“I have an idea,” Sadira said. “My cousin is married to the sultan of Marrabat. A lesser wife, but she has connections in the city. I will empty the treasury and carry it with me. There must be merchants in Syrmarria with private guards, but if not, we can bribe the desert nomads as we travel the Spice Road. The rest of the treasures of the city will buy our way into the sultanates.”
“You’re going to relocate the entire population of Syrmarria across the desert?” Markal asked.
He tried to picture sixty-five thousand men, women, and children suffering under the blistering desert sun while Kratian raiders eyed them hungrily. Hyenas and wild dogs would follow the vast trudging hordes, feasting on the dead and dying. And then, after weeks on the road, the Syrmarrians would arrive in Marrabat half starved, begging for mercy.
“The slave markets of Marrabat will do brisk business when they reach the other side,” Markal decided.
Sadira looked grim. “Many will no doubt become slaves. Perhaps most. Maybe even all, myself included.”
“An ugly fate,” Chantmer said. “Yet the flesh markets of the south are not nearly so cruel as the high king’s road crews. There, you are meant to die. Your blood and suffering will bind the highway to the land.”
“My eunuch will be in the dungeons by now,” the princess said. “A few more minutes and Kandibar will be in my quarters. I must hurry if this is to be done.”
“I agree,” Chantmer said. “Any more waiting wastes precious time.”
The other two looked at Markal for confirmation. How could he agree to this cruel plan, condemning thousands to death and slavery? Yet it was better than any other option.
He nodded slowly. “Talk to the vizier. If he agrees, if he thinks he can evacuate the city to the south, then make it happen. Empty Syrmarria. You only have a few hours, and then it burns.”
Chapter Fifteen
Chantmer went with Sadira to her quarters with the idea of healing Kandibar after his long, agonizing stint in the dungeons. Now alone, Markal picked his way cautiously to the library. By the time he arrived, the first collection of books had been loaded into the cart, which was near the palace gates, hidden beneath so many layers of concealing spells that the first time he’d hauled a volume from the library, he’d bashed his knee against the cart gate while he was groping around to find it. He couldn’t see the horse at all.
Karla and Erasmus stood in the cart, taking volumes as they arrived and arranging them carefully. Markal dropped his book into Karla’s hands and hurried back toward the library for another. Tendrils of sorcery reached for him from every corner, groping, touching, prodding. It was strongest nearest the palace gates, but continued all along the way until he reached the final approaches to the library corridor.
Memnet had been following his same course, and now materialized out of the gloom. The two wizards, master and junior, pushed through the protective wards and into the library, where they faced the pile of material to be evacuated, scarcely diminished in size. Jethro remained at the copyist table with two other archivists, working to secure a final volume.
“If only we could bring the cart closer,” Markal said.
“Impossible,” Memnet said. “It was all we could do to haul it through the gates. It would be caught in a dozen snares before it arrived, and we’d have the enemy on top of us in an instant.”
“Or we could carry two books at a time,” Markal said. “They’re heavy, but if we finished more quickly, we might save a few more volumes.”
“One at a time,” Memnet said firmly. “We must save these books. If we’re careless, we could lose the entire cart.”
A bell was ringing in the city when Markal next emerged from the library. Moments later, another bell. Servants went running through the gates, and Markal braced himself, watching to see if dark acolytes would materialize and stop them. None did.
“Don’t worry about the enemy,” came a disembodied voice over his left shoulder. Memnet’s. “The sorcerer and his servants are in the night market. The creatures must be controlled when they come up from below or they will burrow back into the earth to return to the infernal realms.”
The shadowy magic was growing near the gates, a thick miasma that smelled of rot and decay. When they returned once more to the library and let the concealing spells slip, Markal voiced his doubts and worries.
“Are you sure they’re all at the markets, Master? There’s someone at the gates. Someone is trying to stop us from leaving.”
“Concentrate on your work,” Memnet said. “We will fight that battle if it comes.”
