by Stefon Mears
The necromancer spoke first.
“Kill them all,” he called in a disturbingly high, clear voice, “starting with the priest!”
The ghouls poured forward in a wave.
Cavan charged forward as though taking the fight to the ghouls. He scattered bits of shaved carrot on the stones and cried out, “Hyasi!”
He sprang high into the air while the ghouls ran past below him, too focused on getting at Ehren to worry about Cavan. Cavan could only hope Ehren and the others were ready for them.
Cavan’s focus was on the necromancer, who watched with an amused eye. He lifted his wand as Cavan came down, but Cavan was ready.
He tossed sand into the air and sucked in as he breathed the words, “Ulta na-sach.”
Silence purer than anything Cavan had ridden through that day. No scrabbling and gibbering of ghouls. No sounds of battle behind him.
Most important, whatever incantation the necromancer cried out failed.
Cavan brought the momentum of his leap to bear as he swung his sword at the necromancer, aiming for the throat.
The necromancer parried with his wand.
It seemed unfair somehow. Cavan’s sword could cleave through many things, could even shear shards from lesser swords. True, there were staves he’d heard of that might have stood against his blade, but a wand?
And yet, that wand parried the blow as though it had been a licha sword itself. And worse, the bone wand did not so much as budge an inch under the force of Cavan’s assault. As though it had sucked the momentum from…
No. Not sucked. Killed. Of course. Had to be death magic.
The necromancer looked furious, as Cavan landed gently on the stones. Even managed a grim smile as he parried two more of Cavan’s rapid sword strokes.
Spry, for such an old man. Had to have stolen the vitality from many.
Just then, the purple symbols on the necromancer’s robe and wand flared bright, and Cavan could hear gibbering, slobbering and pounding somewhere behind him, as well as…
…the ring of steel? Did one of the ghouls carry a weapon?
“Better than I expected,” the necromancer said, as he continued to parry more of Cavan’s attacks. “Properly dealt with, you’ll be worthy to add to my resources. Perhaps even worth the cost of my vargamort.”
“Is that what that was?” Cavan asked, drawing his spelled dagger with his off-hand. This dagger was thin, twin-edged, with a wooden handle molded to Cavan’s grip. Runes etched into the blade carried a spell he had prepared himself.
“Fool,” the necromancer said, and spat a word that slipped away from Cavan’s mind, even as he heard it.
But the word shunted power through the wand. Power that arced across the tight space between them, slipped around Cavan’s spelled dagger to strike.
Pain. Like claws raking down Cavan’s very soul. The world seemed to tunnel down on him. Cavan fought to keep his focus on his foe, where it needed to be.
Not foe. Foes.
It seemed as though there were two of the necromancer now. And both of them wielded that wand like a sword on the attack.
Cavan felt hard pressed to keep that wand from touching him, needing both his sword and his dagger to maintain his defense.
He wasn’t sure what would happen if the wand touched him, but finding out sounded like a very, very bad idea.
Both Cavan’s hands were busy, just keeping that enchanted thigh bone at bay. So how could he strike back?
Spells. He must have known a spell or two that could help here. But whatever that ripping sensation through his core had been, it seemed to have cut him off from his magic.
Cavan could not think of a single spell. Not one. His mind reached for where they should have been, but could not grasp them.
The necromancer began pressing Cavan backward.
“Kill them all, starting with the priest!”
Just the order Vastig had hoped for. Those ghouls would focus on the priest. The priest’s friends would come to his aid. And Vastig could deal with the relic-wielder on his own.
His bow was ready. His arrow nocked.
She whirled, frowning, sword raised and ready to parry. No doubt the relic warned her of danger for the last time…
No.
This was not the proper way for him to claim a relic. To shoot the current wielder with a bow was to imply he feared to face her. The relic might sense that. Reject him as a wielder.
Intolerable.
Besides, for however powerful the relic might make her, she was still a human, and youthful. She could not possibly be a match for Vastig.
Instead he smiled at her frown. Tossed aside his bow.
Silence?
The bow should have clattered on the ground. Vastig’s ears should have heard his lips issue the traditional cry of challenge as he drew his swords. His throat certainly vibrated correctly.
But silence had fallen. What was that fool necromancer playing at?
Nevertheless, Vastig ran at the relic-wielder. And fool that she was, she smiled and ran to meet him.
Suddenly a blindingly golden dome sprang into being farther down the hall. The priest’s work, most likely. The ghouls might have trouble with it, but the necromancer would bring it down soon enough.
For now, Vastig had a fight on his hands.
Still, the glare of that dome made him wince. Stop running, even as the relic-wielder closed. Stole the first blow from him.
The first strike should have been Vastig’s. He’d imagined it for days. A feint low with his left sword, and a high right strike with the other.
Instead, the relic-wielder, grinning with undeserved courage, came in high as though to part Vastig’s head from his shoulders in a single strike.
Vastig’s head, of course, was not there when the blow came. Still, between the glare and the ferocity of the strike, Vastig had been unable to properly counter. The most he could do was parry the next attack, this one lower. Toward his waist.
