The Sorcerer's Return (The Sorcerer's Path) (6 page)

He considered surrounding them but discarded
the idea. More movement this close could result in detection and take too much time. He also needed his people near enough to assist each other should their opening strikes fail to kill the sorcerer. They would concentrate their attack on Lord Giles. The girl was little danger by herself, and they could not risk damaging the Codex. They would execute the girl after getting the book. The child would likely be collateral damage.

Harrison gave a silent signal with his hand and all forty wizards unleashed more concentrated arcane power in that moment than in any single engagement in their decades long war with Sumara. Brilliant beams of intense light and power lanced out and lit up the gulley more brightly than the noonday sun. Massive waves of thunder echoed across the land
, as the eldritch power exploded the air with intense heat.

Twenty-five
Inquisitors struck the sorcerer while the remaining wizards weaved chains of magic to pin the sorcerer in place. Azerick’s wards flared as brightly as the powerful rays striking them as he writhed beneath the onslaught. His body contorted as the intense struggle and pain forced him to shift into Klaraxis’ form. Seeing the terrifying image, the Inquisitors unleashed a second salvo.

“Raijaun, run!” Ellyssa shrieked.

Raijaun rolled away from the attack, the power of it blistering his skin despite his quickness, and fled into the night. Ellyssa darted in the opposite direction, raised a protective ward around her, and prepared to strike back, but the Inquisitors’ second attack broke through Azerick’s defenses. The contest between the two powerful magical forces created a deafening explosion that hurled Ellyssa several yards and left her stunned. Only her wards prevented the detonation from blasting her to pieces.

Ellyssa struggled to get to her feet and fell back when she looked at Azerick’s destroyed body. Once the rays penetrated his ward
s, they had cut through his body and left him riddled with gaping, charred holes.

“Azerick, no!” Ellyssa shouted hysterically.

The assault was as brief as it was furious. Inquisitor Harrison looked down at the destruction below. He shuddered upon seeing the ruined demonic body. The ground around the demon glittered from the glass created by the intense beams that melted the sand and rock. Smoke curled lazily into the air from the charred corpse.

“Half of you follow me. The rest of you watch for any sign of treachery
. Destroy the girl if she so much as moves,” Harrison ordered.

The
Inquisitors made a sliding descent to the base of the gulley, keeping a wary eye on the hideous form still lying unmoving a short distance away. The girl barely acknowledged their approach as she sat on the ground weeping. Ellyssa’s eyes darted to the Codex lying a few feet away as the Inquisitor stalked closer.

“Do not do anything foolish, child,” Harrison warned, “I will have what I came for.”

Her tears vanished and a smile spread across her face. “Then you must have come for your death, for you will not get what you want, only what you deserve.”

The young woman and Codex crumbled into the same rough sand and grit of the surrounding terrain.
Inquisitor Harrison spun and watched the demon’s corpse likewise change into a pile of dirt and gravel.

“Dear gods above,” the
Inquisitor managed to whisper before his world was literally torn apart.

Six runes the size of
bar tables briefly flared around the camp before sending massive beams shooting into the night sky as if to stab out the stars themselves. The intensity dwarfed that of the wizards’ assault, leaving them all blinded and desperately trying to blink away the miniature suns now floating across their vision.

The world shrieked in protested agony as Azerick ripped open a huge wound in their reality. High above the gulley, a great black gash
opened in the night sky, sucking up everything below it in a powerful vortex. Wizards cried out as they flew upward into the black maw, along with tons of dirt, sand, and stone. The gulley was scoured clean all the way down to the bedrock. The rift slammed closed seconds later and instantly cast the area into a dark and eerie silence.

The closing of the rift did not signal an end to the
fight, but was just the opening gambit of a battle no one could have expected. The remaining Inquisitors were already raising wards and hastily backing away from the edge of the gulch when a massive wave of force struck them on their left flank, sending them flying dozens of feet and tumbling a score more. Numerous arms made of sand and rock rose from the ground and began pummeling the wizards with fists of stone the size of wagon wheels.

The
Inquisitors were experts in magical combat and recovered quickly. Several erected wards, while most lashed out against the earthen fists, trusting their brothers and sisters in magic to shield them. Lightning and searing rays of arcane power lashed out and destroyed the constructs. The wizards spotted their foes in the flashing illuminations of their spells and turned their power onto the sorcerer and his apprentice.

His trap sprung and the element of surprise over, Azerick and Ellyssa joined the
Inquisitors in direct combat. Although their odds were greatly improved by the removal of half their enemy, the rift trap was magic beyond the capability of even the most powerful human wizard, and it left Azerick significantly fatigued. This fatigue and the amount of power it took to withstand the Inquisitors’ magic severely limited his ability to fight back. To draw more arcane energy meant drawing from even more powerful emotions, both of which would empower Klaraxis. Too much, and the demon could take control.

As the two sides hurled earth-shattering magic at each other, Azerick felt himself faltering. He had to put more power into shielding himself and Ellyssa and was soon on the defensive.
Her wards next to useless, Ellyssa let Azerick protect her from the wizards while she put all her strength into offensive spells. One scarlet beam shattered the ward of an Inquisitor, striking her in the chest and throwing her back. She did not rise again.

With few of her spells powerful enough to pierce the
Inquisitors’ magical shields, she used subtler magic on the ground around them, opening deep crevasses and raising pillars of stone to either swallow or hurl wizards skyward, as such spells made their wards far less effective. Ellyssa noticed Azerick’s strength failing and the slow retreat they were making. If something did not happen soon, they would need to make some kind of escape.

As if reading her thoughts, she heard Azerick mumble, “I need your help.”

Ellyssa spared Azerick a brief look. “I’m sorry. I’m doing everything I can.”

