Disciple of War Disciple of War (Art of the Adept #4) - Michael G. Manning Page 0,218

about what the process would be like for his wife. Ordinarily, her dresses simplified the task in certain important ways, but today she had worn heavy woolen trousers and mail over that. He decided the best thing he could do was mind his own business and focus on the wall.

Damn it. Now I have to pee, he realized. It had been a long morning. He ignored the urge; there was no way he could stop now.

Minutes ticked by, and the hum in the wall gradually grew stronger. At some point Will felt Selene signal her return, placing a hand gently on his shoulder. He continued amplifying the vibration within the wall, and now it could be felt as a physical thing, a weird sensation that sang through the flesh of his hand.

More.

“It’s almost there,” he warned Selene, pausing to cast his prepared iron-body transformation on himself. She followed suit a moment later. A fresh thought occurred to him then. “How are you going to protect me? You can’t put up a force-dome or force-wall. My hand is in the way.”

“I’ve got lots of tricks,” she whispered into his ear. A second later, an odd hemispherical force-wall appeared, with one particular oddity. It had a hand-sized hole located where his wrist was. Will had learned a lot of different force spell variants, but it was one he hadn’t seen before.

“You had that prepared in advance?”

“No. I prepared it while you’ve been busy molesting the wall.”

“Oh.” He still found it impressive that she had known such an odd variant spell. She’ll be a hell of a wizard if we live through this. “Brace yourself.”

He hadn’t had the benefit of a force-wall to protect him the first time he’d done something similar, so he would probably be all right, but now that he was mostly protected, he couldn’t help but worry he was about to lose his hand. His hand wore a mail and leather gauntlet, plus the iron-body transformation that toughened his skin beneath that.

In the end, it turned out to be a non-issue. The hum built to a level the wall could no longer sustain, and then large cracks began to appear. Unlike the wooden gate he had destroyed before, the stone wall’s destruction started more gradually. Shards of stone were ejected forcefully in certain places around where the largest cracks appeared, but those cracks were five to ten feet apart. None of the cracks showed up in front of them, and in retrospect it was obvious that even the force spell had been unnecessary.

A series of deep popping noises rang out, and when Will looked up he saw the wall begin to sag, as though it was made of stiff cloth rather than stone. Selene’s hand tugged on the gorget that protected his throat, and remembering himself, Will began running back with her, away from the wall—which was slumping downward at a deceptively fast speed.

What had seemed like a slow collapse became a thundering roar as more than a hundred feet of wall shuddered to the ground between two of the small towers that repeated at regular intervals. A cloud of dust rose into the air, and when it finally began to settle Will saw that where the wall had been there was now a sloping hill of rubble and broken stonework.

Selene gaped at him. “Holy hell. You really did it,” she muttered.

“You didn’t believe it before?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s just different—seeing it in person.” A second later, she collected her senses and gave him a regretful look. “Go on. You need to start moving before they come looking for the culprit.”

He nodded, kissed her once more, and headed into the dusty gap. Clambering over the rubble was more work than he’d realized, but he did his best. He stretched out his will as he went, threading it through the dark turyn within the city. This time he was deliberately looking for the knot that represented Madrok. That was where the spell-engine would be.

With luck, he could get there without being detected, and with even more luck the demon-lord might leave the engine unprotected long enough for him to destroy the infernal device. So far, he had no reason to think it wouldn’t happen. He found Madrok’s presence and made note of it.

And then it vanished.

Glancing sideways, Will saw Selene and the trolls scrambling up another portion of the collapsed wall. A swirling storm of turyn began to boil between their positions, and Will realized with horror that