Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept

by David A. Wells

  He pointed to the door across the room. Jataan took up a position next to it. Once the last of his friends was through the hole in the wall, he raced to the door and through without hesitation, leading them down a narrow service corridor that accessed a number of Phane’s active laboratories and workspaces.

  Once they’d passed several rooms, the service corridor met a main hallway that ran perpendicular to it. Alexander walked down the hall quickly and quietly, stopping at a heavy door. It opened to a small room, six feet to a side, with only a railing for the far wall. Beyond the railing was a ten-foot-by-ten-foot shaft running vertically through most of the black tower.

  Alexander opened his Wizard’s Den and retrieved a featherlite potion.

  Jack made no move from the railing. “You might want to drop something before you jump,” he said.

  Jataan stepped up to the railing with a piece of firewood. He looked to Alexander, who nodded with a shrug. The log fell for a moment before hitting something strung across the shaft that cut it in two. A moment later a plane of magical energy flared, searing both pieces of wood black. The two pieces continued falling, trailing streamers of smoke until they became entangled in something that Alexander couldn’t see until he sent his sight in closer. An enormous web filled the entire shaft for several levels—hundreds of bright red spiders were crawling all over it.

  “Nice call, Jack,” Alexander said, returning to his chest and trading the featherlite potion for a potion of gaseousness.

  “Perhaps an abundance of caution is in order,” Tasia said, leaning slightly over the railing and sending a torrent of fire raging down the shaft. Alexander backed away, raising his hands to ward off the sudden heat. Tasia poured power into her dragon fire, pushing searing flames into the lowest level of the shaft. She held it for a few moments more and then released it, plunging the world into silence.

  “I suspect you’ll encounter fewer surprises this way,” she said, strolling into the Wizard’s Den.

  “If by surprises, she meant life of any kind, I think she’s probably right,” Jack said, shielding his face with his hand as he looked over the railing.

  Alexander gave it a minute to cool before closing his friends into his Wizard’s Den and drinking the potion of gaseousness. A few moments passed before he abruptly became insubstantial and incorporeal, nothing but a cloud of vapor shaped like a man. With a thought, he flowed over the railing, falling slowly through a variety of deterrents that had been prepared for anyone attempting to pass through the air shaft.

  Several areas had multiple strands of fine wire stretched taut from side to side. Other sections had magical traps but none were triggered by Alexander’s less-than-substantial passage. Within a few minutes, he was at the bottom of the shaft, a large room with a giant grate for a floor. Beneath was a massive central sewer drain for the entire tower with multiple inflows.

  Alexander was momentarily grateful that Phane didn’t trust real people enough to let them into his tower. He drifted under a door and into a musty old storage room filled with ancient-looking furniture collecting dust. He shifted back into solid form and opened his Wizard’s Den.

  Anja wrinkled her nose when she stepped out, but said nothing.

  “This way,” Alexander whispered.

  They were in an area of the tower several levels below the surface—it seemed to be reserved for the storage of things that nobody wanted. Alexander hurried through the empty halls. Beneath the sewers was a series of sublevels accessible only through a guarded and warded staircase that was itself only accessible from Phane’s personal quarters in the higher levels of the tower.

  Alexander found the rounded wall that formed the outside of the staircase, cutting into it without hesitation. He headed down, hearing faint echoes of running water as the staircase passed through the sewer levels and descended into the sublevels.

  The stairs ended well beneath the surface in a room fifty feet on a side with a forty-foot arched ceiling. A garden made entirely of stone plants and trees filled the space. Interspersed between the sculpted vegetation were statues of monsters, each of a similar sort—doglike heads with black fangs, brutish bodies with broad shoulders and bat wings, oversized arms ending in claws, and raptor talons for feet; each looked frighteningly real and shone with the colors of magic.

  A single exit stood on the opposite wall. Alexander sent his sight out, searching for a hidden passage or a second door but found nothing. After a more careful look, he realized that the next section was designed with him in mind, or at least with his Thinblade in mind.

