As he drew closer, Amric studied his assailant. The cold light from the globe overhead cast a portion of the man’s countenance into craggy shadow, and further deepened the hard planes of his face. Amric was surprised to note the creases of age and weariness woven into those bluff features, and the streaks of iron grey that shot through his dark beard. The man’s eyes, however, remained intense and pitiless; his was the hooded stare of a practiced hunter studying his quarry without a trace of emotion. Almost no trace, Amric corrected himself. There was a smoldering anger to the man, a bitter tightness to his features that he kept behind an outward mask. And, as he stared at Amric, a slight widening of his eyes that betrayed something akin to genuine surprise as well.
“Remarkable,” Xenoth breathed. “Truly remarkable.”
Amric eyed him. “What is remarkable?” he demanded, but the man continued as if he had not heard the question.
“The trail you left behind shows you are quite strong, if clumsy, and yet had I not looked more closely….” Xenoth trailed off, pursing his lips. Then he shook his head. “Even now I cannot be certain. I could just kill you. Perhaps I should. Perhaps this is some elaborate trick.” He stared at Amric with distrust and hate in his eyes, but then his brow clouded and his gaze wavered. “No, I have to be certain. There can be no mistakes, this time.”
His frown of concentration deepened, and Amric felt a strange probing at the edge of his senses, as of a low sound just beyond his range of hearing that tickled at his inner ear, or a feathery touch hovering just above his skin.
“Remarkable,” Xenoth muttered again. “Very few full Adepts can conceal themselves so well. Did you truly learn this on your own, without tutelage?”
Amric remained silent, glaring at his captor. He still lacked the context to form a meaningful reply anyway, and if the man interpreted his reticence as indication of the presence of some powerful teacher or ally, then so much the better. Perhaps it would cause him to proceed with greater caution. The probing grew stronger, more invasive. It blossomed into hot, needle-sharp talons that plucked and pried at his psyche. Amric gritted his teeth, fighting the urge to flinch with each sharp new twinge. He could endure this violation, for he had endured greater pain. After all, it was all in his mind; it was not as if this attack would inflict any lasting damage, like a physical weapon-would it?
An eternity later, Xenoth rocked back on his heels and blew out a frustrated breath. The stabbing pains ceased, and Amric sagged against his unseen bonds. He hoped that the man did not notice the prolonged shudder that ran through his rigid frame.
“However you learned this trick,” said the black-robed Adept, “and whether you managed it yourself or it was laid upon you by another, it is magnificently done. I cannot pierce it.” The troubled lines on the man’s face hardened once more into a venomous resolve. “Fortunately, there are other methods available to gather the proof I require.”
There was a grey blur of motion at the edge of Amric’s vision, and Xenoth spun in that direction, raising a clenched fist before him. Bellimar’s hurtling form halted in mid-air, hands extended like claws, teeth bared in an enraged, frozen grimace. The vampire’s fangs, so carefully concealed all the time by restrained expressions and half smiles, were bared beneath narrowed eyes that glowed like red embers. Bellimar hung suspended in the air, straining in helpless fury toward the Adept. Xenoth, for his part, stroked his dark beard as he studied the vampire with cold, deliberate amusement.
“That is the second time you have intervened on the boy’s behalf, creature,” he said. “Shall we see if he feels the same concern for you?”
Xenoth brought his hands forward and together, as if plunging them into Bellimar’s midsection, though several yards still separated them. The old man convulsed, his eyes flaring wide in sudden shock. Then the Adept whipped his arms apart in a sudden ripping motion. A rush of energy washed over Amric like a warm wall of mist and was gone, dissipating into the air. Bellimar bent like a drawn bow, arching backward with his head thrown back as every muscle in his body went taut. The scream came an instant later, an inhuman shriek of agony.
“Stop,” Amric grated. “Stop whatever it is you are doing to him.”
Xenoth threw a glance at him, and his mouth quirked up in an icy smile. “Ah, boy, do not be a fool. This was the easy part. I have only just begun this one’s torment.”
