The City of Ravens (36 page)

Jelan and her followers whirled to confront the threat, goggling with astonishment. In the open air Jack could hear the wild mythal throbbing and crackling, an aura of emerald motes dancing around the device in an endless coruscation. The floor beneath his feet was cool tile, inlaid in an exotic spiraling design that circled the colossal stone in the center. He ignored it and worked his force globe spell, hurling two potent spheres at the Shar priestess, as she offered the most convenient target.

“Beware, Jelan!” he called. “I have returned!”

To his amazement, the spheres flew from his fingertips

and tripled in size, fed by the streaming emerald energy dancing around the mythal. Amarana managed to dodge one, which blasted a mercenary swordsman with the impact of a giant’s hammer, but the other blew her legs out from under her. The mail-clad priestess screeched and hit the tiled floor hard, her legs badly broken by the force of Jack’s spell. The mythal, he realized. Its magic powers are my own!

Then one of Jelan’s followers stabbed at him with an evil gout of black flame that twisted to follow Jack despite his efforts to evade the sorcerous fire. The searing heat and crackling energy contorted his limbs and crumpled Jack to the ground, but now the battle was joined all around him. Zandria hurled a bolt of brilliant lightning straight at Yu Wei. The Shou sorcerer screamed as the white energy illuminated him like a living pillar and then channeled through his incandescent body to strike at the mercenaries who were unfortunate enough to stand nearby, linking them all in a bright and deadly pinion of energy. Marcus dashed at Jelan, who had somehow eluded the fire and the lightning, but from the knight’s left, a mercenary captain raced forward, forcing Marcus to break off his attack and meet his instead. They circled in a flurry of hard-struck blows, swords ringing in the damp air.

The lightning chain flickered to nothing. Jack blinked the afterimages from his eyes, trying to get his bearings, and looked up just in time to see Yu Wei crumple to the ground, a burnt husk. Three of Jelan’s swordsmen fell with him. Heartened, Jack struggled to his feet and rejoined the fray. To the left, Marcus and the captain continued their duel. On the right, Anders fought for his life against the blindingly fast drow swordsman Hathmar Blademark. Zandria traded spells with the Nar warlock Kel Kelek, parrying his spells with counterspells of her own. The tattooed warrior screamed with frustration and abandoned his attempts to breach her defenses, rushing the red-haired mage with his long sword. He crashed into her and knocked her to the stone floor, struggling to bring his sword to bear.

Jelan! Jack realized. Where is she? He searched the battlefield for the Warlord and spotted her pacing deliberately toward the wild mythal, moving strangely.

“Illyth, help Zandria!” he cried, and then he ran straight for the mythal stone.

He made it within ten feet before something kicked his feet out from under him. An invisible force repelled him from the stone, spinning him to the floor. Jack looked up just as Tharzon rebounded from the same transparent barrier he had struck.

“Moradin’s beard! What is this?” the dwarf groaned.

Jack turned, expecting an attack from Jelan—but the Warlord simply ignored him with nothing more than a quick glance of appraisal. Jack rolled over and stood up, trying to determine why she hadn’t run him through as he lay helpless on the floor. Then his eyes fell on the spiral pattern that surrounded the base of the drow mythal.

A faint, emerald glimmer surrounded the mythal at a range of twenty feet or so, rising in delicate sheets like a mirror maze made of green diamond dust suspended in the air. Jack stood just inside the outer barrier. Tharzon scrambled to his feet only an arm’s length on the other side. The dwarf tried to step through, but the magical field repelled him again.

“Damnation! I can’t move through!” Tharzon cursed in anger.

“It seems that I can,” Jack replied. “You help the others. I’ll see what I can do about Jelan.” He turned back to the Warlord.

Jelan carefully approached the stone itself, glancing over her shoulder to keep an eye on the battle. She spotted him and smiled in a warlike fashion.

“Stand back,” she commanded. “I bear you no particular malice, Jack, but I will not tolerate interference!”

Jack frowned. Jelan was a very skilled swordswoman, and he was hesitant to resort to force. But no one else in his party would be able to come to his aid for some time yet; the skirmish still raged outside the emerald field.

“If you’ll tell me what you are doing, I might decide that I have no reason to obstruct you!” he called, hoping to distract her.

“Ending a curse,” she replied, “and mastering this stone.”

