The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal (22 page)

Hydan explained we were about forty
mectors from the capitol city of Poseidon, and would be able to
reach there by tomorrow. The Celadon River went right into the city
and then emptied into the ocean. The capital city was right on the
coast, using the fresh water from the river and the sea for trade
routes.

Myrka and Toji were going to stay in
the second room, and once we’d decided on a departure time, they
headed for the door. I was just going to tell them about Ziny when
I saw Myrka suddenly freeze like she heard something sinister from
the hallway.

She moved to the door quickly and
yanked it open. Ziny was leaning against the door, and half fell
into the room as the Tarvos sorceress pulled it open, landing on
her hands and knees beneath Myrka. It was obvious she had been
eavesdropping.

Myrka snarled, and then grabbed the
girl by the thick strands at the back of her head. It wasn’t hair,
but more of a kind of noodle consistency, but thicker and stronger.
Myrka threw Ziny to the center of our room, and then turned in a
crouch, lifting her hand in the gesture she used when she was going
to use one of those Derkaz blasts of energy.

I leaped between them, starting to
say, “Now hold on, she’s a…”

That is when the dark beam of energy
lanced out from Myrka’s palm and struck me in the gut, burning a
massive hole in my saeran body.

It felt like someone had shoved a hot
poker into my guts the size of a frying pan, and then turned on
electricity, powering it like a continuous cattle prod.

I flew back and hit the wall, and then
slid to the ground, unable to even move.

Myrka snarled in frustration and sent
another blast at Ziny, but the little girl dodged and the blast
went through the floor, opening a two-foot hole to the common room
downstairs.

There were screams from below and
yells of ‘Magic!’ and ‘Wizardry’, I even heard someone yell,
‘Summon the witch’s hunters, those strangers are mages!”

Toji yelled at Myrka, who was angling
for another shot at the crawling Ziny, “What are you doing, you
fool! You have revealed us to these people, and likely killed
Nicholas! I was sworn to protect him if he dies, YOU
DIE!”

He placed himself between Myrka and my
fallen form, weapons ready.

For me, the world was going in and out
of focus, and starting to darken around the edges of my vision. I
could barely see Hydan as he got between our insane Derkaz
sorceress and my fallen form.

Then I dimly saw little Ziny, and even
with Myrka trying to kill her, the little girl was crawling toward
me swiftly.

“
She knows we are mages,
she must die!” Myrka snarled in a deadly voice, and tried to get an
angle on the crawling form of the little saeran girl, but Hydan
stepped between them.

“
Everyone in this Inn knows
we are mages now, thanks to you!” he noted, and I heard some of the
first anger in his voice which I’d ever discerned.

Myrka stopped and finally listened to
the voices of the patrons coming up through the hole in the
floor.

Right then the door burst open and
three saerans bearing weapons appeared in the doorway. Myrka spun
around and incinerated them with a gesture.

Toji spoke in a deadly voice, “Attack
anyone here again, and I will end you.” His tantos were in his
hands, ready for action.

Meanwhile, Ziny had reached my side,
and she put her hands over my stomach. It hurt so badly I didn’t
dare look; I knew I would see my saeran organs falling out, or
worse, burnt to a crisp. I certainly felt like I was dying; I was
holding onto life by the thinnest thread.

Suddenly I felt the pain lessen, and a
strange sensation of things pulling together.

Hydan arrived, but he just frowned and
then smiled slightly, but didn’t do anything.

“
A little help here?” I
croaked when the pain had receded enough for me to even
speak.

He shrugged, “Your little sorceress
friend is doing a fine job, she is quite talented.”

Myrka glanced around Hydan, and saw
what was happening, “She is a mage?”

“
Yes,” Hydan said, “And
skilled for her age.”

In a few moments, I felt back to
normal and sat up. Then I turned to Ziny and said, “Thank you, I
think you just saved my life.”

She just looked at me and blinked
those big eyes.

I looked up at Myrka, and spoke
angrily, “Would you stop killing people, especially ME!”

She didn’t even apologize, “I did not
know she was a mage, and you should know better than to get between
me and my target.”

My eyes narrowed, “She is a little
girl, not a target. Do not attempt to kill any more children or you
will be breaking your oath to me.”

“
If that is your wish,”
Myrka replied coldly.

I decided the sooner I could get rid
of Myrka the better; she had no, for lack of a better term,
humanity. She was a cold-blooded killer.

Ziny looked up at me, and I realized I
had somehow gotten to my feet and I was standing over the smaller
Myrka and scowling down at her. I turned away from the Tarvos
sorceress and looked at Ziny, and my face softened as I said,
“Thank you for healing me, how did you get so good at that? I swear
I was nearly dead.”

“
You were near death, but
my mother taught me how to heal, she was very good at it,” Ziny
said softly, remembering her mother, and feeling the pain of her
loss. I could read it in her small face.

We could all hear the commotion from
below, and Hydan sighed, “Looks like no sleep for us, we’re going
to have to depart before they try something foolish, and Myrka
slaughters them all, or they summon some of Morgain’s necromages
and we get in a real battle. Come on, back to the canal, then out
to the river!”

I nodded toward the little saeran girl
and said to the others, “Ziny comes with us.”

Hydan looked at me strangely, and then
said, “She would probably be safer here.”

“
No, someone may have heard
us, and know she is a mage, so she is coming with us to the
capitol,” I ordered.

No one else had anything to say, so I
took Ziny’s hand and led her down the stairs.

At the sight of us emerging several of
the saerans brandished weapons, but when Myrka pulled her knife,
and blue energy ran down to coat it, they all backed away. The
Innkeeper saw Ziny’s hand in mine, and gave me a little nod, he
understood; Ziny was going with her kind.

