The Essence Gate War: Book 01 - Adept

by Michael Arnquist

  Amric took the opportunity to fill his lungs as the crushing grip on his chest slackened enough to allow unrestricted breath. He was rewarded with a mouthful of choking sand, but his tenuous hold on consciousness firmed and new energy flooded his body. As the queen spat her outrage at her unseen assailant, he expanded his chest and flexed his arms outward, straining against the remaining talons. Then, in a sudden movement, he let all his air out in a whoosh and brought his arms together tightly over his head, making himself as narrow as possible. He fell through and plunged to the ground.

  He struck the ground and rolled, pushing himself to his feet. He began to run on shaky legs away from the towering shape behind him. Trying to clear his head, he wondered if he could find one or both of his swords in this damnable sandstorm.

  With an incoherent scream, the Nar’ath queen swept her remaining limbs wide in a cutting gesture, and the unnatural storm responded to her fury. A concussive blast rippled outward from her, scything throughout the chamber. The sheer force of it slammed into Amric’s back, lifting him from his feet and catapulting him through the air. He landed with jarring force, tumbling end over end before settling into a long skid. A sickly green glow beckoned ahead, and he gritted his teeth as he realized he was sliding toward the edge of one of the pools. The howling wind washed over him, pulling at his flesh and clothing with a savage hand, dragging him toward the toxic fluids. He dug in to slow his approach, using the edges of his boot soles and the naked flesh of his clawing hands. At last the force of the blast gave out, the wind subsided, and he came to rest within inches of the pool’s edge. The viscous green liquid wicked at the stone rim that contained it, as if hungry to reach his flesh. Amric let out the breath he had been holding captive, and spun to look back toward the Nar’ath queen.

  The monster stood near the center of the vast chamber. The eerie storm she had raised was gone, its remnants still crawling away from her across the stone floor in wisps and tendrils. Several shapes were revealed as the last of the sand washed over them, emerging like water-worn rocks through receding floodwaters. Some were the hulking Nar’ath minions, thrown to the ground by the blast. One was the figure of a man in gray robes, kneeling low with his cloak flung over his head in a shielding gesture. Bellimar!

  The Nar’ath queen was upon him in an instant, even before the raking wind had subsided. Massive claws swept the old man from his feet, drawing him into a crushing embrace. Bellimar thrashed about, prying at her talons, and a frenzied struggle ensued. He writhed and struck over and over, loosening her hold as she fought to tighten it. At last she used all three of her remaining claws to clamp his flailing limbs in place. Her head darted forward, and her outer jaws flared and snapped shut upon his head, locking him into place. She began to inhale––and then she recoiled with a shrill cry.

  “What is this?” she hissed in disgust. “Your life force is powerful indeed, but it is tainted and unusable. You are a troublesome, worthless creature!”

  Rising to her full height, she hunched forward and drove the vampire into the ground with such force that the very floor of the chamber shook. A ragged cry echoed through the cavernous hive, and Amric realized it was his own. He began to run at the Nar’ath queen.

  She reared back, still holding Bellimar. His gray form was limp in her claws. Even as he sprinted toward her, Amric hoped that it was but a ruse on Bellimar’s part. The Nar’ath queen might have had the same suspicion, however, as she uncoiled in a sudden whipping motion to send him hurtling away through the air. Bellimar’s body flew like a stone from a sling to strike the wall of the chamber with a sharp crack, and then it slid to the ground to lie in a crumpled heap.

  The Nar’ath queen was still facing in that direction, eyeing Bellimar’s motionless form as if expecting him to rise and attack her again, when Amric reached her. Leaping high, he vaulted onto her back. Catching at the coarse edges of the armored plates along her spine, he clambered up toward her head. She whirled with a startled shriek, but he clung fast. A youth spent among the Sil’ath climbing ancient trees and rocky crags had prepared him well for this task; he was at the nape of her neck even as she started to reach around and claw at him. Her outraged visage swung toward him. He leapt, drawing the knife at his belt, all his attention focused upon plunging the weapon into one of her glowing green eyes.

