“Never mind that. How goes construction on the tower?”
Xanthus bounced lightly on his feet. “Proceeding smoothly. We should reach full functionality within six months.”
“And the delay is because…”
“A reasonable question, my lord.” Xanthus cleared his throat. “And the simple answer—”
“Just spit it out. I don’t have all night.”
Xanthus tilted his head in a pathetic nod of humility. “Of course, my lord. Reports from our scouts indicate rebel activity in the area. I’ve taken the initiative in setting up a Null Sphere to protect Great Saranth. As I’m sure you’re aware, the coliseum is heavily fortified but vulnerable to attacks from the sky, my lord.”
“I’m well aware of that,” Kovax said, relaxing a little. “Continue.”
A Null Sphere. Why hadn’t he thought of that? The rebels probably weren’t stupid enough or strong enough to launch an offensive against Great Saranth from the sky. But in the event they decided on a suicide mission, such an attack would slow construction of his latest Tower of Dusk. No time could be wasted dealing with such setbacks.
Xanthus finished his explanation of how he planned to keep the spell running, and the time and resources he would require. Then he stood patiently waiting for his master’s approval. Kovax held it back.
“Protection from the sky is meaningless if we give the rebels all the time in the world to plan around our defensive measures. I want that spell up and running immediately, not in six months like you say, and not in three.”
Another humble nod. “Yes, my lord. I’m certain I could shave off a month just by—”
Kovax waved his hand over the console, erasing the hologram. The lab was silent again except for the humming of his machines. He had to admit, a Null Sphere was certainly a worthy addition to the coliseum’s defenses. Kovax was sure he would have thought of it himself had he not been spending so much time working on Sightwielder.
Moments later, the needle slipped into his arm. The sting gave him pleasure now. It felt like being home after a long and grueling trip.
He watched through Milo’s eyes as, halfway across the realm, he and his idiot friends threw water balloons at each other, explored their tiny, academy dorms, and traipsed across campus toward the Hall of Champions for a meal.
Little had changed of the cadet lifestyle since Kovax had been a student there—except, of course, for all the technological devices corrupting what had once been a haven of magic and tradition. Kovax couldn’t wrap his mind around the need to use trains for transportation when it only took thirty minutes to walk from one end of campus to the other.
In his day, cadets walked through rain and mud to get to class. It toughened them. Those days were obviously gone—a victory for his cause.
“Papa?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the ghostly figure was standing next to him.
“Kofi. What are you doing here? You’re dead.”
“I am?”
The boy stared up at him in surprise. He had always been a bit slow, but this was unacceptable.
“Go back where you came from. Leave me alone. I’m busy.”
“You’re always busy, Papa. That’s why Mama’s always getting mad at you.”
“Mama’s dead, just like you.”
The boy winced at this. “But I saw her this morning. She was singing.”
Kovax pressed his fingertips against his eyelids. Samara’s voice drifted back to him, the song she used to sing while putting Kofi to bed.
“Why is this happening to me?” he asked the memory of his dead wife, as if she had any reason whatsoever to pity him after what he’d done. Instead of a response, all he heard was a sharp gasp of amazement from Kofi as the boy studied Sightwielder.
“What is this thing, Papa? Is it a toy?”
“No, it’s definitely not a toy.”
“Then what?”
Kovax sighed. “It’s a sightsphere that I invented.”
“You mean like those round stones you use when you have to talk to the scary-looking men in the black pajamas?”
“It’s similar, only much more advanced.” Kovax felt a surge of excitement as he explained how it worked. “I can enter people’s heads with this, use their eyesight to gain valuable information about faraway places.”
Kofi raised his eyebrows in fascination. “Whose head are you in now?”
“Milo Banks.”
“The hero?”
Kovax winced. “Just pay attention and keep quiet.”
They watched the event taking place inside the globe. Milo was sitting at a lunch table now, constantly glancing toward his summoner girlfriend and then quickly looking away. The boy’s self-consciousness often made viewing the world through his eyes a chore.
