The Book of Deacon: Book 03 - The Battle of Verril (38 page)

For a moment she brought to mind some of the
more destructive spells that fell outside of the elemental realm,
but a thought occurred to her. The staff she held was of D'karon
design. A quick perusal of the enchantments clinging to it revealed
one that had much the same feel as that which held the door shut. A
second seemed its logical opposite. She fed the appropriate spell a
dose of her will and it eagerly leapt to work. A smile came to her
face. The door was slowly grinding aside. In taking the staff, she
may well have stolen the very keys to their defense.

“This is quite the useful tool,” Myranda
quipped.

The smile dropped away as the sounds from
within finally made their way through the widening gap. There was a
commotion inside. Splashing water, twisted unnatural voices,
clinking, scratching, clawing. Myranda placed a foot inside the
opening when it was wide enough. Almost instantly she was pushed
back. Out from the inky depths of the place came a cacophonous
rustle and flutter as dozens of black forms burst from the
darkness. For a moment she thought she was being attacked by bats.
She was wrong on both counts.

It was not a colony of bats tearing past her
but a veritable army of cloaks, and they were not attacking. The
disembodied garments seemed utterly unconcerned with the human,
save for the fact that she was in their way. She tried to oppose
them but was thrown aside, sprawling to the ground as the sky
filled with the creatures and the ground crawled with them.
Myranda's eyes darted from one beast to the next. Deep within the
folds of their cloth forms was a crystal, phantom claws locked
about it in a protective grip. They drifted through the sky and
across the surface of the water like ants carrying eggs from a
flooding colony. By the time the flow from the opening trailed off
there were easily hundreds of them, all drifting north.

“Myn!” Myranda called out. “Stop as many of
them as you can, and keep Ivy safe! I will be back as soon as I
can!”

With that she disappeared inside. The dragon
went to work. Sweeping as low along the water as her mind would
allow, she sprayed the creatures with flame. They scattered, but
each blast of fire took a handful of them with it. Myn managed a
few more runs before the flow was too scattered to manage any more
than one at a time. In truth she'd roasted only a small fraction of
the torrent of creatures, but destroying any more would take her
too far from Ivy. She circled back and took up a patrol in a tight
circle over the tiny island, her sharp gaze locked on the sleeping
creature.

Inside the dome, Myranda was greeted with the
only light ever to be found in the depths of D'karon structures,
the blue-white light of captured magic. This time, however, the
light came in a way Myranda scarcely could have imagined. An
intricate pattern of crystalline rods had been gathered together
into a sequence of interlocking shapes, like an array of enormous
snow flakes fixed point to point. The grid formed a shell in the
center of the largely hollow interior that now seemed to have been
bored into the island. Half of it was submerged in water,
refracting and reflecting the light into dazzling blobs of light
across the ceiling, and a trio of wooden struts stood from
water-obscured floor to ceiling. At every point where one crystal
rod met another, a gem was affixed, or at least had been. Even now
a smattering of cloaks and nearmen were harvesting them and
sweeping toward the door, showing little regard for the human who
stood in their way. Myranda stepped aside and let them pass. Myn
would stop them if she could, and there was a far more pressing
matter at hand.

In the very center of the vast crystal shell
was a smaller one attached to stone at the bottom of the deep
hollow center of the island. Inside of it, shifting wildly, was a
swirl of water that clearly had a will controlling it. It was
twisting and writhing, trying to snake out through the space
between the bars and recoiling back inside when it touched one. A
moment later the bundle of water darkened and shifted to stone,
dropping a short distance to the rocky floor. Beside it, standing
completely beneath the rippling surface of the indoor pool, was a
pair of creatures Myranda had never seen before.

Each looked to be a man in a suit of armor,
but even through the shifting wavelets she could see that there was
no flesh beneath the metal plates. They hung loosely in place, an
empty shell in the vague shape of a man, and a formidable man at
that. Red runes traced arcane patterns across every surface. The
only semblance of a being within the armor was a ball of flickering
amber light behind each chest plate. They each held in their
gauntlets a tall spear. In a fluid motion that stretched the unseen
limbs further than any natural being could, one of the demon armors
thrust the weapon into the newly formed stone. A gem flickering in
the blade drew in a dose of power and the rock shuddered and
shifted back to water to start the struggles anew.

