Haldorum reined in beside the wagon alarmed. “What happened? Where is she going?”
Kamarine jumped to the back of the wizard’s horse. “Just go! I will explain on the way!”
Cued by the gathering energy in the sorcerer’s right hand, Steve dived a split second before Azinon unleashed a sizzling bolt of red-hot electrical energy. He rolled to his feet even as a portion of the wall beside him exploded outward, and then he fired back, the white lightning ripping across the room and adding to the scent of ozone in the air. With a deft motion, the sorcerer waved it away and the suit of armor in the far corner of the room flew apart in an explosion of sparks and a clap of thunder.
Azinon countered, opening his mouth and exhaling a green, gaseous cloud that whirled toward the young wizard like a horizontal tornado. It struck Steve in the chest with a viperish hiss, eating away the armor as though it were paper.
With no time to waste, Steve seized both the hardened leather and padded gambeson beneath at the neckline and tore them both in half with magic-imbued strength. The garment and armor fell to the floor in pieces, leaving only his belted white tunic between his skin and the open air.
Quiet then fell across the room as the dark sorcerer smiled. Folding his hands neatly behind his back, he paced a few steps to the left, and then back again to the right in no apparent hurry, his booted footfalls echoing in the chamber. “There is something I do not understand,” he said at last.
“If it’s why you can’t get a date, I’d say it’s that green crap in your mouth.”
In response, Azinon struck him a blow with his will alone. The force of the impact lifted Steve off his feet and spun him twice in the air before he landed face down on the marble floor. From somewhere within, the young wizard’s magic surged, boiling his blood and charging his every cell, threatening to overwhelm and take control. Through no small effort, Steve focused his thoughts, centered himself, and pushed back, forcing that other part of himself away.
“That,” Azinon said pointing to him. He marched briskly across the room unopposed and then seized the young man by the hair, pulling his head back to look into his face. “That is what I do not understand. On your world, boy, I saw a glimpse of your true soul. By your every deed, you serve the Light, yet there is a heart of darkness beating in your proud, noble chest. I have seen it, and I would have that paradox explained.”
Steve was gritting his teeth against the sorcerer’s hold and he reached back to free himself but the man’s grip was like iron. “Still looking for knowledge, Azinon?” he grunted.
Azinon shook Steve’s head once violently. “Whatever it is you are suppressing, it is obviously the stronger part of you, so why oppose it? Even now, when it is the only thing that can possibly save your life, you resist! Why?”
Steve brought his knees up under himself and balled his free hand into a fist.
“Because,” he said. Steve’s punch slammed into Azinon’s stomach and doubled the sorcerer over with an explosive exhale. Rising to his feet, Steve pulled his fist back and struck again to the man’s face. “It—is—not—me!” he screamed, punctuating every word with another blow. Then, seizing the Dark One by the collar, he turned and hurled the man across the room. Azinon sailed through the air, striking the high back of the throne and, despite its weight, knocking it over backward to tumble down the backside of the dais.
Even beaten and bruised, bleeding from his nose and mouth, that last made the young wizard feel good, and he smiled through his split lower lip. It was, however, short-lived.
Azinon stepped up to the top of the dais, his boots bringing an angry hiss with every step, burning into the stone beneath his feet, his appearance like the living incarnation of a thunderstorm. His rage was palpable, and a maelstrom of searing red and green energy swirled around him like wraiths summoned from the grave.
“You!” thundered Azinon.
That single word struck Steve like an explosion, hurling him backward across the floor until he struck his head on the arched doors behind him.
“Will! Die!” Azinon finished, his every word resonating with power and shaking the very pillars of the chamber. As the echo of his voice died away, the sorcerer looked on at the young wizard expectantly, though his opponent did not move. Wiping away the blood running down his cheek with the back of his left hand, the sorcerer raised his right in the boy’s direction, his decision made. “A pity you will not feel this.”