“Look at the colors,” Kofi said.
He reached toward the globe. Kovax slapped the boy’s hand away absently, then recoiled at the touch of cold flesh. His son was no mere ghost, and yet he was no Risen One, either. What was he? Or had Kovax finally lost his sanity altogether?
Ignoring his fears for now, Kovax focused on the mission at hand.
“Watch this,” he told his son.
“What are you gonna do?”
He lifted his hands and clenched them suddenly, brightening the orb with a loud keening noise. The spell left him drained, but Kovax barely noticed. He was no longer in his lab, standing next to his son, surrounded by humming machines. Part of him had flown across the ocean to Theus Academy. This was the crucial next step in his dealings with the machine; he would become a pilot instead of an observer.
Milo was crossing the cafeteria when Kovax decided to test his newfound power over the boy’s will. He had chosen a perfect moment. Kellan, the Archon’s only son, was about to cross Milo’s path. It would be an encounter neither would ever forget.
The splash of pasta and tomato sauce delighted Kovax in a way none of his spells ever had. He savored the taste of victory.
“What’d you do that for?” Kofi whined when it was over.
Kovax was too out of breath to respond. He yanked the needle out of his arm, shutting down the program. The smell of meat and tomato sauce was still hot and thick inside his nose.
“You made food go all over that kid,” Kofi said. “That was mean, Papa.”
“Be quiet,” he snapped at his son.
The dizzy spell this time around was worse than ever. Stars twinkled in his vision—a whole galaxy full of them. Kovax almost tipped over, but his son grabbed him in time, helping his father regain his footing. The boy was much stronger in death than he had ever been in life.
“Thank you, Kofi.”
“No problem, Papa.”
Kovax pointed to a chair next to one of the machines. “Bring that over to me. And watch the wires.”
Kofi obeyed. He dragged the chair with a scraping sound against the floor, awkwardly lifting it over the cables. But was he really moving it? Or was Kovax the one taking action, his mind painting illusion over reality in the process?
“Here you go,” Kofi said.
Kovax sat with a plop. The dizziness faded, but it was time to eat. He always had to remind himself to eat. If only he could make his son go to the kitchen… but that was pushing it.
“Why are you in Milo’s head, Papa?” Kofi asked, taking a seat on the floor next to him.
Kovax blinked away the last dregs of his dizzy spell. “I need something from him,” he replied, deciding he might as well indulge the boy. “The only way to get it is to break into his mind and turn him into my puppet.”
“But you look sick. What if you die?”
“Yes, it could very well kill me, Kofi. If so, I’ll finally join you and your mother. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
He smiled at the boy. Kofi only stared at him attentively, arms propped on his knees, chin resting on his intertwined fingers as though he were listening to one of the bedtime stories his mother used to tell him.
“What do you need Milo to do?”
“I need what’s inside his head, boy. But first I have to make him jump into—”
A pounding on the door jolted them both upright. Kovax reached for his staff, heart fluttering dangerously as he realized he had no idea where it was.
“Who is it?” he shouted.
“It’s Basher, sir,” came the muffled reply.
“Oh no.” Kofi jumped to his feet. “He’s scary.”
The boy darted behind one of the machines and disappeared. Kovax was surprised at how abandoned he felt and how irritated he was with Basher for interrupting them. He rose on shaky knees and draped the hood of his cloak over his head.
“I bring news from the blackwinger,” Basher said from the other side.
With two flicks of his wrist, Kovax dismantled the ward spell protecting the door and flung it open.
“Enter.”
The towering brute stomped inside carrying a black sightstone in the crook of one arm. He looked uneasy.
“Lay it over there,” Kovax said, indicating a grooved pedestal he had pushed against one of the machines to make room for Sightwielder.
Basher dropped the stone with a loud crack. Sightstones were virtually unbreakable, but his carelessness bothered Kovax nevertheless.
