Fortress Draconis (42 page)

Once he’d stripped off his clothes and tossed them aside, Kerrigan stood there with his hands covering his genitals, a blush burning from neck upward. Even Orla studied his naked body—though he was pretty sure her winces came not out of displeasure with his corpulence, but at the sight of his purple bruises. The assault in the Dims had left his flesh mottled a host of ugly colors.

Baoth looked at the elf. “Will you need to deal with that before you proceed?”

The urZrethi answered. “It will be of no consequence. The reconstruction aspects will deal with it.”

The elf concurred with a nod. “We can proceed.”

Baoth crossed to the doorway and waved someone up the stairs. Three Apprentices entered the room, each one bearing a lidded bucket. Whatever was in them sloshed a bit, but none of it leaked out, and the Apprentices were bent over enough that Kerrigan thought they might somehow be carrying molten gold. As they set the buckets down to form a triangle around -him, the Adept realized the Apprentice off to his right was’Larüka.

Standing there naked before her, he broke into a sweat. Kerrigan looked up at the elf and frowned, attempting wordlessly to communicate his consternation, but Vulrasian gave no sign of comprehension at all. Instead the elf nodded to Baoth, who then gestured at the bucket in front of Kerrigan. It rose into the air and slowly drifted over him, then tipped for pouring.

The fluid came thick, more like oil or molasses than wa-ter, and had the deep ruby hue of half-dried blood. Where it touched his head it began to tingle, but that became the rake of thorns over his flesh as it dripped down his body. The sensation spread into a burning, as if he’d run naked at noon and had been sun-kissed to scarlet, then it built. He almost panicked for a moment, fearing he would burst into flame.

The excess fluid pooled in the bowl, coating his toes. The Apprentices dropped to their knees and reached down to scoop the fluid up, but Kerrigan waved them off with a half-coated hand. “You want this to coat me completely?”

The elf nodded. “It will not harm them to help you.”

Kerrigan shook his head. “I’ll do it.” He slowly squatted and dipped his hands in the viscous fluid. He smeared it over his legs and up his thighs, along his genitals, over his buttocks. He coated every inch of him that he could touch, but his huge body made getting all spots impossible.

The girl inched around on her knees until he could see her out of the corner of his left eye. “Adept, let me help you, as you helped me.”

Kerrigan closed his eyes, but nodded. He heard her moving around behind him, then felt the burning spread over his back. He did not feel her touch him until she reached up and coated his ears, then traced fingertips over his eyelids and down his nose. Her fingers drifted over his lips, then she gently tipped his chin up and coated his throat.

The fluid in his ears gave Vulrasian’s voice an oddly distant quality. “Rise, Adept Reese.”

He slowly stood again, the sticky fluid near his joints pulling a bit. Larüka drizzled more liquid on the places where his skin was yet bare. Once she was finished, he continued to stand, waiting, feeling as if his flesh were being dissolved.

The scrape of the lid coming off the second bucket alerted him to a change. He opened his eyes enough to catch a glimpse of a turgid ivory flow starting from the second bucket. He closed his eyes and held his breath, then lifted his face to it and let it pour down over him. The sensation of being nettle-stuck returned to his skin, then intensified. What started as pinpricks became needles, then spikes, piercing him. The fire in his lungs was nothing compared to the pain tearing at his flesh.

Kerrigan had all he could do to remain standing. His body quivered with the pain. He knew that if he squatted, he could never stand again. “Larüka, please.” His words came out in a bubble of the liquid, and only when more pain blossomed on his body did he learn she had heard him.

For the most part she did not touch him, save his ears and the back of his neck, where hair interfered with the anointing. Liquid poured onto his belly flowed down over his loins, and a likewise generous distribution on his back covered his buttocks. As this liquid dried, he felt as if encased in an eggshell-thin layer of plaster, and he dared not move.

Before the pain died away, a third fluid flowed over him like sap. He could not see it, but it smelled of mint and cooled the fire on his skin. It dulled the spikes piercing his flesh. It flowed over his body faster—or maybe just seemed faster in the absence of the pain. Kerrigan smiled as it dripped down his body, and he began to spread it around before it had reached his ankles.

