The Black Shield (The Red Sword Book 2) Read online

  A hand on his shoulder, a voice. His sister’s. And then he was blinking in the darkness again, sitting in the chill air of an early spring night in Eriscoba. Bronwyn removed his hands from the blade and returned her sword to its sheath.

  “The garden wanted me dead,” he said. “Thank the Brothers it’s not real.”

  “Oh, it is a real place, I’m convinced of it. That sorcery you felt would have killed you, too. Or tried to, at least.”

  “Is that the seat of the sorcerer’s power?”

  “I believe so, yes. The sword can be . . . tricky. The visions are real, but not always what they seem.” Bronwyn snapped a stick and fed the pieces into the fire. “I’m going to find this place.”

  “How?”

  “The sword will show me.”

  “You said it was tricky.”

  “I will be cautious.”

  “You’re going alone?”

  “Yes. And I doubt I will return.”

  “Don’t talk like that. Why wouldn’t you?”

  “The only thing that can kill him is Soultrup,” Bronwyn said. “And once I’ve bound his soul, the blade will turn against me. The sorcerer will inhabit the sword, and he will overwhelm the others living inside.”

  “But it won’t matter if he’s in it or not. The sorcerer will be dead. You can rid yourself of the blasted thing and return in triumph.”

  “You think the sorcerer is alone in this war? That he doesn’t have lieutenants whose hearts are every bit as dark as his own? One of them will pick up the sword, and it will obey him. And whoever that is will renew his master’s fight.”

  “So you’ll kill the sorcerer, the sword will fall into the hands of an enemy, and you’ll be killed in turn?” Wolfram asked. “In that case, what will you have accomplished but your own death?”

  She put a hand on his forearm. “No, Wolfie. You still don’t understand. I’m going to fall on the blade as soon as I’ve killed the monster. I will be inside, too, and I will resist.”

  He lost his resolve when she spoke his childhood nickname, and found himself blinking back tears. Bronwyn was a hard woman, filled with resolve and purpose, but she hadn’t always been that way. She’d been his older sister, protective and sometimes even tender.

  “You must be strong,” she said.

  He cleared his throat. “Yes. I will be.”

  “Because you are the captain of the paladins now.”

  “No, I’m not that strong. Give it to Andar, to Marissa.”

  “You are that strong, Sir Wolfram. You will be their captain, and you will continue our crusade against these invaders.”

  “I’m too young—”

  “Young, yes. But also the brother of Randall and Bronwyn, and they will respect you in turn as they respected us. Act the captain, and you will be the captain.”

  He hesitated. “All right. But only until you return.”

  Bronwyn took him by the shoulders. “Listen to me. I’m not going to return. I will do this or die trying.”

  “You might,” he insisted. “The Brothers will guide your path, and the time may come when you find another solution.”

  She released him, and a bitter looked crossed her face. “What other solution?”

  “An ally, a hidden path that you haven’t yet discovered . . . something. Anything but allowing yourself to die.”

  He slipped the pendant with the silver moon from around his neck and gave it to her. “Wear this.”

  “When did you get this?”

  “Father gave it to me before I joined the paladins. It has a small bit of magic in it. If you are still alive . . .”

  “I know what it is, and what it does. Mother used to wear it, too, before she could no longer fight. But how did it come to you, little brother?” There was a smile in her voice as she said it. “Always the coddled one. Everyone’s little wolf cub. Here, take it back—you need courage more than I do.”

  He refused to accept. “It’s become a crutch to lean on. Anyway, I’m a different man than I was three years ago.”

  “You were a boy three years ago.”

  “Exactly my point. I’m a man, not a boy, and I can stand on my own two feet. Besides, you’re forgetting its other purpose.”

  “Ah, that. So you want to know the precise moment when I’m killed? That sounds like torment. Why do that to yourself?”

  “Not at all. I want to confirm that you’re still alive so that I can come look for you when you need help.”

  “You can’t come look for me, because I’m not coming back.”

  “Like I said, anything can happen. Put the chain around your neck. Please.”

