A battle had been fought here, thousands of years ago. And judging from the destruction and bones, the cost to both sides had been high.
The emperor strode forward just as more sorcerous globes illuminated the murk at the chamber’s far end.
Where Kelhak stood.
As perfect as a marble statue. Tall and magnificent. And like Quiss and his colleagues, he had an unnatural density to him. An otherworldly confluence of reality that seemed to push the weight of the world away—or draw it into itself. To hoard intensity, as if to deny that anything outside of its influence mattered.
All eyes were drawn to the sight, like iron to a lodestone.
“Kelhak!” the emperor shouted. “We’re here to—”
The light surrounding Kelhak winked out. A shadow smothered the emperor, then swept him up. There had been no sound, just a darkness enfolding shining crafted armor. It rolled and let out a deep-throated roar. A creature bigger than a draft horse, its gray mottled hide studded with scales. Steam rose from it, and ichor dripped. It was newly created, Caldan realized as a sulfurous, decaying scent assailed him.
A lash of the abomination’s tail knocked two mercenaries into mewling piles. Twisting, glittering tendrils reached out to score its hide—but somehow, impossibly, it resisted them. The beast raised limbs as thick as tree trunks, ending in claws as sharp as blades. Mercenaries and warlocks scattered like rats in torchlight.
Blinding tendrils burst from the emperor as he writhed in its clutches. Dozens of wells opened, and the walls and columns around them were writ with sorcerous blooms and shaken with thunder. Warlocks shrieked and screamed, painting the creature with hissing lines. Javelins poked into its skin, doing little more than annoy it.
A shape flashed past Caldan as the talon entered the fray, so close the wind of its passing ruffled his hair. Its silver blades whirled, hacking chunks from the beast’s armored hide.
Caldan added his sorcery to the warlocks’, his boiling Touched blood coursing through his veins.
A gaping maw dripping mucus closed about the emperor, who was shouting, casting sorcery with abandon. Fangs grated against his shield. Incandescent lines scissored, cutting and shearing and scorching. Alasdair, Florian, Caitlyn, and cel Rau bounded and danced among the thing’s flailing limbs, blades and spears flashing.
“Everyone!” Alasdair cried. “The limbs. Hack its—” Swordlike talons slashed through him, and he fell in pieces, mouth working, making no sound.
Florian wailed in anguish, stabbing at the beast with renewed frenzy. Voracious tendrils roamed over the creature, slashing deep. Smoke and black blood spat from the wounds.
Caldan poured his sorcery into destruction. Hundreds of cuts scored the creation’s scaled hide, but not deep enough. He abandoned Mahsonn’s crafting and took another tack. Gathering his power, he pounded raw destruction upon the thing. Flame and anger, the raw energy of his wells.
But obviously this creature wasn’t all Kelhak had in store, and Silent Companions began pouring out of the darkness. Mercenaries cursed and warlocks screamed. Blades clashed. Sorcery cut and burned. Men and women fell on both sides. Arms hacked and slashed with violence. Armored figures wrestled in the dust and bones. Sorcerers flailed under their shields while spewing dissecting lines. Mold and his Protectors were shining like beacons amid the carnage.
“Stand firm!” Selbourne shouted over the din.
How many of them were left to hear the mercenary captain?
Companions assaulted sorcerous wards and threw themselves at mercenaries, slashing and thrashing, blades shining and cutting, sparks flashing from armor. Caldan turned to them for a few moments, sorcery whirling and dismembering. Their armor glowed orange. Skin blistered and separated. Many fell, and not all of them were replaced.
Caldan’s stomach clenched and twisted. A sickness rose in him, and his muscles weakened, scarcely holding him upright. His Touched abilities were damaging him, with only his one trinket ring to mitigate their aftereffects.
He sensed Quiss and Mazoet, and their sorcerers, shaping something, while warlock flames cascaded against the creature. Whatever they crafted was unleashed. The air shrieked and wailed. A stone column shattered, spraying debris over them all. Quiss and Mazoet shone with sorcery, limned in sickening light.
All of a sudden, the talon scaled the creature’s back, nimble as a cat. Shining blades plunged deep into the creation’s head.
And the back of its skull exploded. Viscous blood and brain misted the air. Fragments of skull splattered the ground, and the beast fell with a mammoth crash.
