Now all I had to do was wait for the results.
I casually wove my way among the other contenders and stood at a safe distance from Sledge so he wouldn’t guess I’d used a cantrip on him. Once I was beside Harper, I faced the front, where the Elemental Soldiers had gathered.
“Today,” said the Air Element, “we’ll test your combat skills. This will help us narrow down the list of candidates to those who can stand up to a range of opponents. We’ll start by pitting you against one another.”
Well, crap. If we weren’t allowed to use magic, I’d better hope I didn’t end up put against Sledge. He could knock the crap out of me in single combat with ease, and even the drowsiness cantrip might not guarantee my victory.
“How do you decide who fights who?” Harper asked.
“Each of you will select a number,” they said. “The person whose number matches yours will be your opponent.”
A gust of air swept over the arena. Several people grabbed the walls, expecting it to be like the last time. Instead, a series of paper aeroplanes fluttered into view, propelled by the Air Element’s magic.
“One piece of paper, Sledge,” the Air Element said in a bored voice. “Not seven.”
“I can take anyone on, no problem.” He dropped a handful of papers all over the floor, a glazed look in his eyes. Looks like the cantrip is already in effect.
I grabbed a scrap of paper with the number 4 scrawled on it. The Earth Element raised his hands next, and the ground began to shift below our feet. In seconds, the arena had divided down the middle, and then again, until earthen walls split it into four evenly sized segments.
“Four matches will take place at once,” said the Air Element. “The first will be between those holding numbers one through four.”
I’m up, then. I waited for the others to move out the way, looking out for my opponent.
“You’re up against Carla, Bria,” said the Air Element.
Good. At least it isn’t Sledge. Assuming no water showed up, I could handle this one. I walked to the front left section of the arena and waited for my opponent to approach. She was taller than I was, broad-shouldered and muscular, but I was reasonably sure I could take her.
In the arena beside mine, Harper faced off against her own opponent. Hoping she’d be subtle if she used the cantrips, I scanned my surroundings. While the four arenas were separated from one another, if someone threw a fireball, it might be an issue. In the arena behind mine, Sledge yawned.
“Hello?” said Carla. “Are you even paying attention to me?”
Nope. “Sure.” I faced my opponent, cracking my knuckles. Here we go.
She started with a feint, then went on the attack. I dodged a punch and blocked another, then swung my fist into her ribs. Two quick punches and a kick to the chest had her on the ground, her eyes widened in disbelief at the speed with which I’d taken her down. Easier than I’d expected, considering I was sleep deprived and nowhere near as prepared as I might have been. If I wasn’t distracted by the possibility of more than one person in here working for the House of Fire.
I glanced at Sledge in time to see him miss an easy hit on his opponent, who dodged his clumsy fists. His adversary got a hit in, and while Sledge still had the advantage, I’d definitely slowed him down. Whether he won or lost, the effects would keep getting worse until he either made a mistake or got knocked out cold. Both were fine with me.
Harper caught my eye and smiled. Now for his allies.
10
The matches continued, gradually growing more violent. Liv marched around yelling at people for throwing fireballs and otherwise flaunting the rules. While most fire mages had developed some resilience to burns over time, she didn’t have that advantage. Even with the armour she wore, it had to sting.
I wondered briefly about telling her there were several spies among the contenders, but I concluded that I’d be better off not drawing any more attention to myself than I had to. Our encounter at the citadel last night felt like a dream, but if she asked me what I’d been doing there, I hadn’t come up with a decent excuse yet.
A yell from Sledge’s direction drew my attention. He hammered his fists into his opponent hard enough to knock him out, and even as the guy pleaded for mercy, he continued pummelling away at him until Liv stormed over to the arena and stuck her head over the edge.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Stop. You already won.”
Sledge gave his opponent another half-hearted punch. “He didn’t surrender.”
“He’s passed out.” Liv entered the arena and grabbed Sledge’s wrist. “That’s enough. You’re disqualified.”
