The Book of Deacon: Book 03 - The Battle of Verril (52 page)

The air in the throne room was alive with
magic. The King sat in the throne, looking upon the battle with the
distant, helpless interest of a man watching the icy water lap up
the sides of his sinking ship. Myranda held the D'karon staff in
one hand and Desmeres’ staff in the other. Powerful spells arced
across the room. It was quickly becoming clear that Myranda was
still no match for Bagu, but between the robe Desmeres provided and
quick work with the D'karon staff, the young wizard found that she
could shrug off most anything the general could summon mystically.
The same, alas, could be said for Bagu. Fire hot enough to melt
stone faded to nothing as it neared him. Black magics had no effect
at all. The only progress at all was made by Ether.

The shape shifter was on her third form,
abandoning the form of a tiger for that of a wolf, and the wolf for
that of a bear. Myranda's uninterrupted assault had created a
handful of openings, and Ether had filled every one with tooth and
claw. Thick black blood leaked from slashes across Bagu's back, but
the wounds were quickly closing. Worse, the animal forms, though
immune to whatever persisting spells had been tearing at her
elemental forms, were defenseless against the perversions of magic
that Bagu unleashed upon her directly. A sizzling patch of fur
served as a reminder.

In a single move, the tide turned against the
Chosen. Bagu's fist closed about the D'karon staff and wrenched it
from Myranda's grasp. No sooner did the staff leave her grip than
the full force of a dozen lingering spells dropped upon Myranda at
once. Black energy wracked her body with pain enough to snuff out
the spell she'd been readying. With a thrusting kick he knocked
Myranda to the ground and hissed a mouthful of arcane words that
nearly incinerated Ether's hulking form. She shifted to stone and
gathered herself, searching for a form that might do some good.

“Stupid creatures,” Bagu spat. “The battle is
lost! There is nothing you can do! You have failed at your
purpose!”

The dark wizard punctuated each sentence with
a new and worse twist of magic. It was all Myranda could do to hold
them off. Bagu's hand finally reached for the hilt of his sword,
left untouched at his belt. He'd not had the opportunity to
brandish it, but with the momentum on his side he revealed its
obsidian blade. Myranda's faltering spell of protection buckled and
quavered. Without words, Bagu raised the weapon. A blur of white
flashed through the room and clashed with the sword. Ivy stood
unsteadily, blades crossed against Bagu's weapon.

“You won't kill my friend,” Ivy hissed, red
flaring in her eyes.

“It is long past time this failed experiment
was brought to an end,” Bagu replied, coils as dark as shadow
working their way up Ivy's legs as he bore down on his blade.

The general's mystic strength seemed
bottomless. Ivy clenched her teeth in agony as Bagu's spell burned
at her soul. He seemed determined to overpower her, to show her
that he was stronger. Slowly Ivy began to lose ground. The blade
sagged nearer to her face. Then, without warning, the pressure was
gone. A hole had opened on Bagu’s breast plate, seemingly on its
own. There was silence. Not a gasp of pain, not a grunt of effort.
Gradually a polished silver blade, now smeared with black blood,
wavered into view within the wound. The general staggered aside.
Behind him, no longer hidden by his sword's spell, was Lain.

What followed next was chaos. Scalding, black
as death energy began to erupt out of the wound. Like water from a
ruptured dam the power came. In the center of the storm was Lain,
sword firmly held in hand, and Bagu. The general lurched, clutching
desperately at the blade and bellowing words that twisted reality.
He cast out his hand and a trio of curls of darkness drew together,
swirling and opening. From the hole in the air came a shaft of
piercing blue light the very same hue as that which painted the
skies to the north. He heaved himself free of Lain's blade and
stumbled though the portal. It snapped shut, the unspent energy
lashing outward and tearing at the heroes, crumbling the stone and
warping the ceremonial shields on the walls.

Then there was quiet. A distant rumble, the
ping of cooling stone, and the clatter of debris settling were the
only sounds. Here and there the masonry of the walls was striped
with a swath of glowing red heat like veins in marble. It was the
only light. Slowly it was joined by Myranda's magic. The light that
had so recently fallen upon splendor and history now fell upon
ruin. Ancient portraits lay dashed upon the floor. Tapestries
smoldered. The heroes slowly gathered themselves.

