Wedding Bells, Magic Spells

by Lisa Shearin

  “You sure you’re okay being in here?” he asked quietly.

  “Until you came in, my back was to the wall and I was mere steps from the closest door.”

  “And now, I’m in your way.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Want me to leave?”

  I smiled. “Never.”

  “We just received the signal,” the Guardian mirror mage said. “They’re ready to come through.”

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Mychael told him.

  The mage stood before a sturdy metal-framed mirror at least seven feet tall and three feet wide, arms extended, palms out, fingers spread wide, eyes focused and unblinking. This mirror was linked to a similar one in the basement of the elven intelligence building in Silvanlar. The surface of the mirror began to ripple as it was activated on the other side. When the ripple turned to a swirl, my stomach tried to do the same thing, and I looked away. Buckets were discreetly kept in the mirror room for a reason. I knew what came next without having to see it. The rotation would quicken until the mirror’s entire surface pulsed. At that point, our first visitor would arrive.

  I looked back to the mirror as an armed elf stepped through.

  No one went for their weapons. We had been told to expect a bodyguard to come through before Markus. It was about time he’d gotten himself one.

  A woman. Average height, dark hair, brown eyes. Sharp eyes that darted aggressively around the room, taking in everything and missing nothing. Beautiful, yet belligerent.

  If Markus thought she was up to handling the trouble he attracted on a daily basis, she must be hell on wheels. I didn’t sense any magic coming from her. Considering the sources of the trouble Markus often found himself in, that said a lot about this woman’s capabilities.

  The elf wore sleek leathers and was armed with knives strapped to her arms, legs, chest, and the small of her back—all within easy reach. I wore my blades the same way.

  The elf nodded in Mychael’s direction. “Paladin Eiliesor.”

  She didn’t look directly at me, though she’d seen me well enough, along with every other armed individual in the room—seen them, assessed them, and determined them to be of no danger to her boss.

  “I’m Brina Daesage, chief of Director Sevelien’s security team.”

  That was a new one. “Markus has an entire security team?” I asked.

  The elf woman flashed a good-natured grin. “He does now.”

  “About time.”

  “Raine Benares, I presume?”

  “Presumption correct. Is Markus coming next?”

  “He is.” She turned to the mage operating the mirror and indicated the signal pad. “May I?”

  The Guardian glanced at Mychael, who gave a single nod of approval.

  Brina Daesage stepped over to the pad, which consisted of a single flat crystal set into the mirror’s frame. She tapped out a coded message to the mirror mage back in Silvanlar that the destination was secure and Markus could come through. After a few moments, the mirror pulsed once and then a pattern appeared on the surface, flickering and rolling in silver waves.

  My stomach tried to roll right along with it, and once again, I looked away.

  The Guardian mirror mage took a few steps back, arms down, but hands still extended, palms out toward the mirror. Once he’d opened the mirror here, his job was essentially done. The elf mage in Silvanlar was running the show now; our man was merely keeping the mirror stable on this end.

  I was watching our mage, not the mirror, but I didn’t need to see the mirror to know there was a problem. The Guardian suddenly started taking deep breaths and hissing them out through clenched teeth as if he was lifting way out of his weight class.

  I looked at the mirror.

  What had been silver waves had turned to corpse gray, ripening into poison green.

  I was no mirror mage, but I knew something was wrong.

  Deadly wrong.

  Just because getting from one place to another through magically linked mirrors was like stepping through a doorway didn’t mean things couldn’t go wrong. I’d seen one malfunction and heard of others—all had been fatal to the person caught in between.

  Mychael had already stepped around me, as had Brina. Her job was to protect Markus from assassins, but unless she was a mirror mage, there wasn’t anything she could do to stop whatever was happening.

  Mychael put a calming hand on his Guardian’s shoulder. Normally, touching a practitioner in the middle of working powerful magic had bad consequences for the toucher, touchee, and possibly anyone within splattering distance.