Caldan checked on Felice, who was safe with Aidan and Caitlyn, a shocked fright in her eyes.
Florian lurched from the beast. Cel Rau slipped in blood, falling to his knees. Caldan raced toward the emperor. A foul stench permeated the air, and the emperor’s unsurpassed smith-crafted armor was dented and scratched.
But Zerach-Sangur rose to his feet, grinning like a madman.
He ignored the carnage around him and nodded to the talon, which backed away to the edge of their light.
The clamor quietened. All the Silent Companions were either dead or incapacitated. Mercenaries stumbled, blades notched and bloodied. So far, at least half were dead or injured, and the warlocks hadn’t fared much better. Quiss and his people had lost one or two, and the survivors looked haggard and drawn.
“Anyone who can walk, gather around me,” the emperor shouted. “Now! Everyone else, tend to your wounds.”
Mercenaries began binding wounds, casting glances toward the back of the chamber, where Kelhak still stood, immobile and serene. The emperor strode toward Kelhak. Lights flickered in nearby tunnels—more Companions rushing to join the fight.
Selbourne yelled. “Form up on me and hold these bastards back!”
Armored figures spewed from the darkness, and the mercenaries met them with steel. Selbourne grabbed Felice’s arm and dragged her back to his men, allowing Aidan, Caitlyn, and cel Rau room to move.
The emperor shrugged off concerned hands. His eyes flashed with anger and determination.
“To me, warlocks!” he roared.
The surviving sorcerers scrabbled to his side, weakened and weary, panicked and scared.
Quiss and his people joined them.
The emperor picked up his sword from where he’d dropped it. It was a smith-crafted blade covered with runic designs. He strode toward Kelhak, not waiting to see who followed.
Air wavered, as if heated around the lich, as a warded dome covered Kelhak.
The emperor pointed his sword at Kelhak, who stood rigid in the face of the threat. Runic armor glinted in sorcerous light, sparkling as the emperor’s shield churned across its surface. Metal plates covered golden mail. Long platinum hair blew, as if in a subterranean wind, and the emperor’s mouth worked as he silently cursed the lich before him.
Kelhak took a step forward, naked torso glistening. A score of sorcerous globes erupted in radiance from where they floated above him, bathing the lich in a cold blue light. Not a single crafting or trinket adorned Kelhak. Not one.
Caldan tried to swallow, though his mouth was dry. The lich was so far gone into his sorcery, he had no need of craftings. In essence, he was pure sorcery, a soul that had captured many others to do its bidding. The body of Kelhak had been used for a purpose. A puppet. A tool. A peerless mind squashed and subsumed without thought.
“Keep them from the sorcerers,” shouted Selbourne over the din of clashing blades and screams as the mercenaries battled the Silent Companions.
“Ik’zvime,” the emperor spat, half curse, half cry.
Kelhak raised his face to the ceiling far above, as if trying to see through the rock between him and open sky.
The emperor’s face twisted in wrath. Flickered in fear. But this time, he wasn’t going to take the coward’s way out.
And he struck.
Caldan lunged for Selbourne in panic and shielded him, yanking him back from the impending eruption. Le
mon and scorched metal scents filled his nostrils, so strong he almost gagged.
Streaks of black coursed from the emperor. Those that touched Kelhak’s shield went no farther; they were absorbed and turned into sparkling motes. Others sprayed wide, cutting a swath through stone. Scorched lines appeared in their wake; molten stone poured from razor trenches, spitting orange and golden. A blistering wind blew, stinging with dust and heat and bone.
Caldan sensed the emperor’s wells, power flowing through them thick and fast, barely under control. The emperor was pushing himself to his limits. And on the heels of his attack, arrows and javelins from the mercenaries struck the God-Emperor’s shield, exploding and flashing to ashes.
And Kelhak remained untouched.
Behind Caldan, Quiss’s sorcerers used craftings to drain and block Kelhak’s wells. A dozen were consumed by them, and yet the obsidian lines of the emperor’s sorcery still flailed in an attempt to penetrate the lich’s shield. In the tumult, Caldan ceded control of his wolf to Gazija, and the construct slunk into the shadows.
Power spewed forth from Zerach-Sangur, and he yelled in defiance.
