by Curtis, Greg
Each spider simply glowed blue for the blink of an eye as the ice arrows released their magic into its flesh, and then collapsed in a heap of broken ice crystals, an effective and relatively powerful enchantment he had placed on a score of arrows and bolts for each guard, as much as those without magical ability could release with a single word, and with thirty longbows in action already that was a lot of dead spiders. Meanwhile he found his own bow in his hands, and the magic on the arrow he held was far more dangerous again. It should be, he’d spent hours crafting it and a few others each night as they’d travelled. It was just as well as he could just make out with his wizard sight a second horde of hunting spiders charging out of the castle, rushing to help their companions. The queen had sent out reinforcements.
Perhaps it was too early to use it, but without thinking about the wisdom of his actions he released the arrow deep into the heart of the mass of spiders furthest from them a good five hundred paces or more. His bow was exceptional and the arrows enchanted for range and accuracy as well as destruction. The result was nothing short of spectacular.
It began as a fireball, a screaming, spinning mass of fire appearing in what had once been the body of a single hunting spider, but it didn’t remain like that. Quickly it grew, the spinning ball, screaming its anger at everything around it, and then enveloping it. In mere heartbeats half a dozen of the spiders were enveloped in its fiery embrace, and then a dozen. Meanwhile the spiders behind it all around it, kept coming. That was their mistake, not that they knew it or would even have cared if they had.
With a roar like that of a thousand angry banshee’s the fire ball suddenly lost all control and simply exploded, and the sheer power of that blast was as nothing that had come before. In an instant the entire width of the entrance to the bridge, the air on both sides, and the path all the way back to the castle itself, was a mass of fire, and he knew that nothing was going to survive. One hundred, two hundred maybe even more spiders simply disintegrated under its savage fury, and the very land underneath them was baked hard. Any grass that had once grown there, would never grow again as the very soil was turned to ashes by the intense heat.
It was a mighty explosion and Marjan congratulated himself on having enchanted such a powerful spell into an arrow, as did the soldiers who let off an enormous cheer when they realised no more spiders were coming. All that practice over the previous years as he had sat alone on his cabin’s porch had obviously been worth it. But perhaps he was a little too quick to celebrate.
He knew that the moment he heard the scream coming from the castle itself, a terrible, inhuman scream, the sort of sound that only many tons of metal could make as it was torn apart by diamond sharp claws and scraped along the stone ground. It was so loud and so piercing that he watched as all around him men began to cover their ears, their weapons and good cheer all but forgotten. Marjan had never heard anything like it before, but that didn’t prevent him from knowing what it was. The queen was finally awake, and she was angry. Her army was gone along with her expected meal, but she was a creature more powerful than them, and she was hungry as well as angry. She was coming in person.
It was too early!
He cursed himself as he understood his mistake, and yet he had planned on waking up Bathsha in due course, but not until the following day or the one after that, in the sunlight, and then only when there were others to help him or hopefully a master he could assist. Then the great black ruin she had made her home, would be melted around her, trapping her in a stone prison while she slept. Now his plan was in ruins, and all because he had made his first arrow too powerful. She had not only lost her army, she had been awoken and enraged. But that he quickly realised, did not mean that he had to abandon his original plan, just bring it forwards and carry the burden himself.
Calling forth all his affinity with the earth under his bare feet, he quickly summoned the essence of the liquid fury that was its beating heart and then started directing it at the ancient ruin, and powered by fear and desperation as he was, at first everything seemed easy, almost too easy.
In the half-light he could see the great ruin begin glowing orange, and then as he kept forcing his magic upon it, the entire structure began to melt. At first it was just a few of the glowing spires which began to slowly collapse in upon themselves, little rivulets of molten rock running down their sides, but then the rest of the castle began to collapse down as well, a molten monolith gradually settling into a giant puddle of red hot bubbling liquid, a puddle which was rapidly becoming a small lake.
The queen screamed some more about then, a terrible noise that sent soldiers all around him collapsing to their knees, hands over their heads, but that didn’t matter half as much to Marjan as the reason she did it. She had seen her way out cut off and turned around, heading back in to the castle’s depths, away from the molten rock. That was a victory, of a sort, but not enough. There were surely other exits and if not she would make some.
“The gods have mercy!” Marjan ignored the soldier’s exclamation as he had to ignore everything else. Only continuing the battle mattered, and so he kept pushing the might of the earth’s fury into the structure.
Then the queen struck back with her most powerful weapon, her tail. No one knew much about her, no one had seen her in the flesh, no one alive at least, but a few wizards with the ability of far sight had been able to relate the frequent minor quakes in the region to her beating her tail on the stone bedrock of the land. They claimed that her tail, a vast bulbous appendage the size of a wagon train and out of which she laid her eggs, was somehow connected to the essence of the rock, and that every move she made with it, caused the rock itself to shudder. This time though, when she beat her tail, it was no small movement and no minor earthquake that followed. It was a disaster.