Once we made it into the basement,
shed our cloaks and got into the canal, we started swimming for the
river and were soon out into the swift current.

Chapter Eight

When the true kings
murderers

Are allowed to roam
free,

A thousand magicians arise
in the land

-The Doors

It was dark in the wide Celadon River,
and much harder to navigate, but I found my saeran eyes saw much
better than human eyes in the dark. Things were in black and white,
with lots of shades of gray, yet it was brighter than what I was
used to seeing at night.

Ziny was swimming circles around us,
literally. The girl was a speed demon and showed what a lifetime,
or even twelve or so years, could do for you as a saeran. Hydan was
having fun with her, trying to swim as fast and gracefully as the
native girl. She took him to the bottom of the Celadon, where they
disturbed a large bottom dwelling fish which was down in the mud.
It had a head too large for its body, and long whiskers. It was
pulling itself along the bottom by those stout whiskers, and the
body only had a vestigial tail and fins.

Hydan laughed at the odd fish, and
called to Ziny, “Is that really a fish?”

“
Yes, we call it a
snogfish,” Ziny replied.

Hydan then exclaimed, “You mean it’s a
fish, but it can’t swim?”

“
It pulls itself along the
bottom by those whiskers,” Ziny clarified.

Hydan guffawed, “Snog, like those fat,
mud snorting animals I’ve seen on land?”

“
Yes,” Ziny said with a
smile, “Their heads are similar, and they both have long
whiskers.”

“
Snogfish, that’s just
lovely!” Hydan exclaimed.

After we swam for two hours the
Celadon widened out into a vast lake. We were all tired and needing
sleep, so I popped to the surface and looked around; we were in
some tall hills, not mountains really, maybe 2000 feet higher than
the lake. The hills were covered in patches of thick trees or
meadows of tall grass.

Off in the distance, further up the
lake, was a lone sentinel poking up out of the flat lake surface,
like a massive tombstone. It was a rocky island, with some kind of
tall dark tower sticking up into the night. There were no lights,
and I thought I could make out one crumbled wall. It seemed
uninhabited.

I ducked back down and said, “Follow
me.” Then I headed for the island.

After ten minutes we came to the
island and saw the rocky underwater hill rising out of the depths
of the dark lake.

We all went to the surface, and I
said, “It looks disserted; perhaps we can find a place to rest
inside until morning.”

The others started moving toward the
shore, but Ziny was treading water next to me, and said, “That is
Dal Kavem.”

“
Oh, what do you know about
it?” I inquired.

She blinked at me and then said, “They
say it is haunted, and anyone who goes there never
returns.”

“
Haunted, by
what?”

“
Ghosts, Shades, I guess.
I’ve never been here, nobody comes here, anymore. Not since it was
destroyed by the Island Witch a long time ago. They say in olden
times it was once an outpost of the capital, a place where mages
dwelled.”

I started kicking toward the shore,
“Come on, I don’t believe in ghosts, it’s just an old
ruin.”

Ziny reluctantly followed.

We clamored up onto the rocky shore,
and then found a path which led toward the short wall that went
around the tall tower. There was an arched opening, which once had
massive gates, but these were ripped off and piled to the sides. I
had no idea what forces it would take to do that without gunpowder
or other explosives. We walked under the dark arch, and could see
the doors to the tower, also standing open and broken, ahead of
us.

“
There was a lot of magic
power used here,” Myrka noted clinically.

As we approached the opening Hydan
reached down and picked up a short piece of wood, but by the time
he raised it over his head it had transformed into a torch, already
lit. This provided us with some light and chased back the dark
shadows. It also revealed an entry hall, strewn with saeran bones,
broken armor, and weapons, all long rusted and decaying.

There were several doors leading off
of the entry hall to the left and right, and a passage which
continued on along the left wall, but on the right was a stairway
hugging the wall, and then turning left after about twenty steps
up.

We all headed toward the stairs by
some unvoiced decision. This was a tower, so you naturally wanted
to go up.

I noticed Ziny was clinging to my
side, one hand touching my hip. I could feel her little hand
shaking.

“
It’s all right,” I said
with a reassuring smile down toward her terrified little face,
“it’s just an old tower, there aren’t any ghosts.”

Right then the ghosts
attacked.

There were many sudden howls which
sounded like something coming from a long tunnel, something
bestial, primordial and definitely insane. A massive wind-swept
into the chamber below us, coming from the doors and hallway. Then
small tornadoes of wind started up around the corpses, and these
small vortexes lifted the old bones and remaining armor and weapons
up, swirling around furiously, before slowing and then assembling
into skeletal warriors, with blue glowing translucent bodies of
some kind of ectoplasmic display.

“
Run for the top of the
tower!” Hydan exclaimed right as Myrka yelled, “Kill them
all!”

“
Up,” I seconded Hydan, and
Myrka took one step down toward the assembling monsters, but then
turned and followed my order. We all scrambled up the
stairs.

The skeletal shades followed, coming
up the stairs after us, and several of them seemed to run right up
the walls.

We crested the stairs onto a balcony
rimmed platform, which had doors and halls branching off into the
second floor of the tower and the stairway kept climbing to the
left. I could see we weren’t going to outrun the skeletal shades,
so I barked, “Toji, Myrka, turn and hold the stairs, Hydan, lead
the way further up, Ziny, stay with me in the middle.”

Myrka turned and said, “It is about
time we stood to do battle!”

“
Fine, fight, but keep
backing up the stairs, I want to get to a better place to defend,
higher up,” I noted.