The Dark Warden (Book 6) (33 page)

Yet it was not nearly as strong as the power the Warden had displayed in Urd Morlemoch. He had indeed left behind most of his power, and much of what remained was holding the gate open. If Ridmark could just get a little closer…

Invisible force seized him and lifted him into the air. 

“And you,” said the Warden. “The Gray Knight. The poor, broken fool questing to redeem himself. Think on this as you die. You were my instrument. All your suffering, all your victories, all your determination, their sole purpose was this. To free me and give me dominion over Old Earth and a thousand other worlds. Now your purpose is fulfilled, and your life ends.” 

Calliande closed her fist, and the invisible power closed around Ridmark with crushing force. 

Blue fire flashed, and Calliande went sprawling, her darkness-filled eyes wide. She hit the ground with a gasp and rolled. Mara stood atop the altar, her hands outthrust from the shove that had knocked Calliande over. 

The force holding Ridmark sputtered and wavered as the Warden’s attention turned away from him. 

“You were wrong about me,” said Mara. 

“Plainly,” said the Warden as Calliande sat up. “But this is one mystery I have no interest in solving.”

Again fire gathered around Calliande’s hand.

It was Ridmark’s very last chance. 

He threw himself forward just as the spell went off, the deadly magic striking his chest. He landed atop Calliande, driving her to the ground, the Warden snarling in fury. Pain erupted through Ridmark, but his right hand came down, the rough soulstone coming to rest against Calliande’s forehead. 

The soulstone blazed with white fire, and a furious howling noise came from the gate. 

The Warden screamed, and Ridmark screamed with him as the magic ripped into his heart. 

###

Calliande wept in silence, defeated. 

The Watcher stood nearby, head bowed.

Failed. She had failed. It had all had been for nothing. The Warden would enslave Old Earth, and the Frostborn would destroy Andomhaim. The Order of the Vigilant had sacrificed itself for naught. Calliande had locked away her memories, lost everyone she had ever loved, and slept for two hundred years all for nothing. She had walked to her death at Urd Morlemoch, and Ridmark and the others had come to their deaths with her. 

The crimson lightning writhed and snapped in the mist around her. Any moment the Warden would complete his spell, and she and the Watcher would be consumed at last…

“What?” said the Watcher. “What…is that?”

Streaks of white fire shot through the mist, quenching the red lightning. The mist itself began to swirl, spinning away in ragged tatters. Calliande felt the world twist and heave around her.

“This is it, isn’t it?” said Calliande in a heavy voice. “This is the end. God forgive me for all that I’ve done.”

“No,” said the Watcher. “I do not understand. What is the Gray Knight doing? This shouldn’t be possible.”

“The…Gray Knight?” said Calliande.

For the very first time since the Warden had called her the Keeper of Avalon, Calliande felt a flicker of hope. 

“Get ready,” said the Watcher, his eyes wide. “You shall have one chance. You must take it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Calliande, and then the world ripped apart around her.

###

“Ridmark!” shouted Mara.

She sounded concerned. Ridmark was in agony. He suspected the spell intended for Mara had hit him much harder than he had thought. 

Yet the soulstone blazed with white fire in his grasp, Calliande shaking beneath him. The gate let out a low howling noise, and the crimson glow of the soulstone atop the altar sputtered and dimmed. Ridmark realized that Calliande was not shaking, that Calliande had gone limp. The mound itself was shaking. 

Calliande groaned, and the darkness in her gaze drained away.

The soulcatcher embedded the altar sputtered and melted like a candle, and the crimson light from the soulstone went dark.

###

Calliande woke to a great deal of pain and confusion. 

Her body ached and throbbed, and her head pulsed as if she had just channeled a colossal amount of magic. Ridmark lay atop her, which under other circumstances she likely would have found enjoyable, but he looked on the verge of collapse. A howling roar filled her ears, blue and green lights playing madly around her. 

“Ridmark?” said Calliande, her voice a croak. “What…what happened?”

“Calliande,” he said, pushing off her. Then his eyes rolled up and he collapsed, blood pouring from his nose. Calliande sat up with alarm as Mara came running at her, a dark elven dagger in her hand. 

“It’s you,” said Mara, skidding to a halt. “It worked.”