The ground shook as if a volcano was opening up under their very feet, and a shockwave of air and sound hit them all. Despite the fact that Marjan had expected it and even prepared for it, the assault was as nothing he could have imagined. People were flung screaming to the ground, soldiers and civilians both, despite the fact that most of them were almost a league from the bridge, nearly at the tree line to the Allyssian forest. The concussion was deafening and a storm of dust was gradually raised above the entire plain lifting lie fog in the sunshine. But it was a mistake, one that Marjan and the Guild Masters had counted on the queen making as it destroyed the honeycombed rock all around her that was her lair.
No sooner had the quake struck then the remains of the molten puddle of the castle suddenly emptied as the lava found new paths opening up and heading deeper into the underground tunnels, filling them up, burying her and whatever remained of her lair.
The queen screamed once more, shocked and angry, maybe even hurt by the lava, and he doubted she’d use her tail again. She might be a simple beast but she had enough intelligence to understand that it would make things worse for her. At least he hoped so as he watched people all around him getting to their feet and brushing themselves off, grateful that they were alive. But he couldn’t say that to them, he couldn’t say or do anything other than what he was doing, fighting.
Without warning fire exploded all around the remains of the molten lake as what little vegetation had existed on the land bridge suddenly burst into flame, and the extra light was a blessing in the darkness, especially when he knew the queen was still alive, and angry. He knew that as everyone did because she was still screaming, and while the noise was being somewhat muffled by the mountain of stone above her as she continued desperately making her way deeper into the underground tunnels to avoid the molten fury descending on her head, it was still strong and evil enough to tell them she was far from dead. She was just angry. He also knew, because she knew and this close to her when she was panicking he could sense her intention to escape, she had another way out of the castle. An exit she was heading for. His blood ran cold at the thought.
Marjan couldn’t let her reach it. If she got out, her screams would be
unfettered by the mountains of rock surrounding her, and would probably kill everyone. Her tail would also be free and the stars alone knew what she could do with that. Besides he had no magic powerful enough to take her on directly. No one did. The axe he hoped would slow her, maybe even hold her back for a while, but that wouldn’t be enough if she decided to give chase. Yet even if it worked perfectly, if they could somehow survive or escape that nightmare, he had nothing, no magic strong enough to kill her. They could never cross the bridge if she was free. All he could do was what he was already doing, try and trap her in her own stone prison. There was only one answer.
More heat.
Even though he was already pushing all that he could, more than he ever had before, Marjan knew that it wasn’t enough, the queen was too close to escaping, and even while the sweat started pouring off his brow and his bare feet started glowing orange with the might they were drawing from the molten fury beneath them, he somehow summoned ever more of the earth’s unimaginable heat to his cause and cast it at the remains of the lair. It wasn’t enough to just melt the castle he knew, he had to liquefy the ground underneath it, turn any and all of the underground passages, cellars and tunnels into magma. Then and only then would he know that the queen was taken care of. He didn’t imagine that she would die, he didn’t know if she could actually be killed, but nothing liked swimming in lava, and they liked even less being trapped in the stone that remained after it had set.
More explosions rocked the night air, loud enough to even drown out the queen’s screaming, and half a dozen geysers of orange fire appeared all around the lake of fire that had once been the castle, and the very bedrock of the land bridge that had once been its base began to melt as he wanted. It was hard work controlling all that molten fury, concentrating on it, but not as difficult as he’d expected. A decade of practicing even on his own seemed to have helped him, along with the fear and desperation coursing through his veins, and it was a simple enough shape to concentrate on.
Surprisingly quickly the glowing orange lake began to grow in size, no longer just a hundred paces across, it started stretching until it touched both sides of the land bridge and small cascades of lava started dribbling over the edges, and it had to be at least a third of a league long. But what he could see of the lake was far less important than that which his mortal eyes couldn’t see, its depth, and he could feel the magma eating its way ever further down into the bedrock of the bridge itself.
Time passed agonisingly slowly, seconds seeming like minutes, minutes like hours as he forced everything he had into that fury and constantly awaited the one thing that terrified him most, the queen’s triumph as she escaped her fiery prison, and yet it passed without that nightmare ever happening, until finally he knew some hope that it never would.
It was when a new sound made itself known to him, silence, as the queen had stopped screaming, that he finally knew he was winning. He knew that she had either dug herself so deep into the bedrock that her screams could no longer be heard, or she was swimming in molten rock. Regardless of whichever option was true he could feel her panicked thoughts, and knew that she knew she was in trouble. She might be all but invulnerable, but against the growing fury he was unleashing all around her, and without her army and her hordes of servant spiders, even she wasn’t sure, and she knew she was trapped. That gave him hope and helped restore his flagging strength. He had to make sure.
