Renegade Wizards (44 page)

Each collision of wood and steel produced a flicker of sparks as each arcane weapon tried to defeat the other. Dumas deflected another staff thrust and spun away, her hand on her metal tome, her mouth moving. Her sword arm shot out, unleashing a clash of bright hues that threatened to overtake Berthal. Instead he slammed his staff into the ground, sending out a wild distortion wave that broke the back of the incoming spell.

Before Dumas could unleash another spell, however, Berthal rushed forward to close the gap. He barely deflected two rapid strokes, but a third one nicked him on the arm. He backed away, but as Dumas tried to press the advantage, Berthal leveled the staff at her. A fire sphere appeared between
the two dragon heads and shot out like an arrow. Dumas raised her arm to shield her face. The ball of fire struck her and exploded. Streams of flame curved around her body. She caught some of its heat, her clothing combusted along her arm, but otherwise was unhurt.

And so they continued sparring, trading cut for cut, injury for injury.

Tythonnia struggled to remember and cast her remaining spells, but Mariyah seemed harder hit. She fumbled her incantations and dropped reagents through leaden fingers. Hundor fared best as he motioned across the gap between them and the gate that disgorged more undead; a wall of flames broke free of the ground, sending sheets of fire upward. Tythonnia suspected their relative skills in magic dictated who had gotten hit the hardest and who survived the curse the best. As it was, she was scraping bottom, her spells nearly depleted or useless. Hundor still had learned magic and Wyldling ways to spare.

Thankfully, Ladonna was with them, adding her spells to the mix. If she’d hoped for a quick escape with Tythonnia, that was no longer an option. The creatures were attacking steadily—uncoordinated but steady. Ladonna, however, was ready for the worst. Her spells punished the creatures for their advance, destroying any that skirted around the wall of flames. From her fingers flew a ray of sickly green light that overtook two creatures. They collapsed to the ground and struggled to rise.

“Sihir anak!”
Tythonnia said, unleashing what she suspected was the last of her useful spells. Her illusions had proven ineffective against the undead. She dispatched four missiles of light that darted around one another as they peppered one of the monsters. It fell back, wounded but still eager for the fight. With a flick of his head, Hundor sent
the wounded creature into the cascading wall of flames. It shrieked as the heat ignited it; Hundor sent it flying into two more undead, igniting their parchment-like skin as well.

Tythonnia glanced at Berthal. The fight with Dumas obviously had taxed him, but he didn’t show any sign of surrendering. Both Berthal and his opponent moved fluidly from parry to stroke to spell as though it was all one beautifully choreographed move.

Hundor had other ideas, however. With the fire wall extended around them, he turned his attention on the preoccupied Dumas. His hands flew into deft motion, his movements graceful and precise as he grabbed the spell’s reagent from the battle pouch on his wrist. The spell was just materializing on his lips when he staggered back.

The crossbow bolt had appeared out of nowhere; it pierced Hundor’s chest. He cried out in pain and gripped the wound around the shaft with one hand, as though to stop the red spot that raced outward. With the other hand, however, he motioned toward a large man.

It was the other hunter, Tythonnia realized. He was taking aim again with his crossbow.

“Kendala,”
Hundor groaned. Nothing seemed to happen until the hunter unleashed another bolt. It struck something in midair and broke. The hunter appeared unhappy and quickly reached for one of his pouches. Tythonnia did the same, both of them racing to unleash their spells.

Her illusions had little chance of entrancing the undead, but they still worked against the living.

Berthal and Dumas paid no attention to the others. Berthal spun the staff above his head, shifting it from one hand to the other. As he did, sparks rained from the staff’s tip down around them both, striking and sparking off Dumas’s face and arms. She yelped in pain and, for the first time, stumbled
back. Berthal pressed his advantage. He attacked like a man possessed, battering his staff against her blade as she held it up to protect herself. He forced her to her knee and seemed poised to win.

That was when the large hunter brought something out from his pouch, a piece of metal. Tythonnia couldn’t hear what he said, but to her horror he hurled it at Berthal who froze suddenly, unable to move as the spell held him. Tythonnia could see his wide-eyed panic, his arms over his head, exposing his chest and stomach to Dumas.

Tythonnia tried to redirect her illusion spell to save Berthal somehow, but in her panic, it slipped from its mooring and dissolved in her own mind. In that moment, Dumas lunged forward with her thin blade and pierced Berthal through his stomach. She smiled with bloody teeth, a hellfire grin married with the mad delight in her eyes.

The large hunter screamed, and out of the corner of her eye, Tythonnia saw fire engulf him. The hunter had Ladonna’s full attention. And Dumas had Tythonnia’s.

Berthal had collapsed to his knees, with Dumas standing over him. He cradled his stomach as though the world itself might spill out. He looked up helplessly at the hunter. She stabbed him again and again through the stomach. Tythonnia screamed her hate and, rushing forward, caught Dumas in the back with her dagger; she plunged it in deep, twisting the knife with all her strength.

