by Philip Blood
I looked at the Tarvos sorceress and said, “Other than just one of us having to take on all the guards, it’s not a terrible plan, but I have to ask, why do all of your plans involve someone killing everyone?”
“Killing them removes them from your list of problems,” she answered.
I nodded slowly, and drawled “Right.” But my sarcasm was lost on the sorceress. Then I turned to Toji because I was still pissed at Hydan for the Trebuchet plan. “What is your idea?”
Toji considered, and then said, “We wait until dark, and then slip to the wall and throw a rope up, using magic to make it lasso a merlon. Then we simply climb up the wall, slip over the other side and into the ocean.”
I nodded, “That might work, but I don’t want to wait until dark, they have had Ziny too long already. We need a plan which will get us there right now.” I turned reluctantly to Hydan and said, “What about you, I ask with real regret.”
Hydan looked innocently at me for a moment and then replied, “I suggest we just go through the wall. First, we set up a diversion to get the attention of the guards, and then we run to the wall and walk through.”
I scowled at him, “How do you walk through a wall?”
“Well, technically, we won’t, not through solid stone, what we will do is walk through the passage which is there.”
“What passage?” I asked.
He looked at me and blinked those shiny black saeran eyes, “The passage which is there because we know it is there.”
Shit, that again, I thought.
“Won’t they have thought of that?” I asked him.
He shrugged, “Why would any mage try to get to the place where they are trying to capture mages in the first place? Sure, if they bring an army they might try, but then they would just assault the entire wall, but a lone mage in their right mind is going to go away from Mystical Island, not towards it!”
“And we are certainly not in our right minds!” I noted with a smile.
“I am,” Myrka noted seriously, “What other mind would I be in?”
I ignored her and said to Hydan, “What kind of diversion?”
“Leave that to me,” he answered.
I gave him a hard look and then said, “You make me very nervous when you say things like that!”
He replied, “Wait here until I return, but be ready to run for the wall.”
We waited about a half hour, and then Hydan ran up to us and said, “Get ready!”
I looked toward the wall, and the guards, waiting, but nothing happened yet.
“What did you do?” I whispered to Hydan.
Then I heard the sound of tree trunks snapping, and trees falling.
“Here they come!” Hydan said with a kind of glee.
Down about a hundred yards to our left, I saw three tall trees suddenly fall toward the wall as if knocked down by some massive force. Something large and white was in among the trees. That’s when I saw it emerge; it was a chicken, a chicken the size of a three story house!
It was running toward the wall and one of the guard towers.
The guards on the wall were all pointing or yelling, and many were running toward the place where the giant chicken was attacking while a few near that point were actually running away down the wall.
Hydan said, “OK, let’s move!”
But right then trees started falling down toward us from deeper in the forest.
Hydan’s eyes grew round and he said, “Oh, I didn’t count on that!”
“On what?” I demanded.
“One of my chickens has chosen to head in our direction,” he replied.
That’s when I saw another of the giant white hens bearing down on us, knocking down trees as she came.
“Run!” Hydan yelled, but the rest of us were already in flight.
We ran for the wall since it was away from the rampaging chicken giant.
I’m not sure if guards saw us or not, it’s hard to say, what with the giant chickens coming at them and all, but we reached the wall without mishap and Toji gestured. A row of bricks disappeared leaving a shallow arch. He moved inside and another row disappeared. After four of these, he turned and closed one row at the entrance behind us. Now we were in a small room with no exits.
“Here,” Hydan said pleasantly, “let me.”
He stepped forward and six rows of bricks all disappeared at once, making a much deeper passage in toward the center of the wall.
Unfortunately, this created a T-intersection with a passage which ran lengthwise through the wall. There was a squad of six necromages headed for a set of stairs which led to the top of the wall, but when our new passage suddenly appeared, they all turned and saw the four of us standing in our little cul-de-sac.
They immediately attacked.
