by Damien Lake
All he needed was an effect, not high-level spell casting. And effects such as he needed were certainly within their range of ability.
He had expected to gather perhaps another half-dozen magic users to add to his plan. Whether ten mages could accomplish the task was more than questionable. His astonishment grew when, with a cityguard captain as his guide, they moved from house to house, from one side of Thoenar to the next, delivering the news that the crown demanded their service. In the end he gathered thirty-one men and women from over fifty.
These, as the captain had repeatedly informed him, were only the magic users who had made their potential services known to the cityguard. The ones who hoped to earn enough by month’s end to pay off the landlord.
For the first time, Marik understood how the magic-oriented shops he had visited across the city could garner enough profit to stay in business. There resided a far larger population of magic users in the everyday world than he had ever dreamed.
His brief interviews had ensured that these thirty-one were capable of adding to the effort. A handful were no better than hedge-wizards, learning on their own without a teacher, discovering odd uses for their talent. Seven came from the elusive schools that never stayed in a set location very long. They had proudly declared their origins. Only one name had registered in his mind, since Tollaf had mentioned it once before. Winds of the Summer Sun.
The two women from that particular discipline might prove the most useful finds of all because they were trained both in large-scale group workings and in the massive undertaking of influencing weather patterns.
He’d had little time to spend with them once they left the city. His only instructions to the mage corps had been for the knowledgeable to teach what they could to those who struggled. Most particularly, instructing each other on how to cooperate magically, acting as a portion of the whole rather than a solo practitioner.
Thirty-five magic users. He expected the four band mages to act as the core but would make no decision until they were in place and he could discuss it with the Summer Sun women. Then he would see who might work best in what positions.
Marik raised his voice until it could be heard by everyone as they climbed the steep path into the mountains. “Make sure you use your blankets tonight! I don’t want a single person using magic in order to stay warm. Any trace of magic might be detected beforehand. Everyone with mage talent should gather as much energy from the diffusion as they can during the walk. Hold onto as much as possible until tomorrow and only replenish what bleeds off at the last moment. If we drain the diffusion at the overlook then enemy mages might notice the gaping hole in the mists and know where we are.”
He continued to call instructions to them, many so obvious he knew he would have been annoyed were he in their positions. Despite that, he could not stop. Better to state the obvious than rely on everyone’s common sense, which, past experience suggested, was a sense that wasn’t all that common in the first place.
“But remember not to try attacking the Citadel outright!” he finished a half-mark later. “This is a cause-and-effect operation! We still don’t know what sort of magical protections it has, and it stands to reason that they would put strong defenses in place on such a valuable asset. I’ve learned from my own battles that attacking an enemy magic user indirectly can sometimes negate any protections he has against direct attacks.”
Marik waited for questions. Surprisingly, there were none. To judge by their expressions, they were deep in contemplation of what they were being asked to do.
The light was already sinking to a golden haze. They could ask whatever questions they thought of after they reached the overlook. Marik pushed them harder, his legs feeling leaden from the vertical climb along a narrow path that changed direction every forty feet like a floating ribbon twisting in the wind.
He prayed that he knew what he was doing.
* * * * *
Climbing a goat path through the mountains in the damnable dark of night had rapidly become Dellen’s new least favorite activity. It beat the mother-loving briar patch by a long mile!
A scrambling sound preceded the noises of a man fighting to prevent a fall off the rocky razorback. “A blooming pox on all of it!” cursed Tallior from ahead.
“It ain’t broken, is it?” sneered Veji. “Then quit your caterwauling and keep moving.”
“Are you lot trying to give away the barn?” Beld demanded from his lead position. “If any of your belly-bitching catches their notice, I’ll make sure you go down the mountain the quick way! Glue your lips together and walk!”
Dellen’s slow approach brought him to Tallior’s position a moment later. Faint grumbles drifted to Dellen’s ear until the city-boy realized he’d been caught up. He sat on the loose stone beside the path nursing a twisted ankle while the larger man passed.
That whore-moaning had been all too common in the last eightdays. It left Dellen wondering if the cutthroat really did believe him and his friends were dumb as river stones. Every day since Beld had forced him to stop running around like a village halfwit, the man had been muttering, brooding, rebellious and incensed. Especially whenever Dellen told him what was good for him.
The ungrateful thug no doubt wanted to backstab them once this business was over with. Here Beld had been struggling a good long while to give Tallior what his bossman wanted, and the idiot was sulky because his own silver-assed scurrying about had failed so badly. Probably wanted to shove a knife in Beld’s back just for that if he hadn’t been planning to from the start. They would have chucked him into the rubbish midden months ago if he had only coughed up the coin in advance he promised would be their reward for helping bury the mage.
He could mutter as hot as he liked while rocks rolled down the steep side behind him. Dellen had his make. Beld had warned him about it when they first started out from Thoenar. Even had he not, the man was stupid enough that his mutterings would have given him away before long.
If he showed no coins the moment they finally gave that mage what he had coming, then the smart move would be to send Tallior along after. His witch-rings could be sold for a fair bit if they found buyers as gullible as the cutthroat. Might be the best course in any event. Any green fighter worth his budding calluses could tell you that it’s smarter to kill an enemy before he can try killing you first. Putting up a defense, waiting for an attack…only a fool would think that was clever fighting.
