The Mists of Sorrow: The Morcyth Saga Book Seven (73 page)

Gazing for a moment over to where the temple
sits, she then puts her face in her hands and begins to sob. The
others in the room glance to each other, none knowing what to
do.

Aku gets up from his position in the corner
and comes to her. He slips his hand into hers and together they
stand there, with only the sound of her sobbing disturbing the
silence.

“How many are there?” Potbelly asks.
Deflecting a sword stroke with his knife, he follows through with
his sword and guts the guard before him.

“I don’t know,” replies Scar. Both of his
blades are red with blood from the bodies that litter the hallway
from where they stand at the top of the stairs, all the way back to
where they first crossed swords.

Ever since the others had left, they’ve held
the corridor. Both now sport numerous wounds and have been forced
to give ground until they now stand at the top of the stairs.
Unwilling to give any more, they decided to make their stand
here.

“Wonder if they made it,” Potbelly says as
he lashes out with his knife. The man he struck dodges back
momentarily when a six inch long cut opens up on lower abdomen,

“Doubt if we’ll ever know,” Scar replies,
then he feints with the sword in his left hand. When the temple
guard raises his sword to block, he runs him through with his
other.

Standing side by side, the two comrades
trade blows with all who come. Only rarely do their opponents
manage to get through their guard. The skill Scar and Potbelly are
facing is woefully below what they’re used to facing in the
pits.

“We could always surrender,” suggests
Potbelly.

“I’d rather eat bloodworms for breakfast,”
replies Scar. “Besides,” he begins then has to pause as his
opponent’s sword lunges forward in an attempt to skewer him through
the middle. Unfortunately for the guard, he slips on the blood
covering the floor and continues forward off balance. It’s easy
enough for Scar to trip him up and then nudge him toward the top of
the stairs.

Potbelly sees what he did and uses his elbow
to propel the guard the rest of the way. As the guard completely
loses his balance, he hits the stairs and falls. Tumbling down the
stairs, he hits the bottom and doesn’t get back up.

“Besides,” resumes Scar as he readies to
meet the next in line, “no one would understand us even if we
tried.”

“You do have a point there,” replies
Potbelly.

So side by side they continue meeting all
comers. Eventually, guards from the city begin to be intermingled
with those of the temple. Blades sing and blood flies as man after
man meet their fate at the hands of expert pit fighters.

“Move!” urges Jiron. The weight of Miko in
his arms is beginning to tire him. Brother Willim and Tinok have
fallen behind and he has had to wait for them to hurry up. “James
isn’t going to be able to hold off much longer.”

“We’re coming,” Brother Willim hollers back.
“Don’t wait for us.”

To himself, Jiron says, “You have the
medallion, I have to wait for you.” Then the other two reach him
and he moves down an adjoining corridor toward the Hall of Despair.
Little Brothers have been their constant companions since leaving
James. Most of the time, Brother Willim has one or two who grab
hold of his robe and pull him forward. Even they seem to understand
the urgency of the situation.

“How much further is it?” Tinok asks. At
first he didn’t have much strength, but after walking for awhile,
the stamina he once had has begun to return. It must have been the
time held inactive here that had done it to him.

“Not much more,” replies Jiron. In fact, the
hallway they are in opens up onto the room containing the bone
chair, the room that Brother Willim had called the Hall of
Despair.

“Almost there,” he says. Upon entering the
Hall, he’s surprised not to see bodies of Hikuli scattered across
the floor. The last time they passed through here, the Little
Brothers were embattled with the Hikuli that populated Ith-Zirul.
The fact that the Little Brothers had come to the cavern and that
no Hikuli had been seen since, seemed to say that they vanquished
the little buggers.

He moves along the side wall until he
reaches the entrance to the hallway leading to the dais room. “Down
here and then we’re home free,” he announces. Moving into the
hallway, he leaves the other two behind as he hurries to the end.
Once he reaches the dais room, he lays Miko atop the dais then
quickly returns to help the other two.

