David Weber - War Maid's choice

He made himself straighten, made himself inhale deeply, and looked up from the crystal as the ghouls scattered like windblown chaff. Many of the creatures, maddened by battle and blood lust, continued to attack, but they were less than a tithe of the original horde. No power on earth could have stopped the rest of them from fleeing now-not when their new gods had been slain, for the compulsion those gods had wielded had vanished with Anshakar’s death, and the terror of his destroyers was upon them.

Malahk Sahrdohr looked back at the older man, gray eyes stunned. He’d watched the same battle, seen the same signs Varnaythus had seen…and now this.

“Well,” the senior wizard said finally, his voice harsh, “it seems Anshakar and the others aren’t going to kill Bahzell after all.” He showed his teeth. “And Vaijon by himself isn’t going to be enough to keep Them happy.”

Sahrdohr shook his head in mute agreement, and Varnaythus’ nostrils flared as he contemplated the act he’d hoped so desperately to avoid.

Well, at least you’re in an even better position to lay the blame on Anshakar and his idiots than you thought you’d be, he told himself. And you’ve got even better reason to rip out that bastard Bahzell’s heart with his wife. Yes, and Yurokhas, as well! His eyes glittered like shards of ice. Let’s see how the pair of them deal with this.

“It’s time,” he said out loud. “We’ll take Chergor first, then Sothofalas.”

Sahrdohr’s expression was acutely unhappy. Obviously, he’d hoped as strongly as Varnaythus that it would never come to this, and he had a few reservations about the strength of their wards. They’d be dangerously close to the blast that would gut the city, and the wards in question were Varnaythus’, not his. No wizard truly liked to trust his own precious skin to the craft of another, but he only nodded and murmured a command into his own gramerhain.

The images in it changed, focusing tightly on the smouldering ruin where the kairsalhain lay buried. The crystal itself burned crimson in Sahrdohr’s stone, despite the wreckage and tumbled stonework hiding it from any mortal senses, and as Varnaythus gazed into the gramerhain over his companion’s shoulder, he felt the kairsalhain’s potency beat against him like waves of heat even through the intermediary of the scrying spell.

“All right, let’s-”

Varnaythus never completed the sentence.

It was like being locked in a cage with a bolt of lightning. In one shattering instant, a cataract ripped through the warded chamber’s defenses as if those formidable workings were so many cobwebs in an autumn storm. Varnaythus cried out in torment as the collapsing wards backlashed through the wizard who’d erected them in the first place. It was only a trickle, only a minute fragment, of the total power he’d poured into them, far less the brutal fist of wild magic which had just torn them asunder, yet it was enough to blast him off his feet and hurl him bruisingly into the chamber’s wall. His head hit stone, hard enough to stun, and he slid down as a white-haired man with eyes of flame appeared in the middle of his sanctum in worn Sothoii leathers.

Sahrdohr threw himself out of his chair, eyes wild with shock and fear, but he was a wizard lord, and despite his total surprise, his hands came up. A wand appeared in them, swinging to point at the apparition, but the flame-eyed man simply reached out towards him, closed his hand into a fist wrapped in a nimbus of wild magic, and made a ripping motion.

Sahrdohr shrieked. He rose on his toes, his body arched, and something flashed from him into that clenched fist. Then his eyes rolled up, his knees collapsed, and he crumpled to the stone floor like a discarded puppet.

Varnaythus pushed himself shakily to his feet, staring at the intruder while he tried to force his stunned mind to function.

It wasn’t possible. Even for Wencit of Rum, this simply wasn’t possible. He’d set those wards himself. Yes, wild magic could break them, but not without probing them first, sampling and analyzing them, learning who’d erected them, how he’d woven them. Not without employing enough power to destroy every living thing within a thousand yards, at any rate! Not even Wencit of Rum could have tested them thoroughly enough to avoid that without Varnaythus sensing him at it. And even if that had been possible, this chamber hadn’t so much as existed before Varnaythus created it, and no one- no one! — could simply teleport himself into a place he’d never been before.

Yet there Wencit stood, and Varnaythus felt terror shiver through him as he found himself face-to-face with the last white wizard in all the world. He reached out in the desperate hope that he might somehow have time to activate one of his own teleportation spells before Wencit annihilated him, but his shoulders slumped as he encountered a fine-meshed barrier, stronger even than his own wards had been, enclosing what had been his sanctum in a prison of wild magic.

“So,” Wencit said finally, his voice soft. “I’ve been looking forward to this, Varnaythus of Kontovar.”

Varnaythus twitched, although why he should be surprised-especially in the wake of everything else that had just happened! — that Wencit knew his name eluded him at the moment.

“I suppose I should be flattered, then,” he heard himself say, and Wencit smiled. It was a cold smile, and his witchfire eyes blazed.

“A professional courtesy first, if you please,” that voice which sounded like his own continued.

“What?” Wencit asked, with a complete calm and assurance Varnaythus found more terrifying than any threat.

“How?” Varnaythus waved at the chamber about them, and that cold smile grew even colder.

“You aren’t the only one who knows how to create a kairsalhain. But you were kind enough to build your working chamber on top of one of mine.”

Varnaythus’ eyes flickered in shock. Then he shook himself.

“That’s not possible,” he said flatly. “I created this chamber myself. No one else-not even Sahrdohr-knew its physical location, and even if you’d found it, no one could get a kairsalhain inside its wards without my sensing it!”

He heard the outraged professional pride in his own voice and knew vanity was a foolish prop at a moment like this. But professional pride was all he truly had, here at the end of things, and he glared at Wencit, daring even a wild wizard to dispute him.

“You weren’t listening,” Wencit replied. “I didn’t get anything ‘inside its wards.’ I didn’t have to. You built it on top of my kairsalhain. It’s been waiting here for over seven hundred years, Varnaythus.”

The Carnadosan’s eyes didn’t flicker this time; they bulged. Seven hundred years? Wencit had been here-buried a kairsalhain here- seven hundred years before? That was…that was “I said I’ve been looking forward to this,” Wencit said. “As it happens, I’ve been looking forward for quite a long time. And speaking of time, it’s time for me to deliver a message to your colleagues back in Trofrolantha.”

“A message?” Varnaythus felt like a parrot, yet despite himself, he also felt a faint tremble of hope. A message implied a messenger, after all.

“Your friend Malahk will deliver it for me,” Wencit said, watching the hope die in Varnaythus’ eyes. “In fact, he’ll be part of the message.”

“What…what do you mean?” Varnaythus thought of all the inventive ways a wizard’s artistically dismembered body could be delivered-and how long the unfortunate wizard could be kept alive during the dismembering process-and shuddered. Perhaps he was going to be more fortunate than Sahrdohr after all.

“Oh, he’ll be just fine…physically,” Wencit replied, still with that icy smile. “But you and the Council crossed a line this time, Varnaythus. There are some things I will not tolerate, and Malahk will deliver that message. And as an indication that they should take it seriously, I’ve stripped his Gift from him.”