War of Wizards (16 page)

Daria landed to find her mother scowling, even though the bodies of dragon wasps lay all about her. The camp smelled putrid. Daria climbed down from Talon.

“There you are,” Palina said. “What took you so long?”

“Fighting for my life, killing enemies. What else?” Daria lifted one eyebrow. “You don’t seem pleased. Did you lose someone?”

“How would I have lost someone? Take a closer look. There was no battle, this is how we found it.”

Daria took a closer look at the camp. The dragon wasps she’d spotted from the air were still in the exact same position. They weren’t lying on the ground so much as sprawled. Not only very much dead, but half-eaten. Some had their bellies torn open, their guts devoured. Others were missing tails, legs, or even heads.

“You see what happened here?” Palina asked. “Do you remember the two dragons we saw battling in the mountains?”

Daria walked across the camp, and her mother followed. Daria was looking for a hole in the ground, a smoldering pit, where the dragon might be found. The hillside had been cleared, leaving behind a small forest of stumps, together with a few branches and leaves. It was all scrub oak. Here and there, she saw extinguished fire pits. And curiously, wooden stakes pounded into the ground, some with rope attached.

“Did you hear me?” Palina prodded.

“Of course I remember. The winner devoured the loser. And then it grew. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

Her mother nodded. “Yes, and then it grew. It’s obvious what happened here. The wasps attacked, and it ate them. So that it could grow.”

“Why would they attack?”

“Maybe the dragon can no longer be controlled. They were attempting to bring it back into the service of the dark wizard. It resisted. Now, it has flown off to who knows where.”

It was a seductive idea, and one that Daria wished she could believe. Leave the dragon alone, and maybe it would leave them alone in turn. They could continue east to join Whelan’s army, battling and defeating whatever wasps they found, and then turn their attention on helpless Veyrians on the ground.

“If that’s the case,” Daria said, “where is the dragon now? There were still wasps and riders around when we arrived, but the monster itself is nowhere to be found.”

Palina shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe they drove it off.”

“Except it was here long enough to eat some of these wasps. And what about the fire pits? It looks to me like they cleared the hillside to make charcoal to shovel into the dragon’s mouth in preparation for battle, so they must have been controlling it.”

“They
were
controlling it, then it rebelled.”

“I don’t know, Mother. The pieces don’t fit.”

“Go on then, convince me.”

Daria fixed on one of the stakes. She lifted the rope. The end was ragged and bloody. Each of the dead wasps, she now saw, was near one of the stakes.

“It looks to me like they brought the young dragon spawn, tied them off, and killed them. These dead wasps have begun to rot. You can smell it. They’ve been here some time. I’ll bet they used the stench to draw the dragon out of the desert.”

“Hmm.”

“When it had eaten its fill, they fed it charcoal,” Daria added. “The dragon must have left at dawn, which means we spent the night a few miles away from the thing. We were fortunate.”

“How do you know that? They might have left days ago.”

Daria kicked at the ash in one of the fire pits. Her boot disturbed live coals, and smoke trailed into the air. “Because the pits aren’t yet cold. Because there were still wasps hanging around when Poul spotted them. I’m guessing the dragon isn’t more than a few hours ahead of us.”

Palina took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Daria could sense the thoughts churning in her mother’s mind. Palina didn’t want to be here, didn’t want anything to do with this war. They belonged in the mountains, high above the petty conflicts of flatlanders. And now, her daughter was telling her, the dragon was only a few hours ahead of them. It had nearly destroyed them last time they’d faced it. And that had been in the mountains, on their own terrain, where the air was crisp and their griffins were confident and aggressive. They’d caught it on the ground, and it had still nearly defeated them. Since then, the dragon had fed, had grown, had become more powerful.

If there was ever a time for Palina to balk, it was now. What would Daria do if her mother abandoned the war? If she took half the flock with her to the northern mountains? Daria waited tensely for her mother to speak.

“Well, then,” Palina said at last, “we had better return to camp and make sure the flock is ready to leave. The sooner we get under way, the sooner we’ll catch that monster and kill it.”

