Stones Unbound (The Magestone Chronicles Book 1) (28 page)

Thandria stepped forward with Korigan to flank one of the
attackers while some men rushed the other.  The shadow assailant spun quickly
and struck at Korigan, but the man did not flinch and rebuffed his attack with
a tiny flick of his wrist to deflect one of the shortswords the attacker was
wielding.  Thandria stepped in quickly to strike, but her rapier was parried by
the other shortword.  Blades flittered back and forth, flashing in the
torchlight, but neither Thandria nor Korigan were able to land an attack, and took
several cuts from the attacker.

Keyth looked to the battle with the other attacker, to see
more than a handful of soldiers on the ground dead or dying, the attacker a
whirlwind of blades parrying, slicing and slashing down his men.  More soldiers
entered the courtyard with crossbows and seeing what was going on, prepared to
enter the fray.  He saw a gap in the two skirmishes and hurried over to the
crossbowmen.

"Wait for a clean shot then take it.  Even if it's not
quite clean, take it!" he ordered.

"But sir, we might hit our own men!" the young
soldier responded.

"Look at them!  Watch how they're killing our men.  The
men that are fighting those attackers will probably be dead in a few minutes. 
Line up your shot and take it.  You may kill one of ours, but you will save
more if you hit him!"

The men around him nodded and took a knee.  These were heavy
crossbows they were using and had huge recoil.  They took aim at the attacker
fighting the common soldiers.  After an indeterminate time, the battle opened
up for just a second and one of the men fired.  The aim was true, but just at
the last second the shadowy form flicked up his shortsword and deflected the
bolt wide - into the chest of an oncoming soldier.  The soldier stopped in his
tracks, looked down at the bolt, and fell over dead.  The battle streamed on
around him.

"Everyone fire at once!" Keyth ordered

Three twangs sounded around him, and three more bolts
launched at the attacker.  One was again deflected harmlessly to the side,
thankfully missing any of his men.  Another missed completely as the figure
dodged in an impossible contortion, but the last disappeared into the shadow
wrapped form, which grunted and stumbled.  Two more bolts followed, easily
hitting the staggered opponent.  Soldiers moved in to finish him off, though
the attacker managed to kill several more before a sword swing managed to drop
the figure to its knees.  More strikes followed until the figure lay prone on
the ground.

Keyth turned back to watch the battle Thandria and Korigan
were waging with the second assailant.  It seemed pretty even, the two veteran
warriors facing off against the enemy.  In fact, it seemed like Thandria had to
hold herself back a little due to coordination with Korigan.  Each of the two
had numerous cuts, Thandria on her arms and one on her leg, though none seemed
to impair her movement.  Korigan had more, including one on his forehead that
caused blood to drip into his eyes.  A deeper one on his thigh looked to be
impeding his movements.

Korigan had managed to move around to the far side of the
attacker, and was facing Keyth.  He noticed his commander watching, and briefly
saluted with his sword.  Keyth knew he was about to do something stupid.  As
the shadowy attacker lunged, Korigan stepped forward onto the blade, trapping
it in his body, and grabbed the wrist of his attacker, holding him in place. 
That was all the opening Thandria needed, and she stepped forward and plunged
her rapier and her thin dagger into the attacker's back hitting vital organs.

The shadowy figure dropped to the ground - dead, Korigan
with him.

"All men, we are mustering at the central spire around
the control room.  Everyone form groups of ten and make their own way by
different routes." Keyth ordered.  "There are more than two of them. 
So let's find them as we go!"  He had no time to spare to mourn Korigan. 
It would have to wait.

He watched as Thandria walked over to the one she had killed
and began rifling about his body.  She then rolled him over and pulled off the
strange harness with the magestone in the center.  "Could come in handy,
assuming it does what I think it might..."  She shrugged.

"What exactly do you -" he began, but was cut off
by more sounds of battle in a nearby octant.  "Come on men, let's rout out
these intruders!" he yelled again, just realizing that the tolling bells
had stopped in all but the two western towers.

