Phoenix in Shadow - eARC

by Ryk E. Spoor

  But Condor had noticed something, a swift ripple streaking through the grass from right to left and diagonally from south to north with the last shock. “It’s coming from the southwest somewhere!”

  He concentrated, and the power came; he felt the red and black wings stretch from his armor, and leapt up, arrowing into the sky. Get up high enough and I’ll be able to see, maybe, what’s going on.

  A minute later, at nine thousand feet, he stopped and looked, his Justiciar-born sight piercing even the growing dimness of the evening, now able to see a line of the shore stretching away about a hundred miles distant, vanishing over the horizon in each direction. To the east-southeast he suddenly felt something, as though a monstrous power were no longer hidden but had stepped into full hideous view.

  No; not as though. Something was rising into view, above the far edge of the horizon, where—as near as he could guess—Sha Kaizatenzei Valatar should be on its long peninsula, and the shadow of a huge bat-wing appeared, stretching out, even at this distance so clearly visible that Condor’s mind went utterly blank trying to grasp how huge the thing must be to be seen from so far away.

  Then he saw the horizon itself moving, and horror truly came home. That’s...a wave. A wave hundreds of feet high, maybe more. The great comber stretched from one side of the lake to the other, as far as his vision could reach in either direction, and Condor realized that this oncoming mountain of water would utterly erase everything in its path, possibly scouring the land clean all the way to the base of the surrounding mountains.

  Myrionar, no. The thought, useless as it was for a False Justiciar to have, came to him as the enormity of it all sank in. He couldn’t see Evening Dawn, far off to the West, or Hishitenzei beyond that, or the other cities and villages he’d passed, but he knew them all and remembered the people he’d helped, or who’d helped him on a quest none of them realized was dark and selfish: Tamilda, now organizing people far below to start rescue and cleanup, oblivious to the fact that only minutes remained before something inconceivably worse came to wipe the city away; Istiri and Mallan, probably just having finished repairing all the damage the bilarel’s attack had caused the farm; Venn and Vann, the two twins who’d stolen his coin purse and led him on a laughing chase through half of Hishitenzei; Falura Seven Nails and her three children who’d needed his help solving a mystery that almost ended in three more deaths; and others, all about to be destroyed by a power beyond anything Condor had ever...

  No. Not quite beyond anything.

  He reached back and drew the Demonshard. Instantly he felt the hungry, cold desire of the blade and its puzzlement at sensing no target nearby.

  “I have heard it said, Demonshard, that Kerlamion’s blade can cut anything, be it flesh or steel or a wall of purest force, and strike beyond its mere reach, breaking power and shattering strength. Is this true?”

  A sensation of assent. Yes.

  “Then show me this power, for I give you a target worthy of your own parent.” He focused, showing the Demonshard the great wave, now looming even higher, five hundred feet and more. “A stroke to cross the horizons, a single cut that shatters the power of an ocean, severs speed and chops height, that none I would protect are harmed. That is what I want.”

  A feeling of contempt. I don’t save, I destroy. Weakling. Unworthy.

  Condor growled under his breath. “I told you you’ll do as I say, sword. Or by Myrionar, I’ll drop you into that maelstrom and you won’t be found—if you’re lucky—until the next Chaoswar!”

  Unwilling acceptance. If I must. At least I’m unsheathed.

  “Can you stop that wave?”

  Smug confidence. Try me.

  “Let’s hope you’re as good as you think.”

  He rose higher and higher, judging the line, the angle, the course. The cut must intercept all of the tsunami, in a single stroke. He regretted that he couldn’t do the same for the other shore, but that simply wasn’t going to be possible. Then he whirled the Demonshard three times and brought the great black sword down in a cut that traced a line from one horizon to the other.

  A streak of black ripped the air with a horrific shriek, emanating blue-white death that echoed the eyes of the Lord of All Hells, and shot outward, carving a dark shadowed path beyond the shore of Enneisolaten that exploded in a fountain of white, opening a vast rent in the freshwater sea into which the oncoming monstrous wave fell, dropping from sight, plummeting to impossible depths beyond sight or imagination. The darkness lifted and only a boiling line remained of what had once been a wave the size of a moving mountain.

