Changing Of The Guard (Book 6) (9 page)

Two snakes, huge and bulbous, raised their hooded heads and spit vile globs of blackness at Garrick. The poison sizzled as it flew through the air. Garrick reached out with raw magic, grabbed zombies, and threw them into the poison’s path, ducking under clouds of ash that formed as they were struck.

Garrick slashed his way farther across the field in a battlefield ballet, weaving, spinning, and ducking. Sweat poured from his aching body. He no longer thought. There was only him, only his enemies, and only the sword that seemed tied to him like a brother.

The snakes closed in, and one whipped its tail at Garrick.

He leapt away and jammed his blade into the beast’s mouth. The other was behind him, and took advantage of the moment to close its jaws over Garrick’s chest, its ichor covered fangs sliding past his rib. It raised its head and screamed with anger as it shook him.

Garrick stared into its dead, black eye, and poured life force into the blade as he raked the weapon over the snake’s head.

Its body gave a spasm, and he poured more fire into this new wound, rending it deeply, then splitting it in two. The reptile faded and fell dead to the ground, dropping Garrick into a free fall. He twisted, barely able to get his good leg under him before he hit the ground.

More zombies pressed in.

Alistair was nearby now. Close.

Garrick stood and fought with a mindless sense of survival. He forgot about Will or Ettril. He forgot about the Freeborn, forgot about Darien, Reynard, or Sunathri. For that moment there was no future. No past. Only now, and only here, and there were only blackened bodies that stung with deadly cold, and a weapon that pulverized his opponent if he could just get it between them.

Alistair chanted a steady stream of magic. His skin hung from his face in limpid pools of decay. A hole in his jaw showed three blackened teeth, and the pupils of his eyes glowed an unreal green.

Garrick’s life force flowed as he fought his way through the mass of Alistair’s zombie army.

Then he was on the dais with his past master.

He swung his sword of pure life force to meet Alistair’s staff. They crashed in a shower of eternally blue sparks, and the staff splintered like driftwood.

The mass of black creatures paused.

Garrick’s arm felt dead.

Alistair’s expression became filled with hatred. A grated whisper leaked from his rotted mouth.

Garrick recognized that sound.

Alistair was focusing on magic, verbalizing distantly memorized favorites from the time when he was Garrick’s superior, teaching again. Alistair was always teaching.

Garrick transferred his sword to his good hand, searching Alistair’s eyes for something that looked familiar, but seeing nothing beyond blackness and pain.

Screaming, Garrick buried the blade in Alistair’s chest.

He pushed life force into the hilt, using the weapon to inject it into Alistair, flooding him in a single release of raw anger that had built since the day his superior had been taken from him.

The blast was immense.

A ball of white fire tossed Garrick backward.

Maybe he screamed again, but any sound he made was dwarfed by the explosion that filled all space and all time.

Then everything was silent.

He lay on his back, trying without success to rise up. He was spent. Done for.

Finally, sound came to him, a wind moaned its way through buildings that towered above. He had to find his sword. He had to find Alistair. He had to find Will.

Will?

Who was Will?

Finally, he rolled to one side, and his fine hair fell over his face like a cobweb. He tried to blow it away, tried to swipe at it with his hand, but nothing moved like it should.

Then, slowly, everything faded to black.

Chapter 7

A sensation of movement came over Ettril Dor-Entfar.

It was Garrick, he realized, the wrinkle Garrick made in the fabric of this little plane upon his arrival in Nestafar.

He sensed the intensity of the battle between Garrick and Alistair.

He felt the web of the plane split with each spell casting, felt the zombies’ hunger—it was a hunger that was unsurprising in its desperation given that he, Ettril Dor-Entfar, had already absorbed every bit of life force on the plane. The creatures would ache forever, but this was of little consequence to him. He felt Garrick’s triumph over the snakes, his sense of achievement at reaching Alistair. The inclusion of Garrick’s old superior in this game was a masterful stroke that had raised the plan from merely a satisfying work of substance to a rare piece of art.

The final explosion startled him.

He gazed again at the boy.

All that sacrifice for a single child. It made no sense.

There was nothing special about him. He was small, with freckles over his nose. He wasn’t particularly well kept. He had no foreseeable future. No, Ettril thought, it made no sense at all that Garrick would go to these lengths to save an orphaned boy such as Will.

He felt Garrick’s life force fade as the Torean laid on the cold surface of the Nestafarian tundra.

He stood then.

The time had come to play his last gambit. The time had come for him to claim his eternal right.

Chapter 8

Garrick felt as if he had been whipped a thousand times. He was cold. His vision was a blur. His mind numb. He thought his foot had been shredded, and he wasn’t certain he even had a left hand any more.

His hunger was like a creature gnawing inside him.

He had fallen. He remembered that.

And Alistair.

He remembered Alistair, remembered the dead look in his superior’s eyes just before he broke into a thousand pieces. At least Alistair’s pain was over, he thought. At least there was that.

He scanned the battlefield without moving his head.

Debris scattered in the wind. Tatters of cloth and paper blew in eddy currents. The smell of burned and rotted flesh seemed the only presence left on the plane.

Against this backdrop, Ettril Dor-Entfar glided into his view.

