The walls of the hallway rippled and extruded shiny black skeletal arms whose wicked talons clawed at them. They ripped Ruel’s and Geret’s magical swords out of their hands and crumpled them until their magic failed and they winked out of existence. More hands stretched up from the floor and held the group’s legs fast.
Salvor slashed at them, hacking off fingers. Rhona shouted for Ahm to duck as she reached high and lopped an arm off the ceiling. Geret yanked out his other sword and tried to fend off a ceilingful of stone claws.
The cultists in the main hallway laughed, and their echoing voices reached the Scions just before the Enforcers did.
~~~
The Tome’s yellow essence swirled in Oolat’s mind with whorls of confidence. The ritual chamber was prepared. The Scions were being delayed and destroyed on the upper three levels of the stronghold. That meant the thief and her light-slinging sidekick were steadily venturing farther from any potential help.
It was time to act.
Oolat was horrified as the Tome’s plan washed over his cramped, impotent consciousness. No! You can’t possibly! he ranted at the malevolence that controlled his body. She must suffer for her deeds! She could be an endless source of bloodmagic! Please, anything but this!
The Tome took no notice of the squeakings of its avatar’s mind. Such chatter was not only irrelevant to its purpose, but useless and mortal-minded as well.
It gathered Oolat’s darkness like a shroud, then winked its avatar away, leaving the ancient book on the lectern.
~~~
Sanych and Meena were lost.
“I told you,” Meena said, her clipped tones revealing her irritation. “They change the entire labyrinth down here every century or so. It’s never been the same twice.”
“We’re wasting all this time,” Sanych said, gesturing to the hallway. It was dressed in dark stone, lined with green torches, and identical to many others they had been down in the last fifteen minutes. “There can’t be many more levels below us, can there?”
“This place is like an ants’ nest; more vertical than horizontal. Who knows?”
“I do,” Oolat said, popping into existence inside Sanych’s invisibility barrier.
Sanych staggered back a step, light flaring in her palms. How did he find us?
Before she could raise her hands and attack, Oolat lunged for Meena, a predatory grimace on his lips.
Meena thrust her sword forward, catching Oolat along the ribs. He didn’t seem to notice. His hands flared blackly on either side of her head, and she screamed.
Sanych’s palms rose toward Oolat’s back, but she hesitated. Her thoughts were frantic: If Meena can cut him, will my magic work against him? And if it doesn’t, will it bounce back in this narrow corridor and kill me?
Meena’s eyes rolled up in her head. As she started to collapse, Oolat’s arms swept around her like a lover, cradling her head against his chest. His eyes flicked to Sanych, a wicked fire gleaming in his white irises. Then he winked out of existence, taking Meena with him.
Sanych reacted with instinct: she needed to see, to understand, if she was ever to find Meena again. Time slowed to a honeyed flow all around her, and she saw a thin black line shooting away down the middle of the corridor. She threw herself after it. It felt different than blinking; she didn’t know her destination. It was more like tracing. Behind her, her own bright trail—the tail end of the magic that encompassed her—whipped around corners and down stairwells. The black line grew thicker ahead.
A triumphant smile spread across her face. Nothing is faster than light.
On a wide and ornate spiral staircase carved from living rock, she passed an Enforcer who had both feet suspended off the floor. He moved so slowly, he appeared immobile.
Down a long hallway, up a few steps, toward the open doors—
A barrier of blackness snapped into place, enclosing her completely. All light died. There was no sensation, no input. She couldn’t feel the floor beneath her feet. Her hands touched nothing. She lit her skin from within, but the blackness siphoned it away.
Oolat had her. Encapsulated by the light-mirroring darkness, her magic was rendered useless.
Then she remembered her trail. Sanych looked over her shoulder and saw that the tiniest thread of light still trailed behind her. It connected her to the light in the hallways, but it was flowing to catch up with her. She blinked backward, ratcheting up to full speed, frantic to escape the silent, enclosing darkness.
She found herself at the top of three stone steps, in the light of the ubiquitous green torches, right where she’d wanted to be. She gasped in relief, panting and trembling at her close call.
