by Spurrier, Jo
Kell stumbled back, sending all of his energy into the shield and deflecting the force of Sierra’s attack into the rubble beneath their feet. She was burning through her strength, but she could feel his power fading, and so she struck again and again, giving him no quarter in which to recover, barely aware of the energy Isidro was sending to her. All she could think of was bringing Kell down and crushing him beneath the rage and fury that burned within her.
The rock beneath her feet trembled, and then it shattered with a sharp, percussive crack and filthy yellow water bubbled up between the cracks. In the space of a heartbeat it was past her knees and rising, flowing with such force that she had to divert her dwindling strength to keep it from sweeping her feet out from underneath her.
As the water reached her waist, Kell laughed again, in his own voice this time. ‘Well, girl, that ought to keep you out of trouble. I’ll be back once I’ve dealt with my snivelling worm of an apprentice.’
With another blast he brought the roof of the cavern down between them, and as the earth trembled again Sierra felt the rocks groan. It must have opened the cracks in the cistern wider, for the pressure of the water suddenly increased and the flow rose to her neck, spurting against her with all the mass contained in the cistern lending it force.
He’s coming.
Isidro didn’t need to speak aloud — they’d both seen what happened below, felt Sierra devoting all her power to fighting the torrent of water, struggling to hold the bubble of air that kept her from drowning.
Rasten shoved away from the wall. ‘How in the hells did he get behind her?’
‘He has a camouflage enchantment,’ Isidro said. ‘He took it from me when he took me prisoner …’ He scrabbled through his bag, pulling out the stones he’d gathered. ‘There might be others built into the trip-lines — that’s probably how I passed your entrance without seeing it. If … if he was using something similar to make Sierra think I was talking to her down there, then … what if he can use it to move around unseen?’
‘To sneak up on us?’ Rasten said. ‘By all the Gods —’
‘Think!’ Isidro snapped. ‘It puts out an energy field, and that can be disrupted. The suppression stones, the ones Sierra pried off before she escaped back in the winter — can you make them? Quickly?’
Rasten looked down at the cluster of white stones in Isidro’s hand.
It took only a minute or so apiece, and as Rasten turned out the stones Isidro scattered them through the passage and took down the nearest anchors to remove the threat of trip-wires and flame. One of them confirmed his suspicion of the camouflage devices — as he drained one stone, a section of apparently solid wall flickered and vanished to reveal a rubble-filled passageway.
Now that the awful pain was gone, and the water he’d found had revived him, Isidro was beginning to think clearly again. ‘That explains why Kell didn’t want me to see this place on the way down,’ he said, laying out the last few stones. He turned to Rasten, who stood near the centre of the circle they made. ‘Do they interfere with your power?’
‘A little, but they’d do the same to Kell,’ Rasten said. ‘Now get out of sight, and tell Sirri what’s happening. You’re no good in a fight; you’re too easy a target.’ Rasten turned his back on Isidro, set his feet square and summoned the power he had left. Isidro could feel it coursing along his nerves and over his bones, and grew uneasy thinking of just how much Kell had raised from him before Rasten had cut the device away.
Sirri! Rasten called. I need more power! You know what to do.
Away and beneath them, trapped under rock and rushing water, Isidro felt Sierra lift her head. She gripped the rough stone with both hands, anchoring herself to the wall and augmenting her strength with power to keep from being swept away by the frothing torrent. Sierra reached for her smooth neck, and Isidro realised she was aiming for a pressure-point, to rouse pain without damage. But the moment her hand lifted from the wall, the rushing water pushed her off balance and she had to snatch for her handhold again.
Sirri, now!
Isidro looked down at his own useless right hand, scarred where Rasten had nailed it to a log all those months ago. There was a limit to how much pain one man could cause himself without incapacitation, and of all of them here, he was the least useful in this fight. He was expendable.
Rasten had turned his back on Isidro. He must have had that same thought — the apprentice wouldn’t hesitate to use any resource he had at hand, or so Isidro had always thought.
‘Rasten!’ Isidro called. ‘Give me a knife!’
