Heart of Black Ice Read online

  “We dare not let King Grieve have it all,” Ruva said.

  The thought made Utros ill. He looked across the valley. “We break camp at dawn and march westward at a swift, even brutal, pace. Our food will run out before long.” He lowered his voice. “When we were partly stone, our bellies were quiet. We did not appreciate the blessing that went hand in hand with that curse. Now this army must hold itself together long enough to cross over the mountains.”

  “You will hold the army together,” Ruva said.

  Utros couldn’t drive away the cold knot in his chest. In the past month he had already dispatched dozens of expeditionary armies with thousands of men to plant the banner of Utros across the landscape. Now he would have to strip every resource they could find just to keep the huge army moving.

  But he looked forward to the march.

  CHAPTER 12

  As Adessa moved up the riverbank on her long journey back to Ildakar, her only company was Maxim’s severed head, which she carried in a bloody sack at her side. She traveled at a steady pace, without urgency, since the hunt was over. She had killed her prey, but her quest was not finished. She still had to bring the trophy back home.

  Home. Adessa rarely let herself think such thoughts. As a morazeth, she gave her body and her skills entirely to Ildakar. Adessa had no joys, no doubts, only service. She would fight and defeat any opponent in the combat arena; she would kill any enemies of the city, even the wizard commander himself. She did not count the cost in blood, nor did she celebrate the amount she spilled.

  Before she had killed Maxim, he’d taunted her that Ildakar might be under siege by a Norukai war fleet. He also claimed to have broken the petrification spell and intentionally unleashed the gigantic army of General Utros. Adessa had no reason to believe this was true, since she also knew that the wizard commander had a habit of lying. Once she got back to the city, she would see the truth for herself, and fight if necessary.

  As she moved mile after mile, Adessa anticipated seeing the glorious city, the arbor-lined streets, the ruling tower and the sacrificial pyramid, the combat arena soaked with blood and glory. Adessa had trained so many fighters, and some, like Ian, even became champions, a rare honor. She had also allowed Ian to become her lover, to impregnate her with her most recent child. Even though Adessa had killed Ian when he betrayed Ildakar, she could not deny the fondness she’d felt for him. If only he had not been corrupted.…

  At Gant’s Ford, after leaving the Farrier family, she considered finding a riverboat pilot who would take her upriver to Ildakar, but Adessa was in no mood for company. She could travel swiftly enough alone, and she had been by herself ever since the sovrena sent her on this hunt. By now the uprising in Ildakar would have been subdued, Thora and the wizards’ duma would have reestablished their rule and punished the criminals. Adessa would come home triumphant.

  She followed a dirt road alongside the Killraven River, but as she went farther from the town, the path degenerated into a faint trail among the trees. The dangerous swamps far to the north would be much more of a challenge.

  After a day of hard traveling, she ate dried meat and fruit from her pack and eventually stopped to make camp. Adessa gathered dry wood in a clearing and sat on a fallen tree whose bark had rotted away. The campfire of dry willow wood, grasses, and oak twigs cracked and popped, exhaling a ribbon of smoke. She drank from her waterskin and made a small meal of more preserved food. In a few days, she would have to hunt, but tonight she would just rest and then move on as soon as the sun rose.

  The nearby river curled along the banks with a whispering sound. Night birds chirped and insects muttered as they stirred in the comforting darkness.

  Adessa picked up the sack with its grisly burden and set Maxim’s head on a stump across from the campfire. She pushed the fabric down to expose the discolored, swollen skin. The wizard commander’s eyes were puffy and half open, a gelatinous milky white. His mouth hung slack as the lips drooped to expose his teeth. He had once possessed a capricious trickster smile filled with more poison than humor. Now his skin held an oily greenish cast of decay, and rusty brown stains covered the stump of his neck.

  Trying to balance the head upright, she pressed down to squish the soft tissue. “You will be my company for the evening,” Adessa said. “But you were not good company in life. Sovrena Thora despised you. Now you will at least be silent and respectful.”

