The Dragonswarm by Aaron Pogue

Author:Aaron Pogue [Pogue, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Dragonriders, Swords and Sorcery, J. K. Rowling, Christopher Paolini, Robert Jordan, Anne McCaffrey, George R. R. Martin
Publisher: Consortium Books
Published: 2011-12-19T16:00:00+00:00

11. The Wizard

The figure on the earth before me was Lareth Undinane—the rebel wizard who had started every darkness in my life. I rose, and gently lifted back his flapping cloak with the tip of my Chaos blade. He wore a frayed old silken doublet underneath it. I stared at the faded fabric, but I don't dknow what I expected to see: oozing blood, perhaps, or the bulge of thick bandages. I'd stabbed three feet of flawless steel clean through his chest. But that had been a hundred days ago.

He had not recovered well, but he had recovered. My teeth ground together in anger, and my hand ached from its grip on the sword's hilt. I felt the frantic thrashing of the monstrous rage in the back of my head, but I gave it no rein. Not even for this one. I took a slow, calming breath instead and focused on the lingering thrill of my new authority.

Still I could not tear my eyes from him. I shook my head in slow disbelief and breathed his name. "Lareth Undinane." It sounded like a curse in the still morning, and as I spoke the corpse stirred. I growled low in my throat, and his good eye snapped up and fixed on my face. He lay perfectly still, his breath wheezing through the scarred gap at the corner of his mouth. The eye flicked to the sword in my hand, gleaming black and smooth as silk, and then back to my head. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. Sweat stood on his forehead.

I said, "You lived."

He did not offer me a pithy response. He didn't grovel or beg. He didn't draw a deep breath or fling up his hand dramatically. He just narrowed his eye and spoke a word of power.

It caught me entirely unprepared. Too much had happened too quickly, but more than that he did not look a threat. He looked pathetic. He looked weak and small and helpless, but he had nearly obliterated me and Vechernyvetr together the last time I'd faced him. He lashed out at me, a complicated working entirely of his own design, and I felt the shape of his will settle like a handkerchief over my mind.

I remembered the working. I remembered reaching for my wizard's sight and falling to my knees in agony. I remembered the utter helplessness under his power. Sudden fear spiked hard and hot beneath my heart, and I fought down the desperate panic that screamed for me to reach to the Chaos power. Instead I kept my eyes fixed firmly in reality and raised the tip of my sword until it hung just above his good eye.

"Release this spell," I said, more steadily than I felt. "Or I will do a more thorough job of killing you this time."

Half of his mouth curled toward a smile. "With a sword?" he said. "By strength of arms?" He closed his eye, and unseen chains latched tight around my wrist and jerked it back.

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