by Todd Herzman
Ella used her magical senses. Her head protested, stinging in pain as she reached out, but it was her only choice. She felt where the blood mage was—the blood lord, by Magna’s reckoning. She felt the pinpricks of energy that were his crew, his thralls. She stopped on them a moment, using her senses to examine them. If she focused hard enough, she could feel the strings of energy that connected them to the blood lord like a physical pull. She pushed her senses down, into the bowels of the ship. Aralia was there. Her power seemed fainter than before. Had Ella hurt her?
There was no time to worry about that. Ella pushed her senses down farther, remembering where it was Aralia said their power came from. Where mana came from.
When Ella sensed the sea, it almost overwhelmed her. An ocean of energy—the very water had power in it. Aralia hadn’t shown her how to pull power from nature—Ella had never run out of her reserve before. And she’d used it so rarely that the reserve replenished itself without her needing to prompt it.
But now, Ella needed that energy. She touched her mind to the ocean. Her head split in pain, feeling as if it were being stretched, pulled apart from all sides. She’d done something very wrong when she’d tried to make contact with Aralia’s mind, something that had damaged her own mind. Ella persevered. She pushed through the pain, knowing that if she didn’t, she was doomed. Doomed to be a prisoner for the rest of her life, doomed to be bloodlocked and turned into a thrall. She’d end up as Arin had, for all those years. Kept in a cell, used only for her powers…
The pain was immense, but she felt it working. She felt the mana edge out of the water and float up to her. Little round balls of energy in her mind’s eye, flitting through the floor of the ship. They passed the deck Aralia was on, and before they made it to Ella, Ella managed to nudge some energy toward Aralia. Aralia’s presence sparked in Ella’s senses.
A ball of energy slipped through the floor of Ella’s cabin. She opened her eyes and saw it for real. A smile spread to her lips as the ball hovered toward her. It touched her skin, entering through her chest and warming her heart. Her head still throbbed, but she could feel energy in her reserve again.
The mana kept coming, sweeping up from the water straight to Ella until she felt her reserve replenished in full. Her senses told her Aralia was doing the same—wherever she was down in the ship, her powers were being restored, though at a much slower pace—as if Ella had jumpstarted the witch’s natural replenishment process.
She still took an arrow though her side, Ella thought. At least there was a doctor on board.
Ella shifted on the bed. She pulled at her restraints, but they still held her fast. Her head throbbed in pain as she moved. She’d hoped regaining her reserve would make the headache disappear, but it was no better than it had been before. She looked over at her right hand, strapped down tightly. She had her powers back now, but if she used fire to burn through the restraints, she risked setting the whole room alight—she risked setting herself alight.
She took a deep breath, considered her other powers, and realised fire would be the only way. It was a risk worth taking. First, she needed to get herself free, then she could worry about whether she’d set another ship on fire.
Ella twisted her wrist until her palm pointed at the strap that held it. Control, she thought to herself. She only needed a small amount of fire. She’d managed to control the fire when walking the cave tunnels and when fighting the thralls. She could do it now. She would do it now.
She stopped her senses from reaching out, instead focusing them fully within. Her reserve pulsed inside of her, brewing with power. Ella gave it the lightest of nudges, coaxing just a smidge of mana out of it. Her hand began to smoke, ever so slightly. A small flame, the size of a dying candle’s, licked her palm. Ella let out a breath. The flame was the right size, but it wasn’t angled in the right direction. The strap was on her wrist, beneath her palm, but the flame went where all flames went—up.
When fighting the thralls, she’d somehow shot streams of fire at them. If she launched this little flame and missed the strap, she’d set the bed alight.
Ella’s heart beat fast as she made her decision. Better to die in flames than in chains. She launched the little flame from her palm. It hit the strap dead on, but extinguished itself a moment later, barely having melted the threads. Ella took a shuddering breath and tried again. This time, with a flame twice the size. When it fell onto the strap, the heated leather burned her flesh. Ella stopped herself from screaming. Why had she felt pain? The flames had never burned her before.
