Tribulations (Rogue Mage Anthology Book 2)

by Faith Hunter

Also, I was oddly excited about the chance to watch him again at savage blade. I knew I shouldn’t be. He was the enemy. Well, not truly. I didn’t have enemies. I hadn’t chosen a side. But as a representative of the Realms in some way he had yet to confirm, and with me carrying contraband for the EIH, he was as close to an enemy as I had. Certainly he was not my friend.

  Carrick pulled a sword from a sheath behind his back and offered it to me hilt first. It was plain—utilitarian—and yet strangely beautiful. If there was an imperfection, I couldn’t spot it.

  “Mage steel,” he told me. “My second best, but it will do.”

  As though I would argue that the blade offered was unworthy of me.

  I slid my pack to the ground and pushed it off to the side where it wouldn’t trip me up. I’d have felt better keeping it close, but it would have put me off-balance and gotten in my way. Carrick checked my grip on the hilt, but didn’t correct it. He showed me how to stand, how to hold the sword in my dominant hand, fingers just so. He didn’t have to do anything about my feet. I knew how to position them for maximum flexibility of motion, how to turn into my strikes. Immediately we moved on to attacks, lunges, guards. I caught on quickly, my borrowed sword slicing the air, nearly singing. It was probably my imagination that I felt a tingle, a connection straight through the hilt and into my hand, zipping through my arm and up my body. It might have been adrenaline, endorphins, Carrick’s nearness—

  Then we heard little Tom’s scream.

  We froze for only a second and then took off as though the hounds of Hell were nipping at our heels. I swept up my pack without a pause as I ran full out back toward camp. My heart hammered in my chest at the thought of something happening to the boy with the big eyes who’d watched Carrick so worshipfully.

  Carrick reached the edge of the campsite first and stopped. I came up fast behind him and barely swerved in time to avoid crashing into his back. We faced a maddened Maeve Doolan holding the terrified boy to her chest, an already bloody knife at his throat. The others were arrayed around the two of them, Katie crying and begging, the men with her exchanging dangerous looks as though silently plotting to take Maeve down. But crazy came with its own kind of strength, and I feared for Tom’s life. Especially if Maeve had already tasted blood, as I feared from the knife and the sight of the boots splayed behind her, which I recognized as Mad Molly’s. I wanted to run to her but didn’t dare set Maeve off.

  “Don’t hurt him,” Katie wailed. “Let him be. Please. He’s no harm to anyone. He’s only five.”

  “A fitting sacrifice then,” Maeve hissed. “Innocent.” There was no sanity in her eyes. She was clearly in the thrall of someone or something—likely whatever had invaded her dreams.

  I shot Carrick a sidelong glance, wondering what to do, whether he had a plan, whether his magic—but he was looking at my pack; I presumed that meant it was glowing again.

  I yanked it around to the front of me to see, and it attracted Maeve’s attention as well.

  “You have it with you!” she cried. “Give it to me! Give it here and I’ll let the boy go.”

  Beside me, Carrick shook his head just slightly, but enough for the boy’s mother to see. Katie cried out, dropping to her knees at his feet.

  I had a second to decide whether I dared trade the amulet and whatever else my pack held for the boy. On the one hand, Tom’s life was easily worth anything I had. But if the contents of my pack could be used to take thousands of other lives—I couldn’t let it fall into the hands of Maeve and whatever controlled her.

  To buy time, I reached into my bag for the wrapped package, which warmed my hands almost to burning. I held the glowing oilcloth out to Maeve. If she stepped up for it, Carrick could strike her down, but she was too smart for that.

  “Fetch it for me,” she told Tom, moving her knife out of the way and shoving him forward, point pressed to his back.

  Tom shrieked and instead of going for the package, ran for his mother. Maeve lunged after him, but Carrick was suddenly in her way, swinging his mighty blade down to cut her neck to sternum, the seraph steel slicing through her flesh as if it was mist. Maeve’s mouth opened, her eyes wide in surprise. And then she fell to the ground, lifeless. Katie held her son to her, pressing his face into her shoulder so that he couldn’t see, as much as he tried to wriggle around.

  She raised accusing eyes to me. “You. She was after what you had. You’re the cause of all of this.”

