War of Wizards (14 page)

“Your name is Rima, isn’t it? I’m Darik.”

“I know, my lord.”

“Just Darik. I’m no lord. In fact, I’m from Balsalom. I grew up here.”

“I can hear that in your accent, my lord.”

“It’s a brave thing you’re doing.”

“I don’t feel brave. I feel like I’m going to die, I’m so scared.”

“That’s why it’s brave.”

The torturers had carried over a bench and were now setting out a series of horrible tools. He’d faced the torturers guild once before, during his attempted escape from slavery, but Markal had rescued him. Now, he was sitting in a chair as if to be submitting once more to cruelty at the hands of these men, but worse, an innocent girl would be suffering in his place. She stared at the torturers busying themselves with their tools, her eyes bulging.

“Can you cover her eyes?” he asked.

“No,” Chantmer said. “I need her to see.”

“That seems an unnecessary cruelty.”

“You might think so. But fear is its own kind of pain. We can take all of it, bind it to the rune. The tattoo is a vessel that needs to be filled. Her blood can do that, but her terror is just as effective.”

“It’s a small spell,” Darik said.

“You are wrong,” Chantmer said. “The sleeping spell requires a good deal of power. Of limited effectiveness, in this case, it is true. That is the girl’s tragedy. She will suffer much, but for very little. A momentary advantage in battle, if that. Tell me, Rima. What are you more scared of, drowning or snakes?”

“I don’t . . . maybe drowning. I was caught in a sandstorm once, and—”

“That will do.” He motioned to the remaining torturers. “You know what to do.”

The torturer was an older man, nearly as tall as Chantmer, but so gaunt his eyes seemed to be staring out from two pits. He had an oiled beard, dyed black, that somewhat concealed his hollow cheeks, but his hands were so long and bony they looked almost skeletal. He wore a gray robe with red cartouches of power. He waved his hand and muttered a spell. Rima went rigid.

“I control your body,” the torturer told her. “You do not move without my permission. Your heart does not beat, except that I allow it to happen.”

“Close your eyes,” Chantmer told Darik. “Concentrate on the words of the sleeping spell, but do not speak them aloud. It will help bind the rune to your flesh.”

Darik did as he was told. He could barely concentrate at first, could only think of the helpless girl and wonder what the torturer meant to do to her.

It’s too terrible. I cannot do this.
 

But he had to. And Rima had offered herself. She wouldn’t die, would only suffer for a stretch, and her sacrifice would help keep others from dying.

“And now, girl,” the torturer said. “I command you to stop breathing. Yes, like that. You want to breathe, you need to breathe above all other things. But your throat is closed. You are suffocating. A sandstorm has come off the desert, and it fills your lungs with sand.”

A man screamed from elsewhere in the courtyard, one of the other victims who’d come in to have his pain extracted and distilled for the khalifa’s magical army. Rima was also suffering, but in silence. Even with his eyes closed, Darik could feel her terror radiating outward. She couldn’t breathe, she was suffocating, her lungs burning.

Darik moved his lips to help himself concentrate, but didn’t vocalize the words of the spell. He felt Chantmer moving behind him. The needle touched the skin on his back. He expected pain. A sharp prick from the scorching hot needle, a burning sensation as the ink seeped into his flesh. That’s what had happened when Roghan had worked on him.

Instead, a shiver of pleasure worked its way down his back, like the warm flush from a cup of tea mixed with an elixir of poppy. It washed away the residual throbbing from the first tattoo, the ache in his legs from squatting on the bed of nails, and the exhaustion from the previous night, when he’d barely slept after days of trudging through the desert with Sofiana.

The next needle prick was more of the same, and soon he was floating on the haze of a drugged, soporific stupor. Euphoria, the sensation of rising from his body. It continued for some unknown length of time, then he heard Chantmer speak.

“Let the girl breathe.”

The girl sucked in a loud, ragged gasp for air. As Darik opened his eyes, the euphoria already fading, he looked at Rima to see her sobbing, gasping, coughing. The torturer stood back a pace, watching with his dark, hollow gaze.

By the Brothers. What had been pain for her had come to Darik like a delicious potion, carrying him away on waves of pleasure. What a horrible, ugly thing. A knife of guilt twisted in his belly.

