The Crystal Sorcerers (26 page)

"The samurai understands the intertwining of life, of death, of peace and war, and how one does not exist without the other," Ikawa whispered. "Chances are we have already lost. Tulana just told me that the ladulta say she has almost reached the mainland. We will not be there for another day."

Mark could not respond.

"Yet we still have this moment," Ikawa continued, "and we will still try."

"And if we lose?"

"Then it is all gone--this world, this beautiful world which I love now far more than where we came from. Knowing the evil we are about to face has made me love this place far more than I could ever have imagined, because I realize how fragile it truly is. I think I understand how the gods who created this must feel, why Jartan will die himself to protect it. Because if it was never threatened, we would not know how precious it truly is. Your Norsemen knew this in the Dark Ages, when even
Valhalla would have its final day, and thus the moments of goodness were all the more precious.
If we understand that, then how precious those whom we love and call our friends truly are.
And how terrible the burden we now carry to protect it for others, even
if
it means that we shall die and never know its pleasures again."

Ikawa looked over at Mark as if suddenly embarrassed.

"We better get the men ready to move out," he said evenly.

Unable to reply, Mark smiled. Their gaze held for a moment in mutual understanding.

The rest of the men came up from below, some cursing and groaning, others quiet, all with anger in their eyes as Tulana broke the news that Patrice was even now reaching the mainland.

"Well damn it, let's get some flying done,"
Walker said, rising into the air.

Together, the group ascended into the afternoon sky, Leti and Tulana in the lead. Turning westward, they disappeared into the clouds.

"Just what the hell am I going to do now?" Allic muttered to himself, peering up over the lip of the cave where he had remained hidden for the last two days.

The fortress was aswarm with Gorgon's minions. Where they had come from he had no idea. They must have remained hidden on another part of the world and come back.

The attack had been brutal and stunningly swift.
Half of his garrison gone under the swarm of the first overpowering strike.
There was nothing to do but run and hide.

He looked at the rest of his men. Dejected, they sat huddled in the darkness. He could hear the rasping wheezing of their breath.

There'd been no water since this morning. The filters on their masks had long since clogged and become next to useless.

His fantasies floated now between the nightmare bodies and a cold glass of water--it wasn't even wine anymore or brandy, it was simply water. There was nothing here at all to work with, nothing he could coax and change with his powers into something they could drink. Perhaps Jartan could have pulled it off, but where the hell was he?

"My lord."

Allic looked back.

"Edwinna's dead."

He looked into the shadows where a sorcerer sat, still cradling the woman's head in his lap.

There was nothing Allic could have done to save her. He had drained what little strength he had left into her, but the horrifying burns had simply been too much for him to master. In another time, another place it could have been done all so simply--but not here.

He cursed silently at his impotence.

A shadow winged through the blood-red sky, and he froze.

The demons were still looking for them. Yet it was not those searches from above that worried him. As long as they kept their shields off and hid in the cave, they would be safe; the landscape was a massive catacomb of such warrens. Yet there were other searches as well.

Cautiously peering over the rim again, he saw a team attempting one.

A demon stood on a low rise not half a mile away. Beside it was one of the nightmare perversions of humanity, a man with four legs, but no arms. Its head was bent low to the ground; then it rose, hesitated, and turned to one side. The creature moved into a hollow and disappeared from view, the demon following behind it.

It had taken Allic a while to realize that the creature was trying to find them by scent. Ever so gradually, the demon--and their monstrous slaves--would close the circle around them, flushing the sorcerers into the air where the finish would be short and deadly.

Allic slid back into the darkness of the cave.

What would kill them first--the demons, or the lack of water?

Jartan must know by now what had happened. What the hell was delaying him?

At the moment, Allic almost didn't care. They were going to die, and when the time came, he would lead one last sortie and take some of Gorgon's minions with him.

An inner thrill of warning coursed through Patrice's mind, but her plot was now too far along for caution. Yet his presence was almost soothing; gentle in visage, and so carefully crafted in its seductiveness.

"I sense fear," Gorgon said quietly.

"If we should fail," Patrice replied, almost too quickly, to cover her misgivings.

His laughter echoed through the empty chamber. "We fail? Together we shall rule Haven."

"Yet I turn now even against the gods."

Even Patrice was amazed at her own indecisiveness. She had been divorced from the circle of gods since the Great War, and they in turn had ignored her. Now they would know the folly of their slights.... Yet still there was that sense of fear.

"The gods," Gorgon laughed, his voice like that of a delighted child pulling a prank on unsuspecting elders. "What are they? Why are they known as gods?
Because they stole Haven from the Old Ones and abrogated the power unto themselves.
We and they are cut from the same cloth."

"Yet they are gods."

"And you shall be a goddess.
My goddess and consort."

Patrice hesitated. "But they are immortal, and even a demigod like
myself
will know age in the end."

