Her right hand clutched an iron rail as she ran down the long spiral staircase that would take her to the first floor. Round and round she descended. As she reached the bottom, she saw several grandmasters rushing toward the heart of the Xerxis, where they might gather in the parliamentary chamber. Cassandra frowned deeply, wondering how the naysayers would explain this. Perhaps, at last, they would realize that they could not deny a crisis when it was happening all around them. But the time when Parliament might have been in control of what was to come had long passed. While they had continued to argue, the decisions were now being made by others. The Voice of Parliament and many of those loyal to her had set a plan in motion with the chief constable of Arcanum and his deputies.
If there was a war council here, it would be in the watchtower. That was where the defense of Arcanum would be organized.
The flow of people—grandmasters and their aides—moved toward the heart of the Xerxis, toward the parliamentary chamber. Cassandra turned in the other direction, heading for the junction where she would be able to ascend to the watchtower.
Then she heard Carlyle call her name.
She spun to see him running toward her with several acolytes of the Order of Alhazred. Her guild. Her people.
“Grandmaster,” Carlyle said, “the city is under attack. The Wurm are here—”
“I’m aware of that!” she said, not meaning to be harsh but not willing to be delayed.
But Carlyle was no longer the fussy assistant that he so often seemed. Once before, she had seen him revert to the hardened, expert combat mage he had been in his youth. Now here he was again, curt and professional, ready for a fight.
“Mistress, I’m sorry, but it is our job to make certain no harm comes to you.”
She stared at him in horror. “You expect me to stay out of the battle to defend Arcanum?”
Carlyle flinched. “Not at all, Grandmaster. I’d never suggest it. But you’re the Grandmaster of the Order of Alhazred. Your guild will fight at your side. They’re assembling outside as we speak.”
Cassandra nodded. A smile spread across her features. She glanced once in the direction of the watchtower, but she knew that Alethea Borgia had the defense of the city well in hand. What Arcanum needed were champions to fight for her.
“What are we waiting for?” she asked.
Carlyle smiled and stepped back, letting Cassandra take the lead. He told her where her combat mages and acolytes were gathered, and she ran along a corridor and found the door that led outside. They were there on a broad lawn awaiting her orders.
But all of them were staring into the sky, looking more mystified than concerned.
Only then did she realize that the bells had stopped ringing.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
A combat mage named Tosches turned and, realizing to whom he spoke, stood up straight and nodded respectfully. “Grandmaster. It appears the Wurm have gone.”
“Gone?” Carlyle asked, incredulous. “They’re not going to just leave Arcanum alone.”
“No,” Cassandra agreed. “But I saw them. Only three. I’d assumed there were more, but perhaps not. Perhaps they’re merely scouts, taking our measure.”
Carlyle knitted his brows in thought. “Perhaps. But what of Twilight, then?”
To that, Cassandra had no answer.
Vermin.
To Raptus the mages scurrying around on the ground were nothing but vermin. He was filled to bursting with the magic of the Spawn of Wrath, could feel it pulsing inside of him like the fire in the furnace of his belly, only even more powerful. When he spread his wings, the wind knocked some of them down. Others he crushed underfoot.
All around him his raiders did battle with mages, but he had already realized the truth. General Raptus no longer needed his army. He was an army unto himself. Throughout all the years he had spent darkly dreaming of his return to Terra and his vengeance upon the mages, he had thought only of destruction. Now, though, he had begun to think of conquest. Death would be merciful compared to the cruelty to which the mages had banished the Wurm. They did not deserve death.
No. He would not kill them all. Raptus would fly from city to city, village to village. He would burn and shatter their civilization, and then he would make slaves of them all. They would have no other choice, for how could they stop him?
His kin were all around him, his soldiers, his loyal followers, but he gave them little thought now. Even Hannuk, who led the scouts to the north, was of little consequence to him. His people were free, as he had promised them, and he gave them barely a thought. On the wing, they would continue to serve at his side, to attack the mages, to fight for vengeance. For justice.
But he didn’t need them anymore. The Spawn of Wrath had transformed him into something greater.
Raptus stood on the blood-stained field between the gates of Twilight and the river that ran past. He had personally slain at least half the mages who had gathered there to oppose him, his fire engulfing dozens at a time. The magic they hurled at him had staggered him several times, but otherwise they had not harmed him. Even the most powerful mages among them would fall eventually, either by fire or by magic or because Raptus, unable to kill them any other way, would simply tear them apart.
A regiment of mages in blue and gold were retreating across the stone bridge that spanned the river. There were larger groups off to the east and he knew there were many still inside the mountainside stronghold city, but all things in time.
Raptus was the most powerful creature in the world now. The nightmare of Draconae, the insult of banishment, was long behind him. He had nothing but time. Time to kill and time to hate, at his leisure.
