by R. K. Thorne
His eyes smoldered like angry coals as his gaze slid across the group, taking them in. Beside Dom and Elise, Jaena stood at the head of the long, silver-inlaid table in the meeting room and secondary library. Ro leaned against the table just around its corner at her side, and Derk was beyond him, glaring down at the maps Jaena’d brought and spread across the table. One was of Panar and its surroundings, and the other, eastern Akaria. Wunik stood beyond him, talking quietly to Devol of all people, who’d somehow managed to weasel his way into this meeting even though he wasn’t a mage. The other side held Miara’s sister and father, Luha and Pytor, and a Takaran named Teron who’d arrived with them all from Estun, along with his father Jerrin. The new mages Wessa and Sestin had been talking brightly and laughing at the far end of the table, although they quieted as Beneral entered.
The lord of the White City clenched his jaw as his gaze returned to the table’s head. To her. Probably processing that this was a meeting of mages. He didn’t want to be here, did he?
“Thank you for coming,” said Dom. “We have some… unfortunate news to share.” Checking the doors were firmly shut behind Beneral, Dom took a deep breath before he continued. “Miara is missing.”
The lord’s eyebrows shot up, some of his anger fading. That he hadn’t been expecting. “What happened?” he said, voice rough.
“We don’t know,” said Elise.
“We suspect she’s been kidnapped.” Dom folded his arms across his chest.
“Maybe worse,” Jaena grumbled.
“Are other mages at risk?” Beneral asked.
“We don’t know,” said Dom simply. “But I thought you should know. We already mounted a search with Ranok’s guard. It’s turned up nothing.” He paused, swallowed. “But that wasn’t the only reason for this meeting.”
“What is it then?” said Beneral.
Dom looked to Jaena. She sucked in a breath. Here goes. “I believe we need to organize a defense of this city, urgently, both magical and traditional.”
“You believe… ?” asked Beneral, sounding skeptical. “I assure you our traditional forces are already well organized, although were an attack imminent we might—”
“I promise you, it is imminent. I asked Wunik to check the other cities last evening, and again this morning.”
“I had been checking regularly,” Wunik added, “but with Miara’s disappearance, I…”
“It’s fine, Wunik. We all understand.” Beneral’s voice was much more understanding for Wunik.
Jaena cleared her throat. “It appears that three Kavanarian regiments have started down the road toward Panar. Our best estimate is around three to four thousand men and two hundred mages.”
A long silence stretched on as everyone fell still.
“Well, it’s not five hundred mages,” Derk mumbled. “That’s something, I guess.”
“It still leaves us outnumbered twenty to one.” Elise’s eyes were large and round. “Or even worse than that, perhaps.”
“I’ve played worse odds,” Devol said, patting her on the arm.
“I’ll order the army to begin preparations,” Beneral said quickly. “Is there anything else you need from me?”
The quiet in the room suddenly became brittle, ready to crack at the slightest touch. Derk coughed, and Jaena shifted her weight again.
“I think you know what we need,” murmured Elise.
Beneral frowned.
“Your help.” Jaena pursed her lips at him, words heavy with meaning. “We need all the help we can get.”
His dark-brown eyes locked with hers for a long moment before he sighed slowly through his nose. “Fine. You shall have it. Just tell me where and when. And what. But I need to see to the city first. It must always be my first priority.”
“You’ll defend it best by offering your aid alongside ours,” Jaena offered, but he didn’t look convinced.
Elise was nodding. “Our subjects must be warned.”
“Is there any possibility they could be heading to Dramsren instead?” Beneral asked. “Or somewhere else? I don’t want to create fear unnecessarily.”
“We can’t know for sure,” said Wunik. “But the best road for Dramsren was one they’ve already passed. They will pass another two less direct routes. I can report to you each time they do.”
“Yes, please, Elder. I’ll figure out something in the meantime. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go get started. Let me know of your plans and how I fit into them, and I’ll do as you ask.”
“Thank you, Ven,” said Elise softly.
