“Holy crap!” Seth cried. “We’re going to fry up here! Who’s doing that?”
“Dorn.”
“Dorn? Why are we up here?”
“I miscalculated. I thought with enough power I could deflect his attacks and draw his focus until his mana depleted at the Chrysler Building.”
“You picked a fight on purpose?”
“We need to draw the bulk of his ire here to stop the spread of the golems and to distract him from the captain and Malcolm, who are even now storming his position.”
“Jeezus! I’m gone for a few hours and we’re suddenly on the offensive.”
Another bolt came through the lobby of the observation deck and hit the grating. The smell of ozone permeated the air and the hairs on Seth’s arms stood on end.
“We got to get off this deck,” he said. “We’re going to die up here.”
“Seth…,” Lelani started. She paused a moment looking uncharacteristically uncertain. “I have to go to the Chrysler Building. I have to take on Dorn directly.”
“Are you nuts?!” he scolded.
Far from it, her look said she was deadly serious. Seth gained a little insight into the lives of wizards at this moment. They all lived in fear of one another … like the era of mutually assured destruction before the Berlin Wall fell, wizards inherently understood there was no sure way of telling who was more powerful than whom, what tricks the other had, what the other knew that you didn’t, and that the only certain way to stay alive was to always strike first and strike hard. Even during the best of times, they were like college professors perpetually in fear of the competitor’s paper that would disprove a life’s work; only in wizards’ cases there were temporal powers involved—means to control and manipulate the universe. What a mad way to live, Seth realized.
The sky darkened from more than the setting sun. A true cloud had formed over Manhattan, above the collective black haze from all the fires and explosions, to block the few stars the city laid claim to. The breeze picked up, cool droplets fell intermittently chilling Seth’s cheeks, threatening to become a steady drizzle. A flash in the clouds startled them, thinking another bolt had landed on their deck, but it was nature’s power, outlining the ceiling’s linty bulk, like blue-gray balls of cotton crushed in a bag.
“Powerful magic affects weather patterns,” Lelani said. “It’s never good to draw out so much in one place. Dorn has used a lifetime’s worth of spells against us.”
“What do you need me to do?” Seth asked.
“Stay up here and throw anything you can at him … anything that will make him believe he still battles me. By the gods’ good graces, I may make it there in time to engage Dorn when Lord MacDonnell assaults his stronghold. If he can dispatch the remaining henchmen and escape with Catherine, it would dispirit Dorn—perhaps enough to give the malady that ails him time to run its course.”
Seth grabbed her arm. “Wait. Why don’t you just kill him? You sound … like you don’t expect to be around to see Dorn go down.”
She gently put her hand on his and forced a smile. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, and headed into the lobby. Seth followed her with a million questions. He couldn’t very well throw hard air or turn things into flowers across a city. Before they reached the elevators, one dinged and its doors opened. Symian and a large heavily armed henchman stepped onto the deck.
Lelani grabbed Seth and hurdled them both through the broken panes back out onto the southern balcony. Bullets whizzed overhead, flying out over the unsuspecting city. Lelani whipped up two phosphorus balls and chucked them back into the lobby. She didn’t have time to put too much energy into them, but they flashed brilliantly. The trick worked because the henchman now shot wildly, and like a blind man with a gun managed to hit everything except what he wanted to. They heard Symian yowl in pain. Seth recalled that the troll’s skin was flammable.
Seth worked up the spell for hard air. “Get behind me,” he said to his partner, and swung his staff toward the lobby intending to blow both assailants completely off the deck. A spray of glass and rubble, souvenirs, pamphlets—everything not nailed down—blew out the eastern side of the building in a cloud of debris that looked very much like the sky over a ticker tape parade. The lobby was emptied.
“Well done,” said Lelani, impressed. “You must teach me that.”
They entered the lobby again, slowly. The henchman was on the floor of the east balcony, moaning, saved from flying off the building by the suicide grate. He reached under his coat. Lelani approached, and as the pistol emerged from the coat, she kicked him in the head, caving in the henchman’s skull like a ripe melon.
