Shroud of Eternity Read online

  Nicci nodded slowly. “That’s a good idea, Bannon Farmer. We’ll approach through the trees—keep your eyes open. Mrra can range ahead and warn us. As soon as we come upon a lone member of the army, we will capture him and ask questions.” She allowed herself a thin smile. “By force if necessary.”

  “If necessary, indeed.” Nathan raised his eyebrows. “But I would prefer not to start a war with half a million soldiers—at least not until I get my gift back.”

  “I thought we would just talk with whomever we found,” Bannon muttered.

  Having traveled together for so long, they easily worked their way through the chaparral foothills, among the hissing brown grasses and swaying tree thistles. Where possible, they kept to the patchy shelter of scrub oaks. A cascade of grasshoppers sprang out of their way. Distant birds chirped.

  But they heard no sound at all from the huge, distant army.

  Nicci spotted a dark scar where a grass fire had blackened a swath of bone-dry hills before burning itself out. In these driest months of late summer, she could imagine how the chaparral might become an inferno. Her greater concern, though, was that the burned area offered no cover.

  Nathan paused next to a spiky thistle tree, shading his eyes to study the vast and oddly motionless military force. “I believe you’re right. My vision has always been exceptional—so much time staring at the rest of the world from high towers, I suppose. I’ve been focusing on specific groups of soldiers, and there isn’t any movement. None at all. I can make out hints of their uniforms, which are of an ancient sort, but their colors are all … gray.” He sucked on a tiny drop of blood that welled up on his palm where a thistle spine had pierced him. “Their armor reminds me of…”

  His brow furrowed. “Remember after we worked our way inland from Renda Bay? You’ll recall that I took a side trip to an ancient watchtower. Through the tower’s bloodglass, I observed huge armies. I think they were the armies of Emperor Kurgan—Iron Fang. His General Utros conquered much of the world in his name, sweeping across the continent. From that watchtower, I saw the ancient warriors through time and magic.” He nodded slowly. “Dear spirits, the soldiers ahead remind me very much of those warriors.”

  “But the ones you saw were from thousands of years in the past,” Bannon said.

  “So I thought. And I can’t be sure about this army—until we get closer.”

  They continued toward patchy forests where they could hide, and the questions in Nicci’s mind made her more and more uneasy. She could not make sense of what she was seeing.

  She vividly recalled Jagang’s armies, the stench, turmoil, and mayhem, like miasma. Thanks to the acoustics of the foothills and the open plain, she should have been able to hear a distant murmur of shouts, the clang of steel from practice swordplay, or the bash of armorers hammering metal, the screams of captive women being dragged into soldiers’ tents, work crews with spades digging latrines or burial trenches for executed prisoners. There would have been the smell of funeral pyres, the smoke of cook fires, the lilt of music or bawdy singing, shouted orders from officers, or grumbled complaints from losers in gambling games.

  But Nicci heard only the silence of the wind, the snickering grasses, the click and buzz of insects … none of the din and chaos generated by a huge army.

  Mrra bounded back from her explorations, crashing through the underbrush—not prowling, not stealthy. Nicci relaxed.

  In a cleft in the foothills ahead, several runoff streams converged in a glen thick with tall scrub oak and scattered pines. Bannon pointed toward the brush, the overhanging branches. “Look, I see soldiers there—not many. Maybe we can talk to them?”

  “I see them as well,” Nathan said. “Only four or five men.” His whispered voice had an undertone of hope.

  A chill prickled Nicci’s skin as she spotted several figures huddled in the lattice shadows of branches. They crouched together, possibly at a camp, maybe as lookouts for the army. She had not noticed them, and Mrra had not sensed them, but these concealed warriors had likely seen the three approach.

  “It may be too late already.” Nicci saw no movement. “We’ll investigate, but be careful.” She touched the daggers she kept on each hip, but her greater weapon was her magic.

  Bannon and Nathan drew their swords, and they moved together through the grasses to the patch of forest. Bannon ducked under a low-hanging branch, pushing leaves out of the way. “It looks like a good place to camp,” he whispered, far too loudly for Nicci’s tastes. “Maybe that’s why they’re here.”

