The Sorcerer (37 page)

Takari nocked the arrow and raised her bow, but turned to Galaeron before firing and tipped her head back, lips slightly parted.

“In case this one doesn’t work either—”

“It will work.”

Galaeron took another arrow from her quiver, and Takari rolled her eyes.

“Same old Galaeron.” There was genuine disgust in her voice. “Won’t ever give a wood elf a chance.”

She set the tip of her arrow on the closest phaerimm, which was no more than twenty paces away, and pulled the bowstring back.

Galaeron laid his free hand over her draw arm.

Takari turned, her expression one of irritation.

“I do love you,” Galaeron said.

Takari’s jaw dropped. Had Galaeron not tightened his grasp, she would have let slip the arrow.

“You’re only saying that because we’re about to die.”

Galaeron shook his head, then looked back to the approaching phaerimm. They had closed to fifteen paces. He cast another piercing spell on the arrow in his hand.

Takari ignored the thornbacks and continued to study Galaeron.

“You always did have a lousy sense of timing,” she said, “but I’ll take what I can get”

She loosed her arrow, and the shaft took its target square in the body. Galaeron’s shadow magic allowed it to penetrate the phaerimm’s missile guard and sink to the fletching. The thornback squalled in pain and teleported away, though not so quickly that Galaeron failed to notice the black disintegration crater forming around Takari’s arrow.

The five survivors attacked with a veritable spell-storm of flames, meteor stones, lightning, and half a dozen other kinds of magic death. As the spells entered the shadow where Galaeron and Takari were hiding, they were tunneled through a shadow door that opened on the opposite side of the courtyard, and the phaerimm were blasted from behind by their own spells.

Two died instantly, and two more teleported away to safety. Galaeron handed the death arrow to Takari. She nocked and loosed it into the remaining thornback even as it flicked its fingers at their hiding place. Galaeron’s dimensional door shimmered once, then crackled out of existence. By then, the phaerimm who had dispelled it lay motionless on the ground, a black hole expanding around the arrow buried in its head-disk.

Galaeron grabbed Takari’s hand and guided it to his belt

“Hold tight,” he said.

“You can be sure.”

He turned and raced into the deep shadows. Though his power was great enough to keep at bay most of the lesser creatures they were likely to stumble across on such a short journey through the Deep, Galaeron was careful to keep moving and moving fast. Shadow-touched though she was, Takari was still enough a creature of the Weave that Galaeron could feel her radiating heat against his back … warm and distinct… and if he could feel it, so could the shapeless

mouths that preyed on the hapless visitors who wandered too far from the Fringe.

They had traveled about a dozen heartbeats when a terrible gurgling growl erupted in the distance behind them. Takari stopped, her hand pulling on Galaeron’s belt as she turned to look over her shoulder.

“Keep moving!” he warned. “Or it’ll be us next”

“What is it?” Takari asked.

“Its guarding our back trail,” Galaeron answered. That’s s all that matters.”

A lightning bolt crackled in the distance and fell silent There was no flicker of light, not even a faint one, and Galaeron knew that had they been looking straight into the bolt, they would have seen nothing. So deep in shadow, light vanished almost at its source. The shadow monster growled again, then died with an agonized wall.

“That can’t be good,” Takari said.

“We can do our own dirty work,” Galaeron said. “The attack will slow them down. The sound will draw things that even phaerimm don’t want to run into.”

“What about us?” Takari asked.

“We don’t want to run into those things either.” Galaeron pulled her toward the Fringe and added, “That’s s why we went first.”

Once they were out of the Shadow Deep, Galaeron came up behind the tree where Manynests had alighted. He stopped in the Fringe. Though they could not see into the courtyard from the their vantage point, any phaerimm still lurking in the area were less likely to come poking around in the shadows. He cast his piercing magic on another death arrow and returned it to Takari.

“Use that only if a phaerimm comes for us,” he said. “Let me borrow the darksword.”

Takari unhooked her scabbard, but did not hand it over.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To surprise our pursuers,” he said, drawing the darksword

from the scabbard. “This shouldn’t be difficult, but you know what to do if I don’t come back.”

