Seven Sorcerers: Book Three of the Books of the Shaper

by John R. Fultz

  We are five.

  We rise into the sky with Zyung, tearing at him like wolves rending an elk.

  Vaazhia sinks her talons into Zyung’s eyes, which blast forth sunfire. The blast catches Sharadza, who reels and loses her spear, her skin dissolving. Bolts of deathlight from the High Seraphim pummel the Daughter of Vod. Her scream is one of mingled agony and grief. She becomes a burning, swirling mass of flame that refuses to fall.

  Alua’s white fires glide up Zyung’s naked legs like pythons, devouring his flesh like brittle parchment. In moments it will reach his chest and heart.

  Lyrilan and I await our opening.

  It will come soon, but now Vaazhia’s berserk assault hides Zyung’s back from us. His grasping hands reach backward to seize her horned head as she sinks fangs into his throat. He wrenches the comely head away from her shoulders, a gout of crimson spewing across his torso.

  The Conqueror’s voice rings out again, and Vaazhia’s tumbling body is a thing of salt that explodes when it hits the ground.

  Two more sorcerers crushed by Zyung’s power.

  Perhaps there were not enough of them to weaken him after all. Perhaps Ianthe’s plan was doomed to fail. Could the Almighty know of the Panther’s betrayal as he had known Sungui’s dual nature? Certainly he did not trust her. It could be that he allowed her to assemble this coven so that he might expose and destroy it during this very confrontation.

  The Feathered Serpent was no more. The reptilian sorceress had been salted as well. Iardu had yet to strike. Lyrilan cowered behind the Almighty like a village boy afraid to cast a spear on his first hunt. White flame devoured Zyung’s lower half, and the sister of Vireon had become a burning, howling maelstrom.

  Was the sacrifice of these allies part of Iardu’s plan? Was he waiting, like Ianthe, until Zyung had spent the majority of his power destroying them? Perhaps then the Shaper would strike and Lyrilan could work his transforming spell.

  Sungui fretted as she tossed light across the battling titans. Uurz was a wailing holocaust below the dreadnoughts.

  “Turn your lights upon the city!” Sungui gave the command to all the High Ones. “Zyung does not need us. Bring down the golden towers! Send the walls to ash!”

  Her distraction worked: The High Ones who were truly attacking Zyung’s combatants turned instead to the blazing city, casting their deathlights upon it. They could not conceive that the Almighty should need their aid any longer; he was making quick work of the seven sorcerers. The High Seraphim and the Lesser Seraphim would complete what the dreadnoughts had begun. The earth shook beneath crumbling, burning Uurz. The outer walls began to melt and splinter, collapsing across the bodies of Giants and battalions of Men.

  The cries of winged beasts filled the sky above the Seraphim. The first rank of dreadnoughts released its Trill Knights, who descended like a flock of vultures into the devastation. Uurzians who fled between the collapsing towers and flaming walls were skewered on the lances of the riders. On the decks of the airships the massed ranks of Manslayers beat swords against shields, anticipating the moment when they would be set to ground, turned loose to plunder the shattered city.

  Sungui turned her eyes back to Zyung.

  Iardu and Lyrilan pounced on him like tigers.

  Be patient…

  We are four.

  Sharadza, torn and blazing from the deathlights, lunges once more toward Zyung. She has armored herself in condensed sun-rays, forging a greatsword from that same brightness.

  Lyrilan and I strike as one. Our blazing hands dig into the GodKing’s back, tearing through stony flesh toward the beating heart within. Lyrilan chants a song of annihilation. I join his spell, although it cannot affect the Conqueror unless we claim his heart.

  Alua’s flame engulfs the lower half of Zyung now. The Conqueror grows even larger, increasing in mass and density. He tosses us from him as a hound slings water from its fur. Even Alua’s white flame is cast away.

  Zyung’s arms move faster than my eyes can follow. He catches Sharadza and Alua in his tightening fists. Lyrilan and I rush through the air at him.

  The city burns and shatters below us, and the Seraphim have begun casting their deathlights upon it. A flock of leather-winged lizards rises from the ships, diving in the hundreds toward Uurz’s remaining defenders. On their backs armored riders carry Giant-killing lances.

  Again Zyung’s voice rises above the fray, and two more of our number perish in salt.

  The remains of Sharadza and Alua stream like white sand from Zyung’s clenched fists.

