“There,” breathed Riothamus, and turned his Sight upon the door.
And as he did, a sigil of blood-colored flame blazed to life upon the thick planks.
The ward had been so sensitive that even his Sight had activated it.
“Damnation,” said Riothamus, and an image of bladed wings flashed before this Sight.
The Lady of Blades was coming for him.
Riothamus turned, both hands around his staff.
###
Hugh slashed away the last of the ropes, and Adelaide stood.
“Hugh,” breathed Adelaide, throwing her arms around him. “Gods, gods, I…”
“Listen to me,” said Hugh. The sounds of battle rang through the hall as Molly struggled against Malaric and Mazael fought the great winged spirit. They needed Hugh’s aid, though what he could do against such powerful foes, he knew not. “Get out of the keep. Lord Bryce and the others are in the courtyard. Malaric’s warded the doors to the great hall, but the servants’ doors should still be open. Have them send every man they can. Go!”
She nodded, the familiar steel glinting in her eyes. “I love you.”
She ran across the dais to the door behind the Prince's chair. Hugh turned to join the battle and saw Mazael fall in a heap to the floor, blood splashing across his armor, the Lady of Blades springing over him to deliver the killing blow…
And then the spirit froze in midair, head titled to the side, as if listening.
“Clever,” she said, looking at Mazael.
And then she vanished.
###
Malaric was enjoying this.
Molly slowed, her breath coming in a harsh rasp, blood trickling into her eyes from a cut across her forehead. Malaric saw the toll the extended battle took upon her. Her Demonsouled blood healed her wounds…but even its strength had a limit, and the more wounds Malaric dealt, the more her power dissipated.
And the Lady of Blades would kill with Mazael and Hugh. Malaric hoped she left the corpses relatively intact. He would enjoy throwing Hugh’s head onto Lord Bryce’s lap.
“Pathetic,” said Malaric, blocking one of Molly’s swings with the caethweisyr and striking back with his sword. Molly jerked back, trying to avoid his blade, but his sword gashed her right leg. “You were always weak. I knew it from the moment I first saw you.”
“You,” rasped Molly, “talk entirely too much.”
He lunged at her, and she disappeared in a flicker of darkness, reappearing further down the balcony. But not as far as her previous jumps had taken her. Her strength was fading…and when it failed, Malaric would have her.
That would almost be as sweet as killing Hugh.
Malaric stepped forward, and the Lady of Blades disappeared.
He turned, stunned. Mazael lay prone upon the floor, and Hugh stood by the empty throne. Yet the Lady of Blades had simply vanished. Had Mazael defeated her? Or was the Guardian within the hall, preparing to unleash his powers upon Malaric?
Then Malaric’s mind overrode his fear. The Lady might have departed…but Mazael Cravenlock was, for the moment, defenseless. Hugh had freed Adelaide, and the sniveling wretch would flee after her. Mazael was by far the most dangerous of Malaric’s opponents.
Once he disposed of Mazael, he could kill Molly and hunt down Hugh at his leisure.
Malaric strode into the shadows and reappeared next to Mazael. The Lord of Castle Cravenlock started to stand, but the Lady had left too many gashes upon his arms and legs, and he was too slow. Malaric raised his sword for the kill, grinning.
Pain exploded through his right side.
Malaric screamed and saw Hugh standing at his right, both hands wrapped around his sword hilt, the blade buried in Malaric’s side.
He had not fled after all.
Malaric might have misjudged him.
Hugh twisted the sword, and pain flooded through Malaric. He bellowed and swung his fist, Demonsouled power driving his arm, and struck Hugh in the chest. His half-brother fell back, ripping the sword from Malaric’s side.
Waves of agony throbbed through Malaric, but the Demonsouled power filled him, letting him ignore the pain. He stalked after Hugh. But blue fire flashed in his vision, and he whirled to find Mazael back on his feet, Lion an inferno of blue flame in his fist.
