Invoking Darkness (38 page)

Galen's shoulders stretched wide as he searched for Elizar. Then the darkening sphere did something Galen had never seen before. It moved, floating away from the wall, carrying its prisoner and the chunk of rock to which he clung. As the sphere darkened, it came to hover over the other Drazi, showing them what would happen if they tried to flee.

The captured Drazi's mouth opened in a silent scream. The sphere snapped into its rapid collapse, and the Drazi's body crumpled like a piece of paper. The shrinking sphere paled to gray, then, like a mirage, simply faded away. A blast of air rushed in to fill the void with a great rolling crack.

If Elizar had the spell of destruction, then Galen's only chance was to crush Elizar before Elizar crushed him. The first rank of machine people herded the surviving Drazi back into the tunnel. The second rank gathered the few dead, added their bodies to a pile against the wall.

The soldiers were being trained not to kill, but to render helpless. That way, the conquered could add to their numbers.

As the black soldiers resumed their original positions, Galen saw a flash of purple among them. Elizar emerged at their front. He wore a long purple velvet coat, a purple and gold vest beneath. The dark goatee scoured into the shape of the rune for magic stood out against his pale skin. His angular face carried a cold arrogance.

Fury raced through Galen, and the tech echoed it. He used his sensors. This was no illusion. Elizar's eyes were lowered in concentration. He cupped his hands around his mouth, and with a jerk of his head, released a long, sustained syllable. With a similar movement he had once conjured a deadly spike. The front ranks of soldiers marched to the back, those farther back filing forward. Elizar was the puppet-master controlling them.

Galen lost his view of the purple figure as the soldiers moved. When they returned to stillness, Elizar again appeared. There was the friend who had betrayed him, who had betrayed them all, who had lied, who had tortured, who had killed, who had sought power for himself, and who had finally found it.

Now, at last, it would end. He took a moment to assert his exercises, his control. He would destroy only his target, nothing else. He focused on Elizar, visualized a blank screen in his mind's eye, imposed the equation upon it. The energy fell upon him, bloomed through him, burned out of him. Elizar's head snapped up. As a sphere around him began to redden and darken, his eyes found Galen, and his rippling mouth curved into a smile.

Elizar brought his hands to his mouth, and his body jerked. The darkness passed up over his face like a shadow, and suddenly, incredibly, the sphere had moved. It hovered now above Elizar, empty. It was impossible. One mage couldn't control the spells of another. It had to be some illusion, some trick. He could find no sign of it.

His body racing, he visualized the spell again, felt the tech's eager echo. Elizar nodded, cupped his hands again around his mouth. The second sphere rose beside the first, just as the first snapped into its rapid, fading collapse. A thunderous crack split the air. Galen had waited so long to crush Elizar, so long. He would not be denied now.

He walked toward Elizar, visualized the simple spell again and again, building a neat column in his mind's eye. Energy raged through him. The spheres flew from Elizar as quickly as they formed. They filled the air above him, collapsing with a fusillade of sound.

Then Elizar jerked yet again, and the sphere around him did not rise up, instead passing to one side, stopping to surround one of the machine people.

Though Galen burned to continue the spells, he wrapped the walls of his exercises tighter, forced the screen in his mind's eye blank. He did not want to kill any others. He would not kill any others. The sphere around the black figure grew darker, and somehow Galen felt as if his own vision were darkening, as if he too were encased by the sphere.

He stumbled to a stop, confused, and a rush of whispers poured into his mind, infecting him.

Chaos through warfare.

Evolution through bloodshed.

Perfection through victory.

Then he was standing in two places. He stood where he had been, at the back of the black columns, and he stood only a few feet from Elizar's darkening figure, in the front rank of soldiers. The pain was incredible. His body was rippling, deforming, pulled in different directions. His glittering black arms stretched downward, reaching the floor and curling there. He wanted to scream, to run, but he could not.

Flesh will do what it's told.

