Calliande drew in power for another ward, and then Ridmark’s voice rang over the battle.
“To me!” he shouted. “To me! Quickly!”
She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw the dark auras of the urhaalgars as they surged up the slope. How the devil had urhaalgars gotten so close to her without the Sight detecting them? The Sight saw flickers of power around them, the remnants of a collapsing spell of dark magic.
A spell of obscuring and concealing, designed to hide something from the Sight. Hiding from the Sight was possible. It wasn’t easy, but it was possible, and it seemed that the Confessor possessed the knowledge.
And that meant he had planned this ambush with great care.
There were more creatures than just urhaalgars in the wheat. The Sight also showed Calliande the necromantic auras of undead creatures. A lot of necromantic auras, and of a sort that she had never before seen. She had heard that the Confessor was a potent necromancer but had not yet seen any proof of it.
It seemed that was about to change.
She also glimpsed black-armored forms among the wheat. Dvargir warriors were advancing as well, wearing the masked helms they preferred when forced to travel in the daylight. Both Justin Cyros and Taerdyn and Tycharon had hired dvargir mercenaries, so why not the Confessor? The dvargir were willing to kill for anyone who paid them on time.
All this flashed through Calliande’s mind in a second.
“Tamlin, Calem, Selene!” shouted Calliande as the three of them hurled spells at the dragons circling overhead. “Help Ridmark and Third! Tamara and Kalussa, stay with me. Keep striking at the dragons.”
Tamlin nodded and whirled, raising the Sword of Earth, and Selene and Calem followed him as he rushed towards the charging urhaalgars and undead. Calliande glimpsed Krastikon and the aura of the Sword of Death as he ran to join the battle, the gladiators charging behind him. Calliande wished she could have spared the strength to cast a spell of augmentation around the bronze weapons of the gladiators. Their bronze weapons wouldn’t harm the urhaalgars, and they might not be able to harm the strange undead that emerged from the wheat.
The Confessor’s golden dragon unleashed another stream of fire, and Calliande had to turn her full attention to the warding spell.
###
Calem raced towards the fighting, the Sword of Air in both hands.
Strangely, he always felt the calmest when rushing into a fight, when charging into mortal danger. He had spent most of his life engaged in violence, and he almost always knew what to do when in a battle. Truth be told, it was the only time he was certain of how to act. He didn’t always know how to express his gratitude to the Keeper and the Shield Knight for sparing him, or how to comfort Kalussa when she woke up with nightmares of Najaris and Lord Tycharon.
But he had spent a lot of time fighting, and he was very, very good at it.
His mind sorted out the details of the battle in the space between two running strides. He recognized the familiar gangly, scaled forms of urhaalgars. Damned things. Urd Maelwyn was crawling with them, and the Confessor bred them in vast numbers in the labyrinthine dungeons beneath the city. The creatures converged on Ridmark and Third, which was a mistake on their part. Ridmark’s soulblade killed an urhaalgar with every hit, and Third flickered in and out of them with pulses of blue fire. Lightning and fire wreathed her golden swords, and she left slain urhaalgars in her wake.
Behind the urhaalgars came a wave of undead. Most of the undead that Calem had seen outside of Urd Maelwyn had either been withered, mummified corpses, or shadows and specters given life by dark magic. These creatures were different, products of the Confessor’s own peculiar style of necromancy. They looked like the jet-black skeletons of orcs and humans, the bones bound together by wisps of blue light. Ghostly images of blue light sheathed the skeletons, the image of whoever the skeletons had belonged to in life. Blades of blue light extended from their right hands, and while those blades looked immaterial, Calem knew they could cut through flesh and bone with ease.
After the undead came dvargir warriors in masked helmets, swords and axes of strange black steel in their hands. Calem recognized some of them and his mouth twisted in disgust. It seemed that the dvargir of Great House Tzanar who had fled Najaris had found new employment for themselves in the Confessor’s service.
It took Calem about two seconds to assess the battlefield, and then he moved.
He sprinted forward and cast a spell, drawing on the magic of elemental air. He had once possessed no magical ability whatsoever. But when he and Kalussa had confronted the Masked One inside the strange dream-world, something had changed within Calem. Perhaps it had been power ripped from the Masked One during the confrontation, or maybe it had something to do with the enslavement spells that had wrapped his mind for years.