Toji tried to seal the passage, but he was too late, and the necromage’s vision of reality kept things from changing.
The necromages drew knives, as did Toji and Myrka, and they leaped to battle.
Unfortunately, my grasp of magic was sketchy at this point, so I drew Caliburn.
That changed things in this tight chamber significantly. This was the most powerful Actuality weapon the Sivaeral House had ever created, and what it did was keep ANY mage of the Second Tier or below from altering reality in a decent area around the unsheathed blade.
Hydan took one look at my exposed sword and yelled, “Nick, get away from us or we can’t use magic!”
I hadn’t really thought about the fact that it would do the same thing to my companions as to my enemies.
I took a round house swing at two of the necromages, who leaped back out of the blade's reach. Their daggers were useless when confronted with the reach of my sword unless one of them came in from behind and back stabbed me.
Worrying about that very thing, I ran forward and past our enemies and got into the larger hallway, away from my companions so they would be out of Caliburn’s area of effect.
Two of the necromages came after me, their daggers held ready to attack.
I could hear the sounds of battle back in the cul-de-sac.
One gestured at the ceiling, I think he was trying to collapse it on me, but nothing happened!
“Hell yes!” I cried out, knowing Caliburn was working! He couldn’t change things around me! What I believed stayed the way I saw it all.
The failure of his attack surprised the necromage, because he paused, which is when I brought Caliburn down and loped off the thing’s arm at the shoulder. This sword was SHARP!
The necromage snarled and pulled back. I was surprised he wasn’t dead, but then I realized these necromages were using dead bodies, they could probably take a lot more physical damage than a living body could handle.
The one with the missing arm hissed to his companion, “That is an Actuality blade! We cannot affect things here!”
They both backed up, keeping an eye on me warily.
But I charged them, I didn’t want them getting out of the blade’s effect.
They tried to run, but I swung and took One Arm in the neck, catapulting his head from his shoulders.
That’s when reinforcements arrived from down the hall behind me. I heard them coming and looked back to find four more necromages and six regular saerans. As they got near the regular saerans held back and let the necromages take me on.
I was about to call out to my companions when I noticed one of the necromages limping, it was Peg Leg, one of the necromages who took Ziny back at the river!
Sudden anger boiled in my gut, and I charged them, going for the necromages.
I was like a berserker, and the necromage’s knives were inadequate against my sword, and their protections no longer worked. Caliburn was like a ribbon of death, cleaving through their undead bodies. I only stopped when it was just Peg Leg and me.
At the sight of me slaughtering the necromages, the six saerans watching suddenly bolted back down the passage.
“That’s right, run for your lives!” I bellowed a
fter them.
Then I lifted my sword and spoke in a voice quivering with anger, “Take me to the saeran sorceress you took at the river or die here and now!”
Peg Leg looked at the gleaming blade, and then at his own little knife. He nodded, and said, “She is this way.”
He limped ahead of me, and I stayed hard on his heels, er, heel, the other was a couple of splintered bone ends.
After a few passages we came to a bank of cells and he pointed at one.
“She is there,” he noted.
I glanced in the grate and saw her small huddled form.
Peg Leg ran away, or at least, kind of hop-skipped away.
I guess I should have been more concerned, but I was happy to see Ziny alive.
That’s when Peg Leg stopped about fifty yards away.
I was concentrating on trying to believe the door was unlocked and was barely keeping track of the one legged necromage. And then Medrod spun into existence next to him.
Right at this moment I must have believed the lock was open, because the door opened to my pull, and I called, “Ziny, it’s me, Nick, run!”
She looked up with tear stained eyes and blinked those big round saeran orbs at me, and then she ran to my arms.
It felt so good to hug her when she arrived, she was so small and thin, just a little waif caught up in a war she had never wanted.
But now I had to turn, Medrod was approaching, and he was a mage of a whole new color or Tier.
The first thing he did was raise a hand and blue light lanced out, Derkaz power!
