Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept (48 page)

“What are you doing?” Isabel shouted.

“Using you,” he said, binding her hands and feet in midair with circles of magical force, holding her in place, helpless again.

He began to chant as she struggled and railed against him.

Then s
he stopped shouting at him, calming herself and focusing on defending herself from the darkness that was about to come.

Phane spoke the final word of his spell with force
, and the portal in her mind was torn open, flooding her psyche with cold darkness and empty despair. She heard screaming, visceral and primal. It took a moment before she realized that it was hers.

Inky blackness belched forth from her mouth,
her nose, her eyes, swirling and coalescing into an indistinct mass of black magic. When the darkness finished flowing through her, and the portal to the netherworld slammed shut, she went limp, sobbing in anguish from the immoral residue left behind by so much hate and bile.

Dimly she was aware of Phane chanting again in the background. She struggled to regain control over her body and
her will, grappling with the guilt, despair, and fear still coursing through her. When she managed to look up, she saw the darkness that Phane had conjured dart off toward the enemy position around the Gate.

It re
ached them in seconds, moving in a streak of blackness and then coming to an abrupt stop above them, where it coalesced into a sphere twenty feet wide. Then it began to spin.

At first, the soldiers below just watched as the sphere spun faster and faster.
Suddenly, one of them was sucked into the vortex, his body completely desiccated in an instant as he passed through the darkness. His lifeless remains were ejected into the air with enough force to propel them several hundred of feet, leaving nothing but a stain on the landscape and a scattered collection of shattered bones where his corpse fell.

Another soldier, then another, then five,
then ten and then dozens every second were drawn up into the vortex, dying in an instant and being cast into the air to fall at random, their remains scattered haphazardly across the battlefield.

A few of the soldiers on the periphery of the unit were able to escape instant death,
but the vast majority of those guarding the Gate were killed, desiccated, and then very thoroughly distributed around the area in a matter of minutes.

It was the most terrifying display of deadly power that Isabel had ever seen, and it sickened her that once again, she had been instrumental in such evil by providing Phane with access to the netherworld.

“Oh, now that was special, wasn’t it?” he said, almost to himself, chuckling gently. He turned to Isabel with an appraising smile and hardness in his eyes. “My thoughts on your highest value to me are evolving.” He nodded to himself, looking down over the edge of the tower.

“General Hargrove,” he shouted, “have your first legion secure the Nether Gate and begin building defensive fortifications. Have the remaining two legions stand fast.”

“Understood, Prince Phane,” Hargrove said, turning to his commanders.

Isabel was beginning to recover,
though she still felt unclean. “So is this what I can expect going forward?” she asked weakly.

“Now that all depends on you, doesn’t it?” he said. “If you cooperate, you’ll come to understand that the darkness can be remarka
bly rewarding. If not, you’ve proven to be invaluable as a conduit.

“Honestly, I would far prefer to have you as my willing second. You would have great leeway in the methods you use, provided they achieve the ends I require. I’m offering you the opportunity to rule the world with me
, Isabel. Most people would be grateful.”

“Not if they knew you,” Isabel managed, still sapped and defenseless, suspended by magic a few feet off the ground.

“Defiant to the last,” he said. “I have to say, your resistance makes victory all the more sweet.”

Before she could muster the will or strength to respond
, he released the bindings and she fell to the ground, rolling to her side and pulling her knees up to her chest. She focused on her breathing, willing all of the pain and violation she felt into the background of her mind.

For a moment
, the thought of suicide crept into her thoughts, not driven by self-pity, but out of concern that through her, Phane might do unimaginable harm. Then she thought of Alexander and her will to win returned with a vengeance, followed very quickly by a feeling of abject helplessness.

She returned to her breathing while Phane watched a legion of his soldiers march toward his ultimate prize. Breath by breath, she recovered her sensibilities, and then her strength, and then her determination to turn the tables on Phane. That could only be accomplished when the time was right and that required her to be ready and to recognize it when it came.

She had limited power at her disposal. Slyder was hidden nearby and he had the slave master’s ring. But even without the Andalian slave collar, she was no match for Phane … unless she could access the light.

She remained curled up on the
ground, conserving her strength and focusing her mind, ignoring Phane as he ignored her in favor of watching the progress of his war.

“Call a halt!” he shouted down to Hargrove.

A whistler arrow went up.

Isabel opened her eyes, rolling over
to look in the direction of the enemy. A swarm of drakini floated a hundred feet off the ground toward the Gate. They reached it within a few minutes, one casting a single spear down into the ground. Then they retreated back toward Zuhl’s rapidly marching main army less than a mile away.

A dust devil formed around the spear, growing into a whirlwind and then a tornado. When it reached full speed
, the wind-whipped dust began to turn white, raining snow and hail down for five hundred feet in all directions. The surrounding area was quickly transformed into a winter scene, white and frigid.

Isabel felt a cold gust of wind blow past he
r, sending a chill up her spine in spite of the temperate spring afternoon.

As abruptly as it had formed, the
tornado vanished, leaving a mound of ice and snow that looked like a small mountain a hundred feet tall and twice as wide covering the Nether Gate.

The cold air that had just blown past her settled into a cool breeze
emanating from the ice mountain, sapping the warmth from her and leaving her shivering on the ground. As she got to her feet, arms wrapped tightly around her chest, Phane smirked, muttering the words of another spell. A few moments later, the air within the magic circle atop the conjured tower became warm and calm.

