Marked For Magic

by Daisy Banks

  She glanced across and he stood naked, too. He glowed pale golden in the reflected light of the flames. Flickers of blue leaped out toward them.

  “Surely, we would be better clothed.”

  His soft laughter rolled through her mind.

  “What is amusing?” She could think of nothing to make her laugh under the leaden, violet expanse above them.

  “Would you like clothes?” He caressed her face with his glittering palm.

  “Of course, wouldn’t you?”

  Her red gown slid over her in a cool watery wave. “Well, it’s a close approximation. I’m sure my bodice was never quite so low.”

  He conjured the dreadful, tatty, green robe for himself, and she bit her lip to stop herself telling him he could at least have picked the new black one.

  More of his low, soft laughter slid through her.

  “How can you laugh here of all places? How far must we travel?”

  “I don’t know how far we need to search, but you will know it when we approach the entity responsible for all this.” His fingers squeezed hers, and his love spiraled around her from her toes to the crown of her head. The connection between them, deepened by the ritual, intensified the power he offered her, and the force of his love blotted out all else.

  “Thabit, don’t think about love now, or I won’t be able to concentrate.”

  “Very well, we will go on.”

  The heat beating against them increased in ferocity, and tongues of fire flicked like whips slashing up from the sides of the path. The tortuous shapes of blackened tree stumps loomed in a parody of life, stark against the strange sky.

  She had to concentrate to still the bursts of flames so they could move forward along the track. She focused hard, supported by his strength. The fires would diminish, but surged forth anew once they moved on. “I found you near here.”

  He nodded, and she sensed his vigilance increase with each step. A wave of nausea crept over her. She swallowed thickly, her throat parched by the hot, dry air. Her focus slipped, and heat from the path shot through her feet.

  “You must control it. You must not permit it to master you. Work with me. Feel the power and use it.” His message doused her in snow.

  She gasped at the frigid chill. Tiny trickles of water slid down her neck as the snow melted. She shook her wet hair. “You didn’t need to do that. I know what to do.”

  His intake of breath was sharp when she set cool patches of ice before them like stepping-stones. The flames lessened for a moment, but returned with more ferocity, shooting high into the air with a rush of heat to scorch them. She fixed her concentration on the sides of the path and drove the heat and fire back down.

  “Ah, well done. The flames love to obey you. Whatever creature controls this plane, it senses we’re here. You will have to maintain your concentration with me now.”

  She drew from his strength to pinpoint her focus on the path. Thabit was generous with the strength he gave to her. She pushed the gnawing doubts back into the pit of her stomach. She could do this. A tingle of power flashed and hummed through her body.

  Their goal took a nebulous shadow form in her mind. “We will find the creature responsible for this place and all the suffering.”

  Larger black rocks edged the path here. Huge lumps, shiny like glass, reflected the dull sky, and others appeared torn and jagged, blasted apart by heat incalculable. The path narrowed and became only wide enough for her to follow Thabit. Tall rocks, so misshapen they looked like they had once been liquid, edged the thinning trail. She still held his hand. Once her small patches of ice dissolved into the cinders, the heat renewed its threat.

  The coolness of the forest pool they swam in each morning sprang to mind. She gasped— before the thought skimmed away, it became a reality. They splashed through cool, ankle deep, water. Clouds of vapor swirled upward into the dark sky. The fumes made Thabit splutter with her. He glanced over his shoulder. “Perhaps a little too much?”

  Two steps later, they hit an invisible barrier. Their joint energy swept it away with ease, but with the sound of a tolling bell, a savage agony tore through her and silenced him. The pain slashed like butchery knives twisting inside her, forcing her to stand still. Their enemy must know of their presence in this realm, and its invisible attack was cruel.

  Beads of sweat sprang on Thabit’s brow. She crushed his fingers with hers.

