The Book of Deacon: Book 03 - The Battle of Verril (32 page)

Before long Ivy's chains had been worn down
to a few short lengths, affording her far greater control. The
sword wielding nearman was already on his last legs, the bizarre
assault leaving him battered and bloodied, but now the strikes
where landing upon undefended flesh without fail. Finally there was
nothing left on her legs and neck but shackles, the crystal bands
on her tail having long since slipped away. She wrapped the
remaining links that dangled from her wrists around her fingers and
advanced on the nearly beaten warrior. Her ears twitched. The door
marked III was creaking open.

Myranda took a large, gently pulsing crystal
into her hands. Its ravenous hunger sated, she felt no draw on her
strength. In its place she could feel the raw power locked just
below its surface. It was like a dull warmth, a warmth that she
felt not with her body, but with her soul. Tiny fractures were
feathering across the surface. Myranda probed the enchantments of
the staff. There was a connection, she could feel it. The same
power trapped within the crystal fueled the spells. If she could
just manage to use the staff to tap into it, she might have a
chance. Carefully she tugged and pulled at the tools of the D'karon
with magic. Reluctantly, a filament of brilliant light wormed out
of the crystal and flowed into the staff. Instantly she felt the
enchantments come alive. Each seeming to have a will of its own.
They all wished to be cast at once. She sifted through them,
finally coming upon one that seemed right.

Staff in one hand, gem in the other, she
turned to the door barring their way. On the ground the defeated
warrior lay, barely moving. Ivy stood over him, the links of chain
slowly slipping from her fingers. Her gaze, her mind, her entire
being was transfixed by the form before her. A young woman, perhaps
Myranda's age, was standing just outside of the third cell. Her
eyes were blank and empty, staring at an indistinct point in the
distance. From the looks of her, she hadn't seen the outside in
years, so pale was her skin. Indeed, she looked frail and weary
enough to have been locked away for the whole of her life. The
clothes she wore were simple, and seemed almost ancient, worn thin
over years. Ivy approached her.

“What is the matter?” Myranda asked, concern
in her voice.

Ivy raised a hand and touched the woman on
the cheek. Slowly, mechanically, the woman imitated. A ragged
sleeve slid back to reveal, in sharp black against her pale
forearm, the Mark of the Chosen. Ivy was fairly trembling. A lone
tear rolled down her cheek, her face a potent mix of agony,
longing, and confusion. Her mind seemed frozen, locked about a
feeling she couldn't describe. Something she felt . . . she
knew
to her very core. Those eyes. They were familiar, but
she'd never seen them before. How could it be? What did it
mean?

This third foe did not seem to be a threat,
but appearances were often deceiving. However, as a quiet crackling
emanated from the crystals behind her, Myranda knew that there was
a far more pressing concern that had to be dealt with first. She
focused her attentions on the door, unleashing the full power of
the spell she'd selected. Sure enough, the staff was all too eager
to sap the crystal of its stolen strength. As it did, the door
began to rattle against is hinges. Myranda could feel the clash of
the two spells, the tension as they struggled against one another.
As the two D'karon spells battled, she cast her gaze cautiously
about with what little will she had to spare. The woman before Ivy
seemed harmless. Indeed, beyond harmless. She'd seen a blank
expression like that once before though, on Hollow, the prophet of
Entwell. Yet when the spirits gripped him, Hollow was anything but
harmless. As she contemplated what precisely it was that Demont had
been keeping behind the third cell door, and why Ivy found it so
fascinating, the malthrope's expression changed to one of
comprehension.

“She doesn't look right because she is . . .
she is too . . . old,” Ivy gasped in a hushed voice.

Realization cut through her more painfully
than any knife could. In its wake, memories long concealed by a
dense fog were thrust into clarity. A continuous line of
recollection lurched up from the mists, bright and real. The sounds
of battle rang in her ears. Scenes of soldiers flashed before her
darting eyes. They were the same images she'd recalled when Myranda
had asked her to remember, but vivid as life. She saw the eyes of
her parents in crystal clarity as they were struck down. She heard
the screams of the other children around her. She felt the searing
sting of an arcane tool as it was plunged cruelly into her
chest.

