Inky blackness belched forth from her mouth, her nose, her eyes, swirling and coalescing into an indistinct mass of black magic. When the darkness finished flowing through her, and the portal to the netherworld slammed shut, she went limp, sobbing in anguish from the immoral residue left behind by so much hate and bile.
Dimly she was aware of Phane chanting again in the background. She struggled to regain control over her body and her will, grappling with the guilt, despair, and fear still coursing through her. When she managed to look up, she saw the darkness that Phane had conjured dart off toward the enemy position around the Gate.
It reached them in seconds, moving in a streak of blackness and then coming to an abrupt stop above them, where it coalesced into a sphere twenty feet wide. Then it began to spin.
At first, the soldiers below just watched as the sphere spun faster and faster. Suddenly, one of them was sucked into the vortex, his body completely desiccated in an instant as he passed through the darkness. His lifeless remains were ejected into the air with enough force to propel them several hundred of feet, leaving nothing but a stain on the landscape and a scattered collection of shattered bones where his corpse fell.
Another soldier, then another, then five, then ten and then dozens every second were drawn up into the vortex, dying in an instant and being cast into the air to fall at random, their remains scattered haphazardly across the battlefield.
A few of the soldiers on the periphery of the unit were able to escape instant death, but the vast majority of those guarding the Gate were killed, desiccated, and then very thoroughly distributed around the area in a matter of minutes.
It was the most terrifying display of deadly power that Isabel had ever seen, and it sickened her that once again, she had been instrumental in such evil by providing Phane with access to the netherworld.
“Oh, now that was special, wasn’t it?” he said, almost to himself, chuckling gently. He turned to Isabel with an appraising smile and hardness in his eyes. “My thoughts on your highest value to me are evolving.” He nodded to himself, looking down over the edge of the tower.
“General Hargrove,” he shouted, “have your first legion secure the Nether Gate and begin building defensive fortifications. Have the remaining two legions stand fast.”
“Understood, Prince Phane,” Hargrove said, turning to his commanders.
Isabel was beginning to recover, though she still felt unclean. “So is this what I can expect going forward?” she asked weakly.
“Now that all depends on you, doesn’t it?” he said. “If you cooperate, you’ll come to understand that the darkness can be remarkably rewarding. If not, you’ve proven to be invaluable as a conduit.
“Honestly, I would far prefer to have you as my willing second. You would have great leeway in the methods you use, provided they achieve the ends I require. I’m offering you the opportunity to rule the world with me, Isabel. Most people would be grateful.”
“Not if they knew you,” Isabel managed, still sapped and defenseless, suspended by magic a few feet off the ground.
“Defiant to the last,” he said. “I have to say, your resistance makes victory all the more sweet.”
Before she could muster the will or strength to respond, he released the bindings and she fell to the ground, rolling to her side and pulling her knees up to her chest. She focused on her breathing, willing all of the pain and violation she felt into the background of her mind.
For a moment, the thought of suicide crept into her thoughts, not driven by self-pity, but out of concern that through her, Phane might do unimaginable harm. Then she thought of Alexander and her will to win returned with a vengeance, followed very quickly by a feeling of abject helplessness.
She returned to her breathing while Phane watched a legion of his soldiers march toward his ultimate prize. Breath by breath, she recovered her sensibilities, and then her strength, and then her determination to turn the tables on Phane. That could only be accomplished when the time was right and that required her to be ready and to recognize it when it came.
She had limited power at her disposal. Slyder was hidden nearby and he had the slave master’s ring. But even without the Andalian slave collar, she was no match for Phane … unless she could access the light.
She remained curled up on the ground, conserving her strength and focusing her mind, ignoring Phane as he ignored her in favor of watching the progress of his war.
“Call a halt!” he shouted down to Hargrove.
A whistler arrow went up.
Isabel opened her eyes, rolling over to look in the direction of the enemy. A swarm of drakini floated a hundred feet off the ground toward the Gate. They reached it within a few minutes, one casting a single spear down into the ground. Then they retreated back toward Zuhl’s rapidly marching main army less than a mile away.
