Boaberous was scanning around the crowd until he saw Jataan coming his way. They joined up without a word and set out into the streets of Southport. The blacksmith was Reishi Protectorate. That would be their first stop. They needed information, horses, and perhaps a few men to assist in their task.
The Rebel Mage had sent an assassin through the millennia to bring the Reishi line to an end for all time. Jataan P’Tal had a sacred duty to prevent Mage Cedric’s assassin from succeeding. He’d always understood that the best defense was a good offense. He had come to kill Alexander Valentine before he had the chance to deliver Mage Cedric’s final blow to civilization.
***
Phane sauntered casually into the council chamber of the Reishi Army Regency on Karth. His voyage had taken a day longer than he’d wanted but that didn’t matter. He was here now. He looked each man in the eye as he moved closer to the table with each languid step.
The men at the table regarded him with a mixture of suspicion, fear, and anger. He shouldn’t have been able to walk into their council chamber unchallenged and unannounced. Yet here he was and his demeanor was anything but expected.
They were all wearing armor adorned with an ornately stylized letter R emblazoned in gold on their polished steel breastplates. All nine of them were slightly overweight but each had clearly served his time in the field. Some bore scars. Others simply wore the grizzled look of a man who’d seen his share of death.
Phane flashed his best boyish smile at them, knowing that it would only chafe them further. He wore no armor, carried no weapon, and showed no respect. He regarded them casually for a brief moment before he reached across the table and took the wine goblet from the man in the center chair and hopped up on the table, sitting sideways so he could look over his shoulder at the man sitting in the seat of power, the center seat of the council table.
These men were the General Council of the Reishi Army Regency. They ruled half the island of Karth, with the House of Karth ruling the other half. They had been at war with each other, off and on, for the better part of the last two thousand years.
At the end of the Reishi War, a significant force of the Reishi Army had been trapped on Karth when the Reishi fell. Since the House of Karth had sided with the rebel forces against the Reishi, they were natural enemies. The war never really ended for the people of Karth. The island was governed by tyranny on both sides and the people bore the brunt of the burden.
Phane took a long drink from the goblet, draining it completely, then casually tossed it on the floor. When he flashed another of his boyish smiles at the man in the center seat, one of the other Generals stood and drew his sword.
“How dare you? Guards!” he bellowed. When none came rushing in he frowned slightly and lunged at Phane, who simply slipped off the table and danced out of the way of the blade. He stopped just out of sword range and stood pointing at the man and laughing in mockery.
The man’s face turned red and his mouth opened and closed in rage. Phane took another step backward and motioned with both hands to come for him, while wearing a big dopey grin and snickering at the grizzled old soldier.
The other men all wore masks of stone-cold anger but each held his seat at the table, staring at the intruder with a mixture of caution and disbelief. The man with the sword vaulted over the table but before he could hit the ground, while he was at the apex of his vault, Phane’s smile contorted into a look of murderous glee. He thrust his hand out toward the man.
With one hand on the table and still in midair, the man simply burst apart as if a force of tremendous energy had struck him square in the chest hard enough to turn his body to pulp and splatter his parts around the room. The bulk of his mass smashed into the wall behind the table with such force that it liquefied on impact, squirting gore in every direction. One arm thudded onto the table as it came free of his torso at the shoulder. One of his legs spun end over end through the air and hit the edge of the table, leaving a lurid red splotch before flipping off onto the ground and settling in a pile of gore framed by a slowly expanding puddle of blood. His head skittered into the corner of the room and spun slowly to a stop, leaving a red circle painted on the floor around it.
The remaining eight men sat in stunned fear, splattered with the pulverized flesh, bone, blood, and guts of a man who only moments before had sat at their table. Phane giggled for a moment before his face took on the look of another murder waiting to happen. He drew himself up and deliberately cleared his throat.
“Gentlemen, I am Prince Phane Reishi.” Their faces went white behind masks of splattered blood. “I am here to assume command of the Reishi Army Regency and deliver you victory over the traitorous House of Karth.”
The blood-soaked men all looked back and forth at each other, little bits of viscera and bone falling from their hair when they moved their heads. The man in the center chair stood slowly and bowed stiffly, dripping blood on the table.
“Prince Phane, we are at your service.” There was a slight tremor to his voice.
Phane flashed his most boyish smile. “Of course you are, General. You and your men can get cleaned up now, and do something with this mess.” He gestured around at the table with a look of exaggerated disgust. “Then I would like to inspect my army.” He turned and sauntered off, talking over his shoulder as he left the scene of carnage, “In the meantime, I’ll make myself at home.”
Chapter 34
Alexander screamed. He put his hands on either side of his head like he was trying to keep it from coming apart and screamed again. The pain was unbearable. He didn’t know that anything could hurt so much. He slumped to his knees. The searing agony began to expand from the breathtaking torment in his head to the rest of his body. It felt like molten lead flowed slowly through his veins from his head into his torso and out to his extremities. He wanted to scream again but couldn’t draw enough breath. He was on his knees slumped over with his forehead on the cold stone floor when a convulsion of tingling, burning misery tore through him. He fell over on his side and gasped for breath. His lungs simply wouldn’t work. He felt them burn with need for air but couldn’t make them draw breath. He shook in a paroxysm and imagined that this must be what it felt like to drown in liquid fire. His vision started to close down and he felt himself losing consciousness. He nearly panicked. He knew he would lose everything if he let himself succumb now. He had to endure the trial of pain, or perish.
Alexander had spent the week prior studying with Mason, learning about the mana fast and what he could expect. He worked hard and long to learn the mental concentration exercises and visualization techniques he would need to survive the ordeal and to control his access to the firmament once he succeeded.
