Famfrit's Jewel - Chapter 4
The Siege of Ankoron
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Marazoth sat on an ornate rug in the middle of his tent with tomes, codices, and scrolls strewn around him, half opened and half read. Famfrit’s Jewel shined in his hands, the transparent crystal slick yet dry, illuminated and without shadow. The power washed over him like a hot summer wind, making his fingers tingle with potential.
Chainmail clattered beyond the canvas walls, hammers clanked against steel, horses whinnied, men shared war stories, embellished more than a bard’s tale. Somewhere more distant cows mooed and cottars shouted to one another about what tasks were left for the day. Marazoth centred himself, picturing the walls of Ankoron just over the hill, his past and future home. He listed the men and women who’d shunned him and his parents, some where dead but they had heirs who could be punished all the same. His curse, his gift, would become their dread. King Ceradas’s most of all. Death would be a blessing to them.
Marazoth reached out with his mind, worming a tendril of will towards the Jewel. It spoke to him in a song of long low pitched notes that undulated, wrapping round his mind and tugged at his thoughts. Was that the voice of a god? The sorcerer found the centre of the crystal and seized it with his mind. The low notes became high, frantic and hasty. Sweat beaded down his neck. The centre of the Jewel fought him, poking and prodding, burning and freezing, the power concentrated itself and pressed against his immaterial grip. Marazoth set his jaw and wrestled.
‘Marazoth, master?’ Asparion knocked on the wooden post holding up the tent flap door.
His grip was shattered and the world slammed back into view. An ache burrowed its way into Marazoth’s molars and worked down his jaw and into his shoulder. He was sodden with sweat. ‘Enter,’ he said, raspy and exhausted. ‘And?’
Asparion entered, hunched and older than his years. ‘I did as you asked. The men are dead, or close to it. Our tracker is delayed, his companion sure to slow him further.’
‘Good. I hope no harm befell you?’ Marazoth tightened his physical grip on Famfrit’s Jewel. The object did not resist him but the power inside it did.
‘No,’ Asparion noticed his hands were thinner than before. ‘Nothing that won’t recover with a meal.’
‘You teleported again.’
‘Had too.’
‘I’ve warned you before, I will not do so again,’ Marazoth searched his open tomes for some new morsel of guidance, some new nugget that would allow him to control the Jewel. For all the wisdom of the old sorcerers none had successfully controlled a god’s gift. Influenced, yes. Controlled, no.
‘Of course, master.’ Asparion bowed, his hair limp and dank.
‘Find mercenaries to replace the ones you lost, trained men this time, not farmers or cowherds. We advance on Ankoron at dawn. Inform the captains, don’t bother breaking camp.’ Marazoth felt the two guards posted at the door bristle, something in the air became heavy and tight.
‘We do not…’
Marazoth cut his student off, ‘The men are not our path into the city, this is.’ He held up Famfrit’s Jewel in both hands, its radiance bathed him in shadowless light. ‘Come closer, you look dreadful,’ Marazoth held the crystal out to Asparion. The spirit of it wormed its way through Asparion, revivifying him. He wondered his student could see it taking place in the same way or if it was simply a feeling.
‘You can control it?’ Asparion’s hands fattened up, his skin regained its colour, and he stood straighter. ‘Thank you, master.’
‘I can control it long enough to secure the city, and, more importantly, the king,’ Marazoth reached out again, a quick pinch at the core of the Jewel, and flung it out into the world. A chilling fog rolled off Marazoth, the edges of his rug were drained of colour, the scrolls shrivelled. Asparion staggered back as the fog crawled over his feet and out beneath the walls of the tent, the student ran and climbed atop a stool. The guards out side complained of a chill, one mentioned aching bones, the other said the ground had turned pale. ‘Such a small amount of power…’ Marazoth remembered his attempt in the greatwood, clumsy and foolish, a waste in fact. The Jewel cried out in high pitched whine.
Marazoth stood aboard his open sided palanquin, bells rang out from the four pillars. His soldiers, barely a thousand in number, marched in four columns around his command. The city of Ankoron rose from the horizon, a city as ancient as the mountains, and anyone atop its walls would be laughing at the pitiful force approaching. Good, Marazoth thought, let them laugh, it will provide a distraction. Famfrit’s Jewel sat on a plinth beside him covered with purple silk. The gates of the city stood open the days traffic, an endless line of carts and donkeys stacked with millet and barley while an equally long line of carriages and trolleys left the city with swords, pottery, and the landed gentry. Marazoth purposefully marched off the side of the road, over the grassland that had, some believed, once been part of the greatwood. He wanted them all to see, he needed them to see that the one they once shunned had returned, strong and powerful.
An arrow thunked into the dirt ahead of the palanquin. A warning. Marazoth rose his hand and the four columns halted in a single hammer of steel. A dust filled silence emanated from the road and atop the wall. Bowmen filtered back and forth, back and forth, taking positions between the merlons while runners, young boys, sprinted messages from the wall to the command posts somewhere in the city. Flags were raised on the tower, signalling order of engagement to the bowmen. Marazoth didn’t care about any of that, he was no here to fight, he was here to rule.
Chatter began on the road, between the merchant-peasants and the guards. Those at the rear of the queue turned to leave while those in the middle could do little but watch and wait. Some huddled beneath their carts. The gate captain halted all traffic leaving Ankoron, much to the chagrin of some aristocrat with a six horse carriage of lacquered wood.
