Her breath came in short bursts, burning her lungs. Riordan forced her legs
under her. Rau's warhorse stampeded toward her.
She snatched up the Sword. Throwing herself to the side at the last second,
she drew the crystal blade across the its legs, cutting both tendons. The
majestic animal pitched forward.
A heavy armored body pinned her to the earth. Riordan looked up into searing
blue eyes. She got a leg between them, kicked viciously, trying to unseat him
far enough to get the Sword between them.
“Riordan!” She heard Nhaille's call from somewhere off to the right.
“You are really starting to annoy me.” Dark hair tumbled down around her. Rau
had lost his helmet in the fall. He wrenched the amber dagger from his belt.
“And I've worked so hard to spare your pretty face.”
Freeing her right hand, Riordan swung the Sword toward him.
He parried, catching it at the hilt with the amber dagger. Energy sizzled
down the blade, ancient sorceries long parted, greeted each other. Bending her
arm backward, the Amber blade inched toward her face.
Lightning crackled. Golden beads of light formed within the Amber. The Amber
blade became transparent. Then, before her eyes, it faded and disappeared. In
her mind, Riordan felt the Sword's power weaken.
So, I was right. They cancel each other out. Hope soared.
Rau tumbled forward. For a fraction of a second, they lay face to face like
lovers. Fear, the first real fear she'd seen, crossed his face.
The Prince stared at his empty hand, the horrifying realization dawning that
without the protection of the Master Stone, he had no chance against the Sword
of Zal-Azaar. Terror overtook disbelief. Like the Shraal before him, he'd
thought his magic weapon was invincible. Rau scrambled to his feet.
“Pull back!” he shouted as Larz reined in beside him. “Retreat to Hael!” Like
a coward, Rau fled, leaving his Captain to stare in dismay after him. Snatching
up the Sword, Riordan dashed after him.
To find Larz' blade blocking her path.
Beyond the steel gray of his sword, she saw Rau's black cloak flapping in the
breeze as he fled.
The Sword, weakened by its run-in with the Amber, demanded to have its
strength restored.
Riordan swung.
“No Riordan!” Nhaille moved so swiftly, she barely saw him as he leapt in
front of her, knocking her sword arm from its target.
As if in slow motion, she watched the length of Larz's sword descend,
catching Nhaille in the shoulder. A thin line of blood trickled down the front
of his leather armor. He crumpled, but still managed to stay in the saddle. “Get
the Amber,” he said hoarsely.
Riordan's eyes flashed to the amber stake lodged in Larz's belt. A second
power stone. The one he'd led the army with.
She feinted left, putting herself bodily between Larz and Nhaille, drawing a
swipe from Larz's sword. She cut high. Larz fended her off with a vicious
swing.
And in doing so, he left himself open to the blinding arc of the Sword of
Zal-Azaar.
Shocked eyes glared up at her. The Sword sliced cleanly through tendons,
slowing only slightly as it hit bone. A fraction of a second later he tumbled to
the ground, his horrified expression frozen upon his face.
Trailing blood, Nhaille lunged awkwardly toward Larz's body and snatched the
Amber blade from his belt. The body liquefied, flowed into the Sword.
Disbelief reverberated through her mind. Larz's one last dying thought.
Haelian soldiers stared at her in mute terror. Amassed behind them, legions
of the dead milled about in dazed confusion.
Nhaille held the Amber blade out to her. She looked down at the amber stake
lying across his palm and took a step backward.
“No.” Barely a whisper. Out of all her nightmares, this was one she'd never
dreamed of.
“We have no choice.”
“Nhaille, I can't do...that.”
“Rau has fled back to Hael to the safety of the Master Stone. We must act
before he reaches it. If that is where it's hidden.”
Haelian soldiers recovered themselves. Finding no other way but to retreat
through Kanarekii lines, they raised their Swords.
“Riordan, we're out of time and out of options.” She heard the weakness in
Nhaille's voice. “You must take the Amber.”
Blood trickled Nhaille's arm, coating the Amber. Somehow she had to get him
through what was left of Haelian lines and off the battlefield. Still, she
balked at taking the Amber. “Give it to Penden,” she suggested.
An odd expression crossed Nhaille's face. Revulsion mixed with longing.
