Her heart was beating strong and steady. Will fought to stifle his falling tears as Selene’s eyes fluttered open and she groaned. Blue eyes focused on him. “What happened?” She lifted her head, and then he saw the blood on the rocks.
“Stay still,” he cautioned. “You’re hurt, but I’m not sure where yet.” With his fingers he began exploring her skull until he found a wet place on the backside. Either something struck her head, or she smacked it on the rocks when she fell, he thought.
A faint rumble in the distance caused Will to lift his head and look around once more. He didn’t spot anyone nearby, but small pebbles and dust were starting to rain down from the cliff. Staring up, he saw the figure of a man standing high above, watching them. More movement drew Will’s eyes, and he saw a massive form separate from the side of the cliff and begin flowing sinuously toward him. It was reminiscent of a snake, if snakes were made of stone, but Will knew what it was already. An earth elemental.
He’d already used the force-dome that he’d had prepared, and it would take too long to cast another, not that it would have helped. The elemental could attack from beneath them. The iron-body transformation was still active and would offer him considerable protection, but it wouldn’t protect his injured wife. Will’s mind snapped into overdrive. He doesn’t know she’s alive, so I’m the only remaining target. “Stay still and pretend you’re dead,” he ordered quietly. Remembering the heart-stone enchantment, he made a quick amendment. “If I don’t give you any other instructions, you’re free to do whatever you wish after ten minutes. Any orders I’ve given in the past will be void.”
Running sideways, he yelled at the man atop the cliff. “You’re dead! I’ll kill you for what you’ve done!” He was gratified to see that the elemental seemed to be following him. As long as I can keep the fight away from where Selene is, she should be safe.
He’d only gone fifty feet when something hard slammed into his back, sending him into a tumble across the jagged ground. If not for the iron-body transformation, he would have been bruised and bleeding from a dozen places. Will jumped up quickly and ran again, looking back to see that the elemental still hadn’t caught up. I must have been hit by a stone missile of some sort, he decided. He slowed down to look back again and saw the elemental launch another rock in his direction, a stone the size of a man’s fist. This time, Will stopped it with a point-defense shield.
But he couldn’t run fast enough to stay ahead of the elemental while continually looking backward. Meanwhile, his enemy was high above, beyond easy reach. It looked to be roughly seventy yards from the top of the cliff to the base. For a sorcerer, it was an ideal setting against an opponent without elementals. The stranger’s elemental could attack Will with impunity while Will could do little to respond at such a range.
The light-darts could reach his enemy, but he didn’t have any prepared, and it didn’t appear likely that the earth elemental would leave him unmolested for the scant seconds he would need. A force-cage would solve the problem. Will had seen Ethelgren use it against Laina’s elementals with great effect, but he didn’t have that spell prepared either.
He sent several force-lances at the elemental, which did little to slow or impede its progress. It launched a few heavy stones at him in return, and he deflected them without trouble. Throughout the exchange, it continued to close the distance between them.
How strong was an earth elemental? How much abuse could his iron-body transformation take? These were questions high on Will’s list of things he wished he knew, and it was becoming very likely he would soon discover the answers. There were a lot of spells that could solve his problem, but he couldn’t reflex cast any of them.
With a snarl, he turned and summoned his falchion and a silver coin from the limnthal, then activated the last spell that he did have prepared, Ethelgren’s silver-sword spell. Argent flames erupted from the blade as he met the massive stone snake’s charge.
Despite being so large, the earth elemental wasn’t slow. Will barely managed to dodge its snapping head as he turned to bring the sword down across the elemental’s neck. The silver-sword spell was excellent for dealing physical damage—it could cut through almost anything with enough strength behind it. Will managed to cut through several inches of stone before the blade stopped.
Not that it mattered. Even if he could have cut completely through the thing, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Elementals were beings of pure magic and spirit, the remnants of a wizard’s will and source. Their bodies were things of convenience, and damaging one was merely a temporary setback. Will’s attack had been little more than a symbolic sign of his resistance.
The elemental continued forward, pulling the sword from his grasp as it turned and encircled him with its body. What would follow was certain to be painful.
Will attached a source-link to the elemental and tensed as the rock and stone spiraled inward and tightened around him. The pain came sooner than he expected as the elemental began to constrict, crushing him within its coils. The iron-body transformation effectively protected his skin from laceration, but it didn’t do nearly enough to save his bones and innards. It was only skin-deep, after all.
The air escaped his lungs in a rasping scream as he simultaneously began ripping the turyn from the elemental through the source-link. The vast and rapid rush of turyn brought a faint sense of nausea that was quickly forgotten as he felt his ribs begin to pop and crack. The elemental continued to squeeze, and Will continued to pull on its turyn in a fool’s race toward impotence or death.
Seconds passed in agony as he wondered how long he could last before his skull cracked or his eyes popped out of his head. It took him a moment to realize that the elemental was no longer tightening around him. He had drained it to the point of being unable to move, but he was still under a tremendous amount of pressure and trapped within a stone prison.