It was almost dusk, and the sun was a red smear on the eastern horizon by the time Markal returned to the open air. There was chaos in the streets to the west, below the palace in the souks and winding neighborhoods. Shouts and banging doors, and so many people and animals on the move that it was a continual rumble of noise. The princess and the vizier’s plan for evacuating Syrmarria was rapidly becoming a mass charge toward the southern gate of the city.
Markal handed another book to Karla and Erasmus and paused to sniff at the air. There was smoke, and not the kind from cook fires. More like burning swamp gas, with a strong odor of sulfur.
By the time he and Memnet reached the library anew, Chantmer was inside, pacing impatiently with a volume in his arms, as Jethro had been given strict instructions not to let anyone leave alone.
“How was the vizier?” Markal asked.
“His bones are intact, and so is his mind,” Chantmer said. “Other than that . . . not so well.”
“You used healing magic?”
Chantmer gave a dismissive wave of the hand. “I did what I could. What Kandibar needs is several weeks of rest, with food and drink from the gardens, but absent that, a little magic should keep him on his feet long enough to see the city evacuated.”
“Keep working,” Memnet said, coming up behind them. “Time is drawing short.”
They made several more trips to the wagon, and all the time the haze of smoke kept thickening above Syrmarria. The pile of books in the library dropped with agonizing slowness. Some time after darkness had fallen, there was a loud pop from the center of the city, and a geyser of sparks and smoke blasted skyward in a churning column. Screams came from the city below, and soon became a great cry that shook the air all the way to the palace. The next time Markal reached a vantage point, he looked down at Syrmarria.
People and animals were already pouring through the south gate to the farmlands beyond the walls, and great masses of them clogged the alleys and streets. Smoke poured up from the night market, and the nearby intersections had turned into a stampede that threatened to crush them all before they could be evacuated.
“By the Brothers,” Memnet’s voice said nearby. “Won’t somebody take command?”
And then, miraculously, the ministers, servants, and merchants organizing the evacuation seemed to regain control. Even as smoke continued to pour from the center of the city, and an ominous rumbling filled the air and shook the ground, the retreat turned orderly again. The city was not yet burning; there was still time.
“Master,” Chantmer said from nearby. Like Memnet, he seemed to be a floating voice. “Something is heating the ground.”
It was true, Markal realized. His feet were sweating in their boots. He bent to touch the flagstones and was alarmed to discover that they were scalding hot. The vines on a nearby wall drooped, withering before his eyes.
“The salamanders carry fire from the center of the earth,” Memnet said. “But I never thought it would reach all the way up here—we’re on top of a hill. Hurry. We must, must get those books out.”
The inside of the palace had turned hot and stifling since their last visit, but when they descended to the library level, the air was unchanged and the stones cool to the touch. The sweat on Markal’s brow turned chill, and he shivered.
“Forget what I said earlier,” Memnet said. “Pick up as many books as you can—we’re out of time. Leave what you
can’t carry. Archivists, too. Everyone, move.”
“Some of these tomes are more valuable than others,” Jethro began. “Start with these ones here—”
“No!” Memnet said. “No time. It is upon us. Grab what you can and go.”
Markal joined the general scramble. In addition to all the scrolls, tablets, and books still on the shelves—an unfathomable collection of knowledge and lore—there were still a good dozen volumes left in the pile the archivists had carefully prepared while others had loaded the cart. Markal and the rest struggled under their loads, balancing books and scrolls as they emerged from the library.
Jethro was the last to leave, and he stepped into the corridor with an anguished groan. Chantmer hooked his foot on the oak door and dragged it shut with a clank. Even the corridor now tasted like smoke. Markal bit back a cough and followed the others up the stone stairs. A scroll fell from the top of one of the heaps carried by an archivist and bounced down. When someone stopped to recover it, Memnet ordered her to keep moving.
