by Jasmine Walt
And yet, if it wasn’t the servants, then who? Did a warlock bespell the wardrobe from afar? Was that even possible?
If they can spy on you from a distance, there is no reason why they can’t do other things, a voice in her head whispered, and she shivered. Maybe she really did need to be more careful. Magic was a very versatile weapon, and until Lucyan found out more information, they had no idea of the warlocks’ true capabilities. At the very least, she needed to be more vigilant of her surroundings. The last thing she needed was for Drystan and Alistair’s fears to be realized. She would survive, she would deliver her babe, and damn anyone to hell who tried to stand in her way.
12
“Faster!” Alistair barked as he ran the troops through advanced conditioning drills. He watched the men and women execute a series of explosive jumps and kicks and advanced maneuvers, all requiring great dexterity and strength. The drills he and his sisters were putting their recruits through were far more strenuous than the usual drills the soldiers had to perform, but since much depended on these strike forces, Alistair and Tariana had decided not to pull any punches.
He was running the soldiers through their third set of grueling exercises when Tariana stepped into the room. “A word, brother,” she called, pitching her voice so it could be heard over the grunts and groans in the room.
“Corporal Mian,” Alistair said, singling out one of the men toward the front of the room. The soldier jogged up to him, then saluted and stood at attention. “Lead the remainder of the training exercise in my stead.”
“Yes, sir!” the soldier shouted. He took over the drill, and Alistair followed his sister outside. He pulled in a deep breath of fresh air, free of the sweat and odor that constantly plagued the training rooms no matter how thoroughly and often they were cleaned. Alistair had gotten used to it when he’d done his own army training, but his dragon nose was very sensitive, and all the time he’d spent away had stripped the resistance he’d built up.
Tariana led Alistair down the steps of an underground cellar. It was one of several on the base, and it had been cleared of wine and food to make room for chairs and tables and maps. They’d converted it into their new war room in an attempt to avoid the warlocks’ spying, and held all sensitive meetings in here. Whatever Tariana had pulled him aside for must be important, he thought as he took a torch from the wall and blew a thin stream of fire to light it.
“We’ve received a message from Shadley,” Tariana said, pulling a scroll from her sleeve. She sat down at the table and unrolled it, her eyes gleaming. “His spies have identified a temple just on the warlock side of the border where they suspect weapons and magical artifacts are being stockpiled.”
Alistair’s pulse jumped with excitement. “How far from the border?” he asked.
“Only a few miles, in a hamlet otherwise barely worth mentioning. The spies report that the temple is quite oversized for its location, and it has three full-time priests who behave more like soldiers than holy men. Very suspicious for a place with a population of only a few hundred people.”
“Indeed.” Alistair tapped his chin in thought. “This is a worthwhile target, if we can pull off the raid without being identified as Dragon Force soldiers.”
“That’s what we’ve been training the men for, isn’t it?” Tariana pointed out. “We’ve spent countless hours coaching the dragon born to fight like humans, which is no mean feat considering that they’ve spent their lives being taught to use their full strength.” She shook her head. “They aren’t quite ready yet, but if we take a human-only force we will be decimated.”
“We?” Alistair lifted a brow. “Are the two of us going together?”
Tariana huffed. “I thought about leaving you behind, but I knew you wouldn’t hear of it, and I have had enough of sitting back and letting the others do the fighting. Drystan would not approve,” she added with a wry smile, “but his stodgy arse is locked up in the Keep, so he isn’t here to tell us no.”
Alistair laughed. “One would think he is the older sibling, not you,” he teased. Under different circumstances, Tariana would have stayed behind, but since the two of them were personally commanding the strike forces, he understood her need to ensure the first one was a success. “How would you like to proceed?”
“I want you to take your second-in-command and scout the area,” Tariana ordered. “Since you can fly, you will get there far faster. We will camp at the border until night, and if we do not hear from you before sunset, I will lead the strike.”
