Shadow of the Exile (The Infernal Guardian Book 1)

by Mitchell Hogan

  A clamor to save Ren inflamed Tarrik, but as he ran again toward the pyramid, a figure rushed at him from an avenue between tents. A dreadlord swinging its massive blade.

  Tarrik leaped aside, and the sword severed a tent rope and bit into the earth. He grimaced as a corner of Ren’s journal poked him in the ribs and thrust his spear at the orichalcum-eyed monstrosity. His blade screeched across its breastplate; the dreadlord hardly noticed the strike. Tarrik backed up a step, keeping his spear leveled at his attacker. The dreadlord was slow, but the armor was a problem.

  The metal eyes went black for an instant before erupting in an orange glow. The great sword rose from the ground, and the dreadlord moved toward Tarrik as if possessing otherworldly grace. The massive sword spun up over its head and came slicing down at Tarrik’s shoulder.

  Tarrik pivoted and managed to raise his spear in time, deflecting the sword so its blade missed him by an inch. The dreadlord somehow arrested the weapon’s momentum and swung it around for another hack. Tarrik tried to parry, but his spear was almost wrenched out of his grip with the force of the clash.

  Too close. We’re too close. His reach was his advantage.

  He leaped backward and tripped over a tent rope. He tumbled to the ground, and before he could right himself, the dreadlord was above him, its great sword swooping down straight for his head.

  Tarrik threw himself to the side, the hilt of Ren’s sword digging into his back. The blade hammered into the earth, half of its steel buried. Tarrik kicked frantically at the rope around his leg to free himself. The dreadlord tugged at its blade, but the weapon barely moved.

  Tarrik spoke a cant and brought his shadow-blade into existence. He slashed through the rope, releasing his leg. The dreadlord’s blade came free from the ground, trailing dust and clumps of earth.

  Tarrik scrambled to his feet as the dreadlord turned. He thrust his spear one-handed, fast and well-placed, aiming for the mailed gap between breastplate and thigh plate. The great sword moved as if weightless, the blade catching his spear tip and forcing it down and to the side. Tarrik’s cut with his shadow-blade was fast enough to finish almost any opponent, but the dreadlord dodged to the side, and the dark-tide weapon scored a shallow cut along the vambrace protecting its upper arm. Sparks sprayed, and metal screeched.

  Anyone else’s arm would have been severed, but the dreadlord didn’t pause. It came at Tarrik again, this time angling its great sword from shoulder to hip. Tarrik moved back in a crouch, letting the blade pass harmlessly in front of him. He risked a quick glance toward the pyramid. He was wasting too much time.

  Finish this.

  The great sword swung again—a feint. It altered direction midslice, and Tarrik barely avoided the blade. He jabbed his spear at the dreadlord’s eyes, but even when its tip scraped across the helm’s visor, the creature didn’t flinch. The dreadlord attacked again, its blade moving in a blur, cutting and thrusting as if the weapon were as light as a feather.

  Steel slammed into Tarrik’s spear blade again and again. Somehow he managed to turn aside each blow, but the edge of the sword scored lines across his ribs, cheek, and thigh. In desperation he lunged at the dreadlord’s legs. As the creature stumbled, its massive blade skittered off a rock, throwing sparks into the air.

  Tarrik dropped his spear and thrust his shadow-blade through the gap between the dreadlord’s breastplate and gorget. Black blood spurted as he tore the creature’s throat out with a ripping gush. It slumped to the dirt, glowing orange eyes flickering and dying, leaving plain orichalcum balls. Tarrik saw the dreadlord’s lips moving, but no sound came forth. Someone had sent the creature to kill Tarrik—most likely Ekthras, who apparently commanded the ensorcelled warriors. And whatever he’d done to them had altered their blood.

  Tarrik grabbed his spear and raced toward the pyramid, his other arm clamping Ren’s journal to his side. A swelling tide of eldritch energy washed over and through him; the screams of fallen soldiers mingled with an otherworldly hum.

  A lone horn sounded, rising above the din, but the Cabalists’ warriors had forgotten why they were there. They writhed and wailed on the ground, a chorus of suffering. Those closest to the pyramid were already dead. Only the Cabal’s most puissant sorcerers, and the Nine, still stood.

