Cursed by Fire (44 page)

“Brother, I do believe we have been threatened,” Garreth said with thoughtful amusement.

Again, without a smile.

Dethan looked up questioningly as Garreth handed him the missive. He read it quickly and promptly burst out in a rich, raucous laugh.

“Such posturing. They are weak and they know it. Once we lay siege and they begin to starve for lack of fresh game and supplies, they will be welcoming us with open arms. As it is, their mill and butchery are outside the city walls. We have already seized control of them, as well as the farmland and crops, which right now are ripe with growing grain and thick with orchards. They know they are doomed to fall to us. This is mere posturing.”

“It has spine, you have to admit.”

“It shows fear.” Dethan scoffed.

“I think it’s just the opposite,” Garreth said thoughtfully.
“They sound very certain that they are not the ones in danger. Perhaps the more important question is, how did this missive reach us? The city has been locked down against us since we arrived, no one in and no one out.”

“There is always a way in or out, whatever the circumstance. There are always some enterprising sorts willing to risk running a blockade. For profit.”

“Yes, but the Kithians are violet-skinned. Surely we would have noticed one of them in our camp who was not under guard.”

There were Kithians in camp, all of them prisoners of the army. Mostly farmers and others who had been caught outside the walls of the city. But as Garreth had said, they were all under guard.

“That is a puzzle, it is true,” Dethan said, a frown marring his features. He walked to the tent opening and yelled out, “You! Page! Where did you get this letter?”

The courier who had dropped off the missives stepped into the opening of the tent, leaving the conversation he’d been having with one of the command tent guards.

“A messenger from Hexis brought it only a short while ago,” the courier said.

“No, not the one from my wife. The other.”

“Other? I handed you only one missive, your honor.”

“I’m holding both in my hands, page,” Dethan said, showing the letters to the man.

“I … I only … But there was only one,” the page insisted, looking flustered and very honestly worried.

“Never mind. Go and get yourself a meal,” Dethan said. Then, once the young man had left, he turned back toward Garreth. “What do we make of this?”

“Altered perception? It must be some kind of magery.”

“So it seems. If they have a mage with that kind of power, we will have to be more alert. It was foolish of
them to tip their hand though. We will now be on guard against it.”

“But what can we do against a mage? Especially one who can alter the mind. Your wife is the only mage we know and she is two weeks’ journey away from here.”

“My wife will remain home with my son,” Dethan said darkly. “We will not even entertain the idea of her coming on a campaign.”

“Dethan, she is a magess of fire, one of the most powerful of the mage schools—”

“Enough! We will not discuss it!”

Garreth knew by his brother’s terrible tone that it was indeed the end of the conversation. Garreth’s sister by marriage, however powerful she might be, would never be allowed from behind the safety of Hexis’s walls. Not for anything, and certainly not for war.

“Then how are we to prepare for whatever tricks they have planned? This is clearly a mage of some kind of mindcraft.”

“Perhaps. The best way to battle this is by using deception and great numbers. No mage is strong enough to fool an entire army, but they can do damage in small increments. It is most important that they don’t know where you and I are. As leaders, we are the ones giving commands and we cannot allow ourselves to be tricked into giving false commands.”

“Not an easy ploy considering your armor is black. It rather stands out.”

“As does yours with its golden hue. We will have to wear other armor.”

“But both of our armors are god made. And you are no longer immortal, brother. I do not wish to see you—”

“I was fighting wars without immortality for a very long time. Do you not trust that I can come away from this alive and well again?”

“Of course I do. I only meant … I would not wish to
take unnecessary chances. Not when such a valuable tool such as our armor is available to us.”

“It is not ideal of course, but it will have to be. I will call a page to find us suits of common armor. You cannot be killed except with a god-made weapon, and since I am the only one with a god-made sword, you have little to worry about.”

“I would not say that,” Garreth said with a grimace. He moved toward the opening of the tent. “Dusk comes.”

Dethan frowned, his clover-green eyes expressing his deep regret, his awareness of what his brother was suffering, and the guilt of knowing it was his folly that had led Garreth to it.

