Alexander watched, calmly assessing his strength and finding himself woefully lacking. He doubted that he could even get up. He felt so weak, so drained of energy and so absent of will that he found himself simply watching his life slip away with a sense of helpless detachment. A rock the size of a watermelon landed nearby, shattering into a dozen pieces and showering him with gravel. The sharp sting barely registered.
He felt like he was watching an hourglass run out. The only question that remained was would it run out before the ceiling collapsed in on him. His life force drained away like water, dripping its last out of his body.
He thought of Isabel.
And then everything went black.
Chapter 41
Isabel watched as the three summoned demons obeyed their orders, wondering how long Alexander had before he would be ambushed by Samael.
Naberius was flying toward the Rangers and infantry, but he was still a few minutes out. At the moment, Legion was the one that had her blood running cold.
She watched with a mixture of awe and horror as Legion multiplied through the ranks of Zuhl’s army in a matter of seconds, each few steps doubling his number until he reached a final count of one thousand exact duplicates of the original.
It happened so quickly that the barbarians didn’t have time to respond. Within seconds there were a thousand demonic warriors inside their line. Legion swept into them with wanton violence, killing with a delicate balance of cold precision and roaring, trembling rage.
Worse, when a barbarian did manage to cut one down, it was only a matter of a minute or so before it was replaced, bringing the number back to one thousand demonic warriors. Thousands fell in the first minutes of the onslaught.
Horns blared and the barbarians retreated, falling back in smaller units, scattering as they fled the front lines of the battle. Legion didn’t give chase, instead diminishing in proportion to the number of enemy soldiers he faced. Once the entire barbarian army was fleeing, he became a single warrior again, leaping back up onto the plateau and stopping two dozen feet from Phane.
“They are routed,” Legion said.
“Yes, well done. Hold there until I tell you otherwise,” Phane said, smiling with satisfaction at the sight of Zuhl’s army scattering into the distance.
Isabel thought she was losing her mind at first. The sound was faint and very distant, but it carried just enough that she could catch bits and pieces on the breeze. She was listening intently when the Acuna approached with the Babachenko at the lead.
“Prince Phane,” the Babachenko said, “may I ask that you send Legion to scour the invaders from the north of Andalia?”
Phane rubbed his chin, frowning to himself before shaking his head slowly.
“No, not yet,” he said. “Let’s win this battle decisively and then we can look to the rest of the world.”
“It looks like you’ve triumphed to me,” the Babachenko said. “Legion has swept aside the barbarians, and I have no doubt that Naberius is about to scatter the pretender’s army.”
Isabel caught another note on the breeze, a clear voice in the distance, a familiar voice.
“Patience,” Phane said to the Babachenko.
The little man pursed his lips.
Isabel listened. A shout, then a scream, then more shouting and screaming rose up. A clamor spread through Phane’s army, death and dying moving toward the plateau. Isabel’s mind raced. She listened closer, but heard only more sounds of fear and killing.
“General, what’s happening?” Phane snapped, when the noise distracted him from watching Naberius approach the Rangers.
“Reports of men attacking each other at random, Prince Phane,” Hargrove said.
Phane looked around wildly for just a second, before turning to Isabel.
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
Phane lifted her from the ground, crushing the air out of her with his magic as he drew her close, holding her a foot off the ground before him.
“Don’t play with me.”
“I don’t know for sure, but I can guess,” she said, a smile slowly spreading across her face.
He’d told her to be ready. He had a plan all along.
Phane dropped her. She stumbled but kept her feet.
“No matter,” he said, turning to Hargrove. “Tighten the personal guard around me.”
The general saluted and went about relaying the order.
Isabel called Slyder closer, still high overhead, but right above them, circling lazily on the wind. She scanned the people around her. Phane and the Babachenko, the High Overseer and seven Acuna wizards were fanned out around Phane’s inner cordon. Surrounding them were nearly a hundred wraithkin. Beyond them were four hundred soldiers in defensive bands.
