Mickey Zucker Reichert - Shadows Realm (40 page)

The mind barriers.
Silme let her imagination lapse, but the bliss remained, strong and comforting within her. Her mental defenses responded, sliding downward a crack. Encouraged, she widened the gap.

Chaos struck with heightened force, collapsing the barrier completely. A rational thought flashed through Silme’s mind.
I’m tricked! While I fought my own defenses, Chaos had already bonded.
Then the idea was buried beneath a thunderous avalanche of power. Morality fled before the attack. The imagined scene returned. But, where Silme had constructed waving fields of grain, Chaos showed her the reality of a village in shambles, a wild mix of destruction and death. It twisted revulsion to elation, pity to glee, and laughter rang in Silme’s ears.

Savage with anger, Silme’s sense of self rose to battle the intruder. But Chaos surrounded her inner being, and her sensibilities fled like shadow before rising flames. Silme saw fires grasping for the heavens, red and golden and glorious. That the blaze ate cities seemed unimportant. They challenged the gods themselves and offered the strength and power of their defiance to Silme.

“No!” Silme’s cry seemed to come from elsewhere; it lost meaning before it left her throat. As if from a great abyss, her inner self rebelled, a mouse pinned beneath a lion’s paw. It roused memories of Larson wordlessly embracing her while her tears left damp patches on his tunic. But Chaos intervened, stripping emotion as completely as in Harriman’s damaged thoughts. Silme gasped, surrendering to the blissful oblivion it offered. Each mighty promise left Silme greedy for the next. Now Chaos no longer needed to come to her; she pursued it. She shuddered. Her grip went murderously tight, and her fingernails burrowed into Bolverkr’s flesh.

Bolverkr cried out in pain and surprise. He jerked instinctively and tore partially free. In the moment of weakness his actions created, Silme’s morality launched its attack.
Don’t let it have you! Look what it’s done to Bolverkr. He claims Allerum and Taziar deserve to die, yet his cruelty goes far beyond simply executing enemies. No amount of power is worth inflicting torture on the guilty or the innocent.

Chaos responded with a howling whirlwind of fury. It battered Silme’s sense of self, pounding it into a darkened corner of awareness. Her sensibilities died to a spark, but that one snippet of consciousness made its final stand.
Got to rid myself of this Chaos long enough to think.
Though crushed and bruised by a force far more powerful than herself, Silme deflected the energy in the only way she knew how. The world clouded to sapphire blue as she channeled all thought to the rankstone clamped between the claws of her dragonstaff.

Designed to store life aura and attuned to Silme, the stone accepted the energy she fed it, brightening as the power gorged it. She felt the gemstone pulse, bloated with Chaos, as her sense of self seeped slowly back into control.
Got to get away from here. How? I can’t transport.
She deflected another wave of Chaos.

Power torrented into the stone. Still in Harriman’s study, the sapphire quivered, loaded with more energy than its creator had ever intended. Pain engulfed Silme’s senses, stretching and pounding from within her, driving her to the rim of unconsciousness. She struggled to retain awareness, unwilling to surrender to Chaos, feeling sanity slip away as darkness crushed in. Another pulse of Chaos ripped through her and crashed into the shuddering facets of the sapphire.

Suddenly, agony splashed Silme’s vision in a flash of blinding light. The rankstone exploded, showering fragments through Harriman’s study, a blue spray of sapphire chips rattling from the walls and ceiling. Silme screamed, instinctively tearing free of the contact. All sensation fled her, the anguish dulling to an empty ache. She sank to the ground, exhausted, feeling as cold and shattered as her stone. Then, a thought penetrated her muddled senses.
The Chaos I channeled to my rank stone is free, not dead. It has to go somewhere.
Realization mobilized her.
Not somewhere, to someone.
Her vision slid slowly back into focus and Bolverkr’s grizzled face, blank with horror, filled her gaze.
Bolverkr, of course! And I’m right in its path!
She floundered to her feet.

Desperately, Bolverkr raised an arm to cast a transport, his other hand groping for Silme.

Slowed by fatigue, Silme felt his fingers close about the torn fabric of her dress. “No!” she screamed.
Chaos will follow Bolverkr. I can’t handle the power. If he takes me with him, it’ll destroy me and the baby.
She lurched. Cloth tore. She staggered free of his grasp, tripped and sprawled to the dirt.

A storm of Chaos howled toward them.