The strap caught alight. Ella stared at it, the flames burning her skin. She kept herself as still as possible, worried she’d accidentally snuff the fire out before it did its job.
‘Come on, come on,’ she whispered between gritted teeth. When the flames had burned through half the strap—and melted her skin around it—she couldn’t hold on anymore. She ripped her arm out. Her wrist came free of its bindings, and she smashed it against the bed, rolling her wrist and killing the flame.
Her wrist throbbed with a consistent, stinging pain. She pushed it away as she’d pushed away the pain in her head and forced herself to undo the binding on her other hand—this time without having to burn herself. When Ella’s hands were free, she snatched the cup of water from the bedside and dumped it on her burning wrist. She swallowed a yelp, took two deep breaths, and undid the straps from her ankles.
Ella slid off the bed and onto her feet. She was free. At least, free for now. She reached out with her newfound senses. The blood lord still stood on the deck.
And there was someone directly outside of her cabin. She pulled her senses toward whoever it was. They didn’t appear to be moving. She focused her senses upon them and felt a string of energy—a bloodlock—that reached out and connected with the blood lord above. A thrall standing guard? She thanked herself for not having made enough noise to attract their attention. She stepped gently to the door. If she killed the thrall, would the blood lord know? Ella put a hand on the handle and turned it as slowly as she could manage. It turned, but when she tried to open the door the latch on the other side stopped it.
If hurting or killing the blood lord’s thralls meant he’d know she was free, she would need to act fast.
Blood mages get their power from their thralls, she thought. The less thralls… the less power. That meant she would have to kill them—all of them—if she wanted to weaken the blood lord. She thought of Arin, of all the people she’d seen back in the sanctuary. They had all been thralls once. Ruben might be a thrall now… She thought of Magna, the woman who seemed so gentle, stuck on this ship under someone else’s control.
These people didn’t deserve to die. It wasn’t their fault they were doing what they did—they were being controlled. Their actions weren’t their own.
But how else was she supposed to escape?
Ella stepped to the side of the door, took a deep breath, then started screaming. ‘Help! Help me, please!’
The latch clicked free, the handle turned, and the door swung in. A short, scarred man poked his head into the room. The second he did, a bolt of lightning struck him between the eyes. Ella felt power pass from him—whatever mana he’d held disappeared in a flash as his heart stopped.
The man slumped to the ground, his weight smashing the door open. Ella stared at what she’d done. She’d killed before, back on the island—but this, this was different. This man hadn’t attacked her, hadn’t tried to hurt her.
He was stopping me from leaving, she thought. There was no other way.
Ella bent down and grabbed the man’s ankles. She pulled him just far enough into the room that the door could close behind him. She slipped out of the room, shut the door, and called on her magical senses. The pinpricks of energy were moving, fast, down to her deck from the left.
She would have to move faster.
Ella fled to the right. She could tell where Aralia was on the ship—down, maybe one deck belo
w—but this was the first time she’d been out of her cabin. Her senses didn’t map the ship. She turned a corner, worrying she would reach a dead end. Footsteps pounded from where she’d just been.
Stairs, she thought. Thank the stars. The stairs were at the end of the hall. She sped to them, boots thudding on the deck. They’d reach her soon. She didn’t have enough time, enough focus, to check if the blood lord was among them. She needed to weaken him. There was no way she would escape with Aralia—and whoever else may have survived—while he lived. She rushed down the stairs, taking two at a time and jumping the last four. It was dark down here. She hid underneath the staircase and peered through the gaps between the steps.
Them or me, she thought. If she let these few live, she’d be trapped in the bowels of the ship until the entire crew surrounded her. She wouldn’t be able to take them on all at once.
Booted feet pounded down the hall, stopping at the top of the stairs. Ella angled her palms to face through the gap in the steps and tried to keep her breath steady. She heard someone whisper but couldn’t make out the words. Now she’d stopped running, she closed her eyes and drew on her other senses.
