Isaura looked over at Naelros. He had suggested a stronger force to make that maneuver, but Anarus had opted for speed. Anarus, it struck Isaura, became hasty as the moon waned, and seemed more possessed of himself as it grew to full.
The dracomorph acknowledged her glance with a nod, but remained silent.
The wolfish sullanciri paced angrily. As he turned, he would look at the bloody head and snap at it. Half the time he would curse, the rest growl. His eyes blazed with an evil light, and snarls bared fangs with menacing regularity. Anger and outrage radiated off him like heat from molten rock.
Then his head came up and his ears flattened back. A long tongue came out and he licked his muzzle, then hunched his shoulders and gathered his clawed hands at the small of his back. “There are a number of things made clear now. First, the Murosans have learned well from the plight of the Sebcians. The only way to stop us from laying siege to their cities is to prevent us from getting at their cities. They do this by blocking the roads and confiscating our supplies. Soon enough, though, we will have more troops and supplies coming in through Porjal, so the troops they have out there now will be useless.”
Naelros nodded. “If you desired, Lord Anarus, I could take my people and hunt down their raiders.”
“No, no, that will not do.” Anarus growled, but not savagely. “Your troops are no more suited to hunting than mine are. I do have a task for you, though. You will take your regiment and two others, along with a dragonel battalion. You will drive at Nawal.”
Is it wise to split your force?
The snarl directed at Neskartu came quick and dire. “Question me not, wizard. That force will be sufficient to threaten Nawal. If our troops arrive to lay siege and no one comes to lift it, the people will lose heart and open the city to us. Without defenders, the dragonels will be enough to reduce the defenses to rubble. Our move will force King Bowmar to weaken the garrison opposing us here in order to defend Nawal, or he will lose that city.”
Isaura raised a hand. “My lord Anarus, the people of Muroso set great store in their wizards. Until the ones in Nawal are eliminated, the people will not surrender.“
“Of course, Princess; that is obvious.” The sullanciri pointed a crooked finger toward the distant Murosan position. “They have not erected any of their black posts there, so they resist our invitations to pit their wizards against ours. Lord Neskartu and his students are wasted here. I will send them to Nawal as well. You, Princess, may stay here or go, as you will.”
She will come with me. Her safety is my charge.
“Then see to it well, my friend.” Anarus turned and looked at the dracomorph. “You have questions?”
“How long do I have to take Nawal?”
The sullanciri‘s ears flipped this way and that as he thought. “Two weeks should be sufficient.”
“And have I enough firedirt and food to accomplish the task?”
“If you do not squander the first, and if you do not feast with the second, yes.” Anarus’ eyes narrowed. “You will be resupplied from Porjal, since it will be faster to reach Nawal than wherever I shall be. My supplies will still come from the north, when they get through.”
Naelros nodded. “And you will request more assistance from the empress?”
“Done, long since done.” A growl rolled from Anarus’ throat. “Come to me with news of Nawal’s conquest or do not come to me at all.”
Something ancient moved through Naelros’ dark eyes. Isaura did not know what it was, but it burned her senses. It had been equal parts anger and contempt, and yet more, woven in such a tight and complex pattern that she could only marvel at what little she comprehended. Naelros would obey the sullanciri—for now, at least—but what he did after he reported success, she could not predict.
Whatever that would be, Isaura was certain, it would not be as foolish as Anarus’ hastily snapped command.
58
Kerrigan Reese was finding the Conservatory students very annoying. They sat there in their encampment, at the heart of the Aurolani siege force, casting spell after detection spell. Not only were their detection spells cast in the old, sloppy style he now detested, but they were painfully easy to deal with.
Once it had been reported that a third of the Aurolani army had moved northwest toward Nawal, Princess Alexia had marched her troops to the city ahead of them. While the cavalry formed a screening force in the direction of the enemy advance, the Zamsina Guards, a light infantry unit, hurried to Nawal. Kerrigan had traveled with them and had been afforded chambers in the local Caledo Academy.
He had been tempted to ignore the Aurolani spells, but a conversation he’d had with Princess Alexia reminded him of a job he had done for General Adrogans on the Okrannel campaign. Kerrigan had prepared lots of documents that purported to be from a unit traveling covertly through the Okrans countryside. When the enemy uncovered this cache of documents, they sent troops out to hunt for these phantom warriors.
Thus Kerrigan had been introduced to the concept of disinformation. It was patently obvious that if the Aurolani thought there were more troops in the city than there were, they would be slower to attack—and vice versa. An underreporting of troops might lure them into an ambush, and an overre-porting might even make them withdraw.
Kerrigan took some time to examine the Aurolani spells and realized they were looking to detect fires burning, swords, spears, arrows, and adults sorted by gender. Clearly each mage had been given a specific result to tabulate, and together they would provide a picture of just who and what was waiting inside the city.
Messing around with the results of every spell would have been difficult, so Kerrigan chose his targets carefully. He selected the best-cast spells with the tightest search templates, and those were the ones he played with. He examined them, learned the method of their reporting, and created two spells. One sought the reports and killed them; the other sought the reports and duplicated them.
Both spells worked well and validated Kerrigan’s thoughts about how masking spells might function to conceal something from a search spell. An old-style search spell. He also created a spell to seek out counterspells employed to detect the spells he cast to alter information. Those never produced results, which actually disappointed him, even though it meant the enemy had no idea they were being tricked.
But what annoyed him about the Conservatory mages was their dogged persistence in casting their spells. He hardly got a chance to work on his detection spell for a fragment of the DragonCrown, but late in the afternoon of the second day in Nawal, he thought he had it ready. Ignoring the search spells for a moment, he set himself, then cast his spell.
Kerrigan could not help but be pleased with himself. His spell melded a number of styles and aspects. It twisted and tangled like the organic weavings of elven magick, but before the tendrils thickened, they evaporated as might urZrethi magick. When they flashed into form again, they had the angularity of a human spell, but its sharp crusts burst as elven tendrils grew out through them.
He cast the spell toward the east and at the Aurolani camp. He’d planned to cast it toward Meredo, where he knew a fragment existed, but the distance would delay the report, and he was anxious to see if the spell worked. If the enemy had a fragment of the DragonCrown, he was sure to get a report quickly. He focused the casting to a narrow arc, which would, perforce, expand as it swept forward. He figured the rate of speed would be a mile a minute, with the rate slowing as the arc grew. At that rate, however, he’d have his report back from the Aurolani camp in seconds.
He waited.
Nothing.