Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept (35 page)

“How many levels below is the library?”

“Seven,” the sentinel said, its voice distant and hollow.

“The demon is on the fourth level below,” Alexander said. “We should probably finish it off before we go to the library.”

“Yeah, I’d rather not have that thing behind us either,” Jack said.

Alexander led the way, taking care to avoid stepping in the sporadic puddles of blood marring the stairs. They spiraled through bedrock, opening to each successive level a hundred feet below the last at a landing with an open archway leading to a large chamber. He couldn’t help wondering what lay in the darkness of the ancient Keep. One day he intended to thoroughly explore the place … but not today.

He stepped cautiously into the room that served as an entry hall for the fourth level and stopped, listening for any hint of the demon.

“Sentinel, stand guard here. Allow none to pass through this chamber except for us.”

The guardian nodded, its white eyes glowing softly.

A few steps into the passage marked with the demon’s blood, Alexander stopped, frowning at the floor. It had been traveled recently, though not by anything that wore boots. Odd-looking footprints marked the stone at irregular intervals. Alexander tried to imagine what kind of creature might have made the markings but found himself at a loss. As he proceeded, he wondered if he would soon find out.

“Looks like the demon isn’t the only thing down here,” he said softly.

“Of course it isn’t,” Jack mumbled.

The hallway ran straight for nearly a hundred paces before opening into a large room, too
dark to see anything save for the wall that they’d entered through. The ceiling was forty feet high, supported by stone pillars spaced every forty feet. Alexander raised his light, sending shadows cast by the pillars out into the enormous room.

Rusted and broken remnants of iron cages were spaced at even intervals between the pillars, all of similar size and laid out in orderly fashion. The odd tracks led off in several different directions.

“What was this place?” Anja asked.

“If I had to guess, I would say it was a laboratory used for breeding enchanted creatures,” Magda said.

“Do you think any of them are still alive?” Anja asked.

“Judging from the tracks we’ve seen, almost certainly,” Cassandra said.

“Looks like the demon went straight through the room,” Alexander said, pointing to several irregularly spaced acid scorch marks. He sent his sight forward, searching for any hint of color or movement, but found only an empty room that measured five hundred feet on a side. At one time it could have held nearly a hundred creatures in its many cages.

He set out cautiously, keeping his light bright enough to
illuminate several dozen feet in every direction. As they proceeded, the cages became larger, some enclosed in magic circles, though none were occupied by anything more than bones. He was starting to relax when the tomblike silence was shattered with a high-pitched screech that echoed throughout the room.

“What was that?” Abigail said, nocking an arrow.

“It didn’t sound like the demon,” Jack said.

Alexander sent his sight forward toward the sound when another shriek hit them like a wave. The noise was so shrill and intense that it made his ears hurt. He caught the colors of something in the darkness, then another … and another.

“Looks like there are several of them,” he said.

Magda, Cassandra
, and Lita began casting spells, Jack tossed up his hood and vanished, Anja drew her broadsword.

“Co
rrection,” Alexander said, “there are a lot of them.”

Som
ewhere in the distance, beyond passages that they had yet to walk, the demon roared. Out of the warrens on the far wall came creatures that Alexander had never seen before. In the darkness, their colors looked twisted and malformed, like made beings. They reminded him of the colors of the gorledon.

He raised his light brighter still, enough to fill the room without drawing on the power of the realm of light. It took effort but nothing that he couldn’t maintain for several minutes. The creatures came out of irregular passages
in the walls that looked like they’d been dug rather than cut.

They were about
five feet tall, and stood on four insect-like legs that ended in a single sharp spike each. Their torso rose up above the trunk, armored in segmented black chitin with three rows of hooked spikes along the back and sides. Two multisegmented arms ended in oversized pincers. A wide mouth lined with sharp ridges of chitin where its lips should have been and bordered by mandibles on either side occupied the majority of its face, which swept back into a single horn that curved over the top of its head and nearly touched the back of its neck. Five openings lined each side of its head where its ears should have been.