Symian was still missing.
They looked at each other, wondering if the troll now lay splattered on some lower rooftop. They walked through the lobby, carefully searching.
Suddenly Lelani waved her arms in a pattern and the air around them flashed brightly, crackling like a bug zapper in summer. “You’ll not catch me twice with that spell, troll!” she shouted.
“What’d he do?” Seth whispered.
“He tried to place us in stasis.”
A few moments of silence felt like they stretched into years. Unexpectedly, Symian walked out, hands up where they could see them, waving a white handkerchief. He walked slowly past the elevators in full view. Lelani put up her own hands in a defensive posture and Seth raised his staff. The right side of Symian’s jacket and hoodie was burned through. His right shoulder and neck blackened. Apparently, he’d learned how to put himself out when afire.
“I can’t beat you,” Symian said.
“It’s a trick,” Seth said.
“I wish it were,” said Symian. He looked dispirited, like he had no fight left in him. “I returned one faerie silver dagger to Dorn—he believes I still have the other knife and therefore the advantage. I could not tell him that I had lost it to you. I cannot beat you in a fight, fair or otherwise. He sent me regardless, knowing that … to my death.” To Lelani he said, “You offered me mercy once … I choose not to die. I have that right, do I not? To live?”
“Just like that?” Seth said.
“He’s mad,” Symian said fearfully. “The headaches have driven him to desperation. Look at how many of our company are dead. What he did to Tom—to Lord MacDonnell’s wife … We are undone. Even his own childhood friend, Kraten, believes we’re on the path to our doom under Dorn—but who dares confront a deranged sorcerer? He’s too scared to go home defeated. He’s despera—”
Symian fell to his knees writhing in a struggle against an invisible force. He grabbed his head and made choking sounds. “Nooo! Stay out!” he cried.
“Mind spell!” Lelani shouted. “Some of my wards are down!” She shot a phosphorus ball at the troll.
Symian caught it with no effect on him and threw it back at her a hundred times more powerful. Lelani erected a ward just in time, but the blast blew her and Seth back out the other end of the lobby toward the Jersey side. White spots in a white haze filled Seth’s vision.
Symian approached them with a confident swagger. Something was wrong with his eyes … they moved independently, in different directions.
“I thought I’d help my apprentice since he has such high regard for your talents,” Symian said. His speech pattern was different, his voice gravelly and forced.
Seth cast another hard air spell, only to have Symian-Dorn throw it back at him. The force slammed him into the wall and he lost consciousness …
… It was the second time in a day that someone spoke to Seth while he lay in a subconscious state. This time, it was the tree wizard Rosencrantz, who it turned out, was the familiar presence in the magic at the Empire State Building. The lay line that ran through New York also emerged in the tree wizard’s meadow, and Rosencrantz was capable of sending out a tendril of consciousness along the stream. The tree wizard was already familiar with Seth’s mind. It cost Rosencrantz greatly to communicate in real time. The tree had to cast its own time warp t
o speed its reactions to human levels, and it aged rapidly as it did so. Seth could not tell what language the communication was held in, or what the tree wizard’s voice even sounded like, or even how long the conversation lasted. He just knew that all these things happened. Rosencrantz healed his concussion through the stream as they communicated.
Seth opened his eyes to a throbbing pain clamoring on his skull. A steady drizzle had arrived and its coolness helped revive him. Symian-Dorn had a hand around Lelani’s throat and the other pulled at the dagger on Lelani’s belt. Not long had passed since Seth had been struck unconscious.
“What’s this?” Symian-Dorn asked the centaur.
Despite blurry vision and a throbbing headache, he had to take down Symian now or Lelani was finished. It had to be fast and simple. The simplest spell.
He got up quietly, moved behind Symian, and cast the spell to separate the bonds between all the salt molecules in the troll’s body. Symian-Dorn screamed and dropped the dagger. Salt was a vital component in any carbon-based creature; Seth didn’t think he could kill Symian quickly this way, but he had his attention.
