“What’s the Conclave going to be like?” Bethany asked as they huddled around the fire that evening. Dormael looked down at the girl, who was snuggled under his arm and wrapped in her own cloak. She had remained close to him throughout the day, sharing silent company.
“What’s it going to be like?” Dormael repeated, taking a deep breath. “Where to start, girl? It will be different from anything you’ve ever seen.”
“It’s…well, it’s where I’m going, isn’t it?” she asked, risking a look into his eyes.
“That’s the plan, little one,” Dormael nodded. “Isn’t that what you want? To learn to use your power?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “At least, I think so. Are you going to be there?”
Dormael wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t stay with the girl during her training, or huddle over her like a mother bear with her cub. Initiates were separated from their families for a reason, and Dormael would be expected to disavow her unless she was on holiday. He would be able to visit, of course, but he also had duties as a Warlock. Dormael quailed a bit as he realized that she would spend a great deal of her time alone—or away from him, anyway. He had adopted her only to drop her at the Conclave’s doorstep, and fly off to his next assignment.
“I will be there sometimes,” Dormael said. “I will be able to visit you, and I will hear about everything you do. I live at the Conclave, you know, so I will be close by.” He took a deep breath. “The thing is, Bethany, I also have duties. Do you understand what that means?”
“Yes,” she said. “You have to take care of the armlet.”
“That’s part of it,” he said, a smile coming to his face. “There are, however, other things I do. For you, though, the Conclave will be different. It’s a school. You will learn things, be required to pass tests. Do you understand?”
Bethany nodded.
“You’ll be put into a class—a group of children close to your age and skill level. You’ll live with them, you’ll become something like a family,” he said.
“But…aren’t we family now?” she asked, confusion wrinkling her brow.
“We are,” Dormael said, rubbing her shoulder. “But your classmates will be something close, too, eventually. Nothing wrong with more family, right?”
“Right,” she said.
“You’ll learn all sorts of things—history, mathematics, philosophy…”
“What about magic?” she asked. “Aren’t I going to learn magic?”
“Of course,” he laughed. “We’ve been teaching you a bit already. At the Conclave, though, they’ll teach you the right way. D’Jenn and I are just improvising. There, you will have real instructors.”
“I want to learn to make roasts with magic,” she smiled. “Roasts with gravy and roasted carrots. And rolls. Rolls with honey and butter.”
Dormael just laughed, and ruffled the girl’s hair.
Their trek through the foothills lasted for days. The weather stayed dry, which was a blessing from the gods as far as Dormael was concerned, but it was damnably cold. The wind tore at their hoods, and blew dust into their eyes. Dark clouds formed over the passes, and blew gusts down through the hills like icy bellows. Dormael thought about using magic to keep warm, but decided against it. As the days passed by, he huddled deeper into his cloak, and tried his best to get used to it.
Around six days out from Harlun homestead, they began the climb into the Runemian Mountains. The road was wide and easy on the horses at the bottom, but as they twisted higher into the mountains, it became narrower, rockier, and more eroded. They were forced to slow down over the next three days as they went higher, and D’Jenn scowled at the delay.
On the fourth day of their slow, careful climb, they made it to a point where the trail leveled off. The road squeezed into a narrow ravine, just wide enough for three horses to ride abreast, and disappeared behind winding switchbacks. Allen led the way, with D’Jenn and Shawna following close behind. Dormael had drawn remount duty for the day, and was leading the train of horses they had taken from the Cultists, with Bethany humming from her spot on his saddle. He looked around as they entered the pass, trying to guess how far up the mountain they had come. The highlands behind them were a patchwork of folded lands with brown grasses blowing in the cold wind. Ahead there was nothing but craggy boulders, evergreens, and stunted bushes on all sides.
