I pushed myself to my feet, but before I could turn to look at him I felt his sword press into my back. “Eyes forward.”
I tried Pulling from myself, forcing the magic through, but I was no match for his binding.
“Go ahead and open it.”
I did, and it squeaked loudly. I needed to find a way to warn the girls. I hoped they didn’t come in looking for me.
He pushed me into one of the two cells, then locked it behind me.
Now that I was safely inside, he stowed his sword and examined the one he took from me. “Interesting sigil.”
I said nothing.
“Want to tell me what a Revenant is doing snooping around my jail?”
“Revenant?”
“Playing dumb will get you nowhere. Why don’t you save us all a lot of time and tell me what you were doing here? Looking for a friend?” He shook his head. “No, haven’t had any here, so that can’t be it. If you’re not a Revenant, what are you doing here?”
“I already told you. I was curious. This place seemed out of place. It’s so worn down compared to everything else.”
He snorted. “You’re not wrong about that.” He squinted at me. “So you’re not from around here then.”
“I—”
“No, I don’t think you are.” He sighed. “Best to let the guard know, I suppose. Well sir, get comfortable. You’re gonna be here awhile.”
48
But not long enough for the warden’s binding to fade and allow me to escape and warn my friends.
Far too soon, the door opened and the warden appeared with six city guards.
“Careful with this one,” the warden warned. “He’s tricky. Don’t know what he is, but he can walk through wooden doors, sure as Er’si.”
“We’ll take care of it,” one of the guards replied. “You’ve got him warded?”
“That I do.”
The one who’d spoken nodded, then looked to me.
There were too many of them to fight, but that didn’t stop me from trying when they opened the door to my cell.
“Looks like he’s eager to be leaving,” one of the guards quipped as the others pinned me against the bars and got me restrained.
I struggled against the shackles binding my hands, struggled against the magical binding. But neither broke.
Any mage worth his magic should have been able to break free from the binding. I however was a king, and only a mage by Inclination.
If I got out of this alive, I would remedy that.
My magic was dangerous, yes, but also powerful. A power which until recently I never thought I’d need.
I kept struggling until one of the guards hit me in the head with the butt of his sword.
Not enjoying this, I stopped struggling. I wasn’t breaking free from the shackles anyway.
When they led me outside I looked around for the others, hoping they had fled.
They hadn’t.
They had slightly spread out, pretending to browse the stalls. They must have seen this group of guards enter and known something was wrong.
I saw Trin start to Whisper, and I shook my head subtly at her.
She stopped, but it had already affected one of them: the guard holding my left arm stumbled, then caught himself.
The guard on my right elbowed me in the gut for this, bringing us to a halt.
The one who’d stumbled caught himself, then chuckled, putting up his hand. “Sorry,” he said to the other guards. “Tripped.”
“Dammit Clevus,” the one who’d elbowed me said. “Made me think he was trying to escape.”
The other four guards had formed up around us, on the lookout. Several people stared at us, though most continued about their shopping.
“Sorry,” he said again, and we started moving.
Neither apologized to me.
Vi moved into the road, blocking our way.
I caught her eye and tried to tell her with my gaze not to interfere.
She didn’t listen.
“Out of the—” But that was as far as the lead guard got before Vi suddenly transformed and attacked him.
He screamed as she sunk her powerful jaws through the thin armor over his shoulder.
Another guard drew his blade and went to slash at Vi, but vines suddenly wrapped around his arm.
He looked down in confusion, then followed them to the woman standing several paces away, her arm below the elbow made from said vines.
She yanked and he was pulled off his feet and thrown through the air, dropping his sword.
He crashed into a fruit stand, sending apples flying and squishing berries, red juices exploding like blood.
People scattered, running away screaming, though not so far away that they couldn’t still watch.
The first guard Vi had attacked now moaned on the ground, one hand over his bleeding shoulder.
She was already onto the next.
I tried Pulling to help out, but the binding still prevented me.
I slammed my shoulder into the guard on my left and he stumbled to the ground.
I tried the same to the one on my right, but he was ready and pressed his sword to my neck. “Don’t—”
Vines wrapped his neck and he let out a croak, clutching at them. He kept his wits about him, however, along with his sword, and after a brief moment of panic began hacking at the vines.
More wrapped around his sword hand, then he too was flung into the stalls surrounding us, sending more people scattering, though this time with less screaming.
Another guard came for me and suddenly Alva was upon him, sinking her fangs in.
The guard on my left who I’d knocked over was up again, going for Vi. Before I could react Trin dashed in and grabbed a dropped sword, slashing it across his legs before he could stab his own into Vi’s back.
He cried out in pain and fell to the ground, spinning and slashing as he did. But Trin dashed backward, dodging his swipe.
Suddenly Vi reverted back from her beast form with a yelp of surprise.
The warden had joined the fight.
