The Sentinel Mage

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE





THEY ATE BREAKFAST on top of the outcrop and then lowered everything to the ground. Prince Harkeld scrambled down. Innis was crouching on the edge, ready to jump, when she felt a light touch on her elbow. It was Dareus.

“Change with Petrus once you’re down.”

She nodded.

It wasn’t easy to swap places without being seen. One of the soldiers, coming around the outcrop to empty his bladder in private, almost interrupted them. Innis shrank to a lizard, hiding against the sandstone, while Petrus fumbled to pull his trews up.

She waited for the soldier to leave, then shifted into a bird. Dareus was waiting on the other side of the outcrop, gazing at the sky, a blanket over his arm.

Innis landed at his feet. He held the blanket out, shielding her as she changed. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and listened to his instructions: “Innis, you’re to look for the assassins. I want you to fly to Ner.”

She nodded.

“If you haven’t seen anything by the time you reach Ner, assume they survived—and be careful. Don’t let them see you.”

Innis nodded again.

“I want numbers. We need to know what we’re up against.”

“Gerit,” she heard Dareus say as she shifted into a hawk again. “I want you to fly ahead and search for a safe place for tonight.” His voice faded as she swept up into the air.





INNIS FLEW FOR several hours with the sandstone cliffs towering on either side. At one point the canyon narrowed into a boulder-choked gorge—ancient rapids. Then it widened again.

For long stretches, the tombs were broken open. Innis knew what it meant: the Fithian assassins had passed through.

She looked for other signs of their passage, but found only two piles of horse manure, almost obscured by drifts of sand. Both were on the far side of the river, the side their own party hadn’t traveled on. Another few days and even those telltale piles would be buried by the sand. Of tracks, there was no sign. The assassins had taken care to hide them, and what they’d not hidden, the wind and the blowing sand had erased.

Mid-morning, the canyon began to change. Fingers of rock split from the canyon walls and others rose from the sand, long spines like the fins of gigantic, buried sea creatures. And then she burst out of the canyon. Sand stretched ahead of her—and the ruins of the city Ner.

Innis circled, climbing high into the sky. Below her, rock fins stretched out into the desert like the fingers of a delta.

The desert they’d passed through before had been almost blood red; this desert was the color of rusting iron. It stretched as far as she could see, a broad bowl surrounded by arid mountains.

Innis swooped low, until she skimmed above the sandstone fins. Some extended for furlongs; others speared up like gigantic orange-red tree trunks. It was a forest of stone planted in sand, a jungle of rocky fins and spires reaching hundreds of feet into the air.

Ahead, pillowed in sand, were the ruins. Several thousand people had lived there when the Massen Empire was at its height, a dozen or more centuries ago, but little remained of the city now—a line of columns, most of which were broken stumps; a flight of stone steps in a patch of rippled sand; a roofless tower, with one window like a staring eye. The desert had almost swallowed the ancient city.

Crouching to the east of the ruins, like a beast ready to pounce, was a massive hump of rust-orange rock. It towered out of the desert, easily the size of a palace. A slit of darkness showed at its base.

The city lay ahead, but the hulking lump of rock drew her attention. Innis altered course, arrowing towards it. The slit grew rapidly in size until it was a gash the height of a man. The darkness inside was absolute.

She knew what that darkness hid: the city’s graveyard. The catacombs of Ner, where the first anchor stone was concealed.

Innis circled in front of the opening, undecided. Should she look inside?

Oh, for pity’s sake, stop hesitating, she told herself crossly. Justen wouldn’t vacillate; he’d do.

She glided inside, changing form—from hawk to owl—dropping a couple of feet in the air as she shifted.

Sandstone pressed heavily down on her for a moment, and then the low ceiling of rock was gone and a cave opened out, vast and echoing.

Innis circled higher. The daylight didn’t penetrate far, but the sparse light was enough for her owl’s eyes. She’d expected something crude, simple; instead the catacombs were laid out like the spokes of a wheel. High sandstone walls radiated from the center of the cavern with deep avenues between them.

She swooped low, skimming along the top of one wall, and realized that the walls hadn’t been builtup from the floor of the cavern; the avenues had been carved down into the bedrock.

Innis glided down into one of the avenues, until she was a mere yard above the floor. It was like flying along a canyon. Sandstone reached high on either side, burrowed with niches in which corpses had been interred.

