Sea of Death: Blade of the Flame - Book 3

by Tim Waggoner

  “Resist!” the old man shouted, blood-flecked spittle flying from his fanged mouth. “The priest is trying to drive me out! Fight him, damn you!”

  Here within the core of her soul, Makala was still human, and she knew the dark spirit that she’d inherited from Aldarik Cathmore was desperate to maintain its hold on her.

  You present yourself as a benefactor that provides both strength and coldblooded ruthlessness, Makala said. But you’re nothing. Just a parasite afraid to be separated from its host. You heard what Diran said: begone!

  The dark spirit threw back its head and roared its fury to the night sky. A small dot of silver light began to grow on the spirit’s wrinkled forehead. It quickly assumed the shape of a glowing blue-white arrowhead, and then the light spread rapidly across the spirit, blazing brighter and brighter, until Makala could see nothing but its light … a light that no longer hurt to gaze upon.

  She opened her eyes and found herself looking up at Diran’s concerned face. The priest knelt beside her. He’d removed the arrowhead from her flesh, holding it clasped in his fist to hide it from her sight. Her forehead felt as if a white-hot branding iron had been pressed to it, but the pain was already beginning to recede.

  She smiled at the man who had once been her lover. “You did it, Diran. The dark spirit’s gone. Am I …” She reached up and touched the sharp point of her right incisor. She was still a vampire.

  “I’m sorry,” Diran said.

  Makala sat up. “Don’t be. Thanks to you, my soul is free of Cathmore’s taint. That’s enough of a miracle for one night, wouldn’t you say?”

  Diran smiled, but before either of them could speak again, they heard Nathifa cry out in a voice like thunder. “I’ll see you all dead!”

  The shadowy substance of the lich’s cloak rose up to cover her head, and her ebon form began to grow, its shape rearranging as it expanded. Slender sections separated from the central core, forming a dozen writhing tentacles. Makala realized what Nathifa was doing: she was using up the remainder of her magic for one last attack. Perhaps she would snatch them up in her tentacles and squeeze the life out of them, or perhaps she would simply drain their lifeforces. It didn’t matter. Whatever the sorceress intended, Makala wasn’t going to stand by and allow it to happen. Diran had saved her soul, and now she was going to save his life, regardless of the cost to herself.

  She gave the priest a quick kiss.

  “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

  Before Diran could react, Makala transformed into a bat and flew directly into the tentacled monster Nathifa had become, disappearing into its shadowy substance.

  Solus’s mind was lost in a raging storm of psionic chaos—a riotous cacophony of blinding images and deafening sounds. Thanks to the memories of his kalashtar creators that he had absorbed long ago, he understood what was happening. When Solus had first descended to the dock, he had sensed that Nathifa was summoning and controlling the weresharks through a psionic link with Haaken, who in turn was linked to the stone body of the priest Nerthatch. Solus, drawing on his creators’ knowledge, knew that if he could disrupt that psionic chain Nathifa had established, he could stop her enchantment. But what he hadn’t paused to consider—and what was the cause of his current predicament—was that while there was at times a certain overlap in the disciplines of psionics and magic, their power came from very different energy sources. The power Nathifa used to fuel her spell was corrupted by the foulness of her undead form, and the substance of Nerthatch’s stone body was suffused with the evil energies of the dark power that had cursed him. Thus, when Solus had attempted to establish his mind-link to Nathifa using the statue and Haaken as conduits, he’d opened himself up to the dark energies surging through all three. Now he could not break the link, and evil filled his mind, threatening to plunge him into madness, and though he was fighting as hard as he could, he feared it was a losing battle.

  He thought of Diran and Ghaji, of Tresslar and Yvka, but most of all, he thought of Hinto. He and the halfling had formed a special bond, right from the beginning, and while Solus felt sorrow at the thought of failing his friends, he regretted letting Hinto down most of all. The psiforged hoped his friends would find a way to defeat Nathifa and stop the weresharks attacking Regalport without him.

