He hoped . . . for who wouldn’t? But he also despaired.
Urgency filled him, hot and pressing.
Mercenaries clashed around the chamber. Steel striking steel, flashing sparks, blades biting into leather and flesh. Snarls and words echoed between walls. He could sense them, their heartbeats, as booted feet stirred up clouds of dust that had remained untouched, unsullied, for thousands of years. More mercenaries fell, their ranks thinning. Selbourne was buying them scant extra minutes, at great cost.
Stone columns lay between Caldan and the lich. And that terrible shield.
Immune to destructive sorcery, Kelhak remained unharmed. The only sign of his weakness was the slightly diminished mass of his wells. But there were still so many . . . Lights flashed behind Caldan, uncertain at first, then steady, rolling back the blackness with globes of illumination. Quiss had recovered—enough to join with his remaining sorcerers.
Caldan felt more sorcery weaving out of the darkness. More tailored smith-craftings tore into the lich, stripping further wells from its voracious grasp.
Kelhak stood motionless. A smile played about his mouth. The God-Emperor’s terrible voice rang out. “Come, all of you. There is peace within me.”
He thinks we are defeated, Caldan thought. And why shouldn’t he?
A putrid stench followed the wells pried from the lich, like the rot of human flesh.
Caldan stepped to the edge of the lich’s shield and took the trinket sword in his right hand from where Mold had dropped it. His shield sprang up around him, but he stopped short of the line dividing safety from death. He couldn’t risk testing his own wards against the lich’s. Somewhere behind him, Selbourne shouted a warning.
Caldan clutched the Protectors’ trinket sword, hand burning. His gauntleted hand clenched into a fist around Mahsonn’s crafting, but he found he no longer needed contact with it, or the rest of his craftings. His power and finesse had grown, and he knew them now. His shield. His construct. The Bleeder’s weapon.
He linked to the last.
Scores of tendrils whipped across the lich’s shield. A hundred points of violet light sparked from the contact. The purple glare coalesced into one blinding flash, limning stone and corpses with its brilliance.
The barrier shrank as cascading motes scattered across its marble surface, then strengthened.
He’d barely scratched it.
Kelhak lashed out, a potent eruption that came for Caldan—only to splash harmlessly against a shield raised by Quiss and his people.
“We can’t stand much more,” Quiss yelled above the tumult.
Caldan felt a hand on his shoulder. Felice. She looked up at him, her face streaked with dirt and sweat. And pressed something into his hand.
The bone trinket rings.
“Use them,” she said desperately. “If we don’t try something, then we’re all dead.”
Caldan swallowed and closed his hand around them.
It was relatively easy now, to search for the hidden coercive link to them, to decipher their inner workings as his power flowed through them.
He took a breath and lashed at Kelhak—with the same sorcery he’d killed Devenish for using.
Blackness covered Kelhak’s shield as burgeoning purified land tried to siphon life from everything it touched. The lich’s wards exploded with light, the glow of sorcery coating everything with corrosive glitter. And once more the shield shrank, only to expand again as Kelhak resisted, somehow.
Caldan opened more wells. Four. Eight. He split strings and tapped their power. More clashes of sorcery. Caldan added a legion of slashes to buffet the lich’s wards. Followed by more coalescing purified land. Again and again.
Blinding flashes painted every surface, dispelling shadows, and thunder cracked around him. Caldan’s wells pummeled the lich’s shield, trying to break it with frenzied onslaught. Coruscating lines scoured the air, hissing with violence. Flames erupted. Stone pavings closest to the shield crumbled and exploded, showering dust and shrapnel. Men and sorcerers cried out in terror, their wailing penetrating Caldan’s awareness.
But he dared not pause.
Power smashed into power. Gouts of sorcery slopped across the floor.
Do not stop, Gazija said to him.
Caldan nodded, droplets of sweat falling from his brow, though he knew the old sorcerer couldn’t see him.
He tried something different: a shaping of focused power, the kind he’d used when escaping from Thenna’s torments. Modified through the bone rings, splitting its swath into segments.
