Ride the Storm

by Karen Chance

  It was beautiful.

  It also wasn’t helping with the dizziness, or maybe that was me. I didn’t know; I only knew I had to get up, to find out where my acolytes had gone, to warn them about what was about to go down in the arena. And to hope they still had the power to do something about it, because I didn’t.

  I didn’t have the power to do anything except lie there, trying to will myself back onto my feet. But my feet weren’t listening, and neither was anything else. I was alive; I was breathing; my eyes were focusing, more or less. But that was as good as it got.

  And that wasn’t enough.

  I thought I’d become thoroughly familiar with exhaustion these past few weeks, thought I knew every desperate description and pooped permutation. But I’d been wrong. So, so wrong. I was bone tired, wearier than I’d ever been in my life, to the point I honestly thought I could go to sleep, right now, right here, with no trouble at all. And for a split second, I wondered if it mattered. What good could I be to anybody like this? I was half-dead, my power utterly spent, and the battle hadn’t even started yet.

  Which meant there was still time to stop it, if I could get my lazy butt off the floor.

  I tried rolling over, to use my hands as leverage, and was quickly reminded that one was still stuck to the ice. So I rolled back the other way, toward the chasm this time, tugging and yanking on a hand that felt less like it was trapped by the skin than by the flesh underneath. I started prying it up anyway, feeling like cursing—

  And then felt like it a lot more when I looked down.

  At Johanna’s body still frozen in place. At the clawed hand still raised, the fingers stiff and pale as marble. At the frost-covered face now a ghostly oval, framed by hair like a spectral halo. And at the eyes—

  Which weren’t nearly as dead as I’d thought.

  I hung there, panting and exhausted, trapped by my own abused flesh, watching something boil behind Johanna’s dead eyes. Something black and terrible. Something that burst free of the ice a second later, hurtling through the air like a striking fist.

  And then it was on me.

  I didn’t have time to move. I barely had time to acknowledge what was happening before she hit like a ton of bricks, and then kept on coming. Because death to a necromancer is a malleable concept, and Johanna wasn’t ready to go.

  But she was very ready to make sure that I did.

  In seconds, I felt the tethers to my body thin and slip and start to falter. Because she was trying to tear me loose, like she’d done when she knocked me into the Badlands. She’d lost her body, so now she was trying to take mine.

  And I didn’t think she planned on giving it back.

  But she’d already pulled this trick once, and it didn’t have the element of surprise. And she was a ghost, fresh and filled with power, but a ghost, and this was my body, and that carried certain privileges. Like exorcising . . . stubborn spirits . . . who needed . . . to die already!

  I hurled Johanna out with a gasp, using up power I couldn’t afford—but then, neither could she. Without a body, ghosts run out fast, and there was only one way for her to replace hers. If I drained her enough, it would force her into the Badlands to hunt.

  Where, if I was lucky, something might just finish the job for me.

  And a second later, she did take off, an amorphous black cloud streaming across the wide expanse of the room. But she wasn’t headed for the Badlands. She was headed for—

  Shit, I thought, watching as she dove straight into a fey who’d just run in the door. And not just any fey. A Svarestri warrior armed to the teeth who began shaking and convulsing as she fought him for control.

  I stared at them for a second, and then started frantically trying to pry my hand off the ice again. It hurt like hell, the pain white-hot and startling. I ignored it. I’d have more than torn flesh to worry about if she managed to—

  And then she did.

  The Svarestri’s head suddenly shot up and turned my way. And the next time I blinked, he was coming at a dead run. So I left my hand alone and finished the job Johanna had started, bursting out of my skin and into his, just before the sword in his hand could slice through my throat.

  The sword stopped midair, quivering; my soulless body collapsed behind me; and my spirit and Johanna’s fought a last-ditch battle for control. And she was fighting hard. But here’s the thing, Jo, I thought, gritting teeth I no longer had. Everything is harder when you’re a ghost. Everything. To the point that even beat-up clairvoyants can be a real problem.

  Especially if they happen to be necromancers, too.

  Slowly, slowly, the sword began to waver. Slowly, slowly, I moved more toward complete control of this body. Slowly, slowly, I started to force her out—

  And then everything happened at once: Jo fled, her power all but gone; the sword clattered harmlessly to the floor, barely missing my head; and I breathed a small, cautious, please-let-this-be-the-end sigh of relief.

  But of course not.

  * * *

  A screaming bolt of red tore through the air, exploding in a mass of sparks that set the stones above my head on fire. “Damn witches,” someone cursed as I jerked back out of the way.

  And wondered why the very male voice had sounded like it was coming from me.

  “That wasn’t a witch,” someone else said as I looked up at a high-arched doorway, at a tunnel splashed with fire and spell-light, at two huge torches flaming on either side illuminating a small area of well-trodden dirt. And at the stadium wall rising high above that, with bright pennants flapping in the wind, despite the rain that was still pissing down.

  Because I wasn’t in the great hall anymore.

