Adept (The Essence Gate War, Book 1) - By Michael Arnquist Page 0,153

them. It would be several minutes before his unhurried pace brought him near enough to them to exchange quiet words. It took Amric long seconds to locate Bellimar, as he did not want to crane his neck back and forth searching for him and thus risk drawing undue attention to his position. He finally discerned the vampire standing at the edge of a pool further around the room. He stood tall and straight with his cloak folded tightly about him, little more than a sliver of night in the cavern’s gloom. His attention appeared to be absorbed by something in the glowing waters.

“The city will fall this night,” the Nar’ath queen assured him. Though she had to be aware of the presence of the others within the chamber, she still seemed to pay them no heed whatsoever.

“You sound very certain of that.”

“Even now my forces gather there,” she said. “When night falls, the city will bare itself to us, and by morning’s light my minions will have harvested them all.”

He glanced upward through the opening far above and onto the tortured sky. The oppressive blanket of clouds had walled off the sun at last, and the light that poured down now into the chamber was a dim grey shroud. He wondered how long remained until nightfall. Under normal circumstances there would be several hours of daylight remaining, but if this cloud cover rolled over Keldrin’s Landing as well, a serviceable darkness––and the accompanying assault––might come all the sooner.

“Why bother with the city at all?” he asked. “If, as you say, conquering this world is truly not your goal.”

She gave a long and sibilant hiss, but he could not decipher whether the sound indicated pleasure or annoyance. “We are after bigger game, as you must realize by now. But we must build our forces, and maneuver them into proper position.”

“Again you speak of ‘we’, and yet all I see here is you.”

She uttered a keening, triumphant shriek that he realized was a laugh. “Then you have only begun to look, arrogant one. My sisters and I have grown in strength slowly over the centuries, recovering in secret from the blow you dealt us so long ago. And had you not activated the Gate and begun to draw upon this world, it might have taken many more centuries before we were ready to strike at yours. Now our hives fill the wasteland, draining the land dry of life, and we build our forces to hurl against you. The time for hiding and preparing is almost done.”

He paused, reeling with the implications of her words. He quailed at the thought of many more monstrosities like this one, each building its own army of black creatures, their sinister hives pockmarking the land like a spreading disease. They were stealing the beings of this world and converting them into their own blasphemous parody of life, and growing stronger all the time. Very soon, if it had not come to pass already, they would need fear nothing on this world. The Nar’ath queen leaned forward, her long black claws rasping against the stone, as she mistook his partial comprehension for something more.

“Did you truly think that you had eradicated our kind? You, whose avarice granted our existence in the first place? We are a growing cancer on the ley lines that feed your world. We know your addiction. You cannot survive without it, and yet the more you draw upon it, the stronger we continue to grow.”

Her tone grew more heated with every word, and he could see her huge form tensing and swelling.

“We have adapted, Adept, evolved over these many centuries that we might more perfectly hunt your race. In your arrogance and greed, you have given us the means to strike at you in more ways than you even realize.”

“Calm yourself, foul one,” he said quickly, striving for a dismissive tone. “You are not ready to pit yourself against the might of the Adepts.”

She gave a deep, grating chuckle, still poised on the verge of action. “I hear ‘we’, and yet see only you,” she said, twisting his own words and casting them back at him.

He threw back his head and boomed a laugh that echoed eerily around the vast chamber, warping the sound until he did not recognize it as his own. “And did you truly think that I came alone?”

It had the desired effect. The Nar’ath queen hesitated, eyes widening to dart suspiciously around the cavern. Her malevolent gaze slid over the