Another came out of the rain from her left, and she reacted with grace and speed, spinning away and flicking her blades at the passing cadaver’s hamstrings, causing it to fall on its face as the muscles there were suddenly severed. It smacked heavily into the slick grass and started attempting to struggle to its feet once again, but Shawna pounced and thrust her blade through the back of its neck, ending its struggle before it could get started.
Suddenly she felt her braid yanked painfully backward, and her head was jerked toward the sky and the breath knocked from her lungs as she found herself on her back, the corpse she’d already beaten staring down at her. She panicked, and blood dripped into her face from the gaping wound in the thing’s throat as it reached for her neck with its right hand. She slashed her left blade at the thing’s reaching arm, severing it at the elbow. The appendage, suddenly limp, fell onto her chest. She recoiled from it, but had to hack savagely at the thing’s neck again as it kept coming, bending down and trying to bite her.
The magical steel parted the creature’s head from its body with barely a vibration of impact, and it almost bounced off of her as it rolled down the hill. The dead thing fell atop her, and she had to push it savagely off of her as she tried to get to her feet. She kicked it as she got up in frustration, cursing at it. The damned thing had tried to bite her!
She glanced around quickly, falling again into Light Stance, but there were no more of the things near her. They all seemed to be rushing off to her right, where D’Jenn and Allen were involved in a melee with another smaller group. If the larger group reached them before they could do something to thin their ranks, it would be over for them. She started to run toward them, to help, but stopped as someone came out of the rain to her left.
He was a strange, devilish looking man. He was completely hairless, devoid of even eyebrows as far as Shawna could tell. He was thin, but muscular and graceful. There was only a studded leather vest covering his torso, and part of it was scorched as if it had been in an incredibly hot fire. Even the steel of the studs integrated into the vest were melted and misshapen. The skin beneath that mark was pink, blistered, and even a little blackened across his right shoulder and even part of the way up that side of his neck, but the man didn’t seem to favor the burn as he moved. In fact, he didn’t seem to notice it at all.
He wore dark leather pants tucked into hobnailed boots, and an arming belt around his waist. There were scars up and down his arms – in fact, his entire body was crisscrossed with a veritable map of scars that appeared to be the remnants of battles fought with the blade. Enough, it seemed, for an entire century’s worth of duels and wars. But some of the scars were different – more regular, patterned, as if they were runes or text of some sort. Upon the undersides of his forearms was a pair of raised brands – the Swords and Vines of a Marked Blademaster. He carried a slender longsword in one hand of a design that she hadn’t seen before. Its blade wasn’t as wide as the more popular versions, but was pointed and graceful while still appearing to be strong. The hilt was half again as long as it should have been. In the other hand was a simple poniard-style dagger, long and deadly.
“You’re Marked,” he said, smiling. The expression seemed painful on him, somehow. His eyes were such deep wells of sadness that Shawna almost dropped her guard.
Almost.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” she warily replied, “I am. Your Marks, though, appear to have been branded. How did you come about them?”
“In my day, this is how they Marked new swordarms. The hammer and needle weren’t very popular, then,” he said.
Shawna peered at him suspiciously. She’d never met any Blademaster who was branded instead of tattooed, or heard of one for that matter. Granted, her Marks were young, yet, but still; there was something strange about this odd looking man before her. He gave her the chills, to say the least.
“You’re the Vilth?” she asked, her heart fluttering in her chest.
He laughed bitterly, “No. I am not. I am only another pawn in this game, as you are.”
“You work with him, though.”
“Yes.” Another forced smile.
Shawna took a deep breath and squared herself, “It seems, then, that we must be enemies.”
“It seems so. Perhaps you will be the one. I can only hope,” the odd man said, smiling that forlorn grimace of his. The comment struck Shawna as strange, but she moved on with the ritual, not caring to wonder on the matter. These people were at least in some way responsible for the death of her family.
They would pay.