The niches had once been sealed, but now rubble littered the sandy floor—chunks of stone, drifts of crumbling mortar. Her keen owl ears caught faint rustlings of sound, no louder than the furtive scurrying of mice—the corpses were stirring in their graves. And tonight, once the sun set, they’d do more than stir; they’d walk abroad.

The passage narrowed until her wings almost brushed either side, and then she burst out into a circular open space. Precisely at its center, a squat lump of rock stood like an altar. It was basalt, black, thickly draped with curse shadows.

Innis veered away from the anchor stone. She circled upward until she saw the avenues radiating in all directions beneath her. A faint slit of daylight marked the cavern entrance.

She arrowed towards it and burst out into almost-blinding sunlight, soaring up into the sky. Masse spread itself out beneath her in dull, muted colors and shades of gray, stretching as far as she could see—desert, rock, barren mountains. To the south, the canyon meandered like a river. Below her, the ruins of Ner slumbered beneath a thousand years’ worth of sand.

Innis hung in the air and shifted from owl into hawk, barely dropping a few inches in height. The colors became vivid again, the desert rust-orange, the sky blue, the sandstone red.

She circled, examining the ruined city. If the assassins were here, they’d have found a hiding place safe from the corpses.

The only possibility was the ruined tower, sticking up out of the sand like a finger, its truncated shadow telling her it was nearly noon—but the tower, when she flew low to inspect it, was empty. The sole occupant was a lizard, sunning itself on a lip of rock.

Innis flew up into the sky again, widening her circles. If not the city, then where?

Her interest sharpened on the mouth of the canyon, where the forest of sandstone fins and spires thrust up into the sky. Where the prince had to pass on his way to the anchor stone. Where there was concealment from searching eyes—and safety from the corpses.

She found the horses first, hidden behind a long, sloping spine of sandstone. After that, it was easy. It would have been easier if she’d dared take the form of a wolf or dog and use her nose, but in the guise of a sky lark, flitting from one upthrust of rock to the next, she found the assassins eventually. They were in a cave halfway up a thick fin of sandstone. Six men. One slept, his weapons close to hand, three silently played a complicated game with small stones, another was sharpening his knives, and the sixth man sat guard, a sword laid across his knees, alert.

Two hundred yards distant, on another sandstone fin, in a hole barely large enough for a man, a seventh assassin crouched, utterly still, watching the river and the path to Ner.

Innis spent an hour looking for further sentries, but found none. She flew back to the first cave and shifted into the shape of a lizard and crept as close as she dared. She stared at the six men. Fithian assassins. Killers, with a harsh and legendary code of honor.

They looked disappointingly ordinary: tired, dirty, with unshaven faces and stained, rumpled clothing. And yet, for all their ordinariness, they were terrifying. The sentry didn’t fidget, didn’t yawn. His stillness, his focus on his task, was absolute. He was waiting. Waiting for his shift to end. Waiting for another night, with corpses prowling the canyon floor. Waiting for us to arrive, so that he may kill the prince.





IT WAS LATE afternoon when Innis reached the others. They were setting up camp in a cave on the eastern side of the canyon, hauling blankets, food, water, up by rope.

“Did you find them?” Dareus asked, once she’d dressed.

“Yes.”

Prince Tomas looked up from his task: lashing waterskins to the rope dangling from the cave. “How many?”

Innis was aware of men pausing, turning to look at her. “Seven. They’re hiding at the mouth of the canyon.”

“Seven.” Tomas glanced at his soldiers, as if counting them.

“We can handle ‘em,” Gerit said. He cleared his throat and spat into the sand. “Bastards won’t know what hit ‘em.”





THEY PASSED THE night with no more disturbance than the occasional detached hand creeping up from the canyon floor. In the morning, Harkeld stood in the cave mouth and looked out. Dawn flushed the sky. The sand was empty apart from the churned tracks of hundreds of feet and the odd, abandoned limb.

“Once the anchor stone is destroyed, will the corpses stop coming out?” Tomas asked.

“I don’t know,” Dareus said. “But my guess would be yes.”





BY MID-MORNING THEY’D gathered the horses—eleven had broken free, two needed to be killed—loaded their supplies and were on their way: another ordinary day. The disembodied wailing, the stark landscape, the broken tombs, had become familiar, almost normal.

