Bannon crouched in a fighting stance, and Lila stood beside him with her sword raised. Nathan extended his hands, ready to call on his gift.
Nicci felt glad for their loyalty, although she didn’t need it. She touched the coldness in her heart, and her voice came out as hard as black ice. “You misunderstand, General. I did not call you here to give my surrender. I came to defeat you. I came to send all of you to the underworld, where you are long overdue.”
The escort troops shifted in their saddles, amused by her bravado. Standing in front of his stallion, Utros cocked his head back. Her comments seemed like braggadocio, but Nicci was deadly serious. She could feel the bone box in her pocket.
General Utros drew his sword and advanced on Nicci, ready to strike her down where she stood. Ruva slithered out of her saddle and approached, while the pale remnant of her sister hovered beside her, glowering. Because Nicci’s demeanor was so completely confident, the twins showed a flicker of uneasiness.
Nicci said, “Thanks to Lord Rahl, the only war wizard born in many centuries, the underworld was sealed forever and the veil was made impenetrable. The dead could no longer return to the world of the living.”
“We know this,” Ruva sneered.
“You and all of your soldiers should have been dead fifteen centuries ago. Your souls have been on the wrong side of the veil for all this time.” Nicci looked beyond Utros to the escort soldiers. “When you were petrified, the Keeper did not know he had lost you, but now you are flesh again . . . and your souls are forfeit.”
“We are here,” Ava snapped. “I am with my sister.”
From the general’s troubled expression, Nicci could see that her words were no surprise to him. She said, “You know this in your heart, General Utros. You should be long dead.”
“My empire is here in this world,” Utros said. “Today we have sent enough souls to the underworld to satisfy the Keeper.”
“But they are not the correct souls. I was once a Sister of the Dark, and I was allied with the Keeper.” Her expression hardened. “I no longer serve him. He is no friend of mine, but I will happily give him what he is owed.” Her gaze traveled out to the city of Tanimura, where countless ancient soldiers continued fighting. “All of your souls. Life to the living. Death to the dead.”
Utros did not seem amused. “You are arrogant and powerless.”
Nicci snatched the bone box from her dress and slid aside the delicate lid, which was now stained with blood from her hand. Inside, the small glowing pearl rotated, shone brighter.
Seeing it, the twin sorceresses recoiled. Ava’s spirit shrieked, and Ruva lunged forward, realizing the danger even if she did not understand what the object was.
Utros raised his sword to kill Nicci, but Bannon and Lila both dove in to drive the big general back a step. Knowing he had to give Nicci whatever time she needed, Nathan shoved with both hands, palms outward. The blast of solidified air ripped harmlessly through the spirit of Ava but slammed Ruva backward, disrupting the spell she was trying to work.
Nicci had finally realized what Richard’s constructed spell truly was—that Subtractive Magic, her Subtractive Magic, was the necessary component to unleash the devastation. Nicci herself was the key, the foundation. Richard had known she would figure it out.
Life to the living. Death to the dead, written in the language of Creation. This spell would heal the frayed threads in the veil. What had once unraveled would be tied up again.
She called upon both sides of her gift. Holding the bone box in her palm, she summoned lightning, and an arcing bolt of pure white energy, braided with an opposite bolt of black Subtractive power, struck the bone box and vaporized it in a blinding flash of pure elemental power. The dual elements twisted together and struck the glowing orb, delivering the required element to ignite the internal protocols of Richard’s constructed spell. The magic began to unfold around her and run toward its terminal objective.
As Nicci ignited the spell, the backwash levitated her into the air. Glowing lines grew and lengthened, crisscrossing to form a cylinder around her, as if a two-dimensional spell-form had become three-dimensional in order to be viable in such an extreme circumstance. With a roaring sound that reverberated across the flat expanse of the island, those patterns of lines, angles, and arcs continued to grow outward, extending away from the cylindrical spell-form. Lines of light raced through the air to support triangles and intersections. While orange light spiraled outward, the lines of power braced complex angles of pure white.
