Villains by Necessity (42 page)

"Nothing's happening to the window," reported Sam, "except that it's wet." Valerie came over and gently touched the glass. It was indeed wet and cold. But there was the faintest crackle of powerful magic under her fingertips ...

"It's the right window, the right actions ... it just needs something else ..." she said, frowning in concentration.

"How about light?" suggested Sam. Then wished he hadn't.

The room exploded into brilliant white radiance.

Sam's assassin fires flared like lightning as sudden shock hit him. With a soft warm blast of displaced air, and a swirl of golden smoke, the Arch-Mage Mizzamir appeared in the center of the room, near the font. His ornate staff was shining like the sun, and in the brief conscious glance Sam had, before the fire filled his vision, he looked more upset than Sam had ever seen; which is to say, he looked mildly annoyed.

"Now then, this has gone far enough," he began ...

But the light from his staff filled the room. It blasted the shadows away and rebounded, filling and spilling like liquid silver ... it lit up the windows bright as noonday, shining out through them and back inside so that they glowed like jewels aflame. Valerie, her hand resting on the window, barely had time to notice the sudden surge of magic under her hand before powerful forces swept her up and sent her spinning down inside a whirlpool of rainbow light.

Mizzamir himself flinched from the sudden burst of light that exploded from the main window. And before he could look back again to see the Nathauan sorceress vanish, a dark, heavy shape had crashed into him, daggers flashing. Nightshade flew out the door, croaking at the top of his lungs.

%%%Down in the city, Robin and Blackmail, still looking up at the Tower, saw it explode with brilliant light. Several other people saw, and pointed and exclaimed in amazement.

But Blackmail grabbed Robin's arm and yanked him along, running at a clanking trot along toward the Castle. After a few paces, he stopped at a light two-horse carriage, near which was tethered a riding palfrey, saddled and bridled. He swung himself up on the palfrey and grabbed the leading reins of the carriage, and, beckoning Robin to follow, set off for the Castle at a brisk trot, the horse and carriage rumbling obediently alongside.

Robin, not wanting to go but unsure if he could refuse, followed behind.

Mizzamir had not gone into this confrontation unprepared.

Sam's daggers flashed but were repelled by a blast of force that sent him flying backward. He crashed into a wall, but staggered to his feet as he saw the mage begin to ready a spell. Suddenly, a thought sprang into his firestormed brain: Got to get him out of here! If Valerie returns successful he can take the Segment of the Key and then he's won! The door was still open. He dodged a bolt of paralyzing blue energy, then faced Mizzamir.

"You want me, wizard, you'll have to catch me," he hissed, and ran for it.

Valerie found herself in a large cavern, lit with a dim green-purple light that made the true size of the vast echoing area impossible to determine. It might once have had pillars in it, for she saw piles of broken columns lying about in disarray on the floor. The stone, air, dim light, and craftsmanship were certainly not that of the Castle ... nor was the creature that raised itself up from behind a pile of broken stone.

Valerie's fine black eyebrows flew up in shock as she recognized a creature from the window panels of the Test, a strange beast that the wizard Mizzamir himself had fought and destroyed in the furthest depths of Putak-Azum, a battle matched only in fame by his confrontation, in the higher vaults of the same catacombs, with the %%%Dark dragon Kazikuckla. Valerie felt she would far have preferred to meet a clean, simple dragon rather than the monstrosity which reared before her now.

It was the Thur-Uisgie, a demon spawn from the early days of the world, a terrible, powerful creature. She could not recall if Mizzamir had fought the beast singlehandedly then, her mind wandering in distraction and shock. It obviously couldn't be the same one... could it?

It seemed horribly real. Even its smell, a stink like rotting corpses, was authentic enough to make even her Nathauan stomach retch.

It had a dragon's head, topping a human torso, and sprouted shriveled vestigial batwings from the shoulders.

A mane of fine black quills hung down around its head, and its three red eyes gleamed as it saw her. Its mouth showed small sucking fangs, and its three spindly arms terminated in long thin fingers. It stood upright on hind legs like a horse's, covered in fine scales. It had a scaly tail barbed with more quills, and it rattled these together now as it spoke in a hissing voice.

