Clea called up a seraphic shield while Elizabeth used the power of the coronet to uproot trees and rocks from the oasis and hurl them at the Mindless Ones as the women tried to break through the creatures’ circled ranks. Red optic blasts hit the shield and bounced off in a shower of sparks, while others tracked and destroyed Elizabeth’s projectiles midair, burned harmless scars into the landscape, or found targets in other Mindless Ones. Without Plokta to control them, the Mindless Ones quickly descended into chaos, attacking each other when they could no longer see Clea and Elizabeth through the Tsuut’ina woman’s cloaking spell. Apparently, their ability to do so earlier had been another consequence of the hell lord’s control, and now that he was gone, they were as blind to the fleeing women as they had always been.
While Elizabeth and Plokta had bargained, Clea had kept a close eye on the shifting landscape around them, noting that the mountains that were her objective were gradually nearing, even while the women themselves remained in the same place. Such was the nature of the Never Hills and part of the reason she’d chosen to come this way. It was a risk, but if the Hills cooperated, it could shave days off their travel time.
The Hills, miraculously, did indeed seem inclined to do their part. Now she and Elizabeth just had to take advantage of their gift.
Clea pointed toward the mountains, yelling to be heard over the tumult around them.
“That’s where we’re headed!”
Elizabeth followed her finger, then shook her head in disbelief. “No way! We’ll never make it! Not unless you know a way to make the hills move at Mach five or something.”
As they spoke, the two women wove their way through the thicket of hulking bodies, trying to avoid bouncing off the creatures or tumbling into the pits and holes their errant red beams were creating. They were only partially successful, as Clea stumbled over the still-smoking limb of an eye-blasted tree and nearly went down, taking the shield with her. She recovered her balance at the last moment, and the Shield of the Seraphim never wavered.
Elizabeth was not so fortunate.
Her eyes on the mountainous prize, she didn’t see the rut caused by a blast gone wide, her foot catching the edge of it and sliding down to get stuck in the bottom. The rut refused to give the foot back without a fight, a struggle which resulted in a hard yank and a pained yelp from Elizabeth.
“Just a sprain,” Elizabeth panted, and Clea hoped she was right. But it was the least of their worries.
The Talisman might be nigh omnipotent, but Elizabeth Twoyoungmen was not. Overtaxed by her previous wound, holding the concealment spell, tapping into and weaponizing the power of the earth against the Mindless Ones, and now this latest injury, something had to give.
It was the cloaking spell.
It had barely been able to conceal the two of them before, given Elizabeth’s condition. Now it failed completely.
For anyone watching, where there had been only hillside a moment before, a silver-haired, purple-clad woman appeared alongside a dark-haired woman in a fur-trimmed robe who was limping badly.
The Mindless Ones were watching. Clea could only pray Umar wasn’t.
But as a renewed barrage of red optic beams sliced into the hill around them, Clea knew that she had to act. Her mother might have blocked ingress to and egress from the Dark Dimension, she might currently be ruling it, she might even have helped create it. But she was not, and never had been, its Sorceress Supreme.
Clea was.
Blocking out everything else, she closed her eyes and conjured up the faces of the Vishanti.
Though the Vishanti – Agamotto, Hoggoth, and Oshtur – often chose to reveal themselves to mortals in different forms over the centuries, Clea had come to know them via her studies on Earth, and so had Earthly associations for each of them.
For her, the Omnipotent Oshtur took on the form of Ma’at, the Egyptian goddess of truth, justice, balance, and order. In her mind’s eye, Clea saw the goddess in a long, sleeveless white tunic with a golden collar, gold-strapped sandals, and a serpent headdress with a brightly colored plume. When an image of Margali tried to superimpose itself over the goddess’s form, Clea shoved it aside roughly and continued her visualization. Oshtur held her rainbow-winged arms out wide, bearing balanced scales in each hand. She wore a hint of a smile, and her eyes were kind.