The space around him seemed to gather itself. The distortion stopped, and the contraction began. The dark sphere clenched around him, crunching arms and legs up into his body, breaking ribs, crushing organs. Elizar and the cavern faded to black. With a brilliant excruciating flash of pain, the sphere closed around his heart, and he felt nothing more.

Galen found himself on the ground, panting hard.

Elizar glided in front of him and hovered there, the blue tinge of a shield discoloring his skin.

"It hurts, doesn't it," Elizar said.

"Don't try it again."

Galen's fury rose up, irresistible. Elizar had to die, and now was the time. He visualized the one-term equation again. As the space around Elizar darkened, he shook his head. With a touch of his hand to his mouth, a jerk of his chin, the sphere shot out to surround another Shadow soldier. The whispers flooded back into Galen's mind.

Orders must be followed precisely and accurately.

There can be no error.

There can be no deviation.

It was the Eye, Galen realized, the Eye giving direction to the soldier.

Flesh will say nothing, do nothing, until ordered.

The sphere's distortion twisted through him, and his glittering black body began to spin, a dervish, and with his increasing speed, he began to deform, organs, bones, features melting, stretching. Say nothing, do nothing. He wanted to scream, to fight, but the Shadow skin controlled his body, not he. Within it he was helpless.

He could say nothing, do nothing, except obey.

Galen realized that through his spell of destruction, he was connecting to these servants of the Shadows, thinking their thoughts, feeling their feelings. The same thing had happened when he'd attacked Anna in her ship, behind the City Center on Thenothk.

He searched for the identity of this being, for some memory, some personality. But he could find nothing, not even a name – only the desire to escape from the pain, and the necessity to obey. He spun tighter and tighter, his tissue, his face turning to jelly, his self melting away. Yet the Shadows had destroyed that much earlier. The whispers of the Eye faded as the sphere severed the connection, but still he did not scream, obedient to the last.

The darkness closed around him, crushed him. He looked up, gasping, disoriented, at Elizar crouched beside him.

"A deterrent," Elizar said. "The Shadows don't want us destroying their equipment."

Galen extended his hands, bracing them for balance against the cave floor. It was not rock they pressed against, though, but the hard, smooth surface of a platform. He was on Elizar's platform, he realized, and they were speeding across the cavern. He rolled off, dropped the few feet to the uneven ground.

With a few awkward movements he pushed himself to his knees. His body was burning, incandescent. Struggling to regain his bearings, he looked for Elizar, wanting to cast the spell again. He forced his eyes closed, withdrawing farther down that dark tunnel of his control, containing the energy, securing it.

He shivered. What a fool he'd been. He'd centered all his plans on the spell of destruction. The only reason he was still alive was that Elizar seemed in no mood to kill him, at least not yet. He slowed his breaths, opened his eyes. Where had Elizar been taking him? Somewhere to nullify his tech?

Elizar had brought him back the way he'd come. He was only a few yards from the Eye. He saw no enclosed space where Elizar might intend to trap him. As if from a great distance, he saw Elizar gliding toward him. He must catch Elizar off guard, try something different.

Elizar's shields were only moderately strong; with sufficient time and effort, Galen might break through. How he would ever destroy the Eye, if each death incapacitated him as the others had, he didn't know. Elizar stopped before Galen, brought his hand to his mouth, and with a jerk of his head released a short, precise syllable. The platform descended to the ground, dissolved.

Elizar's hand returned to his side, clenching into a fist. His dark blue gaze fixed on Galen, his jaw tight. His velvet coat betrayed short, rapid breaths. He wanted to attack Galen; Galen knew the feeling well enough to recognize it in another. The tech's energy quickened in response. He worked through his exercises, waiting, waiting. Finally Elizar spoke, his voice hard.

"Are they really all dead?"

Galen took a moment to steady his respiration, heart rate.

"You should know. You and your 'associates' are responsible for their deaths."

"But all the mages? At first I believed they'd died. Later I started to wonder if they'd found some way to trick the Shadows, to get away."

"No doubt it soothes your conscience to think so."

Elizar gave a truncated laugh.

