But Dariak was uninjured. The lightning jade drew in the energy and hummed deeply within Dariak’s pocket. “I see you spent some time with the jade before you lost it to Halrone,” he commented.
She snarled. “Lost it? Fool, I loaned it to him. How else could I become stronger unless I had others who could challenge me? You don’t become powerful by squashing ants.” She eyed him dangerously, then growled again. “I see it takes a liking to you, protecting you. No matter.”
While she spoke, Dariak readied his next spell. He reached out for the blue flames along the wall and pulled their energies forward into a blazing azure inferno. Sharice caught the brunt of the blast and toppled over. Angrily, she brought her hands up, redirecting the air in the room to send the flames toward Dariak, who then pushed his hands away and returned the flames to their source.
Sharice reclaimed her staff and drew an intricate symbol in the air with its crowning light. At once, the air thinned and she all but vanished from sight completely. Dariak prepared his fire dart spell and sent out cursory shots, trying to locate her. She laughed mockingly from behind him, but when he turned and fired, no one was there. Her laughter sounded randomly throughout the room, as if she were in all places at once. He remembered the way her laughter had echoed from the walls at the start of the battle. With the added control of air in the room, he realized she could manipulate her sounds.
Dariak pulled another fiery blast from the blue flames and lit a blazing fireball toward one end of the chamber, hoping he could at least sequester her into a smaller zone. Wind blew in and scattered the flames, but he tried again anyway. With each successive fireball, he noticed the direction of the wind and he used it to locate his target. The floor was still wet and, waiting until each fiery blast distracted her, he turned specific patches to ice again.
Yet the wind wasn’t erratic or purely defensive. Sharice was slowly creating a large whirlwind through the room and Dariak didn’t notice until too late. The wind whipped at him, snagging his robe and heaving him up into the air. He hovered toward the ceiling and then plummeted harshly to the ground. Before he could recover, the process repeated itself, leaving him bruised and gasping.
Cackling echoed around the room and Dariak reached for more spell components from his pockets, but his supplies for protection spells were running low. He withdrew a knob of blackroot and cast it outward, seeking to blind her from where he thought she stood. He felt the spell take hold, glad at least that he had correctly ascertained her position.
“Fool,” she accused again. “Shadow magic? Don’t you think I had access to that jade as well? Here, let me show you shadow magic!”
The room filled with the ominous sounds of malevolent chanting. Dariak slapped his hands onto the ground and stood up, drawing the stony floor with him. He didn’t send it outward this time, but spun in a deep circle, continuously pulling the stone closer and closer until it covered him from head toe, essentially turning him into a rock golem.
Sharice was caught in the throes of her spell and unleashed a bolt of darkness that drew all the light from the room, seeking Dariak next in order to draw the light from within him as well. His stony coating deflected the spell, but she had anticipated some form of defense and was already casting the spell again. Dariak didn’t have time to reset the stone shield before the next death bolt flashed forward.
Dariak withdrew the lightning jade, fanning the outer sparks with his hand and pleading for help. The electricity shot up and around him, binding him in a glowing cage that numbed him when he touched it. The shadow struck the light and a violent boom shook the walls.
Sharice screamed in fury, racing toward him, staff in hand and no longer obscured by darkness. She moved impossibly fast, propelled by the wind she summoned, making her body light and fluid. The staff crashed into Dariak, ringing his head with a deep thud. He kicked out, but she was already gone, circling around and batting at him again. He raised his arm, calling the earth for protection. His arm solidified and when the staff struck it cracked loudly as if hitting stone. Sharice pulled back and swept again, moving too quickly for Dariak to stop her.
Pulling energy from the water and earth, Dariak created a thick muddy paste and tossed it up and around him, hoping at least to slow her down. Two slices through with her staff, however, and the mess was gone. He tried turning the mud into a sticky sludge, but her speed overpowered it and it didn’t slow her down at all.
With each swing of the staff, she added another spell. Air darts pelted him from above, after which thorns appeared, shooting out from vines that were hanging on the wall. Dariak deflected the attacks the best he could, but the onslaught was so fast he wasn’t sure he could fend them all off.
The staff struck his arm painfully, disrupting a shielding spell he was summoning. He had survived the crumbling Prisoner’s Tower; how could this one woman be beating him into submission? Furious with himself, Dariak reached deep within, touching each jade in turn and asking for help. He lingered with the lightning jade, whose power was still new to him. He pulled it forth and beckoned to the flickering light.
Sharice balked at the feeble sparks leaking from the jade, then doubled her efforts by encasing Dariak in a dark, blinding sphere and continuing to float around rapidly, striking him hard. She reached across the room with her powers and drew on the plant life that waited so tamely on her workbenches. The vines were already spewing their thorns, but now she called for the flowers to release their toxins. She channeled the disruptive fragrances with sharp jabs of air, bringing the poisonous fumes directly within Dariak’s darkened globe.
