by R. K. Thorne
“I freed you!”
She whirled to look at him incredulously. “You—it was you?”
He nodded, but lunged around her to block a slave who’d sought the opening. “Time for getting to know each other later!”
Derk joined them, and together the three of them fought their way through the rest. But even as the last one fell, forty more mages marched forward.
Enough. Time to get back. But first…
The new mages hadn’t yet taken control of the skies yet. Aven brushed a hole through the clouds and yanked down every bit of Erepha’s energy he could. He blew the spell across the wind, and the forty approaching mages gradually slowed to a stop.
No… only thirty or so did. Some of them, the furthest out, didn’t feel it. In fact, they were already shaking awake the others who did. Moments later, the sky split with lightning, vicious attacks beginning to fall.
“Come on. We better get back in.” He gestured to Menaha to follow.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said.
They took off at a sprint for the battlement—or what was left of it.
Kae dashed up the steps of the second tower two at a time. At the top, he stopped short, panting.
“Only two?”
Elder Wunik turned and nodded darkly.
“But this was the second meeting point,” Kae said weakly.
“No one else has made it here yet,” said Beneral. “It’s just us air mages now.”
“Fortunately,” said Wunik, a touch proper, “we can do quite a lot.”
Kae strode to the tower window and looked out at the battle. To his surprise, where there had been twenty mages, there seemed more like thirty now. More were falling every minute, but he could also see more mages readying to join the field behind them.
“Lightning,” Beneral suggested.
Kae nodded. “Yes, all three of us together. Let’s take some part of the storm over them and shock them a little.”
“Or a lot,” grumbled Beneral.
Wunik led the way, and the three air mages poured their energies into a twitching ball of lightning, swinging it out over where the mage slaves fought. And then, when it was just so—they struck. Kae’s fist tightened as the first bolts darted out.
But even after attack after attack left a mage smoking on the ground—more were still coming. They could barely handle these twenty. How were they going to handle nearly the whole two hundred?
“That way—down by the shop with the green sign, see it?” Pytor pointed across the square and down the street. “Right there.”
“Got it. Be right back.” Jaena darted away.
“Wait a minute—” Dom started. “Maybe we should come with you.”
She stopped, already shaking her head.
“If you don’t return and the situation is dire,” said Pytor, “we’re falling back to Ranok.”
She nodded sharply and took off through the fog.
Down the street, and toward the green sign. The street was empty. So was the side street. Where was he? She stepped forward and opened the door of the shop.
The shop… was no longer a shop. The roof had fallen in—or been crushed—leaving only a raw husk. But inside, healer mages and nonmages buzzed around, patients laid out in a semi-orderly fashion.
One thing her eyes didn’t see was Ro.
She ducked as another incoming boulder shook the earth, and when she straightened, Ro came around the far corner, stepping gingerly over the rubble and holding a young man in his arms. He was dust-covered, and his face was tight with worry, but there was no blood. Well, only a little blood that didn’t seem to be his. No missing limbs.
Thank all the gods and all the ancestors.
She ran to him even as he sat down the man, dodging mages and the injured, and once the man was out of his arms, she threw hers around him.
“I was so worried,” she said softly.
“Jae!” He nodded against the side of her head. “We’re here now.”
“But the battle isn’t going well, Ro. This is a losing game. We’re only delaying the inevitable.”
He shrugged. “We knew the odds were stacked against us from the start.”
She pressed her lips together, unwilling to take failure as an answer. “Come on. We aren’t stopping them; at this rate, they’ll level the city. We need to find Aven.”
There had to be some other path to victory. She just couldn’t think of it.
Aven stared out at the battle, panting as he knocked yet another air mage on his ass for trying to toast a soldier. It didn’t feel like nearly enough. The darkness fell like a smothering cloak over him, choking hope.
