“You will not escape me again, Lucius,” she cried out above the howling of the gale. “The Guardian Starlight is mine!”
“You have become twisted, Aidy. You are the last person who should have it!”
“It has corrupted you, don’t you see, Lucius?” Adrianna said as the gale died down and she drifted towards him. “You do not have the knowledge or the will to control an artefact of the elves. It would be better if you simply gave it to me.”
“It doesn’t want you. I know that much. Whatever this thing is, it chose me. It is in my blood, Aidy, that is why it wanted me. I have some connection to the elves, however diluted by the years since their passing. No amount of study can replace that.”
“You are wrong in that assumption, Lucius, very wrong. Unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the inclination to school you further. Hand it over to me now or, I promise, I will kill you.”
So saying, Adrianna’s eyes blazed with an unholy light. Lucius raced for the door only to find it blocked by the Preacher Divine.
“Harridan!” the Preacher Divine screamed as he ignored Lucius and gestured with his staff towards the airborne Shadowmage. A jagged bolt of brilliant white light erupted from his staff and struck Adrianna full in the chest, sending her spinning through the air to fall out of sight in the plaza beyond.
The Preacher Divine seemed to notice Lucius then and, as his gaze travelled to the Guardian Starlight, his eyes gleamed with desire.
With a flick of his wrist, Lucius sent his dagger tumbling pommel over point in an arrow-straight throw that ended with the weapon embedded in the Preacher Divine’s shoulder.
Grunting with pain, the Preacher Divine staggered back. Lucius threw himself through window and tumbled to the ground outside. Rolling with the momentum, he bounded back onto his feet and raced for the next building.
Nearby, Adrianna was getting to her feet.
Anger flooded into her heart, and Adrianna embraced it, feeling its energy. It boiled and erupted, raw fury flowing through her veins, binding itself with the rush of magic she summoned. And she rose into the air again, her hair forming a wild halo around her head, fizzing with sparks of arcane energy.
TELLMORE AND RENAULD had managed to advance nearly the full length of the bridge without having attracted any attention, and the wizard found himself daring to hope that he might just accomplish his mission by picking the Guardian Starlight from the dead body of one of the combatants. He had seen Renauld throw more than one unnerved glance at him as they witnessed the titanic magical furies unleashed close by. Adrianna had pulled the roof off one house, shortly after to disappear from sight as the Preacher Divine blasted her with magic, and Lucius had dived out of the small house to sprint to another building, no doubt to lay another ambush.
Tellmore then saw the agent of Vos stagger out of the roofless building, clutching at a dagger buried in his shoulder. They both saw one another at the same time, but pain slowed the Vos agent’s reactions and Tellmore released his spell first, a hastily cast enchantment designed to coat the man in a web of magical strands that could bind or crush him as desired.
The Vos man waved wildly with his staff, just catching the edge of the incoming spell with enough force to turn it aside. Before either could call upon another magical attack, Renauld charged, shouting out to their men-at-arms as he raised his sword to strike.
“Renauld, no!”
Tellmore reached out a hand to stop him, but it was too late.
THE WAR CRIES of several men caused Lucius to frown and he cautiously peer over the top of a stone. Racing down two of the bridges leading to the plaza were armoured men sporting the colours of the Baron de Sousse.
More sounds of spells discharging came to his ears and he decided to move away from the source, figuring the longer he spent in hiding, the more chance that everyone else in the hall might wipe one another out.
He crept out of the shop and his attention was immediately drawn upwards. Floating about thirty feet in the air, in complete silence, Adrianna looked the very vision of his worst nightmare.
Her skin was a deathly pale, while her hair streamed behind, twisting and sizzling with raw, untempered magic. It was her face that scared him the most, though. For once, there was no anger in it at all. She was completely devoid of any emotion and he knew in that moment that she was more dangerous than she had ever been.
Adrianna’s head whipped round and her cold gaze nearly froze him in place. Instinctively, Lucius grasped the Guardian Starlight and plucked it from his belt, brandishing it as he called upon his magic.