"So, someone comes to take the Tessst?" Valerie stood her ground. Too often had a mage been overtaken in the preliminaries of battle by an illusion.

"You can't exist," she stated firmly, forcing her voice to remain steady as she bent her will to believe what she was saying. "And even if you do, you don't have any magic. You are evil, your magic would be evil... and I hold the last of the Darkportals."

The Thur snapped its fangs at her. "Excellent reasoning, small Nathauan ... but you forget I am now but a created creature in the service of Arch-Mage Mizzamir, and thus can draw my energy from the forces of Light ... which as you know out-powers your own consssiderably.

Prepare to die!" Its mouth snapped suddenly, and it began weaving the air with its hands as it cast a spell.

"Thuckssisam maleestafn'wa... "

Valerie was taken off guard, but the first few words of the spell were familiar, and she instantly began chanting the appropriate counterspell.

"Kiliani marusha prethanus ... "

Valerie had fought something similar to this wizards' duel time and time again with young upstart sorcerers in the depths of the Underrealm. Her Darkportal, in fact, had been won from a higher sorceress whom Valerie had defeated, long, long ago. But circumstances had been different; the ranges had been closer, the spells had conflicted and interfered with each other so that each one had more or less bounced off the other as they manifested (a common problem in mages' duels when both sides were using spells at close range, without room to dodge).

But here, in this maze of pillars and rubble, facing the alien demon-thing, the battle would be different. Now it was spellcast and resist and counter, dodge and chase and retaliate. And what with this much rubble to interfere with full volley and this much distance to play with, the outcome was likely to be far from stalemate.

Valerie barely finished her defense in time. In the moment before it manifested, a glowing golden dart shot from the Thur's scaly fingertip. The bolt struck her in the shoulder, causing searing pain and blistering damage as it vanished, but the next seven hit and vanished against an invisible shield of magic force.

"Haass ..." snarled the Thur. "So you do know some magic, then ... well, perhaps I shall crush you with my bare hands!" It began to cast once more, a personal spell, Valerie judged, from the gestures.

"Maximus porenthus atalus...

She decided to attack while it was thus preoccupied.

She chanted rapidly and fired a bolt of devastating redblack energy. It struck the monster full in the chest, causing it to keen in rage and tremble with sudden weakness, its spell of magical strength gone.

Looks like I'm going to need a bit of a backup, Valerie thought. She took from her components pouch a pair of tiny representative items, and began to chant once more.

The Thur hissed and began spellcasting as well.

Valerie wasn't hoping for much when she cast her summoning spell. The incantation would bring a few minor beings of this world to fight for her, regardless of how they might feel; but with the world as it was there weren't a whole lot of usefully dangerous things left.

In fact, as the air in front of her shimmered, she was startled to see three red-robed apprentice wizards from the convention appear, holding stacks of notes. They gaped at her in blank astonishment, until the Thur completed its spell with a flourish and blew them away in a wash of gore. They screamed as they fell, oozing, then exploded.

The blast knocked the sorceress behind a pillar, and she quickly began chanting an offensive spell while the Thur blinked. It licked the spattered gore away from its eyes and dispatched one of the still-squirming apprentices with a stomp of its heavy hoof. Valerie then jumped up from shelter and fired her spell.

Sharp sparks began to pelt down upon the Thur, and it hissed in anger, fangs snapping as it shouted a counterspell.

It seemed to burst into violet flames that formed a shield around it, smothering the sparks. Using this momentary protection, it cast a lethal spell with a snarling hiss. Valerie cursed as a cloud of billowing, poisonous yellow gas erupted from the monster's hooves and began rolling toward her. An acrid stench began to fill the room as the flickering, fire-shielded Thur cackled in triumph. Valerie hastily muttered a spell.

"Palonius teletrasin portula... "

She knew of this magic, it was one that the Verdants had used to slay the Nathauan in their tunnels; the gas would not move back to its caster. She used a powerful shot of her energy to teleport herself behind the Thur.

Then she immediately began an attack spell. The Thur startled at her vanishing, spun around, saw her, recognized the words she was chanting, and, panic stricken, spun a dome of shimmering light around itself to protect it from the spell. Valerie finished the spell, and instead of aiming the sudden beam of green light at the protected Thur, she aimed it at the creature's feet. Her Darkportal throbbed against her neck, sending an icy burning through her bones as she drew dangerously powerful %%%amounts of raw negative energy from it, to combine matter with its exact opposite ...

