Basher let out an impatient grunt as he lifted his warhammer off one shoulder and switched it to the other.
Coscoros followed, studying the branches and bushes with a look of disgust on his white face. He kept his wings drawn back along his spine, though every once in a while, he fluttered them to scare away insects.
Behind them, a woman with fiery orange hair and matching eyes scanned her surroundings.
“Bugs,” Coscoros said, brushing his long black hair behind one ear. “They make me sick.”
The woman scoffed at him. She wore a simple suit of hardened leather armor, dyed black and exposing the shiny yellow skin of her arms and legs. Though she resembled a human woman in most ways—except for the yellow skin and orange eyes—her Feral birthright was exposed by the tail that curled up behind her. Black and metallic, it had a stinger at the tip. The markings on its shell, like spatters of bright orange paint, were a warning that the stinger was poisonous. Her name was Leticia.
She whipped her tail around and spoke in a snide voice.
“Better than birds,” she said. “Feathers are home to all sorts of fleas and mites.”
“Acolyte feathers are resistant to that sort of thing,” Coscoros said, “but if it makes you feel better to suggest…”
“Plucking your feathers out one by one would make me feel better.”
Coscoros chuckled. “Is it difficult to hide how attractive you find me?”
Leticia’s eyes came to life like struck matches. With an insectile burst of movement, she grabbed Coscoros and pinned him to the nearest tree. Kovax and Basher turned to watch.
Coscoros tried to hide his surprise by smiling, but his mouth twitched, a sign that his confidence was waning. Leticia leaned forward until her face was only inches away from his. Her breath smelled papery and spicy, like a beehive.
“I could sting you, Blackwinger,” she said in a throaty whisper. “But then you would die.” She got close and smelled him. “There’s enough poison in me to kill a thousand men in ten blinks of an eye. Would you like a taste?”
“Enough,” Kovax said, stamping his staff into the dirt. “Behave yourselves.”
Leticia’s stinger hovered above her left shoulder, aimed at the spot between the Dark Acolyte’s eyes.
“My money’s on the woman,” Basher said, spinning the warhammer against the ground as easily as if it were a child’s top. It made a loud rustling sound.
“I said, enough. Basher, separate them.”
Basher sighed. “It’s going to be one of those days.”
Leticia’s tail reached forward and stroked the side of Coscoros’s face with its nail-like tip. Coscoros inhaled sharply. He had stopped smiling.
“All right, you win. Put that thing away.”
Leticia smiled and let the orange in her eyes flare once more as she pulled away. She walked back to Kovax as if nothing had happened.
“Pay attention,” Kovax said, “and don’t underestimate Iolus. He could kill all of you with a snap of his fingers.” He added, “I might even allow it, just so I can have some peace and quiet.”
He continued along the path leading through the Withered Forest, using his staff as a walking stick. Leticia smiled cruelly at Coscoros and blew him a kiss before joining the low mage.
Basher smacked Coscoros on the shoulder. A bruise would appear later.
“What are you, stupid? She could tear your wings off and eat them for lunch.”
Coscoros watched Leticia move up the foothill, his eyes wide with delight. He sighed and fluttered his black wings.
“I think I’m in love.”
CHAPTER 34
T hey walked on until Kovax suddenly stopped.
He stood for a moment, eyes pointed straight into the forest, head slightly cocked, as if listening for something. The blue crystal tip of his staff glowed faintly.
“There it is,” he said, staring at nothing. It was late evening now, and the trees were dark shapes against the gloom. Bodies moved among the leaves, watching them.
“What is it?” Leticia said, keeping her voice low. “All I see are darksprites and rinrows.”
Coscoros and Basher came up behind her and studied the swaying trees. Basher kept a firm grip on his warhammer, and Coscoros did the same with the hilt of his short sword.
“Smells like a graveyard,” Coscoros said.
Basher looked up at the whispering branches. “Let’s do this and get out of here.”
“We’re at the barrier,” Kovax said. “Everyone stand back.”
Leticia’s tail rose at her side, ready to strike if necessary. It was covered in dew and glistened in the twilight. Basher took a few steps back with his warhammer held before him. Coscoros skipped back a few paces and pulled out his sword.
But Kovax didn’t seem to be afraid. He reached out with his staff and barely flinched as blue light blasted from the crystal.
Basher, Leticia, and Coscoros shielded their eyes. The sudden blast of energy was neither cold nor hot, but sharp. It stung their faces, washing their skin with that prickly feeling one gets in an arm or a leg that has fallen asleep.
Kovax had revealed a giant, semitransparent dome that shone like thin crystal catching the moonlight. It was as tall as a three-story house and covered most of the forest before them. White coils of energy swam across its surface.
Coscoros slid his short sword back into its sheath. “What is it?”
“It’s a detection barrier,” Kovax said. “It alerts him to anyone trying to cross into his lands.”
“Are we to sneak up on him, then?” Leticia said.
“Not exactly.” Kovax slid one hand halfway through the barrier. “It’s a test.”
In a low voice, he began a chant in a language the others barely recognized. It was an old, dead language understood only by scholars.