She felt the blood lord at the top of the stairs, surrounded by six thralls, their bloodlocked energy strings threaded to their master. When the whispering stopped, one of them headed back the way they’d come.
Wood creaked above her head on the landing. Someone cleared their throat. ‘By now, you must have realised you have reached a dead end, unless it was your intention to flee into a storage room.’ It was the blood lord. She’d recognise that bored, droning voice anywhere.
Ella blinked, her eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. She could make out shelves on one wall, a half-dozen barrels lining the other. No doors. No hallways.
Shit, she thought.
‘You killed one of my men,’ the blood lord said, then he made a tsk noise. ‘Not very polite, a guest killing their host’s possessions.’
Possessions. He spoke of his people as if they belonged to him. She wanted to scream back at the man, but she forced herself to keep quiet. There was no point revealing her position.
She sensed two people coming down the hall to the blood lord.
‘It’s only fair that I kill something of yours. Sing, little birdy. Tell your friend you’re here.’
‘Ella?’ a woman called out, her voice strained. ‘Ella, are you down there?’
Reena. Reena was alive! Ella’s pain at being betrayed felt petty now, in light of all that had happened. She’d thought Reena had died when the Serpentine burned.
She hadn’t. Which was a small relief, considering she was about to die now.
‘I could let her live, you know.’
Ella inched her foot to the side.
‘If you come up, no one has to die.’
Chapter 45
Marius
It took them the whole day to reach the top of the mountain. No one had followed them; there didn’t seem to be any thralls left. Still, Marius and Lilah kept looking over their shoulders. When Lilah wasn’t using both hands to climb, she rested one on the pommel of her Starblade.
It felt as if they’d been climbing forever when they came upon the monastery’s stone walls. Marius knew that, beyond those walls, tunnels stretched deep into the mountain, carved hundreds of years ago by the first Tahali monks. The ones who’d founded the order.
Peiter had taught him that.
‘Think they’ll let us in?’ Lilah said. They were walking the length of the stone wall, looking for the monastery’s gate. The ground here was pleasingly flat after so long climbing.
Marius pulled an iron chain from his coat pocket. He rubbed one of the links between his fingers. ‘They have to.’
Lilah touched the clasp at her neck, the symbol of her seeker order. ‘I hope you’re right.’
The wall stretched farther than Marius had expected. He’d assumed the place would be smaller, considering how difficult it was to reach. How could they build a place like this somewhere so remote? Magic, he thought. Of course. Eventually, they came upon a large set of wooden doors. The doors were as smooth as the stone walls and just as tall. Marius craned his neck to look to the top. It was maybe four times his height—three times Lilah’s.
There was a single, iron door knocker on the right-side door. Marius and Lilah exchanged a glance. She looked to the chain in his hands and nodded her head in the direction of the knocker. ‘Seems like you should be the one.’
Marius trudged over to the knocker, walking on sore feet and shaky legs. This should have been an exciting moment. He’d spent much of the journey wondering what life would be like on the other side of that door. But after all that had happened, after Peiter, he just wanted to be safe.
The knocker was the shape and size of an adult hand. It felt strange to grab it. He wondered at the significance. The monks, offering a helping hand to those in need? He hoped the hand would be offered to them. He was fairly sure the monks would let him in. He glanced back at Lilah. The seeker was another question entirely.
Marius knocked three times, let go of the hand-shaped knocker, and waited in the silence that followed. There was no slit in the door. How did they know who was knocking? Marius looked up, and saw a face attached to a bald head staring at him from atop the wall.
‘You don’t look like monks.’
It was a woman’s voice. Marius blinked up at her, not used to seeing a woman with a shaved head.
‘I wish to join the order, become an apprent—’ Marius started, but was interrupted.
‘We seek sanctuary.’ Lilah stepped beside Marius. ‘We’ve been pursued by a blood mage’s thralls, there was a battle, at the bottom of the mountain.’
