Sword of Shadows (33 page)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Mechnes sprang from sleep
, knife in hand. An eerie quiet had settled over the camp, muffling snores and murmurs of men, the footsteps of passing guards and the hiss of bright torches. Beyond these sounds, on the edge of Mechnes’s awareness, flitted an ephemeral whisper, a repetitive string of notes.

Mechnes closed his eyes, bent upon drawing the timorous song from its hiding place. Time and again the notes slipped from his grasp. In the end, they skittered beyond reach, leaving a silent void, like the cavity that remained when the roots of a tree were torn from the earth.

Adiana.

She was beyond him, then.

His head began to ache.

He rose and splashed cool water on his face, then called for his steward to assist him.

Outside, a damp curtain of fog shrouded the light of predawn. The camp stirred with impatient calls of his officers, the grunts of awakening men, the rasp of leather, and the chink
of mail. Mechnes mounted his horse and cantered to the line of pickets that faced north toward their enemy.

“What do you report?” he demanded of the men on duty.

“Nothing, milord,” the captain answered. “They have not stirred in all the night.”

Mechnes received this news with a grim shake of his head. Unless Rishona’s creatures were subtler than he thought, her final sacrifice must have failed.

“Form the infantry in the usual manner,” he said to the officers that accompanied him. “Tehmad, take three companies of armored horse to our right flank. When our archers begin to shoot, sweep away their cavalry and cut down the enemy mages. Athenon, command our left. Use your horse to drive the enemy into the river. I will command two companies in reserve and bring them to support the first success. Mage King or no, we attack as soon as this accursed fog burns off.”

The sun rose restless and hot as the Syrnte army assembled on the field of battle. Vapor lifted off the grassy earth, rising toward the heavens, forming white billows that sailed eastward in silence. Wind gusted across the field, stirring up aromas of wet grass and flowering chamomile.

Mechnes inhaled the sweet fragrance, invigorated by the thought that it would soon be salted with blood and death. It was here on the verge of battle that he always felt the most alive, overlooking the abyss where thousands of fates would intersect. No amount of Syrnte magic could unmask the future that waited on the other side.

The ground was damp but tractable, sloping gently up toward a ridge occupied by a scattered line of mage warriors, with companies of horse on either flank. The numbers were few, but more men might well be hiding behind the ridge.

The Mage King appeared at the crest, mounted on a large destrier and accompanied by a small contingent of knights. At his side, a woman in burgundy robes, the crystal head of her staff glinting in the newly revealed sun. Mechnes narrowed his eyes, remembering Rishona’s warning.

The Mage King’s power is complete only with the maga at his side; and the full potential her magic realized only in his presence. She is the one we must slay first, before all others.

“That one,” he said to his officers, “is dangerous.”

“The woman?” Tehmad did not bother to hide his doubt.

“She is the last of the High Magas. It may well have been her magic that vanquished the Naether Demons last night. A sack of gold for the man who brings her to me, dead or alive.”

The maga separated from her liege, taking a small number of mages with her. They, in turn, divided into two groups that took positions at the rear of the cavalry on each flank. The King and his guard rode down slope, flags lowered in an appeal for parley.

“Come,” Mechnes said to his men. “Let us indulge this young warrior with a friendly chat before we deliver him to his doom. Perhaps the ground will dry a little more as we speak.”

They met in the center of the field. For all Mechnes had heard about the Mage King, he found the regent unimpressive. Not a single scar marked his bearded face, and his level gaze appeared untested by the harsh choices of campaigning.

Mechnes had skewered countless young commanders like this one, men who believed they fought for honor, not for blood and glory; innocents brought down in short order, and sentenced to slow, agonizing deaths as the Syrnte prince took possession of all they held dear.

“If you have words for me, Prince Akmael, then be quick with them. The day has begun, and my men are impatient for the kill.”

The young King blunted the sting of Mechnes’s
taunt by holding his silence. He studied the officers who accompanied the Syrnte commander, then scanned the troops assembled behind them.

“You are not welcome here, Prince Mechnes,” he said. “I bid you to return with your army to the land of the Syrnte, and leave the people and provinces of Moisehén in peace.”

Mechnes lifted his arm in a conciliatory gesture that was not without a hint of mockery. “Peace is what we intend to bring. This kingdom has been at war with itself for two generations because your father, the usurper, murdered his siblings and took that which was not his. Today we will put an end to this struggle. Tamara-Rishona, grand daughter to Joturi-Nur and daughter to Prince Feroden, San’iloman of the Syrnte and rightful Queen of Moisehén, has returned to assume the throne that is hers and become a true steward of her people.”

“A woman cannot claim the Crown of Vortingen.”

“This woman will claim whatever she pleases.”

The Mage King nodded to one of the men at his side, who produced a blood-stained bundle and unfurled its cloth, allowing the contents to tumble to the ground.

Mechnes faltered when he recognized Rishona’s severed head. Her blackened eyes stared blankly at the sky. Her fair skin was transformed into a sickly gray. Blood-matted hair splayed against the pale green grass.

The Syrnte horses whinnied. Several of Mechnes’s men reined back a few steps before the prince halted their startled retreat with an angry shout and a lift of his hand.

Mechnes’s vision blurred.

There was another woman with my Queen. Her eyes as blue as the sun-lit sea. Did she…?

Laughter tumbled from Rishona’s lifeless lips, and Mechnes heard Adiana mocking him.

No one is beautiful when they are dead.

The Syrnte prince ground his teeth.

