Nicci spoke again, addressing the duma. “This isn’t just an administrative meeting, but a war council. We have to make decisions. What are we going to do, now that the general’s sorceresses have attacked here?” She swept her blue gaze across the members, touched her ragged hair. “How will you respond?”
“What options do we have?” Damon asked.
Elsa leaned forward, placed her elbows on the stone table. “All options? Well, we can annihilate Utros and his army … which doesn’t seem likely. Or we can drive them away, scatter them to other lands.”
“Even if we could break the siege and drive them away, it would only turn them loose on the rest of the Old World,” Nicci said. “And my responsibility is greater than just this one city.”
Elsa raised a third finger. “I’m just listing all options, however unpalatable they may be. Another possibility is that Ildakar can simply surrender, open its gates and let the city be overrun.”
Amid the shocked whispers around the tables, Lani said, “I’d rather not make that choice.”
Elsa smiled. “So, I think our best option is the fourth one.” She glanced at Nathan. “We find some way to negotiate a peace. That is the general’s best option, too. What is he still fighting for? What purpose does this siege serve? He no longer even has an emperor.”
Nicci said, “He does not seem to be in a mind-set for negotiating. His sorceresses attacked me.”
“If we prove our strength, then he’ll listen,” said Oron. “I say we make a focused attack, target one section of his army, and give him a black eye. Show him what we can do and threaten much worse if he isn’t reasonable.” He sniffed. “We are not to be trifled with.”
“Those are all the choices I can think of,” Elsa said.
The duma members talked among themselves, considering, but Quentin interjected, “You are forgetting one other option.” He glanced at Damon, who nodded. Obviously they had discussed this before.
The dark-haired wizard stroked his drooping mustaches and said, “We know how to work the blood magic. It’s been done before. We could rebuild the apparatus, make the spell-forms, and find enough volunteers for sacrifice.” He paused to let everyone realize what he was saying. “If we raised the shroud of eternity again and took Ildakar out of time, we would all be safe and protected forever.” He smiled. “We’d never need to worry about General Utros again.”
When the duma meeting broke for an uncomfortable recess, Nicci went to the top of the high ruling tower, where she had a view of the huge army on the expansive plain. She watched the enemy ranks drilling, like game pieces on a vast board.
When Emperor Jagang had practiced his strategy, the big tyrant found ways to amuse himself and to hone his skills. As the Imperial Order consolidated the Old World and moved north to conquer D’Hara, he would play his game of har’kur, forcing Nicci to serve as his opponent, as Death’s Mistress. Back then, though he abused her, she had tried to please him, believing in the cause of the Order.
In a large clearing in camp, Jagang’s soldiers would scribe lines in the turf with their spears, and then assemble the playing pieces—slaves who represented the parts of various armies. As Nicci and Emperor Jagang sat together on a wooden observation tower, they would command the game pieces to move across the field. The slaves had no choice but to go where they were told. If Nicci lost a move, Jagang’s soldiers would stride forward with their halberds and hack off the head of the losing piece.
Once, one of Jagang’s game pieces, doomed after Nicci made a bold move, had tried to run from the playing field, only to be skewered with spears. By the rules laid down by Jagang himself, the fleeing piece meant that his side forfeited the game. In a rage, Jagang had ordered all of Nicci’s pieces slaughtered as well as his own. The evil dream walker had not known how to lose. Afterward, he looked at the slaughtered slaves and huffed. “Let that be a lesson. In war sometimes unpredictable disasters happen.”
Now, as Nicci watched the ancient army, she wished one of those unpredictable disasters would befall General Utros.
Nathan emerged into the tower’s rooftop gardens. Under the open sky, there were hedges in planters, jasmine shrubs, and dwarf citrus trees. Songbirds flitted around without fear now that the hair-fine nets Sovrena Thora had strung around the roof were gone.
Nathan smiled. “I don’t mean to disturb your thoughts, Sorceress. Have you found a brilliant solution to overthrow the enemy army?”
“I am still thinking.” It was in these peaceful high gardens that Wizard Commander Maxim had secretly encouraged her to challenge the sovrena’s corrupt rule. “The duma has to make their own decisions. I am not their leader, and neither are you.”
Nathan stroked his chin. “Agreed, but I am not convinced a surprise military offensive against an army of that size will be as effective as the wizards think it will be.” He mused, “We could send another negotiating party to Utros. Do we have any reason to believe the general might be willing to listen, now that he’s had time to consider the reality of his situation? Maybe his bluster was just a tactic. We did defeat his sorceresses and prove our strength.”
“And now we know we cannot trust him.” Nicci breathed cold air through her nostrils and peered into the distance. “He attacked me, Nathan. I can’t let that go unchallenged. I want to find a way to make him hurt, and if the duma intends to launch a strike with all of their gifted and a great many soldiers, maybe we could succeed, if we targeted a specific part of his army and hit him without any forewarning.”
Humming, the wizard extended his arms in front of his chest, palms outward. Spreading his fingers, he sketched a rectangle in the air, pinched his fingertips, and used his gift to create a distance-viewing lens. The army of General Utros sprang into sharp clarity in front of them, and as Nathan shifted his hands, so did the view, to show thousands of soldiers like individual armies drilling. Smaller parties rode out into the hills on scouting or raiding expeditions.
Nicci raised a hand. “Go back. What was that?”
They watched a group of more than a thousand soldiers marching westward into the hills, a powerful invading force toward the mountains. Another large army marched north into the thick forests and the mining areas in the hills, while a third expeditionary force moved south toward the Killraven River and the lowlands.
Nathan frowned. “He is shrinking his siege force.”
Nicci was deeply concerned. “Very few cities could withstand even one of those splinter armies. Imagine all those enemy soldiers arriving at Cliffwall, or Renda Bay, or one of the larger cities along the coast like Larrikan Shores or Serrimundi. General Utros could threaten the entire Old World.” She squeezed her fists, feeling the chill in her heart, the black ice forming there. She couldn’t stop thinking of what Richard had commanded her and Nathan to do. “We can’t let that happen. We have to work with the wizards here, keep Utros occupied.”
Nathan waved his hands, and the shimmering view dissolved. He spoke in a softer voice. “I have the utmost confidence in your ability to save us. After all, you must save the entire world. It was foretold in my life book.”
“I don’t trust the word of a witch woman, and prophecy is gone. You know that better than anyone. Why should we believe it?”
Rather than arguing, Nathan brought out the book, as if to offer proof of what Red had written. He opened the leather-bound volume and flipped forward from where he had added journal entries of their adventures, from the Dark Lands to the Old World, down beyond the Phantom Coast and now over the mountains to Ildakar. He stopped at the first page to read the lines that both he and Nicci knew well.