As one of the Endarkened was trying to seduce him now. This, then, was their last line of defense, and the most compelling of all.
“Well…” Kellen said, walking closer and lifting the keystone in his hands as if he were about to hand it over. “I guess I really ought to be smart and do what you say.”
The Other-Kellen smiled triumphantly and relaxed, certain of its victory.
“But I’m not going to!” Kellen shouted.
He brought the keystone down—hard—on the doppelganger’s hands. It howled and recoiled as if it had been burned, jerking its hands back from the point of the obelisk.
And in that moment it, … changed.
The Other-Kellen was gone. In its place stood a Demon.
It—she!—towered over Kellen, her wings spread wide. He caught a confused glimpse of blood-red skin, of horns and claws, but she was barely there for an instant, for in the moment that the Demon had released her hold on the obelisk, Kellen slammed the keystone down over the tip of the stone.
The instant the keystone touched the obelisk, the Demon howled in fury and vanished, her cheated rage a whiplash across his senses. For a moment he was blind and deaf in a paroxysm of pain. He cringed, but kept his hands on the stone.
They had not counted on his experience with being lied to. And perhaps that was the greatest weapon Lycaelon Tavadon had given to him.
I know a lie when I hear it, you bastards! His father had lied to him so smoothly, so convincingly, and so often, that Kellen had learned every guise that a lie could wear.
Kellen trembled all over, realizing in that moment how close the Demon had come to winning. But it hadn’t.
Now it was up to him. Despite everything he had already gone through, the hardest part was still to come. Hardest—and yet, in its way, the easiest. All he had to do was surrender—surrender his will, surrender his power, and put it all in the service of something far outside himself.
He took a deep breath and reached down into the keystone with his Wildmage senses, touching the power waiting within. The power leaped toward him eagerly, but Kellen knew that he was not to be its destination. Gently he turned it toward the obelisk.
He felt the obelisk’s resistance, and pushed harder, adding the last of his strength and all of his will to the keystone’s power, forcing the link into being.
One by one, the obelisk’s defenses gave way. Kellen felt the triggering force begin to rush through him and into the obelisk. He kept his palms pressed against the keystone’s sides; without him to maintain the link, the spell would be broken before the Barrier was breached. And all of it—the journey, the others’ sacrifice—would all have been for nothing.
Then, breakthrough.
And his body spasmed, convulsed, his mouth going open in a silent scream.
This was worse than anything he could have imagined. He felt as if he were being struck by bolt after bolt of lightning, a torrent of energy that somehow went on and on and on, searing its way through him.
His hands were burning. Holding the keystone was like clutching red-hot metal fresh from the forge, and there was no respite, no mercy. He could smell the pork-like scent of his cooking flesh, could feel blood running down his wrists as blisters swelled up and burst, and then, in a thunderclap of agony, the fire was everywhere, coursing through his veins with every beat of his heart.
Kellen howled unashamedly, great wracking sobs of hopeless agony. And he held on. Perhaps it was stubbornness, but he had always been stubborn. And he would not give the Demons this victory.
Then came a single thought, emerging through the fire and the pain.
I’m going to die.
He realized at that moment that this was the price of the spell, the rest of the cost. It must be. A Wildmage’s life, Idalia must have known when she created the spell that the price of casting it would be the life
