All of it was a feckless debate that stole attention from practical reforms championed by people who weren’t conspiracy theorists. Who lived in reality. She clenched the reins tight. Rather than squabbling about how mages were organized, why not focus on what they could do today? Tomorrow? Help people who needed it. Actually do something instead of arguing how to do something.
“All I’ve heard is self-indulgent ranting,” she said.
He rolled his eyes.
“It’s easy to say that something is imperfect, but it’s a much more difficult task to actually perfect it. Everyone has an opinion on the future of the Divinity, but the people seeking to break it up aren’t thinking beyond themselves. The Divinity has been keeping peace since the Magehold Convention. Tell me, what happens to the world when the bonds holding it together are dissolved?”
“If they’re holding the world together with unthinkable acts and unconscionable methods, then we owe it to everyone to find out.”
“If.” She locked eyes with him. “You’re willing to burn it all down based on if.” She exhaled lengthily while he shook his head. “Until there is something to prove any of this, it would be reckless to destroy the only protection keeping the world from destroying itself.”
“We keep the world from destroying itself, Rielle. We mages. Don’t ever forget that it is we, and not some institution, who guard the gates of chaos.”
Of course mages kept the peace. But without the Divinity, they’d squabble over whether and how to keep that peace than actually keeping it. Decentralize power, and suddenly every idea was the best idea. Until it wasn’t. And there was no sheepdog to herd the straying flock of wool-brained morons. It had happened in Parliament—King Marcus had been a weak king, and the nobles had been strengthened. And he was dead now. Along with his entire line. And Courdeval was in shambles. “Look how much good we’ve—”
Hooves thundered.
Brennan pulled up on his destrier. “Horses,” he announced grimly. “At least forty head.”
So much for a quiet trip. Rielle gave Brennan a grim nod. He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and cantered up to Jon.
“He can’t possibly know that.” Leigh hunched forward and stared into the distance.
She cast earthsight over her eyes. An incoming fleck of light appeared in the distance. Riders. It would be battle.
She dispelled the earthsight and assessed their surroundings. The path ahead, the woods, the plains, a cliff—
“Let them come,” Leigh bit out.
She tightened her grip on the reins. “We don’t know what we’re facing.”
Jon and Brennan pulled back their horses. “The woods,” Jon said, jerking his head toward the trees.
Split their attackers’ greater numbers, use the terrain—
“We don’t need the woods,” Leigh grumbled.
“Unless anyone has a better idea in the next second, we have run out of time.” Brennan urged his horse toward the trees, with a wordless glance behind him. They hurried to follow.
In the tree cover, they slowed toward a small clearing on an incline and dismounted. She clapped her mare’s hindquarters and sent her deeper into the forest along with the other horses.
“Cover me,” she said to Jon over her shoulder. He drew his sword.
She gestured a cross, and her finger glowed azure. She backtracked and hastily inscribed runes on the forest floor—round ancient symbols, just like the ones at Cosette’s. Pyromancy runes to immolate them, geomancy runes to drop them into pits, aeromancy runes to blow them back, throw them off their mounts—
A low hum rose from nearby. She stole a glance through the trees, off to the side, as she worked.
“The Mor Bluffs,” Jon said softly, his back against an oak next to her. “It’s a long way down.”
“It will be. For them.” She inscribed the runes in an arc, as far around them as she could manage, two rows deep.
Jon hissed and tipped his head behind her. Brennan.
She nodded, and they receded toward Leigh, who leaned against an oak, polishing his nails. Jon eyed her from the cover of the trunk next to hers. He donned his helm, visor still open.
They’d survive this. They had to.
“Your efforts are unnecessary, ma chère.” Leigh always did prefer impulse.
She shrugged. “Well, if all else fails—”
“Pray and flambé?” he offered, with a smug smile.
A long silence claimed the woods, stilling all but the hum of the Mor River and their soft breaths. Hooves clopped in the distance.
Calls, scattered and clipped, echoed through the trees.