A twitch showed that he had heard, but Rasten did not turn until Isidro strode across to grab him by the shoulder. Rasten whirled to face him a moment before his hand fell, his own fists raised and flaring with red-hued power.
‘A knife,’ Isidro said again. ‘Quickly!’
Rasten hesitated — it was so brief that Isidro was hardly sure he’d seen it, but there was a flicker of something in his eyes. A flicker of what? He couldn’t say. He didn’t know the man well enough to read him.
Rasten pulled a slender-bladed dagger from his belt and handed it over hilt first. ‘Wait,’ he said, and rummaged in his belt-pouch, pulling out a stone strung on a leather cord. ‘Put this on first.’
Isidro identified it at a touch. It was a channelling device, performing some of the functions of a ritual circle when a sacrifice was bound within it. Isidro pulled the leather thong over his head. Then he took the knife and set the point against the scar on his palm.
He couldn’t let himself think about it, or he would lose his nerve. The blade was wickedly sharp — at the first touch there came a sting and a trickle of blood. Isidro set his jaw and emptied his mind. He took a single breath — in, out — and shoved the blade through his palm.
At the shock of the knife Sierra threw her head back and screamed. Power surged and spilled, filling the flooded passage with flickering blue light and a crackle that rivalled the deafening roar of the water. She reeled it in, trying to keep the precious energy from spilling, and as the pressure grew she gathered it up and pounded at the wall of rubble ahead of her, then snapped up a shield as the rock exploded and was swept past her by the gushing water. Gasping for breath as the water washed over her face, she inched forward and prepared to strike and smash again. She had to be careful — she had never been good at conserving power, and Rasten would need it more desperately than she, but she had to get out of here, and it had to be soon.
Isidro stumbled back against the tunnel wall. He couldn’t look away from the knife, the slender blood-streaked blade jutting from the back of his hand. He ought to pull it out, but his left hand seemed to have lost all its strength and could only pluck uselessly at the hilt.
Rasten followed him and Isidro instinctively turned away, but Rasten was quick and phenomenally strong for all his smaller size. He pinned Isidro against the wall with his shoulder, took his arm in a firm grip and wrenched the knife free. The pain was so intense — or perhaps it was simply shock — that for a moment Isidro thought he would pass out. His vision narrowed to a long, dark tunnel, his throat clenched and his stomach churned.
Then Sierra spoke inside his mind. Issey, oh, Isidro …
Sirri, just get out of there! We need you!
I’m trying! He saw her loose another blast in his mind’s eye and inch forward again, while the flow of water seemed to grow stronger as it grew smoother.
The pain in his hand, the scent of blood and sweat and fear and power — all of it was bringing buried memories to the surface. Isidro wrapped his good hand around his wrist and forced his right hand to flex, while Rasten, still standing over him, threw his head back as power rushed through him. Isidro was struggling to stay in the present and not be drawn back into the past, and it was at that moment, as he focussed on the sandstone walls and yellow earth that he saw a blur cross their perimeter of suppression stones. It looked like the rippling haze in the air above a fire.
Isidro gave a wordless
shout of warning, and with the knife still in his hand Rasten spun around and struck with both the blade and with a lash of power. It shattered the camouflage Kell carried, and in the instant Isidro saw him Kell seemed nothing like the hobbling old man who had stalked the king’s hall. Kell had his knobbled cane in one hand, and in the other he held a sword, the blade so fine and slight that it would be more accurate to call it a rapier — it had been concealed inside his cane all this time, Isidro realised.
Rasten’s blast also popped the globes of fire he’d cast for light, and the passage was plunged into darkness, relieved only by the flash and flicker of red and gold light as the mages fought.
In the passage below, Sierra eased back on her blasts, letting Rasten take the power. Isidro pressed his back against the wall and squeezed his right hand with his left as the blood oozed between his fingers.
Rasten fought with guts and fury, striking swift and hard with hands and power, but Isidro saw that Kell was an old hand at this game. He poured power into his shields, letting Rasten exhaust himself while none of the blows he landed were critical. After a few moments Rasten realised that his tactics were failing, and the second his will faltered Kell struck him with a blast of power that sent Rasten reeling with blood pouring down his face.
