Jataan came up to his left about a half step back, allowing him ample room to work but closing a vulnerability in Alexander’s guard. The final push was quick and decisive. The conjured guardians were flawless swordsmen, quick and light, but without heart or instinct or experience or any of a hundred other things that make a warrior dangerous. The force knights fell with each stroke as Alexander and Jataan advanced, Anja following close behind.
They reached the far side of the corridor without further injury. As soon as they passed the threshold, the force knights vanished, leaving a subtle aura of magic filling the entire hallway again. Alexander opened the door to his Wizard’s Den and helped Tasia to a bed. She protested, but not too loudly. Her wound was deep.
Alexander handed Lita a healing potion. She helped Tasia sit up to drink it, then gently laid her back down and cast a healing spell.
“What do we face next?” Jataan asked.
Alexander nodded to himself as he sat heavily on the edge of the nearest bed and closed his eyes, taking a look at the next path they would need to negotiate. The stairs descended around and around a central shaft for over a hundred feet, some of them glowing with magic. Alexander moved in closer and found a variety of mechanical traps of gruesome and ingenious design distributed randomly but with terrifying frequency down the entire staircase.
He turned his focus to the central shaft, leaning over the railing at the top and looking down to the landing. He inspected more closely, looking for traps or wards, but found none other than those on the stairs themselves.
“Stay here,” he said, going to his chest and selecting a featherlite potion. “I’ll see you at the bottom.”
He drank the potion, then waited until the magic took effect before stepping over the railing and off the edge, falling quickly, the wind rushing by for a moment, before he slowed as he neared the ground, magic breaking his fall and depositing him safely at the base of the stairs.
When he opened the door to the Wizard’s Den, Jataan stepped out ready for a fight, then relaxed when he saw that all was calm.
“We’re through the worst of it,” Alexander said. “All that’s left are some wraithkin.”
“Is this Phane’s inner sanctum?” Jack asked.
“Part of it, I think. This level and the ones below it are where he did his demonic summoning. The stairs are this way.”
“Deeper still?” Jack said.
“I’m afraid so.”
Alexander led the way with his light raised. He kept his sight pushed out, searching the surrounding area for any hint of danger and finding a worrisome number of wraithkin. They were staying out of his light, blinking from shadow to shadow just the other side of the walls surrounding them.
He stopped at the top of a spiral staircase.
“Stay in the light … wraithkin are close.”
He led the way down slowly, keeping his light bright enough to flood the stairs with brilliance in both directions. They went down ten levels, passing floor after floor of summoning chambers and horrific-looking experimentation rooms. All the while, Alexander was tracking the progress of dozens of wraithkin blinking down, floor by floor, as they descended.
The stairs ended in a small chamber. Alexander stopped short of rounding the corner, sending his sight forward. In the middle of the room was a simple stone pedestal. At its center was a glowing red crystal spinning on its end like a top. It shined with powerful magic.
“More defenses,” he said, “and a bunch of wraithkin close enough to blink in.”
Everyone tensed a bit.
Alexander thought for a moment before coming to a decision.
“Fall back, one level up,” he said. “Stay in the light.”
The level above wasn’t defended. It was a cold unused laboratory that looked to have been in full operation when it had been abandoned and left to rot. Alexander filled the room with light, forcing a few wraithkin to blink into adjacent rooms.
He looked into the level below for the hallway he wanted and went to the spot just above it, cutting a hole in the floor with a few precise strokes. After a moment’s look, he dropped through the hole.
Chaos erupted from above, shouting and fighting. With a jolt of horror, he realized that the wraithkin had waited for him to separate from his friends. He quickly raised Luminessence, flooding both levels with brilliant light and searing away the demonic protection … the six wraithkin that had ambushed his friends all toppled over with looks of horror frozen on their faces.
A moment later Jataan lowered a limp and bloody Anja down to Alexander. He maneuvered her to the ground, letting her slide down his side so he could keep his light raised. Jack came next, holding a wound on his side. Then Jataan lowered Lita. Jack caught her, letting her gently to the ground. She’d been stabbed in the belly with a wraithkin blade. Her face was grey and her colors shone with pain. Jataan came through last, favoring a gash in his leg.
Alexander opened the door to his Wizard’s Den and he and Jataan carried their friends inside. He dimmed his light only after the door was closed, discovering that Luminessence had been projecting bright and protective light without his deliberate concentration.
“Anja was slammed into a wall,” Jack said. “She hit her head and fell like a rag doll.”
“Lita was stabbed with a wraithkin blade,” Jataan said in a monotone, more fear in his colors than Alexander had ever seen.
“Were both of you cut with the wraithkin blades as well?” Alexander asked, going to his chest and getting three healing potions.
Both nodded.
“My wound is minor,” Jataan said.
“I can manage,” Jack said, “though I wouldn’t mind some help with a bandage.”
Alexander sat Anja up in bed and tipped her head back. It lolled to one side. He fought off a wave of nausea. Her colors were alive and strong, but she looked like she was dead. He gently held her bloody head and poured the healing elixir down her throat, silently hoping that it would have enough power to help her. Once she had swallowed the potion, he eased her back onto the bed.
