Lesson of the Fire (28 page)

Sven cleared his throat. “Horsa, you need to
go to the army. Can you rebuild this version?”

Horsa nodded.

“Good. Listen. We will not lose Domus Palus
to Flasten’s army. You will take command, and this is what you will
do ...”

* * *

Horsa Verifien wore a marsord out of
devotion.

Since Nightfire had taken him from Rustiford
so many years ago to be a slave, and then an apprentice, he had
praised Marrish for enlightening him above everyone else. Having
the Lord of Wind and Fire as his patron, plus his strength with
Vitality, had earned his acceptance into the priesthood, and he had
achieved the highest rank they allowed there.

A yellow cloak meant one was a spokesperson
for a red, but if there was glory, it all went to the red. Then
again, if there was trouble, the red took the blame.

He was as big as Erbark Lasik — in fact,
they were cousins — but where Erbark had black hair, Horsa had dark
brown. Where Erbark had muscles of steel, Horsa had muscles like
rivers. Horsa was devoted to Marrish and the priesthood, and he
quietly wielded great influence in that sphere. Horsa doubted even
Sven suspected his role in convincing the priests to swear
allegiance to him when he took the Chair. Horsa had hoped it would
delay the bloodshed between Mar longer than this, but now he held
hope that it would save more Mar in the long term than letting
Volund have his way.

Upon receiving the Mardux’s orders, he
teleported to the leading edge of the army, certain the plan
proposed by his Mardux would be enough to save Domus Palus.

* * *

That afternoon, Erika helped Sven to the
Council with a frown on her face. He smiled and assured her he
would return directly to bed after the meeting.

Dux Gruber Ratsell of Wasfal was there.
Duxes Yver Verlren of Piljerka and Borya Zaghaf of Skrem were there
— if only because they had no place else to go. Dux Wolber Verden
was not there — Flasten’s army was too close to Gunne Palus for him
to be away from his army. Duxess Glyda Zaun did not put in an
appearance. Since the battle at Skrem Palus, her words that this
was an inter-duxy fight no matter how you twisted it had been
proven true, and she would not budge from the Bastion at Pidel
Palus. Dux Volund Feiglen, though invited, had refused to come.

“Fellow weards,” Sven told the Council. “The
Dux of Flasten has committed an egregious sin against the Duxy of
Skrem. Even now his army comes through the Duxy of Gunne. Gunne has
approved the following decree, which requires only a simple
majority: The Dux of Flasten is a traitor for his attack on the
Duxy of Skrem and subsequent invasion of the Duxy of Gunne. His
lands, title and name are to revert to the Mardux’s authority until
such time as this Council agrees Flasten should exist again.

“I have signed this document, and I ask all
of you to, as well.”

They did, for what reasons Sven could only
guess. But Borya’s pen nearly tore the paper, and Yver was only
slightly less emphatic. Gruber looked up as he signed.

“This does not yet give you the votes you
need to create your adepts.”

“Pidel’s absence in the previous trouble
with the Drakes was marked,” Sven said. “The duxy’s lack of
involvement to save the Duxy of Piljerka is reminiscent of the fall
of the Duxy of Despar. I make no accusations against the duxess. I
merely note that her isolationism is hardly in the interest of the
Mar. The following writ, also signed by Gunne already, suspends her
seat on the Council until she returns to Domus Palus.”

“You get your unanimous vote,” Gruber said.
“Every duxy is involved in this except Pidel, which is too far
south now, and Wasfal, which will certainly never be involved. Why
should I vote in favor of stripping Pidel of her rights? Then I
will be giving up my own.”

In answer, Sven motioned the three duxes to
join him at the reconnaissance stone.

“I have not told anyone else about this,” he
said, pointing to the area north of Domus Palus. “We had focused
our efforts south and east, which makes the stone more powerful.
Routinely, though, I do a sweep to the north.”

“The Mass,” Yver whispered.

Sven nodded, redirected the
myst
.
To the
north, less than four hundred miles away, was a sea of Drake life.
It extended off the map.

“We must make the adepts,” Sven said
quietly. “The Mass approaches.”