  Condor stared in awe for a few moments, then murmured, “Thank you, Demonshard. Well done.”

  He felt a grudging acceptance of his thanks from the dark blade, and then raised his eyes. “What about that?”

  For the first time, the sensation from the blade was uncertain.

  “What?” Condor was stunned. After what he’d just seen, after what the King of All Hells had said, he’d thought there was truly nothing beyond the Demonshard to destroy. “What is that?”

  An image came, of a great black dragon casting cities into shadow darker than the now-coming night, a black dragon that was the opposite of every image of the Great Dragons that Condor had ever seen, and now he truly knew horror. A childhood story meant to frighten children had risen from myth into horrid reality. “An Elderwyrm?”

  Assent.

  Faint distant flashes of light; gold, blue-white, and something staggered the mighty Dragon.

  Then he looked down and saw the devastation in Ruratenzei. A final shock had brought down hundreds of homes, cracked the surrounding walls, damaged the castle itself. He looked back, to where—he was sure—the Phoenix Justiciar and his—or her—companions dueled a monster out of legend, and sighed. I suspect the battle will end—one way or another—before I could reach them. And there are people below who need my help now.

  Condor sheathed the Demonshard and let himself drop, plummeting down towards Ruratenzei. He landed next to Tamilda, who was bellowing orders to a group trying to brace a precariously-tilting wall. “I’m not leaving now. You need help.”

  She looked at him with a suspicious air. “I just felt one of the darkest things I have ever sensed, Condor, watched living malice radiate from you from one side of the world to the other. I appreciate your earlier help...but I need to know what that was before I accept any more.”

  Good senses. He nodded. “We have little time, so...the short explanation is that I made a bargain for the power to track down a very personal enemy of mine. I’m not sure it was a good bargain, and I’m stuck with the consequences. But I’ve so far kept it from hurting anyone else.”

  Tamilda’s sharp black eyes searched his own narrowly. Then she finally nodded and stepped back. “I see you tell the truth. All right, then, I won’t deny we need your help!”

  With a relieved smile, Condor ran to the wall, calling up his full strength, and pushed the question of the Elderwyrm to the back of his mind. Either they will deal with it...or they will not, and in that case I may have to face it. But that is something for the future, and these people...these people are something for the now.

  Chapter 54

  I’ve never felt this useless in my life, Poplock admitted to himself.

  He was sitting on Hiriista’s shoulder, having bounced away from Tobimar when he’d gone to try his luck against the Elderwyrm, and both Poplock and the magewright were basically just spectators. Hiriista occasionally selected one of his many matrices and hurled a spell at the gargantuan reptilian monstrosity, but for the most part they could only watch as their three friends contested with an awakened god.

  The cataclysmic struggle, the waving of forest-sized wings and unleashing of energies capable of breaking mountains, the shocks of power and boiling heat of battle, had created seething clouds overhead in what had been a pristine sky dotted with stars. Lightning flickered within the clouds, the power of storms now the merest backdrop for a battle bey
ond imagination.

  “Isn’t that completely useless?” he muttered as Hiriista sent a screaming bolt of ice at Sanamaveridion.

  “Not completely,” the mazakh answered. “Even the power of the gods can be worn down by enough mundane or ordinary magical power. It just takes a great deal of power to do it. But our friends are doing their best to wear the Dragon down.” He sorted through the multiplicity of amulets again. “I will admit it is something of a forlorn attempt, but it is all I can do.”

  “More than I can manage,” Poplock said. His little clockwork crossbow and all its darts put together probably couldn’t even have gotten the Elderwyrm’s attention, even if the range hadn’t been literally miles beyond anything Poplock had ever imagined shooting. He’d already triggered the couple of Gemcalls that he had available, for what miniscule and undetectable difference they might have made, and if he really wanted to, he could probably throw a couple more spells that might reach the monster.

  He glanced back into the city, seeing the broken houses, the floating bridges that had cracked—some pieces now dwindling away into the sky—the smoke rising from fires. I’m not even going to be very useful there. But maybe more than I am here.