Good. It seemed he’d decided to go out on his own terms. That, or our conversation earlier had annoyed him enough that he’d decided to take as many of us down with him as possible. Either worked.
Sledge freed himself and swung his fist at Liv. She ducked the blow and kicked at his legs, knocking him onto his back. Before he could climb to his feet, she blasted him down with spirit magic. This time, he stayed put.
The Air Element summoned two liches to escort Sledge from the premises. Liv tailed behind them as though she expected Sledge to give them the slip. By now, I was starting to regret my hasty actions in getting Sledge kicked out. He wasn’t the only agent of the House of Fire, or whoever he worked for. Unless I cornered him on his way out and risked getting caught by the guards, I’d have to rely on guesswork to figure out who the others might be.
Liv had already turned away from the gate, scanning the grounds. She peered past the arena, towards the node, and then approached the bushes near the jail where I’d hidden back when I’d first come here. Had she spotted another intruder?
Liv reached into the bushes and grabbed a teenage boy by the shoulders and dragged him out, causing him to drop his invisibility cantrip. I glanced at Harper, who’d paled.
Oh, no, Harper, you didn’t.
“What kind of mage are you?” Liv asked the newcomer.
“I—” He faltered. “Water.”
Oh, damn. Harper hadn’t mentioned her brother wasn’t a fire mage, but it explained why he hadn’t come to take part in the trials himself. Unfortunately, the flood from yesterday was still fresh in everyone’s minds. If Liv blamed Harper, it was one step from there to her finding the sprite.
I could only watch as Liv led the pair of siblings up the stone staircase and into the castle. At least she hadn’t booted them out into the swamp, though perhaps that was because the liches were struggling to extract Sledge from the premises. He dug his heels in and refused to shift, despite the cantrip I’d used on him. I dragged my gaze away and watched the doors close behind Liv and Harper. If both of them wound up taken back to the House of Fire, they were as good as dead.
Dammit.
I walked out of the arena and approached the Air Element. “Harper’s not responsible for what her brother did. You don’t know—”
“Get back in the arena,” they said.
I didn’t budge. “She won’t get kicked out for this, right? She’s not working against anyone, and her brother wasn’t the one who flooded the castle.”
“That’s for her to tell Liv, not me,” they said. “I’m not unaware that many of the contenders have family to consider, but we can’t have people breaking into the castle grounds using cantrips.”
I was starting to suspect she’d given her brother one of the invisibility cantrips I’d stolen from the storeroom. Why hadn’t she run her plan past me? Right, because she thought I was leaving the contest.
“I get that, but look at Sledge and some of the others,” I said. “They broke the rules worse than she did.”
“You’re arguing with the wrong person,” they said. “Harper will likely be allowed to stay, provided her brother isn’t found to have interfered with the contest.”
But if he was kicked out, the House of Fire would catch him.
“This is bullshit!” Sledge bellowed. “You can’t kick me out.”
Fire l
eapt from his palms, straight at the liches. As they retreated out of range, Liv returned from the castle, marching over to him and conjuring magic to her own hands. I then spotted Harper approaching the arena again. Relief swept through me. She’d been allowed to stay… for now. Yet the devastated expression on her face told me the same couldn’t be said for her brother.
I hardly paid attention to my next fight, and when we broke for lunch, I waited for her outside the arena. “Harper.”
She shook her head. “Don’t, Bria. I won’t get you into trouble, too.”
“Bit late for that.” Despite the distraction of the matches, Shawn’s words ricocheted around my mind. He and his fellow spirit mages planned to break in here tomorrow, and I hadn’t the faintest idea how to handle it. “Come on, talk to me. Maybe I can help.”
“You already gave me the cantrips.” She drew in a breath. “I had to send him away, but he’s hiding in the swamp, and… I know they’ll find him. Sooner or later, the liches will stop him and throw him straight to the wolves.”
