“It matters a lot to me.”
“You can be an ass sometimes, you know that?” Nathaliey said. “We’re on the verge of annihilation here, and you’re worried about your stupid pride.”
“I’m the one who is proud?” Chantmer said. “Listen to you lording it over me. Trying to force your way in and steal credit for my work.”
Markal leaned around Chantmer while he was arguing with Nathaliey and caught sight of familiar marks in the stone. “That’s a desolation ward,” he said.
Nathaliey drew closer. “You mean like in the walled garden? Oh. Yes. I see it. A whole row of them.”
“Stand back, you’re crowding me,” Chantmer said. He kept working, brushing away dirt.
“And the master wants you to activate it?” Markal asked. “It will blast this entire hillside. Nothing will ever grow here again.”
“You’re hardly one to cast judgment on what should or shouldn’t be destroyed,” Chantmer said. “You destroyed the walled garden. This is just a bit of meadow and an old fairy fort.”
He was right, and yet Markal was taken aback that the master would plan such a trap. But if Markal properly understood what Chantmer was doing, activating the runes would allow them to fall back from the southern defenses and concentrate their forces elsewhere.
“Here, let us help,” Markal said, “and then we can all leave together.”
Chantmer grumbled some more and insisted that they not try to steal his credit. Nathaliey snapped back irritably, and Markal made soothing noises to calm them both. To a certain extent, he understood Chantmer’s anger at being left behind while the other three greater apprentices advanced in power and prestige. He’d have been humiliated, too, and how much worse for Chantmer, given his well-developed sense of pride?
Markal recognized the markings in the stone, but there was something unfamiliar about the magic vibrating beneath the surface. At first he thought it was age, that the stone had been laid down by a precursor to the Crimson Path, most likely the order who’d built the stone ring in the mountains where the old hermit lived.
But by the time they finished and covered it with sod, he decided that this was not the extent of it. There was magic down there that he’d have liked to have investigated, maybe even studied in the library. And that reminded him that the books where the lore would be found had most likely been left behind and devoured by fire salamanders.
Once finished, they set out across the countryside and hooked around to the northeast to reach the bridge over Blossom Creek. Midway through the trip—a journey of a few miles—they discovered a patrol of mounted troops—not marauders, but regular Veyrian cavalry—and threw up concealing spells while they prepared an attack. When the riders reached them, Markal heaved the road and threw the men from the saddle, and Chantmer and Nathaliey drew a desiccation spell. In the matter of seconds, they killed twenty men and sent their horses scattered and riderless across the countryside.
The brief encounter, victorious though it was, slowed their journey. The Veyrians were close to the garden walls, and next time it might be the enemy springing an ambush. They slowed further when Markal caught a whiff of sorcery.
Nathaliey turned about in the road, sniffing at the air. “A dark acolyte.”
Chantmer’s face darkened. “I recognize that stench. Zartosht. Let him find us. We will have our revenge for Jethro’s death.”
But if there were dark acolytes about, Toth could easily be present, too. Except he would hide himself better, even this close to the gardens, where the order’s power was strongest. The three of them together couldn’t fight the dark wizard out here, whether he was in the company of his dark acolytes or not. Markal told them to pick up the pace.
They were moving at a good clip when they came through the orchards and into clear grasslands. They stopped long enough to deepen their concealing spells. Just as they set off again, there was a distant boom and a rumble like hundreds of clashing swords. Three dragon wasps raced overhead, hissing and spitting as they fought the reins of their riders.
The wasps flew in the same direction as the noise, which all came from the northeast, where the bridge crossed Blossom Creek. The three companions broke into a run.
By the time they approached the bridge, the meadow beyond had turned into a regular battlefield. Dozens of troops lay dead east of the stream, and the ground was pocked with holes surrounded by dirt and rock, as if a monster had clawed its way across the ground. Hundreds more men—most of them infantry with long, Veyrian-style hooked pikes—trudged across the meadow, bracing as if against a howling windstorm. There was nothing visibly opposing them, but they kept falling to their knees before dragging themselves up again. A few, overcome by exhaustion, went down and couldn’t get up again.
