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Nathan whispered close to Elsa’s face. “I trust your abilities implicitly.”
The largest concentration of fighters had gathered here at the main gates to accompany Nathan and Elsa on their charge to the heart of the camp to lay down the central rune, but five other teams, led by Oron, Olgya, Justin, Perri, and Leo, had been dispatched to secondary gates up and down the wall. They would all rush out at the same time, each with a very specific destination and assignment.
Olgya had presented each of them with a new cloak made of the impenetrable armor silk to serve as both protection and camouflage. The worms in her warehouse had spun themselves into exhaustion, but they had produced countless bolts of the special cloth. All of the escort fighters were likewise protected.
Nathan and Elsa wrapped their silk cloaks around themselves, sashed tightly at their waists. Nathan had his ornate sword at his side, with his black pants and traveling boots. He felt like an adventurer and a wizard, as well as Elsa’s protector.
The ranks of the city guard, infuriated by the brutal execution of High Captain Stuart, had supplied many of the volunteers for the escorts. “For Stuart!” the guards called, raising their swords.
Each of the teams also had two morazeth warriors. The women had sworn their lives to protect the gifted team leaders while they marked the spell-forms.
“We have to be fast,” Nathan called out. “Our purpose is not to engage the enemy and fight. Each team must get to its position and lay down the boundary runes.” He smiled. “Then Elsa will do the rest.”
The older sorceress sat silent and preoccupied on her chestnut gelding, which she had agreed to ride because they required speed. Nathan sat astride a sturdy gray horse close to her. The escort fighters gathered around their respective teams at the different gates, hard-bitten arena veterans as well as uniformed city guard. Not long ago, these groups had been bitter enemies. Now they would all go out to fight together.
“So much has changed,” Nathan muttered to Elsa. “Amazing how facing a common enemy can form fast friendships.”
She looked over at him, her face filled with emotion. Tears sparkled in her eyes. “Thank you for being my friend, Nathan. I am glad you came to Ildakar, and I am glad I got to know you. You’re the first man since Derek who has truly warmed my heart.”
“I hope I continue to do so, my dear. But now it is time. We should be off!”
Elsa nodded, biting her lower lip.
Nathan saw the freed slave Rendell among the fighters, a man who had served Mirrormask and then become the first member of the lower classes to have a seat on the duma. Rendell raised an iron club in salute to Nathan. “I am fighting as well, Wizard. I may not have magic, but I have a sword arm and my anger is as great as anyone else’s.”
“We will celebrate together afterward,” Nathan said.
They had decided not to blow defiant war horns, but would simply ride out unexpectedly into the morning rain under the gray skies. Even a few minutes of surprise might make a great difference.
The main gates began to open, and the tense guardian soldiers pressed closer around Nathan and Elsa. They all held their swords ready to charge.
Elsa carried a large bladder of bright red paint, identical to the pigment used to mark the giant rune on the cliff wall. When it came time, she would snip the corner and draw a spattering line across the ground to outline her anchor rune. Oron, Olgya, and the other three gifted nobles had similar sacks of paint to draw boundary runes in the proper places. After they all sent up a signal to indicate they had completed their work, Elsa would connect the boundary runes with the anchor rune, and transfer all the heat stored in the cliffs and the river right into the midst of the ancient army.
Nathan gave Elsa a confident smile as gates opened up and down the main wall of Ildakar. “We are off, my dear! Let us go see what victory feels like.”
He kicked his gray horse, which galloped ahead with Elsa racing beside him. The rest of the escort fighters charged, ready to battle to the death for this desperate plan. Nathan was already calling lightning with one hand, while summoning wizard’s fire in the other. He planned to make quite an impact.
“For Ildakar!” he cried. The words echoed from countless other throats.
CHAPTER 76
All the flatboat pilots, fishermen, and river traders had been warned away from Ildakar as soon as the giant transference rune was painted on the bluffside. When Elsa activated the towering spell-form, the backlash would be dangerous for anyone in the vicinity.