The hideous creatures looked like ants fleeing a mound that had been flooded, first a dozen
, then scores pouring out into the room. Alexander expected them to shy away from his light, but they seemed oblivious to it.

“
Back away slowly,” Alexander said.

When he spoke, all of the
creatures’ heads snapped toward him as if they’d just noticed intruders in their lair. As one, they shrieked, filling the room with sound so intense that Alexander feared his ears would burst. When it stopped, he could barely hear. His friends were all reeling from the onslaught of deafening noise … and the creatures were coming.

They moved quickly, skittering across the stones on their four legs, converging
on them from the front and sides.

Abigail drove an arrow into the mouth of the nearest one, killing it. The rest ignored their fallen, moving with single-minded determination.

Magda sent a pea-sized blue sphere into their midst. It exploded in a burst of force, sending creatures sprawling to the stone floor, but more took their place.

“Run!” Alexander shouted, drawing the Thinblade. Everyone fled toward the entrance with Alexander bringing up the rear and Jataan holding back just enough to be a step ahead of him. The first creature overtook Alexander scarcely twenty steps from the relative safety of the corridor. He spun as the creature lunged, cutting it off across the torso, following through full circle
, nearly losing his balance but catching himself before he fell. He stumbled the last few feet into the corridor, passing between Jataan and Anja who stood in the entrance, weapons drawn, awaiting the onslaught.

Jataan drove a pike through the next nearest creature, then transformed his Weaponere’s stone into a short spear. Anja hacked another at the neck, killing it with a stroke, but it fell into her
, cutting the outside of her leg with the hooked spikes lining its back and side. Her injury only served to make her angry. With a shout of rage, she lunged forward, stabbing another through the face and kicking it off her blade before another grabbed her by the leg with a pincer. She hacked it off with a shout of pain and fury, bringing her blade back up and cleaving the creature across the torso.

Jataan stabbed one, then a second and a third in quick jabbing thrusts, driving the point of his spear into their mouths and out the back of their heads, dropping them where they stood almost instantly.

Anja hacked another, taking a step out into the room, the pincer still clamped on her leg. Alexander turned, dropping Luminessence so he could grab Anja by the back of her tunic and yank her behind him while driving the Thinblade forward into the next creature in one fluid motion. Darkness momentarily engulfed them until Cassandra brought a dozen orbs of glowing light into existence with a few words.

An arrow whizzed past him, through a creature’s head and into the one behind it. Anja
shouted a curse from behind him. Alexander brought his blade across and through two more that had clambered over the rapidly growing pile of carnage in front of them.

Magda’s arm came over his shoulder and the entire pile of living and dead creatures exploded
away from them, blown back into the room by the force of her magic.

“Fall back,” Alexander said,
snatching up Luminessence and retreating into the corridor with Jataan at his side. Piercing sound nearly brought him to his knees a moment later, leaving only a shrill ringing in his ears. The creatures renewed their attack, skittering three abreast into the corridor toward them.

Alexander
set himself, an arrow zipping past him, killing the creature in the center, only to have another take its place as the corridor began to fill with them. Jataan’s spear transformed into a pike, killing another, then reverted back into a spear. Alexander swept the Thinblade into the nearest two, cleaving them in half, taking a step back, only to kill another three as they scurried over their dead. Jataan killed two more with blindingly fast thrusts of his spear.

“Run to the Sentinel,” Alexander shouted without looking back as he and Jataan gave ground.
Three more came, pushed from behind by a flood of the horrible creatures. He killed one, narrowly avoiding another’s pincers, his future sight guiding his movements and his sword. He let go of thought and gave himself over to the battle, allowing magic, experience, and instinct to guide his hand.

“Cover my flank,” he said to Jataan as he pushed forward into the torrent of monsters. The Thinblade moved in a blur, slashing, cutting
, and killing with each movement. He held his ground, a spear point darting past him every few seconds, stabbing those that attacked from his left side, allowing him to concentrate on slaughtering the seemingly endless flood of creatures pouring toward him.

The broken and dying began to build up at his feet, their black blood flowing out onto the stone floor, making it slick. Alexander gave ground, checking behind him to see that his friends had fallen back to the room with the Sentinel.

