Calliande stepped forward, white fire glowing around her staff.
“It’s one of the Maledicti,” she said.
###
Tamara watched as the jastaani reformed their lines at the bottom of the valley.
The Scythe landed, her wings folding behind her armored body, and Tamara felt a pulse of fear. The urdhracos had killed at least two of Tamara’s other selves. Yet the Scythe’s attention was on Third, and the gaunt face beneath the ragged silver hair was twisted with hatred.
The figure in the golden robes glided forward, hovering a few inches off the ground, the cowl bowed as if in thought and the hands hidden in the voluminous sleeves of the robes.
It was a Maledictus, Tamara was sure of it. The design of the elaborate robes was identical to those of Mhazhama and Qazaldhar and the Maledictus of Shadows, though these robes were a brilliant gold. The black medallion of a Sign of the New God hung against the Maledictus’s chest, stark against the golden cloth.
“He’s the one who bound the hydra, isn’t he?” said Ridmark.
“Aye,” said Calliande, her eyes narrowed. “And he’s powerful. There’s something in his aura…it’s twisted, somehow. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Then something strange happened.
The jastaani fell to their knees, pressing their faces to the earth. A low purring murmur rose from their throats as they chanted the name of the Janaab Kal. The Maledictus paused a few paces in front of the kneeling jastaani and raised his face to gaze up at Tamara and the others, his hands sliding free from his sleeves.
He had the green-skinned hands of an orcish man, thick and strong. Within the cowl, a jade mask concealed his features. The mask had been fashioned in the snarling face of a jaguar, the eyes wrought of gold, the fangs of ivory. The Maledictus raised his hand to the chanting jastaani as if in benediction.
“Shield Knight and the Keeper!” called the Maledictus in the Latin tongue. His voice was deep and melodious and beautiful.
“I assume you are the Maledictus of Life?” said Ridmark. His voice was a harsh rasp compared to the musical thunder of the Maledictus’s voice, but Tamara preferred it to the terrifying, beautiful voice that came from the jade mask.
“You may call me that if you wish,” said the Maledictus. “But the name my children have given me is more accurate. I am their Janaab Kal, their Immortal One, and I shall give them the gift of everlasting life. Rejoice, Shield Knight, and give thanks. For I am the herald of the New God, and I am the wellspring of life. For soon the New God shall rise in splendor, and all kindreds and all nations shall bow to him until the end of the cosmos. All chaos shall be banished, all discord shall end, and all shall be one in the will of the New God.”
“Let me guess,” said Ridmark, making no effort to hide his derision. “You’ve convinced the jastaani that you are their god and prophet, just as Qazaldhar convinced the muridachs that he was the prophet of the Lord of Carrion.”
“You make a fundamental error, Shield Knight,” said the Immortal One. “For I am the god of the jastaani. I am not an abstraction or a myth, but a god who walks among them and blesses them with my own hands. I am their loving father, and they are my devoted children. And as their loving father, I shall give them the gift of immortality, and my children and I shall serve the New God for all time.”
There was an utter conviction in his voice. Tamara wondered if the Maledictus of Life actually believed himself to be the god of the jastaani.
“I doubt that,” said Ridmark. “You have deceived them, just as Qazaldhar deceived the muridachs, and you’ll cast the jastaani aside once you have no further need of them. And you’ve made a mistake, Maledictus, showing yourself to us.”
“Fear not, Shield Knight,” said the Immortal One. “For my children and I have come to liberate you from the burden of your freedom. You shall be slain, and then resurrected into the service of the New God. You shall experience the power of the New God firsthand, and when you do, you shall know joy, and all fear and doubt will be banished from your mind.”
Ridmark scoffed. “And I’m sure claiming three of the Seven Swords and freeing Qazaldhar are purely coincidental.”
The Scythe smirked at him, and then resumed glaring at Third, who remained impassive.
“Your mind is clouded with suspicion and fear,” said the Immortal One. “I have come to release you from such burdens.” The Maledictus lifted his hands. “Behold now the true power of the New God!”