  Twenty feet wide and ten feet high, the corridor ran straight through the bedrock for two hundred feet to a set of switchback stairs that went down fifty feet before opening into another corridor at a right angle to the one above. It ran for another two hundred feet before ending in a similar set of stairs and another identical corridor fifty feet deeper. A total of four corridors, each fifty feet beneath the last and each turning at a right angle to the previous made it almost impossible to cut through to the lower levels.

  “Those things are going to come to life the moment we step out there,” Alexander said. “Unfortunately, this is the only way, and it’s going to get worse farther in.”

  Anja drew her sword. Jack tossed up his hood. Lita cast her shield spell. Alexander drew the Thinblade, keeping Luminessence in his left hand. Jataan nodded readiness when Alexander looked to him.

  “Now!” he said, sprinting toward the nearest gargoyle, slashing it in half as it came to life, its body returning to stone as parts of it hit the floor and shattered. He raised his light, but the gargoyles seemed immune to it.

  Jataan reached the next closest as it unfurled its wings. He drove a short spear into the creature’s neck and broke off its head with a sharp wrenching motion to the side.

  One leapt over Alexander and came down on Anja. She stepped aside and swept through its wing and arm with her broadsword, shattering both and causing the unnatural creature to crash into the floor, smashing into pieces.

  Tasia burned the wings off another and Lita knocked one out of the air with a light-lance.

  Alexander dodged as his battle sense took over, narrowly avoiding an attack from behind, then taking the gargoyle’s foot as it passed overhead. Another gargoyle right behind the first landed on top of him, its raptor talons gripping him by the shoulders, crushing into him.

  It launched into the air, carrying Alexander five feet, then ten before Jataan’s spear drove through the place where the creature’s heart should have been. Despite the spear sticking through its chest, the gargoyle carried Alexander another five feet into the air. He slashed wildly at the beast but his range of motion was severely hampered by the crushing grasp of its talons on his shoulders. A light-lance hit its wing, burning a hole through it.

  Alexander felt the world slow to a moment, then flash by all at once, as the creature dropped him to the floor. He heard a crack when he hit, pain shooting up his leg. He tumbled to the ground and rolled into a ball, trying to focus on the battle, but unable to get past the agony radiating from his leg. Once he came to a stop, he looked at his wound, sending his sight into his leg and seeing the bone broken in two places. He winced to himself.

  Fire erupted from Tasia’s hands, a jet of orange-red heat leaping to the nearest gargoyle and melting its wings in a matter of seconds. The last one tried to attack Anja but she hacked its legs off before it could land on her, then finished it by shattering its head and torso with a single, well-placed blow.

  Alexander opened his Wizard’s Den, silently thanking Balthazar Reishi for incorporating such a capability into the Sovereign Stone. Jack and Jataan carried him inside to a cot. He closed the door after everyone was inside and lay back, closing his eyes and probing his injury again.

  After a few moments he sat up with some effort.

  “It’s broken right here, and right here,” he said to Lita. “You’ll have to pull it straight and then realign the bones right after I drink a healing
potion.”

  “That’s going to be extremely painful,” Lita said.

  “I know, but we don’t have time to let the potion fix my bones. If you can get them lined up, I’ll be able to fight sooner.”

  She frowned for a moment, seeming to consider counterarguments before nodding agreement.

  “Jataan, I need you to hold him down,” she said. “Jack, he’ll need something to bite down on and of course a healing potion.”

  After a few moments everyone was in place.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” she said.

  He took a deep breath and drank the healing potion, noting the dull pain in his leg as he put a roll of leather in his mouth and lay back. Jataan and Anja held him down. He closed his eyes, sending his vision into his leg. Lita got a careful grip on his ankle, clenching her teeth before gently but firmly pulling his leg straight.