Beld stopped several yards further on. “What’s the—” Albin started to ask.
“Quiet!” Beld hissed back. “Aren’t you listening?”
Dellen strained his ears. It occurred to him that it would be smart to kneel down so he would be harder to see. His boot toes dug through the path’s edges and sent a cascade of loose scree down both slopes.
“Bloody…Dellen, thump that blasted troublemaker before he gives us away!”
“Uh, yeah. Right, Beld.” He glared hard behind him at Tallior’s shadowy form. Dellen listened intently, hoping for the slightest sound from the lackey so he could pound the scheming maggot.
Tallior’s fingertips scraped across the pathway’s surface, finding the left and right edges to the razorback. The group’s progress had slowed to a crawl when they had come upon this narrow deathtrap halfway up the mountain. Dellen could see Tallior was turning coward after his near fall. He chose to feel his way along until they regained safer ground.
He lashed backward with his foot. The kick connected squarely with Tallior’s forehead. “Stop making so much cussed noise, ya’!”
Tallior rolled twice down the path before regaining control. “You filthy bottom-dweller! I’ll break your gods damned neck for that! No one sane dares to attack me!”
Dellen raised his foot again, the motion only visible in the darkness by a shifting of deeper silhouettes. “That’s them mages up there. You want them finding you?”
He put a hand to the hilt protruding over his right shoulder when he thought the slight motions he sensed was
Tallior raising that prissy club of his. As if that were any right sort of weapon for a man to carry!
Beld pushed past him before he had the chance to put the worm in his proper place. “I think that overlook the mages were keen on is ahead. Time to pass out those rings you love so much.”
Tallior swallowed his anger. “Are you certain? Or guessing? This whole idea seems sketchy to me in the first place.”
“Railson won’t never be expecting trouble here,” Beld promised. “Once the attack starts, he’ll be hightailing it down the mountain to get back to the band. He can’t stand being away from them for long. Loves bossing everyone around and giving orders too much. But the mages’ll stay put, doing what he wants them to. That’s our perfect chance.”
“That’s a heavy load of assumptions all in one place.”
“And what do you plan to do?” Beld’s words were acidic. “You’re never going to get lucky and find him out away from the band and his army pissants. Not without us. Stop crying over the coin you promised and give out your rings you been insisting on. Time to see what the big screaming deal is.”
“As soon as we get off this damned knife’s edge, then.”
He shouldered past Dellen with a murderous gleam reflecting from his slanted eyes. Dellen smiled back with a grin he expected would terrify a poser like Tallior. The cutthroat inched his way further up the path on hands and knees, slow as a caterpillar, his club clutched in one hand like Dellen had thought.
Perhaps Tallior wasn’t quite so mule-stupid as he usually looked, Dellen noted. If he had forked over the small pouch with his Nolier rings inside it there on the path, it would have been easy as rolling a drunk to reach forward, grab one foot, and send the snotty bastard over the side.
Except he was still making enough noise to give a magpie a headache. For a moment, Dellen thought he still heard the city-boy’s scraping coming from behind. Since no one else was climbing the mountain in the flaming dark, it obviously meant Tallior was kicking up noise louder than anyone with a brain could achieve on purpose.
He could hardly wait to chuck him off a cliff and out of their worries.
* * * * *
On Tullainian soil, a broad expanse of open plains extended from the Stoneseams’ northwestern base. A figure stood enshrouded in midnight’s strongest presence.
“Not a care does he possess for the lives of others. Be they his followers or enemies, innocent or deserving, they are as empty concepts to his regard.”
“You can’t…say that precisely,” Rail panted. “He cares about them as much as…a drover cares about his cattle herd. In the end they’ll be…so much meat on the table.”
The Red Man redirected his gaze from its westward contemplation to study the kneeling kkan’edom beside him. “Apt in detail it may be, yet it is a philosophy that revolts my entire being. Such blatant disregard for his mother species.”
“Always take what you can get, because your own stomach growling next day…is more important than a hundred starving strangers. Basic human nature, Red. Which is why you’re having a bulldog of a time coming to terms with it.”
“Expansive is my understanding, friend. It is why an individual would willingly adopt a course of destruction certain to encompass the instigator that births the quandaries in my soul.”
“Because every human walking is a black-hearted gambler inside.” Rail shakily stood to his feet. “Few tyrants are destroyed by their own power. It’s the ‘crusaders for the light of justice’, or similar deluded do-gooders, who always end up introducing them to bony old Death. The black-hearts all gamble on being able to avoid meeting their counterparts long enough to ensure they can’t be brought down.”
“Cynicism is a trait well at home in the collective heart of mankind.”
“I’d say that’s why the strong seem to find the Earth God’s service so appealing,” Rail agreed, accepting Red’s assessment of him by projecting it on humans everywhere. “Like calls to like.”
