Nalia saw her father fall out of the corner of her eye. In that moment, she felt a heat flow through her she had not felt since the Gray Man killed her mother. She would not allow this to go unpunished. Because the closest person to her was the assassin Ix, the assassin would be the one to suffer. Within her, a calmness developed, spreading throughout her body and infusing her with energy. Instantly, the solution to this battle came to her, and she went into action.
Before Ix appeared again, Nalia went within herself. She became one with the battle, even more so than before. She became one with her surroundings. More importantly, she became one with her opponent. Just as the assassin was about to appear, Nalia could sense where she would be. Turning quickly, she struck out, apparently at thin air. As Ix appeared, she became substantial just in time to be struck in the face with an open-palm strike. Her nose broke and blood spattered all over her face and Nalia’s hand. Before she could strike with her swords, however, the assassin teleported away again.
The next two times the woman teleported, she was more careful, appearing not right next to Nalia but far enough away to prevent a recurrence of the previous strike. Finally realizing that she would not be able to surprise her as before, the assassin settled for physical battle.
With one of Ix’s arms injured but still serviceable, Nalia thought she would have an easy time fighting the woman. It was not so. Even without teleporting, the woman was proficient in combat, using combinations of feet, legs, fists, arms, elbows, even her head. She threw combinations of attacks, including knife attacks that Nalia was hard pressed to avoid in her tired and wounded state.
When a particularly clever knife attack left a shallow slash on her midsection, Nalia decided it was time to end the conflict. Trying to bait the assassin into overreaching, and failing, she attacked in bursts, trying to force the other woman to make a mistake from fatigue. She could see in Ix’s eyes that she knew what Nalia was doing, and there was fear in those eyes that it would work. Making one last ditch effort, the assassin threw her remaining dagger at the Sapsyr and prepared to teleport.
Nalia deflected the dagger with her shrapezi and, before Ix disappeared, probably for good, Nalia grabbed the assassin’s wrist, applied a wrist lock, and held on tight. A fraction of a second later, both of them disappeared from the room.
Sam scanned the room quickly, eyes darting to every corner. His breathing, coming in quick, panting gasps, caused flecks or light to dance in front of him. He watched as Rindu killed Shordan Drees and then collapsed. It looked as if the big man’s sword had gone all the way through him and he appeared to be dead. Sam couldn’t get to him to know for sure. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t get out of the prison he was in.
What may have been even worse was that while he was watching Nalia fight with Ix, appearing to be winning, they both abruptly disappeared from the room. He guessed it was the assassin’s trick of teleporting, but somehow Nalia was dragged along.
Now, with both of his protectors dead or incapacitated, there was only him alone with the Gray Man. He tried to slow his breathing, tried to calm himself, and looked to the villain only to see amusement reflected on his face. “Now, that was interesting. I wonder if either of them will come back.”
Turning his glowing gaze on Sam, the amusement drained from his face. His dark features painted on that ash-gray face of his showed no emotion, but Sam understood the danger written there. “Enough games. You have been an irritation to me since you arrived in this world. You have been working toward this confrontation, not knowing how truly dangerous it is for you. Why? What are you looking for, boy? Tell me before you die.”
Sam fought the fear welling up inside him. He supposed it didn’t matter. They had severely underestimated the Gray Man’s power and the ease at which he could manipulate them. Without Rindu and Nalia, he didn’t suppose it mattered. His life was already over in all the ways that were important.
“I just want to go home,” he finally said, deflated.
“What?” The Gray Man actually seemed to be confused. “What are you talking about?”
“I just want to go home. I can’t get back to my world. That’s it. You are the only one who has the knowledge to help me.”
The Gray Man was silent for a moment, looking deep into Sam’s eyes as if to judge whether or not he was telling the truth. Then, incongruously, he began to laugh. The soft laugh built into a hearty belly laugh before the man tapered off. Wiping a tear from his eye, he shook his head. “I expected something noble, something dangerous, something…substantial. Instead, I get a pathetic plea from a whining child. ‘I want my mommy!’ Ha. Such a small thing to die for. Such a small thing.
“Well. Sam, is it? Well, Sam, just so you can die fulfilled, I will tell you that getting home is easier than you would ever believe, and harder. The concept is easy, but the application…ah, that is where things become difficult. It’s ironic that in a way, I was searching for the same thing, thus our friend here.” He gestured to Dr. Walt, who was twitching and softly groaning, apparently having a nightmare. As if any nightmare could compare to this reality.
“In any case, your time is at an end and I have things to do. So, goodbye Sam. I hope your last thought finds that all your effort was worthwhile.”
Chapter 55
Nalia found herself in a small stone room, still holding onto the assassin. From the look of the stone, she thought that maybe she was still in the fortress, but in a different location. The sparsely furnished chamber had no conventional decorations, but instead had weapons scattered about or mounted on the walls. A simple bed, table, and chair were the only other things in the room. This must be the assassin’s personal room.