Regardless of the reason, Calem had become Swordborn, and he had also received a great deal of magical power with elemental air.
He cast the spell and leaped, and the spell carried his jump in a high arc down the slope, higher and farther than he could have jumped unassisted.
Calem landed among the urhaalgars attacking Ridmark and Third and started killing.
The urhaalgars were dangerous fighters. Like many creatures of dark magic, they were immune to normal weapons of bronze and wood, and a fighter needed magic to wound them. While the urhaalgars were fast, they weren’t as strong as a grown man, and Calem could block their strikes with ease. The real threat of the urhaalgars came from the spines that lined their bodies, spines coated with deadly venom. For that matter, their bites also transmitted the poison.
The trick, of course, was to make sure they couldn’t touch you.
The Sword of Air made that easy.
Calem killed an urhaalgar with a swift chop through the neck. The deadly magic of the Sword sliced through the creature, and its head and body fell in different directions. The edge of the Sword of Air could cut through anything, and the tough scales of the urhaalgars proved no obstacle. He killed three creatures in rapid succession, and then a wave of the glowing undead charged at him.
He snapped the Sword of Air up in a silvery blow and deflected the ethereal blade. The ebony skeleton jumped back, but the ghostly image of the dead man superimposed over the bones gibbered and wept, the translucent face twisted with grief.
“I confess!” wailed the ghostly image. “I confess! I was the one who stole the sheep! I stole the sheep, and I said nothing as another man was hanged for it! I…”
Calem wasn’t interested in the specter’s confessions, and he attacked. He slashed at the undead creatures as its confessions continued, and the ethereal blade rose to block his attack. That was one of the many disturbing things about the Confessor’s undead. The stream of lamentations continued even as the creature fought with competent skill.
Fortunately, the ethereal blade proved no more able to resist the edge of the Sword of Air than the flesh of an urhaalgar, and Calem chopped through it. The Sword ripped apart the creature, and it fell to the ground in a rain of black bones and wisps of blue light that faded into nothingness.
Calem turned, seeking another foe, and he saw a dozen dvargir kneeling at the edge of the wheat, black crossbows in hand.
He threw himself to the side, avoiding the storm of bolts. Most of the bolts missed him, but two of them slammed into his chest and stomach. The quarrels shattered against his dark elven armor, but the impact threw him to the ground, the breath exploding from his lungs.
Another wave of the confessing undead charged from the wheat, joined by dvargir swordsmen.
###
Ridmark slew another urhaalgar and stepped back, Oathshield drawn back to strike, Aegisikon shifted to its shield form on his left arm. Fire bloomed overhead, only to splash against the translucent wall of Calliande’s magic. It was a damned strange sight, but Calliande was holding back the fire of the dragons and the dark magic of the Confessor and his followers, while Tamara and Kalussa hurled attacks skyward. Ridmark thought the dragons were slowing, that they showed signs of injury from the magical attacks. Perhaps if they held on a little longer, the Confessor would turn and retreat from the battle. Ridmark was reasonably sure that the Confessor did not want to walk all the way back to Urd Maelwyn.
But the Confessor had not brought just dragons and dark magic to this battle.
No, he had planned too well for that.
Most of the urhaalgars had been killed, slain by either Oathshield or the Swords of Death, Air, and Earth. But mobs of the strange undead charged from the wheat, ebony skeletons overlaid with ghostly blue images, and dozens of dvargir warriors followed. The gladiators and the xiatami commoners struggled against the press, and thankfully normal weapons of bronze seemed able to wound the undead. Yet the undead were still dangerous fighters, and the black steel that armored the dvargir was far superior to bronze. The gladiators and the xiatami were holding, yet they were starting to fall back.
Calliande might be able to hold back the dragon fire and the dark magic, but she couldn’t if she had to defend herself from the undead and the dvargir.
“Third!” said Ridmark, cutting down another urhaalgar. “Keep them off me for a few seconds!”
Third nodded and went into a furious attack, her swords tracing nets of lightning and fire around her as the surviving urhaalgars reeled back. Ridmark took a quick step back and concentrated on his link to Oathshield. It did not take long to unlock the weapon’s full power, but he needed to concentrate for a few heartbeats, and in the middle of a battle, that lapse of attention could be fatal.
