Kat fired a light-lance, rolling to the side of the hastily cut door as soon as her spell was away. Amelia was next, launching a bubble of liquid fire into the room. A shard of ice just missed her as she stepped past the opening.
Magda’s spell fired next, filling the room with a torrent of flame that seemed to spontaneously ignite from the air itself, burning like a roaring furnace for twenty seconds.
Abigail turned away from the opening in the wall, shielding her face. Even after the fire died down, the room still emitted enough heat to make it unbearable. They waited a few more minutes before entering.
Abigail slipped in after Magda. The room was empty except for the sarcophagus where Zuhl slept when his mind was within a simulacrum. Four crystalline alcoves were cut into the walls on either side of the sarcophagus. Inside the two to the right were two simulacra, frozen in time, waiting for Zuhl to put them on like a suit of clothes. Inside the alcoves to the left were two small masses of tissue that looked like they were growing.
A door was ajar in the back wall.
“The bastard escaped,” Abigail said, her anger rising.
She went to the two simulacra, hibernating, empty, waiting for Zuhl to inhabit them. She cut through the crystal encasing them, whipping the Thinblade back and forth, slicing through each of them six or seven times before turning her attention to the sarcophagus itself. A large blue crystal was embedded at the head of the box. She started there, slicing it into several pieces, then she went to work on the box itself, cutting it into dozens of pieces, sending them clattering to the floor. Finally, she destroyed the two alcoves containing the growing tissue masses, her rage still boiling over Zuhl’s escape.
“It looks like it goes pretty straight,” Kat said, withdrawing her head from the open passage. “And it looks like the door would be almost undetectable if it hadn’t been left open.”
Magda frowned, then began casting a spell. A few moments later, a trail of silvery footprints lit up the floor. They only lasted for a few seconds, but long enough to show where they led—to a second hidden door, which was closed and locked from the inside.
Bree blasted the door open with a force-push. Magda led the way into a seven-foot-tall, four-foot-wide passage that ran in a straight line from Zuhl’s chambers. Fifty feet in, the passage was entirely filled with ice.
Abigail started cutting large chunks away. It took several minutes to clear the obstacle, meant no doubt as a delaying tactic.
Once past the ice, the corridor continued straight for many hundreds of feet, stopping at a spiral staircase that wound upward. They proceeded with caution, coming to the top of the stairs, where they found a ladder that led up one level more.
Magda stopped to cast a spell, closing her eyes and sending her vision into the room above.
“It’s the dragon aerie,” she said, opening her eyes. “Zuhl is there with a dozen priests and it looks like they’re waiting for us.”
“Can you blow the trapdoor open?” Abigail asked.
“Of course,” Magda said.
She smiled, unslinging her bow and drawing an arrow with blue feathers.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Abigail said, nocking the arrow and bracing herself for the pain in her wounded arm.
Magda hit the trapdoor at the top of the ladder with a force-push, blasting it open, slamming it over onto the floor above hard enough to loosen the hinges.
Abigail launched the force arrow at the aerie’s ceiling two hundred feet above. Her arrow streaked into the air, rising far too quickly for Zuhl or his priests to do anything before it hit. The explosion shattered a section of the ceiling, causing it to collapse, debris large and small falling onto Zuhl and his priests. Two died quickly, one crushed under a section of roof, the other impaled with a beam, staked to the floor like a bug in a display case.
Magda started to climb the ladder, but Abigail put a hand on her arm.
“Wait,” she said with a knowing smile. She wasn’t disappointed. Not half a minute later, Ixabrax roared, deafening and intensely threatening as he crashed through the hole in the roof, descending into the aerie, breathing a great gout of icy, frigid air, freezing several of the priests solid in spite of their natural resistance to cold.
Zuhl’s shield held.
“Now,” Abigail said, following Magda up to the floor of the aerie.
Zora came in next. Zuhl and the priests were so preoccupied by the sudden arrival of two very angry dragons that they didn’t even notice Abigail and the witches.
Ixabrax attacked Zuhl, his talons out. Still the shield held, Ixabrax bouncing off, scrambling to gain purchase for a moment before launching back into the air and turning his attention to three priests who were peppering him with ice shards. He froze them solid with a gout of his icy breath.
Zora breathed frost at Zuhl, his shield turning red and boiling the ice into steam as quickly as it hit. She crashed into his shield, both talons hitting hard, then gripping the magical shell and thrusting off of it back into the air.
Abigail drew another arrow with blue feathers, firing it at Zuhl. It hit nearby, missing him entirely, but hitting close enough that the explosion of magical force collapsed his shield. The shock wave blasted him to the ground, leaving him stunned.
He regained his senses just in time to see Ixabrax land on top of him, snatching him up with one talon and launching into the air a moment later. He whipped Zuhl up to his mouth and bit him in half, tossing the legs into the air toward Zora. She snatched them like a dog catching a treat, crunching them once before swallowing the last of Lord Zuhl.
The priests ran, but not quickly enough. Ixabrax and Zora turned on them next, freezing them solid in moments and then crashing into them, shattering them into thousands of bloody chunks.
