Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept (34 page)

Chapter
26

“I grow impatient, Human,” Zora said. “We should take the fight to Zuhl today.”

“No,” Alexander said, approaching her snout. “After I claim this Keep, I’ll be able to see inside the fortress island where Ixabrax is being held.”

Zora had seen them approaching the Keep and launched into the sky from her place as guard dog at the Gate, landing in front of them.

Abigail steppe
d up next to Alexander. “Please Zora, let us do this. We will free Ixabrax. I gave you my word and I intend to honor it. If my brother can see where he’s being held, we’ll have a much better chance of success.”

“When?” Zora said.

“If all goes well today, we’ll fly at dawn tomorrow and launch our attack the day after,” Alexander said.

“I will hold you to that, Human,” Zora said. “You may pass.”

“Thank you, Zora,” Alexander said, skirting the dragon on his way to the Keep. Abigail, Jack, Anja, Jataan, Lita, Magda, and Cassandra were accompanying him along with a couple of soldiers who had spent time in the Keep clearing the outer chambers. Lieutenant Carson, a young man from a noble house, was their commander. He and his men gave Zora a wide berth.

The entry hall was cleaned of the debris that had littered the floor the last time Alexander had been
there. Lanterns hung along the walls, though none were lit. The high glass ceiling had been repaired, allowing ample light into the room.

“Looks like Commander Perry’
s been busy,” Alexander said, trying to imagine the entry chamber at its height. It must have been truly impressive.

“Very much so,
sir,” Carson said. “The outer chambers are clear and in good order, but the central chambers are sealed with wards cast by Wizard Dinh. Unfortunately, the bulk of the Keep’s upper levels and all but the first two lower levels can only be accessed through the core chambers.”

Alexander nodded to hims
elf as he raised his light and proceeded into the corridor leading to the throne room. The wide hallway was clean but dark and cold. He felt like a trespasser, each footfall echoing into the darkness. He began to expect an attack at any moment, but it didn’t come. They moved cautiously, everyone’s colors betraying trepidation as they neared the central chambers, turning this way and that at Lieutenant Carson’s direction.

“Here,” he said, pointing to a large double
door. They had passed several doorways, most of which were open, only rusting hinges bolted into the doorframes offering proof that the rooms had once been enclosed.

These doors were different. Each was ten feet wide and thirty feet tall. Both were carved with ornate scenes o
f horsemen on the hunt. Delicate gold leaf and finely wrought silver inlays reflected Alexander’s light, bringing the scenes to life. More importantly, these doors hadn’t aged. They were as solid as the day they were hung.

“Wizard Dinh sealed these doors after casting a few spells to see what was down the hallway beyond,”
Carson said.

“How do we unseal them?” Anja asked.

Magda stepped up and placed her hand on the pull ring, whispering a few words under her breath.

“
That should do it,” she said. “Wizard Dinh explained the nature of his spell to me last night.”

Alexander motioned to
Carson to have his men open the heavy doors, which swung without so much as a squeak and locked into place against the walls on either side, revealing a wide hall with an arched ceiling fifty feet overhead.

While the outer chambers of the Keep had been thoroughly cleaned by Perry’s men, this hall was thick with undisturbed dust. The remnants of a carpet ran down the center of the floor, the moldering
remains of furniture were interspersed along the walls at even intervals with decayed and rotted tapestries between them. It didn’t look like anyone had walked this path in a very long time.

Anja sniffed,
wrinkling her nose.

Alexand
er sent his sight down the hall, which ran straight for several hundred feet with numerous doors on either side, some still intact but most decayed to dust. A few smaller passages intersected but none showed any hint of recent traffic. After several hundred feet, Alexander came to a place that looked familiar. Five dead men, split in half from the tops of their heads down through their torsos were scattered amid the remnants of three force lances. Powerful wards still stood at the threshold of all three corridors surrounding the large double doors that led to the Reishi throne room.

Alexander had faced Rexius Truss
there and lured five of his Lancers to their deaths. When he returned to his body, he said, “This is as far as you go, Lieutenant.”

“We would accompany you into the Keep, Lord Reishi,”
Carson said, his colors flaring with disappointment.

Alexander smiled. “I don’t doubt you, Lieutenant, but I know what’s down that hall. Return to Commander Perry and report our progress.”

“As you wish, Lord Reishi,” he said, saluting crisply.

Alexander set ou
t at a brisk pace. Dust rose with each footstep, cloaking the floor in a low cloud behind them. The place was quiet as a tomb and about as inviting.

He
stopped ten feet from the shield that spanned the width of the corridor where it came to a tee with another passage of the same dimensions. Forty feet ahead were the large double doors leading to the throne room.

“What are we waiting for?” Anja said, starting forward.

“Stop!” Alexander said firmly enough to halt her in her tracks.

“What?” she said, a bit taken aback.

“There’s a shield across the hall that will kill you,” he said. “Wait here, I have to ask the sovereigns a few more questions.” His Wizard’s Den opened with a thought and he went to his magic circle before touching the Stone. He didn’t bother to sit at the council table, choosing to stand behind his chair instead.

“Will the shields around the throne room allow me to pass?” he asked.

“Yes,” Balthazar said, “unless they’ve been altered.”

“Malachi, will the shields let me pass without harm?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Alexander said, turning away but stopping as a thought occurred to him. “Why did you summon the tentacle demon and what did you bind it to do?”

“I summoned it to guard the core of the Keep in the event that we were overrun,” Malachi said.

