Siege of Stone

CHAPTER 52

“We cannot defeat them,” said Damon, sounding so reasonable. He seemed more relaxed with Nicci gone. “We have known this for fifteen centuries.”

The wizard stood before the duma members, pacing restlessly back and forth on the blue marble tiles. The long mustaches on either side of his mouth drooped with a stylish affectation, each one tipped with a ruby bead knotted through the thin hairs. “When we sent out our best strike force against General Utros, we massacred many of the enemy, but we also lost nearly a third of our fighters.” He gestured generally toward the high windows that looked out upon the distant battlefield. “And untold numbers of the enemy remain.”

Still seated, Nathan frowned in consternation, disappointed. He knew that Nicci would have scolded the wizard for his defeatist attitude. He cleared his throat and spoke up. “What you say can’t be denied, Damon, and I understand the uneasiness in your hearts.” Subconsciously, he rubbed the scar on his breastbone. “But the same could have been said about the Imperial Order, or Sulachan’s undead army, and yet they were both defeated. You can’t give up.”

On the seat beside him, Elsa gave him an appreciative smile and patted his arm. “Ildakar does not give up. We can be stronger than ever.”

The duma members were exhausted, having slept little in recent days, and despite their endless discussions, they had found no ingenious solution. Nathan considered the Ixax warriors again, but he didn’t think the titans were ready yet.

Quentin left the stone table to join his fellow wizard in the speaking area, showing solidarity with Damon. “We have to face facts, even if we don’t like what they reveal. The soldiers are constantly pounding on our walls, and although our reinforcement spells continue to hold, they cannot last forever. Our defenses may have seemed invincible when we built them thousands of years ago, but even the stone must eventually crumble. We can’t hide here forever.”

“We defeated General Utros before,” Oron pointed out. “Is our city weaker now?” In annoyed distraction, he picked at a plate of sweetened pastries, selected one, and took a small bite.

“Of course we are weaker!” Damon snapped. “During our greatest days, imagine what the wizards of Ildakar did. They raised this city high above the river, created the cliffs, flooded the swamps and filled them with monsters. We petrified the entire army. Could any of us do that now? Our gifted nobles are not what they once were.”

“But Ildakar is free,” interjected Rendell, who usually didn’t speak during the meetings. The other wizards scorned him and ignored his comment.

“We no longer have the wizard commander,” Quentin said. “Maxim was one of the most powerful wizards in our history, and he is gone. He developed the petrification spell that saved us before. Andre is dead. Ivan is dead. Renn is gone. Even Nicci has left us!”

“Well, my friends, you do have me,” Nathan said with a wry smile. “My gift is strong. Let us not give up hope.”

“And Renn might come home soon,” Lani said. She now wore a blue silk robe over her pale, hard skin. “If he found Cliffwall, maybe the archive there will offer something even more powerful than a petrification spell. We can use it against General Utros.”

“I like the man well enough,” Olgya said with a frown, “but Renn always struck me as somewhat, ah, lackluster. I’m not convinced he managed to find Cliffwall at all.”

Lani looked ready to defend the wizard she loved, but Elsa broke in. “Renn left Ildakar before the stone army awakened, so he has no idea about our crisis. He wouldn’t know what to look for.”

Rendell spoke up again. “Ildakar will fight together in ways it never did before, but we need to know how. We have a large population, and many are willing to join our defenders if we give them armor and weapons. But we can’t simply throw fighters against the siege force. No matter how brave we are, we would lose!”

“We would die,” Oron corrected.

“That is a valid definition of losing,” Nathan said in an acerbic tone.

An unexpected female voice came from the doorway. “You have me.”

With a rustle of armor and heavy boots, two Ildakaran guards led a slender woman in a dress of flowing green silk. Her stiff hair was done up in an elaborate sculpture of braids and ringlets. Her skin was as pale as Lani’s.

Nathan and Elsa lurched to their feet, but Damon turned to greet Thora, extending his arm in a welcoming gesture. “Quentin and I asked for the sovrena to be brought here.”

“She is no longer the sovrena,” Lani said.

“She is still a very powerful sorceress, regardless,” Quentin said. “We should not underestimate her powers. We need all the help we can get.”

