He practically hurls me behind the clutter of damaged barrels, torn jute sacks and other mercantile debris that’s piled up. My elbow makes painful contact with a large crate as I duck down for cover. Then the light is snuffed out as Jules throws an old grain sack over the both of us, and not a moment too soon.
Heavy boot heels thud down the alley and across the dirt ground right in front of us. “She ran back here!” a man yells.
“Must be headed for the Roach Bank,” another answers.
My breath seems outrageously loud. I cover my mouth and nose with my arm to stifle it. I start to feel faint as my pulse hammers in my ears and fear threatens to crack me into a million jagged pieces.
More boots thud by, but the voices begin to recede. “She went this way! Toward the river!”
The alley finally falls silent, and Jules peeks out. Weak twilight seeps in under the sack.
My head is spinning, my heart thundering in my chest. My brother. My grandfather. My entire universe constricts to one singularity: a suffocating fear for my family.
I murmur a fire spell and pull up a ball of magic from the ground.
The spell sizzles up in a buzzing thread to curl tight inside my chest. A vibrating pain grows, prickling like a rotating ball of needles in the center of me. I can’t do anything with this power, not without a wand, but it emanates a steadying warmth that stays my mounting panic.
“We need to get to the top of the peak,” I rasp out breathlessly to Jules, jerking my head toward the small mountain at our backs. “We can see everything up there. And it’s the quickest way to my cottage.” I give him a significant look. “If we can get there, I can get hold of the wand.”
Jules’s eyes widen, but he nods in assent. He knows I’ve experimented with Grandfather’s wand, even though I’m not supposed to. The wand once belonged to my father, but when he died, our Mage Council gifted it to my virtually magic-free grandfather in tribute. It’s ill-constructed, this wand, the laminated wood unevenly layered and of substandard wood, but we’re lucky to have it. Most Gardnerians, especially poorer ones like us, don’t own wands. Even a coarse wand like ours is outrageously expensive—difficult to craft and even harder to obtain.
But I know how to wield it.
Unlike most females of my race, I’ve some magic in me.
Every muscle tensed and on high alert, Jules quietly pulls the sack off us entirely. Hunched down, we slip into the brush behind the refuse, into the slice of forest at the edge of town that quickly slants upward to form Crykes Peak.
It’s our small mountain, Jules’s and mine—one of the only places where a Kelt and a Gardnerian can go together and not be noticed. We’ve whiled away more than a few summer evenings at the top, reading, laughing, talking about history and alchemy, Jules sharing stories of the University with me.
It’s getting darker, and the sunset through the trees is lovely and peaceful, a mockery of the terrible chaos that’s been unleashed. There’s a hard chill seeping into the air, autumn beginning to dig its claws into summer.
I grasp Jules’s hand as he half pulls me up the sheltered, rocky path that cuts through the trees, my heavy black skirts slowing me down. We know just where to go—we’re familiar with all the footholds, and my dark clothing blends into the long shadows.
When we reach the jagged peak, my chest hurts like I’ve swallowed cut glass and my stomach is a painful knot.
More fiendish dragons soar overhead, racing across the sky. Jules and I flatten ourselves among the surrounding rocks to avoid being sighted. One dragon flies so close to the top of the mountain that I can make out the black scales of the creature’s underbelly, its taloned feet curled up underneath, tipped with terrible claws.
Then the air around us goes quiet again, and we rise, trembling, to our feet. My heart lurches as I take in the sight before us.
There’s a whole host of dragons in the air now, soldiers astride them as they wing their way north. They’re like a flat, black swarm of mammoth insects, screeching at each other, wings whooshing. The brilliant orange sunset silhouettes their evil forms.
I swivel my head, following their movement. I rise a bit more and turn my gaze down toward the Wey River, toward home.
Our cottage is a single, bright flame.
All the Gardnerian homesteads up and down the river have been torched and are burning bright. The ball of steadying magic inside me is snuffed out in one painful jolt.
“My house!” I cry. My knees give way, and I stagger down to the rocky ground.
“No,” Jules gasps, his eyes fixed on my cottage, face stricken.