Golden light glowed around his fingers.
###
Calliande raised her staff, preparing to defend against whatever attack the Immortal One flung at them.
Yet the Maledictus did not attack. The twisted power writhed around him, and the golden light blazed brighter from his hands. Ribbons of golden light poured from his fingers, twisting and dancing like ropes caught in a wind, and Calliande started to cast a ward, ready to defend her companions from the attack.
But the spell had not been aimed at them.
The ribbons of golden light touched the dead jastaani, and they began to move.
Calliande’s first thought was that the Immortal One was using necromancy, that he had just raised the slain jastaani as undead. But the jastaani were breathing as they stood, and with horrified amazement, Calliande realized that the Immortal One’s magic had brought them back to life.
How? How had he possibly done that? Only God had the power to raise the dead.
Her curiosity overrode her fear, and she sent the Sight into the auras of the raised jastaani.
And at once, she recoiled in revulsion.
The Maledictus might have raised the slain jastaani, but his twisted magic had raised them as soulless, empty shells. Their auras were hideous and disfigured. The Immortal One’s magic had returned them to life, but it had transformed them into a parody of the living, machines of blood and meat and nothing more.
And as she looked, Calliande saw that the disfigurement of their auras had extended to their flesh. The dead jastaani had suffered grievous wounds, whether from Oathshield, the three Swords, Third’s blades, or Kalussa’s crystal spheres. Now their wounds were healing, but it wasn’t the kind of healing the magic of the Well of Tarlion allowed. The healing spell of the Magistri could either erase a wound entirely or heal it well enough that only a scar remained. The strange healing that the Immortal One’s magic sent through the reanimated jastaani closed their wounds, but the regenerated flesh kept growing, swelling and bulging and rippling beneath their flesh.
The healed wounds became giant tumors.
It was the work of the Maledictus of Life, Calliande realized. There were different kinds of life. A tumor that killed its victim was a sort of life. The fungus that killed a mighty oak tree was a kind of life. The parasite that killed its host was also alive. That was the kind of life that the Immortal One commanded – hideous, twisted life that devoured and destroyed.
The kneeling jastaani continued their chant as the Immortal One raised their slain comrades as soulless shells. The strange growths twisted and distorted the reanimated jastaani. In their alien way, the jastaani were sleek and beautiful, albeit in the deadly fashion that a well-forged sword was beautiful. Now the magic of the Maledictus had transformed the slain jastaani into misshapen, tumorous horrors, their bodies distorted by the power surging through them.
“Behold my resurrected children!” said the Immortal One, his voice ringing through the valley. The chants of the jastaani rose in a triumphant, ecstatic chorus. “Behold the conquest of the New God over the power of death! My children, kill my enemies! Slay my foes! Slay my foes, that they too may drink of my immortality!”
The living jastaani surged their feet and charged with jaguar-like screams. The resurrected horrors charged in silence, casting aside their swords and shields to attack with their clawed hands.
###
Ridmark fought for his life, the reanimated jastaani closing around him.
The sheer press of the
enemy had forced them back, driving them away from the valley and further south down the road. The reanimated creatures were just as strong and fast as the living jastaani, but far more resilient.
Even worse, nothing seemed to kill them.
When Calem or Krastikon or Tamlin attacked with the three Swords, the blades sliced through the creatures without slowing. Yet the creatures regenerated the damage at once and could regrow arms and legs with terrifying speed. And every time they regenerated a limb or even a head, the new appendage was more distorted and twisted than the one it replaced. Soon several of the creatures had been hit so many times that they no longer looked like jastaani at all, but instead resembled hideous mixtures of squid and slug and tumor, tentacles and mouths and eyestalks jutting from the glistening pink flesh almost at random. Not even the most diseased mind could have imagined such a horror, but Ridmark fought such creatures now.