Vastig’s arm jarred from the impact of the blow. Sparks flew, and a notch had been taken from one of his blades.
Soon enough, that would not matter.
First, though, he had to regain the advantage. Right now, this grinning woman battered at Vastig’s defenses, driving him backward. Attacking with such speed that Vastig had to keep both swords whirling in parries that dug more notches from his blades.
Sound returned to the world.
“Should have kept the bow,” the relic-wielder taunted. “Might have had a chance.”
“You are nothing without that sword,” Vastig said, managing his first counter strike. A weak stab with his lesser hand. All too easy for her to evade. But it was a beginning.
“Keep thinking that,” she said. Her grin, if anything, widened.
Vastig had her sword out of line now, thanks to a swift strike at the left side of her face that he’d forced her to parry. He brought his blade’s twin toward her kidneys at such speed she would never get her blade back in time to parry—
She didn’t. Didn’t even try.
Instead, she did the last thing Vastig expected. She kicked him in the gut. A fast, heavy kick, perfect balance and timing. A lesser warrior would have lost his breath to it, especially here in the master’s domain.
The kick knocked him three steps backward.
Vastig’s arm finished the arc of his swing, but the relic-wielder was out of reach as his sword passed.
It was a good move. A worthy move. Something an elf warmaster would have done. Perhaps an older dwarven sergeant. But a human? Surely not. Surely it was—
“All my life,” the relic-wielder said as she closed with a series of rapid attacks that kept Vastig on his back foot. “Same thing. Too short. A woman. Built for a pleasure house, not a battlefield.”
Vastig twirled in place, whipping his blades through a series of high and low strikes at such speeds that one of them had to land.
Instead she parried the first strike hard enough to throw the second of
f its line. She then slipped just out of the second blade’s path and stabbed inward, breaking the pattern and forcing Vastig back on the defensive.
And all the while she kept talking and grinning.
“I’ve heard how lucky I am. I’ve heard a million, million excuses from the losers. The ones I leave alive, anyway. They blame the terrain. They blame their old wounds. They blame the circumstances.”
“What will you blame when I’m spilling your life’s blood?” Vastig asked, finding an opening and slipping onto the offensive once more.
Now it was Vastig pressing her back toward the ghouls. Oh, he could have turned her to a wall instead. But the relic, in her hands, was powerful enough that a little assistance would not go amiss.
Besides, Vastig would still deliver the final blow by his own hand. That was all that mattered.
And yet, she kept grinning. And she parried as though she read Vastig’s pattern of attacks even before he decided on it.
Impossible. No human could be that good. The relic must have been even mightier than Vastig thought.
“If you kill me,” the relic-wielder mocked, “I’ll be glad to die. It means I don’t deserve to live.”
“You don’t,” Vastig said, hoping to wipe the grin from her face just once before he found the opening that would take her life. “You wield a great relic. Without its powers at your disposal, you would be nothing. You would have died by my arrow on the hill. You would never have sensed me following you. It is the relic and its might that make you a foe worth killing.”
She had the temerity to laugh.
“Great relic? It’s a fine tool, but it’s only a tool. Nothing without the right hand to guide it.”
Only a dozen steps to that dome and the ghouls surrounding it. Beating on it. But her words could not go unanswered. Vastig redoubled the force behind his strikes. That would slow his hands a little, but her arrogance…
“Never,” he said as another notch sheared from his blades when she parried his strike. “It’s proven its power to warn you. To—”
“You want to know what powers this sword possesses?”
“Yes!”
Vastig had her now. Her sword out of line. A single thrust would—
The grinning woman shifted her grip. Her sword whirled back on the attack faster than Vastig could follow. As though she needed only think of the movement and the sword would leap to her service. As though the sword were weightless.
Vastig abandoned his strike. Used both blades to parry. But for all the quality of his swords, they’d grown notched and weaker through the fight.
The wyrding black blade cleaved right through them. Sliced Vastig open, from the ribs through the guts and out the other side.
The sword came out of him, and Vastig saw that not a single drop of blood clung to the blade.
The last words he ever heard were, “It can cut through damn near anything.”
Cavan still felt stiff and sore from the attack of that thing. That vargamort.
Worse, Cavan felt torn inside. As though the necromancer’s spell had ripped the core of Cavan’s being right down the center.
Worse yet, that spell seemed to cut him off from his own magic, even while it duplicated the necromancer.
Now there were two of the old man, both fighting like young men, swiping and stabbing with their bone wands as though they were blades.
At least Ehren and the others were safe from those ghouls, inside that golden dome Ehren had conjured up. How long it would keep the ghouls at bay, Cavan couldn’t be sure, but he had no doubt that even now Amra was devising a plan that would turn the tide.
Amra. For all her taunting and teasing ways, she was the reason Cavan was still alive right now. It was her intensive training — far and beyond the rudiments Cavan had been taught by Ser Dreng, back when Cavan was failing to become a warrior — that kept his hands moving through parries without the need for his mind to get involved.
