The Swordmage Trilogy Bundle, Volumes 1-3 (54 page)

No sooner had she passed the chalice to Faxon than they heard a voice at the wall where it had been broken away by the Xarundi's exit. The voice was soft and sultry, and it was a voice that Tiadaria would never forget as long as she lived.

“Well, well,” Nerillia said, stepping into the room, two wicked looking whips trailing behind her. “It seems that I'm not the only one interested in recovering our party favors.”

“You know what they say,” Tiadaria snapped. “Finder's, keepers.”

“Not in this case, I'm afraid,” another voice said from outside the wall. Tionne entered, the Captain's lich only a step behind. “I think we'll be taking back our little toys.”

“Tia!” Faxon yelled in warning, but her blades were already in her hands.

As the Captain's scimitar streaked down, her blades flashed out, catching the rusted blade of her former mentor and throwing it away. Another strike came soon on the heels of the first, then another.

Soon, Tiadaria and the Captain were locked in a battle of blades that flashed faster than the human eye could recognize. With Tiadaria occupied, Tionne and Nerillia moved toward Faxon.

#

“Don't do this, Tionne. Turn back from this dark path you're traveling and I promise you that we can find a way to make this right.”

Tionne was, at turns, amused and horrified. The fact that Faxon thought he could make her 'right' only showed how little he knew about her or had been paying attention. The last few days had shown her that there was no place for her among the Imperium. Her connection to the Dyr would forever make her an outcast to the majority of their society.

She spared a quick glance to where the lich and Tiadaria were fighting. The swordmage would be far too busy trying to stay alive to meddle in other affairs. Tionne was thankful for that. Though she thought she could fight Faxon and win, she was somewhat frightened of Tiadaria. The flashing blades were something she didn't understand. Magic, on the other hand, was something she was intimately comfortable with.

“I don't need fixing, Faxon. What about that don't you get? Or
do you
get it? Is that it? That the great and powerful Master Faxon Indra couldn't fix the broken little girl under his care?” She laughed. “You couldn't even see me for what I really am. How could you ever think you could fix me?”

He looked away from her and Tionne knew she was getting to him. That was it then. Faxon felt as if he had failed her. Never mind that she hadn't wanted his help in the first place. He was a fool. She dropped her hands to her sides and hung her head.

“Please, Master Indra,” she said in her best scared little girl voice. “Please, help me.”

As she expected, Faxon took a step toward her, his hands outstretched as if to guide her back to the path of the light. Tionne's head snapped up, her eyes flickering with the sickly glow of power drawn from the Dyr. She snarled the words of power as her hands snapped forward. Deadly black tendrils shot from her palms, seeking to ensnare and devour the older quintessentialist.

A flick of his wrist severed the tendrils before they could reach their target and Tionne felt the burning backlash of the countered spell between her temples. A blue-white missile streaked from Faxon's hands, striking her in the shoulder and spinning her around. She screamed in both pain and surprise. Before she could counter, Nerillia had gone on the offensive, striking out with one of the whips.

Faxon countered with one of his own. A whip of gleaming white light formed in his hand and wrapped around Nerillia's weapon, arresting it mid-strike. He yanked hard on the magical strand, pulling the Lamiad off balance and wresting the weapon from her grasp. He flicked the whip out a second time, wrapping it around the Lamiad's ankle.

Tionne drew on the Quintessential Sphere and sliced the air in the direction of the whip Faxon was holding. The spell bolt went wide, slamming into the bar and sending a shower of splinters into the air. Before Tionne could do anything about it, Faxon yanked the lanyard upward, picking Nerillia up off the floor. He lifted her until she nearly touched the ceiling, then whipped his hand down, slamming her into the floor so hard that the boards snapped.

“NO!” Tionne screamed. Nerillia wasn't moving, but she didn't dare go to her. That would put Tionne directly in Faxon's line of sight.

