Shards of a Broken Crown (60 page)

“If your
husband doesn’t object, I’ll join you,” said Nakor.
“Come this way.” He motioned toward an opening in the
fence, between sections of the building, and they entered.

Once they had
entered, Nakor saw what the structures were. A huge square had three
small buildings at each corner. In the center rose six large stones,
each one carved with runes that set Miranda’s teeth on edge to
view. “What is this place?” she asked.

“It’s
a place of summoning, a place of dark magic, a place from which
something very bad will come,” said Nakor.

They saw
movement in the dark, in the middle of the ring of stones. They moved
forward quietly. A band of men, all wearing dark robes, stood around
a large stone. Behind the stone was a man who stood with arms
outstretched, one who chanted something to the sky.

“Now we
know why that man was so afraid,” whispered Nakor. “Look!”

Upon the stone
lay a young woman, her eyes wide with terror, a gag in her mouth. Her
hands were tied to rings of iron in the stone and she was dressed in
a short black sleeveless shift.

Nakor’s
eyes widened as he considered this. “We must leave!” he
said urgently.

Miranda said,
“We can’t leave her there to die.”

“Thousands
will die soon if we don’t leave,” he whispered, holding
her elbow and steering her back toward the exit.

Then there came
a rumbling in the air, and Nakor said, “Run!”

Miranda didn’t
hesitate, and followed Nakor out the doorway. The soldiers nearby
ignored the two who ran from the building, for their eyes were
riveted on the scene before them. A faint blue-green light was
gathering around the building, swirling as if being stirred by a
giant invisible stick.

Nakor stopped a
few yards before Miranda and held his staff overhead. “Fly!”
he shouted.

Miranda halted,
closed her eyes, and gathered her own powers to fly. She leaped
forward, as if diving, but rather than falling, she rose. She grabbed
Nakor’s staff and hauled him into the sky.

She flew in a
straight line, up the hillside, then began a gentle turn. When she
could look down upon the building, she said, “Oh, gods of
mercy!”

Up the coast, a
dozen lights like the one before them had blossomed, evil green and
blue lights that filled the night with a terrible illumination. Then
down the coast came a line of power, moving from each of the
constructions, starting somewhere near Ylith and ending below where
Miranda flew.

A note painful
to hear rang and below those soldiers camped nearest the building
reeled back from the sound. A faint light spread out in a fan from
the building, toward the Kingdom camp, growing fainter as it went. It
shifted through the spectrum, going to red, then back to green, then
to violet. A last deep indigo wave faded from view, and the grinding
sound suddenly stopped.

Then, on the
battlefield, the dead began to rise.

Men screamed.

Erik raced from
his tent, barely dressed, holding his sword. Battle-hardened soldiers
were fleeing in terror, while others struggled at the front. He
grabbed one man, and shouted, “What is it?”

The man’s
eyes were wide with horror and he could only point to the front of
the line as he pulled free of Erik’s grasp and ran. Erik
hurried to the front of the line, and for a moment he couldn’t
understand what he saw.

His men were
fighting a vicious action against the invader, and he leaped forward,
shouting, “All units to the line!”

Then he saw one
of the men locked in struggle with a Kingdom soldier who wore the
tunic of a different Kingdom unit. For a second he wondered if they
had been infiltrated. Then he saw the man’s face, and the hair
on Erik’s neck and arms stood up. He felt revulsion unlike
anything he had known in his short life.

The soldier
trying to kill his former companion was dead. His lifeless eyes were
still rolled up in his head and the flesh of his face was pallid and
slack. But his movements were deliberate as he swung his sword.

Erik jumped
forward and severed the thing’s head from its body with a
single blow. The head rolled away, but the body kept swinging the
sword. Erik hacked again and severed the creature’s arm, yet
the creature pressed forward.

Jadow Shati
leaped past Erik and cut the creature’s leg out from under it.
The corpse toppled over.

“Man, they
won’t stop.”

