I raised my eyebrows. They were better than I had expected. He must have put a lot of work into them. They even interacted with the environment in a natural way, coming at the Kallorwegians from the most logical directions.
One of the older mages shoved the prince toward the trees while the others fanned out, racing to take up defensive postures among the boulders.
“Don’t lose him,” Lucas hissed in my ear, and we both took off through the trees toward where the prince had disappeared.
Both of us abandoned any attempt at stealth in favor of speed, crashing through the leaves and branches that clawed at us. A shooting burst of power rushing toward us gave me just enough warning to scream, “Shield!”
The blow crashed against my shield, nearly unbalancing me enough to send me to the ground.
“Get a shield up. Now!” I screamed at Lucas, and he retrieved and ripped a parchment faster than seemed possible. Only when I felt his power spring up around him did I relax slightly.
A black-robed mage stalked out of the trees, his eyes fixed on both of us, a parchment in his hand. Lucas turned to meet him.
“Go!” he told me. “Find the prince. I’ll handle this one.”
I hesitated, but he shoved me, and I took off running again. Twice more a screaming wave of power gave me just enough warning to throw up a shield. For the first time I felt the beginning stirrings of fatigue. Two years ago I would have been exhausted by now, but the rigorous training had expanded my endurance, and I pressed on without pause.
The sound of the attacking horde had dissipated, and I could hear shouts from the direction of the boulders. More mages would be on us soon, and I didn’t have time to waste. I flew through a gap in the trees just in time to see a black-robed figure step over the prone body of a gray-uniformed soldier.
He turned toward me, and I recognized the figure of the younger mage. Crown Prince Cassius.
I had no time to step back, out of sight, before his eyes found mine. A determined light sprang into their black depths. He stepped toward me.
I gasped my way through the binding words even while my mind scrambled to come up with a composition. In the end, I only managed to throw up a shield. I needed time to think. Now that I had found him, I suddenly realized that I didn’t know if Lucas had intended to kill or capture Cassius.
“The Spoken Mage.” His voice sounded almost reverent. “So it’s true.”
“Call off your attack,” I said to buy myself time, although the words sounded foolish to my ears. Perhaps I could incapacitate him without killing him. Let Lucas decide his final fate. I glanced back over my shoulder, but there was no sign of my own prince yet.
“On one condition.” He took several more steps toward me.
I stumbled back, his answer throwing me off balance again.
“Condition? What condition?” I hadn’t expected him to take my demand seriously.
“I will call off this entire attack and have all my troops withdraw past the Abneris—as long as you go with us.”
I sucked in a breath, my head spinning. “Go with you? Never!”
“Just think about it.” He stepped closer, and I had to edge sideways around the small clearing to avoid him.
My mind ran through the countless terrible scenarios of what might await me in Kallorway.
“This whole battle could end right now,” he continued. “No more lives lost. In exchange for just one person. Can you really refuse such an offer?”
“You’re saying this is for me?” I asked. “This whole attack is for me?”
“We tried sending intelligencers after you when we thought you were unguarded in your home town,” he said. “And then we tried a raiding party. Four whole squads and an ambush.” He shook his head. “Each time you defeated us just demonstrated how valuable a prize you really are. So here we are. The entire Kallorwegian army as distraction.”
I gulped. The breach team had never been after headquarters. They’d been after me. And I’d run straight into their arms.
This time when he stepped forward again, shock held me immobile. But a shout followed by a scream in the distance unfroze me. I spun toward the sound. Had that been Araminta? Leila?
“It can all stop right now,” Cassius repeated. “I’ll give the order as soon as you come with me.”
My shield still burned around me, so when he tried to reach out a hand to me, it smashed into the barrier of my power. He pulled it back and shook it as if the contact had stung.
“Put down your shield. Come with me. And we can end this war.”
“The war? I will never help Kallorway invade Ardann.”
He shook his head, his eyes still fixed on me as if nothing else in the world existed. As if we were not standing in the middle of a leafy battlefield.
“My father hates Ardann, has hated you with a passion for all his life. He believes you Ardannians stand in the way of the rightful Kallorwegian possession of the entire southern half of the peninsula.”
I frowned. None of this was news to me. And it hardly inspired me to sympathize with their cause. Cassius’s voice dropped lower, and despite myself, my body swayed forward to hear what he had to say.
“Not everyone in Kallorway agrees with him.”
I pulled back, my eyes searching his face as I tried to understand his words. This close I could see that his eyes weren’t black but a dark, rich brown. And they glowed now with excitement and sincerity.
“Some of us—many of us—are sick of this drain on our kingdom, of the unnecessary loss of life. But some hesitate to rally around me because of my youth.” He leaned toward me. “But with you by my side, no one would doubt my power. With you by my side, I could win the Mage Council to my cause.”
“You would depose your own father?” I choked over the words.
He looked away, breaking eye contact for the first time.
“He would burn down both kingdoms for the sake of his pride,” he said. “We owe our people better than that.”
My mind whirled. Could it be true? Could it really be that simple? If I went with him now, could we end the war?