There were no concealers about them now, no subtlety. They simply ran with as much as they could carry, desperate to reach Karla and Erasmus at the palace gates. Somehow they had to get the cart, fight their way through the sorcery preventing their exit from the palace, and get out of the city before it was too late. Memnet led, shouting whenever someone lingered with his or her load.
They emerged onto a terrace to find flowers wilted and black. The leaves of a lemon tree curled and died before their eyes. A fountain on the opposite side of the terrace steamed like a kettle about to boil. A delicate arcade of fluted columns marked a gate of sorts above the stairs that led from the terrace toward the palace gates, and the vines growing across it twisted and smoked like live snakes dropped onto a hot skillet.
Memnet was almost to the columns when he dropped his books and scrolls and materialized the orb. It glowed white-hot in his fist. The ground in front of them heaved, and smoking, blackened flagstones blasted into the air, launched skyward by a geyser of smoke, followed by a wave of heat that rocked Markal on his heels.
A hole opened, glowing with heat. A long, snake-like snout appeared, made of fire and molten rock, followed by a clawed hand that buried itself into the flagstones, which melted to slag under its touch. More claws emerged, and a fire salamander pulled itself, writhing and burning, from its hole. Its tongue flickered—pure flame—and the lemon tree burst into flames. It wrapped its body around a column and it melted.
Memnet and the others had stopped dead some thirty feet away from the creature. The city was aglow with lights, fire shooting into the sky where the night market had been. Even as he stared in horror, Markal struggled to understand how this salamander had come up beneath the palace—through some rune, a portal, that they’d never detected? It must be right here, in a spot they’d crossed dozens of times just this evening.
This creature of the depths was heat and fire and smoke, and Markal was stunned into paralysis. The salamander was between them and the cart. The whole terrace was melting, the trees burning and fire spreading already to the roof of nearby palace apartments. And they had no way to escape.
Memnet lifted the orb and shouted an incantation. A shower of white arrows flew from the orb and struck the salamander, bursting into steam as they hit. The salamander whipped its head about with an angry hiss and crawled serpentine-like across the melting stones even as icy arrows kept slamming into its body.
The fire dimmed where the arrows hit, and the creature’s skin solidified and turned black and shiny like obsidian as it cooled. The salamander’s movements slowed, turned creaky as the bombardment continued. It was hissing and spitting fire, and steam kept pouring off it, but the ice turned it to stone before their eyes as the master thundered ice onto its skin and quenched its heat.
“I can’t kill it,” Memnet shouted over the din of shattering ice and cracking stone. “Only slow it for a moment. Get around it, go. I will follow. Markal, lead them down.”
Markal gathered his wits. It was boiling hot close to the salamander, and a wall of flame roared from the burning lemon tree that they had to fight their way past. It was so hot that the water in the fountain next to it was steaming. He was afraid their robes would catch fire from the heat. How did the master intend them to get past?
“Frigidalus,” Jethro said.
Yes, of course. Markal dropped his load, held out his palms, and raised blood and power to the surface. “Refrigescant caeli. Consolabitur nos ab æstus.”
A gust of cold air blew in from behind, drove through the smoke, and swept it clear. Markal scooped up the books and prepared to run past Memnet and the monster, leading his companions down from the terrace.
But as the smoke cleared, it revealed a man standing beneath the melting arch, with the flaming tree to his right and the steaming fountain to his left. He stood at the top of the stairs, where moments earlier there had been no one. Markal recognized him at once.
It was Toth, the sorcerer and necromancer. The dark wizard, the high king of Veyre.
Chapter Sixteen
The last time Markal had seen the dark wizard, he was in the partially built fortress along the Tothian Way, wearing the colors and garb of a Veyrian lord. Now Toth had shed his tunic in favor of a gray robe like those worn by his highest servants.
But he didn’t have the gaunt face of a dark acolyte, nor the dead eyes and waxy complexion of a marauder. Instead, his skin was the color of wheat, his hair dark and curly, his eyes flashing and very much alive. He lifted his hands, and his lips curled in an ugly grimace as he spoke his incantation.
