Siege of Stone

CHAPTER 83

With the release of transference magic, the inferno swept toward them across the battlefield. The thunderous explosion of heat appeared out of nowhere, and General Utros threw his arm in front of his gold half mask, but the concentrated blaze was more intense even than dragon fire. Utros sucked in a breath to shout his defiance, refusing to believe that he would lose so completely, so abruptly.

Ava and Ruva flung themselves on him, wrapping around him, each holding out a hand. Their scream was a raw sound of desperation in unison. The sound rippled the air, and their magic formed a shell of emptiness like molten glass, a curved shield that covered them at the last instant. The bubble clamped down and sealed with a suddenness that made the general’s ears pop, but even so, a tendril of superheated air was trapped inside with them. A single gasp of breath scorched his mouth and lungs.

Utros crouched beneath the fire that rolled as if someone had poured a crucible of molten iron over the top of them. He fell to his knees, squeezed his eyes shut, and clenched his fists. As the heat thundered on and on, Ava and Ruva strained next to him, weeping, their lips drawn back to expose their teeth. They clutched at each other as if each twin had to steal energy from her sister just to survive.

He didn’t understand what had happened. When he had seen the six small groups that rode out from the gates, each led by a gifted wizard or sorceress, he knew the Ildakarans had some desperate plan. Utros had stayed by his command tent, assuming this was another foolish sortie that could be easily defeated.

When they saw what the Ildakaran groups were doing, though, Ava and Ruva had grown frightened. Ruva said, “They are laying down runes! This is part of a larger spell. Look at the positioning!”

Ava pointed out the knots of fighting, then the flare signals sent into the sky from where the gifted raiders made their mark. “It is a spell-form of some sort! They could encircle and cut off a large part of our forces.”

After the destruction caused by the Ixax warriors and the gray dragon, Utros knew he had to stop the Ildakarans. “Keeper and spirits, come with me. We will block that foremost group.” After he armed himself and wore his horned helmet, Utros had marched brusquely through his troops to meet the nearest strike force. He saw the wizard Nathan among them, as well as an older sorceress wearing purple robes.

Nathan and numerous fighters defended the sorceress while she marked a prominent rune on the ground. Utros had rushed toward them, but before he could get there, the older woman used her gift to blast Nathan and all the other defenders into the air, flinging them far away and leaving her to stand alone.

“What is—” Utros began to say as the sorceress completed her magic, triggering the spell. Transference magic.

Ava and Ruva screamed and held up their hands. So much fire came out of nowhere.…

When the inferno finally died down, Utros pushed himself to his feet again and stared through the rippling haze of the protective shield. The air was hot and scorched inside the bubble. He desperately needed to see what remained of his camp, his army. “Set us free. Let me out there!”

“We are not safe, beloved Utros,” Ava said. “I don’t know if anyone is left alive in our army.”

“I need to see!” he demanded. “Now.” He pressed the gold half mask against his face.

Exhausted, Ava and Ruva sagged. When they allowed their magic to dissipate, the transparent shell flickered away, and Utros stared out upon a nightmarish landscape so hot that the ground had turned into glass. Lumps of rock smoldered, still glowing dull orange. Smoke fouled the air like black bloodstains. Nearby, the landscape was a forest of blackened bones, curved ribs, charred skulls exploded as the brains boiled in the flash of heat.

He and the twin sorceresses were the only ones alive nearby. The entire front ranks of his gigantic army had been wiped out.

Utros had always segregated his thoughts, walling off emotions from logic, tactical plans from historical knowledge, but now those compartments in his mind began to crumble with the horror of what he saw. Staring at the vacant black scar that had recently been crowded with loyal troops, he guessed that at least thirty thousand men had been caught in that instantaneous funeral pyre.

As he stared at the roasted world and thought of all those soldiers who had unquestioningly followed his command, he let out a bellowing roar toward Ildakar, demanding revenge.

And as he watched, the city itself shimmered and disappeared before his eyes.

