Garn hesitated, ostensibly assessing the situation, waiting as long as he dared. “I cannot,” he said after two of his pumping heartbeats. “They are behind our soldiers and the wall of flame.” He halfheartedly poked his sword toward the great hall’s ceiling, again at a forty-five-degree angle. “My signal is too distorted for them to see.”
Already, the fastest intruders were slipping through the gate, including the old woman. The tree-branch woman casually knocked aside one of the gate guard’s pikes, then pulled an arrow from the quiver on her back, and rammed it into his throat. The way clear, she stepped between the obelisks.
“Is that so? Why aren’t you attacking, Kara?” the Alchemist asked, his tone casual but menacing at the same time.
Stepping beside Garn, Kara Laurel began picking off the soldiers who paused to slay the few men and women left guarding the gate. A half dozen dropped as her white spears of light struck.
Their numbers small from the start, the remaining gate guards did not last long. Most had left their posts to assist with the assault at the Oracle, something he’d discuss with the general who’d given the command, soon.
A few tense seconds passed as the desperate group, their path clear, ran through the gate. Soon only the white-haired man and the staff woman remained. Facing the great hall, they walked slowly backward.
Firing golden spears of her own, the woman easily deflected Kara Laurel’s white ones, her eyes focused on the hallway where they stood, fixed… on him.
The white-haired, long-bearded man sent a final flash of light exploding into Garn’s soldiers. Then they both vanished, the woman last. Garn fought an almost overpowering urge to follow her.
With the last explosions dying in the hall, the Alchemist ran to the Oracle and gazed inside. His screams of fury echoed throughout the great hall.
THE SKY ABOVE
The symbol Crystalyn sent floating across the battlefield, an octagon as wide as a building wall, displayed giants swinging weapons as sapling-tree-sized arrows struck in clouds all around. Enthralled, she watched as the image reflected upon it magnified the struggle below hundreds of times.
Cyclone-sized black cones swallowed patches of sky as they flew toward silver-armored soldiers, sent from a row of Dark Users at the back of the line. Jagged, upside-down lightning trees flashed in the midst of a large group of white- and yellow-robed Light Users striking many at random and hurtling them into the air, not always in one piece.
A deadly array of red missiles and white ones as long as spears fell in clusters like shards of heat rays expelled in bursts from a dying sun. Waterfalls of black and golden flame appeared in midair and flowed upon troops and robe wearers caught between the two opposing armies melting the carnage of the gory battlefield along with the greenery. White flashes of light preceded explosions in areas thick with men, and walls of black flames sprang up blocking retreat and engulfing those nearby.
Crystalyn let the symbol fade from the battlefield; if she and her companions could see it, so could anyone from the ground.
Jade slumped beside the rock ledge they used for shelter. “Well, that did us a lot of good, the imagery was too large to really see what we’re up against. We had to give it a try, I suppose.”
Crystalyn thought about the latest attempt of combining each of their abilities together in order to gauge the enemy’s strength. Perhaps they’d been going about it the wrong way. Quickly, she redrew and recombined the familiar magical absorption symbol she’d just used, visualizing it in her mind and then willing it to hover before her. Floating as it did cost her little. The big drain happened when the symbol detonated, so to speak. “Let’s try this: let your aura images absorb into my symbol instead of mirroring the battle below. They should stay contained inside until I retrieve it, I hope. Each attempt this way drains me a little, but I have to know where to land my symbols for the most damage. The Dark Users will return fire, and possibly their archers, once I start.”
A small grin lit Jade’s tired face. “That might work. I’ll give it a go. Don’t take too long, though. There are a lot of auras down there. I can’t feed them all to you, though I should pull enough to view as you circle.”
Crystalyn gazed at her sister with a silence that stretched.
“Likely we’ll only have one shot, it will be as serious a drain as we’ve had, so far,” Jade continued. Then she froze. A brief, lopsided smile tugged one corner of her mouth upward a moment later. “Am I stating the obvious again?”
