She came toward them, laughing to herself, rubbing her eyes and neck. Distracted, she passed a handbreadth away without a glance at the three women pressed tight to the wall. They waited until the wytch was too far down the corridor to hear.
‘No invoking!’ Astrid hissed in admonishment.
‘Sorry! It’s just reflex. Since I was chosen …’ Millie’s whisper trailed off, but she needed explain no further. The early days were a rapture of dangerous excitement and unexplored possibility.
The next minutes, pressing down the warren of thin corridors toward the fortress gates, set Natalia’s teeth on edge. Grotesque arrow slits in the walls – misshapen and full of sharp toothlike protrusions – leered at their backs. She imagined the arrow slits licking them as they passed.
Once, Millie led them off down another path. They waited for a pair of wytches to pass, one of them dressed like a binder – a wielder of a particularly nasty brand of alteration magic which was a natural counter to other mages, literally binding a mage’s mouth and hands to prevent spellcasting. Worse, powerful binders could bind a person’s muscles, freezing their heart or lung functions. The Order of the Light had an impressive roster of talent. Not good news for the upcoming hostile takeover.
Natalia could only hope the Order of the Light would see sense. The thought of fighting other mages lacerated her with sadness. So many mages had been killed. So many long years hunted, hounded, tortured and murdered out of ignorance. To fight and kill each other was wasteful as well as criminal. No two ways about it. The Council wasn’t the enemy; she’d make the wytches see.
They rejoined the main concourse that stretched down the middle of the fortress. There were voices ahead. The noise was low, relaxed. It didn’t come closer.
Millie whispered, ‘The gates.’
The surprise leaping in Natalia’s stomach said she hadn’t really expected them to get this far. They crept forward, toward the gatehouse. There was enough shadow in the area to feed their mantles.
Inside the gatehouse were half a dozen full wytches clustered around an open portcullis. Not a plain robe in sight. All these wytches would be accessing their full potential. Beyond the gate, the formless purple haze promised a vague and uncertain freedom.
Not one of the capable and intelligent women gathered in the gatehouse seemed to have considered closing the portcullis. If they had, escape would have been impossible. As it was, it was just improbable. Something about the state-breaking nature of magic left most mages without any consideration for practicalities. It was a weakness. Natalia’s training with Cole had given her an appreciation for both sides of that coin.
It was why hunters had been able to capture mages down the generations. Magic could make a person powerful like the gods of old. And fat and lazy with it. Men who lacked the power to throw around the stars were lean, hungry, ambitious and practical. They hunted in packs, overcoming the odds because they fought smart.
However fat and lazy on their power these wytches might have become, there were six of them, one of Natalia, and two unknown quantities. Never take a rookie on a close-run fight was one of Cole’s field wisdoms. He was fond of his field wisdoms. So had Natalia been, all those years ago. She pushed his strangely storied face and his blunt, attractive gruffness aside and ignored a needle of loneliness. They could never have been.
She wondered what Ethan would do in her place. He’d probably decide to blow up the gatehouse – that was his plan for most things. But Natalia had a better idea. Why would she blow things up, when she could get the wytches to do it for her?
A brief conversation of spikey whispers laid out the plan. Millie had been chosen by none other than Loki, the Norse trickster god. The plan wouldn’t have been possible without her misdirection – layered subterfuge was always more effective than a single gambit.
Natalia’s magic wreathed her, pulling the shadows in closer as she invoked. Her Nahuatl tripped in its flowing rhythms and clipped suffixes while she invoked a complex key of Mixcoatl: the facet of enmity and discord. This was Natalia’s hardest obfuscation spell – her version of Astrid’s doppelganger.
As the electric-blue current of magic travelled along the limbs of Natalia’s body, Millie invoked, the soft rolling ‘r’ sounds of ancient Norse blending together as Loki leant his subtle hand to obfuscation, wrapping around Mixcoatl’s angry, hot magic with his own cool tones. Natalia’s strands of power became stilled air beneath Loki’s mask, her spell’s colour gone. This was a taxing key. She summoned to her mind a picture of weighing scales as the spoken part of the key neared its completion. Mixcoatl’s due – a tiny piece of Natalia’s consciousness – gleamed while she willed it onto the imagined scales in offering to the Mesoamerican god.
