chapter 23
Borric skimmed at the surface of consciousness from the underside. To his fevered imagination, it seemed he was being carried in the belly of some great shuddering beast as it raced over hill and valley, and he wanted to scream out in defiance at his fate. For brief moments he would propel himself upward to crest that surface and steal breath from the waking world. Each time he was rewarded by the cool night breeze whispering across his face and the barest glimpses of tall, rustling grasses waving at him as he passed over them. Then jaws of darkness would close over him once again, and he was back in the belly of the beast.
Borric crashed to the ground, and white-hot pain lanced through his broken arm. An involuntary cry escaped through his clenched teeth as he was expelled into full consciousness at last, and he writhed onto his back to remove the weight from his crushed limb. He began to push himself upright with his uninjured arm when he looked up and his surroundings swam into focus. He froze in place.
He had no idea how long he had been unconscious since the frenzied battle in the streets of Keldrin’s Landing, but the night was still deep and absolute and untouched by any interference from the dawn. He was lying atop a low hillock in the rolling grasslands, far from the city now. An insistent moon soaked the thick clouds above from behind with a soft, silvery glow, and if not for that muted light he would have been hard pressed to see even a hand’s breadth before him.
As it was, however, he had no trouble at all discerning the black creature looming above him.
Borric’s breath lodged in his throat as he braced for an attack, but the fiend stood motionless, nearly astride him, silhouetted against that argent sky. A long strip of its ragged, cloth-like wrappings trailed across his leg, and he had to fight the overwhelming urge to fling the loathsome object away from him. He realized the monster was not even looking in his direction. Instead, it faced to the south and was poised as if listening intently to some distant sound. He cast a surreptitious glance about, seeking the means to strike a blow while his captor was distracted, but his own weapons were gone and he could not see so much as a rock nearby in the darkness.
When the creature moved, Borric started so hard that he nearly left the ground. It took a dragging step forward, its vacant ebon face still raised to the south. A chorus of dry rustling sounds on all sides brought Borric’s head whipping around, and the captain of the city guard realized with a sinking feeling that hundreds of the creatures were all around him. They were all standing taut, seemingly uncertain, just as the one above him. Scattered moans and sobs revealed that other captives had been dropped to the earth as well.
The creatures all surged forward in unison, a sudden black wave that went from standstill to sprint in the blink of an eye. Borric’s erstwhile captor vanished from sight, swallowed by the tall grasses. The grizzled soldier had but a moment’s flicker of relief before the muffled thunder of hundreds of black feet brought him around. A steady stream of the creatures rushed by him on either side, heedless of his presence, and he twisted and dodged as best he could from his position on the ground to avoid their passage. One struck him a glancing blow as it rushed by him; it was not an attack but rather an incidental collision, but it was enough to spin him halfway around and send him sprawling. His shoulder throbbed like it had been struck with an iron bar as he rose with caution from the dirt, but the creature ran on without sparing a backward glance. Sharp cries from all around told him that others were not so fortunate in avoiding the stampede.
It seemed an endless number of the foul creatures had flowed around him when finally it ended, and the last of the attackers passed into the night. Borric rose to unsteady feet and looked around. More dim figures were rising from the grasses, and he saw a number of people pulling others to their feet or supporting them to stand.
Borric blew out a breath. He did not know why the creatures had so suddenly abandoned their prey, and for the moment he did not much care. He and the others had been granted a welcome reprieve, and he would make the most of it. He only hoped that the fiends would not return just as suddenly. Even if they did not, the open night held many other dangers for a straggling group of unarmed refugees. It would be a long and harrowing trek back to the city.
The townsfolk were already drawing together into small groups. He started walking toward the nearest. He held himself straight-backed and did his best not to hobble; his men and the citizens of Keldrin’s Landing would need him to be strong. He raised a shout for members of the city guard, and several voices responded at once. He allowed himself a grim nod of satisfaction, and then he began the process of organizing the survivors, calling out directions in a clear, commanding voice.
