Dark Path: Book Three of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  Bridget made a short, sharp gesture, and an unnatural gust of wind swept from her hand, sweeping the mound of ash and bone fragments from the emptied levare into the chamber in a fan across the polished floor. She shouted her goddess’ name as she plunged into the room, her boots crunching on the ash and bone fragments which allowed her sufficient traction to be able to walk so long as she stayed on the fan of debris. The rest of the raiders followed her, weapons ready, stepping quickly but carefully.

  Henri’s first spell, a simple work of fire, ripped the screen into a dozen burning fragments, exposing a square block of what appeared to be pure gold, two feet square on a side and waist-high to a man. The top was cut at an angle so that the skull it supported on a silk pillow (the cranium sat on a bed of bones and bone fragments, he noted absently) looked out at the chamber at a head’s normal angle. The White Necromancer, Henri realized as the skull turned to face their door: just a skull and age-rotted remnants of a skeleton, which was why it had the screen. A wave of ethereal force smashed him to his knees and sent blood spurting from his nose, bringing home the fact that the liche was far from helpless, at least in the realm of magical endeavor.

  The Dayar had metal sheathing on their ‘feet’ Elonia saw as she weighed the glass Orb of Destruction in her hand, allowing them to cross the polished floor as if it were bare dirt, curls of wax spurting up with each bony footstep. These Dayar were very old, their ‘bone’ having darkened until they were hard to make out against the black walls save for their fiery blue flame-eyes. Each was somewhat taller than a man, an awful parody of a Human skeleton made of thick, sweeping shafts of age-darkened material that looked more like ivory than bone. No sinew or cartilage marred the creature’s clean lines, nor did any other substance bind the animated framework together. The bones were wrong, it could be seen at a second glance: the rib cage was too long, the spine was only four separate pieces, and the arms and legs had double shafts from hip to knee and shoulder to elbow. Horn-like protrusions jutted from the backs of the elbows, the tops of the shoulders, and other points, sure signs of a long-serving Dayar; these warriors also boasted two or three horns jutting from their thick-structured skulls. Each was armed with a wickedly spiked mace and a light shield; bronze plates, now green with age, had been riveted to the creatures’ ribs for added protection.

  She cast when the creatures were within the effects of the Torc; otherwise, the Orb would be defeated by the liche’s protective spells. A grave-sized section of floor exploded into gravel just in front of the Dayars’ feet; more importantly (and unexpectedly), the force of the eruption buckled several slabs of the marble which sheathed the bedrock floor, so that for an instant the Dayar tottered on a surface as shifting as a sea.

  It was so old, such a sense of endless age that washed over her as she focused the Torc and her enchantments upon the liche. The White Necromancer was old even by Dwarven or Threllian standards, with an awareness that stretched back six centuries or more, an awareness that struck her like a physical force, driving her back a step even as she wove spells and cast wards. She was aware of the Orb of Destruction going off, but little else as she concentrated upon her foe. The liche might be reduced to a skull and twenty pounds of bones, but the will, the intelligence, and much of its power still remained. It was diminished from what it had once been capable of, but it was far from decrepit. A counter-spell battered her back another step, her feet crunching across the ashes and bone fragments that clotted the wax and defeated the necromancer’s simple and deadly ruse.

  Two Dayar tripped in the newly-made trench made by the Orb, and the other five staggered and danced on the shifting, flapping marble slabs. Maxmillian was struck by a sudden inspiration spurred by a distant childhood memory: leaping to the end of the debris fan, he launched himself at the Dayar, sliding across the waxed floor on his seat like a child on an icy pond, blue-green light dancing on his war hammer as he called forth its enchantment, further augmented by the Torc’s field. He slid between the two Dayar nearest the wall as the skeletal warriors fought for balance, steering with an elbow as he had done on ice as a boy. Catching one mace swing on his shield and feeling the other fan his cheek (the miss further unbalancing his foe), he swung to the right and then left with savage force, his first blow blasting a ‘kneecap’ to shards, the second, on the other Dayar, converting a ‘foot’ to fragments. As the two creatures toppled to the floor the scholar dug in the butt of his hammer and the lower rim of his shield, spraying himself with wax flakes as he stopped abruptly.

