Wrath of a Mad God Page 2
Miranda quickly inspected the two Dasati, and confirmed that the first was dead and the second unconscious. She looked in all directions to see if anyone else might have escaped her probes but after a moment she accepted that she was now alone with a corpse and a potential prisoner.
With one wall shattered and another knocked flat she fi-8
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nally saw her prison in its entirety. The sphere was no more than a hundred feet in diameter, partitioned by wooden walls and curtains inside which were two pallets with bedding, a table with writing materials and another of those alien stone lamps, a chest and a large woven mat over the earth floor. She quickly scouted the other spaces and found an almost incomprehensible array of items. The one thing she failed to discover was the device that had provided the means to make the journey from the Dasati realm to Kelewan. She had anticipated something large, similar to the Tsurani rift machines, or at least something like a pedestal upon which to stand, but nothing presented itself as an obvious choice.
She was already angry, and now the frustration of the moment drove her to the edge of rage. How dare these aliens come into this realm and assault her! All her life Miranda had battled a violent temper, a heritage from her mother, and while she maintained a relatively calm demeanor most of the time, when she finally lost that temper her family had long since decided that giving her a wide berth was the only practical choice.
A stack of papers, oddly waxy, lay around the floor, and Miranda knelt to grab a handful. Who knew what was written upon them, in this alien language? Perhaps some insight into these creatures might be forthcoming.
She heard a soft groan, and saw the still-living Deathpriest start to twitch. Without thought she stood up, took one step and kicked his jaw as hard as she could. “Ow!” The side of the Dasati’s jaw felt like granite. “Damn me!” she swore, thinking she had broken her foot. With the papers in one hand, she knelt next to the unconscious form and gripped the front of his robe. “You’re coming with me!” she hissed.
Miranda closed her eyes and turned the entirety of her attention to the walls of the sphere she was probing until she felt the peculiar flow of energy and then attuned herself to it as if turning pegs on a lute to change the pitch of the strings.
When she judged herself ready, Miranda willed herself outside, a short distance from the other side of the wall. She screamed as her entire body was torn for a moment by cascading 9
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energies, as if ice were cutting into her nerves, then she found herself kneeling on the dry grass in the hills of Lash Province.
It was morning, which for some reason surprised her, and she could barely stand the pain that came even from breathing.
Her entire body protested the reversion to her native environment. Whatever the Dasati had done to provide her with the means to live in their realm, or that piece of it under the dome, the translation back was agony.
The Deathpriest appeared to have also survived the transition. She knelt beside him, clutching his robe as if it were the only tether she had to consciousness. A moment passed and the pain lessened, and after another, she felt herself beginning to adjust. Taking a deep, gasping breath, she blinked to clear her vision before immediately closing them again. “That’s not good.”
Taking another deep breath, she ignored the searing pain that opening her eyes had caused her, and willed herself to the Pattern Room in the Assembly.
Two magicians were in the room when she appeared. She cast her captive down in front of them. “Bind him. He is a Dasati Deathpriest.” She did not know if these two were privy to the knowledge Pug had passed to the Assembly since the Talnoy had been brought to Kelewan for study, but every Great One living had heard of the Dasati. Finding one lying unconscious at their feet caused them to hesitate for a moment, but then the two Black Robes hurried to do her bidding. The stress of escape and bringing a captive had taken Miranda to the end of her already depleted resources. She took two staggering steps, and then slumped unconscious to the floor.
Miranda opened her eyes and found herself in the quarters reserved for her or Pug when they came to visit. Alenca, the most senior member of the Assembly of Magicians, sat on a stool beside her bed, his face composed and untroubled, looking like a grand-parent waiting patiently for a child to awaken from an illness.
Miranda blinked, then croaked, “How long?”
“One afternoon, last night, and all this morning. How are you?”
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Miranda sat up, gingerly, and discovered that she was wearing a simple white linen shift. Alenca smiled, “I trust you don’t object to our having cleaned you up. You were in quite a state when you appeared before us.”
Miranda swung her legs out of bed and carefully stood up. Her cleaned, pressed robes waited for her on a divan in front of a window overlooking the lake. The afternoon sun sparkled off the water. Unmindful of the old man watching her, she slipped off the shift and put on her robes. “What about the Dasati?” she asked, inspecting herself in the small mirror on the wall.
“He is still unconscious, and it appears, dying.”
“Really?” said Miranda. “I didn’t think his injuries that severe.” She looked at the old magician. “I need to see him and we need to call as many members as you can to the Assembly.”
“Already done,” said the old man with a chuckle. “Word of the captive quickly spread and only those members too ill to travel are absent.”
“Wyntakata?” asked Miranda.
“Missing, of course.” He waved Miranda through the portal to the hallway and followed her, falling into step beside her.
“We assume he is either dead or had some hand in this.”
“He’s not Wyntakata,” said Miranda. “He’s Leso Varen, the necromancer.”
