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Nicci’s thoughts guided the panther as she herself lay restless and half asleep in the grand villa. She was still disturbed by so many losses from the night before.
As they recovered throughout the day, the people of Ildakar tried to assess how much damage their attack had really inflicted on the enemy, but the mutilated bodies hurled by the catapults had caused great shock and dismay. The people struggled to find a sense of victory, but they couldn’t help but count their own fallen, even though they couldn’t identify the mangled corpses. Nicci didn’t even know if Bannon’s body was among them.
Through the sand panther, though, Nicci could now see the true damage General Utros had suffered. Many of the blazing fires were not bright campfires, as the Ildakarans assumed. Mrra smelled burning flesh, saw the piles of bodies, the charred skin and blackened bones falling into greasy embers. These were funeral pyres. Though the ancient warriors were hardened from the remnants of the stone spell, they still bled and they still died. Now the corpses burned, although it took a great deal of firewood.
In her partial dream state, Nicci guessed that the number of enemy dead was at least three to five times as many as Ildakar had lost, but even so it was not a cause for celebration.
Mrra moved like a shadow in the faint moonlight, circling the troops and funeral pyres, seeing the blasted trenches and the damage done. As she crept close to the general’s headquarters, Nicci felt her senses heightened, all sounds and smells intensified tenfold. Mrra sniffed and discovered several large barrels that reeked of blood. Nicci didn’t know why General Utros would store casks of blood, and Mrra didn’t care. Blood did not frighten her.
Nicci memorized all the details as Mrra continued to move around the camp, observing even though the big cat didn’t comprehend human warfare. But she had gleaned enough understanding through her association with her sister panther that she noticed something odd, familiar smells that didn’t belong among the ancient army.
Though unable to approach closer due to the movement of ancient soldiers, Mrra spotted one wooden shack with no windows and a barred door. She heard stirring, low voices, smelled a different scent. Other humans were inside, not these dusty-smelling ones, but warm-blooded men. Captives, perhaps? Hostages that Utros would use as bargaining chips?
There was certainly no way to rescue them in the midst of the gigantic enemy camp.
Before she departed through the sliph the next morning, Nicci would report the news to the duma. Thanks to her feline spy, she had a great deal of new information to share.
CHAPTER 43
Many cities in the Old World had suffered under the Imperial Order, but the threat of General Utros’s army was something entirely different from what they had experienced previously. Now that parts of his army were clearly on the move, Nicci had to spread the warning far and wide. She would travel to Tanimura, Serrimundi, Larrikan Shores, maybe all the way up to Aydindril or the People’s Palace, if the sliph could take her that far. She would tell her story, sound the alarm, rally them in any way possible.
But she needed to have proof. They would not just accept her wild story.
The following morning, after Nicci had delivered her report to the duma of what Mrra had seen, and told them her plan to spread the alarm to other cities, Elsa joined her and Nathan outside the ruling tower. She wore clean purple robes, and she had pinned back her gray-shot hair.
The older woman smiled and nodded slowly. “I think I have just the proof you need, a way you can take the ancient army with you. You can show everyone how great a threat Utros is, and they won’t be able to deny it.” She held up a small pane of glass she had brought with her. “We can use transference magic.”
With the sharp point of a dagger, Elsa scratched runes in each corner of the glass rectangle, then inspected her work. “I can transfer the image of what we see and capture it within the pane. The picture will live inside the glass.”
While Nicci and Nathan watched, she lifted the rectangular glass and slowly turned it, holding it at arm’s length and gazing through it to see the countless soldiers, the burned hills, the numerous tents, the immensity of the siege army. Then she touched the scratched rune in the lower left corner and handed the small pane to Nicci. “That should convince anyone who looks.”
Nicci held the glass, amazed that it had captured the precise image of what they saw from the tower, an undeniable and frightening record of the great army gathered outside of Ildakar. “Yes, this will help a great deal.” She wrapped the glass pane in a cloth. “Now I have to go to the sliph.”
