Renegade Wizards (43 page)

The attacks were scattered, uncoordinated, like a swarming of insects. More blight shades poured through the iris in the heavens, and while individually they proved no match for most sorcerers there, their strength was in their numbers.

Ladonna continued toward the ritual circle, spells curling off her fingers as she smote the undead. She was a dozen feet away, watching Tythonnia, Berthal, and the others struggle
against the rooting effect of the curse. Three more creatures loped toward her, but she was ready with killing spells.

The first spell to roll off her tongue spent the fold of red cloth in her other hand and evaporated from her mind. The blister of swollen grass rose from the ground before a carpet of biting insects erupted from the earth. They swarmed up the arms and feet of the blight shades, biting and dying as the undead aura of decay overtook them. One of the creatures stumbled into the mass of writhing insects and thrashed about as they instantly covered its body.

The other two creatures dashed away from the patch of insects, trying to escape the devouring death.

Ladonna never felt calmer. Her test had involved necromancy unchecked and waves of undead assailing her. She survived that. She was ready for what challenged her now. Ladonna motioned the insects to clear a path for her. They did, overtaking another blight shade that seemed to melt into their mass. She reached the ritual circle.

Dumas and Shasee were engaged in battle, sword against undamaged staff, feints leading into attacks, blows blocked, and parries opening the opponent up to fast-cast spells. Shasee struck Dumas with an open palm that sent a jolt through her body. Dumas responded by speaking an arcane word and twisting the blade so a flash of light nearly blinded them all. Ladonna was impressed with Shasee’s skill. The Wyldling sorcerer was more competent than she gave him credit for.

The blight shades, meanwhile, were busy attacking Dumas’s men. The mercenaries fought a retreating battle, so Ladonna didn’t bother with them.

The ritual circle itself was corrupted, the sanctity of it despoiled. Ladonna crossed the circle, bringing the insects along with her. Blight shades landed all around her, but the swarm always attacked those closest, sending the creatures into thrashing spasms.

The circle was too large and powerful a spell to disrupt entirely, but like all chains, all she needed to find was a weak link. She grabbed Tythonnia’s arm and for a moment, studied the panicked look in her friend’s face.

“Sihir evak,”
Ladonna said, gesturing as though to paint the air itself. The disruption spell unfurled in her thoughts, and she focused on shattering just one link in the curse’s complex chain. She felt it snap, and suddenly, the blood-red glow from the sigils and the rune lines burned away.

She’d broken the circle, and Tythonnia collapsed into Ladonna’s arms. The others slumped to the ground, except for Berthal, who steadied himself on his staff.

The iris, however, remained above them. The creatures that were dropping through seemed confused for a moment. Then they hissed in anger. Everyone inside the circle was suddenly fair game.

Three blight shades tackled Kinsley as he lay on the ground. They tore into him with a fierce vengeance, rotting him alive as he screamed and fought until his tendons could no longer hold him together. Another two lunged for a man in the circle Ladonna knew vaguely, Hundor she believed; he flicked his head at the undead, sending them both flying.

Berthal swept his staff around, his eyes white with Wyldling energy. An orb of fire appeared between the two dragon heads and spit out in a gush of flame as he swept the staff in a wide arc. He caught three creatures in the blaze, obliterating them.

Ladonna looked around in wonderment as she helped Tythonnia to her feet. It was utter pandemonium. The fight was everywhere, the number of creatures increasing steadily despite the many they had killed while the number of humans grew fewer by the minute. The blight shades were simply overwhelming them.

In the distance, more screams could be heard. Ladonna
didn’t need to see the camp to know the creatures were there already.

More blight shades dropped through the hole, some attacking, some running toward the camp or the men with Dumas, some simply trying to escape their prison. How anyone would survive that day, Ladonna didn’t know.

Shasee struggled in the battle. Dumas alone was a skilled opponent, worthy of his full attention, but the constant threat of the creatures added to his peril. He saw one of the sorcerers by his side fall to one of the dread beings and couldn’t save him. The other closest sorcerer, a woman by the name of Calyasy, was struggling to protect him while he fought Dumas. Calyasy had no spells left, however, and she fought with her staff.

Suddenly, Calyasy screamed, and Shasee barely caught a glimpse of her as the undead dragged her to the ground.

It was the distraction Dumas needed; Shasee realized his mistake as soon she deflected his staff and reached in to grab him.

“Halilintar sentu!”
she said with a smile.

