The tattooed man stepped off the carriage, walked ahead of the Acolytes, and stopped, orange eyes burning with hatred. That was when Milo saw his tail, a long, dancing whip of a tail that shone metallically in the light, reminding Milo of a mosquito’s feeding tube. Behind him, Kovax leaned forward in the carriage, holding a staff with a blue crystal embedded in its tip. He stared at Max through narrowed eyes.
“I could have destroyed that school. I almost did, just to spite you.”
“You’re going to die here,” Max said, squaring his shoulders. “Is that what you want, low mage?”
Kovax smiled. The tattooed man began to crack his knuckles. Milo could hear each sickening pop across the field. The five Dark Acolytes glared at Max, their porcelain faces twisted with hatred. All thoughts of the beacon crystal evaporated as Milo urged his father on.
“Kill them, Dad. Just kill them and come back.”
“Very well,” Kovax said, leaning back and lifting his staff. The levathons snorted and kicked their hooves into the dirt, red eyes burning. “You wish to challenge me here in front of my men? You want your children to see what it looks like when a demigod dies?”
“You can’t kill me,” Max said. “You don’t even have a Berserker with you. Turn around and we’ll save this battle for another day, just you and me and any three men of your choice. I’ll be alone. It’ll be fair that way.”
A disgusted snarl crept up Kovax’s face.
“Cowardice brought you down here, Maximus. You abandoned the Forge like a craven fool, and now the rebels are too weak to even show their faces. But arrogance—that will be your downfall.” He made a rolling motion with a bony index finger. “The daggers.”
The Dark Acolytes looked at each other, nodded, and pulled out daggers with black blades. Thin, gray smoke fell from the metal and splashed against the grass. Milo saw his father tense up.
“Daggers made from Tiberian steel,” Kovax said, “and dipped in Cebron blood to better pierce your Sargonaut skin and poison you. I call them demigod killers.” Kovax gave Max his most menacing look. “Surrender now and your children won’t have to watch you die, Maximus.”
“You’ll have to go through me.”
“So be it.”
The tattooed man, so broad of shoulder he looked like a bull, began to take big, hurried strides toward Max, his tail whipping from side to side.
Max fell to a crouch and punched his right fist into the earth. His arm began to churn the soil in search of something. As the tattooed man approached, the Dark Acolytes leaped into the air and took flight.
Milo wiped sweat from his eyes. Something nagged at him, a feeling that he was forgetting a very important thing. But with Emma clinging to his arm, and a bunch of winged men rising into the air, intent on killing his father, his brain simply could not focus on what it was.
Max found what he was looking for. He lifted a large rock out of the hole he’d made in the ground and dropped it, then reached in and pulled out a second, a third, a fourth—so fast his moving arm was a blur.
Then, rising with a rock in hand, he took aim, pulled back, and released. Before the first rock could connect, he had already bent down to pick up another. He threw the rocks one after another with the quickness and force of a machine gun firing bullets.
The rocks slammed into two of the Dark Acolytes, flinging them back like birds shot midflight by a hunter. They pirouetted to the ground and didn’t get up. The remaining three Acolytes halted their flight and hung back, dipping up and down as their wings beat the air. They were scowling at Max, apparently too afraid to go forward.
The tattooed man reached down by his belt and pulled out a dagger with a black blade like the others. Max stepped back, keeping a constant distance between them. The tattooed man had begun to slash the air in front of him, leaving thin trails of smoke. Max focused on the smoking blade, obviously more afraid of it than anything else.
Kovax closed his eyes and began moving his hands around, lips squirming as he chanted. The Dark Acolytes saw this, nodded to each other, and began to circle Max and the tattooed man. They had their daggers raised and resembled black wasps waiting to swoop down on their prey and sting it to death.
Alexandra had been watching since the beginning, gripping the metal of the carriage and bobbing on her feet. “I can’t hold back anymore.”
Milo held his sister, who was sobbing into his shirt. He turned to his mother.