Looking to the woman’s face, she found surprise painted there. “We can do this the hard way or the easy way,” Nalia said to her. “Would you like to die easy or hard?”
The assassin tried to break the wristlock Nalia still held her in, but was unable. She tried to sweep Nalia’s foot, but could not do so while being in such an awkward position. With her other arm injured, she was at the Sapsyr’s mercy and she knew it.
“Where are we? Still in the fortress?”
The assassin didn’t answer. Nalia ratcheted up the pressure on the wrist lock, causing Ix to groan in pain.
“Are. We. Still. In. The. Fortress? One more chance.”
“Yes,” the assassin moaned. “Yes, still in the fortress.”
“Better. Now, I am tired from killing all your friends...”
“They are not my friends.”
“Fine. I am tired from killing all the soldiers. It means little to kill one more, but I find I am feeling generous. Tell me exactly how to get back to the chamber we were in and I will let you teleport away. If you try anything, or if you teleport back, I will kill you.”
The assassin looked at her for a moment and then nodded.
“Say it.”
“I will tell you how to get back to the chamber and then I will go away and not return.”
Nalia looked her over and tightened her wrist lock, causing the assassin to groan and bend further toward the ground. “Now tell me.”
After Ix explained how to get to the chamber, Nalia released her slowly and brought her swords up.
The assassin glared at her. “It was time I was moving on anyway. There is employment to be had elsewhere.” She slowly opened a wooden box on her table, withdrew some small figurines, and then disappeared.
Nalia threw open the door and ran as fast as she could back toward the large chamber, hoping that the assassin had told her the truth.
Sam looked at the Gray Man and knew he was going to die. He had given it his best attempt, as did his two friends, but it simply wasn’t enough. He would die and even if Nalia had survived, he would never see her again. His mother would never know what happened to him. He would die failing, not in some heroic quest, but in a childish quest, trying simply to get home. Nevertheless, he thought he was ready.
The Gray Man raised a han
d and the rim of his eyes glowed an even brighter red. He saw in those eyes the intent and the power to do as he had said he would. In seconds, he would kill Sam in some way that Sam couldn’t even imagine.
And then the Gray Man stopped, his hand lowering, his jaw going slack. Sam didn’t know what was going on. Why had he stopped? Then, before he had even finished the question to himself, images flooded his mind and he lost all sense of where he was.
He was looking out across the fortress from some vantage point high on a tower. The entire fortress was made of black stone, but that would never do. No, a different fortress, fitting his name, would be better. Concentrating for a long moment, he spread his hands and felt the vibrational energy flood into him and out of his hands. He placed both hands on the nearest stone and began changing the frequency of light the stone reflected. As he did so, he changed its color.
From the very base of the walls and buildings the color changed as if the structures were being dipped in an ocean of paint. No longer black, every part of the stone turned a dull gray. Yes, the Gray Fortress. A fitting name for the stronghold of the Gray Man.
One of the two Arzbedim who were currently torturing him made a mistake. A fatal one. The man had allowed him to rest for more than the seven minutes they usually gave him. What’s more, the incompetent captor had not bound him strongly enough with the shackles. They had no idea that as he had been tortured for these last twelve years, he had grown stronger, learned many new things, and had become more than a match for any of them. They would soon find out.
He waited until the two captors were talking, looking away from him. He closed his eyes, centered himself, and pulled in energy from his surroundings. He was careful not to take energy directly from the two men, though. He didn’t want to tip them off just yet.
When he held as much energy as he could, he coughed once, weakly. Both men looked toward him, seeing too late that he was glowing in their rohw-sensitive sight. As soon as they saw him, he crushed their hearts in their chests with his power and watched happily as their bodies dropped to the stone floor.
Fifty six. There are fifty six Arzbedim. Before I am done, there will be none. That will be their payment for my capture and my torture.
Using his rohw to snap the bonds, he dropped to the floor. He took the robes from one of the dead guards and set about his grisly task. Wherever he found Arzbedim, he killed them, simply and efficiently. He was in no mood and no condition to duel with them, to fight with them. No, he would kill them, plain and simple.
Some he killed by crushing their hearts with the power. With some he took a more personal approach and actually cut their throats with a knife. Whatever the method, by the time the night was done and he had made his way through the main areas of the fortress, fifty-three Arzbedim were dead.
He waited at the fortress, resting, eating, growing strong again. When the remaining three rogue mages returned to the fortress, he was waiting for them. He had no special punishment for any of them, not even their leader, Silicim Mant, but they all died. It wasn’t personal. It just needed to be done.
The torture lasted for years. How many years, he didn’t know. Enough. Enough to do to him whatever was needed to make him into who, or what, he was now.
At first, he didn’t understand why they were torturing him every day. He didn’t know anything, and he tried to tell them that, but soon realized it didn’t matter. They thought he had information they wanted and they would get it, eventually. He remembered being a regular man, a free man, but that was quickly slipping away. He knew he had a heartbreaking experience just before he came to this place, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was. All he knew is that he felt powerless to do anything and he didn’t like it.