Nathan staggered backward, shielding his eyes with the sleeve of his frayed ruffled shirt. The lightning bolt had been powerful, but it was no more than a whisper compared to the constructed spell she had just triggered. The magic continued to grow.
As the lines expanded and branched ever outward, thorns of light sprouted in needle-sharp points. Their patterns and flow interacted and connected, giving the entire web of lines their intended purpose—to open the torn veil wide enough so the Keeper could seize all the long-overdue souls and drag them to where they belonged.
Life to the living. Death to the dead.
After Nicci set the constructed spell in motion, the routines continued to grow through a rhythm of intersections and routes that arced out in all directions. Suspended within the web, lifted off the ground, she felt each new line as if some cosmic needle were taking a stitch through her soul to draw the thread of light out of her and into the fabric of the spell. She experienced profound pain and pleasure at the same time.
The spell would encompass General Utros and the entire ancient army.
*
Nathan watched the unfolding, increasing lines of power, knowing that this was beyond anything he could do. Richard had created the spell, but Nicci was the engine driving all the destruction. Encased in her web of expanding, invincible magic, the beautiful sorceress wheeled in the air.
Utros’s escort soldiers screamed and backed away. Their horses reared in panic. Ava and Ruva cried out in challenge and terror, trying to defend against what Nicci had unleashed. The general strained to stagger forward, struggling to lift his sword so he could kill Nicci, but the weapon seemed as heavy as a mountain.
Bannon and Lila were buffeted by the surging power. They tried to stand their ground, holding their swords to defend against powers they could not imagine. Halsband Island shook and shuddered, and the settling rubble underfoot made the ground unsteady, while Nicci hung suspended in the air as light showered around her.
With impossible speed, the dazzling lines spiraled across the landscape and rolled past the island, beyond the bridges to the lowtown, then across the harbor. The spell raced like an ill wind through all the districts of the city to the outlying hills and beyond. Unstoppable, it swept up tens of thousands of the invading army. The underworld was now open and ravenous, demanding to have these souls.
Men in ancient armor screamed as the glowing green lines overran them, netting some, while impaling others on the thorns of orange light, slicing others with razor black energy.
Tendrils flew out beyond Tanimura, far down the coast, racing across the Old World to reclaim all the souls of the ancient army, wherever they had been dispatched. The very line between life and death was at stake, now torn open.
As the veil to the underworld tore to allow passage of all those souls, Nathan felt his heart rip as well. The darkness within him hammered outward, struggling, trying to hold on. He clutched his chest as pain exploded like a battering ram inside him. He had not experienced agony like this since Fleshmancer Andre had split open his breastbone to pull out his old, weak heart.
Now the remnants of Ivan strained and struggled. That evil man’s spirit resisted, but the raging constructed spell demanded every scrap of his tainted soul as well. Searing green light blazed around Nathan’s eyes, inside his mind, and he used his own gift to push the hated presence out of him.
With a last dull saw blade of pain, the poisonous vestige of Ivan slipped out of him and
fluttered away like scattered raven’s wings. The chief handler’s spirit was sucked down with all the other screaming souls as the world and the underworld yawned open.
Nathan realized he was at last free.
*
Green mist swirled like a sudden fog, rising from a world that did not belong to the living. Across the battlefield in the hills and the city streets, the ground shuddered open. Countless ancient soldiers were yanked screaming into the underworld, their souls reclaimed, their centuries-old bodies crumbling to dust.
From the center of the storm of magic, Nicci realized that elements of the spell patterns were themselves in the language of Creation, a design that transitioned into an elemental language that hummed with the rhythm of life itself and also called to the dead.
Ava’s shimmering spirit tried to flee, pulling against the invisible claws of destiny. Her intangible form stretched and tangled, then was whisked away with a fading shriek. Leaping after her dead sister, trying to catch her, Ruva struggled with the limitations of her physical form. Their connection was too strong, and the Keeper demanded them both. Ruva’s soul tore away, inexorably following her twin to the underworld. Empty, her body dropped lifeless, disintegrating into grains of dust and fragments of yellowed bones.
