Authors: Edward Lazellari
Cal had him against the wall—Kraten attacked hard, like a batter who’d lost his timing and swung for the fences. Cal uncharacteristically parried to the inside of his own body, something all are taught never to do because it leaves the pointy end of your opponent’s sword within reach of your unguarded midsection—but Kraten was not expecting it, and not only couldn’t take advantage of the opportunity, but he overextended and lost his balance. The tip of Kraten’s sword scraped the floor—Cal put his boot on the blade’s center and snapped it with a ping. Kraten, hand still on his hilt, was unable to withdraw fast enough when Cal wound back with his sword arm like a recoiling spring.
With a twist of his torso, Cal sliced through Kraten’s neck like hot butter. Kraten’s head popped off, hit the open triangular windowsill behind him, and bounced out the seventy-story room while his corpse hit the floor at Cal’s feet.
Cal said a prayer for Erin and headed back to the other side of the floor to see how everyone else fared.
3
Cal was mostly still concerned about Dorn. A new lightning battle had replaced the marionette dance—a far more fevered pitch characterized this duel.
The Empire State Building gave back with equal fervor. Cal was never more proud of Lelani. Dorn was unhinged and completely oblivious to the goings-on behind his back. Cal thought about attacking the man, but the lightning looked dangerous beyond his capacity to tolerate and he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get Catherine out of the observatory first.
Hesz and Mal were nowhere to be seen in the main hall that spanned the length of the building. Cat had crawled from her spot beneath the window to an area closer to Dorn, just behind him next to a large duffel bag on the west side of the floor.
What the heck…?
thought Cal.
She rifled through the duffel bag with hands bound and pulled out a dagger that she then tried to unsheathe with her teeth.
Cal rushed over, praying Dorn wouldn’t notice them. When she looked up at him, he took her face in his hands and kissed her passionately. She melted at his touch at first, then put her fists on his chest and pushed back hard.
“Are you okay?” Cal asked.
“That depends,” Cat said.
“On what?”
“Will your
fiancée
mind our kissing?” she said coldly.
“Really, Cat? Now?”
A frigid wash cascaded over Cal—like a winning coach under the bucket after the Super Bowl. No magic scared him more than his wife’s wrath. He preferred to be sword fighting—killing stuff was easier. As if in answer to his wish, Hesz and Malcolm crashed through the ceiling, landing with a loud thud beside them. Cal didn’t even realize there was another floor above them.
Cat flattened herself in time as Hesz’s mace whooshed over her and smashed the wall next to her head into dust. Callum shot up looking for an angle of attack that wouldn’t compromise Malcolm. He thought he’d found it, but charged into Hesz’s backhanded swing. It was like hitting a wrecking ball, and he flew across the room smashing against a wall. This was the second time Cal’s armor saved him from disaster, but his Kevlar helmet had suffered a huge crack.
Hesz’s backhand maneuver gave Malcolm a much-needed opening. The dwarv raised his ax above his head and with a hard vertical swing, buried it deep into Hesz’s left calf. The giant roared in pain and swiveled back toward his attacker. Mal couldn’t free his ax in time to avoid Hesz’s grasp. The giant took him by the scruff and held the diminutive billionaire away at arm’s length. Mal tried to grab his other ax, but his arm wouldn’t bend enough with his shoulder pinned under the crushing grip. Hesz hobbled to the north corner window that somehow remained undamaged through all the fighting and hurled Malcolm through it with tremendous force, smashing glass and frame. Mal’s screams faded into the night as he plummeted.
Cal recovered, though he still saw spots dancing about him. His leg took the brunt of his crash and fiercely ached. He tried to still his grief over Malcolm’s sudden demise, enough to keep his wits for the fight ahead. Cat was almost through her bonds, her knife wedged between her knees as she rubbed her wrist ties against it. Hesz was oblivious to her, despite being only a few feet away. The giant was lost in deep contemplation.
Sword in hand, Cal cautiously shuffled toward the bruised, bleeding frost giant. Hesz effortlessly pulled Malcolm’s ax out of his calf. It was a toy in his gargantuan hands—albeit a very sharp toy. Cal was alert—Hesz could chuck the weapon like a no. 2 pencil—but instead Kraten’s headless body by the window engrossed the giant’s attention. Hesz turned to Dorn, consumed by madness and mesmerized by his lightning war, hurling tremendous power across the city at his unseen antagonist. Then the giant looked at Kraten’s corpse again.
