Baz swung off his horse, followed by Spearcaster and Fieldson. Jade stood in the archway of the citadel with the wind clutching at her clothes while the generals strode across the yard. When they reached her, Spearcaster and Fieldson bowed and Baz nodded, but she cared nothing now about formalities.
“Cobalt refused to meet?” she asked.
“He walked away,” Baz said harshly. He turned to Fieldson. “Tell her.”
“I couldn’t get through to him.” Fieldson looked more tired than Jade had ever seen him. “He heard what I said, but nothing would bend him from his course.”
“Kaj had his wife’s clothes.” Baz clenched his fist as if he held the garments. “Shredded and soaked in blood. He told Cobalt we tortured her to death and are doing the same to Drummer.”
“What?” Jade stared at him. “Ozar has agreed to let Drummer attend the negotiations. Let Cobalt know.” Drummer was his own best proof of his well-being.
“It won’t matter,” Fieldson said. “Not if we can’t produce his wife.”
“This is insane,” Jade said.
“Kidnapping his wife was brutally effective if someone wanted to provoke him into a war,” Spearcaster said.
“That may be,” Fieldson said bleakly. “But I doubt whoever planned this realized what he was unleashing. Cobalt isn’t just a man, not when he fights. He’s more. And he’s angry, that deep, burning rage that nothing cools.”
“I watched his men running maneuvers while we rode through his camp,” Spearcaster said. “They’re more than well trained. They’re like gears in a machine he has oiled until it hums.”
Jade felt as if she were sinking. “You don’t think we can beat him even with Ozar’s army, do you?”
Fieldson regarded her with a weariness that seemed much deeper than any sleep could help. After a long pause, he said, “Nothing is impossible.”
Baz spoke bitterly to her. “Think who has the most to gain if you and Cobalt go to war.”
“Even Ozar wouldn’t go that far.” Jade wasn’t certain if she was trying to convince them or herself. “Bloody saints, Ozar has Drummer! And Kaj claims we’re torturing him. What if Ozar agreed to let Drummer attend the negotiations to prove we were doing exactly that? Baz! We have to get Drummer back.”
“Jade.” Her cousin spoke with pain. “Cobalt is preparing to march. I must join our forces. I will go to Ozar and speak to him about Drummer, but our first priority must be the battle.” Baz laid his hand on her arm. “Ozar has nothing to gain by hurting Drummer. The damage was done the moment the Chamberlight queen disappeared. And remember eight of our best men are with Drummer.”
Eight wasn’t enough. She needed eight thousand. Her voice hardened. “Ozar better have his own bodyguards. Because if he is behind this, I will kill him myself.”
Drummer sat on a trunk covered by a Kazlatarian rug holding his glittar. The tent swayed with the early-morning winds. Four of his Taka Mal guards and four of his Jazidian guards were present. Two were sitting on stools, one polishing his weapons and another breaking his fast, and the others stood posted around the walls of the tent. The place was bursting at the seams with soldiers. At least the other eight of them were asleep in another tent.
Drummer idly strummed a tune on his glittar. He had laid his jacket on the trunk, and now he reached into its pocket. The cube felt solid in his hand. He took it out and set it on the rug. Then he went back to playing.
“What is that?” the guard eating breakfast asked.
Drummer regarded him innocently. “A glittar.”
“Not the harp,” he said, with disdain. “That.” He pointed to the cube.
“Oh. That.” Drummer shrugged. “A good luck talisman.”
The guard grunted and went back to eating his mush.
Drummer let his music wander into a rhythmic melody he played for parents who wanted their children to sleep. He concentrated on the cube. The music focused his abilities and the spell came so easily, he would have laughed had he been alone. He wove a yellow spell, hypnotic, soothing, soothing, soothing. It spread throughout the tent, invisible. That was one reason he had assumed his spells were minor. Mel’s showed as colored light, and she was the strongest mage he knew. But the talent apparently manifested differently in different people. For him, colors appeared more rarely than for his niece, unless he was deliberately making a spell of light.
