But what if there was no heir? She only had the word of a wraithe to go on. At least if she’d been told who the heir was, her hope would have been more tangible. More so, if Carred had been named the guardian. She’d give her life to protect Talia’s child—the future of Niyas. But, apparently, giving her life wasn’t good enough.
The ox-drawn cart they’d brought with them groaned and clattered to a halt on the mud-churned road that led to the hill. The two Last Cohort veterans responsible for keeping the cargo stable climbed out the back and signaled to her that everything was all right. The cart was stacked with kegs of black powder and volatile alchemicals. Carred had paid good coin for the explosives, which her agents had procured from the caliphate of Sohrah in the Jargalan Desert. She’d paid more to smuggle the dangerous goods through the Order’s naval blockades.
Coins well spent, she had to hope. Niyandrians needed a victory more meaningful than the burning of mainlander settlements. She needed one. More than that, her people needed a cause to rally behind.
And the Order of Eternal Vigilance had given them that cause when they began construction of a new stronghold on the site of the old capital of Niyas.
Strike and run, the wraithe had told her all those years ago. Hide so you may strike again. Well, she’d been doing just that, but not any longer. Not today. Maybe she was breaking Queen Talia’s orders, but how could she know? She’d been kept in the dark about virtually everything. She’d been given the thinnest of hopes and then told to be patient. But she’d be damned if she was going to allow mainlanders to claim the ruins of Naphor as their own. She’d not stand idly by while her enemy built a city at the very heart of Niyas. It was an affront to everything Niyandrian. A desecration.
She pulled out the dark metal ring she wore on a chain around her neck—Talia’s ring—and made a fist around it. She’d sworn to herself never to put it on, but nor would she be without it until her Queen returned to claim it. “Talia, if you can hear me, give me strength,” Carred muttered as she set foot on the weathered track that led to the summit. “Because I’m getting too old for this.”
She allowed herself a rueful smile as she tucked the ring back beneath her shirt. She was nowhere close to being considered old for a Niyandrian, but as she made the ascent, the area around her right hip stiffened, forcing her to limp slightly. Her body was riddled with aches and pains and unsightly battle scars. No one could fight forever, and she’d been a fighter for more than half her life. She’d taken an arrow in her hip several years back—it had hit her in the front, the head exiting behind. Eadgith, the cohort’s necromancer, had removed the shaft and banished the rot with an influx of the earth-tide that powered her sorcery. The wound had healed into a puckered scar front and back. The whole area was numb, but arduous walking, or too long in the saddle, caused the joint to stiffen.
When Carred reached the top of the hill, the mist was so thick she could barely see her hand in front of her face. She moved with caution through the gloom, expecting at any moment a shadow to emerge. If it did, would the wraithe strike her down for her disobedience? Or was she supposed to be here? The mist seemed to amplify her heartbeat till it pounded in her ears. It brought back memories of the siege of Naphor and the panic instilled by mainland war drums.
Gradually, the outline of the squat building atop the summit began to take shape within the mist. Carred gave it a wide berth and made for the far side of the hill. There, she knelt on the damp grass to wait for the mist to lift.
While she waited, she closed her eyes and spoke to Talia. It was a ritual that had started as an outpouring of grief, but with the passage of time, the words of loss and longing had taken on the nature of prayer. As her lips moved in a silent litany, she felt once more the coldness of Talia’s skin against hers, the kiss of her bloodless lips.
Carred sniffed back tears, not understanding why, after all this time, she still wept. It felt like someone else’s grief, or a grief too great to call her own. It was Niyas she wept for, she told herself. But she couldn’t shake off the feeling that she wept for herself, for half a life passed in service to nothing more than a fading dream.
Talia’s final words rang in her head again: Don’t leave me in the realm of the dead …
The necromancers of old spoke of a time when death would be conquered once and for all, but most these days used the earth-tide to stave off infection or add a few more years to their lives. Talia, though, had still believed. There had been a contagious certainty in her pursuit of immortality. Since Naphor, Carred had wanted to believe the Queen had been successful, that it was only a matter of time before she came back. But hope was a fragile thing, and the years of waiting had worn away the edges of her certainty.
She knew that the Knights of Eternal Vigilance who now had the run of Niyas called her the priestess of a cult of fanatics, but what else did she have? And now the mainland overlords wanted to obliterate the last vestiges of Niyandrian culture by appropriating the former capital. Carred and her people were doomed to a life of oppression, if they were left any life at all. They lacked the might to repel the mainlanders, even if they mustered the will. All they had left were myths and promises.
Carred took in a long breath and opened her eyes. The mist was thinning, and in the distance she could see the scorched earth of Naphor. At the center of the devastated city, where Queen Talia’s palace had once stood, a huge citadel was under construction. Carred took out her spyglass, extended the tube, and surveyed the scene.
Even at this early hour, workers made their way through the remnants of streets toward the construction site, overseen by a scatter of knights in armor that glinted in the rising sun’s pinkish rays. The workers were Niyandrians—either slaves or traitors. Either way, their unparalleled skills in masonry would benefit the Order and make their citadel stronger than any on the mainland. Only Crac Tholanoth at Dorinah, which the knights had renamed Branil’s Burg, could rival it.
Carred made out wagons within an enclosure, stables and a corral in the near distance. And all about, mountainous piles of stone taken from the ruins of the old city. There were small buildings under construction around the citadel too. The knights were rebuilding the city. It was another violation she could not permit.
She took note each time she saw a knight, and looked in vain for any sign of a garrison significant enough to oppose her force of fifty. She estimated a few hundred workers, but fewer than twenty knights.
She’d seen enough. Closing the spyglass, she returned it to its sheath at her belt, then made her way back down the hill to where her soldiers waited.
“Get some rest,” she told them. “We attack at dusk.”
Just before the sun set over Naphor, wagons filled with Niyandrian laborers departed the construction site. From the edge of the forest, Carred watched them through her spyglass. Within the charred ruins of the old city there was little movement, just a handful of guards posted beneath the scaffolding that surrounded the citadel. She counted four, armored head to toe and carrying shields and swords. There would be more in the makeshift barracks behind the stables.
She returned to her men and women and nodded that it was time.
As Carred untethered her horse and mounted, it snorted and shook its mane. The beast was nervous. It knew what was coming.