As this liquid numbed him, he could not feel if Larüka touched him at all. He lifted his chin, letting her paint his throat with it. He rubbed it over his genitals and backside, then lowered his head so she could do his ears and neck. Finally she traced it over his eyelids and lips.

He opened his eyes as she stepped back. Baoth eclipsed his view of her, then Orla herded the Apprentices out of the room. Baoth held up the scroll and fully unfurled it. He stood where the first bucket had, while the elf and the urZrethi moved to complete the triangle.

Vulrasian’s voice came low and filled with gravity. “You will begin, Adept Reese, and we will match you. Do not stop until it is done. We shall continue past, for a bit, but you will do the hard work. Commence now.”

Kerrigan started reading from the scroll, slowly yet firmly and with the rhythm of the words. While he had only read them over once before, the spell had a cadence and sense that led one from the first word to the next and so on. The seamless chain of sounds looped and whirled, stretched taut and then loosened as syllable piled on syllable, rhymes created echoes, and refrains became sanctuaries where he could rest and gain confidence.

The two Magisters’ voices mostly joined with his, but sometimes rose in counterpoint. While his words were the chain, their words helped shape it and direct it. They added color here and energy there, refining and defining what he was doing. Their sounds met his, making new words and layering meaning on old words. They erased the commonplace from oft-used phrases, added understanding to the obscure, and raised some expressions beyond comprehension.

When he finished his reading, he closed his eyes and could feel his portion of the spell taking root within him. Angular and hard, it sank into his bones. The urZrethi magick came next, all smoke and evershifting shadow. It spread like a webwork over his bones, fracturing his spell into a billion fragments. The pain of the spikes faded as new, crisp agonies shook him.

The Elvish words’ soothing salve calmed his body. They flooded into the breaks, sealing and healing them. It fused them together, then spread out into his nerves and muscles and skin. He felt whole and more so—and he sensed it was more than just the stiffness of his limbs and the bruises being healed.

He opened his eyes and found himself standing in a dry depression. All of the fluid had been absorbed into him and not a trace remained on his pale white flesh. He flexed his fingers, then his arms. He took a double handful of his belly and let it flop. He was different, he knew that without a doubt, but he could not tell how.

Kerrigan looked around. “What happened? What did we do?”

Vulrasian’s blue eyes narrowed. “If things went well, we have saved you great pain.” The elf beckoned Orla forward with the flick of a finger. “Magister, strike him with your staff.”

Orla shook her head and tossed the elf her staff. “I disagreed with your plan, so I shall not play your game. You want him struck, you strike.”

Vulrasian accepted the staff, whirled it around in a circle, then snapped it down at Kerrigan’s left forearm. The Adept heard it strike before he felt it, but instead of the slap of stick on skin and the attendant sting, he heard the clack of wood on rock. He’d already begun to shy from the blow, bringing his arm up, and now saw an ivory bone plate sinking beneath his skin at the point of impact.

Again the staff came around, this time hitting him in the chest. A bone plate armored his sternum, letting the stick rebound harmlessly. The staff came up at his face and glanced off a ridge on his left cheek.

Baoth laughed aloud as Kerrigan’s jaw dropped open. “It worked.”

“It did.” The elf handed the staff back to Orla. “Your reservations, it seems, Magister Orla, were unnecessary.”

“You missed the point, then. I was not concerned that he could handle the spell. I was concerned over his ability to handle what the spell has done to him.”

Kerrigan frowned. “What do you mean, Magister? This is fantastic! If this had been done before, I’d not have been beaten by those ruffians in the Dim. I wouldn’t have been hurt. This is incredible. I can’t be hurt!”

He pulled his right foot back and kicked the edge of the bowl. His toes smashed full on into it without so much a hint of armor appearing. He did hear a crack, however, and hopped back, catching his heel on the back of the bowl. He flopped over backward, landing hard, with the urZrethi darting sideways from beneath him.

Kerrigan clutched his foot. “Ow, ow, OW! Ow. What happened? I don’t understand.”

Icy tones filled Orla’s voice. “The magick will stop others from hurting you, but not you from hurting yourself, and that’s from physical damage. Spells will kill you unless you counter them. On the other hand, get pushed from a roof and you will likely survive; leap the same distance and you’ll die.”

