Talis found tears of joying pouring down his cheeks as he gazed into Mara’s beautiful, fear-filled eyes. She mouthed the words “I love you” and took a step towards him. Charna jumped from Talis’s arms and stalked off into the dark. Jeremiah raised a hand and froze her and Nikulo.
“I said, what dagger is this that you speak of?”
Talis pointed at the blade in Mara’s hand. “Princess Minoweth’s dagger…we found it in the Underworld.”
Jeremiah sauntered up to Mara and bent down and inspected the blade. “A very old and powerful dark relic. Imbued with a terrible, malicious power. Your friend found the dagger? And she made the mistake of keeping it, even using it? It’s a miracle she’s not consumed by it…others would be dead by now. Your friend has some fortitude and power of her own to withstand the evil behind the blade.”
He took the dagger and twirled it in his hand. “It has a light touch…a perfectly balanced blade. Such dark memories it holds, of many killings in the night done at the hand of your friend. She has slain her master, one of Aurellia’s Elders. Perhaps I should give her the dagger back and let her continue to kill the others. But no, this blade is far too powerful for a mortal such as her. I think I will take it as my own. Where did you say you found it?”
“In an old city in the Underworld, a city called Haldrax.”
“Haldrax, you say? That name sounds strangely familiar…stirs a very old memory. The dagger belonged to Princess Minoweth? Do you mean the alchemist’s daughter? What was his name, Grey of Haldrax? Yes I believe so. Of the world called Yorek…is that your world, mortal?”
Talis nodded and gazed at the dagger that now shone a hideous shade of green. In Jeremiah’s hands the weapon seemed to come alive with some kind of massive, latent power.
“Oh, but he was a very powerful sorcerer and talented alchemist. If this dagger is truly of his crafting, then the relic is hideously wonderful indeed. And, as the memory says, has the ability to slay one as powerful as Aurellia’s Elders—perhaps even the dark lord himself?”
The Starwalker turned to frown at Talis. “Can you make your friends behave if I release them? Or should I turn them into stone?”
“They will not interfere, I promise it.”
Jeremiah snapped a finger and Nikulo and Mara gasped and shrank in fright at the Starwalker. Mara noticed her dagger was lodged in Jeremiah’s hand.
“You stole my dagger!” Mara went to charge him, but Talis held her and whispered in her ear to let it go, that Jeremiah would kill her if she resisted.
“From my understanding you stole the dagger from Grey of Haldrax. I’m merely relieving you of the burden of possessing the dagger. And, I should say, saving your life in the process. I believe an expression of thanks and appreciation are in order?”
“You expect thanks for stealing my dagger?” Mara narrowed her eyes at the Starwalker. “How about you use the blade to slice your own neck? And I’ll clean the dagger and keep it safe, thank you.”
Jeremiah burst into laughter and for a moment his old barkeep form returned. “I like your spunk, girl. If I had my tavern back I’d offer you a mug of ale, I would. Boy, you surround yourself with good friends. Why don’t you all join us on our voyage through the stars? Talis simply must come, and since your friends seem to like you so much, they must come as well.”
Talis glanced around to see Nikulo’s reaction, and realized he was gone. Where did he go? Jeremiah followed his eyes and peered around, suspicion growing on his face.
“Where did your fat friend go? Find him! Open your map and find him.”
At the unfurling of the Surineda Map, the room glowed golden and Mara peered curiously at the blue dot moving quickly away from them. Since Talis had asked the map to show the fragment buried underneath the Regents Palace, he could see that somehow Nikulo was moving ever closer. How did Nikulo know where the fragment was?
“He’s going to reach it before we can get there.”
But Jeremiah had already stormed after Nikulo. Talis caught Mara’s eyes and they darted after the Starwalker, following the eerie silver-and-black glow. Soon he was out of sight, running faster than they could follow, and Talis had to use the map to guide them. After curving around tunnels and past old, crumbling wooden doorways, they reached a storeroom lined with crates and dusty shelves and at the far end of the vast room he could see brilliant bursts of silver and the dark light of shadow magic. As Talis ran towards his friend, the bright green glow of poison spells from Nikulo exploded and slammed Jeremiah back, knocking over shelves and boxes.