  A brilliant beam of light leapt from Henri’s hand, only to be deflected aside, cutting a molted track across the front of the gold block. He was still on his knees, as an erect stance and braced footing were unnecessary for the type of struggle he was in. Blood was running down the left side of his head, and his face and neck were bleeding from a score of tiny cuts from floor debris whipped into the air by unseen flows of magical energy as the invisible battle raged back and forth between the two Badgers and the liche. The fight was dragging on for what seemed an eternity; his powers were flagging, and he had yet to see a single spell of his strike home, or even have an effect upon his Undead foe. Wearily he spat the command for a ward that narrowly blocked a bolt of gray-blue force that darted from an eye socket. His responding beam of light ripped a gust of feathers from the liche’s pillow, the closest strike he had made.

  Kustar darted forward to the edge of the area made safe by the debris, lunging forward to drive the point of her sword into, and through, the skull of the Dayar whose foot Maxmillian had destroyed. She had gone a step too far, however; her right foot shot out from under her, dropping her onto the floor with a bone-jarring impact that drove the air from her lungs and knocked her sword-hilt from her fingers. Red lights danced before her eyes as she struggled to scramble backwards onto safer flooring and catch her breath.

  She cursed when she saw the Pargaie officer go for one of the fallen Dayar; they were safely out of the fight for now, leaving only three still on their feet. Bracing herself, Elonia held her position and let the first Undead come to her. Their fight was for time, not kills, and damn the bloodthirsty Dark Threll style. Muttering the command to the strongest of her very limited number of spells, the Seeress created a shield of force that deflected the Dayar’s mace as she hooked its shield with one manople, jerking the barrier down and to the side as she leaned in and punched the point of the other manople through the creature’s skull. The flame-eyes winked out and the mace clattered to the floor as the thing’s frame crumbled into blackened shards in the span of a heartbeat.

  Staying on his hands and knees as one of the still-standing Dayar came at him, Maxmillian summoned the remaining usable enchantment in his hammer for a single, devastating blow, which he directed at the floor directly in front of the Dayar’s feet. The impact numbed his arm to the elbow, but when the marble slab smashed at the point of impact, the surviving two-thirds of the sheet of stone bucked into the air, sending the skeletal warrior sprawling. The historian caved in its skull before it could recover and climbed to his feet on the patch of bare (and blessedly rough) bedrock his blow had exposed, kicking aside the rest of the unseated slab to give himself room to maneuver. And maneuvering was needed: the two Dayar who had tripped in the Orb’s trench were back on their feet, and the odds were still far from even.

  Keeping her focus with a skill born of years of practice, ignoring the gasps, grunts and ring of metal on metal produced by the melee to her left, Bridget wove the power of the Torc and her own powers into a tightening web. The liche was old, age-weakened, and it had been decades since it had faced a personal attack, and even more decades since it faced magic other than necromantic, but still it fought on. Henri’s attacks, though parried, were doing far more damage than the wizard could guess: they were disruptive, distractive, and taking a heavy toll upon the liche’s powers. A part of her mind wondered at the White Necromancer’s skills and ability: despite being reduced to a state where a significant amount of its p
owers must constantly be used to maintain the thread between life-force and the remnants of its physical being, caught completely by surprise, and hammered by powerful spells of a nature specifically intended to slay Undead, the liche still existed and fought back like a maddened puma. On an even footing without the Torc the fight would be over by now with herself and Henri dead, given the liche’s skill, but with the Torc the tide was turning. Bridget had never handled a power this strong, a clearer channel to more energy and a tighter focus than she had dreamed possible. So potent was the forces she manipulated that when one of the Dayar charging from the group on the far side of the dais was brushed by the very fringe of one weaving, the warrior was instantly transformed into a dirty mist of dust, falling brass plates, and weapons.