  There were a thousand questions crowding my mind, because I’d never possessed a fey before, and trust them to make it freaky. But only one really mattered. I tried turning my head, to look down the tunnel at the duel, but it didn’t want to go. It was looking outward instead, at dark figures highlighted by flickers of spell-fire in the distance. And searching for the one that had just gotten a whole lot closer.

  “Who is it, then?” I heard myself ask. “We were told there were witches—”

  “Oh, they’re out there, some of Morgaine’s creatures. But there’s a mage with them, too. He’s the one you’ve got to—” My companion cut off, and I glanced around to see a Svarestri warrior staring at me curiously.

  Probably because my hair was on fire.

  “Here!” My companion shoved me around. And did something that resulted in my head feeling lighter and a great length of burning silver hair landing on the dirt at my feet. “It’s spelled,” he hissed.

  I felt myself lick my lips. “Right.”

  “And watch out for the mage,” he added. “He’s said to be good with glamourie, so don’t trust anyone.”

  “Including you?” I heard myself joke.

  My companion smiled slightly.

  And then both our heads jerked up as a barrage of spells exploded against the wall behind us and the dirt in front of us, throwing the latter up like a curtain. One that a group of Svarestri burst through a second later, in a less-than-orderly fashion, yelling orders to pull back, pull back. Which was kind of unnecessary, since my companion and I were already double-timing it into the tunnel along with everyone else.

  “We’re outnumbered!” one of the fey yelled—an officer, judging by his fancier outfit. “Open the gate!”

  “Tell him,” my companion said, nodding at me. “I don’t have the password.”

  Everyone looked at me.

  “I— We have orders,” I heard myself say. “The reinforcements—”

  A spell crashed against the top of the archway, sending a gust of fire through the opening, like a bellow out of hell. Shields bloomed, my companion’s covering both of us, just in time. Yet I could still feel the flames, hot and bright—and wrong. Unnatural,
like the creatures who cast them.

  “By the time they show up, we’ll be dead!” the officer thundered. “Open it now!”

  “You should do what he says,” my companion advised.

  “I can’t open it now! You know what—”

  My voice cut off when another spell hit the archway, a glancing blow this time. And then rattled around inside the tunnel before smashing against our shields. My eyes lifted to see that the night outside the arch had turned smoky bright with spell-fire and loud with curses and screams.

  And busy with what looked like hundreds of dark figures dashing through the smoke, headed this way.

  “Open it!” the officer yelled—needlessly. Because my hands had already started fumbling at my belt for a set of keys. They were clumsy with panic and slick with sweat, and for a second, I didn’t think—

  There!

  The lock turned; a muttered phrase dropped the shield. And a second later, we were surging through the opening. Only instead of a troop of Svarestri warriors, I was suddenly surrounded by a flood of dirty, ragged, wild-haired—

  “Witches,” I hissed, right before what felt like a red-hot poker bisected my ribs.

  “To answer your previous question,” my companion said, his silver eyes flooding green. “Especially me.”

  And then the world exploded in fire.

  * * *

  I scrambled back, panting and clawing desperately at my side—

  For a big-ass knife . . . that wasn’t there.

  For a moment, I just sat there in flickering darkness, shaking and disoriented, which was starting to feel like my default. Only this time, it was worse, because at least I’d known where I was before. Now . . .

  I had no freaking clue.

  I should have been looking out through the fey’s eyes, at my body sprawled on the ice. Instead, I was seeing something that looked like the view from many eyes, hundreds of them, spotting the darkness. All showing me different scenes and angles of Arthur’s city.

  It reminded me of a surveillance setup in a high-rise or a jail, with cameras on multiple locations being projected onto rows of TV monitors. Only instead of TV, these were free-floating images that drifted in the air all around me. And showed a city descending into chaos.

  I saw people sloshing through swamped roads, heading for the woods, bags of their possessions thrown over their backs. I saw others huddled in their homes, looking fearfully out of gaps in the shutters. I saw still more fighting alongside the covens, which had arrived in force, with hundreds of witches flooding into the city.

  All of whom seemed to have decided that Arthur didn’t really need an amphitheater, after all, because they were trying to burn it down.

  The wooden lattice of seats above the great stone base caught fire as I watched. And a moment later, half the arena was engulfed in a roaring blaze that defied the rain. The wind was blowing strongly to the left, and banners of flame three or four stories high started blowing with it, scattering sparks onto the fleeing crowd.

  And onto the phalanx of Svarestri reinforcements double-timing it from the direction of the wharf, looking a thousand strong, maybe more. It was hard to tell because of the darkness, and because the scenes weren’t like movies shot with a steady cam. They were rolling and shaking and running, crisscrossed with spell-fire and lightning, and slashed at by rain.

  And then I was moving, too, as the space around me suddenly convulsed, sending me rolling across the floor.

  And straight into—

  * * *

  “Round them up! Don’t let them scatter!”

  My borrowed neck twisted, but I couldn’t tell who had spoken. A gust of wind had just slapped me in the face, carrying enough rain to blind me. All I could see were a bunch of running, panicked faces, scrambling around the rocky ground near the docks.

