Calliande cast a spell, and Kyralion’s golden longsword began to shine with harsh white light. Tamara sensed the flow of power from Calliande that maintained the aura around the sword.
“That will wound Qazaldhar if you get close enough to him,” said Calliande. “It will also damage the blood spell as you walk through it. If…”
She grimaced and sent another shaft of fire into the boiling clouds of bloody mist, driving them back.
“If you’re ready,” said Calliande, “it…”
Kyralion did not hesitate but sprinted forward, his glowing sword raised before him.
Tamara’s heart rose into her throat as Kyralion raced into the bloody mist. It closed around him at once, and it swallowed the light of his sword. For an instant, nothing happened, and Tamara feared that the necromantic mist had killed him. Then a vicious ripple went through the mist, writhing as if it had been caught in a gale.
All at once the mist vanished, and Tamara saw Qazaldhar hurtling backward, the Maledictus gliding over the ground as Kyralion raced after him. In a flash of insight, Tamara realized that Qazaldhar had to stand in one place to maintain the spell of poisoned mist around himself, and the Maledictus had been forced to flee before Kyralion struck him.
“Now!” shouted Calliande. “Now! Take him! This is our last chance!”
The five Augurs, Rilmeira, and Calliande all began casting spells. Kalussa leveled the Staff of Blades at the Maledictus. Kyralion kept pursuing Qazaldhar, and Tamara and Krastikon hurried towards him.
But the Maledictus stopped and lifted the Sign in his left hand, and shadows and blood-colored fire twisted around him.
###
The short sword stabbed towards Third’s throat, and she raised her arms to block the blow.
Even as she did, Third knew it was futile. The Scythe’s strike was perfect. There was no way Third could block it, no way Third could avoid it.
The song of her blood thundered through her mind, stronger than it had ever been. Her interaction with the Sylmarus seemed to have strengthened the song, charging it with new power, but that did Third little good. She could now travel through the blocking effect around the Seven Swords, but she still could not punch through the warding spell that Qazaldhar had raised.
But the song of her blood burned through her thoughts.
And then the song manifested a new melody.
The blue fire burned through the veins beneath the skin of her hands, as it did when she traveled.
But something else happened.
The power roared through her blood, and a sword of blue fire exploded from her right hand. It looked like a longsword wrought out of glowing azure flame, and Third reacted on instinct, rolling her wrist to intercept the descending blade.
The short sword struck the burning blade and shattered, fragments of dark elven steel raining around Third. The Scythe stumbled, her void-filled eyes going wide with surprise, and she overbalanced. Third kicked up, her left foot slamming into the Scythe’s stomach, and the urdhracos jerked back with a wheeze, trying to recover her balance.
Third leaped to her feet and slashed with the burning sword. The Scythe jerked back, but the tip of the blade ripped across her chest and stomach, slicing through the armor plating as if it was not there. A sizzle filled Third’s ears, accompanied by the smell of burning flesh, and the Scythe reared back with a shriek of pain, her sword coming up in guard.
They stared at each other, and then the Scythe leaped into the air, her wings beating as she turned and fled to the north.
Third ran to help Ridmark, the strange sword still burning in her right hand.
###
Calliande finished her warding spell, and Qazaldhar unleashed his dark magic in a storm.
Dozens of snarling coils of shadow leaped from his Sign of the New God, lashing and snapping like whips. Calliande called a ward of shimmering white light before them, and most of the coils struck the wall of light and rebounded from it. Yet several of them snarled past, and a tentacle of shadow struck one of the Augurs. It wrapped around her neck like a garrote, and before Calliande could do anything, the Augur fell dead to the ground, her life sucked away by the dark magic.
The Sight saw the slain Augur’s stolen strength surging into Qazaldhar, fueling his sorcery.
Calliande struck with a blast of white fire, hoping to distract Qazaldhar as Kyralion, Magatai, and Krastikon closed on him. Her spell hit the Maledictus and knocked him back, the black robes billowing around him like a living shadow. Qazaldhar made a slashing motion with his left hand, and blue fire exploded from him in a ring. It struck Krastikon, Kyralion, and Magatai, throwing them to the ground, and Calliande could not tell if they were stunned or dead.
