Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept (54 page)

He la
id his hand on the stone arch and in ancient Reishi said, “Open.”

Nothing happened.

He started to feel a touch of panic. Then the arch shimmered, the interior transforming into a passage leading to another room. Alexander stepped through as wraithkin blinked into the room they were leaving. Jataan darted through and Alexander closed the gate before any Wraithkin could get close enough to follow.

They
had entered a simple room, twenty feet on a side with one door on the opposite wall. Alexander looked ahead, finding an empty hallway with a number of rooms on either side, all empty as well, and a large domed room through the double doors at the far end of the hall.

Through those doors was Alexander’s nightmare.

Suddenly, a shadow rose up, taking shape out of nothing, flickering into some monstrous form for a moment before transforming into a shard of black, shadowy force about the size of a sword. Alexander tried to raise his light, he tried to shout a warning, but it happened too quickly. The shadow stabbed Jataan through the back and out his gut, holding him up for a moment, then twisting slightly before vanishing. Jataan fell to the floor.

In the back of his mind, Alexander wondered why he hadn’t seen it coming. He opened the door, dragging
Jataan into the Wizard’s Den, closing the door the moment P’Tal’s feet cleared the threshold, pulling him to a bed and carefully lifting him onto the covers.

He rushed to his chest for yet another healing potion. He’d thought the treasure trove of magic that Lucky had sent would be more than he would ever need, but he was
starting to think otherwise.

Jataan grunted as he struggled to sit up. Alexander helped him drink the potion and eased him back
down.

“You know you can wait for some of us to heal,” Jack said. “Anja looks like she’s on the mend. And so is Tasia.”

Jataan groaned unintelligibly.

“I’m so close,” Alexander said. “I have to do this right now, before they have time to organize a counterattack.”

He went to his lock box and removed the phylactery crafted and enchanted by Malachi Reishi to contain his soul and make him immortal.

“Chloe, I
want you to stay inside the Wizard’s Den. Azugorath could hurt you.”

She buzzed into a ball of light, appearing a few feet in front of him, then float
ed up and kissed him on the cheek.

“Be safe, My Love.”

“I will, Little One.”

He raised his light and opened the door, stepping through quickly and closing it immediately. He didn’t hesitate, striding into the cold and empty hallway, his light held bright and high.
He ignored the doors to either side on his way to the chamber at the end, the place where Phane was warehousing demons to power his war effort.

He moved to the side of the door
on the left and sliced down through the hinges. It clattered to the ground. Alexander sent his sight inside.

The door opened
onto a small observation deck twenty feet above the circular floor of the giant domed room. Most of the magic circles spaced evenly throughout the room held wraith, each serving as the power source for an individual wraithkin.

In the center, floating above them all, contained
within three magical circles working in tandem, was Azugorath, the Wraith Queen.

Alexander felt a little flutter of fear. He
’d come all this way to confront her, but now that he stood at the precipice, he found himself hesitating. After a moment, he started laughing at himself. His choice had been made long ago. He’d made it when he accepted the mantle of power, the title of Lord Reishi.

That’s what it meant to hold power responsibly. Power was only honorable and righteous when it was used to protect the innocent. The battle he faced was his duty because he’d chosen to have power over others.

He sheathed the Thinblade and took the phylactery from his belt, then raised Luminessence high as he strode up to the railing separating the observation deck from the domed room. The collective shriek of angst and fury at the sudden intrusion of light filled the room with a cacophony of such varied tone and magnitude that Alexander felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it.

Then he saw her eyes—red and hateful
—but somehow alluring and seductive. He felt his energy begin to wane.

He tore his mind’s eye away from Azugorath’s
mesmerizing gaze, casting his focus far across the world to Isabel, catching a single glimpse of her in the midst of a great and terrible battle, standing right next to Phane, right where she needed to be. He slammed back into himself, a thrill of fear coursing through him from the pulsating shriek of the wraithkin crashing into him like waves.

He raised his light
brighter still, pouring his will into Luminessence, flooding the chamber with such brilliance that darkness could not survive. A collective howl filled the enormous room, pain stabbing into Alexander’s ears as it reached its crescendo. Then it suddenly stopped. In a wave moving away from him, the wraith occupying the magic circles covering the floor of the room were pushed from the world of time and substance by Alexander’s light—banished.

He let his light falter for just an instant,
and in that instant, Azugorath was free of her bindings. She hadn’t been banished by Alexander’s light, just held at bay. When he let his light dim for that one moment, she shot forward.

