They followed my directions, descending to where I’d been trapped as a boy and had nearly gone insane. Shadea froze as we entered the room, staring at the black stone ceiling tapering up into darkness. Something like astonishment, then anger flickered across her face and I thought I caught her mouthing Byzant’s name. She hurried us onwards.
After a while she bid us hold at a rockfall. “I sense the corruption of blood sorcery beyond.” She waved a hand and the rock rippled and receded like water, revealing a large and familiar cavern whose walls bore recent scars inflicted by superheated rock and flame.
The pyromancers sent fizzing globes of fire soaring across the chamber to reveal a huge empty pit in the centre. Instead of the lake of blood and the fleshy abomination there were now only shallow dregs of black water and a stained lip of crusty brown. The entire far wall had collapsed into a mess of shattered bone and rubble, a hole knocked through to remove the thing in the lake and then resealed. Even with the sanctor shutting down my Gift I could feel a miasma of foul magic tingling against my skin. The magi all looked decidedly queasy. Maybe having a sanctor around to shut down my Gift did have some benefits.
“Is this the location?” Cillian asked.
I nodded.
Shadea bent down and ran two fingers across the lip of the pit. She rubbed the wetness into her fingers for a few seconds, lifted them to her nose and took a sniff, then licked them. Her face twisted like she’d bitten into a lemon. She spat into a kerchief. “Residue of blood sorcery,” she said as the cloth incinerated in her hand. She looked at me with perhaps a little less distaste as she wiped her fingers. “The strongest I have ever encountered, with traces of the Gifts of many individuals, which partially verifies his story of mageblood.” She turned to me. “Show me where you entered the cavern.”
I raised an eyebrow, glanced at the guards holding me in place.
“Oh, very well,” Cillian said. “Let him loose, but stay close. Do not let him touch your skin.” Even with the sanctor shadowing me they were taking no risks.
The iron grip of the guards vanished. I cricked my neck and stretched manacled arms, pointed over at a small rubble choked alcove. “I entered from there.”
Shadea looked thoughtful. “You fought this blood sorcerer, you say? A pyromancer magus?” She studied the heat-scarred walls and traced the origin of the conflagration, fixing on the circle of melted stone down by the edge of the lake where the hooded magus had been standing. “Tell me then, how exactly did you fight him from all the way over there?”
It was difficult to keep the sudden stress from my face. I had two choices: to reveal the true extent of my swollen powers, or to lie. I chose a half-truth, the very best of lies, just enough of the truth to make it believable.
“Harailt wasn’t alone,” I said. “He had four men with him. Disciples or apprentices all with bodily corruption. I grabbed one of them and send him into a killing frenzy.” I talked them through a revised version of the events up until the shard beasts attacked and the tunnel collapsed as I fled.
One of the pyromancers looked at Cillian curiously. “Shard beasts?”
“Daemons summoned from a strange realm of living crystal,” she replied. “Scant knowledge of them exists, mostly references from Archmagus Byzant’s personal library.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “A curious connection, since Edrin was once a favoured pupil of Archmagus Byzant.”
I snorted. “Yes, and what of it? Aside from yourself, Edell, Ailidh, and a half dozen others also had personal tuition from Byzant. That insinuation isn’t worth the spit I’d waste on it. Guess who else Byzant taught? Harailt.”
A shiver rippled through me as the air currents changed and swirled across my hair and skin. Something was moving overhead, something big. I peered up into the gloom where only the tips of stalactites were visible. A glint in the dark caught my eye, then another. Dull splodges of colour began pulsing into life all across the ceiling. Not something big – lots of things.
“Shard beasts!” I shouted, preparing to grab a lantern and hobble to freedom while the magi were distracted.
Dozens of crystalline spiders clittered and clattered down the stalactites, glittering like grotesque jewels. If I hadn’t seen the thing in the lake I wouldn’t have believed it was possible for one man to tear so many daemons from the Far Realms. This was unheard of outside of peasants’ wild tales told in dingy taverns by firelight. How were they even alive? Daemons died in Setharis, everybody knew that. Much like the shadow cats then.
“Form a circle,” Shadea barked. Martain dragged me back and the magi formed a defensive ring a safe distance outside of the sanctor’s disabling effects. Palpable auras of power rippled up around them and the air vibrated. The guards drew short swords and planted themselves on either side of me. They swore like sailors – displaying some shred of personality at last – but didn’t show the fear normal people would have when confronted by such creatures. The sanctor remained behind me, no doubt intending to use me as a meat shield.
I tried to slip my hands from the manacles. “Let me free, damn you.”
The sharp point of Martain’s blade pressed into my back. “That will not be necessary.”
As the shard beasts advanced into our light they began moving faster. Bulbous obsidian eyes glistened as they fixed on us. They dropped, flipping in mid-air, knife-legs stabbing down at our heads.
Martain shoved me to the ground. The guards dropped with me. A deafening concussion thumped me on the back, searing my skin. I lifted my head, the only sound a ringing in my ears. Most of the shard beasts had been flung across the cavern by a pyromancer’s explosion but were already righting themselves and scurrying back. A good dozen of the things had darted through the flames and were now waging silent battle amidst the smoke, rearing and slashing razor limbs at Eva.
The knight slammed her fist through the bulbous abdomen of one beast, shattering it in a spray of glittering dust and glowing fluids. She tossed it aside and caught another mid-leap, knife-legs splayed to envelop her. Jagged crystal tore through leather and chain, but left only shallow scratches on skin gone hard as steel. Her mouth twisted into a savage grin as she crushed the creature between her hands. Two dead in two seconds. She drew her knife and set to work like a demigod of battle, destroying everything before her. This was the girl I had lied to and flirted with? Shite.
My hearing returned as Shadea and Cillian loosed volleys of crackling incandescent energy into the things, leaving twitching and jerking husks of blackened crystal.
The pyromancers spat roaring jets of flame across the cavern. Shard beasts glowed red hot and squealed, a teeth-on-edge sound like tearing metal. Cillian lifted her hand, sucking moisture from air and rock and drawing up the dregs of the lake to form a wall of water. With a wave the wall hammered into the super-heated daemons. They shattered like dropped glass and clouds of steam billowed upwards. Only a few of the daemons were left, and those were cracked and leaking stinking luminous liquids.
One last, enormous, spider dropped from the ceiling to land directly in front of Cillian. It reared, limbs slicing at her face. She ducked, quickly backed away and created a globe of black water around the daemon, hiding it from sight. Razored limbs burst from the sphere, thrashing as it lurched this way and that, blindly hunting its tormentor. Then it crashed to the floor and stopped moving.
“Impressive,” Shadea said. A compliment from her was rarer than diamond.
“Byzant’s records state that shard beasts breathe light instead of air,” Cillian said. “It is likely they were left as a trap and roused from hibernation by our lanterns.” The globe fell apart, splashed down and flooded back into the pit. Shadea loosed a lash of energy that cleaved the larger creature in two. The cavern trembled, followed by the unseen crack and tumble of a few rocks falling near the far wall.