“What are you doing here, M’lord?” Zerick, the smaller of the two guards, shouted.
“Someone is still inside!”
“It’s Sir Nelson,” Mason, the larger one, said. He pointed to a second-floor window. “The last time I saw him, he was up there.”
“We’ve got to get him out!”
Zerick shook his head. “It’s impossible, M’lord. We tried. The fire is just too hot.” He pointed at the water wizards with a jut of his chin. “Once they’ve doused the flames, we can-”
“Their spell will kill him just as sure as the fire!” Ian ran back to the two mages. “I must insist you hold your spell!”
The younger of the two looked up, saw who he was, swallowed his first retort and simply raised his hands in a helpless gesture. “M’lord, the law is absolute. We must protect the city.”
“It’s not the building I care about. One of my knights is trapped inside.”
“The loss of one man’s life does not justify threatening the well-being of the entire city,” the young mage argued. “I must insist you stand back.”
Ian grabbed him by the front of his robes. “You are coming with me.” He pointed to the older mage. “And you-do not cast that dousing spell until we come back out!”
“M’lord . . .” the young mage sputtered. “. . . Unhand me! This is just not done . . .”
“Can you keep the flames off us?”
“Well . . . I can try, but . . .”
“Do it and your name will be mentioned most favorably to the King.” Ian glanced over at Lumist. “Make sure the other one waits for us to come out!”
“I’m not letting you go in there by yourself!” Lumist hollered.
“There’s no time to argue. Once we’re clear, let him cast the spell. Understand?”
And without another word, he threw his cloak up to shield his face and ran headlong into the burning building with the frightened young water mage reluctantly tagging along behind him.
Chapter 9
Josephine scaled the outer wall of the keep, crawled into her empty bedroom and quietly closed the window behind her. During the short trek home, she had tried to devise a plan to rescue her mother and sister, and perhaps even her father too, but the situation was grim. Mister Lipscombe and Furland Pervis had the upper hand and she didn’t have any magical skills of her own to counter them, at least none she could use yet.
“Father, when will you teach me how to do magic?” She remembered being very young the first time she’d asked him that. His dazzling displays of power had been an unforgettable harmony in her mind and she wanted to learn how to create such songs.
“Soon, my dear,” he would always reply, voice sad, eyes suddenly gone vacant, “when you’re older.”
Over the years, she had eventually grown tired of asking, but now, as she crept across her bedroom floor she wished she had been more persistent.
“I know yer up there, girl,” Lipscombe called out. “C’mon down.”
Josephine recovered her crossbow and clutched it tightly in her hands. Without the benefit of shadows in which to hide, he must have seen her sneak down the alley or climb up the outside of the keep. She yanked her bedroom door open, but before she stepped out into the hallway, she remembered something Edgar had taught her. Don’t go blundering forward without checking the situation first. Pressing herself flat against the doorframe, she peered around the corner.
The hallway was empty.
“Check, then go. Check, then go,” Josephine muttered. She took a deep breath. “Keep your wits about you, Jo.”
“Hurry up,” Lipscombe shouted. “Yer sister is waitin’.”
Leigh. No doubt, she would still be crying, frightened beyond words and comprehension. It would be weeks before she recovered from all this, perhaps even months, if ever.
Josephine took another deep breath, summoned her courage, and ran for the stairs. All she needed was one opportunity, a single opening and she’d pull the trigger!
She swallowed hard. Could she kill him? Shooting at hay targets was one thing, but another human being was something else completely.
“We’re in th’ dinin’ hall,” Lipscombe called out again.
The wide, marble stairs emptied into the main hall below and when Josephine reached the bottom, she turned and headed toward the rear of the keep, past the lavatory. She slowed as she neared the dining hall door and listened for any sounds coming from beyond.
Instead, she heard the faint creak of the lavatory door opening behind her.
Check, then go!
Too late she remembered Edgar’s words. Something hard struck her across the back of the head and everything went dark.
Chapter 10
“There! You see, Mister Hewes, your family is still alive.”
A familiar voice, cold and stern, came to Joseph Hewes from somewhere in the shadows. He tried to find the source, but the chains holding him against the stone platform would not allow movement of any kind. A knotted gag kept him from uttering magical phrases and his arms were stretched out to either side with each of his fingers locked in heavy blocks of wood. Someone was being very careful with him.
And Joseph was certain he knew who and why.
In his mind’s eye, he studied the projected image of his wife, Annie and their daughter, Leigh closely. Both were tied to chairs in his dining hall and it appeared that poor Leigh had been beaten. On the floor in front of their bound feet lay his dear Josephine, unconscious, but still alive. He tried to draw the image closer, but a black cloth was suddenly thrown over the surface of the sending mirror and the vision within his mind faded.
“Make the communication discs permanent and you and your family will be released,” the voice offered. “Threaten me again with their destruction and you will watch them all slowly and painfully die!”