The ground exploded in the meadow, and several men flew skyward. Others staggered toward the new hole as if sucked into a vortex, and struggled to get out of it again to keep moving. Meanwhile, several dozen men drew near the stream, but turned as one from the road and charged, screaming, north along the stream bank in the wrong direction. They shortly veered back into the meadow, where their cries faded into scattered confusion.
Causing all this chaos was a small cluster of figures atop the stone bridge. The three companions approached from the safe side of the stream, and as Markal drew near he saw Narud standing at the head of the small procession on the bridge, with one of the lesser apprentices, a young man named Kreth, at his side, and three acolytes and a pair of keepers behind. Narud maintained an impressive, suitably wizard-like posture, while the others worked at the numerous markings chiseled into the bridge to call forth their power.
The three newcomers came up from behind.
“How long have you been under attack?” Markal asked.
Narud glanced up, as if to gauge the position of the sun. “An hour, perhaps a little longer.”
“You should have sent someone to fetch us.”
“I assumed you were busy. Anyway, we’ve been holding our own.” Narud glanced at Nathaliey and Chantmer, who were running their hands along the stone balustrade and discussing the state of the defenses, then back at Markal. “We had a bad moment early on. Eight dragon wasps attacked us on the bridge, and we weren’t prepared for an aerial attack.”
“How did you drive them off?” Markal asked.
“The acolytes threw up a vortex, and I was going to pull water from the stream and form ice spears, like the master instructed. Before I could, a flock of griffins came and chased them off.”
Markal scanned the sky. There were a handful of wasps far to the east, but lurking, not ready to throw themselves into battle, as if afraid of another griffin charge. He was glad they weren’t facing wasps on top of everything else.
Yuli had been so hostile the first time he’d met her. That was before marauders attacked her aerie and stole eggs from her griffins’ nest. Hamid—or Toth, if he’d been the one to order it—had blundered.
He was still thinking this over when several griffins came winging in from the north, pursued by a dozen or more dragon wasps, riders high on their backs, waving spears and jeering at their enemy’s retreat. Just when it seemed that the griffins would flee the scene entirely, they swooped around and charged into the startled wasps from every side. The griffins only numbered six or seven—it was hard to count either side given the speed and fluidity of the battlefield overhead—but three more griffins dropped from above and slammed into the dragon wasps as their riders attempted to regroup.
A griffin retreat had turned into a rout of the enemy forces in the course of seconds. Or so it seemed at first. But the battle was even more fluid than Markal first supposed. Before the griffins could seize victory, a fresh cluster of dragon wasps snaked in from the east. And then more griffins were arriving, and soon the sky was filled with screaming, hissing, clashing bodies.
He spotted Yuli and Ageel brawling with a wasp and its rider and driving it toward the ground. When they were eighty or ninety feet up, Veyria
n soldiers began to launch arrows and crossbow bolts.
Yuli flung herself from the griffin and attacked the wasp rider atop his own mount, attached to Ageel by only a slender tether around the ankle. She cut his throat, slashed his tethers, and sent him plummeting to earth. Then, with an agile twist of the body, and still holding the sword, she hauled herself one-handed back to her own mount. Ageel disengaged and left the floundering, tattered wasp to come screeching down among the soldiers, who scattered in fear.
It made for a thrilling view, but a fresh push across the meadows quickly drew Markal’s attention. He was wary at the renewed energy, but there were fewer than four hundred men in total in the meadow, and it was nothing that the defenders couldn’t handle. Was this a diversion, a probing attack? Did Toth really have so many men that he could throw them away by the hundreds?