Both dragons looked around for more prey but the battle was done, the enemy dead. Abigail slung her bow and approached them slowly.
“Thank you for this, Abigail Ruatha,” Ixabrax said. “You are a true friend.”
“You as well, Ixabrax. I wish you and Zora the very best.”
“I believe we still have a witch to help you kill,” Zora said.
Abigail smiled. She remembered their bargain, but she was loathe to bring it up.
“I would welcome your help,” Abigail said, “but I need to wait until I hear from my brother before we proceed.”
“Then I suggest we fall back to a safe location,” Ixabrax said.
Abigail smiled. “I’m surprised you’re so willing to help us fight our war.”
“Zora gave her word and a dragon’s word matters,” Ixabrax said. “Also, if I had helped you kill Zuhl in the first place, he wouldn’t have collared me a second time.”
Soldiers stormed into the room from three entrances, stopping cold and backing away slightly at the sight of Ixabrax and Zora.
“Time to go,” Ixabrax said, lowering his neck for Abigail and half of the witches. The other half of the witches quickly climbed aboard Zora, and both dragons launched with a roar, leaving Whitehall broken and without a master.
Chapter 37
Isabel blinked in disbelief as her duplicate vanished and Phane whirled on the seven-hundred-year-old mage.
Zuhl stood right there behind him. He’d arrived by surprise, he’d distracted Phane just enough to open a vulnerability, he held a weapon that looked surpassingly powerful, and he was poised to strike.
Yet he did nothing, his eyes going blank and empty, as if one moment he was there and the next he wasn’t.
Phane took in the threat, a flicker of confusion dancing across his face that was quickly replaced with resolve. He hit Zuhl in the chest with his magic so forcefully that it tore him in half, blasting his remains off the plateau and into his army.
Phane cocked his head, frowning for a moment before he shrugged to himself and started laughing.
“I never once imagined that he would hesitate,” he said, still shaking his head, reaching out and pulling the crystal scepter into his hand with his magic.
“This might be useful.” He opened his Wizard’s Den and leaned the staff against the wall, closing the door a moment later.
Priests rose up on new pillars of ice in a half circle surrounding the plateau just as the drakini made another attack run. Phane renewed his shield and grabbed Isabel by the upper arm, dragging her with him to the Nether Gate. The bubble of magical energy surrounding them both deflected first a series of ice shards and then a white bolt of freezing magical energy that coated the side of his shield with a foot of ice for six feet in all directions.
The Acuna struggled to repel the sudden attack, pouring most of their energy into their shields and other defensive spells while the priests continued to hurl cold and ice at them. Drakini breathed frost into Phane’s personal guard before landing to kill one or two men each.
They didn’t know about the wraithkin. Half of the drakini were killed when they landed close enough for a wraithkin to blink behind them. The rest fled, a few more falling from the Acuna wizards’ magic.
Phane ignored it all, relying on his shield for protection. He reached the control pedestal, nodding to himself at the shape and size of the keystone receptacles. He opened his Wizard’s Den with a gesture and reached inside, withdrawing a box before closing the door again. Carefully, almost gingerly, Phane set the keystones in place.
Isabel felt like she should do something. She wanted to act, to stop him, to kill him, but instead she stood there and watched him drop each keystone into its slot. As he inserted the last stone, the air became heavy and cold, sending a chill up her spine. A shadow passed overhead.
Air began to flow toward the indistinct splotch of inky blackness that occupied the interior of the Nether Gate’s stone arch.
Phane tipped his head back and laughed, very deliberately taking a moment to revel in his victory. Shards of ice shattered against his shield, a man fell nearby, frozen solid from a blast of magical coldness. Phane seemed to remember that he was in a battle and a look of pure childish glee danced across his face.
“Naberius!” he bellowed at the Gate.
The darkness swirled and a giant figure stepped through that almost looked human. He stood nine feet tall and had the body of a perfectly proportioned man, his muscles chiseled as if sculpted from black stone. He was exquisite in every detail, except that his fingers ended in long black claws, his eyes glowed like smoldering embers, and he had coarse bone horns jutting from his forehead. Large, batlike wings folded behind his broad shoulders. He was armed with an oversized halberd.
“I am Naberius, Marquis of the Undead,” he said. “For what purpose have you summoned me?”
“Destroy that army,” Phane said, pointing at the Rangers and the Ithilian infantry a league to the east.
“By your command,” Naberius said, unfurling his wings.
“No!” Isabel shouted.
Naberius regarded her for a moment, intently taking note of her before launching into the sky.
“Legion!” Phane bellowed.
A second figure stepped through the Gate, this one also in the form of a man, a large man, seven feet tall and three hundred pounds. He wore black plate armor from head to foot, only his yellow eyes visible past his defenses. Blades and spikes bristled from his joints at every angle. He carried an oversized broadsword in his left hand and a large round shield in his right.
He scanned the world of time and substance as if looking through everything and everyone until he saw Phane. His eyes stopped and he nodded slowly.
“I am Legion.”
“Destroy that army,” Phane said, pointing at Zuhl’s soldiers.
