Shadowstorm (32 page)

“Put the same spell in the stone,” Riven said to Cale, and withdrew from his belt pouch the small spell-storing stone he had taken from the Sojourner. He tossed it into the air before his face and it took up orbit around his head, whirring softly.

A year ago, Cale would not have considered sharing such

a spell with Riven. He had been too protective of his unique relationship with Mask. No longer. He and Riven were the First and Second, the Right and Left. They had killed Kesson Rel together. He cast the spell and Riven’s stone absorbed the energy.

Come when I call, he said to them.

Riven held up his ringed finger. “We’ll be there.”

Magadon concentrated for a moment and a sheath of mental energy formed around his body. He took an arrow and nocked it in the bow he had taken from the elfin Kesson Rel’s tower. The arrow’s tip flared red as his mind charged it with power.

will be watching, Magadon said, and Cale felt the tingle in his eyes that indicated Magadon was seeing what Cale saw.p>

Cale imagined Furlinastis’s swamp in his mind, pulled the shadows about him, and rode them there. He materialized in the fetid shallow water of the swamp, Weaveshear in hand. Sickly, brownish fog floated around his knees. The stink of decay filled his nostrils. He heard none of the usual shrieks, howls, or buzzing of insects. The swamp was silent.

Furlinastis was near.

He tested the mindlink to ensure it was working at his unknown distance from his companions. Mags, Riven? Here, Riven answered. Here, Magadon said. And I see what you see. He’s near, Cale said.

Shadows and fog walled him in on all sides. Stands of broad-leafed malformed trees jutted from the bog. Cale did not see the dragon. Furlinastis was as much shadow as Cale. He could be anywhere.

A hiss and the sound of a whispered incantation sounded from Cale’s left. He chose a random stand of trees fifty paces away and stepped through the space between shadows. He materialized in the trees, but not before the spell took effect and stripped him of every ward and enhancement spell he had cast.

He cursed, shaped the shadows around him into illusory duplicates of himself that mimicked his every move. He looked back in the direction from which he had heard the dragon cast its dispelling incantation.

He saw nothing. His breath came fast.

The dragons a spellcaster, he said to Magadon and Riven. My wards are gone.

Riven cursed. Get clear, Cale. We’ll rethink it.

A soft splash from behind him whirled Cale around.

He had only a fraction of a heartbeat to process the sight of an onrushing mountain of scales, claws, teeth, and shadows before the dragons gargantuan form buried him, his shadow duplicates, and the entirety of the copse of trees.

ŚŠŚ ŚŠŚ

Tamlin fought his fear enough to utter the words to a weak spell as the dragon neared. He pointed his hand at the dragon and four bolts of orange energy streaked from his fingertips, hit the dragon’s scales, and bounced off harmlessly. Bolts of lightning, a beam of gray energy, and a series of silver orbs streaked into the air on the heels of his spell but none seemed to harm the onrushing dragon.

Beside him, Brennus and Rivalen incanted spells of their own as the dragon closed. A black beam went forth from Rivalen’s hand and hit the dragon in the chest. Several scales shattered and rained down on the city. The creature roared with anger and pain, beat its wings, but did not slow its approach. A green beam shot from Brennus’s finger, hit the creature in the wing, but did no harm that Tamlin could see.

The men around them shouted, screamed, pointed, cowered. Onthul tried to maintain order, called for crossbows, but his commands went unheeded. The dragon angled itself lower, streaked directly for the walls. The Saerloonian drums beat so fast they sounded like one long, loud hum.

The fear that accompanied the dragon intensified and drove Tamlin to his knees. Some of the men cowered in their positions on the wall. Others jumped down in their terror and shattered legs and ankles. A few tried ro run for the gatehouse, knocking others down, trampling them. The dragon roared.

“Disperse!” Rivalen shouted down at the men in the streets. “Get back! Spread out!”

Brennus and Rivalen began to cast again. The dragon roared, swooped over them, opened its mouth, and exhaled a thick cloud of green vapor. Rivalen and Brennus completed their spells. Tamlin felt a hand on him, felt his body shimmer into mist. The screams and shouts sounded far off. The walls around him appeared to be only gray shadows. Rivalen and Brennus stood beside him.

“The ethereal plane, Hulorn,” Rivalen said. “The dragon’s breath cannot affect us here.”

