was plainly evident; she had even greater incentive to betray him than before. He glanced at the pinlegs. It was imperative to transport the mysterious creature and David back to Rowan as soon as possible. David had mentioned another tunnel in Raikos, and they were drifting toward that eastern province, but he also considered Sir Alistair and Kolbyt’s warnings. Yuga might have reduced the area to a wasteland. David’s tunnel might not even exist anymore.
“What’s the date?” he wondered.
“December eighth,” replied Madam Petra. “Why?”
“Prusias expects an answer by solstice,” said Max. “That leaves just a few weeks. We’re relatively close to a place that might magic us to Rowan, but it’s near Yuga. What have you heard about her?”
“Aamon certainly gave her a wide berth,” replied Madam Petra. “His armies abandoned the Iron Road altogether and invaded Blys over open country. Supposedly she’s in Raikos, but whether she’s near Taros or Bholevna, I don’t know.”
At the mention of these cities, David stirred. Grimacing, he tried to sit up and fell back against the wicker basket. Despite the cold, his face was hot with fever.
“Bholevna,” he murmured weakly. “My pack …”
Max knelt by his friend and inspected the bandages, which were already damp with clotted blood.
“We left your pack in the wagon,” said Max. “It’s back at Piter’s Folly. What about Bholevna?”
“Tunnel …,” David whispered.
“The tunnel’s near Bholevna?”
David nodded and gestured weakly for Max to come closer. The boy’s bloodstained fingers plucked at Max’s sleeve, fumbling about until they caught hold of his hand.
“Hold it tight,” David whispered.
Max did so, wrapping both of his warm hands around David’s cold one. The sorcerer’s lips twitched, mouthing silent words over and over. Max began to feel light-headed. His head swam as David slowly leeched energy from his body like some sort of vampire.
A sudden surge of energy departed Max, pumping through his fingertips like waters bursting from a dam. David’s hand seized up as though he’d touched an electrified fence. The boy’s legs kicked against the pinlegs case, harder and harder. Max tried to tear his hands away, but he was weakening rapidly.
“Pull him off!” he wheezed.
Instantly, Toby changed from a lutin to a chimpanzee. Max felt the primate’s powerful hands grip his and pry them from David’s. Baring his teeth like a wild animal, David kicked and struck out at Toby, thrashing about the balloon’s compartment as though possessed.
“What’s the matter with him?” shrieked Toby, pulling. “He’s—”
Max toppled heavily onto his side. The motion and the smee’s efforts finally broke the connection, and David collapsed back against the wicker basket, struggling for breath. Smoke rose off the sorcerer’s clothes as though they’d been thrust into an oven.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I—I should have known … my God!”
The boy lost consciousness, his nose whistling as it often did whenever he was deeply asleep. Madam Petra crept over to Max, crouching over him and peering at him closely.
“Are you all right?” she asked tentatively.
Max nodded blandly. His wits were wandering, but he was profoundly wary of betraying any weakness to the smuggler. The woman had just lost a fortune; should she deliver Max McDaniels and David Menlo to the Enemy, she might regain it tenfold. Gathering himself, Max stood on shaky legs.
“I’m fine,” he lied. “David used me to strengthen himself. It caught me by surprise.”
The smee changed back to a lutin and examined his hands. “I didn’t know David was so strong!”
Max said nothing, seizing the opportunity to gather himself. Leaning over the basket’s rim, he allowed the cold gales to clear his mind while he gazed out at the gray clouds and the faint, gray-green landscape far below.
The winds howled at such heights, whipping through the balloon’s rigging with a stinging mix of ice and sleet. Katarina was sitting quietly, curled next to her mother, who was ministering to her burns and soiled face. Gazing back down, Max tried to estimate their speed as the balloon carried them east over a series of small lakes and hardscrabble hills. For the moment, they were traveling in the proper direction, but the winter winds were capricious. He hoped whatever David had done, whatever energies he had sourced from Max, would enable a swift recovery. They might need Rowan’s sorcerer to summon a breeze to blow them toward Bholevna. Easing down, Max rested his back against the basket and closed his eyes to think.
His next realization was that someone was shaking him.
Night had fallen. The burners’ golden light danced on the smuggler’s face as she crouched above Max and tugged at his cloak.
“Wind’s changed,” she said. “We’re drifting north. Something’s happening below.”
For several seconds, Max merely blinked at the woman and tried to piece together where he was. His face was numb from the cold and he was disoriented not only from ordinary exhaustion, but also from the aftershocks of David’s spell. Nodding dumbly, he pushed himself up.
Below was a sea of clouds. In the moonlight, they appeared like herds of soft, silvery cattle drifting over the slumbering earth. Peeking here and there through the gaps was the edge of a great city, a sprawl of twinkling lights in clusters and spokes and patterns. Above the winds and the creak of cordage, Max heard droning calls, as if the clouds were lowing in their dark pasture. Was he still dreaming?
“What city is that?” he murmured.
“That’s not a city,” breathed Madam Petra. “It’s an army.”
Rubbing his eyes, he peered again, reminded suddenly of Mina’s accounts of the many worlds, half veiled within the summoning circles. The lights might have been such a place, thousands of fireflies hovering over some dark, primeval marsh. They were so tiny, so distant that Max imagined the smuggler was joking until he heard the lowing again. Slowly but surely, his wits returned as the freezing winds cleared away the cobwebs.
The sound was not lowing cattle; it was the call of war horns. There must have been hundreds of them— perhaps thousands—all blowing in unison far below. At ground level, the volume must have been deafening, a din to herald an End of Days. As Max watched, many of the lights began to move, creeping north.
“Can they see us?” he wondered.
“I doubt it,” said Madam Petra. “We must be a mile or more up, and there’s cloud cover. The burners are small … even if they saw us, we’d probably just look like a tiny star.”
“A tiny star that’s moving,” said Max.
“An army that size isn’t concerned with a moving star; it’s concerned with other armies.”
Madam Petra snatched Max’s spyglass as soon as he produced it. Leaning out from the balloon, she scanned the landscape below. She was silent for several minutes, sweeping the glass across the lights, which were converging into distinct patterns and formations. Focusing on a shimmering cluster, she shook her head and returned the glass to Max.
“Prusias is here,” she said grimly. “That’s his palanquin in the central column. Do you see it?”
Max spotted it right away, a section where many lights were crowded like honeybees congregating around their queen. The rolling palanquin must have been enormous, but still it was dwarfed by the surrounding sea of banners and torches. There must have been a quarter million troops below, not even counting the siege engines and supply wagons, cooks, engineers, carpenters, blacksmiths, servants, and God knew whatever else accompanied an army of such size. Max’s initial impression had been correct. This was indeed a city—a creeping city bent on conquest. The horns had ceased, replaced now by the tolling
“Still believe Rowan can win?”
Max said nothing but watched Prusias’s legions coursing north like streams of glowing lava. Leaning against the basket, Madam Petra brushed against him.
