Sorceress of Faith

by Robin D. Owens

  She was a success! She had succeeded in goals that she’d set for herself. She had mastered her Power and become a Circlet. She had found a man to love and share her life with. Most of all, she had saved her brother.

  And why was Mahlyar using these hateful puppets? To distract. He didn’t seem to be doing anything else, like firing up a thunderbolt, he was just watching her. To test her? Perhaps. To psych her out. Yes!

  And because he was afraid of her.

  The knowledge dazzled her.

  She aimed her wand at him, sent fire spearing toward him.

  Palm out, he deflected it.

  “You are the failure!” She could play his game. “You failed to raise your Tower.” It didn’t sound too awful to her, but his features contorted. He shot a stream of darkness.

  She jerked her wand, countered the stream, sent it into the ground at his feet. He snarled.

  They circled. Anxious faces outside the dome—Pascal, Swordmarshall Thealia, Alexa—watched. She couldn’t let their fear become her own.

  He flung back his hood and howled, shocking her.

  She jumped back. His face was patchy with color, bloodred, Lladranan gold, dead gray. A large brow ridge overhung his deep-set sockets. One eye showed small and red, the other hollow bone. Four-inch tentacles sprouted from around his mouth, three at each temple, thicker ones at the angle of his jaw.

  Marian thought she’d go mad if one of those tentacles touched her.

  His bolt of dark light caught her in the chest with hideous cold. Her heart slowed, her torso numbed. Her brain went foggy.

  Then her left ankle gave. No! She hopped. Stomped her left foot, both feet. Her soles tingled as energy from the ground whispered through her. A tremor shivered through her. Not enough energy, not enough Power. Still, she flicked her wand and fire spurted. He waved it away, advanced with lips curled back showing sharp pointy teeth.

  Marian set her feet, settled into her balance, raised her wand and summoned all the Power she had to shoot a flame.

  With a finger-snap, Mahlyar built a shield to deflect her fire.

  She stared as he kept coming.

  He yanked the wand from her hands, shrieked with pain and let it fly. It hit the forcefield, then the ground.

  So much for a wand as a weapon. Fear pooling inside her, she stooped and picked up a rock, threw it at him.

  It hit his shoulder and he grunted.

  This wasn’t good.

  Sneering, he flexed his fingers. Claws flicked from the tips, gleaming and murderous.

  She ran for the wand. It was better than the rock, maybe still had some Power. She’d thrown a brithenwood stick once to good effect.

  Scooping it up, she blessed adrenaline for her new strength. This time she whistled a short spell—“Kill, kill, kill”—and dredged up the last shred of anger and hate and destructive emotion from her body. She whirled and flung the wand, mind directed.

  It skewered his left hand, torched it.

  He screamed, blew on his hand and encased it in ice.

  With evil determination, he flicked a writhing thread of dark energy at her. It caught her left ankle, twisted, twined. Trapped.

  With one jerk he had her feet out from under her, was dragging her to him. He grinned, his black tongue licking over thick lips, his facial tentacles pulsing bloodred in triumph.

  Terror immobilized her. She flopped around. Caught.

  Think!

  A pointed rock bit into her bottom.

  Use the pain!

  Use your Power!

  From the sun. She reached and it flowed into her, energizing.

  From the ground. Her nails clawed the ground and rich energy poured into her.

  Energy. Power. Use it!

  How?

  She was a Weather mage. Lightning!

  Yes.

  She couldn’t Call it from outside the forcefield.

  But she could call it from inside herself. She formed the bolt, her whole body arcing as she sought to contain the energy. It ran through her head to toes to head, a closed circuit, escalating in Power, infusing every cell, sparking down every nerve. Suddenly her Power was there.

  She stared up at Mahlyar, and he bent slowly down, grinning, tentacles curling, reaching, grasping.

  She jammed her arms out, fingers stiff and spread. Lightning!

  Blue fire zapped him, flung him back to hit the forcefield. He fell to the ground.

  She stumbled to her feet and limped toward him. Her left ankle hurt—she sent a streak of lightning energy to encircle it, halted at the pain as her own Power burned away all traces of the Dark.

  Mahlyar staggered to his feet and swept his right arm out, claws extended, gleaming and sharp. Sent a dark ray shooting.