“Once I am king in Kallmon, you would be free to go where you pleased,” he promised. “You could return to Corrin the next day, if you wished.”
I trembled, fighting within myself. If I went with him now, my friends would think I had betrayed them. But when the war ended, they would understand. They would have to. If the war ended, that was. If I didn’t find myself locked forever in some Kallorwegian dungeon or executed alongside their insane crown prince for an attempted coup.
I swallowed.
“It will only get worse if you don’t help me,” he said. “It’s already worse than you realize.”
My eyes raced to his. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“My father has been hearing rumors about the Sekalis. Rumors he doesn’t like. He’s getting…creative.”
“What do the Sekalis have to do with this?”
He gave a short laugh. “I heard you were originally commonborn, Spoken Mage, but surely you know the vast might of the Empire? If they choose to involve themselves in this war…”
“The Sekalis don’t care about the southern savages,” I whispered.
“Don’t they?” he asked. “I heard they invited an Ardannian delegation into their lands not so long ago. And, more importantly, my father heard it too. And so he told his mages he needed something new.”
I could feel Cassius closing in on me, although he didn’t actually move any closer. And though he didn’t attempt to attack me, my energy still burned out of me into my shield, and I could feel my mind growing fuzzier.
“I heard you had an unseasonably warm winter last year,” he said, watching me for my reaction. “Warm weather isn’t good for green fever. I hear it even mutated—became a killer. Fighting it must have taken a lot of Ardann’s resources. Which would have made it an ideal time to launch a large offensive.”
“No,” I whispered although my voice sound
ed weak. “That can’t have been…”
My denial trailed away, and he remained silent, letting me absorb the truth of his words. The change in the weather. The mutation. The Kallorwegian attack just afterward. The only mystery was that it had never occurred to us that it might all be part of the same offensive.
This time the prince did step forward.
Dead. So many dead. I wavered, and he stepped closer again.
“Lower your shield and help me end the war, Elena,” he whispered.
With a soft sigh, I cut off my power.
“You’ve made the right decision,” he said, resting his left hand on the small of my back and trying to guide me back out of the trees toward the boulders.
But a small sound from back in the direction I had come made us both look around.
“Lucas,” I gasped as he stepped forward into the open space.
“Elena!” he cried at the same moment as movement flashed in the corner of my eye.
A rock, held in Cassius’s right palm, swung toward my head. My mind went blank, empty of words.
And then somehow Lucas was there, thrusting me out of the way as the rock glanced off his shoulder. He grunted in pain, wrestling with Cassius as the stone dropped to the forest floor.
I scrambled backward, trying to make sense of what was happening. I wanted to call out to Lucas to stop. To tell him that I had chosen to go with Cassius. But the rock. The Kallorwegian had lured me into lowering my shield, and then he had attacked.
“Separate them,” I screamed, still too muddled to know what I should do.
The two princes shot apart, landing hard against trees on opposite sides of the clearing. Cassius fell backward against the body of one of our soldiers, and I remembered with blinding clarity who had killed the soldier. Cassius was our enemy.
I stumbled, almost falling, as I ran to Lucas, helping him off the ground. He recovered more quickly than his opponent who had become tangled in the dead soldier, and he whipped out a composition. A new mage burst from the trees behind Cassius as Lucas ripped it.
The Kallorwegian prince screamed, a brief sound of agony that cut off as he slumped against the ground. The new mage ripped his own composition, a shield springing up around both of them, before he dropped to his knees beside Cassius.
He placed his hand against the prince’s chest, and I saw it rise and fall slightly.
“To the prince!” The mage yelled. “To the prince. Retreat!”
Lucas grabbed my arm and dragged me backward into the trees.
“He’s not dead,” I gasped, unsure if I felt disappointment or relief.
“Unfortunately not,” said Lucas. “But killing him might have only inspired them to fight harder. We need them to withdraw.”
I looked at him in confusion.
“That’s a rather nasty composition of my own invention,” he said. “The kind of injury that requires complex analysis and healing. Even if they have a healer among their team, they will require space, time, and quiet to heal him. None of which are to be found on a battlefield.”
While he spoke, we had retraced our steps to our original position. From the bush where I had first hidden, I saw the black-robed mages emerge, the prince carried between them and a protective barrier enclosing them on all sides. They passed in front of the boulders, heading back toward the river.
But just as they passed in front of us, a rustle and a muffled curse sounded from the tree above me, as if Clarence had slipped and only just caught himself. One of the mages on the outside of the group looked over. With one arm he helped support the unconscious Cassius, but the other whipped into his sleeve and pulled out a curl of parchment. Gripping it in his teeth, he ripped it clean through, and then flung out the arm, pointing it at Clarence.
Before the rest of us had even realized what was happening, a bolt of lightning appeared and shot in the direction of his pointing finger. The tree exploded, fragments flying out in every direction, and the main bulk of the trunk began to fall directly toward me.
“Elena!” screamed Araminta, and then someone else pushed past her, diving at me and sending me flying.