Amric rose to his feet, never taking his eyes from the man in black robes.
The newcomer raised one hand over his head to point skyward, and a brilliant, fist-sized globe sprang into existence high overhead, bathing the entire area in cold, blue light. The man surveyed them all for a long moment as they squinted against the sudden illumination. Then his face darkened in apparent anger, and he started forward, striding down the dune and toward them. He walked with a measured pace, his taut posture an incongruous mix of arrogance and prowling caution.
“I am Xenoth, Adept of the Third Circle,” he announced. “I am the Hand of the High Council of Aetheria in this matter.”
Amric frowned. He glanced at Bellimar and raised an eyebrow, but the old man gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. It seemed the string of names and titles meant nothing to him either.
The man drew to a halt twenty yards from them. The Sil’ath warriors moved away from Amric in wary crouches, spreading out to form a semicircle around the stranger, but he appeared not to notice. Instead, his deep-set eyes shifted in all directions beneath a dark brow as he seemed to be searching for some unseen threat.
“Which matter?” Amric asked, and the man’s hawk eyes turned to him.
“I seek the rogue Adept,” Xenoth said. “Where is he?”
“I am not certain of whom you speak. Perhaps if you could describe this––”
“Do not toy with me, boy,” the man snapped. “I felt the power that was employed right here, moments ago. Not even you simpletons could fail to notice a display of that magnitude. Where is he hiding?”
Xenoth’s tilted his head to one side, regarding Amric with narrowed eyes. “Yes,” he murmured. “I think you know something.” The man’s arms hung at his sides, and his long fingers twitched. “Time to share what you know, boy.”
Amric tensed, measuring the distance between them. His palms itched for his swords, but he wondered what good they would be against the likes of a true Adept. In his mind’s eye, he saw again the Nar’ath hive swallowed by the ravenous ground, so much like the thunderous collapse of Stronghold’s core; could he even close with Xenoth before the man brought such terrible power to bear against him and his friends? He hesitated. Perhaps he should be considering another defense entirely. But as he searched within for the mysterious, lingering presence, he found nothing.
“Forgive the lad,” Bellimar interjected, stepping smoothly in front of Amric. “He thinks with his sword arm, more often than not.”
“And what have we here?” Xenoth mused. A humorless smile twisted his sharp, angular face, and he raised one hand in a beckoning gesture. Bellimar stiffened with a grunt as he was lifted from the ground by some unseen force. Amric started forward, one hand reaching over his shoulder, but Bellimar stopped him with a warning look. The warrior let his hand fall, and he watched in helpless frustration as the vampire’s rigid form, suspended several feet in the air, drifted over to the black-robed Adept.
Xenoth clasped his hands behind his back and tilted his bearded chin upward as Bellimar floated to a halt before him.
“Fascinating,” he murmured. Then, louder, he said, “Do you know what I see before me, vampire?”
“I can only guess,” Bellimar said through clenched teeth.
Xenoth chuckled. “I see a corrupted being, caught on the knife’s edge between life and death, held there by a powerful enchantment. This is marvelous work, intricate and thorough. This could only have been accomplished by Adepts. Do you recall when this was done to you?”
“As if it was yesterday,” Bellimar hissed.
Xenoth met his eyes and gave a slow, grave nod, as if processing some sobering bit of information he found there. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “It is no secret that my kind have visited this world over the millennia, when the occasion warranted. You must have drawn considerable interest from my ancestors for them to devote such special attention to you.”
“Your kind forced this torment upon me,” Bellimar snarled. “If not for their interference many centuries ago in the affairs of this world––in my affairs––I would have cast all the lands beneath my shadow.”
“Ah, that would be it, then,” Xenoth said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “They were merely protecting their investment.”
Bellimar hesitated, taken aback. “Protecting…? What investment?”
“The spread of Unlife, if left unchecked, can eventually taint the core energy of a world, like a parasite in the water supply,” Xenoth replied. “This world had to be allowed to ripen unhindered.”