Talis put away the Surineda Map and raised his hands to help Nikulo fight Jeremiah. He glanced at the ground and spotted the crystal that the Starwalker had stolen from him. He scooped it up and summoned a massive ball of golden light and flung it into Jeremiah’s chest, sending him catapulting back against the stone wall.
Nikulo wielded a black stone fragment in his hand, red and gold light beaming from his eyes, and pushed Talis behind him, stepping through the broken boxes, advancing on Jeremiah as if he were wounded prey.
The Starwalker rose and brandished Princess Minoweth’s dagger at Nikulo, his skin bubbling and festering with sores crawling over his face.
“I will kill you…you fat-faced pile of shit. That fragment belongs to me! You thief, give it to me!”
“If you insist, I’d be happy to give it to you.” Nikulo chuckled and leapt forward and stabbed the fragment into Jeremiah’s left eye. The Starwalker screamed and writhed about; his body smoked and burst into flame but was quickly consumed up and only ash remained.
Nikulo bent down and inspected what was left. “This fat-faced pile of shit gave it to you, all right. I’d piss on your grave but I haven’t had a drink of ale in far too long.”
“What in the name of the gods has gotten into you?” Talis treaded carefully up to his friend, wondering how Nikulo had beaten the Starwalker so easily. And how had he disappeared like that before?
“It was a simple mistake I made…after Palarian took me away to the mountains.” Nikulo stood and rubbed a hand over his sweaty brow. “I drank from a pool called The Origin Spring, a place of great power for those of Vellia. I wasn’t supposed to drink from the waters. And now I’m afflicted in a way, with sentient beings that inhabit the spring—it’s a long story. Anyways, they’re inside of me, a part of my mind; they’ve given me power and knowledge and guided me here to the fragment. They claim the fragment is part of them, connected to their source, part of the heart of Vellia… So I’m cursed, but not really in a bad way? I don’t know if that makes sense.”
Talis shrugged his shoulders and peered into his friend’s eyes, sensing no malice within. “You saved us, that’s all that matters. As long as you are ok—you’re not dying are you? Good, then let’s figure this out together, shall we?”
Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Mara stalking up to Princess Minoweth’s dagger pulsing green in the pile of Jeremiah’s ashes. He reached out to hold her back but she just slapped his hand aside and continued on.
“No, Mara…the dagger will kill you.” Nikulo stood in front of her and shook his head. “We have to destroy it…otherwise its power will consume you. Why don’t you sleep for a while?”
At his words Mara slumped and Talis caught her in his arms before she collapsed to the ground. Her body felt feverish and much lighter than before—thin and scrawny as a stray cat—as if some strange force had preserved her and removed her body’s need for food.
“Essence of the blackest heart, return to Princess Minoweth—all the hatred and all the cruelty of night.” Nikulo pointed a finger at the dagger and a brilliant, white light surged from within and it vaporized in an instant.
Talis lifted a hand and summoned the power of wind magic and cast away the tainted ashes. Jeremiah was gone but what of the other Starwalkers and their army of undead fighting outside? Would Nikulo be able to fight them all as easily at he defeated Jeremiah? What of Aurellia and his forces? Talis held a crystal
from the heart of Ghaelstrom but he knew it wasn’t enough for them to return home. He needed the other stones for them to find their way back home. Nothing else mattered.
“What are we going to do now?” Nikulo studied him with heavy eyes and a tiredness on his face like one much older than his young years. Out of the dark room Charna returned and rubbed along his legs, purring as if pleased the battle was over.
“We’re going home, little lynx, we’re going home. But first we need the other crystals the Starwalkers stole from me—we need them to open world portals back to Chandrix, and back to our world. I’ve had enough of this place.”
Talis lifted Mara into his arms, wanting her to rest a while, and trudged along with Nikulo back to the tunnel. Nikulo stopped and rubbed his face brusquely, and shook his head. He mumbled to himself and stared down the dark tunnel.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I keep having these hallucinations.” Nikulo slapped himself and exhaled, making grunts like an animal in pain. “Get out of my mind!”
