Shadow's Blade, page 31
You have learned nothing, Justis Fearsson. The words echoed in my head, my only warning of what was to come.
Anguish. It spiked through my skull, as sharp and unrelenting as a steel blade. I think I screamed. I know I clawed at my scalp, trying to pull out whatever she had used to impale me. But of course, there was nothing I could grab, nothing I could remove, and the pain went on and on for what seemed an eternity.
“Stop it!”
Gracie’s voice came from a great distance, through agony and fatigue, and Saorla’s soft laughter.
“Leave him alone.”
“Will you let me see you?”
“Yes.”
“No,” I said, croaking the word. “Our . . . only . . . advantage.”
“The glamour will die with you,” Gracie whispered. She was far closer to me than I had thought. Her hand rested on my shoulder. “Either way she’s going to see us. This way we still have a chance.”
“All right,” I said. And then I repeated it, loud enough that the words would reach Saorla. “All right.”
The pain didn’t stop, but it diminished. I could open my eyes. Finding myself flat on my back, I sat up, a groan escaping me.
“You will remove the glamour?” Saorla asked.
“Yes.” I cast the spell, unsure in that moment of whether I had the strength to make it work. It should have been a simple three element crafting, but only if I was willing to expose all of us, including Billie and the kids. So I made it more complicated than it needed to be. Saorla, Fitzwater and the other weremancers, my glamour, Neil, Gracie, and me, and the removal of the spell.
I released the magic, knew from the way Gracie glanced my way that she felt the spell on her skin, just as I did.
“Much better,” Saorla said. She started to say more, but then stopped and stared off into the night. I felt magic purr in the ground.
“A glamour of my own, Justis Fearsson. Whoever blew up those vehicles attracted the notice of the local fire department. They won’t find us now. You’ll not have any help from them.” The smile that curved her lips was short-lived. “Now, where are the children? Where’s the girl I met earlier today?”
“Far away from here,” I said.
“I do not believe you.”
Footsteps rustled the dirt behind us. Turning my head—the motion painful enough to make me suck air through my teeth—I saw Vogue and her two companions stumble into the light cast by the burning SUVs. The man whose leg I’d broken was limping, but it seemed that he or his friends had healed the break. Great. Neil had yet to wake, but even if he did, we were outnumbered again. Not that it mattered. With Saorla here, numbers were the least of our concerns.
“Search the tents,” Saorla said. “Find those children.”
Gracie lifted her chin. “You won’t.”
Something snapped, and Gracie cried out. She dropped the Ruger and clutched her mangled hand.
“That was but one finger,” Saorla said, walking toward us. “I can break them all, and will if you do not tell me where you have hidden the children.”
“You know that won’t work, Saorla,” I said. “Earlier today you claimed to know what it was like to bear children. Have you forgotten what it means to be a mother? She’d rather die than tell you anything. And she’d endure any pain to keep them safe.”
She halted and scowled down at me.
“And before you try one of us, I assure you the father would do the same, and so would I. I’d gladly die if it meant keeping you in the dark, and keeping those kids safe.”
“Very well,” she said, in a tone that was entirely too sanguine for my taste. “Perhaps she would care to tell me where the Sgian-Bán is hidden.” She spoke the blade’s name in an accent I had never heard, and though loath to admit it, I couldn’t help thinking that she made it sound beautiful, powerful, even magical. “Will she endure the same pain to protect a blade, an object no more alive than that automobile? Is she willing to watch you die in order to keep it hidden?” She stepped around me to where Neil lay. “Would she allow me to kill the father of her babes?”
“No,” Gracie said. Tears streaked her cheeks, shining in the light of the moon and the fires.
“Tell me where it is.”
Gracie glared up at her, her lips pressed thin. I sensed that she was bracing herself, and I knew what for.
Bone broke again, and she shrieked, bending over until her forehead rested on the desert floor.
“Tell me!”