“My name is Shawna Llewan,” she said, moving her right blade up to salute the dark man before her, touching the hilt to her nose, “and my Mark is two years old.”
“I am Maarkov the Unnamed,” he replied, saluting Shawna in return, “and my Mark is ninety four years old.”
Shawna’s blood ran cold. Had he just said ninety four years?
“Die with honor, Maarkov Unnamed,” she replied, forcing her voice to a steady cadence.
“Die with honor, Shawna Llewan.”
****
Dormael strode down the hill after D’Jenn, spear held low, Kai held ready. D’Jenn rushed headlong after his brother, and Dormael thought that if he walked a little further to the left and started tossing a little power around, he could help them out by thinning the ranks of the cadavers that were headed toward them. He spotted one already, far down the hill and to his left that appeared to be headed directly up at Dormael.
D’Jenn suddenly ducked one off to his right, and it was much closer. It simply adjusted its target, seeing Dormael standing there just beyond, and continued on its path, right toward him. Dormael smiled and reached out with his Kai, gripping the corpse in the unyielding power of his magic. It suddenly froze, rising from the ground so abruptly that the rainwater coming off of it continued forward in a spray. Dormael grimaced and made a clenching gesture with his right hand, and the body suddenly cracked wetly as it was compressed into the shape of a rough ball, as if it were grasped in a giant, invisible version of Dormael’s own hand.
He sent it hurtling into the other corpse to his left, and the velocity was so great that it tumbled the dead body end over end as it flew backward. He felt the impact through his magic, and though it looked gruesome, it felt oddly satisfying. Dormael smiled and continued forward down the hill.
He fried another cadaver with a flash fire that was so hot it charred him before the rain could manage to put him out, the flames simply blossoming from inside his body. Another came running out of the storm, and Dormael tripped it with a simple touch of pure force from his Kai, and when the thing fell on its back, Dormael rammed the blade of his spear through the thing’s eye. Its struggles ceased immediately.
He felt something then. Dormael realized he was still wearing the armlet as it came suddenly to life and began singing its alien song in response to another song coming from somewhere out in the storm. It lifted from his chest sharply and was pulled with inevitable strength from the thong around Dormael’s neck, snapping the cord.
Dormael reacted instinctively, Splintering the song that had reached for the armlet, and catching the artifact again in his own magical grip, bringing it quickly back to his hand again. The grass around him, and in a straight line down the hill, was suddenly frozen solid as the Splintered energies touched the world.
There was a man at the end of that line of solid ice. A man in a dark, flowing cloak, standing with his arm upraised toward Dormael. Dormael knew that the man was looking at him just as he was looking at the cloaked man. He knew immediately who it was, and could feel the pure malice in the man’s song.
It was the Vilth.
Time seemed to slow down for an instant, and Dormael’s hand clutched hard to the Third Sign against further attempts to simply take it from him with magic. There was something strange about this man’s song in the magic. It was a bitter melody, sharp and quick, but heavy and slightly melancholy as well. It spread out into the
world around him, slapping against everything instead of touching it, sinking teeth into things instead of seeping in.
Entwined with it was that blackened, soot-like feeling that Inera’s own Kai had been augmented by. This man, though, was much stronger with it. It lay over his song like an oily residue you had no hope of cleaning, and emanated from the man like smoke from a burning corpse. It was so prevalent that the world around him seemed to cower and recoil from him in Dormael’s senses, as if the very fabric of reality disdained his existence. Dormael felt dirty for even touching upon it with his Kai.
And he was strong – at least as strong as Dormael, if not more so.
He felt the smile the man was favoring him with through his senses, and through the way the Vilth’s Kai fluttered slightly in amusement. It was a mocking thing, devoid of any real mirth. The cadavers all seemed to be avoiding him now in favor of his companions, leaving him to their master to deal with. Everyone was tied up fighting their own battles on the hill, leaving Dormael to face this bastard down.
It was just him, and the Vilth.