  Pain twisted her shoulders as if every rock thrown at her when she left the village landed there. She absorbed the wounds and raked in the others tormenting him. Her body shook with the effort, her jaw ached, and she struggled against a scream. She fought off the pounding and gained control.

  Relief came, and with it, his approving smile. “Well done. Stay alive to the threats.”

  The water she had conjured sucked at the glowing cinders, giving a few moments of respite before the surge of flames renewed.

  Thabit stood motionless, teeth gritted, as another battering hammered her. She sagged with the effort to drive it off. Turning his back on the direction the attack came from, he hauled her into his embrace. Tongues of flame returned in a ferocious effort to ensnare them both.

  “Are you all right? The creature seeks a weakness between us. Do not let it find one.” His gaze searched hers, and waves of his love engulfed her, so all she wanted to do was to stay in his arms.

  Though she and Cassandra had spoken of what may happen here, she had not understood the pain might claim her with such ease. She had thought so much on the act necessary to be here, the rest had paled in significance.

  “Are you ready to go on? Can you sense we are near it?”

  Wrapped in his arms, shielded by him from the worst of the heat, she shook her head. She used all her power to locate where the entity lurked in the darkness. Finally… “I have it!”

  Like a candle flame in the night, she could sense another presence other than him. A consciousness that was not Thabit’s reached out to her, and with it, a deep hunger. The thing was ravenous and in pain. “Thabit, it’s crying. Whatever it is, there is weeping and sorrow.”

  “Interesting, you think so. Be wary.” He released her, and they turned back the way they had headed before the attack.

  Grasping his hand tight, she clambered with him up the narrow path into the low hillocks of rock. The power of the entity grew in her mind to pull at her like a strong river current. Even with Thabit’s support, she fought to prevent being swept away. Like she’d experienced in the wretched wicker cage, starvation gnawed in her gut so her stomach ached with the need.

  “Block it or it will take control of you. I need you more.” His thought steadied her, and she squeezed his hand in answer. She sent the weeping to a tiny part of her mind, and concentrated on them moving forward.

  An icy wedge of determination replaced any trace of Thabit’s earlier levity. His intense level of concentration astounded her, but even with so much of him engaged in the search, he still spared enough to bolster her power. Right now, he needed little aid.

  “We’re close!” She shot the thought to him. The sense of malevolence and hunger tugged at her and threatened to break her control.

  “I know.” His thought snapped her back in command. “Well done. I need you now.”

  She pushed the darkness away, and as she had rehearsed with Cassandra, focused on the purity of the silver light. The heat around them dissipated, and a gem-encrusted scabbard now swung at his hip.

  He gripped the silvered sword hilt and glanced back to her with a smile of encouragement. “Thank you, a good notion.”

  The fiery darkness drew at her strength, and tendrils of its psychic force sought to enter her mind. She allowed it to, because if it focused on her, then Thabit might be free of it. “How could this thing have found Alicia?”

  Sobs swelled through the darkness. A cry that spoke of pain and loss, the bitterest sorrows. A tightening coil of fear twined around her heart as they stepped closer to
where the sounds came from.

  She searched in one direction for the source of the noise while Thabit looked in the other. “There!” She pointed toward a clump of rock.

  A small, naked child crouched in the cleft of two dark masses. The child’s white hair and lily pale flesh, wickedly incongruous with the brutal surroundings, made her stomach churn.

  “Thabit, look!” She slipped her hand from his at the child’s whimper. Her skirt swirled in her haste as she dashed over the jagged rocks.

  “No!”

  Though she heard Thabit’s cry, she bent down to scoop the child into her embrace. The wide, tearful glance flashed hot orange like flame.

  The small, naked boy roared, “Alicia.”

  Her hair lit with arcs of fire, and the child fell from her arms. She screamed, while the now grotesque child swelled in size, his smile widening.

  Flames engulfed her body. A savage strength sent her cartwheeling into the air and dumped her to the ground in a blaze. The laughing boy grew to dwarf her. His orange eyes glowed, and he shrieked in triumph.