As she stared in consternation at the black barrier that blocked her from the doors beyond, she felt Geret’s concern mushroom into defensive rage at her frantic worry for Meena and fear of Oolat’s power.
“No, Geret!” she cried aloud, her voice echoing in the hallway. She knew he was trying to break free from his own battle to come help her. His determination was steel in her mind; everything else fell away. He was going to come to her aid or die trying. She needed another way to reach Meena, and she needed it now, before Geret left everyone behind. His relative invulnerability was one of his allies’ best assets.
Her salvation blossomed full-formed into her mind, and she bit her lip with a grin. Reaching the one man who could help her was risky. It might even kill her, despite the Oath. But she had no choice. Oolat was about to kill Meena, without whom the Dire Tome could not be destroyed. She took a deep breath and held it, willing Geret a few moments of patience, and blinked away.
~~~
Meena woke to the scent of charring herbs. Their smoke hung thickly, incense-like, in the air. A hard surface pressed against the right side of her head, and she realized she was lying on the floor. Black stone, it was; mere inches from her eyes lay the curve of an embedded ring of gemstones, their multicolored facets winking in the pale green light.
Meena tried to bolt to her feet, but her wrists were manacled to the floor, and she wrenched her shoulder, collapsing back to her knees. Her eyes darted around the room; eleven circles of gemstones lined the curving wall, as they had four hundred years ago. Her breathing quickened.
“Your Oathen is not here to save you this time. Is he.” Oolat’s voice was oddly toneless.
Meena looked back at the Dzur i’Oth leader. His thick black robe was open, revealing a bare chest gleaming with perspiration even in the coolness of the underground chamber. His white eyes stared at her with deathly purpose. Behind him on the black carven lectern sat the Dire Tome, its pages rustling in anticipation.
“This body does not wish the ritual to go forward,” he said.
Meena frowned in confusion.
He ambled toward the gemstone ring at the other end of the room. “It wishes for you to remain an everlasting font for bloodmagic. Not the worst plan. Yet there is far more benefit than that in my plan for you. Though your body took the blessings intended for my loyal worshippers so long ago, I see this now as the hand of Fate. For only now, at my release back into the world, may I truly grasp the power that has been intended for me all along.”
Fighting down her fear, Meena raised her chin and replied, “That power was never intended for anyone. Your predecessors just decided to take it.”
“Those who can, should,” Oolat said, raising his arms and turning to face her. Behind her, the book’s thick pages turned of their own accord.
“Don’t you need another ten people to kill me?” Meena blurted, wondering if there remained a magic spell in the entire world that was powerful enough to bring about her death.
“I am not going to kill you. I am going to inhabit you.”
“What?” she gasped.
“I took this flesh because it was willing at the time. Even then, I spilled much blood to complete the spell. To claim you, I will perform the ritual of Binding—my consciousness to your body—and inhabit your immortal flesh forever. I am the Great
and Dire Tome of Ages. Once I leave this mortal flesh behind,” he slapped his bare chest with a hand, “I will be truly invincible, and all will grovel before me in worship and despair!”
Meena’s throat let slip an anguished cry. Of all the horrors in the world, this was an unforeseen and nearly-inconceivable one. To be twisted and used by the very evil she sought to destroy, to be made its helpless pawn, to live eternally, abetting its domination and reign of terror—the prospect left Meena horrified.
Oolat began to chant. Meena began to scream.
~~~
The realization that Sanych had just blinked outside the Dragon Temple nearly cost Geret an ear as one of the Enforcers swiped at his head with a serrated sword. Geret got his own blade in the way just in time, then kicked the man’s knee with his free foot, dropping his opponent to the floor. Geret’s other leg remained in the viselike grip of a stone hand.
Ahm created a huge cube of steel above the Enforcer in front of him, crushing him with it. Salvor, on Geret’s other side, was heavily engaged with two Enforcers, one of whom had just knocked Narjin unconscious.
“That dank little bastard’s just going to bake us when we kill enough Enforcers to give him a shot,” Geret muttered, hacking the last fingers off the stone hand that gripped his leg.
