by Curtis, Greg
Erislee had of course always known that that would be the case and that there had never been anything they could have done about it. Still, seeing so many of them dead was appalling. Knowing that they were responsible – that she had given the order – was worse. And while she could tell herself that if they had not launched the attack and had just waited out the siege, that there would have been no civilians left alive as the beasts would have killed them all – it didn't help. Though she knew the bombardment had saved lives, it seemed a lie when she was staring at the bodies of the fallen.
Similarly she was beginning to realise that there had also been a good reason why the false temple had finally launched their counter attack. They simply couldn't sit and be slowly destroyed by the bombardment. It had been a move born of desperation. The longer they had stayed where they were and taken shelter, the more would have died from the bombardment. Or from the chimera as little by little they would have broken free of their pens and their masters' control. They'd always had to counter attack. All the war masters agreed on that. In fact that had been part of the purpose of the bombardment. To draw them out in to an attack on open ground where thanks to their preparations they'd had the advantage. Even if it hadn't been quite as much of an advantage as they'd hoped for.
But at least not everyone was dead. Though there were hundreds of bodies lying out in the open and many more in the broken buildings covered with rubble, there were also survivors. Most of them were innocents. The soldiers and the chimera had largely been killed in their charge. And as they took each terrace the remaining defenders quickly surrendered or gave up their lives. Thus far there had been nothing of an organised resistance as they had feared.
So what were left with were mainly just the frightened citizens. Those who had been bullied and beaten down by the false priests, frightened into submission, and then forced to do their bidding. They had become little more than slaves. It was the same story as what they had seen in all the towns and villages they had so far freed.
If anything, in Midland Heights it was worse. Maybe they had been beaten down harder, for longer? Whatever had been done to them it had left them with their souls crushed. Their spirits completely broken.
The signs were easy to spot. The people hid. They kept their heads down. They wouldn't look any of Erislee's army in the eye. They didn't raise their voices. In fact if Erislee or one of her fighters raised his voice or made any sort of threatening gesture they grovelled. Some of them event went so far as to fall down to their hands and knees in a heartbeat. And they did exactly what they were told to do immediately.
In all her life Erislee had never seen such examples of human wretchedness. Nor so many of them. And the worst of it was that she doubted these people would ever truly recover from what had been done to them. The damage to their spirits was just too great.
The only good thing about their condition was that it did make it easy to separate them from the false priests hiding among them. And there were a few that tried. Some of the false priests were trying to escape the consequences of their actions any way they could. Perhaps most of them. And they'd decided that the easiest way to do that was to put on the rags of the people they'd enslaved and brutalised for years and pretend to be them. They couldn't get away with it though. Because while they could wear the rags and bow and scrape, there was something about the level of fear and subjugation of the people that they just couldn't imitate. It simply wasn't in them. They were also too well fed. It seemed that not everyone in the city had been starving.
Which was why the false priest being led away by the soldiers in front of her had been caught. He didn't look the part, so they'd checked his wrist, found the marks of his master there beneath the dirt he'd tried to cover them up with, and now he was in chains and looking shocked. It was almost as though he didn't understand why he was being taken away.
It was depressing to see how little understanding the false priest had of what he'd done. Of how his actions had helped create the living hell that was Midland Heights. But at least he would soon learn a little more of it. Already his magic had been taken from him as he had been forced to drink the tea. And without it he was scared – even if he had only been a minor wizard to begin with. His magic couldn't really have helped him, but without it he felt vulnerable. Very vulnerable. In fact he was crying. He was trying to hide it now that his pleas had fallen on deaf ears, but still the tears were rolling down his cheeks as he guessed his fate. He would be taken from here, interrogated, and when he had given up everything he knew, tried. And the outcome of that trial was certain. He would be hung.
The false priest had to know that. He had to know that there was no hope for him. Just as there was no hope for any of the others. He wasn't the first and he wouldn't be the last. Half a dozen more had already been taken away and she suspected hundreds more would follow in due course. They were only on the third terrace after all and there were at least thirty more to go as they climbed through the city.
So what was the point in tears she wondered? Of begging? Those things would not save him. They would do him no good at all. They wouldn't even earn him any sympathy. He had to know that. For he had not yielded to the tears of those he had brutalised. In fact even as she watched the soldiers take him to the waiting prison caravan where he would be manacled to the others and led away, he didn't appear to spare a thought for the others. He didn't so much as look at them. He only cared for himself.
Erislee couldn't help but think that something was very wrong with him. Nyma had told her what Harl had said about these six great answers the Circle wizards had sought and the deal they'd made. The answers that they had sacrificed innocent people without end to obtain. And while these great answers might be valuable things, not one of them in her view was worth the life of another. She was a hunter. When she killed it was for food. It was to feed the hungry. And while there was a challenge involved it was not about sport as some claimed.
