“I apologize,” came the dragon’s slurring rumble. “You won’t like this part much.” Before Nestor had the chance to wonder what he wouldn’t like—as if he could like any of this!—his weightlessness ended with nauseating abruptness. He crushed against his invisible bonds as the dragon leveled out, inertia still pulling him toward the earth. It took a moment, but the pulling feeling finally left him, returning him to the lurch of the dragon’s glide that suddenly didn’t seem so bad.
The crater floor rose at a slight angle as they neared the mountain. Below them, a number of man-made structures streaked by. They were laid out in a precise configuration, but what they were made of, or what their purpose had been, Nestor could not say. But it was of little consequence to him. Finally, blessedly, they were slowing.
The dragon’s mighty wings beat the air as its glide became a hover, kicking up dust devils that swirled vividly in Nestor’s magical sight. Gravel crunched underfoot as the dragon came to rest on the mountainside. But not gravel, he realized. Rubble, as from some fallen building. It was made up of strange, flowing patterns, as if—
“Did they give you any trouble?” came a voice whose source was just outside of Nestor’s periphery. Strain as he might, the granite could not get a glimpse of him.
“Not a bit,” the dragon rumbled, the hint of a snicker in its voice. “Where do you want them?”
“Here’s fine. He’s shackled, and she won’t leave without him.”
The dragon unceremoniously dumped Nestor on the ground, those unforgiving bonds of air vanishing without warning, leaving Nestor’s backside exposed to the myriad rocks and pebbles that made up the crater floor.
Nestor scrambled stiffly to his feet, anger and nausea vying for command of his features. The source of the voice was a granite, though not one that he’d ever met. He stood with confidence, relaxed, and yet ready to meet any challenge that Nestor or Jaeda might present.
Jaeda...
“What did you do to her?” he barked, whirling on the dragon.
“She’ll be fine,” the beast slurred with surprising gentleness. “I’ve already removed the sleep spell from her, and she should be awake any moment now.”
“By what right did you take us?” Nestor demanded, dividing the question evenly between the dragon and the granite that seemed to command it. “Who are you? What do you mean to do with us?”
“All in good time, Chief General Veis,” the granite said. “For the moment, just know that you are safe, and guests of mine for as long as you choose to stay. I actually would have sent you on with the others, but they’ve been gone for quite some time.”
“Others? What in the Abyss are you talking about?”
The granite looked abashed for a moment, shifting uncertainly. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you don’t—never mind. I’ll explain in due course. For now, however, you might tend to Jaeda.”
Nestor eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then turned to Jaeda. She groaned as he approached, as one awaking from a restless night. “No, I can do it...” she muttered as he helped her to her feet. “What happened? I’ve got a splitting headache—”
Her complaints cut off sharply as she opened her eyes and took in the strange granite. “You! What have you done?” she demanded, fully alert, her yellow-orange parody of a face twisting in outrage in Nestor’s sight. Her aura flared in earthen brilliance as she gathered mana for an attack.
“You’re both safe,” the other said, raising his hands as a show of harmlessness. “I mean no harm to either of you. I only want to help.”
Jaeda stood motionless, not attacking the granite, but not releasing her magics either. “Why should I trust you?”
“We have... mutual acquaintances, in case you’ve forgotten,” the other said with a knowing smirk.
“I take it you know each other?” Nestor said dryly.
“You could say that,” Jaeda answered, slowly letting the mana bleed from her, as if in a sigh. Her eyes never wavered from their strange host.
***
Dawn was still hours away, but the rebel army was wide awake and on alert. For the sake of stealth, Reit had ordered the transport ships to drop anchor on the eastern shore of Ysre, allowing the rebels to approach Bastion from around the mountain’s wide northern base, hiding them effectively from the city’s inhabitants.
The advancing Rank army was proof positive that they were hidden no longer, and his ships seemed a world away. Only the Seacutter could be reached before the Bastionite horde attacked, but the ship was barely capable of holding fifty passengers and crew, let alone the many hundreds who were gathered on the mountain’s western plain. Reit had dismissed the Seacutter as an option. Delana had not, though for other reasons.