Rhona looked over at him after one last slice of her blue-bright sword, dropping another Enforcer to the growing pile. She sheathed her magical blade in the man’s body, drew a pair of sharp daggers from the back of her belt, and tossed one to Geret. With her other hand, she flicked the second dagger down the corridor.
The cultist saw her missile approaching and used a flare of yellow lightning to blast it into a hot blob of melted metal that splattered onto the cool stone with a hiss. His smug chuckle was fatally interrupted by Geret’s dagger as it pierced his eyeball. With a final gasp of surprise, he toppled backward onto the floor; one last flicker of electricity climbed the dagger’s hilt before fading into nothingness. His companion cried out and ducked around the corner of the corridor.
“Shiny,” Rhona sai, reaching to retrieve her sword.
Geret nodded. Whatever her personal issues, she knows how to fight.
One of the last few Enforcers in the melee had been waiting for Rhona to lose her focus; the woman’s blade lunged toward the pirate captain’s heart. Ruel threw himself across in front of her, though both his feet were still gripped by stone hands. His blade deflected the woman’s sword, but he lost his balance, falling onto his hands.
“Ruel, you clumsy swab,” Rhona began, swinging her blade at the woman who had nearly impaled her, and who was trying to do so again. But the Enforcer flipped her blade in mid-swing, stabbing it down into Ruel’s back before he could regain his feet.
The young pirate cried out, and Rhona’s eyes widened in outrage. She stepped forward with her one mobile leg and drove her blade straight through the woman’s chest, twisting it so that the fiery blue blade scorched flesh all the way around. The woman gurgled and sagged to the floor.
“I hope you’re prepared for merciless teasing, Ruel,” Rhona said. “What Clansman worth his swag has a scar on his back?”
Ruel didn’t answer, slumping to the floor. A pool of blood leaked out past his limp arm.
Rhona paled. “Ruel?”
Chapter Thirty-six
An empty mug sat cooling on the wooden table, its recently-held tea now gurgling contentedly in the man’s stomach. He sighed and looked around. The sudden fulfillment of his life’s purpose left him feeling a bit bereft—
A beam of light slipped through the crack between his window shutters, and a female figure appeared beside his tri-legged stool. With a groan, she dropped into a fetal position, writhing.
Or not, Curzon finished, as he saw the rippling colors of numerous churning spells that clung to Sanych’s form.
He flicked his fingers, shooing away the matrices that held the magic spells together. Their colors faded and dissipated into nothingness. Even as he bent over her, he could feel the transmogrified energy wafting above his head, hungry to be used again.
“Lucky you’re an Oathen. What have you gotten into now, girl?” he asked her, exasperated.
“Help,” she murmured, still shaking from the flight through the barrier spells that surrounded the temple. Locks of blonde hair had come loose from her ponytail and lay plastered to her cheeks with sweat.
“I have helped you. Those spells would have killed you before long, Oathbinding or no,” he chided.
“Help Meena,” Sanych clarified, pushing herself into a sitting position.
Curzon crossed his arms. “Our deal is complete.”
Sanych grimaced and got to her feet, glaring at her teacher. “You just saved me without a former agreement in place,” she pointed out. “My friends are dying, my Oathen is in danger, and Oolat has kidnapped Meena! You and I both know that’s just the start of his reign of terror. Does that sound like something you want to sit back and let happen?”
“Well,” Curzon said, his eyes searching the room. His fine, quiet home. His magic pocket of happiness.
“Master Curzon,” Sanych said with a breathless air of desperation, “if the cause of the Scions ever needed a hero, it’s now. You know what he’ll do to Shanal, to the world, now that he has that book, don’t you? No more quiet little cave! No more tea, no more stamp berries, and no more Scions to gripe at. Because they’ll all be dead!”
Curzon gulped, and his expression firmed. “Well,” he said again, meeting the girl’s eyes. “I do have a new theory I want to try. And there is all this energy in the room. Yes, I think I can get away with trying a theory.”
