Groups of lightfists stood along the walls, less organised than he would have hoped. Many were mere apprentices, young and untried. They looked to their teachers for command, but the teachers were stretched thin. Wards were everywhere, but they were being used for personal protection more than for the walls. Impacts shook the parapets with alarming regularity as blue bolts thundered in from the seething mass of shadow mages out on the plain.
A grim spectre plunged at him from the air – a conjured creature only, a shadow of a shadow , he thought grimly, as he wove his hands to summon his own diaphanous counter-creature. A sunwing appeared – a golden-skinned humanoid with large eyes and gossamer wings, one of Arkus’s powerful servants. It pulled a glowing sword against the wraith and they whirled away together, caught up in their insubstantial fight.
Such conjurings, though they looked impressive, were not strong magic in Methodrex’s experience. All one had to do to counter them was imagine a natural enemy and bring it forth, or use attacks that would otherwise kill the real version of the conjured creature. And yet in his next few steps he came across the body of a young lightfist lying on the ground, icy particles crusted on his open eyes, dead from the life-sucking touch of a wraith. His students must be flustered by the varied onslaught of shadow magic, if they were being caught out by such illusionary forces.
‘Conjure sunwings!’ he shouted to those nearby. ‘Remember your training!’
He reached a bridge to the cobblestone tower, the highest point in Holdwith, and made his way across. Glancing about, he saw that his calls had netted him a coterie of mages.
‘To the top,’ he told them, ‘and hurry.’
They passed through a room in which many oddments were stored, and he was relieved to see the object he wanted within easy reach. Seizing the long golden rod, he continued up to the top of the tower, emerging on a high balcony.
‘Wards!’ he commanded, and several mages set about channelling. ‘The rest of you,’ he continued, ‘lend me your strength!’
He held out the rod, which began to glow.
Losara watched with interest as radiant sunwings rose from the walls to drive back the wraiths. Strange creatures – he’d never seen them in the world, but he supposed they must exist somewhere, to be re-created here. Maybe in the court of Arkus?
A moment later, from the top of the cobblestone tower, a molten beam shone forth and moved over the plain towards them, cooking the ground that it touched. Bolts shot towards the source of the beam, but a great white ward had sprung up from many lightfists working together. The beam ripped through groups of shadow mages and their defences, rending limbs from scorched bodies. It continued to sweep across their front lines, precise and deadly and directed.
‘Come, Roma,’ Losara said.
He strode towards the beam, placed himself deliberately in its path, and put up a shadow ward around himself. As the beam found him, the pressure on his defence was great.
‘Lend me your might,’ he told Roma, and opened a conduit in himself for his servant to channel through. He felt Roma send power into him and knew that, had the man still wanted to, now would be the perfect opportunity for betrayal. Already inside Losara’s defences, it would be a simple matter for the Magus Supreme to divert energy to explode his heart, rip him apart, or bring about one of a dozen other deaths.
I trust you , thought Losara.
I know whom I serve , came Roma’s thought, and strangely it gave Losara strength just as the borrowed magic did.
I can take more , Losara sent. It could be dangerous for a single mage to channel too much power from others, hence the standard groups of four amongst his force’s ranks – but Losara was no ordinary mage.
‘Aid the Dreamer!’ Roma called, and others nearby obeyed.
With great focus, Losara pressed back upon the beam, creating a shadowy one of his own. Filaments of light splintered away at the focal point where the two beams met. He started making progress, for his opponent was not as strong as he, and he could still handle more aid from his underlings.
Surrender , he sent to Methodrex, and I promise you will not die this night.
Do you suppose I believe such lies? came the reply, though there was a tinge of desperation to it.
The golden rod would have been slippery in his hands, had its heat not steamed away sweat even as it formed. Methodrex gritted his teeth as the pressure from Losara grew, as shadow pushed along the white-hot line that sprang from the rod.
He possesses no such artifact , thought Methodrex, yet still I cannot stand against him.
Suddenly the rod cracked in his hands, piercing his palms with incandescent splinters. The light beam lost all rigidity and fell away, ribbon-like. The eclipsing beam of shadow tore into the tower and quietly exploded into a dark cloud, surrounding the ward, cutting off all view beyond it. Methodrex tried to add to the defence, but his strength was all but depleted. The large combined ward collapsed into individual ones, each quickly constricted by the encroaching darkness. Soon Methodrex could not even make them out as anything more than dim flares in the void.
A snake-like tendril pierced the bubble of his own meagre defence, and it burst instantly. Shadow power collapsed in on him, rippling through him as he went soaring from the balcony to land in the Academy courtyard, his troubles over.
Losara lowered his hand, dropping the beam.
‘A great many lights have been put out,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Roma.
On the walls defences were still visible, but they were fewer and less collected.
‘The rest we want alive.’
Roma nodded. ‘Prepare your sleep spells!’ he commanded the shadow mages.
Bolts stopped crackling and conjured wraiths were abandoned, halting in the air as if their strings had been cut, to float away as mist. Mages channelled, building their power and waiting for the word. A few fireballs landed amongst them, but at this moment defence was not a priority.
‘Help me once again, my friend,’ said Losara, and Roma poured more power into him. Losara worked his hands, moulding a great spell. Soon it was as strong as he could make it.
‘RELEASE!’ he cried. Along the line, each group of mages sent forth the same casting. A blanketing wave of sleep spells went out to cover the fort, invisibly but wholly. Wards on the walls flickered under the barrage; others pulsed and faded more slowly. Perhaps the light mages remaining could have defended against a few of the spells, but with so many at once …soon only the lights of fires remained.
‘Advance!’ called Roma, and hundreds of shadow mages bore down upon the silent fort.
Beauty
Bel awoke with a start, yet there was nothing there to spook him. Just tense , he supposed, as their present situation came stealing back into his sleep-deprived mind.
‘Go back to sleep,’ he told Jaya, whom he had woken with his jolting.
‘Do you think I can?’ she moaned, blinking in the morning light that came in spots through the forest roof.
For days they had been on the run, and Bel felt he had entered a strange state whereby he worked hard in order to make no progress at all. Back east the sky was hazy, but the spires of smoke had finally begun to disperse. He could only imagine the skeleton of a wood that lay behind them.