A hole!
The hole whips around the shield-dome like a leaf caught on a turbulent river, small, but there.
I can’t feel my lower legs.
Soldiers call out and point at the hole in the shield as it swirls around the changeable vortex of the dome’s surface. They send up a triumphant cheer.
The ax-paladin strides toward me, his muscles rippling, his burned face as close as he can get it without touching the scorching shield, teeth bared. “I will pull your people out one by one and flay them in front of you.”
The other soldiers are scrambling about, yelling to each other. I realize they’re inexplicably moving back, giving the shield a wide berth. The ax-paladin grins at something over my head and lumbers backward, as well.
“Why are they retreating?” I croak out to Jules, desperation clawing at me.
I feel his head tilt up, his hand going tight over mine.
An unearthly shriek tears through the sky above, and I look up to see a massive dragon flying in impossibly fast.
Hurtling straight for my shield.
Chapter 5: Wandshield
The dragon crashes into my glowing shield, claws out, a Keltic soldier astride its back, and I gasp as the shield buckles toward me, stopping just a hand span from my face. I struggle to hold on to it, but the force of the attack reverberates with crippling pain around my shoulders.
The muscular animal slides to the ground, landing on its haunches with a heavy thump. The creature sets its soulless white eyes on me, growling as it backs up, then throws its full weight at the shield again.
I grit my teeth and grasp the wand more firmly in my hands, wrenching magic up from the ground. My lungs are close to bursting, and my ribs are on fire as I struggle to repel the dragon’s strength. I’m hunkered down, breathing hard, the magic shooting through me in a fiery line.
“I can’t hold it much longer,” I force out to Jules, teeth clenched, despair taking hold. “I’m sorry, Jules. I can’t.”
Jules’s hand tightens around my wrist again, offering support. “You can. I know you can.”
The Icaral, dark wings flapping, hurls a fireball at me. It smashes against the shield to my right. The impact throws me back against Jules and jars my wrists to the bones, the shield nearly collapsing from the concussive blow. The glowing bubble springs back into place, but I can sense a weak spot where the fireball hit, and flames cling to the shield’s surface in a blazing circle that moves around the dome in chaotic arcs, joining the hole made by the Icaral’s fire.
“She’s weakening,” Lucian observes dispassionately to the strafeling. The dragon releases a grating shriek that scrapes painfully inside my head. The creature rises up and swipes its claws at the shield, the soldier astride it pulling the reins in tight. A great ripping sound, like canvas tearing, rends the air as the dragon hooks its claws into the shield and mauls it, creating three gaping slashes.
Hooks of magic catch inside me, burning hotter, and sweat cloaks my back. I cry out, struggling to pull in enough tendrils of power to close the holes, but my magic is dissipating to a papery wisp of energy.
The Keltic soldiers call to each other jovially as they drop down into a line and nock flaming arrows to bows. They wait, their eyes trained on me with bright, predatory interest.
“Fire!” Lucian commands.
A flaming barrage assaults the shield. They aim for the holes, but the holes are swirling around too fast, and the arrows just glance off the glowing surface. The dragon takes another swipe at the shield, tearing at it, the dome quickly rendered a flimsy net with ever-widening gaps.
“Here’s a new sport,” one of the Kelt soldiers jests as he lets loose another flaming arrow. “Roach fry!”
His arrow flies straight through a hole and lands on the barn’s roof.
“No!” I scream as the roof catches fire. I fumble and try to keep hold of the wand, almost dropping it.
Jules’s hand moves to clasp tight over my fingers, but my magic is depleted, my fire diminished to flickering embers. The numbness of my feet and lower legs spreads toward my knees as the shield-strands begin to cave in.
Stars prick at my vision, my sight blurring at the edges, my body trembling. I want to run into the barn. Jump into the flames to rescue my family. But I can’t move. The numbness has spread over my knees, and I’ve broken out in a feverish, light-headed sweat.
“Wren!” I cry out, choked by tears, my vision growing mottled and hazy.
