by C. G. Garcia
Allison had no idea what Ter-ob was, but she knew by the look in Raya’s eyes that she didn’t want to know.
Instead, she asked, “They looked like a swirling cloud of smoke with teeth. How is that possible?”
“When conditions are right between the magical planes,” Raya explained, “a dark-mage has the ability to Summon creatures from any of the six hells of Ter-ob. However, the light of Seni prevents them from entering completely into our world. Only a hint of the darkness from their realm—the swirling smoke as you call it—and their fangs are able to become completely substantial and only when night falls across the lands.”
She nodded, wishing she had not asked. Allison knew that she wouldn’t sleep a wink that night, especially if she was going to be alone in Aidric’s suite. Maybe Raya wouldn’t mind having her over for the night—that is, if she could make herself actually ask. She hated to intrude, friend or no friend.
As Allison watched the Lamian army, now equipped in armor, helms, and swords, gather into the courtyard, Aidric suddenly turned away from Diryan and hurried over to where Raya and she sat.
“Are you all right?” he asked her, his brow furrowed with worry.
“I think so,” Allison replied uncertainly, “except I feel like I was just trampled by a mob of crazed people. My head’s throbbing something fierce!”
Aidric nodded and said, “You should since you’ve just suffered through both a mental and magical shock. Even though we should have expected Roderick to try something like this in the midst of our celebration, none of us actually Foresaw this coming. According to Seer Penrith, even the Providencen priests had no Forewarning.” He then turned to Raya and said, “Can you please stay with Allison and make certain she’s properly taken care of? I don’t know how long this battle will wage on, and I don’t want to leave her alone so soon. Seni knows when and if I’ll return.”
“Of course, if you’re sure I won’t be needed,” Raya said.
“At the moment, I believe we have mages enough, but I’ll bespeak you if the need suddenly arises. Now, I must be off. I believe we are ready to depart.”
“May Seni guide and protect you,” Raya said softly.
Allison could say nothing as Aidric gazed down at her solemnly, nodded his good-byes, and rejoined the army.
“Will he be all right?” Allison asked fearfully as she watched his retreating back.
Raya tilted her head to the side and regarded her with a little shrewd smile. “You care for him don’t you? I mean, more deeply than just friendship?”
Allison looked away, feeling the blood rising to heat her cheeks. Did she dare?
She refused to look at Raya when she answered, “I think—I think—yes, I like him, more than I probably should.”
“I thought so,” came her answer.
Allison started and turned astonished eyes on Raya, who was smiling. “Don’t look so surprised,” Raya said gently. “It’s clear how you feel about him every time you look at him. Even a blind fool could see it. My only question is, why haven’t you acted upon it?”
“I don’t think I could ever be that bold!” Allison replied anxiously. “Besides, I don’t know how he feels about me, and until I do, nothing will happen at all. I don’t want to make things awkward between us, so promise me that you won’t say anything to him about this!”
“But why?” Raya asked, puzzled. “You love him, and yet, you don’t want him to know?”
I didn’t say anything about love! Instead of arguing the point, Allison merely pleaded, “Please, just promise me.”
Raya sighed and said, “All right. Although I don’t understand why under the Thrones above you would wish it so, I promise I’ll say nothing to him, but I wish you wouldn’t keep your feelings to yourself. I admit that I don’t know Aidric’s feelings towards you, except that he obviously sees you as a friend, but he’s been long without a lover. He’s overworked and lonely. I think you would be good for him. He’s been brooding much too often these days.”
“As handsome and kind as he is, I’m surprised he has no one.”
“Oh, he could have any number of lovers if he chose, but he’s been hurt too many times in the past and is wary to give his heart to anyone. I’ll let him tell you about it if he chooses. It really isn’t my place to speak of his past, personal troubles.”
