Shadow Mage

by Sarah McCarthy

  55

  Sarai

  The door was locked from the outside, but Sarai picked it and was through in a trice. Immediately, she wished she’d been more careful, because a giant glowing collection of limbs and bears lumbered past, growling ferociously and bursting into flames every so often. She pressed herself against the wall, willing herself to be as tiny and unobtrusive as possible, and mercifully the Ael passed her by, contenting itself with ripping a door off its hinges and crunching it into kindling.

  Once it was past, Sarai snuck down the stairs and out into the courtyard, which was utterly destroyed. It looked like a forest after a terrible windstorm: downed trees, ripped up plants, trash scattered everywhere.

  Keeping herself hidden, Sarai snuck through the wreckage, pausing every so often to duck behind a fallen tree trunk while a monster passed. She didn’t let herself think, or imagine, what had happened until she got back to where she’d last seen Agnes. There were a few dead bodies, and Sarai felt her panic rising, but at least none of them were Agnes. She recognized a few of the faces, though, and her heart felt heavier than it ever had for any of the other deaths she’d been responsible for.

  Where is everyone? Sarai wondered, scanning the wreckage. The door to the speaking pool was blasted off its hinges, black scorch marks around it. She picked a knife off the ground and stuffed it roughly into one of her empty scabbards, replacing the knife that was probably still inside Jeremy in Westwend.

  She looked around again and realized that one of the dead bodies was watching her.

  The Baron saw he’d been spotted and sat up. “You, you’re that odd one, that new type of mage, aren’t you? How did you escape?”

  “Yeah. Sarai. What happened here?”

  “Some demon took over Finn’s body, everyone collapsed. He and Kel fought, and she ran through there.” He pointed to the blasted tunnel. “Then the demon—Morthil—gathered up most of the mages—he must have assumed I was dead, since I’m not a mage—and blasted off himself.” He pointed into the air. “Gone after her, I imagine.”

  “Any idea where?” Sarai said grimly.

  “Something about the floating something.”

  The citadel. “Thanks.” Sarai turned to go, then stopped. Was she going to run to the Uplands? She doubted the horse had that much left in it.

  The Baron was picking himself up behind her and dusting himself off. He picked up a long sword and sheathed it.

  “Well, I say, that did not go at all to plan. Still, all’s not lost, I suppose.”

  Sarai looked at him like he was insane.

  “Shall we take that?” the Baron asked, pointing over her head. She looked and saw he was pointing at the wind runner.

  “Excellent. Yes. Let’s go.” She didn’t have time to question why he wanted to come. If he wanted to die, then fine.

  They hopped in; the Baron worked the controls, and they shot off to the south and west.

  “So… a shadow mage, huh?” the Baron asked, after they had been riding in silence for a few minutes. He’d apparently gotten bored with twiddling his thumbs. “Any practical applications of that? For commerce, perhaps?”

  “I’m an assassin,” Sarai snapped. She had other things on her mind. Like figuring out what to do when they got to the Citadel. Showing up like this was all well and good, but what was her plan, even? She’d failed to assassinate Finn even when he wasn’t inhabited by an immortal demon. Also, it appeared that Kel and Isabelle had been telling the truth about that.

  “Oh, here to kill Finn?” the Baron asked, and Sarai looked at him fully in the face for the first time.

  “Maybe.”

  He broke into a wide grin and extended his hand to her. “Oh, very good. Excellent. I’m the one who hired you. Or, hired that… gentleman, I might more rightly say.”

  Sarai took his hand and shook it uncertainly. “Right… sorry I didn’t…”

  “Oh no, no, seems like it was a much harder job than I anticipated. Than any of us could have anticipated. Nice to meet you. Jeremy indicated that you were the absolute best.”

  Her throat constricted.

  “Well, hopefully it’s not too late to finish the job, eh?” he said, elbowing her conspiratorially in the ribs.

  “Right…” She wanted to ask him why he’d tried to have Finn assassinated, but just at that moment they jerked into a very steep upward climb and found themselves pressed uncomfortably backwards into their seats. A few seconds later and they crested the ridge of mountains, and there before them was the Citadel.

  Sarai had seen it a few times before. It had always been an impressive sight to behold, but today was not its day. The whole thing was on fire for one. A pile of what looked like dead bodies lay scattered underneath it, and Finn—Morthil now—floated in front of it, sending fireball after fireball at it in what looked like an attempt to break in through the main gates.

  He hadn’t seen them yet. The boat was heading straight for a back entrance. The Baron tried to say something, but Sarai didn’t hear him. She pulled all the shadow she could manage from everything around them. The boat itself went dark and slowed slightly as it headed for the gates.

  Please don’t see us. Sarai thought.

  Just as she thought that the gates collapsed, and Morthil gave a triumphant laugh, shooting through them, followed by a line of pale, dead-eyed, floating mages.

  The boat sailed in just in time, docking with a slight tinkling of chimes. Please don’t hear that. An explosion sounded from somewhere. Hopefully that was a loud enough distraction.

  56

  Kel

  “He’s coming, I can feel it,” Kel said, her eyes meeting those of the mages around her.