“Very well.” Alistair got to his feet. “It’s getting close to mid-morning,” he said, checking his timepiece. “I suppose I’d better leave now.”
The two of them parted ways, Tariana to ready the strike force, and Alistair in search of Captain Tinor, his trusted second-in-command. He fetched the captain from a meeting, then brought him down to the cellar so he could brief him.
“Finally.” Tinor rubbed his hands together in excitement. He was a fit, broad-shouldered man of twenty-five, with dark hair and brilliant blue eyes that looked like they could cut diamonds. He was also dragon born, and one of the most skilled fighters on the base. Alistair had taken to using him as a sparring partner in the evenings; the man was nearly as good as Drystan and made a decent replacement for his older brother. “I’ve been waiting forever for a real mission!”
“As have I,” Alistair said, grinning. He knew everyone was itching to stick it to the warlocks; he felt the same way himself. “We’re to scout out the temple and the town and make sure there are no unpleasant surprises waiting for us.”
“I assume you’ll be wearing a disguise?” Tinor asked, looking him up and down. “Those eyes of yours are very distinctive, and everyone in Terragaard knows what you look like.”
“Yes, I have one of those newfangled charms.” Alistair went to a locked chest and retrieved a small wooden box. He slipped on the silver ring waiting within, then turned around. “How do I look?”
Tinor choked. “Like a little old woman,” he said.
“No, really.” Alistair crossed his arms over his chest.
“I am completely serious,” Tinor said, finally giving in to his laughter. “Look down at yourself. You’re even wearing a dress!”
Alistair did, then scowled. He was indeed wearing a red, ankle-length woolen dress. “At least it’s my color,” he muttered, yanking off the ring. This only made Tinor laugh even harder, so he chucked the ring at his friend’s head. “You can wear that one,” he said.
“I have no need of a disguise,” Tinor said, catching the ring deftly. “You’re the one with the pretty eyes.” He grinned.
The two of them packed a few essentials for the trip, then took off, Tinor riding Alistair’s back. It was a joy to stretch his wings and soar above the clouds, and Alistair couldn’t help swelling with pride as Tinor whooped and laughed, sounding both terrified and elated as he experienced his first flight. Alistair knew the thrill of flying would eventually dull a little, but he had a feeling that taking someone to the skies for their first time would never, ever get old.
It only took them a few hours to reach the border, and once they did, Alistair landed in the midst of a thickly wooded forest and shifted back to human form. The town was an hour’s hike from the forest, but the spies had reported there was no safe place for Alistair to land nearby. The last thing they needed was for the warlocks to spot a dragon in their territory.
“Do you really think these will be effective against trained warlocks?” Tinor asked, fingering the amulet he wore on a chain around his neck. “How much protection can one little stone really provide against magic?”
“The way Lucyan explained it to me, it all depends on how powerful the warlock who cast the stone was,” Alistair said. “The stronger the magic within the amulet, the more powerful the spells it can repel. When Lucyan came to rescue Dareena and me from Elvenhame, he brought one of these with him.” Alistair touched the amulet resting against his own chest. “The anti-dragon spel
l was making me deathly weak and ill, but with the amulet, it only took me a few hours to recover most of my strength. He must have gotten very lucky, because any spell that can blanket large swaths of an entire kingdom must be very powerful.”
Tinor shrugged. “Maybe, but if the spell truly did extend over such a wide area, perhaps it was diluted,” he said. “I imagine that if the warlock who cast it had focused only on the castle, you would not have recovered nearly so fast.”
Alistair shrugged. “That may be so. It just means we’ll need to be quicker with our swords than they are with their spells.”
They reached the hamlet in good time and stopped at a tavern for some lunch. While they ate, they chatted up the locals and listened to the buzz of conversation. As the spies had reported, the community only had a few hundred members, and many of them lived in the outlying lands rather than in the hamlet itself. There were fewer than a hundred residents within the town’s borders. The residents were a bit standoffish, but once Tinor and Alistair explained that they were refugees running from the war looking for work, they became more sympathetic to their plight.
