But Tanil didn’t seem to understand. Throwing off the cloak, he struggled weakly to get up. “Korin. I lost him. Got to find …”
A red-haired woman who’d been among the captives knelt by Tobin and touched her arm. “I’ll tend to him, Highness, and the others. This was my farm. I’ve got all I need for them.”
“Thank you.” Tobin stood up and wiped a hand across her mouth. Some of the disembowled men had been taken down and laid out in the hay with cloaks pulled over their faces.
Tharin was dealing with those who still lived. As Tobin watched, he stepped close to one still nailed. He spoke close to the man’s ear and Tobin saw the dying man nod. Tharin kissed him on the brow, then quickly plunged his dagger up under his ribs, into his heart. The man shuddered and went limp. Tharin stepped to the next man.
Tobin turned away, not wanting to see more, and stumbled into a young woman who’d come up behind her. She was dressed in the tattered remains of a silk gown. Sinking to her knees at Tobin’s feet, she mumbled, “Forgive me, Prince Tobin, I only wanted to thank—” She looked up and her eyes went wide.
“I know you, don’t I?” Tobin asked, trying to place her. She seemed familiar, but she’d been beaten, too. Her face was too bruised and swollen to recognize. Someone had bitten her on the shoulder, and the wound was still bleeding.
“I’m Yrena, my—” She started to say “prince” and stopped, still staring.
“Yrena? Oh!” Tobin felt her face go scarlet. “You were—”
The courtesan bowed her head, confusion still plain on her face. “Your birthday gift, Highness.”
Tobin was aware of Ki staring at her as she raised the woman by the hand. “I remember you, and your kindness, too.”
“It’s more than repaid, for the fate you spared me tonight.” Yrena’s eyes filled with tears. “Whatever else I can do, I will.”
“You could help with the wounded,” Tobin replied.
“Of course, Highness.” Yrena took Tobin’s hands in hers and kissed them, then went to help the red-haired woman. Sadly, there was little left to do. Only one other man lay beside Tanil. All the others were dead, and soldiers were singing the dirge.
Tharin was wiping his knife with a rag. “Come away, Tobin,” he said softly. “There’s nothing more to do here.”
A scream rang out beyond the house, then another, followed by shrill Skalan hunting cries.
“We must have missed a few,” said Tharin. “Do you want prisoners taken?”
Tobin looked back at the mutilated Skalans. “No. No prisoners.”
56
The Wormhole stronghold was lost during the fourth day of the siege. The Plenimarans were systematically burning the districts of the city and Iya watched from a distance as the stone buildings above the Wormhole blazed like furnaces. Old Lyman and the others too old or infirm had been sped on, passing their life force into friends or former apprentices. There had been no safe place to move them.
The city was unrecognizable. The last of the free wizards crept through the raddled landscape like ghosts. Even the enemy had forsaken the wasteland they’d created, massing instead around the smoke-blackened bastion of the Palatine.
Iya and Dylias gathered the survivors near the east gate that night, sheltering in the ruins of a granary. Of the thirty-eight wizards she’d known here, only nineteen were left, and eight were wounded. None were warriors, but they’d moved with stealth and attacked small forces by surprise, banding together to use their newfound strength against necromancer and soldiers alike.
Some of them had fallen by magic—Orgeus had been caught in a magical blast of some sort and died instantly. Saruel the Khatme, who’d been with him, had lost the hearing in one ear. Archers or swordsmen had killed others. None had been taken alive.
Too many precious lives lost, Iya thought, keeping watch through that long night. And too much power gone already.
As she’d suspected, wizards could draw strength from one another if they chose and it was compounded, not diminished. The fewer of them there were, the less power they could muster. And yet they had fought well. As near as she could tell, they’d killed all but a few of the necromancers. Iya had killed three herself, slaying them with the same heat she’d used to melt the cup the night she’d first visited the Wormhole. She’d never turned that on a living being before; they’d fizzled and burst their skins like sausages. It had been a most satisfying sight.
“What do we do now?” a young wizard named Hariad asked, as they crouched with the others in the smoky granary, sharing what food they’d been able to scavenge.
All eyes turned to Iya. She’d never claimed to be their leader, but she had brought the vision. Setting aside the stale crust she’d been eating, she rubbed at her eyes and sighed. “We’ve done all we can, I think. We can’t get into the Palatine, and we’re no match for an army. But if we can get out, we might be of some use to Tobin when she arrives.”
And so it was decided. Iya and her ragged defenders abandoned the city and fled under cover of darkness and magic, making their way through the scattered Plenimaran pickets beyond the ruins of the north gate.
Following the same route Tobin had taken three nights earlier, they found their way to the copse where Eyoli still lay hidden. She expected to find a corpse, for she’d had no word from him since the night he was wounded. He’d managed one message spell, telling her of the ambush, then nothing.
Instead, she was amazed to find him unconscious but alive. Tobin had left him bundled in Plenimaran cloaks beneath a large oak, with half a dozen canteens around him. The crows had been busy among the dead scattered on the open ground beyond the trees, but the young mind clouder was untouched.
It was a cold, clear night. They built a small fire and made camp under the trees. Iya gave Eyoli what help she could and he came to at last.
“I dreamed—I saw her!” he croaked, reaching weakly for her hand.
Iya stroked his brow. “Yes, we all did.”
“Then it’s true? It was Prince Tobin all along?”
“Yes. And you helped her.”
Eyoli smiled and closed his eyes. “That’s all right, then. I don’t mind about the rest.”
Iya stripped the crusted bandage from his shoulder and wrinkled her nose at the smell. The wound was full of pus, but there was no sign of the spreading rot. She let out a sigh of relief. She’d grown fond of this fearless young man, and come to depend on him, too. She’d lost count of the times he’d passed through the Harriers’ net, carrying messages. He’d mastered the message spell, too, which still eluded her.
“Saruel, bring what simples you have left,” she called softly. Iya wrapped herself in her cloak and leaned back against the tree while the Aurënfaie cleaned the wound. Summoning what strength she had left, she sent out a seeing spell, skimming above the darkened countryside to the Palatine. They still fought there, but the dead lay everywhere and the three necromancers she’d been unable to hunt down or vanquish were busy before the gates.
Turning her mind north, she saw Tobin and her raiders bearing down on a Plenimaran outpost, and the army that followed close behind. “Come, my queen,” she murmured as the vision faded. “Claim your birthright.”
“She has claimed it,” a cold voice whispered close to her ear.
Opening her eyes, Iya saw Brother crouched beside her, his pale thin lips curled in a sneer.
“Your work is done, old woman.” He reached toward her, as if to take her hand.
Iya saw her own death in those bottomless black eyes, but summoned a protection spell just in time. “No. Not yet. There’s more left for me to do.”
The spell held, rocking the demon back on his haunches. He bared his teeth at her. Freed from Tobin, he seemed even less human than before. He had the greenish cast of a corpse. “I don’t forget,” he whispered, slowly melting into the darkness. “Never forget …”