Chapter Three
“Check.” I smiled as I passed the board over to Roarke. The motion opened my coat to the cold wind, and I quickly pulled it closed against the mountain chill. “Sorry to trick you with that last gambit, but I had to offer it to you.”
The Chaos Rider accepted the board and turned it around so he could view the game from behind his own lines. He rested the board on his left knee, which he had wrapped around the pommel of his saddle. The skin around his eyes tightened as he winced, then his steamy breath drifted up like smoke as he swore under his breath. “Chaos take you, Locke. You are a two-Cavalry player who has decided not to wear his badges just to vex me.”
I reined Stail a bit back away from Roarke’s horse as the mountain trail narrowed. “As I have told you, I’ve not been ranked. The village of Stone Rapids did not have a Master to test me.”
Riding near the middle of the caravan, I looked back and saw half of it stretched out along the snowy switchback trail leading up through the mountains to the City of Sorcerers. In just the half a day’s climb from the forests to the alpine heights the weather had gotten cold. If the dark clouds coming up from the southwest made it into the mountains while still loaded with moisture from the ocean, we’d be buried in snow by dawn.
Trying to distract me during the game, Roarke had gone on about how this last snaky run would lead to the lip of the high mountain valley in which the sorcerers had built their citadel. Carved by centuries of wagons, horses, and other packbeasts, the trail had been ground into the granite rising above the last of the forests. Try as I might, while Roarke worked on his moves, I saw nothing to indicate we were really getting near the power source for the Ward Walls holding back Chaos.
To me, everything on the trip was new and utterly fascinating. Stone Rapids had been the largest human settlement I had ever seen, but the caravan itself had more people than the whole village and surrounding countryside. The geography around my grandfather’s farm had been largely flat and very fertile, in direct contrast to the rocky soil here in the foothills, or the granite mountains where only lichen and scrub trees existed. The blue sky, which had been limitless at home, appeared smaller here, where the mountains sliced up into it.
And all that, I kept reminding myself, was normal. The things I had seen that had been touched by Chaos, like Cruach, were even more strange and intriguing. Despite Eirene’s admonition about the fantasy of romance involving Chaos, I found myself drawn to hearing more about it. Roarke said I had Chaos in my blood. As I spent more time with Eirene, Roarke, and Cruach, I slowly realized that attending the Emperor’s Ball, instead of being the adventure of a lifetime, could pale in comparison with actually going on an expedition into Chaos. Though I knew Chaos and the Bharashadi warrior Kothvir had killed my father, I found myself wanting to go beyond the wall.
The trail broadened again after we passed between two dolmen. I gently kicked Stail in the ribs, and the bay gelding responded by pulling up alongside Roarke. We rode two abreast for all of a minute, because Eirene and her mount worked their way back from the front of the caravan toward us. Stail liked the creature she sat astride no more than I, so I let Stail drift back in behind Roarke’s mount.
Eirene’s horse—at least I thought it had started life as a horse—had clearly spent a lot of time in Chaos. Instead of having a normal coat, a black-and-orange lizard-flesh covered the beast, though its mane and tail remained normal and black. Its eyes were full of Chaosfire and the two fangs protruding from either side of its muzzle gave it the look of a carnivore, which was what I assumed disturbed Stail. I had no idea what the creature ate and no real desire to find out, either.
It had taken me a day or two to figure it out, but the green in Eirene’s hair and the points on her ears were not the only changes Chaos had wrought in her. When she smiled, especially in the daylight, I could see she had a set of fangs to rival those on her mount. I also gathered real quickly that the bony spurs on her elbows and heels were not part of her clothing.
When I asked Roarke to confirm my suspicions, he answered, “Things like that happen in Chaos.” He also quickly added that Eirene was lucky because the changes Chaos created were not always symmetrical or easy to look at.