  He never made it.

  Moving with impossible speed, she struck him from the air. The world exploded into colors as Amric slammed into the ground: encroaching blackness, scarlet pain, and an eruption of white fire that threatened to engulf him. Something inside him was screaming to be let out. Confusing images pounded at his dazed mind. He saw Bellimar’s face, frozen in final death; he saw Valkarr’s features melt from worry to horror and revulsion; he saw his own face, flickering between rage, fear and scorn. These images shattered into slivers of glass as a new countenance pushed through them all. It was hate-filled and exulting, with slitted green eyes burning at him above a many-fanged mouth. It was the Nar’ath queen, and she would have him at last.

  He was dimly aware, as if it was happening to someone else entirely, of being held in a crushing grip, of his ribs threatening to crack and his lungs burning once more for precious breath. The queen’s expression was avid, incensed as she drew him to her. She was speaking to him, but he could not make out the words.

  His eyes rolled skyward, drawn by some unknown instinct. Cold, gray clouds churned overhead, showing their disdain for the trivial affairs of the mortals below. A figure rose to stand at the stone rim high above, silhouetted against that steel sky. His vision was fading, but he felt he should recognize that figure. All he could discern was a flash of her auburn hair, the polished gleam of a bent bow, and the murderous glint thrown by the dark missile she had nocked. Then the glint was gone, and the bow was being lowered. A fleeting whistle greeted his ears, rising sharply at the end like an unanswered question.

  The queen’s glowing eyes were still fixed upon him when everything erupted into heat and thunder. His vision went fiery white, and he had the strangest sensation that he was pushing the heat away from him with his bare hands. He realized he was tumbling through the air, no longer in the iron grip of the Nar’ath queen. He struck the ground hard. As the darkness rose to claim him, it felt as if a portal of white fire opened beneath him instead, and he continued to fall.

  CHAPTER 22

  He stood in the formless landscape of the dream, surrounded by crawling white mists. It was the material of his will, waiting to be wrought, and yet he suppressed his every instinct to do so.

  Amric began to walk.

  The mists curled about him, cloaking and embracing, somehow both warm and chill at once. He glanced at his hands. They were empty, and he had no weapon on his person; he was unarmed. As quick as the thought came to him, he was clothed in dark armor, and the well-worn grips of his swords rested against his palms with familiar weight. He hesitated, frowning, and then banished it all. They were the trappings of war, and though the warrior felt a strong desire for the comfort of their presence, they ran counter to his purpose here, this time.

  He continued to walk. He was headed neither to nor from any particular destination, and no such landmark offered itself from out of the mists. It was the simple movement he sought, and in particular an almost complete lack of focus, for if he was correct it would eventually bring––

  Yes, there it was; a feather-light touch at the fringe of his awareness, an extra presence here at the core of a domain that should have, by all rights, been his and his alone. He slowed to a halt, and though the presence shrank, it did not withdraw.

  “You may as well show yourself,” he called. “For reasons I do not yet fully understand, this is your dream as much as it is mine.”

  There was a wavering there at the periphery of his senses, a flickering indecision as of something wild and frightened poised to flee. Then it stiffened into a fragile resolve, and there was movement. A shadow appeared in the hanging mists ahead and solidified into t
he shape of a man as it approached. Amric waited.

  When it stepped from the mists to stand before him, it wore his face, as before. Amric studied the other, and he watched it study him in return with searching eyes. There was concern and resignation there that he felt he should understand. He wondered what the other read in his own countenance as it looked upon him. The other began to fidget beneath the intensity of his gaze, so he gave a strained smile and turned to walk once more. He found it disconcerting to be staring into a mirror of his own visage, anyway. After a moment’s hesitation, the other joined him, falling into step at his side, but a long pace away.

