Siege of Stone

CHAPTER 48

As the expedition departed from Cliffwall, Verna felt optimistic. The company included General Zimmer and half of his D’Haran soldiers along with the guard escort that had accompanied Renn on the journey from Ildakar. Captain Trevor and his men were pleased to be going home, although none of them relished the thought of another hard trek.

“A journey doesn’t need to be difficult if you know your way,” Verna said to the uneasy Renn, who was torn between his desire to go home and his wish to stay at the comfortable archive. He expressed his worries about getting lost, running out of supplies, fending off wild beasts, and countless other wilderness hazards. This time, though, they all rode horses from the D’Haran expeditionary force, and General Zimmer’s men knew how to make efficient field camps along the way.

Riding along, the wizard looked over at Verna. “I much prefer this to walking on sore feet, although I may change my mind after several days in the saddle.” He shifted his position, holding on to the reins of his ash-gray mare, and rubbed his already sore buttocks. “In Ildakar we have few horses. The city was bottled up for so many years, where would we ride? How would we feed them?”

“Didn’t your nobles use carriages to travel about the town?”

“Oh, sometimes, but they live in the higher levels and rarely need to go down to the lower districts, since they have household servants to run errands for them.” He rocked back and forth as the horses continued at a fast walk.

Verna stared ahead at the severe line of mountains that rose out of the great green bowl that had once been the Lifedrinker’s Scar. The wizard seemed intimidated by the range ahead of them, remembering the hardships of their first crossing. The people of Cliffwall had spoken of the legendary beauty of Kol Adair, although Renn had an entirely different experience of the windy mountain pass. He had complained about the thin air, stumbling over loose rocks, fighting through willows in the tundra. He hadn’t seen much beauty.

As they rode toward the rugged mountains, Verna tried to sound reassuring. “We’ll guide you better this time, Renn. I am certain of it.”

“I trust your word, Prelate, and when we reach Ildakar, I will return the favor and show you our hospitality.” He lowered his voice. “After we give a cautious report to Sovrena Thora.”

Verna said, “Nicci and Nathan will help, I’m sure.”

Six of her fellow Sisters of the Light accompanied her and Amber, while four remained at Cliffwall to continue their studies with the other scholars. An additional dozen gifted scholars and students rode with the party, intent men and women who had studied the preserved records and learned much magic. They had been wisely afraid to exercise their abilities, having seen the previous mishaps caused by naive and uncontrolled amateurs, but Verna thought these earnest trainees could learn more by doing than by merely reading. This expedition might give them a chance to stretch their abilities.

Oliver and Peretta shared a horse. Looking ahead, they pointed out interesting landmarks to each other and also Amber, who seemed just as starry-eyed about her adventures since leaving Tanimura. The three young people had become fast friends, and Amber talked about her brother who had stayed behind to defend Renda Bay.

Verna listened to their conversation, but kept her thoughts to herself. She had traveled for much of her life, wandering with Sisters Grace and Elizabeth in search of Richard Rahl. Verna hadn’t known at the time that her two companions were secretly Sisters of the Dark working for the Keeper. So many things had slipped beneath Verna’s notice that she felt embarrassed and ashamed. She hoped that would never happen again.

By the good spirits, she was still here in another land and another situation. The Sisters of the Dark were gone, the veil to the underworld forever sealed, and the Keeper locked away. Magic had changed. Prophecy was gone. The Palace of the Prophets had been erased, but Verna was still prelate, even though their order had little meaning anymore.

For days they traveled into the hills, following Trevor’s best guess of the route, though General Zimmer expressed gruff skepticism about trying to retrace the path of a party that had been lost and miserable in the first place. They could see the high mountain pass ahead, and Peretta had memorized descriptions of Kol Adair from the ancient records. The party camped at night with cook fires, tents, and warm blankets.

Renn sat at the main campfire next to Zimmer, Verna, and Sisters Rhoda and Eldine. The wizard helped himself to a second plate of mashed beans. “Ah, I remember when Lani and I would have the servants prepare feasts for only the two of us, and we would enjoy calm conversation long into the night. She was such a wonderful woman.” He smiled. “Did I mention that Lani could call songbirds? They would flutter and sing around us. We’d sit outside and the larks would provide better music than any minstrel.”

“She sounds very nice,” Verna said. “Was she a sorceress? What happened to her?”

“Thora turned her to stone.” Renn’s expression darkened. “Once a person has been frozen with the petrification spell, nothing can revive them. Even the wizard commander said he couldn’t reverse the magic.” He glanced away.

The group climbed higher into the mountains, and the days and nights grew intensely cold. General Zimmer looked at the rugged ridgelines ahead, where a relatively clear path for the horses switchbacked up the slopes. “We should push ourselves hard so we can be over the pass before sunset. If we can get back down to the tree line, we will have a much warmer camp tonight.”

“And plenty of firewood,” Trevor added.

