The Essence Gate War: Book 01 - Adept (64 page)

“And then you think to return home, to your world, through the Essence Gate nestled amid the
ancient ruins of Queln?” The Nar’ath queen’s harsh voice almost purred with satisfaction.

There was a long pause as the black-robed Adept stood, still and silent, regarding the monster swaying in a spider’s crouch
before him. “You cannot use the Essence Gate,” he said at last.

The queen’s
laugh was booming, triumphant. “I see that the colossal arrogance of the Adepts has not diminished in all this time!” She leaned forward, and her voice dropped to an almost intimate whisper that somehow still carried to Thalya’s ears. “We have already used the Gate, sweet enemy mine, and countless times at that.”

“
Impossible. You are lying.”

“
I would not hesitate to harm you with lies,” the Nar’ath queen sneered, “but when the truth will suffice, it is a much sharper weapon. Years ago the Essence Gate began to draw, ever so slightly, upon the energies of this world. My sisters and I were feeding upon the ley lines to restore our strength and to increase our numbers. We were proceeding with utmost caution, remaining well out of sight. The Gate drew tremendous power to it, swelling the lines as it drained the land. It was nothing at all for us to trace the flow of power to its origin in Queln, where so many of the lines meet in a great nexus. We could feel the power flowing through the Gate, and we were quick to divine its purpose. We moved but a few token forces through at first, testing our ability to use the passage. We grew bolder when we saw how poorly the Gates were protected on your side. Now many of my sisters have already passed through with their armies into your world, and our forces build on both sides.”

Xenoth did not reply, and the queen laughed in disdain
. “What power you have bestowed upon us, all unknowing! You tapped into the arteries of this world, unable to rein in your appetite, and were unaware of the parasite you fed as you did so. The Nar’ath have grown stronger in recent years than in all the centuries that came before. Your greed and conceit have at last paved the way for your downfall, and for our ascension.”

Xenoth growled something in reply which Thalya was unable to discern, but the Nar’ath queen rumbled another laugh that grew hard and brittle at the end
. “Do you take me for a fool?” she demanded. “You cannot change what will be. Your world is lost, and it gives me pleasure to have you die not in ignorance, but in despair!”

On the last word, her voice rose to a terrible shriek, and
she sprang at the Adept. The black-robed figure threw his arms wide, and fire lanced from his fingers to slam into the charging queen. She crashed to the ground with a bellow, but pushed herself upright in an instant, cackling and fixing her emerald glare upon Xenoth. Tendrils of smoke rose where the fire had scorched her flesh. She hurtled forward, impossibly quick for a creature of such mass, and fire streaked out again to lash at her in response. This time she hunched forward, shielding her head with claw and limb, and drew most of the fire upon her heavy shoulders. Some of it struck home, but most glanced away from her plated armor.

The Nar’ath queen peered between her crossed limbs with a devil’s grin, eyes narrowed to slits
. “Oh yes, Adept,” she hissed. “We have built up some resistance to your arsenal since last we met.”

She lunged toward him
. Xenoth stabbed his hands toward the sky, and a thick wall reared from the wasteland ground before him. With a thunderous crash the Nar’ath queen hammered through it. She lashed out with a long, many-jointed limb at Xenoth. He crossed his arm in a warding gesture, and though her claws rebounded from the empty air before him, the Adept was sent flying through the night in a flutter of black robes. With a hiss of pleasure, the queen slithered after him.

“Come on!” Syth exclaimed, bounding to his feet.

Thalya tore her gaze from where the Nar’ath queen was leaving the pool of light, and blinked up at him. “Where?”

“To the swordsman
! He is no longer bound. This is our chance to be away from here while those monsters tear each other apart.”

The huntress
snapped her gaze back to Amric, abandoned for the moment on the sands. It seemed true; the warrior was no longer pinned flat on his back, but rather had risen to one elbow and was holding his head with his other hand. Thalya sprang to her feet and followed Syth, who was already sprinting across the sands.