“Ah,” said the old man. “That explains a great deal.” He sighed as they rounded a corner. “It’s a pity, really. I was fond of Wyntakata, though he tended to ramble when he spoke. But he was clever and always good company.”
Miranda found it difficult to separate the host from the par-asite that occupied it, but realized the old man was sincere in his regret. “I’m sorry you lost a friend,” she said, “but I fear we may lose a great many friends before this business is over.”
She stopped at a large intersection and glanced at her companion, who indicated they should turn down a long corridor.
“We have the Dasati in a warded room.”
“Good,” said Miranda.
Two grey-robed apprentice magicians stood guard at the 1 1
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door. Inside the room a pair of Great Ones stood beside the figure of the Dasati Deathpriest.
One, a man named Hostan, greeted Miranda while the other kept watch over the unconscious figure on the sleeping pallet. “Cubai and I are convinced something is very wrong with this . . . man.”
The magician inspecting the Deathpriest nodded. “He has not shown any signs of reviving, and his breathing appears to be more labored. If he were human I would say he has a fever.” He shook his head in dismay. “But with this creature, I don’t have a remote idea what to look for.”
Cubai was a magician who was far more curious about healing arts than most Black Robes, since it tended to be the province of healers of the Lesser Path of magic and clerics of certain orders. Miranda thought him an ideal choice to be watching over the Deathpriest.
Miranda said, “While a prisoner, I deduced some things about these creatures.
“The Dasati are not that different from humans, at least in the sense that elves, dwarves, and goblins are similar: roughly humanlike in form, standing upright on two legs, eyes in the front of a recognizable face, all the rest you can see, and I know they have two genders, male and female, the women bearing their young within their bodies. I gleaned that much while being closely examined by the Deathpriests. I can’t speak their language, but I did pick up a word or two along the
way and now have some sense of what they presume about humans.”
She turned as a handful of magicians came into the room after word had spread she was up and with the Deathpriest. She raised her voice so all could hear. “They are physically stronger than us by a significant margin. I judge it to be a quality of their nature magnified by their presence on this world. But I think they have some difficulty with the differences between the two worlds, hence the dome of energy they created in which to reside. But one of their average warriors can overpower all but the most powerful human, be it Tsurani warrior or Kingdom soldier.” No time like the present to start planting the idea of Midkemian help, she thought.
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She looked down at the Deathpriest and tried to reconcile what she saw with what she had observed while he and his companion had experimented on her. “He doesn’t look well, that is clear.” She leaned over and saw a sheen of moisture on his brow.
“I think you’re right about the fever, Cubai. I think his color is pale, but that may be the difference in light in the two . . .”
Her voice trailed off as she saw the creature’s eyelids flutter. She stepped back. “I think he’s waking!”
Instantly two magicians began incanting wards while others readied spells of confinement, but the Dasati did not awake or rise. Instead, with a low moan of agony, his body arched and began to convulse. Miranda was hesitant to touch him and that hesitancy prevented her from stopping him from flopping off the pallet onto the floor.
As he thrashed violently now, his skin started to blister. Not quite sure why, Miranda shouted, “Stand away!”
The magicians drew back. Suddenly a flame engulfed the Deathpriest’s body and then a huge discharge of heat and light nearly blinded those standing nearby, singeing hair and causing everyone within proximity to fall back.
The stench was that of sulfur and rotting meat being cooked, and many were gagging from the smell. Moving backward from the site of the immolation, Miranda saw only the faint outline of a body in white ash on the floor.
“What just happened?” asked Alenca, obviously shaken by the experience.
“I don’t know,” answered Miranda. “I think that outside the dome they are unable to deal with the abundance of energy that we take for granted. I think it proved too much for him and . . . well, you saw what happened.”
“What now?” asked the old magician.
“We go back to the dome and investigate,” answered Miranda, assuming command of the situation without being asked.
“That incursion is a threat to the Empire.”
That alone was reason enough to mobilize the Great Ones of the Empire. Alenca nodded. “Not only must we investigate, we must eradicate this dome.” He turned to another magician 1 3
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and said, “Hochaka, would you be good enough to carry word to the Light of Heaven in the Holy City? The Emperor must be made aware of what is taking place, and convey to him our intentions of providing a fully detailed report after we finish.”
Miranda was amused by the steely tone taken by the old magician: in his youth he must have been an impressive figure.
He was the type of man who often surprises others when he takes control, a quiet authority figure, effective at gaining attention when other, louder voices are demanding it and being ignored.
Miranda followed his lead. Quietly she said, “I had to . . .
sense my way around inside the dome before I could escape.”
She paused for effect before saying, “I ask that you allow me to guide you in this.”
The Great Ones in the room looked taken aback by the request—a woman, and an outlander at that, leading them? But others looked to Alenca who quietly said, “It is only logical.”
With those four words he handed the power of the Assembly of Magicians, the single most puissant gathering of magic on two worlds, over to Miranda.
She nodded. “Please ask as many of the Assembly as can be here to gather in the Great Hall of Magicians in one hour’s time. I will tell what I know and suggest what I think should be done.”
