by Sarah Hawke
I nodded and dashed along beside her, trying to keep as low and quiet as I could. As impressed as I was with her shot, I was even more astonished by the abrupt shift in her mood and demeanor. Just like when we had been attacked off the docks, she had transitioned from obsequious servant to hardened warrior in the blink of an eye. Yet again I was reminded of Valuri, and yet again my stomach clenched when I thought about how I’d abandoned her…
Biting down on my lip hard enough to draw blood, I glanced up to the edge of the beleaguered battlements once we reached the fortress’s edge. Kaseya looked at me expectantly, and I nodded as I reached out to the Aether and cradled her body in an invisible fist of magical force. Taking another deep breath to aim and focus, I hurled her up onto the wall and held her in place until she confirmed her safety through our link.
Now just make sure you don’t fuck up and throw yourself all the way over the wall and into the courtyard.
Wincing at the memory of my last few failed attempts to fly, I repeated the same technique and launched myself up straight into the air. My aim wasn’t perfect—I almost crashed into the crenellations by being overcautious with my arc—but I managed to tumble when I hit the top of the battlements and roll safely into position.
Kaseya, for her part, leapt into action the moment she knew I was safe. Dashing towards the watchtower, she quickly checked the corpse inside before she scrambled to the door and lined up a shot at the other tower sentry. He was dead a full ten seconds before I caught up to her, but she wasn’t done: when one of the bandits from the courtyard unexpectedly ascended the steps towards the tower, she nocked another arrow and silently eliminated him as well.
Three shots, three horrifyingly accurate kills. Forget taking bounties—she could just join the Duskwatch Rangers and get promoted to captain in a few weeks. We could probably live comfortably off her salary. I could just sit at home reading all day, waiting patiently for her to shift to end so I could tie her up and fuck her until morning…
“Are you ready?” Kaseya whispered.
“Yeah,” I rasped, reaching out to the Aether again. If the stench of blood and death couldn’t pull my mind out of the sewer, then maybe I really was hopeless.
I followed closely behind her as she crept towards the closest staircase, bow still in hand. Most of the bandits were still sleeping on the bedrolls in the courtyard, blissfully unaware of our presence. Killing them would be easy enough; I could conjure a fireball and vaporize most of them before they had a chance to react. But I wasn’t here to murder a bunch of starving bandits, even the ones that deserved it. I might have been a terrible person—my recent behavior with my accidental amazon slave seemed to corroborate this theory pretty strongly—but I still liked to believe I was a few shades better than a murderous psychopath. For now, at least.
Once we reached the ground floor and confirmed that no one was awake, we sneaked across the dirt courtyard all the way to the door of the inner keep. While Kaseya pressed her ear against the dilapidated wooden door, I reached out through the Aether to see if I could sense anyone nearby on the other side. I was only a dabbler with clairvoyant magic, just like with most channeling techniques, but I was reasonably confident in my ability to detect the presence of any magical items within a few dozen yards.
Which was precisely why the hairs on the back of my neck started to prickle when I sensed a person instead.
Kaseya squatted down next to me and frowned when our bond relayed my growing anxiety. “I do not hear any additional sentries. What’s wrong?”
“I can sense an Aetheric echo in there,” I told her. “But it’s from a person, not the supplies.”
She creased her head in concentration. “Yes…I can sense it too. A prisoner? Perhaps one of the guild members who was escorting the caravan?”
“Maybe, but if so we shouldn’t sense anything. Wizards don’t produce an Aetheric echo like sorcerers do.”
“Perhaps one of the bandits is a rogue moshalim .”
“Let’s hope not,” I said, hissing softly between my teeth. “All right, we’ll stick to the plan and have a look around. We’ll head inside and—”
The door to the keep suddenly burst open mid-word, slamming into Kaseya and knocking her into me. We tumbled together in an awkward ball of arms and legs before she somehow managed to vault off me and unsheathe her sword. I recovered my balance just in time to watch her charge the thoroughly shocked bandit and skewer her blade straight through his gut.