Crystalyn flashed a quick smile of her own. “We’ve been at this a while, but now I have a second wind and the pacing down, I think. I gave you a little time to rest, though it’s too bad grounding won’t work with your ability as it does with mine, it really helps slow the symbols’ drain on my life.”
Jade shrugged a lock of her auburn hair from an eye. “Grounding works for you and every User of the Flow, but I’ve tried it countless times. Either I’m not getting how it works or it will never happen for me. I’ve visualized a path from my feet to my mind and back again to the ground as you’ve taught, but it hasn’t lessened the energy it takes from to interrupt the Flow.”
Crystalyn changed the subject. “Do you regret coming back here?” In a way, if they hadn’t come back, Jade wouldn’t need her ability so much, nor would she. “I know we have to find Dad, but once we have, do you want to go back? We have the extra set of sapphire obelisks Lord Charn—I mean, Ruena—stashed in the mausoleum. They’re probably the same ones the Dragon Lady somehow got Dad to go through; we could go back to the Muddy Wagon Inn anytime you want to activate them.”
Jade’s fine, red-brown eyebrows rose as she thought it through. “They could be the same ones, but who’s to say there aren’t others? We only took the time to go through perhaps a quarter of the warehouse. As for regretting our return, I’m not certain yet. I do want to let Camoe know about Burl, though.” Her voice broke at mention of the dark creation who’d been a dear companion.
Crystalyn felt a pang of guilt, but she’d done what needed doing.
“Besides,” Jade went on, “we’re going to help those people down there. We can make a difference.”
Crystalyn was heartened her sister had arrived at the same conclusion she had. “From the little we’ve seen so far, it looks like the Vibrant Vale is losing. Our friends will have nowhere to run. I won’t let us fail to find a way to get to them. Let’s give this symbol another go, if you’re up to it.”
Hastel slid into the ancient quarry site from underneath the ponderosa pine tree growing in the middle of the old wagon road leading to the pit made from harvested stone. “I heard that. You’re right. From what we’ve managed to scout, the Valens are losing,” he said.
Crystalyn glanced beyond the tree, but nothing moved. “Is Atoi with you?”
Hastel studied her as he responded. “No, she’s watching the hillside below. She’ll let us know if anyone gets past your Broth. His warden eyes are good, but it’s a big area.”
Like Jade, he’d stated the obvious, though he looked at her as if she had. “Which is precisely the problem; things are going to escalate soon. I’m about to disturb that anthill down there, so I’ll call my link mate back. Broth can bring Atoi with him. The three of you need to scout our seeming escape path. Make it look like we are running for our lives, then find and mark where we leave the path to begin circling back. Once Jade and I discover the best targets to scatter for the diversion, I’ll pummel the area with symbols. We won’t have long before they converge on this little hillside, but it should give us the time we’ll need.”
A little too late, Hastel masked the look of relief that flitted on his wounded face, his one eye glossy.
Did he think they would just give up and go home in the face of such a sizable force? Perhaps he had.
“Aye, I will find the way,” Hastel said. He slipped under the tree and made use of the quarry road. “Don’t take too long.” The soft admonishment hung in the air after him.
&nbs
p; Crystalyn looked at Jade. “If we can’t get through, we go to Brown Recluse. Perhaps we can persuade the monks to aid us with helping the Valens with their plight.”
Jade’s brow furrowed. “You’re putting a lot of faith in the belief Camoe’s brother Caven is still prominence at the monastery. I know he helped me reunite with you at the Dark Citadel, but doing so cost the lives of four tavern workers. That couldn’t have gone well for him.”
Crystalyn wanted to assure her sister everything would have a happy conclusion, but such words would sound as artificial as they were to both of them. Those types of endings were for normal people going about mundane, nondescript lives. Their family and new friends were as far from normal as a world full of warring magic Users, both Dark and Light, had forced them to get. Though they both longed for it, they would never have ordinary lives. Jade knew it as well as Crystalyn did. “Then hopefully, what we do today will be enough to make it through, though attacking an entire army by our lonesome is a tad bit reckless or unstable. You get to decide which it is.”
