“Then your harbor would be a mess, to no good purpose. These materials are scarce in Ishara, and so we benefit your land, do we not?” After a brief pause, Mak Dur decided to play his strongest card. “We also carry ten large sheets of pristine shadowglass, polished and flawless.”
Klovus’s eyes lit up at that. “Ah, we will use that in the Magnifica temple, as windows to observe our great godling.”
The voyagier felt great relief. “There, you see? Our arrival is beneficial.”
The priestlord’s expression became calculating, which immediately made Mak Dur wary. “You can provide one other valuable item—information. We need to know what the godless are doing after their treachery on Fulcor Island. They tried to assassinate the empra, and we expect that is only the beginning of hostilities. What are their war preparations?”
“I am not privy to any war council. No Utauk is.”
“But you must have seen their shipyards at Rivermouth,” Klovus pressed. “Are they gathering a navy? When will they launch an attack on Ishara?”
Mak Dur spread his hands. “Truly, I know nothing of that, Priestlord. We loaded our cargo in the merchant district of Convera down by the river, then we sailed back here.” He realized he had to give the priestlord something. “It’s true, the people of the Commonwealth are enraged by what happened on Fulcor. The konag was killed—apparently by Isharans—and his son wants revenge. I would not be surprised if they try to retaliate in some way, but it will take a long time to gather armies and build warships.”
He did not reveal that when his ship had previously returned from Serepol, he had reported that the empra remained in a coma, that Ishara was leaderless and in turmoil. He had no doubt Konag Mandan would retaliate. That was why the Glissand had to make one last voyage, and now. There was not much time, but they were Utauks!
Klovus considered the ship and smiled. “We will interrogate the rest of your crew to determine if they can provide further details. Perhaps they noticed something you did not.”
Mak Dur felt cold. “As I said, sir, we are neutral. My sailors will tell you what they know.” He wouldn’t have any choice.
The key priestlord raised his voice so all the soldiers could hear his pronouncement. “This ship is impounded. We may need it as part of our fleet.”
On the deck, the sailors muttered in dismay. Mak Dur faced down the priestlord. “But Utauks are neutral!”
“No one can be neutral in this war. Your vessel has come here, therefore it is ours. You will not be allowed to leave Serepol.”
Mak Dur’s heart sank as he looked back at his ship. The worried sailors on deck crowded against the rail.
The priestlord warned, “Your comfort depends on your cooperation. You can be guests, or you can be prisoners.” He issued orders to the soldiers along the dock. “Remove their cargo for inspection. I’ll want a full accounting.” He smiled. “And give me all of the shadowglass.”
39
QUO returned to the desert palace with his report about the human slaves in Ivun’s work camps. He described the lackluster workers, the angry apathy, the disappointingly low productivity. The queen was not pleased with his report.
Mage Axus strode into the throne room, uninvited. He glowered at Quo. “I have long advised Queen Voo that we should make the humans want to fight for us. Treat them better as a means to manipulate them. Since they will not survive the war anyway, we should shape them into what we want. It is to our advantage.”
Quo did not respect the troublesome mage. “You bore us with your irrelevant notions. You want to coddle the humans too much.”
Axus glowered. “It is foolish to waste resources.”
“Humans die easily. There is no way around that.” Quo shrugged.
“We can make them die less swiftly. They will work better because they wish to stay alive, and the wreths will benefit because they work for us longer. Make them think we are their benefactors! We—”
“That is exactly what I am doing with King Adan and the army of Suderra,” Queen Voo interrupted. She stroked her lower lip as she watched them squabble, not interested in either argument. “Mage Ivun always wants more slaves, more work crews, and it becomes tiresome, but he does indeed produce the weapons and armor I ask for. He attempts to teach his slaves how to fight, though I doubt any are trained well enough to be worthwhile additions to our army. Even if they are slaughtered quickly, though, they could distract a few frostwreths, I suppose.”