But Garreth had willingly followed Dethan. He had made the choice of his own free will to go on their quest for the fountain. He had been weak and was now paying the price for not being strong against his brothers’ cajoling coercions.

“Brother …” Dethan began.

“Dusk comes every night,” Garreth said quietly. “Will you flagellate yourself every time?”

“Yes,” Dethan said simply.

“I wish you would not” was all Garreth could say. Then he left the tent and began to head toward the orchards that stood a little ways away from the encampment. He headed for the section of mar jan trees that had turned from a healthy white to a sickly brown, the only trees in the orchards not bearing leaves or fruit. Both had fallen to the ground the day after they had first come to Kith. The day after his first dusk in the orchard.

He stood among those barren trees and slowly removed his armor. Piece by piece, he set it down onto the ground a few feet away from where he eventually stood waiting.

The moment the first touch of darkness bled into the
sky, the grasses beneath his feet began to turn white with frost. The frost crept outward in an ever-widening circle, overtaking the dead trees, climbing up the bark and into the branches. Had there been leaves left, they too would have frosted over.

He began to feel the cold seeping into his bones and he could not help but shudder. He tried not to brace against it, tried in vain to just let it come without his body resisting it and causing him even more pain in the long run. But he tensed just the same, his heartbeat racing as his breath began to cloud upon the air.

He dropped to his knees, falling forward onto his hands, as pain screamed through his freezing muscles. His body shuddered again and again in a futile effort to try to warm itself. He felt everything within him turning to solid ice, from bones to sinew to flesh. The insides of his ears, his eyes in his sockets, his scrotum and his penis. Eventually his lungs and heart froze solid and he could no longer breathe. When that happened he fell, a solid block of iced flesh, to the ground.

And after an hour he began to thaw …

… only to freeze again.

They laid siege to the city the very next day.

The city walls had pots of boiling oil atop them, which would be dumped upon the soldiers who tried to scale them. The trick was to ascend where the pots were not; the pots were so large and so heavy that they were fixed into the battlements and could not be moved. Unfortunately the soldiers could learn their placement only by trial and error. When the first wave of soldiers attempted the walls, which Garreth had ordered to be attacked from every quarter at the exact same moment, the pots were dumped immediately upon them, scalding every man the oil touched … and showing exactly where the pots were positioned and where they were not.

Garreth then pulled the men back, and the wounded and burned ones were cared for, the camp mems—priestesses who had the ability to heal—making their way through the injured ranks and giving solace wherever they could. Dethan had done likewise on the opposite side of the walled city, looking for weaknesses that could be exploited.

The city of Kith’s walls were eight-sided, the octagon
large and protective of the inhabitants inside. They rose up at least a hundred feet high, making scaling them a true challenge.

But when the soldiers attacked again that afternoon, they brought in scaffolds, placing them beyond the reach of the oil pots, and began to scale them by tens and by twenties. Archers came into play, shooting from the city battlements down into the climbing men.

Garreth walked up to his best archers, a contingent he had set aside for this one purpose.

“Aim for every archer you see,” he instructed them. “Make every shot count and take your time. Let them show themselves and get overconfident. Then pick them off one by one.”

“Yes, my lord,” they said in unison.

And so they did. Archers began to drop from the walls, their bodies falling into the ranks of the advancing men. Either that or they fell back behind the battlements. In the camp, Garreth watched everything with a steady eye and a magnification scope.

And that was when he first saw her.

She would have been hard to miss, standing openly on top of the city wall facing him. She did not duck and cover, did not dodge the arrows flying all around her. She was dressed in a brilliant jewel-blue, like the blue of a diri’s egg. She wore a long scarf, which blew in the wind, trailing behind her like a banner—a magnificent plumage for a brave and fearless bird. Her hair was down, it too blowing in the wild wind, the fiery red of it a color unlike anything he had ever seen—deep and dark in some places, light and coppery in others. And of course there was her lavender skin, marking her as Kithian, if being on their battlements was not proof enough.

Then, like some kind of powerful goddess, she
reached her arms up high and wide, tipped her head back, and closed her eyes. She seemed to breathe in the world around her.

That was when a shadow, swift and dark, skimmed over their forces.