Steel and Stone (3 page)

The second general chimed in. “The Meiri peasants were fond of the Meir, but they adore his wife. We’d best be sure the captain is correct.” His stare indicated that he, at least, didn’t think Kitiara was reliable. “I suggest we wait,” he concluded.

Kitiara ignored the two and spoke to the Valdane. “I am as sure that Dreena has left the Meir’s castle as I am that I stand before you now.” Her gaze never wavered.

The leader nodded to Janusz. “Mount the attack.”

Janusz bowed and left, and the generals scattered. Kitiara waited at the Valdane’s tent until the mage, his thin white hair fluttering above the collar of his black robe, disappeared into his own tent before she followed. When she reached the mage’s tent, she stationed herself by the tent flap, eased it open a finger’s width, and watched. Knowledge was power, her mercenary father had often reminded her. It wouldn’t hurt to know more about the mysterious mage.

Janusz looked neither right nor left as he moved directly to his cot and pulled out a trunk that lay beneath it. He released a pinch of gray dust into the air and whispered,
“Rrachelan,”
releasing a magical lock. Then he slung up the heavy lid, reached inside, and drew out a sandalwood box carved with silhouettes of minotaurs and seal-like creatures with huge tusks.

He repeated the incantation, with a slight difference
in intonation, then opened the box. A look of relief spread across his face. “The power of ten lifetimes for the man who unlocks it,” he whispered. Kitiara felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.

Janusz’s fingers disappeared into the box and emerged with two—two what? “Gems” was the obvious word, but the stones were more than gems. They glowed with unearthly light. Once, traveling south of the Khurman Sea, two hundred miles to the south, Kitiara had seen a necklace of amethysts that had gleamed violet in lamplight but, outside, had deepened to the purple-blue of the darkest ocean. Those Khurman stones, however, were mere pebbles compared to these. These radiated the heat of light and the cold of winter.

Ice, Kitiara thought; they looked like glowing, purple ovals of ice, the size of robins’ eggs. She’d never seen anything so beautiful. Her breath quickened.

The mage had said they held power. Kitiara knew he spoke the truth.

“Mage!” The Valdane was shouting from his own tent. The spell-caster looked up and caught Kitiara spying on him at the opening of his tent. He hurriedly slipped the two stones into a pocket of his robe, and the weird purple light went out as completely as if the gems had never existed. Shaking with anger, Janusz could barely speak. “Return to your post, Captain,” he choked out. “And forget what you’ve seen here, lest you suddenly find yourself with the head of an eel.”

Kitiara made a show of moving away from the tent flap, but seconds later, she peered back in. The mage was taking the deep breath that Kitiara had seen her brother, Raistlin, use to cleanse his thoughts and focus his attention on spell-casting. Then Janusz turned
and swept from the tent, scant seconds after Kitiara had dodged around the corner of the mage’s lodging.

The mage moved to a clearing in the trees downhill from the tents. He was in clear view of the castle. His hands twitched. It was as if Janusz’s fingers had lives of their own as they danced through the complex movements that accompanied the spell.

“Ecanaba ladston, zhurack!”
the mage intoned.

Kitiara felt her face tingle, and she looked away. She heard Janusz continue his chanting. Was he turning her into an eel after all? She looked around, seeking something shiny, a mirror or pool of melted snow that might tell her if she was still Kitiara Uth Matar. Even as she looked, however, a voice in her brain reminded her that the mage hadn’t locked the box. Sudden thunder distracted her. She looked up.

Now clouds coalesced in columns above the Meir’s castle, forming a thunderhead as high as a dozen castles. The sky above the mercenary camp was suddenly clear. The soldiers abandoned their duties. Frozen, mouths agape, they watched as the mage on the hillside drew the forces of nature into his grasp and commanded them against his enemy. On the parapets, the castle’s occupants were nearly as still. They gazed upward with dawning horror.

The cloud throbbed above them. Lightning bolts of yellow, blue, and red burst from the churning mist. Thunder reverberated inside Kitiara’s head. She forced herself to remember to breathe. Her knees felt watery, and she leaned against a tree. If she’d had to defend herself now, she would have been felled as easily as a young sapling. But no attacker advanced against the mercenaries.

Then suddenly the cloud opened, and fire poured down upon the defenders of the castle.

