Cathexis: Necromancer's Dagger (13 page)

Dubar took out the vial of Etterine poison
and carefully worked out the old cork stopper. Once he had it free
he took the bolt from the loaded crossbow beside him and dipped it
liberally into the gray cloudy liquid. Once satisfied, he replaced
the bolt in its slot and then eased the crossbow carefully into
position in the hay in front of his body. He sighted down the shaft
toward the double doors across the length of the barn and waited
for his chance.

As Elizabeth neared the stable her mind was
occupied by her worries about the necromancer within her husband's
body. She kept her attention and powers concentrated in his
direction in case he started to use his connection to the
darkness.

Elizabeth reached the stable and opened the
door a body's width before slipping inside.

Dubar saw her step in and took careful aim
with his poisoned bolt. With a squeeze of his
finger,
he let the deadly bolt fly. The moment
he pulled the trigger he whistled shrilly and then scampered to his
feet. He scooped up the large battle
ax
he had ready and
leaped
down to a pile of hay below.

Although Elizabeth's concentration was on
the palace and the necromancer, her powers were active, so she
sensed more than saw the deadly bolt streaking for her heart.
Desperately the sorceress tried to raise her shields and move out
of the way, but she felt as though she were swimming through brown
syrup; there just wasn't enough time. She barely managed to turn
before the bolt hit with stunning force, driving its way into the
far right side of her chest. Time sped up and Elizabeth felt
herself
slammed against the wooden
door. She slid to the ground as her knees gave out. Desperately she
tried to regain control of her
pain-wracked
mind.

From places of
concealment,
the other assassins hurled forward in a
surprise attack on the unsuspecting knights who were only now
starting to realize that something was amiss.

Dubar had given his men quick and terse
instructions, they were to keep the knights busy until he could
finish Lady Ardellen. He ran
lithely
past the battling knights with his eyes locked on
the stricken Kirnath Sorceress. As he ran he lifted the heavy
ax
with which he planned to strike
her head from her shoulders in one massive blow. He figured that
even a sorceress couldn't heal herself from such a terrible
wound.

Gustin saw three dark shapes baring naked
blades rushing forward, so he bellowed with his considerable lungs,
"We're under attack!"

The massive knight let one hand release the
saddle he was holding and slapped the horse before him on the rump;
it
leaped
forward knocking down
one of the approaching men.

Hetark's
blond bearded face was calm as he stepped from behind the horses
into the path of the two other oncoming assassins. He swept his
sword from his sheath in a fluid motion. "Keep Michael SAFE!" he
exclaimed to Drake. The smaller knight stood holding the bundled
little boy a few paces behind Hetark.

The leader of the
assassins
reached Elizabeth and prepared to strike with
his raised
ax
.

Inside her body Elizabeth was fighting a
battle. She had regained her concentration and reached past the
pain with her aura powers. She sought the wound and the metal bolt
that transfixed her lung, but then she felt the effects of the
Etterine poison. It ate at her concentration like acid. Elizabeth
strove to concentrate her muddled thoughts and marshal her powers
of healing. She ignored the bolt and bent her power on changing her
poison-tainted
blood back to
normal. She knew she could deal with the bolt once her mind was
entirely free of the poison's effect. With her mind absorbed with
the internal
battle,
she had no
idea that death approached on the edge of a hurling
ax
blade.

Gustin looked toward Elizabeth and saw her
on the ground; a man was nearly to her and he was brandishing a
huge
ax
. With no time to reach
them before the
ax
fell, and
having no bow or sling, Gustin did the only thing he could; he
threw the heavy saddle with all his strength. It flew the full
forty feet that separated them and just as the
ax
began to fall the saddle struck the man in
the back with great force. The impact of the heavy leather knocked
him and his
ax
against the wooden
frame of the stable door with a loud 'thump'.

Gustin trusted Hetark against the two
opponents charging him, and he noted Drake retreating with Michael.
With his charge safe for the moment, Gustin turned his full
attention on Lady Ardellen. The big knight ran toward her assassin
like a charging
hoofhorn
.

