Shadow of the Otherverse (The Last Whisper of the Gods Saga Book 3) (42 page)

Sweat pouring from skin turned red by the encroaching heat, Sorial risked a glance at Justin. The man stood calmly in place, hands moving in flicking gestures to turn aside weak offensives from his opponents while intensifying his multi-faceted attack. His face was an impassive mask but he didn’t seem to be concentrating with great intensity. Noticing Sorial’s stare, he smiled. At that moment, the gulf of mastery between them seemed wider than Sorial could have imagined.

The arrival of the djinn, four in total, changed the timber of the battle. Alicia was forced to withdraw from attacking Justin in order to face them. That meant Sorial had no choice but to stand against The Lord of Fire alone and, with his wife removed from the immediate contest, he braced himself for Justin’s next fusillade. It was as destructive as expected. Everything around him erupted into flame, including the tiny dust particles comprising his shield. Sorial’s robe caught fire but he didn’t panic. Once, something like that would have destabilized him but no longer. His experiences over the last year had taught him lessons about surviving desperate situations when a split second decision could mean the difference between life and death. He dissolved the original shield, instantaneously replacing it with a new one while drawing on the earth’s endless cool reserves to chill his body.

Less than forty feet away, Alicia was hard-pressed. The djinn weren’t as powerful as Justin but there were four of them. Having observed Sorial’s tactics against them, she knew how to destroy them but she was so focused on not being reduced to ash by their incessant fire-ball attacks that she couldn’t formulate the degree of concentration necessary to strip them of their water. Desperation began to assert itself. It wasn’t good enough for her to hold her own. Her part in this was to eliminate the djinn. They represented Justin’s last non-human defense.

Three were high in the air, their feet well above the level of Alicia’s head. The other, however, was within reach if she could get close enough. She began inching toward it, knowing the price she would pay for success. She feared pain more than death and, even with her healing powers, there would be no escaping it. In the midst of so much chaos, she needed the surety of a flesh-to-flesh contact to kill the creature. But would she still be able to defend against the others while in the throes of agony? She was about to find out.

It took only a few more steps for the moment to arrive. The djinn was either oblivious to her intentions or unconcerned that she would try something as rash as touching it. Steeling herself, she reached out with her left arm, grasped for its ankle, and screamed as the white-hot anguish washed over her.

* * *

Rotgut was as cold as he had ever been in his life but it wasn’t the weather that was getting to him; it was the waiting. Bad things were happening all around and the only thing he and fourteen thousands of Obis’ finest could do was wait. There were grumblings that, orders be damned, they should move. Do something. Don’t let the city go down without a fight. Rotgut could understand their feelings. Many of them had houses and families in harm’s way. They had seen the wall come down. They knew the enemy wasn’t just at the gate; they were inside. But Rotgut respected the rule of command and the men giving those commands. Still, it would be a relief to do something other than sit in the cold, sip warm water and pretend it was broth, and squint through the haze in the direction of a city whose salvation looked grimmer with every passing hour.

When the order to march came, Rotgut would move out but not in the same direction as the majority of the army. He had a different mission. It was questionable whether his intentions would be sanctioned if anyone knew about them other than his closest compatriots but he didn’t worry about that. He saw an opportunity to fill a need and he intended to pursue it even it got him and some others killed.

Scouts arrived regularly with new information - a steady stream of bad news occasionally punctuated by a dose of optimism. The attack had started a scant three hours ago with djinn bombarding the walls with fire. Magic had taken two of them down then, not long after, flammable rocks, flung in large quantities from slings, had killed another pair. Concerted attacks by the dragon and the surviving djinn had brought down the walls. The Citadel had then been targeted by the dragon, with heavy damage sustained by the upper stories, possibly resulting in the destruction of the army’s command. Shortly thereafter, friendly “land dragons” (as they were being called) had attacked and killed the enemy fire dragon before disappearing. Most recently, there had been some kind of skirmish outside the city, not far to the north and east of Sutter’s Hill.

