“Keep them on the run,” Sir Roger shouted, his voice echoing over the sound of muskets being fired. The air started to smell of smoke, dark clouds drifting across the battlefield. “Don’t let them get organized!”
Emily frowned. We have them on the run?
She looked around as more and more troops poured through the portal, spreading out rapidly as they tore through the orcs. The fortress looked like something out of a desert movie, a fortress that might be owned and operated by foreign legionnaires as they tried to bring civilization to tribesmen who wanted none of it. And yet... there was something about the design that suggested a sandcastle on the verge of collapse. The walls were solid, yet fragile. The entire complex seemed both inhabited yet abandoned. It made little sense.
“This way,” Lady Barb called. “Hurry!”
Emily followed her towards a low building that seemed to be made of sandstone. Lady Barb threw a spell into the room, then plunged after it as soon as the hex faded. A lone orc threw himself at her, teeth drawn back in a savage grimace. Lady Barb cast a powerful force punch, slamming him into the wall. Emily felt sick as she saw his skin cracked by the impact, breaking like a lobster’s shell. He hissed, a second before Lady Barb put a fireball between his eyes. Penny stumbled away, looking ready to throw up. Emily pretended not to hear the sound of vomiting from a darkened corner.
She glanced around the room, noting how barren it truly was. There were no beds, no blankets... not even makeshift pillows. The heat tore at her, making her sweat despite the spells. It was somehow hotter in the chamber than it was outside, a cloying heat that burned her mind. Lady Barb muttered a pair of revealing spells, then turned and led the way back outside. The sounds of fighting were dying as the soldiers secured the complex, parties of musketmen taking up positions on the half-melted walls or dragging vast quantities of supplies through the portal. She let out a breath as a line of horsemen charged through the portal, waving their swords around as if they thought they were going to crash straight into the orcs. Crown Prince Dater had insisted on being included. Emily just hoped he wouldn’t get himself killed, along with his men. Charging into a mass of orcs was a good way to get slaughtered for nothing.
“Good plan,” Lady Barb commented. “Really.”
“It isn’t over yet,” Penny added. “Is it?”
“No,” Lady Barb agreed. “But we’ve completed the first part of the plan.”
Emily said nothing as they surveyed the remainder of the fortress for traps, magical and mundane. The orcs seemed to have been sleeping on the ground, given the lack of any real bedding or barracks. Their supplies were practically non-existent, save for bags of foul-smelling meat. She recoiled at the stench... whatever it was, it smelt as through it had gone off weeks ago. Lady Barb inspected the bags, then ordered a pair of soldiers to bury it with the dead orcs. Emily realized, to her horror, that the meat had come from orcs... dead orcs. It was a sickening thought.
The fortress itself felt as if the necromancers hadn’t paid it any real attention. It was hard to be sure, but it was well within what had once been Shadye’s territory, only a mile or two from the Inverse Shadow. She forced herself to scramble onto the walls - Penny actually flew up onto the walls - and peered south, towards the ancient structure. She thought she could sense odd magic flickering in the distance, although she couldn’t get a handle on it. The Inverse Shadow had always been dangerous. No one, not even Void or the Grandmaster, had been sure what it actually was. Shadye himself had hesitated to mess with the forces within the strange complex.
We’ll stay well clear of it too, she thought, as more and more soldiers flooded into the fortress. A number started to dig trenches and establish firing positions, the remainder were put to work strengthening the walls and evacuating the wounded. Whatever’s in that place, we don’t want to mess with it either.
Lady Barb rested a hand on her shoulder. “Things are going fine so far.”
“So far.” Emily stared into the distance. It looked and felt like a desert, a desert of ash and tainted magic. The cavalry was churning up the ash as they cantered around the fortress, trying to get their beasts used to the Blighted Lands before they charged out to cause trouble. “Do they know we’re here?”
“Yes.” Lady Barb sounded very certain. “They’ll have sensed the portal, Emily. They’ll be on their way.”
“And if they didn’t, we can send out the cavalry to lure them here,” Emily said. She watched a team of soldiers manhandling a cannon into position. “In this place, who knows what they’ll have sensed?”
