A general feeling of panic consumed the streets of Bryn Calazar. Citizens scurried by, jostling others out of their way, heedless of anything but the path before them. Most seemed to be rushing toward the center of the city in the direction of the harbor and the Lyceum. Braden noticed that most of the men wearing state livery appeared to be headed in the opposite direction. It was hard to walk; the streets were in chaotic turmoil. The wind carried toward them the sound of distant screams.
An echoing thunder rumbled from the west. It didn’t come from the storm clouds. Braden instantly recognized the din of hundreds of war drums.
Jogging ahead of the others, he hurried toward a narrow staircase protruding from the side of a nearby building. He took the steps two at a time, rushing up onto a tiled balcony, where he leaned out to peer westward toward the horizon.
From that vantage, Braden had a sweeping view of most of the city and the rolling countryside beyond. A choking sea of men and horses churned like a dark tide that frothed with banners and spears, breaking like waves against the fortifications of the city walls. Braden felt a thrill of excitement at the sight; thousands more warriors than he’d anticipated had responded to his summons. The sight was awe-inspiring, even humbling. In the rear of the turbulent ranks he could see siege engines being readied, arbalests and ballistae preparing to fling munitions at the walls. Elessar had heeded him well.
Overhead in the sky, the flickering lights in the clouds resembled a sickened aurora.
“I’ll be damned,” Quin muttered beside him.
He looked over at his brother and, to his surprise, saw that Quin’s attention wasn’t focused on the besieging army at all. Instead, he was gazing upward at the Lyceum’s graceful domes. The magelight that illuminated its walls was tinted a murky blood-red hue. It was a signal, one that Braden had never actually witnessed before in his life. He understood its purpose immediately with a sharp wrench of his stomach.
Quin remarked with trepidation, “They’re summoning the full Assembly.”
Braden stared upward at the scintillating magelight that bathed the walls of the Lyceum, rendering the gilt domes a rich and coppery bronze. “Good,” he commented coldly. “We’ll want them all inside.”
“Why?” Sephana wondered, a hand going up to push a lock of hair back out of her face.
Still gazing up at the ominous portent of the blood-red domes, Braden answered her, “When the magic field destabilizes, it will reverse the polarity of the arches that ward the entrance to the Lyceum. Instead of barring the gates against intruders, anyone sensitive to the magic field will be stuck inside. If we can destroy the Chamber of Egress, then Renquist’s darkmages will be trapped.”
“Along with everyone else,” Sephana observed softly, her eyes full of sadness.
At Braden’s side, Quin drew in a deep breath. He uttered portentously, “‘From the Atrament we all come, and back to the Atrament we all return.’”
He was quoting from the Dhummad, the book of the dead. Braden stared hard at his brother, trying to put a finger on his emotions. With Quin, it was often hard to tell exactly what he was feeling. Quin stood leaning with his elbows against the stone balustrade, hat cradled in his hands. He was gazing outward across the city, surveying the prevailing tides of battle beyond the walls with narrowed eyes. His expression remained distant and enigmatic.
Sephana glanced at Braden with a somber smile, entwining her fingers with his own. He squeezed her hand gently, caressing her soft skin with his thumb.
A trail of fire streaked by overhead from the direction of the Lyceum, passing right over them with a terrible crackling sound. All three of them ducked as the balcony they stood upon shook with the thunder of its impact. A rumbling explosion brightened the shadows beyond the city walls, the sounds of screams both terrible and terrifying.
Another flaming volley shot out from the Grand Dome, arcing across the sky before dropping down onto the besieging army of the Jenn. The fire spread outward upon impact, liquid tongues of flame ravaging everything in their path, leaving only a charred swath of ground and the anguished shrieks of dying men and beasts. Two large ballistae erupted into flames, quickly consumed along with the men who tended them.
Braden felt his stomach sickened by the violence of the assault. A terrible chill settled into his bones, along with a profound sadness. He forced himself to turn away from the edge of the balcony, disengaging his senses from the horror. Voice gruff with emotion, he informed the others, “That’s our cue.”