He bowed low to her. “It’s all right, Elise. I may be stubborn, but I want to live too.” Then he turned and strode out.
Jaena took advantage of the moment of silence. “Wunik, have you seen anything else we should know about?”
“As Aven reported,” Wunik chimed in, “we confirmed the southern stronghold is gone. Only ruins and embers remain.”
Elise rubbed her face. “So many lost…”
They couldn’t think about that now. Time enough for it later, if they survived. “All right, if Beneral’s too busy for the rest of this, that’s fine, but I wanted to meet with you all today because I have plans. Plans for how to maybe even defeat them, or at least save some of the people of Panar, if not ourselves.”
“Don’t sound so confident, General,” Derk said, folding his arms with a smirk.
She rolled her eyes. “At twenty-to-one odds, I think acting confident might actually make you feel less sure of me.”
“A good observation, that,” said Devol, chuckling. Next to him, the young bronze-skinned Takaran snorted, and his father, standing at his shoulder, smiled.
“Now, my plan is this. We can’t win fighting them spell for spell. We can’t win catching their spells either; they’ll be too many, and we might miss. We need to keep them from even casting. Stop them. Distract them. Annoy them. Whatever we can manage. And I think there are ways we can achieve that with spells that are cheap in energy cost. Meaning we can do them again and again and again. We’ve got lots of options. In fact, I made a list.”
Glancing to her side, she caught Ro smiling crookedly as she unfolded her sheet. Derk and Wunik were sharing a look, eyebrows raised. Elise was still rubbing her face.
“How many creature mages do we have?”
“Me, my mother, and we’ll have Siliana when she gets back,” said Dom.
“And Luha and I,” said Pytor, Miara’s father.
“Us too,” said Wessa, raising her hand halfway in the air. “I don’t know how much we can do, but…”
“You certainly may be able to help,” chimed in Wunik. “Or you can always support with energy. We’ll see how far we get between now and then.”
“I’m hoping to get some friends to show up too, but I can’t guarantee anything,” she said quietly.
Jaena nodded. “Good. We won’t count on them till they’re here casting spells, but that’s great that you’re trying. All right—seven creature mages. That’s excellent. Now, we need some to focus on healing. If not of the soldiers themselves, then of lieutenants, commanders, and us mages. Anyone at a critical location in the battle.”
“Siliana and the queen would be best,” said Pytor. “I’m a gardener, not a healer.”
“Perfect—then you use vines. Brambles. Flowers to make them sneeze. Anything botanical you can think of to reach out to mages a mile across the battlefield and distract them from casting their spell.” Jaena scribbled their names down, with “healing” and “gardening” next to them.
“Got it.” Pytor nodded.
“I’m great with pranks,” Luha chimed in.
“Why does that not surprise me?” Derk muttered.
“That leaves me,” said Dom, “but I’ve got very little training. Wunik’s showed me a thing or two, but…”
Jaena frowned. “Hmm, I want someone on insects. Wunik, do you think you could teach that to any of the new mages?”
“Insects?” Dom said, looking dumbfound
ed.
“Bees, mosquitos, beetles, flies—they’re all hard to catch, hard to stop, and horribly annoying and distracting, don’t you think?”
“I guess?”
“If there’s a swarm of them? Coming at your face? I thought charming some into helping us could be a good strategy.”
“I can try to learn.” Dom looked to Wunik hopefully, who gave him a slight, optimistic nod.
“We’ll work on it with all of them,” Wunik said.
“All right.” Jaena nodded. “If not, you can pull energy for the healers.”
“I suppose that’s what I’m going to do too?” Tharomar asked.
“Moving on to earth, then. No,” said Jaena. “You’re going to be heating things up.”
“Excuse me?” coughed Derk.
“Metal things, Derk. Like armor and swords. As a smith, maybe he’s thought about doing that once or twice before in his life?”
