War of Wizards (9 page)

Her mother thrust out her chin. “And I did what you told me, so sit down. But,” Palina added, as Daria slowly sat, “I will point out that this is not
our
war. It never was, and it never will be.”

“Three dragon wasps attacked me not ten miles from here. We fought a full-grown dragon, here, in the mountains. Many of us have already fallen to this enemy. How can you claim this is not our war?”

“It isn’t,” Palina insisted, “and it never was until we got involved. Your father rescued those men from Montcrag. That’s the only reason we’re being attacked.”

“You would have let the dark wizard overrun the castle and slaughter them all?”

“I don’t know what I would have done, because I was not there. Your father did not consult me. But since then, since he led us into battle at Sleptstock and Arvada, King Toth has bent his mind to destroying our people. You want us to face a dragon, no matter how many of us die, and then, no doubt, you’ll have us flying back and forth at the whim of wizards and kings. Bringing messages here, carrying people there. Attacking their enemies and dying. How many of us do you think there are? Do you possibly think we could fight this war to its conclusion and somehow survive as a people?” Palina nodded. “I would have regretted the deaths at Montcrag, but I would not have intervened.”

“So, yes,” Daria said bitterly. “You would have let the castle defenders be killed. Whelan was there, and Markal. The wizard has always been our friend and a friend of the Mountain Brother. And Darik. He’d be dead now.”

“I know how you feel about your flatlander. I wish you would leave him be, find a mate among your own people. Someone who breathes the mountain air, who is not afraid of cold or solitude. We are few, and they are more numerous than the stones of the mountainside. But that is your choice. I cannot stop you even if I wanted to. But your war . . . no. That is another matter.”

“We’re the only ones who can defeat this dragon,” Daria said. “And I have given orders to prepare for battle. Now tell me straightaway. Have you done what I asked? Will they be ready?”

“They’ll be ready.” A note of bitterness had entered Palina’s voice. “They’ll face the dragon and die for you. But when it’s done, when we’ve either defeated the monster or fled the battlefield, too weak to fight on . . . ”

“What?”

“Then we leave. We load our mounts and fly north. Through the land of the golden griffins and beyond. We’ll make a new home in the northern mountains.”

“It is a wilderness, the heart of the Wylde. Summer barely comes.”

“We don’t need summer. We only need mountains and forests and game to hunt. And isolation from the flatlanders and their wars.”

Daria stared into the fire and imagined how it would go. It was already winter in the north country, and if there had ever been aeries, they must be in ruins. What a terrible struggle that first winter would be.

“People might die before spring comes,” Daria said.

“Better than utter destruction at the hands of the dark wizard.”

“We’ll win the war. I know we will. Darik and Markal and Whelan—”

“
They
may win the war, Daria, but we won’t. We’ll be gone. Defeated, extinct. At best, we’ll be remembered in stories they tell each other.”

Daria had no answer to this. Maybe her mother was right. How many were they, a few hundred riders and their griffins? And that included the children and the elderly. She thought of the army of thousands of wights that she’d seen crawling mindlessly across the plain toward Ter.

If I die, don’t let that happen to me. May the Harvester gather my soul.
 

“We’ll fight your battle, Daria,” her mother confirmed. “But only this battle and no more. When it’s over, if any of us survive, we’re flying north. Every rider, every griffin. That will happen whether we win or not. And whether or not you are there to lead us.”

Daria stared. She’d never heard of such a thing. That they would leave the flockheart behind? And they weren’t just her people, they were her family, her own blood: her mother, her uncles, her sister, her cousins. Could she go with them and leave Darik behind? She’d asked so much of him already, to join her in the mountains knowing that she would suffer in the flatlands. But to take him north, where the first winter would be so brutal that even the cold-hardened people of the mountains would struggle, might be too much for him.

The alternative was staying, yet the thought of remaining behind like a ghost in the land filled her with a bone-deep ache. No, she couldn’t. If her people left, she would go with them. She was the flockheart, it was her duty.

Daria’s stew had gone cold by the time she picked it up. She chewed and swallowed listlessly. It formed a hard lump in her stomach.