  Her tiny store of magic long exhausted, Elonia parried another mace blow and yielded a half-step of the ever-narrowing distance between herself and Henri, desperately holding back two Dayar. The other group would be here any second, and still the air crackled and howled at the passage of spell and counter-spell. One Dayar suddenly crashed to the floor, its legs kicked out from beneath it by Kustar, who had not yet regained her feet. The lithe Nepas sprang upon the Undead warrior, wrapping her legs around its chest as she drove her dagger point through an eye socket, collapsing the creature into fragmented ruin. The crash of bronze plates hitting the floor nearby indicated that Maxmillian had gotten another; the odds were shifting, but not fast enough.

  The chamber was spinning like the way a room did when you were drunk to the point of passing out; Henri had ceased any offensive spells and was husbanding his fast declining store of energy for protective wards. He was still on his knees, left hand planted on gritty, warming waxed floor while the other traced symbols in the air, head hung down and turned to the side to keep the blood out of his eyes. It wasn’t necessary to see the liche, he could be blind and still feel that malevolent orb of power squatting on the block of solid gold. He saw Maxmillian, on his feet now, plant his hammer in the skull of a Dayar- he had thought the scholar dead; then Kustar tripped up one of the Undead facing Elonia and slew it. He saw the Seeress entangle the remaining upright Dayar’s mace with a daring, risky sweep of a fighting net and keep it in place as Maxmillian trotted up from behind to stave in its skull. He saw the last of the near group of Dayar, which had had the lower portion of one leg destroyed somehow, hobble up behind Kustar as Maxmillian and Elonia finished their foe and grab the Nepas’ hair with its left hand as she rose up from the ruins of its comrade.

  The Dayar jerked the screaming Pargaie officer onto her back, ignoring her desperate, awkward dagger-thrusts, her sword still lying yards away in the dust of the first Dayar she had slain. The Undead warrior crushed her chest with its first blow, smashing the breastbone and sending jagged splinters into the heart sac and lungs, stilling Kustar’s screams into a dying gurgle; the second blow tore open the joint of her shoulder, stopping the frantic dagger-thrusts. The third blow died in mid-air along with the Dayar as a manople point punched through the wielder’s unprotected skull. He felt nothing as he watched the beautiful woman who had given him pleasure like no other vomiting blood in a last dying effort to breathe, felt nothing because darkness was sweeping in from the corners of his vision to topple him, like a black avalanche from which there was no escape.

  She saw another charging Dayar wink out of existence when it got too close to her weaving, vanishing into falling dust and armament. Henri was out of the fight, but the White Necromancer wasn’t in much better shape, and a very good thing that it was, because the Torc was a burning weight around her neck and the bracelet that was part of her enchanted set had shattered under the unrelenting force directed at her. Permanent harm had been done to the matching amulet as well, and the belt was nearly drained, although she could not tell at this moment whether it was a permanent loss or not. She let none of it distract her, none of it mar her thinking, her weaving, or her power. She could still lose, the desecration of Nature before her could still endure the passing of more years should she fail here. But she was hurting it now, she knew, doing more than battering its wards and draining its power; it was taking real damage, damage that would never be made whole again, damage that the liche’s time-ravaged physical being could scarce afford.

  Maxmillian and Elonia passed behind Bridget, who stood planted like a post with sparks dancing about her outthrust hands and fingertips, and circled around to meet the five Dayar coming from the far side of the dais. The Undead warriors had had to circle well around the chamber to avoid losing any more of their number to the magical energies that crackled and flashed between the priestess and their master. They slowed to a normal walk and spread out as they approached the two weary Badgers, hefting their weapons eagerly.

  “That’s torn it!” Maxmillian shouted over the noise of magical battle. “We’re really in it now.”

  “Too true,” Elonia nodded. “I knew I should have gone to bed with you sooner. Follow my lead.”

  Before he could ask what she meant, the Seeress dove forward, landing just in front of the line of Dayar and deliberately rolling into them, bringing two warriors in the center crashing to the ground. Instantly, Maxmillian saw what she was about: when prone, the Dayar’s maces were largely useless, at least at such close quarters, while Elonia’s manoples were still in their element.