Though the hilt began to chill his hand, the cold no longer caused him any discomfort Like Melegaunt, Telamont, and Hadrhune, he was part of the shadow.

“Yeah,” Takari said. “Die.”

“I meant check the leader,” Galaeron said. “Be certain if s dead.”

Takari shook her head in mock despair and said, “I know what you meant, Galaeron.” She started to turn away, then changed her mind and grabbed Galaeron behind the neck. “First, you prove you weren’t lying. First you prove you love me.”

She pulled his head close to hers and kissed him long and hard, a kiss born of two decades of longing, a kiss that would no longer be denied. Though he knew their pursuers would be coming up fast, Galaeron let himself melt into it, let his spirit and his lips and his tongue touch Takari’s as he never had before. They joined as only elves can join, and Galaeron felt what she had always known, that they were spirit mates, that they belonged together no matter what the heartache and loneliness and sorrow brought down on them by their destiny. Nothing remained to keep them apart— nothing except their human lovers.

Takari sensed this as soon as Galaeron did, of course, and she was the first to pull away.

Galaeron would not make her ask.

“I still love her,” he said.

He was not admitting anything Takari did not already know, but he had to say it aloud. He owed her that much— and himself, too.

“I’d have to be blind to miss that,” Takari said. She smiled—a little sadly—and glanced down at her belly. “I have a few entanglements of my own.”

Galaeron kissed her again—briefly—and slipped back into the shadows. Once he was alone, he had no fear whatsoever

of the unseen creatures who haunted the Deep. He was as much a part of the darkness as they were, and anything powerful enough to find and stalk him would also be intelligent enough to sense the power he bore. This wisdom was also born of the gift Melegaunt had passed to him, as was his knowledge of the phaerimm, and the ways of the Shadow Deep, and the lore of shadow spells, and who knew how many other dark Shadovar secrets. As far as Galaeron could tell, the only part of Melegaunt’s experience that the old archwizard had failed to pass along was what to do with so much power and how to wield it wisely. Melegaunt likely had never known or—if he had—cared.

Twenty steps later, the Fringe lay well out of sight. Galaeron stopped to wait. There was no need to hide, nor anyplace to do so had he wished. In the Deep, there was only shadow, and in the hands of those who knew the art, shadow could be shaped into whatever was needed or desired.

Soon, Galaeron sensed a fiery presence approaching along the path he and Takari had taken. Though it was impossible for an elf—or any creature enclosed within a skin—to perceive shape, he felt by the intensity of the thing’s heat and its apparent size that it was a phaerimm. He waited long enough to be certain only one creature remained, then he raised a wall of shadow in front of himself and waited.

While far from lost, the phaerimm was obviously frightened. In the vain hope of keeping shadow monsters at bay, it was talking softly to itself, using its powers to stir the shadows into a constant whirl. The thornback also had half a dozen spells prepped and ready to cast—Galaeron could feel the scorching nodules of Weave magic hanging from its body. He allowed it to pass, then dismissed his shadow wall and stepped out behind it

The nervous phaerimm reacted quickly, encasing itself in a cocoon of fire and launching a volley of magic darts. The blow caught Galaeron in the shoulder and sent him tumbling back head over heels—not a safe way to travel in the Shadow

Deep, even for him. A pair of jaws opened beneath him and tore into his calf, trying to drag him down into some hidden lair. He brought his darksword down alongside his leg. It felt like cutting air, but the mouth opened and he pulled free.

The phaerimm was faring worse than he. Galaeron could feel it a dozen paces ahead and off to one side, stirring the silent shadows into a froth as a pack of shadow creatures— some flying and some slithering—manifested all around and pulled in six directions at once. The thornback was defending itself as well as it was able, but its teleport spells would not work and its other spells were ineffective. No matter how many creatures it destroyed, more formed to take their places. No matter what kind of armor it covered itself in, their shadow fangs and dark claws tore through. An arm came off, then the tail, and finally a long strip of thorny hide.

Galaeron would have left the creature to its fate, save that Melegaunt’s wisdom had taught him better than to count a phaerimm dead until it lay disemboweled and burning on the ground. Moving back toward the tree where he had left Takari to avoid attracting a pack of his own attackers, he prepared a volley of shadow arrows and sent them hurling into his entrapped foe.