Crackling light blazed around his fingers. He made a slicing motion and the light shot down like a bolt of lightning and split against the ground, coursing along the slightly rounded edges of the barrier. A seam had opened.
“Follow me,” he said, bending at the waist so he could pass through. Beyond the seam, the forest looked even darker and more forbidding.
Leticia followed without hesitation. Coscoros and Basher looked at each other, shrugged, and ducked through the opening.
AN HOUR LATER, they were at the base of the mountains.
“Iolus!” Kovax shouted up at a cabin sitting on a rock ledge, a leaning one-room structure that looked ready to tip onto its side. “Come out!”
Boulders sat on various smaller ledges, looking somewhat out of place, and Kovax could tell at once that they had been placed there—lifted by magic, most likely—to be dropped on intruders should the need arise. There were traps all over the landscape, and he had already evaded several without informing the others. The night had been full of near-death moments that only he knew about.
“What is it?” Coscoros said.
Kovax nodded once in admiration. “Iolus has paired himself with a talented magician. This place is protected by spells that are a match even for me.”
“Is there anything I can do, sir?”
Kovax scowled at him with such contempt that Coscoros had to avert his gaze.
“You can stay out of my way, Blackwinger.”
With a nod and a half-hearted “Yes, sir,” Coscoros backed away from the low mage. He rejoined Leticia and Basher, who were gazing up at the mountainside.
The cabin remained dark and deathly still. No one had tended to the place in a long time. Some of the shingles were missing and the dark patches they had left on the roof were like the scattered signs of a disease on the shell of a dead insect.
“This can’t be the place,” Basher said. “Iolus would never allow himself to sink this low.”
“Who knows?” Coscoros said. “He disappeared almost two decades ago. Used to love being famous, remember? Paraded himself around like a movie star from Theus. But to just disappear like that—something must have ha
ppened.”
Kovax ignored his soldiers and swirled his hands as though fingerpainting on an invisible canvas. A low hum rose from his throat. His hands began to pulse with a liquidy white light that dripped off his fingers and steamed against the ground.
Coscoros studied Leticia for a moment. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, ignoring him.
“Why do you think he did it?” Coscoros said. Still nothing. “Hey, Feral. I asked you a question.”
“I know,” she said. “I can smell your breath from here. It’s unsettling.”
Basher grunted in satisfaction. “Three points for that one.”
He walked away a few paces as if to sit against a nearby tree—or on top of one. But instead of sitting, he lifted his warhammer and, with a mighty swing that made the bare branches click against each other, he smacked the weapon against the forest floor. THUMP! He pulled the warhammer out of the hole it had made in the soil and slipped it into its harness. Then he reached into the hole and pulled out the skin of a small animal. He tossed the skin aside, reached in again, and pulled out a handful of guts that steamed in the cold, night air. They glistened in the moonlight.
“Oh, that’s disgusting,” Leticia said, looking away as Basher began to slurp down the entrails.
“You get used to it,” Coscoros said. “Anyway, getting back to my question, do you think Iolus, the great sorcerer from Theus, would really build himself such a pitiful cabin out here in the middle of nowhere? And if so, what would drive a man to such desperation? Hmm? Why don’t you give us your opinion, Feral? Or does that hive mind of yours prohibit you from independent reasoning?”
“Sure can’t encourage it,” Basher said through a mouthful of intestines.
“I’ll tell you the story,” Leticia said. “But first, the Berserker has to throw away his meal. It’s making me sick.”
“Agreed,” Coscoros said. “Basher, get rid of it.”
Basher swallowed the remaining entrails, then sucked the juices off his fingers and burped. He walked over to Coscoros. “Do you have a mint?”
Several feet away, Kovax stopped humming and began to chant. The white light around his hands swirled and twisted like glowing strands of spider web. Floating now, the strands crossed and twined in the air.
Leticia frowned at Basher’s blood-covered hands. He grinned and hid them behind his back. She shook her head, then walked over and sat on a rock.
“His full name’s Iolus Magnus,” she said, draping her tail over one shoulder and stroking it, “and a long time ago, the bastard broke my heart.”
Basher and Coscoros leaned forward, listening.
CHAPTER 35
“G ood luck, hero.”
A younger, less battle-hardened Leticia lay on her side on a massive bed, her slender body covered, though not completely, by a silk sheet. She stretched her long legs and smiled at Iolus. Her tail poked out from the sheet, dark and shiny as a chain of polished black steel.
Iolus didn’t notice. He was putting on a suit of deep-purple plate armor he didn’t even need. His boots would never touch the battlefield.
“This is it,” Leticia said. “Your moment in the sun.”
“The sun stayed in bed this morning.” Iolus looked out the window at the gray light falling from above. He was a tall man with long, rust-colored hair pulled back into a ponytail. High cheekbones and deep-set eyes gave him the appearance of a man who spent much of his time in sinister contemplation.
“Stand up,” he said, turning his attention to a full-length mirror in the corner of the room. His plate armor made him look huge, like a walking fortress.
