The words were dry as they came out of Koram’s mouth. “I won’t hold any sympathy or any grudge against you. My grudge is with Yvoluk.”
The praetor’s laugh sounded like splintering wood. “And my grudge is with you, Koram. You cast me to my death, but magic cushioned my fall. Unluckily for the beast giants, they have a strong life force. Using it to power my magic was as easy as poking a hole in a wineskin. I was nearly buried among the corpses I had slain.” Behind him, the five warriors drew their blades and bows, ready to attack, but Yvoluk motioned them back. He seemed proud of what he had done.
“I crawled out of the zone of death just as Dictator Andropinis cast his own spell from the wall above. He unleashed such terrible magic that he felled dozens of giants, not to mention several hundred cowardly soldiers with a single spell. He called up a lava storm in the estuary, enough to send Skull Wearer and his minions fleeing. I barely scaled the wall myself.” The praetor shook his head like a disappointed parent. “But you had already run away, Koram. You gave us quite a chase.”
“Then I will save you further trouble. When you forced me to fight opponents in the Criterion, I had no reason to kill them. Now, though, I have all the reasons I need.” Koram bent his powerful legs and sprang across the gap from Horizon Finder to the levitating dromond.
Jisanne was already rallying her magic as she emerged onto the deck. She saw Koram land on the adjacent silt dromond to face his enemy, yelling, “Fight me, Yvoluk! I have waited long enough for this.”
The Balic templar just laughed. “And why should I bother fighting you when I have others to do so?” He motioned for his fighters, and three of the men nocked arrows to bowstrings; the other two lifted their short swords and crouched to charge.
With anger roiling through her, Jisanne stepped out of the shadows and began to work her first spell. Drawing energy from all around her in a quick rush, she felt the tension build within her. Her need justified whatever means she might employ, even defilement-fast, powerful, and deadly magic. “Leave us alone!”
Spotting her, the thri-kreen tracker gave an alarmed squawk and his small antennae lifted, twitching. “Koram sent a defiler against us!”
With instinctive terror, Yvoluk’s warriors fired their arrows without any command from the praetor. Three shafts leaped out from twanging bows. One of the arrows clattered on Horizon Finder’s deck-but the other two struck Jisanne, one on the left side of her chest, the second in her abdomen. The impacts drove her backward.
With a howl, Koram thrust his sword deep into the traitorous thri-kreen’s back, piercing the tan chitin; the thri-kreen’s lower set of legs folded and he fell to his knees, dragging Koram’s sword with him, caught in his hard shell. “Ah, so this is how it ends…” He whistled through his mandibles.
Jisanne gasped as her spell died around her. She tried to keep uttering the words, but only blood came out of her mouth, not the rest of the incantation.
With a barked command from Yvoluk, the soldiers fell upon Koram, five against one. Even as he struggled to tear his sword free from the thri-kreen’s body, the warriors swarmed over him, thrusting and stabbing.
Lying in a pool of her own blood on the deck of Horizon Finder, Jisanne saw an image of her sister’s family cut down by mob hatred. Yes, she did know how to use arcane magic, and now her own blood gave her all the power she needed to finish the spell.
The silt stirred beneath the levitating dromond. A line of ivory vertebrae moved in a serpentine ripple, and a pair of ribcages lifted up through the sand. Balanced on puzzle-pieces of stacked bones, two saurian skulls dropped open hinged jaws to brandish sand-worn fangs. The long-dead sea serpents both roared, a dry rasping sound that scratched through their hollow throats. Once so majestic as they glided on Athas’s long-forgotten seas, the fossilized monsters now loomed over the levitating dromond. Jisanne clenched her bloodied fists, drove the monsters into action.
Yvoluk’s warriors looked up and screamed, scrambling away from Koram. The praetor stared in awe, craning his neck up at the giant fanged skulls, then frantically worked his own spell to protect himself-but before he could finish, one of the skeleton serpents darted forward and chomped down. Lifting the bleeding templar into the air, the serpent shook him from side to side, bit him in half, then tossed the severed body off the dromond. Yvoluk was still gurgling as he sank into the silt.
Jisanne crawled to the side rail, lifted herself up, and extended a red hand toward Koram. On the levitating dromond, he was a patchwork of deep wounds, bleeding from numerous slashes and cuts, many of them surely fatal. She tried to call his name, but her lungs were filled with blood.
Koram dragged himself to the bow and somehow found the strength to make a staggering leap back to Horizon Finder. Jisanne attempted to catch him, and they both tumbled together. One of the arrow shafts snapped off inside, and the pain blinded her.
Even without her magical control, the skeletal serpents continued to attack the dromond. Ivory skulls smashed the planks, broke the hull, shattered the rails. The serpents seized the terrified Balic soldiers in their jaws, tossing bodies over the side or leaving them strewn across the deck. The dromond crashed, running aground onto the stone quay.
Jisanne and Koram held each other, barely hearing the screams and the mayhem. Drowning in the pain, she felt the magic fade. The twin sea monster skeletons raised sinuous bone necks as if in a salute, then crumbled into ivory shards in the dust.
Jisanne knew she was dying, and beside her Koram grasped her hand. His wounds looked even worse than hers. “Do you have the navigation crystal?” he said. “Take us back… to when Athas was alive.”
With an effort she removed the worn object, wet fingers fumbling with the strings of the pouch. “The magic won’t last. It destroys. It is what drained this world.”
He leaned closer, his breath rattling. “Then I give you my life energy willingly-take it! I’d rather die there than in this place.”
Jisanne cupped the navigation crystal in her palm. Each breath was like broken glass caught on fire; the arrow deep in her stomach was a grinding spear of ice that twisted in her guts. “Maybe with my life force, too, it will be enough to seal the spell permanently.”
Koram could barely hold his head up. He was fading quickly. If she didn’t act soon, the opportunity would be wasted.
Jisanne clenched her fingers around the crystal. Previously, she had filled a small bowl with her own blood, just enough to work the arcane magic. Now there was so much blood, but she felt so weak… and Koram was so weak.
She pulled the spell from her own core, stronger than ever before. Jisanne used everything she had, and everything Koram had. She scraped both of their existences until they were bone dry and empty, she pulled on any life force around them, the waning energy of the dying guards, the small burrowing creatures in the ground, every faint flicker she could find. Even the sand and dust turned dark. She had never called on so much life force to fuel her magic.
Her vision faded into static and grit, and she could see only the crystal in her hand. Jisanne tried to hold onto it, but the object dulled, then crumbled into small shards and glittering dust in her hand.
Destroyed.
Jisanne collapsed, feeling the weight of Koram beside her but no life there, and no life inside her either…
Then the deck began rocking beneath them, and the bright sun beating down seemed to have a different quality. The air Jisanne inhaled was moist and salty-and as she sucked in a lungful she realized that the arrow wounds no longer hurt. The spell had worked after all!