Jez gasped as the fingers squeezed. He was almost positive that vision had been accidental, the result of him touching an echo of his own power. This wasn’t just a phobos. This was the phobos Jez had banished on his first day at the Academy. The phobos recognized him as well. It brought him to its face and opened a wide mouth full of teeth seemingly made of black stone. Rather than drawing more deeply on Luntayary’s power, Jez released it. His form shrank, and he slipped out of the demon’s hand. Almost instantly, he called his wings back. Jez drove his crystal sword into the demon’s abdomen, but the creature was too powerful for even his weapon to have much of an effect.
Jez darted into the air, and Ziary flew in close to attack. The scion delivered a quick slash to the creature’s chest before diving away, but the demon threw out his hand, and a rope of fire lashed out and wound itself around Ziary’s feet. The demon tugged, jerking Ziary backward. The phobos caught him in his hand, and Ziary screamed. Jez turned in the air and rushed toward his friend. At the same instant, a ball of fire engulfed the demon’s head, but it ignored the illusion, and the flames vanished just as Jez reached Ziary. Scarlet energy ran through the scion’s body. There was a cracking sound, and Ziary’s form fell away to be replaced by Osmund, who wasn’t moving. A heartbeat later, Jez’s blade sheered through two of the demon’s fingers. Osmund fell free, and Jez dove to catch him. Just as they neared the ground, half a dozen duplicates scattered in all directions, and Jez could feel the well of protection energy inside of them.
“I may not be able to fool that thing for long,” Lina’s voice said. Jez looked around, but he couldn’t see her, “but I think I can buy you a few seconds.”
Jez nodded and placed Osmund on the floor. Before he could say anything, the other boy vanished.
“Thanks Lina,” he said under his breath before taking to the air again.
The flame rope tried to entangle Jez, but a quick slash of his sword severed the end of it. Jez drew deeply on Luntayary’s power until it singed his flesh. He shaped that power into chains and threw it at the phobos. The creature caught the chain in its hand, but Jez sent a surge of power into it. The hand steamed, and the demon roared and tried to release it, but the chain had burned itself into the phobos’s hand. Jez flew around the creature until he had it completely tied up. The demon struggled, but the chain was too strong, and Jez continually poured power into it. The demon screamed as the binding burned its flesh and fell to the ground with a thundering crash. Jez landed a few feet away and staggered to it. The demon’s six eyes focused on him. With one quick slash, Jez removed the beast’s head from its body.
The head rolled away, though its eyes locked onto him every time they turned in his direction. It was a full minute before the creature roared. The sound should’ve never been able to come out of a severed head and probably could’ve been heard for miles. Blue flames erupted around the demon, both from its head and its body. In a matter of seconds, it was consumed, leaving nothing but a pile of ash.
Jez felt a faint pulsing of power where its body had been. For a moment, he couldn’t believe it. If the demon’s physical form had been destroyed in the mortal realm, its essence would return here while it recovered, but it had been destroyed in its home. There should be nothing of it remaining. Jez stepped forward and closed his eyes. He reached out for the power and excitement welled in him. This wasn’t the demon’s power. It was fading quickly, and it would be gone within an hour, but he recognized it. It was his own. He started to laugh.
“Jez, what is it?” Lina asked.
She had reappeared and examined Osmund. He had his eyes open and struggled to sit up. Jez pointed at the ashes. “I bound that demon over two years ago.”
“So?”
“So I created a talisman to keep it in the abyss. The talisman was linked to the demon, but now that the demon is destroyed, the talisman is crumbling. Until it does, though, part of that link is still in the abyss. It’s free to be used.”
“You mean Sharim could use it to get free?”
Jez shook his head. “No, the other end of the link is still sealed away by my talisman, but I made it, and I can take it down.”
“Jez what are you saying?” Osmund asked.
“I can get us home.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Jez’s awareness ran through the link until he could sense the lower levels of the Academy. Wards surrounded him, powerful ones that would prevent them from leaving the room if they were there physically, but it would still be a thousand times better than being trapped in the abyss. The silk doll that served as a talisman to keep the phobos locked away was decaying, but so long as it held, he would be able to open a way back. He took a deep breath and returned to his body.
He sat on the burned out ground where the phobos had died. Osmund stood over him, though the larger boy struggled to stand up straight. Lina waited nearby as well. Jez saw the characteristic darkening of the land around them which told him Lina was hiding them beneath one of her illusions.
“Anything?” he asked.
Osmund looked down at him and shook his head. “We’ve seen some demons, but none of them came close.”
“We should hurry,” Lina said. “With what you’ve been doing, it won’t take Mirel long to tell the false images I’m sending her from the true one.”
Jez nodded. “Be ready to fight off whatever comes. Lina’s illusions probably can’t hide this.”
“Jez, are you sure?” Osmund asked.
“No, but this is a combination of banishing and summoning, and it’s going to be a lot of power. She’s not good enough in either of those to know them well enough to hide them.”
Lina huffed. “You know, I am standing right here.”
Jez raised an eyebrow. “Am I wrong?”
