by Peter Grant
“I see.” Owain thought hard for a moment. “You say that amulet prevents her from using her powers?”
“That is what she claims.”
“I think I have something that might break the spell that binds it in place. Will she let me try?”
The priest stared. “But… it would take weeks of study to analyze it first!”
“I’m not going to analyze it. Just ask her.”
The woman was clearly excited to hear Owain’s question, and nodded vigorously at him as she spoke to Hevel. He confirmed, “Yes, she says you can try whatever it is.”
“Good. Translate to her what I am about to say.”
Owain took the ampoule from around his neck and removed it from its red leather pouch. He held it up before the woman, speaking slowly. “This is an ancient artifact of the Light. It was crafted as an ultimate weapon against evil. I think, if I touch it to the amulet on your forehead, it may be powerful enough to break the spell that holds it there.”
She listened carefully as Hevel translated, her eyes fixed on the glowing, shimmering ampoule. She nodded slowly, and spoke. “She says it is clearly a thing of great power, but nothing to be feared by those who serve the Light.”
Owain nodded. He reached out his hand, and gently touched the ampoule to the black stone. It redoubled in brightness for an instant, the colors within it swirling urgently. There came a sudden, audible crack! as the iron band snapped, and the stone shattered into fragments as it fell to the ground. The woman raised her hands to heaven, exultation on her face, and exclaimed aloud, tears running down her cheeks. Owain didn’t need a translation to understand that she was rejoicing at being free at last from the restraint on her powers.
After a few moments, she lowered her arms and broke into excited speech. Hevel conversed with her for a few moments, then turned to Owain, his face alight with interest. “She says her powers have been restored. Using them, she discerned my own powers, and asked me what we were doing here. I told her about our mission, and that I was in telepathic link with my brother priest-mages back in the Kingdom.
“She says that, if we will allow her, she can reach out to her sisters. They will have been trying to find her since she went missing, but could not have done so, because of that black stone amulet. They will be overjoyed to hear that we have freed her. She says they can enter a similar mental and spiritual union to our own, and will probably agree to work together with us to defeat this evil. They cannot join our telepathic link directly, but they can act through her, just as our priest-mages are acting through me.”
“Could that work?” Owain asked.
“I think so, yes. Their powers are different from ours, but we know they serve the Light in their own way. If we are to face an ancient, powerful evil, their help will be worth having.”
Owain hesitated, then said, “Tell her this. We face an unknown evil of great power. There is no guarantee that we shall survive. I would rather send her to safety with our troopers, to await the outcome of whatever happens when we try to breach that barrier.” He indicated the black wall of fog. “I do not want her death on my conscience.”
“I will tell her.”
The priest-mage held another brief conversation with Sisa, then turned back to Owain. “She says that, since she is here, it was obviously meant for her to encounter us, and to use her powers to aid mine in supporting you. She says she sees the hand of her Goddess in this. For myself, I think she may be right. At any rate, she absolves you from any blame if she is killed.”
Owain sighed. “Very well. Tell her she may contact her sisters.”
They watched as Sisa closed her eyes and frowned in concentration. After about a minute, her expression lightened, as if a great strain had been lifted from her. She remained silent for another few minutes, then opened her eyes and spoke to Hevel.
“She says she has managed to reach her Prioress in Qithara. She will wake her sisters, and they will gather in their prayer room. She asks if we can wait for about fifteen minutes, until they are all assembled and ready.”
Owain nodded. “While we wait, you and she can use your powers to find out more about that black fog. I shall try to go through it.”
“But you are no wizard or mage!” Hevel objected. “How can you do that without being killed?”
“I shall use this ampoule, and see what happens. Whatever it is that we seek lies on the far side of that fog. I must at least try to reach it. If I fail, you can tell your brothers, and try to find another way to breach those defenses.”
“I… I suppose you are right. Very well. Sisa and I will see whether we can find out anything about it, to help you.”