He stepped through the curtain into his entryway, pulling it shut behind him. Settling down into a comfortable position, he willed his magic to perform.
A moment later, Curzon stepped back through the curtain. “Well? What are we still doing here?”
~~~
Salvor and Rhona hacked away at the stone fingers around Ruel’s ankles until he slipped free and slumped to the floor. In desperation, Ahm flung up a thick metal wall between all of them and the remaining Enforcers. It was instantly hammered and clawed at as the craven spellcaster around the far corner created a few dozen arms on all sides of it. Their stone talons ripped and tore at the metal as if it were paper.
Rhona dragged Ruel back from the broken stone limbs, careful not to disturb the serrated blade that pierced his torso clean through. Salvor hacked at the last few fingers of his and Geret’s restraining stone grips, scattering sharp chips and fragments with his fiery blade. He freed the others as well, including Narjin, who was just returning to consciousness with a large knot on her forehead.
A quick glance behind showed a pale Rhona stanching the wounds in Ruel’s chest and back with the lacy sleeves she’d cut from her blouse. “You die, and I will kill you so slowly, Ruel,” she growled, “you’ll beg me to make you that whipping boy on that leaky garbage scow of a ship.”
The Enforcers were nearly through the metal wall. Ahm continued to shore it up with braces and new layers, but they were quickly set upon by more stone arms.
Salvor looked at Geret and Ahm, nodding. “Gentlemen.”
Geret met his eyes. “This time, I get to be in front.”
Salvor opened his mouth to protest. The very concept of letting his prince defend him was anathema, yet he had seen with his own eyes how Geret had survived multiple sword strikes with barely a scratch.
Then Ahm’s metal was falling to the floor in twisted shards as the Enforcers battered their way through. Ahm let it dissipate and replaced it with dozens of tiny spheres, but numerous small hands extruded from the floor and grabbed the silvery balls, pulling them down into the stone.
Ahm formed a block of steel over the distant spellcaster’s head, but three stone arms stretched out from the wall and caught it before it could crush him.
More arms grasped the Scions and their companions, clasping them tightly. Even Ruel and Rhona were embraced
and pinned to the floor. Rhona screeched in rage and frustration as her face was pressed into her cousin’s side.
The first Enforcer raised his sword over an immobile Geret, who gritted his teeth in anticipation.
“Folly, you bitch!” Salvor cursed, unable to act.
The serrated blade sliced down.
Slender beams of white light shot down the hallway, striking the stone-arm cultist and the Enforcers in the head. As one, they crumpled to the floor.
“Sanych!” Geret called, showing no surprise at her presence. The diminutive spellcaster ran toward him. Curzon trailed behind her, looking uncomfortable.
“Sanych?” Salvor blurted, still stunned at the sudden cessation of the enemies’ attacks.
The Archivist looked dismayed at the sight of Ruel, still and pale, trapped to the floor with Rhona clasped atop him. “Curzon, can you help?” she asked.
“Hm? Oh, yes.” With a dismissive wave of his hand, the stone arms dissolved into nothingness.
Rhona rose up and checked Ruel’s wounds, swearing under her breath. Her cheek was bright red with his blood.
“We’re going to save Meena from Oolat,” Sanych said.
“I’m coming with you,” Geret said, picking his old sword up again.
Ahm looked at Narjin. She tipped her head toward the cousins. He spoke to Sanych. “I’ll come as well. Narjin will stay with Rhona and Ruel.”
Salvor met Rhona’s eyes; he gave her an inquiring nod.
“I’m Clan, dirtwalker,” she replied, lifting her chin. “Go find someone who actually needs help.”
He turned to Sanych. “Whenever you’re ready, Archivist.”
They blinked.
~~~
Less than a moment later, Sanych stood several levels further underground, outside the black barrier with Geret, Salvor, Ahm and Curzon.
“I can’t hear a thing in there,” Geret said, trying to stare through the blackness.
“How long has it been?” Salvor asked.
“Hardly any time at all,” Sanych said.
“You know I can’t destroy the Tome, Sanych.” Curzon’s tone was hesitant.
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