“These bastards really seem to hate outsiders,” Tinor muttered when they’d left the tavern. “I can only imagine what they’d do to us if they knew who we really were.”
“Hush,” Alistair said in a low voice as they made their way to the center of the hamlet, where a buxom server had told them they could find the temple. “Someone could be listening. Let us not draw any more attention to ourselves than necessary.”
Tinor looked around, then nodded. There were not very many people walking the streets, and in a town as small as this, newcomers would stick out like a sore thumb. Alistair spotted a woman peering out the window of her small cottage, her face barely visible through the curtains. He smiled at her, and she abruptly pulled them shut.
No warm welcomes for him, then.
“There it is,” Tinor said as the temple finally came into view. “Bit bigger than I thought, wouldn’t you say?”
Alistair blinked. He’d expected a simple wooden structure, but this temple was carved from some kind of gray rock. It dwarfed the humbler buildings on the street with its tall, forbidding presence, and a chill ran down his back as he spied a robed priest guarding the front entrance. His hair was shorn close to his scalp, and beneath his black robes, Alistair spied broad shoulders and the hint of a powerful physique.
“If that’s a clergyman, I’ll eat my own sword,” Tinor muttered under his breath, and Alistair privately agreed. The man guarding the entrance was far too vigilant, his keen eyes taking in everything around him. Alistair and Tinor moved on, walking up the street at an unhurried pace. If they loitered around the temple for too long, the guard would get suspicious, so instead, they took a roundabout way to the back. It seemed to be unguarded, but for all they knew, there could be wards.
“I wish sunset wasn’t so far away,” Alistair muttered under his breath to Tinor as they moved on. “We’re going to be sitting around here with our thumbs up our arses for hours.”
Tinor shrugged. “I think I saw a few men playing chess in the back of the tavern. We could always join them.”
Alistair shook his head. “We have to keep our eye on the temple,” he said. “The last thing we need is for the warlocks to suddenly decide to move whatever they have hidden there, or worse.”
The two of them parked themselves on a rooftop a few streets away. Tinor had brought a telescope to spy on the temple, but Alistair needed no such device—his dragon eyes were sharper than any hawk’s. From his perch, he could clearly see the temple, and he marked the faces of the priests and visitors who came and went. He also caught a glimpse of a few of the strike force soldiers off in the distance, spying on the hamlet from behind the cover of a large hill.
“It’s time,” Alistair said, nudging Tinor. The sun had slipped beneath the horizon now, washing everything in shades of red and gold and purple. The colors were fading fast, twilight descending upon everything. Tariana and her men would be readying themselves now. Quietly, the two of them dropped to the ground, then made their way back to the temple. Torches had been lit around the entrances, the priests casting long shadows against the stone façade.
Alistair and Tinor waited behind a building around the corner. Gradually, the strike force soldiers trickled in—Tariana sent them in pairs, as a group of twenty swarming this small town would have drawn far too much attention. Finally, Tariana herself came, the last two soldiers beside her.
“Any surprises?” she asked Alistair in a low voice.
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Good. Let’s go then.”
They approached the building from the rear, which was unguarded as there was no entrance. The sound of children laughing drifted in from one of the open windows a few streets away, and Alistair’s gut clenched at the thought of doing battle so close to innocents. But there was nothing for it—this had to be done. He only hoped the women and children would have enough sense to stay far away from the temple until they were through.
“I’ll go ahead and take care of the one guarding the entrance,” Alistair said in a voice so low it was nearly inaudible even to his own ears.
Tariana nodded and motioned for him to go ahead. Alistair took a few silent steps forward and prepared to hop over the railing that ran around the structure. But just as he flexed his legs, he felt a sizzle in the air.
