Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept (50 page)

Once the roar died down,
she peeked through the hole again. Fire still burned inside the charred and scorched room, but Zuhl’s sarcophagus was intact.

Abigail muttered a curse under her breath, slinging her bow and drawing the Thinblade.

“Looks like you were right,” she said, slicing into the wall, drawing lines through the stone, cutting a large chunk out and letting it fall away. She looked through the hole again and saw the lid of the sarcophagus open, a pale hand just visible on its edge.

“He
’s getting up,” Abigail said, cutting into the wall with quick broad strokes, opening a passage into the chamber within a few seconds. Stone fell away in small chunks at first and then all at once enough stone collapsed into the room to allow a person to step through. Magda grabbed Abigail and yanked her aside a moment before a six-foot ice shard shot through the opening and hit Dalia’s shield with enough force to pop it like a soap bubble, blasting her to the ground, stunned but otherwise unharmed.

Kat fired a light-la
nce, rolling to the side of the hastily cut door as soon as her spell was away. Amelia was next, launching a bubble of liquid fire into the room. A shard of ice just missed her as she stepped past the opening.

Magda’s spell fired next, filling the room with a torrent of flame that seemed to spontaneously ignite from the air itself, burning like a roaring furnace for twenty seconds.

Abigail turned away from the opening in the wall, shielding her face. Even after the fire died down, the room still emitted enough heat to make it unbearable. They waited a few more minutes before entering.

Abigail slipped in after Magda. The room was empty except for the sarcophagus where Zuhl slept when h
is mind was within a simulacrum. Four crystalline alcoves were cut into the walls on either side of the sarcophagus. Inside the two to the right were two simulacra, frozen in time, waiting for Zuhl to put them on like a suit of clothes. Inside the alcoves to the left were two small masses of tissue that looked like they were growing.

A door was ajar in the back wall.

“The bastard escaped,” Abigail said, her anger rising.

She went to the two simulacra
, hibernating, empty, waiting for Zuhl to inhabit them. She cut through the crystal encasing them, whipping the Thinblade back and forth, slicing through each of them six or seven times before turning her attention to the sarcophagus itself. A large blue crystal was embedded at the head of the box. She started there, slicing it into several pieces, then she went to work on the box itself, cutting it into dozens of pieces, sending them clattering to the floor. Finally, she destroyed the two alcoves containing the growing tissue masses, her rage still boiling over Zuhl’s escape.

“It looks like it goes pretty straight,” Kat said, withdrawing her head from the
open passage. “And it looks like the door would be almost undetectable if it hadn’t been left open.”

Magda frowned,
then began casting a spell. A few moments later, a trail of silvery footprints lit up the floor. They only lasted for a few seconds, but long enough to show where they led—to a second hidden door, which was closed and locked from the inside.

Bree blasted
the door open with a force-push. Magda led the way into a seven-foot-tall, four-foot-wide passage that ran in a straight line from Zuhl’s chambers. Fifty feet in, the passage was entirely filled with ice.

Abigail started cutting large chunks away. It took several minutes to clear the obstacle, meant
no doubt as a delaying tactic.

Once past the ice, the corridor continued straight for many hundreds of feet, stopping at a spiral staircase
that wound upward. They proceeded with caution, coming to the top of the stairs, where they found a ladder that led up one level more.

Magda stopped
to cast a spell, closing her eyes and sending her vision into the room above.

“It’s the dragon aerie,” she said, opening her eyes. “Zuhl is there with a dozen priests and
it looks like they’re waiting for us.”

“Can you blow the trapdoor open?” Abigail asked.

“Of course,” Magda said.

She smiled, unslinging her bow and drawing an arrow with blue feathers.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Abigail said, nocking the arrow and bracing herself for the pain in her wounded arm.

Magda hit the trapdoor at the top of the ladder with a force
-push, blasting it open, slamming it over onto the floor above hard enough to loosen the hinges.