“Well, no.”
“That’s not what I mean anyway,” Osmund said.
“Then what?”
“Are you sure we should be leaving?”
Jez gaped at his friend. “Osmund, are you serious? This is the abyss. We’re both wounded, and Lina is exhausting herself trying to hide us from senses she doesn’t have. Why shouldn’t we be leaving?”
“Because we delivered the library into Sharim’s hands.”
That brought Jez up short. Osmund’s words seemed to hang in the air. Jez looked in the direction of the library. With no fog, he could make out its outline on the top of the large hill. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Really? You’ve hardly thought of anything else for the past six months.”
“For the past six months, I wasn’t in the abyss.”
“We have a way out,” Lina said. “We can take care of Sharim later, if he can even escape.”
“He can, Lina. That knowledge is in the library. If Sharim can find it, he’ll be able to invade the mortal realm with a practically endless army of demons.”
“You can barely stand.”
“I’m the only one who can summon Shamarion and the rest of the pharim.” He pursed his lips. He had to drag the next words out. “Look, Lina, there’s no reason for you to stay here. I can send you back.”
For a moment, she looked surprised and a little pained, but Osmund spoke before she did.
“What about me?” he asked, making no effort to hide his wide grin.
Jez rolled his eyes. “I would be glad if you weren’t around to bother me.”
“No, that’s okay. This sounds like another one of your bad plans, and you’d be hopeless if I left.”
Jez didn’t bother to acknowledge him. “What about it, Lina? If you’re going to go back, you have to do it now before the link degrades.”
She looked into the ashes of the demon for several seconds. “You’re really going to stay?”
Jez allowed himself to feel the way back to the mortal realm as he looked at the scorched land around him. In the distance, a geyser shot out a gout of flame, and winged demons flew overhead. It would be so easy to leave this place, and no one would blame him for fleein
g from the abyss.
“Before I fought him, Marrowit offered to return my father to life,” Jez said.
Lina took in a sharp breath. “What?”
Jez smiled. He hadn’t told anyone that before. “He swore an oath that if I left him alone, he would bring my father back and that he would withdraw from the world for as long as I lived.” Jez let out a breath. “He was a demon of the third order, and I hadn’t even completed a full term at the Academy. I almost accepted.”
Osmund stared at him. “I can’t say I blame you. I’m not sure what I would’ve done.”
“I would’ve been sacrificing the world to save myself. This isn’t any different except that the demons will come against us sooner. I can’t leave.”
Lina looked from Jez to Osmund and nodded. “I’m getting better with the other senses. I might be able to help.”
“Are you sure?”
She hesitated before nodding. She and Osmund talked for a little while, but Jez barely listened. His attention remained focused on the link as it slowly evaporated, taking their way home with it.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
They wandered across the mountainside, never staying in one place too long. Every once in a while, they would take a break for a few minutes, hidden under one of Lina’s illusions, but they never stayed for more than a quarter hour. The dim red sun remained a steady presence in the sky. It took Jez a while to realize that the oppressive heat he felt wasn’t coming from the sun but from the earth itself. The burning in his lungs grew steadily worse, and before long, he tasted blood every time he took a breath. Osmund had trouble walking, and Lina struggled as she constantly maintained her illusions. At one point, they huddled in a cleft in the rock as half a dozen chezamuts wandered by. They were larger than the soldier demons Jez had seen before, and they likely wouldn’t be nearly so easy to defeat.
“How much time do you think has passed?” Lina asked.
“I’m not sure,” Jez said. “Maybe three or four hours.”
“Jez, we can’t keep this up.”
Her voice wavered a little. She sounded almost as afraid as he felt. Jez started to reassure her, but he’d only gotten out a single word before falling into a fit of coughing so strong that he doubled over. When he finished, there was a spot of blood on the ground, larger than any other he’d made since coming here. He stared at it for a few seconds. Slowly, the ground absorbed it, and Jez tried not to wonder if the abyss was drinking his blood.
“You’re probably right.”
“Then, what do we do?” Osmund asked.
“Find another cave?” Lina asked.
Jez shook his head. “If we stay in one place too long, the demons will find us. This is their world.”
“Not all of it,” Osmund said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the library isn’t from their world. It’s from ours.”
“There have to be hundreds of demons there by now.”
“It’s a place big enough to hold thousands,” Osmund said, “and there are those warded rooms. I might’ve been able to get in, but I’m sure there are places demons can’t go.”
“If it was so easy to get in, we would’ve done it earlier,” Jez said.
“Earlier we weren’t just looking for a place to hide out for half a day. We don’t have to take it from them. We just have to avoid their notice.”
Jez pursed his lips. “You’re probably right.”
“How will we get in?” Lina asked. “The doors will be watched.”
“The light of knowledge,” Osmund said. Jez and Lina looked at him. “The brazier at the top of the library. There has to be a way down from there.”
“Do you expect us to climb the walls?” Lina asked.
“No,” Osmund said. “I expect us to fly.”
