The Essence Gate War: Book 01 - Adept (58 page)

Release me
, it had told him. From what? To fight together, it had suggested. But how? By taking over his body? He felt another chill. Would this creature then assume control, never to relinquish it? Would Amric then become the entity within, little more than a persistent shade lurking at the back of its consciousness?

H
e shook his head. The thoughts sent fear lancing through him, but they did not match what he had seen and felt. The other had not wrested control from him in Stronghold, when he had been injured and at his most vulnerable. Instead, it had joined with him somehow, brought him unimaginable power at his time of need, and bolstered him to achieve the impossible. Afterward, it had retreated into seeming nonexistence again, fleeing before his scrutiny as it had done every time since, and as it had done here. These were not the actions of some unseen tyrant or assassin, awaiting only opportunity to strike him down. And the haunting, wounded look in its––in
his
––eyes had been disturbingly genuine.

The familiar presence
gathered at his side. Even with his eyes closed, Amric could feel a tentative hand reaching for his shoulder, and an overpowering sense of worry washed over him. He opened his eyes to regard the other, once more his mirror image, and the hand froze in mid-reach.

“The dream, with the hidden cottage in the forest,” Amric mused
. “That was
your
dream, not mine.”

The other hesitated, and then nodded.

“You fear me, fear my discovery of you,” he continued, fumbling for comprehension. “I can
feel
it in you, just as you react to my own state of mind. You have been remaining ever close, but evading my direct attention, terrified that I will find you and strike you down somehow, just as in the dream.”

The other drew back, almost cringing.

“That is why you come to me only in moments of distraction or weakness,” Amric said, eyes narrowing. “Only then are you bold enough to act. You seek to protect me, and yet you have this terrible fear of my wrath.”

His own grey eyes stared back at him, wide with apprehension
. Amric burst out laughing, and the other started and blinked at the sudden sound.

“I still do not know what you are, my
mysterious friend,” he said with a shake of his head. “But I can see that you are as scared of me as I am of whatever it is you represent.”

The other flashed a
hesitant smile at him, but remained at arm’s length.

A harsh sound echoed faintly in the distance, shrill and grating
. It was an alien shriek filled with rage and pain, and sudden memories of the waking world flooded back to Amric. The hive, his friends, the Nar’ath queen and her minions, the arrow fired by Thalya and the concussive explosion that had resulted; how could he have forgotten? His life and the lives of his friends hung in the balance as he wandered this surreal landscape.

“If I can hear that monster
out there, at least I know I am still alive,” he said grimly. “I need to wake. I need to go back and fight. Now.”

His dark leather and
oiled chain armor appeared, sheathing him in its fierce embrace. His fingers curled around battle-worn hilts, and the steel of his blades gleamed before him. The creeping white mists of the dream began to curl about him. The other drew away from him and vanished like smoke scattered before the wind, though whether it fled his weapons or his sharpening focus, he was not sure.

The mists swirled in a tightening funnel around him, faster and faster, bearing flickering images
. Amric caught glimpses of the dark interior of the hive, illuminated by the pulsing green glow of the pools. He saw the huge and menacing figure of the Nar’ath queen, thrashing about while her skulking minions milled about with confused and uncertain movements. He saw the hunched figures of his friends isolated amid a storm of sand. And there were other images as well, hallucinations that made no sense to him: the forest, the hidden cottage, an intangible presence hovering fretfully within the cottage above a sleeping child. The door to the cottage cracked open to reveal a blinding sliver of sunlight…

Amric shook his head, and the chaotic images
receded. These were not his visions alone, he knew, but also the memories of the other tangled with his own. He clenched at the recognition, wanting to push it all away from him, to be alone once more in his own mind. But the thought continued to nag at him: whether or not he was at risk of losing himself, if this elusive entity could help him save his friends, would he not do it? The situation was dire, if indeed it was still possible to win out. He had already admitted the possibility of the worst that could happen to him, and yet he knew that he would give his own life in an instant if it meant saving the others.

Why, then, not his sanity as well?

He smiled grimly. There would be time enough to seek a cure, if he survived.

“I am going out there to slay that monstrosity, if it can be done,” he called
into the air. “You offered to fight together, before. Will you do so now?”

There was no response to his query aside from the echoes of the Nar’ath queen’s fury, which were growing louder by the moment
. The mists curled tighter around him like a cocoon.

“Will you come if I
call upon you?” Amric shouted.

He looked around for the shadowy figure, but saw no sign of it
. He closed his eyes, seeking the insubstantial presence that he knew was nearby, and yet he could not find it. There was nothing. The harder he looked for it, the less certain he was that he had ever felt it, that the whole experience had ever been anything more than a muddled, lingering dream. Perhaps he really was going mad after all.

He tightened his grips on the swords and braced himself, looking upward into
the narrowing funnel of mist above him. The shrieks of the Nar’ath queen hammered at him in waves now. The soft caress of the mists felt more and more like the howling bite of a sandstorm. He closed his eyes, pushing back doubt and fatigue, seeking the center of the void he would need to survive in the maelstrom awaiting him in the waking world above.

He exhaled slowly.

“Are you with me?” he whispered.

Yes
, I am with you.

Rough hands shook him.

The ingrained instincts of the warrior took over, and he lashed out before
he was fully aware, before his eyes even opened. A grip of iron caught his forearm in motion and clamped there, holding him firm. Amric’s eyes flared wide to find Valkarr crouched over him. He could read the relief in his friend’s tight expression even through the swirling, wind-borne sand. Behind Valkarr stood the hazy figures of Sariel and Innikar, peering down at Amric.

