Vanderjack winced. Why isn’t Rivven doing anything about this? he wondered. He took another step and watched as all of the myriad threads from the arena floor made contact with the fetch. It was becoming harder to look at Cazuvel, with all of the violent light radiating out from him. He looked away, toward the palace of the khan. She wasn’t standing there on her balcony anymore. Where had she gone?
The crowd was fleeing again. There was no more cheering, not for the man who had survived the games and the dragonne, nor for Cazuvel. All Vanderjack could hear from the stands was screaming, yelling, people climbing up the benches, scrambling to get to the exits.
“The fetch has expanded upon the basic theories that Cazuvel had once used to create the painting,” said the Philosopher.
“Souls as templates … he’s going to bring more fetches through those portals. Bring them through and into the bodies of the dead. You need to do something quickly!”
Vanderjack would have rolled his eyes if one eye hadn’t swollen almost completely shut and the other wasn’t streaming with tears from the unceasing light. The hand gripping the cage was starting to blister, and the energy flooding into him didn’t feel right anymore. It felt unnatural. He was using the fetch’s own ritual to keep himself going-the very power of the Abyss.
“Gredchen!” Vanderjack shouted above the roar of the magical storm in the cage. He could see her face. She didn’t seem conscious. The ribbons of energy and light leaping from her to the sword and the painting at the other end of the cage formed a rippling afterimage of her, a half-real image that had begun to shift from her body toward the center of the storm.
Vanderjack reached up, felt Gredchen’s wrists, and found that they were securely manacled. The only thing that was close at hand that might cut through those bonds and free Gredchen was his sword, and that meant he would have to climb up on top of the cage and pull it free.
Cazuvel had been so caught up in his necromancy, and so dismissive of Vanderjack, that he hadn’t registered the sellsword moving around the cage toward Gredchen. However, since the web of souls was in place, the fetch turned to his hapless foe and laughed. “Are you still alive, Ergothian? I should take pity on you-put you out of your misery.”
“About time too,” muttered Vanderjack, seeing a series of iron rungs in the cage beside Gredchen. It appeared to be fashioned in such a way as to grant access to the roof of the cage, and that’s where he needed to be. “What are you trying to do with the ugly woman, by the way?”
“I admire your ability to continue with these pointless jokes as you face death,” Cazuvel said. “Gredchen here is the result of the true Cazuvel’s early experimentation with soul magic. While flawed, she is nevertheless living proof that his theories were viable. In fact, had he not overreached his own abilities when plumbing the depths of this magic, he might have perfected the immortality of body and spirit.”
That was interesting-and Vanderjack wouldn’t mind prolonging the discussion with a fiend from the Abyss about one of Rivven Cairn’s pet Black Robes. Keep the braggart talking. Yes, that was the plan, such as it was.
“I have the ghost of the Cook to thank for reminding me of that experiment.” Cazuvel smiled, gathering power in his palm, holding it there, nurturing it, as if biding his time before delivering the sellsword’s fiery end.
“As I unravel the magical bonds that secured the life force of the baron’s daughter in this painting, bonds secured by energies wrought from the Abyss, I shall replace the baron’s daughter with my own spirit. Then
As Vanderjack thrust his hand into one of the pockets sewn into his trews, his fingers closed around the thing he was frantically looking for. He coughed again and used the wracking motion to fall against the cage near Gredchen.
“Which reminds me. Where is my dear highmaster?”
“I really don’t know,” said Vanderjack. “But I think I’ll send her a message.” He pulled his hand from his pocket and, thrusting both arms into the cage on either side of Gredchen, produced the small parcel Rivven had given him. It was the talisman for sending the mage’s body back to Rivven after Vanderjack had killed him. Well, that might not happen, but Vanderjack had a more immediate use for it. If only he could block out the pain burning his arms, searing his skin, setting the sleeves of his tunic on fire.
Cazuvel’s eyes widened and he drew his hands back, focusing the power of the cage through them. Vanderjack was faster. He slipped the parcel on its thong around Gredchen’s neck, even as the parcel itself glowed with the heat of the eldritch fires within the cage. He fell back and allowed himself a scream, his arms smoking.
Cazuvel roared in anger, unleashing the lightning bolt he’d stored up, and watched it streak into Vanderjack, an Abyssal lightning that blew the sellsword back to the very edge of the platform. But it was too late. A burning smell like roasting cinnamon wafted up from the cage.
Vanderjack lay on his stomach, feeling all but dead. He could barely to look up to see that Gredchen had vanished. The raging vortex of soul and planar energy within the cage had lost one of its vital elements.
Cazuvel shrieked and was lost in a towering column of nightmarish light, fire, and darkness. The vortex exploded upward, straight up into the sky, a tornadic firestorm that carried the too-mortal body of the fetch up as it went. Cazuvel spun about, end over end, screaming, before being torn apart by the winds of the Abyss.
“That’s what I think of your army,” Vanderjack whispered before passing out.
Rivven spoke the words in her mind.
The wind increased briefly, heralding the great red wyrm’s arrival. His wings buffeted Rivven as he descended, dropping to just below the balcony level. The highmaster made sure her sword was secure on her back, adjusted her knee-high boots, and leaped over the railing onto the dragon saddle.
She looked down at the arena and saw Vanderjack hugging the cage, silhouetted by the blinding blue- orange light churning around within it. She saw the wizard, threads of magical power extending from almost a hundred small blue and orange points of light in the arena. She shifted her vision magically with a spoken word, expanding her senses to penetrate into the eldritch realms.
“By the Dark Queen, he’s done it,” she whispered.
“Are we going anywhere in particular?” asked the dragon. “Or am I just hovering here to give you a better view?”
“Take me down there. I have a feeling Vanderjack’s about to die, so I need to-”
“Rivven Cairn!” cried a familiar voice.
She turned in her saddle, looking up to the left. “Theodenes? Are you insane? Get your flying cat out of the way of my dragon, or I’ll personally give the order for him to burn you out of the sky.”
“How much do you know, Rivven?” the gnome said defiantly. He was astride Star, who had flown up and in front of Cear, as brazen as his scales. “About this. How much did you know before today?”
Rivven looked down at the battle then back at the gnome. “Are you asking me about the painting? I knew all about it, of course. Well, Cazuvel being an imposter, that was new to me, but I can adapt.”
“You knew who Gredchen really was,” the gnome said. “That she and the painting …”
“Yes, yes. The painting was crafted by Cazuvel to preserve the baron’s only daughter, but she died anyway. So I had Cazuvel use the painting to bring the daughter back, and Gredchen was the result. I’ve kept the painting ever since.”
“And you promised the baron that one day, if he kept funneling you information about the Solamnic Knights, you’d have your wizard fix everything. He’d get his real daughter back, not an ugly copy.”
Rivven sat up a little straighter in the saddle. “That was the deal. Now if you’re through with this line of investigation, I’ve got a precariously balanced portal to the Abyss to take off the hands of a demonic wizard.”
“That’s all I needed to know,” said Theodenes. “Star? Did the ghosts get all of that?”
The dragonne rumbled. “Yes,” he said. “They will pass this information to Etharion, who is watching over Vanderjack.”
“Ghosts?” asked Rivven with a frown. “What ghosts?”
The gnome smiled. “Vanderjack’s sword is haunted,” he said. “Didn’t you know that? Seven ghosts, always