Soldiers, peasants, and nobles screamed and sought frantically, futilely, to escape the liquid flame. Some managed to remove their clothing, only to discover that the brimstone adhered to their skin. Many, to avoid lingering deaths, dove to quick ones off the castle walls. Others tried in vain to protect the castle, shooting arrows toward the surrounding army as it waited safely out of reach of danger.

Impotent against the brimstone, the Meir’s supporters burned to death where they stood. The wooden gate of the castle exploded. The top floor of the castle collapsed. A section of the castle wall cracked open. Through it, Kitiara saw the contents of water troughs boil and bubble. Then the troughs, too, exploded.

So great was Janusz’s control that the mercenaries felt none of the fire, felt only a comfortable warmth beneath their feet. A hot wind streamed through the camp, and that, too, was almost pleasant, given the dampness they’d grown accustomed to. But the wind also carried ashes, and the eyes of the mercenaries streamed with tears.

The wise ones held the wool of their cloaks before their mouths and noses. Lloiden did not. He collapsed, choking, to the ground before his tent, and Kitiara wondered if Janusz was avenging the insolence of a few hours earlier.

And then it was over. The fiery rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The cloud hissed into nothingness. The mercenaries released their breath. What once had been an imposing castle was nothing but steaming wreckage. The opening still gaped at the front of the castle, but still no one dared enter. The air was thick with ashes and the horrible smell of charred flesh.

One quavering voice rose out of the camp. “So why’d he bother to hire
us?”
the soldier asked.

Then the Valdane appeared around the back of Janusz’s tent. He pointed his sword at Kitiara where she still leaned against the tree. “Attack!” he screamed, his face red with anger. “I hired you to annihilate my enemy! Now do it!”

“Valdane,” Kitiara said wearily, forcing herself to stand upright, “there is no enemy. Your mage has killed them all.”

But the leader waved his sword like a child tilting at an imaginary monster. “You will make sure, Captain! I want to be certain they’re all dead.”

Kitiara tried again. “Valdane, no one could possibly sur—”

“Find them!”

There was no defying him. Janusz, looking half-dead with the effort that the fiery rain had cost him, dragged himself up the hill. His voice was barely audible, his face streaked with ash and sweat. “Valdane, it’s too hot in the wreckage for our soldiers to venture inside.”

“Then send rain!”

Janusz took a long look at the Valdane, then turned soundlessly and stumbled back down the incline. Kitiara heard more chanting.

“It’s raining!” a soldier shouted.

It was true. There were no clouds, yet the mage had created a gentle shower, warmed by the heat of the smoldering, hissing castle. One of the generals, the self-important one, ordered troops to advance into the Meir’s castle. Kitiara’s troops, the general commanded, were to stand guard around the stricken building’s perimeter.

The soldiers had no sooner marched between the
smoldering columns that once had flanked the main gate when a cry went up from the advance guard of Kitiara’s men. The cry passed from man to man and finally became audible. “We are attacked!”

“What?”
the Valdane shrieked. His blue eyes bulged; he swept his sword back and forth more wildly. “Mage!”

Kitiara drew her sword from its scabbard and ran a few paces downhill to join her troops, but the Valdane called her back. “Get the mage and meet me in my tent!” he ordered.

“But my men …” Kitiara looked down at them. Already she could see them falling before hundreds of mounted nobles dressed in scarlet and royal blue, followed by swarms of peasants armed with hoes, axes, and plow blades mounted on staffs. Inefficient weapons, perhaps, but not in the hands of men and women defending their homes and lives.

The smell of smoke and mud thick in her nostrils, Kitiara ran down the hill and approached the mage. Janusz sat upon a boulder, face ashen, eyes closed, hands lying limp on his lap, palms upward. “The Valdane wants to see you, mage,” Kitiara said.

His eyes opened. Kitiara had to lean toward him to catch his words. “I … have nothing left,” Janusz whispered. “No strength.” He coughed and closed his eyes again.

“We’ve been attacked by a large force of Meiri,” Kitiara insisted.

“I know.”

“Perhaps more fire—?”

The mage cast her a withering look and shook his head contemptuously. Kitiara remembered, from her brother, the rules of magic; once used, a spell vanished from the spell-caster’s head until he could study
it again. Great magic took a great physical toll. Asking more of Janusz now could kill him.

“But the Valdane—” she tried again.

“I will come. Give me your arm.”

Kitiara helped the mage up the hill into the Valdane’s tent and eased him onto a bench before the leader’s small desk. She retreated to a spot by the door, but she didn’t leave. One of the generals, streaked with blood, shoved her aside and entered the tent. “Valdane, we are losing!” he blurted.

