War of Wizards (5 page)

“How many men do you have in the city?”

“Most men of fighting age marched east long ago. Only four thousand remain, another two thousand recruits in training. The recruits are of limited use at this point, but not helpless, either.”

A year ago, that would have sounded like a trifling number against an enemy army, but Darik better understood warfare. “That should be enough to hold the city walls. Those attackers are far behind our lines. They can’t maintain a siege. How would they be resupplied? And it’s doubtful they have siege weapons. Where would they have found them?”

“They don’t need siege weapons.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Darik asked. “Or powerful magic, or a dragon. Something. You cannot break down the city walls of Balsalom with swords and spears.”

Kallia fixed him with a sharp gaze. “Then you haven’t heard. You don’t know.”

“Know what?”

“The army marching toward us doesn’t need siege weapons. And it doesn’t need resupply, either.”

“Every army needs resupply,” he insisted. “Did you see the size of King Toth’s caravans when he invaded the Free Kingdoms? If you mean Toth’s men are living off the land, that might have worked before. But after a year of warfare, the land must be stripped bare by now. The only food to be found is within the city walls.”

“Darik, you are patronizing me,” she said, and her voice was stern, her gaze sharp. “I have done nothing but fight this war since you left. Who do you think is keeping Whelan’s army supplied with men and provisions? If the land is barren, it is because I have stripped it myself. I have emptied my coffers and pushed every merchant in the city to the brink of poverty to keep my husband fighting. The people of this city have given their gold to buy grain from the sultanates, and their sons to bleed and die for Balsalom.”

Darik bowed his head, horrified that he’d spoken to her as he would have to a child. Kallia was so warm and sympathetic that he had forgotten his place. And she was absolutely right.

“Khalifa, forgive me. I beg you.”

She touched his wrist again. “Enough of that. I am not angry. But you don’t know what we’re facing. I do.”

He stayed silent rather than humiliate himself again. He stared out at the plain beyond the city walls. The approaching army was large, but it seemed to be moving slowly, not rushing to encircle the walls and pin the defenders inside. A few riders galloped out from Balsalom, including several dozen men heading south along the Spice Road, but for the most part people were still struggling to get inside, not out.

“You’ve heard that Starnar has fallen?” Kallia asked.

“Yes, my queen.”

“The head of the griffins—what do they call her, the flockheart?—flew in last night with more devastating news. Ter has also fallen. Sacked and destroyed. The entire population was put to the sword. No chance to change allegiance, no prisoners taken, no slaves. Nothing offered, apparently, but death.”

Darik was so interested to hear confirmation that Daria had landed in the palace that it took a moment for the weight of Kallia’s words to sink in. The entire population destroyed? How many tens of thousands must have died? Did the dark wizard mean to expand the Desolation of Toth until it devoured all of the Western Khalifates?

“Yes,” she confirmed. “All of them, dead. Their animals slaughtered and left to rot, their granaries put to the torch. This army doesn’t need provisions.”

“How is that possible? An army needs to eat. A man still needs food in his belly.”

“A
living
man does. But not a wight.” Her face was grim. “This army is the marching dead of the Desolation.”

Chapter Six

Something twinged deep in Kallia’s abdomen. It was a warning; the pain was beginning and would soon strike in full.

Darik was still staring out at the plain, a look of horror on his face. Kallia had been struck by how much he seemed to have aged in the months since she’d seen him last. He was no longer a boy on the cusp of adulthood, but a man and a warrior. He may not have been the hero that Captain Rouhani and the other desperate defenders of the city were hoping for, but she could see the young man’s strength in the way he carried himself, the way he touched at the pommel of his sword without noticing, as if it were an extension of his body.

When Kallia had explained that she was concealing the threat to Balsalom from her husband, he had nodded knowingly. A hard look came into his eyes at that moment. It was the look of a man who had killed and would kill again. A man who understood that victory over an implacable enemy meant terrible sacrifices.