If she survived, I will find her.

He shifted in his saddle, lips twitching with barely suppressed rage, fingers curling into tight fists.

“Tehmad,” he barked, “retrieve our Queen.”

The officer dismounted, gathered Rishona’s remains, and wrapped them with reverence in his own cloak.

Mechnes turned to the Mage King.

“You are not worthy of the crown you wear, Prince Akmael. Only the most depraved of men would so defile a creature of such beauty. I do not know by what black arts you slew the San’iloman, but the arm of her vengeance still lives.

“You and your men will die here today. The women of Moisehén will become our slaves and their children will be given in sacrifice to the goddess Mikata. Your queen,” Mechnes glanced toward the red-clad figure on the ridge, “and your maga will be mine to use as I please before delivering them to the cruder appetites of my men. Your daughter, the Princess Eliasara, will be thrown from the ramparts of your fathers’ fortress. Your lands will be ravaged, your people destroyed, and the last of your seed obliterated for this crime you have committed against my people and my blood.”

Mechnes spat on the ground, turned and unsheathed his sword.

“For the Queen!” he roared to the army that awaited his command. “For Tamara-Rishona, the San’iloman. For the glory and vengeance of her people!”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Thunder rose from the ranks
of the Syrnte as Eolyn dismounted. The army’s shouts were rabid, their swords raised. Spears beat against shields. Feet stomped on the earth. The very heavens seemed to tremble with wrath.

“Maga Eolyn,” Echior prompted quietly, “it is time.”

Eolyn nodded and took her place at the center of the circle. She had never witnessed such a great and terrible army. Men stood under flags of burgundy and gold, shoulder to shoulder like the stones of Faernvorn. What she remembered of her brother’s troops seemed ragged by comparison, and the forces Akmael had organized to defeat Ernan in that time, small and inconsequential.

Akmael’s army is larger now, but not as large as this
.

Eight High Mages marked the edge of the circle, each man twelve paces away from her. From here they could see the entire the battlefield, illuminated in the gold-green hues of the rising sun, the massed forces of the Syrnte a black shadow across its face.

Eolyn wrapped her hand firmly around Tzeremond’s staff and connected to the steady pulse of magic that lived in its heart.

Ehekaht,
she said, and the High Mages joined in the chant,

Ehekahtu

Naeom avignaes aenthe

Sepenom avignaes soeh

Renenom ukaht maen

Evenahm faeom reohoert

Ehekaht, Ehukae

Each staff emitted a low hum as its crystal head ignited with the sacred fire of Dragon. Maga and mages synchronized their staves before sending tendrils of their spirits toward the heart of the mountain. From here, they wove a net that bound all the warriors of Moisehén: spearmen and archers, knights and mage warriors, that latter adding strength to the spell with their own magic.

At the center of their collective stood the Mage King. His spirit intertwined with Eolyn’s, the magic of each feeding into the other, building like a sapphire flame that illuminated the very portals of death, driving the Lost Souls and their terrible hunger further into the shadows of imagination.

Eolyn drew a sharp breath, understanding for the first time that this was why Akmael had summoned her: to invoke the magic they had discovered when Tzeremond banished her spirit from the world of the living, a power that bound them and kept the Underworld at bay. Akmael intended to use it as a barrier between now and the hereafter, between life and death, between victory and defeat.

A long, low blast sounded from the horns of the enemy.

Eolyn opened her eyes to see the Syrnte advancing up slope, an aggressive march that unsettled the bowels of the earth. The net woven by the circle of mages shivered under the weight of their march. Eolyn drew on the mage’s power to strengthen the links between each of Akmael’s men, most of whom were positioned behind the rise, hidden from the sight of the Syrnte.

The Mage King’s army tensed as a single entity: a dragon perched upon a cliff ready to strike, its scales forged from mail and metal; its fiery breath held in the staves of mage warriors; its serpentine gaze delivered through Akmael’s eyes, sharp and calculating, attentive to experience, reliant upon instinct.

In silence they waited, their focus absolute, until all Eolyn could hear was the fall of the enemy’s feet, the calls of their officers, the labored breath of each man.

Akmael chose his moment. The trumpeters threw open the gates of war. Mage warriors sent bellows of fire against the Syrnte, searing shields and flesh, forcing them to halt. Shouts of panic and pain afflicted the enemy ranks. Lines wavered despite the harried reprimands of officers and the repeated wail of their horns.

Again Akmael’s trumpets sounded, and the men of Moisehén rose as one. Foot soldiers sprang over the ridge and plummeted toward the Syrnte lines, their voices synchronized in a single roar, spears extended like claws as they descended upon their prey.

The Syrnte fired volleys of arrows into the mass of attacking men. Bodkin points pierced mail. The cries of the fallen were silenced as the soldiers who followed trampled them down. Opposing lines clashed with a deafening force that reverberated across the field, metal singing against metal, splintering wood, hewing limbs.

Eolyn felt vortices of the Underworld blossom underfoot, dragging the fatally wounded toward cold, silent depths. Every soul that slipped away was like a splinter driven into her spirit.

How much of this brutal torrent she could bear, Eolyn did not know. But she had Tzeremond’s staff in her hand and his mages in her circle. She held the Mage King in her heart and the South Woods in her soul. She had the memory of her coven and her stubborn dreams of peace.

What power she could draw from all this she resolved to give to her people today, to stand or die with these men-at-arms, defending until her last breath the heritage of Moisehén and the magic that made them whole.

Chapter Forty