Mzatal dissipated the shield over the tree tunnel. “Have you more to say to us?” he asked the downed lord. After a moment of no answer except labored gasps and choked whimpers, Mzatal released the net and inclined his head to the reyza. “Honored one, please depart with Amkir in accordance with our agreement, as you witnessed.”
The reyza rumbled assent and moved forward to scoop up the lolling Amkir. Mzatal turned away, took my hand and strode toward Steeev, who’d returned from his reconnaissance while we were occupied with Amkir.
Eilahn joined us as Steeev gave his brief report: Rhyzkahl and Jesral were already engaged in the ritual process, and Idris wasn’t the only human they were sending back to Earth. Katashi was in the ritual as well.
“We are out of time,” Mzatal said. “As soon as Amkir recovers enough, he will warn Rhyzkahl that we are coming. We must go now and stop the process.”
Steeev laid his hand on Mzatal’s shoulder even as Eilahn laid hers on mine.
“With you, Boss,” I murmured.
Mzatal brushed my cheek with his fingertips, then gave a nod to Steeev. In the next heartbeat the world dropped away, then surged back up again in a different location.
It took me a few seconds to get my bearings as we arrived, but Mzatal already had his essence blade, Khatur, in one hand as he traced glowing strike enhancements with the other. The nexus was little more than a cleared and well-trampled circle in the rainforest with eleven stones, of about my height, evenly spaced around its perimeter. Idris and Katashi crouched in the center, and filling the space between the two men and the stones were more than a dozen concentric rings of ignited, floating sigils. Like strands of colored light woven into intricate patterns, the sigils drifted from ground-level to chest height, some pulsing light to dark, and others simply shimmering. By the degree of activation, I knew the ritual was well underway.
Idris had his back to us, and though I couldn’t see any ropes or bindings, I knew there were more subtle ways in which he might be restrained. Katashi faced our way and fixed his gaze on Mzatal. The old summoner had two hands again, I noted. Mzatal had sliced one off during Katashi’s failed attempt to snatch me for the Mraztur, but obviously one of the lords had decided to grow it back. Bully for him.
On the far side of the nexus, Rhyzkahl, tall, blond, and angelically beautiful, traced completion sigils with hurried, though precise, gestures. Jesral worked feverishly beside him to direct the energies toward the center of the ritual and initiate the transfer. Jesral’s keen eyes flicked our way once, sharp features betraying only confidence. Slim and dark-haired, he reminded me of a male model, though not the hunky kind. He’d be the model wearing the purple velvet suit and slouching oh-so-perfectly in a wingback chair while an unlit cigarette dangled from between two fingers.
I sank into my connection with Mzatal, felt his purpose then captured and wove elusive strands from the flows to enhance his tracings with my personal touches. But my eyes were on Idris. As though feeling our presence, he glanced back over his shoulder, and my heart lurched at the haunted look on his face as he met my eyes.
A translucent silver-blue cylinder of power snapped into existence around Idris and Katashi—Mzatal’s creation, designed to delay the ritual for as long as possible. Without his intervention it would finalize in a matter of seconds, sending both Idris and Katashi to who-the-hell-knew-where on Earth.
Mzatal’s intention flowed clearly through our connection. Disrupt the ritual without damaging Idris. I quickly traced sigils to augment his containment cylinder as I searched for weak spots in the sigil patterns.
There. Between the second and third rings, a link wavered as though its bounding sigils had been hastily set. I “showed” Mzatal the weakness, but to my dismay I realized he couldn’t exploit it. He needed all of his focus and power to hold the shield that slowed the ritual, and had nothing to spare to make a strike.
I felt his frustration mingle with mine as the ritual built to a throbbing crescendo. “Five heartbeats, zharkat,” he said through gritted teeth. Cursing, I desperately sought a solution. Four. I had my not-a-Glock, but that wouldn’t be enough to even put a ripple in it. It would be like using paintballs to try and stop a charging crack addict.
Three. Beside me Mzatal trembled with the stress of holding the shield. Beyond the diagram Rhyzkahl bared his teeth in a triumphant smile, lifted his blade and gave Mzatal a mocking salute.
That was it. I knew a way to exploit the weakness.