Abigail launched the force arrow at the
aerie’s ceiling two hundred feet above. Her arrow streaked into the air, rising far too quickly for Zuhl or his priests to do anything before it hit. The explosion shattered a section of the ceiling, causing it to collapse, debris large and small falling onto Zuhl and his priests. Two died quickly, one crushed under a section of roof, the other impaled with a beam, staked to the floor like a bug in a display case.

Magda started to climb the ladder, but Abigail put a hand on her arm.

“Wait,” she said with a knowing smile. She wasn’t disappointed. Not half a minute later, Ixabrax roared, deafening and intensely threatening as he crashed through the hole in the roof, descending into the aerie, breathing a great gout of icy, frigid air, freezing several of the priests solid in spite of their natural resistance to cold.

Zuhl’s shield held.

“Now,” Abigail said, following Magda up to the floor of the aerie.

Zora came in next. Zuhl and the priests were so preoccupied by the sudden arrival of two very angry dragons that they didn’t even
notice Abigail and the witches.

Ixabrax
attacked Zuhl, his talons out. Still the shield held, Ixabrax bouncing off, scrambling to gain purchase for a moment before launching back into the air and turning his attention to three priests who were peppering him with ice shards. He froze them solid with a gout of his icy breath.

Zora breathed frost at Zuhl, his shield turning red and boiling the ice into steam as quickly as it hit. She crashed into his shield, both talons hitting hard, then gripping the magical shell and thrusting off of it back into the air.

Abigail drew another arrow with blue feathers, firing it at Zuhl. It hit nearby, missing him entirely, but hitting close enough that the explosion of magical force collapsed his shield. The shock wave blasted him to the ground, leaving him stunned.

He
regained his senses just in time to see Ixabrax land on top of him, snatching him up with one talon and launching into the air a moment later. He whipped Zuhl up to his mouth and bit him in half, tossing the legs into the air toward Zora. She snatched them like a dog catching a treat, crunching them once before swallowing the last of Lord Zuhl.

The priests ran, but not quickly enough. I
xabrax and Zora turned on them next, freezing them solid in moments and then crashing into them, shattering them into thousands of bloody chunks.

Both dragons looked
around for more prey but the battle was done, the enemy dead. Abigail slung her bow and approached them slowly.

“Thank you for this, Abigail Ruatha,” Ixabrax said. “You
are a true friend.”

“You as well, Ixabrax. I wish you and Zora the very best.”

“I believe we still have a witch to help you kill,” Zora said.

Abigail smiled. She remembered the
ir bargain, but she was loathe to bring it up.

“I would welcome your help,” Abigail said, “but I need to wait until I hear from my brother before we proceed.”

“Then I suggest we fall back to a safe location,” Ixabrax said.

Abigail smiled. “I’m surprised you’re so willing to help us fight our war.”

“Zora gave her word and a dragon’s word matters,” Ixabrax said. “Also, if I had helped you kill Zuhl in the first place, he wouldn’t have collared me a second time.”

Soldiers
stormed into the room from three entrances, stopping cold and backing away slightly at the sight of Ixabrax and Zora.

“Time to go,”
Ixabrax said, lowering his neck for Abigail and half of the witches. The other half of the witches quickly climbed aboard Zora, and both dragons launched with a roar, leaving Whitehall broken and without a master.

Chapter
37

Isabel blinked in disbelief as her duplicate vanished and Phane whirled on the seven-hundred-year-old mage.

Zuhl stood right there behind him
. He’d arrived by surprise, he’d distracted Phane just enough to open a vulnerability, he held a weapon that looked surpassingly powerful, and he was poised to strike.

Yet he did nothing, his eyes going blank and empty, as if one moment he was there and the next he wasn’t.

Phane took in the threat, a flicker of confusion dancing across his face that was quickly replaced with resolve. He hit Zuhl in the chest with his magic so forcefully that it tore him in half, blasting his remains off the plateau and into his army.

Phane cocked his head, frowning for a moment before he shrugged to himself and started laughing.

