My father gestured before himself with a sweep of his sword, chuckling. “Five. Which makes nine for me.”
I glanced over. There were five headless warriors arrayed on the ground around him.
“Four,” I said. “Which makes nine for me. See if you can continue to keep up, Daddy-o.” I took a step forward, raising my left hand and allowing the centipedes to twist and twine around my palm and wrist. I wrapped my bravado around me as if it were another level of protection against the death and destruction I was about to unleash.
And maybe it was. A thing protecting my heart and soul.
I thrust my jade knife toward the three dozen white-armored elves standing between me and my objective — the gateway.
“The wielder of the instruments of assassination has returned,” I yelled. “Give way, or I and my father, the warrior of the guardian dragons, will carve a path through you.”
The elves glared and snarled back at me. Then each one in the front line defiantly thumped their milky, iridescent sword against their chest once, advancing toward us in perfect step with each other.
My father laughed. “I thought you were very clear, my daughter. But some people just don’t want to listen.”
The first wave of elves attacked before I could respond with a smart-ass remark.
Three more fell to my centipedes. One to my knife.
Four fell to my father’s sword. Another to a left-hand uppercut backed by a blast of guardian power.
The elves kept coming.
And falling.
Magic continued to boil from the gateway — magic pulled from Haoxin, draining her, slowly killing her. Reggie was still trying to get more elves through, and it was an easy guess that doing so was what had kept her occupied while we’d been sneaking through the maze.
Weapons and magic flying, we marched over the fallen. Side by side, my father and I pressed forward, swiftly and decisively. Moving as if we’d fought together, as if we’d waged war together, for centuries. Gabby and Mory stayed tucked up safely behind us.
If an elf managed to slip by me or Yazi, one of Mory’s zombies latched on to the attacker, holding them at bay for the moment it took for one of us to turn and dispatch them.
Freddie helpfully burrowed into one elf’s eyeball, slithering out of the other only after I’d skewered the elf through his gemstone.
Amplified by Gabby, Mory picked up three more of the fallen, boosting her elf shield to twelve. I knew that her being able to do so was something to marvel at, even with the amplifier’s help. But I didn’t have time for pride or praise.
I thought of nothing but the next step, unleashing the centipedes over and over again. Slitting throats, cracking gemstones.
Not a single blow made it through my defenses. What my own magic didn’t deflect, the magic embedded in my new armor mitigated.
We were still about five feet from the gateway when the energy radiating from it ebbed to a trickle. Then a wave of magic tasting of salt water and decomposing wood crashed over us like a tsunami. It prickled across my forehead, trying to find purchase on my scar and slip into my brain.
Gabby grunted in pain.
Reggie had decided to join the fight.
Finally.
I slashed through her telepathic onslaught with a casual flick of my knife. My father did the same at my left.
The final wave of elves fell back, but they stayed facing us as they circled back around the gateway — momentarily stepping out of our sight.
I called the centipedes back, clipping them into place on my necklace. Then, without bothering to discuss our next steps, I reached back for Mory, hitching her up on my back like a toddler.
The necromancer wrapped her arms around my neck without hesitation.
“To the right,” my father barked, reaching for Gabby.
Picking up the necromancer and the amplifier, we moved together, quickly circling the gateway. The stadium was a blur of magic as we moved. Then just as suddenly we stopped, depositing our companions next to the churning magic feeding off Haoxin.
Mory gasped, falling to her knees.
“What the hell?” Gabby murmured, wobbling and clutching her stomach.
I didn’t have time to make sure they were okay, though. I was already turning to face Reggie.
Not only did I have a personal score to settle, I also had to keep every single elf in the stadium focused on me. I had to keep the fight centered on Yazi and me.
Because even though it was so faint and brief that it might have been only a long-lost memory, I could have sworn I’d tasted sweet stewed cherries, thick whipped cream, bittersweet chocolate, and the barest hint of cool peppermint.
It was there one moment, then gone, overwhelmed by the blistering, mind-warping power of the gateway at my back.
Warner. Kandy. Kett.
They’d been freed from their cells.
Maybe we were going to pull this off after all.
10
I met Reggie’s vicious, green-eyed gaze across the wide expanse of the very center of the massive fifty-thousand-seat stadium. Then I slid my eyes toward my father. “I lost count.”
“Not counting the wounded who retreated, it’s twenty-five for me, nineteen for you, and three for the necromancer and amplifier. With help from the leech,” my father said loudly and clearly amused.
Mory and Gabby shifted around behind us. The pixie necromancer settled down cross-legged on the edge of the platform, directly in front of the gateway. Gabby kneeled, tucking up behind Mory with her hands on her shoulders. Six zombie elves — Mory had apparently lost hold of the others, or the elves had taken them out — lurched around the pulsing magic of the gate, three to either side, shielding Mory and Gabby.
Alivia and Traveler backed Reggie, who was still wearing her stupid cloak. And as I made a very fast count, I estimated that close to three hundred elves were arrayed around their liege, all of them sheathed in their white, flexible armor and bristling with crystal blood-swords and magic.