  “Who?” my current avatar asked, his voice sounding as confused as I was. “The humans?”

  “No! Not the damn humans! Our own!”

  I turned to the side, pulling up a hood to shield my eyes, while I searched the crowd. Their frightened faces were highlighted by the inferno in the distance, by the spells exploding here and there, and by the lightning gathering in force over the arena. While rain continued to bucket down, not as hard as before, but hard enough to cause the torch I was carrying to sputter and hiss.

  And then this body spied a fellow fey on the ground, a little distance off. He had a local girl beneath him, her skirts up around her waist, her face set in horror. Until I ran over and pulled him off. “Get back in formation!”

  He shrugged off my hold. “For what? We’ll never get through that.” He gestured at the open plain before us, where what looked like an army of witches were battling to protect the fleeing humans, and to bar our approach to the arena.

  It had turned the open ground between the cities into a hell pit of smoke and blood and fire, and drifting clouds of steam that formed whenever a spell hit one of the many puddles of water. The women’s shadows darted among the clouds, concealed one minute, and splashed grotesquely large onto the side of the haze the next, like the field was full of misshapen giants. They looked like the shadow puppets I’d laughed at as a child, only no one was laughing now.

  Including the fey on the ground, who had grabbed the frightened girl as she tried to flee, jerking her back. “We may as well amuse ourselves until reinforcements arrive,” he said as I stared down at him. And felt a wash of borrowed anger spread through me.

  Borrowed because it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t in response to the girl’s terrified screams as the fey fell on her again. Wasn’t at seeing him rip open her clothes, spreading her naked in the mud. Wasn’t in sympathy as her hands grasped the dirt beneath her, desperately seeking some grounding as her body shook from his renewed thrusts.

  No, it was anger that he’d soil himself with such a creature, fury that he’d neglect his duty to do it, and cold determination to stop him.

  My right hand jerked him up a second time, throwing him to the side, while my left—

  “No!” I yelled as a spear flashed into my hand. One pointed not at the fey, who had scrambled back out of the way, but at his prize. I had a split second to hear the girl scream, to see the spear light reflected in her widened eyes, to feel my borrowed muscles bunch.

  And then I threw us to the side—stupidly, because I wasn’t in charge here. I was just an observer, using someone else’s eyes to see. But it didn’t matter; I couldn’t do this. Couldn’t just watch through a murderer’s eyes as he—

  And I wasn’t. The ground exploded in front of me, cutting off the view, while the blast from the spear sent me stumbling back into the soldier behind me. We went down, but through the rain of flying earth I glimpsed the girl, snatching up her tattered clothes and staggering to her feet, before abruptly bolting off into the night.

  Because the fey’s attack . . .

  Had missed.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  A moment later, I was back in flickering darkness, thrown there by what felt like an earthquake. And forced to grab for what my mind seemed to have decided was the floor, although it felt more like a bucking bronco. Because the quakes kept coming.

  I didn’t know why, and couldn’t even seem to concentrate on the question. I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything, probably because I’d been away from my body too long and was getting fuzzy-brained. I needed to get back—soon—but there was something telling me not to. Something I’d just seen, but couldn’t currently remember. Something . . . damn it!

  I looked away, over to one side where the images were fewer, trying to clear my head.

  And got caught up instead with what some witches were doing.

  It looked like they were trying to cast a ward around the arena, to protect their sisters inside. But they hadn’t finished, and they were too close, way too close. Because I only saw through Svares
tri eyes, and that meant—

  “No!” I yelled, stretching out a hand as a dozen women were blasted with a line of those energy spears, so hard that they were launched into the air still burning. The rest of the Svarestri reinforcements appeared on the plain a moment later, dropping the glamourie they’d been using so quickly and so uniformly that it looked like they’d stepped out of thin air. And I’d been right.

  There were thousands.

  “Say again.”

  My head came up as someone’s voice echoed in the space around me.

  “Say again. We didn’t hear that, sir.”

  Sir?

  For a moment, I just lay there, uncomprehending. Before noticing that a few of my outstretched fingers had slipped inside the image. Like dipping my hands into a pool. Only it wasn’t a pool, was it?

  Like these weren’t TVs.

  They were minds.

  Svarestri minds, linked through some kind of spell. A communications spell, because they had to coordinate the attack someway, didn’t they? And their king was kind of busy right now.

  Unlike their captain, I thought, staring around.

  “Sir? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” I rasped. “Yes, I can hear you. Pull back.”

  “Sir?”

  “Pull back! The king—the king has another plan.”

  “Sir . . .” It was the voice’s turn to sound confused. “We’re under attack. Can you confirm—”

  “It’s confirmed! Pull back!”

  Something rocked the image, leaving me unsure whether the convulsion was on my end or theirs. Or both, I thought, as I was jolted around at almost the same time that the ground erupted under the fey, enough to throw them and the remaining witches off their feet. And causing the Svarestri to look to their leader for instructions.