Shroud of Eternity

CHAPTER 74

Fleshmancer Andre’s bloodcurdling scream echoed through his entire villa, then ended abruptly. In the other room, Elsa backed away, her eyes wide as she glanced nervously at Nathan. “What did he unleash upon Ildakar?”

“I will save us first, dear lady, and then worry about saving the entire city.” He gathered his white smocklike robe around him and took her arm. “It would be wise for us to leave this place.”

Elsa hurried along as they pulled aside the indigo hangings, looking for a way out of the maze that Andre called his studio. With a booming sound and an echoing bellow, something huge hammered through the stone block walls, coming closer.

Before Nathan and Elsa could reach the high foyer at the front of the mansion, the wall opposite them cracked and shivered. A loud pounding blow crashed like a battering ram, and the thick walls toppled. A huge figure threw stone blocks aside like a squirrel scattering leaves in autumn. Nathan’s mouth dropped open in disbelief.

The mammoth warrior was like an insane juggernaut smashing through the support walls.

“Dear spirits, he awakened one of the Ixax warriors!” Elsa cried. Nathan reached out an arm and swept Elsa behind him. The gigantic soldier turned the iron shell of its cauldron-sized helmet toward the sound of Nathan’s voice. Its yellow eyes blazed through the slit.

“Those things were never meant to be activated,” Elsa said. “I didn’t even know they were still alive.”

“Alive and angry it seems.” Nathan raised his hands in a placating gesture, speaking directly to the titan. “But I’m not the one who tormented you. We aren’t your enemies.”

Fifteen feet tall, the Ixax crashed through the broken stone and lumbered into the great foyer. Nathan and Elsa backed toward the vine-covered front entrance. The warrior swung its boulder-sized fists, crushing one of the stone blocks into powder.

“I don’t suppose you’d listen to reason?” Nathan pleaded.

The Ixax warrior charged like an angry bull the size of a mountain.

They scrambled through the spacious foyer, but Nathan knew the Ixax could easily run them down. The enormous armored warrior might merely crush them, or perhaps, like a child tormenting an insect, pull them apart limb by limb.

The titan confronted one of the marble support columns that rose to the arched ceiling. It wrapped its armored arms around the column and strained, cracking the stone, uprooting the pillar like an angry bear tearing up a tree. The Ixax hurled the column toward Nathan and Elsa.

She held up her hand, and with a shove of magic, diverted the pillar so that it spun in the air and crashed into the second tall marble column, cracking it. The ceiling groaned and splintered. Shards tumbled down to the tiled floor. The second support column broke in the middle, and the halves collapsed.

The ceiling cracked, and Nathan grabbed Elsa, pulling her through the arch and outside the fleshmancer’s villa just as the Ixax straightened and raised both gauntleted fists. Then the ceiling collapsed, countless stone blocks burying the warrior under tons of debris.

As Nathan and Elsa ducked for shelter, powdered stone dust swirled all around them, making them cough. The continuing roar of the breaking stone sounded like an avalanche. Andre’s mansion fell in on itself with a roar nearly as loud as the Ixax.

“Do you think that destroyed it?” Elsa asked, shielding her eyes from the clouds of dust.

“Of course not, dear lady,” he said. They backed away, keeping an eye on the smoke and powder from the collapsed building. As he stared at the devastation, Nathan felt a tingle within him, sharp pains that cracked inside his chest, the heavy drumbeat of his heart. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. The lines of Han through his body burned like hot wires, and the gift flowed inside him with a staccato urgency. With Elsa’s help, he had been practicing his magic, but was still unable to perform as the great wizard he had once been.

Even with control of the gift again, though, Nathan doubted it would be enough. Andre had been an exceedingly powerful wizard, but he had not been sufficient enough to stand against his monstrous creation. What chance did Nathan have?

“Why would Andre unleash that thing?” Elsa asked. “Why did he do it?”

