The burlap containers were still outside his reach, and the cargo stacked most closely to them appeared to be the most poorly packed of all. He wondered, How can these people make any money shipping goods in such a haphazard way? Then it occurred to him that the war effort had probably thinned the ranks of working sailors significantly. He remembered how the wizards had convinced the captains of all the largest ships in the port of Tarteel to lend their vessels to the cause, leaving the smaller boats like the single-masted sloop in which he was now sailing, to handle the task of shipping cargo. If the best ships were out of commission, then so too were the best sailors, he reasoned.
The current state of shipping trade aside, he still had to get to those sacks. Directly in front of the pile of what he prayed would be something edible, was a very unsteady looking jumble of open-sided crates. Ban assumed these were designed for transporting small animals, such as the dirka he had released. But instead of livestock, they contained what looked like crystal drinking glasses, surrounded by straw. So, a frontal assault is out of the question, he told himself.
To the right of the glassware was an equally precarious pile of ceramic shingles. Seriously? Why not just set up a wall of gongs and bells! Everything is ready to tumble down and make enormous amounts of noise! he realized.
He looked at last to the left of his goal. The pyramid of containers there appeared to be barrels of ale. Again, they were wobbly-looking, but they seemed to be his best bet. At least if one of these came free and fell it would make no more than a thump, which might pass as the normal noise of settling cargo if indeed the crew heard it at all. The casks where stacked up such that the pile of burlap sacks extended a full four feet higher than them. If Ban could climb the barrels, he would be able to reach the bags. He looked one final time at the mound and reached up to gain a handhold. Here goes nothing, he thought.
Almost as once he realized things could go very badly, very fast. The barrels were even more unsteady than they first appeared. As he hoisted himself up on the first one, it rocked crazily, causing the one set above it to tremble as well. He waited for a moment to regain his balance before making his way further up the stack. He negotiated the next row, then the next. Finally, he pulled himself to the top of the casks. They swayed erratically below him. Reaching to the pile of burlap sacks he found that they were quite securely bound. Of course, he thought. Everything in front of them is held together by wishes, but the grain is tied nice and snug. He worked carefully on the satchel closest to him, worrying it back and forth to dislodge it. After several minutes of being perched precariously, he managed to get the sack loose. Unfortunately, when it came free, it did so quite suddenly, causing Ban to topple backwards and fall several feet, landing heavily on a small patch of bare floor. The sack landed on top of him. While the episode was painful, it hadn’t made much noise. He lay still for a minute, thankful for his good fortune.
A moment later, as his luck would have it, one of the casks came free from its place. Not content to fall forward and land on the deck, it rolled slightly to its right as it fell and caromed into the stack of glassware. Both the barrel and the crystal then hit the floor with a resounding noise that Ban felt sure was not only heard above deck, but by those back in Tarteel as well.
A moment later he heard the unmistakable sound of the latch to the hold being shot back. About the only good news was that the spot on which he had so ungracefully come to rest could not be seen from above, so he continued to lay motionless. A moment later the hold was filled with the brilliant light of the sun as the hatch was thrown open. Ban heard two distinct voices, and he was sure they belonged to the same two sailors who had loaded him into the cargo space.
“What in the Under Plane was that?” one asked. It sounded like the crane operator.
“Well somethin’ fell, clearly,” said the other.
“Oh, thank ya for that brilliant observation! I would’a never figgered that out!”
“Such a smart mouth, ya is.”
“One of us needs some smarts,” said the first sailor indignantly.
“I didn’t say ya were smart,” retorted the other.
“We’re prolly gonna catch it for this,” said the first. “We was the ones loaded all this stuff in.”
“Look, there’s bound t’ be some settlin’ at sea. It’s part o’ the cost o’ doin’ business. Merchants got insurance for just this sorta thing.”
“Yer right. Just seal the hatch back up, an’ if anyone asks when we get to Harundy we’ll say we maybe heard something jostlin’ around.”
“Maybe,” said the second sailor, laughing. “Maybe it is!”
And with that the hold grew dark once more.
Ban, who now realized he’d been holding his breath during the sailors’ entire conversation, allowed himself to breathe once again. After remaining motionless for another full five minutes to make sure the sailors didn’t return, he pushed the heavy sack off his chest and sat up. He looked to where the barrel and the crate of glasses had fallen. They’d missed him by inches. I suppose that could have ended much worse for me, he thought. He doubted the sack would have afforded him much protection from the heavy cask.
He now focused his attention upon that sack. From within the pocket of his trousers he pulled his small knife. Exposing the short, sharp blade, he made a cut in the sack. Immediately kernels of wesla, a delicious red cereal grain, began to spill out. “Jackpot!” he said aloud, clapping his hand over his mouth immediately, realizing that a voice from the hold would not be treated in quite so dismissive a manner as had been the supposed shifting cargo.