He did not die silently. His gurgling shriek echoed off the walls of the fortress, and we were suddenly out of time.
“Oh, shit.”
To their credit, the bandits sleeping in the courtyard were awake and armed in a matter of seconds, and the sound of frantic, booted footfalls rumbled from inside the keep as more men rushed out to see what the hell had just happened. Kaseya, as unflappable as ever, grabbed her shield off her back and braced herself for their charge.
“Keep them at bay while I hold the door!” she shouted.
I swore under my breath as I sheathed myself in a glowing mantle of protective magic. I only had a few more seconds before I got swarmed, not nearly enough to muster enough power for a full-on assault. So instead, I improvised.
Extending both my hands, I blasted the ground in front of me with a gout of green magical fire until I had created a semi-circular wall around us. Most of the bandits dove away, terrified at the sight of magic, and between the rising smoke and the crackling flames we had decent cover for if and when they invariably overcame their fear.
Behind me, Kaseya had already clashed with a pair of bandits, scything down one and bashing the other with her shield. A third charged at her from the doorway, an enormous axe clutched in both his oversized hands. He swung across his body like he was chopping down a tree, but Kaseya expertly caught the wild attack with her shield, deflecting the axe rather than attempting to stop it head-on. The bandit careened off balance, allowing her to lunge inside his guard and thrust her sword through his chest.
I was just about to blast the battlements and scare off the survivors when an arrow whistled through the flaming wall and struck Kaseya in the shoulder. I froze in place, mortified, and time seemed to slow around me as she crumpled to a knee. A second shot followed the first, glancing harmlessly off my spell armor, but at that point I was barely even paying attention. The instant I saw blood hemorrhaging down her back, I screamed and unleashed my full power.
The Aether coursed through me like lightning through metal. I whirled about to face the other bandits, my entire body immolated in green, sorcerous flame. I hurled a fireball from each hand, detonating one on either side of the courtyard. The explosions were so loud they made my ears pop, and the force of the blasts hurled stone and flaming debris in every direction. By the time the ash settled and the air went still, there was virtually nothing left besides black heaps of smoldering bone.
I dove down next to Kaseya and clutched at her wound. She seemed completely oblivious to the pain. She was just staring wide-eyed at the destruction I’d wrought.
“Moshalim… ” she murmured.
“Just hold still,” I said, numbing her shoulder as best I could before I yanked the arrow free. She winced but didn’t cry out, and I channeled a burst of restorative energy into her wound. Her skin sealed shut after a few seconds, and as far as I could tell there wasn’t any lingering damage.
“Such power, such devastation…” Kaseya murmured as if she were in some kind of trance. “This is why the Senosi fear you.”
“One of many reasons,” I said, trying to ignore the stench of smoke and seared flesh. My hands and arms tingled painfully; the Aetheric backlash was already taking its toll on my body. “I’m sure you have the same problem with your sorcerers back home.”
“Not like this,” she whispered. “Never like this…”
I frowned, confused, before I heard a pleading whimper from somewhere inside the keep. “The prisoner,” I said, standing. “Can you walk?”
She led the way into the keep. I followed closely behind her, wondering if there was some way I could extend the protection of my spell armor to her. It had worked with my vision enhancing technique, after all. Perhaps I could find a way to exploit our bond in other ways.
The fortress interior was much smaller than it had appeared from the outside. Most of the original rooms had been crushed in cave-ins over time, though the original dungeon had apparently survived more or less intact. We followed the whimpers down a staircase, and a horrid, rotting scent assaulted my nostrils halfway down.
“In here,” Kaseya said. “Goddess be merciful.”
I swept in behind her and examined the area. Half a dozen cells were arrayed around the rectangular room, all sealed by rusty iron bars. The source of the foul smell was obvious—two of the three current prisoners were dead. They were clad in the gray-blue robes of guild wizards, and they had clearly been tortured quite thoroughly before someone had finally slashed open their throats.