The laughter that he seemed unable now to control exploded out of him again and he took several vast steps toward the bridge. The mages who raced across it realized he was coming for them, and many of them turned to defend themselves, attempting to cast a spell that would shield them. Raptus felt the magic crackling all over him and the fire burbling up through his chest, rising in his gullet. He spread his wings wide and bent down to breathe that volcanic fire down upon them—
The magic struck him from behind, a spell of such power that it could only have been conjured and cast by a great many archmages working together. It was a spell of eradication, meant to disintegrate whatever it touched, one of the most savagely powerful spells in existence because it would obliterate anything in its way. It struck Raptus’s left wing from the back and the impact spun him around. He roared in pain. Glancing back at the damaged wing, he saw a tattered, ragged hole had been blown right through it, muscle and skin hanging down. Blood rained down upon the soil of Twilight.
Raptus tried to lift his head, meaning to destroy them all, but he fell to his knees, tail sweeping behind him. Still barely able to see through his pain, he raised his head and shot a volley of liquid fire out across the field, immolating anything in his way.
Then the pain began to subside. He felt the magic of the Spawn of Wrath filling him once more, as though he was still too small to contain all the power of the Dragons of Old. When he glanced at the wing again, forcing himself to focus, he saw the flesh and muscle knitting itself back together again. He had not had the strength—the magic—to do such a thing earlier, but now, moment by moment, he grew in size and in power.
Once more Raptus began to laugh.
Staggering, he rose to his feet and looked around.
The mages were fleeing. Sky carriages darted through the air, rushing away from the mountain stronghold of the Legion Nocturne. Twilight was being emptied of troops. Raptus’s raiders were pursuing them, attacking, but the combat mages managed for the most part to keep them away.
On the ground, mages were running on foot or riding horses. Raptus realized he must have been disoriented for longer than he’d thought, for most of them—more than one hundred, he guessed—had already made it across the bridge and were racing for the forest. The Wurm were giving chase, and some of the mage
s were brought down, but if they were to be kept from escaping, it would be up to Raptus.
He started after them.
At the bridge he stopped and watched them go.
“General!” shouted a Wurm soldier who flew, hovering, beside him. “Aren’t we going to stop them?”
Raptus laughed once more, uncontrollably. Then he shook his head. With a single flap of his wings—a spike of pain running through him from his still-healing wound—he carried himself far across the river and along the road away from Twilight.
“Run!” he shouted, his voice as large as his body, carrying like the echo of thunder all across the lands of the Legion Nocturne. “Flee back to Arcanum, cowardly mages! Vermin! Raptus is merciful! You shall have a single day to prepare. When I arrive at the Xerxis, the Parliament of Mages shall surrender to me the city of Arcanum, the nation of Sunderland, and Terra! You will bow before me, or you will die!”
Chapter Nine
The atmosphere in the parliamentary chamber that afternoon was entirely different than it had been the previous day. Or any other day in the history of Terra, Cassandra suspected. There was no more bickering, no more shouting. The grandmasters had ceased accusing one another of heresy or treachery and not a single word was spoken that attempted to lay the blame for the troubles facing Arcanum on Timothy Cade.
It was quiet in the spire of the Xerxis. The light that shone down from the window high above seemed to exist only to cast shadows. The first person Cassandra had sought out when the Voice had called this meeting had been Lord Foxheart of the Malleus Guild. Fewer than twenty of the combat mages he had sent to Twilight under Romulus’s command had returned alive. In the space of a single day, at least three quarters of the members of the guild—those who looked to Lord Foxheart for leadership—had been killed, and their settlement destroyed.
He was a ghost of a man now. Lord Foxheart seemed to have shrunken into himself.
Cassandra had found him in the moments before the Voice called the chamber to order, and she had touched him gently on the shoulder. His eyes, when he looked at her, were wary. His expression no longer reminded her of a rodent, but instead of a grandfather who has lived long enough to acquire sadness and wisdom in equal measure.
“Grandmaster Nicodemus,” Foxheart had begun, “I must offer you an apology. It seems I owe regrets to a great many—”
“No, sir, I beg you,” she’d said, holding up a hand. “We are all joined in our grief and determination today. There is only one guild as of this moment. I only wanted to offer my condolences.”
Lord Foxheart had taken her hand, squeezed her fingers, and nodded once. She thought he might thank her, but then realized that he could not summon the words.
“We will stop them,” she said.
“We must,” Foxheart had replied. “There is no other choice.”
Then the meeting had begun. The Voice of Parliament had entered with Lord Romulus and Verlis. Given that the last time the Wurm had been within the parliamentary chamber he had bitten off the arm of Constable Grimshaw, Cassandra was surprised there was no uproar upon his entrance. To her the lack of opposition was the ultimate example of just how serious their situation had become.
It was declared that Romulus would remain in command of the joint combat forces of the guilds of Parliament. Though the battle of Twilight could be seen as nothing but a disaster, no one debated Alethea Borgia’s decision. Given what had become of Raptus, Cassandra considered it nothing short of miraculous that anyone had survived that encounter.
“As I speak to you,” the Voice continued, “many nonessential personnel, including thousands of unskilled mages, children, and noncombatant parents, are being evacuated northward. They will have only a small number of combat mages as their guard. We are taking an enormous risk that the Wurm will not simply bypass Arcanum and go on to the north to strike at them. But Verlis has assured us that Raptus’s desire for conquest will overpower his bloodlust for the time being.