Nathan tumbled through the air, heartsick as he watched the inferno rush across the battlefield, enclosed by the boundary runes the other teams had inscribed. Safe beyond the flames, he crashed onto the grass and rolled.

Other Ildakaran defenders tumbled beside him: Rendell, the two morazeth, the soldiers and arena fighters who had kept Elsa safe while she completed her magic. Elsa had used her last energy to hurl them all to safety. Lyesse and Thorn sprang to their feet and prepared to fight without even bothering to brush themselves off. Nathan, Rendell, and the others gained their feet and prepared to face the ancient soldiers.

But the outburst of fire from the transference magic was overwhelming. Nathan saw that this one blow, this one spell, had killed tens of thousands of the enemy.

And one dear Elsa.

In his anger at seeing the half-stone soldiers on the perimeter still moving toward them, Nathan flung out more wizard’s fire, destroying any enemies who dared to come close. The blast gave him and his companions a moment to catch their breath. “We have to get back into the city,” he called in a hoarse voice. “Fall back to the gates.”

They turned toward the towering city of Ildakar, their only safe haven now. They had all sacrificed so much to defend it. But before they could move to rush back home, the entire city flickered, then vanished entirely.

“Dear spirits!” Nathan cried. He knew what had happened.

Rendell’s jaw dropped open in disbelief. “Our city! Ildakar is gone.”

The other survivors stared in dismay. “Our homes!” cried one of the city guard, who bled from a long gash down his left arm.

The two morazeth were still ready to kill, but their faces were stricken. “Our Ildakar…”

With the shroud restored, the city and much of the uplift were simply erased. The beautiful buildings, the orchards, the layered gardens, the merchants’ district, the craftsmen’s district, the warehouses … everything was gone, as if it had simply been shaved off the plain, leaving a drop-off to the river, but no city.

Ildakar had vanished again, sealed away in time.

Nathan groaned. He remembered the first time he had seen Ildakar from the high mountain pass of Kol Adair. His life book had guided him here, and he had indeed found what he needed, the heart of a wizard—Chief Handler Ivan’s. He felt pain in his chest now and knew it was in response to the shock of seeing that the city was gone.

But the same prediction in his life book had declared that the sorceress would save the world. He didn’t even know where Nicci was.

The “sorceress” … Had the foretelling meant Elsa?

“The shroud may be permanent, or it may be temporary,” Nathan said to his shocked companions as they picked themselves up. Standing just outside the blackened devastation, he suddenly felt vulnerable. “Either way, Ildakar will give us no protection now. We have to get away from the battlefield, and swiftly, before Utros issues commands—if he survived. Either way, I imagine they will want revenge.”

Though his soul ached from the loss of Elsa, he knew she would have been satisfied with what she accomplished. Her transference magic had dealt a terrible blow to the enemy army. Even now, General Utros’s forces were barely recovering.

Nathan knew it was time to move. Now.

He looked in the blackened grasses, saw the other surviving strike teams, and realized they would be rushing for shelter, too. He drew his ornate sword and tossed his soot-smeared white hair behind him. “There may not be many of us, but we have to find a way to fight what remains of the army.”

“We cannot fight them all,” said the morazeth Thorn. “We are the only ones left.”

“Not the only ones,” Nathan said. “It is not over yet.”

Still, there was no city left to fight for.

Their group raced around the well-defined edge of the burn and reunited with Olgya and her surviving fighters. Their larger group kept moving westward to the rugged foothills, in the direction of the mountains and Kol Adair. They also reunited with Perri’s contingent, as well as Leo’s, farther down the valley. When they encountered the bedraggled remnants of the group that had shot the fire arrow, Nathan learned that Julian had been killed, but not before finishing the boundary rune.

Together they continued to withdraw from the unsettled and stunned enemy army. Nathan thought the wilderness in the direction of the mountains would offer them the best chance. Nicci was gone through the sliph, presumably far away in Serrimundi. How could she ever come back now? He doubted he would ever see her again.