  But he couldn’t keep from watching. Everyone’s lives depended on this battle—maybe the lives of everyone on the other side of the mountains, too. After all, once Sanamaveridion was done with Kaizatenzei, why wouldn’t he head south and start wrecking anything that caught his eye there?

  A tremendous wing-buffet struck Tobimar from the sky, sent him plummeting into the roiling water below; but even as Poplock felt his little fingers digging hard into Hiriista’s scaly shoulder, he saw the Skysand prince shoot skyward again, the blue-white aura of Terian clear and bright. Kyri, a brilliant point of gold light surrounded alternately by a red-gold firebird and a blue-and-gold balance, struck the Dragon so hard its head was driven down, halfway underwater, even as Miri managed a midair kick to the thing’s armored gut.

  Poplock had his farseer out, and he heard the grimness of his voice as he spoke. “Oh, this is getting bad.”

  “What do you see, my friend?”

  “Look for yourself.” He handed the miniature spyglass to Hiriista, who resized it by touching it to some crystal on his chest.

  Hiriista let out a long, baleful hiss as he studied the situation. Poplock knew what he saw: Tobimar’s face, bloodied and battered, Miri’s utter exhaustion written in her pale cheeks, Kyri’s weary, slowing movement that brought each of the Dragon’s blows ever closer to finishing her. Even with powers of god and demon, the three were reaching the limit of their endurance and the powers that supported them. Sanamaveridion was not unscathed—he was bleeding from a dozen places, one eye was swelling shut, scales were rent all along his head and neck—but he was clearly not even close to the end of his strength.

  “What if we got all the Unity Guard in on this?”

  Hiriista shook his head. “I am unsure whether they even have a way to reach him, so far away. Besides...” and the reptilian voice had a note of furious, painful empathy, “look.”

  Poplock looked and saw one of the Hues suddenly clutch his head, stagger, and collapse. Looking around, he realized that several other Unity Guards were down, with the others trying desperately to revive them. “What is going on? I don’t—”

  The little Toad broke off, suddenly understanding. “Oh, Blackwart’s grace. The capsules. The room’s starting to collapse on them, isn’t it?”

  Hiriista nodded slowly. “That is my guess, yes.”

  “You weaken, half-gods and fallen demons!” Sanamaveridion’s voice boomed. A raging column of fire was split again by a desperate lunge of the Phoenix, but this time vertically; part of it plunged with a screaming hiss into the lake and spewed hot, sulfurous mists across the city, while the other part passed just above most of the city—blasting the Tower and turning it to burning, useless splinters as it collapsed in ruins atop the broader base of the Valatar Palace, which cracked dangerously.

  “Drought. Even if they win this battle, the damage will be huge.” He glanced to the multiple scars across the landscape from prior attempts by the Dragon to obliterate Sha Kaizatenzei Valatar. No telling how bad the damage really is; I can’t see it from here, really, and it still looks awfully bad to me.

  “And they have little time left before it becomes moot,” Hiriista said slowly. “Shargamor’s Shadow says it is fast losing strength. Another five minutes, and the waters will no longer obey any save the law of wave and destruction.”

  “Well, mudbubbles.”

  Hiriista shook his head, and Poplock felt the shoulder slumping. “I fear we are, indeed, doomed. Without some other factor entering the equation, some outside element, I think we are about to see our friends die. And we, ourselves, will not outlive them for long.”

  Poplock stared up and wished he could argue, but he could see the way his friends were weakening. They may not even make it to the end of those five minutes.

  But...“Wait a minute. Say that again.”

  “I fear we are—”

  “No, no, the rest of it.”

  “Without some other factor?”

  That was it. “An outside element!”

  He dove into his neverfull pack. Where? Hid it away safe. Where...here!

  He pulled the matrix off his arm and tugged hard on the prongs. “Come on!”

  “I do not know what you think you are going to do,” Hiriista said, taking the ring-shaped Calling Matrix from him, “but I will help.”

