Imperial Traitor (37 page)

The hand-to-hand fight that ensued was ferocious. If either had possessed lesser skill they would have been overwhelmed in seconds. Punches, kicks and knife hand strikes were matched with blocks
and counterstrikes of equal skill and speed. Seconds ticked and the two blurred in a whirling dervish of flashing arms and legs, but neither could gain a clear advantage over the other.

Femke fought with a single-minded intensity she had not felt since she had battled Shalidar on the roof of the Royal Palace in Thrandor. Had the Fox not been encumbered with her cloak, she might
have possessed an edge. It was impossible to tell and irrelevant to the situation. Despite wanting to know who was concealed beneath the dark hood, Femke was not about to encourage the Fox to gain
more freedom of movement.

It was a back kick that turned the fight. Femke spun and kicked out backward with her right heel. The power of the strike was such that it drove through the Fox’s defensive block and
caught her squarely in the solar plexus. The kick was so hard that it lifted the assassin from her feet and threw her across the chamber. She landed with a
whoof
on her back, not far from
the transfer stone.

Femke saw the woman’s eyes shift to the stone, but her kick had left her awkwardly placed to prevent the Fox from reaching her goal. Femke spun and dived, both fists outstretched. It was
an all-or-nothing strike that would leave her horribly vulnerable if she missed her target, but fast as she was, Fox had far less ground to cover.

Something silver flashed in her hand as the Fox slapped it down on the transfer stone.

Femke literally flew across the intervening gap, but even with her lightning-fast reactions, she was not fast enough. Sparkling motes of energy swirled in place of the assassin and Femke felt a
chill race down her spine as she passed through the space that the Fox had occupied a split second before. She landed hard, but felt no pain as she scrambled to her feet.

‘Damn!’ she cursed, smashing her fist down on the transfer stone in frustration. There was nothing she could do. She did not even know where Fox would emerge, so there was no chance
of catching up with her. There was nothing to be gained by remaining here in her chamber. It was unlikely that Fox would come back for a while – if ever, assuming Jabal could destroy the
bonding stone.

It was as she bent to pick up her knife from where it had come to rest on the floor that the chamber lurched in the most alarming fashion. There was the shortest of pauses before the blast wave
hit. The force of the impact picked her from her feet and smashed her body into the nearby bookcase. Femke’s last fleeting thought was that the entire underground complex was collapsing, and
then there was nothing.

The shock wave rocked Rikala’s front room as if it were a ship running aground at speed. The little seamstress placed her arms over her head and closed her eyes tight as
the sound of falling pots and pans mixed with that of breaking glass and shattering pottery. When the shaking stopped, she cautiously lifted her head. The first thing to catch her eye was the
alarmingly wide crack in the wall in front of her. Without a second thought for her possessions, she staggered up out of her chair and ran out through her front door into the street, terrified that
the house might fall down around her at any moment.

No sooner had she stepped out through the door than a piece of falling masonry twice the size of a large man fell from the sky, crashing through the front wall of the house opposite. Rikala
screamed in terror. Turning towards the Palace, she saw a huge mushroom cloud billowing upwards, black and forboding.

‘What in Shand’s holy name could have created that?’ she mouthed in astonishment. Even as she completed the thought, a deadly rain of smaller pieces of stone began to shower
down, clattering and crashing into the rooftops and across the cobbled streets. Dangerous though it may be to remain inside with a huge crack in your wall, to stand out in this would be to invite
death with open arms.

Cowering as she ducked back inside, Rikala dashed into her tiny kitchen and dived under the table, where she remained, quaking and weeping uncontrollably. The noise of the falling debris was
terrifying as death and destruction rained down across the city. To Rikala it seemed as though the Creator himself had decided to shatter the mundane life of Shandrim with a thunderbolt from
heaven. Whatever had caused this, one thing was sure – life would never be the same again. Anyone who survived would recall the day of the great cloud of devastation.

One second Reynik was on his feet, talking tactics in hushed tones with his father in the corridor outside the Great Hall, the next he was flat on his face, convinced the end
of the world had come. A series of rumblings, smashing and crashing noises followed, along with hysterical screams and panicked shouting emanating from the Great Hall.

‘What in hell . . .’

A quick glance around revealed that no one had managed to stay on his feet through the explosive quake. His father and the other Legionnaires were all scattered across the floor like so many
twigs shaken from a tree by high winds. Even Calvyn, whom Reynik expected to still be upright through some magical means, was sprawled flat on his back. No one appeared badly injured, though
Calvyn’s face had suddenly lost all its usual colour and vitality.

‘Master?’ he mouthed, his voice not audible above the noise from the Great Hall, but the word clearly formed on his lips.

Reynik leaped to his feet and ran to Calvyn’s side. ‘What has Jabal done?’ he asked urgently, grabbing the young acolyte by the hand and helping him sit up. ‘What’s
happened, Calvyn? What has Jabal done?’

‘Master . . .’ Calvyn whispered again, his voice thick with sorrow and tears forming in his eyes. He gave no outward sign of having registered Reynik’s presence. His body was
limp with grief and his eyes distant. Reynik realised the futility of his questions. He would get no quick answers from the magician. Calvyn was in a deep state of shock. Reynik tried shaking him,
but without success. Calvyn could not help.

He turned to Lord Kempten. The Emperor Designate did not appear hurt. His glamour disguise was gone. Instinctively, Reynik glanced down at his own appearance. All the glamours had dissipated.
The explosion must have had magical repercussions, he realised. Calvyn was in no state to reform them, but it no longer mattered. The time for disguise was past.

‘Are you ready, my Lord?’ Reynik asked urgently. ‘It sounds like pandemonium in the Great Hall. Shand only knows what’s happening in there. If you’re going to take
control, then you need to do it now.’