—————
The five master sorcerers formed a semi-circle, focused like a lens on the point where the footpath emerged from the ward spell. Around them, seventeen sets of clothing lay in heaps. The hapless apprentice sorcerers who had worn them had been slain by the being in the Dark Altar, their bodies and life essences consumed to bolster its power. Their trembling, fearful teachers knew that, if they failed this night, they would suffer the same fate – if whatever danger was outside did not kill them first.
“Strengthen the ward spell around the footpath,” their leader whispered. “Whatever is out there will most likely come that way, since it is the only point of entry into the outer two circles.”
The others nodded. The black fog shifted, thinning at the sides and rear, concentrating and growing thicker around the path.
They waited on tenterhooks, poised for instant action.
XXII
Owain and the soldiers waited, sitting on the grass, until Hevel and Sisa had finished their preparations. At last the priest-mage said, “Sisa’s sisters are ready, as are my brothers. We have agreed that, since we do not know the spell that produced the fog barrier, we cannot aid you in breaking it. However, if your artifact of light succeeds in breaking it, Sisa and her sisters will hold a spell of protection over you against arcane attack. My brothers and I will be ready to use counter-spells against any sorcerers who may be waiting.”
Owain nodded as he stood. “That sounds good to me.” He glanced at Ofer and Raz. “I think you should leave now. I’ll pass you through the ward to the first circle, then give you time to get back to the horses. You can wait for us there. From here on, I doubt you’ll be able to help us.”
“You never know,” Ofer said. His face was pale, but determined. “Besides, you’re no mage, King’s Champion, but I don’t see you running.”
“My feet are sore and tired,” Raz quipped, feigning a limp. “I may as well stay with you, and give them a rest until this is over.”
Owain laughed. “I thank both of you. You are fighting men to be proud of.”
“One thing,” Ofer added. “Would you please touch that… thing… you carry to our swords and daggers? If it’s a power for good, I’d like to have that added blessing on my blades.”
“Of course.”
Owain took out the ampoule again, and touched it to the men’s weapons. All four blades appeared to glow briefly, faintly, as he did so.
Raz shivered. “I felt a tingle from that,” he muttered.
Ofer nodded. “Me, too.”
“There is real power concentrated in this,” Owain agreed. He drew Rajczak’s dagger and his battle-axe, and held the ampoule to them as well, feeling the same tingle Raz had reported.
As he returned the dagger to its sheath, he said, “We shall not go up the footpath. Any enemy inside will expect us to do that, so let us surprise them. We’ll try over there, a quarter of the way around the hill. Hevel, Sisa, stay about three or four yards behind me. Raz, you stay well out to my left; Ofer, to the right. Any enemy inside will concentrate on us in the center, which may give you two an opportunity to strike from the side.”
The two soldiers spoke as one. “Got it.” “Aye, King’s Champion.”
“Good.” He looked at Hevel and Sisa. “Are you ready?”
“Ready, King’s Champ
ion,” Hevel answered. Sisa must have understood instinctively what he meant, because she gulped, then nodded firmly.
“Stay back far enough that you can see around me, and react to any threat from inside.”
Owain moved around the hill, stepping awkwardly as the slope grew steeper. He looked down at the ampoule in his left hand, which seemed to grow brighter even as he looked at it. “It’s all up to you,” he whispered. “Either I die out here, or we go through and face whatever’s inside.”
He wound the ampoule’s chain around two of his fingers, and hefted the battle-axe in his right hand. Sucking in a deep breath, he raised his left hand, and slowly pushed the ampoule into the fog. Tendrils of the dark substance wrapped around his fingers. He felt a sudden, agonizing chill run up his arm, as if his hand were being turned to ice and stone; but the ampoule flared up, becoming so bright his eyes could not look at it, driving back the coldness. It was as if a titanic struggle were being waged between light and darkness. Wisps of black fog seemed to flee in all directions, and there was a mighty groaning sound. Suddenly, the barrier gave way. With a mighty blast of ice-cold wind and a shriek as if of human agony, the fog vanished, leaving the entire hilltop exposed to the moonlight. Below them, the lower two ward spells vanished in the same instant, leaving the hilltop unprotected.