Natalia gave up the sensation of breath and heartbeat in her body and added the way her clothes sat on her skin. She parcelled up the feeling of her adrenaline and the anticipation of the hunt before her. These silvery moments she offered to the hungry god who waited in the Myriad. The moments she offered gleamed on the scale and tipped it in Natalia’s favour.
Mixcoatl’s deceitful rage fell like a rain at the offering, and the spell key turned, unlocking this facet of his power. First, it pattered onto the scales and tipped them to neutral. Then the magic poured inside Natalia’s chest, falling on her heart until it ached with hatred. She sacrificed another glimmering shard of her life. This time, the intense boredom and frustration of the last shapeless days. It shimmered on the scale and as the scales weighted down in her favour again, Mixcoatl poured the envy of scorned kings upon her, filling her until she could take no more. She released the spell, closing the key, and the magic washed out of her flooding the gatehouse with the bile of hatred and tipping the kerosene of envy on top.
A deep, weary gash was struck into her brain; the moments of her life she had offered would be forever lost in a distant, unreal haze, as though she could only see them in a dream.
Bursting from beneath Millie’s colourless veil, Natalia’s magic hit the wytches, who had no warning and less defence. One nervous-looking sister shot her companion – the red-haired woman from guard duty – a hot glare.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ The redhead’s tone was an undisguised threat.
The nervous woman tutted. ‘You’ve always looked down on us seers. You think we’re less than you.’
The redhead’s mouth dropped open as though she were about to apologise, but Mixcoatl’s fury snapped it shut and narrowed her eyes.
‘Well, it’s not hard is it? Always looking. Observing. While me and mine run toward the danger, you stand back and watch. There’s a reason the oracles in ancient times were all lonely old hags!’
Hot bickering agitation erupted on all sides as years of small grudges, the result of life together in close and trying times, flared into megalith proportions.
‘That’s easy for you to say, your mind hasn’t been abraded by that Murk-spawned thing back there! I lie awake all night, listening to you snore away, frightened to sleep for the things the Mournanvil shows me!’
They had moments before someone sensed the manipulation of Natalia’s magic in a flash of insight. Natalia moved them along. ‘Cover us.’ Millie’s shadow nodded. Astrid hunched behind them as they edged forward, hugging the walls while the sound of more argument broke around them.
Millie wove a basket of quiet lies around the sandy heat of Natalia’s obfuscation spell as they moved toward the portcullis. The exit was blocked. The red-haired woman was on her feet, pointing into the seer’s face. Whatever laxity the wytches had shown by leaving the exit open, they more than made up for with their choices of Myriad mage. Every useful aspect for security was represented in that group; a fair fight would have been short and final.
Natalia, Millie and Astrid were stuck in the last portion of shadow before the portcullis. Unless the seer and the red-haired woman moved, they couldn’t get past. The bruised light from outside glowed more strongly close to the exit, but shadow magic n
eeded shadow to function. They would be exposed the moment they broke this last scrap of cover.
They needed a distraction, something perhaps Astrid could provide. As Natalia turned to signal Astrid, the blazing white of war magic filled the room. The fissures between the wytches ran deeper than they could have known. A battle mage invoked, Sekhmet’s name ringing clear. The battle mage leapt forward, attacking another wytch who invoked her shield key, a water shield roaring like a tidal wave, deflecting Sekhmet’s slashing jaws.
The snap of hostile magic was a fuse burned to nothing. Gods and fae were called on in a shower of defensive and offensive spells. Natalia’s brain bent under the weight of power flooding the room. Millie staggered behind, caught by Astrid. Loki’s obscuring hand was fizzling out as Millie lost concentration.
Natalia grabbed Millie’s hand. ‘Move.’
There was no need to be quiet now, amidst the roar of the forces of the universe. They ran for the exit, covering the remaining few yards. The wytches at the portcullis had backed off from each other: the red-haired woman was shielded by an impressive pillar of flame, but her eyes had been blinded by the seer.
