by James Wisher
Black lightning shot from the three urns. The corrupt power surrounded the Leviathan. It hovered half in the air and half underwater.
Corrupt lightning sparked off emerald scales. Everywhere the blasts hit a tiny spot of darkness appeared for a second before vanishing.
A pained scream caught Damien’s attention. Dragging his gaze away from the dragon he spotted Salem on her knees in the front of Velco’s ship.
He studied the flows of dark energy. All the corruption was focused on Salem. David and her sister were sending their overflow through the connection between the urns. It was killing Salem.
The Leviathan roared. Jade soul force pulsed from its body.
The black lost its coherence, the energy fading away to nothing. On the ships all three sorcerers collapsed. Their urns rolled around the decks of their respective vessels.
Damien turned back and found himself staring into a yellow eye, the vertical, black pupil as long as the whalers’ harpoons.
Damien knew there were no gods. He’d learned the stories as a child. The two true gods had died at the dawn of the universe and given birth to the races of angels, demons, and dragons. When he stared into the eye of the Leviathan he had no trouble believing this creature to be divine in origin. It radiated power so intense it made the ice dragon Damien had fought seem like a rock lizard.
Was this how normal people felt when they encountered a sorcerer? No. Regular people couldn’t sense Damien’s power the way he did the dragon’s.
Its gaze held no malice or anger. It also held no pity or remorse. The sailors’ tales, describing the dragon as a force of nature, were absolutely correct. This magnificent creature would destroy them all or swim away as its whim decided. Nothing a being as insignificant as a human could do would influence it.
A dull thud broke the connection between dragon and human. Damien looked down to see a ballista bolt falling into the ocean. On the deck Velco and a pair of sailors worked frantically to reload the weapon. What could they possibly imagine that would accomplish?
He dove for the ship, pushing with every drop of power he had. If Velco wanted to die out here he was welcome to, but Damien wouldn’t let the captain take Salem down too.
Damien sent twin beams of golden energy streaking toward the deck.
Above him the Leviathan plunged toward the ship. Heaven’s mercy, this was going to be close.
Damien formed a bubble around Salem and another around the urn. He pulled them both off the deck and towards him. They had barely cleared the ship when the dragon’s head struck.
The Longshot exploded. Splinters of wood went everywhere. Damien circled around. He wouldn’t try and fight the dragon, there wasn’t any point. He couldn’t help the surviving sailors with the dragon still circling the intact ships, but he wanted to collect the other two urns. Those artifacts were too powerful to take a chance on someone else finding them.
He flew to Maishi’s ship first. Salem’s sister lay groaning on the deck, struggling to climb to her feet. Damien grabbed the urn with another energy beam and pulled it into the same bubble as the first.
“Maishi!” he shouted.
She looked up.
Behind them the Leviathan rose from the depths again, a whole ship in its massive jaws. It bit down, crushing the ship without a sorcerer to pieces. Bodies and debris fell like overripe fruit into the water.
“Your sister’s okay. We need to go.”
“David!” Maishi flew away, ignoring both him and her sister.
Damien raced after her, intent on claiming the last urn. He hadn’t flown far when the crash of the Leviathan smashing the ship they’d just left to splinters behind them filled the air. Damien grimaced and put on more speed. It wouldn’t take the dragon long to swing around and sink the final ship.
Maishi reached the last ship a second ahead of him. David was stumbling around like a drunk after the urn as it rolled around on the deck. There was no sign of the crew. Damien suspected they’d had the good sense to jump overboard. Not like that would save them if the dragon decided it wanted them dead.
Damien sent a beam after the urn. Golden hands appeared and tried to wrestle it away from him. David leaned against Maishi, a snarl of concentration twisting his face.
They didn’t have time to play around. The dragon’s power was rising fast.
Maishi must have sensed it as well. She yanked on David’s arm, trying to get him to leave. The idiot wouldn’t budge.
Damien sent a blast of energy that smashed David’s construct to bits. The urn flew towards Damien and joined the other two in his bubble. Damien flew east while the other two sorcerers flew west an instant before the Leviathan rose from the ocean and claimed the final ship.
With its work done the dragon dove deep and swam away like nothing had happened. Debris littered the surface of the ocean. David and Maishi floated above the water, staring at him. Rather David stared at him, hate burning in his eyes. Maishi was looking at her sister. Salem was sitting up in his bubble, but she still looked pretty woozy.
Damien turned her bubble into a platform. “Can you fly on your own?”
Salem tried to stand, wobbled and settled back down. “Not yet. Maishi.” She held out a hand to her sister.
Maishi started toward Salem, but David grabbed her arm and dragged her back. “Forget her. We need to reclaim the urns.”
“But my sister—”
“I said forget her! She’s too weak to be of any use. Let the boy waste his power protecting her. It’ll make our attacks that much more successful.”
The two sorcerers didn’t concern Damien. Their fight with the dragon had taken a lot out of them. If they were stupid enough to attack he’d kill them both. He really hoped they didn’t. The last thing Damien wanted was to kill Salem’s sister in front of her.
