Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 81

Even with as much harm as they had done to the Norukai fleet and the army of General Utros, Nicci could see that Tanimura was about to fall. She had not seen a battle so overwhelming since the armies of Emperor Jagang besieged the People’s Palace.

The surviving members of her militia withdrew from the Hagen Woods, leaving a bloodbath behind them, but as they crossed into the city, they encountered waves of constant fighting. Utros’s main force pushed toward the center of Tanimura, while other contingents spilled into every street, where they ransacked buildings and battled their way through makeshift barricades the defenders had erected. The fighting took place in houses, alleys, rooftops, and streets, and the city’s outnumbered defenders used that to their advantage.

In an open public square ahead, Nicci spotted the banners of General Linden and his D’Haran soldiers, and they were fighting in what looked like a last stand. She led her militia there to join them in the fight; she could see they needed her.

The Hidden People accompanied her, racing along in their gray robes. Many had fallen in the Hagen Woods, but they did not count their dead. Breathing hard, young Asha had a knife-edged smile. “We traveled across the continent for you, Nicci. We will fight for you now.”

The rest of the Hidden People were just as determined, carrying swords from the weapons stockpile they had stewarded in Orogang. For more than a thousand years, they had waited for General Utros to return, but their hero had cruelly turned against them. Now the deadly people, and the pride of ferocious sand panthers, might shift the balance here and save Linden and his troops.

Fighting their way through city streets, Nicci’s followers slew hundreds more as they drove like a wedge through the invaders, cutting off an entire group and killing them down to the last man.

Ahead, Linden’s regiments had taken up a defensive position in a square enclosed by high buildings. His D’Haran soldiers stood several ranks deep, with an outer line of shields as a barricade. Archers in the rear launched volleys of arrows into the enemy army, but the invaders crashed into them like waves against a rocky shore. Linden shouted ever-more-desperate commands, and a standard-bearer beside him raised a flag showing the colors of D’Hara and the stylized letter “R” for the House of Rahl.

The defensive line held firm until an unexpected part of the flank began to crumble. Under the constant barrage, the shield line buckled and dozens of enemy warriors raged through as if it were a hemorrhaging wound. They ran past the shield line, which then closed behind them and re-formed, stronger than before. Nicci smiled at the clever trick. Thirty enemy warriors, now trapped inside the line, were all cut down, one by one.

Amid the great ground battle, unexpected lightning drew a zigzag line in the air, and the energy struck an ancient subcommander and his adjutant at the front of the enemy charge. The blast shattered the victims into smoking pieces.

Looking for the source of the surprising attack, Nicci was amazed to see a wizard with long white hair dressed in a fine cape and vest. “Nathan!” He couldn’t hear her over the sounds of battle, but when she extended her fingers to the sky and brought them down, Nicci drew her own lightning bolt to incinerate three more soldiers next to the ones he himself had killed.

That got the wizard’s attention. Nathan waved, and beside him Bannon and the morazeth Lila also shouted, glad to see her.

Using a battering ram of wind to clear the way, Nicci led her surviving militia members to reinforce Linden’s troops, disrupting the ancient army and causing a panic. The prowling sand panthers tore at the enemy soldiers, but Mrra herself was reluctant to leave Nicci’s side, now that they were reunited at last.

Nicci fought her way close to General Linden and his beleaguered troops. She unleashed another bolt of branched lightning, which strafed the front lines of enemy fighters, and still more of them flooded into the city. Already exhausted, Nicci dug deep into her reserves of energy.

Knowing the stakes, she resorted to a darker form of destruction, pulling upon dangerous Subtractive Magic. She called upon that side of the gift only when it was absolutely necessary, for those were the skills she had learned when she was a Sister of the Dark. Now she served the D’Haran Empire, and she served Richard. Her heart was strong enough to handle it.

She opened herself, stretched out her gift in both the positive and negative directions to draw another bolt of lightning, but this time she joined it with an infinitely dark crack in the sky, like a mirror image entangled with the white bolt. The zigzagging blast killed more than a hundred in a single strike. The fury of her lightning stunned the front ranks of the enemy division, driving back their charge and giving Nicci’s militia the window they needed to surge forward and reinforce Linden’s troops.

“Thank you, Sorceress.” Linden looked ready to drop from exhaustion and blood loss. His shield was splintered, and his leather armor and chain mail were ragged from many blows.

Nathan strode up to her, grinning. “Dear spirits, I’m glad to see you! I know you rarely use Subtractive Magic, but that was sorely needed.” He watched the Hidden People join the defensive line and raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I see you found some friends.”