Amric went cold at the man’s words in a way that had nothing to do with the cooling night breeze. Allow this world to ripen? For what purpose? He could not see Bellimar’s expression, since the old man was still hovering and facing away from him, but the Adept was studying that expression with piercing intensity.
“Does it soothe your anger to know that there was little nobility in what they did?” Xenoth asked. “No, I thought not.”
“What they did was leave me in torment for more centuries than I can now recall,” Bellimar spat in a venomous tone, “cut off from my powers and afflicted with a hunger that I could no longer satisfy. They layered crushing guilt and conscience upon my existing curse, and amplified my suffering a hundredfold in so doing.” His voice faltered and dropped to a near whisper. “And I cannot say any of it was undeserved, given my crimes.”
Xenoth’s laugh was a harsh, pitiless thing. “Wretched, foolish creature,” he chided. “You continue to delude yourself, even after all this time. Do you not see? The Adepts dampened your connection to all magic, that much is true, and somehow they managed to do it without ending your existence. A fine, delicate touch, that. However, while you could no longer tap your sorcerous powers, such as they were, your vampiric affliction was also suppressed. But that is all. Any quaint sense of morality that emerged at that point, any penance that you believed you had to pay, was your own.”
Amric saw Bellimar stiffen at the man’s words.
“I see you do not fully believe me,” Xenoth said with a chuckle. “Consider another point, then. The enchantment imposed upon you should have lasted a century or so at most, and yet you say it has lasted many. Why do you think that is, vampire?”
The Adept let the words hang there for a long moment, remorseless and still as a coiled serpent, even as Bellimar hung in the air before him.
“You know as well as I, vampire. Your own will, your own tenuous access to Essence, is sustaining this curse––as you call it––now.”
Bellimar gasped and hung his head, shaking it in silent denial, but Xenoth pressed on. “Can you not appreciate the irony? Some part of you is convinced that you deserve this suffering, and so you maintain it all this time, with increasing effort on your part, without even being consciously aware of how you are sabotaging yourself.”
The old man raised his head and stared, mute and helpless, at his captor.
“There is no need for your continued suffering, however,” Xenoth continued. “The enchantment is ages old and decaying now, even with your bolstering. No doubt you can feel its hold upon you slipping more and more as the years pass. I cannot say for certain how much longer it will last. I can free you, here and now. The scant time remaining to this world is insufficient for you to do any material damage. How would you like to be free?”
Bellimar’s head twisted to the side, and his stricken eyes found first Amric, and then Thalya. His gaze caught on the huntress and remained there.
“What say you, vampire?” Xenoth said softly. “The Adepts did this to you, long ago. Surely there is no guilt in letting an Adept free you now. Tell me what I wish to know, and you can be unfettered once more. You can rule the twilight days of this world. Tell me where the fugitive Adept is hiding.”
Thalya stood rigid, staring back at the man––the monster––that she held responsible for the death of her father, and for the destruction of her entire life. She appeared to be waiting for him to utter the words that would deliver final condemnation in her eyes.
“What say you, vampire?” Xenoth repeated. The words, so like the ones Bellimar had demanded of Amric back in the inn at Keldrin’s Landing when they had first met, struck at Amric’s core. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, to distract the Adept and draw his attention away from the old man, but the words lodged in his throat and his limbs seemed frozen, unresponsive.
Syth took a sliding step forward, his fists clenched at his sides. The strange winds emanating from his person swept the sands back from him in a spiraling halo. “Leave him alone,” he grated.
Xenoth turned toward him, blinking as if had entirely overlooked the thief’s presence. He flicked one hand and Bellimar was cast away in an arc. The old man landed in a catlike crouch on the barren ground and stayed low with his grey robes pooled about him. His features were a frozen mask as he stared at the Adept. Xenoth held up one hand and curled it into a loose fist, and Syth’s fluttering cloak suddenly pressed tight to his rigid body as his feet left the ground. As Syth floated toward Xenoth, wide-eyed and struggling against his invisible bonds, the latter looked him up and down with a critical eye.
