But it was too late, and as he met the atherian’s blank gaze Carro felt a thrill he had never experienced in the man’s presence before, even upon their first meeting.
A light seemed to have gone out behind Raz’s eyes. Like some spark had been snuffed, the glint of life that made the amber orbs shine with amusement, sadness, merriment, anger, and every other emotion, had suddenly vanished. In its wake something darker had appeared, hungry and pitiless. Raz’s eyes, usually so lively and alert, had suddenly taken on an empty, wicked edge, sharp with intelligence but lacking all gleam of ego and being.
They reminded Carro of the eyes of a cliff hawk or falcon, of the great birds of prey that circled in the heavens of the North, keenly seeking the next meal among the leaves and the flowing grasses of the woods and plains.
They were the eyes of a predator.
“Raz…?” Carro tried again, though he found himself unable to brave taking another step further.
“I left her.”
The voice chilled Carro to the very bone. It was Raz’s voice, but there was a deadness to it, an utter lack of emotion that made it almost monstrous. Combined with the fathomless, empty gaze, the atherian became suddenly more animal than beast, and Carro instinctively prepared a defensive ward in his bad hand, readying the spell.
Instantly, he regretted it.
Behind Raz the Priests and Priestesses scattered about their seats sensed the magic, and it set them immediately on edge. Behn Argo was on his feet in an instant, followed swiftly by Petrük, Elber, and Forn. Most of the group Cullen Brern had led down the mountain followed suit, looking anxious. Even the members of the council who hadn’t moved were suddenly tense, exchanging worried glances.
“Carro, what’s going on?”
Jofrey’s voice seemed to draw Raz’s attention before Carro could answer. The atherian’s head jerked to the side, ears flaring, and the rest of him turned to follow this leading motion as though in some lumbering trance. Carro watched Raz’s hard, cold eyes sweep the room, taking in the council, then Avonair, Reyn Hartlet, and the Priests and Priestesses behind them.
Then they settled on the door at the very top of the room.
“I left her,” Raz repeated, taking a step towards Jofrey, though Carro rather thought the man was utterly unaware of the men and women who stood between him and the steps leading upward.
It was Behn Argo who made the first mistake.
Whether or not it was his own life or the High Priest’s he feared for would be the matter of much debate in the coming days, but whatever his reasoning, Argo’s actions were remembered by all as the spark that lit the fire. With a yell of fear the man drew from the magics and summoned a handful of milky flames into the palm of his left hand, hefting his staff with his right.
In a mirroring cascade, the others followed suit.
“NO!” Carro, Cullen Brern, and Jofrey shouted together, but it was too late. Valaria Petrük was already on her feet, preparing what looked to be a complex warding spell. Old Jerrom’s withered hands were suddenly aglow with twin orbs of blinding white light. Benala Forn and old Priest Elber matched each other, hefting staffs in both hands. Young Aster Re’het and Kallet Brern moved together, leaping down from their seats to get between Raz and Jofrey, she with stunning spells in both hands, he with steel filling his.
“No!” Carro heard Jofrey yell again, trying to press through the Priest and Priestess. “Stop this! All of you!”
Jofrey’s plea for peace, though, was cut short as Petrük shouted in victory, flinging her completed casting down on Raz, who hadn’t looked away from the door. The spell had the shape of a clear sphere while it lanced towards the atherian, like a large ball of swimming, shifting glass, but as it struck the ground beneath his feet it expanded, shimmering as it grew. Raz snarled in sudden anger as the spell swelled around him, swallowing his feet, then his legs, then his torso. He fought the pull of the magic, attempting to throw himself away from it, but the spell held him firm, gripping him like hardening mortar. He screamed in fury one last time as the ward warped and bent itself over his head, and suddenly the sound of his fighting became dampened, as though he were howling through water.
“Valaria!” Carro shouted, whirling on the woman standing above him among the seats. “Release him! Let him go!”
Petrük, however, gave him a cool, demeaning glance.
“You brought the animal into our home, al’Dor!” she sneered, smiling victoriously as her hands moved before her, maintaining the spell that encased Raz’s twisting, thrashing body. “How are we to know what he’s capable of? Even you were preparing yourself for an attack!”