Kell pressed home his advantage and struck again and again, giving Rasten no time to recover. With each blow Isidro could feel the old man stripping away the younger’s power, leaving him weaker with each strike.
They were all doomed unless something happened to break the cycle. Isidro felt for the device hanging from his shoulder, a slender tube of metal sculpted from an old cooking pot. He had just one blaster; just one chance to make a difference. Now was the time to make it count.
Isidro had never tested the device and had no idea how much damage it could do, or even if it would work at all. It was a creation of desperation, a last resort, nothing more.
With his left hand clamped around the stock Isidro pushed away from the wall. He almost stumbled — he hadn’t realised just how much the pain had sapped his strength, or how badly the shock of the wound affected him — but shuffled determinedly on around the edges of the mages’ fight. Then he reached Kell’s side unnoticed and felt the man’s shields wrapped around him like armour.
Isidro stripped that power away, taking it into himself. Kell stiffened the moment he felt his shields waver — he made to pull away, but Isidro kicked at his weak leg and shoved the end of the metal tube against the small of Kell’s back. If Isidro had had two good hands, one to steady himself on the old man’s shoulder, he might have been able to keep his aim, but as it was Kell’s leg gave way and he began to crumple, just as Isidro set the blaster off.
The device roared like a tiger and bucked in Isidro’s grip, sending a shock up his arm like a kick from a horse.
The distraction gave Rasten the opening he needed to regroup. He couldn’t have known what Isidro was planning, but acting purely on instinct he slammed up a shield.
Like any Blood-Mage, Kell was conditioned to ignore pain, to shove it aside and focus on the matter at hand. The only reason Isidro knew his missile had struck home was the splash of blood on Kell’s shirt and, in the flooded passage, Sierra’s scream at the echoed sensation of a metal ball tearing through skin and flesh and vitals.
His one blaster spent, Isidro cast the useless device aside. Kell had turned on him with a roar when Rasten, fuelled by fresh power routed through Sierra, struck him a massive blow from behind, sending the old mage staggering.
Isidro swiftly backed away, summoning what power he had and preparing to spin it into a shield, but he knew any defence was futile. Even wounded — and if his missile had pierced kidney or gut then it was certainly a mortal wound, though it might take days to finish him — he was powerful enough that Isidro’s strongest shield would be little more than gossamer.
Bright, fresh blood stained Kell’s back and belly crimson, but he held himself proud and straight as he turned his head, trying to keep both enemies in sight. After one contemptuous glance, he turned his back on Isidro. Facing Rasten, Kell reached high overhead with thick ropes of power, and brought the vaulted ceiling crashing down onto his apprentice.
With the water rushing around her, Sierra clung to the walls and coughed and spluttered, letting power flood through her as she struggled to breathe without filling her lungs with fluid. She shuddered with the echoing sensation of a missile tearing through her belly, and then the pummelling rain of bricks and rubble as Rasten was driven to the ground under the collapsing roof. For a moment the pain threatened to drag her down, but then the golden tide rose, buoying her up on a pure and brilliant swell of power. The cold didn’t matter, the darkness, the airlessness, none of it mattered. Sierra delved into the power and scooped it up, letting it fill her and turn her soul to light. Then she gathered herself and blasted at the cracked and crumbling stone, forcing her way forward with blow after blow after blow.
Kell slammed Isidro against the wall, cracking his skull against the stone with such force that his vision exploded into myriad flashing lights. By the time he could see again, Isidro found himself slumped on the ground with Kell standing over him, sword in hand.
‘You pathetic worm, you wretched cripple,’ Kell hissed through clenched teeth as he pressed a hand to the wound in his gut. A sour smell filled the air, like vomit and bile, and it made Isidro want to retch. ‘I’ll skin you alive for this. I’ll cut you to pieces and make you eat them!’ Kell set the tip of his sword against Isidro’s throat and stepped onto Isidro’s ruined arm, pressing down with all his weight. Isidro felt the bones click and grind, and clenched his teeth to keep from crying out.
