Rising of a Mage: Book 03 - A Mage Risen (17 page)

The mention of his brother stung him more then the boy could know. He probably didn’t even know that Cannen was dead. “Ok
ay. Stop. I get it. I’m here. I’m not going to let that happen. Do you know how many of them there are?”

“The man said thirty wizards and thirty assassins, but I don’t know if he was telling the truth.”

“He probably was. The Black Dragons aren’t known to bluff. Are they all in the square or are they spread out through the city?”

“I don’t know
, Master, we were all told to stay inside. The whole city really is staying inside. No one wants to be the next ones to go in those blocks.”

“Don’t worry
, Steven. I am going to take care of it. I even brought some friends, and Master Gabriel can take care of himself. When he sees me he will fight. He is only letting them hold him because he doesn’t want more people to get hurt. Just stay inside.”

Anwar looked at Grundel and Rundo then nodded for them to follow. When they got to the entrance of the guild he stopped. “Ok
ay, listen. They aren’t going to all just stand in a group so I can kill them all. They will be spread out. They are going to use people’s homes for cover to try to keep us from getting at them. This is a trap for me. I am going to spring it. I will raise a shield and walk out into the square.”

Rundo started to object, but Anwar cut him off before he could get a word out.

“Don’t start, Rundo. Listen, with the amount of power inside me they could have a hundred wizards and not get through, a thousand even. All right. Now I will go out there and let them start attacking me. I'll get the people free. You guys get some cover, and start taking out any Black Dragons you see. Use the daggers and axes and stay behind cover. They have wizards. If you expose yourself they will be able to attack you. Once I see you enter the fight and I know where you are, I’ll be able to put a shield around you, but until then you will be vulnerable. Give me five minutes and then make your way to the square—it’s down the street out here, three blocks, then take a right. That street leads to the main square. By the time you leave, there should be enough going on to guide you anyway. Remember, give me five minutes to get all of their attention on me.”

Anwar walked out of the guild and made his way down to the square. He raised a shield around himself. He
couldn’t use a shield that would send the magic back when he released the shield because there were going to be civilians around, and he had to be deliberate with his methods. He couldn’t be careless. It wouldn’t help to save a couple lives if he lost control and killed hundreds of innocent people.

When he turned the last corner and started walking into the square
, he saw them. Master Gabriel was in the middle. On one side of him was Captain Eric, and on the other side was Master Gibbins. There was another soldier sagging in another of the pillories. On the other side of Captain Eric was another soldier who seemed unharmed.

Anwar walked straight across the square toward them. When he was halfway across
, a Black Dragon wizard walked out of a building between him and them on the right end of the square. He started making his way across the square to cut him off.

Anwar stopped and let the man come out to make his grand declaration before springing the trap. The Black Dragons were two things if they were nothing else
: dramatic and predictable.

“Anwar Alamira! I am Pedina of the Black Dragons Guild. Surrender now
, and the people of this city will be left unharmed.”

Anwar did what he thought the person leading these men wanted him to do.
A line of electric energy shot from his hand and slammed into the man's chest. He jerked for a second before falling to the ground.

Balls of fire and electricity came
at him from nearly every direction. Anwar started walking again. The attacks wouldn’t have upset his shield even before he had come into his unimaginable power.

Then balls and lines of black energy slammed into his shield. They didn’t phase his shield. They would have been enough to get his attention before
, though. He shot a small ball of energy at the locks on each of the pillories. The locks blew off, and each of the men came out of his restraints. “Gabriel, get them out of here now.” He threw a shield over them.

Just as he had expected
, when the dragons saw their captives escaping, they fired crossbow bolts and balls of fire at the captives, which slammed into his shield. A few seconds later he saw that they were all gathered together in a huddle, and then they were gone. He had been hoping that Gabriel would still have his enchanted ring on. He waited for the next attack so he could follow it back to its source. Fire slammed into the shield, and he looked over to the top of a building. He shot a magic bolt through the chest of the man perched there. His shield broke as if it were made of glass. Then Anwar was bombarded from the back. He turned around to find at least a dozen Dragons on the far roof, some firing magic down, others shooting crossbows. He raised a wall of fire on the far side of the roof and pulled it back toward himself. Two of the men saw the fire coming up behind them in time to leap from the roof. The rest burned where they were or fell from the roof and died.

Rundo and Grundel were still waiting outside the guild when they heard the first sounds of fighting. It hadn’t been five minutes, but the intention was for everyone to have their attention on Anwar. It sounded like conditions were met. They surely would be by the time they ran all the way there.

They ran three blocks and turned right. When they did they found their guide. Fire and lightning were flying through the air. It looked like a volcano was fighting with a thunderstorm. When they got to the edge of the square they crouched behind the edge of the first building. Grundel saw a low wall across the street. It wasn’t much, a low stone wall that was probably used to contain small animals that were being sold at market, but it was better to have stone in between him and a ball of fire than nothing. He didn’t want to get far from Rundo. If they were close they could watch each other’s back and Anwar wouldn’t have to try to keep track of both of them while he was fighting. The last thing the world needed was for him to accidentally kill one of his friends. That would surely push him over the edge. He tapped Rundo on the shoulder and pointed to where he was going. Rundo nodded and looked back at the fight.

Not far where he stood
, Rundo saw the roof go up in flames. Two men made it off that roof. The first man who leapt from the roof of the five-story building was not a wizard; he fell the five stories quickly. He was either dead or out of the fight; it didn’t matter to him. The other used magic to slow his descent. Rundo let his dagger fly at the wizard, but it slammed into a magical shield. When the wizard turned and looked at Rundo, Grundel’s axe blew through his shield and caved in his chest.