Sonya plummeted down through the stained glass ceiling feet first, her shield shattering the structure and bringing the whole of the dome down around her like deadly shards of rain. Though not in any immediate danger, she extended her other hand and cast her protection around Steve’s unmoving form as the plated glass shattered into tens of thousands of smaller pieces on the marble floor.
“Ah, my dear,” Azinon cooed in delight.
She touched down lightly amid the broken glass and fractured marble.
“So nice of you to return.”
Sonya’s glowing shield expanded around herself to become a hemisphere. With one hand guiding her own magical protection and the other extended toward Steve, she slowly backed away from the sorcerer, toward her friend’s unmoving form as she said, “Leave him alone.”
Azinon advanced down the steps of the dais, his footsteps flaming in his wake. “I am afraid that is impossible—but thank you for coming back. It saves me the time of fetching you myself.”
“Stay where you are!” Sonya warned him. “I won’t tell you again.”
Heedless, the sorcerer advanced still, opening his hands to either side. “And if I do not?”
Keeping herself between the Dark One and her friend, Sonya dropped her shield around Steve and extended her hand instead toward the sorcerer. Immediately Azinon was engulfed in the aura of the Third Power’s magic, and he screamed. Azinon’s hands clutched feebly at his chest where the skin burned as though still aflame, the flesh smoking beneath his black tunic. The night the Resistance came for the Emperor, Steve had almost died, but he had also managed to catch the sorcerer unawares with a bolt of lightning that had hurled the Dark One a dozen paces away. Now that wound flared anew, bubbling the flesh as it smoked and peeled.
Azinon looked to the Third through bloodshot eyes and summoned his will. Sonya gasped, her hands clawing at the air as she arched backward and rose from the ground, her body spasming under the sorcerer’s crushing will. The shield around her faded to nothing, and she would have screamed in torment if but for the fact her lungs refused to draw in air.
Azinon left her suspended in agony as he slowly regained his feet. “It seems whatever prevents me from dominating your friend does not lend itself so well to you, my dear.” Extending his hand, palm facing himself, he brought it toward his chest and Sonya’s floating form drifted toward him. He kept her there a few moments more, clearly relishing her anguish as consciousness left her, and then released her to fall to the floor at his feet. Azinon sneered down at her, battered and bloody as he was, with both lust and triumph on his face.
“You,” he said, “are the greatest prize of all. I will ravage you at my leisure; you will satisfy my every sadistic whim; and all the while you will ensure none I deem worthy ever falls to the plague.” Looking down at her, he licked his lips. “And in return, I shall prolong your life into eternity alongside mine,”—with the toe of his boot he rolled her over onto her back—“so you may serve me forev—”
Azinon turned at the strange, scraping sound behind and to his left. It was an odd little sound that carried like the din of laughter over water as it bumped and clicked through bits of broken stone and a carpet of broken pieces of shattered glass. He turned to face the sound when he spied the source: the glittering silver rapier, scraping along the marble floor like an animated limb searching for its body, rolling first this way, and then that. Then like a compass needle finding true north, the rapier spun about and leaped into the air hilt first. Azinon ducked and turned as he followed the weapon’s path over his h
ead and beyond.
Standing silent, feet parted, head down, Steve snatched the rapier out of the air without so much as looking up.
“Could it be?” Azinon whispered with a childlike smile on his face.
Steve’s arm lowered to his side, the tip of the rapier dropping to clink lightly off a piece of glass on the floor.
“Is that my boy in there?”
Energy burst along the length of the weapon, sparking and crackling from the forte´ to the point, turning the blade white hot. From where the blade touched the floor, flames erupted.
The sorcerer smiled and he absently gestured to a sword on the wall. It flew across the room and landed in his hand, red energy surging down its length. “Oh, I think so,” he said with a nod. “My, but they grow up so fast.”
Steve raised his head then, revealing orbs like blackened storm clouds.
Azinon nodded once at this. “And put away their childish things.”
Like the incarnations of Death and War, the two men charged.
