“What was my charge?”
“To find Lord Tolandruth and bring him back to Daltigoth.”
That was not good enough, and Zala told him so. That information was common knowledge now, among the Juramona Militia.
“I also know your human father is held hostage to your success. He’s a prisoner in Caergoth.”
The mention of her father sent anger flooding through Zala. She drew her sword. The wizard recoiled as she put the sword tip under his chin and demanded to know what he was up to.
“We’re on the same side!” Helbin insisted. “Set me free! I cannot work bound up like this. Dire things may happen if I am not free!”
“If you’re such a high sorcerer, why don’t you hex the cords from your hands?”
Helbin grimaced. “I am not a sorcerer. I am a wizard of the Red Robes.” Such distinctions obviously mattered little to her, so he added, “I need to move my hands in order to perform conjurations-”
She dropped the point of her sword to his chest. “Is my father safe?” she asked, voice husky with fear.
“He lives. He’s held by the governor of Caergoth, Lord Wornoth.”
“What is your purpose here? Speak true, or I’ll cut your throat!”
“Our lady has sworn me to silence. I may speak only to Lord Tolandruth!”
He seemed genuinely distressed, but that meant nothing. City folk were like that, Zala knew. They lied as easily as they breathed.
“If you kill me, all we have fought for will be lost!” Helbin announced.
“And what exactly are ‘we’ fighting for?”
Zala flinched hard at the unexpected voice behind her. Her sword point pierced Helbin’s silk robe, and he yelped.
Tol had just emerged from behind a pile of treasure. Arrayed behind him were Kiya, Tylocost, Queen Casberry, and a sextet of warriors.
“So, Master Helbin,” Tol said. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
Chapter 14
An eerie silence had enveloped Daltigoth. Born of terror, it was a palpable presence, like an evil spirit unknowingly summoned from the Abyss. Streets were empty, market squares abandoned, and wind tumbled rubbish over the cobbles where commerce once reigned. Ground level windows were either boarded up or broken out, empty black holes hinting at tragedies within.
Ackal’s Wolves had run rampant through the city for four days. The rioting, which had plagued the capital off and on since the beginning of the bakali invasion, ceased completely. So had all trade. From the Quarry District to the canal quay, Daltigoth was quiet-as a corpse is quiet.
Backed by imperial authority, Captain Tathman had proclaimed a curfew. Anyone found outdoors between sundown and sunrise faced swift, certain death. No one was immune-neither lords nor ladies, wizards, priests, artisans, or laborers. Ackal V’s thugs moved in a body from district to district, sounding their terrifying wolf calls. These strange instruments, made from cow horn and brass, gave a perfect lupine imitation, the last sound many ears in Daltigoth heard.
Thieves, malcontents, spies, and petty intriguers who continued to ply their trades were slain. So, too, were innocents slaughtered. Workers caught unawares, and folk whose only crime was to be drunk enough to think they could negotiate the back alleys with impunity, paid for their folly. The curfew also gave the Wolves a legal excuse to dispose of their personal enemies. Most were dragged out of their homes, declared in violation of the curfew once on the street, and summarily executed.
The number of deaths was so large a wagon service had to be hastily organized to remove the bodies, to prevent the outbreak of disease. Prisoners from the city jail were conscripted to dig a mass grave. Each morning the wagons rolled to the green fields outside Daltigoth’s vast walls and deposited their cargo in the hard earth.
The City Guards, the usual keepers of the peace, had achieved nothing more than a stalemate after a half a year battling the rioters. When the Wolves began their pacification of the unruly streets, some Guards joined them. The rest returned to their barracks and closed their shutters.
With the city growing more tomb-like each day, the emperor became increasingly buoyant. He’d ordered Tathman to keep detailed lists of the “criminals” executed, and he pored over these lists at breakfast and dinner. When he spotted the name of some old enemy, the emperor drank a toast to the victim’s demise, then added a gold coin to the cup as reward for Tathman.
One evening, Ackal V held a macabre banquet in the great plaza. He was the only guest. He sat at the head of the great banquet table dining on venison and squab, while facing him was rank upon rank of empty chairs, arranged in lines as precise as a military parade. Each chair represented a resident of Daltigoth slain by the Wolves. The emperor ate and drank well into the night, served by silent, expressionless lackeys. Now and then one would bring a new chair to the rear of the formation.
Empress Valaran lost contact with her chief agent in the city on the second day of the curfew. She sent him another message written in Yetai’s secret ink. The courier also disappeared.
In the late afternoon, a few days after her husband’s bizarre banquet, Valaran ascended to a high palace corridor to look out on the city’s now-quiescent streets. She avoided her old sanctuary. The palace roof reminded her too strongly of Winath’s death. She contented herself with the view of the city’s southwest quarter offered by this high, long corridor, which connected the imperial suite to the Consorts’ Chambers. From here she could see much of the New City and the Canal District.
Six days had passed since her last communication with Helbin. During that time she’d brought the magic mirror to her own bedchamber, hiding it in plain sight on the high table that held her toiletries. There it seemed nothing more than an exotic Silvanesti trinket, and she could make multiple attempts during the day to contact the wizard, without arousing suspicion by too frequent trips to the library. She had no success; the mirror showed nothing but her own face.
Columns of smoke no longer obscured the city rooftops. The swell of angry voices, once as regular as the ocean tide, likewise was stilled.
Couriers brought war news. The bakali had crossed the Dalti River without boats by resorting to a remarkable tactic. Working night and day, they created a low, short wall of stones about twenty paces out from the eastern shore. They filled this backwater with all manner of rubbish-whole trees, rubble from human homesteads. The result was a huge floating weir of debris. It dammed the Dalti sufficiently to lower the water level behind the obstruction enough for the lizard-men to cross to the far shore. Once loose on the west bank, they swarmed through the rich farmlands northeast of Daltigoth, driving out everyone in their path. They tore down houses and barns, dragging the broken timbers and masonry along with them.
Halfway between the Dalti and North Thorn rivers the bakali host halted and began building an enormous fortified camp. The flat alluvial plain seemed an odd choice for a stronghold; it offered no heights on which to build. Undaunted, the lizard-men erected a huge earthen mound, bolstered by stolen timber and brick, and commenced digging a deep ditch around it. Other parties of bakali carved channels in the black soil back to the Dalti River. When they completed the channels, they could flood the low-lying land around the earthen mound, and create a wide, deep moat.
Faced with these developments, Ackal V scrapped his earlier plans and ordered all the empire’s remaining hordes to muster for battle. The Great Horde came together at the village of Verryne, on the east bank of the Thorn River, fifteen leagues from the capital. Only a few cavalry bands remained between Daltigoth and the bakali host, scouting and watching the enemy. This left the city open to attack, but the emperor wasn’t worried. The walls of Daltigoth were formidable, the city could be supplied indefinitely via the imperial canal.