“Get back!” he roared at the soldiers as fire exploded all around them. He leapt through the flames, then rolled on the ground to douse them before springing up over the railing. Behind him, he could hear the screams of agony from the men, and his gut clenched with guilt and sorrow. Glancing back, he saw several men who had not managed to get clear rolling on the ground. Tariana had taken off her cloak and was beating them, trying to douse the flames. He sincerely hoped Tinor wasn’t one of them, but there was no time to dwell on it. The warlocks were already on the alert.
Alistair drew his sword, then sprinted toward the front of the temple. Two priests charged around the corner, their faces twisted as they shouted battle cries. Magic glowed around their hands, and fire bloomed in Alistair’s chest, an instinctive response that he had to clamp down on. With lightning speed, he hurtled a dagger at one of the warlocks just as he raised his hand to fling whatever battle magic he’d conjured. The knife sank deep into the man’s throat, but he managed to hurtle the ball of glowing magic anyway. Alistair lunged at the second man’s legs, bringing him to the ground and avoiding the attack all at once. The magic smashed into the wall behind him, and debris rained down all around them.
“Who are you?” the other warlock snarled. He tried to scramble to his feet, but Alistair was already standing over him again. Ignoring the warlock’s question, he drove his sword through the man’s chest.
“With me!” he shouted as Tariana and the other strike force soldiers came running from around the other side of the temple. He didn’t know how they’d gotten past the ring of fire, and didn’t care—all that mattered was they were unhurt. Yanking his bloodied sword out of the dying man’s chest, he led the charge into the temple. It was a cavernous space, much bigger on the inside than it looked from the street, with a giant statue of Rumas. The warlock god wielded a staff in one hand, and a giant flame sat on the open palm of the other hand, no doubt kindled and tended by the temple staff. Next to him was a boar with wickedly curved tusks that came up to the god’s hip. Standing in front of the massive statue were four more warlocks, all dressed in priest garb. A glowing red dome surrounded the four of them.
Alistair only had a split second to take all of this in. One of the warlocks made a hand gesture, and a volley of arrows hurtled toward them out of nowhere.
“Shield!” Tariana yelled. The soldiers complied, but not fast enough—four were taken down, arrows protruding from chests, throats, and heads. The rest charged forward, attempting to break the shield, but it held fast. Three men were incinerated upon contact.
�
�Give up,” one of the warlocks sneered. “You cannot hope to defeat us.”
Alistair and Tariana locked gazes. A silent understanding passed between them, and they both whipped off their cloaks. “We’ll see about that,” Alistair growled, letting rage flow over him. “Fall back! Now!”
The soldiers retreated, and the bewildered expressions on their faces disappeared as Alistair and Tariana shifted. Their forms rapidly expanded, taking up most of the space in the temple until they towered over the warlocks. As Alistair rose up to his full height, flame boiling in his chest, the magical dome seemed puny, as did the warlocks within. Their faces went bone white with fear, and the shield flickered.
Tariana wasted no time unleashing a torrent of fire at that first sign of weakness. The warlocks attempted to bolster the shield, but when Alistair added his own fire to the assault, they were unable to hold out. Their screams of horror and agony filled the temple, and in seconds, they were reduced to ash.
Stunned silence descended upon the temple, and yet Alistair could still hear screams. It took him a moment to realize they were coming from outside the temple.
Shit, Tariana said, her voice echoing tersely in his mind. Bystanders.
The two of them hastily resumed their human forms, then wrapped their cloaks around themselves to hide their nakedness. Seconds later, several men hurried into the temple, wielding pitchforks and old blades that had seen better days.
“What is the meaning of all this?” the oldest man demanded, his voice harsh. He was a tall, imposing figure with pure white hair and pale eyes. “How dare you defile our sacred temple!”
“I am Captain Grensham,” Alistair said, stepping forward to confront the man. “We were sent here by order of King Wulorian himself to punish a renegade group of priests who were planning sedition.”