He played a song of sleep and dreams, and one by one, his guards drifted off. The heads of the two on stools sagged to their chests, and the men posted around the walls sat on the ground. Several lay down and the others nodded off while sitting up. He played a bit longer to make sure they were out. Then he picked up his cube, eased off the trunk, and slipped out of the tent. So far, his plans had worked as he expected. He had feared Jade would resist his coming back here even more than she had, but she seemed willing to trust him.
The morning was young and clear and hot, though the sun was barely above the mountains. It didn’t reassure Drummer that so few people were about this early. The army must have moved out, a prospect that chilled him despite the day’s heat, for it could mean they had gone to fight.
He slipped across the camp, staying in shadows. This was the most dangerous part of his plan, for he was clearly recognizable right now. He made a spell to shunt light around his body; unless someone looked closely, he would be invisible—he hoped.
Drummer soon reached a tent used to supply the warriors with weapons and armor. At first he thought he was in luck; no one was inside. He soon discovered that neither was the equipment; they had taken it all. His search turned up only some old leather leg guards and boots. He found a breastplate that would be too small for most Jazidian warriors, with their muscle-bound physiques. It fit him fine, though he suspected he would look like a boy to the other soldiers. The helmet had a broken faceplate, but it hid his yellow hair. His blue eyes would be visible, though; he would have to hope no one came close enough to tell.
They had taken the swords, bows, axes, and other instruments of mayhem. It didn’t much matter, since he had little experience with weapons, except for a dagger. He would have liked to carry his glittar and play more spells, but he could imagine how it would look, a warrior strumming a harp. He stuffed it in a saddlebag. His search turned up nothing else useful, so he went back outside, for all appearances a Jazidian warrior. The armor felt strange and uncomfortable, but at least it protected him.
Getting a horse turned out to be more difficult, not because none were left in camp, but because several stable hands had remained behind as well. Although he found the gear he needed in a tent, he couldn’t reach the horses without anyone seeing him. Finally he gave up slinking around and strode boldly into a pen with a gray stallion. It nickered while he saddled it. Two stable boys of about twelve were sitting on the fence across the pen, watching. They looked confused, uncertain whether to protest or to help him. He finished outfitting the horse and swung into the saddle, and they still hadn’t figured out what to do. So he blithely rode past them, out of the pen, headed west, toward the army.
Drummer had known he might fail to reach Cobalt when he set out last night. Since he hadn’t been able to sneak through the Jazid lines, he was doing the next best thing: He became part of those lines. He had used mood spells to gauge Ozar’s response and determine, to the best of his ability, that the Jazid king wasn’t planning to kill him. He had tried turning the spell around to influence Ozar, but the reversal had hurt, somehow. Whether or not it worked, he couldn’t say, but when Ozar had agreed to the bargain, he hadn’t been lying. Now Drummer would ride through the Jazid army from within it and achieve his goal—to see Cobalt—before the king lost his head and attacked Taka Mal.
On the morning of the fifth day in the second month of summer, the Chamberlight army marched across the western border of Taka Mal, six thousand men. The Onyx and Quaazera forces joined, over seven thousand men altogether. The armies met in the Rocklands. Each had a distinctive commander: One fought as h
is cousin’s protector; one fought for greed; and one was driven past all reason, just as the mythical dragons of Taka Mal were driven into the mountains to mate—and then die.
They met with volleys of arrows, with the inexorable push of cavalry and foot troops, and with a crash of swords. War cries split the desert calm. So began the Battle of the Dragon-Sun, the largest war in one thousand years.
Mel pulled herself up to an outcropping and struggled to her feet. Sagging against the rocks, she closed her eyes, breathing hard. The morning had blurred into a haze as she crossed the mountains, searching desperately for paths through the sheer walls and deep ravines.
She was fortunate Ozar’s fortress hadn’t been higher. Had she been farther up, where no trees grew, it could have taken her weeks, even months, to come down, if she hadn’t died from a fall, or starvation and thirst, or a mountain cat that had too little prey in the hollowed spaces of the Jagged Teeth.