He took the second potion to Lita, helping her sit up to drink it. She tried to resist, tried to argue that the potion would do no good against a wraithkin wound, but Alexander poured it into her mouth anyway. He knew that it probably wouldn’t save her, but he also knew that it might—and besides, it was all that he could do at the moment. Jataan went to work cleaning and dressing her wound.
Alexander cleaned Jack’s wound. It wasn’t deep enough to be deadly under normal circumstances, but a wraithkin wound would take a long time to heal. Once he’d bandaged it, he checked Jataan’s dressing, which the battle mage had expertly applied to his own leg.
“Jack, I want you to stay here,” Alexander said.
“I might be able to help,” Jack said, wincing and almost keeling over when he tried to stand up. “Or not,” he muttered, sitting back down.
“Rest and keep an eye on our wounded.”
Jack nodded, looking up intently. “Be careful.”
Alexander raised his light and opened the door. Wraithkin vanished from the shadows when he stepped into the hallway, Jataan right behind him. He closed the door and started forward. A wraithkin appeared thirty feet down the hall. Alexander held his light and his pace. The wraithkin blinked away.
He reached the door that he’d been looking for and stepped up beside it, slipping his blade into the stone several inches outside the doorjamb at a sharp angle. Stepping across the door quickly, he sliced into the other side as well.
A moment later, the door exploded outward, sending stone and splinters into the opposite wall and filling the corridor with dust. Alexander pulled a splinter out of his cheek just a few inches from his eye, then he entered the room quickly, cutting down two sentinels that were just coming to life.
He looked around the room for the casket that held Hector Lal. It sat at an angle on a specially made rack as if on display. Alexander could see Hector through a window in the casket lid,
alive but suspended in time, a prisoner to his own folly, locked in a magical box.
“I’m sorry,” Alexander whispered, closing the distance quickly, slicing through the casket several times, cutting Hector across the head and torso, killing him instantly.
“I hope you’re watching, Siduri,” he said to the ceiling.
With renewed focus on his light, his Thinblade firmly in hand, he led Jataan back into the hallway. Two wraithkin were standing at each end.
“Great darkness is near, My Love,” Chloe said, spinning into existence and then vanishing again.
“I know,” Alexander said. “We’re getting close.”
He raised his light enough to deter the wraithkin and proceeded to his next target. He passed three more doors, stopping at a fourth. He could only imagine what lay within Phane’s laboratories, but he didn’t have time to worry about it at the moment.
He slashed through the door, causing the wards protecting it to blast it away, hurling it across the hallway. This time Alexander had an arm over his face to avoid flying debris. Wraithkin appeared down the hall, close enough to be burned with Alexander’s light, which had diminished somewhat from lack of attention.
He stood in the doorway, flooding both the hall and the room with light until Jataan had passed. A howl of fear filled the level, followed by several more. Alexander’s battle sense flared, revealing multiple threats. He raised his light, killing ten more wraithkin that appeared all at once. Their desperation told Alexander that he was close.
Then he saw the gate. It was made from the same dull black stone that the Reishi Gates were crafted from, but it was smaller and its colors weren’t nearly as expansive or complex. A single word was carved into the stone at the top of the arch. Alexander smiled to himself—he’d seen this and was prepared.
He laid his hand on the stone arch and in ancient Reishi said, “Open.”
Nothing happened.
He started to feel a touch of panic. Then the arch shimmered, the interior transforming into a passage leading to another room. Alexander stepped through as wraithkin blinked into the room they were leaving. Jataan darted through and Alexander closed the gate before any Wraithkin could get close enough to follow.
They had entered a simple room, twenty feet on a side with one door on the opposite wall. Alexander looked ahead, finding an empty hallway with a number of rooms on either side, all empty as well, and a large domed room through the double doors at the far end of the hall.
Through those doors was Alexander’s nightmare.
Suddenly, a shadow rose up, taking shape out of nothing, flickering into some monstrous form for a moment before transforming into a shard of black, shadowy force about the size of a sword. Alexander tried to raise his light, he tried to shout a warning, but it happened too quickly. The shadow stabbed Jataan through the back and out his gut, holding him up for a moment, then twisting slightly before vanishing. Jataan fell to the floor.
In the back of his mind, Alexander wondered why he hadn’t seen it coming. He opened the door, dragging Jataan into the Wizard’s Den, closing the door the moment P’Tal’s feet cleared the threshold, pulling him to a bed and carefully lifting him onto the covers.
He rushed to his chest for yet another healing potion. He’d thought the treasure trove of magic that Lucky had sent would be more than he would ever need, but he was starting to think otherwise.
Jataan grunted as he struggled to sit up. Alexander helped him drink the potion and eased him back down.
“You know you can wait for some of us to heal,” Jack said. “Anja looks like she’s on the mend. And so is Tasia.”
Jataan groaned unintelligibly.