He could smell the poisons before they fully came within his area, thus he drew as deep a breath as he could manage, then held it as he focused the rest of his thoughts into the lightning jade. He knew he needed something explosively powerful in order to defeat Sharice, and the earth and water were more defensive than offensive. Calling to the torches had proven fruitless, and though she had used an electric blast of her own, Dariak doubted she had ever seen the jade unleash the level of fury he had witnessed at the top of the Prisoner’s Tower.
As the poisonous fumes surrounded him, making his eyes water terribly, Dariak concentrated to block out all other sensations. In a detached manner, he understood that while he remained within the shadow orb, he was exposed to noxious fumes that would give him only moments to live. He also realized that Sharice was compressing the air around him, making him feel heavy and sluggish. Plus, she had her flailing staff in hand, its glowing head cutting through the darkness occasionally and cracking against him.
None of it mattered. Without the strength of the lightning jade, he would run out of stamina soon anyway, even if he escaped the darkened sphere and found clean air. Channeling his mind into the sparking crystal, Dariak recalled the searing pain that had lanced through him at the tower, and not just the initial moments of numbness followed by scorching pain; he remembered the pain he felt of dying. He called to the lightning to give him the strength he needed to overcome this foe and to live. He knew it was risky, for the lightning jade had taken his life once. That time it had restored him, but there was no guarantee it could revive him a second time. He would have to entrust the quest for the jades to his companions, hoping they would fulfill his destiny if he could not.
The jade sparked with blinding fury, and with a deafening crack, the air within the shadow globe vanished into a vacuum. Dariak felt his insides pulled apart from the force and rather than fight it, he accepted the call of the electricity, which erupted from the jade and ran through his body. He felt the power tingle from head to toe, erasing all his physical memories of how things felt and worked. He no longer had legs or arms. There was no sense of sight or sound.
He became a throbbing ball of energy.
All Dariak could do was will himself in various directions, but he couldn’t see where he was going, only sense disturbances of power. Surrounding him was a spherical field that hindered him, so he willed it asunder and so it went, obl
iterated by the light he had become. The torches called to him from the sides of the room. He leaned toward one and his body streaked across the chamber to the blue flame, trailing deep thunder. Nothing happened when he struck the fire, however, so he hesitated, building up his strength and sensing another disturbance nearby.
The vines and flowers continued to release their thorns and toxins, and Dariak flashed over to them, burning them instantly to ash. He couldn’t control himself more than that. One tilt and he blasted across the room, eager to bring destruction to the next flux of energy. He could only sense a narrow pathway in front of him, however, so he couldn’t tell quite where in the room the other jade was located. He knew nothing of Sharice, but felt energies being pulled from one end of the room toward the other. Eagerly, he followed them.
With a blinding streak, Dariak’s electrified body shot across the vast room, chasing after a flurry of energy that whirled in a tight cyclone, but it wasn’t a true source of power, he realized after reaching it. It was a spell meant to contain him. But he was pure energy now. He couldn’t be contained. He tilted back and blazed across the room, his powerful thunder shaking the walls and threatening to bring them down.
Each passing across the room weakened him. He knew that much but not much else. More power existed in the chamber and he pushed ahead, crashing into the barrier Sharice had erected at the stairwell and exploding it to pieces. He was vaguely aware that it was a supremely dense wall of air held together by her will alone, but he couldn’t appreciate the craft of it, for a sheath of darkness fell over him.
The barely human aspect left of him told Dariak that the dark magic should have killed him. It was full of malice and the intent to paralyze his life functions, making them all forget their individual jobs and leaving him a lifeless mass on the floor. The rest of Dariak, however, saw the attack as a violation of its own invigorating strength. The lightning traced the spell back to its source and Dariak hungrily leaped across the room, searing a violent path of his own.
As he reached the great source of the power, however, something distracted him. It was relatively small, but it drew him so forcefully he couldn’t stop himself. He crashed against a thin filament and wound upward in a tight, deep spiral, cresting at the top and exploding outward. He heard a terrified scream and it took him a moment to realize it wasn’t his own and that there was someone else in the room with him. He understood slowly that as the lightning faded away, his own senses started to return.
Fear welled inside of him, for he knew that with all the force rushing through his body, he was due for a terrible amount of pain once he could feel again. He didn’t want it to happen. He focused his thoughts on the other energy sources in the room, finding one very close by and flashing himself toward it, seeking to add its power to his own, thereby prolonging the spell. But he didn’t have the strength to pull the power from its source, perhaps because it was Sharice, tightly curled in a ball on the floor, badly burned and using every protective spell in her arsenal to keep herself alive.
Without an ample power supply, the lightning faded and Dariak crashed in a heap, his body blissfully numb for the moment. He glanced around the oversized chamber, seeing burn marks streaked all across the floor and ceiling in numerous directions. The distance he had covered! Beside him, near Sharice’s huddled form, was her staff with the winding metal bands that had drawn him in and forced him to spiral up its length until he erupted out the top of the staff. Though the upper portion of the staff was blown apart, the jade itself lingered, pulsating wildly with Dariak so close by. He reached out and claimed the clear jade, feeling an odd breeze exuding from its surface. Without a word, he pocketed it, turning at last to Sharice.
