The Legend of Asahiel: Book 02 - The Obsidian Key (22 page)

As if their silence marked a grim victory, Soric snorted and walked away, coming to a stop on the other side of the pedestal. There he peered down at
a disc-shaped tablet Torin hadn’t noticed before. With a crooked finger, he began tracing spherical patterns upon its stone surface. Suddenly, the circle beneath Torin started to vent, trailers of mist wafting from its furrows.

At the same time, the air within the chamber began to hum and crackle, alive with mystical energy. Torin’s gaze flicked to Talyzar, to Autumn, to Raven—all of whom appeared to be at the mercy of the wizard.

“And now, my brother, we see to your fate.”

K
ELL COUGHED, SPEWING SEAWATER
from his lungs. The salty fluid tasted like bile and burned like acid, but then air—wondrous air—filled his chest once more. He sucked it down in ragged gulps, while a powerful hand slapped his back in encouragement.

“Spit it out, mate. There’s a good lad.”

Kell reached up to ward off the enthusiastic pounding, which sent waves of agony through a stinging shoulder. He glanced about, his eyes slowly regaining focus. He was in a skiff—not that stolen from the wizard’s harbor, but one of those belonging to the
Raven’s Squall
.

“Welcome back, my friend,” said another of his mates, at whom he could only manage to stare.

“Boy doesn’t know head from tail,” replied a third, and a snicker passed through the boat.

“Cap’n!” Kell wheezed, clutching at the bolt lodged in his shoulder. “Black Spar! They need help.”

“Settle down, mate. Let’s catch your breath first.”

But it was all coming back now. Amid painful coughs and the bucking of their little vessel on the choppy waves, Kell righted himself. “We’ve got to get to the
Squall
. Raven’s orders.”

“She’s a mite busy just now, mate. Take a look.”

Kell squinted along the line of the other’s outstretched arm. The longboats that had pursued him were rowing desperately toward shore, seeking the shelter of the reef. Closing fast was the
Squall,
her deck firing away with ballistae and catapults. Though trapped at the edge of the shoal, she was not letting them get away.

The half-drowned pirate found his smile as the first of the boats was struck by an iron ball that bit off its stern and launched the mercenary in its prow screaming into the air. While pulling frantically away from its doomed comrade, another of the enemy boats was seized by a wave and dashed against a coastal outcrop, where it crumbled into splinters.

The last looked for a moment like it might actually get away, but then a volley of spears caught its oarsmen through the chest and stomach. It carried on, dead men aboard, steered by the sea.

As her firing ceased, the
Squall
heaved to, waiting for her longboats to return. Kell turned to Brack, the burly boatswain who had slapped the breath back into his lungs, and shared with him a roguish grin.

“Hurry, mate,” he said through chattering teeth. “We’ve a bigger fish to reel in.”

“Yeah?” Brack asked. “What might that be?”

“One of the largest carracks I ever saw, nested in the wizard’s harbor, captained by one Madrach.”

Brack’s grin vanished. The man had lost his favorite tooth and three fingers from his left hand during Madrach’s attempted mutiny four years earlier. To Kell’s knowledge, not a day had since passed in which he had not grumbled about a chance to even the score.

“Captain gave us permission to take him down,” he added.

“You heard the man!” Brack roared to his oarsmen. “Back to the
Squall
! Faster!”

Kell shivered as the wind whipped through his soaked body. Brack tossed him a blanket of coarse wool, fetched from the storage locker beneath his bench seat. Clutching its folds about his neck in a blue-fingered fist, Kell sat facing out over the prow. Perhaps he should have lied to save his own skin—told them he was the last and urged them away with due haste. The
Squall
was still hurting from her fight a week ago, and Madrach’s ship posed a much more lethal challenge than a handful of longboats. He hadn’t gone through all that he had just so narrowly survived to plunge headlong into a serpent’s hollow.

Then again, he hadn’t come so far in his duty only to fail his beleaguered mates now.

The winds blew and the boat rocked, and Kell hoped he was not already too late.

“I
KNEW EARLY ON,”
Soric said, “what was to become of you.”

