The Godswar Saga (Omnibus)

by Jennifer Vale

  “I guess it doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “Jason should be nearby.”

  Keeping an arrow nocked in her bow, Sarina jogged forward. Tam stayed close, and together they maneuvered through two adjacent corridors before ending up exactly where they’d started. This time, however, the room was completely empty.

  “Shit!” Tam hissed. “They must have taken him somewhere.”

  Or they killed him already, Sarina thought darkly. But there were no signs of a visible battle between channelers—no blood, no scorch marks, nothing. It was as if Jason and the Sovereign had simply disappeared.

  “Check the exits,” she said. “There might be some sign we can use to—look out!”

  She caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye, and suddenly a black-armored Crell soldier spun around one of the pillars behind Tam. Diving to her left in order to get a clear shot, Sarina drew her bow and fired—

  And then the soldier vanished.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Tam cried out as he hopped backwards. “You almost hit me!”

  “There’s someone else here,” Sarina told him. She nocked another arrow and swiveled her aim back and forth across the room. “He was hiding behind the pillar and then he just…disappeared.”

  Tam blinked. “Uh, I didn’t see anything. Are you sure…wait!”

  He pivoted towards her, his eyes narrowing dangerously. His palms flashed open, and without warning a cone of fire erupted from his fingertips.

  Rolling hard to her left, Sarina narrowly avoided being incinerated. “Tam!” she screamed. “Stop!”

  “He was right behind you,” Tam said, shaking his head. “A soldier holding a…” He trailed off, and his brow furrowed in concentration. “There’s something wrong.”

  “No shit,” she muttered. “Is this some kind of magic?”

  “Someone is inside our heads. I think…”

  “You think what?”

  “I think there’s a Shadow nearby.”

  Sarina’s stomach sank. Back in Taig, before Jason had opened the cube holding Malacross’s Godsoul, they had battled a Shadow. It had nearly killed her, and Jason would have died too if not for dumb luck. But today they were fresh out of imprisoned Immortals, and she hoped Tam was strong enough to protect them…

  “Can you block him out?” she asked.

  Tam continued sweeping his eyes about the chamber. “I think so. Just stay still and let me find him.”

  Nodding, Sarina continued her own search and bit down on her lip until she tasted blood. Jason had told her that pain could sometimes make telepathy more difficult—it focused the mind and sharpened the senses, at least in the short term. Hopefully it would work here. If not…

  “There you are, asshole,” Tam sneered. He spun on a heel until he was staring directly at her, and flames once again burst into his palms. “Time to burn!”

  Sarina tumbled to the side again, but this time she wasn’t quite fast enough. The flames singed her boots and leg armor, and she cried out in pain when she rolled straight into one of the support columns.

  “Tam, it’s me!” Sarina screamed. “Tam!”

  “Just hold back a second—I’ll take care of him,” he said, tracking her movements. “Just stand still…”

  Swearing under her breath, Sarina nocked another arrow and fired. She hit Tam squarely in the right bicep, and he shrieked in pain as he crumpled to the floor. He started gibbering unintelligibly, but she did her best to ignore him. Holding her breath, she frantically tried to locate the Shadow. He wasn’t behind any of the pillars, nor was he standing right out in the open. But he had to be here somewhere. She just needed to concentrate and find him…

  It was then, just when she was about to start panicking, that she caught a flicker of movement on the marble pillar just a few feet away.

  “Where are you, coward?” she snarled. “Why not just show yourself and fight?”

  Keeping her left hand gripped tightly on her bow, Sarina surreptitiously slid her right hand into her baldric to retrieve another of her throwing knives. She backpedaled towards the wall one slow step after another, and she held her breath and counted to three—

  At which point she dropped into a crouch, spun around towards the wall, and hurled her knife as hard as she could.

  The Shadow screeched ghoulishly as the knife pierced his stomach. His mental illusions shattered, and instead of a barely discernable blob of darkness clinging to the wall, she saw him for what he was—a pale-skinned man hiding behind the elaborate vestments of an imperial governor.

