Chapter 14

Karath’s Watch, Suluk

The glow of burning ships cut through the evening fog, staining it murky orange. Standing on the parapet of one of Sevenspires’ green towers, Shedara gazed out at the strange light, her heart heavy. If things didn’t go well, she’d be seeing more of that light very soon. It might be the last thing she saw.

“You’re sure this is necessary?” she asked. “It seems a bit… extreme.”

The dwarf, Roshambur, stood next to her, stroking his golden beard. He shrugged. “Not as extreme as fifty thousand hobgoblins rowing into the harbor unopposed. If we sink enough ships in the port mouth, we’ll form a battlement against them, make it hard for them to pass through. It is a tactic we’ve used before.”

Shedara regarded Roshambur with a thoughtful eye. She’d never liked his kind—the Silvanaes had long-standing troubles with the mountain-folk—but this one was different. She’d never known a dwarf to wear a wizard’s robes before; by her experience, they were gruff, rude creatures with little patience or care for inward thought. Roshambur, however, was as skillful a mage as Nalaran back home. She could learn a lot from him, she sensed. So far, though, they’d been busy with battle preparations; he hadn’t even had time to examine Azar, and the shred of Maladar’s soul inside him, much less commune about the finer points of sorcery.

Also, unlike most dwarves, he didn’t smell like damp earth and stale beer. That boosted her opinion of him quite a bit.

“The minotaurs have other means,” she said. “Great chains they string across the harbor, sunken rams they can raise with winches to gouge out hulls.”

“The minotaurs keep slaves to do that sort of work,” Roshambur countered, puffing out his chest. “We isle-folk do not.”

Shedara spread her hands, as if to say, well, good for you.

“And we have our wizards,” the dwarf went on, not seeming to notice her mocking. “Give me magic over engineer’s tricks any day.”

“In this slop?” she asked, flicking her hand at the fog. “Most war spells I know, you need to see what you’re attacking. Unless you’ve found a way of casting blind.”

“Perhaps we have,” Roshambur answered. “Or perhaps there are things you don’t know. You’re very sure of yourself. Are all elves this way?”

From another dwarf, that would have been an insult, a challenge she’d feel obliged to answer. Even coming from Roshambur, it made her hand itch, wanting to draw a blade. Shedara ignored that impulse, though; the look on his bearded face was one of genuine curiosity, not scorn.

“Perhaps we are,” she replied, “but you’re the one who claims your magic’s the key to winning the battle.”

Roshambur shook his head. “I said nothing of the sort. Only that we have ways of dealing with this fog.”

“Dealing?” Shedara asked. “You mean you can lift it?”

“Of course we can lift it. We put it here in the first place.”

Shedara looked around, stunned. “This isn’t natural?”

“Not completely. Which is to say, the Grayveil’s a foggy stretch of brine, but come now. Mist that doesn’t lift for—how long have you been here, five days?”

“Six.”

“Six, then. Have you ever heard of such a phenomenon in nature?”

Thinking about it, Shedara had to shake her head.

“There you go,” Roshambur said with a wink. “We fog-bind our cities to keep them safe. If the hobgoblins could see us from the far shore, they’d have built themselves a fleet long ago and come across for plunder. It’s worked for four hundred years. If it weren’t for Maladar, it probably would have worked for four hundred more.”

“And you’re leaving it be until they get close,” she said. “Until they’re close enough to hit.”

“Aye. Leave ’em not knowing where they’re going until they’re past the burnt hulls. Then they’ll be scattered, disorganized. When we lift the fog, it’ll be the shock of their lives. Then we start blowing their boats out of the water.”

She chuckled at that, imagining the hobgoblins’ faces when the fog bank suddenly vanished. Then another thought occurred to her, and her laughter died. “You’re forgetting Maladar. I’ve felt his power. He’s worth a hundred of your mages.”

The dwarf’s face darkened. He twisted his beard between his fingertips. “Well, then, it’s a good thing we have two hundred mages,” he said.

He bared his teeth in a grin as he spoke, but she could tell he was worried. The Rainwarders hadn’t forgotten Maladar; they just had no way to deal with him. Thousands of hobgoblins were bad, but an archmage who could drown entire cities—or a whole Uigan horde—was a dire threat. The look in Roshambur’s eyes when he regarded her made her feel cold.

If Maladar wants to kill us all, it said, he will.

They stood together, elf and dwarf, watching the glow of the burning ship. In time, the orange light faded; the burning ships would be sinking, breaking apart, pieces of their hulls jutting up out of the shallows like teeth. She saw it in her mind, though she still hadn’t seen much of Suluk for the mist, even after nearly a week in the city.

Finally, a clamor rose from the palace below—the clash of large, silver gongs being struck with hammers, a heralding signal. She and her companions had heard it before, many times in the days since their arrival in Suluk.

Beside her, Roshambur nodded. “I must go. The king needs me at his side.”

“Of course,” she said as the dwarf bowed and left.