“Unstable,” he remarked with a note of disapproval in his voice. “The halves of your nature are in constant conflict, much like your vampire friend there. It is a wonder you survive at all, but you are calmed at the moment. Is this some subtle working of the rogue Adept, perhaps?”
Xenoth looked to the others, and Syth flinched when his dark gaze fell upon Thalya.
“Ah, I see,” the Adept murmured with a cold, knowing smile as his eyes lingered over the huntress. “Something much simpler, in fact.” He gestured toward the black, jointed gauntlets that Syth was wearing. “Does she know the price you pay in wearing those dreadful devices? Do you even know, yourself?”
The muscles in Syth’s jaw clenched as he glared defiance down at the black-robed man. Xenoth gave an unfriendly chuckle. “No matter,” he said. “You know the information I truly seek, and I now know what you truly value. Do I need to be so crass as to state the obvious?”
Thalya gave a startled yelp as her arms were pinned to her sides. She was pulled taut to her full height until the toes of her leather boots just grazed the surface of the sand beneath her. Syth gave an incoherent growl of rage and threw himself against the unseen force binding his limbs. He twisted and thrashed, but to no avail.
With an effort of will, Amric wrenched free of his paralysis and burst into motion at last. He stepped forward, reaching for his swords, and the other Sil’ath warriors started toward Xenoth in the same instant. The black-robed man barely spared them a glance, making an impatient gesture with one hand in their direction. The ground rose before the charging warriors in a thick crescent and smashed into them, hurling them all backward and crashing over them like a wave.
The last sounds Amric heard before weight and darkness closed over him were the frightened screams of the horses as they thundered away, deeper into the wasteland. A detached part of his mind was relieved that the beasts had not been caught in the wave, even though rounding them back up for the trip home would be no easy task. That was a matter for another time, however. At the moment, he was tired and battered, and needed just a few moments of rest before…
He cleared away such drifting thoughts with an abrupt shudder, and quelled a moment of panic as he realized just how close he had come to losing consciousness there, buried in an earthen tomb. He forced himself into motion, clawing in the direction he had last seen the night sky, squeezing his eyes and mouth shut to deny the seeping sand that strove to invade. He had not had time to fill his lungs before being buried, and his chest burned with need. His outstretched hands broke the surface first, followed by his head, and he sucked in a sweet breath. The Sil’ath were emerging on either side as well, gasping and shaken.
Xenoth was still focused on Syth and paid them no more heed than so many insects, swatted away and then forgotten. A throaty bellow from Halthak, however, brought him around with one dark eyebrow raised. The Half-Ork ran forward with his gnarled staff held across his chest, as if he meant to push Xenoth back from the others through sheer force. The Adept’s hard features twisted into a sardonic smile.
“Another scrub talent,” he sneered. “More than a spark, but highly limited in utility. This pitiful world certainly does suffer its share of mongrels.”
He flicked a finger at Halthak, and a sharp snapping report wrenched a scream from the healer even as it spun him from his feet. “Let that occupy you for a time,” Xenoth said, as Halthak collapsed in a heap upon the sand. “And be grateful for my mercy. With your particular talents, I could make your end far longer and more arduous than you could ever imagine.”
Amric pulled himself from the sand and stood just as Xenoth was returning his attention to the struggling form of Syth.
“Xenoth!” he shouted. Inwardly, he was grateful that his voice rang out clear and strong, not at all like the croak he had suspected might emerge. “Let them go. I am the one you are after.”
The Adept spun toward him. He wore an irritated, disbelieving scowl, but then his eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion.
“Could it be?” he mused. “Yes, it just might, at that. I should have spotted you at once, even in that barbarous garb. Your aura is not just weak like these other brutes, but non-existent. You are too perfectly concealed, and that should have alerted me from the start. The right age, yes, and you even look a bit like…. Come here, boy!”
