Sonya dropped her protective magic and all within her shield, save for the sprite, again gasped for breath under the brunt of the magician’s evil magic. She then changed her focus and her golden aura flared anew, this time engulfing the scarlet-robed mage. It clearly startled him for a moment, but he did not lose his concentration. Rather, he sneered at what he likely interpreted as a weak and paltry attempt to shake him.
Sonya closed her eyes and fought her rising revulsion at what she was about to do. The realization that she might have to fight—even kill—another human being to save the lives of her unborn children first came during her experience in the Memsherar, but at the time it had seemed of little consequence, a distasteful but necessary act to save the lives of those as yet unborn. Now the thought sickened her even as she did so for the sake of her friends. A wounded sound escaped Sonya’s lips and she gasped, as the fight to turn the flow of her benevolent power felt akin to forcing a river to change course. The aura around the magician reacted violently in response, roiling and twisting like some tortured creature. At Sonya’s right, Kurella staggered and fell to her knees, hands clasped around her throat. Scott, concerned even in his own peril, tried to help but he too went down. Sonya then heard a body fall to her left and she already knew Eegrin had lost consciousness. Jiv alone remained breathing and alert, and it was only that which saved him from a crushing death as the Jisetrian went down.
Her eyes brimming with tears, the Third Power of Mithal focused all her concentration into a single violent shift that wrenched the flow of her power in a new direction. The aura around Azinon’s servant intensified and for the first time he stumbled over his incantation. The onset of a sharp ache surrounded his lungs, pressing them for but an instant. Surprised though he was by the sudden convulsive pain, he nevertheless resumed his chant with renewed fervor. Seconds passed and then another pain struck him with such potency he doubled over. The soldiers standing to either side of the magician looked on with sudden fear as he lifted his head and shrieked.
“I will kill you!” he screamed. With a supreme effort, he straightened, facing her on his knees but snarling in defiance. His spell already weakening, his hands weaved a rapid and intricate pattern, attempting to bolster the potency of his spell, and then he cried out in agony as the brands upon his wrists, received decades earlier as an apprentice mage, burned anew with all the intensity as when the red-hot irons first touched his skin. The smell of charred flesh filled the air with its sickly sweet odor and the magician stared at his wrists, amazement and horror apparent on his face at his body’s seeming betrayal. But it was not betrayal; it was the magic of the Third Power, renewing every injury the dark servant had ever known.
A tear traced down Sonya’s face. “Stop it!” she pleaded, almost as if she were the one tortured.
But the magician would not relent. He stubbornly fought his weakening hold over his spell and, in payment, the five-inch scar across his forehead split open. The magician cried out as the old wound reopened and warm blood poured down his brow and into his eyes. In the same moment, no longer able to see his prey, the spell broke and its captives were free.
Within the glowing shield, Scott and Kurella unsteadily regained their feet.
“Sonya,” Scott gasped, “let me out.”
“But the soldiers—“
“Let me out!”
Her attention divided, Sonya’s concentration over her enemy shattered as Kayliss burst forth and fell upon the left ranks with a storm’s fury. In an instant, all became chaos as the redcrest soldiers, already fearful of the display of dueling magicks, fled for their lives amid the maelstrom of tooth, claw, and fur.
“Sonya, let me go,” Scott said again insistent, straightening as his strength returned, “or it’s going to start all over again.”
Her vision full of the sight of running men, and her ears with the sounds of battle, Sonya hastily acquiesced and dropped her protective shield just long enough for Scott to scramble out.
Scott shifted as he moved, growing taller; hair, claws, and teeth sprouting from once human skin and bone as the fearsome lupine within revealed itself. Scott slashed at any redcrests he passed as he stalked his prey, rending with his claws or hammering with his fists even as he closed the distance.
A tree saved the magician from losing his feet and with his back against the trunk, he cleared his vision just in time to see two large, clawed hands fasten around his head. Then, with a sound like gravel crunching underfoot, Scott spun the man’s head one hundred and eighty degrees.
