A Trial of Sorcerers: Book One

by Kova, Elise

  As the last dredges of sunlight were slipping away, Eira paused, knocking her knuckles against her tired thighs.

  “Do you think we should make camp for the night?” she asked.

  “You want to get back before everyone else, right?”

  “Yes, but…would they have put us so far out if they hadn’t intended for us to take shelter out here?” Eira looked over her shoulder at the molten sky. If they were going to set up camp, they needed to do it now, while they still had a decent amount of light.

  “If they did, all the better. Groundbreakers will likely hunker against the cold. But Firebearers may continue. They can make light in the darkness and keep themselves warm with their flames.”

  “We’re not competing against them though,” she needlessly reminded him. Though her thoughts wandered to Alyss spending the night alone in the cold.

  Only the illusion of danger, she reminded herself. Alyss may be frigid, but they were all being trailed by people, just out of sight. Weren’t they? Even her and Marcus…unless they’d somehow given their trackers the slip when they’d moved quickly off the beaten path.

  “The other Waterrunners will either settle for the night because they don’t have light, or they’ll continue on because they’re impervious to the cold. Do you want to take the risk?”

  Eira looked up to the sky. It was a full moon tonight. That would give more than enough light to see by. There were eight Waterrunners left. But two would be cut. That meant they couldn’t risk coming in last. And nothing sounded more horrible than arriving in Solarin together and finding only one slot left.

  “You’re right, we should keep going,” Eira decided.

  “That was my thought,” he said as they pressed ahead. “If I’m right about the cutoff we took, we should be well away from any of the other little tests they could throw our way. We should make it back to Solarin before dawn if we walk all night.”

  “If we walk all night,” she repeated and added a groan at the end.

  “You could always stop here.”

  “I’m not stopping here.”

  “Just saying.” He shrugged with a grin.

  “You and me, together at the end.” Eira stared into the darkening forest ahead. Every tree looked like the last. She was grateful her brother had his bearings. “I should tell—warn—you…I know that the last trial is going to be a duel. We will have to actually fight each other.”

  “And that’s different from when we were kids, how?”

  She laughed at his deadpan tone. “We really did tear up Mom and Dad’s kitchen that one time after my powers manifested.”

  “Absolutely destroyed it.”

  “You can’t go easy on me, all right?” Eira glanced in his direction.

  “Only if you swear to not go easy on me.” He ruffled the hair on the top of her head. “I thought we established earlier—we want to earn our spot from the other.” Eira nodded. “By the way, how did you get all this information, really?”

  “I…” Eira bit her lip. “I sort of know someone who is helping organize the trials.”

  “Other than Uncle Fritz?”

  “Higher up than him.”

  “Who?” Marcus whispered as though there was someone to overhear their suddenly scandalous discussion. “Was it someone you met at court with Cullen? He said you ran into Prince Romulin.”

  “Not the prince. It’s Ambassador Ferro. I might have been meeting with him in secret.”

  “What?” There was a protective edge to Marcus’s voice. But unlike in the past, it didn’t make Eira immediately want to shout about how she could defend herself. This tone made her feel warm, safe. “What exactly have you been doing? Has he done anything inappropriate?”

  “No! Of course not…” She filled him in just as she had Alyss. Marcus listened just as intently, but asked much fewer questions than Alyss had. Eira finished just before her last meeting with Ferro, keeping the kiss to herself.

  “So, you like him, then?”

  “Yes, I think I do,” Eira said, softer than the pastel tones that were quickly being painted over by a starry brush in the sky above them.

  “Do you love him?”

  She thought about the question a moment, trying not to let her cold and defensive walls immediately shut her off from her feelings. Those walls, placed around her heart from having to survive Adam’s cruelty and her subsequent life as the Tower outcast, had slowly come down over the last few weeks. They didn’t seem like they needed to be as thick. The incident from three years ago no longer had a hold on her. Perhaps what Aunt Gwen had said was right.

