Bryn drew her rapier and dagger. “No quarter. Got it.”
Elias nodded, took a breath, and drew his sword. It all came down to this moment. The last time he had drawn steel with the Lucerne Sentinels he had sought vengeance. Now he sought redemption. “Any last questions?”
“Just this,” said Bryn, looking across the room at him with eyes as sharp as the Aradurian steel she held in hand, “don’t you dare die on me. You hear me, Elias Duana. Don’t you dare.”
Elias felt something stir deep in his chest. “Not this day.”
Elias locked eyes with Danica, who nodded at him. He raised his sword and channeled his power. He felt warmth gather in his sternum, which then radiated through his body. A tidal wave of energy washed over him. He harnessed the raw arcane energy, bent it to his will. Elias erected a concave shield of shimmering energy to divert and channel the tremendous force pent up in the containment field. He constructed the shield with a small slit in the center, of a breadth to allow the blade of his sword to slip through it.
His ears registered Ogden saying, “Ingenious,” but his mind was focused entirely on the task at hand.
With painstaking care Elias eased the blade of his sword into the opening. He drew in a deep, steadying breath and focused on the enchanted steel in his hand; he made it an extension of his will. The point of the blade pierced the membrane of the containment field. The field recoiled against him, to reject the foreign magic. Instead of resisting Elias drew the field toward him, funneling it into his sword. The volatile tumult of energies threatened to overcome him, for he could not draw it quickly enough into his sword, but his shield deflected the spill-over and cycled it back toward the field in an energetic loop which then returned to his blade. Elias maintained the cycle until the containment field had been completely absorbed into his sword.
He drew his sword back into a high guard and waited. His blade felt heavier now, pregnant with a not inconsequential payload of arcane energy.
He didn’t have long to wait.
A distortion warbled in the space between him and the rift, and from it stepped Mordum, and he wasn’t alone.
Mordum held a soul-knife pressed to Teah’s throat. His other arm squeezed between her left arm and her ribcage, palm facing outward, toward Elias. Teah’s hands were bound behind her back, her legs hobbled, and she was gagged with a braid of leather cord.
“How pleasant to see you again, Duana,” Mordum said.
Teah caught Elias’s eyes with her own. She tilted her head back toward Mordum. He knew that she was trying to tell him something, warn him. She had not been far from his thoughts during the weeks he passed with Rasen. It had been his intention to return to where he had broken with her after he had reclaimed the Grimoire. Rasen didn’t want him returning to Teah’s timeline until he possessed the Grimoire, for he feared it would destabilize her timeline too much. That, and if he fell no one would be there to stop Mordum. Elias had begrudgingly agreed, providing that he was allowed to return for her after sealing the rift.
“Mordum, it doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t know the full scope of this. You have tracked me not to your past, but into another, parallel timeline.”
“Tsk, tsk,” said the dark fey as he pressed his face to Teah’s, “such tactics do not become you. I have foreseen the Enkilder’s doom, and it is you.”
“You’re only seeing a tiny piece of the puzzle. What you see is the result of your decision to try to stop me. You cannot see past your own, wrong choice.”
“Enough.” Mordum pressed the soul-knife into Teah’s throat, though his eyes never left Elias. “I see you’ve brought friends. Not very honorable of you. Tell the old wizard not to cast his spell. Teah’s throat will be slit before he can raise his hands.”
Elias glared back at Mordum. “Ogden. Stand down. Please.”
“Son, I am no unfeeling brute,” said Ogden, “but how can we measure one life against the very existence of a civilization?”
“He’s too close to the rift. Your magic could disturb it and destroy this entire timeline. Mordum knows that I’m the terminal element. He has to destroy me to rewrite history. We are the players. Until one of us is removed from the equation there can be no solution beyond this moment. The equation must be balanced.”
“He’s right, wizard.” Mordum smiled. “We are the players. We decide the fate of all. No one else. Yet he cannot destroy me until I step away from the rift.”
