Wedding Bells, Magic Spells

by Lisa Shearin

  I glanced over to Markus—and Brina—and raised an eyebrow. “To Markus?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sure he will appreciate your consideration.”

  My cousin picked an imaginary bit of lint from his velvet sleeve. “I thought he would.”

  Phaelan cautiously made his way to where Markus was seated. Brina’s eyes locked on his approach. Her hand didn’t need to go to her sword’s hilt; it was already there. Phaelan judiciously kept his hands palms forward and away from any of his weapons. It wasn’t how most men would begin a courtship, but Phaelan wasn’t most men—and Brina Daesage wasn’t most women.

  I stood on tiptoe to see Mychael. He was already halfway to the bar. As paladin, he’d gotten to be an expert at small talk and efficiently working a room.

  This isn’t a competition, I told myself.

  I spotted Edythe through the crowd—and she spotted me.

  Oh crap. So much for getting to the bar first.

  I’d already spoken to her and Brant twice. Brant was fun and friendly. Edythe was not. I still had no idea how she felt about me, but I thought I was about to find out. I wondered if I could get Vegard to go to the bar and bring me that drink. I took a deep breath and moved aside to one of the few clear spots on the floor that was also near an open door leading out onto a terrace, or whatever it was called in a fortress. There was cool air flowing in. My gown wasn’t hot, but all these people in one room were, and if Edythe was finally ready to speak her mind, at least I’d be comfortable while she did it.

  I glanced over to where Vegard stood. He’d seen Edythe approaching. He gave me a questioning look; I replied with a nod. He backed off a little farther to give us privacy to talk, but not before giving me a thumbs-up and an encouraging smile.

  Edythe walked toward me, smiling brilliantly, and holding out her arms. “My dear, I’ve been meaning to tell you how lovely you look this evening.”

  Brilliant smile? My dear? Incoming hug?

  Her lips were smiling; her eyes were the flat black of a shark. My right hand went into my skirt’s pocket and came out with a dagger.

  This was not Edythe Eiliesor.

  It was Sandrina’s shapeshifter.

  Chapter 31

  “Clever girl,” the fake Edythe murmured. “Let’s take a nice walk outside.”

  I slowly circled off to the left. “I don’t think so.”

  The woman stepped off to the right. “I am but one of many here.”

  More shapeshifters.

  The blade of her small stiletto was concealed in the palm of her hand. The blade was wet, whether with drug or poison didn’t matter. Either way I didn’t dare take my eyes off of her. While both of us were wearing gowns, the shapeshifter had the misfortune of having had to copy Edythe’s dress, down to the heavy brocade skirts.

  She angled the stiletto’s tip toward me. “I’m merely here to deliver a gift to the bride.”

  “Another of Sandrina’s specialty poisons?”

  “My you are a clever little thing. Come with me and your paladin lives. Raise an alarm and he dies.”

  I stopped circling her. “Threatening Mychael was the wrong thing to do.”

  We were attracting attention, meaning she was running out of time and she knew it.

  She attacked.

  I let her.

  I quickly pivoted to the side, letting the weight of her skirts carry her past me. She stumbled, but didn’t fall—at least not until I kicked her.

  I knew from past experience that it took a lot of pain for a master shapeshifter to lose their assumed form.

  Pain. Or unconsciousness.

  I went for whichever one I could get.

  Though until I had landed a good punch to the side of her head, I didn’t realize how this looked to everyone else.

  The bride and her mother-in-law were having a catfight.

  “She’s a shapesh—” I managed, before taking an elbow to the jaw.

  And the gloves were off.

  The fake Edythe and I turned into a snarling, cussing, punching, and kicking mass of silk and brocade rolling around on the citadel’s ballroom floor.

  I’d lost my dagger at some point, and I sank my teeth into her wrist, making her drop the stiletto, as a strong arm locked around my waist and lifted me off of her.

  With the help of a guest, the woman stood and made the mistake of smirking—until I kicked out and the heel of my fancy silk shoe took her right under the chin.

  She lost consciousness—and her glamour.

  An elven mother-in-law turned into a Khrynsani temple guard, complete with the serpent tattoo on the left side of his face.

