Maxim chose two young women who were comely enough—one of them Danner’s own daughter—and took them as his lovers, granting them that extra glow of importance. The village girls were inexperienced and unimaginative, but pleasurable, and Maxim could train them, or even try others who might catch his attention. He didn’t want anyone in Tarada to feel left out. For the first time since he had abandoned Ildakar, Maxim saw a bright future.
Then Adessa arrived.
Over the last week, Maxim had prepared for the possibility of her coming and given the villagers instructions to sound a warning upon the approach of any strangers, but Adessa was fast.
A fisherwoman came running through the reeds, yelling at the top of her voice, “The morazeth is here! To arms!”
Moments later, Maxim emerged from his palatial reed structure to see a haughty Adessa stride into the village with her weapons drawn and a deadly gleam in her eyes. Under Maxim’s spell, an older fisherman threw himself upon her, attacking with a boat hook, but Adessa chopped the wooden staff in half, then sliced her knife across his stomach. Not even slowing her pace, she kicked the man aside as he fell clutching at the ropy entrails spilling out of his stomach. “Maxim, I am here for your head! On orders from Sovrena Thora.”
Knowing she was protected from his magic, Maxim cried out to the people, “Protect me! Stop her!” He used his glamour spell to nudge the villagers who were already wrapped around his finger.
Danner charged forward, lips drawn back in a grimace of anger and disgust. “We won’t let you harm our wizard commander!” Two more fishermen joined him.
Adessa looked at them as if they were bothersome flies. The villagers clumsily swung makeshift weapons, as Maxim had known they would. He needed them only for a diversion. They slowed Adessa for a moment, but she cut the legs out from under Danner, stabbed the two fishermen, and kept moving forward at her inexorable pace.
With a wild shriek, Danner’s young daughter bounded forward and threw a torn fishing net at Adessa, surprising her. The morazeth thrashed, tangling her short sword in the net, while other howling villagers rushed into the brief opening. The mob struck the morazeth leader with sticks. A young child darted in with gutting knife to stab her rune-marked legs. Adessa kicked him aside and into the water. More villagers crowded forward with murderous intent, but Adessa slashed herself free from the net.
Now the morazeth took the attack seriously. Whirling as if she were in an exhibition for the Ildakaran combat arena, she slew the Taradan villagers as fast as they came within reach of her sword. A few of them managed to land blows, though Adessa ignored the pain. She killed them all, leaving the marsh path and the village littered with severed limbs and decapitated heads.
Maxim dispatched more villagers to come running to his defense, well aware that the morazeth would surely defeat them all, and as the villagers died, one after another, his own tenuous glamour frayed. Terror loosened his hold on the population, and they pulled away.
Maxim knew it was time for another tactic. This small fishing village would never have served as the capital of his new empire, he realized. It was just an experiment, a way-stop on his journey, and it was time for him to use the supreme power of his gift so he could escape unscathed.
His magic would not harm Adessa, but he was clever enough to put it to other use. He used his gift on the sluggish waters of the oxbow bend, pulling upon the current.
As Adessa hacked her way through the last villagers, Maxim hurled the river water in a wide smothering flood over Tarada. The sudden wave washed away his reed palace and the numerous huts. Adessa braced herself for the crash of the wave.
At the same time, Maxim unleashed more magic, triggering a surge of heat that exploded the curtain of water into hot steam. Searing vapor roared and whistled, scouring the village. Boiling water drenched the people and structures, and swept Adessa away in the hot rush. As more of the river exploded, the entire oxbow was engulfed in impenetrable fog.
It gave Maxim the perfect cover to escape. He had already found a boat, which he would take to the main river. From there, he could get far away.
CHAPTER 40
Left inside her lifeless cell, Thora was tired of waiting. She refused to let her captors determine her fate anymore, and she would not be blocked from the great city, her city. Ildakar had discarded her, shoved her into this dark corner where no one bothered to think about her anymore. Thora had reached her breaking point.
Her own husband had spread his poison, brought the city down upon itself, and then dashed off, laughing at what he had done. For a long time, Thora had felt a sneering indifference toward him, and now when she thought of how he had kissed her and stroked her skin, she felt nauseated.
High Captain Avery had been a far superior lover, so attentive, appreciating her for her beauty, not just her power. In the cell now, thinking of the handsome captain, Thora touched her arms, her breasts, let her fingers explore her thighs and between her legs, but what should have been a tingling erotic sensation was little more than a numb touch. Her body was more stone than flesh and could no longer experience pleasure.
How she hated Maxim, hated the duma members who had cast this petrification spell on her, the conspirators who had pronounced her guilty because they didn’t understand what she had done for Ildakar. Everything for Ildakar!
She felt like the unloved stepchild of her mother city. The leaders dismissed her vision and ignored her powerful magic that had protected them for so many centuries. Her heart was broken for how her dreams had crumbled.
She returned to the doorway of her cell, where the rune-engraved stone blocks prevented her from using magic to escape. Thora ignited a light in her hand and set it afloat. The glowing ball hovered in the air, illuminating the stone walls. She studied the spiderwebbed fracture pattern where, in her fury at Lani’s taunting, she had lashed out and damaged the block with her bare fist.
It was just a start. She knew she could do more.
Thora had to get out of this cell, had to see her city. No, she needed to escape this place. Much to her dismay and disgust, Ildakar was no longer her home. She understood that full well. Nicci and Nathan, the duma, the ungrateful lower classes who had revolted against Ildakar and killed her son Amos—they were no longer her people. No, Ildakar was not her city anymore, no matter how much she had given to it.
She bunched her fist, drew it back, and slammed against the stone above the cracked block. Her knuckles hit so hard that the blow resonated up her arm, sending a shiver of pain up to her shoulder. In a way, she was reassured that she could feel it.
But she hadn’t managed to crack the next stone. She needed more.
Something about Lani’s provocation had triggered the extra power in her. Now, when she thought about her dulled sensations, how she longed to feel the thrill of pleasure in that most intimate of places which was now dead to her, she felt anger again. It grew brighter than the flame that hovered nearby.
Ildakar had taken so much from her! Lashing out, Thora struck another resounding blow against the stone, and this time she felt the block fracture. Before she let her anger fade, Thora smashed again and again, building it into a wild frenzy. She recalled how much she had enjoyed pleasure parties, thought of her lover Avery who had been murdered by Mirrormask’s rebels … murdered by her own husband!
After many repeated blows, Thora felt the damage to her hand, saw blood oozing from her chalky skin. If she’d been a normal human, Thora’s fists would have been smashed to a bloody pulp. She didn’t relent, but merely ignored the damage so she could keep going.