She remained where she was a while longer, listening to the clamor of the gongs. She knew it meant another city’s fighters had arrived. The last of the reinforcements, in fact, from far-flung Thumar, the northernmost of the isles. They represented another thousand swords to defend against the hobgoblins, and thirty wizards as well. The Rainward kings had all answered Nakhil’s call. She must go down to meet the Thumarese and attend the ceremony of welcome—the last before the attack began.

Still, Maladar preyed on her thoughts. Why did he even need the hobgoblins if his intent was to destroy Suluk? His magic alone could smash the city, kill everyone within its walls. Horde or no horde, it didn’t matter. Magic was all he required; he needed nothing more, unless…

Unless destroying Suluk wasn’t his real goal.

Shedara peered out into the gloom, suddenly afraid. She’d seen the tactic used before. The Faceless had spent the whole Uigan nation as a diversion from their theft of the Hooded One. The more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Maladar was trying the same trick. He didn’t want Suluk at all; he wanted something else. But what?

She thought about it a while, then shook her head, cursing. She had no idea.

That worried her more than anything.

The Rainward kings—and queens—all crowded Nakhil’s throne room with their retinues, perfumed and groomed and clad in satin and cloth-of-gold, each trying to outshine the rest as they greeted King Calex of Thumar and his retainers. There were nine delegations in all, with all their heralds and servants—enough, at last, to make the room seem close to full.

There was Calex and his three sons, dwarves all, mail-clad and armed for battle beneath the violet banners of their realm, emblazoned with the golden trident that was its sigil.

Queen Pharga of Mazanti, also a dwarf, and the two princes who were her husbands, were clad in scarlet tabards with white storm clouds, all three wearing massive, two-handed mauls strapped across their backs.

Partho, Suzerain of the Isles of Selenna—unmarried, childless, and deadly dull, reading ponderously from a scroll of soft griffin hide. His robes were deep forest green, with five silver stars.

Queen Etishan, the oldest of the human rulers, was so frail and palsied that it seemed she might drop dead at any moment. She leaned on an ivory staff and was surrounded by a company of thirty warriors who were all her own great-grandchildren. They all wore white surcoats of the Great Isle Ios, cut diagonally in half by a black bar.

Rakis of Essud was massively fat, with a long beard dyed fire-orange, and had eight young wives. They boasted no heraldry and wore rich garments of brocade and cloth-of-gold, as if they believed they were attending a ball rather than facing impending war.

Vorth of Gald, another centaur, and his half-ogre bodyguards were each encased head-to-toe in polished steel plate with a copper manticore on the breastplate.

Qinnuk of the Eastern Archipelago was a voyager from Panak who had risen through conquest to rule the scattered outer islets of the Rainwards. Three yellow warships blazed on his cloak of sea-green.

King Talkash, dark-skinned and white-haired, showed traces of elf blood in the faint points of his ears beneath his iron crown. Aside from his wizard—they all had sorcerers as viziers, even the dwarves—he came to Sevenspires alone; his emblem was a fist of gray on charcoal, the war sign of his realm, the twin isles of Greater and Lesser Ull.

And, standing on his dais of black stone among the lapis and silver fountains, between the statues of sea-elves and shark-men, were Nakhil and Roshambur.

Nakhil was the first to speak, as was his right as host; he went on at great length, reciting a detailed history of the relations between his kingdom and Calex’s, from their rise out of the ashes of the Destruction, through the three great Wars of the Isles, to the peace forged at the end of the Godless Night. The welcome went on for half an hour, and though all the kings present—even barbaric Qinnuk—knew that history well, they all listened with rapt intent as Nakhil retold the tale.

Next Calex spoke, at equal length, in reply—about the very same thing, only from Thumar’s perspective. The other kings all looked on, nodding sagely.

Partho of Selenna was no better. If anything, his greeting was even duller, revolving around a parable involving wolves who yearned to reach a glistening river in a deep gorge until they fell in and drowned in the rapids.

Etishan of Ios insisted on speaking in ancient Aurish, which meant everything had to be laboriously translated for those monarchs who didn’t know the tongue, which was most of them. Everyone held their breath a little, for each breath the queen took seemed weaker than the one before, likely to be her last. A quiet sigh of relief rippled through the chamber when she reached the end of her speech, for many in the room had wondered if she would survive long enough to finish it.

By the time King Vorth of Gald got busy, quoting extensively from various heroic epics, Shedara decided she only had two choices left to preserve her sanity: flee or draw one of her daggers and shove it in her eye. She drew Essana aside, to the edge of the throne room.

“I need to get out of here,” she said. “Will I be missed?”

They glanced around at the various kings and their companies. There must have been two hundred people gathered in the throne room, what with wizards and bodyguards and counselors.

Essana shrugged. “I doubt it,” she said. “I think we could lose a king or two, and we’d only know when it was their turn to talk. I wish you could take me with you; I’ve spent my whole life at court and never seen anything as drawn-out as this.”

