by E. G. Foley
But it’d be fun to find out. He enjoyed the exhilaration of risking catastrophe. One had to be reckless to become a truly great warlock—and perhaps a bit mad.
As much as he was enjoying terrifying Wyvern, Zolond’s own pulse pounded at what he meant to do. Outwardly, he remained nonchalant about the chaos whirling around them.
If he hadn’t turned his bowler into the iron circlet, the Black Crown itself might’ve blown away—the very object Wyvern apparently wanted, along with the scepter-wand in Zolond’s hand, and the Master’s Ring, glowing a furious green on his finger.
“You young sneak! Wish to challenge me, do you?” he chided Wyvern over the howling wind. “Well? What are you waiting for? I’m standing right here!”
“We’ll be torn to shreds if we don’t get inside, you fossil!” Wyvern yelled. “We can sort this out once we’ve reached our coordinates!”
“No. Now.”
“You’re insane!”
Zolond grinned. Wyvern hauled back and lobbed a bolt of magic at him in frustration. Zolond deflected it easily.
“Oh, Nathan. Really?”
The earl cursed. But rather than stay and fight him, the braggart Nephilim turned around and ran toward the nearest tower door.
Zolond flicked his wand and tripped him. Wyvern sprawled on his belly.
“Tsk, tsk, my lord. Whatever would your father say to see you running like a coward?”
Zolond walked after him, then began buffeting the traitor back and forth, slamming him against the battlements again and again without even touching him.
Finally regrouping, his haughty face bloodied, Wyvern wrenched free of his magical chokehold and leaped to his feet with a snarl.
“Your time is done, you traitor!” Wyvern said, pointing at Zolond with one of his freakish six fingers.
Zolond broke the finger with a snap.
Wyvern bellowed and clutched his hand.
Zolond fought a smile. It really was too bad Ramona couldn’t see this. Still some life in the old dog yet, eh, my girl?
Of course, if this were merely a physical battle, Wyvern would’ve crushed him. After all, the half-breed was herculean of stature, while Zolond was ancient and frail.
But the Dark Master had honed his sorcery for more than three hundred years.
And he was angry.
Which explained the dread in Wyvern’s eyes when he looked at him.
That’s right. Zolond stared at him matter-of-factly and watched Wyvern put the danger together in his mind. If the Dark Master could do that to his finger with a mere thought…
Rallying, Wyvern let out a furious cry and struck back with a sudden release of force.
The bolt of power he shot forth from his palm knocked Zolond off his feet and flung him over the side of the wall into the courtyard below.
Plunging downward, he quickly broke his fall with a cushion of air to slow his descent. But, as he landed on his stomach, he heard a clank. His war crown had slipped off his head in the fall.
Now it rolled across the brick-edged courtyard.
And that left the sorcerer-king seriously annoyed.
Up on the ramparts, Wyvern climbed to his feet and hurried on toward the same tower door he had been trying to get to before Zolond had so rudely stopped him.
“Oh, Nathan!” he called, projecting his voice so it rang like a thunderclap. “Just where do you think you’re going?”
Zolond murmured a spell that turned his own arms into huge tentacles like those of a Kraken. The left tentacle he slithered across the ground, retrieving his crown. But the right he stretched forth longer and longer, across the courtyard and up the castle wall to wrap around the fleeing earl’s waist. He dragged Wyvern over the edge of the wall, slamming him down in the courtyard.
“Stay and fight like a man.”
Just as Zolond retracted his arms back to normal and placed the iron circlet back on his head, the Black Fortress shifted out of reality there on the hill beside Merlin Hall and went hurtling out through the void.
At once, excruciating pain ripped through Zolond’s body. He let out a roar, knocked to the ground. He heard Wyvern’s bellow of agony as well.
It was nothing like gliding through the gray clouds of the rift, as he’d done earlier, and nowhere as painless as he’d heard that the experience of traveling through the Grid with an authorized Lightrider was.