Jules’s arm comes tight around me in a fiercely protective embrace. I can’t move my limbs. The magic is burning me out from the inside. Consuming me.
The white wand falls from my hands to the ground.
The remnants of the shield collapse and dissolve into the dirt with a steaming hiss.
“Stand back!” Lucian orders.
The soldier astride the dragon dismounts and pulls the creature back as it bares its hideous teeth at me. The Icaral is right beside the dragon, growing a tight fireball that rotates above his palm. He glances pointedly at the barn, then grins maniacally at me.
“Blessed Mages, cowering in the dirt,” the demon hisses mockingly. “The Wingeds are triumphant. We have kept our wings. And our power. And now you will burn.”
He flings the fireball, and it collides with the barn’s roof, exploding the entire top half of the structure into churning flames.
A raucous cheer erupts.
A wail of despair escapes me as I’m jerked backward, rough hands pulling me away from the barn as Jules fights to cling to me. Brandon comes up behind him and wrenches his broken arm backward. Jules cries out, wild with pain as he’s pulled free of me and dragged off.
I hunch forward, weeping as a pair of Kelt soldiers drag me back from the inferno. Jules calls my name, but I can’t bring myself to move, to fight. The world seems to tilt, everything going in and out of focus.
Wren. He’s just a child. Oh, Ancient One... Wren!
“The Roach bitch is mine!”
Through a veil of tears, I see the ax-paladin stalking toward me, a triumphant snarl on his face.
I let out a strangled, high-pitched cry as he grabs my hair and yanks me up. I dangle in the air, helpless, pain spearing my scalp.
Then a giant explosion thunders around us, and the ax-paladin’s head snaps up. The shockwaves pulse straight through me, the very ground shaking, the world lit up by powerful orange lightning. The soldiers flinch away, instinctively shielding themselves with hands and arms. All heads turn to the mountains and stare, slack-jawed and silent.
“What in the Ancient One’s name...?” a young soldier croaks out.
Another deafening explosion sounds, this one closer. Soldiers shield their eyes, blinking toward the mountains in confusion as the barn fire flares and spreads, flames licking at the door, beams cracking and falling to the ground.
My eyes water with pain as I’m wrenched farther up, forced to look right into the murderous eyes of the ax-paladin.
“What. Is. This?” he grinds out, low and fierce, but I can sense a sliver of desperation clawing around the edges of his words.
Another flash of orange just past the mountains. Alarm horns sound.
Commander Lucian barks out commands, then glances up at the flames rapidly consuming the barn, his jaw set tight. “Karver,” he orders the soldier restraining the dragon. “Guard the barn. Set your dragon on any Gardnerians who live.” He turns toward the remaining troops. “Take the men down to Crykes Field. We have to get off this high ground. Now!” The strafeling echoes the command in Uriskal.
An organized formation of dragons rises up from the central field, soldiers astride. The riders are mere silhouettes from this distance, flying toward the mountains and the orange explosions beyond.
Thunder shakes the ground as soldiers scramble t
oward the field. Lucian mounts his horse and the strafeling leaps astride his hydreena, both leaders taking off after their men at a furious pace.
The ax-paladin jostles my head, sending waves of agony down my spine. “Answer, witch! What dark magic is this?”
A black flood of rage and despair crashes through me.
I don’t care what’s coming for you. Wren is dead. Burned in your fire.
I suck in a breath and use my last shred of energy to spit in his face.
He snarls and grabs up his ax with lethal ease.
My heart falls straight through my feet as the world slows around me. My mouth falls open, and a low moan escapes my lungs. He pulls back his muscular arm, ax in hand, ready to impale me on its curved edge.
A streak of crackling, blue lightning hurtles in from my right and slams into his chest.
His body bucks from the impact, eyes bulging, ax falling. His hand releases my hair, and we fall hard to the ground—me, crumpling into a useless bundle, and him...
Dead.
I gape at his body, stunned.