He kept going, pushing on with everything he had and everything he ever would have, kept liquefying the rock all around her, determined to trap her, until finally, in one glorious moment, he knew he had done it. He could feel the queen’s overpowering and terrible thoughts so clearly in his by then, the fear and the rage, and above all the panicked sensation of having to swim and being unable to. She had many skills but that wasn’t one of them and like a drowning man she was frightened, a sensation she had probably never known in her entire life.
He knew then with a feeling of unparalleled joy, that the plan had succeeded if not quite according to the anticipated timetable, and it was all he could do not to scream his victory aloud. But he didn’t have time. Instead he had to act, and almost exactly as he had practiced it in his thoughts for the past tenday, it was then that he finally let the magic go and prepared himself. It was time to close the trap.
“Everyone turn around and cover your eyes!” He was all but exhausted from the effort that he had put into the spell, but he knew he wasn’t finished. The queen was still alive even if she’d stopped screaming, he could feel her malevolence like a physical force as she still tried to escape, swimming desperately for the surface, and despite the violence of the attack he’d launched against her he was still sure she couldn’t be killed. But she was in pain, trapped, frightened, swimming and possibly even drowning in lava. It was time to entomb her before she swam free. If she broke loose they would all be in terrible trouble.
With a cry more animal than human and a single sweep of his arms to the skies he released all of the heat that had been trapped in the molten rock, transforming it into a single blinding column of light that tore its way up into the heavens like a phoenix reborn, and for a moment the entire sky lit up brighter than it had ever been before. People screamed, men cursed and he heard others fall to the ground swearing as they were blinded by it, but he knew that they would only be upset for a short while and it was necessary. It was vital.
Seconds later it was over. The light was gone and in its place everything had turned completely black as their eyes tried and failed to adjust to the darkness. Marjan too, even having prepared for the blast by closing his eyes and covering them with his hands, was blinded, except for the brilliant green and red afterimages that were all around him, but he wasn’t bothered by it. He could feel the success of his magic, and even the rage and confusion of the queen as she found herself entombed inside a lake of glass, a fly in amber, and as he fell to his knees, exhausted, he couldn’t stop laughing, perhaps a little hysterically.
In all his life he’d never cast such a spell, used so much magic all at once and he was tired. But he was also ecstatic, celebrating with every fibre of his being, and more than just a victory over an ancient and deadly foe, more than even their survival. He was celebrating the newfound strength that seemed to flow through him. Certainly a true master might have been able to do better, though in his euphoria he doubted much better, but he had achieved a new level in his magical journey, one that was well beyond that of just an adept or even a journeyman. Surely he had reached the level of a junior guild wizard, maybe even an artisan, a true craftsman of magic.
In time as his sight came back to him, and as it also returned to everyone else, he watched as the others started to get to their feet once more, some staring at him, but most choosing to stare at what had once been a giant, black castle full of danger, on a mountainous pass of rock rubble, and what was now a perfectly smooth lake of darkened glass glistening in the moonlight, extending for as far as the eye could see, spanning the entire length and width of the land bridge.
By the moonlight and the silvery light of the clouds he could see the imperfections in it like little splashes of milky smooth light everywhere, ripples in a dark pond after many stones had been thrown into it, though he knew they had actually been caused by the simple shaking of the molten ground underneath as the queen desperately tried to swim and her limbs flailed wildly.
Some started cheering then, clapping their hands and stamping their feet while Marjan just remained on his knees, staring at the remains of the bridge, and trying to convince himself that he had done what he thought he had. It was not a complex or learned magic, there had been no tendays or months of study and preparation, but still the raw power of the magic he had unleashed was a testimony to things he had never been sure of, never tested, most of all his strength. In a decade apart from the Guild, studying as best he could on his own, working from texts and scrolls he had had to purchase from various magic emporia throughout the region, he had still grown as
a wizard. Grown more powerful than he had realised. Maybe more powerful than the Guild had thought he would.
That cheered him, even as he knew it should have troubled him. Strength was important to a wizard, but so was knowledge, and above both of those, morality, though in its place the Guild truly only asked for compliance with their law. He had been cast out of the Guild for his failure to obey its rules, and the consequences of his failure had been tragic. But expulsion wasn’t all they could do if he continued breaking the rules, and he was still expected to obey their rules even in exile. The rules were for everyone, even exiles. Now that he had found the further strength within him that said he was growing as a wizard, he had also found the ever-greater ability to break more rules and create even bigger tragedies. The Guild would no doubt be more wary of him when they heard, and they might even start to watch him more closely. He would have to start being more cautious in future.