But when it reached the sphere of Caliburn’s influence, it just evaporated! Obviously, his blasts could not affect my reality around Caliburn!
Medrod scowled, and kept coming, pulling a dark black short sword from a sheath belted to his waist.
I pushed Ziny behind me and snarled at Medrod, “Come on you bastard, let’s dance.”
He slashed in a cross body blow, but I parried. We exchanged two more blows, but then I started thinking that Medrod’s blade was getting kind of translucent. I must have believed it, and Caliburn was on my side, so Medrod couldn’t change reality to his own liking. Our next clash was less jarring, more like hitting something soft.
Medrod was scowling, but he swung again and I parried. When our swords met, he reached out with his free hand and grabbed me by the throat. My sword was bound against his and I was staring into those dark bloodshot eyes.
“Now you will die,” he hissed.
That’s when Ziny leaped onto Medrod’s back and bit him on the shoulder.
He howled and turned, which let me disengage Caliburn.
Medrod let loose of my throat to avoid my sword slash.
Ziny was still clinging to his back, and I was afraid he would just stab her with his sword, so I pressed the attack.
I swung, and this time, when our swords met, his stopped the blow, but then crumbled to dust, I’d thought it looked kind of ancient and what I thought was working around Caliburn!
Medrod gaped at his empty hand for a split second, and I pulled back Caliburn with a snarl, ready to run him through the gut.
But Medrod leaped backward, and reached up to grab Ziny by the arm, and he yanked her down in front of him, right into the path of my thrust with Caliburn.
I had to abort the attack lest I skewer the little saeran girl.
She was looking terrified, and Medrod grabbed her by the neck.
“One move toward me and I will snap this little girl’s neck,” he said.
I stopped but I was pacing back and forth only four feet from him with a snarl of hatred on my face.
With his other hand, Medrod drew a pentagram in flaming red.
I was desperately trying to figure out how to get to Medrod and save Ziny, so much I forgot about Peg Leg completely. Suddenly he leaped on me from behind, locking one of his arms around my throat.
I gagged, and tried to reach with Caliburn to stab him, and I might have got him a few times too, though he didn’t seem to be affected by the thrusts. In moments, the lack of blood to my brain caused me to start to black out. I dropped Caliburn so I could try and pry his bony arm from my neck, which was another mistake. Medrod stepped forward and hit me, hard.
The world went black.
I woke up with a very sore neck and face, and a headache. I was wondering if I had been out on a bender the night before. I figured this must be the hangover of all hangovers. Then my vision cleared and I noticed I was in some kind of stone room, which had two window openings. In one, I could see an ocean with an island some distance offshore. Out the other I could see a forest. I also noticed I was bound to a post with ropes.
Then my memory returned and I remembered little Ziny’s body held against Medrod as a little girl shield. I really hated the bastard. After a moment to digest what had happened, I looked up and around the chamber and noticed Caliburn, now sheathed, laying on a wood table. There were three necromage guards watching me, all with those drawn and dry skinned faces and milky white shriveled eyes. One of them was Peg Leg. It seems he was now elevated in status. To my left was Ziny, also bound to a pole, and about six feet away, staring at me with those dark saeran eyes was Medrod.
The Derkaz wizard smiled with a pleased look on his saeran face, which did not share any of the shriveled or dry looks of the necromages. “Ah, you are awake, wizard.”
“I’m going to kill you,” I said with a cold fire in my heart.
He smiled, “I see you are angry, show some respect, you lost, I won.”
“You have never seen me really angry,” I said. “Now, let the girl go or I will kill you slowly.”
He scratched at his chin thoughtfully. “Which little girl are we talking about?”
“Ziny, you bastard, she’s right there!”
He nodded a few times, “Ah, yes, the little sorceress. Well, the truth is I thought little of such a young and low Tier sorceress. I hadn’t even sent her to my wife for conversion yet.”