“Oh, Ancient One,” I cry, a great sob tearing from my chest, my palms clinging to the rock behind me. “Oh, Jules, do you think they’re alive?”
He falls beside me as more dragons streak by, his hands coming up to grip my arms.
“Ancient One, help me,” I wail, my chest heaving, sure I’m going to retch. I look to Jules with crippling despair. “Do you think they killed them?”
He opens his mouth, but no words come out. The entire world seems to fall away, but he catches me as I crumble, his arms closing around me.
“They’re dead, aren’t they?” I moan into his chest, rocking my head side to side in grief.
“I don’t know,” he says, clutching me tight.
“My mother’s gone. My father. Not Grandfather and Wren, too!” His hand comes up to cradle my hair. “Oh, Jules,” I sob, “Grandfather should have let me have the wand! He should have let us leave sooner!”
“I know. I know it, Tessla.”
“I could have saved them!” I let out a low, agonized wail as he holds me.
Choking on tears, I pull away from Jules and stagger up to peer north.
The horde of dragons is a dark splotch moving relentlessly over the Caledonian Mountains toward central Gardneria. The Kelts have turned the entirety of broad Crykes Field into a military staging area. Lines of dark tents and geometric rune-marked structures have been erected and hundreds of torches are lit. Some of the dragons are being flown down onto the field.
Horrified, I turn south and spot a large mass of uniformed Keltic soldiers wearing russet military tunics over black pants. They’re riding in tight formation into Doveshire via the Southern Wayroad. Urisk soldiers flank them—powerful geomancers with pointed ears and the blue hair and sky-blue skin of their military class, their cobalt-blue armor marked with glowing georunes. Some of the Urisk are riding hydreenas, the terrible, boar-shaped beasts hunched and bristling, tusks gleaming in the dying light. Some are riding in their rune-powered horseless carriages with glowing runes for wheels.
The Western Wayroad is clogged with Keltic families fleeing toward the coast, away from the fighting, their carts piled high with people and possessions and festooned with red flags bearing black Xs.
“They’ve an Icaral demon!” I gasp as a black-winged soldier rides into view astride a hydreena, his eyes pinpoints of fire. He looks much like the blue Urisk soldiers, save for his glowing eyes and the feathered black wings that fan menacingly out from his back, not entirely unlike the dragons above us.
An Evil One.
I slump down, dizzy, my back to a broad rock as I teeter sideways, weeping.
Jules crouches down and takes my arm. “Come away with me.” There’s steel in his voice. “I’ll find Keltic clothes for you. We’ll escape.”
I thrust my arm out at him, my skin glimmering faintly emerald in the gathering darkness. “It’s no use, Jules. How could we hide this?”
His jaw hardens. “I’ll smuggle you into Verpacia.”
I’m shaking my head as the tears stream down my face. “They’ll catch us. I’m sure they’ve closed the border.”
“I go to the University,” he insists. “I know people. People who could help us.”
“But my family
,” I keen in despair, wracked by sobs.
“I’ll be your family.”
He says this with such rock-hard conviction, the tears catch in my throat. I look to him, stunned.
“I’ll marry you,” he insists. “Somehow, we’ll get to Verpacia, and I’ll marry you. We’ll get a cottage there. Somewhere remote. I’ll find work at the University and I’ll hide you.”
“Gardnerians don’t marry,” I remind him, my voice choked with grief for my family, my people. “We wandfast. Then we seal the bond.” Anguish rises in me like a terrible wave. “Just leave me, Jules. I’m going to get you killed. You can’t help me.”
“I can.”
I take a deep, shuddering breath. Kind, foolish Jules. I touch his face. His jutting cheekbone. His infinitely intelligent eyes.
“You can’t marry me, Jules,” I tell him, my mouth trembling. “I’m not a Kelt.”
His expression turns fierce. “I don’t care! When have I ever cared?”
“I will always be Gardnerian.”
“Then be Gardnerian,” he stubbornly returns. “We’ll make a life in Verpacia. And when things calm down, we can wandfast if it’s possible. I don’t care. I’d bind myself to you.”