She gritted her teeth as the wind shifted. The more she stared into the distance, the more uneasy she felt. Strange flickers of light darted through the grim skies, uncanny clouds drifting overhead. They looked yellow, as if they were poisonous... she wondered, suddenly, just what the necromancers had been releasing into the atmosphere. They certainly had the power to blow dust and ash into the skies and block out the sunlight. She felt a pang of sympathy for anyone unfortunate enough to live within the Blighted Lands. The necromancers might be unharmed by their surroundings, their power protecting them from almost everything. Everyone else...
The orcs are tough, she thought, numbly. No wonder they infest the Blighted Lands.
She heard a scrambling sound behind her and turned to see Sir Roger clambering up the ladder. “Lady Emily,” he said. “I beg leave to report the fortress has been secured.”
Emily nodded, carefully not pointing out that the fortress had been secured for nearly half an hour. She didn’t blame Sir Roger for being careful. His life - and those of his men - rested on returning victorious. His family’s future depended on him returning - or dying - a hero. She just hoped it wouldn’t lead to an argument over who was in command, as they started to expand their foothold. The necromancers might not even have noticed the fortress had been invaded. There was so much tainted magic in the Blighted Lands that the portal might have been masked from their senses.
Which would be ironic, she mused, if we went to all this trouble and no one even noticed.
She straightened up. “Good,” she said. “You know what to do.”
“We’ve cleared a room for you and the other sorcerers,” Sir Roger said. “It should give you some privacy.”
“If not comfort,” Emily finished. There was so much tainted magic in the air that she wasn’t sure their spells would last, not without constant attention. “We’ll check it out in a moment.”
She floated to the ground and looked at the portal. A steady line of troops, horses and supplies were marching into the Blighted Lands. She caught the eye of a handful of men and grimaced, inwardly, as she realized many of them were likely to die. They seemed cheerful and confident, but... she swallowed hard. She’d watched men die before, yet... she hadn’t been the one who’d planned the offensive, not then. Now... they were going to die for her. She wanted to tell them to turn back, but she knew she couldn’t. They’d been committed from the moment they’d stepped through the portal.
Sergeant Miles met them as they reached the barracks. “You two have that room,” he said, barely raising his eyes from the papers in his hand. A line of soldiers ran past him, carrying boxes of supplies. “Barb and I will share the other one.”
“Understood.” Emily wasn’t about to deny Lady Barb and Sergeant Miles their chance to share a room. “Let us know when you need us.”
She led Penny into the room, wincing at the heat. The air was so thick and humid she thought she’d walked into a rainforest. She didn’t want to think about where the moisture might have come from. The air was hard to breathe. She muttered a pair of cooling spells, cursing under her breath as the magic refused to work properly. It took several tries to cool the room to something livable, just so she could sit down. The floor felt uncomfortably warm, as if she was kneeling on a frying pan. The silly side of her mind was tempted to crack an egg and see if it cooked.
Penny closed the door and cast a privacy ward. “Is it always l
ike this? I mean...”
“Blood and gore?” Emily met her eyes, evenly. “Yes. I’m afraid so.”
“But...” Penny swallowed hard and started again. “It... why did no one tell me?”
Emily hesitated. “They probably did,” she said. “But it’s not something you grasp until you see it.”
She looked down at her hands. There was something... unreal about magical combat, for all it could leave someone dead or wishing they were. A duel that ended with one person turned into a toad could be reversed with a simple spell. Anything that wasn’t immediately fatal could be healed, given time and magic. A magician might be annoyed at being frozen or transfigured or whatever, but it would be little more than a minor irritation. But a real war was different. It was bloody and gory and men brutally wounded and women raped and... her stomach churned. She wasn’t used to it. She hoped she’d never become used to it.
I’m afraid there’s going to be a certain amount of...well... violence, her thoughts quoted, mocking her. But at least we know it’s all in a good cause, don’t we?
