Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (47 page)

Xenos opened secondary channels, then a new set
entirely.  They collected the available energies efficiently from the plains. 
So efficiently that he could not absorb them as quickly as he retrieved.  He
held them in abeyance until they surrounded him, several dozen willow-wisps in
an engulfing cloud, two new ones blinking into existence for every one he
consumed.

His sharpening senses detected the orb before it
closed half the distance.  A laughable attempt.  No matter his depleted state,
a simple orb such as that would never have scratched him.  He allowed it to
continue, reconstituting his hand while he waited.

The flesh twisted, veins bulging to the surface thick
as cords.  Skin changed in color until the peach darkened to gray.  His nails
grew several inches, hard as steel, sharper than daggers.  At the end, his hand
looked closer to a Taur’s rather than a man’s except his nails were straight
rather than curved.

When the orb streaked at him, he thrust his hand at
it.  His nails pierced the simple surface, smooth as a leather ball.  The
etheric orb shattered.  Energy shards dispersed before fading.

Xenos could see the audacious group clustered on their
ledge.  His eyes narrowed abruptly when he took in the man who must be their
leader.  That sword!  The
kkan’edom
?  Impossible!

Yes…impossible.  After the first shocked moment he
could see the man below was not the
eul’kkandr’s
despicable servant.  A
sword likened to that warrior’s, but a different man wielding it.

At the swordsman’s back worked the group who had
claimed a colossal victory over the Citadel where none before could boast a
single scratch.  A remarkable feat.  Finding success with minimal resources
against certain odds foretelling doom.  Leading them to create geomantic energy
pockets that transformed the air below to molten lava beds and the air touching
him to glacial icebergs.

“Is that you, Arm of Galemar?” he called loudly, far
too distant to actually be heard.  “Your predecessors find pride in you!  You
are worthy of inheriting their title!  Again Galemar proves none can conquer
their preeminent warrior!  I offer my thanks for safeguarding my homeland until
the day of my return!  Yet I can allow no one to stand in my way, not even my
land’s greatest pride!”

He formed an energy disk of purest fire, so hot that
the flames spinning sunwise within were brilliant white.  This would be perfect
as it would terrify the Arm’s group before he killed them.  Their harvest would
be rich.  A hard flick of its channel sent the thin disk soaring toward the
ridiculous shields they had clumsily pieced together.  The disk sheered through
them as if slicing through butter.

It struck the cliff five feet below their boots.  The
disk continued forward, passing through the stone effortlessly, leaving glowing
stone in the precise cut it left behind.  Xenos yanked the last channel off the
disk.

Underground, the disk exploded.  The overlook
shattered.  Bodies were tossed.  Several were crushed when they fell between
chunks of land that were falling back into jumbled place.

The Arm nearly plummeted to his death.  Before he
could slip out into empty space, a land fragment sprouting a young tree spun
before him.  Its tree whipped around to lash the Arm across his chest in
midair.  He spun head over feet to crash into a grassy slope tilted upward
sixty degrees.  The meadow had been perfectly flat moments earlier.

When the ground settled, Xenos counted auras.  A
quarter had perished.  He could feel the terror of immanent death overtaking
the survivors.  Yes, their auras were spiking.  They were realizing they were
going to die this day.  Casualties rather than heroes.  Hearts were pumping
faster.  Excess life energies were blooming.  Let the realizations sink in. 
Let the pain from broken bones hit their nerve centers.  The feast grew sweet
and delectable.

He waited several long moments.  A proper sendoff for
the noble Arm of Galemar was in order, he decided.  His childhood idol and
kingdom’s knight had achieved a victory to match his predecessors.  Not only
that, but Xenos owed him gratitude for the marvelous bounty of death his
strategy would yield.  This battlefield would garner a fantastic harvest
indeed, making his conquest of the Rovasii all but certain.

