War of Wizards (6 page)

Kallia had allowed herself greater hope from the riders she’d sent south to the sultanates. Daria had told her that Narud was in Marrabat. He was strange, but a powerful wizard and a friend of Markal’s. If Kallia could retrieve him, he might have some way to combat the wights.

But among these new messengers were the exhausted riders who had returned to tell her that they’d spotted an army of Marrabatti and Kratians marching north along the Spice Road. The riders had turned to race home and warn Balsalom. What did it mean? Kallia had sent her sister Marialla to marry the sultan to gain an ally in the war, and Marialla had traveled with a party of Balsalomians that included her grand vizier, Fenerath, and Whelan’s brother, Daniel, the former king of the Eriscoban Free Kingdoms. Could they have accomplished their goal so quickly? It didn’t seem possible.

Why hadn’t the two riders made contact with the army to discover its intent, she demanded. The men bowed and apologized with great ceremony. They’d meant to, they insisted, had shadowed the army for several hours, but then an advance company of Kratians set after them on camels, apparently taking them for spies or bandits. They’d fled north rather than risk capture or death. Better to warn Balsalom and let the khalifa send a larger force. If their intent was hostile, the advance force could harass and delay while Balsalom braced for attack.

Their words had a certain logic, except Kallia could no longer afford to send a larger force. Certainly, she could spare no army large enough to block the Spice Road. Kallia could only hope that the Marrabatti had friendly intentions. She ordered the two riders to get fresh mounts and leave at once, before Balsalom was surrounded. They were dusty and exhausted from the road, but seemed only too happy to be ordered out of the city. They were
so
delighted, in fact, that Kallia’s viziers chased them off with sarcastic comments, hinting they were cowards.

Kallia turned to other messengers. The watchmen had sent several survivors from Ter and Starnar, who approached the khalifa under guard. They shared what information they had about how to combat the wights—precious little, as it turned out—and confirmed that the undead army would save its attack for darkness. Magic weapons seemed to help, they said, provided conjurers could be found to cast spells. One claimed that water helped, while another said fire was effective.

Darik had bathed and dressed in leather armor over a fresh tunic with the colors of the palace guard. He and Prince Ethan stood to one side, gathering their own information, sending their own couriers in response to new information. Ethan commanded a small force of eight hundred men from the Free Kingdoms and seemed to have appointed Darik as his captain since the young man’s arrival a few hours earlier. Now, Darik asked permission to approach the khalifa.

Kallia was speaking with a refugee from Ter, the most recent city to fall. She beckoned for Darik to come over.

“Who is driving the wights?” Darik asked.

The refugee was an older woman with graying hair and clothing that had once been elegant, but was now torn and splattered with blood. She’d claimed to be the wife of a guildmaster, the only survivor from her family, who had escaped Ter in the chaos of battle to join the flood of refugees. The other refugees Kallia had spoken with had been frightened, almost stunned by their terrifying experience, but this woman spoke in calm tones, and her gaze was steady.

“They had no leader,” she told Darik, “if that is what you mean. No captain, nobody giving orders.”

“A conjurer, then? A torturer mumbling incantations?”

“No. Not that I saw.”

“How about ravagers?”

“Ravagers, my lord?”

“Mounted knights. Not ghosts, but men with bodies.
Dead
bodies. They would look like knights, dressed as Eriscobans, most likely. Do you know what a Knight Temperate is?”

The woman looked confused and glanced between Darik and Kallia, then to the viziers frowning to one side. “No, nothing like that. Only wights, spirits. Gray and blue and indistinct. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t seen them.”

“I’ve seen them,” Darik said. “I understand.”

“Is there something you’re looking for?” Kallia asked him. “Some hint or important information?”

“Wights are mindless things,” he said. “They are the souls of the dead, and their only thought is to flee from the Harvester to prevent him from gathering them. But until they hear the baying of hounds and the dark gatherer’s horn, they will remain in place.” Darik licked his lips. “I once stumbled off the road and into the Desolation. The wights stumble about as if in a dream, sleepwalking and mindless. If they were farmers in life, they plow and harvest. If they were warriors, they march. There are the spirits of horses, dogs, war elephants. Even giants killed in the battle for Aristonia.

