Chapter Twenty-four
Nathaliey worked alone as the sun went down, moving methodically along the ridge as she placed her defenses. Her tools were dirt, stone, and wood. An outside observer might have thought her actions trivial and random: two sticks crossed here, a line traced in the dirt with circles on either side, five pebbles arranged in a line with another stick at the end, and finally, ancient letters laid out in leaves, sticks, and scribbles in the earth. It may look like nothing, but each was a mirror of runes and wards she had spent years building in the gardens of Memnet the Great, and she left a drop of blood on each one to endow it with magic.
You are a wizard, she told herself. Markal knows it, you know it. There’s no need for the master to confirm. You have power, you have knowledge.
And after telling herself this for the past hour, she nearly believed it, too. At all costs, she needed to avoid a crisis of confidence when it came time to face the enemy. She’d seen doubt overcome Markal at critical moments, and the effects were debilitating.
The marauders were drawing near, only a turn or two below her, and the sound of their approach carried up the hillside: horses huffing for air, hooves thumping against the dirt road, and the boots of marauders, on foot so the animals would be fresher for battle. The enemy was close enough she could have called out a challenge. And yet she still had a few moments remaining if she continued to work in silence.
Bronwyn had slowed her pace since Wolfram spotted the marauders from above, and she must have either sensed or seen the paladins in return and known the Blackshields were preparing for battle on the ridge. Dusk had arrived, and they’d have to fight in the dark, where the enemy would have an advantage. However, Bronwyn wouldn’t want to come charging the last miles and then fly into battle against the paladins, who’d been resting and preparing.
There was another presence along with the marauders and their captain. Their new enemy, the one who’d despoiled the paladins’ supplies at Montlac. A whisper of magic rose from below and lingered in the air. He was imbuing Bronwyn and her forces with a dark power. Nathaliey redoubled her efforts, anxious to finish.
She heard Markal before she saw him. He stood behind her, watching while she traced one of her runes in the dirt, running over it again and again, chanting its associated incantation as she did so. When she finished, she rose with a groan, wiped her hands on the cloth at her belt, and put her hands on her lower back, which was stiff from stooping.
“There, that’s as good as I can manage for now.”
“It’s excellent work,” he said.
She looked him over. “You seem well rested.”
“I won’t be for long,” Markal said. “Our friend is approaching—do you sense him?”
“Yes. He’s fed power to the marauders and their horses, giving them strength.”
“He’s ahead of the rest now. On foot and alone. A hundred feet below us, just through the trees and around the bend.”
Nathaliey looked down the hillside. The road hooked around a granite outcrop with a stunted tree sprouting from a fissure like a gnarled hat, then passed over bare rock and disappeared into the trees. She didn’t see the sorcerer, couldn’t sense whether or not he was on foot, as Markal could, but he was there, all right. A malignant energy, very close now.
“Why is he alone?” she asked.
“Maybe the same reason we’re waiting here instead of taking shelter with the Blackshields. He wants to test us personally.”
Nathaliey gestured at her handiwork, which the entire company of marauders might have stumbled into without noticing, but which Toth’s acolyte would detect without trouble.
“He can test my work.”
“Your subplanto is weak,” Markal said. “See that twig? It’s out of alignment with the leaf and the longer stick.”
“The twig with the bent tip?”
“No, the one after that.”
Now she saw what he meant and winced. “Too late to fix it now. I bound it pretty hard.”
“The rest of it looks good, though. Some of it very good. You’ve got a good memory for these defenses, and you bound them well, considering the tools at hand and how little time you had to work.”
Nathaliey shrugged, pleased by the compliment, but mildly embarrassed at the same time. “I’ve done these things a million times in the garden, that’s all it means.”
“Study the incantations a million times and you’ll have them, too.” Markal’s gaze sharpened, and he stared down the path. “Here he comes.”
A man emerged from around the bend, wearing a gray cloak, but too slender and furtive for a marauder. Bony hands emerged from his sleeves, and he threw back his hood to show hollow, deep-set eyes, a gaunt face, and thin lips. His skin was pale, not as gray as a marauder’s, but sickly.
