The curtain billowed open to a gasp from the crowd. There, in a glimmering cage of silver Magic, the Goddess hunkered, a band of the same silver Magic fastened around her neck.
“No!” someone cried out, but the Supreme Leader held up a hand, silencing the low murmur of the crowd.
“Yes,” Reynalia said. “I’m afraid it is true. We suspected as much, but now we have our proof. Behold!”
She pointed to the back of the Great Hall just as the massive doors opened, allowing a group of guards to march in. At the center of the procession, a man stumbled along, two chains linked around his neck, held by a guard on either side.
Patrick!
Syrie’s heart pounded at the sight of him, his hair dirty and tangled, his face a mass of bruises.
Once the guards forced him to his knees in front of the dais, all but the two holding his chains stepped away, giving Syrie an open view of his back, swollen and raw. An oft-applied whip, she guessed. They’d made him suffer. For her. For protecting her.
Someone was going to pay for what they had done to him.
Deep in her chest, the pressure that had been building for so long rolled itself into a tight, tiny ball, pulsing with her anger. In less than a heartbeat, the tiny ball burst forth, filling her eyes and her mind with stars. An unimaginable power surged through her body, bringing her to her knees. Her vision clouded so that she covered her eyes with her hands. Vaguely, she was aware of Dallyn reaching her side, helping her to stand, whispering, asking if she needed help.
Someone was going to need help, but it wasn’t her.
When her vision cleared, everything around her seemed to sparkle, as if she viewed the world through a shimmering haze of green.
Green. The color of purest Faerie Magic. Her Magic, amplified many times over.
Slipping her arm from Dallyn’s hold, Syrie pushed through the crowd. She made her way to the front of the room until she was only feet from where Patrick knelt between the guards. Once there, she let the cloak fall from her head and shoulders and dropped all pretense of the disguise she had worn, revealing herself to all those on the dais. She knew the moment she was recognized. Reynalia stopped speaking mid-sentence as their eyes met.
“It is time for your treachery to come to an end, Reynalia Ré Alyn,” Syrie called out. “Release the man.”
“You!” The Supreme Leader sneered. “You should have stayed where we sent you, little one.”
“So that you could have me killed?” Syrie demanded. “As you tried more than once while I was there, I might add. I don’t think so. Release the man.”
Reynalia barked a laugh, rising to her feet. “Who do you think you are to give orders to the High Council? You are nothing. A disgraced handmaiden, returned from exile.”
The other Council members were on their feet now, too, moving as a single entity toward the spot where the guards stood with Patrick, as if by their physical presence they could stop her. As they moved forward, the crowd surged back, leaving an open space between Syrie and the people she confronted.
Good. If they were to leave the Hall altogether, it would be even better. One less thing for her to worry over.
“Release the man,” she said for the third time. “This is your last warning.”
Three, she decided, was the magic number. She’d given them three chances to do as she asked. Three and no more.
“I have a better idea,” Reynalia said as she moved to join the other members of the High Council. “What if we put you in chains with him?”
They’d had their warning.
Syrie turned her sparkling gaze on the chains that held Patrick, allowing a trickle of the fury she felt to ride the green rays of light. The band around his neck popped open and the chains slid to the floor at his feet.
“I’m not overly fond of chains,” she said.
Patrick lifted his head to look at her, a smile forming on his parched lips. Her heart pounded in her chest as the power inside her pulsed in time with her heartbeat.
“What are you doing on your knees?” she asked, holding out her hand. “You belong at my side.”
Patrick rose to his feet. The guards on either side of him looked first at their Supreme Leader before they stepped back to allow him to pass unchallenged.
The crowd had thinned considerably when the chains had fallen, leaving only a few bystanders mixed in with the men and women Dallyn had gathered to her support.
“Look around you, Reynalia. You are outnumbered. Release the Earth Mother,” Syrie ordered, hoping this step would go as well as freeing Patrick had.
“Never!” the Supreme Leader vowed. “She’ll remain as she is, chained for my entertainment, for as long as I draw breath. I am the Earth Mother now.”
“You?” Syrie barked a laugh, derision and fury given life in one sound. “I don’t think so. You’re hardly a Goddess. You don’t even carry the blood of the royal family in your veins.”
“The royal family,” Reynalia sneered. “For all intents and purposes, there is no royal family anymore. I saw to their demise myself. What’s left of that bloodline is little more than a self-absorbed lump of a man, confined to a glen for the rest of his pitiful life, wallowing in his own pathetic self-pity.”
“There are more of the line remaining than you might imagine,” Syrie said. “It was, in fact, one of their own who enabled my rescue from the hell where you’d abandoned me.”
“Nevertheless, they cannot return to Wyddecol. They will never rule again.” Reynalia lifted her chin, looking out over the people still gathered in the hall. “They never deserved to rule Wyddecol in the first place. They were unfit for the service. They never worked for what was right or best for the people.”
It was clear that Reynalia had grown so accustomed to pandering to her audience that she continued to spout her lies even when so few of the people were left in the Great Hall to hear her.