Erik recognized
the danger. Beyond the horror of facing men already dead, which had
caused one man in four to run in fear, the dead were unrelenting.
They could not be stopped unless they were hacked to pieces. And
while one was being butchered, another would strike and kill a
Kingdom soldier.

Then Erik saw a
freshly killed Kingdom soldier rise up, his eyes rolled up in his
head, and turn to attack his former companions.

“How do we
fight them?” shouted Jadow.

“Fire!”
said Erik. He turned and shouted, “Hold them here!” and
ran to the rear. Men were running forward to answer the alarm, and
Erik held up his hands, halting a score of them. “Go to the
rear and get all the hay the cavalry left.” He pointed to where
the road narrowed. “Lay it from there, to there.” He
indicated another point opposite it across the road. Then he ran to
another squad who were about to run to the front, and shouted, “Strip
the tents! Get everything that will burn and pile it on the hay.”

“What hay,
Captain?” asked one soldier.

“When you
get back with the tents, you’ll see the hay.”

Erik hurried to
the rear, where the engineers had been sleeping under their partially
completed catapults. They were up and buckling on weapons, ready to
defend their war engines if necessary. “Are any of these
finished?” asked Erik.

The Captain of
Engineers, a stocky man with a grey beard, said, “This one is
ready, Captain, and that other over there is just about ready to go.
What is going on?”

Erik grasped the
man’s arm. “Go to the front. See where our forward
positions are. Return here and aim your catapult at that location.”

The Captain of
Engineers ran off, while Erik turned to the rest of his crew. “How
many of you will it take to finish that other catapult?”

One of the
engineers said, “Just two of us, Captain. All we have to do is
install the locking clamps on the arm. We could have finished last
night, but we wanted to get supper.”

“Go finish
it. The rest of you, come with me.”

He led them to
the baggage train and shouted to the soldiers guarding it, “Get
to the front and hold!”

They ran off,
and Erik pointed to a pair of wagons sitting on the side of the road.
He asked the engineers, “Can any of you hitch up those horses?”

All of them
answered they could, so Erik said, “Get half that oil to the
front, where you’ll see them building a barricade, and the
other half to the catapults.”

He ran back to
the front. The plan would only work if they could keep the dead
soldiers outside the barricade. And until that task was finished,
Erik could serve his cause best by using his power to hack apart each
dead soldier trying to get past the diamonds.

Miranda said,
“We must get Pug and Tomas!”

They watched
from a vantage point among the trees upon the hillside, as the
Kingdom forces rallied to repulse the first wave of undead soldiers.
Then Nakor heard horns blowing at the rear of Fadawah’s army.
Men under arms gathered and formed up behind the struggle taking
place at the diamonds. “Yes,” said Nakor. “Get Pug
and Tomas, and Ryana if she’s there.”

Miranda
vanished.

Nakor heard a
trumpet sound, and the Kingdom forces at the diamonds retreated to a
barrier wall that had been building rapidly behind them. They leaped
over it and those who were wounded were dragged up and over it by
their comrades. No man wished to die and turn against his comrades.

Then a fire was
ignited and another. Suddenly the barricade was ablaze. Von Darkmoor,
he thought. Young Erik was thinking fast on his feet.

The dead
stumbled into the flames and noiselessly they flailed about, until
they collapsed upon the ground. The few that managed to gain a
purchase on the burning barriers were pushed back by spears and
poles.

Then Nakor heard
the sound of a war engine firing and in the darkness he could see
something flying over the camp to land near the diamonds. A minute
later another missile came flying overhead and landed closer to the
barricade. Nakor could see a barrel explode upon impact, sending oil
in all directions, which ignited when some struck the barricade. The
pool of fire engulfed those corpses stumbling toward the barricade
and soon they were falling.

Pug, Tomas,
Ryana, and Miranda suddenly appeared next to Nakor.

Pug said,
“Gods!”

Nakor said,
“Those corpses aren’t the problem, Pug. Erik von Darkmoor
is taking care of them as needed, but there is where you must go!”
He pointed northward. “Find the source of that energy, and
you’ll find the one you need to destroy.”

