And dragon high, O shining lord,
Bear up my soul, grant me thy light,
For with thy grace and Jolith’s might,
There are three hands upon my sword…
Sighing-he had never much liked that hymn-Cathan turned back to the way ahead.
Their Dravinish guides, lean men with curled moustaches dyed bright colors and horn bows on their saddles, called to one another in their guttural tongue, their laughing voices ringing off the canyon walls. They knew the path to Losarcum and where to find the stores of food and water their people had hidden among the rocks. They also knew how to avoid the true dangers of the Anvil, the manticores and serpent-headed hawks that still haunted the wilds.
They had seen one of the former on their first day, riding the warm updrafts above the desert-its sleek, leonine form betrayed by batlike wings, many-spiked tail, and a twisted, almost-human face. It hadn’t seen them, intent on some other prey, and had flown away before the knights could cock their crossbows. Since then, nothing.
Cathan’s thoughts drifted to the Lightbringer. They had not spoken since that night at the manse, when Beldinas had revealed his plan to assail the Towers. After that, Cathan had kept busy helping his men prepare for their journey. The one time he had tried to seek out the Kingpriest, Quarath had turned him away, claiming His Holiness was too busy for visitors. Finally, on the day Cathan’s company left the Lordcity, Beldinas had appeared at the western gates for the Parlaido, the leavetaking ceremony. He had offered the ritual benediction, then Quarath had steered him away. Now he was far away, sequestered in the Temple with only the elf for company.
Cathan shook his head. He could see nothing but grief coming of this. The stones in the Garden of Martyrs would bear many more knights’ names before this was over. More and more, he yearned to question the Lightbringer …
A sharp whistle yanked him out of his reverie. With a rattle he reined in, reaching for Ebonbane. Ahead, the Dravinish riders had come to a halt and were climbing down from their saddles. Beyond them, the canyon came to a sudden end in a cliff wall. Hewn into the soft stone was a great gatehouse, with stout pillars bearing up the tons of rock. Behind the columns was a huge stone plug, carved with intricate latticework and brightly painted in reds and golds. On either side stood a brass statue of a bullock sporting an eagle’s wings.
“We have come,” the lead rider proclaimed to the knights. His face was caked with road-dust. “Soon you shall behold Qim Sudri, the City of Stone.”
Some of the younger knights glanced at one another in confusion, but Cathan nodded.
He had been to Losarcum before, and knew its native name. He recognized the gates and easily spotted the archers perched on ledges above, all in leather kirtles studded with copper and tall conical helms that winked in the sunlight. The knights’ guides shouted up to them, and after a brief conversation-and more than a little laughter-one of the bowmen vanished into a cleft in the canyon wall. Soon after, the ground gave a great rumble, and the plug pushed out from the cliffs face, then slid aside. A burst of cool air blew out of the depths within, carrying the scents of wine and smoke.
Cathan glanced back at his men, who shifted nervously in their saddles. “We’re safe here,” he told them, climbing down from his horse.
For now …
Lights soon kindled in the blackness beyond-great, copper lamps on long poles, carried by half-clad servant boys with shaved heads. An old man, also bald and bare-chested, emerged and strode down the steps from the barbican. His eyes were rimmed with kohl, and his beard, which reached down to the scarlet sash that girded his waist, was dyed deep violet and bound with rings of gold. In his hands he bore a stone pot, carved with more latticework.
“Daqan si-tuli bhak,” he declared, tugging his beard. “All roads have their ending. I am Ibsim, Master of Doors. Taste of our salt.”
He extended the urn. It was filled with powder, smelling vaguely of the sea. Cathan nodded to the old man, then took a pinch and placed it on his tongue. The salt burned after the long, dry ride, but he swallowed politely.
“I thank you, Ibsim,” he said, tugging his beard in return. “May we enter your city, and drink the sweetness of its springs?”
“Of course,” said the Master of Doors, standing aside. “All who serve the Lightbringer are welcome within our gates.”
It hadn’t always been so, Cathan knew. Istar had not conquered Dravinaar easily, and the desert princes had fought the empire’s Scatas for decades before finally surrendering to the warlord Fabran, not long before the rise of the Kingpriests. Even after, Losarcum had been a site of strife, serving as home to intense factions during the church’s two great schisms-most recently in the War of Three Thrones, nearly a century ago. The last rebel Kingpriest to dwell here, Ardosean the Uniter, had seized the throne from his rivals, founding a dynasty that had not ended until Kurnos’s downfall and Beldinas’s rise to the throne.
If the people of Losarcum bore any resentment for that, however, Cathan saw no evidence. Ibsim bowed deeply, waving the knights on. Cathan raised a hand in thanks, then swung back into his saddle and clucked his tongue, urging his horse forward. His men followed into the City of Stone.
Losarcum was ancient, older even than the Lordcity and the other towns of Istar’s heartland. Its origins were lost to history, but it was said that a legion of dwarves had worked alongside men to build it. Whether this was so, even the sages couldn’t say, but the signs were there-for, of all the empire’s glorious cities, this was the only one not built upon the ground but carved out of it.
The mesa that sheltered it was huge, perhaps the largest in all the Anvil. Beneath it lay a vast, underground reservoir. The water from this flowed up to form a wide oasis where palms and fruit trees grew. Folk gathered about this central oasis in brightly colored tunics to trade and jest, argue and sing. All around this pleasant garden, the ancestors of the Losarcines had tunneled streets from the rock, and hollowed out the remaining stone to shape buildings. Nearly all of the City of Stone, from the simplest hovels to the grand, many-terraced Patriarch’s Palace, from the great amphitheater where the citizens flocked to watch mummer’s shows, to the nine-walled, star-shaped temple of Paladine, had been built not by raising stones but by sculpting them from the land.
Nearly all.
One loomed above the rest, on a promontory overlooking the city itself. This spire was not golden in hue, but gleaming black, a glassy spike accented with crimson and white on its parapets. It stood now, quiet and still, surrounded by its enchanted grove of swaying cypresses, like an obsidian dagger.
Cathan paused as he emerged into the plaza within Losarcum’s gates. There were wonders aplenty in the Stone City-the Market of Wings, where thousands of ruby and sapphire songbirds trilled in silver cages; the Honeycomb, a twisted complex of natural caves that housed the city’s powerful cloth-dyers’ guild; Ardosean’s Walk, where a fifty-foot statue of the Uniter stood, gazing north toward the Lordcity. All he could do now, though-all any of the knights could do-was stare at the offensive Tower of High Sorcery.
“They’re in there,” said Tithian, coming up alongside him. “They’re probably watching us now, with their magic. I wonder if they’re afraid?”
Cathan licked his lips, saying nothing. I hope so, he thought. I certainly am.
“Bah!” declared Marto, jumping down from his steed with a clangor of mail. “They’re traitors and infidels. Who cares what they think?”
A rumble of agreement rose from the rest of the knights. They were hungry for battle, for a chance to get back what they had lost at Lattakay: their honor. The enemy was trapped, the knights believed, with nowhere to run.