Star Mage (Book 5) (25 page)

“Please, don’t kill me!” Emperor Ghaalis wailed. “I never ordered any of those assaults…it was all the doings of the magical Orders in Ishur, and that madmen Lord Aurellia. I wanted to stop them but I was warned against interfering.”

“So you’re just a puppet, then?” Talis said. “A figurehead Emperor that keeps the people of Carvina placated while the sorcerers and necromancers wreak havoc on the world outside?”

“They were desperate to find sources of power to aid them in their dark cause.” The Emperor relaxed a bit as he could see that Talis and Mara had calmed their stance. “But you never should have come here, you’ll only invoke the wrath of the Dragons.”

“The Dragons?” Talis looked perplexed as he studied the Emperor’s eyes.

Behind him, Talis could hear footsteps approach, and glancing back, Master Goleth strode up alongside them and frowned at the situation. “Why have you done this? You claimed to come seeking peace and you make such a move against our Emperor? He is the weak piece in the game, and the Empress awaits, and her children, and the Dragons. They want you to kill him and free his claim over the power of the throne. Do not give in to their wishes.”

The wizard flourished his hand at the throne. “Notice that Princess Devonia and Prince Davos have left their father to your friend’s daggers. Yet be sure they still lurk in the shadows, waiting to pounce once you slay the Emperor. This is all a trap and a setup…don’t fall for their play.”

Mara cleared her throat and shook her head as if struggling to resist some dark power. “I said I would accept a peace treaty. There is no need for any more bloodshed today.”

“I can offer you the signed paper of the treaty you seek.” The Emperor’s eyes fell to the floor, as if unwilling to say more. But Talis imagined that the paper would be worth little to enforce anything outside of Carvina. Had they come all this way and failed to prevent more violence from reaching Naru?

“Any treaty he signs would be worthless,” said a girl’s familiar voice. “Unless of course you are a fool and believe in its value.” Talis spotted a girl’s figure appear from behind a stone pillar. Was that Princess Devonia? And as the girl strode closer into the light, he could see it was her, but a carapace of armor was slowly forming over her lithe body, covering even her neck and head in a shiny skin that reminded Talis of the scales that covered the dragons of Ghaelstrom. Her scaly armor was red and dangerous and her eyes glittered with power.

More figures appeared, all menacing and covered in dragon scale, and Talis could feel the air crackle with their magical power. His mind warned him to flee and change forms and fly back to Naru with Mara and escape this trap, to escape death and certain destruction. The Emperor seemed calm and confident now, and he returned to the Ebony Throne and his knights repositioned themselves in a fan around him, their eyes stoic and unmoving.

And the Dragons moved silently towards them, their eyes glowing in the now darkening chamber.

Rikar watched in terror as the Starwalkers strode up to the wooden cross and inspected the dry, windswept corpse, sniffing suspiciously at the skin. The smallest of the four Starwalkers, a bald, stocky man who wore a black silk robe with a gold, strange rune on the chest, aimed a stone at the temple. Rikar could tell by the shape and how the starlight glittered off the stone that it was a fragment, like the one that Nikulo had possessed. The man was certainly their leader, as the other Starwalkers held nothing in their hands.

As the four stalked towards the gaping mouth of the temple, Rikar enjoyed the idea of them being trapped in the confines of the chamber. If this went all as planned by the Nameless, would he find himself free, whatever freedom was in this half-state between life and death? Free to return to the land of the dead and join his father in the suffering of the Grim March? Or did the Nameless have a way to grant him life again, a form of physical renewal through his blood they’d collected in the jars? Though glancing at his shriveled body, he doubted whether that was even possible.
 

He tried to follow them into the Ruins of Elmarr, but the silver cord that connected him to his body held him firm and close, and he was left to stare at the sand swirling under a gusting wind and the stars twinkling knowingly at him overhead, like they were the ancient witnesses to all his foolishness. Time swept on and jumped and popped like the thrashing of a curtain under a stiff breeze. The desert churned and rolled and the stars twisted and turned in the sky as if a picture wheel played with by a child.