He felt the threads of power running inside his mind’s eye and called upon the power of the blackest of them, the one that felt chill to his mental touch. It throbbed and grew as he hastily sculpted it into shape. The arcane presence of the Guardian Starlight was a beacon in his hand and the spell flowed through it, magnified and focussed as it soared towards Adrianna.
Caught within the spell’s binding power, Adrianna stopped in mid-air and Lucius channelled every ounce of energy he could summon into it, feeling his skin grow cold as ice crystals formed in his hair and his breath steamed from his mouth.
Adrianna shrieked as the threads of magic wrapped around her, sapping her vitality and ageing her before Lucius’ eyes.
“It did not have to be this way,” he managed to say through gritted teeth.
That was enough for Adrianna to find the briefest gap in his spell. She broke free in a dazzling pulse of magic, sending waves of dust spiralling away from her and causing Lucius to stagger.
Raising her hands, she let loose a long, keening wail of anguish, the rising crescendo building into a spell of terrible potency.
Lucius hastily erected layers of invisible magical barriers between himself and Adrianna, hoping that the Guardian Starlight would aid him in maintaining their integrity when she unleashed her onslaught.
He did not have to wait long. Head snapping down, Adrianna uttered a single word of power and the air above Lucius groaned. Glancing up, he saw roiling black smoke gathering above him, spreading outwards like clouds driven by a storm. It rained fire.
The breath was sucked from Lucius’ lungs as the fire flayed his clothes and skin, and set his hair alight. Feeling his skin begin to peel, Lucius reeled blindly. Every inch of his body seemed to boil and there was no relief.
Then, it was gone.
Lucius did not move for a long time. The fingers of his left hand showed signs of life first, twitching as he slowly extended his arm out, searching.
The Guardian Starlight was gone.
HOPING THE PREACHER Divine’s staff had all but spent its power, Tellmore left Renauld to bury his sword in the man’s chest in order to search out the two Shadowmages. He stopped short when he saw Adrianna floating towards him, her deadly intent clear, but she was then distracted by something she saw behind a row of buildings beyond his line of sight.
The power he saw Adrianna release then all but took his breath away. He had never seen the like.
Tellmore’s mind flicked through dozens of incantations as he approached the area Adrianna had devastated. She had disappeared from view, but he had no illusions that she wouldn’t rematerialise soon. He tried to think fast for a spell to use against her.
THE CRYSTAL AT the tip of Alhmanic’s staff had begun to fade, and he had been reduced to parrying blows from the Pontaine knight’s sword with its shaft, an undignified treatment for a relic. Every movement brought pain as the Shadowmage’s dagger, still buried in his shoulder, began to grind against bone.
Alhmanic knew he needed to withdraw, to allow the staff to regenerate. Without it, he was utterly outclassed by the mages present here.
But he was not willing to return to the Anointed Lord, may he be graced with serving her forever, empty-handed.
Alhmanic limped backwards a couple of steps, and held up a hand as if pleading for mercy. The knight backed off slightly, his sword held at arm’s length in the traditional Pontaine signal for surrender.
&
nbsp; “Your staff, sir, drop it,” the knight said.
Alhmanic managed a nod. He made to cast the staff aside, but whipped it up suddenly, smashing it against the knight’s sword to throw the blade to one side. Then he thrust the staff forward with all his remaining strength, so the butt thudded right between the knight’s eyes.
The knight fell to the ground, out cold.
“Bloody Pontaine idiot,” Alhmanic muttered. “No wonder you lot lost the damned war.”
Turning away from the knight, he paused to grasp the dagger with one hand. Closing his eyes, he tore the weapon from his flesh.
Gasping with the effort, he cast a baleful look down at the unconscious knight. It did not sit well with him to leave an enemy at his back, but Alhmanic knew he was weak and getting weaker. If he was going to claim the blasted artefact in the name of the Anointed Lord, may her farts part the clouds, he had to act now.
