seal open?” he asked. His vision was blurry at best. He could barely make out the structure on the lawn.
“Can you see where they burned the symbols in the grass?” Phen asked.
The marks were nearer to the door, and Hyden could see the shape. He recognized the ancient symbol that was burned inside the circle. He had eradicated a more permanent version of it in the Dragon’s Spire, so that Mikahl could kill Pael. “Here,” he grunted, pulling Loak’s ring from his finger. “Put it on. Go see if you can help Mikahl and the Princess.”
Phen took the ring and watched as Hyden leaned heavily on the wall. He looked like he had sweated all the liquid from his body, as if his eyes were sinking away. Outside, the priests were beginning to chant. Phen gave Hyden a quick hug then wiped the tears from his eyes. He wanted to speak, to say goodbye or something, anything, but no words would come.
Hyden forced a smile. “Put it on, Phen,” he said weakly. “Be sure and destroy the skull after.”
“After what?” Phen asked, as he faded from sight.
“You’ll know when it’s time.” A tremor shook Hyden. “When she… she comes for you, tell her what hap… happened to me. Now go. Ta… take care of Talon.”
Hyden didn’t wait for Phen to respond. He shoved Phen’s invisible body gently out the door and quietly latched it closed behind him.
Phen had no idea what ‘she’ Hyden was talking about. Hyden was obviously feeling the effects of the poison and not thinking clearly. Hyden was about to die. Phen knew he would never be able to laugh or joke with him again. Phen was so overcome with grief that he had to fight to keep from sobbing out loud. He couldn’t…
A deep whooshing sound blasted from somewhere under the seal. It was so deep and powerful that it startled Phen out of his grief. The rush of fear-driven anxiety hurried his pace across the garden. Just as they had before, the red priests had moved the skull from its place atop the podium to a small altar built at one end of the symbol they’d burned into the lawn. The skull sat so that its wicked jade eyes looked over the place where the world would soon fade away into blackness.
Phen noticed that Shaella’s statues had taken up new positions. He hadn’t seen them move. Two of them now stood guard on each side of the short set of wooden steps that led up into the makeshift temple. He had no choice but to go between them. He glanced at Shaella as he passed her. She was fidgety, yet focused. Her eyes were glued to the place where Gerard had appeared before. Just as Phen started into the gazebo the whooshing sound came again, only this time it took on a deep thumping that pulsed in time with the diminished harmony the priests were chanting. He knew he had to hurry. He could feel the static drawing in.
He didn’t want to have to tangle with the marble guardians. He had no idea how formidable they were, but he was sure that they were plenty capable of stopping a terrified boy from getting by if they had to.
Remembering that Spike was about, he called to his familiar. The lyna shot toward him across the yard like a startled rabbit. It bounded up into the gazebo without a thought. Phen watched the statues carefully, but saw nothing, not even the slightest of flinches. Through Spike’s eyes, he looked about the inside of the structure and saw that the walls were nothing more than heavy curtains. If he had to, he could get out through the seams where they overlapped. Mikahl and Rosa were lying as still as the statues that were guarding them. A shining glint on the altar caught the lyna’s eye. It was the tip of a blade. Phen hoped that it was Ironspike. Hyden had told him once that all of King Mikahl’s powers were held in the blade. If Mikahl ever lost it, or dropped it, he would be vulnerable. Hyden explained that this was why the High King trained so rigorously and regularly with it.
Phen heard Shaella gasp and glanced back toward the seal.
It was opening. He had to hurry.
He took a deep breath and charged between the statues. He didn’t look back. If he had, he would have been frozen with fear. Both marble guardians were starting in right behind him.
Phen saw that it was Ironspike on the altar. He snatched it and started over to where Mikahl lay beside the Princess. The weight of the sword caused him to drop it when its blade slid off of the altar. It hung in the satiny tablecloth that was draped over the table. Phen grabbed that and pulled a candelabra and a statue onto the floor with a clatter. The first marble guard that came in charged at Phen as if it could see him, but it got tangled in the tablecloth and fell face first. Its reaching hand fell just short of Phen’s ankle. The second one stumbled over the first, buying Phen just enough time to boot the sword against Mikahl and wrap the High King’s hand around the hilt.
Phen wasn’t sure what he hoped would happen, but he’d expected more than nothing. His heart sank. It would apparently take more than just the sword to pull Mikahl out of the spell he was under. Phen looked back, and one of the guardians was on him. He wasn’t sure what happened next, but he knew that Ironspike’s blade flickered blue for a moment. He dove over the wooden rail of the gazebo into the drapery that hung there. His weight tore the heavy cloth from its hangers and he fell the few feet to the ground on the back side of the building.
Thinking that the stone-formed guard was right on his heels, Phen rolled to his feet quickly. He ran to a place a few dozen feet behind Queen Shaella. There he began silently reciting the words to the spell he would use to destroy the skull.
It was getting darker, but the hole in the world was far blacker then any Westland night had ever been. Already the seal was opened wide, and over the physical roar of power it caused, Phen could hear something coming up from within.
Mikahl felt the rush of Ironspike’s magic. It didn’t come on like a symphonic tidal wave this time. The sound came slower, the trickle of whistled melody, an echo of a reverberation that was eventually joined by another strand of audible power, and then another. Slowly it worked its way around and through the spell that was cast on him. The thick muck he felt trapped in gave way to a more viscous resistance. Then gradually he was able to move and stretch his limbs.
The first thing he did was raise the blade up into the strange white-painted man that was charging over him. Even when he’d been spelled, he could see. Knowing that Phen had the ring that made him invisible, he assumed that it was Phen who’d moved his sword across the floor and put it in his hand. The man over him wasn’t a man at all, he found, when his blade sent a showering of stone chips across his face. The sword cleaved through a stone leg, though, leaving the heavy granite limb to crash into his body. The rest of the animated statue crumbled into gravel as it fell.
Mikahl shoved the leg away and sat up. Another of the stone men was untangling itself from an overturned table and cloth. Mikahl wasted no time. He sat up and lunged with his sword so that its tip punctured the marble man’s chest. He saw his stupidity as the man cracked apart and began to crumble over them. He had to roll and crawl over the limp form of Princess Rosa to keep the heavy chunks of stone from bashing into her delicate body. Luckily, the back of his head and shoulders took the brunt of the damage.
A few heartbeats later, Mikahl started down the wooden steps of the gazebo only to see the thing that was once Gerard Skyler standing over a black hole in the lawn. Mikahl saw the back of Shaella’s half-scorched head reflecting the flickering torch flames, just as two more of the marble guardians came closing in on him from either side. The eyes of the beast in the hole locked onto his. He felt a chill tear through him when the striking resemblance to Hyden registered in his brain. Shaella whirled on him as well, with the makings of a spell already on her lips.
It was all Mikahl could do to call Ironspike’s magical shield forth from its symphony as he spun with his blade extended to slice a complete circle around him. Both of the marble guardians shattered at the sword’s touch. Then a hot crimson blast shot forth from Shaella’s hands hitting his crackling blue shield in an explosion of prismatic light. But the concussion of raw power that Gerard sent hurling at him was far more potent. Mikahl went flinging backwards through the gazebo and right out the other side of the structure. He came to a tumbling halt on the lawn on the other side, so entangled in drapery that he had to fight just to extend his legs.
“Gerard,” a weak voice called out from behind the thing standing in the seal. It was Hyden. “What have you done to yourself?” he asked. The tears flowing from his eyes were bloody. Inside the thick plated body of the thing before him, he could plainly see his little brother, and the idea of it ripped at his heart like a jagged claw.
