by Lucia Ashta
But my brother was prepared for them, with his courage and sword at the ready for battle. At the base of the stairs, he swung at Maurisse and sliced at his thigh. The sorcerer roared, as much from the pain as the indignity that someone he deemed unimportant might hurt him.
Sinter rushed to his master’s side, pulling at him, trying to drag him into the corners of the dungeon, where he imagined they’d be safer. But there was darkness everywhere, and my brother could see in the inkwell while they couldn’t.
And my magic didn’t distinguish between light and dark. Now that Maurisse and Sinter were in the dungeon with us, there was no avoiding what was coming.
“Get away from him, you scoundrel!” Sinter yelled, his sniveling voice high-pitched. “You’re no match for the likes of the duke.”
“Clearly, I am.”
“That’s only because he hasn’t used his magic. There’s no more powerful sorcerer than he, you know that, right? You’ve just signed your own death sentence.” Sinter sneered, and I felt it run along the waves of my magic, where my powers responded, wanting to end this now. No point dragging it out.
I stood slowly.
“But he’ll have a little fun with your sister first,” Sinter continued, unaware that death was about to descend on him. “Such a pretty thing, she is. It’d be a shame not to take advantage of that before killing her.” He laughed, filling the air with my revulsion.
“Be quiet, you fool,” Maurisse snapped. “I need to use my magic to defeat him since I’m injured.” He emphasized the final word as if it were a great injustice that a man such as he, of his station, should have to suffer the indignity of bodily harm. He had no problem inflicting pain and torment on others, as long as he shouldn’t have to endure the same fate.
“But—” Sinter started, only for Maurisse to interrupt him and force more verbal abuse on him. The underling had probably been about to remind the high-and-mighty duke that he couldn’t perform magic down here, at least not ordinary magic.
Nando slashed at Maurisse again, slicing into the duke’s other thigh. Maurisse roared bloody murder, though my brother could have already killed him twice over and hadn’t. No matter, Maurisse was furious that he’d been marred, instead of grateful that his head wasn’t sliced clean off.
“You’ll pay for this,” Maurisse growled, and launched straight into the chanting of a spell. Through his anger, he spoke loudly, and for once I could make out the words clearly.
“This boy before me has done me wrong.
With this spell, I punish him.
I claim his life and ensure he won’t live long.
He’ll die right now, through the power of this spell.
Death will take him. Life will leave him.
And he’ll learn the lesson not to mess with his superiors.”
I was certain those last words at the very least must not be part of the usual spell, but magic was malleable. I understood that very well in the space I was in, with my magic boiling, choosing the perfect opportunity to strike.
Through my mind’s eye I sensed the duke flail his arms about, clearly expecting something to happen... but it didn’t.
“I kill him now,” he roared, apparently thinking that he could overpower magic through brute force, since that was how he approached life’s obstacles in general.
But, of course, nothing happened. Thanks to his earlier spell, which guaranteed that no additional spells could be cast in this room, his magic didn’t gather any force.
Nando said, “You made it so that no ordinary magician can do magic down here, remember?”
“I’m not an ordinary magician,” Maurisse snapped, anger radiating off him in palpable waves. I saw them as I looked with that one eye that could see in the darkness.
“Well, down here you aren’t a magician at all, now are you?”
Maurisse growled. “Don’t you dare touch me with that sword again.”
“I’ll ‘dare’ do whatever I have to do to protect myself, my sister, and our owl friend. We’re trapped here only because of you. Whatever fate you suffer here today will be due to your choices, not ours.”
“‘Whatever fate I’ll suffer...’ I won’t suffer any fate, you idiot. The only one who will suffer now will be you and that pretty little thing you call a sister. I’ll make her suffer while you watch, and only then will I torture you. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll kill you. Maybe I’ll cut off all your limbs and let you try to lead a life like that. Once you finally do die, an agonizing death of course, I’ll keep your spirit trapped forever.”
Maurisse grinned, and the air became tinged with his foulness. “I’ve never eaten owl before. I think I shall roast him, alive of course, then be kind enough to invite you to join me in your final meal. You’ll love eating owl, I’m sure.”
Sir Lancelot whimpered from the floor behind me when I decided that was enough.
Nando raised his sword to strike him down when I pushed more words from me to him. “Wait,” I said.
There was a delay, but Nando heard me. Immediately, he brought his sword down and waited.
“Join Sir Lancelot.”
“But I need to protect you,” he said aloud.
“Who are you talking to, you fool?” Maurisse asked, and we ignored him.
“You’ve protected me all I need. Give me space so I won’t hurt you.”
Nando was overprotective of me during the best of times. He wouldn’t want to step aside and leave me in close proximity to the duke and his minion.
But he must have felt some of what was going on within me, because he did as I requested, settling at my back but not touching me as he usually would have done.
“Take them down” was all he said.
“What?” Maurisse laughed. “The little girl? Take us down?”
It was a taunt. My body was that of a woman.
“Do you hear that, Sinter?”
“Ridiculous, Your Grace.”
“Totally ridiculous. Now help me back up the stairs, Sinter. Just because of their little antics, they’ll go without food or water until tomorrow.”