  Alexander screamed around the bite piece, pain drowning out everything else for a few moments, flooding into him and momentarily denying him his sanity. He seemed to remember himself just a moment before Lita began to slowly relax the tension on his leg. He caught his breath as another wave of pain jolted him past the point of awareness of anything else. She gently let go. He screamed again, struggling to look into his leg at his bones, but failing to do any more than pass out from the pain.

  Chapter 39

  He woke feeling groggy, with echoes of agony hovering nearby. He knew that there was a great source of pain somewhere close, but he couldn’t quite remember anything about it. He held very still, measuring his breath, extending his awareness until his circumstances came back to him in a rush … along with an aching throb in his leg.

  He sent his vision into his injury, searching out the places where his bones had broken. He found them mending, but less than perfectly. He would have a limp unless he wanted to deliberately break his leg again—not a prospect that he was eager to entertain. He had to admit though, given the damage of the original break, Lita saved him from a crippling injury by resetting his bones before the potion did its work.

  He sat up stretching his leg gingerly, wincing as the dull ache transformed into a sharp stabbing pain. He took a quick breath, easing his feet to the floor.

  “You should stay in bed,” Lita said. “Your leg still has healing to do.”

  “I know,” he said almost to himself, looking down at the floor between his feet. Try as he might, he couldn’t see a way to proceed without spending more time recuperating. Feeling a great sense of defeat, Alexander lay back down, closing his eyes tightly.

  “Lita, would you cast your healing spell on my leg, please?”

  “Of course,” she said, coming to his side. She began with her diagnostic spell, frowning at what she saw.

  “I already know,” Alexander said.

  She pursed her lips and nodded, beginning her healing spell.

  Alexander drifted off to sleep again, waking after what seemed like only a few minutes. His leg still hurt, but it was strong enough to bear weight, especially with Luminessence to lean on.

  He got to his feet, testing his strength and balance and finding himself less stable than he would have liked.

  “We can wait until you’re fully healed,” Anja said.

  “No, we can’t,” Alexander said, drawing the Thinblade. “Phane is nearly to the Nether Gate.” He opened the door, waiting for some enemy or another to present itself. When none did, he ventured forth, sending his sight ahead to search out the nearest threat. He didn’t have far to go. Midway down the long corridor were a dozen sentinels standing in formation across the hall, three rows of four.

  He walked to the threshold of the hallway, trying to ignore the pain of each step and stopped, raising his light. The stone guardians didn’t react. He stepped over the threshold and all twelve of them woke at once, their eyes coming alight with an ember-red glow. They began marching in step.

  As they approached, Tasia lit one on fire, a torrent of flame jetting from her hands to the stone guardian. It scarcely even changed color. She raised an eyebrow at it.

  “You have to hit them hard enough to break them,” Alexander said, holding his ground and waiting for the enemy to come to him.

  Anja and Jataan spread out.

  When the sentinels got close, they sprang forward with surprising speed and agility, the first row of four launching themselves at Anja, Tasia, Alexander, and Jataan all at once.

  Anja turned sideways when the sentinel lunged at her, his spear cutting her tunic across the front. She added speed to her defensive spin, bringing the pommel of her sword around into the back of the sentinel’s head, shattering the stone into a hundred pieces and dropping the enemy where it stood.

  Tasia slipped inside her attacker’s spear thrust with an annoyed frown, grabbed the stone guardian by the shoulders and threw it forty feet across the floor.

  Alexander waited for the strike to come in his mind’s eye, stepping aside a moment before reality caught up with his sight, bringing the Thinblade across the sentinel and then back again, cutting it into chunks in a matter of seconds.

  Jataan met his attacker, shifting away from the spear strike and landing a powerful blow with the oversized war hammer that materialized in his hands. He hit the sentinel’s shield squarely, a wave of hairline cracks spreading out across it, then into the sentinel’s arm and finally through the rest of its body. When it tried to move, it broke off at the knees, toppled forward and shattered into gravel.