It had been an act. Gracie had wanted the necromancer to break another of her fingers. It was the only way to make Saorla believe the lie she was about to tell. I’m not sure I could have done it. I knew a lot of brave people—Kona, my dad in his own way, Billie. In that moment I thought Gracie more courageous than all of them.
“My parents have it,” she said, panting out the words. “They don’t know. But it’s in their house. Hidden, safe.”
“You will take me there. You will find it and give it to me.” She glanced back at Fitzwater, but he was still on his hands and knees. She sneered, turned to Vogue. “Watch them,” she said. “If they attempt to escape, kill them. And take their weapons. We may be warded, but I prefer they not have any means of creating mischief.”
Saorla grabbed a handful of Gracie’s hair and hauled her to her feet, drawing a sob.
I opened my mouth to object, but before I could, the two of them vanished.
Vogue stalked toward me, her eyes narrowed and shining with firelight. I had no doubt she intended to kill me. Over the past few days, I had knocked her around quite a bit. She wanted revenge. Her companions—Susan and the man whose leg I’d broken—trailed behind her. I had a feeling that they wanted a piece of me, too. But before Vogue could kick me in the head again, or put a knife through my heart, or light me on fire, Fitzwater said, “Leave him.”
His voice sounded weak, but it stopped her. He remained Saorla’s must trusted servant, even if he did look and sound like a beat up old man. He stood, though it seemed to take a great effort.
“We’ve got the woman,” Vogue said. “What does he matter?”
“Saorla wants him alive for now.” He flashed a weak smile my way. “Apparently he still owes her a boon. And since we have the woman, and will soon have the blade, she’ll have to think of some other way to use him. Take his gun, and the woman’s, but don’t do anything else to him.”
Vogue’s expression curdled, but she did as she was told, stooping to grab Gracie’s weapon off the ground and then looming over me, the Ruger aimed at my forehead, her free hand outstretched. I couldn’t remember if I had warded myself against bullets, and I wasn’t sure I trusted my other wardings to withstand a gunshot from point-blank range. Despising her, and hating myself a little, I handed her the Sig Sauer.
She eyed it, and I could tell she was remembering the pistol-whipping from earlier. But she didn’t hit me or blow my brains out. She pocketed my weapon, but held on to the Ruger, and she stepped back, putting a bit of distance between us.
Unsure of what to try next, weary beyond words, I stared at the spot where Gracie and Saorla had been.
Maybe I should have been relieved to hear that the necromancer wouldn’t be killing me immediately upon her return. But knowing that Gracie had lied to her, and knowing too that eventually Saorla would find the blade anyway, I wasn’t sure death wouldn’t be preferable to what was coming.
It is the one weapon in your world that can be used to kill runemystes.
She would find a way to force me to summon Namid, and then she’d kill him while I watched. I knew it wouldn’t be as easy for her as that made it sound. But I also was familiar enough with Saorla to know this was her intent.
I glimpsed movement out of the corner of my eye, and it was all I could do not to turn my head and draw the attention of Vogue and Fitzwater. Allowing my eyes to roam the moonlit landscape in a way that would seem natural, I saw that Neil was moving the index finger on his right hand. He remained motionless otherwise, his eyes closed. In every respect he appeared to be unconscious still. But his finger moved with the regularity of a windshield wiper blade. It had to be intentional, an attempt to get my attention.
I braced my hands on the ground and started to stand.
“Stop it!” Vogue said, holding the Ruger with both hands. “What do you think you’re doing?”
I did stop, and I raised one hand: a placating gesture. “I just want to stand up,” I said. “My legs and back are killing me.”
“Stay where you are.”
“I’m not trying to get myself shot,” I said. Moving ever so slowly, I got to one knee and held up both hands for her to see. “And I know that you and Fitzwater can pummel me with spells if you want to. But sitting on the rock and sand isn’t as comfortable as it sounds.”
“I don’t give a crap! Don’t move!”