  Bronwyn did so, but seemed grudging as she tucked it beneath her shirt. Then she rose to her feet holding the sheathed sword and glanced at the moon as if to gauge its position in the sky. When she spoke, her voice had hardened once more.

  “Our watch is up, Sir Wolfram, and it’s time to wake our replacements and get some rest. We each have a long day ahead of us. You, leading the paladins as their captain. And I, riding through the mountain passes on my way to the khalifates on the other side. Alone.”

  She made for her tent without another word. Wolfram tossed more sticks on the fire so it would still be burning when the next watch came, picked up his own sword, and started after her. Bronwyn. So bloody stubborn, and so dismissive. He was just little Wolfie, after all, her wolf cub who had once carried her shield and breastplate.

  No, Sister, you are wrong. I am not a cub anymore, I am a wolf. And I am as tenacious and stubborn as you are.

  Chapter Three

  A road west of Aristonia, several weeks after the assault on the gardens of Memnet the Great.

  It was a simple trap that lamed the horse. One moment it was walking at a good pace, an older mare leading a younger, less sure-footed one at dusk, while the two humans kept their attention on their surroundings, and the next it went down with the distinctive groan and rolled eyes common to injured horses.

  The two travelers coaxed the animal onto its side, and it was there that Markal found a two-inch nail speared through to the soft part of her hoof. Nathaliey calmed the horse with gentle words and a whispered spell while Markal pulled out the long bloody piece of iron. He searched where the horse had gone down and found the trap a moment later.

  “Someone dug this hole,” he said, “and lined the bottom with nails.”

  Nathaliey muttered an oath. “Marauders?”

  Almost two weeks had passed since they’d left Memnet’s gardens, long enough that the road seemed to have become their entire life. Every day the same exhausting slog, beginning with a bit of cheese and bread, followed by a long morning crossing open plains and abandoned farm roads through drought-blasted fields, with a bit of rest taken at nearly dry streambeds or wherever else they could get water and forage for the horses. More walking in the afternoon until finally exhaustion and nightfall brought them a few precious hours of rest. When the enemy was close, they hid during the day and traveled at night.

  They’d paid for two nights’ rest in dusty farm villages along drying, nearly empty canals, and spent eleven nights sleeping under the star-choked skies. Markal had expected to reach the mountains by now, but the magical scent of hunting marauders had sent them on several detours, and the jagged peaks of the Dragon’s Spine remained nearly twenty miles to the west.

  Memories of the chaotic weeks before their departure had taken on a hazy, dreamlike quality. First, Nathaliey riding into the gardens in anguish, carrying Memnet’s head after he’d been murdered by marauders in the desert north of Marrabat. Markal led the burial of the master’s head. Then, the arrival of Bronwyn of Arvada, followed by her brutal slaying of the elderly acolyte, followed in turn by Markal accompanying her to search for the sorcerer.

  He’d witnessed the horror of the sorcerer burning the Sacred Forest and Bronwyn’s attack on King Toth in a battle that had killed the king’s pasha, Malik, before Bronwyn herself fell. Finally, Memnet’s awakening from hi
s death—or near death, as it turned out—and the defense of the gardens against an army of marauders, wights, and Veyrian soldiers trying to destroy the order and recover Bronwyn’s sword.

  Markal unstrapped Soultrup from the injured horse’s saddlebags. The sword was carefully wrapped in linen and bound with leather thongs so that nobody would accidentally touch either blade or hilt. He set it aside and worked to remove the saddle and bags while Nathaliey stroked the animal’s neck and encouraged her to stay down.

  “I don’t think it’s marauders,” Markal said. “I haven’t felt them for the last two days, and they’d be more likely to ambush us from the road than try to lame our horses.”

  “Except that we’ve slipped several ambushes already,” she said. “They might be wise to us by now, and set a conventional trap instead.”

  “Fair point. You’d better send a seeker just in case.”

  “Why don’t you let me see to the horse,” she said, “and you can send the seeker.”

