The Chronicles of the Eirish: Book 1: The Lich's Horde

by Doug Dandridge

  “I told you to be careful,” Marcus told the boy, looking into eyes that were half crazed from the energy coursing through his body and brain. Marcus told himself to watch the boy, who had the least training of anyone in his party, to go along with his deadly natural gift. “Now, let’s finish this thing.”

  Backtracking through the distortion field they stood in front of the massive door once again. Marcus studied it for a moment, looking for weak points and finding none. He thought about the task for a moment. He didn’t think a cannon could blast through a door like this one, and he had to wonder why it was here, so deep under the cathedral. It really made no sense, and that bothered him to his core. Things that didn’t make sense on the surface normally had an underlying reason.

  Marcus raised both hands as he said the words to a spell, channeling the energy. He brought his hands down and pushed forward, sending a torrent of energy into the door, which started to bow inward under the force. He pushed harder, feeling the resistance of the heavy door and the massive bar that held it in place. The door and its hinges started to squeal as they deformed. With sweat pouring down his face the mage continued to pour force into it. With a final squeal and a groan, the bar collapse, and the deformed door flew backwards into the chamber beyond, falling with a clang.

  Marcus was still wondering why there was a door like this down here where there really didn’t seem a need. He got the answer a moment later as something he didn’t expect to see came running toward them. A movement from the shadows on the far side of the room and something loomed. It took the mage a moment to recognize what he was looking at, and when recognition came he recoiled, fear running through him. An iron bull, starting forward with the clank of metal, steam shooting from its nostrils, its red eyes glaring at the intruders it had been set here to crush.

  The bull gained speed, lowering its head, horns pointed at Marcus where he stood. While the mage tried to come up with something that would save them.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rory could feel the energy in the air, like a pall of doom hanging over their heads. He looked up to see the patriarch on the tower, calling out a prayer in a voice that sounded like thunder. In moments something answered from the clouds, another voice, combining inhuman beauty and horror. The king wasn’t sure what kind of spell he was using, only that it was not going to be good for him or his people.

  Aepep raised his staff and pointed it at the patriarch. He shouted a word, and a beam of blue light linked the end of his staff with the glowing field that surrounded the priest. Energy splashed on energy, and the field around the patriarch expanded, grew in power, and started to brighten until the square was lit as if under the noonday sun.

  “Master,” yelled one of the apprentices. “Master, stop. You’re feeding him power.”

  “I cannot be feeding him power,” yelled Aepep. “It isn’t the kind of power he can use.”

  No, thought Rory, his eyes locked on the archwizard. He is tapping into the power of our gods. And he is beyond you while he had that power.

  The patriarch continued to shout in his thunderous voice, and the voice in the sky continued to echo him, thundering through the square. The guards started to look alarmed, some turning and trying to run from the square. Too late. Aepep kept fighting, shooting his beam of magic at the priest, unwilling to give in even when it looked hopeless.

  Pallion shouted one last word, a thunderclap that was echoed by a mighty flash of lightning in the sky.

  “Shoot him,” called out Rory to his musketeers, those who hadn’t started looking for a way out, who had just finished reloading their weapons.

  Men pulled stocks to their shoulders and sighted in, and the uneven cracks of the muskets sounded as they puffed white smoke into the air. A hundred balls sped toward the patriarch, all hitting his expanded shield and bouncing away. The men started to do what warriors would, despite the obvious uselessness of their weapons against the magic of the cleric. Guardsmen placed their stocks upon the ground and poured powder from their horns down the barrels, working as fast as they could to drop their bullets and ram everything down the weapon.

  Rory was grateful for the loyalty of his men, even as he understood the fear that was driving a small number of them to attempt to flee. They had to be as terrified as he was. Maybe a little less, since they couldn’t have felt the guilt he did at leading them into this death trap.

  The patriarch waved his hands over the square, and the spell he had called down from above took effect.

  Rory felt his muscles freeze, his body locked in place. His eyes were set on the patriarch, the last thing he had willed them to look at. He tried to draw in a breath, and failed, and now he saw what a diabolical spell the patriarch had cast. None of his people could move, none could breath, and it would be only minutes before they started passing out from lack of air. And minutes later before men started to die of asphyxiation.

  * * *

  “He is killing them,” screamed Ankhu, another of the young mages, barely an adult. The mage pointed an ebony finger at the patriarch, panic in his voice.

  And his magic is not affecting us, thought Aepep, running possible options through his mind. The mages all had amulets of protection, created by the best alchemists of Aegypt. While they would not make them invulnerable to all magic, they could protect them from area spells such as the priest was casting. They seemed to be working, since all of the mages were still breathing easily.

  “We have to keep the king and his men alive until Marcus can return with the demigod,” said Aepep, looking at his three apprentices.

  “We need time,” said Ankhu, glancing at Hemetre, the second strongest of the apprentices after Marcus.

  “Time,” said the princess of Aegypt, the only noble among the group, her eyes widening. “We can slow time and amplify what time they have.”

  “Everyone,” yelled Aepep, keeping his beam playing on the shield of the priest trying to keep the cleric’s concentration on his defense. “Give Hemetre your energy. Hemetre, as soon as you finish your cast I will feed my power into your spell.”