Dormael realized his mistake just an instant too late as the man’s Kai whipped outward. He’d given the Vilth time to recover from the numbing feeling of the Splintering, wasted precious instants when Dormael would have been at an advantage. One of the same stones he and D’Jenn had hurled at the cadavers came tumbling toward him from the rain blurred morning, whirling as it flew for him with more speed than would have been necessary to kill him. Dormael smacked the thing aside with his power, and the backlash of force made him stumble backwards and almost lose his footing in the wet grass, but he was able to recover. He heard a great cracking sound as it must have hit what remained of the stone wall behind him.
Dormael didn’t wait this time. He bounded forward, sprinting with all he had, trying to close the distance between himself and the Vilth. He felt the man’s Kai materializing an attack as he ran, and the feeling was familiar to him. He saw a bolt of lightning start to form in front of him, and Dormael adjusted his own Kai to respond.
That was the Vilth’s first mistake. Dormael was good with lightning.
He reached out, forming a channel with his magic in front of his running body and directed it around his shoulders and down the haft of his spear, just as he had back on the Stormy Sea. The lightning arced across the shortening distance between Dormael and the Vilth, but instead of striking Dormael it ran down the channel he’d made, flashing down his shoulders and out the haft of his spear, running down the blade – to arc brightly right back at the Vilth.
He was able to get a hand up in time, and the lightning bounced off of it and into the grass beyond him, but Dormael’s magic had surprised him, and he was on his heels. Dormael was on him before he could ready another spell, thrusting his spear at him one-handed while clutching the Third Sign tightly in the other. It was an awkward way to fight, but Dormael hadn’t any place on his person to store the thing except for the leather thong around his neck, and it was now broken.
The Vilth moved quickly, slipping with serpentine grace out of the path of Dormael’s thrusts, but Dormael kept him moving, backpedaling and forcing him to stay on the defensive. Dormael was readying another spell the entire time; using the training he’d received at the Conclave to mate his physical attacks with his magical ones. He could feel the Vilth attempting to pull his own magic together, but every time Dormael’s spear thrust forward, seeking his throat, it forced the man to break his concentration and dodge the deadly blade of the spear. The power of the Vilth was vast and intimidating, but this was exactly the sort of situation that Victus had trained his Warlocks for, and Dormael was well in his element.
He rammed another thrust at the Vilth’s throat, forcing him to slip to Dormael’s left. At the same instant, he pushed his left hand toward the Necromancer and pushed with his Kai, intending it to be an attack of pure force that would send the man sprawling into the grass.
But something happened when his magic touched the armlet.
His Kai burst out from his left hand, but as it did the frantic song of the Nar’doroc burst out and entwined with his magic, and instead of pure force, something else entirely happened. White hot fire plumed out from his fist in a great cloud, engulfing the Vilth in a sudden conflagration. Dormael was just as surprised as the Vilth, and jumped back as it happened, ending the attack in his confusion, the magic he’d summoned unraveling.
The Vilth screamed in pain. The fear of fire was a primal thing, and with good reason. The fire from the armlet burned hot and true, no matter the rainfall. It crawled over the man’s cloak with hungry intensity, seeking his flesh with burning hot tendrils. The Vilth struggled for an instant, and then threw his arms out. Dormael heard him scream as his magic pushed outward, tearing the burning cloak from his body and dissolving it in midair. The fire died with it.
The Vilth stood shirtless, wearing only leather pants and an odd satchel around his shoulder. He had two curving knives at his belt, heavier on the end than near the hilt, and they were almost as long as a short sword. His skin was burnt, but not badly enough to be fatal or even debilitating. Dormael gasped as he saw the Vilth’s form for the first time.
He was covered in the ritualistic scars that Inera had been sporting, but to such an extent that the very thought of going through the process made Dormael cringe. The rune scars covered his entire chest and stomach, webbed over his arms, and even created curving lines radiating out from his eyes to swirl over the lines of his face and head. It made his visage even more repugnant and frightening than it already would have been.