Instead, she took her rage and coaxed it out, feeding it with all the memories of her miserable experiences in the Great Tower. Feeling isolated and alone in the Academy. All the times she missed her family. All the times Faxon had treated her unfairly. Every negative experience she could remember, she fed to the raging fire in her belly.

Slipping into the Quintessential Sphere, she called out to the Dyr, feeling its influence in the swirling eddies of magical power that surrounded her. Though the rune was far away, protected by the Xarundi, she felt it answer her call. It had accepted her offering, all the harrowing experiences she had offered it in return for granting her the power to dispose of Faxon once and for all.

He turned on her, his hands full of ivory fire, his lips moving in a silent prayer to whatever lightwalker runes he called on for his magic. Her guttural shout was faster and more powerful than he was expecting. She moved her hands, as if parting an invisible curtain, and the ground split under their feet.

The sudden movement made him stumble. Faxon managed to keep his footing, but his concentration was broken. He cried out in pain and Tionne smiled. She pressed the attack by calling on the power of the Deep Void, enticing the horrors that lurked there to push through the weak spot she'd created in the rift.

Many horrors responded to her call, throwing themselves at the gate, begging for release out into the world. They sang to her, worshiped her, trying to convince her to open a bigger gate. Tionne knew better than to listen to the sweet whispers in her mind. She opened only a small hole in the fabric of the Meridian and coaxed a few of the smallest demons through into the rift she'd created.

A pair of hellhounds clawed their way out of the rift, advancing on Faxon as he prepared another spell. Their blackened hide was shot through with lines of red and orange, their eyes afire with a malevolent red glow. Their slavering fangs extended four inches outside their skeletal maws and dripped with molten fire.

Tionne banished the rift and ordered the hellhounds to attack the quintessentialist. It took every ounce of her power and will to control these creatures from the Deep Void. She struggled to remain in control, for she knew that if she failed to maintain her dominance over them, they'd turn on anything and everyone, including herself. While she relished the thought of Faxon being torn limb from limb, she didn't want to experience that fate firsthand.

The unholy mongrels leapt out of the fissure and ran toward Faxon. Their ragged howls sounded like a blade drawn along a slate board and made Tionne wince. There was a brilliant flash of light and a braying scream of pain from one of the hounds. It spun across the floor, a smoking hole in its side where Faxon had hit it.

He wasn't fast enough to deal with the other, however, and it jumped on him, plowing headfirst into the man's chest and knocking him backward. Powerful jaws snapped at Faxon's neck. He was inches from a gruesome death and Tionne found all her muscles tensed with both the effort of will and desire to see him die.

Somehow, he managed to wedge an arm between the beast's jaws and his neck. The hellhound clamped down on his arm, small gouts of fire bursting from both sides of the creature's mouth. Faxon screamed. The arm of his robe had burst into flames and was dangerously close to searing the hair from his face and scalp. His face contorted in a mask of agony, he forced the beast back, using his own arm as a lever.

The other hellhound, having heard the scream of prey, had gotten back to its feet and slowly circled the pair on the ground. Its wounds were bad, but not mortal. There was still a considerable amount of fight in the beast. Tionne could feel it through her link.

She could also feel the link to the Captain's lich. It's battle with Tiadaria had reached a breakneck pace. Their strikes and counterstrikes landed so fast and furious that the blades threw off showers of magical sparks where they clashed against each other. Fresh blood stained Tiadaria's  clothes where the Captain had gotten in a few lucky hits. Likewise, the lich was looking even more ragged and shabby than when they'd reanimated it. Tionne dared say that Tiadaria probably had the upper hand in that fight, so she better dispose of Faxon and be gone before she'd destroyed the lich.

Taking advantage of the moment of respite offered by the hounds' relentless attack on the quintessentialist, Tionne darted over to Nerillia and fell to her knees. The Lamiad's eyes were closed, but her chest moved with breath, so Tionne knew she was still alive. The girl pressed her fingers against the smooth grey neck and felt for the beat. It was there, slow and strong.

