Darien hauled himself to his feet, summoning the remainder of the necrators under his command: a frightful army, if ever there was one. They ranged ahead of his mortal forces, questing, seeking, terrorizing. Soldiers screamed and fled, abandoning their duties and their comrades. Those brave enough to stand their ground met terrible ends.
He followed after his creations through the blinding glare of Azár’s magelight. He trudged forward, using the Onslaught to punch a wedge through a group of foot soldiers. The men shrieked as they burned, the sound of their agony grimly satisfying.
Darien continued forward into the thick of the melee, tossing would-be adversaries back away from him carelessly. Arrows and weapons didn’t touch him; they were no match for the wrath of the Onslaught that surrounded him like a lethal aura. His opponents slumped to the ground or simply burned where they stood.
A squad of infantry broke out of the enemy line to assault him directly, howling and with weapons raised as they sprinted toward him. Darien closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the men were boneless globs, and he was glowing with a terrible green light.
Darien staggered back, faltering. The strain of handling the vast amounts of power he’d drawn was taking its toll. He took a lurching step forward and felt an arrow plunk against his armor. Another shaft found its way through a gap between plates.
He cried out, driven to his knees by the searing fire that erupted from his shoulder. He gritted his teeth and tugged on the arrow’s shaft, wrestling the chiseled barb out from under his collar bone. Reeling from pain and on the verge of passing out, he squeezed his eyes closed and healed the injury.
He caught himself with an outstretched hand as the mending swept over him. Eventually, the world stabilized. Somehow, he managed to stay awake. Darien picked himself up off the ground, clenching his jaw against the terrible weariness that was the price of the healing. He staggered, shambling like a drunken man. The heavy armor bore down on his shoulders, pressing down on him like a giant hand trying to squash him into the grave.
Seeing his struggles, his men swept forward and formed a defensive ring around him. It wasn’t necessary. Every gray-cloaked soldier that broke toward him slumped to the ground, where they lay twitching and bleeding and melting into the dirt. The more he walked, the more exhausted he became, until he staggered with every step.
A foot soldier wrapped an arm around him, supporting him as Darien sagged to the ground. He couldn’t bear the weight of the armor any longer. He reached up and unlocked the rivets that held his cuirass together, letting the plates slide apart. With the Tanisar’s help, he shed the heavy steel, groaning with relief when the weight was finally off him. He sat there for a moment just panting, trying desperately to catch his breath.
“Brother, are you injured?”
Suddenly, Sayeed was there, kneeling at his side. He caught Darien by the shoulders, a look of intense concern on his bearded face. Behind him came Azár, glowing with radiance brighter than the sun. The world looked smeared, like someone had swiped a cloth across wet canvas.
Darien shook his head to clear his vision. He wiped his face with his sleeve, which came away stained. Sweat and blood streamed from his brow. He felt disoriented. He glanced around, at last realizing that the fighting around him had worn itself out.
Behind Sayeed, what was left of the Greystone defenders knelt at the feet of black-mailed guards. Scattered corpses littered the landscape like fallen logs, in some places collected into heaps. Shadowy necrators roamed the battlefield, diligent in their business.
“The canyon is ours,” Sayeed reported, and clapped him on the arm with a grin.
Darien stared up at him, too exhausted to smile back. He nodded instead, closing his eyes in relief.
30
Battlemage
Darien turned at the sound of hoofbeats to find Byron Connel riding toward them along the shoreline. His courser swayed in its gait, lathered sides crusted with mud. The Battlemage reined in and dismounted, his blue robes flowing out from under an enameled breastplate. He wielded the silver talisman Thar’gon in his hand. The weapon glowed with an eldritch light, drenching Connel in a halo of radiance. He strode over to where Darien sat resting between Azár and Sayeed. Looking down, he nodded a greeting.
“That was well-executed,” he said, cold eyes shifting to the grisly terrain. “We’ll mop up what’s left. Use the momentum we’ve gained to take the keep.”