It was Amra’s training that taught Cavan to read the movements and patterns of a foe’s strikes. To parry, yes, but also to turn that pattern against the enemy.
Even torn asunder inside, Amra would already be on the counterattack.
Cavan wasn’t as good. Especially right now, when he felt so … cloven. Unable to bring himself together enough to mount the kind of counterattack Amra would expect of him.
The most Cavan could do was keep his blades parrying. But that kept him alive. For now, at least.
That spell. It had cut him off from his magic. What else had it done? Was it the source of that twinned necromancer? What exactly was that spell?
Not something Cavan had time to consider as the necromancer pressed him slowly backward toward the edge of the red, glowing ring of the pentacle graven into the floor beneath him.
Some deeply entrenched instinct told Cavan he must not let himself step on the circle. He didn’t know why. Couldn’t remember. Couldn’t really think properly at all.
But right now, stepping on or through that circle was bad. He knew that much. And in the moment, Cavan could only trust to what he knew that thoroughly.
“An enchanted sword, and a spelled dagger,” the necromancers said, in unison. “And the dagger carries your own signature. Not quite a warrior, yet not quite a wizard, are you?”
No time to answer. No time to think. Only time to keep his blades moving. Only time to keep that bone wand from touching him. Even if Cavan gave more ground to do so.
He was getting closer and closer to the outer ring that surrounded the star. He’d leapt over it to enter. He remembered doing it. But that was not an option now. Something had changed.
“You will make a fine protazzon,” the necromancers said.
That was a word Cavan recognized. A kind of champion among the undead, wielding both spells and swords against the living.
Was that the answer? The cleaving spell? The necromancer fighting him with both melee and magic together? Yes. Protazzons were a rare form of undead. Likely they had to be made a specific way.
If only Cavan could put the pieces together, maybe the puzzle would make sense.
Closer and closer Cavan came to that edge as the necromancer pushed his attack. And Cavan could hear the ghouls shrieking battle cries. Fighting something now.
A bad sign. Those ghouls weren’t likely fighting each other.
The golden dome came down.
His friends were in danger. What could he do?
Nothing. Couldn’t think. Could barely fight. It took all his focus to parry those bone wands, fast as they came on the attack. High and low, low and high, middline attacks blended into the mix.
Facing one necromancer was bad enough, but two seemed too much to ask of anyone.
The necromancers spat out a spell then. Another horrific combination of syllables that Cavan’s brain refused to take in. But a stream of something white and ghostly issued from the mouths of the necromancers, right at Cavan.
One of those moments in life when time itself seemed to slow.
Cavan couldn’t touch his spells, so no way to counter whatever the necromancer was doing. Ducking wasn’t an option either. It would throw off his parries, because those wands kept coming.
Cavan wasn’t wizard enough to overcome the necromancer’s magics, especially right now. Wasn’t warrior enough to outfight the necromancer and his spirit image combined.
And now the twin streams of ghostly matter joined together as they came. They tore at the thin air itself as they flowed toward Cavan’s face.
Screams came from inside that spell. Screams of the tormented dead, those poor spirits forced to not only serve the necromancer, but to slay at his command. To rip and rend the spirits of those who still had bodies of their own. To prepare the way for the necromancer’s fell magics to revive Cavan as one of their own.
Worse. As a protazzon, who would doubtless be turned immediately against his friends.
And even as that spell came at him, the necromancers’ bone wands continued thei
r assault.
Nowhere even to retreat now. Cavan’s boots were all but touching the glowing blood red ring of the star on the floor behind him.
Cavan saw only one chance.
Cavan doubled the strength of a double-parry. Bought himself fractions of a second.
He dove desperately forward to his right.
The spell soared through the air behind him — close enough to hiss across the back of his neck — and tore into the stone wall, rotting it away as though centuries passed every second.
Cavan tried desperately to think as he rolled, his blades tucked in tight to keep them safe and out of his body. He would need them soon enough. Already the twin necromancers were turning. Approaching. Raising their wands.
Cavan rolled again.
The necromancers fired off another twinned spell that smote the stone floor where Cavan had been moments before. Was his back smoking? The floor was. And something in his back hurt…
No time for that. He had to keep rolling. Had to buy time to puzzle through something that just occurred to him.
He felt a fleeting recollection of Reesa evading Kolsach in her duel. Hoped there would be something like uneven cobblestones to aid him now…
The star on the floor. It was five-pointed like all those used by the Order of the Blessed Star, not seven-pointed like those usually used in necromancy. And yet, the necromancer had chiseled away every star the order had left.
Every star but this one.
Why had he left this one star engraved in the floor?
Because he needed it for something.
It was a gamble. Just an instinct, really, but instincts were about all Cavan had left.
He spun and slashed his licha sword across the outer ring of the glowing red circle. The circle resisted, but the masterwork edge and enchantments of the sword did their work.
The blade cut. The edge of the circle split asunder.
Fiery power erupted from the cleft. All the power that circled star had channeled and contained, unleashed all at once.
Some of it was simply wasted. Funneled away in a quick flare of orange light so bright Cavan ached to the back of his skull just to see it.