Wolves of Empire [EPIC DARK FANTASY] [Book One Complete]

Seventeen

Tali

Sinnis, Northwest Indaver

12th of Tournus

Tali decided after a scant four days in Sinnis's claustrophobic grip that she much preferred the island of Alzikanem, even though she'd always considered it a prison. Small and restricting, yes, but at least it had been peaceful. At least there were few enough other people around that she could avoid them if she wanted. At least it had lacked the stenches she now associated with larger settlements: shit and piss and body odour and cloying animal aromas.

They left their room at the inn the morning of their fifth day in the city, unable to procure the funds for another night. Shira had sold her khophesh, but insisted they needed that money for food to get them to the Fensidium safehouse.

"It's best we leave anyway," Shira said as she navigated the tightly packed city street with Tali close at her side. "We'll start drawing attention if we stay, and Heller must know to look for us by now."

"How would he know?" Tali asked, having to raise her voice to be heard above the ringing cacophony of foreign voices.

It was one of the only things she'd yet to properly question. What with Shira's claims of Novhar, the witch-hunt currently occurring in Sinnis, and the entire experience of being somewhere so utterly unknown to her, Tali had accepted her uncle's imminent rescue of them without comment. Only when she considered it did she realise how odd it was to assume he knew where to find her and what had happened.

No odder than anything else in the last week, but odd all the same.

Shira said nothing, though Tali knew she'd heard. She set a hand on Shira's shoulder, partly to seize her attention, partly to avoid being separated, and repeated the question.

"Our master in the Fensidium will know, and will send your uncle's cadre after us," was Shira's answer, spoken low enough to almost go unheard.

Tali scoffed. "Is your master some kind of all-knowing superhuman?"

"Nothing so fantastical," Shira replied. She didn't elaborate, and Tali used a brief lull in the crowd to consider.

She knew her uncle and Shira belonged to the order of renegade mages. Just as she knew, after it had been deemed unsafe for her to continue living with her uncle, that Shira had accompanied her to Alzikanem to protect her from threats unknown. Tali had always assumed this originated from some maternal obligation the woman might nurture, being the only motherly figure in Tali's life, but it was just as likely Shira's superior, or Tali's uncle, had asked it of Shira.

In that case, this enigmatic superior protected Tali. By extension, they might know more about what she needed protection from.

"Who's your master?" Tali pressed.

Shira glanced across at her, hesitating. She seemed to relent, however, because she pitched her voice even lower to whisper a name. "He's called Sudarium."

Tali deflated; not a name she knew. Not a revelation, then, but another ill-fitting piece of a puzzle proving more intricate the more she learned.

The crowd spilled out into a packed market square, larger than the one the execution had taken place in and built almost at the base of one of the seven tapering hills. Shira intended for them to leave the city today, and they'd come here to trade for as much food as they could. It was an endless and open expanse out on the Karhes—this Tali knew from experience—and hunting their own food without even Shira's blade would be almost impossible.

There were no stalls, however. Just a roiling sea of people gathered around a platform jutting from the square's centre. Tali felt a ripple of fear and disgust at the prospect of witnessing another messy murder, but noticed the masked executioner's absence with a frown.

A sole figure dominated the platform, standing upon it with hands folded behind back, posture the ramrod straightness of a military commander. Her father had affected such poses before, when he'd stood at the harbour wall on Alzikanem thinking no one was watching during his too-brief visits to see her. This figure was tall, with a stern brow and a harsh jawline dusted with stubble. He wore a dark brown knee-length tunic decorated with a dozen golden buckles and belted at the waist, along with trousers of a slightly lighter shade. Though a plain outfit, on his proud form it looked like a monarch's robe of office.

For a heartbeat, if she didn't focus, didn't spot the smaller differences, didn't note the confident way this man held himself, Tali could almost see her father.

He said nothing, didn't move, merely watched the thickening crowd with a gaze that held them all steady. Though not close enough to draw his attention, Tali felt struck by that gaze. Pinned in place, her mind flayed open, every private thought she'd ever had thrown to the wind for all to gawk at. It was a similar sensation to the one spawned by the Shaeviren monster, and she might've found it ominous had the figure on the platform not obviously been a mortal man, and not some shapeless, formless, unknowable entity.

