Mark of Fire (The Endarian Prophecy Book 1)

by Richard Phillips

  All else became secondary to the development of her skills. She picked up two additional spells that she quickly mastered. These enabled her to ensnare enemies in thick mud and send forth a freezing wind. She found herself becoming more irritable, resenting any interruptions and taking that resentment out on the offender with a verbal barrage. Even her irrepressible brother started to maintain a certain distance.

  Her father had tried talking to Carol, eventually resorting to a severe scolding that was unflinching in its honesty. But she continued to dig deeper into an emotional well. Due to the disturbing effects that Carol’s practice of magic and devolving attitude was having on morale, and because she ignored his demands to cease such behavior, Rafel ordered her wagon placed last in line. This was fine with Carol.

  She sat on the back of the wagon, her feet dangling down. Her leather breeches, like the rest of her clothes, were covered in dust kicked into the air from the long caravan. Her hair was tangled and dirty. The stringent water conservation had made baths an unaffordable luxury, and Carol had lost interest in brushing out her tresses.

  Her brown eyes had taken on a gray cast, her face drawn and taut. Sleep came with great difficulty, for Arn’s face haunted her dreams. She found herself tempted to try increasingly difficult spells, using a mixture of subtle and extreme variations, the elemental entities she directed baffled by her newfound harshness. Of late she had even been drawn toward calling upon the primordial, Kaleal. After all, what did it really matter anymore whether or not she controlled him or went mad? Perhaps she was there already.

  Carol directed her will out into the dunes behind the wagon, grabbing a breeze and whipping it into a raging whirl. A dark wall of sand formed in the air, laced with jagged branches of lightning as a wall of fog crawled out before the manifestation.

  Carol closed her eyes, sending out a blast of cold air that struck the fog, the resulting condensed snow immediately sucked into the whirling torrent behind it. The wind howled, and the crash of thunder close at hand caused the oxen to break into a nervous trot. The elements were far more effective than Jake’s voice.

  A horse separated from the main line and pulled back to fall in beside Carol’s wagon. Jake brought the team to a halt at a command from Alan, who pulled his warhorse up beside the wagon. Alan swung from his saddle and climbed onto the seat beside Lucy, causing the terrified girl to shriek. He ignored her and climbed into the back.

  Alan placed his broad hand on Carol’s shoulder.

  “Carol, stop it. Stop it now!” her brother commanded.

  For a few seconds, Carol was barely aware of him. Then, ever so slowly, the unnatural storm abated, replaced by the still, dry heat of the desert. She turned to stare, glassy-eyed, into Alan’s face.

  “I have left you to yourself and to your practice with the hope that you would work your way through this malaise,” Alan said. “But you’ve quit fighting and given up. That’s not what I would’ve expected of the sister who once told me that it was her duty to learn magic so that she could bring a new political order to the world. So maybe, before you kill yourself, you should be the one to burn this.” Alan grabbed her hand and thrust a book onto her palm. “It seems that you no longer value it.”

  He then turned, went to the front of the wagon, and leapt back on his horse, wheeling away with a flick of his reins.

  Carol looked numbly at the battered leather binding. As she gazed down at Thorean’s Liberty, she bent her head and wept. Rolling back under the canvas, she hugged the old volume, her body curled up in a ball.

  On the wagon seat, Jake leaned over to Lucy.

  “Lorness Carol will get better now. Lord Alan has seen to it.”

  PART III

  A word of caution to any who would wield the magic of exchange: Should your channel’s capacity be exceeded, the shortfall shall be drawn from the wielder.

  —From the Scroll of Landrel

  16

  Lagoth—Northwest Mogev Desert

  YOR 413, Late Summer

  The city spread out majestically before them. Arn and Ty sat astride their mounts along a ridge a little more than half a league from the outer walls. The southern wall was perhaps fifty feet high and quite wide but had no gates. Armored guards atop the wall paced back and forth between towers that jutted skyward. All along the perimeter, the top of the wall was perforated with crenels for pouring hot oil or shooting arrows down upon enemies.

