The dead will live forever.
That’s what the necromancers taught. What Niyandrians were supposed to believe.
But the carrion birds circling overhead, the red-skinned corpses on the ground, told a different story.
Naphor, the ancient capital of Niyas, was about to fall.
Around Captain Carred Selenas, in the Avenue of Bone that led from the palace to the city’s east gate, the surviving warriors of the Last Cohort were mounted, awaiting her order to flee.
Together, they watched as Queen Talia rose on a dark crest of sorcery above the invaders from the mainland pouring through the breach in the curtain walls. The Niyandrian Queen’s crimson skin glowed like lava from the forces coursing through her. She looked so gaunt. Her stick limbs and frail body were swamped by the black robe that whipped and snapped around her. She resembled the thing the mainlanders called her: a demon. The Necromancer Queen.
Ice formed in Carred’s guts. They were not wrong in their assessment.
She had seen.
Oh, Talia.
Carred stifled her tears. Bit back revulsion.
She understood now just what it was she’d seen during the night, when she’d woken in Talia’s bed. And she’d smelled the odor of decay, heard the whispering of distant voices. The image of the Queen, naked flesh rippling with unearthly light, the misty forms of women and men drifting around her, had burned itself in Carred’s mind.
Talia had sacrificed too much for the power to protect her people, and still it hadn’t been enough.
Carred had cried out, revealing she was awake. She’d seen the flash of anger in Talia’s eyes as the Queen turned to face her and the spirits faded away. The rage had only been fleeting, replaced with tears and professions of love. And Carred had melted, believed what she wanted to believe. Talia was her queen, her life, her love.
And so, she’d welcomed the Queen back to bed and held her close, willing the warmth back into Talia’s body, which had begun the slow drift into the realm of the dead.
A roar of triumph went up from the enemy charging across the plaza in front of the palace, their battle formations giving way to the chaos of a mob. It was a massacre in the name of their five-faced god.
The rose-and-star standard of the City States bobbed among them, along with the scythe-and-ox of the Pristart Combine and the golden hawk of Kaile. The yellows, greens and blues of their surcoats blurred together in one seething mass. The only semblance of discipline left in the enemy lines was among the hundreds of white-cloaked Knights of the Order of Eternal Vigilance, each surrounded by a sphere of light that could turn a blade or repel all but the most potent sorcery.
Red-skinned Niyandrians ran from their homes, some of them carrying children. Carred almost disobeyed her queen then, almost ordered the Last Cohort to charge to their aid. It would have been suicide, the outcome still the same. And she’d made Talia a promise.
The panicked Niyandrians swarmed toward the knights, howling, screaming, flinging the destructive enchantments that came so easily to their race. Silver motes sparked from the spheres around the knights. Ensorcelled blades came down. Blood sprayed.
Carred looked away, her eyes drawn to where Talia hovered above the slaughter. The air about the Queen quivered under the strain of unseen forces. It seemed that Talia grew denser somehow. Her skin danced with flames.
Carred shielded her eyes as lightning flashed.
Sparks erupted from Queen Talia’s protective wards. Her eyes blazed golden as she sought out the enemy sorcerer who had blasted her. She slung out a hand, and purplish vapor whiplashed toward a red-robed man. As it struck, he putrefied in an instant, his remains splashing to the ground, bubbling and steaming.
“Yes!” Carred muttered through gritted teeth. “Yes!”
Around her, horses nickered as their riders watched the fighting with anxious eyes and slumped shoulders. They had been chosen to survive, yet every one of them would have preferred to stay and die.
A cry sounded from the end of the Avenue of Bone. The Last Cohort had been spotted. Enemy footmen poured between the shops and houses, streaming toward them.
Carred flinched as the Queen glared down at her. Though she was a hundred yards below, she heard Talia’s words as if they were whispered in her ear. “Aren’t you leaving it a bit late, Captain? It’s time for you to go.”
Tears streamed down Carred’s cheeks. She’d served Talia since she was old enough to hold a sword. At sixteen, she’d been the youngest Niyandrian to join the Last Cohort. Three years later, she’d been raised to captain, always close to the Queen, ever her intimate.
Talia glanced toward the eastern gate. She’d ordered it open the moment a trebuchet’s missile collapsed a section of the southern wall. Enemy soldiers surged toward the gate, ensuring no one escaped the slaughter. The Queen soared higher into the sky, spinning as she went, tendrils of dark sorcery radiating out from her, lashing, cutting, burning. Mainlanders fell screaming, yet still more came.
“Flee!” Talia commanded the Last Cohort. “Now!” Just for Carred, she added, “Hallow Hill. Don’t forget.” For a moment the Queen’s face twisted, as if she was worried she’d made the wrong decision. “Please, Carred … don’t leave me in the realm of the dead.”
Concussive blasts hammered the Queen’s wards, spinning her to the ground.
Carred started to dismount, but Talia rolled to her knees and stood, wreathed in emerald light.
“No,” Carred mouthed.
She sat back in her saddle, kicked her heels into her horse’s flanks and yelled for the rest of the Last Cohort to follow. At a gallop, she tore through the channel Talia had opened in the enemy ranks, close to thirty riders in her wake. Pressure built in her head. Sulfur and earth and coppery blood filled her nostrils—the stench of Talia’s sorcery.
Enemy sorcerers fled toward the breach in the southern wall, shouting warnings. They knew what was coming. Mainland soldiers started to scatter, but it was too late—for them as well as for Naphor.
As Carred shot through the eastern gate, she glanced back over her shoulder. The Queen’s emerald blaze filled the sky above the city, pulsing, throbbing, a thunderhead ready to burst. Blood oozed from Carred’s nostrils. The hairs on her arms stood on end.
Riders of the Last Cohort caught up to Carred and swept to either side, shouted on by Derin Lan, one of her lieutenants.
And then the Queen’s pent-up energies exploded.
The shock wave buckled the knees of Carred’s horse. She flew over its head and slammed into the ground. Dazed and seeing double, she wriggled her fingers, her toes; tried to flex her arms. The chink of spurs, the clump of boots, and Derin Lan was there, helping her up.
“You all right?” he asked in a shaky voice.
Carred swallowed as she nodded, suddenly all too aware of the weight of her mail.
She looked back at the devastation. The massed ranks of the allied armies that had remained outside the walls with their trebuchets and ballistae were a frozen vignette, hands covering ears. One of their siege towers teetered precariously. Black smoke billowed above the shattered city. Scarcely a stone stood atop another.
Naphor was gone.
And so was the Queen.
The sky was leaden and there was a constant drizzle as Carred and the Last Cohort rode deep into Rynmuntithe, the great forest at the heart of Niyas. It was dusk when they came into sight of Hallow Hill.