  Tarrik squinted at the standing figures as he moved closer, pushing through the mass of dead or dying bodies. Where was Ren?

  There. Riding toward the churning black maw of Samal’s prison. She halted her mount and turned to face the remaining Cabalists and the two groups of the Nine. At this distance, Tarrik couldn’t see her face.

  A luminous golden aura surrounded her, faint at first, then becoming stronger until she was bathed in ethereal light.

  Tarrik urged himself to greater speed, all the while keeping an eye out for more dreadlords. If one had been sent against him, others might have the same goal. But why? Did Ekthras want him out of the way so Ren had one less resource to call upon?

  The last few Cabalist sorcerers were singing cants now, their concentration focused entirely on the sorcery that would free Samal. The Nine spread out, still on their mounts, until there was a good twenty yards between them. Each was now surrounded by a spherical arcane shield, glimmering in the sunlight.

  Tarrik slowed, then halted. He wanted to rush to Ren, to question her, but his interference might jeopardize what she was trying to achieve. Did that matter? Should he try to save her from herself, without thought to the consequences?

  As he stood there, frozen with indecision, Ren raised her arms above her head. A tempest erupted between her and the other sorcerers—twenty-foot lances of searing shine as bright as the sun that speared into their wards. Tarrik blinked, his eyes adjusting to the brilliance of the unleashed power.

  The Nine stood unharmed. Ren’s dazzling spears had failed to penetrate their shields. But she had caught their attention.

  “We are at the culmination of centuries of planning,” she cried out in a voice that somehow reached Tarrik too. “Our lord, Samal Rak-shazza, imprisoned so long ago, is close to being freed. But the demons themselves named Samal the ‘Adversary.’ And for good reason.”

  The remaining Nine exchanged frowns and puzzled looks but continued their cants. The arcane pulse humming through Tarrik increased in magnitude. The few warriors still on their feet fell to squirm in the dust. Three of the Cabalist sorcerers cried out in dismay and also collapsed.

  Ren turned toward the pyramid, then came full circle to face the Nine again. “Samal made slaves of us, and so he will with all who inhabit our world,” she shouted at them. “Our choice is simple. Open his prison and become his slaves again, or die fighting his demonic evil.”

  Surprised gasps rose at her words. Jawo-linger stood with her mouth open, a confused look on her face. Moushumi nodded vigorously, as if she’d known all along that Ren had somehow freed herself of some of Samal’s bindings, for how else could she speak against their master?

  Ekthras shook his head, and his mocking laughter rose over the tumult. “We are bound!” he cried. “All of us. There can be no return. Nor do we want one. This minuscule defiance is of no importance. You are Samal’s creature, to do with as he wills. And when he is freed, your blood will be the first to spill.”

  Ren remained silent, a lone figure against the arrayed might of the Cabalist sorcerers and the Nine.

  There was a flash of illumination—sunlight turned to milk—a searing light that gutted the Cabalists’ spherical wards. Concussions cracked and hammered arcane shields into smoke. The air twisted into swirling tornadoes, raising columns of dust from the arid earth.

  “Nikerm Qualias!” Ren shouted.

  Golden lights smote the dozen remaining wards with the force of boulders, fracturing them into smoke and splinters. Sorcerers doubled over or pitched to the dust. Their clothes ignited. Blood streamed from their ears and noses.

  More sunlight flared. Scintillating white lines, ruler straight, blasted the Cabalists. Men and women s
hrieked, all speared through as if made from tissue, shredded with a hundred razor cuts. Tarrik saw their skin blister and blacken.

  The few Cabalists who remained fought back with shouted cants. Violet and sapphire lines arced toward Ren, forming through the haze of smoke and dust. Incandescent flares pounded her shield, skimming off to scorch the ground and leave burning slicks. Shock waves spread outward, sending gouts of dirt skyward. The ground under Ren steamed and glowed. Her boots began to smoke.

  She raised a hand, spoke words Tarrik couldn’t hear over the tumult, and rose into the air surrounded by a sphere of sparkling golden light. Like a new sun, he thought in wonder.

  Ren soared over the devastation and the hostile sorcerers on the blackened ground, through the billowing smog and swirling dirt. Samal’s pyramid reared behind her, the dazzling light streaming from her shield bathing its slopes.