The enemy seemed to be organizing, no longer content to charge, retreat, and charge again. Roughly two hundred with pikes gathered around a man at the center shouting orders and herding them into lines. Once they’d clustered together, their lieutenant gave a shout, and they trudged toward the bridge. Narud drew power from an acolyte and activated one of the runes on the bridge, which went off with a loud pop. Rocks and dirt exploded from the meadow and hurled themselves at the enemy troops. Several men fell under the bombardment, but the rest continued with dogged determination.
As of yet, none of Markal’s companions seemed alarmed, but something about the situation felt different. Narud and Chantmer consulted behind him in low voices while acolytes and keepers leaned in to listen. Nathaliey made her way through the others and descended toward the meadow, where she bent to test the stones where they met the far bank.
Markal followed her down and sniffed at the air. He took in the scent of grass and wildflowers, the smell of clean water from the brook, and the odor of sweat and fear radiating from the troops marching this way. A dragon wasp slammed into the ground a few feet away, making him start, and as its snaking head drummed the ground, he smelled the desert heat in its burning blood. Magic from the bridge radiated out at the presence of this enemy, and the dying monster sank into the soil.
As it did, something emerged from it—the sorcery binding it to service. That was fresh magic . . . and recognizable. Now that he’d taken note of it, the smell seemed to permeate the meadow, radiating from the soldiers, the ground, and the sky. It wasn’t the sorcery of a dark acolyte, either. It was more powerful than that.
Nathaliey had left the bridge. She picked up a handful of dirt and pebbles and spread them in a half-circle in front of her. Markal came down and took her arm.
“Toth is here,” he said. “Get back to the bridge.”
Dirt spilled from her hands. “How can you be sure?”
“Help me find me a revelation rune.”
They felt the stone balustrade and shortly found what Markal was looking for. A quick incantation activated it, and a wave of magic rolled out from the bridge and across the meadow. Everything changed.
Toth’s magic had concealed an entire army. Each man in the meadow turned into a dozen. There had been a wagon inching across the ground, dragged by several men using it for cover, and this turned into a massive wall of wood planks. Two or three hundred archers advanced behind it. The two hundred pikemen became three thousand or more, still gathering in numbers as they surged toward the bridge.
And there was another enemy even closer at hand. What Markal had dismissed as the dead or wounded proved to be dozens of men crawling on their bellies through the grass, advancing so slowly that they hadn’t aroused notice. The nearest were only feet from the bridge, and none of the wards had blocked their progress.
In contrast, the defenders, numbering only ten individuals, had been calmly, almost casually blasting the enemies in the meadow while reserving their strength for a heavier assault. An assault they had almost missed entirely.
Keepers were hard at work, backs turned as they readied wards and runes. Markal shouted a warning, and they looked up.
At that same moment, a cry went up in the middle of the Veyrian army. Trumpets blared from across the assembled companies of troops. The men crawling on the ground sprang to their feet and broke into a run. Behind them, thousands of Veyrian troops surged across the meadow.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nathaliey had been arranging dirt and rocks at the edge of the bridge when Markal told her that he’d sensed the dark wizard. Her work had been something to keep her occupied during the lull in fighting, nothing more.
The trap was simple. If a Veyrian soldier penetrated the outer defenses, the ground would twist beneath him and break his ankle. Nothing serious or battle-altering. She had mixed in a drop of her blood and was laying it down, somewhat bored and frustrated at the slow pace of battle, when Markal gave his warning.
He sounded frightened, and she knew enough not to question him, letting the rest of the dirt and pebbles fall from her hand as he dragged her back. He called up one of the spells on the bridgework, and suddenly the battlefield revealed itself as it truly was. Among the thousands of attackers, some of the enemy had already drawn very near to the bridge. The closest was a soldier crawling around the dying, flailing dragon wasp, and he reached his feet and broke into a sprint.
One of the keepers had been preparing a rune on the stonework at the edge of the bridge. He was slow to heed Markal’s shouted warning, and only belatedly lifted his gaze. His eyes widened in surprise at the charging soldier. They Veyrian brought his sword in a great arc from behind his shoulder.