She snorted. It was in a good cause. The necromancers had to be stopped. She stood, motioning for Penny to follow her. They couldn’t sit around doing nothing, not when it would give Penny time to brood. There were plenty of things they had to do before the necromancers tried to wipe them off the face of the planet, before it all hit the fan...
And before my other self reignites the nexus point, she told herself. The plan was perfect. She couldn’t help feeling that boded ill for the future. If she does, we can put an end to the war.
Chapter Sixteen (Emily1)
IT’S LIKE A POST-APOCALYPTIC NIGHTMARE, Emily thought, as she followed Cat along the pass and into the Blighted Lands. The people who live here...
She shuddered, tasting bile in her throat. She’d read dozens of books set in worlds after nuclear wars or alien invasions or pandemics or something else that upended the established order and tore the world to bits. Civilization shattered, the social order torn asunder... cities burned to the ground, farmlands destroyed by starving - and desperate - people who’d become nothing more than a plague of locusts upon the land. The books had painted a grim picture of the dying of the light, of tyrants throwing aside all restraint and imposing their will on the world. The land - and food, and water - itself became a threat.
The Blighted Lands were worse. Syaitan had been bad, but the Blighted Lands managed to be truly horrific. The sun hung low in the sky, slowly shading to red as they walked further and further south. The ground below their feet shifted constantly, as if it were on the verge of plunging them into an inescapable crevice. The air stank of tainted magic, the wind constantly shifting to blow it into their faces. Emily wrapped a scarf around her mouth in a desperate bid to protect herself, but it didn’t work. It felt as if she was walking through an immense radioactive desert, through a land so dry and parched that even the vultures hunted elsewhere. They’d seen no signs of life since they’d walked through the pass and entered the Blighted Lands.
Sweat poured down her back as she kept walking, somehow. The heat sapped her mind and body, despite the spells she muttered constantly. She’d walked further, even during her first year, but here... the heat weakened her, trying to slow her to a crawl. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on Cat’s back, knowing he wouldn’t admit weakness unless he’d truly reached the end of his rope. He seemed as sluggish as herself, sweat staining his back. Emily hoped they hadn’t lost their way. The landscape itself seemed to be playing tricks on her mind.
She gritted her teeth as the wind brushed against her, again. Things flickered at the corner of her eye, somehow never coming into focus no matter how hard she looked. A faint haze shimmered in the distance, taunting her with visions of water and food and comfortable places to rest. She stumbled, nearly tripping over the bones of something that might have been a giant crab or spider or... something. Whatever it was, she was glad it was dead. Creatures like that didn’t grow so big without magic. Beyond it, in a blackened hollow, she saw the bones of something much larger. A dragon? It was hard to be sure. The flesh and blood had long since melted.
The minutes ticked by slowly, each one feeling like an hour as she trudged after Cat. Her eyes hurt, her body hurt, her head ached... she swallowed hard, tasting dust and tainted magic. She was going to have to cleanse herself thoroughly after this, just to make sure none of the taint clung to her. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but at least she’d be alive. The thought of a nice bath - maybe not hot, after the desert - drew her on. She’d settle for going for a swim in a freezing lake. She wouldn’t even care if she had to swim naked.
Maybe we should have tried to teleport, she thought. It mocked her, reminding her there’d been other options... if she’d been prepared to take the risk. Or tried to separate when we invaded the Blighted Lands.
The thought vanished as they stumbled into the remnants of a town. It looked human - there was nothing alien about the design - but it had clearly been abandoned years ago. The buildings were little more than piles of stone on the ground, steadily eroded by the weather until there was almost nothing left. She had a sense of people living there, once upon a time, before the wars and the necromancers and the wave of devastation that had formed the Blighted Lands had swept over their town. She felt a pang of pity for the long-gone civilians, wondering what had happened to them. Had they escaped? Or had they been overwhelmed and slaughtered under a necromantic knife? She glanced behind her. The mountains were lost within the haze.
