Chapter XXXII

“Grand Duke Jachai, it's been a while,” said Grigori as he was brought before the Grand Duke in the castle of Migdal.

“I would've preferred to see you stoned for what you did to my wife,” Jachai said with a sneer. “But I have need of you.”

“I've heard. I'm to be a bargaining chip, then? You're willing to let the man you accuse of being your wife's murderer go free so long as Marquis Husam does too? Husam must be very important to you.”

“Lock him up!” Jachai said, waving a hand to the castle guards.

“Aryn won't give up Husam for me!” Grigori shouted. “We both know how this will end, don't embarrass yourself!”

Truth was, while Jachai wanted Husam as an ally in this war a part of him hoped Grigori was right, that Queen Aryn would not trade Husam for him. If Grigori was killed as part of hostage negotiations there would be far fewer questions about his death than there would have been had Jachai simply had Grigori executed for Liat's murder.

If Aryn decided she would not trade for Grigori then Jachai would feel little remorse for killing Grigori. Grigori may not have been responsible for Liat's death, but as far as Jachai was concerned he may as well have been. Such treachery! Jachai invited Grigori in to his home, gave him a job, took care of him, invited him to eat at his table, and Grigori decided to have relations with his wife. There was an old saying in Arx that those who shared bread and salt together became close friends. If you shared a pound of salt you became like family. He’d eaten enough dinners with Grigori to be considered family. It was Grigori who’d broken that sacred trust. What had happened to loyalty and honesty in this kingdom? Did none of that matter anymore? Was Jachai the only one who cared about such matters as the sacred covenant of a marriage?

Then it hit him, and Jachai understood the whole matter in an entirely different light; he wasn't responsible for Liat's death. Liat and Grigori were responsible. Sure, Jachai was the one who forced her head under the water, but Liat was the one who had sworn the oath that only death would come between her and her husband, and Grigori, knowing full well that she'd sworn such an oath, seduced her to satisfy his own selfish desires anyway. Jachai was the victim, not Liat or Grigori! The more he thought about it the tighter his fist became, and the tighter he gritted his teeth, until his own nails had drawn blood in his palm and his teeth had all but cracked.

. . .

At Count Osias' advice, Mahla and the rest of the Dunn Banner Knights had left the previous night. Osias had their few horses shod backwards, and special boots made for those on foot for the first few miles of the trip. The shoes were uncomfortable, but when scouts and spies found the tracks in the morning it would look like a large group of people was moving to the castle of Migdal, not away from it. When dawn had finally broken, Mahla gave her comrades the signal to stop and take off the special boots, and re-shoe the horses. Her knights had been groaning and complaining for hours by then and now were finally happy to be wearing normal, comfortable boots.

“A dozen stones at your face are far more uncomfortable than any weirdly-shaped boots. Quit your griping!” Mahla yelled at them.

Lila sighed in relief as she slipped off the boots. She cracked her toes and rubbing the sore soles of her feet. “I take it we're on our way to Laherig?”

“Aye,” Mahla said. “Five-hundred soldiers is far too few to make a real difference in this war. I'm Duchess of Laherig. The soldiers there will follow me into battle.”

“Can't imagine they haven't gotten word that you're officially considered a traitor to the crown. That helping you would be treason,” Lila said, lacing up her regular boots. “What makes you so sure they'll fight for you?”

“The odds are already in my favor. Grand Duke Jachai, along with nearly every other military leader in Arx, is backing me up. With such an army on my side this is going to be a short war, and when it's over and I'm Queen anyone who DIDN'T help me will be guilty of treason. I don't think the soldiers at Laherig will be willing to take the risk that I'll be merciful.” Mahla shrugged and smirked. “That's not exactly my reputation.”

“Yes...about that reputation...” Lila began, pulling the boot straps tight and tying them. “Being known as a ruthless warrior who gets the job done is a great reputation to have as a mercenary, but as a queen? I'm not so sure...”

“What? You want me to be more like Queen Aryn?” Mahla asked. “Soft and weak? Sympathetic to the weakest in the kingdom? I don't know if you've noticed, but this civil war is because of her weak leadership. People as weak as Aryn need to step down, let the strong take control. When Aryn's mother, Sarahi, conquered the Nihilites do you think she did it by being nice?”

“No, but it was relatively easy because they had no king and most of the nobility had been killed in a major uprising,” Lila said. “It's horrible, really, that so many people these days don't know their history, but a small group of revolutionaries were leading a huge revolt against the nobility of Nihilus. Why? Because the noble houses were abusing the poor, taking advantage of them. Noblemen were dragged out of their houses in the middle of the night and murdered in the streets! The poor are not as weak as you think they are. They have little in the way of weapons or training, but they outnumber the nobility and their knights over a hundred to one! I just…don’t want to see anything bad happen to you.”

“You're worried that the Arxians will do what the Nihilites did?” Mahla laughed. “Fine. Tell you what, next time we see a poor beggar getting picked on by mean ruffians we'll do something about it.”

. . .

Sixteen years since geomancers nearly collapsed Ten Red Pass onto the advancing Nihilite army. Sixteen years since they made the ground shake with their magic. How quickly the noble houses had forgotten, how easily the lesson from long ago had slipped their mind. Now they stood against the Church, knowing full well that the Church had total command over Arx's geomancers.

Kamal had been Queen Aryn's geomancy tutor for years, and as such he was one of the lucky ones selected to make a lasting impression on the rebelling noble houses. He and nineteen other geomancers were all it would take to make this plan work.

