Oresso Nane put his head down, picking up the pace along with Zuria and Brosk. Razili lagged a bit, along with Yezani, but Chelka practically flew. She sprinted over the stones of the path, sandals clapping upon them.
The domes of the High Palace rose up before them, and only then, in the twilight, did Edmath see the dark shapes flitting over the surfaces of each dome. They passed here and there in the moonlight, misshapen and strangely distorted at this distance. Edmath’s heart pounded aloud, and he clutched his stethian to his side. The ball of crystal on its end felt warm as the weapon slipped in his hand and brought the end sphere closer to his fingers. What was this device, and what could it do?
Keeping his eyes on the malformed creatures moving atop the domes, Edmath watched several of them take to the air. They glided down to land at the gates before the Saales. He panted for breath and kept running. He drew a striker from his pouch but spilled another onto the path as he did. He only had three of them left on him after these. Chelka’s white wedding gown flew out behind her, streaming like a banner, pale against the darkening sky. Brosk’s arms rippled as he drew his striker chain from the loop at his belt. The metallic gleam of bronze lit up coldly with the moonlight.
“Those are not friends up ahead,” Brosk called back as she slowed his pace. “Prepare to fight.” Veering off to the left, Brosk unfolded the striker chain to fly out behind him. He dragged it in and opened a trio of tears as he did.
Chelka struck with a ring Edmath hadn’t seen her draw, and magic flowed back down the path into him and the other four Saales. The current wasn’t with them, though. Chelka and Brosk wouldn’t have enough power to do anything major to the foes immediately up ahead. He would have said something, but they were already upon the enemy.
He slipped his striker over one finger as the shadows became four distinct creatures, mostly human, but not quite. Dull red tendrils flowed from the first one’s impossibly humped back, and they grew as Edmath drew closer. Chelka came to a stop, making a light sign with her free hand. She had barely enough magic to pull it off.
A flash of yellow so bright it would have blinded Edmath if he hadn’t known to look away bloomed in front of them. Brosk ran past the deformed people, opening a rash of rips as he did so. Edmath ran toward where Chelka stood, long shadow cast by the bright glow of the light she had summoned. Razili and Zuria followed Brosk, but the light began to fade. To Edmath’s horror, he recognized the twisted voice of the huge man from one of the actors in the play. His jocular tone from earlier that evening was gone, and his back bulged with the shape of a conjoined protean sphere.
“Saales! This is for Beliu on Dreamwater!”
Edmath’s hand sign for the green fist faltered. He knew the man with the bulging black mass on his back was telling the truth with a certainty that made him sick to his stomach. What were the villagers from Beliu doing here? From the shadowy frames of the other performers, fast tangles of black tendrils grew, shooting at Edmath and the others at dizzying speeds.
One tendril wrapped around Edmath’s wrist and dragged him forward. Razili fell to the ground with a yell. As the last of the light from Chelka’s spell faded, Edmath glimpsed Brosk slash a grasping black tentacle off at the tip. A terrible cracking sound, like breaking bones, came from Razili, and he heard Zuria hiss as she transformed into her serpent tosh.
Edmath swung his stethian, sending the cloth sheath flying off and brought it down on the tentacle gripping his left arm. It came apart and recoiled with a shriek of explosive flesh.
Light flared again, this time blinding Edmath as he hadn’t seen Chelka summon it. A roar like a collapsing wave came from just ahead of him, followed by a huge crashing sound of a body falling. The light dimmed slowly and Edmath heard Chelka call out.
“Razili, get out of there!”
The body of the huge actor, no not just an actor, a villager, one of those lost at Beliu on Dreamwater lay sprawled on the path. Perched atop his chest, Razili Nane crouched, covered in the ridged and abrasive armor of her coral tosh. Her stony hands were slick with blood. The other villagers retreated along the path. One of them left a slick red trail from where he had clashed with Brosk through the dome’s open door.
Brosk shifted into his whale tosh, face becoming indistinct and shoulders broadening. His striker whip hung in his hands. The magic flowing all around them cast the whole scene in a surreal light visible only to trained eyes. He returned Chelka’s stone-faced look before glancing at Brosk.