“Is everyone all right?” Ivy said as she
helped Myranda to her feet.

Ether
was slowly returning to her human form. As massive as the battle
had been, she was not much worse for wear. The animal forms that
were so often forsaken in favor of her elemental ones had been
virtually effortless to assume, and as most of the attacks had
merely damaged her physically, the injuries were whisked away with
the form. Lain had once scolded her for squandering her abilities.
Now it seemed that he may have been correct, she could have been
more efficient.

The special equipment provided by Desmeres
had taken the brunt of the damage directed at the others with
barely a mark to show for it. Lain slid the ring of his sword to
the position Deacon had indicated would heal him. Within a few
moments, at the cost of the remainder of the sword's stolen power,
Lain's injuries were nearly gone. Myranda put her mind to repairing
the damage she'd taken, then turned her attentions to Ivy. Of all
of the heroes, she'd fared the best, barely requiring more than a
moment of the healer's ministrations. The king was another
matter.

“Your majesty!” Myranda cried, rushing to the
throne.

The burst created by the closing of the
portal had struck him unimpeded; the elderly monarch was slumped
across the arm of the throne. Myranda ran to him. It was the work
of a few moments to revive him, but to restore him was another
matter entirely. The D'karon magic had a cruel, almost poisonous
quality to it. It wrapped about one's soul and remained long after
the injuries were closed.

“Enough. Leave me,” the King said.

“You are my King and I will not allow you to
die,” Myranda said.

“See to the city. They deserve what little
time you can give them,” the King said, pushing Myranda away.

“The city is fine. I don't think we knocked
down a single building,” Ivy said, a hint of disappointment in her
voice. “The streets are pretty much clear. I think the Undermine
are mopping up the rest. And Deacon, I suppose. I don't know, I
missed most of it.”

“Still, it doesn't matter. It is over now.
Perhaps my ancestors truly thought they were saving the kingdom. I
was still a boy when I learned the truth, that
they
had all
of the power. This kingdom ceased to be ours the very moment one of
those things wore the colors of the north. I knew I couldn't take
it back, I could only delay the awful realization from hitting my
people. I never would have thought that it was the
world
I
was failing,” the king rambled.

“Be still, your majesty. You are out of
danger, but you will need to rest,” Myranda said.

“Your majesty . . .
Your majesty!
I am
no king. I am barely a
man
. My name, my kingdom, my
bloodline is tainted forever,” he raged, throwing his crown to the
ground.

“We are wasting time. We need to find and end
the generals while Bagu is still wounded,” Ether insisted.

“The generals don't matter. The sand has run
out. The gateway is open now. They have succeeded, you have
failed,” the king muttered.

“Gateway?” Myranda asked.

“Their world to ours . . . indeed, their
world to theirs,” the king said vaguely.

“A gateway is open? Where?” Myranda
gasped.

“I think I know! There was light on the
clouds to the north. That has to be it, right?” Ivy said, her voice
radiating the simple joy of being helpful.

“Let us go! That gateway must be closed,”
Myranda said.

Lain was already padding swiftly down the
hallway. The others quickly followed.

“Myranda! You have to hear what happened!
These things that Desmeres made, I think they woke me up! And . . .
“ Ivy began.

“Ivy, we've still got a job to do. You can
tell me later. If there
is
a later . . . “ Myranda said
solemnly.

“There'd better be. I have a
lot
to
say,” Ivy stated.

Myn leapt alertly to her feet when the heroes
arrived. Myranda, Ivy, and Lain climbed to her back. After a few
words, Myn began to charge along the courtyard, building speed and
spreading her wings. The load was half again heavier than she'd
been used to, and she was lifting off with a day of flight and a
night of battle between her and her last real rest. The wings
caught the air and pumped experimentally as she made a few
successively longer hops. Then, with a final leap, she launched
herself into the air. After a few powerful flaps of her wings it
was as though she carried no weight at all. She wheeled and set off
toward the piercing point of light on the horizon to the north.