All of them were in disguise, dressed in peasants' clothing and covered in dirt, so as not to arouse suspicion. Each of them had a horse pulling a wagon. The wagons were filled with hay or harvested wheat. Once they got within sight of the castle, Kamal cast a spell upon the ground, which caused a rock to rise from the dirt. His wheel struck the rock and broke. From the walls of the castle it would be unlikely that the watchers in the towers would be able to see the broken wheel, but in case anyone came by Kamal knew they would need an excuse to have stopped directly in front of the castle.

Kamal threw his hands into the air in feigned frustration, and stepped down off of his carriage to inspect the broken wheel. While he was kneeling down, he slipped off the straps tying the horse to the wagon. All of the other geomancers stopped their wagons as well, walking over, pretending that each of them were helping him look at the broken wheel.

“Alright,” Kamal said, “Begin the chant.”

All of them knelt by the disabled wagon, kept the castle in sight, and began their chant.

. . .

“Scouts are reporting that a Saburan army has just entered the March of Nagav, with a royal messenger among them,” Count Osias said.

“And we already have soldiers from the West in the capital,” Jachai sneered. “Aryn relies on foreign armies to keep her throne! Surely the people will not let this stand!”

“Actually, your Excellency, the rich merchants and traders are rejoicing in this. They saw it will be good for trade relations with these other lands,” said Count Joab of Xane.

“Vultures!” yelled Count Okran of Mt. Orson. “Profiteering on the war! They'd let the Nihilites conquer us and sacrifice us all to their demons if there was enough coin in it!”

“We'll have Marquis Husam back soon enough,” Jachai said. “Then all these foreign armies will make little difference. We'll be able to surround the capital, destroy the surrounding farmlands, and then starve them out.”

“What if your prisoner is right?” asked Count Osias. “What if Aryn doesn't trade Husam for Grigori?”

“She'll make the trade,” Jachai said. “Grigori helped raise her, from my understanding. He's like a father to her, he's family. She won't let him die.”

“It will still be a few more days before the rest of our armies arrive, so we have to plan for-” Osias was cut off as the ground began to shake intensely. He fell out of his chair, and his head hit the table on the way down.

Jachai immediately dropped under the table as books fell off the shelves on the walls, and then the shelves fell off too. The shaking was so intense they may as well have been in a tiny boat on turbulent waters rather than a fortress on solid ground, and it was only getting worse as it went on. Count Okran stumbled and crashed through the doorway. Count Joab joined Jachai under the table. As the shaking intensified the table began to move and slide across the floor. Jachai and Joab grabbed the table so that they could hold it still, but soon they found this simply ensured that whenever the table moved they moved with it.

Sudden jolts through the floor pushed them both upwards three times, and they heard the sound of the walls beginning to crack. The mortar between the bricks began to break, and gray dust filled the air. The candelabras had fallen over, and the tapestries and paintings, now on the floor, had caught fire. To their horror, Jachai and Joab watched one of the walls cave in, and the ceiling come crashing down on them. The collapsed wall broke most of the ceiling's fall, and the table caught most of the debris. They could feel the shock of each of the bricks hitting the table, and heard the splinters breaking off.

As they heard the floor underneath them crack and groan they came to a most horrible realization: they were on the second floor of the castle. Beneath them they could hear the rumbling, the breaking down of the mortar holding the walls together, the cracking of the support pillars, and the screaming of those below trapped in the falling debris.

Finally, the floor underneath them gave out, and the two of them felt a sensation like a hook in their bellies, dragging them downward as they fell amongst the other debris. Jachai crashed onto a broken pillar and slid down the side of it, covering his face as debris fell at him. Joab crashed into a table on the level below and broke through it. The unconscious Count Osias fell on one of the knights huddled in the corner below, with a loud clang as their armor hit. The knight yelped and fell motionless.

Even with all of this destruction, the shaking continued on, and Jachai looked up to see the two walls still standing, towering over him and the other lords. They began to sway. With a groan of pain he scrambled to get under the pillar he'd landed on. Yes, he'd be buried alive if he got under there, but at least he'd be alive. He knew that if he was on top of the pillar when the other two walls fell he'd be crushed completely.

Sure enough, the remaining two walls of the keep came tumbling down. Jachai and the other lords were buried underneath all the rubble.

. . .

Much to Kamal's horror, the spell had worked much better, or worse, than he expected. After over an hour of chanting the ground under the castle of Migdal had begun to shake, and within minutes after that the entire castle had collapsed. The ground all around the castle was split open, small new hills had formed, and dust filled the sky over the ruined castle. The other geomancers cheered at the success of their joined efforts, but Kamal simply stared in horror at what he'd done, what he'd contributed to.

As the other geomancers saddled up their horses and rode off, wanting to be as far away from the wreckage of the castle as possible, Kamal decided to do something about the horrific sight before him. He walked up to the ruined castle and began using his magic to move aside the stones piled on top of those inside the castle.

The first body he found was utterly crushed, a knight with his head bashed in and his chest broken. Then a servant, a man with his arms and legs broken, and a face pale from loss of blood. Finally he found his first survivor, a woman in chain-mail armor, with the symbol of Count Osias on her tabbard.

“What happened?” the knight asked.

Kamal hesitated. He didn't want to lie to her, but if he admitted that he brought the castle down on top of her and her comrades she’d surely kill him, and at the moment he wanted her to help him unearth any other potential survivors. “There was an earthquake,” Kamal said. “We have to get everyone else out of the wreckage. Start on the other end.”

In time more and more survivors were found, and the few in any condition to help dig up others pitched in. When Kamal was confident that the situation was under control, he slipped away, knowing that the unearthing of the castle of Migdal would take days, and he certainly didn't want to be anywhere near the survivors when they realized that the disaster was the work of geomancers.