Malaric threw himself into the shadows and reappeared at the foot of the dais. Mazael and Hugh strode after him, and Molly appeared behind them. All three were battered, bloody, exhausted.
Yet they didn’t turn back.
And Malaric saw his death in Mazael’s eyes.
He lifted the caethweisyr, intending to summon the Lady once more, and the realization struck him.
The Lady of Blades hadn’t escaped his bindings. Instead, a previous command had taken precedence. He had commanded her to manifest should anyone attempt to enter the Study Tower…and the Guardian was not with Molly and Mazael.
The Guardian was trying to claim Corvad’s skull.
Sick dread filled Malaric at the thought, and he almost fled the throne room for the Study Tower.
No. Not even the Guardian could overcome the Lady of Blades. And Molly and Mazael were weakened, and Hugh was a meaningless pest. Once Malaric disposed of them, he would turn his attention to the Guardian.
He rolled his shoulders, feeling the wound in his side close with the power of the skull.
“When I take your head,” he said to Hugh, “do you think I should present it to Lord Bryce first, or Lady Adelaide? I think her reaction…”
“Stop talking,” said Hugh, lifting his sword.
Malaric laughed. “As you wish.”
He rushed to meet them.
###
The Lady of Blades appeared on the roof of the Study Tower, perched like a great steel raptor. She had been wounded, her cuts pulsing with a harsh white glow.
“Guardian!” said the Lady. “So you attack Malaric at his source of power! Wiser than your allies, who try to slay him directly.”
Riothamus kept the fear from his face. “Perhaps I can aid you. If I break the spells binding you to Malaric…”
“Then I will be free,” said the Lady. “Until then, I am bidden to slay you.”
Her wings flexed…and a hundred blades erupted towards Riothamus, a storm of steel that could rip him to shreds.
But he was ready.
His staff flared with golden light, and he lifted his left hand. White mist swirled around his fingers, and a dome of thick ice spread over him. The Lady’s blades hammered into the ice, cracks spreading across its surface, but the dome held. Riothamus thrust his staff against the ice, and the dome exploded, hurtling both the blades and jagged shards of ice at the Lady.
She sprang into the air, her steel wings motionless, and the barrage missed her. Riothamus spun as the Lady circled the Study Tower, swords glittering in either hand. What would she do next? Another volley of blades from her wings? Or perhaps she would draw close and cut him to pieces with her swords. Then again, she need only knock him from the stairs and send him falling to his death...
He realized what she would do next, and leveled his staff.
A moment later the Lady shot around the tower, her hands moving a spell. Riothamus sensed the power, and she flung an invisible blast of psychokinetic force at him. Light flared as he cast a ward, and the spell slammed into him. The force rocked him back a step, but he kept his balance.
Again the Lady circled the Tower, rising higher into the air. Riothamus watched her, looking for an opening, the sun glinting off her steel-bladed wings.
Her metal wings.
Riothamus lifted his staff, and struck it against the stairs.
A blast of silver-blue lighting screamed out of the sky and slammed into the Lady, drawn to her bladed wings. The bolt struck her with enough force to throw her against the curved wall of the central keep. But she recovered and shot back into the air, her glowing eyes narrowed.
Riothamus summoned another lightning blast, and this time the Lady thrust o
ut a hand. The blast veered to strike her palm, and then rebounded at Riothamus. He cast a ward, a shell of golden light glittering around him, and the lightning bolt struck him. Both bolt and ward winked out in a flash of blue light, the harsh smell of a thunderstorm filling his nostrils.
The Lady rose into the air, beginning another spell.
Riothamus's mind raced. He could not kill the Lady - she was a spirit manifested in the mortal world, and if he destroyed her material form, she would only manifest again. He could try to banish her, but even with the Guardian’s staff, he doubted he could muster the raw power to banish a spirit of such potency.
Then the answer came to him.
The Lady of Blades was not his foe. She was only a weapon bound in the service of Malaric. And if Riothamus could find a way to turn that weapon against Malaric...
He began another spell.