"That's Indro," Shira said, having gleaned the information from the hushed murmurs around her.

Tali studied him again, squinting across the distance. She supposed, if you took his powerful frame and military posture into account, she understood how he'd gained such an enraptured following. She knew little of command, but her father had once told her about the loyalty soldiers owed their commanders. Should a general earn the respect of his men, Endarion had said, that loyalty could become adoration. It was clear from their silence, their upturned faces, their wide eyes, that this crowd adored Indro.

She didn't know how long Indro held the square in its strained, suspended silence. Minutes, maybe. An hour? Enough for the square to fill, for Indro to deem it a satisfactory audience and nod, as if to himself, before stepping to the platform's edge to address them.

His powerful voice complimented his aura. It was impossible to guess his age, though from his appearance and the energetic way he addressed the crowd, he seemed in his prime.

Shira's translation overlapped Indro's words, but his voice formed an unbroken melody at the back of her mind.

"It pleases me to see so many of Sinnis's citizens present and eager to hear my words. It bodes well for the future, for your country will have need of you. I have addressed many other nations within the Empire of a Thousand Kings, and they have all roused themselves to my call. I know you will be no different.

"There is a war. Or rather, there will be.

"It has come to my attention that the Empire of Drasken, which squats across the Karhes and practices its foul craft unchecked, has set its sights on us. On all of us.

"Some of you may have witnessed the recent executions and been informed by my officers that the crime those individuals are guilty of is aasiurmancy. This is true, but I fear they were also Drasken's agents. The Varkommer, devious snakes that they are, have sent aasiurmancers to infiltrate our cities, to bring us low, to topple us so their Sky Fleet can bomb the ashes and call our land theirs."

Indro paused there, let his words simmer in the air and boil in the minds of his listeners. Tali followed Shira's trailing translation, confusion creasing her brow; she knew of no conflict the Drasken Empire tried to instigate. She wasn't a Drasken citizen, sure, but news of something as severe as continent-wide war would've reached her in Alzikanem, despite how far removed from everything the island was.

"There is another concern, one which my advisors have suggested I keep hidden from the public, but I believe should be shared. We are all loyal citizens of the Thousand Kings, and we all deserve to know the truth.

"Aside from its desire for our destruction, Drasken has become illicit bedfellows with an organisation of mages known as the Fensidium."

Another pause, long enough for Tali to spy the concern writ on Shira's face.

"The Fensidium serves beneath Sudarium with the intent of bringing about a second Cataclysm. With Drasken as their allies, they have the power to accomplish this. If we are to have any hope of prevailing, if all human life is to have any hope of withstanding the apocalypse the Fensidium wishes to bring down upon us all, we must stop them before we are destroyed. We must take this war to their very doorstep. We must support the mercenaries who harry their borders. We must march upon their mountain border, must field our armies into their land, must desecrate their cities and their villages, must slaughter all of them, so that not a single mage remains with the intent to end us all."

Indro's voice grew louder, deeper, more dangerous, though he never seemed to shout or strain. Where a lesser speaker might support their words with bellows in the belief that volume equals righteousness, Indro seemed to extend his voice. Like a tangible thing it surrounded them, blanketing them as fog. Tali didn't know how he did it.

"The Varkommer and Sudarium must be brought down, so that their villainous following fails. Every mage that owes them allegiance—and that is every mage that draws breath—must be eradicated. This I ask of you, as I have asked of all your neighbours. United, we will march across the Karhes and leave both death and hope in our wake.

"Death to those who would wear Sudarium's cause as their own. Hope to those who stand with me."

His speech ended with jarring suddenness. A tense heartbeat of quiet, followed by rapturous applause that startled Tali. Indro bowed then raised his head. His eyes locked onto Tali's and even over the distance she knew he stared right at her. Knew it with a certainty she couldn't explain. His mouth lifted into a smile, but there was nothing pleasant about it. After a prolonged heartbeat of eye contact, he descended into the crowd, and she lost sight of him.