“Help him, Mom. I’ll watch Emma.”
Torn between helping Max and protecting her children, Alexandra’s inner pain became evident on her face—in the swollen flesh around her eyes, the tightened jaw muscles, and the layer of sweat on her forehead. When she spoke, her voice was ragged and cracked.
“Wait here. I’ll come back, I swear it.”
She stepped away from the carriage and rolled her head back, exposing a pale and fragile throat. Milo and Emma stared in awe as her skin began to glow, faintly at first, then with more intensity until every patch of exposed skin on her body was as bright as a fluorescent lamp. Then her feet left the ground and she was rising into the air, radiating light like a newborn star. A fine mist encircled her body. Behind her tipped-back shoulders and gleaming, porcelain neck, a pair of wings unfurled like white flags.
The light faded and Alexandra dropped to her feet.
Milo and Emma could look at her now without being blinded. They saw, attached to her back, a pair of powerful-looking wings as white as freshly fallen snow. The wings lifted, followed by her arms, and for a moment she resembled a statue of an angel.
When she opened her eyes, light poured out.
“Mom,” Milo said in breathless wonder.
He glanced at his sister and saw tears running down her face.
Alexandra flapped her wings and flew upward like a missile. Milo heard his father’s voice.
“Zandra, no! Go back!”
She cut across the field, trailing a fine mist that had no smell but left a dewy feeling on Milo’s skin, and dove into the tattooed man, who had been about to stab Max with the dagger. The man fell back and slid across the grass so forcefully that he left a ditch in his wake.
Alexandra flapped away before the man could stab her, but she failed to notice the three Dark Acolytes coming at her from different angles. She had been careless, and if Milo’s throat hadn’t locked up in fear, he would have screamed for her to look out.
Emma’s voice worked just fine.
“Mom, above you! They’re coming!”
Kovax stood in the carriage, a cocky smirk on his face as he watched his men at work.
They grabbed Alexandra in midflight. One Acolyte hung back and watched as the other two took hold of her wings and legs. Max jumped twenty feet in the air and tried to grab her, but one of the Dark Acolytes slashed at him with the black dagger, sending him off course.
It was hard to tell from this distance, but Milo was almost certain his father had been wounded. He landed in a crouch and inspected his body. Then he touched the upper-right section of his abdomen and brought his hand up.
The fingers were bloody.
“Poisoned,” the tattooed man grunted. “Give up, rebel coward.”
“You just come at me now,” Max told him.
The tattooed man ran toward him, opening his mouth in a roar. A moment later, throwing gusts of wind in every direction that flattened the grass at his feet, the man transformed into a giant scorpion.
Emma screamed as the creature landed with a thump and began to twitch and skitter toward her father.
The Dark Acolytes carried Alexandra back to the carriage as Max faced the scorpion alone. He used a large, flat rock the size of a shield to fend off the deadly looking stinger. The scorpion scurried left and right, its mouthparts moving like the blades of a giant shredder.
Max ducked and rolled out of the way to avoid the claws and the stinger. Every time he hit the ground, he would pick up a rock or a small stone. Then he would throw it—his arm moving so fast it was
a blur—at the scorpion’s exoskeleton.
The rocks made holes in the creature’s armor, and Milo could hear its high-pitched screams every time one broke through. Max tried running toward Alexandra but the scorpion blocked him.
“Dad!” Milo screamed.
Something was wrong. His father was staggering, like he was drunk. Milo had never seen the man drink before, but he had seen enough drunken characters on TV to know what it looked like. His father’s arms swung before him and he was slightly hunched over. His face had paled.
“What’s wrong with him?” Emma said.
“I think it was the dagger,” Milo said. “It poisoned him.”
The Dark Acolytes held Alexandra in place by putting daggers to her throat. Kovax put his hand on her forehead and began a low chant.
“Zandra,” Max said, his voice hollow. She had fallen asleep in the Dark Acolytes’ arms. Max staggered forward and reached out with a shaky arm.