Closing his eyes, Will began using some of the turyn he had stolen, firing force-lances from his hands. Sharp pains exploded against his palms, but the stone began to crumble and fall away. As his freedom returned, he was better able to direct the force-lances and in less than a minute, the last of the elemental’s body fell away to join the rest of the rubble pile at his feet. Blood dripped from his hands where the first force-lances had torn even his iron-reinforced skin.
Bending down, he retrieved the still-blazing falchion and then straightened to stare upward at the sorcerer, who was watching him with an expression of muted horror. His ribs screamed painfully as he did, but the only outward sign he gave was furious snarl of rage.
The elemental wouldn’t be able to function for some time. Although elementals were physically immune to most things and essentially unkillable, they recovered turyn in the same manner that most modern wizards did: slowly. The exception to that rule was a greater elemental created from a wizard of Arrogan’s time, since they could absorb turyn in the same way Will could. Such elementals were rare, though, and Will doubted this was one of them.
Will was still holding a painful amount of turyn, and so he released it by sending a series of force-lances at the cliff’s edge beneath where the sorcerer stood. The range was excessive, which mean the spells cost him a large amount of turyn. It also served to force his enemy to retreat in fear.
With his excess turyn spent, he held out his hand and began constructing an elemental earth-and-air travel-disk spell. The sorcerer wasn’t dead, and the elemental would recover. He intended to bring the fight to a final conclusion. It took him most of a minute, and then the stone disk came together beneath his feet, lifting him into the air. Directing the air that supported it, he pushed away from the ground and began ascending.
The travel-disk wasn’t meant for flying. It normally hovered above the ground and could sometimes be pushed to fifteen or twenty feet to clear obstacles, but it needed the earth to push against. Will wasn’t in the mood to climb the cliff in the usual fashion. Every second meant their enemy was getting farther away. He followed a late
ral path beside the cliff for twenty yards or so, until he reached a point where the top edge was lower, perhaps just thirty yards above him, then he rammed the excess turyn he still held into the air flow beneath him. The stone disk shot up beneath his feet as a similar force seemed to push him down against it.
His eyes tracked the cliff edge as it neared, and his upward velocity gradually slowed. He was still pushing more energy into the spell, trying to increase his lift, but he was too far from the ground to gain much for his effort. It was going to be close, and if he missed, the result would probably be painful.
I’m not going to make it. The disk reached its apogee just a foot from the cliff edge, so Will stepped off with a jaunty hop that made him want to howl as his ribs ground together from the sudden movement. From the outside, it probably looked impressively graceful, but inwardly he was swearing. He was also disappointed to have lost the disk, since it would have made catching up to the sorcerer much easier. Will released the spell as it fell back toward the base of the cliff and then started to scan for his enemy.
A flash of searing pain in his left arm and shoulder alerted him to the direction he should be looking, as a fire-bolt spattered across his iron-reinforced skin. The spell might have killed him, but the iron-body spell had kept it from penetrating. Instead, he was left with the prospect of a third-degree burn across his shoulder and upper arm. Mentally, he filed it under things to worry about later.
His eyes focused on a tall, slender man with long black hair and a thin moustache. The sorcerer was well attired in an expensive coat and rich brown riding boots. His hair had pretty waves and appeared to have been oiled. The man hastily constructed another fire-bolt and launched it in Will’s direction.
Will stomped toward the man, idly deflecting the fire-bolt with a point-defense shield as he noted the fact that the fellow had had to construct the spell in the normal time-consuming fashion. As expected, he’s not much of a spell caster. He pointed the blazing sword at the stranger as he strode closer, steadily shortening the thirty yards that still remained between them. “You’re about to have a very bad day,” he pronounced ominously. “The worst day ever, in fact, but fortunately for you, it’s also your last.”
The sorcerer took a step back, then seemed to consider his options. He stopped and began constructing a new spell, one Will recognized—a force-dome. It made perfect sense. With a solid defense, the man could wait for his elemental to recover and return to aid him. Given the injuries Will had already sustained, he doubted he could survive another encounter with the earth elemental.
The distance was still too great for a force-lance given the amount of turyn that remained to him, so instead Will summoned his crossbow from the limnthal, catching it with his free left hand and firing wildly in the direction of his enemy. It was a desperate action, one that had no chance of hitting, but it served its intended purpose. The sorcerer saw the crossbow and reflexively jumped to one side, ruining the spell he was attempting to construct. Will grinned wickedly at him and kept walking.
He wanted to run, but his ribs wouldn’t allow that. Sending the crossbow back into extra-dimensional storage, he spoke to his foe. “You have two options at this point: stand and die or run and die. Either way I’m going to kill you, but I think your chances might be a tiny bit better if you run.” He was almost within twenty yards now, and a force-lance was close to being a practical option.
The sorcerer ran.
“Shit,” he swore. “I had to open my damned mouth.” Will put everything he had into a force-lance, aiming low in the hopes of merely wounding his target. A wave of dizziness passed over him as his turyn dropped to practically nothing—and he missed. “Goddamn it!” Swaying on his feet, Will began pulling in turyn as quickly as he could manage, while simultaneously constructing a light-darts spell with five missiles.
