Sea of Death: Blade of the Flame - Book 3 Read online

  Far easier said than done.

  If Ghaji’s elemental axe had still functioned, its flames would have made short work of the mummies, as well as the spiderlings they hosted, but the axe was just a weapon of steel now, and there was no point in wishing otherwise. Various objects were scattered across the floor of the ancient crypt, making it awkward to maneuver, but the clutter also hindered the web mummies, so overall it proved an advantage for the faster, more agile living warriors. Dust covered the crypt floor, and Ghaji ordered Hinto and Onu to scoop up handfuls and throw them onto the oncoming mummies. Ghaji hoped that the dust would adhere to the mummies’ webbing and nullify its stickiness, making it possible to touch the creatures without becoming bound to them.

  Ghaji knelt and rubbed his axe head in the dust for the same reason, and Asenka followed suit for her long sword. Yvka sorted through the magical items in her pouch for weapons that would deter the mummies without damaging them to the point where the spiderlings they hosted were set free. Ghaji didn’t know whether Yvka could employ the magic of her dragonmark so soon after wielding it against the dark serpent that had taken control of Solus, but even if she could, he had no idea what use it would be against the web mummies. Though the same luminescent mold grew here on the walls of the crypt just as it did in the outer cavern, the light was so dim that Ghaji doubted Yvka’s shadow magic would make any difference to the mummies.

  So Hinto and Onu threw dust, Ghaji and Asenka struck the attacking web mummies using the flats of their dust-coated blades, and Yvka tossed a variety of mystic weapons designed by the artificers of the Shadow Network—walnuts that exploded with concussive force, thistles that flew through the air and traced lines that created magical barriers. Thus Ghaji and the others managed to hold back the tide of undead without releasing any more spiderlings.

  But the dust covering their weapons soon rubbed off, and Asenka’s long sword became stuck fast to a web mummy’s chest. As the mummy reached out to grab hold of Asenka, Ghaji started forward, intending to keep the monster from getting its undead claws on her. But before he could do more than take a step in her direction, a hand fell on his shoulder, and a hollow voice said, “Allow me.”

  Ghaji was startled to see a web mummy walk past him—when had the thing gotten through their defenses?—and stagger toward Asenka. The creature walked with one hand held palm up, and Ghaji saw that the thing carried a handful of crypt-dust. The mummy stepped up to the one reaching for Asenka and rubbed the dust it carried onto the blade of her sword. Asenka looked at the mummy assisting her in disbelief, but she was no fool. She yanked her sword free and quickly stepped back out of reach of either mummy. Their undead benefactor then rubbed its hands together, making sure both were coated with dust, and then shoved the other mummy as hard as it could. The second mummy stumbled backward, bumped into the edge of a sepulcher, and fell into it, web-wrapped legs sticking up and waving uselessly in the air.

  The helper-mummy turned back to face them, a familiar grin on its desiccated, sunken-eyed face, and that’s when Ghaji noticed that beneath web-strands covering the mummy lay a bright red sea captain’s coat.

  “I’m glad that worked,” Onu said. “I wasn’t sure I could fool the beastly things!”

  Ghaji grinned back in relief. After that, the battle went more easily, for Onu—still wearing the shape of a web mummy—was able to walk right up to the real creatures and rub dust on them without interference. Thus Ghaji and the others continued holding the web mummies at bay, the half-orc hoping that Diran was having equal success dealing with Nathifa.

  In the confusion, no one—including Asenka—noticed that when she tore her sword free from the web mummy, a tiny red spider no larger than an infant’s fist clung to the blade. This youngling had been hiding close to the surface of its host’s dead, dry flesh, doing its best to avoid being devoured by its ravenous sisters. When Asenka yanked her sword away, a small scrap of skin came with it, a scrap the youngling was clinging to. The spider, following its instincts to attack anything that threatened its host, scuttled down the length of the sword toward the hilt and onto the back of Asenka’s hand. The warrior woman felt the feather-light touch of the spiderling’s legs on her flesh, But before she could shake off the tiny creature, it sank its fangs into the back of her hand and released venom into her system.