“We should go,” Maishi said. “I don’t have much power left and neither do you.”
“If we go to my master without the urns he’ll kill us.” David’s power gathered as he prepared to attack.
Damien struck first with a raw blast of power that obliterated David’s shield and sent him tumbling through the sky. Steam rose from his body when he finally got himself under control. His face twisted into an ugly snarl.
“Let’s go. I’ll see you again, boy.” David flew east toward the kingdom. With a final look at her sister, Maishi followed.
“Maishi!” Salem shouted after her fleeing sister, her voice empty and forlorn.
Chapter 42
When it became clear to Damien that David wasn’t coming back he turned his attention to the debris floating below. A few survivors drifted amid the ruins of the flotilla. He needed to fish those people out of the water and get them somewhere dry. On the platform beside him Salem sniffled and rubbed her eyes.
“Are you okay?” Damien asked.
Salem made one last swipe at her eyes before she looked his way. “She abandoned me. My own sister, after everything we’ve been through. How could she?”
Damien had no idea how to answer that. He couldn’t imagine Jen ever abandoning him or if she did how he’d feel about it. “I’m sorry. If you want to go after them I understand.”
“You’d let me go?”
“You’re not my prisoner. I can’t let you have the urns though. They’re way too dangerous to have loose in the kingdom. I need to get the survivors out of the water. If you’re going now’s the time.”
She shook her head. “I’m not strong enough to make the flight and anyway I have no idea where they’re headed. I’ll stay with you.”
“That’s fine. I suspect you’ll see your sister again and if you stick with me maybe you can convince her not to do something that will make me have to kill her.”
Salem flinched. Damien sighed. He really needed to take Lane up on her offer of diplomacy lessons. Well, sometimes the truth wasn’t very diplomatic.
Damien flew down to the water. Sailors shouted and waved at him. He plucked them out one by one, transferring them
to the platform he’d conjured for Salem. He picked up eleven men, some of them in rough shape. One had an arm bent at the wrong angle, another had a two-foot stake of wood driven through his calf.
Nothing else moved, but near the edge of the debris field he sensed a weak soul force. Damien flew over and found Captain Velco clinging to the remains of his ballista. One of his arms was missing just below the shoulder. Something, probably the dragon’s soul force, had cauterized the wound so he hadn’t bled to death. Had the Leviathan left Velco alive on purpose? The captain’s remaining arm was tangled up with the ballista cable. That was the only thing that had kept him from going to the bottom when he passed out.
Damien scooped up the unconscious man and flew him to the platform. The sailors sat around staring into space. A couple muttered to themselves, trying to make sense of what had happened. Salem had recovered enough that she was healing some of the worst injuries.
One man sat huddled off by himself, watching the girl through narrow eyes. He grasped his forearm and from between the gaps in his fingers Damien saw something black. When Damien made a move to get a closer look Captain Velco coughed, groaned, and sat up.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Damien said.
Velco looked around the little platform. “Is this all that survived?”
“Your other sorcerers fled to their true master. You were a pawn in something much larger, Captain.”
Velco groaned again and lay back, his remaining arm over his eyes. “Any more good news?”
Before Damien had a chance to answer, the sailor he’d been watching lunged for Salem and put a knife to her throat. “You’re going to give me them urns and fly us back to Port Valcane. Otherwise I’m going to cut this bitch’s head off.”
On the sailor’s arm was a tattoo of a raven. How did a member of the Unkindness sneak aboard the whalers’ ship? Damien surrounded the sailor’s knife blade with an invisible sheath of soul force. He wouldn’t be able to cut butter with that weapon now.
Salem locked gazes with Damien and gathered her power. He gave a slight shake of his head, hoping he could draw some more information out of the thug.
“I can’t give you the urns. Let her go and you might live through this.”
The false sailor pulled Salem closer to his body. “I know your type. You won’t let anything happen to this girl. The master will reward me for recovering her property.”
“Her? You mean the sorcerer?”
“Aye, she’s waiting for us back in port. When I give her the urns she’ll take me to her master and he’ll give me real power. Now hand them over.”
Damien nodded.
Salem lashed out with spears of power. They pierced her captor through the chest and stomach. He staggered back and dropped his knife.
“I’ll kill you for that.” He spat blood onto the tattoo on his forearm. It burst into black flames that swirled around him, healing the holes in his body. The dark fire gathered around his hands.
Damien opened a hole in the platform under the thug’s feet. He fell a hundred feet to the ocean below. The man thrashed his way to the surface, the water boiling around him. He shouted curses and screamed incoherent threats as he fought to stay above the water.
“You’re just going to leave him to drown?” Salem asked.
“His power will burn out in ten or fifteen minutes. When it does he’s dead. He chose to die the moment he activated that tattoo. That’s what corrupt power does to people, it kills them or turns them into monsters.” Damien shook his head and flew away, the platform trailing behind.
Chapter 43
Port Valcane appeared on the horizon, much to Damien’s relief. The flight back had taken a day, a night, and part of another day. Even his enormous soul force was reaching its limit. When he had everyone back to solid ground he planned to sleep for a week.