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Whether Indro's apparent sighting of them or the explicit mention of the Fensidium and Sudarium, Shira spurred to action. "We need to go. Now." Her mentor turned her around and steered her through the crowd. They were met with angry scowls and muttered curses as they shouldered people aside, but Shira seemed deaf to it.

Shira quickened their pace as the crowd thinned, her posture steady and sure. Tali knew her too well, though. She read the panic in her mentor's sharp movements, saw a frown creasing her forehead, noticed the way she glared at anyone who drew too close.

They made it out onto an emptier street, a narrow thoroughfare branching from the main road. The houses leered in towards them, and the eyes of passers-by lingered on them as they passed.

When they'd put distance between themselves and the square, Tali felt the tension leech from her shoulders unbidden. Her heart still hammered, and Indro's smile dominated her thoughts, but they were safe now, out of the enemy's proximity.

Shira halted so suddenly that Tali smashed into her, rebounding off her mentor's muscular frame. She peered over the woman's shoulder, finding the street exactly as it should be.

No, not exactly. A figure strode up its centre towards them. His stature became more evident as he neared, until Tali recognised this creature—ten feet tall, armoured, winged, hawk-nosed—as the brute who'd torn her home island apart.

"An adept trick, worldstriding, but easy to follow," the creature boomed in his strange, sinister voice, having to almost shout to be heard over the thumping of his own footsteps. "You will come with me now, and no one else need perish."

Shira shifted to stand fully in front of Tali. "Why do you want the girl?"

The creature stopped a mere ten feet from them and curled his lip into a very human expression of disgust. "I need not even address you, insignificant mortal." He angled his gaze to Tali, somehow looking right into her eyes despite her being concealed by Shira. "Come with me, Valhir. You need not be our enemy."

Valhir? A name or a title? Unfamiliar, either way.

She remembered Shira had labelled this beast Novhar. An immortal thought long dead, and humanity's creators besides. She snatched a glance over Shira's shoulders, looked upon the face of a primordial myth, and found something vaguely familiar in him. Something mostly human, removed only by his overall size, the demonic twin juts of his folded wings, and the armour Tali saw now was certainly an organic part of him. She wondered how old this creature was, for the world to think him ten thousand years dead. Wondered how fleeting and insignificant her own sixteen years were by comparison. Wondered how many warriors more capable than she had fallen to this monster's immortal strength.

His glare didn't waver. "You are being coerced, and we cannot allow your master to fulfil his plans."

A reply leapt carelessly from Tali's mouth. "I don't have a master."

"Sudarium has likely ensured you believe that, but he will end the world with you. Do you wish to have a hand in the next Cataclysm?"

Shira nudged Tali back, her hand falling to the khopesh that no longer resided at her hip. "You are chasing the wrong child."

"Again, mortal, you address me as if you have the right." The Novhar uttered a shallow laugh. "I can smell Sudarium's taint on you. Do you enjoy serving a man who would re-enact apocalypse?" When her mentor offered no reply, the monster continued. "I can kill the child now, if you would prefer, or take her with me, alive, to be trained by those who understand her abilities. I was given no specifics on which state she needed to be in when I presented her to my Matriarch."

"She is not yours to take," Shira replied, voice hard.

The creature—Tali still hesitated to think of him as Novhar—snorted. "You are all ours to take. None of you would be here had we not chosen to give you life, so many thousands of years ago."

Tali saw the tell-tale stiffening of Shira's shoulders in the split second before she utilised her aasiurmancy. Her strained tone, her short replies, the way she hadn't moved through the confrontation, were because she'd been gathering aasiur into herself, pooling her most reliable weapon.

Her mentor shifted forward, appearing at the monster's side in less than a heartbeat, the air shimmering with a liquid quality where she'd just been standing. She threw herself into an attack, slashing a fist at the monster's waist. Though far bigger and heavier than Shira, their attacker unbalanced and staggered backwards with the momentum. The armour encasing one knee collided with the floor with a stony crunch. Shira made to dodge away, her grimace testament to how hard the armour had been against her hand, but the creature's fist clipped her shoulder hard enough to fell her. She sprawled, unable to catch herself, her head striking the ground as she tumbled.