  “Let’s get this over with, then,” Isabelle said, rubbing her palms together.

  Illiam had pushed himself up to a seat and was rubbing his forehead gingerly.

  “I don’t think there’s enough time,” Kel said. “I don’t know exactly how long it’s going to take, but as soon as he’s in range you’ll all pass out again.”

  “Can you stop him?”

  Kel shook her head. “I… I can’t. My magic is still gone.”

  “Use our power,” Isabelle said.

  “What?”

  “Like Morthil. Do that, draining, passing out thing, and use our magic to make a barrier.”

  Would that work? Could she use their magic like Morthil did? “I… I don’t know if I can.” And even if she could, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  Isabelle looked around at the other mages, “We’re all in agreement, right? She can use our power?”

  They all nodded seriously.

  Kel’s stomach twisted, but when she looked around, there was certainty in every single one of their faces. If there was any chance this would work, she had to try.

  She reached out, and there it was. Their magic. She pulled at it, and it came. It poured into her, like water into a dry streambed. One by one, they fainted, and again, she was alone. Relief and joy spread through her.

  She was more powerful than she’d ever been before. The whole world felt spread out before her, and she knew, with an utterly simple certainty, that it would obey her commands. All of it. She could make the world into whatever she wanted it to be.

  The voices came flooding back. All of them.

  Kel!

  It was Smoke.

  Smoke! You’re alive! Are you OK?

  I’m… OK… but he’s gone after you. We couldn’t stop him.

  Thank you, thank you so much. I’m so sorry, Smoke. I’m going to stop him.

  I know.

  Her heart filled with warmth and hope and joy and connection, but she couldn’t let herself feel this any longer, as much as she wanted to. She turned her attention to creating a barrier, poured iron and fire into it, felt it thicken and harden. That would take Morthil some time to get through.

  She could feel Morthil, too, speeding up the mountains towards them.

  Ah, so you’ve figured it out, have you?
Fun, isn’t it? She felt the flicker of a smile from him, then she cut the connection.

  For a moment, she stood in the darkened room, the sleeping mages around her, the power coursing through her, and it occurred to her to wonder what might happen if she just… kept this. Could she fight off Morthil? Could the mages keep their magic? Could she… experience this again?

  But no. She didn’t want to live in that world. Even if it meant going back to being without magic. She wasn’t going to leave the Ael in torment, or the mages to be tools of hers and Morthil’s, or her brother trapped with Morthil in his body.

  She released the magic back to the mages, and one by one they awoke.

  “Quickly,” she said. “I’ve built a barrier, but I don’t know how long it will hold him off. We have to do the ritual. Are you all ready?” she asked. The loneliness had already enveloped her again, that disconnection from the world around her, but she pushed it away. There was work to do.

  57

  Illiam

  She was so beautiful and so vulnerable looking, Illiam thought, despite her incredible power. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she grouped them around the glowing pool. The very pool, he realized, where he had first spoken with the creature who had given him the powers. The creature who had given him everything he’d ever wanted.

  Something exploded overhead, and the whole citadel shook, dust raining down on them, speckling the magical waters of the pool with darkness.

  “Hurry,” Kel said.

  She directed them to close their eyes, to direct their magic into the pool, and then he could feel her presence, guiding his magic, and that of the other mages as well. It was like… like they were no longer separate people, in separate bodies. He could hear their thoughts, their fears, their anger, and he could feel his magic, that newfound power that he’d only recently received, joining with theirs, leaving him.

  He didn’t want it to leave, didn’t want to lose that thing that made him special, but he knew it wouldn’t leave him for long. That cold thing inside him grew warm, then hot. The thing that the creature had placed there, in exchange for what it had given him.

  Apparently, this was to be the price of his powers. The fulfillment of his agreements. He wasn’t surprised, that it would come to this. Now. In this moment.

  Illiam bit his lower lip; only feet away he could feel that beautiful girl. She would be all right. They would both be all right. He was going to take her away from all of this. She thought she wanted to achieve this, but she didn’t really. This ritual would fail because of Illiam, but that was all right. It would keep magic in the world, and it would keep them together.

  The thing inside him unfurled, and a burning, roiling darkness coiled out of it. Like a poison spreading through clear waters, it poured from him into the other mages.

  The connection between them began to shudder and quake, a ripple going through them. One of the mages screamed; the thread of power turned, coming from the pool and pulsing back into the mages. Kel gasped, then gave a little cry of pain.

  It will be all right. It will be over soon, Illiam thought, wishing he could take her hand until it was over.

  She was fighting against it. Whatever Illiam had released into the pool, it was doing something to the ritual, something that was going to keep it from working. The mage next to him began to seize, he opened his eyes and looked at her. The white-haired mage. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she dropped to the ground, shaking and jolting.

  Another cried out and dropped, too.

  Illiam was sweating now, but he wasn’t feeling any pain, not like the others. He turned and looked at Kel, saw tears running down her face. The others were dying. The power was overwhelming them, turning back in on them. She was trying to pull the excess into herself, now, trying to protect them.