Chapter XXXI
Steel clashed with steel as Steve’s blade countered a vicious downward slice meant for his skull. Without pause the young man charged, taking his enemy by surprise and sending the redcrest off his feet with the impact. Steve then turned and met another soldier’s failed attempt to backstab, which then turned to a charge and a wild yell instead. Steve’s eyes narrowed above the answering white light of the crystal and the soldier’s blade briefly bent into the shape of a horseshoe before snapping in two at the apex of that bend. The man hadn’t even an instant to contemplate how it happened before Steve seized him by the front of his gambeson and pulled him off his feet, hurling him in a high arc over his head to land on the ground over twenty feet away unconscious. Remembering his first attacker, Steve turned and stunned the man with a weak bolt of white lightning as he tried to recover his feet.
“Impressive,” came a calm, forbidding voice.
Steve looked up and his eyes widened slightly in recognition of the man who approached.
“Surprised?” Borathis asked.
Steve moved a cautious step in retreat but the fearsome warrior did not press closer than ten paces. Watching him closely Steve replied, “Yes, all things considered.”
Borathis’s brow arched nonchalantly as he tilted his head, as though the answer were not unexpected. “You’ve only known me a short time so I can understand that. But after your Jisetrian friends humiliated me in front of my men outside that peasant village, I have done nothing but plan how you and Gorium would repay your debts to me.” Borathis’s helm turned side to side as he tsked. “You and that pompous monarch should have killed me yourselves rather than leave me for the harpies.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Steve replied honestly, his eyes never straying from the man for longer than the millisecond it took to blink. He remembered well the deceptive speed and agility of this warrior from their last encounter, and he was resolved not to underestimate him again.
Speaking as he went, Borathis advanced a casual step forward and, as expected, Steve retreated a step almost simultaneously. “I suppose I should thank you,” the warrior said. “Were it not for you, King Gorium would surely have run me through where I stood. Instead my men and I were deposited in the Valley of the Harpies—behind your back, I presume—in the hopes those scavengers would do the job for him.” Borathis’s tone turned to ice with, “That flying fat man gravely underestimates me.”
Steve hated to admit it, but this man scared him. “Well, nobody’s perfect,” he replied, hoping his voice carried more confidence than he felt.
“I am counting on that.”
Borathis then reached to his hip and freed the massive sword belted there in one smooth motion; a weapon, strangely enough, despite its keenly glowing edges, Steve had not even realized was there until then. Hefting the scarlet steel, he held it before himself, tip pointed to the sky, and smiling in apparent admiration at the wicked craftsmanship as he spoke. “For the rest of my men the harpies were enough. But for me, my humiliation at the hands of you and that pompous chicken only fueled my determination to live. I owe both of you a great deal for my disgrace, and payment begins with you.” This last he said leveling the sword, point first, at the young wizard.
Borathis lunged with the speed of a man half his age and buried his steel halfway into the trunk of a tree slightly behind where his prey stood only a moment ago. Steve’s agile sidestep put him directly besi
de his attacker, drawing his sword in the same motion, but the experienced warrior sent him away with a kick to the chest before the rapier could be brought to bear. Steve recovered quickly but his immediate thoughts centered on the scarlet blade and that horrific shriek the weapon emitted when it entered the stout wood of the tree. No ordinary weapon could ever make such a sound, nor could it have pierced through to the very heart of a solid oak with such ease. He hesitated, wary, understanding now more than just the skill of this seasoned warrior was in play.
Borathis pulled his sword free with little effort. With a laugh, he held up the sword and openly admired its finely crafted length once more. “Impressive, is it not?” he asked. The flat of the blade showed a dimmer scarlet even in the ill light of the advancing morning; the edges, unnaturally sharp, pulsated with a glowing red. “It is a demon’s essence you see coursing through this steel, boy. Your learned powers cannot help you now.”
“It’s impressive, I’ll give you that,” Steve admitted with a nod. “But don’t think you’re going to get a whole lot of use out of it.”