  The bite was painful, but Asenka had endured worse in her time, and her only reaction was to draw in a hissing breath of air that no one else heard. She gave her hand a violent shake, dislodged the spiderling onto the floor, and crushed it beneath her boot before it could crawl away. She then examined the back of her hand. The bite was already swelling and beginning to purple, and she could feel it throb in concert with her pulse. She didn’t experience any immediate effects of the venom, though. No lightheadedness, no nausea. She decided that not only had the spiderling been too small to deliver much venom but that she’d managed to dislodge it before it could inject what little it could. Besides, she had more important things to worry about than a tiny spider bite right now. She had to help the others keep the web mummies busy and buy Diran enough time to stop Nathifa.

  And so Asenka returned her attention to battle, the spider’s bite all but forgotten.

  Makala and Haaken stood wrapped in webbing strong as steel, held captive by a pair of web mummies while crimson spiderlings crawled across their bodies, stinging whatever flesh remained exposed. The younglings’ mother crouched in front of them, the tomb spider’s fangs glistening with fluid as she prepared to inject them with her venom. The only reason the giant spider hadn’t done so by now, Makala assumed, was because the arrival of Diran and his companions had distracted her. But now that the rest of the tomb spider’s web mummies were attacking the intruders, evidently the mother was ready to return to the business at hand: namely preparing new hosts in which she could implant eggs.

  The spiderlings’ stings hurt, but Makala’s undead physiology seemed unaffected by their venom. She wasn’t certain what effect a full dose from an adult tomb spider might do, though. Haaken roared and struggled against his silken bonds as the spiderlings savaged his body, but Makala thought the wereshark reacted more out of rage and frustration than pain. While Haaken was a lycanthrope, he was still a living creature, and might well react more strongly to an injection of adult tomb spider venom.

  Makala didn’t care what happened to Haaken, nor did she care whether or not Nathifa succeeded in absorbing the magic of Paganus’s hoard. Right now all she cared about was not becoming a repository for a clutch of tomb spider eggs.

  As the tomb spider moved forward to bite Makala, the vampire transformed into mist. The arachnid’s fangs passed through her insubstantial form harmlessly. The web mummy that had been holding onto her staggered backward as if in confusion, and the webbing that had encircled her, with nothing solid left to hold it up, fell to the crypt floor. The tomb spider scuttled backward and crouched low, wary. Its prey had vanished and its tiny spider mind was attempting to grasp what had happened and whether or not this strange development constituted a new threat.

  Makala willed her mist-form to float upward and over the tomb spider, and then she transformed back into her humanoid shape. Makala dropped onto the tomb spider’s back and, marshalling all her vampire’s strength, she rammed her hands through the creature’s body. There was a loud crunching sound as Makala penetrated the spider’s outer shell, and then her hands were covered with thick warm fluid. Makala grasped hold of the slippery soft organs inside and pulled.

  The tomb spider reared back in agony, front legs waving wildly in the air. Makala was thrown backward off the spider, the guts she held onto trailing out of the creature’s back like streamers of bloody meat. She released the organs, transformed into a bat in midair, and swooped up toward the crypt’s ceiling. Using a combination of both her bat and vampire senses, Makala was able to form a clear mental image of the battle occurring below.

  She “saw” the tomb spider start to come back down on its forel
egs. As it did, Haaken pulled free from the web mummy that held him and threw himself beneath one of the spider’s legs. The claw on the leg’s tip tore through the webbing wrapped about the wereshark’s chest, in the process slicing a long wound down Haaken’s chest and abdomen. But that didn’t matter. Haaken would heal swiftly—and far more importantly, he was free.

  Makala was impressed. She hadn’t thought Haaken that intelligent.