  With a thought, electrical Power rippled around her, shielding her. Nothing could get through from outside.

  The next blue bolt of fire from her fingertips tore open his chest. She reached in and ripped out his blackened heart. It shriveled as she closed her fist around it, nails digging in. He screamed and the world shook.

  The forcefield around them popped like a bubble and all the energy that they had confined and not used swept into her. Powerful energy, clean, sparkling, snapping energy, like a thunderstorm rolling through her and leaving lightning. She staggered and fell to her knees, dropped her head.

  I will take that, Sinafin said in a tuneful voice. A beak pressed at her right fist, thrust through her fingers, snapped up the small stone heart in her hand.

  “My God,” someone said in English. Female. Alexa. “Shit, Marian, when you learn to fight you don’t mess around.” Her voice wobbled. “Ripped out the heart. Shit. I think I need to sit down.”

  A presence joined Marian on the ground. She felt it to her left.

  She was full to bursting with Power, her skin stretched tight, the inner flesh of her lips turned out. All her senses were…off. She hoped they weren’t fried, but suspected they were, along with her brain synapses. All fried. Poor Marian. Too bad. Such potential.

  But she’d always known she’d come to this.

  She heard whispering, then Bossgond said loudly, “She will never have such Power again. It is the best time for her to raise her Tower, I say!” He walked up to Marian and she saw him as a wavy ripple of shades of yellow in the air. The gold tone was particularly striking and she stared at it.

  “Ahem.” Bossgond cleared his throat. “Marian, it is time to raise your Tower.”

  Raise her Tower! The stunning idea nearly jolted her from the Power daze. She’d heard, read, thought a lot about that, but she wasn’t ready. Oh no. Hadn’t she overcome enough challenges today?

  Someone took her elbows and lifted her to her feet. She didn’t want to be upright or to think. She’d just look at the pretty gold—

  “Marian,” said Alexa. “You’re staring at Bossgond’s crotch.”

  Oops.

  “Marian.” Another male voice, reverberating across all the chords of her being. Soft, tender, caressing her name. Jaquar, who drew close.

  She’d have thought Jaquar would be shades of red, like his maroon robe, but he was blue. From the palest gray-blue, icy-white blue to deep indigo. And the most beautiful blue was his eyes.

  “Beautiful blue eyes,” she said.

  “Yes, yes,” Bossgond snapped. “Let’s get you to Alf Island. I know the place there that called to you.”

  “Heart to heart, soul to soul. Cleave. Transfer. Go. Come…” She wanted Jaquar’s heart and soul to cleave to her own. Cleave was a word used in the Christian marriage ceremony, wasn’t it?

  “Take her other arm, Jaquar, and let’s move before her brain explodes with an overload of Power!”

  Just escaped brain being eaten to face brain exploding…Some days you couldn’t win. Marian giggled.

  Bossgond continued shouting orders. “Transfer to Alf Island through the innermost pentacle. It has remnants of Power, too. We need to get her there and started on her Tower raising fast, so she can use th
is energy before it burns her out.”

  She stared at the yellow banner that was Bossgond. He flapped in the breeze, agitated. She’d never seen him so disturbed, never heard him emphasize his words in normal speech. Then came a time that bent and twisted.

  “This is something I don’t want to miss,” shouted Alexa. “We’ll follow on our volarans.”

  Wind and fire and water. The scent of wildflowers so perfect that she wept and felt tears sizzle dry on her skin.

  Her feet connected with the land and the rootedness shocked her clear to her heart. This was her land. Her place, forever.

  The yellow waves of air approached, holding a large peacock-colored pearl. Bossgond placed the lovely pearl on her shoulder.

  Hello, Marian, Tuck said, nuzzling her neck.

  Tuck! She was back. She was home.

  “Raise your Tower, Fifth Degree Circlet Marian Dale Harasta!” Bossgond thundered the command, brooking no denial.

  Marian responded instinctively.

  And it started. The first of her Power siphoned from her, coalescing into a three-dimensional image of the perfect Towers for her, and her mind cleared. She smiled. Who could have guessed?

  They were square. She’d wanted square after all the round towers she’d inhabited. They weren’t simple, but a Victorian fancy of what castle towers should look like. How fun. How amusing to plant this here on Amee.