Bannon’s ginger hair was matted with blood and sweat, but his hazel eyes shone. “Now we can all fight together! The Norukai are mostly defeated, and Captain Jared took us to the docks so we could help here in the city.” Barely able to contain his own news, he blurted out, “At least King Grieve is dead.”

That got Nicci’s attention. “How did he die? Badly, I hope.”

“The boy killed him,” Lila answered with clear pride. “Cut off his head.”

Nicci rewarded the young swordsman with a gratified nod. “Well deserved.”

“We broke the backbone of the Norukai fleet out there on the water, and the Serrimundi navy arrived just in time to attack them from behind.” Nathan looked beyond the square to the sweeping harbor, where innumerable serpent ships were sunk or burning in the water. But the Norukai did not go quietly. The fighting continued to rage on the water, and many of the landed raiders still pillaged the streets.

Worse, though, General Utros’s army continued to ransack Tanimura, and several divisions were closing in from all sides. From the defended square, Nicci could see Utros in his distinctive horned helmet surveying the attack from high ground. The general sat on his black stallion, directing his troops with the painted sorceress at his side. Given time, his army could simply trample Tanimura to dust, leaving only a flat expanse of rubble, just like Halsband Island.

Smoke rolled into the sky from the burning buildings, and the air resounded with battle. Screaming seagulls wheeled overhead, anxious for the feast they would have with all the dead bodies piled in the streets.

Nathan looked ashen as he caught his breath. “I have used so much of my magic already today that I’m afraid I have little left.” He regarded her with relief. “At least you can still draw on Subtractive Magic, which is something the rest of us cannot do.”

“If that is what’s necessary,” Nicci answered with a frown. “We promised Richard we would protect D’Hara, and he knows my abilities. I’ll do anything to stop Utros from marching north into the New World. Richard has his own problems there. He left this to me.”

She had to stop the enemy here and now, because she loved Richard too much. She longed to see him one last time, though she had long ago accepted that she would never have his love in return. Nevertheless, his respect, his friendship, his complete confidence gave Nicci strength she didn’t know she had. He believed in her … and he said he’d given her everything she needed. Richard would never abandon her.

She thought of the small bone box and the glowing constructed spell. Despite her best efforts, she had been unable to decipher what Richard meant. Life to the living. Death to the dead. What did that mean? And how could she use it?

So many brave fighters were already dead, and Utros’s ancient army kept coming. The great military force should have been dead many centuries ago, but the petrification spell from the wizards of Ildakar had thwarted the Keeper. Every single fighter wearing the flame symbol should have gone to the underworld long, long ago.

Death to the dead.…

With a sudden idea, she snatched out the bone box from her pocket and held it in her bloodstained palm. When the blood touched the bone, the energy of spilled life affected the delicate container and the scratched symbols. The markings intensified, glowed.

Life to the living. Death to the dead.

Thoughts clicked together in her mind, and she suddenly understood what was necessary, the missing piece she had forgotten. The answer had been there, but she hadn’t looked for it in the right way. She hadn’t thought the way Richard would think.

When trying to analyze the glowing, rotating sphere, she had performed a test she knew well. An obvious test. But while she had used Subtractive Magic to ignite a verification web, she had not used it on the constructed spell itself.

It was a form of constructed spell that contained a bit of original magic from the design of the Wizard’s Keep, from a time when wizards also possessed Subtractive Magic. Such a defensive spell from the Keep, she realized, had to contain Subtractive elements. Richard would have known that. Why hadn’t she seen it right away? No wonder Nathan, the Cliffwall scholars, and the Sisters of the Light had not been able to help her.

Her pulse raced faster as the answers came to her in the din of the surrounding battle. Without Subtractive Magic, the spell would be sterile! That was why Nicci could not find anything meaningful when she had initially tried to decipher the contents by touching the tiny sphere with her power.

It would not be meaningful without the direct injection of the Subtractive element! That was the missing piece.

Now she knew what to do, and it was indeed everything she needed, just as Richard said.

Nicci snapped shut the bone box again, covering the glowing spell. A hard smile crossed her face. She saw General Utros on higher ground outside the city, but he was far away, with an entire army between himself and Nicci. She had to get closer.

“I need to get a message to Utros,” she said. “An ultimatum.”

Hidden People slipped in among the attacking soldiers, killing many and then darting away. They were used to moving in the shadows. They crowded in among General Linden’s armed warriors, and Nicci called to get their attention. “Asha! I need you. I have a task for the Hidden People, and the war may depend on it.”

Asha killed another enemy soldier and withdrew, still holding her bloody knife. Five more Hidden People heard the call and fell back to present themselves. “We are ready to do whatever you need, Nicci.”

