Siege of Stone

CHAPTER 70

Maxim found just the place to rest and hide while he gathered his strength, a cozy cottage in the forested hills above the Killraven River. He had traveled a great distance, covering his tracks all along the way. He’d abandoned his small stolen boat from Tarada at another river town and then moved on.

He had encountered many settlements on the banks, since the widening river provided food and work for so many people, but Maxim didn’t want to live in a town again, not yet. He did intend to build a new empire greater than Ildakar, but that would come in time, and Maxim had plenty of time.

His mistake at Tarada was that he’d been in too much of a hurry. He had waited nearly a thousand years for the downfall of stagnant Ildakar, and by now the city was surely destroyed by the stone army he had awakened. He couldn’t expect to create a comparable city in only a year or two.

Here, up in the hills above a small river town called Gant’s Ford, Maxim settled in to a time of impatient peace, maybe for months. The isolated cottage was spacious, with a main area and hearth. A large bed for the mother and father was blocked off by a hanging leather curtain, while a smaller room off to the side had three narrow beds for the children. In the fireplace, an iron hook held a cauldron for a pot of soup, as well as iron skewers for roasting fish brought up from the town market, or squirrels or hares caught in the forest.

In the larder behind the cottage, the father had hung strings of venison sausages. Chickens ran about in the yard, pecking at beetles and worms, taking care of themselves. Maxim, the former wizard commander of Ildakar, was not a man to tend barnyard fowl.

Someday when he built a grand city again, he would have uniformed guards, servants to attend to his every need, practitioners talented in the art of massage after he luxuriated in a perfumed bath, young women for his bed. He would have clothiers create magnificent garments for him out of the finest fabrics, the softest weaves, the warmest furs. His jewelry would be crafted by the most skilled smiths in his domain.

He sighed, missing Ildakar more than he’d thought he would.

For now, this cottage was an acceptable home. The forest silence was comforting, enhanced by the sound of rushing spruce boughs in the breezes. The man and his wife had cut down the tallest trees, leaving stumps in the front yard. Blocks of firewood were stacked against the cottage, and an axe rested next to one of the stumps that served as a chopping block. When he ran out of split firewood for the hearth, though, Maxim didn’t deign to swing the ax, but used his gift to expand cracks in the logs, shattering them into pieces the fireplace could accommodate. He was resourceful, even self-sufficient.

After fleeing through the swamps for days, avoiding predators as well as the maddeningly determined Adessa, he was glad to have a safe and quiet place to reside. He knew she wouldn’t give up, although if Adessa had any sense at all, she would realize she could never defeat a wizard commander! The protective branded runes would save her from an overt attack of magic, but she had no powers remotely comparable to his own. He’d been shocked at how strong the morazeth was when she tried to kill him, and he wondered where that enhanced strength came from. Had Thora found a way to trigger some manifestation of the gift in Adessa? It was annoying.

As he moved through the silent home, he plucked at the clean linen shirt that had been the husband’s. The trousers were too large, and he needed a rope belt around the waist to hold them up, but that was part of his disguise. His Ildakaran garments had been beyond repair, and he’d discarded the gray robes he had worn as Mirrormask. At Tarada, he’d been forced to flee so swiftly he had been unable to bring extra clothes. At least he no longer looked like a beggar.

After he used a small glamour spell, people in Gant’s Ford gave him what he needed. He just had to lie low for now, like a bear hibernating for the winter, and eventually he would emerge with detailed plans to conquer the world. The solitude was the hardest part. After living for so many centuries in Ildakar, Maxim was not accustomed to being alone.

Once every two or three days he would make the hour walk down the forest path to the river town. He called no attention to himself in his rough-spun clothes, and people assumed he was one of the many woodcutters, farmers, and hunters who lived in the wild. Maxim ate food from the inns, and he especially liked the catfish pie. Sometimes he spent coins he’d found in a jar inside the cottage, while other times he just worked a forgetting spell and left without paying. He drank the town’s sour ale and grimaced, even tried some wine that came from barges upriver. Once, he asked if the tavernkeeper possessed any bloodwine from Ildakar, and the portly man had just laughed at him, explaining that bloodwine was an extravagance no one in town could afford.

Maxim convinced himself that he was getting to know the poor people, the hardworking ungifted types. When he played his role as Mirrormask, he had pretended to understand the plight of the lower classes. He had learned the right words to say and watched how easily people reacted to his promises. He could incite them with honeyed words about freedom, although the people in Gant’s Ford were already free, and they knew their lot in life would never change for the better.

Later, after he had his fill of people, Maxim would walk back up the path to his cottage in the hills, where he continued to dream of greater conquests.

One afternoon, the silence and boredom weighed heavily on him, and he left the cottage. Out in the yard the wild chickens clucked and fled, though he had no intention of killing them. That would be too messy, too much work.

The family kept a garden plot with onions, beans, and a squash plant whose vines sprawled across the ground. Behind the cottage, a line of brambles held sweet berries. He had enough food to last a while, but he was growing impatient with all this waiting.

He strolled past the garden patch and saw the five stone figures, exactly where they had been since he first arrived here. The broad-chested husband, and his wife who was not old, but not pretty either. Her petrified hair was tied back, covered with a scarf. A drab skirt hung from hips widened by childbirth. The mother held the hand of one of her children, a boy of about eight. The father grabbed the smallest one, a girl no more than five. An older boy of eleven ran between them. Their expressions had turned to panic when they realized how much danger Maxim posed. They had tried to sneak away into the night, but hadn’t gotten far. Maxim had emerged from the door and saw them running. Without bothering to call out, he released his petrification spell. They froze in midstep, their skin and bones hardening into stone. They would always keep that expression of fear, their eyes wide, but they would never take another step. He regretted his impetuous move, because now they couldn’t help him, couldn’t serve him, and Maxim needed someone to do the work around the cottage.

When he first arrived, the family had welcomed him as a traveler, fed him, let him spend the night, but they became frightened when he forced them to do things, and he’d been too tired to use much finesse.

Now he walked past the statue family, looked at the mother and father, whose blind, staring eyes didn’t move, didn’t see him. Sarcastically, he wished them a good day, since he had no one else to talk to.

He walked along the hilltop, listening to the whisper of tall spruces, until he reached an overlook from which he could see the Killraven River far below. He stood on a rock promontory, drinking in the view, seeing the noon sun sparkle on the current. Gant’s Ford filled the bank, the tiny people going about their daily business.

Then he spotted the ships on the river, a large and imposing fleet of at least fifty sturdy vessels with lines of long oars, midnight-blue sails, and a fearsome carved serpent at each prow. Maxim stared. The Norukai!

This was no simple trading fleet, not a ship or two delivering slaves in exchange for bloodwine and yaxen meat. This was a full Norukai invasion. In the past, the raiders had come to Ildakar pretending to be simple merchants, but now that he saw the dangerous fleet pressing upriver, he understood their goal. This wasn’t just a raid or two on vulnerable river villages. He smiled as he began to imagine how much havoc those fierce warriors would unleash upon Ildakar.

When the Norukai attackers arrived, Maxim had no doubt that the city would fall, if Ildakar wasn’t already destroyed in the aftermath of what he himself had done. He drove away a twinge of remorse and just watched for the next hour as dozens of serpent warships sailed upriver toward his former home.