Owain found himself staring into a circle of standing stones. He was standing between two of them. Five hooded, cloaked figures had been staring off to his left, along the line of the footpath, but spun around in confusion as they realized what had happened. The central figure was the fastest to recover. He pointed his right hand at Owain, and screamed some words in a guttural, harsh, grating tongue. Owain just had time to realize, I know that tongue! I heard it from the defenders of Karsh!
A narrow beam of red light lanced out from the figure’s hand. It speared towards Owain, but was absorbed and dissipated by a golden curtain of light that suddenly coruscated around and above him, like a tall, narrow dome covering him from head to feet. He realized that the ward spell cast by Sisa and her sisters was protecting him.
Behind him, he heard Hevel shout, “In Ahurael’s name!” A ball of green fire flew over Owain’s head, splashing at the feet of the man who had cursed him. He was caught in its flames, and shrieked in agony; but the other four pointed at the fire, which shimmered, wavered, and went out in a ball of reddish-black steam. The burned man reeled, almost falling, but the others closed in around him, holding him upright. They looked past Owain, and raised their hands. All their attention had shifted to the priest-mage as Hevel moved to his left, to get a clear view of them past Owain. Clearly, they saw him as the more immediate threat.
We’ll see about that! Owain thought, and ran towards them, keeping to the right to leave Hevel a clear line of sight. The sorcerers wavered in confusion. The leftmost, closest to Owain, began to turn towards him, even as the others spewed their own fiery red lances at Hevel; but his attention was torn between the priest-mage and the onrushing King’s Champion. He could not react fast enough to protect himself as Owain swung his battle-axe in a smooth, powerful stroke. The sorcerer shrieked as the blade lopped off his left arm above the elbow, and cleaved deep into his chest.
The dark-clad figure stumbled and fell to his knees, clutching at the massive wound with his right arm. He collapsed as Owain pivoted towards the next sorcerer in line. The Champion felt the ampoule, pressed against the palm of his left hand by the haft of his axe, grow suddenly warmer as the weapon drew blood, but dared not take his attention from his foes to glance at it.
Behind him, Sisa altered the focus of her protective spell to shield Hevel as the red lances struck at him, deflecting and dissipating them before they could harm him. As they vanished, he called, “Thank you, sister-mage!”. He raised his right hand and tossed a succession of the glowing green fireballs at the remaining sorcerers.
Sisa smiled as she switched her focus back to Owain. He is valiant! she thought to herself and her sisters, as she saw him reverse the stroke that had felled the first figure. As his axe swept up and back to the right, it almost decapitated the second sorcerer in the line, leaving his head attached by only a flap of flesh and skin. Blood fountained. The figure flopped limply forward, as if rendered suddenly boneless.
The figure at the far end of the line of sorcerers suddenly screamed aloud, a high-pitched, agonized wail, and collapsed. Owain heard Raz yell savagely, “Didn’t expect that through your kidney, did you?” The blade of the trooper’s sword was red with blood. He’d obviously run in from the left, while the sorcerers’ attention was held by Owain and the priest-mage.
“Nicely done, Raz!” Owain called as he closed in on the remaining two figures. One was still stumbling, off-balance, after being burned by Hevel’s first bolt. The second released his arm, raising his hand to point at Owain, only to shriek in his turn as another of Hevel’s green fireballs splashed all over him, enveloping him in flames.