“And yet you’ll need to come away from it to engage me. Killing Teah will avail you nothing.”
“That is true. We’re in a stalemate. And yet you won’t let me kill her. You can’t bear the thought of losing another woman. You see, Duana, I understand you. And that is why you’ll order your friends—all of them—to fall back so that we can settle this as it was meant to be. The battle between the last of the time mages. The battle for time itself.
“Now, tell your people to exit the room and then cast a containment field across the doorway. Don’t think to deceive me. If it is false I’ll know, and cut her throat.”
“Then what?” asked Elias.
“Then we contain the rift and have ourselves a duel.”
“Do as he says,” said Elias.”
“Not ever,” growled Danica.
The other Sentinels were quick to agree.
“I am the cause of this rift in time,” said Elias. “Only I can set it right. We can’t afford to string out this stalemate for much longer. I can already feel the timeline eroding just by him being here, and if we allow him to gate back through time in such close proximity to the rift everything we seek to save could be destroyed. He has won the point. There is no other way.”
The room went silent as the two time mages stared each other down.
“Then end this, Elias, and end it well,” said the queen.
Elias waited until his party had exited the room before backpedaling toward the doorway. He laid his sword against the doorframe, though he kept his eyes fixed on Mordum, ready to raise a shield at a moment’s notice. The runes branded into his forearm warmed as he willed the containment field he had absorbed to reform in the open doorway. He spared Danica a quick glance and gave her a surreptitious, knowing wink.
Mordum’s eyes narrowed as he studied the containment field. “It is fair.”
“Now unhand Teah.”
Mordum ran a finger along the creamy expanse of her throat and then unceremoniously threw her to the floor. As she rolled across the polished white marble Elias saw that her hands were bound with linked demesnes.
“That’s the problem with you, Duana. It’s the same problem that has held the Enkilder back, and it’s one that I mean to remedy. You can’t make the difficult choices. Life, history, is decided by the choices we make.”
“On that we can agree,” said Elias. “Your choice is to hand over the Grimoire and surrender now, or face your inevitable defeat.”
Mordum took off his cloak and threw it to the floor. He withdrew the Grimoire from a pocket in his waistcoat, a simple leather tome bound by a leather cord. He held up the spellbook and then set it atop his crumbled cloak. He straightened slowly. His hands settled by his hips, where they hung loosely. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” answered Elias.
Unlike his other wizard’s duels, where he had always taken the defensive, utilizing his sword to absorb his opponent’s magic, he threw himself into an immediate offensive. Elias cast an arc of liquid energy from his hand. It was like to a lightning bolt but it held in the air between them like a rope of snaking light.
Without even raising his hands Mordum erected a shield, a scintillating blue force field that absorbed Elias’s spell. Elias cast out his other arm, sword still in hand, and a second arc of lightning lanced forth from the point of his blade. Mordum’s spell absorbed the second bolt, though he had to quickly widen his shield in response.
Elias pulled his spells back and stepped toward Mordum. The fey instantly dropped his shield and launched a gl
obe of crimson flame, which materialized from the air above him and tore toward Elias. Instead of preparing to deflect the blow Elias counterattacked as soon as Mordum’s shield went down with a bolt of inky, viscous energy. It was a spell Rasen had taught him that involved a fraction of the energy required to generate an incinerating or slaying spell and was designed to stun, not kill. Before Elias’s spell had closed half the distance to Mordum, the sphere of fire was upon him. Elias twisted from his hips and took the spell on his raised sword. He hadn’t time to brace himself against its power and it shoved him back, requiring him to take a couple of halting sidesteps to keep his feet, but the spell fizzled, absorbed by his steel.
As he recovered he saw that Mordum had fallen to a knee, ripples of indigo energy arcing across his torso. The dark fey had the faculty to glare up at him, but was unable to bring his magic to bear. Elias wrestled back his equilibrium and charged, closing the distance between them. As he closed within striking distance he raised his sword into a high guard, but he checked his swing, for a ripple of pins-and-needles rushed through his arms, telling him that Mordum had recovered and was once again channeling his magic.
