by Mara Amberly
“This way,” she called. “If we get caught in there, we might never get out.”
She saw that he followed her. As she ran, she drew energy from the environment to use for her magick. She couldn’t set the town ablaze the way Cassia might, but she wasn’t helpless. She knew she could do something.
A glance back revealed at least 5 men running after them, each in the cultists’ dark robes.
“We’re about to get a lot of company,” she exclaimed, her fear growing as they climbed over a low back wall of the property and dropped down on to a hillside.
There were trees sparsely separated, with thicker foliage that was lower to the ground. It wouldn’t offer a lot of cover, but there were more trees in the distance where they might be able to lose their pursuers. Alexa just hoped they weren’t the ones populated with gigantic spiders.
As a fireball overshot their position, Alexa spun back around and extended her hands, unleashing a ferocious surge of elemental air. It deflected an incoming fireball and blew it into the side of the house they’d passed. It went up in a gigantic whoosh of flame, further fuelled by the winds she’d cast. The sorcerers behind her were blown back on to the ground, while the area was buffeted by broken branches, leaves and dirt that were swept up by her spell.
“Not as terrifying as your sister’s magick, but close,” Knave commented, as they hurried on. Their hair was only stirred by the lightest of winds, while the house behind them was coming apart from the turbulent winds and climbing flames.
Alexa once again gathered energy as they ran, weaving it between her hands with little focus. She could shape it later; she just wanted the option to use it.
They ran over grass and gravel, while the trees were just ahead of them. This wasn’t the place where they’d come out of the web-strewn woods earlier, so it was possible they wouldn’t encounter spiders. They hadn’t expected cultists either, when one ran out from between the trees, directly in their path. The man was tall, and he cut an imposing figure in his black robes, which seemed more ornate than those of the others. It gave the impression he was someone important and perhaps, more dangerous.
Alexa stopped at once, glancing back to ensure the other cultists hadn’t caught up.
Knave took off at a sharp angle toward the dubious cover of the woods, attempting to avoid the cultist. Realising it gave them the best chance of escape, and that she’d otherwise be alone to deal with him, Alexa followed Knave.
As they ran, she could feel a disturbance in the energy around them and knew he must be preparing to cast elemental magick. The feeling was akin to all of the air being sucked out of a room, but as they ran, more magickal energy flowed in to fill the void.
The moment they reached the treeline, she felt safer, but their running was slowed by the leaf litter and fallen branches that carpeted the ground.
She felt an oncoming rush of air and threw up a barrier behind them at the last moment. Alexa realised a moment too late that the onrushing magick wasn’t air – it was fire, sent in a surge of heat, rather than a traditional fireball. Trees burst into flame around them, but she blocked the worst of it with her power. Her shield grew hotter as the magick flowed over it, burning her hands more the longer she held it.
“I don’t know how long I can hold this, Knave. Get away from here.”
“I’m not leaving you, Alexa.”
He could see the cultist now, as he slowly strode toward them, his hands extended in what might’ve seemed a harmless gesture. In actuality, it was anything but that.
Alexa didn’t have much in the way of skill with water or fire magick, which would’ve been more useful to her, but she could work with earth. It wasn’t her favoured element, but as she held her air shield against the approaching cultist, she drew on the earth in front of them and fed earth energy into the shield. At first this merely darkened her view, but it helped hold back the wave of heat, and as she added more, a stronger barrier formed between them and the enemy – at least, until he could get around it. She backed off from the shield, leaving it precisely where it was, and ran, followed by Knave.
She did her best to hold it in place and keep it strong, but he was stronger. She gasped when she felt the barrier torn apart. Alexa drew on the energy around her and cast another hasty barrier behind them as they ran, but she knew it wasn’t anywhere near as strong as the last one and couldn’t fend off such a powerful attack. Glancing back, she saw a fireball streak toward them, overshooting her barrier completely, and dove out of the way. It struck a tree, sending splintering shards of wood and flame in all directions.