  Life went on. She could let the mistakes she made along the way, however grave, define her or teach her.

  “I think I do,” Eira admitted to both herself and her brother. “I know it may be silly, but—”

  “It’s not silly at all,” he said softly, once more throwing an arm around her shoulders and pulling her in for a hug. “My sister, courting the elfin Ambassador to Meru. Well, I guess it’s not that surprising.”

  “Stop.” A scarlet blush burned her cheeks.

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He chuckled. “Just promise me when you go off and move to Meru to be with your new elfin lover you’ll come back and visit from time to time.”

  “I’m not moving to Meru.” She tried to laugh off the wriggling, uncomfortable feeling the thought put in her stomach. Part of her was here, born and bred from the salt air of the sea in Oparium and the mountain frost of Solarin. The other part of her…was elsewhere in the vast unknown of the world beyond.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Before Eira could object again, the forest opened up, surrounding a massive lake. The top of the lake was entirely frozen over, but thin at the center. Marcus approached and put his foot down on the edge of the ice. Magic pulsed out from him and Eira watched the ice thicken into an even consistency. When he lifted his foot, a blade of ice formed underneath it. He stepped out onto the lake, gliding over its surface on two frozen skates.

  “Skiing and now ice skating?”

  “I know, it’s a crime we’re having this much fun on a trial.” He did a lazy loop. “Come on out.”

  Eira laughed with a shake of her head and stepped onto the ice as well. Making ice skates was one of the first things her brother had taught her to do. They’d sneaked out that night, too. It was the first winter after she’d manifested her magic in full and he couldn’t wait to show her how to use it. He’d taken her to a nearby pond and they’d spun and spun on clumsily made blades until they were sick.

  Now, they swerved around and around, making lazy progress forward. Eira tilted her head back and stared at the stars above her, swimming through the sky in her dizzy haze. The sky and all its vastness above her. Her brother’s laughter filling her ears as he hooked his arm with hers. The smile they shared…were the last things she saw before the flash.

  Light glowed underneath the surface of the lake. Bright and hot, there for only a moment. The darkness was twice as thick the second after it vanished.

  Ice cracked underfoot, shattering with a violent explosion. Eira tumbled, her arm slipping from Marcus’s, and they plunged into the inky depths beneath them.

  Water rushed around her. Her waterlogged clothes tried to pull her down. Eira inhaled in shock and her magic activated from a base instinct to survive.

  Water wouldn’t hurt Waterrunners so long as they had magical strength.

  A pocket of air surrounded her nose and mouth, the water pressing against it in a fight against her powers. Eira gasped and sputtered, getting her bearings underneath the water. Marcus was in a similar position, already kicking to the surface. She followed behind him.

  Perhaps they weren’t as far off track as they’d thought and this was a test. Or perhaps whoever had been trailing them decided that they had been having too easy of a time and saw an opportunity to make their lives more difficult—even the playing field. Either way, they would be up on the surface soon.
>
  Or so she thought.

  Light spun into existence, weaving from between the shadows. It snapped into place just under the surface of the water, stretching from bank to bank across the lake. Marcus slammed into the barrier first.

  Eira didn’t even try. She recognized this glyph. She’d seen it, night after night, on a much smaller scale.

  Break my shield, Deneya had commanded.

  Marcus summoned a spear of ice, slamming it as hard as he could into the barrier. The water slowed him down, but even if it hadn’t, the result would’ve been the same. Eira watched as his spear shattered against the shield.

  She felt removed from her body, detached from the creeping horror that was all sharp fangs and gnashing teeth making its way up her spine.

  What kind of test was this? Eira’s mind whirred around the question as she saw her brother pressing against, slamming into, and magically assaulting the shield that kept them underwater.

  The shield couldn’t be broken. Deneya had admitted as much. Why was it here?

  She swam over to Marcus, grabbing his elbow before he could punch his bloody knuckles again into the shield.