Bolverkr shouted in frustration and fear. As he transported to the shelter of his fortress, his magic knifed power through Harriman’s mind. The chaos-force blinked out as quickly, trailing a suffocating wake of ozone.

Silme choked. Lungs burning, she clung to her life energy and dove for the only sanctuary she knew.

Al Larson crouched at Taziar’s back, his gaze locked on four cocked crossbows. “Fire!” The guard’s shout sounded thin as smoke beneath the scrambling of Taziar’s friends through the window. The bolts sailed over the heads of five kneeling swordsmen. Larson swung as he dodged. One shaft whisked through the air where his chest had been. His blade deflected the other. The bolt snapped, its pieces clattering along the corridor. Suddenly, Gaelinar’s throwing rocks at him during training seemed worth the bruises.

Fridurik gasped in pain. Larson glanced to his left. The redhead clasped a bloody hole in his thigh where one of the bolts had penetrated. As the crossbowmen reloaded, two of the swordsmen charged Larson and Fridurik. Though concerned for his companion, Larson was forced to tend to his own defense. As the guardsman rushed down on him, sword swiping for his neck, Larson dropped to one knee. His upstroke sliced open the sentry’s abdomen. He shouldered the man aside in time to see Fridurik lock swords with the guardsman’s companion. Fridurik’s injury made him clumsy. The guard’s knee crashed into the thief’s gut. Fridurik doubled over, and the guard struck for his unshielded back.

Larson lunged. His blade sheared through the guard’s chest, but the guard’s blow landed, too. Both men collapsed, and Larson found himself facing four loaded crossbows alone.

Larson distributed his weight evenly, trying to judge the paths of the bolts in the instant before their release.
Compared with bullets, arrows crawl, and eleventh century bolts move even slower.
Larson gathered solace from the flash of thought. The bolts whipped free. He tensed to dodge. Before he could move, something foreign crashed into his mind with a suddenness that jarred loose a scream. Pained beyond recognition of danger, he caught at his head. The edged steel heads of bolts bit through his left arm and calf, drawing another scream. His sword dropped to the floor.

Larson staggered backward into Taziar. “Allerum!” The Climber broke Larson’s fall, though their collision drove him, breathless, to the edge of the window. Dizzied and pain-maddened, Larson could not fathom why Taziar seized him by the hair and jerked him over. The pain of the maneuver seemed a minor annoyance compared with the agony in his skull, and its significance was lost on Larson. But the sensation of falling was not. Wind sang around him as he ripped through air. His composure cracked, his shocked howl vividly betraying fear.

Larson’s back hit the moat with a stinging slap. Water smothered him. Dazed and aching, he clawed for the surface. His fingers struck something solid. He grabbed for it, but his frenzied strokes churned it deeper. As the pain in his head died to an ache, sense filtered back into his consciousness.
My god, I’m drowning Shadow.

Quickly, Larson disentangled from Taziar. His head broke the surface, and he gasped air deep into his lungs. A moment later, Taziar appeared, choking and sputtering, beside him.

“Shit,” Larson said. The curse seemed so weak in the wake of near death, that, despite pain, he could not keep himself from laughing in hysteria.

Apparently, Taziar did not find the humor in the scene. He clapped a damp hand over Larson’s lips, stifling his laughter. “It’s day, and the night sentries will have gone to sleep. But we still have to get by the gate guards.” Taziar released his grip and swam toward the far bank with long, steady strokes.

More guards.
Larson groaned, following with an ungainly sidestroke that allowed his injured arm and leg to drag.
All this, and it’s still not over.
He stared at the wake of blood trailing him through the murky water. His wounds made his limbs ache worse than anything he had known since a college football player put him through a weight training workout in junior high. Then, the ache of tortured muscles had forced him to spend the following morning in bed. He watched Taziar pull himself to shore, shivering as the chill air touched his sodden clothes and skin.
I may not be able to walk, let alone battle through more guards.