“I was mistaken!” Carro insisted, looking back to Raz and feeling a sudden tightness as he watched the atherian’s dark form begin to move faster and faster, lunging and smashing itself against the sides of the magic. “Please! Let him go!”
“Why?” she jeered, clearing enjoying herself. “To let him loose, like some hound of war?”
“Valaria, Syrah is alive! We heard her, as we were moving around the Kayle’s camp! He just thinks he can get her back!”
“Delusional,” Behn Argo snorted spitefully. “Even if she didn’t die with the rest of the group, it’s been almost a fortnight. By this time the mountain men would have—”
CRACK!
As one, everybody in the room stiffened in shock at the sound. It was one they knew well, one every consecrated Priest and Priestess had had instilled in them a thousand times over in the practice chambers as they trained and fought.
It was the sound of a breaking ward.
XXXI
ALL EYES fell on Petrük’s spell, fluid and turning about the dark form of Raz i’Syul. The atherian, though, had stilled, calming in his writhing, rabid attempts to free himself of the confines of the magic. He knelt now, indistinct within his shimmering prison, arms above his head.
Indistinct, that is, except for the silvery steel claws of the hands that were forcing their way slowly through the very top of the spell, sending thin, shifting cracks over its surface as it began to fail.
“Impossible,” Carro heard someone mutter from behind him.
But whoever had spoken didn’t know Raz i’Syul Arro as Carro had come to know him. Any learned Priest would have quickly said that it would take a battering ram to break a detainment ward.
And Carro knew well—thinking of the bloody tales Talo had reluctantly told him of the Azbar Arena—that a battering ram didn’t hold a candle to the destructive power of the Monster unleashed.
There was another crack, and the whole spell seemed to cave upward slightly, bending under the tremendous pressure of the atherian pushing himself up on powerful legs.
“Valaria, release him!” Carro shouted again, hearing the plea creep into his voice now. “Please! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
The old woman, though, seemed deaf to his cries. She was staring, pale and frightened, at the breaking spell, clearly numbed by what she was witnessing. The others, too, were silent in their horror.
Fortunately, there was one exception.
“Everyone out!” Jofrey bellowed, pushing himself between Aster and Kallet. “OUT!”
The man’s words shook the shock from some of the more strong-willed members of the council. Cullen and Kallet rushed forward with Jofrey towards Raz, though Carro didn’t know if they intended on breaking the ward or attempt to strengthen it. Old Elber whirled in the stands above, shouting at the younger Priests and Priestesses behind him to run for help. Even old Jerrom was attempting to struggle to his feet, hands still full of light.
Before anyone could really do anything, though, the magic failed.
BOOM!
The force of the shattering spell went off like a bomb, the built-up energy of the sorcery releasing all at once. Carro caught only a glance of the ward evaporating in a rush of silver and white smoke before the shockwave smashed into him, throwing him backwards like a rag doll to slam into the great brazier at the far end
of the dais and send his staff flying. The trough of fire overturned under the force of his heavy body, spilling flames out over the ground as the wind was brutally knocked out of him. He might have broken his back if he hadn’t still been holding onto the protective ward that had set everything off in the first place. As it was, he felt a spasm of pain in his left arm, and knew well that whatever healing his body and magics had managed to do to the broken bone over the last two days had just come undone.
All the same, Carro did his best to scramble to his feet, struggling for breath while pushing himself up with his good hand. As he looked up he saw that Jofrey, Kallet, and Cullen were all picking themselves up as well, having been thrown back by the blast. Aster was in a crumpled heap on the stairs, unmoving, one leg at an awkward angle and her face half-covered in blood from a great gash across her forehead. The others, further away from the breaking ward up among the stone benches, seemed to have only been knocked off their feet.
And in their center, towering upward like some hungry titan of flesh and shadow, Raz stood, wings outstretched around him, his scream of fury painful to the ears.
