The Free Kingdoms (Book 2) (21 page)

“Hahahaha,” the dragon laughed as it turned slowly, in a deep voice that frightened Darik worse than its roar. “Come here little sparrow. I am hungry.”

Darik and Joffa dove toward the ground as the dragon flew overhead, searching for Flockheart, who sped west, shouting taunts. “Daria!” he cried. “Where are you?”

He heard the griffin scream again, closer and he brought Joffa to the ground in a copse of trees. The griffin cry sounded again, closer.

“Daria?”

“Darik!” she answered and relief flooded him. “Over here.”

“Where are you?” he asked, turning in the direction from which he thought he’d heard her voice. Joffa waddled forward.

“Don’t let Joffa see us,” she said, the urgency so strong in her voice that he stopped immediately. He dismounted from Joffa and tied the tether around a tree branch.

He stepped through the trees, searching through the darkness for movement and stumbling once at a root that reached up to trip him. “Where are you? We don’t have much time.”

Griffin and rider sat in a clearing in the trees, branches torn all around them. A dead dragon wasp lay a few feet away. Daria rose from Averial’s side and he felt a fresh surge of relief. “Thank the brothers that you’re alive,” he said.

“Darik,” she said, gesturing for him to come closer. He obeyed.

Darik took one look at Averial and knew she was finished. One wing was torn almost completely away and a huge gash opened her underbelly wide, exposing intestines and stomach. She flapped the other wing feebly, while Daria tried to settle her down. Darik felt sick.

“Daria,” he said, meaning to urge her to hurry, but he couldn’t. “Oh, Daria. I’m so sorry.” He took her in his arms.

Daria wrapped her arms around his neck and wept. “I can’t leave her here. Alone with that thing hunting her. No, I can’t.”

Darik imagined the dragon settling onto the terrified griffin to tear it apart and nodded. “You’re right. But what can we do to help?” he asked, even as the answer came to him. “Oh, there really is only one thing, isn’t there?”

“Would you, would you do it, Darik?” she asked in a voice that was barely a whisper as she pulled away from him. “I don’t think I could.”

Darik swallowed to force down the huge lump rising in his throat. He nodded. “Yes, I’ll do it.”

He pulled out Waspcleaver. The blade gleamed in the dim light, still stained with the blackened blood of wasp and rider. He wiped it on the grass and took a tentative step toward Averial. Wounded as she was, the griffin could still tear his arm from its socket or open his belly with a claw.

But Averial didn’t move as he drew closer. Her cries grew louder and sounded frightened. Joffa screamed an answer from the trees further back and Darik feared he would tear the flimsy tether to shreds and come over to attack him. Daria hurried in to comfort Averial, wrapping her arms around the griffin’s shoulders.

“Stay to the back,” he told Daria, his voice trembling almost as much as his hands. “I don’t trust myself to swing true.”

She nodded and backed up, resting her head against Averial’s haunches and closing her eyes. “Hurry, Darik. Hurry, before I lose my will.”

Darik stepped forward and lifted the sword overhead, hoping for Whelan’s strength to end it in a single blow. He brought the sword down as hard as he could, while Averial screamed in pain and Daria sobbed.

Alas, he was so damnably weak and clumsy. It took five gashes with Waspcleaver to finish the terrible deed.

#

The thread of light didn’t progress in a straight line. First it led Markal west along the Way, then departed from the road a few miles from Sleptstock, when the sounds of battle faded in the distance. The farms this side of the Citadel grew lush and green, still a few weeks from the first frost. Bees buzzed among flowering vines that grew in the hedgerows. A few sheep, ungathered stragglers, he guessed, grazed peacefully in a field, watching him with that stupored look of indifference that sheep mastered better than any other animal. He told them to run or be killed, but they ignored him, lured into complacency by the quiet in the air.

But Markal knew better. He couldn’t shake the bloodshed at Sleptstock. It returned him to the worst battles of the Tothian War. He spurred his horse past the sheep, following the thread of seeking.

By late afternoon, someone followed him. It started as a whisper in his mind, and soon he heard murmuring voices. He rode along a stream bank as it flowed through sheep pastures, when the air filled with the smell of sulfur. His horse shivered nervously, itching to run. Blue lights appeared on the hillside that rose above the stream on his left, and Markal gave the horse his lead. It danced through the stream and raced across the pasture through the darkness. The horse stumbled, and Markal feared it would break a leg. At last, the horse stopped, head hanging in exhaustion, but they had outrun the wights.