  We are only two.

  “Now!” I yell at the Emperor of Uurz.

  Lyrilan sings again the ancient incantation that he spoke at Shar Dni.

  Yet Zyung mutters his own syllables of power, reflecting Lyrilan’s sorcery.

  Instead of Zyung it is Lyrilan who whitens and falls to join the heaps of salt.

  No…

  Sungui watched the colossal Lyrilan crystalize and plummet toward the plain, bursting into a cloud of salt before the broken gates. Zyung stood tall as a mountain now, ready to trample the world beneath his heel. Iardu was an insect buzzing about his granite face, avoiding his blazing eyes.

  We have waited too long! What hope has Iardu without Lyrilan?

  Among the hovering Seraphim, Sungui found Ianthe’s stunned face. The Panther turned to meet her, and the panic in her black eyes turned to fury. Gammir growled like a beast in the air beside her, his face gone crimson in the glow of the burning city.

  Now! Like shattering glass Ianthe’s command exploded inside the heads of the coven. Sungui nearly screamed at the intimate violence. Turn on your brethren, my children! Let each one choose annihilation or freedom!

  The five hundred seized their fellow High Seraphim, grabbing them by wrists and necks. “Join us against Zyung, or be sent to salt.” There was nothing else that need be said. Here, in simple words spoken plainly, was the last chance the loyalists would get to share in the plunder of the Living Empire, once it was broken and divided among the Rebel Seraphim.

  Sungui and Eshad grabbed one between them.

  “Never!” screamed the loyalist, deathlights flashing from his eyes.

  As one, the two rebels breathed their spell, while the loyalist struggled and vomited sorcery at them. In seconds it was over. The loyalist was an effigy of salt. Sungui and Eshad broke him into pieces, stuffing him into distended mouths.

  Sungui chewed and swallowed as her fellow rebels were doing in the sky all about her.

  The taste was bitter, as it always was. Fleeting emotions and memories, drowned beneath her will. Imbibed power gleaming from mouth and nostrils.

  Eshad gave her a nod, turning to exchange bolts with another loyalist. Sungui helped him grab the man, yet before they salted him, he surrendered. He set off with Eshad to salt and devour another. Ianthe and Gammir were devouring Seraphim after Seraphim. Sungui knew these two were offering no last chance for their victims, but she had no time to protest.

  The Lesser Seraphim had receded from the battle entirely, seeking refuge on the dreadnoughts. This civil war was not for them to fight. A single High One could destroy a dozen of them in the wink of an eye. They would sit out this conflict and swear allegiance to whichever faction won in the end.

  And which faction will that be? Sungui wondered.

  A fog of salt dust filled the hot and smoky air. Amid the chaos of battling, consuming Seraphim, Sungui glimpsed Zyung grabbing Iardu in his massive fist.

  If the Shaper perishes, so do our dreams of conquest.

  Ianthe has used us all, she realized. Zyung has destroyed her enemies one by one. Now he will devour Iardu. The Panther and Wolf will flee, leaving us to the Almighty’s wrath.

  In that moment, she knew herself a fool.

  “Iardu.” Zyung greets me at last. His quicksilver hand falls fast, snaring me like an errant fly. He will salt me too, but again his arrogance tells me what he will do first. He will gloat over my defeat. He brings me
up close to his flaring eyes. He towers above the burning city, his head higher now than his floating dreadnoughts.

  The High Seraphim have turned their attention to the city, casting towers into rubble with their gleaming bolts. They are as children entertaining themselves with the slow destruction of an unwanted toy. Yet something new begins among the floating Seraphim. Two of them send a third one to salt, devouring him as I watch over Zyung’s shoulder. The same thing happens again and again throughout their swarming ranks. There is strife among the High Lord’s servants.

  Ianthe’s doing.

  I sense her and Gammir darting among the legion of sorcerers, singing the songs of transmutation that send the Old Breed to salt; aiding the Rebel Seraphim in the rapid devouring of their stubborn fellows. Ianthe has turned the entire legion against itself. No longer do their deathlights fall upon the blazing towers of Uurz. They strike at each other instead.

  A second battle rages now above the first–a revolt of sorcerers.

  I knew this would come. It is early, but not surprising.