“Those men had protean spheres.”
“Indeed.” Brosk’s massive shoulders sagged. “Edmath, you don’t need to tell me.”
Edmath nodded before looking behind himself at Oresso Nane, and Yezani Rumenha. They were both unhurt, and Oresso wore his coral tosh as well. Yezani had a pair of double strikers in her hands, but her expression was absolutely terrified. The horrors of protean spheres were shocking to any mage. Edmath’s own adrenaline-fueled excitement at the violence was all that kept him from looking away. The remains of the tentacle fell from his wrist.
Chelka drew her stethian from its silken sheathe. She looked down the path.
“We need to keep moving. If there are more of these people inside then they will know we’re coming now.”
Edmath joined Chelka in the lead and went to the inner palace. They climbed the steps there carefully. He and Chelka led, and Oresso and the others followed them. Zuria hissed from her snake tosh. Her forked tongue flicked out of her mouth.
“Brother,” she said. “We should split up if we are to find the High Emperor in time.”
“You are right, sister. we can search twice as fast in two groups.” Edmath closed his eyes for a second and opened them to see better in the dark. “Or faster yet, in three.” He paced forward into the palace hall, followed closely by Chelka.
Brosk waited in his path.
“Razili and Zuria, take the right corridor and search the domes in that direction. Oresso and Yezani, can you handle the inner gardens?”
“We will try,” Yezani said. “Don’t worry about me, Brosk.”
Brosk gave her a shaky nod.
“Thanks,” Edmath said.
Brosk’s eyes, large and dark in his tosh, flicked to Edmath and Chelka. “You two, come with me. We’ll go left down the hallway up ahead.”
Edmath followed Brosk up the steps, avoiding the spreading blood trail and followed by Chelka. She drew a triple-ring striker and held it along with her stethian, throwing her train up and over one shoulder. Her eyes shifted in the dark but still, she did not assume her tosh. The squid tosh would not be overly useful in a dry place like this. It would be awkward to maneuver on land and made breathing in air difficult. Brosk jogged forward, eyes closed in the lantern-lit corridor. The curve of the hallway led them forward, following the blood trail.
“There are more of them up ahead. I can hear them.”
“Of course. We’ll need to break through.”
Edmath raised the stethian in his right hand and pointed it down the corridor as he made a hand sign with his left. As he marched forward, he held out the palm of his hand. He completed the single hand sign. A luminous plant grew in his palm.
“Brosk, you are the strongest. You should go first.”
“Indeed. Those creatures are powerful, but I trust my tosh. Is this the work of Roshi, I wonder?”
Chelka shouldered her stethian, ball-point in the air.
“I think I can use this device,” she said, and tipped her head toward it. “I’ll have to have a spell ready though.”
“I will make sure we are not attacked from behind.” Edmath looked over his shoulder. “The others will have to be wary as well. There could be any number of foes about.”
He walking slowly, and watched the shadows dance on the white stone of the walls. The polished floor reflected his face, a darker patch in a pool of light. Chelka and Brosk moved ahead of him, liquid-shapes maneuvering in the darkness. Overhead the cry of a mirache came in clearly to Edmath’s ears in the fox langua
ge.
“We are hunters. They are prey!”
Edmath shuddered. Roshi had taken Beliu’s people to use as their own it seemed, and now more monsters might easily arrive. Edmath’s pace quickened and his breathing became ragged.
“The Roshi fox beasts are looking for something.”
Brosk quieted Edmath’s whisper with a raised hand. Chelka turned and looked back at Edmath. Black hair flowed across her shoulders in the torchlight.
“Here they are. Give me some magic and close your eyes.”
She lowered her stethian and muttered something Edmath couldn’t hear while forming a sign with her ringed hand. Edmath struck the air. Ahead of him, Brosk did the same. The magic flowed around them and into them, but mostly toward Chelka. Mystic power rushed into her and she glowed as if someone lit a fire inside her chest. Edmath closed his eyes and made the sign of the thorn with his right hand. A cold breeze came in from a window up ahead and a roar rumbled from up ahead.