I stayed as I was on one knee, my hands raised. I had her full attention now, which was what I wanted.
Susan, though, proved herself a bit more observant.
“Hey,” she said, “I think this guy is moving.”
I wanted to shout at Neil that now was as good a time as any to do something—anything. To his credit, he didn’t need to be told. Magic hummed in the ground beneath my knee. I watched Vogue for some sign that the spell had hit her, but saw none.
Puzzlement knitted her brow. “What was that?”
“Hey!” Susan said, voice rising.
A knife flashed in Neil’s hand; I knew it hadn’t been there before. That first crafting had been a transporting spell. He slashed at his other arm and cast almost in the same moment, blood appearing on his skin and vanishing as if wiped away. The second spell resonated like a drum, far more powerful than the first.
And Vogue burst into flame.
It wasn’t the attack I would have used, but Neil had admitted to me that he wasn’t the most accomplished of weremystes, and fire spells were easy.
Vogue’s shriek skirled upward. The Ruger went off—I think in her agony she pulled the trigger. An instant later it dropped to the ground. She took two writhing steps, her arms flailing, before dropping to her knees.
I grabbed the Ruger and aimed it at Susan and her friend.
Another spell swirled through the air, and the flames burning on Vogue went out. After the brightness of the blaze, my eyes needed time to readjust to the night. I assumed I wasn’t alone in that regard, and cast a crude camouflage spell. Three elements instead of seven: the night, the desert, and me blending with both.
I sensed another spell and dove, as if avoiding a gunshot. I hit the ground, rolled, and came up with the Ruger trained on Susan again.
“Where the hell is he?” said the man standing with her.
I’d only get one chance to strike at them, and I knew the pistol was the worst of my options.
Vogue was no longer burning, but her hair and clothes were essentially gone, and even in the dim light of the moon and smoldering SUVs I could see that her skin was blistered and melted in some places.
“He’s close still,” Fitzwater said. “And if he values Mister Davett’s life—”
I didn’t wait to hear more. There was more blood on Neil’s arm, but I hoped that he would cast again and use it himself. He needed it more than I did. More to the point, I knew what Namid would say about me resorting to more blood magic. I had already used the flames from the SUV. I could do these enhanced spells. But my last crafting had diminished the fires too much.
And in that scintilla of time, I remembered what Gracie had told me a couple of days before. There’s power everywhere . . . Namid had said much the same thing to me in Billie’s dining room.
Desperate times and desperate measures.
Heat from the day’s sun still radiated from the ground, and so I drew on that, hoping to God it would work as well as it had for Gracie the other day. I wanted to incapacitate Susan and the guy with her, and I didn’t give a damn about being gentle. I envisioned a block of cement falling on their heads. Them, the block, and the energy from that heat to enhance the spell.
The magic I felt flowing up through my legs was like nothing I’d ever drawn upon before. I half-expected lightning to fly from my hands. At the touch of that conjuring, Susan and her friend collapsed with such finality, I wondered if I’d used too much power.
But I didn’t hesitate, whirling toward Fitzwater and the two remaining weremancers, I drew upon that power again.
I didn’t get the chance to cast.
Neil let out a whine that built slowly to a scream of such anguish, I could do nothing more than stare at him. He held his head in his hands, the knife beside him on the ground, all but forgotten.
“Cast another spell and he dies,” Fitzwater said over Neil’s cries. He was still in the roadway, but from what I could see, he had recovered from the spells we’d thrown at him earlier. He stood straight-backed, his fists clenched at his side.
“Show yourself,” he demanded. “Or he dies.”
Between us, Neil and I had evened the odds a bit. But I couldn’t take out Fitzwater and the two with him without costing Neil his life, and that wasn’t a trade I was ready to make.
“Easy, Fitzwater.”
I cast again to remove the camouflage spell. Fitzwater’s eyes found me right away. I still held the Ruger, and, to be on the safe side, I laid it on the ground and kicked it away a few feet.