A rock tumbled down from the pile covering Rasten, falling to the ground with a clatter. Then, with a bellow Rasten heaved himself out from under it and leapt. He slammed into Kell from behind; and as the old man’s leg gave way he bore them both to the ground, collapsing in a heap with Isidro trapped at the bottom. Kell’s sword fell between them, and as the old man struggled to find a grip and hurl Rasten from his back, the blade sliced deep, scoring a line of fire across Isidro’s ribs. A stray foot struck against Isidro’s right arm, and he bellowed before he could stop himself. Rasten had his arms around Kell’s neck, choking him with hands and power both as thick ropes of red flame battled with gilded cords.
Rasten’s eyes met Isidro’s for a split second. Beneath them all Sierra was still fighting her way through the rock, following the water’s gushing path back to them. She needs more power, Isidro thought dimly as the sword sliced through skin and muscle again. This paltry fare was not enough; she needed more.
He caught Rasten’s gaze and nodded.
Rasten stomped on the splintered bones of his right arm, and Isidro’s world exploded into jagged shards of light and pain.
With one final blast Sierra burst through the floor of the cistern. A fresh wave of power surged through her, but the chamber was still half-full and she emerged into a whirlpool of draining water that drew her down with immense force. With a roar of frustration and echoed pain, Sierra hurled the water away from her, and then froze it solid into a thick rime of ice that clung to the walls and bound the skeletons littering the floor into a grotesque jumble of jagged bones.
At her feet she saw an axe, a bright silver-lipped blade with a long wooden handle: no elegant weapon, just a simple woodsman’s tool. She snatched it up and turned her face up to the hole in the roof through which she’d fallen, and then summoned a staircase of stone and ice to take her there.
The sigil on Isidro’s back burned as Kell and Rasten struggled. The old man fought like a bear, even with a loop of grey intestine protruding from the wound in his belly. Kell was still drawing power from him, and from Rasten as well — as their master he’d carved a handhold right into their souls.
When he blinked he saw a glimpse through Sierra’s eyes as she ran towards them with an axe in her hands, shielding herself in a blue veil of lightning as flames swirled a
round her. Did Kell have such a hold on her, as well?
Rasten had lost the upper hand, and was flagging — the falling roof had taken a lot out of him, and it took so much of his strength to defend against Kell’s blows he couldn’t land any of his own.
Isidro tried to move, but they were still sprawled across him, pinning him to the ground, and the slightest pressure on his right arm made him feel as though he would burst with a thousand brilliant jagged needles of pain. And here we are again, he thought.
One of the suppression stones lay just beyond the useless limb. Isidro’s eye lingered on it for a long moment before his pain-riddled mind realised what his subconscious was trying to tell him.
‘Rasten!’ he called out, scrabbling to reach it with his good hand. ‘Rasten, the stones!’
Rasten froze, and in that moment of hesitation Kell struck with claws of power that cut deep, sapping his strength and binding his will. Kell lurched forward, shifting his weight, so at last Isidro could move to snatch up the stone. As Kell knelt on the earthen floor with Rasten beneath him, Isidro felt for the wound the blaster had punched in the old man’s back and shoved the stone in, burying it in his flesh just as a jet of flame roared around the curve of the tunnel and Sierra appeared, dripping wet and surrounded by writhing, twisting lightning. There was an axe in her hands, the head rippling with Black Sun’s Fire.
Kell bellowed in pain as his power sputtered and died at the touch of the stone, guttering out like a candle flame.
‘Not so powerful now, are you, you son of a bitch?’ Rasten said. Kell’s hands were still around his neck, and Rasten grabbed his thumbs and wrenched them back with a grinding crack of bone.
Kell pulled away, staggering with the pain and shock of losing his power. His thumbs flapping at obscene angles, he groped behind his back, reaching for the stone Isidro had thrust into the wound. Isidro grabbed for his flailing arm and, though he was weak, without his power Kell was weaker. He seized the arm and held it as Rasten grabbed the other, just as Sierra came upon them with the axe raised. The flickering blue glow of Black Sun’s Fire was the only light in the chamber, and Isidro could just make out the look of utter disbelief on Kell’s face.