  Mychael Eiliesor wasn’t normal; he was a healer, of mind and body. He was giving his Guardian added strength and calm to do what needed to be done. The man’s breathing slowed, but it didn’t change the fact that he appeared to be fighting a losing battle.

  “Steady,” Mychael told him, his spellsinger voice helping the man to do just that.

  “Sir, I’ve lost—”

  “No, you haven’t. Hold on to what you’ve got.”

  “Something…inside.” His hands, palms out toward the mirror, were slowly flexing forward, toward the sickly green swirl, as if what was inside was dragging him forward and into his own mirror. Then his booted feet began sliding on the stone floor.

  Mychael held on and Vegard ran to help.

  For an instant, I saw Markus.

  On the other side of the mirror.

  Trapped.

  His eyes were open and vacant, his skin was blue, and something like black rope was wrapped around his chest.

  Mychael saw and swore. “Vegard, hold him.”

  He released the mage, and in the next moment before any of us could stop him, his arms blazed with a protection spell, he grabbed the mirror’s frame in his right hand and plunged his left into the mirror up to his shoulder. His eyes squeezed shut with effort.

  If the mirror shattered, Mychael’s arm would be severed. That didn’t stop him.

  And it didn’t stop another black, rope-like thing from lashing out from inside the mirror and wrapping around Mychael’s throat. I instantly had my sharpest dagger in my hands, slashing at where the rope and mirror met. It didn’t even scratch it.

  Mychael jerked, the side of his face flush against the mirror, the rope pulling him inside.

  My vision narrowed until all I saw was that thing wrapped around the throat of the man I loved, the man who had put himself in danger again and again, risking his life and soul to save mine. Now some monster thought it was going drag him off to whatever was on the other side.

  Oh. Hell. No.

  I summoned my magic and grabbed the rope with my bare hand—a hand that was glowing dark red.

  Red?

  That was the only thought I managed to have before instinct and rage took over. I didn’t care that I should be ten kinds of terrified at what the rest of the monster looked like. I didn’t care what it would do to me. I forced every bit of strength, every shred of whatever magic I still possessed into my hand, constricting, crushing. Whatever the magic was, wherever it’d come from, it hurt what was strangling Mychael. It hurt it badly. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I sure didn’t know how, but I kept doing it until the rope dissolved in my hand, freeing Mychael.

  The instant after Mychael pulled Markus out of the mirror, it shattered, covering us all in crystalline dust.

  Markus’s eyes were fixed and staring, he wasn’t breathing.

  I dropped to the floor beside his body.

  Markus Sevelien was dead.

  Mychael’s hand held balled lightning. He pushed his spread fingers hard against the center of Markus’s chest, and the elf’s back arched with the charge.

  Nothing.

  Mychael sent another jolt into Markus’s chest.

  And another.

  A tremor shook Markus’s entire body, and he gasped. That gasp turned into a breath. Two breaths. Three. Markus was breathing on his own. It was ragged, but he was doing it.

 
; Mychael sat back and blew out a breath of his own. “Welcome back, Markus.”

  To the Isle of Mid, or to life?

  Chapter 2

  Under normal circumstances, an injured—or recently dead—intelligence director would be taken to his kingdom’s embassy. But considering that Markus’s own people had tried to kill him last month and that an elf mage had been in control of the mirror today, any elf was suspect, and the elves in the elven embassy were more suspect than most.

  With the mirror on our end destroyed, the rest of Markus’s security detail was stuck in Silvanlar at elven intelligence headquarters—supposedly the most secure building in the capital. The black-tentacled thing that had attacked Mychael and briefly killed Markus hadn’t been an elf, but that didn’t mean an elf hadn’t set it loose.

  I didn’t know how something like that had happened, but I knew why.

  Someone wanted Markus dead. Again.

  Markus Sevelien had been presumed dead before.

  It’d turned out to be a good thing then.