“We must make peace with Flasten,” Gruber
said, his voice shaking.

Skrem shook his head. “Never!”

Gruber did not seem to notice. “We need his
wizards to defend Domus Palus!”

Sven displayed the writ for Wasfal and held
out a quill. “Sign this, and we will have more magic-wielders in
Domus than exist in the rest of Marrishland.”

In the light of tens of thousands of
invading Drakes, the Dux of Wasfal stripped the Duxess of Pidel of
her Council seat, to save Marrishland from a threat that didn’t
exist.

Falsified intelligence is
more dangerous than no intelligence at all,
Sven thought.
With luck, Wasfal and
others who might be my enemies will not recognize the deception
until the adepts are too numerous and useful to destroy.

No single recon spell could stretch four
hundred miles. Sven would have had to set up an entire network of
recon stones in the Fens of Reur to see across them.

Reconnaissance can be falsified on either
end of the spell.

On the map, the imaginary Mass crept
forward.

* * *

In the Fens of Reur, the real Mass crept
forward.

Riding on a platform on top of a striped
guer — one of the largest species of guer — Katla felt like the
tiniest speck of myst in Marrishland. The Wave Commander, a jabber
guer, stood near her, watching the army pulse below them. He had
long since gotten over the novelty of having her there.

Despite herself, she looked back over her
shoulder. Of course she could not see the Second Wave. It was more
than a span behind them, and east besides — the First Wave stripped
the land of everything as it marched south. But it was coming. She
had seen it form, and the Third and Fourth Waves. She stared back
ahead, trying to convince herself she was still in control. They
had not let her talk to the Delegates yet.

You had better get those wizards back to the
capital, Sven!

It was the only hope the Mar had of
surviving, and even with her brother in charge of the forces there,
she knew it was a dim one.

So many will die in this war — Drakes,
mundanes and magocrats. By Seruvus, it was not supposed to come to
this!

* * *

Bui, Eda and the others from Tortz hid in
trees on the edge of Flasten’s army, well above anyone’s line of
sight. Like any Mar army, this one stretched and compacted like a
snake’s belly as it moved through the swamp. Occasionally, several
dozen greens would drift far to one side and then trickle back
in.

Slowly but surely, five were headed their
way.

Bui waved two fingers at Eda, who passed the
signal around to the other side.

Two minutes.

They slowly counted to one hundred twenty,
until the five were below them, and then, with a holler, they
pounced on the wizards. Eda countered the few spells that would
have been effective at such close range as knives flashed and blood
spurted.

The five wizards never stood up again.

Quietly, the mundanes stripped the wizards
of cloaks, gloves, boots and rations, and then they disappeared
into the swamp.

* * *

War.

The word reverberated off the trees. It
flowed with the rivers. The mud sucked it up, and konig worms ate
it, infected the Drakes, and they knew of it. And as the Mar
rediscovered the power they had unleashed, the Mass, dark and
sinister, crept south toward Domus Palus.

The Domus army tramped through the Duxy of
Flasten, following their Mardux’s last orders to them. When they
came across Drakes, they killed them, exterminating a problem Dux
Feiglin had fought for many years. During that time, they
learned.

Before war, there had been battles. Battles
had been individual confrontations or paid-for events for most of
the army’s wizards. Battle magic was limited to blasts of Power and
Energy — hardly anyone spent time on defensive magic. The wizards
were better healers than warriors, but they weren’t skilled enough
to cure disease.

Now, they were learning to work together.
They had heard of Hallgerd and Flosi and their disastrous battle
because of lack of knowledge. They had seen how Sven had wielded a
thousand wizards like a razor to an infected leg, dividing and
defeating chunks of Drakes. They practiced that.

Flasten’s army pulsated. On a reconnaissance
stone, the brilliant blob representing the army birthed a hundred
little scouts — groups of eighty, a hundred or more wizards sent to
“retrieve deserters” or “hunt ravits.” And interspersed with them,
between them, among them, entirely invisible, were the guerrillas,
abiding by their remorse.

