Destiny's Rift bw-2

by Sam Bowring

  They came to the place where the mages camped and Roma waited. A thousand stood ready, most of them Arabodedas and Vortharg – the gift was rarer amongst the other races, but when present it was strong.

  Losara rose to hover in the air and address them. Before he did, he noticed that each mage’s black cloak had been stitched at the shoulder with a blue thread, depicting the outline of a four-fingered hand.

  The insignia , he sent to Roma. Your doing?

  It is well they remember whom they serve , sent back Roma.

  You flatter me.

  No , sent Roma. They are right to be proud. As are you, my lord.

  Losara found that he was touched. He thought about mentioning that he actually did still have a hand with the proper number of fingers on it, but decided he didn’t want to ruin the moment. Instead he spoke, his voice amplified by magic.

  ‘Greetings, my brethren. Today we make for Holdwith. If we add speed to our heels, we should reach it by nightfall and be favoured by darkness in our attack. I know that the Magus Supreme has spoken to you of what we must achieve, so I will say only this: if we are successful, it will be a great step towards ending this war in our favour.’

  A cheer went up, and bolts of blue energy crackled into the air.

  ‘Now,’ said Losara, ‘make haste!’

  As one, the mages sped away over the Stone Fields like a great black mist. Although their legs seemed to move at a normal pace, they covered the ground faster than any regular stride. Losara followed, floating above them, dividing his power between Tyrellan and Lalenda to help speed them along. Tyrellan’s eyes gleamed as he raced over the rocks, and if Losara didn’t know better he might have thought the First Slave was enjoying himself. A short distance behind the goblin, the shadowmander followed, bouncing and leaping, keeping up on its own, or perhaps simply dragged along because it had to stay close to its anchor to the world. Flying at his side, Lalenda grinned at Losara as she spread her wings wide, her wild hair whipping about her head, then plunged to sweep over the speeding horde.

  ‘For ice, water and mud!’ she called. ‘Let sunset eternal fall on Kainordas!’

  Eyes rose to her, impassioned shouts came in answer, and Losara thought his mages took heart from the fervent pixie who accompanied them.

  Sometime after midday they could see the border in the distance, brightly foreboding on the other side. There was no shadow out there to refuel the mages’ reserves as they spent it on speed, and although Losara did not want to burn their power away, he decided there would be time at nightfall to stop and replenish.

  The brightness grew, and a thousand pairs of eyes stung as they hurtled into it, a dark swell breaking on sunny shores. As they moved out across the barren lands, they came across a single Kainordan patrol and engulfed it quickly. A spark of fire was the only resistance from a lightfist with the group, and it was quickly snuffed out.

  Slower , Losara sent out to all. We do not wish to reach Holdwith before night.

  The group slowed, conserving their power, until evening began to fall. When Holdwith appeared on the horizon they stopped altogether, and Losara ordered an hour of rest. He did not think the light mages would sense them from this distance, but even if they did, there was no time for further aid to reach them. In the meantime he had a preliminary job of his own.

  I will return shortly , he sent to Roma, then turned to Lalenda.

  ‘Wait with the others,’ he said. ‘I have something to do.’

  She looked worried by that, but he fell to shadow and circled her feet, then slid up her body to embrace her under her clothes so that she reddened and giggled. Then he was away, towards Holdwith.

  As he drew close it seemed he was sensed, for a sentry barked alarm. He remembered, from the last time he’d come here to set a particular whelkling free, that inlaid into the walls of the fort were a series of ward stones like the ones surrounding the Halls. They were not a foolproof defence against shadow magic, but they stood in the way of a swift, decisive victory, providing a certain resistance that his mages would need to overcome. He slipped halfway up a wall and found the first, softly glowing amongst regular bricks of brown stone.

  Congealing into reality from the torso up, floating upon a bottom half of shadow, he brought his hand forth and injected the ward with power, shattering it to pieces. Then he fell back to shadow and moved onwards. A fireball from above crashed against the wall where he had been but moments before.

  Losara stopped at the next ward stone and again crumbled it with his touch. He sensed light power collecting as more mages gathered on the parapets above. There was a tugging as ethereal grips tried to seize him, but he broke through them easily.

  ‘It’s attacking the wards!’ came a shout from above. ‘Power to the wards!’

  As he materialised at the next stone, it pulsed more brightly than the others, as somehow the light mages enhanced its power. Some interconnected defence system, old and potent, began to fire. It took extra effort to smash this one, and bolts of light crashed down around him.

  He decided to press his luck and try for a fourth. He flew past a couple so the pattern of his destruction did not become predictable, and appeared once again. Shouts from the walls confirmed that the light mages had raced to the wrong place. As he sent his power into the ward, it seemed somehow slippery in his grip, despite being completely stationary. Then came a bright spark, and a backlash of light magic rippled from it into him. He toppled backwards, turning to shadow before any of his flesh touched the ground, and pooled, stunned, as bands of light shimmered through him. The feeling was sick-making, and he pulsed his own power through himself, dispelling the light but leaving behind a burning pain.

  Cutting his losses, he retreated across the plains to his mages. At least he had broken the ward’s circle along the front they would attack – but had his manoeuvring done more harm than good, by alerting the enemy to the impending attack?