Lines of arcane energy whipped Caldan’s shield, and he found himself dragged backward by Selbourne, who was shouting, spit spattering from his mouth. The noise of sorcery deafened Caldan, drowning out any other sound. Selbourne’s words went unheard.
Caldan sent his own sorcery against Kelhak’s shield, but it seemed feeble in comparison to the emperor’s immense power.
Midnight tendrils bounced across walls, through columns, cutting swaths through stone. A mercenary cried out as one sliced through him. Another wailed as his arm was neatly severed and dropped to the ground. A warlock, confident her shield would protect her, darted forward, and her head was separated from her neck. The shield winked out. Crimson spurted, splashing warlocks nearby, who flinched as the hot liquid drenched their own shields.
Everywhere, men and women sobbed and mewled. Around them was sorcerous slaughter, while in front were foes who fought like madmen, soundless and vicious.
Kelhak’s laughter boomed, a thousand-voiced sound. An ageless tormented clamor condensed into a single vocalization.
Caldan groped for courage as Selbourne continued to drag him across the floor.
“No!” he shouted to the mercenary, words whipped away like leaves in a storm.
“We need you at the rear!” Selbourne said. “We can’t hold them off much longer.”
“I can’t,” Caldan said. “Kelhak must be killed, or everyone has died for nothing.”
Selbourne nodded grimly. “Go, then. We’ll bloody hold.” He gripped Caldan’s shoulder briefly, then turned and raced to bolster his mercenaries.
Caldan felt a swell of pride at the man’s courage, before he turned and rushed toward Kelhak.
A thunderous crack battered Caldan down, slapping him sideways. He scrambled to his feet, ribs aching. From nearby, he sensed Quiss, Mazoet, and their people hammering against the lich’s shield.
Wave after wave after wave of sizzling brilliance. Blazing light that sparkled with violet incandescence so intense it hurt his eyes to look upon.
All washing like the sea against a rock. Withstood. Broken.
Smoke and cinders spat from Kelhak’s spectral wards. Lights of all colors flashed and stamped the walls of the gallery. Surges of force made the air shimmer.
And the lich laughed all the while.
Until the talon darted forward—and straight through Kelhak’s shield, as though it didn’t exist. Caldan sensed its wells open, and a wave of cold poured forth. The lich screamed as the heat was sucked out of the air. Sharp cracks sounded as a mist swirled, and frost rimed stone as moisture froze. Silver blades slashed at Kelhak, sliced the skin of his upraised arms.
There was a thunderous clap. The talon wailed in agony, high and piercing, as a wave of force slammed it aside. It tumbled across the floor, rags flapping, leaving a trail of dark blood. Legs trailing limply behind it, the talon used its clawlike hands to crawl across the stone as it attempted to get away from Kelhak.
Caldan opened his wells and added his corrosive power to that assailing the lich. Everything he had learned. Every trick he had deduced. Every method of controlling destructive sorcery he had gathered, he melded into the Bleeder’s crafting.
Sorcerous tendrils whipped through dust illuminated by flashing lights. The air shrieked. The glow of forbidden sorcery etched every surface.
Kelhak’s shield whined as it was painted with motes. Purple and red sparkles swirled and churned. And the destructive sorcery dissipated to nothing.
Pinprick glitters were yanked from Kelhak—warlocks and Quiss’s people draining wells from the lich. More were sucked from it, floating through the violence to their crafted prisons. And the vermillion glow of the lich’s stolen wells dimmed minutely. But it wasn’t enough. The lich was far stronger than they’d realized. The emperor’s confidence had been a sham. He was only here because he had no choice—it was fight or die.
And when the lich rose from the tumult of their feeble sorcerous attacks, when they were depleted and it was still strong, they would be absorbed. And the wells they’d stripped and blocked would return to the creature.
The emperor shouted in defiance again.
Answering lines blacker than night glittered out to meet him. Dark yet blinding—precise and beautiful.
The emperor’s shield broke under their onslaught. Metal and flesh and bone were severed. Zerach-Sangur, the emperor of the Mahruse Empire, toppled. Meat collapsed into slops and blood spurts. Intense heat blackened and charred what was left of him.