Brilliant lines as sharp as razors sawed at the shield. Seething lightning crawled and pried, attempting to violate the sanctity of the lich’s wards. Power bled over. Corpses smoked and charred. Selbourne cried out in pain. Caldan sensed the mercenaries retreat from the Silent Companions, then gather in a defiant cluster.
He drew even more power, feeling its corrosiveness wash over him.
And Kelhak’s shield wavered. For an instant, it dimmed under the assault of the Wasters of Life. And the lich’s attention drew away from everyone else. To focus on Caldan.
Kelhak frowned, head tilted to one side. He regarded Caldan as a curious child might a bug. A power grew within the lich, a swelling of sorcery so massive it dwarfed anything Caldan had ever sensed.
It hammered into Caldan, breaking over him. His mind recoiled from its intensity, and his body was crushed into the ground. He reeled, losing focus, but with an immense surge of will drew even more from his wells and reinforced his shield. He staggered to his feet—and sent surges of sorcery at Kelhak.
Caldan raged, pouring power into the bonfire.
And felt a break. Nothing physical, but something intrinsic to life. Perhaps it was the fabric of the world shredding.
A Shattering.
He was on the brink. His fight with the lich had begun to unravel reality.
Dismay crept up on Caldan. He withdrew some of his power. By attempting to kill Kelhak, he would destroy the world. He was no better than Devenish, whom he’d killed to prevent such a thing. He couldn’t do it.
He faltered . . .
Caldan cried out, but he didn’t know what he said. A prayer. A plea. A yell of defiance.
Kelhak took a step forward. Their eyes met, and like recognized like.
Liches.
One weaker than the other. Prey.
Caldan’s wolf construct barreled out of the blackness, skittering across stone, metal claws scrabbling for purchase. There was a Silent Companion clinging to it, hands gripping around its runic neck. Inside, Gazija sent the construct toward the lich’s shield. Through it. Human armor and flesh melted and sloughed, leaving a trail of bones, which scattered, clattering over stone. Kelhak’s corrosive shield covered the wolf construct, scouring its metal skin. Sections glowed orange. Crafted metal liquefied and ran, leaving gaping holes.
It pushed farther inside before its legs collapsed beneath it. Then its corroded alloy split apart.
Gazija tumbled out, rune-covered limbs flailing. Along with him, smith-crafted discs attached to a golden chain spilled like a hoard of coins across the floor.
Caldan ceased his pummeling of the dome ward and gathered his strength. The shield sprang back, as strong as before. Kelhak’s eyes turned from him, became aware of Gazija.
The manlike construct rose to stand, a smith-crafted figure two hands high. It ran, trailing the golden chain, not toward Kelhak, but in the beginnings of a circle.
“Do not break!” Selbourne bellowed in the gloom.
The captain and his remaining men formed an arc behind Caldan, along with Felice, Florian, Aidan, and cel Rau. Silent Companions came at them, weapons moving in a frenzy. Blood spilled like wine, splashing faces, arms, torsos, legs and feet. Boots slipped and skidded. Faces twisted in snarls. Metal clashed, striking sparks.
“Hold the line!” yelled Selbourne.
The mercenaries were giving Caldan a chance. Holding back the tide of slavering inhumanity.
/> Caldan sensed Gazija’s power grow. He heard the sorcerer’s design call to him.
Inside Kelhak’s corrosive shield, Gazija’s metal limbs extended, and he spread glistening sorcery at the lich. Luminous threads struck Kelhak, and he recoiled from their ferocity. But the sorcery encountered another shield covering the body it sought to destroy, an impenetrable barrier as invisible as air.
The hazy dome surrounding the lich, separating it from the outside world, dissolved as it marshaled its resources. It sucked its power back into itself, recoiling its strings and opening more wells.
Caldan stepped toward it, hesitated, glanced back at Selbourne and his men. They were falling fast.
There isn’t time, he thought to himself. Then, There has to be.
He turned his sorcery to the Silent Companions. Sparkling destruction weaved among them. They screamed and flailed and were flayed. Bodies were wrenched and twisted, adding their charcoaled meat to the ground.
Reality wrenched around Kelhak as a hundred wells opened at once.