Casting a wave of soothing Light Magic on his friend, Talis lowered his voice as he spoke: “Draw in the power of light—let it steady and focus your thoughts. Remember home, remember your parents, remember your friends. We need you.” If Nikulo lost his mind they were doomed. There was no way they could defeat the other Starwalkers alone.
Nikulo inhaled a deep breath and shook off some weight from his shoulders. His eyes seemed to clear and he nodded, thanking Talis for helping him.
“We better go quickly while I can still control myself. Can you open a shadow portal outside to where the Starwalkers are? To a place where we’ll have the element of surprise?”
“Wake Mara, we’ll both need to fight and she’ll need to hide herself.”
Nodding, Nikulo snapped his fingers and Mara groaned in response, her body twisting and hands reaching out to grab the dagger.
“It’s gone…the dagger is destroyed. Let it go, Mara…it’s gone.”
She collapsed to the ground and cried, moaning and thrashing about and cursing Nikulo, her mouth frothed and snarling. Charna hissed and the hairs along her spine rose in response. He cast a spell over Mara and a green mist lifted from her small body, rising and swirling into the air, until a press of his palm pushed it out into the night.
Talis felt his shoulders relax as a calm returned to her body and she lifted cleared eyes to him, eyes that beamed love and kindness. He took her hand and pulled her up into his arms and they kissed, the salty-wet taste of tears on his lips, and he knew she was whole again.
“Save it for later…can we go?” Nikulo struggled to grin but his forced expression barely masked the pain that was surging inside.
With the flourish of a hand, Talis focused his mind on the street behind where the Starwalkers and the undead army had advanced on the palace. He summoned a shadow portal and led Mara, Charna, and Nikulo inside.
22. STARWALKERS
In the blackest of nights, hundreds of explosions ripped across the palace walls and the light lanced into Nikulo’s eyes, causing him to glance away in pain. Aurellia and Regent Donoval still held the shield strong and counter-attacked with waves of suffocating shadows and bright blasts of golden light, smothering all living and undead movement around the three Starwalkers standing in a triangle of dark light.
From the sky dark blotches rained down fire and ice and stones onto the Starwalkers, but they fell uselessly and melted away into a wet, smoldering rubble that built up in heaps around the three figures cloaked in silver-and-black light. One figure dove down at the Starwalkers—in a flash Nikulo could see it was Rikar—and smashed into the lead Starwalker with a hammer of silver-and-black light, sending him flailing and tumbling back, breaking their geometric bond of dark energy.
Rikar roared and shouted in triumph and the sorcerers above answered in a crash of triumphant cheers that echoed off the broken buildings. Necromancers answered by swooping in from all sides with cackling, shambling undead swarming down streets towards the Starwalkers struggling to re-form their bond of power.
Nikulo glanced around, unsure of whom he should fight first. All they needed were the crystals that the Starwalkers held in their hands—then they could go, leave this world, and return home. But the voices in his mind screamed in protest: “Bury them all and claim the power for your own! Vellia is the greatest of the known worlds and you would be her king—for ages and ages!”
His mind was wracked with images of adulating crowds and of Illumina rising from her broken remains, rebuilt, and Nikulo seated on a golden throne, the seat of all power in the world. Beautiful women worshipped him—instead of the mocks and jeers he’d come to expect—they would be his, all of them, and his mind raged and relished at the thought. “Seize the world, seize the power, take it!”
“Don’t give in,” Talis whispered, placing a warm, light-filled hand on Nikulo’s shoulder. “Don’t listen to the voices…master your own destiny. You have to control the voices, take control of your mind. Push them into the dark recesses of your brain.”
Nikulo fought to control the images and voices in his mind, drawing in the light from Talis’s hand. He felt a weight sliding off his back and a brightness wash over his vision. He focused on the Starwalker struggling to get up after being knocked back by Rikar’s attack. With a beckoning of his hand, he yanked the man back hundreds of feet until he hovered next to them, locked in the power of Nikulo’s casting. Talis raced over and seized the crystal in the Starwalker’s hand.
“Do we have enough crystals to go home?” Nikulo shot Talis a desperate glance, still forcing down the chorus that longed to rise up inside of his mind.