The woman narrowed her eyes down at them. ‘We know. We sensed it.’ She turned her gaze to Marius. ‘A boy holding a master’s chain.’ She looked at Lilah. ‘And a seeker seeking sanctuary. How do we know you weren’t on the wrong side of that battle?’
‘You can sense if I’m lying, can’t you?’ Marius looked at the chain in his hands. ‘Peiter could.’
‘Peiter can do a lot of things,’ the woman said, then paused, staring down at the chain in Marius’s hand. ‘Where is Peiter? What have you done to him?’
Lilah kicked the dirt. ‘He’s gone.’ She pointed at Marius. ‘Peiter died protecting him, trying to get him here safe.’
‘Let them through,’ a booming voice said from the other side of the doors.
The woman turned, her head obscured by the top of the wall. ‘But—’
‘Now.’
She sighed and climbed down. Moments later, a latch unlocked. The doors opened outwards. Marius and Lilah had to step back to not get hit by them. A short monk, in robes just like Peiter’s, stood with his arms outstretched. He’d opened the doors with his magic, when he could have used his hands. Peiter’s words entered Marius’s mind, Magic should be used for more.
Peiter had lived his life to serve others. He could have done so much with his magic, could have made his own life easier. Marius had tried to be selfless. He’d tried to give himself up so Peiter and Lilah wouldn’t be hurt. All he’d done was get the man killed. Marius clenched his fist, the chain tight in his grip. He was angry—not just at himself, but at Peiter. It was Marius’s fault—it was all his fault. But if Peiter had broken his oath, he’d be standing beside them now. They would have defeated the blood mage’s thralls together.
The short monk gestured them inside, grabbing Marius’s attention. Behind the monk was a field of green. The gardens. Beyond them, the caves leading into the heart of the monastery. ‘You must be weary from your travels.’ Though his words were kind, his gaze was chiselled stone. ‘Enid.’ He turned his head to the woman. ‘Please let the acolytes know we have guests. They’ll need something to drink, and something hot to eat.’
Marius stepped over the threshold into the monastery’s walls, Lilah right behind him. His shoulders seemed to light
en as he did. He wished he’d walked through the doors with Peiter by his side, but at least he would be safe now. Peiter would have wanted him to be safe.
Enid’s eyes slid to Lilah, then back to the monk. ‘And where will they be?’
‘In the great hall.’
The woman hesitated. Her mouth opened, then shut again. She bowed her head and walked to one of the cave entrances.
The monk, whose eyebrows looked as grey as old Joslin’s hair, turned to address Marius. He was only half a head taller than the boy. ‘I sense power in you. I can see why Peiter wished to bring you here.’ He turned his eyes on Lilah. ‘You’re only inside these walls because from what I can glean from this boy’s mind, he trusts you. And so did Peiter.’ He looked at the swords at her hip, eyes settling on the Starblade. ‘We are not a violent order, as you know. But do not think you will be able to draw that inside these walls without resistance. Do you understand, Seeker?’
Lilah nodded.
‘Good.’ The monk brought his hands up, and the lines on his forehead deepened. The door creaked behind Marius, closing with a soft thud and a clean click from the latch. ‘Follow me.’ The monk turned with a sharp twist and went off in the direction Enid had.
The gardens they passed through were quiet. There were one or two monks tending to the plants, but those were the only people Marius saw. After having visited so many busy towns on his trek, Marius had expected a bustling crowd. Though Peiter had never mentioned how many monks lived and trained in the monastery.
Now that Enid had rushed off, no one was watching the wall. Marius noticed Lilah’s eyes sweeping around the perimeter.
‘No guards?’ she asked.
‘There are other, more hidden means protecting this place.’
Lilah looked unconvinced, but she didn’t press the matter. ‘My name is—’
‘Lilah, and the boy’s name is Marius.’ The monk tapped his forehead. ‘I read the boy’s mind, remember?’