LUCIUS COULD NOT see. Pain screamed at him from every joint, with every movement, and his skin burned. His greatest dread though was that he was blind. Had his eyelids been melted and sealed by Adrianna’s flames?
The Guardian Starlight still called to him and he tried to reach out with his magical senses to find it. The artefact was close, but the constant waves of pain shook his concentration with every tremor.
He felt he had been so close to a final understanding of the device and, perhaps, of his own origins. It burned to think he could give up so easily.
Crawling forward on his knees, Lucius swept the ground before him, hoping to feel the familiar cool touch of the Guardian Starlight.
THEY MET IN the plaza.
Tellmore instantly let loose with a salvo of raw magical energy that chattered his teeth as its power swept through him. He had hoped the rapid but powerful bolts would throw Adrianna off balance, perhaps even send her tumbling down into the rivers of lava far below, but the Shadowmage waved a hand and the spell diverted its energy into the plaza below her, blasting a crater into the stone.
She responded by sending shockwaves through the stone at Tellmore’s feet and he had to leap backwards to avoid plummeting to his death. He retaliated by creating the ghostly apparition of a sword above Adrianna’s head and with a chopping motion, brought it down.
The blade cracked on an invisible shield Adrianna created, shattering into a thousand ethereal fragments.
Tellmore tried again, this time clapping his hands together and allowing the magic to amplify the sound so it would burst the ears and crush the heart of anyone in front of him, but the Shadowmage seemed impervious to it.
Not wanting to wait around for her reprisal, Tellmore wrapped a spell about himself, and disappeared, only to find that Adrianna had created a vivid pink mist that silhouetted him perfectly. He managed to raise an arcane shield just a fraction of a second before a bolt of black energy burnt itself out against its surface.
She was too powerful, he knew. A graduate of the Three Towers, his spells were insignificant against hers, while his own defences would eventually be breached. However, Tellmore had not gained stature in Pontaine society by charging at problems head on, and he resolved to try a different tack.
Seeing Adrianna floating towards him and preparing to throw another attack, he bolstered his shield and drew upon his power to create a very different spell.
The air before him seemed to thicken and twist, before a dark blue fog spiralled out of nothingness to quickly envelop first him, then the whole plaza. Though it blinded him, Tellmore was thankful it also concealed his position.
Already, he could hear the savage discharge of powerful spells as Adrianna threw spells randomly before her, hoping to strike him by chance. He turned and ran before she summoned a wind to blow his fog away and leave him naked before her fury.
The plaza shook as spells impacted again and again on its surface, and the stone itself began to groan under the punishment it had sustained. It would not be long before the plaza could no longer support itself and the whole structure, bridges and all, would plummet hundreds of feet down to smash upon bare rock or sink into molten lava.
Amidst the clouds of dust and wisps of blue fog, a hand reached out, straining for the marble shaft of the Guardian Starlight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE WOODEN HATCH opened and then banged against brick as it fell. Poking her head out, Grennar peered about, then hoisted herself up the last few rungs of the ladder into a small chamber. A single door led out, and it was already open. Breathless from the long, long climb, she held her side as she walked out into the open air.
Outside, she found herself on a balcony that circled the spire just a few yards down from its spiked peak. The view this high up was amazing, with only the central keep of the Citadel rising above her.
Before her was the ocean.
Waves that would easily swallow the spire on which she perched raged high, cresting in a deluge of white foam. Further out, they seemed calmer, though she knew that was deceptive. What looked like gentle rolling hills of water were in fact a nightmare to navigate and could easily swamp a ship.
Grennar had never been to sea but hoped to one day. Perhaps when things had calmed down in the city and the Beggars’ Guild did not teeter on a precipice of failure and destitution.
Getting her breath back she followed the balcony as it rounded the spire. On the opposite side stood Wendric, now guildmaster of the thieves. She had not quite sussed him out as yet, and so remained wary in his presence. Lucius had trusted him enough to run the guild in his absence, and she supposed that should be recommendation enough. Trust was not an easy thing for her to bequeath, though.