Chapter Fourteen

By the end of the second day of the siege, Markal was tired and dirty, and had drained precious energy from Memnet’s orb. He’d have rather been up with Whelan overlooking the battlefield, instead of hurrying back and forth between the three mines tunneling toward the city walls.

Whelan had set up four trebuchets to hurl stones at the city walls of Veyre. The stones crashed with thunderous booms, but there was little visible damage to the walls after a full day of bombardment. More effective were the dozen ballistae with bolts the size of a man’s leg and wrapped in pitch-soaked rags. Men lit the bolts on fire, then launched them soaring through the air with a stream of smoke by day and a long, arcing flame at night. The results of this never-ending barrage were the columns of smoke that rose from Veyre.

It was the middle of the night, and Markal was on his hands and knees in the southernmost mine when he heard a snuffling sound behind him, and something made an animal-like growl. He turned quickly and thwacked his head on the roof of the mine.

“It’s only me, don’t be alarmed.”

“Narud?” Markal said, relieved. He peered into the gloom, but couldn’t pick out the other wizard. “The Harvester take you, you scared me. What is that snuffling, did you turn yourself into a badger?”

“No, I’m in my human form,” Narud said, sounding surprised, as if such a question were ludicrous. “I was just smelling to make sure it was you. It’s dark down here. What do you mean, a badger? To help you dig? How would I have traveled all the way from Marrabat as a
badger
?”

Markal sighed at Narud’s obtuseness. “Yes, of course.”

“Do you
need
me to turn into one?” Narud asked hopefully.

“I need more digging than what a badger can provide,” Markal said. “Unless you’ve got about fifty more of you.”

“Timothe is coming from Eriscoba and should be here by tomorrow. Philina, too. That would make four of us.”

“Humor is lost on you, isn’t it?” Markal said. “But I’m glad to hear they’re coming. We can use their help. Come on, follow me.”

The two wizards edged forward in the mine. Markal had cleared out the diggers so he could do his work, and he shortly came upon abandoned tools: shovels, picks, and buckets. He groped until he could feel the tunnel wall where the men had stopped digging. His fingers found and then traced the ledge of rock that had halted the excavation. It was definitely bedrock.

Markal retrieved Memnet’s orb from his robe and coaxed its fires to life. A cool yellow light stirred at the heart of the glass sphere and shortly illuminated the chamber.

“It’s cold down here,” Narud said. “What are we doing? I assume we’re not down here digging for worms.”

Markal turned to see the other wizard peering forward with wide eyes. He plucked a feather from Narud’s hair, but it turned out to still be attached.

“Ow!”

Markal examined the feather. “An owl this time? I’d have thought an eagle would be faster.”

“I was traveling at night. Safer that way. There are dragon wasps in the air, and an army of wights. I didn’t want to be seen.”

“Wights? What are you talking about?”

Before Narud could answer, the ground shook and dirt fell from the ceiling. Something was going on out there, and that reminded Markal of the urgency of his mission.

“Never mind. Let’s get this taken care of. Do you know the spell
lapis et aqua
?”

Narud frowned. “I know
of
it, but I don’t think I’ve ever mastered the thing. What are we doing here again?”

“Whelan’s men are digging toward the city walls. When they arrive, they’ll prop up the roof with beams, set the supports on fire, and wait for the walls to collapse over the mine.”

“Oh, now I understand. But they keep hitting rock, that’s the problem. And when they do, you come in and remove the stones.”

“More or less. I’m breaking them and softening the earth, and that lets the men remove it several times faster than if they were digging alone.”

“Why light the support beams on fire?” Narud said. “Why not make the earth shake beneath it and let it collapse that way?”

“The walls are too strong, and they are protected with magical wards.”

“I don’t mean attacking them from above,” Narud said. “If you dug your way to the walls—like you’re doing, I mean—you could get someone beneath them and shake them down with magic. That would be more effective than collapsing a few tunnels by burning up support beams.”

“Right, so you’d have to be under the walls to cast the spell. Do you see the problem now?”

Narud frowned and scratched at his head. “No, not really.”

