In the distance, Blaine could hear his captains shouting orders and saw the units respond as he and Niklas had trained them. We’re holding our own, he thought. Let’s see if it lasts. His hand went to finger the magic-deflecting amulet at his throat. True to Rikard’s word, the amulet had pushed aside the worst of the magic they had faced. All morning, Blaine had been alert for signs of magic, though he hoped that the mages had stayed with Rostivan and Quintrel. Lysander was known to be skeptical—even hostile—toward magic, and Blaine wholeheartedly hoped that rumor was true. So far, no major magic had been worked nearby, but surely that was unlikely to last the entire battle, and Blaine lacked assurance that the amulet could completely avert magic’s effects, or protect him from its drain.
Blaine’s attacker came at him with a morning star, swinging the spiked iron ball from its chain with one hand while he jabbed and thrust with a sword in the other. Blaine backed up a step and nearly fell over a corpse, but he glimpsed a metal shield in the dead man’s hand and snatched it up in time to block the deadly morning star’s strike. The ball hit the shield with a loud clang, leaving a dent Blaine was thankful was not in his helm or skull.
Piran took the offensive, charging his opponent before the fighter expected it. With his bald head, loud voice, and wild-eyed grimace, Piran looked like a maniac, and his penchant for risky moves made him unpredictable. Swearing in several different languages with curses that would have shamed the most hardened brigands, Piran came at his attacker with a berserker’s frenzy. He landed three blows before the astonished soldier got his guard up, scoring a deep cut in his opponent’s shoulder, a gash to the man’s thigh, and a slice across his chest.
Kestel and the third man stalked each other warily. The attacker, eager for a fight, feinted to draw Kestel’s strike, but she read the attempt for what it was and went in the other direction, moving inside the man’s guard to score a deep puncture in his left shoulder. Enraged, the enemy soldier came after her with several pounding blows. Kestel parried the first blow, then leapt backward over a fallen corpse to get beyond the man’s reach as his swing went wild.
Even angrier now, the soldier stepped over the dead man and raised his sword for the kill. The movement left his chest open, and Kestel dodged out of reach of his sword. With a flick of her wrist, one dagger caught the soldier in his sword arm, while the second dagger buried itself deep in his chest. He fell across the corpse, and Kestel kicked his sword out of reach, then retrieved her blades, stopping to slit his throat before she cleaned the weapons on the dead man’s cloak.
Blaine parried his attacker’s sword, feeling the force of the blow reverberate up his arm. The morning star swung again, and once more Blaine deflected it with the shield, but the sharp points dug deep into the metal, and when the fighter yanked back his weapon, it jerked the shield from Blaine’s hand, nearly breaking his fingers. His opponent chuckled, thrusting with his sword and almost getting inside Blaine’s guard. The soldier’s hand drew back, ready to let the morning star fly once more.
Blaine grabbed a broken pike from a dead soldier’s hand and blocked the deadly blow, tangling the chain and jerking the weapon out of his attacker’s hand. Blaine thrust forward, and his sword caught the soldier in the middle of the chest, dragging the blade down through his belly. The soldier gave one more savage swing with his sword, opening a deep cut on Blaine’s shoulder before Blaine knocked it away with the broken pike and slammed the wooden pole against the attacker’s head, dropping him to the ground.
Piran was making short work of his own opponent. The soldier tried to parry, but Piran’s wild attack had rattled him badly. Cursing creatively, Piran scored a two-handed hit that cleaved the man from shoulder to chest.
“And your mother was a poxy whore!” Piran finished as he stepped back from the dead man, breathing hard.
“Bad form to keep insulting them after they’re dead, Piran,” Kestel said.
“That’s the problem, Kestel. You’ve already heard all my good insults,” Piran replied. “I’ve got to try them out on someone.”
Snow was falling, a few flakes at first and then rapidly growing into a steady, heavy downfall. Coupled with the wind, it limited visibility, making it difficult to see where the next attack might come from.
“Something’s happening,” Blaine said, pointing. Lysander’s troops were falling back, though the battle was far from decided. Not far enough for a retreat, but enough to put a few clear feet of space between themselves and Blaine’s troops.
