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“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.

CHAPTER 84

After weeks of searching, Adessa finally found the wizard commander. Maxim had been quiet, hiding, keeping a low profile, but the morazeth doubted he would grow complacent. Neither had she.

Maxim surely must know that she would continue to follow him to the end of the world and the end of time. He was smart and powerful, but sometimes he was also a fool, and Adessa was no fool.

Over the long and hard pursuit, she realized that what had started out as a simple hunt was much more than that. This was an actual war between her and the wizard commander, with battles, tactics, and an ultimate goal.

She had lost his track for twenty days, but she kept moving down the river, sure that was where Maxim would go. In certain ways, he had little imagination, and he had no more knowledge of the river’s geography than she had. They both knew the Killraven eventually widened into the estuary, then spilled into the great sea. She simply needed to find him.

With such mastery of the gift, Maxim could have claimed a place to hide, even created a small protective shroud to hide himself from time, and if he just waited long enough, Adessa would never track him down.

But the wizard commander was arrogant and lazy. Although he had grown impatient with Ildakar’s hedonistic extravagances, he was not a rugged man, and he preferred his comforts. That was why Adessa knew he would find some other town, a cozy shelter where he could force someone to take care of him, as he had done at Tarada.

As she approached a river town named Gant’s Ford, she decided to inquire about him there. In her distinctive black leather wrap and with countless protective runes branded on her bare skin, Adessa would be too memorable, and she didn’t want to be recognized, didn’t want word to reach Maxim, if he was indeed here.

She watched and waited, keeping to the reeds at the riverside as she observed the traffic coming into Gant’s Ford. As dusk turned to deep purple, a lone man wearing a patched hooded cloak paddled past her in a canoe. A wicker basket filled with crawfish was balanced in the back of the canoe.

Adessa was already standing in the water, knee deep. As he approached, not seeing her in the twilight shadows, she waded out into the current and pounced on him as he paddled by. The man yelped as if afraid she were a swamp dragon attacking him, but she was worse than a swamp dragon.

Adessa dragged the man out of the canoe and into the water, wrestling him. She punched the nerve cluster on the back of his neck, rendering him helpless. Immobile, he looked terrified as she dragged him into the mud and reeds. There, she stripped off his hooded cloak, knowing it would be a good disguise she could use. She hung it on some tall reeds, then bent over him.

He shivered. “Who are you? I have nothing for you to steal.”

“I am not a bandit,” she said. “But I am the one who’s asking questions.”

He squirmed and choked, and she was losing patience. Holding him down in the soft mud, she removed the black handle of her agile knife and poked the sharp, stubby point into his thigh. It was a minor wound, but when she released the magic, agony careened through his body.

He arched his back and cried out, but his scream was swallowed up in the palm of her hand clamped over his mouth.

She let the surge of pain continue for a moment, then yanked the agile knife out. “I can do more of that, and I can do it all night, unless you tell me what I need to know.”

His body shuddered with sobs. Tears ran down his face. “Y-You haven’t even asked anything yet!”

She described Maxim, explained that he would have been a stranger only recently arrived in the vicinity. The canoe man was so desperate he would have told her anything she wanted to hear, though Adessa also knew how to identify lies. Fortunately, he had indeed seen someone who might have been Maxim.

“He comes into town every two days or so. He lives up in the hills. I think … I think the Farrier family took him in. Farrier is a woodcutter, and they have a cottage, but I haven’t seen them in weeks.”

She leaned closer. “What does this man do when he comes into town?”

“He … he eats. He drinks ale at the tavern. He listens. He is a friendly sort, but strange, won’t tell anyone where he’s from.”

Adessa imagined that Maxim was simply biding his time, building alliances and making plans. “This has been most helpful, but I can’t allow any word of my presence to whisper out.”

His eyes widened, and she killed him as quickly and painlessly as she could, then rolled his body into the reeds, where a swamp dragon would find him soon enough and dispose of the evidence. She made a small cook fire and ate a meal of the crawfish in his basket. Then she developed her plan.

Disguising herself in the cloak, Adessa glided into town, listening, watching for Maxim to appear. While she waited in Gant’s Ford, she learned as much as she could about his habits, the frequency of his visits. She learned the location of the Farriers’ stone cottage in the hills above the river, a small home surrounded by tall spruce. She stole a long, sturdy rope that she calculated she would need.