A dust devil formed around the spear, growing into a whirlwind and then a tornado. When it reached full speed, the wind-whipped dust began to turn white, raining snow and hail down for five hundred feet in all directions. The surrounding area was quickly transformed into a winter scene, white and frigid.
Isabel felt a cold gust of wind blow past her, sending a chill up her spine in spite of the temperate spring afternoon.
As abruptly as it had formed, the tornado vanished, leaving a mound of ice and snow that looked like a small mountain a hundred feet tall and twice as wide covering the Nether Gate.
The cold air that had just blown past her settled into a cool breeze emanating from the ice mountain, sapping the warmth from her and leaving her shivering on the ground. As she got to her feet, arms wrapped tightly around her chest, Phane smirked, muttering the words of another spell. A few moments later, the air within the magic circle atop the conjured tower became warm and calm.
“Interesting,” Phane said, rubbing his chin. “Let’s see what happens when I throw a big rock at it.” He flashed her a smile and then cast his gaze out over the boulder-strewn battlefield, settling on a stone the size of a large wagon. With an outstretched hand, he lifted the stone, easily several tons, a hundred feet, then two hundred feet into the air. He held it there for a moment and then propelled it at the ice mountain with terrible force and speed. The stone seemed to blur, flickering for an instant in the space between its starting point and the ice.
It hit with a deafening crack, sending a shock wave of chilled air outward that felt like a slap in the face. The ice mountain shattered into a mixture of ice shards and coarse jagged hail, raining down across a wide swath.
The icy dust didn’t have a chance to fully settle before it began to swirl, the ice tornado quickly forming again, building on the blasted-out remnants of the previous mountain to form an even larger mound of ice with an even wider area of artificial winter surrounding it.
Phane nodded to himself, frowning at the barrier blocking him from his prize. After a moment he walked to the edge of his tower and called down, “General, move the army to the edge of the cold. Make that your front line.”
He didn’t wait for Hargrove’s response, instead walking to the center of the magic circle atop the tower and sitting cross-legged on the ground, as if waiting for something.
He didn’t have to wait long. The few clouds in the sky began to build, growing in size and darkening as they roiled and turned, building and spreading until the entire battlefield was beneath a huge angry-looking cloud. Phane got to his feet, watching the sky.
The cloud settled into a slow spiral overhead with the ice mountain as its center point. Lightning flashed and then it began to rain. Large drops fell from the sky, first in a smattering, clattering into the armor of a group here and a unit there. After a few minutes, the rain was falling in wind-driven torrents, drenching the battlefield and soaking Phane’s entire army. Hail began to form, small at first, but growing quickly, until Phane’s soldiers were hunkered under their shields to defend against the unnatural deluge.
Lightning struck Phane’s shield. Isabel found herself
on her hands and knees staring at the ground, dazzled and a bit stunned by the sudden flash and terrible noise. Phane began casting a spell. Another bolt struck, filling the world with cold and terrible brilliance. Phane’s chanting grew.
Another bolt struck, but this one stuck to Phane’s shield, the arc holding for several terrifying seconds, building, pulsing with power before rebounding back into the clouds swirling above and terminating with a flash of light so bright that it illuminated the entire cloud, followed by a clap of thunder that reverberated across the battlefield.
The clouds stopped moving and began to lose color, turning first grey, then white, and finally evaporating entirely, leaving the sky clear and bright in no more than a minute’s time.
***
In less than an hour, Phane had moved his army right up to the edge of the frost line, forming a bristling front of shields and spears. Zuhl’s forces had taken up positions on and around the artificial mountain.
Phane spent a few minutes preparing a spell that lifted ten towers twenty feet into the air, each with a set of stairs leading up the side and a magic circle burned into the top. They formed a line just fifty feet behind the shield wall, overlooking the enemy and the objective.