“At this moment, many hundreds of acolytes from every guild are being put into place on strategic structures throughout the city. They will attempt to attack the Wurm while the enemy are still in the air, and to draw them down for close combat if possible. We have chosen structures that are constructed of fireproof materials or protected by enchantments that will prevent them from burning.”
The Voice paused and glanced around the room. Every face was turned toward her, all eyes locked on her. Then she turned to Lord Romulus. “The floor is yours,” she said.
Romulus nodded to her, then to Verlis, including him as though he were a visiting dignitary. Which, in many ways, was what he had become.
“My friends…” he began, letting the words resonate throughout the chamber, perhaps allowing the gathered mages get used to the idea that they had indeed come together, for once, as friends. “Your cooperation thus far has been exceptional. I understand how difficult it has been for all of you to cede the direct command over your guilds to the Voice and, as the Parliament’s appointed commander, to me. I grieve deeply for the losses many of our guilds have already suffered, and so feel even more keenly the responsibility placed upon me.
“I wish that I could guarantee you that your people will survive to see the sun rise the day after tomorrow. I cannot. All that I can guarantee you is that I will fight to the best of my ability, and that I will give my blood, my own life, to keep the city from falling, to keep the Xerxis from conquest, and to destroy Raptus.”
Lord Romulus fell silent for a moment, glancing around at the grandmasters, these men and women who were normally so argumentative, so full of anger and suspicion.
“And now,” he said, “I must ask all of you to do the same.”
A rustle of grunts and whispers of surprise went through the chamber. Dust motes swirled in the daylight streaming down from the apex of the spire.
“Your acolytes and staff members have been deployed in the manner the Voice has just described. Your combat mages have been assigned to work in squadrons, and many of them have been armed with weapons or armor of Malleum. Each squadron has been assigned one Wurm from Verlis’s clan. They will be wearing bands of bright yellow around their arms to identify them to us. The squadrons will be spread around the city, with concentrations at the southern perimeter and around the Xerxis. Raptus seems to have been driven half mad by the power the Spawn of Wrath has given him. He is unlikely to attempt any sort of strategy, believing raw power to be enough. And with the level of magic he has achieved and his strength and the destructive capacity of his fire breath, he may be right.
“But that remains to be seen.
“The squadrons of combat mages and Wurm, and the acolytes placed on rooftops around Arcanum, have been tasked to destroy Raptus’s raiders. To destroy Raptus himself, however, is the greater goal. He must be destroyed, or we have no hope. To do that will require the combined magic of the greatest mages in the entire world, the collective power of the Parliament of Mages.
“You, Grandmasters. Each and every one. The fate of our world rests in your hands. In our hands. Raptus has given us a chance to surrender. We have voted on the matter and the response was a resounding no. Let us deliver that response in person, and by force. While our guilds destroy his soldiers, we grandmasters must annihilate their general. We must prevail, or all is lost. And so I ask …
“Will you surrender ego and pride and submit yourselves to the command of the Voice and to my leadership in battle? Will you follow me, my friends? Will you stand with me until the last spell is cast?”
To Cassandra, it seemed that the entire chamber held its breath. Then Grandmaster Tarquine of the Caerleon Guild raised his fist high in a gesture of silent solidarity. To Cassandra’s astonishment, Belladonna of the Strychnos imitated the gesture immediately She was vindictive, cunning, and cruel, but her expression seemed quite genuine. Others followed suit. Parzival, the grim warrior who was the new Grandmaster of the Order of the Winter Star, sat just beside Cassandra, and as he rai
sed his fist he glanced at her, a thin smile on his face. There was no amusement there, only resignation, and recognition of the wonder of this moment.
Cassandra raised her fist.
The Voice did the same.
When Verlis followed suit, no one found it odd.
They were united.
Timothy stood on the shore of the Island of Patience and stole a few moments of peace. The white sun gleamed down upon the hot sand and spread out across this strange parallel world, turning the sky a golden yellow that he missed terribly every moment he was away from here. The surf washed gently onto the shore, the wind rustling the long, drooping fronds of the Yaquis trees. He had climbed one of those trees upon his arrival here this morning, plucked a fruit, and eaten it before even beginning to descend.
The island had been his home for almost his entire life. Timothy had been born on Terra, his mother dying from trauma during the process, and when his father had realized how different he was—that he was a kind of puncture in the magical matrix, a blind spot in the world—Argus Cade had been so afraid of the world’s reaction to his son that he opened a doorway into an alternate dimension and brought Timothy through. He had done this out of love and fear for his child. Argus had wanted to keep his son safe from the world. And in truth, Timothy had been happy growing up here with Ivar to teach and advise him, particularly after he built Sheridan as a playmate.
But he had wondered many times what his life would have been like if his father had dared keep him on Terra, had been brazen enough to raise him in Arcanum. Upon his father’s death, when Leander had brought him to Arcanum, many had called him an abomination, assassins were sent to kill him, and even many of those who befriended him could not be trusted.
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