As one, the remaining men - about thirty or so - himself and
Thandria ran to the west, through the still open portcullis.  Obviously, the man
he had sent to have them dropped had not made it.  They found themselves in the
octant that housed the drake stables, and continued through it to find
themselves in the more northern of the western octants.  The one that led to
the magegate room.  Keyth's stomach dropped.

He ordered the men that direction only to find the archway
blocked by two of the shadowy assassins.  The men fired their bows and crossbows,
but the attackers merely stepped back into the protection of the doorway.  But
he could see from where they were standing why.  The magegate had been tipped
flat onto the floor.  Even if they made the control room and the magemirror he
was trying for, there would be no way for any reinforcements to make their way
through to Farad'avor.

"We have to get to the control room now more than ever
- fast." He stated to Thandria.  "We have to get to Nathariel and
make sure he's safe."  Nathariel was one of the two Shilaar stationed on
Farad'avor, for the purposes of magegate travel, to monitor the citadel control
stone, and move the citadel if necessary.  Nathariel thought of it as a form of
punishment, since the citadel had rested in this pass for decades.  Other than
activating the magegate, he spent his days reading.  It was his night to
monitor the control stone.

Thandria looked like she was thinking something through, and
said "Come with me."

"But the stairs are that way!" Keyth responded,
pointing towards the outer tower.  There were no easy routes in this citadel,
assuming the portcullises were down. 

"We're not using the stairs," she replied as she
stepped into the shadows under the arch housing the portcullis.  Keyth followed
her tentatively, confused by her actions.  Once he followed her into the
shadows, she hugged him close and whispered, "Take a deep breath."

"What are you doing?  We don't have time for-"
Suddenly everything went dark for a moment, and then the wrenching pain began
as his muscles began to burn, feeling like he had been twisted and stretched in
ways his body could not cope with.  He opened his eyes to find himself on his
knees, gasping for breath - on top of the wall!

He looked up at Thandria in surprise, seeing her standing
slightly crouched, but as if nothing else had happened to her.  "The first
few times are tough, but eventually you get used to it," she said without
turning to look at him.  She was watching the entrance to the control room.

After several moments Keyth managed to get to his feet, his
legs complaining fiercely, as if it was the day after a ten league march.  He
could still hear sporadic battle, and looked over the ramparts at the men still
trying to get to the magegate room, but still not making any headway. 
Apparently the two shadowy attackers were enough to hold off his soldiers.

He looked at Thandria to notice that she had donned the
harness that attacker had worn.  When she noticed him looking, she said,
"It was easier than carrying it."  She turned back to her observations.

He followed her gaze and saw two more shadows guarding the
door to the control spire.  There were bodies of soldiers scattered all around. 
Looking left and right, he saw more soldiers approaching from some of the other
bridges, converging on the wide walkway around the control spire.  Two of the
groups managed to get to the walkway and fire a round of bolts at the
assailants, but they leapt high, and came down in a controlled descent, one in
the middle of each group.  They struck out like Valkiran asps, over and over
again, and in moments all of Keyth's men were dead.

"We need ideas here Thandria.  Got any?" he asked.

"None that you want to hear," she said with a
little bitterness.

Suddenly a gale swept out of nowhere, and lightning cracked
about the courtyard below, sending soldiers scrambling for cover.  He watched
as most of them made it to the walls or into a door opening, but several got
hit by a bolt, tossing them high through the air to land as a charred corpse,
twitching on the ground.  Shadows began to coalesce in the center of the
courtyard on each side of the wall he and Thandria were standing on.  By the
noise and shouts, he was assuming it was happening all around the citadel.

A small circle of swirling smoke and shadow appeared,
quickly growing into a large two dimensional circle two spans across.  The gale
dropped to a light breeze, pulling in the direction of those swirling circles
of darkness, lifting dust and debris into the air.  The lightning stopped as
the circles stopped increasing in size.

As Keyth was beginning to stand, to see better, Thandria
pulled him down.  "This is about to get much worse, it's time to go."