Deacon's rampage was coming to an end. He'd
adopted a spectrum of different manipulations with the swords as
his power had waned. Rotating blades that cut through armor gave
way to sweeping swarms of swords that he directed as a conductor
might direct his musicians. As his strength dropped further, so too
did a number of the swords. Those that had remained orbited him in
a complex pattern, separating and obeying his whim when the time
came to attack. Blades assembled to mimic his fingers clutching and
tearing at massive dragoyles. Others swept into place to block
blows and keep soldiers at bay. When his mind had weakened further
he thinned the cluster of swords to ten carefully arranged about
him, floating and striking as though in the hands of invisible
warriors defending him.

Now what swords remained sagged and drifted
sluggishly. He carefully made another mental note on the effects of
the overdose of nectar. It would seem that the flood of energy
escaping him had the same effect as a siphon on a barrel of water.
It continued to draw energy much at the same rate even after it had
reached quantities he should have been able to maintain. In short,
he was far worse off now than before taking the tonic. Surrounding
him was a single, badly injured dragoyle and perhaps fifty nearmen,
the very last vestiges of D'karon influence in the city. Though it
meant he had sawed, slashed, and bludgeoned his way through the
vast majority of soldiers, this remaining fraction may as well have
been an entire army. He simply didn't have the strength to face
them.

As the final sword slipped back to the ground
and Deacon staggered over the heaps of shredded armor, he quietly
thanked his good judgment for not offering aid to the others. No
doubt Myranda would not have let him die without a fight, and what
energy she wasted on his savior might well have cost them the
battle, and thus the world. Here, at least, he could be killed
without consequence. He smiled weakly as the fate he'd been
expecting all along stalked inevitably closer. They were nearly
upon him when a chorus of war cries from the opposite end of the
courtyard startled him out of his reverie and, more importantly,
distracted the nearmen.

Deacon faintly remembered, an eternity ago
when he'd taken the dose of moon nectar, that he'd warned the
Undermine to seek shelter. At the time they had been a dozen or so
men and women. Unless one of the lesser effects of the potion was
to confuse one's hearing, that number had grown greatly. He turned
to the church to find, along side the well armed and poorly armored
soldiers, were poorly armed and unarmored aristocrats, screaming
for blood. His addled mind tried to work out how the terrified
gathering of social elite had been stirred into a maddened mob of
berserkers. Caya claimed not to be a wizard, so it was not magic
that had set their spirits aflame. Regardless, Caya seemed to have
a power of persuasion that any wizard would kill for, and she
wielded it through words alone.

On the strength of numbers and frenzied
enthusiasm, the D'karon quickly fell to Caya's force. The most
skilled of the soldiers spread out, each leading a small band of
civilians. Names were shouted, doors were opened, streets were
filled. Quickly the city came to life again, this time populated by
those to whom it belonged. The air filled with voices passing the
tale from ear to ear. Curses of anger, cries of disbelief, and
gasps of fear mixed with a universal feeling of relief. Whatever
had happened, whoever was to blame, at least now it was all over.
Caya and Tus approached the weary sorcerer, the latter delivering a
slap on the back that nearly threw him to the ground.

“Why didn't you do that in the first place?
For heaven's sake, my boy, you practically could have taken the
city on your own!” Caya cried.

Deacon did not answer. He was too busy
keeping his eyes focused on the retreating form of the Myn,
carrying the other Chosen north. It wasn't over. Not yet.

#

There were few who had ever seen this part of
the world. Well outside the curious pocket of livable temperatures
that made the capital possible, this mountain range that stretched
to the very top of the world was nothing short of suicide to
traverse on foot. The mountains had no individual names. No
adventurer or explorer had yet to challenge a single summit. A half
circle of mountains that stood noticeably above the rest were known
collectively as The Ancients. The rest were known simply as The
Dagger Gale Mountains, and with good reason. The wind seemed to cut
like a knife, as though the air itself was freezing into jagged
pointed sheets. Myn heaved a heavy, streaming breath of flame every
few minutes and basked in the all too brief warmth it brought.
Despite the near fatal cold, though, each hero had a far more
pressing concern, and it lay just ahead.