A broad grin creased Valkarr’s scaly face
. “If you are done resting, warmaster, your warriors are quite ready to leave this place.”

Amric lurched up to a sitting position, and helping hands boosted him to his feet
. His head spun and his body ached in more places than he could count, but he managed to stand on his own. His face and hands stung as if burnt, and there was a stabbing pain in his left side when he took too deep a breath.

To his surprise, he found his swords
back in his hands, just as in the strange dream. He frowned. His weapons had been lost in the sandstorm as he fought the Nar’ath queen, tumbling from his numb fingers and scattered in different directions. How, then, had they found their way back to him while he was unconscious? The waking world was not like the dream landscape, where he had summoned his belongings with desire alone. Had his friends found them on the chamber floor and pressed them into his unresponsive hands as he was lying there? Whatever the cause, he was grateful for their return.

A sharp tremor shook the ground, accompanied by an ear-splitting peal of agonized fury
. The center of the chamber was enveloped in a great cyclone of sand, and from it came waves rippling along the ground like low-hanging smoke. It seemed the Nar’ath queen was injured and angry, and had once more cloaked herself with her eerie control over the wasteland. As Amric studied the tempest, wondering if they could find their way through it to strike at the monster, another tremor ripped through the hive and almost threw him from his feet. There was a sound like the breaking of dry branches, and a network of cracks spidered through one side of the dome overhead. A piece of sandstone the size of a horse cart fell away from the high wall and shattered into a thousand shards of rock upon the ground. Several more followed, and the cracks in the dome began to spread and widen.

“The hive is collapsing,” Sariel shouted
. “We need to leave now!”

Amric threw another glance toward the dark, raging heart of the storm, and then nodded
. “Let her pull the place down on her own head,” he said. “We will wait for her above, if she emerges.”

They ran for the nearest of the
winding stairways. At the foot of the stairs, Amric paused and spun about.

“Bellimar!” he said
. “Did you find him as well?”

Valkarr shook his head, his expressio
n grim. “We found no sign of him, but it is hard to locate anything out there. We were very fortunate to find you, once the queen raised the sandstorm again.”

Sariel grabbed at Amric’s arm, pulling him toward the stairs
. “There is no time to look again,” she hissed. “We can only hope that he found his way out on his own.”

Amric hesitated, lifting his gaze to the shaking dome above, then
gave a reluctant nod and turned back to the stairs. The old man had shown himself to be canny and tough; hopefully that would be enough to see him free of this place of death and destruction.

The warriors sheathed their blades and raced up the curving stairway
. The ground fell away below, and they were soon above the roiling clouds of dust and sand, but their ascent proved no less harrowing than the battle below had been. The whole place trembled and heaved, threatening to throw them from the narrow stairs with every step. Twice the steps began to crumble away beneath their heels, and only quick leaps and the clasping hands of their comrades allowed them all to continue climbing toward the night sky.

They were partway up when a fluttering shadow shot free of the maelstrom below and rose through the air in an impossible leap
. It clamped to the wall below the stairs ahead of them, clinging like some ragged spider. After a moment’s pause, the figure began to move, scampering up the sheer stone wall. Amric reached over one shoulder for the hilt of a sword as he neared the thing, but then he froze as he recognized the pale, slender hand that reached over the edge of the stairway.

“Bellimar!” he cried.

The old man pulled himself onto the stairs with a grunt, and then rose shakily to his feet. His clothing was torn and he bore countless gashes and scrapes, though his wounds were all puckered and bloodless. He swayed for a moment, clutching his side, and then gave the warriors a rueful look.

“Remind me never to do that again,” he muttered
. “I suppose I should be grateful that I am already dead.”

Below, the angry cries of the Nar’ath queen rose to a crescendo
. The swirling sands drew together across the hive and toward the core of the storm, leaving the chamber floor bare as they receded like a sudden tide. It all hung there for a moment, dense and dark, and then exploded outward with a sound like a thunderclap. The concussive force pressed them all to the wall of the hive for a moment as the sands bit at their exposed flesh. Then it subsided, and the sand sheeted down the outer wall. The chamber was clear to view once more, as was the Nar’ath queen.

She stood hunched in the center of the hive, seething with rage
. She was surrounded by a dozen of her heavyset black minions, which milled about her in fretful uncertainty. The queen’s face was a charred ruin, and her heavy outer jaws hung twisted and useless from the lower part of her elongated skull. From the midst of that blackened visage, however, her green eyes burned with brilliant and unremitting malevolence. Those glowing slits raked over the room, searching for her prey. Her head lifted toward the tiny figures high above her, and her eyes narrowed. With a harsh, gurgling hiss, she burst into motion, surging for the foot of the stairway. The hive, which had become still momentarily, began to shake again with renewed vigor.

Amric’s
brow furrowed. The stairs were narrow and unstable; there was no way they would support her bulk. He was about to say as much aloud when the Nar’ath queen reached the wall, and the words died in his throat. The stone wall warped at her approach, twitching and rippling like the hide of a beast. The ground lifted before her, and the stairs near the bottom melted and flowed slowly together to form the beginnings of a ramp. Amric felt a chill. The monster was reforming the place to meet her will, and it would not be long until she was able to pursue them out of the hive.

Amric glanced down
. The stone beneath him had begun to shift, as when a strong ocean current pulled the sand out from beneath one’s feet. The edges of the steps were becoming less definite, rounding and disintegrating before his eyes. He shared a quick glance with the others.