  Nicci shushed him, but she agreed with the assessment. An outlying party of soldiers could have taken shelter here in the tree-filled glen. But where was the smoke from a campfire?

  Five ancient warriors waited for them under the oaks, gathered around a central point. Mrra padded forward, sniffing, but she showed no fear, no concern at all. Nicci halted, staring at the human figures. The burly warriors wore scaled armor, thick shoulder pads, greaves, and armored boots; pointed, clefted helmets covered their heads. They carried short swords. One man squatted halfway down, leaning toward an object that no one could see.

  All five were petrified, turned to the whitish gray of stone.

  “They’re … statues,” Bannon gasped, with a quaver in his voice. “Like the spell the Adjudicator used.”

  Cautious, Nathan stepped closer. The stone warrior directed his blank gaze toward a cleared spot in the forest floor. “I’d wager that area held a campfire long ago. See, age has erased it, but there are still a few stones left in a ring.”

  The statue warriors wore bland expressions, their thoughts frozen in place when the petrification spell took hold. Nicci ventured closer as tentative answers pelted her like cold hailstones in a summer storm. No fires, no movement across the entire army, utter silence. “I wonder if that whole army has been turned to stone across the plain.”

  Nathan looked both fascinated and unsettled. “The magic required to work such a spell is beyond anything I’ve ever heard of—not since the great wizard wars three thousand years ago.” He spoke with distant admiration. “Ah, that was a time of titanic, unbridled magic.”

  Bannon rapped the blade of his sword against the shoulder of one petrified warrior. Sturdy’s steel sent a bright chiming note into the silence. “A thousand years … three thousand years—and they’re still intact? Will they ever awaken?” He looked at Nicci, his face suddenly struck with remembered grief. “We revived the statue people in Lockridge when Nathan defeated the Adjudicator. All those statues trapped with their guilt.”

  “That was a much smaller thing, my boy. The Adjudicator used his corrupt magic only on those he found guilty, one at a time.” Nathan shook his head again. “The scope of this effort is … breathtaking. So many thousands of men!”

  Mrra sniffed at the stone boots, but found nothing of interest in the marble figures. Restless, she glided off into the spreading oak forest, picking her way among windfall branches and thick mats of brown leaves.

  With curiosity replacing his tension, Nathan walked around the tableau of petrified soldiers, inspecting them like an art patron reviewing a new statue garden placed in a king’s courtyard. “I studied ancient war chronicles back at the Palace of the Prophets. The armor is familiar to me. This badge here, see the sylized flame design?” He tapped the breastplate on one of the guards. “Such a symbol appears in the tales of Iron Fang.” He stepped back, put his hands on his hips. “If only these men could talk, think of the stories they would tell us.”

  “I’d rather they remain silent,” Nicci said. “Because if they could talk, then the entire army could talk. And I doubt their first priority would be talking.”

  Bannon remained mystified. “But if they came to conquer that great city, there’s nothing to keep them here. The city is gone.”

  “Except for the fact that they may all be statues, my boy,” Nathan pointed out. “They’re not going anywhere.”

  “That’s a good point.”

  Natha
n’s voice grew more erudite. “On the bright side, if those countless soldiers are stone, then that vast army is no threat to us or to anyone. We should be able to walk among them and find clues to where the city has gone. No more skulking about. It should be perfectly easy.”

  The moment he uttered his ill-advised comment, a crashing sound broke through the trees at the far side of the glen. Branches snapped asunder, and a huge, hairy creature appeared, uprooting spindly scrub oaks and casting them aside.

  Nicci spun into a crouch, cupping her hands to touch her gift and pull forth magic. Nathan raised his ornate sword, with Bannon right at his shoulder. Mrra bounded out of the trees from the opposite side of the glen, racing toward her companions.

  The monster paused to snuffle the air, assessing the intruders. The beast was the size of an ogre, but shaped like a nightmare-distorted bear. It let out a deep bellow, spreading its jaws wide to release ropes of saliva that drooled onto the ground. It reared up and extended paws filled with hooked claws like the tines of a rake.