Something touched her hand. She spun around, throwing a punch with all the force she could muster. Cat stumbled back, moving with terrible sluggishness. He looked at her blankly for a moment, his eyes dull and tired. Emily stared in alarm, realizing the landscape was getting to him too. Normally, he would have evaded the blow with ease. And it had only been a few hours since they’d left the town!
“We have to keep moving,” he said, slowly. His voice was cracked and broken, as if he were no longer himself. “Emily, we can’t stay here.”
Emily nodded, unable to speak. Cat shot her a look, then turned and led her south. Emily followed him, sweat pooling in her boots. She wanted to remove about half her clothing, even though she knew it would end badly. The material was supposed to be light, but it felt drenched, as if she’d been swimming in her clothes. She took one last look at the dead town, then kept moving. There was nothing she could do. The town had died decades, perhaps centuries, before her birth.
The landscape grew harder as they started to descend into a valley. Emily recalled a dozen cowboy movies as they walked into a pass, spotting a handful of long-dead animals and strange pieces of vegetation within the shadows. She was normally wary of dark places within high-magic regions - it was impossible to tell what might be lurking there, more shadow than man - but in the Blighted Lands they were the only shelter within view. The pass seemed designed to filter the sunlight, to keep it pouring down. She glanced at the reddish sun - it hadn’t moved for hours, from what little she could see - then kept moving. There were faint traces of life everywhere, signs of life within the ground. But there was nothing willing to show itself.
Cat slowed to a halt. One hand fumbled for the flask at his belt. Emily stopped herself, feeling a twinge of numb horror. Cat was normally good with his hands, in all senses of the word, but now he seemed to be having problems so much as unscrewing the cap. It took him nearly five minutes - it felt like an hour - to open the flask, then wave it at her. Emily took it, her own hands aching. Putting the flask to her lips and drinking was suddenly the hardest thing in the universe. She nearly drained the flask before remembering herself and passing it back. He needed to drink too.
“It feels like we’ll never get out of the desert,” Cat said. He sounded better, now that he’d had a drink. “How are you coping?”
Emily leaned into the shadows. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had. “I’ve been better,” she managed. “Whose bright idea was this?”
“Yours,” Cat said.
“It was a brilliant idea,” Emily said, tiredly. She wanted to sit down... no, she wanted to lie down. They’d planned to take a break for noon, when the temperature would reach its peak... she couldn’t believe it wasn’t already noon. She felt as if she’d been walking for most of the day. “Perhaps we should have just left earlier.”
Cat put the flask back on his belt. “We were pushing it to leave so early,” he said. “If we’d walked in the dark...”
Emily nodded. Travelling after dark was dangerous, at least outside the more urbanized parts of the world. All kinds of supernatural creatures, many which had never been properly documented, roamed the darkness, some preying on unwary humans. But it would have been cooler had they travelled before the sun rose. She put the thought out of her mind as Cat resumed the walk, and followed him. The gully grew wider as they pushed further south. It looked to have been cut by running water, but the land was so parched she couldn’t believe it so much as drizzled in the Blighted Lands. Perhaps it rained poison.
Her head started to pound again as they reached the edge of the gully. She slipped on ash, nearly falling before she caught herself. The dunes rose in front of her, each feeling like a mountain. And the heat kept rising.
Cat fell. For a moment, she thought he’d slipped.... and then she saw the ground crumble beneath him. Something was there, something was pulling him down... she had the impression of something dark and dangerous lurking in the shadows, something she really didn’t want to see clearly. She jumped, wrapping her magic around herself as she plunged into the lair. Cat wasn’t moving as a tentacle pulled him into a writhing mass of shadows. Emily blinked in horror - Cat should have been able to free himself - and then hurled a fireball at the creature. There was a howl of pain, a sound she felt more than heard, followed by a wave of tentacles reaching for her. She hurled a second fireball, aiming it at the tentacle holding Cat. He jerked as the fireball burnt though the flesh, falling to the ground. Emily grabbed him and drew on her magic, hurling herself up and back into the sun. The levitation spell started to fail the moment they were in the light, but it didn’t matter. Behind her, she heard the thing scream.
Oathkeeper (Schooled in Magic Book 20) Page 15