Marazoth strode to the front of his palanquin and raised his hands to the flaring sun rising to the. east, ‘I demand to speak with King Ceradas. If he refuses a great plague will befall Ankoron, one no physician can cure, that no fire will kill. He has one watch to consider.’
Again the spectators on the road muttered to themselves unable, or unwilling, to act. Whoever commanded the watchman atop the wall appeared to consider the request, leaning through a merlon to get a good look at the threat. He shook his head and tapped the shoulder of the man beside him. An arrow sailed through the air and thudded into the side of Marazoth’s palanquin with a shower of splinters.
‘Try that again,’ Marazoth called up.
The commander bristled and shouted, ‘Loose!’ A hail of arrowed peppered the sky and rained down on Marazoth. His men raised their shields, though they didn’t have to. The air glittered a few feet overhead and then broken arrows littered the ground.
‘I demand to speak to King Ceradas, he has one watch,’ Marazoth repeated. The commander balked, muttered something to a boy at his side who then sprinted off.
The queue had become a crowd, centred around a few carts with the wiles to sell their pastries and wines on the road rather than wait to enter the city. ‘A mage?’ ‘No, they’re just stories.’ ‘Sorcery?’
Asparion rode up to the side of the palanquin, ‘If the King doesn’t acquiesce to parley?’
Marazoth stroked Famfrit’s Jewel.
Half a watch past with little change until the gate captain began to clear the road, shoving the peasants and merchants onto the grassland. A clatter of steel echoed from the city and a column of pikemen emerged from the city, followed by a second and a third, all in the white and gold colours of the king. The units formed up in a crescent ahead of Marazoth’s force. A bearded man in a bronze helm stepped forward, ‘The King has ordered you leave or perish, which will it be?’
‘Ever the brute,’ Marazoth stood from his wooden throne atop the palanquin and reached for the crystal. ‘I suppose I choose perish,’ he grasped for the live giving power within the Jewel and snatched a slither of its ocean and flung it out into the world, twisting and inverting it for his own ends. The chilling fog rolled from his hands, over the pair of horses pulling his platform, and onto the land. The grass shrivelled on contact but Marazoth did not cease, he stole more and more sending jolts of power along the road, atop the wall, and into Ankoron.
The traders screamed as their harvest rotted before their eyes, their pastries turned to ash on their tongue, and the wine evaporated into maroon dust. The men and women on the road fled, abandoning their donkeys and wares. The bowmen screamed as the first was struck with the Blessing of Death and he fell from the wall, a heap of bones before he hit the ground. The bronze helmed commander staggered backwards, ‘Shields!’ The pikemen raised their round shields, balancing the pikes atop them. The fog clawed up their legs and down their throats, turning the strong youth of Ankoron into decades old corpses. A bronze helm landed on the pallid earth, a skull inside.
Marazoth felt for the edge of the sorcery and tilted it slightly, he didn’t want everyone to die, there was no point ruling over a graveyard, but he had to deliver on his promise. He guided the power to rot the land, to wither the plants and animals, but deflected it from people, from his future subjects, peasants and king alike. ‘Enter the city, I would speak to the king now,’ Marazoth ordered. His columns shuddered to action, the wilted grass crumbling to dust beneath their march. Marazoth felt a thimble of the Jewel’s power swirl around him, he held it there wondering if it would resist him or if the sorcery lacked a will of its own. Was there a god inside the crystal or was it elsewhere, he didn’t know and, apparently, didn’t need to. He lacked total control over the Jewel but he had enough, he had influence.
His palanquin passed beneath the portcullis, the gate captain a pile of bones and chainmail to the side. The ground was white and cracked. The rose bushes along the walls were little more than sticks in the ground, blackened petals littered the stone. City folk cowered along the streets, a mother rushed to shutter a window a pair of children were peering through. It would do little if Marazoth deigned to kill. A woman knelt in the dirt, an old man in her arms. He was dead and judging from his gaunt and yellow face had been deathly ill. Marazoth wondered if he had caused that, if the chilling fog had took that old man’s thread of a life. He could have easily cured the man with the crystal, but such power over life and death would secure him his rule and be used sparingly.
A formation of pikemen blocked the road, shields glistening in the morning sun, their spears like dew. King Ceradas was behind them, armoured and mounted, his face hidden behind his wolf-head helm.
Marazoth sighed and separated a portion of the energies around him. He guided it towards the pikemen and let it go. A torrent of white fog poured over the men. They screamed in a clatter of bronze and steel. The spectators screamed then too and fled into their homes, into the drinking and gambling houses, into the warrens, everywhere but where their King was.
King Ceradas slumped from his mount, pulling his helm off and dropping it to the cracked earth. He gazed upon his crack troops, slack jawed and ashen, ‘What is it you want?’ he growled.
‘To rule.’
‘You want my crown?’
‘No, you can keep that particular bauble. You are a puppet, you are my puppet, am I clear?’
King Ceradas nodded, ‘But why?’
‘Puppets do not ask questions,’ Marazoth guided a slither of a slither of sorcery towards the king’s hand.
The King gasped and sank to his knees clutching his hand, ‘Make it stop! Make it stop!’
Marazoth moved his hand through the air and the pain ceased. ‘I will restore your hand, as an act of good faith, but remember this for I will not be merciful again.’
The King bowed his head.
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