  The thing charged toward them, like a bestial thunderstorm.

  CHAPTER 3

  The beast was too enormous for the thickets of scrub oak to contain it. The thing slashed with a battering-ram arm, catching some meddlesome branches with long hooked claws. With a heave and a louder roar, it shredded the wood, leaving only strips of splintered oak, like ribbon frayed by a seamstress into a decorative tassel. With a backward yank, it uprooted the spindly trees and hurled them sideways. The creature crashed toward them, grunting and snorting like the bellows in a blacksmith shop.

  Bannon ducked among the statue warriors, as if they could protect him. “What is that thing?”

  “We learn something new every day.” Nathan planted his black boots in a widespread stance, bracing himself. He grasped the ornate hilt of his sword with both hands for a stronger grip. “But I suppose we fight it in the usual way.”

  Nicci stepped in front of the two men and curled her fingers, felt her skin tingle as she awakened the gift inside her. “Stand back.”

  The monster reminded her of an enormous rabid bear—or it had once been a bear. Its body was covered with matted cinnamon fur clumped with drying pus and blood that leaked from oozing sores. Its blazing eyes were wide set in the blocky skull. One side of its face looked melted, like candle wax left too near a flame. The eye drooped in its socket, sliding down its face. The cheek had peeled away to reveal a horror of fangs in its elongated snout. Thick saliva dripped out, mixed with blood from its cracked gums.

  The furry body was armored in places with smooth, curved plates, like the shells of lobsters that fishermen sometimes delivered to Grafan Harbor. The hard plates were grafted onto the bear monster’s body, and in many places its hide was marred with branded symbols and geometric spell designs, much like the scarred runes that covered Mrra.

  The creature came on wildly, intent on attacking them, hurting them, killing them. Nicci saw that the beast wasn’t just a ravening predator in search of food: it was in indescribable agony. Judging from the mutilation of its body, especially the festering brand marks on its hide, she knew that some human—some evil human—had shaped this creature.

  No wonder the beast wanted to kill anyone it encountered.

  Even though Nicci understood its reflexive attack, she did not intend to let the monster harm her companions. With barely a thought, she called a sizzling, turbulent sphere of wizard’s fire into each hand. The molten substance would engulf the bear monster and turn its repulsive form into purified ash.

  She hurled the fireballs, one after the other, as the monster crashed closer, knocking lichen-covered trees out of the way. The first blazing sphere struck the beast—and merely curled around the furry body like hot fog, before spilling into the shattered trees on either side. The wizard’s fire ignited the dense scrub oak, but did no harm to the creature.

  The second fireball slammed into the bear monster, only to roll off like water from oiled skin. The beast kept coming.

  “It’s immune to wizard’s fire!” Nathan cried.

  Nicci didn’t wait. She had an arsenal of other spells. She reached out with her gift to stop the bear’s heart, which would drop it in its tracks. Often, under extreme circumstances, she had wrapped a living heart with her magic and clenched to still its beating … but now her gift slid away again. She couldn’t touch the heart, couldn’t reach inside at all.

  The beast stormed closer, undeterred. Just as the bear was upon her, she thrust both of her hands forward, palms out, and pulled the air together, thickening the wind to create an invisible battering ram that slammed into the oncoming monster. It staggered, paused only a moment, and lumbered forward again. The runes branded on its hide glowed faintly.

  Nicci knew what was happening. Mrra was impervious to magic as well, thanks to the scar markings on her tawny hide. This bear had been branded with the same protective runes.

  Then it was upon her, slamming a huge paw down. As she tried to duck to the side, the blow clipped her shoulder, and the force numbed her as she rolled.

  Nathan dove into the fray. “Leave it to us, Sorceress. Come, my boy, you haven’t used your sword in days.”

  Yelling, Bannon came toward the beast, as Nathan darted in, stabbed with the sword, and cut a long gash in the creature’s forearm. The bear snapped its misshapen jaws and swiped at the old wizard with its uninjured paw, but Nathan darted out of the way. He spun on one foot with unexpected grace and stabbed again, but his sword did little more than provoke the creature.