A cone of shadow erupted from Toth’s hands, slammed into Memnet, and knocked the wizard backward. Somehow, Memnet kept hold of his books, but the orb went flying, and he landed hard on his back. The arrows of ice vanished, and almost instantly, molten red heat cracked through the salamander’s skin.
Memnet waved his hand, and the orb lifted itself from the ground and flew to him. Memnet snatched it from the air, and as he brought it around, light flared. Toth was already hurling a second cone of shadow, and the two forces met in the middle and exploded with a shock wave that struck the others. Shadow and light rippled along Markal’s skin and made the hairs curl on his forearms. His stomach churned with nausea as the shadowy remnants of Toth’s sorcery flowed into him.
More black ropes snaked from the enemy’s hands. Memnet blasted light from his orb and made them wither and die, but the darkness kept flowing outward. Toth was using similar magic to his acolytes’ during the battle on the old road, but there was a radiant aura of power that far surpassed anything Markal and Nathaliey had faced.
During the icy assault, the salamander’s feet had frozen in place, turned into trunks of stone that merged with the terrace, but they were melting now. Flames licked from the monster’s mouth and twisted along its spine. Bits of obsidian-like rock burst from the scales on its back.
Markal watched in horror and dismay. He and his companions could not go forward or they’d face Toth and the fire salamander. Neither could they retreat, not with the irreplaceable treasure they carried in their arms. He had to do something, but had already spent the bulk of his magic drawing that ineffective breeze.
The salamander pulled up one foot, then another. Dragging itself free, heat radiating from its body anew, it came toward them. Wizard and sorcerer fought with alternating blasts of shadow and light, fully occupied in their struggle, and the creature slithered unopposed toward the lesser members of the order. A trail of molten stone remained where it crossed the flagstones.
If it had come straight at them, they’d have been destroyed, along with their books, but Toth appeared to have lost mastery of the beast as he battled Memnet. The salamander spotted the wooden columns of a balcony above them, crawled in that direction, and shot out a tongue of flame, which wrapped around the columns and set them ablaze. It crawled halfway up the stone wall, stretched out a clawed forearm, which elongated like an uncoiling rope, and pulled do
wn tiles from the roof, which caught fire.
Flames were spreading throughout the palace, bursting through windows and rippling across roofs. Trees across the terraced gardens swayed in the firestorm, and their crowns caught fire one by one. Even with the salamander distracted, there was too much fire and heat surrounding Toth at the top of the stairs to get down.
“I have magic!” Chantmer said. “What should I do?”
“The monster wants to destroy,” Markal said. “Wood, books, anything that will wither under its flames—that’s what attracts it.”
“The trees are up in flames already,” Jethro said. “We can’t use them.”
“The books—” one of the archivists began.
“No,” Markal said. “Not the books, never that.”
“Blast it,” Chantmer said. “Someone give me an incantation, now.”
“A wall of ice,” Jethro said. “It’s a powerful spell, but easily mastered. Chantmer knows it already.”
Yes, of course. The ice would cool the stairs and shield them and the master from the worst heat so they could get down. A thick enough wall would cool the salamander, even as it drew it.
“I can’t pull ice from the sky,” Chantmer said. “I need contact with water.”
Markal pointed at the steaming fountain not far from where Memnet and Toth kept battering each other with waves of light and darkness. “There’s your source right there. I’ll jump in, make a conduit, and you build the wall.”
“Is there enough water in there?” Chantmer said.
“The fountain is connected to the palace springs—it will fill as fast as you drain it.”
As for the water in the fountain, it would be hot, perhaps scalding. There was nothing to be done for that; he’d suffer burns if he had to. He made to charge into the fray.
“No, not you,” Jethro said before he could move. “You have two hands to carry books, and power left in you. I have one hand and no power. I’ll do it.”
The Red Sword- The Complete Trilogy Page 69