by Damien Lake
“I was right about those two from the first! It would have been better to quietly put them down than have to deal with the consequences of their power hunger.”
Adrian’s silence was stony. He had hated the very notion of fighting corruption with the same type of actions, even if it purged such corrosion from the ranks.
“Have you remembered anything at all yet?” Jide continued, his tone only slightly modulated from before.
“Only a vague darkness.”
“That smells the worst in the whole rancid lot. I don’t know what Harbon did to you, but whatever it was must have shattered at least a dozen death-sentence laws to gods damned fragments!”
“It is fortunate for him that he has apparently perished,” Adrian agreed grimly. “Though not so fortunate for us. Until we learn how he…he gained control over me…I shall not feel secure in my mind. Not merely for the fact that anyone might seek to seize control of the army through me again, but how may we be certain that our officers, the men we trust with such a magnitude of responsibility, are acting according to their free will?”
Jide frowned, the stars glinting off his narrowed eye. “I hadn’t thought that far into it.” He collected his thoughts before cursing, “Damn it all! Half the army could be under the same type of brain-bondage!”
“A more worrisome question is, how far can we trust our mages to investigate the matter? Does this problem stem from within our own, or from forces without? Is this a symptom of the darker threat that imperils all of Arronath?”
“That’s simple enough! It’s a symptom of Xenos’ treachery!”
“We must not jum—”
“To the hells with jumping to conclusions! If nine facts from ten suggest the damnable man is a corkscrew digging into the crown’s authority, then you’d have to be a madman to persist in a belief that he is blameless!” Jide sidestepped in front of Adrian to face him, hands gripping the general’s shoulders. “Your loyalty to Arronath’s rulers is admirable, old friend. It truly is a rarity. But you have to finally accept that the king has been deceived by a master at the craft. A poisonous wasp who is hovering about the throne, buzzing constantly in his ear.”
Adrian removed Jide’s hands from his shoulders, wincing when the wound in his arm drew tighter. “We will bring any such deceptions to light once we have had the chance to speak privately with the councilor.”
He would hear nothing further on the matter from Jide as they walked on through the night, searching for enough shelter to house them until the new dawn.
Yet through it all, the nagging suspicions that had nibbled at the foundations of his faith for so long renewed their siren chorus in his head, their voices louder than he had ever permitted them to rise before.
Chapter 17
Ilona’s bare breasts glistened magnificently in the summer sunlight, stealing Marik’s breath away as she rose from the river water. Her olive flesh exuded a healthy glow under the wet sheen that captivated him. The rivulets of her hair were plastered intimately to her skin.
She walked to the shore. The water droplets falling from her curves were crystal clear, appearing as though she shed diamonds from her pores. Her hips swayed in a way that they only did when she was in a playful mood. Marik watched his nude goddess moving gracefully toward him, feeling the excitement building to such a peak that his entire body felt in pain.
Where he lay prone on the sandy shore, she knelt by his shoulder. Her gentle fingers lifted his head into her lap and sent fiery tingles through his scalp. She stroked his hair fondly as he gazed up into her beautiful, endlessly brown eyes. He reached up to squeeze her breast in one hand, both treasures so perfectly fitted to his palm that they must have been made for him alone.
“Doh-ah? Marik?”
The pain throughout his body intensified. Around him, the sunny riverbank blurred. The water lost its substance, the air twisted in a paint pot spiral. Through the haze, new shapes began taking form, first and foremost being Caresse, whose breast he was squeezing.
He looked up at her from her lap. Beyond her raised eyebrows, he could see the rough stone of a cave wall. Shivers abruptly wracked him when he became aware of the cold air. A slight shift, followed by the struggle to move, told him that the constriction around his legs was from tightly wrapped blankets. The hems scratched against his chin where he had loosened them during the reach to grab Caresse’s—
Marik jerked his hand away as if burned, the realization that he still maintained his grip jarring his mind forcefully to awareness.
“I see you are finally awake. There is no water yet, so you will need to wait a while longer. Wyman promised to return before breaking any ankles. He will be back before nightfall, so he should.”
He sat up…or made an attempt to before fire lanced through his chest. His head slumped back onto her lap, his groan sounding flat. When his vision cleared enough to see properly he saw why the noise had sounded so odd to his ear.
The rock walls had fooled him into thinking he lay in a cave. Without thinking he had listened for an echo when his groan bounced off the walls. Instead, he lay in a…was crevice the right term? He could see little of the surrounding area, only the reaches above where he lay prone. A thin crack wound its way along the left side wall. Sunlight faintly glowed behind it. Clearly the right side wall had come to lean forward in the distant past, creating this near-cave.
He gazed intently at that crack. It could not possibly be a straight line to the outside. The narrow space must curve back in the opposite direction. Unless he were the size of a very young child, he would have no hope of eeling through the crack and reaching the sunlight.
Marik’s eye followed the crack until his head turned enough to see the crevice blossom outward. Atop a debris mound thirty feet tall, the exit must exist as a plague-like pockmark on the mountainside. A chill breeze blew in through the opening. Cold air was funneled directly at them until it felt like open-plains wind.