The Valdane stood, eyes snapping blue below his carrot-red hair. “How can that be?”

“They outnumber us seven to one.”

“But I hired you to defeat the Meiri!” The Valdane advanced upon the mercenary leader, his hand upon his sword hilt.

The general looked desperate. “We must retreat. Perhaps we can gather in the mountains and regroup.…” He stepped backward.

“No!”
Quickly the Valdane drew his short sword and thrust it into the general’s abdomen, jerking the weapon abruptly to one side to deepen the gash. The general collapsed, dead, in a puddle of his own blood.

The Valdane leaned over and yanked the badge of office from the corpse. He handed the blood-daubed crest to Kitiara. “General Uth Matar,” the Valdane said soberly, “take command.”

Kitiara swallowed. The mage, in the background, was smiling with ill-concealed contempt. She’d been named general of a losing army, answering to an insane leader who executed his defeated generals. No wonder Janusz was gleeful. Kitiara wouldn’t survive the day, and the mage’s purple jewels would remain his secret.

The Valdane’s face showed that he thought he was
doing Kitiara an honor. “Thank you, sir,” she said, barely keeping the irony out of her voice. She stepped over the corpse of her predecessor and resumed her position by the door. As soon as the Valdane’s attention was focused on the mage, she slipped through the flap and sped toward her own tent. On the way, she hurled the general’s crest into the mud.

Kitiara slowed as she passed the mage’s quarters. Janusz was occupied in the Valdane’s tent, and he was severely weakened now. Kitiara was practically certain that he hadn’t set the wards that protected the sandalwood box. She hesitated. It was a safe bet the Valdane wouldn’t be hunting down his defeated mercenaries to pay them the wages owed them. If she was going to flee the battlefield, she might as well take her pay with her, in the form of a purple jewel or two.

Kitiara looked around and slipped into the tent. In a second, she was on her knees before the trunk. She took a deep breath and, hoping the mage hadn’t left a magical snake within to guard his wealth, she lifted the heavy lid. Nothing happened. She pulled out the sandalwood box. If the mage had set wards anywhere, it would be here. She lifted the box’s lid. Again nothing.

She forgot her worries as the glow of nine purple stones streamed up from the sandalwood box. “The power of ten lifetimes,” the mage had said. Perhaps she could unlock that power. She’d need a mage to help her. And what better mage than her own brother, Raistlin, back in the city of Solace? He’d been studying at a school for mages since he was a boy. She knew he was gifted; certainly he was loyal.

This would require some thought.

At the moment, however, the situation required action more than thought. Cursing her reverie, she
scooped the nine stones into a pocket and dashed from the room.

She met Wode, Caven’s squire, at the appointed place. The lanky youngster was holding Obsidian’s bridle and staying out of range of a stamping black stallion tied to an oak. Saying nothing, Kitiara wrenched the reins from Wode and mounted the mare. She was pulling the horse around when a voice hailed her.

Kitiara pulled up. “Caven, I’m leaving.”

He vaulted onto Maleficent, his stallion. Caven was the only one who could handle the beast, whom he’d acquired in a game of bones with a minotaur on Mithas. “I’m going with you.”

“But—” Kitiara began.

“I’m going,” he interrupted doggedly. He gestured to Wode, and the teen-ager dashed away.

Kitiara decided she might need him. Especially now. “Let’s go.” She could always ditch Caven later, she thought.

In moments, the two ebony horses with their black-haired riders vanished into the trees. Within minutes, Wode, mounted on a rangy brown nag, clattered after them.

Behind them, the battle neared a bloody end. The mage, leaning heavily on a staff, and the Valdane strode into Janusz’s tent. “Use the stones,” the leader ordered.

“Not yet,” Janusz said, dropping onto his cot.

“You said they were powerful.”

“They require much study,” the mage protested. “I don’t know their secrets yet.”

“Use them!”

Wearily rising to his feet, the mage stepped to the sandalwood box, began the spell to unlock the box,
then stopped in midincantation. Hands shaking, he reached out. The lid came up easily. The mage looked up, horror and anger warring on his gray face, then stared back into the sandalwood box. “They’re gone!” he whispered. “That bitch!” Janusz, his lips thin, reached into his pocket and pulled out two glowing stones. “She has nine, while only one may be enough to rule Krynn, for all I know.”