The Cerulean Storm

by Denning, Troy

  Sadira reached into her robe, whispering, “Whoever you are, this will be the last time you defile an oasis.”

  Abalach surprised the sorceress by answering. “I spoiled a thousand oases before you were ever born, girl.” Her voice was a mere whisper in Sadira’s ears. “And I’ll spoil another thousand after you die.”

  At the top of the hill, a pair of blue streaks flared under the dirt. They shot down the slope, glimmers of azure light flashing up every time they passed beneath a stone. Like a pair of sapphire arrows, the bolts sped out beneath the salt flat, each racing straight toward one of the dwarven companies. When they reached the warriors leading the two wedges, a tremendous crackle echoed over the plain. The dwarves went rigid. Their helmets and breastplates erupted into showers of sparks. Dancing cords of energy leaped from their torsos to the men behind them. These warriors also stiffened, and their armor exploded into blue embers. In an instant, the crackling waves of energy fanned out over both companies of dwarves.

  At the back of the Iron Company, Neeva screeched and flung the steel battle-axe from her hands. The rest of the Kledans, trapped inside their metal breastplates, were not so lucky. They remained completely rigid and motionless, blue energy cords dancing over their armor and weapons. Soon, their flesh blackened and began to smoke. One after the other, the dwarves burst into flame and disintegrated into piles of ash. An instant later, all that remained of the Kledan companies were two piles of soot-stained armor and Neeva, standing alone and dazed on the salt flat.

  Caelum started to call the Bronze Company forward, but Sadira stopped him. “Leave the reserves here, or Abalach will use the same spell against them,” she said. “You and Magnus reinforce the Tyrian flanks with your magic. I’ll fight from here—and guard Rkard.”

  The dwarf nodded, then he and the windsinger rushed forward. Sadira considered casting a spell to protect the Tyrian troops from Abalach but quickly decided against it. If she spent her energies shielding while the sorcerer-queen attacked, Rikus’s assault would stall against the superior force waiting on the hill. To win the battle now, she had to reduce the number of Raamins facing her husband, while also putting Abalach on the defensive or killing her outright.

  Sadira pulled a lump of sulfur and a pinch of bat guano from her pocket. She rolled the two components together into a viscid mass and held it in the palm of her hand. When she spoke her incantation, the wad slowly expanded, emitting a stream of gray, foul-smelling smoke.

  As the gummy ball enlarged, the defiled area of the knoll surged upward, forming a huge dome that continued to swell. When the hillside looked ready to explode, Sadira whispered a mystic syllable. The viscid mass she was holding vanished in a billow of smoke.

  On the hillside, the swollen dome abruptly collapsed in on itself. The slope trembled, and a murmur of concern rustled through the Raamin ranks. The boughs of the saedra trees began to quiver. From deep inside the knoll sounded an angry rumble, and tongues of flame shot from beneath the defiled ground. Then a mighty explosion shook the entire oasis, hurling a huge section of the knoll into the sky.

  A cloud of ash and dust spread over the salt flat, casting a gray pall over the white plain. Splintered trees and Raamin bodies rained down with sharp cracks and soft thumps, most landing within twenty or thirty paces of the hill. Rikus waved his sword, and, with a great cheer, his warriors broke into a full sprint. The cry even seemed to rouse Neeva from her shock, for she picked up her battle-axe and rushed to join the charge.

  Rikus and his followers began to leap over the bodies and saedra trees littering the approach to the hill. Crackling thunderbolts and sputtering fireballs rained down from the slope above. Tyrian warriors fell all along the line. The black streamers of smoke that rose from their bodies were a grisly contrast to the white salt upon which they lay.

  Catching up to Rikus’s charge, Caelum and Magnus answered the Raamins with their own spells. The dwarf sprayed the slope with a crimson beam that set fire to anything it touched. The windsinger summoned a ferocious southern gale. The squall scoured the hillside with an airborne wall of salt, shredding clothing and flesh alike.