Still he could not have been happier. He would not starve. That is to say he thought he could not be happier until he thought about the cask that was sitting next to him. He found a large cork which had been pounded into the end of the barrel. Using his knife to work at it he was eventually able to chip the stopper away and was rewarded with a splash of ale for his efforts. His mother’s high moral fiber had meant that in the first twelve years of his life he’d never tasted anything stronger than bartleberry juice. But cupping his hand under the flow he tasted the amber-colored fluid and decided at once that he loved it. Among the shards of shattered glass, Ban found that one of the drinking vessels had survived the fall, and he captured himself a bit more of the delicious ale. Then he carefully tipped the cask upright so that the liquid stopped pouring out onto the deck of the cargo hold.
So, I won’t starve and I won’t die of thirst, he thought. This might just work out for me after all!
Slurr stood by Tressida’s side. The other wizards of the flight formed a line alongside them, about fifty in all. They faced the city of Stygia.
When the Stygians were defeated by Kern and his comrades some two hundred years prior, one of the conditions of the armistice agreement was that, while the people would be able to trade with other cities and return to a quiet way of life, they were forbidden from ever forming their own military again. In fact, even the construction of defensive structures was forbidden.
Clearly, that article of the treaty had been violated, for the city of Stygia was now surrounded by a high wall.
“How could this have happened without our knowledge?” Slurr asked his companions. “Kern, did you not communicate with the wizards here on the western coast before we departed from Sejira?”
“I did,” Kern replied.
“And?” Slurr said, a little testily. Kern considered saying something about the general’s tone, but chose to refrain. Slurr was under an immense amount of stress between the disappearance of his wife and the responsibility of fighting this war without her. Taking offense with his demeanor would profit nothing.
“And there was no mention of any wall,” he said at last.
They looked to the area outside the barrier, where they had expected to find encampments of their warriors. They had flown sixty miles inland from the western coast of Illyria to reach Stygia, and approaching from that direction were baffled that no tents were pi
tched and no fires kept. There was, in fact, nothing outside the city at all. The trees had all been cut, or broken, down, and the grass had all been scorched away. It looked like a barren waste, more the desert area that characterized the south of the continent than this temperate zone. To Slurr’s eyes it was altogether too much like what he and Yarren had seen upon reaching Niliph after Surok had decimated that place.
But from the tall buildings which reached above the wall, windows were filled with light. Torches burned along the top of the massive barricade. If Surok had gotten here ahead of them, he did not destroy Stygia. Sadly, however, it appeared that he may have utterly defeated the army that was guarding this position.
“Our forces on this side of the city have, at the very least, gone elsewhere. Let us attempt to find those to the south and east,” said Parnasus. “There is little point in remaining here.”
“Very well,” said Slurr at length. They riders mounted their match-mates as Slurr made his way onto Tressida’s back. As the wizards took to the sky, Slurr called over to Kern. “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” he said.
Kern smiled and replied, “Such things are of no consequence between friends as old as you and I.”
They flew in silence for a moment, then Slurr said, “I suppose it will do no harm to say it aloud: this wall must be the work of Surok.”
“I’m afraid I cannot reach any other conclusion,” the wizard answered, his hand rising to clutch his pointed maroon hat and pull it down tighter, as the dragons flew hard to the south of the city. “The time between our last communication and its appearance is too brief for it to have been the work of human hands.”
It took only a few minutes to span the distance between the area on the west to where the anticipated to find those watching over the south of the now-walled city. To their great relief, they did find warriors there, but alas, only a handful. And they were in very poor shape.
Tressida touched down next to the small pocket of men and Slurr hopped from her back and ran to them. They lay scattered about, barely clinging to life.
Kern, after a quick examination, began casting spells to close wounds and restore failing health. Despite his efforts, three men perished even as the wizard undertook to save them, so grievous were their injuries. But several of the men rallied, their eyes opening and coming into focus. Slurr went from man to man, offering water and speaking soothing words. He recognized one of the survivors as Logus Idra, the captain of the standing force tasked with protecting Stygia. He sat beside him, asking nothing of him, but rather praising him for surviving what had obviously been a vicious attack.
“I am worthy of no praise, General,” Idra said in a weak voice. “We were completely overrun.”
Slurr cradled the man’s head in his arms, saying, “Our hearts rejoice at finding any alive, friend. The western force has vanished.”
The captain grimaced as Slurr spoke. “The ‘vanishing’ you speak has obviously occurred here as well. We were a force of three thousand not more than two hours ago.”
Reluctantly Slurr asked, “What has happened?”
“We were on the ready, we were. But they came from all sides at once. Karvats, Silestra and Silumans. Easily five times as many as we had defenders. We fought for all we were worth, but there were just too many. Even employing the tactics you had outlined based upon previous encounters we could not hold them off. Wizards fought from above, but there were too few to make up for the disparity in numbers we suffered on the ground.”
Parnasus stood beside the wounded man as he talked to Slurr. “Where then are the bodies of the fallen?” he asked.
Again, the captain’s face became pained, but the suffering was more mental than physical, as his strength continued to return thanks to Kern’s efforts. “They were carried off…to feed upon. I do not know why we few were left behind, but I saw most of our lost taken, both by Silestra and Silumans. It appears the new creatures have also gained a taste for human flesh.”
