'It's a ghost!' shouted one of the priests.
'An invisible wizard in ghostform,' corrected a mage. She attempted a spell to counter Vhostym's incorporeality. It failed.
As one, the guardsmen rushed in Vhostym's direction, blades bare, snarls on their faces. Unlike the mages, they could not see him. Still they charged.
Vhostym finished his spell, adding a final vocalization that allowed him to sculpt the spell's effect around his person. When he pronounced the final syllable and held forth his hand, four fist-sized spheres of superheated, glowing rock flew forth. Two he directed past the charging soldiers at Olma, and one each he directed at the two wizards who had fired their wands at him.
The spheres slammed into their targets, knocked them from their feet, and exploded into an inferno of red flames that blanketed the entire sanctum in fire. The explosions overlapped, intensifying the heat. Soldiers, priests, and mages burned in the conflagration. Their screams lasted only moments.
As Vhostym had intended when he sculpted his spell, the explosions spared the space in which he floated. Clouds of flame circled around him but he stood untouched in the eye of the inferno. Burning men staggered through the island he had created, fell over, and died. Black smoke poured from their corpses.
Then it was over.
Vhostym surveyed the smoky room.
The soldiers' bodies were so consumed by the flames that they were barely recognizable as men. They lay curled on the floor before him, lips burned away to reveal blackened teeth. The skeletons looked like little more than piles of charred sticks. The protective spells on the wizards and priests had shielded them from some of the damage but the inferno had been so intense that it had overcome even their defensive wards. Almost all of them lay prone, motionless. Only the chest of Olma rose and fell, and her breathing sounded as labored as Vhostym's.
The pedestal, tiles, and murals depicting Cyric or his iconography had been burned away or reduced to shapeless chunks. The temple was Cyric's no more. It was Vhostym's.
He floated over to Olma, looked down on her blackened face, the charred, tangled mass of her hair. One of the priestess's eyes was little more than a seared hole, but the other stared out from the charred ruin of its socket. It focused on Vhostym, saw him.
'What are you?' the priestess whispered. 'Why have you done this?'
Vhostym frowned. Humans, more than any race he had encountered in his travels, always sought to know why things occurred.
He answered, There is no reason that you would understand. And I am what I am.
The priestess's lips peeled back in a snarl. 'I go to death with the Dark Sun's praises on my lips.'
Thank him for providing me with what I needed, Vhostym answered.
He dispelled the illusion around the void orb and summoned the black sphere to his side. Olma's eye twitched when she saw it.
Vhostym caused it to touch her. A green outline flared around her and she turned to dust. She went to her death not with praises on her lips but with fear in her eyes.
Vhostym floated back through the temple and caused the void orb to touch all of the corpses, sparing only their magical trinkets. He collected the magical paraphernalia of the tower's defenders and piled it in one of the side bedchambers. He did not know what he would do with it, but it seemed a waste to destroy it.
After a short time, nothing remained of the former occupants of the temple but dust. There would be no bodies for Blackwill to resurrect and question. In fact, there would be no temple at all.
CHAPTER 10
The intensity of the sensations and images issuing from the Source lessened. Ssessimyth's tentacles spasmed slightly in perturbation. The ruins in which he nested shifted. Stone grated against stone. The whole vibrated above him. His startled minions communicated their pleasure and terror to one another.
Ssessimyth sensed the Source awakening from its long sleep. Something on the surface had drawn its interest. It was trying to climb out of its torpor.
Ssessimyth linked his mind to the Source's external perception and sent his consciousness surfaceward. The projection did not allow him to see images or hear sounds so much as it empowered him directly to perceive facts.
He sensed a calm sea, and in the distance, a ship. Some of the surface dwellers aboard had sensitivity to the Source's emanations, though they had not yet sensed them. The Source, even in sleep, must have perceived the sensitivity. The presence of other creatures with mental powers was drawing it up from sleep, drawing its attention from Ssessimyth.
Anger surged in Ssessimyth, ire that a creature other than him might dare draw on the bliss of the Source. It was his, and his alone.
He tried to lull the Source back into its sleep, failed, then struggled to force the Source to turn its attention fully to him. The Source resisted. Ssessimyth still perceived the images and sensations that he wished, but the experience paled in intensity from that to which he had become accustomed. He was left as little more than an observer, when he long ago had grown addicted to being a participant.
His tentacles spasmed again, shaking loose a rain of unstable stone and particles. The call went out among his minions for one of the priests to come forth and interpret Ssessimyth's movements.
Ssessimyth controlled his anger. Still drinking the mind of the Source, he called upon a power innate to those of his kind, something he had not done in decades.
A pulse of power went forth from him, powered by his will, and raced for the surface. Even if he could not fully control the Source, he could at least destroy those who were trying to share it with him. Then the Source would again be his alone and he could sleep at the bottom of the sea and dream lives and worlds.
Far above him, he knew that his magical power was darkening the sky, summoning the wind. Probably the sea already was beginning to surge. He used the Source's power to send a mental projection to the priests of his minions, ordering them to take to the surface and kill the interlopers. If the storm did not force the ship back or sink it, his minions would kill everyone aboard.
Within moments he sensed the urgent, excited preparations of his minions as they organized their warbands. He returned his attention to the Source and tried to lose himself in the pale images it showed him.
Demon Binder cut through the sea. With her smaller topsails unfurled over the mainsails and the elementals pulling her through the water, she fairly skipped over the waves. Hours passed. The day dawned and moved toward welcome night and still those on board had seen no sign of the slaadi's ship.
Magadon used the visual leech from time to time to ensure that the slaadi were still sailing west. They were. The slaadi's ship had only the wind to propel it. Cale knew Demon Binder had to be gaining.
As dusk fell, darkness gathered in the sky ahead. Cale saw it for what it was: a thunderhead as black as a demon's soul. It looked as though a titan had charred the clouds. Lightning split the cloudbanks. The light from the setting sun caught the moisture in the air before the storm and created an arc of color that reached across the sky. The crew of Demon Binder seemed to regard it as an ill omen. Under the thunderhead, the air was hazy with rain.
The crew stopped for a moment in their work and all eyes looked westward, to the gathering storm. Nervous mutters sounded across the deck.
Captain Evrel said, 'A colored arc at sea is the bridge between us and the Stormlord's realm. And that looks to be enough of a storm that Talos would take a father's pride in it.'
Magadon, standing near the captain on the forecastle and eyeing the clouds, said, 'I do not think it is natural. It gathers too fast.'
'The slaadi?' Jak asked, speaking his thoughts aloud.
Evrel had the sense to pretend he had not heard, or at least had the sense to ask no questions.