Quin spun immediately to face him, raising a finger up before his face. “Stop right there,” he commanded his brother, voice quavering in revulsion. His face was milky pale, eyes moist and bloodshot. “You’re the one who brought this all down upon them. You’d better figure out a way of making it count.”
Braden turned his back on him and started walking away. Jogging, Quin caught up to him immediately, catching him by the shoulder and wrenching him forcibly back around. Quin leaned forward into his brother’s face until the brim of his hat was pressed against Braden’s forehead.
“What are you going to do?” he demanded with a snarl. “Whatever it is, Brother, you’d better act fast. Our people are dying.”
Braden’s gaze was resolute. “I’m going to spring their trap.”
Sephana’s mouth dropped open in shock. To Braden, she inquired softly, “Are you completely certain that’s a good idea?”
Braden wasn’t looking at her. He kept his eyes fixed on Quin as he responded, “I am.”
Quin drew back away from Braden’s face, adjusting his hat and grumbling, “In my experience, only fools and fanatics are ever completely certain. Which one are you?”
Braden shook his head as another flaming lance darted across the sky above them. His face was illuminated briefly in the flare of light from the explosion as the missile shattered against the Jenn army below.
“Probably both,” he grated, turning away from the horror of the screams and moving in the direction of the steps.
At the bottom of the stairs they found the streets a chaotic frenzy. People were running, panicking, racing about without aim or direction. Braden stepped out first into the frenzied commotion, flanked closely by Quin and Sephana walking side by side, staffs in hand.
At the sight of the three mages, some folk stopped and stared, others scurried back out of their way. Quin stalked behind Braden, carrying his staff crossed diagonally in front of his torso. Sephana kept her staff held straight upright and tight against her side, glancing around apprehensively at the surging crowd of onlookers. Overhead, fiery arcs of flame lanced across the darkened sky, raining down death and terror upon the clans.
As they mounted the path up the hill toward the Lyceum, Braden reached down and unhooked Thar’gon from his belt, carrying it downward by his side. He glanced up at the crimson-hued domes on the cliffs above them, feeling the weight of trepidation slowly sink into his chest. He swallowed against the dryness in his throat.
He raised his fist, calling for the others to halt. “This is as close as we dare,” he told them. “I’m going to use Thar’gon to transfer us up to the rooftop above the forecourt. From there, we’ll split up. Sephana, I want you to go with Quin. Get under the dome, to the room below the Circle. Start laying out the disruption charges at the base of the columns. I’m going to spring their trap and try to draw their attention off you. I’ll catch up when I can.”
Quin fixed him with a sidelong glare. “And what, exactly, are we supposed to do when you don’t just ‘catch up?’”
Braden spread his hands. “Then you improvise.”
At that, his brother rolled his eyes, muttering, “Braden, you are a wellspring of inspiration.”
Braden ignored the comment, extending his arm to Sephana with a smile. “Take my hand,” he directed her. “Quin, link in.”
Quin nodded once, grasping Braden’s wrist.
Braden raised the silver morning star against his chest and closed his eyes, envisioning the Lyc
eum’s forecourt with its marching colonnades.
“Vergis,” he whispered.
The path up the cliffs under his feet shifted and was immediately replaced by the pumice bricks that formed the roof of one of the courtyard’s long covered walkways. Braden instantly felt a jar of disorientation as his stomach plunged from the transfer.
No sooner had they arrived then a lance of flame streaked out from the Lyceum’s dome right over their heads, leaving a fiery trail of smoke across the sky. The sound of the crackling firestorm was deafening. He could actually feel the heat coming off of it. In reflex, Braden brought Thar’gon up to ward his face.
He released his grip on Sephana then backed up as far as he could go against the edge of the rooftop with his back to the sea cliff. Then, slowly, he stepped cautiously forward to get a glimpse of the courtyard below. The others moved forward with him, Sephana on his right and Quin on his left.
