War of Wizards (13 page)

Chantmer lifted the hem of his robe to show a tattoo on his calf. “This rune, for example, gained me nothing in battle. I thought it might. Instead, it was wasted effort, and I didn’t bother to cast it.”

Darik leaned forward and peered at it. “Lightning?”

“Something akin to that, yes. But similar spells proved ineffectual, so there was no point to it.”

“What are you suggesting?” Kallia asked.

“There is scarcely enough time to heal our wounded hands, and insufficient pain to draw from our bodies to fix new tattoos. So we must gather strength from others.”

“Oh, I see,” Darik said, his voice hard. “
That’s
why you need the torturers. You’ll torture people and use their pain for the tattoos.”

“Yes.”

Darik shook his head. “I won’t be party to it.”

“Then you’ll weaken yourself unnecessarily.”

Kallia found this train of conversation horrifying. “I refuse to let innocents be tortured in my name.”

“Who said anything about innocents?” Chantmer said. “Have you no Veyrians in your dungeons? No traitors and spies? Are there no common criminals chained beneath the palace, men who murdered their fellows, who violated women and children? Or is Balsalom somehow more pure than any other place?”

“I won’t torture prisoners, either.”

“They are worthless rubbish, fit only for the Harvester’s bag. You would sacrifice Balsalom for the sake of these people? You would see your precious city turned to rubble, its people slaughtered, for a few thieves and murderers?”

“There are reasons I abolished the torturers guild. Reasons that should be obvious.”

“And yet,” Chantmer said, “I would imagine there are men and women in your dungeons who have been moldering for years. Who haven’t seen the light of day since your father held the scepter of Balsalom, whose limbs are chained to the walls and rarely loosed. Whose minds are lost to madness from the dark and the endless solitude. Are they not already in pain? I propose to accelerate that suffering, that is all.”

Kallia wanted to rebut him, but her tongue seemed to have turned to stone. Because she didn’t have a good answer. Her father hadn’t believed in imprisoning men for long spells. If the crime were sufficient to chain a man for five, ten years, then it was sufficient to see him beheaded. Kallia felt much the same way. But there had been exceptions. One man came to mind. A plasterer, he had been caught with the bodies of several children dissolving in quicklime in his cellar. Her father had been so outraged by the horrific nature of the crime that he’d ordered a new dungeon dug in the bowels of the palace, down below any existing cellar or chamber. The prisoner’s food would be delivered in silence. He would never see another soul, would never again hear a voice.

Was the man still alive down there? She hadn’t thought of him in years. And if he was, wasn’t Chantmer right? Wouldn’t his pain be better harnessed by giving it to Balsalom’s defense?

Kallia gestured for Rima to refill her cup with tea, then sipped it slowly to give herself a chance to think. She glanced toward Hajir, who was speaking with the other viziers near the door. No need to ask her ministers. They would tell her to sacrifice the prisoners. Break their bones, if necessary, tear the flesh from their bodies to fuel the wizards’ power. Anything to keep the undead army at bay.

Saldibar
, she thought, not for the first time.
Why did you leave me?
 

If only her grand vizier hadn’t been murdered by the enemy. She would have trusted his counsel. Barring him, Whelan or Markal. But they were hundreds of miles away.

“Darik,” she said, her voice heavy. “Tell me what you think.”

“I—I don’t dare to speak, my queen. It isn’t . . . I can’t render a judgment.”

“I beg you. Counsel me, tell me what I should do.”

“I can’t possibly make this decision.”

“I’m not asking you to,” she insisted. “I’m asking for your opinion. Give it to me. You must.”

“Very well,” Darik said. “I’ll tell you what I think. The use of torture to gather power terrifies me.”

Chantmer scoffed. “And an army of wights does not?”

Darik turned toward him. “It’s the tactic of the enemy. No doubt, King Toth is relying on similar measures to control his army, by torturing and murdering innocents.”

“These are not innocents.”

“They’re not,” Darik conceded. “But tonight, we use murderers, violators of women. Tomorrow, common thieves. The day after that, the poor, the lame. Where does it stop?”

“That’s a ridiculous argument,” Chantmer said.

“Is it? Or is it rather like what you did with the gurgolet that killed our own people? You justified it then, too.”