The most difficult part of waiting was hearing the distant sounds of battle and being paralyzed by circumstances from participation. There were perhaps six thousand soldiers within the city to defend it but they would be no match for the overwhelming force streaming through the shattered wall. And there was only so far they could retreat, when every block surrendered meant consigning more civilians - primarily women and children - to the enemy’s mercy. Vantok and Earlford had provided object lessons of how Justin’s men treated enemy noncombatants; Rotgut would rather slit his own throat than be subjected to that brand of “mercy.”

Rotgut almost missed the signal to move but the spyglass-equipped sentries didn’t. A nearly unanimous cheer went up as the four surviving djinn abandoned Obis. Their path led toward the location where the earlier skirmish had been reported. As the men formed ranks to march to the aid of their fellows in Obis, Rotgut readied the three-dozen who had pledged their service to him. He had dubbed them the “wizards’ company” and they intended to provide whatever aid they could to Sorial and Alicia. If Rotgut knew anything about magic - and, to be sure, it wasn’t much - the way to find The Lord of Earth and The Lady of Water was to follow the djinn.

“Break out the swords and knives!” called Rotgut, rallying the men around him. “Double-speed after those fuckers!” He pointed with his sword toward four reddish specks high in the sky, barely visible through the dusty haze that had spread out from Obis.

Of course, this could turn out to be a terrible mistake and, if it was, it wouldn’t be the first of Rotgut’s life. He hadn’t lived this long with so few promotions because of an impeccable service record. But it was a risk worth taking. If he was right, his small company might mean the difference between victory and defeat for Sorial and Alicia. At least that was the hope. Now it was time to learn the reality.

* * *

Now that he had taken the measure of his opponent, Justin knew he would win. It wasn’t that Sorial was weak or inept. In fact, he displayed surprising flexibility in adapting to Justin’s fluctuating tactics. But the odds were too steep. He gave credit where it was due; the wizards had stymied Justin’s attempts to win the war without magic but, in the end, that was irrelevant. General Gerthak’s death had been unfortunate but no man was irreplaceable. Four djinn were too many for any wizard to overcome - even he might not be able to accomplish that. They would overwhelm Alicia and turn their attention to Sorial. Void or no void, he would die then.

Overall, the battle was going about as well as could be expected, although the loss of the dragon had been a blow. Justin had never anticipated losing that great beast but he had forgotten that Sorial had access to mighty creatures of the earth. A foolish oversight. Also, he had hoped to retain more djinn. In the end, it wouldn’t matter. Once Sorial and Alicia were gone, his troops and magic would be enough to overwhelm Obis and take Andel. Then it would be over and, assuming Ferguson fulfilled his part of the bargain, Justin could at long last make his assault on the Otherverse. The end was near and the conditions were one step closer to being fulfilled. That was good because he was weary - weary of fighting, weary of magic, weary of life. Magic was sometimes referred to in ancient documents as a curse and time had given Justin an appreciation of what that meant.

He nonchalantly deflected Sorial’s occasional thrusts. Was this really all the boy had? There was potency but no originality. Everything was predictable from the bombardment of rocks to the cracking open of the ground beneath Justin. Perhaps Sorial’s capacity for creativity was impeded by his need to constantly defend against Justin’s attacks. A primary lesson taught in the writings of the great wizards was that the best way to win a magical duel was to keep one’s opponent on the defensive. Justin wouldn’t rush this contest. There was no need for him to press the attack or attempt to overwhelm his opponent with a single devastating strike that could leave him off-balance and open to a counteroffensive. Such a strategy was rash and unwarranted. Instead, he would wait for Sorial to make an inevitable mistake. Then it would be over. Patience was a particular virtue of Justin’s.

He smiled for a second time and he saw trepidation in his opponent’s half-masked face.

* * *

Sorial heard Alicia’s scream and its rawness rent his heart, but he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. His own situation was too precarious. He knew through their shared connection that, although she was injured, she wasn’t dead. He couldn’t offer any help. Justin, the fucking smiling bastard, absorbed the entirety of his attention. He had the sickening feeling that the older wizard was toying with him, but Justin’s measured, methodical approach revealed one thing - he didn’t have the power to end this with one masterstroke or he would have done so already. That meant there was still an opening. A small one, to be sure… Sorial knew what his move had to be. He and Alicia had plotted out this scenario over the past few days; the problem lay in the execution.