“No! I will not run screaming like a little girl!” Reit spat vehemently. Delana’s mood went from pleading to frosty at the comment—she always did take offense to the notion that females were in any way a weaker sex—but he rolled on as if he hadn’t noticed. “I’ve already abandoned my people once at the Council’s insistence. I will not do it twice.”
“No one’s asking you to,” Delana hissed through her teeth. “But you have a responsibility to your people, and that leaves no room for pride. You are el’Yatza, the only man in years to openly defy the Highest. Whether you like it or not, people live and die at your command, and do it gladly! We cannot afford for you to fall into his hands again. Think of it! The whole world looks to you—whether in love or hate, the world looks to you. Will you show them foolishness now, on the eve of triumph?”
“It may not be foolishness,” Keth said as he entered the command tent, dispelling what meager privacy the tent afforded. “There’s granites in that army.”
“All the more reason for him to get to safety!”
“But for Reit to make the Seacutter ahead of that army, I’d have to take him,” he pointed out. “And where I go, those granites will follow. I’m the only other granite around for miles. I wouldn’t be too hard to track. It would only be a matter of time before they found me—and him. And even if we did manage to get him on a boat, he’d have the entire Rank navy to contend with, which is why we decided on this plain as a contingency in the first place. At least here, we can offer him the protection of the entire Resistance. I’m sorry, Delana. He’s as stuck as the rest of us.”
“Face it, love,” Reit said, almost pleading for a break in the argument, though it was clear that she was having none of it. “I have to stay. What? Are you going to send an escort with me? How many mages would you sacrifice? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Contrary to popular opinion, I am not the Cause. I’m not even its founder. I’m just a man who didn’t want his children growing up in the same world I did.”
He turned quickly to Keth, cutting off a new round of protests from his stubborn wife. “Gather the rest of the Heads of Order and Guild. We can’t retreat with that army dogging our heels, but we can’t stay out here in the open either. We need to fortify our position.”
“Such as it is,” Keth muttered sullenly as he backed out of the tent.
Fortifying their position actually was not as difficult as it had originally sounded. Having a granite mage in camp made all sorts of things easier, once you got past the defeatist attitude.
Being at the base of the mountain, the plain was strewn with deposits of granite and metal, just below the surface. This served Keth well, since it was less taxing to find and move materials than it was to alter them or create them out of thin air.
He erected a high barricade in short order, raising it straight from the ground. Then he added to the ends, wrapping the wall completely around the rebel camp. Basic structure in place, he paused long enough to draw certain base metals from the earth for his comrades to put to use, then returned to the fortifications.
He raised long stone spikes from the base of the wall, their points jutting outward at an angle. The were large enough to keep attackers from mounting the wall en masse, yet spaced far enough apart so as to not hinder the rebels in
their defense. Then he set to work on opening arrow slits and shaping bulwarks, transforming the hastily raised barrier into a fortress.
Meanwhile, other defenders were busy employing their own various talents. Rubies smelted the raw ores that Keth brought up from the earth, making steel and other alloys. Then, with the help of the sapphires, they made castings, and forged whatever was needed, from wire to tent stakes to arrowheads. A number of amethysts set to work wrapping bulk materials in kinetic energy, and lifting them from one end of the fort to the other, wherever they might be needed. The rest took up sentry positions along the battlements, keeping watch against the unwelcome auras advancing in the night.
Artisans busied themselves affixing gemstones to silver, and etching activation runes. Some of these were added to weapons, some to armor. But many were added to artifacts, hastily crafted and more practical than beautiful, to give mundane defenders more full use of the arcane.