Brandon’s eyes fix on mine, enraged. He lets go of Jules and stalks toward me, shoving aside the fleeing Kelt soldiers. But before he can take more than a few steps, another streak of blue lightning hits him in the chest, killing him instantly before it lashes sideways to take out a whole row of Kelts and the soldier restraining the dragon.
I lie on the ground and blink in disbelief, trying to clear my unstable vision.
A Mage strides into the clearing, slashing blue lightning from the tip of his wand. He’s young, with severely angular features and black hair, his expression fierce. His uniform is dark and marked with a single silver sphere. A black cloak edged with five silver lines flows out behind him like dark water.
The uniform of a powerful Gardnerian Mage.
One of ours.
My hazy, magic-battered mind sharpens and focuses in tight on him. His presence is overwhelming. I can almost feel the lightning burst from his wand, like thunder resonating through the ground, through my body. Straight to my core.
Another young, black-cloaked Mage appears, trailing the lightning-wielder. I flinch back as the unrestrained dragon roars, exposing long, sharp teeth, and lunges for him.
“Hit him at the base of the neck, Fain,” the first Mage calls back over his shoulder as he smashes blue lightning into two geosoldiers who’ve just emerged from the woods.
Fain points his wand at the dragon, his spell streaming out, translucent and flowing like a spring current, to collide with the dragon. The creature stops midlunge, its head jerking back, steam hissing from its nose, then its mouth. Its hide seems to shrink, as if the beast is growing emaciated before my eyes. I can see its ribs, then the outline of its skeleton as the beast’s entire body releases steam, its very life essence ripped away. Its scaled skin withers to the ground like a discarded coat.
“Help,” I try to cry out, but my voice is a ragged whisper, my shoulders uselessly slumped, my feverish cheek pressed hard into the dirt.
Fain turns, his eyes lighting on mine as my head lolls weakly against the ground. He runs to me and falls to his knees by my side, his hand coming up to rest gently on my head. His eyes flick toward the white wand, abandoned on the ground. He sheathes his own wand and picks up the powerful wand, rolling it in his hand, as if gauging the strength of it. He’s young and elegantly handsome, with aquiline features, a long, graceful neck and bright green eyes. A few curls of dark hair fall over his forehead as he quickly takes me in from head to toe.
He smiles and cocks his head, like the world isn’t falling apart around us. “I saw your shield work, Lower River Girl,” he says teasingly, his voice velvety smooth. “Nicely woven.”
“They’re in the barn,” I rasp out, desperate. “Please, my brother...”
“Shhh.” His hand goes to my limp wrist, holding it, brow furrowed with concentration as he checks my pulse, then slowly feels along my arm as if he’s reading a complicated book. “They’re out,” he tells me absently, his brow cinching tighter. “We pulled them out the back. They’re fine. And shielded. Can you feel my hand at all?”
I shake my head. My throat begins to close. I can only force out a constricted whisper. “I can’t feel my arms. Or my legs,” I tell him with mounting panic. “I... I can’t take a deep breath.”
“Tell me what you did.” His words are slow and carefully calm.
“I gathered the magic,” I rasp out, struggling for breath as the magic burns and pushes against my lungs. “As much of it as I could pull up.”
“Vale,” he calls out in the direction of the other Mage, his voice now serious and urgent, his hand tight around my wrist. “I found the shield Mage.”
Vale turns and spots me, then Jules, crumpled up in the flickering firelight cast by the disintegrating barn. Vale’s eyes go wide as his head whips back to me, a shock of recognition lighting his face.
Vale starts toward us just as the Icaral slides out from behind an untethered wagon. The demon stalks forward, balancing a ball of flame over each of his palms. His glowing eyes are set hard on Vale, his black wings flapping.
I open my mouth to warn him, but can’t speak above a whisper.
The demon growls and hurls the fireballs straight at Vale.
Chapter 6: Lightning Mage
Vale whips around in a graceful arc and slashes out with his wand.
A forked tongue of blue lighting smashes into the fireballs and sends up a crackling, spitting wall of blue that hurtles toward the Icaral.
