Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (46 page)

“Wait,” Rail concluded before the other could utter
it.  “And watch.  I wouldn’t expect you to say anything else, Red.”

*        *        *        *        *

The shudders worsened by the moment.  Everyone in the
control room felt painful bruises across their bodies from where they were
thrown like rag dolls into the walls or floor.

“Have you isolated a cause yet?”  Xenos’ voice boomed
through the stone room.

“We haven’t,” answered the geomancer by his square
blocks.

“You mean
you
have failed to do so,” countered
Xenos.  “You sense nothing wrong with the very stone the stasis controllers are
unable to manage.  Rather than stare uselessly at me, go down and aid them in
their recovery efforts!”

The man scrambled through the doorway, then rolled
down the hall when the shudders stole his footing.  Xenos studied the scrying
display, ignoring the havoc that had sent the others into a near panic.

Fewer deaths had occurred than he expected.  So far. 
The Galemarans were using space to their advantage, inflicting damage on the
black soldiers while moving to avoid absorbing any themselves by sacrificing
land.  It was a strategy best suited to open plains.  They had succeeded well
since the first clash, except they were rapidly running out of space. 
Galemar’s abundant trees would be their doom, robbing their ability to escape
the headman’s descending axe.

It was well.  In fact, matters were proceeding better
than he had predicted.  He carefully schooled his features to reflect a lesser
level of confusion than displayed by those surrounding him.

The worst shudder yet accompanied a tremendous
cracking
noise.  Xenos picked himself off the command table, pulling his sleeves out
from images of swords rending flesh.

“Continue as planned,” he ordered.  “Do as you must to
regain control over the situation.  I will check other matters.”

He swept from the room, his mind filled with glee.

*        *        *        *        *

Marik glanced away from the Citadel long enough to
check on his twin combat forces.  Torrance held up well, though for how much
longer he could was questionable.  Gibbon, with the easier job, had followed
his orders exactly, and had proven lethal.

The lieutenant had received nearly all the crossbows
except for the ones belonging to individual Crimson Kings mercenaries. 
Utilizing them in forest fighting tactics, he had done a nice job shredding the
advancing enemy reinforcements.  If his melee men wiped out the remaining
majority, he hoped Gibbon would have the sense to move north and aid Torrance.

He returned his attention to the Citadel.  His mental
hands were poised, ready to craft any sort of shield needed if an attack came. 
Through his magesight he could see nothing of the geomantic energies or what
they did in the vast space encroached on by the floating mountain peak.  All he
could see was the roiling torrent that the etheric plane had become.  The mass
diffusion’s purple mists were churning furiously in reaction to the massive
geomantic workings at play.

An earsplitting
crack
echoed across the plain,
loud to his ears despite the miles.  Little visible change had been wrought in
the Citadel except for a slight lean that might have only been wishful
thinking.  That changed with the
cracking
.  Several moments after the
ominous noise, a massive hanging stalactite parted from its base.

It fell, looking ponderously slow from the distance. 
Marik saw it smash into one of the platforms bearing a full load of men.  Their
auras were snuffed completely in an eye blink.  They vanished as gnats under a
toppling tree.

The impact into the ground broke the stone finger into
a thousand large boulders.  Uncountable brick-sized rocks scattered like
porcelain shards from a dropped teacup.

His group did not hear the impact until after the
stalactite had completely broken.  It came in the same manner as thunder after
a distant lightning flash, sounding eerily similar.  A long, rolling grind of
rock on rock.

“That’s the way!” he crowed to his team.  “We’re
starting to hurt it!  Keep it up!”

Neither Felda nor Truda reacted to his encouragement. 
Their faces were set in concentration, their eyes tight, focusing on their
geosight.  The combined magical energies imbued with the essence of fire from
the bright sunlight needed the same professional direction that icing needed
when a baker applied it fancifully to a cake’s rim.  Felda oversaw those in the
group who heated the lower air pockets while Truda managed the others in
cooling the upper reaches.  Or at least the upper reaches on the eastern side,
applying the downward pressure on the direction they wanted it to topple.

The tilt in the Citadel became increasingly
pronounced.  He could see the lower stalactite tips shifting to point
westward.  At the apex, the topmost peak had leaned east.

Marik pumped the air with his fists.  It was going
exactly as he had hoped.  His idea, born in a room crowed with the magic he had
never wished to possess, was correct.  It would work.

A second huge chunk fell from the main body, its
deafening
crack
this time following its descent.  Its whip-like report
bounced off the mountain walls around him until it sounded as if an avalanche
were in progress.  He worried it might be for a moment when he heard several
stones nearby scraping from their rest to tumble down-slope.

The stone had tilted twelve or thirteen degrees. 
Crimson Kings mercenaries kept up the fight yet several Arronath squads paused
to point, to stare, to goggle at what they knew they could not possibly be
seeing.

When the angle achieved a pronounced twenty degrees,
Marik saw it.  His spine exploded in numbing tingles at the same moment.  He threw
up his shields…

A blast of raw energy smashed into the mountain
overlook.  It shattered Marik’s shields.  They tore into thousands of wispy
strands.  The blow hammered through to hit the corner of the drop-off at
Marik’s feet.

Marik was caught in the explosion.  Most of the stone
was hurled to left and right, if not out into empty space over the ledge.  He
felt his body lifted.

It seemed as if there was endless time while he lazily
flew backward.  The attack had come from the Citadel.  He had seen the boiling
mass streak from atop the tallest peak barely in time to build his meager
defenses.  Through unconscious decision, instinct reacting faster than his mind
could evaluate, he had recognized the attack for the raw energy it was and
chosen the two shields best suited for it.  Errant Energy and Hammer Blow.  In
the short time available he had created six shields, three of each sandwiched
in layers.