  So there.

  The arm that held me belonged to Vegard. I had to get enough air in my lungs before I could speak. Stupid tight bodice. “Sandrina’s shapeshifter.” Gasp. “Poison dagger.” I panted, and tried to look everywhere at once. “Mychael’s next.”

  I didn’t have enough air to speak, let alone shout a warning that could be heard more than two feet away. Vegard didn’t have that problem. He also wasn’t going to let propriety get in the way of saving his paladin. Vegard sucked in what had to have been half the air in the room and bellowed as if he were on a battlefield.

  “Shapeshifter! Assassin!”

  Those two words cut through and went over every voice in the room, and alerted not only Mychael and every Guardian in the room, but also all of our family and friends with steel or spells and a desire to use them. They knew exactly what those two words meant. Sandrina’s other shapeshifters had just become mice in a room full of hungry cats—and I was the hungriest one of all.

  For the second time today, a room erupted into chaos, except this was chaos with the intent of violence. I quickly scanned every face I could see. I knew that Vegard had my back, so I concentrated on locating Sandrina’s other shapeshifters.

  I didn’t expect to see Sandrina herself.

  In a crowd of angry or fearful people, Sandrina Ghalfari stood out because her expression was utterly blank. No emotion whatsoever. Her complexion was glamoured to pass for human, and the tips of her ears rounded, but I knew it was her. She was headed away from me and toward where I’d last seen Mychael.

  She wanted revenge, and she wanted to do it herself.

  She wasn’t giving up.

  Neither was I.

  “Sandrina’s going for Mychael,” I told Vegard. I drew my second dagger and held it to the side of my skirt so I wouldn’t stab anyone who didn’t need stabbing as I quickly wove my way through the crowd. Vegard was right behind me.

  “Take them alive!” I heard Mychael shout.

  I moved faster.

  The crowd thinned and I supplemented my personal armory by snatching the carving knife out of the roasted boar as I sprinted past a buffet table.

  I couldn’t get any closer to Mychael, but Sandrina had—and somehow she’d gotten a rapier, the last few inches of the blade dripping with what could only be poison.

  “Mychael!” I screamed.

  Another rapier’s blade neatly parried Sandrina’s, and I nearly dropped my carving knife when I saw who was wielding it.

  Edythe Eiliesor. The real one.

  My mother-in-law had Mago’s rapier in one hand, the train of her gown in the other, and was forcing Sandrina Ghalfari back with a furious series of moves, her blade a silver blur.

  “Damn,” Vegard blurted.

  Sandrina grabbed a small bowl from the buffet table and flung the contents at Edythe’s eyes. Not all of it hit, but enough of it did. Sandrina darted around a column and out the door that went down to the kitchens—and led to countless ways out of the citadel.

  Oh. Hell. No.

  I caught sight of Mychael surrounded by his father, Justinius, his four bodyguards, Tarsilia, and Piaras.

  Mychael was safe.

  Sandrina was not.

  And from what I could see, neither were any of her shapeshifters.

  There was more than enough steel to go around. I’
d asked my family to go out of their way to be polite, so they were sharing their blades with lesser-armed guests. A Benares wouldn’t set foot out their door or off their ship with only one weapon.

  If there was an incident, I’d asked them not to kill anyone unless absolutely necessary. A couple of chairs had been broken in the melee, and Phaelan’s younger sister had a chair leg in each hand. Phoebe always did have a thing for clubs. Her twin brother had a shapeshifter in a headlock, a shapeshifter who’d lost his shape due to Phoebus clamping his forearm around the Khrynsani’s windpipe. And panicked flailing from overhead drew my attention to a temple guard stuck to the ballroom ceiling. That would be Lucan Kalta’s work. As chief librarian and a senior Conclave member, we’d had to invite him. Now it looked like I might actually have to thank him for something.

  The situation wasn’t under control yet, but it would be. As much as I would have loved to have stayed and enjoyed the show, I had a score to settle.

  Cuinn was helping Edythe clear her eyes of dipping sauce. She saw me and pushed his hands away. “Where did she—?” she began.

  “Through the kitchens,” I told her. “Cuinn, she’ll be using a rift to escape. I need your help.”