  Ripping the shield from his arm, Maxmillian swept it like a discus as Kroh had taught him, catching the last Dayar on the left end of the line across the ‘shins’ in mid-step and toppling it as well. Twirling his hammer, he threw himself on the two upright Undead.

  The weave grew tighter and tighter even as the weight of the Torc drove her to her knees. Her amulet was powder and dust, the chain links tiny splatters of molten metal across her studded leather tunic front. Her hands were growing numb, and it was difficult to breathe, but she could see the life-force of the liche clearly now, so battered were its wards, and she could feel its defenses beginning to flicker as the foe’s strength and energy began to slip.

  It was a madhouse brawl like none she had ever experienced. Elonia thrashed, kicked, stabbed, slashed, and kneed with all the energy and skill she possessed, and in the doing of it kept three Dayar entangled with her in one thrashing, scrabbling mass that prevented any of the Undead from using their maces effectively or even getting a decent grip upon her. Of course, she was doing them no harm either, and her lungs were white-hot bellows trying to get enough oxygen to her muscles while the Dayar felt no fatigue whatsoever. Unless Bridget won soon, her strength would fail her and she would die as Kustar had.

  Maxmillian had buried the ‘beak’ of his hammer in the ‘pelvis’ of one Dayar and tripped it up, smashing its skull open with the griffin-pommel of his hastily drawn sword even as the other foe cracked a couple of his ribs with a tooth-rattling mace stroke. He was thankful that the risarn-bladed sword was much lighter than his hammer, as his strength was fading fast, and it was all he could do to hold the last upright Dayar off of him.

  The rubies were burning her throat; she could feel the blisters swelling and spreading, the pain a distant sensation as the room grew more and more dreamlike under the strain of the battle. Dying like this would not be so bad, she reflected dimly, just fading away as you were supposed to do when you froze to death. Except that she wasn’t freezing, she reminded herself, and she wasn’t going to die: with a mental twitch that was the equivalent of a twirl of the wrist, she completed the weave, and the liche’s wards frayed and broke, falling away under the white-hot power of the Torc-aided spells. For a long instant she looked at the necromancer, not just as a time-worn skull resting on a layer of crumbling bones that lay on a torn pillow atop a battered block of gold, but at the life-force and intellect that made it was it was. She saw the vanity, the raw ambition, the driving will unfettered by any moral restraint, the ego completely centered upon itself, the keen intelligence.

  Once it had been housed in a living body, the remnants of which it still used to link itself wi
th this world, but it had long outlived the body’s life, and still defied death. There was a grotesque majesty about it, an awesome strength of self that commanded a grudging respect in even its bitterest foe. With a very faint twinge of regret, Bridget extended her weave and softy ended the life. She waited a long interval, long in terms of magic, the reality of it being not much more than a heartbeat, before lowering her wards and dismissing the weave. She slumped over to sit firmly on the floor, hooking her thumbs under the Torc’s gold strands to lift the cooling rubies from the burned patches on her throat.

  Elonia struggled free from the now inert Dayar, gasping and wheezing for breath, at the very end of her strength. Maxmillian slowly sheathed his sword and groaned as he knelt to recover his hammer.

  “Elonia,” Bridget wiped away a spill of wine with the trembling hand that held the flask, the other still holding the Torc from her neck. “Are you hurt? Good. Check Henri and Kustar. Maxmillian, are you hurt? Just your ribs? Then finish those Dayar, I’ll tend to you shortly.”

  Slipping her fingers under the Torc, now once again its normal weight and temperature, she stroked the burnt patches, murmuring a cant as she did so. The burns healed instantly, although the scars would remain-she had too much to do to worry about such vanities. Climbing wearily to her feet, she carefully worked her way across the gleaming floor to the dais.

  “Henri lives, Kustar does not,” Elonia called from behind her. “No visible wounds on Henri, but he bleeds from his nose and left ear.”