But now the man was gone, and she saw the boy again. How old was Darik, nineteen, twenty? He had traveled through the Desolation and heard the mindless howls of the lost souls wandering its wastes. It was the endless hunting ground of the Harvester, who was still gathering the souls of the dead hundreds of years after they had fallen in the wars. Darik was clearly haunted by the memory of what he’d seen there. Kallia wanted to explain, to seek his advice as the undead army approached.

But that twinge was a warning. She had learned not to ignore it.

“Find Prince Ethan,” she said. “Help him defend the city. He will—”

Invisible fingers clawed at her bowels, and Kallia bit her lip to keep from crying out.

Darik turned with a frown. “My queen?”

She smoothed the pain from her face. “I . . . need to rest. I will return by—”

And then she could no longer keep away the grimace. She turned and gathered her robes with one hand, her other hand on her abdomen. Darik called after her in a worried tone, but she ignored him and hurried down the stairs of the slender tower. Halfway down, still hearing the young man calling for her, she took a small side door that led through a corridor across one of the inner walls of the palace. Guards patrolled the walkway, protecting the entrance to her apartments, and they steadied pikes as she approached. But when they saw who it was, they shrank against the wall with their gazes averted.

Kallia reached her rooms moments later. She retreated to a small side chamber where she kept her clothing, shut the door, and screamed. Her innards felt aflame, like she’d swallowed burning lamp oil and it was scorching its way through her body. She screamed again and grabbed at her hanging robes as she fell. They came down in a heap about her, and then she was on the floor, writhing and begging for relief.

Her sphincter opened, and the contents of her bowels streamed out, running through her small clothes and down her leg, as if her body were desperately trying to expel whatever was tearing her apart inside. For a moment, she thought the pain was passing, but it started up again almost at once, and this time, seemed to be moving back up the other direction, clawing its way through her intestines, inch by excruciating inch, like a fire salamander digging its way out of the fiery depths of the world. The pain rose to her stomach and kidneys, then climbed to her throat. Bile rose from her stomach, and she vomited. Moments later, more vomiting. She kept heaving until there was nothing left to throw up. Then the pain started back down again.

By the time it finally, mercifully ended, Kallia lay curled in a heap of soiled clothing, smelling of vomit and excrement. Her body shuddered; she was chilled and shivering one moment and burning up the next. She wept in pain and fear, waiting for another attack. But it didn’t come. For now, the pain was gone.

What was happening to her, was her body trying to expel the thing from both ends? Yet her womb remained closed, while the baby continued to grow inside her, week after terrible week.

“It’s not a baby,” she whispered.

It never had been. A baby would have had a soul. Would have quickened in her womb. She’d have felt it moving inside, would have placed her hand over her belly and felt it move. But this was as still as the grave, even as it grew unnaturally fast. If she had taken the advice of her vizier, she’d have taken a strong elixir and destroyed the thing before it took root. She hadn’t, she’d refused to condemn the child because of its parentage.

The memory brought a bitter laugh to her lips. So bitter, in fact, that her stomach clenched in warning, threatening more dry heaves.

Midwives had examined her several times, felt for the baby using their gentle magic, then retreated, confused and frightened. It seemed neither alive nor dead, neither male nor female. Her body gave no sign that it was ready to deliver, nor signs that she was carrying a dead thing inside her or was at any risk. When she was not being actively attacked, she seemed quite healthy, in fact.

As soon as Kallia was sure she was out of danger, she rose to her feet and opened the door to the small clothing room. She felt filthy and weak, and couldn’t let any of her ministers see her. The only one she trusted was a servant girl named Rima, her chief midwife’s daughter. Quiet and discreet. Kallia stood at the door and rang the bell three times, indicating that she wanted the girl. While she waited, she poured a cup of tea to settle her stomach and chewed on fennel seeds to clear the taste of bile from her mouth.

A soft rap sounded on the door. Kallia opened it just wide enough to let the girl in, then shut and latched it again. Rima wore a white silk robe, her arms bare and unadorned except for a slender silver arm bracelet above her elbow. The girl averted her eyes from the khalifa and hurried to the exterior door that opened onto the patio, still ajar from when Kallia had rushed in. The girl shut and locked the door, then went around the room closing the shutters.