Thora walked two paces ahead of the guards, as if leading them. Her hands were bound with thick ropes and chains, but the restraints were merely for show. Thora had proven that she could easily break free with magic if she so chose.

“When I let myself be captured at the wall, I vowed that I would fight for Ildakar. This is my city. My heart is the heart of Ildakar.” She entered the open speaking floor without a glance at her now-empty throne. “When I escaped, my anger caused a kind of madness in me. I did consider joining General Utros to betray Ildakar, and I am ashamed. That will never happen.” She looked at them with her green eyes, strong and confident. “But my gift is powerful, and I can help.”

“Help with what?” Nathan tried to control his uneasiness. “Please explain.”

Elsa’s face was flushed with anger. “You think you can return to our good graces? Damon, Quentin, and I sentenced you because of your crimes against Ildakar.”

“Ildakar is in a different situation now,” Quentin said, embarrassed. “A desperate one.”

Damon cleared his throat and said to the duma, “We have an idea to propose, something we have to consider as our circumstances grow worse.”

Quentin continued in what was obviously a rehearsed presentation with his friend. “We attacked General Utros and stung him like a wasp, but that wasp will be swatted. He is bound to attack us. We bother him so little that he has dispatched a quarter of his army on other conquests. He knows he will crush us, given time. Will we just wait for it to happen?”

Olgya snorted. “And how exactly do you suggest we use Thora to defeat him?”

The former sovrena turned her gaze to all the duma members. “That is a mistaken assumption. We don’t have to defeat Utros to keep Ildakar safe. The solution has been right in front of us all along.” She raised her voice. “How did we stay safe for fifteen hundred years?”

“The enemy army was turned to stone,” Lani said. “But we cannot restore that spell on such a scale.”

“No, not that.” Quentin sniffed impatiently. “Ildakar would be saved if we just raised the shroud of eternity again. The city could retreat safely into time as we did so many centuries ago. Then it wouldn’t matter what General Utros did.”

The proposal left the ruling chamber in sudden silence. “But the pyramid is destroyed,” Elsa said. “All the apparatus is gone.”

Damon said, “I’m a shaper, and I could re-create the equipment. We know how to do the blood magic.”

Oron pondered. “That might work. We could hide for a few centuries, and by then the general’s army would be long gone. None of our concern.”

Rendell was aghast at the suggestion. “But … all that bloodshed!”

“We just returned to the world,” Elsa said. “We would be trapped again.”

“We would be safe,” Damon insisted.

“Dear spirits, that would not be a good idea at all,” Nathan said. “You have to consider more than just this city. If Ildakar vanished, that huge army would range across the entire continent and wreak havoc on city after city.”

“But Ildakar would be safe and intact,” Quentin said with a satisfied smile. “The rest of the world has to defend itself.”

Nathan was appalled. “But all the blood sacrifices! That might be a massacre greater than any attack we could expect from Utros.”

“Yes, it would take a tremendous bloodworking, just as it did before,” Thora said. “Thousands of volunteers. Think of how many people will die if the walls fall and Utros ransacks the city! We cannot let that happen. Better to spend the blood of the people to save the people. I know that enough devoted citizens would make the right choice. Let them decide.”

“And you will need my help to accomplish it.” Thora lifted her delicate wrists to show the heavy bindings there. “I swore I would do what was necessary to help my city. I meant it.”

Nathan heard muttering around the chamber. He looked in alarm at Elsa, who had gone pale. Lani said, “But we have to wait for my Renn to come back.”

“We will wait until it is truly the last resort,” Quentin replied, sounding reasonable, just like Damon. “But for the good of Ildakar, we have to consider our options. Rather than let this city fall into enemy hands, we know what we have to do. Unless someone can think of another way to defeat General Utros?”

“I don’t like this,” Nathan muttered. “Dear spirits, I don’t like this at all.” Maybe when Nicci returned from Tanimura through the sliph, she would bring hopeful news, and they could have a different discussion.

“There is no reason we can’t prepare,” Damon suggested in a smooth voice. “We will spread the word throughout the city, start the people thinking about who is willing to become heroes to save our city by shedding their blood.”

Oron stood. “That is enough discussion for now. We all need food and rest. We are not thinking straight anymore.”