Allison nodded and turned her attention to Aidric once again, who, along with Keldan and Aren, was beginning to cast the portal spell. She watched in spellbound silence as Aidric suddenly began to glow with a brilliant, golden incandescence. He raised his hands high above his head and began to gesture with them in a series of complicated patterns. She could see his lips moving, but his words were lost in the strong hum that had suddenly filled the air. A few seconds later, both Keldan and Aren began to glow with that same brilliant light when they each placed a hand on either side of Aidric’s shoulders.
Allison felt a slight tingling along her arms as the glow of power illuminating the trio brightened to the point where she had to shield her eyes with her hand. Then, to her amazement, a beam of sparkling, golden light emerged from the palms of Aidric’s outstretched hands, and with a sudden sweep of both hands in a circular motion, the power left his hands and formed what appeared to be an outline of an oval of golden light.
As Aidric began to move his hands in various weaving motions, Allison suddenly understood what it was he was doing. He was literally “sculpting” the power into the shape he desired, although she couldn’t even begin to imagine how he was accomplishing it.
Criss Angel, eat your heart out, she thought, awestruck.
When the last empty space of the oval was flooded with power, there was a loud boom that sounded as if a cannon had gone off, and the very air within the oval seemed to tear in half amidst a brilliant flash of colors. Aidric dropped his hands to his sides, looking not at all tired from his efforts.
Before him stood a more refined version of the “rip” that had transported her from her world to this one. Allison shivered at the thought of traveling through one of their portals again. Never again! Not if I can help it! she promised herself fervently.
Allison watched with a sense of dread as one by one, whole groups of people walked into and disappeared within that brilliant, shimmering light until only Aidric and the twins remained. As Aidric stepped towards the portal, he turned to gaze in her direction, winked, and was gone. Then, before she could so much as blink, the portal dissipated in a great flash of colorful light.
Raya must have been watching her expression when Aidric had walked through the portal because she suddenly said in a reassuring tone, “Don’t worry. Aidric is a powerful mage, and if there’s anyone who can survive a battle without so much as a scratch, it’s him.”
Allison stared at the spot on the lawn where the portal had been only seconds earlier and said grimly, “I just pray that you’re right.”
Yep, she would definitely not sleep that night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“She what!” Roderick exclaimed in disbelief after his spy had reported all the recent events occurring in Lamia, nearly causing the spy to lose contact with him.
His mind-voice laced with fear, the Observer repeated, “The Golden Mage has warned them of your intentions to eliminate Idona. She just suddenly had a—fit of some sort and started raving like a woman possessed. The Mage-general managed to extract what she’d Foreseen from her mind, and now, as we speak, Diryan is preparing to send troops to Idona by portal.”
“Damn it! I thought you said she was untrained!” Roderick boomed furiously.
“S-She is,” the Observer sent, mind-voice sounding small and cowed.
“Then pray tell me how she managed to Foresee something that I have kept blocked from even the most powerful of the Providencen Seers,” Roderick demanded.
Fools—they are all fools!
“The Lamians are as baffled as we,” his spy said defensively. “Apparently, not even Aidric knows quite how she did it, and i
f I understand correctly, Aidric had shielded her from having the power to use her abilities. She was not supposed to’ve been able to use her Foresight under those restraints.”
Roderick’s temper quickly simmered at this newest revelation. Well, well, not even His Mightiness can keep a leash on her power, he thought smugly, not being able to resist feeling a great deal of satisfaction that someone—even if that someone had not been him—had finally proved more powerful than the bloody bastard.
Roderick ran his fingers through his hair and frowned as a very troubling thought suddenly occurred to him. If Aidric, who—he admitted grudgingly—was more powerful than he, could not hold her powers at bay, then what chance had he? He was no fool. He knew his magical powers had their limitations.
Yet—no one is infallible, Roderick reminded himself. Certainly even a legendary mage has her weaknesses. I must find out what they are.
“I have a new task for you,” he sent. “You must trail the Golden Mage and learn all you possibly can about her—her loves, her darkest fears, and more importantly, her closest friends.”