For a few heartbeats, nothing happened, and Ridmark reached through his link to the soulblade.
Then Oathshield’s power unlocked.
White fire blazed from the sword and flowed up Ridmark’s limbs, hardening into plate armor the same color as Oathshield. A full helm with a visor covered his face, though it did nothing to obscure his vision. Symbols of white fire flashed around the rim of his shield as the weapon responded to the unlocked magic. Power surged through the armor, making him far stronger and faster than even Oathshield itself could do. It was the unlocked power of the Shield Knight, and Ridmark could only call upon it for a few moments every day.
Best to make good use of those moments, then.
The gladiators reeled back beneath the assault of the undead, and Ridmark charged.
The armor drove him forward, and he crashed into the undead, Oathshield blazing with white fire as it tore through gleaming black bones. The touch of the soulblade’s white fire shattered the ghostly images superimposed over the skeletons, and the bones scattered in all directions.
“I confess!” snarled the image of an orcish woman as she slashed at Ridmark. The armor of the Shield Knight deflected the ethereal blade she aimed at his chest. “I lied to my mother! I know where my father went!”
Ridmark struck the undead, black bones shattering beneath Oathshield’s stroke.
“I confess!” shrieked the image of a human man, his blade striking Ridmark’s helmet. “I slept with my brother’s concubine! Her child is mine, not his! I confess!”
Ridmark stepped into the next attack and cut down the undead.
All around him the strange undead attacked, shrieking their confessions. They were quick and strong, and they fought with deadly skill even as the ghostly images confessed to long-forgotten crimes. Yet their weapons could not touch the armor of the Shield Knight, and Ridmark hammered through them like a storm, Oathshield rising and falling and cutting down an undead with every blow. Third flickered in and out of the undead, slashing with her swords, and Calem, Krastikon, and Tamlin charged into the fray. The three Swords scythed through the undead as if they had been the wheat of the field. The gladiators shouted and rallied, recovering their lines, and the xiatami advanced as well, the rattles at the end of their tails letting out an ominous clicking sound.
Ridmark tore free of the undead and headed towards the advancing dvargir swordsmen while their crossbowmen swung their weapons towards him.
###
The Confessor’s golden dragon swooped back over the river, coming around for another pass. As it did, its jaws opened wide, and more fire lanced over its white fangs. The Confessor leveled the Sword of Water, and a volley of frozen spikes swept from the end of the weapon. At the same time, the Blademaster flung another barrage of his glowing swords, and Terzhalkar cast a spell, a blast of shadow and blue fire ripping from his undead hands.
All of it hammered into Calliande’s wards.
She grimaced and focused the entirety of her will and power into her defenses, holding them in place. It was all she could do to maintain the ward against the fury of the magical attack and the wrath of the dragon fire. The Confessor and his two followers had begun coordinating their attacks, hammering everything they had against Calliande’s wards. Yet her defense was equal to the task. The magic of the mantle of the Keeper had originated upon Old Earth, and it was stronger than any magic of this world. No attack could overcome a ward infused with its power.
But Calliande’s strength had limits, and she could not spare her attention from the wards. She had no power left to strike back.
Fortunately, Kalussa and Tamara did.
Lightning and fire and crystalline spheres ripped from the ground to stab into the three dragons. Calliande saw dozens of charred and cut patches on the sides of all three creatures, places where the thick scales had been blasted away to burn the flesh beneath. The two smaller red dragons had slowed, and seemed in pain, though the Confessor’s mighty dragon seemed indifferent to its wounds.
Both the red dragons swept overhead again, breathing fire, while the Confessor’s dragon circled higher into the sky. Calliande held her ward against dragon fire and dark magic as the Blademaster and the Maledictus of Water passed overhead, but her Sight saw the power gathering around the Confessor. He was using the Sword of Water to do something, but she wasn’t sure what.
More dragon fire hammered against her wards, and she gritted her teeth and held the spell in place, ignoring the pain that flared through her jaw. She really had to stop gritting her teeth, since it had created a mild sprain in the joint of her jaw. Though if she didn’t hold the ward in place and the dragon fire killed her, the jaw pain would be the least of her worries.
The glare from the fire cleared as the red dragons banked for another pass, and then Calliande saw the mirrored sphere floating high overhead.
