I was spellbound, my heart still in my throat, his circle around us a wall of fire reaching up to the ceiling, the floor beneath bubbling molten rock, and through it all, he did not notice nor did it put a dent in his energy reserves. Not able to speak, I simply stared at him.
Someone yelled at him to stop melting the floor, and without even looking at it, he calmed the circle down to snapping embers.
He looked down to the table and I could breathe again.
“Tell me your plan.”
I was dizzy. My plan? My plan? Why didn’t we just forget my plan and turn his flames onto whatever building they were using instead? I’d known he was powerful, but perhaps even Barnes did not know the magic of the Drake Lord they had roped into their cozy little circle. Even as I was thinking this, the practical side of me took over control and started talking. I told him my plan, and for an instant he seemed remorseful, as though regretting his outburst. The practical side of him came to light, too, and he said, “I will be the bait.”
“I thought you’d be the anchor.”
“Leif is a better anchor, Barnes a better tracker, and you need to guard Lilly.”
“I won’t have you go alone.” Though from the way the floor still gave lazy burps and Mordon was unphased, my objection was moot even to myself.
“I’m the best option.”
I smelled the boiling rock and sighed. “Fine.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I worked on the preparations for a finding spell while waiting for Mordon to ferry the rest of our group to me. I explained the plan three more times, once to each Lilly, Leif, and Barnes. Or rather, I explained it twice to Lilly and Barnes saw the spell I was working on and finished it so I could explain the details. She didn’t care for it, and I didn’t much either.
“There has got to be a better plan than playing storm the evil fortress!”
“It’s this or we go to the sorcering council and jump through heaps of loops and by the time they are willing to do something, it will be too late,” I said with a shrug at her oversimplification of the plan. Sadly, it was the best description of my plan I could think of.
“I don’t like it,” said Lilly.
“I like the Storm the Evil Fortress Plan. Simple, to the point, and best of all, it sounds like war,” said Barnes with a toothy grin. Lilly rolled her eyes.
Leif looked up from helping Mordon stabilize my compass trinket. “Constable, I hope if this is reminiscent of combat it is closer to a battle than to a war.”
“We will see,” said Mordon, “Here’s the knife, Barnes. Fera, you’ll have to give him a breath of wind soon as—”
“—as soon as he does the hand-wavy thing and flicks his fingers,” I said.
Barnes started on the spell—it was more of a ritual spell using hand motions and symbols than one requiring words. Though I followed it in my head without problems, one look at Lilly was all it took for me to see that she was utterly lost; Leif was just a little better. Mordon’s mouth was a single grim line. I was eager for my cue in the same way a hound anticipates a fox hunt. I shouldn’t be so excited for this, but I was. I should be frightened. I was frightened. My palms were sweaty, my throat had a lump in it, and my hands quivered. But I was also looking forward to my second chance to get this right. This time, I would save Railey. I had to.
I almost missed my cue, but I remembered just in time to move the wind, helping it to follow the pattern on the ground even though it should do it by itself. For an instant, I was entranced by the pattern itself. Closing my eyes, I felt like I was winding through a maze, washing up each turn, racing down the straightways, then spinning in the center. For an instant, I felt I was being pulled into a tunnel like water down a drain pipe. On the other side, the enemy stood ready.
I swayed on my feet, and realized I was back with the others and Barnes was stabilizing the spell. I had never left, but I could not think of a rational explanation for what I had experienced. Mordon’s eyes darted up to mine and I gave him a weak smile.
I said nothing about the ambush as the others were preparing to step through the gaping black hole in the air in front of Barnes. I had an idea about how to cope with it, and I didn’t want the others to freeze up or get nervous. “Barnes and I should go first, with Mordon taking up the rear,” I said with an authoritativeness I didn’t feel.
Leif approved, though he frowned at me, knowing I wasn’t telling all. I refused to offer the information. Barnes put his hand through the hole and said, “After you.”
I stepped into the darkness and was swept off my feet by an invisible current, almost loosing the invisibility ring I was putting on. I rolled with hard twists and turns, the magic pulsing about my ears and chilling me to the bone with its clammy touch. Something tried to snag my clothes, but it might have been my imagination or the wind in my ears. I gasped for a breath, inhaling the stench of molding seaweed.
My feet skidded across stone and gritty sand. Rolling, I stopped in a kneeling position. Before my eyes could adjust to the dim light or the other side could start their trap, I touched the ground and cast a fey circle. Spells rammed it almost before the circle enclosed me, and the circle sprang to life, casting a luminescence into the shadows. Several more spells energized the circle when Barnes thudded next to me, not even swaying from the adventure.
“Gremlins, pixies, and an ogre,” Barnes said after studying our situation. He pointed, almost hitting me in my invisible face. “Take down the ogre, I’ll work on the rest.”
I touched the circle and the energy flowed into me; but instead of releasing it harmlessly, I pulled it together into a ball the size of my head and shot it into the shadowy area Barnes had indicated. Much to my relief, the ogre was closer than I thought and the energy bolt sunk into his chest, blowing him backwards. The ogre hung in the air for a second, then his head cracked against a stone and he was still.
