The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [242]
“Whole,” he murmured, two eyes shining with wonder. “I am whole. And I can feel it flowing in my veins. His blood. Surely I am the most powerful sorcerer since Orú himself!”
Sareth’s face was a mask of anguish. “You are a fool, Xemeth. Vani …”
Xemeth’s glowing features shifted into a frown. “What of Vani?”
Sareth met Xemeth’s glowing eyes. “Vani is in the Etherion.”
Xemeth stared, frozen, then looked up at the stone ceiling far above. “The demon …”
With a roar of fury, Sareth launched himself forward. He was nearly quick enough. Then, in an easy gesture, Xemeth moved his hand, and crackling gold sparks burst from his fingers, striking Sareth in the chest. He flew back, landing near the edge of the precipice with a grunt of pain. Lirith let out a cry and rushed to him, holding him back from the edge.
Durge and Travis started toward Xemeth, but they were too far away. Only Grace was close, but the threads of the Weirding slipped through her fingers as she tried to weave a spell.
Xemeth picked up the gate artifact from the pedestal, then thrust his hand onto one of its points. Blood oozed forth, covering the artifact.
“I am coming, Vani!” he cried, and the gate appeared: an oval of darkness ringed by blue fire.
Xemeth threw himself into the gate. As he did, the ring of blue magic flashed and expanded. Grace tried to twist away from it, but her foot slipped on a stone, and bright pain flared in her ankle. With a cry, she stumbled the opposite direction.
“Grace, no!” she heard Travis cry.
Then the cavern vanished as Grace fell into the gate.
79.
Magic crackled. Like a seed being spat from an angry mouth, Grace flew from the orifice of the gate and landed with a grunt of pain on hard stone.
Sizzling, the gate snapped shut above her. She pushed herself onto her hands, gasping for breath. This time, passing through the gate had been like swimming through thick, black water. And it had been cold, so horribly cold. Her muscles were clay, her brain a lump of ice.
There’s something you have to remember, Grace, something you’re supposed to look out for.…
With a shudder it came to her. Xemeth. Where was Xemeth?
She forced her muscles to function. Frost clotted her vision; it was hard to see. All she could tell was that she was in a large space and that a storm raged around her. Wind shrieked and groaned, ripping at her hair and clothing. Blotchy shapes flew through the air, but she couldn’t be certain if they were really there or if they were artifacts of her impaired vision.
“Grace!” a man’s voice shouted over the roar of the storm.
No, not a storm. Her vision cleared enough for her to see marble columns and a high blue dome. So this was the Etherion. But there couldn’t be a storm inside a building, even a building as big as this.
Something tugged at her hard—once, then again. No hands touched her. All the same, she felt her body slide several feet over polished stone.
“Grace, you’ve got to hold on!”
At last the heat of her body melted the frost, and she blinked the water from her eyes. A familiar form crouched several feet away. He held on to a column near a wall, his blond hair whipping in the wind. Grace slid another few feet along the floor. She was almost within arm’s reach of him.
“Beltan!” The wind seemed to snatch the words from her lips. “Beltan, what’s happening?”
The knight’s eyes gazed past her. She started to turn, to see what he was looking at.
“No, Grace. Look at me, do you understand? Don’t look at anything but me.”
Grace nodded. Again invisible hands tugged at her. She tried to resist, but it was no use. She slid another foot.
“Get her, Beltan!” Vani shouted.
The assassin gripped another column near Beltan. Melia clung to the same column, blue-black hair swirling wildly. Just beyond, Falken and Aryn held on to a stone bench that must have been bolted to the floor. Clinging to another bench not far from the bard and the baroness was a figure in a black robe.
Grace’s heart lurched. Xemeth?
No. The sorcerer turned his head away from the wind, toward Grace.