“As you wish,” Legion said, his voice somehow hollow, detached. He took two steps toward the enemy and then there were two of him, exactly the same size, same armor, same black sword. Another three steps and there were four of him. Five steps and there were eight of him. They all leapt off the edge of the plateau into the enemy.
“Samael!” Phane bellowed.
Another figure stepped forth from the darkness. It was shadowy, drawing the light in around it. After a moment it came into focus, a perfect, crisp image of a young man, but only the front shell of his face and body. Since he was slightly transparent, Isabel could see through into his empty interior. His form was a less-than-perfect façade.
“I am Samael.”
“Yes, you are,” Phane said. “Find Alexander Reishi and bring him to me unharmed but helpless.”
Samael nodded, flashing off into the sky, a shadow moving with impossible speed.
Chapter 38
Alexander stopped at the door leading from the roof of the black tower to the inner levels. He didn’t have to wait long for his battle sight to warn him of a threat. Moments before it happened in the world of time and substance, Alexander saw the wraithkin appear behind Jataan and stab him in the back.
He grabbed Jataan, pulling him toward the door while raising his light, unleashing Luminessence in all its brilliance. The wraithkin appeared, screaming before it had even fully formed. The dark shadowy essence behind the wraithkin’s unnatural power was blasted away by Alexander’s light a moment later, the body that remained becoming spontaneously wounded in a number of places, bright red blood spilling onto the stairs before he toppled over into Alexander.
“This place is dangerous,” Alexander said, opening the door. “Stay close to the light.” He raised his staff and held his light bright enough to deter creatures of the dark without demanding too much of his concentration or will.
He hadn’t taken ten steps down the hall when a wraithkin appeared thirty feet away. Alexander raised his light but the wraithkin vanished.
“I want to fight them,” Anja said.
“No, you don’t,” Alexander said, reaching a tee in the hall. One way ended in a closed door thirty feet away while the other ran for a hundred feet before turning. He sent his sight through the door into a small room that looked like an empty guard chamber. He motioned for quiet and took the other passage, slowing to look around the corner with magic when he got close.
His battle sight flared, threats appearing from all around, all at once. There was no time to warn anyone—just barely enough time to push his light to its highest radiance, flooding the corridor with pure white light in the same moment that six wraithkin appeared around them, their long, curved knives drawn and poised to strike.
They froze in the light, their demonic link severed, their past wounds manifesting all at once, killing all six with terrifying brutality. Alexander lowered his light and continued as soon as their wounds began to show, leaving the wraithkin to bleed out behind him.
A flight of stairs led to several more flights, each turning back under the previous, taking them down into the heart of the black tower level by level. Alexander stopped between level five and level six.
“Guard room with two sentinels,” he whispered. “Multiple wraithkin are close enough to blink in.”
“So?” Anja said. “We should attack.”
“No, we shouldn’t,” Alexander whispered emphatically. He drew his sword and slipped the blade into the floor at a slight angle, just beginning to draw a circle in the stone when his battle sight flared again. He dropped the Thinblade, letting it fall into the floor up to the hilt, and poured his will into Luminessence. Two wraithkin appeared as his light came up, both falling a moment later from wounds sustained long ago but unfelt until now.
He focused on his light as he reached for the Thinblade, finishing the circle he’d begun with several rough cuts, opening a three-foot-diameter, irregularly shaped hole in the floor. He dropped down to the level below, flooding the room with light, revealing a layer of fog a foot deep on the floor.
A scream broke the silence, filling the chamber with a deafening shriek that seemed to move through the room past them.
Anja drew her sword and pointed it in the direction the voice had gone.
“I don’t like ghosts.”
Tasia raised an eyebrow, looking to Alexander for confirmation.
> “These aren’t ghosts, they’re illusions,” he said, cutting into the floor again. The next room they dropped into was a laboratory with all of its equipment stored neatly away. Alexander looked through the door before opening it into an empty hallway. They passed several more rooms equipped for all manner of magical research. All of the equipment was packed away into cupboards under the tables and lining the walls.
They reached a staircase but the doorway was nothing more than the outline of a door filled with stone. It looked a lot like the sealed doors in Blackstone and the Reishi Keep. Alexander cut through it.
They took the circular staircase down past several levels, each sealed off with a stone doorway. After passing six sealed levels, Alexander stopped in the middle of the staircase. One more turn and the stairs ended in a hallway with a sentinel standing motionless at the midpoint. Magic danced everywhere in the background, obscuring his aura reading.
He sent his vision wider, looking through walls and into the levels below, searching for a path through the black tower that offered the least resistance. After a few moments, he found what he was looking for—the central air shaft, an unobstructed path to the lower levels of the tower.
Alexander drew the Thinblade and looked at Jataan.
“One sentinel,” he said. “Don’t engage until you have to.”
He bounded down the stairs, turning quickly around the corner to the final staircase and leapt the distance to the landing. The sentinel woke up, turning toward him, his eyes beginning to glow red. Alexander ignored the guardian and slashed into the wall, cutting a triangle with three quick strokes. He was through before the sentinel had taken five steps.
Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept Page 46