Jade glanced at her sharply.
Crystalyn smiled as she spoke, adding a bit of self-recrimination to lighten the gravity of the situation. “I daresay, you know which one goes better with my broken mind, it’s always been a tad unstable. Well, perhaps more than that, two tads.”
Even with Jade feeding her tiny increments of the Flow—the river of power underlying the land—which helped shore up her symbols so they lasted longer and had a bit more power, they wouldn’t stand a chance against even one-fourth of the Dark Citadel’s forces besieging the Vale. Not even with the tremendous boost of the black candle artifact enhancing her power.
Jade kept silent.
“Broth?” Crystalyn inquired. The telepathic link resided like a fond, unforgettable memory in her mind. The connection was always there, ready for her to access. “Are you here?”
“I am your link mate, Do’brieni,” came the reply, along with a faint sense of amusement.
She always seemed to amuse him a lot for some unfathomable reason. Perhaps it was because she usually started by asking if he was ‘here’. Where else would her link mate be? “Do you have anything different to report?”
An image of dark-armored soldiers, afoot and on horseback, crowding the open areas below a grove of falun trees flowed through the link.
“As I suspected,” Crystalyn added into the link. “We’re going to attempt something new. If it works, they’ll be on us like a swarm of spiderbees. Gather Atoi and make your way here, quickly.”
“I come,” flowed the voiceless reply.
Crystalyn looked at her sister. “Everyone is ready. Are you?”
Jade’s nod was small, resigned.
Crystalyn combined her familiar absorption symbol with another she’d read about in the Tiered Tome of Symbols, tier three, tucked under the heading seek. The curvy leaves with the diagonal lines symbol had provided limited-range audio, but combining it with the absorption one had been a stroke of genius mixed with sheer luck.
Jade’s ability to glimpse disjointed images in auras, fragments of their lives and their possible futures swirling around them like maelstroms, could prove useful for surveillance, now and in the future, if they got it right. “Here we go. Feed me all the power you can, but don’t overdo it. You have to be able to run when I hit them. They will retaliate.” Contact made the effect much stronger, so she held out her hand.
Jade took it without hesitation.
Crystalyn smiled grimly. Her sister trusted her implicitly, but would she after the death toll climbed? Jade would use herself as a conduit to the Flow, interrupting the raging river of power underlying the land and feeding it into Crystalyn through their touch. As Dad had always said, together they were stronger.
Crystalyn prepared herself by mentally attaching a path of least resistance through the quarry rock beneath her feet. Grounding herself ensured she would pull energy from around her, instead of from her. Though activating her symbols still cost her traces of her life energy, grounding ensured it was only at a fraction of what it had been the first months of discovering her ability with symbols.
Standing, Crystalyn peeked over the ledge at the carnage happening below. Her symbol formed in the air before her, an intricate hexagon with squiggly lines and long spirals making up the center. “There,” she said after a time, pointing. “In the center and at the farthest right appear to be the most concentrated areas. We’ll aim for them.”
Jade squeezed her hand.
Attaching her awareness to the white-gold pattern, Crystalyn sent the symbol moving about the valley, making it to the outskirts of the fighting before it gained notice. A volley of black cones and red missiles converged upon it, only to be absorbed. The added power would boost Jade, though not long.
The enemy’s next attack was a hail of gleaming, onyx arrows sent from a regiment of archers that passed harmlessly through the symbol. The attack stalled after that for some reason, likely the enemy Users waited for someone with authority to tell them what to try next.
Crystalyn made the most of it. Stepping up the pace, she swept the symbol past the center of the raging battle feeling as if she stood in the midst of it. Crystalyn was afraid of leaving the symbol out too long or sending it too far afield; it might leave her too drained to pull her consciousness back. Today was not a good day to become a mindless shell.
Moving on to the right side of the meadow as far as she dared, she swung the symbol into the Vale itself. Some few brave or foolish souls rode after the symbol on horseback, only to fall to a hail of green-hafted arrows. Partway under the battered, green canopy of the great falun trees of the Vibrant Vale, Crystalyn decided to make do with whatever she had for now. The strain of holding on to it was too great.
