Ruby Morgan Box Set: Books 6-10

by LJ Rivers

  My grandfather gawked. “This is the qu—?”

  “Silence, prisoner!” snapped one of the guards.

  “Come now, Valet Innis, remember what our king said when he entrusted us his prey. We are to treat the blood of Morgana with respect.”

  “If this is the Dewinian version of respect, I’m disappointed, My Lord,” said Morgana.

  “Your blood has suffered no harm.” Lord Wadlow drew a wry smile, baring a set of browned teeth. “I cannot, however, let you leave, as I suspect is your wish.” He bowed again. “Your Highness.”

  “That leaves us at an impasse, My Lord. You see, it is very much my intention. Princess?”

  I got to my feet. “Yes, My Queen?”

  “Would you mind setting these men ablaze for me?”

  “Not at all.” I moved my hands in front of me, conjuring a ball of fire, two feet wide. “Shield us,” I said and pushed the fireball forward.

  It exploded as it hit the iron bars, throwing red hot fire over Wadlow and his soldiers. The cascades of melted iron flew towards us, crackling like fireworks off Morgana’s force field. One of Wadlow’s soldiers went up in flames in a matter of seconds. Another threw himself to the floor, but his back was blazing like a bonfire. The third was gone.

  Lord Wadlow stood unharmed amidst the licking flames. He chucked his cloak to the side, revealing a sword underneath. With a swift swing of the blade, he cut off the head of the burning guard on the floor next to him.

  I extended my arm, grabbing hold of the sword with my mind. It started to shake in Wadlow’s hand, but he held on with a steady grip. His eyes widened, which I hoped was a sign of either surprise or, better, fear. He might have seen this kind of magic before, but never from a Fae.

  The voiceless song played in the back of my head, and this time I took heed. The shadows were aplenty in the prison cell, and I coaxed them close, still holding onto Wadlow’s blade. I welcomed the darkness as it filled me from the inside, then drifted away.

  I had never thought to try Shadowwalking through a force field, and for a moment I thought it wouldn’t work. But as I passed the nearly invisible membrane of magic, it felt like a cold blade cutting painlessly through my body. Outside the force field, I moved swiftly behind the Sorcerer lord. I stepped out of the shadows and pulled a handful of dust from one of the pouches Halwyn had given me. Reaching around Wadlow, I tossed the Leaves of Unsight into his eyes.

  He doubled over, dropped his sword, and began rubbing his eyes, just like Halwyn had told Jack not to do back in Rhina’s Deep.

  I bent down to pick up the sword, but the third guard appeared next to me out of thin air.

  A Dodger!

  He kicked me in the knee, and I heard more than felt the joint snap. I collapsed, my knee throbbing with pain on impact with the hard floor. I looked up just in time to see the guard raise his sword over his head, flashing a feral grin. Something came flying through the air. It snapped shut around his neck, and blue sparks flew from the snake as it locked against his skin.

  I loaded a fireball in my palm again and hurled it forward. “Dodge this!”

  The guard’s eyes reflected his horror as he realised he couldn’t escape my magic. His lights went out like someone had flipped a switch. He collapsed atop his lord with a gaping hole in his chest where his heart had once been.

  Morgana and Llewellyn emerged from the cell, the iron bars no longer an issue. She was carrying Lili,while my grandfather held the second electric snake in his hand, its lustreless head crushed. He tossed it aside. Morgana placed Lili gently on the floor and came over and put her hand on my knee.

  The warmth of her healing magic reminded me of Mum, which I didn’t find odd at all. My knee snapped back in place, and the sensation was remarkable.

  The lord of the castle was still moaning, rubbing his eyes.

  “Silence him,” Morgana said.

  I knew what she meant, but I couldn’t kill him like that. I pulled my sleeve over my hand and picked up his sword by the blade. With a bit of assistance from my telekinesis, I swung the foot-long brass hilt down at the back of the Sorcerer’s head.

  The moaning and eye-rubbing stopped.

  “I guess that will have to do,” the queen said. “But it means we still have a fierce enemy in him.”

  I shrugged. “Then we’ll face him again. Let’s get out of here.”

