The Warrior King (Book 4) (17 page)

Just when Markal couldn’t stand it any longer, the darkness lifted. A feeling of peace descended on his shoulders, and a bright light flared in the middle of his vision. He blinked at the light, and when he opened his eyes again, everything had changed.

He stood in the midst of a garden. Flowering bushes crowded the pebbled path on which he stood, bees circling their blossoms. The noon sun hung overhead, welcoming and warm.

The path stretched ahead of him, enveloping a pair of fountains, and then disappeared between two hedges. After a moment of hesitation, Markal followed the path. The last remnants of fear dissipated, and his spirits lifted higher than they had in weeks.

He thought at first that he stood in the Fair Land, or at least a reproduction, but Aristonia had a distinctive smell: honey and wood mixed with a dark earthy scent. This land, however beautiful, had a different smell altogether, not nearly so rich. But still green and very alive.

“So, what now?” he said aloud.

Was his body still sitting on the cool slab among the standing stones, as the night grew chill and his limbs turned rigid and stiff? Perhaps, but the warm breeze on his face was no dream, the scent of flowers in the garden as real as anything he’d ever felt.

With nothing else to do, he continued along the path, feeling drawn, beckoned by some force or being.

The garden grew more lush, the fountains more sublime as the path wandered up and over knolls, past ruined stone walls and towers covered with ivy. Chanting voices came to his ears, men and women speaking in the old tongue. Four hundred years peeled away, and Markal remembered standing in Memnet’s presence as a young man, remembered the endless lessons in writing, language, and history. But he remembered the voices more than anything. Memnet the Great taught his youngest apprentices through repetition, voices chanting the same lines over and over until they hardened into memory.

Markal came upon these training apprentices a few moments later. They sat in an open-air pavilion, ringed by ivy-covered columns, some twenty men and half a dozen women with crossed legs and closed eyes.

“A garden is more than harvest. It is sowing, weeding, watering. A garden is more than harvest . . . ”

A smile came to Markal’s lips. One of the earliest lessons, and also Memnet’s favorite saying. His old friend and teacher was nearby. Markal continued walking and soon came upon a second pavilion.

And there he saw a person who had not lived for four hundred years, not since a ravager had thrust Soultrup into his chest. The greatest and most powerful wizard ever to walk the surface of Mithyl. Markal’s own teacher and master.

Memnet the Great.

Chapter Sixteen

Chantmer glanced up as his servant admitted Faalam into the chambers, and he felt a glow of satisfaction to see the eunuch’s weakened appearance. Faalam shivered even though the coals smoking in the braziers heated the room warmer than the rest of the palace. A tremble played at his lips and hands, and his skin had turned as pale as an Eriscoban’s. The silver bite had worked its effect beautifully.

Chantmer sat on a bed of nails wearing only a loincloth. A man used needles to sketch a new tattoo onto his right shoulder, a quotation of the Martyr in the old script. Over the past week, tattoos had crept further and further over his body, until they encircled his upper arms, neck, and shoulders like coiling snakes. Soon, he would look no different than the other mages under Roghan’s command.

His strength was returning even as he mastered the art of binding his magic to the tattoos in his skin. And yet he hadn’t lost the ability to wither his hands for an immediate surge of power. He swore he would regain his position as the most powerful wizard in the land, capable of bending the proud wizards of the order to his will, as well as subdue these arrogant southern mages.

Chantmer eased himself from the nails and rose to his feet as Faalam approached.

Faalam bowed low. “I apologize for leaving your side, learned master.” A tremor passed through his voice. “I have not felt well.”

Chantmer took Faalam by the hands as if worried the man would stagger and fall. More of the silver bite worked from Chantmer’s skin into his enemy’s.

“You are ill? Perhaps you should return to your bed. You will overexert yourself.”

Faalam pulled away and sat on the pillows by the door. “Not ill. Poisoned.”

“Really?” Chantmer acted alarmed. “Is there an assassin in the palace?”

The eunuch stared back through narrowed eyes. “Never you worry, wizard. My strength returns already. A few more days, and I will return fully to health. Some may be disappointed to hear it.”

“Master?” the tattooist asked Chantmer. He was a slender man with delicate hands and a shaved head. One of the lesser mages. “Shall we continue?”

Chantmer looked to Faalam for the answer to this question.

“I must speak with you alone,” the eunuch said.

The poison had flushed any subtlety from Faalam’s system. Indeed, Chantmer wondered if his senses had not already begun to deteriorate. He’d never before shown interest in speaking with Chantmer about anything, merely following and watching.

“Very well.” He waved his hand to dismiss the tattooist. The man gathered his needles and inks and left the room.

Chantmer doused the coals in the brazier with a ladle of water from the bucket, which sent steam hissing into the air. He drew back the curtains and let in a breeze that flushed the worst of the stifling heat and the smell of burning incense. Chantmer’s chamber sat on the second story above the Courtyard of Contemplation, around which sat other meditation chambers.

Chantmer stretched his muscles slowly by the window before turning his attention back to the eunuch. Faalam shivered again and frowned at the open window. He couldn’t possibly be cold in this heat.

“This business of yours, it must be urgent to pull you from bed when you are so ill.”

“Urgent enough if we don’t deal with the situation.”

Chantmer raised an eyebrow. “
We?
Are we allies now?” 

Faalam coughed into his hand before continuing. “This woman. She deftly turns aside the sultan’s attentions of weightier matters. He forgets his purposes, which purposes, I remind you, are yours and mine as well.”

This news surprised Chantmer. He hadn’t been paying attention to the machinations in the palace since Sofiana disappeared three days earlier. Instead, he had been playing a cat and mouse game with Narud, quite literally. Once Chantmer recognized his old rival’s magical scent—subtle and very nearly missed entirely—and discovered that the other wizard was slinking around as a big gray cat, he’d amused himself by casting minor spells on mice, rats, and other palace vermin and sending them out for Narud to hunt.