“But the palace guards keep the strictest eye on her,” the Observer protested weakly, “not to mention the Mage-general, himself. Under that much attention, I couldn’t possibly—”
“I don’t wish to hear your pathetic excuses!” Roderick “snapped” impatiently. “You’ll do as I bid! If you cannot get near her, then invade her mind and steal the information I require.”
“But, Aidric—”
“You damned fool! You have been bespeaking me without detection for moons! Surely the task of probing one girl’s mind while escaping detection is within your power, and if it isn’t, then you damned well better make it within your power! You know the penalty for failure…”
Roderick smiled sadistically as he “felt” all the blood leave his spy’s face. The last spy that had failed to deliver was now encased behind a walled-up dungeon cell suffering the agonies of starvation and suffocation but unable to die since Roderick had used the Dark Powers to keep him alive for as long as it amused him. It was a trick only a dark-mage of Arioch knew. At night, his screams could be heard quite distinctly throughout the servant quarters.
“Yes, milord,” the Observer sent, the spy’s mind-voice betraying fear, though the spy tried hard to cover it.
“You may go,” Roderick said absently, his mind already forming an alternative plan for Idona as he quickly turned his attention to thought-speaking the mage he had sent to Idona. “Kion, hear me.”
“I’m here, ‘Highness,” Kion’s raspy mind-voice replied in the same thought, startling Roderick, to his annoyance. He didn’t like to be reminded of how many of his subjects had stronger thought-speaking abilities than he possessed. Damn fate and its vices!
“There’s to be a change in the initial plan,” Roderick sent. “Lamia has inconveniently become aware of my plan to attack Idona, and they are preparing to transport an army to aid the Na’arans. You will release the dyani onto the village now, and when Diryan’s army appears, turn the slaughter onto them as well. The mages, however, are to be captured and brought to me alive as planned.”
“And what of Aidric, milord, should he be amongst them?” Kion asked passively.
Aidric, Aidric, Aidric. Roderick was growing increasingly weary of that name, more so in just the past sand-mark.
“I want Aidric captured especially,” Roderick replied firmly. “Abandon your attack on Idona and send the dyani at him alone if you must. After all, this little attack on Idona was only meant to send Diryan a message. Since Diryan has already received my message even before it was sent, we’ll concentrate our efforts on the second part of my plan. I would rather the Mage-general of Lamia captured and under my power, but if it’s not to be so, then I want him destroyed.”
“As you command, ‘Highness,” Kion replied firmly, taking Roderick’s following silence as a dismissal.
Roderick turned in his chair to face the window where he had a clear view of some of his troops training below. He watched them critically for a few moments and then scowled at what he saw. Fools, all of them, he thought again with disgust as the men and youngsters continued to spar in their mock battles while others cheered or laughed at their efforts. They believe this to be nothing more than sport. Perhaps it’s time I make another example of just how high the stakes are for me.
Chuckling to himself, Roderick rose lazily from his chair and slowly made his way down the narrow, dark corridors of his palace, suppressing a grin every time he passed a servant and saw the flash of absolute terror on their face. Every servant knew that when he walked the halls of his palace with such leisure, someone would die that day. He enjoyed watching them struggle to make themselves as invisible as possible.
After he had rounded a few corners, he wasn’t surprised to find the corridors devoid of servants. No doubt they suddenly remembered that they were needed elsewhere when they heard his slow, calculated footsteps approaching.
When he finally reached the training grounds, Roderick merely stood at the end of the path that opened onto the field and stared out onto the field, purposely waiting for someone to notice his presence. He allowed his displeasure to be visible on his carefully calculated expression.
When one of the younger boys, a farm boy of about seventeen, finally spotted him and noticed his expression, his face suddenly drained of all its color. He dropped his sword, thus earning himself a hard rap on the side of his head by his opponent while a few snickered around him. A few of the men sparring around the downed boy stopped their sword-dancing and began to listlessly poke the boy with the points of their practice blades, laughing as the boy squirmed uncomfortably under their taunting and desperately gestured over to where Roderick stood.
