Magic Astray (The Llandra Saga)

by Gregory Mahan

  Randall levered himself back up to get a better look. Standing in front of the statue was now a double handful of elves. But they didn’t look like the elves Randall had seen before. These elves looked taller and much older than the child-like elves in Dyffryn. They stood slightly hunched over, their heads weaving back and forth as they took in their surroundings. Behind them, Randall saw a shimmer in the air, like the mirage caused by the sun over a hot stretch of rock on a summer’s day. But in an instant, it was gone.

  They spoke with Mamaeth at length, but they were too far away for Randall to make out what they were saying. After a moment, they drew wicked looking swords from their scabbards, and began trotting off in the direction of Ninove, leaving the donnan behind.

  “That explains why we haven’t seen an army,” Randall said quietly. “He’s sending them to the capital.”

  “But why isn’t he sending more?” Nia said, confused. “I only counted a dozen.”

  “He’s having to use the Device while it’s still inside the statue,” he mused. “It must weaken the Device, somehow. The portal is open. I can feel it, but it’s small. When he opened it wider to let those elves through, I was hit with so much raw power that it nearly knocked me out.”

  “Those were not elves,” she said, spitting into the grass beside her. “Couldn’t you see them?”

  He shrugged. “They were too far away for me to get a good look. But they looked like elves to me.”

  “Perhaps we are distant cousins. But we do not have fangs. We do not have claws,” she continued derisively. “We are not animals.”

  “Okay, okay,” Randall said hastily. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I couldn’t get a good look at them anyway.” He glanced toward where the troops had gone, but saw no sign of them.

  “Well, if we’re going to attack Mamaeth, we need to do it now, before he summons anything else,” he said.

  Nia nodded grimly, pulling her sword from its sheath. Randall quietly freed his own dagger and coiled his legs underneath him.

  “Now!” he shouted, springing to his feet and sprinting toward the statue. Nia also leapt forward, speeding alongside him. In two great strides, Hunter had left them both behind, paws tearing at the grass as he raced toward the donnan.

  They traveled nearly half the distance before Mamaeth realized that they were there. The imp screeched a challenge, and Berry screamed one in return. Randall opened himself to Llandra, reaching for the lightning, and was staggered by the flood of power that hit him.

  It must be the portal, he thought distantly as he was filled with more magic than he had ever touched before. He noted that Mamaeth was already holding onto a small reservoir of power, but it was dwarfed by the amount of magic that Randall was building up.

  Just as he began to call to the lightning, Mamaeth spoke a word. He wasn’t casting at Randall, nor was he aiming his power at Nia. He was calling to the tiny pinprick of light that was the portal between worlds.

  “Open,” the donnan crooned.

  Light exploded behind Randall’s eyes as the doorway between worlds stretched wide. The power he had built up resonated with the flood pouring into Tallia from the other side, and filled him to the point of bursting. The lightning spell died on his lips as he first stumbled, and then collapsed in wailing agony, tumbling to the ground.

  Chapter 24

  Randall tried to bleed off the excess magic, but it was pouring into him faster than he could get rid of it. In desperation he pushed the magic down into his dagger. Feeding a magical artifact took lots of power, and he had plenty to spare. The pain behind his eyes lessened to a dull roar, and he looked up from the grass where he had fallen.

  A half-dozen elves stood on the far side of the clearing. But Nia had been right: they didn’t look like the elves of Shaderest Forest. They were taller and more feral, with sharp teeth and wickedly long claws coming from each fingertip. Their features were sharper and their skin reminded Randall of boiled leather. They wore scaled black armor, but the scales were much too large to be from any creature on this side of the portal.

  Behind them stood what appeared to be a mass of roots and vines assembled into a vaguely man-shaped form. It had tangles of vines serving as approximations of arms and legs, but that’s where the similarity ended. The thing had no head, and stood nearly ten feet tall. Randall wasn’t even sure the thing was alive until it moved, twisting its torso back and forth as if it were sniffing the air.