  The young princess nodded, then started through the complicated words and motions of the advanced spell. Only she among the group had mastered it, though Aepep knew enough about it to teach the complex motions and verbalizations to one who had the aptitude for it. He was not a master at casting it, though, so the young woman was their only hope.

  Hemetre closed her eyes, waving with her hands in a motion that took in the entire square. She said the final word and her eyes opened to reveal wide brown orbs, flashes of fire and lightning within them. And something happened to time within the square.

  It didn’t stop, per se. What it did was slow considerably, four seconds ticking by outside the field for every one that passed inside. Now those held in the spell of the priest had eight minutes before they started to pass out from lack of air, sixteen or more before they started dying. Hemetre looked over at Aepep, triumph in her eyes, her shoulders slumped from fatigue.

  Time went by as usual outside the forty yards to each side of the princess. The voices of the people outside the field reached them, distorted as they passed through the barrier and slowed up, sounding like the lowing of cattle instead of the speech of humans. They sped some as they reached the mages and the counter field they were within, but the distortion made them unintelligible.

  Aepep stopped sending energy into the defensive field of the priest and shifted it to flow into the young mage, who immediately perked up as the power entered her. She nodded at the master, then turned her concentration to maintaining the time slow field against any efforts the divine magic users might send against it. The master didn’t think there was anything the priests could do, which didn’t mean there wasn’t something they could accomplish.

  One voice yelled from above and to the front, and Aepep looked up to meet the eyes of the patriarch, glaring at him with a murderous gaze, mouthing the words of a spell as he reached up to the sky. With a high-pitched
shout, the cleric threw one hand forward, and a ball of scintillating lightning headed toward the mages.

  * * *

  Marcus flung his hands up at the last second, strengthening the inertial field that was his gift. The bull ran full into the field, fire flashing in its eyes, horns aimed to eviscerate the young mage. It slowed for a moment when it was a couple of yards away, then stopped, finally bouncing away with the screech of metal and sparks flying from where the metal hooves slid over the stone floor. Energy flaring over the part of the field it had contacted, and part of its armored hide glowed with heat. Marcus felt a bit that energy flowing into his body, returning some of the power he had lost punching through the door, allowing him to reenergize the field. Still, there was a net loss there, and eventually the field would run out of power if the creature continued to attack.

  The bull spun away in the creak of metal, then turned back and headed for Bastet, going for a different target. Marcus shouted at the creature, trying to turn its attention toward him, while it picked up speed quickly over a couple of yards, ignoring him and heading for the woman who was standing there in shock, watching her death come at her.

  Marcus flung his right hand forward and said a word of power, aiming at the hind quarters of the bull. The air rippled as the ball of force sped into the flank of the bull, hitting it with the impact of a heavy war hammer and spinning it as it ran. His left hand came forward and he sent another ball into the creature, this time knocking it back on its heels. But not damaging the creature that seemed more invulnerable than ever. He wasn’t sure he could hurt it, that it wouldn’t just keep charging until he ran out of energy and it punctured his body with its overlong horns.

  “Ruhak,” yelled Marcus, pointing at the bull, which had run to the far side of the chamber to gain the room needed to charge at full speed. None of his gifts seemed to be harming it, while those of Bastet and Hes-ra would probably be just as ineffective. All still had spells they had learned that were not part of their natural affinities to magic, but none would be as powerful as what they could draw from within.

  The young boy stepped forward with both hands raised, shining with energy, and unleashed his gift on the machine. A stream of blue light left his left hand, striking the bull with a burst of interstellar cold that slowed it to a crawl as its joints fought the almost instant freeze. The ice cracked as it forced its way through the cold, its burning red eyes now locked on the boy as it started to move toward him. Ruhak, his face a mask of concentration, continued to pour the power of cold into the beast, slowing it down once again. But the bull had no quit in it, and it pushed through the freezing blast and took labored steps toward its tormentor.

  That was when the elemental mage unleashed the power of his right hand, and a beam of pure heat, thousands of degrees, hit the bull. Ice melted and metal cracked, some of its hide started to soften and flow as steam rose from its mouth and nostrils. The bull staggered forward a few more steps, one of its forelegs bending from the heat, then suddenly exploded, fast moving pieces bouncing from the inertial shield that Marcus hastily expanded to cover all his party.

  The remains of the bull fell to the floor, and Marcus could feel some of the energy return to him as the field absorbed the inertia of the flying parts of the artificial animal. Not enough though, and he knew he would be weak until he could find a source of magical energy. He was sure that Ruhak, after his display of elemental power, with in much the same boat.

  “We need to get the walking god before we run into something else,” he told his group, thinking of the mission, and they all nodding in return. Of course, acknowledging that didn’t mean it would happen. There was no telling what was around the next corner, in the next chamber. It could very well kill them before they could find anything.

  Marcus looked at the largest remains of the bull while he walked across the chamber to the other door. Even dead, or destroyed if it had never been alive, it was frightening. He could only hope that this was the worst of what waited down here.

  “How in all the hells did a bunch of divine magic users create such a thing?” asked Hes-ra, staring wide eyed at the creature.