Lila stood with Bannon at the edge of one of the tunnel openings, peering down the network of ramps, stairs, and cargo platforms to the river below. Considering the huge painted design, the morazeth frowned. “I should not have allowed you to hang from a rope while you painted. It was a risk, and I promised to keep you safe.”
“There are different ways of fighting the enemy.” Bannon gestured with pride at the prominent design, which stood out bright and red on the cliffs. “And I needed to help.”
She scoffed. “You could have fallen.”
“I’m not clumsy.” He was exasperated with her attitude. “Neither of us needs protection here. The battle is on the opposite side of the city, and I am worried about the strike teams, and Nathan. By now they should be ready to ride out to place the boundary runes on the battlefield, and that is far more dangerous than anything I’ve done here.” He looked behind him into the tunnels and the city beyond. “Nathan tricked me. I wish he had let me go along with him.”
“Your wizard friend wanted to protect you, and he gave me instructions to do the same. I intend to obey them,” Lila said. “My morazeth sisters are out there with the teams. Therefore, the mission will succeed.”
Bannon touched Sturdy, which he kept comfortably at his side. “What if they fail because one more fighter would have saved a wizard or a sorceress at a critical time? What if Nathan needs me?”
“I don’t dispute your concerns,” Lila finally said, sounding wistful. “I would have liked to go along as well.”
Doing a final check, four painters on separate scaffoldings touched up sections of the design that had washed thin in the rain overnight. “Hurry!” Bannon called to them. “The attack will launch any minute now. When Elsa triggers her transference magic, you don’t want to be out here.”
The cocky young painters swung on the ropes, with no fear of heights. They completed their work, called to one another, then lowered themselves to the wooden platforms. After securing their half-empty buckets of paint, they ducked into the entry tunnels. Rainwater trickled out of small drain outlets from gutters in the streets, streaming down the cliff to the river.
Bannon felt a strange premonition when he saw the water running out of the drain holes. It looked as if Ildakar were weeping rivulets of water, like tears pouring through the painted spell-form and down the cliff.
He thought of the enormous statue of the Sea Mother that towered over Serrimundi Harbor and remembered that he’d felt a similar strange dread when the Wavewalker sailed past. Bannon wondered if that had been an early warning about the selka attack that had destroyed the ship not long afterward. Nathan and Nicci had told him time and again that prophecy was gone, that Lord Rahl had changed the underpinnings of magic. The young man didn’t think he possessed some previously undiscovered gift that let him glimpse the future. He decided the shiver must have been caused by the damp chill in the air.
Lila stood practically naked with only the thin leather wrap around her waist and chest, sandals laced all the way up her calves. Moisture glistened on her skin, highlighting the rune markings. “Aren’t you cold?” he asked.
“No. Never.”
From the tunnel overhang, Bannon and Lila watched the fog lifting off the river as the day brightened. He heard the whisper of the sluggish current, the stir of turgid swamps; then in the distance he heard an eerie, muffled thumping, like a steady heartbeat.
Alert, Lila leaned out over the edge. “Those are drums. Many drums.” The
sun broke through, warming the air, dissipating the mists as the approaching drums grew louder. “Something is coming.”
Straining to see through the thinning fog, Bannon felt an ominous change in the air. Unconsciously, he moved closer to Lila.
Together, they watched in horror as a shape appeared on the wide river below, dark sails, a frightening sea serpent head carved at the prow. The ship glided forward as the drums continued their steady threatening beat, oars raised and lowered, pushing the vessel against the current.
Bannon remembered the Norukai slave traders who had come to Ildakar to sell their cargo of walking meat, and he felt angry.
Behind the lead ship came another, then another—dozens of vessels, with even more trailing off in the remaining fog. Ice spiked through his veins as he realized this was no small merchant expedition. “Sweet Sea Mother, those aren’t Norukai traders. This is an invasion!”