Eirene reined her mount in, stopping us. “Roarke, Haskell wants you to ride ahead and let the magickers know we’re going to defile their valley again.” She tapped his knee with her quirt. “Did you hear me?”
“That’s what I’ve always liked about you, Eirene, your assumption I hear with my knee.” Roarke looked up distractedly from the board. “I heard, and I obey. Locke, I resign, you win.”
Eirene smiled. “Again?”
“Again and always.” Roarke closed the hinged board and slipped the catch before he handed it back to me. “Next time.”
I grinned like a wolf spotting a flock of sheep. “If you let me ride with you, we can play while the caravan catches up with us.”
“Good idea.” Roarke looked over at Eirene. “Keep an eye on Cruach. Ride on, Locke.”
We reached the head of the caravan easily enough, and Haskell waved us on our way. The trail continued upward, but leveled off as it ran just below the mountain ridgeline. We rode along the shore of a lake fed by melting snow, and I saw ice already forming along the edges of the shore. Looking into the lake’s murky green depths, I imagined I saw large things swimming about, and commented on them to Roarke.
“I doubt that, Locke. Hauntblood Lake supplies the water for the City of Sorcerers. Were there anything in it, it would have long ago been slain.” He hesitated for a second, then grinned. “Then again, there just might be things in there, just to keep people from doing anything to the water supply.”
“But why would anyone want to cause harm in the City of Sorcerers? They keep Chaos at bay.”
“There are those who think Chaos should rule the land.” Roarke coughed lightly into his hand. “The Empire has many enemies.”
“But they are in Chaos, right?”
“Not all of them.” Roarke reined his horse around a stone outcropping. “There are some people who think Chaos was preferable to life within the Wardlines.”
I frowned heavily. “But that’s insane. How could they hate the Empire? Life is good here.”
“Is it?”
“Isn’t it?”
Roarke nodded. “I think so, as do you, but not everyone agrees with us. The fact is that some people resent the order the Empire impresses on everything. They dislike the whole system of ranking, all the regulations and limitations. They’re not creatures of Chaos per se, but their personalities are less than orderly.”
The image of the whole Tugg brood back in Stone Rapids came to mind. “I’ve known people like that, true, but they didn’t want Chaos to sweep over the world again.”
“Of course not, but from their number are drawn those who do. There are not many of the virulent ones, but they can be quite dedicated to their cause. You must have heard of such things. Stone Rapids wasn’t that small.”
I shivered, and it wasn’t just the cold. “The Church of Chaos Encroaching.”
“Black Churchers.” Roarke nodded slowly. “They are one group that believes Chaos should reign supreme. There are also other groups of renegade magickers who resent the hold the Grandmaster of Magicks has on magickal knowledge. While outwardly the Etheric brotherhood may disdain politics and interfering in the affairs of the Empire, they practice the manipulative art among themselves with great relish.”
The last vestiges of my naive view of a world being united to oppose Chaos slowly evaporated. “You make things sound as if the Wardlines will collapse tomorrow.”
A jet of steam shot out with Roarke’s laugh. “Not at all, Locke. It’s just that most folks overestimate the threat of Chaos, and underestimate the threat from within. It all balances to the level of terror we’ve grown used to, so you need not get all anxious about it. Still, the nice thing about Chaos is this: there you have a fairly good chance of knowing who your enemies are just by looking at them.”
Rounding a bend, we entered a narrow pass through which the wind howled and a few flakes of snow swirled. I noticed the biting cold for all of a second or two, then slowly forgot about it. A hundred yards down the trail, halfway through the pass itself, I saw two gigantic granite statues. Winged humanoids both, the naked figures knelt on one knee and had their heads bowed. The one on the left, the bearded male figure, rested his hands on the hilt of a sword that had been driven into the ground. The female figure held a magick staff, and as we rode closer I could not see any chisel marks or weathering on either titanic carving.
“How old are these statues?”
Roarke shrugged. “Five centuries or so, I would guess. They date since the time of Chaos.”
