Chapter 32
SINAN
S inan strode out to the flat expanse of earth in front of the bluffs with an undead army of the hortdan behind him and the Prince of Soissons by his side.
Odart and Zhang Jue were waiting for him.
His enemies’ strategy made sense. Odart knew Sinan could bring the entire mountain down on their heads if they stayed in the caves, and in the open Zhang Jue’s weather powers would be the worst threat Sinan and Gallmau faced.
Of course, the hortdan would be the worst threat the Noviodunam’s forces faced.
Sinan couldn’t have been more pleased to have Karakoncolos’s deadly water soldiers with him for this fight.
The hortdan were many things, but subtle wasn’t one of them.
Cursed to exist in their ever-rotting bodies for the crimes they had committed in life, the hortdan had two modes—lurking and the frenzied rending of living flesh.
He also couldn’t be happier to have Gallmau walking next to him, still willing to do anything to save his beast-master sister. He’d be happy to have Gallmau beside him always, and Meri as well. But first they had to win this fight.
The remaining Shields were arranged in a defensive half-circle, and inside the mages held their captives.
Meri was held up by the huge Shield who had engineered the attack against Sinan in the Lutecia tavern.
Her head lolled to one side, and even though she couldn’t possibly pose a threat to them in her condition, her arms and legs were trussed up.
The Princess of Soissons, on the other hand, was awake and furious, by the look of her. Zhang Jue had Rixende by the arm, and her fox ears were flattened against her head.
Naghwe had restored Sinan’s necromantic powers, even enhanced them beyond what they had been before.
He wasn’t sure how much of that was his mother’s strength or even an odd side effect of reversing the Amor Vitriol.
Rixende, on the other hand, would no longer have her beast magic and bone witch powers.
Sinan felt confident he and the hortdan could kill Odart and Zhang Jue, along with the Shields.
He was less confident he could do that and have Rixende and Meri alive at the end.
There was no sign of Valentina or Jacques.
He reached out with his senses, noting a freshly dead body in a cave near the hobbled horses, but he found no necromantic trace of the medica’s or incensor’s death.
Hopefully Valentina was with Jacques, and he was keeping her safe.
“That’s close enough.” Odart gestured to the Shield holding Meri. “She can still live, Gallmau, if you’ll listen to some sense.”
“I’ve got some sense for you,” Gallmau shot back.
“I’m Syagrius Grimoard’s son, and the brother of Rixende Grimoard, Dauphine of Soissons, and my country’s next Queen.
All of you are guilty of the worst kind of treason and oathbreakers, to boot.
I’m giving you one final chance to release the women you’re holding unharmed and surrender.
Otherwise, my Bone Lord friend here is going to kill all of you and let his undead army snack on your organs. ”
Saints, but Sinan loved Gallmau at that moment.
Not that the speech would change Odart’s course of action. The mirror mage had gone too far to give up, as had Zhang Jue.
Still, the words caused an uneasy muttering among the ranks of Shields.
“Your father would have slit his daughter’s throat himself, if he knew the monster she would become,” Zhang Jue spoke up, the hatred in his voice all but palpable.
“Then he would have done the same to you, his bastard, for your weakness in allowing the Grimoard line to be defiled by allowing a death witch to live.”
Sinan wanted to slice Zhang Jue in half with shadow for daring to say that to the prince, but Gallmau didn’t as much as blink.
“Maybe the King would’ve tried.” Gallmau hefted the Shield of Soissons in one hand. “I’d have knocked him into next week if he laid a finger on my baby sister. Let her and Meri go. Now.”
Odart ended the useless negotiations by sending a ball of fire toward Sinan. The mirror mage didn’t have his son around to draw more power from, and Sinan’s response, an arc of shadow, sliced through the flames and extinguished them.
The real attack wouldn’t come from Odart.
Zhang Jue raised his hands to the sky—and this would be one hell of a hit, if the Sorcier du Roi needed to use physical movement.
Sinan’s hair stood on end as a metallic taste filled his mouth. “Gallmau, get Meri.”
The prince had already taken off, charging forward with his shield raised as Sanura ran by his side.
The bolt of lightning Zhang Jue summoned lashed out to the earth, directly where Sinan was standing.