“Leave one for me!” Ofer yelled as he sprinted in from the other side. Owain had already started to swing his axe, but the trooper beat him to it, charging straight at the last sorcerer, his sword held out in front of him like a lance. Its point rammed into and right through the man’s chest, coming out in the center of his spine. The sorcerer didn’t so much scream as sigh, a gurgling, bubbling sound, and folded forward around the blade as he fell. Meanwhile, Owain checked his swing, lifted the axe once more, and chopped down deep into the shoulder and chest of the burning, screaming sorcerer struck by Hever’s spell. The man’s wails were cut off as he toppled, falling on top of the man Raz had slain.
Wrenching his blade free, Owain looked around, opening his mouth to thank his comrades; but before he could speak, there was a colossal concussion of sound, as if a thunderbolt had exploded in their midst. From the dark stone at the very peak of the hill, blackness surged upwards, climbing in the moonlight like a roiling thunderhead.
Owain and his companions fell back in confusion as a voice bellowed, “Again they fail me! Are no worthwhile human instruments to be had anywhere?” The sound boomed over the plain around the hill, so loud that in the woods four and a half miles distant, the remainder of the patrol heard the words clearly, and trembled for their comrades. The blackness coalesced into a giant figure like that of a grotesquely misshapen man. Red, coal-like eyes gleamed in a head of shapeless smoke, atop a bulging, twenty-foot-high torso clad in what looked like slabs of arcane flesh and muscle, jagged and uneven, as if they had been thrown at random onto a frame without caring what the result would look like. Legs like warped pillars reached to the ground. Arms with muscles twisted like gigantic hawsers lifted hands of yellow-red fire.
A mouth opened in the shapeless head, and the voice growled, “So, you puny humans challenge me yet again? Have you not learned, down the aeons, that my powers are greater than mere mortal flesh? That your spells and arts cannot touch me? Then learn!” The figure’s right hand swept across the hilltop, almost casually, and fire poured down from it onto the five figures standing there.
The ampoule in Owain’s left hand suddenly became unbearably hot, seeming to burn his skin as he cried out in pain – but he suddenly realized that it was throwing a radiant veil around him. The flames falling from the figure’s hand splashed over and around him, but did not touch him.
The same could not be said for Raz and Ofer. They screamed as the flames enveloped them, falling to the ground, rolling in a vain attempt to put them out. Within seconds their cries ceased, and they lay still, their bodies smoking.
Owain spun around to look at Hever and Sisa. Their spells, and the shared power of their fellow mages, had protected them; but all their energies were being poured into holding off the flames. Clearly, they could not help him.
Owain acted without thought. His left hand, still holding the ampoule, swept down to his waist, drawing Rajczak’s dagger from its sheath. As the ampoule touched the weapon, it seemed to impart some of its light to the dagger, which began to glow. Owain bent, ga
thering his strength, then straightened, hurling the knife straight upward at the hand above him, still pouring out flame.
The dark figure bellowed in shock and pain as the weapon struck home. “What is this? I cannot be harmed by mortal weapons – yet I bleed!” It lifted its hand to stare at the dagger, sunk deep into the palm, even the hilt now glowing with the ampoule’s shimmering light. Wisps of dark smoke drifted from the wound.
Almost as if a voice spoke within him, Owain suddenly knew what he must do. He tensed, ready to sprint past the figure; but the dark being moved faster. It shook its left hand, so that the dagger fell away; then it pointed a vast, ominous finger straight at him. A tight, narrow beam of roiling red-and-purple light lanced out. It smashed through the protective veil of light cast by the ampoule, and thrust deep into Owain’s chest like a spear head.
Owain gasped as agony seared through him. His heart froze. His chest constricted, crushed, as if clamped in metal bands. He knew at once that he had received his death blow. He had only seconds to live… but he knew that he would live for at least those few seconds. He’d seen men struck through the heart with spear, sword or arrow, who’d taken twenty to thirty seconds to die. Some had even managed to slay the enemy who had killed them, before they succumbed to their wounds. He thought savagely, Then I’ll use my last seconds to finish this! Ahurael, give me strength!