The Shadowglass (The Bone Witch, #3)(77)
Kalen was busy forming a spell of his own, taking advantage of the azi’s speed to create the largest rune I’d ever seen across the sky. As the army drew near, he made a quick, cutting gesture, sending a concentrated wave of knifelike wind that took down whole columns of soldiers, bowling them over before they could cast their own magic. At the same time, the azi snarled and turned, its spiked tail whipping the nearest soldiers and tearing several of them in half. Likh made a gagging sound beside me and squeezed her eyes as Khalad held her, shielding her from the horrific view. Kalen’s spell had taken out hordes of men, mowing them down like stalks of wheat, and the others immediately scrambled for safety. Several of the spellbinders had held back though, and now their spells came spiraling toward us.
I didn’t stop to think. I pushed my thoughts, the azi’s still tied to mine, and wove both the Raising and Puppet runes in quick succession. Almost immediately, the fallen soldiers righted themselves, their features blank, and rushed before us, taking the brunt of the magic that sizzled through their bodies and creating a human barrier that gave Kalen enough time to construct a Shield rune of his own.
I ordered other undead toward their comrades, and soon the Drychta were fighting their own previously deceased. The azi raised its three heads, adding fire to the chaos, and the line holding the Drychta defenses faltered. More soldiers turned and fled, leaving only their dead behind.
“How did you raise so many?” Kalen asked me, chest heaving from his exertions.
I stared at the Drychta dead. I heard their protests and sensed their resistance; I felt them struggling against me, unwilling to give me power over their bodies.
And yet I could.
I let go, and the babble of angry voices faded from my head. The soldiers dropped, dead in every sense of the word once more.
“Was this one of the gifts of Stranger’s Peak that Agnarr mentioned?” he asked.
I should not have been capable of raising so many fighters, even with the Puppet rune and the azi to draw strength from.
“Let’s talk about this after we see Kance,” Kalen suggested, though the worry didn’t leave him. I nodded and glanced back at Khalad and Likh to see how the two were faring, finding them shaken but unhurt.
The Odalians had not joined our efforts when we engaged the Drychta, but neither had they retreated. Instead, they stood some distance away, warily eyeing the azi, who snorted and ignored them. One of them rode forward cautiously, and I saw, to my surprise, that it was General Lode.
“Milady,” he greeted us uncertainly. “This is the last place I expected to see you again.” He turned his gaze to Kalen. “It is equally surprising to see the Duke of Holsrath.”
“I relinquished all claims to the dukedom, sir,” Kalen said irritably. “And Kance can insist that I am eligible for the throne after him and Khalad all he wants, but he needs to understand what official abdication means.”
General Lode coughed. “I presume, then, that you are to assist us in our war against Drycht?”
“Why is Drycht even here to begin with? And why has Kance sent no word to Kion or to the Yadoshans for assistance until the very last minute? He cannot imagine that sending out armies without aid would result in a victory. King Aadil is not known for his honor. Where is he, by the way? Still at the palace?”
“That is not entirely true, Kalen,” came an all-too-familiar voice as King Kance stopped before the daeva, taking his white horse in hand. His tone was how I remembered: soft, pleasant, quiet. “For one thing, I am not, as you can see, in the palace.”
? ? ?
“Are you a blithering fool?” Kalen exploded the instant we reached the Odalian encampment. His heartsglass had been a stormy mix of silver and blue, but he had reined in his anger until we were within the safety of the improvised garrison General Lode had constructed, away from any unexpected attacks by the Drycht. The azi had trotted after us, settling itself comfortably outside the Odalian defenses, one head keeping an eye on the fortifications while the other two watched the horizon intently.
“I did what I had to, Kalen.” King Kance had changed. He’d grown his hair longer, and he was thinner. There were dark circles underneath his eyes, more prominent than when I had last seen him. His skin was darker as well, like he’d been spending more time under the sun. He no longer made my heartsglass flutter like it had when I was a novice, but it hurt to see him all the same.
“I’ve had to make a few adjustments in the last few months.” King Kance didn’t look at me. In fact, he acted like I wasn’t even there at all. “We’ve caught more than our share of Drychta spies skulking about Odalia, which aroused my curiosity. Mithra’s Wall straddles the border between my kingdom and the Yadosha city-states, and all our information pointed to some secret goings-on there by our brothers of the south. Aadil is a crafty bastard; he’d sent a reconnaissance group at first, no more than four or five people, to infiltrate the mountain. But one of Lode’s patrols caught them. We sent several Deathseekers to back those soldiers, and fortunately, they were no match for us, though the survivors chose to kill themselves before we could interrogate them.
“But rather than explain himself, Aadil responded with an even bigger army, as you can see. They spent months sailing around the Yellow Sea and skirting along Yadosha’s Eternity Mountains to avoid our patrols. They want something important from these ranges to go through all this trouble.”