  With his dead face across from her, Adessa squatted on the log and contemplated as she finished her meal. Ravens squawked in the trees above the river and burst into flight. She looked up, wondering what had disturbed them.

  Then a taunting voice sent splinters of ice down her spine. “You think you have won.”

  Her hand flashed to the short sword at her side and she rose from her seat. The campfire snapped again. She looked around.

  “You won’t win,” the voice said, and she turned toward Maxim’s head. Though bloated and discolored with decomposition, his eyes were now open, with the whites focused on her. “Ildakar has already fallen.”

  “By the Keeper!” she cried.

  “Yes, by the Keeper.” Maxim’s lips spread apart and cracked as pus leaked through them. His swollen tongue protruded from his teeth as the jaws moved to form words. “You haven’t finished the job, morazeth.”

  Sure that she was imagining this nonsense, Adessa stared. “Be silent!”

  When Maxim laughed, his head wobbled on the stump. “The veil is frayed, the boundaries slippery. Many souls moved through the cracks.” The head chuckled again. “And I am slippery indeed.”

  “Be silent!”

  Gripping her short sword, she strode around the fire to loom over the severed head. The eyes blinked at her in mocking innocence.

  “I hacked your head from your body,” Adessa said. “I shattered your chest with a tree and burst your heart. You are dead.”

  “Maybe I can’t be killed so easily.” He laughed again.

  “I will cleave your head in two, and then I will chop those pieces into more pieces.”

  He merely scoffed at her. “You think that by removing this receptacle you can destroy my spirit? You are welcome to try.” His lips curled in a sneer. His rotting eyes squinched shut and he opened them again so that runny liquid oozed out of his eyeballs. “Did you not promise my dear Thora you would bring her my head? If you hack me to bits, how will you explain your failure?”

  Adessa wavered, glaring down at him.

  The eerie voice continued, “Come, we will be companions on the long journey back to Ildakar! But I assure you, nothing remains of the city.” He snickered again. “How would you know? You’ve been gone so long.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I see things as a spirit.”

  “You know nothing. You’re my victim. You’re dead.”

  “I am,” Maxim replied. “And yet I am still here.”

  Frustrated and disgusted, she yanked the burlap sack over the severed head, wrapping it up and tying it tightly. Now his voice was just a whisper, but still there. She set her burden on the other side of the fallen tree. Adessa had no further appetite, nor could she sleep throughout the long and noisy night.

  CHAPTER 13

  Throughout the bright daylight hours, the Hidden People busied themselves inside the gloomy buildings of Orogang. They had plugged every chink, sealed every crack so that no hint of sunshine could penetrate their sanctuary. The pallid men and women struck sparks to torches, lanterns, and candles to illuminate the corridors of the palace. Even safe and sheltered within the blocky walls, they still moved furtively.

  Nicci looked up to the high arches where the stone pillars vanished into shadows overhead. Old Cora led her through great, dim chambers where the cool stone walls were covered with patches of moss. “Why did you come to us?” the old woman asked. “Orogang sees almost no travelers. What brought you here?”

  Tagging along, young Asha added, “Did you come over the mountain road? We keep it guarded, but o
ur night hunting parties didn’t see you.”

  Several others walked close, their gray garments rustling as they followed, listening. They spoke in low voices, as if their language were composed entirely of rumors.

  “I did not come by road,” Nicci said. “The sliph carried me. If you have lived in this city for so long, surely you know of her well?”

  The Hidden People muttered nervously. Cora considered. “We have heard stories of the silvery woman in the well, but no one has seen her in our memory. It is said she fell dormant more than a thousand years before Emperor Kurgan.”

  “The sliph was created to transport spies and saboteurs for Emperor Sulachan, long before Iron Fang was born.” Nicci straightened. “I awakened her. I wanted her to take me to Ildakar, but instead she abandoned me here. Something strange happened during our journey. She thinks I betrayed her.” Her heart felt heavy with the knowledge that she might not ever summon the creature again. The sliph was gone. “But I have to get back to my friends. There is a terrible war, and I can’t stay here.”