Yet the attack, which should have been halted before
breaking the fifth shield let alone the sixth, had passed through as if nothing
were blocking it.  What did that mean?  A group within the Citadel, like his
own, working together to counter his?  Combining their strength?

What wind he still possessed was knocked harshly from
him when he struck two investigative mages.  They toppled over each other like
cordwood.

Marik lay looking into the cloudy sky for eons before
realizing he still lived.  Also, sore as he felt, he could still move.  His
tender skin felt sunburned but otherwise he had taken little damage beyond
bruising.

“Whaho ista ken?”  Marik heard his words and paused. 
His head buzzed, his brain rattled.  Shaking it only disoriented him.  He
stopped and breathed deeply, focusing on a dirt smear across his boot before
making his second attempt.  “Who is hot?  Was the warking borken?”

“A few are hurt,” Lynn replied.  She studied him
carefully.  “And the working remains unbroken.  We had best weave a tight
defense.”

“Be careful,” he reminded her as she steadied him with
a hand on his shoulder.  “We have to leaf them a channel to wark through.  They
can’t reach through shells that aren’t bulled of their own energy.”

Marik stumbled back to the point where the blast had
hit.  The female mercenary mage kept him from falling on his face.  He leaned
heavily on her shoulder until he reached his fallen sword.  There she raised
it, with effort, until he could use it as a battlefield crutch.  Jeremy and one
of the stronger city mages joined them to begin weaving shields.

Since he had never performed group workings before,
Marik built his separate, a bit further forward of the blended shields so any
new attack would hit his first.  That might slow it down enough that the
blended shields could deal with it.

The vision in his right eye was stained red.  Blood
had run into it.  There must be a cut on his brow.

His head cleared while he worked.  What must have
happened dawned on him.  It had happened so fast it only appeared as if his
shields had utterly failed.  Instead they had absorbed enough of the power that
what remained only caused a blast strong enough to hurl him off his feet.  The
only injury the two city mages had sustained were due to his crashing into
them.

They quickly finished setting the shields, Marik
slightly disconcerted.  Why hadn’t the Arronaths followed quickly with a second
attack?  He had expected one to come before they were prepared to meet it.

Marik drifted out of his body.  His consciousness
could float through the etheric without sacrificing control over his mage
talent despite the fact that physical activity was close to impossible.  Rarely
had he ever been able to command his body while not still inside it.

He kept a tight grip on the channel maintaining his
shields.  It felt as if his arms stretched miles back to hold the power channel
while he flew to the Citadel.  Once there, he quickly located the attack’s
source.

A stone rain fell from every inch on the floating
mountain.  Whatever magic had altered its basic nature to keep it whole was
failing.  Massive stalactite spears arrowed toward the ground.  Palm-sized
rocks shed like dead skin from the entire surface when the cliff faces were
pulled in opposite directions.  Uncountable tons of stone moved in separate
directions, or pushed inward to converge on a single spot, grinding together. 
It created fantastic stress throughout the entire Citadel beyond his
imagination.  The Citadel had never been intended to flip over on its side.

Near what had been the tallest peak, he found a lone
man.  Marik could not see his aura because he was surrounded in a growing cloud
composed of raw energy.  This was why no second attack had come straight away. 
Whoever this man might be, he was strong, more powerful than anyone Marik had
ever run into.  He prepared a fresh attack of such magnitude that the overlook
would be destroyed.

Marik acted without thought.  Far back in his body,
his mental hands drew energy from his core.  He focused it, imbuing it with the
most power he possibly could pour into his etheric orb.  The instant the last
drop flowed into it, he fired it off.

One mental hand held the shielding channel.  The other
guided the orb along the track he wished.  All Marik knew was that the stranger
was busy building the second attack.  He only had one chance to kill this
powerful foe who meant to destroy his entire group.  Kill him before he could
raise a defense of his own.

This powerful man…this frighteningly
powerful
enemy…this…  This man?  Was this…this the man his…father spoke of?

No choice.  Strike before he is aware of you.  Hit him
while he builds his attack.  Kill him before he can kill you.

Marik curved his etheric orb around on a collision
course with the stranger.

*        *        *        *        *

Xenos gazed in annoyance when his first blast did
little except scorch the mountainside.  He stood on a twenty-yard square plateau
with a cave opening onto it.  The grass covering the small area had been an
ideal spot to relax during long journeys when one needed fresh air.  Assuming,
of course, that one were an officer privileged with permission to climb the
tunnel leading to it.

Such a low energy level was unacceptable.  He reached
far down to the harvesting field below, collecting the slippery life essences
that lay clinging to the half-ground in the etheric plane.  They had already
begun their slow diffusion, glowing dust motes drifting away in bubble streams
to turn purple, joining the otherworld mists.

A single man’s rent life energy, laying where he died,
provided less than half of what he could have garnered on the service altar. 
He collected a second, feeling the inrush of power through his channels.  Then
the third, which quenched his immediate thirst from the long drought.  Five
days worth of power harvested in an instant.  War, strife, chaos.  It truly was
god’s blessing.

Another instant brought him three others.  A second
service’s worth of energy that he normally would have been forced to wait five
days for.  And more!  Six.  Nine.  Fifteen.  Thirty.

Sweetest were the Taurs.  Their aggressive natures,
their size, their lives lived in constant combat between their own or
outsiders; it served to produce beasts with obscene amounts of life energy. 
They were tougher to absorb, being non-human.  It took longer to sooth the
wildness from them as befitted the species.  Yet the efforts were worth the
rewards.