Children of Fire (35 page)

Torian, like all the Free Cities, was surrounded by an enormous wall fifty feet high and twenty feet thick. The cracked, gray stone attested to the age of this formidable defense. The fact that it was still standing after so many centuries and countless attacks upon the city gave testament to its strength.

From his studies under Rexol, Keegan knew the Free Cities—sometimes called the Border Cities—had earned their name through the blood and suffering of their peoples. In the wake of the Cataclysm seven hundred years ago, the entire Southlands had been a collection of a hundred independent city-states evolved from primitive nomadic tribes that had chosen to settle and build rather than continue their ceaseless wandering. The settlements had been ruled by descendants of the tribal chieftains, and the towns were constantly involved in skirmishes and clashes with their neighbors.

Petty warfare was the norm; small raiding armies marched the Southlands, burning and ravaging everything in their path. The battles were crude, the weapons simple but effectively lethal nonetheless. Valuable fertile farmland was fought over and changed hands on an almost yearly basis, until the endless struggle left only a blighted, blasted stretch of sterile soil. Entire generations of young men were lost to the slaughter. Population growth and cultural evolution ground to a halt as the Southlands wallowed in the mire and misery of constant, ceaseless warfare.

And then, after nearly three centuries of stagnation, came the Unification. Seven of the strongest and most powerful warlords joined their armies and began a war of conquest and subjugation throughout the Southlands. The tiny would-be kingdoms were swallowed up into the ever-expanding empire, their ancient rivalries and conflicts forgotten as their leaders were ousted and executed by the Alliance of the Seven.

The banners of the Alliance were first seen in the middle lands, but within two decades its rapidly spreading borders had pushed south until they reached the desert, east until they reached the Frozen Wastes, and west until they reached the Great Sea. The foundations for the Southlands as it existed today were laid as the warlords divided their spoils into the provinces known as the Seven Kingdoms, each claiming the grandest city in his region as his territorial capital.

The great Southland Empire had been constrained on three points of the compass—south, east, and west—by geography and nature. So the warlords turned their land-hungry armies to the north, where they expected their massive forces to conquer everything until they reached the forests of the Danaan. Instead, for the first time, they found pockets of true resistance and an enemy they couldn't sweep away with the sheer numbers of troops at their command: the Free Cities.

Legends of the wars against the Free Cities were well known among the Southlands, and were even more famous in places like Torian. Tales of sieges lasting twenty years, with a few hundred soldiers holding the great walled fortress towns against ten thousand armed foes camped around the gates. Myths of brave City Lords who refused surrender, fiercely clinging to their independence against overwhelming, impossible odds yet somehow succeeding in the end. Epic sagas of the Southland generals crashing their forces against the walls with the relentless fury of pounding waves battering the shore cliffs, only to have their charge and spirits broken time and time again by the stalwart courage of the defenders on the other side.

Of course not all the stories from the Free Cities' Wars were heroic. Dark rumors of cannibalism evolved out of whispers that those trapped within the walled towns could not have survived without devouring their own kind, but Rexol had taught Keegan that this was mostly Southland propaganda. The sieges were not proper sieges. Each of the Free Cities had been built against the very edge of the North Forest, their walls actually extending back into the tree line. When the Southland armies came, they found it impossible to totally surround the walled towns. The north gates within the woods were not blockaded, giving the citizens an escape and a back door to bring in supplies and food.

Not that the Southland generals hadn't tried to cut off this access route. But each time soldiers had been forced into the forbidden woods to try to encircle their enemy, they never returned. It was never proven or admitted, but most historians suspected the Danaan were responsible for the vanishing troops. Either overtly or covertly, they had supported the efforts of the Free Cities, anxious to maintain a buffer between their own lands and those of the expansionist human empire to the south.

In the end the Southlands had admitted defeat, and turned from warfare to diplomacy to try to bring the unbreakable walled towns into their fold. The result was a collection of semi-autonomous cities, strongly allied with the Seven Capitals yet able to resist many of the compromises and political capitulations the rest of the Southlands had to bow to, including the decrees of the Order.