All of this Reit supervised from the front flaps of the command tent, where he had access to any and all notions that the Heads of Order might come up with. These notions were debated—quickly, of course—and implemented as necessary. All in all, Reit had to admit he was most impressed with what his people had been able to accomplish. In just a few hours, they’d turned a rocky, flat strip of grassland into a veritable stronghold. By the time the army from Bastion reached them, it was perhaps an hour before dawn, and the rebels were ready to withstand anything that Bastion might throw at them.
Looking back over his shoulder, he peered into the tent, as he had been doing all night. But nothing was different. The packs were still there, lying on his makeshift command table amidst a scattering of hastily-drawn battle plans. In all the bustle, the scrolls had worked the pack flaps loose. A few scrolls jutted from the packs here and there, and even from across the tent, Reit could see some of the diagrams. What marvels those ancient papers might hold! He wondered, not for the first time tonight, what he might find in there to help break the death grip that the Highest had on this world.
Reit also wondered if the Bastionite Ranks knew about the scrolls. Probably not. But even the drunkest of them would realize that the “rebel infidels” had been up to something last night. How often did a renegade granite just show up in the shadow of the Granite Spire, or an army outside the City of the Learned?
***
The army moved throughout the night, advancing on foot toward the rebel camp. They could have moved faster, using the granite or amethyst magics, but instead saved their strength for the battle to come. The rebels appeared to be going no where. Kredik used the time to try and sober his men up. There were precious few emeralds in the group, and they were employed throughout the night from Bastion to the battlefield, but there were too many men, and too drunk. By the time they reached the rebel encampment, only a fraction of the army had been sobered.
The first attack was called with dawn’s light. From Sal’s vantage point, he could see the first fireballs being lobbed at the fortified camp, only to splash ineffectively against the cold walls. The Rank officers ordered this spot attacked, then that spot with fire, or ice, or lightning. They tested the strength of the fortifications in various ways, even sending the occasional emerald forward to try his hand at withering the granite walls. These unfortunate individuals didn’t last long.
Finally, the sun just cresting the northern ridge of Mount Ysre, Kredik ordered the attack in earnest. He sent in his first wave, these men mostly sober. Those left behind found the nearest unattended emerald. Sal, of course, was slow in healing those who came to him, and more often than not, his charges contracted some horrible ailment shortly after obtaining his services.
Pity. They were such fine, upstanding men.
Holding Emerald as he was, with power suffusing his entire being, it was all Sal could do to restrain himself. He wanted desperately to just cut loose on the Rank soldiers, but right now they were too close together, too focused—or, as focused as a drunken rabble could be. For his hastily conceived Plan B was to work, he’d have to wait for the perfect time. And this wasn’t it.
The first wave split into a two-pronged attack, one to the east flank and one to the west. Both wings were made up of mundanes and lesser strength Rank mages. They attacked the fortification fiercely. Amethysts from the main body moved forward just enough to lift the attackers over the walls, placing them atop the battlements, or wherever their magic dropped them when it reached the farthest limits of its influence.
Bound to Emerald, Sal couldn’t see what has happening inside the compound. Likely, he wouldn’t have been able to pierce the dense walls even if he had risked touching Amethyst. But if the scene on the battlements was any indication, the rebels were holding their own. What few attackers survived the fury of the defending mages were mowed down by the magically enhanced weapons of the rebel mundanes. Swords danced with flame or lightning as their masters reaped a bloody harvest. Arrows dipped and turned in midair, striking impossible blows on their targets. Sal was pleased to find even a few shol’tuk adherents atop the walls, gracefully dispatching one foe after another. But glad as he was to see it, the scene just didn’t feel right. Kredik was holding back. He was sure of it. Even drunk, the mages were powerful. Why not leave off the attack with the amethysts, and use them solely to move the army inside the barrier? Why not use the granites to that effect?
Movement to Sal’s left caught his eye. It was Kredik, flanked by two other sapphires. They moved slowly, deliberately, toward the fort, leaving the Granite Guards in the care of about a dozen amethysts. But the group wasn’t transporting any soldiers or anything. The amethysts were holding magic, the power filling their conduits to such an extent that their auras flared brilliantly. But they were doing nothing with the magic. And the granites weren’t holding any magic at all. The whole group was all just sort of... standing there. He didn’t know why that should make him uneasy, but it did.
