Leaping, Shade collided with the necromancer. A monstrous shock went through him as he touched the ghoulish figure. Shade bit back a scream. Zorane clutched at him, but the warlock struck him a solid blow. The fleshless figure wobbled back, somehow maintaining his place, but now unable to grab at his foe.
Pushing past the Lord, Shade summoned all the strength he had and plunged toward the crystal.
Off to the side, he heard Ephraim cry out to Cabe and Darkhorse, “You will be ours! Your world will be ours!”
And then Shade fell upon centerpiece of the necromancers’ work, pouring every bit of power he could against it.
The pain, when the crystal exploded, was mercifully brief.
XII
The heat ceased abruptly, giving Valea respite. She sensed something else happening, but knew not what.
Then, an incredible urge to drift forward filled her. She did not fight it, the sensation feeling so right. Like a siren’s call, it pulled her on.
As she neared what she felt her goal, Valea noted other presences, as familiar to her as her own family-and yet even more so. She sensed Galani among them. The elf’s spirit comforted her. With the others surrounding her, the enchantress completed the last bit of her journey-and realized that she entered her own body.
But even there she was not alone. She felt the elf maiden and others stay around her, guide her.
And they were
But there was one that did not join, instead receding. That one most of all Valea wanted to stay, but such was not to be. The enchantress felt a caress where her cheek should have been . . . and then the other departed.
Sharissa was gone.
“Cabe! Beware!” Darkhorse immediately enveloped the wizard, possibly the only thing that saved his human friend.
Cabe had only a moment to acknowledge the vision of a very battered Shade falling upon the crystal. Then, the faceless warlock vanished in a searing explosion of energy.
The entrails of the explosion spread throughout the pattern, catching each of the necromancers in turn. They screamed.
But if their suffering was terrible, it compared little to that which filled Ephraim. Set to accept the power offered him by his compatriots, the lead sorcerer now became the ultimate vessel in which the unleashed forces of the pattern spilled.
The ghoulish figure swelled, his armor groaning. His skeletal form burned bright from within. His fleshless jaw swung wide as he cried out the loudest and most agonized.
Ephraim vanished, still wailing. A thin trail of ash was all that marked his memory.
The castle, long held together by the will of the Lords of the Dead, began to crumble. On one side, the ceiling collapsed. The remaining sections groaned ominously.
Still caught, the rest of the Lords continued to scream. The floor containing the pattern began to buckle as it, too, lost cohesion.
“We must flee!” Darkhorse roared.
“Valea! I’ll not leave her body here!”
The eternal snorted. “As if
Now resembling more of a spherical ant than a stallion, Darkhorse maneuvered toward Valea. As they neared, Cabe’s eyes widened.
“She’s breathing! Darkhorse! She’s breathing!”
“And if we would have her continue to do so, we must get her and you out of this abysmal realm swiftly! It seems to be folding in on itself!”
Sure enough, not just the castle but the entire world seemed to be coming apart. The Lords had held their kingdom together and now that they could not, it was decaying rapidly.
Darkhorse scooped up Valea, placing her inside him as he had earlier Cabe. Then, with a prodigious leap, he soared through one falling wall and out into the open.
Beyond the castle, the landscape was still eerily silent. However, Cabe had the odd sensation that there was movement everywhere and all of it fleeing the direction of the Lords’ sanctum.
“They are free!” the eternal rumbled. “The shadows held by the Lords are free!”
And as he said it, they suddenly saw thousands of flittering shapes moving off. Humans, elves, Quel, Seekers, and others undetermined appeared and vanished like flickering dreams. All headed with grateful purpose for some destination far from the collapsing center of the realm.
A screech caused Cabe some fear. Two Necri descended from the grey sky. However, they did not dive in to attack, but rather collided with the ground. As they struck, their bodies scattered like dust. They, too, had been held together by the necromancers’ incredible minds.
“I am going to try to teleport us to the gateway!” the stallion rumbled. “With the Lords in disarray, I should be able to do it!”
Cabe looked back, where a tower from the castle had begun to collapse inward. “Hurry!”
Darkhorse shimmered-and their surroundings altered. Ahead of them, a sliver of blackness appeared. The gateway from this side.
“Hold her tight!”
He need not have said anything to his friend. Cabe would have held on to Valea even at the cost of his own life if it would somehow save her.
The shadow steed leapt at the tear, which suddenly began to fade . . .
Valea screamed.
“Hush,” said a feminine voice. “You’re all right, daughter.”
“Mother?” She looked up to see not just Gwendolyn Bedlam, the elder enchantress a much more glamorous and beautiful version-so Valea thought-of herself, but her father and brother, too. The three stood over her, quite concerned. Valea lay in her plush, down bed back in the Manor. Outside, sunlight shone and birds sang merrily, all as if nothing had ever happened.
“Three days of sleep, that’s the only aftereffect I sense,” Gwen continued, pushing back some of her luxurious, fiery hair. Valea’s mother gazed to the side. “Aurim, see if there’s any sign of Darkhorse returning yet. He said he would be back by now.”
The golden-haired youth, only a few years older than Valea, nodded. “Yes, mother.” He eyed his sibling. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
Valea blinked. Generally when she and Aurim spoke, they argued. This time, however, he had looked so very serious she began to wonder just how close to death she had seemed.
Aurim suddenly vanished, a slight twinkle of stars in his wake. Possibly stronger even than his father, he had, of late, become something of a show-off. Valea found the familiarity of that situation comforting.
Then she remembered the Lords.
Her father must have read her expression. “Their realm was collapsing. Shade-Shade sacrificed himself to destroy their pattern. The chaos incinerated the lead necromancer-”
“Ephraim!” she gasped.
“Ephraim,” Cabe corrected himself. “As to the others, the last I saw, their castle, their world, was crumbling, and they were caught by their own magic. They may be no more, but I’m not counting on it.”
“Whatever the case,” Gwen interjected, “they are nothing to fear, at least for the moment.”
“No.”
But Valea no longer thought of them. She recalled her father’s other words. “Shade-he sacrificed
