She stretched her arms toward the ceiling, her head thrown back as she chanted a series of words entirely alien to Abigail. Blood was smeared around her mouth and dripped from her chin onto her deformed chest. Lennox was bleeding profusely from the throat, crimson flowing into a groove cut into the stone around the edge of the altar.
As black streamers began to flow from Lennox into the young witch, her chanting became more strident … then exultant as the mage’s power flowed into her.
Peti stood with Abel against the far wall. She looked pleased as she watched her sister complete her final rite of passage into the Sin’Rath Coven. Two other equally hideous young women stood with her, envy and lust almost radiating from them as they watched their sister become more than she had been before.
Magda and Cassandra started whispering. A second later, Peti looked straight at them.
“Intruders!” she shouted.
Abel drew his Thinblade and stepped in front of Peti, shielding her as she backed into a nearby passage. The two uninitiated Sin’Rath growled and hissed before retreating with Peti. The witch atop Lennox seemed oblivious to the events unfolding around her, completely enthralled with the transfer of power taking place.
Magda hit one of the two uninitiated Sin’Rath with a light-lance, burning a hole through her back and out her chest. She fell with a thud. Cassandra cast a bubble of liquid fire at the witch atop Lennox. Light flared when it burst, filling the magic circle with orange-hot flame and igniting the would-be Sin’Rath in a whoosh. Her dying shriek could barely be heard over the fire’s roar.
Abigail raced down the stairs, staying close to the wall to ward against the heat. She reached the passage just as the ceiling several dozen feet away collapsed, sending dust billowing out into the room.
Magda reached her a moment later.
“I’m really starting to get tired of her,” Abigail said.
Magda nodded.
“We should go,” Cassandra said, shielding her face from the heat of the fire.
Abigail stared for a moment longer before shaking her head and heading back toward the surface. When they reached the smaller fork, Abigail and Magda shared a look. They took the passage without discussion but were disappointed to find that it led to an underground stream, nothing more than a source of water.
“Where do you think the passage Peti took comes out?” Abigail asked as they retraced their steps.
“Probably somewhere outside the command fortress,” Magda said.
“So will she run or fight?”
“That’s hard to say. She’s cunning but not entirely rational.”
“Soldiers!” Dalia said, cutting their conversation short, pointing to torchlight flickering in the distance.
“I need light,” Abigail said, drawing the Thinblade and stalking forward. Light grew behind her as Magda brought seven illuminating orbs into existence over her head. They rounded a bend and encountered a cluster of soldiers filling the passage with raised shields and spears.
“Surrender,” one said.
Abigail ignored him, striding up and casually lopping off the spear point of the nearest weapon, then holding up the Thinblade as the three Reishi witches came up behind her.
“Do you know what this is?” she demanded.
There was a murmuring among the soldiers.
“My name is Abigail Ruatha. You will stand down and lead us out of this warren. If you even hint at attack, I will cut you all into tiny little pieces and leave you here to rot. Is that clear?”
“Yes, My Lady,” the leader said, turning to his men and barking orders.
“Huh,” Magda said, “the Sin’Rath’s charms must be limited by distance.”
“How did you know they wouldn’t attack?” Cassandra asked.
“I didn’t,” Abigail said, following the soldiers with her sword still drawn.
They returned to the kitchen. As the soldiers filed out into the main room, Abigail heard a brief but tense conversation that ended with a shouted command: “Seize them!”
The few soldiers remaining in the kitchen turned to raise their weapons. Abigail cut three spears with a swipe of the Thinblade, then backed away while the witches began casting spells. More soldiers entered the room, fanning out with shields and spears raised. General Brand strode in behind them.
“You will surrender or die,” he said.
“He’s bitten,” Magda said.
“As are many of his men,” Cassandra said.
Several soldiers looked back and forth between Abigail and General Brand, confusion and uncertainty in their eyes, but more were possessed of righteous determination.
