The Blood Sigil (The Sigilord Chronicles Book 2) (43 page)

The battle raged for hours, with neither side making much headway. Goodwyn and the radixes plowed through line after line of undead, of bile wolves, and of myriad other creatures from hell, but more kept coming. It was both a terrible and wondrous sight to see Goodwyn and a handful of others holding a line while standing on an invisible platform above the water.

Goodwyn and the radixes were slowly backing toward the wall, losing ground, when the enemy's reinforcements arrived. A wave of wyverns surged up off the island like a plague of locusts, darkening the sky. They swarmed and swirled like birds flocking, then rose up over the sigil-borne bridge.

"They are all going to die," said Murin. He spun and turned to Timoc. "It matters not how good the boy's quiver ability is; the wyverns will overwhelm him. Once Goodwyn goes down, the rest will be plucked off the bridge like weeds in a garden."

"Murin, please tell me you are not thinking about—"

"There is no other choice!" Murin snapped. "I have stood by and done nothing far too many times in my life! The hive and their exile be damned, I must put a stop to this!"

"What is he talking about?" Urus asked.

Timoc, ignoring Urus's comment, grabbed Murin by the arm. "Master, please, you cannot do this. The Hive will know. They will come for you. You cannot violate the terms of your exile!"

"If there was ever a reason to violate my exile, this is it. And if I am to be taken, being taken while ridding this world of wyverns would be a noble death indeed!"

"Murin, no!" Timoc called after him, but the gray man spun, took two giant steps, and leapt from the top of the wall.
 

Urus raced after him and looked out over the rope. He watched in shock as Murin shed his clothes, then his grey skin like a molting snake, revealing wet, shiny black scales beneath. The scales grew, burst outward, and multiplied as immense wings sprang from his back. In moments what had once been a tall, mysterious gray man became a monstrous, flying creature, flapping its wings and soaring up into the clouds.

"What the…" Urus muttered, staggering back from the ropes. "Timoc…what the hell was that?"

"Do you remember any of Murin's titles?" asked Timoc. "Has he ever mentioned the house Futanishar?"

Urus nodded. "I think so, once."

"House Futanishar is not a house in the sense you might think, of lineage, land ownership, or rule. House Futanishar is a house of dragons. Specifically, plasma dragons."

"Dragons?" Urus gasped, incredulous. "That's ridiculous, dragons aren't real."

Luse nudged Urus. "Says the guy standing on a wall fighting a horde of wyverns."

"The evidence before you would indicate otherwise, sigilord," said Timoc, pinching a bit of skin on his hand. "You see this gray skin? This is not what those of our kind look like—not when mature, anyway. This body is a chrysalis. I have many centuries left in mine. Murin, on the other hand, is far older than I. He left his chrysalis long ago, but was then forced back into it as part of his exile. When our kind emerge from their chrysalises, we become dragons."

Urus blinked, then swallowed, hard. He stared after the silhouette of the massive beast flying up into the dark clouds above the city.

"What is a plasma dragon?" Luse asked the question before Urus could.

"Plasma is neither solid, nor liquid, nor gas," Timoc began. "Plasma dragons can, for lack of a more elegant way of putting it, belch this material from their throats. Some elder plasma dragons, those as ancient as Murin, have control of a special form of plasma—lightning."

"Murin, who is actually a dragon, shoots lightning from his mouth?" Urus asked, unable to come to terms with what he was being told.

"Your familiar is a lightning dragon!" Luse shouted, punching Urus in the shoulder. "You've been holding out on me!"

"Watch and learn, Urus," said Timoc. "Behold the devastation of an enraged dragon."

Murin descended from the clouds. He tucked in his wings across the ebon scales covering his back and shot straight down like a thrown spear. He dropped below two of the wyverns, which appeared minuscule next to Murin's hulking form, then swept his wings out wide, stopping in mid-flight as though gravity held no power over him.

Murin opened his enormous maw and let loose a roar so loud Urus felt its effect ripple through the skin on his fingertips. Bright bolts of light tore through the air from Murin's mouth, exploding the wyverns in blasts of smoke and charred flesh. One by one Murin darted from enemy to enemy, decimating each with his lightning.