Derk snickered. Ro was eying her with a mixture of surprise and amusement, and perhaps incredulity that she was assuming he’d go along with actually using magic. She wasn’t truly assuming that. She half expected him to say no. But she hoped this meeting would illustrate that they were counting on him. Sitting out of the fight at this point could get them all killed. And he’d already been doing magic at the smithy anyway, dozens or probably hundreds of times without knowing, so what was the difference? She just needed him to make it explicit.
“What good will heating things up do?” asked Ro. “If you’re not in a smithy, I mean.”
Jaena blinked. “Well, you can’t kill anybody with a sword if you can’t hold it. Or wear armor if it’s scalding you.”
Teron’s face lit up. “Oh, I like that. That sounds fun. Can I do that, too?”
“Sure. Unless you want to be on boulder-throwing and sinkhole-creating duty with me.” She was actually leaning more toward earth-quaking and monster-building, but really, whatever he could do to shake things up would be better than nothing.
“Tempting. Do I have to pick now? Which is easier to learn?”
“Heating metal is easy as hell,” she said, smiling. “But moving the earth itself usually comes pretty naturally too.”
“Oh, great, you assign me the easy spell,” grumbled Ro.
Jaena smiled, deciding to feel heartened at his seeming acquiescence. “Well, it better be easy if you need to do it three or four thousand times. Or two thousand if Teron joins in.”
“A fair point.”
“All right, is that all the earth mages?” No one said anything, which she took for a yes. “So that leaves air: Derk, Wunik, Beneral. And Aven when he returns. Did I miss anyone? Four. Could be better, but let’s hope it’s enough. I was the least sure of what you should do. Everything seems so… expensive and lethal.”
Derk smirked at that. “Yes. But storms take up the same space. If their mages are trying to use storms on the city, we’ll have to fight for them. Only so many will fit.”
“We could try to squabble for them,” Wunik said, “simply to slow them down. Go through the air picking fights but jumping to the next one without finishing them. That should come naturally to you.” Derk narrowed his eyes, still smiling. “What can I say? You’re an inspiration to me. And then that should throw them off their actual goals, if temporarily, while they prepare to fight. A fight that won’t actually be coming, ’cause we’ll be moving on to alarm the next one.”
“In their training, I saw the warrior mages favor fire quite often,” Jaena added, tentatively now.
Derk’s face darkened. “Walls of it, that’s what I saw. Built as a group. Not your typical projectile. Completely unavoidable at close range. Could easily… take down a regiment.”
The group fell silent for a moment, as if they were all wondering if that was exactly what had happened.
“Is there any way we could mess with that?” Jaena asked quietly.
“We could fight over it the same way,” Wunik shrugged. “Pick holes in it.”
“Or you could light their shoes on fire,” said Luha, smiling. Everyone turned to look at her, eyebrows raised. “What? It’s a classic. Prank, that is.”
Jaena nodded. “Yes, that’s it. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Derk, you can alternate between that and picking fights.”
“Shoe fires. Right. Children’s pranks will save the day.” Sarcastic as always, but he looked heartened.
Jaena scribbled down more notes. “Would lighting their pants on fire amuse you more?”
His eyes sharpened, smile widening. “Why, yes. Yes, it would.”
“Then, by all means.”
“I have a few ideas up my sleeve,” said Wunik, smiling. “My students tell me I’m a nuisance, anyway. There’s a lot of sand and dirt on that plain that can be blown into eyes. The simple spells can often be quiet disruptive. And fog can be a serious distraction too, especially for creature or earth mages who will need to find an air mage to clear it. I can manage to make an annoyance of myself.”
“Can Beneral? What job should we give him to do?”
“Maybe he should be held in reserve,” offered Ro. “To defend the city if we fail, with whatever means he can. He’s trained, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s very well trained,” said Wunik. “He studied with Elder Staven. In secret, but for several years.”
“Speaking of elders,” Devol asked. “Wasn’t there another elder that was supposed to join us here? Or was it Estun?”
Elise swallowed. “Dead.”
“We found him along the side of the road on our way here,” Dom said. “He was nearly to Estun. Mage slaves or Devoted must have gotten him.”