During the Purge, the Free Cities had resisted the Order as they had resisted the Southern warlords before, with similar success. Here the Pontiff had little influence and even less power. Here Keegan and Jerrod might find sanctuary against the death sentence imposed on them by the Monastery, appealing to Beethania the City Lord through her court mage Khamin Ankha, Rexol's former apprentice.

They were nearing the southern gate now, Keegan and Jerrod and a hundred other travelers along the massive road. The pair had joined the crowd about a mile back, diverting from their previous plan of staying on the lesser-used paths. There was only one way into Torian from this side, and that was through the massive, heavily guarded gates.

Despite the crush of people around them, Keegan knew they would stand out. Jerrod had decided they would make no effort to hide who or what they were. In fact, he had insisted that Keegan adorn himself in full battle regalia: bare-chested, his body covered in painted glyphs and wards, and Rexol's gorgon's-skull staff held in his hand.

The monk wanted to make an impression. He wanted to draw the attention of the city authorities. He wanted everyone to know a fierce Chaos mage was in the city; he wanted Rexol's former apprentice to come to them.

Keegan could feel the eyes of everyone on him as they passed through the enormous walls and into the borders of the city. He disdained to return their gaze—as a Chaos mage, the commoners were beneath him. Yet from the corner of his eye he saw a runner scurrying away, obviously going to alert the city officials of their presence. Jerrod had what he wanted: They had been noticed.

Torian, once a bastion of military might that had withstood the Alliance of the Seven Warlords, was now a thriving trade center; a bridge between the Southlands and the mysterious Danaan kingdom hidden in the trees beyond the north gate. The Danaan influence was obvious throughout the city. Many of the green-hued Forest Folk walked among the crowd, and in the features and coloration of the general populace Keegan could detect the subtle traces of a not quite purely human ancestry. Anywhere else a child of a Danaan and a human would be reviled as an abomination, a half-breed. But judging by the evidence in Torian, here such offspring were accepted with at least a grudging tolerance.

The clothing and fashions were also markedly different from those in the Southlands. Of course styles varied city to city and region to region, but even among the most disparate trends there was always something familiar, something distinctly Southern about the preferred dress within the provinces: functionally, durable garb, and subdued colors.

Here people wore clothes that were loose and flowing. They accessorized with long, delicate scarves that fluttered when they walked or wore diaphanous capes and cloaks atop their outfits. Boots were soft worked leather rather than the hard, cured hide Keegan was familiar with. And everywhere he looked Keegan saw bright tones; red, orange, and green were obviously the colors of choice.

The architecture also reflected the influence of Danaan culture. The squat, square edifices common throughout the Southlands were rare here; instead the town was dominated by tall, elegant towers reminiscent of sketches of the Danaan capital that Keegan had seen in the volumes of Rexol's library. Torian looked less like a city and more like a forest of buildings.

The main thoroughfare was crowded, but no more so than any merchant city in the Southlands. The towers were widely and evenly spaced, creating an orderly grid of broad crisscrossing roads that made moving about the city a simple, almost enjoyable task. And the streets within Torian were, to Keegan's surprise, remarkably clean. The stench and grime associated with major urban centers was all but absent; the congestion and filth of overcrowding that seemed to be a common trait among the Seven Capitals had not yet settled into Torian's character.

Keegan was able to take in the look and feel of the city at his leisure, as Jerrod had slowed their pace to a crawl. He wanted Torian's officials to find them. By now, Khamin Ankha had to know that another wizard had arrived in the town. And, Keegan thought, if Rexol's old apprentice chose not to approach them—if he chose to keep official channels closed—they could simply venture onward into the Danaan lands.

They were still heading north on the main thoroughfare, which would eventually lead them to the much smaller gates of the northern wall. There, Keegan knew, they would have to pay a toll to cross into the Danaan lands. Likely, the guards would warn them not to stray from the well-defined road.