  Sarina didn’t give him a chance to recover. She fired two arrows into his torso, then dove atop his body and jabbed a knife through his heart. Praying to her ancestors that she hadn’t just murdered Tam instead, she remained atop the Shadow for several more heartbeats before finally allowing herself to breathe.

  “Dammit!” Tam growled as he propped himself up on an elbow. Her arrow was still sticking out of his arm. “You shot me!”

  “You scorched me!” she snapped back. As the rush of combat faded, she realized just how much pain she was in. Her legs felt like they were still on fire, but a cursory glance revealed that the burns were relatively minor. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You could have just told me where he was!”

  “I didn’t know until I spotted his reflection in the marble,” she protested as she rolled over to him. “Now hold still and stop squirming.”

  Tam screeched when she broke off the shaft of the arrow, and he wailed like a baby when she jabbed the arrowhead out the other side of his wound. “What the hell are you—?”

  Sarina clamped her hand over his mouth and glared at him. “It will do less damage this way,” she told him. “If you have magic to help with the pain, now would be the time to use it.”

  After a few seconds Tam finally nodded and pushed her hand away. His left hand glowed with Aetheric energy as he touched his wound.

  “Jason isn’t here,” she said while he worked. “They could have dragged him down into the dungeon, but there aren’t enough guards here to hold the castle. I think instead they’ll try and take him back to Crell and hand him over to the Green Coats.”

  “They won’t be able to fly, not with the Solarian griffons and dragons,” Tam replied. “We might still be able to catch them.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “Yeah,” he grunted as he hauled himself to his feet. He had never been much of a healer, but was apparently competent enough to stop most of the visible bleeding. “I just hope they don’t have any more of those assholes lurking around.”

  “If they do, we probably won’t even know it until it’s too late.”

  “Oh,” Tam muttered. “Great.”

  Sarina clapped him on his good arm. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  “Evidently the Crell know all about this back door,” Selvhara muttered once she and Ethan finally reached the castle cemetery. They crouched down in an alley across the street and studied their surroundings. “I still can’t make contact with Jason, and fighting our way inside will take too long. We should loop around to the other passage.”

  “That will take even longer, and there’s no guarantee the Crell haven’t reinforced it by now,” Ethan said, shaking his head. “We can still do this if we work together.”

  Her violet eyes narrowed skeptically, but thankfully she didn’t argue. The situation was definitely worse than he’d anticipated—the Crell had reinforced the gate with four soldiers and a groll in addition to the pair of city watchmen standing atop the overhang with crossbows. They wouldn’t be able to repel a concerted attack from a full enemy unit, obviously, but six men and a lumbering monster were more than sufficient to fend off any marauding Asgardian soldiers who happened to break through the front lines.

  But he and Selvhara weren’t random pillaging barbarians—they were experienced channelers who had battled their way through far greater obstacles than a few men with swords and crossbows.
/>   “They don’t have any Imperators with them,” Ethan said. “If we strike quickly, they won’t be able to stop us.”

  “One of them could be a Breaker,” she warned. “They don’t always wear uniforms and insignia.”

  “Verrator wouldn’t waste one of his precious Unbound guarding a graveyard. We’ll be fine. Just pretend we’re back at Geriskhad.”

  Selvhara turned and frowned at him. “I’ve spent the last decade trying very hard to forget it.”

  “Focus on how we slipped into that fortified tower with a dozen men guarding it,” Ethan said with a tight grin. “We can do it one more time.”

  “You can’t be serious,” she breathed. “It will never work. Not with a groll.”

  “It will work,” he promised. “Just make sure you’re ready to move on my signal.”

  She swallowed anxiously, and for a few tense heartbeats he wondered if she might refuse. But she knew as well as he did that if the Crell had somehow subdued Jason, he wouldn’t have much time. This was their best chance of punching through the gate.

  “I will be ready,” she said. “Just be careful. You’re not forty years old anymore.”