"My conscience? I sacrificed everything to learn the secrets that could save our order. You're the one who could have warned them. You could have saved them. But you didn't. I still can't believe it."

"You saw what I did on Thenothk. I am perfectly capable of mass murder. As, it seems, are you."

"So they really are dead then."

He bit out the words, his tone like a dare.

"What do you want, a list? Elric, Ing-Radi, Muirne, Beel, Natupi, G'Ran, Elektra, Gowen – they're all dead. I found no point in trying to save them. The Circle lied to us, made us into instruments of the Shadows. Any good we do is far outweighed by the destruction we bring. We are tied to the darkness and cannot transcend it. We are all damned. We must all die."

Galen climbed to his feet.

"I have come to finish the job."

Elizar's mouth wrinkled shut, and his eyes narrowed.

"How easily you condemned our entire order."

"Look at us. Among the last of our kind, and all we want to do is kill each other. Death and chaos follow us everywhere."

With a harsh exhalation, Elizar raised his trembling fist to his mouth. He wanted to strike at Galen, wanted it so badly Galen could taste it. Galen had never seen him like this before.

In learning the spell of destruction, though, Elizar would also have learned the joys of that brilliant incandescence, that surging, singing heat the Shadows made them feel. He'd not had two years to learn to resist it. Elizar's hand opened slightly, and his thumb circled his fingertips.

"Death and chaos follow you. You're the one who deserves to be killed. The others didn't."

Anger would make it more difficult for Elizar to control himself, and while he was distracted, Galen could act.

"Now that you know my spell, they shall follow you as well."

"I kill only when there is no alternative."

Galen laughed. "That is so completely wrong, I don't even know where to begin."

"You're the one who killed your little Soom friend, not I."

Galen turned his mind away. After a moment, he realized that Elizar was trying to anger him. Elizar wanted him to cast the spell of destruction again, so that he would be incapacitated as another of the Shadow soldiers died. Galen, however, would not be provoked.

"You would have found more good in having her eaten alive by Razeel's cylinders?"

Elizar brought his hand down in a sharp motion.

"I'm trying to create something here, not destroy. I've learned the secrets upon which our order was built. I know how to control the Shadow devices, including these creatures, who will turn on their masters and fight for me when the time is right. I have been amassing power, and knowledge. When I have enough, I will break from the Shadows and begin a new order of mages."

"You amass knowledge by ripping it from the mind of a child."

Elizar shook his head tightly.

"You would not teach me your spell, and neither would the Shadows. They taught me only to evade it. That left me no choice."

Galen extended a hand toward the Shadow soldiers.

"You enslave others to gain your own freedom."

"Once our order is reestablished, I will need them no longer. Everything I do, I do for the future of the mages."

"That is the greatest lie you have told yourself," Galen said. "Perhaps you once loved the mages. But you love more the image of yourself at the head of them. Otherwise you would have seen that our order should never have existed. The evidence is all around you. Instead you want to rebuild our order, whatever the price. That price has been your integrity."

Galen was sweating. Heat poured off of Elizar.

"Perhaps," Galen continued, "when you first approached the Shadows, your motives were not entirely selfish. You sought to save the order in which you believed. And in your attempt, you did sacrifice, as you said – you sacrificed everything that our order stood for."

Elizar's face flushed red.

"I lied on Thenothk when I told you I regretted killing Isabelle. I enjoyed it. I asked the Shadows to let me kill her."

Galen refused to think of that. He would not do what Elizar wanted him to do. He maintained his orderly progressions, recovered his intention, continued.

"There are no mages to save now. Everything you do, you do for yourself. For your greater power and glory. That is your sole purpose. You will not admit this, you will not question what you do, because it would force you to admit who you are and what you are. You are the weak link who destroyed the mages. And what it has made you is the Shadows' lackey. Even still you do their bidding. You would like to kill me for what I have done, but you do not, because the Shadows have some use for me. You tell yourself that your obedience serves your goal. Yet in truth, it serves only the Shadows, as it has done all along."