by Lisa Cassidy
“King Mastaran is eager to leave too—he wants to get back to Carhall and begin the process of rebuilding,” Tarrick added.
“I need sleep,” Alyx said lightly. She was exhausted, and simply couldn’t sit there any longer pretending there was any real hope. “Tomorrow, we’ll discuss Shakar.”
Dashan led her upstairs to a bedroom on the top floor with a lovely view out over the frozen lake. Exhaustion tugged at every muscle in her body, and she groaned, sprawling face-first onto the bed. She didn’t want to ever move again.
The bed shifted as Dashan laid out next to her, dark eyes searching hers. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She returned his smile.
He shifted, sitting up, and pulled off her boots before dropping them to the floor. Then he carefully undressed her before wrapping her in one of his clean shirts. Silence fell as Dashan shrugged out of his jacket.
“There’s something on your mind,” she said, recognising the look on his face.
He frowned and shook his head. “No there isn’t.”
“You have your thoughtful face on.”
Dashan pulled his shirt off, tossed it over a nearby chair, and sat to begin yanking his boots off. “Alyx, it’s nothing, really. There’s no need for you to worry.”
“Dash,” she said softly. “We talk about everything. Tell me.”
Dashan sighed and leaned back in the chair, one boot on, one off. “Tarian is going to win the elections. He’s humble of course, keeps saying the Shiven could pick anyone. But everyone knows he’ll win the vote.”
“And that’s worrying news?” She lifted an eyebrow.
His jaw tensed. “He’s asked me to stay after the elections. He wants to appoint me as general of the Shiven army, in effect his second.” He shook his head in frustration. “It doesn’t matter. We both know that even though we won this battle, Shakar is still…”
He trailed off, clearly not wanting to say it aloud. Without her mages, they were lost. They might have more time now but Shakar would still win.
Alyx stared at him for a long moment, watching the orange firelight flicker over his handsome face. “I’m the Magor-lier, Dash. Even if somehow we did manage to defeat Shakar, I can’t leave the mages to come here to Karonan.”
He smiled, crossing the room to climb into bed and pull her close. She snuggled into his warmth, dropping light kisses on his chest.
“You’d be perfect for the job,” she whispered.
His arms tightened. “It doesn’t matter.”
Alyx nodded and closed her eyes, allowing the exhaustion to claim her as she relaxed safe in his arms.
“I’m glad we had this,” he murmured against her hair. “Even if only for a short time.”
“Me too. Love you.”
“Love you too, Alyx.”
They were awoken what felt like only minutes later by a loud pounding on their door. With the reflexes of a Taliath, Dashan was rolling out of bed, sword in hand, before Alyx was even properly awake.
“What?” he bellowed as he crossed to the door.
“It’s me, Ladan. Get downstairs now.”
His tone brooked no argument, and still half asleep, Alyx stumbled out of bed and moved towards the door. Dashan caught her arm gently.
“Much as I love seeing you wearing nothing but one of my shirts, maybe you should put something on.”
“Right.” She shook her head, lucidity beginning to return. “Sorry.”
Dashan looked concerned. “Why don’t you stay here and go back to sleep? I can go downstairs.”
“No, I’m awake now.” She tugged pants on and reached for her shirt. This could be what she’d been waiting for.
The twins wore grim expressions as they congregated in the sitting room downstairs. Ladan stood next to his wife, poking at the fire in the grate, his stance rigid with tension.
“What’s going on?” Dashan demanded as soon as Tarrick, the last to arrive, came in.
“Shakar has Brynn.”
Dawn said the words softly. Her eyes flicked to Ladan, then Alyx. There was fear in her eyes, fear for Brynn, but also dread. Part of her knew what came next.
Alyx gasped in a breath, fear clutching at her heart. She glanced at Finn—he met her gaze miserably. She bit her lip to stop the tears wanting to spill down her cheeks. This was her fault. What she’d been afraid of ever since her mages had walked out. Her legs wobbled, and she sat abruptly in the nearest chair.