The impact caught both victim and tormentors by surprise. The phaerimm literally came apart, pieces flying in the dozen different directions that it was being pulled. The angry shadow creatures—those that had not been pinned in place by a dark arrow—melted back into the darkness and came undulating in Galaeron’s direction.

Galaeron opened a shadow door and stepped through, emerging into the relatively safe world of the Fringe. For a moment, he was lost to the afterdaze and did not know where he was. Then, as the flash and flicker of war magic began to filter up through the trees from the slope below, he recalled that he was in the middle of a battle and that it was his job and Takari’s to make certain the statue of Hanali Celanil was free of phaerimm when Khelben and the Chosen arrived

with the High Mages, and that Takari should have been waiting for him right there in the Fringe.

“Takari?”

Galaeron glanced around the Fringe, finding nothing, and limped out onto the hillside. He was dizzy and sore, his arm so weak he could barely lift it.

‘Takari!”

The only answer came in the form of a series of excited peeps from the tree above his head. Galaeron raised his chin and found the familiar white face of Manynests peering down at him.

“She did what?” Galaeron gasped. Takari was not the type to leave her post, not even when she was shadow touched. “That can’t be right”

Manynests answered with a sharp chirp, then pointed his beak down the hill.

“What about the leader?”

Manynests chirped a question.

“The phaerimm leader,” Galaeron said. “The one you dropped the barb on.”

The finch peeped angrily.

“All right, the one you attacked” Galaeron said. “What did she do about that phaerimm?”

The bird’s answer caused Galaeron to limp around the tree as fast as he could move. There were no phaerimm in the courtyard surrounding the statue—at least at first glance—and there was nothing where the leader should have been, save for a puddle of steaming black blood.

“She let it go!” Galaeron cried. “Takari left her post!”

Manynests dropped out of the tree. He landed on one of the darts still protruding from Galaeron’s shoulder. He twilled a long question, then cocked his head and looked down the hill toward the battle.

“No,” Galaeron growled. “I really don’t think Kuhl needed her help.”

Whether the caustic taste in her mouth was ash or fear, Keya Nihmedu could not say. She knew only that her tongue had gone as dry as a flame, that it had become impossible to tell the shuddering of the ground from her own trembling, and that the child in her belly would be lucky to see the world with its own eyes. Burning bluetops were crashing all around her, horse-sized boulders were tumbling down the slope in a ceaseless cascade, and the air was hot enough to bake acorns. The Cold Hand’s objective had sounded simple enough when Galaeron explained it back under the Floating Gardens, but she was hoping he had a backup plan.

Crawling on her belly, Keya crept along beneath the upper slope of the trail cut to where Vala was taking shelter with Kuhl and Burlen. Unlike her

elves, who were either lying flat on their bellies keeping a watch up the slope for tumbling boulders or blindly arcing arrows up in the general direction of the enemy, the Vaasans were sitting with their backs to the battle. They were sharing sticks of jerked thkaerth meat and laughing and shoving each other in the shoulder, though they had made concession enough to the fighting to remove their swords from their scabbards and leave them lying at their sides within easy reach.

As Keya approached, Vala removed a stick of dried meat from their rations bag and offered it to her.

“No, thank you,” Keya shouted to make herself heard over the battle roar. “I don’t have much stomach for thkaerth lately.”

Though she hoped the Vaasans would think this was because of her pregnancy, the truth was she simply could no longer stand the sight of cooked meat; it reminded her too much of the burned bodies that lay scattered and unburied throughout all of Evereska. Trying to look as unconcerned as the Vaasans, she drew herself up beside Vala and removed her sword from its scabbard.

“What do you think?” Keya asked. “Concentrate our spellcasters and try to mount a breakthrough?”

Vala replied, That would only make them easy pickings for the phaerimm.”

“What phaerimm?” Takari asked. “Manynests didn’t say anything about phaerimm.”

“Manynests is a bird. What he can’t see doesn’t exist for him. But they have one.” Vala jerked her thumb over her shoulder and said, “Up there.”