War of Wizards (2 page)

“Sword play
and
wizardry,” another man said, laughing. “This is a rare hero indeed.”

Nevertheless, there was some caution in how the men approached. They seemed uneasy in the face of Darik’s confidence.

He ignored them and continued to gather his will. He didn’t have a fraction of the power of Markal, let alone that of a powerful wizard liked Chantmer the Tall, and neither did he have Whelan’s skill with a sword, but he had more than enough of both to deal with these sorts. As the first man grabbed for his ankle, he spoke the words of the incantation.

“
Jumenta, ite effrenae forma.
” 

He cast the spell at the horses, not the men, and the animals went wild. They bucked and snorted and reared into the air. Men dropped swords and slipped from saddles. One man fell hard. Another went flying a moment later. A third man failed to gain control of his animal, and it galloped off snorting and tossing, with the man only just holding on.

The spell hadn’t come without cost, and Darik’s left hand flared with pain. It turned black and curled into a claw. He let his cloak fall to cover it and drew his sword with his right hand. A man came toward him, still fighting to control his horse. Darik leaped from the stone staircase and threw himself onto the horse’s back. His sword thrust into the man’s chest, and they fell off to land on the hard ground, Darik on top. When he rose and pulled out his sword, the man was dead.

The spell had begun to wear off, and one of the men managed to regain control of his mount. He charged forward swinging, but Darik ducked out of the way, trading blows. As the brigand passed, he got past the man’s guard and slashed him across the shoulder.

The leader of the brigands had been one of the men who fell, and now he was picking himself up and grabbing for his sword, which he hadn’t drawn in the initial approach. He lifted it just as Darik flew in with a hail of blows. The man had some skill with the blade, but Darik had youth and energy, and the man’s confidence seemed shaken. Darik made a small mistake, but the man was too flatfooted to take advantage of it. Darik broke past his defenses and cut him twice, once on the arm, once through his leather cuirass. When Darik fell back, his sword dripped with blood. The man’s eyes were wide, rolling back in fear.

“Enough!” he cried. Then, to one of his men, now coming on foot to join the battle, “No. Leave him be!”

Darik retreated warily to his camel, which was pulling and snorting. He had killed one enemy, wounded two more, but if the remaining brigands came at him again, he might not gain the same advantage. But the men no longer saw him as easy prey, or any prey whatsoever, apparently. Without a word, they collected their dead comrade, slung him over the saddle of his horse, and beat a hasty retreat.

There was no wisdom in sitting around to see if they came back with a greater force, so Darik set out at once. He plodded through the tombs in the direction he’d spotted Sofiana. It was only when he drew closer to the city walls that he risked gaining a higher vantage point to look for the girl. There was no sign of her. He came back down and soon passed through the towers of silence outside the city walls, where the bodies of the dead were laid to be picked over by vultures.

As soon as he got to the refugee encampment outside the walls, Darik asked about the girl, but that didn’t give him much. The city guard had opened the Spice Gate at daybreak, and there was such a crush of people, animals, and carts trying to get inside that his questions drew only indifference or irritated rebukes. He pushed through families with handcarts, past clusters of orphaned children wearing tattered robes and shivering in the cool morning air of late autumn. A battered regiment of soldiers wearing the colors of Starnar seemed to recognize him as a fellow warrior, and the captain hailed him to ask news of the war. Darik confessed that he had none.

“Is it true?” Darik asked in turn. “Did the dark wizard attack Starnar?”

The captain’s face turned grim. “Aye. We were powerless to stop it. The city is overthrown. We lasted barely two days before they breached the walls.”

The soldier was on the downward slope of middle age, with skin like leather and deep lines at his eyes as if from a lifetime of squinting into the sun. A gash curled around his neck from his right ear down to his left collarbone. A strange injury, and it had a weeping, unhealthy look to it.

“How did the Veyrians get so far west?” Darik pressed. “Our armies control the road from here to the Dark Citadel. How would the enemy break through?”

“They weren’t Veyrians,” another man put in. “They came from the Desolation.”

Darik could only repeat it stupidly. “They came from the Desolation?”