If they followed the trade route it would eventually lead them to the Danaan town that had sprung up at the intersection of all the trade routes from all the Free Cities, a nameless community created solely for the purpose of exchanging goods between the human and Danaan peoples. There merchants could buy or sell their wares before returning along the trade routes to the Free Cities that led back into the Southlands.

It was common knowledge the Danaan tolerated merchants and visitors in their domain only so long as they stayed on the trade routes. Anyone straying from the designated areas would be sentenced to immediate execution should their transgression be discovered by an Danaan patrol. And yet there were those who dared to leave the trade routes. Explorers trying to locate and map the hidden Danaan cities. Foolish or brave adventurers seeking long-lost treasure rumored to be hidden beneath the thick branches of the North Forest. Emissaries determined to bypass the restrictions of the Danaan monarchy so they could try to establish diplomatic relations with the forbidden kingdom. Very few of these who left the road, for any reason, ever returned alive.

They had already passed the midway point of the city when they were finally greeted by an official presence. A cadre of banner-carrying footmen marched in tight formation through the streets toward them, the crowd parting before their progress. Behind them were several mounted knights, their lances fluttering with the same flags the footmen carried—a single white tower on a deep blue background, the symbol of Lady Beethania, Torian's current City Lord. Behind the knights rode a man Keegan could only imagine was Khamin Ankha, the most important lord's mage in Torian.

In general, Keegan had little respect for lord's mages. Rexol had once told him that they were often far more skilled in political maneuvering than in the wizard's Gift. Their position was primarily ceremonial; it was rare they could wield magic with anything even approaching the power of a true Chaos mage—or even a village witch or sorcerer.

Keegan had often wondered why those with a true command of Chaos were so rarely found in the position of lord's mage. Perhaps the nobles feared the spellcasters in their employ would overthrow them if they had any true power. Or perhaps those with the ability to shape and control Chaos would not subject themselves to the employ of another, even one as important as a city lord or king. Keegan knew Rexol would never have sworn fealty to anyone but himself.

He had expected Khamin Ankha to be the exception to the rule. He had, after all, studied under Rexol. However, his first impression reinforced his previous experiences rather than dispelled them. This was a man with only the slightest hint of Chaos in the aura about him.

Despite the many cultural differences between Torian and the Seven Capitals, his uniform of office was remarkably similar to that of the lord's mages Keegan had seen in the Southlands. He wore heavy purple robes that completely covered his rather ample frame, the tower of Lady Beethania emblazoned prominently on his chest. His hair was neatly combed, his body almost devoid of tattoos or piercings. His only visible ornamentations were a pair of small earrings, a few necklaces dangling down, and several rings on his plump, fleshy fingers. His skin had a pale hue and seemed to gleam with a strange sheen, though that might merely have been the sun reflecting off the rivulets of sweat running down the fat man's brow.

The man looked vaguely familiar to Keegan, even though he was sure they had never met. After a few moments, he dismissed it as unimportant. The man looked like any other lord's mage in any of a dozen courts in the Southlands. Why shouldn't his appearance seem vaguely familiar?

As the company drew close the footmen stepped to either side to form twin lines along the edges of the road. They raised their banners in unison as the knights pranced their mounts through the line, then assumed their places beside the footmen. Next came the lord's mage, slowly riding forward to greet them. The pomp and ceremony of his arrival left a bitter taste in Keegan's mouth.

“I am Khamin Ankha,” the man proclaimed in a booming voice that surely carried several blocks in every direction, “I welcome you to the Free City of Torian. I am honored to extend an invitation to you and your companions on behalf of Lady Beethania. I have come to escort you to her mansion.”

“I am Jerrod, and this is Keegan—a student of Rexol, your former master,” Jerrod replied in a much lower voice.

“We were beginning to think you wouldn't show, Khamin,” he added. “We certainly did our part to let you know we were coming.”