Darkmask (Pharim War Book 5)

by Gama Ray Martinez

  Scarlet light bloomed around him, and the flaming bars puffed out. Sharim rose into the air glowing with energy. Others screamed as he drew more fully on the power of the high lords. Ziary groaned.

  “I probably shouldn’t have said that.”

  Sharim laughed. His face twitched, and Jez looked around. He didn’t see what he was looking for, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

  “Luven, take me into his mind!”

  The shadows cast by Sharim’s glow lengthened and seemed to absorb the surrounding light. One, cast by a pile of rubble that had once been part of the spire, rippled. The Darkmask leaped out of it and gripped Sharim’s head. He threw a hand toward Jez, and the world vanished.

  CHAPTER 40

  Jez screamed. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but it hurt his mind to perceive it. He tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go. He cried out for help, desperate for anything that could save him from this pain.

  “Why did you come here?”

  The voice was deep and somehow calmed the area around him. The land had been blackened, and fire spurted from the earth. Dark clouds blanketed the sky, and he knew that beyond them lay the dim sun of the abyss. All around were creatures with forms so alien they burned themselves from his mind the moment he looked away. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.

  “Luntayary?”

  “Of course.” The pharim materialized before him.

  “I thought you couldn’t come out unless I called you.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  Jez thought back before nodding. “I guess I did. We’re in the abyss then?”

  “We are in the deepest portion of the abyss, where only the vilest of its denizens are held. No doubt the suffering of this place is precisely why the memory shadows crafted it, but why did you come?”

  “Because I wasn’t going to beat Sharim out there.”

  The pharim gave him a level look, and Jez could practically hear the sarcasm dripping from his voice. “And you think you can do so here?”

  “Here, he doesn’t have the power of seven high lords.”

  “No, just that of one of the most powerful demons to ever walk the earth.”

  Jez let out a long breath. “It’s the only chance I have.”

  Luntayary considered for a second before nodding. “Very well. I will do what I can to protect your mind, but be warned. There are things here that mortals were never meant to see.”

  “I understand,” Jez said.

  He started walking, and Luntayary fell into step beside him. A part of Jez wondered if he should find it odd that he was walking side by side with his own alter ego, but then again, he had left the normal behind so long ago that he was no longer entirely sure what it looked like.

  Jez kept his head down as he walked, trusting that no matter what direction they went, they would eventually find Sharim. Though it might look like the abyss, this was Sharim’s mind, and it couldn’t exist without him. Jez eyed the pharim, though it took several minutes before he worked up the courage to ask his question.

  “I called you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what happens when we get out of here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean who will be in control?”

  “Your mind may well not survive this,” Luntayary said without hesitation. “There may be nothing of you left to go back.”

  Jez gulped. “But what if there is?”

  They walked another fifty paces before Luntayary answered. “We’ll see.”

  Jez almost argued, but the way Luntayary scanned the area around them, looking for danger, told him it would do no good. The pharim would all but ignore him. Instead, they walked in silence, and Jez did his best to ignore the horrors inhabiting the land. Once, a large shadow passed over him, and Jez looked up to see a giant of a man whose skin had been flayed. He felt like he was going to be sick.

  As he looked away, a light flashed beyond a rise in the land. Jez had gone a dozen feet before he realized that he’d started running. He reached the top of the rise and froze. The demon form of Andera sat chained to the side of a hill. Before him stood a ghostly figure. An irrational panic seized Jez, far greater than he’d ever experienced when facing any demon.

  The figure was Dusan.

  The former baron of Korand was two years dead, but it had been he who was responsible for bringing Sharim into the world.

  “I will tell you no more unless you free me,” Andera said.

  “And if I free you, how long will I have to wait? An infant cannot talk right away.”

  “An infant cannot talk because its mind has not developed to a point where it knows how to speak. Do as I have instructed, and I will enter the world fully aware. I will be able to give you the information as soon as my tongue can form words. You have my sworn word.”

  “This is where it all started,” Jez said.

  “Yes,” a voice said from behind.

  Jez and Luntayary whirled. Sharim stood there in his mutilated human form. He smiled.

  “You were a fool to come here.”

  He seized Jez’s throat, and his mind was filled with images of fire and death. Pharim fell before his hands like dry grass before a fire. He seized them and wrenched them from the Keep of the Hosts. They weren’t just banished. They were destroyed utterly. He heard the screams, and he relished them.

  Jez fell away from Sharim. He had been screaming so loud his throat felt raw, and he tasted blood on his breath. Luntayary had drawn his crystal sword and held it to Sharim’s neck.

  “That won’t do any good, and you know it,” Sharim said.

  “Are you certain?” Luntayary asked. “Pharim weapons have always been closer to ideas that the stuff of the mortal realm, and my sword was created to destroy demons. Are you so sure it can’t accomplish that here?”