  Power encased her. She could do anything. She could raise these towers!

  So she settled into her balance, digging her toes into the rich dirt that was nothing like the soil of Colorado. Tuck dug in, too, his claws into her shoulder.

  She sorted the Power inside her. The stronger tune of Amee herself wound through Marian’s blood, and she felt the energy of the land settle in her belly.

  She swayed a little to catch the spray of the incoming surf on her face, distilled the Power of Water: surging, ever flexible, ever changing, yet strong enough to carve beaches and canyons. The hidden, secret, infinitely unknowable depths of the oceans flooded her with energy. She hunkered down to hold the Power. But it had blinded her, so she raised her arms, tilted her face to the sun to feel the warmth of it, of fire.

  A solar flare licked her body, burned through her to mix with, then separate from the water energy. From swollen, cracked lips she said, “Wind! Air!” It whirled around her, buffeting her, and she laughed, for she could feel only the touch of the air and what she contained within herself, could not see, or hear or taste the spray of the tide on her lips. For an instant the wind brought all the dark, rich scents of Amee. Then that sense, too, vanished as a whirlwind as it spun inside her.

  She thought she shrieked with joy, with the incredible Power. It tugged at her in four directions—a pleasure-pain tempting her to succumb to the elements, be torn apart in ecstasy. She danced with it, the streams of Power whirling around her in rainbow of colors, surging through her in great chords of melody so beautiful she thought she might splinter into iridescent shards.

  A great tug of something else, some other Song, shuddered through her. A quiet, strong melody of love and lust and yearning. Jaquar. It was easier to remember his name than hers. Marian? Yes, she was Marian. Once of Earth and now of Amee.

  And by the Power she would raise her Tower.

  She screamed with laughter at the simple rhyme, but it focused her, made her concentrate, harnessing the Power—so hard, so difficult when it raged wild—shaping it, harder still—did she pant, sweat, turn bloodless with the effort? And fling it into the shape of two connected towers—like Tower Bridge of London.

  Too great an endeavor for both towers and the bridge and the walkway. So the bridge shrank and Marian fell and felt the hard ground of Amee cut into her knees. And still she strove to build, to manifest in reality what she knew in her mind. No bridge, but instead of arches for traffic to pass through, the bottom stories were solid! She grunted with effort.

  “Done!” someone shouted. “Let the Power go!”

  What Power? It was all used up. Marian fell to her side, and the tiny bit remaining of the four elemental Powers trickled from her grasp into…Tuck? He’d hopped onto the ground and now bathed in the last shining remnants of her Power.

  Feeling came first. Jaquar cradled her in his arms, but the Song of Amee linked her to the planet and the grass was cool against her calves. She had Towers and a world and a man.

  Then she noticed the exquisite mixed fragrance of sweet grass and flowers and sea spray.

  “Well now,” Alexa said, and Marian could feel her hearing sharpen. “That’s a sight I never thought to see again.” Alexa chuckled.

  As if Alexa’s words were a spell—and they could be, couldn’t they? Alexa was as strong in Power as she, though trained in a different discipline—Marian’s blindness faded and overbright colors and shapes replaced it. She blinked and blinked again, and found herself staring at Alexa, who stood holding Marian’s brithenwood staff and her own Jade Baton. Alexa gazed at the two Towers of Tower Bridge. They were connected with a little Victorian fancy of a walkway on the fourth level.

  Marian looked at them, delighted. She never would have thought that her “perfect” image of a tower would be these fussy buildings. What a fabulous house. And Ritual room. And study. What wondrous things she could do in a place like that.

  “Two,” Jaquar said, and his chest rumbled against her. “Two. For you and Bossgond? Or for you and Andrew?”

  Marian tried to speak, but coughed. Her throat was dry. Had she been screaming as she’d thought?

  Bossgond squatted down near them, held a wineskin to her lips. She drank gratefully, uncaring that some of the thick mead trickled down her chin.

  “I thought.” She met Jaquar’s eyes and saw anger there—and deep hurt. That wasn’t acceptable. She wanted his smile. Clearing her throat again, she said, “I thought for me and Tuck.”

