“With good reason.” Rassan pointed at another meteor. “How—”
Rassan’s words were lost in the deafening blast.
Azmon’s anger replaced his shock. If Dura meant to intimidate him, she was in for a surprise. He flexed his newfound strength. He ignored the presence of the other that sought to drag him into the Nine Hells, and slowly he rose to levitate a few feet above the wall. Above his head, he gathered his own roaring ball of hellfire and threw it at Dura. As the hellfire roared across the no-man’s-land between the walls, Azmon lashed out with lightning and countered the sky fire.
His hellfire splashed across the yellow wall, consuming Dura’s position in clouds of smoke and lingering flames. Azmon sneered and prepared another meteor. The foreignness of his new powers gave him an out-of-body experience. His flesh was not his, and he marveled at its power. In his mind—underneath the claws, scales, and rot—his body still existed, but he knew the truth. The Blight drew him closer to the Black Gate. He became a conduit and swelled with raw power. He was godlike.
Lahar wanted to stand beside Marah during her trial, but the firestorm that spread across the ramparts made him back away. He stubbornly refused to abandon the wall, though. Dura’s spells didn’t seem to shake Shinar, but Azmon’s made the dwarven walls tremble. Whenever the bricks underfoot wavered, Lahar stumbled. Smoke filled the air, clogged his lungs, and watered his eyes. Orbs of fire became blurs of heat and concussive blasts. Useless, he stood and watched terrible flames consume both walls.
Dura and Azmon became focal points. Their spells glowed within the smoke clouds, but through his coughing, Lahar spotted the lesser sorcerers adding their own shields, fire orbs, and lightning bolts to the battle. The heat and smoke drove Lahar away. Coughing, he stumbled to the edge of the battle, where Nemuel directed a handful of elven sorcerers.
Lahar asked Nemuel, “What do we do?”
Nemuel glared at the fight. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I can’t leave Marah. How can we help?”
“We can’t do anything.” Nemuel looked at Lahar as though he was a simpleton. “We let them exhaust each other. One will fail, eventually.”
“But Shinar’s walls can’t be broken with sorcery.”
“Unfortunately, our walls are not as strong. They will give out before Marah does.”
“You mean Dura.”
“Dura’s never had this kind of power. If not for Marah, our wall would be in ruins.”
“But she’s only six.”
“I’ve never seen anyone do that. See how she anticipates him and alters her runes midstream? There are elven masters who cannot do that. It’s like the runes are an extension of her mind.”
Lahar didn’t understand. Flames flickered through a smoky haze as though they were living things that hungered and swirled around the figures they wanted to kill. Between billows of smoke, he saw Marah directing the storm. Her white hair danced in the wind, and she wore a determined frown.
Rassan shifted from trying to protect Azmon to protecting himself. The heat coming off the emperor made him stagger away, and someone of real power on the dwarven wall kept hurling meteors at them. He cradled his head to soothe a high-pitched ringing in his ears. Using sorcery was leaving him nearly blind, and that was before the haze of smoke caused his eyes to water. But strangest of all were the concussive blasts hitting Shinar’s walls. Each shockwave crashed into his ribs, making his heart skip.
Rassan retreated from the ramparts.
Azmon levitated five feet above the wall and summoned fiery orbs with both hands. He flung the spells with inhuman speed. Rassan couldn’t see much more than the bursting orange lights through the smoke. Once, Azmon reeled from an attack, and his red eyes shone through the slits in his mask.
Other bone lords withdrew as well. Rassan double-checked for signs of treachery but found none. They seemed to share his thoughts. The battle wasn’t real sorcery—not any sorcery Rassan had ever studied—the combatants were otherworldly. Someone of immense stature stood on the yellow wall and deflected the emperor’s most powerful spells. Both sides sought to bludgeon the other in an exchange of blasts and shields.
Rassan couldn’t figure out how the Red Sorceress had become so powerful. He began to question everything he saw and wondered whether Azmon had lied about Dura’s skill or if the seraphim were fighting on the walls with Dura or whether the elves had held back their best runes until that moment. Rassan couldn’t be sure. Small and helpless, he pondered the enemies’ spells. No mortals should have had that kind of power.