  “I suppose I could. Better you, though.”

  “Why? Are you testing me? A wizard and his apprentice—there should always be a lesson somehow.”

  “You’re not my apprentice, and I’m barely a wizard.” He shifted the horse to get the other side of the saddlebag out from where her body was pinning it down, then eyed Nathaliey, who studied him with a questioning frown. “You don’t really think I’ve been testing you, do you? I thought you were joking.”

  “When is the last time you spoke an incantation?” she asked.

  “I cast spells every day.”

  “A real spell.”

  Markal sighed and admitted the real reason he’d asked her. “I want you to send a seeker because yours are stronger than mine.”

  “Is that all?” Her frown turned to a smile, and she shook her head. “And I don’t want to cast the spell because I can’t remember the words. I knew it this morning but . . . well, the blasted thing has slipped my mind again.”

  Now it was Markal’s turn to smile. “In other words, your insecurities and mine are clashing. How about I help you with the words, young apprentice, and we both ignore the fact that the student is stronger than the master?”

  It had been a source of low-level tension since leaving the garden, usually manifested through banter and gentle teasing, that Memnet the Great had officially named Markal a wizard after decades of study, while Nathaliey, much younger, but with greater power, remained an apprentice. If only she could hold the slippery incantations in her head, she would far outmatch his meager abilities, and they both knew it.

  Markal fed her the words to the incantation, and magic flowed out of her, together with blood from her pores that ran down her forearms to her palms. The seeker materialized. It was a small invisible eye that floated above the ground in whichever direction she sent it. Nathaliey wiped her bloody hands on the towel at her belt, sat cross-legged in the middle of the dusty road, and closed her eyes as she guided it out. Markal let her work while he saw to the injured horse.

  He cleaned the wound with water and vinegar—much to the horse’s distress—and applied a poultice of herbs and honey so that it wouldn’t get contaminated, but when he raised the animal to her feet, she stood awkwardly with her hoof raised. He brought her forward, but she refused to put weight on it.

  “I’ve found them,” Nathaliey announced. “Four men coming this way from the east. And this isn’t the only trap they’ve set. In fact, it seems as though we’ve passed two or three traps already, and neither saw them nor tripped them. Good fortune, I suppose, but it was only a matter of time before it ran out on us.”

  “What about the men?” he pressed. “Are they enemies?”

  “Of course they’re enemies—they just lamed our horse. But not marauders, if that’s what you mean.”

  Markal breathed a sigh of relief. King Toth’s gray-skinned champions had magic about them, mostly contained in their gray cloaks, which had been imbued with power. They were formidable foes. It had been a marauder who cut off the master’s head, and marauders who led wights into the garden. Markal had witnessed Bronwyn fighting a marauder, and she’d overcome him only with difficulty and some magical help.

  “Look at this!” Nathaliey exclaimed. “They’re carrying something—they must be something more than mere bandits.”

  Markal released the reins of the horse, closed his eyes, and followed the tendril of light from his companion until he found her seeker, west on the road where she’d pushed it. It was a full half mile from their current location, yet strong enough to show the four men in bright relief, with a gray spot on the road where they were bending to attend to one of their traps. Had it been Markal’s seeker, and not Nathaliey’s, it would have begun attenuating in strength at five hundred feet, and faded entirely a few thousand feet after that. Yet she held it in place effortlessly, and he knew she could send it for many miles more before she lost control.

  The bandits had a donkey with them—no doubt stolen from some other traveler—laden with bundles and bags. Using Nathaliey’s seeker, he took a closer look and saw that the bundles hid clothing, a pair of brass candlesticks, and other objects whose forms could be seen, but not exactly sussed out. And there, within them, was something glowing cool white. An object of power.

  “Stealing magic,” Markal said with an ironic cluck of the tongue. “You’ve been very bad, my friends.”

  “What is it? It’s not one of our books or scrolls, is it?”

  “Not a book, and not something of ours—the feel is all wrong. I think it’s a charm of some kind, most likely a vizier’s chain or a ring for a wealthy merchant who wants protection from bandits.”