Neil continued to wail.
“Now, stop hurting him.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll crush you like a bug.”
I meant it. On this night, with that last spell I’d cast, I had taken to heart the lessons Namid had been trying for so many years to impart to me. He was right: I didn’t need blood. It wasn’t just that I understood what he meant when he told me that power was all around us. I could feel that power, and somehow I had discovered the means to access it. Maybe it was the product of new-found wisdom, born of Gracie’s advice and Namid’s teachings. Maybe my frustration at having been held back for so long by my own ignorance and limitations had reached the tipping point. Maybe it really was the product of that desperation. Or perhaps it was some combination of all three. Whatever the cause, I finally got it. For the first time in my life, I believed I was worthy of being called a runecrafter.
If it came to a battle between Fitzwater and me, I knew I could beat him. My fear, though, was that he would kill Neil or someone else before I could do so. That was the only reason I didn’t try to destroy him where he stood.
He must have heard the confidence in my voice, because seconds later, Neil’s cries subsided to a soft whimper.
“You shouldn’t have done that to my friends,” Fitzwater said. “You and Davett have made things much harder for yourselves.”
“I suppose you expected us to sit here, waiting to die. I didn’t try to kill those two,” I said, waving a hand at the unconscious weremancers. “That’s more consideration than they deserved. It’s more than you gave to Burt Kendall and his assistant.”
His smile could have brought snow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re a liar.”
The smile slipped, leaving him looking as angry as I’d seen him. “Watch your mouth.”
“No, I don’t think I will. What do you plan to do about it?”
I wanted him to attack me. I wanted him to see for himself what I already knew.
He threw a spell. I didn’t know what it was, nor I did I care. I warded myself, drawing on the heat in the sand and the moonlight on the brush and cacti, the fires burning low and the wind carrying the smoke eastward. His casting passed over me like the gentle swell of a wave on a calm morning.
Another grin had crept across his features, but now his face fell.
“That wasn’t very good, Lionel,” I said. “My turn.”
I drew on those same sources and added three elements: my fist, his gut, and a solid blow.
He doubled over with a retching grunt. I would have liked to make him throw up, but he managed not to.
“That’s how you do it,” I said. “Maybe it’s time for you to take blood from one of your remaining companions.”
Fitzwater glanced over his shoulder at the two weremancers. They backed away from him.
He faced me again. “Or I could simply kill Davett.”
I cast another spell. Moments before I had been exhausted almost to the point of collapse, because I realized now, I had been fighting my magic even as I used it. With the understanding of how magic ought to work, came an ease of runecrafting I had never imagined was possible. I didn’t even sense that headache Gracie had warned me about. Namid would have been proud.
An aqua shell of power appeared over Neil, glowing like bioluminescent algae in the sea.
“Go ahead and try,” I said.
For the first time, Fitzwater appeared frightened. And I wanted to revel in his fear, to repay him for the terror he had inflicted on Gracie, Emmy, and Zach, to avenge Burt and Tommy and Lucas Quinn.
But at that moment, Saorla winked into view again, her fist entangled in Gracie’s hair.
Gracie could barely keep herself upright. Her face was damp with sweat and tears. Her hand appeared mangled beyond repair, and she had a welt on her jaw and another on her temple.
Saorla looked at me, and then at Neil and the glowing shield I had created.
“Well, we can’t have that.”
She snapped her fingers, and the warding vanished.
CHAPTER 22
Saorla pushed Gracie away from her. Gracie stumbled and fell to the dirt, using her injured hand to break the fall, and then sobbing.
“She lied to me,” Saorla said to no one in particular. “The Sgian-Bán was not there.”
“What did you do to her parents?” I asked.
The necromancer cast a sidelong glance my way, a sly smile curving her lips. “What do you think I did with them? Do you expect me to say that they are dead? That they tried to interfere and so I punished them as they deserved?”