Assured that Nerillia was as fine as could be expected, Tionne turned her attention back to the battle. The second hound had darted in, trying to latch its powerful jaws onto Faxon's leg. Though his face was sheened with sweat, he'd managed to land a crushing kick to its skull. There was a crack and the hellhound's head split down the center. It wavered, dead on its feet for a moment, before it burst into sparks that quickly faded to ash.

The beast that had latched to Faxon's arm hadn't lost any of its drive to kill. It had slid further down his arm, toward the wrist, tearing the robe away from his arm. She could see deep furrows where the fangs had torn into his flesh and blisters where the hellflame had seared the skin. The smell of charred flesh was heavy in the room.

With a roar that Tionne wouldn't have believed had she not seen it, Faxon summoned a globe of lightning that danced around the fingers of his free hand. He slammed it into his other arm, where the jaws of the hellhound were firmly latched.

Faxon's roar turned into a scream of agony as his own weapon raced up his arm into his shoulder and beyond. The luminescence in the quintessentialist's eyes faded and Tionne knew that the pain had knocked him out of his commune with the Quintessential Sphere. His gambit had paid off, however. Spears of light shot out from cracks in the remaining hellhound's sides. It yelped, then collapsed in a shower of dust just as its brother had done.

Cradling his ravaged arm to his chest, Faxon had managed to sit up. Tionne took a step toward him, calling on the power of the Dyr to imbue her with pestilence and disease that she could spread to her former guardian and seal his fate. There was a curious tingle in her hands and Tionne glanced down to see hundreds of tiny black-green spheres scuttling back and forth over her skin like hungry insects.

A cruel smile twisted her lips and she walked to the edge of the break in the floor. There was nothing he could do to her now. Without being able to call on his own power from the Sphere, he was no threat to her. She'd always known she was more powerful than he. Now she had proof.

“This is how it ends, Faxon. You die by my hand, knowing that you failed. You failed to 'fix' me. You failed to turn me to the foolishness you lightwalkers regard as truth. You failed to save the Imperium. You'll die as a failure, a foolish, old, useless man.”

“There's something I have that you'll never have, Tionne.” Faxon managed to gasp the words through teeth clenched in pain. She raised an eyebrow at him.

“Oh? And what's that?”

“Friends,” he grunted.

Tionne whirled, aware that the sounds of the sword battle Tiadaria was waging against the Captain's lich had gotten much closer. She turned just in time to see Tiadaria's blade flash out. Time seemed to slow as the razor sharp weapon moved inexorably toward her throat.

At the last moment, the lich's rusted scimitar crashed down on Tiadaria's blade, turning it and forcing it lower. The flat of the blade slammed into Tionne's chest, throwing her across the room. She crashed into the far wall, her teeth coming down so hard on her tongue that she almost severed it. She spat blood and forced herself to her knees.

The battle was lost. The chalice was on the floor beside Faxon and there was no way she could get to it before Tiadaria was able to take another swipe at her. Tionne couldn't count on the lich to be able to protect her from another blow. She'd been damn lucky as it was. She glanced in their direction.

Tiadaria and the lich were still locked in battle. Tionne didn't know how much time she'd have, but she knew when to retreat. She skittered across the floor like a crab, wincing at the pain in her chest. Lifting Nerillia's body by the shoulders, she dragged her toward the hole in the wall where they'd entered.

Tionne was suddenly very tired. The strength she'd expended to keep the hellhounds in check was now endangering both herself and Nerillia. They needed to leave and they needed to leave now. With a primal scream, Tionne summoned every last bit of strength and pulled the Lamiad through the hole and out into the night.

They'd given the Xarundi enough of a head start. She'd find a way to wake Nerillia, then they'd go to the palace. Once the King had been executed in front of his subjects and the palace cavern returned to the dragon, where the chalice was and who possessed it wouldn't matter in the slightest.