“And we are going along with you,” Nathan said. “In case you need help.”
Nicci flashed him a quick, skeptical glance but withheld her comment. As she walked purposefully down the steep streets with Nathan and Elsa following, she thought of the sliph. “Though I can travel great distances swiftly, I will not be able to bring any help back with me. Ildakar is still on its own.”
Elsa took Nathan’s arm. “We have been on our own for a very long time.” She looked confident, even majestic as she walked along. “During so many centuries beneath the shroud, I did dream of the outside world. I read the histories of other cities, mining towns in the mountains, trade centers by the ocean. They seemed like magical places, and very few people in Ildakar remembered ever seeing them. If I’d known about the sliph and how easy it is to travel, maybe I would have explored.” They descended through the merchants’ district and into crowded residential levels where the lower classes lived. “But I suppose even the sliph couldn’t pass through a bubble in time. Our shroud would have been impenetrable.”
Nicci kept walking at a brisk pace. “That would not have been your primary problem. The sliph can only be used by someone with both sides of the gift, Additive and Subtractive Magic. Millennia ago, many wizards could access that magic, but now very few can use the Subtractive side.”
“Then how are you going to use the sliph now?” Elsa asked.
“I was a Sister of the Dark, and I served the Keeper. I can use Subtractive Magic because of the terrible price I paid.” She thought of the destruction she had caused, the people she had hurt, how she had tried to destroy Richard. Though she had forsaken that darkness, the scars were still within her, as was that poisonous strength. “I will be able to travel.”
They reached the lowest levels of Ildakar, and Nicci went directly to the low stone building that held the hidden sliph well. The door was open and unguarded, but people avoided the place. Though some had peered inside, the eerie darkness and the chill kept them away.
Nicci ducked and entered the enclosure, igniting a ball of light to drive away the shadows. Elsa and Nathan followed close behind. The air inside smelled like stagnant water and mold, with an undertone of rot. Green moss grew on the stone floor, but otherwise the chamber was empty, no furniture, no ornaments, no symbols.
Nicci knew how to s
ummon the sliph. She had used the strange method of transportation before, sometimes uneventfully, while other journeys had turned into ordeals. Now she saw no other way to spread her warning so widely and so quickly.
Her feet whispered along the smooth floor as she walked to the low circular well. With all the places the sliph could travel, she considered where to go, how she might best sound the alarm to other cities, whom she could rally. The people across the Old World would have to prepare their defenses, gather for war. As proof, she had Elsa’s cloth-wrapped rectangle of glass, which she secured next to one of the daggers at her hip. But she didn’t know if it would be enough.
Nicci looked into the bottomless well in front of her, a hollow blackness that exuded cold and utter silence. “Sliph! Sliph, I summon you. I wish to travel.” When she sensed no response, she shouted louder. “Sliph, I command you to awaken! I wish to travel.” She looked back over her shoulder at Nathan and Elsa. “I will need your help.”
“Are you sure the creature is still alive?” Elsa asked.
“Oh, I’m certain she lives, although she may have gone dormant after so much time,” Nathan said. “They are not natural beings. We must call her again.”
“I traveled within the sliph not long ago,” Nicci said. “It’s how we got back to the People’s Palace in time to fight Sulachan’s hordes.” Determined, she reached out with her gift, called with her mind and heart as well as with her voice. “Sliph, you know me. I need your services.”
The sliph was a woman who had been altered by ancient wizards in preparation for their war. She remembered the original sliph, a former whore transformed into a magical creature who existed to carry travelers from destination to destination, deriving great pleasure from doing so.
But the other sliph that had rescued Nicci and her companions when they were trapped within the cliff city of Stroyza was an entirely different creature, one who remembered her name as Lucy. That sliph had been less passionate, less desperate to serve, and far less cooperative, but Richard had convinced her to whisk them all away.