“Aye,” the captain said. “Some devilry, some foul magic of the dark wizard. They’ve beset Ter, and will soon be here, too.”

“Don’t say that!” a woman cried. “The khalifa will save us. And the wizards. They are on our side.”

“Shut your mouth, woman,” one of the soldiers said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Darik hadn’t come for information, he’d come to search for Sofiana on his way into the city, figuring that she would enter Balsalom long enough to steal supplies before heading east, so he took advantage of the argument to press forward. She might be just ahead of him, slipping unnoticed through the crowd. Darik used the camel to muscle people out of the way, and sometimes resorted to calling out in a commanding voice that he was on the khalifa’s business and to step aside.

Men wearing the green and gray of the watchmans guild kept busy at the open gate, inspecting people and goods as they entered. They weren’t turning anybody away, so far as Darik could see, but when he drew closer, he saw the reason for the inspection.

“You!” one of the watchmen called at Darik. He had an oiled beard and a sharp, intelligent gaze, and put a hand on his sword hilt when he saw that Darik had a weapon. “Down from the camel.” He snapped his fingers at another watchman. “This one is armed.”

Darik dropped from the camel and pulled back his cloak to let them see the sword clearly, but didn’t draw it. “My intentions are honorable. I am a son of Balsalom and fight in her defense.”

“Maybe they
are
honorable,” the man with the oiled beard said. “I will be the judge of that. Draw your blade halfway. There, that’s enough. You are Balsalomian, but you carry a barbarian sword?”

“It’s Southron steel, given to me when I joined the Brotherhood. I fought at King Whelan’s side at Sleptstock and the gates of Arvada, and rode with the Knights Temperate north to the Old Road through the mountains.”

“Wearing a Marrabatti cloak and riding a camel?”

Darik hid the wince that wanted to come to his face. He hadn’t given ample thought to his story, being too focused on finding Sofiana. Now, he wished he’d had a chance to concoct something that sounded less preposterous than the truth.

“Most recently, I came up the Spice Road from the sultanates.”

By now, other armed men were gathering. Their posture wasn’t exactly threatening, but it was wary, and some had begun to mutter.

“I know that sounds unlikely,” Darik continued, “but I—” He thought about flying on the griffin, battling Chantmer on the edge of the Desolation, and his subsequent journey up and down the Spice Road. “—but I was traveling in the company of knights and wizards and griffin riders.”

This brought more incredulous looks.

“Please, I am looking for someone. A girl—she passed this way. She’s the daughter of the Eriscoban king. The khalifa, may she live forever, would want you to help me find her.”

“What is your name, good knight?” the man with the oiled beard asked. Something new had entered his voice. He no longer sounded suspicious, and held out his arm to keep his men from pressing closer.

“My name is Darik. I am a friend of King Whelan, and I—”

The man’s eyes widened. “Darik of Balsalom?”

Darik . . .
of Balsalom?
 

“Well, yes.”

“It’s Darik!” the man shouted. “Move them off the road. Everybody, out of the way!”

“You know who I am?”

“The Harvester take me, of course I do. A Knight Temperate, friend of kings and griffin riders. You walk with wizards.”

Darik had unconsciously lifted his blackened, peeling left hand to his face, and the man stared at it. Darik hastily hid it within his robes.

“You are a
wizard
, as well.”

“No, really, I’m not. I cast a bit of clumsy magic to chase off a few brigands. Have you seen the girl? She is thirteen, dressed like a Kratian nomad.”

“I’ll send men to look for her, but you must come to the palace with me. You must see the khalifa at once, may she live forever.”

Since the captain had given his command, the watchmen had been working to clear a passageway through the crowds and into the city. Men were shouting Darik’s name to speed the effort, as if he were some sort of hero. Someone brought a horse, and they insisted he dismount the camel and climb into its saddle. A soldier passed him a skin filled with sweetened tea, and another man tried to give him food. Darik was hungry, but he refused this last offer. Soon, the man with the oiled beard had mounted a second horse and was leading him into the city. He introduced himself as Captain Rouhani, and though he was several years older than Darik, rode in a position of deference, as if the younger man was in command.