Two. The rings flared, and there was no time left to consult with Mzatal. With his attention so intensely focused on holding Idris, he’d never be able to read my intention in time to respond.
I slammed closed my connection to the grove, jerked my hand into the air and called Szerain’s essence blade to me.
Vsuhl coalesced in my hand for the first time since I’d nearly caused a second cataclysm during its retrieval. During that ritual my grove power had melded with the blade’s with no ill effect, but the addition of rakkuhr—the foul potency utilized by the Mraztur—had catalyzed the other two powers into an uncontrollable force that had nearly ripped the world apart.
I really didn’t want to repeat that experience, hence the decision to cut myself off from the grove before calling the blade. Safety first, and all that.
The blade’s potency flooded me, sharp and fierce, but I had no time to revel in it. I tightened my grip on the hilt and united its power with that of Mzatal’s blade.
Mzatal faltered in shocked surprise, entire body jerking as if he’d brushed a live wire. Yet his loss of focus lasted only an instant, and he quickly recovered to weave the combined blade potencies into the strike. I focused on the weak spot in the rings, but instead of sending potency directly toward the ritual, he simply thrust his hand palm down toward the ground.
Nothing happened.
One.
Even Jesral shot us a look of What the fuck? His eyes came to rest on Vsuhl, and his hands ceased to work the potency. Hunger and desire and avarice flowed from him. Holy shit did he ever want this blade.
Zero. I sucked in a breath as I felt it, and in the next instant Mzatal’s strike burst from the ground in a blinding flash beneath the weak spot of the rings.
The cylinder turned into a seething vortex of potency. Katashi screamed as a surge threw him from the center to land in a crumpled heap almost twenty feet left of the perimeter. Idris cried out in pain, then hunched in on himself as if clinging to the center.
I held Vsuhl, focused the power as I sought a way to extract him from the still active ritual. As soon as the vortex dropped, anyone still in that center would go to Earth. And with the ritual damaged, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be a fun experience.
“Idris,” I breathed, and in that moment I was right beside him—part of the vortex, yet untouched by it. “Idris.”
He looked up at the vortex—at me—tortured desperation in his eyes as he clutched the ritual strands together, repaired them. “Kara . . . no,” he choked out. “I need to go. Have to let them send me. Please. Stop.”
He’s been manipulated, I thought with sick rage. An extension of the mind reading ability of the lords, manipulation involved altering memories, attitudes, motivations, or damn near anything else an inventive lord could dream up. In a summoner, such tampering drastically decreased their effectiveness, yet I couldn’t come up with any other explanation for why he resisted our help. Mzatal continued his efforts to unwind the diagram, but with Idris holding the ritual from the center, I didn’t see how we could extract him without damaging him profoundly.
“It’s going to be all right,” I told Idris.
Closing his eyes, he shook his head, then pulled the strands and was gone.
I yelled a curse and dove forward, both physically and arcanely, to catch a portal strand. I closed my grip around one right before it slithered through.
Idris, crumpled on his side on a cement floor. A man’s hand on his shoulder. A ring on the middle finger—dual stones, dark red and
onyx, set in intricate gold filigree.
Mzatal’s frustration and anger filled our connection, and the strand flashed and disintegrated as he sent a seething blast of power into the ritual. The sigil rings shattered, and I felt Mzatal direct the backlash toward Rhyzkahl and Jesral.
Rhyzkahl staggered back a step but managed to deflect most of it. Jesral wasn’t so fortunate and took a direct hit that cast him back hard into the trunk of a tree. Eyes locked on Mzatal, Rhyzkahl stalked into the center of the nexus, likely to replenish potency.
Breathing hard, Jesral shoved away from the tree. His gaze dropped to the blade in my hand, and his face hardened, then in a move like a striking viper he cast an attack at Mzatal.
Mzatal shifted his weight and deflected the strike with an angry flick of his hand. “Send Vsuhl away,” he gritted out.
I hesitated, tempted to argue the need for both blades, yet Mzatal’s insistence remained firm. Reluctantly, I sent the blade away, even as Mzatal hurled a return volley of jagged potency like stylized lightning. With a determined sweep of both arms, Jesral deflected all but one, staggered and spun as it struck him in the hip.