“That’s the least of the punishments they should have.”
“You’re right. Perhaps I’m being too lenient, and I do have a reputation to uphold.”
“Yes, Your Grace. Make them suffer for calling us down here like this, to attack us in the dark when we can’t see.”
“I think I will. I’ll—”
“Enough,” I said, pushing the thought into everyone’s minds.
Maurisse quieted, but only for a second. “Run,” he said to Sinter, and when Sinter turned and bolted up the stairs, he added, “With me, you idiot!”
But Sinter must have understood a bit of what was within me. He must have realized what was coming, and decided that of the two of us, I was the greater threat, the girl who talked in his mind.
Sinter turned tail and bounded up the steps, taking two at a time. In the dark, he tripped, and fell on his face, sliding several steps. He was quick to scramble back to his feet and race out of there. He slammed the door shut behind him and was gone.
“Coward,” Maurisse grumbled, clutching at the gashes in his thighs.
But everyone there knew who the real coward was. Probably even the duke, deep down, realized it was he.
I took a step toward the man, fiery palms at the ready.
Chapter 4
“What’s she doing?” Maurisse asked nervously, even though no one who remained in that dungeon cared for his well-being, not after what he’d done. “Why is she... glowing?”
“Because she has magic,” Nando said, “and she’s about to kill you with it.”
Kill him? Was that what I was about to do?
“She doesn’t have magic,” Maurisse said. “She can’t. If I couldn’t do a spell, then she certainly can’t.” But he only sounded half certain.
He limped backward until he leaned against the staircase railing.
“Doesn’t she look like she has magic?” Nando pr
odded. “You can see her, can’t you? You can’t see anything else in this dungeon, yet you can see her.”
Maurisse didn’t say anything.
“I can see the fear on your face. You realize the time of terrorizing those weaker than you, and those with less influence and wealth than you, and those more frightened than you... is over.”
“You can’t see my face.”
“Really? Then how do you think I was able to slice you with my sword so precisely? You aren’t bleeding to death, are you? I cut only to incapacitate, not to kill. Because yours is a death that should arrive by the hand of magic, the very magic that you’ve abused to condemn others who didn’t deserve the treatment you gave them.”
Again, Maurisse was silent. He must have realized that there had to be at least some truth to Nando’s statements. After all, his sword strokes had been that exact, and he had allowed fear to show on his face in this dark pit where no one was supposed to be able to see it.
But a part of me had hinged on Nando’s mention that I was to use my magic to kill the duke. Papá had trained Nando and our older brothers for combat. In the milieu of battle, men died; it was unavoidable and an accepted consequence of taking up arms.
But Papá hadn’t trained me for combat, and yet I could wield my magic to kill as effectively as Nando wielded his blade.
I wasn’t ready to kill; I didn’t want to. There might be nothing good left in Maurisse, and I agreed that the only way to spare humanity from his plan, and the unnecessary bloodshed it would cause, was to kill him. I just hadn’t anticipated that I’d have to be the one to kill him.
Ever connected to me, Nando spoke to me. “I can kill him if you don’t want to.”
I wouldn’t respond with words, but I nodded. That might be the best plan. If it was unavoidable, of the two of us, Nando was the only one prepared to hand out that fate.
But first, magic. My magic had continued to bubble and boil all this time, and it wanted freedom. It wished that I might allow it to deal at least some punishment to the man who’d tarnished the name of magic. More than that, it was the idea of teaching him a lesson so he’d never seek to mistreat others again—for however long he lived.
In the very next moment, the pit of lava within me urged me beyond ideas, back to the place where I’d best connected with my powers. Gone were the thoughts of what I could and couldn’t do. Gone were the decisions of what I wouldn’t.
As if my magic were controlling me and not the other way around, I took slow, steady steps across the dirt floor. My physical eyes were closed, and they wouldn’t have been able to see in the dark like Nando could anyway. I saw everything I needed to see, however, only I saw it in sheets of undulating color and light. As if I were in a dream, where colors wove my reality instead of hard lines, I advanced.
“Get her away from me!” Maurisse yelled, though he had no minion to jump to do his bidding this time.
“Did you respect the hundreds of people you killed when they asked you to stay away from them?” Nando asked.
“They deserved it,” Maurisse said weakly, though surely he must have realized none of us would believe his lie. I’d met Ama and heard her story; she hadn’t deserved her death or eternal condemnation. I’d bet then neither did the thousands of others he’d punished. Because I was certain of that one fact: Maurisse hadn’t killed hundreds; he’d killed thousands. He intended to kill hundreds of thousands, even if it was to be the effect of his upturning of the magical world and not directly by his hand.
The decision was clear: it was either him or most of the world’s population. He’d devastate as permanently as the Black Death.
The power simmering within me had no difficulty resolving the right course of action. My heart protested what seemed like murder. My magic explained that it wasn’t murder, it was the restoration of balance. It was wiping one man from history so that many more could occupy it.
When I continued to resist, my magic stopped trying to persuade me. It was on a trajectory it deemed worthy, and for the moment, I was coming along.
I drew to a complete stop in front of the sorcerer. I was still and serene even as he pressed his back into the railing behind him, trying to escape.