This resembled falling through a tornado fraught with broken glass at unimaginable speeds, with lightning bolts flying past on all sides.
The thunderous wind stole the air from his lungs; the whole castle rattled as they whizzed through the nothingness. The frigid cold was intolerable, the pressure immense. His eardrums felt like they would burst.
Zolond crawled over to the brick housing of the machine and hugged the base of it to keep from being flung off into the void. All the while, the throbbing of the infernal device beat like goblins’ drums in his chest.
By the lurid glow of the pulsating energy ball, he looked over to see how his foe was faring.
The younger warlock glanced around too, trying to get his bearings. Then he noticed Zolond eyeing him and sent him an evil sneer.
Zolond surmised they were both thinking the same thing: to weaken the other during the jump in order to strike the winning blow first the moment they landed.
The Nephilim was not without skill as a sorcerer, Zolond knew. But it was his brute physical strength that gave him the advantage in this bizarre situation, allowing him to at least move his powerful body under the crushing gravitational forces bearing down on them both.
Zolond could do nothing but lie there, helpless. Even Wyvern struggled to lift his left hand a few inches off the ground. His lips began moving and his biceps bulged beneath his finely tailored shirt as he strove to keep the hand raised to cast a spell.
Zolond couldn’t hear the earl’s words over the howling of the gale and the frantic pounding of the machine, but it dawned on him that the young upstart actually had the nerve to speak an Assassin’s Arrow at him.
With a gasp, Zolond recoiled from the deadly curse, but the fiery dart of glowing magic dissolved in the whirlwind before it even reached him.
Halfway through its arc, the orange arrow of the curse was ripped to pieces, which were then sucked up into the void like wisps of smoke.
Wyvern cursed at his failure, then seemed determined to kill Zolond with his bare hands, if need be.
The oversized earl rallied his strength, then began dragging himself inch by inch across the few feet of ground between them.
Zolond watched him in alarm, still unable to move from the gravitational forces. He narrowed his eyes in growing fury when Wyvern managed to grasp his ankle.
The hatred in the Nephilim’s eyes as he inched nearer made Zolond realize that the brute meant to strangle him.
Suddenly, they arrived at the coordinates with a bone-jarring jolt, slamming into place at their destination, wherever this was.
Zolond felt mighty forces surging around them, huge gravity, a tearing sensation as the hole they had punched through reality flew to mend itself back together.
The void was slow to release them from its black grip.
As the machine continued its pulsating drumbeat and the gales began to slow, Zolond realized this would be his best opportunity to immobilize the Nephilim for once and for all.
But did he have the strength left to do it?
His whole body felt battered and so very old, his bones as weak as matchsticks, his skin like paper. In short, the sorcerer-king was drained of nearly all power, while Wyvern could still summon the strength of his demon father…
A strange thing happened at that moment, however. As his weary molecules began settling into this new physical realm, Zolond suddenly perceived a faint thread of energy from afar begin flowing into him. What on earth? He had no idea where it came from.
Not from him, to be sure.
No, it seemed to emanate to him from a great distance. Ramona? Bu
t she wouldn’t dare presume to assist the Dark Master.
Besides, this unexpected infusion of energy felt hot-blooded and vigorous.
Young.
Victor! Zolond suddenly realized—and nearly laughed. Of course. Why, you little scoundrel. But at his age, he was not too proud to appreciate the long-distance boost. He just might survive this after all.
The Fortress was still finishing the jump, blinking in and out of reality at its new location.
He could smell the noxious fumes from the energy ball, feel the ions hanging in the air as the lightning began to dwindle. It was all rather dizzying.
But Zolond fought the disorientation of that nightmarish trip. He’d been alive too long to let anything faze him. Ignoring the ghastly, sizzling sensation racing across his skin, he strove to clear his head and come up with a solution.
Honestly, the Order didn’t know how easy they had it, with Gaia always so accommodating toward their side. The Dark Druids had to use the most cunning magic, the most forbidden science to achieve what the Order trained mere junior Lightriders—children—to accomplish with ease.
