#
Grustim stood at the mouth of the cave, eyes
set upon Deacon. The Dragon Rider had an awareness of magic.
Elements of his training had been focused on defending against it.
His armor and weapons had been designed to deflect and disperse
black magic. All of his life he had felt that wizards were not
true
warriors. They toyed with forces that made them
powerful in a way that did not pay proper respect to the training
and discipline of even the lowest soldier. It felt unfair that they
had been given a tool that put them in a position of power they did
not deserve.
Watching Deacon work had begun to give him a
new appreciation. This…
keyhole
was monstrous. Even without
a drop of genuine mystic training, he could feel the fearsome
forces at work. There was the sense that Deacon was doing battle
with a wild animal with only his mind to defend him. And yet he
worked with unshaking hands and slow, calm breaths. With a sword
dangling over him by the thinnest of threads, he showed no hint of
fear or concern.
One of his hands gripped his gem tightly, and
the other was plunged deep into the churning knot of lights.
Between his hands was a sliver of metal drifting and slowly
rotating. He hadn’t placed it there; it had simply appeared,
accumulating from thin air.
Garr rumbled a warning and Grustim
turned.
“What is it?” Deacon asked, not willing to
turn away from his workings.
“The soldiers have held their position
several hundred paces due north. A second and third group has met
and combined ranks, but they are not advancing.”
“That is good news.”
“No. It is very, very bad.”
“Why?”
“Because it confirms what I had already
suspected. They are coordinating. That implies they were well aware
that what they would find here would be a threat. And a significant
one. How much longer will it take you to finish?”
“Impossible to tell. Several minutes more at
least. Possibly an hour. And when we are through, we’ll simply be
left with the same quantity of power condensed. To be certain
Turiel can’t put it to use again, we’ll have to keep it from
her.”
“Then keep working.
When
they arrive,
I cannot conceive of any outcome that will preserve our peace, and
very few that will preserve our lives. I will speak to them. If
they do not like what they hear, they will attack. If I attempt to
fend them off, it will be treason. If you do, it will be war.”
“Can you release Garr from his oath
again?”
“I should not have done that once, but I will
not do it again. It would only ease my conscience in any case,
because if any of these men die while you are near, those who wish
for a reason for war will have all that they need to justify
it.”
“But—”
“Focus on your work. This stone has been set
in motion. No amount of questioning will keep it from the bottom of
the mountain.”
#
Myranda’s mind burned and her soul wavered.
She’d begun the battle with little strength, and the tasks at hand
were many. Turiel was relentless, levying attacks of devastating
intensity. Myranda absorbed, deflected, and countered all she
could, no stranger to battling a foe who massively outclassed her,
but every passing moment only made her opponent stronger.
Worse, Myranda had to split her attentions
between the necromancer and the troops she had raised, who now
marched relentlessly toward Crestview. The skeletons were fragile,
no sturdier than the bones that composed them, but striking them
down was only a delay. As soon as one fell, Turiel restored it, and
as the battle crept closer to the village, more of the battlefront
came under Turiel’s expanding influence, and thus more of the
skeletons rose.
“You put forth a noble effort, Myranda,”
Turiel said, her voice booming with the power that was still
building within her. “If I do manage to kill you, I look forward to
the chats we’ll have afterward.”
An earsplitting howl pierced the air, drawing
both Myranda’s and Turiel’s attention. Myn’s battle with Mott had
been truly savage, the dragon more driven to conquer this
supernaturally resilient beast than Myranda had ever seen. She’d
clamped her jaws about the back of Mott’s neck and blasted a breath
of fire. It didn’t incinerate Mott, but it was clearly more damage
or pain than the beast could shrug off.
“Mott!” Turiel said, her voice scolding.
“Honestly. I made you better than that. I’m beginning to think you
weren’t ready for the additional size. If you can’t use it
properly, I’ll take it from you.”
She raised her staff and snapped her fingers.