“Be careful with it.”
Basher glanced uncertainly at him. “Were you talking to someone, my lord?”
“None of your business. If you are finished, you can leave.”
A hurt look crossed the Berserker’s bearded gray face. It was troubling to see such sensitivity in a captain. The idiot had to toughen himself up, or Kovax would have him replaced. He was already spending too much time with Iolus, and no one in Kovax’s employ was less trustworthy than that mindless playboy of a sorcerer.
“At your command, sir,” Basher said, then bowed and stomped out of the room.
Once he had shut the door, Kovax reignited the ward spell. He dreaded the message he might find in the sightstone—not because it might be bad news, but because he hated dealing with administrative matters. They only took away from his time with Sightwielder.
He tapped the stone, filling it with the image of Coscoros. The area behind him was dark, and Kovax realized after a moment that it was just the Acolyte’s artificial wings, each one a thin steel web covered in flame-resistant fabric. They weren’t made for flying, but after much practice, the blackwinger had learned to glide from one high place to another.
As always, the Dark Acolyte wore a hateful expression. He had never forgiven fate for taking his wings.
“Sir,” Coscoros said with a firm nod.
“What news do you bring from the Northern Frontier, Knight-Marshal?”
The Acolyte’s voice warbled as it reached all the way from Ankhar. “The Heavenswraith remains under our control. Crystal Bark will fall in less than two days if the storm keeps up.”
“And the Sargonaut?”
“Pris Walksprite is an inconvenience, nothing more. I’ll slit her throat myself.” As he said this, Coscoros brought up a black-bladed dagger that dripped oily tendrils of smoke. “The same one used to kill Maximus, my lord.”
“Very good.”
A deep moaning sound, like wind mixed with the murmur of an angry god, rose somewhere behind the Knight-Marshal’s wings.
“Another wave of elementals,” Coscoros said. “I’ve kept them coming just as you ordered.”
“And don’t let them stop until it’s finished,” Kovax said, struggling to hide the fatigue in his voice. The dizziness had led to a sharp headache.
“Sir?” Coscoros said, perplexed at something only he could see.
A tickle rose on Kovax’s upper lip. He touched it and pulled his hand back to find blood on his fingertips.
“It’s nothing,” he said, wiping his sleeve across his face. “You have your orders. Destroy her, then find the other Champions and do the same. Simple enough, right?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Good. That will be all, Knight-Marshal.”
He swiped a hand across the stone’s surface to power it down. With a tortured moan, Kovax stumbled over to the chair and landed with a hard thump that sent vibrations shooting up his spine and into his head. That was unfortunate; it felt like an army of tiny archers releasing a wave of arrows into the flesh behind his eyes.
“The gods damn me to hell,” he muttered, massaging his temples.
Minutes later, the pain faded enough for him to be able to stand. His lab felt emptier than usual without his son.
“Kofi?” he said. “Where did you go? Come out here and help me to the door.”
There was no one else. His son had left him to endure his suffering alone.
Kovax made his way toward the door. His bedchamber was only a hundred paces down the hall, but his body gave up halfway across the lab and slid to the cold floor. It was strangely comfortable down here. And besides, what was the point of leaving his lab? He would only have to walk back in the morning.
The thought lulled him to sleep.
CHAPTER 28
I olus slapped the reins on his oil-black levathon, urging the beast forward with a clapping of hooves against stone. A line of levathons passed in the opposite direction, away from a tunnel leading down to the heart of the mountain. Each levathon that passed, gray from the mineral dust that clung to their coats, had been shorn of its wings to make it better suited to ground labor. They grunted and groaned as they pulled wagons of partly charged blood crystals out of the tunnel. Next to them, another line returned empty wagons to be loaded again.
A mother lode had been discovered deep inside the mountain. Kovax’s army of undead laborers had their work cut out for them. Iolus smiled at the pun.