While she did this, Kallia stripped off her clothing and left it in a heap on the floor, drew back the curtain to her sandalwood wash basin, and climbed in. Two large clay pitchers the size of a man and filled with scented rose water sat behind the basin, and shortly Rima came around and turned the spigots to let out the water. Kallia shivered as the cool water spilled onto her back.

This late in the year, Kallia would have preferred to bathe in the heated pools alongside the wives and daughters of the viziers, but she needed privacy now. People in the palace knew she was unwell—probably, the entire city knew—but better to keep as quiet about her ailment as possible. If people knew how close she felt to dying every time an attack came, they’d be terrified for her, and that would sap the will of Balsalom to resist the enemy.

Rima produced a bar of hard soap made of olive oil and scented with lemon. She lathered her hands in the water and massaged the soap into the khalifa’s skin. The girl was slightly built, but her hands were strong, and Kallia closed her eyes and let the pressure against her muscles and the smell of soap and scented water relax her.

Rima cleared her throat. “It seems worse, Khalifa. I was frightened.”

“You heard me crying out?”

“Yes, Khalifa.”

“Perhaps it is time to move my apartments. I need a quiet place, where nobody will hear my screams.”

“Nobody else can hear, my queen, only me. My room is just on the other side of the wall, so I can be close enough to attend to your needs. You don’t need to move. I don’t tell anyone what I hear except my mother, and she is your midwife. You can trust us both with any secret you might have.”

This was somewhat reassuring. “Tell me if you hear people talking. More than usual, I mean.”

“My queen, do you think . . . ?” The girl hesitated and looked at the bar of soap in her hands as Kallia turned with a questioning look. “I beg your pardon. I misspoke.”

“Speak plainly. I won’t be angry.”

“The wights are coming. And what you’re carrying in your womb . . . could it be waiting for them? The attacks are growing worse, and now the dead have come to the city.”

Kallia raised her eyebrows. This was more sophisticated thinking than she’d imagined would come from the girl. Of course these thoughts had passed through Kallia’s own mind. Why would the wights leave the Desolation now? Only to overthrow Balsalom, or was the khalifa their target?

“Have you been talking to someone?”

“No, my queen. These are my own thoughts.”

“Do not share them with others. There is enough to worry about without frightening people with this speculation.”

Kallia’s body had grown accustomed to the temperature of the water, and she wanted nothing more than to rest in the wash basin, but she couldn’t sit here relaxing while wights encircled the city.

“Bring me a towel, please, Rima.”

“Your skin will be dried from the soap. Will you not let me rub your body with oils before you dress?”

“I have no time, Rima. My viziers will be arguing in the throne room while couriers line up, begging to deliver their messages. We’ll be under attack by nightfall, and I cannot spare another moment. The battle may come to find me writhing on the floor, so I need to see to my duties now.”

Kallia had said this while standing and letting the girl dry her, and now Rima’s trembling hands dropped the towel. She bent quickly to pick it up, muttering apologies.

“Don’t be afraid, Rima.”

“They killed everyone in Starnar.” The girl’s words came in a whisper. “That’s what they say. And they say we’ll all die, too.”

“Balsalom will not fall. I swear to you, we’ll win this battle.”

The words sounded hollow coming out of Kallia’s mouth. And from the look on the girl’s face, she knew that they hadn’t been believed.

#

Kallia soon found herself in the throne room, reclining on pillows, while viziers and pashas jostled for her attention. Couriers came running with messages and left with fresh missives. Kallia kept her tone measured, tried to show concern but never panic or even excessive worry. There was almost too much information to digest, too many decisions to be made.

She hadn’t yet sent riders east to find her husband’s army, but a few days ago she’d ordered messengers to ride west, in hopes of bringing help from the Free Kingdoms. Now that she better understood the threat, she realized that these riders had probably died when they met the army of wights coming out of the Desolation, so she’d asked Daria to carry the news as far as the castles in the mountain passes.