At noon, they came to a place where the canyon was no wider than the ancient riverbed. They dismounted and led the horses, picking their way over the tumbled boulders.

“Rapids,” Justen said.

Harkeld nodded.

The canyon grew narrower. They were climbing now, scrambling. Water must have once spewed through here with extraordinary force—the canyon was choked with boulders, some larger than houses, and the cliffs were deeply scored and gouged. No water gushed through here now: the River Ner trickled deep below the jumble of rock.

The canyon walls leaned over them, almost touching. The rock was veined with white, like fat marbling a slice of beef. There were no tombs, although the occasional cave still pocked the sandstone.

Harkeld halted to drink from his waterskin. His horse blew in his ear. He glanced at the men and horses strung out ahead of him, clambering upward, then turned and looked back down the rubble-choked gorge. The canyon echoed with sound—the clatter of hooves on rock, the scrape of hobnailed boots, the sound of men panting and grunting as they climbed.

Justen looked up from several yards below. “Over half way up, I reckon.”

Harkeld nodded. He slung the waterskin over his shoulder. Something whistled past his cheek. Two things happened simultaneously: hot liquid sprayed across his face, filling his eyes, and his horse stumbled and collapsed, knocking him to the ground.

A second object hurtled past his face, striking rock with a fierce clang.

“Sire?” he heard Justen call out. “What’s wrong with your horse?”

The horse lay heavy and unmoving, pinning the lower half of his body. Harkeld struggled to push it aside, struggled to wipe his eyes, struggled to reach for his sword. The smell of fresh blood filled his nose.

His vision cleared. He saw a stranger crouched a few yards in front of him. The man’s face was stubbled, dirty. He detached something from his belt: a five-bladed throwing star.

Fithian assassin!

Everything in Harkeld’s body seemed to stand still: his heart didn’t beat, his blood didn’t flow, no breath filled his lungs.

A hawk dropped screaming from the sky.

“Sire! What’s wrong?” Justen’s voice was closer.

The assassin paid no attention to the hawk, no attention to Tomas now shouting and running back towards them. His eyes were fixed on Harkeld with fierce intensity. He raised his arm to throw. The blades of the throwing star gleamed in his hand.

Something ignited in Harkeld’s chest—fear, anger, panic—burning as hotly as flames inside him. He thrust his hand towards the man, a futile gesture, as if that lethal weapon could be warded off with mere flesh and bone.

The assassin erupted into flames. Not just his clothes, but his hair, his skin, his screaming mouth. An answering fire crackled over Harkeld’s skin with a hiss he felt deep inside him.

Justen scrambled over the horse and halted, his sword outstretched.

The assassin burned, writhing in agony, his skin crisping and blackening, turning to ash. The flames were intensely hot, almost roaring as they consumed him. In a matter of seconds the man was dead. On the rock lay a charred, smoking husk that had once been human.

Justen re-sheathed his sword. He turned to Harkeld, his face pale. “Sire, let me help you.”

With Justen’s assistance he was able to push aside the horse and scramble to his feet. Harkeld stood, trembling. Horror reverberated inside him.

“Are you hurt?” Tomas asked, breathless, as he reached them.

Harkeld shook his head, unable to tear his gaze from the black, twisted corpse.

“There’s blood on your face.”

The horse’s. His tongue couldn’t form the words. He wiped his face with his sleeve.

Dareus pushed through the soldiers. “Are you all right?”

Harkeld turned to him. His horror found an outlet. “How could you do that?” His voice was hoarse. He swallowed and spoke more strongly, almost shouting, hurling the words at the witch: “How could you do something so monstrous!”

“We didn’t.” Dareus was looking at him as intensely as the assassin had. “You did.”

Harkeld stepped away from the witch, away from the smoking corpse, shaking his head. “You’re lying.” But even as he spoke, he felt the truth of Dareus’s words: the remembered sensation of fire igniting in his chest, the sting of flames running over his skin. “You did it!”

“We were too far away.”

“No!” Harkeld shook his head again. “I’m not a witch.” He looked at Justen, at Tomas. Justen met his gaze squarely, with no hint of condemnation on his face; Tomas wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I am not a witch!”

The shout reverberated in the gorge, echoing off the towering cliffs. Witch witch witch.