The Red Sword- The Complete Trilogy Read online

  Markal desperately searched for some incantation. But both his companions had spent their power, literally bleeding it to the ground, and there was nothing strong enough to turn her aside that he could manage on his own.

  “Did you think you could cheat me?” she called. “Did you think me a weak-minded fool from your slave markets?”

  Bronwyn came at Markal with her sword. He could only flinch, his feet rooted to the ground. The blade glinted red. The keepers and acolytes came running from the Golden Pavilion, but they could do nothing. Narud stared in horror.

  Only Chantmer was active. He reached into his robe and withdrew a small round object. A glass ball, one moment the color of cream streaked with amber, the next translucent, glowing from some internal light.

  You devil, Markal thought. Where did you get that?

  Yet a wild hope rose in his breast. Chantmer had got his hands on Memnet’s orb. For years their master had filled it with the strength that he bled from his pores. The apprentice wouldn’t be able to draw on the great wizard’s power, even if the master had been alive, but Chantmer must have learned how to use it, must have stored some of his own strength in its depths or he wouldn’t be rolling it in his palm with his eyes narrowed in concentration.

  The woman, focused on Markal, didn’t see it. Holding the hilt of her great two-handed sword in her right fist, she grabbed his tunic in her left and jerked him toward her.

  “I will cut you down, boy. My sword will tear your very soul asunder if you do not tell me the truth at once.”

  “Yes, of course.” Markal cast a desperate glance at his companion.

  Chantmer mumbled under his breath, and light grew inside the orb. He had memorized some spell, it would seem, and was trying to get the words right.

  Bronwyn shook Markal. “Tell me!”

  “Tell you what? I’ll tell you anything! By the Brothers, don’t kill me.”

  Chantmer! Hurry, damn you!

  At last the other apprentice straightened with a triumphant look. “Uitio uersurum sed volans malleis percutite eos.”

  It was volans malleis, a spell to cast a pair of flying hammers, and Chantmer had done it well enough to raise a single hammer that seemed to coalesce out of the very air until it became a glowing, swirling weapon that picked up speed as it hurled toward the barbarian intruder.

  Bronwyn’s back was turned; there was no way she could see the hammer before it struck. It would hit her from behind and crush her skull. Markal had wished to turn the woman aside without bloodshed, but he no longer cared. He wanted her put down.

  Then, as if someone had shouted a warning in her ear, Bronwyn turned with startling speed, her sword at the ready. The hammer struck the blade. There was a terrific crash, a flash of light, and icy grit sprayed against Markal’s face. When the light cleared, Bronwyn and her sword stood unharmed and there was no sign of the magical hammer. She sprang at Chantmer with the sword drawn behind her shoulder for a killing blow.

  Chantmer may have drawn power from the orb, but some had come from his own body. He staggered backward and dropped the smooth glass sphere, which rolled away, smeared with the apprentice’s blood. He sank to his knees before Bronwyn could reach him, head falling forward, exposing his neck like a horse thief before the executioner’s ax.

  But the first of the keepers had reached the fight. She was an old woman named Eliana, her back crooked from the relentless punishment of the passing years, but also from decades of bending to pluck weeds that grew as eagerly in the soil of Memnet’s gardens as any other plant. Eliana had a keen eye for anything that grew unnaturally among the flowers and fruiting vines, and now she’d turned her attention to a newcomer who was as unwelcome as any weed. For years, she’d worn a pendant made of green stone in the shape of a tree around her neck. Magic flowed from the object, and her lips formed a spell.

  Again, as if warned by a hidden ally, Bronwyn turned from Chantmer, and her sword swung in a wide arc. It caught Eliana a terrific blow, cleaving the old woman’s collarbone and severing her hand and pendant. Bronwyn wrenched out the sword before the woman’s body hit the ground.

  All movement stopped, except for Chantmer struggling to stand and failing. The other keepers and apprentices stared at the dead woman as her life’s blood flowed into the ground she’d nurtured since her childhood.

