Ruva rode beside Utros on her bay mare, but she seemed in a trance. Although he insisted that she eat well, the sorceress seemed gaunt, even wasted. Her voice was quiet above the plodding hooves of the horses. “Do you think Ava will be in Tanimura? I miss my sister.”
Utros frowned. “Ava’s spirit appears whenever she wishes.”
“I haven’t seen her in so long.” The vibrant paint that marked Ruva’s body was smeared and flaked off in patches, which disrupted the arcane loops of the spell-forms the twins had so carefully painted on each other.
More disturbingly, he saw a faint fuzz of hair, tufts of stubble that showed how Ruva had not maintained the exquisitely careful shaving of her body. Her eyes had a distant and disturbing hint of madness. “Will Emperor Kurgan be in Tanimura, I wonder? I will help you defeat him, beloved Utros.”
“Iron Fang is no longer our enemy. We have others to conquer,” Utros said, then added an edge to his voice. “I need you, Ruva. You are my sorceress, the only one left.”
Her disturbed eyes flicked back and forth. “No?.?.?.?no. We are both here. Ava will come back. The Keeper doesn’t have her yet.”
He clenched his jaw, grinding his molars together as if to crush any unwise words before they came out. The scarred half of his face stretched tight. “I need your focus. I need your magic.” He softened his tone. “And I need your companionship.”
Ruva blinked and came back to herself. She shook her head. “You shall have it. I feel stretched thin without my sister. She is here and yet not here. Part of my Han is frayed, but she will make me whole again if she comes back.” Ruva lifted her head and shouted out in a raw voice, beseeching the sky, “Ava, where are you? The Keeper cannot have you yet. He can’t have either of us.”
After finding no respite in Renda Bay, the ancient soldiers had leveled what remained of the town, sifted fruitlessly through the ashes, and then watched the fleet of serpent ships gather again and set off. The Norukai could offer little assistance to the landbound troops, nor did they have much interest in doing so.
King Grieve would revel in his newfound war, raiding town after town as he moved northward. Utros’s soldiers would take much longer to reach Tanimura. They needed to move at a forced march and hope to reach that great city by the time the Norukai raiders arrived.
Rather than working their way along the rugged coast, they moved inland, where they found a direct but long-abandoned imperial road. Utros was glad to find it still existed. Such roads were not meant to be trade routes, but straight-line thoroughfares by which Sulachan had led his armies up to the New World and his war with the wizards there.
The old roads were overgrown, the paving stones buckled and shifted with time, but the route was plain, a direct way to Tanimura. “It has been a long time since a conquering army passed this way,” he mused.
Behind him the army trampled everything in their path as they moved on and on.
Finally, in response to Ruva’s summons, a flickering shape appeared in the air. The green-limned spirit of Ava drifted in front of the horses. “I am here,” she said in her hollow voice, “but it grows more difficult to hang on each day.”
Ruva opened her arms to her twin as she sat in the saddle. The spectral form intensified even as Ruva weakened; then Ava’s form dimmed and Ruva drew strength in return. “We are connected, sweet sister.”
“We are being torn apart,” Ava said. “The Keeper wants us both, and the more I deny him, the harder he pulls.”
“The Keeper wants us all,” Ruva said.
The spirit separated again and hovered before Utros. She extended a slender arm and pointed back toward the endless lines of troops. “The Keeper calls them. He knows them. They can’t forget that their place is in the underworld.”
“Their place is with their general. And they will keep marching.”
Behind them the troops plodded onward in uneven ranks. Weak and exhausted, some of them collapsed, falling to the flattened road. The dazed comrades behind them trampled the bodies, while others, ravenous, fell upon them, tearing off the ancient leather armor and devouring the flesh down to the bones.
Ruva laughed with an irrational edge in her voice. “See, the Keeper claims his own!”
“The Keeper will have to be satisfied for now.” Utros lowered his voice. “He already has Emperor Kurgan, and he has Majel, but I have this world for now, and I swore to conquer it. I need my army. My place is here.” He raised a fist to the sky. “I will hold on until I have accomplished my task!”
Ava’s spirit let out a strained laugh that was eerily echoed by her twin sister. “The Keeper pulls us all closer to the veil. He will wait, but he will not be denied forever.” Her faint spirit stretched and pulled, and she reached a yearning arm toward Ruva. Her twin tried to grasp her, tried to hold on, but Ava wavered like an image imprinted on smoke. Her spirit vanished.