  I looked immediately to Carrick. If he too thought I was the cause, I was as dead as Maeve. I’d just seen proof of how swift and merciless kylen could be when dispensing justice.

  “Show us,” he said. His sword swung my way, dripping with Maeve’s blood. “And do it quickly. Maeve was touched. Whatever she served will come itself, now that its tool has been dispatched.”

  I thought of the other mule train and Molly’s haunted look. Dark forces might have come with or without me, but if I carried a lodestone . . .

  I didn’t argue.

  I set the oilcloth on the ground and unrolled it. Carrick hissed when the demon iron was revealed and let out the last of his air when I reached the amulet.

  “Spiritstone,” he said on the exhale, his gaze riveted to the red glow at the heart of the stone. “I’ve heard of these, but I’ve never seen . . .”

  I looked at him, questioningly, and he explained. “A stone that holds the concentrated essence, the spirit, of something. Terrible to trap any being that way.”

  “Even your enemies?” For my part, I couldn’t imagine anything that constrained the feral force of a dragon to be a bad thing.

  He didn’t answer, and I hurried to reveal the rest, careful not to touch the spiritstone with my bare hands.

  The package held two more amulets. One was a great cloudy green stone embedded in the broken end of a staff. Jade? Aventurine? I was no expert in these things. The other was a pendant of clear stone that immediately caught and held the light from the moon. Neither affected me the way the infernal artifacts had. They didn’t sicken or burn or attract me.

  Confirming that these were something other, Carrick reached for the moonstone, which glowed brighter the closer he came, nearly blinding as he wrapped his fingers around it.

  “Where did you get these?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the glow.

  Artifacts of the Dark and the Light. At a guess taken from some battlefield—but what battle? There’d been reports of attacks in the north, but were they worse than had been reported? Were we humans being kept in the dark? Carrick had mentioned a war. I’d thought he meant the eternal struggle, but what if he meant something much more immediate?

  And how on Earth had Whit gotten his hands on these things? What did he know?

  “I’m just a courier,” I said, but it sounded weak even to me.

  Carrick spared a glance for me. “Not anymore. Something’s coming. We both sense it. You will fight or you will die.”

  He looked to the rest of the group, making sure to meet everyone’s eyes, even those of Elder Doolan, who had collapsed into a heap by the body of his wife, slack-faced with shock. “That goes for you all. You will fight or you will die.”

  Carrick turned to me. “I’d have a word with you.” I didn’t take it for a suggestion.

  “Can I check on Molly while we talk?”

  “What—” Liam started.

  Carrick cut him off. “Make sure that all are armed. Form a perimeter around the children. I’ll be right with you.”

  If he’d had a free hand, Carrick might have dragged me off. Instead, he gestured with his sword for me to put the artifacts back in my pack, and then herded me in Molly’s direction. She wasn’t moving. Not a twitch. She was on her stomach, arms splayed, laying as she’d fallen. The slant of the lean-to cut off the light, so at first I had hope she might still be alive. Knocked out but breathing. That hope died when I reached out to her and my hand came away covered in blood that had blended with the deep brown of her coat. It was everywhere. I turned
her over to be certain, but I knew the truth even before I saw it in her open, lifeless eyes. Maeve had knifed her in the back. Molly’d never had a chance.

  My heart ached. My fault—all my fault.

  I turned to Carrick. “What do you need? How can I help?”

  “The spiritstone. Have you touched it?”

  “No.”

  “Do it. Now.” His gaze burned into mine.

  Reluctantly, I pulled the oilcloth out of my pack, partially unwrapped it. The spiritstone stared up at me from the cloth, its red heart pulsing. I swallowed hard before I took it in one hand. It was hot, which was not a surprise, but it was also heavier than expected, and I knew why the package with only a single broken sword and three amulets had weighed on me.

  “It doesn’t burn you?” he asked.

  “Not . . . much.” I answered, afraid of what that meant for my soul. Maybe only that I hadn’t chosen a side, though that was about to change. The stone’s heat burrowed into me, but it didn’t burn. For now.

  “Good. When the forces come, you will activate it.”

  “How? What?”