###
Mazael parried and thrust for Malaric's heart. But Malaric vanished in a swirl of darkness, reappearing a dozen yards away. Molly appeared besides him a heartbeat later, but Malaric pivoted and kicked her in the stomach. He tried to follow the kick with a killing blow, but Hugh lunged at him. Malaric snarled and launched a series of blows, his superior strength and speed driving the younger man back.
Mazael charged at Malaric, bringing Lion in a blur of azure light for Malaric's head.
But Malaric swirled into darkness and reappeared on the dais. Sweat dripped down Malaric’s face in a steady stream, and dark circles ringed his eyes. The extended battle was wearing on him.
But it was wearing on Mazael, too. The wounds the Lady of Blades had given him had closed, yet they still throbbed. Lifting Lion had grown harder and harder. And with his strength drained, he felt Skalatan's poison flowing through his veins, making his arms and legs burn.
But he would not relent. Not when he was so close. Skalatan was somewhere nearby. Mazael need only find him to save Romaria.
But to do that, he had to first defeat Malaric.
Malaric lifted his sword, expression grim. It was long past the time for taunts.
The first one to make a mistake would die.
Both Malaric and Molly stepped into the shadows.
###
Riothamus drew on the staff’s power until the sigils cut into the bronze wood blazed with light like molten gold.
Another lightning blast, the strongest he could muster, hammered into the Lady of Blades. But the mighty spirit was ready for him, and gestured with a mocking laugh. The lightning ricocheted from her extended hands and screamed towards Riothamus.
But he had foreseen this. He went to one knee and rolled, keeping his balance on the narrow stairs, and the lighting blast shot over him by bare inches.
It slammed into the door and struck it with enough force to shatter the wood into smoldering splinters.
And to destroy the wards Malaric had placed over the door and the stone arch.
The Lady laughed.
Riothamus flung himself to his feet and pointed the Guardian's staff. A burst of golden flame shot from it and struck the Lady, cutting her laughter short. Riothamus raced up the narrow stairs, through the ruined door, and into the Prince's study.
The room was bare, save for some wooden shelves lining the curved walls. A stone plinth sat in the center of the room, and atop the plinth rested a yellowing skull. Dozens of rows of tiny runes and sigils glowed with a sullen red light across the skull’s brow and jaw. Riothamus felt the power pouring from the thing, the malevolent aura of strength.
Corvad's skull...and the receptacle of Malaric's soul.
Riothamus could feel the intricate necromantic spells Malaric had laid upon the skull, binding his soul to the relic and transferring its power to him. Those spells were complex, and Riothamus could spend weeks unraveling them.
He didn't have weeks. The Lady of Blades was going to come through that door and kill him in another few heartbeats. Riothamus had time for just one spell.
He leveled the Guardian’s staff and unleashed its full power. Golden fire leapt from the staff and hammered into the skull, filling the tower with brilliant light.
###
Malaric dodged past Hugh's thrust and threw himself into the shadows, reappearing on the far side of the great hall.
He was winning.
The battle had exhausted him...but it had done far worse to the others. Mazael looked on the verge of collapse, Molly limped with every step, and Hugh bled from three minor cuts. Sooner or later they would fall, and Malaric would...
He froze, blinking.
A horrible queasy sensation filled him, and a spasm went through his muscles. Had Molly poisoned him somehow? It would take a potent toxin to overcome the power of Corvad's skull...
The skull.
Apparently the Lady of Blades had not been strong enough to stop the Guardian.
An instant later golden fire exploded from every inch of his skin. The pain was worse than anything he had ever known, and Malaric fell to his knees with a scream. He saw Mazael and Molly and Hugh staring at him, and he reached for the skull's power, hoping to get away from the horrible golden flames...
But fresh agony filled him, and Malaric realized the fire came from the skull, from his connection to it.
A connection he could not longer sever.
The fire redoubled in intensity, and the caethweisyr in his left hand splintered into a dozen pieces in the flames.
###
The Lady of Blades appeared in the doorway, and went perfectly motionless.