The tree crashed to the ground, branches everywhere, some of its leaves still burning.
“Elena!” Lucas was at my side before I could take a single breath, drawing me to my feet, his eyes roaming over me.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m fine. But Clarence. Where’s Clarence?”
A soft mew of pain sent me crawling through the sparks and ash and remaining greenery. Wedged beneath the fallen trunk, her lower body crushed, lay Leila. I realized now who had gone flying past Araminta. Who had saved me.
“Leila!” I dropped to my knees beside her, tears welling up in my eyes.
She smiled up at me, her lips trembling.
“I couldn’t let the Spoken Mage die, now could I?”
My hands scrabbled uselessly at the heavy trunk. I looked around for help, and my eyes fell on the burned husk of a body.
I screamed and fell backward, my hands flying to my mouth. My stomach heaved, and I barely kept myself from retching.
Clarence. Tall, bookish Clarence, who had never had any place in a war and who had still managed to take down the first of their mages. He had taken a direct hit. No healer could help him now.
Tears fell from my eyes unheeded as determination filled me. I might be too late to help Clarence, but I wasn’t too late to help Leila.
“Elena.”
Distantly I heard Lucas’s voice speaking to me, but I didn’t turn to him.
“Lift!” I screamed, too full of frustration and grief to take time with binding words or proper limitations. The tree trunk shot up as if lifted by a giant’s hand and flung away from us, slamming against the boulders.
I crawled forward to cradle Leila’s head in my lap. With the trunk lifted, I could see the extent of her injuries. And without the pressure, her blood now flowed freely.
My head spun, and I was glad I wasn’t standing. I had no time for finesse, this healing would have to be all or nothing. This was exactly the scenario Thornton had warned me against.
But some things were worth it.
“Heal her,” I said, just as Lucas shouted, “No!”
Power poured out of me into my friend, filling her body. The trees spun around me, and the noises of my companions sounded fuzzy, first loud and then too soft.
And still the healing continued to drain me.
I had already used too much power in this fight. I could feel it in my bones. When I blacked out this time, I wouldn’t wake up.
But Leila, at least, would live.
Lucas slumped to his knees beside me. He pried my hands from Leila’s face, although the action made no difference to my working.
“I love you, Lucas,” I said softly.
“Don’t say that!” he snapped. “You can’t leave me.”
I tried to muster a final smile for him, but the energy to do so eluded me.
“Take my energy,” he said.
“It doesn’t work like that,” I managed to murmur.
“Nothing about you works the way it’s supposed to. Try! Just try.”
But even trying required energy, and I had nothing left. Centuries of testing had shown that compositions couldn’t store power.
A lightning bolt flashed through my mind. My compositions didn’t work the way written ones worked. I didn’t need to store it on parchment and then release it. As long as I didn’t use a binding, my workings happened instantly as I spoke them. I didn’t need to pull energy into a dead parchment, I needed to pull it into my living self. Everyone had been so focused on how I could increase my own energy limits, no one had ever had me try to siphon energy from someone else.
Blackness crept in around the edges of my vision as I distantly felt Leila’s bones mending and skin knitting back together. I tried to pull words in front of my eyes, but the letters swam in front of me in a jumbled mess.
I blinked and forced the last shreds of m
y willpower to pull them into line.
“Take…energy,” I whispered, clinging to Lucas’s hands as the blackness grew, eating at my vision until all that was left was the bright of his eyes. And then even that began to fade as I felt the life draining out of me.
Chapter 24
But the green of his eyes didn’t disappear. Instead his image grew stronger as fresh energy flowed into me from his hands. I could feel two energy flows now. One drained out of me as my power surged into Leila, and one, like a rushing spring, poured into me as my power drew energy from Lucas.
Hope sprang into his face as my back straightened, and I met his eyes, my own growing wide. The drain ceased, and Leila sat up. But still the well of energy from Lucas poured into me. The fog of exhaustion lifted from my brain and limbs. I felt tired still, but no longer near the point of collapse.
As I straightened, Lucas’s shoulders slumped slightly. I abruptly cut off the flow of power, remembering the origin of my new energy. Lucas leaned forward, cupped my face in his hands and kissed me deeply.
When we drew apart, he was staring at me with awe.
“Elena, you just—”
I shook my head, not wanting to hear him say it out loud. I looked up and found Leila and Araminta watching us with similar shock and wonder on their faces. Leila offered me a hand, and when I let her pull me to my feet, she swept me into a hug.
“Thank you,” she said, tears in her voice.
“Whoa.” I laughed shakily as I staggered, my energy levels still low despite the reserves from Lucas. “You saved me first remember.”
Araminta approached, and her eyes fell on Clarence’s body. For a moment she stared at it, and then she gagged and turned to throw up in the bushes. I stepped toward her to help her, but she was already turning back to me, anger in her eyes. She held out a hand to me.
“Take mine, too, Elena.”
“What?” I stared at her.
“Take my energy. Fill yourself up, and then go and make sure this is truly over.”
“I don’t…”
Voice of Dominion (The Spoken Mage Book 3) Page 24
