Magician’s End (57 page)

The dragons sang a melancholy song. It had no words, but carried a meaning no mortal could apprehend. Within the web of the song was repeated, over and over, ‘Tomas must die.’

He hit Draken-Korin so hard that the Lord of Tigers stumbled back a full ten yards, and Tomas used his mental powers to ask,
Why must I die, daughter of Ryath?

From the great golden dragon who presided over this contest came the thought:
Death is a gateway into something beyond. Tomas must pass beyond. At the proper time, Ashen-Shugar must be without constraint.

Tomas laughed as Draken-Korin poised to charge him. ‘You mock me?’ the Lord of Tigers shouted.

‘All of life is mockery,’ Tomas responded. ‘Come, old enemy, last of our kind, let us put an end to this.’

Draken-Korin charged and Tomas easily dodged the attack, inflicting a serious wound to the black-clad warrior. The Lord of Tigers screamed in pain and rage, spinning away to get out of Tomas’s reach.

Tomas closed his eyes.

Again he stood on rocks, with an inky-dark sea swirling on all sides. He had climbed out of that black tide over a century before and knew what it meant to be swept under and pulled down by it. It was an ending and beginning for him. He laughed in a triumphant voice and dived head-first into the water.

I am Tomas!

With a purpose that could only be seen as mad, Tomas sought out the heart of this blackness, the root nature of the Valheru with whom he had shared his existence for decades. Downward he swam.

Ashen-Shugar opened his eyes and felt a power, unlike any he had experienced in ages of life, flow through him. The dragons surrounding him sang a battle song of blood and victory and he turned to see Draken-Korin before him. The Lord of Tigers was battered and covered in blood, staggering as he readied himself for another attack.

Ashen-Shugar looked at his own blood-covered hands and arms. He saw the rents in his tabard and felt the flame of wounds upon his body. He willed away the pain and healed the wounds and felt life well up within him.

The blood drained from Draken-Korin’s face as he screamed, ‘No!’ He launched himself at his old foe with a ferocity born of terror. Whatever reserves he had held back were now unleashed and he appeared for a moment a warrior reborn.

Ashen-Shugar held his ground, easily countering the blows and looking into the face of his oldest enemy with the certainty that the day was won. After a flurry of blows, Ashen-Shugar batted away Draken-Korin’s ebon blade and stepped forward, smashing him in the face with his white shield.

The Lord of Tigers arced backwards, landing hard on the ground. He groaned in pain and knew he had nothing left to offer. His sword fell from limp fingers and he released his hold on his black shield. With what little strength he had left, he struggled to get up and fell to his knees.

‘Why?’ he whispered.

Ashen-Shugar stared down at him.

‘Why was I brought back, just to die once more?’

‘Does it matter?’ replied Ashen-Shugar.

With a powerful sweep of his sword, Ashen-Shugar sundered the Lord of Tigers’ head from his shoulders, and watched as blood fountained high into the midday sunlight.

As one, the dragons tilted back their heads and cried out in a song of sorrow and triumph.

Ashen-Shugar, Ruler of the Eagle’s Reaches, turned and looked at the ring of dragons as if seeing them for the first time. ‘What has happened?’ he demanded.

Rylan leaped down with one beat of her massive wings to confront the white-and-gold-clad warrior. ‘You have been lost in a dream, master. You have been awakened by your most ancient enemy, and your power is needed.’

‘To what cause must my powers be lent?’

‘An invader, your most powerful foe, has invaded your world.’

Ashen-Shugar had not participated in the Chaos Wars against the emerging gods. He had watched from afar, so he had no gauge to measure the gods by, save their ability to reduce his brethren to sobbing, frightened children. In his vanity, he thought himself above them, so their experience bore no relation to his own self-estimation. But once in his existence he had faced an enemy so powerful and unrelenting that the Dragon Host had been forced to flee in disarray. Softly he said, ‘The Dread have come?’

‘Indeed,’ said the golden dragon. ‘We have assembled to contest the invasion, every lesser dragon on this world, but your power and command are needed.’

‘Of course,’ said Ashen-Shugar. He gestured with one hand and Rylan lowered her head, allowing him to mount her. ‘Take me to the Dread. We shall rid this world of their taint.’