  According to our plan, we couldn’t count on my grandparents going through the same narrow opening that Morgana and I had used. Instead, we went up the spiral staircase, all the way to the top. Morgana flew with Lili in her arms while I ran behind my grandfather. Again, I helped him with my magic. Two-thirds up, we passed the dead Hamlish. Looking at the impossible angles of his neck and back, I hoped he’d died immediately upon impact.

  Shaking the thought away, I focused on helping Llewellyn, and in minutes, we were at the top of the stairs.

  I peeked carefully over the edge. Quiet. “No one there,” I whispered.

  Morgana raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “Lord Wadlow must have thought his guard was mistaken, as he didn’t alarm the whole castle. These Sorcerers are sometimes so full of—” She bit down on her words. “I meant no disrespect, Princess.”

  I ignored her, climbed the final two steps and held out my hand to Llewellyn. Morgana flapped her wings twice and landed softly next to us. She lowered Lili to the ground and nodded at me. “Call for Brendan.”

  Like my father had done weeks ago to alarm the fisherman off the coast of Bardsey Island, I shot a fireball out towards the grove across the field. It painted a red strip of light on the tall grass as it arched over the trees and descended on the other side. I tried to quell the fire before it touched the ground, but it was too far out for my magic to reach it.

  “Over there!” someone shouted from one of the corner towers. Other voices joined in, followed by footsteps along the battlement.

  Morgana climbed atop the parapet. “I’ll handle them.” She jumped into the darkness below.

  I formed a force field around the rest of us. The men stopped twenty feet away. There were three of them, two with spears and one with an arrow, already nocked.

  “It’s the king’s prisoners,” said the archer.

  “Stay where you are,” said another. He leaned over the edge, bellowing into the castle courtyard. “Sound the alarm! The pris—” His voice cut short when a force field wrapped around his head. It tightened, and he tried desperately to get his hands underneath to get some air.

  “I can protect us now,” Llewellyn said, creating a force field himself inside mine. It encapsulated himself and his wife. “Go, Ruby.”

  I dropped my force field and stepped to the side, holding my hand up in front of me. The archer released his arrow. It evaporated as it entered my wall of heat. The choking guard had fallen to the ground and was shaking vigorously. His tongue hung out of the side of his mouth, and his arms no longer flailed or tried to remove the deadly force field.

  The third guard held his spear in front of him but made no move towards me. Behind him, Morgana came flying fast, her hand forming another force field. The sound of a giant bell reverberated through the stone structure, followed by dozens of voices yelling orders. The guard tilted his head slightly.

  Everything stopped.

  Morgana froze in the air. The bell stopped mid-ring, and the voices turned into a buzzing cacophony of noise, like an out of tune radio.

  I tried to move, but nothing happened. My hands and feet refused to obey. The guard ambled towards me, raising his spear.

  The last time I had met a Time Turner’s magic, I had been inside the bubble. The Blacksmith back in the Forge had let me join his enclosure of time. Now, the Time Turner guard was the only one experiencing moving time, and he was about to end my life with a spear through my heart.

  From the corner of my eye, something was moving through the air. Something big. The Time Turner didn’t see it, most likely because he didn’t think he needed to. Besides, he w
as busy killing me, and his spear looked sharp.

  A vast silhouette of a creature came down from above. Hondo.

  Its beak wrapped around the head and shoulders of the guard, hoisting him off the ground. Everything came back to life when the Time Turner lost his.

  How the fudge?

  I didn’t have time, ironically, to ponder the question. Morgana flew past the point where she thought the guard would be, giving me a puzzled look before alighting next to his spear. The alarm bell sounded again, and the voices resumed shouting.

  “Get on the griffins,” Brendan called from my right. He was astride Amalli’s neck, while Cree hovered next to him.

  Morgana flew after Hondo, who had ditched the guard—perhaps feeding the snakefish in the moat. He dipped below her to allow her to take his reins.

  I hurried to my grandparents. “Let’s go!”

  Cree perched atop the stone wall of the stairwell, balancing as steadily as a cat, which in some ways she was.