Nhaille shuddered. “Neither Penden nor I can wield the Amber.”
“Why not?” She raised the Sword struck away a Haelian blade aimed her
way.
“Neither of us are Shraal.”
The words sunk in slowly. She parried a sword headed for her heart and sent
its owner to hell. His dying screams twined with the twisting thoughts in her
mind.
“That's why it didn't work. That's how Larz lost control of the army. He
wasn't Shraal, but Rau was.”
“Shraal, or simply mad enough to suffice,” Nhaille said. “It worked for Larz
for awhile, but he couldn't sustain it. That is at least my guess.” Nhaille's
attention was torn away by a Haelian soldier.
She leapt in front of him, dispatching the attacker with one sure stroke.
Another mind echoed within hers. She felt sick. But there was no time to attend
to her own revulsion and frailties.
Nhaille held the dagger out to her again. “Take the Amber. Without it we
perish.”
Riordan looked around her. Soldiers in Kanarekii armor were still desperately
few, even with Hael on the retreat. Without the leagues of the dead to fatten
their ranks, they wouldn't succeed in taking Hael. Hael would stand by superior
numbers alone. Somewhere among the shifting lines of standing corpses were her
brothers. Her Father. She balked at being their slavers, but she had no
choice.
“Forgive me,” she whispered. And reached for the Amber.
Unlike the coolness of the Sword, the Amber was hot to the touch. Riordan
closed her fingers around it, felt Nhaille's hand drop away under hers. Slowly,
she drew it back toward her.
A multitude of minds assaulted her. Worse by far than wielding the Sword.
Chaos swirled in her consciousness. Hate, fear, dampened by death. Thoughts from
beyond the grave, unnatural. Riordan closed her eyes. Broadcasted by the Amber,
she sent her own thoughts out toward them.
Dead minds were capable of little resistance. She reached into decaying
brains, laying her thoughts over the fragmented images she found there. Like
shaping clay, she reworked the orders Rau had placed there, changing their form,
substituting allegiance to Kanarek instead of Hael.
The change confused them. She felt their thoughts slipping away from her like
trying to catch an eel with her bare hands.
She concentrated harder, tempting them with the promise of eternal rest.
Promising them vengeance for the terrible wrong Hael had dealt them.
Slowly, she felt the tide of their thoughts change. The dead raised their
weapons.
And turned on the soldiers of Hael.
It took an inordinate amount of effort to maintain contact. No wonder Larz
had weakened. Twin forces threatened to tear her mind apart. The Sword, confused
by the proximity of the Amber, the banquet of so many bodies and so little
killing clamored to be appeased. Each time she stole a little concentration to
keep it under control, her command over the dead weakened. Dividing her
attention, Riordan poured the full force of her will into diametrically opposing
tasks.
Nhaille's good arm closed around her, holding her upright with the last of
his strength. She hadn't even realized she was falling. The Amber burned in her
mind, its flame consuming all conscious thought save for the dire instructions
she broadcasted to the dead. In contrast, the Sword was cool evil, seducing her
brain with thoughts of killing, of absorbing the souls of all around her.
Riordan tightened her thoughts around the Sword, squeezing its demands into
silence, preventing it from killing, while she sent the Amber the opposite
order. It tore at her soul. But one glimpse of the battlefield told her there
was no other choice. They had to win over Hael before they could rid the world
of the Amber.
Shouts leaked through the barriers. Riordan opened her eyes. Haelian soldiers
who moments ago had stared at her in dumb-struck silence, now fought for their
very lives. As if lifted by the strings of an invisible puppeteer, the dead
sprang to life.
The dead outnumbered them all. Hael could not hold out for long. Especially
without Larz or Rau.
“We're going to have to make more of them,” Nhaille said. Seeing she was
steady on her feet once again, he dropped his hands. It was then that she
noticed his pallor, the tight lines of pain around his mouth.
“Nhaille, we can't do that!” Her concentration slipped. Riordan caught
herself and poured the last of her will into the equation. “Wielding the Amber
is one thing. Making more of those ghouls is quite another.” She motioned to the
congealing blood on his armor. “You're injured, we have to get you out of here,
so you can rest and--”
“Do not be short-sighted, Riordan. I am expendable in this matter. I have
only to keep to my feet long enough to win back Kholer. After Kholer you must go
on to defeat Hael.”