“I’m so close,” Alexander said. “I have to do this right now, before they have time to organize a counterattack.”
He went to his lock box and removed the phylactery crafted and enchanted by Malachi Reishi to contain his soul and make him immortal.
“Chloe, I want you to stay inside the Wizard’s Den. Azugorath could hurt you.”
She buzzed into a ball of light, appearing a few feet in front of him, then floated up and kissed him on the cheek.
“Be safe, My Love.”
“I will, Little One.”
He raised his light and opened the door, stepping through quickly and closing it immediately. He didn’t hesitate, striding into the cold and empty hallway, his light held bright and high. He ignored the doors to either side on his way to the chamber at the end, the place where Phane was warehousing demons to power his war effort.
He moved to the side of the door on the left and sliced down through the hinges. It clattered to the ground. Alexander sent his sight inside.
The door opened onto a small observation deck twenty feet above the circular floor of the giant domed room. Most of the magic circles spaced evenly throughout the room held wraith, each serving as the power source for an individual wraithkin.
In the center, floating above them all, contained within three magical circles working in tandem, was Azugorath, the Wraith Queen.
Alexander felt a little flutter of fear. He’d come all this way to confront her, but now that he stood at the precipice, he found himself hesitating. After a moment, he started laughing at himself. His choice had been made long ago. He’d made it when he accepted the mantle of power, the title of Lord Reishi.
That’s what it meant to hold power responsibly. Power was only honorable and righteous when it was used to protect the innocent. The battle he faced was his duty because he’d chosen to have power over others.
He sheathed the Thinblade and took the phylactery from his belt, then raised Luminessence high as he strode up to the railing separating the observation deck from the domed room. The collective shriek of angst and fury at the sudden intrusion of light filled the room with a cacophony of such varied tone and magnitude that Alexander felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it.
Then he saw her eyes—red and hateful—but somehow alluring and seductive. He felt his energy begin to wane.
He tore his mind’s eye away from Azugorath’s mesmerizing gaze, casting his focus far across the world to Isabel, catching a single glimpse of her in the midst of a great and terrible battle, standing right next to Phane, right where she needed to be. He slammed back into himself, a thrill of fear coursing through him from the pulsating shriek of the wraithkin crashing into him like waves.
He raised his light brighter still, pouring his will into Luminessence, flooding the chamber with such brilliance that darkness could not survive. A collective howl filled the enormous room, pain stabbing into Alexander’s ears as it reached its crescendo. Then it suddenly stopped. In a wave moving away from him, the wraith occupying the magic circles covering the floor of the room were pushed from the world of time and substance by Alexander’s light—banished.
He let his light falter for just an instant, and in that instant, Azugorath was free of her bindings. She hadn’t been banished by Alexander’s light, just held at bay. When he let his light dim for that one moment, she shot forward.
Frantically, he pushed his will into the staff, raising his light again, but it was too little, too late. She was on him, surrounding him, suffocating him, filling him with cold dry death. He leaned into Luminessence and poured his last bit of will into the staff, raising the light to its zenith. She howled, a muffled, horrible sound, but held firm as she surrounded him with her dark and dreadful essence.
He could feel his life draining away, leaking into an abyss of hatred capable of devouring everything. Numbing coldness started at his fingertips and began to move into his hands and arms. No matter how he fought, the Wraith Queen smothered him with her life-stealing presence, relishing his struggle. His lungs burned with the need for air.
His strength all but gone, he remembered the phylactery in his hand. He formed the word in his mind and then spoke forcefully, but no sound came forth. He felt a wave of panic wash over him as he slumped to his knees, pouring his renewed will into Luminessence.
It flared with brilliance that threatened to drive her off, breaking her grip on him for one precious moment, just enough time to take a breath and say a word. He spoke it just before Azugorath collapsed in on him again, crushing him, suffocating him. Alexander rolled to his side, holding on to Luminessence for dear life even though his light was waning with his strength. Death was claiming him.
Dimly, he became aware that the darkness was swirling around him instead of crushing him like a thousand wet blankets. Having no strength left, he simply watched as the Wraith Queen finally realized what was happening. Part of her essence had entered the vessel … the spell had been cast.
Her howls of rage and fury crashed over Alexander like waves, seeming to cut into him, scarring him more deeply than any physical wound could.
The coldness whipped past him, swirling into the silver bottle until Azugorath’s scream diminished and she was gone, leaving Alexander lying on the floor, clutching the phylactery in one hand and the staff in the other and wondering when he was going to die.
He was certain that he was dying.
He could feel his life force draining away.
He thought of Isabel and how much he loved her. He hoped that his plan had worked. For a moment he thought about going to have a look, but he barely had the strength to keep his eyes open.
Everything went dark.
A cracking noise reverberated through the room, dust and small pebbles raining down, clattering on the floor, pelting him. The floor jumped suddenly, jolting him as half the room abruptly rose ten feet, shearing the walls and ceiling with a single shudder of the earth. Larger stones began to fall.
Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept Page 49