Hetark didn't wait for the two assassins to
attack; he
leaped
toward the
nearest man, thereby reaching one opponent before the next could
arrive. With blinding speed and utter control of his body, the
knight sidestepped the man's thrust and slashed the attacker's
throat open with a quick pull of his blade. The man fell gurgling
to the soft floor of the stable while Hetark stepped clear of the
dying man and faced the next opponent.

The man attempted a foolish slash with his
sword, which Hetark
parried
and
then coolly ran him through. It wasn't for naught that Lord Jatar
had searched the entire Kingdom to find his son's Knight
Protectors; they were the six greatest fighters in the land.

Just as Hetark finished off his second
opponent the assassin's third henchman recovered from the glancing
blow of Gustin's horse, and
leaped
for Hetark's back brandishing his sword.

The attacker never made it to Hetark because
Drake threw a dagger with his free
hand
while holding Michael safely with his other arm. The
throw took the last attacker in the center of his back and he
dropped instantly.

Dubar was only momentarily stunned from the
impact of the saddle. The assassin quickly regained his balance and
started to raise his
ax
, but even
though Elizabeth was right before him a huge man
was only strides
away and coming fast. Dubar
turned and raised the
ax
to finish
the approaching knight, he thought the Sorceress helpless from the
poison.

Gustin was concentrating so hard on arriving
in time to stop the assassin that he had not even pulled a
weapon.

As the man swung the
ax
down toward Gustin's head the knight reached up and
met the shaft of the plunging weapon with his open palm. The
hardwood
smacked into the center
of his hand with a meaty `thwack'. The heavy
ax
was brought to an instant halt. Gustin
wrenched the
ax
from the other
man’s weaker grip with a heave of massive muscles built up nearly
from birth on the anvil of his father's smithy.

Dubar was momentarily stunned; nothing
should have been able to stop the weight of that
ax
, certainly not a man's arm.

Gustin brought the flat of the
ax
back around in a cross swinging motion that
struck the assassin on the side of his head. The massive weight of
the
ax
broke Dubar's skull and he
fell dead at Gustin's feet.

Dubar's body fell next to Elizabeth just as
she finished pulling the bolt from her chest while healing her
wound with her aura powers. Now that she'd neutralized the weak
poison it was easy for her to match her wounded aura colors to her
normal patterns and her body changed to match the repaired aura.
The ugly wound in her chest closed and then gradually vanished.

Gustin had seen the bolt stuck in her chest
as she'd fallen, and now he knelt to see if there was anything he
could do to save her life. Worry creased his large face into a map
of lines; yet as he took hold of her she looked up and said, "I'm
all right Gustin, is Michael safe?" The worry for her son was very
evident in the tone of her voice.

Gustin
gaped
at the blood on her clothes, but the bolt lay in
her hand, not embedded in her as he thought he had seen.

"Are you not wounded, milady?" he asked.

"No longer Gustin, I'm fine."

"Michael is safe, milady," Drake explained,
having just approached. He extended the young boy who was reaching
to get to his mother and started to cry when his efforts were in
vain.

Gustin helped Elizabeth stand. She looked at
the bolt she still held in her hand and then tossed it to the
ground a few feet away. She bent down to the body of the dead
assassin and searched his pockets and soon came up with the vial of
Etterine poison.

Looking at Gustin, she explained. "I believe
this is a poison that is effective on Kirnath because it ruins your
mind's
ability to concentrate.
It's rare, and lucky for me, this batch is evidently old and has
very little potency left; still..." she said, dropping it to the
ground, "smash it."

Gustin needed no further instruction; he
brought the heavy
ax
down and
smashed the bottle to dust.

Elizabeth held up the heavy purse she'd also
found
on
the body. "He had this,"
she said, pouring out a few of the gold round, "I'd say a man like
this would not have this kind of
wealth
unless he had just been paid to
murder,
someone."

Gustin nodded, it rang true.

