The Complete Rhenwars Saga: An Epic Fantasy Pentalogy

by M. L. Spencer

  Darien closed his eyes, the sound of his pulse ringing in his ears, the song of the magic field a sudden, rapturous symphony in his head. Reaching up, he took her hand in his.

  The raging current he sent through her took Arden by surprise. Twisting in agony, her mouth drew into a rictus as she screamed, blue lightnings of power clawing into her flesh. Darien watched in fascination as her pale skin glazed and then crisped, cracking to ooze boiling fluid that ran like tears down her face.

  He let the crackling energies die with the sound of her screams. Leaning over her, he smiled in satisfaction.

  “The necrators…”

  Startled by her voice, Darien drew back. Somehow, she was still alive. But not for long; the sound of her breath was but a gurgle in her throat.

  “They have no power over you.”

  “Because my heart is black,” she whispered as she died.

  Darien nodded, staring down at her charred corpse. He felt no sympathy for her whatsoever, absolutely no remorse. The only thing he felt was a satisfying sense of vindication.

  “So is mine, now,” he assured her.

  He rose to face the ring of necrators who stood regarding him with acute disinterest. They had no reason to challenge him. If they looked deeply into his heart, the only thing they would find was an ally.

  Proctor raised his sword to block the blade that cleaved down at him as his stallion reared and attacked the Enemy with its hooves and teeth. He clung to his shield, warding off blow after blow from one soldier as another worked furiously to get his blade inside his guard. He parried the thrusts, then changed through to a downward cut that took his opponent in the neck. The man crumbled as Proctor swung his sword around to ward off a glancing slice from the opposite direction.

  He spun his horse away, angling the destrier back toward the charging horde.

  Darien gazed down from the rim of the summit, his boots scant inches from the edge. He was no longer troubled by the reeling vertigo he had experienced earlier. Many things he had been afraid of before had ceased to be a problem. Arden’s thanacryst sat on its haunches at his side, nose quivering as it scented the wind, drooling an awful fluid that slicked its dark fur and dripped, viscous, to the stone. The necrators at his back remained silently at their stations. He paid them no mind. They would linger there until he deigned to send them away. He was their master, now.

  Darien gazed down, considering the view below with calm indifference. To the north, he could see the wedge of the first host, dispersed now as they rushed to harry what was left of Proctor’s men. To the west, he could see the van of the second host emerging from behind the ridge. There was still no trace of Emmery’s support, but now he doubted he would need it. Orien’s Circle glowed behind him, pulsing to the cadence of the magic field.

  He waited, watching as below him, men of Proctor’s command were swept under by a breaking tide of death.

  He waited and did nothing.

  Reaching down, he ran his fingers over the coarse fur of the thanacryst’s head. The beast had been anxious, ever since he had dumped its mistress’ corpse off the edge of the cliff. He soothed it with quiet, whispered words, hand ruffling the slathered fur of its neck.

  Garret Proctor felt the arrow take him in the chest, piercing through his armor even as his sword smashed through the visor of an Enemy pikeman. Gritting his teeth, he brought his blade up again. Hacking his way out of a thicket of shields and swords, he sent his mount at a gallop across the snow-covered plain. Ahead, he could see the tall spire of Orien’s Finger like an ancient and decrepit pillar thrusting upward into the sky.

  All he had to do was reach the pillar’s base. After that, his final duty would be consummated.

  The thanacryst growled. He thought perhaps it might be hungry. Patting its head, Darien took one last look down at the flagging chase below, then turned away from the edge. Under the silent watch of the necrators, he strode calmly to the center of the Circle, taking his place at the focal point of the glimmering lines of the star.

  It was time.

  Darien closed his eyes, shrouding his mind in concentration as he felt the Circle of Convergence through his feet. The lines of power pulsed once, harkening to his call. Gathering the energies of the focus, Darien summoned the strength of the magic field, offering himself as a conduit for the vast intensity of the vortex.

