Jason climbed laboriously down to the ground. He was leaving a trail, he knew, but he no longer cared. By the time his captors returned, if they survived, he would have reached his goal—or died trying.
With his wrists still manacled, Jason Windcrier ran for the Aronsdale army.
Cobalt recognized Baz Quaazera by his magnificent armor and dragon helmet, which shone gold in the harsh sunlight. The prince was surrounded by his officers as they cut a swath through the battle. The Midnight King urged his horse forward.
Cobalt fought like a man possessed, for he was crazed, overcome with hatred for the monsters who had brutalized his wife. He cut down Baz’s officers quickly. He acted on instinct, swinging, striking, dodging with a rhythm so natural he was barely aware of his actions. Then he was facing Baz, and for the first time he met a foe who challenged him. They fought on horseback, Cobalt with his straight sword, Baz with his curved blade. Every time Cobalt drove him back, Baz surged forward. He came in too close for Cobalt to effectively use his long sword, and their blades clanged together. He and Baz ended up alongside each other, their horses facing in opposite directions, agitated by the proximity, Baz’s sword hooked around Cobalt’s weapon.
“Your wife isn’t in Taka Mal!” Baz told him, furious.
“Liar.” Cobalt strained to break their lock. The ring with Mel’s clothes had roused his suspicion of Jazid, but it didn’t matter: Taka Mal and Jazid fought together. The battle fury was on him, and he saw no differences in his foes, only enemies.
“Escar, listen!” Baz said. “Ozar set it up. Kaj lied for him because Ozar paid Kaj’s gambling debts.”
Cobalt finally managed to break their impasse. He shoved Baz away and brought up his sword.
But he remembered the ring in Mel’s clothes.
“He wanted to force concessions from Vizarana,” Baz said, his chest heaving with exertion.
Cobalt went at him with a hard swing, but Baz parried and drove him back.
“Damn it, Escar!” Baz shouted. “Ozar is the one who killed your wife. Not me.” Intent on his words, he lost his momentum and his defense faltered, just for an instant—but it was all the opening Cobalt needed. He swung his sword in the perfect arc to exploit his foe’s exposed neck. One blow, and Baz would die.
But—the ring.
Cobalt pulled his strike and just sat on his horse, heaving in breaths. Baz froze in mid-swing, staring at him, his eyes barely visible behind the faceplate of his helmet. Then he lowered his sword, only a bit, but enough.
“You tortured Drummer,” Cobalt said. “That’s why you wouldn’t let me see him.”
“Drummer is Ozar’s hostage.”
“You’re hiding something.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Baz said. “Drummer is a hostage to force Vizarana’s behavior.” In a voice full of pain, Baz said, “She only treated Drummer the way women have been torturing men since the beginning of time. She gave him her love.”
Cobalt couldn’t stop fighting; he was like a machine that once started had to finish. He was literally shaking from his efforts to contain his murderous rage. But all his talking with the Taka Mal envoys these past few days, with Fieldson, with Matthew, with Cragland, even with Baz, it all kept pointing in the same direction, away from Taka Mal and toward Jazid.
With a jerk on the reins, Cobalt wheeled Admiral around and set off across the field—leaving Baz alive. Admiral’s hooves pounded the rocky ground. The fighting was sparser here, and he encountered fewer soldiers. He struck down those who attacked him and raced past those who fled, galloping toward the Jazidian command post on a plateau above the battlefield.
Cobalt couldn’t have said how long it took to cross the battlefield. The fighting went in slow motion. Aeons passed in an instant. Yet almost as soon as he started, he was reining Admiral to a stop below the command center. He rode up the trail to the plateau, and Admiral neighed in challenge as they approached the guards at the top. Cobalt shouted across the open area to the tent on the other side. “Onyx! Come out!”