Markal reached the Citadel shortly, surprised that the thread hadn’t simply followed the Tothian Way into the city. He’d supposed at first that Chantmer was on the move all afternoon, but he wasn’t sure by the time he reached Eastgate.

Torches lit every window in the Golden Tower, making its surface glow like a beacon over the lands that surrounded the city. It would be the chief prize in the looting. No doubt Toth’s soldiers dreamt of gold tonight.

Markal was challenged as he approached Eastgate. A man with a crossbow shouted, “Who are you and what business have you in the Citadel?” Other men stood on the towers, armored and armed.

Markal swept back his hood and raised his blackened right hand. “Markal of the Order.”

The man nodded grimly and signaled to someone behind him. “Do you have news of Sleptstock?”

By now, advance riders would have galloped west to prepare the city for the retreating army and brace the Citadel for assault. And they could smell the smoke of Sleptstock burning as well as he could.

“No more than you already have,” he answered.

The gates creaked open on their hinges. He dropped from the horse, now mumbling to itself in exhaustion, and led it through the gates, patting the beast’s neck in thanks for carrying him so swiftly. Through the gates, a series of iron portcullises raised ahead of him with the clank and grind of chains and gears. They were designed to drop should the enemy breach the gates, but had been lowered for extra caution.

Eastgate led him right into the Citadel, divided by the Way as it entered Arvada. He stood and let its familiar comfort wash over him.
Sanctuary.
 

It was still early evening, and the Citadel bustled with activity as the city prepared itself for war. Unlike last time he’d entered the city, its barracks and stables filled with armies arriving from the far reaches of Eriscoba. As he climbed the Golden Tower, the city bustled below him. Daniel gathered all remaining forces for one battle. Should they lose, should Toth destroy their armies, there would be nothing left to oppose him.

To Markal’s surprise, the thread of light led him up the stairs, past Chantmer’s apartments, toward the Thorne Chamber itself. Nobody was up this high. Doors to rooms hung open, torches burning in windows, but the sentinels at those windows had deserted their posts. It worried him.

The thread of seeking brightened with every step, but he pushed through a thickening cloud that poured down from above. A voice whispered in his head for him to stop, so compelling that he almost retreated and forgot his purpose. Markal recognized the spells even as they battered his will. Spells of sending, of warding, of forbidding, as many as eight or ten all wound together in a ball of protection about the wizard. If Markal actually reached the chamber, he would be powerless to approach Chantmer with the intention of doing harm.

Markal could scarcely comprehend the will, the conviction required to gather such force. It was wizards like Toth and Chantmer, and Memnet the Great who wielded true power, their power driven by conviction that reached toward madness. For Toth, it was the conviction that he was the one true king of Mithyl, equal to the Brothers who had created it, conviction that sustained him beyond the grave. For Chantmer—well, Markal had thought him devoted to the Order and the teachings of the Martyr, but now he wasn’t so sure.

The door to the Thorne Chamber lay wide open, instead of closed as he’d thought it would be. Markal pushed through the last spell and stepped into the chamber. Chantmer sat on the dais in the middle of the room, back turned, while swirling red light surrounded the man’s head. He hunched over something.

“So,” Markal said in a loud voice. “Chantmer the Tall has taken the Martyr’s seat again. I shouldn’t be surprised, since he has lifted himself above the Order.”

Chantmer lifted a hand—an
unblackened
hand, Markal noted with surprise. “Spare me your scolding, Talebearer. I have no time for such trifles.” His voice was strained.

Markal approached the dais cautiously. He stepped around until he faced the wizard, who looked up with a tired face that still managed a sneer of contempt. Chantmer’s right hand was also whole. Where did he get his power, then?

He held the steel tome on his lap: words danced across the page and pictures flickered in and out of focus. A picture appeared of the Tothian Way and Hoffan’s army retreating toward the Citadel. Chantmer watched for a moment, but as soon as he turned his attention back to Markal, the picture dissolved into a swirl of colors.

“The Tome of Prophesy,” Markal said. “You can read it?”

Chantmer laughed, but it was forced. “Ah yes, your little spell. I will admit, it confused me for a time, but Narud and Nathaliey haven’t the skill to hide themselves.” He shrugged. “And once I swept them aside, the tome revealed truths and hidden knowledge that you can only guess at.”