He insisted that the Babachenko and the High Overseer take the towers to either side of him, with the remaining towers for the rest of the Acuna wizards. He motioned to Isabel impatiently. She plodded up the stairs to the tower top, feeling a tingle of magic wash over her as Phane took his position and raised his defenses.
She scanned the battlefield. The main body of Zuhl’s army was just arriving, filling in behind their advance force. Phane’s army was arrayed in front of his tower line in a series of rows, each supporting those soldiers in front of them. A large contingent of reserve forces stood at the ready on the south side of the battlefield, and a guard force of several thousand surrounded Phane in concentric circles.
He was using his army more as a defensive bulwark than a general officer’s weapon of war … though after seeing the magic he was capable of wielding, Isabel had to admit that his strategy did have some merit.
To the east, two legions of Rangers were assembled around a legion of infantry. A squad of Sky Knights floated in a high orbit overhead. She estimated that it would take the Rangers ten minutes to close the distance—the infantry would take thirty. At the moment, they were holding position.
Phane motioned for the Babachenko and the High Overseer to attack. The Babachenko frowned, seeming to hesitate before turning toward Zuhl’s army with resignation and beginning to cast a spell. A few moments later, a bubble of liquid fire leapt from his hands and splashed into the enemy ranks, igniting a dozen men in a whoosh. The rest of the Acuna wizards began casting spells—force-shards and liquid fire filled the air.
Drakini swept in past the ice mountain, descending into the front ranks of Phane’s army before his men could react, breathing frost into them a moment before landing and then slashing into every soldier within reach. The initial attack was devastating to the integrity of the line. Moments after the drakini landed, they launched again, bounding over a dozen rows of soldiers to breathe frost again and land, clawing and killing.
The Acuna shifted their focus to the drakini, targeting them with force-shards and killing several with the first volley. They fled, launching into the sky and retreating over the main body of Zuhl’s forces.
Phane looked down to the ground just ahead of his tower and motioned for his wraithkin to clear the area. Within moments it was empty. With a word, he burned a magic circle into the ground, then looked out at the enemy with a smile, seeming to relish the momentary deliberation before selecting a single enemy soldier and lifting him from his position on the battlefield a hundred feet away, drawing him over the fighting and depositing him inside the circle below, his hands and feet bound with force manacles a moment later.
The man cursed and railed at Phane, who simply smiled down at him before selecting another and then a third man from the enemy ranks, plucking them from the relative safety of their place in formation and binding them with magic inside the circle.
Zuhl’s forces were pushing against Phane’s line, taking advantage of the damage caused by the drakini attack to gain ground. Phane ignored them. Isabel started wondering if she might have a chance to strike while he was preoccupied with his spell, but decided against it. Her time would come.
As the battle raged, the air grew colder. Phane stepped up his chanting. The three men in the circle below began to scream, visceral fear and tortured agony bound into one long death knell. When they fell silent, the air began to flow into the darkness swirling in the center of the circle. Phane uttered a final set of words and the darkness cleared with a clap.
Standing in the center of the circle, amid the three lifeless corpses sacrificed to call it forth, was a demon of stone and fire, its body a collection of rocks held together by joints of orange-red heat. It stood twelve feet tall and was roughly formed in the shape of a man, but without features or detail past legs, arms, body, and head. Heat radiated from it, drying the air and causing Isabel to break out in a prickly sweat.
“Destroy the spear at the center of the ice,” Phane commanded.
The creature nodded, bounding past startled soldiers until it neared the front line where it jumped over Phane’s men, landing in the middle of the barbarians and thrashing its way toward the ice mountain. Each step produced a gout of steam; each strike burned the man struck.
It reached the side of the artificial mountain and stopped, beginning to glow with heat, melting into the ice, water running away in rivulets only to freeze again as it flowed away from the heat. The demon sank through the melting ice to the ground and then began melting its way to the spear. The whirlwind started to form again as soon as the demon reached it, exposing it to the air, but the demon took it in both hands and melted it through in two places in a matter of moments.