Shedara rested a hand on Essana’s shoulder, feeling a genuine kinship with her. After the first few times they told their tale—for they’d had to tell it to every ruler when they arrived—they’d stopped taking turns, and Essana’d taken on the whole of the obligation. Simply, Essana was by far the best storyteller among them, and so she would stay for the full length of the welcoming ceremony. Azar would remain too; he was listening intently to every word, his strange, young-old eyes shining. Shedara shivered, wondering what might be going on in his head…

What the piece of Maladar in Azar’s head might be thinking.

“At least this is the last one of these,” Shedara said. “No more kings to come, now that Calex is here.”

Essana nodded. “Yes. Now all that’s left are the actual war councils—with nine kings who all consider themselves the strategic heirs of Porfaran the Cunning, and who all have different ideas for how the battle should be led. I can hardly wait.”

Shedara laughed, but as she made her way out of the palace and into Suluk’s fog-shrouded streets and courtyards, she realized it wasn’t all that funny. She stood in the last nation left with the strength and will to oppose the Faceless Emperor, and it was divided among too many squabbling rulers. She’d seen enough signs of division already, and the war council hadn’t really begun yet. If there was a hope of stopping Maladar, she didn’t think it was coming from the Rainwards after all.

Where would it come from, then? She didn’t know.

She found Hult in the Square of the Mariners, a courtyard above the waterfront that was so broad, the buildings at its edges were only dim shadows in the fog. Massive statues of Rainward sea captains—none of whose names she recognized—loomed in the mist, bronze but stained green with age and white with gull droppings, their heads hidden from sight. Beneath them, armies clad in Suluki blue and green and the colors of two other kingdoms (one wore the white and black of Ios, the other Mazanti scarlet) marched in formation, sparred with wooden swords, shot arrows at barrel butts, and other things armies did to keep busy before a fight.

The warriors of the isles were quite good, well trained with both blade and bow, but Hult was better. A mob of soldiers had knotted around him, cursing and drinking and wagering. Shedara had to elbow her way through the crowd to get to the front. When she did, she saw why so many men had gathered: Hult was fighting three men at once, his curved wooden sword weaving back and forth as he parried.

No, wait—four men. One had gone down already, his left eye swollen shut and turning an alarming shade of purple; he was getting up again, struggling back to his feet while his comrades cheered him on. The others encircled Hult, feinting and drawing back, searching for weaknesses. He drove them back again and again, and sent another one sprawling with a crack of his sword across the man’s shoulders. The weapon was more familiar in his hand than the blade he’d borne since Kristophan; the first thing he’d done after their reception with the king was to trade that straight-bladed sword for a Rainward-style scimitar, which was closer to the shuk he’d wielded for most of his life. It improved his fighting; as she watched, he disarmed the man with the black eye and put him down for good with a thrust to the stomach that left him on his knees.

Shedara smiled and folded her arms across her chest, enjoying herself for the first time that day. Hult was a simple man, and she liked him for that. Perhaps not enough to kiss him again—she honestly wasn’t sure.

The crowd roared again; a fifth soldier, wielding a long-hafted flail, had just waded into the fray. His weapon whipped through the air, and Hult ducked just as it was about to crack his skull. As Hult went down, his foot swept sideways and took out one of his opponents’ legs; the man landed flat on his back with a yell and stayed down, groaning and clutching his side. Hult sprang back up again, his sword whistling in an arc that connected with the flail-wielder’s wrist. There was the unmistakable, sickening crack of bone, and the man screamed, dropped his weapon, and staggered away, his hand pointing at too sharp an angle with his arm. Someone shouted for a Mislaxan; a healer in a sky-blue vest was already hurrying across the courtyard, looking annoyed.

There was only one left: a big, beefy man with mustaches that hung down well past his jaw, weighted with amber beads. He had short blades in either hand and whirled them in hypnotic patterns, in and out, back and forth. Hult turned to face his last foe, his face and bare chest—he’d stripped to the waist for the fight—glistening in the mist. The beefy man stood very still, swords held low, knees bent, and waited.

“You first,” Hult said.

Shedara smiled. This was going to be good.

Then it was over, without a blow struck, for all eyes turned toward the harbor, where the hulks of burned ships were mere blurs in the fog. Hands clapped onto weapons. Voices whispered. Soldiers started running as their officers shouted. Shedara stood still and caught Hult’s eye. He looked grim. Together, they gazed out at the harbor.

In the gloom, out of sight, a massive iron bell was ringing, one single note, over and over. A boat had reached the breakwater: just a lone vessel, not Maladar’s horde—not yet—but not another Rainward king either. There weren’t any left to come.

“A scout,” Hult said. “Has to be.”

Shedara nodded. “That can only mean one thing.”

They shared the same thoughts. The hobgoblins had been sighted crossing the Grayveil. The enemy was on its way. And still Shedara wondered what Maladar was up to.