“Nice of them to give us a rest,” Piran quipped suspiciously.
A sudden pounding in Blaine’s head nearly made him cry out. “Watch yourselves!” Blaine warned as one hand went to the pendant. Kestel stepped closer and grabbed his arm, and immediately the effect lessened, a benefit of the null talisman she wore.
“Now, would you look at that?” Piran said in a wondering voice. Blaine and Kestel turned, and Blaine lost contact with Kestel’s grip. Piran was staring at the snow, and he reached a hand toward the snow as if to grasp something that only he could see.
Blaine frowned, then caught a glimpse of something in the curtain of shimmering snow. Shadows became faces, and Blaine gasped in recognition. His mother. Carensa. Servants, long dead, whom he had known since childhood. His hated father. Carr.
Carr’s image triggered a jolt of rage, and Blaine blinked rapidly, struggling against the vision. He gripped the pendant tightly, and the vision blurred, sliding away from him as if the magic-dampening amulet had broken the spell. Kestel’s touch on his arm cleared his head, and when he looked once more, the images were gone. Kestel grabbed Piran’s arm, and he shook free of the illusion.
“They’re regrouping, and they’re going to attack while our men are woolgathering,” Blaine said, glancing around wildly. “Noise! We’ve got to make noise.”
Blaine grabbed his dented shield and the broken pike and began to hammer on the metal, shouting at the top of his lungs. “Wake up! They’re coming!”
Piran snatched up three or four tin cups that had littered the battlefield, dropped or knocked from their owners’ belts. Holding them overhead, he slammed them together over and over again as his rough voice carried over the wind.
Kestel ripped the dented helm from one of the dead men and began to beat on it with the wooden handle of a fallen war hammer. “Danger!” she shouted. “Move!”
Blaine and Kestel ran along the line in one direction while Piran ran in the other, setting up as loud a clamor as they could muster. Blaine’s head felt as if it would explode, both from the magic and from the cacophony. All around them, men roused from their vision, and the illusion faded.
Lysander’s troops, cheated of their easy victory, readied for the charge, but this time, Blaine and his men beat them to it. Perhaps the illusion reminded the men too well of what they had lost or who was left behind. Or maybe, tired, cold, and injured, they were ready for a fair fight without tricks.
Whatever the reason, Blaine and Piran led the advance, rallying their spent troops behind them, swords in hand. Kestel snared the reins from a riderless horse and swung up to the saddle. Borya and Desya rallied the soldiers, much like they had long-ago herded errant livestock on the flatlands of their boyhood. Buoyed by rage, Blaine’s troops closed the distance between themselves and Lysander’s soldiers, fighting all-out and ready for vengeance.
Snow fell harder than before, and the wind sent icy gusts, reducing visibility a few inches. It was unlikely either side could prevail in these conditions. Blaine heard Lysander’s commanders call retreat.
“Hold your ground!” Blaine ordered, and the command echoed down the line. “Hold steady!”
It was a fool’s bargain to keep on fighting in this storm, and both Blaine and Lysander knew it. They would each lose as many men to exposure as to battle, and with no ability to see farther than the hand on one’s arm, no strategy could suffice. Blaine had no doubt that Lysander and his men would return just as soon as the weather cleared.
&
nbsp; “Are we certain mages can’t affect the weather?” Kestel asked, riding up to join him.
Blaine shrugged. “So we’ve been told. If the storms really are a reaction to the old magic, then let’s hope no one’s foolish enough to add to the problem.”
“I doubt this storm, at least, was sent by either side,” Piran agreed. “After all, who benefited? Not Lysander—he was forced to retreat. Not us—we might have won the day if it hadn’t started storming.” He shook his head. “All the same, the sooner you get the magic straightened out, the happier we’ll all be—and the longer we’re likely to live.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY
HOW WILL YOU KNOW WHEN IT’S DONE?” CONNOR looked around the ritual chamber at Mirdalur and shook his head.