  Haaken let out an elated battle-roar and grabbed hold of the tomb spider’s two front forelegs. The giant arachnid brought her mouth parts down in an attempt to sink her fangs into Haaken’s broad shark-like head. But before she could strike, Haaken ripped the forelegs legs out of her body, and the tomb spider squealed in pain. She scuttled backward, gore spilling from the gaping wounds were her legs had been attached to her body, but Haaken had scented the blood of his prey, and the wereshark wasn’t about to let the tomb spider escape. He leaped forward, claws outstretched, tooth-filled maw open wide, and as he landed atop the spider, he clamped his jaws down upon the spider’s eyes and bit down with all his might. The tomb spider’s shell cracked open like that of a steamed crab beneath the pressure of the wereshark’s jaws and gore sprayed over Haaken. The tomb spider whipped about from side to side in a desperate attempt to dislodge her attacker, but Haaken held on tight with his clawed hands, biting, tearing, and rending.

  Finally, the spider’s body slumped to the floor of the crypt and its remaining legs curled inward, twitching feebly as the creature surrendered to death. Haaken, his shark’s snout smeared with blood and viscera, continued ravaging the tomb spider’s corpse, gulping down great mouthfuls of the thing’s innards with mindless efficiency.

  Leontis stood by, only half-listening while Diran explained his plan to the psiforged and the artificer. The priest watched with increasing frustration as the battle took place around him and, far worse, without him. He was Sir Leontis of the Order of Templars, and it wasn’t in his nature to stand idly by while others risked their lives in the struggle against evil. He understood why Diran had asked him to stay back, though. If Nathifa was a powerful enough lich, it was possible that both priests would be needed to stop her, but Leontis knew another reason—perhaps the most important one—was that Diran didn’t want to risk having Leontis lose control of his lupine side again so soon after what had happened in the forest when they’d fought the shadowclaws. The werewolf had helped the others against those monsters then, but what guarantee was there that the beast wouldn’t turn on Leontis’s companions this time? None at all.

  Leontis recognized the logic in Diran’s strategy and even agreed with it, but it still chafed. Diran had played upon their friendship to convince Leontis to come along on this quest, all for the sake of some dubious visions revealed by a demon desperate to make a deal to prevent being cast out of its young host body. Leontis had allowed himself to be convinced, telling himself that perhaps he could do one last bit of good before leaving this mortal plane and joining with the Silver Flame. But he’d contributed little to the group’s efforts so far. He’d stopped a Fury-crazed Ghaji from slaying Diran, and he’d killed the flying creature that had been about to attack them as their longboat had approached the island, and that was all. The werewolf had done far more, killing numerous shadowclaws before being caught in the fireblast. It seemed that for all his vaunted training and priestly abilities, Leontis was of less use than the wild animal that shared his soul.

  Why should he keep fighting the wolf inside him, then? Perhaps there was a reason he had been infected with the curse of lycanthropy. Perhaps it wasn’t a curse, at least not in his case. Perhaps it was, instead, a weapon that he was meant to wield in his order’s battle against evil. Evil against evil, fire against fire …

  He shook his head. That was the werewolf talking, not the man. The beast would do anything to be free again, even attempt to persuade Leontis to believe that evil could be used as a tool for good when wielded by one of the Purified. But that was the sort of thinking that led to abuses of power. The ends did not justify the means, no matter what. The teachings of the priesthood were absolutely clear on this, and so Leontis vowed to continue fighting to keep the werewolf caged inside him.

  But then he heard an animalistic roar, and the sound sent a strange fire surging up his spine and into his brain. Leontis trained his gaze upon a creature that appeared to be half-human and half-shark. In the confusion, Leontis hadn’t taken much notice of the creature, but he knew instinctively that it was a fellow lycanthrope. The wereshark attacked the tomb spider, leaping upon the arachnid and biting huge hunks out of her.

  Leontis felt the fire in his mind build into a raging inferno at the sight of the wereshark glutting itself on the spider’s internal organs, and when the wolf came to the fore, there was nothing he could do to stop the beast from taking possession of his body. And as he felt his persona giving way to the werewolf’s savagery, he was horrified to realize that not only did he like it, he welcomed it.

  Diran saw Leontis shift into his hybrid wolf form and bounded toward the wereshark. The sea-based lycanthrope had slain the tomb spider—something Diran supposed they all should be grateful for—and was engaged in devouring the mutilated remains. Diran had been born and raised in the Principalities, and thus knew that sharks would eat virtually anything, but he had a difficult time believing anyone with even a shred of humanity in them would eat a tomb spider, let alone do so with such enthusiastic delight. In addition, tomb spiders were creatures suffused with negative energy, and Diran couldn’t see how even a lycanthrope could ingest the horrid thing’s meat without being affected somehow by that energy.