Kovax grinned at him and whipped the reins to get the levathons beating their wings.
“Don’t run, you coward,” Max said. “Stay and fight!”
“But I’ve already won,” Kovax said, and slung Alexandra’s unconscious body over the side of the carriage. Her wings fell around her like loose, white curtains. “You’ll be paralyzed soon, helpless and weak as a human. As for your children, I’ll take good care of them.”
Kovax extended his right hand toward Max and narrowed his eyes. The blue crystal in his staff brightened and dimmed, and then a liquidy, orange light gathered in his palm like lava. He sent it arching toward Max.
It must have hurt terribly. Max let out a cry of agony and tried to brush off the steaming residue. But his arms flopped, unable to bend at the elbows.
The scorpion swung its tail. The tip struck Max on the head and knocked him onto his back. Then, before Milo could grasp what was happening, he found himself standing in front of the carriage, no longer hidden from view.
“Milo,” his father said, trying to reach out to him and failing. His strength was gone. “Use the crystal.”
Milo searched the grass, biting his lower lip to keep from bursting into panicked sobs. Emma helped him, but they were distracted by what was happening to their father. A dark whirlwind had formed around the scorpion, emitting a fierce gusting sound, and soon the glossy, hard-shelled creature had transformed back into its original human form. The tattooed man grinned at Max.
“Get up, Dad!” Milo screamed at his father.
Emma joined in. “Daddy, don’t let him!”
The tattooed man plucked one of the smoking daggers from the ground and leaped forward with the agility of a chimpanzee. His arm was up over his head as he flew through the air, and before Max could turn to face his attacker, the tattooed man had planted the dagger in his back.
Milo fell to his knees in despair. His father looked at him and said two words.
“Get out.”
Then he fell forward against the grass. His eyes closed and his shoulders settled, and Milo was sure that he was dead. Emma had stepped out from behind the carriage. Then she did the worst thing possible.
She ran toward them.
Milo got to his feet. He opened his mouth to warn his sister about the Dark Acolytes swooping in on her. But he found he couldn’t speak. His anger and fear—his sense of being utterly helpless—were too great.
Then something took over him. Later, he would remember it as a feeling of being possessed, like his body and mind had been hijacked by a demon.
He winced as light formed around the edges of his vision, orange light, like flames consuming a piece of paper from the edges inward. The sight of his father lying there, motionless as if he were dead, and Emma running toward the tattooed man and the Dark Acolytes, kindled a furious flame inside of him. He clenched his teeth and made fists out of his hands. The orange light around his vision intensified, making the countryside look like a flaming battlefield.
He looked down at his hands. They had caught fire.
“Emma!” he shouted.
A ball of fire appeared between his palms, as smooth as a tiny sun. He instinctively reached back to throw it, and with a sizzling pfut pfut pfut sound, it left his hand and arched across the field, leaving a trail of white-hot smoke through which it was difficult to see. He hadn’t even felt his arm swing through the air.
He let his hands drop to his sides, his eyes stinging from the smoke. And yet there was no smell of anything burning; not his skin or his hair, or even his clothes. He vaguely saw the fireball split into three smaller globes above Emma’s head that curved intelligently over her and toward the Dark Acolytes.
It happened quickly. The burning orbs collided with their targets, making a series of heavy cracks. The flames scattered everywhere. The tattooed man was thrown back several feet, flames dancing all over his body. One of the Dark Acolytes escaped and made his way toward the carriage. The other two had caught fire and fell flaming through the air like burning shreds of fabric.
Milo stepped through the smoke, coughing and trying to maintain his balance. The heat in his hands had gone away. His skin was unharmed. He was too dizzy to make sense of what had happened.
The smoke lifted and he saw Emma sprawled on top of her father, a little thing in black tights, possibly dead but he couldn’t tell. Her ballet tights didn’t look burned, which gave him hope. The bodies of the Dark Acolytes and the tattooed man lay around her, charred and blackened. Somehow the fireball had left Emma and Max untouched.