Chapter 11
The warehouse fire, like a great, multi-limbed creature with dozens of twisting appendages each ending in a starving mouth, fed voraciously upon the wooden structure. Its hunger was insatiable, and it devoured everything it encountered, releasing a noxious fume in its wake and a curtain of black smoke equally as deadly as its fiery touch. Curling, twisting, snaking sinuously along the floor, consuming crates and barrels, the orange flames encountered a thick wooden support beam and began to climb. Greedily, the fire spiraled upwards until it danced along the bottom of the ceiling and feasted on the underside of the second floor. Here and there, between the cracks of the ill-fitting boards a flicking tongue of flame would slip through followed by a burst of smoke. It wasn’t searching for human flesh, but it would eat it just as ravenously as wood.
“Help!” The cry meant nothing to the fire. “Help me!”
The speaker beat upon an extended claw of flames with his cloak, slapping at it over and over, but the fire crept through a crack to his right and left and forced him slowly back toward the smoldering exterior wall. Again, and again, the cloak flipped out, until the fire snapped back, biting the trailing edge and igniting the fabric. The cloth burned quickly, the threads blackening and falling to ash as the man cast it aside frantically.
“Please, someone help . . .” he moaned.
The fire couldn’t possibly know the knight was weakening, that the heat of its touch was leeching the moisture from his body, or that the fumes it cast off were burrowing down deeply into his lungs and robbing him of air.
It only knew how to feed and destroy.
Chapter 12
“Use your water!” Ian shouted at the young mage as they plunged through the burning warehouse. The stairs were near the rear of the building and at the top stretched a narrow catwalk which led to the rooms above.
A thick stream of water arched over Ian’s shoulder and scattered the flames immediately in front of him. The fire screamed, hissing like an angry, feral cat and retreated, allowing them passage.
“More!” Ian said, pulling the mage along behind him. “There!” He pointed to a burning support beam on their right. �
�And there!” A line of fire threatened to cut off their route to the stairs.
The mage complied without protest, thrusting his hands out and producing the water, sometimes from his palms, other times from his fingertips, but even his skillful use of magic was barely enough to open a clear path to the stairs. Ian mopped at the gritty sweat dripping into his tearing eyes and stumbled forward. All around him his cargo burned but it was the knight trapped in one of the rooms above he had come to save.
He reached the stairs and started to climb. Fire danced along the railing. More spanned the catwalk directly ahead of them once they reached the top. “You need to extinguish all that!” Ian pointed. “The rooms are just beyond.”
The mage’s face hardened, and his brow pinched down over the bridge of his nose. Slowly, as if heavy weights were attached to his wrists, the young man raised his arms and extended them toward the fire.
A trickle of water dripped from his fingers and then a short burst sputtered from his palms. The flames continued to dance as the water vaporized into harmless steam.
“I can’t use any more water,” the mage cried, “otherwise, it will come out!”
“A man’s life is at stake!”
“I know, and I’m sorry, but, I can’t! IT will come out!”
“Just one more blast, then you can leave!” The fire was already closing in around the damp route the mage had created for their entry.
The young man shook his head. “You ask too much!” He took a step back. “I’m sorry, M’lord!” He turned and fled back down the stairs.
Ian considered chasing after him, but beyond the wall of flames blocking his path, he spied the first of three doors only twenty or thirty feet away. He had already come this far, it would be a shame to turn away now.
“SIR NELSON!” he shouted, hoping to be heard over the roar of the fire.
“Here . . .”
“Hold on, Sir, I’m coming for you.”
Ian wrapped his cloak around himself. He had barely survived the hot breath of a fire once before, many years earlier when he was a boy living in Gyunwar. The memory reared up in front of him and for a moment he was reliving the pain and agony he’d suffered back then all over again. “Go,” he muttered to himself. “Go! Move now!”
Spurred to action, Ian closed his eyes and leapt into the wall of fire.
Chapter 13
“Sir, I cannot wait any longer. I must cast the spell now!”
Lumist rounded on the impatient water mage. “If a single drop of water falls on that building before Lord Weatherall exits,” he wrapped his hand around the hilt of his sword, “you will not live to see the second.”
“But, sir, the fire is spreading rapidly. If I don’t cast the spell now, I don’t-”
Lumist started to draw his sword.
“Someone’s coming out!”
A voice from the growing crowd of curious onlookers caught Lumist’s attention and he spun around, praying it was Ian, but the figure staggering through the opening was the young water mage. He stumbled out into the street, his blond hair singed, and his pale face blackened with soot.
“Did you leave Lord Ian behind to burn?” Lumist roared. He charged across the street, his blade drawn and raised threateningly.
The young water mage dropped to his knees without answering and began vomiting and clawing at his chest. Lumist slowed. His gray eyes narrowed into thin slits. The mage’s arms jerked back violently, and his mouth opened as if to scream. No sound came out. Instead, a watery-blue claw emerged followed quickly by a second. Cries erupted up and down the street as the curious onlookers fled.
“Sir!” the older mage shouted. “Stand back!”
The blue claws wrapped around the convulsing mage’s lips and pushed his mouth open until his lower jaw snapped and broke free. The older mage brushed past Lumist, muttering the beginnings of a new spell.