Her shaking fingers rose and tugged at the
neck of the human's shirt. It slid down slightly, revealing a
ghastly white scar at the base of her throat. A scar precisely
where the artifact had been driven in her memory. Ivy stumbled back
as if struck, her eyes riddled with pain. The agony dropped away
slowly, leaving Ivy's expression as blank as that of her tormentor.
Slower still came its replacement. The change was subtle on the
surface. Her lips pressed together slightly. Her eyes drew
narrower. Around her the air seemed to grow warmer and colder at
the same time. It had all of the burning bite of the chillest of
winter nights. She drew in a breath and released it as a seething
hiss that swirled in front of her as a puff of white mist.

Deep inside, Ivy burned. She burned not with
the white hot flame of anger, a fire that danced blindingly across
the surface. This was deeper, smoldering in her very core. This was
an emotion she'd never felt so intensely. Her soul and body boiled
with it. It was not long before the intense feeling found its way
along the channels installed by the D'karon. It came to the surface
not as the crimson glow of anger. It was not a glow at all. Indeed,
the light seemed to be drawn from the air around her. Darkness
rolled off of her in thin black waves, billowing like mist and
thickening as it drifted to the floor.

“Demont,” she hissed, blackness beginning to
thread its way along her white fur. “It wasn't enough that he
killed me. It isn't enough that he tore my soul from my body. He
had to lock them both away. Twist them. Shape them. Leave them to
wither. I am nothing to him. He tainted everything.”

Ivy's words dripped with a hatred the likes
of which Myranda never would have thought her capable. She felt the
intense emotion at the edge of her mind, eager to get in. It was
relentless. Myranda kept it at bay and intensified her efforts on
the door. It was not budging, and the crystal was nearly drained.
Or at least, it had been. Now it was drinking greedily of the
blanket of black mist that rolled across the floor.

“Ivy, I need you to calm down,” Myranda
pleaded.

“No . . . no. Now is not the time to be calm.
Not when that . . . thing still lives. Not while his little twisted
creations still lurk about. He must be punished. He must be ended.
And I will use what he gave me to do it,” she fumed.

Her voice had a more even, more mature
quality. There was no hint of the innocence that saturated her tone
normally. Now there was hatred, vengeance, and nothing else. She
shifted her gaze to the mock hero, his falsely noble form
struggling back to his feet, sword in hand. She stalked toward him.
The mist around her feet whisked aside, offering a glimpse of
pockmarked, eroded stone where her feet had been. Each step left
behind a similar patch that looked as though a century of decay had
worn it away.

Myranda looked around. Everywhere the mist
touched seemed to age before her eyes. Iron bars rusted. Wood
flaked and crumbled. Only two things were spared. The mist had
parted itself around Myranda, and around the figure that had driven
Ivy to this level of madness. The nearmen were not afforded the
same mercy. Instead, as Ivy finally reached the battered form of
the warrior, the mist seemed to coil up around him. She reached out
and grasped him by the neck. A ghostly pallor spread out from her
touch, withering flesh to gnarled sinew. Myranda turned away from
the horrid sight, only to behold a far worse one.

The wooden racks that held the dangerously
full gems finally gave way under the effects of the mist. The
crystals tumbled to the ground. Some of them fractured, brilliant
light gleaming from within and threatening to burst forth. Most
managed to stay whole, drinking in the mist that they were now
immersed in. Every last one of them took on a painfully bright
glow. Myranda rushed to them, staff in hand. She had to spill off
the energy, and quickly, as there was certainly no time to make it
far enough away to escape the blast.

She slid to a stop as a form rose up from the
mist. The wizard, still clinging to life after Myranda's last
attack, struggled to his feet. He hadn't been spared the effects of
the concentrated hate that was pouring out of Ivy. His clothes
looked as though they had been left at the mercy of a dozen hard
winters. His flesh was stark white and drawn. In his hands, though,
were a pair of the wands left by Ivy's handlers. With a mechanical
look of dignity and nobility still plastered on his ravaged face,
the creation began to unleash blast after blast of the black magic.
The stores of the wands were depleted quickly, only to be fed by
the very crystals Myranda was trying to deal with. The black energy
kicked up a wake of mist as it crackled through the air. Myranda
raised the staff and found it more than able to deflect the
attacks.