The former didn’t seem too bad, but Jack didn’t like the implications of the latter. He steeled himself for a fight and stepped toward her.

“Not if I can help it, dear Elana,” Jack said. He summoned up a green spiral of energy, vibrant and powerful, and lashed out at her.

The bolt crackled across her torso and did not affect her in the least. Jelan smiled sweetly.

“Magic cannot touch me, Jack. You’ll have to do better than that!” Then she danced away around the stone, circling away from him. The shimmering energy seemed denser, more substantial, the closer he moved to the stone pillar. Clearly, it wasn’t a matter of walking up and manipulating the device; one had to carefully negotiate the fields of chaotic energy wreathing the wild mythal.

“What happens when she reaches the stone?” Jack muttered to himself.

He had a suspicion that he did not want to find out. He resumed his pursuit, slipping toward the stone as fast as he could while trying to keep Jelan in sight.

Outside, the impetus of his companions’ attack had

stalled. Anders and Marcus were matched by swordsmen every bit as skillful as they were, if not more so. Zandria and Myth struggled against Kel Kelek. Ashwillow worked spell and blade against three of Jelan’s picked swordsmen, determined fighters who sought to comer her and cut her down. She halted two of them with a spell that rooted them to the spot, holding them in place through the force of her will, but the third swordsman reached her and slashed her across the torso. Ashwillow cried out and fell, curled around her wound, as the swordsman looked around for his next opponent.

Tharzon crashed into the man who’d struck down Ashwillow and knocked him to the floor. With one hand he slapped the swordsman’s helmet from his head, and with the other he split the fellow’s skull with his axe. The dwarf picked himself up, just as Hathmar wounded Anders and drove the barbarian to one knee with a series of blinding slashes.

“Hold on, Anders! I am coming!” Tharzon called.

Jack returned his attention to Jelan and moved closer, completing a circuit of the mythal stone three and a half laps behind Jelan. He turned the comer and suddenly found that she had halted, facing a smooth flat patch that marked one side of the stone. She’d reached the center, and he was only ten or twelve feet behind her. Jack circled carefully, warily, nearer. He was almost in sword reach, and it wouldn’t help anything if he allowed her to gut him just as he caught her. I need to distract her, he decided.

“Jelan! Your lieutenants and swordsmen are defeated! You have no hope of victory. I call on you to surrender!”

Jelan glanced over her shoulder at him, measured the distance from the mythal face to the spot he currently occupied, and smiled. “Your friends have the upper hand,” she admitted, “but my soldiers are still fighting. I

see no need to give in yet.” She turned back to the mythal.

Jack scowled. He plucked the poignard from his belt and threw it at her, but the repelling force that protected the mythal from his approach also defeated missiles. The dagger clattered to the ground only a foot from where it had left his hand. Jelan did not even take notice. Instead, she faced the stone and seemed to raise her hands in supplication, closing her eyes and stretching as if she could embrace the colossal pillar if she tried hard enough.

“Whatever it is you’re attempting to do, you are out of time,” Jack promised darkly.

He spared the battle outside another look. With Tharzon’s aid Anders fought his way to his feet again, blood streaming from several wounds. The powerful Northman beat aside the drow captain’s attack and rammed forward breast-to-breast with the mercenary, shoving Hathmar back toward the wall of water surrounding the stone. Feathers of white water streaked away from the drow as he breached the barrier, and then Anders hammered him all the way through, losing his balance as the maelstrom swept away Hathmar. He drifted back into the black depths of the lake, caught in the current and swept back from air and life. Helplessly, the drow vanished into the dark depths.

Anders spotted Jack and Jelan and dashed straight at them, only to encounter the same barrier that restricted Jack. He rebounded and went down hard.

“I have an argument with you, Warlord!” he cried.

“So?” Jelan laughed. “You, too, are not in time.” She completed whatever ritual or preparation she had performed, and then slashed open the palm of her left hand with a dagger. Then she pressed her bloody hand to the cold, dark stone.

With a detonation that tossed Jack, Blacktree, and everyone else nearby to the ground, the wild mythal exploded with emerald energy. Whips of green power flailed against the water, the stone, the darkness above with the fury of wildcats, sizzling and snapping. The maelstrom’s eye blasted apart in a spray of cold water and reformed fifty yards wider than it had been, hammered backward by the power pouring from the mythal stone. And in the center of it all, Jelan arched and screamed with ecstasy and delight as the energy poured into her body, filling her, dancing across her skin like fire.

