Raging Sea and Trembling Earth: Disciples of the Horned One Volume Two (Soul Force Saga Book 2) (13 page)

L
on slammed
his fist on the table when Sasha finished reading the letter Thomas had sent. They sat in a meeting room with the archmage. A full day had passed since the attack and Alden and Imogen had made a full recovery. The Legionnaires had returned to the capital to resume their duties.

“I shouldn’t have sent the letter telling him we knew Lenore was the traitor,” Sasha said. Given where the attack took place it hadn’t taken much effort to figure out Lenore had betrayed them to Connor. When Thomas confronted her she attacked, killing two students, three masters, and herself.

“Don’t,” the archmage said. “The only one who did anything wrong was Lenore. You can’t blame yourself.” She turned her intense gaze on Lon. “Either of you.”

Lon slumped in his chair. He knew the archmage was correct, but he couldn’t keep from blaming himself. If he’d only gotten back from his interview with Mrs. Blackman sooner he could have warned them. Lenore was the one that corrupted Connor. She’d seen his interest in demons and twisted that childish curiosity into something monstrous. From the journals Thomas had found hidden in her room it appeared Lenore had been a member of the Cult of the Horned One for years before Connor first vanished.

“They found nothing that would give us an idea of where to look for him?” the archmage asked.

“Not according to Thomas,” Sasha said. “They’re giving everything a second and third look, but it doesn’t sound promising.”

“How did she sneak a black ring into The Tower anyway?” Lon asked

“She kept it in a box that hid its aura of corruption.” Sasha got up and paced for a second. “We badly underestimated her. We can’t make that mistake again.”

Lon didn’t think she’d find anyone to argue with her on that. They brooded in glum silence, each thinking their own thoughts. Lon sensed a power approaching, not corrupt, thank heaven. He didn’t think he could handle another battle just now.

The archmage perked up as well. “A message from Damien.”

She concentrated, sending a beam of soul force to intercept Damien’s messenger. The beam zipped out the door and a second later returned with a small scroll. The archmage unrolled it and shook her head. “It appears rumors of David Weks’s death have been exaggerated.”

“What?” Lon accepted the scroll when she offered it. He muttered to himself as he read then looked up. “How did he travel to the Old Empire and who did I find wearing his ring?”

“Two excellent questions. We’ll have to be certain to ask him when he arrives.” Looking at the archmage’s stony expression Lon was glad she didn’t plan to ask him any questions.

“
W
hy kill the dragon
?”

Damien was once again sitting on a conjured chair in Salem’s cramped cabin. Across from him the girl was using sorcery to brew tea. Considering how much paper she kept in her room it was probably a good idea to avoid fire. Damien had joined her for tea and conversation twice more since their first visit a week ago. Salem was gradually relaxing in his company and he’d managed to tease out a few more details of her life.

Not a lot, but some. The girl was surprisingly hesitant to talk about herself. So far he’d learned that Salem and her sister were banished from their village when the local witch noticed they had external flowing soul force. Not that she put it that way. Apparently some of the details of how sorcery worked hadn’t made it to the remote village where they grew up.

Anyway, once the village found out about their abilities no one would have anything to do with them. The last words their mother spoke to them was to tell them about a sorcerer who lived in the mountains. With no other options they’d traveled to find the sorcerer who took them in and trained them.

Salem poured tea into a pair of battered tin cups and handed him one. Damien took a sip. Mint and lemon. He’d never tasted anything like it in the kingdom.

She watched him over the rim of her steaming cup. “Is it good?”

“Very, thank you. We have nothing like this back home.”

“This variety only grows around my village.” She took a sip. “It reminds me of home.”

They drank in silence for a minute. Damien was about to ask his question again when she said, “Our master told us before he died, ‘Man is capable of anything he puts his mind to.’ To honor him Maishi and I set out to accomplish the most difficult task we could imagine. We’d debated several other ideas when we met David and told him of our quest. He mentioned the Leviathan and suggested nothing could be more difficult than killing the most powerful creature on the planet. Maishi seized on that at once.”

“You didn’t agree?”

“I thought we could find a task that didn’t involve killing anything. But once my sister made up her mind nothing would change it. I wouldn’t abandon her so I had no choice but to accept her decision. David told us about the urns and the three of us set out to collect them. Once we’d done that it wasn’t hard to find Captain Velco and convince him to take us out hunting.”