“Interesting
,” Phane said, rubbing his chin. “Let’s see what happens when I throw a big rock at it.” He flashed her a smile and then cast his gaze out over the boulder-strewn battlefield, settling on a stone the size of a large wagon. With an outstretched hand, he lifted the stone, easily several tons, a hundred feet, then two hundred feet into the air. He held it there for a moment and then propelled it at the ice mountain with terrible force and speed. The stone seemed to blur, flickering for an instant in the space between its starting point and the ice.

It hit with a deafening crack, sending a shock
wave of chilled air outward that felt like a slap in the face. The ice mountain shattered into a mixture of ice shards and coarse jagged hail, raining down across a wide swath.

The icy dust
didn’t have a chance to fully settle before it began to swirl, the ice tornado quickly forming again, building on the blasted-out remnants of the previous mountain to form an even larger mound of ice with an even wider area of artificial winter surrounding it.

Phane nodded to himself, frowning at the barrier blocking him from his prize. After a moment he walked to the edge of his
tower and called down, “General, move the army to the edge of the cold. Make that your front line.”

He didn’t wait for Hargrove’s response, instead walking to the center of the magic circle atop the tower and sitt
ing cross-legged on the ground, as if waiting for something.

He didn’t have to wait long. The few clouds in the sky began to build, growing in size and darkening as they roiled a
nd turned, building and spreading until the entire battlefield was beneath a huge angry-looking cloud. Phane got to his feet, watching the sky.

The cloud
settled into a slow spiral overhead with the ice mountain as its center point. Lightning flashed and then it began to rain. Large drops fell from the sky, first in a smattering, clattering into the armor of a group here and a unit there. After a few minutes, the rain was falling in wind-driven torrents, drenching the battlefield and soaking Phane’s entire army. Hail began to form, small at first, but growing quickly, until Phane’s soldiers were hunkered under their shields to defend against the unnatural deluge.

Lightning struck Phane’s
shield. Isabel found herself on her hands and knees staring at the ground, dazzled and a bit stunned by the sudden flash and terrible noise. Phane began casting a spell. Another bolt struck, filling the world with cold and terrible brilliance. Phane’s chanting grew.

Another bolt struck, but this one stuck to Phane’s shield, the arc holding for several terrifying seconds, building, pulsing with power before rebounding back into the clouds swirling above and terminating with a flash of light so bright that it illuminated the entire cloud, followed by a clap of thunder that reverberated across the battlefield.

The clouds stopped moving and began to lose color, turning first grey, then white, and finally evaporating entirely, leaving the sky clear and bright in no more than a minute’s time.

***

In less than an hour, Phane had moved his army right up to the edge of the frost line, forming a bristling front of shields and spears. Zuhl’s forces had taken up positions on and around the artificial mountain.

Phane spent a few minutes preparing a spell
that lifted ten towers twenty feet into the air, each with a set of stairs leading up the side and a magic circle burned into the top. They formed a line just fifty feet behind the shield wall, overlooking the enemy and the objective.

He
insisted that the Babachenko and the High Overseer take the towers to either side of him, with the remaining towers for the rest of the Acuna wizards. He motioned to Isabel impatiently. She plodded up the stairs to the tower top, feeling a tingle of magic wash over her as Phane took his position and raised his defenses.

She
scanned the battlefield. The main body of Zuhl’s army was just arriving, filling in behind their advance force. Phane’s army was arrayed in front of his tower line in a series of rows, each supporting those soldiers in front of them. A large contingent of reserve forces stood at the ready on the south side of the battlefield, and a guard force of several thousand surrounded Phane in concentric circles.

He was using his army more as a
defensive bulwark than a general officer’s weapon of war … though after seeing the magic he was capable of wielding, Isabel had to admit that his strategy did have some merit.

To the east,
two legions of Rangers were assembled around a legion of infantry. A squad of Sky Knights floated in a high orbit overhead. She estimated that it would take the Rangers ten minutes to close the distance—the infantry would take thirty. At the moment, they were holding position.

Phane motioned
for the Babachenko and the High Overseer to attack. The Babachenko frowned, seeming to hesitate before turning toward Zuhl’s army with resignation and beginning to cast a spell. A few moments later, a bubble of liquid fire leapt from his hands and splashed into the enemy ranks, igniting a dozen men in a whoosh. The rest of the Acuna wizards began casting spells—force-shards and liquid fire filled the air.

Drakini swept in past the ice mountain, descending into the front ranks of Phane’s army before
his men could react, breathing frost into them a moment before landing and then slashing into every soldier within reach. The initial attack was devastating to the integrity of the line. Moments after the drakini landed, they launched again, bounding over a dozen rows of soldiers to breathe frost again and land, clawing and killing.

The Acuna shifted their focus to the drakini, targeting them with force
-shards and killing several with the first volley. They fled, launching into the sky and retreating over the main body of Zuhl’s forces.

Phane looked down to the ground just ahead of his tower and motioned for his wraithkin to clear the area. Within moments it was empty.
With a word, he burned a magic circle into the ground, then looked out at the enemy with a smile, seeming to relish the momentary deliberation before selecting a single enemy soldier and lifting him from his position on the battlefield a hundred feet away, drawing him over the fighting and depositing him inside the circle below, his hands and feet bound with force manacles a moment later.

The man
cursed and railed at Phane, who simply smiled down at him before selecting another and then a third man from the enemy ranks, plucking them from the relative safety of their place in formation and binding them with magic inside the circle.