Melisanda raised an eyebrow. "Safe?"
He repressed a bitter laugh. "Well, taking everything else into consideration ... at least there's no trap here." Steeling himself, Aeron pushed the door open and stepped into the Shadow Stone's chamber, hand raised to cover his eyes from the painful light.
The chamber was much the same as they had left it only a few short hours ago, but the Shadow Stone had changed. It burned with a fierce radiance of black light, searing Aeron's eyes and scouring the walls with its intolerable touch. All of his senses reeled with the stone's proximity; his ears were filled with the shrieking rush of tortured air and the cracking of the tower's blasted stones, the air stank with a miasma of ozone and decay, and even through his closed eyes the stone pressed its hateful image into his mind. It pulsed in the center of a rippling blackness of floor, ceiling, and walls wrenched impossibly through a transdimensional storm that destroyed his sense of up and down, distance and form. He recoiled, toppling against the wall as his feet swept out from under him.
Melisanda fell beside him, her long brown hair flying about her face as if she were caught in a gale. "Aeron! Speak your spell!" she shouted, huddling against the ruined stone wall.
Aeron opened his eyes a mere slit to gain his bearings, climbing to his feet with one hand on the ice rimmed stone of the chamber wall. He looked again on the Shadow Stone, gathering his strength and determination for what came next.
"Aeron! Now!" cried Melisanda.
Drawing a deep breath, Aeron barked the first syllables of the striking-spell, freeing the symbol in his mind. But instead of seeking the strength of his own spirit or the natural stone, air, and water around him to power the spell, he threw his consciousness forward into the yawning black maelstrom before him, embracing the shrieking chaos of the Shadow Stone.
From the stone one coursing stream of unfettered power lanced out to transfix Aeron, pinning him on a spear of foulness and hate that threatened to flay the flesh from his bones. He screamed as every inch of his body crawled with the malignant energy and corruption pouring into his heart. Somehow he endured it, maintaining just enough awareness and will to finish the last syllable of the erasure spell, holding on to the dark silhouette of the stone's iron banding as a dying warrior might cling to the sight of the crest of the enemy who had just struck him down. He narrowed his eyes against the agony and turned a fraction of the stone's awful power toward his spell.
The runes upon the stone's casing glowed once and faded, stricken from existence. As they vanished, the bands shifted, slipped, and then clattered to the ground, no longer clasped to the Shadow Stone. Instantly the coursing conduit of power that tore and clawed at Aeron's breast snapped away, grounding itself futilely in the walls of the chamber. It was joined a split second later by first one, then another ravening stream of power, dancing and creeping against the chamber walls and the blank archways of shadow, while the stone began to pulse brighter and brighter.
Aeron shook his head and found himself lying with his head cradled in Melisanda's lap, a cold dull ache in the center of his chest. The unbearable touch of the stone was fading, allowing him to recover his senses and sanity.
"What happened?" he asked against the rage of the storm.
"It worked!" Melisanda whispered. "The stone's out of control. It's not doing whatever it was doing before."
Aeron levered himself to his elbow and gazed at the spectacle for a long moment. The stone's pulse was growing faster, stronger, a dull booming and rocking that shook the substance of two worlds. The fierce radiance with which it had blazed before was now trapped within its uneven facets, a pinprick of light that grew larger and brighter with every passing moment, until the stone strained with the incalculable potential imprisoned within it.
"The bands didn't focus the Stone's power, they let it escape!" he realized.
"I don't think we should stay here too much longer," Melisanda said. She helped Aeron to his feet and slid his arm over her shoulder.
"No," said Aeron. "I've got to stay. Go ahead and get out of here now-take the arch that leads to Akanax, if it is working. And then move far away from the portal's exit."
Melisanda wheeled to face him. "Are you insane? If you stay here, you'll be killed!"
He offered her a weak smile. "And if I leave, Oriseus may be able to undo what I've just done. I have to make sure that the stone is destroyed, Melisanda."