  No, what are you doing? One of the seizing mages lay still, unmoving, and Kel yanked that rest of the excess power from him; it was coursing through her body now, her hair lifting from her shoulders, little crackles of energy running through her. It was too much for her; he could see black burns spreading over her skin. Stop, he thought. This is what needs to happen.

  He reached out, grasped the darkness and started to pull it from her, back into the pool, and the other mages.

  This is why you need me. This is why I am here. This needs to be done, and you’re too afraid to do it. But don’t worry, Kel. It’s all going to be all right in the end.

  58

  Kel

  Something was wrong, something was going terribly, terribly wrong. The connection to the mages had given her a small amount of magic back, but now the mages were dying. She tried to protect them, tried to pull the excess power—where was it even coming from—back into herself, but it was too much.

  Her eyes met Illiam’s. Images flashed into her mind. She saw him, lonely, playing by himself while the other kids in the village laughed and made fun of him. She saw him alone, imagining a different world, a place he could go where he would be the best, where everyone would want to be around him. She watched as that loneliness turned to arrogance, to a belief that he was special. That he would be a mage and finally all the years of loneliness and rejection would make sense, would amount to something.

  There would have been disappointment on his birthday, when he hadn’t become a mage. It would have been too much to bear, and so he didn’t. He didn’t bear it. He continued on, insisting that this was who he was, that this was what he was destined for.

  And he’d gotten what he wanted.

  She saw him meeting with Morthil, bargaining for the powers he’d always wanted. He’d come to the Table and it had been exactly how he’d always hoped, always imagined. Everything was perfect, except that nothing with Kel had gone the way he’d wanted or expected it to. But he held out hope; he had complete confidence that she would love him, but under that he was absolutely sure she wouldn’t. That no one would ever love him.

  Kel was dying, the mages around her were dying. The ritual was failing, and Morthil would be here any second. She tried to separate the darkness from the shadow magic, tried to force the ritual to work, but it wouldn’t. She could see now that when Illiam had gotten his powers, he’d gotten a strange, malformed version of them from Morthil. A version Morthil had known wouldn’t work.

  Illiam’s face twisted in anger. This was not how he’d wanted this to go, she could see. He didn’t care about whether the ritual succeeded or failed—although he’d rather it failed—he didn’t care that this was what she wanted, what she thought was right. He imagined that after this, whatever way it turned out, they would be together. That she would love him.

  Kel thought of the crows, who had sacrificed themselves for this. She looked at the mages, collapsed on the ground, thought of Morthil coming for them. Then she looked at Illiam. She didn’t hate him for betraying her. She only felt sad for him. She saw his loneliness and his belief that no one would love him unless he was special, and she wanted to help him.

  But this time, she knew that she couldn’t.

  She kept her eyes locked on his as she took the energy she’d pulled from the mages and pushed it back towards him.

  His eyes widened as he realized what she was doing. Several unreadable things went across his face as he pushed back reflexively, and then suddenly the resistance was gone. The magic poured into him, away from her. She watched it tear him apart.

  Seconds later, the mages awoke. Isabelle was the first to lift her head, looking around, her eyes falling on Illiam, clearly dead, next to her.

  “What happened? Did it work?”

  “He betrayed us. He was working with Morthil. It didn’t work.”

  “Told you, didn’t I?”

  “I thought I could make it work anyway, but I couldn’t.”

  Overhead, another explosion shook the Citadel. “We’re screwed now, right?”

  “Wrong,” came a voice from the doorway.

  59

  Sarai

  As they swept in,
Sarai looked down and saw the bodies, one of which was clad in sparkly purple, skintight material, and she snapped. That was it. She didn’t care about being an assassin anymore. She didn’t care about magic, or about who she might or might not be. None of it mattered. That pillar was right. All that mattered was the people you cared about, and the only one of those left for Sarai was Agnes. Of course, the last thing Agnes had asked Sarai to do before she had abandoned her had been to help her keep Kel from destroying magic. But probably that didn’t apply now.

  Sarai wouldn’t say she understood Agnes very well, or people in general, come to think of it, but she probably would want Sarai to do the thing that Sarai thought could probably save Agnes’s life. And that was destroy magic. Maybe kill the Finn demon if she could. That would be a plus, but that seemed a little out of her skill set, as much as Sarai didn’t want to admit it.

  The Baron, who had been to the Citadel many times for trade meetings, led her deep into the castle. Overhead, they could hear Morthil bringing in the last of his bodies. At the door to the room with the speaking pool, Sarai paused, bending over the doorknob for a moment before she ducked in, the Baron following her.

  They’d just said something about being screwed, which seemed like the perfect moment for a dramatic entrance, if Sarai had ever heard one.

  “Wrong,” she said, striding into the room, the Baron right behind her, and slamming the door shut behind them. It would have been the perfect moment to be wearing a skintight bodysuit. But still, everyone turned and stared at her in shock. So satisfying. She suppressed a smile. “Let’s get this over with before he gets all those bodies down through these tunnels,” she said, crossing the room and carefully avoiding Isabelle’s stare.