He approached until he stopped in front of the stumbling ward Markal had called out earlier, roughly ten paces short of the two companions. His eyes scanned her work, then he studied Nathaliey and Markal in turn.
“I have found a pair of worms from the wizard’s garden,” he said. His voice was oily, and made her skin crawl. “Put them in the sun, and they shrivel and die.”
“Better worms than filth from the bottom of the king’s boot,” Nathaliey replied. “Scraped off on a rock and washed away in the first good rain.”
“My name is Vashti, and I am an acolyte of the dark wizard. You don’t know the extent of my power, or you would be more circumspect in your insults.”
“Oh, an acolyte,” she said. “Excuse me for my disrespect. We are wizards of the Crimson Path—I suggest you turn around before you die.”
The dark acolyte pointed a bony finger at the stumbler. “Killed by the likes of this? Doubtful.”
Vashti mumbled a word. The stick snapped, the leaf blew away, and the twig flipped end over end. The ward dissolved like a pinch of salt dropped in a bucket of water.
Markal turned to Nathaliey with a casual, almost bored expression. “He passed the first test, so I suppose he has some modicum of power.”
The dark acolyte’s lip curled back. “I’ll sweep away all of your feeble magic, and then I’ll feed your souls to my ravagers.”
“Oh, so they’re yours?” Nathaliey said. “Did anyone tell Bronwyn?”
“Ravagers,” Markal said, still talking to Nathaliey. “Is that what they call the gray shambling corpses?”
“Go on, then,” Nathaliey told Vashti. “Enough boasting. Knock away my protective spells if you can.”
The man looked livid now. He began to speak under his breath in a harsh guttural tone that sounded like metal scraped against metal. His power rippled beneath his skin, and there was a lot of it. Too much. Markal was raising his power, too, and she sensed his readiness. If the dark acolyte swept away her wards and runes in a single blow, he would be ready to fight the man off so they could retreat in safety.
Dark magic poured out of the man’s hands and blasted the ground where she’d been working. A ward broke apart, and a rune—one she’d thought of as her best work—cracked like a splitting stone. Two others boiled off most of their strength as they responded to the threat. The others held, some untouched.
Vashti snarled a curse. He drew his hood and took a step back. Nathaliey looked at him, eager. Now was the time to strike, when he’d thrown off most of his magic and couldn’t raise his defenses. Markal grabbed her arm.
“No. Hold your strength.”
There was something hard in his voice, and she didn’t resist as he pulled her back. Vashti had seemed ready to break and run, but it was only as she peered closer that she recognized what Markal had already noted: the dark acolyte had shielded himself with protective spells of his own, expecting a counterattack. Bleeding herself now would only waste her power in the same way he’d wasted his.
“Hurry, now,” Markal said. “Bronwyn is coming around the bend.”
Vashti cursed at their back, but couldn’t pursue them or send magic chasing them through Nathaliey’s wards and runes.
&
nbsp; “So much work, blown apart with a single spell,” Nathaliey said.
“It cost him dearly,” Markal said. “And most of your defenses held. Meanwhile, we have plenty of strength to summon magic.”
“That’s true,” she said, feeling better.
They were almost to the paladins when a shout drew her attention. She glanced over her shoulder to see the first of the mounted gray marauders arriving at her barricade. It was Bronwyn, and her voice rose above the general din, shouting at the dark acolyte to clear the way if he didn’t want to be impaled on her sword.
The Blackshields had also been busy, constructing a palisade of sharpened stakes stretching from the cliff edge up the hillside. A narrow opening in the center was wide enough for either a single horse or two people on foot, and paladins challenged Nathaliey and Markal as they approached.
Nathaliey recognized one of Wolfram’s lieutenants. “It’s only us, Sir Lucas.”
He wore a patch over one eye, and cocked the other at them, birdlike and suspicious as they pushed through the opening. A dozen more paladins waited on foot, ready with spears to skewer anyone trying to force their way in.