Haldorum staggered to a halt as thunder shook the halls of the palace, surprise written on every face around him—including his own.
The impact echoed through the corridors like Vulcan’s hammer, toppling statues, tumbling precious vases and other finery from their stands to shatter on the floor.
“God in Heaven! What was that?” he declared.
Kamarine grabbed the old wizard by the sleeve and pulled him into a run. “You can bet it was not God in Heaven. Come on!”
Their blades crashed together in a violent flash of sound and light. Each held the contact, the opposing powers of the two combatants swirling and mixing across the steel bridge between them, their faces pressing closer and closer in their struggle until they were but inches apart, their crossed weapons between them.
Something changed then. The contest of equals unbalanced and Steve’s blade inched closer to the sorcerer’s neck, the young wizard’s face a ghastly visage of rage and hatred. Baring his teeth with the effort, Azinon put both hands to the hilt of his sword and still the white blade pressed on. Turning to leverage, he slid the forte´ of his weapon to rest against the midpoint of Steve’s blade and pressed, the movement eliciting tiny shards of electricity along the length and dropping sparks to the floor. And still it came.
Azinon’s countenance turned frantic. For the first time in his existence, the sorcerer revealed his fear as a pathetic mewling little sound escaped his lips. Unharmed, Azinon would live on forever, but the young wizard’s searing white blade had death written in its length.
“What’s wrong?” Steve growled across the space between them. “This is what you wanted! This is my rage! This is my hatred!”
Azinon inhaled and opened his mouth, the poisonous fog gathering at the back of his throat, but the sudden crack of Steve’s forehead across the bridge of his nose sent him reeling backward instead. Sparks flew as their blades came apart and Azinon struggled for his balance on the bits of glass and shattered stone, his eyes watering and the crest of his nose running blood where the skin had torn.
The vision in his left eye cleared enough to see Steve’s blade descending for his skull. Desperately he threw up his own weapon and the young wizard’s blade hammered down once, then again, repeating the pattern, seemingly taking out his rage in that furious assault as the sorcerer retreated. Azinon then tripped just as Steve’s blade crashed down for the tenth time in half as many seconds, the force of it driving the sorcerer to his knees.
“Golems!” he screamed.
Steve turned at the screeching sound of metal shifting. A cold unlife filled the three remaining suits of armor in the room and an icy fog seeped out of their visors and joints. Though possessing no hands of flesh, the metal gauntlets held massive two-handed swords all the same. Glowing red orbs alighted inside their helms and, suddenly, the three were on the move.
Steve started to turn from the cowering sorcerer but spun back again with an inside-to-outside sweep of his sword that carried Azinon’s cowardly attack up and out. At the same time, the sorcerer screamed in agony anew as Steve’s booted heel crashed into the bridge of his nose, accompanied by a satisfying crack of bone. Azinon’s sword flew from his grasp as he fell to his back and covered his nose with his hands. With a cry of despair, the sorcerer waited for his death blow at the hands of this maddened wizard whose dark side he had himself conjured forth.
Azinon waited across seconds to die, but Steve turned his back yet again. Incredibly, the young wizard left him there. Instead of killing the sorcerer, Steve bent at the knees and then leaped an impossible distance, landing between the unconscious Third Power of Mithal and the golem stomping its way on a direct path through her to get to him.
Believing in neither Fate nor Fortune, Azinon nevertheless whispered a quiet thanks to them both as he climbed to his feet and puzzled over this unforeseen circumstance that spared his life.
The last time Steve was overcome by whatever entity now possessed him, he had cared for nothing and no one, save his revenge—even seeking the destruction of Haldorum to satiate his rage.
Steve ducked the golem’s awkward swing easily, rising up in the wake of the attack and plunging the point of his blade through the open visor, between the burning red coals there. An unearthly howl pierced the air and the armor flew apart in a burst of frigid mist and dark shadow.
Azinon snarled viciously across teeth painted red with his own blood as understanding dawned across his face.