At first, the Koradictine was a speck on the horizon, distant and tiny, moving with what appeared to be ant-like speed. But he drew near quickly, and Garrick saw that he traveled on a disk that glimmered with scintillating mage flame, riding him forward like a magic carpet. His crimson robes, with their golden-threaded brocade, were anachronisms amid the blacks and grays of the rest of the plane.

As the mage drew nearer, Garrick saw another disk followed behind. It, too, glowed blue, and it, too, hovered inches from the ground.

Will lay in a pitiful heap upon it.

Will.

The boy rolled to look at Garrick, his eyes wide and his mouth gagged. His thin arms were tied firmly against his sides, his hands bound behind his back.

Garrick’s heart plunged. He raised himself to an elbow, wincing with the effort.

Braxidane!
Garrick gave a desperate call through his link.
Braxidane!

There was no response.

He struggled to draw his legs underneath him, pleased to see his foot, though swollen and bloodied, remained intact. The movement came with pain, though, and his limbs were jelly.

Garrick looked once more at Will, and anger fueled his strength.

He stood, his legs trembling.

He held his ribs awkwardly, his hand numb against his belly. His life force sputtered like a candle drowning in its own wax. He set a gate and felt a gentle trickle that dulled his pain, but could not remove it.

Ettril towered over him amid the rubble of this devastated city. The intensity of his presence burned against Garrick’s hunger like a raging sun. That hunger surged with the Koradictine’s nearness. It wanted to drink Ettril in, to reach out and take him as it had once taken a serving lad in a village outside Dorfort, to rip Ettril’s life force from his body as he once had done to mages on the fields of God’s Tower. But Ettril Dor-Entfar was no simple mage. He was god-touched himself, and he was having none of Garrick’s fantasies.

“If you harmed the boy,” Garrick said, his tongue clay in his mouth, “I’ll kill you.”

Ettril gave a deep belly laugh. Energy crackled across the Koradictine’s entire being.

“I’m so pleased to find you’re still alive,” Ettril said, his voice echoing inside Garrick’s skull.

Ettril seemed larger than life. His staff flowed like liquid in his hand, and he smiled with vile humor as he took in the destruction that lay around him. His silver-gray hair shifted and waved of its own volition. His skin glowed. His eyes were puffy, white, and bloated, their pupils dilated and wild.

“It wasn’t Alistair who drained the plane at all, was it?” Garrick said, shivering with the cold wind. The trickle of mage stuff was helping him. At least he could stand on his own. “You’re the one who created these creatures.”

“Weren’t they wonderful?” Ettril said.

“But now you have no one to rule.”

“I never intended to rule Nestafar, Garrick.”

Garrick was aghast. “You destroyed an entire plane on a lark?”

“I destroyed it because I needed its energy, and because I needed someplace to draw you toward.” He glanced around and gave a smile, his lips full and pulsing. “So, in a way, you could say Nestafar’s fate was your fault. Isn’t that just … perfect?”

“These people were merely mage fodder to you?”

“It was a selfish plane, anyway,” Ettril said, “filled with people interested in wealth and material rather than knowledge. Their greed had already changed the very composition of their plane. So, you see, I didn’t really do anything they weren’t already doing to themselves.”

“You spout Hezarin’s credo like an expert,” Garrick said.

“Only because she’s right. I’ve done this plane a great service. Now it can rebuild itself.”

“You are generous to a fault.”

“I’m glad you see it that way. It will make it more pleasant to think of you when I use your life force someplace else.”

The blow came almost from nowhere, but Garrick was schooled enough to react as soon as he smelled the Koradictine odor rising within the fabric of the plane’s energy. He pulled as much magic into his mind as he could and threw a shield haphazardly over himself.

Still, the Koradictine’s fist of power tossed him to the ground like a rag doll.

Garrick took refuge behind the cornerstone of a broken building. Ettril’s god-touch was strong, his magic sizzled with vitality. Garrick would never beat him if this battle came down to sorcerous power. His only chance was to somehow nab Will, and get off the plane.

“Come out from behind that rock,” Ettril said. “You know you can’t hide from me anymore.”

Gripping the boulder, Garrick stood up again, strangely ready to die. It would be worth it if he could save Will, he thought. And it would solve so many problems.

Energy seeped from the Koradictine.

Garrick’s hunger was drawn to that energy. It yearned for its sustenance and drew morsels from its fringe.

Will squirmed on the disc, obviously understanding of what was happening around him.

“The two of you share a bond,” Ettril said with clear distaste. “So, to prove I can be accommodating, I’ll take both of you at the same time.”

Ettril sang a phrase, and magic swirled in the clouds above him.

Garrick took the moment to grab what little energy he could, and he threw a bolt at the disk where Will lay. The leather around the boy’s wrists scorched, and the bindings around his arms burned away.

“Run, Will,” Garrick said.

The boy rolled from the disk, wasting no time. He ripped the gag from his mouth as he ran, falling once, then getting up to run again.

“You think I won’t be able to find him later?” Ettril said, turning back to cast his spell.

A black cone struck Garrick full in the chest, and every muscle in his body clenched.

An avalanche of cascading pain crushed him.

His heart stopped. Bones ground against bones. His teeth gritted with the bloody taste of calcium and saliva. He fell, gasping for breath and groaning with distended sounds he had never heard from himself before.

The ground was hard against his cheek and forehead.

Shards of the city lay around him—broken panes of glass and metal, a blackened piece of cloth, scraps of wood that had once been a chair or a bed or maybe just a table.