Wizardborn (64 page)

Suddenly a ball of fierce white light came screaming from the west, ignited the fell powders.

The resulting fireball erupted high in the air, sent out a deep boom that went echoing for miles. The ground trembled, and three black spires on the reavers' fortress shattered. The reavers could endure it no more.

From the warrens to the south, thousands of reavers came streaming from their burrows, weapons in hand.

Meanwhile, from the fortress, the fell sorceress hurled a counterspell. A thundering
gasht
sound erupted, and noxious
fumes billowed from every kill hole in the fortress. The flames near the fortress sputtered and died.

“Attack,” Raj Ahten screamed, filling the hills with the power of his Voice.

The artillerymen south of the flames loosed volleys of rocks and ballista bolts into the onrushing horde. His army of commoners did not balk. They split into two wings and raced to meet the reavers.

Raj Ahten did not concern himself with the battle on the plains. He spurred a great Imperial warhorse toward the fortress, drew his hammer. Men charged around him and ahead.

Flanked by burning runes, he felt a sudden sense of serenity. There was a presence here in battle that he had never sensed before. It had no body or form, only a vast appetite. He felt as if it were a cloud, hovering above the battlefield, like an eagle waiting to feast.

It did not speak, yet he felt certain that it was mindful of him.

He hit the swirling mists, held his breath as his charger plunged through. His eyes and nose burned at the very touch of the air.

His mount reached the pits, and Raj Ahten leapt down. The sky went black as he scrambled up the other side. The flameweavers drew fire from the heavens. In moments they would begin hurling massive fireballs toward the kill holes of the fortress.

Screams filled the battlefield as his armies clashed with the reaver horde.

The sky brightened again, filled with fiery light and a whooshing sound. A fireball streaked from Az.

Half a dozen warriors gained the entrance to the fortress, ran inside. The reavers' lair was painfully dark.

Kill holes were set above and below the entrance. The first warrior who raced inside halted for half a second as a knight gig dropped down, hooked him beneath the chin, and jerked him upward.

A second man took a reaver's blade through the crotch.
The force of the blow drove him upward a dozen feet into the ceiling. He rained a spray of blood as he fell. A third man saw the danger and leapt through quickly, dodging past a blow from above, another from a side slot. The entrance became a deadly gauntlet.

The tunnel sloped up along a sinuous curve into perfect blackness. Raj Ahten smelled the rising danger of a reaver's curse back at the end of the tunnel, and it issued forth before he could warn his men.

He leapt from the entrance. A cloud of green-gray shot from the gullet of the lair. Twenty men disappeared.

Raj Ahten leapt through before the sorceress could hurl another spell.

He realized that he might well be the only man in the world fit to breach the reavers' fortress. He had endowments of sight that let him see the reavers' shimmering forms even in perfect darkness. His metabolism and grace let him leap past deadly blades faster than the reavers could move.

In less than a second after the sorceress had cast her spell, he was up the tunnel.

He leapt into her open mouth, thrust his warhammer into her soft upper palate before she knew he had even charged. Brains and blood rained down as she opened her mouth in alarm, staggered back.

He rolled from her mouth, ducked beneath her legs. He felt a rush of peace and comfort. There was something deeply satisfying about killing reavers.

The walls around him shuddered as a fireball slammed against the fortress, spilling light through a thousand kill holes. Up ahead he saw his next target, another sorceress.

He had gained ingress to the reavers' fortress.

   53   

What avails a blow that does not take a man's life? It only alerts the prey to danger.

—
From the Teachings of the Silent Ones

“Hear me! Hear me, O People!” a man shouted in the dawn, filling the streets with the sound of his voice.

The Emir Owatt woke from his slumber in the Dedicate's tower at his palace in Bel Nai, a city near the sea in the small country of Tuulistan, just north of Kuhran.

The emir was blind. He had given the use of his eyes to Raj Ahten. And because the emir was beloved by his people, he had been made Raj Ahten's vector.

As such, he was pampered here in Bel Nai, like some woman's old cat.

The emir did not stir, did not stumble out to the balcony to better hear. The fellow who shouted had great endowments of voice, so that his words flew above the dusty streets and trumpeted above the noise of the city—the bawling of camels, the crowing of roosters, the first morning cries of vendors in the bazaar. “Hear the words of Wuqaz Faharaqin, Warlord of the Ah'Kellah, as I raise the Atwaba against a murderer most despicable: he who calls himself ‘Lord of the Sun,' Raj Ahten.”

It had been but six short years ago that Emir Owatt was captured in the Palace of Weeping Vines at Ma'al. At the time, Raj Ahten's Invincibles had surrounded the entire
city. By surrendering, the emir had hoped to save his people from outright slaughter.

Now he climbed from his bed and hobbled to the small open window, grasping the bars with both hands. The cool night air off the ocean slapped him like a woman's open palm.

Nine-year-old Messan came rushing up the tower stairs. “Father! Father! Do you hear?”

“Yes, I hear very well,” the emir said. “Come, be my eyes. Tell me what you see?”