Frantically, he
pushed his will into the staff, raising his light again, but it was too little, too late. She was on him, surrounding him, suffocating him, filling him with cold dry death. He leaned into Luminessence and poured his last bit of will into the staff, raising the light to its zenith. She howled, a muffled, horrible sound, but held firm as she surrounded him with her dark and dreadful essence.

He could feel his life draining away, leaking into an abyss of hatred capable of devouring
everything. Numbing coldness started at his fingertips and began to move into his hands and arms. No matter how he fought, the Wraith Queen smothered him with her life-stealing presence, relishing his struggle. His lungs burned with the need for air.

His strength all but gone,
he remembered the phylactery in his hand. He formed the word in his mind and then spoke forcefully, but no sound came forth. He felt a wave of panic wash over him as he slumped to his knees, pouring his renewed will into Luminessence.

It flared with brilliance that threatened to drive her off, breaking her grip on him for
one precious moment, just enough time to take a breath and say a word. He spoke it just before Azugorath collapsed in on him again, crushing him, suffocating him. Alexander rolled to his side, holding on to Luminessence for dear life even though his light was waning with his strength. Death was claiming him.

Dimly, he became aware that the darkness was swirling around him instead of crushing him like a thousand wet blankets.
Having no strength left, he simply watched as the Wraith Queen finally realized what was happening. Part of her essence had entered the vessel … the spell had been cast.

Her
howls of rage and fury crashed over Alexander like waves, seeming to cut into him, scarring him more deeply than any physical wound could.

The coldness whipped past him, swirling into the silver bottle until
Azugorath’s scream diminished and she was gone, leaving Alexander lying on the floor, clutching the phylactery in one hand and the staff in the other and wondering when he was going to die.

He was certain that he was dying.

He could feel his life force draining away.

He thought of Isabel and how much he loved her. He hoped that his plan had worked. For a moment he thought about going to have a look, but he barely had the strength to keep his eyes open.

Everything went dark.

A cracking noise reverberated through the room, dust and small pebbles raining down, clattering o
n the floor, pelting him. The floor jumped suddenly, jolting him as half the room abruptly rose ten feet, shearing the walls and ceiling with a single shudder of the earth. Larger stones began to fall.

Alexander watched, calmly assessing his strength and finding himself woefully lacking. He doubted that he could even get up. He felt so weak, so drained of energy and so absent of will that he found himself
simply watching his life slip away with a sense of helpless detachment. A rock the size of a watermelon landed nearby, shattering into a dozen pieces and showering him with gravel. The sharp sting barely registered.

He felt like h
e was watching an hourglass run out. The only question that remained was would it run out before the ceiling collapsed in on him. His life force drained away like water, dripping its last out of his body.

He thought of Isabel.

And then everything went black.

Chapter
41

Isabel watched as the three summoned demons obeyed their orders, wondering how long Alexander had before he would be ambushed by Samael.

Naberius was flying toward the Rangers and infantry, but he was still a few minutes out.
At the moment, Legion was the one that had her blood running cold.

She watched with a mixture of awe and horror as Legion multiplied through the ranks of Zuhl’s army in a matter of seconds, each few steps doubling his number until he reached a final count of one thousand exact dupl
icates of the original.

It happened so quickly that the barbarians didn’t have time to respond. Within seconds there were a thousand demonic warriors
inside their line. Legion swept into them with wanton violence, killing with a delicate balance of cold precision and roaring, trembling rage.

Worse, when a barbarian
did manage to cut one down, it was only a matter of a minute or so before it was replaced, bringing the number back to one thousand demonic warriors. Thousands fell in the first minutes of the onslaught.

Horns blared and the barbarians retreated, falling back in smaller units, scattering as they fled the front lines of the battle. Legion didn’t give chase, instead diminishing in proportion to the number of enemy soldiers he faced. Once the entire barbarian army was
fleeing, he became a single warrior again, leaping back up onto the plateau and stopping two dozen feet from Phane.

“They are routed,” Legion said.

“Yes, well done. Hold there until I tell you otherwise,” Phane said, smiling with satisfaction at the sight of Zuhl’s army scattering into the distance.

Isabel thought she was losing her mind at first. The sound was faint and very distant, but it carried just enough that she could catch bits and pieces on the breeze. She was
listening intently when the Acuna approached with the Babachenko at the lead.

“Prince Phane,” the Babachenko
said, “may I ask that you send Legion to scour the invaders from the north of Andalia?”

Phane rubbed his chin, frowning to himself before shaking his head slowly.

“No, not yet,” he said. “Let’s win this battle decisively and then we can look to the rest of the world.”