Hundreds of elves. Between me and my target.
Except I was supposed to support and defend Mory in this stage of Rochelle’s master plan. Sneak in, trigger a distraction, then watch over Mory while she closed the gateway. So revenge was going to have to wait until the necromancer managed to free Haoxin.
Three smaller subgroups of elves suddenly broke off in different directions. I counted six elves in each group, heading down three different passageways into the maze — including the one we’d avoided using.
So Reggie had finally seen through our distraction attempt. Or maybe she’d known there was a separate rescue attempt going on at the same time, but had been focused on shoring up her forces with as many new recruits as she could get through the gateway before we made it through the maze.
Fear slipped down my spine, spreading a numbness through my limbs. All I could think about was how we should have cut through the walls earlier. We should have brought some heavier-duty spells with us, not just sealing off the maze behind us but letting us blast our way through.
I took a deep breath, trying to quell the terror rising in response to all the unknowns. But there was nothing I could do, other than what had already been done. Nothing I could do for anyone other than Mory and Gabby.
I had to stick to the plan. I had to hope.
So. Might as well keep the diversion tactics going and buy the necromancer some time.
I took a single step forward, pulling my katana from the built-in sheath on my back. The front line of elves raised their crystal weapons in unison. They were puppets, like Mory’s zombies. Except that Reggie’s strings could theoretically be severed, freeing the elves. Just like I’d severed her connection to me. Of course, I’d almost killed myself doing so, so that wasn’t a terribly practical solution.
My father chuckled.
Good to know a freaking legion of elves all controlled by a megalomaniac telepath amused the warrior of the guardians.
Behind me, I felt more than
saw Mory pull her newly powered-up knitting needles out of her satchel, then hold them up in the air, pointed toward Haoxin.
“Ready?” Gabby whispered.
“Not yet.”
I leveled my sword, pointing it directly at Reggie. She pressed her hands forward, then swept her arms open. The elves directly between us took three steps to the side, opening a pathway and exposing a circle that had been scribed on the floor in what I assumed was Elvish script.
“I am Jade Godfrey, wielder of the instruments of assassination,” I cried, projecting my voice as much as I could. “I stand before you with my father, the warrior of the guardian dragons.”
Traveler flashed Reggie a disconcerted look, but she waved him off without taking her gaze from me.
I twirled my katana, using the magic embedded in it to flip it around my hand, then tossing it back and forth in a glittering display. “This is the dragon slayer,” I proclaimed. Then I captured the katana in my right hand, absorbing all the magic I’d generated into its twenty-four-inch blade and pointing it at Reggie again. “After today, it will have a new name.”
I gestured to all the elves on my right, then back to my left. “Elf slayer.”
I paused, hoping to let the threat sink in. “But … I’m also here to close the gateway. I can do that with all of you on this side, likely dead at my feet. Or after you’ve chosen to return to your own dimension. But I will slaughter anyone who stands between me and Reggie.” I thrust my sword toward the telepath. “Hand her over to me, and we can shortcut the maiming and decapitation.”
The hundreds of elves arrayed before me didn’t even blink.
I hadn’t expected them to.
“Do you always declare your intentions so thoroughly?” my father asked. “I usually just start lopping heads off.”
“I know, Dad. But the elves are just pawns in Reggie’s game. I wanted to give them a chance to make up their own minds.”
Yazi looked at me doubtfully.
“Plus,” I said huffily, “I was being intimidating.”
A wide grin bloomed across my father’s face. “That you were, daughter of mine. That you were.”
A flush of warmth triggered by his pride filled the empty space in my heart, if only for that moment.
“Got it,” Mory murmured. “I can see the threads …”
“Okay … okay …” Gabby whispered.
I glanced back to see the amplifier wrap her hands around the back of Mory’s head, pressing her fingertips to the necromancer’s temples. Magic welled between them.
Freddie disappeared from Mory’s shoulder, reappearing perched on the head of the zombie elf next to the necromancer. The shadow leech spread its wings, beady red eyes pinned to the elf army, needle-like teeth flashing. Then it chittered madly.
So I wasn’t the only mouthy one in the group. Good to know.
Now the leech and I just had to prove we could back up the boasting.
Reggie took a step forward into the circle with Alivia at her side. Magic shimmered through the Elvish script, then a ward slammed into place around them, streaking upward in a thick column all the way to the domed ceiling.
I could feel the intensity of the magic from where I stood, easily over fifty feet away.
Traveler strode forward through the pathway Reggie had created, and the elf army stepped back into place as he passed. Once again blocking me from my target.
The taste of Alivia’s magic — the primary forest-after-a-rainstorm scent that all elves seemed to carry, plus her apricot undertone — channeled downward. A platform rose underneath the telepath and the ward builder’s feet, raising them about three feet from the concrete floor. So they could see the battle about to be waged.
I’d been too distracted to notice it before, but the floor around us was plain concrete. The elves must have torn up all the synthetic turf at some point. I snorted. “Fancy.”
My father grunted, rolled his shoulders, and manifested his golden broadsword out of thin air. A few of the elves arrayed in the front line actually flinched in response to the intense power rolling off the weapon.