All of the briene flying birds withdrew to take defensive positions behind the wall, their pilots likely wanting to stay well clear of the dragon tearing a swath of destruction through the enemy's airborne forces.

Within minutes the air on the top of the wall had altered, from the scent of cold, salty water to the odor of burnt sand that accompanied the rare thunderstorms Urus had experienced in the desert. From horizon to horizon, the sky above Niragan flickered and flashed with bright white lightning.

Stunned, and with their jaws still hanging open, the archers simply stopped targeting the enemies in the sky and focused their attention on the invisible bridge below and the army marching across the bay.

Murin soared through the air once the skies had been cleared of the winged monsters. He too then turned to the army marching across the hidden bridge toward the line Goodwyn and the others held. Diving for the vanguard, he swept across the bridge with his talons spread wide, claws the size of Urus's sword cleaving through the phalanx of rotting corpses.

Again and again the dragon dove for the bridge, slicing apart everything within his reach, and survivors of the initial cuts were cast into the icy waters of the bay.

Flaming arrows shot from the tops of the walls plunged into the skeletons. They didn't react to the arrows skewering them, but the fire eventually turned them to ash. Urus couldn't decide which worried him more, the undead or the hell-spawned creatures still on the island, driving the skeletons from behind. The acidic skin and saliva of the bile wolves, the raw strength of their handlers, and outright insanity of the other creatures he had yet to experience…How could anyone hope to survive against such a foe?

"My lord," said one of the radixes who had remained behind on the wall.

People need to stop calling me that
, Urus thought.

"The children," said the radix. "They insist on seeing you. We tried to keep them back, but they insisted they had information vital to the battle."

Looking over the radix's shoulder, Urus saw the kids clambering up onto the wall. Owl, the oldest, looked to be about fourteen.
 
Ferret, the tall, lanky one, seemed to be of the same age, and Spider, the short and stocky one, seemed to be younger than the others by at least a year or more.

He was about to launch into an argument about why the children should not be on the wall, but Owl began speaking before he could start. She gestured and flailed her arms, and as she spoke she looked around, barely maintaining eye contact. He couldn't read a single word on her lips.

Luse signed a translation. "She says that she knows you're going to send her back down to the camp, but they have a plan you need to hear." Luse giggled a little as she signed the word for
hear
.

"Tell me this plan, but only because Goodwyn vouches for you all," Urus said. "And look at me so I can read your lips. I'm deaf."

Owl blinked and looked a little shaken, but she composed herself quickly. "I know we don't have military training. We're not big, we're not strong, and we're definitely not killers. We don't have magic like you or Goodwyn, but we're smart and we know this city. Spider's got a plan that could stop this enemy."

"What plan?"

"Remember when Spider sank some of the street back on the island?" Owl asked. "He made a moat around our position."

Urus nodded. "I remember. He saved our lives."

"When he was under Findanar, he saw something, and his big brain got to chewing on the problem. Once Spider sees a puzzle, he can't let go of it."

Urus could certainly sympathize with that.

"Anyway," Owl resumed, struggling to focus on Urus. She seemed intimidated by him and her attention drawn to the sights and sounds around them. "He thinks he can sink the whole island."

If the boy can sink the entire island,
came Murin's thoughts,
then it might bury the portal through which these hellish creatures are flooding.
 
Urus hadn't realized the dragon had been eavesdropping—or that he could.
 

"I could take a few of my men and go with them, my lord," volunteered the radix.

"How can you sink the island?" Urus asked, but movement in the sky caught his attention. He turned to look, scanning the sky, and noticed that a single wyvern had been left unharmed by Murin's rampage. That fact alone made the beast stand out. Why had Murin let it live?

"What is that?" asked Luse, noticing the same creature.

Plunging down out of the clouds, spiraling straight toward them, was one of the long-tailed wyvern creatures, but it had something stuck to its back. As the thing drew closer, the archers atop the wall all nocked their arrows.
 

The creature spun, banked, and kicked as though trying to rid itself of the thing on its back. Finally, Urus could tell that the shape belonged to a person. A girl with long, wine-colored hair came into view, riding in the wyvern's saddle.