  They strode this way for a time, directionless and unhurried, in a tense but companionable silence. At last Amric cleared his voice and spoke.

  “You are––” he began, and then paused with a frown. “You are inside me?”

  The other glanced at him, and then quickly away. It gave a shallow nod. Amric closed his eyes, going cold inside, but otherwise kept his reaction from showing. It was the response he dreaded, the very thing he had been adamant in denying to himself, but he did not want to drive this entity back into hiding until he had more answers. Despite his effort at control, however, the other flinched as if struck.

  “Is this an infection?” Amric asked. “Am I sick, or mad?”

  The other looked at him with a pained expression, and shook its head. Amric chuckled at the folly of his own question. How could he trust the word of what might be a figment of his own imagination to determine if he was mad nor not?

  “How long have you been… with me? Since Stronghold, and the exposure to the Essence Fount?”

  A slow shake of the head.

  “Longer?”

  A barely perceptible nod. Amric frowned as he walked.

  “Why do you not speak?” he said. “It was you calling to me when I lost consciousness in the grip of the Nar’ath queen, was it not? Urging me to release you, to fight together?”

  The other nodded.

  “Then why do you not speak now?”

  His double gave a helpless shrug. Amric stopped and turned toward it, brow furrowing in confusion. The other immediately shrank before his intent gaze. Even as the warrior stared, the figure’s outline shimmered and grew indistinct, beginning to fade from view.

  “Wait!” Amric cried, reaching toward it. The form blurred, darting away from his outstretched hand like a windblown curl of dark smoke. Amric gritted his teeth and pulled up short, fighting his desire to give chase. He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  “Please wait,” he said in as gentle a tone as he could manage. “I just need to understand.”

  He waited there for long seconds, breathing slowly. He struggled to keep his mind clear of the anger and loathing that threatened to seep in again at the thought of another creature inhabiting his body like some incorporeal parasite. In desperation he drew upon his warrior’s training, seeking the calm in which he wrapped himself at the center of battle. Very gradually it came to him through his own layers of resistance, and he sank into that void, shedding hesitation and fear, stripping away denial and prejudice. He needed the truth if he was to survive, in this as much as in the chaos of battle, and he would cut away what obscured it until truth was all that remained.

  This strange entity had been with him for some time now, of that much he was certain. Certainly since the cataclysmic events at Stronghold, when proximity to the Essence Fount had affected him so. And he could not deny that some unknown force had acted through him to collapse the massive chamber at the core of that fortress when all had seemed lost. That same power had kept Valkarr from the very edge of death long enough for him to be saved. It had been all too easy for him to attribute the episode to the Essence Fount, since it was a huge, powerful manifestation of purest magic and utterly beyond his ken. Grelthus and Bellimar had both insisted that the Fount was not a live thing capable of intelligent action, however. It was a rupture in a ley line––a veritable river of magical energy––and no more sentient than an erupting volcano.

  He had ignored all they said and refrained from further examination of the alternatives, because he had feared the conclusions to which they led. It might have been the Essence Fount, or merely coming to a land where all magic was rising to run rampant, that awakened this entity within him, but for some reason he believed its response that it had been with him since before that time.

  A lifetime’s aversion to magic rose like bile in his throat, threatening to dislodge him from the center of the void. He was a warrior, raised among the Sil’ath. Magic was a perverse thing, an addiction for less disciplined races. An image appeared in his mind of Valkarr, his closest friend since childhood, with reptilian features twisted in shock and revulsion. Then came more flashing images: Innikar, Sariel, Prakseth––but no, Prakseth was dead. Amric shook himself, and sought the calm within once more.

  It was not that simple. Whatever lurked inside him might be killing him or driving him slowly mad, it was true. But it had also saved Valkarr in Stronghold, had in fact saved all their lives. And while the strange dizzy spells had occurred at inopportune times, during periods of high stress and in the face of deadly threats, it seemed as if the other had been offering help each time.