Chantmer clenched his jaw. “None of this would be necessary if Markal hadn’t stolen Memnet’s orb from me. I’d have gathered so much power that I could have scattered these wights like chaff in the wind.”

Darik turned back to Kallia. “You asked for my counsel, and I’ve given it to you. Don’t listen to Chantmer. Find some other way.”

“There is no other way,” Chantmer said. “We won’t have the strength to cast back the enemy, not tonight, and perhaps not for many days to come if we don’t. By then, it will be too late. We must stop them tonight. Our only hope is to draw pain from the prisoners, bind the resulting power to our bodies with ink and needle, and then call the power forth when the enemy attacks.”

Already, Kallia could imagine the cries of the tortured, their pleas for mercy. It would be like the night Balsalom fell to the dark wizard’s army, when the screams of her people echoed through the palace. She rested a hand on her swollen belly.

“A few days, that’s all we need,” Chantmer prodded. “Then Daniel’s army will arrive from the south. He’ll have thirty thousand men-at-arms. It will be enough to throw back the enemy, but we must hold the city until then. Ask your viziers. They will tell you.”

“There is no need,” Kallia said slowly. “I won’t use violence on the helpless, no matter their crimes.” Kallia fixed Chantmer’s gaze. “I am sorry, wizard, we must find another way.”

“Then you’ve surrendered,” Chantmer said. He straightened his robes and rose until he was towering over her. “In that case, there’s nothing more for us in Balsalom. We will depart at once.”

“Please, don’t go.”

“Let him,” Darik said bitterly. “Chantmer was never here to help us in the first place, except to advance his own personal glory.”

Kallia put one hand on her belly. For a moment, it felt as though something had stirred. Then it was still again. “Chantmer,” she began once more. “Please, listen to me. I need your help. I just can’t . . . there must be another way.”

His tone was cold and towering. “There is not.”

“Khalifa,” came a thin voice behind her. It was Rima.

“I’m all right,” Kallia said, thinking the girl had spotted the khalifa putting a hand on her belly and misinterpreted it as another attack.

“May I say something, my queen?” Rima asked. Her voice trembled.

“Yes, of course.”

Chantmer let out a jeering laugh. “You ignore your viziers, but you’ll listen to children. First Darik, now this girl. It’s no wonder that your city is doomed.”

Rima’s hands were shaking so badly now that it looked like she would drop the clay teapot on the flagstones. Kallia levered herself to her feet, with Darik springing up to help. She took the pot from the servant girl’s hands.

“You can speak,” Kallia urged. “If you have something to say, it must be important.”

“I could . . .”

“Yes?”

“I could take their place. The prisoners.”

Kallia frowned. “What?”

“And others would, too. It wouldn’t be violence against the helpless,” Rima said, her voice stronger now. “We would offer ourselves, we would do it willingly.”

“No, I couldn’t—”

“For you, Khalifa, for Balsalom. What is a little pain to saving your life and all the lives in the city?”

“It would be more than a little bit of pain,” Darik said. He eyed the girl with eyes narrowed in concern. “You understand that, right? There would be no poppy to dull the agony. We couldn’t, we
need
that pain. You would scream, you would beg to die.”

“Yes, my lord. I understand.” Rima’s eyes flickered to the khalifa. She licked her lips. “Others have suffered. I will endure.”

“Interesting,” Chantmer said. He stood stroking his beard, his brow furrowed. “Very interesting, indeed. It might possibly work if there were enough others like you.”

“How many is enough?” Kallia asked, her heart sinking that she would even consider such a horrible thing. Better the criminals than her loyal servants, than Rima.

Yet wasn’t this somehow different, somehow a step back from the evil chasm that Chantmer had proposed? Because Darik was right. Tonight it might be criminals, but soon enough, they would be dragging people off the street. Instead, this would be a choice. No man or woman would suffer the torturers, except by actively stepping forward when called.

“That depends,” Chantmer said. “One body, broken cruelly, would give us great power. Torture them to death, and we might do with as few as six, one sufferer for each of us, including one for Darik.”

“Me?” Darik sounded horrified at the prospect.