“They must have taken forever to carve out of the mountain.” I craned my neck back to look up toward the woman’s face. “She’s bigger than the tallest tree around Stone Rapids.”
“They’re both big, and would have taken a long time to carve, but they were magicked into being.” Roarke pointed to where the colossi joined the rocks behind them, then directed me to look up. In sharp contrast to the rough, craggy walls of the canyon, above us I saw a smooth chimney that looked eroded through the rock. “Some sorcerers caused the granite to run like water while others used their power to shape it into the statues you see. When the spell that liquefied the stone wore off, the statues solidified into the new shapes they had taken.”
As we passed between the statues, Roarke rubbed at his missing eye, then spurred his horse forward. I matched Stail’s gait to that of Roarke’s stallion and followed the Chaos Rider through the rest of the pass. I felt a tingling all over my body as I rode between the two guardians and felt mildly uncomfortable. It seemed to me that the statues were watching me and studying me more closely than my grandfather had when I passed from Daggerman to Apprentice.
They marked the summit of the mountains, so the trail beyond them began to slope downward. It cut back and forth three times before opening out into a green valley. While riding through the latter half of the pass the feeling that I was being watched stayed with me, but I found it more easily explained as we got closer to the City of Sorcerers. I knew the narrow trail would prove an excellent ambush point for defenders higher up in the mountains, so I assumed sentries in hidden watching posts were keeping an eye on the both of us.
Roarke reined up as we entered the valley. A small blue river cascaded from the western end of the valley and splashed down into a pool on the valley floor approximately sixty feet below. From there it split the valley in half and provided water for the fields, which were, uncharacteristically for the time of year, green. From my vantage point I saw a few people in the fields, but no one seemed to be working at any particular task.
The road wound its way down into the valley and toward the east end split, where one part headed south toward Duaropolis and the main branch continued on to Herakopolis. Near the crossroads, tents and pavilions marked the campsite of at least one other caravan. I could not tell if it was heading toward the capital or back toward Garik, but I assumed it had arrived earlier that day, as people still appeared to be erecting shelters for the night.
Coming around a granite finger, I got my first glimpse of the City of Sorcerers, and with it, all other details of the valley dwindled to insignificance. Massive obsidian battlements encircled the city and gleamed brightly in the sunlight. One of eight towers sprouted from the top of the wall at each main point of the circle, and red pennants flew from the tops of them. By squinting and carefully counting archers’ ports, I figured each tower to be four stories high, yet the towers were but a third of the height of the walls upon which they stood.
Yet taller than those towers, a single spire rose from the center of the city. Its gentle spiral fluting made the blackish purple tower look more like a horn grown up out of the ground than any construct made by the hand of man. At its pinnacle something glittered and sparkled like a captive star, its light starting at bright shades of white and yellow, then shifting through green and red to blue and purple. The light show seemed familiar, but it took me a moment to recall where I had seen it before. When it came to me, it did so with crystal clarity—I had seen it in Eirene’s Chaosfire eyes.
As we rode closer my eyes confirmed what I already knew in my soul. The citadel’s walls showed no seams where block had been fitted to block. Their smooth exterior was unmarked by signs of construction or siege. “They did this all with their magick, too, did they not?”
Roarke nodded his head respectfully. “They built their city in a manner similar to that they used to create the pass guardians. Bear in mind, however, obsidian is not a stone you find in these mountains. It came all the way from Kea, and the city itself appeared almost overnight.”
I rode in awed silence the rest of the way toward the city. As its heights soared above me, I kept trying to think of ways to describe it to Geoff when I returned home. I knew it would take a Songsmaster to adequately paint a word picture of the majesty and the sheer power of the monument to themselves the sorcerers had created. If this was indeed the source of the power that kept the Ward Walls in place, I did not fear their coming down anytime soon.