  A strand of sparkling green fiber appeared on the ground between Rikus’s charging legion and the base of the hill. The right flank reached the green strand first. As the warriors leaped across the line, a loud crack reverberated beneath their feet. The filament became a gaping chasm with a bright emerald glow shining up from its depths. The Tyrians screamed, and a lime-colored tongue of vapor shot up to engulf each one of them. The entire flank simply dissolved, their bodies eaten away even before they fell out of sight.

  Magnus stopped at the edge and tried to peer down into the fissure. A green tendril shot up and lapped at his thick hide. He stumbled away, clutching at his throat and coughing.

  At the other end of the Tyrian line, where the hill curved away slightly, the warriors had not been so close to the chasm when it opened. Most had managed to stop at the brink and were dragging themselves away on their hands and knees, coughing and choking while tendrils of green vapor lapped at their feet.

  From her vantage point across the salt flat, Sadira did not see Rikus among the survivors. She ran her gaze over the tide of crawling refugees and located Neeva and Caelum, but there was no sign of the mul. The sorceress felt a cold lump form in her stomach. Rikus had been leading the charge at his end of the line. Had he fallen into the chasm?

  Determined to prevent Raam’s sorcerer-queen from casting any more such spells, Sadira pulled a pinch of powdered glass from her pocket. After a moment of searching, she spotted another circle of Raamin bodies near the summit of the hill. It was directly above the chasm’s right end, and Sadira felt certain that it marked the place Abalach had been standing when she had drawn the energy for her last spell.

  Sadira tossed the powdered glass into the air and spoke her incantation. As it dropped to the ground, the silvery dust scintillated in the light of the crimson sun. On the hillside, sparkles of red light flashed over the withered saedras. The glimmers quickly coalesced near the heart of the despoiled ground, outlining the distant shape of a mature woman dressed in flowing robes.

  The figure turned toward Sadira. “You’ve found what you’re looking for,” said Abalach’s voice. “What do you think you’ll do with me?”

  Sadira reached for a spell ingredient.

  Abalach barked a sharp command in the language of her city. The Raamin warriors rushed down the slope, their spears ready to throw across the chasm at the retreating Tyrians. For a moment, the sorcerer-queen watched her army charge.

  Then, as Sadira pulled a small glass rod from her pocket, Abalach tossed something into the air. A cloud of red smoke billowed into existence and swallowed her figure.

  Recognizing the basic nature of the spell, Sadira realized instantly that her foe was using magic to change positions. Still holding the glass rod, she ran her eyes over the knoll, searching for Abalach’s new location.

  Sadira saw that the Raamins had reached the bottom of the hill. As she watched, they ran up to the edge of the chasm and hurled their spears across the green abyss. Most of the shafts clattered harmlessly to the ground, but enough found their marks to fill the plain with death cries.

  A similar squall of screams erupted from the enemy ranks. Green tongues of vapor began to rise from the chasm again, this time licking at Raamin warriors as a whirl of flashing blades and kicking feet knocked them into the abyss.

  With a start, Sadira realized that the attacker was Rikus. The mul had landed on the other side of the gap.

  Given the width of the chasm, the sorceress could not imagine that he had been able to leap across. It seemed more likely that in his typical brash fashion, Rikus had been charging too far ahead of the legion and had gotten separated when Abalach’s spell had created the abyss. For now, that was proving a misfortune for the Raamins, but Sadira did not know how long her husband could continue to fight so savagely.

  Already, it seemed to the sorceress that he
was tiring. He had stopped advancing and now allowed the Raamins to come to him. Sadira could see at least twenty of them moving toward her husband, whirling spiked flails above their heads. The sorceress pointed the glass rod in their direction and spoke the words to her spell. A bolt of energy arced over the chasm and came down in the center of the advancing Raamins. There was a tremendous bang, and bodies flew in all directions. To Sadira’s amazement, Rikus rushed his shocked enemies, sending them to their deaths twice as fast as before.

  “Don’t be crazy, Rikus!” Sadira cried, knowing even the champion gladiator could not survive such odds. “Wait for help!”

  “There won’t be any, stupid girl.” The voice belonged to Abalach, and this time it came from behind Sadira.

  The sorceress felt a strange tingle deep within her belly. The entire Bronze Company gave a deep groan and dropped to the ground in a tremendous clanging of armor. The sensation in her stomach grew more severe, as if a cold hand had reached deep inside her to squeeze her entrails. She did not panic, for she had felt such pain before and knew what it meant: The life force was being drawn from her body.