“What happened?” said Calliande. Above her rose a stone altar and a massive arch of black stone, a sheet of white light sparking within it. “I…”

Ridmark shuddered once and went still. 

“We have to go,” said Mara, gazing at the arch. “When he touched the Warden with that soulstone, it ripped apart the binding on that spell. All that power has to go somewhere. I think the hill is going to explode.”

“Ridmark,” said Calliande. 

He had stopped breathing. There was dark bruising under the skin of his neck and jaw and hands, and she realized that he had been hit by a spell of potent dark magic, one that had inflicted such a pounding that his heart had stopped. She summoned all the power she could manage to hold, the Well’s magic flaring around her fingers, and placed her hands upon him.

Agony howled through her as she felt his pain as if it were her own. For a moment it was too much, and the spell threatened to slip away from her. She gritted her teeth and fought through the agony, and bit by bit the pain lessened as the magic healed Ridmark’s damage. 

His eyes shot open, and he sat up, breathing hard. 

“Ridmark,” said Calliande. 

He looked at her. “It is you, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “Yes. Thank you. I thought…I thought all was lost. Thank you for coming back for me.”

“Goddamn it,” said Mara, more agitated than Calliande had ever seen her. “We have to go right now.”

Ridmark stood and helped Calliande up, and she cast the spell to detect the presence of magic. The sensations coming through the spell alarmed her. “She’s right. That thing, whatever it is…”

“The Warden’s gate,” said Ridmark. He hurried to the altar and snatched up the soulstone, its depths white and cool once more. 

“It’s about to collapse,” said Calliande. “That won’t be…clean.”

The others hurried to the top of the mound. Calliande saw the white fire of a soulblade and looked for Arandar’s face, but instead saw Gavin, the boy armored in blue dark eleven steel. Had he taken up Truthseeker? Arandar followed him, face grim and weary, his armor and shield spattered with the blue-glowing blood of the Devout. Then came Caius and Kharlacht and Jager, the master thief hurrying to his wife’s side. Morigna came last of all, leaning on her staff. Dark circles ringed her black eyes, and something seemed off about her. Yet she rushed forward and caught Ridmark in a hug. 

“You madman,” she said. “You actually did it.”

Ridmark started to say something, but Calliande never found out what.

The mound lurched beneath them, and the howling noise from the gate rose to an agonized scream. The light from the menhirs flickered and twitched, and the altar began to glow, sinking into the mound as it did so.

“Go!” roared Ridmark, and raced ran down the mound and into the rings of menhirs. The slope shuddered and heaved, and it took all of Calliande’s concentration to keep her balance. Soon they reached the bottom of the hill, the bodies of Devout orcs and undead and urvaalgs lying thick upon the sickly grass. Had Ridmark and the others fought their way through all that? Calliande risked a look back and saw blue-green flames devouring the top of the hill, the menhirs melting in the heat. 

They ran through a narrow ravine between two hills. The howling noise from the hill rose to a molten scream, so loud it threatened to rip Calliande’s head in half. 

“There!” shouted Ridmark, pointing at the side of a low cliff. “Take cover! Now!” 

He urged them on, and Calliande scrambled against the base of the cliff, squatting beneath it, the others ducking around her. Calliande looked at the light staining the black sky, the terrible screaming noise audible even through the cliff. When the explosion came…

The ground jolted beneath her as if she had stepped upon a trapdoor.

Roaring sound and blazing light filled the world.

Chapter 23 - One Hundred Thousand Years Of War

A long time later, Ridmark sat up, coughing. 

The air was heavy with dust and a harsh, burnt smell. The light of the standing stones had faded and the ring of fire around Urd Morlemoch had vanished. Only the light from the ribbons of flame overhead remained. 

Ridmark got to his feet, a white glow catching his eye. Calliande knelt over Kharlacht, healing his wounds, her face tight and drawn.

“You should save your strength,” said Kharlacht. 

“No,” said Calliande. “Not when you have taken these wounds in my defense.” She shivered a bit and straightened up. “Done.”

“Is everyone all right?” said Ridmark. 

Caius coughed out a laugh, his brown robes matted with dust. “Well, we have taken no fresh wounds, and we are still alive. That in itself, I think, constitutes a miracle.”

“For once,” said Morigna. “I will not argue with you.” 