Soon morning’s first light colored the horizon in a delicate wash of pinks and purples and reds, illuminating the scattering stain of storm clouds off in the distance. While Rikar was watching the brilliant sunlight break over the beautiful dunes, he caught a flicker of movement off to the side and turned to witness the priests marching outside in a ceremonial line. Of particular interest, he spotted four priests each holding ornate iron urns that billowed out black and grey puffs of smoke. Did they contain the remains of the Starwalkers? Had the Nameless succeeded in luring them inside and slaughtering them like pigs in the chamber?

He felt a kind of euphoria overtake him as he spied the glass jars that contained his blood, which were being carried by several temple priests over to where his corpse still hung on the cross. The same priest that had cast his hideous spell over Rikar followed the glass-carrying priests to his body. They placed the four jars at each cardinal location around Rikar’s remains, and to his surprise, opened the lids.

The priest began chanting strange words that sounded like the words he’d said over Rikar that had slain him, but this time the order of the words seemed spoken in reverse. Black spirals spewed from the sorcerer’s hands and flowed into a black, dense mass of smoke in front of Rikar’s splayed corpse. Four tendrils from the black mass dove into the jars of blood and formed a kind of tube that sucked the thick liquid into the smoky mass. Soon the glass jars were empty and the dense mass seemed to come alive with a kind of strange, surging power that possessed Rikar with a feeling of familiarity and endearment.

Empty now, the glass jars were removed by the priests and in their place were positioned the four smoking urns. Why were they putting the urns near his corpse? The smoke was wafting up into the black cloud and mixing with the remains of his blood. For a painfully long time Rikar was fixated on the image of the smoke being pulled into the now growing, electrified mass. After what seemed like an hour or more, the urns stopped smoking and the priests came over and dumped the ashes into the living, churning black cloud and a burst of brilliant light exploded in a fiery blast.

When the dust and smoke cleared, Rikar moved in close to see what had happened to his corpse, and to his horror, found that the black mass had disappeared. What had happened to it? Had the spell or the experiment somehow failed and he’d be forced to live life as a wraith, stuck in between the world of the living and the dead?

Then a faint flicker appeared on the sand. Was that a jewel or a crystal of some kind? But the thing—or whatever it was—moved in a kind of wriggling, worm-like movement. As Rikar went even closer to inspect, he could see that it wasn’t a worm at all, since it moved in a serpentine motion as it darted across the sand towards the wooden cross. The shiny, shimmering surface of the snake possessed a kind of starlight luminescence on the scales, but the overall color was definitely red like the rich rouge of blood.

Somehow Rikar felt a chilling dread come over him as he watched the serpent slither up and snake around the wood and it soon glided up and penetrated the crusty remains of his corpse. At that tiny tear in his tissue, a ripping feeling wrenched the inside of his spirit and caused a great, wracking pain to jolt through him. But the pain and the agony only got worse. Much worse than anything Rikar had ever experienced. It was as if four demons were pulling several sides of his soul and tearing him apart.

Screaming did no good as he had no mouth and throat and lungs to express the pain. He fled as far away from his corpse as the silver chain would allow, but still the throbbing, shooting pain surged into his stomach and shook him in epic convulsions. The pain was flowing, he realized, from his body, through the silver cord, and into his soul. Instead of fleeing from the feeling, he forced himself to return to his body and inspect what was causing all the agony. And the evidence was clear in the color returning to his skin and the bulging under his cheeks and in the stirring of his legs.

He was beginning to connect the pain with the regrowth of his skin and muscles and tendons. Even his brain was sparking with little zaps of electricity. He gazed dumbfounded as his body came back to life. And the times when he could see the serpent slither underneath his skin, he found himself sick with disgust.