“You’d be
inside
the tunnels.
Under
the walls. Inside and under when you cast the spell to collapse them.”

“Ah, I see. It would collapse on top of you. But what if—”

“Enough of that!” Markal said, as the ground shuddered again. “I’m going to draw magic from the orb. Can you lend me a strengthening spell? Is one of your hands uninjured?”

“They’re both healed, actually. I changed to an owl three days ago and haven’t cast any magic since.”

“Good. Now pay attention. I can’t have you looking for worms or voles.”

“It’s all right, I’ve already eaten. But if you spot any—”

“Shh.”

Markal reached into the orb and pulled out a tendril of power. Every day, he’d been burning his hands and storing the power inside the orb that had once belonged to Memnet the Great. He pulled off only a thread of it now and gathered his will to focus it. He needed to direct it straight forward, and not toward the surface, or he’d bury the two of them alive. At the same time, it had to be strong enough to thrust forward another fifty feet toward the walls of Veyre. As he began to chant the spell, Narud’s voice joined his, but with the words of a different incantation.

Magic flowed out of Markal and burrowed into the wall of bedrock, which let out a terrific crack as it split. The earth around it crumbled as if it were a crust of stale bread, and soon the whole shelf of rock seemed as soft as sand, and still rumbled as the magic radiated forward.

The ground was still shaking as the two wizards turned around and crawled back toward the opening of the mine. Markal worried that he’d pressed too hard with his spell, that with Narud’s help it had weakened the entire mine and rendered it unstable and dangerous. This was the most promising excavation, the one that had tunneled the farthest toward Veyre. Its loss would be a blow.

But when the two wizards emerged from the ground, they discovered the source of the noise was a terrific fight all around them. Markal took in the battlefield in a glance, and what he saw filled him with dread.

A large enemy force had charged from the city while the wizards were in the mines. The terrain all around was a battlefield. The main gates of the city lay wide open, and hundreds of defenders were still pouring out. One force of mounted enemies had rushed to engage Hoffan’s cavalry, and Markal saw with alarm that they were led by a dozen blank-staring, pale ravagers. Undead knights, raised to slaughter the dark wizard’s enemies. Hoffan’s men had brawled with them before, and been well bloodied in the encounter. Once again, they were struggling to hold back the ravagers.

Markal saw all this in an instant. Understood at once that their position was untenable. They were too close to the city, and the enemy was trying too hard to seize this particular patch of ground. Yet they hadn’t gone after the other mines, only this one, and that told Markal something, too. They must have spotted the two wizards entering the mine and timed the attack to catch them underground. This attack was designed to kill Markal and Narud, not destroy the mine.

“Beware, conjurers,” Narud said.

He pointed with his left hand, which was pink and raw, as if it had been plunged into a kettle of boiling water, but not withered as Markal’s would have been. Narud hadn’t seriously exerted himself casting the spell, and would quickly recover.

Six conjurers in gray robes with red cartouches of power came riding through the midst of the black-cloaked Veyrian footmen. Torturers. They threw back their hoods and searched the battlefield until they spotted Markal and Narud. Their eyes seemed dark and hollow, their faces drawn and pale. They felt almost bloated with magic, and Markal felt something coming from the city, like a foul wind from a sewer, blowing over them, strengthening them. The torturers met Markal’s gaze and grinned, but it was a mirthless, haunted smile. These slaves of the dark wizard could feel no true joy in their work, only the sadistic pleasure of destruction.

Had Markal been alone, he’d have been in serious trouble. Even with Memnet’s orb in hand, fighting off the dark wizard’s minions while trying to avoid getting skewered by all the swords hacking toward him would have been too much. But standing next to his companion from the Order of the Wounded Hand, Markal liked his chances.

“They are thin and weak,” he told Narud, as the enemy conjurers dropped from the saddle and formed a half ring some twenty feet distant.

“They are powerful,” Narud countered. “A stench flies from the city, strengthening them.”

“Magically, yes, but physically, they are starved. Look at them, hollow cheeks and bony hands. And with an unslakeable thirst. Like men who have consumed nothing but poppy milk. We will use that to our advantage. Bring the desert to them.”