Ewzad raised a writhing thumb and the air above it blurred until an image appeared. He could see the ground surrounding the Mage School now and Mellinda was right. There was a myriad of magical traps scattered about.
“Halt the men, yes?” Ewzad said. He giggled. “It’s time I gave the wizards my demands.”
He leaned back into the chair and closed his eyes. The other Envakfeers had given him this idea. He enacted the spell as they had shown him and felt a gut-wrenching lurch. Then he was floating above his body. He giggled as he looked down at himself.
He could see Hamford’s massive form and the breadth of his army around him. He could even see the mage Arcon, riding on his horse down below. The vision was so clear and detailed that he wondered how real it was. He looked at Kassy sitting on the top of the giant’s head and decided to try out his technique.
“Kassy!” he said.
Her red slitted eyes blinked and she whipped her head around to look at his body slumped in the chair. “King Ewwie? You iss awake?”
Ewzad concentrated and formed a shadowy figure in the air in front of him. He transformed the face of the figure into his image, crown and all. “Kassy.” He commanded. “Watch over my body.”
Her jaw dropped. “Yess, King Ewwie.”
Ewzad giggled and dissolved the figure, then soared through the air towards the Mage School. His troops were spread out below him. Thousands of men, most of them marked with a kernel of power. He looked back and saw the silvery cord connecting him to his body.
“This is a dangerous spell,” said Mellinda.
“Dangerous? No-no. No one can reach my body, witch,” he said. It irritated him that she could still communicate with him when he was separated from his body like this.
“Many of them have spirit sight,” she reminded. “If they see your spirit, they will know you are vulnerable.”
“Ah, but I’m not. No, you see, Stardeon’s rings allow me to bring my power with me.” If he had a face to smile with, his grin would be stretching from ear to ear. “Watch, dear Mellinda. Yes, watch.”
He soared to the great gates of the school and climbed through the air until he was high above them. The warriors and wizards scurried around on their wall and on the grounds behind it like insignificant bugs. He longed to squash them and he would, but for the moment he stared up at the Rune Tower and seethed. Oh how he loathed this place.
He had seen it first as a child. When he was twelve, his father took him on a tour of the kingdom, showing him every major city, introducing him to every noble. So many of the places were impressive. So many were grand. But this place, the Mage School, was glorious. He gazed in awe at the clock tower and the fountains. The wizards let him come inside and see the great library. He had laughed in excitement. All the knowledge he would ever need was there at his fingertips. And all the time, he had known they were his enemies.
His Uncle Larvitus had taught him of the evils of the Mage School the day Ewzad had his awakening. It had been the year prior. Eleven was an early age for an awakening. For most children it didn’t happen until puberty, but that summer spent at his uncle’s house had been full of revelations.
His father liked to visit his brother’s spacious house often. It was a lovely place, set on a lake with a small town full of peasants to wait on them. They spent many a week there as Ewzad was growing up and all that time, he’d had no idea his uncle was a dark wizard.
Ewzad was nearing his teenage years and it was expected that he would spend most of his time at the palace in Dremald learning the courtly arts. Uncle Larvitus knew Ewzad wouldn’t spend much time with him in the future, so he forced the awakening on him.
Larvitus had grabbed him by the neck and sent some kind of strange tingling deep within him, then locked him in the dark chicken house. Ewzad had been frightened, but chickens were harmless creatures really. Then Larvitus let a weasel loose inside. The chickens erupted into panicked squawks, buffeting him with their wings, pecking at him, and that tingling sensation grew into a burning. One minute later Ewzad had blown the house to pieces with an explosion of steam, cooking every living thing within.
Ewzad stumbled from the wreckage, terrified at what had happened and Larvitus was there waiting. He grabbed Ewzad then and asked him an important question. What did he want to be? Ewzad didn’t have to think about his answer. He wanted to be king. That was the only way he would be able to marry Princess Elise.