The monster rose slowly, his moments as inevitable as the violent crest of a tsunami, and turned his focus to Shira, who had yet to gain her own feet.

In the breaths before the Novhar struck, Tali saw the fight play out with the certainty of a premonition. The monster would overpower Shira, blast her to ashes with his pyromancy, or tear her asunder as he had Alzikanem. Her mentor wouldn't be able to muster a dying scream before she was annihilated, and then nothing would stand between Tali and whatever fate this immortal harboured for her.

That was why, as the Novhar shifted his wings, bracing his body for an outpouring of magic, Tali felt the surge of panic again and let it consume her. She slammed her eyes shut against it, blocking out the maelstrom of colours and lights and swirling aasiurmantic currents she knew her body was being dragged into, and raised her arms. It was a monumental effort, like dragging her limbs upwards through thick mud. The magic, uncontrolled, rumbled through her mind with the thundering hooves of a cavalry charge, split her bones down to the marrow, eviscerated her muscles, tore her soul into ragged strips.

Her arms heated as if held over a roaring fireplace until the skin crisped and smoked. Static plucked at the hairs on her forearms and coils of energy lashed like whips against her flesh.

The aasiur didn't explode all at once, as it had done when she'd worldstrode. Her awareness of it, more than any real harnessing, allowed her to pour it from her soul in a steady stream. Eyes still closed, she let her jaw hang loose in a raw bellow of fearful anger, her hands splayed around the aasiur bursting from her palms.

Almost drained, almost at the point where she would collapse, she stopped. Clamped her hands into fists. Surfaced from the currents. Opened her eyes.

The Novhar had been blasted back into the face of a building halfway down the street. Flickers of aasiurmantic fire danced across his plates, though he appeared uninjured. He pulled himself from the crumbled stone of the building and, still smoking, paced back out into the street as if Tali had done no more than stick her tongue out at him.

"That was ill-advised," the Novhar said, scraping a hand dismissively across one shoulder as if to swipe away the remnants of her pyromancy. "But I can see now you have inherited Ekaterina's magical prowess. You will prove useful to us."

The ten-foot monstrosity paced slowly towards her, as unhurried as a triumphant predator. Nearby, Shira still struggled to regain her composure.

"Who's Ekaterina?" she asked, fumbling for words.

"Ah, yes. She went by a different name when in mortal guise. Katrin, was it not?"

The name sent a jolt through her. "My mother?"

"You did not think you'd inherited these gifts from your pathetically mortal father, did you?" As close as he now was, the Novhar was colossal, almost twice her height. He loomed over her, his near-human features settling into a kind of cold amusement. "Ekaterina was an accomplished aasiurmancer. If you are half the mage she was, you can aid us, and make up for her betrayals."

"Did you kill her?" Tali demanded, flexing her fingers, testing the surface of the power within her.

The Novhar laughed again, though it was more substantial, more menacing. "Does it matter? She betrayed us in her service to Sudarium. Betrayed us again in her seduction of the mortal general who sired you. A third time when she whelped you." He seemed to consider her for a moment. "She deserved her fate."

"Us?" He spoke of her mother as if she'd been one of them. A Novhar.

But that was impossible. Her mother had been a Tharghestian soldier, a mortal Dontili, killed so easily by an unknown assassin.

"You begin to understand, I see."

She gripped the lingering trickles of magical energy with a metaphysical hand and lashed it out at the Novhar. This time, it manifested as a lightning strike, though she'd no idea how to manipulate that. Again, the strike drove the Novhar back, threw him off his feet, but did no apparent damage beyond briefly dislodging his concentration.

The Novhar rose, this time extending his strange wings and pushing himself up into the air. He snapped one arm out, clenched his fist, and drew it into his chest as if trying to drag something towards him. In the background, one of Sinnis's seven hills listed, then collapsed in on itself. Its top half toppled, crushing its lower half in a storm of dust and debris. Tali saw falling bodies and felt the reverberation of the fall through the ground and in the dusty breeze it whipped up.

