“Step back, man,” Leo shouted. “Let me get my sword into it!”
The monster growled and clawed at my chest, its jaws worrying at my arm. But it still couldn’t get through, and it was impossible to miss at this range. I held down the trigger, and walked a line of bullets up its belly. The big 0.50 slugs tore huge holes in the beast’s hide, spraying the room behind it with black ichor and fragments of broken bones.
It released my arm, falling back on its hind legs, and I put three more rounds into its head just to be sure.
“What the hell?” Gronir said.
“It’s making new minions designed to kill us,” Steelbinder said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That one was breaking active spell effects, but not enchantments. Let’s not give it a chance to find an attack that works on us.”
My shield reformed, and I pulled it in so it would be inside the curse barrier one of my rings projected. Hopefully that would block the spell-breaking effect, or at least slow it down for a few seconds.
“Indeed. Leo, take point. It can’t be more than a few rooms away.”
“Yes, sir!” The armored wizard pulled a small object out of a pouch, and strode across the hall we’d tunneled into to slap it against the far wall. Cracks immediately began to spread from the impact point, spreading and growing exponentially, and in seconds the stone crumbled away to reveal a dimly-lit cellar on the far side.
A sea of monsters filled the room from wall to wall.
I could hear sounds of battle from somewhere nearby. Shouts, the clang of steel, the screams of injured men. But there was no time to make sense of that. A walking mouth the size of a bear was waiting for Leo, and immediately lunged through the opening to attack him. A swarm of dog-sized monsters flooded out around it, and dozens of little flying things came swooping in from above.
Gronir roasted quite a few of the flyers with his flamer, but Leo went down with the big thing on top of him. Half of Steelbinder’s flying blades went to work on the smaller monsters, while the rest turned into floating steel disks that moved to block anything from getting too close to him.
Well, I’d have to assume Leo could handle himself. I spun the cylinder on my gun, and started firing bouncer rounds over the melee into the crowded room.
They worked beautifully. The first one punched through a dog-monster’s hindquarters and went tumbling across the room, its spinning blades leaving a trail of gore and severed body parts behind. The second one encountered another beast with a spell-breaking aura halfway across the room, but the impact of the bullet still killed the thing. There didn’t seem to be very many of those, and my next few shots carved more bloody swathes through the horde.
An endless stream of reinforcements poured in through a doorway on the far side of the room, but the monsters were dying faster than they could be replaced. Steelbinder gathered a ball of lightning in his hand and threw it into the room, where it unleashed a flurry of miniature lightning bolts that threw the horde into confusion. The giant beast fell aside with a thump, and Leo started to crawl out from under it. We were winning.
Then I felt a sharp pain in my foot. I jerked back, and looked down to find that a tentacle with a mouth on the end had emerged from the floor to latch onto my foot. Another one curled around my ankle before I could pull free, and more were emerging from a widening hole in the floor.
“Burrowers!” I shouted, and sliced through the tentacles with a force blade. I took to the air on a levitation field like the one I’d developed for my skimmers, but the pain in my foot was still getting worse.
The tentacles wrapped around my leg were still alive, growing mouths that tore apart my boot and burrowed into my flesh. My body sense informed me that dozens of tendrils were digging into me like roots, eating and growing as they spread.
Yeah, fuck that. I called up my flesh sorcery, reached into the alien biology of those burrowing invaders, and killed them. The magic that animated them fought me, resisting my magic and trying to force dead cells back to life. But I was stronger than it was, and that wasn’t my only sorcery. I fought back against its magic too, dispelling the protections it raised and disrupting its regeneration power. For a few seconds I focused the whole power output of my amulet on the task.
Finally, it died.
I spent a few more seconds making sure it hadn’t left some further trick ready to hit me when I was distracted, and then turned my attention back to my surroundings.
Steelbinder was standing on a floating disk of steel now, surrounded by a crackling web of lighting that incinerated anything that got close to him. Leo had been forced away from the opening, and was hacking away furiously at the monsters that were still trying to get at him while a mass of severed tentacles wrapped around his legs seeking a way through his armor. Gronir had backed well up, and was hosing down the opening with his flamer. But that wouldn’t discourage them for long.
“Gronir, pull back!”
I laid down a thick sheet of nickel-iron to cover the floor, leaving holes where Gronir and Leo were standing. Leo jumped onto the iron almost as soon as it formed, and a wave of crawling black lights danced across his armor turning the vine monsters to dust. I closed the hole where he’d been standing, and drew Grinder again.
“Maximum destruction, everyone,” Steelbinder called. “Daniel, take point and cut a path through these things.”
I nodded. “You got it. Gronir, stay out here.”
A fresh wave of monsters lunged towards us, smaller ones with grey-white hides that ignored the wash of fire from Gronir’s flamer. But that was just normal flame. I lit Grinder, and directed a jet of plasma into the middle of the swarm.
They died with high-pitched chittering shrieks, their bodies flashing to vapor in the face of a fire hotter than the sun. Grinder’s violet flame had to be somewhere well north of ten thousand degrees, and thermal energy transfer is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature difference. I left the beam on, and floated forward with a savage grin.
