The Swordmage Trilogy Bundle, Volumes 1-3 (25 page)

Her hands went weak and the scimitars dropped to the ground. She felt herself lifted by an invisible hand around her throat, the toes of her boots dangling an inch above the street. Tiadaria prepared herself to die. Her vision was starting to go gray around the edges and flashes of light were dancing across her eyes. She wondered if this was how the Captain felt just before the end.

There was a brilliant flash and it took her a moment to realize she could breathe again. The pain in her chest was excruciating, but she forced herself to take one deep breath after another, filling her starving lungs. Another flash seared her vision and she realized that these weren’t from her near suffocation. The quintessentialists had rallied and were sending magic missiles at her attacker. Two quints had rounded the corner at the end of the street and were casting as fast as they could speak the words of power. The Xarundi fought back, answering their magic projectiles with dark, seething missiles of his own.

Tia picked up her scimitars and glanced at Wynn. He was still backed against the wall, paralyzed with fear. The quints were losing ground to the Xarundi and she waded into the fray, her blades slicing the air toward the beast’s good leg. He caught the descending blade easily with his claws and threw it off, hitting her with a pulsing wave of magical energy that knocked her backward into the street.

The Xarundi whirled and grabbed Wynn, hauling him up by the collar and using him as a shield. The quints tried to flank their enemy but were unable to get a shot that wouldn’t harm Wynn as well. As he turned his shield to face his attackers, the Xarundi turned his back on Tiadaria. A momentary advantage was all she needed, and she sprang forward. The beast whirled, its claws extended, but Tia dropped and slid, screaming as her cracked ribs grated against each other. She drew her blade across the living leg as she slid. Blood spilled on the cobblestones.

She had hoped to sever the tendons behind the knee, but she missed. Fortunately, the resulting gash was deep enough that the Xarundi howled in pain and rage and tossed Wynn aside. Tia heard flesh tear as the creature’s claws raked down the young man’s face as he fell. Tia didn’t have a chance to check on Wynn, instead she danced into striking range, intending to strike a killing blow to the creature who had been responsible for the Captain’s death.

The Xarundi knocked the attacking quints away with another spell burst. He caught her around the throat. There was no invisible grasp this time. He had her in is very real, very dangerous hand. He lifted her easily over his head. Other quintessentialists had appeared from either side of the street, converging on her captor. Tia wanted to shout at them to kill them both, but she couldn’t do more than croak.

Its eyes locked on hers, the blue fire searing into her soul. When it spoke, its harsh rendition of the common tongue sent chills up her spine. “I am Zarfensis, High Priest of the Xarundi, Chosen of the Shadow Assembly, and I will see you dead. I swear it.”

Zarfensis threw her into the wall that Wynn had been backed against and her head rocked back. Just before she passed out, she saw the Xarundi close the distance to the quintessentialists in two astounding leaps. He slammed into the tight-knit group, tossing them aside like so many rag dolls. The monstrous beast disappeared into the darkness.

Wynn lay a few feet away, the left side of his face a ruin of blood and torn flesh. Tia’s stomach churned when she saw that his eye was gone. She coughed and tasted copper on her tongue. Her chest hurt so badly and fighting for breath was becoming harder.

Tia tried to call for help but couldn’t make the words come. Lying there in the street, her outstretched fingers nearly touching Wynn’s, she slipped into blackness.

Outside Ethergate, the eleven remaining Xarundi gathered in the gathering light of day. Chrin’s maw was a mass of blood and gore. Most of his nose was gone, bare cartilage exposed by the flashing blade of the girl’s lethal scimitar.

Zarfensis struggled with his metal leg. The gnome had told him that it would need to be recharged periodically with runedust. The High Priest had fished about in his belt pouch only to find that the vial of dust that he had been carrying for that purpose had been shattered during the fighting. He pried the chamber open and poured as much of the dust as he could scrape out of the pouch into the leg. It helped some, but the journey back to the Warrens would be a slow one.

“That’s twice,” Chrin snarled. “That the vermin have bested us, High Priest.”

“I don’t know that they bested us, Chrin. We lost four of our brothers, but we killed scores of vermin, including their magic users, and we gained a valuable ally. The gargoyle gave us the means to summon him at our will and will be uniquely suited to providing information we cannot hope to obtain elsewhere.”

The warrior glared at him, saying nothing.

“I know it goes against our nature to flee from vermin,” Zarfensis said. “All I ask is that you trust me a little longer. Wars aren’t always won with the first battle.”

Chrin thought about that for a moment and then nodded slowly. He turned and began trudging through the predawn light, the warriors falling into formation behind him. They’d find somewhere safe to sleep the day away and start mending their wounds. Then they would return to the Warrens and plan their next attack. The girl would fall and the rest of the vermin with her. Zarfensis would see to that personally.