  To the west, the river passed underneath the outer wall through a domed arch. The arch extended out from the wall on the outside, forming a tunnel into the city with sides thick enough to house a network of pathways. The occupants had made no attempt to conceal that this was an obvious trap.

  The desert lay beyond the city’s western wall, while the eastern wall wound up into the foothills before wrapping around to the north. This left plenty of room for the city and its castle atop the hill in the city center.

  Arn and Ty kept to the higher ridges as they worked their way northward, maintaining cover within thick woods. Several times they were forced to detour up into the mountains to avoid armed patrols, which were made up of a mixture of humans and vorgs. As opposed to the bandits Arn had encountered in and around Rork, these warriors wore chain mail battle armor and looked to be part of larger units.

  The sight of the vorgs pulled forth a reminder of Charna. He shunted aside the thought and refocused. The two riders continued to work their way through the rough country, reaching the northern edge of the wall as evening fell.

  A wide road stretched away from the city to the north and west, exiting the wall beneath a great portcullis. The guard force here was quite heavy, and the sight of an additional military encampment outside the walls surprised Arn.

  Tens of thousands of soldiers were gathering on the northern outskirts of the city. Lights from hundreds of fires twinkled in the twilight. From their vantage point on the hill, Arn and Ty could see the city lighting up as well.

  “What do you make of that?” Ty asked.

  “I haven’t heard of an army that size being gathered since the Vorg War, and that was thirty years ago.”

  “It’s a safe bet that this little sight would set off a general panic in Tal,” Ty said. “How in the deep are we going to get in there?”

  “They’ve got so many soldiers coming and going that it’ll be easy to get inside the walls. All we need are the uniforms,” Arn said.

  The duo turned back toward the higher mountains, traveling into rougher terrain. Within an hour, they found a sheltered draw with good grass and water that would take a great deal of luck for a patrol to find. Ty turned the palomino loose, while Arn hobbled Ax for grazing and watering. Arn slung his pack over his shoulder and set out toward the city with Ty striding along beside him.

  The soldiers were confident of their security, for the posted guards were none too alert. Ty and Arn moved past them easily in the darkness, crawling along and using low ground to avoid being silhouetted against the sky. Arn led the way past the outer tents, selecting a small one about twenty feet inside the perimeter. He raised his hand, motioning for Ty to guard his back.

  Arn paused at the flap, listening to the sounds of breathing from within. He could make out the steady breathing of two humans, and the slower, rumbling breaths of three vorgs. He drew Slaken, the oiled black blade sliding noiselessly from its sheath, and slipped into the tent. The occupants lay sprawled on the ground with little room between them, their packs and arms stacked against the tent’s sides. Arn paused to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, then stepped over the first vorg. So swiftly did the knife tip slide into the vorg’s brain, just behind his ear, the soldier didn’t even flinch.

  Arn moved around the tent, repeating the process for each of the sleeping occupants. He then wiped Slaken on one of the vorgs’ shirts and returned it to its sheath. From the smell of them, all the dead soldiers were wearing their only set of clothes and washing hadn’t been a priority. Arn stripped the clothes from one of the men and fro
m the largest vorg. He then stacked two chain shirts on top of the pile and ducked outside to where the Kanjari stood guard. He gave this armload to Ty and slipped back into the tent.

  Arn stripped the remaining bodies, piling clothes and armor and wrapping them in a blanket. He rummaged through the rest of the tent, finding two pouches of coins. Placing these into the blanket, Arn hefted the bundle onto his back and stepped out into the night. Creeping back the way they had come, Arn and Ty departed from the line of tents and, finding a clump of dense brush, set about changing into their new clothes.

  The armor and clothes fitted the two as well as they’d fitted the previous owners, but that didn’t mean the attire was ideal. The chain shirts were third-rate. In fact, all the armor was rusty and in need of the most basic maintenance. Still, Arn had worn worse.