The woman was covered in massive burns from head to toe and energies swirled around her body, so tightly woven to protect herself, she probably didn’t even realize that the fight was over. Dariak reached out to touch her tentatively, but a shadowy outer covering prevented him from making contact. There was nothing he could do for her; he couldn’t even stand on his own.
But at least he had claimed her jade.
Chapter 3
Dinner with Mother
The wards encasing the house were still intact and because Sharice hadn’t willed them to leave, the travelers were trapped unless Dariak could find a way to undo them. The mage was exhausted, however, and his body wasn’t responding well to his demands. Gabrion had to practically shout in his ear to be heard, but Dariak had no suggestions yet for what he needed. Gabrion propped him up on an armchair, making sure he was secure before helping the others with Sharice.
The woman’s body was hard to look at, she was so burned. Layers of flesh rolled back, some of it fused with patches of cloth. Ash and steam rose from her frizzled hair and her head lolled limply as they moved her. If she wasn’t still breathing, they would have assumed the worst.
Randler was at a loss. His mother had rejected him, sending bounty hunters after him to claim his pieces of jade even if it meant killing him. Yet seeing her in this condition broke his heart all over again. He wanted to help her somehow, so he tried drawing her pain away with the shadow jade as Kitalla gently tapped her face to awaken her. It took a while, but her eyes opened, then widened fearfully once she realized she was bound. Moments later, pain followed the fear, as tears streamed from her eyes. Randler couldn’t bear it, so he pulled the gag from her mouth, asking what he could do to help.
“Where is he?” she hissed.
“What? Dariak? Over there.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
She growled, muttering under her breath. “Release me so I may heal myself.” When he hesitated, she snarled, “Now!”
Kitalla had daggers ready as Randler untied the ropes. Sharice immediately cast a few spells to numb her agony, then set about promoting healing within her. As she felt the extent of the damage, she grumbled again, knowing she would need more help than her ability alone could handle.
“Is there another mage among you? No, what am I saying,” she answered herself. “Yet you each carry a shard. Very interesting.” She sniffed at Kitalla. “Haven’t met yours yet. Mind handing it over and letting me look at it?”
“Sure,” Kitalla replied sardonically, “but it won’t help your quivering corpse much.” She emphasized her threat by whirling her daggers around her fingers.
Sharice grinned. “Well then, maybe some other time. So where is he?” It was a needless question as he was across the room in a chair, straining to bring the energies about himself, especially now that she was on her feet again.
Dariak clenched his fists and sought the power of the earth jade, pulling dust toward him in the only form of protective shield he could muster. He eyed the charred woman ferociously, hoping at least to portray a sense of strength, even if he didn’t feel it.
“Peace, mage,” she said, coming closer. “You defeated me fairly. Killing you now would prevent me from learning more from you. You do recall my comment about squashing ants, don’t you?” She stared at him carefully. “You’d be better off putting your skills toward healing than defense. I’ll help.” And she did, bringing her hands about and sending healing energies into him.
The two were greatly weakened from their bout, but as they sent healing back and forth, they regained enough of their strength to move about freely, though Dariak still struggled to hear anything. The burns on Sharice’s skin looked horrible, but magic stopped them from becoming infected and from hurting. Hardly any of the plants in the basement had survived Dariak’s lightning blitz around the room, and so Randler, no longer needing to keep his identity hidden, went to secure some herbs from town, knowing he could do so the quickest.
The next few hours were tense as Gabrion and Kitalla kept a constant vigil on Sharice, ensuring she didn’t act in any untoward manner, though they understood that their knowledge of spells was so limited they wouldn’t know a harmful spell until too late. Still, keeping weapons trained on her made them feel safer, and Da
riak seemed content with the situation. When Randler returned with all the supplies they required, the team worked at creating salves to mend Sharice’s burns and to tend to puncture wounds Dariak had suffered from the air darts and thorns, as well as his scrapes from being tossed by the powerful winds. With all the major work out of the way, Randler made a quick meal, needing to eat but anxious for them to be on their way again.
“So, what happens now?” Sharice ventured once the food was gone.
“We continue our mission,” Dariak said.
“Collecting the other shards, no doubt?” she surmised. “Randler, dear, where did you put that other one?”
The bard shook his head. “I’ll tell them once we’re off, mother.”
“Oh, don’t want my pets finding it first?”
Kitalla snorted. “Those rogues you sent? Don’t make me laugh. Even if they did get to it first, they wouldn’t manage to keep it for long.”
“Well, I can see that’s true, especially with him around,” Sharice commented, looking pointedly at Dariak. “Very powerful, indeed, young mage. You’re almost like a conduit for the jades. A very rare skill, I must say.”
“Mother,” Randler said with a warning note in his voice.
“I’m just paying the man a compliment. Mind yourself, child,” she scolded. “Yes, my husband’s father told great, wild tales about such things. Perhaps Randler has shared some with you on the journey?”
It felt like an ominous opening to a new branch of conversation and no one really wanted to engage with the woman, but sitting in awkward silence was worse. “Of course, Sharice,” Dariak said, feeling he should keep the focus on himself. “We’ve heard quite a few good tales.”
The Shattered Shards Page 4