She blinked, unable to make sense of the sight. The Confessor’s dragon hovered over the hill, the great golden wings beating, and the dark elven lord held the Sword of Water over his head, calling on its power. A huge mirrored sphere floated in the air before him, already larger than the golden dragon. Was it some sort of spell?
No. It was simpler than that.
It was water, an enormous globe of water held in place by the Confessor’s will. The Confessor was using the Sword of Water to summon a tremendous quantity of water, and the Sword’s power kept it floating. Calliande was a fisherman’s daughter, had grown up near both the southern sea and the River Moradel, and she knew about water. She remembered carrying buckets of water to her mother’s hearth, her muscles straining under the load.
Water was heavy.
And the Confessor was going to drop that enormous globe of water on their heads.
Calliande’s mind raced, trying to think what to do. Deflecting magic was one thing. Blocking that much raw mass at once was something else. Could she hit the water with fire, turn it to steam before it struck the ground? No, she didn’t have that much power. Even if she, Kalussa, and Tamara all cast spells of magical fire at once, that wouldn’t be enough. Freezing it would accomplish nothing. And speaking of steam, once the water struck the hill, it would pour into the melee at the edge of the wheat fields. It would not be enough to drown anyone, but it would knock the combatants from their feet. It would be a simple matter for the Confessor’s dragon to breath fire across the drenched battlefield. The fire would turn the water to steam, and that would boil the combatants alive. Calliande suspected the Confessor didn’t particularly care about the fate of his dvargir mercenaries, especially if their deaths gained him the three Swords.
“Keeper!” said Kalussa. “I have an idea! I think I can keep the water from sweeping us away.”
Calliande hesitated. There wasn’t time to do anything else. Did she trust Kalussa that much? She remembered the arrogant young Sister of the Arcanii she had met during the battle for Castra Chaeldon…and contrasted that memory with her fierce-eyed apprentice.
“Do it,” said Calliande.
The huge sphere of water wobbled a little.
“Keeper, Tamara, stand on either side of me,” said Kalussa, and she leveled the Staff of Blades.
“Tamara, get ready to strike,” said Calliande. “Once the Confessor drops that globe, I think he’s going to try to boil everyone in the battle. We need to hit him hard enough that he breaks off his attack or we kill him. I’ll attack his wards, you strike him with everything you can summon.”
Tamara nodded, and the Staff of Blades began spitting splinters of crystal. They struck the ground and expanded, and Calliande realized that Kalussa was building a jagged crystalline wall before them, U-shaped and angled to deflect the flood away from their position. Splinter after splinter leaped from the end of the Staff and swelled, reinforcing the wall. Would it work? Calliande had no idea, and it had never occurred to her that Kalussa could use the Staff to build things. Perhaps she had been inspired by seeing Tycharon use the Staff to create that giant floating crystal ring in the arena of Najaris.
The huge sphere of water wobbled and then began to fall.
“Kalussa!” said Tamara, a hint of nervousness in her voice as the sphere plummeted towards the hilltop.
The Confessor’s dragon let out a booming cry and dove, heading towards the battle raging below the hill. Calliande realized that her guess had been right, that the Confessor intended to use his dragon’s fire to boil his foes in the flood.
“Strike when I give the word!” said Calliande, and then the sphere of water struck the hilltop.
The noise was enormous, a thunderous splashing sound that filled Calliande’s ears, and a wall of water rushed in all directions. It slammed into the barrier that Kalussa had created, and a maze of spidery cracks spread through the wall of crystal. Yet the barrier held, even though Calliande was drenched in the spray shooting past the U-shaped wall.
She saw the Confessor’s dragon swoop towards the melee.
###
“I confess!” shrieked the ghostly image of the orcish man. “I opened the gate to our enemies! I took gold to betray our village…”
Ridmark’s sent Oathshield ripping through the undead creature’s skull, silencing its confessions. As the undead fell, two more dvargir swordsmen charged at him, blades drawn back to strike. He stepped into the attack, and the swords hammered against his armor to no effect. The dark metal of the dvargir was far stronger than either bronze or normal steel, but it could do nothing against the armor of the Shield Knight. Ridmark couldn’t see their expressions behind their masked helms, but to judge from the way they flinched, he imagined they were surprised.