Hoggoth she saw as an immense tiger whose eyes burned and smoked with an unknowable fire. Despite this, his was a cold and distant presence, and not her favorite.
Agamotto, the child of Oshtur, had taken on for Clea the appearance of the caterpillar from the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ever since Stephen had regaled her with his tale of encountering the being in that whimsical guise. Visualizing him thus always calmed Clea, which was exactly what she needed for this to work.
The Teleportation Spell of the Vishanti.
It required years of meditative practice to master, tranquility to cast, and it allowed the caster to directly channel the power of the Vishanti to instantly go from one place in the lower realms to another. The path could not be traced, magically or otherwise, and the spell could transport multiple subjects without requiring the expenditure of extra energy or time.
And, because it utilized a power even Umar could not contest with, her barrier shouldn’t be able to stop it.
“Shouldn’t” being the operative word, of course.
It would also immediately inform Umar of Clea’s whereabouts, though she would only know where her daughter had been, not where she was going. It couldn’t be helped at this point. She and Elizabeth couldn’t hold off the Mindless Ones indefinitely, and the longer they fought, the more they risked exposing themselves to Umar’s watchful gaze. The time for hiding was almost past, and the sooner they got to their endgame, the better.
With her eyes closed and her heart and mind calm, Clea reached out her hand silently to Elizabeth, knowing the other sorceress would take it. As she did, the world lurched, then stilled.
Clea opened her eyes.
She and Elizabeth were in a cavern lit by intermittent floating globes. A man with heart-stopping dark hair graying at the temples was hurrying toward her. His expression was hostile at first, but changed swiftly when he realized who she was. He began to run toward her.
“Clea!” he shouted, then surprised her by grabbing her up in his arms and swinging her around, holding her tightly before releasing her.
“Rahl!” she exclaimed, her delight almost equaling his when she realized he was not who she’d at first feared him to be. She pulled him back into her arms for another, longer embrace, making a face at Elizabeth’s raised eyebrow. Then she took a deep breath and stepped back. “It’s so good to see you!”
And it was. Rahl had been part of the rebellion from the beginning, since before she had overthrown Umar the first time, fighting by her side. Unbeknownst to her, he and several of her other followers from that time had spent many long years imprisoned in a secret dungeon while she fought on with newer, younger recruits. She had thought them dead, and their discovery in an overlooked outpost still held by Dormammu loyalists had been one of her happiest days in recent memory.
Rahl had never made a secret of his feelings for her, but always stood back respectfully. Except when he thought Stephen wasn’t treating her as well as she deserved. Which was often, as it turned out. Especially of late.
He was a devoted general, and a good friend. And he was ready to be something more – with Stephen’s blessing (though there were probably times when the Sorcerer Supreme wished he could take that back).
Clea often thought the day she’d be ready to let Rahl be that something more was creeping ever nearer, whether she wanted it to or not.
Of course, those thoughts couldn’t help but stir memories of Nobel, another of her rebels who had dreamed of something more with her. When he’d died in her arms in the mountains above the Sarebbe Wastelands, he had even told her he’d secretly been building a home for the two of them. Which was actually rather presumptuous. Bordering on creepy, even. Sweet, but creepy.
Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what it was about her that inspired such steadfast devotion in these men, yet couldn’t keep Stephen’s from flagging over time and distance.
Perhaps it was simply that – time, and distance. Or perhaps it wasn’t his devotion that was the problem, but the nature of their separate duties. One day soon she and Stephen would need to sit down and have a long talk.
But it wasn’t today. Today was not a day for talk of relationships, good or bad. Today was a day to plan for war.
“You know it’s always good to see you, Clea,” Rahl said with a soft smile, the wrinkles about his eyes crinkling. Then he arranged his features into a more neutral configuration as other figures began to approach out of the darkness. Clea’s heart soared as she recognized them, releasing a fear she had not realized had been weighing it down.
“Well, it’s about damned time,” Margali said.