Shouldering a heavy backpack, he made his way through the passage, past endless torches fueled by low magic that cast a watery, bluish light against the walls. Iolus despised those lights. They were the mark of low mages. A sorcerer would have used natural fire.
The levathons and wagons cast eerie shadows on the walls. His ears rang from the constant banging of hooves and creaking of metal wheels. To him, the noise was a pleasant sort of music. He even found himself whistling.
An endless supply of blood crystals, conveniently being diverted to Iolus’s lair in the Nardgrillax mountains. He had to pull it off somehow without Kovax noticing. With no means of charging them, Iolus would have to rely on the natural accumulation within each one...unless he could find a better, more powerful option.
Down in the mines, Risen Ones chipped away at the crystal deposits embedded in the rock walls. They used ordinary pickaxes tipped with Tiberian Steel, the only metal strong enough to do the job. Having retained some semblance of their former humanity, the zombies swung in unison, then stopped as one to fill the sacks at their feet with crystals as if they had coordinated their efforts to be more efficient.
This cavern was wider than the others, albeit with a low ceiling that almost touched his head while Iolus was mounted. He got off the levathon and went the rest of the way on foot. The Risen Ones stank, a fiercely sour smell of decay that even he found unbearable. Bits of flesh fell from their bodies while they worked and littered the floor. Occasionally he stepped into an oily puddle that emanated a stench so disgusting it made him swallow the urge to vomit.
He would have to burn his clothes when he got out. Thankfully, he had packed a spare outfit in his backpack along with the spell generators.
Narrow corridors branched off from the main cavern. Iolus entered one that sloped downward and saw miners chipping away at the other end. This unit was tasked with going even deeper in search of fresh deposits. Occasionally, one would press his ear against the stone to check for underground rivers that could flood the place.
Iolus continued until he had mapped out the tunnels branching away from the central cavern. He was looking for something very specific—a feeling that he, like every sorcerer trained in elemental manipulation, received when around large bodies of wa
ter.
There. At the end of one, he felt it—a cool, tingling sensation inside his mouth. He placed his ear against the wall and listened to the faint rushing sound on the other side. It explained why this tunnel was empty. The miners who had carved it had given up after hearing this exact sound, which for them spelled disaster. A deep-enough crack in this wall would flood the entire system of tunnels and caverns, erasing months of progress and cutting off an entire cache of buried crystals. In other words, it was perfect.
He unslung the backpack and let it drop to the ground, then cast a Wind Barrier spell on the mouth of the tunnel to seal it. Any miners attempting to investigate would find themselves thrown backward as if by a tornado. Of course, this sort of elemental barrier would not be enough to hold back a flood. For that, Iolus had another spell in mind.
Opening the backpack, he took out a thick, tubular metal device with a spike extending from one end. He drove this into the ground, hammered it a few times, and clicked it on. Then, Iolus tethered the Wind Barrier spell to the device using a combination of whispered commands and buttons. Finally, he built up a mound of dirt over the device to hide it.
Magic and luminotronics never came together so well as they did with spell generators. These little devices would keep a spell churning for weeks, though he would have to come back every few days and check on them.
Next, he brought Aikon out of its sheath and floated it toward the wall. With a flick of his hands, the blade began to thrust itself against the stone with more force than any Berserker could have managed. It moved so fast it became a blur.
Chunks of stone flew away from the quickly eroding wall. Iolus waited until a decent hole had been carved, then paused. The rushing sound was louder now, only slightly more than before, but it was enough for him to calculate the distance between himself and the river. He wasn’t far.
Setting Aikon back in motion, Iolus walked halfway up the slope. His next spell created a force field that sealed the tunnel and dampened the sound of Aikon banging against the stone. He slid his hand through the barrier and savored the tingling sensation. About a foot in thickness, the barrier was one-way only. It would keep the river from flooding the tunnel, and he could still cast spells into it from the other side. Perfect.
Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series Page 65