Lending an arm to both Brother Willim and
Tinok, he practically drags them forward. “Easy my son,” Brother
Willim says when he almost loses his balance. He’s still not
completely over the wound to his middle the warrior priest had
dealt him despite the healing he did on himself.

As they enter the room, he helps Tinok up
onto the dais first, then he follows. “Now you,” he says as he
turns to offer Brother Willim his hand.

Brother Willim takes his hand and steps up
upon the dais. The medallion in his pocket triggers the magic
within the dais and they vanish.

All his life he had read in books these
wondrous tales of people who had overcome the odds. Who had gone
the distance despite the obstacles that lay before them. He always
wondered if he had it in him to be one of those people. When he
sent the others off to safety while he stayed behind, he had his
answer.

But what other choice was there?

The struggle to prevent the gate from
allowing the presence from the other side from getting through
grows harder by the minute. Even with the power of the Star at his
beck and call he doesn’t have enough to prevent it for long. Having
to put more and more of the Star’s power into holding the gate
closed, he’s forced to use less in keeping the shadows away. Slowly
they draw ever closer.

He has a good idea what he can do to destroy
the gate, he just has to hold out long enough for the others to
reach the dais and get away. If he can’t, there’s little hope that
they will survive what’s to come.

A little to his right he sees the dark form
of Ozgirath as it lays upon the rune covered floor. The dagger
Jiron thrust into his breast still glows with ruddy light, the dark
robe remains still.

Then his eyes return to the gate as the
malignant presence that James can only call pure evil tries again
to bull its way through. He can sense the frustration and growing
anger coming through from the other side. He can also sense lines
of magical energy being channeled to the gate from elsewhere and
being absorbed by it. Try as he might, nothing he does effectively
interrupts the streams of power from being delivered.

When at last he deems the time is right, he
creates the sphere. One that he’s created twice before, each time
with massive destructive power. The first time was outside the City
of Light, the result of which destroyed a good portion of the
Empire’s invasion force. Not enough to stop them, but it hurt them
bad.

The second time was not too long ago when
mages came to destroy Illan’s army and everyone with it. The
resulting explosion that time was immense. It seared the earth for
miles in every direction and weakened the boundary between the
planes to such an extent that a creature not of this world was able
to pass through.

Now staring at the sphere before him, he
sees his death, as activating it will surely mean. There will be
little chance to escape its blast once he does. Then all of a
sudden, the presence from the other side makes a massive push as it
tries to force its way through the gate. The gate bulges to an
extent further than ever it had before. Sparks dance across its
surface and just as James is sure it’s going to break through, the
pressure subsides.

Now James,
he says to himself.
While it’s regrouping for another attempt.
He focuses his
eyes on the sphere and sends the command that will activate it.
For Meliana
.

No sooner does the sphere become activated
than it latches onto the streams of power flowing to the gate and
draws them to itself. James can also feel the power of the Star
beginning to be drawn into it as well. Opening up the conduit as
wide as he can, he funnels raw, primal power to the sphere.

The sphere goes from translucent to deep red
in half a second as unimaginable power is absorbed into it. The
magic that James had used to prevent the gate from opening is now
being drawn into the sphere.

Sparks begin to appear across the surface of
the gate and it bulges forward as the presence again tries to
cross. Only this time, it’s not meeting any opposition. As the gate
opens, terror rolls over James as something begins to cross
over.

Tearing his eyes from the gate, he
concentrates on the sphere. Now so dark red as to be almost black,
it crackles with power. Then it reaches critical mass and
detonates.

Back in Zixtyn, the priests of Dmon-Li
continue sacrificing slaves and directing the resulting power to
Dmon-Li’s altar in the nexus of the temple. Which in turn sends the
power to Ith-Zirul. A backlash of energy travels back along the
power stream when the sphere detonates. When it reaches the
altar…

Crumph!

…the magic explodes in a tremendous
conflagration of energy. The temple rocks on its foundation as the
force of the explosion blasts the temple asunder.

“Jiron!” screams Aleya when the temple
explodes into the night. Standing at the window, Aleya and the
others see a massive fireball rising to the sky where the temple
had stood.