“Run!” he shouted again. Jataan ignored him, a trickle of blood running from his ear. Alexander tapped his shoulder with Luminessence and motioned for him to flee.

They reached the room and Abigail loosed an arrow into the corridor. Alexander thought he saw red feathers as the enchanted shaft shot past him in a blur. A second later Magda stepped into the threshold with Cassandra and Lita standing behind her, each placing a hand on her shoulder. The corridor erupted in an explosion of orange-red fire the color of a sunset, filling the entire passage with
flame hot enough to melt steel. The fire washed up against Magda’s shield and rebounded into the corridor, blasting the charred remains of countless creatures back into the large room at the other end.

Alexander watched the power flow from Cassandra and Lita into Magda as she began casting another spell, this one taking more time and drawing greater power before she placed her hand on one wall of the corridor and released her magic. The stone itself rippled like water
, then began to flow into the corridor, filling the passage for twenty feet with stone that looked like hardened lava, sealing it from floor to ceiling.

Chapter 27

Alexander sent his sight through to the other side and saw that the large room lined with pillars was filled with hundreds of the creatures and they were in a frenzy.
When they reached the stone barrier, they began chipping away at it with the points of their pincers. He was alarmed by just how quickly they were able to dig through the solid stone. In less than a minute, they’d eaten through nearly a foot.

Behind them
, the demon roared. Alexander sent his sight deeper into the darkness and found the tentacle demon emerging from the warrens that had presumably been these creatures’ lair. It was nearly healed from the injuries that Luminessence had inflicted. Some of the creatures attacked it, shrieking with such intensity that their sonic attack could be heard through the stone and through Alexander’s temporary deafness.

He snapped back to himself and assessed his friends. Everyone looked a bit dazed, some had blood coming out of their ears. Anja was bleeding from several wounds on her legs.

“Sentinel, hold this room,” he shouted, his voice sounding muffled even to himself, as he strode into the staircase and headed down, Luminessence lighting the way. His friends needed rest and healing, but he dared not stop here. There was no telling how many of the creatures lived beneath the Reishi Keep and he couldn’t risk becoming trapped.

He moved as quickly as he dared, the world sounding muffled and gauzy, each footstep felt more than heard. His leg started to feel stiff and sore, still not quite fully healed. Under normal exertion
, he hardly noticed the pain anymore, but racing down so many stairs reminded him once again.

At the next level
, he stopped and sent his sight back to the barrier that Magda had created. The creatures had already eaten away a few feet of the stone. He was suddenly yanked aside, his sight snapping back to his body as Jataan drove his spear into the face of another of the creatures coming from the entrance to the fifth level.

Cassandra stepped up and filled the room with a jet of flame, the stench of burning chitin filling Alexander’s nostrils. He pressed on, racing dow
nward but choosing each step carefully lest he stumble.

As the entrance to
the sixth level came into view, he sent his sight forward, quickly searching for any hint of danger. Finding none, he continued down. By the time he reached the seventh and lowest level of the staircase, his legs and lungs burned. Anja was bleeding freely and leaning heavily on Jack. Alexander opened the door to his Wizard’s Den and Jack helped her inside. Lita followed.

He closed the door without a second look and sent his sight forward into the seventh level. A shout of warning brought him back before he could do more than discover that the room before them had only one exit, but two archways that were filled with stone.

He looked back up the stairs and saw Jataan kill another of the creatures, but there were many more behind it. Stepping into the fifty-foot-square room, Alexander scanned for threats. Down the corridor, he saw the movement of twisted and unnatural colors, followed by a shriek that would have been more painful if his hearing wasn’t already impaired. More of the creatures were coming from the passage leading out of the chamber.

Magda grabbed him by the shoulder and he heard her speak clear
ly and calmly in his mind.

“Library,” she said, pointing to one of the archways filled with stone.

Alexander nodded and ran to it. As he placed his hand on it, a tingle of magic raced over him and his hand pushed through. With a thought, he opened his Wizard’s Den and urgently motioned his friends inside. Jataan was the last to enter as a number of the creatures converged on Alexander. He slashed three in half before pushing backward through the magical door, stumbling and falling hard, dropping Luminessence.

