She continued battering the stone until the runes were finally destroyed. The blocks crumbled, the door sagged on its hinges, and Thora kicked hard against the heavy wooden barrier. Iron pins snapped from the hinges, and the crossbar clattered into the corridor. With a groan, the door broke free and crashed to the floor, leaving the way open for her.
Laughing, Thora stepped out of her cell. Once past the protective runes, she felt her gift swell within her. With an offhand gesture, she flicked a bleeding hand down the hall, igniting all of the torches with magic. Glancing down at her mangled fists, which had begun to scream with pain, she restored herself, sealed the worst of the injuries. She was the sovrena, intact once more, although she was unable to drive away the slow permanence of stone that still infused her body.
She was free, and now at last she could do what needed to be done. Ildakar had forsaken her, but General Utros and his vast army might appreciate Thora’s work, her magic. If she joined forces with him, she could help him overthrow this broken Ildakar and destroy the treacherous duma; then she could install herself as sovrena again and begin to fix things. Yes, that was how she could have her city back. That was how she could restore her dream, even if it meant she had to forge a terrible alliance with an ancient enemy.
She drove away the thought of what Utros and his armies would do to Ildakar once they surged through the gates, at least at first. It was for the best in the long run. She owed nothing to the city anymore, and she would rebuild it from scratch.
Thora knew her way around the dungeon levels. In her years as sovrena, she had sentenced many traitors to be killed in the combat arena, or she had simply used the petrification spell to turn them to stone. But some were sent to the dungeons, where she expected them to learn their lesson. Sometimes, she forgot about the captives long past the point where they had become contrite, then desperate, and then insane. After that, they rotted in the cells, leaving only moldering piles of bones for the rats to eat. Thora felt no sympathy for those victims, nor for her current jailers. She had her own priorities.
Freed, she strode along the passageways, searching for a way out into the open air. In a lit antechamber she startled two guards as they played a game with gambling sticks, bidding with stolen gold coins and jewelry. She recognized the two men who had treated her with such disrespect. As she strode into the antechamber, they lurched to their feet, astonished. “The sovrena’s escaped!”
She called a fist of air that slammed one of the guards against the far wall, and when he was pinned there, she pushed, harder, feeling the delicious thrill as his ribs cracked, and blood poured out of his mouth and nose. She kept pressing, crushing his heart flat, pushing the breastbone all the way against the spine.
Yelling, the second guard tried to run, and Thora smacked him with her magic just as he passed through the door, knocking his skull like a melon against the wall. She slowly pressed harder, flattening his skull until his brain oozed out like pinkish-gray slime down the walls.
Moving onward, Thora crashed through doorways, scattering more guards. Some turned to fight, but she dispensed with them quickly. Others fled. She had full command of her gift now, unhindered by protective runes. No one would stop her. When she reached the barred doorway of the dungeon tunnels beneath the bluff, she bent and twisted the metal barricade, then hurled it at two guards who raced forward to stop her.
When she finally broke out to the landscaped streets and orchards, Thora paused to inhale, smelling freedom, smelling Ildakar. It was very late at night, the streets nearly deserted just before dawn. All the noble mansions were well lit, but she saw no one moving about. Above her, the shattered ruins of the sacrificial pyramid stood like an insult, where Nicci had thwarted the sovrena’s plans to raise the shroud of eternity. So much had collapsed on that night.…
Thora needed to make changes, but she couldn’t do it while Ildakar stood against her. No, the city had to be purged. She had to reshape Ildakar so that it could achieve the glory it deserved. She would use General Utros, the mortal enemy of Ildakar, but Ildakar had become its own enemy. She had to save her city from itself, and to do that, in order to surrender to Utros, she needed to get past the wall. She was sure the enemy camp would accept her.
She paused, feeling a chill of second thoughts, dreading how the victorious enemy soldiers would pillage Ildakar, punish the people for resisting the siege, for turning them to stone. They would destroy much of the splendor—
No, she banished those ideas. In the long term, if it was the only way Thora could become sovrena again, the results would be worth the terrible price.
Now that she had escaped, she needed to be careful. Before she could get past the main gates, Nicci, Nathan, and the duma members would stand against her, so she moved quickly, before news of her escape spread.
Down in the lower levels of the city, she heard a loud commotion and she saw many torches and gathering crowds. Something was happening at the main wall, and beyond the city she could see large fires spreading from the grassy hills down into the siege encampment.
In the chaos, maybe she would have her chance. Thora made her way swiftly through the city streets, keeping hidden. She came upon a late-working gardener who pushed a small cart filled with night soil, tending the grapevine trellises for the vineyards long after dark. With a shovel he scooped his fertilizer into the plants, then looked up at her. “Good evening, my lady.” Then he recognized her, reacted with surprise. “Sovrena Thora! I thought you were—”
She snapped his neck with a gesture, and he collapsed into the steaming brown load in his cart. She should have felt a flicker of guilt, since he was one of her subjects, but she didn’t consider any of them her people anymore. They were just obstacles hindering her escape.
As she approached the towering wall, she heard shouts and a clamor of marching feet, whinnying horses, the jingle of armor. When she finally came within sight of the tall gates, she watched a battered and disorganized army returning from battle in the darkest hour before dawn, hundreds of fighters in mismatched uniforms, armor, and weapons. What had happened? Members of the city guard marched alongside arena slaves. She even saw several morazeth among them, which proved to her how much Ildakar had been corrupted. The fabric of her city was ruined!
She tried to put the pieces together from what she saw. Had Ildakar launched some kind of attack? Had this mismatched group of defenders attempted to challenge General Utros and his myriad soldiers? The returning fighters looked battered, sullen, and they didn’t cheer or whistle as they might with a well-earned victory. Rather, they seemed badly bruised.
Then she saw the hated Nicci riding a bay charger with Nathan in the saddle behind her, trotting alongside Damon, with Elsa behind him. Even Oron, head of the skinners’ guild, and Lady Olgya rode with the duma members, as if they belonged there. Lani strutted about, drunk with her own power. Returning fighters poured through the gate even as it crashed shut behind them.
Damon and Quentin extended their hands and worked a barrier spell, the locking magic that secured the towering doors. Thora realized she would never escape that way. All the gates would be likewise sealed. She would have to make it over the wall somehow and leave these people to their well-deserved fates.
Soon after the great gate sealed, she heard the monotonous pounding of Utros’s hardened soldiers against the immense walls. Thora herself, just one person, had smashed her way out of her cell, and with countless thousands of hard fists battering the wall, she knew it had to crumble before long, no matter how many reinforcement spells the wizards used.
But she intended to be on the other side with the victors when the city fell.