by Cindy Dees
“Alchemy incoming!” Rynn cried from behind Will.
Will managed to dodge the small glass missile aimed at his chest. His movement opened up his left side, however, and he took a nasty cut across his ribs. “Replace me!” he called.
Rynn jumped in front of him as Will dropped back. Hatma ran forward to patch his armor while Rosana cast a healing spell into him.
“How are you doing for healing magic?” he panted.
“Low. Raina can only do a little at a time.”
“Does your healing magic heal her?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Try it. We need her casting at full strength.”
Rosana shot him a worried look. “Don’t count on it.”
He traded grim looks with her. They were in serious trouble then.
As he headed back to the line, he passed Sha’Li dropping back. She’d taken some terrible hacking blow where her neck and shoulder joined and was barely upright.
“Raina!” he shouted. He said to Sha’Li as he raced past her, “See if you can get that door open across the clearing. We can’t stay here all day.”
* * *
Sha’Li staggered and nearly passed out from massive blood loss before a wave of cool, painful healing flowed into her neck.
“Better?” Raina gasped, looking half-dead herself.
“Yes. Thanks. You all right?” she asked. “You look terrible.”
“I’m fine. Do you need a magic shield before you head back?” Raina asked in a paper-thin voice.
The girl didn’t look capable of lighting a candle with magic, let alone casting a high-level protective spell.
“Save your magic. Will wants me to open that door over there.”
“Hurry,” Raina urged her before turning away to heal Lakanos, who was bloody and not moving, as if mortally wounded.
Sha’Li moved to the back of the cluster of tree branches and peered over at the door. A few of Anton’s men were examining it already, and the way they moved, they were rogues. They looked frustrated, too.
If she didn’t look directly at the door, but let it hover at the edge of her peripheral vision, she thought she spied a faint magical gleam about it, like the dim glow of moonlight into the dark of a cold night.
The symbols had to be the key. She pulled out her circular book again and thumbed through the pages, comparing various symbols carved on the door to those in her book. They were very similar in shape and style, clearly the same language or code. Some of them looked vaguely like drawings, while others were collections of slashes, dots, and ink strokes.
In her experience, collections of symbols like this disguised key mechanisms. The right symbols had to be manipulated in the right way, in the right order, to unlock the door. As the thought occurred to her, the tribe symbol on her cheek abruptly felt warm. Startled, she accepted the sign and murmured her thanks to Lunimar.
What order, then? Instead of matching individual symbols, she started looking for matching sequences of symbols in her book to those on the door.
“Hurry, Sha’Li!” Raina called from behind her. “Anton’s throwing death poisons, and I can’t throw many more life spells.”
Frantically, Sha’Li searched the pages of her book. The answer had to be in here somewhere.
* * *
Justin heard the sounds of combat as they approached the strange, domelike island rising out of the mist and turbulent water. Tarses had created a truly terrifying barge made entirely of clear ice and had ferried his men across a dozen at a time. Justin and Kadir were on the last barge.
Not only could he look straight down into the churning, poisonous depths, but Justin feared that, at any second, the boat would melt or even shatter. He’d never been more glad to set foot back on solid land.
Tarses formed his men and moved out, advancing into the strange forest of dense, leafless tree trunks. To his credit, Tarses led from the front. Kadir stuck to Tarses’s heels, and Justin stuck to Kadir’s. They followed the shouts and clashing metal to a clearing with a battle raging off to one side of it.
“There’s Eben!” Justin shouted, pointing at a beleaguered line of fighters holding a narrow gap between two trees.
Tarses paused for a moment, clearly assessing the battlefield. They stood at the left flank of the attacking force trying to break through the pair of trees.
“Anton Constantine!” Tarses snarled. “I always hated that guy.”
And with that, he and his men charged.
* * *
Vesper stepped through the portal. Passing through to the material plane, even for a short time, taxed her power to the absolute limit, and she could not sustain it for long. But no way was she missing this, the pinnacle of her achievements, aimed at for the past 150 years.
Her bodyguard, who had stayed with her all this time, loyal to the end, led her forces through the unstable portal. He didn’t think it would hold open for long, hence she’d gone through just behind him. Then a stream of phantasms rushed through, pouring out of the cataract as fast as they could jump through.
By her count, several hundred of her elementally powered phantasms made it through the breach before the portal’s magic collapsed. The Gaged Man had lined up her army in descending order from strongest to weakest, so those who had made it across to this plane were her deadliest fighters.
“The door!” she called to the Gaged Man. “Over there! We must take it!”
He spied the nullstone door, circular and covered with dragon runes, and nodded back his understanding. However, a pitched battle of some kind was already under way between them and the door. She stood still and let her minions charge forward around her, crashing into the fight.
A chaotic mêlée ensued, and she shied away from it, terrified of the mortality of the fragile body she inhabited. If it died, she would perish forever. Stars, it was infuriating being forced to exist in this weak state. Just a few more minutes. And then she would find the Sleeping King’s body and make it hers.
With his immortal body and her immortal spirit, they would form a being that would make Maximillian himself shake in his boots. Even the dragons themselves would cower before her. And then they would pay for what they’d done to her. They all would pay.