The stone beneath the Thur suddenly vanished with an explosive roar, and the monster fell with a shriek and a clatter into a deep pit. A volley of sharp quills rattled up, but Valerie dodged behind a pillar and hid herself in the rubble.

A sudden phrase of power emanated from the pit, and it smote the sorceress through her ears, making her mind reel. She fell, shaking. The Nathauan lay, limp and unmoving, unable to think or act, while the creature dragged its bruised body out of the pit and came looking for her, its tiny round nostrils whiffing as it poked about in the rubble.

She had not known that Mizzamir's mimic creation could so precisely follow its original that it would even know the ancient words of Dark Power, and have the strength to use them ... The magic of the Test was too great, too unfathomable. She was done for. She heard the sucking sounds, the Thur-Uisgie's teeth dripping digestive venom as it slowly approached.

Naturally it was far beyond Mizzamir's dignity to go running around the halls like some errant apprentice.

And dangerous as well. He would no sooner chase after an assassin than follow a cobra into its hole. His scrying font was ruined; no help there, but he'd lived in this Castle for over a century, and he knew his way around quite well. He stopped a moment to grab a magical ice-wand from its case on one shelf, and then teleported himself with a sweep of magic.

Sam, running lightly down the second set of steps, dodged more by instinct than by skill as he felt the sudden sharpness in the air that heralded Mizzamir's sudden appearance on the steps below him. A bolt of energy flashed from a wand and struck a small wall lamp where the assassin had been. Instantly the lamp was encased in a rough block of blue-green ice, with its magical flame still glowing within. Sam had time for one thought: Still %%%trying to catch me without hurting me. No wonder I've survived this long. He threw a dagger. The mage ducked, too late; but his protective spells held, and the blade rebounded off an invisible force field and went clattering back up the stairs, rebounding from the walls. Sam dived straight at the tall mage, and smashed into him. They went tumbling down the stairs, Sam trying to find some weapon that would break the wizard's magical field, and Mizzamir desperately trying to get a clear shot at the assassin with his ice-wand.

They broke apart as they crashed into the hall at the foot of the stairs, accompanied by exclamations of shock from the numerous passing mages. Sam used the impact to his advantage, kicking away from the mage by a good foothold on the wizard's chest. Mizzamir staggered back, robes in disarray, and Sam leaped down the hall. A pair of mages moved to intercept him, but he yanked a tapestry down over them, and ducked as an ice-bolt shot over his head and froze the tangled mages. As he turned a corner he heard a scream-an apprentice pierced by a mysterious flying dagger that had worked its way back down the stairwell.

Kaylana and Arcie, heading back to the kitchens, heard the commotion and ran toward it. Sam rounded a corner, shoving mages out of the way, just as they emerged. He saw them and skidded to a stop.

"Arciegohelpvalerie, Kaylanagetoutofherefindblackmail," he panted, then jumped away again, running. The Druid and rogue flung themselves to either side of the hall as a shouting group of mages pursued the assassin.

Down the hall, there was a sudden rush of air, and Mizzamir's unmistakable form appeared, firing rapid blasts from a wand at Sam. Sam ducked, dodged, and finally rolled as the blasts flashed around him, then he came up running and vanished again. Kaylana and Arcie exchanged glances, then ran in opposite directions, Kaylana toward the scullery exit, and Arcie back the way Sam had come.

Sam was running on pure fire now. His sensible means

%%%of thought-reaction couldn't act fast enough, couldn't work accurately enough to dodge the sudden blasts from Mizzamir's weapon. The mage seemed to know where he was going before he did; and Sam was becoming rapidly lost in this twisting castle of corridors and rooms, all crowded with decorations and lesser mages. In addition to Mizzamir's efforts he now had to parry the other mages' offensive or restraining spells, familiars in the shapes of cats, owls, tiny dragons and stranger things all snarling and snapping at him as he pushed past their owners. His own nature, too, struggled against his consciousness, which knew he had to run, to decoy, when the fire was shouting in his blood: Don't run away! That's the target' You aren't supposed to run away from the target!