Dormael felt a tug at the rope he’d tied to the lead packhorse’s bridle, and turned to see what was causing the problem. One of the horses at the rear of the train was slowing to pluck at a sprig of grass, so Dormael sighed and let the beast have its snack. There was no sense in hurrying things along when they were making about as much speed as a blind man with a cane. The rest of the party disappeared around a bend in the trail, and Dormael let them gain a little ground while the remounts got moving again.
“What is that man doing?” Bethany asked, drawing Dormael out of his reverie.
“What man?”
His heart froze as he turned his eyes to see what the girl was talking about. On a ridge overlooking the trail, a man was crouched behind a bush, drawing an arrow to his cheek. Dormael just happened to be at an angle where he could see the bastard—if he had followed everyone else into the pass, he’d never have spotted him. His hands tightened on Bethany’s shoulders, and he opened his Kai.
D’Jenn! Archers!
The thought was blasted out to his cousin’s mind in a fury of heart-quickened emotion, so Dormael didn’t know if his cousin had even received the garbled message. If he yelled, he would alert the ambushers and spring the trap. He could only hope that D’Jenn had heard him.
He could hope, and he could fry the bastards with magic.
Dormael raised his hands, and fire blossomed on the walls of the ravine, roaring into life and sweeping down upon anything that would have been hiding there. Horses screamed, reared, and tried to bolt. Men yelled in agony and stumbled out of the conflagration, a few of them leaping down onto the trail to escape the flames. In an instant it was over, and the roaring blaze died to a flickering remnant of its initial fury. The wails of the wounded and dying stabbed into the stunned silence.
Dormael dug his heels into Horse’s flanks and screamed for Bethany to hold on tight. They climbed around the narrow switchback and rejoined their friends, just as chaos was beginning to take hold. Steel whispered and rang as weapons were drawn, and the horses were tossing their heads in fear. A troop of excited voices rang out, echoing from the walls of the pass on either side of them.
“Ride!” D’Jenn shouted, whipping his mace from his belt.
He spurred Mist down the trail at a gallop, and everyone pounded after him. Dormael yanked on the remount line, trying to alert the horses to what was happening, but he needn’t make the effort. The panicked beasts followed as their instincts took over. Like thunder, they fled down the winding trail.
Dormael rounded a bend just in time to see his brother lean out of the saddle and stab downward with his spear, killing a man in dark leathers as he rode by. Allen abandoned the weapon and drew his saber, turning his horse in a circle. Shawna and D’Jenn were also jammed into the clearing, and it took Dormael a moment before he saw the reason.
A tree was fallen across the road, trapping them inside.
Dormael cursed as the remounts flooded in behind him, choking the area like a holding pen. Horse swung around in a desperate circle, eyes rolling, while Dormael tried to fix his eyes on the fallen tree. He could hear D’Jenn’s song playing an angry melody in the ether, though he couldn’t tell if he was trying to move the tree, or defend against more assailants. Dormael spotted men here and there, but his damned horse wouldn’t stop spinning so he could get his bearings. Everything was chaos.
Just then, Allen yelled and chopped down with his sword, killing a man in a spray of bright blood. Dormael spotted more of them coming from all sides—men dressed in cast-off leathers, all bright knives and hungry eyes. Arrows flitted through the air around them, and Dormael kne
w they had closed the trap.
He saw one wild-eyed man running for them as Horse danced around. Dormael wrenched the bastard from the ground with his power, and tossed him screaming into the trees. He pulled ice from the air with his magic, and sent it hurtling into their attackers. Trying to avoid hitting the horses, or accidentally unleashing something that would hit his friends, was difficult in the swirling chaos of the fight. Dust was being kicked up everywhere, and Dormael was having trouble seeing.
He spotted his brother, screaming mad and covered in blood, laying about with that long, curved saber. Allen had kept his mount, and fought a desperate battle. His horse was one of the combat-trained Cultist mounts, and it lashed out with its hooves to kick anything that moved in its periphery. Allen tried to clear a space around him, but the confusion was too great.