  Bronwyn stood with her sword dripping blood. “She would have killed me.” The words sounded hollow in the air. “There was magic—I could feel it. My bones would have broken. The grass would have swallowed me.”

  Memnet’s Orb lay at Bronwyn’s feet, and she plucked it up. She wiped the blood off on the grass and then stared into its depths. She glanced at Chantmer, who had regained his feet at last and stood wobbling, his eyes bloodshot and his face pale as a shroud. Narud moved to his side and draped Chantmer’s arm over his shoulder to keep him from falling.

  “You all would have killed me,” Bronwyn added. “I had no choice, you see.”

  “You are the only killer in this garden,” Markal said. He stared at the dead woman and the horrible look on her face, then looked up. “You have done your harm. Now go. By the Brothers, leave us alone.”

  Her face hardened. “No. I have only proven the truth of my words, that I will see this garden and all of you destroyed if it is necessary to find the wizard. Will you test me again?”

  “I told you before. He is dead.”

  “So you’ve claimed. An assassin cut off his head, threw his body over a horse, and rode into the desert. So you told me, and maybe you’re even telling a truth to mask the lies. So where is the head?”

  So she knew, or at least suspected. Cutting the wizard’s head from his body had killed him, of course it had. But then what? An ordinary soul would have fled the body to wander mindlessly across the land until the Harvester collected it in his bag of souls. But Memnet the Great had no ordinary soul, and his gardens were no ordinary land.

  “Well?” she demanded. “I am armed. I have proven I will kill, and you have proven yourself unable to stop me. I even have your bauble now.”

  What choice did Markal have? His companions had spilled their magic. All the keepers and the acolytes together wouldn’t be able to stop this woman, who seemed possessed of godly strength, reflexes, and senses. Markal could add little through his own magic.

  He had one chance, that Memnet’s eyes had opened at last. Markal thought about Chantmer and Narud, and something else occurred to him. No, he had two chances.

  “I will show you the wizard’s head,” Markal said. He gave what he hoped was a significant glance to the others, but of course Bronwyn picked up on it too, and a flinty look entered her expression.

  “And?” she said.

  “Your instincts were correct. It’s buried in the walled garden where you first found me.”

  Chantmer’s eyes widened in alarm. This, the barbarian didn’t seem to notice.

  “I thought so,” she said. “Cunning boy, you sent me away, and I almost believed you.” Bronwyn glanced down at the dead keeper, then turned toward the path with a grim expression. “Come. I won’t go alone.”

  “No,” Markal said to the others when they started to follow. “Don’t follow. Look to Eliana. There are rituals for a dead member of the order, and they should be honored.”

  He put his right hand behind his back as he fell in behind Bronwyn, who strode away without making sure he would follow. A spell came to his lips. It was a simple incantation. His skin burned and felt slick as blood rolled toward his fist. But even as he finished whispering the spell, he felt the strength of it dissolving into the warm breeze flowing through the garden. What emerged from his efforts was nothing but a trickle compared to the gush of power that had come from Narud’s and Chantmer’s.

  Yet it was enough. Markal glanced behind him, and his fellow apprentices nodded their understanding. They had heard the suggestion he’d whispered into their minds.

  Chapter Three

  Nathaliey knew that the manuscrip
ts of the library at Syrmarria were protected from fire and water. Even the frailest, most worn scroll, unrolled and rerolled a thousand times over the generations, had a ward that would allow one to throw it onto a bonfire only to discover it lying in the ashes hours later, unharmed. She could only imagine that the brass plates and the vaults of clay tablets were at least as well protected.

  Yet Nathaliey couldn’t shake the feeling of danger when she passed through the hidden entrance and into the Vault of Secrets with a candelabra in hand. It only grew as the archivist lit the oil lamps in their sconces on the walls. All those stacks of paper, all that ancient learning—it felt fragile, tenuous.