Anwar saw the axe slam into the falling wizard. He followed its path back to Grundel
and saw him crouched down behind a wall. Across the street from him Rundo was climbing the side of a building. He raised shields over both of them. The shields would protect them as long as they didn’t let anyone get inside of it. He wasn’t going to be able to focus on them enough to hold the type of shield he had around himself. His shield was a magical barrier of armor around himself, while their shields were more like bubbles around them. If they got in a hand-to-hand fight it was up to them, but anything outside of sword range they were protected from. With them protected, Anwar returned his attention to the fight. A ball of black energy slammed into his shield. He sent a green ball of energy back. Then he started attracting the attention of the men on the roof that Rundo was climbing to get.

Rundo climbed up the wall of the building he was hiding behind. Halflings made great thieves because they were naturally nimble. Rundo used that
ability now. There weren’t a lot of handholds for a full-grown man, but for his small fingers there were plenty. He went up the wall as fast as if he were climbing a latter. He saw a couple of balls of fire slam into the top of the building as he peeked his head over the edge. That was his opportunity, and he came over the wall. There were nine men on the roof; six of them were firing and reloading crossbows, and so they were less likely to be protected with magic. He let his two daggers fly. They both flew true. The first buried in the back of the skull of the man on the far right as he was reloading his crossbow. The second slammed hilt-deep into the back of the man at the other end of the line. The magically enchanted daggers returned to their sheaths before the men fell over, dead or dying. The next man from the end had just finished reloading when he noticed the man next to him fall. When he turned behind him to look, he saw Rundo just as he was letting go of the next dagger. The man tried to get out of the way but caught the dagger in his hip as he was spinning. He fired his crossbow when the dagger caught him, and the bolt slammed into the gut of the wizard he was there to protect. The wizard fell to the ground, clutching his stomach. He was still a threat, but less of one than the others. Four were down and Rundo’s fifth dagger was already flying. His sixth had just made it back to its sheath, which meant that the wound in the crossbowman’s hip was open now that the dagger wasn’t sealing the wound. He let that one fly, too. The first of those two daggers slammed into the back of another crossbowman as he let loose another bolt at Anwar. The other hit the second wizard in the back of his neck. He would be dead in a minute. The third wizard turned around and called to the two crossbowmen next to him. Rundo threw the dagger that had just made it back to his sheath and leapt over the side of the building.

Grundel
had watched Rundo climb up that wall like a cave lizard in Evermount climbed up the stone. It was impressive. He hadn’t ever thought of Rundo as a fighter, but maybe he was wrong. He saw a man creep out of the building Rundo had just climbed onto the roof of. He was sighting down his crossbow when Grundel’s axe cut him in half, then the weapon came flying back to his hand. He saw Rundo come rolling over the top of that roof. He caught the edge and then dropped a few feet, catching a handhold Grundel couldn’t see. A ball of fire followed close behind. Then two men came to edge of the building and peered over it. Grundel released his axe. It flew end over end and smashed into the center of the wizard’s chest. The other man was about to fire down on Rundo, but the axe smashing into the wizard distracted him. Rundo let go with one hand and flung one of his daggers up. It grazed the Dragon’s arm, making him drop the crossbow, and he pulled back away from the edge just in time for Grundel’s axe to slam into his back and send him flying over Rundo on his way to the ground.

Rundo made it down to the ground safely
, then he ran across the street to join Grundel. They watched as a black line of magic wrapped around Anwar. Grundel jumped over the wall, but a line of lightning shot from a window and knocked him back over it.

Anwar saw the rope of dark energy wrap around him. He brought his arms down and let it wrap around his shield
, playing along as if he were stuck. He could have pushed back against the energy, but he let it tighten around his shield. It couldn’t hurt him while his shield was in place. This was the easiest way to draw them all out of their hiding places.

King Gier watched from a window as the Black Dragon Stregone wrapped some kind of black energy around Anwar. The other Black Dragons came out. Another man wrapped his own magic
, a much thinner line, around Anwar also. The two wizards had him captured. The king ran out into the square. There were only eight of the wizards and twelve of the assassins left alive. He walked across the square to stand next to Stregone, eyeing an apparently helpless Anwar.

“Well
, Anwar, you are not so proud now. You’re not so tough now that there are some other wizards in Kampar, are you?” he said.

Anwar just stared down into the eyes of the king. His guards stood behind him with the swords that he had enchanted for them. “You let these men come into your city and kill innocent people all to get back at me?”

“No, I let them do it for the gold, but I would have let them do it for free just to be a part of this.”

Just then Captain Eric came running around the corner with fifty guards.

“Kill them,” the king yelled at the Black Dragons.

Stregone nodded to one of the wizards
standing by, who began walking toward Captain Eric.

One of the guards spun around
, bringing his sword up. The sword had been magically enchanted and cut through the wizard’s magical shield like butter. The man was cut clean in half. The other two guards burst into action, following the lead of their comrade. The one in the middle drove his blade through the back of the king. The tip of the blade stuck out of the man’s fat stomach. The third guard drove his blade through the chest of another of the wizards as he turned around to see what was happening.

Anwar watched as the King
’s Guard turned their blades on the king and the Black Dragons. He watched as the swords he had enchanted cut through the magical shields of the unsuspecting wizards. Then he saw that the rest of the Black Dragons were realizing what was happening, but before they could act he pushed back against the ropes of dark energy that were wrapped around him. He saw the shock in Stregone’s face as his most powerful magic was thwarted in an instant. Anwar shot tendrils of electricity out at the remaining eighteen Black Dragons around him. Each of them jerked momentarily as the electricity broke through their shields and coursed through their bodies. Then all twelve of them fell to the ground.