The Earthen Purgatory.  Xenos chose the attack with a
smile.  Centuries had it been since last it was witnessed.  Only the true god’s
most loyal followers had ever known the secret to casting it.  A lance of
energy, powerful in its own right.  Yet once it made contact with raw stone, it
mutated, the energy beginning a chain reaction, building on itself until the
final release.

A release that would turn a square mile into a
blooming mushroom of fire and slag.

Xenos meticulously spun the lance using a combination
of magecraft and geomancy.  He shut down his inflows of fresh power until he
finished crafting it.  The Earthen Purgatory required extremely high levels of
concentration and imbued energy.

Once he held it in hand, he resumed his absorption
from the battlefield and selected a spot between the Arm’s feet.  There.  A
good spot.  People had begun to converge on the Arm, seeking assurances that he
lived, desiring instruction.  It was time.

He cocked his arm back.  The Earthen Purgatory
required physical release as well as mental.  It was the great secret behind it
and why no outsiders had ever duplicated the Earth God’s masterpiece.

A whip of fire lashed hard into his back the instant
he released the lance.  He felt it go astray slightly, not that it mattered. 
Xenos staggered several steps before spinning to see who dared!

There!  On the edge of those trees.  The detestable
eul’kkandr
!

*        *        *        *        *

Marik gazed woozily between his supine boots.  He lay
limply against the slope where the tree had thrown him.  His chest burned.  Had
his ribs cracked?  Standing seemed an act beyond which the gods could reasonable
expect from him.

Somehow he had retained his sword when the tree played
stickball with him.  It rested in his right hand.  He lacked the strength to
lift it.  He lacked the strength to move his head.

A crunching noise announced an unknown person’s
approach over an area of freshly-made gravel.  The blurred figure entered his
view from the right, indistinguishable at first because the earlier cut was
bleeding freely into his eye.  It halted several feet to the side.  Marik
forced his head to loll sideways until he could see who it was.

“Beld?”  Marik blinked.  “Ah.  That explains it.”  He
relaxed gratefully.  “When did I fall asleep?”

“You look good all broken there in the dirt.”

“I can’t remember feeling like this in a dream
before.”  He thought he sounded drunk.  “Except one time, I think.  That was a
bad dream.  Maybe I’ve been cooked again.”

“Cooked, yeah,” the large man sneered.  “Your fat’s in
my frying pan this time, you lousy bastard.”

“A dream.  Must be.  I can’t see your aura, Beld.  I
can’t remember ever seeing auras in my dreams before.”

“As I said,” declared a second man who rounded a
freshly fragmented boulder pile.  “He is unable to see us properly with his
magical vision.”

“You’re still not making any sense,” Beld growled. 
“Keep your Nolier rings out of it!”

“Rings?  Nolier?”

“That’s right,” Beld confided with mock cheerfulness
while drawing his claymore.  “This here is Tallior, in case you didn’t know. 
Works for a higher-up in Thoenar you got on the wrong side of.”

“You mean Baron Sestion?”  Confusion rang through
Marik’s head.  He could see the man Tallior, who looked oddly familiar, growing
livid at mention of the name.  “What’s Sestion have to do with Nolier?  He’s a
court noble in Thoenar.”

Beld, surprisingly, seemed amused.  “Court baron, eh? 
That’s an answer or two, isn’t it?”

“The man is incoherent!” shouted Tallior.  “I have no
idea what he speaks of, and neither, apparently, does he!”

“How much will he pay for his fancy rings back, I
wonder?  A fat pouch of metal, I bet.”  Beld waited until Tallior started
screaming before cutting him off.  “Who cares?  I told you we’d find this piece
of dog vomit with his guard down up here.  You were worried about the other
mages, but what did I say?  Looks like I’m right and you’re wrong, doesn’t it? 
Found him weaker than we could have hoped.”

Marik was alarmed to see Beld raising his blade high. 
Dream or not, he cared little for the prospect of this great ox, of all people,
cutting him down.  People said if you died in your dreams, you died for real. 
He hardly wanted to be the one to find out for certain.