Sayeed glanced down at Darien, raising his eyebrows in concern. Darien shook his head and spread his fingers in a gesture of negation.
Connel mounted and rode away, awash in the argent brilliance of his weapon. Darien let his eyes follow the horse and rider across the battlefield until both were lost from sight. Then he turned to Sayeed.
“I’m tired,” he admitted. “But I’m not used up. Connel’s right; we need to press our advantage.”
“The keep is inside a node,” Azár protested, her hand on the dagger at her belt.
Darien nodded. “Aye, it is. But I’ve the Hellpower.” He rose to his feet, working his arms to test his shoulder. It moved freely without pain, but he could still feel the effects of the healing. He tried not to let his exhaustion show on his face.
“I want you to stay here,” he told Azár. “You won’t be of any use up there.”
But his wife lifted her chin, narrowing her eyes. She slid the dagger from its sheath, holding it up in front of him. “I fight at your side,” she reminded him. “Where you go, I go.”
He pulled her against his chest, dagger and all, then released her just as quickly. He motioned to his officers to gather around.
“We’ll continue on to the keep,” he told them. “It’ll be a frontal assault straight into the teeth of their fortifications. I know of some of the traps they’ve rigged, so I’ll go ahead of you.” To Azár, he cautioned, “I won’t be able to heal. The Onslaught doesn’t work like that.”
“Then don’t get hurt.”
Sayeed moved forward to help Darien back into the cuirass he’d shed. The weight of the plate immediately bore down on him. He felt a deep-seated weariness that only sleep would mend.
He gave one last glance at the fallen corpses that patterned the ground around him, most wearing gray cloaks. It occurred to him that he felt not even a scrap of compassion for the fallen. He found that odd; these men had once been under his command. Yet the only feeling he could muster was a growing sense of vindication. He stepped over the first corpse that lay sprawled in his path, the remains of a young pikeman who would move no more.
Someone brought him a captured horse, a nervous brown destrier that was rightfully skittish of him. With a word, Darien dismissed his entourage of necrators. The absence of the shades calmed the gelding somewhat, enough to tolerate him on its back. Pulling Azár up behind him, Darien gathered the reins in his hand. He grasped a fistful of the horse’s mane and kicked it forward.
By the time they reached the fortress, the wind had died. The whole world seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation of the inevitable.
Darien took a good, hard look at the keep and scowled, estimating the losses they would sustain trying to penetrate its defenses. He’d already fought his way out of there, so he knew he could fight his way back in. He just dreaded doing so. He already wore enough blood on him. It coated his armor and slathered the parts of his face not shielded by his helm. He was still exhausted. And he didn’t look forward to the tests he would face within those walls. Kyel might be in there somewhere. And Meiran. He wasn’t sure he could bring himself to kill either one of them.
The very thought of Meiran turned his blood to ice. Her image in his mind twisted something already broken inside him. It drove all rational thought away, until all he could see was red. Darien took a deep breath and hung his head. Then he glared back up at the fortress with new resolve.
“Brother.”
He looked down to find Sayeed standing alongside his mount. The officer nodded in the direction of the slope
s below the fortress. Darien followed his gaze, spotting a group of men who had emerged from the dark entrance to the keep, really just a hole in the mountainside. They looked like men of rank. One of them bore a white cloth in his hand, a token of truce. To Darien’s relief, he didn’t see Kyel among them.
Sayeed said, “They may be wishing to discuss surrender.”
Darien was not disposed to discuss surrender. Perhaps the men approaching him could tell his frame of mind; they had a nervous look about them. One man tugged at his collar as he walked. Another fidgeted with his uniform. Every face looked strained and battle-weary.
“No quarter,” Darien said, his gaze tracking the approaching men. “Leave two witnesses alive to report what they’ve seen here. No mercy to the rest. They die here, and they die brutally. Restraint now will only cost us later.”
