“Listen to me, Chantmer the so-called Tall. I came upon you unawares. I caught you struggling with your spell and crushed it to dust without your even noticing.” Zartosht held up his palms. “And I did it without wasting a single drop of my blood. I could have killed you if I’d wished. Made your blood flow until you collapsed from the loss of it. And then, while you lay there, barely breathing, cut your throat. But I didn’t.”
“How generous of you. What do you want?”
Even as he asked it, Chantmer was sizing up his opponent. An enemy in the khalif’s palace, an invader—he should be destroyed, not conversed with. Chantmer could smash him with the hammers, or burn him up, but he’d already expended a good deal of his strength in the failed incantation. The enemy had thwarted his incantation, but that didn’t mean that he had real power; it was too early to say.
“I am here to destroy you and your order.”
Chantmer scoffed. “Indeed.”
“And I’m not alone.”
“Neither am I.”
“Yes, I’m aware of those pathetic old fools in the library.” Zartosht smiled. “I’ve met them . . . in their lair. And was unrecognized.”
“It was you who defaced the Book of Gods. A destructive, blasphemous act.”
“And I’ll do it again. I come and go as I wish.”
“Now who is it telling pointless lies?”
The dark acolyte’s lips curled into a sneer. “I’ll see your books burn. Your library in ash.”
“Those books will be here long after your necromancer is dead and the Harvester has gathered his soul. And why would he destroy them anyway? Steal them, yes. He is incapable of gathering his own knowledge.”
“I said burn them. Why does Toth have need of such pathetic scribbling? He has power over the dead, and when his highway is built, he will bring all kingdoms under his control. Even the Harvester will not dare molest him. What are a few worm-eaten scrolls and dusty tomes to that?”
“What delusions you have,” Chantmer said, and Zartosht’s face darkened in rage.
This one was easy to work into a frenzy. A little more anger, and he might reveal what he was doing in the palace. One more prod would likely send him into a rage.
“Is stark madness a prerequisite for becoming a sorcerer’s acolyte,” Chantmer said, “or does that come with years of intensive training?”
Zartosht’s expression unexpectedly smoothed, became thoughtful. “We don’t have to be enemies, you and I,” he said. “We could be allies in a great venture.”
“Wait, are you trying to recruit me? Is that what this is about?”
“Those archivists in the library—would you rather be allied with them? Chain yourself to their feeble skills? Their leader—Jethro, isn’t it?—stood over my shoulder while I cut the book with my master’s knife. He saw nothing, detected nothing wrong.”
“So you can find your way to the library any time you wish? Are you still making that claim?”
“As for the others, they are not your equals. You know this, Chantmer. Only the wizard himself, and Memnet is no more capable of defeating Toth than you are capable of defeating me.”
“We already defeated him,” Chantmer said. “An entire army of your gray warriors and your Veyrian troops were slaughtered in their assault on the gardens. Wights, too. What did that cost your master?”
“It cost him nothing. A trifle. Syrmarria is ours, your Sacred Forest burns. The Tothian Way continues its march west. The number of ravagers increases day by day.”
Ravagers. Is that what the enemy called the gray marauders?
“Yet our gardens stand, as strong and defiant as ever,” Chantmer said.
“Are they?” Zartosht asked. “Or did you destroy the strongest part of your defenses to win a temporary reprieve?”
“That is rebuilt as well,” Chantmer lied. Nothing would take root in the walled garden—it was a withered patch of ground that Markal had bricked over so the blight wouldn’t spread. “Come with me, and I’ll show you if you’d like. You might not return to report your findings, of course.”
“I felt your magic just now, Chantmer. It was strong and wild, but fatally weakened by the limitations of your body, the blood you draw from your own pores. My spell to counter it cost me nothing.”
“It is easier to destroy than create,” Chantmer countered, “so that is no testament to your skill or power. Where did you draw your power, if not from your own body?”
“I drew it from the dungeon. A few choice enemies who resisted Pasha Izak’s rule are languishing below.”