“My God,” said Ridmark. “No argument? You must indeed be exhausted.”

She offered him a wan smile, which concerned him all the more. Morigna was never without a sharp retort. She had exhibited strange new powers in the battle, and both Arandar and Gavin had said that she had used dark magic. What had happened to her in Urd Morlemoch? 

Later. They could worry about it later, if they got out of the Torn Hills alive. 

“Gray Knight,” said Mara, her voice soft. “Look at that.” 

Something dark stood at an angle in the nearby ravine. Ridmark started to reach for his axe, fearing it was an enemy, but then saw that it was a menhir. After a moment of confusion Ridmark realized that it was one of the standing stones from the grand circle. The explosion had thrown it there.

He stepped into the ravine, looked for the hill with the grand circle, and failed to find it.

Instead a crater yawned between the hills, its sides glowing molten hot. Boulders and broken menhirs had been scattered across the surrounding hills, and many of the twisted pine trees had caught fire. Ridmark stared at the devastation, stunned. He had seen potent destruction unleashed by magic, but never anything like this. 

“I am amazed that we lived through that,” said Mara.

“Yes,” said Ridmark. He took a deep breath. “We had better move. Quickly.”

“Why?” said Mara, and then she looked at the white gleam of Urd Morlemoch’s ruins. “Oh.” 

“What happened?” said Calliande, white light dancing around her fingers as she healed Caius. 

“That rough soulstone,” said Ridmark. “We took one from the menhirs. It was still linked to the wards around Urd Morlemoch. When I touched you with it, it pulled out the Warden’s spirit and sent it back to his first body.”

Calliande touched her belt pouch. She had taken the rough soulstone from the hill as they fled. “I wondered where this stone came from.”

“Splendid,” said Jager. “Now we have two of the damned things. Perhaps we’ll have twice as many mad sorcerers after us.”

“Probably,” said Ridmark, “but only if we live long enough to get away. The Warden spent the last nine years plotting to use me to escape, to bring Calliande here so he could take her body for his own. So when he wakes up in his old body, he’s going…”

The scream cut off his words. It was a cry of frustrated rage and fury, so loud that the ground trembled with it. The flames rising from Urd Morlemoch’s central tower grew more violent, lashing at the black sky like whips. 

“He’s going,” said Jager, “to be a little upset.”

“Your grasp of the obvious,” said Morigna, “never fails to astound me.” 

The Warden’s voice thundered from the sky.

“Kill them all! Kill them all! Find Ridmark Arban and his companions, find them and kill them! Kill them all!” 

An answering roar rose from the stone circles in the hills. Dark shapes poured from the gates of Urd Morlemoch, and Ridmark realized that the ruins had not been empty after all. The creatures had merely been waiting for their master’s call. More shadows rose from the central tower of Urd Morlemoch, their wings spreading against the sky. Urdhracosi, most likely, along with other things. On the other hills the warriors and wizards of the Devout came to heed their master’s command and slay his enemies.

“We have to run, now,” said Ridmark. “Make for the east.”

The others nodded and gathered up their weapons. Calliande had healed their wounds, but they were exhausted from the ordeal. They would not make it far before the Warden’s creatures caught them. Alone, Ridmark might have had a chance. But he would be damned before he would abandon his friends and his lover, his allies who had stood with him through so many mortal perils. 

The best he could hope for was to raise a ring of corpses around them before he finally fell. 

“We will not be able to outrun them,” said Jager, “and I doubt we can hide.”

“Perhaps not,” said Ridmark. “But we are two Swordbearers, the Keeper of Avalon, the Master Thief of Cintarra, the first dark elven half-breed to command her own will, the first dwarf to join the church, the sorceress who defied the last of the Eternalists, and a warrior of Vhaluusk. By God, if we die here, we shall make an ending worthy of song.” 

“Well, I had hoped to die in bed at the age of a hundred and forty,” said Jager, “but I suppose this will have to do.”

“Run,” said Ridmark, and they headed to the east as darkness boiled from Urd Morlemoch. 

###

Morigna ran a few paces behind Ridmark, her breath rasping in her throat, every step dragging at her legs. She wanted to stop for a few moments and catch her breath. But if she did that, she was dead. Better to keep moving.