She leaned closer to the few eager volunteers. “No matter what it takes, I need you to get a message to General Utros. Go around the army or go through them, hide, dodge, but get to him by any means necessary.” She pointed to the distant figure high above the storm of battle. “Tell the general that I demand to speak to him. Have him meet me on Halsband Island.” She paused, and then added with a hard smile, “Tell him it is Nicci—the one who killed his sorceress Ava. He will come.”

Nathan’s eyes went wide. “Dear spirits, do you know what you’re doing?”

She felt the bone box in her pocket. “I’m absolutely certain. Richard told me this is all I need. General Utros has to come face me.”

Young Asha nodded and looked to her fellow Hidden People. “We will go for you, Nicci. At least one of us will deliver the message, at all costs.”

They flitted away through the streets, where their shadowy cloaks made them invisible in the raging battle.

As the fight continued and the ancient soldiers swept through the streets of Tanimura, Oliver struggled not to feel dismay. For every soldier that fell, ten more swept in behind him. It was like trying to empty the sea with a bucket.

Fearless, Peretta stood holding up her hands and curling her fingers to summon bright flashes of light she could throw into the faces of the enemy. The ancient soldiers saw what she was doing, though, and that made Peretta a target.

Oliver watched an archer draw an arrow and aim toward her, pulling back the string. “Peretta!” Oliver screamed, but she couldn’t move in time as the archer let fly. Instead, he remembered the training and pushed a gust of wind, creating a burst of air that deflected the arrow’s trajectory just enough so that it barely scratched the young woman’s shoulder as it streaked past.

Peretta ducked, wincing at the fresh wound, then grinned at him. “Thank you, Oliver.”

In retaliation, she blinded the archer with a flash of light, and Oliver summoned a small burst of heat that snapped the bowstring. Released, the bow sprang back, smacking the soldier in the head.

Amber joined them. “We have to find a better way to fight. These spells, one at a time, can’t defeat such a huge army.”

“We’re fighting as best we can,” Peretta said.

Amber’s face was flushed. “But everything we studied at Cliffwall, all that we learned—there must be something we can use!”

Oliver shook his head. “We found the magic to summon all those poisonous scorpions from beneath the ground. That proved to be quite effective.” He sighed. “But there are no scorpions here in the city.”

“Not scorpions … but what else does a city have?” Amber asked. Her lips quirked in an eager smile, waiting for them to answer.

Oliver didn’t know what she meant. He had very little experience with cities. Cliffwall was clean and compact, and he had rarely been elsewhere. Cities like Tanimura seemed dirty to him, crowded and unpleasant. Peretta also shook her head.

Amber’s eyes gleamed. “Rats! Beneath any city there are thousands of rats.”

“Oh! We could use the same summoning magic,” Peretta said, understanding what she meant. “Call up the rats from the sewers, from the alleys, gutters, and midden heaps.”

A D’Haran captain with his group of beleaguered defenders shouted a cry of defiance as they were surrounded by overwhelming enemies. Raising his sword, the captain yelled for the others to join him in a fight to the death. He led a hundred soldiers against a wall of ancient warriors marching through a square.

“Quickly!” Amber knelt and placed her hands against the flagstones of the square. Peretta and Oliver joined her, shoulder-to-shoulder. “Remember what we used for the scorpions. Call them—call them all! Can you feel them?”

Oliver sensed the tingling in his fingers. “Yes, I think so. Little and furry, but with sharp teeth.”

“And hungry,” Peretta added. “They are very hungry.”

With their combined gift, they reached out, sent a call. While the minds of the scorpions had been tiny and susceptible, the rats were more intelligent. But the three young companions were able to convince the rodents that this was what they wanted to do.

Oliver could sense scurrying feet, furry bodies rising up from the sewers, running through the gutters. The creatures swirled out of Tanimura’s underbelly, all claws and teeth, naked pink tails and red eyes.

The D’Haran captain’s sortie slowed, defeated by a horde of enemy soldiers that surrounded them. Blood sprayed as ten enemies fought against every defender, hacking them down one by one, until the brave captain himself was dragged to the ground.

As the defenders fell, though, the rats boiled up from the streets in a brown wave of death, just like all the scorpions that had erupted from the desert floor back at Cliffwall. They were dirty vermin that lived beneath the moist and noisome shadows of the streets, but they also defended their city.

The invaders howled and flailed as they suddenly faced this ravenous wave that fell upon them, thousands of furry bodies that crawled up their legs and gnawed their skin, tore through chinks in their armor. Though they thrashed their weapons and clawed with their gauntleted hands, the enemy soldiers could not fight against it. Their voices became a panicked outcry, and their disciplined, regimented advance across the square broke apart.

Oliver, Peretta, and Amber watched, shaking with fear and awe, as innumerable rats fed upon the enemy.