She rested the back of her head on the hard throne and closed her eyes. “They resent being forced to work, even though that is why their race was created in the first place. King Adan’s army seems more tractable, by letting them imagine their freedom.”
Quo sauntered up the dais and took a seat on the floor beside his sister’s throne. “I encouraged the slaves to breed. That might help.” His voice had a humorous lilt, and then he grew more serious. “Humans are more fertile than wreths ever were, but they are also stubborn. Telling them to do a thing makes them defiant, rather than cooperative.”
Voo sighed. “It is a flaw in their creation. Fortunately, Kur did not make the same mistake when he created wreths.”
Axus strode forward. “We must build our armies, my queen. Hear me, placing humans inside fences and beating them into submission will not create an effective fighting force.”
Reflexively, Quo disagreed, but the queen interrupted him. “We will take both approaches. Mage Ivun will continue to run his camp and extract the work and materials we need, especially now that he has begun producing shadowglass. Meanwhile, I will cultivate King Adan, let him think his interests align with ours, even help him arm his soldiers and train them for us. I can manipulate him easily. I will give dear Adan the tools, and he will build a tremendous army. For me. It’s much easier that way.”
Accepting defeat, or compromise, both Quo and Axus bowed stiffly and took a step back.
Voo opened her eyes and gave her brother a gentle smile. “While you were gone, Adan Starfall came to see me, along with another one of their kings.”
Quo was suddenly interested. “Oh? Did their great konag respond to your summons?”
A flash of annoyance crossed her beautiful face. “No, it was a different one. King Kollanan from Norterra. He says he has fought frostwreths.”
Quo laughed in surprise. “Frostwreths? They have finally come out of the snow? They have actually been seen?”
She reached down to stroke her brother’s long hair and explained about the ice fortress on Lake Bakal and how the humans had the audacity to attack it. Quo found the news delightful. “So frostwreths made a move against humans? Was that a wise thing for Queen Onn to do? It makes no tactical sense.”
“It was not intentional. By building their fortress near a human settlement, the frostwreths accidentally stepped on something that bit them. Now King Kollanan asks for my assistance to deliver an even more destructive blow. He asked me to send some of our warriors to go help fight them.” She looked at Quo with an earnest, sympathetic smile. “I promised him that I would. I want you to go, dear brother.”
He rose quickly to his feet so he could look her in the eye. “I would be happy to shed frostwreth blood, but why should I fight for humans?”
“Fight against the frostwreths. And you will do it because I order it. Do not be as stubborn as the humans.”
He lowered his head, showing deference.
“Gather a party of warriors—oh, twenty or thirty … whatever you think is sufficient. Ride north to the city of Fellstaff, join King Kollanan, and help him destroy the frostwreth fortress. I would be very pleased if you did that.”
Grinning and eager, Quo kissed his sister’s hand. “That would be my honor. We will let our enemies know that their time has come. The war begins now.”
The queen pondered, and Quo could tell she was not yet finished. “That is only part of your task, dear brother. There is something else I need you to do. Something just as important.” Voo’s expression hardened
, and Quo could feel the heat of anger rising from her. “The humans keep ignoring me. Konag Mandan still has not answered my summons. King Adan refused to bring his wife Penda here, despite my specific command to do so. Instead, he has hidden her away somewhere. I want to see her and her baby—it was a very generous invitation—but instead I have learned she has gone to their nomadic tribes. She will give birth soon.”
Quo rubbed his hands together, barely able to contain his eagerness. “What do you want me to do?”
“Be alert when you ride through the hills. Extend your magic, scout the wilderness. Queen Penda Orr is out there somewhere, and she cannot be difficult to find.” Her eyes blazed like molten copper.
Quo brushed off his legs. “We have taken many humans before—entire villages, crowded caravans—and I sent all of them to Ivun’s camp.”
“I do not want Penda Orr sent to a work camp! I want her here.”
“And what do you intend to do with her?” Mage Axus asked. “I am curious.”