The two of us rode up to the main gate, and, following Roarke’s example, I dismounted. As we turned our horses over to a pair of young men, an armored guardsman left a doorway built into the siege wall itself and marched over to greet us.
“Back already, Roarke? I thought you would stay with Haskell in Garik this winter.”
“Haskell decided to winter in Herak.” Roarke shrugged, pulled off his mittens, and blew on his hands. “A gaggle of merchants decided to make the run for Bear’s Eve before the snow closes the passes and offered Haskell enough money to make it worth my while. Besides, Aneurin, I wanted to see if you made Captain as you were bragging you would.”
The redheaded warrior hooked a finger through his ceremonial sash and displayed a badge proudly. It showed three squares of white arrayed in an arrow pattern within a circle on a background of red. “Made Captain right after you left. How many people are in the caravan?”
“Fifty and two hundred, with one hundred wagons.” Roarke looked back out toward an expanse of field a bit west of the area occupied by the other caravan. “This company is fairly self-contained and not too disruptive. A metals merchant has some simpleton sellswords attending him. If some of your fighters so desire, they can earn some money wagering on duels. If you put us on Southfield, we will not be any problem.”
“Good. I will dispatch a man to clear the way between the Guardians for you.” Aneurin looked back toward the gate. “Do you want to see Zavendir?”
Roarke nodded. “As always. I know the way.”
“Let these two pass,” Aneurin shouted to the guards near the doorway. “Good luck, Roarke. He granted me a two-Pawn advantage and still had me in thirty moves.”
Roarke answered Aneurin’s grin with a wry smile, then turned and led me on into the City of Sorcerers. The tall tunnel leading through the wall looked to be a good forty feet long to me, and at least half that in height. At the entrance, all but hidden in a dark cut near the ceiling, I saw a raised portcullis that I assumed would block the way if an invading army ever tried to enter the city. Overhead, in disturbingly neat rows, I saw two sets of archers’ ports on either side of the tunnel, and a line of murderholes drilled at the apex of the tunnel’s arch. I had no doubt that breaching the portcullis would be the rough equivalent of committing suicide for the warriors foolish enough to attempt it.
At the far end we passed through a small human-sized doorway cut in the left of two stout oaken doors. Inside I noticed that a wooden bar as wide as my own chest held the doors shut. I also noticed some heavy blocks against which other wooden braces could be placed to help hold the doors shut.
Within the shadow of the walls I saw a smaller, seamless wall grown up out of the native granite. Tiny houses, shops, and stalls lined the double-wide street between the two walls. While I found the scene utterly normal to the eye, my ears thought they had been frozen clean off. I saw people shopping in the bazaar, but heard none of the excited shouts or haggling that would have filled the streets on market day in Stone Rapids. Instead the lot of them—buyers and sellers both—gesticulated wildly and with such a definite purpose to their motions that I wondered if they weren’t all moontouched.
“Roarke,” I whispered, “why is everyone so quiet?”
The Chaos Rider smiled broadly and replied in a normal but subdued voice. “This is the City of Sorcerers, my friend. Working great magicks—and even training in lesser ones—requires concentration. Those who live just outside the city have developed a unique method of communication to provide the solitude needed for the magickers to do their work.”
I blinked away my surprise. “What about inside the city itself?”
Roarke shrugged. “Only magickal adepts are allowed inside the city, so only they know what happens there.” To forestall any further questions, he raised a finger to his lips, then led me through the streets toward the west. About a tenth of the way around the circle of the city, Roarke ducked into an arched doorway leading back into the obsidian wall. I followed close behind as he mounted a set of stairs in the right wall and climbed up three flights to a circular landing. It had a silver diamond set three feet from the floor on the westernmost point of the circle. When I joined him on the landing, Roarke pressed his right hand to the device.