The final crystal was hurried out the door
and finally notice was taken of the intruder. Only two nearmen
remained, sloshing around the shallow water at the edge of the
flooded room. As Myranda raised her staff to face them, she was
quickly reminded that the gem structure was ravenous enough to
limit her to the D'karon spells, but that was of little concern.
She'd become quite comfortable with their use. A bolt of black
ripped through the air at her, but it was easily deflected. She
clamped the crushing spell so frequently used upon her around her
attacker and hurled him at the stone wall. The other nearman aimed
a shot at the curved roof, his destructive spell punching a jagged
hole through it. A second blast destroyed one of the wooden
struts.

Impossibly, the whole of the island shuddered
and tilted, sagging against the remaining struts. The door Myranda
had entered through dipped below the waterline and began to gush
water. Myranda scrambled through the icy water to the high ground
at the opposite end of the flooding room. She regained her footing
just in time to deflect another blast from the sole surviving
nearman. The blast reversed neatly on itself and destroyed its
caster. Myranda turned to a sharp hissing sound overhead. It came
from the hole above her. Air was escaping. The island, which was
now certainly anything but a proper one, was sinking!

Outside, the sight of the sudden movement of
the island cast a fresh spike of fear into Myn's mind. She couldn't
believe her eyes. The waves were certainly working their way up the
shore. The water terrified the creature, but the thought of losing
her friends terrified her more. She dove low, snatching up Ivy
before the water could reach her. Working her wings for all they
were worth she skimmed across the water's surface to the shore,
depositing Ivy there and charging back. The water would not claim
Myranda.

The wizard splashed out to the crystal shell
and climbed atop it, blasting at it with whatever the staff seemed
capable of. Fractures curled their way around the bars, but they
seemed to shrug off the worst of the damage. Below, one of the
demon armors was scaling the sloped floor beneath the water. When
it reached the shell, the various plates and straps of the armor
spread and scattered, finding gaps large enough to slip through and
reassembling around the amber glow on the other side. Myranda
worked at the shell. One bar broke, then another. Suddenly a grip,
literally like iron, closed around her ankle and tore her from atop
the crystal structure. She was tossed effortlessly aside.

Water that was colder than ice drained the
feeling from her limbs as she struggled to reach some manner of
foothold. Alas, the last of the floor was slipping ever deeper into
the water, leaving little more than the peak of the crystal cage
above the surface. The steely grip closed around her ankle again
and she was yanked beneath the waves with barely a gasp of breath.
Nearly blinded by the freezing water, Myranda managed to dodge the
thrusting spear of the armor, but only just. She forced aside the
agony tearing at her mind and summoned another blast. The gauntlet
clutching her leg flew to pieces, allowing her to fight her way to
what little air remained and take a much needed breath.

Myn crashed down on the sinking hunk of
stone, clawing madly at the tiny hole she found. She felt the waves
close around her legs and every ancient instinct and ingrained fear
demanded she take to the air again. She denied them, finally
breaking though. There was the wet snap of wood and the entire
island seemed to drop out from under her, sinking into the depths.
The terrified dragon flailed about in the water before managing to
catch enough of the wind in her wings to hoist herself skyward. The
former island drifted out of sight, the remnants of the sheet of
ice that had been the lake's surface closing over it.

The last of the air slipped out of the
widening hole. It was large enough to escape through, but Myranda
turned her back to it. She still had a job to do. The icy water
stung at her eyes as she gazed down at the still intact shells of
crystal. The remaining hand of the demon armor had caught hold of
the edge of her cloak and she was being pulled into the darkening
depths. A sizable chunk of the ruined roof drifted down beside her.
Again she called upon the vice spell, clutching it and guiding its
fall. It broke easily through the first shell, but the armor
creature that had stayed behind managed to deflect it from the
smaller shell, the shell that held what remained of Ether. A moment
later the still intact demon armor hurled its spear. The weapon
hissed through the water like a harpoon and grazed Myranda's
side.