“How?” Dashan demanded.
“Shakar contacted me telepathically a short time ago.” Dawn shuddered, and Alyx reached out to touch her arm in sympathy. She well knew what Shakar’s touch on one’s mind was like. Ladan gently pulled his wife close. “He told me he has Brynn and that he is going to kill him, slowly, unless Alyx goes to face him.”
“How does he have Brynn?” Tarrick sounded calm, but his fists were clenching and unclenching at his side. “I thought he was back in Alistriem helping to run things there. Could Shakar have moved on Rionn so quickly?”
“Brynn’s not in Alistriem,” Alyx said quietly, raising her eyes to the room. “I sent him to find Shakar for me.”
Tarrick stared at her, realisation creeping across his face. “You sent him before the mages left?”
She rubbed a trembling hand over her face. “It was the second part of the plan.” She didn’t bother spelling it out—it didn’t matter anymore.
“We thought…” Finn choked out, then stopped, unable to continue. Dawn went straight to her twin, wrapping her arms around him. His shoulders shuddered with unshed sobs.
“It was my call, Finn,” Alyx told him. “This is not your fault.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dashan demanded.
“Because it was too dangerous for anyone to know,” she almost shouted. Panic was threading through her, making it hard to think straight, to be calm. She didn’t have much time. Brynn didn’t have much time. “We have to go.”
“Whoa, wait!” Dashan’s grip on her arm halted her in her tracks as she spun for the door. “What does that mean?”
“If you go now, right where he wants you, he’ll kill you too.” Ladan’s scowl matched Tarrick’s and Dashan’s. “He’ll have his mages with him. They’ll kill you before you even get close.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But I can’t leave Brynn.”
“You have to.” The words seemed to tear out of Tarrick, as if causing him physical pain. A horrified hush fell over the room, but nobody disagreed with him.
Dashan shifted towards her, voice gentle. “Cayr and Jenna were right before. This was our best opportunity, but it won’t be our only one. But you are the only one strong enough to take him one day. If you go after him now, he’ll kill you. Then there is no hope for any of us.”
She pulled away from him, unable to accept leaving Brynn to die. “What if we sneak in? Attack Shakar while he’s alone?”
“Then the first thing he’ll do is call his mages the moment he feels threatened.” Ladan lifted a hand as she opened her mouth to speak. “And he’s not stupid enough to be lured away from his mages either. He’s just lost his army—he’ll be extra cautious.”
“There has to be something.” Dawn looked beseechingly at Finn, who shook his head miserably, then Ladan. His grim look softened, and he reached out to draw her gently against his side. Her tears soaked into his shirt.
Alyx turned and walked out of the room.
The night air was bitterly cold, but she welcomed the way it bit into her bones and made her shiver. The physical discomfort distracted her from the pain within. There was no hope that Shakar would spare Brynn if she didn’t come—her and Finn’s clever plan had been turned completely on its head. The guilt was searing, and she couldn’t help constantly thinking of Sarah, and Brynn’s family, of the letter she would now have to deliver them.
The black despair she’d been feeling for weeks overwhelmed her. To defeat Shakar, she’d have to win the mages back, and do it before he rebuilt his strength or found anoth
er army. Her head thumped back against the icy cold stone of the low wall lining the roof as she slid to the ground.
She didn’t have the strength for it—she’d thrown everything she had into building a better mage order, and she’d failed. Even worse was the thought of more years of fighting and struggle, more losses that tore away a strip of her soul each time.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs leading to the roof, and she was unsurprised to see Dashan emerge.
“I can’t do it, Dash,” she said. “I can’t win this. I don’t have any strength left for more. It had to be now.”
He slid down the wall beside her, heedless of the cold, and said nothing. She didn’t cry, she didn’t talk, and he didn’t try to push her. Even when her shivering became more pronounced, he didn’t reach out. He just sat there with her.