  Diran shouted Leontis’s name, in a vain attempt to call him back, but it was too late. The man was gone and only the werewolf remained. Leontis snarled as he threw himself upon the wereshark, and the lycanthropes began trying to kill each other, two predators that instinctively sensed and loathed a competitor.

  Diran wished he could go to his friend’s aid, but there was nothing he could do for Leontis right now. He spared a second to wonder where Makala was—he’d seen her transform into mist and attack the tomb spider, but he hadn’t witnessed the outcome of her action. Either the spider had wounded her somehow or, more likely, Makala was still close by, either in mist or bat form. He’d vowed to free his former lover from the curse of undeath and undo the mistake he’d made by not slaying her the moment she awoke as a vampire. Hopefully, he’d get the chance to redeem himself soon … after Nathifa was stopped. The lich had to be dealt with before she could absorb even more of the magic in Paganus’s hoard.

  Diran turned to Tresslar and Solus. “Ready?”

  The psiforged and the artificer nodded. Both held daggers given them by the priest, one in each hand. Diran held the same number.

  “Throw!” Diran commanded, and the three companions tossed the daggers straight up into the air, without even attempting to aim them anywhere in particular. When the daggers reached the apex of their less-than-graceful flight, Solus grabbed hold of the blades telekinetically and sent them streaking toward the oversized eyeball hovering above Nathifa’s head.

  The guardian eye released a blast of necromantic energy at the six oncoming daggers, but the blades fanned out, and the ebon beam managed to deflect only one. The remaining five encircled the eye and began rotating rapidly around the living orb, moving with such blinding speed that Diran had a difficult time keeping track of the knives. The eye, moving just as swiftly as the blades, oriented on one after the other, blasting them out of the air with dark beams of mystic force. One blade, two … three … four …

  At Solus’s mental command, the last dagger curved away in the opposite direction from where the three companions stood. The eye tracked the blade, turning away from them as it prepared to deal with this final threat. As soon as the guardian eye faced the other direction and couldn’t see them, Diran slipped another dagger out of its cloak sheath, aimed, and hurled the blade at the back of eye. As the eye blasted the last o
f the rotating blades, the new dagger plunged into it from behind, and the guardian orb exploded in a spray of blood and viscous fluid.

  Nathifa cried out in pain and frustration, but she didn’t allow her concentration to slacken. The lich continued absorbing magic into the Amahau, but now she had no guardian to protect her. Solus released control of the levitating daggers and the blades fell to the floor. There was no point in the psiforged driving them into the lich. The only way she could be killed was if the phylactery containing her lifeforce was discovered and destroyed. But if Diran could get close enough, he could use the power of the Silver Flame to repel her, giving Tresslar a chance to regain possession of his dragonwand.

  The priest drew a silver dagger from his cloak and removed his arrowhead symbol from his vest pocket. He then turned to Solus and Tresslar.

  “Be careful,” he warned his companions. “Even diminished as Nathifa is by the loss of her arm and eye, she is still most powerful—all the more so because she possesses the dragonwand.”

  “I shall remember,” Solus said.

  “You take care of the lich,” Tresslar said, a determined look on his face. “You let me worry about the Amahau.”

  Diran nodded, and together the three started toward the lich.

  Nathifa was no stranger to mystic power, but she’d never experienced anything like the Amahau before. The sheer amount of magical energy that it could hold was astonishing. It had already drained a good portion of Paganus’s hoard, and Nathifa could sense that it wasn’t near to being full. How much magic could the dragonhead contain? With its power hers to command, she would be like unto a god herself. She could keep the artifact for herself, continue traveling throughout the Principalities and absorbing magic wherever she went. And when she finally had enough, she could travel to the Fingerbone Mountains and challenge Vol. With the power of the Amahau, she could defeat the Lich Queen, cast her down, and take her place on the throne of bones.