Warriors blocked his way, eight men in armor and helmets, black plumes restless in the wind. A man exited the tent, an officer of high rank judging from the braid on his uniform. He took one look at Cobalt and disappeared back inside. With the Jazidian guards as his escort, Cobalt rode Admiral across the plateau. This place wasn’t for battle. The ancient codes of war decreed such a post an area of truce where one commander could approach another to confer or surrender. No one could come up here to interfere, neither Cobalt’s men nor any more from Ozar’s army. If Cobalt violated that code, these guards could kill him with impunity. However, they were in full view of the battlefield, which meant they couldn’t violate the code, either; if they did, Cobalt’s men would sweep over this post.
“I will speak to Onyx.” Cobalt’s voice rumbled.
One of the men came forward with careful respect. “You must first relinquish your sword.”
Cobalt had no intention of relinquishing anything. He kept his weapon gripped in his hand. “I come to see your atajazid.”
“Do you wish to surrender?” the man asked.
“I will speak to Onyx,” Cobalt said. “Not to you. Not to Quaazera. Not even to your damned Shadow Dragon.”
The officer stiffened at the insult to the dragon, and for a moment it seemed he would challenge Cobalt. Then he spun around and strode into the tent. The others remained outside, hands on their sword hilts.
Ozar didn’t come out of the tent. Instead, he rode from behind it on a magnificent charger. He sat as tall in the saddle as Cobalt, and his shoulders were almost as broad in his armor. The stones in the hilt of his monstrous sword were black.
Onyx.
Ozar spoke coldly. “You come here armed to kill.”
“You kidnapped my wife,” Cobalt said.
The atajazid answered with scorn. “It is not my problem if you cannot keep track of your wife.”
Cobalt gritted his teeth. Stonebreaker used to talk to him that way, full of ridicule for the grandson he subjected to so much pain, physical and emotional. It had filled Cobalt with a rage that had driven him to pound his fists against the stone blocks of a tower until his shredded skin dripped with blood.
“You took my wife.” The storm built within Cobalt. He had to know the truth. “You whipped her to death.”
Ozar considered him. Only his eyes showed through his helmet. The distant roar of combat echoed below them, and Ozar’s warriors stood back, watching.
The atajazid spoke with deliberate, calculated malice. “She did have a beautiful body. I’d never seen yellow hair in a woman’s crotch. And those breasts. Although they were less attractive with blood all over them.”
Cobalt had his answer.
He thought he would go insane. Maybe he did. He raised his sword, and the others moved through invisible molasses. As he closed the distance between himself and Ozar, riding Admiral, his sword descended toward the king. From horseback, Ozar countered in slow motion. The responses of his warriors on foot were even more delayed, so belabored that Cobalt could judge where every one of them would be well before the man reached that position.
A man to his left was raising his blade, and Cobalt saw it would hit Admiral before Cobalt’s blow connected with Ozar’s sword. In mid-swing, Cobalt changed direction, slashing at the man. He cut the warrior’s arm off at the shoulder. The man screamed, a drawn out sound that went on a long time.
Cobalt raised his sword to counter Ozar’s blow. Incredibly, the atajazid hadn’t finished his swing. Cobalt had no idea how fast he was moving, but he remembered Mel’s words: Saints, Cobalt, when you fight, it’s as if you have supernatural powers. I didn’t think it was possible to move that fast.
Except Mel was dead.
His blade met Ozar’s with an eerie drawn-out crash. Cobalt felt the immense power and reach behind that swing and knew the atajazid was no ordinary opponent. The warriors around Cobalt assailed him, but they moved so slowly, he could engage t
hem between his swings with Ozar. He knew what Ozar had intended; incite him into a precipitous attack so the Jazid warriors could kill him without violating the code. Except they misjudged their opponent, and the price of that mistake would be their deaths.
As Cobalt fought, his sense of time sped up and his strikes became blurs. He cut, parried, slashed, countered, and one by one the warriors fell. Then it was only he and Ozar facing each other. Ozar’s men lay on the ground, incapacitated or dead, none able to fight. Two were dragging themselves and several others clear of the area before the horses trampled them.
The sky had turned crimson from horizon to horizon, or maybe it was the fire within Cobalt. The day blazed, as if the Dragon-Sun had come to earth, but it burned within him and exploded outward at this man who had murdered his wife and unborn child.
