Changing Of The Guard (Book 6) (8 page)

An image of Hirl-enat came to him, coated with a sensation of urgency.

He brushed it away.

He could get used to being god-touched. His was the only true magic on this plane, and he was the only creature with a link to Talin, the only one with the Touch of Existence.

Well, the only human, he thought with a smile.

Hirl-enat’s image persisted, though, pulling at him with a dogged determination that said the mage wasn’t going away. Ettril spoke a few words of magic and made a connection.

“I hope for your sake this is important,” he said.

“Are you all right, Lord? We’ve been unable to raise you.”

Ettril smiled. “I am more than all right. Tell me what this is about.”

Hirl-enat paused for only the slightest of moments.

“Lectodinian raiders are destroying our order, sir.”

“Lectodinians?” Ettril turned his full attention to his Koradictine subordinate. “Tell me more.”

“We’ve been polling the order as you asked, and one after the other has been unable to answer. Those who can, however, report of murdered mages left amid traces of Lectodinian magic.”

Ettril cursed. He cast a burst of magic that twisted across his palms in a caustic blue-brown cloud.

“Zutrian thinks he’s found us weakened,” he said.

“He may be right, Superior. I’ve been able to rouse only two mages. We need you back here now.”

“No!” Ettril’s anger flared again.

Hezarin would be furious if he left this task undone, and after all this time he would not deny himself the sweet anticipation he felt toward seeing Garrick squirm.

Beyond that, his god-touch had let him see things in a different light. He had been so wrong about so many things throughout his life. He once thought events on Adruin mattered, that controlling people and obtaining power there was important. But his travels through All of Existence and the taste of his god-touch was enough to change all that.

He drew energy from his link, reveling in the purity of its strength. Let Zutrian have his day in the sun, he thought.

Garrick was on his way. It would not be long now.

“This is my moment of revenge. I’ll not have it wasted by a petty Lectodinian who thinks he understands power.”

“But if you don’t come now, the Koradictines—”

“I said no.” Ettril’s voice was sharp as a battle axe. “Take care of this yourself. I will return when I can, and I’ll expect the order to be in proper condition.”

He shut down the communication link and gathered himself.

Ettril motioned toward the boy, and felt life force waft with an aroma as attractive as fresh-baked pie.

The boy moaned.

He turned his attention back to his spell work, tending the trail he had left to float free. It felt odd to be the bait of his own trap, odd, but wonderful at the same time. It made him feel important. It made him feel like he was in control—which, of course, he was.

Energy crackled around him—azure and cobalt, lavender, golden chartreuse, browns of soil, and greens of the forests.

Yes, Ettril thought.

He was after far larger prey.

Adruin could wait.

Chapter 5

The Koradictine's link grew stronger and easier to follow as it led Garrick back through Existence. He gathered up life force as it flowed over him. Its vitality filled him. It brought him renewed vigor.

“Don’t you have an order to run?”

Garrick recognized the tone of superiority in Braxidane's voice.

“Can’t you see I’m busy?” he replied.

“I can see you’re wasting your time on things that are unimportant.”

“Will is not unimportant.”

“I think you need to prioritize better.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Then perhaps you can explain why the leader of an order of mages is letting that same order crumble rather than face his responsibility.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“Compassion is not an emotion you're familiar with.”

“Apparently I as familiar with compassion as you are with accountability.”

“I’ll do things on my time, Braxidane. Now get out of my way. I have better things to do than argue with you. You’re causing me to lose touch with the Koradictine.”

Garrick set his gates and drew upon the plane of magic.

The thread grew more substantial, and he pulled on it to find himself rushing through the gray matter of Existence once again.

A dark gate loomed ahead.

He slipped into it, and a blast furnace of flaming energy rose around him—Ettril’s ward. He dug into the flow to bring up a shield of free energy. The gate was strong. It tasted bold and sharp, like dark tea left burning too long.

This would be it.

Ettril had run long enough, and the strength of this ward told Garrick this was where Ettril Dor-Entfar would make his stand.

“How do you think he’s doing it?” Braxidane asked.

Garrick grimaced, sensing his superior’s trail beside him.

“I thought I left you behind.”

Braxidane hung in the flow like a bulbous jellyfish, saying nothing, biding his time.

“Doing what?” Garrick asked as he probed the ward.

“How do you think the Koradictine is traveling the planes so easily?”

Garrick thought about that. He couldn’t have survived Existence his first time without the protection of Karasacti’s robe. How was Ettril Dor-Entfar doing it?

“You don’t know, do you?”

Braxidane’s voice picked at him like he was a piece of meat.

“Typical. You went charging off to save the world without a thought about what you were up against.”

“I did the best I knew how.”

“That excuse doesn’t work anymore, Garrick. You know that by now. You need to act as if you understand things are bigger than Adruin.”

“He’s getting help,” Garrick said, beginning to realize what Braxidane was telling him.

“Yes. My sister is supporting him.”

“So is he god-touched now?”

“She can’t have another god-touched on Adruin,” Braxidane said. “But, yes, Ettril Dor-Entfar is now hers so long as he isn’t on that plane. Or on any other plane that has an existing mage she has … touched.”