Seth poured it on. That’s right, he thought. Who’s your daddy? Take your focus off Lelani so she can whammy you into next week.
Instead, the possessed troll called up a powerful gale and threw Lelani into it. The gust carried her over the protective grating around the deck. Lelani reached out at the last minute and grabbed the curved top of the suicide grate with both hands before she went over. Seth thanked God the top of the grate curved inward to create a bit of a platform at the top that Lelani could lay on, otherwise, she would have been impaled by steel rods sticking straight up. Seth continued to wreak havoc with Symian’s salt levels until the troll slumped to the ground dazed. Silvery smoke rose from his body. His eyes were straight, though. Elvis has left the building, folks.
Seth ran over to his partner, who was struggling with all her strength to stay atop the grate and fall inward toward the deck, not slide off the outer curve. Her hands were bleeding from the strain of her weight.
Shit … she weighs as much as a horse! Seth realized. She began to slip backward, the edge of the grate cutting at her fingers. He dropped his staff and jumped up to grab her shoulders, pulling back toward the deck with all his weight. His added weight allowed Lelani time to brace her invisible back hoof on a support piece that ran horizontally along the fence, and leverage by which to stabilize herself.
A very expensive sounding piece of metal pinged, as it was unsheathed behind Seth. He was not at a good angle to see behind him, but Lelani’s expression said Symian was on his feet and opportunistically revoking his surrender. From the corner of Seth’s eye, Symian shuffled slowly toward them through puddles on the deck with the silver dagger in hand, still dazed by his master’s mind puppetry and Seth’s salt attack.
“Fucking bad guys,” Seth grunted.
As if things could not get worse, a flash emanated from the Chrysler Building. Time slowed for Seth—everything in the world looked trapped inside a gelatin mold, but whether it was a true magical effect or his mind’s natural reaction to impending death, he could not say. He did know that a bolt of lightning hurled toward them across the sky—whether it hit true was irrelevant, Lelani could not get off the fence in time—she would fry. Her fear-filled expression locked with his in mutual understanding that there was not enough time for whatever sentiments still remained between them—her hands too vital in keeping her from falling off the building to raise a counter spell.
An epiphany filled the ex-photographer, a possession of his consciousness by his own knowledge of a thing. As the bolt approached, he dropped from the fence, put out his hand toward his staff and called it to him, whipped it before him to tap Lelani through the grate, and aimed the back end at the troll. The lightning hit Lelani dead on; it passed through her, painfully, but safely, into the staff and shot out of the rear at the troll. Symian simultaneously ignited and was blown through the grate on the opposite end of the deck by the powerful bolt. He shrieked in anguish, a bright screaming star hurtling down with the rain toward Horace Greeley Park.
The lightning blast had short-circuited Lelani’s illusion spell. With Seth’s help, she clamored back onto the observation deck, slightly smoking, in full centaur glory. Her hands were bloodied, her clothes torn, and her bright red hair a mess, but still, she was beautiful. Seth had forgotten how stunning she was. He’d been in shock when she dropped her illusion at the MacDonnells’ home, with barely enough wits to appreciate what a striking creature Lelani Stormbringer was. Without the illusion, she abandoned her crouch and stood at her full height, topping out at six foot three. He drank her in, determined not to let another opportunity pass him by.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Thank you,” he responded. “For putting up with me. For saving my life when you got to New York … for being my friend when I was so undeserving of it.”
She grinned devilishly. “Well … I will deny this if you repeat it, but as much as you were an annoying pain in the ass back in Aandor—you were also the most fun student we had at the academy. If you hadn’t kept challenging the limits of common sense, it would have been a lot duller.”
Seth laughed.
They headed into the lobby—the elevators were completely blown out.
“I guess it’s the stairs,” Seth observed.
“Not exactly,” Lelani said. They walked to the eastern side of the building. Lelani used a spell that mimicked a blowtorch to cut through the grate. “You have to challenge Dorn. He is unaware that his power dwindles.”