  The battle below forgotten, he opened up his mind. The surge of power flooded into him, filling him, consuming him utterly.

  The lines of Orien’s Circle glowed, glimmering, increasing to a white brilliance unequalled even by the sun. A breeze stirred, playing with the strands of his hair. The wind swelled, became a vibrant gust of air that moved along the perimeter of the Circle, slowly rotating. Almost stately, the spinning column of air grew, groping upward into the sky as the new-found morning began to darken.

  The thanacryst threw back its head and howled.

  The necrators looked silently on, their dark forms unaffected by the first strains of the grand resonance forming around them, groping upward to choke the sky.

  36

  Grand Resonance

  Garret Proctor fought the reins of his horse, wincing as his arm grazed the arrow in his chest. The entire front of his padded gambeson was stained a dark burgundy sheen. Fighting had enlarged the wound, and the battle-rage that quickened his heart only served to pump the blood out faster. He had seen such wounds before and knew it was mortal.

  Grasping the arrow, he snapped off the protruding end of the shaft and flung it away. The pain was fierce, almost incapacitating. His vision swam, and for a moment the pillar of rock before him wavered and grew dim. Looking down, he could see his lifeblood now coming in spurts timed to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

  Orien’s Finger reared sharply overhead, jutting upward into the sky. As his horse took the hill at the base of the crag, Proctor drew back on the reins and wheeled his mount around. Behind him, what was left of the men under his command were embroiled in a desperate race. There were so few left. Two more fell from their horses even as he watched. The writhing mass of both Enemy armies flooded behind them, churning like an ocean at the place where two swift currents meet.

  The hurling onslaught slowed to a halt. His back to the rock face of Orien’s Finger, Proctor brandished his sword over his head as the men that were left formed up at his side. Before them, the front ranks of the Enemy pierced the air with a resonating cry.

  The cry was taken up like a wave through the ranks, sweeping out from the crag like a deafening riptide. The clamor rose even further as the second host joined in, over fifty thousand fresh voices adding their thunder to the din.

  And then every voice suddenly silenced in unison as all eyes were drawn upward to the sky.

  From horizon to horizon, the dawn went abruptly, alarmingly gray. Proctor saw a shadow slip across the face of the sun, rendering its disk pale and colorless, like a face taken by the pallor of death. The new white sun glowed like an ill omen in the sky, its veiled face emitting little warmth and little light. The day turned rapidly, sinisterly cold. The air seemed almost to congeal, became stiff and still.

  A dreadful calm descended on the plains, silent and impassive. Even the dark ranks of the Enemy stood motionless, like a frozen black sea. His own men glanced around fearfully, faces as pale as the dim sun overhead.

  Garret Proctor did not need to look up. He knew what was coming. Instead he closed his eyes, fondly remembering the few friends he had known in life and praying the gods would forgive his sins.

  The sky grew dark as the sun paled to a ghostly hue. Staring up at it, Malcolm Wellingford knew his face only reflected the ghastly shade. The summit of Orien’s Finger could be seen looming high above the ridge behind them, encased in a circulating mass of black clouds that expanded even as it rotated, groping out across the sky.

  “The signal,” Wellingford whispered to himself through the fear that gripped his heart. The turmoil above surpassed anything his nightmares had ever conc
eived. He had been expecting something big, perhaps even terrible, but nothing as darkly evil as the sickness above that infected the sky.

  The boy still in him wanted to turn his horse and flee, gallop away as fast and as far as he could. But the new-found man within him knew he had a duty to perform. A duty that, at all cost, had to proceed.

  General Wellingford drew his sword, striving to keep the point of the blade steady as he held it skyward over his head. Raising his voice, he addressed his men:

  “Ring them in to the line, push them up against the pillar as close as you can! They’ll try to run but accord them no escape! We have but one chance at this. There’ll not be another. Do not fall back!

  “Now, FORWARD!”

  With a downward slash, he leveled his sword in the air. The blade did not waver in his hand, so unlike the heart that faltered in his chest. He was but a boy, but he was also a man with a homeland to defend.

