Raj Ahten suspected that men had already begun killing one another in their haste to flee.
Dull consternation began to settle over him, a creeping numbness. He was still nearly two hundred and sixty miles from Kartish.
But he dared not show concern. He prodded his camel and held his head high as he rode into the market, past the Fountains of Paradise with their tubes of polished silver twisted like vines that spurted water in flowery shapes, above basins carved of rhodolite and filled with live crocodiles.
Refugees had evacuated from the south with their whole families—children, animals, and all that they owned. Those who had mounts at all were lucky. The peasant men and women of Maygassa had a hungry, frenzied look in their eyes as they shouted, “Horses? Camels? I pay gold for camels!”
“Food? I want food?”
Babes cried in panic. The bazaar was normally a hive of eager merchants hawking their wares. Maygassa was home to the busiest markets in the world. Here by the north gates on the outskirts of the market, medicine men sold healing herbs—goku and ginseng—or potions made from ground white cobras to ward off old age, or lizard testicles to make a man virile. And down near the docks were merchants of fish, vegetables, hemp, wood, copper, and iron. Farther into the finer merchant district were vast stalls for the traffickers in silk and linen, cloth of gold, muslin, cotton, and wool, all dyed in ten thousand colors.
On a busy day, the bazaar was so crowded that one could not ride a camel through.
But now the northern bazaar was nearly empty, the stalls vacant, the wheedling cries of the merchants unheard. Most of the traffickers had already fled Maygassa. Those who remained were the most mercenary sort, rapacious men who would charge a peasant twenty times the normal price for a horse, only to deliver a sickly mule. He saw women with eyes that shone from greed selling saffron rice at forty times its customary value.
Desperate peasants crowded round them.
“Raj Ahten!” a woman cried. “Our deliverer!” All eyes in the market began to turn to him. For years Raj Ahten had warned his people that the reavers would attack. He’d promised to be their savior. Now people muttered hopefully. “O Great Light!”
“He will save us!”
Into the midst of the bustle and confusion he rode. The cries of the hawkers died on their lips. Everywhere, the people fell silent.
Raj Ahten raised his hand. “What is this commotion?” he called. He pinned his eyes upon a man who was offering a handful of rubies for a camel so old that its muzzle hairs had gone gray.
“Great One,” the man said, “the reavers—they surfaced in Kartish! The very Lord of the Underworld marches at their head...”
Raj Ahten nodded. “Are they marching here now?”
“No, O Light of the Universe, it is much worse. There is a blight upon the land—a creeping stench that kills every plant it touches. It is moving this way, just a bit faster than a man can walk—unless the wind bears it faster. Last night, the winds blew very hard indeed.”
In rising trepidation Raj Ahten made some quick calculations. The reavers had surfaced yesterday at dawn, and had swiftly created a Seal of Desolation in Kartish, as they’d done at Carris. If the resulting blight crept forward at a steady pace, it could be over two hundred miles in diameter.
“It covers all of Kartish?” He tried to imagine the consequences. There would be little food for his troops, so he would not be able to lay siege to the reavers’ stronghold. He’d have to strike quickly, and with all of his might. If the reavers managed to hold the blood-metal mines, it would bring his ruin.
But there were other dangers. The bulk of Raj Ahten’s Dedicates were currently housed in the Palace of Canaries, not far from the mines themselves. They would be at risk.
I am dead now, he thought. If my Dedicates die, I will die with them.
“Indeed, Enlightened One. The blight covers Kartish and Muyyatin as well. But last night the winds drove it into Dharmad and Aven. Soon it will swallow all of the Jewel Kingdoms. Every plant in them will be blasted by nightfall.”
Raj Ahten could not imagine the pepper trees at Aven lying blackened and twisted in their groves, or the passion fruit orchards of Dharmad with nothing but rot beneath their trees. The apiaries of Osmol would be devastated, along with the vineyards and jungles and the rice paddies at Bina.
The farms and orchards of southern Indhopal, of the jewel Kingdoms, were the richest in the world. With them gone, all of Indhopal would suffer famine this winter.
“All gone,” the kaif said. “All destroyed. The people are fleeing as fast as they can, but the blight spreads even at night. A common man, even on horse, cannot outrun it! To wait until it catches up with you is folly, for it means certain death.”
“And what of my warriors?”
“Armies are converging on the mines at Kartish,” someone yelled from the crowd. One of his soldiers was there, a man in a saffron surcoat with the three-headed wolf emblazoned in red. But he wore his surcoat hidden under a black cloak, so that Raj Ahten had not seen him from behind. “Aysalla Pusnabish leads the charge, with three million footmen and eighty thousand lancers—every able-bodied man in the Jewel Kingdoms.”
Pusnabish was Raj Ahten’s most trusted warlord—the captain who protected his Dedicates. He was marshaling every troop available, but nearly all of those three million men would be commoners, and it might take days for them to gather.
If the Lord of the Underworld led the reavers, if she uttered curses as the one had at Carris, the commoners would become as dross burning in a forge.
Raj Ahten asked, “Yesterday the reavers took Kartish?”
“Yes, O Wise One,” the soldier said.
“And Pusnabish is throwing every man against them?”
“As I have said,” the soldier agreed.
“And the blight still spreads?”
“Even as we speak,” the soldier said. “I raced north from the borders at dawn, and saw the decimation spread with my own eyes.”
It could mean only one thing. Pusnabish had failed to dislodge the reavers, failed to destroy the Seal of Desolation. Perhaps he had simply been unable to break the reavers’ defenses. Perhaps he did not know what needed to be done, or was still gathering his troops. But Raj Ahten suspected the worst: Pusnabish and all his millions might already be dead.
Raj Ahten could not reach Kartish before nightfall, not if his camel was to live through it. Once he hit the blasted lands, there would be no fodder for the beast.
And as the blasting spell spread, it would make it more and more difficult for anyone to reach Kartish, to mount an attack on the reavers lodged there.
There was a slim hope that Pusnabish and his men still lived, that Raj Ahten could marshal a charge against the reavers and break the Seal of Desolation there. A slim chance.
He prodded his camel through the streets of Maygassa, and as he did, he calculated quickly. If the Desolation spread, then by tomorrow at dawn it would swallow the Jewel Kingdoms and lead to a terrible famine in Indhopal. A day later, it would swallow Maygassa and begin taking the rich jungles to the north. Five days later, it would eat through the vast deserts of Indhopal, destroying all but Deyazz.
Within a week, it could devastate all of Indhopal. After that, the world.
37
Many Farewells
True friends must be cherished beyond all worldly measure, for in our memory they shine brighter than gold and last longer than diamonds.
Myrrima’s heart felt heavy as she prepared to leave Gaborn. Men had only begun to cart off the bodies of Jureem, Handy, and their attackers.
The assault on Iome had happened so quickly that Myrrima’s nerves still jangled. The reavers were brewing some new trouble on Mangan’s Rock, while Gaborn spoke of going to the Underworld to fight their master.