Fortunately, Wyvern was as dazed from the jump as he. The earl’s grip loosened on his ankle just a little; Zolond took that as his cue.
Half to preserve the shattered truce with the Order and stop a useless war, half to save his own life, Zolond (with a little help from his grandson) forced himself back into a state of battle readiness before the jump had fully completed.
Mentally sifting through his wide repertoire of spells at top speed, he lifted a yet-translucent hand, summoning up all the sinister magic that had been forced into the Master’s Ring by the Dark Druids’ founders.
The second he felt the solidity of the machine’s brick housing at his back, he let out a raspy war cry and hurled a blast of pent-up power through his ring and the wand-scepter at once. The double blow hit Wyvern in the head at point-blank range.
And knocked him out cold.
“Ha,” Zolond whispered with a grim smile, his chest heaving. “That’ll teach ya.”
Then the machine shut off and the cylinder swiveled back down into its housing.
The doors that let out into the bailey flew open instantly. Reptilians and bridge crew members alike came running out to find the “frail” Dark Master standing over the unconscious Nephilim.
Zolond gave the crewmen a frosty look to let them know he was back, and most displeased with every one of them.
“Take him away,” Zolond ordered them. “No—wait.” First, the traitor must be bound.
Zolond glared at the crewmen who had foolishly obeyed Wyvern’s treasonous orders. They would all be dealt with, in turn, and he saw how they quaked in their boots, for they knew it too.
But first, Zolond conjured a set of adamantine chains just like the ones that trapped Shemrazul in the Ninth Pit of Hades.
The thick, unbreakable silver chains wrapped themselves magically around Wyvern’s ankles and wrists; they snaked around his waist, hog-tying the proud Nephilim.
The crew members cowered. While the reptilians glared and hissed, flicking their forked tongues in disapproval at them, Zolond levitated the unconscious earl off the ground with his walking stick—all two hundred plus pounds of him.
Then he floated the Nephilim into the castle as easily as though he were walking a dog on a leash.
When he went into the Black Fortress, guiding his levitated burden before him, Zolond did not speak a word to anyone. He didn’t have to.
Every staff member he passed stared at him with shocked dread, then cleared out of his path and hung their heads. No doubt they sensed his fury and disgust with them all.
There was an old saying: If you’re going to kill the king, you had better kill the king.
Well, Zolond wasn’t dead yet. But those who had dared to move against him soon would be.
The other insurgent Dark Druids did not show their faces. They probably hadn’t even realized yet that he was here.
“Where are the others?” he asked Escher, his trembling lieutenant. “Raige, Viola, the sea-witch?”
“I-in their chambers, sire.”
“Hmm.” Zolond deemed it likely they were still recovering from the battle at Merlin Hall and had retreated to their rooms to brace for the jump.
Only a couple of minutes had passed, after all, since the Black Fortress had vanished from the hillside atop Aelfric the Long Man and reappeared here, wherever they were.
The interim felt much longer to Zolond, of course, thanks to that horrific ride through the void. But most of the crew, the half-troll mercenaries, and the other Dark Druids probably hadn’t even noticed that he was in the building.
How could they know Ramona had warned him about what was going on behind his back?
Still pondering the best way to deal with the other members of the failed coup now that he had neutralized the ringleader, Zolond personally took Wyvern down to the most impregnable cell the Black Fortress contained.
This would only be a temporary haven, of course. The traitor had much worse in store for him. All in good time.
For now, Zolond dumped the earl on the stone floor of the cell in a clatter of chains, then slammed the iron door shut and triple-locked it.
More was needed.
“Belua lapis viventum…” Murmuring one of his favorite incantations into his fist, Zolond conjured a handful of dust, then blew it off his palm and watched it grow and quickly congeal into a living stone gargoyle.
Seven feet tall, the fiery-eyed thing had horns, fangs, and long, lanky arms that ended in deadly claws. It hissed and stretched restlessly.
“Guard the door,” Zolond ordered it. He conjured a second one for added security.