Sayeed nodded his agreement. Then he turned and relayed Darien’s orders in the language of the clans. His men raised a warcry, shaking their weapons in the air. Upon hearing it, the Greystone officers turned and fled back in the direction of the tunnel.
“Visea,” Darien whispered.
Five necrators melted into existence and swept forward up the steps. From within the tunnel came frantic echoes of horror. The commotion faded quickly into a haunting silence.
Darien thrust his arm up, gripping his gloved hand into a fist. Then he brought it down.
With a cry, the Tanisar ranks burst forward, breaking like a tidal wave of wrath upon the slopes of the mountainside. Darien allowed the soldiers to charge past him. He waited, watching as his men were halted at the entrance of the fortress by the fall of an iron gate.
He dismounted stiffly and stood leaning against his horse. Azár slipped to his side, considering him with a look of concern. “This is the edge of the node,” she said, reaching out and catching his hand. “Stay here, my husband. Do not enter within.”
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine. I want you to wait here.” He stroked a thumb across her soft fingers.
“I will not—” she started to protest.
“You’re more than my Lightweaver,” he said. “You’re my light.” Then he kissed her. For the first time, he felt his wife soften in his arms, the feral tension draining out of her.
He closed his eyes and reached deep inside her, pinching something there. He caught Azár as she slumped unconscious against his chest. Darien looked to Sayeed, who stared at him with a face frozen in shock.
“Take the horse,” he commanded. “Get her back down the mountain. Now.”
Sayeed effected a curt bow then sprang onto the back of the warhorse. Darien lifted Azár up to him, making sure she was secure in the officer’s grasp. Then he slapped the horse’s rump, sending it forward down the slope. He turned and mounted the steps to the keep.
Above, he could hear the sound of screams and the battering of arrows against armor as his men took fire from the arrow loops above. His assaulting force had been stopped by the sealed gate that blocked the entrance to the fortress. Without a battering ram, they could go no further.
“Stand back,” he warned the Tanisars.
The men complied, backing out of his way.
Darien closed his eyes, letting the Hellpower fill him until he could feel it wriggling inside every bone, worming beneath his skin. Then he opened his eyes and hurled it all back out of him in a blast of sickening energy directed at the gate. The iron gate turned at first red and then yellow, finally heating to white before it started to slump. The whole thing melted to liquid that ran in a viscous, spreading pool down the steps toward him. Darien willed the molten iron to cool. And it did. It hardened into a cascade of gleaming metal, its leading edge a handspan away from his feet.
He didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward onto it.
“Lord!” one of the officers called from behind him.
Darien turned, glancing back over his shoulder at the man, who jogged up to him and bowed.
“Give us the honor of going ahead of you!” the man gasped, his eyes wide and full of battle-rage.
Darien understood. It was a matter of sharaq. He nodded at the officer. “You may have the honor.”
He stood on the steps, catching his breath as a regiment of Tanisars swept past him over the cooling slag that had once been the gate of the fortress. He waited until the last man entered the tunnel, then donned his helm and started after them.
A deafening thunder ripped the air. Then the shockwave hit, hurling Darien backward off his feet as the entire fortress exploded in a shower of souls and stone.
Kyel jolted awake to an intense feeling of wrongness.
He moaned, groggy, tossing his head from side to side. Blinking, he willed the world back into focus. The spinning of the universe gradually slowed. His head felt better, not so much like a gourd with all its guts scraped out of it. That was the first thought he had. The second thought made him sit bolt upright.
He scrambled to his feet. Meiran was standing with her back to him against a crumbled wall, staring out into the darkness that, for some reason, seemed less infinite than usual. In the distance, there was light. A violent, raging glow that painted her face and gleamed like blood crystals in her eyes. He took a step toward her, demanding, “What happened?”
The Prime Warden glanced back at him, one hand on the charred wall, her face condemning. “We brought the keep down on top of them.”