Lani said in a hard voice, “Thora can’t be allowed to remain free, no matter what she promises. Take her back to her cell.”

“At least for now,” Olgya said.

Uneasy about the duma’s considerations, Nathan went back to visit the Ixax warriors. This time, he carried a disturbing book he had discovered in Andre’s library, an old diary. In the destruction of the villa, the shelves had collapsed and the volumes were scattered, but Nathan had read the journal with widening eyes.

He understood far more about these towering invincible warriors and everything they had sacrificed to become the Ixax.

As he walked into the chamber where the colossal figures stood, Nathan placed a calm smile on his face. He knew the two giants were watching him, and he wanted to keep them at ease. They focused on him each time he came to converse with them. For many days he had told the silent figures stories, regaling them with legends, even exaggerating some of his own exploits. The armored warriors knew Nathan Rahl as a person now, and he hoped the Ixax also remembered who they had been as humans.

Andre’s diary emphasized the fact with even more poignancy than anything Nathan had told them before. He held up the old journal with its brittle, brown pages. “I know who you are now. This is a diary written centuries ago in the hand of Fleshmancer Andre himself. It is from when the army of General Utros first laid siege to Ildakar, when the wizards were desperate for any means to save the city. Do you remember?”

He sat on a broken pillar of marble and flipped the discolored pages, skimming the scrawled handwriting. “Let me read you some of what he wrote. ‘I fear our city will fall. All of Ildakar is in panic. The wizards seek a way to fight back against this enormous horde. Our walls are strong, and our magic is strong, but the army of General Utros is like a swarm of locusts. Even if all our people go out and fight to the death, it will not be enough. We need stronger warriors, and I can create them.’”

Nathan smiled up at the armored giants. He tapped the words with his fingertip. “You were afraid too, weren’t you? You knew you had to protect your families, and when the desperate call went out, three of you agreed to give up your lives and your loved ones for the sake of Ildakar.” Though neither of the Ixax moved at all, he imagined that they nodded.

Nathan turned the pages, summarizing the words. “Andre says he chose you from more than a dozen volunteers to become the mighty Ixax. Do you remember your names? Do they sound familiar?” He looked up. “Jonathan, Rald, and Denn. You were young men, talented fighters. Andre says that you were the pick of your commanders, that you all excelled in personal combat.”

Nathan didn’t know which one of the three he had killed, which two remained, but he was sure all three volunteers had known each other well. “Jonathan had a wife named Maria and a daughter who was sick. As part of the agreement, the wizards agreed to heal the little girl once he volunteered to become an Ixax.” He looked down at the pages, at the descriptions. “Rald had a sweetheart, but he broke off his relationship because he believed this was a greater duty.” Nathan felt a lump in his throat. “And Denn came from a large family with four brothers and three sisters. He was the youngest, a recruit for the army of Ildakar. His family was so proud of him.”

He looked down again at the pages of Andre’s diary. The fleshmancer had viewed Rald, Jonathan, and Denn as mere specimens, test subjects, not as tragic human beings. He had ignored their bravery and everything they were giving up. Nathan decided not to read that part of the diary aloud to them.

The fleshmancer described the transformative magic he had used, how he unleashed energy to make the young men’s bones grow like trees, their muscles swell and expand, their bodies becoming giants through a combination of fleshmancy and metallurgy. Andre had reinforced their bones with bronze, added armor to their flesh in order to turn the warriors into something more than human. But Nathan knew they were still human inside.

“You agreed to fight for Ildakar,” he said. “But you never got your chance. Andre was an unkind, heartless man. I know that, as do you. He tormented you needlessly.” He brushed his pale hair away from his cheek and closed the book. He knew what was written there, but he didn’t want to read any more of the fleshmancer’s petulant complaints against the old duma for not letting him unleash his monstrous warriors.

“Your reasons were pure,” Nathan reminded the giants. “I know that your hearts remember. Even though your families, your sweethearts, your children are long gone, Ildakar still needs you. If the time comes, I hope you remember the real reason that you gave up so much. There are good people here, just as you were good people.”

Nathan waited in silence for a long moment, then stood. “I will come back, I promise. I’ll tell you more stories.”