“Knave,” she whimpered, when she realised a large sliver of wood had punched straight through her shoulder, while many smaller ones had punctured her right arm. She had burns over her shoulder and the side of her face.
Knave realised at once that Alexa wasn’t going to be able to outrun the cultist, and she wasn’t in any shape to shield them against any more devastating attacks. He leaned in, kissing her on the cheek, before gripping the hilt of her sword, which she had sheathed at her back.
“Try and heal yourself, lass,” he murmured with a great deal of love and sadness in his voice. It was the voice of a man who didn’t know if he would be coming back.
Knave unsheathed her sword, and turned around to face the cultist.
He didn’t look that powerful, but looks could be deceiving.
With a roar, Knave charged at the sorcerer, before he could prepare the spell that would kill them.
Knave had learned a thing or two while travelling with the priestesses on the road. Magick took time to cast and it wasn’t infallible. When it worked right, it could be almost too powerful, but that may have had more to do with the sorcerer than the magick. This cultist looked to Knave like a rich man who’d always had others doing his bidding. He wasn’t used to being hurt, and he wasn’t used to being told no. A man like that was used to getting his way and that could be a weakness.
Knave didn’t swing his sword in a dramatic arc, as the man might’ve expected. Instead, his first swing was intended to aggravate him. To mess up his fine clothes. To make him hurt, in a way that would distract him. As Knave didn’t have magick, he had to use what was left to him – his fighting skills and his cunning, both of which were more formidable than he might’ve admitted.
As a ball of flame flared to life in the cultist’s palm, Knave kicked him hard in the knee and swung out with his sword. The weapon’s arc missed the front of his shirt, but gashed the cultist’s left forearm. Almost at once, the fireball broke up mid-air.
Knave thought the distraction he’d caused had done it, but then the fire reformed in the sorcerer’s hand, coalescing into a semi-substantial blade of elemental fire.
“Not quite what I was expecting,” Knave commented.
It prompted a sneer from the cultist, who seemed immune to the weapon’s heat as he tightened his grip on the hilt. Readying himself for a swordfight, the cultist swung it in a fierce blow.
Knave parried his attack with ease, but he noticed something strange about the weapon of fire. It was entirely soundless and it clashed with his sword as metal would, even though it seemed to have no solid core. It fascinated Knave and it also worried him. He could feel the heat radiating off the weapon, so he was careful not to get burned. He also hoped the heat wouldn’t warp his own blade.
“You truly have no chance against me with that,” the cultist exclaimed, as he lashed out at Knave again, and his attack was quickly parried and returned in kind.
“Why, are you supposed to be someone important?” Knave asked, with a note of tiredness to his voice, as though he’d heard it all before. He had little patience for arrogant people.
“I should be. It’s my cult,” the man remarked with a chuckle of laughter.
Knave couldn’t conceal his surprise and it served as just the sort of distraction he was trying to exact.
A sword thrust barely missed him. Knave sidestepped it and his upper swing caught the cultist acr
oss the jaw, leaving a minor, bleeding cut.
“So that would make you Jarlath then?” he asked, his eyebrow rising.
“You’ve heard of me,” the cultist joked, swinging out with his sword, then levelling a punch at Knave’s head that missed him equally well.
“Only bad things. Pathetic actually,” Knave stated, as he reached behind him and drew out a small dagger from his back sheath.
“I’m going to kill you for that,” Jarlath confessed, grinning. “Not that I wasn’t going to kill you and the woman already. It looks like she’s bleeding out already and it might save me the effort.
Knave knew the cult leader was trying to make him look in order to distract him, so for the moment he didn’t. There was nothing he could do to heal Alexa or help her right now. The best thing he could do was defeat Jarlath, otherwise they were both as good as dead.
“Don’t listen to him,” Alexa called weakly from beneath the shattered tree.
