Sea of Death: Blade of the Flame - Book 3 (38 page)

She “saw” the tomb spider start to come back down on its forelegs. As it did, Haaken pulled free from the web mummy that held him and threw himself beneath one of the spider’s legs. The claw on the leg’s tip tore through the webbing wrapped about the wereshark’s chest, in the process slicing a long wound down Haaken’s chest and abdomen. But that didn’t matter. Haaken would heal swiftly—and far more importantly, he was free.

Makala was impressed. She hadn’t thought Haaken that intelligent.

Haaken let out an elated battle-roar and grabbed hold of the tomb spider’s two front forelegs. The giant arachnid brought her mouth parts down in an attempt to sink her fangs into Haaken’s broad shark-like head. But before she could strike, Haaken ripped the forelegs legs out of her body, and the tomb spider squealed in pain. She scuttled backward, gore spilling from the gaping wounds were her legs had been attached to her body, but Haaken had scented
the blood of his prey, and the wereshark wasn’t about to let the tomb spider escape. He leaped forward, claws outstretched, tooth-filled maw open wide, and as he landed atop the spider, he clamped his jaws down upon the spider’s eyes and bit down with all his might. The tomb spider’s shell cracked open like that of a steamed crab beneath the pressure of the wereshark’s jaws and gore sprayed over Haaken. The tomb spider whipped about from side to side in a desperate attempt to dislodge her attacker, but Haaken held on tight with his clawed hands, biting, tearing, and rending.

Finally, the spider’s body slumped to the floor of the crypt and its remaining legs curled inward, twitching feebly as the creature surrendered to death. Haaken, his shark’s snout smeared with blood and viscera, continued ravaging the tomb spider’s corpse, gulping down great mouthfuls of the thing’s innards with mindless efficiency.

Leontis stood by, only half-listening while Diran explained his plan to the psiforged and the artificer. The priest watched with increasing frustration as the battle took place around him and, far worse, without him. He was
Sir
Leontis of the Order of Templars, and it wasn’t in his nature to stand idly by while others risked their lives in the struggle against evil. He understood why Diran had asked him to stay back, though. If Nathifa was a powerful enough lich, it was possible that both priests would be needed to stop her, but Leontis knew another reason—perhaps the most important one—was that Diran didn’t want to risk having Leontis lose control of his lupine side again so soon after what had happened in the forest when they’d fought the shadowclaws. The werewolf had helped the others against those monsters then, but what guarantee was there that the beast wouldn’t turn on Leontis’s companions this time? None at all.

Leontis recognized the logic in Diran’s strategy and even agreed with it, but it still chafed. Diran had played upon their friendship to convince Leontis to come along on this quest, all for the sake of some dubious visions revealed by a demon desperate to make a deal to prevent being cast out of its young host body. Leontis had allowed
himself to be convinced, telling himself that perhaps he could do one last bit of good before leaving this mortal plane and joining with the Silver Flame. But he’d contributed little to the group’s efforts so far. He’d stopped a Fury-crazed Ghaji from slaying Diran, and he’d killed the flying creature that had been about to attack them as their longboat had approached the island, and that was all. The werewolf had done far more, killing numerous shadowclaws before being caught in the fireblast. It seemed that for all his vaunted training and priestly abilities, Leontis was of less use than the wild animal that shared his soul.

Why should he keep fighting the wolf inside him, then? Perhaps there was a reason he had been infected with the curse of lycanthropy. Perhaps it
wasn’t
a curse, at least not in his case. Perhaps it was, instead, a weapon that he was meant to wield in his order’s battle against evil. Evil against evil, fire against fire …

He shook his head. That was the werewolf talking, not the man. The beast would do anything to be free again, even attempt to persuade Leontis to believe that evil could be used as a tool for good when wielded by one of the Purified. But that was the sort of thinking that led to abuses of power. The ends did
not
justify the means, no matter what. The teachings of the priesthood were absolutely clear on this, and so Leontis vowed to continue fighting to keep the werewolf caged inside him.

But then he heard an animalistic roar, and the sound sent a strange fire surging up his spine and into his brain. Leontis trained his gaze upon a creature that appeared to be half-human and half-shark. In the confusion, Leontis hadn’t taken much notice of the creature, but he knew instinctively that it was a fellow lycanthrope. The wereshark attacked the tomb spider, leaping upon the arachnid and biting huge hunks out of her.

Leontis felt the fire in his mind build into a raging inferno at the sight of the wereshark glutting itself on the spider’s internal organs, and when the wolf came to the fore, there was nothing he could do to stop the beast from taking possession of his body. And as he felt his persona giving way to the werewolf’s savagery, he was horrified to realize that not only did he like it, he welcomed it.

Diran saw Leontis shift into his hybrid wolf form and bounded toward the wereshark. The sea-based lycanthrope had slain the tomb spider—something Diran supposed they all should be grateful for—and was engaged in devouring the mutilated remains. Diran had been born and raised in the Principalities, and thus knew that sharks would eat virtually anything, but he had a difficult time believing anyone with even a shred of humanity in them would eat a tomb spider, let alone do so with such enthusiastic delight. In addition, tomb spiders were creatures suffused with negative energy, and Diran couldn’t see how even a lycanthrope could ingest the horrid thing’s meat without being affected somehow by that energy.