Mzatal’s aura washed over me and tumbled like a raging river of acid toward Jesral, pressing his advantage. His attack followed, in a barrage that knocked the already off-balance Jesral back several feet. Jesral shot a quick look at Rhyzkahl, face shifting to a mixture of anger and outrage as he seemed to realize that Rhyzkahl wasn’t planning to help him in his duel with Mzatal. The Mraztur had broken the age old “lords only fight one-on-one” agreement when they sought to prevent me from recovering Vsuhl but, for whatever reason, Rhyzkahl didn’t seem willing to do so again.
Continuing to trace and enhance Mzatal’s attacks, I glanced at Rhyzkahl. His attention remained fixed on Mzatal, eyes narrowed in what looked like calculated interest. As I watched, he shifted his scrutiny to me and began to trace an odd compact construct with both hands.
Dread coursed through me, and I gave Mzatal a mental nudge. Rhyzkahl’s doing something, Boss, but to my dismay his response was sluggish, distracted. Snarling, he sent another strike toward Jesral, while I tried harder to get his attention. Mzatal. Stop attacking Jesral for a second!
Rhyzkahl’s mouth spread in a vulpine smile as whatever he’d formed coalesced into a golf ball-sized creation that seethed orange and red. My dread shifted to full-blown alarm. Rakkuhr. Mzatal swiped aside a valiant effort from Jesral and drew power for a blow that would take Jesral down. Rhyzkahl glanced to the fully occupied Mzatal, smirked, then lobbed the tightly wound ball toward me in an underhand throw.
“Boss!” I yelled, eyes widening. Frantically, I tried to pull power from Mzatal’s strike to deflect the thing as it expanded and arced toward me like a softball from hell. My alarm finally cut through Mzatal’s haze of anger even as he loosed the attack on Jesral. He snapped his focus to me and then to the rakkuhr-laced sigil ball as it struck his shields. Its outer layers burned away like a meteor entering the atmosphere, the sigil emerging as a glowing red speck that arrowed toward the center of my chest.
In a fraction of a blink of an eye, Mzatal slammed a wave of power at the speck to deflect it.
Almost deflect it. The thing struck my left deltoid and drove in with a wave of agony utterly at odds with its size. I choked out a cry of pain as the sigil scars on that side of my body erupted in fiery pins and needles.
I felt Mzatal call Eilahn and Steeev to us, then he seized my head in his hands, eyes boring into mine in assessment. Breath hissing, I clutched my shoulder, though the fire in the sigils seemed to be fading. Cursing low, Mzatal released me and turned to focus on Rhyzkahl, who stood with his hands held out in imitation of a non-threatening position, although his expression was positively gleeful and full of satisfaction. Jesral lay sprawled behind him, taken down by Mzatal’s last strike.
Rhyzkahl lowered his head. “Rowan.” The name dragged razored claws through my mind.
Rowan. The name he’d used when he sought to enthrall me. I shook my head to clear a brief wave of dizziness, then bared my teeth at him. “Kara,” I told him. “I’m Kara.”
Rhyzkahl ignored my response and moved to Katashi, crouched and laid a hand on the old man. Jesral groaned and tried to roll over, but couldn’t manage even that.
Mzatal wrapped an arm around me. “You are Kara,” he said firmly.
I dragged my attention back to Mzatal, surprised to see distress in his eyes. “Huh? Oh.” I frowned. That sounded right. “Yeah, Kara. I’m Kara.” Of course I was Kara. Grimacing, I continued to hold my shoulder. “Shit, that stung.”
The two syraza swooped in to land beside us. Rhyzkahl effortlessly swung Katashi’s limp form over his shoulder and stood, then gave an ugly laugh. “She will be your downfall, Mzatal,” he called out.
A muscle twitched in Mzatal’s jaw, but he swiveled his head to look at Eilahn. “Take her to the grove.”
Eilahn hissed in Rhyzkahl’s direction as she set her hand on my arm. The world dropped away and reformed, and then we were at the entrance to the tree tunnel. I took a deeper breath as we entered, relieved that the not quite right sensation was far less now that I was in the grove.
“What did Rhyzkahl mean by that?” I asked Eilahn, troubled. “How would I be Mzatal’s downfall?”
“I do not know,” she replied, eyes dark with worry. “Perhaps he believes you distract Mzatal.”
