Prime Lektor stood back about twenty paces, staring at the godstone with a mix of fascination and horror, as if expecting the stone to reassemble itself at any moment. He seemed at a loss for words until Flerring spoke, to which he replied, “It’s not exactly dust.”
“It cracked along the seams,” Flerring said, tracing her fingers along the break between the two halves of the main obelisk. “Just as planned. There were two deep grooves cut along fault lines in the rock, and we focused most of the explosion there.” She tapped a section of the capstone where a large area of writing had been replaced by a spiraling fracture, much like glass in a window that had been shattered without falling from the pane. “It’s true, all that oil should have turned this thing to dust. But considering how you were talking about that sorcery, I think we did pretty good.”
Slowly, Vlora felt her smile fade. She took a step toward the stone and gently laid a hand on the surface. She felt a pulse, like the beating of a heart, touching her from the Else. It was an unpleasant feeling and she immediately wanted to wipe her hand off and leave this place at once. She forced calm. “I can still sense the sorcery of the thing.”
“So can I,” Prime Lektor said.
Taniel and Julene both confirmed it.
“It’s faded,” Taniel said to Flerring’s annoyed expression, “but it’s definitely still there. Do you think whoever built this thing planned for the possibility of it being broken?”
Vlora expected Prime to look smug, but the old sorcerer seemed baffled more than anything else. “It’s possible,” he said, “but they made it so strong that they must have thought it would survive anything. I doubt a god could crack it.”
“Not even Kresimir could have conceived of a man-made force as strong as blasting oil,” Julene said with a hint of wonder in her voice. She tapped her right stub against the capstone, examining it with a clinical approach. “Normally, when an object has been enchanted, substantial damage to it will unravel the enchantment. It may be that …” She trailed off. “Ah, I see.”
“What is it?” Vlora demanded. Her anxiety was back, and she had gone from disappointment to elation and back again so quickly in the last quarter of an hour that she just wanted to know what the pit was going on.
Julene turned and smiled smugly at Prime. “Do you see it?” she asked.
With some reservation, Prime shook his head.
“Those fault lines in the stone are also fault lines in the sorcery. We couldn’t see it, not when it was full strength. They must have bound the sorcery to the very grain of the rock. Helps make it stronger, but it also makes it vulnerable. The sorcery holding the whole thing together is like an outer layer. We broke through that with the blasting oil, leaving three distinct pieces of enchanted rock.”
“So instead of having to deal with one godstone, we’re dealing with three?” Burt asked flatly.
“Not exactly,” Julene continued. She had perked up from her usual disinterest and had even grown excited. “It’s not a godstone now, not nearly. The pieces are nothing compared to the whole. I think that it could be put back together, given time, but—”
“If we can separate the pieces,” Vlora finished for her. Her mind was already working, pushing through a number of different plans. “Which is the most powerful piece?”
“I see it now,” Prime finally announced. “ ‘Power’ is the wrong way of thinking about it. The two halves of the main trunk are where the meat of the sorcery is. But the capstone, though weaker, is used to connect them to make the three of them greater than the sum of their parts.”
“That’s all I need to know.” Vlora turned to Burt, her heart racing. The moment she’d been waiting for—where she could see the next path she needed to take—was finally here. “You told us that you had made plans to take the stone north of the Ironhook Mountains if you could find it. Can you still do that?”
The question seemed to catch everyone off guard, including Burt. Taniel stepped forward before Burt could respond. “Are you sure about this?” he asked quietly.
Vlora ignored him. “Can you?” she asked again.
Burt eyeballed the pieces. “What do you need me to do?”
“I want you to take the two pieces of the main trunk and take them over the passes. As soon as you’re north of the mountains, separate the two pieces. Send them to the farthest reaches of your territory, or beyond. I don’t really care who ends up with them, as long as they are in two very different places.”
“This is madness,” Prime interjected. “We can’t trust northern savages with even a fragment of the stone, let alone two-thirds.”
Burt narrowed his eyes at the word “savages.” “Then come with us, old man. You want to study them so badly, then we’ll take you north with the pieces and you can make sure they’re disposed of or hidden.”
It was Vlora’s turn to be surprised. “I thought you don’t allow Kressians north of the Ironhook?”
“Like I told you before, the Dynize have changed everything, and we need to make decisions quickly. Besides, I have the feeling I know what your plan is, and I want insurance.”
“What do you mean by insurance?” Taniel asked.
Burt pointed at Prime. “This one can hide the presence of the godstones. If he continues to do that, it’ll give my people plenty of time to pull the two big pieces into the passes and dynamite them behind us. We’ll be long gone before the Dynize Privileged can figure out something is up.”
Olem, who had remained silent for this entire time, suddenly spoke up, fixing Vlora with a pained expression. “We’re going to take the capstone, aren’t we?”
“And lead the Dynize on a merry chase,” Vlora confirmed, locking eyes with Taniel. “We take the capstone to the coast, put it on a ship, and we drop it into the deepest part of the ocean. And even if the Dynize happen to catch up with us, they’ll wind up with just a fraction of what they need and no idea where the rest has been taken.”
Olem considered the idea for a moment, and Vlora could see in his eyes that he thought it was going to get them all killed. He stared at the godstone, looking older than Vlora remembered him, and drawing out a pang of worry from her. “All right,” he said. “But the Dynize are almost upon us. I’ll have our engineers up here in half an hour and we’ll be rumbling out of the town in two. We need to get as far away as we can before nightfall.”
CHAPTER 59
Styke crested a hill and tugged gently on his reins, bringing Amrec—and the entire column behind them—to a stop in the middle of the road. He eyed the distant towers of New Starlight for a few moments, then swept his gaze across the rolling hills between his own party and the city-fortress before bringing his looking glass to his eye to get a better look.
“That’s a lot more crowded than when we passed here five days ago,” Ibana commented. She sat beside Styke, her comments no doubt directed at the army now camped at the base of the curtain wall that cut New Starlight off from the mainland. At a glance, and without a glass, any seasoned campaigner would put the army at fifty thousand men or more. “That’s going to be a problem,” Ibana added. “We can’t break an entire field army, not by ourselves.”
Styke kept the glass to his eyes, frowning toward the city and sweeping his gaze back and forth across the army camping outside it to make sure that his head wasn’t playing tricks on him. “We may not have to.” He handed Ibana the looking glass and sat back in the saddle, fiddling with his big lancers’ ring.
Slowly, Ibana’s mouth fell open. “Those are Fatrastan flags.”
“Above the army and the city,” Styke confirmed. “I’m not mad, am I?”
“Not about this.” Ibana handed the looking glass back. “It’s been five days since we passed here, and we very clearly saw Dynize soldiers manning the wall. Where did that army come from, and how the pit did they take New Starlight without a siege?”
Styke took off his ring, spat upon it, and polished it against his jacket before returning it to his finger. “I think that’s Dvory and the Third.”