Pulling back quickly—too fast—her perspective snapped from the symbol back to where she stood in the quarry. Her awareness of her present surroundings mixed with her body’s demand for equilibrium and assaulted her all at once.
Dizzy, Crystalyn’s head swirled.
Crystalyn found herself looking up at the bright, though brisk, afternoon sky. Growing on the rim of the quarry pit, fragrant mountain flowers exulted in new spring.
A rock scraped against another.
Jade sat beside her, concern furrowing her fine eyebrows. “Looks like you’re back—your eyes aren’t blank now. I never know if you’re going to return from one of those jaunts. Flinging your mind around the countryside like that can’t be good for your health. One of these times, I won’t catch you in time, and you’re going to get hurt.” Jade paused, regarding her closely. “Well? Did it work?”
Blinking rapidly, her mind still adjusting, Crystalyn stood and brushed the moist soil from the back of her legs. “We’ll see in a moment,” she said and then paused, allowing her racing heart to still before going on. The trips ‘around the countryside’ as her sister so eloquently put it, were starting to take a lot out of her.
Finally, her heartbeat slowed. Crystalyn brought out the symbol, setting it to hover in the air before them. Restoring the link to the symbol, she took Jade’s hand, signaling her to bring up the aura images it had captured.
The absorption symbol worked better than expected. Almost instantly, images of men and women in various battle poses popped into being, replacing the symbol’s pattern on the white side. Scrolling from left to right, frame after frame of images flickered by as if it were a three-dimensional holo projection, though not how Crystalyn recalled it.
Something was off. The scenes seemed more brutal. Granted, the perspective was closer then when she’d guided the symbol, but the damage was so much greater. Large areas erupted with the earth exploding under the feet of many soldiers and Users.
Then she had it. They watched a future projection of the battle below, the brutal carnage of a war that would happen when men and women died. Jade’s ability had drawn the moment of death images into the symbol with a show of staggering pow
er. Crystalyn’s jaw dropped with awe by her little sister’s ability.
The soundless screams of the dying showed on anguished faces as those caught in the violence clutched weakly at their horrid injuries. Arrows and magical bolts flew sizzling through the air; blood splashed a vibrant red as weapons connected.
Armored men and women charged forward, pikes held at the ready, only to drop with an arrow to the throat or wiped apart by a huge boulder flung from a catapult. Worse, vines lying dormant on the ground would suddenly reach up and tighten around limbs, squeezing until they sliced through.
Crystalyn concentrated on the densest areas of the dying, looking for the highest concentrations of the enemy. The view swung to the right side, where the Dark army fared better. Cavalry prepared to sweep toward the right center where a group of tall, muscular Valens, some with eyes glowing radiant white, made their stand. Most had visible injuries, some with black arrow shafts impaled through arms or legs, while others had blackened, still bubbling wounds.
A contingent of robed Users waited behind the relative safety of infantry, presumably until the cavalry rode back to the rear after a foray into the front lines.
The image froze, ending halfway along the writhing mass of dark-armored, robed, and green-clad bodies of forest warriors, the Valens, and some dark creations, the magical beings manifested by Dark Users. Crystalyn played it through again before dissolving it.
Now she knew what symbols to use and where to place them. The future scenes had made the decision easy by showing her. “Okay, I’m going to use my acidic drop symbol on the right side, then send the explosive rings through the center, working on their Users as much as possible. I’ll get three to four symbols off before they pinpoint our location.”
Jade’s brilliant green eyes were wide with horror. “Oh, Great Father! That was hard to watch. How do you do it? You’re so… so clinical sometimes.”
Crystalyn glanced at Jade. “I have to be hard with some of this. Think of it as a festering wound to cleanse before it will heal, as I do. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able help anyone, not even ourselves,” she hesitated. “Once I begin, we won’t have long. Are you up to it Jade?”
Beyond the Dark Gate Page 3