A series of thumping footfalls nearing.
Branches breaking. Foliage crunching.
The hiss of blades drawn.
A silent moment stretched for ages.
“Why don’t we just—” a voice yelled.
“Shut it, Anton,” another cut in. “Nobody asked you.”
“Now!” A battle cry.
Boots pounded the ground. An arrow flew past and hit the trunk of a tree with a whine and a thwack.
A massive repulsion shield sprang before them—Leigh’s. He held it with his fisted hand. An arrow, two—a dozen glanced off, diverted.
A great boom shook through the ground. Screams. Another. A series of deafening booms and shrieks. The hiss of fire and crackling. The yawning groan and creaking of a tree falling, and one more—
Rattled their footing.
The runes.
She peeked around the trunk through the blurry distortion of Leigh’s repulsion shield. Fire gorged on the forest in an arc that spread over pits, fallen trees, and crumpled bodies.
Horses screamed as they jumped through the flames. A second wave of about fifteen men charged straight for them, with more behind.
Leigh unfurled his clenched fist. The repulsion shield rippled out toward the riders. Horses and men were thrown back toward the flames, cries tearing through the air.
Half a dozen riders still charged. Arcanir, sigils—?
She grasped the anima threaded in the trees mere feet away. Yanked them down.
One by one, massive trunks collapsed to the ground, braiding in falling quakes, and with her other hand, she turned their anima. Tumbled them down the incline toward the riders. Destroying all ahead in an enormous, thudding clamor—
It stopped.
“Geomancer!” Brennan called from ahead, where he leaped over two fallen trunks.
Distant stone spikes erupted from the ground and sped toward them in a twenty-foot swath. Leigh pushed blurry force magic directly down and levitated.
She shielded herself in an aqueous bubble, overfeeding it with anima until its waters grew and grew and destabilized. It wouldn’t hold much—
She directed its overfed force into a tidal wave toward the geomancer.
Wood splintered, obliterated to dust as a compressed century of tides hit stone.
The waters split, dispelled. A man advanced through, followed by two others. Had to be—
Trees collapsed toward them. Hit Leigh’s repulsion shield. They fanned out and thudded to the ground, falling in a ring. She spelled her fire cloak in place.
A man fled the scene on branches as if they were a bridge that bent and molded to command. Leigh shot force-magic projectiles at him.
One hit a trunk and shattered it.
One hit the ground—exploded.
Still the geomancer evaded. He had to be stopped. He was hers.
She immolated the trees ahead of him. Flaming branches curved under his feet, and yelping, he jumped to another bough she burned.
An axe-wielder charged past Jon toward her amid a chaos of weapons, blood, and magic. Jon spun behind him, sweeping his sword through the man’s neck. A head toppled to the ground.
A second and third man advanced; he faced them, his helm spattered red. An arrow glanced off his pauldron.
The geomancer tumbled to the forest floor in a wreath of flame. She enclose
d him in a circle of fire as bushes and shrubs sprang into a cage around her. Enemy magic. Denser and denser and tightening.
She fed her flame cloak anima until it burst, blasting open the cage in flying splinters, then spelled a wind wall into place to repel incoming spells.
The geomancer raised a dais out of the circle of flame. Jumped off onto a glowing bridge of braided vines that formed out of nothing.
This slippery bastard wasn’t getting away—
Rain.
Holding the wind wall in place, she gathered the groundwater, days of rain and remnants of her tidal wave, widening control of her anima as far as it would go, spreading in a massive circle that stretched past him in every direction.
She pulled it all together.
Torrents of surging water converged in one location. Unrelenting pressure. To keep stable, it required anima, more and more and more.
She gave and gave and gave. Kept the geomancer within. Stone cut from the inside, but she fed the indomitable water the anima to obliterate it.
If he had the brighter anima, he’d win this test of endurance. Arrows hit her wind wall. No matter. She’d hold out for the geomancer, then deal with them.