Exertion of mind and body were squandering
Myranda's last breath of air, and pressure squeezed painfully in
around her. The inner shell still held strong. She ignored the pain
and cold and held out her staff, groping with its spells for
something to smash Ether's cage. The whole of the structure around
her lurched as it struck the floor of the lake, sinking slightly
into the icy mud. The shock was enough to dislodge a piece of the
damaged roof. Myranda tried to swim aside but the injured armor
creature clamped her wrist in its remaining glove and twisted it
viciously. The fingers opened of their own accord and her stolen
staff floated instantly out of reach, rocketing to the surface. The
stone pushed her to the tilted ground and pinned her there. It was
all Myranda could do to keep from losing her last few moments of
air in a scream of agony.

All that she knew of water magic flashed
through her mind, but what remained of the enchantments protecting
this place, and the crystal shell feeding off of it prevented even
the simplest spell from taking hold. Levitation and a dozen other
spells fell flat in a frenzied panic of casting. Her lungs burned
for air. Her chest heaved for it. The demon armors stood about her
as her vision began to darken. Then came the sound.

It was strange and far away, like thunder
filtering though the fathoms of water. Myranda and her attackers
turned their eyes to the surface as one. Thrusting toward them with
waving motions that rippled along her whole body was Myn. Madness
flashed in her eyes. She came down upon the ruins of the structure
like an avalanche, snapping her jaws around one suit of armor in a
maelstrom of bubbles and twisted metal and smashing the other apart
with a wildly flailing claw. The beast quickly levered aside the
stone that pinned her friend and snatched her up. Myranda gestured
wildly at the shell of crystal. Myn cast a fleeting glance and
whipped at it with her tail, reducing it to powder. She then
planted her feet on the stone floor and thrust herself toward the
surface.

The pair erupted from the surface, shattering
a chunk of ice and soaring into the air. The dragon unfurled her
wings and darted to the shore as Myranda gasped a burning cold
breath of the icy air and collapsed into a fit of coughing. Myn
belched out column after column of flame until the water that clung
to her boiled and sizzled. She shook and rolled in crazed fear, as
though the drops that nestled among her scales were at this moment
trying to kill her. By the time she was through, Myranda had
finished coughing and now lay in a trembling heap on the ground.
Without the crystals near, her spells would work. Warmth and health
were but a few whispered words away, but that could wait. She
struggled soggily to her feet and looked to the lake.

The whole of the surface was surging with
waves and churning ice. In the center, a small, clear mound of
water had heaved itself up. It resembled a human form in the very
loosest of terms, but stood perfectly still, in stark contrast to
the stormy surface. Slits of light where the eyes should be flared.
Slowly the water around it settled to stillness. A circle of water
centered around the form dropped flat and calm and the circle began
to grow. More and more of the lake was struck by the sudden
stillness. With each wave that sunk to nothing the humanity of the
form became more distinct. Finally the whole of the lake was a dead
calm, smooth as glass, and in the center, Ether.

She sunk beneath the surface, providing it
with its first ripples. An instant later her form emerged from the
shore nearest to the other heroes. Now near enough to see, the
expression on her watery face was far from the serene, complacent
mask of superiority she normally wore. It was a mosaic of fear,
fatigue, desperation, and perhaps most out of place of them all,
gratitude.

“Thank you . . . “ the shape shifter managed.
Two more unlikely words were never spoken.

Ether dropped to her knees on the dusty
pebbles of the shore. The rough gray texture crept up her legs, and
in a few moments she was entirely composed of stone, motionless.
Myranda made her way to the form and looked into its eyes, little
more than orbs of smoother white stone set against the rest, but in
them she saw the flicker of power that she was hoping for. Ether
was out of danger. All she needed was time to rest and a good
strong fire. Indeed that was all that each of them needed.