“So boy, catch an eyeful of a wench o’er yonder did ye?” Roderick heard one of them sneer. “Let’s just see who’t be there hidin’ in the bushes.”
The laughter abruptly stopped as several eyes turned in Roderick’s direction and froze in shock. The silence that followed was so profound that a dropped pin could have been heard striking the ground.
Containing his amusement with some effort, Roderick strode dramatically into the practice grounds, every slow, deliberate step an agony to those who stared back at him in fear. He headed straight for the boy, whom he had instantly decided would be the object of his example. The boy was clumsy and distracted far too easily to be of any use to him in his army. Had he have been a mere twelve summers old, then the character flaw could have possibly been beaten out of him, but at around seventeen, Roderick believed that it was virtually too late to change him.
“Get up!” Roderick commanded menacingly to the frightened boy.
In his haste to obey, the boy tripped over his own legs, and with a wail of anguish, he fell flat onto his face before he could stop himself. Roderick reached down angrily and grabbed the boy roughly by his tunic, yanking him to his feet. The boy was trembling badly in his fear, and from the way he bit his lip and the pinched look of his face, it was painfully clear that he was struggling not to cry. This only made Roderick cast the boy away from him in disgust, and even before he hit the ground, his body was suddenly engulfed in a burst of green mage-flames.
The boy released a shriek that was almost inhuman and flailed his body wildly in a futile attempt to douse the flames that slowly ate away at his body as if he was merely a piece of timber. Within a few depths, his screams died down, and when the flames finally vanished, all that was left of the boy was a small smear of blackened ashes.
Roderick then glared out onto the group of fighters and said in a completely calm voice that made them wince, “Should anyone else displease me again, then your fate will be worse a hundred fold than the boy’s. Mark my words, when I’m done with you, you’ll wish I had cast the mage-flames upon you instead.”
Satisfied that his point had been made, Roderick turned on his heel and arrogantly walked back to his palace that seemed, not surprisingly, as empty as it had w
hen he had left it.
***
The stench of blood and burning bodies made Aidric wrinkle his nose in disgust as the acrid smell reached his nostrils, a constant reminder of the horrors before him and the horrors that surely were still to come. What seemed like a sea of bodies littered the ground before him—Lamian, Na’aran, and Mihran soldiers in equal numbers, lost to either the dyani’s razor sharp fangs, magical attacks, or the end of an enemy blade.
Aidric clenched his jaw in both despair and anger as he wearily channeled the power of the Mage-field through his body to fuel the wind storm he had called up to dispel the dyani swarm. No matter how quickly he eliminated the hellish creatures, sending them back to the first hell from which they had been Summoned, twice as many seemed to immediately replace those that had fallen.
Where in the six hells is that damned mage finding so many dyani? he thought frantically as he became more aware of his tiring body with every passing depth. There could not possibly be this many even in Ter-ob!
For the hundredth time that night, he wished that Na’ar had a Mage-field. The strain that his mind was under in drawing the power from the Lamian Mage-field over hundreds of spans to himself and then channeling the power through his body was beginning to take its toll on him. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold off the swarm for much longer—two sand-marks at the maximum if he was lucky.
However, during the last few sand-marks, it seemed to him that most of the swarm was concentrated at him personally than on Idona, itself. The more he thought about it, the more the Mihran soldiers appeared to be merely an annoying distraction to something that he was sure was yet to come.
The twins fought with the Lamian army, weaving their magic into a musical barrier that kept the dyani at bay while several mages concentrated on destroying them. He needed their assistance desperately, but he dared not tear them away from their current task. Without that musical barrier, the other mages would soon be overwhelmed by the swarm. No—somehow he had to come up with a way to eliminate the mage controlling them. However, Roderick’s mage was giving him no opportunity to do just that by bombarding him with an ungodly amount of those hellspawn.