The suspicion faded from Lucas’s face. “Only making sure you aren’t marauders, hiding behind sorcery. Have they reached your magical . . . whatever it is?”
“You mean the runes and wards? Yes, they’re fighting against them now.”
“And how long will that hold them?”
“Twenty minutes, if we’re lucky,” she said. “With any luck, they’ll come through already tired and battle weary.”
“Good, let’s hope for maximum damage,” Lucas said. “We’ll make them pay a second time when they charge the palisade.”
“Only ten minutes to break the runes and wards,” Markal said. “And this little barricade won’t survive the first charge, either. Warn the captain, make sure he’s ready.”
Lucas sent a rider, and Nathaliey and Markal took position behind the palisade and stared through the gaps in the sharpened staves at the enemy pushing against her work down the hillside.
“How do you figure ten minutes?” Nathaliey asked, feeling a little indignant. “The sorcerer’s acolyte wasted most of his power in that first strike. The rest will have to hack their way through with brute force.”
“Vashti would have been better off attacking them one at a time,” Markal said. “But he’s collecting more magic. Listen.”
A man’s high-pitched shriek rose above the shouting and clamor from below. There was pain in his cry, agony even. The injured man didn’t sound like a marauder—did they even feel pain the same way as a fully living person? He had to be a prisoner, most likely a captive from the lowlands of Eriscoba.
“What are they doing, torturing him?” she asked.
“It’s where the dark acolyte gets his power.” Markal’s tone was grim. “The pain of his victims. The more that poor fellow suffers, the more Vashti has to throw against us.”
There was a crack, like the sound of a tree snapping in the wind, and a blast of magic washed up the hill. One of her wards had just exploded under attack.
“The sorcery can’t get them all,” she said stubbornly. “Not in ten minutes.”
“No, some of it will linger,” Markal said. “And I imagine it will cling to the marauders when they come, slowing their movements and sapping their strength. But these aren’t the gardens—they’re not even the stone circle. What you did is a gimmick, an annoyance.”
“So why didn’t you tell me to put them up here where I could build them into the palisade?”
“Wait a few minutes and you’ll see why.”
She would have pressed him, pointing out that she was supposedly a wizard, and he was speaking elliptically, as if he were her master and she his apprentice, but movement from behind drew her attention. Wolfram had mounted two dozen paladins at the top of a rise about a hundred feet behind the barricade, positioned to charge from higher ground. A cluster of riderless horses waited behind them, saddled and waiting for the paladins with spears and staves to fall back after the initial clash.
The sun had fallen, and only a red smear remained on the horizon to the west. Darkness enveloped the hills and mountains behind them, and the sky was blackening, with the first stars winking above the peaks. Aided by their cloaks, the marauders had better eyesight than the paladins, and to negate the advantage, Wolfram had lit bonfires around the hilltop. They’d better hope there weren’t any giants lurking about who would be drawn, curious, to investigate the fires.
Or griffins, for that matter, Nathaliey thought as the woman with the broken arm went from fire to fire, heaping in more fuel. The smoke and light would make a great beacon to swoop in for another attack, and that was all they needed, harassment from the sky while they were trying to hold off the marauders on the ground.
Another blast of magic came from down the hillside, and Nathaliey turned to see more of her traps snapping and exploding in flashes of light. A breeze blew against the palisade, forcing air between the staves, and it carried Vashti’s foul magic mingled with her own. She clenched her teeth at the waste of her efforts. It hadn’t cost her much, only time, and that was time she’d have otherwise spent idling nervously, waiting for the enemy, but seeing the enemy sweep it effortlessly aside left her feeling helpless.
Two mounted enemies broke through her barricade. The first was the villain with the missing hand, and the second was Bronwyn, who gestured with a massive sword held casually in one hand. It could only be Soultrup, though it wasn’t yet gleaming red.
“Already?” Nathaliey said with a groan.
“Like I told you,” Markal said. “It wasn’t twenty minutes.”