Bellimar’s scream continued. It went on and on, rising into the night air to hang there unending, as if refusing to be bound by the need to draw breath. Amric added his own voice, shouting forth incoherent rage as he strained against his invisible prison.
“Perhaps I am not casting my net wide enough, however,” Xenoth said, his words vibrating with power as they cut through the din somehow without him raising his voice. “If this one’s plight does not move you, then we will try another.”
He turned toward Halthak, who had regained his feet on a leg that looked to be fully repaired. The Adept made a sharp gesture, palm up as if scooping something from the ground, and angry blue fire erupted from the wasteland beneath Halthak’s feet and crawled up his limbs. The Half-Ork uttered a cry of pain and dismay, and he staggered back, slapping at the flames. The blue fire spread hungrily to his hands and arms, writhing along his limbs like a live thing. In its wake, the healer’s skin blackened and cracked. Halthak stumbled to his knees, a look of concentration freezing his coarse features into a rictus of pain. The flesh began to heal beneath the licking blue flames. Halthak scooped sand onto his limbs, seeking to smother the spreading fire, but when the sand fell away the fire still remained, slithering over his figure to blacken new flesh. Halthak groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, and the skin knit shut and healed once more. The fire, however, was an implacable foe, and continued to crawl over him.
Amric roared his fury, throwing himself into his efforts until his vision swam and darkened at the edges from the exertion. Something cracked in the back of his mind.
Get out here, he panted at the presence hiding within him. He is killing them! Get out here and join me, or we all die, here and now! The only reply was a mindless, gibbering terror, distant and muted.
“Or perhaps another,” Xenoth continued in a hard tone. He flung out one hand and great gout of brilliant white fire erupted from it. The fiery display was blinding, and for a brief moment it lit up the wasteland around them in stark relief. Amric, squinting against the sudden illumination, was able to catch a glimpse of the sprinting form of Innikar, rushing forward with blades upraised, before the fire engulfed him in mid-stride. The Sil’ath warrior did not even utter a cry, so quick was his demise. The white fire flared once, dazzling and fierce. When it faded, Innikar was simply gone. His abandoned blades glowed and hissed in the sand, no more than warped pieces of metal, and the remains of the warrior’s armor were a blackened and shriveled mass.
Amric’s throat cracked and closed on a scream he had not even realized was his own. He saw Sariel and Valkarr approaching from opposite sides, their mouths open in horror. Xenoth turned toward Sariel. Without hesitation, she hurled one of her swords to spin in a glittering arc toward the black-robed Adept. The spinning weapon struck some invisible barrier in mid-air and ricocheted to the side, but Xenoth flinched away from it with a grunt nonetheless, and it saved her life. She had thrown herself to the side as soon as the sword left her hand, and another long breath of white flame seared through the space she had occupied a moment before.
Halthak uttered frantic cries of pain as the blue flames writhed all over him. Bellimar was still suspended in the air, bucking and convulsing, his scream becoming hoarse as it echoed on and on. Sariel rolled on the ground and came up in a dead sprint, running parallel to Xenoth. Valkarr did the same from the other side. The Adept tracked their movements with calculating eyes.
Something broke in Amric’s mind. The barrier that had cracked moments before shattered into razor shards, which then shattered into so much dust. He could not say for certain whether he drew forth the other within hi
m and shook from it the blind, unreasoning fear that held it paralyzed, or whether it rose to meet him, buoyed by a rising explosion of power and vengeful fury. There was a jarring collision that shook him to the core as they joined, exquisite pain and pleasure interwoven in an instant, and the other suddenly filled his awareness. Before, when they had interacted, it had felt like two wary combatants circling one another, seeking some way to occupy the same space without breaking some fragile truce. There had been an impression of passing control from one to the other, a grudging relinquishing of self.
This time was nothing like before.
