“You are as powerless as these mortals,” Jinzeri said, “bound by your own empty values. Without the will to act, all the power in the world is meaningless.”
“Sometimes the greatest thing you can do with power is withhold it,” Selaphiel said.
Alexander began to feel a strange sensation building in his head. Pressure behind his forehead grew swiftly. He staggered with the sudden pain of it as the Sovereign Stone pulsed with crimson light and the door to the Wizard’s Den opened.
The room beyond was a fifty-foot square with arched ceilings, twenty feet high and dotted with a dozen glowing stones that cast a warm illumination. A single door occupied the center of the far wall. The center of the right wall held a hearth with several comfortable-looking chairs arrayed before it. The middle of the room contained an elegantly carved table large enough to seat four to a side and one on each end surrounded by ten matching chairs. The left wall held a four-poster bed in the far corner with a large footlocker pushed up against it and a small night table and lamp beside it. An ornately carved and polished desk sat in the corner to the left of the door with a large set of bookshelves occupying the space between the desk and the bed.
Alexander registered all of these things at a glance, but the thing that demanded his immediate attention was the swirling ball of soot-black smoke floating over the central table. It was darker that night with colors to match.
A moment after the door opened, Selaphiel pulsed with light so bright it would have blinded Alexander had it not been for his magical vision. His companions all shielded their eyes against the brilliance.
Jinzeri tipped his head back and cackled. “Destroy the tree,” he commanded.
The swirling ball of smoke seemed to expand as if awakening. It shot forth in a two-foot-diameter jet of blackness straight for the vitalwood tree. Despite its frightening speed, Selaphiel was faster. In a blink, he stood on the island between the tree and the demon. He raised his hand and a shield of magical force tinged with white formed a shell around the tree. The demon scattered as it crashed into the shield. Wisps of blackness slid through the air, reforming into a ball of thick black smoke.
“Flee!” Selaphiel commanded.
Everything was happening so quickly. Alexander couldn’t quite make sense of it all. He had no idea why a demon was waiting within the Wizard’s Den. Jinzeri had commanded it to destroy the tree and it tried to obey. From the brief conversation between the shade and Selaphiel, it was obvious that the vitalwood tree was far more important than Alexander understood.
“I have the nectar, My Love,” Chloe said in his mind.
Selaphiel spoke a word of power and a shell of shimmering blue-white light encased the entire vitalwood tree and a large part of the island.
“You will not succeed!” he shouted as he cast a bolt of light at the smoke demon.
Alexander felt a tremor ripple through the air as light met darkness.
Somewhere in the background of the chaos, Jinzeri laughed.
“You will have your wish, Shade,” Selaphiel said. From his outstretched hand, an arc of brilliant light reached out and took hold of a point in space before him. With a jerk, he tore the light away and the fabric of the world was rent, revealing a place beyond time and substance.
The tear in the world began to draw everything toward it.
“Quickly, My Love,” Chloe said, “we must take refuge within the Wizard’s Den or we’ll be lost.”
“Inside!” Alexander shouted above the fury of the vortex drawing everything into it.
His companions didn’t hesitate. They filed into the Wizard’s Den quickly, even as the vortex pulled on them.
Alexander watched the scene unfold from the threshold of his Wizard’s Den. The hole in the world sucked everything toward it, siphoning water from the lake into the emptiness beyond, sucking small stones and sand, tugging at Alexander.
The tree was protected by the shield that Selaphiel had erected, but everything else was fair game. The smoke demon was drawn into the vortex, swirling around the hole in tighter and tighter circles. Selaphiel had lost his form and was just a streak of bright light spiraling into the tear in the world as well.
The pressure increased and Alexander saw Chloe start to slide toward the door. In a panic, he willed the door closed and it vanished, leaving nothing but a wall where a moment ago was a passage leading to chaos. The sudden silence was deafening.
The turbulence stopped abruptly and Isabel staggered against him. He caught her, helping her to a chair.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, worry creasing his brow.
“It’s the darkness,” she said.
Chapter 26
Abigail stood in the ruins of Fellenden City. Anatoly, Magda, Conner, and Captain Wyatt and his platoon accompanied her. It was unusually cold for autumn and the sky was grey and bleak.
It had been weeks since Zuhl’s forces had sacked the city, but the stench of death still lingered in the damp air. Fellenden was a lifeless shell of what it had once been. The streets were littered with corpses, decaying or picked clean by scavengers. Rats ran freely through the city, fat from the abundant carrion. Buildings were smashed or burned out and abandoned. The few people they’d seen were hiding, no doubt terrified that the army responsible for such barbarity had returned to pick the bones of the city.
Abigail fought the feeling of nausea welling up inside her. She had been warned by her scouts that the city was broken and dead. Her advisors had suggested that there was nothing to gain by entering the city, but she needed to see it for herself. She wanted to have a clear picture of what she faced, who the enemy was.
The people, if they could be called that, responsible for such enormity were the problem with the world. Such an act of wanton destruction for the sake of power, without any regard for the suffering of others, was the reason the world was embroiled in war. Whether it was Phane or Zuhl didn’t make any difference. People who craved power and those who followed them were the enemies of civilization.
Abigail thought about the events of the past several months. She remembered how many times she had quietly wished that her family wasn’t at the center of events, that she could have gone on living her blissfully boring little life.
As she looked around in dismay at the carnage scattered through the streets of Fellenden City, she was grateful. For the first time since this ordeal had begun, she felt a deep sense of gratitude that she
was
at the center of events. In that moment she understood her brother a bit better. He had reluctantly embraced his fate. She had resisted, supporting him out of love, but never fully committing to any cause other than the preservation of those she loved.