Her eyes met Lacy’s. She winked. Lacy went a bit pale but nodded almost imperceptibly.
The screaming and shouting drew closer, right at the base of the plateau now. Steel against steel, followed by a wail of agony that trailed off into silence. There was a lull in the fighting and Isabel heard the music again.
She looked off toward the Rangers, sending her mind to Slyder for a moment to get a clearer view. The two legions of Rangers had split away from the legion of infantry. Several Sky Knights flew well above the fight with one higher still. Isabel looked closer and saw Wren riding behind Kiera. She was singing and her voice was carrying across the entire battlefield.
Noise from below drew Isabel’s attention. She looked down as Naberius landed in the middle of the infantry, howling a great battle cry. He didn’t strike with his halberd, instead planting the butt of it firmly in the ground beside him.
A wave of blackness seemed to pulse away from him through the soldiers for a hundred feet in every direction, spreading in a fraction of a second. Thousands of men screamed, contorting in pain as the darkness moved through them. Most fell to their knees, a few dropping to the ground and flailing around in agony. Those outside the range of the wave stood in stunned horror, watching helplessly as their brothers fell.
Another wave pulsed away from Naberius. The few men still on their knees fell over. Many died, others fought for their last breath.
Another pulse of darkness and everyone within a hundred feet of Naberius was dead. He tipped his head back and laughed, mocking, cruel and hateful.
He pulsed again.
Isabel thought she saw movement. Her blood went cold.
Another wave of darkness and a few of the corpses began to stir. Another and they all started getting to their feet. They weren’t human anymore, they weren’t even corpses. The dark energy radiating from Naberius had desiccated them almost entirely, mummifying their flesh and hardening their bones.
Another pulse and his army of several thousand undead raised their weapons in unison.
“Kill!” Naberius commanded.
The undead army turned against the Ithilian infantry surrounding them, sweeping into them by surprise—fearless, without pain, hungry to kill. The infantry broke, scattering away from the army of skeleton soldiers that had just been formed from the heart of their own legion.
Isabel returned to herself, shaken by what she’d just witnessed. Phane was looking out toward the battle and smiling.
“You see, gentlemen, two armies defeated effortlessly,” Phane said. “Just imagine what we’ll be able to do.”
The Babachenko bit his lip before forcing a smile. “Perhaps,” he said.
Just then a shout went up from within Phane’s personal guard.
Fighting broke out among several men on the periphery of the plateau. Phane muttered a few words under his breath, looking intently at the commotion.
“Rankosi,” he snapped.
The fighting intensified, with several more men joining in against everyone nearby. Isabel smiled to herself.
Another man caught her eye. He was walking through the cordon of soldiers, his eyes on Phane. Isabel had never seen this man before, but she could tell at a glance that he was formid
able. A soldier noticed him and moved to challenge, then looked right through him as if he didn’t even exist.
Another noticed him and then forgot him just as quickly. The man was dressed in the uniform of the Regency soldiers, but he moved altogether differently. He turned abruptly to avoid a cluster of people, passing a single soldier instead, unnoticed.
He moved through the wraithkin just as easily, drawing almost no notice, and when he did, he was forgotten a moment later.
One of the Acuna wizards pointed straight at him, shouting, “Grant!”
Several looked his way, but only a few saw him. Two of them began casting spells. Both stopped in midsentence, seeming confused. Those who hadn’t seen him a moment before could suddenly see him and they began casting spells.
He was close now, moving behind the cluster, Phane and the Babachenko facing away. Both turned at the warning.
Phane frowned, looking straight through Titus Grant.
Grant drew a thin-bladed dagger, walking in an arc around the cluster of wizards, alternately touching two or three minds at a time, blotting out their awareness of his existence entirely.
Phane and the Babachenko both locked eyes on him in the same moment, then both looked confused, staring off into the distance as if trying to remember something important that wouldn’t come to mind.