Traveler barked a series of orders in a language I could no longer understand. And a flush of relief actually ran through me at the confirmation — minor or not — that the gemstone hadn’t left any unwanted residual in me. Nothing that Reggie might harness and use against me.
With Traveler at their center, the first wave of elves raised their swords and began methodically stalking toward us, making a wall about twenty warriors across. Another uniform line began marching a half-dozen steps behind the first.
“The big guy in the middle is a teleporter,” I said. “Traveler, they call him. He survived Haoxin.”
My father grunted. “Reckless and adventurous likes to play,” he said, referring to Haoxin’s secondary title. “She likes to test her powers.” He shrugged. “I am not so … young.”
His hesitation before the word ‘young’ made me wonder what he’d stopped himself from saying. But the elves were quickly closing in, so I didn’t ask.
The first wave was about twenty feet away when my father randomly leaped fifteen feet into the air, coming down deliberately hard on his right foot in front of us.
Guardian magic exploded as he hit. The concrete floor cracked as if it had been struck by a massive meteor. A meteor that then caused a shockwave that radiated in only one direction, leaving the floor beneath my feet untouched, but crumpling concrete and rebar in a wide arc forward.
Caught in the wave of guardian magic and roiling concrete, the first two lines of elves flew backward, including Traveler. They slammed into the hundreds of elves behind them, knocking them asunder. Elves smashed into the column of magic Alivia had erected around Reggie, falling senseless to the floor before being accidentally trampled. Other white-armored warriors crashed into and through the outer walls of the maze. Some were even tossed up into the stadium seating. Easily two dozen didn’t get back up.
I lost track of Traveler. He might have teleported out of the way.
That assault was really going to tip the body count in my father’s favor. Which was okay, actually, because it was a stupid game to have been playing anyway.
The cracked floor abruptly settled, creating a wide ridge of jagged concrete and twisted rebar in a rough half circle in front of us. The barrier ranged from eight to ten feet high in places, and looked treacherously unstable. The elves would now be forced to climb over the barrier to get to us. The area directly before us was relatively clear. The concrete was slightly cracked, but smooth enough that we wouldn’t need to worry about tripping.
But now we’d be able to pick the elves off in small groups as they scrambled over the ridge. Also, Reggie’s viewing platform likely wasn’t high enough to see completely over the barrier. So the telepath would have to rely on filtered information if she planned to command the battle.
“Freaking brilliant,” I whispered.
Yazi threw back his head and laughed. The ground shook with his power, shifting the unstable barrier so that a number of the elves already attempting to scale it slipped and got their legs caught in various crevices.
“You’re going to have to teach me that one, Dad,” I said.
Still laughing, Yazi stepped forward and lazily decapitated three elves who’d managed to make it over. Then he turned back, still grinning, to wink at me.
Then, one by one — well, sometimes two by two, or three by three for my father — we slaughtered any of the elves that made it over the concrete and rebar, keeping Mory and Gabby safely tucked at our backs.
Every time my father dropped an elf, he kicked that warrior back over the barrier. When the pile around my own feet grew too cumbersome, he would switch places with me and clear it. Slowly and steadily, the concrete barrier was blanketed with the bodies of Reggie’s army, growing higher and higher. Forcing the warrior elves to scramble over their own dead and dying to reach us.
We were butchering and maiming the elves faster than
they could decompose and crumble into fine crystal. That was utterly disconcerting, even as we used it to our advantage.
There was no sign of Traveler, though he could have easily teleported in. No sign of Reggie or Alivia peeking over the ridge. The absence of Traveler, who loathed me enough to want to confront me directly, worried me. Either he’d been badly wounded when my father erected the barrier … or Reggie had sent him elsewhere.
Yet another thing I could do nothing about.
So I kept my focus narrow, trying to ignore the destruction that I … that we unleashed. Whenever my katana grew heavy with elven blood, I simply absorbed its magic into the steel blade, watching that blood crumble into flakes of crystal. Over and over again.
At some point, the centipedes started singing. They made a thrilled trill as I released the instrument of assassination from my grasp and they sped toward their targets. Then a contented hum when they returned to me. It was as if they were feeding, adapting, growing with power.
And all I could do was acknowledge it, understanding that this was the purpose of the instruments, and of the katana soon to be known as the elf slayer. Understanding that this was the destiny of the wielder.
My destiny.
All I could do was keep myself between Mory and Gabby and the onslaught. All I could do was keep moving.
The nightmares, for all of us, would come later. If we survived.
The steady assault eased to a trickle, barely enough to keep both my father and me engaged. Freddie settled on my shoulder as I turned back to check on Mory. The leech was heavy with magic, its form as substantial as I’d ever seen it. It was more winged demon, red eyes, and hooked claws than shadow now.
I realized that my movements during the fight had opened up too much space between me and the gateway. I couldn’t let any elves slip around and past me. Returning my gaze to the top of the corpse-littered barrier, I took a few quick steps back.
Gemstones, Elves, and Other Insidious Magic (Dowser 9) Page 23