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Nicci recognized it. “That looks like one of the sacrificial knives the council members held during the blood magic.”
“Yes, a fitting irony, don’t you think? One of the raiders who sold the sacrificial slaves now has to face pain from the same sort of knife.”
“Where did you get it?” Nicci asked.
Mirrormask held up the blade, turned it in front of his reflective face as if regarding the details. “My followers are everywhere.”
“King Grieve and his army will come here,” Dar insisted. “Why do you think our slavers trade with Ildakar? We are gathering information. You think your city is invincible, but you are overconfident and weak.” His excessive jaw opened and closed like a flapping skull. He worked up the saliva to spit at them, but it only drooled down the scarred sides of his mouth. “We sell the walking meat, take your gold, and learn everything about your city so that we can capture it along with the rest of the Old World.”
“He is quite ambitious, isn’t he?” Mirrormask said in his muffled voice.
Nicci did not dismiss the threat so lightly. “What do you mean, the Norukai have armies and navies? How do they intend to conquer the Old World?”
Dar sneered at them. “You are all walking meat to us. You are weak. We build our strength on the Norukai islands, and we intend to take over the mainland.” He laughed. “We saw the thousands of stone soldiers outside of your city. You thought that was a fierce army? With our ships, we will have twice as many warriors—and soon we will launch.” He laughed, knowing he would die eventually.
Nicci wondered how long the rebels would continue peeling the skin off of him. He could probably survive for days longer.
Rendell and several other rebels had quietly followed them down the tunnels to watch the interrogation, and many of them seemed restless and hungry, wanting their chance to inflict pain as well.
Mirrormask looked at the golden-handled knife, where his reflection ricocheted in the polished steel of the blade. “Alas, you will not be here to see that victory.”
In a swift motion, he slashed the Norukai’s throat. Dar writhed and jittered on the manacle chains. As blood spurted out, Mirrormask deftly stepped aside so that the spraying crimson did not splatter his gray robe, but several warm drops struck Nicci’s cheek. The other rebels stood back, muttering as the blood flowed down the slaver’s naked chest, pooling on the narrow walkway and dripping into the canal, adding blood to the city’s water supply.
The people of Ildakar had been exposed to blood before. Nicci was not queasy about the murder of Dar, or the blood in the canal. “I do not like his talk of a great conquering army. What do we know of the Norukai?”
“Very little, nor do I care,” Mirrormask said. “We are protected inside the shroud. The business of Ildakar is my concern.”
After Dar stopped twitching, Mirrormask grasped his forehead and pressed him back against the sandstone wall. He pressed hard with the long knife and sawed across the throat again, slicing through the larynx, windpipe, and finally the spine. He held Dar’s severed head by one of the dangling braids at the back of the skull and tossed it to Rendell, who meekly caught it. Blood splashed on the escaped slave’s drab clothes.
Mirrormask said, “Under cover of darkness, take that and mount it on a pike somewhere inside the city. Because of the shroud, we can’t take it to one of the paths leading to Ildakar, as we did with the others. But the message should be plain enough.”
The rebel leader turned and strode away along the aqueduct tunnels, leaving his hidden nest of followers.
CHAPTER 61
Warm afternoon breezes picked up, whistling through the narrow slickrock canyons, but the wizard Renn kept his eyes downcast, watching his feet as they plodded one step after another. The eleven surviving members of the expedition led by Captain Trevor trudged along the unruly paths.
None of them knew where they were going.
“I am certain we’re almost there,” Trevor said, for the fifth time that day. His foolish optimism was the only thing that kept him from insanity.
After they crossed over the spectacular pass of Kol Adair and worked their way into the lower mountains, they found worn paths that were overgrown with weeds, even trees. It was as if the world had reshaped itself to erase any stubborn markings left by ancient humanity. Eventually the expedition had found the high desert plateau and the start of the slickrock canyons. The expedition kept moving onward, convincing themselves they were on the right path.…
Desperate for a drink, the group fought through stunted piñon pines, spiky yucca plants, and brittle gray tamarisk. The soldiers could hear the flowing stream, so close, so inaccessible. Somewhere in the tamarisk thicket, water flowed into a pothole and then spilled over the rock. “Keeper’s crotch!” said one of the soldiers. “Curse these weeds.” They used their swords to hack away at the stubborn tamarisk, splintering sharp dry twigs.
“Wizard, can’t you use your magic to make a path?” asked another downcast soldier. “Or at least to tell us where we are?”
“My gift isn’t a map,” Renn said. His throat was too dry to argue. “Don’t you think if I could, I would have created a magic map two weeks ago?”
“It was just a suggestion, Wizard,” Trevor said in a calming voice.
Scratching the bothersome stubble on his multiple chins, Renn huffed. “Step back. I can use magic to clear that debris. It’ll be something, at least.”
The nine soldiers backed away from the aggressive thicket clogged around the trickle of water. Renn jerked his hand and called upon his gift to uproot the stubborn, spiky growths. Expressing his anger and frustration at the whole situation, he yanked the tamarisks out of the ground and sent them away with such vehemence that the dry branches whistled through the air until they crashed far down the canyon in a heap of debris. The water continued to gurgle from the spring, but now it was a muddy mess. The pools of clear water were slurries of red mud from the slickrock soil. Crowding forward, the men stared in dismay. “Now we can’t drink that.”
“Just wait for it to settle out,” said Captain Trevor, always cheerful. “Or we can filter it through rags.”
“Let’s camp here,” Renn suggested, though it was still just midafternoon. “At least we know there’ll be water.”
“What about food?” asked one of the soldiers. “Our packs are empty.”
“Go catch some lizards,” Trevor commanded. When the soldiers grumbled, he replied, “If you complain, then you aren’t hungry enough.”
The soldiers, once brave members of the Ildakaran city guard, had become scavengers, foraging up and down the canyons, throwing rocks at lizards or trying to catch them with their bare hands. Three days ago, one man had found a bush filled with dark purple berries, which he ate greedily, not wanting to share with his fellows. He had returned sheepishly to camp, his lips discolored. His companions were upset with him for having gorged himself on fresh fruit.
The man had died screaming that night, vomiting and spasming from the poison. After that, they were much more careful.
Renn longed for his own villa back in Ildakar, his household slaves, his gardens, his lovely wind chimes. “We were not trained as woodsmen,” he complained to Trevor, loud enough for the other soldiers to hear.
As the scouts came back with their meager offerings from the hunt, they even brought the dried branches of the uprooted tamarisk for the campfire. The dry, airy wood blazed so hot and fast, the fire got out of their control and set nearby bushes on fire. Renn was again forced to call upon his magic—and some of the water from the spring—to extinguish the blaze.
It was just one more catastrophe on their endless journey.
Renn hated the sovrena and the wizard commander, resenting them for sending him out on this fool’s errand without a clear goal, without specific directions to their destination, and without any training. They had been pampered inside the legendary city for their entire lives. When had Renn ever needed to know how to camp, hunt, or find
edible roots and leaves? None of them knew. The city guard had no such training.
Now they were lost and miserable in the wasteland. They had been gone for so long, he doubted they could ever find their way back home. Instead, they had to discover Cliffwall and claim the vast libraries of magic in the name of Ildakar.
Renn wasn’t so sure he even cared about Ildakar anymore.
As they bedded down to sleep, still smelling the smoke from the now-smothered campfire, Captain Trevor said, “I’m sure we’ll get there tomorrow.”