“You try my patience,” Brand said. “Surrender now.”
“Retreat,” Abigail said, backing through the door to the servants’ hallway.
“Attack!” Brand commanded just as Magda, Cassandra, and Dalia each cast a force-push into the van of the soldiers, shoving several back into their companions and causing many to fall in a jumble.
Cassandra spelled the door after closing it behind her.
“It won’t hold for long,” she said.
Abigail cut through the wall, kicking a large chunk of it into the alley behind the building. Once outside and into the dim light of rising dawn, she shot a whistler arrow into the air. It was answered with the roar of wyverns.
“Can you get us up onto the roof?” she asked.
“Of course,” Magda said. “Hold hands.”
All four of them clasped hands, forming a circle. Magda whispered the words of her spell and they began to rise into the air, slowly, only a few feet every second, but quickly enough to put them on the second-story roof well before the soldiers breached the door and stepped into the alley.
Brand emerged from the building, shouting for his men to find the intruders. Abigail ignored him, scanning the guard towers and smiling with satisfaction. All four of the wizards were gone. Most of her plan had worked. All that remained were Peti and Abel. Her smile transformed into a grimace when one of the soldiers on the nearest tower spotted them and shouted an alarm.
“How many soldiers do you think are bitten?” Abigail asked.
“Not enough to defeat us,” Cassandra said, waving at a pair of witches on the roof of another building nearby. In the growing light, the other eight witches became visible on four different rooftops. With their target wizards all taken safely away by the wyverns, each pair had ascended to predetermined extraction points to await Abigail’s signal.
“Good. Change of plan. We take the fortress and secure the soldiers who have been bitten.”
“How do you propose we do that?” Cassandra asked.
“I don’t want to kill General Brand, but we need to get him off the field. Without leadership, those who haven’t been bitten will yield to my authority.”
“I think we can manage that,” Magda said, signaling to Amelia to land. She was leading the steeds of the witches who had infiltrated the command fortress. After a pass, she floated in to light on the rooftop with Abigail while the rest of the wyverns picked out their riders and landed nearby.
“The wizards have been secured,” Amelia said, her face red and windblown. “Mage Jalal is with them now.”
“Excellent,” Magda said. “We’re going to take the fortress. As soon as we subdue General Brand, I want you to snatch him up and take him to Jalal as well.”
Soldiers were pouring out of every building and forming up in the central square to attack the wyverns with arrows, while General Brand shouted for them to be quick about it.
Magda and Cassandra joined hands and began chanting. A moment later, amber light arced from their hands, leaping off the rooftop, over the crowd of soldiers and striking Brand full in the chest. The light seemed to flow around his entire body, dancing and flickering over every inch of him. He froze in place and then fell over.
A great whoosh of air made Abigail duck as Amelia’s wyvern launched off the roof, landing briefly on one taloned foot, scattering the nearby s
oldiers as she carefully took Brand with the other talon. Before the soldiers could react, she was in the air and flying low over the encampment.
“Can you shield me from arrows?” Abigail asked.
“Of course,” Magda replied, casting a spell around her.
Before she stepped up to the edge of the roof to address the soldiers, she looked sideways at Magda.
“Just how many spells do you know anyway?”
“Seventy-eight,” Magda said with a little smile.
“Huh,” Abigail said, nodding to herself as she started toward the edge of the roof, but then stopped.
“Dalia, will you go get me Agneza’s head, please?”
“Of course,” Dalia said.
“Soldiers of Ithilian, hear me,” Abigail shouted into the confusion and fear below. “My name is Abigail Ruatha and I am your ally.” She drew the Thinblade, the ancient badge of royalty, and held it up for the men to see. “King Abel and many of his men have fallen under the spell of two very powerful and very evil witches. To your eyes these demon-spawn creatures seem beautiful beyond measure, but you have been deceived.”
There was a murmur of disagreement that grew into angry denials.