I staggered, dizzy and my vision darkened for a few seconds. I could hear Barnes and gremlins fighting in the distance, but I couldn’t see him. Someone else entered, skidding like me but landing on their butt. Then another two people came through and there was a shriek and two muttering voices.
Flashes of Mordon’s fire bolts illuminated Leif helping Lilly to her feet; his fire was directed at the pixies amassing in swarms. No one tried to make a light yet, letting Barnes take advantage of the dark for as long as was possible. I ducked a flaming bolt and tried to organize my scattered thoughts.
Lightening streaked from Leif’s wand, dropping several pixies to the ground which were quickly replaced. Closing my watering eyes against the blinding light, I focused on the wind around the pixie swarm closing in on the trio. I could feel their wing beats, frantic as a hummingbird and just as noisy, and I reached out to the air, making the resistance against their wings stop. They fell to the floor, shouting in high-pitched squeals. Despite needle-like swords, Leif crushed any underfoot that he could, searing them with lightening while Mordon shifted into his dragon form. With one fiery breath melting the sand to glass, the pixies stopped moving. Molten earth and overdone dinner filled my nose; I sneezed. Mordon swung his neck and almost did not stop in time. I patted his nose, still warm from breathing fire.
The air filled with thousands of humming wings, and I winced. The noises from Barnes and the gremlins had stopped, and I hoped that was a good sign.
“Fera?” whispered Leif.
“By Mordon, invisible,” I said.
“Can you do that again?”
I felt on the wind and winced. “They’re farther apart this time. It’s too big of an area for that.”
Brilliant light filled the cavern, making me squeeze my eyes shut. Even so, I saw red through my eyelids and I could not adjust to the pain fast enough, my heart thudding from being startled. I should have asked Lilly to hold up a light so we couldn’t have been blinded like this. Who turned on the light, and had they done anything yet to the others?
I forced my eyes open and saw past purple splotches B
arnes in physical combat with Eliza, wrestling for her staff. Buzzing grew louder and louder in my ears, and I turned to see us ringed by thousands of hoovering pixies—and below them, ten sorcerers were in the beginning of a chant. I didn’t know what chant it was, but my bet was that it wasn’t going to be good. Sucking in a breath, I pulled the wind into a single burst, crashing pixies and tiny pixie swords down into the flesh of the sorcerers.
It was more effective than I thought it would be, causing several to jump in surprise, a couple to cry out in shock—which disturbed their neighbors—and one pixie even jabbed his sword into a woman’s eye. Not every one of them was distracted, and I blinked watering eyes in time to see a wand lowered in my direction. A green light exploded from its tip, and I sprawled over Mordon’s claw, coming to a rest on hot, ridged glass.
Glad I hadn’t cracked my head over the stone, I pulled the invisibility ring off and stowed it in a pocket. If there were at least two vampires here, it wouldn’t do me any good. Magic-using vampires were a bit of a rare find, and I wondered who had the money and connections to bring two of them together—it couldn’t just be Gregor’s doing, could it?
“Lilly!” said Leif.
Lilly lay unmoving over a bed of stones, a glowing trail of smoke leaving her chest. Leif was not far, but he scarcely took one step before pixies dove on him and he ducked.
“Get the eyes! The eyes! The nose!” a chorus of shrill, tiny voices cried, but they weren’t the ones after Leif. They came from above Mordon, a cluster so thick they blocked out the light. Mordon was the primary target, and Leif wouldn’t get two seconds of relief if the bored pixies kept pestering him.
Wincing, I yelled, “Mordon! Get away from here!”
He stopped his snapping, each mouthful slaying a swarm, to look at me and nod. He couldn’t go far or fast, but the pixies went with him. A small cluster still clung about Leif’s head.
“Leif, hold your breath!”
My energy was whittling already, but I put my hands together then pulled them apart, drawing the air from around Leif’s head the way I had done to Eliza. My hope had been that they would fall, but they clung to his clothes, ears, and face, stabbing him. He worked with his wand, shooting bolts at each one. My vacuum fell, and he grabbed the panting pixies by handfuls to stomp with his boots. He reached Lilly, coming under fire from the sorcerers, his cheek a pincushion to too many swords.
I took a step towards them, and stepped into a puddle of melted ice. The cold seeped up my leg, numbing up to my knee, and my skin grew even more frosty. Crawling up my leg was a black shadow, dark cirrus clouds leading the way up my thigh. I couldn’t feel my foot past dull deadness and thumps against the floor.
“Leif!” I yelled, taking the compass from about my neck and hurling it. He caught it.
I didn’t know where Barnes was, but when I checked on the sorcerers next, there were only five still standing. Barnes moved from one shadow to the next in a way that didn’t seem possible for a human to do, striking his opponents and disappearing before they could turn around. Even with Eliza close behind, he was making me feel like we actually had a chance.