“Open up, Ed.” Chelka’s voice drew Edmath’s eyes.
Her red and yellow spell-light built along the narrow side of the stethian. The red was something he’d not seen before, but a new, sinister flame. The spell cast Chelka’s face in fierce flashes of light and shadow.
The creatures coming toward them from the hallway were barely recognizable as human. Protean spheres had all but devoured the bodies of these people during the transformation and now their human parts hung limply from the floating orbs of black and red flesh. Tentacles flew out from the nearest creature and slashed toward Brosk. Edmath struck and opened another ragged tear before he moved to complete the thorn hand sign.
Wrapped with black ropes of flesh, Brosk’s enormous shape strained and broke several of them. His arms seethed with muscles no human without magic possessed. Edmath focused on the thorns in his mind and launched them forward, shooting long vines covered in tiny points all over the warped flesh of the creature before him.
He wrapped his fingers around the thick, smooth vine that appeared his hand and tugged on it, making the thorns cut through the protean sphere and dragging it to the floor. With a surge of strength, Brosk broke the last of the black tendrils wrapped around him. The creature they had grown from recoiled and yelled in an all too human voice.
“You will die, Saales. All die!”
Four more monsters came down the hall toward them, bringing the number of foes to six. Chelka walked up to Edmath’s side. He didn’t dare look at her, for fear of losing his sight. The blinding light on the edge of her stethian drew the attention of the villagers and their protean spheres. The one that had been wrestling with Brosk broke away and charged Edmath, trying to get to her.
Edmath backed toward Chelka. His fingers tugged on the roots of the thorn plant. He pulled it into the creature’s path which held it back, though only for a second. Blood beaded on the body where the thorns cut into it and then the protean sphere pushed through, tearing long gashes across its host’s chest and abdomen. The creature did not seem to notice the pain.
A flare of light from Chelka’s stethian struck the creature in its human chest and broke through like a hot poker, setting it on fire and sending ignited blood spraying up its neck. The fire blackened and seared flesh as it went. Edmath made the thorn sign again, running past the falling villager and casting the vines around the leg of another in front of him.
Chelka sent a blast of light through a villager on Edmath’s left, knocking the twisted man to the ground, smoking. Edmath kept running past the villager he’d entangled. The vines dragged, pulling the man down by his protean sphere.
Brosk’s fist smashed into another, driving it back a step before Chelka’s next bolt of light set it ablaze. Edmath turned and made the sign of the root, entangling another creature so it fell. Brosk and Chelka followed him past the maimed and burning villagers at a run.
Things intensified the longer they fought. Those wounds could be fatal, Edmath knew, and the sickness that came to a Saale from killing would catch up with Chelka soon. She raced ahead of him, strong legs just as good for running as for dancing. She leveled her stethian, still alight with lethal flames, and stared straight ahead.
“More enemies, from above,” Brosk said.
“I’ve got them.” Chelka angled the end of her stethian up. Trickles of white smoke rose from the ball at its tip. Three blasts of red and yellow light shot through the first creature as it descended from the ceiling. Edmath watched it break into ashen pieces and fall to the ground, its buoyancy destroyed.
“Don’t overdo it, my dear.” Edmath made the sign of the branch. “If you take ill this fight will become more difficult.”
“I understand.” Chelka slowed her pace and closed with the inner wall of the corridor.
Brosk swung his striker whip and knocked an approaching tentacle from the air. He dodged another coming in from above, and dropped to his knees. A spot of black blood appeared on his gray forearm.
“Please die, will you?” A hoarse female voice came from above. “A prince and a Saale, you are. Doubly I hate you.”
A hair-thin black line pulled free from Brosk’s arm and he gave a gasp of pain. The line retracted toward a spidery-limbed sphere descended from the ceiling with a yellow-haired woman emerging from its back, head bent over backward to glare with blue eyes at Brosk.
“You cursed mages must pay for what we have suffered.”
Edmath didn’t listen any further. He used the last of his magic and made the sign of the green fist. The huge chunk of plant matter shot from before him and into the villager woman’s sphere. The blow knocked her backward, but she recovered quickly. She floated up higher, and then shot a pair of dark lances of hair toward Edmath. The black hair-like spears were so thin he only saw them because of the light from Chelka’s spell. He threw himself to one side.