The sorceress fixed her eyes on him, a fragile mix of emotions flickering across her face. "If you stay, I stay. We'll see it through together," she said.
Aeron considered what he could say to change her mind, but then he felt a deliberate ripple in the chaos around him, a noxious parody of the old delight he'd sensed when magic was woven nearby. A whirling streamer of darkness formed by the chamber door, a new shadow portal hovering in the air. He stood back, trembling in fatigue.
"Ready yourself, Melisanda. It's Oriseus."
She glanced at him and nodded. "I don't know if I can cast any spells in here," she said.
Aeron handed Dalrioc's wand to her. "This might work. I think Dalrioc crafted this scepter to draw its power from the stone." The portal was nearly complete; Aeron quickly edged away to leave plenty of space between them. "Don't hesitate when he appears. We can't give him any chance to work his spells against us."
With a thin tearing sound a form materialized in the spiraling shadow and emerged, shedding streamers of tangible darkness like a swimmer rising from the deeps. Slender and agile, the intruder sprang into motion before the curtain began to fail, crouching to aim a long bow at Aeron.
Melisanda raised Dalrioc's wand, ready to unleash its deadly ray, but Aeron shouted, "No! It's Eriale!"
He raced to catch Melisanda's hand before she struck. Melisanda looked at him, startled, while Eriale's hands blurred and the bow sang its shrill song. Aeron twisted catlike in mid-leap, but Eriale's arrow caught him high on the hip, skewering his side. His legs seemed to turn to rubber, spilling him to the cold flagstones before the first claws of pain sank into his awareness. Gasping in shock, he turned to look at his foster-sister.
Eriale met his eyes with a look cold enough to chill his heart. No trace of emotion or recognition crossed her face. With mechanical certainty, she reached for her quiver and drew another arrow, its steel point aimed at his heart. She drew the bowstring back to her ear, death in her unblinking eyes.
"Eriale, it's me!" Aeron cried, while warm blood streamed from his wound. "Don't shoot!"
The archer hesitated for a moment, the merest hint of indecision softening her expression, but then she steeled herself and steadied her aim for the killing shot.
Melisanda barked an arcane word and swept a blinding ray of sparkling frost from the iron scepter across Eriale. Eriale winced but didn't make a sound, dropping the bow to cradle her frost-burned arms to her body. Her blank eyes still held Aeron fixed in a deadly glare. The Vilhonese sorceress dashed up to kick the bow away, and wheeled to face Aeron. "Are you-"
"I think I'll live," he answered, trying to climb to his feet. He leaned awkwardly against the chamber wall, staring at Eriale. Pressing one hand to his side, he glanced down at the arrow. He didn't know much of the healing arts and wasn't willing to take any chances with trying to pull it out or push it through. Pinning the arrow in place with his right hand, he snapped off the shaft and steeled himself to push it to the back of his mind for the moment. "She didn't get a true shot at me, thank Assuran. Let me see if I can work a countermagic to dispel Oriseus's charm over her."
Pushing himself off the wall, Aeron moved over to where Eriale crouched and knelt beside her, seeking some indication of the type of charm or geas she'd been placed under. He winced at the blistered white streaks and glistening frost that showed where Dalrioc's wand had struck her-if Melisanda had missed by only a foot or two, Eriale might have been critically injured. He worked a simple counter-spell to remove the magics that ensorceled the archer.
Eriale flinched, but a hint of color returned to her face, and the blankness fell away from her stare. "Aeron? What happened-" She gasped as the pain of her injuries flooded through her, no longer checked by the ruthless dominion that had turned her against him. She sagged to the floor, suppressing a sob.
"Eriale, I'm sorry," Aeron began. "I didn't know-"
He was interrupted by the sudden cold certainty that shadow-magic was gathering under a conscious will. His heart lurched with the sensation of magic at work. Behind him, Melisanda cried out in alarm. "The portal, Aeron!"