The pain in Larson’s head had faded, leaving a foreign presence huddled in a corner of his awareness. It confused him. In the past, when sorcerers and gods had penetrated his thoughts, they had done so without causing him pain.
Except one.
Larson recalled a stroll through a forest in southern Norway when someone or something had entered his thoughts with a violence that left his head throbbing.
Right after it happened, I started recalling sailboating on Cedar Lake, details of the past, and Taziar’s stories of Cullinsberg.
Larson reached for the brittle grasses overhanging the bank.
Apparently, the pain comes when the sorcerer breaks in on me at warp speed.
Larson crawled from the water, for the first time sorry his elf form made him impervious to cold. The discomfort might have numbed or, at least, drawn attention from the agony of his crossbow wounds.
Still, despite its desperate entrance, the presence in my mind doesn’t appear to be trying to hurt me ... yet.
It lay unmoving. Larson had discovered he could muster only one form of mental defense against intruders: trapping them in his mind. Quietly, he built a wall around the interloper.
Too much to do now. I’ll deal with it later.
Larson ripped strips from the hem of his cloak to serve as bandages.

“Here. Let me do that.” Taziar offered his hands to help Larson to his feet. Fearing for his injuries, Larson passed the cloth but waved his friend away. Instead, he clambered to his feet, stiffly guarding the torn, clenched muscles of his arm and calf. With nearly all his weight shifted to the right, he managed to stand.

Taziar knelt. His skilled fingers seemed to fly as he tightened a pressure dressing over the scarlet-smeared hole in Larson’s breeks, then rose and tied another on the elf’s arm.

The pain of walking proved tolerable if Larson used a pronounced limp. “Now what?” he whispered.

Taziar glanced around hurriedly. “It’ll take time for the surviving sentries to get word of our prison break from the tower to the gate guards.” He tapped his fingers on his knee as he considered. “I have an idea. Allerum, when you and Silme came to speak with the baron, how many guards stood at the gate?”

Larson considered. “Two. The gates were open, and a lot of people milled around the grounds.”

“The holiday will keep the peasants away.” Taziar traced some object through the fabric of his hip pocket. “Get everyone together.” He pointed vaguely at the trees, benches, and gardens of the baron’s courtyard, and Larson noticed the dripping prisoners crouched behind various plants and ornaments. “Lead them behind that clump of bushes.” Taziar made an arching motion to indicate a huge copse of grape and berry vines toward the front of the keep. “Quietly,” he warned. “When I yell, have everyone run through the gate. Tell them to scatter around the city. We’ll meet at the back door of the whorehouse.”

Before Larson could question further, Taziar trotted off, rounding the opposite side of the keep. With a shrug of resignation, Larson approached the hiding prisoners. Locating Shylar, he repeated the plan, and, with her help, herded the others behind the brambles. Through a break in the vines, he watched the guards, standing stiff and solemn before the opened gates. Behind them, the drawbridge overpassed the moat. Larson saw no sign of Taziar, but he knew it would take time for the Climber to cover ground.

Clouds formed a thin, pewter layer over the morning sky, and the day smelled of damp. Larson studied his companions. Of the six survivors, only Shylar and the violet-eyed thief, Asril, appeared alert enough to run. The mad dash from the cells, the descent, and the swim across the moat had taxed the others to the limits of any vitality remaining after the guards’ tortures. Most trembled in the breezes, naked or clothed in soaking tatters. Though fully clad in her dress, Shylar kept her arms wrapped to her chest, her lips blue from cold. Odwulf shivered so hard, his teeth chattered.

Without a weapon, Larson felt as bare as his companions. Aside from Shylar, the other five prisoners clutched swords taken from the dead prison sentries, their blades half-raised or dragging in the dirt. Seeing a chance to arm himself, Larson removed his cloak and offered it to Odwulf. “Here. I’ll trade for your sword.”

Odwulf looked at the proffered cloak. Though wet, it would certainly offer more protection than uncovered skin, yet Odwulf did not reach for it.

Attributing the thief’s hesitation to mistrust, Larson explained. “I have to get out of here, too. I’m trained to fight. Harriman’s holding my pregnant wife prisoner, and I’m going to get her back.” Speaking the words aloud roused all the anger the need to escape had suppressed. Larson’s pain faded before growing desperation.

Odwulf stared at Larson’s face, as if to read the thought beyond the emotion. Wordlessly, he handed Larson his sword. Accepting the cloak, he wrapped it tightly over his bruised and sagging shoulders.

Larson slid the sword into the left side of his belt. He peered through the break in the brush just in time to see Taziar race toward the guards, his shout loud and urgent.

“Guards! Quick!” Taziar slid to a halt several yards from the gate and summoned the sentries with frantic waves. The Climber’s disheveled appearance made him look even more desperate. “It’s an emergency. Over here. We can’t be heard.”