Pain and fatigue slowed him down, and it was ten seconds before he was ready, and by then his target had covered more than a hundred yards, putting him somewhere close to a hundred and twenty yards distant. “Mother! He’s fast,” muttered Will. It was pure luck that the grassy slope was only littered with small boulders and a few scrubby trees, offering the sorcerer little cover.
Lining up his shot, Will tried to space the light-darts evenly across six or seven feet to improve his chances that at least one would hit the man. He was gratified to see the sorcerer jerk slightly then stumble. At least one hit, he thought, but his enemy kept running. Will changed tactics and used the next minute to construct another travel-disk. By the time he had finished, the sorcerer was no longer in view, having disappeared into a small collection of trees at the base of the hill.
He covered the distance with the travel-disk in a vastly shorter span of time and entered the shadowed eaves. Still he saw no one, so he began gliding slowly forward, using the simple chime spell at intervals to locate his foe if the man had used some sort of magic to hide himself.
Apparently the man didn’t know any camouflage spells, as the chime spell reported nothing, but Will discovered the assassin a moment later when the man stepped out from behind a nearby tree and leveled a surprise fire-bolt at his head. Will deflected it with a point-defense shield and then returned the favor as he instinctively fired a force-lance.
His aim was perfect that time, blowing a fist-sized hole directly through the center of the assassin’s chest. The mustachioed villain stared at him open mouthed for a second, then toppled soundlessly to the forest floor.
“Damn it!” Will swore. He had fully intended to kill the man, but he’d wanted to question him first. Disappointed, he took a moment to release the assassin’s elemental, then prepared to return to Selene.
Chapter 9
Selene was sitting up where he had left her when Will returned, gliding back with the dead sorcerer lying atop the disk next to his feet. The three crossbow bolts were in a neat pile in front of her. Her first words were, “This dress is ruined.”
“Then take it off.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
He shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. We’ve been forced to be celibate for so many months now that I’m not sure my heart could take the sight of you undressed.”
“No concern for voyeurs?”
Will settled the disk to the ground and dismissed it. It crumbled into a pile of gravel with the dead sorcerer’s body atop it. Will pointed to the man. “This is what happened to the last man I caught watching you.”
She grimaced at the sight of the body. “That isn’t funny. What happened to your hands?” Then she spotted his shoulder and hissed as she audibly took a sudden breath. “That’s bad!”
“It won’t kill me,” said Will, trying not to wince as his ribs screamed at him with each step toward her. “Let me examine your head. That could really be serious.”
Selene stopped him with just her eyes. “I’ve got a lump and a cut, but my skull is fine. You’re obviously in worse shape.”
He lowered his eyes to her torso, indicating where the quarrels had struck her. “What about…?”
Her expression took on a faint look of mirth, as though she was considering a joke, but she restrained herself and answered soberly, “Mild bruises where they hit me. Nothing to worry about.”
Will chuckled, then looked away as if bored. “Actually, I meant your breasts. Who cares about a few bruises?” he announced sarcastically.
Selene laughed and took the last step to close the gap between them. “You’re incorrigible. Even when I take the high road, you have to drag me into the gutter.” There was a smile in her voice. Then she put her arms around him and squeezed.
Blinding agony shot through him, followed by a red haze. When it cleared, Will found himself staring up at her. She had somehow gotten him to the ground. “My ribs are a little tender,” he explained.
“You don’t say?” Selene exclaimed, her tone betraying a hint of fear. “Next time, tell me that first! Where are the regeneration potions?”
“It’s just a f
ew cracked ribs. They’re too valuable to waste. You should use one for your head, though. Sometimes even seemingly innocuous head injuries can turn fatal hours or days later,” he told her.
She covered her face with one hand, then took a deep breath. “Your shoulder is a nightmare. You need one for that alone. I’ll be fine.”
Will debated internally for a moment, though he knew she was right. In fact, he’d planned to take a regeneration potion already, but he worried that Selene might refuse one for herself. So, he employed the oldest and most effective tactic for resolving marital conflicts, extortion. “Only if you take one as well.”
Selene glared at him incredulously. “Is that my best option? What’s the alternative, we die together?”
He winked. “I’ll die first, and you’ll be stuck here, the grieving widow, and nobody wants that. You’re pretty ugly when you cry.” He summoned two regeneration potions from the limnthal.
She grimaced at the sight, remembering the taste. “There could be more assassins out there. One of us should stay alert. The potion might knock us out.”
“I wasn’t hurt that badly,” he returned. “And if your head wound is so simple then you weren’t either.”
She snatched the potion from his hand and downed it before she could lose her nerve, though she still gagged after she swallowed. “Oh. That’s vile.” Will followed suit and did his best to hide his own reaction, though he didn’t succeed entirely.
Worse than the taste was the itching and burning that followed as his wounds began rapidly healing. His ribs came together, producing a series of sharp pains that made him gasp, but after that a warm, syrupy sensation washed over him. The worst was past, and his body was beginning to insist on rest. Since he was already lying down, it was hard to resist.
Disciple of War (Art of the Adept Book 4) Page 8