  Stop, she mouthed. It was impossible to communicate effectively underwater. They only had so much air in the small bubbles around their nose and mouth and he was using his up quickly with all the exertion. Wait.

  Why? he worded back, looking frantically between her and the shield.

  She brought her fists together and made a breaking motion in time with a shake of her head. It can’t be broken. She hoped he understood.

  His eyes continued darting between her and the shield. Marcus waited several seconds before trying to break it once more.

  Stop! Eira tried to grab for him but he ignored her.

  He was going to exhaust himself. This had to be a test of endurance. If his magic ran out, then the little bubble would collapse.

  He’d drown.

  Eira pressed her nose to the shield, seeing nothing of the dark world past the glowing, spinning lines. Come on, she thought. This is enough; let us out.

  The reverberations of Marcus’s attacks through the water were torture. Eira listened to their thrums as numbness set in on her, colder than the water around her, colder than the ice of the mountaintops. The shield wasn’t going away.

  Marcus’s magic flickered as he tried to summon another club of ice. It melted away into the water. Eira saw the moment his power wavered and the bubble collapsed. It was back in a moment, him coughing and sputtering.

  No, this is too far.

  Eira turned to the shield, finally lodging her own magic against it. The moment she tried, she could feel how thin her power was already from trying to keep her alive. Fighting against the laws of nature took a toll on any sorcerer; there was only so long they could hold out. And even if her magic was strong enough, she’d run out of air in her tiny bubble, pass out, and then drown.

  She began attacking with the same frenzy that Marcus had. She placed her hands against the shield, her own disk of ice forming beneath it, that Eira tried to push up against. It didn’t budge.

  She sent her magic to the other side of the shield, watching ice spike up on the lake top frantically. Help, she imagined the ice spelling. Help!

  Marcus grabbed her shoulder with wide eyes. Help. His mouth made the word she’d just been thinking and Eira watched as the bubble collapsed.

  Without thinking, Eira reached to her face, taking a part of her own bubble and attaching it back to his. She held it there with her own magic. Marcus coughed and sputtered, his eyes going hazy.

  They had to get out, now. If they couldn’t they were doomed.

  Eira faced the shield and pressed her hands against it. She pushed her fingers so hard into it her nails splintered and bent back. Blood mixed with the dark waters. Eira visualized her magic stretching through the Lightspinning, weakening it, fracturing it.

  Stop. Stop. Stop! she screamed mentally.

  She imagined her icy tendrils extending all the way back to the person who made the shield. She’d kill them. She’d freeze them alive—Deneya, Ferro, someone else, she didn’t care. She’d kill to save her brother if that’s what it took—freeze over everything, close it all off.

  Stop!

  Her magic spiked and the world went dark. The bubble around her mouth collapsed and Eira inhaled a gulp of water. But the shield was gone.

  She emerged on the surface gasping and coughing violently, shards of ice bobbing around her. Eira splashed. “Marcus?” she called weakly between coughing. Her throat burned. “Marcus!”

  He hadn’t come up.

  Every bit of survival instinct rallied against her ducking her head under those dark waters once more and returning to where she had just been trapped. But Eira did so anyway. She summoned the last of her strength and brought ample air with her this time.

  She swam down, into the inky depths, into the deep void of the Father’s realms themselves. She would leave this world if that’s what it meant to bring him back. Marcus came into view, pale and ghostlike in the filtered moonlight.

  Eira pulled him back to the surface. With her magic, she pushed them over toward the bank. The water deposited them onto the frozen ground with a disembodied hand that quickly collapsed back into the lake.

  “M-Marcus?” Her teeth chattered. But not from the cold. Frost was already freezing her clothes to her skin, her hair to her neck, but that wasn’t why she was shivering. “Marcus?”

  Eira placed her hands on his chest and tried to feel the water in his lungs. Carefully, clumsily, she pulled forward. Like a horrible geyser it bubbled up from his throat.