He turned in his chair. “You didn’t tell me.”

“What, that you would enjoy it?” Chantmer shrugged. “There are privileges to being a wizard. You should ask Markal about them sometime.”

“Are you finished?” he said bitterly. “Can we send the poor girl back to the khalifa?”

“I’m afraid not. The power began to fade before I was halfway done. Another moment, and she’d have lost consciousness, and then she’d have been no good to us at all. I need something more,” Chantmer told the torturer. “Some pain she will feel deep in her bones.”

“Please, my lord,” Rima sobbed.

“How about the tongs?” Chantmer said. “Leave a mark if you must, but don’t disfigure her. We may need her again later.”

“You are a monster,” Darik said. He couldn’t look at the girl, and wished he could blot out the sound of her sobs, the other screams starting up here and there across the courtyard.

“Tell yourself that, if it eases your conscience.” Chantmer turned one of the needles in the brazier. “But if I were you, I would try harder to maintain focus. You were enjoying yourself too much to remember why we are here. Unless you delight in hurting the girl, that is. In which case, go on as you were. Only know that it will take twice as long if you do.”

#

The only thing that rescued Darik from the unrelenting misery in the courtyard was his limited range of spells. Chantmer listened, and then discarded nearly everything Darik could summon. Darik managed to remember the spell with the magical hammers, and the wizard tattooed him with the sleep spell and several other minor incantations. Plus, of course, Darik could always blacken his hands again, assuming they healed in time for the next battle. And assuming he could manage other spells.

It took at least two, and sometimes three, unfortunate volunteers to fix every single tattoo, and when he left the courtyard, he heard the torturers talking about raising more volunteers. It seemed all of their efforts were delivering insufficient results. It also seemed that hours would be needed for every mage to receive a full complement of tattoos. They would not be able to finish by nightfall. Tomorrow, Chantmer said, they would start earlier.

“Tomorrow?” Darik demanded. “You’re planning to commit this atrocity tomorrow, as well?”

“Yes, tomorrow, and as many more days as it takes.”

Darik fled the courtyard. He went to find Kallia, but she was in her chambers and would not be disturbed. He tried to find Rima, to apologize, but the girl was said to be attending to the khalifa.

Instead, he accompanied Captain Rouhani to the city walls to inspect the preparations for the night’s defenses. Hundreds of laborers had been working since their victory the previous night, repairing the gap in the city wall, shoring up the gates where they’d been damaged, and further preparing the defenses for another attack. Darik and Rouhani climbed one of the watchtowers above the Great Gates.

“There they are, the bastards,” Rouhani said. “What are they doing?”

Darik eyed the churning mass gathering along the Tothian Way as the shadows grew long across the plain. Another hour, maybe less, and it would be dark. He hoped Chantmer was finishing his work and would shortly bring his mages to the city walls. Would events tonight play out much the same way, or would the enemy employ a new strategy?

“They don’t
want
to attack us,” Darik said. “That’s the first thing to remember about the undead. The only coherent thought that ever enters their mind is to flee the Harvester. Everything else is reflex, an echo of their past lives.”

“What I saw last night didn’t look like reflex. Looked to me like they had a definite plan of breaking into the city and destroying it.”

“But was it
conscious
? Did they look like an army to you, different pieces organizing for attack, with generals, men under them who varied in bravery and cowardice? Or was it the behavior of wasps, swarming to attack when the nest is kicked? No thought, nothing but sting and kill. Reflex and instinct.”

Rouhani frowned. He tugged at his gloves. “I’m not sure I see the difference. How can they do what they’ve done without some kind of leader?”

“There must be,” Darik agreed, “but who? Last night, I thought it was the wizards—Chantmer and the rest. I was wrong.”

“You think there’s someone else in the city helping them?”

“I don’t know,” Darik said. “Maybe so. Or maybe I’m wrong, and there are conjurers in that mindless swarm.”

Rouhani twisted the ends of his oiled beard and looked back over the plain. “My men are at your disposal. Use your magic, find the enemy conjurer, and we’ll ride out to kill him, the two of us leading my men to victory.”