* * *
Will staggered back from the line fight, and Ayli had just trickled the last of her healing magic into him when a great roar made him look up sharply. Somebody had just attacked Anton’s forces from the left, hitting them hard.
He craned to see over Eben and Lakanos, and his jaw dropped. Those were elementals. Big ones. Like the ones last year in the Dominion—
Wait a minute. Those were just like the ones from last year.
“Rynn!” he shouted. “Are those phantasms on the field?”
The paxan didn’t respond immediately, for he was engaged in a lightning-fast fight against a two–long sword fighter who was giving him all the trouble he could handle. Will made his way to Rynn’s side, timing his own attack for when both swords were extended forward and unable to snap back to defend against a punishing thrust from his staff. He caught Anton’s man under the ribs and drove up into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of the fellow and forcing him to fall back, gasping and retching.
“The elementals on the right. Are they phantasms?” Will shouted.
Rynn looked across the wild fight. “Yes. Where did they come from?”
“I don’t care. They’re attacking Anton.”
“They’ll attack us as soon as they’re done with his troops,” Rynn warned.
Will grinned. “Yes, but until then, the enemy of my enemy…”
Rynn grinned and dived back into the battle.
* * *
Thanon stared at the mess before him and didn’t have the faintest idea where to begin. His men, a hundred strong, stared along with him, and one of his lieutenants muttered, “Who’s who?”
“I have no idea.” He reached out with his mind, using his paxan mental powers to feel the combat
ants, to sense their motives and emotional states. Perhaps he could figure out who was attacking and who defending at the least. From there, perchance he could reason out who wanted what in this sea of clashing weapons, bloodied bodies, shouts, wails, and mayhem.
A mind pushed back against his with such power that he physically reeled from it. “It cannot be…”
“Be what, my lord?” one of his men asked.
“I have not felt that mind for nigh on two hundred years.” He reached out again, this time with exceeding caution, merely to taste and observe, not to interact with that massive blast of Kothite might.
One of his lieutenants, also a veteran of several hundred years serving in Grand Marshal Korovo’s forces, lurched. He looked at Thanon wildly. “What—”
“I feel her, too.”
“But … she’s dead.”
He had no explanation for the existence of Ammertus’s daughter here. But who else wielded the same mental emanations as Ammertus, layered with the calculating, capricious, female energy of his only daughter, Avilla? She was destroyed 150 years ago. She. Could. Not. Exist.
And yet she lived. Furthermore, she was on this field of battle.
Why, then, had she not simply mind-blasted everyone who opposed her, ordering them all to die?
He scanned the battle frantically in search of her child-sized frame, her long red braids, the same gaudy shade as her father’s unruly red hair. Why did he not see her?
He dared not send his men into battle against her. He and they would all die if they chose wrongly who to support in this fight—
His darting gaze halted. Went back to the person he’d just spotted.
His jaw dropped.
What was this place?
“Are you all right, my lord?”
His men, almost exclusively paxan and sensitive to emotions and thoughts, were picking up on his mental distress. “I am … shocked. Look over there. Who do you see leading that brace of hydesmyn?”
His lieutenant gasped. “Surely not. He died in glorious battle shortly after his return from Pan Orda.”
“And yet, there stands a well-formed jann, tall and handsome, wearing ice armor, identical in appearance to every portrait I’ve ever seen of the Empire’s greatest general, ably leading a force of skilled warriors.”
At the moment, Tarses’s men were being hard pressed by several large elementals on one side and a smaller force of roguish types on the other.
“How can it be anyone but General Tarses?” Thanon demanded.
His mind felt tilted and awhirl. First Avilla, and now Tarses? What cause could possibly bring two such eminent beings back to life and together in this place?
“To General Tarses!” he ordered his men. They waded into the mêlée, slashing their way determinedly toward the legendary Kothite general and Imperial hero.
* * *
Sha’Li gave up on the book. She could find no sequence anywhere in its pages that even remotely resembled the symbols on that cursed door. The amulet under her shirt burned her flesh where it rubbed her scales, and she yanked it clear of her collar in frustration. The medallion felt hot in her hand. Odd. Her scales acted as excellent insulators, and she rarely felt heat or cold.
She turned it over and noticed a single row of symbols carved around its edge. She had to turn the thing just right to spot them and did so eagerly now.
Someone bumped into her, and Raina mumbled an apology, then asked, “How’re you coming on the door?”
“I’m not!” she snapped.
“Keep trying. I know you can do it.”
Sha’Li tilted the amulet and moved to the edge of their little copse of tree trunks, but there wasn’t enough light to see by. She spied a bit of filtered sunlight making its way through the wake tree’s leaves and the pervasive mist to one side of the great black door.
She had to climb the nearest tree trunk and turn sideways to slip between it and its neighbor, but she escaped their cul-de-sac and picked her way carefully past clusters of fighting to the brighter spot.
Crouching in the shadow of a tree trunk, she held her hand out with the amulet in it. The light illuminated the carvings on its polished surface, and she shifted around so she could look at the amulet and door simultaneously. It was awkward standing thus, but she was able to begin comparing the symbols. This had to be it. Why else would the amulet have heated up on its own?