  But just as Solus was about to surrender to the whirlpool of insanity that threatened to pull him under, he felt the pressure in his mind ease. The storm of madness that swirled around him lessened, and though it did not abate entirely, it diminished to the point where Solus was no longer in danger of being lost to its fury. He didn’t know precisely how it happened, but he sensed that Nathifa’s link to Haaken, and therefore to the statue of Nerthatch, had been broken. He was about to sever his own link to the statue since he could no longer use it to strike against the lich, but now that his mind was free to focus more clearly, he sensed that all the weresharks Nathifa had summoned remained linked to the statue.

  And that meant they were all linked to him.

  If Solus had possessed the physiognomy for it, he would have smiled. To the weresharks still at sea, he sent a single command: Stay away! But he had something a bit more special in mind for those lycanthropes rampaging through the streets of Regalport.

  Solus concentrated on sending a very specific image into their minds.

  It had been a glorious night of slaughter so far for the weresharks, and the fun showed no signs of abating. True, there had been some minor resistance. The city watch was putting up a fight (though not much of one), and the Sea Dragons had given a much better account of themselves—and continued to do so in isolated spots throughout Regalport. Operatives from House Thuranni were striking silently and swiftly from the shadows, though not doing much permanent damage, and of course there were various swordfighters, artificers, wizards, and more who had taken to the streets in order to protect their city. But what of it? The defenders’ efforts only added to the weresharks’ amusement, and every person the lycanthropes wounded but did not slay became infected with their curse, adding to their numbers, if not this night, then on the morrow. There was nothing anyone could do to stop the weresharks’ rampage. There were simply too many of them, and they had struck swiftly and without warning. Regalport had already fallen. Its citizens just hadn’t realized it yet.

  But then something strange happened. The cobblestone streets shimmered and became coated with smooth metal. The buildings changed as well, stone and wood now overlaid with bluish-white until everything in Regalport gleamed with reflected moonlight. Throughout the city, the weresharks reacted in horror as they realized they were entirely surrounded by silver. Their feet burned from the silver cobblestones they stood upon, and the moonlight reflecting off the silver buildings seared their eyes. The weresharks panicked and ran blindly, following their instincts back toward the sea, and those few who were not slain by Regalport’s defenders—none of whom saw the illusion that so terrified the weresharks—actually made it.

  Solus’s perceptions shifted back to the material plane in time to see Tresslar, once again in possession of his dragonwand, lower the magical device. The psiforged’s fingers were still pressed to the head of Nerthatch’s stone body, but he could no longer sense any evil power within the statue. He guessed that Tresslar had used the Amahau to absorb the statue’s energy, but he felt confident that he had gotten his twin messages to the weresharks through the statue’s link before Nerthatch’s body was completely drained of magic. Solus lowered his hands from the statue’s head and turned to see what further assistance he might render his friends. That’s when he saw Haaken remove his hands from the statue’s shoulders, and he realized that he hadn’t dealt with all the weresharks in Regalport this night. He had failed to follow the link back through the statue to Haaken’s mind.

  Haaken didn’t recover right away, however. He swayed on his feet as he struggled to shake off the effects of serving as a conduit for Nathifa’s magic. Solus had witnessed the recuperative powers of lycanthropes
enough times to know that it wouldn’t take long for Haaken to recover, and the psiforged didn’t intend to give him the chance. Solus concentrated on using his telekinetic power to grab hold of the wereshark and fling him far out into the bay, but nothing happened. Solus looked down at his chest and saw that his psionic crystals had gone dark. He’d expended his entire storehouse of psionic energy to resist the mental maelstrom he’d been caught in and then to deal with the weresharks. It would be quite some time before his crystals were able to restore themselves, and in the meantime, he was helpless.

  No, he thought as he looked down at his hands. Not entirely.

  The psiforged curled his stone fingers into a fist, stepped forward, and punched Haaken on the snout as hard as he could. Unfortunately, Solus hadn’t been built for strength, and all he managed to accomplish with his blow was to clear Haaken’s mind. The wereshark glared at Solus and lashed out with a vicious backhand strike, and suddenly the psiforged was the one who found himself flying off the dock and plunging into the bay.

  Ghaji saw Haaken knock Solus into the water. The half-orc didn’t know if the psiforged could swim, but since the construct didn’t need to breathe, Ghaji decided the point was moot. He took a quick look around and tried to decide on his next move.