  He held his breath as twelve thousand men rushed out from behind the cover of the ridge, the sound of their charge shaking the very ground and trembling the air around him.

  As Swain had promised, they were exactly an hour late. Kyel had fidgeted in the saddle the entire ride, terrified of what awaited them up ahead. He strained for a view of Orien’s Finger, but the sight of it was still blocked by a range of hills that stretched out in front of them to the north. What he did see ahead was disconcerting.

  “What is that?” He pointed at a dark patch in the distance that was almost hidden from sight by a small grove of trees.

  Swain squinted, a frown of concentration on his face. A look of surprise dawned in his eyes. He whispered, “It looks to me like a bunch of fools. Something tells me you held back a few bits of Darien’s plan.”

  “I told you what I knew,” Kyel said defensively. “He’s the one who didn’t share everything with me.”

  Swain looked skeptical. “So you’re telling me you had no idea an army from Chamsbrey was going to be meeting us here?”

  Kyel shook his head, wondering what on earth Chamsbrey’s presence could mean. He didn’t wonder long. Looking up into a sky suddenly dark and gray, he saw with dread that the sun had gone a pasty shade of white.

  And then the crag came into view. At its summit was a spiraling mass of black clouds. Appallingly unnatural, they spread outward like a rotating saucer that was rapidly increasing in size. Kyel stared up at it, horrified.

  At his side, Nigel Swain drew up his mount. “Not dangerous, you say?”

  Kyel barely heard him. He gaped at that writhing mass with acute disbelief. That couldn’t be Darien. It couldn’t be. The thing in the sky was evil. There was no other word for it. And the sun … whatever had been done to the sun was repulsive. Something malevolent was taking place ahead, something both hideous and terrifying.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  Beside him, Swain never took his eyes off the abomination in the sky. “I have no idea.”

  Kyel pulled his horse up, transfixed by the view ahead. In the distance, he could see Orien’s Finger with its black, swirling crown. At its base was almost the mirror image of what was taking place above in the sky.

  The dark mass of the Enemy host was ringed by a thin line of infantry desperately fighting a pitched battle to hold their line. The scene was as heartrending as it was appalling. The army from Chamsbrey had no chance. Their numbers were like a child’s dike of sand trying to hold back the rising flood of a river.

  In the sky above, the black clouds rumbled. A low, resonating thunder built gradually until Kyel could feel it in his chest. The sound of it swelled, unrelenting.

  His horse reared, almost throwing him off, and still the echoing thunder rose. Kyel jumped down and grabbed his mount by the bridle, holding it with one hand as he tried to cover his ears. The rumble became a deafening vibration.

  And then the entire world went black. Looking up, Kyel saw that the racing clouds had utterly consumed the sky. They swirled overhead, raging. The only light to be seen was at the summit of Orien’s Finger. There, a white brilliance gleamed from out of the darkness, pulsating with thrumming vibrations that shook the air and trembled the very foundations of the earth.

  Kyel’s horse reared again, knocking him to the ground. The gelding bolted, galloping away, but he hardly noticed. His eyes were fixed on that pulsing beacon of light.

  An explosion of orange-yellow flame shot upward from the summit, blazed there for a span of seconds, and then turned and swept back down upon itself. It poured over the sides of the crag, spilling like a ferocious, glowing waterfall to rush outward in an expanding cloud that whipped across the plains. There was a brief, blinding flare of light. Kyel screamed, throwing his hands up before his face.

  Then it vanished, as if stopped by an invisible and impregnable wall. The noise of it hit, a terrible, air-splitting thunder like the sound of all the heavens collapsing straight into hell. Then the sound was gone, dying almost as abruptly as it came. A warm wind like a summer breeze drifted toward them from the crag, billowing great clouds of dust up high into the air.

  Kyel watched from the ground, mouth gaping, unable to believe what his eyes had just seen, what his ears had just heard.

  It had taken seconds. Only seconds. Nothing could have survived that.