Chantmer fixed him with a lizard-like gaze. “Yes, you. Six people to suffer, six wizards to use their pain. Unless you are too righteous and holy, unless you will stand by while others suffer, yet refuse to use the strength you have been given.”

Darik swallowed hard. “You are right. Of course you are.”

“But those six sufferers would die,” Chantmer said.

Rima’s knees gave out. Darik caught her before she slammed into the flagstones, and helped her up again. She stood trembling, her eyes wide with terror. Yet she didn’t retract her offer.

“That would be worse,” Kallia told the wizard. “Rima, no. I won’t accept this.”

“I would do it for you, my queen.”

“No, I swear by the Brothers, I won’t,” Kallia said. “Do you understand me?”

The girl feebly nodded her head.

“That is one possibility,” Chantmer said. “The other would require
more
people,
more
suffering in total, but not so great a burden on any one . . . victim. Yes, let us call them victims. It is a terrible thing we would be asking.”

“That is a rare bit of decency from you,” Darik said. “I didn’t think you were capable of sentiment.”

“Why not? You think me a monster? I don’t wish pain on any being. But a farmer may cringe at the squeals of his pig, while still cutting its throat so he can feed his family.”

Darik blinked twice. “Or perhaps not so sentimental.”

Kallia winced to hear her people compared to pigs. “Tell me your plan, Chantmer, before we find ourselves at odds again.”

The wizard reared himself to his full height. “The first step is to find fifty people who are willing to be tortured.”

Chapter Eleven

The first tattoo was the easiest. Darik sat on a bed of nails, stripped to his waist, while Roghan pricked his skin with a hot needle dipped in dye. The pain was exquisite, and it was all he could do not to groan each time the needle jabbed the flesh on his chest. Whenever he began to shift, to better position himself on the nails, Chantmer snarled at Darik to sit up straight.

But it was
his
pain,
his
discomfort. And when he was done and looked down at the curling shape of a fire salamander, while Roghan instructed him in how to call up the power from the tattoo, he felt no regret. The tattoo would bring out a fireball like the one he’d used effectively last night. And the power would come from his own body, all of it.

Darik eased himself from the bed of nails, groaning with relief. Roghan moved off to work on one of the other mages, while Chantmer grilled Darik about the other spells he knew.

“Do you know
funes dolor
?”

“That sounds familiar,” Darik said. He tried to dredge the details from his memory. “Something about the wind?”

“Not even close. How about
volans malleis
?” 

“That’s the one with the flying hammers, right? I know it.” He thought about how he’d battered himself unconscious the time he’d tried to use it. “Not very well, though. You could teach me.”

“Not now, I couldn’t. How about spells to cause the earth to tremble?”

“Not really.”

Chantmer gave an exaggerated sigh. “A thunderclap, some other atmospheric disturbance?”

Darik shook his head.

“What
do
you know?”

“I can turn myself into a goat. Well, sort of. The hooves, anyway.” Darik meant it as self-deprecation, but from Chantmer’s glare, he could tell that the wizard thought he was serious. “How about that sleep spell I cast on you when we met at the Tothian Way? I managed that.”

“Not with any skill, you didn’t. But I suppose that might help. If you spread it when you cast, it will confuse a few of them. Think, rack your feeble mind and see if you can come up with something, anything useful.” Chantmer snapped his fingers.

One of the torturers looked their way. He’d been with Roghan, leading volunteers into the open courtyard that Chantmer and Roghan had taken for their work, and now nodded to two other men, who were leading Kallia’s young servant girl. What was her name? Rima. She’d volunteered in the throne room and set off this whole miserable turn of events. The girl was pale, her lips pressed together, her eyes wide. To Darik’s horror, the torturers brought her over to him.

He eyed the girl nervously, then looked at Chantmer, who was sticking the needles into the brazier of coals and swirling the pots of dye to keep them mixed.

“She’s for me?” Darik asked Chantmer.

“Yes, you.”

“Should I sit back down on the nails?”

“No,” Chantmer said slowly, as if speaking to a child, only more exaggerated and sarcastic. “We’re not causing
you
pain, remember? We’ve taken as much of that as we can use for now.” Then, to one of the torturers, “Bring chairs for both of them.”

Darik sat, and the girl was forced into her chair. She made a small, frightened sound in the back of her throat.