As she ran, the titanic struggle
between the Nar’ath and the Adept continued. The concussive force of a distant explosion nearly lifted Thalya from her feet, and the Nar’ath queen slammed to the ground partially in the light. She rose and twisted toward her foe, lurching into sinuous motion once more. Green fire sprang into sight across her armored carapace, spreading with voracious speed. The queen shrieked her rage but otherwise paid it no heed, and the unnatural fire dwindled and died away as she slithered back into the darkness beyond. Arcing threads of light illuminated her silhouette, raining down upon her like a volley of flaming arrows, and she swatted at them as she bore down upon her prey.

Thalya shuddered and ran on.

Syth, moving swift as the wind that was a part of his nature, reached Amric first. The Sil’ath warriors, Valkarr and Sariel, seemed to appear from nowhere and were at his side moments later. The three of them had the swordsman on his feet by the time Thalya reached them all. Amric swayed in their grip, but his voice was level and steady when he spoke.

“
You have to find Halthak and be away from here,” he said. “The Adept means to kill you all by some scheme he has devised.”

Valkarr and Sariel exchanged a glance, and both opened their mouths to reply, but whatever they were to say was lost beneath a sudden, keening scream by the Nar’ath queen
. Sand sprayed over them in a rolling cloud as her massive form was driven back into the light. Fire streaked from the darkness and tore at her flesh, and she twisted from side to side in a futile effort to avoid each new strike. The Adept appeared, following her and pressing the attack. Even as the fire continued to flay at her in relentless strokes, the ground about her rippled and hardened into great thorns of stone that speared into her serpentine body and held her fast. The queen roared in fury and tried to wrench loose for another charge, but a towering spike shot upward to pierce her midsection, transfixing her. She quivered with the blow and slumped forward onto the spike. Only then did the rain of fire cease. The Nar’ath queen drew short, ragged breaths and lifted her fearsome head to glare hatred at her foe.

Xenoth stalked
further into the silvery light, dirtied and disheveled and panting with exertion. Perspiration ran across the hard planes of his face, drawing veins of flesh in the dust there. “Now you die, fiend,” he said in a low growl.

“You call us monsters, Adept, and yet it is not we who have destroyed worlds to sate our appetites.
” She tilted her head toward him in a hideous grin as dark green ichor seeped between her fanged teeth. “At least, not yet.” The Nar’ath queen convulsed with harsh, gurgling laughter.

Xenoth’s jaw clenched and he shot both hands skyward
. Another huge pair of spikes erupted from the ground and met at the queen’s chest, and the laughter came to an abrupt end. The giant form sagged and went still. The Adept eyed the motionless creature for a long moment before turning toward them. Thalya felt a chill play along her spine at the murderous rage writ plain upon the man’s features. Xenoth stabbed a finger at Amric.

“You, wilding, are coming
back to Aetheria with me. The Council needs to hear of this new threat, and I will bring them all that you know on the matter.”

“That,” Amric replied, “will be a disappointment to all involved.”

Xenoth’s eyes narrowed. “Nevertheless, before you die, you will do this service for the world that birthed you. Come here, boy!”

He made a sharp beckoning gesture, and Amric stiffened
. Torn from the grasp of his comrades, he hurtled through the air to hover before the Adept. Steel rang as the two Sil’ath warriors drew their swords and started forward, and Syth crouched and clenched his gauntleted fists, preparing to launch himself as well. Thalya raised her bow, reaching over one shoulder for her quiver.

“No, wait!” Amric shouted
, halting them in their tracks. Thalya’s hand froze with her fingers brushing the fletching of an arrow. “He will burn you to cinders, as he did Innikar!”

“Listen to the boy,”
Xenoth warned. He made a gesture, and a brilliant seam of light parted in the air behind him. The huntress caught a glimpse through the aperture of another sliver of night, elsewhere––of murky grey mists curling about tumbled masses of bleached stone. “There is no need for me to slay you all. Not when someone else is so eager to do so.”

Something about the Adept’s dark chuckle made the hair at the nape of her neck stand on end; it was a sound laden with
both malice and conviction. Then another sound caught her attention, a dry rustling at the edge of the darkness. She turned her head toward it, and her flesh turned to ice.