He killed them both, turning towards the line of dvargir crossbowmen, and the roaring sound came to his ears.
Ridmark whirled just in time to see the water rushing down the hill and into the battle.
It slammed into him and even though the water only came to just above his knees, the impact still nearly pulled him from his feet. Only the power of the Shield Knight’s armor let him keep his balance. Few others were as lucky. The water knocked over nearly all the combatants, and for an awful instant, Ridmark feared nearly the gladiators and xiatami would drown. Yet the force of the flow slackened as the water rushed into the field, and Ridmark saw men and xiatami thrash their way to their feet.
Third kept her balance by the simple expedient of transporting herself a few feet into the air and dropping back into the water. Selene cast a spell, and suddenly she was standing on top of a small bank of ice, her magic having frozen the water. Ridmark looked around and saw that most of the remaining dvargir and undead had been knocked over.
He looked at Selene and Third, and Selene grinned, while Third nodded.
Ridmark rushed forward and started killing, the water foaming around his armored boots. The dvargir were dangerous foes, but the Confessor’s wave had knocked them from their feet. Ridmark killed five dvargir in as many heartbeats, and Third and Selene tore through them.
A roar boomed from overhead, and a shadow fell over the rippling water.
Ridmark looked up and saw the Confessor’s golden dragon diving towards him.
He shouted a warning, but he knew it was too late. The inferno of the dragon’s breath would turn the water to steam, likely killing everyone in its path. Third would be able to transport herself out of the way in time, but no one else would escape.
And Ridmark was about to find out if the armor of the Shield Knight could deflect a dragon’s fire.
The dragon’s jaws opened wide, fire dancing to life behind its gleaming fangs, and then a shaft of white fire struck the red-armored form of the Confessor. The dark elven lord rocked, and an instant later a bolt of lightning screamed out of the sky and struck him. Ridmark had seen Calliande and Tamara fight alongside each other long enough to recognize their familiar tactic of Calliande breaching a sorcerer’s defenses and Tamara following up with a devastating elemental strike.
The Confessor went rigid and then stabbed with the Sword of Water. Another lance of ice shot from the Sword and hurtled towards the hill, only to shatter against Calliande’s wards. Four crystal spheres shot out and slammed into the dragon’s flank, and the creature screamed in pain. The Confessor gestured, and the dragon banked over the wheat field, flying to the north. The Blademaster’s dragon and Terzhalkar’s crimson mount fell in alongside the golden dragon, and all three beasts flew away to the north with terrific speed.
It seemed the Confessor had decided to abandon the field.
“Hurry!” shouted Ridmark as the gladiators and the xiatami regained their feet. “Take them! Quickly!”
The men and the xiatami shouted and charged at the disorganized dvargir.
###
Calliande hurried down the slope, her boots squelching in the mud, intending to aid the others as they fought the dvargir and the surviving undead.
But the fight was almost over.
The gladiators and the xiatami threw themselves into the battle, cutting down the remaining undead. Most of the dvargir fled into the wheat field. With their power to cloak themselves in shadow, they would likely get away. They would run right back to Urd Maelwyn. Or back to the Deeps and Khaldurmar, given that the Confessor obviously wasn’t concerned if they escaped or not.
The last few dvargir melted into the wheat, and Ridmark shouted for the men to hold.
At the same time, Kalussa let out a feral-sounding snarl.
“Him!” she spat, and she leveled the Staff of Blades.
“What?” said Calliande.
The Staff of Blades spat a crystalline sphere that intersected with the left knee of a fleeing dvargir warrior. There was a spray of blood, and the dvargir fell with a cry, his sword bouncing from his hand. Kalussa stalked forward, her face a mask of rage, and Calliande followed her, alarmed. The dvargir warrior tried to get to his feet, only for Kalussa to swing the Staff of Blades and hit the dvargir across the head. The dvargir warrior fell on his back with a groan of pain, and Calliande noted that his black armor had the ornate red scrollwork that marked a Dzark, the dvargir equivalent of a knight.
A flicker of recognition went through her.
Kalussa stooped and ripped aside the Dzark’s helmet, leveling the Staff of Blades into the dvargir’s face. His void-filled eyes were wide with terror, and Calliande recognized his features.
“Thazmek,” said Kalussa, her voice like ice. “Remember me?”
***