  Abalach had probably been waiting the entire battle for this moment. With all eyes turned toward the trouble at the front lines, it was the perfect opportunity for the sorcerer-queen to surprise the reserves with an attack from the rear.

  Sadira spun around. She found a tangled mass of dwarves clutching at their stomachs as their life forces were pulled from them. Some had managed to remain on their feet, though they had to brace themselves on their axes and seemed in imminent danger of falling. Others had fallen unconscious and already appeared close to death, with gray faces and sunken eyes. Most simply writhed on the ground, their panicked voices cursing the magic that would rob them of the chance to die with their steel buried in their enemies. Sadira saw no sign of the magical pall she had cast over the dwarves earlier, and she realized that Abalach-Re had been near the company long enough to dispel the magical shield.

  In the middle of the confusion stood Rkard, gaping at the dying company with wide, frightened eyes and showing no sign of physical distress. In his hands he clutched the sword tip that Rikus had given him earlier—which Sadira assumed to be the source of his good fortune. Apparently, the shard afforded him the same protection that the Scourge bestowed on Rikus. As long as he held the enchanted steel, the sorcerer-queen could not harm the young mul with any sort of attack, whether physical, mental, or magical.

  Thirty paces beyond the boy stood Abalach-Re. The Raamin queen was an ivory-skinned beauty, with peaked eyebrows and huge, round eyes as baleful as they were dark. Her narrow nose ended in a sharp point. She had full lips as red as rubies, a slender chin, and a neck so long and thin it was almost serpentine. The queen’s only weapon was a small scepter, which had an eerie green light glimmering deep within its obsidian pommel.

  Abalach raised a slender finger and beckoned to Rkard. The claw at the end of the digit was as long as a dagger. “Come here, child,” she said, a forked tongue licking over her red lips. “I only want the banshees. I won’t hurt you.”

  Rkard shifted his grip on the broken blade. “Liar.” Abalach’s eyes flared, and she stepped toward the boy. “Then I’ll come to you,” the queen said. “The banshees will arrive soon enough—when I start breaking your little bones.”

  Sadira could not tell whether the threat was a bluff or if Abalach did not realize the nature of the shard in Rkard’s hands, but the sorceress did not want to put the matter to a test. She directed her palm at the pommel of the queen’s scepter, which she knew served as a sort of mystic lens. Through it, Abalach could pull the life force from men and animals, using it to power her mightiest spells.

  Sadira forced a stream of the sun’s energy from her hand. The beam was almost invisible as it left her palm, a pink ripple in the hot desert air. With her attention fixed on Rkard, Abalach-Re did not notice the faint shimmer as she drew it, along with the life energy she was taking from Sadira, into her scepter’s pommel.

  The beam sank into the obsidian ball with a loud hiss. A crimson light flared in the heart of the dark orb, and Sadira felt the outflow of her life force cease. The pommel burst into shards with a brilliant flash of scarlet, spraying jagged pieces of obsidian in all directions. A ball of scintillating lights hovered briefly at the end of the scepter, then sank into the salt-crusted soil like water.

  Abalach-Re threw her useless scepter aside. She scowled at Sadira, then said, “That will not save the child—or you!”

  The yalmus of the Bronze Company and two dozen warriors, all that remained conscious, pushed themselves to their feet. Looking pale and nauseated, they stepped forward and attacked. Their steel axes bounced off Abalach’s ivory flesh without opening a single gash.

  The queen began to slap them aside, her claws ripping through their breastplates as though they were flesh. The yalmus landed at Rkard’s feet, his armor torn open to reveal a gory mess beneath. The young mul backed away, his eyes wide with horror as he watched Abalach savaging the rest of the company. Sadira started forward to protect him.

  As soon as Rkard stepped away from the Bronze Company, two lumps of gnarled bone appeared at the boy’s sides. They did not arrive so much as wink into existence, emerging from empty air in the flicker of an eye. The figures were as large as giants and so twisted they could not even be called skeletons. One even lacked a head, though both had long gray beards dangling from where their chins should have been.