  The winged lizards harass the walls and dive among the streets, snatching men into the air and dropping them into the flames. Further up, Ianthe’s rebels annihilate their own kind. Zyung should never have taken one as empty of loyalty as the Claw into his midst. In a moment he will discover this error, when he has sent me to join my companions in the salt-death.

  “I warned you long ago not to resist my vision,” Zyung says. I am held fast in his behemoth fist. “There is no redemption for you, Starwing. You will see my wisdom at last, when I have consumed your essence.”

  I meet his gaze, drawing his attention as deeply as I can.

  “Perhaps,” I say. “And you will see mine.”

  In the instant before Zyung’s voice can send me to salt, another voice rattles our bones. In that same moment he forgets the nuisance trapped in his fist, and watches the rapid flow of whiteness cascade up his legs. As a rushing wave it comes, a transformation of titanic flesh to marbled salt. A scream of rage dies in his throat as his colossal body goes rigid.

  Even as I shatter his salted fist with an eruption of blue flame, he falls forward across the green plain. The thunder of his impact shakes the burning walls of Uurz and flattens an abandoned village.

  I descend to find the true Lyrilan waiting for me, emeralds agleam on his dark robe.

  We are the size of Men once more. He smiles.

  “Call them quickly,” I say.

  Half of the loyalists were salted and consumed in a matter of moments. The black smokes rising from Uurz mingled with wisps of salt from bodies broken and divided.

  In the moment that Lyrilan’s voice rang across the darkening plain, the struggles of the High Seraphim ceased. The mountain of salt that was Zyung seemed impossible, but there it stood. A frozen moment that would change the shape of the world and those who built it.

  How? Sungui could not say.

  The earth rumbled as Zyung crashed to the ground.

  A green flame flared into the twilight, a beacon that drew the attention of the High Ones and brought an end to their feud. There was nothing left to fight for. No Celestial One to claim their loyalty. The last of the loyalists conceded, joining the rebels in an instant, all of them gleaming like silver motes between leaping flames and floating ships. All of them hearing Lyrilan’s voiceless summons, the attraction of his light-burst, the glow that tinted the salt of the titan to shades of emerald.

  The Emperor of Uurz lives! Ianthe’s plan has worked.

  The time for devouring had come.

  Now, my children! Now! Ianthe’s voice resounded in the heads of the High Seraphim. Zyung is salted! Feast! Feast! His power and his empire are yours! Take it!

  They swarmed from the sky like a plague of silver locusts.

  Sungui joined them gladly. The coven had grown by at least two hundred.

  All of them unbound.

  All of them hungry.

  A blast of viridian light spears the sky, and the Rebel Seraphim descend upon the salted God-King by the hundreds. Their mouths open impossibly wide to bite off great chunks of his brittle substance. They cover his massive body like ants upon a pile of sugar, devouring, devouring. Consuming both form and essence. There is Ianthe, and Gammir, along with the rest of them, imbibing Zyung’s eternal spirit through his salt.

  Vireon and Alua step from nowhere to join Lyrilan and me. Khama floats close behind them. A soft hand takes my own, and Sharadza is there. We watch the long-enslaved Old Breed feed upon the God-King’s crystallized soul. They take his diluted power into themselves, spreading it among their hundreds as a legion of warriors shares a keg of ale.

  “This is gruesome,” Sharadza says. “Must it be this way?”

  I cannot tell her what I must do next.

  “Yes,” I say. “The only way to destroy Zyung’s immortal being is to divide it among the others. If not for Ianthe’s rebels, we would have to consume him ourselves.”

  Sharadza shivers. “I would not devour anyone so.”

  “Then thank our enemy,” I say.

  “And the envoy who brought her scroll,” says Lyrilan. “Sungui the Venomous.”

  Even as Ianthe’s swarm devours the salted colossus, it shrinks to the size of an Uduru. This must have been Zyung’s customary size. The Seraphim move quick as spiders, stuffing their mouths and bellies, streaming light from their eyes and throats. Soon there will be nothing left of Zyung.

  Vireon turns toward the blazing Uurz. “What of the city?” he asks. There is confusion among the dreadnoughts and the Manslayers peering from their decks. The silver hordes are ready to storm the dying city. The Men and Giants are finished, the golden towers toppled to dust, the orchards and walls aflame.