Torin was only half listening. Whatever his brother had planned for him, he wanted no part of it. His mind raced, trying to come up with something, anything, to extricate himself from this before it was too late. But strive as he might, dipping over and again into his well of ideas, the bucket kept coming back empty.

The wizard droned on, leaning upon his lectern like a magistrate passing sentence. “Almost from the beginning, when I learned of my mother’s betrayal and her plans for you. I knew it would be something special, a response worthy of the risk and planning she underwent to prepare you for taking my role.

“As if to erase me,” he snarled. “Like some failed experiment.”

His only hope, Torin decided, was to reason with the wizard somehow. He couldn’t tell if the man was gloating or venting. Either way, it seemed clear that what he truly wished for was some form of acknowledgment—an admission of guilt, perhaps. Otherwise, there would have been no need for such theatrics.

“I, too, was betrayed,” Torin blurted. “Lied to from the beginning. The crimes of which you speak—we are victims, one and the same.”

Soric scowled. “Dare you compare your idyllic village to the bowels of a slave ship? The embrace of a foster father to the whips of those who barter in human flesh?”

Torin shrank from those flashing eyes, down into the runner’s stance forced by his foot being buried in the stone floor. The mist from the circle swirled higher, brushing at his ears.

“The same? Hardly, my brother. Though you shall taste soon enough what it means to be tormented, made outcast, while your world goes on without you. While those who knew you speak your name only in guarded whispers, as if it were better had you never been born. You would usurp my existence? Then let you suffer for it, as I have. And let us see if you prove strong enough, as I did, to return.”

There were whispers in fact now, a voiceless susurration rising out of the mists, swirling at the edge of the circle—like the wind through the forest in the moments before a storm.

“Would you know how it happened?” Soric taunted. “How I escaped our father’s decree? Fate would not have it that I live my life as a slave. I knew that much even while being led away in shackles—Stay where you are, assassin.”

Torin’s gaze flew to the doorway, where Xarius Talyzar had eased across the threshold and into the chamber. Although the wizard had not even glanced in his direction, the assassin stopped in his tracks, pinned in place by his master’s outstretched hand.

“But destiny has a way of testing us,” Soric continued, “of preparing us for what is to come. So I realized when the storm overtook us, and I washed ashore this lost isle. So I learned when I crawled through the depths of this keep to discover the crypt of those who had built it, those who had conducted their study of magic within.

“They were gone, but their treasure—and their secrets—remained. Secrets I would one day reintroduce to this world. For years I labored just to interpret the language in which the knowledge was recorded. After that came the pain, of a kind you cannot comprehend, as I made their findings my own and experimented with my newfound power. It shaped me as much as I shaped it. But in the end, it was the magic that saved me, that made possible my rebirth.”

It was becoming more difficult to hear, let alone focus on, the wizard’s words. The whispers had given way to low, sinister growls, and the thickening mist had begun to spin more rapidly. He looked to Raven, slumped now against his altar—whether alive or dead, Torin couldn’t tell. Autumn was still alert, but was focused upon Soric, as if it were her attention alone that kept him talking. Perhaps it was, Torin thought, for the wizard was speaking to her as much as to him, almost as if caught in some sort of trance. If only he could figure out what all this time might buy him.

“Strange, the truth of magic,” Soric said, his yellow gaze clouding. “For it is no great secret, really. We are, each of us, fashioned from the same universal energies. Such energy can be broken into separate spheres, each a state of being, through which man can attune himself to the natural flow of the universe and thereby manipulate its component forces.”

He closed his eyes, drawing a deep breath. When he opened them again, he stared directly at Torin, like a tutor addressing a difficult student.

“Energy follows thought. To practice magic, one must imagine it, feel it, make it real in his own mind. Focus hard enough, and that which the wielder desires will become manifest. In the days when magic was strong, some did so with words or tunes, some with artifacts or charms, some with gestures or an absolute stillness of form. All are trappings, a means by which to draw and aim one’s focus in order to cast the desired manipulation of energy.”