The outline of an eye formed in the protean sphere connected to the woman’s midsection and fixed its gaze upon Edmath. More hairs shot at him. He wove out of the way of the sharp points and still, the eye remained staring at him.
Nausea hit him, almost as if he’d taken a life with magic. Someone had struck him with a disorienting curse. The curse caught him up in dizziness and he fell to one knee. Chelka’s voice came in from the haze and his wave of nausea abated along with a flash of red light.
Her bolt of light hit the spider woman and burned through the sphere’s staring eye. Brosk opened a trio of tears with his striker chain and advanced on the falling form of the villager.
The woman lurched on the legs of her sphere. She scuttled back down the hallway where she had first appeared to attack them.
Edmath recovered his stance and advanced, keeping conscious of the survival arts as he did so. He moved one foot, then the other, and advanced down the hallway without faltering. His feet didn’t drag, but flowed with him, liquid smooth movement after liquid-smooth movement. Maybe he wouldn’t be hopeless at the arts of battle forever. The spidery village-woman did not reappear.
He, Chelka, and Brosk advanced without delay.
Brosk winced visibly as he looked down at the wound on his arm. His whale-face contorted but he kept his pace up. The three of them made their way onto a bridge leading over the gardens to the center of the high palace. The pyramid loomed in the moonlight over the central domes. Below them, the darkened grounds of the gardens were filled with shrieks of the Enchiel and the cries of the ordinary Roshi warriors who fought with them. Two or three men with lances and more with torches would surround a single Enchieli in an attempt to bring it down, but they were already outnumbered.
“It looks as though the Roshi are not holding their own.” Edmath panted for air as he spoke. The constant running and fighting were taking their toll on him. “We should be fine if we can find his Grace.”
“We can only hope.” Brosk tore tear after tear with his striker chain. Edmath and Chelka did the same with their own strikers. “He must still be alive.”
Fear and uncertainty tugged at Edmath. He didn�
�t know if they could get out of the palace themselves. His earlier words hardly reassured him. Down in the gardens was one thing, but these villagers would get them through numbers if there were too many more, not to mention the physical mages. Ursar Kiet, Tamina, and even Akalok Roshi could fight with more power than any of these protean spheres, he was certain.
“We’ll find him,” Chelka said. “We have to.”
A roar and growl came from before them. In the shadows up ahead where the bridge met the dome a pair of Echiel lay slain, great wings torn and bodies opened by terrible wounds. Edmath felt pity for the great creatures but more fearful at the prospect of facing their killer. He looked at Chelka as they came to a stop before the closed door to the dome.
“Chelka, how do you wield your stethian?”
“It’s not difficult. Just focus on it when you make the hand sign.” Chelka lowered the flickering light of her weapon. “It uses much power, so strike often.”
“Thank you. I will.”
Brosk looked up from the bodies of the Enchiel as the sound of growls intensified. Edmath couldn’t put his finger on where it was coming from, though. A pair of great red fox heads flashed down between the columns on his left and another two on his right.
Edmath grabbed Chelka’s arm and pulled her down as he dropped to the floor. Brosk threw his back against the door and swung his striker chain at the head menacing him. The huge fox face withdrew as the chain’s sharp edge opened a gash above its eyes. Another head passed over Edmath and Chelka and then rapidly drew back, noticing them.
Edmath sprang up and to one side. Chelka rolled onto her back, sending a blast of light at the creature from her stethian. It snaked back up out of sight and the bolt blackened a pillar near the corner where the bridge joined the wall. Edmath made the sign of the thorn and glared at the face of the mirache hovering before him.
He pointed the ball of the stethian at it and focused hard on the weapon. The vines that shot at the creature were black and long, razor-sharp blades, not really thorns at all. Edmath was too slow to grab the roots but the bladed vines hit the Mirache in a coil and opened wounds all across one side of its face, releasing blood to flow through fur. The head drew back with a loud yelp.
Spells of the Curtain Volume One Page 18
