Murtagh

The acolyte obliged by producing a short-bladed dagger from within the sleeve of his jerkin. The iron blade appeared as grey velvet in the light from the crystals.

Bachel took the dagger and strode toward Alín.

“No!” shouted Murtagh, and he launched his thoughts at Bachel’s mind in a furious assault.

The witch’s steps faltered, and then she stopped, and Murtagh strove to hold her in place as he charged forward.

Bachel motioned at the Draumar. Their chanting increased, and Murtagh stumbled and fell to one knee as the full force of twelve more minds crashed into his. Their voices filled his ears with a throbbing rhythm. His head seemed to pulse with the same tempo, and darkness crept in about the edges of his vision.

Moving was impossible. Murtagh’s awareness of his body shrank as he focused inward and armored himself against the onslaught. His sense of self became the center of his existence; it was all he allowed himself to think of, all he allowed himself to imagine. What he saw, he observed without judgment or reaction, as if he were watching events without meaning.

Bachel raised an arm and threw a vial toward him.

The glass shattered on the stone by his hand. A cloud of pearly white vapor floated up to his face and wrapped itself around him. But he smelled none of it, and it had no effect on him—his wards at work.

The witch bared her teeth. “Your magics will not—”

Another tremor passed through the mountain, and for a moment, the ground seemed to rise beneath him.

The disturbance provided a useful distraction. Two of the Draumar lost their concentration, and Murtagh seized the opportunity to drive deep into their minds. But only for a second. Then the combined might of the cultists forced him to retreat within himself.

Bachel abandoned Alín and advanced upon him. The butt of Niernen tapped against the ground in time with the witch’s every step. Her guards followed, two of them dragging Alín between them.

Bachel stopped in front of Murtagh, and the staff-wielding acolytes closed in around him, forming a tight circle. Their chanting increased in volume again, a dozen voices drumming against his ears, a dozen minds battering against his consciousness.

“Why do you strive so?” Bachel said, her voice a low purr. “Surrender to me, my son. Join us. Join us in service to Azlagûr, and never again will you be tormented by doubt. Your place in the world will be secured, and your name will be sung for a thousand generations.”

Join us, the cultists’ thoughts chanted, a constant, maddening refrain.

Murtagh felt physically trapped, hemmed in too tightly to move or even to think. Bodies all about him and voices also, and every member of the group assaulting him in the same fashion until it seemed he was dealing with a single, massive creature determined to defeat and constrain him.

His hand trembled about Ithring’s hilt. Even the idea of standing and striking was enough for the cultists to gain purchase on his consciousness. The weight of their minds pressed him down, flattening his being until his identity thinned and nearly vanished, and it was difficult to tell whose thoughts belonged to whom.

Yet even then, he refused to surrender. He was sovereign to himself, and he would sooner die than be otherwise.

A sudden movement: Alín twisted and wrenched free of her captors. She tore something from the neck of the man to her right, and then she sprang toward Murtagh.

Bachel shouted and pointed at Alín. A spear of fire leaped from the witch’s clawed finger and struck Alín in the chest.

The fire passed harmlessly around her.

With a desperate cry, Alín collapsed against Murtagh with her arms around his shoulders. Her fingers fumbled against the back of his neck and—

Clarity. Sudden relief. The pressure upon his mind vanished, and he jumped to his feet.

A bird-skull amulet bounced against his chest.

Ithring sang through the air as he swung at the nearest cultist. The man had no wards to protect him; the sword’s crimson blade passed through him with hardly any resistance.

The chanting dissolved into panicked discord.

Murtagh quick-stepped to the next Draumar and clove head from body. The cultists were crowded close to him, and he moved with ruthless efficiency among them, chopping at arms and legs and stabbing where he could, determined to keep them so busy they could not again immobilize him.

Bachel snarled. A torrent of flame shot from her to Murtagh. As with Alín, the flames wrapped around him without harm. Nor did the arcane fire touch two of the three Draumar behind him. However, the third cultist was the man from whom Alín had stolen the amulet, and him the fire harrowed, and his skin cracked and his hair vanished in a flare of orange sparks. He ran away screaming as a blanket of flames enveloped him.

In his blindness, the man ran off the edge of the great hole in the center of the room and fell into the black void, the flames trailing like flapping flags from his body.