Etchings of Power (Aegis of the Gods) (32 page)

Ryne woke abruptly from his slumber. The fire was nothing more than glowing embers, its smoke a faded scent. Thumper’s humped form was a mere silhouette in the night. Overhead, a cloudy veil occluded the twin moons and the stars, the resulting darkness enveloping the copse. He felt them coming before Thumper’s plaintive mewl or before he sensed Sakari through the trees.

He leaped to his feet and sprinted to Thumper. The dartan did not need much encouragement and stood ready, his neck swinging from side to side. Heart racing, Ryne snatched up the reins and leapt onto Thumper’s back.

Moments later, Sakari burst through the brush and sprang into the saddle behind him. “There are at least twenty of them.”

“Twenty-six,” Ryne corrected. His Matersense revealed all before him. He extended his sight and smell well beyond their normal range by using the air and its endless void as part of the element of Flows. Within this sight, the dark became late evening.

The black auras he depicted with this increased range engulfed the night itself. They shone with their blackness, making the night appear as nothing more than a gray shadow.

At the head of the interlopers bounded eight wraithwolves. From time to time, they sprang up on two legs like men, sniffing the air before dropping onto to all fours to leap again and again. Elongated muzzles adorned their faces, and thick hair covered arms and bodies, muscles pumping with each movement. The fetid stench of wet dog’s fur mixed with decayed flesh rolled from the beasts in waves. As one, the wraithwolves stopped and lifted their snouts toward the copse. Green eyes glowed.

A chill prickled Ryne’s skin at the things that followed behind the wolves.

At first, he thought they were humans, but as his sight touched them, he knew differently. These creatures glided instead of running, similar to Sakari, but where Sakari’s feet touched the ground, these men did not. They also possessed no solid forms. They appeared as mist or smoke in the shape of men. Wherever they passed, the elements around them distorted from sharpness into dulled edges. They easily kept pace with the wraithwolves.

“Darkwraiths,” Ryne whispered. As he turned to whip Thumper’s reins to send him running, bloodcurdling howls echoed into the night. He glanced over his shoulder.

The wraithwolves no longer ran. Instead, they swelled, and he sensed more than he saw the shade they pulled within themselves. Then they vanished. They reappeared from the shadows themselves some twenty feet closer.

Ryne dismounted. “The wraithwolves just Blurred,” he said without looking up at Sakari. The thrill for impending battle fluted across his skin. “There is but one place we can find safety. Take Thumper there, I’ll meet you.” He held up the reins as Sakari leaped into the forward saddle.

“As you wish.” Sakari flapped the chains and sent Thumper speeding through the copse.

The darkwraiths screeched a keening wail. Ryne focused on them. They too Blurred, using the shade to leap from shadow to shadow.

Ryne calmed his battle energy and reached through his Scripts to the elements of Mater stored there. The celestial bodies etched into his skin came alive with his touch. Their light filtered from among the Streams.

The heat he had ignored when he first embraced his Matersense raced through Ryne’s body like wildfire on dry tinder. His toes curled, and he leaned his head back. A morbid grin twisted his features. He no longer needed to hold his bloodlust at bay. He no longer need to calm himself. The voices called, and he embraced them, allowing the Scripts to work. Above him, the clouds parted to reveal the moons.

Hagan, you and your pipe, your body ripped in ways
that
shouldn’t be possible. Vana and Vera, impaled on the floor and ravaged. Kahkon, bloody and torn. Lara, your throat ripped out.
None of you deserved to die in such a way
. The fire within Ryne burned brighter.

He painted a mental picture of himself as a fleeting luminescence, and his Scripts took over, adding the moons’ light to theirs. The two Forged together. An ethereal glow bathed Ryne’s body.

The shadelings drew closer, eyes burning embers among the shadows.

White flames flared within Ryne as his bloodlust burst forth with the Forging. He threw his head back, a smile twisting his lips, the thirst to kill filling him in a wave. Ryne’s battle energy and lust intertwined as one, long lost lovers in a wanton embrace.

Greedily, his Scripts gobbled up the coupled energy and emotions mixing them with the Mater within him. The glow from the essences subsided, absorbed by his Scripts and body.

Using that power, Ryne Shimmered from one moonbeam to the next, appearing thirty feet from where he once stood.

Behind him, the shadelings howled and wailed.

CHAPTER 24

Irmina teetered in the saddle. Her eyes snapped open, and she lurched upright for what felt like the hundredth time.
I must stay awake…cannot allow myself to fall asleep now.
Shadowy cobwebs clouded her vision, and fatigue weighed on her body. She shook her head. If there was a time she wished sleep would abandon her, it would be now, but slumber clung to her like a needy baby.

Pain lanced across her stomach and back. With each laborious step Misty took, Irmina’s legs and ass chafed and burned more, the normally soft padding used on her saddle having long outlived its usefulness. If she dismounted now, she would find her skin bloody and raw. Her wounds felt as if someone stuck a red-hot poker into her flesh before trailing the metal tip down her skin.
But his weapon hadn’t been a poker had it? Had he used a dagger?
At times, she was unsure.

Humid air adding to her need to close her eyes if only for a moment, she swayed again. She could, couldn’t she? Shut her eyes and rest? When next she leaned to one side, her eyes fluttered then drooped shut before she forced them apart again by sheer force of will. Or was it the sweat from her brow now burning her eyes that made them open?

