Read The Crucible of the Dragon God Online
Authors: Mike Wild
Tags: #Action & Adventure, #General, #Fantasy, #Epic, #Fiction
The city was all but obscured by smoke and dust, filled with the sound of explosions and agonised screams. Her plan to take the fight to the k'nid began as soon as she, Pim and the other volunteers flung open the doors of the
Underlook
and began blasting their way out of the alleyway. Bolts of blue crackled into the narrow space, filling it with so much magical energy that it was at first difficult to tell whether the crackstaffs were effective against the k'nid. But the gratifying crunch of their blasted and twitching chitinous bodies beneath their feet, as they continued to advance towards the Andon Heart, soon told them what they wished to know. Their fight had just got a little more even.
Kali and the others burst into the marketplace and fanned out, beams lancing out to take down the k'nid who had made it their business to consume the market stalls. Their targeting was not random, each shot chosen quickly but carefully, and Kali found herself impressed by the marksmanship of Pim and his men. K'nid after k'nid were blasted, screeching, scuttling and dismembered. She supposed the dexterity of hands trained to slip a wallet from a pocket, without a hint it had ever been there, had other uses, too.
She wished only that the same were true of the Three Towers. The spires continued to blast away above them and this close to the structure, in its very shadow in fact, she could feel the raw power. A power that made her limbs feel weak and her brain tight. Such power did not, however, stop those k'nid who had chosen the towers as their target from flinging themselves at its sides. As she watched they joined an earlier assault wave, working away at the tallow-like walls to find a way to the mages inside. Kali debated giving the mages a helping hand by blasting the k'nid away, but only for a second. As far as she was concerned the League could stand or fall by its own devices, as they had so callously left the people outside to stand or fall by theirs.
The marketplace cleared, Kali and the others moved on into the streets where they split up to cover the warren of small streets and alleyways individually.
As she worked her way along one such street, Kali could hear the discharge of crackstaffs echoing all around her, and she smiled slightly at the damage that was obviously being meted out. Firing as she moved, her attention was nevertheless split between the next target and the location of Merrit Moon. She thought she caught sight of the old man - in his ogur form - once, but only as a possible presence amidst a small hill of swarming k'nid who were being batted and tossed aside. The chaos of the streets, however, prevented her from reaching him before he had moved on, leaving a path of destruction in his wake. Soon after, their paths almost crossed once more - but this time the old man's presence was announced only by a prolonged and savage roar of fury that was carried to her from beyond the rooftops, a street or maybe three away. By this time, however, Kali was beginning to realise that she had other, more relevant concerns.
The fact was, the sound of discharging crackstaffs that had been so prevalent not so long before was lessening somewhat. What was worse, she was beginning to hear cries of alarm and screams that she somehow knew came from Pim's people.
It did not take her long to work out why. The alarm bells from the city walls were ringing again and, glimpsed in streets all around her, Kali saw more k'nid were entering the fray, flocking to their unnatural brethren and bringing reinforcements into the battle that seemed inexhaustible. She and Pim and his people had made a difference in the defence of the city, but the fact was there were just too many of the creatures and more were coming all the time.
"We have to pull back!" Kali shouted to one of Pim's men as he stumbled out an alleyway nearby, his crackstaff firing into the shadows.
The thief looked at her, his face desperate, and Kali staggered back as she realised half of it was a bloody mess, all but gone.
"They just keep coming," he gasped. "There's no stoppi -"
As he spoke, two k'nid sprang from the alley and enveloped him. In the time it took his face to crumple in horror he was no more than a pile of steaming bones on the ground. Kali could do nothing but fire off a couple of bolts in retaliation and then, as more k'nid poured from alleyways and began to pursue her, she turned and ran. All she could do was try to carry the message to Pim and the others herself now.
Spinning occasionally to fire her crackstaff at the pursuing k'nid, Kali raced along the street, weaving from side to side as the fireballs from the Three Towers continued to pummel down, obliterating buildings all around her and forcing her to duck or roll as great chunks and shards of stone exploded across her path.