  That feeling had been growing in her breast all day, since she’d crossed through the gate and into Syrmarria. Men from Veyre and Delitha packed the streets, along with sweating laborers with rough accents and even rougher expressions as they studied her. The high king was spending lavishly to build his road to the mountains, and even more lavishly on the castles that would guard its passage through the high passes. Much of the wealth flowed through Aristonia’s capital city.

  Nathaliey had been born in Syrmarria; her parents still lived here, and her father, in fact, still served the khalif. She could almost find her way blindfolded through the alleys climbing the hill as they folded over each other toward the palace. She knew the souks by the sound of their shouting merchants; she could be carried back to the markets with a single smell on the wind.

  But Syrmarria was changing quickly. Every time she returned, something was new: a tower under construction, the expansion of the city wall, a new manor house or a street of low mud houses. The western wall of the city was coming down, to be replaced several hundred yards farther out and thus expand the city.

  Everything seemed different until she reached the vaults beneath the palace. Here, nothing had changed. Nothing would ever change.

  The archivist, a man of indeterminate, but advanced years, had led her into the Vault of Secrets. His eyes were red and watery, heavy with bags, but he watched her steadily, and his gaze made her uncomfortable. There was a question in it.

  “What is it, friend?” she asked, ashamed to realize she couldn’t remember his name with any certainty. Jethro? Yes, that was it.

  “Is it true about the master?”

  A knot of pain had resided in her gut since the assassination, never fully unwinding, and now it flared to life. Still, the question surprised her. The four apprentices had agreed to keep it a secret within the walls of the garden until they were sure.

  “Where did you hear that?” she asked sharply.

  “Peace, it is not widely known. I, too, am a member of the order.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean that. But how did you hear, being in the city?”

  “My brother is a keeper of the gardens—well, he is not my brother by blood, but we were apprentices together under the master for twenty years. He sends me a basket of wolf peaches every fortnight. There was a note with the most recent shipment, very cryptic, but I understood its meaning. Is it true?”

  “Ah. Yes, I see.” She nodded sadly. “Yes, old friend. It is true.”

  The creases and lines on the man’s face deepened into a look of great age and sorrow. “The last of the great wizards. I wonder what shall become of us now.”

  “Bring me the Veyrian scrolls,” she said, “and the tome with the bloodstain I was looking at before. Do you remember that?”

  He turned to the nooks and shelves on the wall behind her. Nathaliey set down the candelabra, took off her satchel from over her shoulder, and set it on the table. She removed two sheets of parchment and her inks and quills. The information she was searching for had to be here.

  Markal was the most learned of any of them, and the longest under the master’s guidance, but even he didn’t know the answer. Could they continue to study and learn on their own, progress and master the arts without a teacher? There must be answers here. Memnet the Great hadn’t sprouted in the forest one day like a mushroom after a heavy rain—he had been taught himself, by an older wizard, a woman about whom Nathaliey knew very little, except that she had founded the order and begun the gardens. And who had taught her?

  And was the master truly dead? Markal and Chantmer thought not. Narud refused to offer an opinion, but there was doubt in his eyes when the other two buried Memnet’s head in the walled garden. Nathaliey thought the master was gone forever. Too much time had passed between when the enemy cut him down and when she brought his head to the gardens.

  Nathaliey and Memnet had been at the end of a lengthy trip to the sultanates when the assassins found them. Master and apprentice had spent three months away from the gardens, first traveling south with a caravan of Veyrian merchants, then spending two weeks in Marrabat and Nevanah consulting with kings and ministers to prevent a destructive war between the two cities. Only when Memnet threatened to curse the springs of Marrabat and turn them brackish did the sultan order his army to abandon their siege of the rival city.

  “Can you really do that?” Nathaliey had asked when she was alone with the wizard. “Destroy a city’s entire water supply?”

  “Only a monster would condemn a city of two hundred thousand souls to die of thirst.”

  “You didn’t answer the question, Master.”

  “You are right, I didn’t.”