Diran shouted Leontis’s name, in a vain attempt to call him back, but it was too late. The man was gone and only the werewolf remained. Leontis snarled as he threw himself upon the wereshark, and the lycanthropes began trying to kill each other, two predators that instinctively sensed and loathed a competitor.

Diran wished he could go to his friend’s aid, but there was nothing he could do for Leontis right now. He spared a second to wonder where Makala was—he’d seen her transform into mist and attack the tomb spider, but he hadn’t witnessed the outcome of her action. Either the spider had wounded her somehow or, more likely, Makala was still close by, either in mist or bat form. He’d vowed to free his former lover from the curse of undeath and undo the mistake he’d made by not slaying her the moment she awoke as a vampire. Hopefully, he’d get the chance to redeem himself soon … after Nathifa was stopped. The lich had to be dealt with before she could absorb even more of the magic in Paganus’s hoard.

Diran turned to Tresslar and Solus. “Ready?”

The psiforged and the artificer nodded. Both held daggers given them by the priest, one in each hand. Diran held the same number.

“Throw!” Diran commanded, and the three companions tossed the daggers straight up into the air, without even attempting to aim them anywhere in particular. When the daggers reached the apex of their less-than-graceful flight, Solus grabbed hold of the blades
telekinetically and sent them streaking toward the oversized eyeball hovering above Nathifa’s head.

The guardian eye released a blast of necromantic energy at the six oncoming daggers, but the blades fanned out, and the ebon beam managed to deflect only one. The remaining five encircled the eye and began rotating rapidly around the living orb, moving with such blinding speed that Diran had a difficult time keeping track of the knives. The eye, moving just as swiftly as the blades, oriented on one after the other, blasting them out of the air with dark beams of mystic force. One blade, two … three … four …

At Solus’s mental command, the last dagger curved away in the opposite direction from where the three companions stood. The eye tracked the blade, turning away from them as it prepared to deal with this final threat. As soon as the guardian eye faced the other direction and couldn’t see them, Diran slipped another dagger out of its cloak sheath, aimed, and hurled the blade at the back of eye. As the eye blasted the last of the rotating blades, the new dagger plunged into it from behind, and the guardian orb exploded in a spray of blood and viscous fluid.

Nathifa cried out in pain and frustration, but she didn’t allow her concentration to slacken. The lich continued absorbing magic into the Amahau, but now she had no guardian to protect her. Solus released control of the levitating daggers and the blades fell to the floor. There was no point in the psiforged driving them into the lich. The only way she could be killed was if the phylactery containing her lifeforce was discovered and destroyed. But if Diran could get close enough, he could use the power of the Silver Flame to repel her, giving Tresslar a chance to regain possession of his dragonwand.

The priest drew a silver dagger from his cloak and removed his arrowhead symbol from his vest pocket. He then turned to Solus and Tresslar.

“Be careful,” he warned his companions. “Even diminished as Nathifa is by the loss of her arm and eye, she is still most powerful—all the more so because she possesses the dragonwand.”

“I shall remember,” Solus said.

“You take care of the lich,” Tresslar said, a determined look on his face. “You let me worry about the Amahau.”

Diran nodded, and together the three started toward the lich.

Nathifa was no stranger to mystic power, but she’d never experienced anything like the Amahau before. The sheer amount of magical energy that it could hold was astonishing. It had already drained a good portion of Paganus’s hoard, and Nathifa could sense that it wasn’t near to being full. How much magic could the dragonhead contain? With its power hers to command, she would be like unto a god herself. She could keep the artifact for herself, continue traveling throughout the Principalities and absorbing magic wherever she went. And when she finally had enough, she could travel to the Fingerbone Mountains and challenge Vol. With the power of the Amahau, she could defeat the Lich Queen, cast her down, and take her place on the throne of bones.

But Nathifa knew it was a foolish dream. She’d made a bargain with Prince Moren to get the supplies to repair the
Zephyr
, and the bill would come due soon—long before she could ever hope to acquire enough power to challenge Vol. Nathifa wondered if perhaps this wasn’t how her Queen had planned it all along. Vol might well have sent the Ragestorm, and Prince Moren
had
answered her summons rather quickly. Perhaps he’d been waiting close by at Vol’s command.

No matter, Nathifa decided. The die was cast, and events would play themselves out as they would. Let Vol’s reign continue. As long as Nathifa finally had her vengeance on Kolbyr, she would be satisfied.

Though the bulk of her concentration was focused on controlling the Amahau, she was able to spare a fraction of her awareness to monitor the progress of the battle around her. Skarm writhed on the crypt floor, his barghest physiology doing its best to fight off the web spider’s venom. Nathifa knew he was fighting a losing battle, though. The venom was simply too strong. Nathifa was pleased that
Haaken had killed the web spider, but she was surprised to see the wereshark now fought with another lycanthrope. The lich had been aware that a werewolf numbered among Bastiaan’s companions, and she couldn’t conceive of a priest—especially one devoted to the Silver Flame—associating with such a monster. There was obviously more to that story than met the eye.