“I was fleeing Balsalom when the dark wizard attacked it,” Darik continued. “His conjurers gathered wights and sent them into the city. It took magic and will to keep the wights from fleeing in mindless terror. There were several dozen wights, and Markal said only a powerful wizard could have managed to control so many. But this? This is an entire army.”

“You may go,” Kallia told the refugee. Then, to the guard who came to escort her out, she added, “Feed this woman and see her properly clothed before she leaves the palace.” When the woman was gone, Kallia turned back to Darik, “Then you think the wights are controlled by the enemy’s wizards?”

“I had thought so, yes. A small army of torturers and conjurers to command them at all times. Or maybe the ravagers—I don’t know what powers they may have.”

“The woman said no,” Kallia said. “Are you sure of your assumptions?”

Darik frowned. “There must be
someone
, and he must command awesome power to control so many wights, to form them into an army and drive them out of the Desolation against our cities.”

“The dark wizard himself?” she suggested.

“He is hundreds of miles from here, under siege in Veyre.”

“Perhaps the enemy is commanding them from the Dark Citadel.”

“Perhaps.” Darik didn’t sound convinced. “It is so far. The magic to do such a thing . . .”

Darik was still standing with Kallia when Hajir brought two men, stoneworkers who claimed to have witnessed strange magic within the city. Hajir seemed skeptical and said he’d almost turned the pair away, but there were two men with the same story, and they were insistent.

Kallia looked them over. They were simple men, their strong, calloused hands clasping their caps in front of them, the dust of their labors still clinging to their clothing. They seemed stunned to be in the khalifa’s presence.

“Tell her,” Hajir said sharply. “Hurry up.”

“Go ahead,” Kallia encouraged when they still seemed reticent. “What did you see?”

One of the men cleared his throat. “We was working at the bazaar, on them new buildings for the foreigners. You know them, right?” He elbowed his fellow worker. “You tell her. Farnoud will tell it better. He talks good.”

She was trying to be patient. She could see Hajir’s lips pressed together in irritation, while Darik’s attention drifted back to Ethan, who stood talking to a pair of men from the palace guard.

“Farnoud,” she said to the second man. “That’s your name? Please tell me what you saw.”

Farnoud began as hesitantly as the first man, but a few words of encouragement loosened his tongue. The two men had been working in the Grand Bazaar, constructing the new apartments for the poor. This work came by Kallia’s decree. The markets were dying, suffocating from the terrible condition of the trade roads and the flight of silver coin from the city, and so she’d determined that a better use of the space was to house the thousands of refugees pouring into the city. Upon completion of the repairs to the city walls, she had ordered the remaining stone and mud sent to the Grand Bazaar to be used in the construction.

The two workers had been setting mud bricks on the third floor of one of these new buildings, when a small flock of storks landed nearby. They were not the mottled gray storks of the khalifates, but white, with long, orange-yellow legs. Farnoud thought they’d come from the desert. They traipsed through the freshly laid mud, leaving prints, jabbering and squawking.

Kallia stared. This was their miraculous tale of magic? An unusual flock of storks coming out of the desert and squawking at each other? Kallia was getting ready to tell Hajir to send the men back to work, when Farnoud continued.

“We was staring at them storks, you can imagine, listening to ’em jabber like they was men. Then all of a sudden like, we had to look down at the bazaar. There weren’t nothing happening down there, just two men haggling over hides, but we had to see. When we looked back, you know what? Them storks was gone! Instead, five men in robes with their hoods up, all suspicious looking.”

Darik was still standing by Kallia’s side, and now he stiffened. He met her gaze and gave a small nod.

“Seems like they didn’t want nobody looking at them,” the other man added. He glanced dully back and forth between Darik and Kallia, seeming to notice the look passing between them, but not comprehending.

“That’s right!” Farnoud said. “One of them saw us looking, and he lifted his fingers and gave ’em a little wave like this.” Farnoud demonstrated with his thick, square fingers, making them waggle. “And then we was looking down at the bazaar again. Soon enough, they was gone.”

