had a few more weeks to heal, then victory would be more certain. Without him, it seemed desperate. Their great hope was to tempt King Toth to press his attack before he was ready, but so quickly had the enemy overwhelmed the outer defenses that Markal was suffering great doubts on that score.
“Where are they?” Nathaliey asked when Narud finished describing the preparations. She stared across the meadow. “Can we dare hope they’ve abandoned the attack?”
“Don’t be a fool,” Chantmer said. “Why would they do that?”
“They’ve taken losses,” she said. “Maybe one of their leaders fell. They might have left the gardens to regroup.”
“We don’t want them to retreat,” Memnet said. “We need a complete victory.”
“It doesn’t have to be here on this spot,” Nathaliey said. “Most never reached the woodland trail, right, Markal? Could be the rest of them are wandering around in there, lost and dying. Maybe they’ll never make it out.”
“We can hope,” Chantmer said. He didn’t sound convinced in the slightest, but neither had Nathaliey.
“The majority will reach the meadow,” the master said. “Every battle, every struggle to this point has weakened them. But it hasn’t
stopped the inevitable.” His eyes narrowed, and he sniffed the wind. “Indeed, here they come.”
One of the acolytes working below heard this, and news passed through the defenders in whispers and mutters. Soon, even the palace guards were tense and watching. The keepers at the trench tossed aside spades and took up position by the guards.
For a long time Markal didn’t see anything, and he wondered if the master was wrong, but then movement caught his eye. Several soldiers staggered out of the woods opposite the meadow, followed by a handful more. Soon there were at least thirty men, and still they kept coming. From a few dozen, they soon had at least a hundred, and then there were two hundred, then three hundred. Still, they kept coming.
“By the Brothers,” Nathaliey said. “How many are there?”
“An army, it would seem,” Markal said.
The Veyrians had come just far enough into the meadow to put space between themselves and the woods, and now they formed into rows, each under a banner: a red star, a yellow crescent, a red shield on a white background. One man was on a horse. He rode back and forth in front of the footmen, tightening their ranks, organizing fresh companies whenever enough newcomers had emerged from the forest.
“Look around the lake,” Chantmer warned.
All attention had been turned to the forest, and heads turned to see what he was pointing at. A solid line of men marched swiftly up the lake path that followed the water’s edge. They crossed a wooden bridge over a stream, passed beneath drooping willows, and traipsed onto a path of boards and stones that crossed a marshy stretch populated by cattails and reeds. A man at the lead shouted, and their pace quickened.
Here, the lakeside Veyrians met their first opposition. They’d apparently been trying to cross the causeway and take up position on a grassy rise on the opposite side. From there, it would be a quick run downhill to the pavilion. But as they reached the middle part of the swampy stretch, they stumbled from the boardwalk and tripped on stones that were flat and meant for easy walking—easy for those who were welcome in the gardens, of course.
The Red Sword (The Red Sword Trilogy Book 1) Page 25