Gorgon's laughter echoed through the night. "I shall make you immortal also."

Incredulous, she looked at him.

"Can I not steal souls bound for the
Sea
of
Chaos
and bend them to my bidding? If I have such power over death, then know that you, too, shall be immortal when my hand stretches across Haven."

His image pulsed and glowed, shaping and reshaping, hovering for a moment as a seductive woman/child, then as a man, then as a strange shaping of the two, which held Patrice spellbound.

"It is but a small matter," Gorgon whispered. "Remember, you now hold the Crystals of Fire, except for the Heart the most coveted of Jartan's gems."

"Jartan?"
Patrice asked. "Where is he now?"

The image of Gorgon rose high in the pillar of fire.

"He has taken much that is mine," the demon lord boomed. "Thousands of my servants, a score of my lords have fallen into the
Sea
of
Chaos
by his hands. Even now his forces storm the very gates of my inner realm. Yet he has paid as well, for by my hand even Minar was injured. I have slain their sons and daughters, their children's children, and their host of followers."

Patrice could sense the rage in his voice and knew that Jartan and Minar had dealt Gorgon a severe setback, despite of the cost he'd exacted.

"Yet it shall be as nothing," Gorgon went on, dropping into a thin pulsing flame. "For when my servants have passed through to your realm, the work shall begin. With Horat's Portal crystal, I will be able to break through the barriers and step into Haven, making it ours. Jartan and Minar know not the threat. Already we have slipped past them, destroying the portals back to this world. It will take
them
days to cut their way back here--and by then it wiil be too late."

"It is time we begin," Gorgon whispered soothingly.

Patrice looked at him, her features fixed in a smile. How long she had planned for this moment, she could no longer recall. She could not even say when the turning away had first begun; how many countless nights she had savored the anticipation of this moment, though her heart had stayed her. Could it be that the mere anticipation had kept her alive, kept her dreaming and plotting?

She watched him closely, and the clarity of thought returned. He would try to destroy her in the end, she knew. Could she ever control him?

"You are not afraid of me, are you?" Gorgon purred, and again his voice was like that of a young woman's.

A dark smile flickered across her mouth. No; she could control even him--or it--or whatever it was that floated before her.

When his work here was done she would bend him to her will, or drive him back into the darkness. It had gone too far already, she realized. She had taken action which would force Jartan to strike her--if he returned--and that thought filled her with a sudden edge of fear and at last pushed the caution aside.

"Afraid of you?" she whispered. "I fear nothing."

Her right hand pointed downward, and the dark portal crystal by her feet flared into brilliance.

The portal widened, deepened, pulsing bright red.
Shafts of light snapped past her, so that the room appeared to be engulfed in an inferno. From out of the flame five forms drifted upward, their taloned wings beating darkly against the light.

Arcing outward, they spiraled down to land by her side, their coal-black eyes like pits of eternal night.

"Your servants," a demon lord growled, bowing.

"Then begin your work," Patrice said coldly, stepping back from the pentagram.

Forming a circle around the pillar of light, they raised their winged arms, their cries renting the air.

Then one by one, from out of the light, yet more appeared, broadening the circle, drawing out the legion of their warriors and magic users, and preparing for the arrival of their master.

Exhausted, Patrice turned away, and a gentle laughter washed over the room. She looked back to see the image of Gorgon, still barred from her realm by the power of the Essence laid down so long ago. But here at last she was cracking the final barrier, and she could see the lust of anticipation in his eyes. He looked over at her and smiled again, the smile of an innocent child. She smiled back to him, the smile of an innocent woman.

"There--do you sense it?" Leti whispered softly. The Heart crystal in the center of the conference room glowed and flickered, bathing those in the circle with
a gentle
lavender light. "She's doing it; she is actually cutting the fabric of the Essence, laying our world bare to him."

Ikawa looked across the room at her, and though for a moment their eyes caught and held each other, he felt so very distant from her. She was now a demigod burdened with an awesome responsibility to protect the realm, while he was still merely a sorcerer, the holder of a minor fiefdom.

Boreas, who had arrived only moments before the war council had begun, shifted in his chair and glared with a cold anger. "She's opened the gate."

"How long do you think we have?" Leti asked, looking over at the only ally whom she and Tulana had been able to summon. Communication had been next to impossible, so thorough had Patrice's jamming been. If not for Tulana's strength, and the crystal shard forged by his grandfather, they might not have reached even Boreas. All attempts to reach Aleena had failed, and Reena, whose realm was on the other side of the world, would not respond, so distant was she now to the concerns of others.

"The barriers are the strongest bonds ever forged," Boreas said darkly. "Even with Horat's crystal it will take days. She needs to bring through hundreds of his demons first; they in turn must channel all their energy back into the portal to stretch it wider. We have three, maybe four days before Gorgon himself can cross through."