  A few flights of arrows arced toward Ren, but most burst into flame before they struck. The remaining arrowheads peppered her shield, drumming violet sparks from its golden surface and turning to molten blobs of metal that fell earthward.

  Puck Moonan snarled cants from his froth-rimmed mouth. His apprentice lay prone behind him, her clothes smoldering.

  Jawo-linger was on one knee, a hand outstretched toward Ren, her face a mask of rage and hate now. Her cants formed flaming balls that streaked at Ren and pounded her golden wards. Their supposed friendship was at an end.

  Ren leaned her head back and answered the violence with cants of her own. A white mist shot through with lightning rose from the ground, somehow not dispersed by the turbulent air.

  The sorcerers shouted with fear and dismay. Waves of sapphire and violet crashed against Ren’s shield, splashing over her like water. They cascaded downward, washing over the dying warriors. Their skin blistered and cracked or was shorn away. Scarlet gore sprayed the dirt, and those still alive keened amid the carcasses of their comrades.

  Ren floated above the carnage, a shattered circle beneath her. The Cabalists had sent their most powerful cants against her, and she had survived.

  As Tarrik watched, she sent more hammering lights against the Cabalists, so bright as to throw shadows even in daylight. Their wards cracked and shredded into tatters. Ren could have wiped them out with another blast, but instead she turned her attention to the Nine, who were focused on freeing Samal. She shrieked, the sound amplified by sorcery, and began another series of Skanuric cants. Torrents of light raked across the Nine, their wards shrinking under the onslaught.

  Red-haired Moushumi was the first to falter—her shield cracked like broken pottery. She groveled in the dirt, expecting to be obliterated, but another ward sprang up. Ekthras held a hand out toward her, and Tarrik guessed he had come to Moushumi’s aid.

  Jawo-linger took a few steps toward Ren, her mouth twisted into a snarl. She sent fiery balls cascading against Ren’s shield, but they splashed off, ineffective.

  Ekthras shouted, and the remaining sorcerers of the Nine moved closer, forming a circle with him in its center, their shields merging to form a single glistening dome. Moushumi rose to her feet again, adding her voice to the others’. Ren’s blinding incandescences thrashed wildly across their wards, but they did not falter as the Cabalists’ had. They chanted in unison, and their combined shield glowed brighter, the ground around burning with such fierce heat that it turned molten.

  As one, the Nine turned away from Ren to face the void at the entrance to the pyramid.

  Ekthras screamed a command and raised the silver bull above his head. It began to glow with a fierce light. Marren did the same with his statuette, and Lera with its twin. Jawo-linger held out a pearly cube and joined with them, all artifacts glowing brighter and stronger.

  Ren shouted more cants, and more of her scything incandescent lines struck the Nine’s wards. Again and again she smote them, but her might, the might of the sun, more powerful than either the dawn- or dusk-tides, wasn’t enough. The Nine stood firm.

  A long, low moan came from the disorienting void that was the entrance to Samal’s prison. The wicked might of the Adversary was close.

  Tears streamed down Ren’s face. For all her strength, all her planning, all the secrets she had somehow withheld from her colleagues, the Nine continued with their goal to free Samal. She hung low above the plain, her knuckle between her teeth.

  Tarrik almost laughed at the familiar sight, but his mirth was quickly replaced by a terrible chill that pricked his spine. Samal would be released. Ren would die. And so would he.

  He heard the thud of boots, the clink of mail and creak of armor. Dreadlords. They formed into groups of three and, almost as one, raised their hands as if reaching for Ren. Brown discs shot from them, arcing at her wards, hitting them with dull thuds as if made from wet clay. Each strike dented her shield for an instant and sent shining violet motes skittering across its surface. One attack could be easily ignored, but they came in a relentless salvo. As Tarrik watched, Ren wobbled slightly and dipped in the air before recovering herself.

  She descended steadily, straight toward the dreadlords gathered underneath her. The Nine ignored her, focused completely on freeing Samal, but the few remaining Cabalists resumed their attack. Searing lines again scored Ren’s shield, and the pounding of the dreadlords’ missiles persisted. The arcane ward surrounding her began to dissipate into smoke.

  Move, Tarrik chided himself. He clenched his teeth and pushed against the heaving sensation of the sorcery around the pyramid, forcing himself to stagger forward. His body seemed to be tugged back and forth—a sense of falling, of being pulled across unseen dimensions.