He staggered to his feet, his breath knocked out of him, half expecting the creatures to flood through the door and renew their attack, but they didn’t come.
He started to breathe a sigh of relief when he noticed movement behind him and his battle sight showed him the coming moments. Even with the magical warning, the attack came too quickly to avoid. A tentacle, black and thin but terribly strong, wrapped itself around him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides. Another coiled around his neck. Both constricted as they lifted him from the ground and turned him to face a creature that looked like a nightmare.

The thing
stood six feet at the shoulder. Its skin was black as pitch, except for dark red stripes radiating down its forelegs. Each of its six feet was clawed like a cat’s, except the claws didn’t look like they retracted. Its head was large with a long snout and its mouth was filled with black needlelike teeth. Six eyes wrapped around the sides of its head, just below two blood-red horns that curled back from its brow. Sprouting from its shoulders were two long tentacles—both of which were currently wrapped around Alexander.

He didn’t hesitate, his blood already hot with battle and fear. With just his wrist, he swept the Thinblade up and through the two tentacles, cleaving them both in a blink
. He fell to the ground, the beast roaring in pain and rage. It leaped, arcing through the air along a trajectory that would bring it down right on top of him. He rolled to the side, but not quite far enough. A clawed foot came down on his left shoulder, tearing deeply into his flesh and pinning him to the ground, hot pain ripping through him.

He
swept the Thinblade into the creature with all of his strength, slicing up through its belly, cutting the thing nearly in two. It toppled to the ground, its jaws still snapping, even as its blood, black and angry, boiled across the floor toward him. Alexander rolled out of the way, scrambling to avoid the growing pool of demon blood that made the stone floor sputter and smoke along the leading edge of the expanding pool.

Regaining h
is feet, he snatched Luminessence from the floor before the blood could reach it and backed away, wincing in pain from the deep gouges in his shoulder. Only then did he see the full scope and grandeur of the room he stood in.

E
venly spaced panels in the twenty-foot ceiling provided soft glowing light. The entrance opened to a space about twenty feet on a side with a magic circle inlaid in gold and silver. A small sitting area with a table and comfortable chairs was just to the right. The walls were two hundred feet on a side. The floor was lined with row after row of bookshelves, all filled to overflowing. Some books screamed of magic, while others simply glowed softly with the telltale colors of enchantment. A path ran straight down the middle of the room, offering easy access to the rows of shelves.

Alexander sent his sight through the room quickly, searching for any other threats, but found none. Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, deliberately calming his pounding heart, he opened his Wizard’s
Den, then sat down heavily on an overstuffed chair in the sitting area.

Jataan was the first out, short spear in hand.

“Lita, Lord Reishi is wounded,” he shouted, scanning the area before checking the demon cleaved nearly in half on the floor.

Lita bustled up to Alexander and frowned at his wound, shaking h
er head and pursing her lips. She laid her hand gently on him and began muttering the words of a spell.

Abigail stepped out of the Wizard’s Den, took one look at the dead demon and gave h
er brother a withering glare. “We could have helped,” she said, too loudly.

Alexander just nodded.

Magda and Cassandra took only a moment to survey the carnage before they smiled like children in a candy store, looking out at the countless magical tomes accumulated over two thousand years of study by the House of Reishi.

“How’s Anja?” Alexander asked without looking up.

“Resting,” Lita said. “She’ll be fine in a few hours … and so will you, provided you agree to lie down and rest.”

He nodded again. Jack offered him a hand which he took gratefully, regaining his feet.

“Stay away from the back wall—it’s trapped,” he said, heading for a cot in his Wizard’s Den.

“
If they told you about a trap, they might have mentioned the demon,” Abigail said, still talking too loudly.

“I didn’t ask about a guardian, and Malachi isn’t one to volunteer information.”

He lay down, closed his eyes and let Lita go to work cleaning his wounds. Before she was finished, he lapsed into a deep sleep. When he woke, his shoulder was stiff and sore, but not as painful as he would have expected. His hearing was also back to normal. He worked his jaw to pop his ears and felt a slight stab of pain, a reminder of the enemy he would have to fight again to escape the Keep.