The boy grabbed the elbow of his father's burnoose, and stood on tiptoe. The smell of dust, camels, and smoke hung over the city, along with the scent of wet hemp, which women in the markets wove into rope and baskets.

Emir Owatt could hear the scuffle of feet as people went running. Guards shouted at the gate.

“There is a great crowd gathering outside the keep,” Messan whispered. “Three Invincibles sit on their horses in the square.”

“You are sure they are Invincibles?”

“They are sitting on Imperial warhorses, and all wear the surcoats of Invincibles among the Ah'kellah. One man has wings on his breast and helm. He is holding something—the head of a man. He has it by the hair!”

Owatt could hear the ring of mail, the scuff of boots over stone down below him.

“What are our guards doing?”

“Some are running to the gates, others are taking posts on the towers. Some have strung their horn bows, and look as if they will shoot.”

“Our guards will not shoot,” the emir predicted. “Wuqaz Faharaqin has great respect. They must listen to what he has to say.”

“Hear me!” Wuqaz shouted. “In Rofehavan, an Earth King has arisen, Gaborn Val Orden. He has wed Iome Vanisalaam Sylvarresta, and is now our lord's own cousin by marriage. The Earth King has warned that we are in great danger, and begs Raj Ahten to put aside his conflict until
the enemies of mankind are laid low. But Raj Ahten dishonors our nation. He champions the reavers' cause by battling his own kin!”

At that there were shouts of horror and cries of disbelief from the square. Some people shouted, “Liar. This man is lying.”

“Wuqaz is holding up the head, to show the people,” Messan said.

The boy fell silent as Wuqaz relayed what had befallen Carris. Wuqaz told of a battle, with reavers surrounding a castle. He told how his men fought to defend Carris, for in doing so they defended all mankind.

But Raj Ahten tried to flee the city by boat, leaving women, children, and his own common troops to suffer the ministrations of reavers.

And when the Earth King charged from the hills, Choosing for his army Raj Ahten and all of his Invincibles, Raj Ahten sought to restrain his troops from giving aid, leaving the Earth King to die.

“Even when his favored wife, Saffira, appeared and bade our king lay aside his war,” Wuqaz shouted, “Raj Ahten withheld aid. She had endowments of glamour and voice from thousands, and only the strongest being could have resisted her. Raj Ahten resisted.

“He let the reavers slaughter his own wife, as the Earth King faced the reaver horde alone!”

At this news, Emir Owatt gasped, then dropped to his knees, leaning against the wall for support. Messan grabbed him.

The emir had long feared this. He'd feared it ever since that dreadful night when Raj Ahten laid his siege at Ma'al. He had known then that he in his tiny kingdom would never be able to fight Raj Ahten.

His mind flashed back to that night. He could not fight, but he'd devised another plan, one that offered hope that he might yet vanquish the Wolf Lord.

He took all of the forcibles in his treasury, and had the facilitators forge them anew, so that each held a rune of
glamour or voice. Then he'd used them on his tender daughter, Saffira.

Raj Ahten was a man of fierce appetites. The emir had suspected that the Wolf Lord would not be able to resist the child. “Beg him not to kill us,” Owatt had warned Saffira. “He will spare us for your sake. Ask him to prepare a place of honor among his Dedicates.”

After the surrender, Raj Ahten demanded the use of the emir's tongue, believing that the emir must have great endowments of voice with which to beguile his people. After all, how else could a lord be so beloved by the commoners?

But a search of the emir's scars showed that he bore no endowments of voice. Owatt offered instead his eyes, saying to Raj Ahten, “Take them, for I do not wish to see how you will make my people suffer.”

It had been a poor choice. Too often Owatt had heard the cries of his people in the markets.

He'd long suspected that Saffira would die by violence. He'd been afraid that in some petty fit, Raj Ahten might strike her. With his endowments of brawn, any blow he delivered would destroy the girl.

But Raj Ahten became fond of Saffira—as fond as his nature allowed. He'd pampered her, conceded to her wishes, sired her children, and showered her with gifts. She was as much a wife as he would ever know.

Now, the emir learned that, indeed, Raj Ahten had murdered Saffira—pretty little Saffira.

In the square, an old woman began to cry out angrily, “Liar! Tongue of the snake!”

Always, the emir felt surprised to hear any common person rise in defense of Raj Ahten. To speak against him was outlawed, and so one could go for months without hearing a single whisper of discontent, yet he often imagined that others kept their discontent hidden inside, as he did.

I am a blind man, the emir thought, and even I can see his evil.

Wuqaz shouted, “I do not lie. Let me tell you all: Here is the head of an Invincible—Pashtuk by name—whom Raj Ahten slew in an effort to kill the Earth King.

“By the Atwaba, I call upon all good men: Throw off the yoke of Raj Ahten! There must be only one king—the Earth King!”

The emir's heart pounded fiercely in his chest. He knew that Wuqaz spoke to him. True, he was in the market more than a hundred yards below, but he had come here to shout outside these walls, knowing that the emir was here, knowing that Owatt might be cowed, but would never surrender.