“You should stay wrapped up, you should,” Caresse admonished. “Two cracked ribs and enough bruises to make a bull cry.”
“My ribs?” His memory danced, but the sensation was a familiar one. Before the wizardess could reply he answered his own question by corralling his thoughts into coherency. “I remember, or I think I do. There was a spinning tree and it slapped me down.”
“Something landed you a square one,” she agreed.
“I can’t…quite picture what happened. Everything went crazy all of a sudden.”
Caresse shrugged her shoulders. “It is the same with us. The same questions no one can answer.”
Marik blinked. “You’ve been awake longer than I have. What day is it? What’s been happening?”
“I think it is the day after tomorrow. Or what tomorrow was when we were battling. I’ve lost track of time, so I have.”
“We’re still in the mountains, aren’t we?” He moved his head enough to have a better look around. The crevice’s walls came to a dead end ten feet away after a minor war to see which could produce the sharpest protrusions. Blankets and packs were scattered across the floor, which was surprisingly level considering it was nature-made. A small pile of stones sat on the exposed floor in the center of the clutter.
“In the mountains, indeed,” she agreed. She smoothed down of lick of his hair which had become mussed at his movement. Her hand re-evoked memories of Ilona. Marik felt her absence stronger than he could ever remember. “We must be three miles from the overlook. Wyman spent an entire day searching for a way down or shelter before we came here. Maybe it is the day after the day after tomorrow, then.”
“Wyman…” A brief swirl of vapor and mist clouded his mind momentarily before he could force it away. “Why is he with us? Is Dietrik here, too?”
“I do not know. Wyman says he was walking in the night when he saw several large, suspicious men creeping to the path we took in the daytime. He did not like their bearing, so he followed them to see what mischief they played at.”
“La
rge…Beld!” He sat upright like a branch snapping until the abrupt pain reminded him that, though made of flesh rather than wood, he was just as broken. “Yes, Beld was there,” he grunted, pressing a hand firmly to his ribs. Marik scraped his legs across the stone until he sat side-by-side with Caresse, leaning against the crevice’s wall. “And his friends. Only his friends?”
“Marik?” Caresse asked when his words fell into incomprehensible mumbling.
“It’s another onion,” he answered without thinking. “But I don’t have time to peel it now. Can you tell me what happened?”
“Partly,” she said hesitantly, concern in her voice while she studied him carefully. “The essence of fire came at us from the flying mountain. It hit the cliff side, so it did.”
“Essence of fire…you mean a fire-based attack, don’t you?”
“Indeed, but it was too fast. I could not see it. I only felt the elemental essence approaching.”
“That fits,” he decided. “There was a strong mage aboard that thing. He was starting a counterattack. Whatever happened must have been his doing.”
“If he worked alone, then I hope the fall killed him.” She frowned at different concerns troubling her. “Indeed, I do. After the first attack, the overlook was shattered. Did you see?”
“I did. It looked like a picture puzzle with all the pieces shaken up and dumped back into the positions where they had been. Approximately.”
She nodded once, a severe motion that jerked an image of Celerity from the recesses of memory without warning. “The second attack turned the overlook into a slope over the cliff with rocks and trees sliding off. You were sliding off too, except Wyman came running from the path and caught your wrist at the edge. He says he pulled you back up, and damned bloody near rolled off the flaming mountainside with the avalanche four gods damned different times.”
“His words, I assume.”
“Oh, indeed. The pathway down was gone. We had to move through the mountains since the overlook kept crumbling away every moment.”
“Carrying me the whole way, right? That can’t have been easy. I’m glad he found this cave for us to shelter in, though.”
“It is not a cave!” She crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “Why are men obsessed with caves? The entire time he kept saying we needed to find a cave we could camp in, so he did! Try to explain about limestone and granite and all you get are looks when they decide you are being a silly nit. ‘Mountains have caves, so we need to find one.’ Honestly!”
“Uh…” It was the first time he had ever seen her annoyed straight out of her buoyant nature. “So…uh, he found a good spot in the end, didn’t he? I guess it doesn’t matter.”
She redirected her irritation on him. “I found it after casting earthsense through the stone. There was a larger space with spring water closer by, except it was two-hundred feet down a sheer wall over a mile-deep chasm.”
“Oh.” He cared little for the thought of such a shelter. Far too high. To bring the conversation back to the salient subject, he noted, “I can see others came with us. But unless they preferred to carry their packs with them while they are out, I don’t much like what I am seeing.”
Sorrow drained her ire. “Seven survived the attack. Lynn is here, but Jeremy must have been right in the thick. We found no trace of him.”
Marik stayed silent. He barely knew any of the mercenary mages beyond Tollaf, whom he knew better than he cared to, and Caresse, who had helped in his mage training. Lynn’s survival was good since he assumed the two women felt a closer bond between them than with any of the male magic users in their small group. Yet she obviously felt Jeremy’s death keenly. She had welcomed her magical talents, and had been with the Kings longer than he. Caresse must have come to accept them all as unblooded family. Perhaps even boring old Yoseph.