Sorial continued a barrage of seemingly desperate, wholly unremarkable assaults. He opened a crevasse beneath his opponent’s feet but the other wizard used a rising column of heat to levitate above the gap. Wreathed in flame and bathed in fire, Justin looked more like a demon than a man; the red pupils of his eyes glowed with hellish intensity. Conventional earth-based attacks were easily turned away. Meanwhile, Sorial was being suffocated by the heat that percolated through his defenses. His hair had been burned away and his skin was blistering. The shield had to be constantly refreshed. Justin’s fire wasn’t aimed at Sorial’s person but at all the particles he surrounded himself with. Normally, earth smothered fire, but these weren’t normal flames. The time had come to try something different.

Plundering his past successes, he uncovered one that might be effective in this situation: the gravity hammer he had used in his first confrontation with Ariel and that had later brought down the djinn outside Basingham. The Lord of Fire wasn’t airborne, although he was balanced on a wave of heat slightly above the surface. Sorial’s goal, however, wasn’t as dramatic as it had been with flying opponents - all he needed was to create a moment’s instability, a diversion. It worked; despite having anticipated every other attack, Justin was unprepared for this one. It drove him to his knees and broke his concentration. This provided two openings. With the first, Sorial called for reinforcements to aid Alicia. With the second, he launched a direct strike against his opponent.

Sorial identified particles of dirt existing inside the fringes of Justin’s fire shield and brought them under his control. Most were within the older wizard’s body - typically harmless specks that could be found trapped in the innards of every living being. They were small enough that no individual mote was capable of causing damage unless directed by a power with detrimental intentions. Sorial used them to punch through soft tissue, damaging cells and, in some cases, causing internal bleeding. He let them enter the veins and arteries, poisoning Justin’s blood. All of this came short of his goal of creating immediate crippling results. In fact, at least in the near term, it was more of a nuisance attack than a serious threat. Justin reacted with vehemence, wrapping Sorial in a cocoon of fire that not only shattered the younger man’s earth shield by incinerating the dirt but also consumed all the air. Sorial’s instinctive reaction was to withdraw into the ground but he found the way blocked by molten rock Justin had shifted there to prevent escape. Gasping like a fish out of water, Sorial flash-cooled the magma then plunged through it, achieving a moment’s temporary safety. He reemerged a short distance away and was again assaulted.

Across the hilltop, Alicia was dimly aware of Sorial’s struggle. Having sacrificed her left hand and forearm in the service of slaying one djinn, she found herself mired in a haze of pain and shock, barely able to stave off attacks by the other three and incapable of mounting another offensive strike. Struggling to see through the tears and dripping sweat, she used her abilities to protect her bruised and burned body from additional harm and do what she could to soothe the abused nerves just below her elbow, where the cauterized stump ended. The hand and lower arm were gone; she had to make sure the rest of her didn’t follow. Sorial needed her help. He was relying on her to fulfill her portion of their compact. But she didn’t know how to help herself much less him. She couldn’t afford to lose another arm and three djinn were too many for her to overcome, especially in her diminished condition.

Salvation, or at least a temporary reprieve, arrived unexpectedly. Initially, Alicia wasn’t sure what was happening when a massive form burst through the ground near her, showering her with dirt, rocks, and other earthen debris. The creature - large, powerful, and fast - hurtled skyward through this rent in the hillside. Sorial’s rock wyrms, presumably responding to his summons, had arrived to help. As in Sorial’s “demonstration” in Obis, there were two - the one he had initially contacted and its mate. They were doomed from the instant they chose to attack the djinn and likely recognized this fact, but they acted nonetheless, either compelled by loyalty to Sorial or something more fundamental. The Lord of Earth had called and they had no choice but to respond even though the ultimate sacrifice was demanded.