Battle horns
sounded, and Fadawah’s army started to march forward as the
fires began to abate.

Tomas asked,
“Where can I best serve?”

Nakor said,
“Killing those soldiers here does no good, but ending the
problem up there may save the West.”

Ryana shifted
her form and suddenly the huge dragon towered over them. “I
will carry you all.”

They climbed on
her back and she launched herself skyward. Those soldiers who
happened to be glancing toward the treeline as Ryana struck a mighty
beat of her wings and gained altitude were astonished, and many
shouted and pointed, but as the battle built in fury and the
advancing army of Fadawah bore down on the abandoned diamonds, most
were too preoccupied with survival to notice the dragon.

She circled once
and headed north.

Dash heard the
drums from the Keshians in the field. He knew he’d see what
they had in store later; the darkness hid the Keshians’
deployment as sunrise was still hours off. As best the watchmen on
the walls could tell in the dark they were facing only cavalry and
mounted infantry, with no heavy foot or war engines; Dash assumed
they had infiltrated fast-moving companies for weeks now, and that
slower-moving units had been avoided. With even half the normal
garrison here, Kesh would never risk an attack on this scale. So the
news was mixed good and bad: they were only facing swordsmen and
horse archers, but they were facing a lot of them.

Dash expected
this meant the escaping Keshian officer Duko wrote of in his message
to Patrick had successfully reached his army with the news of
Krondor’s weaknesses. The only good news in the message had
been the fact of Jimmy being alive and Malar being dead.

The word from
the palace was equally mixed. Patrick, Francie, and her father would
recover—though Lord Brian might have lasting effects from the
poison. Lord Rufio was dead, and several of the other nobles of the
area as well. Two officers had recovered enough to take up positions
on the walls, but Dash knew they were woefully undermanned to hold
off the Keshian army for more than a few hours, a day or two at best.

There were still
too many weaknesses in the defense of the city. There were ways into
the city that you didn’t have to be a Mocker to find. The dry
aqueduct along the north wall had more than a half-dozen entrances if
one simply took the time to probe. Dash wished he could have repaired
the sluice gates and flooded it, but he would have filled a hundred
cellars full of water by doing so. Suddenly an idea struck Dash. He
called out, “Gustaf!”

The mercenary
appeared and said, “Sheriff?”

“Take two
men and run to the city armory. See if we have any Quegan fire oil.
If we do, here’s what you do with it.” Dash outlined his
plan, then called to Mackey, “Hold things here while I’m
gone. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Dash hurried off
the wall and ran down High Street, to the intersection of the North
Gate road. He cut through burned-out buildings until he reached the
cleverly cleared alley and he hurried through it, despite the predawn
darkness.

He jumped fences
and ducked under obstacles, risking injury to reach his goal in as
timely a fashion as he could. He found the door he sought, a root
cellar entrance from all appearances, but really a cover to one of
the Mocker-controlled tunnels leading toward their headquarters.

He hurried down
stone steps, as lightly as he could while keeping up a good rate of
speed. He grabbed a stone wall corner with his left hand, steadying
himself as he swung around.

A man turned
with a startled expression on his face, and without breaking strike,
Dash hit him as hard as he could, dropping him to the stone floor
without a sound. Dash hurried along a wide walkway which ran above
the watercourse. There was a slow trickle of water flowing through
it. Dash knew that would change if Gustaf found the oil and used it
as directed.

Dash reached a
section of wall that appeared identical to the adjacent sections, but
which yielded to pressure, swinging open on a shaft, perfectly
balanced so as to pivot with ease. Down a short tunnel Dash hurried,
reaching a plain door. Dash knew that here he stood the biggest risk
of being killed before he could speak.

He tripped the
locks from his side, but instead of opening the door he stood back.
The audible clicks alerted someone, for after a moment the door swung
open and a curious face peered through. Dash grabbed the thief and
hauled him forward, spinning him around while off balance, and
propelling him back through the door before he entered.

The man careened
into two others who were standing on the other side of the door,
knocking all of them over in a heap.