Kyel felt a shiver of abject cold steel over him. He backed away from her, away from Traver’s reproachful glare and Cadmus’ downturned gaze. Edging backward up the dirt path, he fled the footprints of the ruin. He stopped on a lip of charred rock that was once the foundation of the fortress. He turned and gazed out across the wide ravine.
Fires burned where the new keep had once stood, their flames choked by smoke and dust. The entire stronghold had been reduced to rubble. Kyel stood there numb, gazing out upon a scene of devastation that was partially his own making.
“A lot of good people died today, Kyel.” Traver’s harsh words lashed out at him like a whip. Kyel jerked around to face him.
“And you blame me.” He broke out in a sweat.
“I do.”
Kyel clenched his hands into trembling fists. He whirled on Meiran, his eyes narrowing in cold rage. “All this could have been prevented if you’d just honored your given word. No one had to die!”
He glared back and forth between Meiran, Traver, and the fires. The graveness of their situation was starting to creep up on him. There was an entire Enemy army down there. And soon it would be marching in their direction.
“What do we do?”
“We need to go,” Traver growled, gripping the pommel of his sword with his one good hand. “We can make it out of the pass by morning. Are we bringing him with us?” he asked Meiran, jerking his head at Kyel.
Meiran considered Kyel gravely, as if weighing his fate with her eyes. “Yes,” she sighed finally. She started up the path toward him. But she jolted to a halt, gaping at something behind him.
Kyel whirled around. It took him precious seconds to realize what he was looking at. And precious more to react. He reached out with his mind, throwing up a golden shield between Meiran and the red-bearded darkmage striding toward them through the fog of smoke.
Traver drew his sword and stepped between them.
“NO!” Kyel shouted.
The demon didn’t pause in his stride, but raised his spiked morning star over his head. He brought it down in a curving arc.
The weapon didn’t connect. Yet Traver sailed backward, flung through the air as if hit by the brunt force of a hurricane. He hit the ground with a sickening noise.
Kyel gaped at the sight of Traver jerking spastically, his head leaking brains and blood onto the rocks.
The shock alone almost stunned him into inaction. But somehow, Kyel kept the golden shield up as he stood his ground between Meiran and the approaching demon. Behind him, he could hear Cadmus retching his dinner onto the ground.
The blue-r
obed darkmage halted in front of them, raising his accursed weapon. His eyes burned fierce, his body aglow with the argent light of the talisman. His brutal eyes locked on Kyel with a presence that was numbing in its strength.
“Surrender.”
Kyel couldn’t react. He was paralyzed by the demon’s gaze, gripped in ice-cold shackles of terror. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Traver still twitching on the ground. He opened his mouth, but that was the best he could do. He couldn’t force a single word past his lips.
The demon took a threatening step toward him, his gaze commanding. “Drop. Your. Shield.”
Kyel swallowed, finally realizing who it was that confronted him: Byron Connel, ancient Warden of Battlemages. The same man who had single-handedly decimated Caladorn’s armies.
In Connel’s eyes, Kyel saw the promise of his own death.
There was no reason to fight, he realized. He’d already lost. He didn’t have the skills or the strength to defend against Connel’s power. Nevertheless, he maintained the wavering, golden shield. He’d given Meiran his word that he’d protect her with his life.
The only thing he could do was die for her.
It was the best he could do. It was all he could do.
“Kyel…” Meiran moaned.
He held the demon’s stare, clenching his jaw, and waited for the death blow to fall.
Byron Connel nodded slightly. Then he struck.
An iron fist of air slapped Kyel in the face, picking him up and flinging him to the ground. An explosion of light shocked his vision as his head struck the rocks. Somehow, he retained enough of himself to realize that he’d dropped his shield. Frantic, he rolled over just in time to see Connel disappear.
And reappear in front of Meiran.
She opened her mouth to scream but only blood came out.
Kyel lurched to his feet, clawing the dagger Craig had given him out of its scabbard as Meiran crumbled to the ground. He stared down at her face as she lay dying, gasping her last breaths through a mouthful of blood.
Darkrise Page 32