“You expect me to believe that your High Council, this handpicked group you have assembled, is at all concerned with what is right and best for the people of Wyddecol? You think any of them believe war is best for them? War only suits your desire for power.”
“You lie,” Reynalia yelled.
“No, it’s the truth, and we all know it. If your only desire was to do what is best for our people, you would be pleased to see me here. You would be pleased to see that I was saved from what you decreed as my fate by True Love. If what you say is true, you should be thrilled that, in my return to Wyddecol, two souls have been set back on their proper paths. That, after all, is what is right and best, is it not? As that is the greatest desire of all our kind, is that not the task our people should devote themselves to enabling? Especially since it was the warring of our kind that was responsible for the tragedy that ripped those pairings asunder.”
“Foolish child!” Reynalia shook her head, her eyes hardening. “Your priorities, the priorities of a lovesick girl, are not ours. We look to less frivolous pursuits than you suggest. You should have stayed where you were, Elesyria. You have little power here other than a few parlor tricks. You are insignificant to me, to us.” She waved a hand to include the other members of the High Council stationed on either side of her. “Like a midge on a summer’s night, you are but a minor annoyance. You should have remembered as much before you and these other traitors sought to rise against us.”
“And you,” the Earth Mother said from the cage of silver where they’d chained her, her voice hoarse and breaking. “You should have remembered more about your own history, if you ever knew it. You made a grievous error when you chose to punish my own maiden.”
“We’ll see about that,” Reynalia snarled, extending an arm.
Jagged splinters of silver light streaked from her fingertips toward the little band of defenders, as pandemonium broke out in a cacophony of screams and barked orders.
Patrick threw himself in front of Syrie, no doubt determined to protect her. But he needn’t have worried. She lifted her hand and a net of pure light
spread out around them, like a spiderweb spun of emerald shards, deflecting the bolts sent their way.
“You should have taken her powers, Reynalia.” The voice of the Goddess rang out over the screams of those who had not yet escaped the battle area. “Simply sealing those powers behind a wall of forgetfulness was a poor choice on your part. Passing through the Time Flow of the All Conscious with her powers intact, like the tempering of fine steel, has made Elesyria stronger than ever. Much stronger than any of you,” the Goddess intoned. “Perhaps even stronger than me.”
Her? Stronger than the Goddess? Syrie didn’t believe such a thing was possible. But even if it were, it didn’t matter. It had nothing to do with why she’d come. She’d come to free the Goddess. She’d come to rescue Patrick. And so far, she’d only accomplished half of her goal.
“Let her go, Reynalia. Don’t make this any worse than it has to be,” Syrie said.
“You’ve already done that, girl,” Reynalia snarled. “Did you not think me smart enough to realize you would come to the rescue of your man? Your Goddess? Did you not realize I would be prepared for your treachery once I knew you were in Wyddecol? I am not without my sources.”
“Your spies, you mean,” the Goddess said. “The ones you planted in my Temple.”
“I planted nothing,” Reynalia said. “I merely cultivated that which already grew wild thanks to your negligence and favoritism.”
So there were spies at the Temple. A feeling of sadness filled Syrie’s heart, quickly replaced with concern for her friend, Nally. The guards that had come after her, the ones who had captured Patrick, had also captured Nally.
“What have you done with Nalindria?” she demanded, dreading what she might hear but needing to know.
“I would not waste my worry on that count, if I were you,” Reynalia said, moving backward to place more space between them. “She has been…” A pause, followed by an evil chuckle. “She has been appropriately rewarded for her treachery.”
Poor Nally. Poor, gentle, dedicated Nally.
“You are a beast, Reynalia,” Syrie said, forcing the words out through her sorrow and anger. “A beast whose time to rule has come to an end.”
“I may be a beast, but you are a fool. Now!” Reynalia screamed, and her guards swarmed in from all sides of the room, streaming out from behind the draperies that lined the Great Hall.
All around Syrie, the clash and clank of metal meeting metal rose to drown out everything else. For a moment she regretted not having accepted the sword Dallyn had offered before they had come, but she knew it would do her little good. Of all the skills she possessed, use of that weapon was not one.
Beside her, Patrick laughed as he hefted a sword he’d taken from one of the guards. He swung it in an arc around his head before bringing it down in a slashing motion to stop the oncoming charge of another attacker. Around them, the battle raged, with fighters on both sides dropping. Slowly, Syrie found herself being edged toward the back of the Great Hall, forced in that direction by Patrick’s movements. It became clear to her that he fought to clear a path for their retreat.
“No,” she yelled over the din of battle. “We cannot leave this place. We must free the Goddess.”
Irritation flashed over his face and he exchanged words with Dallyn, who fought nearby. Together, the two of them began to move back in the direction from which they’d come, back toward the dais where the caged Goddess waited.
As soon as they were close enough, Syrie slipped around the men, darting past two approaching guards to climb onto the dais. She crawled under the long table and stayed on her hands and knees until she reached the cage. Up close, the sight of the Goddess took Syrie’s breath from her. Dirty and weakened, she looked more woman than Goddess. Her hair hung in greasy clumps and her face sagged, as if the silver chain around her neck drew the very life source from her body.