  Ethan met her eyes and smiled. He could still feel the rage and hatred buried deep inside her, but he could also feel the compassion. Despite all he had done—despite all the lives he had ruined and all the destruction he had caused—she still didn’t want him to die. She might not love him anymore, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to hate him. In anyone else, he would have seen such empathy as a weakness. He would have lambasted them for their foolishness and naivety. But for whatever reason, in her he had always seen it as a strength. Just like Elissa, Selvhara had always been the light to his darkness.

  “All right,” he said, reaching out to the Aether and channeling its power through his body. He bolstered his strength and speed, erected a protective mantle around his skin, and then conjured a ball of flame into each of his palms. “Here we go.”

  Hopping up from his crouch, Ethan dashed out into the street directly in front of the gate. The guards had obviously been instructed to fire at anyone who approached; the marksmen perched on the overhang didn’t even hesitate long enough to check for a uniform before opening fire. One crossbow bolt whizzed past Ethan’s cheek while another deflected harmlessly off his Aetheric mantle, and he clenched his teeth as he dove awkwardly to the side and hurled his fireballs straight up towards the overhang.

  The explosion was every bit as impressive as he’d hoped. A storm of flaming pebbles rained down in front of the gate, and the horrified screams of the marksmen were choked off almost immediately. But before they died, one of them managed a final shot…and the bolt drilled straight through Ethan’s mantle and into his shoulder. The impact of the shot knocked him backwards into a nearby wall, and rather than calmly tumbling away like he’d planned, Ethan cracked his skull hard against the stone and nearly blacked out. He crumpled to a knee and struggled to clear his vision even as he heard the surviving Crell soldiers draw their weapons and charge.

  They were clearly well-trained and prepared for battle against a channeler. Raw conscripts would have run screaming in the other direction, and even most rank-and-file soldiers would probably have attempted to gang rush him all at once. But the Crell allowed the groll to lumber ahead of them just in case Ethan unleashed another fiery blast, and he waited until the creature was nearly on top of him before vaulting back to his feet.

  “Now!”

  On cue, a mighty vortex of wind whirled down the alleyway, hurling dust and debris in all directions. Selvhara floated into his field of vision like a woman riding atop a hurricane, and with a flick of her wrists the windstorm battered the soldiers up against the gate. Even the groll was staggered by the powerful gale; the creature snarled in impotent fury as it lurched backwards into the gate. The soldiers clutched onto the metal bars for dear life, but Ethan knew that Selvhara couldn’t sustain such a wide, roaring tempest for long.

  Fortunately, she didn’t have to. With a dramatic thrust of his hands, Ethan unleashed a jagged bolt of lightning straight into the portcullis. The electricity surged through the metal, and the Crell soldiers screamed in terror. Crushed against the gate by the buffeting winds and covered head-to-toe in metal plates, they didn’t stand a chance in the Void. They fried inside their armored shells like clams boiling in a cauldron, and within moments the air filled with the acrid stench of scorched flesh. The lightly-armored groll didn’t fare any better—the electricity coursed through its body and stopped its heart in short order.

  Ten seconds later, it was all over.

  “Perfect,” Ethan said, chuckling in satisfaction even as he covered his nostrils to avoid the smell. “Just like old times.”

  “We still need to get the gate open,” Selvhara whispered. He could sense the disgust in her thoughts—not at the sight of the smoldering corpses, but at herself for creating them. Even after all the years and all the carnage, killing still bothered her. He didn’t understand how she hadn’t immunized her conscience from death.

  “Opening it shouldn’t be difficult,” he told her, ignoring the sudden pangs of guilt gnawing at his own stomach. “Here.”

  He stepped in closer and blasted the locking mechanism with a bolt of pure Aetheric energy. The hinges exploded inward, and he gingerly stepped over the corpses before kicking the gate open wide enough for them to walk through. The smell was even stronger here, and he yanked the collar of his cloak up over his nose and mouth until they had made it halfway through the graveyard.