“It seems like a terrible risk. I’ve fought a dragon, a weak one, if there is such a thing, and I only hurt it. I doubt I’d have nerve enough to take on the strongest of the five.”

Shouts from outside interrupted their chat. The lookout had spotted more spouts. Salem leapt to her feet. “I have to prepare.”

Damien got up and put a hand on her arm. “Please be careful.”

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

He left Salem to prepare and went out on deck. Sailors were readying their hunting supplies and loading the little boats. Captain Velco stood at the wheel and bellowed encouragement. Damien couldn’t get over how much noise the process entailed. Shouts and laughter mingled with the clanging of harpoons and spears.

Damien flew up to three times the height of the mast and looked in the same direction as the lookout. From this height the whales were easy to spot. They resembled dark gray shadows on the water. Every minute or two one of the giants would blow a spout of water ten feet into the air.

Below him the little boats settled in the water and the sailors immediately pulled toward the pod. Two more boats launched from another member of the flotilla. It appeared Captain Velco had decided if one dead whale wasn’t enough to draw the dragon’s attention, maybe two would do it. Damien shook his head at the stupidity of the whole proceeding.

The boats from Velco’s ship reached the pod first and, like before, the harpooner did his job, sinking his weapon deep into a whale at the edge of the pod. A second later they were off to the races. The tiny boat hooked to twenty tons of angry animal flew north. The rest of the ships followed along.

Damien was trying to figure out how the second group of hunters would coax their prey to swim in the same direction when one of the whales, a monster twice the size of the first one they harpooned, turned and charged the pursuing skiffs. The harpooner hurled his weapon, but the rushed shot didn’t hit square and bounced off the whale’s thick hide.

The harpooner in the second skiff raised his weapon, but the whale dove. Its head went down and its tail came up. The shattered first skiff went flying one way and its occupants the other.

The whale swam away, seeming content that it had made its point. Damien considered flying down to help when a massive power to the east drew his attention.

His body trembled.

He’d never felt anything this strong before. The combined might of every sorcerer in the kingdom wouldn’t equal the power drawing ever nearer. Every fiber of his being screamed that he should flee.

Down below, the hunters were in the process of slaying the harpooned whale. Velco’s ships sailed into position, Salem and the others standing in the front of three of the ships. They had to sense the approaching dragon. It was so powerful he suspected the ordinary sailors might sense it.

Damien studied the ocean. It didn’t take him long to spot the massive, sinuous shadow approaching. It seemed to go on forever. Three, four, maybe five hundred yards long. It didn’t seem possible such a huge creature could exist.

It dove out of sight.

Velco was still maneuvering his ships to circle the dead whale. Corrupt power radiated from the urns in the sorcerers’ hands. Despite himself Damien flew closer. Something titanic was about to happen and he needed to see it.

D
amien hovered
above the mast of Velco’s ship, the tension in the air almost visible. He wanted to shout at them to sail away, but it wouldn’t do any good. This was what they wanted.

The Leviathan swam right below them. Damien sensed rather than saw the dragon speed toward the surface.

A second later it burst from the water, jaws agape, the whole whale as well as the skiff and sailors caught between teeth so long they resembled ships’ masts. Two men leapt clear before those jaws snapped shut. Pieces of the less fortunate men fell to the water behind them.

Black lightning shot from the three urns. The corrupt power surrounded the Leviathan. It hovered half in the air and half underwater.

Corrupt lightning sparked off emerald scales. Everywhere the blasts hit a tiny spot of darkness appeared for a second before vanishing.

A pained scream caught Damien’s attention. Dragging his gaze away from the dragon he spotted Salem on her knees in the front of Velco’s ship.

He studied the flows of dark energy. All the corruption was focused on Salem. David and her sister were sending their overflow through the connection between the urns. It was killing Salem.

The Leviathan roared. Jade soul force pulsed from its body.

The black lost its coherence, the energy fading away to nothing. On the ships all three sorcerers collapsed. Their urns rolled around the decks of their respective vessels.

Damien turned back and found himself staring into a yellow eye, the vertical, black pupil as long as the whalers’ harpoons.

Damien knew there were no gods. He’d learned the stories as a child. The two true gods had died at the dawn of the universe and given birth to the races of angels, demons, and dragons. When he stared into the eye of the Leviathan he had no trouble believing this creature to be divine in origin. It radiated power so intense it made the ice dragon Damien had fought seem like a rock lizard.