“Choice enemies such as those loyal to the rightful sovereign of Aristonia? Will your pasha wave their flayed skins above the gates alongside the khalif’s?”
“Perhaps eventually. It would be a good lesson to the viziers.”
“I was under the impression that Omar’s viziers, being a cowardly lot, had capitulated to the unlawful and villainous usurpation of the khalifate.”
“All but one. There was that fool who led the palace guard in a revolt.” Zartosht raised an eyebrow. “Did you think he’d escaped, or that his treachery had gone undetected?”
Zartosht must be talking about Kandibar Liltige, Nathaliey’s father. After the battle, Kandibar had gathered the surviving palace guards and set off on the Spice Road for Marrabat, hoping to enlist the aid of the sultan by warning of Toth’s designs on the south. Nathaliey had accompanied them for a stretch, only abandoning them when she’d seen them safely into a camel caravan of Kratians. But Kandibar had apparently been betrayed or ambushed before he could reach his destination.
“I can sense your desires, Chantmer—”
“Doubtful.”
“—and you do not belong with this inferior order of magical dabblers. None of them recognize your power or potential. Come with me—I’ll present you to the others. Then you will meet the high king himself.”
“I know Toth already. I’ve met him, and was unimpressed.”
“That was before he came into his power. Wouldn’t you like to come into your power some day? I am giving you that opportunity. It won’t be offered a second time.”
“No, it won’t,” Chantmer said. “Because I’m tired of this conversation, and it is time to destroy you.”
He put his hands palm down and brought the words to his lips. His opponent had been standing in front of him with his legs apart, his posture arrogant, and he stiffened quickly and raised his hands in a defensive posture, eyes widening in alarm. The man had been caught unprepared.
Had Chantmer been at full strength, he could have crushed the dark acolyte, either smashed him or burned him, but he’d already bled off most of his strength. So instead, he cast a simple concealing spell. Everything turned to shadow around him, and as the magic was still taking hold, he made to run for the staircase that led down from the terrace toward the gate towers, as if attempting to flee the palace entirely.
The ruse worked; Zartosht’s eyes followed where he supposed Chantmer was going based on his initial feint. Instead, Chantmer shrank back among the statues lining the walkway, wrapped his arms around the lion, and became one with the stone.
Zartosht hissed something into the darkness, and another figure appeared, this one a woman, also gaunt faced and bony. Didn’t the sorcerer feed his apprentices? Or did they burn off their own flesh when casting their spells? Yes, most likely. How else would Zartosht have gathered the vizier’s pain all the way from the dungeon if not with a small bit of magic to initiate?
The two of them chanted in unison, and Chantmer paid close attention. There was power there—real, raw strength—but he measured it when it emerged, and was not overwhelmed with what they’d called up. It was a seeking spell of some kind, although he didn’t recognize its exact nature, but it wasn’t strong enough to penetrate his disguise. Not if they set off toward the lower gardens instead of searching first among the statuary.
Hands outstretched, they peered into the gardens, heads turning this way and that. Sn
iffing, touching the ground, looking for his trail. There wasn’t any trail, the deluded fools, because he’d only moved three steps to disguise himself against the stone lion. Their seeking magic had completely failed.
I am a match for either one of them.
Which reminded him that he was more than a match for Nathaliey, Narud, and Markal, too—especially Markal, the glorified archivist—and that two of the three had already been named wizards, with Nathaliey sure to follow. For some reason, Memnet the Great was holding Chantmer back, refusing to grant him the position that was rightfully his. No doubt trying to teach him a lesson, but by the Brothers, he couldn’t imagine what that would be.
And for the first time, he was actually tempted by Zartosht’s offer. Not by the thought of serving the sorcerer, but by getting out from beneath Memnet’s whims. To learn fresh magic, unbounded by the rules of the order, the false humility that was forced upon him at every turn.
Don’t delude yourself. You wouldn’t be unfettered serving under the dark wizard; you would be his slave from the moment you accepted until the moment you died. And perhaps not even death would release you.