Larvitus told him then that wizards aren’t allowed to be king. Wizards aren’t allowed to rule anywhere. They aren’t even allowed to be nobles. Ewzad’s uncle stood with him in the wreckage of the chicken house, the stench of cooked feathers in the air, and told him he had two choices. Admit that his magic destroyed the place and go with the wizards to the Mage School where he would be taught magic, but stripped of rank. Or he could leave with Larvitus and blame the coop’s destruction on a sudden lightning strike. Larvitus would teach him to use his magic, but he would have to keep his powers secret or the wizards would take him away.
The wizards’ rules were unfair. That’s what Ewzad had understood the day he’d first visited the Mage School. This was a place he had deserved, full of the knowledge he’d craved. He should have been taught by true teachers instead of the smelly uncle he’d been forced to kill two years later. But the Mage School was never to be his. Not until now.
As he hovered above the wall, staring at that magnificent tower, his plans solidified. Once the wizards were gone, he would claim the Rune Tower to be his and his alone. He would raise the bridges and close the gates and use one of the Mage School’s mirrors to travel from Dremald palace to the tower and back again. He could rule Dremaldria and mine the tower’s secrets all for himself.
He giggled at the notion and shifted his attention back to the insects milling about below. It was time to give his speech. He gathered air magic to amplify his voice.
“Citizens of Dremaldria!” he said, his voice echoing throughout the grounds. He glided back a short distance from the gates and built an image in front of him. To the shocked people on the wall it looked like Ewzad’s face floated in the air, a hundred feet tall, a sparkling crown upon his brow. “It is I. Yes-yes, your king. I come before you now to ask you to rejoin your fellow citizens. Come into my arms and avoid this folly. Yes, wouldn’t that be better? Surrender now and you live.”
“Do you wish to negotiate?” shouted a wizard wearing a golden robe. Ewzad didn’t recognize the man’s face.
“That’s Air Wizard Randolf of the High Council,” Mellinda said. “With Latva ill, he is their speaker.”
“Oh, good,” said both Ewzad and the giant face in the air. “No-no. There will be no negotiations, Wizard Randolf. Just surrender.”
The wizard, unused to such a start, continued on as if Ewzad hadn’t already stated his terms, “What are your demands?”
“My demands?” Ewzad scoffed. “Your surrender. I said it, didn’t I? Yes-yes, I did. It’s surrender or death. I don’t see how I could be more clear, do you?”
Randolf cleared his throat and Ewzad decided he hated the man. “We need to know more. What are the conditions?”
The people around Randolf didn’t like the idea of negotiation any more than Ewzad did. Some of them began to shout him down.
“Yes, my conditions are simple. Oh-oh so simple. You must surrender to my army and turn over your leaders for execution.”
“Our leaders?” said Randolf, obviously aware that he was one of those leaders.
“Yes indeed. The rest of your men will be spared as long as they swear fealty to me. Your king and protector, yes. Then the Mage School will be dissolved and I will take possession of the Rune Tower. Nice, yes?”
“Swear fealty to you?” Randolf scoffed. “Your legitimacy as king is still very much in question. Come back to us when you are ready to talk.”
“In question?” Ewzad’s enormous visage snarled. He reached out with the rings’ magic and pierced the wizards’s body, then ignited an e
xplosion of steam from deep within the man. Randolf burst into pieces with a loud pop. Ewzad’s visage frowned. A pop? What an unsatisfying sound. He added a loud thunder roll so that the entire school could hear what had happened.
“Who wishes to speak next? Hmm?” he asked. The shocked expressions of the tiny people told him that his point had been made. He began to think that this might perhaps work after all. He could keep blowing them up one by one until they surrendered. What a delicious notion. Yes, and his army wouldn’t be wasted.
“I will speak!” shouted a brawny brown-haired man. He had two strangely shaped swords on his back and a gray bow in his hand.
Ewzad recognized the speaker’s face. This was the proud bonding wizard Mellinda had told him about. He was bigger now, but this was the young Sir Edge that had released all those prisoners in his dungeon. This was the man that had defeated his precious Bandham.
“I don’t think your magic will work,” Mellinda warned. “The bond may protect him from the rings.”
“Ridiculous.” Ewzad said, his visage forming a sneer. “Oh, speak will you? Sir Edge, is it?”
“I am!” the named warrior shouted. The people around him, including one ugly ogre, were clutching at him, trying to talk him down.