There was no escaping the amount of power that brewed inside me.
Once more, actions distilled themselves into still shots. Impressions of what was happening, as if I watched, detached, from above.
My arms rose to my sides, my palms turning to face the sorcerer. The fire in my palms pulsed as it reacted to the darkness that seethed from the heart of the man before me.
He no longer was the impeccably dressed, impeccably pressed, man of leisure who had the ear of the king. He was a cornered, wild beast, and his facial expressions morphed to resemble one.
He snarled and cowered.
My magic bubbled to the point of eruption and leapt forward.
It happened so quickly that I struggled to register everything that took place.
An orange, glowing light, thick and viscous as if it truly were lava, shot from my hands.
As soon as it hit him, he screamed, and my mind hurried to block out the sound. For even though he was a man who’d had no problems inflicting pain on others, when the tables were turned, he shrieked like an innocent.
The light streamed in two long, steady strings of fire. Of heat. Of power. Of my magic.
And Maurisse lit up like a light bulb. He glowed from within for a few prolonged seconds, making him seem nearly beautiful, as if the darkness he’d allowed to consume him could be replaced with light.
But it soon changed. The steady stream of magic was too much for his physical vessel to contain. He cracked beneath the pressure. His body glowed softly, but where cracks and crevices began to form, the pure molten heat of my magic shone through.
It was in that moment that I realized I was killing him.
Panicked, I tried to pull back, to rein my magic in. For an instant, I feared it was already too late. But then I felt my power respond, allowing me the final choice.
Maurisse had certainly learned a lesson already, but would it be enough to keep him from enacting his plan to reveal magic to the entire planet?
As if Nando sensed my qualms, he spoke up then. Only I couldn’t make out his words. All I could hear was the pulsing of my heart, in perfect synchronicity with the roaring of the fire, whooshing through my veins, filling every single part of me.
Nando moved next to me, his sword sheathed, and both hands in the air, looking for a safe place to touch me. In the end, he didn’t, and I imagined that if my fire was lighting Maurisse like the sun, I might look something like it. He’d been smart not to touch me. I’d never want to hurt him, and I wasn’t sure I had enough control over myself to ensure I wouldn’t.
In the end it was Sir Lancelot’s voice that managed to reach me in that place I was. The owl, who’d been weak to the point of total debility before this started, had regained some of his strength.
He called out, in a strong, pure voice that reached me in my heart. “Don’t stop now, Lady Isa. You must kill him, even if you don’t want to. Men like him never stop hurting others.”
That alone might not have convinced me entirely, and I might still have pulled back. But then he said, “Your magic is seeking to return balance to the world. Your magic wants to remove his darkness. Your power is pure. Allow it to do as it must.”
That did it. Because in my heart I felt that what the wise owl said was true. Killing a man wasn’t what I wanted to do. Removing a sorcerer and the darkness he’d hosted was what magic needed to do.
Who was I to stand in the way of magic? Who was I to understand something so much greater than I? I couldn’t question it, not really, and so I shouldn’t. I wouldn’t.
I stood aside in the only way I could. I shut my thoughts and doubts down, and returned to that place of instinct alone, where I didn’t question the flow of my magic, but experienced myself as one with it.
My power responded instantly
. It sparked with renewed vigor. Its glow intensified.
And as it streamed with gathering force inside the body of the sorcerer, who was no more than flesh, blood, and bone, it overpowered him.
The crevices that criss-crossed his skin widened until they became ravines. The heat I sent within him began also to dissolve his flesh, and pin points of glow popped up all over his skin, like a bad case of lethal pox.
His skin thinned into something no thicker than rice parchment. The glow within grew brighter, shining now like sun rays through the cracks, beaming and lighting up the dungeon.
His lips settled into the last expression he’d ever consciously make, frozen in a scream of terror.
And then he burst from within. The power inside him exploded, shattering him into a million pieces of gore.
The remains of his human body raced toward us, and Nando dove between the now-dead man and me to protect me from the filth that was about to bathe us.
But it didn’t. Just before the bits of Maurisse met with Nando, they disintegrated. Fully absorbed by the light of my magic, the remains of the duke evaporated in speckled bursts, then disappeared into nothing. Like dying stars twinkling before vanishing from sight.
Without a doubt, the duke would never harm another living being again. He was as dead as they got.
Chapter 5
“Bravo, Lady Isa!” Sir Lancelot called to me, his voice suddenly clear. The death of our self-declared archenemy must have given him a burst of strength.
But I was still faraway, at one with my magic, and even though my magic had been the one to choose the path that brought about Maurisse’s death, it didn’t revel in his end. Magic, like nature, like all life, sought balance. Now that it had achieved balance, my magic was in the process of settling, of retreating to the well within me where it always was—and where now I’d never forget its presence.
“Isa, are you all right?” Nando asked. This time, he dared to place a hand on my arm, although I must have still looked volatile.
His touch startled me, making me jump.
“Shh, it’s just me. You’re fine. Nothing’s going to hurt you now,” he said, but I couldn’t help the question that popped into my mind, faint and timid. And my magic? Will it ever hurt me if I lose control of it?