D’Jenn was picking out random men in the shifting, dusty mass, and killing them in flashes of red light. Dormael didn’t know what sort of spell he was using, but D’Jenn’s methods were often mysterious. He let his horse spin and kick all she want, and instead of trying to calm her, he concentrated on laying about with his magic. Dormael could sense the furious storm of his cousin’s Kai, which was no doubt working on several things at once. D’Jenn still found the presence of mind to whip out with his morningstar from time to time, when one of the bandits got too close.
Since D’Jenn was occupied with the attackers, Dormael turned his attention to finding a way out of this ambush. He spun around until his eyes fell on the fallen tree, and fixed on it with his magic. Seizing it in his Kai, he started to lift the heavy thing from the ground.
Horse whinnied as Dormael’s weight began to increase. He cursed and distributed it around him instead, leveraging his power against the rocks on either side of the trail. The tree shifted and cracked, uttering groaning protests as it began to rise from the ground, trailing a shower of dirt and pine needles. Concentrating, he moved the tree off to the side, thinking to toss it into a group of their attackers.
Bethany’s hand tightening on his arm was all the warning he had.
Pain exploded on the back of his head, and everything went hazy. His world toppled end over end, and he slammed into the ground. A rushing, pounding noise drowned out his hearing. Dirt filled his mouth and nose, and his magic left him like a tide receding from the shore. The tree made an awful racket as it crashed to the ground nearby, and screams lifted in its wake.
Dormael tried to rise, but pain rushed from the back of his head all the way to his legs, and his muscles gave an involuntary spasm. He dug his fingers into the dirt with a silent gasp of pain, and tried again. This time his body responded, but his head swam with the effort. Blood ran from the top of his head down into his mouth, and he spat to the side.
“Grab her!” he heard a voice growl, and he forced his head up to see.
Two men were reaching up to Horse’s saddle, each trying to grab hold of Bethany. Horse spun, fighting to keep them away, but one of the men stepped into the horse’s side, and took hold of his reins. The other got a hand on Bethany’s ankle.
“No,” Dormael growled, trying again to get to his feet.
The man pulled her from the saddle, even against the girl’s flailing arms and legs. She landed on the ground in a whimpering heap, and tried to scoot away. The pounding hooves and stomping boots in the chaos, though, kept her rooted to the spot. She saw Dormael bleeding on the ground, and gave him a frightened look. Dormael’s heart wrenched in fear as he reached for his magic, but the power eluded him, running through his mental fingers like slippery oil.
“Kill the wizard, we carry the girl back to Jureus,” one of them said.
A black feeling took root in Dormael’s guts. His head was full of wool, and his skull was probably cracked. His magic wouldn’t respond to his frenzied commands, and Bethany was out of his reach. He saw a hand reach down to take Bethany by the hair, and he cried out. Bethany screamed, and then Dormael felt it—tingling along his arms and legs like a thousand spiders racing over his skin.
The girl had summoned her power.
Bethany threw up her hand in a gesture of pure instinct, shying away from the man who was reaching for her. A yellow light flickered over the girl’s body, down across the ground, and leapt onto the bandit like a critter made of shifting motes. He screamed and stumbled back, and Dormael watched in fascinated horror as the lights sank into his skin and began to crawl around beneath it. His body swelled, distended, and burst like an overripe melon in a shower of gore.
Bethany saw her handiwork, and her eyes went wide with fear. Pebbles began to dance along the ground as her emotions climbed to a fever pitch, her magic reacting with fury and fear. Dormael clenched his teeth again and fought to rise from the ground, this time getting to a knee. Another man grabbed Bethany from behind, but she fought free of his grip and scrambled away.
Dormael saw something in her face, saw her reach a breaking point. Her expression changed between one instant and the next—from abject terror to something cold, something determined. In the space of a single heartbeat, Bethany’s eyes alighted on the man pursuing her, and she concentrated. Dormael felt her magic—wild and unfocused only seconds before—move with deadly purpose.