  Amalli’s head appeared next to me. She had landed on the wall, too, and was bending her front legs. On her back, Brendan leaned forward. “Give me Lili.”

  Llewellyn stared at him in blatant disbelief.

  “Trust me, Llew.”

  My grandfather slowly scooped his wife up and handed her to Brendan like a swaddled infant. When Amalli took off, I grabbed Llew’s hand and helped him mount Cree behind me. I patted the griffin’s head. “Go, girl!”

  She jumped to the right, extending her immense wings as we dived towards the darkness of the moat below. With a swooping arc, the griffin shot back up in the air, looking to fall in behind Hondo and the queen. Amalli was already in position behind Hondo’s right wing.

  Something shook Cree, and she made a shrilling sound. We were falling.

  I turned to look. A metal rod protruded from below her left wing. Behind us, two griffins were in pursuit. The dim light of the grass fire below aided visibility, and I counted two soldiers with raised spears on the creatures. One of them threw his weapon. I sent a wave of magic towards it, turning it in the air. It veered straight at the griffin’s neck, but I pushed it to the right at the last second. It might have been a smarter move to have the spear strike the animal, as it would have sent the soldier plunging to his death, but I couldn’t make myself hurt it.

  The soldier had another spear in his hand and let it fly. Cree banked sharply to the right, throwing me off balance. I couldn’t stop the soldier’s spear this time, and it buried itself in Cree’s feathers, next to the first one.

  “Help!” my grandfather cried out. He lay sprawled on Cree’s back, holding onto her fur with his fingers.

  I leaned back, reaching for him. “Give me your hand!”

  He tried, but as his grip slipped, he slid further away.

  Another spear flew past and nicked Cree’s ear. We were almost on the ground now. If we landed, the soldiers would be on us in seconds, and I wasn’t sure I could fight them off alone.

  Cree touched down, giving me no other choice than to try. I hopped onto the grass, ready to throw all my magic at the attackers. Cree rolled over, squealing and roaring with pain. A wall of feathers swung in my direction. With no time to react, Cree’s massive wing folded against me, pinning me to the ground.

  Wadlow’s griffins landed, and what I had thought were two soldiers turned out to be four, two on each animal’s back. They leapt to the ground and turned to me, no longer holding spears. Their blades made swooshing sounds as the soldiers swung them by their sides. I raised my hand, intending to throw a fireball at them, but Cree moved again and forced all the air out of me. I pushed all my healing magic into her, feeling my core empty itself. I could only hope I had enough in me to help her, but she didn’t seem to react to it.

  Amalli touched down a few feet from Cree’s extended wing. The soldiers stopped, ready to take the griffin on, but she took off again.

  On the ground, where her feet had been seconds earlier, stood Brendan. He raised his sword, the thin training blade Elwood had forged for him, and stepped in front of the oncoming soldiers.

  “Stop, or die,” he said in a menacing voice, lower and more powerful than I had ever heard.

  The front soldier paused and held his fist up, halting his colleagues. He smirked. “Are you going to kill us with that?”

  “If I have to.”

  “Then, foolish Avalonian, you will have to.”

  The guard charged Brendan, who didn’t move. He stayed in his defensive stance, one I had practised many times with him. Whatever happened to ‘attack is the best form of defence’?

  As the guard swung his three-foot blade, Brendan sidestepped. I almost didn’t see the move of his hand before the tip of his sword protruded from the guard’s neck. Brendan withdrew the blade, now covered in scarlet, and ignored the fallen soldier. Instead, he prepared to handle the other two who were running at him. Again, he took the defensive stance, one foot forward, the other backward, and turned a fraction to the side. He flexed his knees a little, keeping his balance as low to the ground as possible.

  It was like watching a ballet. From my strained vantage point, I could do nothing other than witness my boyfriend dance and jump, spin and charge. I had never seen him in his competition mode, only in training. He had been right: he did have magic. The two guards never stood a chance, and in less than fifteen seconds they lay sprawled next to each other, dark red blood oozing from their necks. Brendan looked for the fourth guard, but he was nowhere in sight.

  “He’s a Dodger,” I cried.

  “True, milady,” the soldier said as he appeared behind Brendan, swinging his sword at his neck.