Chantmer lifted his hand to the thread of light—the
seeking
—that connected the two wizards’ chests together. He snapped his fingers and the thread dissolved. The shade disappeared from Markal’s eyes. The magic to discern and break the spell appeared to cost Chantmer nothing.

Markal fought down his worry to complete the task for which he had come. “Why did you betray us at Sleptstock, Chantmer.”

Chantmer feigned ignorance. “Betray you?”

Sudden anger sparked in Markal, hot enough to burn him alive. “Yes! You betrayed us. Our gurgolet might have fought Toth’s wyrm to a standstill, if you hadn’t interfered. We’d have held the bridge.”

Chantmer appeared to find this genuinely funny. Laughing, he shut the book and put it to his side, then rose to his feet. “
Your
gurgolet?
Yours?
None of you had the power to raise that monster without my strength.”

Markal clenched his teeth. “That is precisely my point. If you had been there, and not on a self-appointed mission, we’d have won the battle.”

Chantmer’s eyes narrowed. “Your gurgolet meant nothing to that battle. That beast hasn’t the strength to defeat Toth. No, nothing you tried at Sleptstock would have held the enemy.”

“And you purposefully scattered the Brotherhood on a fool quest, knowing all along that it was Tainara’s wight killing the king.”

Chantmer shrugged. “An unfortunate coincidence. A mistake.”

Markal clenched his teeth. “Mistake or not, the Knights Temperate are gone, just when we need them the most. And what of this? You swore by the Wounded Hand that you would tell me everything, and I find you working to your own purposes again.”

“What is there to tell that you don’t already know?” Chantmer said with another shrug of dismissal. He walked to the window, where the torchlight reflected off his face. “Only that I needed the gurgolet for my own use. When I felt Toth trying to take control, I simply let him do so.”

Markal could answer some of his earlier questions. He’d already guessed that Chantmer fancied himself successor to Memnet the Great, the wizard who destroyed Toth. But why the gurgolet? Why fight directly against the armies of the Citadel? He knew now, as well as the source of Chantmer’s magic.

“You killed those men,” Markal said softly. “You helped build the gurgolet so you could draw the life force of men it destroyed. But why let Toth turn it against your own army?”

“For a man of such wisdom, you are a fool, Markal. Toth has bound the life forces of his own men. He needs a constant stream of death to keep his soul from being gathered until he can bind it permanently to a human body. I had no choice. I had to use
our
men.”

It disgusted Markal to see Chantmer reduced to such levels. “You will be cast from the Order for doing such a thing. I swear it.”

“You do what you must. Now go, I have work to do.” He returned to his seat and picked up the book. The strain returned to his face. This close to Toth, he no doubt fought the dark wizard to control the tome every time he opened it.

“The book is not yours,” Markal said, refusing to move. “At the least, it belongs to the Order, but the book was in my care before you took it under false pretenses. And before you bent it to your will, it spoke to the boy.”

He hadn’t thought this would work, and indeed, Chantmer gave this demand no consideration or argument. Eyes blazing, he lifted his hand, whispering a spell under his breath. “Go!”

The command drove Markal from the room. He staggered backwards to the hallway, physically shoved. His head rang with the clamor of a thousand bells and he couldn’t focus his eyes. Chantmer turned back to his book, even as Markal staggered down the stairs.

When he reached the close on the north side of the Golden Tower, he stopped and breathed deeply for several minutes. His head cleared slowly, as did the nausea. He looked up and saw Chantmer’s face in the window, before it disappeared.

They didn’t have strength enough to fight Chantmer. Neither could they afford to turn their attentions from Toth’s army. Perhaps Chantmer really had the potency to challenge Toth, and could draw the dark wizard’s attentions while they fought. But supposing Chantmer defeated Toth. What then? The man was drunk with power.

By the time Markal turned toward Eastgate to wait for the other wizards, the vanguard of Hoffan’s retreating force arrived. It started as a trickle that grew to a flood of wounded and battle-weary men as the night progressed. The army was much diminished from the proud force that had marched to Sleptstock a few days earlier. Bolstered by the Eriscobans already gathered in the city, however, they would prove a formidable army to overcome. But would it be enough to turn aside the dark wizard?