Kerrigan’s voice gained a bit of an edge. “Enough. You have had your third strike. You had one for being challenged. You had one for what you had learned. You had one for what you have done.”
Neskartu’s clawed hands released the scored stone. The sullanciri straightened, but kept his wings unfurled to make himself larger. The colors no longer raced through him, but flowed in bright, twisting sheets.
And now you would have your strike?
Kerrigan nodded slowly and brought the wand to hand. “My strike, yes.”
The sullanciris colors quickened. He had said that Kerrigan’s use of the wand would bring certain death. Isaura did know that Neskartu graced the most promising and treacherous of his students with gifts like that wand. While these gifts enhanced the ability to cast magick, they were not without danger. Through them the sullanciri could destroy a rebel.
Isaura found herself wanting to shout a warning, but she could not. Her mother had told her that she would be betrayed, and the words came back to haunt Isaura. I will not be the one to betray her.
A heartbeat later, she knew neither the warning nor the betrayal was necessary.
The youth looked up at the creature towering over him. “I know two things. If I cast through this wand, you will kill me. If I use this wand, I will kill you.”
Power flowed so quickly into Kerrigan that Isaura could feel currents warping to fill him. Neskartu began preparing defenses against any number of combat spells, but they mattered not. The sullanciri had missed the most important clue about his attacker, and had he spotted it, he might have been able to prepare correctly.
Isaura doubted that would have saved his life.
Kerrigan was not a combat mage. He did not cast a spell through the wand, but on the wand—a wand Neskartu had enchanted himself. The spell hyperaccelerated the wand. In the blink of an eye it went from motionless to a blur.
Like an arrow, it punched through Neskartu’s chest. It tugged at the flesh of his back, tenting it between the wings. The wand lifted the sullanciri so quickly into the air that his arms and legs streaked out behind him like streamers. The wings collapsed around him, and his body followed, until he had become nothing but a dark line ringed with angry colors. Then Isaura heard a thundercrack, felt it ripple through her chest. The end of that line snapped forward to the front, then it disappeared into a puff of white vapor high in the sky.
In the thundercrack’s wake, silence reigned. Shock showed on all faces, save that of the Adept. He looked mildly curious, then rubbed his hands over the thighs of his robe. He frowned as he looked at the stone, then gestured almost blithely and it floated back into its original position.
Off to Isaura’s right, a fire captain snarled an order. A spark was set to the firehole of a dragonel. Smoke spurted upward with a hiss, then a moment later the weapon roared. It belched fire, and an iron ball arced out. It bounced once, splashing water and grasses, then bore down on Kerrigan.
The youth froze. The ball struck him solidly in the chest, tumbling him back two dozen feet. A great cry rose from the Aurolani lines and the dragonel crew heartily congratulated itself.
Then the Adept struggled to his feet. He wove unsteadily, but appeared to draw strength from the cheers of the spectators high on the walls. He staggered over to where the ball lay steaming on the ground, then lifted it awkwardly. He waddled off with the thing suspended between his knees.
Naelros shot to his feet and snarled at the dragonel crew. The gibberers mewed and hid themselves behind their weapon. The dracomorph turned his head and looked at her. “He will use the metal from the ball to shape wards to deflect anything with a similar content, will he not?”
Isaura nodded. “If all the balls are from the same crucible, or the ore was mined in the same place, they would be effective.”
“But not wholly.”
“After what I saw here, I could not judge.”
The dracomorph nodded slowly. “This changes things.” He settled back onto his heels. “This changes many things.”
The calm that bled into his voice surprised her. “He has slain a sullanciri and is very powerful. You cannot be thinking to continue the siege.”
Naelros fixed her with a dark stare. “He is powerful, but not the most powerful. He has changed things, so shall we. With proper aid, your mother shall be pleased, and Nawal will be mine.”
62
Svarskya lay before Adrogans, broken and old. Houses sagged. Towers had collapsed, crushing buildings and raising stone scars across the landscape. The outer city had once been beautiful, and the walls surrounding it almost ornamental. Those walls remained largely ornamental, having been long since overgrown and covered with snow. So many gaps had been worn in the outer ring that one could not easily follow its line with the eye. It would have been simple to mistake it for hillocks.
Nothing moved in the outer city. That, Adrogans reminded himself, did not mean nothing waited there. The sprawl stood a half mile thick at its narrowest point, and quadruple that at its widest. In the quarter century since its conquest, the streets had shifted as new buildings were raised and old were razed, but the various routes to the old city were still obvious.
The old inner city, which had grown around the docks, still boasted towers and tall walls. Prince Kirill’s evacuation of the city had let the Aurolani take it without requiring its destruction. Consequently, Adrogans could easily imagine its splendor in the previous era, but he doubted he would ever see it look so grand again.
General Caro rode up. “We are ready to go when you are, General.”
Adrogans snorted. “We might well wait forever then, for I do not know if I will ever be ready.” He glanced up at Nefrai-kesh’s tower, where flickers of flame flashed from windows with a certain regularity. “What are you thinking?”
Phfas laughed harshly. “A question you should put to him when your sword is at his throat.”
“If we can get that far, Uncle.” Adrogans’ constant companion, Pain, offered him nothing. She did not cling to him or claw him, but merely rested against his back as if she were a tired child given to his care, not the embodiment of physical torment. With combat looming, she should have been at her most fierce, anxious for the orgy of agonies.
The potential slaughter had Adrogans’ mind racing. Any of the snow-covered hovels could have been packed with firedirt. If he sent tight formations into the city, an explosion would kill hundreds. If he spread them out to forestall that from happening, concentrated Aurolani forces would overwhelm his thin lines and slaughter his warriors. And if he has enough firedirt to make all those hovels explode, my entire army will die.
On the one hand, the Aurolani hardly needed to defend the outer city since the walls of the inner city still held. Adrogans’ swift advance had outstripped the chance of any siege machinery being brought up. And while the outer city would yield enough lumber and rock to build such things, that would take time. Since the Aurolani could be resupplied by sea, time worked in their favor.
It could have been that Nefrai-kesh desired nothing more sinister than buying time. The problem Adrogans had with that was that Nefrai-kesh could have bought a lot more time by the proper use of troops in previous battles. If he had strongly garrisoned the Svar Bridge, taking it would have won time and chewed up a lot of Adrogans’ troops. And if boombags had been used there, there would be no counting the cost. Come spring, he could have crushed what was left of my forces.
There were many contingencies for which Adrogans could not account. While arcanslata reports did keep him informed in general terms about the eastern front, he had no true sense of how many of Chytrine’s troops were being diverted there. It was quite possible that Nefrai-kesh would not be reinforced. In fact, it could have been that his troops were being drawn away to be used in Muroso. The conquest of Sebcia could have hurt Chytrine much more than anyone knew.