Calling down Sagus, he tried another star spell. Anger, this time. Maybe he could turn them on each other. But no. He winced as the Kavanarian mages only fought harder, sudden ravenous beasts but still single-mindedly focused on Panar. And still only two dozen or so. He couldn’t reach them all, and it wasn’t helping. If anything, it was hurting. He swept the calming spell across them again, lulling the enraged ones into a temporary sleep. This one didn’t last much longer than the first.
He fought off the icy rain, and each time others fought to bring it right back. The earth around Panar was churned and raw; gods only knew what was happening to it back by the camp line. Flames flickered in the darkness before being snuffed out. Lightning struck at the fighting mage slaves, followed sometimes by screams, sometimes by silence.
Screams rang out when mages hit brambles or were assaulted by beetles. The city’s catapults loosed stone after stone, most deflected or dodged.
Nothing was working. None of it. Sure it slowed them down, but these mages fought on, losing fewer troops and doing greater damage. It was an equation that was not in Akaria’s favor at the moment.
The mages had no choice, really.
They weren’t the real enemy. Daes was.
If Aven could cut off this monster’s head, the limbs would stop flailing. Or maybe stop collapsing buildings with innocent, unarmed people inside.
Twenty more mages joined the current twenty, then an hour later another twenty, and still the fighting raged on. Somehow distracting them was slowing them down. Fog blinded, swords rebelled, vines hindered. But he couldn’t free any. He couldn’t even see Casel now. And eventually he and his friends were going to get tired first, and what then? He needed something better—a plan—but no one had come up with one for actually winning. Only stopping, delaying. And they were doing that.
But this wasn’t just ceding the city to an enemy. The entire city was being destroyed.
A messenger caught his eye, running fast in royal leathers toward where they were hunkered. “Sire!” the messenger shouted. “Lord Beneral sends word. Ships approach. Armed! From Reilin.”
“Reilin—why—” Aven stopped short and swore. Of course. Queen Marielle was from Reilin.
By the gods.
“He’s readying the fleet, but if it gets colder, they’ll be trapped in the ice.”
“Got it. Go, get out of here.” The messenger raced back away from the battlement. He wanted to offer help, maybe some way to melt the ice, but who knew if there’d be a mage available to do it?
Aven caught his breath as a new crushing sound rang out, close by but behind him. He turned to see a shop crumble, then the house behind it.
Then another. And another.
He offered up a hasty prayer that no one had been inside, but a chill ran down his spine. It wouldn’t take terribly long for them to do that to the entire city.
He had to do something. Anything.
He whirled back, glaring at the Kavanarian mages, the tents across the chasm beyond. Actually, on this side of the canyon, one tent sat slightly bigger than the others, and its top was flagged red on top. The head of the monster.
Daes.
He turned his attention to the sky. A backup plan had occurred to him in the dead of the night, and he knew it was time. He was out of other options, besides letting the city be
flattened.
Frowning, he pushed the clouds apart and reached up. Not for Casel. Not for Erepha.
No, not this time.
He winced and gritted his teeth as he reached for Masari and pulled down its essence—thick, hot, squirming, rotten. He poured its rage and heat into the dagger in his belt, poured until it would fill no longer. It flowed into the metal, settled there. Kae’s book had taught him that much.
Letting go, though, the energy started to race out. He clamped down on the dagger, gradually refilling it back up.
He would have to hold it closed, like a damn bottle with his thumb over the lid. He sighed. Let his opportunity to use it come soon.
He unstrapped the dagger sheath from his belt and wrapped it around his forearm, covering it with his gambeson and the mail that Perik had so valiantly brought. The boy deserved to be more than a servant. Too bad Aven likely wouldn’t survive this to raise him up.
Hand and mind clamped over the dagger, he turned back to the field. Devol was hunkered nearby.
“Dev! Devol, I need you to send word. A messenger. Tell them we want to negotiate.”
“Negotiate! Aven, you can’t. Not with Kavanar.”
“Look around you, Dev. They’re going to destroy the whole city,” he shouted. “We have to try.”