Suspended in the air as the magical holocaust continued, Nicci knew that this spell-form was complex beyond her comprehension. She gazed in awe at the network of light woven into a fabric of forms around her, motifs and unfathomable emblems. She was not surprised that Richard had been able to conceive such power. Caught in her own web and also shielded by it, she watched the very stuff of creation and annihilation.
By using the interior perspective of the constructed spell, by being the initiating element, Nicci was more than an observer, but also a participant. It was her very will, her fury, her nature that became an empowering element to annihilate the vast invading force in one stroke. It was Nicci herself who laid waste to the ancient army and cast them tumbling into the world of the dead.
Strong and defiant, General Utros resisted until the last minute, but even the legendary commander could not withstand the call of the Keeper, the obdurate demands of mortality. As he shuddered and struggled against the pull of the constructed spell, the gold mask fell off to show his stripped face.
Knowing he could not win, Utros raised one gauntleted fist, shouting a final vow. “Now I can conquer the whole underworld!” His massive body disintegrated as his spirit vanished into the whirlwind of green mist.
As the spell finally wound through to its terminus, its task accomplished, Nicci felt more alive than she had ever been. Embraced by Richard’s spell, she had dealt out death, once again becoming Death’s Mistress. Richard had written the message for her in the language of Creation on the bone box. In that moment, neither world—the world of the living nor the world of the dead—seemed entirely real to her. She was the Grace. She was life. She was death.
Only then was Nicci released from her prison of light, exhausted and exhilarated by the experience. She drifted back to the ground and slumped in the rubble of the Palace of the Prophets.
More than ever, she ached for Richard. It was bliss to have been held in the embrace of his spell, but now it was gone. That moment of love and protection evaporated as the last few lines of light went dark.
CHAPTER 85
The ravaged city reeled as the world itself cracked open. Misty veils rippled through the streets as the ancient warriors were swept away to where they should have gone centuries before. With howls of despair louder than the roar of battle, the soldiers collapsed in full armor, falling to dust. Tanimura became a literal city of the dead.
The D’Haran fighters, the city militia, the ragtag refugee army, and the everyday citizens were left amazed as the seemingly hopeless battle simply ended before their eyes. The overwhelming enemy was vanquished by an ally no one had expected—the Keeper himself.
Among his weary and wounded soldiers, General Zimmer stood wrung-out and shuddering. His hand trembled as he gripped the hilt of his sword. For hours he had lived in a mechanical process of defending himself, cutting down one opponent after another. They were all faceless to him. Surely he had slain more than a hundred by his own hand.
Lyesse, her bare skin painted red with blood, turned with angry disappointment at all the opponents who had dropped dead in front of her; she clearly wasn’t finished getting revenge for Thorn.
Sisters Arabella and Mab staggered up to General Zimmer, dragging with every step. Mab bled from a deep cut in her upper arm and another in her ribs, and Arabella held her up. Now that she had a moment when she wasn’t fighting for her life, Sister Arabella healed her companion’s injuries, strengthening Mab enough so that she could stand upright again.
Oliver, Peretta, and Amber joined them. All the rats they had summoned had fled back into the sewers and grates, gorged with fresh meat and matted with blood, but no one understood why the entire ancient army had just crumbled to dust in a hurricane of inexplicable magic.
“What do we do now, General?” Oliver looked around, but none of the others even spoke questions aloud.
At the far side of the blood-strewn square, where so many ancient soldiers had vanished into death, twenty fierce Norukai stood with their mouths wide, suddenly finding themselves alone and vastly outnumbered. Now that the tables were turned, they bellowed their defiance and raised their axes, clubs, and swords to keep fighting.
Though battered, the D’Haran soldiers were rejuvenated by the sudden reprieve, and their battle cry was ten times as loud as the scarred raiders’. General Zimmer led the charge. “Now we clear the streets of Tanimura, wipe out every last Norukai, and dump their bodies into the sea.”