  The weird greenish mist now covered the entire bay, and tendrils were just starting to curl up over the edges of the dock. Ghaji didn’t know what the stuff was, but he knew it wasn’t good. Tresslar still held the dragonwand, but something had happened to it. The Amahau and the wand it was attached to had both turned pure black. Ghaji was no artificer, but he doubted the wand was going to be of much use in the immediate future. Strangest of all, Nathifa had transformed into a mass of shadow tentacles approximately ten feet tall. Nathifa—or whatever she was now—had folded over on herself, as if she were a giant fist squeezing something tight within her grip. Ghaji had no idea what it could be, until he remembered seeing a small dark object streak into Nathifa’s shadowy form right after he had cut the dragonwand free. Ghaji glanced in Diran’s direction and saw his friend rising to his feet, silver arrowhead held in his right hand. There was no sign of Makala.

  That’s when Ghaji realized what Nathifa was squeezing within her shadowy grasp.

  Diran dashed to the half-orc’s side. “Makala’s inside Nathifa! We have to do something before the lich destroys her!”

  Ghaji wasn’t sure what Diran was talking about, but it never occurred to him to question his friend.

  “Let’s do it,” the half-orc said.

  Together the two friends started toward the tentacled beast, Ghaji gripping his flaming axe tight, Diran raising his silver arrowhead, preparing to wield the holy object against the evil sorceress.

  That’s when Haaken grabbed them both by the neck and slammed their heads together.

  Bright light flashed behind Ghaji’s eyes, the world spun, and his vision went gray. When his eyes cleared, he found himself looking up at Haaken, and he realized that he was lying on his back. The wereshark must have dropped him and Diran to the dock after knocking them together. Ghaji tried to rise, but his head felt as if it had been shattered into a million pieces, and he was too dizzy to move. He turned to look at Diran, and though his friend was consciousness, he looked to be in just as bad a shape as Ghaji. Blood ran from both Diran’s ears and nostrils. Not a good sign. Ghaji turned the other direction and saw his elemental axe lying on the dock several feet out of reach. Once out of his hand, its flames had extinguished. He supposed it didn’t matter that he’d dropped the axe. He was too weak to lift it right now anyway.

  Haaken looked down at them, grinning with a maw full of shark teeth. “You don’t know how good it feels to finally have a chance to pay the two of you back for wrecking my ship and stranding me on Demothi Island. I suppose I should thank you, though. If it wasn’t for you, I’d never have become the magnificent creature I am today. I did manage to extract a bit of revenge on Trebaz Sinara, though.” The wereshark focused his gaze on Diran. “It was no accident that I threw your werewolf friend at Asenka. She was a pain in my rump back when I was human, and I was glad to end her life. Her bones made such lovely snapping sounds when the wolf hit her, didn’t they?”

  Haaken laughed then, the sound hideous coming from his inhuman throat.

  Ghaji saw Diran struggle to rise, an expression of mingled sorrow and fury on his face, but the priest was too injured to get up and slumped back down onto the dock.

  “I was just going to kill the two of you,” Haaken continued, “but now that I think of it, that would be too easy. Instead, I’m to give you each a little love nip. Just enough to draw blood—and pass along my gift to you. I think you’ll eventually come to enjoy being weresharks. I know I love it.”

  Haaken started forward, mouth open wide—

  “Get away from them!”

  Haaken paused and turned to look at Tresslar. The artificer held forth the blackened dragonwand, the Amahau pointed directly at the wereshark.

  “Take another step and I destroy you!”

  “Don’t bluff, old man,” Haaken growled. “If that thing still worked, you’d have used it already.” The wereshark looked back down at Ghaji and Diran. “You two aren’t going anywhere soon. I’ll wet my appetite for you by slaying the old man first.”

  Haaken turned back to Tresslar and began to advance on the artificer. Tresslar held his ground, but Ghaji could see that the dragonwand was shaking in the artificer’s hand. Tresslar had been bluffing, and now that Haaken had called his bluff, it appeared that the artificer had run out of tricks.

