9-4
Syffox raised his brow. “My bow?”
The rival priest addressed him grimly, “Yes, you will give us your bow!”
Syffox turned to the presiding lord, who merely acquiesced with an upward palm. He returned to the angered priest with a look of concern. “My bow is accustomed to my hand. It would not serve anyone other than me. Perhaps my quiver instead.” He gestured to the officer with the quiver at his feet. “It is special in its own way.”
The priest shook his head. “The choice is ours and we choose your bow.”
Syffox’s normally placid temperament began to harden. “You wish for me to give you my bow that was made by the last of my kin?”
The priest shifted a bit. “Yes.”
“You wish for me to give you my bow that was passed to me with my father’s dying breath?”
The rival priest raised his chin in defiance. “Yes.”
“You wish for me to give you my bow that is the last surviving relic of my people?”
The priest of Coronus forced a greater air of arrogance. “You would be a fool to not see the danger of disrespecting us.”
Syffox took in a deep breath. “Perhaps I am a fool to think I can avoid the confrontation you so eagerly seek to test me with.” He turned to the lord of the hall. “Do the lords of Kundz feel the same?”
The lord replied without change to his simple, efficient manner, “Customs are the ways of priests and not so important to the operations of this city. We are, however, a people of discipline and tests. The clergy are allowed to set their trials.”
He nodded to the lord with respect. “Very well, then, let the trail begin.” Syffox began drawing in the magic around him to overcharge his own power store. A chill crept over the crowd as he sucked in the heat from the entire hall. A cascade of fog billowed around him while frost spread across the floor.
The priests of Coronus backed away in shock and fear. Syffox wasn’t comfortable with such grandiose displays and had no intention of harming priests so much his junior. He hoped that a display of his own would help ensure no one was hurt.
“Perhaps if you don’t see the dangers of disrespecting me, it is simply because you cannot see the forest for the trees.”
A myriad of images of Syffox spread out across the chamber. The senior priest struck out to where Syffox stood with a yellow ray of magic. The ray struck a false image that promptly vanished. The bolt struck the banister behind with a burst of flames. The lords and civilians in the room dove underneath the benches and ledges.
The images of Syffox began to dart and weave about the great hall; some even taunted the clerics as they danced around. The priests struck out at the images with magical bolts and missiles. Syffox, in the meantime, was safely at the edge of the room. He raised his bow and fired a forked arrow that caught the wrist of one cleric and pinned his hand and wand to the wall. With a razor arrow, he struck a cleric’s staff that split and erupted into a burst of sparks.
The priests of Coronus were too distracted by the illusions to find the real Syffox. However, the officer was better trained for chaos and noticed that only one of the Syffoxes was firing its bow. He drew his sword and dashed across the room.
Without raising his bow, Syffox fired a blunt, heavy arrow. The arrow struck the officer off guard and thumped him solidly in the hip. The force of the weighted arrow jerked the officer’s leg and sent him tumbling to the floor. As he landed at Syffox’s feet, Syffox fired an arrow through each side of the officer’s armour, nailing the man to the floor without puncturing his skin.
By now, the clerics were starting to thin the number of illusions. A new distraction was in order. Syffox raised his hand and waved as if beckoning someone in from the entrance. A buzzing hiss answered his summons, and a black cloud of locusts poured through the doorway into the great hall. His disciples outside dashed to the ground and covered their heads.
Inside the hall, chaos erupted as people ran about haphazardly, screaming and swatting at the insects. Taking shelter by a back doorway, the presiding lord of Kundz found amusement in the spectacle. The clerics of Coronus ran about batting insects and casting jets of flame into the air. The elder cleric focused on his deity and held his ground. He called upon Coronus for a single, precise blast of flame.
A quick flash of fire burst from the priest. The wave of heat slapped over everyone in the room. It was an intense flare but not hot enough to burn flesh, just enough to singe the delicate wings of the locusts and dissolve the remaining false Syffoxes. The concussive force of the flare stunned the locusts and rattled the heads of those still in the room. Dazed, everyone stopped in their tracks.
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Syffox stood to one side of the hall with tendrils of smoke wafting up from his hair and beard. Smouldering locusts rained down about him. He looked to the priest of Coronus both bewildered and impressed as he snuffed out a small flame on his shoulder.
The priest seized upon Syffox’s momentary lapse and, with all the magic he could muster, blasted him with a raging torrent of fire. The flame engulfed Syffox, burning him into a pinnacle of red-hot embers. Smoke and heat filled the hall. Wood and parchment ignited, and metal artefacts and shields about the chamber popped and groaned with the heat. The priest only stopped his deluge of flame when his own skin began to burn.
Where Syffox once stood was now only a black column of char and ash. The floor and walls behind the column were scorched, and a thick curtain of smoke clung to the ceiling. The remaining witnesses stood in awe.