“Hang on. I’ll get you out of there,” Syrie whispered.
“Make it so,” the Goddess answered, her voice ragged, as if she had no energy left to speak.
Syrie absolutely intended to, as quickly as possible. If she could figure a way to open the damned cage.
There appeared to be no lock of any kind, no opening, either. Just bars of pulsing, glowing silver. After several minutes of useless examination, Syrie’s frustration got the better of her. Grabbing the bars with her bare hands, she shook them violently. To her surprise, each of the bars she held ceased to glow, turning a dull gray before they crumbled to ash in her grip.
“Yes!” she exclaimed, moving her hands to the next set of bars.
She tightened her grip until those also crumbled and then moved on to the next, until a gap had formed, large enough for her to reach in to pull the Goddess toward her. When the chains pulled taut, Syrie let go of the sagging woman and fastened her hands around the chains. If it had worked for the cage, perhaps it would work for the chains in the same way.
Though it took longer, the chains ultimately gave way as well, allowing Syrie to pull the Goddess from the cage. Once she had the woman out, Syrie felt as if she were as constrained as she had been before opening the cage. The Goddess, after so long a time hunkered over in the tiny cage, was too weak to stand under her own power. She clung to Syrie as they crouched on the floor near the table.
Syrie had barely risen to her feet to search for help when she heard the ragged warning.
“Behind,” the Goddess warned.
Syrie whirled to find Reynalia, knife in hand, approaching. Two cloaked figures followed closely behind her, as if to guard the Supreme Leader, but neither of these people carried weapons.
“You will not take her,” Reynalia said, slowly moving forward. “We will not allow it. Neither of you will make it out of this hall.”
A shout, more animal noise than words, pierced the air around them, stopping Reynalia and her escorts.
Patrick!
In one leap, he cleared the dais and landed on the table, running full speed. His sword held above his head, he threw himself toward Reynalia and those who accompanied her.
“Orlyn!” Reynalia screamed. “Now!”
In the split second before Patrick landed, the figure to Reynalia’s right drew a wicked-looking sword from beneath his cloak and held it aloft, thrusting it into Patrick’s chest and twisting it as Patrick fell to the ground.
“I remembered, son of Odin,” Orlyn said. “Remembered the purpose of the mark you wear.”
Blood pumped from the wound as the man withdrew his weapon and backed away. From across the distance between them, Patrick’s eyes locked with Syrie’s until they fluttered shut.
The air around Syrie pulsed, as if with an animal heartbeat of its very own. The pulse pounded against her eardrums, all but blocking the harsh sound of Reynalia’s laughter when she stepped over Patrick’s body, as if he were but a bump in her path to reach Syrie.
Syrie’s vision clouded to a pinpoint before expanding, sharpened as if by a green crystalline lens. She felt as if she might explode until, a heartbeat later, the air exploded around her.
It took her a moment to realize that the animal scream ringing in the air came from her, ripped from her lungs as blood pumped from Patrick’s wound. It took another moment to realize that the green lightning streaking across the dais came from her, too.
The filth who had thrust his sword into Patrick’s chest threw himself in front of Reynalia, taking the full force of the blast Syrie sent her direction. Reynalia screamed, grabbing her face and stumbling forward. Before Orlyn’s ashes finished falling, the second of Reynalia’s companions grabbed hold of the Supreme Leader, dragging her to safety behind the curtains leading away from the Great Hall.
But not before betraying her own identity.
As she grabbed Reynalia’s arm to hurry her away, her own cloak fell back, revealing her face.
Nalindria!
The treachery hit like a punch to the gut, staggering Syrie as she lurched toward the spot where Patrick lay. Her own best frie
nd. The one person in Wyddecol she’d thought she could trust above all others.
Reaching Patrick’s side, she dropped to her knees, her fingers searching his throat for a pulse. It was so faint and irregular, she almost missed it. Inserting her fingers into the slice in his shirt, she ripped the material apart, exposing the whole of his chest. Blood oozed up around her fingers when she laid her hand over the gaping hole, formed directly in the center of the mark on his chest. Though he still breathed, it was only shallowly, and no matter how she called to him, no matter the tears she shed, his eyes did not open.
“Help me!” she cried out, not knowing who she expected to come to her aid.
“It is too late, my lady,” Dallyn said, resting a hand on her shoulder.
Too late? Impossible!
When all had been lost for her, Patrick had risked everything to find her. When her life was threatened, he’d been there to protect her. Too late, the man said? Never! She wouldn’t allow it to be too late.
If she had the abilities everyone seemed to think she possessed, now was the time to call upon them.
“Can you lift him?” she asked, rising to her feet.
“Of course I can,” Dallyn said, a ring of offense tinging his answer. “But to what end you ask this, I can not understand.”
“You don’t need to understand,” she said, turning her back and starting for the door that opened onto the plaza. “You only need to bring him where I lead.”
She had to act quickly. Yes, what she planned was against every rule of her people, but it was the only chance she had. It would work. It had to work. And if anyone thought to stop her? She’d incinerate them where they stood just as she had the man whose blow had taken Patrick down.
Anywhere in Time (Magic of Time Book 2) Page 20