* * *
Rosana had never seen so many fighting so fiercely in the same place at the same time. She’d thought the second incursion of the Boki into Dupree had been bad, but it was a pale shadow in violence and bloodshed compared to this. She was out of mana and resorting to her stash of potions to keep her friends alive.
Raina did what she could, but she could only heal in dribs and drabs that did little to stem the tide of bloodshed and injury around them.
As far as Rosana could tell, no fewer than three separate forces were on the field. And they all appeared to be fighting their way toward the black door while doing their best to keep the others away from the same goal. It reminded her of a giant, deadly game of capture the flag.
She had just turned to check on her frontline fighters when a wave of something dark and sinister rolled through her mind. What on Urth? She looked around the grove in alarm, seeking the source of the newest threat.
Through the trees, she glimpsed them coming, dripping wet and creeping low toward the battle. Dark in color, they moved quickly and stealthily. Had they actually come through the Nyghtflume to get here? How had they survived?
But then she felt the wave again, stronger this time, and recognized it. Void magic. These creatures were steeped in it. And for some reason, they drew the same magic out of her. She felt it oozing from her pores along with the rancid sweat of fear.
An urge to summon the black energy to her hands, to blast it in every direction, to rain death and destruction on everyone, nearly overcame her. Gads, it was a seductive call. It was right there. Hers for the taking. No matter that she’d cast all her usual mana already. If she called on that magic, renewed magical power would come to her, flowing from that dark place inside her—
Right. And overcasting would kill her. Not that the void magic cared. It coaxed her to use the power. Kill her foes. Take control of the battle. To rain death upon them all.
She ran up behind Will and shouted to him as he fought, “Void creatures have come out of the river! Beware their magics!”
He grunted an acknowledgment.
Dropping back, she warned Ayli and Raina, “Void magic is on the field! Watch for death spells and wasting diseases cast upon our friends!”
Raina looked where she pointed and gasped. “Are those night trolls?”
“They’re trolls, they’re black, and they stink of the Void,” Rosana replied. “Looks like they’ve got some nulvari with them, too.”
“Tainted, all of them,” Ayli declared.
“We have to find a way out of here!” Raina cried. “We’ll all die if we stay in the middle of this carnage.”
Rosana responded tartly, “We need to get through that door. Open it, slip through, and then lock it behind us so all these other people can kill one another.”
Ayli asked tersely as she reached for Cicero to heal him, “Rosana, do you have any healing left?”
“Not really. A potion or two.”
“Take Raina and go help your lizardman friend get that door open. Neither of you is doing any good here.”
Raina looked crushed, and Rosana spied a spark of rebellion in her friend’s blue eyes. She grabbed Raina’s hand and dragged her away from the fight. “C’mon.”
* * *
Eben felt his formidable strength beginning to wane. No matter how many of their foes they killed, more just kept arriving. He had no idea who was who anymore. They were all killing each other indiscriminately as far as he could tell. Not that he was any different. He attacked anyone who raised a sword to him and was in range of his long sword and mace. The entire w
orld had narrowed down to the person on his left and the person on his right. They were his friends, his brothers and sisters in arms. He would die for them, and they would die for him. Everyone else was the enemy.
But then he heard a familiar voice cast water damage, and his head jerked up. He nearly got gutted for his troubles, and he had to refocus on the mercenary before him. Impatient, he took the first opening the man offered and thrust his razor-flanged mace into the man’s face. The effect was devastating. The fellow staggered back screaming and spouting blood, weapon dropped and hands plastered over his ruined face.
Eben looked up again, searching for his sister. For surely that had been her clear, calm voice incanting a water spell. He didn’t see her, but he did spot a half dozen cloaked, hooded figures with glowing hands moving into the grove in a tight phalanx. The Cabal. They didn’t wade into the thick of the weapons combat but rather skirted around the edges of the space, apparently headed toward Anton Constantine.
Another flash of water magic. That had to be Marikeen.
“Cicero! Take my place!” he shouted.
Eben dashed forward through the gap left by the man whose face he’d slashed. He ducked a polearm that swung at his head and dodged around a cluster of Imperial soldiers surrounding some sort of elemental and pummeling it into the ground.
“Marikeen!” he shouted.
One of the cloaked figures turned toward him momentarily. It was to that one he grimly fought over the next several minutes. The trick was to keep moving forward, not to engage any individuals who took a swing at him but rather to just block the blow and move on.
Eventually, he drew near the cluster of cloaked figures. They seemed to be splitting their magic about equally between casting defensive spells on themselves and attacking people around them. He paused just out of casting range and called his sister’s name again. This time one of the cloaked figures separated from the group. Marikeen threw herself into his arms, and they exchanged a short, fierce hug. He pushed back her hood to see her face, and she snatched it back up over her head.
“There’s a powerful psionicist on the field,” she said quickly. “The hood protects me from her.” She led him quickly to one side of the main battle, and they moved behind a large tree trunk out of sight of most of the combatants.