Lightning shot through the claw of her hand straight into Shasee’s chest. His teeth clamped down, and he fell to the ground, unable to move as his muscles clenched into spasms.

Dumas smiled down at him and walked away. Her blade shot out on its own, cutting three quick slices into an undead creature about to attack her. She ignored the ones advancing on him, however.

Shasee struggled to move, to defend himself, but two creatures were upon him already. They grabbed his arm and his leg and pulled. He felt the decay overtake his limbs, like a torch being passed over a field of his nerves. He struggled to fight back, but it was too late. A terrible cold overtook him,
not enough to numb him from the pain, but enough to sap his strength. That was when he felt his joints pop and the fabric of his skin rip.

Hort stood his ground between the trees and the ritual circle. He wanted to advance, to help Dumas, but the mad gleam in her eye was foreign to the woman he knew. A feral countenance had slipped over her, and it recognized nothing else beyond what lay in her pin-point focus. He wasn’t sure she wouldn’t strike at him if he approached too suddenly. And she’d just left her foe to a terrible death at the hands of the creatures. It was an act wholly without mercy or humanity. This new Dumas, whoever she was, frightened him more deeply than anyone ever had. Loyalty kept him from retreating, but fear stopped him from advancing.

Instead, he fought the closest creatures with his axe, its viscera-clotted edge deftly slicing through them. Those that thought distance was safer, however, met with his spells. He cast nothing terribly fancy, just the type of arcane magic that bent the advantage in his direction. There was no time to use the crossbow strapped to his back, not at that range.

Hort unleashed filaments of web from his fingertips, catching four creatures in the strands suspended between two rocks.

“Archers, shoot!” he cried, backing away from the monsters.

When no arrows whistled in response, he turned and saw Migress and the surviving mercenaries fighting a retreat back to the tree line.

“You’re on your own, madman,” Migress shouted.

An undead creature deftly avoided the sword stroke of one of the men next to him and latched its puckered mouth onto his throat. The mercenary fell but Migress came to his man’s rescue.

A sharp pain cut into Hort’s shoulder then, and he cursed himself for being distracted. One of the creatures was on his back and clawing at him. Pain blistered his skin, the first whisper of death. Hort swung backward, overhead, with his axe. His blade sliced cleanly into the undead. It screeched in his ear and tried to drop away. Hort pivoted and slammed his axe and the undead into the ground, driving the blade deeper into it.

The creature stopped writhing, and Hort’s back tingled as life slowly returned to it. At least the putrefaction wasn’t permanent, Hort thought, but he faced an ugly proposition. He couldn’t stand alone here. He was making himself a target, and there was safety in numbers. He wanted to retreat, but he didn’t want to abandon Dumas. She meant too much to him. Despite everything, she remained his friend. He owed it to her to save her.

Hort advanced toward the ritual circle, slaughtering any of the creatures foolish enough to approach him. But then, they were all fools that day, he thought.

Berthal yelled in rage, a frustrated cry of anger so foreign to his nature that Tythonnia glanced at him fearfully. Shasee had died, in the most inhuman way possible, and the huntress Dumas was heading straight for her and Ladonna.

Mariyah rose to her feet with Hundor’s help; he continued knocking creatures about with a glance or a head toss. He appeared weakened, however, each effort costing him. Tythonnia felt exhausted, her spells gone, her energy drained through the vortex of the gate. Ladonna helped her up, to her own peril. She didn’t see the creature at her back.

“Api kartus,”
Tythonnia said, barely thinking. The thumbs of her outstretched hands touched, and a jet of flame engulfed the creature advancing on them. She didn’t even realize she had any magic left. Ladonna spun around in surprise then nodded in appreciation.

“We have to leave now!” Ladonna said. She began pulling Tythonnia out of the circle.

“Not without the others,” Tythonnia said, tugging herself free from Ladonna’s grip.

“I don’t care about the others,” Ladonna replied. She was about to say something else, but a terrific explosion almost knocked them off their feet.

Berthal and Dumas were fighting.

Staff rang against sword, neither of them giving an inch. Spell slammed into counterspell, obliterating one another in showers of sparks and fire. As Berthal and Dumas struggled, each one a master of their craft, Hundor and Mariyah kept the creatures at bay and away from their leader. Tythonnia broke from Ladonna’s grip and joined her friends. They couldn’t help Berthal fight; they had their hands full with the blight shades.

Berthal twirled his staff around, striking out with the hardened bottom, but Dumas parried the blow. She couldn’t match force with force, but she was skilled enough to deflect his best efforts.