Kempten nodded. Lutalo and the other Legionnaires were all scrambling to their feet. They gathered in a defensive group around Lord Kempten and were ready within a matter of a few seconds.

Reynik gave his father a brief nod and stepped through the doorway into the chaos beyond.

At first it was hard to make sense of the mess. There seemed altogether too much debris for the relatively small hole in the roof and the larger hole in the end wall above the altar. It was only
when Reynik focused on the huge chunk of masonry that had crashed down in the centre of the dais that he realised it had not fallen, but had been hurled through the end wall of the hall from
elsewhere.

‘Good grief!’ he uttered as he scanned the vast hall. One of the great pillars had crumbled and fallen right across the middle of the audience. By some miracle, the section of the
roof that it had supported had not caved in, but was sagging precariously. Reynik’s instinctive assessment was that it was poised to come down at any moment. Noblemen were scrambling to pull
friends and loved ones from under the debris, but for the most part the pieces of stone were simply too heavy to move. Others were dithering, or running for exits, or simply sitting, held in
mesmerised thrall by the shock of the moment. The pained screams of the injured joined with the wailing of those cast into instant mourning at the sudden, crushing death of those nearby. The sounds
echoed and rang around the hall in a way that accentuated the panic and pain of the moment.

Tremarle was clearly visible in the middle of the chaos. He was one of the few actively trying to coordinate efforts to free a nobleman trapped underneath one of the smaller sections of fallen
stone. It took a moment or two for Reynik’s searching eyes to find Shalidar, but then his eyes came to rest on his sworn enemy.

‘Shalidar mustn’t get away,’ he said quickly, already in motion before making the conscious decision to attack. ‘You must protect Lord Kempten, father, but if I fall, do
what you can to see Shalidar stopped.’

The assassin was halfway across the Great Hall, clearly looking to escape through one of the side doors. The first thing that Reynik noted was that he was limping, but either the injury he had
sustained was a minor one or it was not a fresh wound, for he looked to be moving with relative ease in spite of his uneven gait.

‘Stand and face me, Shalidar!’ The shout was loud enough to cut through the chaos and confusion. Shalidar froze in his tracks. The assassin’s face instinctively twisted into a
sneer of contempt. Reynik closed the distance between them quickly, bounding and vaulting over fallen masonry with determined purpose.

The assassin’s eyes narrowed as he recognised his adversary. His sneer twisted further to become a snarl of anger. It looked for the briefest of moments as if he might make a run for the
side door. The indecision was clear in his eyes, a flicker of uncertainty before accepting the challenge.

Reynik noted the fleeting inner conflict with a sense of satisfaction. Shalidar was not so sure of himself now, he realised. It was one thing to attack someone on a dark street with the
advantage of surprise, but to face a determined, talented fighter, who knew exactly what to expect from the encounter was a different prospect.

Across the Great Hall, another had frozen at Reynik’s shouted challenge.

‘Leave my son be,’ Tremarle called out, alarmed by the sight of Reynik bounding through the debris with a murderous expression on his face. If Reynik heard the call, he gave no
indication of it.

‘Your son, Tremarle? You have no sons.’

The response came from the dais, and Tremarle was quick to identify the speaker’s voice.

‘Kempten! I heard whispers that you were still alive, but I gave them little credence. What is it to you if I have adopted Shalidar as my son? And what is the meaning of all this? If you
wanted the Mantle, you could have taken it. You were the named heir,’ he said, gesturing around at the devastation of the Great Hall with a look that spoke of personal injury.

‘You’re making a fool of yourself, Tremarle, though I suspect you’ve done so unwittingly. Shalidar has used you. Don’t you see it? You’re too wily to have let his
profession escape you. You know who he is – what he is. But did you know that it was he who killed Danar?’

A clash of blades rang loud through the silence that followed Kempten’s last statement.

‘Shalidar killed Danar?’ Disbelief was heavy in his tone and evident in his expression, though it quickly wavered in the face of Lord Kempten’s steady gaze. His misgivings
about Shalidar’s hidden agenda had troubled his heart for some time, but this? Bile rose to the back of his throat as he recognised the truth in Kempten’s eyes. The realisation that he
had fallen victim to the very worst kind of deception hit him with cruel force.

Shalidar timed his attack with precision. He waited until the critical instant when Reynik committed to hurdling the final piece of fallen masonry between them. As Reynik leaped, Shalidar palmed
and flung one of his knives. The blade flashed through the air, the finely-honed steel streaking with deadly accuracy towards the centre of Reynik’s torso. The young Legionnaire saw the blade
leave Shalidar’s hand and in that second his mind and body accelerated, the world appearing to slow as the adrenalin spike in his system provoked an entirely new turn of speed.

With a spectacular twist mid-leap, Reynik somehow arched his body such that the blade passed by, missing him by the finest of margins. In that moment, his entire consciousness seemed to reach a
new level. He assimilated details that under normal circumstances would never have been possible: the fine ebony handle of the blade as it zipped past, the brushing sensation of its passage and the
flashing expression of disappointment on Shalidar’s face. Every detail etched itself into his mind.

With a catlike sensitivity to the force of gravity, Reynik managed to complete his twist and land on his feet, though he was not at all in balance as he hit the floor. He fell forwards and
tucked into an acrobatic, twisting roll that he had learned from Femke. In a flash he was back on his feet, his momentum intact and his desire to engage with Shalidar burning more fiercely than
ever. His mind and body lurched back into its normal speed of thought and reaction. With his blade in the guard position, he rushed forwards.

Shalidar did not allow his flash of disappointment at failing to stop his adversary affect him. With his customary grace, he whipped out his sword and adopted a strong, defensive stance to meet
the oncoming Legionnaire.