“It wasn’t even ten. More like five.”
“That’s good news, not bad,” Markal said. “If there’s one thing we can count on from the enemy, it’s impatience—each and every marauder who forces his way through is going to carry your magic with him.”
What was left of Nathaliey’s wards rebuffed the second wave of marauders, who tried to surge in after Bronwyn and her one-handed lieutenant, only to be driven back with their horses stomping and throwing their heads. Bronwyn shouted something, and Vashti attacked the runes again. More screaming from behind as someone tortured the captive to feed the dark acolyte’s power.
The marauders made another attempt. Two more broke through. Then another trio, and finally, the whole mass surged and broke down what was left of Nathaliey’s work. They came riding up the hillside, gaining speed as they approached the palisade.
“How will Vashti do it?” Markal murmured. “Fire, I should think. He’ll set it ablaze, force us back, and trust the marauders’ cloaks to keep them from harm.” He glanced at Nathaliey. “That’s why I didn’t have you protect the palisade itself. It’s not going to last long enough to matter.”
Nathaliey sensed a gathering strength from the acolyte. Power swelling, growing. And something carrying on the wind, an incantation, a twisted version of something she’d heard before. It wasn’t fire, it was . . .
“Get back!” she cried.
Her ears ached with sudden pressure, and her limbs felt heavy, as something seemed to compress the air. Nathaliey, Markal, Lucas, and the others staggered back from the sharpened staves, which suddenly bent as if under a tremendous weight and then snapped in a single, roaring explosion. Shards of wood shot in every direction. One went singing past Nathaliey’s ear, and another piece struck her leg with the force of a stone hurled from a sling. Two paladins went down, one with the sharpened edge of a stave through his throat, the other impaled through the leg. The first died instantly. The second cried out in pain as his companions dragged him back. Others struggled to free themselves from the wreckage.
The first of the marauders reached the palisade ruins and forced their horses through, over, and around the broken, shattered sticks. There was nobody to slow them; the dark acolyte had wiped out the defenses in a single blast.
Yet most of the initial defen
ders had survived the attack, thanks to Nathaliey’s timely warning, and they reached Wolfram’s massed cavalry and made for their horses. Nathaliey and Markal climbed the hillside behind them, where they could throw magic into the fight without coming under direct attack from enemy swords. She searched the marauders as they broke down the rest of the barricade, taking stock of their strength and watching how Bronwyn asserted herself at their head, shouting orders and jostling with her horse to get the others in line.
The marauders gathered into a wedge above the wreckage, while the dark acolyte took position below them between the two halves of the destroyed palisade. A naked man lay facedown on the road in front of him with his hands bound and bloody, barely struggling, and Vashti bent with a dagger and slit his throat. He tossed aside the dagger and held his arms up, his palms out. Shadow flowed into them from the gathering darkness.
The prisoner stopped moving, yet shadow continued to flow into Vashti’s hands. A pair of grievously injured paladins cried out from beneath the wreckage of the palisade, and Nathaliey realized with horror that the dark acolyte was feeding on their pain as they died.
Vashti’s cloak had emerged battered and faded after his struggles with the runes and wards. He’d seemed weaker, too, trembling and wobbling on his feet. But he seemed to strengthen as shadow flowed into him.
“The longer the battle rages, the stronger he’ll be,” she said. “We’re doomed.”
“We are wizards of the Order of the Crimson Path,” Markal said. “We are not doomed.”
Bronwyn took position in front of the marauders. She lifted Soultrup, and a red spurt of flame shot down the edge of the blade from hilt to tip. She waved it forward, letting out a hoarse shout, and the marauders surged up the hillside toward the waiting Blackshields.
Chapter Twenty-five
“The spell is desiccation,” Jethro said. “There are only six words, and three of them you should know from the runes on the bridge over Blossom Creek, the one that makes an unwanted guest think he’s dying of thirst in the desert. Do you know the one I’m talking about?”
The Red Sword- The Complete Trilogy Page 52