“Do you wish to surrender, Edge?” Ewzad asked. Not that it mattered. He intended to kill the man one way or another.
“No! We won’t surrender!” Edge shouted. He drew an arrow and pulled it back on his gray bow. “We will fight! We will destroy your army! And we will destroy you!”
The man fired, his arrow flying faster than an arrow should. It passed between the eyes of the visage and continued right through the center of Ewzad’s invisible form. An agonizing shock spread through him and Ewzad knew that, back in his chair on the back of Hamford’s neck, his body had just convulsed.
“How dare you?” Ewzad growled and he reached for the man, intending to inflate him like a sheep’s bladder balloon. But he couldn’t. The man was slippery. It was like there was nothing for Ewzad to grab hold of. Ewzad’s visage showed his confusion.
“Just leave,” Mellinda said. “Or kill one of those near him. Your monsters can kill him well enough later.”
“I see your true form, Ewzad Vriil!” said Edge. “Would that I could reach your body with this arrow.” He fired again and this time, the arrow was surrounded by a faint glow.
It passed through Ewzad before he could move out of the way. This shot was more painful than the one before. Back on his throne, his body bit through its tongue. His visage winced. The people cheered.
“Then die all of you!” Ewzad shouted.
His visage faded into the air and Ewzad fled, full of fury. He followed the silvery line connecting to his body. He could see Kassy perched over his spasming form, trying to wake him. Once he was inside, he shoved the concerned raptoid away and spat out the tip of his tongue. A simple writhe of his fingers healed the wound and he shouted out to Mellinda.
“Witch! Have your spies planted their surprises?” he asked.
“I told you not to stay,” she said.
“I asked you something, you horrible hag! Didn’t I?” he asked, aching to reach through their connection and throttle her. But he needed her and she knew it. He could not afford to damage her now. Not yet. Perhaps when this battle was over he could indulge himself. “Have they planted their surprises?”
“Yes, Master. They have,” she said smugly. “All but two, but that will be more than enough.”
“It had better be. Don’t you think?” he snapped.
“It will,” she promised.
“Yes-yes. Good, and the wizards don’t know?”
“They do not,” she claimed. “Your raptoid killed the captured ones before they revealed what they had done for me. Shall I have your packages activated now?”
“No-no. Send in the fodder,” he smiled. “Yes, let them think their defenses were effective. Then, when I give the word, activate our little surprise.”
The defenders cheered. A chant of ‘Edge! Edge! Edge!’ began to run down the wall.
The people around him clapped Justan on the back and Fist wrapped him up in a hug. His mother grasped his arm and said, “Never do that to me again.”
Justan’s hands were still shaking. Ewzad’s show had been impressive and he’d been afraid, but he’d seen the way Ewzad had pierced Wizard Randolf with spirit magic and knowing it to be the power of the Rings of Stardeon, he had hoped that the bond would protect him.
He’d also known that his father or mother, or one of his other friends would have spoken up if he hadn’t. So he’d taken Ewzad’s fury upon himself. He’d half expected his gambit to fail. Fortunately, he had been lucky and Ewzad’s power hadn’t been able to hurt him.
Perhaps more importantly, he’d noticed that his first arrow had hurt the wizard. That was why he had wrapped a small piece of the bond around the arrow on his second shot and that had been enough to drive the wizard away. It was too bad he hadn’t been given a third attempt.
The stone in Justan’s pocket vibrated again. He pulled it out and saw the words, ‘Good one son’. Followed quickly by, ‘Incoming!’
“Incoming attack!” Justan cried.
They heard the shouts of crazed goblins long before they saw them. Thousands of the stupid creatures ran down the main road and streamed from the forest around the school. The traps worked well. Explosions rocked the ground, launching their little bodies in the air. The earth opened beneath them, dropping them onto rocky spikes. Blades of air spat from the trees, hewing them to pieces. It was a slaughter.
“He saw the traps,” Fist said, shaking his head at the destruction below. “He doesn’t care about goblins.”