  The house he’d been staying in here had been packed with explosives and set on fire, converting it instantly from a house to a crater. If Markus had been in there, he’d have been blown to bits. Mychael and I had gotten him out moments before everything had gone boom. Markus had worked behind the scenes to lure out some highly placed traitors both in elven intelligence and the elven embassy here. They’d been arrogant and had grown careless, and both had gotten them caught.

  To keep whoever was behind killing Markus this time from getting a second chance, Mychael was entirely justified tossing protocol out the nearest window—or through what was left of the elves’ sabotaged mirror.

  As the head of a security detail that was now stuck in Silvanlar, Brina Daesage had agreed with his choice.

  Archmagus Justinius Valerian’s apartment in the west tower of the Guardians’ citadel was as secure as a vault—although most vaults didn’t have Guardian battle mages standing guard along both sides of the corridor leading to it, warriors who could kill you in various and sundry ways with a single spell. The old man had hosted security-compromised guests before, and not one of them had died while in his tower.

  As long as he was here, Markus was safe.

  I wasn’t so sure about myself. Though the biggest danger to myself might be me.

  Even when I’d been bonded to the Saghred, my magic had never manifested itself in dark red. Red and acid green were the colors of the darker magics. I’d seen a similar deep red radiance many times over the past few months.

  In the glow of the Saghred.

  The shade of red that I’d produced had been closer to the Saghred end of the spectrum.

  I was feeling an overwhelming urge to scream and run. While neither would accomplish anything, that didn’t stop me from wanting to.

  Everyone had seen what happened, and no one had said a word. Whatever had enabled me to do what I did had saved Mychael, who had saved Markus, so as scared as I’d been of what I’d done, my magic could have manifested in purple sparklies for all I cared.

  Find who attacked Markus now, care about what had happened to me later.

  Brina Daesage had just seen her security plans shattered as thoroughly as that mirror. She was expressing her displeasure in the only way she could at the moment, which was pacing the length of Justinius’s bedchamber, scowling at not having anyone to punch or stab.

  A woman after my own heart.

  Markus was still unconscious. His heart was beating again mostly on its own and he was breathing, but he was far from stable.

  Mychael and Dalis, the archmagus’s personal healer, were working on him, and Brina and I were trying to stay out of the way. Vegard was across the room, waiting on our side of the closed bedroom door. If anyone tried to come in, they’d better belong here.

  We had no idea why Markus had been attacked. And until we did, Mychael wasn’t taking any chances. Most of the delegates had arrived yesterday and last night. Tam and Imala were due to arrive in another hour—by mirror. Mychael had ordered a message sent by telepath telling them to wait. It’d been successfully received in Regor. Santis Eldor, the elven ambassador, was on his way to Mid on a small agency ship that had set sail from Laerin two days ago. Mychael had ordered a message sent to the telepath aboard the ambassador’s ship with news of what had happened—though that had just as much to do with being a protective big brother. I didn’t blame him one bit. Isibel Eiliesor, Mychael’s younger sister, was on the elven ambassador’s staff and traveling with him—for the peace talks and our wedding.

  Markus’s color had improved just in the past few minutes. He may not have been completely out of the woods yet, but unless he took another long trip through a short mirror, his survival chances were looking really good. I recognized the spell Mychael was presently weaving. It would put Markus into a deep sleep to allow his body time to heal.

  I took a breath and tried to relax my shoulders. “He’ll make it,” I said quietly. Brina Daesage glanced at me, expression unreadable. “You had doubts?”

  I gave her a tired smile. “With any other healer, maybe. With Mychael, never. I’ve seen him do more in less time with worse injuries.”

  “Worse than death?”

  “Try dead with a crossbow bolt through the heart.”

  Mychael had brought Tam back from the dead after I’d shot him through the heart with a crossbow. It was a long story, and nothing personal.

  Brina grinned. “Chancellor Nathrach. I heard what happened.”

  I wearily rubbed the back of my neck. “It was a hell of a day.”

  “I imagine it was. You did what you had to do.”