He drove Ozar toward the tent, intending to entangle him in its sides, but the atajazid rallied and backed him toward the edge of the plateau. Cobalt had never fought an opponent with such power or speed, and his arm was tiring. Admiral stumbled on the mace of a fallen warrior, and for a brutal instant Cobalt thought his horse would topple off the plateau. Ozar came to this combat fresh, were as Cobalt had been fighting for most of the morning.
Then Admiral lurched forward and regained his footing.
Ozar suddenly switched his sword to his other hand and lunged at Cobalt from the left. Disoriented, Cobalt faltered, and Ozar’s blade skidded on his shoulder, scraping layers off his jerkin and cutting into his arm. With a shout, Cobalt jerked the reins and backed up Admiral. He had never seen anyone change hands during a fight with such ease. His own arm ached, and blood dripped down it to the hilt of his sword.
Ozar pressed his advantage, coming in fast. He wielded his sword in his left hand with as much speed as with his right. Cobalt blocked his strikes, and every time Ozar’s blade rang against his sword, Cobalt’s injured arm shook with the impact.
Admiral screamed and reared, a reaction so strange that Cobalt froze, gripping the reins as he stared at the receding ground. In the same instant, a jagged sheet of light split the red sky, followed by thunder so loud it sounded as if it could crack the world in two.
The atajazid tried to cut across Admiral’s legs. Infuriated, Cobalt slashed at him as the frenzied horse came down, but Admiral side-stepped when his hooves hit the ground and it threw off Cobalt’s strike. Ozar came at him from the left, and Cobalt was having trouble judging his angles of attack. Ozar wasn’t purely ambidextrous; he didn’t fight as well with his left hand as with his right. But combined with Cobalt’s weakening arm, it was enough to give Ozar a pronounced advantage.
They fought beneath a sky that flamed. Ozar wore away Cobalt’s endurance, whittling it down. Back and forth, back and forth, until Cobalt’s vision hazed. Still Ozar kept at him, his left arm strong, and Cobalt knew he was facing his death in the shape of a man with a dragon helmet and black armor.
Desperate, Cobalt let his arm sag, just enough to draw in Ozar, tempting him. It was a feint; to take advantage of Cobalt’s “lapse,” Ozar would have to leave his right side undefended for just an instant. Expecting the atajazid’s swing, Cobalt dodged the blow and came in with his own. His sword rang on Ozar’s breastplate. The blow disrupted the atajazid’s defense for only a second—but that was enough. With a surge of power, Cobalt let go of the reins and threw his last strength into a swing with both of his hands gripped on the hilt of his sword. He caught Ozar in the space between his breastplate and his helmet. With the sheer power behind his swing, his blade kept going—
And sliced Ozar’s head from his body.
Cobalt groaned as his arm fell to his side, his sword hanging. The atajazid’s severed head rolled across the bloody ground and hit a tent pole. As Ozar’s horse faltered, his body slowly toppled out of the saddle and crashed to the ground.
Cobalt stared at the atajazid’s body. He barely kept one hand on the hilt of his sword. Gasping with exertion, he looked around at the plateau, at the carnage and death, and he knew that if Mel had lived, she would never have for-given him for the horrors he had wrought today. He had truly become the Midnight King.
A scar ran down Jarid’s chin, giving his face a harsh quality. He otherwise had the classic Dawnfield features, the straight nose and sculpted cheekbones. His dark hair grazed his shoulders.
“He is a Harsdown officer,” Aron was saying. Eighteen years old, Aron was Jarid’s heir and his joy. Jarid didn’t want his son to die in the furious combat across their border. He dreaded the news brought by this Harsdown major.
“And you say this man was in Taka Mal?” Jarid said.
“Yes.” Aron’s face darkened. “He came here in chains. He’s been beaten and starved.”
“Will he live?”
“The healers say yes,” Aron said. “He insists he must see you. He says his news cannot wait.”
“Very well,” the Aronsdale king said. “Bring in Penta-Major Windcrier.”
Like the sea whipped by a hurricane, with waves of violence that crashed on the shore of humanity; like a tornado that tore apart the land; like a wildfire that would blaze until nothing remained—so the fighting raged across the land of the Dragon-Sun. Mel stood on a ridge high above the battle, and she wanted to shout her protest to the sky.