Hot air washed over Caldan, scalding him. He turned to the lich and saw Gazija’s form smoldering under pummeling lights. But he still stood.
Caldan ran toward Kelhak, splitting strings from his wells, as many as he could handle. Bitter lemons and hot metal filled his mouth and nose. The sheer number of strings daunted him, and he swallowed, almost gagging at a pinching, sulfurous stench. The lich’s sorcery rattled his bones.
Caldan staggered, head and body aching. But he was close now.
Waves of heat poured from Gazija. He lurched a few more steps, one hand gripping the end of the golden chain, a few feet from the beginning. The stone underneath his metal feet was a lake of fire, skittering with sparkling cinders. But Gazija’s smith-crafted alloyed body withstood the sorcery.
For now.
Knowing time was short, Caldan linked to as many of the rune-covered discs as he could, questing his strings out, finding linkages and anchors, pulsing his power through runic patterns based on the trinket sword clutched in one hand.
Wells were stripped from the lich. Ten. Twenty. Fifty.
Not enough.
If they pulled a hundred more from the lich, then maybe they had a chance. Caldan clenched his teeth and opened more wells, splitting a dozen new strings and yanking power from the abomination.
Not enough.
Kelhak turned glowing eyes upon Caldan. For several heartbeats, they glared at each other.
Just as Gazija reached the other end of the chain, and fused the two together with a burst of sorcery, hairlike carvings appeared and connected the circular crafting.
Roaring, Caldan rushed forward as scorching hammers smashed into his shield. A weight descended on him, bending his back as his shield erupted in sparkling motes. The crafting whined under the strain—a fraction of Kelhak’s power brought to bear. Caldan’s blood rang in his ears. Heat penetrated the soles of his boots, and they began to smoke.
He stepped inside the circle the golden chain delineated and coursed his power through it. Foreign strings joined his—Gazija adding his own sorcery to the crafting.
Reality twisted, folded in on itself. A sudden gale dragged at Caldan.
The ground dropped from under his feet. Caldan’s stomach recoiled, twisting and rebelling against the alien sensation.
He landed with a thump, raising a cloud of dust from his clothes. The wind ceased.
Caldan’s clutching hands grabbed dry leaves and the dirt of centuries, the bone rings spilling to the dirt.
His wells disappeared.
A shrieking wail battered Caldan’s eardrums.
The lich.
Caldan laughed weakly, tried to pull himself together. He struggled to his feet and stood in the center of the circle of the purified land in Parkside. It was a black stain on the landscape—sorcery abused, used to destroy the very life of the earth. Corruption and vileness clawed at his senses.
To his right, the construct housing Gazija lay, twisted and scorched.
Caldan dragged his gaze away toward Kelhak. The lich’s eyes were fixed in front of him. His mouth was open, as if he couldn’t quite believe what was happening. He raised trembling hands and stared at them.
“This cannot be,” Kelhak said, words filled with fear and dread.
Caldan tried again to open his wells, but they were barred to him.
“Caldan!” he heard Miranda yell from somewhere far to his right. He risked a quick glance, and in the distance saw her race across the edge of the purified land toward him.
One of Kelhak’s hands dropped to grab a dagger in his belt, while the other hand stopped it when it was half drawn. His face twisted into a grimace, then a scowl, then a half smile. He grunted, hands and arms working, as if he struggled with himself.
Then one foot stepped forward, toward the edge of the purified land. Growling with the effort, Kelhak dragged the other foot across the ground.
Kelhak. The real Kelhak.
He was still there, inside somewhere. The same Kelhak who’d been a student at the monastery. Who’d won the Dominion tournament at the Autumn Festival, then left Anasoma to make his way in the world. A course not unlike Caldan’s own. And now Caldan was a lich as well.
The lich may have taken Kelhak’s body, but here, with no sorcery to imprison him, he was trying to break free.
Caldan’s own wells wriggled in his mind, suddenly becoming as slippery as eels as he grasped at them. He corralled his own well, then another. Sweat stinging his eyes, he managed to hold on to them with the force of his will alone. Except the more he gathered, the harder they were to control.
And the lich had hundreds.