Borathis arched a brow. “Say you now?”
“I do. Where I come from we have a game we used to play when we were kids called Dodge Ball. The whole object was not to get hit. I wonder how well you play.” At that Steve released a flickering shard of lightning from his fingertips that danced across the darkness to his enemy. The crimson blade, however, independent of its bearer, intercepted the attack with a speed no mortal could ever match. The bolt struck and the energy dissipated along the blade’s length without effect to either weapon or wielder. Steve fired again, and twice more consecutively, but the blade’s speed was blinding.
Borathis did not retaliate immediately. Instead he leered through the visor of his helmet, and those eyes promised pain. Many men before now had cowered under that same glare and, as much he hated to admit it, Steve was intimidated.
“Seems I play well,” Borathis announced levelly. “My turn.”
The sword glimmered for the briefest instant and then Borathis vanished. Reacting on pure instinct, Steve leaped high into the air and caught a tree branch several meters up. Swinging his legs up and over he maneuvered himself quickly to crouch atop his new perch.
The move was a startling one, and Borathis’s face showed his surprise. “Remarkable!” he laughed.
In that first desperate moment when Borathis vanished, everything in the young Power screamed the warrior had turned invisible—and in the case of a veteran swordsman like this, it was a lethal prospect. Looking down Steve could see then his first assumption had been wrong, but his actions had been right. With his sword still poised for attack, Borathis had disappeared, then reappeared behind him.
Not invisibility, Steve thought, but—“
As quick as that the armored man vanished and then appeared beside him on the stout branch, closest to the trunk of the tree. Steve raised his sword defensively on gut instinct and his enemy’s enchanted steel came down in a shrieking arc, severing the limb between them. Steve plummeted to the earth feet first, hitting and rolling as best he could but still taking the brunt of the fall. Borathis laughed from his place above, resting casually with one hand on the trunk of the tree before he vanished again. Steve, still shaking off the effects of the fall, attempted to rise to his hands and knees but an armored foot between his shoulder blades shoved him back to the ground.
“There will be no Jisetrian rescue this time, boy. You, like your pathetic Resistance, will be finished before this new day is out.”
Steve again tried to rise but Borathis held him firmly pinned underfoot. “The Resistance lasted this long without me,” Steve grunted, “and they’ll be here after I’m gone. And it’s only a matter of time before they win.”
Borathis snorted derisively. “After today, boy, there will not be a Resistance left to fight. Today you become the first casualty of a storm that is descending upon your friends even now.” Steve’s head turned sharply at this and he caught Borathis’s smile within his metal helm. “Yes, Azinon knows of your little alliance with the Jisetra, and he knows the location of your beloved Resistance. As I am sure you will agree, assistance from the higher powers—although costly—can be well worth the price. Tonight we prove it for the last time.”
With a suddenness born of desperation, Steve rolled to his side, unbalancing Borathis, and kicked his free leg out from under him. The move caught the warlord unprepared and flattened him on his back. He sat up immediately and Steve’s magic-imbued fist struck him like a hammer of granite, flattening him to his back once more. However formidable, the blow did not weaken Borathis’s hold on his sword and he vanished even as Steve tried to pounce on him. A dozen feet away Borathis reappeared back on his feet and rushed behind a furious bellow. Steve reached for his sword with his will and it flew to his hand just in time to parry a vicious downswing that staggered him as the man who delivered it ran by. Borathis recovered not far away—adjusting the helmet that now wobbled slightly on his head from the supernatural punch—and then turned to face his enemy with a look of cold fire in his eyes.
Too angered and afraid for his friends to succumb to intimidation then, Steve returned the hate-filled stare. He did not want to believe it, but he had little choice. Borathis had already stated his knowledge of the alliance and, if he knew of that, there was every reason to believe Azinon knew the new location of the Resistance.
Steve’s thoughts must have been evident on his face, for Borathis nodded saying, “That’s right, boy. This petty fighting has come to its end. This day will see the fall of your precious army, and in celebration we will drink toasts with goblets of your warm blood!”