She started another spell, and Qazaldhar vanished in a swirl of blue fire and shadow. The Sight showed her the surge of power, and Calliande whirled as Qazaldhar reappeared twenty yards behind them, already casting another spell. She threw together another ward as swiftly as she could, and Qazaldhar struck. Blood-colored fire ripped from his Sign and snarled towards them, and Calliande cast her ward. The bloody fire snarled into it, and Qazaldhar shifted his aim. He killed another Augur, the lifeless body striking the ground. Calliande snarled and attacked with a lance of white fire, but again Qazaldhar traveled away, reappearing to her right.
Even without the crimson cloud of stolen blood, the Maledictus was a deadly foe, skilled in all manner of dark magic, and his power was augmented by the life force he had stolen from all those muridachs. If Calliande had been fresh and rested, she might have been able to take him, but with her mind exhausted and her reactions slowed, she was having a hard time holding her ground, let alone striking back…
“No!”
Rilmeira strode forward and thrust her hand out, and a ribbon of lightning leaped from her fingers and struck Qazaldhar. The Maledictus rocked back, the lightning snarling around him, and Calliande saw the strain in both Qazaldhar and Rilmeira as their wills strove against each other. The deaths of the two Augurs had enraged Rilmeira past reason, and her whole strength and will poured into the spell as she snarled.
“No more!” screamed Rilmeira. “No more will you torment our people! No more will you spill the blood of the innocent!”
Calliande added her own strength to the attack, as did Tamara and Kalussa and the surviving Augurs, but Qazaldhar’s defenses held.
The Maledictus loosed his bubbling, wet laugh. “The Kratomachar rises! The New God comes! But you will not live to see it!”
He screamed and made a chopping motion with his hand, and crimson fire erupted from him in all directions with a tremendous surge of power. Calliande cast another ward, but the bloody fire smashed through it, and the impact knocked her over.
She hit the ground hard, rolled, and used her staff to force herself to one knee. Rilmeira had kept her feet and still flung her stream of lightning at the Maledictus. Qazaldhar gestured with the Sign, and Rilmeira went rigid with a scream, the lightning choking off. She floated a few inches into the air, and Qazaldhar laughed. Calliande saw the stirring of dark magic as the Maledictus prepared to kill Rilmeira as he had killed the muridach soldiers and harvested their lives.
“Daughter!” shrieked Athadira, and the High Augur stepped in front of Rilmeira, lightning leaping from her staff to stab at Qazaldhar.
The elemental magic failed to punch through the ward, and the killing spell that had been directed at Rilmeira struck the High Augur instead.
Blood exploded from Athadira’s eyes and nose and mouth and ears, shooting in an arc toward Qazaldhar and spinning around him in a crimson haze. Athadira collapsed lifeless to the ground, and Rilmeira screamed again.
Magatai, Kyralion, and Krastikon closed on Qazaldhar from three different directions. The Maledictus glided backward, and Calliande saw the surge of dark magic as he prepared to transport himself away and attack from a different direction.
Then Magatai bellowed something in the Takai tongue and flung his sword.
&
nbsp; The lightning-wreathed blade spun end over end and slammed into Qazaldhar’s chest, the blade sinking a few inches into his torso. Qazaldhar rocked back, and his travel spell collapsed.
The lesser soulstone in Magatai’s borrowed sword had pinned Qazaldhar in place.
The Maledictus reached for the hilt, intending to yank the weapon from his chest. But he had only one hand, and he could not relax his grip on the Sign of the New God. His fingers scrabbled against the hilt, and he wrenched the weapon free after a second.
But in that second, Krastikon closed with the Maledictus of Death.
The dark blade of the Sword of Death rose and fell, and Krastikon brought the Sword down in a diagonal cut through Qazaldhar’s torso. Qazaldhar shrieked, and he fell in pieces to the ground, the blue fire in his eyes and around the Sign of the New God winking out. A hooded wraith of shadow and blue fire rose from the crumpled pile of robes and undead flesh. Qazaldhar’s spirit, loosed from the undead shell.