The fey vanished into a warbling distortion in space. Elias spun his back foot around in crescent moon step and skidded to a stop perpendicular to Mordum’s last position. The elf rematerialized not in a precise flanking position, but off to one side. Unfortunately for him, Elias was ready and checked his dagger-stab with the flat of his sword. Elias fired another lightning bolt from his free hand. Mordum, unnaturally alacritous, caught the bolt in his off-hand and with a vehement curse cast it back at Elias.
Elias reabsorbed the sudden backward swell in his spell, but the collision of arcane energy stunned him, and scalded his arm up to the elbow. Seizing his momentary advantage Mordum thrust his arms to his side and shouted in the darkspeech. A wild and ragged burst of colorless, sheer force energy burst from him. Elias pushed his power right out of his chest, in automatic response, and raised a shield. His hasty shield mitigated the worst of the attack, sparing his bones from shattering, but the tremendous recoil ripped him from his feet and send him skidding across the room on his back. He managed to tuck himself into a sideways roll as he collided with the far wall. The impact knocked the wind out of him, but he already heaved his legs, trying to get his feet under him, his eyes never leaving Mordum.
The fey struck again and without preamble. A sphere of roiling red energy, as wide around as a whiskey barrel, sailed toward Elias, having materialized from a space-time distortion mere feet before him. With shaking arms, and only halfway to his feet, Elias braced himself against the wall and thrust his sword directly into the heart of the energy ball. It collapsed in on itself with a violent, thunderous rumble. As the spell funneled into Elias’s sword the blade glowed red, edged in white, as if in remembrance of the day it was forged. The near-molten steel hissed and smoked as Elias drew himself up and grinned at Mordum.
“The power of the Darkin will not avail you on this ground,” he said.
Mordum’s hands balled into fists. “Curse you, Duana!”
“Curse me,” said Danica Duana as she unfurled a meteor of viscous flame.
While Elias and Mordum had fought she had at once began probing the containment field with Ogden. She ran her hands frantically around the barrier, trying to feel for a weak spot. She found a small chink, which felt like a loose thread, knotted in on itself. Elias had left a small lynchpin for her, as he had clued her in with his wink. Acting out of instinct and intuition Danica pressed a trickle of her magic against the weakness, testing against it. In response the containment field buckled and warbled. Ogden immediately summoned a shield in case the field was about to collapse.
“Easy, easy,” said Danica more to herself than to Ogden. She pointed her index finger and thumb at the marble sized knot in the field. She imagined that her fingers extended into invisible pincers formed from her magic. She brought her fingers together and felt the knot in the field compress beneath her extended senses. She knew that if she pulled at the inconsistency gently that the containment field would unravel and collapse in on itself. The question then became what would become of the collapsing energy once it was unbound?
Danica shrugged away the thought. She hadn’t time to perseverate. “Ogden, divert the energy when it collapses.” Before waiting for a response she pulled back in a smooth fluid motion.
The containment field first puckered where she tugged at it and then lengthened into a spike. As the spike stretched into a rope of pale red energy the containment field began to recoil and pull against her. With a silent oath she braced herself and hauled against it with all of her will. The containment field collapsed toward her and looked like nothing so much as an incandescent meteor.
Ogden raised two shields at once to alternately deflect and absorb the collapsed wall of energy, but Danica had other ideas.
Reacting on pure instinct, she drew the collapsing field towards her, lassoing it with her mind. Simultaneously, she erected a hemispherical shield of glimmering blue light. Her head throbbed with instant needle-sharp pain as she diverted her thoughts, and her power, into two mind-splitting tasks: drawing the field towards her and pushing back against it with her shield.
Ogden saw what she was about. “Step back,” he told the others who crowded around the doorway, each ready at a moment’s notice to charge to Elias’s aid.