“Two is enough, but I don’t know the runes to cast the world portal spell! We have to find Palarian.” Talis blasted a wave of undead that shambled hungrily towards them. Several necromancers dropped from the sky and focused their dark spells on them.
“What? Why didn’t you ask him for the runes when you were with him before?” Nikulo found himself raging with fury, angry at Talis for not being able to return home. They had enough crystals! Thousands of eyes returned to his vision, laughing eyes, self-righteous eyes, and the eyes feasted on his rage. “Punish him, punish your friend for his stupidity, use the power to make him obey!”
Rikar returned once more, diving at the two remaining Starwalkers, and zapped the standing woman with a bright, bursting arc of electricity. The woman screamed and spun around, catapulting back until she slammed into a cracked, crystal temple with shattered, spiked spires that rose to the sky. Rikar yelled in victory and charged her, sending massive shadow hands to wrap around her figure, lifting her up higher and higher above the temple until he released the spell. Gravity took hold of her flailing body and she was pulled down and spiked by the broken crystal spires.
He sneered at the woman and pumped his fist into the air, his cheers joined by the shouts and whoops of thousands of flying necromancers and sorcerers circling overhead.
Aurellia and Regent Donoval flew down onto the wreckage of the square where the last remaining Starwalker stood, unflinching, unyielding, his palm facing Aurellia. Nikulo recognized the man to be Jared, from the tavern, the old man who had nursed his troubles with a mug of ale. Now he stood alone, facing impossible odds but refusing to yield.
“We have to leave, now!” whispered Talis, and he scooped up Charna and pulled on Nikulo’s arm. “Leave while they’re focused on the last Starwalker.”
Nikulo noticed Talis concentrating on the Surineda Map. Points of light blazed over the image of the land. Talis flicked his wrist and opened a shadow portal. Nikulo released the remaining Starwalker from his bond and catapulted him at Rikar, hoping to provide a distraction, and made his way towards the portal. Talis helped Mara as they hobbled towards the swirl of churning shadows, but a sticky web of twisted silver and black wrapped around them, and the more they struggled, the stronger the web wrapped around them.
Glancing back, Nikulo could see Rikar soaring towards him, fir
e blazing in his eyes. The voices boomed inside his mind: “He knows, he knows you hold the fragment, he knows you command great power, he’s come to kill and maim and steal!”
Nikulo cast out long strands of tiny, poisonous tentacles, amazed that what he imagined could come to life so easily. The power surged through his arm and poured out waves of energy, sending the tentacles snapping around, searching and probing, until they caught purchase around Rikar’s neck. Nikulo squeezed hard until Rikar’s face was red with rage. He only stopped when Rikar slashed out hundreds of magical blades that sliced the tentacles in tiny pieces.
“You’ve found great power, old friend.” Rikar heaved a great gulp of air and thrust out his hands, shooting millions of tiny darts at Nikulo.
Talis produced a shield of shimmering, golden light, and the darts bounced off helplessly. “I’m surprised you even made it this far… I would have thought Aurellia would have left you back on Chandrix to rot.”
“You should have taken a relic back in Haldrax, the ring brings me glory and victory over men.” Rikar flicked his wrist and released several massive nether hounds that darted and leapt at Talis’s shield, biting and thrashing and consuming the light until it was gone.
Nikulo place a hand on his temple and commanded the beasts to turn tail and attack Rikar, who summoned a hammer in response and knocked them away, but the beasts kept returning, stronger each time, strengthened by the power flowing into them from the fragment in Nikulo’s hand. Rikar refused to stop fighting, blasting the hounds and summoning weapons to beat them off. But Nikulo’s power was much stronger.
“Ready to give up?” Nikulo knew Rikar—he wouldn’t give up until he was dead. And taunting him only made it worse.
A chanting singing rose up above the noise of battle, a song pure and sweet. Nikulo stared past Rikar and spotted the two Starwalkers pressed back-to-back, their arms wrapped around each other, singing a sad sweet song, their faces beaming white light. For a moment Nikulo felt sorry for them—trapped and surrounded, two of their comrades slain—and in his heart he knew that here stood two truly free beings. And in that moment all he could think of was to help them escape.
Dragon Mage (Blacklight Chronicles) Page 16