A sense of fatigue washed over Garrick.

“This is all Hezarin’s doing, then? The whole Koradictine uprising? Rastella, stealing Will? It’s all on her shoulders.”

“You’re growing brighter with every passing moment,” Braxidane said. “I am so proud.”

“So once again we’re merely planewalkers’ proxies.”

“Humans have never needed planewalkers to find cause to combat each other.”

“Ettril couldn’t have gotten off Adruin without her.”

“There are many ways to cross planes.”

“That’s what I like about you, Braxidane. You’re always so firm in your answers.”

“It’s an unsteady universe, Garrick. You’ll just have to deal with it.”

Garrick chewed on that as the current pulled on them. Streaks of color passed, scarlet, and yellow, and the blue of a jay’s wing. He was no longer the boy who had been sold to Alistair, no longer the young man who had proposed to his love in the woods.

He laughed at himself.

“This is certain, Braxidane: I am going to get Will back. You can’t dissuade me of that.”

“You’ve got one simple task, Garrick. One. Lead the Freeborn. It’s a task of great value, yet you will risk yourself and everything you mean to Adruin merely to save a boy?”

“I have to, or I cannot lead the Freeborn.”

“I cannot help you from this point.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“I’ve already given Hezarin the upper hand by intervening once when you would surely have died. I can’t afford to do it again.”

“So it’s
won’t.
”

“I don’t understand you, Garrick.”

“That’s not my concern.”

Braxidane turned slate gray, and dipped a row of gaseous cilia to flow freely in the currents.

Then Garrick was alone.

He smiled to himself. It felt good.

Then he turned back to the gate.

He had been letting the Koradictine dictate their path and set his traps. The first had drained his life force, the second had dealt a blow to his psyche. Both had caught him by surprise. That couldn’t happen again.

He used these last few moments to absorb what strength he could. Then he set his gates and gathered life force within him. The two magics folded in upon each other. He trembled with their forces as he wrapped them around himself to create a protective covering that shone brightly throughout All of Existence.

Then Garrick stepped through the portal.

Chapter 6

Garrick landed in a blazing ball of fire.

This place had once been a city, but was now charred and blackened. Buildings, tall and of architecture that spoke of an artistic people, were fallen in shambles, bricks crumbled, stones cracked and splintered to expose their coarse, rugged innards.

Bodies littered the ground.

Men and women. Children. Dogs, and horses, and mules, and cattle. They all lay shriveled and decaying, leaving the city to smell of burnt flesh.

His stomach churned with bile. Garrick had seen this before.

He felt a presence behind him at the same time as he heard the moan, a low, familiar cry that grew to a high-pitched wail.

Garrick turned.

“Alistair,” he said.

His old mage superior stood on a platform of charred stone with an ugly blue energy swirling about him like a bruised cloud. His staff was in one hand, his arms outstretched. Ettril had loosed Alistair on the people here, letting him feed upon the whole of this world’s citizens—a foul trick, given Alistair’s inability to draw real sustenance.

Garrick pushed his senses outward, hoping to see where the Koradictine superior had fled, following the single thread of power that led toward Ettril and toward Will.

The path went directly through Alistair.

He wondered how Ettril had found his old superior, but in the end, perhaps that didn’t matter at all. Perhaps it was Hezarin’s doing. Perhaps not. What mattered was that Garrick had created this thing that was now Alistair, and that Alistair had done this wicked deed. And what mattered was that he had to find a way past Alistair if he was going to get to Will.

“I’ve made a mess of you,” Garrick said. “Of that, I’m sorry.”

Alistair’s voice screeched in the wind. He waved a staff that glowed ugly green. An aching need grew from nowhere to draw on Garrick from every direction.

A woman’s arm moved, flaking with skin of ashes and oozing with dark fluid. A man stood up, his face peeling from his skull. They rose like that, more and more of them, tens of the dead at a time, then hundreds, bones clattering, teeth against teeth, wailing with dry, creaking screeches.

Alistair waved his staff again and their eye sockets filled with need.

These people were damned, their life forces destroyed in some obscene fashion. Their cold desire snaked between them as if they were a single thing.

Garrick set gates and drew on his link to Talin. He leaped to the tallest pedestal of stone and fire flared from his fist. Lightning flashed from Alistair’s staff. The explosion of their meeting rocked the ground.

A bony hand wrapped itself around Garrick’s ankle with a touch that burned so cold he thought the flesh had been flayed from the bone.

Garrick turned his fire on it.

He couldn’t hold back and expect to survive, so he channeled life force to form a long bladed sword of pure energy built of Existence itself, and he rained it down on anything close to him. Everything it touched burned, and everywhere it went Alistair’s zombies gave their final screams.

His foot throbbed as he fought. He had expected his life force to heal whatever wounds he suffered, but it did no good against the zombie’s touch. Hobbling and gritting his teeth, he faced Alistair with even deeper respect.

Alistair prepared another spell.

Garrick leaped into the mass of blackened bodies, cutting a swath through them with wild swings of his sword. He paid a dear price, though, as each strike drew his energy down. He skewered a woman, then spun and destroyed a line of charred bodies.

Alistair cast magic after magic.

Garrick’s power drained further.