  “A drop of your blood and it will answer to your call.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted it to, but Carrick had already moved on, reaching for the final amulet, the green stone. He held it for a moment with his eyes closed. “Simple Illumination conjure,” he said. “Not yet spent. We’ll put this near the children in the center. The light will be at our backs, blinding to our enemies. Their eyes aren’t meant for it. Little enough advantage, but we’ll take what we can.”

  And he was off, stalking toward the others and issuing orders like a general commanding his troops. I said a brief prayer over Molly before the amulet in my hand scorched me to silence. I tucked it into a pocket and turned back toward the others.

  Liam had made sure everyone was armed. Even Katie brandished a hog-butchering knife she must have carried with her, the look of a warrior about her. She would die before she let anything get to her kids. Carrick had the adults—Katie, Flynn and Aiden, Elder Doolan, Ronan, and Liam—arrayed in a circle that he cut through to plant the broken end of the staff with the green stone in the ground.

  He called to Tom, and when the boy stepped forward, Carrick took off his coat and handed it to him as though to a squire. Tom’s eyes widened, as did mine, I’m sure, at the sight of Carrick’s wings unfurling. Gorgeous wings, starting white as alabaster at the top and transitioning to dove grey in the center on to charcoal at the tips. Or more accurately, some iridescent form of gray, as the colors seemed to shift, there and then gone in an instant, like the changing black of a raven’s wing.

  Then he gave Tom the very important task of triggering the amulet. The responsibility seemed to push back the boy’s fear. His shoulders squared, his jaw jutted out in determination and he gave a single brave nod.

  Carrick caught my eye and I caught my breath as we joined the circle protecting the children and our camp. I held the mage steel blade in the hand that would usually hold my knife, the spiritstone in the other, with my bata tucked into the belt at my waist within ready reach.

  There we stood, tense, waiting.

  “Your amulet,” I whispered, meaning the moonstone he held. “What does it do?”

  “Moon madness,” he answered, without taking his gaze from the darkness surrounding us. “Stay well to my side.”

  After a few minutes a shiver of warning went through me, despite the heat of the amulet I held. Carrick’s stone flared in his hand, and I knew. He cried out for Tom to trigger the Illumination amulet and suddenly our enemies were upon us.

  Light flared at our backs, and before us I heard a hissing and howling in reaction, a gnashing of teeth and claws that was nothing to the horror of seeing our enemies revealed—an entire army of dragonets, each a chimera of parts, each more grotesque than the next. One with a hag’s head, stringy black hair sparse across it, with a jaw that unhinged to reveal viper’s teeth and a body that owed more to mosquito than man. Another with a tail like a flail with multiple strands, each barbed. Others looked more like insects or scorpions, with segmented bodies and too many legs, or eerily saurian, with pointed snouts full of bladed teeth. So many I couldn’t take them all in. And behind them stood a nightwalker, cadaverously thin and bone white, one hand up to shield red-glowing eyes that watered in pain and burned with malice.

  We were outnumbered. Whether it was their aura or my body’s own response, fear took hold of me, wrapping itself around my heart and squeezing. The stone in my hand pulsed in time with my heart’s frantic beating. I didn’t waste the reminder.

  Blood. I tipped the blade toward my hand, giving just a tiny nick to my thumb where I held it poised above the amulet. As the first drop of blood struck it, the spiritstone bucked in my hand and then the obsidian . . . moved. The carved eyes flared, and it uncoiled, rippling, growing, becoming less and less opaque as it did. As soon as it was large enough, it unhinged its jaw and swallowed the stone at its center, at which point it exploded up into the air, becoming a dragon of shadow, huge and menacing, dripping darkness. So many legs, like a giant millipede, two sets of bat wings. One head, with a spined ridge running from the apex of its head down the entire length of its body. The stuff of nightmares.

  The nightwalker cried for his army to charge before my shadow dragon could reach full size. I thrust my hand forward the way I would release a hawk, calling in voice and mind for the shadow beast to attack the Dark army. It struck at the front line, coming up with a dragonet trapped in its teeth and another caught in its many legs.

  The rest of the creatures boiled toward us. Beside me, Carrick thrust forward his own amulet and called out a word in a language I couldn’t understand. The moonstone flared brighter than the moon itself, sending out a pulse of power that swept the horde. Those caught in the pulse turned on each other instantly—ripping, tearing, biting, rending.