He frowned. “Likely survive?”

She nodded. “Find yourself under a big enough rock and it will crush you. Let asullanciri drive an enchanted lance through you, and you’ll die horribly.”

“But little things, they won’t hurt me.” Kerrigan sat up. “Why did you think this was bad?”

Orla drew a gold coin from the purse on her belt and tossed it into the middle of the floor. “Levitate the coin.”

Kerrigan arched an eyebrow at her. “You know I can do it.”

“So, do it.”

The Adept gestured at the coin with his right hand. It rose a foot off the floor before her staff clopped him on the shoulder. The staff bounced off bone plate, but the echoes of its impact died beneath the gold coin’s ringing peal as it hit the floor.

Kerrigan looked at the coin as it accelerated through a death spiral. “I don’t understand.”

“It is simple, Adept Reese.” Orla gave Baoth a venomous glance. “That spell is part of you now. It is always on, always working. It draws energy from you as needed, diverting that which you might need to use for other things. This puts you in the curious situation where you will be unable to help others if you are put under a constant threat. An el-ven archer with a keen eye and a silverwood bow could prevent you from casting a single spell just by delivering an arrow from time to time.”

Her nostrils flared. “You’ll watch your comrades get cut down and be unable to do anything for them, and yet you will survive. Forever you’ll carry the memory of their betrayal with you. I hope you can live with that. I couldn’t, nor could the only man who had this spell cast on him before you.”

Kerrigan shook his head. “Who was that?”

“Yrulph Kirun, the creator of the DragonCrown.” Orla slowly shook her head. “His madness has returned over the centuries to haunt the world. You’ve been given this spell in the hopes you will be able to end his insane legacy. I just hope, Adept Reese, it does not lead you to leave us one that is worse.”

A half week, somber and dour, passed between the con-IXfrontation with Myrall’mara and the arrival of the cele-ilbrated Jeranese general, Markus Adrogans. In the aftermath of the slaughter, Alyx had thought about many things, though none could deflect her from remembering the torn corpses cooling, and the little sighs the children made as their bodies relaxed and forced air from lungs.

She’d seen such things before, and heard them, but never quite that way. She’d seen slain children in the wake of Aurolani raids. She’d heard the death-sighs of corpses. She’d just never been close enough to the site where children had died to see their blood yet flowing and their eyes still clouding over.And never was that death at my hands.

Peri had done her best to lighten Alyx’s mood over the past five days, but her sister knew her well enough to back away when things would not work. Misha had tried as well. When his initial suggestions that they enjoy some diversion such as theater failed to win her acquiescence, he challenged her to train with him at swordplay. The workouts had been good, but had left Misha bruised and sore; which darkened the mood that had been started because of injuries done to those who did not deserve them.

Had she been given a choice, she would not have come to Fortress Gryps for the reception in Adrogans’ honor. But the Grand Duchess saw to it that she had no choice, and had even selected for her the gown with an embroidered bodice of black and gold over gold starched-satin skirts. The gown left her uncovered from the bodice to neck and wrists, which she found uncomfortable despite having spent ample time growing up amid the Gyrkyme wearing as little as possible.

At least, with them, I was always allowed to have a dagger strapped to my thigh or upper arm.She’d actually wanted to wear one on her upper left arm, and Peri had gotten her a suitable sheath covered with the same brocade as her bodice, but Tatyana had vetoed that plan. She could have worn it on her thigh, but digging beneath the skirts to draw it would have been impossible. The Grand Duchess had allowed as how she could secret a dagger between her breasts as part of the bodice, but Alyx doubted mightily that it would remain secret for long. That particular portion of her anatomy seemed to invite inspection, especially from those odious lechers she’d have loved to stab.

Alyx had arrived at the reception early in hopes she would be allowed to leave equally early. She knew, from careful study of Adrogans’ battles, that he would arrive late with a large entourage and wreak havoc. As the evening wore on and the moment of his impending arrival grew closer, Alyx had taken the precaution of moving away from the tables laden with victuals, lest she be trapped between them and the Jeranese General Staff. From studying supply reports, she knew Adrogans’ troops were largely overfed, his army more of a herd than a military organization.