“Liar!” one man yelled.
“Lady Peti said that women spread falsehoods,” another said.
Several others shouted threats at Abigail.
She made a mental note of those who objected the most vocally.
“Some of those in your ranks have been bitten. They are beyond reason and must be detained until the venom runs its course.”
A soldier with emblems of rank pushed through the crowd and fired a crossbow at Abigail. The bolt turned aside at the last moment, but it came close enough that Abigail flinched.
“Lady Peti said you would lie to us,” he yelled, turning to the men behind him. “Don’t listen to her—”
Magda interrupted him with a force-push, blowing him to the ground and leaving him dazed.
“Look at his neck,” Abigail said. “You’ll see that he’s been bitten.”
Before he could regain his senses, the nearest soldier checked him, backing away like he was contagious.
“She’s right. He has bite marks.”
As they were absorbing the truth of their situation, several more soldiers fired on Abigail. This time she didn’t flinch, trusting Magda’s magic to protect her as it had so often in the past. Dalia came rushing up with Agneza’s deformed and grotesque head. Abigail took it by the horn and held it up.
“This is Agneza as she truly looks. Her dark magic deceived you—made you see her as beautiful, but she is not, and neither is her sister Peti.”
Abigail tossed the head into the crowd. Many stood in stunned shock and horror, but those who’d been bitten attacked their companions with reckless abandon.
“Subdue them!” Abigail shouted, but the din of battle drowned her out. The fight lasted barely a minute since there were only a score of men who’d been bitten. Most died in their frenzied attack but a few were saved and subdued.
Abigail watched with a mixture of sadness for the loss of life and anger at the last remaining Sin’Rath.
“I swear that I will see the Sin’Rath ended if it’s the last thing I do,” Magda said.
Abigail nodded, turning to Dalia. “Go get Sofia and Jalal. Bring them back here, quickly.”
Dalia nodded and raced to her waiting wyvern, mounting quickly and launching into the sky.
“What do you have in mind?” Cassandra asked.
“Sofia will take command of her army and Jalal will tell us where the witch went with Abel.”
“What about them?” Magda asked, nodding to the men below. They stood in a loose circle around Agneza’s head, those nearest staring with disbelief and revulsion while others tried to get close enough to see.
“Once it sinks in, I suspect they’ll do everything they can to help us.”
Chapter 12
“Lord Abel is at the gate,” Bree said, slightly out of breath.
“Is that witch with my husband?” Sofia asked.
“She is, along with a cordon of men surrounding them both,” Bree reported. “Dalia, Kat, and Amelia are on the gatehouse tower. The guardsmen have been instructed to stay off the walls.”
“Good,” Abigail said, standing up from the table in the main council chamber where Abel had conducted business. Sofia, Evelyn, and Jalal were there along with more than a dozen witches from the Reishi Coven. The rest of the wizards had remained hidden in the cave network to avoid becoming charmed again.
It had been little more than an hour since Sofia had arrived. Jalal had divined that Peti was still inside the main encampment with Abel and that they were rallying their troops to assault the command fortress. Even with a number of witches and Mage Jalal, Abigail knew they wouldn’t be able to hold it against a force of twenty thousand.
“Mage Jalal, I’d like you to stay here with Sofia and Evelyn,” Abigail said.
“I’m coming with you,” Sofia and Evelyn both said at the same time.
“This might get ugly,” Abigail said. “I’d rather you weren’t in the way when the fighting starts.”
“He’s my husband,” Sofia said.
“He’s my father,” Evelyn said.
Abigail nodded in resignation, turning to Bree. “Keep them safe.”
They filed out of the command building into a light drizzle falling out of a calm, uniformly grey sky. Wyverns were perched on a number of rooftops and witches manned the guard towers at the four corners of the fortress. Halfway across the central square, a thunderous roar stopped them in their tracks. The wyverns launched into the sky, scattering in all directions like a flock of birds fleeing a predator.