  He stumbled toward a horse, but just as he reached it, the beast uttered a terrible scream and collapsed, flailing its legs wildly in the dirt. He jumped back to avoid thrashing hooves, and when he looked toward the Nine, he found Ekthras staring at him. The sorcerer mouthed a word, inaudible to Tarrik at this distance. But then he saw dreadlords coming for him, slow and heavy, raising dust with each footfall.

  He charged one of them, and it turned toward him, slow and heavy, its massive sword gleaming with reflected sorceries. The creature’s blade hacked down at Tarrik, and he deflected it with ringing smacks of his spear. The great sword cut through the air to one side, driving deep into the dirt.

  Tarrik leaped backward to give himself space and swirled his spear blade at two more dreadlords, swooping it around and out as he began his grim dance. He had no time to think; his vision was filled with waving blades and blank orichalcum eyes.

  The time for dissembling was over if he was to survive. Tarrik shifted his spear to his left hand, then spoke a cant, and his shadow-blade sprang to life again. He reacted instantly, body and spear and blade moving in flawless movements. Swords were parried and batted aside, some shattering when struck by his shadow-blade. Iron-rimmed shields were cloven. Flesh was sliced and limbs punctured and severed. Booted feet slipped in gore.

  Tarrik hammered his shadow-blade into a torso and tore it free. He darted to the side, moving out of the jumble of bodies and blood-slicked ground. Frantically looking around, he saw no more dreadlords close. Those that remained were racing toward Ren, as if they could somehow reach her lofty perch.

  He crashed into another dreadlord, sending it staggering. His shadow-blade found its way through a joint in the creature’s backplate, just above the hip. There was a brief resistance from the spine, and Tarrik pushed harder. The dreadlord uttered a coughing moan and fell.

  The second swung its blade at Tarrik. He ducked under the sword, dropped his spear, found a hold on an arm, and twisted, wrenching with all his might. The dreadlord toppled to the ground with a crash, and Tarrik forced his shadow-blade into its neck.

  He looked around to see the others still focused on attacking Ren. He grinned like a madman.

  Tarrik threw himself at another two dreadlords. Filled with renewed vigor at the sight of Ren recovering, he hacked and slashed and thrust at the unnatural warriors until they were lifeles
s.

  Ren’s shield had renewed, and she raised a hand toward the Nine. White threads of energy shot from her fingers and pierced the united wards of the Nine. They connected to the artifacts held by Ekthras, Lera, Marren, and Jawo-linger. All four erupted into a brilliance brighter than the noonday sun. The sorcerers cried out, their cants forgotten, as their fingers and palms blackened and skin sloughed from bone.

  Jawo-linger staggered and fell, and her face came too close to her artifact. Her hair erupted in flames, her eye turning white as it boiled.

  Ekthras stumbled to the side, away from his artifact, and Marren and Lera followed. As Jawo-linger shrieked in anguish, the other three managed cants through gritted teeth, and Puck’s and Moushumi’s incantations continued unabated. A soft emerald glow surrounded their wounds, which began to heal before Tarrik’s eyes. They stood straighter, eyes fixed on Ren, faces colored by fury.

  Ren’s sabotaged artifacts had bought her a short amount of time, but nothing more. The remaining sorcerers of the Nine chanted in unison Skanuric words of arcane power. Their eldritch sorceries joined with those of the Cabalists still assaulting Ren, and violet and pitch-black lances of energy slammed into her, buffeting her in the sky. Her wards cracked and shattered, and she plummeted toward the ground.

  Tarrik dodged around a dreadlord, then kicked at the knee of another. The joint cracked, and there was a clatter of metal as the creature crashed to the ground. He sprinted toward Ren, reaching her just as she landed in the dirt. Her shields held, but tears streamed down her bloodied, grimy face, and her fingers were strangely curled. She snarled a cant, and a wave of pressure knocked dreadlords and Cabalists off their feet. Somehow Tarrik remained standing.

  As did the remaining Nine, who had once again turned to face the pyramid.

  “They are too strong,” Ren said. “They know I am defeated. Samal comes.”

  Tarrik went cold all over. Whatever Ren’s plan was, it had failed.