  But others reached us. I shoved the remains of the amulet down my shirt, in case it needed to be in contact with my skin for me to stay in control, and used my freed hand to grab my bata. In a second I was fully engaged—bashing, thrusting, swinging, breaking. My sword was less familiar and mostly a defense at first, deflecting blows, keeping my opponents at blade length. All around me were cries of power and pain.

  “Again!” I cried to the shadow dragon, not sure whether to direct it with words or will. There’d been no time to learn.

  A bladed beak snapped at my neck, and I threw all my weight into an overhand swing, bringing the metal end of my bata down on the beak with a crack so great it bounced the beast’s head off the ground. But another attack was already coming in from my left, pincers snapping together. Instinctively, I swung the sword to counter the new menace, the way of it coming more naturally to me now. The flat of the blade knocked the pincers aside before they could pierce me, but the first creature had recovered. Its beak was caved in where I’d beaten it, a painful-looking set of cracks radiating outward, but it didn’t stop the creature from coming. It struck at me, lighting fast, its beak easily as sharp as my blade. I had to dive and roll beneath the other’s pincers as they swung back at me, coming up on the other side and straight to my feet, both weapons at the ready. I became a dervish—whirling, slashing, cracking, never in the same spot from one second to the next to confound the dragonets’ deadly aim.

  The shadow dragon swept back and forth across the field as I fought, doing devastation with each pass. Beside me, Carrick was a maelstrom of motion, but I couldn’t spare a glance to marvel. A third dragonet was circling now, more behind it. I had to finish the first two before I was overwhelmed.

  The pincers came at me again, but this time I leapt into the air, landing on top of them just long enough to propel myself even higher, up onto the other beast. I’d been aiming for its head, but only got as far as its oversized beak. I landed hard, and the beast reared back. I started to slide and thrust my sword down deep into the beak to hold myself in place. The dragonet gave a strangled squawk, an
d I hung on to the sword hilt for dear life as it thrashed back and forth, trying to dislodge me.

  The pincers came for me again, the dragonet deaf to its fellow’s agony. I gave up my hold on the embedded sword to slide away, letting the pincers smash into the other creature with a crack that I hoped would finish it off. I hit the ground rolling, coming up beneath the second dragonet with just my bata. There was a seam in the beast’s lower shell, and I aimed for it, pounding away with the head of my bata until it cracked like a crab’s carapace. The creature fell back, but I chased it down, beating it with my metal-tipped stick until it started to waver. It was going to come crashing down.

  I dove out from beneath the dragonet as it collapsed, catching my boot under its bulk. I kicked hard to get free just as something raked my back, opening fiery furrows in it. I twisted to see a new dragonet with claws the size of meat hooks coming for me. I was trying desperately to free the bata trapped underneath me when a cry I felt more than heard split the night. The shadow dragon jetted back over the battlefield to sweep up the taloned monstrosity in its maw and carry it away. Maybe my spilled blood had called it.

  A horrible laugh brought me abruptly and painfully to my feet—and face-to-face with the blood-red eyes of the nightwalker. His skin glowed ghoul-white in the light of the Illumination spell. He smiled as he saw me, but there was nothing of joy in it. Or mirth. Or sanity. I slashed at him, but he was inhumanly fast, twisted and changed by the blood he’d taken from his Dark master. He knocked my bata aside as if it was nothing and latched ragged claws around my neck to lift me off the ground. I felt the amulet I’d hidden away slide out as my shirt came untucked. Panicked, I cried for help, but only managed a gurgle.

  Of all people, Elder Doolan was suddenly there, lunging at the creature, swinging a sword inexpertly. The nightwalker lashed out with his free hand, throwing out a wave of force, and the elder flew back, leaving a gap in the protective circle we’d formed around the kids. I swung and kicked and bashed, desperate to get to them, but the nightwalker was armored and I had no leverage. I frantically pried at the fingers around my throat, but it was like trying to bend steel. His claws only dug deeper. I called on my blood to bring the shadow dragon back around, but with the amulet now on the ground at my feet, it wouldn’t respond to me.