For all his newfound might, Azmon could not humble Dura. She was stronger than he remembered, and he vented his vexations with lightning strikes. He howled as he launched attack after attack at the wall. All around Dura, bricks crumbled. The center of her position remained intact. A shimmering shield rebuked him, and he erected his own shields to counter her attacks.
Azmon licked his lips. He sensed another presence with Dura and wondered what the elves had done. He could not believe that, with all his strength, he could not pierce her shields. A decade before, his assault would have crushed her.
Confused, he scanned the walls. His senses told him the spells came from his teacher, but years had passed since they’d fought, and he wasn’t sure he could trust his instincts. The runes followed her style, but maybe she’d taught the elves new tricks. The spells were at once foreign and similar, which made him feel like an apprentice again. The elves had more runes than the Red Tower, but Azmon grasped at few clues. Through the smoke and spells, he couldn’t tell who stood on the wall.
A thought twisted his guts. Has Larz Kedar become this powerful? How is that possible?
With dread, Azmon renewed his attacks. Fear of failing Mulciber replaced his anger. He couldn’t survive another punishment. He didn’t have it in him to recover from such wounds again. Desperation left him dancing around a pit of knives. With one mistake, his spells would topple him onto the blades. He flirted with damnation.
Marah watched herself fight. Her body became a secondary entity caught between the blazing lights and the booming blasts. Her vision narrowed further, but compared to her usual eyesight, it wasn’t that different. In her mind’s eye swirled a vortex of runes. She struggled to keep them separate from the battle. Dimly, as though she were dreaming, she knew Dura stood nearby and others—Lord Nemuel and other elves—shouted commands to abandon the ramparts. Marah noted these things in passing while she wrestled with sorcery.
“Dura, we must leave,” Lord Nemuel shouted. “The shedim fight beside Azmon.”
“There are no shedim,” Dura said. “That is Azmon.”
Marah spared a moment to consider the spells. They didn’t feel like they had before, when she knew Tyrus fought Mulciber. The spells from Shinar were mundane things—only the frequency and power were different. She wondered why the elves blamed demons.
Nemuel said, “The bone lords have never been this powerful.”
“I know my own student. That is Azmon.”
“We must leave.”
“If there were shedim fighting on those walls, the angels would answer.”
Marah glanced skyward, like everyone else. Through wisps of black smoke and debris, a blue sky appeared calm. A few lazy clouds drifted by. Marah returned to the fight, alternating between shields and fire, wondering who would tire first. Above the walls of Shinar, a figure in white robes levitated and answered her spell for spell. She recognized his runes. They had called to her since she was a small child.
“That is my father,” Marah said. “I sense his runes, like Tyrus.”
Nemuel asked, “What is she talking about?”
“Hush.” Dura coughed on the smoke and waved Nemuel away. “Child, help me.”
The wall lurched. Everyone wobbled and fought to keep their feet. Below them, lost in the billowing black smoke, bricks crumbled, cracked, and fell.
Nemuel shouted, “If you stay, you will die.”
Dura said, “Or we break him.”
Marah’s world shrank, and she felt alone. Dura refused to surrender, and Marah would not abandon her grandmother, but they were alone in the smoke and flames. Sweat matted the hair around her temples, and she breathed hard. The runes were slowly draining the life from her.
Lahar was at her side, propping Dura up. Marah couldn’t hear what they said.
The shield is too big. Get rid of the would-be king.
Marah said, “Lahar, leave.”
“I won’t abandon you.”
“I can’t protect both of you. Leave, before the wall falls.”
“You’ll be buried.”
“I’ll be fine.” Her words were empty, meaningless things. “Hurry. Leave.”