Irritation flashed across the queen’s face. “I want her and the child simply because King Adan thinks he can prevent me from having them.”
40
THE orphan girl stood before smooth pools of vitrified stone like mirrors composed of midnight. Through her visions, Glik knew that the Plain of Black Glass had once been the site of a glorious wreth city, and she had seen its last days through her inner eye, when the wreths had unleashed enough uncontrollable magic to wipe out this entire valley.
As dawn light spread across the ruined terrain, the sandwreth guards led the workers into the dangerous broken area. Augas pulled carts filled with tools for excavating shadowglass. The augas walked cautiously across the black glass, their blunt heads bobbing as they sniffed crannies for rodents they could snatch up. But the Plain of Black Glass was dead, alive only with memories and magic.
“Work with great care!” shouted Mage Ivun. “The shadowglass is precious and powerful.” When the dour man frowned, his brows pushed together like colliding folds of flesh.
Cheth looked down at her scuffed black boots, the remnants of her Brava uniform. “It is like walking on razors and sword blades.”
“Take tools,” grunted a guard, lifting axes, shovels, chisels, and hammers from one of the carts.
Glik received a short-handled pick. Cheth accepted a mallet with a pointed spike. The Brava squeezed the handle until her knuckles turned white, and Glik could tell she was considering how the implements could become weapons. Cheth could probably kill one or two of the wreths, but they would take her down. With his magic, Ivun could knock the entire work party flat … and then where would they run?
If Glik tried to race away, her feet would be shredded to ribbons. If she tripped and fell even once, she could slice herself open, like the dead Utauk prospector she had found. She might be free, but she would still be dead and would never go back to her greater Utauk family, not inside the circle, not outside the circle.
The workers spread out cautiously, picking their way. With a light footstep, Glik hopped from one boulder to another, finding a path. The wind whistled like faint ancient screams from the cataclysmic battle that had occurred here. She felt the oppressive sunlight and the weighty haze of time. She said to her Brava companion, “Do you feel it? The blood? The agony and hatred? Shadowglass is the residue left by … so much pain and death that it can’t even be measured.” She drew a circle around her heart.
Cheth looked across the jumbled obsidian. “It seems like such a waste. They are all gone now—their memories, their hopes, their legacies. Humans and wreths.”
Glik chose an ebony boulder and struck the smooth black surface with her pick. The shadowglass broke along broad fracture lines, and the tool thrummed in her hand as if recoiling from the magic. The black glass crumbled into smaller pieces. Sharp finger-sized chunks could be made into arrowheads or spear points; larger flat sections could be affixed to shields.
She nicked her fingertips again and again on the glass edges, and some blood smeared the impenetrable surface. Not much, but she was already in a heightened state of awareness. The beginning is the end is the beginning. Mumbling the phrase, she fell into a fugue state, so that she no longer noticed the pounding sun, the dry air, the oppressive history that rippled like a mirage from the oily stone.
After a large sheet of shadowglass broke off along fracture lines, Glik peered into the fresh, exposed face of the main boulder. Blackness filled her view, and she was afraid she might fall inside. The rock seemed to be a bottomless pool, an empty window, pulling at her. Visions from history arose around her: the vast battlefield, advancing armies wheeling forward, mages building sorcerous weapons in the fortified city … crystals and cannons, gigantic lenses framed with runes. Glik vaguely understood that such machinery of magic had been developed as a means to attack Ossus, but instead the wreths had turned their unorthodox weapons against other wreths.
Glik felt echoes of defeat all around her as a silent thunder of images pounded in her head, tens of thousands of human soldiers forced by their wreth creators to march into battle against a commensurate sacrificial force dispatched by the opposing army.
When the wreths unleashed their magical weapons, obliterating each other, the residue penetrated deep into the world. Glik’s eyelids fluttered closed, and she heard skas screaming high in the sky. At the end of that devastating ancient battle, Ossus must have stirred beneath his mountains before returning to a satisfied sleep.
