Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 2

The empty city towered around Nicci, silent and mysterious. She turned to get her bearings and assessed the dark buildings, the imposing stone walls, the thick pillars and ornate carvings … the utter bleakness. This was not Ildakar, not at all.

The moon spilled silver light over the ruins, but she saw no cheerful lanterns or torches lighting any of the stone structures. All the windows and doors were black and vacant, like the eyes of dead men. The thin air held an underlying chill. She could see the silhouettes of black crags that ringed the city, and she realized she must be high in the mountains.

Nicci stepped away from the sliph well, angry and confused. Her body ached, as if the abortive journey had wrung her like a washrag. “Sliph!” she shouted, but the quiet was so deep and intense that it buzzed in her ears.

The spiteful silver creature had dumped her here and abandoned her.

In the middle of a central plaza, a waist-high stone barrier surrounded the enigmatic well. The sliph had simply retreated down into the depths after lashing out at Nicci, leaving her alone. She had no idea where she was.

As Nicci caught her breath and her balance, she felt uncharacteristically weak, disconnected. She had never felt like this when traveling in the sliph before. She called to the deep, empty well. “Come back! This is not my destination. I wish to travel.”

Her words resonated in the deep black gullet and whispered back at her from the high stone buildings, but no other sound came. The silvery creature refused to respond. This particular sliph, a determined adherent of Emperor Sulachan’s long-lost cause, had finally realized that Nicci did not, in fact, serve the same master. When Nicci had revealed that Sulachan was dead, defeated not once but twice, the silvery woman had broken her bonds of duty and stranded Nicci in this forsaken place.

“Sliph! Where am I?” Nicci’s voice vanished into infinity below. She could do nothing to help fight General Utros if she was trapped … here.

As her head rang and throbbed, Nicci wondered how much damage she had suffered in the dangerous passage. She remembered that the sliph had said one other intriguing thing before leaving: “Ildakar is gone. Ildakar is no more. I cannot take you there.” Clearly, the sliph had also been damaged when she tried to reach her destination, and failed.

How could Ildakar be “no more”? Maybe the sliph well in the lower levels of the legendary city had been destroyed or sealed somehow. What else could prevent the sliph from traveling there?

Then Nicci recalled something else. Before she’d killed Kor, the Norukai captain, he revealed that King Grieve had launched a massive attack against Ildakar. How could the great city defend itself against the invincible army of General Utros as well as a second threat from the Norukai? Was it possible that the wizards’ duma had raised the shroud of eternity as their only recourse? Would they have left the rest of the world to face the scourge alone? Yes, the wizards of Ildakar would have done exactly that.

And if that were the case, Nicci would be on her own.

First, she had to find out where she was. Her close-cropped blond hair was dusty from hard travel. She still had blood on her skin and black dress from fighting the Norukai in Serrimundi Harbor. Her body felt shaky and sore, an aftereffect of the sliph passage. Her gift was weak.

Exploring her new surroundings, Nicci studied the massive pillars and stone buildings, huge monuments, temples, or governmental halls. As she moved across the plaza, her feet whispered on the uneven flagstones. The city was littered with looming stone towers and fallen arches, long-dry fountains, intricate decorations weathered into indeterminate lumps.

The structures were immense and ostentatious, designed to inspire awe. The imposing grandeur reminded her of Emperor Jagang’s palace in Altur’Rang or the Wizard’s Keep in Aydindril. This place had once been a large population center, a capital, or at least a major trading hub. But all the doorways and windows were sealed or bricked up, like crypts. This was a city of the dead.

She heard a rustling sound and saw a pair of wild deer wandering through the empty park, eating the shrubs and flowers. Startled to see Nicci, the deer skittered off, but halted not far away and went back to grazing.

In another magnificent square, Nicci came upon the enormous statue of a man, which now lay broken on the flagstones. The raised marble base was the size of a building’s foundation, and originally the titan must have towered three stories high, but only the sturdy boots remained attached to the base. Someone had smashed the legs, intentionally toppling the statue.

She absorbed the scene and felt an undertone of violence and destruction here. The stone arms had broken off, and now the remnants lay overgrown with vines.

She stepped up to the toppled statue and regarded it, ignoring the moss and dust. The man’s haughty face had a heavy brow and hooked nose, and his hair hung in snakelike braids beneath a blocky crown. The carved mouth was open in a weathered smile, showing one prominent pointed tooth, clearly an affectation.