Overall, his features were similar to what he’d remembered of himself, though he never really fawned over himself in the mirror. He seemed taller somehow, and his face held the menacing expression of a zombie. The color of his skin was definitely lighter than before, and it glowed with a kind of faint phosphorescence. Gone were the black hair and brooding eyebrows.

The priest clapped his hands and surprised Rikar from his reverie. He turned and eyed the priest as he started casting another spell at Rikar’s now groggy and trembling body. The priest strode ceremoniously up to the cross and placed his hand over the body’s midsection—at the originating point of the silver cord. He closed his eyes and chanted shrill words as he felt along the air where the cord was, and as if he could actually feel the cord itself, stretched his hands along its actual surface, and tugged and tugged the cord, pulling Rikar’s spirit closer to the stirring body.

“This will burn a little,” whispered the priest.
 

A little?
Rikar wanted to say, and found himself dreading what the priest had in mind.

Several other priests came and unbound Rikar’s body from the cross and helped the groggy figure to its feet. As they held the body firm, the first priest positioned himself behind Rikar’s spirit, and chanted a new spell that caused a red shimmering brilliance to form around the shell of his soul. In a burst of power striking him from behind, Rikar felt himself pushed and propelled forward, until he penetrated the heavy mass of his body in a wrenching, tearing movement.

For a long while he felt nauseous and unsettled, like when you wake from the nightmare of a fever dream drenched in sweat. But in the heavy, gloomy feeling that followed, he sensed a clean, distilled power pouring through him that was foreign and frightening at the same time. It focused his mind and raised his awareness, and as if with renewed senses, his mind surged with new information that had escaped him before: the lull of a locust’s wings, the itch of a priest’s dry skin, the interruption of the flow of sand over a skull, and the deep, dreadful drumming of a heartbeat somewhere far down inside the temple.

All the sounds flooding his mind caused him to go mad for a moment, until he forced himself to only listen to the shifting of the nearby priests as they observed him in rapt attention. Rikar was afraid to open his eyes to the blinding light of late morning, and instead he inhaled a deep breath of air and his nostrils were filled with a myriad of scents: the distant fragrance of a desert rose, the coppery smell of spilled blood on the sand, the acrid odor of the priests sweating under the hot sun, and the most distinct smell of all, coming from within the bowels of the temple, was the smell of death. The same festering smell as the Underworld.

“Rise, Lord Rikar,” said the voice of the priest who had killed him. “And give thanks to our Master and Lord of All for bestowing such generous gifts of power to you.”

Without thinking, Rikar opened his eyes to study the man and instantly regretted it. The light was painfully bright and caused his hands to shield his eyes and he cringed from the sun. Normally it would take longer for him to adjust to the brilliance, but for some reason he mind sharpened and the view dimmed in response and in seconds was bearable. He wasn’t used to such resilience of vision and senses and wondered what change had wrought such a difference.
The smoke and the ashes of the Starwalkers…they’re a part of you now
, he remembered.

The priest placed Rikar’s ring on his renewed finger and handed him a white robe to wear. Only upon feeling the soft texture of the robe against his fingers did he realize that he was naked, and the sun felt soothing and serene as it warmed his bare back.

“Our Lord and Master has gained a fragment of the stars from the quad that sacrificed themselves for our cause. Perhaps you can feel the change inside of you? Their essence has helped to reform your physical body, and with it, the Master has granted you new powers that will take you some time to discover within yourself.”
 

The priest spread his hands wide and closed his eyes to feel the sun warm his face. “You must go and help the Child of the Sun, the Master commands it, and help the girl who wields the twin daggers and dances with the dead. The three of you are commanded to obey our Master and recover more fragments for his freedom. You must go quickly, as the Order of the Dragons will soon destroy them in Carvina. I will show you the way to the Emperor’s Palace in the capitol. Without their help, you will be unable to succeed against the Starwalkers, so we must leave now.”