“A theory endowed of troubling aspects,” the Red Man replied. His gaze returned to the gaping hole in night’s regal starscape. The black void where the floating Citadel blocked the sky. “Centuries He has been separated from those who called Him their god, yet He persists to this day, feeble from time, famished from isolation. Will He never be fully vanquished as long as He finds a single heart to reside therein?”
“Figure that out after you’ve tracked down the last of the stones,” Rail brusquely stated. “You’re floating off to the side again! Stay with me long enough to make a solid decision for a change.”
“Is it the possibility that—”
“Stop it, Red! We’ve run out of time for your philosophizing! It’s time to act. To actually do something.”
The Red Man blinked once in the starlight. His lips pursed in the mild annoyance that was as far into a foul temper as Rail had ever seen him indulge. He opened his mouth after a moment and inhaled a great lungful. His tongue twitched as it tasted the air. “Without doubt, our quarry has entered the stronghold above. The taint is strong.”
“So much for Xenos choosing a steady journey to keep a low profile,” Rail accused. “You were wrong, as usual. He beat us here, and now he’s up there. Underground again, even if his hairy ass is halfway to heaven!”
“His ancient protections he would not have,” the Red Man mused. “Nor his followers in legions.”
“We have no chance up there,” Rail declared. “We might be able to fight our way through however many soldiers are between him and us, but what then, eh? One mother of a counterattack, that’s what! He’ll put every scrap of energy he has left into the blast he sends against us this time. So I am not taking the kkan’korsa into that floating grave, or flying up on your back, or on one of those pestilential flies of theirs for that matter, or in any other way that your diseased mind comes up with. If you still think we can attack him in there by surprise, then you’ve gone completely around the twist!”
“Then watching for our next opportunity seems the steady course.” The Red Man started walking across the empty plains.
“More bloody watching. Try and surprise me sometime, why don’t you?” Rail muttered. But he followed resolutely behind.
Chapter 15
It was destined to be a bad day. Marik felt it strongly when he shrugged out of his blanket which had done nothing to stop his shivering. The feeling persisted through a breakfast of dried fruit, and congealed when, surrounded by his mages, they watched the floating Citadel drift into view.
Torrance’s forces were prepared to fight, but not to charge. From two miles distant Marik could see town square-sized platforms lowering black soldiers to the ground. Taurs descended on a separate lift packed far less densely than the soldiers’. No doubt a territorial fight would ensue otherwise. Too much distance separated the two battle groups. If Torrance ordered a charge in hopes of attacking before the enemy solidified ranks, his own would spread thin. The enemy would be able to shatter the opposition with a hammer stroke.
They had hoped to avoid this. Neither of Marik’s forces had the strength to stand long in a pitched battle against organized enemies. No earthworks or defensive walls protected them, enabling them to concentrate heavily on offensive measures.
Commander Torrance could be relied upon to keep his head. What of Gibbon? Would he shun the tactics of husbanding his men and make a noble stand for his soldier’s honor? All he needed to accomplish was to stall the southern enemy reinforcements.
Eleven platforms delivered their occupants before the Arronath ground forces increased their speed from ‘keep abreast’ to ‘advancing the guard’. Their Citadel had continued floating on the wind as it shuttled men to the ground. Only a mile now separated them from Torrance’s command.
Marik pitched the last bite of tough apricot off the overlook. This, the tallest peak in the Stoneseams’ northernmost reach, afforded his group a clear view of the plains where Torrance would meet the Arronaths. Rises blocked them from seeing Gibbon’
s ambush force. He possessed an advantageous position, surrounded by small woods and copses he could use to best effect. The plain on which Torrance waited was one of Galemar’s rare open stretches.
“Felda, Truda, you two take the lead. Keep your distance from the stone and make sure everyone is working smoothly.”
The two Summer Sun women nodded with a trace of nervousness. He assigned them no fault for it. They were about to attempt a dangerous undertaking.
Marik stepped to the very edge. Shorter peaks and cliffs were clustered below until the mountains abruptly ended in the flatlands. At this height, the Citadel’s topmost crest lay two or three hundred feet below his soles.
He would not have been able to easily reach the Citadel with his own talent. It floated a little beyond three miles away, still within his four-mile range, yet at a distance to tax his control. While his senses could reach that far, directing a working across the vast distance would be tricky.
Most of the investigative mages with him could not utilize their talents beyond ordinary line-of-sight. Felda had assured him many times that it would not matter as long as they were part of a larger whole. The weaker mages would simply be feeding power to the greater working, not directing the intricate details of it at the far end.
Managing the mix of so many different magical talents was beyond him. He considered it a blessing that Felda and Truda, women capable of doing so, were available, and vowed to make a donation at the cathedral upon their return to Thoenar. Felda, a wizardess, would control the mage and geomancy talents in the group. Truda, a witch, would do likewise with her magician and geomancy talents. Their shared geomancy would be the link through which all three sources of magical power would merge.
Every shred of power would be converted to geomancy since that was the winning hand Marik was wagering on. He could feed additional power into the working through Felda, except he wanted to remain free to keep an eye on the battle. Also, in the event of magical counterattack, he could erect shields to protect the group long enough for the other nine magic users skilled at defense to separate and add their talents to his in that arena.