The man was flung away from her in a spray of blood, making a wet smacking noise as if he’d been swatted by the hand of an invisible giant. His body flew into a nearby tree, cracking limbs on his way to the ground. Dormael watched in awe, then turned a surprised glare on his newly-adopted daughter. When he looked back at her, though, she was once again huddled into a ball.
Dormael hissed in pain as his body protested, and fought down a wave of nausea as he climbed to his feet. He stumbled over to where Bethany was crouched and put his arms around her, croaking in her ear that it would be alright. He’d never seen anything like that look on her face before, and couldn’t help but feel a chill run down his spine at the memory.
Another gurgling scream sounded from behind them. Turning, he saw Shawna pulling one of her blades from the throat of one dying man while stepping like an eel through the space between two others. As the first man fell in a spray of blood, she slashed open the thigh of a second. The third man had enough time to attack with a desperate slash at her face, but Shawna tapped his sword aside with contempt, and repaid him with a delicate cut across the eyes. He stumbled away, screaming in agony. Shawna turned as the three went down, looking for another enemy to come screaming out of the chaos. The woman must have abandoned her horse in favor of fighting on foot.
Dormael grabbed at Horse’s reins and pulled the beast around so he could plant Bethany in the saddle. His head throbbed in time with his heartbeat, each thud coming with teeth-clenching pain. Once Bethany was perched on horseback, he struggled into the saddle behind her. His legs went weak as he climbed, and he almost pitched back into the dirt, but was able to right himself and get seated.
Dormael reached to the back of his head and probed at the wound, even as a wave of dizziness swept over him. He had a cut, and a vicious, swollen bruise, but his skull was whole. Even as the dusty chaos raged around him, Dormael breathed a sigh of relief at that. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then tried once again to summon his magic.
Shawna’s scream ripped his concentration away, and he spun in her direction.
A crowd of men surrounded her, and one of them had tossed a net over her head. Shawna screamed in rage and hacked at the thing with her blades, but one of the bastards stepped forward and knocked her to the ground. Dormael tried to haul Horse around in Shawna’s direction, but he was too slow. Even as he watched, the men closed in and dragged her into the woods.
He reached again for his magic, but the damnable power slipped from his mind, leaving nothing but a dull pain in its wake. Dormael cursed, spurring Horse after the men who had taken Shawna. He headed for the side of the road, where a trail meandered into the woods. Growling, Dormael spurred Horse up the trail, after the cloud of dust and the retreating bandits.
F
lames roared to life before him, appearing from nowhere to reach three times the height of a man. Dormael felt the sensation of magic being used—a tingling along his arms and legs—but he couldn’t hear the song without listening to his own power. He spent a confused moment wondering why in the Six Hells D’Jenn would prevent him from chasing their attackers before he realized the truth.
The bandits, whoever they were, had a wizard amongst them.
Dormael cursed and wheeled Horse back out onto the trail. Only his brother, D’Jenn, and the corpses were left in the chaotic aftermath. He was astonished to see at least twenty men lying dead on the packed dirt, blood flung about in every direction.
Allen was covered in gore, his sword a dripping mess. He heaved out great breaths from atop his horse—a spotted chestnut he’d named Old Girl. Allen spun her in a circle, surveying the carnage around them. Dormael’s eyes went to the man whom Bethany had burst like an overripe melon, his remains nothing more than a splotch of blood and organs.
D’Jenn held his mace out to the side, spikes dripping onto the dirt. Dormael felt the pressure of his cousin’s magic along his skin, and resisted the urge to reach for his own. D’Jenn looked to Dormael, Allen, then glanced around in the fading dust, his eyes going wild.
“They took her,” Dormael said, guessing the direction of his thoughts. “They took Shawna.”
“They got away with her horse, and most of the remounts, too,” Allen said. “Let’s regroup, then we’ll get up that fucking trail and take them back!”
The Seven Signs: Three Book Collection Page 56