She remembered the men in the mountain pass, the ones who had tried to take her. Her magic remembered, too, and it flared up in defense, posturing like an angry dog protecting its master. The hallway, however, was silent and empty, save for her.
You’re alone now.
No! Not again, not again, not again, not again!
The voice came to her sometimes, whispering things to her in the dark. She thought she had left it behind long ago, left it in the streets where she starved and fought to keep from freezing. She thought that voice had died.
“I’m not alone,” she whispered to herself, a mantra against her fear. “I’m only stuck if I want to be stuck. Fear is just a thought like any other.”
It helped, but not much.
Bethany decided that there was nothing for it but to keep going. If she froze and stayed in the same place, she might rot down here forever. It might be a hundred years before the next person came along and found her.
She ran. She ran down the darkened hallways, unsure of her direction. She ran down side corridors, back and forth until she was so turned around that she had no idea where she was. There were no candles this far down. Her only company was the dust, and the silence.
There were a couple of times that she thought someone might be following her. She would hear a boot scrape over stone, or some random noise that she felt sure had come from a person. Her Kai, though, returned no sense of anyone, and the darkness pressed in on all sides. Part of her thought it was her mind playing tricks on her, but she couldn’t be sure.
There was nothing to do but keep running. After what seemed like a week, she saw a puddle of candlelight in the distance—her candle, she was sure of it! She ran for it, skidding around a corner until she saw the candle at the end of a long hallway.
Something, though, brought her up short.
A man was crouched on the ground with his back to her, examining something on the floor in the puddle of light. He was wearing one of those Sevenlander cloaks that Dormael and D’Jenn wore, and Bethany couldn’t see what he looked like. Her heart was beating so loud that she was afraid he could hear it, even as far away as he was.
Her footprints told a story in the dust, leading off into an adjacent tunnel, crisscrossing back and forth between the halls. The man was gazing at them, as if he was trying to decide which fork to take, and which tracks to follow. Bethany was so afraid that she could barely move, but she forced herself to take a step backwards, keeping her eyes on the man further down the hall. The man should have been her salvation, but something—perhaps her general mistrust of bigger people—caused her to creep back into the darkness.
Her foot made a scraping noise against the stone.
The man turned his face to her so quickly that she uttered a squeal of surprise. She felt another song in the magic, and before she could move, she was surrounded with bright, white light. It caused spots to dance across her vision, and it hurt her eyes. She froze, outlined by the magical light, too afraid to move.
He locked eyes with her, and for just a second, Bethany thought that maybe she was just being silly. Maybe he wasn’t chasing her, maybe he was just down here for another reason that had nothing to do with her. Still, she knew she wasn’t supposed to be running around in the dark all alone, and using her magic, too. What if he got her in trouble? The expression on his face was intense, and Bethany could see that his eyes were different colors—one brown, one blue. They both bored into her like daggers.
Bethany knew she should come forward and tell him who she was, and what she was doing down here, but something stopped her. She wasn’t sure what it was, but something about the man felt wrong. Maybe it was the way he was staring at her, like one of those hungry monsters in the old man’s stories. He took a step forward.
She shuffled backward.
“Child,” he said. “Come here.” His tone gave her a bad feeling, like there was a spider crawling over her skin. He took another step forward.
Bethany took another step back.
“Your father is looking for you,” he said. “I’m a friend of his—he sent me to find you, and bring you back. He’s quite worried about you, you know.”
He was lying. She would have known it even if she didn’t know that Dormael had gone into the city. Sometimes she could hear people lying, and his lie rang like a bell in her ears. She was so scared, but she forced herself to be brave, like Shawna, like Leyton.
Pirate-Queen of the Sea…
“Leave me alone,” she told him, her voice shaking under the weight of her fear. It felt good to say it, like the very words helped to bolster her courage. The man took another step toward her, and Bethany took another step away from him.
“Now, now,” the man chided, holding his hand out to her. “Just come along and I’ll take you back upstairs. We can go find your father together, alright? Bethany is your name, right? Don’t do anything silly, Bethany. We’ll go right upstairs and find your father.”
“You’re a liar!” She wanted to say more, but his answering scowl scared her into silence. She took another step back, this time in response to his frown. Her magic coiled like a snake around her.
“You come here, child. Now!” he said, and the last word hit her somehow, like a blanket being thrown over her face. Before she knew what she was doing, she was taking a step toward the man. Her mouth wouldn’t work, and she didn’t want to go toward him, but she took another step anyways. Her body was betraying her.
“Good…come here child, that’s it,” he said. His voice was like a rope dragging her down the hall, right toward him. Her Kai was singing to her in frantic tones, struggling against the man’s song, which wrapped around her mind tighter than a snake. Her feet took another step. She was breathing so hard and her head hurt so much. She started to get dizzy, and she was suddenly just a scared little girl again, helpless again.
Alone again.
There was no one to help her.
No!
She took another step forward. The man’s song was ringing in her ears.
NO!
Her feet kept moving, even though she fought them with every muscle in her body. The man was stepping toward her, his hand reaching out to take hers. She felt her song slipping away, being drowned out by his song.
No, no, no, NO!
Bethany screamed. She screamed with everything she could muster, pouring all of her fear into it, purifying the air around her with raw emotion. Her voice broke through the man’s Kai, the magic he was using against her, like a rock through a glass window.
Her magic was back, roaring through her like she’d never felt before, and it was just as angry and afraid as she was. Her screams lashed across the space that separated her from the stranger, slamming into him just as his voice had slammed into her, only stronger. Dust rose from the floor in a thin cloud as her scream hit him, and he slid backward across the intervening space as he struggled against her, shouting with surprise and disbelief.