Damn the League
, she thought.
They actually seemed - probably in increasing desperation - to be intensifying their bombardment and if their self preservation protocol
continued like this, they'd be responsible for as many Andonian deaths as the k'nid themselves.
And she'd be one of them if she didn't get into some kind of cover soon.
Kali dodged into a side alley but there found herself tripping over her own feet, her route blocked by a man busied with another pack of k'nid streaming in from its other end. He was holding his ground well but, whoever he was, he wasn't one of Pim's men and he wasn't using a crackstaff to defend himself. In fact, he wasn't using any kind of weapon at all, except himself.
Bursts of fire, ice and magical energy roared and cracked from his fingertips, wielded against his attackers to devastating effect. She'd seen shadowmages at work before - mainly using their magics against
her
- but never one who handled the threads with such absolute confidence, dexterity and power. Tall and becloaked - with a handsome, if weather beaten, face visible beneath the hood - he wove complex patterns with his hands that seemed less the result of years of dedicated training than a natural, instinctive affinity with the craft.
"Nice handiwork," Kali said, running to his position. K'nid followed her in, thrashing at her heels. Too many of them.
"You, too," the man said. "Saw you earlier - some of the moves you pulled off.
Look out!
"
Kali span, firing burst after burst at the k'nid and found herself pressed back to back with the stranger. She could feel him lurch with each magical bolt that he unleashed and they balanced each other as she expended the power of her crackstaff.
"Yes, well, I seem to have a peculiar knack for what I do," she shouted over her shoulder.
"Me, too."
"The name's Kali Hooper."
"Lucius Kane."
"Pleased to meet you, Lucius. But unless we break this up and get the hells out of this pitsing bottleneck, we're stuffed."
"Not quite the language I'd use to describe our present predicament, but wholeheartedly agreed. Ideas, Miss Hooper?"
Kali glanced upward, at the walls tightly confining the alleyway. High and sheer, they seemed to be the only buildings in Andon that hadn't been buttressed with balconies, makeshift extensions or dropbogs of some kind. As such they would be near impossible to scale. She knew she could make it up with a few well-timed moves but the question was what good would that do her new comrade-in-arms?
"The only way out seems to be up. But..."
"Up it is, then. Shall we?"
"Shall we wha -?"
Before Kali could finish, she felt Kane's back detach from her own, and then caught a glimpse of a flitting and dwindling shadow above. There might have been nothing for the man to cling on to but he apparently didn't
need
anything, rapidly flinging himself up some invisible ladder in the wall that only he could see. As far as Kali knew, there was no 'invisible ladder' spell in the grimoire or whatever it was these people used. So what the hells was he doing - using the
threads
themselves as rungs? Gods, yes, it seemed that was exactly what he was doing, using the threads as
physical
things, manipulating the world itself to his own ends. She had never seen any -
any
- shadowmage do that before.
He was looking back down at her and
grinning
.
Bastard!
Despite their predicament, he was clearly throwing down a challenge and, with a roar of determination, she kicked off after him, booting two k'nid out of the way. She used the subsequent scramble of the pack's bodies as a launching pad to throw herself up against one wall and then another, each time higher and higher, repeating the process until she had caught up with Kane.
Kali flipped herself over the edge of the roof.
"Not very gentlemanly," she gasped, "leaving a helpless girl alone like that."
"You're no helpless girl, and you know it."
"That's as maybe but -" Kali stopped suddenly, and it was her turn to shout a warning. "Kane!"
Somehow, one of the k'nid had managed to follow them to the roof, and was leaping for the shadowmage as she shouted. Spotting it, Kane's arm shot out and, for a moment, Kali thought he was about to unleash another elemental bolt, but that wasn't what he was doing at all. Instead, he punched the k'nid solidly as it came, but instead of knocking it back, his fist disappeared
inside
its chitinous shell so that the creature was caught, dangling, thrashing and impaled, on the end of his arm. Impossible enough that the man had somehow penetrated its natural armour, Kali thought, but what he did next actually made her stagger back. His mouth twisting into a grimace, his eyes widening and staring at the creature directly, Kane seemed somehow to suck the very life from it. The k'nid crumpled and decomposed in seconds, leaving behind a brittle and lifeless husk.