Mott’s form shuddered and shifted to black. The details dropped
away and began to unravel into a nest of threads that wove into the
ground. A tiny bundle of the threads separated from the rest, and
after a moment of struggle, Mott’s original form broke free.
Myn shook her head and recovered from the
sudden disappearance of her opponent, then locked Mott’s tiny
scuttling form in her gaze.
Showing a remarkable amount of logic and
awareness for so bizarre a creature, Mott chose to retreat rather
than tangle with a still furious dragon that was now dozens of
times his size. Working with the undersized vulture wings he’d
started with, he alternately fluttered and scrambled off to the
north. Myn turned to follow.
“Myn, no! See to the city! Make sure the
people are safe!” Myranda ordered.
The wizard rushed toward Turiel, her staff
braced between her hands.
Turiel turned to her and smirked, raising her
staff to summon a shield. Myranda gathered her weakening will into
her crystal and thrust if forward. It was enough to shatter the
shield, just barely, but with no power left for a proper attack.
Turiel seemed aware of it, the beginnings of a grin flashing on her
face.
A moment later the grin was wiped away as
Myranda continued her forward charge. If there was no time and
little magic to spare for a mystic attack, there were other
options. Her time in Entwell had largely been focused on sculpting
her mystic aptitude into its present level of mastery, but she’d
learned other lessons as well. Much as she’d resisted, she’d been
required to take instruction in combat, too. Though she was loath
to put it to use, times like these made it clear why her
instructors had insisted she learn. She drove her shoulder hard
into Turiel’s chest, throwing her off balance. Before she could
regain her feet, Myranda hooked the tip of her staff behind
Turiel’s foot and pulled it out from under her.
The necromancer struck the ground, startled
and confused. She drew in a breath, but before she could release it
as a threat or a spell, Myranda planted a boot on her throat and
thrust the head of her staff between Turiel’s eyes.
“Drop your staff and end this madness,”
Myranda demanded.
“You’ll… have to kill me,” Turiel
croaked.
Myranda pulled her mind to a new task. From
the start there’d been no hope of overpowering the necromancer, but
now that she was so close, and she’d interrupted the woman’s focus
for even a moment, there was the chance to keep it from returning.
She set her will against Turiel’s, wrapping her own mind and spirit
around the dark wizard’s, walling her off from the churning spirits
that surrounded her. It wasn’t a matter of being stronger. It was a
matter of keeping Turiel’s will from her power. Tiny shoves and
prods of her mind, constantly shifting, kept the necromancer off
balance mentally in the same way she’d been knocked off balance
physically.
“My, my, my…” Turiel breathed, trying and
failing to break through Myranda’s confounding influence. “I’d not
expected such savagery. Brute physical force?”
“I will do what I must.
That
much I
learned from your beloved D’Karon,” Myranda said.
“Then kill me. It is as simple as that.”
“You are a necromancer. I very much doubt
killing you would do much good, and I don’t kill for no
reason.”
Turiel rolled her eyes. “I’m no Epidime… but
I
have
been curious how simple it would be to work my skills
from the wrong side of the grave.” She drew in a breath,
struggling. “This is taking all of your mental agility. How long do
you suppose you can keep me down?”
“Long enough,” she said, sweat trickling down
her face. At the border it was not as warm as at the heart of
Tressor, but the sweat had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Perhaps long enough to convince you to—”
“Fah! No more of that!” Turiel said.
“You are betraying your world for the sake of
the memory of your sister!” Myranda growled.
“What better reason to betray a world than
family?” Turiel asked.
Myranda felt a vicious, potent rush of
strength, Turiel making an earnest and very nearly successful
attempt to break the stalemate.
“Tell me, Myranda,” she said. “What side of
the border are we on? And what is that delightful, rhythmic
sound?”