And unlike the swamp trolls, neither fire nor acid seemed to harm them. Calliande and Tamara hit the reanimated jastaani with volleys of magical fire and acidic mist, and the creatures simply regenerated the damage. Kalussa threw shafts of magical fire, some of them so hot that they burned holes through the creatures, but the glistening flesh simply closed right over the wounds.
Only one thing seemed able to kill the creatures.
Oathshield’s fire burned through the abominations and left them motionless on the ground. Ridmark had never encountered magic like this before, magic that raised a dead thing into a fleshy, crawling horror, but the fury of a soulblade still burned through the magic and sent the creatures falling. Once they fell, the reanimated jastaani started rotting at once, the stench filling the air.
And once Ridmark realized that Oathshield’s fire could destroy the reanimated creatures, Calliande followed suit, calling the fire of the Well and hurling it in blazing shafts. Her fire hit with enough force to burn through the creatures and send them motionless to the ground, their reanimated flesh dissolving into stinking black slime.
Then the Maledictus of Life attacked.
The Immortal One flung a blast of dark magic at Calliande, a mixture of shadow and blue fire that would suck away the life from anything it touched. Calliande had to turn her attention to her defense, warding herself from the spells of dark magic. When she tried to strike back at the Immortal One, the Maledictus used the tactics that Khurazalin and Qazaldhar had employed earlier and traveled away through magic, reappearing elsewhere in the valley.
Which meant that Ridmark was the only one who had a weapon that could harm the creatures. Kalussa had followed Calliande’s tactics and was throwing blasts of white fire, but while Calliande could kill one of the creatures with a single spell, it took Kalussa three or four castings to do the same thing.
There was only one way Ridmark could win this battle.
He cut down another creature and jumped back, raising Oathshield with both hands. Ridmark just needed a moment, only a moment, and he concentrated on his link with the soulblade, reaching for the power within the weapon.
And at his call, the power of the Shield Knight unlocked.
White fire erupted from the sword and covered his body with a glowing sheet. The white fire hardened to blue plate armor, covering him from head to foot. A full helmet concealed his head, though it did nothing to impair his vision. The armor made him far faster and stronger and was nearly impervious to both physical and magical attack.
Ridmark lifted Oathshield in his right fist and charged, cutting down two of the reanimated jastaani. The only way to win this battle was to either cut down the Immortal One or to destroy all the jastaani, and Ridmark intended to do both.
###
Third cut down one of the living jastaani, the creature falling at her boots.
At once one of the ribbons of golden light touched the dead warrior, and it started to rise again, tumorous, glistening growths bulging from the wounds Third had carved into its flesh. Third supposed that she should have been frightened, but at the moment she felt only exasperation.
Usually, when she killed something, it stayed down.
She saw white fire encase Ridmark and harden into blue armor, and the Shield Knight charged into the reanimated jastaani, cutting them down right and left. It seemed that the situation had become dire enough that Ridmark had unlocked Oathshield’s full power.
Third agreed. The only way to win this fight was to kill the Maledictus of Life. The wizard called himself the Immortal One, but Third was willing to challenge that assertion.
She reached for the fiery song in her blood and drew upon it, and blue fire swallowed the world.
Third reappeared behind the Maledictus of Life. Her swords were already drawn back to stab, and she drove the blades forward. But the Immortal One was moving, and he vanished in a swirl of blue fire and shadow. Third stumbled, caught her balance, and turned. The Maledictus had traveled to the other end of the valley, and the delay had given Calliande enough time to blast down three more of the reanimated jastaani.
Well, if the Maledictus of Life wanted to play the fight that way, Third would oblige. She could chase the Immortal One back and forth, and that would give Ridmark and Calliande time to cut down the reanimated jastaani.
Third started to reach for the song in her blood again, and a shadow filled the corner of her eye.