Utros and Ruva rode on alone. Under his breath, he promised the Keeper, “I will bring you many more souls, if you will just wait?.?.?.?wait.”
CHAPTER 69
True to his word, Captain Jared readied the Chaser for departure within the hour. In recent weeks, the ship had ferried many refugees up to Tanimura, rescuing survivors from ruined towns, and delivering emergency supplies. This time, Jared would sail south on a reconnaissance mission until they encountered the Norukai fleet, and then the Chaser would race back with a report.
While docked in Serrimundi Harbor, the captain had added armor plating to his ship. The krakener was dirty and stained, nothing much to look at, but the new copper plates made the ship look gaudy.
As they sailed out of the harbor and past the line of reefs, Nicci remained on deck, letting the evening breezes ruffle her hair. Even brisk winds didn’t entirely drive away the ever-present fishy smell. Nathan, Bannon, and Lila joined her, staring into the deepening darkness.
Nathan, always confident and pleased with himself, was even more so now that he was back with his companions. Even aboard the dingy ship, he wore a fine shirt, new vest, and embroidered cape. His long white hair drifted about as he faced the breeze. “Though the future is dire, I am glad to be with you again, Sorceress. Richard made me promise to take care of you, and I would hate to disappoint him.”
Nicci raised her eyebrows. “He sent me to keep you out of trouble, and now we’ve got an entire war on our hands.”
“It is not a war that we started, dear Sorceress, but it is a war we will finish.”
Bannon patted the scabbard at his hip. “And I’ll fight at your side. They will be no match for us.”
Nicci recognized the ornate blade that Nathan had carried from D’Hara. “You gave him your sword?”
“The boy needed a new weapon, so I accommodated him.”
Bannon’s expression sagged. “King Grieve threw Sturdy overboard. I loved that sword, and now it’s at the bottom of a river.” He drew his new blade and looked down at the gleaming steel. “But I love this one just as much! It is a wizard’s sword.”
“The boy has earned a decent weapon after all he’s done,” Nathan said. “Now that I have my gift back, I can make do with an ordinary sword.” He patted the standard military blade at his side.
Lila managed to place herself between Bannon and Nicci. “The blade is what kills the enemy, not its appearance.” She glanced at Nathan. “Nor its cost.”
When full darkness set in and the Chaser cruised through open water, Captain Jared rang the bell to get the attention of the crew. “We will serve dinner, fine kraken meat to impress our esteemed guests!”
One of the crew members joked, “I thought we were going to use that meat to kill the Norukai when we found them.”
Jared took mock offense, and the rest of the crew laughed. He presented platters of the meat in grayish puddles of “special” sauce, which he explained was a recipe that his mother had concocted to make the kraken meat taste delicious. “You mean palatable,” yelled another one of the crewmen. They laughed again.
&n
bsp; Nathan tasted the dish with trepidation, while Lila and Nicci ate their meals without comment. “Better than fish guts,” Bannon observed, as if it were a compliment, and then he spoke at length about how his mother used to cook kraken meat with cabbage on Chiriya Island.
Jared sat on a crate on the open deck and grew serious as he leaned forward, meeting Nicci’s eyes. “My crew and I are glad to have this important mission. Krakeners put up with a lot of ribbing from other sailors. We know that our ship smells. We know that fancy cargo vessels are cleaner and more comfortable, and we even know that some people don’t like the taste of kraken meat. But we are loyal citizens, and we will fight to defend our land.”
Later that night, after the crew had quieted, Nicci took Nathan aside. “On my previous visit, I did dispatch a message up to the People’s Palace to inform Richard about this terrible war. I asked him to send help, but apparently he’s involved in some crisis of his own up in D’Hara. He didn’t explain.” Her expression darkened. “He is, however, confident that I can handle any problems here in the Old World.”
Nathan’s nostrils flared. “You mean that we can handle any problems.”
Nicci produced the small bone box and extended it to him. “Richard told me this is all I would need. I cast a verification web, poked and prodded with my gift, but I still don’t know what it is. Maybe you can help me figure it out.”
Curious, the wizard took the bone box and inspected each side. “These markings are the language of Creation. ‘Life to the living. Death to the dead.’?” Cautiously, he pried open the lid and let out a whistle of amazement when he saw the glowing pearl of magic that twisted and rolled and rippled. “It is?.?.?.?hmmm, I believe it’s a constructed spell.”