But the Sword of Death glowed with blue fire, and the spirit was dragged towards the blade. It touched the Sword, and it seemed to shrink, drawn into the blade like water sinking into a sponge.
Then the blue fire faded away as the spirit disappeared into the Sword of Death.
###
Ridmark faced Nerzamdrathus alone.
He wasn’t sure what had happened to Third. The Scythe had plunged towards her, and Third had been forced to fight the urdhracos. Ridmark wanted to aid her, but he dared not turn his attention from Nerzamdrathus for even a single instant. The Great King of the muridachs seemed untiring, his black sword weaving a net of metal before him.
Ridmark had no such luxury. He felt the fatigue dragging at him, felt it clouding his mind. The armor of the Shield Knight kept him moving with speed and strength, but his grip on that power was wavering. Any moment now he would lose his grip, and the power would leave him.
When it did, Nerzamdrathus was going to kill him.
Ridmark threw himself into the fight, hammering again and again at the huge muridach. The world shrank to his foe and the symbols of bloody fire shining upon Nerzamdrathus’s crimson armor. Ridmark dodged around the attacks of the dark sword, and Oathshield stabbed out to quench the blood sigils. Ridmark destroyed sigil after sigil, and he felt his exhaustion building with every blow, while Nerzamdrathus never tired.
Then Ridmark struck another blood sigil, and the Great King stumbled.
There was a flash of crimson light from the armor, and a dozen sigils went dark. Nerzamdrathus stumbled with a bellow of frustration, fighting to keep his balance, his limbs trembling as if he suddenly had been burdened with a great weight.
Ridmark realized that the armor had to weigh a great deal. One of those spells must have eased the burden of all that metal, keeping it from dragging at Nerzamdrathus as he fought. But now the spell had been broken, and the Great King struggled to keep his balance, raising his sword with far less speed.
Oathshield burned in Ridmark’s hands as he struck, and he surged inside Nerzamdrathus’s guard before the muridach could react. He aimed for the right shoulder, and Oathshield bit into the gap in the armor there. Nerzamdrathus bellowed in pain and swept his blade out, but Ridmark dodged, ducking under the black sword. He sidestepped and swung Oathshield again, and this time the soulblade crunched into the back of Nerzamdrathus’s right knee. The Great King roared, and Ridmark ripped the soulblade free, jumping back to keep out of reach of Nerzamdrathus’s weapon.
The Great King charged after him, his sword rising high as he grasped the hilt with both hands for an overhanded blow.
Except the movement put too much stress on his wounded knee, and Nerzamdrathus staggered, his right leg buckling. The Great King came down on his right knee with a snarl of pain, and Ridmark seized the opening, all of the Shield Knight’s power driving him forward.
Nerzamdrathus started to rise, but it was too late.
Oathshield plunged into the gap in Nerzamdrathus's armor above his cuirass, and the soulblade sank deep into his throat. The Great King gurgled, blood spattering his chisel-like teeth, and Ridmark wrenched Oathshield free and started swinging.
On the third blow, Nerzamdrathus’s head came off and rolled away. Ridmark jumped back as the armored body sagged and collapsed to the ground with a clang, the black sword bouncing away from Nerzamdrathus’s limp hand.
He took a shuddering breath, and the power of the Shield Knight drained from him.
The blue armor dissolved into white flame and then vanished into nothingness, and the strength and speed disappeared with the armor. A wave of crushing exhaustion rolled through Ridmark, and he stumbled. Antenora’s bracer weighed heavy upon his right forearm for a moment, taking the brunt of the fatigue that would have otherwise been crippling. After a moment Ridmark could keep his feet.
He was still bone tired.
Third ran towards him. She had lost her bronze axe and her remaining short sword of dark elven steel, and in her right hand she carried a sword that looked as if it had been fashioned from blue fire. The veins in her right hand burned, and it seemed like the fire was pouring from her arm and shaping itself into the sword.
Third came to a halt, looked at Ridmark, at Nerzamdrathus’s headless corpse, and then back at Ridmark.
“You killed him,” said Third.
“Aye,” said Ridmark. He blew out a long breath and wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Suppose he missed his chance to feed on the women and children of Cathair Caedyn.”
Third’s lip twitched. “So he did.”