* * *

The infirmary, normally ample space for the sick or wounded of Ethergate, was crammed full to bursting. Normally there were beds for half a dozen patients, spread out from each other so that the healers and clerics could do their work. The surprise attack on the city had left them with five times that many injured and so many dead that the city guard had moved some of the bodies into an unused storeroom across from the brokerage. Someone had proposed a mass grave, but was met with such vocal resistance that the idea had been summarily dismissed.

Dawn had brought with it the full reality of the night’s horrors. In the cold light of day, there were many reminders of how narrowly they had survived. Buildings were damaged or in some cases, burned out hulks. Crimson stained the streets and in many places the heavy stench of blood and offal still hung on the air. The guards had gone from door to door, as much to catalog any wounded or dead as to assure themselves that no Xarundi, living or dead, remained in the city. The four monsters they had killed had been dragged outside the city walls and set to burn. Many had gathered to witness the disposal, looking on in grim silence.

Wynn looked out the window near Tia’s bed. A pair of healers carrying a litter dashed by. Curls of lazy smoke climbed into the sky from within the city and without. He wondered how long it would take them all to recover. He looked down at Tiadaria. She might have been sleeping, except that the healers had said she took a nasty blow to the head. That had happened after he had been knocked out. There was hushed talk that she might never wake, but he refused to believe such nonsense. She was strong, a fierce warrior. Unlike the coward he was. Tia had to wake, he thought savagely. They needed her. He needed her.

The air in the infirmary was thick with the smell of antiseptic spirits. It reminded him of the hall in Blackbeach where they had taken the bodies of the boys he had killed. Wynn had vowed never to enter such a place again. Yet here he was, keeping an uneasy vigil over the woman who had saved his life. It seemed the least he could do. After all, it was his fault that she was in the bed in the first place.

No matter how many times he revisited the previous night’s events in his head, he couldn’t come up with a single way in which he had done anything but get her hurt. To be fair, Tia hadn’t fully conveyed the mind-numbing horror of being face-to-face with a real, live Xarundi. To hear about the beasts was one thing. To watch in helpless terror as it tore apart every living thing in its path was another matter altogether.

Still, she had asked him to fight, and instead, he had frozen in place, too terrified to do more than huddle against the wall and hope that the entire ordeal would be over soon. If only he had fought, maybe his face wouldn’t hurt so much, maybe he’d still have his eye, and maybe the girl laying in the bed next to him could not have only saved herself, but others in the city who had needed her help as well.

The side of his face throbbed like a distant drumbeat. He tentatively touched the bandages there. His fingers came away sticky, stained with blood that had seeped through the gauze. The healers had offered him medicine for the pain, but he had politely, if firmly, refused. The pain was a good reminder that the next time Tia asked him to fight, maybe he should do it.

There was a commotion at the end of the long hall and Wynn turned his body so he could see clearly with his remaining eye. The clerics had just drawn a bloodstained sheet over the face of someone laying on the table. A woman, a commoner judging by her plain linen dress, threw herself over the body, her wails echoing across the infirmary. How many more would die, Wynn wondered bitterly.

Even as small as he felt, there was something inside him that was even worse. It was the insistent little voice that asked what if? What if Tiadaria had never come to Ethergate? What if the Xarundi hadn’t come looking for her? It wasn’t as if the city hadn’t fought off its fair share of attacks in the past, but never had the cost been so high. The rational part of him knew she wasn’t really to blame, but the rational side of him hadn’t done him much good lately.

Tiadaria shifted and Wynn’s attention was instantly focused back on the bed. He watched her eyes. They fluttered a bit under the lids, but she didn’t wake. He wanted to grab her, shake her, and do anything that might bring her back. He wasn’t sure what to do. So rather than make things worse, he settled on doing nothing. Brooding, he slumped back in his chair and watched her.

The steady throbbing in his head had almost lulled him to sleep when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned his head, then followed a moment later with his full body. He was still struggling to adapt to his newly acquired handicap. The man who stood behind him was of medium build and height, with a head of thick, curly brown hair. The look of compassion he turned on Wynn was enough to make the apprentice look away in embarrassment.

“Apprentice Wynn?” The stranger’s voice was a mellow baritone, far more soothing than Wynn wanted or felt he deserved.

“Yes?”

“I’ve brought a message for Lady Tiadaria. The cleric at the door said you’d been with her all night.”

“And will be until she wakes,” he said harshly, as if somehow the stranger’s statement implied that Wynn should be elsewhere.

“That’s good,” the man said, snaking his foot around the leg of a nearby stool and drawing it next to the apprentice’s chair. “Tia would like that.”

The familiarity of his tone caught Wynn off guard. “You know her?”

Offering a slow, sad smile the man nodded. “Yes. We fought together against the Xarundi at Dragonfell. My name is Cabot. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”

Wynn grunted and offered no other reply. Cabot didn’t seem overly inclined to continue the conversation, which suited the apprentice just fine. In fact, Wynn had almost forgotten about Cabot’s presence when he spoke again.

“I feel like I can trust you to deliver this in my absence.” Cabot produced a sealed letter from inside his doublet. He offered it to Wynn, who took it with numb fingers.