Metal clashed against metal. The shock ran up Tiadaria's arm into her shoulder. Her scimitar dropped from numb fingers. Her entire arm felt as if it had been plunged into ice-cold water. Though the lich's muscles were atrophied, and in some places in tatters, the power that reanimated it also gave it at least as much strength as the Captain had possessed in life. She was forced to defend with her less dominant hand. That always made her feel slower and more exposed, something the construct of the Captain obviously remembered.

“Come, my little one, you can't keep this up indefinitely. Faxon is injured. Go to him and I'll allow you to die together.”

“Don't call me that. I'm not so little anymore, and I don't belong to you.”

She punctuated her retort with a spinning kick to the Captain's middle. The blow knocked him off balance and his scimitar dropped for a moment. Tiadaria swung from the shoulder, sacrificing agility for raw power. If she was going to dismember the horror before her, she needed to be able to cut through bone.

The Captain dodged to one side with a deft feint, bringing his sword around backhand and slicing across her shoulder leaving a jagged gash. Tiadaria cried out from the fire that crossed her back. A skeletal foot in a tattered boot slammed into her ankle and it buckled, throwing her sideways onto the floor.

The scimitar, jarred by the hard landing, slid across the rough planks. Face down and weaponless, she was in a terribly vulnerable position. Tiadaria rolled onto her back, just in time to dodge the whistling blade that embedded itself in the wood inches from her ear. She took advantage of the time it took for the Captain to pull the blade free to roll away from him and recover her weapons.

“And yet you still wear the collar. Why is that? Still longing for someone to take care of you? Are you still too young and inexperienced to take care of yourself?”

She launched a series of lighting quick strikes, which he countered with ease. His bony hand flashed back and forth, knocking each of her blades away with no apparent effort.

“Two blades, and still no match for me,” the Captain taunted her. “I thought I taught you better.”

Tiadaria knew he was trying to get into her head, to make her doubt herself. Logically, she knew that, but the more he said, the more she started to wonder if there was a kernel of truth to his taunts and jibes. Maybe she hadn't learned enough to hold out against him. Maybe she really was too weak and too slow to win this fight.

“You're so tired. All you need to do is put down your weapons and let me end it. Quickly, painlessly. Your suffering will be over. You can join your little friend. The one who foolishly sacrificed himself so you might live.”

“He's not dead. We took him to the hospital. They'll save him.”

The Captain laughed. His hollow voice echoed deep in his rotted chest. He waved his free hand, the tattered flesh twitching back and forth with the motion.

“Of course he's dead. He was dead before you ever reached the hospital. Faxon knew. He had to have known.”

Tiadaria's eyes darted to the quintessentialist, who lowered his head. She wanted to scream at him. Wanted to demand that he deny the accusations. What the Captain said couldn't be true. It couldn't. She hadn't even had time to say goodbye. She hadn't had time to tell Wynn everything she needed to tell him. They were going to be married. They were going to spend the rest of their lives together. All of this would be over soon and they'd be able to start over and make it work the way they should have from the beginning.

“He isn't dead,” she said defiantly, her eyes blazing. “You can't know that. You're trying to get inside my head and it's not going to work.”

Once again the Captain laughed, the sound grating on Tiadaria's nerves and raising gooseflesh on her arms.

“Poor Tiadaria. Your friend is most assuredly dead, young Tiadaria. I am a part of the Dyr. Don't you think I felt it when he died? From a wound that I inflicted, no less. A wound that was meant for you. He sacrificed himself to allow you to live, for all the good it did.”

The seed of doubt found fertile soil in her soul, sending out black tendrils that burrowed into her heart and mind and made it feel as if her blood was freezing in her veins. Wynn was dead. Somehow, now that she'd heard the words, it was impossible to deny them. It was as if hearing them aloud had made them real. As if in speaking of the deed, the Captain had sealed the fate of the man she loved. Tears sprang to her eyes and she swiped them away, remembering to stay on guard against any attack the Captain might make.