“That sword,” said Ridmark. “How…are you doing that?”
“I am not entirely certain,” said Third. “We can ponder it later. The others will need our help.”
“Yes,” said Ridmark. “Yes, we should find them and…”
He trailed off as he looked around.
The muridach army had been shattered.
Everywhere Ridmark looked, he saw muridachs fleeing in terror to the jungle, saw gray elves flashing back and forth in pulses of blue fire to kill their foes. All the Throne Guards were dead. All the muridach priests were dead. The muridachs’ siege engines and camps lay abandoned and broken. Further to the south Ridmark spotted Calliande, and there was no sign of Qazaldhar. Ridmark wondered if the Maledictus had fled, or if Tamara’s idea to trap his spirit in the Sword of Death had worked.
But the muridach horde had been broken. The siege of Cathair Caedyn was over.
“Ridmark,” said Third. There was an unsteady quaver in her voice.
He looked at her.
“Did we win?” she said. The blue sword unraveled in her grasp, the blue fire fading away, and the flames vanished within her black eyes.
“I’ll be damned,” said Ridmark. “I think we did.”
###
Calliande let out a long breath and looked around the battlefield.
“Is…is it over?” said Kalussa, leaning against the Staff of Blades in her exhaustion.
“For now,” said Calliande, reaching for the Sight.
She needn’t have bothered. Qazaldhar had been destroyed, Nerzamdrathus was dead, and most of the carrion priests had been slain by either the transporting gray elves or the furious lightning of the Augurs. Calliande’s Sight spotted the dark auras of a few of them, but the survivors were fleeing into the jungles with the muridach soldiers.
The death of Nerzamdrathus and most of the muridach lords and priests had ripped the heart out of the muridach army. The mighty horde had fractured into a thousand mobs scrabbling over each other to escape from the victorious gray elves. The gray elven warriors kept transporting themselves in pursuit of their beaten enemies, cutting down as many as they could before the enemy escaped.
Even with the High Augur and two of the other Augurs dead, they kept fighting.
Kyralion was likely the reason for it.
“Keep after them,” said Kyralion to Rhomathar. The Lord Marshal nodded. “The more of them we can take now, while they’re running for t
heir lives, the fewer who will return to fight us again.”
“I doubt they will return for a long time,” said Rhomathar, leaning on his sword, his golden armor spattered with muridach blood. “They took such appalling losses, and we killed nearly all of their lords and priests. Likely they will have a bloody civil war before they have a new Great King. Assuming a Great King can even take control, and the muridachs do not fracture back into warring cities once again.”
“And the power is fading,” said Seruna, her face lined with exhaustion as she leaned on her staff. “Whatever Lady Third did in the Sylmarus, it granted us the ability to travel as she does, but that strength is fading. The plague curse is gone, but the power to travel will not last for much longer.”
“Nevertheless,” said Kyralion. “The muridachs almost destroyed us. This is our chance to teach them a hard lesson. Let them never again travel to the Illicaeryn Jungle or think of the Liberated without fear.”
“As you wish, then,” said Rhomathar.
Kyralion stepped next to Rilmeira, who gazed at her mother’s corpse with a stricken expression. Rilmeira hesitated, and then closed her eyes and rested her head against Kyralion’s shoulder.
“Lady Calliande,” said Kalussa. “Lord Ridmark. He’s still alive.”
Calliande turned, relief flooding through her as she saw Ridmark. He looked exhausted and battered, but he was walking under his own power, Oathshield in his right hand. Third came next to him, no weapons in her hands, the scabbards empty at her belt.
She faltered for a half-step when she saw Rilmeira leaning against Kyralion, then nodded to herself and kept walking.
“Ridmark,” said Calliande. “Nerzamdrathus?
“Dead,” said Ridmark. He grimaced and rolled his shoulders. “Qazaldhar?”
“Destroyed,” said Calliande. “Tamara was right.” Tamara looked a little embarrassed. “When Krastikon cut Qazaldhar down with the Sword of Death, the Sword trapped his spirit. So long as Krastikon keeps the Sword, Qazaldhar will not be able to take another body.”
Sevenfold Sword: Unity Page 31