  Thabit’s thoughts sought her, but she must deal with this herself. Even while the screams of pain and horror left her lips, she reached with her mind for the pure, cool, white light to douse the fire.

  Changing shape again, the creature towered above her and bellowed its fury when the tormenting flames snuffed out. A soft, pale mist surrounded her, moisture seeping into her blistered and blackened flesh to make it whole.

  Thabit leaped forward, and his outline gleamed. “If you wish to fight, do so with me!” His voice echoed in the darkness.

  The huge snout-like nose on the massive head slowly turned away from her and toward him. The colossal beast snapped coal-black teeth at her when she edged closer to Thabit. The clang of the sword as he drew it from the scabbard made her still. “You’re wrong. The sword won’t stop this creature. What will send its consciousness back to darkness is to starve it, to starve it of energy, to take all it has created.”

  “You have the key.” Thabit had a hand on her. He clutched the tattered remnant of her sleeve and tugged her over the cinders and nearer to him.

  The creature roared and bellowed at them. Flames licked around its three-toed feet.

  She dragged herself up onto hands and knees, and though still unsteady, managed to stand with Thabit. They huddled as if they sheltered in the one corner of a raging hearth. Their only shield was the glimmer of white light she managed to create.

  He slipped his arm about her and pulled her closer. At Thabit’s nod, she stripped her thoughts from his and focused to create the luminous whirlwind in her mind. The pure energy had the strength to take the creature’s source of power and destroy it.

  The towering, fire-red beast, clothed in flame, rushed toward them. Thabit hauled her behind him. A huge wall of ice he created slowed the monster. The flames sizzled when the demon’s splayed, colossal fingers appeared at the top of the frozen wall. The glowing fingers dug in to the dripping ice, tearing lumps free.

  Shuddering with the strain, she tried harder to focus on the white light until it filled all her vision in a whiplash-tailed spin. Thabit’s mind joined hers to guide the whirlwind out and up.

  The ice wall shattered under a barrage of flaming fists.

  “Be gone from this place! Leave this plane! Your time here is done.” Thabit’s commands rang loud above the giant’s hisses and screeches.

  At last, as her knuckles cracked with the sheer force of her clenched fingers, the white light swept out and over the path to wrench great swathes of rock and flame away.

  Remorseless, the power they had created swirled over the remaining pathway and sucked the monster up into the expanding cone. The huge creature howled and shrieked. Arms and legs flailed and cascades of flame rolled toward them with the demon’s cries, its size diminishing as the fiery light dimmed like an ember. Fragments of powdery ash broke away from the thrashing limbs and drifted down like petals onto the surface of a pool.

  The howls from the orange glow above them lessened. More of the cinder path, rocks, and stunted trees soared up to rotate with ever-growing speed.

  No longer fed by the will of evil, the flames dimmed from the scorch of blue to yellow. The fragment of time and place the creature had created spun into the pale funnel of their power.

  Thabit held her secure while the torrent of light spilled from her body. A starry white beam shot from her raised fingertips and pointed above. Up and up, the whirlwind dragged everything around them. Even the sullen violet sky leached into the pale, spinning cone.

  The starless black void surrounded them. The creature’s shrieks became distant. Shaking with the violence of the radiance torn from her, she clung to Thabit’s sword belt.

  “Not everything, or we will end up with it.” Thabit warned.

  She fought to rein in the incredible power whipping through her and around them. They both balanced on tiptoe now. A tiny patch of the cold cinder path remained.

  One last pitiful shriek of the demon echoed a second before the air stilled.

  Her only awareness was Thabit’s arms clasped about her.

  “Home, my love.”

  The darkness shivered, her fingers slipped from his belt, and she tumbled down spinning.