No one would mistake the large underground chamber for anything but a mage’s lair. Torches in sconces along the walls lit the huge, windowless room. In the center of the open space, an elaborate labyrinth had been set into the rock, a twisting pathway that took up most of the area, leaving a narrow path along the outside.
The labyrinth had wider areas at intervals along its route: thirteen of them, Connor counted. The spaces would be just wide enough for a man to stand and a candle to burn. Along the walls of the chamber, sigils were marked into the stone, and Connor was certain that each marking had a match with one of the thirteen obsidian disks held by the Lords of the Blood.
“We can’t be completely certain until McFadden walks the path and attempts to call down the magic onto his chosen Lords of the Blood,” Dolan replied. “But the magic is no longer wild like what McFadden encountered on his first, unfortunate attempt.”
Connor had heard the details of that attempt, and knew how close Blaine and the others had come to dying. Whoever created the Mirdalur ritual chamber did not want interlopers.
“What is it you want of us?” Connor’s voice asked the question, but Dolan recognized the Wraith Lord’s presence.
“You were one of the thirteen Lords,” Dolan answered, meaning Kierken Vandholt, the man who became the Wraith Lord. “With Connor’s help, you will participate again. You’re the only one who has walked this labyrinth as a Lord of the Blood—other than McFadden—and the only survivor of the old ritual.” He paused. “I would ask you to walk to your place in the path—just walk—and tell me what you feel.”
The Wraith Lord chuckled. “Anxious to rid yourself of me, Dolan?”
Dolan looked aghast. “No, m’lord. And for safety’s sake, you’ll carry neither presence-crystal nor your disk. Our mages have walked the path and felt very little stirring of power. We fear we will only get one opportunity, and we have a minimum of information on which to draw.”
Are you willing? The Wraith Lord asked in Connor’s mind. Since I require your body to comply with the request.
So long as we don’t get burned to a cinder or blown apart, I’m willing, Connor replied. I didn’t come this far to let Blaine fail.
Connor had recovered from his battle wounds. As the Wraith Lord and Penhallow had promised him, his recovery was much faster than before Penhallow strengthened the kruvgaldur. Then again, the injuries were that much worse, because I was able to withstand them, Connor thought. Prudently, the Wraith Lord did not comment.
“What precautions have you taken?” Penhallow asked. He gave Connor a cautionary glance.
When Connor had staggered back after the battle, more dead than alive, Penhallow had just been rising from his crypt. He had looked on worriedly as the healers labored, but Connor had declined more of Penhallow’s blood since the wounds were serious but not mortal. Connor was still trying to decide whether, when the day eventually came that his injuries were beyond healing, he would accept Penhallow’s offer of immortality. So far, he had thought no, but he was well aware the decision might look different when the moment was finally upon him.
“We’ve worked with extreme caution,” Dolan assured him. “Mortal and talishte mages have warded the chamber inside and the structure outside. We have validated the translations of the manuscripts we seized from Quintrel, as well as those we took from the crypts beneath Quillarth Castle and the Citadel.”
Penhallow nodded. “Very well. What of the presence-crystals? We believe Quintrel has been affected by a corrupted artifact. Are you sure, Dolan, that none of that taint affects the crystals?” He looked toward the crystals, which lay in a row on a narrow worktable in the rear of the chamber. Even from this distance, Connor could see a faint, pulsing glow.
Dolan hesitated. “We’ve tested to the best of our ability,” he said. “But it’s worrisome that Quintrel acquired a divi just at the time the crystals came to light.”
“What’s a divi?” Connor asked, pushing himself to the forefront of his consciousness for a moment.
Penhallow frowned. “Talishte are not the only immortals—nor are we the most dangerous, no matter what you may think. Divis are old spirits, perhaps old enough to have walked this world when it was formless and barren.”
He seemed to carefully weigh his words before continuing. “They’re not evil… not the way you would mean the word. They just don’t care about anything that gets in their way. Power is what they crave. Valuing the lives of mortals—and even those of talishte—doesn’t factor into their thinking.” He met Connor’s gaze.