“Good morning, young miss,” Wendric said without turning, and Grennar grimaced.
He had insisted on calling her “young miss” since their first meeting as guildmasters. Nothing was meant by it, she knew, it was just Wendric’s way to address her as such; in his mind, he was showing the deepest respect. For her part, it merely reminded everyone who heard how young she really was.
Lucius had always treated her as an equal, not some child off the street.
“Wendric,” she said and joined him leaning against the balcony, staring down at the city going about it business below. Today, that business was unusually loud and colourful, and it filled her with nothing but dread.
Grennar decided to avoid the uncomfortable truths happening below them for at least a little while longer.
“Have you heard anything from Lucius?” she asked.
Wendric shook his head.
“No. I thought you would have heard something before we did.”
“Well, that’s what we do,” she said.
Wendric looked down at her and, after a moment, put an arm gently across her shoulders.
“I miss him too,” he said. “I’ll never be the guildmaster he was.”
“You’ll do alright. So long as you listen to the beggars.”
He smiled at that. “The one lesson he continued to pound into me, day after day. Beggars are the eyes and ears of the city. You’ll get far better return of information from them than you will on all the bribes you pay to guards, merchants and nobles.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“Aye.”
For a few moments, they stood in an awkward silence. Wendric finally dropped his arm.
“Can’t say I miss those crazy Shadowmages though.”
“Oh, they are still about,” Grennar said. “Just nothing like what they were under Adrianna.”
“She was the craziest of the lot of them.”
“You’ll get no argument from me there. I just hope she never found Lucius.”
He looked down at her, hearing the forlorn tone in her voice.
“Don’t you be worrying overly on Lucius,” he said, trying to put a hint of mock reproach in his voice. “You are talking about the man who joined the thieves as a pickpocket and became guildmaster in a matter of minutes.”
Grennar smiled. “And brought down the Vos rule in the city, single-
handed.”
“Indeed, bringing freedom and prosperity to all in his wake. What is one mad Shadowmage compared to all that?”
“Wendric,” Grennar said. “I am scared for him, you know.”
“I know, young miss. I know.”
Grennar shuddered and wrapped her arms about her body. “She’s different now. It is as if she doesn’t see people as, well, people any more. We are all just here to be used by her, and crushed when we get in the way.”
“Then I daresay it is a good thing that Adrianna is far away from here. And I don’t think she’ll catch Lucius. They may both be Shadowmages, but he is a thief as well. He can stay one step ahead of anyone.”
“I hope so,” Grennar whispered, then suddenly felt the need to change the subject. She stopped staring at the horizon and forced herself to watch the procession in the streets far below.
The forces of Pontaine had been roused from their slumber and were now marching through Turnitia in all their glory. Winding through the Five Markets, which had been closed by the Baron de Sousse to mark this special day, a long trail of troops meandered through Turnitia. Unlike the uniform Vos troops, however, the army of Pontaine was a brightly coloured array of nobles, men-at-arms, knights and assorted hangers-on. Each noble had his own livery and this was transposed onto the men following him in a variety of ways. It almost seemed more like a carnival than an army marching.
Though she knew it was just as likely she would never see any of the fighting men again, Grennar had taken the trouble to learn the different units that comprised the army. After all, you never knew what piece of information would prove useful in the future.
Immediately below them, crossing the Square of True Believers, were the Sardenne Militia, drafted from a hundred different towns and villages scattered across the great forest’s borders. They were a ragged looking lot, wearing their own clothes for the most part, and many bore only farming tools as weapons. They were all identified by the small red and golden shield that had been granted to them by the Baron du Fillimont, their leader. There was a lot of them in the militia but talk around the city had already suggested they would not be of much account in battle. Most would turn tail and run at the first sight of an aggressive enemy, while the rest would be cut down where they stood.
The Shadowmage Trilogy (Twilight of Kerberos: The Shadowmage Books) Page 71