This other part of Steven did not emerge to save his own life. Indeed, the sorcerer had nearly killed him—would have killed him—were it not for the Third’s timely intervention. But the moment she was in danger… There was only one thing that could so blind a person in such fashion.
Spraying blood with the words, Azinon said in disgust, “You love her.”
Steve turned to face him again. Sonya stirred to consciousness even as Steve stepped over her body and continued after the sorcerer.
Both remaining golems advanced on the wizard, and both fell in two attacks that left them in a burst of mist and shadow.
Azinon did not run as Steve came on. The young wizard’s countenance gave no indication of surprise at that fact—or perhaps it was that he didn’t care. His face showed no more expression than the cold calculation of a scientist seeking to find out simply if sorcerers died the same way golems did when you put a blade between their eyes.
Steve closed the distance and still the sorcerer remained fixed to the spot. Azinon raised his hand then, half-heartedly, and sent a bolt of energy sizzling at his opponent, though his expression clearly showed it was more out of curiosity than expectation of effect. Steve, however, merely raised his weapon and the energy dissipated along his blade, his stride never wavering.
Azinon shrugged indifferent.
The young wizard advanced within two paces and drew his arm back, the sword point aimed directly between the sorcerer’s eyes.
Azinon raised a hand, palm out. “Strike now and she dies.”
Steve halted, his sword blade glowing with deadly magic, the crystal blazing around his neck like a star. From this distance, the sorcerer knew, it would only take an extension of the young Power’s arm. So little a motion, a fraction of a second, and his life would be forfeit.
Slowly he paced around his young adversary and the young wizard turned with him, slowly rotating in place, blade poised to strike like a hooded cobra. The sorcerer paced a steady half circle until bringing the Third Power into view over his shoulder. There she stood, clearly frightened as Azinon held her in his thrall, tears falling down her cheeks, her dagger held in her own hand with the point poised a millimeter before her right eye.
“I have only to envision the act and she will kill herself before your very eyes,” Azinon warned, even as he watched for that slightest glimmer of movement that would foretell his doom a nanosecond before death actually claimed him—and, thereby, Sonya as well.
“I know what you are thinking, Steven,” Azinon
said, watching, waiting, but Steve did not move.
Behind the sorcerer, behind Sonya, a crowd of voices could be heard gathering on the other side of the double doors to the throne room. Someone shouted, “Get back!”, and then blue light was shining through the crack under the left door.
“You are thinking you might be able to strike me down in time to save her.” The white-hot radiance from Steve’s weapon illumined the bloodied face of the sorcerer in a ghostly light. Azinon watched as a tendril of electrical energy sparked and danced around the blade of the rapier, traveling down to the tip and back again like a living thing. “But you should ask yourself, are you faster than thought?”
“Steve, just kill him!” Sonya screamed through her tears. “It doesn’t matter about me, just kill him!”
Blue fire ignited a section of the arched door roughly five feet in diameter. Haldorum was surely on the other side, the sorcerer knew, burning his way through, but even he would not be able to save the Third once inside. He would not wait that long.
Azinon glanced briefly at the door, where his enemies were soon to break through. “Time is running out, Steven. Choose.”
Steve’s breath came in quick succession through clenched teeth bared in rage and his sword trembled before its target. Sweat trickled down his temple and brow, touching the corners of eyes gone black. Azinon could see that fury raged within the young man like a pent up storm. This wizard wanted with every fiber of his being to strike him down and finish it all. The sorcerer could sense it did not matter to Steve that his death would let this world start over again; it did not matter that over time millions of lives would likely be saved; it only mattered that his rage be quenched in the blood of his enemy.
All of this would come to pass if he could just find it within himself to let her die.
Steve lowered his sword and let it fall from fingers gone limp. The white light along the blade extinguished the moment it fell from his grasp and cold steel clanged on the marble floor at his feet.
Azinon sneered at his victory. His own sword flew from across the room and landed in his outstretched hand.
Third Power Page 67