  Marcus could understand why she thought that. Priests, or at least the most powerful of them, controlled the ability to summon creatures from other planes of existence. Angels and demons and monsters that would chill the marrow of any rational human. This was not such a creature. This had been constructed, much as some mages constructed things called golems.

  “This thing was not made by the priests,” said Marcus with confidence. “This was made by alchemists and master smiths.”

  “But, alchemy is magic,” said Ruhak, a confused expression on his face. “I thought they forbid such here. Is that why they hide it down here?”

  “Not to their way of thinking,” said Bastet, shaking her head.

  Marcus nodded in agreement as Ruhak looked over at him with disbelieving eyes. He was recalling what the master had taught him about this region, the same lessons that Baster had attended. They didn’t consider alchemy true magic, though a great alchemist, working alongside a master smith, could make a weapon capable of exhibiting power as great as the spells of an archmage. He thought it might have had something to do with the demands of the warriors, who wanted the weapons and armor that the alchemists could make. The priests would of course bow to those demands, since the nobility controlled the wealth of the kingdom that flowed into the coffers of the church.

  Ruhak continued to shake his head, not understanding such rationalizations. Marcus had been surprised himself at first, but had then come to appreciate the way humans could twist logic to make reality fit what they wanted to believe. Not the mages. What worked was real, what didn’t wasn’t. That was all that mattered to them.

  The other door was just as heavy, but the bar was on this side, held in place by complicated looking locks on both ends. Marcus knew they were beyond him, but not to someone with the proper talent.

  Hes-ra moved to stand before one of the locks, her face a mask of concentration. She touched the lock to the left, mumbling the words of a spell that would open most locks constructed by man. With a click the lock fell open, releasing from the bar and falling to the floor. She did the same on the other lock, and Marcus and Ruhak muscled the bar out of its brackets.

  Marcus pulled on the handle and the door slid open as if it were perfectly balanced on greased rollers, which it might well have been. It revealed another corridor, this one bending to the right, allowing them view for only a dozen yards at a time.

  “Everyone be alert,” cautioned Marcus, leading the way down the corridor. He wouldn’t have been surprised if whoever was at the end of the corridor had heard their battle with the bull. Then again, he didn’t know the sound absorbing or transmitting qualities of this area, and they could possibly have not been detected.

  After a turn of about forty-five degrees over forty yards they came to another door, this one with what looked like a standard lock. Again Hes-ra worked her magic, and once again a lock clicked open, revealing a room. And a trio of lightly armored guards under the supervision of a priest.

  Chapter Twelve

  Master Aepep concentrated on deflecting the attacks of the patriarch while he let his three apprentices, led by Hemetre, work on maintaining the time slowing spell. It was an obvious strain on those young people to maintain such an energy intensive spell. Not that he was having an easy time dealing with the patriarch on his own, who was tapping into the divine power of his goddess directly.

  Aepep deflected another bolt of power, one that would have left him and his three apprentices as pillars of ash that the breeze would have soon had swirling around the square. The shock of the strike on his shield caused him to grit his teeth and close his eyes in pain, and he knew that it wouldn’t take too many more bolts like that to break through and kill them all. And the patriarch didn’t seem to be weakening. In fact, every bolt he was throwing seemed more powerful than the last.

  I’ve go
t to do something, thought the master, questing with his mind for a source of power. There were fountains and lines of magical energy throughout the world. The extinct Eldritch people had built stone shrines or established sacred groves around many of the power sources. And the humans, in many cases without even knowing why, had built major habitations around them. Such as the city of Doblas.

  There, thought the archmage, his magic sense finding the source of Earth power that flowed through the ground, across the square and under the Cathedral. He was not over the flow, but it was still something he could tap into if given the chance. He deflected another bolt, then dropped his shield for a moment so he could concentrate on making the connection. He was almost there when the grinning patriarch threw another bolt at him and his charges.

  * * *

  The priest and the guards seemed in shock to see intruders appear this deep under their cathedral. More shocked than the mages were to find them there, since they had expected for there to be a force around the walking god.

  The priest started to move first, shouting a word of power and pointing a finger at Marcus. Marcus felt his muscles lock as soon as the finger pointed his way, cutting off the words he was about to shout out, a warning and a command.

  Ruhak was the next to react, just a second after Marcus turned into a living statue, and a moment before the priest could turn his attention to any of the other mages. With a flick of his fingers he sent a stream of fire into the robes of the priest, who instantly had no other thought but to try and save himself from burning to death. The priest called out some more words while gesturing at his robes. The fire died, the robes smoldering still, and the expression on the cleric’s face was a mixture of rage and agony from the burns he had already sustained.

  With rage filled eyes the priest, who seemed to be proficient at combat, turned toward Ruhak and pointed at the young mage. At the same instant Marcus felt his own muscles return to his control. He pushed a palm forward like he was pushing the air, shouting out the triggering word, and a mass of rippling energy sped from his outstretched arm and into the priest, lifting the man from the floor and slamming him into the wall hard enough to crack bones. The man slid to the floor to lay unmoving, and Marcus wasn’t sure that the man was still alive.