“This is from Faxon?” Wynn asked, recognizing the seal and the extravagant blue wax.

“Yes,” Cabot replied with a smile. “For Lady Tiadaria.” He tapped the scrawled name over the seal.

“I’m not in the habit of reading other people’s mail,” Wynn retorted hotly.

“I am,” Cabot said, slowly getting to his feet. “I work for Imperium Intelligence. Please see that Tiadaria gets that letter as soon as she wakes.” Cabot turned to leave, then stopped and looked back at Wynn over his shoulder. “The Xarundi would have come to Ethergate sooner or later, Wynn. Tiadaria wasn’t the only thing of interest to them here, it would seem.”

Wynn jerked upright in surprise. “The gargoyle?” He had only just found out about the theft himself. A knot of quintessentialists had passed through the infirmary discussing the gargoyle. He wondered how Cabot could know of its disappearance already.

Cabot nodded. “We live in interesting times.” He walked off, leaving Wynn to contemplate exactly how interesting they were. Cabot seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He was still trying to puzzle out the connection when Tia spoke.

“Did I hear Cabot?” Tia’s voice was soft and slow and for a moment, Wynn wasn’t sure he had heard it at all. Her eyes were still closed.

“Are you awake?” Wynn pulled his chair closer to the bed. “Tia?”

“I’m awake,” she said with a grimace. “Please don’t yell. My head is killing me. So was Cabot really here?”

“He was.” Wynn kept his voice barely above a whisper. “He brought a letter for you, from Faxon.”

“Can you read it to me?” There was a pause, then Tia gasped. “I’m sorry, Wynn. I…”

“It’s okay, Tia. I still have one good eye.” He broke the seal, shaking the letter open. It was the first time he had to try to read. It wasn’t so bad, but it would take some getting used to. “It reads:

“Dear Tiadaria,

“Bad news spreads like wildfire. The attack on Ethergate is all anyone is talking about here in Blackbeach. I’m coming as soon as I can, but I think we both know that this attack was no coincidence.

“I’m sending Cabot on with this letter. My reasons for this are twofold: first, I wanted you to know I’m on my way. Second, I wanted you to have someone you could rely on--”

Wynn faltered here. Surely there was no way that Faxon could have heard about his shameful cowardice so quickly. He recovered his composure and continued.

“I wanted you to have someone you could rely on in the city until I arrive. Please keep Wynn safe. He’s a good lad, but not much of a fighter. I’ll be there soon. Stay put. Faxon.”

Wynn glanced over the letter again before adding, “He underlined stay put.”

Tiadaria laughed. If the laughter had a bit of a hysterical edge to it, neither of them would mention it. She opened her eyes and looked at him, her face a mask of sorrow as she saw his stained bandages.

“Oh Wynn,” she sighed, her voice cracking and dangerously close to a sob. “I’m so sorry.”

Wynn ducked his head. Her grief only made him feel that much worse. He had failed her and yet she was the one saying she was sorry. Mastering a fear that had nothing to do with what they had been through the previous night, he reached out and took her hand. Link-shock jumped between them and Tiadaria tried to pull away, but he held her firmly.

“I should be apologizing to you,” he said, his voice rough. “If I had fought--”

“If you had fought, it wouldn’t have made any difference. We might both be dead. We’re not. We survived.” She freed her hand from his and laid it gently against the bandages. The look in her eyes made Wynn’s heart skip.

He placed his hand on hers and gently forced it back to the bed. “I’ll be fine, Tia. I have a spare eye, and besides, the healer said that the scars will make me look rugged and manly.”

“Well then,” she said with a hint of her normal humor. “Things went according to plan then, huh?”

Wynn gave her a puzzled look and Tia sighed with exasperation. She really had to do something about his sense of humor, or more accurately, the lack thereof. He wasn’t that much older than she was, there was no reason for him to be so serious and humorless.

“I was kidding you, Wynn. You know, as if you planned the whole thing to get yourself some manly scars.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you have the strangest sense of humor?”

Tia smiled tolerantly. “Life is pretty strange, Wynn. Might as well laugh about it while we can.”

“I guess.” He glanced around the infirmary. “Doesn’t seem like there is much to laugh about in here.”

“No,” she agreed. “Things are pretty serious in here. Hey! Wait a minute! You said that Cabot had brought that letter from Faxon, but he’s still in Blackbeach. It took me more than a week to get here.”

Wynn snorted. “He probably took the gate.”

“What gate?” Now it was Tiadaria’s turn to look puzzled.

“The ether gate,” he said, rolling his eyes. “It’s much faster to get here from Blackbeach that way. More dangerous though, and not fun. At all.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You mean to tell me that there is a way to get directly from Blackbeach to Ethergate?”

“Of course.” Wynn seemed completely oblivious to her agitation.

“And this mode of travel that connects Blackbeach to Ethergate is called the ether gate? A little on the nose, don’t you think?”

“Well, calling it the City of Sparkling Magical Teleportation was deemed a waste of words.”