An alarmed part of Amric quailed at the sensation, at the permanence he felt in the action of merging; there would be no return to normality this time. That part of him felt dismay for what he had just sacrificed and loathing for the thing he had just become. In the end, however, that disapproving part of him was like a scholar clearing his throat at the center of a battlefield between colliding armies-just a small noise lost amid a maelstrom.
Power continued to surge and gather within him, building into a white-hot core that permeated his being until his very flesh tingled and he thought he might be incinerated if he drew upon more. Amric flexed outward with the power in a jerking shrug, and the bonds that held him ruptured, cast aside like so many brittle sticks. He staggered as his boots hit the ground. Then he and the other within him turned their attention together to their foe.
Xenoth stiffened, some arcane instinct warning him of the forces gathering at his back. He spun away from hunting the Sil’ath warriors, his eyes widening.
Amric hit him with everything he had.
He lunged forward with both hands extended, and from them leapt forth a torrent of white flame that filled the night, hammering into Xenoth. The black-robed Adept cursed and crossed his arms before him, lowering his head and bracing against the surge. Sand went up in great, spiraling plumes as the man was driven sliding backward a dozen yards across the ground.
The tenacious blue flame coursing over Halthak’s body dwindled and died, and the healer sagged to all fours. Bellimar’s scream came to an abrupt end as whatever force was holding him suspended in the air released him at last. He crashed to the ground in a heap. Valkarr and Sariel each slowed to a halt, staring in disbelief at the display of power going on between them. Valkarr’s dark eyes threw back a reflection of dazzling white light as his gaze darted between his childhood friend and the river of eldritch flame emanating from him.
Amric clenched his jaw and continued to pour energy out into the night, sending it washing over the black-robed Adept. Where it was coming from, he neither knew nor cared; he would burn Xenoth to a cinder, just as that monster had done to Innikar and tried to do to the others.
A deep fatigue, starting at the roots of his senses, began to steal over him. He shook it off and continued, but his outthrust hands began a traitorous trembling. Perspiration beaded his forehead and ran into his eyes, and he blinked it clear with a growl. With a sinking sensation, he realized that the flames were not as bright, not as voluminous, as they had been moments before. His mind grew clouded, and a strange wordless clamoring intruded, trailed by a dull comprehension; it was the other within him, pulsating with panicked warnings.
The jet of flame sputtered and died, and Amric fell panting to his knees, more exhausted than he could recall having been in his entire life. He raised his head with a monumental effort to regard the damage he had done.
A smoking crater gaped before him, twenty feet across and three times that or more in length. The near end was a scorched ramp downward into a blackened pit, starting narrow and broadening to its full width at the bottom. The far end was scalloped deeply and polished to a dark, glass-like finish. The edge of the crater glowed like an ember thread, fading as it cooled in the night air.
At the center of the basin stood the black-robed Adept, unharmed.
Xenoth’s arms were still crossed before him, and he let them fall to his sides. His teeth gleamed in the soft, silvery light of the globe hanging high overhead. It was the grin of a peerless predator on familiar ground.
“You have ample power, boy, I will grant you that,” Xenoth said, speaking slowly as if savoring every word. “But you lack the training to use it, and you exhaust yourself with such ineffective, unfocused displays. You very nearly killed yourself there and saved me the trouble.”
He began a purposeful march up the scorched ramp.
“Now let me show you how it is done.”
The Adept’s hands began to glow.
CHAPTER 24
The black-robed Adept spread his hands out before him without breaking stride, and Amric found himself fighting for his life.
The attack came from every direction at once, bewildering, dazzling, faster than thought. Streaks of light leapt from Xenoth’s splayed fingers and arced through the sky. They fell toward Amric like sparkling gossamer threads, graceful in their descent, and yet some nagging instinct warned him that their touch would mean his death. He tried to rise from his knees, but the ground buckled and shifted beneath him like a live thing, throwing him off balance. His attacker made a curt back-handed motion, as if casting something away, and a crackling ball of energy the size of a fist came hurtling at him. He hurled himself to the side, rolling from its path and trying to keep a wary eye upon the falling threads. Rather than continuing past, however, the orb swerved to follow him in a sudden burst of speed.