A roar shook the cavern as Mordon rolled, crashing to the floor and squishing pixies, his tail flashing out and hitting Eliza. I ducked beneath a wing, receiving a pixie across my shoulders. It giggled and stabbed me, thrusting the thick needle deep into the muscle in my back. I slammed my hands together and the air crumpled the tiny form, squishing it as effectively as two heavy books would have.
The shadow was now about my hips, and I was loosing all sensation. I fell to my knees, checked that Mordon was on the ground, and started to pull the air around in a slow dust devil. It caught the pixies off guard and I smashed them into a wall. I heard more buzzing, but it was distant. Too distant. The shadow was up to my ribcage. I fought to maintain connection with my magic.
Gregor’s voice flowed through the cavern. “I knew it would be too great a task for you to manage this ambuscade, Elizabeth, but I do love being proved correct. Get out of my sight, and let me contain the...situation.”
Leif had not left yet; he didn’t seem to know how to make the chain longer, and Lilly was pale. Leif was shaking, kneeling over her still body, deflecting spells as they came. Since I couldn’t walk, I rolled to them when Gregor closed his eyes.
Gregor raised his arms and shouted two words that hung in the air like knives. I crawled over Lilly to yank more links into the chain. She had no response. No breathing. I saw now why her brother had failed to lengthen the chain; he could scarcely clench his fist for all the shaking he was doing.
“You can’t do any good here,” said Leif, gritting his teeth, “You’ll need to come back with us.”
“Two is the limit for my Earnhardt compass. You and Lilly. Get her better,” I said, tossing the chain over both of them before Leif could object. The compass took them.
Gregor no longer looked very human. His bones kept growing, stretching skin that somehow kept getting thinner, becoming a nearly transparent membrane. Decay and lesions mottled his body, and the stench of the grave wafted off him, coming with each breath past his bloody lips. Sunken eyes, shoved deep in their sockets, glowed red as he looked about the room. His clothes tore and shredded, revealing a gaunt, emancipated figure with broken, gray claws extending down to his knees. The man was like a skeleton withdrawn from the dirt and set upon a surface with a hunger that nothing would ever satisfy.
“A wendigo,” said Barnes in my ear. I jumped, surprised when he pulled me into a sitting position.
“What is it?”
“It’s what cannibals can turn into. With every victim, they grow in proportion to their meal so their gnawing hunger only intensifies.”
Gregor spoke, his voice raspy and clotted, as though it came from a throat filled with soil, “You’ve recited the Mother Goose version of the tale. Tell her the Brothers Grimm version. Tell her what happens when I eat sorcerers.”
My stomach lurched. I had a horrific idea that black magic, cannibalism, and sorcerers equaled out to be a downright terrible monster...a monster with great magic and greater greed. Barnes read my expression and said, “It’s worse.”
I didn’t want to find out what could be worse than what he had done. I was fighting back images of Gregor wearing a suit, sitting down to a formal candlelit table and calmly eating a serving of human steak, washing it down with a glass of wine. That was how I saw him doing it, at least at first. Later, would he simply rip into the flesh raw? Tear into it with all the savagery that cannibalism conjured? When had he become this beast? What could stop him?
And I realized the reason for the ambush. I did not know who his victims were, but my bet was that none of them were as high profile, or as powerful, as any of my companions.
“Barnes?”
But he already was thinking the same thing, and from the annoyed twitch of his mustache, Barnes was not going to have anything to do with being a meal.
“Imagine the power I will receive today! I shall be peerless!” said Gregor, spitting thick speckles of blood past long, broken teeth.
“You won’t touch her!” said Mordon, growling and rumbling dirt down from the cavern top.
“I was not planning on it...yet. Once Morgana Le Fey assumes her body as host, I will eat them both. Imagine, a sorcerer worse than the sworn enemy of Merlyn’s. The lambs will have no choice but to submit, and once again the sorcerers will have no reason to hide behind portal doors and pretend they do not exist.”
Gregor apparently could have continued his evil monologue, but Mordon interrupted him with a burst of fire unlike one I had ever seen him do before; the fire caused the rocks to ooze and bubble and pixies too close caught their wings on fire. The firestorm continued as Barnes turned to me.
“Is there any way to get this thing off?” I said, holding my arms away from my body. From the armpits down, I was lost in black clouds. I couldn’t feel anything anymore, but with my chest growing colder, I was encompassed in shak
es and shudders.
Barnes reached for a curl of the fog and seized it. He started pulling it back, pulling it away, but it kept slipping out of his grasp. Brow sweating, he tried again and again, until the ground shook as Mordon’s body collapsed against it and the cavern trembled with his pants.
“I can’t get it,” said Barnes. “Its like there are hundreds of wills fighting my own.”
A wet, hacking laugh echoed to us. Past the waving heat rays and the red flows of rock stood the wendigo, his skin blackened and peeling back to reveal bleeding flesh and white bone.
“Barnes,” I whispered, “You and Mordon find a way to get out of here. He can’t...he can’t have your strength.”
“What about you?”
Barnes shook his head. “No spells on her. That stuff is too unstable.”
Feral Magic Page 21