Nathan shook his head. “Andre was with the two of us, remember? Someone else awakened that giant warrior.”

“But only a great wizard can do that,” she said.

He pursed his lips. “As I’ve been told so often, Ildakar is filled with wizards.”

Like a geyser of erupting stone, debris flew upward as the Ixax warrior blasted its way out of the rubble, tossing massive blocks out of the way as if they were no more than pebbles. Covered in dust but otherwise unharmed, the behemoth rose out of the ruined mansion.

“By now the rest of the duma will be up near the pyramid,” Elsa said. “We have to call them and stand together to fight against this monster.”

Nathan took her arm, and they backed away. “I am generally an optimist, but Andre told me that each Ixax warrior could single-handedly slaughter thousands of the enemy. I’m not sure all the duma members combined will be strong enough.”

The Ixax charged toward them, picking up speed as it began to run. Each footfall sounded like a stonecutter’s hammer breaking rock in a quarry.

Members of the city guard scurried through the streets, responding to the other alarms. Nathan had no idea what was happening throughout Ildakar, and he wondered if Mirrormask’s rebellion had finally begun. Was awakening the Ixax warrior part of that attack? This huge juggernaut would cause utter mayhem throughout the city.

But what fool would do that? Who would dare?

He and Elsa retreated down the street as the mammoth warrior uprooted the anchored trellises, mowed down the eerie hedgerows of eye-filled flowers. Nathan looked for any sort of shelter among the nearby buildings.

A bell tower rose next to a civic building constructed of cut sandstone blocks. The bell tolled, loud and desperate, to rouse the city, calling the defenders to arms. With all the turmoil in the streets, the population scrambled about in confusion. Some were part of a disorganized uprising, while others were merely trying to flee.

Ten armed guards swarmed along the street, holding their swords or crossbows at the ready. But when they came upon the behemoth, they stumbled to a wavering halt. As the Ixax warrior turned toward them, the guard lieutenant summoned his squad. Two crossbowmen fired metal quarrels that struck the Ixax full on the chest, but merely bounced off. The other soldiers yelled a rallying cry and threw themselves on the impossible enemy, hacking at the massive legs to hamstring the Ixax.

But the thing’s armor was like steel, and their blades caromed off of it. The angry warrior knocked them all aside, smashing them with a single blow as if they were a game of gambling sticks. Blood and brains splattered on the whitewashed walls where, incongruously, rebels had inserted bright, sharp mirror fragments.

The great bronze bell continued to ring out a deafening clamor, and the Ixax stomped toward the tower, throwing itself upon the high stone structure. With gauntleted hands like battering rams, it hammered the stone, pounding the structure of the tower until the anchoring beams cracked and the sandstone blocks crumbled. With a mighty heave the Ixax toppled the bell tower, cracking the walls and shoving it forward.

Still clanging, the bronze bell broke loose from its cradle and fell from the tower, shattering more sandstone as it went. The entire tower crashed down onto the adjacent three-story civic building. The Ixax continued to move through the collapsing barrier, as if the thick walls were no more than an inconvenient thicket of weeds.

It roared again through the confining helmet, a tone so loud it shivered some of the fallen sandstone blocks. After smashing its way through the rubble, the juggernaut careered toward the next section of buildings, where trade workers lived. People ran screaming into the night.

Weeping, Elsa pulled away from Nathan and bravely stood her ground against the warrior, raising her hands and releasing her gift. With magic, she lifted some of the broken blocks into the air and hurled them at the oncoming Ixax. A large fractured stone crashed into the helmet without making so much as a dent. The Ixax raised a gauntlet to batter another block out of the air.

Seeing Elsa, it changed the focus of its rampage and came toward her. The matronly sorceress stood frantically trying to release more magic, to find some other desperate weapon. But Nathan knew her primary strength was in transference magic, and she needed two points to work that. There wasn’t enough time.