  The magewright pulled the currently-drained gem from the socket and looked at Poplock’s proffered replacement. “This? It is flawed, and not terribly magical at all. I—”

  “Just lock it in!”

  The magewright shrugged and took the clear gem with the blackish inclusions. “As you wish.” His taloned fingers delicately repositioned the crystal and pushed just so, and it was seated in the matrix. “It is done.”

  Poplock shoved the matrix on his arm again. How would this work? Not attuned, got no time to work through it...“By the gift I was given and the hope of the legend, I call you—COME FORTH!”

  The gem detonated in a spark of pure white light, spraying sand-sized shards outward to abrade and embed in skin, shattering the Matrix itself, sending a screaming wave of pain through Poplock. Broke...my arm. Lost the gem. Stupid, stupid!

  But as Hiriista shook his head, they heard another voice, a voice that spoke from the empty air, air that shimmered with pure black night speckled with stars, as though they looked through some spectral gateway to the sky.

  “I cross the void beyond the mind; the empty space that circles time. I see where others stumble blind, in search of truths they’ll never find. An alien wisdom is my guide.

  “I am...the Wanderer.”

  From that darkness, gripping his elaborate staff, white light playing about him, the Wanderer stepped, his blond hair shining faintly in the night from the flickers of the desperate combat. “A True Summons, touching on my own essence. I sense it was felt even by my original.” He looked up. “And a desperate enough reason to try it. An Elderwyrm, huh? Should’ve guessed it was something like that in here.”

  “I don’t know if you can do anything...but you were the only thing I could think of.”

  The wizard’s smile flashed out. “Oh, I think I can manage something. Hmm. Twilight Cannon? No, probably not quite bad enough for that. But this is still a very, very bad situation...”

  For a moment he stood, studying the uneven battle between Dragon and defenders, and then smiled again. “Yes, actually. Time for a spell that I’ve wanted to use for a long time, but wasn’t ever quite appropriate before. Too much collateral damage. But in this case, you’ve already got something giving you plenty of collateral damage. Magewright, have you anything that could convey a message to your friends?”

  Hiriista didn’t bother asking how the Wanderer knew what he was, just took out a pair of rings and put them on. “We can speak
with two of them using these—it will last but a few minutes, though.”

  “That’s all we need.” The Wanderer stepped forward. “Tell them that the Dragon must be confined to the open water, and they must be clear of him.”

  Hiriista relayed the message, choosing Miri and Tobimar. “What?” came Tobimar’s voice, edged with exhaustion. “Why? We might manage that for a minute or so, but—”

  “Do it, Tobimar!” Poplock said. “Trust me—we’ve got a plan!”

  “All right, I’ll trust you. KYRI! Me, you, and Miri are going to wall him in! Miri knows how to do it, a three-sided seal!”

  “We’ll run out of strength—”

  “We already are! Do it!”

  Blue-green, red-gold, and blue-white energies suddenly shimmered from three points as the three combatants darted away—Miri once more standing at the very end of the peninsula, Kyri far off to the right, Tobimar far to the left—and the triple light stretched out, touched, and then grew, a triangular box reaching from the depths of the water to the clouds above. Sanamaveridion snarled and threw himself against the wall, but though they could see sparks travel its length and Miri stagger as though she’d been struck, it held—for the moment.

  “This is pointless!” the Dragon roared, half in puzzlement, half in anger. “A minute, perhaps less? And then you will be exhausted!”

  “Wanderer...” Poplock said.

  The youthful-looking mage grinned, a sharp and dangerous expression, and then his face grew grave as he raised the legendary Staff of Stars. “Don’t worry. They don’t have to hold him long.”

  “Distant beyond measure, source of every dawn

  Blazing in the heavens, hope when all is gone...”

  Sanamaveridion’s eyes saw the faint white light, and widened. “Wanderer?”

  The Dragon redoubled its struggles, suddenly aware that it might well be in danger. Miri staggered and went to one knee, her power streaming out so swiftly that her gigantic form was shrinking. The barrier rippled now like a curtain, and Tobimar and Kyri bobbed like corks in the air...but it still held.