Free War of Wizards by Michael Wallace

trail led up a stone staircase to the top of the walls. Darik, Ethan, and Rouhani waited until the staircase was clear, then hurried up to the parapet. They picked their way carefully along the wall walk behind the battlement. Darik was so focused on the magical trail, and on slipping carefully by the archers manning the wall, that he didn’t immediately glance down outside the city. But Rouhani gasped, and Darik drew short and followed his gaze.
    It looked at first like a ghostly blue light, like a river flowing through the obelisks and mastabas of the Tombs of the Kings, but as he stared, individual figures came into focus, climbing over and around obstacles like an army of ants on the march, every one of them directed as if by an unseen hand. There were men on foot and ghostly horses, their faces blurred, their bodies seeming almost to stretch from one location to another instead of walking. Larger figures moved among them: giants, mammoths, snaking dragon-like creatures without wings.
    The three companions stood near a small cluster of archers with their arrows lined in position behind the wall, and a single ballista with a loaded bolt. The men were cursing, glancing over their shoulders as if they wanted to flee back into the city.
    Darik nudged Rouhani and Ethan to get them moving. They continued along the wall walk for a few minutes, then came onto the roof of one of the small guard towers that punctuated the wall at intervals. This one stood where the city wall curved to face the northern approaches, and should have been heavily manned, but curiously, only a handful of archers guarded it, and these stood shoulder to shoulder. Their bows were out, arrows notched, but not yet drawn.
    In spite of this odd detail, Darik might have stumbled past them if he hadn’t been intently studying the magical trail. But the trail didn’t carry across to the wall walk on the opposite side, it cut to the edge of the tower roof and stopped at the five archers. As he stared, the bows and arrows seemed to disappear in their hands, the golden dragon of the House of Saffa dissolved from their cloaks. They wore gray robes with drawn hoods. Not so different from how Darik and his companions had dressed upon leaving the palace.
    Wizards. Magic hung about them, an aura of power. He’d never sensed that before, but now, still under the influence of the spell he’d cast in the Grand Bazaar, it seemed as much a part of them as their legs or arms. They hadn’t yet spotted the three men cloaked in shadow who had been hunting them.
    Darik held out an arm to stop his companions, then gestured with his hooded head toward the enemy wizards. Ethan and Rouhani stiffened. For a moment, the three of them stood frozen. The five wizards had begun to chant. The sun was a ball of flame to the west, falling below the horizon. Soon, it would be night.
    Now what? Fight them? But how? Darik’s left hand was blackened into a claw, withdrawn into his sleeve, and throbbing. He could use his other hand to call more magic, but doubt had taken him, and he worried that his effort would fizzle and sputter. And even if it didn’t, he’d then be left with two useless hands, and no way to draw his sword. That would leave Rouhani and Ethan to face five wizards powerful enough to command an army of wights, while Darik tried to raise more men to aid in the fight.
    Rouhani leaned in and whispered in Darik’s ears. “Destroy them.”
    The captain’s voice was low, no louder than a breeze across the desert sand, but instantly, one of the enemies whipped his head in their direction. He threw back his hood and drew his hands from beneath his cloak. Words of power came to his lips.
     
     

Chapter Seven
    Daria was exhausted, and her griffin was flagging, by the time she reached the foothills at the base of the Dragon’s Spine. Snow covered the upper peaks, and after so many days flying across deserts and dry plains, she wanted nothing more than to climb to the higher