And poor, dear Bannon. He had hoped to keep the young man safe in the city, which was now whisked away. Nathan gritted his teeth. In a thousand years, he had made many bad choices, and he had to live with them all. He would find a way to live with this one.

“Come, we have to survive,” he said. The remnants of all six strike force groups, the outcasts of Ildakar, also raced to the hills. The reeling enemy army was unable to count their dead, struggling to recover from what had happened. Was Utros even still alive? Nathan had seen the general and his two sorceresses well within the boundary of the inferno, but he couldn’t be sure. If Utros was dead, then who would lead what remained of this gigantic force? He could always hope the ancient army would break apart and disperse.

In the foothills, the Ildakaran defenders converged, tired, frightened, and confused. They had all seen their city vanish, and they knew they were cut off from their homes and families forever, stranded in the wilderness. As the refugees gathered in the hills, they came upon the fifth group of fighters, who had drawn the last boundary rune.

Nathan was surprised to see a familiar face—one he had never expected to see again. “Prelate Verna! Dear spirits, I cross half the world and the Sisters of the Light are still following me.” He had broken her jaw the last time she had caught up with him.

Verna looked wrung out. Her face was smeared with dust and dirt, her gray-shot brown hair a tangled mess. She had seven other Sisters with her, along with General Zimmer and a small group of D’Haran soldiers. He saw the wizard Renn, who had been sent away from Ildakar, and the two young scholars, Oliver and Peretta, whom Nathan and Nicci had dispatched as messengers from Cliffwall. “What are you all doing here?”

“We’re exploring the world,” Peretta said, “and committing all the details to memory. That is our mission as scholars.”

Verna said, “You and Nicci sent these two from Cliffwall and they made it to Tanimura, where they told us of the great archive. General Zimmer sent an expeditionary force to help protect that magical lore, and we met Renn. He was leading us to Ildakar with news of Cliffwall.”

“What … what happened here?” Renn combined a thousand questions into that one statement. He nodded toward the devastated plain where smoke wafted into the air, toward the emptiness where Ildakar had been.

“We will have a long time to tell stories,” Oron said in an impatient voice. “First we have to get to safety and survive.”

Olgya sounded lost. “Are we all that remain of the wizards of Ildakar?”

“We may still be wizards,” Renn said, “but Ildakar is gone.”

From the shelter of the trees in the hills, Nathan looked back at the army far below and the emptiness where Ildakar had been.

As he stood wiping sweat from his brow and feeling the misery in his heart, he heard a stirring in the underbrush. Beside him, Verna, Renn, and the other refugees turned. When a rune-branded sand panther crept out from among the scrub oak and tall grasses, the Cliffwall scholars backed away in fear. General Zimmer and his soldiers warily raised their swords, preparing to fight off the predator.

Nathan felt a rush of relief, though. “It’s Mrra.” He turned to the others. “No need to worry. That is Nicci’s sand panther.”

“Where is Nicci?” asked Rendell, sounding miserable. “She left us when we needed her most.”

The big cat twitched, and her lips curled back to show curved fangs. She sniffed the air, obviously upset with all the fire, blood, and smoke in the air, too much death. Nathan held up a hand, trying to calm the big cat. “Mrra, you know me. You know our friends.”

Everyone in the party remained hushed, feeling the tension. Mrra’s long tail twitched, rustling the underbrush. Her golden eyes flashed and she turned her head as if hearing a distant sound.

“You are with us now, Mrra. Ildakar’s gone,” Nathan said, trying to sound soothing. “I don’t know where Nicci is.”

The sand panther made a low growl, then suddenly pricked up her ears. She looked up at the sky and curled about, as if she had sensed something, a connection. With a brief roar, Mrra bounded away, running into the hills to vanish in the deepening twilight. Nathan wondered what calling the panther had felt, but he had no answer. He couldn’t begin to guess where Nicci might be.

Nor did he know what he and his small band of surviving fighters could do against the gigantic ancient army.