  “Tell Vaazhia that the time for phantoms has passed,” I say. The Feathered Serpent flies off to find the lizardess. I face Sharadza and take both her hands in mine. “I must leave you now, before this devouring is complete. Trust me when I say that this must be done. Wait for me on the island. If you will…”

  She cries my name as I move away from her, but I do not respond. I cannot.

  Vireon grabs her shoulders to keep her from rushing after me.

  Floating above the dwindling hill of Zyung’s salt, I remain unnoticed by the Seraphim who lick, chew, and swallow their way to his last grain. I close my eyes and begin the most important spell I will ever cast.

  The Flame of Intellect on my chest gutters and fades. My hand plunges into my breast, sharp as a blade. It clutches the pulsing jewel that is my heart. With the last of my strength and a shout of agony, I tear it out through the bleeding hole in my chest. It pulses redly in my hand, no larger than a pomegranate, dripping crimson across the salt-mound below. Some of it falls upon the heads of the devouring Seraphim, yet they take no notice.

  Only Ianthe senses it. Her weakness for blood aroused, she watches me with eyes of jet. The heart turns to a white rock in my hand, and I drop it into the midst of the salt-mound that is the last of Zyung. Instantly the heart-stone dissolves and merges with the existing grains. My own salt is indistinguishable now from that of Zyung. Ianthe has already returned to devouring him like the rest of her conspirators.

  I hover for a moment longer above them, heartless and fading. Then I glide back to Sharadza, streaming blood from my opened chest. I fall into her arms, and she weeps over me. Still I fade, yet the last thing I see is her sweet face close to mine.

  I hear her calling my name. I hope she understands.

  I die in her arms, at peace with what I have done.

  18

  Phantoms

  Uurz was a great circle of flame and rubble. The bodies of Men and Giants were cinders scattered across its blackened interior. A host of winged lizards spiraled above the flames like black vultures, searching for the wounded and dying. Above the flocking Trills the ranks of dreadnoughts floated among columns of black smoke.

  North of the inferno Zyung the Conqueror lay salted and dwindling, sink
ing swiftly into the stomachs and souls of his most powerful slaves. Yet they were slaves no more. Word of the High Seraphim’s betrayal had not yet reached the armada, but like the rising smokes it would soon engulf the dreadnoughts.

  Khama soared into the clouds east of the Holy Armada and then sped south across the unspoiled grassland. When the burning city seemed no larger than a bonfire on the north horizon, he opened his great maw and bellowed a roar that shook the plain. His Serpent body coiled and flashed sun-bright above the flatland, the second part of his prearranged signal.

  As if some cosmic sleeper had awakened from a dream of flaming death, two things happened at once. First, the walls of the flaming city on the north horizon vanished, along with its toppled towers, shattered palace, and the charred bones of its Men and Giants. Second, the granite ramparts of the true Uurz appeared below the Feathered Serpent, its golden spires gleaming in the purple dusk. Like a desert mirage it shimmered into existence, along with the surrounding roads and plantations that had remained unseen.

  Before the city’s double gate stood thirteen armored legions of Men, with a fourteenth legion of Giants. Dahrima and her spear-sisters stood among the ranks of anxious Udvorg. D’zan of Yaskatha sat upon a mailed warhorse at the front of the Uurzian vanguard. Vaazhia the Lizardess stood tall as a Giant at his side. Her crimson eyes were vivid with sorcery.

  The Holy Armada of Zyung floated now above a great, burning ring of grassland north of Uurz. The phantom city conjured by Vaazhia had faded into nothingness, along with the phantoms of the six sorcerers defeated by Zyung. The false city and its defending legions had been as real as the Nameless Folk that served the lizardess during her isolation, yet also entirely unreal. Conjurings of dust and vapor, shadows and light given substance by Vaazhia’s willpower, guided by her imagination. While the armada had set the phantom city aflame, the real Uurz and its legions had stayed hidden beneath a cloak of sorcery a league to the south.

  Until Khama’s signal, when the lizardess dropped her great mantle of phantasms.

  Of the seven who battled the God-King before the gates of the phantom Uurz, only Iardu had been more than a clever apparition. “There must be some truth at the heart of any good lie,” the Shaper had insisted. “Zyung knows me better than any of you. When he sees my own reality, he will believe these phantoms to be my true allies. And when they are all vanquished, he will relish his victory over me. In that moment, when I claim the whole of his attention, Lyrilan must strike.”