The soldiers hunched down on their saddles, wrapped in cloaks as they rode into the cold wind. Oliver and Peretta huddled closer to each other in the saddle, warm and content as they wrapped one blanket around the two of them.

The horses plodded along, climbing to the summit of the pass, where the vista suddenly unfolded before them, a world full of black, glacier-hung mountains. The group paused to marvel at the peaks, the frozen waves of ice that slid down the crags, the waterfalls of snowmelt running down sheer gorges, the jewel-like lakes, the lush hanging valleys.

As the sun dipped lower in late afternoon, shadows spread out in the bowl beyond Kol Adair. Renn gestured toward the vista. “You see what I told you? Imagine picking your way over those mountains, down into the valley, then back up over this pass. What a nightmare!”

Peretta drank in the view, filing every detail in her memmer’s mind. Oliver marveled at what he saw, though his eyesight was poor.

Zimmer spotted the path that zigzagged down the slope on the opposite side of the pass, but the shelter of the tree line seemed a long way below. “I’ll send scouts to reconnoiter the best way. With the steep rocky trail, I don’t want the horses to break a leg, and we certainly don’t want to pick our way down in the dark.”

Amber stared across the valley toward the glaciers clinging to the black rocky slopes. “What is that over there? It looks like people—lots of people.”

Oliver shaded his eyes, squinting, but his expression remained blank. He shook his head. “I can’t tell.”

Verna and Zimmer tried to discern what the young novice’s sharp eyes had spotted. “I see it now. It looks like a significant force of troops at the base of the cliffs on the next ridge. It’s a huge camp, but where are their tents? Their campfires?”

Beside her, Peretta squinted. “It’s thousands of people, maybe as many as ten thousand, like a whole moving city.”

“Not a city,” Zimmer said. “An army.”

After dismounting, Renn stood in his maroon wizard’s robes, hands on his hips. The wind blew his hair. “But where would such a military force come from? Even Ildakar doesn’t have an army that size.”

Captain Trevor looked pale and uneasy. “That is the direction we have to go. How will we get past them?”

“Maybe they’re friendly,” Amber said.

“An army of many thousands is not likely to be friendly,” Zimmer said.

“The only giant army near Ildakar was turned to stone,” said Renn. “And they couldn’t possibly…” His voice trailed off.

Trevor also looked concerned. “Where else would they come from?”

“We have to know.” Zimmer blew cold air through his lips. “Right now, we’d best remain hidden. Our force isn’t large, but we are exposed up here on the pass. We need to get into the trees. Alas, we can’t build campfires tonight, because they might be spotted.”

Verna continued to stare, disturbed. “Whoever it is, they’re marching in the general direction of Cliffwall.”

Shaken by what they’d seen, the expedition hurried down off the exposed pass, painstakingly picking their way down the stony slope. Riders in the lead had identified the best way to get into the shelter of the trees below. When they reached the forest cover in the last glow of twilight, the soldiers spread out to set up a rudimentary camp. Renn looked forlornly at the plentiful fallen wood, but no one built a warm, cheery fire. Verna, however, assigned several Cliffwall scholars the task of using magic to boil water so they could at least make hot soup or tea. The Sisters also generated heat to warm rocks, which made the camp much more comfortable.

General Zimmer met with several of his best D’Haran scouts. “We need to know what that army is. Their camp is large, but not permanent, so they haven’t been there long. I want some answers before they begin to move again. A force that size will take some time to pack up and set off.”

Trevor seemed anxious. “Let one of my people accompany your scouts. If they travel under cover of darkness, they could get close enough for a good view. My men might recognize those soldiers, if they did come from Ildakar.”

Zimmer agreed and dispatched three men into the deepening dusk to investigate the unexpected army.

Verna sat next to the general on a fallen log. “It will take hours for them to bring back a report. We should get some rest in the meantime. It’s going to be a long night.”

Shortly before dawn, the three scouts returned, their faces scratched from branches. They had made their way around the curve of the hanging valley to the edge of the encamped army, where they had indeed gotten a good view.

“We saw thousands of armed warriors, General,” the first man reported. “I don’t know how to explain it. They have no campfires, blankets, tents, or food that we could see. They are simply on the move, thousands of them, but they stopped for the night. The terrain is too rugged to cross in the darkness.”

The second scout said, “And their armor looks ancient. Some of them bear standards with a flame symbol on it.”

“It is the mark of Emperor Kurgan,” said the Ildakaran guard who had accompanied them. He sounded certain. “I have seen it before on the petrified army outside of our city.”

“We saw two of their sentries as they passed close to us on patrol,” said the first scout. “They moved sluggishly, and they were not very alert.” He glanced at Verna, then back to his commander. “General, sir, their skin was grayish, like stone.”

Renn and Captain Trevor looked appalled. “I was afraid of this,” the wizard groaned. “By the Keeper’s beard, it’s the ancient army, the soldiers of General Utros. They are somehow awake and on the move.”

Verna heard the news with a chill. “And they are marching toward Cliffwall.”