The final prisoner, a short human female, was alive and visibly unharmed aside from the fact she had been stripped naked. I winced when I thought about how many times these bandits had probably raped her, but I didn’t spot a single bruise or lesion anywhere on her body.
“Oh, thank the gods,” the woman gasped, glancing up through her tangled brown hair. “I knew the Archmage would send someone to rescue us eventually! I just…” She paused when she belatedly realized we weren’t wearing guild attire. “Wait, who are you?”
“It’s all right—we’re mercenaries from Highwind,” I told her. “We’re not technically with the guild, but they are the ones who offered the bounty.”
“Bounty?” she rasped. “But I heard the sounds of magic! I thought they’d sent a hundred wizards to fetch us!”
“Not quite,” I murmured.
“Jorem is more than capable of handling the situation himself,” Kaseya said, dashing forward and fiddling with the lock. “Just remain calm and we will free you.”
The woman seemed to freeze up the moment she heard my name, and it was only then, when she flicked the haggard strands of hair from her face, that I realized why.
I didn’t gasp or swear or do anything else so obvious, but I could actually feel some of the puzzle pieces in my mind slide into place. Suddenly this whole situation made a lot more sense.
“Well whoever you are, I can’t thank you enough,” the woman went on. “They already killed Rogan and Donnel.”
“You are fortunate they did not kill you, too,” Kaseya said, glancing back to me when she sensed the abrupt shift in my mood. I locked eyes with her and did my best to silently communicate that she needed to play along.
“I know,” the woman breathed. “It was horrible. I spent every minute just waiting for them to barge in here and rape me.”
While Kaseya opened the door and helped the prisoner to her feet, I glanced around the rest of the dungeon. I didn’t see her clothing or equipment anywhere, nor did I see any sign of the missing guild supplies.
“Did they say why they didn’t touch you?” I asked.
"N-no, not specifically,” she stuttered. “I think they were planning to sell my off to slavers. One of them mentioned something about unspoiled females fetching a high price with the Black Mistress.”
I nodded and resisted the urge to grin. To her credit, she was pretty good at thinking on her feet. That excuse probably would have persuaded me if I’d heard it a minute ago.
“The bounty said that you had valuable cargo with you,” I went on. “Do you have any idea where they kept it?”
The woman shook her head as Kaseya threw a tattered cloak over her shoulders to hide her nakedness. “They already sold it yesterday. I don’t know who bought it, though—I could barely even hear voices from in here.”
“Well, the important thing is that you’re safe,” I said. “Let’s get out of here in case they have any scout patrols on their way back.”
We rushed out of the fortress in a hurry, though before we opened the main gate I surreptitiously retrieved a fallen dagger from one of the dead bandits and slipped it into my sleeve. I also made sure to keep our new friend in front of me the entire time. The way her eyes gaped at the flames and bodies outside suggested amazement and horror, but I knew better. She had probably known who I was the moment the first explosion had rocked the courtyard, possibly before.
Once we approached the edge of the forest a few hundred yards away, I signaled for a stop. Our new friend glanced between us, confused.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Did you see something?”
“Only a face I recognize from back home,” I told her, smiling. “You know, I will give you some credit: you’re pretty good at this ‘damsel-in-distress’ thing. Though flashing your tits at us was probably overkill.”
The woman froze in place. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ll take a wild guess and assume you threw yourself in that cell the moment you heard the first explosions outside,” I went on. “The whole ‘unspoiled slave’ thing wasn’t a bad story, but there’s no way in the abyss a bunch of haggard, sex-starved bandits would have kept their hands off you this long. Yet here you are, without a single bruise or scratch.”
She glanced nervously between us. “I don’t understand.”
“That said, I probably would have fallen for the whole thing if I didn’t recognize you,” I said. “Lenara, right? As I recall, you spent a lot of time at the Castarium .” I glanced over to Kaseya. “It’s a lovely little place where the Senosi torture and humiliate male sorcerers, right before chopping off their balls and letting them bleed out in front of an audience.”