“Who, the House of Fire?” I said. “They’re not around. We’d have seen them. Besides, I doubt the Death King would let them get that close to his territory.”
“It’s…” She paused, swallowing hard. “It’s not the House of Fire. Not the ones you probably know, anyway.”
My body stiffened. Oh, no. Unfortunately, I did know. If it wasn’t the public face of the House of Fire, there was only one entity it could be.
“The…” I could hardly bring myself to say the word. “Family.”
She flinched. “The House of Fire was a safe haven by comparison, but they wouldn’t take my brother in, since he’s a water mage. There are far worse things than being behind bars.”
“I know that.” I wished I didn’t. And the House of Fire had been a safe place of sorts for me, too, after I’d left home. After I’d left the Family.
She blew out a breath. “Worse, Sledge is with them. He said he got a tip-off about us being in here.”
Oh, hell. Had that tipoff come about because I’d told Shawn about Harper being hunted by the House of Fire? If the worst happened and he wasn’t who I thought he was, I’d unintentionally endangered her life, not to mention her brother’s.
My throat went dry. “Elements. I’m sorry, Harper. Is your brother still hiding nearby? I might be able to help him.”
Hell if I knew how, though, if the Spirit Agents had never been my allies after all.
“He’s coming back after the trials are done for the day,” she said. “In other words, after Liv goes home. She didn’t guess about Mav, but considering she’s been watching me like a hawk, I won’t risk it.”
“We’ll wait, then.” I gave her a quick hug. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to help you.”
The rest of the afternoon dragged on, unbearably slow. As the trials finally drew to a close, the losers left in droves, but I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate with the others who’d got through to the next round. Harper and I waited impatiently for the losers to leave the castle, one eye on the setting sun. Finally, when the others had all traipsed off back to the dormitories, we pulled out our invisibility cantrips.
“It’ll be easier for to go out through the gates,” I told Harper. “I have a transporter spell which can get us through the node, but it’s painful, and I’m pretty sure only one of us can use it at a time.”
“You have a transporter?” Her eyes rounded. “Damn. I’ve never seen one.”
“That was why I needed to get into the storeroom.” There was no sense in hiding the truth from her now. “Okay, we’ll wait for a gap in the liches at the gate. Try not to touch anyone.”
Her brow wrinkled. “Can you touch a lich? I always thought your hand would pass right through them.”
“Let’s not test that one in practise.”
The two of us turned on the invisibility cantrips, then we crossed the grounds towards the gates. The liches on guard duty stood a couple of feet apart, so we’d need to walk in single file and hope they couldn’t hear our breathing. I took the lead, arms by my sides, and walked straight through, holding my breath. The murky swamp water hid my footprints, and we crept out of the gates and across the swampy ground, until we reached a safe enough distance from the castle for me to breathe out.
“You still there?” Harper whispered.
“Yeah,” I whispered back. “You said your brother was hiding somewhere out here?”
“We’ll have to reveal ourselves if we want him to spot us,” she said. “Better get away from the castle first.”
Once we’d walked out of sight of the gates, we turned off the cantrips. Unbroken swampland extended into the distance on either side, and the only signs of life were a few scraggly bushes and spindly trees.
“Percy?” Harper called out. “It’s me.”
The teenage boy stepped out from behind a tree. He and Harper shared the same dark hair and eyes, and he flinched at the sight of me.
“Hey,” she whispered. “This is Bria. She’s safe. Bria, this is my brother, Percy.”
“Hi.” I reached into my pocket. “I have some cantrips for you to use to keep yourself safe. I figured you had more use for them than I did.”
I held out a handful of cantrips, and he took them warily. “How’d you get these?”
“I stole them from the Death King,” I said. “You should hide somewhere that isn’t in the swampland. There’s a place in Arcadia called the Withered Oak which proclaims it’s a hideout for mages…”
Harper flinched. “No. That place… it attracts the unscrupulous sort.”