He averted his gaze out of embarrassment for her grief. In doing so, he picked through the shapes populating the shadows around them. A thought struck as he did so. His eyes moved with increasing apprehension after every shadow absent of—
Caresse continued. “It is you, me, Wyman, and Lynn, and three of the city mages. They are supposed to be checking possible paths to Galemar I found with earthsense. Indeed, they are.”
So Yoseph was also gone. The Crimson King’s mage force had been cut in half since the time he had joined it.
His roving eye picked out a numerical anomaly after he was forced to admit that his custom sword was absent. Ercsilon almighty, after all that trouble, it hadn’t even lasted half a season! “Seven survivors? I see sixteen packs.”
“Wyman collected as many as he could the next day, he did. They were littered everywhere after the overlook blew up. He says these were the only ones he could safely reach without pitching ass over teakettle to the bloody plains.”
“Then…yes. I don’t see my…things.”
“Mine are gone, too. I do not know who these belonged to.”
“Well, that was smart thinking. We’re going to need all the provisions we can gather if we are going to get out of the Stoneseams. Except I have to wonder how many provisions we have. When we left, we weren’t planning to be away from the supply stores for longer than a day or two. I hope whoever packed these was smart enough to pack more than they thought they needed.”
“This one did not think so,” Caresse said, and kicked the nearest pack. “I looked through it yesterday. A bag of dried grapes will work for us, but I do not think powdered stag antler will taste very good. Or mole claws. Or rat teeth. Or viper fangs.”
“Must have been one of the city magicians. His components seem to have a running theme. He must have preferred a particular spell and ones similar in nature. Any idea what sort of spells those components would generate?”
She shrugged, as ignorant of a magician’s magic as he. Marik eased the pressure his hand exerted on his ribs to see how incapacitated he might be by the injuries. Each breath brought mild pain, yet nothing worse. They felt cracked rather than clean broken. Still in their original position without bone shards shredding the surrounding muscle or penetrating his lungs.
Caresse spoke on, providing the less essential details concerning their journey to this crevice through a pathless mountainscape. It sounded a hard trek and he appreciated the extra difficulty he must have caused with his dead weight. After a candlemark, at the point where the sunlight had bled to a reddish-orange, Wyman returned with the other four.
Marik expected the typical edged-sarcasm of mercenaries everywhere. Instead, Wyman glanced at Marik long enough to ascertain his state, then marched to the far side of the crevice to root through several rescued packs.
For an instant, Marik narrowed his eyes for closer study to recheck that it was Wyman and not Sloan. Well, Wyman never had been a vernacular type. Since his first day in the squad, the man offered little interaction to anyone other than Churt. The boy archer seemed the only one whom Wyman tolerated sharing his time and space with.
The other four also moved without words. Caresse rose to join Lynn in private conversation no one else could overhear. They settled on a layer formed of several spread blankets laid to pad the hard stone while the city mages hesitated in their movements. Marik could see they were uncomfortable with the situation, stranded with four mercenaries, far from home, enduring circumstances they probably had never conceived being in. At last, each found a private spot to huddle in. They wrapped blankets around their bodies to ward off the increasingly chill evening winds.
Should he speak? He was still the crown-appointed general. He would be expected to take command of any situation. But they looked to already be doing everything he could think of. Only an idiot would try to assert himself into a routine that ran smoothly and efficiently. It only caused disruptions.
A shadow knelt beside Marik without warning, startling him into banging his head against the wall. Wyman bestowed a hard eye on him before returning to his tasks. He had recovered nine tightly rolled bandages from the packs. When unrolled, Marik
’s experience told him each might be roughly fifteen feet in length.
“Pain?”
Marik returned the gimlet stare in kind. Expressions, like swords, could be honed. Rather than with a grindstone, surviving through the carnage born of multiple battles provided a sharper edge with each year.
It gratified him to see Wyman’s soften the slightest bit. Only an experienced fighter could have discerned the difference, and he felt pleased at his ability to do so. Marik relented as well, answering, “A little.”
“What type? I didn’t wrap you before in case the bindings made it worse.”
“Cracked, I think. Nothing moving that shouldn’t be.”
Wyman nodded. He began unrolling a bandage while Marik slowly shrugged out from his tunic. “No salves. Just have to make do.”
“It probably won’t matter.”
“Your leg might. It’s not deep, but you have a gash.”
Marik tugged off the blankets cocooning him to see what he had failed to feel. The looser cloth allowed his left leg the freedom to complain. A dull ache grew under the rent torn through his breeches. When had he sustained that?
“It might be a problem,” Marik acceded as he flexed his leg carefully. “Though it’s a nuisance more than anything.”
“We’ve kept it washed since we first stopped to breathe.” Wyman slipped the bandage across Marik’s back and started winding it tightly around his chest. “The others have been…looking at it every few marks. They say it probably won’t go septic.”
“I guess I’ll have to talk to them tomorrow.”
The talk lapsed. He felt ill at ease speaking when Wyman clearly felt the same. Was it the general dislike loners had for all of humanity, or a personal feeling stemming from his mage talent? His friendship with Dietrik had always allowed him to know more about the rest of the squad than what he saw in person. Older members accepted him as an oddity while the newer members were hard pressed to warm to him. Being a mage never sat easy with the newest faces.