The trio of sapphires continued forward to the front of the Rank formation. They seemed disconnected in a way, unconcerned with what was happening around them. At once, they seemed both focused and distant. Trance-like, Sal decided. All that existed for them was the fort. Or more specifically, the south-facing wall of the fort. They spaced themselves out, each man standing about fifteen feet from the other two, with Kredik at the head of the triangle closest to the barrier. As one, they took hold of their soulgem’s magic, and gooseflesh puckered Sal’s skin as the pleasant autumn morning turned icy. The cold intensified, and a ball of thin haze began to form in the center of the triangle.
The haze rapidly condensed into a thick fog, then to a cloud, finally forming water droplets which froze almost instantly. The droplets themselves then bonded together, forming a single ball that continued to thicken as sapphire magic added layer upon layer of ice to the sphere. In seconds, it was the size of a cantaloupe. Seconds later, a wagon wheel. It continued to expand in all directions, swelling to about ten feet across, as big and as solid as a boulder. Or the load of a siege engine.
No sooner had the thought occurred to Sal that thought became reality. The glacial sphere catapulted forward, flying straight as a bullet into the granite wall. Even from more than a hundred yards away, the ground shook with the force of the impact. Invaders and defenders alike fell from the battlements as a section of wall rocked backward a bit, then righted itself. Jagged cracks etched themselves across the wall face. Amazingly, the wall held, but just barely. A blood-thirsty cheer ran through the Earthen Rank mob anyway, and those who weren’t rushing to the attack were dancing around arm in arm, already celebrating their impending victory. Before the icy powder of the first volley had even settled completely, the sapphires set to preparing the second.
Sal had waited long enough. The crowd was still more drunk than not, and all were half-blind with bloodlust. There would never be a better time than now.
Looking to the rear of the mob, Sal caught sight of Tribean. There were perhaps eighty other Rank recruits loyal to the Cause st
anding with him, with many more dispersed throughout the crowd. All swords were pulled and held at the ready. All bodies were rigid, muscles knotted with restrained vengeance. All gemstone eyes were fixed on Sal, awaiting his command.
And he gave it.
He peeled back the eye patch that he’d worn for weeks, and tossed it to the ground, releasing the emerald magic as it fell. Once more he fixed Tribean with his stare, diamond having replaced emerald, healthy flesh having replaced leather. There was no mistaking this signal. The world’s only diamond mage had revealed himself, completely and irrevocably. And it was time to get to work.
Touching Emerald again, he let the magic flood his conduits and flow down into the assassin’s katana in his right hand. Assassin’s katana... quite appropriate, he thought. For while his body filled with healing, the sword filled with death. Stepping to the sapphires, he dispensed it. So zealously, in fact, that he didn’t even notice that his fellows had followed suit. Or that one strangely dressed mundane had joined the battle beside him. Or that the five granites were no where to be found.
***
A trail of spraying blood marked Keth’s path through the fray, punctuated now and then by the occasional scream cut short by his blade. Suffused in granite magic, he was able to shrug off many of the magical attacks that found him. What attacks he couldn’t shrug off, he ignored. Pain seemed distant, floating in his aura but blessedly separate. He virtually shook with a pleasure that overshadowed his pain. He was finally able to exercise his talents without restraint, doing what he did best.
He was the embodiment of Death. All that mattered was the battle. Finding targets was easy, at least at first. He had to do little except follow the smell of stale spirits. What invaders he didn’t kill with his sword he dispatched... in other ways.
Within minutes of the initial attack, he’d gained the respect of his foes, and in a few more minutes, their fear. By the time the sapphires outside the walls began their own offensive, he’d reached legendary status, driving invaders before him by the dozen, mowing down those who weren’t fast enough—or sober enough—to escape his notice.
Gemworld Page 45