Knave took her at her word, and bore down on the cultist. He needed to end this fight while he still had any chance at all of besting Jarlath.
Knave paced around Jarlath, swinging his sword to draw the cultist’s gaze. He was also hoping to keep the man’s attention off his other hand, which concealed a blade.
It all happened so quickly – Knave stepped in with a feint that slid past the cultist at the last moment. As Jarlath swung his burning sword down in a slash intended to sever Knave’s arm, he stabbed the dagger hard into the sorcerer’s chest.
Jarlath gasped at the pain, but his groan turned into a sickly grin. “That’s not going to kill me,” he declared, pulling the dagger out with his free hand.
Knave swung his sword and decapitated him on the spot.
Jarlath’s body fell, crashing down with a sense of finality. He was undeniably dead as his blood pooled on the ground.
“No, but this will. Thanks for the information, you idiot.”
Knave kicked the flaming sword from his hand, which promptly disappeared.
In order to make doubly sure, he stabbed his sword through Jarlath’s chest before wiping the blood off on his black robe. It was done, if this indeed was Jarlath.
Knave hurried back over to Alexa, where she leaned against the fractured tree.
“He’s dead,” Knave exclaimed, clearly surprised by the outcome. “Are you alright, Alexa?” he asked, examining her wound. The splinter of wood protruded from her shoulder, and she gazed up at him with fear and a hint of tears.
“I am but I don’t know how to get it out. I can’t heal it while it’s in there.”
Knave sighed, because he knew this wasn’t going to be pleasant. He was inclined to leave it there until someone with more medical skill could help her. If she passed out, there wouldn’t be anyone else to heal the injury. The more he thought about it, the more he realised he should wait until they re-joined Cassia and Ariane, provided they were safe.
“I’m going to carry you back to the tree where we were supposed to meet, alright? That way your Sisters can help you.”
Alexa nodded at that. “Alright, but Knave… it hurts.”
Knave bundled Alexa up and lifted her into his arms. The way seemed clear, so he carried her through the woods, hoping not to encounter any other enemies on the way.
Chapter 21
Knave found his way back to the tree where Cassia and Ariane waited. It was still several hours from dawn, so far as he could tell. Just as Knave feared she might, Alexa had fallen unconscious by then, but she soon awakened when she heard Cassia and Ariane’s concerned voices.
“I think the wood might’ve splintered in her shoulder,” Cassia exclaimed.
Opening her eyes, Alexa sighed. “You’re going to have to take it out so I can heal,” Alexa told them, her voice weak.
“We’re going to do that, Alexa,” Cassia promised her. “We’ll heal you as fast as we can after that. It’s going to hurt but we’re going to make it quick, alright?”
Alexa blinked back tears, and closed her eyes, just wanting it to be over. She felt so weak, and she sensed it would take time to recover from the ordeal she’d been through. “I’m so tired,” she told them, wincing as Ariane pulled the cloth from around her wound.
“I’m going to wait over here, alright?” Knave told them, giving the ladies privacy while they worked on Alexa’s injury.
The woods by the town felt far from safe, so he kept an eye out for trouble. He no longer had Alexa’s sword; he’d returned that to her sheath, which lay beside her now, but he had his knives.
It brought to mind the rune reading Alexa gave him when he was awaiting execution in the prison yard. The Gods had spared his life for a reason – unanimously, it seemed, and he’d long wondered why. He’d never thought of himself as an assassin – he’d always treated killing as a last resort, but now he realised it was probably why. They saw him as someone who could deal with Jarlath, if the man he’d killed was in fact the cult leader he’d claimed to be.
A scream of agony tore through the night air, and he knew what it would be.
Knave hoped Alexa would be alright, but he was certain that Cassia and Ariane would do all they could to heal her. He’d been unsure about Ariane at first, but her heart seemed to be in the right place and she had a level head on her shoulders. The world was lonelier for the priestesses than it had once been, but he knew they had each other, and that was important.