Elizabeth took her struggling son and he
immediately calmed down now that he was back in his mother’s arms.
"Thank you all for your swift protection, but we MUST get moving.
This is only the first of the attacks we will face once they learn
I have escaped. Trust me; I will explain what has happened when
Michael is safe, but for now we must flee."

“They’re gone,” stated Harland Von Dracek to
CAracusS, who was pacing up and down the carpeted floor of Jatar’s
study like a
fangclaw
in a circus
cage, all he needed were bars and a worn track beneath his feet to
complete the picture.

“How sure are you? I thought she was
completely fooled when she spoke with me,” complained CAracusS
shaking Jatar’s handsome head with disbelief.

“I’m positive, a gate guard told me she rode
out with three men and four spare horses; she knew you were not her
husband.”

“How could she know, I let nothing slip,”
CAracusS said, vehemently.

“She sensed you,
necromancer
like I can sense you now. An initiate with
aura powers can sense the presence of the Dark Plane. It leaves a
mental stink that even I, an informally trained sorcerer, can pick
up when I get close to you,” complained Von Dracek with a curl of
his nose to emphasize the foulness.

“Nonsense, I smell nothing,” replied
CAracusS, sniffing disdainfully.

“This is hard to explain, but it’s not a
real smell, you don’t detect it with your nostrils. Think of it as
explaining colors to a blind man, it’s nearly impossible because he
lacks a basis of
comparison;
but
take my word for it, if I can smell you then a concentrating
Kirnath Adept could detect traces of you from leagues away."

CAracusS merely scowled at the Tchulian.

Von Dracek continued: “That’s why we hoped
her attention would remain on the church ceremony instead of the
palace long enough to keep her aura powers from picking up your
scent.
Obviously,
it didn’t work,
and now we have a bigger problem; the wife of our murdered victim
is a Kirnath Adept, and she knows what we have done."

"She is only one woman," CAracusS pointed
out.

Von Dracek shook his head sadly, “She could
cause us trouble when she spreads the story about what happened to
Jatar, and you can bet her guesses aren’t too far off the mark. Her
early instruction on everything to do with aura power certainly
covered the use of cathexis artifacts. And never forget, she is a
fully trained sorceress, we’d be fools to underestimate her
power."

"I do not fear these sorcerers. She may have
fled the city, but there is still enough time to catch her before
she can contact anyone and do
us
harm."

The Tchulian nodded and replied, “We will
try and catch her, but even if she escaped we will have a few weeks
to consolidate our position before some
upper-level
commander hears one of Lady Ardellen’s rumors
and
begins
to put them together
with the strange changes in their ruler's personality and policies,
however, just to be safe I think we should start the personnel
changes immediately,” Von Dracek counseled.

“Do you think it wise to begin the
accusations and removals of the key officers this fast?” wondered
the necromancer.

“I don’t see that we have any choice. Lady
Ardellen may be spreading those rumors all too soon. I think we
should make our first major move tomorrow and imprison the top
military leaders; they carry too much weight with the troops.”

“Won’t that make people even more suspicious
about their ruler?” worried CAracusS.

“The leaders, yes, but most of the populace
will believe anything their beloved Lord Jatar tells them with no
question. It’s the commanders and the household servants that will
see the difference in how you act. No matter how good you are,
those who were close to Jatar will begin to suspect, and if they
hear the rumors... no, they must be imprisoned or killed and
quickly,” finished Von Dracek striking his gloved fist into his
palm.

“Then I should be making up some pretext for
their arrests, perhaps something about a plot to assassinate myself
and Lady Ardellen, we could incorporate yesterday's fake
assassination attempt. We can say that Lady Ardellen is in flight
from more of the assassins, and I could send you out to save her.
After all,
it will make sense; you
are the hero that saved me from the other assassins yesterday. I’ll
tell them that most of the military leaders and some household
servants were in on the plot, so we are locking them all up until
Lady Ardellen and the heir are safe and we can get this whole thing
sorted out. Later, when we’ve blamed Lady Ardellen’s death on the
assassins, we’ll sentence those imprisoned to death,” the
necromancer said, finishing his proposed plan.