The shadowmage shrugged the remains off and crushed them beneath his boot. Clearly, what he had just done had been
nothing
to him.
Kali stared.
"Who
are
you?"
Silhouetted by the fiery oranges of the ongoing bombardment from the Three Towers, Kane stared back. And when the shadowmage spoke, somehow Kali knew his words were as much about her as they were about himself. What was more, she saw reflected in his eyes the same inner torment that she had felt ever since the day she had begun to realise that she was... different.
"That," he said, "remains to be seen."
With those words, Kane turned and manoeuvred himself over the other side of the roof. Their brief liaison had been, it appeared, just that.
"Wait!" Kali said. "What plans do you have now?"
Kane inclined his head towards the Three Towers. "I have business at the League of Prestidigitation and Prestige. Suggestions that might help the current crisis. And you?"
"Like you. Try to stop these bastards. But first I have to find the old man."
"Old man?"
"A friend. He went missing during the assault."
"And what is this friend's name?"
"Merrit Moon. Bad haircut, beard, pink horse blanket. Or, actually, he could still be big, green and roaring. It's, um, a long story. Have you seen him?"
"No. But I might be able to help you find him."
"Be glad of any help."
"Call it a professional courtesy."
"You're on. How about I take the west gate and you the -?"
"Not
physically
. Have you anything that belongs to the old man?"
"No, I -" Kali began, then thought again. "Wait." She dug in her equipment belt, pulling something out from its very bottom and shoving it in Kane's hand. The shadowmage regarded the mouldy, half eaten pie with an unfathomable expression.
"He baked it for me," Kali said. "About four years ago."
Kane smiled slightly and, without elaborating, moved his arm out above the rooftops in a gesture that looked half salute and half as if he were sowing seeds, and Kali swore that some kind of fine, shimmering dust took to the air. Kane waited for a few seconds while this dust settled and then pointed in the direction of the city walls, where a faint glow could now be seen rising from street level like a beacon. "There. Your friend is there."
"How in the hells did you -"
But Kane was gone.
"There one minute, gone the next," Kali shrugged, and smiled. "Lot like myself, really."
Wasting no time, Kali took a few steps back from the roof edge and then ran, leaping the gap between the building and its neighbour, reckoning that the safest and quickest way to reach Moon's beacon was by rooftop, avoiding the battleground below. Thankfully, her progress towards the city walls was taking her away from the epicentre of the k'nid invasion, the creatures - with the help of the towers' fireballs - having already devastated this part of Andon and moved on. Thus it was that when she finally dropped back down to street level, she found herself in an area of relative calm in the shadow of the city wall itself. There a few scattered guards and civilian survivors had set up a makeshift field hospital that, so far, had gone unnoticed by the k'nid. Still, they were close and while those who tended tried to help those they could, or comfort the maimed and dying where they couldn't, they were forced to stifle their moans or sobs with their hands as they worked.
The old man wasn't among them, but he was nearby. Kali found him in the doorway of the bunker where she had left Horse, talking to the beast. But her relief at the discovery that the two of them were still alive was lessened somewhat by the appearance of the old man.
Kali bit her lip as she approached, taking in the fact that he was all but slumped in position. The shallow breathing and raised and pulsing veins on his arms, coupled with his bloodshot eyes, were testimony to the fact that he had only recently recovered from a full Thrutt transformation.
But, by the look of things, Thrutt had sated himself before he had burned out. The bloodied and cracked remains of various k'nid covered the old man's clothes, along with a considerable amount of blood from the old man himself.
"We are losing this battle, young lady," Moon breathed, wearily.
"I know, old man." She only hoped that those she had despatched back to the
Underlook
were not facing their last stand. "I know."
"It is good to see, however, that you have not become one of its victims."