“Damn,” curses Reilin under his breath.

“Come on,” Shorty says. “James said to get
out of town if things went bad.”

“It couldn’t have been much worse than
that,” agrees Stig.

Aleya collapses by the window and is wracked
with sobs. Stig tries to comfort her while Shorty and Reilin gather
their things.

“We can’t know that killed them,” he says to
her. “They’ve survived worse before.”

“You think so?” she asks as she raises her
head hopefully.

“Sure,” he says. “But we need to get out of
here before someone comes looking.” To Shorty he asks, “You got
everything?”

With their traveling packs in hand, he says,
“Yes.”

“Then head down to the stables and get the
horses ready,” Stig tells him.

Nodding his head, Shorty rushes
downstairs.

Aleya pulls herself up off the floor and
stares once again at the fire that is still arcing toward the
clouds. “Please be okay,” she says. Then taking a deep breath, she
takes Aku by the hand and turns to Stig. “Let’s go.”

“What the hell was that?”

Covered in rock and dirt, Scar and Potbelly
find themselves at the bottom of the stairs. The blast knocked them
back and threw them down to the bottom.

“James I would imagine,” Potbelly replies as
he pries his leg out from under a large piece of what use to be the
temple wall.

“I think I’m blind,” Scar says from further
up the stairs than where Potbelly had landed.

“You’re not blind,” replies Potbelly. “It’s
just dark. I think the blast collapsed the hallway up there and
buried those soldiers along with the torches they were carrying.”
Stepping carefully, he begins feeling his way up toward Scar. “You
still have that flint?”

“Yeah,” replies Scar.

Then a second or two later, he hears cloth
being torn, then sparks appear as Scar strikes the flint stone. A
moment later, a flame appears and Potbelly sees Scar sitting on a
broken section of the temple. Beside him is a strip of cloth that
use to be attached to his tunic. Using his knife, Scar winds the
burning cloth around the blade and holds it aloft as a torch.

“I think we’re alone down here,” Scar says
after looking up and down the stairs for others.

“Looks that way,” agrees Potbelly.

“Better see if we can get out of here,” Scar
says. Getting up off the broken section of temple wall, he turns
toward the top of the stairs. That’s when he realizes his swords
are not in their scabbards. One is lying further up the stairs and
the other is wedged in amongst a pile of rocks so tightly that no
amount of pulling will free it.

Potbelly sees his predicament and suggests,
“Take the sword from the dead guy at the bottom of the stair.

“Good idea,” replies Scar and descends to
the bottom where the dead guard that they shoved down the stairs
lays. The man’s sword doesn’t fit within the scabbard around his
waist so Scar removes his empty scabbard and then buckles on the
dead man’s. He then draws the sword quickly from the scabbard a
couple times to be sure it’s in the proper position. Once he’s
satisfied that it has an easy draw for emergencies, he bends over
and tears off several strips of cloth from the dead man’s shirt to
use as fuel for his makeshift torch.

“Now, let’s get out of here.” With his
knife-torch held high, he ascends back up the stairs. The stairwell
is choked with rubble which makes the footing treacherous. At the
top, they find little resemblance to the place they had so recently
been fighting for their lives. A few bodies of temple guards are
wedged in among the debris that’s all but blocking the top of the
stairwell.

From where Potbelly stands slightly below
Scar on the stairs he asks, “Is there a way out?”

“Maybe” replies Scar. “Here take this.” He
then hands Potbelly his knife-torch. “Let me see if I can get us
out of here.” Moving toward the choked passage, he begins to feel a
slight breeze which gives him hope.

Using his hands, he starts trying to push
the rock away. When that fails to yield results, he begins digging
out the stones chocking the passage. All of a sudden he stops and
turns back to Potbelly. “Kill the light!” he exclaims quietly. “I
hear someone.”

Potbelly flicks the burning cloth from the
blade of the knife and stomps the flame out once it’s on the
ground. When the passage again goes dark, they notice a faint light
coming from the left side of the rock pile.