Chapter Eight

Two warring needs seized Darik as the opposing figure drew back his cowl. The first was to raise his uninjured right hand and call forth the power of the Order of the Wounded Hand, speak a spell to his lips, and hurl a fireball at these wizards. One moment, one lucky chance while their attention was drawn elsewhere and he was still cloaked in the spell he’d cast at the edge of the bazaar, and maybe he would cause them a terrible injury. Rouhani and Ethan could rush in and finish them before they recovered.

The second urge was to use that same hand and draw his sword. That was Whelan’s influence, plus Darik’s time riding and training with the Knights Temperate under Roderick’s command. Sword or magic? He only had an instant to decide.

In the end, Darik drew his sword. He’d already wounded one hand, and if he used his other, he’d be helpless, whereas the sword gave him a chance to cast a spell later. It was out of the sheath in an instant, and Darik had to throw back the cloak to give himself wider range of motion for combat. Some of the magic hiding him dissipated as he exposed his arms.

The incantation died on the enemy wizard’s lips. He let out a jeering laugh, waved his hand, and the last shreds of the illusion of five archers dropped away like a torch held to a spiderweb. Darik stopped short. The wizard was Chantmer the Tall with four companions.

Chantmer peered down at him. “You. And to think I was frightened, that for a moment I thought you were wizards.”

Tattoos covered Chantmer’s body: his hands, neck, and presumably the clothed parts of his body, as well. Only his face was unmarred. The others drew back their own cloaks, and they looked much the same, covered with tattoos: runes, mythical beasts, words in strange ancient tongues, even geometric patterns. Darik supposed that each one represented a spell that could be called forth at will.

“What do we do?” Rouhani asked Darik, his voice tight. “How do we defeat these men? Command us!”

“You’re asking this
boy
to command you?” Chantmer sneered. “Balsalom has indeed sunk low. Look at your city, prostrate before an army of wights, so helpless she cannot muster a handful of conjurers to drive them back. And this slave—”

“He is no slave!” Rouhani said. “This
hero
—”

“Enough,” Chantmer said.

Rouhani fell silent, blinking. He put his hand to his mouth, then tried to speak again, but could only manage an incoherent babble. Ethan stood tense and ready, light on his feet, sword in hand. Darik had never seen the king’s youngest brother fight, but imagined he would be a formidable swordsman, like his brothers. But Darik, Ethan, and Rouhani made three against five wizards.

“Who cast this spell on you?” Chantmer asked.

“I did it myself, Betrayer,” Darik said.

“Yes, of course you did,” he said sarcastically. “Who was it? Is Markal in the city? Why is he not with the king?” Chantmer’s eyes narrowed. “Yet you do not have Markal’s scent about you. It was a wizard of the Order, I know that much, but who? Philina? Timothe?”

Darik glanced down from the walls. The wights had come to a halt some hundred yards distant from the city. They turned their heads west toward the setting sun as if watching it fall. A few more minutes, then night would fall, and the wights would attack. Now was not the time to bristle at Chantmer’s arrogance.

“By the Brothers, I’m begging you,” Darik said. “Balsalom is innocent. Whatever the dark wizard promised you, it can’t be worth the slaughter of so many people.”

“What?” Chantmer blinked. “You think that I . . .? You are naive and witless. This is not my army. I don’t command them.”

“You don’t? Then why are you here? To watch the city burn for your own amusement?”

“To fight them, you fool.”

Could it be true? Darik scarcely dared to hope. Chantmer the Betrayer, defending Balsalom? Why? How would that advance the wizard’s personal glory?

“I saw what you did at Sleptstock,” Darik said, “when you raised the bone gurgolet and killed your own people. Wizards, soldiers. Why would you help us now?”

“I have no time to banter with a child.” Chantmer turned to his companions. “If these three take another step toward us, you may kill them with impunity. It is time. Prepare a line.”

Chantmer nodded at one of the mages, a beardless man with dark, braided hair and an amulet hanging from a chain at his neck. “Roghan, you will lead the initial thrust.” Chantmer glanced back at Darik. “Watch and learn, boy, what true power is. You can tell Markal next time you see him.”