Snarling, the demon sends a line of fire out toward the lightning wall, coating the Icaral’s side of it with yellow flames.
Their heels digging into the ground, both Vale and the Icaral furiously push their magic against the wall, which is now a glowing and sparking green. It grows taller than their heads and widens, setting the ground aflame.
“Do you need assistance?” Fain calls to Vale, worry lacing his tone.
“No,” Vale grinds out, pushing the shield forward. “It’s got to be fire. I’ve got him.”
Fain sends up a watery shield-dome over us, its translucent ripples limned with glowing orange light reflected from the torches. He must have a water affinity, whereas Vale’s is clearly fire, like mine.
Though my body is still wracked with burning waves of pain, I can still see the Icaral demon through Fain’s shield, the creature’s eyes flaming white-hot. The demon grins, pushes his palms out and forces the fiery wall toward Vale. The lines of Vale’s lightning fan out in response, and a stray bolt slams into the ground beside us, just past our shield, sending up a smoking hiss.
A Keltic soldier bursts from the forest far to our left, his ax raised. Ignoring us, he runs past the livestock pen toward the distant side of the barn.
Giant icicles, like clear javelins, shoot from behind the barn and slam into the mammoth Kelt, knocking him down, instantly freezing him. Wide-eyed and rigid as stone, he lies immobilized, ice spreading out from his body in a frosty haze.
Another cloaked, black-haired Mage strides into view, his eyes set tight on the frozen Kelt. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, this ice-wielding Mage, descending like a winter storm. Flanking him is the hateful Upper River girl—the young woman who named me a race traitor.
“Over there!” she says. “Another Kelt! A staen’en whore!” She points into the shadows of the livestock pen, where a small, dark ball huddles between the feeding trough and the water pail.
Daisie!
“Please,” I hear Daisie plead as the Mage’s eyes fix tightly on her.
Without even a flicker of pity, the Mage raises his wand and sends an ice javelin straight into Daisie’s chest with a sickening thump.
My body trembles with shock and horror.
“Gods, Malkyn!” Fury flashes in Fain�
��s eyes. But the Icaral’s shrieking hiss and Vale’s grunting cry divert his attention back to maintaining our watery shield.
“There’s another one, there!” the girl cries.
I follow the point of her finger, which leads straight to Jules. I look to Fain and our eyes lock. I try to speak, but my lungs are still burning with the magic I gathered, and I’m unable to utter a single word to save my best friend.
Behind Fain, Vale utters a final spell, slamming his ward arm down. The whole shield, both fire and lightning, goes down with it. He gracefully flips his wand back and then straight out, sending a bolt of lightning through the Icaral’s chest.
The demon lets out an unearthly howl, his whole body arcing back into a taut bow. He falls limply to the ground, and Fain’s watery shield follows suit.
Vale runs toward us.
“That Kelt, there! He’s her Kelt,” the girl cries to Malkyn, pointing first at Jules, then at me. Her beautiful green eyes are red with tears, her mouth pulled down and trembling with disgust. She jabs her finger at Jules, her tone venomous. “He goes after our women!”
I struggle to tell them how Jules saved me, how he helped me stay strong enough to protect everyone. But my voice is gone. All I can do is gasp for air.
Vale throws the young woman a knife-sharp look of cold appraisal just as Malkyn flicks his wand toward Jules.
Fast as a cobra, Vale hurls a bolt of lightning that knocks Malkyn’s ice javelin into the rapidly disintegrating barn. The javelin explodes into a shower of ice, then instantly turns to steam.
“What are you doing?” Malkyn’s voice is calm enough, but there’s rage just beneath the surface. I shrivel at the sound of his deep, resonant voice, the image of him murdering gentle Daisie vivid in my mind.
“He’s mine,” Vale states coldly.
“You seem to be forgetting that I outrank you, Vale,” Malkyn states slowly and coolly. I notice Malkyn’s uniform has two silver bars on his chest to Vale’s one.
Wandfasted Page 4