Volley after volley of D'karon magic splashed
against the stolen staff, but if anything it was merely delaying
the inevitable. The crystals would give way before long if
something was not done. Myranda cast a glance she could not afford
to Ivy, who strode casually along a floor that was now wholly
hidden beneath a lightly shifting black mist. She seemed
unconcerned with the destructive bursts of magic that lurched in
wild deflections across the throne room turned battlefield.

The lapse in Myranda’s attention let a swath
of magic through her defenses. It passed through her. A
simultaneous agony of the body and soul burned at her, but she
wrestled it from her mind and managed to block the follow up
attack. Now Ivy was beside her.

“See to it that nothing happens to Aneriana,”
Ivy ordered.

Before Myranda could object, or even agree,
Ivy was in front of her. A pair of spells that would have put
Myranda on her knees clashed against Ivy. Rather than passing
through her, they seemed to curl and scatter. A third seemed to
wrap around her, blending with fur that was now more black than
white. Finally she stopped. Once again the mist swirled up,
swallowing the wizard even as he continued his assault. The spells
continued to burst from the writhing clouds. A moment later, there
was stillness. The mist dropped away. It left behind what looked to
be a poorly embalmed cadaver left to the elements for a century. It
crumbled to the ground in a dusty pile of gray bones, white skin,
and black powder that may once have been blood.

A sound like crackling ice drew Myranda's
attention. A sound like scratching claws drew Ivy's. As the girl
tried to find something in the staff's arsenal that could buy them
some time, she saw a fleeting glimpse of Ivy's eyes. The bright,
lively, innocent pink eyes were replaced with a cold, determined
violet mockery of them. The eyes locked on the watcher as it
scrabbled along the high ceiling to a window. The mere gaze was
enough to prompt a choked off squeal of pain from the creature. A
moment later it fell to the ground, causing a ripple in the settled
mist before striking the ground as a dry, shrived husk.

Myranda drew up as much as she could of the
power that surged dangerously around her and heaved it at the door.
The staff, powerful though it was, simply could not burn enough
energy quickly enough to unravel the locking spell, let alone empty
the crystals. As a shaft of light burst from a crystal, Myranda
turned in a blur of motion and focused the staff's efforts on
holding it together. Another crystal, then another got the same
treatment. The only thing standing between the castle and its utter
demolition was the struggling will of the Chosen.

“Ivy . . . the door. You have to get it open
. . . I can't . . . hold this for very long,” Myranda pleaded.

“My work is not through here,” came a voice
as cold and hollow as a crypt.

The black as night form of what had once been
Ivy stood before the final door. The wood crumbled to dust. The
form inside looked up, as though the light that now poured into its
chamber brought with it a long missing spark of life. What she saw
was a man, young, but already scarred with the remnants of many
battles. He wore armor that was twisted and damaged. His eyes had
the same distant, empty stare as the woman that even now stood in
the center of the room. Deep inside them, though, was the tiniest
flicker of wisdom.

Myranda wove her will with that of the staff,
lending as much as she could spare to the weapon's mystic
influence. As she did, its secrets began to unfold. She could feel
the texture of the spell, see the runes that would coax it from a
page, feel the thoughts that had created it. Slowly she traced it
to its roots, the fragment that somehow allowed it to draw its
strength from the crystals. The rest of the threads of magic drew
back to reveal it. Quickly she crafted a spell of her own that
incorporated the stolen technique. A shimmering shield flashed into
existence, forming a dome over the crystals. She gave her aching
spirit a moment's rest. The shield held, but a shudder as a crystal
splashed its contents against it assured the young wizard that it
wouldn't hold for long. She turned to Ivy knowing that now was the
last chance to escape.

One last time the black mist rushed in around
the work of Demont. It twisted and roiled about the armor clad
form. A hand reached out from among the mist and grasped the hilt
of the Sword of the Chosen. Instantly the mist was swept away. He
raised the sword defensively. Ivy grasped the blade, oblivious to
the razor sharp edge, and attempted to wrench it from his grasp.
There was a glimmer of dormant magic and a paralyzing sensation
that had been felt only once before it shot down Ivy's arm. She
cried out in pain.