Was this how normal people felt when they encountered a sorcerer? No. Regular people couldn’t sense Damien’s power the way he did the dragon’s.

Its gaze held no malice or anger. It also held no pity or remorse. The sailors’ tales, describing the dragon as a force of nature, were absolutely correct. This magnificent creature would destroy them all or swim away as its whim decided. Nothing a being as insignificant as a human could do would influence it.

A dull thud broke the connection between dragon and human. Damien looked down to see a ballista bolt falling into the ocean. On the deck Velco and a pair of sailors worked frantically to reload the weapon. What could they possibly imagine that would accomplish?

He dove for the ship, pushing with every drop of power he had. If Velco wanted to die out here he was welcome to, but Damien wouldn’t let the captain take Salem down too.

Damien sent twin beams of golden energy streaking toward the deck.

Above him the Leviathan plunged toward the ship. Heaven’s mercy, this was going to be close.

Damien formed a bubble around Salem and another around the urn. He pulled them both off the deck and towards him. They had barely cleared the ship when the dragon’s head struck.

The
Longshot
exploded. Splinters of wood went everywhere. Damien circled around. He wouldn’t try and fight the dragon, there wasn’t any point. He couldn’t help the surviving sailors with the dragon still circling the intact ships, but he wanted to collect the other two urns. Those artifacts were too powerful to take a chance on someone else finding them.

He flew to Maishi’s ship first. Salem’s sister lay groaning on the deck, struggling to climb to her feet. Damien grabbed the urn with another energy beam and pulled it into the same bubble as the first.

“Maishi!” he shouted.

She looked up.

Behind them the Leviathan rose from the depths again, a whole ship in its massive jaws. It bit down, crushing the ship without a sorcerer to pieces. Bodies and debris fell like overripe fruit into the water.

“Your sister’s okay. We need to go.”

“David!” Maishi flew away, ignoring both him and her sister.

Damien raced after her, intent on claiming the last urn. He hadn’t flown far when the crash of the Leviathan smashing the ship they’d just left to splinters behind them filled the air. Damien grimaced and put on more speed. It wouldn’t take the dragon long to swing around and sink the final ship.

Maishi reached the last ship a second ahead of him. David was stumbling around like a drunk after the urn as it rolled around on the deck. There was no sign of the crew. Damien suspected they’d had the good sense to jump overboard. Not like that would save them if the dragon decided it wanted them dead.

Damien sent a beam after the urn. Golden hands appeared and tried to wrestle it away from him. David leaned against Maishi, a snarl of concentration twisting his face.

They didn’t have time to play around. The dragon’s power was rising fast.

Maishi must have sensed it as well. She yanked on David’s arm, trying to get him to leave. The idiot wouldn’t budge.

Damien sent a blast of energy that smashed David’s construct to bits. The urn flew towards Damien and joined the other two in his bubble. Damien flew east while the other two sorcerers flew west an instant before the Leviathan rose from the ocean and claimed the final ship.

With its work done the dragon dove deep and swam away like nothing had happened. Debris littered the surface of the ocean. David and Maishi floated above the water, staring at him. Rather David stared at him, hate burning in his eyes. Maishi was looking at her sister. Salem was sitting up in his bubble, but she still looked pretty woozy.

Damien turned her bubble into a platform. “Can you fly on your own?”

Salem tried to stand, wobbled and settled back down. “Not yet. Maishi.” She held out a hand to her sister.

Maishi started toward Salem, but David grabbed her arm and dragged her back. “Forget her. We need to reclaim the urns.”

“But my sister—”

“I said forget her! She’s too weak to be of any use. Let the boy waste his power protecting her. It’ll make our attacks that much more successful.”

The two sorcerers didn’t concern Damien. Their fight with the dragon had taken a lot out of them. If they were stupid enough to attack he’d kill them both. He really hoped they didn’t. The last thing Damien wanted was to kill Salem’s sister in front of her.

“We should go,” Maishi said. “I don’t have much power left and neither do you.”

“If we go to my master without the urns he’ll kill us.” David’s power gathered as he prepared to attack.

Damien struck first with a raw blast of power that obliterated David’s shield and sent him tumbling through the sky. Steam rose from his body when he finally got himself under control. His face twisted into an ugly snarl.

“Let’s go. I’ll see you again, boy.” David flew east toward the kingdom. With a final look at her sister, Maishi followed.

“Maishi!” Salem shouted after her fleeing sister, her voice empty and forlorn.