Scion’s Sacrifice

by R. Michael Card

  Cassine and Davar landed as the others were spreading out slightly, ready for a fight. Emberthorn and Eaglewing were out and ready, Ahrn had a staff he spun lazily, and Tirol held two slender long-swords.

  Davar called out a hushed, “This way.”

  They followed him across the half-mile wide bailey toward the stark black walls of the main keep, which jutted up hundreds of feet into the low rolling clouds.

  The inner keep was a lesson in structural horror. No wall was smooth. There were no curves or square edges. The outer surface was a crisscrossing of jagged stone, sharp and haphazard. There were no doors only dark maws with ragged stone teeth that gaped in various spots along the walls, none on ground level. Odd protuberances and stone spikes clawed out from the walls all over, like some giant armored and deformed porcupine.

  Cassine shuddered from the feel of despair and horror the walls gave off and she bolstered her soul-soothing to the others and continued on.

  As it turned out the jagged edges of the wall were functional as well as ugly. Davar came to one spot in the wall and began to climb the rough stone to a dark opening fifty feet up. The climbing was easy with the all the large and small uneven stonework, and they were all quickly at the entrance, standing just inside an unlit tunnel.

  The flames on Emberthorn’s blade and Starsong’ soft white luminescence lit the hallway, and Cassine created a small ball of fire to float ahead of them as they started deeper into the keep.

  Inside there were no windows, no torches, and no magical light other than their own. This was the heart of the Blacklord’s realm and here darkness reigned. Without light, these passages would be treacherous. Holes gaped in the floor, tunnels tilted down or up suddenly. Sometimes a hall would end and the only way to go was straight up, perhaps hundreds of feet.

  At these points, Wyllea or Davar would ferry them up the long shafts. Wyllea flew smoothly up the tunnel, while Davar made a great leap to throw himself up the vertical hallways.

  There was little sound in the keep, the floor absorbed their footfalls into an oppressive silence.

  After what seemed like hours of careful stalking through eerie narrow halls, they came to a room so large their light sources penetrated only partway into the quiet darkness

  “This is the first of the galleries. There are guards here, stone statues that move as fast and as quiet as the wind. Most likely they’re already on their way here to slay us,” Davar said with a hushed, intense tone. “Try not to engage too many of them. If possible, we want to get around these guys, not fight them. Though I’m itching for a bit of action right now.”

  “You’re one crazy man, you know that,” Tirol said.

  A whisper of sound, that was all it was, and Davar pulled Tirol out of the way of a massive stone blade swept through the air to decapitate him.

  “You said they were big, but Gods!” Wyllea called as one lumbered into their light, a thirty-foot tall man of stone with a stone sword just as long.

  Ahrn and Tirol fell back since they wouldn’t do much good in this fight. Cassine dropped a bright ball of fire above them to let them see farther then joined the three scions in combat. She had no weapon as they did, but these were creations of stone and that she had power over.

  She stood behind the wall of bodies the scions created and sent her senses into the darkness, feeling for more of the moving statues.

  Gods, but there were a lot of them!

  A dozen more were closing fast and even more flooded I behind them. There was no way they could fight them all, or if they did they’d be exhausted afterwards. They needed to end this initial fight quickly and move on before the rest got here.

  Cass steadied her heart, calming her fears, and acted. She sent her earth sense into the closest dozen. She felt the stone, the flaws and weaknesses within every moving block. These things had no spirit to connect to, so if she was going to do anything to them it would require raw earth talent and lots of it. She thrust her energy out, pushing and pulling with all her considerable earth talent, exploiting each flaw.

  Stone ground on stone as she forced it harder still. Then with a great crash and creak, the statues crumbled to piles of thick stone blocks and dust. She’d pushed harder than she wanted, but the threat around them had been eliminated.

  “What was that?” Senia asked.

  “Me,” Cassine said breathing hard. “But there are many more coming. Davar, what’s our route out of here, this will have to be a moving fight, or we’ll be stopped here far too long.”

  Davar grunted his acknowledgment. “This way,” he said, skirting along the wall to their left.

  “I sure hope he knows where he’s going,” Tirol said, as he and Ahrn began running.

  “Don’t we all.” Senia jogged along with long strides beside them.

  Wyllea flew above them, facing backward, guarding the rear.

  Cass used her earth talent to strengthen her muscles and bones, rejuvenating her for the sprint to come. She also continued to keep track of the stone guards. The constructs must have had some way to see in the dark or perhaps didn’t need to see at all and simply knew where intruders were. They adjusted their course to purse Cass and the others.

  “Davar, look out!” she called

  Davar launched himself upward. The guard was close, sword sweeping underneath Davar as the big man sliced cleanly through the thing’s neck. Its stone head crashed to the ground and shattered. That did nothing to stop it.

  Its blade slashed again. This time at Ahrn. He narrowly ducked under it. Senia, close behind him, leapt and sliced through the guardian’s sword arm. It crashed to the ground in front of Tirol and Cassine.

  Cassine grabbed the tall rogue, surging her earth talent to increase her strength and carry him while jumping over the debris.

  “Thanks,” he gasped.