The huntress threw her head back, slamming it into Tythonnia’s forehead. She staggered from the blow, her head blossoming with pain-filled light. She could barely focus. She had a vague sense of Berthal lying on the ground, of Dumas driven to one knee, of the other hunter screaming and twisting in agony as fire engulfed his entire body, of Mariyah cradling a dying Hundor, of Ladonna standing alone and unleashing spells in a frenzy trying to keep the undead at bay. There seemed to be a lot of them, circling around.

“We have to leave!” Ladonna shouted; Tythonnia had the distant impression her words was directed at her. “Dark Nuitari, it’s too late!”

Tythonnia felt the tug on her clothing and hair, that sense of an impending shift in gravity … toward the iris. The undead wailed again; they turned and screamed at the gate that pulled at them and encouraged them to come home then turned back again to stare hungrily at Tythonnia and the others.

This is it, Tythonnia thought. This is how we die.

The undead readied themselves for the final onslaught.

“You will not have me!” Ladonna screamed at them. “It is I who will have
you! Rogan xur grig!”

For a moment, Tythonnia thought she was hallucinating. Ladonna stood with straightened back, her arms out by her sides as though ready to become airborne. In the sunlight and in the orange glow of the world beyond the aperture, her jewelry seemed to sparkle. Then all at once, the precious stones lifted from their settings and hovered around Ladonna. A dozen or more egg-shaped stones of the most vibrant purple surrounded her. They orbited around her on a dozen separate trajectories that brought them into intersecting paths, but never once did they collide.

The undead hesitated at the spectacle but for only a moment. Then the stones circling Ladonna flared and flashed, and from each, she unleashed hidden spells.

Tythonnia shielded her head as daggers of light—too many to count—burst outward from the stones. They filled the air with their numbers, each one zigging and zagging around the others and leaving trails of light as the arcane darts found their marks and peppered the undead. Still more daggers of light exploded from the stones until they filled the air with their singing whine. It was almost beautiful.

There were too many of them; it was impossible to halt the tide. Par-Salian and another sorcerer, a Vagros barely old enough to call himself a man, were at the edge of the camp. They were trying to save people—Par-Salian with learned spells and the young man with the erratic magic of the Wyldling.

The blight shades were everywhere, and the cries of anguish and agony wouldn’t stop. The most terrible of the screams came from the children, their high-pitched terror as the undead slaughtered indiscriminately. Par-Salian wished he could gouge out his own eyes and tear off his ears. A senseless dark would have been better than this horror.

Par-Salian summoned another sphere of flame and directed its path to protect those in the greatest danger. He maneuvered to avoid the bodies littering the ground already, but it was growing more difficult.

The Vagros continued unleashing what paltry magic he possessed and swinging his club when he had a chance. He was crying and struggling to keep the tears from blinding him, but he fought with a frenzied fervor for his friends and family. Par-Salian’s heart broke for him.

Among a clutch of wagons, Par-Salian spied Snowbeard struggling to protect a young boy of eight. One arm dangled by Snowbeard’s side, bloody and useless, while the other still hefted an axe. He was swinging it freely to keep two blight shades at bay, but his last swing unbalanced him, and Snowbeard tripped over Lorall’s body. The undead creatures mauled him while the boy looked on and screamed.

One of the monsters noticed the boy then, its head snapping up in attention.

“Save him!” the Vagros sorcerer shouted. He batted at the head of a blight shade nearing him, but the creature, after stumbling, sprang back to its feet, angrier than ever.

Par-Salian nodded and ran for the boy, only barely recognizing him as one of his history students. He directed a
sphere of flame ahead of himself with a flick of his hand, catching the undead from behind. Its gauzy cloak and hood caught fire, and it threw itself against the earth, thrashing, trying to extinguish the flame. Its high-pitched shrieks filled the air, and its compatriot leaped away from Snowbeard’s decayed corpse to avoid the same fate.

The boy was still screaming when Par-Salian reached him. The child clung to his leg, sobbing Par-Salian’s name into his thigh. Par-Salian wanted to pick him up and console him, but he needed both hands free. Another two blight shades loped toward them. They were surrounded; only Par-Salian’s blazing sphere kept the monsters at bay.

A sudden flash of light caught their attention. Even the undead glanced back at the incredible spectacle unfolding at the ritual circle.

Par-Salian could barely see his friends through the black bodies of the undead, but the air over their heads glowed as dozens of hornetlike lights spit out in all directions. He watched in amazement as missiles angled off. The air seemed filled with a never-ending cascade.

Ladonna’s Death Blossom, Par-Salian realized. She’d been preparing for the attack for days, slowly storing one single spell again and again in the magical stones hidden in her jewelry. It would be her final desperate act if the monsters were about to overwhelm her, he knew. It meant that conjuring a horse to escape with Tythonnia was impossible now. It meant that reaching her to teleport away was equally unlikely. It was the end. She was in mortal peril, and he could do nothing to save her.