“It looks like you’ve triumphed to me,” the Babachenko said. “Legion has swept aside the barbarians, and I have no doubt that Naberius is about to scatter the
pretender’s army.”

Isabel
caught another note on the breeze, a clear voice in the distance, a familiar voice.

“Patience,” Phane said to the Babachenko.

The little man pursed his lips.

Isabel listened. A shout, then a scream, then more shouting and screaming rose up. A clamor spread through Phane’s army, death and dying moving toward the plateau.
Isabel’s mind raced. She listened closer, but heard only more sounds of fear and killing.

“General, what’s happening?” Phane snapped, when the noise distracted him from watching Naberius
approach the Rangers.

“Reports of men attacking each other at random, Pri
nce Phane,” Hargrove said.

Phane looked around wildly for just a second, before turning to Isabel.

“Where is he?”

“Who?”

Phane lifted her from the ground, crushing the air out of her with his magic as he drew her close, holding her a foot off the ground before him.

“Don’t play with me.”

“I don’t know for sure, but I can guess,” she said, a smile slowly spreading across her face.

He’d told her to be ready. He had a plan all along.

Phane dropped her. She stumbled but kept her feet.

“No matter,” he said,
turning to Hargrove. “Tighten the personal guard around me.”

The
general saluted and went about relaying the order.

Isabel called Slyder closer, still high overhead, but right above them
, circling lazily on the wind. She scanned the people around her. Phane and the Babachenko, the High Overseer and seven Acuna wizards were fanned out around Phane’s inner cordon. Surrounding them were nearly a hundred wraithkin. Beyond them were four hundred soldiers in defensive bands.

Her eyes met Lacy’s. She winked. Lacy went a bit pale but nodded almost imperceptibly.

The screaming and shouting drew closer, right at the base of the plateau now. Steel against steel, followed by a wail of agony that trailed off into silence. There was a lull in the fighting and Isabel heard the music again.

She looked off toward the Rangers, sending her mind to Slyder for a moment to get a clearer view. The two legions of Rangers had split away from the legion of infantry. Several Sky Knights flew well above the fight with one higher still. Isabel looked closer and saw Wren riding behind Kiera.
She was singing and her voice was carrying across the entire battlefield.

Noise from below
drew Isabel’s attention. She looked down as Naberius landed in the middle of the infantry, howling a great battle cry. He didn’t strike with his halberd, instead planting the butt of it firmly in the ground beside him.

A wave of blackness seemed to pulse away from him through the so
ldiers for a hundred feet in every direction, spreading in a fraction of a second. Thousands of men screamed, contorting in pain as the darkness moved through them. Most fell to their knees, a few dropping to the ground and flailing around in agony. Those outside the range of the wave stood in stunned horror, watching helplessly as their brothers fell.

Another wave pulsed away from
Naberius. The few men still on their knees fell over. Many died, others fought for their last breath.

Another pulse of darkness and everyone within a hundred feet of Naberius was dead. He tipped his head back and laughed, mocking, cruel and hateful.

He pulsed again.

Isabel thought she saw movement. Her blood went cold.

Another wave of darkness and a few of the corpses began to stir. Another and they all started getting to their feet. They weren’t human anymore, they weren’t even corpses. The dark energy radiating from Naberius had desiccated them almost entirely, mummifying their flesh and hardening their bones.

Another pulse and his army of several thousand undead raised their weapons in unison.

“Kill!” Naberius commanded.

The undead army turned against the Ithilian infantry surrounding them,
sweeping into them by surprise—fearless, without pain, hungry to kill. The infantry broke, scattering away from the army of skeleton soldiers that had just been formed from the heart of their own legion.

Isabel returned to herself, shaken by what s
he’d just witnessed. Phane was looking out toward the battle and smiling.

“You see, g
entlemen, two armies defeated effortlessly,” Phane said. “Just imagine what we’ll be able to do.”

The Babachenko bit his lip before
forcing a smile. “Perhaps,” he said.

Just then a
shout went up from within Phane’s personal guard.

Fighting broke out
among several men on the periphery of the plateau. Phane muttered a few words under his breath, looking intently at the commotion.

“Rankosi,” he snapped.

The fighting intensified, with several more men joining in against everyone nearby. Isabel smiled to herself.

A
nother man caught her eye. He was walking through the cordon of soldiers, his eyes on Phane. Isabel had never seen this man before, but she could tell at a glance that he was formidable. A soldier noticed him and moved to challenge, then looked right through him as if he didn’t even exist.