  “They have a shoddun with them!” Nia screamed.

  Randall didn’t know what a shoddun was, but it didn’t matter. He would fight his way to Mamaeth, and put an end to this madness, no matter what hellish creatures the donnan summoned.

  He looked down to retrieve his dagger from the ground and was shocked to see the hilt of the weapon sticking out from his side. He must have fallen on it when he tumbled. I don’t feel anything, he thought numbly. It must be shock. Stunned, he glanced around him.

  Mamaeth and Berry were locked in hand-to-hand battle, but Berry seemed to be getting the worse of it. Mamaeth had his friend pinned to the ground, his jaws locked around the younger donnan’s throat. Nia and Hunter were already surrounded by the elves, unable to counter so many. She was bleeding heavily from a number of wounds.

  Hopelessness washed over him. He didn’t know why he thought they’d had a chance. They were outmatched and outclassed, and would die in this field in the next few minutes. One of the elves broke away from fighting Nia and stalked toward him menacingly, and Randall almost giggled. Doesn’t he see that I’m already as good as dead? Whether I can feel it or not, that dagger in my side is a fatal wound for sure, he thought.

  “It’s the glamour, Randall! You have to fight it,” Nia screamed.

  The glamour? Now that she had mentioned, Randall realized that he did feel a pressure in his mind, much like whenever he was in Dyffryn, or whenever he looked too closely at Nia. Elven glamour made things look more beautiful and safe, but she had said that these weren’t elves. Randall pushed back, clearing his mind of the alien influence. It wasn’t as easy as shaking off the elven glamour, but now that he knew it was there, he could resist the effects.

  The scene around him changed, but subtly. Berry and Mamaeth really were fighting, and the elves had done their best to surround Nia and Hunter. But things weren’t as bad as they had first seemed. Berry seemed to be holding his own, for the moment, and Nia’s wounds looked superficial, at best. The elf stalking toward him still had fangs and claws, but didn’t look nearly as menacing as before.

  However, the long curved sword he was swinging toward Randall’s head was very real indeed. Randall rolled to the side, the sword missing him by inches. He kicked out, catching the elf in the ankles and toppling him to the ground. Randall leapt onto his chest before the elf could right himself, plunging his dagger deep into the side of the enemy’s neck.

  My dagger, huh? Randall mused. I guess that was part of the glamour too. The blade of Randall’s dagger threw off a bright white light, and he found it hard to look directly into it. That was new, too, but he had never fed the weapon as much magic as he had today.

  Laughing giddily, he stood up and stalked toward the knot of elves harassing Nia. Even from here, he could see the holes in their defenses, and the errors in their movements. Cutting them down would be child’s play.

  He caught the first elf by surprise, his dagger sliding neatly between two vertebrae and severing the spinal column between the creature’s shoulder blades. It wasn’t an immediately fatal wound, but did have the benefit of causing instantaneous and total paralysis. The falling elf’s cries alerted the others, and those nearest to Randall turned to face him in battle.

  The first to engage him kept stealing glances at his glowing dagger, his eyes wide. I’ll bet this wasn’t what you expected your first taste of magic to be, Randall thought wickedly. His foe’s distraction proved to be his undoing, allowing Randall to feint to the left, catching his opponent off guard and allowing him to slam his dag
ger into the elf’s ribcage.

  He pushed the dying elf away with his boot and stole a glance at Nia. She was faring much better now that many of the elves had turned their attention toward him. He smiled to himself and began to work his way toward her when something caught at his ankle, yanking him off his feet.

  It was a tangle of roots. As he fell, more roots slithered up from under the earth, wrapping themselves around his legs. Any edge that his dagger gave him would be lost if he were pinned to the ground, and the elves surged forward to take advantage of his misfortune.

  Panic welling up within him, Randall shouted a word, spraying shrapnel outward in all directions from his outstretched hand. The elves closest to him crumpled to the earth, and those further away fell back nursing grievous wounds. The portal to Llandra pulsed painfully when Randall pronounced the spell, filling him with new power.