Borathis charged and the crystal around the young wizard’s neck sang as he was driven back with defensive ducks, parries, and backward jumps, a few of which missed by only a hair’s breadth. A moment later, their blades locked above their heads. With Steve’s sword momentarily engaged, Borathis doubled him over with a knee. His stomach muscles convulsing, Steve scrambled away a few agonizing steps as his enemy calmly stalked him.
“Why are you doing this?” Steve gasped. “Do you know how many people are going to die—on both sides? Why do you serve a man who keeps you as a slave?”
Borathis advanced another step, then slowly circled, the tip of his blade tracing a line in the dirt as he moved. “I am no slave,” he said. “And of course a great many people are going to die—most of them yours.” The man sneered wickedly then, “I’ve noticed the Resistance has a difficult time fighting Jalkora.”
Steve’s eyes widened. He remembered the losses they suffered at Shallows Crag, and that had been with some advance warning and an emergency escape. The Resistance now would have neither.
Borathis nodded and chuckled evilly. “Not a pleasant thought, is it?”
Steve vented his anger in a fierce attack marked only by a vengeful scream. Borathis responded as a man expecting just this kind of desperation, and he deflected the wild sword blow expertly, riposting solidly with his own jaw-numbing punch with his free hand. Steve lost his feet and spun halfway around to land on his hands and knees, his sword only a few inches from his fingers.
Hefting his own over his head, Borathis said, “Your effort on behalf of your friends is inspiring, boy. Take heart knowing there is at least one who will survive this day.” Steve’s head slumped between his shoulders and, with his groan, Borathis relaxed his posture slightly, looking disappointed. “I would have believed this to comfort you. My lord tells me the Third is every bit as beautiful as she is gifted”—he raised his blade an inch higher for the kill—“and that her body, like her gift, shall not go to waste.”
Steve’s hand seized the hilt of his sword and scorched the grass as power surged up its length. Screaming in reply, the demon blade arced downward with a low parry at neck-breaking speed. The two swords met fiercely in a burst of red and white sparks an inch from the warlord’s thigh. Only now, after the fact, did Borathis’s surprised eyes reveal he was
even aware of the attack, so inhumanly fast did the young wizard move. Without the demon essence blade, he would surely have been separated from both his legs.
Across that contact, Borathis gazed into the young man’s eyes and met his own reflection in those orbs that blazed with white-hot power.
“I’ll kill you with my own hands if I have to!” Steve growled through clenched teeth.
Drawing back his blade, he lunged from the ground like a coiled viper. Borathis moved as a man in control of his own body once more, but the demon blade was clearly enhancing his speed. Steve’s blade missed its mark and the two swords struck in a torrent of sparks. The power coursing through each weapon struggled for dominion through the contact of every attack and counterattack, fighting each other across split-second cuts, parries, and ripostes.
Steve’s rage blinded him. He could think of nothing but Azinon and Sonya alone, the power of the sorcerer overwhelming her will and forcing her into unspeakable acts. And Borathis, the man who willingly served the foul lord, who would just as soon watch the rape of the woman he loved.
That was never going to happen. By God, Steve swore, that was never going to happen! If death was the only means to change this world then let it start with this son-of-a-bitch!
The magic coursing through the blade, combined with Steve’s mighty swing, sizzled the air with its passage and the resulting clash with the opposing sword pushed Borathis’s heels into the earth. Before a riposte could be made, the demon blade moved of its own again, again, and yet again, matching speed for speed with the furious young wizard, intercepting every attack and jerking its wielder around like a scarecrow sewn to the hilt. Borathis fought on the defensive with the demon blade guiding his every move. Every attack grew stronger than the one before and each threatened his center of balance violently. The warlord fought desperately to break off and retreat, his every parry spoke to it in the way he moved, to gain back his momentum, but to turn his back now—even if the sword allowed it—would have seen the man run clean through with the white hot sword in the young wizard’s hand.
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