  “It can’t offer that much protection if these four got their hands on it,” she said.

  “No, I suppose not. They’re coming this way—I was going to suggest hiding, but now I’m curious.”

  “You’re always curious, Markal. Besides, isn’t a magical sword enough trouble without adding someone’s ring of non-protection?”

  “It should be. But it’s not.”

  #

  Markal told Nathaliey to send the seeker farther down the road to make sure nobody else was lurking and using the four bandits as a shield to hide a more nefarious attack. But the road looked clear, and the surrounding brush held no additional secrets that either of them could see, and so they tied the horses to a drought-killed tree by the side of the road and settled down to wait.

  One of the four men came strolling up the road with his donkey a few minutes later. It was laden with the goods that Nathaliey’s seeker had spied earlier, but Markal noted that the nature of the bundles had been carefully disguised with wool blankets tied down with twine.

  The supposed traveler was an older man with a gray beard, idling along as if in no hurry, and even though drought had strangled the land west of Aristonia, there were still enough people holding on at scattered oases and watering holes that most travelers wouldn’t have thought much to see this solitary older man approaching, even after an obvious trap had lamed their horse. Probably, they would even ask his help. But Markal and Nathaliey were not most travelers.

  The two companions were forty miles beyond the western edge of the Sacred Forest, and eight or ten miles south of King Toth’s new highway, where massive crews of slaves were building not only the road itself, but a series of watchtowers and heavier fortifications. Although this country was nominally outside of the borders of Aristonia, most of the people were of Aristonian stock, but a fair number were either darker skinned descendants of some ancient migration from the south or showed barbarian influence in their fair complexion, auburn hair, and light eyes.

  This man was one of the latter. Both hair and beard were largely gray, but there were streaks of wheat color among the gray, and his eyes contained flecks of blue. The deep tan of his skin and a certain turn to his nose indicated eastern heritage as well.

  The man pulled up short with his donkey to study the travelers and the horses. He looked over th
e saddlebags and Bronwyn’s weapon, well-bundled but obviously a sword from its shape and size, sitting on the ground where Markal had set them. The man looked suitably wary, as any innocent traveler would be coming across such a scene, but his eyes lingered too long on the sword.

  “Funny place to make camp for the night,” the man said. The accent was more Aristonian than not. “No water and rough territory, especially after dark, which it will be shortly.”

  “One of our horses is lame,” Markal said, “so it’s hard to press on at the moment.”

  “Oh?”

  “Stepped on a nail,” Nathaliey added. “Went right up into the hoof.”

  The man frowned and looked her over, then turned back to Markal. He seemed momentarily confused, and Markal knew he was trying to suss out who these two unexpected people were. The companions would appear to be of indeterminate age. They had a sword, but didn’t appear to be warriors. Neither did they seem like merchants. All this flickered across the man’s face in an instant, and then it was gone, and he was a simple man again, who’d come across two travelers in need.

  “I see. Well, you don’t want to be caught out after dark. Several men have taken up residence atop an old fairy fort south of here, and they come out looking for trouble once the sun goes down. They’ve robbed a number of travelers and even killed a man once, if the rumors are true. I wouldn’t be surprised if they purposefully lamed horses like yours to make it easier to rob their victims.”

  “Neither would I,” Markal said. “Not surprised at all.”

  “Either way, we’d be better off elsewhere when it gets dark,” Nathaliey said, nodding. “Where do you suggest we go?”

  The man gestured over his shoulder. “There’s an inn about a mile up the road, nicely fortified, too, with a good stout oak door. Easy enough to find. I’d accompany you if I weren’t worried about being caught out myself.”

  “Ah, so that’s the plan,” Nathaliey said.

  The man blinked. “Huh?”

  Markal nodded. “He sends us toward his so-called inn, pretends to continue on his way, then turns around and follows us from a safe distance. We run into his companions in the road, and this fellow is behind to rush in to help if we prove difficult.”