Next he saw to it that both of Wyvern’s dangerous pets were secured, lest either beast try to help its master. He had the surly manticore caged and the temperamental dragon, Tazaroc, chained in his large stall near the loading bay.
Zolond was eager to punish the earl’s rebel followers, but first, there were the Noxu to deal with. The barbarian mercenaries seemed to have become confused in their loyalties, and thus were of no further use to the Dark Master.
In their barracks, the half-trolls were celebrating their plunder.
Cocking his head toward one of the ventilation grates, Zolond could hear the echoes of their coarse laughter and bestial snorts of glee.
What to do, what to do…
Zolond walked up the black stone stairs from the basement, leaving the two gargoyles to guard the Nephilim.
“Hmm, how shall I punish them?” he mused aloud.
The various uniformed crewmen who were following him around whimpered uncertainly.
Zolond smiled. “I know…”
Lifting his hand, he invoked a contagion that infected only troll species. That seemed efficient.
Zinjo Fever was one of the few things the dull-witted Noxu feared. The dread disease was harmless to others but killed their kind almost instantly.
Admittedly, sending a pestilence was tricky work, even for the Dark Master. It required immense concentration, and Zolond was worn out from the night’s events. First, he closed his eyes, secure in doing so despite having traitors lurking in the castle.
With his four trusty reptilians surrounding him once more, Zolond knew he didn’t have to worry. He whispered the spell for Zinjo Fever into his right hand.
Though he kept his eyes closed, concentrating, he knew the Master’s Ring took on a sinister glow.
He could feel the gathering pestilence tingle and burn the flesh of his palm slightly, like hot spices. He cradled the growing handful of red smoke for a moment longer, letting it intensify.
Then he opened his eyes, craving vengeance on all who’d disobeyed him. When the scarlet smoke in his hand glowed hot, Zolond released the fever with a snarl.
At once, tendrils of red smoke began traveling down the black granite hallways of the castle, curling up and down the stairwells, reaching their way into every c
hamber, until all of the Noxu were falling to their knees, gasping for breath.
Pleased, Zolond turned next to the bridge crew. The gray-uniformed officers of the castle-ship backed away from him.
“I want a full report of all the jumps Wyvern ordered since I left,” he told Escher.
“Y-yes, sire, right away. Back to your posts!” Escher snapped at his subordinates.
Half the bridge crew had been following Zolond around in a terrified daze.
“W-we had no choice but to obey the commander, Your Darkness,” said the navigator, Officer Lantz. “We were only following orders.”
Without warning, Zolond turned around and hurled a bolt of magic at him, sealing Lantz’s lips so there was nothing beneath his nose but smooth skin, down to his chin.
The mouthless navigator’s eyes widened and he made a muffled sound of terror.
“Do you think I care for your excuses?” Zolond did not bother telling him that the silencing spell usually wore off in about nine hours. Let him suffer. “You heard the lieutenant. Get back to your posts and await my orders!”
The bridge crew fled back to their places, two of the others leading Lantz, who was doing his best to scream without a mouth.
“Now then,” Zolond murmured to the reptilians. “I must deal with my unfortunate colleagues.” He paused, saddened. “I wonder if any of the Council refused to join Wyvern’s adventure. Surely a few must’ve stayed loyal to me.”
“We are with you, sire, come what may,” Druk said. The other three reptilians nodded and closed ranks around him.
Zolond was gratified by their loyalty. At least someone around here appreciated the sacrifices he had made for this organization.
Everyone else seemed to need reminding that it was he, not Wyvern, who wore the Black Crown.
Unfortunately, Zolond was wearied to the core of his dark soul by all that had just transpired. If that hurling journey through the void and his duel with the Nephilim weren’t grueling enough, the subsequent series of spells he’d performed since his arrival had taxed his powers to the utmost.
If it weren’t for the boost from his cocky young heir, Zolond feared he might’ve collapsed from exhaustion by now. A slight smirk crooked his lips. Good lad.