Salem flew beside him, testing her strength, trying to discover if the urns had done any permanent damage. So far she seemed fine. Her dark hair blew around her face, and every once in a while he caught a glimpse of a faint smile. Damien was mostly relieved she’d stopped crying.
“You’re getting tired,” Salem said.
“I passed tired some time last night. Right now I’m somewhere between exhausted and unconscious. You did good work getting the sailors all stabilized. You have a knack for healing.”
“I’ve always preferred healing to fighting. Maishi’s the fierce one.” She sniffed, but didn’t start crying. Salem looked toward the horizon. “Someone’s coming. Someone strong.”
“My master.” He’d sensed the archmage approaching minutes ago, but was curious about how sharp Salem’s senses were. “Don’t worry, I’ll vouch for you.”
“Why? We’re practically strangers. You owe me nothing, yet you’ve been kind and thoughtful, treating me like a friend rather than an enemy.”
“The truth is you’re a sweet girl and I think David tricked you and your sister into helping him. Maishi seems besotted with him and I don’t know if I can keep her from doing something stupid if he asks her to. My hope is that if you’re with me when they do whatever they’re planning to do, you can convince her to surrender. Maishi hasn’t actually broken any kingdom laws yet. If you can make her stop you both have a future here if you want it.”
“We’re sorcerers. We have no place anywhere. We’ll be feared and shunned wherever we go.”
Damien laughed. “Who fed you that nonsense? There are two hundred or so sorcerers in the kingdom, most of them loved and respected by their friends, family, and society in general. Only criminals are shunned.”
“But David said—”
“David said? Why would you believe anything that man had to say? He told you what he needed you to believe so you’d do what he wanted. I’m telling you the truth. You’d be a great addition to the kingdom’s sorcerers. With your gift for healing you’d be welcome anywhere.”
“Really?” She sounded so desperate to believe him. Someone had her totally convinced she was a monster with no place in society.
Damien made a little X over his heart. “I swear.”
The archmage’s eagle swooped into formation beside them. Her gaze racked the miserable survivors then came back to him. “Damien. Do I need to ask how it went?”
“It went as we expected. I brought you a present.” He concentrated and the bubble surrounding the urns flew over to her.
His master assumed control of the sphere. “What have we here?”
“Their secret weapon. The Leviathan wasn’t impressed. The urns seem to drain the wielder’s soul force at the same time they drain the target’s. I’ve never seen anything like them. Salem can tell you more.”
The archmage turned her cool gaze on Salem who flinched. “I look forward to that conversation. Where are the other two?”
“Best guess? I’d say they slunk back to Connor. They’ll be back. David was desperate to reclaim the urns. I hope you have a place to keep them. Somewhere deep, dark, and secure. I don’t know what Connor wants them for, but it can’t be good.”
“I was planning to just destroy them,” his master said. “We acquired several other dark artifacts that need purifying. Three more won’t make much difference.”
Damien chewed his lip. “Master, the way these things soak up soul force I have my doubts you can destroy them. It would be like trying to douse a fire by throwing oil on it.”
The archmage glared at the urns, trying to unmake them by sheer willpower. If anyone could, she could, but Damien feared it wouldn’t be that easy.
Chapter 44
John sprawled on the couch in the royal quarters and watched the princess pace. The king and queen had gone out for a ride leaving the pair of them alone. If she didn’t calm down she was going to wear a hole in an expensive rug.
He’d been in the capital for over a month now and all he’d accomplished was healing the occasional overzealous guard injured in training. Most of his time seemed to be spent listening to Karrie plot ho
w to get Damien to marry her. She’d considered dozens of plans, each more farfetched than the last. John was so thoroughly sick of it he was tempted to ask for a transfer back to his old post where he could do something useful. At least holed up in the royal apartment he hadn’t run into anyone looking for favors.
Finally she stopped and rounded on him in a swirl of blue skirts. “You’re his best friend. Don’t you have any ideas how I can convince him that loving a sword is stupid?”
John scrubbed his hand over his face. How many times was he going to have to explain this? “It’s not the sword, it’s the spirit bound to the sword. And I can guarantee you the one thing that would make Damien never speak to you again is telling him loving Lizzy is stupid. You know, instead of trying to trick, seduce, or otherwise force him to like you, you might try doing something nice for him without expecting anything in return.”
She frowned as though the idea had never crossed her mind. Knowing Karrie it probably hadn’t. “Like what?”
“Damien’s name day was a couple days ago. You could throw him a late party after he finishes his mission. Get Jen and Fredric to come. Fix a nice dinner, maybe a cake. Hell, I don’t know. If nothing else we’ll have a good meal.”
The princess started pacing again. “A name day party. That might work. It’ll show him I care. That I can do things for him that some stupid sword can’t. John, it’s brilliant. But how will I know when to plan for?”
“Can’t help you there. It’s not like a mission has an end day. You should probably ask Jen and Fredric to come now that way whenever Damien gets back you could have the party the next day.”
Karrie smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “This might be just the thing to convince him to consider me. Things are finally looking up.”