Azerick
’s lip twitched in a grin. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

Blackness filled the sky
, and a huge swathe of bright stars vanished. Ellyssa could feel a wind picking up at her back and growing stronger. A sound like someone shaking out a rug, only a thousand times more intense, echoed out over the sounds of battle. Ellyssa’s eyes followed those of the Inquisitors as they stared in terrified amazement at the dragon dropping from the sky.

As big as a castle, Sandy struck the ground with enough force to create a tremor
so powerful it knocked several wizards from their feet. She let out a deafening roar that made bones tremor and bowels loosen. Sandy inhaled deeply before blanketing a massive swath of land in hellish fire. Every shrub and scrawny, dry tree dotting the land burst into flames. Sand melted into glass, and rock cracked and turned to slag under her inferno. Hissing out in the ancient language of the dragons, she reared up and crashed her forelegs onto the ground. The earth buckled and sent a rolling wave hundreds of yards wide undulating out toward the Inquisitors.

Wizards not incinerated by her fiery breath uselessly poured magic into their wards. When the wave rolled beneath their feet, the ground turned no more solid than mud. They sank into the ground, some up to their necks
, before the rock resolidified and trapped them in its tight grip. A few wizards, their hands free enough to resist, tried to turn their magic against the rock, but Azerick slammed them senseless with invisible strikes of force.

“If any of you wish to live beyond the next few moments, I suggest you cease resisting
and surrender,” Azerick called out as he stalked forward. He gave Sandy a pat on her house-sized flank as he passed.

“What will you do with us, demon?” a wizard demanded to know.

“I will leave you here with a warning for your hall, your Duchess, and The Academy. The Codex is mine. I retrieved it from creatures of unparalleled evil. I fought a dragon for it when I was little more than a journeyman. It speaks to me, and it speaks to my apprentice. Never in our recorded history has it spoken to more than one person at one time. It is a tool created by our gods to aid in a battle against a common enemy more terrifying than you can imagine. Tell your Duchess and your Academy, I do not want to fight you. Our world will need everyone, especially wizards, to fight these creatures who strike fear into the hearts of our gods. But if you fight against me, you are worse than useless; you are a detriment, and I will end you,” Azerick promised.

“You killed several of us here tonight!” the
Inquisitor accused.

“You forced this battle.”

The speaker looked at his trapped and fallen fellows and shifted his eyes to the sorcerer and the awe-inspiring dragon. Such a thing was a creature of legend and nightmare. How this man came to befriend one, he could not fathom. What he did know was that he was beaten.

“Where are the others, the ones lost to the rift?”

Azerick shrugged. “Somewhere in Sumara. Transdimensional magic is not my specialty. Most of them should have survived their journey, assuming it took them where I intended. Fight me again, and I will rip open a gate straight to the deepest pits if the abyss and throw you all in where my demons will devour your flesh and drink your souls.”

Azerick turned and walked briskly away. Ellyssa and Sandy followed him into the darkness. Behind another rise, Raijaun hid in deep cleft between boulders, using his demonic magic to wrap himself in
impenetrable darkness. He rushed out of his hiding spot and hugged Azerick tightly.

Out of earshot of the
Inquisitors, Ellyssa finally spoke the question she had been dying to ask since Sandy appeared. “Sandy, how did you get here, and when did you get so damned big?” she exclaimed.

Sandy’s scaly face could not hide her grin as Azerick spoke a word and made a gesture. Her image wavered and shrank before their eyes until she was her normal, but still formidable size.

“It was all an illusion?”

“Like I said, sometimes a bluff is better than a good hand,” Azerick responded
with a smirk.

“But her roar and the fire and the shaking ground
?”

“All augmented by me. When her appearance caused the
Inquisitors to balk their attack on me, I was able to lend my power to her breath and the effects of her magic.”

“But how did she find us?” Ellyssa asked.

“I was able to contact her when we were in Sandusk.”

Sandy said, “Imagine my surprise when I went to get a drink from my spring and saw Azerick’s face staring at me from the water!” She craned her neck down and studied Azerick. “So it really is you.
You smell funny.”

“I’m not quite myself,” Azerick replied.
“Come, we need to put some distance between us and these idiots in case they get free and suddenly develop another acute case of stupidity. Sandy, you know where to meet us?”

The young dragon nodded
, trotted a short ways away, and took to the air. Ellyssa shielded her eyes as the wind from Sandy’s beating wings kicked up dust, sand, and gravel. Once free of the ground, Sandy quickly vanished into the darkness of the night.

Azerick slashed at the air with his staff and portal opened in the
space before him. Ellyssa watched him pause to steady himself, giving evidence to his exhaustion and the strain of the night’s battle. Azerick spied the look of concern on his apprentice’s face, smiled, and nodded at the portal.

Ellyssa took Raijaun by the hand and stepped through, reeling and stumbling as she exited more than a mile from where Azerick stood on the other side.
Azerick crossed over a moment later, and Ellyssa watched him stagger just a bit. This was the first time Azerick had shown how exhausted he was. She was concerned to see he was reaching his limitations, but at the same time relieved to know he had them.

“Do you want to stop and rest?” she asked
worriedly.

Azerick took several deep breaths and shook his head. “We need to
keep moving. I do not want to encourage the Inquisitors to follow us. It is unlikely we would survive a second encounter. I just hope they continue to believe my bluff and do not realize it for what it was.”

He steadied himself
, opened a rift once more, and took them another mile away. Azerick did not falter as he stepped through, but Ellyssa saw the effort it took firmly set in his face. He obviously did not want her to see how weak and tired he was. Two more gates took them almost five miles from the battle before Azerick called them to a stop.