Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

More laughter pulsed from the Aurolani lines.

Naelros’ nostrils flared. “I do smell fear from the boy, but not enough. Not nearly enough.”

Isaura shook her head. She could feel the power gathering around Neskartu. The sullanciri pulled from pure, strong flows, but only skimming bits and pieces of currents. What he was gathering would be strong, but merely a fraction of what he could have drawn were he open to the reality of magick. Neskartu’s right hand rose slowly, and his fingers flowed through a series of forms before he pointed his hand at Kerrigan and cast his first spell.

The argent brilliance of the attack did not surprise Isaura, for she knew the sullanciri would try to overwhelm his enemy at a shot. A jagged bolt of lightning as thick as her thigh sizzled through the air, crossing between the combatants in a heartbeat. Pure power burned the air, and snow melted into steam.

The bolt never hit the youth. It skittered wide, then curled back around, spawning smaller bolts the way a vine might sprout thorns. They stabbed at him with little silvery blades. Some curled and hooked, trying to rake over him, but none touched him. The lightning swirled around him faster and faster, tightening as if to crush him, but the silver slowly evaporated in an ectoplasmic fog that revealed Kerrigan unrumpled, unmoved, and unharmed.

Isaura reached out and could feel the dissipating energy of Neskartu’s spell, but she caught nothing of what Kerrigan had used to resist it. As a rule, like would have had to meet like. While a skilled magician might be able to block or deflect a spell using a lesser spell, that was a function of the defender’s superior knowledge of magick.

Which means he is so far above Neskartu that… No, that could not be possible.

Kerrigan nodded slowly. “Please, you were a Magister on Vilwan. Out of respect for that position, I offer you a second strike.”

The colors running through Neskartu danced as if they were drifting on the surface of a storm-wracked sea. Both his hands flowed wide at shoulder height, then descended and rose again. As they did, so did the power gathering around him. The mist from the snow began to gather and creep toward Kerrigan. It flowed up his robes, frosting them. Quickly enough he would be entombed in ice. Deprived of air, he would collapse, and Neskartu would let him smother.

That was the intent of the spell. In reality, the vapor rose and some did frost the hem of Kerrigan’s robe, but it never got past his knees. The vapor did continue to flow upward, but it kept going, higher and higher, until it began to curl back around in a mushroom shape. The cloud above him continued to boil until the sullanciri’s arms fell and it all vanished.

Naelros’ dark eyes blinked. “Now I smell much fear.”

“From the boy?”

“No.”

The Vilwanese youth bowed his head to Neskartu a third time. “You knew my mentor. You caused her death. I will allow you a third strike, but no more.”

Neskartu’s anger radiated out wordlessly. Even Isaura flinched, but the youth did not. The sullanciri’s body shifted as his fury built, and he gathered in power. Neskartu grew and expanded, rippling with shadow muscle, sprouting huge dragon wings. Colors raced, bouncing within him as if trapped in a closed vessel, melding and shifting. Incredible amounts of power poured into him, more than Isaura would have ever thought he could contain.

The sullanciri twisted, lifting a wing past the dolmen behind him, and grabbed the stone. He yanked it side to side, as if it were a tooth to be loosened in the jaw, then tore it free. Muddy clods of dirt dripped and fell fcom the thick end. He raised it over his head, then smashed it down on the Adept.

Isaura caught no sense of Kerrigan employing magick in his defense. Ungainly and jiggling, he danced aside. The stone slammed into the ground hard and heavy. Isaura could feel the earth shake even where she sat. The impact bounced Kerrigan back and dumped him on his fat backside.

He slumped against the black stone and grabbed at the edge with his right hand.

Mine ! Neskartu’s triumphant mindburst made her breath catch in her throat. The hulking sullanciri bent over, grasping the stone again. Muscles rippled over his back and arms. Colors intensified to outline them. Once more the stone would rise, once more it would fall, and Kerrigan would be pulverized.

The stone did not move.

Calmly, despite the violent effort shaking the sullanciri , Kerrigan rolled to his knees, then levered himself up with his hands on the stone. Though the stone had landed in turf softened by spells and melting snow, Neskartu might as well have been trying to uproot the whole of Nawal. All of his efforts were for naught.

Kerrigan’s voice gained a bit of an edge. “Enough. You have had your third strike. You had one for being challenged. You had one for what you had learned. You had one for what you have done.”

Neskartu’s clawed hands released the scored stone. The sullanciri straightened, but kept his wings unfurled to make himself larger. The colors no longer raced through him, but flowed in bright, twisting sheets.

And now you would have your strike?

Kerrigan nodded slowly and brought the wand to hand. “My strike, yes.”

The sullanciris colors quickened. He had said that Kerrigan’s use of the wand would bring certain death. Isaura did know that Neskartu graced the most promising and treacherous of his students with gifts like that wand. While these gifts enhanced the ability to cast magick, they were not without danger. Through them the sullanciri could destroy a rebel.

Isaura found herself wanting to shout a warning, but she could not. Her mother had told her that she would be betrayed, and the words came back to haunt Isaura. I will not be the one to betray her .

A heartbeat later, she knew neither the warning nor the betrayal was necessary.

The youth looked up at the creature towering over him. “I know two things. If I cast through this wand, you will kill me. If I use this wand, I will kill you.”

Power flowed so quickly into Kerrigan that Isaura could feel currents warping to fill him. Neskartu began preparing defenses against any number of combat spells, but they mattered not. The sullanciri had missed the most important clue about his attacker, and had he spotted it, he might have been able to prepare correctly.

Isaura doubted that would have saved his life.

Kerrigan was not a combat mage. He did not cast a spell through the wand, but on the wand—a wand Neskartu had enchanted himself. The spell hyperaccelerated the wand. In the blink of an eye it went from motionless to a blur.

Like an arrow, it punched through Neskartu’s chest. It tugged at the flesh of his back, tenting it between the wings. The wand lifted the sullanciri so quickly into the air that his arms and legs streaked out behind him like streamers. The wings collapsed around him, and his body followed, until he had become nothing but a dark line ringed with angry colors. Then Isaura heard a thundercrack, felt it ripple through her chest. The end of that line snapped forward to the front, then it disappeared into a puff of white vapor high in the sky.

In the thundercrack’s wake, silence reigned. Shock showed on all faces, save that of the Adept. He looked mildly curious, then rubbed his hands over the thighs of his robe. He frowned as he looked at the stone, then gestured almost blithely and it floated back into its original position.

Off to Isaura’s right, a fire captain snarled an order. A spark was set to the firehole of a dragonel. Smoke spurted upward with a hiss, then a moment later the weapon roared. It belched fire, and an iron ball arced out. It bounced once, splashing water and grasses, then bore down on Kerrigan.