“Poor Tiadaria,” he taunted her. “Everyone she's ever loved is either dead or has abandoned her. I'm dead. Her friend is dead. Faxon will soon be dead. How many others will die tonight because of your shortsightedness, Tiadaria? How many will pay the price for your inattention to your duty?”

Even as he spoke, Tiadaria's thoughts turned toward Valyn and the King. How many
would
die because she hadn't anticipated the threat? The currents and eddies in the Quintessential Sphere had to have been there for her to see. If she'd been closer to the capital, maybe she'd have seen or heard something that could have prevented the hundreds of deaths she'd seen tonight. Maybe the Captain was right. Maybe she had turned her back on her destiny. The people of Dragonfell, of the Imperium, deserved better. Her swords wavered in shaking hands.

“That's right, Tiadaria. Just lay down your weapons and you'll never be troubled by this again. I shouldn't have interfered that day on the executioner's platform. His blade would have been a kindness. You wouldn't have had to felt so much pain to get to where you are right now.”

She remembered that day as clearly as anything in her life. The sky a crisp blue and the sound of songbirds singing in the trees at the edge of King's Reach. Despair flooded through her. Perhaps she would have been better off on the chopping block. She'd at least have been free. No longer a slave to her destiny, her duty, or her honor.

“Tiadaria, don't...listen to him,” Faxon's voice was harsh and filled with agony.

She dared another short glance at him. His arm was mangled, the bloodstained ivory of bone showing through in some areas where the hellhounds' fangs had torn his flesh away. He was blistered and burned and far too pale for him to be conscious, much less alive.

“Faxon, please!” She pleaded with him, unsure of what she was asking him for, only that she needed him. If Wynn was truly gone, she needed him now more than ever.

The quintessentialist pushed himself slowly to his knees, then to his feet. The Captain's lich took a step toward him, but Tiadaria's blades crashed down on his, shoving him back away from the crippled mage.

“Don't listen to him, Tiadaria.” Faxon sounded stronger now, though he looked no better than he had a moment ago. “The Captain was proud of you. You've done nothing to tarnish his expectations of you. This...thing...is the twisted echo of every negative aspect of the man you loved. He's using the power of the Dyr to try and cloud your memories. Fight him. End this now and we might still have time to save the city.”

“Faxon always was an idyllic fool. You can't defeat me, little one. Your mentors are dead or dying, everyone else has abandoned you. You have nothing. Curl up and die. Why suffer more than you need to?”

“Pain is the fire in which resolve is tempered,” Tiadaria said quietly. “You told me that. Before they forced you to become this perverted wretch.”

“A badly tempered blade is worse than no blade at all,” the Captain snarled.

“My will and resolve are tempered by something you can't understand. There is no love without pain and no pain without love. You'll never know love again, Captain, and I'm sorry for you...but you will know pain.”

Channeling her memories of the Captain, of Faxon, of Wynn, of a hundred different moments in which her love had caused her pain, Tiadaria called on the power of the Quintessential Sphere. Its essence flowed into her, buoyed her, lifted her above the sickening miasma that the Captain had tried to use against her.

Tiadaria ran toward the lich, her blades held out in front of her like a pachyderm’s tusks. A condescending smile crossed the Captain's ruined face and he brought his blade around, meaning to sever her head from her shoulders. At the last moment, she leapt, clearing the sweep of his blade and coming down inches from him, too near for him to defend.

She thrust her scimitars up into his chest, tears streaming down her face. The blades entered the wound where the Xarundi had killed him so many years ago and grated against the spine. Tiadaria forced the blades together, severing the spine and tearing the rotted flesh and tendons that held the body together. Severed below the ribcage, the top half of the body collapsed to the floor, still clawing at her with one moldering hand.

