The Fifth Vertex (The Sigilord Chronicles) (40 page)

He angled his bird back toward the briene fleet, a cluster of flat black lines floating on the water in the distance.
 

Therren pulled his bird up into formation alongside Goodwyn's craft.
 

"How many?" Therren shouted. Goodwyn replied by holding up three fingers.

Therren held up a single finger, a disappointed look on his face.

A ball of flame shot past them from below, followed by several more. The mages were retaliating, and the briene birds were out of spears.

Goodwyn swerved to the right just as a fireball rushed toward him. He easily avoided two more, then put the bird back on course toward the briene fleet.

Those fireballs are too slow to hit anything
, he thought, but the comfort was short-lived. He looked back to check on Therren and saw his friend's bird spiraling toward the ocean, its wings ablaze.

"Therren!" Goodwyn shouted, banking the bird down and back toward the spot where he knew his friend was going to splash down. Therren jumped out of the bird and landed in the water on his back while the bird broke apart into pieces against the the rough surf.

Goodwyn swung around and flew over Therren, who wasn't moving.

"Therren!" he screamed, then pulled up to come around for another pass.

The battle raged all around him, volleys of fireballs launched by the magical archers on the ships toward the island shore and the briene birds. The Order was fighting a battle on two fronts, and the initial bird attack had decimated their numbers. Whoever had engaged the Order from the island had saved the battle.

As he came around for another pass, Therren splashed and sputtered.
 

He slowed the bird down as much as he could and lowered the talons until they skimmed the ocean.

"Grab the claws!" Goodwyn shouted.

He soared up to and right past Therren. Therren reached out but his timing was off, and he missed the chance. Even flying as slowly as the bird could go, it was still much faster than a sprinting horse.

Goodwyn came around again for another try, this time so slowly the bird barely managed to stay aloft. He knew exactly when Therren would need to raise his hands to be able to grab the talons.

"Wait for it!" he shouted. A moment later, "Now!"

Therren reached up, grabbed the claws, and hung on. Goodwyn pulled the bird up and again aimed it toward the briene fleet, trying to get out of range of the mage fireballs. He reached down and hauled his friend up into the cockpit.

"I was about to drown," Therren said, still coughing up sea water.

"I would never let that happen," Goodwyn said.

"Are we the last ones out?" Therren asked.

Goodwyn turned in his seat, looking back. What he saw terrified him more than the sight of his friend nearly drowning or the dozens of near collisions with fireballs. A wall of water taller than the highest ship mast rolled toward the Order ships. His jaw dropped.

"What?" Therren said, turning to look. "Pull up! Pull us up, now!"

Goodwyn yanked up on the control stick, but the bird wouldn't lift. Black smoke puffed out from under the wings and the little metal needle for fuel pointed to the carving of an empty jar.

"It's almost out of fuel, and it won't go any higher," Goodwyn said.

They looked back in horror as the wall of water swallowed five of the Order's ships, breaking them apart like children's toys. The wave surged toward them.

"Make it go higher!" Therren yelled, also grabbing the control stick. Instead, the bird's nose started to dip toward the water.

"Hold on tight!" Goodwyn pushed Therren down into the empty space near the pedals in the cockpit. He grabbed the rails on the cockpit edges and closed his eyes as the wave hammered into their helpless craft.

30

Urus steadied himself on all fours, looking down at the stone floor. Noise was everywhere and everything made it—the stone, the door, and of course Draegon.
 

How do people deal with this? I can't think with all this noise!
Urus thought.

He looked up to see Draegon inspecting Hugo, running his finger down the long, flat side of the blade, opposite the side with Hugo's name-sign etched into it.

"So how does it feel to be able to hear?" Draegon asked. His voice cracked and sounded like there was something stuck in his throat.
Does everyone sound like this?

"
It hurts. Everything is so…loud," said Urus.

"You will get used to the noise, just as you will get used to the other change I have made to you," Draegon said, cracking a wide, wicked grin.

"What other change?"

"You didn't actually think I believed your nonsense about joining me, did you?" Draegon snapped, his expression changing, his face filling with rage. "Playing me with the sob story of your sad, pathetic childhood so I might believe you would join me freely…for what? So I let my guard down long enough for you to plunge your sword into my gut? Boy, I have not remained alive thousands of years to be fooled by some pathetic little untrained sigilord."

"What did you do to me?" Urus struggled to his feet. The room still seemed to wobble and the way the walls repeated everything he said disturbed him.
 

"I would never risk that you would hand over a power like yours voluntarily. I bound your blood to mine when you let me cure your disability. You submitted to me, which is all I needed to take your power. You are mine now, sigilord. I
own
you."

"Never!" Urus shouted and leapt forward, hoping to strike before the blood mage could summon his power.
 

Draegon held out a hand and Urus stopped in mid-air, frozen in place hovering inches above the ground.
 

"As I said, I own you. Your blood is mine to do with as I please. You will be an endless source of power to me. I could slaughter an entire city and consume all of its blood and still not even come close to the power you have granted me."

"I won't let you do this," Urus mumbled, struggling to open his mouth.

"Really?" said the mage, still smiling wide. He knew he had one and was relishing the victory. He wiggled a finger and, in response, Urus's right arm snapped completely backward, white bone jutting out from his elbow. "Leeching the power from stupid sigilords like you is what I live for. It really is a shame that you're the only one left."

The pain was unbearable. Urus's eyes rolled back into his head and, just as he felt the bliss of unconsciousness take him, his eyes flared wide again, forced to feel every bit of pain.