  The landscape changed. Andera fought pharim, both one at a time and in groups. There was a sense of joy as shadows that didn’t belong here fed on Sharim’s memories. Even Luntayary was stunned by the sheer savagery of the images. Sharim seemed to melt away. Luntayary tried to strike, but his sword cut through empty air. Sharim materialized behind him and ran his blade through the pharim’s lower back. The tip came out of his chest. As Luntayary fell, the scene shifted to that of a dozen pharim, both Shadowguards and Shadeslayers. Together, the pharim ran their weapons into Andera. Sharim screamed, though it only lasted a second.

  “You’re not in control,” Jez said. “It’s still the memory shadows.”

  Sharim turned to him and hissed. He raised his weapon to strike.

  “We formed a contingent,” Jez said. “That has to be the only time in history a demon has linked with a pharim.”

  There was a sense of curiosity, and the scene shifted again. They were in an unused storage chamber in Rumar Keep, just above Lina’s quarters. Sharim, before he had revealed himself, had formed a contingent with Jez so that they could open a hole in a floor that had been protected by ancient wards. The deformed Sharim shivered. Jez wasn’t sure if it would work, but he focused on the idea of a black background, the same initiating thought that they had used to form the contingent. Jez tried to interweave his power with Sharim’s. Nausea ran through him, and he felt like he was going to be sick, but their power joined. With such a simple initiating thought, Jez would only be able to access the smallest portion of Sharim’s power, but Sharim was drawing strength from the seven high lords of the pharim, and even a fraction of that power was almost more than Jez could comprehend.

  “Luven, take us out!”

  The image shattered, and they were back on the battleground. Jez would only have a second before Sharim took his power back. Hopefully, that was all that would be needed. He called out to Luntayary with his mind, and to his relief, the pharim answered. Jez’s consciousness was pushed aside, and Luntayary wove Sharim’s own power against the wards he’d set up around the pharim lords. Jez felt it when Sharim pulled his power back.
Energy burned within him as he tried to remake the circles, but Luntayary had weakened them too much, and as one, the pharim lords cried out. Their circles flared as Sharim drew one last surge of power from them and sent it into the ground as he wove other workings onto the high lords themselves. The wards shattered. Instantly, Sariel appeared on Sharim’s left side and Manakel on his right. Their blades lashed out, but Sharim vanished. For a second, the pharim gaped.

  “That is not possible,” Sariel said.

  “He took more than power from us,” Leziel, high lord of secrets said. “He learned how to go Between.”

  The ground rumbled, but too late did they realize what Sharim’s final burst of power had been. The earth split open, and the mountain exploded.

  CHAPTER 41

  A sphere of scarlet energy surrounded them, covering every mage and soldier who had been in the caldera. The force of the explosion sent them sailing upward, and Jez looked down at the devastation wrought by the eruption. He could only see it for a few seconds before black smoke filled the air. There was no sense of movement, giving the experience an almost surreal feel to it. Then, they fell beneath the canopy of smoke, and the earth rushed up to meet them. The mages cried out in surprise and fear as they crashed into the ground. The sphere hit with such force that it was half submerged in the earth, though none of its inhabitants felt it. Before anyone could say anything, a wave of molten rock washed over them, nearly covering the sphere and flooding the interior with orange light. It took Jez almost a full minute to get over his shock and understand what was going on.

  Manakel knelt in the center with his eyes closed. His hands glowed an angry red and seemed to be the source of the sphere. To Jez’s shock, the high lord of destruction was sweating.

  “What...” He didn’t even know how to continue.

  A hand rested on his shoulder, and he looked up to see Sariel.

  The lord of the Shadowguards shook his head. “Leave him.”

  “But...”

  “Andera did more than you realize.” Sariel gestured to the sky at the thick black cloud spreading over them. “We’ll be extremely busy over the next couple of weeks mitigating that, or else this land will wither and die.”

  “But can’t you—”

  Sariel raised a hand. The gesture had such absolute authority that Jez went silent without thinking. Sariel gestured to the gathered mages and soldiers, and Jez realized everyone was looking at them. He nodded, and Sariel smiled.

  “Luntayary is gone?”

  The question startled Jez. He closed his eyes and searched his thoughts. In a deep corner of his mind, behind wards sets by Dusan and perfected by Sariel, Luntayary waited. There was a sense of acknowledgment, though Jez wasn’t sure if he had imagined it. He opened his eyes and nodded. He spoke quietly, though he had no real hope of keeping his words from being heard.

  “He retreated.”

  Sariel nodded as if it were no great surprise. Without another word, he turned and knelt next to Manakel. The high lords exchanged nods, and the sphere shifted from red to blue. Manakel let out a long breath and slumped where he sat, though few of those watching seemed to realize the implications. One of the high lords of the pharim was tired.

  Once Jez shed the form of Luntayary, most of his wounds went with it. In spite of Aniel’s working, the change had burned him, and those injuries remained, keeping him in near constant pain. With so much magic going through him, not even the pharim wanted to risk healing him. While Aphlel took care of the rest of the wounded, Jez was forced to endure the more mundane attentions of those trained in healing. Eventually, he could sit up, and he stared at the sea of molten rock around them. Osmund and Lina stayed by his side until he finally managed to speak.