Myranda cast a precious glance aside. Myn was
running herself ragged keeping the scattered skeletons from
advancing, but for now the situation was in hand. The troops of
both sides were only a few hundred paces away. The battle had
drifted well south of the border between the kingdoms. They were on
Tresson land. The Tresson soldiers were looking upon a dragon, two
wizards, and a cluster of the shambling dead doing battle
dangerously close to a settlement. The Tressons were within their
rights and their duties to defend their people. Worse, Myn was a
common sight at the border. The Alliance soldiers had certainly
recognized her, and they were within their duty to come to her aid.
And so they had. It was by any measure an invasion, Alliance
soldiers rushing across the border with weapons in hand and the
intention to use them.
Her realization was soon followed by a sharp,
dizzying pain in the side of her head. The distraction had freed
Turiel enough to deliver a punishing blow with her staff. Myranda
had no sooner struck the ground than she could feel the
necromancer’s power surge like a torch flaring to life.
Instinctively she rolled aside. A line of black filaments erupted
from the ground, and every last skeleton Myn had shattered rose
again, bound and bolstered by more of the unending black
threads.
Myranda climbed to her feet and turned to
Turiel. The necromancer was standing and wringing her hands.
“Direct physical violence. It seems so
beneath a spell caster. I’m not certain if I should admire or pity
a person such as you who willingly resorts to it,” Turiel said.
“I’d much prefer to leave it in the hands of the specialists.”
She looked to the soldiers, who were aligning
themselves into ranks, now approaching the raging battle between
Myn and the skeletons with caution. Their eyes flitted from the
undead assailants to their counterparts from the other land and
back again, clearly viewing them as equal threats.
Myranda tried to rush toward Turiel again,
slashing at the threads the necromancer conjured. She made little
progress, Turiel having no trouble keeping her distance with a few
lazy steps backward. Myranda had simply pushed herself too far.
Days with barely any sleep, massive expenditures of energy—her
spirit had been wrung out, drained. If the battle persisted for
much longer, there would be no chance for her to even defend
herself, let alone defeat a woman who was growing stronger by the
moment.
Myn was having similar trouble. It took
little more than a single swat of her claws or a curl of her tail
to bash the skeletons apart, but they rose as quickly as they fell,
and there were so many of them. Bony fingers and scattered,
timeworn weapons scratched and gouged at her. Thick, potent blood
was seeping from a dozen minor wounds, and she was huffing great
exhausted breaths as she continued her assault.
“It’s been so long since I folded in a dose
of energy to the keyhole. I feel shamefully lax in my
responsibilities. But I suspect a bit of fresh bloodshed will be
the last scrap I need,” Turiel mused.
Myranda shook her head and stumbled back. As
surely as she needed to stop Turiel, she knew it was still more
important to stop her people and the people of Tressor from tearing
each other apart. It might already be too late to keep Turiel from
getting what she needed to finish her spell. Likewise, the
consequences of the actions she and others had been forced to take
could well have already broken this fragile peace beyond repair. In
the end, though, everything she’d ever done was to stop further
bloodshed. If nothing else, Myranda knew she had to keep these
troops from each other. To keep them focused on whom she knew to be
their common enemy.
The leading soldiers were less than a dozen
paces apart now. In seconds they would meet. Myranda ran to them,
ignoring the slashing attacks of the lingering threads she was
leaving behind. She poured a bit of magic into her voice, allowing
it to rise above the din of battle, and addressed the troops.
“Listen to me! I am Myranda, Duchess of
Kenvard and Guardian of the Realm. All Alliance troops, you are
ordered to defend Crestview from the undead. Until I say otherwise,
we are in a truce, and Tressor is an ally. Defend that village as
you would defend your own home! Myn! Come here!”
The faithful dragon thrust herself into the
air, a spring of her powerful legs and a flap of her massive wings
bringing her to Myranda’s side in a single bound. Myranda climbed
onto her back, and allowed a precious dose of her flagging mystic
reserves to trickle into her friend and seal the worst of her
wounds. She did not speak, offering not so much as a single command
to Myn. The two knew each other well enough that such was not
necessary. Another wing-assisted leap brought the pair to the
narrowing strip of land between the foremost troops of Turiel’s
army and the flimsy walls of the settlement.