  Cora paused as she led Nicci along. “Another terrible war. There is always a terrible war.”

  They entered a cavernous chamber with a domed ceiling supported by gigantic marble pillars. Nicci paused to take in the size, assuming this must have been a grand throne room. Iron Fang’s?

  “Ildakar is many days’ ride from here.” Cyrus sounded dubious as he accompanied them. “And the sliph brought you all that way?”

  “The sliph carried me to Serrimundi on the coast and Tanimura before that. Those places are much farther away than Ildakar. Distance is not the same for such a creature.” Nicci paused. “But if I cannot summon her again, then I have no way to get to where I need to be—not in time. Ildakar is under siege, and it may already have fallen.”

  “Our people cannot leave Orogang, or we would help you,” Cora said. “Because of the zhiss, we are honor-bound to remain here and keep the rest of the world safe.”

  Nicci looked around at the shadowy people, who slipped in and out of corridors and disappeared into dark passageways. “How many of you are there?” Hundreds had swarmed into the city square when they attempted to capture her, and she had seen many more silhouettes hovering in the doorways and arches of the sealed buildings. Were they a significant fighting force?

  “Many,” Cora said. “Our people live inside the buildings and in the catacombs that connect the largest structures, others in caves in the mountains. We are everywhere in Orogang, but we don’t allow ourselves to be seen.”

  The torches burned like fiery eyes filling the large chambers. Emperor Kurgan’s ancient palace held innumerable wings and chambers, as well as underground levels, but shadows disguised the magnitude of the place. The ancient capital city had many imposing structures. Iron Fang had built them all with heavy taxes and forced labor as he crushed citizens to prove his power. Though he had been murdered by his own people, Kurgan’s monuments had endured for fifteen centuries.

  The Hidden People went about their daily business. In large communal chambers, Nicci heard the clack of looms, the rasp of files, the rough biting sound of small saws. Craftsmen were shaping wood to make chairs, building tables, creating common amenities. Others wove fabric or spun yarn, while seamstresses sewed garments. The interior of the city had a hushed quality, but Nicci also sensed a certain contentment rather than fear.

  “How do you feed so many people?” she asked. “I saw storehouses and granaries in the streets. Do you really farm at night?”

  “We plant crops,” Cora explained. “The daylight cares for its own and the zhiss do not bother the plants. At night we till and harvest. Our hunters bring back meat.” Her smile showed genuine satisfaction. “We produce enough to care for ourselves.”

  Asha pulled ahead, excited. “But there’s more! Our most important crop is underground. Come, let me show you.” The girl reached an arched doorway above a descending stone staircase. She trotted down the steps with a patter of feet, leading them to a dark lower level beneath the palace.

  Nicci followed Asha down claustrophobic and confined stairs into an underground chamber with rough rock walls. The room was illuminated by an eerie silver-blue light emanating from fleshy growths that covered the walls. Nicci smelled a lingering swampy odor in the air that was not entirely unpleasant.

  Ten Hidden People, including some younger children, worked among the bulbous growths. They carried baskets and harvested the gray-white fungus, while others distributed brown mulch from baskets to fertilize the growths. Asha tore a piece of the shapeless mass from the wall and popped it into her mouth, obviously relishing the taste.

  As stern Cyrus stood at Cora’s shoulder, the old woman spoke with a hint of awe. “We cultivate and nurture this substance, making it our greatest weapon against the zhiss. This is why the swarm has not swelled across the land.”

  Two of the children harvested the mushrooms, stuffing their baskets while snitching a bite or two.

  Cyrus also took a mouthful, as if it were his duty. “We consume the special fungus every day so that it permeates our flesh. It … helps our work.”

  Nicci realized how hungry she was after her ordeals, and she reached out to take a sample, but Cora violently yanked her hand away. “Not for you, Sorceress! Not for you.”

  Nicci backed away. “I do not understand you or your people.”