They dashed between the two battling wytches, and as Natalia ran, she glanced at the seer’s probability shield. The transparent plates of the shield, patterned like turtleshell, reflected a dozen possible futures on its surface. In each future, Natalia, Millie and Astrid tore past, exposed for all to see.
The seer’s eyes widened when she saw the shield, realisation dawning on her face. Natalia hurtled past and struck out, through the woman’s shield, catching her in the throat. In the dozen possible futures reflected in the shield, the seer’s cry died, strangled off, too stunned to react in time while her throat closed and she struggled to breathe.
The weight of Millie and Astrid bore down on Natalia, propelling her on. They were through the portcullis in a moment. The land beyond held a path on withered, weak brown soil. Perhaps twenty metres from the exit, the path dropped away off the shelf of land, into the purple sky. The path’s terminus probably marked the permanent door into the Ways.
They sprinted, reaching the end of the path. Natalia had no idea how long the seer would choke before she rallied the wytches in the gatehouse.
‘Millie, hide us. Astrid, keep them away, but only if you have to.’
Both women nodded. Natalia searched for the activation rune for the portal. It should have been visible.
Battle raged behind them as Natalia reached out for the rune, still searching. She heard a voice inside the gatehouse crying for order; her spell was fading. Where was the rune? It was nowhere to be found.
‘Millie, Astrid, can you find the portal rune?’
The two women cast around the space, their magic reaching out for the telltale pin power that would mark the rune’s location.
‘Hold!’ The command was infused with steel will; Natalia’s body froze. The few wytches still visible through the portcullis stood rock still. What magic was this?
The raven-haired woman – the Mother’s executioner – emerged from the gatehouse with an arrogant gait, laughing at Natalia.
Chapter 10
Henry Millar might have imagined that the day he was told the world was full of things straight from a fantasy-booknut’s nightmare would be harder to believe. Henry Millar might have imagined a lot of things, but Henry only knew his own name by virtue of a kind woman called Lucy. Except, as it turned out, Lucy could have been called anything. The man who imparted this wisdom to Henry had arrived by a fricking portal, to kill him. Given that bottom line for normality, it had all started to make weird sense.
Still, it had been the strangest day in living memory. All few days of living memory. His head screamed for painkillers, which Cole seemed to think meant he needed to drink more booze. Not a single paracetamol in the entire flat. Cole said he didn’t believe in drugs. Despite that, Cole was on a mission to drink all of the definitely-not-a-drug alcohol in the universe.
Sitting in a flat resembling a dojo or medieval armoury while watching Cole stuff shotgun shells into his pockets like a five-year-old having a tantrum at a pick ‘n’ mix, did not give Henry the courage to point out the narcotic nature of Cole’s chosen panacea. Instead, Henry opted for making soothing listening noises in response to Cole’s quite imaginative swearing. Henry wasn’t sure what he hoped his umms and yeahs would achieve, as Cole lumbered about the room gesticulating and asking questions.
‘Do they think I’m going to sit here like their wilted little pricks, all shrivelled and useless, bowing and scraping, yes sir, no sir, three fucking bags of bollocks full sir?’ And so it went on.
Processing that the world was sandwiched between two quite terrible sounding places – the Murk and the Myriad – and that monsters were real was bad enough. Hearing that the monsters were licensed, and that the whole thing was overseen by some Council with a stupid name, and that there was an ‘armistice’ – which Cole seemed to be under the mistaken impression meant ‘peace agreement’ – was the icing on a very terrifying cake. Henry had imagined the good guys fought the bad guys. But here, it seemed it wasn’t that simple.
Vampires were real. Werewolves had been stigmatised in the media and were, in fact, relatively noble creatures who couldn’t turn into a half-man, half-wolf – the hybrid form of the Hollywood werewolf was a case of mistaken identity with another creature.