Fueled by the prospect of certain victory, his army ran after the burly raiders, who turned to flee.
*
Bannon was horrified to watch the underworld open up and reclaim all the lost souls in a nightmarish storm. In the aftermath, it took him a long moment to realize that the defenders of Tanimura had somehow won.
After the astonishing play of lights, forms, and tangled lines, Nicci had collapsed in the rubble of the Palace of the Prophets. Nathan squatted next to the sorceress, cradling her in a tender gesture. “Dear spirits, I don’t know when I’ve ever endured the like. You saved us. You saved us all!”
Her voice was ragged. “Not just me. You all helped. I could not have done this without you.” Nicci looked at him, then at Bannon and Lila, nodding in gratitude. “But this was also Richard’s doing. He made that constructed spell and said it was all I needed. Even though I didn’t understand what he meant, I believed him. He had faith in me, and that faith made me stronger than I’ve ever been before.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over Halsband Island and extended throughout Tanimura. Now that General Utros had turned to dust, his gold mask lay facedown on the broken stones. Only a few bits of his horned helmet remained, mostly decayed, next to bone splinters. Of the escort soldiers, only a few scraps of metal, rusted buckles, and broken links of chain mail lay on the ground.
Diminished sounds of fighting came from the city as new skirmishes erupted. With his sharp vision, Bannon could see knots of Norukai warriors trying to fend off a surge from the overjoyed D’Haran defenders. Lila flashed an eager glance at Bannon. “Sounds like the fun isn’t over yet, boy. Would you like to join me? If we run, we might get there before someone else slays them all.”
Bannon looked at his ornate sword. The hilt now felt perfect in his hand, entirely his. The edge was notched from the recent fighting, but any good swordsmith could restore its razor edge. “I do want to see all the Norukai dead, but sweet Sea Mother, I have done enough killing for today.”
In the main city, the vengeful militia members, Tanimuran city guards, and D’Haran soldiers surrounded the last Norukai. A few raiders managed to get back to two of the grounded serpent ships and shoved off into the harbor, but they found no safety in the water either. The ships of the Tanimur
an navy as well as the reinforcements from Serrimundi still remained to fight them. A rain of fire arrows dropped down on the serpent ships before they could get out of the harbor. Before long every last raider vessel was engulfed in flames and burned to the waterline.
A short while later, General Linden rode to Halsband Island with a handful of soldiers, followed by several Hidden People in bloodstained gray cloaks. Zimmer followed soon after with his own bedraggled escort. “We are mopping up throughout the city,” Zimmer said.
Linden added, “By standing together, we might have withstood the Norukai, but we had no chance against the army of General Utros.” He shook his head, looked at the dust and bone fragments scattered amid the rubble, the trivial remnants of so many ancient soldiers. “I can’t believe it.”
Nicci said, “With Richard’s help I found a power even greater than an invincible army—the power of life and death.”
Life to the living. Death to the dead.
“The power of destiny,” Nathan said, raising his eyebrows. “Never forget that she was indeed Death’s Mistress.”
More Sisters of the Light made their way to Halsband Island, their former home. During the battles in the city, Sisters Sharon, Lucia, and Heather had been slain, and now the remaining Sisters marked their passing. Sisters Rhoda, Eldine, Mab, and Arabella greeted Nicci and Nathan, relieved. “It seems fitting that the last battle took place on the very foundations of the Palace of the Prophets,” Rhoda said.
“So much magic was entwined through the structure of that building, maybe some of it remained,” Arabella said.
“I am glad the palace is no more,” Nathan said with sniff. “It no longer had a purpose.”
Nicci said, “With prophecy gone and gifted young men no longer suffering, your entire order has no purpose.”
“Prelate Verna wrestled with the same question,” said Eldine. “She tried to find a new reason because our old ways were gone. By helping at Cliffwall, the Sisters worked to understand and guide the use of magical lore.”
Heart of Black Ice (Sister of Darkness: The Nicci Chronicles Book 4) Page 50