“You mean the princess?”

“Yes, Marialla Saffa,” Faalam said irritably. He glared up at Chantmer from where he’d sunk to the pillows. “Who else would I be talking about?”

“She is a nobody, only the pawn of the khalifa. The princess commands no armies and masters no guilds. And she is not so delicate in age as the child, so how could she possibly turn the attentions of the sultan?”

“Mufashe’s tastes are large and wide-ranging. He is a man of appetites, and this woman appeals to them. This is the sultan’s undoing. He is distracted from his purpose.”

“Which is?”

Faalam frowned and turned away.

“The sultan sent messengers across the desert to ask for her hand, did he not?” Chantmer prodded. “So that a political alliance would be formed between Balsalom and Marrabat. Or was that Balsalom’s idea?”

“What was offered was a political alliance. Perhaps another outlet for his lust, at most. But nothing more.”

This grew interesting. “Is Mufashe smitten with the woman, is that your claim?”

Again, the eunuch didn’t answer.

“Very well,” Chantmer said. “Keep your own counsel. But if the sultan’s appetites turned so easily from the girl to the princess, then if you were to remove the princess, he would simply find some other pretty thing to occupy his attention. Does it matter who?”

“Of course it matters. For all of the girl’s spirit, she was still a child. Her goals were single-minded and transparent.”

Not so transparent, my friend. You never suspected the poison until it was too late.

Faalam paused to catch his breath. A fleck of bloody spittle hung on his lip. Chantmer hoped he had the decency to wait until the conversation ended before vomiting up his innards and dying.

After a moment, the eunuch regained his composure. “Who knows what game Marialla plays? It is a game, of that I am certain.”

“Is she stirring up trouble?”

“She’s playing the sultan’s sons against each other. They are as grasping and treacherous as their father. We may have civil war on our hands if we don’t do something. Indeed, it may already be too late. The eldest has withdrawn to his lands outside the city and begun raising men.”

“All of this in a few days?” Chantmer said, alarmed.

He had heard whisperings of factions among Mufashe’s sons from Roghan and the other mages, but had no idea that Marialla could cause such trouble, and in so little time. She must be dealt with. But he certainly didn’t want to suggest poisoning the woman in front of the sultan’s chief adviser, and it occurred to him that this might be a
good
thing, if he could figure out how to turn it to his advantage.

“What then?” he asked. “Do you have a plan to diffuse this situation?”

“First, consider one other problem.” Faalam coughed wetly into his hand before continuing. “We may suddenly find a Balsalomian army marching south on the Spice Road, or a host of Knights Temperate riding through the mountain passes. Pasha Boroah still commands several thousand men.”

“Because of the girl.”

“Yes. She will have tales to tell.”

“Fah!” Chantmer laughed. The silver bite had indeed damaged the eunuch’s mind. “I know the girl is resourceful, but you surely cannot believe that she can cross hundreds of miles of desert by herself. And there are garrisons of men and tax collectors who have received word of the missing girl. They will find her and return her. Anyway, what could she possibly tell Balsalom?”

“That you are vying for control of Marrabat.”

“Nonsense. Who told you that?”

“Whispers, gossip.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear.”

Faalam rose to his feet and turned toward the arched doorway. “What I
do
believe, Chantmer the Betrayer, is that you are a wicked and treacherous man who will stop at nothing in his pursuit of personal glory.” 

Rage swept over him. “I am not Chantmer the Betrayer!” he cried as the man bowed and ducked out of the room. He raised his hand to punish the man, then thought better of it and let the eunuch go. Faalam was dying already; he was not worth Chantmer’s precious magic and the risk of a scimitar at his neck if he killed the sultan’s adviser.

Only after he settled back onto the bed of nails did he begin to wonder. Why had Faalam told him all of this? He hadn’t asked Chantmer’s advice at any time, but had given information without cost, and in Chantmer’s experience, Marrabatti rarely committed such follies, let alone the eunuch. He shuffled the pieces of the conversation in his mind and then settled on one interesting detail.

If the sultan’s sons all vied for the throne, perhaps Chantmer could turn one of them to his own advantage. Or better still, he could turn the princess. Roghan concerned himself too much with his order of mages, the sultan with his various sexual interests, and whatever Faalam schemed would die when the man did. That left Chantmer to control the throne. Control the throne, and he could take Balsalom as well, and then he would have the power to unify Mithyl to fight against the dark wizard in Veyre.

And yet, it occurred to him that perhaps Faalam
wanted
him to turn his attention to the throne. Perhaps he had led Chantmer to that very conclusion. He considered for a moment, but couldn’t think of why the eunuch would wish such a thing. Indeed, it didn’t matter anyway. The man would soon be dead. 

Chapter Seventeen

Sofiana never had any intention of traveling up the Spice Road with Darik. She remembered when she’d passed through the Desolation of Toth last summer with Whelan, Markal, and Darik, and the boy had proved worthless at best. He was a naive city boy, and though he’d been enslaved when her father and the wizard rescued him, he’d proved himself a slow learner. Yes, he had been training and fighting since the beginning of the war, but how much could one person learn in so short a time?

So when the two cats slipped out of Marrabat through the sewers and entered the desert, she was already thinking about how she could lose him. Darik led her up the road a couple of miles and into a village of mud and straw houses. She could smell wild animals creeping by in the darkness, and some of them would be able to smell her too. Darik found a farmer’s shed, the walls crumbling and gaps eroded in the foundation. He squirmed in and meowed for her to follow. Once inside, his glowing eyes gave her a significant look, and then he cast his gaze toward the corner, where a collection of broken tools would provide refuge until they transformed back into humans.