He shook his head to rid it of treasonous thoughts, angry that he’d even considered such a thing. Knowing he’d bested the dark acolytes, especially Zartosht, cheered him. He’d gained knowledge, first that Kandibar Liltige was a prisoner beneath the palace, and second that the enemy was raising more gray marauders. Or rather, ravagers.
Now, a plan. Find Nathaliey’s father in the dungeons, break past whatever physical and magical protections guarded the place, and free him. Then, when that was done, Chantmer would present his accomplishment to Memnet the Great and openly suggest it was time he be named a full wizard of the order.
If not, well, what more could he do to prove his worth?
Chapter Ten
Nathaliey had been caught by surprise when the enemy emerged from behind the standing stones. She’d been too intent on the ones hunting them from behind, fighting her exhaustion, wondering if Markal could draw power from the stone circle. The situation seemed beyond desperate, and that was before the marauder stepped out from behind the stone and smashed Markal in the face with his shield.
Now they had him, and men grabbed her, as well, with more enemies rushing into the stone circle from the trail behind. The attackers wrenched Soultrup from Markal’s grasp, and one of them held it up and shouted in triumph.
“I have it! I have the sword!”
Markal kept struggling, trying to free his hands and raise magic, but they stuffed his mouth with a rag and hit him with closed fists. The sword had drawn attention, and the one who’d grabbed it tried to undo the leather thongs holding the linens in place, even while someone else snarled at him not to touch the blade.
The sword and the assault on Markal slackened the attention they were paying Nathaliey, and she took advantage. One man had her by the wrists, but not firmly enough to keep her from turning her hands palms downward. She had an incantation on her lips before someone noticed she was calling up magic and shouted for help.
“Labi et cadere. Lapidem te percussit!”
The ground heaved, and the marauders flailed for balance and fell all around her. It was the same spell she’d used to escape the Veyrian soldiers when Pasha Malik had seized her in the khalif’s throne room, and the result was greater than she’d hoped. They rolled about as if caught in an earthquake. The one holding the sword dropped it as he went down, and the ones hitting her friend collapsed as well.
“Markal!” she cried.
But her companion was groaning from the blows, and either didn’t hear her or couldn’t respond. Already, the enemies were struggling back to their feet, shouting instructions to each other. Nathaliey froze for a split second, torn between her desire to escape and her need to help Markal. But she’d help more if she stayed free of the enemy’s grasp, so she fled, just ahead of grasping hands.
Nathaliey didn’t expect to get far before they hunted her down, but her spell was strong, as if the stone circle had strengthened it, and the ground kept shaking and tilting. She staggered past the stones and into the darkness, where she doubled over to catch her breath. She was too exhausted to continue, worn out, beaten down by the hard day of travel on an empty stomach and the cost of the magic she’d called up.
“One more spell,” she whispered. “One more.”
One more incantation to hide her in the wilderness so she could rest a few minutes and then double back to rescue Markal. Somehow. She would find a way.
She scratched through her memory until she found a spell to conceal her from her enemies. But when she held out her hands, there was no power there, no reserve. No way to raise blood to her pores and draw it out again, and if she tried she might only succeed in killing herself.
If only she hadn’t dropped the saddlebag, she could have rummaged through it and found some last scrap of bread or oatcake from home. Something from the gardens would give her strength.
The ground stopped shaking, and the men grabbed for Markal, who was trying to rise to his feet and come after her. Others looked around, and someone spotted her and shouted. She forced herself to move.
Something growled from the darkness ahead of her, and a large dark shadow loomed in front of her. Nathaliey’s heart gave a frightened thud. The giant!
No, it wasn’t big enough. A pair of gleaming eyes studied her from chest height, and she saw its snout and heavy body. A smell, thick and musky, hung in the air. It was a large male black bear. And no natural bear—of that she was suddenly sure.
“Narud?”