  Another sentinel stabbed at Anja. She rolled away from the strike but at the cost of her balance. The sentinel lunged in and smashed her with its shield, sending her crashing to the floor and leaving her stunned as it closed on her.

  Tasia seemed on the verge of losing her temper as another sentinel attacked her, followed almost immediately by another. She caught the first by the wrist, throwing it past her. The second struck, leaving a thin red line across her belly. She closed quickly, grabbing it by the throat, picking it up and whipping it around and around before smashing the back of its head into the wall with such force that it shattered.

  Jataan waded into the four sentinels coming for him and Alexander, sweeping his war hammer in a great arc across their legs, taking three down with a single stroke. The fourth lunged at him. He parried the spear point aside with his left hand while bringing the hammer around and jabbing the top of it into the sentinel’s knee, breaking the leg off and knocking the sentinel to the ground.

  Alexander lunged, trusting that his good leg would support him when he landed, whipping out the Thinblade and catching the hip of the sentinel raising a spear over Anja. Its leg fell off with a stroke. Alexander lost his balance and crashed to the ground, rolling onto his back as quickly as he could regain his senses. His leg hurt—enough for the pain to be distracting even in the face of closing enemies.

  The one-legged sentinel hopped for a moment, turning toward Alexander, but fell a moment later. Jack dragged Anja away from the downed but still dangerous sentinel. Alexander managed to regain control in time to sweep the Thinblade through the stone guardian as it crawled toward him.

  Jataan made short work of the remaining guardians, breaking the three that he had toppled before they could regain their feet and then shattering the two that Tasia had downed.

  “More rest,” Lita said, kneeling next to Alexander.

  He tested his leg, finding it weak and in pain but strong enough to support his weight, so he got to his feet.

  “There’s no time right now,” he said, limping down the hall, leaning heavily on Luminessence. At the far end, a door opened onto the staircase. Peering over the railing, he could see the next floor fifty feet below. He took a step back, resting his hand on the wall to steady himself as he sent his sight down. The stairs opened into a hall nearly identical to the one they had just traveled. It was twenty feet wide, ten feet high and two hundred feet long, ending in another staircase going down.

  In the middle of the hallway, three creatures were floating in giant bubble
s of softly glowing green magical light. They looked like they were frozen in time, which was good considering their appearance.

  They looked like insects, similar to a preying mantis, with four legs and two arms. Their light-green exoskeleton looked almost like armor. Two large eyes were lidded with chitin, closing them off from all light while they slept. Antennae sprouted from their foreheads which swept back quickly, covering their oversized skulls with a carapace shield. Each was armed with a glaive. It was hard to judge given that they were each curled up in a ball, but Alexander estimated they would stand six feet tall and weigh two hundred pounds. Worse still, each had expansive and powerful colors.

  He sat down and quietly explained what they faced as best he could.

  “We could try and sneak by,” Jack said.

  “The hallway itself is spelled,” Alexander said. “One step, invisible or not, and I’m pretty sure they’ll wake up.”

  “Any idea what they can do?” Jack asked.

  Alexander shrugged.

  “If they’re armed with bladed weapons, then they can bleed,” Jataan said.

  “There’s only three of them, right?” Anja said. “I say we rush ’em.”

  “The fact that there’s only three of them is what bothers me,” Alexander said. “That and their colors.”

  “So what then, are we going to turn around?” Anja said.

  Alexander looked up at her and sighed. “No, we’re going to rush ’em, but I need rest first.”

  He opened his Wizard’s Den and hobbled inside. He silently apologized to Isabel, feeling like he was letting her down with each delay, though he knew that he would just be a liability in battle in his current condition.

  Lita started to cast her spell but he stopped her.

  “Give me another potion,” he said.

  “You’ll be out longer.”

  “I know, but I’ll be stronger for it.”

  She nodded approvingly. “About time you grew some common sense,” she said, bustling off to the chest and retrieving a healing potion.