  “I’m sure you’ll get a chance to repay me later,” she said, feeling the incredible drain on her body from so much earth talent used.

  They ducked into a smaller side tunnel before the next guardian could reach them, pausing to catch their breath once they were safely out of the gallery.

  Cassine moved up next to Davar. “I’ve used a lot of earth talent so far. I don’t know how much more I’ve got.”

  He brushed back some hair from her face and with the touch came a surge of his own energy. “Here’s a little for now,” he said softly. “And remember that spell we learned. You can drain your spirit talent to fuel any other talent. It’s a last ditch thing, but at least it’s something.”

  She was grateful and tried to smile, but succeeded only in a tired, lopsided grimace.

  Once again, Davar led them through a maze of passages and finally stopped them when they came to a sheer drop. Even before he spoke, a noise filled the tunnel, as if they were surrounded by a great hive of bees.

  “Hear that?” Davar asked.

  There were nods all around. “What is it?” Wyllea asked.

  “That, or more precisely, those are the Raging Disciples.”

  In one of their gatherings to prepare for this assault, Davar had told them all of the Raging Disciples. These were men and women who’d come to the Blacklord willingly to undergo the magical transformation that would turn them into his dark assassins. Yet the magic needed to imbue a person with such power did not always flow smoothly into a body. For every dozen assassins created, there was a Raging Disciple made. Deformed, crazed, and seeking only death, they would fight anyone who came near them with all the terrible power of an assassin, but none of the training or control. They’d been known to eat their victims, or rend them limb from limb, usually while the person was still alive. Why they didn’t attack each other was a mystery, probably some mind-infused spell from the Blacklord.

  “How many are there? It sounds like thousands down there?” Ahrn asked.

  “The gallery is massive,” Davar said, grim. “You’re right. There are thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands, I don’t know. The only way past them is to f
ly. But we still must land to pass through the locked door on the far side of the chamber. This will take all of us working in tandem to survive. Everyone clear on the plan?”

  “Remind me what’s on the other side of that door?” Senia asked.

  “The room of fire.”

  “Right, the one with the lava.”

  “Yes.”

  “Great,” Tirol sighed with a grimace.

  Davar took a moment to glance at each of them. “We all know what to do. Let’s make sure we all survive this.” Then he turned to Wyllea. “You’re up.”

  Chapter 23

  Davar watched the dark-haired scion concentrate for a moment before stepping out over the shaft. She didn’t fall but seemed instead to be walking on nothing.

  “This isn’t easy to maintain so let’s make this quick,” Wyllea said, a hint of strain in her voice. “Everyone on.”

  Davar had no fear of the fall below and was the first to step out into the hardened air Wyllea was creating. It was odd. He expected to fall but didn’t. They’d practiced this at the abbey, but it was still an odd sensation. The others gathered onto the invisible platform quickly, even if a few looked a little uncertain.

  Then Wyllea lowered them down the shaft. Davar’s stomach lurched at the speed of the drop. The effect was clear on the faces of the others as well.

  “Could we go a little slower, perhaps?” Tirol asked, his face an odd shade of green.

  “No lover, we can’t, so suck it up. I want to get this over with as soon as possible. This isn’t easy.” Wyllea’s voice was clipped, strain more than audible now.

  Quickly enough they were below the roof level of the massive chamber and began to move laterally, following the curve of the high-arching ceiling.

  I think we could use more light, Davar said to Starsong.

  Done! The blade gleamed, a clear bright light, reflecting off the sheer, smooth black surface not far above them. As Shadowfang had been attached to the sub-element of shadow, Starsong was of the sub-element of light and she could blaze forth like the sun itself when needed. The room below was now clearly illuminated. The Raging Disciples on the ground were also used to darkness and many cried out and covered their eyes from the new star soaring above them.

  Below them was a sea of sea of crazed humanity — if indeed there was any humanity left in those poor souls. They surged and moved, like waves upon the ocean, screaming jeering and discordant song of madness.

  Uncertainty sunk its dark claws into Davar’s heart. He’d been through these halls many times before, but on those journeys, he’d been protected by the Blacklord’s magic. This time would be much different. Not only would there be no protection, but he was sure he’d be targeted specifically. The Blacklord would want to keep the scion women and Cassine alive if possible, but Davar himself was a lost cause to his once ‘father.’ He was fine with that. It meant he was no longer redeemable in his father’s eyes, and he was a threat to be eliminated. That was a good thing.

  Now he just had to survive.

  He turned to the others. “Don’t worry. There may be a lot of them down there, but we’ll be fighting in a small area, only a few will be able to get to us at one time. We can handle this.” They knew it, but he’d wanted to reassure himself as well.

  “So what you’re saying is that we don’t have to kill all seven million of them?” Tirol asked grimacing as he stared at the seething horde.

  “There aren’t that many,” Ahrn said stoically.

  “Exactly.” Davar tried to put on a smile, but truth be told he had no clue how many there were. The room was hundreds of feet across and so tightly packed that it was impossible to tell how many there were. There could be millions… he didn’t know.

  And it was coming time to drop down into that crowd.

