The sound of blades crashing together cut through his avalanche of thoughts, replacing them with the single, clear voice of the dead ChuKang come back to him.
“To stand still on a field of battle is to invite death to find you.”
Drakis pushed himself up, leaping to his feet, and closing at once with the nearest of the elven Guardians. Instinct and training took over, pushing the maddening thoughts to the side as he concentrated on the moment before him and the enemy that he barely recognized as one of his own household. He gave himself to his instincts, not wanting to think or consider the consequences of his attack. He blocked the elf’s frantic blow, arrested his sword arm, and, in a single, fluid move, wrested the blade from the horrified elf’s grasp.
Drakis swung the blade, rotating the grip with his wrist. The elf backed up, baring his teeth beneath his blank, black eyes.
Drakis did not hesitate. He feigned a blow to the right and then, with lightning skill, curled the blade over his head and sliced it into his opponent on the left. He drew the blade back and then thrust it forward, burying it deep into the elf’s gut and then turning it with a violent rotation of both hands on the hilt.
Blood gushed over his hands from the gaping wound, but Drakis maintained his grip on the hilt, jerking it free and reeling backward slightly from the effort.
It saved his life. A blade flashed downward in front of his face. He stepped back on his right foot, planting it for balance as he raised his own blade to deflect the downward cut away from him. He spun to confront his next attacker.
Don’t think. . just survive.
He locked his eyes with those of a taller Guardian for a moment, but it was enough. A massive fist, its fur already caked with blood connected with the elf’s head from the left, driving it with such force into the garden wall next to them that Drakis heard the skull crack over the screaming chorus around them.
“Help me!” roared Belag. “Help me!”
Drakis turned to look at Belag. His golden eyes were fixed open, darting suddenly here and there. The human saw something he had never seen in any manticore before: fear filled the flat feline features of his countenance. He reached out with his bloodied, huge hand, feeling toward Drakis as though he could not see him.
A terrible sound, like a thunder that would never end, surged down around them. Drakis looked up.
The avatria was falling. Bereft of the power of the Aether Well, the elegant floating home of the Timurans first leaned to one side and then dropped straight down, smashing down onto the tall garden wall of the subatria with crushing force. Hundreds of alabaster tiles crashed down into the garden from the hemispherical underside of the structure, knocking many of the terrified household members to the ground. Several of the braziers lighting the garden fell over, their coals igniting a fire. Drakis watched in amazement as several subatria slaves, cackling as they danced, began pouring oil from amphorae on the fire, causing it to erupt robustly, its smoke obscuring the scene. As Drakis watched, an enormous crack opened up along the curved foundation that threatened to collapse the entire structure on them at any moment.
Training and instinct. Training and instinct.
The human grabbed Belag’s forearm.
“Gather the Warriors,” Drakis heard himself say, although his own voice sounded detached from him-a thing apart. “Tell those who can to meet outside at the totem hilltop southwest of the House. .”
“Outside!” Panic rose in the manticore’s voice. “We’ve no permission to. .”
“Belag! I am Master of the Centurai now,” Drakis shouted, his face pressed close, filling the vision of the manticore. In the back of his mind he knew how utterly ridiculous his words were. There were no masters any more. . no Centurai. “Get any warriors you can and meet me outside. . west of the Warrior Gate at the hilltop totem!”
Overhead, an overwhelming cracking sound shook the hall. Drakis glanced up fearfully. The amount of debris from the collapsing avatria above them was increasing at an alarming rate.
“Belag!” Drakis shouted. “Obey!”
The manticore’s eye slits suddenly narrowed into focus. “Aye!”
Drakis glanced around as the huge lion-man turned and bolted off to his right. The garden was barely recognizable. Flames shot up from several large fires, their flickering light illuminating the shattered base of the avatria that threatened imminent collapse. Silhouetted or illuminated, everywhere there seemed to be figures moving through the haze of the smoke.