Torin had heard enough. The growls had given way to screams, a cacophony of agonized wails. The mist had become a vortex beneath him, completely obscuring the circle at his feet. Its winds whipped about him, scratching his flesh with dust and grit. Atop it all, he had to endure this tirade from his brother, like something out of a poorly conceived mummer’s tale.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” he shouted over the mounting gale.

The wizard smiled. “All? Dear brother, I might as well give you a blade
and tell you to put the sharp end in my belly. There’s a bit more to it than that, is there not?”

“Why don’t we find out?” Torin snapped, his eyes falling again to the Sword box, so painfully close to his grasp.

His brother’s smile vanished. “I tell you this so you know, brother, that your fate is nothing more, and nothing less, than what I demand. A spell I have been perfecting ever since I returned to this keep. A banishment, like that decreed for me. Only, I send you not to sea in the belly of a ship, but into the Great Maelstrom, that churning tempest from which all worlds are born. Within its fiery winds, you will be stripped of your mortal shell, but your essence will remain, with an eternal understanding of your punishment and a perfect recollection of he who cast you hither. Pain, my brother, is all that shall stand between you and oblivion.”

In response, Autumn’s voice carried above the shrieking tumult. “A dangerous game, wizard. To give vent to the Maelstrom is to open a rift not easily contained.”

The words were lost on Torin. He had never heard of this Great Maelstrom. An old-world mythology, perhaps, pagan in its roots, from before the enlightened age of the Ceilhigh. Even if it were true, as this vortex might suggest, he was focused solely on what he knew: that if he did not soon find a way to the Sword, he would not be long for this earth.

“The Sword!” he blurted. “It can still be yours!”

Soric wrested his gaze from Autumn and fixed it on Torin. “Do you think to bait me, brother? The energy is in motion. You cannot stop it.”

“But
you
can,” Torin said. “And you will, if you wish to lay claim to the true Sword of Asahiel.”

The look the wizard gave him fell somewhere between fury and amusement. “Are you telling me, then, that the weapon I saw is not in this box?” He stepped around to the other side of the pedestal and lifted the container from its perch.

“Look for yourself,” Torin urged, clutching a final shield of hope.

The wizard scowled in warning, but what more might the man possibly do to him? Even so, Torin held his breath as Soric slid aside the latch and opened the box.

Revealing, as Raven had claimed, the ordinary broadsword within.

Fury was the clear winner now, flashing across the wizard’s face amid a terrific flickering of shadows cast by the whirling mists. “What trickery is this?”

“Release these prisoners,” Torin said, nodding toward Raven and Autumn, “and perhaps I’ll tell you what I did with the real Sword.”

Soric seemed on the verge of erupting, but, with an obvious effort, regained control of his seething emotions. “It matters not,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “A trophy, and little more. Like all else to which you’ve laid claim, the Sword was never yours to begin with. It cannot save you now.”

Torin’s feeble shield shattered and fell away.

“A look, perhaps?” Talyzar suggested.

Torin wasn’t even certain he’d heard the man, but Soric snapped a hard gaze upon the other.

“Know you something of this?” the wizard demanded. “As I recall, it was you who brought me the blade.”

The assassin shook his head. “A suspicion. If I may?”

Soric glared at his servant, then at Torin, then back and forth between the two, as if attempting to discern some form of subterfuge. Torin, meanwhile, could only frown uncertainly. If Talyzar was working a ploy, it didn’t include him.

Finally, the wizard held out the box, and the assassin came forward. Under his master’s watchful eye, Talyzar closed the lid and began feeling around the outside with one hand. Again Torin held his breath, wondering what the assassin was up to.

After a moment of inspection, Talyzar froze, the searching hand positioned near the bottom of the box. He tilted the box in presentation, then opened the lid.

The Sword of Asahiel, along with the Pendant, gleamed red in the darkness.

“Marvelous,” Soric crowed. He turned to Torin and his smile became cruel. “Although what I am about to show you is no illusion.”

Torin studied the assassin. Had Talyzar known, or simply figured it out? But of course he knew, Torin fumed. He’d been spying on them the entire time, betraying him to the wizard more than once already. Why should this be any different?