I’ve known for some time that Jules fancies me. It’s been building in him over time. I’ve seen it in the heat lighting his gaze when he looks at me. In the new tension between us. But he’s always held back, polite and unsure of my feelings. To hear him speak so boldly stuns me into silence.
“We’ll go up through the mountains,” he says. “You can stay here while I get a horse and supplies.”
“What if they’re still alive?” My voice is small and weak, clinging to senseless hope. My crippled, doddering grandfather and my sickly eight-year-old brother. What are the chances they’ve escaped all this?
He gives me a hard look. We both know the likely truth.
“What would they want you to do?” Jules asks, his jaw set tight.
A bitter laugh cuts through my tears. “Grandfather? He’d want me to push you clear off that cliff.” I start to weep anew at the thought of my gentle, staunchly religious grandfather and his overwhelming hatred of Kelts. Grandfather would be horrified at the bizarre prospect of Keltic Jules trying to wandfast to his granddaughter, for the same reasons that he foolishly, blindly heeded our religion’s strictures that barred women from wielding wands without first securing the Mage Council’s approval.
“What would Wren want, then?” Jules asks, softer this time.
I think of my brother’s wide, ready smile. Roughly, I wipe the tears from my eyes, steeling myself. “He’d want me to go with you.”
“Will you do it?” Jules asks, his hand coming up to caress my face. “Will you come away with me?”
I nod and let him pull me into a warm embrace.
A twig snaps to my left.
“Well, isn’t this touching.”
Jules’s whole body stiffens, and I blanch at the sound of the familiar voice.
Brandon stands just a few feet away, smiling triumphantly as three Keltic soldiers surround us and unsheathe their swords.
Chapter 3: Prisoner
“Where’s my brother? And my grandfather?” My voice is coarse and low with dread as I stumble along the wooded path toward Crykes Field. I’m stealthily summoning up bits of magic from the ground as I’m herded along, storing the power inside me, though it hurts to gather so much without using it.
All I need is a wand.
Brandon laughs. “Quit your nattering, witch.” He gives me a rough shove, which almost sends me hurtling to the ground. I choke back my outrage as I regain my balance.
Narrowing my eyes, I pull up another thread of magic and wind it around the others deep inside me. Gardnerian magic runs along affinity lines—fire, water, air, earth and light. I have mostly fire.
Lots of it.
Jules is being mercilessly driven ahead of me. One of the soldiers, a tall, bearded man, gives my friend’s head a hard smack every now and then, laughing when Jules nearly falls sideways. Night has taken hold, the stars shining pinpricks in the sky, shadows engulfing the woods around us.
I flinch as yet another dragon flies overhead, my hidden magic sending a knifelike jab to my ribs.
So many dragons. A sickening terror tries to pull me under, but I push the magic’s simmering power at it, keeping the fear at bay.
We’re close to Crykes Field, and I can hear the raucous laughter of soldiers up ahead. My nerves fray as the shrieks of countless dragons echo above and across the ground in the distance. A staccato burst of orders is shouted nearby, and I can make out rough, low voices speaking the sharp language of the Urisk.
Urisk geomancers are powerful magicians from the southern lands, able to harness the latent magic of gemstones and crystals. And their military has recently formed an alliance with the Keltic forces.
Against my people.
The woods open up, and Jules is pushed into a clearing. I hesitate, heart thudding, my steps skidding to a halt.
A mammoth barn looms before me. In the darkness of the forest, I hadn’t realized that we were approaching Mage Gullin’s sprawling farm. That the enemy soldiers had decided to place part of their encampment here.
There are Keltic and Urisk soldiers standing and talking in small groups, the barn just beyond them. Torches on iron stands have been thrust into the dirt. They ring the large, circular clearing between farm buildings, the flames casting everything in a sinister, orange glow.
This flat land extends to the steep bluff that lines the entire rear boundary of the farm, offering a clear view of the full expanse of Crykes Field below. Countless campfires are scattered across the field, flickering between the rows of Keltic military tents and the georune-marked shelters of the Urisk soldiers.