Soon after he arrived, he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror as he was being moved from his cell to a torture room. That was before they permanently moved him into a torture room for convenience. In the mirror, he saw a man that was of average size and in good shape, with brown hair and the same colored eyes. He hardly recognized himself, feeling as if he was trying to pull the memories through a fine filter.
As time went on, he started forgetting things about his past life. He forgot his name and why he was here. His existence consisted solely of torture for no apparent reason…and endless pain. A few years later, he saw his reflection once again when one of his captors showed it to him. He was hideous. All his hair had fallen out, his skin had turned ash gray and chalky, and his eyes had darkened while developing a red rim around them. It was from the power they used on him, the captor joked, saying that now he fit in with the rest of them. It was true. His captors looked the same.
While torturing him, they inculcated in him a desire to use power to straddle both worlds, the one from which he came and the one he was now in, to rule over one or both. That was, in fact, the Arzbedim’s entire purpose for being and the purpose for which they were torturing him. They still thought that he had some secret that would help them attain the power they craved.
It was years after his capture that he realized that he could see something happen just before one of his captors used their magic power on him. At first, it was just a feeling, then a shimmering. Soon, though, he was looking for it more carefully and he began to see a glow envelop the person torturing him, or at least a glow around a particular body part on that person.
He began to listen more carefully, learning things through idle conversation about his captors’ power. They called it rohw, a vibrational energy that could be used to great effect. Apparently, he was naturally gifted when it came to this energy because the more he paid attention and learned, the more sensitive to the energy he became and the more he was able to see what his torturers were doing to him. He was even daring enough to reverse some of the effects of particularly difficult torture sessions, being careful not to heal himself completely lest he be caught.
In this way, he practiced and developed his power, logically thinking through its uses and coming up with new ways to use it that the Arzbedim could not even begin to dream up. So it was that he prepared as he waited for the right time to escape.
The man frantically made his way to the cave opening before the flood waters swallowed him up. He had just watched his fiancée, the woman he loved more than anything in the world, along with his best friend, die horribly in a flash flood while on an archaeological expedition. He was the sole survivor and now he was trying to escape a similar fate.
He stumbled through the cave, frightened that the water would rise enough to fill the cave and drown him, afraid that he would get stuck and die in the cave, afraid some creature would find him. He was just afraid. Making his way by headlamp light, he came to what seemed to be the end of the cavern. He huddled there, shivering, waiting to die.
The sound around him was deafening. As he huddled, trying to stay warm, he covered his ears to soften the shrieking of the wind through the cave. Curiously, the shrieking changed, almost sounding musical, before his world turned inside out and he found himself surrounded by robed figures.
The man was taken into custody by the robed figures and through some act of musical accompaniment, he was transported far away to a fortress made of stone. Still weeping over his lost love, his best friend, and his comrades, he was too much in the grips of shock to respond to the new circumstances. He only knew that he did not have the power to stop the death of the people he loved and never wanted to feel so powerless again.
All those ideas disappeared when the torture started.
The toddler with a mop of sandy blonde hair and gray eyes that seemed too intelligent for his age ran to his uncle and hugged his leg fiercely. “I lud yoo, Uckle Grayman” the child cooed happily.
Grayson Wepp picked up his nephew and hugged him tight. “I love you, too, Sam.”
After a long hug, the little boy swiveled his head excitedly from left to right. Spotting what he was looking for, he screeched, “Stefnee!” and put his arms out toward the woman next to Grayson.
“Oh, sure,” Grayson teased, “he can say your name well enough, but not mine. Sam, say my name. Grayson. Grayson. Uncle Grayson.”
“Grayman, Grayman, Uckle Grayman.”
Ruffling the boy’s hair, Grayson laughed. “Well, maybe I’ll just change it to Grayman.”
Stephanie leaned over and kissed him. “Too many more of those gray hairs, and it will fit.”
Grayson smiled at his fiancée. A feeling of love washed over him and not for the first time, he felt like he was the luckiest man alive.
Turning as his best friend Mark walked into the room, followed closely by Grayson’s sister—and Mark’s wife—Nicole, Grayson beamed. This was his family. This was where he belonged.
“Mommy, daddy! It’s Uckle Grayman an’ Stefnee!” Sam shrieked as he reached out to his father.
“I know, Sam,” Nicole Sharp said. Her smiling face reflected that she felt the same way Grayson did. Of course, whenever Sam was involved, smiles were never in short supply.
Turning to the small boy again, Grayson took a small present from his bag. It was a box, wrapped in bright green paper, with a yellow bow and ribbons tied tightly around it. “Here, Sam, I brought you something. Your daddy is going to go with Stephanie and me to do some work in Turkey. I want you to have this so that you will know I’m always thinking about you while we’re there. Maybe I can find something there to bring back to you, too.”
The boy’s eyes dropped toward the ground as he suddenly went limp, realizing the implication of what he was just told. “You going away? And eat turkey?” he said sadly.
Harmonic Magic Series Boxed Set Page 37