The Novhar slashed his arm in a horizontal arc with a roar, and a tangled cluster of the broken hill soared over the city's roofs towards them. It was a jumbled mess, bodies both living and already dead tumbling from the flying ruins like macabre rain. Easily a quarter of the towering hill, thrown at her by the Novhar. Dimly, beneath the immediacy of the massive projectile, Tali saw the Novhar slump to his knees, spent by his magical outpouring.

Tali leapt for Shira, crouched over her fallen mentor, and shielded herself with her arms in a futile attempt to protect them both. She heard the thunderous rumble of the approaching tower, punctuated by a chorus of screams, and pulled at her inner recesses in a desperate attempt to locate any vestiges of magic. The very air seemed to part before the thrown edifice.

She knew, even as she pulled at a glimmering thread within her mind, that it would likely unravel her with it. But she had no choice; the decapitated hill bore down on them with apocalyptic might.

She tore, the sensation like peeling the skin from her body in one forceful motion, then threw her magic up in a shockwave. Mindlessly formed as a wall of air, it collided with the projectile, the noise so loud if deafened her. Though she couldn't hear, she saw what happened next with a lucidity she assumed her magic would've robbed her of.

Her counterattack caused the hill to shatter against her invisible shield and explode outwards, its components spread out across the city in an explosion of debris. A lethal maelstrom of stone and windows and roofs and human bodies lashed into the streets, into the buildings, into those in the vicinity unfortunate enough to be on the street. Boulders launched by siege engines couldn't have done a more destructive job of dismantling Sinnis.

Another of the hills buckled, flattened everything in its shadow, falling in the direction Tali knew Indro's square to be in. How many of his audience remained there, she wondered? How many people had she just inadvertently killed?

Her hearing returned in fits and starts, distorted, only the faded echo of Shira's shouts audible at first. Her mentor grabbed her shoulder, digging her fingers into her flesh hard enough to drag her back to reality. Shira shouted again, though only by reading her lips could Tali know she said, "Hold on."

She did, clinging to her mentor like a frightened child to her mother, her one and only bastion of protection in a cruel world.

Shira had filled herself with aasiur in the time it had taken Tali to unsuccessfully combat the Novhar. A distant, dislocated part of her mind knew, from what Shira had taught her before, that repeated use of aasiur in a short span of time was damaging, even fatal to a mage. Had she not been near-senseless with deafness and her own display, she might've told her mentor to stop, to wait for the dust cloud to clear and the state of their attacker revealed before they acted.

Shira's idomancy encompassed them both, cushioning them in a pillow-like buffer of air as she shifted them through space. It was, Shira had said before, like worldstriding. What Shira could do was skip distances without having to progress between them. To those outside its influence, it looked like they winked in and out of existence, stuttering down the wrecked street and out onto the main thoroughfare towards the gates. To Tali, enveloped both in Shira's arms and the embrace of her idomancy, their surroundings flashed from one scene to another with no transition, reality folding over itself as Shira punched through it.

When they toppled from Shira's influence, they were thrown back into the world as it should be with a lurch. They collapsed together onto the spongy grass of the land surrounding Sinnis. A short distance away hunched the city itself, a tumorous lump, stripped of two of its towering hills, tendrils of smoke announcing its distress.

"I can't go any further," Shira said, her words separated by wheezing breaths.

Tali couldn't hear herself over the insistent thump of her heartbeat but spoke anyway. "He won't follow us?"

"He won't have seen where we went in the middle of that chaos," Shira replied. "Idomancy makes less of a ripple than worldstriding. He shouldn't be able to track us."

Tali nodded. Her head felt too heavy, and she kept on nodding. Her eyelids drooped, blotting out half the horizon. Shira took hold of her, cradled her head, and lowered her onto her back. "It's okay. Rest awhile. We've got time."

She wanted to protest that she was fine, rise to her feet and insist they leave Sinnis and the Novhar and Indro as far behind as they'd left Alzikanem. But she couldn't. She was too drained. She needed to close her eyes.

Just for a second.