“I will kill you,” I noted again. I looked over at Ziny, who was trying to keep up a brave front. I spoke softly to her, “It will be all right, I’ll get us out of this.”
Medrod laughed at me, “No, you will never escape, and soon you won’t want to, once you serve me as a necrosoul. I had thought we knew every Sivaeral Third still supporting the antiquated system of the Ring of Ten, but you are a welcome surprise!”
I raised an eyebrow at him and then said, “You are very impressed with yourself, aren’t you?”
He smiled, “I have reason to be. I will be the first Second to replace their father as ruler of a World, and who knows? Perhaps I will be the ruler of all ten Worlds, eventually.”
I sneered at him, “Personally, I think you’re whipped, your wife wears the pants now, buddy. I hear your father kicked your ass, and now you are just some kind of husk or ghost. You wouldn’t even be talking to me if your wife hadn’t pulled some séance or something. Face the facts, Jack, she is the one leading the charge of the dark brigade.”
He laughed, and gestured at the three other beings watching me, “I am not a necromage, like these three, nor a ghost, shade or phantom, this is a LIVING body! You, however, will be killed and brought back as a necromage to serve us!”
“How about I just bury you in some dark hole, forever,” was my reply.
He smiled at me and ignored my sally, and then said, “When my spies reported a Sivaeral wizard at that Inn, I had no idea you were a Third! But four mages, of any Tier, was too good a prize to ignore. I had my forces searching downstream, so it was easy to sense the arcane battle going on at that tower. And though we seem to have missed you there, we were able to set our trap downstream, which ‘netted’ us your precious ‘Ziny’.”
I just glowered at the jerk.
“Her capture has made you angry, I see,” he said with an evil smile.
I tilted my head at him and said, “Listen, Dead Rod, as I mentioned, you haven’t seen me angry, but if you hurt that little girl, you
will.”
“You are a Third, and my prisoner. I do not fear you, or your wrath. The truth is I was quite vexed with you when you escaped. That fog idea was brilliant. I’m sure you will make an excellent necromage for our cause. After you escaped from the river trap, I was thinking of attacking the capital to take you and any remaining mages, but then you just came to me! If I knew you would surrender to us I could have saved myself a lot of trouble!”
I glowered at him, “I only came for Ziny, let us go and we will depart, hurt her and I will end you, no matter what part of hell you crawled out of!”
“Sorry, I am a saeran; we prefer water Worlds.”
“Whatever,” I replied.
“My wife has become quite adept at turning mages, so you will serve us as a necromage. After I’m finished interrogating you, I will send you to my wife to be killed and resurrected in your new form. However, I have no need of this sorceress, she knows nothing of interest.”
“Don’t you dare touch her!” I said, straining at my bonds.
But one of the necromages went and unbound her from the post, though her little hands were still bound behind her back.
“Nicholas?” she said in a tiny voice.
“I will come for you,” I replied. Then to Medrod, I snarled, “What are you doing with her!”
“She will be made one of ours.”
The necromage took Ziny out of the room, and I watched her until the door closed.
Medrod walked over to stand a few paces in front of me, and said, “Before I send you to my wife, I think we should be properly introduced, as you seem to already know, I am Medrod, Second of House Sivaeral, soon to be ruler of Abal, and you are?”
“Nicholas Sivaeral, Third, and future dispatcher of the pretender to the throne, one Med, soon-to-be-dead, Rod.”
Medrod chuckled. “That will be quite impossible, I think. I have taken Caliburn from you, and you will soon be turned to a necromage; then you will serve my needs.”
“Not in this or any other lifetime!”
He just smiled and then said, “I have been thinking about the mystery of your lineage, and I believe I know who you are. There was a rumor about one of my sisters having a child a long time ago, whom she named, Nicholas. The child was stolen, and presumed dead, but he would have been a Sivaeral Third. She never admitted who the father was, but it was obvious enough why he was one of our brothers. She was wise to try to hide you on Earth, for your kind is always hunted by the Houses.”