That was Talorc’s mistake.
“Koen!” I yelled over the noise of battle and the groaning and cracks of moving wood. “Get me over to the fireplace.”
He stared at me as if I’d grown wings and was about to fly off. “That’s where the golem is.”
“I know! Just get me over there!”
He stood irresolutely for a moment, looking between me and Serrin, who stared at the golem through the trees. One delicate hand covered her mouth. She seemed to be in shock. Koen forced her into a sitting position.
“Stay here,” he said firmly. “And don’t worry. That thing won’t get this far.” He didn’t look like he believed his own words.
His eyes pinched with worry, he ran to my right side and half lifted me as we scuttled awkwardly through the trees. Between the twisting, moving limbs, I caught glimpses of the golem swinging its arms at the branches attacking it. It was almost to the hearth. Its blackened skin began to glow, and a roaring sound like a building bonfire filled the room.
“There!” I pointed Koen to a cluster of metal tools hanging to one side of the hearth. When we got close enough, I snatched the tongs off their hook and turned to the warriors fighting the golem.
“Bridei!” I screamed. But she couldn’t hear me.
The demon stepped back with a foot and crushed one of the hearth fires. It threw back its head, and its body turned an angry red.
With all my strength, I threw the tongs toward Bridei. They landed on the stone at her feet, and the movement caught her attention. She looked down at them, then over at me.
“Its mouth!” I yelled. I made elaborate motions with my hands to clarify. “Get the coal out of its mouth!”
Her eyes narrowed, and she nodded her understanding. In a smooth movement, she sheathed her sword and swept up the tongs. Taking a running leap at one of the trees, she caught a lower branch and began swinging herself upwards.
Ghalad backed away from a swipe of the golem’s arm and toward us. He pointed at Bridei. “Good idea,” he panted. “Attack from above.”
Bridei moved quickly. The trees seemed to sense her need, their branches growing to support her weight and aid her climb. I caught movement near the base of one of the trees and saw Talorc there. He gestured with his arms, and the trees mimicked his movements.
As Bridei approached the golem’s head, the creature caught sight of her. In a heartbeat, it grabbed the tree she was in and ripped it out of the stone floor, rocks and bits of wood raining down. It swung the tree at a side wall. Bridei leapt.
I screamed her name and stepped forward before I remembered I didn’t have my crutch. I lost my balance and fell to the floor. Koen cried out and knelt beside me.
“Are you hurt?” he shouted over the increasingly loud roar.
I shook my head impatiently. Ghalad grabbed my arm, but before he could help me stand, there was a thundering crunch. The tree shattered against the wall. Bridei fell clear, but she landed hard and toppled to the floor in a heap. The tongs flew from her grasp and skidded across the stone. Without thinking, I scrambled after them.
“Wait!” Koen lunged for me, but his fingers only brushed the hem of my robe.
The trees attacked the golem with renewed effort, their branches twining together around it, weaving themselves into a cage that blocked the creature from view.
I reached the tongs and snatched them just as the angry roar got so loud it was painful.
“Watch out!” I thought I heard Ghalad yell.
He fell on top of me in a protective crouch as the trees exploded.
I heard a pop followed by an eerie silence, like someone had stuffed my ears full of wool. I moaned and tried to get out from under Ghalad. He shifted back onto his haunches and said something I couldn’t hear.
The floor vibrated, and I looked up at the golem where he stomped his feet in the fire, spraying the room with sparks. He was undamaged. I couldn’t say the same for the rest of the kitchen.
The trees were gone, replaced by heaps of broken wood and huge splinters like javelins. All of the soldiers and warriors lay on the floor, some impaled by shafts of wood. Koen sat up. He wobbled and caught himself with an arm. Bridei crawled through the wreckage toward Talorc. One leg dragged behind her as though it were injured. Talorc himself lay still, as pale as death. I couldn’t see Serrin anywhere.
Ghalad grabbed my face between cupped hands and turned my head to look at him. Blood peppered his white shirt where it wasn’t covered by the breastplate with small shafts of wood protruding from the back of his arms. None looked big enough to cause major injury, but he would need an examination soon to ensure nothing inside was punctured. He didn’t seem to notice the injuries.
He was saying something I couldn’t make out. I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut. A ringing noise filled my head like a hundred angry wasps bumping against the inside of my skull.
I got my good leg under me and tried to stand. I fell, but Ghalad caught me and pulled me up beside him, one arm around my waist to hold me steady. His shirt was sticky with the blood and sweat, and his musky scent had gotten stronger.
Sound was slowly coming back. I thought I heard him say, “—getting you out of here.” He turned me toward the door, and I decided my interpretation was accurate enough.