Hundreds of curious faces looked up at Darik. A few people called his name. He stared ahead, his face flushed, his stomach knotting.

Darik had fled Balsalom a slave. Hotheaded, foolish, disdainful of the fellow slaves who’d accompanied him. Those fellow slaves had been Whelan and Markal, of course. One man a prince, soon to become high king of all of the Eriscoban Free Kingdoms, and the other man a wizard. Any glory Darik possessed came from his association with those greater than himself, not anything he’d earned. Even what they’d said about riding a griffin. That was because of Daria.

Having passed through the great iron doorway of the Spice Gate, they rode the cobbled road into the city. Two stout towers frowned down on them, and Darik studied the freshly dressed stone along the walls before they passed into the spice bazaars. Only a little scaffolding remained, and a few dozen workers. Soon, the last damage caused by the enemy would be erased.

The heady scent of myrrh, cardamon, and peppercorn filled the air, and at first glance, the spice markets seemed more crowded than ever. But closer inspection showed that many of the stalls and even the arcades and canopies had been torn down and replaced by tents and sloppy mud buildings leaning against each other for support. More tents and cook fires came from atop the buildings themselves.

He turned to see the captain studying him. “There is little need for luxuries,” Rouhani explained, “and great need to house those left destitute by the war.”

“I need to find the girl. She is King Whelan’s daughter, and, since the marriage, the adopted child of the khalifa herself, may she live forever.”

“I sent my best men to look for her. I assure you, I didn’t take your request lightly.”

“Oh, I know. They rushed off to do your bidding. But I’d rather see to it myself. I know the city well enough.” Darik looked around at his changed surroundings. “Well, mostly. Send word to the viziers to request help from their conjurers, and lend me twenty men of the watch. I’ll be sure to find her.”

“You’re needed at the palace. They gave me strict instructions. Should you appear—”

“Who did?”

“Hajir, did, and—”

“Who?”

“Hajir. He is acting as Kallia’s principal vizier while Fenerath is in Marrabat with Princess Marialla. Plus, the barbarian emissary asked for you, as did the queen of the griffin people before she left.”

“Daria Flockheart?” Darik asked. “She was here?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Here, in the city? Are you sure?”

Rouhani nodded. “I saw her myself, looked into the eyes of her terrible beast. She is young and beautiful, with black hair and dark eyes. Skin like marble.”

“Yes, that’s her. But why was she in Balsalom? She is terrified of the city and its people.”

“The griffin queen said the wizards are looking for you. Anyway, she didn’t land in the city itself, exactly. She descended to the palace, stayed barely five minutes, and flew away as soon as she had delivered her message. I didn’t hear the message, personally—it was not meant for my ears.” Rouhani shook his head. “But you are quite wrong about the young queen. She could not possibly be terrified of the city—she rides a ferocious beast, half lion and half eagle. The creature is the size of a horse, its feathers the color of gold. They say she defeated a dragon in battle.”

“Yes, I know.”

“She looked at me,” Rouhani said. He seemed quite taken with what he’d seen and heard. “So young, yet so serious. She said nothing at first. Her gaze was quite terrifying. I thought I would faint.”

“We each have our own terrors. What did she tell you?”

“She said that I resembled you.”

“Do we?”

“I don’t know, my lord. I confess I do not see it. I am a simple man of the watch, and you—”

“Please, enough of that,” Darik protested. “I’m no lord. My father was a merchant, and not a very good one. They sold us into slavery when he couldn’t pay his debts. Anyway, Daria hasn’t seen many Balsalomians. I’m sure she thinks we all resemble each other. You and I are close in age, and last time I saw her I hadn’t shaved in days, so I imagine she saw your beard and couldn’t help but think of me.”

Darik was also wondering about that message from the wizards. If both Markal and Narud were wondering about him, and it was urgent enough to send Daria winging around like a common messenger to find him, then it must be serious indeed.

“Is Kallia also looking for me?” he asked.

“The khalifa has not mentioned you. May she live forever,” Rouhani added, almost as an afterthought. Something was unsettled in his tone.

“What is it, what is wrong?”

“She is . . . unwell, my lord.”

“What do you mean, unwell? Is it the baby? Is it time?”