  “The Academy?”

  Osmund shook his head. “It’s gone, Jez.”

  The words shocked him into silence again. It took him the better part of an hour to fully comprehend them. He had known it was coming. The destruction of the Academy had always been part of the plan, but he hadn’t been prepared for the gravity of the situation. The Carceri Academy, one of the greatest centers of learning in the entire world and the place that had served as Jez’s home for the past couple of years, had been destroyed.

  Osmund and Captain Narva spent most of the next day in each other’s company, and Jez wondered when that had happened. Even more surprising to Jez was how Lina never strayed more than a few yards from him, and if he was being honest with himself, he didn’t want her to.

  Jabur, once he had been healed, proved surprisingly effective at keeping people calm. The large man had acquitted himself well in battle, and both the mages and the soldiers respected him. He stayed out of Jez’s way, though he spent time with some of the beast mages, doing what he could to improve his grasp on his own power.

  Jez didn’t sleep well that night. His dreams were full of the faces of those whom he had lost. He hadn’t been the only leader of this battle, but he had certainly been a pivotal force in it, and the lives of those lost rested on his head as much as anyone else’s. More than that, when they had been transported from the Academy the first time, they had gone to Hiranta. Many of those who hadn’t been a part of the attack had fled the town, but some had remained and had been incinerated by the fire mountain.

  At one point during the night, he sat up. Most were trying to sleep, but the lava surrounded them kept nearly everyone awake. Fina met Jez’s gaze, and though the destruction master had no skill with mental magic, Jez was certain he knew that it hadn’t been the lava that had kept Jez from sleep. They exchanged nods, but there was nothing more that needed to be said.

  At sunrise the next day, the lava had subsided enough for Sariel to open a hole in the top of the sphere. Ziary, along with the beast mages capable of transforming into large flying animals, ferried the mages to a safe area miles away. Jez, still unable to risk transforming, had asked if they couldn’t simply use another one of Luven’s feathers, but the Darkmask said it wouldn’t work. He explained why, but the explanation was too technical for Jez to understand. It was another day before the masters and the high lords were able to gather in anything that resembled privacy. No one even attempted to deny Jez entry to that meeting.

  “He bound our power,” Leziel said, “and he used our own strength to do it. We are trapped here and vulnerable.”

  “Can’t you just undo his binding?” Balud asked.

  “Can you undo a work done with the power of the seven?” Leziel asked. Balud shook his head. “We are fortunate he was rushed. His ward was flawed. It allows us a measure of power, perhaps as much as a particularly powerful mage, but the bulk of our power is still locked away.”

  “But you crafted a shield,” Besis said.

  “The shield was more a matter of knowledge than strength,” Manakel said. “Weak though we might be, our minds have not been altered.”

  “So you’ll help us,” Jez said.

  “Yes,” Sariel said. “When Andera bound us, he freed us of that particular restriction.”

  “What about the rest of the pharim?”

  “They are still forbidden from coming into this world.”

  “What?” Linala said.

  “We had our full power when we made that decree,” Sariel said. “We don’t have the strength to undo it.”

  “We summoned a semblance before,” the knowledge master said. “Can we do that again and tell the pharim that you’ve removed the restriction?”

  “You don’t understand,” Sariel said. “If it were just a matter of letting them know, we could simply send Luven or find one of the Shadowguards still in this world. When a high lord of the pharim makes a command to those under him, he changes their very nature. They are not capable of disobeying. We do not have the power to reverse that.”

  “So what you’re saying,” Jez said, “is that the Academy has been destroyed along with the library of Zandra. We’ve used most of the demon cages and the other artifacts hidden beneath the spire. The seven high lords of
the pharim are basically mortals. They don’t have their power. Sharim has effectively locked away the rest of the pharim. His army has been destroyed, but he could easily summon another one. Am I missing anything?” Everyone just stared at him. “Where do we even begin to fix this?”

  Six of the high lords began talking at the same time, each suggesting a different strategy, but after a few seconds, Aphlel cleared his throat, and they all went silent. Every eye went to the high lord of healing.

  “Our foe is stronger than we are. He holds every advantage. Eventually, be it in an hour, a day, or a year, he will come for us. We are wounded and badly. There is only one place to start.” His robes emitted a brilliant orange light, matching the glow of his eyes. His sword, a wooden weapon with leaves sprouting from the blade, began to shimmer. His next words washed over Jez, taking away some of his fear and anxiety. “We must begin to heal.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gama Ray Martinez lives near Salt Lake City, Utah. He moved there solely because he likes mountains. He collects weapons in case he ever needs to supply a medieval battalion, and he greatly resents when work or other real life things get in the way of writing. Find him at http://gamarayburst.com/ and http://www.facebook.com/gamarayburst.