Amric’s hand darted over his shoulder for one of the swords in a reflexive but futile gesture, but the fiery missile was too close. He threw up his hands, as if mere flesh could somehow ward off the thing’s destructive power, and he braced for the impact. To his surprise, the crackling ball struck some unseen barrier mere inches from his hands. The blow sent a shudder of force through him, but the ball deflected aside. His relief was short-lived, however; the orb looped through the air in an unsteady arc and came at him again, picking up speed.
His mind raced, trying to discern how he had defended himself from the attack, but his thoughts were interrupted as something struck him from behind. His back tingled and went numb, and he stumbled forward from the blow. The treacherous ground rippled and rose to catch at his foot, and he was sent sprawling. A flare of instinct warned him of the next attack, and he spun onto his back, thrusting out a forearm to block it. One of the deadly threads landed inches above his arm and pooled there upon an invisible surface. Several more followed, hissing as they struck. They began to spread, seeking the edges of the shield above him.
Amric gasped for breath, his mind muddled with fatigue. The other within him was a constant, frantic presence now, yammering in fear.
If you can do better, he thought in weary frustration, feel free to step in at any point.
A rumbling blow shook the shield around him, and then another, and then another. Three of the blazing orbs wobbled away from him, dim for a moment and then brightening once more. They were expending their energy against his invisible shield, he realized. Their energy for his; small wonder that he felt more tired by the moment, then. How had Xenoth held up so well beneath Amric’s onslaught of magic, then? The Adept had emerged from the attack, uninjured and infuriatingly unperturbed.
Xenoth’s laughter floated to him.
“You cannot keep this up for long, boy,” the man called to him. “You are untrained, weary, slow to react.” As if to punctuate his point, another thunderous blow shook Amric’s shield and the cold, tingling sensation seeped through his right side. The glowing threads continued to fall above him, spreading and probing for weakness.
Xenoth chuckled. “You see, boy, fighting with magic is like using any other weapon. It requires skill and strategy as well as strength. It requires discipline, and a lifetime of practice. To conquer your foes, you cannot simply hoist the largest sword you find and swing it as hard as you can. Victory goes not to he who roars the loudest.”
The orbs blurred toward Amric, and three more crashing strikes buffeted him. His forearms, sti
ll raised above him, were quivering and numb. His breath burned in his throat and whistled between his clenched teeth. The presence within had subsided to feverish, insistent murmurings. Through a mental fog, Amric realized there was coherence to what it was saying. It was articulating a desperate plan.
“To be certain, there is a time and place to hold nothing back,” Xenoth continued. By the direction of his voice, the man was moving around Amric in a slow circle. “However, in this case it is hardly required, since you are a minor threat at best.”
Amric ground his teeth at the naked derision in the Adept’s voice. He knew that Xenoth was trying to taunt him, but it galled him that the man was right. Would Xenoth leave once he had slain Amric? Or would the black-hearted bastard feel compelled to finish Amric’s friends as well?
The presence was still adamant within the warrior’s head. I do not like our odds, Amric thought back in grim response, but neither do I have a better plan. Everything in one strike, then. Be ready.
Three more hammering strikes rang against his invisible shield, and the glowing spheres drifted away in unsteady orbits. Amric closed his eyes, sucked in a breath, and burst into motion.
Guided by the mysterious presence within, he pushed outward with explosive force, casting away the clinging energy of the threads. He surged to his feet, cursing both the lethargy of his movements and the way the world tilted and swayed around him. He found the dark figure of Xenoth no more than a handful of paces away, and he gathered his will for a single surprise strike that would encompass the entirety of the strength remaining to him.
The chilling smile upon the Adept’s hard, angular features was the first true indication that the plan had already failed. Amric strained, drawing upon the power of Essence that surrounded him, the lifeblood of this world, and it responded to his call. Unlike the raging torrent of before, however, it gathered in sluggish, grudging response, as if sharing his weariness. Not enough, he realized, and not fast enough by half.
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