“He probably thinks we’re dead.”
From her satchel Lelani retrieved a small dream catcher necklace, similar to her own, and placed it around Seth’s neck.
“You should disprove Dorn of that notion,” she said.
Seth knew just what to do, too. Rosencrantz reminded him while he lay unconscious … the nature of lightning. And having channeled it, he understood it better now, knew how to use magic to manipulate its essence. Standing on the northeast corner of the observation deck, he dug in his heels, knees bent. He brought up his anger—anger of the injustices in his life; anger at himself for ruining Darcy; for taking his friends for granted over the years; for Ben Reyes, who deserved better than to die protecting his home; for all the men and women who died in this city tonight who would never have a chance to redeem their own mistakes because of Dorn—years of accumulated shame, fury, and pain. This time the magic did not avoid him, he had threaded the needle … he knew how to draw it to him, bind it like a cowboy knew how to rope five hundred pounds of angry bull.
Seth focused all this emotion into a white-hot line in his head that he named redemption, and thrust his staff toward the Chrysler Building with both hands. A bright hot streak of lightning emanated from its tip and whipped across the sky battering the other building’s silver crown.
“That felt great,” he admitted.
Never one to let a challenge go unanswered, Dorn responded in kind, but before his bolt reached the Empire State, Seth met it halfway with another one of his own. The two lines collided over Thirty-ninth Street struggling for dominance, illuminating the Manhattan skyline for miles. Dorn’s push was strong, but Seth pushed just as hard and held the midpoint of the dual bolts at bay.
“GO!” he grunted. “I don’t know how long I can stay toe to toe.”
Lelani closed her eyes. With hands opened, palms up and thumbs and index fingers forming circles, she chanted in a language Seth now recognized as Centauran. She entered a trancelike state as she cast this enchantment upon herself. A faint black glow appeared on the edge of her body then brightly flickered out like the blowing of flame. Lelani opened her eyes, pulled her composite longbow and quiver from her bag, and, with a smile, vaulted over the edge of the balcony.
CHAPTER 50
NO SOUP FOR YOU
The last column of the henge was about to be put in place. The highly experienced and able men of
Local 20 had made fast work of it. Allyn wondered why then it took so long to get construction projects finished in New York. The same highways were still under repair since he had last visited two years earlier.
He looked toward Manhattan; flashes of lightning cut the deep blue sky. This was wizards’ doing … heavy columns of gray smoke billowed up from Midtown and joined the rain clouds above. What price to pay for the life of one boy. How many dead? Injured? Scarred for life? Americans were not used to fighting battles on the home front. War was something we exported. In so many ways Aandor was similar, Allyn thought. Like New York after 9/11, Aandor, too, had lost its innocence … its confidence of its own indestructibility.
What Farrenheil had done to Aandor was an abomination. The rules of chivalry kept wars on battle plains among armies. But once the dogs of war were let loose, few could restrain their bite. Soldiers did not fight for weekly pay … they fight for the opportunity to pillage, to make themselves rich in one fell swoop by raiding the fine homes of the enemy, to plant their seeds in their adversaries’ wives and daughters. Now, Farrenheil has taken its pound of flesh from this beautiful metropolis as well—a city that had suffered so much already. There would be a reckoning. No one listens to the pacifist pleas of ministers and priests. Cycles like this were hard to break.
Allyn stepped onto a crane and motioned upward with his thumb. It rose ten stories, giving him a better vantage by which to see Midtown. He could just make out the Chrysler Building from where he stood. It was still saturated with the mana. But he spotted what he had hoped for, a cutoff point near its middle. As Dorn used more energy, the mana rose but did not replenish from below—it drained from the building like penicillin plunged out of a needle. Soon, Lord Dorn will have nothing to draw on but the smoke and ash of his own destruction.
“We done here, Rev?” asked Johnny Maronne.
“Yes. It’s up to the warriors and wizards now.”
“Okay boys, wrap it up!” cried Johnny. You’ll have some special bonuses in your next pay. Don’t spend it all in one place.”
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