She was too late.
In one year, Cobalt had lost his father and the father’s love Cobalt had so long craved; his grandfather, who had left him with a legacy of pain and fury he could never reconcile; and his wife and heir, or so he believed. He would destroy entire countries in his grief and his thirst for revenge.
Taka Mal, Jazid, and Chamberlight men fought below. Cobalt’s forces had the upper hand, but the Aronsdale army was approaching, banners flying, ranks of cavalry and foot troops. If they joined the violence, this would become the largest battle in the history of the settled lands. The destruction could be incalculable.
“Stop!” Mel said. She was three stories above the plain, much too far away for her words to carry over the roar of battle. To anyone below, she would be no more than a figure on a ridge silhouetted against the sky.
The red sky. It blazed. Far across the field, on a plateau as high as this ridge, two men were fighting, dark against the carnelian sky. Above them, the air flamed, gold and red and orange. Mel knew then that she had hiked too hard and too long, that the lack of food, her injuries, and desperation were making her hear things. A haunting melody wove through the clamor. It was like the music Drummer wrote, except those tunes had been playful and lacking depth. This was full of grief and power, so mournfully beautiful that it hurt.
The colors in the sky were forming a luminous figure. Vague and insubstantial, it looked like a dragon in sunset colors. She didn’t understand how she could hear music, but it filled her the way a spell filled a shape. Down below, the battle raged beneath the dragon, so much killing and so much misery.
Mel took the flail off her belt and removed the cloth that protected her from the spikes. Standing with her feet planted wide on the rocky spur, she clenched the handle and extended her arm straight up with the ball hanging by its chain.
She swung the ball.
With a strength honed by years of training against soldiers heavier and more powerful than herself, Mel whirled the ball in a circle, around and around, a three-dimensional shape tracing out a two-dimensional shape. Except the ball wasn’t perfect. Spikes marred its symmetry. She delved within herself for a power that had nothing to do with light or softness. Her spell caught on the circle created by the swinging ball, and the circle deepened the effect, but it wasn’t enough to focus her true power. Her spell scraped across the spiked ball and didn’t catch.
Swing.
Swing.
Swing.
The spell built.
The music saturated Mel. It became part of her. In the sky, an incredible figure was forming, a dragon of fire and sun. Mel drew from the music and filled her spell with power. It scraped across the spiked ball—
And caught.
The spell formed with a power unlike anything she had ever known, bigger, more intense even than in Ozar’s fortress. And this time she controlled it. She stood on the ridge, swinging the flail above her head, and the ball focused her power—
It exploded outward.
A sheet of lightning cracked in the sky, though no clouds marred the roof of the world. The lightning forked in hundreds of branches that hit all over the battlefield and thunder crashed, deafening. Warriors surged away from the strikes in waves of people. The ground where the lightning hit was burned and shattered, and cracks ran out in all directions, zigzagging across the Rocklands, fast and furious.
In that instant, the dragon roared and filled the sky with the fire of his breath. Mel knew such spells. It was light, only light, created somewhere, somehow, by a mage of great power, but paired with the very real lightning, it was terrifying.
Her fury poured through the ball. She swung it and jagged sheets of lightning hammered the land as if nature had gone mad. Mel controlled the spell, hitting rock rather than people, striking again and again while the dragon roared flames across the blazing sky. The entire world, everywhere Mel could see, had turned unbearably brilliant.
Soldiers ran for shelter, desperate waves of humanity pounding off the Rocklands, seeking cover. The spell blasted through Mel until she thought it would tear her apart. Her helmet was suffocating her; she ripped it off her head, still swinging the ball. Her hair whipped around her body in the wind created by the force of her spell.
The battle fell apart in ragged patches all across the field. Warriors took shelter in the foothills or their camps. People pointed at Mel and the dragon in the sky as they ran, and their mouths opened in shouts she couldn’t hear. She scorched the field with lightning, and thunder roared across the land while the Sun-Dragon bellowed its fury.