  The roots continued to twist around him, working their way up his thighs toward his torso. It had to be the shoddun. It was still standing in the spot where it had been summoned, but its arm-vines were thrust down into the ground.

  With most of the elves dead or wounded, Nia worked her way toward Randall and began hacking at the vines with her sword. It was no use; her sword didn’t have the weight required to cleave through the thick roots and they were erupting from the ground faster than she could cut them away.

  Randall stretched his hand toward the shoddun, a spell tearing itself from his throat. Flame leapt from his fingertips, engulfing the creature in a column of fire. The portal again pulsed painfully, stronger this time than before. The vegetation pinning him to the ground immediately began thrashing and jerking about before withdrawing into the earth. The shoddun, still on fire, began lumbering away from the battlefield.

  Randall turned toward the statue, glancing back and forth before spotting Mamaeth clambering up its side. Berry was lying motionless in the grass at the statue’s feet.

  “Berry, no!” Randall shouted, stretching forth his hand as he raced toward his friend. Fire shot from his fingertips, causing the portal to throb again. This time, the amount of power that filled him was nearly as much as when Mamaeth had opened the portal, staggering Randall.

  The donnan deflected the column of flame, sending one back in return. Randall threw up a shield, pushing as much excess magic as he could into the spell. The translucent bubble shattered under the force of the attack, but it had done its job, keeping the worst of the attack away from Randall and Nia. With each exchange, the portal reacted more strongly, forcing Randall to push more and more magic into each spell so as not to become overwhelmed.

  “Open,” Mamaeth crooned, and this time at least a hundred creatures appeared on the battlefield. There were elves and at least a half-dozen shoddun, as well as an innumerable number of creatures that Randall had never even heard of, in any of the folk tales told by his grandmother.

  “There are too many!” Nia cried out in despair.

  In desperation, Randall called forth the lightning, putting every ounce of power he had into the enchantment. As magic filled Randall from the portal, he fed it into the spell, holding onto it as long as he could. Again and again, shafts of electricity slammed into the earth, leaving charred and flaming corpses in their wake. The portal grew wider, feeding more energy to him, and lighting rained down around them in a spectacular display of power. Nia fell to her knees, mouth agape, staring at the carnage around them.

  As Randall fed even more power into the lightning spell, the portal began giving off an audible whine, able to be heard even over the deafening thunder and the screams of the dying. And then, it happened. The portal tore open with a shriek, and all the creatures of hell began pouring through.

  “You’ve done my work for me, you stupid boy!” Mamaeth laughed from his perch.

  Randall spun to face the donnan, only to see the creature fading from view. Uselessly, he loosed a bolt of flame in the imp’s direction, but it was already gone.

  “Randall!” Nia screamed, and he whirled around. Hundreds of nightmarish creatures were streaming toward them, with more appearing with each passing moment.

  “Yaosheen!” he screamed, pushing every ounce of power into the spell. The bubble popped into existence just in time, surrounding the three companions and the statue. The monsters from Llandra battered against it, but the shield held. As long as power poured into him from the open portal, he would be able to feed it back into the spell.

  “You have to close the gateway,” Nia cried.

  “I have to hold the shield,” he yelled back.

  But did he? In his mind, he could see the route of power, from the jagged wound of the open portal through him and into the shield. The shield was already there, so why was he even necessary? If he twisted the power just so, why couldn’t he connect the shield directly to the source?

  Sweat formed on his brow as he pushed the magic to do his bidding. He was a conduit, and the power wanted to flow through him, resisting his efforts to tie it off. And then, without warning, it jumped from the portal to the shield like a spark to a metal door handle on a dry winter day. He was out of the loop.

  Instantly, the shield grew opaque, a bright silvery ball surrounding them. And while Randall couldn’t see the beasts around him, he could still hear them smashing themselves against it in fury.