Phane smiled. “Now for some real fun,” he said, extending his hands toward the rapidly melting remnants of the ice mountain, lifting the chunks of ice and the water itself into the air with his magic. Piece by piece, drop by drop, Phane lifted the water and ice over the barbarians’ heads, forming a large swirling mass, spinning faster and faster.
Isabel stood transfixed, as did most of the soldiers on both sides of the battlefield. Once the ice had all melted, Phane lowered the huge bubble of water onto the enemy soldiers still guarding the Nether Gate, holding it in a shape large enough that the soldiers were completely and hopelessly submerged. Phane laughed with delight as hundreds of men drowned before him. Once they were dead, he shoved the water into a wave that rolled across the short distance to the main body of Zuhl’s army, splashing into their front line and knocking over the first few ranks of soldiers.
Out of the corner of her eye, Isabel saw a man sprinting toward the Nether Gate. She frowned, squinting to see better, recognition coming over her, followed by sudden hope. It was Trajan Karth and he was carrying the Goiri bone—bane of magic. He was one of the few people in all the Seven Isles who could actually destroy the Nether Gate.
Phane noticed him, too, frowning in disbelief for only a moment before fully recognizing the threat. His gaze snapped to a boulder just a bit smaller than a house. With both hands outstretched, he focused his will, lifting the boulder and lobbing it in a gentle arc across the battlefield.
Isabel held her breath, watching helplessly as the giant stone flew unerringly. It landed squarely on Trajan, burying the Prince of Karth under dozens of tons of stone in an instant. For a moment, it didn’t seem real. One second, he was alive and running with all of the speed and purpose that a man can muster, the next second he was crushed under a boulder, effectively scoured from the face of the world in a blink.
“Oh, Trajan,” Isabel whispered.
“Charge!” Phane shouted to his army, ignoring her.
A horn blew and Phane’s army seemed to spring forward as one, racing toward the enemy with reckless aband
on, moving past the Nether Gate and securing a defensive line several hundred feet beyond, facing Zuhl’s army.
“Come,” Phane said, abandoning his tower and advancing with his army, surrounded by several dozen wraithkin. They moved forward quickly, Phane’s eyes never wavering from his goal.
Twenty pillars of ice formed just inside Zuhl’s line not three hundred feet away. Atop each, a priest began casting shards of ice toward Phane and those surrounding him.
Half a dozen hit, killing a few of his personal guards, before Phane raised a shield over his companions. It formed a reddish half shell, flashing with heat as each ice shard hit. The priests turned their magic against the soldiers on Phane’s front line, ripping into them savagely, momentarily shaking their spirit. Zuhl gained ground.
Phane cast another spell, muttering for several seconds before a magic circle two hundred feet in diameter burned into the ground around the Nether Gate. As soon as his first spell was cast, he began chanting in another language.
His front line collapsed, falling back under the pressure of the barbarian attack. Phane ignored them, the words of his spell tumbling off his tongue, each word given its due attention, each syllable uttered crisply and precisely.
Suddenly, the ground shook, stalling Zuhl’s charge. A moment later, the large magic circle rose forty feet into the air, forming a perfect plateau in a matter of seconds.
Hundreds of the men in Phane’s first legion were trapped between the barbarians’ charge and the cliff that had risen so unexpectedly behind them. The result was a loss of nearly half their number, trapped and slaughtered.
Isabel scanned the surface of the huge plateau. Phane, four hundred of his personal guards, all of the Acuna wizards, the wraithkin, Lacy, Tyr and a dozen of his men were safely on top while the rest of Phane’s army was spread out below, engaged with the barbarians on either side of the plateau as both forces flowed around it.
A dozen priests rose up on pillars of ice, forming shielded battlements to protect them from arrows while giving them windows to cast their spells through. Moments after each tower was formed, the priests began casting ice shards, a foot long and as sharp as glass, into the soldiers on top of the plateau.
Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept Page 44