  Time will tell.

  A great glowing beacon rose in the sky, illuminating the land around the fort and reaching the edges of his force.

  ‘They know we’re here,’ he announced as he stepped into physicality. ‘But it changes nothing. We advance!’

  Mages roared in unison, and together they sped towards the fort.

  Stay well behind , Losara sent to Lalenda. Please, my love. Well behind.

  I will watch your victory from the hill , she replied. Maybe while I drink a cup of tea.

  He glanced about and saw the hill she was talking about, a league or so from the fort. Good, there she should be safe.

  ‘Deplete their numbers first!’ he called. ‘Some must fall before others may live!’

  Roma had trained his mages well. As they came within range of the fort, they broke into groups of four, spacing themselves apart so as not to present too large a target. The groups channelled together to send out spells more powerful than one mage alone could muster, and great blue bolts went shooting towards the fort. Lights erupted along the walls as wards went up, hundreds of luminous blotches, and several bolts landed to blow chips from the parapets. Fireballs came sizzling back in reply, and light bolts, and balls of light that homed in on shadow – a spray of various and deadly brightnesses streaming towards them. Losara’s mages sent up shadow wards around themselves, swallowing up the fire and light. A few fell screaming, their bodies smoking.

  ‘Stay in your groups!’ Roma bellowed. ‘Send forth conjurings!’

  All around, mages began mumbling as they summoned fell wraiths from nothing. Each wraith was under the control of an individual at the centre of each group, and flew up into the air to gust towards the enemy. Many were set alight before reaching their target, quickly burning to nothing, but a few made it through to dive along the walls, bringing screams as they froze lightfists alive with their touch.

  Losara found Roma, his hands out and his eyes distant as he saw through his wraith creation. He gritted his teeth then blinked as his true sight returned. ‘Three down before i
t was destroyed,’ he muttered, then noticed Losara beside him.

  ‘Again?’ he asked.

  ‘Again,’ said Losara.

  ‘More shadow bolts!’ shouted Roma. ‘More conjurings!’

  Crackling blue energy lit up another wave of wraiths, who dived and dodged the light spells coming the other way. Several massive shadow bolts blasted the walls and send red-robed bodies flying.

  ‘To me!’ came a distant shout echoing from within the fort. Losara recognised the voice of Methodrex, the High Overseer of Holdwith, whom he had ‘met’ in his pilgrimage dream. In those visions Methodrex had been instrumental in the downfall of Fenvarrow.

  How different reality was turning out to be.

  •

  Methodrex strode along the walls as fast as his short legs could carry him. His white–gold robe seemed to have chosen this moment to become much too long, tangling itself around his calves as he went.

  ‘To me!’ he called, trying not to let his voice show how shaken he was. The ease and speed with which their ward stones had been destroyed, breaking what was once a powerful circle of defence, was mind-boggling. No one should have been able to smash such ancient magic as if stepping on snail shells. But times were changing, and he knew who it was that must have come, slipping through the night, to crack armour that had held for centuries.

  Groups of lightfists stood along the walls, less organised than he would have hoped. Many were mere apprentices, young and untried. They looked to their teachers for command, but the teachers were stretched thin. Wards were everywhere, but they were being used for personal protection more than for the walls. Impacts shook the parapets with alarming regularity as blue bolts thundered in from the seething mass of shadow mages out on the plain.

  A grim spectre plunged at him from the air – a conjured creature only, a shadow of a shadow , he thought grimly, as he wove his hands to summon his own diaphanous counter-creature. A sunwing appeared – a golden-skinned humanoid with large eyes and gossamer wings, one of Arkus’s powerful servants. It pulled a glowing sword against the wraith and they whirled away together, caught up in their insubstantial fight.

  Such conjurings, though they looked impressive, were not strong magic in Methodrex’s experience. All one had to do to counter them was imagine a natural enemy and bring it forth, or use attacks that would otherwise kill the real version of the conjured creature. And yet in his next few steps he came across the body of a young lightfist lying on the ground, icy particles crusted on his open eyes, dead from the life-sucking touch of a wraith. His students must be flustered by the varied onslaught of shadow magic, if they were being caught out by such illusionary forces.

  ‘Conjure sunwings!’ he shouted to those nearby. ‘Remember your training!’

  He reached a bridge to the cobblestone tower, the highest point in Holdwith, and made his way across. Glancing about, he saw that his calls had netted him a coterie of mages.

  ‘To the top,’ he told them, ‘and hurry.’

  They passed through a room in which many oddments were stored, and he was relieved to see the object he wanted within easy reach. Seizing the long golden rod, he continued up to the top of the tower, emerging on a high balcony.

  ‘Wards!’ he commanded, and several mages set about channelling. ‘The rest of you,’ he continued, ‘lend me your strength!’

  He held out the rod, which began to glow.

  •

  Losara watched with interest as radiant sunwings rose from the walls to drive back the wraiths. Strange creatures – he’d never seen them in the world, but he supposed they must exist somewhere, to be re-created here. Maybe in the court of Arkus?