Some complex thinking occurred in the brute’s mind, which Cal found fascinating. Hesz turned back to MacDonnell with the most somber expression, his sky-blue eyes piercing out at the captain from under the heavy ridge of his brow. These were not the eyes of a man intent on violence.
“The people of this universe have done nothing to offend me,” Hesz said sedately, with a deep voice like rolling thunder mixed with gravel. “They’ve not affronted my race or my kingdom. They did not deserve this—madness,” he said. Hesz dropped Malcolm’s ax. “I yield.”
“You what?” Cal said, incredulously.
“Whether in madness or desperation, Dorn has squandered our advantages,” Hesz explained. “Our mission is done. I do not hate the people of this world enough to continue this chaos. I do not even hate the prince. Life is difficult enough without the whims of wizards and kings to muddle through.”
Hesz limped toward the stairwell leaving a line of blood in his wake. “Dorn will be dead soon enough…,” he continued as he hobbled toward the exit. “Whether by your hand or by the illness that has plagued him. If your impatience steers you toward the former, I bid you good fortune, MacDonnell; I truly do. I ask only one consideration for this terse peace … if you capture Symian, show the boy mercy. He is not evil … we all must earn our fortunes some way.”
Hesz turned his back on Cal, a compliment that Cal’s reputation for fair play preceded him and he would not attack the giant from behind, and slowly walked into the stairwell. Cal heard his descent, one slow lumbering step after another.
Cal was stunned. He couldn’t really let the giant go … not after what he did to Malcolm. But there were more important tasks at the moment than picking a fight. He was alone now, and Cat’s safety was paramount. Of all the ways he imagined how his fight with Hesz would play out, this was not even close. He hadn’t even known the giant was that articulate.
The floor was quiet. Too quiet. He turned slowly. Dorn stood before the gaping hole in the wall facing him. Cat was still on the floor to the wizard’s left. The sorcerer’s pallor had whitened; he had cold dead eyes … windows to his dementia.
“They’ve left me,” Dorn said. He looked overcome, drained … like a faded shirt that had been washed too often. “All of them.” Dorn pulled out a small locket that opened on a hinge. “Even Lara has abandoned me.” He held out the locket to show Cal the picture. “And they’ve turned off the magic.” Dorn sounded like a kid who just received a time-out for something he didn’t do.
“What kind of a world is it where you can turn off the magic? WHO SAID YOU COULD TURN OFF MY MAGIC!” he screamed, animated.
His eyes looked like they had been flushed with salt water, crimson and webbed, his face filled with hatred one moment, then confusion the next, followed by the softness of sorrow. He put the tips of his fingers against his right temple, picking at the roots of his blond hair even as he pressed. Dorn’s emotions ran like the colors in a spinning kaleidoscope—melding and blending without start or end.
Cat did not dare move or even take a breath, her eyes conveying her fear at the wizard’s mental breakdown. Cal locked eyes with Dorn, willing him not to notice anyone else in the room. It wasn’t as hard as he thought … Dorn was suffering terribly and looked to be able to concentrate on only one thing at a time. Cal squeezed the hilt of his sword, which made the leather-wrapping squeak, and took a small step toward the sorcerer—then another one. By the third step, he could not move—not at all.
“Tsk,tsk,” said Dorn, waggling a reproachful finger at MacDonnell. “There are spells, you see,” he said, unfolding his arms in a grand gesture to encompass the room and its murals of the heavens. “… And then there are spells.” He made the universal symbol of small things with thumb and index finger close together. “I have enough magic left to keep you a well-behaved statue. Do you know what you’ve cost me, MacDonnell?”
Cal thought it a rhetorical question, in light of what Dorn and his ilk had cost the Kingdom of Aandor.
Dorn shouted, “DO YOU?!”
The shouting exacerbated Dorn’s migraine. Dorn pressed the butt of his hands into his temples hard enough to crush coconuts. His arms trembled with the effort.
“Before I go, I will see an end to you,” Dorn promised. “Good bye, MacDonne—” Dorn suddenly yelped in pain.
Cat, crawling on her stomach behind the lord of Farrenheil, had stabbed him in the ankle with her knife. Dorn kicked her away. He pulled the knife out of his foot and waved his other hand toward her—Cal dreaded what would happen next.
Nothing happened, though. Dorn waved his hand at her again. Still nothing.