She blinked awake into watery morning sunlight, muscles cold, aching and locked stiff. Beside her Dashan was awake, watching her carefully with his warm brown eyes.
“I don’t have anything left,” she whispered to him.
He smiled a little, then stood up, reaching a hand down. She took it, cursing in pain as her stiffened muscles were forced to move. “I’m not going to give you platitudes or tell you you’ll feel better about all this with time,” he said. “I’m just going to say that I love you, and I’m sorry you had to make the terrible choice you did last night. I’m also going to tell you it was the right one.”
They were the right words to say, but even his beloved voice didn’t help. She looked away. “I should wash up and change.”
“You should eat something too.”
“I’m not hungry.” The thought of eating made her feel ill.
They’d just reached the top of the stairs when the clear ring of a horn sounded through the morning air. Dashan instantly reached for Heartfire. Alyx left him to run back to the edge of the roof, slowing as she made her way down the stairs. She’d only taken two steps when an odd itching sensation scratched over her mind. Summoning magic without thought, she recognised Dawn’s telepathic magic, and reached out to make the connection.
“What is it, Dawn?”
“Alyx, get to the north gate now! Finn, Tarrick, and I are on our way.”
“What is it, what’s wrong?”
“Just come now!”
Dawn’s voice vanished from her head, and Alyx took a deep breath. Even walking up the few steps she’d come down seemed too much of an effort. Still, Dawn had been insistent. With a sigh, she traipsed back up to the roof, almost colliding with Dashan as he came sprinting back towards her.
“Riders approaching from the north!” he said tersely. “Can you get us there?”
She reached out, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and shot them into the sky.
Chapter 47
She dropped them one block from the gate to the northern causeway, just ahead of where Dawn, Tarrick, and Finn were galloping up the street.
“Is it an attack?” Alyx snapped at Dawn. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if it was—she was completely and utterly drained. There was nothing left in her for another fight.
Dawn shook her head, swinging out of the saddle. Alyx almost took a step back—Dawn’s eyes were aglow as she gripped Alyx by the shoulders, an odd energy vibrating from her. “Go out there, Alyx. Go now.”
“We don’t know that it’s—”
“Dashan, enough!” Dawn firmly cut him off. “Go, Alyx. We’ll be right behind you.”
Frowning, Alyx turned and strode towards the front gates. At a shout from Dashan the soldiers on the walls began winching them open. A light falling snow drifted around her as she walked out onto the causeway…and came to a dead stop.
Riders filled the stone road over the frozen lake, and each and every one of them wore a royal blue cloak with the emblem of a leaping flame etched in scarlet thread over their chests. Heartfire.
And at their head rode Rothai.
He reined in his horse a short distance away from her and dismounted. A few others did too, but her gaze was entirely on her old sparring master.
“Have you come to kill me?” she asked, unable to hide the raw bitterness of her words.
He took three strides towards her and stopped. “On the contrary, Magor-lier. We’d hoped to arrive in time for the battle for Karonan, but despite my best efforts, it seems we failed. You have my apologies.”
She stared at him. “You’ve got about two seconds to explain to me what is going on, or I’m going to walk away and never come back.”
He gave a sharp nod. “Very well. Cario’s death made you vulnerable within the mages. It didn’t help that you destroyed half a room in front of those most uncertain about you, then went ahead and became invulnerable,” he said tersely. “Adahn was working against you for weeks, and he used Parja’s arrival to increase his efforts. If I’d spoken out directly against them, I’d have risked a permanent split of your forces.”
“So you joined them instead?” she demanded.
“I made it appear so. It was hard to challenge Adahn’s assertions about you directly—I had to engineer it so that I could prove without doubt to every single one of your mages that we were right to have faith in you. That you would never be another Shakar. There were those that helped me, of course.” Rothai gestured behind him where Merial, Tari, and Nordan hovered. “Once we left you we immediately began to work on undermining Adahn’s influence. It wasn’t hard. As soon as I brought them back to your side, we came here as quickly as we could.”