Magicians quickly left to use their arts to summon as many of the members of the Assembly as they could reach. Miranda knew that whatever else might be true, once word of a threat to the Empire reached even the most distant member, all would return to hear her warning. Only those out of touch or too ill to travel would not be in the Hall when she explained that the Empire of Tsuranuanni, and the entire world of Kelewan, now faced the gravest threat ever known.
Miranda retired to her quarters. She slumped down onto the soft divan. She dared not lie down on the bed as she knew she would quickly fall asleep again. One night’s rest and a meal didn’t undo the damage the Dasati had wrought on her. She had to stay focused on the task at hand using fear, pain, and the need to act quickly as if they were food and drink, for she knew time was working against them.
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Whatever processes the Dasati had begun would only become more difficult to interrupt as time went by. A knock at the door announced the arrival of a grey-robed apprentice, one of the few young women who was now a student of magic. She carried a tray bearing a porcelain pitcher, a cup, and a platter of fruits and breads. “Great One, the Great One Alenca thought you might need refreshment.”
“Thank you,” said Miranda, indicating that the girl should put the tray down. As soon as she left, Miranda realized she was starving. She fell to eating and quickly felt energy returning to her aching, damaged body. This was one of those times she wished she had been more disposed to study clerical magic, as her husband had. Pug had called upon those arts several times and Miranda knew he would soon have had her feeling as if she had slept a week, and had not endured days of humiliation and torture, with an incantation or a draught of some foul-tasting but effective elixir.
Thinking of Pug made her pensive. She couldn’t imagine three people better able to withstand the journey into the Dasati realm—the second level of reality as Pug called it. Yet she worried. A complicated woman with complex feelings, Miranda loved her husband deeply. Not with the passionate abandon of youth—she had outgrown that when Pug was still a child—but rather with a deep appreciation of his unique qualities and why they made him perfectly suited for her as a life companion. Her sons had been an unexpected benefit of powerful life-magic, and had proven a blessing she had never anticipated. She might not be the best mother by some people’s judgment, but she enjoyed being one.
Caleb had been a challenge, when it was discovered he possessed no overt talent for the magic arts, especially after Magnus proved to be such a prodigy. She loved both her sons—with that special feeling for a firstborn she had for Magnus, and that equally special feeling for the baby of the family, amplified by her awareness of how difficult Caleb’s childhood had been in a community of magic-users. The other children’s pranks had been especially cruel, and Magnus sticking up for his younger 1 5
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brother had been both a blessing and a curse. Still, both children had grown to be men of exceptional qualities, men she looked upon with pride and love.
She sat silently for a moment, then stood up. Those three men—Pug, Magnus, and Caleb—were as much a reason as she needed to destroy the Dasati world if need be, for they were more important to her than any three beings in her long history.
She found herself growing angry and knew that if he were here, Pug would be telling her to rein in her fiery temper because it only clouded her judgment.
Miranda stretched, ignoring protesting muscles and aching joints. She would find time later to deal with her own physical discomfort. Right now she had an invasion to deal with.
A knock at the door announced Alenca’s arrival. “They are here,” he said.
Miranda nodded. “Thank you, old friend.” She walked with him to the Great Hall of the Assembly of Magicians.
As she anticipated, nearly
every seat was filled and the low murmur of voices fell away as Alenca took his position on the podium.
“Brothers . . . and sisters,” he began, reminding himself there were now female Great Ones scattered around the room.
“We are here at the behest of an old friend, Miranda.” He stepped aside, letting her take his place. No one in the Great Hall needed to be told who Miranda was. Pug’s status as one of the Great Ones had been established even before Alenca had been born, and Miranda benefited from this association as well as being a powerful magic-user in her own right.
“Kelewan is being invaded,” Miranda said without preamble. “At this very moment, a dome of black energy is being expanded in a vale in the far north. At first I saw it as a beachhead, much like the rift your forebears used to invade my home world.” The reference to the Riftwar was intentional. She knew that every student in this Assembly had been taught the entire tragic history of that ill-fated invasion in which the lives of so many had been spent in a bid of raw political power. The deadly
“Game of the Council” had seen thousands of Midkemian and 1 6
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Tsurani soldiers dead as a ploy on behalf of a political faction in the High Council. Several Black Robes had been party to that murderous plot, to establish the then Warlord and his faction in an unassailable position of power. Only the intervention of Pug, and the rise to power of a remarkable woman, Mara of the Acoma, had changed that deadly game.
Miranda continued. “Each of you here knows why the Riftwar was conducted, so I will not lecture you on what you already know. This is not an invasion for political gain, wealth in booty, concessions in victory, or any sort of conventional war.
“This is not merely an invasion, but the beginning of a colonization, a process that will end with the complete annihilation of every life-form on this world.”
That brought a collective intake of breath and murmurings of disbelief. Miranda held up her hands and continued. “Those who have studied the Talnoy and the Dasati Deathpriest prisoner, I urge you to disseminate what you know to as many of the other members as you can.”