  Chapter 26

  As though yanked by a fierce cord, Nin shot back into her body. A second of peace. Their ritual had protected her so the painful burns were left behind, but the physical sensation between her spread thighs came crashing back. Thabit took a deep breath above her. He too, had returned. When he withdrew, a fiery heat roared inside her sex to wake all her senses. “Gods!”

  “My love?” He moved beside her, lifted her from the blanket and cradled her into his embrace. “You have paid the price for us all, and never will I forget.” He kissed her brow.

  She touched her hair and curled a long strand around her fingers. The recollection of the moment when they had all sparked to fire returned, but he shook his head. “No, do not remember.”

  She nodded. It was best to let go. What had happened in the strange other world could not touch her here. Their shared power protected her physical body in the present. Only the recollections could hurt her if she allowed them to linger in her thoughts, and there was no need to think on them.

  The flame was out and their work done. They would never need to return. An ache in the pit of her stomach blossomed, and she hunched over in his embrace.

  “I’ll get you a cup of wine. After you have drunk, we can sleep. Say you’ll forgive me, please?”

  She nodded unable to do more.

  The power they had generated had been necessary even if painful for her in its creation. He settled her on the white blanket. The huge room was silent. The others must have gone hours ago. The fire had burned down low.

  She glanced at the window. Telltale smudges of dawn touched the horizon beyond the snowy field and the lake.

  He returned with a goblet and handed it to her. “Will you ever be able to trust me again?”

  She laughed, for she had given him everything it was possible to give. “Do you think I will trust you less now?”

  Cassandra had warned her how things could be. The journey had been worse than she had imagined, but by joining with Thabit and defeating the evil creature, she had taken on the fullest of her powers. At present, the change felt an uncomfortable fit, but she would recover. Silent while her understanding grew, she sipped the wine, and only then did she reach over and kiss him.

  “Who but you could have taken me there? No other would have faced the demon with me. I love you and this…” She brushed at the smear of blood on her thigh. “This will wash away.”

  He took the cup from her, captured her face in his hands, and kissed her until the room spun around her.

  “Stay here while I end the ritual.” He moved from candle to candle, murmuring words of thanks for protection and the gifts of the gods. The room grew dim and gray wh
en the candles snuffed out.

  He rejoined her and caught her chin gently in his hand. “I am taking you to bed. We will sleep, and when we wake, we shall tell them the tale. I have several herbals to help if pain or recollections bother you.” He wrapped the robe about her and draped his own about himself.

  “Bed with you?”

  “Yes, do you think I would allow you out of my sight, out of my embrace ever, if I had a choice? We have waited long enough.” He lifted her up in his arms.

  A rush of pleasure surged through her, exhausted and pained though she was. “You promise?”

  “I swear you will be mine for as long as you wish to be. I will be yours until the stars are gone.”

  One or two sleepy guards roused, but did not speak as he carried her through the corridors.

  “Thabit?” She yawned. The door to the tower chamber opened at his silent command.

  “Later, my love.”

  Wine and biscuits lay on a tray, a massive white candle had burned half way through, and the fire in the hearth smoldered low. He settled her on the bed. “More wine, it’s an order, and after you will sleep.”

  She sipped from the cup he gave her and tasted the herbs that Cassandra must have added to the wine. When the cup was empty, he took it from her, set it down, and lay beside her. He wound his arms around her and his love cocooned her in its warmth.

  “Sleep now.” His thought once more tipped sleep into her, and she knew no more.

  * * * *

  The sound of running water woke her.

  “It’s all right, go back to sleep. I’ll wake you in a little while,” he whispered, his breath warm by her ear.

  She didn’t open her eyes, but rolled over to doze. Low sounds in the room filtered to her through the bed curtains. Only when the noise ceased, and she drifted toward full wakefulness, did Thabit pull back the curtains.

  “It’s time to bathe and to feed you breakfast.” He lifted her out of the bed and pulled the tangle of the robe from her. The silky fabric gone, he placed her in a huge, brass tub full of warm water.