Book of Water

Chapter 25

25

The morning blazed golden as Rogero sat high on a hillside gazing across the fertile lands. In the distance he could see Monarch Pass, a cleft in the long range of mountains. Beyond that lay all of the west. All of King Carleman’s empire.

Rogero had already conquered everywhere and everyone, in the name of his emperor, from the eastern shores to here. It had only taken him a year. He planned to conquer Carleman’s empire in far less than that.

By all accounts, at twenty years old, he was the most successful military leader who had ever lived. His skills as both warrior and sorcerer had made him invincible. People said he would never lose.

Rogero shifted his gaze away from the mountains and returned to the task at hand. He rose to his feet and stared down into the holes at the shrouded shapes that lay there.

Twenty-three men. Dead in the past two days. Twenty-three strong, competent, well-trained, loyal men, in addition to the fifteen he had recently lost in battle. Eleven more men lay sick back in camp. They might survive, they might not. If not, Rogero would have lost half his army in the space of two nightfalls.

They had all set out with him from the start, his elite band of warriors, one hundred men that he had hand-chosen and trained himself. He saw their faces not just in camp and on the march every day, but also in the thousands of wind warriors he had created in their image to overwhelm and terrify their opponents.

“You ever notice he makes more of me?” he once heard Koffman boasting. “It’s because I’m the best looking.”

“It’s because of that doozy eye,” Laren told him. “You’re the easiest one to remember. It drives them mad. They think, ‘Didn’t I already fight this one?’”

Rogero had dug their graves himself. Not with spade or pick, but with a thought and a few gestures of his hand. He carved out the earth on a hillside far from camp and then transported the bodies on Vinderon. He set them one by one down into the cool dark soil, whispering words of thanks and regret as he did.

To die of some sickness rather than in battle. His men would have felt ashamed if they knew.

Rogero shifted his thoughts to fire. A ribbon of it rose from the air to his right, and he sent it spearing down into the graves. Whatever this sickness was, he couldn’t risk any more of his men contracting it. Even the rising smoke might carry it on the wind. And smoke would be visible from a distance, giving his location away.

But Rogero was master of wind, as much as of soil and water and flame. With another curve of his hand he sent the smoke swirling back into the graves. He could do nothing to mask the scent of burning flesh, though, and he could see how it disturbed Vinderon. The windhorse’s eyes were wide, his nostrils flared. Vinderon shook his head as if to drive the scent away, and he pawed at the loosened dirt. A thick cloud of dust rose around him, hiding him from the world.

“Away,” said Rogero softly, and the windhorse immediately obeyed, disappearing in a cloud of red dust. Rogero sat near the graves and watched the flames do their work.

Where had the sickness come from? If it had been in the food he stole from the enemy camp, wouldn’t Rogero himself feel ill, too? He had eaten it the same as his men.

Was it a sickness passed on from King Carleman’s army? If so, how were those men—and the young woman—able to fight? They all appeared hardy. If any were sick, they must have been hidden in the tents.

Or had it come from the last village Rogero and his men conquered? That had been two days before their assault on Monarch Pass. Was it possible the sickness had festered in their bodies and suddenly awoken all at once?

Rogero had no answers. Meanwhile the flames reduced his men to char.

He waved a fresh layer of soil on top of them and prepared to leave them in peace.

The sun on his knuckles brought a glint of gold to his eyes.

He stared at the ring on the first finger of his left hand. A gift from the king’s only child, his twenty-year-old daughter, Angelica.

“Whenever you are cold or hungry or lonely, kiss it and remember me.”

Rogero did not kiss it, but he did slip his thumbnail under the dark blue jewel in the center of the ring and opened it at its concealed hinge.

Inside lay a treasure many other men would have fought and killed to possess: a lock of Angelica’s soft fine hair, shining golden in a shaft of the sun.

Impossible though it could be after so much time had already passed since she presented him with the gift, Rogero swore he could still smell the clean orchid fragrance of her hair and even feel the tenderness of her hand touching his.

He stroked his finger across the soft golden strands, and it was true, he did feel better.

Less sad. Less lonely. Calmer. And suddenly certain of his next move.

He broke open an edge of the closest grave and allowed a small sliver of smoke to escape.

He captured it inside his cupped palms and held it before his lips.

“Across the pass,” he told it. “Over Carleman’s camp. Stay there. Spread.”

He blew a puff of his own breath between his hands and then released the smoke to the wind.

He did not need to watch it go. He knew that it would obey.

He whistled for Vinderon, who instantly appeared at his side. The red roan nickered to his master and tossed his wild head. Rogero patted Vinderon’s side and then leapt on the horse’s back.

A worry tugged at the young commander’s mind. Wasn’t there… shouldn’t I… wasn’t there a reason not to do what I just did?

“Hush,” he seemed to hear Angelica whisper. He almost imagined he could feel the inanimate ring purring against his finger.

“Back to camp,” Rogero ordered the windhorse, and to any spying eye it would have seemed that the two disappeared.