With a single snap of her wings, Rylan, daughter of Ryath, took to the sky, and the entirety of dragonkind on Midkemia took flight behind her.

Brendan saw the mêlée below as if it were a moving thing, an ocean’s surface of churning steel and blood, brave banners, and rearing horses, and with it came a noise of screaming, crying, shouting, and the clash of metal. But it had a rhythm, a surge, ebb, and flow, and without knowing how he knew, he knew he was witnessing a battle approaching stalemate.

Then, suddenly, from the north Prince Edward’s cavalry came flying. Now Brendan knew why he had let Oliver’s cavalry charge be answered by terrain, arrows and hedgehog poles. He had sent his own cavalry on a fast ride around the granite ridge serving as the northern redoubt, and now was hitting Oliver hard on his right flank.

There was a balance in the air, a sense that somehow this was going to break one way or the other, and within an hour, perhaps within minutes, the battle would be won or lost.

Then Brendan saw movement to the south-east. It took a moment to understand what he was seeing. The Keshian mercenaries must have been infiltrated through the woods, and been thrown wholesale at the knoll to the south-east. Rather than attempt to ride around it with cavalry, Oliver had stormed it with infantry, and now that infantry was streaming down off that knoll, directly at the Prince of Krondor’s position, with only Brendan, a few minor nobles, and twenty mounted palace guardsman to defend the prince.

‘’Ware the field!’ Brendan shouted as loudly as he could. ‘’Ware the field!’ He pointed with his sword.

The Krondorian palace guards rode up behind him, forming a line, lowering lances and drawing their swords. Their captain shouted, ‘On my command, charge …
Charge!
’ and the twenty riders with Brendan at their side rushed into the mass of oncoming mercenaries.

Pug asked, ‘Is everyone seeing this?’

Miranda and Nakor both said, ‘Yes,’ then Nakor said, ‘but I can barely believe my senses.’

‘The orb is safely there?’ asked Magnus.

‘Yes,’ said his father. ‘See if you can locate it. Try linking with my mind if you must.’

Magnus sat next to his father and closed his eyes. Piercing the dome to link with the orb was difficult, so he linked with his father’s mind and instantly was inside the dome, amid chaos.

‘What are those … things?’ he heard Miranda say through his father’s perceptions.

The interior of the dome was illuminated by a faint red light, sunlight filtered through the magical energy field surrounding the city. Within the boundaries of the dome there was a roiling cloud of black. Occasionally a piece of the cloud would break off and form a roughly humanoid shape, something upright with broad shoulders and bright red eyes, but eventually it would fall back into the mass.

‘We remain unnoticed,’ said Nakor.

‘So far,’ said Pug.

Magnus said, ‘Laromendis and his brother said the heart of the city was where this rift was formed.’

Pug moved the orb, watching to see if it called attention from the mass of black smoke. They moved without incident a few yards, then he picked up speed and hurried to the centre of the city. He had no problem identifying the point of entrance.

‘Gods!’ said Miranda.

‘It’s the void!’ said Nakor.

In the centre of the city a blackness occupied an area roughly the size of a building. Nothing could be seen within it, but from the edges the black smoke emerged, curling and surging outward.

‘This is what is devouring the centre of the Fifth Circle,’ said Nakor.

‘Watch the edges,’ said Miranda.

Through the vision they got from the orb, they could see the edges of the void expanding at the crawl of a snail, mere inches an hour, yet it was still expanding. ‘At this rate this city will be gone in a year,’ said Pug.

‘Sooner,’ said Nakor. ‘I think the rate of expansion is accelerating. Look at those tiles in the wall.’

The void was consuming a wall, decorated with small tiles roughly an inch across. Pug did not need the void to cross one to observe, ‘I think you’re correct.’

‘What is this void?’ asked Magnus. ‘Is it a manifestation of the Dread? Is it the Dread itself?’

Pug said, ‘I don’t think we’re going to learn anything useful by simply wandering around among all this … smoke, for lack of a better term. It’s clearly a manifestation of what’s in that pit.’ He hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘We weren’t going to get this orb back, anyway,’ and moved it into the void.

Suddenly they were without bearing, engulfed by a world of neutral grey. ‘We are in the void,’ said Pug. ‘I have been here before.’

