Ashia’s aura, so flat and professional, suddenly blossomed with warmth. Jardir hugged her close, then drew back, meeting her eyes. ‘Remember that, when I must punish your defiance.’
The warmth of her aura did not dim in the least as she bowed one last time and turned back into the night. Only then did her detachment return, like a cloak she threw over herself before stepping into battle.
Jardir threw off his robes, stripping down to his white bido to reveal his warded flesh. Beyond that he wore only plain sandals, his crown, and Leesha’s cloak. In his hands he carried only the Spear of Kaji.
He looked back at Jayan, spotting his son’s aura in the crowd of warriors even more easily than his white turban.
Everam grant you be worthy, my son, he prayed.
There was a whispering on the night wind, and without understanding how he knew, he understood it was the demon princes, speaking to one another with magic rather than simple words. He could not understand what they were saying, but he isolated the nearest of the voices and followed it into the night. Warriors cried out and attempted to go with him, but while a berth appeared in the demons barring Jardir’s way as the crown forced them aside, they closed in quickly behind him.
It was not far before he began to see the currents of magic flowing towards the wheat fields. Demons patrolled the area, but they walked by him, oblivious to his presence as he crept through the stalks to the edge of the alagai princes’ wards. The tall wheat stopped abruptly, and before him the ala was scorched clean, glowing with magic.
Jardir marvelled at the precision of the lines. Flame demons could burn almost anything, but their magical fires tended to start very real ones. The fact that the burning went only in one direction, stopping as abruptly as it began, spoke of other magics involved.
He could feel the ward pushing at him. At first approaching had been like walking against a heavy wind, then like striding in deep water. When he reached out to the edge, it felt as solid as a wall of thick glass. Energy skittered along his fingertips, but he embraced the sting, tasting the magic.
Finally understanding the power, he concentrated, and felt the Crown of Kaji warm at his brow. He thrust his hand into the ward, and the magic parted around him like the stalks of wheat he had pushed through to get here.
Still the call on the night wind led him on as he walked openly along the lines of the demons’ web. He kept the power tight around himself, seeming no more than a slight ripple in the warding, like a pebble thrown into a rushing river.
He walked for some time before finding his quarry. The mind demon wasn’t even looking his way, its attention on the blaze of flame demons burning a path in the wheat. The demon was drawing wards in the air, snuffing the flames along precise lines. Its bodyguard, an amorphous blob of flowing black scales, hot with magic, slithered at its side.
The demon’s aura was bright with power, like looking at the sun, and it moved with casual security. And Jardir could see why. Magic was woven around the creature to protect it from prying eyes, but not, it seemed, his crownsight. Trusting in Leesha’s cloak, he strode right up to it.
The mimic perked up when he came within striking distance and the mind demon turned to face him, but it was too late. He stabbed hard with the Spear of Kaji, piercing its black heart.
The burst of power was like nothing Jardir had ever dreamed. He had killed powerful demons before, used to the feeling of magic running up the length of the spear, filling its well and pumping into him, making him stronger, faster. It healed his wounds, honed his senses, and polished away the years like rust buffed from steel.
But that feeling was a sip of water compared with the flood that ran through him, threatening to drown him in magic.
The demon prince shrieked in agony, and its pain was reflected in the screams and convulsions of the mimic and every other demon in the area. The demon reached for him, and while the claws at the end of its spindle arms were no longer than a pillow wife’s manicured nail, they were sharp as razors.
Jardir growled, sending a blast of the magic suffusing him back through the spear. It shocked through the demon like lightning, rattling it so hard its teeth ground and shattered. Its body began to smoke and stink, and Jardir pulled the spear free, swinging it in a tight slash that took the razor edge right through the slender demon’s neck.
The lesser demons collapsed as the mind demon’s head struck the ala, but the mimic took longer to die, shrieking wildly as its flesh bubbled and shifted, sometimes taking on familiar shapes, and others taking forms only seen in nightmares.
Still awash in power, Jardir pointed at it and drew a ward with the tip of his spear, blasting the creature back to Nie. He could hear bits of gelatinous flesh strike the ground as the smoke cleared.
Jardir stood still in the silence that followed, listening hard, but the calls of the other demon princes were gone.
They had felt their brother’s death, and fled the field.
Jardir bent, slinging the alagai prince’s body over his shoulder. He picked up its conical head with his free hand. With enough electrum, he could double the range of the Skull Throne, or build another to take with him as he conquered the North.
But first, there needed to be an early harvest.
‘I do not see the point of this, Father,’ Jayan said, when Jardir called his court in the hours before dawn and laid out his plan. ‘We should be rebuilding the defences and resting for the coming night, not …’
‘Be silent and listen well,’ Jardir snapped. ‘The alagai cannot defeat us on the field, and your mother has magicked the central city beyond their reach. The mind demons’ plan to build greatwards in the wheat fields has failed, and they will not attempt it again, lest they reveal their locations to me and meet the same fate as their brother.’
‘Then we have won,’ Jayan said.
‘Do not be a fool,’ Asome said. ‘The alagai need not meet our spears or storm our wards to kill us. They have only to burn the fields.’
‘And so we must leave them nothing to burn,’ Ashan agreed. ‘Harvest everything. Even grain not fully fruited.’
‘Work for the women, khaffit, and chin who cowered behind the walls while men stood for them in the night,’ Jayan said.
‘Work for all of us,’ Jardir corrected. ‘Even if every man, woman, and child in Everam’s Bounty, from the proudest dama to the lowliest chin cripple, bends their back from sunup to sunset, we will only be able to harvest …’
‘Twenty-two percent,’ Abban supplied.
‘… twenty-two per cent of the crop before night falls and the fires begin,’ Jardir finished. ‘It is essential that we have every hand, and that those of us considered above such toil be seen in the fields with the rest.’
Aleverak laid a hand on Jayan’s shoulder. ‘You did great honour to the white turban last night, son of Ahmann. Take heart in this. Did not Kaji himself begin life as a simple fruit picker?’
Jayan glanced at the hand, and there was a flare of anger in his aura at the perceived condescension. Aleverak had humbled him before, however, and he was wise enough to swallow the emotion.
There, my son, is the beginning of wisdom, Jardir thought.
‘Be careful, Deliverer,’ Hasik said as they approached a group of chin farmers, ‘they’re armed.’
Jardir studied the huge reaping tools the men held and did not deny they could be effective weapons in the right hands, but he sensed no danger here. The chin seemed terrified of him.