Caldan thought he heard the warlocks wailing over the tumult. A scream came from Caitlyn. She rushed Kelhak, sword raised over her head. And was tackled by cel Rau. They fell, tumbling in the dust. Caitlyn kicked and clawed the swordsman as he tried to stop her. Cel Rau wrestled himself on top of her. He pinned her arms, and she kneed him in the plums. He toppled to the side, and Caitlyn thrust him off. She lurched to her feet and grabbed her blade, rushing toward Kelhak again, screaming incoherently. Cel Rau stretched one hand toward her . . .
A bolt as bright as the sun came from Kelhak and struck Caitlyn—who evaporated in a scarlet mist. Her blade clanged to the stone. Her fight against evil was over.
And evil had won.
Coercive sorcery poured from the lich, assailing Quiss and his sorcerers. Quiss dropped, as if poleaxed, and Mazoet fell, howling, clutching at his head. He tore clumps of hair from his scalp. The sorcerous assault on the lich’s wells ceased in an instant.
Caldan scrabbled across the cold stones, aiming for Quiss, who lay on the ground, writhing and moaning in agony. A short distance away, Mazoet’s eyes and ears leaked blood. The sorcerer’s mouth opened in a scream—but no sound emerged. A brilliant mote jerked from his head and shot toward Kelhak, and joined the other wells in his churning mass of power. Mazoet slumped to the cold stone. He twitched once, then his eyes remained open, staring lifelessly.
The many-throated voice of the lich roared in Caldan’s ears.
“You know not what you do. But I forgive you. We forgive you. Come, join with me. With all of us.”
By the ancestors. They were out of their depth. So far out, they were all likely dead.
Mold sat among his butchered Protectors. Scattered around him were chunks of flesh dripping red, white bones protruding from ragged meat. He blinked numbly at the sight, as if he didn’t believe what he was seeing. Pressing one hand to the floor, he staggered to his feet and turned his gaze to the almost invisible barrier around Kelhak. Large though it was, it was small against the vaulted ceiling above them.
They hadn’t even come close to the shield yet, and they were slaughtered, their numbers reduced to a fraction.
Mold shrieked—a sound drawn from the depths of his soul, rage filled and throat tearing.
Kelhak was slowly turning in a circle, as if searching for something, or someone. His manifold roar echoed betwee
n walls, compounding his alienness.
Mold stepped toward the shield, trinket sword in his hand. His shadow stretched out behind him, cast by the sorcery pouring from Kelhak.
Caldan knew it was no use. The shield would repel him. There was no way Mold could penetrate it and get to the lich.
The last remaining Protector stopped at the shield’s edge, wild-eyed, maniacal face pale. Mold cried out—words lost in the uproar of sorcery crashing around them. He raised a fist to beat on the shield in frustration.
And his arm passed through.
Violet sorcery coated it like paint. Mold convulsed, tendons in his neck standing out like whipcord. His flesh dripped, splattering the stone, revealing the bones underneath. He wailed, feet scuffing the ground as he attempted to pull himself free, but couldn’t. Corrosive fire burst from the shield and covered him. Bones cracked and twisted.
Felice cried out in horror.
Mold fell to the floor, lifeless, sword clanging on stone. And a bright spark was ripped from him, caged in patterns of coercive sorcery. It floated up, then toward Kelhak. The God-Emperor laughed again, a sound that wasn’t loud but nevertheless reached Caldan where he crouched. So profound and diverse was it, the lich’s voice penetrated his bones.
The spark contained a well, and whatever was left of Mold’s awareness. It drifted in the air and found its way to Kelhak. Then it was gone, added to his host of wells. One more to the total. One more to replace those they’d already stripped from him.
Caldan trembled.
Even if his body survived this day, he knew a part of him wouldn’t.
Kelhak, the lich, was horror. A carrion being that shouldn’t exist.
Almost without thinking, he commanded his wolf to return to his side from the darkness. Sounds of fighting came from behind. Sel-bourne and his mercenaries still battling the Silent Companions and Indryallans come upon them from the tunnels—their blood spilled and lives lost to give them this one chance.
Caldan had come into this wanting one only thing: to survive. But seeing the lich in the flesh, knowing it didn’t require flesh itself, that it was the remnants of a decayed sentience, he knew his own life was a minuscule thing compared to stopping Kelhak.
A Shattered Empire Page 54