No one else needed to know. It was too great a risk they’d give the truth away. The dagger felt warm, writhing like a snake inside his sleeve.
Devol’s face was dark as he scanned the wreckage. Buildings had collapsed all around them. Rubble was on fire. And that wasn’t even on the battlefield yet, where real chaos reigned.
“All right. All right. I’ll go. Be careful, son.”
Aven nodded, gripped the dagger tighter, and waited.
Chapter 18
Sacrifice
Morning light had just cracked the horizon when the Kavanarian group rode out and stopped on the field, signaling they’d accepted his offer to negotiate. Aven sighed, feeling a sense of victory that no other Akarian did. He hid it deep down behind the sigh and got on his horse. The fighting had drifted down to nothing in the wee hours of the night, and Aven had sent his messenger, and here they were.
His finger stayed clamped on the dagger, along with his mind, but he blinked, exhausted. How long would he have to maintain this? He couldn’t do it forever.
The Akarian group that rode out was nearly all mages. Devol and Derk rode on either side, Siliana, Jaena, and Ro at the back. All of them armed and armored to the teeth.
Aven stared down Daes the minute he could spot the man. The Kavanarians had their mages too, and a few average soldiers posted around the corners of the group. But Aven wasn’t worried about a violent altercation. Not with what he offered. Daes looked much the same, if better dressed and with a circlet of rubies this time. The queen was there too, to Aven’s surprise, placid and statuesque on horseback beside him.
“So, we meet again,” said Daes.
“Unfortunately,” growled Aven. No reason to feign politeness. Daes wouldn’t buy it.
“No courtly formalities?” Daes grinned at the queen. “Not much of a king, is he, Marielle?”
“You’re Queen Marielle?” said Aven, faking surprise. “You’re not what I expected.”
“Why do you say that?” she said in a perfect courtly voice, neither challenging nor sweet, hard to read.
“Well, you’re quite lovely, for someone as ruthless and self-serving as Daes.”
A corner of her mouth quirked. “Ruthless and self-serving was a welcome change.”
“Enough,” Daes said, cutting them off.
“Enough courtly niceties for you?” Aven pursed his lips.
“You call that nice?”
“Akarians clearly have a thicker skin.”
Daes clenched his jaw for a moment before speaking. “You said you wanted to negotiate a surrender, not trade insults. What do you want?”
“I don’t want to see the White City destroyed. Neither should you. And I want us to be left alone, of course. What do you want?”
A slow grin spread across Daes’s face. “Ah, but what have I ever wanted? You, of course.”
“Well, you can’t have him,” barked Devol from behind.
“Wait.” Aven held up a hand.
Daes’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “You know, I didn’t believe you when you said you were the only one with the star magic. But now I see it’s true, you really haven’t told anyone. I want the star magic destroyed, above all things. I want mage slaves never to be freed. Ever. And I want you to become one of them.”
“No, Aven, you can’t—” Devol started.
Aven held up a hand to silence him again. “If I go with you, you’ll leave the city? Leave Akaria? End the war?”
“Well, I can’t go quite that easily. I suppose I need the brand too. How else will I make you a slave? I will rip every brick from this city and toss it into the ocean until I find it.”
Aven could feel Jaena tense behind him, and what he was about to say was only going to make that worse.
“I’ll make you a new one,” he said.
Daes stopped short. “What? Liar. You don’t know how.”
Aven carefully drew out the tattered, leather-bound volume from his cloak, keeping the dagger’s energy carefully sealed. “I do know how. Been looking for this?”
Daes hesitated, scowling at him. “If you fail to create it, I’ll return. The brand will be returned to me, one way or another.”
“Yes. It will be,” said Aven softly, his voice dark.
“A fair exchange you propose.” Daes sounded mildly surprised at that. “But we cannot trust each other. It’s doomed.”
“Send your troops back first. And your mages. And your queen’s fleet of ships. When they’re all a day away, I’ll go with you.”