One of the witches on a guard tower shouted: “Dragon!”
Alarms went up from the encampment outside the command fortress and the soldiers within seemed on the verge of panic. An expectant stillness came over everyone in the square as they awaited the first glimpse.
“It’s blue,” Abigail said. “Can you see if it has a rider?”
“No rider … and it’s not Ixabrax,” Magda said.
The dragon flew straight for the command fortress, descending in a gentle glide, then flaring its wings and landing in the square as men and witches scattered, making ready to attack.
“Hold!” Abigail shouted over the rush of wind, shielding her eyes from the dust.
“Abigail Ruatha!” the dragon called out in a rumbling voice. “I was told I would find Abigail Ruatha here.”
Abigail took a deep breath and steeled her nerves before striding out to face the dragon with as much feigned confidence as she could muster. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her legs were trembling, her hands were sweating. She had to remind herself to breathe as she approached.
It struck her just how ephemeral and small human struggles were in the face of such a creature. The dragon’s ice-blue scales glistened with rainwater, her brow swept back into a single horn that marked the first in a series of spikes running the length of her spine. Her barbed tail flicked about like that of an irritated cat.
Magda followed to the side and just behind Abigail as she approached the dragon’s head, held low to the ground so she could look Abigail in the eye.
“I urge caution,” Magda said under her breath.
“A wise precaution,” the dragon said. “Are you Abigail Ruatha?”
“I am.”
“You will come with me,” the dragon said.
“Not without answers, I won’t,” Abigail said.
The dragon’s eyes narrowed and she moved her snout closer to Abigail.
“Do not defy me, Human.”
“Who are you and why have you sought me out?”
The dragon hesitated for a moment. Abigail got the distinct impression that she was giving serious thought to eating her.
“I am Zora, mate to Ixabrax. He has been taken and enslaved by the human known as Zuhl. You will help me free him.”
&n
bsp; Abigail couldn’t help herself—she smiled with unabashed joy.
“You’re his mate? I’m so glad he found you.”
Zora ignored her. “You will come with me … now.”
Dalia raced into the square, skidding to a stop when she rounded the corner and saw Zora. The dragon’s head snapped to look at her with suspicion.
“We won’t attack you,” Abigail said, motioning to Dalia to hold her position. “You’re safe here.”
Zora looked around warily, her tail nervously flicking this way and that.
“What is it, Dalia?” Magda asked.
“Abel and the witch fled when the dragon arrived.”
“Climb onto my neck and hold on tightly,” Zora said.
“Slow down,” Abigail said. “I’m right in the middle of something here.”
“You will set your concerns aside.”
“No, I won’t.”
Zora cocked her head. Abigail couldn’t tell if she was bemused or just irritated.
The dragon snorted a gust of chilled air at Abigail, sending shivers through her body.
“You’re trying my patience, Human.”
Abigail tried to banish the cold but couldn’t stop trembling until she considered the situation and her anger started to rise.
“And you’re trying mine, Dragon. I’m right in the middle of a war here and the outcome of this battle will shape the future of an entire island kingdom. Countless people will be affected. And you want me to drop what I’m doing and fly away with you?”
“Your concerns are of little interest to me. I care only for Ixabrax, and you are the one being that I know of who can help me free him. You will help me or I will become a far greater and more immediate threat to your future than any other enemy you face.”
Abigail stepped closer to Zora’s snout, drawing the Thinblade and holding it up for her to see, close enough to strike. The soldiers and witches all tensed, frozen in place.
“Don’t threaten me, Dragon.”
Zora’s tail cocked back, poised to strike.
Abigail turned the Thinblade in front of her and said, “This is what you want. But it will do you no good without me, so hear me well. Ixabrax is my friend and it breaks my heart that Zuhl has collared him again.” She sheathed the Thinblade. “I will help you free him, but only on my terms.”
Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept Page 14