  The old woman seemed conciliatory. “We will explain everything. It is important.” She picked one of the misshapen mushrooms and crushed it in her palm, showing the mess to Nicci, who inhaled a deeper breath. With her gift and her heightened senses, she found an ominous undertone to the slightly savory smell, a foul chemical that she had not noticed before. Cora said, “The fungus is deadly to all who are not accustomed to it, a poison as strong as the deathrise flower. It would kill you if you ate even a mouthful.”

  As they stood in the lambent glow of the chamber, Nicci watched other people arrive for their daily rations, plucking the fast-growing mushrooms and eating them as they walked back out.

  “This fungus makes us deadly to the zhiss,” Cora continued. “We have bred ourselves to endure it. We accustom our bodies to the poison from the time we are mere infants. We expose our bodies to the chemical, building up our resistance until our blood, our skin, every bit of us is filled with the poison.”

  Cyrus frowned at Nicci. “You could not survive it, Sorceress, no matter how great your gift is.”

  Nicci had endured poisons before, but she did not wish to test this, especially when she was already weak after her ordeal in the sliph. “I need to regain my strength, not diminish it. If the sliph does not respond to my summons, then I will have an arduous journey ahead of me … if I can find my way back.”

  “We know where Ildakar is,” Cora said. “We can show you the mountains and the passes and how to get there. I am even familiar with these cities on the coast that you call Serrimundi and Tanimura, though our records are ancient.”

  “How can you know about the coast if you have never left this city?” Nicci asked. “Orogang has been cut off for centuries.”

  The old woman gave a mysterious smile. “That doesn’t mean we have forgotten.”

  Leaving the fungus chamber, Cora led her and the others into an enclosed wing aboveground that connected to another grand building. They entered a speaking chamber with tiers of empty benches and a great open area for lectures on the floor. It was a place where Nicci could imagine shouting sessions and political debates.

  On the floor stood a solid table on legs as wide as tree trunks. The table held a large, immaculately detailed relief map of the Old World sculpted out of clay and painted with natural colors. It was as if someone had shrunk down the actual mountains, valleys, and rivers of the Old World to fit there.

  Bright lanterns rested on the four corners of the massive table, like suns shining down on the terrain. Previously, Nicci had seen only small swatches of the Old World marked on maps, but this three-dimensional representation enc
ompassed the entirety of the Old World, from the coastline to the mountains and beyond.

  Cora stretched out her arm and touched a bowl in the craggy mountains surrounded by difficult passes but connected by the fine lines of well-traveled imperial roads. “This is Orogang, the center of Iron Fang’s great empire.”

  The old woman traced her fingertips along mountain ridges, following the roads south, plunging down into drainages and wider valleys as converging streams formed the headwaters of the Killraven River, which led south to another prominent city, Ildakar. From there, the river rolled along until it reached a widening estuary that spilled into the sea. Finding Ildakar, Nicci retraced the path that she, Nathan, and Bannon had traveled over the high pass of Kol Adair, back to the desert canyons that hid Cliffwall, and westward over more ridges to the sea and Renda Bay. She followed the coastline to the north, saw numerous shoreline cities all the way up to Serrimundi and Tanimura.

  “This map was created long ago by order of Emperor Kurgan. He wanted to know the whole world, because he commanded General Utros to conquer the whole world.”

  “And General Utros will return someday,” said Cyrus, who stood utterly confident, his pale chin thrust forward. “Remember the old prophecy! We have been waiting for so long, though he is surely long dead.…”

  Nicci surprised them. “Oh, General Utros still lives. He and his giant army were turned to stone for centuries by the wizards of Ildakar, but now they have awakened.” Cyrus looked astonished by the news, but she cautioned him, “Hear me, he is no savior. Even though Iron Fang is long dead, Utros means to conquer the Old World for himself. Do not expect him to be your hero.”

  “We have had legends for generation after generation.” Cyrus stiffened, squared his shoulders. “He is a great man. The prophecy tells us he is coming back for us.”

  “You might have legends, but I have confronted the man myself. I know how much destruction his army will cause, how many people will die because of his ambition. You should fear him, not hope for his return.”