The heat was like walking into a blast furnace. In a few seconds the air was too hot to breathe, and the stone floor of the larger chamber began to glow red as it melted. Even with the fire protection I’d enchanted onto my coat I could feel the radiant heat trying to burn my skin, only for the healing of my amulet to repair the damage as fast as it happened. I floated quickly across the room, flash-frying everything in my path.
A thought struck me, and I glanced up. The roof was vaulted stone. Good thing, because wooden beams wouldn’t have survived this.
Then I was across the room, forcing my way through the opening the monsters had been pouring out of. It abruptly closed, an armored bulk I couldn’t see clearly through Grinder’s flame moving to seal it off. For a moment a ball of violet plasma formed in the air in front of me, trapped between the barrier and my own force field. It was blindingly bright, roiling violently as Grinder’s plasma beam fed more and more energy into it.
I stabbed out with an improvised counterspell, and broke the barrier’s fire resistance aura.
There was a deep bellow of agony, and the creature evaporated. The trapped plasma exploded out into the room behind it, burning away paper and furniture and the flesh of the gathered monsters, and filling the air with superheated vapors. I caught a glimpse of a huge, heaving mass of flesh filling the middle of the room, and turned off the plasma beam.
Most of the room’s occupants were already dead, and the few that remained didn’t last long. A dark shadow flashed across the room and became Leo, already bisecting an ungainly-looking bipedal thing with his glowing sword. Then lightning filled the room for a moment, bending around us to strike all of our enemies at once, and the other survivors dropped.
Lukas Steelbinder strode into the room, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that the floor behind us had melted into lava a couple of inches deep. He observed the mass of charred flesh in the middle of the room, and nodded sharply.
“That’s it.”
Grinder, Leo’s swo
rd and Steelbinder’s lightning made short work of the thing.
When I was sure it was dead I shut down Grinder, and blessed silence fell. Steelbinder drew a handful of something that looked like little steel snowflakes from a pouch, and sent them floating around the room. The temperature quickly began to fall.
“Well, that was a brisk little affair,” Steelbinder commented. “That flash step is a new achievement for you, isn’t it Leo?”
“Yes, sir. Just got it working a few weeks ago, sir.”
“Congratulations, that’s a big step. I see your reputation for brutal overkill is well deserved, Daniel. I haven’t seen flame of that intensity in years.”
“Yeah, I really should get around to making better dial-a-yield attacks someday. But with Ragnarok approaching I’ve been spending all my time on more power instead, so I didn’t have anything else that would get the job done without bringing down the whole building.”
“Yes, well, I was counting on something like that in any event. They would have adapted to a more measured attack, and bogged us down again.”
“Lukas!” The voice of Prince Caspar roared from behind us. “What in the Nine Worlds are you wizards playing at?”
I turned, to find the prince and a ragged-looking band of knights gingerly standing on the half-molten stone of the tunnel I’d blasted through a few minutes ago. Well, now, that was unexpected. I’d been impressed enough that the other wizards had been able to follow me. If the royal bodyguards had magic items that could cope with walking on lava I needed to upgrade my evaluation of their threat level.
“Someone summoned a devourer here,” Steelbinder said mildly. “We just finished killing it.”
“Someone?” The prince snarled. “Those damned beasts killed the whole temple delegation, and most of the city government as well. Someone wants this city in chaos, and that someone is a wizard. This is treason, Lukas.”
“This is Loki’s daughter, Caspar,” Steelbinder replied evenly. “None of my people have the power to summon a greater demon from the Stygian Abyss, let alone command it. She obviously hopes to set us at each other’s throats.”
“This was your ritual chamber, Lukas! It was you who persuaded me to allow your wizards to work right next to the war room, and look what has come of it! Find this bitch, and kill her, or I’m holding you responsible. And what is he doing here?” He jabbed an armored finger at me.
“Adept Black was with my delegation,” Steelbinder said, sounding a bit exasperated now. “Surely you’re not going to blame him for this? He helped us kill the beast, and besides he had no opportunity to cast such a spell.”
“I wouldn’t have a clue how to summon a demon anyway,” I put in. “You’ve seen my magic, Your Highness. If I was trying to sabotage the city I’d be using earth spells and explosions.”
He glared at me. “So you say. Get out. The meeting is cancelled. I’ll make my own plans to deal with this army, without any more interference from wizards. Lukas, the Conclave’s only task for now is to find me this demigoddess. I want her head on a platter before the enemy reaches our gates.”
The implied ‘or else’ hung in the air.
Steelbinder nodded stiffly. “As you wish, Your Highness.”
We returned to the street where we’d left our escort in silence. They were still there, thankfully, although they looked like they’d seen a bit of action after we left. I spent a few minutes patching up the injured there, while Steelbinder conferred with Ward.
“It’s probably best if you lie low for now,” Steelbinder told me.
I nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be in my tower if you need me. He isn’t handling the pressure very well, is he?”
Steelbinder shook his head. “He’s steady enough in a normal fight, but I fear the end of the world is a bit much for him. Still, he’s the only man the nobles will follow. We can’t hold the city without their manpower, so we’d best do what we can to placate him. Can you ready a power talisman for the Conclave?”