  “What…what did you do?” Nia asked, eyes wide.

  “I tied the shield directly to Llandra,” Randall panted.

  “Oh,” she said, though it was clear that she had no idea what he was talking about. “Does that mean we are safe now?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything on this earth that can get through it. Though I’m not sure I know how to shut it off, either,” he said.

  “What about the gateway?” she asked.

  Randall nodded and turned to the statue. Berry lay crumpled in a heap at its base, jagged wounds along his side. Randall rushed to his friend, scooping up the limp form and cradling it in his hands.

  “Your healing talisman! Quickly!” Randall cried.

  Nia nodded and rushed over, fishing the artifact from her tunic. Randall pressed the engraved metal bit against Berry’s chest, willing power to flow into it. The talisman grew cold and began to glow, but there was no effect on Berry’s wounds. Randall pushed harder, feeding more power into the device until it shone a bright red. Metal began rusting and flaking away from the artifact at an increasing rate, until finally there was nothing left but a fine red powder.

  Panicked, Randall dug out his own talisman, and pressed it against the unconscious imp. Ignoring the weariness that suddenly slammed into him, he forced magic into it with all his will. The talisman flared brightly before exploding into a spray of powder.

  “Wake up, Berry,” Randall sobbed, his tears mixing with the powder on the imp’s chest and running down the inert form like blood. “Please wake up.”

  Nia gently rested her hand on Randall’s shoulder. “He’s gone,” she said softly.

  “No! He’s not gone,” he spat savagely, twisting his head to glare at her. “He has to wake up. He has to.”

  “We all lose friends in battle,” Nia said. “Hunter is somewhere, out there…” she finished, sweeping her arm in an arc indicating the area outside of the bubble. There were tears in her eyes.

  “Those of us that are left have to carry on,” she continued. “There is still work to be done.”

  Randall nodded, hugging Berry to his chest tightly before softly placing his body on the grass. He took a moment to gently arrange the imp’s limbs, so that the donnan looked as if it might be sleeping.

  Standing, he looked at the statue. There were several shallow gouges along one side, as if someone had tried to break into it to get to the Summoning Device. But the dwarven steel had proven to be too difficult to penetrate. He was certain that he wouldn’t be able to crack it open, either.

  Outside of the shield, the noise had reached a fever pitch. Randall could hear the cascade of thunder, and screaming from all around
them. Closing his eyes, he could feel the bright flashes of power that meant someone was using magic. There were Mages here!

  Randall turned his attention to the portal, which he could feel pulsating in his mind with every spell they cast. Now that the gateway was open, it fed the Mages power without growing in size. In his mind’s eye he could see the tenuous thread leading from it to the Summoning Device buried deep within the robes of the statue.

  Drawing his own power, he pushed against that connection, willing it to close. As difficult as it had been to link his shielding spell to Llandra through the portal, breaking this connection was proving to be a monumentally more difficult task. Even with all his will focused to the task, he barely budged the amount of power flowing between the portal and the device.

  The sounds of battle raged around him as he drew more and more power to channel into his effort. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck began to stand on end as he channeled more energy into the connection. His sorrow at Berry’s passing steadily grew into a white hot fury as he pushed against the conduit with all his will.

  “You will close,” he growled out through gritted teeth. “I am Randall Miller, Archmage. You will do my bidding.”

  As the power built, Randall wasn’t sure which would give out first: the Summoning Device or him. There was a great cracking sound as the statue of Aiden split from shoulder to hip. He stumbled forward as if he had been fighting against a heavy current that had suddenly ceased to exist, and the portal winked out of existence.

  He tried to catch his balance, but exhaustion crashed into him like a giant hand pressing him into the earth. Darkness took him as he slammed face first into the grass.

  Chapter 25

  Randall woke slowly. It seemed as if every muscle in his body ached, and he moaned as he rolled over onto his side. He was hot, sweating, and weakly pushed the covers away from his face so that he could breathe. Covers?