Others were straggling for the exit, some crawling. The golem grabbed one soldier. The man’s scream pierced the sound barrier around my head, and I hunched my shoulders, catching sight of the tongs I still held.
Then Koen screamed my name. I looked around to see the golem reaching for him.
I slipped out of Ghalad’s embrace and stumbled toward Koen. Somehow I kept both legs under me, though I wobbled like a newborn goat. Fighting gravity, I veered closer to the golem. It didn’t notice me coming at it from the side. I began to shout. I screamed and shook the tongs.
Ghalad cursed from somewhere behind me. “What in the skies do you think you’re doing, woman?”
I tried to jump and finally lost my balance for good. But the golem had noticed me. It swept me up in one giant hand.
Dizziness rushed over me as the ground fell away and the golem’s mouth came closer. Its hand felt hot and tight, and the tightness quickly became painful. I cried out and lost my grip on the tongs. They tumbled to the stone floor, and despair welled up inside me. I couldn’t breathe. The golem’s hand squeezed tighter, and blackness swam at the edges of my vision. Any moment now, I would explode into ashes like the soldiers the golem had already caught.
Then the golem’s mouth was right in front of me—a gaping red cavity with the coal inside. It was so bright it hurt my eyes. It was roughly the size of a walnut. I could easily fit it in the palm of my hand. I blinked at it stupidly for a moment before snatching the coal in both hands and pressing as hard as I could.
Agony I’d never known shot up my hands and filled my entire body. I shook violently. Even losing my leg hadn’t felt like this. Somehow I kept my grip on the coal. My hands went numb and turned black. Smoke rose from my palms and a nauseating smell of burned flesh filled my nostrils. I gritted my teeth. If only I could scream under the vise around my lungs. Instead, I pressed harder. All at once, the coal disintegrated.
At the same time, the golem lurched, grip loosening. Then it collapsed in on itself, shrinking and falling apart. I fell with it, and blackness overtook me.
ELEVEN
I was trapped under a thick layer of ice in a frozen lake. Muffled, indistinguishable voices murmured above me alongside unidentifiable colors and shapes. I was suffocating. I panicked and struggled against the cold water, pounded on the ice.
“It will not break,” said a man’s voice.
I turned. My hair swirled around and tickled my face. A man in a sky-blue robe floated serenely in the water, his hands folded across his middle. A circle of ivy leaves perched on his brow. He looked neither Quahtl nor T’yathan. It was difficult to read his expression under the thick, iron-grey beard covering his face, but small lines around his
eyes twitched as he watched me carefully.
“Then how do I get out?” I asked, finding I could somehow speak.
His smile was gentle, but I felt chided as he answered, “You must melt the ice.”
Then he was gone, and I gasped for breath as people crowded around me. I was back in the kitchen, the memory of the golem washing over me. I sucked in great gulps of air and choked on smoke.
“Get back,” Koen said firmly. “Give her room.”
“Alswyn!” I heard Bridei’s voice and turned to see her crawling toward me, one hand outstretched. I grabbed it, sobbing and clutching at her. Koen let go of me as I rolled into Bridei’s embrace. We held each other fiercely.
“Your hands,” Bridei said. She grabbed my arms to pull my hands in front of her.
I opened my palms. They were red and hot, as if sunburned, but they were no longer black. I gaped at them, trying to understand.
Bridei laughed. “It’s a miracle. You see? Ragnell has forgiven you after all. You saved our lives, and she saved yours.”
I thought Bridei was jumping to unwarranted conclusions, but I pushed the mystery to a back corner of my mind as she pulled me into another hug.
“The circle.” Talorc’s voice was rough and weak. We turned to where he struggled to sit up. “Can the ash sorcerer bring back the demon?”
The relief in my belly vanished like frost in the morning sun.
TWELVE
I carefully washed the charcoal off the floor of the storeroom with a lime solution. The stone radiated heat from the battle with the golem that had taken place underneath it. At least up here we avoided the noise of the massive cleanup underway in the kitchen below.
Koen had volunteered to help me. We were silent as we each worked with our buckets and cloths. Koen avoided my eyes. I could almost punch the wall between us. Why had he volunteered to come up here only to pretend that I wasn’t there?
Finally I leaned back and sighed heavily. “Go on. Ask me.”
He ducked his head as if I’d struck him. “It’s none of my business.”
“It’s all right, Koen. Ask me.”
“No.”
“Fine. Then I’ll just tell you. I was banished because I was an ash sorceress.” There, I’d said it. Now that it was out in the open, it felt like a heavy weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t need to hide it from him anymore.
His jaw worked as he clenched and unclenched his teeth. Finally, he said in a small voice that was more a question than a statement, “But you’re not anymore?”