  “The entrance is right up here,” Ethan said, gesturing ahead to the featureless slab of stone jutting across the back of the graveyard. To a casual observer, the wall probably looked like a simple divider separating the castle from the mortuary—which was, naturally, the whole point. But assuming the Crell hadn’t changed anything, there was a nearby lever that would open the concealed door and allow them inside…

  He stopped and turned when he realized Selvhara was no longer following behind him. He half-expected her to be mourning over the dead soldiers, but instead she was standing directly over one of the tombstones.

  Elissa’s tombstone.

  “The Crell didn’t destroy it,” Selvhara whispered, her voice barely audible over the sounds of battle still raging in the distance. Nearly all the snow covering the plot had melted, but the chrysanthemums he had laid out several weeks ago were still there. The shriveled petals had even retained some of their color.

  “Apparently not even the Sovereigns are so vile as to disturb the dead,” Ethan replied, his throat tightening.

  For a long, agonizing moment, Selvhara remained frozen beside the grave. Ethan could almost see the old memories flickering behind her eyes, but just as he was about to remind her that they were running out of time, she snapped out of her trance and nodded.

  “Can you open the door?”

  “Yes. Just give me a moment.”

  The lever was buried behind a blank headstone along the western edge of the cemetery, and despite his wounded shoulder Ethan had no trouble pulling it into place. The wall rumbled like he had just awakened a hibernating beast, but a few seconds later the concealed door slid open.

  “This way,” he motioned.

  The passage clearly hadn’t been used in a long time, but despite the stale air and thick layers of cobwebs, the familiar architecture immediately unlocked a trove of dusty memories in the back of Ethan’s mind. He was the one who had designed these tunnels in the first place. He was the one who had persuaded King Whitestone to build them.

  He was the one who led them all to their deaths.

  Wincing, Ethan channeled another healing spell into his aching shoulder. Less than a minute later, they reached the doorway leading into the throne room, and he placed his hand upon the lever. “I don’t sense anyone,” he whispered over his shoulder. “Perhaps Jason is still in one of the other passages?”

  “I don’t know,” Selvhara murmured. “I thought I sen
sed Tam for a moment—I felt a great spike of pain. But now he’s gone again.”

  Ethan grunted. “He must be the weakest Unbound in Torsia if you can’t reach him from here.”

  “Something is holding him back,” she said, shaking her head. “We need to hurry.”

  Nodding, Ethan pulled the lever. The narrow doorway slid open, and he stepped out into the throne room. It was completely empty.

  “What?” he rasped, his eyes fixating upon the empty throne. “Where are the guards? Where is Verrator?”

  “Before I lost contact, Jason mentioned he wasn’t hiding inside the Bastion,” Selvhara said. “He said that no one had used it for a long time.”

  “I know. I’ve had a demon watching the castle for days now. It told me that Verrator never bothered with the Bastion—he was supposed to be sitting right here in the throne room!”

  She turned and glared at him. “You never told us that.”

  “The details weren’t important at the time,” Ethan grumbled as he placed his hand upon the throne. “All that matters is finding Verrator. He must be nearby.”

  “We need to find Jason first,” Selvhara snapped. “He needs us to…”

  Ethan glanced back over his shoulder as she trailed off. Her eyes were locked upon something along the side of the room, and she dashed over and knelt down. Frowning, Ethan craned his neck around the corner—

  “Impossible,” he breathed, sprinting forward. There, lying crumpled in a bloody ball upon the floor, was Sovereign Verrator. A knife and two arrows jutted out of his corpse, and he had clearly been stabbed repeatedly in the chest.

  “He was killed just a few minutes ago,” Selvhara said, her fingers curling around the knife impaled through his stomach. “This is Sarina’s knife. And these are her arrows.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ethan stammered. “That barbarian is no match for an Ascendant. And surely one of us would have sensed something when Verrator died. We would have noticed when Sarina Ascended.”

  “She didn’t. This man isn’t Sovereign Verrator.”