  The three of us took off after her together.

  Vegard had gone to check on Mychael, and I heard his shouts for me to stop. If I did, Sandrina Ghalfari would escape, close that rift after her, and we wouldn’t know where it had been until she decided to use it again to pay us another visit. That was not going to happen. We needed to know where that rift was and close it permanently.

  Sandrina had a good head start, the kitchen was crowded, and she’d left chaos in her wake. I couldn’t tell if any of those who had been knocked to the floor were wounded or not. I wasn’t a healer, so what help I could have offered wouldn’t have done anyone any good. I was a seeker and a pissed off bride-to-be, and the woman I was chasing had just tried to murder my soon-to-be husband, and wouldn’t stop until she and her army had killed us all. Those things qualified me and gave me the right to hunt her down and make her sorry she hadn’t kept running since that night in the Khrynsani temple.

  Sandrina Ghalfari had passed two exits from the kitchens that would have taken her out of the citadel. That meant she was going down into the citadel’s sub-basements, which confirmed she’d used a rift. There were no tunnels down there that led to the outside. I’d made it my business to know the citadel’s layout like the back of my hand—especially during the time when Carnades Silvanus had been trying to have me imprisoned in the sub-basements’ containment rooms, until he could have me executed. Once down there, the only way out was up to the main level.

  And once down there, it was like a maze. A maze that was kept lighted, but still a maze.

  I held up my hand to signal Edythe and Cuinn to stop at an intersection of five narrow hallways. They were marked with numbers indicating what section of the citadel they went under, but that didn’t tell me which one Sandrina Ghalfari had taken.

  Then I smiled in realization. Oh yes, it did.

  Section three contained the highest tower in the citadel—where Sarad Nukpana’s body was entombed. Mychael and Justinius had magically disguised the door on the outside of the tower, but its footings were down in the sub-basements. There must have been a door down there that had let Sandrina gain access to the tower without tripping any of the alarm spells on the tower’s exterior.

  If Sandrina’s escape rift was under that tower, I couldn’t continue chasing her with only a dagger, a carving knife, my armed and apparently dangerous mother-in-law, and a mirror mage professor. The assassination attempts had failed, and neither Mychael nor I were dead. Sandrina was a smart woman. She wasn’t going to risk capture now and ruin everything she’d arranged on Timurus. I couldn’t risk that there wouldn’t be a nasty surprise waiting for us, but if the Khrynsani had a rift in the citadel, that was the worst security breach imaginable. We needed to know where it was to ensure this was their last visit.

  There was nothing wrong with my shields. I could protect myself as well as Edythe and Cuinn, if necessary. When the Saghred and I had been psychic roommates, I could sling spells and fling fireballs with the best of them. If the Saghred’s essence had been desperate enough to flee from the rock and into me, it was in its best interests to keep me alive. If I died, we’d both cease to exist. I needed a weapon and I needed it now.

  I slid my dagger back into its sheath and turned my hand palm up in front of me.

  Come on, fireball. Come on, come on.

  A trio of sparks popped to life above my palm and began quickly circling each other, faster and faster, leaving thin strands of gold and orange light in their wake, until a ball of pulsing flame hovered just above my open hand. Light, but no heat. I wrapped my fingers around it, the surface buzzing against my skin like thousands of fireflies. I’d never made anything like this before, so I had no idea what it’d do if I threw it, but it looked fierce enough. If Sandrina had any ideas about attacking us, maybe it’d at least act as a deterrent. It was all I had, so it’d have to do.

  I led the way down to the base of Sarad’s tower.

  There were several branches off of the hallway we were in, and my study of the citadel’s layout told me that to reach the tower from where we’d started, we’d take a series of left turns. I also knew I was going in the right direction because I could now sense Sandrina. I could sense her like I’d been able to sense her son. In the past, the Saghred had helped me track Sarad Nukpana. But it was different now. I sensed…no, I felt Sandrina’s emotions: rage, frustration, impatience—and now, eager anticipation. The sensation raised the tiny hairs on the back of my neck.

  I knew she was at the rift.