But these wizards! They killed for no reason and without a single thought of compassion. It was as though the instant they heard about these six great answers, everything in their lives revolved around them. There was nothing else. They didn't see the suffering they caused. They didn't care about it. Morality was completely forgotten as was simple human decency. The law wasn't so much as a thought in their heads. The only thing they knew was the desire for those six answers. And the one and only time they thought about anything else was when they were caught and soon to die.
There would have to be something done about that. She knew it, as did the others. Especially when it seemed that most wizards were exactly the same. When it looked as though all their lofty ideals and inviolate rules that they had pretended to hold so precious meant nothing to them. When it seemed that they had all been lies, and that what truly beat in their hearts was hunger for power. Hunger for these great answers.
Which made it all the harder to understand their own wizards. They not only didn't seem to have any desire for these six great answers, but were completely mystified as to why the others did. How they could have become as they were. Many of them seemed to believe it was some sort of sickness of the mind that had befallen them. Something that had completely overcome both their simple humanity and their common sense. Every time she spoke with them they said the same thing. These wizards were mad.
And maybe she thought, they were right? Maybe they were mad. It was easier to accept than that most wizards were simply immoral. But maybe they had always been mad. They had just been better at hiding it.
The other thing that troubled her was the number of false priests. Over the previous months they must have killed upwards of two or three thousand of them. Half of them were simple demon thralls who it seemed controlled the beasts through the charms they held. But the rest had been wizards. And this was in the Rainbow Mountains, the smallest of the five kingdoms with the fewest people. She hadn't guessed that there were so many wizards in the world! Not even minor wizards such as these were. She also g
uessed that before the false temple had risen there hadn't been.
These people would never have been called wizards back then. They were just people who had a small touch of magic. Not enough to be trained. Not enough to go into business or call themselves a wizard. For the most part these were the insignificant ones. But when the false temple had come to power it seemed that they had somehow drawn all of these people to them. Turned them from regular citizens of whichever town or city they lived in, into monsters who would kill without mercy or limitation for a dream of a power they had surely never had a chance of realising. How had they done that? How had they turned so many?
Harl was right. There was something very wrong with these wizards. But was he also wrong? Could it be that they had always been like this? That they had never been righteous or law abiding? That for hundreds of years the Circle and its precious laws for the wizards of the Kingdom of the Lion had always just been a disguise for the dark desires of the wizards? The inquisitors were asking those questions of the prisoners. She had listened to the arcane smith and known that his questions were good ones and asked them to investigate. But she feared that the answers they got would not be the ones that Harl and the others wanted. Having magic might simply corrupt a man's soul. And that would have to be dealt with in time.
The sound of a cat mewling somewhere nearby abruptly took her away from her melancholy. It was a sound that troubled her, though not the creature itself when she saw the tabby peering down at her from the roof of a nearby building. She quite liked cats. They were pointless animals in many respects. They followed no orders and other than hunting vermin were of no use. But they were consummate hunters, and she respected that about them. What she didn't like was the fact that they were the animal that Maynard the Irrepressible was constantly summoning. And so her first thought whenever she spotted one of the creatures was to wonder if he was somewhere nearby.
It seemed unlikely she thought as she scoured the nearby buildings, looking for the Circle wizard. He was quite probably mad, but she doubted he was suicidal. So the chances were that he was holed up in one of the upper terraces, preparing to defend himself to the end. Especially if he had any idea of the fate they had in store for him.
“Look!”
A soldier shouted from somewhere behind her, his voice filled with fear. She turned hurriedly to see him pointing to the sky. But when she followed the direction of his arm she realised he wasn't pointing at the sky at all. He was pointing to a spinning vortex of shimmering light in it, and she instantly knew what it was. A summoning. And Maynard was a powerful summoner. He was bringing something big through. Something deadly was being brought into the world.
“Dina!”
Erislee called for the wizard, hoping that she as their only other Circle wizard might have some answer to whatever he was doing. Some defence.
She couldn't see Dina but she soon felt her magic. A wind that came out of nowhere suddenly rushed down the hill and into the city, blasting them with cold air before twisting upwards at the last to smash into the shimmering vortex, spinning it around. Could it work? Wind against whatever was being summoned? Erislee didn't know. But if it didn't she had her longbow.
Other wizards were entering the fray too. She saw lightning and fire streaking into the vortex, trying to destroy it or whatever was in it being summoned. But they seemed to have little effect. Soon the outline of the creature started to appear and she understood why.