  Jaquar’s hurt flashed out of existence. He laughed. “That hamster is prancing.”

  Tuck scrabbled up the side of her leg, danced up her thigh to her stomach. Her mouth dropped open. He was a rainbow-furred hamster. He sat back on his haunches, something large in his right cheek pouch. She had the suspicion that it was a shriveled stone heart and didn’t want to contemplate that.

  Tuck said, “I am pleased. But I do not need a whole Tower.”

  He nuzzled her neck, then hopped off her to the ground and grew. Marian goggled, then stared some more when he was joined by a matching foot-long rainbow-colored hamster.

  Sinafin.

  “We will make a little turret and take turns living here and with Alexa.” Tuck came up and his tongue darted out to lick her chin. “Thank you. I shall live long and have Powerful offspring.”

  “Huh,” she said, and tried to sit. It was beyond her strength, but Jaquar moved so she was propped in a sitting position against him. He held the wineskin now. Bossgond had risen and moved away to join everyone else in surveying the Towers.

  “Perhaps,” Marian whispered, “you’d like to live with me in one Tower and we could use the other for our studies?”

  Jaquar shook his head.

  Her stomach tightened and the mead turned sour in her mouth.

  “They’re square,” he pointed out, “and silly looking. My masculinity might be called into question.”

  Bastien, Alexa’s Pairling, had wandered back and now snorted. “I think they’re fine Towers. If you don’t want them, I bet I could convince Alexa—”

  Jaquar hugged Marian tight. His heart was thumping hard, but his voice was cool. “I want them, and Marian.” He glanced up at Bastien. “I’ll use your worthless self as witness. I hereby formally ask Marian to Pair-bond with me in a coeurdechain.”

  Bastien snorted again. “You Sorcerers, always so formal. Why don’t you just kiss her?”

  So Jaquar did, and she felt the Song that rose between them twine them together. His total self opened to her and she responded. She tasted the true intensity and richness of life that could be found in giv
ing and sharing love with a partner.

  She broke the kiss and touched his cheek, smiling. “I look forward to exploring every aspect of our lives and our world with you.”

  Then she studied the people around her. To her amazement Andrew-Koz was there, swaying in the hold of a massive Swordmarshall, eyelids heavy.

  She jumped up and ran to hug him. His arms came around her, but he didn’t hug her back as he always had. Her heart flipped into her throat. “Andrew?”

  He blinked. When he answered, his words slurred. “I think you should call me Koz.” He was speaking Lladranan! Of course he knew French, and Marian had tried to teach him rudiments of the language on Earth. Did the brain have language patterns—? Her mouth dried.

  “Koz?” She stepped back, and his arms fell to his side.

  “Yep,” he said in English, and that reassured her a little. He switched back to Lladranan. “And I think I’ll live in Horseshoe Hall at the Marshalls’ Castle. I’m a Chevalier now.” He puffed out his chest, but it was a larger chest than he’d had and he overbalanced.

  The Swordmarshall steadied him. “Easy, lad.”

  Koz-Andrew glanced at the Towers, then to her. “Go, Marian,” he said, and the lilt when he said her name was the same, though the voice was deeper. He smiled, and somehow that was the same, too.

  She grabbed his hands, which were not at all the same. “I’m your sister and I love you. I want you to be happy.” She didn’t want him fighting. But it was not her decision.

  Marian swung her gaze to Alexa’s. Koz had been a part of Alexa’s household. The other Exotique winked and nodded, and Marian released a relieved breath. Alexa would watch out for him.

  Koz was taller than Marian, so she stood on the balls of her feet and brushed a kiss against his cheek. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Koz said. His eyes narrowed as he looked past her to Jaquar, who came up to them and placed an arm around Marian’s shoulder. “Looks like you’ve got a man. Don’t take any crap from him.”

  She smiled. “I won’t.”

  Bossgond announced, “I think I will establish a school centered around my Tower.” He stood, hands on hips.

  “Wonderful!” Marian said. The old Circlet needed to be more sociable. She looked at Bossgond, a grumpy old man who’d become the father she’d never had. Alexa and Bastien gazed at her, smiling, too. Sinafin and Tuck paraded around as peacocks and Marian caught Tuck’s chirp.