“Laor save us…” Carro breathed, taking in the beast that was all that remained of his friend. It was the first time he had ever seen the Monster in truth. The heavy furs that covered Raz did nothing to hide the lithe, twisting cords of muscle beneath dark scales, nor the terrifying sheen of membrane extending around him like a bloody cloak. For a solid few seconds Carro could only stare at the atherian, experiencing again the primal fear that made him feel like a lame rabbit at the feet of some ravenous wolf.
Then Raz’s attention shifted, and Carro’s suspended sense of terror broke as he realized the atherian was no longer intent on just the door.
Valaria Petrük shrieked shrilly as the eyes fell on her.
Before Carro could yell a warning, the Monster was moving, little more than a black and red blur streaked with silver steel and brown fur. Even as Carro started forward he saw Raz take the great stone seats two at a time, rushing Petrük with the still confidence of a hunter descending on easy prey.
Fortunately for the councilwoman, neither she nor Behn Argo, standing beside her, were actually that easy to kill.
Whereas Reyn Hartlet’s single defensive spell had done little more than slow Raz down the night before, the combined sorcery of the man and woman—thrown up instinctively more than anything—did much better. The magics layered to form a thin, shimmering wall between them and the atherian, and Raz—with no time to slow down in his headlong rush—smashed into it with the force of a falling tree. The ward held, and the man ricocheted sideways off it, thrown away with a sizzle of burning fur. As a dozen voices began to shout in fear and anger, Carro adding his to the mix, Raz tumbled down to the base of the consecration room once again. He was on his feet in a blink, though, snarling as he rolled and rose, amber eyes taking in the chamber and the men and women standing above him in quick, calculated flicks.
This time they settled on the door again, and Raz moved like lightning up the stone once more.
“Let him go!” Carro heard himself screaming, and he thought he made out Jofrey and Cullen echoing the command from off to his right. “Let him go!”
Whether the words were lost to the shouts and cracking of summoned magic, or just ignored by a group of men and women frightened beyond rational thought, he didn’t know. Whatever the reason, the faithful moved as one to close in on Raz, like they were penning in a cornered animal.
And like any cornered animal, the Monster became vicious in his desperation to escape.
The first to go down was the Priest Loric, part of Brern’s entourage, who had seated himself at the edge of the stairs. He leapt up directly in Raz’s path, intent on preventing the atherian from getting away. He howled his own battlecry as he flung paired stunning spells at the dark form barreling upward towards him, throwing them with calm, practiced efficiency.
Skill and talent only went so far, though, when facing off against the Raz i’Syul Arro.
The atherian dodged both spells with ease, ducking under one and leaping clear over the other. As Loric’s face slipped from warrior’s confidence into stunned fear, the man was on him. In a quick succession of moves the Priest was doubled over by a punch to the stomach, then knocked cold by a hard, chopping blow to the back of the head. He fell forward, unconscious down the stairs, coming to rest half atop the form of Aster Re’het, still sprawled on the steps.
The next pair, armed with staffs, did only slightly better. The Priest and Priestess, whose names Carro didn’t know, moved from either side of the room, trying to take Raz in a well-timed pincer. The man yelled and pelted the atherian with a trio of flickering fire strikes, the white flames hissing through the air. Raz turned towards him in time to dodge these spells as well, dipping and weaving beneath the first two, then half-spinning, half-flipping under the third.
This final moved landed him right in front of the woman, coming from the other side, and she shouted triumphantly as she brought the full weight of her staff down on Raz’s head.
Had she stayed silent, she might just have been the first person to ever take the Monster of Karth by surprise.
Instead, Raz reacted instinctively to her yell, twisting as he brought an arm above his head defensively. The staff collided with the bracer of his gauntlet with a crash, and the woman had barely enough time to register a gasp of shock before the atherian’s hand shifted to rip the steel out of her grasp. Raz, armed with something of a familiar weapon now, moved like water, his movements ingrained in his body. One end of the staff came around to smash into the side of the woman’s left knee, rousing a horrible howl of pain. It was cut short, though, as the other end whipped around to ram her full in the body, just below the center of her chest.