"What do you mean?" he asked.  Before she could
respond, he heard the yells of men as they appeared from out of each of the
circles.  He watched as Goralonian soldiers streamed from the circles of
darkness in the hundreds.  He watched as his soldiers ran out to meet with them
in a futile attempt to drive them back, but there were too many.

"We have to get to the drake stables!" Thandria
said quietly.  "It's the only way off this rock."

Keyth looked up and saw the drake stables across the nearest
courtyard that was quickly filling up with enemy soldiers.  "Okay, let's
go!"  He stood up and sprinted along the wall, outwards from the center
spire.  Watching over the wall to his right as his soldiers fought the enemy,
trying to bottle them up near the portal.

He flinched suddenly as a ball of fire erupted to his left
amid enemy soldiers, reducing a huge number of them to charred corpses.  Verdagrisha,
the other Shilaar, must have woken and joined the battle.  Keyth looked around
and saw her standing on the outer wall, just past the tower at the end of the
wall they were on.  He shouted at the woman, and waved at her to join them. 
That just about cost him his life as several arrows whizzed by him.  He ducked
low again and continued to run.

They reached the end of the wall near the outer tower, just
above the drake stable doors.  The tower door burst open, three Goralonian
soldiers bursting forth.  Thandria didn't hesitate, stepping forward to meet
them with her rapier and thin dagger.  The soldiers all had heavy broadswords
and wore chainmail.  Two moved forward to attack while the third held back
waiting for room. 

Keyth drew his sword and moved to stand beside Thandria, but
she stopped him with a look.  "I have this," she said, as she slid
into a combat stance.

One of the soldiers charged her, but she side stepped as he
swung his sword down in a vicious arc, and drove her thin dagger into his lower
back near the kidney.  She moved towards the second enemy, parrying his quick
slash with her rapier, driving it out wide, following with a sweep of her
dagger across his throat.  In three seconds two of the soldiers were dead or
dying.  The third, with a shocked look on his face, turned to run and fell
forward on his face.

Stepping out from the tower was Verdagrisha, her dark hair
in a messy bun, her yellow robes rumpled.  She wore a delicate circlet on her
brow that held her magestone glowing a deep blood red.  "Can't let you
have all the fun, can I?" she said as she looked at Thandria with a raised
eyebrow.

"By all means, please join in." Thandria replied.

Several arrows sparked off a magical shield that Verdagrisha
must have cast earlier as they surveyed the scene below.  Most of the Imperial
soldiers under Keyth's command in the courtyard directly in front of the drake
stables had been cut down.  It appeared that the influx of Goralonian soldiers
had trickled down to nothing as the portals were beginning to shrink.  Keyth
was not uplifted though, as at least several hundred of the enemy were in each
courtyard that he could see.

"We need to get down to the drake stables," he
said to the Shilaar, gesturing to the large building below them and twenty
paces away.

"Well then, let's get down there, shall we?" she
replied.  They watched as a contingent of soldiers in the courtyard below
spotted them on the wall and moved towards the tower at the end of the wall,
cutting off that route to the stairs.

"Any ideas?" Keyth said.

"Sure, Thandria said as she stepped up onto the
battlements lining the radial wall.  More arrows bounced off the magical
shield, mere handspans from Thandria.  She held her hand out for Keyth.  He
looked at her questioningly, but he did trust her with his life, as she had proven
several times in the last bell.  He stepped up beside her and she grabbed him
in another rough embrace.

"A distraction if you will?" Keyth directed at the
spell wielder.

"My extreme pleasure," she responded as she began
intoning an incantation.  As she finished, a small glowing orb of light flew
from her hands into the middle of the ranks of soldiers in the center of the
courtyard, and exploded in a huge ball of fire.  Hundreds of soldiers were
immolated, their charred bodies dropping to the ground.  Dozens dropped to the
ground with severe burns as the remainder scattered for cover.

"Will that do?" she inquired.

"That will do." He responded as Thandria threw
them off the wall to plummet the eight spans to the courtyard below.  Halfway
down, Keyth felt his fall slow moderately, though they did land with a jarring
sensation in his knees.  "Huh?" he said.  "Did you know that
would happen?"