Troy Denning - The Cerulean Storm

Listening attentively to Magnus’s beautiful song, Sadira peered under the collar of her robe. The flesh of her arm had paled clear up to her shoulder. The sorceress guessed that the magic energy in her body would be completely drained after five or six more spells-even less, if the spells were powerful ones. After that, she would have to find a different source for her enchantments. And in the Gray, she doubted that she would find any plants from which to draw the mystic force of life.

Wondering if she would have enough magic to defeat the wraiths when they finally showed themselves, the sorceress started to climb. The stairs were small, barely wide enough to accept her foot from the toes to the arch. Often, the steps were cracked and so worn that they formed more of a ramp than a staircase. A thousand years of dust lay upon the treads, and she passed over the ancient grime without leaving a track. It took more than a footfall to disturb the torpor of the Gray.

The sorceress climbed for a long time: minutes or hours or days, she did not know. Progress, if she was making any, came slowly. The summit remained veiled by distance, and the base of the tower seemed no nearer. Still, she continued to climb, reassured by the increasing volume of the windsinger’s voice that she was traveling in the right direction. In the stillness of the haze, distance and time were mere illusions, but not Magnus’s song. It came from the outside, and it was real.

After a time, a glowing emerald floated into view. It hovered next to the wall, several steps above, and a large eddy of darkening haze slowly circled it. A pair of green pinpoints appeared in the haze, at about head-height and twinkling with a sinister glow.

Sadira stopped climbing, anxious and ready for battle. Like her, wraiths needed something important from their lives to serve as magnets for their spirits. Although the sorceress had never encountered these particular apparitions before the attack on the Cloud Road, Rikus had. From his description, she knew that for Borys’s followers, a brilliant gem served this purpose. Though she could not be certain, she guessed that Borys had given one of the stones to each of his knights when he took them into his service.

The sorceress thrust a hand into her robe pocket, watching dark haze coalesce around the emerald above. The cloud soon formed the cumbersome figure of a woman in a full suit of plate armor. The warrior wore the visor of her helmet up, so that she could focus the green specks of her eyes on Sadira. The woman’s face was stern and hard, with a cleft chin, sneering lips, and broad flat cheeks.

The wraith pointed the tip of her sword toward the haze below. “Go down,” she ordered.

Sadira pulled a tiny satchel of copper dust from her pocket. The sorceress tore the packet open with her teeth, then waited as the wraith charged. When her attacker was almost upon her, she blew the brown powder toward the warrior’s open visor. The stuff coated the woman’s face.

The wraith’s sword came down.

Sadira twisted away, diverting the blow with a crashing block to her foe’s elbow. From the solid feel of the armor, it was hard to believe the warrior had coalesced out of gray haze just a moment earlier. The wraith stumbled then caught herself and braced to swing again.

The attack came too late. Sadira spoke her spell’s command word, and the copper dust covering the wraith’s face flashed blue.

A tremulous, ear-piercing shriek burst from the wraith’s lips. She dropped her sword and clutched at her face, pitching forward. Before she could clatter to the ground, a blue glow ran through her armor. Her body instantly dissolved into a gray fog and drifted away, leaving a glowing emerald floating where her head had been an instant earlier.

The sorceress plucked the gem out of the air. It was as large as her thumb, cut into an marquise oval and deeper in color than any emerald she had ever seen. The sheen of its many facets looked almost black, while a faint green light glimmered in the center.

Sadira laid the stone on a step, drew her dagger, and smashed the pommel into the gem. The stone did not shatter so much as crumble into a coarse, lime-colored powder. A shimmering radiance hung over the crushed stone, slowly expanding outward in a cloudlike mass. Save for its green tint, the light resembled the mystic energy that normal sorcerers drew from plants to cast their spells.

The cloud burst apart with a deafening crash. Bolts of green light shot through the Gray, lighting it with a spectacular show of brilliant flashes. The storm continued to rage, filling the vast abyss with a tempest of resounding booms and effulgent flares, stirring the ashen haze into a froth of swirling green light.

Sadira was surprised by the tumult. She had known crushing the gem would release a certain amount of life force, for even wraiths needed some energy to bind their spirits together. But the stone had contained at least as much power as she would expect to find in a living woman. Perhaps that was the reason Borys’s knights had been so dedicated to him. If the gems served as repositories for their life forces, it would be possible for him to resurrect them.

After a time, the storm gave one last rumble and died away in a wave of flickering color. Once more, Magnus’s voice descended from the tower summit, clear and unimpeded. Before starting up the stairs, Sadira paused long enough to look under her robe to see how much mystic energy her spell had consumed. The enchantment had been a costly one. Most of her upper torso had paled to the normal hue of her flesh. If she were going to get past all the wraiths, she would have to find a more efficient way to use her magic.

The sorceress began climbing. By this time, Magnus had repeated his sibilant rhymes so many times that she knew the syllables by heart, even if she did not understand the meaning of the words. Sadira began to sing along. The melody lifted her spirits, and keeping a watchful eye for more wraiths, she bounded up the stairs two at time.

Finally, the sorceress rounded a curve, and the staircase broadened into a small apron that sat before the open gates of a white bastion. The ramparts were built of alabaster and finished with undulating caps of ivory. Beyond the entranceway, a pool of shimmering blue water filled the inner ward of the citadel, with a single pathway of limestone blocks leading toward its center. The walkway stopped at the base of a minaret rising directly out of the water. This slender steeple was faced with white onyx and crowned by a crystal cupola.

Although she had reached the summit of the Pristine Tower, Sadira’s singing croaked to a stop. Between her and the gate stood ten wraiths, all armored in gray plate similar to the first woman’s. They wore their helmet visors down, so that all the sorceress could see of their faces was the jewel-colored slivers of light emitted by their burning eyes: ruby, sapphire, citrine, amethyst, and more. None of them carried weapons.

The largest wraith stepped forward. He extended a mailed hand and, in a raspy voice, ordered, “Go down.” Sadira reached into her robe and shook her head. She was vaguely aware that Magnus’s booming voice had grown urgent. Directly above the citadel’s minaret, the pearly haze swirled about in two great eddies, each spinning in opposite directions.

“Stand aside-” She paused to clear a nervous catch in her throat, then continued, “Let me pass.”

The wraith shook his head. “Borys is aware of what you and Rikus are doing,” he said. “He has demanded your deaths.”

Sadira tensed, her limbs cold and aching. She wanted to ask how much the Dragon knew, and whether he had found Agis, but realized that it would be futile. If the wraith replied at all, his answer was sure to be misleading.