Robert Vardeman - Pillar of Night

“They do not break and run. They still advance,” said Brinke.

“Claybore has not only trained them well, they fear him more than anything we can do to them.” Lan smiled grimly, feeling no humor in what he was about to do.

Lan blasted the sorcerers in control of the remaining death machines and let the demons run free. They turned on those around them, snorting fire and crushing humans beneath the machines’ bulk. Above dived flyers powered by fire elementals, intent on destroying the renegade machines. Huge gouts of flame lanced from the tail to propel the metal cylinders. The mages controlling these started into a shallow dive, then opened vents to the front. The flames lashed downward.

Lan staggered back as wave after wave of heat struck around him. His clothes began smouldering and his hair singed. He heard Krek moaning in pain and Inyx cursing. Of Brinke he saw and heard nothing. He reached out for her, both physically and magically, but the blonde woman was not there. Then he understood why.

She had been protecting him from hammer-rapid blows sent by thousands of mages assembled by Claybore for this express purpose. Brinke had tired too quickly and now some of those magical stabs and prods came through her protection.

Lan gasped with strain when he carried more of the burden himself. He dared not relax for an instant; too many attacks came at him from too many directions. The aerial assaults continued and required him to protect all on the ground from the fire elementals’ wrath. The juggernauts rumbling around in death-dealing circles on the ground still allowed many troops past, grey-clad soldiers who would soon close on him. Worst of all was the hail of pinpricks from the assembled sorcerers. No one individual mage contributed more than a tiny sting of magic, but their aggregate wore on him increasingly.

“Brinke,” he pleaded. “Give me some aid. Please!”

Through a red fog he saw the blonde lying on the ground in a heap. She was unconscious.

“Resident!” he called. “They are too many for me. Help me now.”

“The Pillar of Night still holds me immobile, Lan Martak. I can do nothing but suggest, to tell you that nothing is impossible for one such as yourself.”

Lan stopped trying to counter on all fronts. The grey-clad soldiers presented the least immediate danger. He concentrated on the flyers. Conjuring a water elemental in midair and inside a moving flyer proved a trick almost beyond his levels of skill. Almost.

The hindmost of the flyers simply vanished in an incandescent cloud of molten metal as water and fire elementals locked together within the bowels of the machine. Slowly at first, then with greater confidence and control, he sent forth the water elementals to extinguish the power sources on the flyers.

It almost destroyed him and the others.

The hundreds-thousands?-of mages battering away at him intensified their attack. And still he did not sense Claybore’s presence. The mage used all these tactics to wear Lan Martak down. Lan let out a tiny sob of frustration when he saw how well it worked.

The flyers were gone and the land-gripping juggernauts had passed the time of usefulness, but he weakened with every passing instant. The sheer force of the opposition made his knees tremble and his vision blur. He reached out and touched the Pillar of Night.

“No, not yet. You cannot,” warned the Resident. Lan discovered the trap in trying to tap the Resident for help in this way. The spell forming the huge black cylinder sucked away at his vital forces and left him even more enervated. He tried to pull back and could not. As if stuck in tar, his hand refused to budge.

“Do you know fear, Martak?” came Claybore’s booming voice. “When you touched the Pillar, you summoned me. I knew then that you were defeated.”

“No, no!” sobbed Lan, struggling to pull free. Everything worked against him. The pressure from the phalanxes of sorcerers increased. The grey-clad legions trooped ever closer. And Claybore began his assault.

The other attacks on Lan’s mind and body paled in comparison. Claybore’s skill, his cunning, his eons of experience all went into defeating Lan.

“You are only a country bumpkin who stumbled onto a few spells. A chant to make a campfire, a minor healing potion, those are your domain, Martak. This is mine.”

If any one of the other mage’s attacks had been a pinprick, Claybore’s was a battering ram. Somehow, Lan reached inside and held. But strength fled rapidly.

“You lost your ally,” gloated Claybore. “The Lady Brinke is no mage. She furnished you with false hope and nothing more.”

Lan sank further into defeat. Depression mounted. His cleverest spells availed him nothing. Claybore hid behind the combined might of all his mages and only waited for his grey-clads to arrive-and they would. Soon.

“The Resident found out how strong I was ten thousand years ago. He and Terrill, like you, Martak, underestimated my ability.”

Lan struggled up and fought like a cornered rat. He felt the curtains of magic part and individual mages became apparent to him. One or two he recognized personally from past encounters, but most he did not. At the forefront of this assemblage, though, Lan picked out Patriccan.

“Yes, he remembers you,” said Claybore. “He hates you for all you’ve done. Patriccan even begs me to let him be the one who destroys you, but I have yet to decide on your fate. Would you like to roam my little forest for all of time, as Terrill does?”

“Resist,” came the Resident of the Pit’s single suggestion. Lan already did that and slipped by slow inches into oblivion.

“I am sure we can find other appropriate measures to take, if we think long enough on them. You have a curious resiliency when it comes to winning free of the space between worlds. I do not think it wise to maroon you there again. Some other fitting punishment for all the trouble you have caused me must be found.”

Lan sagged to his knees, hand still frozen to the Pillar of Night.

Strong hands picked him up, locked under his arms and held him. A bristly limb the thickness of his thigh smashed down upon his hand, knocking it free of the Pillar. Lan coughed and wiped away dirt and sweat. Dimly he saw Inyx supporting him with Krek nearby.

“We’re not abandoning you,” said Inyx.

“Not after that hideous Claybore singed my lovely legs,” added Krek.

Lan Martak had been wrong. He had thought Brinke, being a mage, would give him more support. The mental link with Inyx did more than the blonde sorceress ever had to shore up his defenses, to lend him strength. And curiously, he found himself also linked with Krek.

From Inyx he received strength and drive. From Krek came a spider’s viciousness, which would have driven any human insane.

His spells, Inyx’s drive, Krek’s ferocity. He bound them all together and hid them inside his light mote familiar, waiting for the proper instant. As Claybore built his assault, the moment came.

Patriccan paused for the briefest of times; Lan struck there.

The journeyman mage let forth a bloodcurdling shriek as Lan formed a fire elemental in the man’s stomach. The instant Lan released the elemental, Patriccan died. The other mages assembled in the room also perished, alleviating some of the pressure Lan felt. He quickly sought and destroyed those sorcerers not in Claybore’s headquarters.

“The troops still approach,” Lan heard Ducasien calling. The young mage had no time for mere soldiers. Claybore presented the gravest danger.

“What?” came the startled cry as Claybore realized Lan not only fought back again but had eliminated all the other mages. “You… you can’t do that. No one can!”

Lan lashed out at Claybore, striving to dismember him as Terrill had done so many years earlier. One arm fell off, but the mage’s power remained unscathed. Recovering, Claybore visited upon Lan nightmares come to life. Lan faced his own weaknesses, his fears, his regrets. Inyx’s support helped but it was Krek’s single-minded ferocity that carried Lan past the obscene thoughts from his own mind.