“When you go for a walk, do you intend to step on small insects, crush the life out of plants? Does that give you joy?” he asked.
“Of course not!” Connor retorted.
Penhallow nodded. “Now imagine being the insect. Your intent—the fact that you didn’t leave home looking forward to killing the insect and that you weren’t going to enjoy it—wouldn’t matter, would it?”
Connor took a moment to think about it, then shook his head. “No. I suppose not.”
“To the divis, we are the insects, the beetle accidentally trodden underfoot on the way to achieving control. No harm meant does not mean no harm done,” Penhallow replied.
“Is Quintrel strong enough to bind such a spirit?” Connor asked, eyes widening.
Penhallow gave a shrug, and even the Wraith Lord did not seem to know. “Doubtful,” Penhallow said. “More likely, the divi has bound Quintrel without him knowing it. I would not be surprised that the old Valshoans had knowledge of many things lost to us now.”
“They did,” Dolan said, breaking his silence. “And they dabbled in things mortals—and perhaps immortals—ought not to touch. I thought that my Knights had destroyed or hidden those things.” He grimaced. “Obviously, we did not succeed.”
Penhallow shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself. When a spirit such as a divi wishes to be found, it will arrange for it to happen. Divis are conscious and sentient, and the effects of their actions on ‘weaker’ creatures do not concern them.”
Connor shuddered. The thought that the divis were powerful enough to group talishte and mortals together in their view of ‘weak’ was something he did not want to dwell on.
“Could a divi mislead a mage of Dolan’s strength?” Connor asked.
Dolan gave a shrug. “It’s possible. It would be quite presumptuous to declare myself too experienced to be fooled. It’s certain that a divi misled Quintrel, because I doubt even he would give himself over to such a spirit if he knew the true cost.”
Connor felt a chill go down his back. “Which is?” he asked.
Dolan met his gaze. “Divis feed on the energy of a soul. They’re parasites. Quintrel is being consumed, little by little. No bargain is worth that.”
Connor agreed, but he wondered if Quintrel himself would consider any cost too high. “What does Quintrel get out of the deal?” he asked.
Dolan grimaced. “When we left Valshoa, Quintrel planned to have his mages put a geas on Rostivan to assure that he would do Quintrel’s bidding.”
“Which would give Quintrel his own army,” Penhallow replied. “And it appears to have worked.”
The Wraith Lord directed Connor’s attention to the presence
-crystals. “Quintrel declared the crystals to be the solution to anchoring the magic,” he said, “but how?”
“The crystals are the ‘connection,’ so to speak, between the power that flows through the nodes and meridians in the ground and the ‘instructions’ to bind the power that’s contained in the disks,” Dolan replied, gesturing toward the crystals. “We believe that each time the power has been bound, other objects have formed that connection. Perhaps the ritual destroys the connecting objects; we don’t know what was used before.”
“Carved stone wands,” the Wraith Lord replied. “That’s what we carried four centuries ago when the working was done. I did not make the association with the crystals until now.”
The Wraith Lord directed Connor to point toward the labyrinth. “We each had a thick agate ‘wand’ with runes carved into it,” he recalled. “They cracked top to bottom when the magic was bound, and since they were no use after that, I assume they were discarded.”
Dolan nodded. “Thank you. That confirms what I suspected.”
Are you ready? the Wraith Lord asked Connor, who nodded. “Let’s take that walk into the labyrinth now,” he said to Dolan. “Since only McFadden and I are tied by bloodline to the prior workings, what say I return to the spot I filled the last time?”
For your safety, let me remain in control, the Wraith Lord warned Connor. I don’t trust Quintrel.
Neither do I.
The Wraith Lord chuckled. Then we are agreed.
The Wraith Lord walked to the opening of the labyrinth and paused. He took a deep breath, letting it steady Connor’s nerves. While the Wraith Lord might not have needed the breath, Connor certainly did. Carefully, the Wraith Lord entered the labyrinth, watching his steps so that he did not tread outside of the pathway.
I feel magic building, Connor thought.
War of Shadows: Book Three of the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga Page 46