Xenoth thrust one hand toward him in a lunging strike, and a vice-like pressure closed around Amric with crushing, irresistible power. A pulsing arc of force sent the others, including the floating figure of Syth, flying away from the Adept to tumble like so many dry leaves across the ground.
Amric glared at the black-robed man as he glided toward him. Xenoth peered back, his heavy brow furrowed in concentration. The warrior tried to shift and flex, seeking some room to move within his invisible bonds, but there was none to be had; he might as well have been encased in cold, unforgiving stone. His swords, an inviting weight at his back, might as well have been back in Keldrin’s Landing for all the chance he had to reach them now.
As he drew closer, Amric studied his assailant. The cold light from the globe overhead cast a portion of the man’s countenance into craggy shadow, and further deepened the hard planes of his face. Amric was surprised to note the creases of age and weariness woven into those bluff features, and the streaks of iron grey that shot through his dark beard. The man’s eyes, however, remained intense and pitiless; his was the hooded stare of a practiced hunter studying his quarry without a trace of emotion. Almost no trace, Amric corrected himself. There was a smoldering anger to the man, a bitter tightness to his features that he kept behind an outward mask. And, as he stared at Amric, a slight widening of his eyes that betrayed something akin to genuine surprise as well.
“Remarkable,” Xenoth breathed. “Truly remarkable.”
Amric eyed him. “What is remarkable?” he demanded, but the man continued as if he had not heard the question.
“The trail you left behind shows you are quite strong, if clumsy, and yet had I not looked more closely….” Xenoth trailed off, pursing his lips. Then he shook his head. “Even now I cannot be certain. I could just kill you. Perhaps I should. Perhaps this is some elaborate trick.” He stared at Amric with distrust and hate in his eyes, but then his brow clouded and his gaze wavered. “No, I have to be certain. There can be no mistakes, this time.”
His frown of concentration deepened, and Amric felt a strange probing at the edge of his senses, as of a low sound just beyond his range of hearing that tickled at his inner ear, or a feathery touch hovering just above his skin.
“Remarkable,” Xenoth muttered again. “Very few full Adepts can conceal themselves so well. Did you truly learn this on your own, without tutelage?”
Amric remained silent, glaring at his captor. He still lacked the context to form a meaningful reply anyway, and if the man interpreted his reticence as indication of the presence of some powerful teacher or ally, then so much the better. Perhaps it would cause him to proceed with greater caution. The probing grew stronger, more invasive. It blossomed into hot, needle-sharp talons that plucked and pried at his psyche. Amric gritted his teeth, fighting the urge to flinch with each sharp new twinge. He could endure this violation, for he had endured greater pain. After all, it was all in his mind; it was not as if this attack would inflict any lasting damage, like a physical weapon––would it?
An eternity later, Xenoth rocked back on his heels and blew out a frustrated breath. The stabbing pains ceased, and Amric sagged against his unseen bonds. He hoped that the man did not notice the prolonged shudder that ran through his rigid frame.
“However you learned this trick,” said the black-robed Adept, “and whether you managed it yourself or it was laid upon you by another, it is magnificently done. I cannot pierce it.” The troubled lines on the man’s face hardened once more into a venomous resolve. “Fortunately, there are other methods available to gather the proof I require.”
There was a grey blur of motion at the edge of Amric’s vision, and Xenoth spun in that direction, raising a clenched fist before him. Bellimar’s hurtling form halted in mid-air, hands extended like claws, teeth bared in an enraged, frozen grimace. The vampire’s fangs, so carefully concealed all the time by restrained expressions and half smiles, were bared beneath narrowed eyes that glowed like red embers. Bellimar hung suspended in the air, straining in helpless fury toward the Adept. Xenoth, for his part, stroked his dark beard as he studied the vampire with cold, deliberate amusement.
“That is the second time you have intervened on the boy’s behalf, creature,” he said. “Shall we see if he feels the same concern for you?”