Leticia let the sheet slide off her body as she rose and stepped off the bed. Iolus watched her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was a bright orange waterfall, falling in rippling waves around her shoulders and covering her chest. Her tail lingered upright behind her, its stinger pointed straight up.
Iolus gave her a wicked grin. “I like the fact that you could sting me, and I’d be dead in a heartbeat.”
“Four heartbeats, actually.” She came up behind him and put her arms around his chest. “Try not to fall off your levathon when you’re up there, okay? You were never a good rider.”
“Stop,” he said, stepping out of her arms. “I need to stay focused.”
“Then why did you ask me to stand?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do.” She let Iolus run his gaze along her naked body. “It’s not enough that I love you. The great Iolus must turn me into a puppet as well.”
He snapped his fingers. “Go back to bed.”
She did as ordered, sliding into the bed with the grace of a lizard slipping beneath a leaf.
“Come to me,” she said, slithering out from beneath the sheet’s topmost edge. “Once more before you leave.”
Silence. She lifted her head just in time to see the door slam shut. He was gone.
“Rats,” she said, pouting.
THE REBEL FORCES had gathered in the forest surrounding the stone keep.
Now that it was his, Iolus could stand over the keep’s front wall and look out at the trees, and he could almost feel all those bothersome rebel animals who had come here to die by the destructive fire of his mind. The thought excited him—Kovax had been keeping him on a short leash for far too long.
“Let’s get this over with quickly,” he said, turning and looking at the scarred faces of men who had been with him through many battles. He caught the admiration in their eyes, that faint, moist glow in the corners. Most of these men were older than he was, but it didn’t matter; they knew exactly how dangerous he was. “And then,” he said, “when the enemy is nothing but ash in the wind, let us celebrate with nectarwine and bitterbrew, and music from Valcyona’s harp!”
Cheers rose from the gathered soldiers, so loud it filled the sky and made his ears ring. He wanted the enemy to hear it. He knew they could.
It unnerved him, however, that he couldn’t see them in the trees. He and his men had the elevated position, and therefore the advantage, but still—something didn’t feel right.
“Bring me Tyridius,” he said, standing with his hands on his hips, plate armor shining despite the gloomy sky.
His most trusted captain marched forward with the levathon at his side—a skeletal black creature of the Warwing line, bred for battle. Tyridius snorted and looked at Iolus with eyes like burning asteroids.
“As ordered, sir.”
The man wore a long, black-and-red steel helmet with spikes at the top and a faceguard that covered his nose and curved down around his chin. His name was Pertheon, and Iolus felt better having him at his side. His mask gave him the look of a destroyer, for whom murder was sport. His suit of plate armor was the biggest among all of them, too heavy for anyone but a Sargonaut, and its black-and-red color made Iolus think of a raging volcano.
“Pertheon, my brother, today you will make the race of Sargonauts proud.”
“Thank you, Knight-Marshal. And if I have to follow you into the depths of the underworld, it would be but a minor sacrifice.”
Iolus smiled. “No need. Tonight, we drink and sing the songs of our fathers.”
He saw Pertheon smile beneath the mask. He clapped the taller man’s shoulder.
“Send the Wing Guard, first and second waves.”
Pertheon turned, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted the order. The air stirred as two dozen soldiers on levathons took off and sailed through the air. Another two dozen Dark Acolytes followed closely behind. They circled the air above the fort, making a protective tunnel from here to the forest.
Iolus mounted Tyridius as easily as a hand slips into a silk glove. The levathon’s wings were the same black as its pelt, so black they were blue along the edges. He turned the levathon and rode away from the forest, then turned again and sprinted forward, ready to leap. The creature let out a deep huff as the combined weight of horse and rider lifted off its legs and was carried instead by its wings.
He reached out with both arms, spread his fingertips, and let loose, in a burst of light and heat, a stream of sizzling orange energy that he directed away from himself. His riders lifted away from the stream and watched as the energy, so bright it was difficult to look at, expanded and spread out beneath them in a rippling sheet. The spray continued to shoot from Iolus’s fingers, feeding the layer of fire beneath him until the forest could no longer be seen.
The spray stopped, the sheet broke into a thousand pieces, and each piece shaped itself into a pointed shaft. The missiles fell and the sound they made as they pounded into the forest, and the intense light they created as they exploded among the trees, shook the earth and pushed away the clouds.
BOOM BOOM BUH-BOOM BOOM!
The shocks kept coming, each one bigger than the last. It was enough to frighten the battle-trained levathons. Iolus looked up at his men, who were flying in a scattered wave back to the fort to escape the smoke. They had been instructed to do so—the smoke was poisonous and would suffocate them otherwise. It was just the thing to top off this glorious display—the frosting on the cake, so to speak. Anyone surviving the fire would have their organs turned to soup by the smoke.
The enemy hadn’t seen it coming. They couldn’t have—Iolus’s identity had been kept a secret, and Kovax had been using weaker magical attacks against the rebels for years now, to make them confident, to keep them from creating a force capable of dealing with Iolus’s talent.
“Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed up at the patch of sky still visible through the smoke. “Take a good whiff, Maximus. It’s the smell of your downfall.”
Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series Page 21