With growing suspicion, Nicci walked around the toppled statue to the front of the base, where engraved letters were worn down but still readable.

EMPEROR KURGAN

Nicci turned back to the head of the fallen statue. The pointed tooth must be the iron fang Kurgan had worn to intimidate those in his presence. He had been a violent and capricious emperor who skinned his wife alive and fed her to flesh beetles when he learned of her affair with General Utros. Outraged at what he had done, Iron Fang’s own people had overthrown him and dragged his body through the streets. They had even smashed his statue.

Even now, after fifteen centuries, Nicci took grim satisfaction at seeing this evidence of his demise. Given the broken figure of the despised emperor, as well as the immense buildings and monuments, Nicci had a good idea of where she was. This city must be Orogang, capital of Kurgan’s vast empire, which had collapsed after his downfall.

She turned slowly as the pieces fell into place, but she still didn’t understand why the city itself was a graveyard. Even with Kurgan dead and the empire torn apart by political turmoil, why would such an important metropolis have been abandoned? Why would the population have left these impressive buildings to the rats and spiders? Where would the people have gone? Had a plague wiped them out? A famine or drought?

And why were the doors sealed and the windows bricked shut, as if to seal something inside?

She passed a sunken amphitheater, a deep round bowl with circular tiers of seats leading down to a central stage at the bottom. Kurgan must have addressed the people from there, his voice resounding up the walls of the deep bowl. The seats were empty now, many of them crumbled, the stage overgrown with weeds.

Beyond the amphitheater, Nicci found a second towering statue, but this one looked barely weathered, as if someone had maintained it over the centuries. The figure was a muscular, broad-chested warrior wearing a helmet and ornate armor once emblazoned with Kurgan’s stylized flame, though the symbol had been defaced, leaving only a white scar on the stone. The handsome, broad face beneath the helmet’s scooped cheek guards had a firm jaw, piercing eyes, strong cheekbones, a regal-looking nose.

Nicci knew this man, had faced him on the battlefield. General Utros—Iron Fang’s greatest military commander, who had been dispatched from Orogang to conquer the Old World in the name of his emperor. Utros had accepted the mission without questioning the worthiness of his leader, because Utros was a man who didn’t question orders.

Judging by the condition of the sculpture, the people of Orogang had revered the general. It seemed odd to her that the Utros monument was even now clean of debris and stains, not dilapidated like the rest of this empty city. She froze when she spotted fresh flowers strewn on one corner of the base.

Someone had been here, and recently.

Suddenly wary, she looked around. The buildings remained silent, some of them collapsing, but others deceptively intact. Maybe some hermit or devotee had placed a flower at the statue of his hero. No one here would possibly guess that Utros could still be alive after fifteen hundred years.

Nicci sensed something more than the loneliness of this place, but a presence, eyes watching her. Orogang might not be as abandoned and desolate as she had thought. Staring into the shadows cast by the moon, she heard a rustle of movement. At first she thought it might just be the wandering deer, then realized it was a different kind of furtive sound. Footsteps.

Nicci spun, reaching out with her gift, though she still felt weak and strange. “Who is there?”

The hush fell again after her words faded. She turned toward the largest structure that dominated the main plaza, a massive building with tall fluted columns at the grand entryway. The doors were now open, though they revealed only darkness within. Beyond the Utros statue, she saw more movement, a shadow darting into deeper shadows, multiple gray-clad human figures melting into the murk.

Nicci turned cautiously, alert. “Reveal yourselves! Come out and face me.” Her voice sounded as loud as a gong in the empty city. She touched the daggers at each hip and prepared to defend herself.

At last, she was able to discern human silhouettes as they emerged from hiding places, darkened doorways, narrow alleys. The strangers moved with trepidation, whispering among themselves. They refused to answer her.

“Who are you?” Nicci turned in a slow circle and realized the figures were all around her, but she could barely sense them, as if they were only spirits. She saw many more people than she expected.

Looking beyond the city, she saw a faint glow of dawn outlining the mountain crags and revealing more figures scuttling out of their stone-walled lairs and converging on her.

Nicci let her hands rest threateningly on the daggers. “I don’t want to attack you, but I will.”

The brightening dawn seemed to agitate them, and she heard urgent voices rising, but the few snatches of words made no sense to her. Nicci backed toward the base of the Utros statue and stared up at the stone face that merely gazed ahead.

Then, as if they heard a silent signal, the shadowy people lunged forward to surround her.