"I can also control whether you pass out or not," said Draegon. "Don't think for a second that I can't inflict unspeakable pain upon you, for as long as I see fit. Now, let's see about destroying this last vertex, shall we?"

An image flashed into Urus's mind, a single sigil—a spiral with four lines coming out of the center.
Where did that come from?
Urus wondered. He had never seen the symbol before.

Draegon beckoned Urus's helpless body and in response Urus floated toward the center of the room. Blood dripped from his arm and the pain was more than he could bear, yet Draegon kept him conscious. Shock and pain wracked his entire body.

Urus hovered over the coffin, a simple stone box with a forged steel shield adorning the top. It was a kite shield with a riveted reinforced border and etched patterns all along the outside. In the middle of the shield was a single symbol—four opposing triangles that overlapped in the middle, all surrounded by a circle with an inner circle around the triangle points.

It was the Kestian brand for one of the culled.

"That's impossible," he said out loud.
How can this symbol be here? These people died thousands of years before Kest, why is that symbol the same?
Urus thought, his mind racing. Somehow the symbol had survived throughout history, inexplicably coming to be used by the Kestians as a symbol burned into the chests of failed warriors.
 

"What's impossible?" Draegon asked, glancing back and forth between Urus and the sigil on the shield.

Could this be the vertex?
he asked himself. All the other vertices had been big slabs of stone, or made to look like doors. They were carved with inscriptions and writing from top to bottom, some of also appeared in the book he carried.

"Once I force you to cast the destruction sigil, the last ward will be down and we will be free," Draegon said.
 

There has to be a reason for this
, Urus thought.
That symbol, it's not a coincidence that I'm the one that found it. It has to be meant for me
.

"It isn't just meant for me," he said aloud. "That symbol
is
me."

As if in response to the realization, the sigil on the sarcophagus sprang to life, glowing bright blue. Heat filled his chest and the scar from when he had been culled also luminesced, the scar tissue on his skin heating up like it had the day he had been branded. Compared to the pain in his arm, the burning sensation was almost pleasant.

"Stop it! What are you doing?" shouted Draegon. He cast his arm wide, flinging Urus across the room, slamming him into a wall.
 

It was too late. As the light faded from the sigil on the casket, so too did the sigil. The metal shield's surface was now smooth and polished, with no trace of the sigil etching. The culled brand on Urus's chest brightened, burning the symbol into his shirt.

"A blue sigil? That…That's not possible!" Draegon fumed, so enraged that spit frothed from his mouth, his hands twitching.

What's so important about blue sigils?
Urus wondered.

He didn't know how, but Urus knew that he and the fifth vertex had been joined somehow. It had become an inseparable part of him. The scar tissue on his chest, the symbol of a culled unworthy of being a Kestian warrior, now felt as though it weighed more than a suit of plate armor.

He laughed, which made him cough blood up against the wall. "I guess if you want the fifth vertex destroyed, you're going to have to kill me. It's a shame you have to give up using me as your sigilord marionette to do it."

"No!" Draegon shouted. "This isn't possible, you can't have used your power, your body is under my control! How did you do that to the vertex?"
 

The blood mage stalked across the room, his face flush with anger, fists clenched. Urus immediately recognized the look in the man's eyes. Draegon was furious, and he was about to take his anger out on Urus. Urus mentally braced himself for what he knew was coming, unable to brace himself physically.

"I may have to kill you, but I don't have to do it quickly. I will break the final ward, but not before I take my time slowly breaking you!" Draegon leapt into the air and landed on Urus's chest. A flurry of furious stomps on Urus's stomach followed. Unsatisfied with the pain he was causing, Draegon got down on his knees and punched Urus in the face, over and over until Urus could barely see. He felt his jaw detach from his skull, dangling loose, tethered only by skin and muscle.

With what he was sure was his last breath, Urus looked toward his sword and whispered through broken teeth, "Save me, Hugo."

Urus endured a few more punches to the face and chest, then the blows stopped. A strange sound filled the room as a wind blew against his face. He struggled to open his eyes, only managing to get one open. Through puss and blood, Urus managed to get a glimpse of the action.

Hugo—the ghostly blue phantasm whom he had once summoned to kill his own father—stood beside him, holding the screaming blood mage aloft in its smokey blue grasp.

Draegon bled from fresh cuts and, as each new drop of blood touched the air, it floated up off his skin, formed into the shape of a spear, caught fire, and shot straight toward Hugo. The blood-fire passed through the creature as though he weren't there. Unaffected by Draegon's magic, Hugo countered each attack with a punch to the mage's face.

The blood mage began an incantation, despite his throat being slowly crushed by Hugo. Draegon's control of Urus's actions lapsed as he focused solely on the spell that would likely banish Hugo.
 

Unable to summon the physical strength to attack the mage, Urus remembered the image of the destruction sigil that flashed through his mind, the one Draegon was going to force him to cast to destroy the fifth vertex.

With his one good hand, Urus urged the power through his fingers as he etched the sigil in the air.
How would a blood mage know about a sigil like this?
Urus wondered, but put the thought out of his mind so he could stay focused on his sigilcraft. He still didn't know the extent of the dangerous side-effects of casting a sigil incorrectly.

Hugo vanished suddenly and Draegon dropped to the floor. The mage whirled, flashing a bloody, victorious grin at Urus. With a dismissive wave of his hand he flung Urus back against the far wall.

But it was too late. Urus had finished casting the sigil, a spiral with a decreasing radius with four lines drawn into the center. It hung in the air, solid and bright, glowing blue.