When the fire in her overtaxed muscles eased, she walked around the outcropping of rock and found—another outcropping. She climbed over it. On the other side, a rocky slope dropped down from her feet, but it wasn’t steep like the inclines higher in the mountains. With wind blowing the hair that had escaped her braid, she looked across the jumbled foothills to the flatlands beyond—and her breath stopped.
“No,” Mel said. “No!”
They were fighting. In the Rocklands, an ocean of soldiers seethed and boiled. Ozar had carried through with his threat.
The madman had provoked Cobalt into war.
“You can’t go out there!” Matthew tried to grab Admiral’s reins as he rode up alongside Cobalt.
“You go too far.” Cobalt yanked away the reins, then wheeled Admiral around and galloped away from the camp where he had been conferring with his commanders. It didn’t matter that he was the king of three countries. He would not stay in safety. His fire wouldn’t be denied.
Cobalt rode hard and soon outpaced Matthew. He passed the outskirts of the fighting, his sword gripped in his fist. His “experts” claimed the weapon was too heavy and too long, but they were wrong. Lighter swords felt like toys. After the experts watched him train, they said no more, though their faces had paled.
A man in Jazidian armor rode at him, large and broad shouldered, astride a bay horse. A shadow-dragon helmet hid his face. He shouted his war cry and swung his mace in an arc toward Cobalt, the power of his strike obvious in the speed of the heavy weapon as it descended.
The fire that blazed in Cobalt happened only when he fought—truly fought—for his life. It was unlike anything else he experienced. Mel said it was a spell. He knew only that it filled him with greater strength and speed, and heightened senses that surpassed even his normal intensity.
Time slowed as Cobalt leaned back from the mace. Despite the speed of the descending ball, he easily evaded the blow. Admiral dodged as well, with an innate understanding of his needs. In that instant, Cobalt brought up his sword, his gaze locked on the sliver of skin above the man’s breastplate and below his helmet. He swung at his opponent’s neck—and felt his blade hit. The blow threw the warrior off his horse, and the man took an endless, endless time to fall. He hit the ground in a sprawl of armor and blood.
Cobalt kept riding, burning, caught in his fury. He wielded his sword and men fell. None were worthy opponents. None had strength, speed, or skill. He shouted his war cries and Admiral surged ahead. At first warriors engaged him, but soon they were wheeling their horses to flee. Foot soldiers ran. He kept on, driven by the thought of his wife and his heir dying by torture—and he, Cobalt, had done nothing, nothing to stop that horror.
Now they would pay, every Taka Mal and Jazidian warrior alive. He would soak the desert red with their blood.
26
Dragon Star
Drummer knew what had happened before he saw it. The shouts, the clank of mail, the scream of men and horses—it roared in the parched morning air. He was too late, too late, Cobalt had already gone to war.
Drummer rode through jagged formations, the lowest foothills of the range that towered behind him. He came around a thicket of rock spires and reined to an abrupt stop before a nightmare. The same Rocklands that had almost killed him were host now to the deaths of hundreds. Men churned across the plains as far as he could see to the north, west, and south. They wore the armor of Quaazera, Onyx, Chamberlight, but nowhere did he see Dawnfield, which meant that either Windcrier had never reached the Aronsdale army or else King Jarid had refused the treaty.
He clenched the reins. Cobalt shouldn’t be in combat, but Drummer had no doubt he was out there, wreaking havoc on anyone unfortunate enough to come within reach of his inhuman speed and strength. Drummer doubted he could reach the Aronsdale army now. He couldn’t go around a battle this extended. Nor could he ride through; with neither weapons nor training, he would be slaughtered within moments. If he could have reached Cobalt last night, his plan might have prevented all this, but now it was too late.
He had to do something. But what? He knew the tales, that Mel had stopped the Shazire battle with her magecraft, wielding what many believed had been an ensorcelled sword of fire. He also knew the truth she had told almost no one else; she had created no more than light. Anyone could have killed her had they had dared to try. No one had gone near her, but that had been at twilight, when the battle was essentially over. This was the heat of the morning and the first blast of hostilities, and no sword of light was going to stop this insanity.
