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“Mrra must be free,” Nicci insisted. “I can control her. I can hide her.”
Mirrormask held up a hand. “One step at a time, my followers. For now, let us smash the reflecting basins. That will give us a measurable victory tonight.”
* * *
After full dark, Nicci emerged from the tunnels with ten of the hooded rebels. Rendell accompanied her, while Mirrormask departed down one of the streets alone. Other followers spread out to seek the innocuous-looking basins.
Ildakar was dark and silent. Stars sparkled overhead, shimmering from the distortion of the shroud that now encapsulated the city. A faint sliver of moon shaped like the blade of a sacrificial knife hung low to the horizon, barely visible between the buildings.
This was the first time Nicci had been outside in days, and she paused to take a long breath, drawing energy from the cool darkness, but her thoughts weren’t with the stars or the fresh air. Nicci devoted her full attention to their work here in the city.
She and Rendell kept to the shadows, darting between buildings, avoiding the dim glows of light that seeped through shuttered windows. She heard low conversations, smelled savory curls of smoke from cooking hearths. Some of the windows were open in the night air, and people sat silhouetted on windowsills, taking in the fresh air. Nicci and Rendell moved silently. She was sure some people spotted them, but they raised no alarm, only gave their quiet support.
She thought of the times when she had faced enemies using her magic or her knives, defeating them in personal combat. She had led armies both for Jagang and against him. “I don’t like this skulking around,” she muttered to Rendell as they paused at the mouth of an alley that led out into a gathering square. “I prefer to face my opponent directly.”
“We will have a stand-up fight soon enough,” Rendell said. “The sovrena and the wizard commander are planning another massive bloodworking. Hundreds of slaves are being rounded up for a great sacrifice at the pyramid.” His voice was weary, weighted down with misery. “This one is designed to make the shroud permanent.”
Nicci blinked in alarm. “Then we will never get out, and neither will the sacrificial slaves. We have to act before that happens!”
“We have already been trapped here forever. But we will keep fighting, shroud or no shroud.”
Nicci hissed, “Dear spirits, we don’t have much time. When is this supposed to take place?”
“Tomorrow night. The city guards are preparing. The morazeth have been bringing the slaves into great pens.”
She considered how to encourage, or even coerce, Mirrormask to call his followers and act now. She herself might have to take charge.
But first things first. “For now, let us remove one of the sovrena’s weapons. She won’t spy on us anymore.” She strode across the square into the open starlight, making no effort to hide herself.
On the opposite wall hung one of the reflecting basins, chest high and holding a still pool of water. Rendell remained in the shadows, calling out in a hoarse whisper, “If that is a scrying pool, you’ll be seen!”
“I intend to be seen.” Nicci marched boldly to the wall. Her black dress was swallowed in the night, but her blond hair and pale skin made her identity obvious to any observer. She stepped up to the hemispherical reflecting pool and looked down into the calm, still surface, like a mirror.
She stared at her reflection. “Are you watching me, Sovrena?” Her clear blue eyes gazed back at her, but Nicci imagined that they were Thora’s eyes. “I am here. I am alive. And I mean to destroy you.” She lowered her face until it was only inches above the water. “But you’ll never know when I come for you.”
She released her gift with cracking force, shattering the curved stone basin, so that the shards crashed to the flagstones, spilling the water. A continuing flow leaked from a pipe inside the wall, a trickle from the aqueducts.
She turned to Rendell. “The rest of the rebels are doing the same. Come help me find more of the basins. We will gouge out the sovrena’s magical eyes.”
CHAPTER 66
The D’Haran army rode out of the mountains into the broad green valley that had once been the Scar. Sitting astride her horse, Prelate Verna looked ahead, scanning the landscape. After days of riding, she had named her horse Dusty, an endearing as well as descriptive term; Richard had taught her to name, and respect, her horse.
“Do you think we are almost to Cliffwall?” asked Sister Amber. Her eyes were sparkling. “I never knew the world was so vast.”
“You still have seen only the tiniest portion of it, child.” Verna was surprised by the ever-widening vistas. What if even the sweeping D’Haran Empire was just a small country in a continent of inconceivable size?
The young novice looked amazed, then briefly skeptical, but she gave a solemn nod. “I would never doubt you, Prelate.”
Oliver and Peretta, riding together on the same horse, gazed ahead of them. “We have to go around the valley to the north, then up into the high desert to find Cliffwall.” Oliver squinted, but could not seem to make out the details.
Peretta added, “We camped exactly eight times from Cliffwall to this point. But riding on horseback is much faster.”
General Zimmer held the reins of his black destrier and glanced back at the two young scholars. “That means we should be only days away.”
They followed a blurred trail, portions of which had once been a road, but much had weathered and washed away. The horses followed the gentle geography where streams had cut down to the valley.
“It looks like a beautiful place,” Verna said. “Wild and pristine.”
“The Lifedrinker’s mark is almost entirely erased,” Peretta said. “Look at the meadows, the new forests, the rivers and lakes. The valley is alive again.”
“I would not thank Victoria for what she did,” Oliver said.
As they rode into the twilight, they saw a sparkle of lights ahead, dozens of small fires. Worried that it might be an army encamped in the valley, General Zimmer dispatched scouts to investigate, and they rode back in the dark to say that the fires were the camps of settlers, people who had moved in and begun to build new homes and farms.
Rather than approaching the settlement, the general ordered that they bed down for the night where they were. He scratched the rough stubble on his cheek. “We’d terrify those poor people if a hundred armored riders arrived after dark. Let us wait until morning so we can come in as visitors, rather than invaders.”
After giving Dusty a withered apple for a treat, Verna lay on her blanket, listening to the night birds and insects. The Sisters of the Light camped close together, spreading out their bedrolls. They talked excitedly, knowing their destination was at hand. The soldiers played games and sang songs, relaxed with the comfortable routin
e of travel. Many remarked that they liked the landscape of the Old World, and although they missed lovers, wives, and children from back home, they certainly preferred this duty to marching off to war and battling hordes of cannibalistic undead. Verna drifted off to sleep, listening as a young soldier played a stringed instrument and sang a quiet tune about a girl he had left behind in Anderith.
The next morning, the group rode to the new village. Ten families had staked their claim beside a wide stream. When the settlers saw the contingent of riders approach, they stood together warily. Verna realized these people must have suffered much over the years and had learned to fear strangers, but General Zimmer introduced himself and insisted that they came in peace.
“This valley is fertile again,” said a bearded man in mud-streaked clothes. He had fastened a makeshift plow to the settlement’s lone ox, and now stood beside the big animal. The villagers had cleared and tilled several acres of the land. Woodcutters had chopped down trees and worked them into logs for construction. “For a long time, nobody could live here, but now this ground is perfect for crops. And untouched.”
A thin woman with large eyes and prematurely gray hair came forward to greet General Zimmer and Prelate Verna. She gestured to the largest building they had constructed. “That one will be a schoolhouse. Once this settlement is established, more people will come down from the mountains to join us.”
“Many were driven out as the Lifedrinker’s Scar grew and grew,” said the first farmer. “But this valley is our ancestral home. It was ours long ago.”
“And the valley is yours again,” said General Zimmer. “We come with the news that the Imperial Order has faded, Emperor Jagang is dead, and Lord Rahl now wants you to be free to determine your own lives, without tyranny or oppression.”
More people came close, including three children, all covered with mud because they had been helping plant seeds in the new furrows. They all smiled at the soldiers.
“We are just riding through, finding our way to Cliffwall,” Verna said. “You have nothing to fear from us.”