  I quickly handed the carving knife to Cuinn, and with that hand freed up, I fanned the fingers of my empty hand in front of us from wall to wall, summoned the strongest shield I had, and ran toward that rift.

  After the next left turn, an ornate door stood open at the end of the hallway. A door that was far too fancy for a containment room.

  Cuinn quickly stepped up beside me. He nodded toward the door and mouthed one word: “Rift.” His head cocked toward the door as if he were listening. “It’s about to close,” he whispered.

  We moved as quickly as caution would allow to the open door, and with my shield solidly in front of us, I peered inside.

  There was row upon row of wine racks. The room was dimly lit with lightglobes set in sconces along the walls, and while I couldn’t see the rift, I could sense Sandrina. We went in, shields and fireball ready. The far corner of the room was illuminated by a glowing seam that ran from floor to ceiling. Unlike the rift in Cuinn’s lab, we couldn’t see through to the other side of this one. I didn’t want to. The scene on this side was nightmarish enough.

  Four seemingly disembodied arms reached through the rift, lifting Sarad Nukpana’s corpse to take it through to the other side. The goblin’s dead eyes were open and staring. Sandrina’s arms were around her son’s knees, pushing his body the rest of the way through.

  A scream rose in my throat, and I pushed it right back down.

  I wasn’t the only one with a shield. Sandrina had put one between us and her escape, so using my fireball to incinerate that waking nightmare wasn’t an option.

  Sandrina looked back at us, her mad eyes glittering in the rift’s glow. “We didn’t get all that we wanted, but my son is enough. For now. I will return, and when I do, I will bring many who are eager to enjoy all this world has to offer. Enjoy your life, my dear. You won’t have it—or anyone you love—for much longer.” The goblin’s smile was pure evil. “And since you didn’t get my first wedding gift, we’ll leave you with another.”

  As Sandrina and the legs of her son’s corpse passed through the rift, the seam closed and folded in on itself, and the glow winked out.

  I started breathing again. “What did she mean by—”

  A tremor started in the corner of the room where the rift had been an
d worked its way up the walls to the ceiling.

  Cuinn went white as a sheet. “They used the wall and ceiling to bear the rift’s weight. Collapse the rift—”

  My stomach dropped to my feet. “Collapse the ceiling.”

  A spiderweb of cracks appeared in the ceiling, cracks that fanned out, coming toward us and through the wall out into the hallway. The door slammed shut seemingly on its own, and chunks of ceiling fell just outside to block it.

  I’d been in a similar situation before, under the elven embassy. It had taken me and Tam and the Saghred running at full power to keep the ceiling—and the embassy above it—from collapsing on top of us and a group of imprisoned teenage spellsingers. I didn’t have Tam and I didn’t have the Saghred, at least not in the way I’d had the Saghred before. All I had now was an anemic-looking fireball and no clue what it could do. But if I didn’t do something and do it now, the three of us would be squashed like bugs, I would never get married, and Mychael would be a widower before he was a husband.

  I swore.

  Dust began to fall along with chunks of stone, and the fireball I clutched in my hand suddenly grew heavy, the flickering lights solidifying into what looked like molten lava.

  Lava. Liquid rock.

  And I couldn’t use it unless I dropped the shields protecting us. Shields were good against spells, not tons of falling rock. I dropped the shields and screamed in terror and rage as I thrust my hand and the fireball it held toward the fractured ceiling, pushing with everything I had, willing the liquid fire I’d created into the cracks as I created more and still more lava, filling every fissure in the room and the hall beyond, visualizing the lava cooling, solidifying, becoming part of the ceiling and walls, stopping the collapse.

  I was gasping, panting, and tasting blood. It was either a result of taking an elbow to the jaw, or I’d just ruptured something. My vision grew dark, and I felt myself falling. Slender arms went around me, supporting me and holding me up.

  Edythe.

  I must have passed out for a moment. When I came to my senses, I was utterly spent, my head lying back against Cuinn’s shoulder; his arms were around both me and Edythe. We all looked at the ceiling, at the lava that filled the cracks, cooling, fading from orange to black, and solidifying, becoming part of the rock itself. The fracturing stopped, the rock ceased to fall, and the dust settled.