Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 55

The wave of rock was like a petrified tide that buried his front ranks, all those loyal fighters who had continued to follow him even though they had lost everything else. Utros stared at the fresh uneven rock that covered the canyon floor, searching for words. Finally, he said, “Our destiny is permanently wrapped in stone.”

Ruva raged beside him, a roiling mass of barely constrained magic. “Those men gave their lives for you, beloved Utros. They know you will not falter. They know you will conquer the world, as you swore to do.” She looked at the bodies partially imprisoned in stone. “And their sacrifice will help you achieve that goal.”

“How?” Utros snarled at her. “How does this help me?” He looked at the devastation, the massacre.

The fallen canyon wall had hardened like a mudslide baked in the hot sun, studded with thousands of corpses like insects caught in pitch. His soldiers had worn the best armor; their swords were sharp, their training was excellent, and they could fight against any enemy—but how could they prepare for this? Arms thrust upward still clutching swords, gauntlets and booted feet protruding in the air with the rest of the bodies drowned under rock.

One man’s head, his helmet askew, grimaced and gasped. The rest of his body was submerged in the stone; though he could still breathe, he was trapped, crushed. His mouth opened and closed, and his eyes bulged as he tried to sip air. The dying soldier couldn’t even form words; he had no room left in his chest. His gaunt face turned blue as he suffocated, little by little.

Utros leaned over him. “I can do nothing to help you.” His heart wrenched with vengeance and sadness. “I am grateful for your service and sorry for your sacrifice.” He drew his sword. “This is all I can offer.” He struck off the man’s head, leaving a stump that spouted blood from the rim of stone.

He would order his soldiers to do the same to any other hopelessly trapped warriors. It was the right thing to do, but it made him sick.

Only by a miracle was he still alive. When the canyon first began to melt, Ruva and Ava had saved him, blocked him. After the defenders made their stand at the bottleneck, the general’s soldiers had still pushed past the swarm of poisonous scorpions, the spike-filled pits, the camouflage curtain that hid the canyon itself. Nathan and the other gifted fighters had battled and retreated, battled and retreated, luring them farther inside.

Utros had been fooled, thinking that the rebels had only that one last line of defense. His army had believed in their victory as soon as they saw the cliff alcove filled with archive buildings, and Ruva had hissed with anticipation of all the powerful knowledge stored here.

His army had charged forward in a frenzy, and Utros could not have stopped them if he’d tried. They surged into the hidden canyon, like a rider giving free rein to a spirited horse. Though he wanted to be at the front of the troops, Ruva forced him to stay back. The starving soldiers fell upon the orchards and fields. They ran down the flocks of terrified sheep and tore them to pieces, eating the creatures raw. Before he could revel in his victory, Ruva sensed the resonance of an incredibly powerful spell … and then the cliffs flowed in a molten avalanche.

Ava’s shimmering spirit had swooped in front of him, frantic. “Away! It is not safe! A massive spell! I tried to stop her, General!”

Ruva mirrored her twin’s motions and used her gift to bowl Utros back against the rocks of the bottleneck as the wave of stone roared down on the front ranks of his army. Killing so many!

Now as he viewed the stark aftermath, the general tried to guess how many more of his soldiers were dead, additional numbers to add to the tally. Fortunately, the bulk of the ancient army had not even entered the hidden canyon and milled outside in the high desert, ninety thousand or more.

First Commander Enoch rode up, his face ashen as he stared across the rippled stone, countless embedded bodies, grasping hands, horrorstruck dead faces. He cleared his throat as if to spit out the harsh words he needed to say. “The Keeper claimed many more, sir. He knows us, and he wants us all.”

“The Keeper will have to be satisfied for now,” Utros said. “This is enough!”

Ava shimmered in front of them, her expression distraught. “He tugs me with greater strength. He wants my sister. He wants me!”

Ruva chimed in, “Thanks to our loyalty to you, beloved Utros, we have the strength to resist him. Loyalty is stronger than love.” She narrowed her eyes. “Loyalty is stronger than death.”

Getting down to business, Enoch said, “We killed a sheep, sir, and we will roast it to feed all the prominent commanders, but the other soldiers still feel as if they’re starving.”

“Because they are starving,” Utros said. “Even if they still move and march.”

Ruva sounded defensive. “No! Our spell maintains them. They keep going even with the hunger inside. They will live until they are nothing more than walking bones!”

Utros watched in disgust as his soldiers spread out like scuttling beetles. They stripped the leaves and tender branches from the orchards, gobbling any fruit they found, ransacking gardens, breaking into the cliffside dwellings to scrounge even the smallest crumbs.

Far worse, though it did not surprise him knowing how desperate the preservation spell was, he watched the gaunt warriors race across the hardened stone, finding dead or dying soldiers that had been trapped. They did not try to rescue their comrades, did not look for survivors. Rather, they seized any hand or leg or face protruding from the rock and tore away strips of flesh, ripping the meat clean as they ate whatever remained of the bodies. They cracked the bones and sucked the marrow, lapped at the blood and gnawed any scrap of skin, muscle, or tendon, and moved on in search of more.

Ava shimmered before them and watched. “They need the nourishment. They will sustain themselves in any way they can. And they will continue to be your fighters.”

Ruva explained that the preservation spell could hold the army for only so long. “Any food they find—” She paused and said in a harder voice to emphasize her point, “Any food will provide energy to keep them going.”

Thinking of his legend, his honor, Utros felt sick. “What is becoming of my army? What is becoming of me?” He summoned his resolve, focused on the end goal, his reason for existence after so many centuries. “We will pay any price. We made that decision long ago, and it is too late to change now.” He strode past the mangled remnants of his lost soldiers to look up at the sheer cliff that was now an impenetrable barrier. The Cliffwall archive was completely gone.

“They destroyed all that lore.” He looked to the spirit of Ava. “Can you salvage anything? Pass through the rock in your spectral form and find a single scroll, a lone volume? Anything at all?”

Her intangible spirit flickered. “It is not possible. The books themselves are encased in stone. The scrolls are petrified.” As she folded herself on top of Ruva, both twins said, “They eradicated the knowledge rather than let us have it.”

Enoch said, “Such desperation shows how much they must fear us.”

Utros nodded. “It was a wise tactical move. I would have liked for Ruva to have that magic as a powerful weapon for my cause, but we do not need it.” He raised his voice so the other soldiers could hear him. “Don’t ever believe we need a crutch like that! My army is sufficient.”

A few vengeful soldiers picked their way to the far end of the canyon in hopes of catching the defenders who had fled into the highland wilderness, but Utros knew that Nathan and the others would be long gone.

“Tonight we feast on what we have,” he said, “but we dare not rest for long. We must keep the army moving. Our goal is to reach the western sea and conquer any cities in between. The Norukai will already be ransacking the coast. King Grieve is engaged in the war.” He turned so that the sunlight flashed on his golden half mask. “My war.”