War of Wizards by Michael Wallace Page B

other times it seemed to be a black, shadowy shaft that repelled all light, so dark that it hurt the eyes.
    Yet Markal knew from Veyrian prisoners and defectors that the Dark Citadel was a ziggurat, like one of the desert tombs or the ancient, crumbling temples of the Desolation, only vastly larger and constructed of black brick. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some deeper underlying structure that he would be unable to see with his naked eye. He knew the true form, but what was the sense of it?
    A heavy, worried feeling settled into his belly as he picked his way among the bodies of horses and Veyrian soldiers to reach the top of the hillock that had marked the enemy’s last stand yesterday. Whelan’s forces had overrun the hill and sent the enemy fleeing to the safety of Veyre’s city walls. That worried feeling spread until Markal felt as though he’d swallowed a tankard of bacon fat and it had congealed in his stomach. He slipped his good hand into his robe to rest on the smooth, familiar shape of Memnet’s orb. It was pregnant with magic. He’d fed it steadily until it held enough power to burn the hillside to ash and reduce the soldiers upon it, both living and dead, to charred skeletons.
    Markal reached the top. Three figures stood looking east: the king, Pasha Boroah, and Hoffan, the mountain lord. The wind shifted, bringing the briny scent of the sea, and it caught their cloaks and sent them flapping. They glanced at Markal as he came to stand by their side.
    Veyre stretched below and in the distance, still several miles off. It rose on the edge of a gray, restless sea that sent breakers crashing against the rocky spit of land that sheltered the bay and the sea wall. The city was massive, five miles long where it met the coast and two miles wide, protected on one side by city walls rivaling those of Balsalom or Arvada, and by the sea on the other.
    As large as the city was, the black ziggurat at its heart dominated. It was one layer on top of another, almost pyramid shaped as it climbed. The uppermost level was a tower that stood on one edge and gave the entire structure an unbalanced look. According to captives, a second wall surrounded the citadel compound itself and was built of the same black bricks, but Markal couldn’t see it from this vantage.
    A dark feeling washed over Markal, as if someone or something had turned its malevolent gaze in their direction. No, he realized, it was the Dark Citadel itself. It gave off an energy, a black magic concentrated and radiating outward like the tendrils of some tumorous growth.
    “Well, friends,” Whelan said. “What do you think? Can we take it?”
    “There’s no army to stop us from laying siege,” Hoffan said.
    Markal eyed the burned fields and destroyed villages that dotted the plains between their encampment west of the city and the walls themselves. The destruction hadn’t been Whelan’s doing, but the dark wizard scorching the landscape ahead of the invading army.
    “And once we’ve surrounded the city, what then?” Markal said.
    Whelan shrugged. “Attack with siege weapons, attempt to scale the walls. Turn your magic against the city, see if you can break the dark wizard’s hold on the Veyrians’ minds.”
    “I don’t know where to begin such a thing.”
    “We can mine the walls,” Hoffan said. “We have the men and the tools.”
    Whelan nodded and glanced at Markal. “And magic to soften the ground.”
    Pasha Boroah cleared his throat. “Has anyone seen the dragon?”
    “Not since yesterday,” Markal said. “It might be in the city, waiting for us. Or it might be hunting the griffin riders west of here.”
    “There’s smoke rising from the citadel,” Boroah said. “Perhaps they’re feeding it for battle.”
    Pasha Boroah was a Selphan with a blue turban and bushy sideburns that connected to his mustache. He stroked his whiskers when he was thinking, which he seemed to do a good deal of. Whelan had privately