"Hold your fire!" Urus shouted, holding up an open palm to stop the archers.

"My lord," Choein counseled. "We can't let that thing get close enough to us to spit its acid."

"My friend is riding on its back," Urus said. Again he held up his hand and shouted, "I said hold your fire!"

Urus kept his hand aloft as he watched Cailix steer the writhing monster down toward the wall. The thing continued to plummet out of the sky, as all the while Cailix delivered punches and kicks and yanked its neck to keep it flying.

She angled the beast down, sending it careening toward the giant storm wall. Just before impact, she leapt from its back and grabbed for the rope railing. The wyvern slammed into the cold iron and slid down into the bay below.

Urus grabbed one of Cailix's wrists and Luse grabbed the other. Together they heaved her up onto the wall.

"What the hell are you doing?" Urus asked.

"No time to explain. You and I need to go back to the island," she wheezed, struggling to catch her breath.

"Are you okay?" Urus said, picking her up. "Colin said you were—"

"Colin is here?" she said, snapping to attention, swiveling to Lu. "Where's Colin? And who is she?"

Urus glanced back and forth between Luse and Cailix, suddenly feeling very awkward and uncomfortable.

"Colin is back at our camp. This is Luse," Urus said. "She's a sigilord, like me."

"Is she now?" Cailix said, lifting an appraising eyebrow and taking in Lu from head to toe.

"You have the corruption," Luse said. It wasn't a question.

"That's not important right now. Urus, you need to come with me so we can stop that undead army."

"How can we stop them?" Urus asked.

"I know how to reverse the blood sigil that has raised the dead. Autar used Anderis's blood to make it, so it'll take both of us to undo it. A blue sigilord and a blood mage."

Urus looked to Luse, hoping she would have some idea of what to do.

"She might be right," Luse said. "It would take sigilcraft more powerful than mine to reverse what Autar has done. If you don't reverse that sigil, nothing else will make any difference. An army of undead will wash over the world, killing everything in their path."

"Come on," Cailix urged. "Get us back to the island. You can still move around like you did before, right? You can take us back to the street where you vanished?"

"I think so."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Cailix stood, straightened her pants and shirt, and folded her arms across her chest. "There will be time for reunions and catching up later."

Urus turned to Luse, a strange feeling suddenly filling him, at the same time warm and cold, comforting and lonely. He met her eyes, unsure of what to say.

"We can't go back to the island if we're going to sink it," Urus added.

"Sink it when we're done," Cailix said. She wasn't the most friendly of people on her best day, but she seemed unusually short and angry. Urus wondered what she had been through since the last time he'd seen her.

"Owl, bring a small escort with you," Urus said, nodding at the radix. "If you run into any resistance, you turn back. No fighting. But you need to give us two hours. If we aren't back from Findanar in two hours, you sink the island no matter what. That portal to hell has to be closed."

Owl seemed shocked, her face a mix of joy and fear as she now had to deal with the reality of attempting such a dangerous mission.

"We won't let you down, sir," she said, saluting awkwardly.

Urus again looked at Luse, hoping there might be some strength he could borrow from her eyes.

"Go, little bull," she signed.
 

"But the battle." Urus pointed down at the melee below, trying to find an excuse to stay. The last place in the world he wanted to be was back on that island, surrounded by those terrible creatures. "I'm needed here."

"Between Goodwyn, the radixes, and your lightning dragon familiar, there's no way that army's going to scale this wall. And besides, what happens here won't matter if you don't reverse the blood sigil. Go, put your birth defect to good use."

Urus smiled, then turned and began etching the travel sigil in the air. The act had become almost second nature to him, and after teleporting an entire army and its machines, teleporting himself and one other person seemed like child's play.

The sigil hung in the air before him. He reached out to touch it, but hesitated instead. Without thinking, he bent and kissed Luse on softly on the lips. As their lips parted, he squeezed her hands, took a step back, and, too scared to look up and see her reaction to what he had just done, pressed his palm to the sigil, the world vanishing in a cerulean flash.