Drawing back one of her blades, she buried it in the Captain's skull, splitting it down the center. The seat of the magic disrupted, the lich collapsed into a pile of broken bones and desiccated flesh. Whatever part of it had once been the Captain was gone, forever.

Tiadaria sank to her knees, tears streaming down her face. There were tears of relief mixed with tears of grief and pain, but she knew she had little time for any of them. They needed to get to the palace and save the king from the Xarundi menace that was almost on their doorstep, if they weren't there already.

A groan from behind her cut through the fog of emotion and she rushed to Faxon, deftly leaping the chasm that Tionne's magic had caused. The mage was in poor shape. He was covered in sweat and his eyes showed far too much white to be healthy or proper. He was going into shock and Tiadaria didn't know if there was anything she could do for him.

“I don't know how to help, Faxon.”

“Forget about me,” he countered gruffly. He motioned to the corner of the room with his other hand. The chalice was resting in the corner. “Get me the Chalice of Souls. We don't have much time.”

“Faxon! You can't cast in this condition. You'll die.”

“We'll all die if I don't. We all have sacrifices to make.”

“Faxon! No! Please! I can't lose you too.”

“And you won't, if you help me, but we're running out of time. The chalice, swordmage, now.”

It was the first time that Faxon had ever called her that and the surprise spurred her into movement. She ran across the room, snagged the chalice, and brought it back to him. Faxon had sunk back to his knees, unable to remain standing.

“Hold it tightly. No matter what happens to me, don't let go. Just focus on sending the blood wraiths back from where they came.”

“Faxon--”

“No arguments, Tiadaria. Focus!”

Tiadaria screwed her eye shut and focused on the blood wraiths being tossed back into the abyss of the Deep Void. As she concentrated, her hands where she clutched the metal started to get cold. She felt the coolness of Faxon's hands over hers as he intoned a complicated spell. With each passing iteration, the metal seemed to grow colder and colder, until it was burning her flesh.

It felt as if the chalice were molten in her grasp. She screamed in pain, her eyes snapping open to see a stream of red wisps flowing into the safe house through the broken doors and windows and through the massive hole in the wall. They slipped into the chalice where they disappeared in a whirling vortex of blackness at the bottom.

Faxon's chant had reached a hysterical pitch and Tiadaria held on to the chalice with every ounce of willpower she could muster. Just when she thought she couldn't take any more, the last of the red wisps was sucked into the chalice and there was a brilliant flash at the bottom of the cup. They released it at almost the same time, nearly throwing it from them. It hit the floor, rolled toward the chasm, and tipped over the lip, disappearing from view into the darkness.

Tiadaria knelt by the quintessentialist, who lay on his back, his injured arm clutched to his chest. She prodded his shoulder with an experimental finger.

“I'm still here,” he said, from what seemed like a considerable distance. “Go to the palace. Now, before it's too late.”

“I can't leave you, Faxon. Please.”

“You can and you will. You need to stop the Xarundi. Go.”

Tia got to her feet, brushing her palms against her tattered breeches. She gathered her scimitars and turned toward the door.

“Tia?” Faxon called.

“Yes?”

“If you see a healer, I'm not too proud to be carried back to the hospital.”

Tiadaria couldn't help but chuckle. She promised to send help and slipped out into the night, heading north toward the palace and the Xarundi. Whether or not Tionne was there too, this was going to end and end now, before anyone else had to die.

#

As it turned out, finding a healer to attend to Faxon wasn't a problem. It appeared as if the ritual that he had invoked using the chalice had indeed rid Dragonfell of the last of the blood wraiths. Rotting husks dotted the streets, but none of them appeared to be moving. She checked on one or two as she passed, but finding nothing to be concerned with, hurried on. The city guards were returning to their posts, and with them a host of clerics and healers who were doing their best to attend to those who couldn't make it to the hospital or a healing house for treatment. Tiadaria paused long enough to give directions to where Faxon was and urge haste, then she continued on her way toward the palace cavern.