Tamlin saw the shadows of men near him writhing in pain, clutching at their throats, digging fists into their eyes.

“Put an end to the conjurer bringing fire elementals into the city,” Rivalen said to Brennus. “Then summon Yder.”

“The earth elementals?” Brennus asked.

“Variance and the priests, as best they can.”

Brennus nodded. “The dragon?”

“I will handle the dragon,” Rivalen said, and his golden eyes flared. “Prepare yourself, Hulorn.”

Sound and substance turned solid as Rivalen took them back across the planar barrier. Men lay about on the walls, the ground. Some screamed. Others gagged, vomited. Hundreds lay still. An acrid, stinging stink hung in the air. Tamlin’s eyes watered.

Behind Tamlin, the city burned. Around him, fully a third of his men lay dead or incapacitated. As he watched, shadows clotted here and there on the walls and the Sharran priests stepped from the darkness.

“Variance!” Rivalen called to one of the Shadovar.

The darkness around Rivalen churned and the tall priestess appeared before him. She threw up her faceguard.

“Handle the earth elementals when they come, and protect the Hulorn,” Rivalen said. “If he comes to harm, you answer to me.

She looked at Tamlin, at Rivalen. She nodded and lowered her faceguard. The shadows swirling around her brushed Tamlin.

“What are you going to do?” Tamlin asked Rivalen.

In the sky above, the dragon flew over the Saerloonian army and started to wheel around.

“Kill that green,” Rivalen said. He jumped from the wall and took flight.

Meanwhile, Onthul’s voice boomed over the chaos. The tall captain strode the battlements, rallying the men. His voice was a croak, whether from gas or shouting, Tamlin did not know.

“You can die fighting on your feet or crawling on your stomachs. How will you have it? Up and ready crossbows! Get on your damned feet!”

A few hundred of the reserve units rushed up from within the city. They looked at the carnage with wide eyes. Onthul shouted at them to take station on the walls and replace the fallen.

Out on the field, the red-robed wizard stood before the remaining fire elementals, preparing to teleport them into the city. Brennus watched him closely, hands ready, the words to a spell sitting just behind his lips. When the red-robed wizard disappeared with the fire elementals, Brennus hurriedly recited his spell and smiled. “I have him,” he said to Tamlin. Darkness swirled around him and he disappeared.

With the fire elementals clear of the field, the Saerloonian trumpets sounded a march and the entire army lurched into motion.

“Trebuchets!” Onthul shouted.

The spotters, still alive, peeked over rhe wall and raised his hand. On the ground below, three of the four trebuchets remained manned. Replacements hurried in.

“You are a spellcaster?” Variance asked Tamlin. Her voice sounded stilted behind her faceguard. Tamlin nodded. “Can you cast counterspells?” Again Tamlin nodded. “Ready them,” Variance said.

A rumble shook the walls and the earth elementals exploded out of the ground in bursts of rock and dirt. Their heads reached the top of the walls. Tamlin stared into the blank, blunt-featured face of the one nearest him. It did not seem to notice him.

The elementals bellowed, raised their arms to the sky, and smashed huge, rocky fists into the sides and tops of the walls. The impact shook Tamlin from his feet. The Khyber Gate rattled on its hinges. Dust, men, and rock flew into the sky. A thin crack opened along the wall near Tamlin. Another. Men shouted, screamed. Vats of oil shattered, soaked the walls, and burst into flame. Tamlin heard Onthul barking orders through the smoke and chaos. Crossbows twanged and bolts sank into the elementals by the dozen.

The Saerloonians shouted, moved double quick. The Selgauntan trebuchets fired and huge, sealed vats of alchemical fire arced into the sky. The impact would shatter the wooden vats and the viscous fluid would ignite upon contact with the air.

It would not be enough, Tamlin knew. He was watching Selgaunt fall. The siege of his city would not last months. It would last hours.

He decided to die fighting on his feet. He faced the nearest elemental and started to cast a counterspell. While he intoned the words, he saw the vats of alchemical fire hit the ground and explode in flame and heat. One landed short of the Saerloonians and lit the plains on fire, but three landed in the midst of the army and turned men to torches.

The huge elemental took notice of him. It bellowed, raised its fist high, to smash Tamlin or the wall or both. Tamlin completed his counterspell and his magic warred with the power of the summoner of the elemental.