It was then that he hit the bit of dirt and rock Nathaliey had been preparing. The trap was only partially placed, and not yet activated, but she’d already mixed in a drop of her blood. The soldier stumbled, almost fell, and caught his balance. In the split second Nathaliey’s work had bought them, the slow-moving keeper got onto the bridge.
The Veyrian swung his sword, but it was no longer at an unprotected opponent. The weapon twisted in his hand as he swung at the air over the bridge and struck the stone balustrade instead. It shattered on impact, there was a secondary snap, this time bone, and the soldier staggered backward with his sword arm hanging limp.
Keepers activated runes, and the meadow churned up dirt and mud. Great sinkholes opened in the ground, while in other places mud geysers shot skyward. Narud drew magic from an acolyte and hurled a fireball into the meadow to set the grass on fire. Chantmer brought up volans malleis—his beloved spectral hammers—and hurled them from the crest of the bridge while Markal strengthened them with another rune. The hammers spawned other hammers, which in turn doubled in size as they spun through the sky.
They slammed into the main force of enemies, churning and battering as they cut a vast swath. By the time the hammers stopped, they’d left a path of mangled bodies. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of men lay dead or wounded. Chantmer shouted in triumph.
“Your long-standing faith in the magical hammers has been rewarded,” Nathaliey told him.
Chantmer seemed so pleased that he didn’t bother to scowl.
The ground heaved in the center of the enemy army, but this time it wasn’t their magic at work. The dead and dying flew into the sky, together with their weapons, armor, and the rocks and dirt torn loose by wizardry from the bridge. All blasted high into the air. A dead soldier struck a griffin hard on the wing, and it squawked in pain, flipped over, and fell fluttering to the earth while the rider struggled desperately to free himself.
The battle overhead was going poorly even before debris hurled into the midst of the action. The entire griffin army seemed to be engaged in combat, outnumbered by dragon wasps, which harried them from every side and continued to flood into the aerial battlefield. Yuli and others whistled a warning as the mass of bodies, weapons, and armor blasted through them like missiles launched from catapults.
But Nathaliey didn’t have time to worry about their allies, as enemy sorcery now flung the dead and dying at the bridge, where they fell in a lethal rain. A body st
ruck a keeper, and she went down without a sound. The others cowered and reached for magic. Two spectral shields went up almost simultaneously, and the rest of the bodies and weapons bounced harmlessly away.
By the time the bombardment had stopped, a hundred or more enemies had reached the bridge and were hurling themselves forward in waves in an attempt to break through. Some stumbled and fell, while others reached the bridge only to dive into the brook as if that had been their objective all along. Dozens fell face-first into the water, flailing and drowning in knee-deep water, unable to lift their heads clear from the magic holding them under. But other soldiers chopped and battered at the invisible barriers, and the defenses were already cracking.
Nathaliey’s fingers traced a rune on the balustrade, and she activated it with a word. The bridge became a fluid thing, like a waving blanket, and the figures on the far end were like bugs. She gave a mental jerk, and the end of the bridge seemed to snap. Men went flying backward. Then Kreth, one of the lesser apprentices, took the bold step of calling up one of the primary offensive runes. The ground above the riverbank opened with a loud crack, and a fissure raced across the meadow and through the army. Men fell into it or stumbled away as it reached them. Thinking quickly, Nathaliey activated two more runes, which strengthened the magic as it flowed.
The ground shook from the violence of the magic and the sheer size of the tearing rift. There was a rumble like thunder from deep in the earth below them. The surface of the brook churned like water at a boil, and a crack appeared in the stone at Nathaliey’s feet.
The bridge would hold, but the meadow wouldn’t. Her companions poured their magic into the spreading fissure, which become a gorge. Men fell into it by the hundreds, and the ground at the bottom churned and chewed like a vast biting mouth. The enemy formations were crumbling. Veyrian cheers turned to cries of retreat. Men broke ranks, turned to flee. If the order could keep the ground heaving a few more seconds, the entire army would fall apart.
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