In Domus Palus a new army formed. The
priests were appointed to gather mundanes and teach them magic.
There came to be three types of rotes passed on. Attack adepts
learned Power or Energy. Defense adepts learned to create walls of
force and the basics of countering magic. Healer adepts used
Vitality to cure burns and broken bodies. All were given bright
green armbands to wear over their cloaks, patches torn from a dead
green, a reminder of what power could bring you.

The Duxy of Pidel heard of the war and did
nothing.

The Takraf Protectorates fought a different
war, a war against itself. It was quiet, it was insidious, and it
didn’t show up on Sven’s reconnaissance stones. What alarm would
sound if groups of Mar wandered from town to town in the
Protectorates where Sven had worked for years to encourage
inter-village cooperation? Einar explained the one red the stones
showed. Anti-divination spells surrounded Robert, Valgird and Ari
as they plunged into the Protectorates like a boot into mud — with
little or no resistance and perfectly protected by Sven’s defenses
from the dangerous things they might otherwise have
encountered.

Chapter 23

“
While Mar scholars are best known for
their devotion to logic and empiricism, mundane Mar have always
placed great trust in the interpretation of natural phenomena. It
is not so surprising, then, that Sven Takraf so often sees omens
and portents scattered throughout his life, guiding him on the path
set for him by the gods. The thinkers of the Duxy of Pidel prize
and practice both modes of thinking — one for its practicality and
the other as necessary to living a good and moral life.”

— Pondr,

Collected Journals,
edited by Weard Asa Sehtah

The Bastion of Pidel Palus was the most
bizarre structure Erbark had ever seen. Four roads led to the rise
of land upon which Pidel had built the Bastion. One led to Domus
Palus, another led out of the country, a third to the docks along
the southern coast. The last led north into the Dead Swamps, once
the road to Despar Palus. Eight spires marked the points of the
octagonal fortress. Every wall was identical — perfectly level,
precisely forty blocks of stone high. Amazingly, the Bastion lacked
a gate. Each road led to a blank stone wall, and there were no
windows — just tiny air holes.

“How am I to get in?” Erbark said out
loud.

Teleportation,
he realized.

The Duxy of Pidel was reputed to be the only
region in Marrishland able to produce wizards as skilled as the
graduates of Nightfire’s Academy. Only the duxess and her closest
councilors lived within the walls of the Bastion. The duxess’s
advisors were all powerful wizards. They did not need guards on the
towers, and they did not need gates. Their magic was enough to
provide both defense and accessibility.

No green’s Mobility trick can get me inside,
nor would a stairway of Power. Linetel requires a clear path to
travel. Formtel cannot travel uphill. Memtel cannot access a place
never visited.

Erbark could use none. Even ambers seldom
learned these lesser types of teleportation.

That leaves hightel — true
teleportation.

That was the teleportation of reds and some
yellows. It was as much out of his reach as morutmanon. The
statement the Bastion’s design made was clear.

“
Peace in the swamp,
” a woman’s voice
said in Middling Gien behind him.

Erbark whirled and found
himself facing a middle-aged woman dressed in red.
“
Peace in the swamp
,” he responded, the language sounding unnatural in his mouth.
“
I am Erbark Lasik.
”

She spoke quickly, easily.
There was a poetry there. “
I am Duxess
Glyda Zaun. You have come not in peace but in war. I see the
Mardux’s marks upon you.
”

Erbark struggled to
translate the words as she spoke them. He raised his right hand in
salute and prayed she would not force him to argue rhetoric in
Middling Gien.
Sven should have sent
someone else.

“
I
beg your aid,
” he managed, his
pronunciation clumsy.
“Side with us and
you will end this war. Flasten knows he cannot defeat all the
duxies.
”

“
The Duxy of Pidel will not involve itself in the conflict
between Domus and Flasten.
” She spoke
firmly and without room for argument.

Erbark gave up, switching to Mar. “The
Mardux didn’t want a war between Mar. His enemy is Dinah, but Dux
Feiglin has sided with the Bald Goddess against Marrishland. Mardux
Takraf only wishes an end to this bloodshed.”