Ethan and Rouhani looked to Darik for guidance, but he shook his head and gestured for the three of them to go to the edge of the wall to watch. Before he started a confrontation with Chantmer and his mages, he needed to know whether or not the wizard was telling the truth.

The five wizards lined up at the edge of the tower wall. They stripped off their cloaks and pulled off their robes until they hung about their waists, baring their chests. One of the mages was a woman, slender and small breasted, and she uncovered her chest like the rest of them. Tattoos covered nearly every inch of visible flesh. Each of them had one large tattoo in common, a red snake that curled from their collarbones, across their chests, and around to their backs.

The horizon swallowed the sun in a conflagration of red and orange, the disk dropping moment by moment until there was nothing left but a dying glow above the western horizon. The brightest stars appeared in the blue-black sky, and then suddenly, the night was filled with them. A long sigh, almost a whisper, passed down the length of the army of wights. The glow spread, a ghostly blue light that was soon the brightest thing in the night. The wights flowed toward the city, a solid wall, one spirit merging with the next.

Cries sounded all along the walls. Trumpets blasted orders. Men to the right of the guard tower stoked fires beneath kettles of steaming oil and water. Men with leather gloves grabbed the handles, preparing to heave their contents over the edge. Archers launched a volley of arrows. Fiery bolts mixed among the arrows, carrying flaming rags into the midst of the wights.

Sometimes, the arrows seemed to pass through with no effect, but others struck, and wights fell where they hit. Other wights faltered around them, but the sheer force of will driving them forward closed any gaps, and shortly, the undead army was piling against the wall. Darik didn’t know what they hoped to accomplish. They didn’t seem able to scale the walls, and they had no siege engines he could see, either ghostly or physical in form. They seemed to face the same limitations as any living army. How would they break into the city?

Chantmer and his companions began to chant. Their words were soft, but grew in volume as more wights gathered against the walls and gates. It was no spell that Darik knew, and he could only parse a few words from the old tongue, something about slaves and chains, he thought, though he didn’t understand what that could mean.

The red snakes glowed on the bodies of the wizards until they throbbed like coals in a blacksmith’s fire. The snakes began to move. They writhed and twisted until it looked as if they were squirming beneath the flesh, trying to burst free. The air vibrated with magic.

Captain Rouhani stared, eyes bulging, mouth open and slack. “The Harvester take me!”

“Stay back, both of you,” Darik ordered.

The snake tattoos flared one last time, then vanished completely, leaving only bare flesh, pink or brown according to the natural color of each wizard’s skin tone. Something moved on the ground below, red and fiery.

Darik leaned over the battlement, the wizards temporarily forgotten. Five giant red snakes burst from the ground, one after another, as if emerging from hidden lairs. Each snake was a hundred feet long, the size of the dragon Darik and Sofiana had spotted in the desert. They had horns and great, shaggy heads, but their bodies were completely snake-like, except that they seemed to be made of fire. They raced through the army of wights in every direction, burning and scattering enemies. Every time one of the wights caught fire, the snake’s flames diminished slightly.

The sighing horde was soon crackling and burning. A long, unearthly wail rose from their mouths until it became a howl. Darik slapped his hands over his ears, that mindless sound dragging him back to the Desolation of Toth. Ethan and Rouhani cried out in fear next to him. When Darik had recovered his wits, he looked down to see the fiery snakes dissolving with a final burst of sparks and smoke.

But the creatures had done their duty, and the enemy was in full retreat from the city walls. They were no longer a single, throbbing mass as they scattered across the plain, but ten thousand individual wights: men, women, children, horses, war elephants, giants. All of them fleeing in terror, as if pursued by the Harvester and his hounds. And perhaps they were. Darik thought he caught the ring of a distant horn before it was drowned in the cheers and triumphant blasts of trumpets along the city walls. One of the guild towers rang its bells, and it was answered in short order by other towers throughout Balsalom.

Chantmer leaned against the wall, panting. Sweat poured down his temples and dripped off the tip of his beard. But he was flushed with triumph, his eyes glittering. The other wizards seemed more beaten, some on their knees, others bent over double and gasping. One by one they began to pull up their robes to cover their bare torsos.