Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept by David A. Wells Page B

your neck and I’ll let you live.”
    His offer was met with derisive laughter.
    “Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Alexander muttered, motioning for Jataan to take half of the Rangers and flank to the high side of the ravine.
    Dark tendrils began moving away from Yasim’s position, creeping along the ground toward his fallen men.
    “I don’t like the looks of that,” Jack said, pulling his hood up and flickering out of sight.
    When the tendrils reached the fresh corpses, the dead arched their backs, shaking as if in excruciating pain before springing to their feet with far more agility than the dead should be able to muster. As one, they turned toward Alexander and howled. A moment later, they were frantically charging toward him. The Rangers’ colors rippled with fear.
    It took Alexander a moment to fully process what he was seeing. He sent a surge of light into the world, flooding the forest with such pure radiant brilliance that Yasim’s dark spell broke and his dead fell once again, crashing to the forest floor in midstride.
    Darkness began filling the ravine like smoke, thick and impenetrable to normal sight. Alexander raised his light, but it wouldn’t penetrate the darkness . He raised it brighter still, another pulse of the purest light, washing away the unnatural darkness but only after he drew power from the realm of light itself. A wave of weariness flowed into him, forcing him to lean on his staff for a moment.
    The Rangers with Jataan loosed another volley into the enemy, felling three more. Yasim sent a number of shadow creatures at them, wing and claw and fang taking form in midflight. Alexander tried to raise his light again but all he could muster was natural illumination, bright and blinding to his enemies, but with little power to dispel Yasim’s dark magic. He drew the Thinblade and charged into battle with Anja close on his heels and the Rangers advancing behind them, bows at the ready.
    The first shadow reached Jataan . He slipped aside and cleaved through it with a sword that seemed to materialize in his hand. The creature vanished in a puff of foul smoke. The remaining shadows swept into the Rangers, tearing into flesh and killing three men in as many seconds, then vanishing. Kiera killed one with a light-lance spell. A Ranger killed another with a hasty, but lucky, swing of his sword.
    Alexander reached the closest assassin, sliding out of the path of his sword and sweeping through the man with the Thinblade, killing him almost as an afterthought on his way to Yasim. Anja killed another man with a brutal hack of her oversized sword. The courage of the enemy seemed to break all at once and the remaining killers turned and fled down the ravine. The Rangers took them down with a continuous barrage of arrows, dropping one after the next in rapid succession.
    A lexander reached Yasim just as the Royal Assassin unleashed another spell. In the space of a heartbeat, Alexander felt all of his strength fail. He went to one knee, unable to stand, debilitating weakness filling every recess of his being. He tried to raise his light, but didn’t have the strength.
    Yasim smiled down at him, the look of triumph frozen in place when Jataan decapitated him with a stroke from behind. In that moment, Alexander’s strength flooded back into his body just as quickly as it had left him. He stood, scanning the carnage and finding only his people still breathing.
    “Well done,” he said to Jataan as he kne lt beside the Royal Assassin’s corpse. He took the slave master’s ring from Yasim’s finger and the slave collar that was looped around his belt.
    Alexander slipped the ring on and touched it to the collar. A moment passed before the clasp opened with a click.
    “Have someone particular in mind?” Jack asked, flickering into view.
    “No, but I’m hoping Kelvin can figure out how to remove one of these collars without using a master ring.”
    A Ranger sergeant approached. “I have four dead and three