A large explosion confused things further. Lahar vanished, and Marah wondered if the blast had consumed him. Dura fell to her knees. Marah could shield them. Marah could heal her. Marah could counterattack. But she couldn’t do all three at once, and the frustration made her furious. She wanted to destroy the people who hurt her teacher, but knew she had to fight alone. No one else could defy her father. Dura wrapped an arm around Marah’s back and buried her face in Marah’s chest. The gesture resembled defeat, and the wrongness almost shocked Marah into dropping her shields. If Dura needed comfort, they were doomed.
“I was wrong,” Dura said. “That can’t be your father.”
It is. Ignore her.
Marah said, “We need to get you away from the wall.”
“Let me take the shield. You run.”
Dura raised a shield. Marah caught the blur of a skeletal hand, covered in liver spots and blue veins, rising before them as though Dura commanded Azmon to stop. Marah took the opening to attack. The voices told her to make the bone lords reel, and she did her best. Venting her frustrations into the spell, she summoned the biggest meteor she could imagine.
“Careful,” Dura said. “You dare too much.”
Make them pay!
Runes danced and slipped through Marah’s fingers. Flirting with disaster, she made the spell larger. The voices grew silent, fearful, and she sensed a lull in the bone lords’ spells. In the final moments of the spell, when she thought she might destroy her own wall, she flung it at Shinar and fell to her hands and knees, gasping. Dura called to her, asking if she was all right, but Marah was too dizzy to focus on the words. The voices remained silent. Her little arms held her face off the ground.
“Are you okay? Marah?”
Marah sucked in air. Spittle dripped from her mouth, and she could not calm her breathing. In the distance, Shinar’s ramparts cracked and shook.
The battle lulled. Both sides watched as pieces of Jethlah’s Wall fell into the no-man’s-land between the two forces. A section of ramparts crumbled, and Azmon—who was back on his feet—retreated from the spreading cracks. The spell took a chunk out of the top of the wall, leaving a little landslide between ramparts. Fragments tumbled down the wall, making hollow echoes that seemed distant after the cacophony of the spells.
Rassan asked, “How…?”
“Unleash the beasts,” Azmon commanded.
Azmon kept backing away from the ramparts. Everything smoldered. He felt the heat of the stone through his boots. The spell that had ripped apart Jethlah’s defenses almost burned him alive. He licked his lips and blinked. He had almost died. The thought echoed through his body. Exhaustion and adrenaline warred within him. He wanted to run.
“Excellency?”
“What are you standing there for?” Azmon pointed at Dura. “Attack her. Now!”
Rassan looked as bewildered as Azmon felt, and while Azmon knew the dwarven walls were weakened, he needed time to understand what had happened. Dura broke Jethlah’s Walls? He preferred defeating her with runes, proving he was the greatest power in the land, but Azmon was no longer sure what he fought. The sorcery stank of his old teacher, but her powers threatened to eclipse his own. The beasts would leave little in their wake, and he wanted to learn her runes. He wanted to talk to her bones.
“Excellency, what if Dura destroys the beasts?”
“She can’t kill them all, damn you.”
Azmon dashed to the far side of the wall, ripped the flag from a guard, and signaled the gates. With a nerve-wracking slowness, they clacked open. He reached out to the horde of beasts and gave them a mental image of the crone he wanted ripped apart. The beasts howled their delight, and a black mass, thousands of horned shoulders and glowing red eyes, surged toward the doors.
The new wall breakers led the charge. A dozen of the twenty-foot brutes shouldered through the main gates and loped toward the walls. They ran like gorillas, powerful arms grabbing the ground so their smaller legs could hop forward. Azmon sensed their excitement. For years, they’d waited to tear apart the yellow bricks, and now their mirth was all fangs and drool.
Dust and smoke provided the perfect cover for the rest of the horde. He had hundreds of wall breakers, but the smaller ones, the man-sized ones, boiled out from the gate and raced toward the walls. They scaled the stone and scurried over the top. He felt the first of his children die in a fiery blaze. The pain of it made him gasp. The web connecting him to the beasts hummed with images of sorcerers and archers engaging the beasts. Azmon fought to block the sensations. He shook as though fevered. When the elven sorcerers burned his children, he felt as though his own body blistered.