He had willingly accompanied Macros into the void to shut down the Tsurani rift and end the war, and it had taken magic and the aid of his old teacher Kulgan to pull him back out. Another time he had ridden through it on the back of a dragon with Tomas, looking for Macros the Black.

Nakor said, ‘I know what Macros meant about this not being an empty place. It is brimming with … stuff. There is great magic here, Pug.’

Miranda said, ‘Perhaps this is where magic comes from, and we somehow tap into it.’

‘There,’ said Magnus. ‘There’s something there.’

Without direction it was difficult to know where ‘there’ was, but within seconds the other three saw what Magnus had referred to: a speck. They focused on it and Pug said, ‘It’s hard to know if we are close to a tiny thing or very far from a massive thing.’

‘Move us closer and we’ll see,’ said Miranda.

‘With only one point of reference, this may be difficult,’ said Pug. But he turned his focus on the spot and willed the orb to move toward it.

Suddenly a stream of energy sped around them, and Nakor cried out, ‘It’s … stuff!’ All they got was a tantalizing glimpse as it sped past. Every time any of them attempted to concentrate on a single mote, it was gone.

Pug said, ‘I think I’m beginning to understand why the Dread have such a problem understanding time. If we attempted to intercept even one tiny part of this stream of particles, strands of energy? – whatever this may be, we would be flailing blindly.’

Magnus said, ‘But in flailing you could do a great deal of damage.’

Miranda said, ‘A nice enough metaphor, true, but let’s see what it is that is doing all the flailing.’

‘Are we getting smaller?’ asked Nakor. ‘Before we couldn’t see the strands of stuff, but now they look large enough to reach out and touch.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Magnus. ‘It’s perspective.’

They saw the speck in the distance expand and with the movement of particles showing them the way, it felt as if they were moving toward the dark spot. It grew and they felt as if they were accelerating toward it, even though they were outside the dome on the ground.

Abruptly, everything changed. The spot expanded almost explosively to look like a massive pit and in the centre of that pit rested a being.

Either it was gigantic, or they had become tiny. The being was roughly humanoid in shape, with flames bathing it from head to toe, but no light or heat was generated. Waves of energy were being created constantly, and the profound sense that swept over the four magic-users was one of rage and sorrow.

Every dark dream, hidden fear, and unvoiced terror was encompassed in those feelings, and the being was aware.

It turned its attention to the orb and it reached out.

Then it reached past the orb and the four magic-users felt it coming out of the pit, along the lines of consciousness that linked them to the orb, coming outside the ruby dome, right at them.

Ruffio was talking to Tanderae and Janil when he heard a cry of anguish. All three turned to see the four magic-users who had been employing the orb lying on the ground, their eyes rolled back in their heads, thrashing in paroxysms of pain.

He hurried over and knelt next to Magnus, put his hand on the thrashing magician’s chest, then shouted, ‘Get healing priests! Get them now!’

•
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
•

War

B
RENDAN SWUNG HIS SWORD.

A Keshian mercenary dodged away before the blow landed and Brendan kept moving forward. He had enough training to know that to be standing still in a melee while on horseback was an invitation to be pulled from the saddle. He knew his mount was his best weapon at the moment, and he intended to take advantage of that.

They were hugely outnumbered, only thirty horsemen – twenty trained guardsmen and not quite a dozen minor nobles like Brendan – against at least five hundred foot soldiers. The best they could hope for was to distract the infantry while Prince Edward rode to safer ground. The captain of the palace guard was rallying some of Edward’s foot soldiers to him, to stem the attempted sweep from the right flank.

Brendan moved as fast as he could, knocking down attackers and causing as much confusion as he could, but keeping away from the heart of the force. His horse was calm and well trained, but even the stoutest warhorse would balk if faced with too many bodies packed tightly together.

Hacking and charging, Brendan managed to turn a half-dozen soldiers away from the line of march, but dozens more were flooding toward the top of the ridge, behind which lay the prince’s pavilion and the tents of the other nobles. He spurred his horse away from the fight and circled around, trying to get his bearings.

Brendan saw that Edward had been spirited away by some of the nobles around him, while his bodyguard was being pushed back and overwhelmed. He knew he could do nothing more, for the Keshian mercenaries were pouring in unchecked. Kicking hard, he drove his horse forward.