Page 142 of Storm of Fury
But the second he opened his Third Eye, he could see the truth: Vadim’s knife had struck her right through the heart.
* * *
“Ishtar!”Marduk yelled, one arm flung over his face as he staggered through the storm of Chaos magic. It felt like hours as he gritted his teeth and fought the rage of pure Chaos. Strips tore from his skin, and the magic stung as though it was cutting through him. But he couldn’t leave her there.
He had to stop her before she opened a portal she might not be strong enough to withstand.
Shadows flickered at the other side of the rune stones. A tall, bearded form appeared, splashed with blood.
Marduk lowered his arm as Vadim moved toward Ishtar with a spear in his hand.
They stood at opposite sides of the circle with Ishtar between them.
Marduk would never reach her in time, but he grasped the wind with his magic, using it to hammer the Keeper.
Launching forward, Vadim grabbed Ishtar and hauled her into his arms, setting the tip of the spear to her throat. “What now, princeling?”
The wind whipped past Marduk, howling down through the valley. The strain of wielding it drove down upon his shoulders, as if he was handling it physically. His knees threatened to buckle.
But he wasn’t the only one handling power.
Chaos magic burned in Ishtar’s eyes as she opened her eyes. Above them, a vortex of eerie green began to whirl slowly to life, sucking the energy from the marrow of the world.
Mother of dragons. Marduk’s jaw dropped open as Ishtar called the portal to life. He could sense the sudden yawning distance as if the portal snatched onto its destination. A thousand colors flickered to life within the circle, and he could have sworn he saw a rainbow bridge stretching into infinity.
She’d done it.
She’d linked both worlds.
“Ishtar,” he whispered, because he could feel her knees weakening, feel her hold on the magic slipping through her fingers as they linked.
Something must have shown on his face, because Vadim glanced up.
Chaos magic might slough off the bastard, but his sister was clearly no fool.
And now she was free of her warded prison, there was no checking her power.
Vadim screamed as the portal sucked at him like an enormous hungry mouth. The spear was torn from his hand, and Ishtar’s dress blew back in the wind as the portal enveloped them.
“No!” Marduk yelled, leaping forward, but the portal evaporated with a hiss, leaving only clouds and bare earth behind.
Little sparks of Chaos fizzed in the air, and then there was nothing but the piercing squeal of Bryn’s merlin as it soared overhead.
And his sister, stumbling out of nowhere to her knees in the dirt with a happy smile on her face. “I did it,” she told him. “I set the world right.”
Marduk slid to his knees in front of her, hesitating to grab her hands after the way she’d reacted last time. “Set the world right? What do you mean?”
He glanced around. The rune stones hummed, the runes still lit up with green fire, though they remained inactive. Something didn’t feel right. If he concentrated, he could feel the ground shivering far, far below him.
“He was locked away,” she whispered. “And he wanted me to release him from his prison. And so I did. But I had to break the chains first.”
“Who? What chains?”
“My friend. The voice in the moon. And these chains.”
She sent him a sudden flurry of images through the bond, though he could barely make any sense of them. The portal, silent and quivering, its power suppressed. And little golden runes stamped over each stone, that had been patiently carved by a circle of long-deaddrekiwarlords as they bound the circle into silence.
Marduk blinked back into the present.