Magic was real and there were two types: Myriad magic and Murk magic. Cole apparently had Murk magic. Which sounded like that should make him a bad guy, except he was employed by this Council of his to make sure that the rules of the Armistice were kept. Despite this being his job’s main function, Cole insisted he was one hundred per cent on the side of humanity. Which sounded like a conflict of interest, but Henry was still getting his head around the fact that being on humanity’s side wasn’t the only option here.
Things only got stranger. There was a spell, Cole called it a ‘glamour’, and it protected the city populace from finding out about all the fricking weird stuff that was living among them. According to Cole, this glamour spell was the only thing that kept people from finding out the truth, and anything that couldn’t hide itself had been long since made extinct or imprisoned, usually by other monsters. Henry presumed this was so the rest could continue to hide and engage in various forms of eating people, undisturbed by the pitchfork masses.
He wanted to ask more, but Cole’s glares did little to convince him that the man was open to helping him make sense of his environment right then. Instead, ingratiation seemed the best idea. Cole finished another tirade, and Henry saw his chance to get on his good side. ‘Yeah man, bloody crypto-fascists,’ Henry said, trying to sound assertive and the right side of angry. Cole had problems with authority. Henry could get behind that. Cole stopped rumbling and lumbering and looked at Henry oddly.
The man was terrifying. He was holding a very sharp-looking dagger thing that seemed to be designed to punch people with. Because merely stabbing was too gentle, for a real man. He kept frowning at the dagger thing and raving on about the Council and vampires. Henry’s head hurt.
Cole stood in front of him as Henry sat on the couch. ‘Did Andrew dress you like that, or are those your clothes?’
Henry looked down. ‘They’re mine. How come?’
Cole’s irritatingly gravelly voice continued. ‘Dressing you up to look like a vampire is the sort of thing he might have done to get me to, you know …’ What did his shell suit have to do with being murdered by Cole? Henry didn’t get it, but he wasn’t about to ask questions either. He drank. It seemed the only way.
The whisky started to take the headache away and fill him with something approaching confidence. ‘What’s wrong with my clothes, man?’
The blurted interruption instantly married regret as Cole frowned at him. Henry prayed that his regret was clear on his face, and Lumbering-Beast-Man wouldn’t stab his face in and steal his lunch money. Just to be sure he backtracked. ‘Sorry, what were you s
aying?’
Lumbering-Beast-Man ran his thumb along the dagger thing fixed to his fist like a bayonet and then frowned. ‘Nothing kid, forget it.’
Was that a smile hidden on Cole’s face?
‘I’m heading out for a bit, so stay here.’
He grabbed that freaking shotgun of his and went through an elaborate process to stuff it into his jacket. Cole was leaving? With all those vampires out there? All those teeth running around the city? Not cool, no way.
‘You’re joking, right, dude? You can’t tell me the world’s a terrifying place then leave me here. I don’t even know who I am!’
Cole shrugged. ‘You come – it’s your funeral, Henry. Stay here where you’ll be safe.’
Suddenly the shotgun-toting psycho looked like a good, kind man. Given Henry was pretty sure Cole was about to do something that would be the worst idea for everyone – well, for him – he decided to act. He found his feet, planting himself firmly before the front door. Why did his Adam’s apple have to bob as Cole came toward him?
‘I need you, dude; we need to make a plan. They’ll come looking for me; they’ll come here. What would they do to me, Cole? I can’t fight. Please!’
Cowering any way other than abjectly would be wasted effort. Later, he would go over all the really cool and clever things he should have said. Was this really who he was? His wobbling legs told him to stop standing on ceremony and just kneel. Begging was always better done kneeling.
Cole waved him aside. ‘Move, Henry. I’ve got work to do.’
Henry stood firm. Cole folded his arms.
‘Count of three.’
Henry’s bladder got pretty insistent.
‘One.’
It wasn’t enough that he’d been threatened at gunpoint by some hyper-macho liability – now he was going to give Cole a laugh by peeing himself like a toddler.
‘Two. Move, Henry. Don’t think you being a civilian will stop me moving you, pal.’
The Cost of Magic (The Ethan Cole Series Book 1) Page 12