  At the summit, the white light faded to a dim afterglow, then died away completely. Overhead, the sky was still encased in darkness, though the clouds seemed to be slowing. Below on the plain, nothing moved. An appalling stillness had taken hold of the morning.

  Kyel looked out into the darkness, his mind numb, his heart heavy with tears.

  Darien opened his eyes to find the demon-hound nuzzling its head against his face, whimpering. His vision blurred, and for a moment there seemed to be two beasts leaning over him. The images wavered, gradually blending into one. The thanacryst crouched at his side, its forelegs sprawled across his chest. Doglike, it reached its head out and slathered the side of his face with its black and oozing tongue. The smell of the creature was foul, like moldering death.

  The sky was not as dark as it had been. The unnatural night had given way to an overcast sky. The clouds above were drizzling, a gentle sprinkle that was warm and comforting.

  “Move,” Darien told the beast, patting his hand on the stone by his side. The thanacryst whined a complaint but shifted its weight off his chest. It lay down beside him, its muzzle between its paws, looking dejected.

  Darien rolled onto his side then pushed himself up weakly. He was sitting near the edge of the summit, though he didn’t remember getting there. Before him, the Circle was quiescent. Sadly, he realized it would never again awaken. Orien’s Circle was ruined. The stone itself seemed to have liquefied and run, then cooled once more in rippling pools of slag. The star itself was grotesquely distorted. The lights of its rays would never shine again. The abusive torrent of power he had subjected it to had destroyed the Circle completely.

  It was a waste, one of a great many wastes that had come from this day.

  He tried to push himself to his feet but found he lacked the strength for it. So instead Darien leaned back, resting his head against the thanacryst’s heaving side. He gazed upward at the gray, overcast sky and let the rain drizzle down on his face. Dimly, he could see the dark shadows of the necrators still present at their stations around the summit’s rim, silent guardians watching over him sightlessly. He found their presence strangely comforting.

  He closed his eyes and let his mind wander toward sleep. But almost as soon as it came, his rest was disturbed by a fragile sound from below. Sitting back up, he stared warily at the place where the stairs met the summit’s rim. Behind him, the thanacryst uttered a low growl.

  Darien did nothing; there was nothing he could do. If it was one of Renquist’s darkmages, then they would have him. The bone-weary exhaustion that filled him prevented him from touching the field. He had a suspicion of whom it might be, and he wasn’t prepared for that challenge either.

  But he
was wrong. To his horror, it was Naia’s veiled face that crested the rim.

  She froze as she took in the vision of the necrators and the thanacryst at his back. Face pale, she looked at him, slowly shaking her head. She was the last person in the world he wanted to see. He had wanted Naia to remember him the way he was. Not like this.

  She crept forward, gaze wandering over the melted Circle at her feet. Then she stopped, eyes drawn to the necrator that glided forward to confront her. Darien frowned, not understanding the demon’s sudden motion. Naia’s presence should not have provoked it; she was no mage.

  “Visea,” he whispered, and watched as all six shadows melted downward, disappearing into the stone.

  She pressed forward again, crossing the ruined Circle to stand before him, eyes on the thanacryst that stood growling from deep within its throat. Darien put a hand on the beast, stilling it. Then he looked down, not wanting her to see the shadows that he knew consumed his eyes.

  She knelt beside him, reaching out a hand to touch his face. He shrank away from her touch, wincing as if in pain. Her hand found his hair instead, running through it soothingly.

  He closed his eyes, wishing to the gods he was dead. If he were dead, she wouldn’t have to see him this way. Better that she gaze upon his corpse than be witness to the decayed corruption that had become of his soul.

  “Easy,” she whispered, trailing a hand down his cheek.

  He suffered her touch. A week ago, he had longed for it. But Naia’s hand was pure and wholesome, and it had no business touching such a filthy thing as his face.

  “I’m here,” she whispered. “I won’t leave you again.”

  But that wasn’t what he wanted. He needed her to leave, right now, before it was too late.