  A moment later, from the top of the cobblestone tower, a molten beam shone forth and moved over the plain towards them, cooking the ground that it touched. Bolts shot towards the source of the beam, but a great white ward had sprung up from many lightfists working together. The beam ripped through groups of shadow mages and their defences, rending limbs from scorched bodies. It continued to sweep across their front lines, precise and deadly and directed.

  ‘Come, Roma,’ Losara said.

  He strode towards the beam, placed himself deliberately in its path, and put up a shadow ward around himself. As the beam found him, the pressure on his defence was great.

  ‘Lend me your might,’ he told Roma, and opened a conduit in himself for his servant to channel through. He felt Roma send power into him and knew that, had the man still wanted to, now would be the perfect opportunity for betrayal. Already inside Losara’s defences, it would be a simple matter for the Magus Supreme to divert energy to explode his heart, rip him apart, or bring about one of a dozen other deaths.

  I trust you , thought Losara.

  I know whom I serve , came Roma’s thought, and strangely it gave Losara strength just as the borrowed magic did.

  I can take more , Losara sent. It could be dangerous for a single mage to channel too much power from others, hence the standard groups of four amongst his force’s ranks – but Losara was no ordinary mage.

  ‘Aid the Dreamer!’ Roma called, and others nearby obeyed.

  With great focus, Losara pressed back upon the beam, creating a shadowy one of his own. Filaments of light splintered away at the focal point where the two beams met. He started making progress, for his opponent was not as strong as he, and he could still handle more aid from his underlings.

  Surrender , he sent to Methodrex, and I promise you will not die this night.

  Do you suppose I believe such lies? came the reply, though there was a tinge of desperation to it.

  •

  The golden rod would have been slippery in his hands, had its heat not steamed away sweat even as it formed. Methodrex gritted his teeth as the pressure from Losara grew, as shadow pushed along the white-hot line that sprang from the rod.

  He possesses no such artifact , thought Methodrex, yet still I cannot stand against him.

  Suddenly the rod cracked in his hands, piercing his palms with incandescent splinters. The light beam lost all rigidity and fell away, ribbon-like. The eclipsing beam of shadow tore into the tower and quietly exploded into a dark cloud, surrounding the ward, cutting off all view beyond it. Methodrex tried to add to the defence, but his strength was all but depleted. The large combined ward collapsed into individual ones, each quickly constricted by the encroaching darkness. Soon Methodrex could not even make them out as anything more than dim flares in the void.

  A snake-like tendril pierced the bubble of his own meagre defence, and it burst instantly. Shadow power collapsed in on him, rippling through him as he went soaring from the balcony to land in the Academy courtyard, his troubles over.

  •

  Losara lowered his hand, dropping the beam.

  ‘A great many lights have been put out,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Roma.

  On the walls defences were still visible, but they were fewer and less collected.

  ‘The rest we want alive.’

  Roma nodded. ‘Prepare your sleep spells!’ he commanded the shadow mages.

  Bolts stopped crackling and conjured wraiths were abandoned, halting in the air as if their strings had been cut, to float away as mist. Mages channelled, building their power and waiting for the word. A few fireballs landed amongst them, but at this moment defence was not a priority.

  ‘Help me once again, my friend,’ said Losara, and Roma poured more power into him. Losara worked his hands, moulding a great spell. Soon it was as strong as he could make it.

  ‘RELEASE!’ he cried. Along the line, each group of mages sent forth the same casting. A blanketing wave of sleep spells went out to cover the fort, invisibly but wholly. Wards on the walls flickered under the barrage; others pulsed and faded more slowly. Perhaps the light mages remaining could have defended against a few of the spells, but with so many at once …soon only the lights of fires remained.

  ‘Advance!’ called Roma, and hundreds of shadow mages bore down upon the
silent fort.

  Beauty

  Bel awoke with a start, yet there was nothing there to spook him. Just tense , he supposed, as their present situation came stealing back into his sleep-deprived mind.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ he told Jaya, whom he had woken with his jolting.

  ‘Do you think I can?’ she moaned, blinking in the morning light that came in spots through the forest roof.

  For days they had been on the run, and Bel felt he had entered a strange state whereby he worked hard in order to make no progress at all. Back east the sky was hazy, but the spires of smoke had finally begun to disperse. He could only imagine the skeleton of a wood that lay behind them.

  They had joined a thinner stretch of trees that ran along the mountains heading west, where the fire had blessedly not reached. Perhaps they were more at risk here, however, should the dragon find them, for the wood was only a league wide at most. It was wetter, though, full of streams and moisture in the air. Fat ferns and damp undergrowth surely would not burn as readily as dry tinder, even in the dragon’s magical flame, and the canopy was thicker too.

  Sometimes a day passed without sight of Olakanzar, but there were never two before he was back, circling overhead, still searching. They had seen him land more than once, smashing his way into the trees somewhere behind them. Bel thought he was tracking them in a more directed fashion than before. Clearly, burning the forest had not worked. There was little comfort in that.

  He knew a dragon’s eyesight was perhaps the best of any, so what was to stop Olakanzar from perching somewhere high in the mountains, and simply watching and waiting for them to emerge?

  Nothing.