Justan looked down on the torn goblin bodies. Of course. Ewzad had mage sight. He had seen. This was how he handled obstacles; as calculating and cruel as if he were only playing strategy games. Or perhaps crueler, he thought, shivering as he glanced at the bloody splatter where Wizard Randolf had been standing.
Justan! I smell one, Gwyrtha sent.
What? he asked.
An eye! A moonrat eye! she said excitedly.
Where? Suddenly he felt a sense of foreboding.
In here, Gwyrtha sniffed at the air. By the wall! By the pasture!
Go. Find it and stop whoever it is. Show me as soon as you see them!
“Mother,” Justan said, grabbing Darlan’s arm to get her attention. She was busy watching the destruction below, readying herself to activate the lava bucket if needed. Her eyes swung to him, his tone of voice concerning her. “Gwyrtha senses a moonrat eye down by the wall, near the pasture. She’s heading there now, it’s-.”
Justan closed his eyes and concentrated. Gwyrtha was nearing the wall. A woman wearing a mage’s robe was kneeling down at the base of the wall doing something. Gwyrtha’s mage sight showed a steady flow of earth magic coming from the woman.
Gwyrtha, knock her over. See what she’s doing!
The woman screamed as Gwyrtha bowled her aside. Justan didn’t recognize the mage, but she was wearing a black robe with blue trim. An earth mage. Gwyrtha sniffed at the spot where the woman had been kneeling. There was a tiny round hole in the grass. An eye! Down there!
Gwyrtha began to dig, but the mage cried out and a block of earth shot up from the ground underneath the rogue horse, blasting the air out of Gwyrtha’s lungs and sending her tumbling to the side. The woman ran to the hole and earth magic flared again.
Get her, Gwyrtha! Justan sent.
I am fast. I am hard. I am strong. Gwyrtha said. She climbed to her feet, the changes in her body already beginning to take place. She leapt at the mage, but another block of earth shot up, shoving her to the side.
I am fast. I am hard. I am strong. She darted forward, dodging the next block of earth, and collided with the mage, slamming the woman into the wall and knocking her unconscious. But it was too late.
A great tremor rocked the school. The wall began to shudder under Justan’s f
eet. He looked over the edge and saw the ground slowly rising towards him. Darlan’s eyes widened.
“We’re sinking!” Fist declared.
Chapter Thirty Five
The devices were cunning things. Ewzad’s goblinoid troops had found them in the Dark Prophet’s palace along with the crysalisk. They were runed cubes made of steel and filled with crystals, each one only about the size of a fist. Their purpose was to reverse a magic spell. The process was rather simple. Place the cube next to a spell. Activate it one time for it to learn the spell’s pattern. The longer you let it learn, the more effective it would be. Then activate it a second time and it would unweave the layers of the spell it had learned.
Ewzad had come up with the idea of creating a little crab-like creature that grew around the cube and when instructed, it would burrow down deep into the earth only to disintegrate and die two weeks later when Ewzad’s power ran out. Over the last year, Mellinda had been sending servants into the school in one guise or another. They would leave the cubes in various places for her spies to find.
There had been thirty of the devices in all and twenty eight of them had been placed along points at the base of the wall and linked together with a low level spell. Deep in the earth, the devices were all but undetectable. They learned the spell’s pattern and waited to be activated.
Ewzad’s plan could not have been executed better. When the mage finished her spell, the cubes came to life at once and began unraveling the centuries-old spells that had raised the walls from the bedrock. The walls descended at roughly the same pace in which they’d been raised. Within a few short minutes they had been reduced from fifty feet tall to forty.
The defenders scrambled, gathering their strongest earth wizards to combat the wall’s descent. Thirty of them, anchored by Wizard Nikoli, worked to keep the walls from failing. The amount of magic they wielded was immense.
The wall sank further and further despite their efforts. They tried to work directly against the descent with sheer force. They drew up enormous supports from within the earth. They tried to firm up the bedrock underneath it. But the cubes’ work was inexorable. The wizards didn’t know the nature of the devices they were fighting against and none of them had been around at the creation of the original wall raising spell to know how it had been executed in the first place.
The Bowl of Souls: Book 05 - Mother of the Moonrat Page 41