Drummer retreated into the forest of rock spires. He had an idea, but he would be vulnerable, easily killed, undefended while he concentrated. He needed a vantage point where he could see the battle but not be seen, where he could create magic unlike anything he had ever tried, probably beyond his ability, but for his child and the wife he might never see again, he had to try.
He rode deeper into the spires until he was picking his way up a shallow slope with outcroppings jutting around him. He found a cave above the fighting. He led the horse to the back of the cave and rubbed it down, then left it to nibble at grass growing out of cracks in the rock. After he removed his armor, he took his saddlebags to the mouth of the cave.
He could see the fighting from here, but he had to be careful. A sheer drop-off fell from the mouth of the cave. If he exhausted himself, he might lose his balance and slip, roll or topple over the edge. Settling cross-legged at the mouth, he gazed out across the Rocklands. From this high, the battle looked even worse, for he could see the full extent of the carnage. He felt ill and wondered how Ozar could consider killing a more noble purpose than music.
Drummer set the cube on the ground. When he tried to settle the glittar in his lap, he was so tense, he nearly snapped one of the strings. He felt foolish and ineffectual, trying to stop one of the worst battles in history with a harp. He played a few notes and focused on the cube. Almost immediately, he realized he had too little strength to create a green spell substantial enough to influence the soldiers in any significant numbers. He might convince a few men to stop fighting, but that would only get them killed. He had to work with red, orange, and yellow spells, which meant he could make light and heat, and he could soothe but not heal. The lower the color level, the greater the spell he could make.
He closed his eyes and centered his spirit, seeking whatever resources gave creativity to his spells. When he opened his eyes, a gold haze surrounded him, and he saw the combat below through a curtain of light.
He began to play.
The music came from an inner place he had never drawn on before, a well of depth and sorrow. The notes saturated the air as if they were liquid, and they wept with grief. He tried to enlarge his spell to cover the battle, but it was so hard, a strain so far beyond what he had ever done that he wondered at his audacity to believe he could do anything at all with it—except fail.
But he kept playing.
Jade stood on the balcony of the citadel and watched the battle with horror. Her army, her people, her country: Al
l would suffer from this insanity. Baz, Spearcaster, Firaz, Slate, so many others—would this be their last day of life? Just a little longer, and her marriage might have established stability in the settled lands. All that was gone, and she would never see her husband again, not even at the tribunal, for Ozar would never allow it, afraid she might change her mind.
The Aronsdale army had marched to the border, but no farther. They gave no indication they intended to join any army. The cavalry had indeed arrived at the last minute, but they didn’t intend to fight.
Jade put her hand on her abdomen, and tears wet her face.
Mel slid down the slope, bringing a miniature avalanche with her. She could see the battle raging. Her chest heaved with exertion, and her hands scraped the ground and sent pebbles cascading away from her body. The slopes she had to traverse were no longer sheer, but the broken land hampered her until she thought she would shout her frustration to the sky—or at the commanders who had started this saints-forsaken war. If she were lucky, she would reach the Rocklands before the father of her child destroyed three countries.
Jason Windcrier huddled in the tent, chained to a pole. The Jazidian soldiers who had caught him called him a spy. They had beaten and starved him, and they threatened to throw him on Ozar’s mercy when they had a chance. When they were done with him.
This morning they had vanished, leaving him for the first time since they had caught him two days ago. He had struggled since then with the manacles that chained him to the post. He was a strong man, hale and hearty, but the chains held him well. Finally he managed to yank the post out of the ground and collapse the tent. He staggered to his feet and fought his way out from under the canvas. A chain hung from his wrist manacles, but he was free.
He found himself on a mass of rock the height of a tower. To the south and east, the battle raged. To the west, the Aronsdale army watched, rank upon rank of their soldiers in the polygon formations adopted by Dawnfield armies, shapes their mages could use during combat to aid the army with their spells.