“I have done it!” she cried.

Done what? Jack wondered as he picked himself up and staggered to his feet. The magic streamed into Jelan as if she were a bottomless well, drinking and drinking without reaching satiation. Dully he noticed that the tile paths were now marked by walls of emerald force, the invisible barrier now visible and unbreakable, completely encapsulating him with the Warlord and the wild mythal. Magic now ran from his body to the stone, draining from his soul as blood might drain from slashed wrists. Moment by moment he felt it slipping away from him.

“Elana,” he coughed. “What have you done?”

“For ten generations my family has suffered,” she cried triumphantly. “Once we were mighty sorcerers, born to wield magic, the most powerful of all Kara-Tur. Then our magic was stripped from us by a divine curse! Now, at last, I have undone that wrong! We will be sorcerers again, one with the Weave, strong in the Art! It is in my blood!”

“You wrecked Raven’s Bluff for this?” Jack asked in amazement.

Magic buffeted him, ruffled his hair and clothing, howled around him like a demon, but he could not sense

it. He only felt its effects, and the ache in his heart, the sense of something missing, was unbearable.

This is my restitution,” she shouted. Energy wreathed her dark hair like a crown of emeralds. “My penance! And my triumph! I have freed my bloodline of the antimagic curse, and I have claimed the first city of my empire. I am bound no longer!”

“What of the mythal?” Jack cried. “You are destroying it!”

“I am taming it,” Jelan replied. “Within its domain, I am the arbiter of all magic, I am magic. My kingdom will be unassailable!”

“Who gave you the right?” Jack demanded. “We have no need of an overlord. We do not desire a tyrant to decide who may use magic and who may not. You broke your curse—good! You have righted an ancient wrong, but you have no legitimacy here, no claim to rule Raven’s Bluff!”

Jelan met his eyes evenly. “I do not ask for the right, Jack Ravenwild. I take it! I once offered you a chance to serve me. This is your last opportunity to reconsider your answer. Will you swear allegiance to me, serve me as one of the rulers of this city? Or would you rather remain a street rat for the rest of your days?”

Jack studied her face. He could see death waiting in her eyes if he answered wrong. He glanced behind him, where Illyth, Anders, Tharzon, and Zandria waited and watched, hemmed out by the green fields of magic. All of Jelan’s lieutenants and swordsmen were down, as were the Hawk Knights. I didn’t even see the end of the battle, Jack thought to himself. What happened?

“Well?” Jelan demanded.

Jack’s allies were silent. Perhaps they’d already tried to make themselves heard through the wall of power surrounding the stone and failed; they simply watched him

now, their expressions unreadable. Hope, despair, anger, compassion—it didn’t matter what they wanted. It was up to him. He turned back to Jelan and smiled. “I decline,” he said.

Jelan raised her hand and struck him with a bolt of icy green lightning. Jack howled in pain and collapsed in a seizure of pain, arms and legs flailing against the stone. He bit his tongue hard. Blood filled his mouth. After an eternity of pain, the seizure relaxed, and he moaned aloud. Awkwardly, he turned himself over and levered himself to his hands and knees.

Tour spells lack subtlety,” he gasped, pushing to his feet. He picked up his rapier and advanced on her.

The Warlord stepped away from the stone and drew her own sword. “Blades, then,” she said.

Without hesitation she darted forward and slashed high at his head, a graceful and deadly arc that would have decapitated him with ease if he hadn’t thrown himself to the ground to duck beneath it. Jack managed to get the point of his rapier up fast enough to back her off a step when she moved to finish him on the ground. Then he scrambled sideways until he gained his feet again.

The Warlord laughed and came at him again, offering him no chance to rest. She slashed and whirled like a dancer with a baton, impossibly swift and skillful. Jack deflected her blade from his heart by a lucky parry, blocked another by retreating behind a corner of the mythal stone, and then took a long, shallow cut along his ribs as he barely twisted away from a thrust that would have impaled him at the navel. He gasped in pain and backed away again. Already his limbs trembled with fatigue. I can’t beat her, he realized. In a minute, maybe two, I’ll slip or miss a parry and shell run me through, and that will be it.