Except Darik wasn’t sure of his conclusions, nor did he think he could track the origin of the wights’ will. He needed Markal or Whelan. Or even Captain Roderick, if he hadn’t been slain by ravagers. Darik was too young to take command and too uncertain to send men into the middle of all of those wights.

The captain frowned, apparently misinterpreting the nature of Darik’s reluctance. “We’re good men, and brave, I assure you. It’s the Third City Watch—maybe you’ve heard of us. They call my company the Desert Lions. I swear that I command the best men left in the city.”

“I’m not doubting your bravery or your skill. I’m doubting myself.”

“Never do that. I certainly never doubted you.”

“No?”

“No. I saw you fighting last night. You are a powerful wizard, and I’m sure an equally powerful warrior.”

Yes, well. Darik had seen enough of wizards and warriors alike to know this wasn’t true. He was trying to decide whether to say as much, or if it would only pointlessly undermine Rouhani’s confidence, when a warning trumpet sounded from the wall to the west. Darik leaned over the battlement and saw the west flank of the undead army moving toward the Tombs of the Kings and the Gate of the Dead.

While Rouhani gave orders to a young member of the watch, Darik looked up the road as it led into the city from the Great Gates, and saw Chantmer strolling toward the gates. He was surrounded by his mages, including Roghan, and a number of the former members of the torturers guild. At their arrival, awed Balsalomians shrank back and pressed themselves against the buildings lining the street. Chantmer seemed to sense Darik’s gaze, and he lifted his eyes. He pointed at the tower on the opposite side of the Great Gates and nodded. No words were necessary.

Go across and wait for me there.

Chapter Twelve

Shortly after dark, a massive wedge of glowing spirits, twenty across and hundreds deep, surged toward the Great Gates. Two ghostly giants led the charge, slamming themselves into the iron-bound gates. They shuddered, but held. Other wights swarmed in, tearing and clawing at both the gates and the surrounding stone towers.

Darik had placed himself under Chantmer’s command and told himself that he would obey any order short of the obviously wicked or corrupt. So when the wizard commanded him to cast his strongest spell—the fireball—in the initial attack, he didn’t hesitate, but gathered his concentration and spoke the words.

He felt the magic gathering, could taste the full weight of power on his tongue. But when the tattoo turned warm on his skin, his confidence and concentration faltered. The fireball fizzled weakly as it burst forth. It splashed the two giants with flames, and the rolling fire ignited a few of the wights, but the giants shortly recovered.

“Fool boy, you threw that one away,” Chantmer said. “Roghan! The hammers!”

Roghan called up the
volans malleis
incantation. A pair of swirling hammers raced out from the mage and slammed into the front ranks. Coming immediately after Darik’s fireball, this momentarily broke the attack. But within seconds, the wights gathered and renewed their push. Chantmer gave more orders, and his mages called up their spells: ice, fire, and boulders torn from the earth to roll through the enemy. From the city walls came fiery arrows, stones, crossbow bolts, and other missiles.

Chantmer paced back and forth giving orders. His mages burned off one tattoo after another. Chantmer used them all equally except for Roghan, who seemed to be held in reserve after that first hammer attack. And Chantmer himself, of course, who hadn’t cast a single spell.

“What are you doing?” Darik finally asked, when a break in the action left him bent and gasping for air. “Are you going to fight, or order us around until we collapse?”

Chantmer glared him into silence. He grabbed a torch from a sconce where it had been placed to help the bowmen, and moved to the edge of the tower. He hailed the men massing behind the gates.

“Ready your weapons!”

Prince Ethan had gathered three hundred Eriscobans, half of them men on horse with spears and the other half tightly bunched footmen with shields and swords. Captain Rouhani had gathered several hundred more, his so-called Desert Lions.

A dozen former torturers were down there, and these conjurers began to chant in unison. The weapons of the gathered men started to glow. Rouhani gave a cry to open the gates. Men heaved at a windlass, and the gates creaked open.

The enemy had been regrouping for another thrust, and this gave the defenders a chance to sally forth without wights pouring into the city. Now, the wights came howling into the fight.

Rouhani held his glowing scimitar aloft. “The Harvester take you all!” Other men took up the cry.