  Release me, it had told him. From what? To fight together, it had suggested. But how? By taking over his body? He felt another chill. Would this creature then assume control, never to relinquish it? Would Amric then become the entity within, little more than a persistent shade lurking at the back of its consciousness?

  He shook his head. The thoughts sent fear lancing through him, but they did not match what he had seen and felt. The other had not wrested control from him in Stronghold, when he had been injured and at his most vulnerable. Instead, it had joined with him somehow, brought him unimaginable power at his time of need, and bolstered him to achieve the impossible. Afterward, it had retreated into seeming nonexistence again, fleeing before his scrutiny as it had done every time since, and as it had done here. These were not the actions of some unseen tyrant or assassin, awaiting only opportunity to strike him down. And the haunting, wounded look in its––in his––eyes had been disturbingly genuine.

  The familiar presence gathered at his side. Even with his eyes closed, Amric could feel a tentative hand reaching for his shoulder, and an overpowering sense of worry washed over him. He opened his eyes to regard the other, once more his mirror image, and the hand froze in mid-reach.

  “The dream, with the hidden cottage in the forest,” Amric mused. “That was your dream, not mine.”

  The other hesitated, and then nodded.

  “You fear me, fear my discovery of you,” he continued, fumbling for comprehension. “I can feel it in you, just as you react to my own state of mind. You have been remaining ever close, but evading my direct attention, terrified that I will find you and strike you down somehow, just as in the dream.”

  The other drew back, almost cringing.

  “That is why you come to me only in moments of distraction or weakness,” Amric said, eyes narrowing. “Only then are you bold enough to act. You seek to protect me, and yet you have this terrible fear of my wrath.”

  His own grey eyes stared back at him, wide with apprehension. Amric burst out laughing, and the other started and blinked at the sudden sound.

  “I still do not know what you are, my mysterious friend,” he said with a shake of his head. “But I can see that you are as scared of me as I am of whatever it is you represent.”

  The other flashed a hesitant smile at him, but remained at arm’s length.

  A harsh sound echoed faintly in the distance, shrill and grating. It was an alien shriek filled with rage and pain, and sudden memories of the waking world flooded back to Amric. The hive, his friends, the Nar’ath queen and her minions, the arrow fired by Thalya and the concussive explosion that had resulted; how could he have forgotten? His life and the lives of his friends hung in the balance as he wandered this surreal landscape.

/>   “If I can hear that monster out there, at least I know I am still alive,” he said grimly. “I need to wake. I need to go back and fight. Now.”

  His dark leather and oiled chain armor appeared, sheathing him in its fierce embrace. His fingers curled around battle-worn hilts, and the steel of his blades gleamed before him. The creeping white mists of the dream began to curl about him. The other drew away from him and vanished like smoke scattered before the wind, though whether it fled his weapons or his sharpening focus, he was not sure.

  The mists swirled in a tightening funnel around him, faster and faster, bearing flickering images. Amric caught glimpses of the dark interior of the hive, illuminated by the pulsing green glow of the pools. He saw the huge and menacing figure of the Nar’ath queen, thrashing about while her skulking minions milled about with confused and uncertain movements. He saw the hunched figures of his friends isolated amid a storm of sand. And there were other images as well, hallucinations that made no sense to him: the forest, the hidden cottage, an intangible presence hovering fretfully within the cottage above a sleeping child. The door to the cottage cracked open to reveal a blinding sliver of sunlight…

  Amric shook his head, and the chaotic images receded. These were not his visions alone, he knew, but also the memories of the other tangled with his own. He clenched at the recognition, wanting to push it all away from him, to be alone once more in his own mind. But the thought continued to nag at him: whether or not he was at risk of losing himself, if this elusive entity could help him save his friends, would he not do it? The situation was dire, if indeed it was still possible to win out. He had already admitted the possibility of the worst that could happen to him, and yet he knew that he would give his own life in an instant if it meant saving the others.