“It wasn’t hard…” She trailed off, mouth hanging open. “You said you had to prove it to them. How?”
“You did, Magor-lier.” Rothai’s eyes blazed suddenly. “By standing there that night and letting us all walk out without retribution, you gave us our free choice. Shakar would have killed us all or found some way to bend us to his will.”
Dawn’s hand on her shoulder was suddenly the only thing that kept her standing. She was utterly breath-taken by what Rothai had done, the faith he had shown in her. “You planned all this, even after you knew I was invulnerable?”
“Yes. Magor-lier.”
Almost as one, the mages still sitting on their horses behind him called out too, “Magor-lier!”
The sound of their joined voices echoed through the cold air, ringing with magic and certainty. She ran a hand over her face, her chest suddenly expanding, filling with bright, unbelievable hope. Spinning, she looked at Tarrick and Finn. “We can go after him. Now.”
Fierce joy shined from the Zandian’s face. “Aye.”
Finn turned to his sister. “Dawn, did Shakar say where he was?”
She nodded, face alight. “DarkSkull Hall.”
Good. “Dash, Ladan, go and tell Cayr and King Mastaran we’re having a meeting right now. I’ll get my mages settled and join you.” Her shoulders straightened. “And then I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.”
She turned back to Rothai as they ran off. “I kind of want to hug you a little bit, Rothai.”
He fought an eye roll. “I really wish you wouldn’t, Magor-lier.”
She sobered. “Where is Adahn?”
“Adahn Torse is dead. As are Parja and Dastanta. I killed them in single combat, in one of the old traditions they were so fond of.” There was no give in Rothai’s hard voice. “You may be trying to change the old ways, but I will never stand by while my Magor-lier is threatened.”
She found she didn’t regret their deaths even a little bit and mourned the part of herself that had become so hard. “I won’t ever forget what you’ve done,” she said softly.
He bowed slightly, hand clenched over his heart.
The mages dismounted to bring their horses in, some with a shamefaced and genuine apology or stammering thanks for letting them back. Then there were those who beamed in delight as they passed, and those she knew were the ones who had helped Rothai.
There were many more of those than the shamefaced ones.
It took them much longer than Alyx wan
ted to be ready, and she chafed at the delay. She’d impressed upon them that this wouldn’t just be a rescue attempt. She intended to face Shakar at last.
“There will be no better time than now,” she repeated many times over the long planning session.
“If we do this now, then we’re doing it right,” Ladan said in a tone that brooked no argument. “I understand your fear for Brynn, but we can’t allow that to push us into hasty action. That’s what Shakar wants.”
“I agree,” Dashan said. “Ladan and I will leave within the hour. We’ll ride north to DarkSkull and scout the area. We’re invulnerable to Shakar’s telepathic power, or that of any mages with him, so they won’t know we’re there. He won’t be alone, Alyx. He’s prepared for you, and that means he’ll have mages and an army with him. We need to know what we’re facing before we confront him.”
Alyx heard them both out patiently, even though they were saying what she’d already been fully intending on doing. “Good. We’ll follow with a combined force of mages and soldiers.”
“Rothai and I will gather the warrior mages, although we’ll have to leave some here to help stabilise Karonan, and I don’t think we should strip the mages we left in Alistriem, either. If things go badly against Shakar, they’ll be all that’s left,” Tarrick said.
“We’ll give you some Bluecoats and soldiers as well.” Cayr nodded at Sparky.
“Just Bluecoats,” Alyx said. “Marching north will take too long. I’ll take mounted warriors only.”
“Few of my militia are mounted,” Mastaran weighed in. “But those under Captain Rodin who were trained by Lord-Taliath Caverlock came with me from Ribeca. You can have them with my blessing, Magor-lier.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Alyx said. “They will be welcome.”
“I will be right behind you with the rest of my soldiers,” the king continued. “It is time I begin rebuilding my city and my country.”
Alyx looked around at those assembled. “I want the rest of us riding out by evening tomorrow. Make it happen.”