  I nodded once. “I did it. I didn’t like it, but I did it.”

  The apartment doors opened, and Brina and I both went for our blades.

  Justinius Valerian.

  I sheathed my blades. Brina hesitated, then did the same. She’d never met the old man, and if he hadn’t been wearing his formal robes, she—or anyone else—wouldn’t peg him as the most powerful mage in the Seven Kingdoms. He was lean to the point of appearing scrawny. What might have been a luxurious head of hair decades ago was now a fringe of white tufts on a liver-spotted head. Only a pair of gleaming blue eyes gave a clue to the power inside the man. Though at the moment, those eyes were as hard as agates. Yep, the old guy definitely wasn’t happy.

  It was his apartment, so I wasn’t surprised to see him, but seeing the look on his face, I wouldn’t exactly say I was glad. I’d seen the old man pissed before, but nothing like this. Even though I hadn’t been the one to cause the figurative thundercloud over his head, I couldn’t help experiencing an internal cringe with a side order of impending doom.

  When I’d come to Mid, the first thing Justinius had done was a mind link to determine if—because of my link with the Saghred—I was too dangerous to live. He’d determined then that I wasn’t. I wondered if he’d ever regretted that decision.

  “You all right, girl?” he asked me.

  “Physically, yes. Emotionally, I’m reserving judgment.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around.” He glanced at Markus in his guest bed and grunted in satisfaction. “Looks like he’ll live.”

  “He will,” Mychael said without turning or pausing in his work.

  “I’ve got Cuinn Aviniel taking a look at that mirror,” Justinius said. “Or what’s left of it.”

  Since Carnades Silvanus’s death, Cuinn Aviniel was now the best mirror mage on the island. Everyone had hated Carnades; no one felt the same about his replacement. Cuinn was a nice guy who actually liked sharing his knowledge of mirrors, unlike most mirror mages, who wanted to be the only ones who understood how and why linked mirrors behaved as they did. He was also a mirror-travel scholar. If anyone would know what had happened to Markus, it would be Cuinn.

  Justinius held up an envelope. The seal was broken. “I’ve got news on the elven ambassador. A messenger was on his way from the communication room with this
for you.”

  “It’s been opened,” I noted.

  “By me.”

  “And you’re entitled, sir.”

  “Yes, I am. And as winded as that squire was, I knew it was something I probably needed to read. Mychael?”

  Mychael paused in his work and turned.

  “It’s something you need to read, son.”

  Oh no. Mychael’s sister.

  No one said a word as Mychael read the message. He then passed it to me and nodded to Brina. As Markus’s security chief, she’d certainly need to know if anything had happened to the elven ambassador. She read over my shoulder.

  “They couldn’t make contact with the Blue Rose,” I summarized. “Could the ambassador’s ship merely be—”

  “When you’re dealing with our telepaths, no contact is the same as bad news.” Mychael’s expression was utterly blank. It was the face he wore when he’d been kicked in the chest with bad news, news so bad it had to be cast aside and dealt with later.

  “I take it they’re your best?” Brina asked the archmagus.

  “They are. There was no distortion. The signal should have come in loud and clear.”

  If there’d been a signal to receive.

  If there had been a ship still afloat to send a signal from.

  I spoke into the tense silence. “Could a sky dragon patrol—”

  “Already deployed,” Justinius said.

  “Thank you, sir,” Mychael said.

  “You’re welcome. Occasionally I can pull my weight around here. If the ambassador’s ship left Laerin two days ago, it would have been southwest of Mermeia by now. Those shipping lanes are heavily traveled. If that ship was attacked, it’s likely there would have been witnesses.”

  “Witnessing is one thing,” Brina said. “Few could or would have stepped in to stop it.”

  Not necessarily. I had a little spark of hope. “I know a captain in those waters right now who could and would have stepped in and ensured the attacker never did it again.” I turned to Justinius. “Sir, I need one of your telepaths to reach out to the Fortune. Phaelan has a telepath on board.”