All he could manage were weak scrambles.  His feet
pushed loose rocks away, his hands unable to raise his overweight weapon.

Beld grinned a feral cat’s smile.  “No more cheap
tricks out of you.  We been waiting the hells own time for this!”

Marik had no idea what happened next.  Something
struck Beld from behind.  He only caught a flash of it before Beld’s body went
rigid.  A long streak of white laced through with dark brown, like gold veins
twisting through quartz.

The large man’s scream was lost beneath the electric
crackles deafening men kingdoms away.  Everything within sight darkened as
Beld’s body outshone the sun.  White lightning enwrapped him in a thousand
arcing tendrils.  His clothing shredded into wisps.  Hair all over his body
vanished in ashy puffs.

Awestruck, Marik watched.  The lightning must have
somehow entered Beld’s body.  He could see the man’s skeleton shining
incandescent through his flesh.  Beld’s heart was plainly visible within the
ribcage, his brain pulsating inside his skull.  Marik could see Beld’s
intestines rupturing inside him.  Could see the bladder pop like an air bubble
broaching a river’s surface.  Watched blood burst through the stomach wall and
rush up the windpipe.

Blood was forcibly expelled through every pore.  Beld
became a fountain spraying fine jets in a hundred directions.  Through the
grotesque ordeal, the man continued screaming, unable to topple, held in place
by an unseen force.  Marik felt the hot liquid, boiling hot, hotter than any
blood he had ever felt, splatter his entire front.  A hard object bounced off
his left eyebrow.  He looked down long enough to see a cracked, blackened
fingernail resting in his lap.

The greater lightning burned away quickly.  Beld
stopped screaming.  His body was a seared lump of venison left too long over
the cook fire.  Scattered flickers of miniscule lightning arced across his
flesh.

Beld slowly toppled sideways.  His body struck the
ground with a hard
thump
.  Marik could not tear his eyes away.  He
watched one last lightning flicker, thin as a strand of hair, crawl off Beld’s
charred heel.  It touched the fresh gravel littering the ground.

The world vanished from sight.

Only light surrounded Marik as the ground beneath his
rear disintegrated.  Dark specs hovered about him in the air, stones that had
been reduced to grains of sand.  He could hear nothing, yet a roar filled his
ears.  A roar such as the world would make were it given voice to shout at the
universe.

He slid downward.  What was there to slide down on
here?  Nothing could exist where nothing existed.  That sounded like a
statement Tru would make.  Where was that black magician?  Riding off with
Tybalt despite Celerity’s adamant wishes.  Nobody was there to mind the earth
casks.  The casks were important to guard because someone might empty the
tobacco ashtray into the
Tullainia 0031
cask.  Then they wouldn’t be
able to scrye any place except the foyer in the Standing Spell.  Dietrik
wouldn’t want a room full of mages watching Rosa slap his face for being
cheeky.

Had he stopped sliding?  His arm was raised above
him.  Maybe it had caught on a rock or a tree root.  It hurt, dangling from one
arm.  But what could he do about it?  How should he know?  Maybe he did know. 
Maybe that was why he was falling asleep.  Because falling asleep when you were
dreaming meant you were waking up.  He could figure out what to do about it
while he waited to attack the Citadel.  By the next time he fell asleep, he
would have the problem figured out and be ready to deal with it.

Yes…he drifted into the void…the void that would take
him away…the void he rushed toward so he could come back with the answer…

*        *        *        *        *

The fiery crater that burned where the copse had once
been pleased Xenos. 
That
would finally put an end to the interminably
interfering
eul’kkandr
!  Even that resourceful one could not have
survived this time!

He glanced to the mountain overlook three miles
distant.  The intact mountain soured his pleasure.  Why had the Earthen
Purgatory failed to enter full final phase?  Was his reclaimed knowledge
faulty?

Impossible!  Or…

Of course.  His deflected aim.  The Earthen Purgatory
must have struck a tree or other organic object.  Only a bare portion of the
energy had managed to find stone.