Blood hit her shield. The carnage in her periphery swung his sword, slicing through flesh with deceptive ease. Jon.
An attacker closed in on him from behind, short sword raised—
The geomancer still—the arrows—
“Jon!” Her heart thundered. Divine.
He spun and parried with his dagger and punched the attacker in the face with his knuckle-dusters. Bloodied teeth flew.
The fight in the convergence of water died. The geomancer.
She dispelled it. Only red water remained.
Her shield broke.
A shadow passed over her.
She fell back. A heavy club thudded into the ground where she’d stood. A flame cloak sprang into place around her, and fire scattered from her fingers.
Upon contact with her attacker, it sputtered and died.
Sigiled—a lieutenant, perhaps. “Time to die, bitch.”
Not today. She pulled the ground under him, but he jumped toward her with an agility that belied his size.
Shooting pain in her arm. Not cooperating.
In spasms of movement, she dragged herself a few feet back under a massive oak bough. No time.
Another strike. She dove aside.
Attack—she had to attack—but her throbbing arm wouldn’t cooperate and she didn’t dare stop moving.
She dug into the hard earth with her other hand and scrambled away from another hit. He raised the club again—
Evade or cast.
She brought down the bough above them.
An eerie wail escaped him. Cut off. Brennan tossed the head aside as blood sprayed from a severed neck. A blade buried in Brennan’s shoulder—he tumbled.
The club plummeted onto her ribs—
Breathe. She couldn’t—
Her vision flashed white.
Excruciating pain pulsed from her side. She curled up on the ground. Gnawing waves wracked her body, but she couldn’t give in—wouldn’t.
Heal. She had to heal. But she couldn’t afford to focus inward during a battle.
Someone screamed her name.
She swallowed hard, pain forcing tears from her eyes as she crawled behind two dead bodies amid the shouts and roars. Mumbled the incantation.
Pain spiked, ripping a scream from her throat.
Too painful to heal. Through the dizzying fog, she saw Jon, his sword and helm gone. Men with targes and bucklers surrounded him.
His eyes met hers, wide and savage like those of a maddened animal. For a second. Less than.
Hand to hand, he fought the bandits crowding him, thrashing violently among them, elbows and fists flying while they attacked him in numbers.
Her head swam. She needed to—to get to—
Brennan fought his way to Jon, throwing men aside. He broke through, bringing his back against Jon’s. Flowing like a Faris master, he dispatched the flankers, his grappling more of an art than combat. She squinted sluggishly. Beautiful, really. Bright... White, almost...
A giant of an attacker pinned Jon. Grunting with effort, he pushed an axe haft away, keeping the sharp edge looming just inches from its mark, the effort of his hands the only obstacle preventing its descent into his neck.
Blinding light flooded the corners of her vision. Fought for dominance. Pulsed. Pounded and spread. Power sang in her blood. She closed her eyes for a sliver of a moment, indulging the sound, swallowing as her mouth watered.
No. He wouldn’t want this. She didn’t want this. Never again.
She blinked. Her fingers hovered over the Sodalis ring. He would...
In the distance of space and memory, a teary-eyed blond girl trudged out of a burning castle, wearing flames like great regalia. Each footstep steamed, melting knee-deep snow, as she faltered away from the wall. Murderer. Demon.
Such a small thing. A child. She hadn’t meant for this to happen, couldn’t control power inherited from ancient magical lines, profound beyond her comprehension, stronger than her young grasp could hold.
Rielle watched from afar, wrapped her mantle tighter—a magister’s mantle. Leigh’s. Her feet—his—hurried toward the girl as whips of flame shot forth.
Batted aside with a repulsion shield.
Another lash, and another, and another, and the girl’s horrified eyes, the shaking of her head, the futile tears as her magic acted in its chaotic nature, its shadow nature, divorced from her self. Pushed away from her self. Distanced. For the sake of her sanity.
Two feet away, he sent a wave of force knocking her back into the castle wall, stunning her, and pulled the metal from his pouch as he rushed her. Pressed its sting into her blazing-hot hand.