Another noticed him and then forgot him just as quickly.
The man was dressed in the uniform of the Regency soldiers, but he moved altogether differently. He turned abruptly to avoid a cluster of people, passing a single soldier instead, unnoticed.

He moved through the wraithkin just as easily, drawing almost no notice
, and when he did, he was forgotten a moment later.

One of the Acuna wizards pointed straight at him, shouting, “Grant!”

Several looked his way, but only a few saw him. Two of them began casting spells. Both stopped in midsentence, seeming confused. Those who hadn’t seen him a moment before could suddenly see him and they began casting spells.

He was close now, moving behind the cluster, Phane and the Babachenko facing away. Both turned at the warning.

Phane frowned, looking straight through Titus Grant.

Grant
drew a thin-bladed dagger, walking in an arc around the cluster of wizards, alternately touching two or three minds at a time, blotting out their awareness of his existence entirely.

Phane and the Babachenko both locked eyes on him in the same moment, then both looked confused, staring off into the distance as if trying to remember something important that wouldn’t come to mind.

Grant circled behind them, dagger in hand. One of the Acuna cast a force-shard, missing entirely for fear of hitting Phane and the Babachenko.

Grant looked straight at Isabel and nodded respectfully,
hastening his pace.

Two of the Acuna wizards pointed at
him as he slipped up behind the Babachenko, driving the point of his dagger into the back of his skull, slicing once through the width of his brain before drawing the blade out and running for the cliff. One of the Acuna wizards hit him with a force-shard as he jumped off the edge of the plateau.

Isabel watched with a mixture of amusement and anticipation as the Babachenko
slumped to his knees and then fell over on his face, dead.

Phane looked around a bit frantically, searching for the threat that had been so close only moments
before. Fear seemed to grip him. He froze in place, his eyes darting this way and that while he remained perfectly still, as if moving might give away his location to a predator. He regained control after only a moment, scanning the battlefield for someone to engage, but there were no enemies nearby.

A few moments later, j
ust over half of the wraithkin stopped in their tracks, old wounds opening, spilling their blood into the dirt where they fell.

Phane
’s panic returned. His head snapped this way and that like a trapped animal. His eyes landed on Isabel.

She smiled at him.
“He’s getting closer,” she said.

A soldier attacked several of the remaining wraithkin. They killed him quickly, but then another man attacked
with total abandon a moment later, his rage drawing Phane’s attention.

“Rankosi!” he shouted. “Go back where you came from.”

He started casting a spell, his eyes fixed on a single soldier walking casually through the ranks, stabbing men in the back and then casting blame on someone else. Rankosi left a trail of bodies behind him, blood spilling out of fear and confusion and false belief.

Phane focused on the shade as he chanted the words of his spell.

Isabel called Slyder to her, scanning the area again and adding Tyr and several of his unwashed to her list of enemies in the immediate vicinity. The pirate pushed through the cordon, demanding to be let through. Phane nodded to the wraithkin to allow him to pass.

Tyr opened his mouth to say something
but Phane stopped him with a raised hand, continuing to chant. Tyr looked angry at the rudeness, his face going a bit red, but he held his tongue, waiting for the arch mage to complete his spell.

More and more of Phane’s personal guard were fighting each other. Some had backed themselves up against the edge of the plateau and were warning everyone else to stay away, doing their best to avoid combat. One of them abruptly dropped his guard and
his sword, turned and walked off the edge, screaming a moment later, then going silent a moment after that. Rankosi’s laugh echoed over the din of battle.

Slyder came down fast and hard, landing next to Isabel.
She knelt down quickly, unfastening the slave master’s ring and slipping it on her finger. As she stood, she tossed Slyder safely into the air. Then she touched the ring to her collar. It popped open with a click. She threw it to the ground and scanned the battlefield.

Phane was
preoccupied with his spell. The Acuna were watching the shade rip through Phane’s best soldiers, leaving a trail of carnage and betrayal, friend killing friend. Tyr was watching Phane with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance, six of his men standing around behind him, a few of them leering at Isabel. No one seemed to notice that she’d removed her collar.

Lacy was just twenty feet away, a wraithkin standing right next to her. A dead wraithkin, dagger still in its sheath, lay not ten feet away. Isabel touched her magic. Her spells were all there, but her access to the light was still blocked by Azugorath.

She remembered the room—that horrible room deep under the black tower filled with wraith, Azugorath at the center of it all, the source of so much of Phane’s dark power. Phane had gleefully told her the purpose of the lesser wraith: to power his wraithkin so that Azugorath could focus on her. And his plan had worked. The Wraith Queen could take Isabel and control her anytime that Phane wished.