“Dera marks her servants on the heel of the right foot,” I said. My tone turned clinical, devoid of emotion. It was the only way I could talk about this and not break down in sobs. “The mark is permanent. It means you are hers, forever, to do her bidding. I didn’t know—” in spite of my resolve, my voice cracked. I cleared my throat, fiercely took hold of my emotions. “I didn’t know what I was getting into when my betrothed convinced me to attend a meeting of Dera’s followers. At first, it was fun and exciting, being able to work magic like my father and King Talorc. But my magic was different. It didn’t create beautiful things or even weapons to aid my people. It created monsters and destroyed. When I finally realized what was happening, it was too late. Dera had me in her clutches, and I was branded as her servant.”
“How did you escape?” I couldn’t tell if Koen believed me or not. He sat unnaturally still without looking at me. Instead, he stared down at what remained of the summoning circle.
I pulled the hem of my robe back and unstrapped the wooden leg to expose the red scars crisscrossing my stump. “My people were in danger. When I tried to warn King Talorc that his son, my betrothed, was a traitor and a servant of Dera, the mark on my heel burst into flame. Bridei was with me when it happened. She saved my life, though it cost me my leg.”
Koen shuddered.
“When the mark was gone, I was able to warn Talorc, and he stopped a golem attack before it overran the kingdom.” I threw my robe back over the stump. “Bridei not only saved my life that day, she saved my soul. Without the mark, I was free from Dera’s control.”
Taking a deep breath, Koen stood and walked past me to the door, still without meeting my eyes. “I’m going to fetch more water,” he said. And then he was gone.
Tears I could no longer stop slipped over my lashes. Koen had always been my friend, on good days and bad. But I didn’t know if he could forgive me for what I’d been—what I’d done in another place, another lifetime. Could he ever believe I was no longer that person? Could I believe it, myself?
Frowning against the emotion, I angrily scrubbed at the dark smears on the floor.
It was useless to wish that I had never heard of Dera or been gullible enough to go along with Cynet when we’d attended the Black School in the hills above my father’s estate. But I wished it anyway. The repercussions of that decision were still impacting my life years later, still causing pain, still taking away the people I loved.
After several moments, I realized I’d cleaned up the last of the charcoal marks. My skin and clothes were covered in black. It seemed it would never wash away. For several long moments, I sat hunched over the bucket. An empty despair crept through me. I felt burned out inside, hollow and empty.
Finally, I plunged my cloth in the bucket to rinse it. The water felt cool against the burned skin of my palms. I swirled the cloth around in it, squeezing it several times. With the movement, it took me awhile to realize the water was beginning to boil.
Surprised, I yanked my hands out so fast the bucket tipped over. Blackened water cascaded across the floor, but I didn’t care about the new mess. There was a tingling sensation in my palms. Slowly, I turned them over.
My palms were glowing, as if a light were embedded under the skin.
No.
No, no, NO!
With growing horror, I realized this could mean only one thing: I had ash magic again.
What happens next? Find out in Allure of the Goddess! Get it HERE from your favorite retailer!
Allure of the Goddess
When King Ghalad goes missing, the peace treaty balances on a sword edge as his enemies threaten to take over the kingdom. To rescue him, Alswyn must travel to the forbidden Plains of Dera and face not only the ghost of her former betrothed, but also the goddess Dera herself. They will both do anything to ensnare Alswyn once more in ash magic.
Available NOW at your favorite online retailer!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I bit off a little bit of crazy with this project, and I really appreciate the unfailing support of the team I had in my corner.
My beta readers, Merry, Azalea, Melody, Cami, and Brielle gave so many great suggestions. I really appreciate their time and efforts!
Thanks to my editor, Daniel Friend, for pointing out all my blind spots and helping me fix them.
My friends in the writer community are truly golden. A special thanks to them for being my cheerleaders!
Katie and Rachel let me drag them all over the rim of Recapture Canyon with a camera so I could get some awesome promotional art. They’re great sports.
Finally, I want to thank my husband and children for supporting me as I pursue this hair-brained scheme to be a professional writer. I couldn’t do it without you.
SHAUNA E. BLACK SMILES a lot. But her appearance can be deceiving. Like the legendary sirens of old, she enjoys luring innocent readers into the stories she creates and trapping them there. Her home is sprinkled with spontaneous singing and the enticing smell of fresh baked bread, but her most cherished ploy lies in her passion for writing. Readers should beware of entering her fantastical worlds, lest they lose all touch with reality and find themselves waiting under lampposts for fauns and talking beavers to appear. If you decide to ignore this warning, you can find out more about her adventurous fiction on her website, ShaunaBlack.com.
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