Adept (The Essence Gate War, Book 1) - By Michael Arnquist Page 0,172

lunged in a new direction, roaring in rage and frustration. Shaking Amric like a child’s doll, she slithered into a wide, rapid turn back toward the center of the vast chamber, prowling after this troublesome new prey.

Borric recognized his mistake the instant he made the attack that undid him.

The guard to his right stumbled and went to his knees, and half a dozen black hands seized him in an instant and pulled him headfirst from view. One of the fiends stepped into the gap and lunged at Borric, and the battle-forged reflexes of countless hard-fought campaigns took over. The captain of the guard stepped into a smooth lunge and drove the point of his sword into the throat of the attacker. It was perfectly executed, a lethal blow to any mortal assailant, but Borric knew in an instant that he was undone.

Before he could withdraw, the gaping fiend seized his wrist in a vise-like grip. It drew itself forward, surging along his blade until the hilt rested against its throat and the full length of shining steel projected from the back of its neck. With a wrench, the creature snapped the bones of his forearm, and his sword tumbled from useless fingers. He was jerked forward, the sheer force of it causing his feet to leave the ground. Something slammed into the back of his skull like an iron sledge, and all was darkness.

Black hands caught him before he hit the ground.

Morland cracked an eye and watched the farseer at work. The young man shuddered and flinched from time to time, but his eyes remained wide open and twitched between distant targets that only he could see. Tears ran openly across his face and into his beard.

What a fool, thought Morland with a curl of his lip. It was not as if this show of weakness would have any effect on the outcome down there. The city was lost. His Nar’ath allies were doing just as they had promised by demonstrating the inevitability of their conquest. Morland felt a surge of pride. The Nar’ath had skulked about for centuries, hiding and evading notice, building their strength slowly; the time for such subterfuge was at an end.

Not for the first time, he congratulated himself for turning a minor setback into the promise of success. He had been furious when the Nar’ath attacked his trade caravan so many months ago; even though they had left the goods untouched, it had cost him no small amount of time and trouble to replace the men that had disappeared. It had cost him many more after that to track down the culprits, to gauge their strength, and to make careful advances to establish contact with their leader.

It was all worth it in the end, however. The Nar’ath forces would continue to grow, fueled by this victory, and he would be remembered for his part in accelerating their eventual triumph. He swelled with pride. And of course, once they had taken what they needed, they would establish him as the undisputed ruler over the survivors, just as they had promised. He would at last achieve the power that had long been his goal, but on a scale to which even he had not dared aspire.

He frowned. Something nagged at the fringes of his thoughts, a tattered edge to an otherwise perfect picture. How many survivors would be left when the Nar’ath were sated? What proof had they offered of their assertion that they had no long-term interest in this world? Where were they going? These seemed like questions he would have asked, being a shrewd negotiator and a calculating businessman. In fact, he recalled going to his initial meetings with the Nar’ath queen with every intention of learning the answers to these questions and more. Now, however, when he looked back, his memories of that meeting were a fog, and he could not produce the answers to any of these queries. He tried to call forth the details––any details––from those fateful encounters, but they slid away like raindrops down a slate roof.

He forced himself to concentrate harder. The towering image of the Nar’ath queen appeared before his mind’s eye, and he found his thoughts dulling, laced with a strange sense of loyalty that bordered on complacency. He frowned again. These thoughts fit him poorly, as if he was awakening to find himself wearing another man’s clothing.

He sat forward. He had no qualms about what was transpiring in Keldrin’s Landing; after all, conquest on the scale he