The stasis spell had begun to unwind. Cal struggled against it, like wading through saltwater taffy, but it became easier with each moment. Dorn noted Cal’s progress and looked utterly confused, but there was sanity in his confusion. He no longer seemed plagued by migraines, and some of his color returned. He studied the knife in his hands.
“No!” he whispered in horror. The blade upset the sorcerer greatly. At the same time, he looked relieved, like a great pressure had been taken from him.
Cat got up and ran over to her husband. “What’s the matter? Why don’t you move?”
“S p e l l,” he said. “W e a r i n g o f f.”
“Not fast enough,” she said.
Dorn went to the duffel bag. Cal tried to get to him, but was still moving in slow motion. Dorn retrieved two swords, one long, one short. Before he unsheathed either, Cat took a running jump and lunged onto Dorn’s back, pounding his head with her fists. She bit his ear and scratched at his face like her namesake.
“You fucking son of a bitch!” she screamed. Cat tore the cartilage off his ear.
Dorn punched her behind his head. She fell off, dazed by the blow, and the ear fell out of her bloody mouth and plunked on the floor with a wet smack. He turned toward Cat—she rose and came at him again. He slapped her hard then backhanded her on the return. She went to her knees.
“You’re no lady,” he said, grabbing Cat by the throat. He pulled her off her feet.
Dorn shook Cat violently, throttling her, cutting off her air. She swung and kicked, but he blocked her blows. Cat tried to kick him in the groin several times, but Dorn twisted and weaved. She turned blue from asphyxiation, but instead of finishing her off, he threw her across the floor toward the gaping hole. Cal’s heart stuck in his throat as Cat’s momentum took her toward the open air. She grasped a piece of jutting wreckage at the last second as most of her body went out the hole. With legs dangling in the rain, Cat held on for dear life.
Dorn unsheathed his long sword and limped toward Cal. Blood from his ankle trailed the floor behind him.
“What irony, MacDonnell,” he said. “The very weapon that rendered me common also stays my ills. My thoughts are clear, the migraines gone. I never would have thought to try this. To think, a cure has been in my possession all this time.” He swished the swords before him gracefully, his thick wrists rolling like ball-bearing joints.
“I was Schweinaufklebera’s best student in Farrenheil, MacDonnell. But his teachings are wasted against a man in your condition right now. I doubt you could race a snail.”
It was true, Cal had half his mobility back, but it wasn’t enough. He braced himself for the thrust, ludicrously trying to get his sword into position, while Dorn literally could run circles around him. Dorn locked onto Cal’s eyes, determined to see the killing blow on his face. A shadow to Cal’s right distracted the lord of Farrenheil—something that clopped on the vintage marble floors like a—
Rearing hooves smashed into Dorn’s chest. The sorcerer skittered into the wall from the force. Lelani moved into Cal’s field of vision, a true sight for sore eyes. He tried to tell her to help Cat, who was struggling to climb back into the building, but his speech was still affected.
Lelani put her hands on Cal’s chest, sang words in her native language, and drew the stasis out of him the way cold hands drew heat from a hot body. He could move again.
He was about to spring to Cat’s aid when the sound of a dagger cutting the air ended with a thud in Lelani’s back. The tip of a silver dagger pierced through Lelani’s chest where her pectoral met her deltoid muscle. Blood surged from the severed brachial artery. She screamed and tried to grab the knife from behind, but the hilt was out of her reach.
“Schweinaufklebera’s fourth rule…,” Dorn growled, clutching his chest where she hit him, but getting back on his feet. “Even the playing field.”
Lelani thrust her arms to cast a spell at the sorcerer but nothing happened—she, too, had been neutralized. It was the same silver knife Cat used to cut Dorn. Lelani, dizzy, went down on her front knees as blood spurted faster out of her wound.
Dorn charged MacDonnell. The knight raised his sword just in time to keep from being cleaved. The clang of metal again reverberated through the art deco aerie. But unlike Kraten, Dorn’s aggression was artful, balanced—his feet placed perfectly shoulder width, his stance relaxed despite the wound to his ankle. His strikes were smooth and rapid. Dorn’s powerful quadriceps bulged against the fine wool of his custom-made pants.
Cal would not last five minutes on a routine of parries and observations with this man. Dorn was the finest swordsman he’d ever encountered, and Cal was thirteen years out of practice.