“When did this happen?” Kallia asked.

“Last night, just as the sun was going down. We was ready to stop for the night already, and we came right to the palace to tell someone what we seen.”

“And yet it is already noon the following day,” she said to Hajir. “Why did it take so long to bring me this information?”

Hajir looked pained. “Khalifa, I cannot trouble you over every rumor or bit of superstitious nonsense. You would do nothing else but listen to such tales. But I sent men to investigate—there was no sign of any strange men, and when we questioned other workers, they had seen nothing.”

“We’re telling the truth!” Farnoud protested.

“Then why bring it to my attention now?” she asked Hajir.

The vizier steepled his long fingers. “Something about the story was troubling me. This morning, before the first bells chimed, I rode to the bazaar to look for anyone who seemed out of place. I saw nothing, but before I left, I went to the roof. There are marks in the mud. The clawed feet of birds. Now, it may be that these men are lying, or they saw a flock of common storks—” Hajir fixed the two workers with a severe gaze, and they looked away, as if unable to bear it. “—but I am troubled. I thought it worthy of an audience with you, my queen.”

“Khalifa,” Darik said, “may I speak to you alone?”

Kallia nodded to Hajir. “That is all.”

Hajir led the two workers out, beneath one of the arcades with its fluted columns, and to the corridor beyond. She gestured to the pillows, and Darik sat next to her.

“You think this is the answer to your question?” she asked.

“If it’s true, yes. Five wizards appeared at dusk, flying into the city as storks before changing into their true forms. That is costly magic—they must be powerful. Then, as dawn arrived, the army of wights marched across the plain to encircle the city. The wizards must have called them.”

A heavy weight settled in her gut. “Servants of the enemy. Where are they now? And could we stop them if we find them?”

“You have your own conjurers, yes?”

“Nobody to match them, no.”

“I’d like to visit the bazaar,” he said. “If they left a trail, I might be able to track them to their hiding place.”

“And defeat them?” she asked hopefully.

“No.” Darik chewed on his lip. “I would be no match. Not even close. But if we found them . . .” His voice trailed off. “With your permission, I would like to try.”

Kallia shifted against the pillows, her heavy belly growing uncomfortable, an ache spreading in her back. Then suddenly, it wasn’t merely a backache, but tendrils of fire burrowing into her flesh.

No. Not again. Not so soon.

Darik studied her. “Khalifa? What is it?”

But she was already climbing to her feet, her face rigid. She couldn’t show her pain and desperation. Viziers, guards, petitioners, and servants all stared as she moved stiffly toward the doorway that led to her apartments.

She passed Prince Ethan, who was studying her with his own worried expression. “Khalifa?”

Kallia shook her head, then waved off both Darik and Hajir, who made to follow her. “No, please. Carry on. Ethan, go with Darik to the bazaar. Hajir, see to the final battle prep—” A vicious stab of pain cut her off, and all she could do was gasp.

The moment it eased, Kallia turned and fled for her rooms to fight through another attack.

Chapter Six

“Ninny left the city,” Ethan told Darik as the two men joined Captain Rouhani. They all pulled on gray cloaks as they walked beneath the barbican and out of the palace. “She bought a horse, left through the East Gate, and rode east. Two guards challenged her, but they declined to give chase, not knowing it was her.”

“These men are sure it was Sofiana they saw?” Darik asked.

He pulled up the hood and tested the cloak to make sure it would cover his arms once he’d hooked the clasps. The less of their bodies that showed, the better the spell would work.

“Do you suppose there were many thirteen-year-old girls haggling for goods this morning, buying a horse with good silver, and galloping out of the city before they closed the gates?” Ethan’s tone was exasperated. “Anyway, once I’d heard, I sent riders after her, but I don’t imagine they’ll catch her. She had a good head start.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so.” Somehow, it made Darik feel better that the girl had given Ethan the slip, too.

“She’s better off outside the city than in,” Rouhani said. “May the Brothers guide her to her father.”

“One can hope,” Ethan agreed.

“Do the cloaks cover you sufficiently?” Darik asked. “No skin should be visible if the magic is to work.”