My cottage and those of my neighbors are still ablaze in the far distance, just past the river, and the smell of charred wood hangs heavy in the air. Far to the north, I can just make out the dark shapes of dragons soaring across the night sky, still winging their way toward Gardneria.
“Move,” Brandon orders, giving me a shove from behind.
A few Keltic soldiers turn to give me the once-over, their red uniforms the color of blood in the torchlight, their faces filling with dark interest at the sight of me.
I push waves of my fire magic against the fear that threatens to undo me, the surge of warmth bolstering my courage. As I study the scattered Urisk soldiers—whose magical talents make them far more intimidating than the Kelts—I find myself pulling up even more magic to steady my nerves. They’re lethally streamlined in appearance, their scythes glimmering with inlaid gemstones and strapped to their backs. One geosoldier rides by on a snarling hydreena, the beast’s ugly, tusked head twisting from side to side against its tight reins.
There’s a military sameness to most of the blue-hued Urisk soldiers, but one soldier stands boldly out. He’s the most heavily rune-marked soldier here, and the dancing torchlight reflects vividly off the gemstones adorning his armor. Sapphires encircle his wrists, looped over his palms, and a string of multicolored gemstones is thrown diagonally over his chest. An aura of glowing power surrounds him like a soft blue mist, and the sheer quantity of gems he carries marks him as a strafeling, one of the most powerful classes of Urisk geomancers.
The strafeling stands next to a Keltic commander with a neatly trimmed blond beard, the Kelt’s deep red uniform trimmed with multiple black bands around his arms and edging his cloak. Beside the Kelt commander towers a huge blond ax-paladin, one of the strongest and most feared of the Keltic soldiers, a colossal ax strapped to the warrior’s broad back.
All three men turn to look at Jules and me as we’re pushed forward, the Kelt commander’s eyes hard and steady, the strafeling appearing curious. The ax-paladin crosses his br
oad arms in front of his muscular chest and regards me with an open leer.
I cling to my magic, swallowing back my terror, and force myself to hold the ax-paladin’s gaze. Then my eyes alight on something thin and white tucked into the side of his weapons belt. The ball of magic churns white-hot in my chest.
A wand!
But why would a Kelt soldier be carrying a Gardnerian wand? Kelts don’t possess any magic.
“Who’s this?” the Kelt commander barks at Brandon, gesturing toward Jules.
Jules’s fists are clenched by his sides, blood trickling down his bruised, split cheekbone. His eyes narrow in defiance and an attempt to focus, his glasses long since smashed under Brandon’s boot heel.
“Jules Kristian,” Brandon announces, stepping forward with bravado. He spits in Jules’s direction and shoots him a look thick with disgust. “A race traitor.”
“He was trying to hide the Roach girl,” one of our soldier escorts explains, his lip curled with malice.
The ax-paladin lets out a low laugh and looks me over, his eyes heavy-lidded. “More than hide her, I’m sure.” He smiles suggestively at Jules, then turns to me. “Do you want a wand, Roach girl?” He bares his teeth, reaches down toward his groin and hoists his member. “I’ve got a better wand for you than that skinny boy.”
The strafeling shoots the ax-paladin a look of disdain, but Brandon and the Keltic soldiers laugh, savoring the idea of my humiliation. I beat back my fear and shift my attention inward, pulling two more long, crimson strands of magic up from the ground. The power pushes at my ribs with searing heat, straining toward the wand.
“Leave her alone,” Jules snarls, his eyes bright with fury.
“Jules,” I caution, but his eyes are locked on the ax-paladin.
“Or what?” Brandon jeers, shoving Jules so hard he stumbles back. “You’ll split our heads? Do you swear you will?”
Jules launches himself at Brandon, catching him off guard, and lands a solid blow to his broad face that knocks Brandon to the ground.
Brandon’s surprise morphs to rage, his expression murderous. With the surrounding Keltic soldiers cheering him on, Brandon rises to his feet and rushes at Jules. He wrestles my friend to the ground, pinning him with his superior size, and punches him hard in the face.
Wandfasted Page 2