Riothamus held his staff before him, ready to work a spell.
The Lady shivered, once, and her inhumanly beautiful lips curled in a satisfied smile.
"Good," she said. "You have broken the bindings. Do you repay your debts, Guardian?"
"As well as I can," said Riothamus, "though I am flawed, like any mortal man, and try not to take on debts I cannot repay."
The Lady's smile turned malicious, and her glowing eyes narrowed.
"Not all of your kin," said the spirit, "display such wisdom."
She vanished in a flicker of gray mist.
Riothamus frowned, wondering if he should try to follow her, and then saw a flare of green light from the corner of his eye.
###
The golden fire surrounding Malaric winked out, and the renegade fell to the floor with a cry of pain. The fire had devoured most of his clothing and charred his skin red and black, yet Mazael saw the burns starting to heal.
Whatever Riothamus had done had not severed Malaric's link with the skull.
No matter. Mazael lifted Lion...
Several things happened at once.
The doors to the great hall burst open, and Lord Bryce Spearshore, Sir Philip Montigard, Maurus, and a dozen others sprinted into the room, followed by their knights and armsmen. Adelaide must have gone for help.
As the men stormed the hall, the Lady of Blades appeared on the dais.
Malaric got to his knees, fresh pink skin spreading over his wounds, but the Lady was far faster. An instant later she held Malaric cradled in her wings, the tips of her blades just piercing his skin.
“Do you know,” she mused, “how very easy it would be to sever your link to that skull?”
"Wait!" said Malaric. "You cannot do this, I command, I command you to..."
"Malaric the bastard, Malaric the thief," purred the Lady, her tone satisfied. "Did I not tell you that stolen power always turns upon its thief in the end?" She leaned forward, a smile of inhuman beauty on her face. "You should have listened to me."
Malaric screamed, the high, ragged scream of a trapped animal.
Her wings moved in a blur and a flash of white light, and Malaric's scream came to a ragged halt.
What was left of him bounced across the dais in several pieces.
###
Riothamus turned just as a wraith of green light and smoke drifted into the study.
At first he thought it was a runedead that had penetrated the wards upon t
he walls of Barellion. But then it solidified into a narrow figure in a gray robe, yellow eyes glittering in a wedge-shaped head beneath the deep cowl.
Skalatan.
"I thank you, Guardian," hissed the archpriest, "for ridding me of a most persistent obstacle."
Riothamus started casting a spell, but the San-keth was faster. A burst of withering green flame shot from the skeletal hand of Skalatan's carrier, and Riothamus just managed to raise a ward. The ghostly flame snarled around him, hammering at his shield of golden light.
Skalatan stepped forward, seized the skull in his skeletal hands, and shifted back into the immaterial form of a wraith.
The green fire winked out, and Riothamus began another spell. But before he could finish it, Skalatan sank back into the floor and vanished.
###
"Farewell, mortals," said the Lady of Blades. She looked at Malaric's remains and laughed. "Look upon his fate, and disturb me no more."
"Fear not," said Mazael. "Nothing could be further from my mind."
The spirit laughed once more, and vanished in a swirl of gray mist.
"My Prince," said Bryce, hurrying forward. "Are you injured?"
"Aye," said Hugh, "but not severely. Lord Mazael and Lady Molly took greater hurts, and..."
His eyes widened a bit when he saw that Mazael's wounds had already healed.
"Go," said Mazael, "and see to your city, my lord Prince." He pulled the compass from his belt. The needle shone like molten gold. Skalatan was very near. "And I shall see to my business."
Hugh gave a single sharp nod and turned to his vassals.
"Father," said Molly, her voice a croak. She sat slumped against one of the columns, her leather armor and clothing torn. Her wounds were already closing, but slowly. The fight had drained her. "I'll..."
"Stay here," said Mazael. "When Riothamus comes, tell him I've gone after Skalatan."
"You can't fight him alone," said Molly. She tried to rise, and her gashed leg twitched and went limp.
Soul of Skulls (Book 6) Page 41
