Page 16 of Siege of Stone (Sister of Darkness: The Nicci Chronicles 3)

Utros sighed. “I don’t want to believe them. You say that I’m the heart of this army, but I draw my strength only because I serve my emperor.”

And I have betrayed him with his wife … the woman I love.

“I may be strong, and I may have led these soldiers to many victories,” he said, “but without my emperor, I am like a door without a hinge. He is my commander.”

Ava returned to the bed and sat next to him. She began to caress his chest, while Ruva stroked his back. They touched his cheeks, the smooth skin and the dragon-burn scar.

All he could think of was beautiful Majel with her long black hair, streaked with reddish highlights when the sunshine struck her. Her almond-shaped brown eyes, her tanned skin that was more beautiful than gold, her kisses, her sighs, her moans as he held her, taking her with ferocity in his tent like an animal in heat. And then after that passion was sated, a longer, slower lovemaking as they sang a song with their bodies, a secret song that Emperor Kurgan could never hear.…

“Our magic is given to you,” said Ava, lying down and draping her leg over his, while Ruva touched his thigh, then wrapped herself around him as well. They were trying to tangle themselves in a knot of bodies and cold flesh. They had painted their smooth, hairless skin with fresh, bright colors again, but he could not see the details in the dimness of the smoky fires.

“We will give you everything, beloved Utros, if we can.”

“As you always have,” the general said in a soft voice, and then he responded to their touch.

The sisters had given him their devotion, their love, their energy, their faith, since they were teenage girls. They’d been considered oddities, revered in a small mountain town, which was one of the first conquests General Utros had made in expanding Iron Fang’s empire. Ava and Ruva had been born even closer than normal twins. Their bodies were fused, their legs melded like two soft candles pressed together.

The babies might have died or been cast out by superstitious villagers, but their father took a terrible chance while they were still infants. As their mother wept in despair, the father had taken his sharpest skinning knife and placed the two connected infant girls on a table. He had cut them apart, hacking through the skin and fused bone that was like an intertwined tree. He had broken them apart, splitting their fused legs; then he wrapped the wounds that bled and bled. Their wounds became severely infected. The shrieking babies had faltered, becoming sicker and sicker.

Then they had died. The spirits of the two innocent infants went to the underworld and actually faced the Keeper. Their hearts stopped, but for only a few minutes. Somehow the village healer managed to revive them. The father stood there, his face sagging, horrified at what he had done. But the girls lived. They had been snatched away from the Keeper.

But He had touched them.

Though each had a horrific matching scar on her leg, the girls were strong, and they healed. They tested each other. They grew up and learned how to walk and run so that they barely showed even a limp. But they did not hide their scars; they flaunted them, wearing short shifts, growing up aloof and beautiful.

When they were ten, the Keeper claimed the debt they had taken from him by killing both their mother and father in a terrible coughing plague, leaving the odd twins to raise themselves. The village feared Ava and Ruva, but their real magic hadn’t manifested until their blood courses came, at the age of thirteen. The young sorceresses lived in the cottage their father had built, and they terrified the villagers. They did no work, but simply claimed whatever food they wished, the clothing they needed, by walking into other houses and rifling through wardrobes and shelves, walking off with what was their due. The townspeople were too frightened to argue with them.

When Utros’s armies marched into their village, the soldiers pillaging and ransacking, the town leader begged the twin sorceresses to help. Ava and Ruva merely scoffed at him, then walked through the startled ranks of soldiers and presented themselves before General Utros.

“You need us with you,” Ruva had said.

“Why?” Utros had demanded, not understanding who the twins were, although he had seen the odd sparkle and offset gaze in their faces.

“You’ll know, sooner or later.”

Utros had indeed taken the twins as his own, though not as lovers. They were too young, and even though they grew to be quite beautiful, he never changed his mind. When he asked Ava and Ruva what he should do with their village, if he should subdue it in the name of Emperor Kurgan, they advised him to make a gesture that could not be misread by other villages in line to be conquered. So he killed all the townspeople and burned the buildings, then spread the word. He’d been a brash young commander then, and the sacrifice of that one town caused fifteen others within a day’s ride to surrender immediately to the banner of Iron Fang.

Utros never took credit for his victory, always insisted that Kurgan deserved the power and the glory, which meant that the emperor also received the blame and the fear. Utros moved on, conquering land after land.…

“We will help you fight,” said Ruva now, whispering close to his face in the dim command structure. “My sister and I know many spells, but for simple information, there is a more straightforward way.”