“Huh, I wondered why it hadn’t left,” he said, returning to his body.

“Everybody inside,” he said.

“Where are you going?” Abigail asked
as he stepped out the door.

“Through the shield. I’ll
let you out in a moment.”

With a thought he willed the door closed and approached the shield cautiously, extending his left littl
e finger. It became warm and a tingle raced over his skin but he was unharmed. Satisfied that he was immune to the ward, he stepped through into the space between the three shields surrounding the throne-room door and opened his Wizard’s Den again.

“Be careful, all three passages are warded
across the threshold,” he said before his friends stepped into the hallway.

He
sent his sight into the throne room and frowned. It was cold and empty except for the sentinel. One of the large double doors opened silently with a gentle pull. The throne room was just as he’d left it except for a few marks where the demon’s tentacles had marred the fine stonework. Alexander stepped onto the white marble floor and scanned the room. Sunlight streamed into the chamber through the ornately worked crystal windows that formed the ceiling high overhead, filling the room with soft, diffused light.

Even with the fine coating of dust covering every surface and all of the artwork lost to the ravages of time, the place was still impressive. The sentinel stood from the throne but made no move to advance.

“Huh,” Alexander said, striding toward the raised dais on the far end of the room, “I’d forgotten all about you.” As he got closer, he saw that the sentinel was marred and stained with black splotches, places where his stone body was just slightly eaten away by powerful acid. Alexander climbed the steps and stopped a few feet from the magical guardian, appraising it thoughtfully.

“These people are my friends. You will not harm them or hinder them in any way. Do you understand?”

The sentinel’s eyes pulsed white and it nodded.

“Do you know the way to the Sovereign’s library?”

It nodded again.

“
Excellent,” he said, sending his sight forward, passing through the antechamber just off the throne room, down the hall and into the large circular room that had once been a bedchamber.

Curled into a ball in the center of the room, its tentacles wrapped around it
self, was the demon. It began to stir when Alexander’s awareness entered the room. He returned to his body and drew the Thinblade.

“It’s close,” he said
.

Jataan was suddenly holding
a sword. Abigail nocked an arrow with white feathers. Jack vanished, eliciting a frown from Cassandra. She, Lita, and Magda began casting spells while Anja drew her sword.

“I’ll go first
,” Alexander said. “Abigail, you’re right behind me. Everyone else, wait until I use my light. If that doesn’t work, hit it with everything you’ve got.”

His pulse quickened and he felt a f
lutter of nerves in his stomach as he headed for the antechamber. Just a few steps past the broken door and into the narrow hallway leading to the bedchamber, he heard a roar that sent a chill racing over every inch of his body.

The far end of the dark, narrow passage filled with an open maw as the beast began to pull itself toward Alexander with alarming speed. Wisps of noxious
-looking smoke rose where the club-like ends of its acidic tentacles touched stone. It roared again, freezing Alexander in place with momentary fear, but he broke through to a place of cold awareness and clear thinking a second later.

He raised Luminessence and
focused his will, calling forth its brightest light. The world exploded in scintillating brilliance, flooding the passage with light so bright that it should have blinded everyone present. The tentacle demon howled in pain and fear, its dark, coarse flesh burning away in thick clouds of black smoke as it scrambled to retreat from the light. It reached the bedchamber quickly and fled from the threshold of the hall, escaping back into shadow.

Alexander let his light dim to a level that required no effort but still illuminated the area brightly. He took a deep breath and deliberately calmed himself. Chloe buzzed into a ball of light
, then vanished again.

“That was unsettling,” Jack said.

“You seem to have a penchant for understatement, Master Colton,” Magda said.

“Indeed,” Cassandra said.

“I remember you telling me about that thing,” Abigail said. “It seems a lot worse now.”

“I don’t think it’s dead,” Anja said. “Shouldn’t we go after it?”

“Let’s wait until that smoke clears,” Alexander said, pointing to the heavy cloud of blackness hanging in the air toward the far end of the hall.

“I can help with that,” Magda said, stepping forward and whispering the words of a spell. A few moments later the air began to flow past them toward the smoke, pushing it into the bedchamber and dissipating it.

They approached cautiously, Alexander sending his sight into the room before they reached the doorway. It was empty, save for several dark splotches of blood on the floor leading down the stairs into the lower levels of the Keep.

“Looks like you hurt it,” Jack said,
dubiously eyeing a puddle of demon blood from a safe distance.

“I wouldn’t touch that,” Alexander said.

“The thought hadn’t crossed my mind,” Jack said.

“Looks like it went down
stairs,” Anja said.

“Well, we had to go that way anyway,” Alexander said without making a move to follow.
Luminessence hadn’t killed it, but it had wounded it, perhaps seriously. Certainly enough to make the demon angry. He suspected that he would have to hold his light at its brightest for longer than he was able to in order to kill it. Not the outcome he was hoping for, yet not a failure either. With practice, he might learn how to maintain his light for longer periods of time. Azugorath would almost certainly be harder to kill than this demon.

He sent his sight down the spiral stairs, following the trail of blood down one level, then another and another until he came
to a landing with an open archway leading into a room with three passages leading out. The floor was pockmarked with acid erosion. The blood trail led through the open archway across from the stairway entrance.

“Looks like it’s running,” Alexander said. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

He returned to the throne room.

“
Sentinel, follow me.”

Once back in the bedchamber, Alexander stopped and faced the stone guardian.