And lost.

Tamlin stared, frozen, as the elementals fist descended. Darkness gathered around him.

“Not here,” Variance said, and transported him away before the elemental could crush him.

•ŠŚŚŠŚ•ŠŚ

Brennus appeared in the center of a wide, cobblestone avenue. The red-robed wizard stood in the middle of the street, his back to Brennus, flanked by columns of living flame twice his height. The flames crackled but there was order to the sound, and Brennus knew it to be the elementals’ language.

The few pedestrians on the street fled in panic. An underfed donkey tied to a hitching post bucked and kicked, terrified, but could not free itself. Its cries of fear rang down the street.

Behind Brennus, powerful impacts reverberated through the city. The attack on the walls had begun in earnest.

The wizard uttered a command, pointed to his right and left, and the elementals moved to nearby buildings and lit them aflame. Muffled screams sounded from within.

Brennus incanted the words to a spell that would prevent the wizard from teleporting. The wizard heard him, whirled. His eyes widened at the sight of Brennus.

“Incinerate him!” the wizard called to the elementals, and ran for the cover of a nearby wagon as he started to cast a spell of his own.

The elementals left off the buildings and raced toward Brennus like wildfire, leaving trails of flame in their wake.

Brennus ignored them, finished his spell, and fired a thin green beam from his outstretched finger. It hit the wizard in the side. The spell did not harm him, but a field of pale green flared around him. The wizard cursed and aborted his spell, knowing that he was prevented from using magical transport. He had intended to transport himself out of the city.

The elementals charged into Brennus and engulfed him. His world turned orange; the elementals’ crackling voices sounded loud in his ears. His wards entirely shielded him and his homunculi from the heat and flame, but the protective spells would not last long under the elementals’ onslaught.

He held out his hands and shouted the words to a counterspell. His power engaged that of the summoner and overpowered it. The binding that held the elementals to the Prime Material Plane unwound and the creatures disappeared with a soft pop and a puff of smoke.

The wizard stared at him. He recognized that Brennus had overpowered his summonings with ease. He started backing away down the street, intoning a spell. Brennus walked after him, reciting the words to his own spell.

Heads poked out of windows.

“He banished the elementals!”

“He saved the city!”

“But what of the dragon?”

Brennus ignored the accolades. The summoner finished his spell, joined his thumbs, and blew on his hands. His spell amplified his breath, turned it frigid, and blasted it toward Brennus in a freezing sheet.

Brennus’s body, infused with shadowstuff, resisted the magic of the spell and he endured the ice without harm. Completing his own spell, he pulled the summoner’s palpable fear from his head and let the magic turn it against him in the form of an illusion.

Brennus did not see what form the illusion took, at least not clearly. He saw only a large shadowy form looming over the summoner. Its face suggested a muzzle; horns or large ears jutted from its head. The wizard collapsed to the ground on his knees, mouth open, eyes wide.

“Do not touch me!” he screamed to his fears.

Brennus’s illusion reached out a muscular arm that ended in a pincer.’ It touched the summoner and he gasped, clutched his

chest, and died. His fears blew away in the breeze.

Brennus walked over to the donkey. Its wild eyes rolled in its head and it backed off to the limit of its tether, but it was too exhausted to do anything more. Brennus reached out a shadow-shrouded hand, stroked its head. “There, now,” he said.

His homunculi emerged from his robe and bit through the tether. The donkey turned and tore off down the street.

More and more heads poked out of windows and doors, all looking at him, back at the walls, up at the sky for the dragon. They wanted a savior and he had given them one. Rivalen would be pleased.

Through his ring, he reached out his mind for his brother Yder.

Come now, he said, and Yder returned a quick acknowledgement.

Brennus dared not transport himself blindly back to the walls, for fear he could materialize in a maelstrom. He did not know what damage the earth elementals had done. Using shadows as stepping stones, he worked his way back to the Khyber Gate.

ŚŠŚ

The impact of Furlinastis’s body drove Cale so deeply into the soft earth that the hole might as well have been a grave. The dragon’s weight crushed him. His ribs shattered, his arm broke, his ankle. Pain lit a spark shower in his brain. He heard the dragon’s roar, muffled by the mud that encased him.