  There was a great double door at the far side of the room. To get to it, they’d need to deal with at least some of the raging disciples. He and Senia would go down first and clear an area. The others would follow, Wyllea and Ahrn would help enlarge the area around the door while Tirol and Cass opened it.

  They reached the far wall and Wyllea lowered them a little.

  Are you ready to free some tortured souls? He asked Starsong.

  More than ready. Let’s go.

  He dropped a ball of light below him to clear a small spot then allowed himself to fall.

  Some of the maddened throng below threw themselves at him before he even reached the ground, but he was ready and Starsong sang with light and fury. He cut through their toughened flesh with ease, freeing them from their eternal suffering.

  Landing right on top of the ball of light he began laying about him with Starsong. With a few quick, aggressive swipes of his sword, he’d cleared enough area for Senia to drop down behind him.

  She came out swinging, her longer blade clearing an even larger area than he could with Starsong. But it would still take them a moment to create enough room for the others.

  Dealing with the Raging Disciples was in some ways easier than dealing with Blacklord’s assassins, and in some ways harder. The disciples had no focus, no training, and no discipline. They came at him in a horde and with one great swipe of his blade he could often take four or more at once. Also, they didn’t coordinate their attacks and could get in each other’s way, which helped him. Yet they were far more intent on their target, their fury a constant beating wave against his defenses. This is what made them deadly. Their sheer numbers and unrelenting ferocity. Assassins would take stock, plan, coordinate and in doing so give him time to plan, but this was purely slaughter on both sides. Either he slew them or they him.

  The constant need to infuse his muscles with immense strength to slice through the hard hides of these once human foes wore on him, draining his earth talent. It didn’t help that he’d lent some of his strength to Cass. He hadn’t thought it would be an issue, but he’d underestimated how tough these foes would be.

  Once he and Senia coordinated their attacks, falling into a rhythm which cut up the disciples, they finally managed to take that step or two forward, creating room for the others. Cass and Tirol went to work on the door as Ahrn and Wyllea joined the fight. The monk used his staff, even his bare hands, bashing skulls and breaking necks. Wyllea hovered above them, picking off anyone who threatened to break through their lines.

  It was up to Cass and Tirol now. He had to pick the lock and she was to detect any traps within the door or the lock to keep Tirol alive while he opened it for them.

  Time expanded and stretched. It was probably only minutes, but it felt like hours. Davar felt himself slowing, his strength waning against the constant onslaught of malignant flesh intent on killing him.

  Starsong, I need some energy. Give me some of that spirit.

  Sure! Starsong said still somehow cheery, and he felt a rush of life and energy renewing him.

  Thanks, he said, his focus restored.

  It was one of Starsong’s abilities. Since light was the sub-element of fire and water, of spirit and soul, the sword could essentially give him an infusion of pure light. It was an interesting effect, using spirit to take some of the sword’s soul energy and re-energize Davar’s body. In addition, it boosted his soul and spirit at the same time, uplifting him more than just physically.

  How often can you do that?

  Not often. Maybe three to five times depending on how much energy you need.

  Good, I may need it later. He used some of his newfound spirit energy to restore his earth talent using the spell he’d discovered with Cass.

  “Got it!” Tirol shouted, followed by the creaking of great hinges as the door swung open behind him. There was a great blast of heat on his back and a stench of sulfur. “Let’s get out of here!” Tirol added.

  “Go!” Senia said. “Ahrn and I can keep them at bay until the rest of you are through.”

  “Will do,” Davar said and took several steps back, as did the other two, closing their radius of control to a smaller area she and Ahr
n could manage. Then Davar turned and fled through the great double doors into the Gallery of Fire.

  Cass and Tirol had been smart. They’d only opened one of the two great doors between the rooms, which opened into the chamber with the Raging Disciples. The two of them had pried the one open far enough for a person to slip through, not much more.

  Wyllea came hot on Davar’s heels as Davar grabbed the door and braced himself. This was going to take some strength.

  “Senia! Now,” he shouted and instantly the two still in the room broke and ran, Ahrn first, followed closely by Senia. The trick was to have as few of the disciples reach the door by the time everyone was through. If those madmen began prying it open their combined strength would be hard to overcome.

  Davar began closing the door even as Senia slipped through. Only a few of the disciples had enough clarity to try to pull the door open. They were in the minority as the press of thousands behind them practically closed the door for Davar.

  Tirol went to work on the lock once again as the rest of them took a moment to catch their breath.

  Davar glanced around the chamber of fire to see if it had changed much since his last visit. It was the only place so far with its own light. Yet the light was a dim red glow from the bubbling lava that covered the floor of most of the room. There was a narrow ledge around the sides of the room, but that was a trap, the stone walls were alive and able to envelop anyone trying to go around. The only true way across the room was flying or across the scattered stepping-stones. The problem with the stepping-stones was they sank almost as soon as any pressure was put on them. Everything seemed the same here.

  “That should do it.” Tirol stood back from the door. The rogue smiled. “I had my doubts about this plan. I really didn’t think we’d make it this far, but now that we have… well, it’s fairly smooth sailing from here, right?”