He ran several paces, leapt from the parapet, vaulted onto the head of the great mage. His right leg snapped from the impact, just below the knee.
He bore the pain, slammed his warhammer into the mage’s sweet triangle. He feared that for such a huge monster, the blade itself was too short. He reversed the weapon and plunged the handle into the hole as if it were a lance.
She seemed unaffected by the wound. The mage shook her head and tossed him. Even with all his metabolism, all his stamina, Raj Ahten’s leg had not yet healed when he slammed painfully to the ground.
The Seal of Desolation itself looked to be made of molten glass, but felt as solid as stone. The mucilage of the glue mums had hardened into knobby shapes. Ghost fires in shades of deepest purple flickered through the thing, bursting out in actinic flashes. A sorcerous smoke filled the room.
The Rune of Desolation was powerful.
Raj Ahten swung his hammer, broke off a knob. A blinding flash of white light burst from the broken rune.
The great mage wheeled to confront him. Gree flew up from her bloated body in a swarm, and her staff blazed a sickly yellow.
Raj Ahten leapt aside as a bolt of pure night shot from the staff. It slammed into the rune where he’d stood, demolishing a wide swath.
The rune simply shattered. A scarlet sorceress caught in the blast hissed in agony, was bowled over on her side. The left half of her body had disintegrated or been blown away, as if it had been eaten by acid.
Raj Ahten dared not give the mage time for a second attack. He raced across the Rune of Desolation, darting left and right.
The huge mage reared back in alarm.
She stood a full six feet taller than the monster at Carris. Never in legend had a reaver grown to such a size. Surely, he told himself, this is the great Lord of the Underworld.
He would never be able to leap high enough to slam his hammer into her massive brain, and she had the wisdom to close her mouth so that he could not strike up through the palate.
His best target was the soft spot of her thorax, but he would have preferred a lance to pierce so deeply.
He reversed his warhammer. The handle was nearly six feet long. With his endowments of brawn, it was no great feat to leap high in the air. He hurled the hammer with all his might, wrenching his shoulder from its socket as he did.
The warhammer buried itself into the monster’s thorax, and the fell mage reared higher, trying to escape. Raj Ahten hit the ground, scurried out of danger.
The fell mage threw down her staff, reached up with her huge clumsy paws and began trying to yank the warhammer out. She got it between two claws, thrust it away from her. It rang against the roof, then clattered a dozen yards off.
She reached for her staff. Raj Ahten lunged for his warhammer.
He had not struck deeply enough. A sound hit to the thorax should have caused her to die almost instantly, similar to a blow to a man’s kidneys.
All around, scarlet sorceresses rushed to join the fray. The great mage lowered her head and charged him, gaping her jaws wide at Raj Ahten.
That was what he needed. He gripped his warhammer, and vaulted into her mouth. The dry, raspy surface of her tongue felt as if it were made of gravel.
Her jaws snapped closed around him, and she tilted her head back in an attempt to swallow. He jumped, plunging the warhammer deep into her soft palate, raking a long gash.
He pulled out the hammer in a rain of gore. Blood and brains cascaded down, spattering.
The fell mage staggered a few feet, wobbled.
Raj Ahten slammed has hammer against the back of her throat to make her gag.
As she coughed him out, a dozen other Runelords in fine silks came leaping into the room. Bhopanastrat shouted, “Kill them all, secure the fortress!”
The scarlet sorceresses backed away, tried to retreat. But there would be no escape. The fortress was surrounded. Raj Ahten had already cleared a path into it, and ripped out the heart of the reavers’ defenses.
Pusnabish entered seconds later. Runelords swarmed into the fortress by the hundreds.
Raj Ahten ran for the open air, leaving lesser men to complete the job.
He imagined how the world would now sing his praise. There would be parades at Maygassa as he ascended the Elephant Throne. The people would carpet the road beneath his feet with petals of rose, gardenia, and lotus. The enormous golden gongs outside the city’s western gate would pound night and day for a month. The most beautiful women in the realm would seek him out, hoping to bear his sons, while wealthy lords and merchants showered him with gifts.
His victory would far outshine any deeds that Gaborn Val Orden had accomplished. He, Raj Ahten, had killed the greatest of reaver mages, had saved the Earth.
Songs would be sung about him for a thousand years. Children as yet undreamed of would sit around the campfires at night and hear how Raj Ahten stood against the Lord of the Underworld. Their mouths would gape in wonder, and they would try to hide from their fathers how they shivered in fear.
All of this, and more, Raj Ahten envisioned as he cleared the mouth of the fortress, came back into the daylight. The poisoned air swirled round the reavers’ hive in a dingy cloud.
He plunged down the ridge into the reavers’ dry moat and suddenly felt a nauseating wrench.
He knew the sensation far too well.
His Dedicates were dying.
At the palace in Bel Nai, the markets were awash with morning light. White doves fluttered about the spires of the citadels, or strutted along rooftops, cooing contentedly.
In the bazaar, a merchant cried as always, “Fresh roasted pistachios, still hot!”
Camels lay in the street, chewing lazily.
Here, a thousand miles north of Kartish, word had not yet reached the city of a reaver attack in far lands. Raj Ahten’s ministers had not wished to alarm the populace.
Yet in the deepest heart of the Dedicates’ Keep, four men lay dying. Three were men who vectored stamina to Raj Ahten. The Emir Owatt knew them by voice. One was Korab Manthusar, a Dedicate who had acted as a vector for nearly twelve years. Another was Jinjafal Dissai, who had vectored stamina for less than five.
Between them, they accounted for hundreds of endowments. They had been sipping tea as they played chess when the emir came upon them and jabbed each with his poisoned needle.
The resin of the malefactor bush paralyzed the lungs, and would leave the men gasping on the floor. Without stamina, they would not resist death for long.
But though the poison promised to make quick work of them, it did not do so soon enough. Both men managed to cry out a brief warning.
The emir spun and stabbed a third dedicate.
A nearby guard heard the noise, rushed into the common room, and sliced the emir in half.
As the old king died, the guard held his hand.
For a moment, the emir imagined the man sought to offer him comfort. But only in his final seconds did he realize that the guard held him to keep the poison needle from piercing another victim.
Raj Ahten gasped outside the reavers’ stronghold, choking on the fetid air. Even now he could taste the great mage’s curse: “Breathe no more.”
The power of it was undeniable.
The curse reached into his lungs, its decimating grip clutching them like a vise. He fought it desperately, but all his remaining endowments of stamina would not keep him alive.
Dedicates were dying, his vectors. His defenses were crumbling. Binnesman’s curse had undone him. He was not the Sum of All Men.
He struggled for air, and his heart beat wildly. Moments before he had imagined the praise that would be his as savior of the world. Now, he lay beneath clouds of darkness, gasping in the pit.
Over Raj Ahten’s head, a fireball hurtled toward the fortress, slammed into its side. Delicious heat spilled out in a hundred directions. Flames roared nearby.