“Run!” I ordered, and took off.
They all listened, all except for Alva, who was draining the guard of blood.
“Alva!”
“I’ve got her,” Sienna said, stopping and turning her hands into vines again, spanning the twenty paces we’d made it away and wrapping around Alva, yanking her unceremoniously from the guard’s neck, a spray of blood shooting into the air as his skin tore.
The warden was on the steps, and now cast a binding at Sienna.
She cried out and dropped Alva halfway back to us as her magic was cut off.
“Go! I’ll—” But my hands were bound behind my back, and I couldn’t pick Alva up.
Trin dashed forward to pick up the little vampire, who was dazed on the ground, drunk with blood.
She stumbled as the warden cast a binding at her as well, but her legs didn’t depend on magic to work, and she scooped up Alva and darted back toward us.
A couple of the guards were getting to their feet, but they were all injured.
The warden seemed content to stand on his steps, only interfering with magic.
We ran, pushing through the crowds of the bazaar as people stood like idiots in the middle of the street, watching us.
“Move!” I yelled at them, then glanced behind us.
Two guards pursued, but they were limping and bloody.
“You shouldn’t have gotten involved,” I scolded my companions.
“We weren’t going to let them take you,” Vi said.
“You okay?” I asked all of them.
“His binding is strong,” Vi grunted. “I can’t transform again. Not until I break it.”
“Same,” Sienna said, sounding uncharacteristically out of breath.
Damn. Like Vi, her magic was a Suffusion. And blocking it was starving her of energy, making her weak.
But unlike me, they both would be able to break the binding.
/> The question was, could they do it in time?
We burst out of the castle and into the city.
It was busier than earlier, and I looked behind us again.
The guards were nowhere in sight. “Stop,” I gasped.
“We can’t,” Vi said.
“We’re drawing attention.” I slowed to a fast walk. “We need to blend in.”
“What happened?” Trin asked.
I checked again for the guards, saw them limping out of the castle, casting around for us.
“This way.” We ducked down a side street. It was still busy, and I tried to get us lost in the crowd.
A few people noticed my shackles and gave me odd glances.
“I’ll explain later. For now we need to find somewhere to hide and regroup.”
“I feel weak,” Sienna said.
“Can you break through the binding?”
“I’m trying. It feels like a fight. I’ve never had to fight before. My forest was peaceful.”
“You’ll be okay,” Vi assured her.
“How about you?”
“I need more time.” She snarled, and her face rippled as though it was trying to morph, but couldn’t.
“I broke it,” Trin said. “I can—”
“No. It’s too dangerous. If anyone finds out what you are, they’ll kill you.”
“We don’t know what this place is. Maybe not. Maybe they don’t have laws against us here.”
“No reason to think it’s different in that regard than anywhere else.”
I checked if we were being followed. I saw a guard, female, not one of the ones who’d been at the warden’s, talking to a citizen.
He pointed in our direction.
Shite.
“Keep moving,” I urged.
There were crowds all around us. If we could just blend in, we’d be okay.
It was too bad my hands were shackled behind my back.
Not many people noticed, but we stood out in other ways. Vi was obviously neither human nor elf, and not many would mistake Alva—who Trin still carried—for a child. Her proportions were all wrong for that.
I cast about for somewhere we could hide. But the city was wide awake now, and there were no empty shops or disused alleyways.
I glanced behind again to see the female guard walking in our direction. She wasn’t looking at us, however, but scanning the crowd, checking the faces of every person she passed.
“Give Vi your cloak,” I told Trin.
She did so without question, handing Alva over to the lycanthrope.
Vi looked down at the little lethargic vampire with a look of revulsion on her face, and held her as far out away from her body as she could.
A moment later she gladly traded the vampire for the cloak and swung it over her shoulders, pulling the hood up over her ears.
It also covered her tail.
Her arms were still uncovered, but there was nothing we could do about them just now.
At least she wouldn’t stand out from behind anymore.
“We’re being followed,” Vi said.
“I know. Stay calm.”
“She’s asking about us.”
“You can hear that over all this noise?”
She gave a slight nod.
We came to an alleyway that led to another street and I gestured at it. “This way,” I said, and ducked into it, quickly glancing the way we’d come.
The female guard was looking right in our direction.
I couldn’t tell if she saw us, but it was still a struggle to stay calm, and I couldn’t help but walk faster.
The alley was nowhere near as crowded as the street we’d just left, and we stood out.
The street at the other end seemed to grow farther away with each step I took.
Every time I checked behind us I expected to see the guard. But she wasn’t there.
We made it to the other street and I quickly turned left and headed into a dense crowd of people.
They were gathered around a stage on which a woman in body paint was standing as another woman spoke to the crowd, reading from a scroll. “…defeated Aera’s generals and her corrupted six armies with her magic.”