I felt an invisible force ripple over me as a split appeared in the seamless rock. It bisected the diamond top to bottom. As the split widened in front of me, I glanced backward and saw the passage back to the stairs narrowing. I thought, at first, that the sides of the circle might be shifting around on some hidden mechanism, but when I looked at where the floor joined the wall, I couldn’t see a seam. Furthermore, I saw the patterns in the rock shifting as if I were looking at them under running water. As the wall eclipsed the stairs, and the silver diamond re-formed itself there on the other side, I suddenly realized I’d just seen a practical demonstration of the magick that created the City of Sorcerers.
Roarke slapped me on the back. “These magickers greatly enjoy knowing their power impresses people. Try to act surprised.”
I choked back a laugh. “Act? Perhaps when my heart stops beating like a war drum.”
Roarke escorted me into a fair-sized room furnished with a small table, four chairs, a sideboard, and two sleeping pallets. The table had a chessboard on it, with the pieces already set up. The Emperor’s Pawn had already been advanced two rows. The sideboard had a platter of bread and cheese on it, as well as a pewter pitcher and two goblets. Until I looked at the food, and my mouth began to water, I did not realize how hungry I was.
Off to my right, a large circular section of the siege wall’s interior lightened toward transparency, granting us a view of the City of Sorcerers. Roarke ran his fingers along a rectangular strip of silver set beside the window, with each stroke making it more clear. “Here, Locke, this is about the best vantage point outsiders get on the city.”
I did my best to keep my teeth clenched so my jaw would not gape open. The window looking out showed us to be on a higher level than the interior wall, though I felt fairly certain the stairs we had climbed had not been that long. More magick, no doubt.
The City of Sorcerers looked, to me, like a huge wheel that had as its hub the tall, black tower swirling up from its heart. From my position I detected multiple architectural styles, each conforming to the boundaries that looked to comprise one-eighth of the city itself. I vaguely recalled someone in the caravan having mentioned eight different schools of magick, so I assume each section of the city was home to one of the schools.
“It is a very strange place.” Roarke pointed toward a sector where the buildings had a spartan simplicity about them. “That is where mages learn spells of a martial nature. At night you can see flashes of light and glowing balls exploding as they practice their spell casting.”
I tried to focus my attention on another section of the city, but found that the outlines of the buildings kept shifting. At times they mirrored the city sectors on either side, then they faded or changed colors. “What goes on there?”
“Concealment magicks. That is the specialty of my brother, Zavendir, isn’t it, Zav?”
I spun as the magicker’s image wavered into view. He sat in the chair behind the Imperial board position. “I should have known better than to try to fool you, Roarke.” He saluted the Chaos Rider with an upraised cup of wine. “What gave me away?”
Roarke pointed to the sideboard. “Three chairs, but only two cups and a line of liquid running down the front of the pitcher. Furthermore, you have drenched yourself with some perfume that I could not help but noticing.”
Zavendir shrugged. “When I heard there were two of you I hoped one was that delightful creature Eirene.”
“Liar. If you thought she was going to be here, you would have only had one pallet in this room so you could offer her more hospitable accommodations in your home.”
“You know me too well, brother.”
I looked from Roarke to Zavendir and noted a similarity to their noses that could mean they were kin. In fact, they looked more alike than Dalt and I did. “Wait, Roarke, how did you notice all that with the wine?”
“How? I trained myself to be observant. Being observant is what will keep you alive in Chaos.”
“Then why haven’t you been back?”
Zavendir answered for the Chaos Rider. “There are times you can observe too much.”
I blushed. “Forgive me.”
“Curiosity is nothing to forgive, Locke, provided it does not get out of hand.” Roarke moved from the window and, pressing a hand to the middle of my back, directed me toward the chair opposite the mage. “Now my curiosity prompts me to discover how you will fare against a Master rank player.”
Zavendir looked at the badges on my coat, then glanced up his brother. “He is not even a Pawn. What is this?”
“Consider it ‘discovered check.’” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Go ahead, Lachlan. Show him there’s magick that can be worked on the board, too.”