  He watched as Ty braided his golden locks into twin forks that he ran inside the chain mail shirt. This change in appearance complimented the vorgish armor he wore, making him look like just another barbarian conscript.

  After they had tossed the unused clothes and armor under bushes and secured their own clothes in a hollow log a considerable distance away, Arn picked up his pack. Then he and Ty began working their way toward another section of the camp on the side closest to the city. As dawn broke, they drifted into the crowds of soldiers and ruffians coming and going.

  A line of robed and hooded slaves lugged barrels and boxes out of the city to the encampment. Green-skinned mulgos cracked whips in the air over these unfortunate souls, laughing when they found an excuse to cut cloth and flesh with the barbed metal tips. Arn had only seen two of the seven-foot-tall amphibian humanoids before arriving in Lagoth. Not particularly surprising. Mulgos preferred damp caves with no light, the very places that the nomadic vorgs and Kanjari hated.

  Arn nudged Ty to signal him to move on and ignore the sights. One surprised look could get them both spotted as outsiders. After one mistake, Arn was pleased to see how quickly Ty picked up the mannerisms of the milling throng.

  The two men took on the look of soldiers who had been given a last liberty before the coming march. There seemed to be a good many others in that same situation, and all were moving into the city. Those warriors coming out were in worse shape, many supported by their comrades.

  The road was wide and heavily rutted by the wheels of wagons and carts. The city’s outer wall towered before the disguised duo, thick and forbidding. As they passed under the portcullis, Arn made note of the number of guards and their state of alertness. This group seemed to be better disciplined than the others he had seen, standing stiffly at attention atop the wall, gazing out on the camp beyond.

  The road passed through a hole in the wall that was more of a tunnel than a gate. Arn could not make anything out in these cavernous holes except deep shadow. An additional portcullis hung from the far end of the tunnel, forming another potential blockade to anyone attempting to enter the city with hostile intent. Arn and Ty fell in behind a group of soldiers that appeared to be in search of entertainment.

  Inside the innermost of the city’s walls, stone houses crowded up against one another on either side of a narrow street that angled between rows of shops. The streets surprised him. Neatly cobbled, they all showed evidence of meticulous and ongoing maintenance.

  The soldiers ahead turned into a narrow alleyway between windowless two-story buildings. The alley curved east and then south, eventually ending at a set of stone steps leading downward. The soldiers descended these, oblivious to the two strangers who followed.

  Three knocks on a wooden door at the bottom caused a small barred window in the upper portion of the door to be opened.

  The door swung inward to admit the group, now ten where there had been eight. The room in which Arn and Ty found themselves resembled a cave more than a tavern. The stench of bad liquor, bat guano, sweat, vomit, and urine was intense enough to make the assassin’s eyes water.

  As his eyes got accustomed to the dim lighting, he could see that there was more than one room in the venue, all of them carved into the solid bedrock of the foundation.

  The walls were barren, save for lanterns hung on hooks. The room in which they now stood was circular, and two arched openings led to other round chambers.

  Tables of assorted sizes and shapes filled the rooms. Many of the occupants appeared to be sleeping with heads resting in pools of spilled drinks. The other inhabitants were either trying to achieve the same blissful state of unconsciousness or directing their attentions to the steady stream of women who made their way through the jumble of bodies and tables, offering drinks or themselves to those who remained alert enough to understand the proposition.

  Arn walked to a table that served as a bed for three vorgs, calmly dumping two of them from their chairs. Ty took a seat across from Arn, booting the other sleeper to the floor in the process. A slender woman stepped over the body of one of the former occupants as she carried a tray of mugs. Ty reached up and grabbed two of these by their bronze handles, passing one across the table to Arn, who flipped the woman a copper piece that she caught in the air.

  The woman turned on her heel and moved off into the crowd.

  “These folk are into some heavy drinking,” Ty muttered. “Doesn’t look like they’re enjoying themselves much, though.”

  “They’re drinking like there’s no tomorrow,” Arn replied.