Mason told him he wasn’t ready. Most apprentice wizards spent years of daily study learning the strict mental discipline required of a wizard. Alexander had some training from Lucky disguised as simple thought exercises but without the rigor. He hadn’t practiced the meditation and the careful, methodical creation of vivid and exacting images in his mind that was so necessary to a wizard.
Alexander had insisted. He needed the power that the mana fast represented if he was going to have any chance of stopping Phane. And he knew he needed to do this now, before he left for Blackstone Keep, or he might never get the chance again.
Isabel had asked him to wait. She begged him to put this off. It broke his heart to see the fear in her beautiful green eyes. She railed at him when begging didn’t work. He took it without flinching. When that didn’t work she fell into his arms and cried. He held her and promised her it would be all right. She stood at the door and watched with tears streaming down her face when he locked himself into the tower room to begin the ordeal.
Abigail had been angrier than Isabel but she knew her brother better and knew he wouldn’t be swayed once he’d set his course. She told him she loved him and made him promise he would survive. She was standing next to Isabel when he secluded himself away for the fast.
Anatoly and Lucky hadn’t tried to talk him out of it. Anatoly simply asked if he was sure he had to do this. When he saw the look of resolve on Alexander’s face, he just nodded. Lucky gave him a few suggestions, pointers, and reminders of lessons past to help him with the trials that lay ahead. Alexander thanked them both for their support and promised he would survive and emerge stronger.
Mason had prepared the top room of his tower for Alexander. It was a round room just over thirty feet across, with a centered, twenty foot magic circle inlaid in gold. Mason set up a cot, a small table, a meditation cushion, and a barrel of drinking water inside the circle for Alexander and cast the invocation that would protect the world outside the circle from the forces that Alexander might call forth. Until he completed the fast, he wouldn’t be able to leave the circle. He had committed to his course. If he succeeded, he would live.
As the torment threatened to overwhelm his sanity he focused his mind on the pain itself. He embraced it and welcomed it into every part of his being. He felt like he was on fire but still he held onto the pain. Mason had told him that he had to face each trial directly in order to succeed. He had to become larger than the trial within his own mind. He had to master the challenge and learn to focus, concentrate, and control his mind and feelings in spite of the trial.
He lay on the floor all that night struggling for each breath, shuddering in unmitigated torment, occasionally convulsing when a wave of agony ripped through him. When dawn came he focused on the light from the tiny window and clung to the pain. He focused his will and looked for a place of clarity where he could find refuge from the gales of unrelenting agony that racked him down to the marrow of his being. He cast about within the confines of his consciousness for a place of safe harbor.
And then, after countless hours of torture, he found it: the eye of the storm. A tiny little part of his being that was held apart from the agony that so completely consumed him. He drew himself into that calm; took shelter in the stillness. For what seemed like a very long time, he just took refuge. But he knew that wasn’t enough. He had to master the trial. He had to master the pain. He had to find a way to command his mind, his body, and his spirit in the face of the torture.
The eye of the storm was the key. He drew himself up from there and watched the pain wash through the rest of him. He detached his will from the suffering, detached his mind from the distraction of it. And then he began to gain command over his body. Bit by bit he was able to impose his will on his pain-racked body and bit by bit his body responded despite the crushing agony.
He made it to his feet with an effort that was beyond anything he’d ever exerted in his life before that moment. Once standing, the pain coursed through him as though it was rising to meet the challenge and maintain its supremacy over him. He bore down with his will. He allowed the pain to have full run of his body, looked it in the face and commanded his arms and legs to obey him anyway. And they did, slowly at first, but soon he was working through fighting sequences with an imaginary sword. Thrust, parry, advance, riposte, withdraw, and counterstrike. He could see the sequence of moves in his mind’s eye and he commanded his body to perform the movements even through the blinding agony. He moved with jerking and halting steps. Each technique was forced and sloppy at first, but he kept at it.
He began to move more fluidly and cleanly. The pain was still there but he had control. He could act in spite of it. Like a dam breaking, the pain suddenly drained away. His nerves were raw and worn and he was exhausted, but the sudden absence of pain was one of the most sublime and uplifting feelings he’d ever experienced. A great wave of relief washed over his sweat-slick body as he collapsed onto his cot. The cool air felt soothing in his lungs and he felt lighter in spite of his fatigue.
It was midafternoon on the fourth day of the mana fast when Alexander passed the trial of pain. The first three days had been nothing more than meditating on an empty stomach and struggling with the solitude. The trial of pain came as suddenly as it faded away. He knew he needed sleep but he also knew he needed to drink the fourth vial of Wizard’s Dust-infused water before he let himself drift off. Mason had impressed upon him the importance of drinking one vial each day without fail. He didn’t say what would happen if he failed to do so but implied it would be very dangerous. Alexander rolled over and flipped open the lid to the little felt-lined case, removed the next vial, popped the sealed glass stopper off and downed the slightly sweet contents. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
He woke sometime in the middle of the night in terror. The fear was so palpable he could feel it closing in around him in the darkness. His heart hammered in his chest and he held his breath for fear of the darkness hearing him. He curled into a ball on his cot and whimpered. He didn’t know what was out there but he knew it was horrible and it was coming for him.
He shivered in cold sweat while the dread coursed through him. He couldn’t tell if he was asleep and caught up in a nightmare or awake and waiting for one of Phane’s conjured beasts to rend him flesh from bone. He simply couldn’t make his mind work right. The fear invaded every corner of his being and poisoned his reason with deep dark foreboding that ebbed and flowed like a tide, sometimes rising to the level of blind, paralyzing panic and other times receding into trembling trepidation.