Slurr shuddered at the news. He realized that the Silumans outnumbered the Silestra by a factor of about ten to one thanks to their ruthless breeding campaign in Surok’s lair high atop Mount Opatta. Thousands upon thousands of human women had been brutally killed by the beasts as they clawed their way out of their mother’s wombs. He had not considered what now seemed to be an obvious fact: these hybrid monsters would share their father’s love for devouring the bodies of their human foes.
“Have they feasted upon the Stygians within this wall as well then?” Kern asked.
Now Idra’s expression darkened into a foul mask of hatred. “The Stygians fought with the monsters, not against them.” The news fell like burning rain upon the listeners. Kern’s fears and suspicions had been realized!
“Well, for whatever the reason they left you, we rejoice that you were not taken,” Parnasus said, smiling at the man. Idra did not return the smile.
“Would that I had been taken as well. It grieves me to remain when so many were dragged away.”
The First Elder was very familiar with survivors’ remorse. One does not pass a thousand years of life without seeing the guilt of those left behind when their loved ones or comrades have gone over to the Next Plane. This was the case in any situation, but the First Elder knew it was compounded in times of great duress. However, he also knew that these few survivors could provide vital intelligence. He saw, however, that the general did not wish to push too hard for information. Still, he had one more question that needed to be asked.
“What of the riders? You said they fought from above. Where are they now?”
This question seemed to distress Idra more than any previously asked of him. “A few escaped,” he said, unable to continue for a moment. “Many however were killed, along with their dragons, by Surok himself. The beast he rides is so huge. It flew from one rider to another, simply biting off the heads of the dragons. The wizards he killed with lightning, which came from his hands.”
Now it was Parnasus’s turn to blanch. There should have been thirty or more wizards attached to Idra’s force of three thousand. Some escaped, the captain said, but his implication was that most had not.
Slurr, Kern, Yarren and Parnasus left the survivors to be further cared for as they retired some distance from them to speak.
“This bodes ill. Very ill,” said Kern. “If Surok can wade through a flight of thirty with such ease, and if in Cerah’s absence he has grown bold enough to finally fight alongside his monsters, we face a very daunting future, to say the least.”
“I wonder at the size of the force he has deployed here. There should have been close to eight or nine thousand between the western and this front. How many warriors remain? Ten? Fifteen?” Slurr asked.
“I think once Kern’s spells have done all they can we need to carry these survivors to safety and take up the dispiriting task of seeing if anything remains of our forces on the eastern side of the city.”
“These men will be strong enough to move in just a few more minutes,” Kern said. “But one question remains unanswered: what of this wall?”
“I will ask Captain Idra before we go,” said Slurr. “I’ve been trying to handle him gently. His mind is wrecked with the notion that this represents failure on his part.”
“Your kindness in this regard is wise,” said Parnasus. “He quite clearly wishes he had died and been taken along with his troops.”
“His spirit will recover,” said Kern emphatically.
“Good,” said Slurr. He left the group and returned to where Idra now sat upright, clearly well on the way to being mended, at least in body.
“Logus, I must ask you one more thing. How did the city come to be walled?”
“The wall formed, both brick and board, untouched by any hands. Even as we fought the monsters, I saw it grow from the ground up in a matter of minutes. Indeed, we were able to hold out longer than it took for the fortification to appear…and we were overrun very quickly.”
“Then it was Surok’s dark magi
c, as the wizards and I suspected.”
“It could have been no other.”
“And you say the people within have opened themselves to him. For whatever reason the hearts of the Stygians are still at opposition to the rest of the Green Lands, even these centuries since their attempt to take Illyria was put down. I hate to say this about any human, but they are evil.”
As Slurr was talking with him, Idra stood to his feet, a sight which caused Slurr to thank Ma’uzzi for wizards’ healing powers. Only moments before the captain had been scratching at the door to the Next Plane. “What is your next move, General?” he asked.
“First we must see what has happened to our forces to the east. Then I will decide my strategy.”
Idra looked at the line of dragons waiting for their riders to help the recovering soldiers onto their backs. He saw the golden dragon and turned to Slurr with an expression of concern. “I see the Chosen One’s dragon, but I do not see her.”
With significant effort Slurr answered in as steady a voice as he could, the mention of Cerah immediately shaking him once more. “She is missing,” he said. “Her dragon has offered to carry me until her return.”
“Will she suffer yet another? I would fly with you to learn the fate of the remainder of my troops.”
Slurr considered this. The fact that Idra was willing to fly into potential danger with him seemed more an indication that his spirit was waxing than waning, but he did not relish the thought of exposing him to the possibility of another massacre. Finally, he made up his mind. “I am sure that Tressida would be honored to give you a lift,” he said.
The two men rejoined the wizards, where Yarren was speaking. “There are thirteen survivors, which means about thirty-seven of us will head to the eastern front. If Surok’s beast is capable to killing our match-mates with such ease, I worry that we could lose many more.”
A Single Candle (Cerah of Quadar Book 3) Page 6