“Step back, my shadow,” the wizard bade his servant. “You’ll not want to stand too close.”

Talyzar followed him around to the other side of the pedestal, leaving Torin alone within his circle. It was like staring through glass at an inverted funnel cloud, which waited to drag him in.

“Give my regards to the Great Fiend,” Soric said, “if ever you find the mercy of the Abyss.”

He raised his palms out wide, then slapped them together. The noise they made was like a thunderclap, and the roaring wind shrilled suddenly louder.

Then it happened. One moment, the wizard was closing his eyes, chin lowering as he muttered some sort of incantation. The earth shuddered, and Torin glanced at the ground beneath him. When he looked up again, the wizard’s mouth was agape, his gaze fixed and staring.

The tip of the Crimson Sword extended from his chest.

Torin could barely see, his eyes squeezed tight against the clawing winds. But he knew the telltale glow of the Sword, could almost see the flames that licked along the part of the blade that was stuck in his brother’s body, illuminating the edges of the wound. Those within the tip shone brightly.

Soric slowly turned, and the blade turned with him, so that the hilt was now in Torin’s view. Beyond stood Talyzar, the box tossed aside, a pair of sabers at the ready.

“Traitor,” the wizard croaked, choking on a mouthful of blood.

The assassin stared back coldly. “We had a bargain.”

“You think you can kill me?”

“I already have,” Talyzar assured him, eyes narrowing like those of a viper.

But it was Soric who showed a viper’s speed, lashing out with one hand to seize the assassin by the throat. Talyzar put one blade in the wizard’s gut, while the other hacked at the arm that grabbed him. But neither loosened the spellcaster’s inhuman grip. The assassin’s eyes bulged as Soric shook him like a child’s doll, breaking his hold on his blades.

A great fissure opened suddenly, cracking the chamber down its center. An astonished Torin found his leg released by the earth, and he flung himself to one side as the entire vortex shifted away from him with a deafening rumble. Like shears through wool, it carved a path through the pedestal that separated him from the unexpected combatants, causing its sides to split and crumble away.

Soric pulled Talyzar’s body close as the funnel settled under them. “For an eternity shall I repay your treachery.”

The invisible barrier shattered, and the storm was upon them. Torin was scarcely able to overcome his shock, but did so to lunge after the Sword. He could feel the winds engulf him. But when he clutched the gleaming hilt protruding from his brother’s back, and the Sword’s warmth swept through him, their tug slackened. After yanking the blade free, he tottered upon a raging precipice as the vortex sucked and swirled, stripping cloth and armor and flesh from the bones of those who vanished within.

But the storm did not disappear with the one to unleash it; rather, it sent forth lightning streams that rent the earth and widened at the edges, the threads of a great web that devoured all in a void of whirring darkness. Clinging to the Sword, Torin found himself trapped on all sides, with that darkness closing in.

Then a scream pierced the tumult. Autumn. Still alive, doubtless horrified by what she saw.

But in the next few heartbeats, the storm seemed to run out of breath and collapse under its own weight. Inch by inch, the earth reclaimed its hold, like water rushing toward low ground. The black threads withdrew; the snaking rifts closed. In a moment, the maelstrom had drained into a tiny hole at the center of where Soric and Talyzar had stood, then evaporated in a puff of mist. All that remained was the quaking and rolling of the mountain beneath Torin’s feet. Finally that, too, ceased.

When it was over, Torin blinked in stunned disbelief. A few of the braziers remained, shedding meager light over what looked like a charred landscape, with the last trailers of mist drifting upward from a floor of black stone. His ears rang in the sudden stillness.

“Torin.”

He spun at the sound, alarmed by the weakness in the voice. Autumn, once again, draped upon the head of her altar.

His bounding steps carried him quickly to her side. He set down the Sword,
and, with both hands, heaved upward upon the head of the altar the way he’d seen Soric raise the lid of Raven’s stocks.

It wouldn’t budge.

“Autumn,” he said, picking up the Sword. “Autumn, I’m going to cut you free. Will you trust me?”

She peered up at him with a half-formed smile. Even now, her eyes sparkled.