“Aven, no,” Jaena whispered behind him. “Miara wouldn’t want this.”
That hit him like a stab in the gut, but he showed nothing. “I won’t see the city destroyed over me.” He turned back to Daes. “The book stays here. When all your armies are back in Kavanar, along with me, they’ll send the book by bird, and I’ll do what you ask.”
Daes had raised his eyebrows. “You… have it all thought out.”
Aven nodded.
He could see Daes’s wheels turning, but he wouldn’t find the catch. There was none. It was a better deal for Daes, who could just wait a week and turn his armies back around to attack Panar without its king. Or its star mage. Aven would never have agreed to it, unless he was truly, truly desperate. Like how he’d feel if he watched his city flattened building by building.
“Fine,” said Daes. “My armies will back off. We’d appreciate a clearer road this voyage.”
“No promises,” Jaena muttered behind him.
“Excellent,” said Aven. “I’ll have the formal treaties written up and sent to you for signing. And I’ll see you here this time tomorrow morning.”
Daes nodded, glaring at Aven, searching for the trick. “Indeed.”
By the next dawn, Aven was battling exhaustion bordering on delirium. For some portion of the night, he’d fallen asleep for a few hours, Masari’s energy dissipating, and he’d had to draw it all down again. The rest was probably worth it, but it racked his nerves. It was too easy to lose the magic, too easy to fumble. And if he did, he’d lose everything.
His mother had obviously not been a fan of his plan. In fact, no one was. Probably because he wasn’t telling them the real plan. But even if that plan failed, he still would rather see the fighting stop.
The only positive was that the fighting had stopped. Everything had stopped. The creature mages fanned out, attending to the wounded, and earth mages tried to reform the walls as best they could.
The lack of Miara’s presence was a constant weight on his shoulders, leaving him a ghost among the living. Without her, there was little for him here. The future he’d wanted was long gone, crushed like the city walls, and if he could go out with a bla
st and save them all for a little while, it was something.
That mission steadied him as he mounted up and rode out to meet his fate.
“Ready to become a slave, little prince?” Daes called from a distance as they rode up to the meeting point, glee in his voice.
“King,” Aven said almost out of reflex, dismounting quickly.
“Neither of those any longer, if you’re fulfilling your half of this bargain.”
Aven stepped forward, headed to Queen Marielle’s horse rapidly, and grabbed her hand just as a guard’s blade came to rest calmly at his shoulder. It hovered icily by his neck. “I’m pleased to make peace with you, Your Majesty,” he said formally, kissing her fingers. She returned the appropriate nod, flushing.
Aven strained his ears, listening, hoping his gamble had paid off. He didn’t want to unleash the dagger on Marielle, but he could do it now if he had to, and that would be something. He could ransom her freedom, and perhaps delay the war even longer. But still not forever.
Huffing, Daes dismounted and rounded the horse, snatching Aven’s hand away from Marielle’s.
Clear of the queen now, a kick came at his side from her guard, and Aven staggered and fell to his knees, being sure to fall forward toward Daes. Daes wisely moved back. Just a little too far. He needed him closer. He couldn’t quite get a grip, as Daes had torn his fingers away from Marielle.
“Oh,” Daes said, feigning disinterest, but his voice and face were more dark and brutal than ever. “Before we get too far, I have a message for you.”
“A message?” said Aven slowly. He inched forward, away from Marielle and toward Daes.
Pulling something from his black gambeson, Daes dropped it on the dusty grass at Aven’s knees.
Strands of red hair, tied with simple twine. Not as long as Miara’s, shorter. But he knew.
Daes bent down and glared at Aven. “Your knight friend sends her regards.”
Aven glared back, eyes suddenly wild and breath heavy. “Where is she, you bastard?” he whispered.
“I actually don’t know. The knight won’t tell me. I presume she’s alive but who knows. The Devoted prefer to kill their prey, you know. If not now, then eventually.”