At the edge of the rooftop, all three of them drew up short, gazing down.
“Well, damn,” Quin remarked.
Directly below, the Lyceum’s forecourt was writhing with the bodies and armaments of hundreds of liveried warriors. At the forefront of the throng, blue-robed mages stood in a line gazing up at them, both men and women alike.
The sound of Quin’s voice prompted Braden into motion.
“Run!” he shouted as the host below them surged forward with a thunderous war cry.
Braden brought Thar’gon up just in time to block the first magical assaults that were hurled against them by the mages on the ground. A spear of light shattered into crystalline fragments that fell harmlessly about them, another absorbed by a shadow shield thrown up by Quin.
Braden shouted back over his shoulder, “Get to the dome!”
Wielding the silver morning star like a club, he turned and sprinted across the vaulted rooftop toward the stairs. As he moved, he sucked in the turbulence of the magic field, filling himself completely to the threshold of his tolerance until liquid energies bled off his body in amber waves.
He met the swarming rush of warriors at the top of the stairs, swinging Thar’gon out before him in great, sweeping arcs. Mangled bodies were flung backwards out of his way, hurled in all directions by the force of the talisman’s concussive impact. Braden conjured an absorption shield that surrounded his body, a gleaming nimbus that countered the magical assaults that rained down upon him. The mighty talisman glowed argent in his hands.
He pushed forward, forcing a wedge deep into the writhing ranks, overpowering their assault and beating them backwards, down and off the stairs. With the might of the legendary artifact in his hands, Braden didn’t have to fight individual warriors. Instead, he used Thar’gon’s imbued motive force to create concussion waves that sent broken bodies exploding backward into the surging turmoil.
Reaching the base of the steps, Braden realized that he could go no further. Confronted from every direction with a battering confusion of conventional and magical attacks, his absorption shield was starting to falter. Braden limped backward, bringing Thar’gon up and closing his eyes.
“Vergis,” he commanded the weapon.
Beneath his feet, the staircase shivered and shifted.
Quin leaped over a gap between two domes then caught Sephana as she followed behind him, helping her keep her feet as she came down hard on the rooftop. The gilt tiles were sharply angled and slippery. His feet lost traction. Sephana reached out and steadied him and, together, they sprinted forward toward the entrance to the Lyceum.
They chased around the circumference of the dome then leaped, dropping down to the roof of a cupola below. Behind them, the sun was starting to set, illuminating the dark bank of cloud cover. Against the light of the setting sun, their bodies were reduced to featureless silhouettes as they crossed the portico above the entrance.
From the edge of the roof, Quin leaped over to the balcony of an adjacent minaret. Then he leaned his staff against the wall, beckoning for Sephana to follow.
“Come on!” he urged her.
Sephana looked ready to balk. But then she gathered her courage and made the leap. Quin caught her in his arms, gently lowering her to the floor of the balcony with a cavalier grin on his face.
“Are you actually enjoying this?” Sephana gasped, leaning forward over her knees to catch her breath.
Quin shrugged, reclaiming his staff. “It sure beats death and boredom,” came his indifferent response.
He led her down the winding stairs within the minaret. Halfway down, they met a guardsman charging up the steps toward them with weapons drawn. Quin brought his staff up in his hands, holding it like a javelin, and dispatched the man with one quick thrust to the head.
At the base of the tower, they ran out through a narrow doorway into the interior under the dome. There, Quin put out his arm, stopping Sephana in her tracks and pressing her back up against the wall. He brought his hand up to cover her own, silencing the glow of her staff.
“Don’t move,” he whispered.
Beneath the Lyceum’s central dome, the Circle of Convergence had been put into play. Lines of power pulsated across the floor, uniting at one point in the center of the eight-pointed Silver Star. All around the perimeter of the Circle, cyclone gusts of wind swirled and rotated, distributing the energies harvested from the vortex up through the hundreds of open windows at the base of the dome.