“I know,” he said. It had been several days since his army had awakened, and their siege was firmly in place. He remembered when this military force had first arrived at Ildakar. They had just recovered from the disastrous attack of the wild silver dragon they intended to unleash against the city.

Even without the dragon, Utros had brought his ranks to fill the plain and let Ildakar tremble before the unspoken threat for two days before he had marched up to the city gates to demand their surrender. He’d known they wouldn’t concede immediately, but he could starve and strangle them over time.

He hadn’t expected the wizards of Ildakar to turn his army to stone for centuries.

Those events seemed like only a week ago in his own mind.

“I’ve made my decision,” he said. “We’ll demand to speak with their representatives. Our next step depends on how Ildakar responds.” He smiled, then reached up to stroke his stiff beard and the patchy scar on his left cheek. “After we talk with them, I will plan how to tear down the city.”

CHAPTER 12

The next morning, Nicci awoke refreshed from dreams of running free and wild while also assessing the siege army. Now her thoughts assembled the details of the huge encampment she had seen through Mrra’s eyes.

She joined Nathan as he emerged from his own quarters dressed in trim white wizard’s robes enhanced with gold stitching on the cuffs and collar. After he had freed himself from his long confinement in the Palace of the Prophets, Nathan Rahl had preferred fine ruffled shirts and tight pants, high boots, wide belts, but on their journey he’d been stripped of his magic for so long, and now that he could use his gift again, he had decided to look like a wizard.

“Shall we solve this problem today, Sorceress?” he said with a quirk of his lips. “Save Ildakar and dispel the enemy army so we can be on our way again?”

Nicci set her jaw as they emerged from under the trellises of sweet-smelling vine flowers. “Yes, that would be a good idea.”

She had never shied away from difficult tasks. Even without the threat of the ancient army, Ildakaran society had many raw wounds that needed to heal. Many in Ildakar were selfish and aloof, takers who thought only of their own needs and nothing of the hard work, the blood and sweat of those who supplied them. But she had also met many strong and worthy citizens, including the followers of Mirrormask. Though the rebel leader himself had been a sham, the freed slave Rendell had shown particular wisdom and bravery, and Nicci was also sure that numerous merchants and lesser nobles would be worth preserving. Yes, parts of Ildakar had to be saved.

When she’d led conquests for the Imperial Order, Nicci had viewed Jagang’s entire army, from the commanders to the foot soldiers, as tools, nothing more. She herself had been raised under t

he poison philosophy of the Order, blind to the good in people. During her lifetime, Nicci’s tragedies and pain had turned her heart to black ice, and when her love for Richard Rahl thawed that ice and helped her see the truth, she herself had become the tool, the weapon that Richard required.

Nicci had felt only satisfaction when she killed Jagang, but that cold determination was tested to its limits when she was forced to murder the innocent girl Thistle so she could obtain the poison she needed to save the world.

That had been a prediction written by the witch woman Red in Nathan’s life book. And the Sorceress must save the world. The witch woman’s other premonition had guided a powerless Nathan over the high mountain pass of Kol Adair to Ildakar, where he had found the heart of a wizard to restore his lost gift.

Nicci had always made her own choices, pursued her own goals, rather than following the capricious winds of prophecy, but she took the life-book pronouncement seriously. And the Sorceress must save the world.

In order to win here in Ildakar, she needed to find her heart of black ice again. She would use her skills to save the city and defeat General Utros. The fight would require the resources, the weapons, the magic, and the manpower of the entire city, from powerful wizards down to the common people. She hoped they were willing to pay the cost for their freedom.

Outside the grand villa, the sound of the army hammering on the walls was a monotonous background noise that thrummed through the streets, but Nicci barely noticed it after several days.

When the pounding abruptly stopped, the unexpected silence was as loud as a scream.

Nathan nearly stumbled on the fine gravel path as he walked alongside her. “Dear spirits!” He scanned the skies, gazing past the city to the tiny dots of soldiers on the plain.

Nicci narrowed her eyes, listening to the sudden quiet. “I don’t like this.”

Nathan forced an unconvincing smile. “Maybe it means Utros has decided to surrender.”

“Neither of us is that much of a fool,” Nicci said, hurrying toward the wall.

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