It was a vast outline. The creature was the size of a six horse wagon train, and that was when it was all curled up. But she recognised the outline and knew that when it unfurled it would become much larger again. A hundred feet long at least, all in long sinuous scales and impenetrable leather. A wingspan just as wide as the creature was long. A long, slender tail that could fly like the whip of a wagon master as it was flicked back and forth. And a neck just as long on which its huge snake like head balanced.
Actually it could more than balance. It could whip around at frightening speed and when the jaws snapped shut on its prey it would be cut in half and gulped down. Drakes didn't chew.
For the moment though the only part of it that was solid was the eye. The great red eye in its horse sized head that took them all in and no doubt worked out which of them would be the meatiest. Which of them it would eat first.
“Dragon!”
Someone shouted it out for some reason, though there was no point. They could all see the vast outline of the creature starting to become solid in the sky above them. And Erislee knew that whoever had shouted it was wrong anyway. It wasn't a dragon. It never could have been. Because the basic rule of summoning was that you could never summon something more powerful than yourself against its will. Demons could sometimes be called, but mostly it was only because they agreed to come. Dragons though would not agree. And no mere wizard could make them.
This wasn't a dragon. It was a drake. Almost as large, able to breath fire and eat people in mere gulps, but lacking intelligence. They were animals. Drakes were to dragons much as monkeys were to men. But that didn't make it any less dangerous. In fact it probably made it more so. A dragon might choose restraint knowing it was not in any danger. A drake never would.
Erislee drew her long bow, notched an arrow and waited. She had to wait because she knew that until the drake had fully come into this world, her arrows would pass straight through it.
“Look for the wizard!” shouted Dina suddenly. “He has to be near!”
Perhaps Dina had the right of it Erislee thought. Perhaps they should be searching for Maynard. And if they could stop him before the summoning was complete that would save a lot of lives. But there was one problem. It was almost impossible to take her eyes off the drake forming in the air above them.
“There!”
One of the soldiers shouted out and she looked to where he was pointing, hoping to spot the wizard. Instead she was only just in time to see the soldier loose an arrow at a target somewhere behind one of the buildings. She couldn't see the target. She didn't know if it was Maynard or not. But she did notice that the moment he loosed his arrow at whoever he could see the shimmering drake suddenly flickered. The spell had faltered as the caster lost his concentration.
That was her signal to act and she suddenly knew just what to do. This was a hunt and though she knew where her target had gone she could not see him. There was always one thing that had to be done when that happened. The quarry would have to be flushed out.
“Take him down!”
Immediately she gave the command half a dozen griffins swooped down from the sky to where the soldier was pointing. Soon after that she watched a screaming man burst from behind the building. It was an old man, bald on top and with a huge bush of unkempt white hair sprouting out from the sides of his head. It was Maynard.
He was quite fast for an old man she thought. Surprisingly fleet of foot. But then his legs were being propelled by fear. Most people were faster when that happened.
Erislee loosed her arrow at him, not troubled in the least by his running. She had long ago learned to bring down a moving target. Simply aim slightly ahead of him and loose in the hope that he would run into the arrow as it flew into him. The hardest thing about the shot was that she couldn't kill him. And that went against everything she knew. Hunting to wound. You never hunted to wound. It was always for the kill.
Still, she aimed low and a heartbeat later the wizard screamed in pain as her arrow found the meat of his thigh. Maynard fell to the ground and as he did, the outline of the drake suddenly began to fade. Maynard was unable to concentrate through the pain and so his casting was failing.
Another arrow found his shoulder and the wizard screamed as he lay in the grass. And it was then that Erislee realised the danger. If she didn't stop her soldiers soon they would kill him and if Dina was right the gods only knew what would happen then.
“Hold your arrows!” Erislee yelled the order out as loudly as she could and then when she saw a couple more arrow
s fly through the air and luckily miss the wizard she yelled it again. The soldiers stopped quickly though doubtless they didn't understand why. Still, they knew that the wizard was down and that the threat of his drake had ended. The visage in the air above them was rapidly becoming fainter and fainter. But though the threat had been overcome, he still had to die.
“Hold him and bring the cage!”
Harl's demon trap had been rushed out to them on the back of a fast wagon in only a matter of days. They'd known they would need it before they took the city. And in fact its arrival at Cut Valley Holding had been one of the signals they'd waited on before the barrage had begun.
It took a few minutes for the soldiers to bring the cage. It was on the back of a wagon on one of the lower terraces and the horses didn't like dragging it up hill. But that gave her time to climb down from her position on the stairs and walk over to where the wizard lay, surrounded by soldiers with their weapons pointed at him. Dina was already there by the time she made it to him.