Grant circled behind them, dagger in hand. One of the Acuna cast a force-shard, missing entirely for fear of hitting Phane and the Babachenko.
Grant looked straight at Isabel and nodded respectfully, hastening his pace.
Two of the Acuna wizards pointed at him as he slipped up behind the Babachenko, driving the point of his dagger into the back of his skull, slicing once through the width of his brain before drawing the blade out and running for the cliff. One of the Acuna wizards hit him with a force-shard as he jumped off the edge of the plateau.
Isabel watched with a mixture of amusement and anticipation as the Babachenko slumped to his knees and then fell over on his face, dead.
Phane looked around a bit frantically, searching for the threat that had been so close only moments before. Fear seemed to grip him. He froze in place, his eyes darting this way and that while he remained perfectly still, as if moving might give away his location to a predator. He regained control after only a moment, scanning the battlefield for someone to engage, but there were no enemies nearby.
A few moments later, just over half of the wraithkin stopped in their tracks, old wounds opening, spilling their blood into the dirt where they fell.
Phane’s panic returned. His head snapped this way and that like a trapped animal. His eyes landed on Isabel.
She smiled at him. “He’s getting closer,” she said.
A soldier attacked several of the remaining wraithkin. They killed him quickly, but then another man attacked with total abandon a moment later, his rage drawing Phane’s attention.
“Rankosi!” he shouted. “Go back where you came from.”
He started casting a spell, his eyes fixed on a single soldier walking casually through the ranks, stabbing men in the back and then casting blame on someone else. Rankosi left a trail of bodies behind him, blood spilling out of fear and confusion and false belief.
Phane focused on the shade as he chanted the words of his spell.
Isabel called Slyder to her, scanning the area again and adding Tyr and several of his unwashed to her list of enemies in the immediate vicinity. The pirate pushed through the cordon, demanding to be let through. Phane nodded to the wraithkin to allow him to pass.
Tyr opened his mouth to say something but Phane stopped him with a raised hand, continuing to chant. Tyr looked angry at the rudeness, his face going a bit red, but he held his tongue, waiting for the arch mage to complete his spell.
More and more of Phane’s personal guard were fighting each other. Some had backed themselves up against the edge of the plateau and were warning everyone else to stay away, doing their best to avoid combat. One of them abruptly dropped his guard and his sword, turned and walked off the edge, screaming a moment later, then going silent a moment after that. Rankosi’s laugh echoed over the din of battle.
Slyder came down fast and hard, landing next to Isabel. She knelt down quickly, unfastening the slave master’s ring and slipping it on her finger. As she stood, she tossed Slyder safely into the air. Then she touched the ring to her collar. It popped open with a click. She threw it to the ground and scanned the battlefield.
Phane was preoccupied with his spell. The Acuna were watching the shade rip through Phane’s best soldiers, leaving a trail of carnage and betrayal, friend killing friend. Tyr was watching Phane with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance, six of his men standing around behind him, a few of them leering at Isabel. No one seemed to notice that she’d removed her collar.
Lacy was just twenty feet away, a wraithkin standing right next to her. A dead wraithkin, dagger still in its sheath, lay not ten feet away. Isabel touched her magic. Her spells were all there, but her access to the light was still blocked by Azugorath.
She remembered the room—that horrible room deep under the black tower filled with wraith, Azugorath at the center of it all, the source of so much of Phane’s dark power. Phane had gleefully told her the purpose of the lesser wraith: to power his wraithkin so that Azugorath could focus on her. And his plan had worked. The Wraith Queen could take Isabel and control her anytime that Phane wished.
But now Azugorath was screaming.
Isabel went to her knees, the wailing, shrieking howl inside her head too much to bear. She thought she might lose her sanity as Azugorath was forcibly ripped from her mind and from the world of time and substance.
Then there was silence. Clarity. Light.