Glik swayed and fell backward, nearly unconscious from the dark forces around her. The unyielding glass struck the back of her head, sending an explosion of dark stars through her vision. With a gasp, she forced her eyes open and lay looking up at the sky. Jumbled shadowglass debris was strewn around her.
Cheth leaned down and grasped her shoulders. “Be careful, girl! What happened to you?”
“Nothing compared to what happened here.” Just whispering those words exhausted her. Cheth helped her back to her feet.
A wreth guard rode his auga closer, angry that Glik and Cheth had stopped working, but when a shout of pain replaced the clinking of tools, the guard rushed off.
One of the workers had accidentally cut a deep gash in his forearm. Blood spilled out, spattering across the black glass. Mage Ivun lurched forward, reaching the wounded man before the guards closed around him. The injured worker pressed down on the deep cut, trying to stop the flow. The wreths were not interested in treating the wound and let the humans take care of the problem. Cheth, familiar with battlefield surgery, obtained a strip of cloth and wrapped the gash in such a way as to hold the wound closed and stem the worst of the flow.
Ivun’s attention, however, was on the puddled blood on the shadowglass. He bent down, tense with anticipation, yet jittery, as if the very idea terrified him. The spilled blood on black glass made the air crackle.
Glik sniffed the air and looked across the ominous landscape. The sensation reminded her of the moments right before a lightning strike.
The wreth mage reveled in it. He swirled the magic around himself and used his good hand to pull back the red leather sleeve of his robe, revealing his shrunken arm. He extended the claw and pressed the deformed limb against the blood on the shadowglass. “There is still magic in the world. Magic we can use!” Ivun drew a deep breath, pressed harder. The human blood on the glass mixed with the mage’s leathery skin.
Glik watched his skin engorge with blood and moisture.
As the mage let out a long, rattling sigh, his arm straightened and the hand twisted at the wrist. Ivun flexed his gnarled fingers, bent his elbow, then stretched out his arm as it rejuvenated like a wilting flower given water.
Ivun raised his arm in triumph. His entire body seemed larger now, possibly due to confidence and relief. The bald mage looked at the work crews and shouted, “The magic is here, and it is ours! With this shadowglass we will make an invincible army.” He smiled at the battered and bedraggled slaves. “You are blessed to be on our side.”
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41
ANCIENT history had never interested Klovus, but the captured Brava’s story intrigued him. He had never paid attention to some unwelcome half-breed colony being wiped out by a godling, centuries ago. Obviously, though, Klea had fixated her life’s passion on rectifying that injustice. Her hatred for Isharans was as intense as the sun reflected in a polished mirror, and he realized belatedly that understanding the enemy’s resentment was as important as turning Isharan hatred against them.
Klovus wanted to know more, and as key priestlord, he had all the resources he might need. He sent a team of priest acolytes into the Serepol archives and museums and dispatched riders with his inquiry to the priestlords in all thirteen districts. “Find any records of a colony built by Bravas from the old world. A place they called Valaera. It will be mostly forgotten now.”
He also called his Black Eels. “Monitor the search. No one has looked for Valaera in centuries, and I need to find it.”
Zaha was calm, ready to hurl himself into whatever mission the key priestlord commanded. “Shall we kill anyone else who knows?”
Klovus frowned. “No, this isn’t a strategic matter. I just … need to know. I want to see this place for myself.”
He could not forget the defiance on Klea’s face when she faced him. If her story was true, then that was why Bravas reviled the godlings. So long ago, the attacking entity would have been only a primordial form of the powerful godlings manifested by the faith of the early Isharan people. As he envisioned that violent night when the fledgling Brava colony had been torn apart, he smiled.
Priests, acolytes, and scholars ransacked old records, pored over faded texts, interpreted legends and folktales. Sooner than Klovus expected, the researchers consolidated fragments of information into a report, and the Black Eels verified the rough conclusions of his scholars.
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