War of Wizards by Michael Wallace Page A

speak, and lifted his eyes to glare at this interruption. Darik fell silent. The wizard finished his spell. It was the same one that Darik had cast.
    The fireball looked just as impressive as it came forth from Chantmer’s hand, but not, Darik noted, more impressive. It was a childish, selfish, and vain thing to note at a desperate moment, but Darik couldn’t flush the thought from his mind. The fire splashed once more over the wights. More chaos, more fires and wails. This time, when the enemy broke ranks, there weren’t enough left to continue the assault. They were soon fleeing from the city.
    “Curse you, boy,” Chantmer said. “You distracted me.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” Darik said. “You did it.”
    The wizard winced and stared at his blackened hand. “Yes, but it cost me double what it should have, thanks to you.”
    “If this is how you are in victory, I’d hate to see how you behave when you lose.”
    “If that ever happens, I’ll be sure to tell you,” Chantmer said.
    Darik could only stare. Chantmer had nearly been killed by the dark wizard during the battle at Arvada, and Markal and Darik had sent him fleeing just a few weeks ago, when they confronted him and one of the tattooed mages on the Tothian Way. He thought the other wizard had been Roghan, the mage with the braided hair and the amulet.
    Men cheered all along the walls. Behind, in the city, Ethan’s men were still fighting the wights that had broken through the wall, and didn’t seem to notice at first that the enemy was now trying to escape, not press forward. When that realization passed through the defenders, they lowered their weapons and gave a ragged cheer of their own. Men had fallen—at least fifteen or twenty—torn apart in a horrific mass of bloody limbs and torsos. But Ethan’s forces had never broken ranks, and they’d kept the wights bottled long enough for Chantmer to finish breaking apart the enemy.
    The wizard’s companions seemed to be recovering. “What now?” Roghan asked.
    “How do you mean?” Chantmer asked.
    He was staring across the plain. It was dark, apart from the stars and a handful of glowing blue wights still struggling away from the city, but there was a faraway look in Chantmer’s eyes, as if he could peer through the darkness and across the distance.
    “We won,” Roghan said. “They will flee toward the Desolation, with the Harvester on their heels, gathering souls. So what do we do? What do we tell the sultan?”
    What did Roghan mean? Was he referring to the army Balsalomian scouts had spotted marching north from the sultanates? Did the sultan of Marrabat intend to seize Balsalom?
    “We have not won,” Chantmer said at last. “The wights are not returning to the Desolation. See?”
    Darik peered into the darkness but couldn’t see what Chantmer meant. Neither, it seemed, could any of the others.
    “They must be falling back toward Ter,” Chantmer continued. “It’s the site of their last conquest, and there they will rebuild their strength.” Chantmer regarded Roghan and the other wizards, then turned to Darik. “We have gained time, perhaps a single day, perhaps longer. But this evil force will return. And we will not be strong enough to resist them.”
     
     

Chapter Nine
    Markal rose from his bedroll and slipped out of the tent, the shadows of a nightmare hanging over his mind like cobwebs in an abandoned tower. The smell of last evening’s battle still lingered, and he walked past smoldering carts, burned enemy tents, and dead Veyrians, the smell of their charred flesh heavy in the morning air. Here and there, he sensed the aftertaste of magic. A cool breeze blew from the north and eased the pain in his aching hand.
    Now that it was daylight, he wanted to gain the hill and look toward Veyre. He was curious to see if his vision of the Dark Citadel matched what he’d seen in his dreams. Sometimes, it appeared as a single tower of gray stone at the edge of the sea, while