Shroud of Eternity

CHAPTER 2

Standing on the ridge far from the unexpected army, Nicci took her time assessing the situation, considering what to do next. “This could be a problem.”

With irrational optimism, Nathan adjusted the ornate sword at his side. “Or maybe not. A conflict has two sides, and as far as I know we’re not a party to either. We have no enemies here, so deep in the Old World. We’re just travelers from afar, and we pose no threat.”

Nicci shook her head, standing close to a low, bent oak. “If I were their commander, I wouldn’t take the chance. I’d assume that any wanderers might be spies.”

“But we’re not,” Bannon said. “We’re innocents.”

Sometimes Nicci found the young man’s naiveté refreshing, other times annoying. “Why worry about a few dead innocents, if it protects a military campaign?”

When Jagang’s army had been on the move and blundered into guiltless travelers who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, Nicci had dealt with the matter herself … and it had never turned out well for those travelers.

Nathan bit his lower lip. “But we don’t know, Sorceress. This army could be the same people who put the heads of those Norukai on stakes and therefore they are the enemies of the slavers. And if that is the case, I’d happily call them allies.”

Nicci gripped one of the gnarled, lichen-patched oak branches, feeling the roughness against her palm. “I don’t want to take the risk. We need to be cautious until we learn more.”

While gazing ahead, Nathan absently touched the center of his chest, as if trying to find the missing gift inside himself. He hung so much hope on the obscure writing in his life book, on his need to find the mysterious city that had somehow vanished. “But if there’s a chance, we have to go there, find out what happened to the city. Maybe one of those soldiers knows. Then I can learn why I lost my gift.”

Nicci turned her gaze toward Nathan. “Did I tell you what the Sisters of the Dark believed was the surest way to strip a wizard of his power? Skin him alive so that the magic could bleed out of him, drop by drop.” She set off again. “They did it to several gifted young men in the Palace of the Prophets.”

Nathan trudged after her, his expression indignant rather than queasy. “I can assure you that isn’t how I misplaced my gift.”

After gliding through the tall grasses, Mrra now circled back. The big cat didn’t seem bothered by the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, who were too far away to pose any immediate danger.

Nicci watched the massed military force for a long time, listening to the rustle of the dark green oak leaves. She narrowed her blue eyes. “Something isn’t right here. Have you noticed?” She pointed to the lines of countless soldiers spread out below. “With that many people, we should see constant movement, patrols or scouting parties heading out or coming in to report, foot soldiers drilling. There is no smoke from cook fires. And listen—you can’t hear a sound.”

She stepped out of the camouflaging oaks, no longer afraid of being spotted. “Look—where are their tents, their pennants? A fighting force of thousands of soldiers would leave a great mark as they moved across the landscape. They would destroy the terrain.” She looked over her shoulder. “If they came over the mountains, we would have seen the scars of their passage, the hills and grasslands trampled to muck by thousands of feet.”

“Maybe they came from another direction,” Nathan said. “North or south.”

“Why are there no fires?” she repeated. “There should be tents, picket lines of horses, supply wagons, material stockpiles.”

The others had no answer for her.

“Only one way to find out,” Bannon suggested. “If we’re careful, we can work our way through the hills, stick to the trees, and remain unseen. With so many soldiers across the plain and in the foothills, we’re bound to come upon outlying groups, maybe scouts camped in the woods, messengers, perimeter patrols. If we find a few people by themselves, we could ask questions.” He grinned uncertainly, but let his hand stray to the leather-wrapped hilt of his sword.

Nicci nodded slowly. “That’s a good idea, Bannon Farmer. We’ll approach through the trees—keep your eyes open. Mrra can range ahead and warn us. As soon as we come upon a lone member of the army, we will capture him and ask questions.” She allowed herself a thin smile. “By force if necessary.”

“If necessary, indeed.” Nathan raised his eyebrows. “But I would prefer not to start a war with half a million soldiers—at least not until I get my gift back.”

“I thought we would just talk with whomever we found,” Bannon muttered.

Having traveled together for so long, they easily worked their way through the chaparral foothills, among the hissing brown grasses and swaying tree thistles. Where possible, they kept to the patchy shelter of scrub oaks. A cascade of grasshoppers sprang out of their way. Distant birds chirped.

But they heard no sound at all from the huge, distant army.

Nicci spotted a dark scar where a grass fire had blackened a swath of bone-dry hills before burning itself out. In these driest months of late summer, she could imagine how the chaparral might become an inferno. Her greater concern, though, was that the burned area offered no cover.

Nathan paused next to a spiky thistle tree, shading his eyes to study the vast and oddly motionless military force. “I believe you’re right. My vision has always been exceptional—so much time staring at the rest of the world from high towers, I suppose. I’ve been focusing on specific groups of soldiers, and there isn’t any movement. None at all. I can make out hints of their uniforms, which are of an ancient sort, but their colors are all … gray.” He sucked on a tiny drop of blood that welled up on his palm where a thistle spine had pierced him. “Their armor reminds me of…”

His brow furrowed. “Remember after we worked our way inland from Renda Bay? You’ll recall that I took a side trip to an ancient watchtower. Through the tower’s bloodglass, I observed huge armies. I think they were the armies of Emperor Kurgan—Iron Fang. His General Utros conquered much of the world in his name, sweeping across the continent. From that watchtower, I saw the ancient warriors through time and magic.” He nodded slowly. “Dear spirits, the soldiers ahead remind me very much of those warriors.”

“But the ones you saw were from thousands of years in the past,” Bannon said.

“So I thought. And I can’t be sure about this army—until we get closer.”

They continued toward patchy forests where they could hide, and the questions in Nicci’s mind made her more and more uneasy. She could not make sense of what she was seeing.