The dwarven wall groaned, and all around Marah, the debris of shattered bricks rained into the wasteland between the walls. Exhausted, she sat next to Dura, who was also sitting, and they cuddled. Marah expected the wall to give out soon, but she lacked the energy to help Dura climb down. Metallic clicking—after a long and loud battle—echoed across the burned field. The Shinari gates opened.
Impossibly large monsters, creatures almost as large as the gates, fought to shoulder their way past. They snapped and snarled at each other as they lodged in the frame, but the ones behind them shoved through and loped toward Marah and Dura. As the big ones cleared the gate, a churning sea of little ones, a never-ending wave of armor plates, horns, claws, and burning eyes, surged forward.
They come for you.
I know, Marah whispered inside her head. I can hear them too.
Tens of thousands of beasts charged her. The horde moved like a fluid body, oozing out of Shinar. All the black bodies climbed over and shoved each other in order to be the first to tear them apart. They rippled toward the walls. Dust leapt from the stone when the large ones collided with the wall, but the little ones climbed. Their claws screeched against the bricks.
Dura spoke to herself. “Azmon, what have you done?”
Marah stood on wobbly legs.
Dura tugged on Marah’s arm. “We cannot stop this.”
“We can’t run.” Marah shut out the voices screaming her doom. “They will hunt us. Do you hear them?”
“No.”
“They talk to me. My father starves them, and they call to me.”
“You must not say such things.”
“Yes… you are right, but I think I can control them.”
“Not yet, child. Wait for Azmon to commit himself.”
“They will break the wall.”
“I know. But we must surprise him.”
Dura pulled herself into a standing position as the wave of black monsters poured over the top of the wall. Marah closed her eyes to avoid the terrible fangs. She raised her arms, feeling as though her father was surrounding her. She sensed his runes living in the dead flesh. They whispered to her. Acting on instinct, she pushed them away. She refused to let the beasts near her grandmother.
She is not your grandmother.
She is to me.
The voices screaming at her could have been the dead in Shinar or the beasts. Marah didn’t know which. She scrunched her face and fo
ught to silence them. She failed. Marah sensed the horde climbing down the other side of the wall.
Another battle blossomed below them as the elves and Gadarans fought within their camps. Marah pushed at the angry creatures, but fatigue dulled her focus. The circle shrank around her and Dura.
Marah said, “There’s too many.”
“You must try.”
“I can’t do this.”
Dura began summoning a ball of hellfire. “I won’t be eaten.”
What is she doing? Stop her.
“Wait.”
Marah wanted to say more but couldn’t hear herself over all the howling. She dared a peek and saw a sphere of beasts climbing over each other to get at her. The invisible barrier kept them away, but when it failed, the monsters would fall on them both. Death surrounded them.
THE GHOST WARRIOR
I
Klay and the other rangers stayed away from the wall. Hellfire and lightning bolts were the domain of sorcerers, not mere mortals. Gadaran knights, as well as the last twelve Shinari knights, stood nearby. The light show commanded everyone’s attention. Billows of smoke rose from the walls, and the crackling lights and exploding flames created ghosts and flashes within the gray haze. The display of power, at once godlike and foreign, made Klay feel small and insignificant. Against such sorcery, armies became mere fodder.
Alone, Lahar climbed down the ramps. “She wouldn’t come.”
“What do you mean?” Klay asked. “Look at the wall. It sags.”
Lahar shrugged.
“They’ll be buried alive if they’re not burned.”
“I’m open to suggestions. It’s not like I can drag them down here.”
Klay shook his head, and everyone went back to gazing at the battle. The destructive power made him nervous, but the flashes dazzled him.
Long ago, or so the legends claimed, a duel between heroes could decide a war. An ancient custom, it saved regular men from needless butchery. Both armies would watch their champions fight and respected the survivor because heroes could lay waste to armies. Klay had enjoyed the stories as a child until he grew and watched groups of weaker men swarm champions. The battle of sorcery looked like one of the old legends, though.
Willing to Endure: A Dark Fantasy (The Shedim Rebellion Book 3) Page 41