  “Breathe,” she whispered. “Please breathe.” She pushed on his chest as the sailors had taught them to do that day they were playing on the beach. But Eira knew her technique was wrong.

  Maybe she could do something more if her uncle had taught her as much as he’d taught Marcus. Maybe if she had been stronger from the start. Maybe if she hadn’t been in the trials at all, he would’ve stayed on the beaten path because he wouldn’t have researched this alternative route.

  “Come on, Marcus. It—it’s just the illusion of danger. It’s not real. This isn’t real.” Eira grabbed her brother’s face with both hands. “Marcus, please,” she whined. “Please.”

  Letting out a cry, she went back to pushing on his chest. At first she was counting, but then her pushes lost all rhythm. They were hopeless and frantic.

  “Don’t do this. Marcus. You can’t. You can’t—” Die.

  Eira tilted her head back and let out the most horrible sound she had ever heard. The stars shivered at her scream. The trees trembled.

  And when she was done…

  She let out another.

  24

  Eira screamed in a long, fading wail until her ragged voice finally gave out. She would scream until there was no more sound left in her—until she was an empty cavern, hollow, void. Numb.

  “Help!” she cried to the heavens. Her brother was gone. She knew that. And yet, she called anyway, “Someone, please, help! Help!”

  She screamed on instinct…without considering that whoever may answer might be the person who had trapped them beneath the ice. That they might be someone Eira didn’t want to draw any nearer.

  “Help! He’s—my brother—he is—” Her voice gave out.

  Did this happen because we broke the rules? Eira wondered as she wept over her brother. We were supposed to survive on our own…and we dared to survive together. We cheated on the second and fourth trials.

  And they were punished for it.

  No.

  The trials were hard…but they weren’t supposed to be dangerous. She looked to her brother, gray in the last of the moonlight, and hiccupped a sob. No one was supposed to die. Least of all him.

  It had to be a rogue elfin. Someone was out there who— Her thoughts faltered.

  There was a shadow moving between the trees that surrounded the lake. Eira peered through the darkness as she
choked on ragged breaths. Ferro stepped into the pale moonlight.

  “Thank the Mother,” she breathed. “Fe—”

  “Yargen,” he snarled, continuing to approach.

  “Wh—”

  “The Goddess’s name is Yargen, you heathen. Mysst soto larrk.” He held out a hand, his hateful words becoming a sword spun from light. “The people of Solaris are as annoying as weeds and as evil as the shade of the god they were born under. The one whom they have unleashed back into the world.”

  Eira open and shut her mouth several times, trying to make sense of his words. Her mind could only focus on one thing. “Please, Ferro, please, your Lightspinning. Help Marcus.”

  The snow crunched under Ferro’s boots as he came to a stop before her. His violet eyes shone with malice. His hair was damp from snowfall and it clung to his head in clumps. He clutched his sword tightly.

  The actions hardly registered to her. How could she reconcile the man who was standing before her now with the man who had spirited her away, who had kissed her, whom she had…she had loved.

  “You should have died with him,” he whispered, shattering the illusion of that man. “You should both be at the bottom of that lake.”

  “What’re you talking about? Help my brother, please. I beg you. I’ll do anything you want. Save him.”

  “Pathetic creature.” Ferro leaned forward and grabbed her by the throat. Eira’s hands closed around his wrist as she kicked her feet, struggling to find balance in the snow and mud as he hoisted her up. His hand was like steel. “You were useful when you had information I needed. But now you’re nothing more than a loose end that knows far too much.”

  Ferro pulled back his sword, holding her out. Stars pricked at Eira’s vision as she gasped for air. Darkness encroached all around her. He thrust forward.

  Eira pressed her eyes closed, bracing herself. She’d be with Marcus again soon. It should have been her that died, not him. This was righting a wrong of fate.

  But the sword sheered off her harmlessly. Her magic had risen to protect her as a thick layer of ice over her skin. It had acted just as she’d read in the journals of that hidden room countless times over but could never consciously summon.