Suddenly, tinted sparks broke away from Kelhak’s head. They floated up, then spiraled down to the ground, where they vanished into the purified land. He trembled, panting hoarsely.
They must have been wells, and whatever remained of the sorcerers. The null of the purified land was unraveling the lich’s absorbed power. But if Kelhak made it out of here, he would be free to resume as he had before.
And Caldan couldn’t let that happen.
He stepped toward Kelhak.
The man, or the lich, looked at Caldan as he approached, but his dragging shuffle continued.
“No, no, no . . .” Kelhak panted under his laboring breath. Another mote rose away from his head, then drifted down to disappear into the ground—quickly followed by two more.
And then, Kelhak’s eyes pierced Caldan’s. “Kill me,” he said. “No! Don’t do that. I have power—we have power. A knowledge of sorcery that would make you a god.” His face twisted. “Don’t listen to it. Kill me, now.” A feral snarl escaped his lips. “Noooo!” Another lurching step.
Palm sweat-slick, Caldan gripped the hilt of the Protectors’ sword hard enough his hand ached. Simmon had asked Caldan to kill him, and he hadn’t been able to. He’d been weak then, but now . . .
He swallowed and approached Kelhak, whose stagger had quickened. More glittering motes broke free and were absorbed by the sorcerous null.
A searing pain assailed Caldan’s mind as one of his wells broke free. He staggered, screaming wordlessly. Through the agony he felt his remaining wells squirm, then settle as he reasserted his control. Caldan gripped the sword harder, forcing himself to go on.
Kelhak moaned. One hand slapped at his head. Another dragging step, then a second.
Perhaps Gazija was right. The lich couldn’t be killed; it was too knowledgeable, too cunning, too innately sorcerous now. There was only one way to be sure. I don’t know and I think weren’t good enough.
He brought the trinket sword up, the blade a river of moonlight. Kelhak’s eyes followed its arc, flickering between contempt and determination.
Caldan reached out with his smith-crafted gauntlet. A skein of symbols covered every surface. Each plate carpeted in one unbroken stroke formed into patterns. Sorcerous runes and gemstones sparkled with power, drawn from the reservoir he’d imbued in the crafting.
Kelhak hissed, spittle flying. He kept up his lurching march across the purified land.
Caldan opened the fingers of his gauntlet.
“No,” Kelhak said, then his face twisted. “Do it.”
Caldan stepped toward Kelhak, who lashed out, kicking and punching and screaming.
Caldan parried the blows, and the trinket sword slid easily into Kelhak’s chest. Hands came up to clutch at the blade; blood dribbled from Kelhak’s mouth like wine. Shimmering lights sprang from his head like disturbed butterflies, swirling and fluttering.
And with one quick thrust, Caldan placed his gauntleted hand against Kelhak’s face.
Limbs twitched and jerked. Kelhak’s knees buckled, and Caldan followed his descent to the ground, keeping the gauntlet in place. It grew cold to the touch and seemed to throb with power. Caldan almost sobbed with relief. It worked, and he’d stored enough sorcerous energy in its buffers to do its work, to function for a time inside the purified land.
Motes flew in glittering clouds around Kelhak’s head. They swirled and roiled, forming into a spiral as they were sucked down into the gauntlet. Some motes—sorcerers—escaped the crafting’s pull and fell toward the ground to vanish in a puff of sparkles, but most were caught in the winding suction of the gauntlet’s sorcery.
Down into the crafting the colored motes went, and the gems flashed with inner light as they were trapped inside. Kelhak convulsed, almost dragging the hand away, but Caldan held on.
Fragments coursed from Kelhak’s head, pulsing and writhing and coiling, before the crafting extracted them, snared them, imprisoned them forever.
And then the motes vanished, sucked into the crafted gauntlet like water down a drain.
Kelhak breathed once. Was still. Lifeless eyes stared.
Shouts came from somewhere, getting closer.
Miranda.
Caldan sat back, pulling the gauntlet and blade from Kelhak with palpable relief. They both glistened red, and the gemstones flickered with contained life: sorcerers, or what was left of them. Their wells. And the lich’s awareness.
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