Something blacker than the night was pooling there, and shadows rippled from it in waves that lapped hungrily at the meager light
. A figure rose at the deepest heart of the shadow, powerful and timeless, and twin pinpoints of scarlet swung toward them. A wave of cold washed over her as that unblinking gaze settled upon her, pushing at her like a physical thing, peeling away her defenses and leaving her trembling like a child. Then it slid across her and was on to the others. The huntress heard their startled gasps and knew they felt it as well, but she could not turn away from the thing in the shadows. She realized her hand, still hovering at her quiver, was shaking so much that the arrow she touched was rattling among its fellows.

The dark figure rose in a slow, silken movement, and the
caressing darkness flowed to it and enfolded it like a mantle. The mantle of the Vampire King, the Lord of the Night.

Bellimar the Black had returned.

Thalya stared, unable to move, the very breath
frozen in her throat.

“What have you done?”
she heard Amric demand.

Xenoth turned his head a fraction but did not
take his eyes from the dark figure at the center of the gathering shadows. “I promised a surprise for these lesser creatures, wilding. Look on a moment, before you and I depart, and witness what I have prepared for your companions.”

Bellimar
––or rather, the monstrosity that now stood in his place––shifted his gaze over to the Adept. Bloodless lips parted in a smile too broad by far to be human, revealing long, curving fangs beneath. “And where will you flee, Adept?” he whispered. Thalya flinched as the velvet words, vibrating with insidious power, caressed at her ears.

Xenoth lifted his chin
. “I flee from nothing and no one.”

Bellimar made a deep inhaling sound, and the silvery light from the globe above dimmed for a moment as tendrils of shadow slithered across the sands
. Xenoth flicked a glance at the tiny ball of light, and then back to the vampire. “And yet you are fearful, Adept,” Bellimar pressed. “I can taste your fear, and it is a heady thing to one so long denied his appetites.”

“I do not fear you, fiend,” Xenoth sneered
. “My concern is for Aetheria alone. The Nar’ath filth must not be allowed to cross over into my world.”

“By the queen’s own words, many already have
. You are too late.”

“Then I will prevent any more from crossing over.”

“And how will you accomplish this, Adept?” Bellimar asked in a chiding tone. “The magic you expended on the wilding and the Nar’ath queen has left you more drained than you wish to show. You are weary, and you have faced but one of the Nar’ath.”

“I have no need to defeat them all myself
, fool. When I bring word of this threat to the Council, they will authorize me to activate the Gate, and this wretched world will be drained of its Essence. The Nar’ath will perish along with everything else. We can then hunt at our leisure whatever smattering of those creatures already made it through.”

Thalya felt a new chill at the Adept’s words
. This, then, was the destruction of their world he had been referencing in that cold, vindictive manner. Worse, it appeared that the night’s events had only served to accelerate the dire fate of her world. Her gaze darted between Bellimar and the Adept. They were intent upon each other, while she and the others were all but forgotten for the moment. Her fingers closed upon the shaft of the arrow and began to remove it from the quiver in a very slow, deliberate draw.

“Come, wilding, it is time for us to go,”
Xenoth said. He half-turned toward the glowing rift in the air and made a peremptory gesture that brought the suspended form of Amric drifting after him.

Bellimar
moved. So sudden and silent was the motion that the huntress blinked in momentary disorientation as her eyes struggled to follow it. She was struck by a memory from her childhood, one of many occasions when her youthful exuberance had shrugged free of the limits imposed by her father’s cautionary words. Playing in the forbidden territory of his study, she had knocked over a large inkwell on his desk, and watched in dawning horror as the jet-black ink raced in spreading rivulets over the papers scattered across its oaken surface. Bellimar’s movement was like that, quick and liquid. One moment that heart of darkness was seething at the edge of the light twenty yards away, and then it simply
flowed
a dozen yards closer in the span of a breath. His eyes never left the black-robed Adept, and his fangs were still bared in a terrible grin.