Her link to the darkness was still there, but it was closed, manageable. More importantly, her link to the light was there as well, and she could touch it as easily as she could touch her nose.
She threw it open, letting the healing and rejuvenating light fill her up to overflowing, reveling in its pure, life-affirming goodness, placing her forehead on the ground out of simple gratitude for the gift of the light. After being deprived of her unique link to the realm of light for so long, she was even more acutely aware of just how lucky she was to have it.
She took a deep breath, drawing in the Maker’s power, filling herself with a feeling of unconditional love as she slowly got to her feet. Phane was turning toward her. A moment after seeing the rest of his wraithkin fall all at once, he knew that she was a threat … but he was too late.
Her hand raised, a kind and gentle smile on her face, Isabel unleashed her Maker’s light at Phane. He threw his hands up in panicked defense, hurling power into his shield, but to no avail. The Maker’s light passed through his magical defenses as if they didn’t even exist, striking him squarely in the chest, passing through him and flooding his being with love and serenity—awakening his dormant conscience for the second time in his life.
The moment her spell lapsed, Isabel shook off the peaceful feelings of love, thrusting all of her righteous anger for Phane into the fore of her mind, transforming her emotions from love to rage as she sprinted for the nearest dead wraithkin, snatching his dagger and turning her attention to Phane. He stood stunned, looking off into the distance, wearing a look of great sadness.
She lunged, thrusting toward his heart, driving with all of her strength. She was close. Fully committed to the attack.
Phane’s expression transformed from sorrow into twisted, triumphant glee in an instant. Less than a blink later, Isabel’s hurtling lunge at Phane was stopped in midstrike. It felt like she’d run into a wall. Her blade was ripped from her hand and tossed aside, she was lifted from the ground and held, her arms crushed to her sides, her body squeezed so tightly that she could hardly breathe.
“Hello, Mother,” Rankosi said from a distance of about two feet, a smile of pure malice growing across his face. “I really couldn’t have done this without you. Not only did you let me into t
he world without precondition—a big mistake—you just gave me exactly what I needed to take Phane: guilt.” He tipped his head back and laughed as the Acuna wizards started to back up.
Isabel was stunned speechless, not that she could draw enough breath to speak. The implications of her actions cascaded through her mind, leading to the inevitable conclusion that she had just doomed the world.
It didn’t take long to arrive at the only solution she had left.
She had to die.
As long as she lived, Rankosi would be loose in the world. If she died, he would be banished.
Phane might win, but he wasn’t going to consume the world, just the next thousand years.
Rankosi smiled at her as if reading her mind. With a gesture, he put the slave collar back around her neck and then took the ring off her finger.
“You’ll live a long and eventful life, Mother. Your friends on the other hand, will die screaming. Especially you,” he said, turning a leering gaze on Lacy. “I intend to violate you in every way possible for your stubborn insolence.”
Lacy went whiter still.
“I want to know what’s going on here,” Tyr demanded. “We had a deal. I’ve upheld my part of the bargain, now where’s my sword?”
“Ah, yes of course, the Thinblade,” Rankosi said with a joyful smile. “I’ve dispatched one of my Master’s vassals to retrieve the sword and the man who currently carries it. Both should be along shortly. Is there anything else I can do for you right now, Lord Tyr?” His tone and demeanor changed markedly, his eyes going hard, glittering with malice and power as he spoke.
Tyr tensed, a bit taken aback by the sheer intensity of Phane’s shift in mood.
“No, thank you, Prince Phane,” he said, a tremor of fear in his voice.
“Excellent,” Rankosi said, all smiles again, turning back to Isabel almost as an afterthought. She was starting to lose consciousness from lack of air. Every breath was shallow, just enough to keep her awake. He dropped her with a gesture, smiling at her as she fell, gasping for air, curling into a ball and struggling to come to terms with how badly things had just gone.
Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept Page 50