Quin squinted, staring through the rotating column of air at the man who stood at the center of it all, commanding the Lyceum’s Circle. Quin recognized the profile immediately. The man responsible for using the energies of Bryn Calazar’s vortex to fling lances of flame at the Jenn was Byron Connel, the Warden of Battlemages.
Quin’s eyes narrowed in revulsion as he stared at the arrogant darkmage before him. He felt a strong compulsion to just stride out across the floor and take on Connel right there, just the two of them. But common sense got the better of him; he had no chance against a mage already saturated in the energies focused by an entire Circle of Convergence.
Quin turned his head and spat upon the tiled floor. Then he took Sephana by the hand and strode forward along the walls around the perimeter of the room. The opening to a stairwell gaped from out of the floor in front of them, beckoning. He jogged toward it.
Braden reappeared next to the fountain—behind the mob still trying to charge his last position on the stairs. He whirled, bringing Thar’gon violently down. A mage collapsed under the force of the blow, blood splattering the columns and the fountain.
Braden glanced up at Devrim Remzi, who stood next to the fountain, gaping into his face with terrified astonishment. Braden reached up, catching the man’s wrist in his hand.
“Do you serve Xerys?” he demanded.
The aged Empiricist stared at him, wide-eyed, taking a step backward and slowly blinking as if grappling for understanding. Adamantly, he shook his head from side to side.
That was enough for Braden.
He brought Thar’gon up in a backhand strike, swatting away the first group of warriors who had turned back to retake the fountain. The atrocious force of the weapon’s discharge sent limbs and torsos hurling away across the courtyard. Braden raised Thar’gon high over his head.
“Vergis.”
The fountain and the forecourt shivered and disappeared.
Quin jumped, landing hard on the stone floor at the base of the stairs, and brought his staff around to shatter the skull of the first guard who came forward to attack them. At his side, Sephana raised her light staff, its glow inspired to brilliance with the power she wielded through it. She held it forward in a walking stance, fending off the ring of guards who rushed forward from the walls of the chamber to confront them.
Quin raised his own staff, crossing it over Sephana’s. Together, light and shadow intermixed to weave a devastating attack. A streak of writhing darkness and light came forth from the ends of their combined staves, undulating across the chamber. Men screamed in agony, their ranks turning to flee before
the writhing mass of conflicting energies.
Quin advanced across the vaulted room, taking advantage of the guardsmen’s retreat. Reaching into the leather pack he wore hanging from one shoulder, he pulled out a disruption charge and flung it toward a nearby column. It rolled like a molded copper die across the floor, coming to rest at the base of a scalloped pillar.
He withdrew a second charge, flinging it across the room in the opposite direction. He reached deep within his pack, pulling out more of the charged cubes. He ran forward, dropping them one at a time at intervals all around the chamber.
“Quin!”
The urgency in Sephana’s voice made him turn toward the stairs. Quin’s jaw dropped at the sight of at least a dozen blue-robed mages swarming down the steps and spreading out across the room toward them. He stopped and confronted them, holding his staff horizontal to the floor.
“Come on,” he dared the first man who approached in front of the others. Quin smiled, raising his staff. “I’ll be your pallbearer.”
Braden’s stomach felt ill from the disorientation caused by the rapid use of transfers. He swayed for a moment over his feet, struggling to get his bearings. Devrim Remzi disengaged from his grip, backing away.
It took Braden only a moment to confirm that the last transfer had shifted them under the dome of the Lyceum, to the arched gallery above the Circle of Convergence. A great wind rose from the floor below, circulating throughout the dome, charged energies creating a crackling of static discharge against the tiled ceiling above.
“What is your intent?” Devrim Remzi bellowed at him over the angry howl of the gale.
Braden turned toward him, lowering the silver morning star back down to his side. He glanced downward at the Circle, to where Byron Connel stood commanding the pulsating energies of the vortex.
The Complete Rhenwars Saga: An Epic Fantasy Pentalogy Page 167