  Memnet and Nathaliey passed through columned arcades and through courtyards of red stone to reach the fluted tower that contained the sultan’s library. They climbed a dizzying spiral staircase to reach the top of the tower, where they enjoyed a glorious view of the low-slung, tent-like city of Marrabat. It was a city of contrasts—incredible beauty in its slender towers and gleaming cupolas next to filthy quarters filled with slaves, cripples, and beggars. Master and apprentice had spent most of the next five days at the top of the tower, poring over old manuscripts, scrolls, and other writings.

  The collection was a fragmented jumble compared to Syrmarria’s library, and most of what they found the master declined to study in depth. But there was an archive of baked clay tablets plundered from a tomb in the desert wasteland, and Memnet was keen to study these at length. Some resisted deciphering, and others still carried the scent of magic around them.

  After some negotiation with the sultan’s mages and viziers, Memnet arranged for a caravan to carry the tablets north at the cost of eight hundred silver dinarii, plus two bushels of raisins, ten casks of wine, and twenty-eight jars of honey from Memnet’s gardens in Aristonia.

  Nathaliey and Memnet left Marrabat one hot morning, passing through the iron gates and their weird reliefs of fire salamanders and dragon wasps and onto the Spice Road. The pair had one camel laden with supplies, and after traveling through the olive groves and date palm groves north of the city, they attracted unwanted attention.

  Two young men on ponies followed them all afternoon, then set up camp that evening on an adjacent dune, perhaps scheming robbery, or perhaps looking for safety in proximity to other travelers. Nathaliey enchanted a stone to act as a ward to protect their camp, and slept easy knowing they wouldn’t be found.

  Two days later, while traveling through hill country covered in scrubby, pungent sage, five Kratian raiders came howling out of a dry gulch on camels, whooping and waving scimitars. They surrounded Memnet and Nathaliey, cursing and threatening the travelers. Their demands: the camel, provisions, and money. In return, the travelers would be permitted one waterskin each and their lives.

  Memnet spoke an incantation, and the nomads’ camels scattered, bellowing and trying to throw their riders. When the Kratians reappeared later that afternoon, swearing revenge, the master warned them to depart, and then, when the warning went unheeded, confused the attackers with another spell that had them fighting each other. Two men lay dead before the survivors recovered their wits and fled into the desert.

  “We could do travelers a favor by taking stronger measures,” Nathaliey pointed out when they were alone again.r />
  “You mean kill bandits on sight?”

  “We wouldn’t take pleasure in it,” she said. “I don’t even like to kill the mice that get into the oatmeal bin. But bandits are like any other vermin—if you don’t deal with them, they multiply. Every year, there are more. Any worse and it will take an army to clear the Spice Road. Sultans and khalifs on both sides of the desert would thank us if we killed a few.”

  “That is true. At first. But when the threat is gone, and the kings think about who else seems to be above the law, where will their attention turn?” Memnet shook his head. “We will defend ourselves, yes, but only to the extent it is necessary.”

  “Otherwise, we hide?”

  “Well, yes. Secrecy is our best protection, both here and in the gardens.”

  She grumbled at this. “Not much different from mice ourselves, are we?”

  Nathaliey was tired of hiding, tired of coaxing reluctant rulers to avoid war, convincing them to build aqueducts instead of siege engines. Chantmer had once opined that the typical man or woman, with a lifespan measured in decades, made a poor ruler. Put a wizard on the throne and he would build irrigation canals and roads, clear forests and settle new lands. A king sought glories he could grasp in a year or two; a wizard straddled the centuries and had the perspective to match.

  That was strictly forbidden, of course. When Memnet’s old friend had left the order to take the throne of Veyre, his magic had failed. He’d lost the very ability to find the gardens that had once been his home. Forgotten, even, that such a place existed.

  The high king wasn’t alone in his ignorance. The city of Syrmarria was a day’s travel from the gardens and knew nothing of them. Instead, it was believed that the magic wielders of the Order of the Crimson Path lived in a hidden desert oasis beyond the borders of Aristonia.