  Bannon attacked from the other side, swinging Sturdy in a horizontal arc that caught the tip of the bear’s massive paw, clipping off four knifelike claws.

  Nathan swung his blade down hard. The steel struck one of the armor shells and glanced off. Everything happened in a few seconds.

  Nicci lunged back to her feet and saw that the blaze ignited by her wizard’s fire crackled in the underbrush, catching deadfall branches and the carpet of dry leaves. The fire would spread, and if it reached the dry grassy hills, the inferno would be unstoppable.

  But before they could fight the fire, they had to halt the attacking monster.

  Since her magic could not harm the bear directly, Nicci used her gift to wrench one of the stunted, burning oaks from the ground and threw the uprooted projectile at the bear. In a crash of sparks and smoke, the tree struck the monster, spraying fire onto its fur. Bannon and Nathan scattered out of the way as the monster tore the burning tree apart and came at them again.

  Nicci set aside her gift and instead drew the two daggers she kept at her sides. In order to inflict harm with the short blades, she would have to be well within the monster’s embrace. She did not intend to be crushed in a furious hug, her ribs snapped like twigs, but she watched for opportunity.

  Nathan hacked with his sword again, but the monster caught him with a backhanded blow. The old wizard flew twenty feet and his limp body crashed into a thicket of scrub oaks, where he lay stunned.

  A tawny shape flashed past, and Mrra sprang upon the monster. Though the panther was much smaller than the enormous bear, Mrra was a killing machine, trained in some distant combat arena.

  Nicci bounded into the fray, both knives held in front of her. As she stabbed, one blade clattered against the implanted armor, but her other knife cut into the tough fur. Striking like a viper, she jabbed and jabbed again, before springing away.

  Mrra attacked with claws and scimitar fangs, tearing at the sword gash Bannon had made in the thing’s belly. The panther ripped the wound wider until entrails spilled out. As it roared, the monster sprayed ribbons of saliva. Its intact paw raked a line of scratches down Mrra’s hide, but the big cat didn’t stop.

  Bannon stabbed his plain sword into the creature’s belly, driving the blade deep, all the way to the spine. Using both bloody paws, the bear clawed at the blade, then swatted at Bannon. As the young man reeled out of the way, his sword slid out of the wound, now slick with gore.

  As Mrra
continued to maul, Nicci worked her way close enough to the monster’s head that she could smell its fetid breath. She plunged one knife into its left eye, drove the point through the socket, cracking the thick bone, and into its brain. Pounding the pommel with the flat of her hand, she hammered the knife deeper and deeper.

  Even that didn’t kill the bear, but Nicci used her other dagger to slash its throat, cutting through insulating fat and sawing through the tendons until she found its jugular. The razor-honed edge severed the vein, and spouting blood drenched her.

  Mrra pulled away, dragging long cords of intestines out of the creature’s torn belly as if the big cat had found a new toy.

  Bannon’s eyes flashed with the frenzy of the fight, a battle trance that sometimes caught him. With a wordless yell, he raised his sword high and plunged it point-first into the bear’s chest, cracking its breastbone and piercing its heart.

  The tortured creature shuddered, gurgled, and finally died.

  Bannon’s shoulders heaved up and down as he hunched over the beast, clutching the leather-wrapped hilt. When he looked down at the bloody mess, he began weeping, not just from relief and terror, but out of real sympathy for the poor creature. “I would have preferred a cleaner kill.”

  A stunned Nathan extricated himself from the thicket, clawing leaves and branches from his hair and clothes. He held a hand to his throbbing head. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help. I was sidelined like an injured player in Ja’La.”

  Even as the dead bear still twitched, the crackling flames of the growing fire caught Nicci’s attention. The scrub oaks burned quickly, and the mounded dry leaves on the forest floor provided a wealth of fuel. The flames rushed through the spindly branches. The blaze had already swept past the five statue warriors, blackening their petrified features.

  Nicci drew several breaths, calming herself to focus on her Han. A forest fire was something she could fight, a problem her gift could solve. She called up the wind again and swirled a curtain of air around the rising flames, encircling the fire. A cyclone of dry leaves blew all around them.