He cursed himself, furious for being so useless, so weak. If ever there was a time …

He shoved Elsa aside, knocking her into a flower bed adjacent to the street. “Out of the way, my dear. Save yourself!”

As the Ixax lumbered toward them with murderous intent, Nathan ran faster, closing the gap. His unadorned smock flapped around him. He did not feel like a great wizard, but he was a great wizard. He was Nathan Rahl. He had lived for a thousand years, and he had fought tremendous foes. His Han had been as strong as braided steel ropes.

“You think you’re invincible, monster.” Nathan stretched out his hands as if to form a laughable roadblock. “But I’m here to stop you. I did not create you, but I will end you.” His words were defiant, and he was pleased that his voice didn’t quaver at all.

“Nathan!” Elsa screamed.

“Let me concentrate, please.” He thought of all of his training, all his gift, and all that he was. “I have the heart of a wizard,” he insisted. He suppressed all the times he had failed, all the spells he had been too afraid to use. But he had no fear now, not even fear of the titanic Ixax warrior.

Thump, thump.

Thump, thump.

The magic was within him. The lines of Han were wrapped around him and through him, and his heart was strong. It beat loudly and made the magic flow and build.

Nathan curled back his lips, gritted his teeth, and let out a groan. He summoned everything he had, refusing to think about the times when the magic had backfired, when the result had been horrifying instead of satisfying. He strode forward another step as the Ixax lumbered to a halt, sensing a thrum in the air, a tension. The warrior raised both of his hugely armored fists as if to batter the world into submission.

Nathan strained. He cried out. He pulled all of his gift, focusing it through the strong heart, the powerful heart … the dark heart of Chief Handler Ivan.

He felt something tear inside him, and suddenly the last blockages of his magic dissolved away. His gift poured forth like a volcano erupting, and Nathan unleashed the magic. All of it.

A giant wave of unstoppable force struck the Ixax warrior and made the armored figure stagger back. The titan raised both hands, strained, took one more heavy footfall forward. But the magic blasted like a cleansing fire, pouring against the shield of armor that encased it.

As Nathan continued the attack, the avalanche of magic scoured away the warrior’s armor, exposing the horrendous creature’s pebbly, twisted skin, dissolving it … peeling back the flesh to unwind the wirelike muscles, flaying the meat away to reach the enhanced bones.

The helmet broke and melted to pieces, exposing the face of the Ixax warrior, the glowing eyes that shifted from anger, to pain, to a dissipating wonder as the body that had once been a human soldier, a horrifically tormented volunteer, was torn away under the onslaught of Nathan’s gift.

The torrent of magic peeled the brute into bits, rendering it down to the dust of flesh, leaving only a nightmarish memory and a wavering growl that faded in the night like a sigh of relief.

Afterward, Nathan collapsed to the street, his white robes pooling around him. Elsa ran to him, dropping to her knees and cradling his shoulders. “Nathan!”

Utterly drained, he looked up at her, blinking his azure eyes. Though his voice was weak, he managed to say, “That was rather impressive.”

“You destroyed it!” she said. “Nathan, you destroyed the Ixax warrior. You saved the city.”

“I just did my part. But I think we can agree that I have my magic back.”

She laughed and dashed tears from her eyes. He wanted to rest, just wanted to lie back and fall asleep for another week, but he knew he couldn’t. He struggled to his feet, leaning on Elsa. “Alas, the night’s work isn’t done. The city still needs saving.”

Thump, thump.

Thump, thump.

He touched his chest, felt his pulse racing. He was strong now. He was back!

Nathan did feel a shadow inside, a hint of grimness mixed with the clean light of his gift, but Nathan had to accept it. Part of Chief Handler Ivan would always be inside him.

“Come with me now,” he said, as Elsa held him up. “If you’ll help me?” Nathan wasn’t sure where he had to go. As crowds gathered to look at the wreckage and marvel at the disintegrated scraps of the Ixax warrior, the two limped along. “Let us go find out about the rest of these troubles, shall we?”