by Blink, Bob
“What do you expect to accomplish here?” Ash’urn asked. They stood atop a peak of rugged rock, a field of ragged dark stone scattered across the valley below. Rigo, Jeen, Mitty, and Burke stood beside them.
“They are protected somehow,” Nycoh said, “but they do not fight back. It is as though something or someone wishes them to reach some destination before they are released to attack. I do not believe they are the source of the protective barrier.”
The group had jumped far enough ahead of the advancing Baldari, it took almost a glass before the horde filled the valley below.
“Now what?” Jeen asked. “She knew that Nycoh had learned some magic that none of the rest of them had mastered, but what she hoped to do here that she couldn’t have done back at the ambush wasn’t clear.
Nycoh didn’t answer, her face set in a determined frown. She scanned the valley below, then suddenly stabbed her staff into the ground in front of her. The hard rock gave little, but a small crack formed at the tip of the staff, and snaked its way quickly down the hill toward the valley below. Within a few paces it was invisible to Rigo and the others, but it continued down the hill, splitting and increasing in number. Then, in the distance below, Rigo heard a sharp crack, as if something brittle had been broken. All across the valley floor wide cracks were forming in the blackened rock that covered the area. It was as if the floor was made of ice covering a large lake that suddenly was breaking into hundreds, if not thousands, of separate pieces. The sections were a man height in thickness, and quite large. Like the chunks of ice on a lake, they were also unstable. The Baldari found themselves fighting for balance on top of hundreds of tipping and turning sections of unstable stone.
Underneath the stone, a reddish glow became more apparent as the gaps between the pieces grew. Many of the sections flipped over, turning a glowing bottom toward the sky. As the sections flipped, the Baldari and their mounts were thrown into the fiery sea under the stones. Nycoh’s companions could only stare at what she had somehow managed to cause to happen.
“Lava” Rigo whispered. “I could see this was an ancient volcano, but I wouldn’t have guessed the lava was still so close to the surface.”
“It wasn’t until a moment ago,” Nycoh answered, her concentration on the fiery sea below them. She was still doing something that was causing the lava to swirl and become even more treacherous to the Baldari that still survived.
“The barrier doesn’t protect them from this,” Burke shouted gleefully. He watched as the last of the mounted warriors lost their footing and plunged into the boiling sea of molten rock to their deaths.
Soon enough, there were none left. Nycoh leaned back, sweat flowing down her face from the effort she had exerted. “It’s done,” she said.
“What of the lava?” Rigo asked.
“It will cool soon enough,” Nycoh said. “I haven’t the strength left to try and speed the process. Out here no one will care anyway.”
“We better tell the others,” Jeen said. “At least it is over.”
Mitty shook her head. “It isn’t over. This is just the beginning. There will be thousands more like them coming soon. Something or someone in the south is driving them this way.”
The End of Into The Ruins
The adventure will conclude in The Baldari
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright 2014 by Robert Blink
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Proof Release: January 2014
First Release: February 2014
Dedication
This book is for my wife, Evelina Blink.
Other books by the Author:
Timelines
The Second Compound
Wizard's Blood [Part One]
Wizard's Blood [Part Two]
Reversal
Split Creek
EndRun
Corrector
Ancient Magic
Dirty Money
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When it became clear that Ancient Magic was going to expand into more than a single volume, my long time good friend Robert Fahey entered the picture with frequent phone calls and emails as we tossed around possibilities for where the plot might go. RF suggested literally dozens of clever ideas, a great many of which made their way into this volume, or are lurking in the background waiting for the concluding volume. As the chapters were written, he read the developing story, suggesting additional possibilities, as well as noting any slip-ups in execution.
As usual, Bill Maggiora was also extremely active during the early writing phase, pulling the chapters as fast as they were written, providing his usual check of conflicts and correctness. Among other inputs, his concerns led to arming our friends Kaler and Daria with something that gave them some range in addition to their superlative close combat weapons skills. Bill has provided extensive input to every book I have written, and is the only contributor who has done so.
Connie Goshgarian performed her usual sanity checks as part of her review, skillfully pointing out inconsistencies and just plain goofs, often questioning why characters didn't take the more obvious and direct action. I have tired to correct such oversights and mental lapses.
Other readers and checkers of both plot and mechanics included Doug Burr, Jean Wilson, Evelina Blink, Monika Gutridge, Jim Spiva, Dianna Hunter, and newcomer to the group, John Hickory. All of these people fought valiantly to keep my typos and other mistakes to a minimum. I outfoxed them by sometimes adding text after the final checking had been completed, thereby slipping in the random error here and there.
Thanks to all for your time and effort.