Xenoth brought his hands forward and together, as if plunging them into Bellimar’s midsection, though several yards still separated them. The old man convulsed, his eyes flaring wide in sudden shock. Then the Adept whipped his arms apart in a sudden ripping motion. A rush of energy washed over Amric like a warm wall of mist and was gone, dissipating into the air. Bellimar bent like a drawn bow, arching backward with his head thrown back as every muscle in his body went taut. The scream came an instant later, an inhuman shriek of agony.
“Stop,” Amric grated. “Stop whatever it is you are doing to him.”
Xenoth threw a glance at him, and his mouth quirked up in an icy smile. “Ah, boy, do not be a fool. This was the easy part. I have only just begun this one’s torment.”
Bellimar’s scream continued. It went on and on, rising into the night air to hang there unending, as if refusing to be bound by the need to draw breath. Amric added his own voice, shouting forth incoherent rage as he strained against his invisible prison.
“Perhaps I am not casting my net wide enough, however,” Xenoth said, his words vibrating with power as they cut through the din somehow without him raising his voice. “If this one’s plight does not move you, then we will try another.”
He turned toward Halthak, who had regained his feet on a leg that looked to be fully repaired. The Adept made a sharp gesture, palm up as if scooping something from the ground, and angry blue fire erupted from the wasteland beneath Halthak’s feet and crawled up his limbs. The Half-Ork uttered a cry of pain and dismay, and he staggered back, slapping at the flames. The blue fire spread hungrily to his hands and arms, writhing along his limbs like a live thing. In its wake, the healer’s skin blackened and cracked. Halthak stumbled to his knees, a look of concentration freezing his coarse features into a rictus of pain. The flesh began to heal beneath the licking blue flames. Halthak scooped sand onto his limbs, seeking to smother the spreading fire, but when the sand fell away the fire still remained, slithering over his figure to blacken new flesh. Halthak groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, and the skin knit shut and healed once more. The fire, however, was an implacable foe, and continued to crawl over him.
Amric roared his fury, throwing himself into his efforts until his vision swam and darkened at the edges from the exertion. Something cracked in the back of his mind.
Get out here, he panted at the presence hiding within him. He is killing them! Get out here and join me, or we all die, here and now! The only reply was a mindless, gibbering terror, distant and muted.
“Or perhaps another,” Xenoth continued in a hard tone. He flung out one hand and great gout of brilliant white fire erupted from it. The fiery display was blinding, and for a brief moment it lit up the wasteland around them in stark relief. Amric, squinting against the sudden illumination, was able to catch a glimpse of the sprinting form of Innikar, rushing forward with blades upraised, before the fire engulfed him in mid-stride. The Sil’ath warrior did not even utter a cry, so quick was his demise. The white fire flared once, dazzling and fierce. When it faded, Innikar was simply gone. His abandoned blades glowed and hissed in the sand, no more than warped pieces of metal, and the remains of the warrior’s armor were a blackened and shriveled mass.
Amric’s throat cracked and closed on a scream he had not even realized was his own. He saw Sariel and Valkarr approaching from opposite sides, their mouths open in horror. Xenoth turned toward Sariel. Without hesitation, she hurled one of her swords to spin in a glittering arc toward the black-robed Adept. The spinning weapon struck some invisible barrier in mid-air and ricocheted to the side, but Xenoth flinched away from it with a grunt nonetheless, and it saved her life. She had thrown herself to the side as soon as the sword left her hand, and another long breath of white flame seared through the space she had occupied a moment before.
Halthak uttered frantic cries of pain as the blue flames writhed all over him. Bellimar was still suspended in the air, bucking and convulsing, his scream becoming hoarse as it echoed on and on. Sariel rolled on the ground and came up in a dead sprint, running parallel to Xenoth. Valkarr did the same from the other side. The Adept tracked their movements with calculating eyes.