Could that be it? I rubbed my shoulder, unsettled, but the arrival of Mzatal and Steeev halted any further musing. Mzatal’s face was an unreadable mask as he strode toward us, but to my shock it melted into full-blown concern as he saw me. He gripped my shoulders. “Zharkat,” he said, once again giving me an assessing look.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, and didn’t wait for a reply before asking the grove to take us back to Mzatal’s realm.
“Mzatal, I saw Idris after he went through to Earth,” I said as soon as we were within the familiar trunks of his grove. “I didn’t see much. Cement floor, and there was a man there with a funky ring—gold, with a red stone and a black stone.”
He released my shoulders, and I watched him visibly shift his focus from what happened to me and onto Idris. “The summoner who received him?” He lifted a hand, traced a quick message sigil and sent it.
“It had to have been.” I rolled my shoulder, grimacing slightly at the residual ache. “Boss, I need to go to Earth to look for him.”
To my surprise he shook his head. “No,” he said almost absently, eyes focused elsewhere.
“No? Why not?” I frowned at him. “He’s on Earth. We sure as hell won’t find him from here.”
His attention steadied on me, and he took my hand. “Forgive me, zharkat,” he said as he headed out of the grove. “I meant not you alone.”
I peered up at him as we walked. What the hell was going on with him? I’d never seen him this distracted.
“Right,” I said. “Of course. You send me, and then I summon you.” I searched his face. “Are you all right?”
“I have asked Elofir to come here,” he told me as we exited the tree tunnel. Ilana was there, and beyond her the glass of Mzatal’s palace glittered in the afternoon sun. I gazed at the waterfall that tumbled from the cliff beneath the palace to join the sea far below. How had I never noticed the way the spray transformed the light into wavering rainbows?
“To help you prepare a ritual to send me to Earth,” I said with a slight nod. “That makes sense.” I gazed at the palace. Those are some seriously nice digs, I thought in admiration, then blinked as the view shifted to the interior of Mzatal’s solarium. Ilana had transported us. I hadn’t expected that, but I didn’t mind at all that she’d saved us the walk.
Mzatal murmured thanks to his ptarl, then turned to me as she departed. The worry was back in his eyes. “No,” he said. “I have asked him to come assess you.”
My brow furrowed. “Me? Why?” I moved to an elegant settee, ran my hand over the lustrous wood and marveled at its shee
n and the rich depth of the finish. “I hardly feel that zap anymore,” I told Mzatal.
“It missed its mark,” he said, eyes going to the center of my chest before lifting to my face again, “but it is still quite active. I need perspective, and so I have called for Elofir.”
I looked at him sharply. “Active?” All thoughts of wood and polish fled. “What is it doing?”
He moved to me, very lightly touched my sternum. “That is what I will determine with Elofir,” he said. “You feel it in the scars, yes?”
Anxiety began to tie clever knots in my stomach. “Well, they burned at first, but that’s mostly faded.” I felt the tingle of the grove activating. “Elofir’s here.”
I startled a heartbeat later as he arrived in the room accompanied by Greeyer, his ptarl. Not that there was anything about Elofir I feared. Lithe like a dancer and with a gentle demeanor backed by quiet strength, he carried no hint of threat in his aura, and was the only true pacifist among the lords. Yet the situation had to be pretty serious if it couldn’t even wait the five minutes or so it took to walk from the grove.
My heart began to pound unevenly as Mzatal turned to him. “It was an unknown implant wrought with rakkuhr,” he said without preamble.
A grave expression settled on Elofir’s face. “Where did it strike?”
“Her left shoulder,” Mzatal replied, “though it was intended for center chest. You will find it easily on assessment.” He tugged his hand over his hair in a very uncharacteristic show of anxiety.
Elofir looked to me. “With your permission?”
Throat tight, I nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course,” I said, eased ever so slightly by the courtesy.
He gestured for me to sit, then dropped to one knee before me when I did so. Immediately I had the hyper-awareness of every single ache or pain or twinge or tickle or itch now that I knew something was wrong. Nose itches? Yep, definitely a brain tumor.
He lightly touched my shoulder, then went still. To my surprise—and dismay—Mzatal began to pace.
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