Reflex and experience saved her life. Third flung herself to the side, hitting the ground and rolling, and the Scythe plummeted from the sky like a black-armored thunderbolt. The longsword of blue dark elven steel clanged off the ground, and the Scythe recovered from her landing at once, her left hand snapping up. A lance of shadow burst from the clawed talons of her gauntlet, and Third had to dodge again. The shadowy lance seared across the ground, turning a foot-long section of stone to crumbling ash.
The Scythe did not give her a chance to recover. The urdhracos leaped at her, her void-filled eyes wide and bulging with hate, her thin lips pulled back in a snarl.
“Come!” she shrieked. “Come and let us die together! We will be free together from the torment of life!”
Third met her attack, and her blades of golden steel rang against the Scythe’s sword and clawed gauntlet.
###
Calliande blasted down another reanimated jastaani. The magic of the Well burned through the twisted, corrupted life that infused the reanimated flesh, and the creature fell over and began to dissolve into slime.
Tamlin, Calem, and Krastikon battled the reanimated jastaani. Magatai had dismounted Northwind, since his arrows were useless, and used his lightning-wreathed sword. They had struck down the reanimated jastaani so many times that the creatures now resembled things from a nightmare, masses of writhing tentacles and snapping jaws and glistening, dripping flesh.
But Ridmark was hammering through them. The power of the Shield Knight blazed like a star to Calliande’s Sight, and the blue armor drove Ridmark forward with terrific speed, his blows slashing through the reanimated jastaani. With the power of the Shield Knight, he was winning.
Calliande wanted to aid him, but she had to turn her full attention to the Maledictus of Life.
The Immortal One flickered back and forth across the valley, hurling attacks of dark magic at Calliande and then transporting away before she could strike back. The magic of the Well and the mantle of the Keeper let her resist his attacks, but Calliande had to turn her full attention to deflecting those spells. If Ridmark or Magatai could get close enough, they could use their soulstone-enhanced weapons to pin the Maledictus in place, and then Calliande could destroy him. Of course, if Ridmark could get that close to the Immortal One, his soulblade would destroy the Maledictus, and that would be that.
But Calliande just had to hold on until Ridmark finished with the reanimated jastaani. Even as she looked, Oathshield ripped through another of the creatures, the twisted corpse rolling away down the valley slope. Ridmark was winning, and once he had dealt with the reanimated creatures, he would turn his attention to the Maledictus, and then they
would win the battle.
Calliande fought on, gritting her teeth as she tried to hold her wards against the Immortal One’s onslaught.
###
Ridmark cut down another reanimated jastaani and looked around.
He couldn’t find another one to attack.
Around him lay the remains of the reanimated jastaani, their twisted bodies dissolving into slime. He spotted the Maledictus of Life at the far end of the valley, face still hidden beneath the jade mask. Calliande flung a spell at the Immortal One, and the Maledictus gestured. Blue fire and shadow writhed around his hands, and the Immortal One became a wraith of smoke and mist and gray light.
As the Maledicti had done so often before, the Immortal One turned and fled away to the north with terrific speed, moving as fast as the wind.
Ridmark looked back and saw that the others were still on their feet. Tamlin, Krastikon, Calem, and Magatai had all taken wounds in the fight, but Kalussa was rushing to heal them. Calliande and Tamara hurried towards Ridmark, their staffs glowing with waiting magic. Third, where was Third? Ridmark had lost track of her during the furious battle against the jastaani.
There!
He spotted her at the bottom of the valley, dueling the Scythe, her golden blades flashing against the Scythe’s blue sword.
Ridmark started to run to her aid.
Then he lost his grip on the power of the Shield Knight.
The battle with the reanimated jastaani had taken too long and used too much of his strength. Ridmark stumbled, and the blue armor that encased him dissolved into white fire and vanished. Fatigue hammered at him, and he suddenly felt the aches and pains of the long battle. The bracer Antenora had given at him dragged at his right arm, and it took the brunt of the fatigue. Without it, Ridmark would have collapsed to the ground and slept for days.
Even with it, he felt bruised, battered, and bone tired.
Sevenfold Sword: Sorceress Page 16