As the twisting shadow door through which Eriale had come faded out altogether, the streamers of darkness began to sink to the floor, coalescing into a single pool or slick of night-black shadow stuff. The pool quivered once, and then something began to rise from its depths, drawing its shape from the darkness, a tall man with cruel, fine features.
"Aeron, you fool! You have no idea what harm your interference has caused," Oriseus said, speaking as he rose from the ebon circle. "You have doomed all of us by unchaining the Shadow Stone." The sorcerer's hands turned and flashed, shaping a spell with frightening celerity.
Aeron barked out the words to a shielding-spell, covering both himself and Eriale with a shimmering green field of energy. From the raging Shadow Stone tendrils of inky darkness shot out to play along the curving sphere of force, corrupting it instantly with black veins of negative energy. Behind him, Melisanda dodged behind one of the pillars that divided the open chamber from the gallery that ringed it, raising Dalrioc's wand to attack Oriseus. But the archmage finished his spell first, directing a serpentine ray of crackling purple energy at Aeron. It sliced through Aeron's shield without the least interference and struck Aeron full in the chest. He fell to the stone floor, stunned.
Eriale recoiled in fright, but then threw herself over him, trying to protect him from Oriseus's spell. "Aeron!"
Oddly enough, he didn't seem to be injured. He shook off Eriale's attentions. "I'm all right," he told her.
Melisanda shouted the command that activated Dalrioc's deadly scepter and sent a blast of arctic air scything toward Oriseus, but the ancient sorcerer whispered another word and turned sideways, disappearing from view. Passing near the Shadow Stone, the frigid ray seemed to attract a coursing conduit of energy from the pulsating crystal, suddenly doubling and redoubling in strength until it shattered one of the stone pillars across the chamber.
"Aeron, Oriseus vanished! Can you see him?"
Aeron struggled to his knees, one hand pressed to the oddly charred patch over his heart. Oriseus's spell had done something to him, he was certain of that; he could sense black, cold energy pricking at his skin, dire potential as yet unrealized. "No, I don't, but that doesn't mean that he left. Be careful, Melisanda-the stone's influence is wreaking havoc with our spells."
"Indeed it is." Oriseus's voice was strong and confident, near Aeron yet somehow impossibly distant. "I must confine the stone's power again, or we shall all be killed. When you struck my spell from the stone's bindings, Aeron, you struck away the only thing that protects all of Chessenta from its power." Oriseus suddenly appeared before the fallen stone, an impossible caricature of a man. He was a flat image, a playing-card figure that winked into nonexistence when he happened to face them edge-on.
Aeron shook his head, astonished. He'd heard of such spells, but he'd never seen one cast before. "I don't believe you, Oriseus. And even if I did, I'm willing to make that sacrifice. Better that the three of us should die here and put a stop to this than allow you to finish what you've started."
"Your life is yours to throw away if you wish," the sorcerer said with venom in his voice, "but what of your sister's and your friend's? And you accuse me of ruthlessness." Oriseus stalked forward and then shifted sideways, vanishing. Aeron caught a glimpse of him spinning across the room, flashing in and out of reality. "We don't have much time for this debate, Aeron. The stone will decide it for us in a matter of minutes!"
In the room's center, the Shadow Stone now burned like a black star, too bright to look at directly. Its dreadful power threw stark shadows against the walls, and it seemed almost distant, as if it were sinking out of sight through the very stuff of reality. The floor and ceiling buckled and twisted toward the stone, drawn to it by a force greater than any maelstrom.
"Then that's it," Aeron replied.
Oriseus cursed in a forgotten language. He reappeared by the stone, stooping for the discarded iron bands that had circled the crystal. Aeron reacted without hesitation, raising his hands and barking out the words for the storm-strike. With no other options, he drew his strength from the Shadow Stone's awful presence, enduring its sinister touch long enough to finish his spell. From his fingertips bright electrical arcs leaped forward to stab at Oriseus- but even as they reached for the sorcerer, they doubled back on Aeron and struck him. He screamed and twisted under the assault of his own spell, caught in the throes of a dozen burning skewers of pain, before collapsing to the floor.