Had the staff been Ahna, the Priestess would have lost a leg moments before being run through by the dviassegai’s wicked blades. As it was, the woman fell back with a pained inhalation as all the air rushed agonizingly from her lungs, the muscles of her chest momentarily paralyzed by the shock of the blow. Even as she crumpled, though, Raz was turning, the woman’s staff moving like silk in his hands. The man who had caught his attention first was still charging him, joined now by two more, one on either side. Carro watched in horrified anticipation as the atherian’s body tensed, his legs coiling beneath him, the supple body of a snake set to strike. He thought to shout out, thought to scream a warning at the trio so foolishly rushing into a fight they had no prayer of winning.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a line of light slashed across his vision, cutting through the air with the crackling buzz of angry magic. Like a whip the goldish-white stroke of thin fire slithered out, wrapping around Raz’s right arm just as he started to pounce. The atherian roared as the spell pulled him down and sideways, throwing him off balance. His golden eyes shifted, seeking out the offending spellcaster.
They settled, cold and hungry, on the thin form of old Jerrom Eyr, shaking and frail on the steps below. The wizened Priest looked to be struggling mightily, all his limited strength having gone into first transforming the light he had been holding into the lash of fire, and now restraining just one of the atherian’s arms. Raz, it looked like, was realizing this quickly, because even as Carro watched the Monster gave the magic a testing pull, forcing Jerrom to take a shaky step forward.
Before the atherian could do anything more, though, there was a flash, and another sizzle of boiling air.
The second lash, bright and white, slashed upwards from the left to snake around Raz’s other arm. Carro turned in time to watch Behn Argo strain to hold onto the magic, his face going red under the effort when Raz roared in fury, pulling at this new restraint. Another flash, though, and a third tether joined the melee, Benala Forn’s magic wrapping around the howling Monster’s neck like a noose even as he screamed louder.
A fourth. A fifth. A sixth.
Within five seconds, Raz i’Syul was trapped in no less than a half-dozen magical s
nares, one around his throat, one around each leg, one around his left arm, and two around his right. It seemed, though, that the spells did little more than immobilize the man, the thin flames already starting to fail in places as Raz threw himself about, thrashing and straining against the bonds, snarling like a rabid beast.
“Someone PUT HIM DOWN!” old Elber yelled from up in the seats, straining with Jerrom to control Raz’s right arm. “PUT HIM DOWN! BEFORE HE GETS LOOSE!”
Even Carro didn’t find it in himself to argue, now. Aster and Loric were sprawled out at the bottom of the stairs before him, feet away from the cracked stone that bordered the crater from which the blasting magic of the failing ward had emanated. Above them, the unnamed Priestess had found her breath again, and was now using it to screech in agony as she rolled around, clutching what looked to be a shattered knee.
Madness, Carro thought in unbelieving sadness, his eyes falling on Raz again, watching him fight his bonds and remembering something Talo had once told him. A taste of madness…
Carro himself thought he could sense a hint of it in his own thoughts, thinking of the ravages he and Raz had left Syrah to at the hands of the Kayle’s men.
Abruptly there was a blinding bloom of light, and Carro was forced to raise his good hand to cover his eyes as they burned and watered. It took a moment, but eventually he was able to peer through the glare to see Jofrey standing at the base of the stairs, hands moving before him as the High Priest summoned and pooled his magic. A great orb of shifting, swimming white built up in the space between his palms, growing and expanding outward as Jofrey crafted the spell. It took several short seconds—a testament to the man’s skill with the gifts Laor had granted him—but when the sphere of combined stunning spells was about his chest-width across, Jofrey didn’t so much as hesitate. With both hands he lifted the spell above his head, then flung it with all his might up the stairs.
The magic lanced upwards, over the steps, lashing out bolts of blue electricity at anything that got within a few feet. Like a lightning storm condense it boiled and raged as it flew, the air around it reverberating with pulsing power. Raz saw it coming, saw the end it spelled to his rage. He roared again, redoubling his fight against the bonds of flames. Valaria Petrük screamed as her lash broke, freeing his right leg. Jerrom’s was next, and above him Elber cursed as he suddenly became the only one fighting Raz’s right arm.
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