He got up and went out into the library, stopping to check on Anja
along the way. She was still asleep, breathing deeply. Lita smiled at his concern from the table where she was watching over her patient.

Surveying the library anew,
Alexander noticed the large three-dimensional map table off to the left side of the entrance. With a frown, he went to the side of the table that had a panel of stone set into it at a slight angle. The outline of a handprint was cut into the stone. The table top itself was a detailed model of the Reishi Isle and the surrounding fortress islands.

Alexander placed his hand on the handprint and felt magic wash over him.
Right before his eyes, the features of the Reishi Isle began to morph and change. He watched with rapt attention. Standing on either side of him, Jack and Abigail watched as well.

In the center of the
island was a tiny model of the Keep. When Alexander focused on it, it enlarged to fill the entire map table. But more amazing than that, the broken section of the Keep where Phane had attacked just after Alexander had recovered the Sovereign Stone looked exactly as it did in the present moment.

“Look,” Abigail said, pointing to the wall surrounding the
Keep and the soldiers encamped within.

“Remarkable,” Jack said.

“Huh,” Alexander said.

Suddenly, the scene changed, shifting to a large toroid room just across the entry hall on the seventh level, the warded passage opposite the door to the lib
rary. In the center of the room was a silvery sphere glowing brightly with magic.

“What’s that?” Abigail asked.

“I think it’s the power crystal,” Alexander said. “At least the chamber looks just like the one inside Blackstone.”

“
What’s that around it?” Abigail asked.

“I suspect it’s a stasis field,” Magda said. “It was said that the Reishi
created a spell that would stop time itself.”

“I guess that would protect the crystal without letting it stop spinning,” Alexander said. “Now I just have to figure out how to turn it off.”

“Can you see the rest of the island in detail?” Magda asked.

The table shifted again, showing the entire
isle surrounded by the five fortress islands. He thought of the island that Zuhl was occupying and it filled the table.

“Huh, this is even better than my clairvoyance because I can let you see what I see.”

The top of the island was filled with soldiers, drilling with their weapons in large unit formations. Three of Zuhl’s warships were anchored nearby and a number of drakini flew around the island in pairs. Alexander pushed in, searching through the interior of the fortress. He found Zuhl sitting in a small library near the top level, reading a book that looked very old. He seemed at ease, as if his plans were proceeding as expected.

“I’m going to kill that man … again,” Abigail said.

“If Ixabrax wasn’t in there, I’d consider destroying the fortress island right now.”

“Where do you think he is?” Abigail asked.

“Try deeper inside the fortress,” Cassandra said, “about midway from the top.”

Alexander shifted his view, finding a large cavern in the center of the fortress that served as the birthing chamber for the wyverns. In the center of this chamber slept Ixabrax.

“Makes sense,” Magda said. “The passages are large enough for him to get in and out.”

“And it’s the safest, most secure place in the fortress island,” Cassandra added.

“I wonder what else this map can show us.” Jack said.

Alexander drew the view back to the entire Reishi Isle
again.

“I suspect it’ll show anything within these boundaries.”

“Perhaps a look at Zuhl’s coastal encampment would be helpful,” Jataan offered.

Alexander shifted to the north coast where Zuhl had been landing soldiers. It was a sprawling, somewhat disorganized camp, that held well over a legion. A smaller unit, several
hundred strong, was preparing to leave, lining up along a freshly cut road that wound into the forest in the general direction of the hidden fortress and the Nether Gate.

“He has sufficient force strength to overpower our defenses here,” Jataan said, “yet he doesn’t appear to be interested in the Keep.”

“Probably figures the Nether Gate is the endgame,” Alexander said.

He focused on the mountain concealing the fortress where the Nether Gate was hidden and the scene shifted again, revealing a large force encamped in the area outside the fortress entrance. Their fortifications were still under construction
, and the work to excavate the chamber housing the Nether Gate seemed to be progressing more rapidly than Alexander would have imagined.