“I’ll have it ready to pick up tomorrow morning. I understand the Conclave has quite a library for its membership? How does access for me and my apprentices sound, as payment for the first one?”
“Agreed.”
The Conclave wizards rode off on their golems, and Gronir and I boarded the transport. It was a relief to get out of the cold.
“Looks like there wasn’t any trouble you couldn’t handle, Marcus?”
“Not this time, sir. But I don’t like the looks of things. Those demons killed hundreds of people in a matter of minutes, and that was just a quick bit of sabotage. What’s going to happen when there’s an army besieging the city? If another menace like this appears while they’re storming the walls the garrison will never hold.”
“I know. But I don’t have any way to find the Unraveler, and we have our own problems to deal with. We’ll just have to trust the Conclave to handle her.”
The rest of the trip home was filled with discussion of our own defensive situation. We had enough food on hand to last for a few weeks now, and the new smithy was up and running. But our men would be stretched thin trying to defend the whole island if there was a serious attack, and most of them were recruits with only a few days of training.
I wasn’t too worried about that, though. Trying to cross the icy river and a moat of melt water to storm my walls would be a nightmare for any attacker, especially since my walls were too tall for scaling ladders and far too strong to breach with siege engines. Unless their magic was a lot stronger than I expected it would take a giant engineering project to build some means of getting over the wall, and I could improve our defenses to counter anything they tried.
Kozalin, however, was a lot more vulnerable. With the moat frozen its walls were open to assault, and in most places they were less than ten feet thick. Not to mention they were built from blocks of stone, instead of being one seamless mass like my own construction. With the right magic it wouldn’t be too hard to breach them, and I didn’t want to think about how many lives it would take to throw back an army of monsters if they got inside the walls.
But there was nothing I could do about that now. Hopefully the prince would come to his senses and let me help once the Unraveler was dealt with, but for now I had my own problems to deal with.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I returned home, intending to put in a few hours in my workshop. I found the outer rooms empty, with even the maids missing. But there was a subtle tang of magic in the air as I passed into the private area.
I followed it to the room Avilla had designated as our future ritual chamber, and frowned. The magic I was feeling wasn’t just the witches. There was Elin’s warm, deep river of power mixed in with their spice and shadow, and something else as well. Elemental passion wrapped in leather and cold steel, entwined with roots sunk deep in the earth. Pelagia? What the hell?
The magic was fading quickly, so whatever they were doing they’d finished it a few minutes ago. I eased the door open, and found myself looking at a completely unexpected scene.
An intricate design of chalk and candles stretched across most of the floor, with three points radiating out from it. Avilla knelt on the stone floor in the middle of the symbol, crying her eyes out in Cerise’s arms. Elin and Pelagia still stood at two of the points, looking on sympathetically, while Tina stood to one side wringing her hands.
“What did I miss?” I asked.
Avilla looked up at me with wide eyes.
“Daniel? I… I… I’m s-sorry!” She wailed, and buried her face in Cerise’s chest again.
“I thought you’d want us to continue the investigation, sir,” Elin told me. “Avilla conceded that our suspicion might well be correct, as her newfound passion for the prince is oddly irresistible in its intensity. None of our arts were suited to investigating such things, so at first we were stumped. But Pelagia is intimately familiar with magics of the heart, and she was kind enough to help us construct a ritual to lay bare the nature and origin of the subject’s de
sires.”
“I see. What did you find?” I asked carefully.
Avilla choked off a sob. “I was never anything but a pawn in granny’s plans. A walking honey trap. The love spell was baked into me when I was made, just waiting to trigger when I met him. I’m so sorry, Daniel. I wanted to be yours, but I’m a treacherous bitch in the end. I can’t fight a spell that’s part of me.”
For a moment I wanted to learn the secrets of necromancy, so I could drag Lysandra’s spirit back from Hades and make her suffer for what she’d done.
I knelt beside Cerise, and put a hand on Avilla’s shoulder. “It sounds like you’re fighting it now.”
“With Cerise’s strength, and Elin’s will,” she countered morosely. “It can’t last for long. I hate being nothing but a puppet for that woman’s schemes, but her spell has eaten my heart. There’s hardly anything left in me to even try to fight it. You should just kill me now, before I turn on you again.”
“No!”
My arms were around her, hugging her and Cerise both against my chest. “God, no. I could never kill you, Avilla. No matter how mad or hurt I might be, and it wasn’t even you.”
“But it is me,” she protested. “I’m a poison apple, Daniel. I don’t want to be, but I can’t help myself.”
“We’ll find a way, honeydew,” Cerise insisted. “Magic fucked this up, and magic can unfuck it. There’s got to be a way to fix this, somehow.”
I couldn’t think. God, Avilla was under a compulsion? And I’d just stormed off and left her to deal with it alone? How could I have been so blind?
“I don’t have a good solution to offer,” Pelagia said gently. “I could show Daniel how to enchant you with a love spell of his own, and drown Lysandra’s work under superior power. But you’d always be one dispel away from reverting, and the conflict would haunt your dreams and slowly drive you mad.”
Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) Page 31