  “I don’t suppose you’re going to give me a chance to say any last words?” Tresslar said, backing up slowly.

  “Why should I?” Haaken snarled.

  “Pity,” Tresslar said. “Because if you did, I’d say, ‘Look out.’”

  Haaken scowled and spun just in time to see a strange creature—part wolf and part shark—leaping at him.

  Diran watched as Leontis—at least, he assumed the hybrid monster was his old friend—tore into Haaken with a savage fury that was both wonderful and terrible to behold. Leontis knocked Haaken onto the dock and clawed at his chest with his hands, ripped at his belly with his feet, and ravaged his neck and face with his teeth. Haaken screamed as his blood fountained into the air and his viscera spilled onto the dock. Diran knew that Haaken was no longer a threat to them, so he turned his attention to Nathifa.

  The priest didn’t know what was happening inside the lich, but from the way her shadowy form was shaking, he assumed that Makala was doing something to attack the sorceress from within. Nathifa couldn’t drain Makala’s lifeforce, since she was a vampire and thus undead, but Makala couldn’t hope to do any lasting damage to the lich, since the only way to slay her kind was to locate and destroy the phylactery in which she’d stored her essence. The best Makala could hope for was a stalemate, but even weakened as Nathifa surely was from the effort of casting her summoning spell, she was still a powerful sorceress, and Diran knew it was only a matter of time until Nathifa bested Makala. Diran hadn’t driven the dark spirit from Makala’s body only to abandon her now. He had to do something, and he had to do it fast.

  He struggled to rise up on his left elbow, ignoring the throbbing in his skull, and the resulting wave of nausea that twisted his gut. He knew he had a severe head injury, but he couldn’t afford to waste the time it would take to heal himself. He could tend to his wounds later—after Nathifa was defeated once and for all.

  Diran retained his grip on the silver arrowhead. He held it lightly between the thumb and forefinger of his free hand and, though it wasn’t a dagger, he’d sharpened its edges, and Nathifa’s transformation into a giant tentacled monster had made her a satisfyingly large target.

  Diran whispered a quick prayer and hurled the holy symbol toward Nathifa. The silver arrowhead spun through the air, struck the lich’s ebon substance, and passed into her darkness.

  Perhaps it hadn’t been the most skillful throw he
’d ever made, Diran thought, but he’d take it.

  Nathifa felt Makala, in humanoid form now, clawing at her from the inside. The lich wished she had never transported the vampire within her body on Trebaz Sinara, for surely that had given the woman the notion to attack this way. Normally, Makala’s efforts to harm her would have been laughable, but Nathifa’s power had been greatly diminished by the events of the last several days, and it was taking her longer to muster the strength to deal with the vampire than she would’ve liked—especially considering the fact that Prince Moren had arrived to claim his due. If she were to have any hope of slaying Bastiaan and the others, she had to deal with Makala swiftly.

  She felt a small sharp-edged object slice into her. Not only was the damnable thing fashioned from silver, it also bore a holy blessing, imparted by Bastiaan, no doubt. The object burned like white fire inside of Nathifa, causing so much agony that she could no longer hold onto Makala. She ejected the vampire from her dark substance and flung Makala onto the dock. The woman landed near the priest and his half-orc companion, but Nathifa had no more attention to give the vampire. She had to expel the silver object from her body before—

  She sensed tendrils of green mist curl onto the dock, stretch toward the ebon tentacles that supported her, and gently, almost lovingly brush against her dark substance.

  Her time was up.

  In his quarters aboard the Ship of Bones, Prince Moren sat in a chair fashioned from the unfulfilled dreams of dead sailors. Resting before him atop a table made from memories of regret and betrayal was the obsidian skull named Espial. Nathifa had bartered the skull in order to obtain the material she needed to repair her damaged vessel, and Moren had agreed not to leave Espial alone for a short time to give the lich an opportunity to achieve her vengeance. Moren had kept his word. He hadn’t laid a finger on the skull, though that hadn’t stopped him from examining it in other ways. It was a most intriguing object. The lich used it to communicate with Vol—or rather the Lich Queen used it to pass along her orders to Nathifa. But Espial served a dual purpose: it was also the lich’s phylactery.