No, it wasn’t him. Nor could it be the hermit. It didn’t smell right, not like a shape-shifting wizard, but an actual bear. She remembered the bear in the gardens who’d surprised the Veyrian soldiers.
“Wilford? Is that you? Did the master send you?”
Shouts came from behind, and the bear growled again and turned away. Nathaliey was afraid of every option that presented itself, but this seemed the least bad of any of them, so she followed. The bear rumbled up the hillside, surprisingly deft as its paws padded forward, and she was equally surprised to discover a hidden reserve of strength that propelled her up and after it. It was nothing more than fresh hope—that was all it took to get her moving again.
The men came crashing after her in the dark. Their search seemed disorganized in the aftermath of her illusion spell, but already their captain was shouting orders, and it wouldn’t be long before they were coming in numbers. The bear had better be something more than a dumb animal, or she was doomed.
The bear stopped and turned its head, as if waiting for her to catch up, and that eased her doubts. Could it be the hermit after all? At the very least, it was imbued with unnatural intelligence. More hope came with that realization, and she found the strength to continue.
She struggled another eighty feet or so up a hillside that was growing steeper and more brush-clogged, and then she came to a rocky cliff face, roughly sixty feet high with no visible means to scale it. The bear lifted its head and rumbled deep in its throat, as if telling her to go up.
Nathaliey gasped for air and shook her head. “I can’t climb that.”
It rumbled again, more insistently. Maybe there were handholds, and maybe in daylight, freshly rested, she could find them, but not now. And it would be slow going even if she could find a way up, with the marauders overtaking her before she was ten feet off the ground.
The bear nudged her with its nose. She pushed back, and the bear pushed harder, turning her halfway about. She could see the cliff to her right, and down the hillside on her left. The marauders were shadows in the night, moving with purpose and armed with swords. The bear nudged her again; it seemed to want her to look right. She obeyed, and saw only the cliff, as impassable as always . . . no!
It wasn’t a cliff at all, it was a tower. Yet when she glanced at a different angle, it looked once again like a rock face leading to higher terrain. Only when she saw it from the co
rner of her eye, saw it sideways, did it appear to be a tower. The disguise was so clever that she’d been standing right in front of it, searching for a way up, and still hadn’t spotted it. The bear moved toward the tower, and she followed, walking at an angle, and then there was a doorway, with light on the other side, a fire or a candle—she couldn’t see exactly what.
Nathaliey stepped through and turned around, momentarily disoriented to find herself in a small room. A fire crackled in the hearth, with a bubbling pot suspended over it on chains and hooks, but the tower had no door, and the fire did little to cut the chill. There were clay pots, empty wine jugs, and other tools and implements in niches, but they were all dirty and unused except for the pot over the fire. A wooden staircase rose on one side of the room toward a second floor, and a thick coat of dust covered each rung, as if it hadn’t been used in months, or even years. A pile of animal skins in the corner may have served as a bed, and there was a plank-like table, with a tree stump for a stool.
Voices sounded to her rear, and she whirled back around. A figure stood directly behind her, not five feet away, on the other side of the threshold, staring right in at her. This marauder was a woman, not a man, but she carried a sword and had a hard glint in her eyes as she peered inside. Nathaliey stood frozen in fear, waiting for the marauder to step inside and challenge her, knowing she’d have no recourse when it happened.
“There’s no way up from here,” the woman told someone behind her. “No handholds, at least none that I can see, and no vegetation to cling to, either.”
“She came this way, all right,” a man’s voice said. “I saw her standing there just a moment ago.”
“Then she got up by magical means, not with her hands and feet.”
Nathaliey realized that the woman wasn’t staring in at her, she was staring at the cliff face—or what she thought was the cliff face, anyway. It was the same view Nathaliey had faced moments earlier, and if the woman put out her hand, she’d feel that there was a way through. To her relief, the marauder continued on. A man followed her, and the voices faded as the search moved away. The danger seemed to have passed.
The Black Shield (The Red Sword Book 2) Page 10