A hush claimed the room that was punctuated by pops of cooling metal and tinkling from the smouldering column of char. The column creaked and shifted before two eyes appeared, gleaming white within the black pillar. Ash and soot fell about the column as Syffox shifted his charred shoulders.
The occupants of the hall stared dumbfounded as the clinking mass walked slowly over to a smoking figure lying on the ground. It was the officer, still pinned by two burnt arrows. His skin, blistered and ragged, steamed from heat; his breathing was rasping and laboured.
The char of Syffox’s flesh squeaked as he reached a blackened and knurled hand down to touch the dying man’s skin. “My apologies for the carelessness of my fellow priest and for the pain I have caused you.” His magic flowed into the man, removing his pain and restoring his burned flesh to health. The man drew in a breath of relief and passed out. A twinge of anger built inside of Syffox.
He stood and faced his attackers. “Do you know what happens to a forest after a fire?” The clerics shifted apprehensively. Syffox grinned deviously, his white teeth shining brightly between charcoal lips. “It comes back stronger.”
The black soot and char burst from Syffox and clanked onto the ground about him, his skin and forest clothes looking as if new. He thrust out his arm. It grew into a massive tree trunk that caught two clerics and blasted them through the stone wall of the courtroom. His other arm turned into a briar of thick, thorny vines that reached out and ensnared another group of clerics, pressing them up against the wall.
Syffox retracted his tree-trunk arm to strike again when a dull shock gripped his back. He clenched his teeth as a sensation of metal grinding against his hip bone rippled through his body. He arched his back with a groan as the steel withdrew from his flesh in an explosion of pain.
With the blows of a hammer, throbs struck him in the back while the sickly comforting warmth of his own blood flowed down a suddenly limp right leg. He shifted his weight to his left leg and stiffened himself against the pain. It had been a long time since he’d felt the wrenching bite of a blade. Syffox cursed himself for carelessly letting someone sneak up behind him.
With a grimace, he slowly turned to face a dirty, unkempt man with wild hair and a crazed look in his eyes. The man backed away from Syffox, snickering. His teeth were black and twisted, and his breath smelled of rot. In his hand was a jagged, rusted dagger covered with filth and blood. It was a follower of Festor.
The crazed man dropped the dagger, and it clattered to the floor in the silent great hall. Giggling, he spoke mockingly to Syffox. “You’re going to die now.”
Syffox scowled at him bitterly, “As will you.”
His fingers stretched out into vines, enwrapping the lunatic and crushing the life out of him. The silence of the great hall was broken again, this time with the sound of the man’s escaping breath and cracking bones. With a flick of his vine fingers, Syffox tossed him aside like a doll.
He turned to face the stunned clerics of Coronus. Those that still stood lunged out to strike out with their magic, but Syffox stopped them by booming “Enough!”
With a wave of his hand and magic, he forced all those in the great hall to their knees and lowered their heads. “There will be no more fighting!”
Syffox cast an angry and regretful glare at the pitiful heap of his assailant. “Enough have been harmed!” With a flick of his hand, he cast a small ball of magic at the corpse. The glimmering ball landed on the man, and he gasped a deep breath of new life. Syffox washed a wave of magic over the wounded clerics of Coronus, and their bones and torn flesh repaired before the astonished eyes of the onlookers. The throbbing pain and wound in his back forced him to concentrate as he raised his hand. The stones of the crumbled wall lifted off the ground and placed themselves back into the structure, healing the damaged hall as well.
Syffox took a step forward to the high priest of Coronus. His right leg pulsed in agony and dragged behind him. He glowered at the priest as pain washed up and down his back and leg. He reached behind to touch the warm, wet wound and forced his magic in to repair it. He took another step but still his right leg dragged.
Concerned, he reached back to touch the wound again. It burned to his touch and seeped blood. Syffox retracted his hand and examined his fingers. Along with blood, his fingertips were dotted with foul-smelling small black specks. He noticed a sensation of needle-like burrs grinding up his veins. He growled in anger. He had been poisoned as well.
Syffox clenched his teeth as he dug his fingers into the sticky wound. He used his magic to pull out the poison. The toxin clung to him and refused to be extracted. Syffox tried again, but the poison held stronger than his magic. He tried forcing his healing into his veins to neutralise the disease, but still it resisted curing.
There was no poison known to man that Syffox could not remedy. But this was no poison of man. It was a poison of Festor. Another long-forgotten feeling began to well up within Syffox… fear.
He stood helpless against the poison as the grating burrs moved through his veins and converged into his heart. He gasped in agony as the sensation of nausea and fire erupted throughout his body. His legs went numb, and the floor rose up to strike him. Through a growing white that crowded out his vision, he could see the faces of his disciples still being held outside the entranceway.
As his last breath left him, he managed to whisper, “I’m sorry, Goddess,” before succumbing to blackness.