Leti settled back in her chair and sighed. Boreas was silent, while Tulana, sitting next to him, pulled on his beard and cursed.

"And Jartan?"
Mark asked.

Leti shook her head and looked at Pina, who was now in charge of the gateway portal.

"Jartan's forces have gone through fourteen jumps on this campaign, eleven of which are into Gorgon's outer realms. Picture it as a long thread leading into an unmapped darkness. Two days ago the thread was cut at the fifth jump point inside Gorgon's territory."

"It was a perfect defense," he said evenly. "The deeper in Jartan went, the more he had to leave behind to protect each point in our communications line. I would assume that after the fifth jump point was outflanked and taken, Gorgon's people followed up the line, cutting point after point."

"So Jartan's still cut off and there's no hope of contacting him?" Tulana asked.

Pina nodded. "Jartan might not even know yet that he's been cut off, or could assume that it's a minor harassment to his rear and continue to press forward. It could be weeks before he comes back. If he followed standard battle doctrine, he would have kept a strong point midway on his communications line. Hopefully that point will hold, but even it could be outflanked and cut off."

"A masterful deception," Boreas commented.

"Obviously well planned," Pina replied, with a slight hint of admiration for the professional skill of his adversary. "I suspect Jartan will perceive this merely as a delaying and harassing action and will continue to press his attack into the heart of Gorgon's realm."

"And we lose Haven," Leti said grimly. "The whole thing fits together so nicely. Lure the gods off Haven, lead them on a wild chase,
then
cut straight into the heart of our realm."

"But it hasn't all gone according to plan," Ikawa replied, the slightest edge of rebuke in his voice.

Boreas and Leti looked up at him.

"Vena was supposed to steal the Crystals of Fire without our even being aware that they were gone. The portal would have been opened, again without our being aware of it. If our attention had not been drawn to it, and at least some of her shielding penetrated by the power of the Heart"--he pointed to the massive gem glowing before the group--"Gorgon might already be among us."

"There's been a delay of nearly ten days as well," Ikawa continued forcefully. "I dare say that Gorgon's forces have taken a terrible beating from the gods while he waited for the crystals to be retrieved."

"We must fight our way through," Boreas pointed out. "It'll take us three days to reach her realm. We'll have no levies of armed men available--there is no time to march them down there. I am bringing all my sorcerers; when I left I had already passed the word to marshal here."

"How many will that be?" Leti asked.

"Just
under
seventy with warrior skills--and that will strip my realm bare. Twenty are already here with me"--he paused--"including Giorgini."

Ikawa looked at Mark, who stiffened, but did not comment.

"We have only a hundred or so from Jartan's provinces," Leti said, "and most of those are not of the top echelon. We can get another forty or so from the free guilds and minor fiefdoms."

"I brought up ten from Landra, and we can pick up another ten from occupation duty in Sarnak's old territory," Pina interjected. "Those of Minar's provinces closest to us can throw in another forty or so."

"Twelve from my territories," Tulana said coldly. "I had to leave seven behind to protect my cities from the Cresus."

"And there's us," Ikawa said.

"Around three hundred then, who can make it here in time," Boreas said. "Calling up transport people and other nonmilitary sorcerers, we might get four hundred
total
."

"And the gods know how many hundreds of demon warriors and lords will have already passed through by the time we get there," Leti pointed out.

"It doesn't look good,"
Valdez grumbled.

"There's nothing else we can do," Boreas snapped. "We have to attack."

"Frontally,"
Valdez said, "against a fortified position with wall crystals, and the odds already against us?" He gave a snort of disdain and walked around the Heart crystal to face Boreas. "We'll be slaughtered on the first assault."

"So we stay back here and hide, like frightened children?" Boreas growled.

"Are you accusing me of cowardice?"

"If your people had done their proper job, that woman never would have infiltrated our ranks."

"I take responsibility for that,"
Valdez snapped.

"You damn well should."

"If you want satisfaction, I'm ready to meet you any time,"
Valdez shouted.

Boreas leaped to his feet. "Here and now, if you don't like what I said."

"Damn you, we're
suppose
to be fighting on the same side," Ikawa roared, coming up to stand between
Valdez and Boreas.

Leti came up beside Ikawa and angrily put her hands on Boreas shoulders. "
Valdez is the best security advisor in Jartan's realms. He's better than
mine,
he's better even than your Farnak. If she got past him, she'd have gotten past any of our people."

"I don't need you to defend me,"
Valdez said slowly, his voice brimming with rage.

"I need all of us to work together," Leti shouted. "If you two want to kill each other later--if there is a later--then go ahead."

Ikawa took
Valdez by the shoulders and gently pushed him away from Boreas. "Not now," he whispered.
"First Patrice, who has insulted you far more by what she did."

"But I must redeem my honor,"
Valdez whispered, torment in his eyes.