Kaseya’s face twisted in horror. “Despicable…”
“One of many reasons I’m not eager to return home,” I murmured, turning back to the naked Huntress. “Unlike you and your kin, I’m not a butcher. If you give us some information, we’ll let you go.”
Lenara didn’t respond, and her face became an indecipherable wall. I knew almost nothing about her personally, but hopefully she wasn’t a complete fanatic. Some of her “sisters” were more reasonable than others, in my experience.
“First things first, why don’t you tell me what really happened here?” I asked. “Here’s my guess: you took control of this gang a little while ago, probably by emasculating and murdering their leader, at which point you directed them to intercept the Mage’s Guild caravan. You gave the supplies to another Senosi, probably to take them straight back to Vorsalos, but then you stuck around in the hopes of capturing or maybe even converting any of the wizards the guild sent up here on a rescue mission. Does that sound about right?”
When Lenara remained silent, Kaseya drew her sword and placed the blade at the other woman’s throat. “Answer his questions.”
“I would listen to her,” I said. “We were promised a lot of coin for this bounty, but since the cargo’s not actually here…well, I at least need you to give me some useful information. What does the Inquisitrix have planned in Highwind? What was in that shipment that is so important?”
A few more long, heated seconds ticked by before Lenara’s lips curled into a smile. “I guess you really are as clever as Valuri said. I’m sure she’ll be pleased to know you escaped Vorsalos unharmed.”
My entire body seized up like she had just blasted me with a bolt of electricity. “Valuri…she’s alive?”
Lenara laughed. “Of course she is. Death would be far too merciful for a traitor. She’ll be the Inquisitrix’s pet for a while yet, I suspect.”
I stumbled backwards as a fresh knot of guilt twisted in my stomach. Convincing myself that Valuri was dead was the only way I had been able to justify leaving Vorsalos behind. But if she was still there, if she was a still the Inquisitrix’s prisoner…
I was so overwhelmed and distracted that my emotions bled through Kaseya’s collar and paralyzed her as well.
She reached out in an effort to console me—
And in that exact moment, Lenara struck.
She whirled around and kicked Kaseya’s arm, battering the sword from her grip. Before the amazon could regain her balance, Lenara deftly sank into a crouch and swept Kaseya’s legs out from under her, knocking her flat onto her back. The Senosi used the distraction to dive across the grass and retrieve the fallen blade. She rolled back to her feet, weapon clutched in both hands and a dark smile on her lips.
“The Inquisitrix has wanted your head for a long time, Jorem Farr,” Lenara spat. “She’ll reward me with a dozen slaves when I present it to her…and probably a dozen more when I mount the head of this amazon cunt along with it.”
She abruptly lunged forward at Kaseya, and my instincts took over. Acting on pure reflex, I thrust out my hands and unleashed a coruscating beam of pure Aetheric energy. The assault would have vaporized any normal person even through the thickest armor, and it did blast Lenara several feet backwards and flatten her to the ground. But she immediately rolled back to a knee, and a moment later a score of glowing blue tattoos became visible beneath her pale skin as they fed upon my power.
“Fool,” she hissed, charging Kaseya again.
Fortunately my distraction had given the amazon just enough time to draw her shield and get back to her feet; unfortunately, it had just empowered Lenara with enough energy to double or even triple her strength. The Senosi were called “mage-killers” for a reason. Despite all my power—despite the fact I just wiped out a fortress filled with bandits—I was completely helpless against this woman.
But Kaseya wasn’t. Her shield intercepted attack after attack, even as Lenara drove her backwards across the grass with her magically-enhanced strength. Kaseya couldn’t actually win like this—it was taking every scrap of her training just to survive—but she was buying us some time.
“Go, Jorem!” she shouted. “Get out of here!”
I had no doubt in my mind that she would have stayed behind to defend me as long as she could, knowing full well that eventually Lenara would overpower and kill her. But I had spent the better part of the last three months chiding myself for being a coward and abandoning Valuri to the Inquisitrix—I was not going to make the same mistake twice.
