So turn invisible.
Thorn shook her head. Not all of us are master sorcerers. I drew on all the energy I could muster to hide our tracks. If this is the end, I think surprise and confusion are our best weapons. She pointed to the ring on her left hand. Time to put these to work.
Lharen nodded. Night’s shadow.
As far down the corridor as possible. Mayne, take point and left. I’ll follow. Lharen, stay back. Cover if you can, but we can’t risk you getting caught in the fire.
She could feel Lharen’s reluctance. He hated staying back when she was in danger. But his mystical skills were the key to accomplishing their mission. Thorn and Mayne were expendable, but Lharen needed to reach the target alive.
Mayne caught Thorn’s eye and raised his arm. A rectangle of shimmering energy appeared across his forearm, a shield almost as wide as the passage itself.
Thorn reached out for Lharen with her thoughts. Now.
Stepping out from the crates, Lharen swept his hand toward the hallway. “Mabar asht tol!” he said, flexing his fingers in an intricate pattern. A bolt of energy flowed from his hand, a narrow column of dark mist that moved with astonishing speed. The murky beam expanded as it moved forward, filling the corridor entirely.
Mayne charged, his shield raised in front of him. Thorn was right behind him.
She stepped into the shadows, and everything went black. But only for a moment. The ring on her finger was enchanted to let her eyes pierce the dark, and even as she pressed forward, her surroundings snapped back into view, painted in stark shades of black and white.
She felt a burst of heat, and Mayne staggered as something struck his shield. But the guards ahead were casting blind. They couldn’t see what was coming.
Mayne slammed into the soldier standing in the archway ahead, knocking him back and to the side. Thorn slipped in behind him. The second knight had raised his wand and was tracking Mayne’s movements, following the sounds of battle. Thorn knocked the wand from his hand and followed the blow with a quick thrust at his throat. She didn’t expect it to be that easy, and it wasn’t; the soldier was fast and called out a word of shielding the instant his wand slipped from his grasp. Thorn’s dagger flew back from his neck, and it was all she could do to keep hold of it. He made a sharp gesture with his hand. A wind rose in the room, a gale that pounded into Thorn, pushing her back from her foe.
No time to waste. The soldiers were blind, but there was no knowing what alarms or wards they could activate. The knight raised his hand to cast another spell, and Thorn threw her dagger. The blade lanced straight through his outstretched palm, the point driving through his hand and pinning it to his chest. Hardly a lethal blow, but enough to cause him to choke on his spell.
He reached up with his good hand, but Thorn was on him. She drove her elbow into his chest, felt ribs crack, then slammed the heel of her hand against his nose. He fell to his knees, but Thorn couldn’t afford to give him a moment’s respite. Another blow sent him tumbling to the floor. She pulled her dagger free from his maimed hand and made a certain end of him.
An awful cry came from behind her, along with the foul stench of burning flesh and hair. Thorn turned in time to see the second guard collapse, struggling to put out the flames that had engulfed his head.
Lharen stepped out of the tunnel, flexing his fingers. “Arcanix be damned. When it comes to the mystic arts, no one beats a Brelish mage.”
“Really?” Mayne said. “So I suppose you could build that?”
There was no question as to what Mayne was talking about. They had come in search of the arcane core, and now it lay before them. It was a massive pillar of twisted metal, pipes of mithral, silver, and adamantine coiled around the darkwood core like steel serpents twisting around the trunk of a tree. Glowing runes covered the exposed wood, and Thorn could feel the magical energies shift in the room as the sigils pulsed and flickered.
“Sovereigns and Six…” Thorn murmured.
It wasn’t the size of the pillar that brought on the curse, nor the sensation of power tingling against her skin. It was the glittering wall surrounding the column, a tornado formed from shards of glass.
“What is it?”
“Dragonshards,” Lharen breathed. “The balance is amazing. Khyber, Siberys, Eberron-thousands, each one linked directly to the power of the core.”
“Lovely,” Thorn said. “Can we destroy it?”
Lharen shook his head. “I wasn’t expecting this. Stand back.” He raised his hands and whispered in an ancient tongue. Light and heat filled the air, a brilliant burst of eldritch power that flowed from Lharen and played across the stones… with no effect at all. Lharen maintained the mystic barrage for ten seconds before he had to stop, gasping for breath. “It’s as I feared. The shards will absorb any energy I throw at them. The ritual I’ve prepared can’t penetrate it.”
“There’s got to be something we can do,” Mayne said.
Lharen stared into the tower of glittering stones then sighed. “There is. Mayne, I’ll need your shield. And your cloak. Is it still charged?”
“A few moments left, no more,” Mayne said, unpinning the cloak and pulling off the bracer that held his mystic shield. “What do you have in mind?”
“The shards protect the core. So I’m going to have to get through the shards.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Thorn said, grabbing Lharen’s arm. “You’ll be torn apart.”
“Mayne’s cloak will provide me with a few moments of protection, and the shield will help.” Lharen grimaced. “I don’t expect to walk away from this. But I’ve beaten the odds before. Perhaps I’ll do it again-if not, I’ll finally pay my debt to the Keeper.”
“There’s got to be another way.”
Lharen pulled free from Thorn’s grip. “There’s no time for this, Nyrielle! Reinforcements will be here soon. It’s the job. Breland has to come first.”
Thorn still wasn’t convinced. “If I came alongside you, if I held the shield…”
“Then we’d both die. There’s no time for this. We need to act now.”
Thorn bit back her words. He was right. They were agents of the King’s Citadel; they’d all sworn to lay down their lives in the service of Breland. But walking into a wall of razors… she took his hand again, gently this time. “This will not be forgotten,” she said.
“I doubt you’ll get the bards singing of it, unless you want to start the war anew,” Lharen said. He was right, of course; none of their work could ever be known beyond the Citadel. Still, he smiled as he held her hand. “You remember. You survive this. That will be enough.”
He pulled free of the others and activated Mayne’s shield. Raising the hood of his cloak and wrapping the garment around his body, he took a deep breath and ran towards the whirling shards.
Rattling thunder filled the room, the sound of shards smashing and shattering against his shield. The fabric of Lharen’s cloak rippled, but its defensive enchantment was holding. Lharen was slowly pushing his way through the storm, and the charm repelled the stones before they could harm him.
He was almost through the barrier when the enchantment broke.
Lharen shuddered as the shards slammed into him. He howled, and he was surrounded in a bloody mist. The sound was a knife in Thorn’s heart. She’d told the truth when she had told Fileon that the scream still haunted her; she’d simply lied about its source.
And then he was through. He collapsed against the pillar, blood seeping through the torn cloak.
Thorn came as close to the barrier as she dared. “Lharen?”
The sorcerer coughed, blood spraying across the core, and Thorn thought he would fall. But he wrapped his fingers around a mithral tube and pulled himself to his full height. “I’ll survive,” he said then coughed again. He fumbled in his satchel and pulled a scroll from its steel case. “Long enough. Now move away.”
Lharen began the ritual as Thorn joined Mayne by the tunnel mouth. Blood dripped onto the parchment as he spoke, but Lharen’s voice never faltered. The words on the scroll burst into iridescent flame, a cold fire that flowed up Lharen’s arm. His voice grew stronger and deeper as the flames surrounded him. The scroll dissolved into ash and silver dust; the blaze flowed up along Lharen’s left arm and was gone.
Lharen dropped to his knees, but a handprint remained where he’d touched the core-a hand of fire, growing brighter with each moment that passed.