“What did you do?” Emma said, staring wide-eyed at him as he jogged over.
Kovax watched the twins. The levathons had backed into the carriage, eyes wide with fear, tendrils of spit swinging from their lips. Kovax held on as the carriage rocked.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, eyes wide in disbelief.
He slapped the reins to put the levathons in motion. Alexandra hung over the side of the carriage, arms swishing from side to side. She was being held in place by the remaining Dark Acolyte, whose face was twisted in a look of utter shock and rage as he stared at Milo.
The levathons straightened their wings and jolted forward. With a great whinnying roar, they tore across the field and soon gained enough speed to propel themselves into the air.
Milo watched the carriage lift his mother above the fields and into the darkening clouds until he was sure it was no longer a threat. When it was gone he ran to his father, spotting the crystal along the way. He picked it up and slipped it into his pocket. The corpses of the Dark Acolytes and the Pestilent had begun to dissolve, as if the earth was breaking them down into their most basic elements before sucking them into the ground.
Milo joined his sister and the two of them got down on their knees and leaned over their father. Max had flipped himself onto his back and his face had gone the color of ash.
“My kids,” he said, struggling to get the words out. “You’re still here. Why?”
“Dad,” Milo said. “Please don’t die.”
“I failed you. I should have told you the truth about who you are.”
Milo shook his head. The skin around his eyes tightened as he began to cry.
“It’s not your fault, Dad. It’s not!”
Max gave them a reassuring smile. Emma rested a hand on her father’s chest, and he covered it with his own.
“Daddy,” she said. “They took Mom. The man took Mom.”
Max reached up and stroked her face with one finger. His arm shook from the effort.
“They poisoned me with that blade,” he said. “If you ever see metal like that again, you run. Both of you. Don’t—don’t let them…”
“We know,” Milo said, sobbing. “Dad!”
His father looked at him, reached up with a shaky hand, and tapped Milo on the forehead.
“A Savant Sorcerer. A talented one. I always had a feeling.”
His arm dropped over his convulsing chest, and then he was gagging.
“Get back,” he said, choking on the words. E
mma whimpered and darted away. Milo covered his mouth to stifle a cry. Their father’s body began to shake, and then it was as if the earth beneath them was shaking. Milo grabbed Emma and pulled her back.
Max looked at them one last time, his eyes full of pride. There was no sadness or regret, only a look of peace. His mouth curved into a smile and his eyes watered.
His body began to glow. Light shot out of him in sharp rays. Milo and Emma had to look away. They heard their father’s voice one last time, and it was soft and whispery, but vast, as if the field and the sky had spoken together.
“Asceranon.”
And then he was gone. Milo and Emma touched the grass where he had lain, and drew back in surprise when they saw a tiny green stem, like the beginnings of a plant, begin to unravel before them. It trembled in the breeze and swayed, and swayed even more until it was twisting like a little green man trying to work his way out of a hole. And it was getting bigger and bigger.
“Get back,” Milo said. “Something’s happening.”
The stem grew taller and began to thicken as the earth blew life into it. Milo and Emma watched in stunned fascination as the stem shot up with an earthy crackle and became a tree. Its skin went from a youthful green to a more muddy color, and then to a solid brown as wooden scales hardened all over it to form a coat of bark.
“What is it?” Emma said.
Milo gazed up at the spreading boughs of leaves.
“It’s a monument.”
Branches shot out with sounds like ropes breaking apart, and bushels of leaves unfurled with gentle sighs, forming a canopy over their heads. The roots were thick and gnarled at the base. Milo approached the trunk, which was several times thicker than his waist, and ran his fingers over the bark. The leaves made a pleasant sound as the wind whispered through them.
“He left this,” Emma said, hugging herself for warmth, “so we would remember where he died. So we can visit him.”
Milo fell against the tree as a painful sob tried to claw its way out of his chest. He kept it in, shoved it down deep, and embraced his father instead. Emma put her hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
Savant (The Luminether Series) Page 9