  He pretended to concentrate on his ale while he surveyed the room. The place didn’t have a tavern atmosphere. Taverns usually had a mixture of revelers and sorrowful folk. This one held the stink of impending hardship and death, the smell of war.

  But what bothered Arn most was the lack of talk. Even the vorgs were strangely silent. He had come here to learn something about this city and the huge army forming outside the gates, but the task was going to be harder than just listening to idle chitchat at the local pubs.

  Something about the women bothered him, too, something subtle, something just beyond his objective consciousness. The old nagging itch of his intuition had come to life once more. As Arn watched them move around the room, serving drinks and trying to please the patrons, understanding dawned that the women were enslaved as well. Their skin was white, unnaturally so—not albino but more like that of longtime invalids who had not been exposed to the sun in years.

  The eyes of many of the slaves were dark, reminding him of John’s eyes, where the pupils were hard to locate. The servers avoided the lit areas, averting their eyes whenever they had to approach the lamps.

  Arn placed a hand on Ty’s shoulder. “Let’s get out of here and find a tavern with some life to it.”

  “Now you’re talking sense,” said Ty.

  Arn led Ty back to the main street and then turned down another alley. Traffic was heavier than before, with columns of slaves who numbered in the hundreds, perhaps thousands. They headed out toward the war camp fully laden and returned empty-handed. Most of the slaves wore cheap robes and hoods pulled up to shade their eyes. What skin Arn had observed on the prisoners had the same abnormal whiteness that he had witnessed on others inside the pub.

  Arn and Ty drifted in with the crowd, intent on following a slave line deeper into the city. As Arn worked his way through the bustling throng, he noticed some slaves in the line who did not exhibit the same pale coloring, and they also had some dark Endarians among them.

  As they passed deeper into the city, the number of people on the street dwindled, making it more difficult to follow the procession unobserved. Arn decided that he would have to wait for nightfall to investigate further.

  Arn found another pub in which to pass the day unnoticed. The venue, a full-fledged tavern, was on a main street and much larger than the first place he and Ty had visited. The noon crowd was large and growing rowdier by the moment, the air filled with the aroma of mulled wine and barbecuing meat.

  As they pushed their way toward the center of the room, Arn caught glimpses of a vorg turning the handle on a large roasting spit. The wild bo
ar’s skin gradually acquired a golden-brown crispness as its body turned above the bed of hot coals.

  The place was loud and raucous with laughter and drunken good cheer. Arn led Ty to a small corner table and signaled to a serving girl for two ales. And thus they passed the afternoon and evening, with Arn sipping his ale and Ty drinking enough for both of them.

  As night fell outside, Arn leaned in close, lowering his voice so only Ty could hear his words. “I’m going to venture out into the city. I need you to stay here and keep your ears open. See what you can learn.”

  “If you’re expecting me to argue with that plan,” said Ty, “then you’ve missed the wagon.”

  “Keep your ears open. If I’m not here by morning, make for our camp, get John and Kim, and head for Endar. I’ll catch up.”

  As Arn rose to his feet, he looked down at his friend in the shabby vorgish armor. “Try not to drink too much.”

  Ty raised his mug in salute. “Try not to get yourself killed.”

  17

  Lagoth

  YOR 413, Late Summer

  To the east, towering thunderclouds hurled lightning at the mountains below. These flashes and the low rumble of thunder stood in sharp contrast to the stars that spread out across the western sky. A wind brought the first drops of rain over the city walls as the tattered flags atop the towers beat out a warning of the impending storm.

  Except for the steady stream of slaves, the main road was empty. At many houses, lone slaves waited outside the doors, having come off shift. Having taken the place of one of these whom he’d left tied up in an alley, Arn pulled his hood more tightly around his face as he awaited the oncoming mulgo overseer and a line of slaves.

  The hooded slaves kept their heads tilted downward as if hoping to escape the gaze of their masters. They shuffled along, single file, toward a broad plaza and the pyramid-shaped building at its center. Gargoyle statues crouched on their haunches on either side of a gaping doorway, each holding a torch in its hand.