He felt compassion for Alexa at her whimpers of pain. He hoped no one else in the woods would hear them, but it seemed deserted again. A lot of time passed before Ariane came looking for him, a relieved smile on her face.
“We’ve done it. We’ve healed her, at least as much as we can for now. Alexa’s resting up.”
Knave breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m glad to hear that. I was worried there for a minute. I wasn’t sure she was going to make it.”
Ariane nodded. “The damage was worse than we thought and we had to go in and pull out a splintered piece that had broken off. That was what took us so long. It’s lucky you brought her to us.”
A sense of nervousness passed over Knave at Ariane’s comment. “I was thinking of taking the piece out myself. It’s a good thing I realised this was the smarter option. How long until she’s back to her old self?”
“I don’t know,” Ariane answered honestly. “It could take a week before she’s back to full strength, but she should be in a position to walk within an hour or two I’d say. She could probably use a night’s rest to help the healing, but I know this isn’t a safe place.”
Knave nodded at that. “Yeah, I think it’s only a matter of time before they stumble upon Jarlath’s body and come looking for us. You haven’t seen anyone else out here, have you? We ran into a teenage boy and a woman in an evening gown, it looked like, when we were in the town. They were escaping the cultists and had the manse, we think.”
Ariane gasped. “Why didn’t you say so? They had the manse? Where are they now? You don’t have it with you?”
Knave shook his head. “It’s not as simple as that. Malachi stole the kid’s bag and it supposedly had the manse in it. He’s a guardian of some kind – one of the people who were trained to use the manses or some such. That means the cultists don’t have it anymore.”
She appeared perplexed by that. Not all that different to how Knave felt about the idea.
“Alexa has a connection with the dragon,” she reminded him. “It won’t bring it back to her?”
“It doesn’t look like it,” Knave told her. “The lass ought to be able to track it though. She seems to know where it is at all times. We find the dragon and I think we’ll find the manse.”
They heard footsteps among the trees; it was Cassia looking for them.
“Hey. She’s awake again and asking for you, Knave. She said you saved her life.”
He grinned. “That’s what I came here to do, right?”
Knave made his way back to Alexa, and he saw her wounds were dressed, and her arm was in a sling.<
br />
“I’m feeling a lot better,” she said, managing a weak smile. “Thanks for what you did out there. I was in no condition to fight him.”
He sat down beside her on the ground, listening to the subtle sounds of the woods around them.
“There weren’t too many options there, so I did what I could. It was lucky he decided to fight me with that flame sword, rather than levelling a gigantic fireball at me. The man seemed arrogant with an urge to prove he was better than me. That’s why he fought me on those terms.”
“Thank you. You fought brilliantly there,” she told him gratefully.
Knave was blushing.
“Wait,” she said, touching a hand to her ear. “A message.”
Many moments passed in silence and then she whispered, “They’re here. The Sisters.”
Cassia ran back to where Knave and Alexa were. “Did you get it? The message from Sister Anya? The Sisters have come to attack the stronghold and they have help.”
Alexa climbed to her feet, cringing at the pain in her shoulder. “I just told her that I think Jarlath’s dead and Knave killed him.”
“Are you sure you ought to get up?” Knave asked Alexa, moving to help support her other arm.
“I’m alright,” she told him, though she accepted his help. “Okay, I’m not but I will be. The Sisters want us to fall back to their position. The town was easier to find without the manse hiding it.”
“Are you sure?” he asked uncertainly. “I know we want this, but it took us a long time to reach the town. I don’t see how they could have got here so quickly.”
“They have another manse,” Cassia told him, “and they used it to reach us.”
“Oh,” Knave said, not expecting that. “If you’re certain, then maybe we should go. If you can?” he asked Alexa.
“I’ll manage,” she told him, though it was clear she was still hurting.
Knave gathered up the blanket and picked up their other possessions, mainly to help Alexa.
“What about the spiders?” he asked, remembering the threat they’d posed.