His eyes were sunken and rimmed with red, as if it had been days since he’d last slept. His body was just shy of being emaciated, and taught muscle webbed with bulging veins pulsed just beneath his skin. Watching him move was like watching a flayed man performing some odd dance. It was fascinating and sickening at the same time.
“You have something that belongs to me,” the Vilth hissed.
“Do I?” Dormael spat.
“Oh, yes. Two things, actually – the artifact, and the little girl you stole from the good Colonel Grant. It took me years to actually track someone down who fit the requirements, and you just swooped in and stole her from his regrettably inept hands. I’ll have them both now, if you want to keep your skin intact,” he rasped. His voice was old, wasted and dry somehow.
“I have a better idea,” Dormael said, “Run back to your Emperor and tell him that chasing down these artifacts just may be the worst thing he could ever attempt in his life. Tell him that if he wants to keep his life, he’ll stop. Then, open your veins because you’re an abomination. I’m obligated to kill you, anyway. You could make it so much easier on the both of us.”
The Vilth showed his teeth as his mouth stretched into a rictus that was a mockery of a smile as he asked softly, “You have no idea what is going on here, do you?”
Dormael was tired of the interplay, so he answered the man by taking the armlet and tucking it behind his belt, weaving the sinuous silver through the belt until the jewel rested against his hip, and the band stuck out a bit from his side. It was the best he could come up with, and his only option unless he wanted to continue to fight one-handed. He gripped his spear with his other hand and began slowly twirling it.
“Here’s my idea. If you want this armlet, you’ll have to pry it off of my dead body. Come get it, you ugly son of a whore.”
“My pleasure,” the Vilth said.
Dormael screamed out in rage as he met the Vilth’s attack with one of his own, and power began to fly around in deadly chaos as the two Blessed closed to do battle.
****
Allen’s world toppled end over end as something cold and large hit him hard enough to drive the breath out of his chest. Something was holding onto him during the tumble, something with large hands as strong as steel manacles. It reeked of blood and rot, and he knew somehow that it wasn’t one of the strange corpses he’d been chopping up a few moments ago. If the kettle
-like noises that the thing was making as they struggled and rolled across the ground was any indication, it was a creature like the one he’d killed in the sewers beneath Ishamael.
As if animated, bloodthirsty cadavers weren’t enough.
Allen had lost his weapons when the thing had slammed into him, and had been dazed but coherent enough to tuck his head to his chest and roll with it, struggling to keep it from his throat. The large saber he wore on his side jabbed painfully into his hip as the ground came back into view again, then the sky. He cursed, holding as tight as he could to the thing that struggled against him.
His back hit the ground again, and he finally lay flat as the thing pushed off of his stomach and jumped away from him. Allen sucked in a breath and forced himself to rise against the pain, knowing that if he stayed on his back he was dead. He made it up onto one knee in a crouch and whipped the saber from its sheath, looking around desperately for the thing that had pounced on him.
He caught sight of it; a few links away and to his left, crouched like a hunting cat in the tall grass. Its twin burning eyes flashed once at Allen, and it let out another shriek that sounded oddly like a challenge to him. Allen answered it in kind, bellowing his rage and rising to his feet, beckoning the thing to come forward.
It obliged him, pumping itself from the ground in some sort of twisted animalistic shamble that was eerily quick. Allen wasn’t going to wait for the thing to come to him, however. If he got on the defensive with this thing then it would overpower him with ease. Allen rushed forward, holding the saber low in both hands, and as the thing pounced for him again, Allen met it with his blade.
He swung with all his might, aiming for the thing’s head, but it was quicker than Allen had anticipated. It slapped the blade with one of its oversized claws, sending it low, and flipped over the blade’s path. Allen heard it land behind him, and he struggled to recover in time to meet it again. He felt like everything was happening in slow motion.
The Sentient Fire (The Seven Signs) Page 95