She vividly recalled Jagang’s armies, the stench, turmoil, and mayhem, like miasma. Thanks to the acoustics of the foothills and the open plain, she should have been able to hear a distant murmur of shouts, the clang of steel from practice swordplay, or the bash of armorers hammering metal, the screams of captive women being dragged into soldiers’ tents, work crews with spades digging latrines or burial trenches for executed prisoners. There would have been the smell of funeral pyres, the smoke of cook fires, the lilt of music or bawdy singing, shouted orders from officers, or grumbled complaints from losers in gambling games.

But Nicci heard only the silence of the wind, the snickering grasses, the click and buzz of insects … none of the din and chaos generated by a huge army.

Mrra bounded back from her explorations, crashing through the underbrush—not prowling, not stealthy. Nicci relaxed.

In a cleft in the foothills ahead, several runoff streams converged in a glen thick with tall scrub oak and scattered pines. Bannon pointed toward the brush, the overhanging branches. “Look, I see soldiers there—not many. Maybe we can talk to them?”

“I see them as well,” Nathan said. “Only four or five men.” His whispered voice had an undertone of hope.

A chill prickled Nicci’s skin as she spotted several figures huddled in the lattice shadows of branches. They crouched together, possibly at a camp, maybe as lookouts for the army. She had not noticed them, and Mrra had not sensed them, but these concealed warriors had likely seen the three approach.

“It may be too late already.” Nicci saw no movement. “We’ll investigate, but be careful.” She touched the daggers she kept on each hip, but her greater weapon was her magic.

Bannon and Nathan drew their swords, and they moved together through the grasses to the patch of forest. Bannon ducked under a low-hanging branch, pushing leaves out of the way. “It looks like a good place to camp,” he whispered, far too loudly for Nicci’s tastes. “Maybe that’s why they’re here.”

Nicci shushed him, but she agreed with the assessment. An outlying party of soldiers could have taken shelter here in the tree-filled glen. But where was the smoke from a campfire?

Five ancient warriors waited for them under the oaks, gathered around a central point. Mrra padded forward, sniffing, but she showed no fear, no concern at all. Nicci halted, staring at the human figures. The burly warriors wore scaled armor, thick shoulder pads, greaves, and armored boots; pointed, clefted helmets covered their heads. They carried short swords. One man squatted halfway down, leaning toward an object that no one could see.

All five were petrified, turned to the whitish gray of stone.

“They’re … statues,” Bannon gasped, with a quaver in his voice. “Like the spell the Adjudicator used.”

Cautious, Nathan stepped closer. The stone warrior directed his blank gaze toward a cleared spot in the forest floor. “I’d wager that area held a campfire long ago. See, age has erased it, but there are still a few stones left in a ring.”

The statue warriors wore bland expressions, their thoughts frozen in place when the petrification spell took hold. Nicci ventured closer as tentative answers pelted her like cold hailstones in a summer storm. No fires, no movement across the entire army, utter silence. “I wonder if that whole army has been turned to stone across the plain.”

Nathan looked both fascinated and unsettled. “The magic required to work such a spell is beyond anything I’ve ever heard of—not since the great wizard wars three thousand years ago.” He spoke with distant admiration. “Ah, that was a time of titanic, unbridled magic.”

Bannon rapped the blade of his sword against the shoulder of one petrified warrior. Sturdy’s steel sent a bright chiming note into the silence. “A thousand years … three thousand years—and they’re still intact? Will they ever awaken?” He looked at Nicci, his face suddenly struck with remembered grief. “We revived the statue people in Lockridge when Nathan defeated the Adjudicator. All those statues trapped with their guilt.”

“That was a much smaller thing, my boy. The Adjudicator used his corrupt magic only on those he found guilty, one at a time.” Nathan shook his head again. “The scope of this effort is … breathtaking. So many thousands of men!”

Mrra sniffed at the stone boots, but found nothing of interest in the marble figures. Restless, she glided off into the spreading oak forest, picking her way among windfall branches and thick mats of brown leaves.

With curiosity replacing his tension, Nathan walked around the tableau of petrified soldiers, inspecting them like an art patron reviewing a new statue garden placed in a king’s courtyard. “I studied ancient war chronicles back at the Palace of the Prophets. The armor is familiar to me. This badge here, see the sylized flame design?” He tapped the breastplate on one of the guards. “Such a symbol appears in the tales of Iron Fang.” He stepped back, put his hands on his hips. “If only these men could talk, think of the stories they would tell us.”

“I’d rather they remain silent,” Nicci said. “Because if they could talk, then the entire army could talk. And I doubt their first priority would be talking.”

Bannon remained mystified. “But if they came to conquer that great city, there’s nothing to keep them here. The city is gone.”

“Except for the fact that they may all be statues, my boy,” Nathan pointed out. “They’re not going anywhere.”

“That’s a good point.”

Nathan’s voice grew more erudite. “On the bright side, if those countless soldiers are stone, then that vast army is no threat to us or to anyone. We should be able to walk among them and find clues to where the city has gone. No more skulking about. It should be perfectly easy.”

The moment he uttered his ill-advised comment, a crashing sound broke through the trees at the far side of the glen. Branches snapped asunder, and a huge, hairy creature appeared, uprooting spindly scrub oaks and casting them aside.

Nicci spun into a crouch, cupping her hands to touch her gift and pull forth magic. Nathan raised his ornate sword, with Bannon right at his shoulder. Mrra bounded out of the trees from the opposite side of the glen, racing toward her companions.

The monster paused to snuffle the air, assessing the intruders. The beast was the size of an ogre, but shaped like a nightmare-distorted bear. It let out a deep bellow, spreading its jaws wide to release ropes of saliva that drooled onto the ground. It reared up and extended paws filled with hooked claws like the tines of a rake.

The thing charged toward them, like a bestial thunderstorm.