Seeing the horror that had befallen Fellenden, she finally understood the only just use for power. Power was good for one thing: crushing those who would kill for it. And that’s exactly what she intended to do. She looked around at the faces of those with her.
Anatoly wore grim determination. She knew that look. It was the look he always had just before he spun his war axe off his shoulder and stepped into battle. She understood completely.
Conner wore a mask of desolation. The people of Fellenden were close friends and trading partners with Ithilian. The two islands shared much in the way of cultural values and work ethic. He looked like he was trying to reconcile the fact that other human beings were capable of such malice.
Magda’s face was set and devoid of expression, yet her eyes flashed with anger. Having been secluded for so long in the fortress island, she was coming to see that Phane wasn’t the only evil in the world worthy of her wrath.
Wyatt was detached and distant, focusing on his duties and maintaining a vigilant watch on the nearby buildings for any hint of a threat to his queen. Even though he was doing a good job of hiding his feelings, there was a tension about him that revealed the turmoil within.
“I never wanted power,” Abigail said, almost to herself. “But I’ve never been more grateful for anything in my whole life than the fact that I’m leading an army against the people who did this.”
“I know how you feel,” Magda said. “We’ve always had our petty squabbles and political infighting within the coven, but we’ve never been at war. Now that I see this, I want blood.”
“You’re going to get your wish,” Abigail said. “Alexander said the primary objective is to take or destroy the shipyards, and that still stands, but our secondary objective is to kill every single one of these brutes in the process. We will offer them no mercy, no quarter, and no remorse. If they offer to surrender, we’ll accept it, disarm them and then execute them to a man. Their crimes are so horrendous, their violation of the Old Law so beyond redemption, that I sentence each and every soldier of Zuhl to death.”
Anatoly nodded in agreement.
“This is so much worse than we feared,” Conner said. “I need to send word to my father. The scope of the destruction we’ve seen here will give him greater reason to mobilize our people.”
“Flight Commander Corina will provide you with message riders,” Magda said.
“The scout riders will be back before dark,” Abigail said. “Once we have their report, we’ll plan our first attack.” She mounted up without another word and turned her horse toward the broken city gate.
***
They had arrived on the island the day before. The initial battle had been very one-sided. Zuhl’s forces guarding the Gate were taken completely by surprise and quickly overwhelmed. Once Abigail’s army was through and the Gate was closed, she had issued orders to move northwest toward Zuhl’s shipyard and the bulk of his forces. It would take weeks to reach their target but Abigail expected to encounter his raiding parties along the way. She intended to pick him apart a piece at a time, weakening his forces before engaging the bulk of his army.
Flight Commander Corina had arrived with nearly a hundred Sky Knights just after dark the night before. She was tall and lithe with a gaunt face, severe eyes, and dirty-blonde hair that she wore tied back in a long braid.
Abigail had ordered her to send out scouts to assess the damage to Fellenden and to locate the enemy. They’d lifted off at dawn and were scheduled to return before dark. Forty teams of two were each given an area of the island to survey. Given the range and speed of the wyverns, they would be able to cover the entire island in a cursory way, providing vital information that would help Abigail formulate her strategy and decide where to focus her scouting activities in the coming weeks.
It was just past dark when the last of the scouting parties returned. The Wing Commanders each accepted reports from their Sky Knights, then reported to the command tent with Mistress Corina. Abigail had assembled her command staff including Connor Ithilian, Mage Dax, Wizard Sark, Mistress Magda, General Markos, and General Kern, along with Anatoly, Knight Raja, Captain Sava, and Captain Wyatt.
Each Wing Commander spoke in turn, reporting the results of the scouting parties under their command. Half of the enemy forces were encamped and dug in around the shipyard on the northwest coast at the edge of the Iron Oak Forest. The scouts estimated four legions. The remaining four legions were spread out across Fellenden.
Each had targeted a city. Wakefield and Bredon were under siege. Bristol Bay had fallen. Reports spoke of fire and carnage on a scale that rivaled the devastation at Fellenden City. The fourth legion was just beyond the mountain pass south of Fellenden City and turning west toward Suva.
The cities that hadn’t yet been targeted by Zuhl’s raiding legions were busy fortifying their defenses and preparing for a battle they knew they would eventually lose. Of the twelve large cities on Fellenden, two had fallen and three more would fall before Abigail could do anything about it.
Raiding parties ranged through the less densely populated areas attacking smaller villages, pillaging what resources they could carry to supply their army and shipyard, raping the women, killing or enslaving the men.
There was virtually no organized resistance to the enemy invasion. Fellenden hadn’t fielded any sort of army to speak of with the exception of small companies of militia who had taken it upon themselves to defend against some of the smaller raiding parties.
One report spoke of a large number of people hiding deep within the Iron Oak Forest. From the description, they appeared to be at least partially military with an ordered encampment beneath the giant trees, scouts posted all around, and warning fires that signaled when the Sky Knights passed overhead. She suspected they were the refugees Alexander had spoken of.
Abigail looked at the updated map and picked her target: Bredon, a city to the north of Fellenden City. The scouts had reported that it was surrounded by ten thousand enemy soldiers and that several buildings were burning within its walls. Its gates were holding—for now. More importantly, it was on the route to the shipyard.
Abigail wanted to strike out at Zuhl’s soldiers, she wanted to crush them, more than that, she wanted to protect the innocent people of Fellenden, but she had a duty that was more important than any of that.
Zuhl had a horde of unimaginable size waiting for ships to carry them to the far corners of the Seven Isles. Her first responsibility was to stop that from ever happening. The future depended on it, but in order for her to fulfill that duty, many innocent people would suffer and die.