  Abalach broke the last dwarf’s neck, then smirked up at the two apparitions. “Jo’orsh, Sa’ram!” she said. “Come.”

  Sadira stepped between the banshees and the Raamin queen. “What do you want with them?”

  It was one of the banshees who answered. “The Lens. Our magic hides it from the Dragon and his minions.”

  “Only until Borys’s spirit lords finish with you,” said Abalach. The queen cast a spiteful glare at Sadira, then lashed out, her daggerlike claws arcing at the sorceress’s throat.

  Sadira twisted away and ducked. The talons raked across her shoulder, tearing away wisps of black shadow. The sorceress struck back, her hands cupped together and glowing scarlet with the power of the sun. The fists caught Abalach square in the jaw. The queen’s head snapped back, and her feet came off the ground. She landed half a dozen paces away, among the dwarves she had killed earlier, and immediately started to rise.

  Realizing there was no time to cast a spell, Sadira moved to attack again. Abalach locked gazes with her, and the image of a lirr appeared in the queen’s dark eyes. It resembled a large lizard with tough, diamond-shaped scales and a tail covered with thorny spines. Sadira realized instantly that the thing was a mental construct, that Abalach was attacking with the Way.

  The lirr flared its magnificent neck fan and opened its pink gullet, then flashed across the space separating the two women. It tore into Sadira’s mind with such force that the sorceress cried out in pain and actually tumbled over backward, slamming the back of her skull into the salt plain.

  The saurian appeared on the shadowy plain of Sadira’s intellect, then began to rip great gobs of spongy black matter from the ground. The sorceress’s head exploded into pain, and she could hardly believe that it was only her thoughts that the beast was gulping down. She had never felt a mental attack this powerful.

  Nevertheless, remembering what her husband Agis had taught her, Sadira focused her thoughts on fighting the terrible beast. She opened a pathway to her spiritual nexus, imagining a dark cord running down to deep within her abdomen. She concentrated on the black matter of her mind and visualized it hardening into granite. A searing wave of energy rose from deep within her body. The shadowy material hardened into rock, catching the creature in the process of ripping away another large hunk of ground and encasing its claws in solid stone.

  A mad cackle erupted from the beast’s throat. “How many wenches like you have I killed?” it chortled, speaking in Abalach’s voice. “A thousand years of battle, and yo
u dare to think you can stop me!”

  With that, the lirr rose to its hind legs, its trapped claws ripping away two great chunks of Sadira’s mind. White flashes of pain erupted all through the sorceress’s head. The beast dropped back down, smashing the rock encasing its talons, and began to tear away great chunks of black stone. Sadira heard someone screaming and realized it was she. She summoned more spiritual energy, hoping to counterattack, but the only thing that rose in response was a wave of bile.

  The sorceress continued to fight, trying to create a wyvern or a baazrag to counter Abalach’s construct. She simply did not have the power. The lirr continued to rip through her mind until, at last, rays of white radiance began to flood her head, and she knew she would fall unconscious.

  Then, from somewhere, she heard Rkard yell in anger as he attacked Abalach. The lirr screeched then went limp and faded away as rapidly as it had come. Sadira found herself alone inside her wounded mind, lost in a white fog of pain.

  “Help!” the young mul called.

  Though she did not remember closing them, Sadira opened her eyes. She found Abalach-Re five paces away, thrashing wildly and trying to shake young Rkard from her back. Sa’ram stood at her side. With the rigid shards of bone that served him as arms, the banshee was ineffectually trying to pluck the young mul off the Raamin queen.

  Sadira pulled a tiny bead of silver from her pocket and yelled, “Rkard, let go!”

  At the sound of her voice, Abalach spun around. Rkard opened his hand and sailed away, crashing down on an unconscious dwarf. He left the Scourge’s broken tip planted in the queen’s back.

  Sadira spoke her incantation and flicked the silver bead at the shard, hoping to drive it through Abalach’s heart. The pellet streaked straight to its target, striking the jagged blade at a shallow angle. There was no blast of magical power, as the sorceress had expected. Instead, a pearly aura spread over the steel, and it began to hum with a high-pitched chime.