Once they’d transformed, Ziary and Luntayary were too powerful for Lina to hide them the way she’d been doing before, but she could change the way they looked so they resembled winged demons. The illusion of black scales covered them, and bat-like wings rose from their backs. Their eyes transformed into twin points of pale yellow lights, and sinuous tails swung behind them. Jez took Lina in his arms, trusting that she too would be shrouded by the illusion.
They spread their wings and took off. The air felt thicker than in the mortal realm, and it felt more like clawing through the sky than flying. After their experience with the fog beast, they avoided clouds, unwilling to risk accidently flying into something that turned out to be a demon. It didn’t take long for details of the library to come into view. The fire still flickered in the tower, seeming out of place on the scorched hillside. Beneath them, a hoard of demons had gathered. Many were twisted versions of those Jez had fought before. Some fought among themselves, and destruction magic flickered back and forth. Even from high above, Jez sensed the reckless energy about them. They were waiting for war.
Jez and Ziary kept their distance from other flying demons until they found an opening to reach the tower. They landed softly near the brazier. Jez just stared at it, and for just a moment, the image of great tower appeared in his mind. The fire burned golden yellow, and he heard whispers in his mind. They spoke of knowledge long lost. Without knowing how he knew, he was certain that the knowledge could be his if he had the will to take it. He found himself taking a step forward and staring deeply into the flames. He could almost see images dancing inside. He jumped when Osmund put a hand on his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Jez said. “Mirel was wrong. This is no ordinary fire.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think ‘light of knowledge’ was more literal than we thought.”
“Do you think this is what Sharim is looking for?”
Jez shrugged. “Maybe. There’s definitely something stored in here.”
“Can you tell what it is?”
Jez put his hand right next to the fire. “It’s not hot.” Something tickled at his mind. It felt like a memory, but not exactly that. “I guess there’s only one thing to do.”
He plunged his hand into the flames.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
There was nothing around Jez. He was neither hot nor cold. Neither humid nor dry. He was in a black void, utterly featureless.
“Hello?”
His voice echoed for a long time. When it finally faded, a point of shining light appeared before him. A second later, it flashed. When the light had dimmed, a man with the dark skin of the lands beyond the eastern sea stood before him. Gray streaked his black hair, and he had deep brown eyes that spoke of a vast knowledge. He wore the robes of a scholar, though his arms bulged with the muscles of one more accustomed to the sword than the quill.
“Greetings.” He had a loud booming voice. He spoke with an odd accent Jez couldn’t place. “It has been a long time since anyone has come here, though I have to say, you’re not what I normally expect from a caretaker.”
“A caretaker?”
The man smiled. “A challenge then? I know your people like to play games, even if you pretend you don’t. Were you challenged by your fellows to get into the library’s tower and touch the light of knowledge?”
Jez blinked at him. “What are you talking about? Who are you?”
“I am the guard, of course.”
“The guard of what?”
The man laughed. “You’ll not get me to reveal my secrets so easily, and you’ve not been the first to try. The caretaker will be upset with you. You should know that I won’t hide what you did from him.”
“The caretaker was the leader of the library?”
“Of course.”
“There is no caretaker. There hasn’t been anyone in the library for over a thousand years.”
“That is ridiculous.”
“You said so yourself, it’s been a long time since anyone came here. How long?”
The man’s smile faltered. “I don’t know. I’m not aware unless there’s someone in the fire. I don’t have a good sense of time otherwise.”
>
“Take a guess.”
He let out a long breath, and his eyes seemed far away for a second. “Less than five thousand years. More than three hundred.”
Jez gaped. “That’s a big range.”
“Normally, I rely on the ones who come here to tell me when the last caretaker entered.”
“Fine. Is it normally at least three hundred years between caretaker visits?”
“No, it tends to be far shorter.”
“That’s because the last caretaker died so long ago no one even knows his name.”
The man stared at him for a long time. Jez felt a presence brush across his mind. He almost fought it off, but after what he had already revealed to Mirel, what did he have to lose? He compressed his wards so they only protected a few key secrets and allowed it inside. It wasn’t a strong probe. Whatever or whoever this guard was, he obviously had no great strength at mental magic, but after a few seconds, it quivered and withdrew. The guard let out a breath, and his shoulders slumped. He shrank a few inches, and the darkness around them seemed somehow larger.
“You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Jiral.”
Jez blinked. “What?”
“The last caretaker. Her name was Jiral.”
“What were you hiding here?”
“A rune.”
“That’s it? Just a rune?”
“Hardly just. The rune I know is the one representing the Keep of the Hosts.”
Jez stared at him. He hadn’t known there was such a rune. “That was the tower I saw in the fire.” The guardian nodded. “Why are you telling me?”
“You are a Shadowguard. I have no reason not to.”
Jez gaped for a second. This being hadn’t gone anywhere near that knowledge. “No, I’m not.”
“Look down at yourself.”
Jez did and realized his clothes had changed to shining sapphire robes. The crystal sword hung from his waist. He looked over his shoulder and saw the pure white wings that had emerged from his back. He turned to the guardian.
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