Devol swore and shook his head, looking down.
“Nevertheless,” Wunik said, his tone clearly trying to buoy the mood, “Beneral and I are well trained and can easily be rocks in people’s shoes while keeping an eye on defenses.”
Jaena finished scribbling the last name down and looked over her list. “Defenses…” she grumbled. “Ro and Teron, one of us may need to be able to shore up the walls as well. If I were them, the first thing I’d do would be to attack these walls. I hope Beneral knows that.”
“Write down your thoughts and send them over,” Wunik offered. “It can’t hurt, and you won’t have to wrangle him into your presence. He’ll read it. Warn him the soldiers could be dying if they’re up on the ramparts at the wrong time.”
“Is there ever a right time? But, yes, I’ll do that. The city guard off the walls would be best, I think. We can make use of the towers here, here, and here, starting with that one.”
“This is a good plan, Jaena,” said Derk. “And not just ’cause I like the idea of pissing all these bastards off.”
Devol propped his hands on his hips. “Sounds like you’ll make their lives a living hell. Which they deserve, for attacking the White City.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that, but if it does, we’ll be as prepared as we can be,” said Jaena.
Derk nodded. “I don’t know if it’ll help us win, but it will sure as hell slow them down.”
Her eyes lit up. “Slow them down? Yes, we will be slowing them down. But maybe we could do more…” She scratched her chin, thinking. “Yes, yes. That’s brilliant.”
“What is?” Derk mumbled.
“Let’s set some traps for them along the way too. Put some obstacles on the roads they travel.” She pointed at the map. “Make them lose momentum. Destroy the bridges, if we have to.”
“Sink the swampy parts even further. Make the forest grow over the road,” Pytor offered. “Or tangle it with thorns. I can help with that.”
“Wunik, can you bring up farsight of the road after this? We have some chaos to cause.”
“Yes, of course.” Wunik was nodding, his eyes looking a touch excited now.
“Anything else? We should go get to work.” Jaena picked up her notes, ready to leave.
“Uh, Jaena?” Luha said softly. “I was wondering about that… thing you brough
t back? Any luck getting rid of it?”
Jaena frowned. She wouldn’t normally talk about it in front of this many people, but…
“We have not been able to destroy it,” she said as softly as she could manage. “We tried heat. We dipped it in acid. Transforming the metal into stone. Nothing works. It’s resistant somehow.”
A dark hush fell across the room.
Jaena dropped her chin, not wanting to lie but hating to end on a note of defeat. “We’re facing the very real possibility that it might not be possible to destroy the brand at all.”
Suddenly, with a crack, the doors across the room flew open. The steward—Telidar—and four armed men charged in. But the men didn’t wear Akarian colors or any uniform she recognized.
Jaena’s heart leapt into her throat. Something wasn’t right. Telidar raised her arm, eyes narrowed, and pointed straight at Jaena. “Start with her.”
Ro didn’t give them a chance. He dropped to a crouch, seized the knapsack, and raced away behind her. Ice pumped into Jaena’s veins as he gripped the edge of the balcony and vaulted over it, plummeting down.
“Ro!” she cried, feeling like he had ripped her heart from her chest and taken it with him in that sack. “Wait!”
The guards rushed past them all, Telidar on their heels, and jumped over the balcony after him.
14
CLIFFS
Ro held onto the edge of the balcony as long as he could as he went over, seeking to ease the fall. He hit the ground with a poorly executed roll, but it was better than nothing for all the preparation he’d given to this idea.
He leapt to his feet and raced off toward the gate. Hopefully Tian or Pekar were on duty. Someone he knew. A peasant man with a knapsack racing out of Ranok with the steward on his heels probably would look mighty suspicious.
Wind rustled behind him, and something crashed hard into the marble wall behind him. He risked a glance back. One guard was slumped at the bottom of the wall, unconscious. On the balcony above, Derk and Wunik were leaning over the balcony, glaring.