Teeth gritted in determination, she forced herself to an upright position. A fog-shrouded hand rose to her face and slapped her. It took her a few slaps and stinging cheeks before she realized the hand was her own. Her stupor cleared enough to take in her surroundings. Night hung heavy, and the surrounding foothills evoked a feeling of something watching her. Shivering despite the hot, heavy air, she glanced down. Her bloody uniform, what was left of it, clung to her in tattered silver and red rags.

At least Misty’s holding up well
. As if Amuni heard her thought, the dartan chose that moment to stumble to four legs before pushing herself back up onto six.
How long has she run this time?
Irmina would’ve trilled a command to rest if she could have, but her mouth was dry as brittle clay.

A painful mewl resonated a few feet from Irmina. She looked toward the sound. Ormand’s black dartan followed not too far away, but from its unsteady gait, the animal wouldn’t last much longer without rest. Languishing behind Ormand were two more Dagodin Knights atop mounts. All that remained of Ranoda’s cohort. Three left out of over four hundred. Her chest heaved with the thought. With every step, the distance between her and the men increased.

She knew she needed to do something, but what she couldn’t truly say. Her mind tried to function, but mired in a stupor as it was, her rational thoughts found ways to delve into a nightmare.
This is a nightmare, isn’t it?

She shook her head again and slapped her face a few more times. Some nagging in the back of her mind insisted she avoid the areas engulfed in the shadows cast by the hills. She tried her best to comply. But when she trotted deep into one such passage where even the moons were hidden from view by several rock outcrops and hardy trees, memories of what occurred in her office rushed into her mind in disjointed dregs.

A black nightmare seeped through her window, blotting out all light from outside. The thing congealed until the blackness resolved into a manlike shape made from shadows. Red eyes appeared and froze her where she stood, while howls rose in a chorus outside.

The many books she’d studied about the Shadowbearer War flashed through her head. Shadelings in the form of smoke or mist bearing black blades had swept down on many cities then, and slaughtering all before them. She’d etched the pictures of the darkwraiths in those books into her mind.

Even as she recognized the creature, her body refused to respond. Heart aflutter, she screamed at her trembling limbs to move as the shadeling’s sword rose inexorably in billowing, black hands.

With a crash, the door caved in to reveal Knight Caden and several other Dagodin. That singular act broke her from the fear riveting her in place. Her sword left its sheath with the speed of thought and turned aside the incoming blade.

Black metal met glinting silversteel in a caress of sparks that showered in a cascading arc.

A sharp pain scoured her back. Twisting away from the agony, she came face to face with Jaecar, a dagger in his hand, and the young Cadet who served the food clinging desperately to his back. She threw herself away from the Alzari, his next slice passing a hair’s breadth from her chest. As she hit the carpet, she rolled and bounced to her feet facing the darkwraith.

From pure instinct, her left hand rose, and she Forged Mater. Flames roared out from her palm in a scorching wave to meet the shadeling. The creature wailed just as a concussion rocked the room, knocking it back through the window with a shower of glass and throwing Irmina off her feet. Heat washed into her face from the blast and matched a similar rush thrumming within her. Before she could crawl back to her feet, Jaecar was on her again like a miniature whirlwind.

The Cadet lay to the side, his bowels spilled, blood pooling under him.

As Irmina attempted to parry the Alzari’s high slice, he changed direction and caught her across the stomach. Her uniform parted like silk. Warmth gushed down her abdomen to her loins.

Snarls and spittle flying from his lips, Jaecar yelled in a language she didn’t recognize. He swept in again, but she was never given a chance to defend herself as Knight Caden and his men intercepted the Alzari and drove him toward the window.

Irmina’s chest rose and fell in shudders as she sucked in deep breaths. A hand snatched at hers. Deep in the heat of battle, a craving to kill rose with her Forging. She almost took the arm attached to the hand until she looked up to see Ormand. She sought the harmony deep within her mind to abate the Streams’ thirst for life in return for its gift.

“Shin Irmina,” Ormand implored as she hesitated, “Run! There’s nothing you can do here but die.” He pulled her toward the door.

She hesitated for a moment as she considered unleashing the power building within her on Jaecar and Melina, but the soldiers blocked her path.

It was enough time to see Kass, his infantile face twisted into a grotesque mask, make an inhuman leap from the bed with a blade in hand onto the back of some unsuspecting Dagodin.

The child buried the knife to the hilt in the soldier’s back. The man screamed, clutching futilely at the dagger. Kass cackled.

Irmina dashed after Ormand.

In the barracks’ halls, men in dark armor with black tattoos across their faces squared off against several clusters of bloody, disheveled Dagodin. Irmina wasted no time. She fed the Streams. Light and heat from the lamps around the walls answered her calling. When she Forged, a firebolt spewed forth toward the men.

Hair crackled, paint peeled, metal buckled with a screech, skin melted and the aroma of roasting flesh filled the air. The dark armored men barely had time to scream.

With their deaths, Irmina’s craving abated. The Dagodin who recognized what she did dropped to their knees in supplication for a brief moment. She heard multiple murmurs of Ashishin in awed voices. The moment passed, and soon they were rushing down the stairs.

Outside, Ranoda was ablaze. Screams pierced the air, and smoke and ash billowed skyward. Mouth agape, Irmina swore she had entered a scene from one of her many nightmares of what her parents must have experienced.

The Tribunal’s soldiers fought men and beasts alike. Black-furred wolfish creatures with green eyes walked like men, ran like wolves, and ripped the throats from whomever they encountered, all the while lifting their bloody muzzles to the sky and howling.