“By the One, what is she doing?” breathed Phinneas.
“She’s creating a slingshot of sorts,” replied Ogden as he herded the others back.
When Danica thought she could bear the pressure in her head for not a heartbeat longer, she abruptly stopped pulling against the collapsed field.
“Curse me.”
The effect was instantaneous. The meteor of dense and sticky spell-fire arrowed across the room, directed by Danica’s will. And she willed it to blow Mordum to dust.
Mordum sensed his doom and turned toward the turbulent spell. A staff leapt into his hand, conjured from thin-air with the speed of thought. The staff of shielding intercepted Danica’s meteor, but her power was too strong and Mordum hadn’t enough of a warning to bring his own strength to bear. His inhuman speed had spared him incineration, but the detonation of Danica’s spell hurled him through the air like a dart.
Time slowed for Mordum as he channeled as much of his magic as he could bring to bear. He spiraled through the air. He had enough time to see the green fury of Danica Duana’s eyes as she stepped into the chamber, and the faces of all of those behind her, their expressions caught in suspended animation. He glanced up at the ceiling as he spun around. He completed the spiral and saw himself sailing toward the rift.
The rift was no longer a closed over window into another realm, but a full tear in the fabric of things. He realized then that the temporal shockwaves in space and time that he created when he gated here had caused the tearing.
Mordum had enough time to contemplate what exactly would happen when he crashed into the rift. Like Duana he was something of a paradox. He was where he didn’t belong. He had changed time many times over. Many probable events were tied to him. He himself was a living time-space vergence. He had warped both about him, and he felt the press of all that time energy and folded space around him.
Would he simply gate to the fey-realm equivalent of this time, even though the gate had not been stabilized yet? Would he collapse the rift, or cause it to tear further, creating a ripple effect through all interconnected timelines? Would he be destroyed?
Mordum had all that time and more to contemplate his fate, but it availed him little for his power had failed him, and try as he might to summon it, his reservoirs were bare.
Elias watched as Mordum disappeared into the rift in a burst of white light. He allowed himself a moment’s reprieve and collapsed. His sword, still glowing like molten steel ingot, clattered to the floor. He let eyes slip closed for a moment. He felt hands on him, pulling him to his feet, checking him for injuries. Elias
tolerated them with a surge of inner warmth. He wanted nothing so much as to lie on the cold floor for a moment and rest, but it felt good to be amongst family again.
“Please, see to Teah,” Elias said as he struggled to hold his head up.
“Whiteshields,” commanded the queen, “do as he says.”
Elias felt a stream of healing magic pour into him. Whether it was from Danica or Phinneas he did not know, but presently he felt more like himself and was able to stand under his own power again.
Teah strode up to Elias. Her legs had been cut free and her gag removed, but her hands were yet bound by the demesnes. “The soul-knife, Wayfarer. Did it go into the rift with Mordum?”
Elias’s heart dropped. “I’m sorry, Teah.”
Teah blinked back tears. “No, you did well.”
“We’ll find the soul-knife, or find another way to lift the curse from Nyla.”
Teah nodded and blinked away sudden tears. She looked to the rift. “Is he dead?”
“He must be,” said Lar. “Who could survive that?”
“It looked like there was a detonation of some kind when he entered it,” said Ogden.
“In any case we have to seal that thing right now,” said Phinneas.
Elias continued to gaze into the rift as the voices fell around him. It flickered and wavered like a candle in the wind. Unlike a candle, however, the rift was growing brighter. The arrhythmic fluttering captured Elias’s attention. He was certain that he had seen something like this before. So entranced was he by the rift, that he realized with no small measure of surprise that he was standing directly before it. He must have walked over to it, but he didn’t remember doing so.
The sight looked so familiar to him, that Elias was consumed with a feeling that he had been here before, that this had happened before. That was his clue that something had gone terribly wrong. Elias tore his gaze away from the rift and quickly retreated.
Wayfarer (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 44