He pushed much of the necromantic power surging through him to expand his shadow armor into a dome over his head, and the strike broke against the barrier, weakening but not shattering it.
The hortdan surged forward and a few of the Shields ran, perhaps from a combination of the prince’s words and the sight of cannibalistic undead monsters streaming toward them. It was chaos and confusion, and he couldn’t see Gallmau.
He had no shortage of large and hulking targets, though.
Sinan sent a hail of shadow darts through the air, different than his usual precise sword strikes but a surprisingly easy magic to perform.
The Shields’ armor did nothing to stop the projectiles, and several of the men fell screaming to the ground.
There was one death and another, and a rush of necromantic power surged through him.
There was no sign of Gallmau or Meri. Sinan prayed the prince had been able to get the Lioness to safety.
His attack did nothing against the two mages, though. They stood back-to-back with Rixende on the ground between them. Electricity crackled, shielding them from his shadow magic. Now Odart was using some of Zhang Jue’s magic for defense.
Jacques was gone, and mirror mages could take any Gift but necromancy. The Sorcier du Roi was all the head of the benandanti had to pull power from.
Sinan would need to get inside the electrical shield protecting the two men, and the closer he got to them, the less likely it was that Zhang Jue would risk another lightning bolt.
He grabbed a short sword from the body of one of the Shields as he ran forward, the weapon too heavy for his taste but still a useful conduit for his magic.
The entire facade of the small mountain in front of him could come tumbling down if he directed his shadow powers at it, but he needed precision, not power, to rescue Rixende and kill the two sorcerers.
Sinan was only a few feet away when the wind began.
It swirled out from Zhang Jue, the air buffeting Sinan and stopping him from getting any closer.
His shadow armor blocked the worst of it, including rocks and branches ripped off the ground by the wind and turned into flying weapons.
A Shield near Sinan took a fractured branch through the eye and went down screaming, drawing the attention of several of the undead, who swarmed him like ants fighting over a dropped glob of honey.
Sinan thrust his sword and sent a bolt of shadow through the twin spheres of electricity surrounding Zhang Jue and Odart.
Rixende slipped out of the bonds holding her hands and used her small fists to hit the Sorcier du Roi.
Zhang Jue held her with one arm and gestured with the other to create even more wind bursts.
Sinan couldn’t bring his full powers down on the surging energy protecting the two mages without risking the princess.
Even if his undead army took care of the remaining Shields, Odart and Zhang Jue had Rixende as a hostage they could use to negotiate their release.
Gallmau would promise them freedom to save his sister, and Odart would craft a careful contract to ensure their safety.
Weather mages had few weaknesses, since the meteorological phenomena they could control were so varied. Zhang Jue could—and had—used cold to weaken Sinan and had marshaled rain before attacking Jacques and likely a searing dry wind against Abarsam.
Zhang Jue’s defensive armor, though, was all electric. His guild had been the fulgari before he had joined the benandanti. That magic could best be countered by earth—and the dead things inside of it.
The two men were a formidable team, even against Sinan’s enhanced powers and the hortdan.
Which meant he needed to split them up.
He turned his attention to the ground underneath the two men’s feet.
Sinan concentrated on a half-remembered spell of enough complexity he wouldn’t have dreamed of trying it before tonight, even in the Artifact-strengthened domain of Karakoncolos. Clods of dirt began to fly up from around Odart’s feet, and grasping skeletal hands shot up through the earth.
The benandanti sorcerer sent circles of fire down around his body to burn away the necromantic magic, but they began to flicker and extinguish. He had used up his son’s borrowed power—and that left only one source of magical energy that wasn’t Sinan’s necromancy.
More dirt boiled up around Odart, and his movements became frantic.
Now he sent down crackles of lightning from his fingertips, but that was much less effective than the fire had been. He sank into the roiling earth up to his knees, and the winds around Sinan calmed.
Zhang Jue noticed too late what his partner was doing to him.
He screamed at Odart, the words lost in the din of battle around them, and the electric field around him and Rixende flickered and died.
Sinan lifted his sword to send a blade of shadow through the Sorcier du Roi’s heart—just as Zhang Jue sent a bolt of electricity into Sinan.