  “No!” I screamed, pushing as hard as I could to get Cree’s limp wing off me. It didn’t move an inch. My telekinesis power didn’t respond to my call because my magic was spent.

  A dark shadow spiralled through the air, grabbing at the Dodger’s neck and shoulders. He managed to swing his sword but missed Brendan by a hair’s breadth. The Dodger screamed and waved his free hand at the animal, clinging onto him.

  Brendan spun around, thrusting his blade through the Dodger’s chest. The animal let go as the soldier fell to the ground, and Brendan ran over to the other side of the griffin.

  It can’t be!

  Brendan sprinted to my side. He bent down and grabbed Cree’s wing. “Heal her,” he said as he lifted.

  “I’ve tried, but I don’t think I have enough.”

  “I might.” My grandfather crawled over. Blood poured from a gash by his left temple. “Sori, didn’t mean to abandon you, child.” The Dodger-killing animal slinked around his arms, purring like a cat.

  “Bailey?” I exclaimed.

  “He ran away when Auberon said he would throw us in prison. He’s grown, hasn’t he? But it’s definitely our Bailey.”

  I shook my head in amazement. “Kit has grown, too,” was all I could say. I looked at my grandfather’s bloody face. “You’re hurt.”

  “I’ll live. Now, let’s see if we can make this bird fly again.”

  He placed his hands next to the two spears embedded in Cree’s body. Red and orange light spread from his palms and into her fur. The griffin jerked, pushing her wing down on me. I gasped for air, praying my ribs wouldn’t crack. After a few seconds, she released the pressure, raising her wing slowly.

  “It’s working,” Brendan said. “Come, I’ll pull you out.” He took my arms and dragged me away from the massive wing. “Are you OK?”

  “I think so. Nothing’s broken, at least.” I went to stand in front of Cree, stroking my hand down her feathered face. “Can you fly, girl?”

  The glint in her eyes told me she was about to try. She rolled over, placing her heavy paws under her body. Trembling, she raised her head and stood.

  Llewellyn was still holding his hands on her, but the light had faded to a dim glow. “I have no more to give.”

  “She can fly.” Morgana was hovering ten feet over us. “Her eyes tell me she can do it.”

/>   “I think so, too.” A thought occurred while I stared between the griffins. “How could Amalli fly through the Time Turner’s boundary?”

  “My erudites might have more details, but all I know is that griffins don’t have the concept of time as we do. They can dive through it from above. That’s also why they can fly for moons on end.”

  “Did you know this, Brendan?”

  He held his hands out, flashing a smile that threatened to grab his ears. “No clue.”

  “And I had no clue you were such a skilled swordsman,” the royal voice from above his head said. “Could you teach my soldiers some of it?”

  “With pleasure, Your Highness.”

  Amalli and Hondo alighted in front of Cree, and Brendan climbed atop Amalli’s back. He had strapped Lili to the animal, using his shirt, and only now did I notice he was wearing the short-sleeved undergarment.

  Shouts and screams thundered from across the field.

  I waved at my grandfather. “We have to go.”

  He climbed onto Cree’s back, looking like he was two hundred years old, and Bailey jumped on as well. I suspected Llewellyn was feeling old, too, having drained all his magic. Cree let out a moaning squeal and got to her feet. The spears were still buried in her flesh, and whatever healing my grandfather had put into the animal could soon be worth nothing as the sharp weapons continued to do damage.

  She ran, stumbling a couple of times, but her wings responded to her commands. Air bound once more, it looked like she would be able to hold her position behind Hondo’s left wing. I assumed it worked like with a flock of geese, that she might save some energy by staying behind the queen’s giant griffin.

  The dark night was bleeding into what passed for a morning in this world, and the dim outline of the coast appeared below. I retrieved the hourglass. It was half empty on both sides, a thin line of grains shifting from one bulb to the other even if I held it sideways. Halwyn could have made a fortune with this back on Earth.

  Cree worked hard to stay up, beating her wings three times more often than Amalli. Brendan glanced over at her once a minute, at the very least. His brows pinched together, but he smiled encouragingly at me whenever I caught his eye.