I frowned. “The guy who runs the place claimed it has nothing to do with the Houses.”
Percy shrugged. “Yeah, but he also doesn’t ask his guests questions.”
I thought of Sledge. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t know any local safe houses in Arcadia. I know a few in Elysium, though.”
“That’s where you’re from?” asked Harper.
I nodded. “It’s not safe for anyone to stick around here. I heard… I heard a rumour that a group of spirit mages is going to try to break into the castle tomorrow.”
“You did?” Harper looked startled. “Since when?”
Ah, crap. How would I even explain how I’d wound up involved with the Spirit Agents? Especially when they’d purported to be the Death King’s allies before Shawn had revealed his real motives?
Percy’s eyes narrowed. “She met them herself. You did, didn’t you?”
“It’s not what you think,” I protested, but Harper’s expression had shuttered.
“So that’s how you knew,” she said. “You were with them.”
“I wasn’t,” I cut in. “The spirit mages… they tricked me into thinking they wanted a spy in the castle, but some of them went rogue, I think.”
“I’ve heard enough,” said Harper. “Leave us alone, Bria.”
Oh, hell. I’d really fucked up. Worse, Shawn was nowhere to be seen, and I was at a loss to figure out how to stop his mad crusade to steal the Death King’s soul. I was out of allies and out of ideas.
11
Harper didn’t say another word to me for the rest of the evening. At the first opportunity, I brought out the transporter and used it to cross from the node into the city of Arcadia again, at which point I walked to the Withered Oak. I’d hoped to find Miles in there, but instead found myself face to face with the unfriendly owner.
“Hey,” I said, hitching on a smile. “Sorry to disturb you. I wondered if you’d seen—”
“That spirit mage friend of yours?” he said. “He won’t come back here, if he has any sense.”
“You claim to be a shelter for all mages,” I pointed out. “Does that include people who conspire with the Houses behind your backs?”
“We don’t ask questions.”
Arsehole. “I guess you don’t.”
That did it. I left the shelter and made for the Citadel of the Elements. Finding my way to the side door, I knocked.
A painful shock jolted through my knuckles, making the hairs on my arms stand on end.
“Dammit!” Shawn had barred the doors against me. I knocked, hammered my fists on the metal surface, but no luck. Cursing, my hands bruised, I marched back to the node before another pack of revenants came after me. I had a quick check of the tunnels, too, but Miles didn’t materialise. I wished I’d at least asked for directions to the Spirit Agents’ base back in Elysium. Then I’d be able to go there and check if they were on my side.
Miles can’t have betrayed me. Can he?
With no answers forthcoming, I returned to the Death King’s castle. I debated telling the Elemental Soldiers about Shawn’s plan to steal their master’s soul, but if I did, I’d end up worse than dead. They also knew of my friendship with Harper, which might lead to her getting kicked out herself. I couldn’t take that risk.
The rest of the evening dragged out, leaving me with entirely too much time to ponder how to stop Shawn and his friends from coming into the castle to steal the Death King’s soul. Did the Spirit Agents truly exist at all? I’d even told Liv about them, but I assumed she hadn’t pursued that line of questioning.
I slept badly that night, and I was still groggy and out of sorts the following morning when we headed to the arena for the next round of the contest.
“Today will be focused on magical combat,” the Air Element told us.
Easy enough, and duelling was a welcome distraction from the way I’d broken Harper’s trust in me. Since Shawn hadn’t given any details of his plans, I could hope that he and his allies didn’t endanger the other contenders’ lives. My best option was to keep my distance and let the Elemental Soldiers handle him. If they could.
As I’d expected, it was a lot harder for the Elemental Soldiers to keep the contenders under control with fireballs flying everywhere. Jets of flame shot across the arena, wrecking other people’s bouts as their clothing caught fire, while Liv wore an expression which suggested she’d rather be hand-rearing vampire chickens than chasing around unruly fire mages.
Cage of Fire (Parallel Magic Book 1) Page 12