“Rivven,” said Vanderjack, gritting his teeth. “I know everything.”
“Almost everything,” she said. “Hand me the sword, then get out of the way. I’m taking over for Cazuvel.”
“You want an army of Abyssal monsters of your own?” the sellsword said, cocking his head to one side and adjusting his grip on the sword.
“That’s something I’ll have to think about in future. Right now, though, how about you do us all a favor and give me your weapon?”
“You said I could keep it. I killed the mage. Now I get my sword back.”
Rivven looked away. “Oh, right. I did say that. Well …” She looked back at him. “I lied.”
“Thought you’d say that,” said Vanderjack.
Rivven tensed and sprang out of her saddle. Cear shoved away from the platform as she unsheathed her sword and brought it down in an impressive display of speed and skill.
Rivven bound all of her strength into the blow she was about to give Vanderjack. As she came down, her curving elven weapon, the weapon with which she’d cut down countless hundreds of foes in her lifetime, flashed in the light.
The blade sliced downward. Vanderjack brought Lifecleaver up in its path. With a high-pitched squeal of shredded metal, Rivven’s magical scimitar struck Vanderjack’s sword and was sliced in half. The end of the sword flew out to the side, and Rivven landed in front of Vanderjack with a gasp.
“My sword!” she cried.
“Star metal!” said Vanderjack. He brought the blade back and swung it forward. Rivven ducked, and the blade swept over her head. She couldn’t believe how sharp and impossibly hard the sword was. Her own blade was magically reinforced, and it was half its original length after meeting his, the end jagged.
Furious, she reached out and grabbed Vanderjack by the shoulder. He buckled; there was a wound there, and she clenched her fingers hard. With her free hand, she grabbed at his sword and wrestled the blade free of his grasp. Wrapping her fingers tightly around Lifecleaver’s hilt, she brought the hand up and delivered a solid right hook backed by the weight of the sword.
Vanderjack collapsed, coughing up blood and worse. She gave him a swift kick in the ribs and said, “That’s for my sword.” With Lifecleaver in her possession, she strode over to the edge of the screaming vortex and stared straight into the Abyss. The smell of power was even stronger, almost overwhelming. She needed to bottle the storm, but there was something about it …
She noticed, then, the ghosts surrounding her.
“Rivven Cairn,” said the Aristocrat.
“You cannot do this,” said the Philosopher.
“Enter the vortex, and you will die,” said the Apothecary.
“I know what you are,” said Rivven, her breathing heavy. “You aren’t ghosts. I’m no stranger to divine forces. I walk the Left Hand Path, like Ariakas before me.”
“But you are not Ariakas,” said the Conjurer.
“No,” she said. “I’ve been more careful than him.”
“And yet you kept a black robe mage in your confidence,” said the Balladeer.
“And never noticed when he was replaced by a fetch,” said the Cavalier.
“If you know who they are, Rivven,” said the Cook. “Then you know they have been watching over Vanderjack all this time.”
“Did he realize it, though? Does he know who the seven of you truly are?” she asked. She was waiting, waiting to step into the vortex and take control of it.
“A man comes to faith in his own way,” said the Philosopher.
Rivven took a deep breath. “So does a woman,” she replied and stepped into the tumult.
She stood there on the edge of oblivion, looking down into a spiraling vortex of black. Above her, she saw the torrents of wind and fire, lightning flashes of orange and blue, everything laced with that howling darkness. Holding the sword tightly, she focused inward; she tried to do what she knew Cazuvel had been doing, using Lifecleaver as a lightning rod for collecting and controlling the power.
“We’re sorry, Rivven,” said the Aristocrat.
“You think you can harness this dark magic for yourself, but it is too strong for you,” said the Conjurer.
“No, I can feel it … even stronger. I see legions of … soldiers, dragons, the minions of my Dark Queen. I could bring them all through. No more highlord, no more requests to Neraka for more draconians.”
“Rivven,” said the Cook.
She closed her eyes and lifted her arms up, filled with the surging and seductive power of the Abyss. “Unlimited power! It’s almost too much! Cear!”
She felt rather than saw the red wyrm land beside her. She felt something emanating from him-anxiety? Suspicion? Fear? “Cear! I have to share this with you!” She reached her hand out, felt it touch upon Cear’s steaming snout, and heard the dragon howl in pain.
“Cear!” she screamed, turning around, looking away from the tremendous black vortex, seeing everything through a shimmering veil of energy. She couldn’t move, couldn’t step out of the wall of the fiery column, and watched helplessly as the red dragon tried to recoil.
Ropes of orange and cobalt blue energy snaked out and seized the dragon. Where she had touched him, his scales grew thick, calcified, and crumbled into dust as if he had aged a thousand years. The vortex howled, and her dragon was pulled sharply inward, into the middle of it. It drew him in, and he was gone, lost to the Abyss.
“Rivven, I’m sorry,” said the Cook.
“Damn you!” she screamed at the ghost. “The sword …?”
“It’s the only thing keeping you alive,” said the Cavalier.
“All this power!”
“Never really yours to take,” said the Conjurer.
She opened her eyes again and looked out at the platform. Vanderjack was getting to his feet again. One leg hung limp; one arm was broken in several places. He looked at her and lifted a finger in her direction.
“I want my sword back,” she heard him say.
She held the sword out before her and pointed it at him. “You can’t have it. I need it!”
“That’s what I used to think,” the sellsword said, taking a step forward, “until a really ugly girl, who by rights should have been a really pretty girl, told me that I didn’t need it nearly as bad as I thought I did.”
“Don’t come any closer,” she said. “I’m warning you, Ergothian. I’ll not surrender this power!”
“This is why history will forget about you, Rivven,” said the Cook.
Rivven didn’t have time to ask him what he meant by that. She looked at the ghosts arrayed about her, their spectral visages sorrowful, and when she looked back at Vanderjack, he was running at her.
The fool! she thought. He’s running straight into-
Vanderjack leaped at Highmaster Rivven Cairn, the star metal blade in her hands piercing through his scale mail shirt, tunic, his ruined chest, and his heart. His mouth was near her ear, his ragged voice barely a whisper.
“Room in there for one more?” he said and she knew he wasn’t talking to her.
With his last gasp, Vanderjack shoved himself away from the highmaster, taking the sword with him. She saw the ghosts descend upon him; they faded from her sight, and all that she heard was the howling siren of the Abyss behind her. The vortex fell in upon itself, an implosion of light and sound. Like a flame deprived of oxygen, the column of nightmares was extinguished. It yawned open one last time.
Rivven followed her dragon down into darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Vanderjack was dying.
He lay on the blasted stone surface of the raised platform, alone. Lifecleaver jutted upward from his chest. The pain was indescribable, but death had yet to claim him. He wondered if, by some bizarre stroke of luck, the sword had completely missed any vital organs and was just lodged in a rib or something like that. But every beat of his heart flooded his chest with a sickening warmth, blood pumping out of the wound formed by the sword.