At this the painted woman’s hands began to glow, then suddenly ignited with light and a bang as a man I hadn’t noticed standing at the other end of the stage collapsed with a theatrical cry of pain.
“It’s a play of Aera and the Million Dead,” Trin observed.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Let’s keep moving so we don’t join them. I get the feeling the guards won’t take too kindly to what we’ve done to their fellows.”
We skirted around the edge of the crowd cautiously, as there were many guards here.
They didn’t appear to be here for us, or even for keeping the peace, however, as they were watching the stage as though enthralled.
Everyone was.
Even when we had to push through a group of people, they hardly seemed to notice.
Another bang, and another of Aera’s Six fell.
The woman playing Erisi bore a strong resemblance to the statue which rose above the city, and which even from here could be seen, rising behind the stage.
We made it past the crowds and ducked down a side street lined with various outfitting shops: tailor, jeweler, tanner, cordwainer.
It was nearly empty.
“Where are we going?” Sienna asked, sounding incredibly weak.
But I couldn’t answer her, because I didn’t know. I had a vague idea of the direction the plaza we entered into the city through was in, but right now was just trying to not get captured.
“She needs rest,” Vi said, not sounding too strong herself.
“I know.” There was still no sign of that female guard. We must have lost her. “We need to get out of the city.”
“What happened with Breaker?” Trin asked.
“Her trail disappeared inside that warden’s office.”
“What do you mean it disappeared?”
“It vanished. Like she teleported.”
“How are we going to find her then?”
“Right now I’m more worried about getting out of here alive.”
“We can’t leave,” Trin protested.
I was about to respond, when Vi’s ears lifted, raising the hood she was wearing.
I looked around, but saw nothing. “What is it?”
“I hear—”
A net suddenly fell upon us, pulling us to the ground.
49
I heard a door opening, and then we went down steps, my feet dragging on them as they dragged me along, my mind and body reeling.
It was colder down here and smelled like hay and dirt with a tinge of sweat and blood.
I couldn’t see anything as the guards who’d captured us had put a hood over my head.
I didn’t know what happened to the others. The net they’d used on us had been coated with the pollen of a certain flower, which disoriented and confused, and my memory of how I’d gotten here was a blur of shapes and colors swirling around in front of my eyes in the black of this hood.
I was thrown to a dirt floor and the sack yanked off my head. I was in a room dimly lit by lamplight, three doors leading off this one: the one I’d been dragged in through, and two others which were closed.
There was a table near the wall, which one of the guards tossed my satchel and belt with sword and coin pouch.
Another of the guards knelt down in front of me, and I found myself face-to-face with the female guard who had been on our trail. “You’ve caused quite a lot of trouble. You and your friends. Tell me what you were doing in the warden’s jail.”
I didn’t reply.
“We should get him processed, Commander,” a guard said to her. “Before the haze wears off.”
She nodded. “Yes, I suppose so. We can interrogate him later. After today, it might not even matter.” She looked at the other guards. “Speaking of, I need to get to the arena.”
“
We’ll handle him, Commander.”
“Good. Get him settled, then get the rest of your guards to the arena.” She gave me one last look, then ascended the stairs, shutting the door behind her.
They undid my shackles long enough to take the clothes the angel had made me, then led me through one of the two doors to a room with several cells, throwing me into one of them.
It wasn’t exactly a dungeon, but it wasn’t exactly a jail either.
The cell had nothing but hay on the floor. Like the rest of the city, at least it seemed clean.
For a jail cell.
No one else was jailed here in this or the other cells.
My mind was clearing from the haze now, and I realized they’d made a mistake in leaving me here.
I Pulled from myself and—
And nothing happened.
Dammit. The binding. Guess I still wasn’t quite free from the haze.
But once the binding wore off, I’d be able to walk through these bars and escape.
I waited, feeling my mind grow ever clearer, and trying to Pull from myself every few moments.
After countless tries, I finally felt something snap, and felt my body grow light.
Yes!
I phased through the shackles, then walked to the bars to phase through them.
Except nothing happened. The bars were solid.
I pushed harder against them, but they didn’t budge. I tried all three sides of the cell, then the wall behind me.
They were all solid, even though I wasn’t.
I even tried going through the floor, but it resisted me. As did the ceiling when I jumped up and tried to put my hand through it.
I Pulled more to see the colors of magic, and the room lit up. I was surrounded by it.
A magical jail.
I sat down in the hay and leaned against the wall, arms on my knees, watching the door.
I was uncomfortably reminded of my time in a cell similar to this in my own kingdom, after Orathar had betrayed me.
I’d spent a long time down there, and now here I was again. Different city, different circumstances, but trapped once more.
I wondered where they had taken the others, and what were they doing to them.
I must’ve dozed off, because I jolted when I heard the door opening.
I was expecting a guard, so was surprised when I saw who it was.
“Alva?”
Curse of Magic Page 19