Something broke in Amric’s mind. The barrier that had cracked moments before shattered into razor shards, which then shattered into so much dust. He could not say for certain whether he drew forth the other within him and shook from it the blind, unreasoning fear that held it paralyzed, or whether it rose to meet him, buoyed by a rising explosion of power and vengeful fury. There was a jarring collision that shook him to the core as they joined, exquisite pain and pleasure interwoven in an instant, and the other suddenly filled his awareness. Before, when they had interacted, it had felt like two wary combatants circling one another, seeking some way to occupy the same space without breaking some fragile truce. There had been an impression of passing control from one to the other, a grudging relinquishing of self.
This time was nothing like before.
An alarmed part of Amric quailed at the sensation, at the permanence he felt in the action of merging; there would be no return to normality this time. That part of him felt dismay for what he had just sacrificed and loathing for the thing he had just become. In the end, however, that disapproving part of him was like a scholar clearing his throat at the center of a battlefield between colliding armies––just a small noise lost amid a maelstrom.
Power continued to surge and gather within him, building into a white-hot core that permeated his being until his very flesh tingled and he thought he might be incinerated if he drew upon more. Amric flexed outward with the power in a jerking shrug, and the bonds that held him ruptured, cast aside like so many brittle sticks. He staggered as his boots hit the ground. Then he and the other within him turned their attention together to their foe.
Xenoth stiffened, some arcane instinct warning him of the forces gathering at his back. He spun away from hunting the Sil’ath warriors, his eyes widening.
Amric hit him with everything he had.
He lunged forward with both hands extended, and from them leapt forth a torrent of white flame that filled the night, hammering into Xenoth. The black-robed Adept cursed and crossed his arms before him, lowering his head and bracing against the surge. Sand went up in great, spiraling plumes as the man was driven sliding backward a dozen yards across the ground.
The tenacious blue flame coursing over Halthak’s body dwindled and died, and the healer sagged to all fours. Bellimar’s scream came to an abrupt end as whatever force was holding him suspended in the air released him at last. He crashed to the ground in a heap. Valkarr and Sariel each slowed to a halt, staring in disbelief at the display of power going on between them. Valkarr’s dark eyes threw back a reflection of dazzling white light as his gaze darted between his childhood friend and the river of eldritch flame emanating from him.
Amric clenched his jaw and continued to pour energy out into the night, sending it washing over the black-robed Adept. Where it was coming from, he neither knew nor cared; he would burn Xenoth to a cinder, just as that monster had done to Innikar and tried to do to the others.
A deep fatigue, starting at the roots of his senses, began to steal over him. He shook it off and continued, but his outthrust hands began a traitorous trembling. Perspiration beaded his forehead and ran into his eyes, and he blinked it clear with a growl. With a sinking sensation, he realized that the flames were not as bright, not as voluminous, as they had been moments before. His mind grew clouded, and a strange wordless clamoring intruded, trailed by a dull comprehension; it was the other within him, pulsating with panicked warnings.
The jet of flame sputtered and died, and Amric fell panting to his knees, more exhausted than he could recall having been in his entire life. He raised his head with a monumental effort to regard the damage he had done.
A smoking crater gaped before him, twenty feet across and three times that or more in length. The near end was a scorched ramp downward into a blackened pit, starting narrow and broadening to its full width at the bottom. The far end was scalloped deeply and polished to a dark, glass-like finish. The edge of the crater glowed like an ember thread, fading as it cooled in the night air.
At the center of the basin stood the black-robed Adept, unharmed.
Xenoth’s arms were still crossed before him, and he let them fall to his sides. His teeth gleamed in the soft, silvery light of the globe hanging high overhead. It was the grin of a peerless predator on familiar ground.
“You have ample power, boy, I will grant you that,” Xenoth said, speaking slowly as if savoring every word. “But you lack the training to use it, and you exhaust yourself with such ineffective, unfocused displays. You very nearly killed yourself there and saved me the trouble.”
He began a purposeful march up the scorched ramp.
“Now let me show you how it is done.”
The Adept’s hands began to glow.