Heat hissed as it dissipated, as magic retreated, as the girl became only the girl once more. Her eyes met his, blinking weakly, and he held her hand. It’s all right. You’re safe now. It wasn’t your fault.
It wasn’t your fault.
Rielle blinked. Suddenly Leigh’s hand holding the girl’s was her hand holding the girl’s. It wasn’t your fault, she said.
The girl squeezed her fingers weakly. I kept the fault for you. All these years. I kept Mama, Papa... everyone. Their pain and their love. Pain and love.
Rielle’s chest tightened. I didn’t know how to feel it. How to bear it.
The girl smiled sadly. Bear their pain with their love. Bear pain with love.
Rielle shook her head, shrugging deeper into the magister’s mantle. She hadn’t been able to bear love, true and deep, without fear of that pain, memory of that pain. But like a set of scales, where love sat, pain sat opposite. Where pain sat, love sat opposite.
For years, she’d locked away that part of herself, the part that could feel either. When pain or love became too intense, intense as fureur, she locked it away in this girl she’d left behind nearly a decade ago. Her way to move on, forward.
The emptiness of those missing parts as she locked them away filled with something else. Someone else. Power. Pure, raw power, with a will of its own.
No more.
It’ll burn you, and it’ll warm you, the girl said.
Rielle nodded. But it’ll be me feeling it. Either way. I’ll be there.
The girl raised her hands and intertwined fingers with Rielle.
The girl, the snow, the castle wall faded away, far back into time and memory, vanishing from sight but not existence, leaving her feeling greater than her whole, somehow. Fuller. Stronger. Herself, who she hadn’t been in ages.
Her heart pounded as she took in the tall trees, the deadfall, the pain—her arm, her side—
Steeped in red, Jon rolled from the shadow of the body before it collapsed, his dagger buried deep between the ribs. He grabbed his sword and cut a bloody path through the foes surrounding Brennan. He grabbed the blade by its leather-wrapped ricasso, below the hilt, and faced th
e remaining men closing in.
His eyes darted to hers. Speared her.
She was useless like this.
A blur came between them. A repulsion shield. Leigh.
Good. She collapsed behind the two dead men. Reached for her belt with her only cooperating hand, then stuck it in her mouth. Pressing her palm to her side, she winced but began the healing incantation.
The shattered bones had splintered into her flesh in agonizing chaos. There would be no time to finish healing entirely, but even a start would help.
Mouthing the words through the belt, she rushed her work. She closed the internal wounds, working through the shooting pain to make herself whole. Her teeth ached, radiating waves into her jaw as she bit into the leather. But pieces of bone and tissue came together, returned to their place. She bound them, grinding the belt down.
Shouts rang out. Two men across the clearing pointing to her.
She raised her arm, signing a storm.
Above her, a small darkness gathered and grew, swirling in a storm-gray whirlwind. The two men turned their heads in her direction.
The short channeling period would have to do.
She brought her hands down and rolled away, her arm and partially healed side throbbing.
Leigh faced them, a hand of force magic for each.
Her flashes of lightning descended, willed to each target. Clouds of black smoke dotted the surroundings, the smell of ozone thick in the air.
Leigh glared at her. Displeased at being preempted.
Blood and the tinge of burnt flesh saturated the battleground. And silence. Dead silence.
Jon’s eyes met hers as he pushed his dagger between the breastplate and pauldron of a fallen foe.
He was all right. She was all right.
Leigh dusted off his coat. Brennan slit a throat with a stolen blade.
Over. It was over.
Divine, if the Black Mountain Brigands had been so prepared—with sigils and arcanir—then what in the Lone awaited them at Courdeval?
Shuddering, she dispelled the fire and the storm clouds, the ground around them brightening with a tentative gray light as scorched trees sizzled. Jon, Brennan, and Leigh stood surrounded by bodies and weapons in every direction. Leigh was already tending his wounds.
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