“I never once imagined that he would hesitate,” he said, still shaking his head, reaching out and pulling the crystal scepter into his hand with his magic. “This might be useful.” He opened his Wizard’s Den and leaned the staff against the wall, closing the door a moment later.

P
riests rose up on new pillars of ice in a half circle surrounding the plateau just as the drakini made another attack run. Phane renewed his shield and grabbed Isabel by the upper arm, dragging her with him to the Nether Gate. The bubble of magical energy surrounding them both deflected first a series of ice shards and then a white bolt of freezing magical energy that coated the side of his shield with a foot of ice for six feet in all directions.

The Acuna struggled to repel the sudden attack, pouring most of their energy into their shields and other defensive spells while the priests continued to hurl cold and ice at them.
Drakini breathed frost into Phane’s personal guard before landing to kill one or two men each.

They didn’t know about the wraithkin. Half of the drakini were killed when they landed close enough for a wraithkin to blink behind them. The rest fled, a few more falling from the Acuna wizards’ magic.

Phane ignored it all, relying on his shield for protection. He reached the control pedestal, nodding to himself at the shape and size of the keystone receptacles. He opened his Wizard’s Den with a gesture and reached inside, withdrawing a box before closing the door again. Carefully, almost gingerly, Phane set the keystones in place.

Isabel felt like she should do something. She wanted to act, to stop him, to kill him, but instead she stood there and watched
him drop each keystone into its slot. As he inserted the last stone, the air became heavy and cold, sending a chill up her spine. A shadow passed overhead.

Air began to flow toward the indistinct splotch of inky blackness that occupied the interior of the Nether Gate’s stone arch.

Phane tipped his head back and laughed, very deliberately taking a moment to revel in his victory. Shards of ice shattered against his shield, a man fell nearby, frozen solid from a blast of magical coldness. Phane seemed to remember that he was in a battle and a look of pure childish glee danced across his face.

“Naberius!
” he bellowed at the Gate.

The darkness swirled and a
giant figure stepped through that almost looked human. He stood nine feet tall and had the body of a perfectly proportioned man, his muscles chiseled as if sculpted from black stone. He was exquisite in every detail, except that his fingers ended in long black claws, his eyes glowed like smoldering embers, and he had coarse bone horns jutting from his forehead. Large, batlike wings folded behind his broad shoulders. He was armed with an oversized halberd.

“I am Naberius, Marquis of the Undead,” he said. “For what purpose have you summoned me?”

“Destroy that army,” Phane said, pointing at the Rangers and the Ithilian infantry a league to the east.

“
By your command,” Naberius said, unfurling his wings.

“No!” Isabel shouted.

Naberius regarded her for a moment, intently taking note of her before launching into the sky.

“Legion!” Phane bellowed.

A second figure stepped through the Gate, this one also in the form of a man, a large man, seven feet tall and three hundred pounds. He wore black plate armor from head to foot, only his yellow eyes visible past his defenses. Blades and spikes bristled from his joints at every angle. He carried an oversized broadsword in his left hand and a large round shield in his right.

He scanned the world of time and substance as if looking through everything
and everyone until he saw Phane. His eyes stopped and he nodded slowly.

“I am Legion.”

“Destroy that army,” Phane said, pointing at Zuhl’s soldiers.

“As you wish,”
Legion said, his voice somehow hollow, detached. He took two steps toward the enemy and then there were two of him, exactly the same size, same armor, same black sword. Another three steps and there were four of him. Five steps and there were eight of him. They all leapt off the edge of the plateau into the enemy.

“Samael!” Phane bellowed.

Another figure stepped forth from the darkness. It was shadowy, drawing the light in around it. After a moment it came into focus, a perfect, crisp image of a young man, but only the front shell of his face and body. Since he was slightly transparent, Isabel could see through into his empty interior. His form was a less-than-perfect façade.

“I am Samael.”

“Yes, you are,” Phane said. “Find Alexander Reishi and bring him to me unharmed but helpless.”

Samael nodded, flash
ing off into the sky, a shadow moving with impossible speed.