As if poured out of a broken pitcher, a blue-hued water elemental sloshed out of its human host and splashed into the street. The magical creature stretched and flexed its long, sinuous limbs as if being trapped inside the human had cramped its semi-amorphous body. The young mage fell away like an empty water-skin, limp and flat.
“Ag’wah, e’orin-tae!” the older mage shouted.
The towering, ten-foot-tall water elemental swirled around, its soggy body turning a murky gray-green, and a pair of glowing orbs the color of a storming sea floated toward the top of its bulbous head.
“Ag’wah, e’orin-tae!” the older mage tried again.
The water elemental raised a rubbery limb and with a roar that sounded like a crashing wave, it swatted wildly at the old mage. The blow caught the man square in the chest and tossed him across the street and through a second-floor window.
Lumist dropped into his old fighting stance, leveled his sword at the water elemental and shouted an ancient Gyunwarian battle cry. The elemental did not move.
“Gy-WA! Gy-WA!” Lumist tried again, brandishing his sword in a grand flourish over his head. There was little he could do against such a powerful creature, but he had to keep it occupied, at least until a few more water mages arrived. If the dim-witted creature decided to charge into the fire, its rampaging would only make the situation more dangerous for Ian.
But the elemental did not seem to notice him or his sword. Its glowing orbs centered on the fire and with another angry roar, it crashed into the burning building. Water boiled, and shrieking clouds of steam billowed into the air. The elemental screamed its fury and slammed repeated against the warehouse until a section broke and fell away.
“IAN!” Lumist shouted, but he was afraid his friend was already lost.
Chapter 14
Joseph Hewes lay in the silent dark and struggled to keep his nightmarish memories at bay. Over the years, he had learned how to push the images of all the screaming faces away, but now, locked in some dank cell with nothing else to occupy his mind, or his hands, he found himself revisiting his past.
And the hell he saw there, the hell he had helped create across the ocean, only reminded him again of how close he’d come to making the same mistake here in Belyne. It would have been easy for him to fall back on the old excuse; he was only doing what he had to do to make a better life for his family, but that reason just didn’t seem enough anymore considering all the harm he’d caused and was still causing. When he’d seen what was being done to those captured slaves . . .
Joseph Hewes cringed. Knowing it was being done was one thing, witnessing it first-hand was something else entirely. That had been the difference this time. That had been what changed his mind. He just couldn’t be a part of another scheme where more people suffered, even if it meant riches beyond his wildest imagination. He had thought he could stop it. He had thought he was clever enough to keep himself and his family safe. He’d been wrong. Pervis had caught him before he could complete his task.
He tested the strength of the chains binding him again, but his captor had gone to great lengths to keep him immobile. There was enough room for him to breathe shallowly and nothing more.
A door opened somewhere behind him. The metal hinges shrieked their protest and a flickering torch pushed aside the shadows with its sickly light.
“I’ve come to read your mind.”
Joseph didn’t recognize the voice, but the man’s tone was serious.
“Cooperation on your part is not necessary for me to succeed,” the man continued, “but it will make the process less painful.” Cold fingers pressed against his forehead. “Shall we begin?”
Joseph wanted to refuse. He wanted to keep his dark secrets to himself. He wanted . . .
Unimaginable pain slashed through the center of his skull and for a long while that was all he knew.
Chapter 15
Ian landed on the other side of the flames and quickly extinguished the fire that had latched onto his cloak. His lungs ached from all the smoke. His pale skin felt hot and dry. He wondered if he’d been burned, but there was no time to chec
k now. Without the water mage to keep the raging fire at bay his time was swiftly running out.
“Sir Nelson!” he shouted again.
“Lord Ian . . .? I’m here . . . in the middle room.”
Ian rushed to the second door. It was locked. Instead of wasting time looking for the right key, he lifted a boot and kicked the door in. He was greeted by another wall of flames. A deadly combination of smoke and fire forced him back onto the catwalk.
“Sir Nelson!” Ian pulled off his cloak and used it to beat against the advancing fire. After a few strikes, the garment began to burn. “I . . . I can’t reach you!”
“Just flee M’lord!” Nelson shouted. The whole building shook. “Save yourself!”
“The window!” Ian cried. “Jump out the window!”
“It is too late for me, M’lord,” Nelson said. His voice was weak, resigned. “I am surrounded!”
Ian searched the catwalk frantically for something, anything he could use against the fire but even the buckets of water the guards usually kept in place up here for just that purpose were suspiciously gone. The building shook again.
“Go, M’lord!” Nelson pleaded. “Both of us were betrayed, but you can still escape!”
“Betrayed?” Somewhere below, Ian heard timbers crack, and a strange bellowing growl. “By whom?”
“The crates downstairs were not from Kylpin’s ship. When I realized the deception, Zerick and Mason locked me-”
The floor buckled and sagged beneath them and the knight’s words cut off. Timbers snapped. Steam hissed. An eerie inhuman scream filled the air. Ian threw himself backwards and watched in horror as the room, Sir Nelson and everything else immediately in front of him wrenched loose and collapsed. Flying chunks of burning debris and boiling water showered the area. Ian cowered against the catwalk railing and covered his face with his arms. Had the water mages cast a different sort of spell?
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