Ascendancy of the Last - By Lisa Smedman Page 0,32

As Q’arlynd straightened, his foot nudged something that scraped across the ground. Something metal. He looked down, but didn’t see anything there.

Then he realized what it must be: Piri’s ring gate!

Q’arlynd hurled himself at the ground. As he did so, the tentacle holding the quasit flicked forward, trying to toss the demon away. This time, Q’arlynd was faster. Before the deepspawn could release the quasit, Q’arlynd landed, chest down, on the spot where the ring gate lay. As he made contact with it, he shouted an incantation. The mirror in his shirt pocket shattered, fueling his spell. Energy rushed out of it, as fast as light. It erupted out of the second ring gate, into the deepspawn. Intense silver light played over the tentacled monster, altering the very substance of its body. When the light vanished, so too did the creature’s natural coloration. A heartbeat before, the deepspawn had been a living, breathing thing. Now it was transformed into clear, solid glass.

Its body, no longer suspended by magic, crashed to the ground. Tentacles shattered.

Q’arlynd stood and brushed himself off. Tinkling bits of mirror fell from the ruin of his shirt pocket. “Bet you didn’t expect that one,” he said dryly. Then he hurried forward. He stepped carefully through the rent in the wall of force and felt its powerful energies lift the hair on his arms and scalp. When he was underneath the transformed deepspawn, he reached up and grabbed the tentacle that held Eldrinn, and wrenched on it. As it snapped, the boy tumbled to the ground. Eldrinn groaned, low and deep—a sound that was music to Q’arlynd’s ears. The boy was still alive!

Q’arlynd scooped up Eldrinn’s wand. It was of a type he didn’t recognize: solid white, with an inscription in Espruar, the script of the surface elves, spiraling around it. Q’arlynd didn’t have time to solve the puzzle the wand presented, however. In a few moments his spell would lapse, and the deepspawn would revert back to flesh. Even missing its tenŹtacles, it would be a formidable foe.

He touched Eldrinn and teleported away.

They materialized within the private hospice of the College of Divination. Q’arlynd barked out an abbreviated explanation to the startled attendant. Instead of springing to his cabinet of potions, however, the elderly apothecary shifted Eldrinn’s sleeve, revealing a vial that was tied to the boy’s forearm. “Why didn’t you use this?” He yanked out the vial and uncorked it. “It’s just as potent as anything I have here.”

“It is?”

“I ought to know. It’s one of my best.”

Q’arlynd shook his head at yet another mystery he didn’t have time to solve. Eldrinn had obviously been given the potion by the apothecary, but how had the boy expected to consume it in the middle of a duel?

“Is there more of that?” Q’arlynd asked.

The apothecary nodded at his cabinet as he parted Eldrinn’s lips and dribbled the potion into the boy’s mouth. “In there. Why?”

“Get it ready,” Q’arlynd said. “There’s another of my apprentices who might need it, once I’ve finished with him.” Then he teleported away.

He returned to the Cage in time to see a member of the Breeder’s Guild rushing to the spot where the wall of force had been breached. The fellow skidded to a halt, reached into a pouch at his hip, and held up a pinch of something. Crushed gemstone dusted his dark fingers. He hurled the dust at the breach in the wall and chanted an incantation—but abruptly halted when he noticed the transformed deepspawn, its clear glass body all but invisible behind the shimmering wall.

“Hey! What did you do to our breeding stock?”

“A transmutation,” Q’arlynd shouted back. “I suggest you complete your spell. The transmutation’s only temporary.”

The guild member hesitated, as if wanting to challenge Q’arlynd further, but decided against it. He waved his hands and chanted, hurriedly completing his repair.

Q’arlynd picked up Piri’s wand, touched his apprentice, and teleported away. This time, the destination was his priŹvate study. He’d have to placate the Breeder’s Guild—they’d demand compensation for the damage to their deepspawn—but that could wait. He patted down Piri’s pockets, looking for the ring the apprentice had removed earlier. He found it—the compulsion built into the rings was too strong for his apprenŹtices to rid themselves of the rings entirely—and slipped the ring into his own pocket. As he waited for Piri to recover, he examined the apprentice’s wand. It was made of ebony, inlaid with chips of red agate: a fire wand. A wise choice for a duel,