“I'm not going anywhere without you!” Riordan parried another sword that
slipped through the protective ranks of the dead around them. “What,” she
grunted, taking down another Haelian, “makes you so sure that's where Doan-Rau
has hidden the Master Stone?”
“He would have taken it there,” Nhaille said, “to win the King's praise.”
“All right,” Riordan said. “Hael it is. I'll find the Master Stone if I have
to dismantle the palace brick by brick.” She looked around in dismay. “And
you're right, we don't have the numbers for such a conquest.” It took only a
glance at the field to notice that Kanarekii uniforms were in desperately short
supply. Without the dead, and the extra Haelians added to their number, they had
no hope at all.
“There must be a cache of amber stakes nearby. Pray Rau wasn't carrying them
himself when he fled.”
“The tent,” she said between labored breaths. “Can you get to it?”
Nhaille squinted into the sun. Between them and Rau's tent, the ground was
thick with writhing bodies. “I have no choice. We need that Amber.”
“I'll come with you.”
“Riordan, you can't.”
“Damned if I'll leave you to fall here in Kholer,” she said viciously.
Plunging into the fray, she swung the Sword in a wide arc before her, leaving
Nhaille no choice but to follow.
On the field, the dead hacked at the Haelians with anything they could lay
hands to. Can't all be my influence. Could it be that on some subconscious level
the dead recognized those that had enslaved them and now wanted revenge? Revenge
and the promise of eternal rest thereafter.
The sword came from out of nowhere. Instincts instilled by years of Nhaille's
relentless training took over. Riordan swung.
Blade pierced armor. She clenched her teeth, terrified to give into the pain
and lose her hold on the dead army. Her pain raised the Sword's bloodlust to new
heights. She swung, the effort tearing at the edges of the wound. The soldier's
scream cut through the air and clove her mind.
Detached, she watched as the Sword sucked up the puddle of life, then she
fled toward the black tarp buffeted by the wind. Behind her she heard Nhaille
swearing as he followed her.
The tent loomed before her. They ducked into the darkness inside.
“It's not deep,” Riordan said to Nhaille's grim expression of concern. She
felt beneath the leather of her armor to be sure. The wound would need a couple
of stitches, but at least her sword arm was uninjured.
Kanarekii soldiers flowed in behind them, securing Rau's cache for Kanarek.
She caught Penden's shadow against the brightness of the doorway and motioned
him forward.
Riordan moved blindly forward in the darkness of the tent. Penden found a
torch and lit it. Strange to be rifling through Rau's personal affects. There
were surprisingly little of them for a person of his station.
His packs turned up nothing but clothing. There was nothing on the table by
the cot. Nothing at all that might hold the fragments of the Mother Stone that
could enslave the dead.
Riordan impaled a space of earth with the Sword of Zal-Azaar. Fiercely, she
reined in her frustration. It took only a moment's lapse to leave the dead army
open to rebellion.
“Nothing,” Nhaille said. She could hear fatigue and pain in his voice.
“They have to be here. There's no way Rau could have had that much Amber with
him. ”
She moved toward the cot, intent on throwing off the covers just in case Rau
was crazy enough to sleep with the Amber warming his bed. Her toe met something
hard.
Her stifled curse brought Penden to her side. In one fluid movement he
overturned the flimsy cot. Blankets fell into a heap at their feet.
Beneath the bed was a metal-bound chest.
With one sure stroke of his sword, Penden broke the lock. The contents
gleamed golden in the torch-light.
Rau's cache.
Penden looked at her in askance.
“Do it,” Nhaille said. “We have no other choice.”
Penden motioned to the Kanarekii soldiers in the doorway, who came nervously
toward the chest as if it held a deadly poison.
It made her physically sick to see her own countrymen handling the Amber
shards, preparing to do to others the horrible deed that had been done to
them.
No choice. Nhaille's words echoed over and over in her mind.
I may meet you in the halls of Al-Gomar after all, Rau.
“Get it over with,” Riordan said.
Nhaille issued the order. Penden's men moved to obey.
The confines of Rau's sanctum were suddenly suffocating. She stepped into the
sunlight, casting a worried glance at the battlefield around her. Kanarekii
soldiers were already about the ugly business of creating slaves of fallen
Haelians.