His song tried to slide back into her head, but she screamed louder, pushing against him with every bit of fear in her body. His cloak flew backwards as if it was caught in a storm wind. He pushed harder against her, trying to force his magic against hers, throwing some sort of attack at her. Bethany’s song was too loud in her ears, and his magic slid from her like water.
Never again, never again, never again, never again!
The stones in the hallway around her cracked, sending more dust flying up from the ground, and the man’s feet were lifted free of the floor. He slammed into the walls—once, twice, three times—and then even harder against the floor. She felt his breath leave his chest in a sudden, painful expulsion, but she kept screaming louder.
Her magic was so angry.
She held him to the floor, afraid that he would get up and try to hurt her. His hand reached upward, struggling with his body and his Kai against her, but she was not going to let him up. He shouldn’t have tried to hurt her. He shouldn’t have tried to lie to her. He shouldn’t have
tried to use his magic on her.
NEVER AGAIN!
The candle flared to life, the fire spreading like water spilling across a table. It crept toward the man in slow increments, pushing against the edges of his magic. His eyes were wild with terror.
Bethany’s lungs pushed her voice out with all her might. Her throat hurt something awful, but the magic wanted more. It wanted to hurt everyone who had ever hurt her, and it wanted to start with the man on the floor. She closed her eyes against the fear, trying force herself to move, to run, to get away from the bad man screaming on the stone. His Kai fought her with desperation. She could feel him struggling against her, and she was surprised to realize that she was much, much stronger than he was.
He started to sob and make pitiful noises. Bethany could hear the spittle in his voice, could hear it start to break as he began to cry. Something about the sound made tears well up in her eyes, too, as if that one little noise had broken the floodgate that was holding them back. Her fire crept closer and closer to him, and she could feel him getting weaker.
“No!” he screamed, the sound terrifying her. “No! PLEASE!”
She turned and fled from him, running back down the hallway into the dark, her eyes blurry from the tears that ran down her face.
She heard his wild, frantic screams as the fire took him.
***
The first thing that D’Jenn saw as he rushed into the room was Dormael, crouched with fingers of unspent electricity flickering over his naked skin. The remains of a Greater Circle lay around him, broken in the front by something that had blown the sand outward. Upon the wall to his right was another Circle, though D’Jenn didn’t recognize any of the glyphs that were scrawled around it. It had been broken as well, and there was some sort of black substance crawling into the cracks of the stone as the magic inside of the Circle dissipated.
He froze as he saw who was rising from the ground across from him.
D’Jenn had never seen anything like this girl before him, this remnant of the girl he’d met. The way she’d been cut upon, weaving strange designs into her skin, was something alien and abhorrent. Her hair had somehow been leached of all its color, leaving it a stark, bone-white. She was a shadow of the Inera that he’d met all those years ago, but it was her. There was no mistaking it.
Her eyes met his, bloodshot and filled with terrible anger. She was wearing some sort of tattered dress, and a girdle around her midsection. It gave D’Jenn the impression of an old burial shroud, decaying from years left in the ground. There was a song ringing out from her that could only be her Kai, but it was interlaced with something else, some other power that felt greasy and black.
Inera snarled, startling him by lancing out with a torrent of fire. She sent it spiraling toward his face, hungry flames reaching for his skin. D’Jenn reacted with instinct, pulling the water from the sewage trench in the room, and pulling it up before him to block the flames. Steam burst from the point of contact, filling the room with its hissing vapor. D’Jenn backed away, keeping the burning steam away from his skin.
Gritting his teeth, D’Jenn split his concentration in two. He sent the other half of his magic whirling through the room like a wind that couldn’t be felt, picking up every piece of errant debris that was lying around. The sand, the dust, the pieces of the door, and anything light enough to be picked up by his magic was gathered into a whirling globe, blurring with the speed of its movement. He moved that toward Inera, engulfing her in the flying debris while still fending off the lance of fire she was throwing at him.
Inera had gotten better, or had received training from somewhere. The last time D’Jenn had seen her, she would have been incapable of fending off his attacks. Her magic had been a humble gift, and one that she had never used in violence. That was not so any longer. She held out a hand, and the whirlpool of flying detritus was pushed outward from her. It wavered as their magic warred against each other, but the globe was pushed steadily away as she bent her strength against him.
D’Jenn could see the strain on her face, though. Each wizard had different gifts, and each was better at different things. Dormael, for instance, could toss around enough power to cause an avalanche, break city walls, or burn stone to molten lava, and do it the hard way—but his concentration was a little on the weak side, and he could barely manage to do two or three things at once. D’Jenn, on the other hand, though a little weaker than Dormael in the raw power aspect, could divide his concentration multiple times, and manage more complex spells in different ways.
It looked to D’Jenn that Inera’s ability with magic was limited. She was barely managing to hold the spinning cloud at bay while maintaining her lance of fire, and she was growing weaker by the second. The only thing that worried D’Jenn was the other power she was tapped into, that greasy black feeling that permeated her Kai like oil poured over water. She closed her eyes, and D’Jenn could feel her trying to stabilize her power through weakening concentration. He pushed harder, moving his shield forward and moving toward her step by step. He wouldn’t have to do much to defeat her.
In his mind, she had already lost.
The steam hissed and billowed around him. He redoubled his efforts, pouring more magic into the whirling cloud, pushing harder against Inera’s will. Her fire wavered, but D’Jenn saw her school her expression into something focused, and the cloud moved outward again. He took another step forward, dividing his mind into yet another partition, and began to leach the heat away from her fire.
The lance of flame began to waver at the edges, sputtering as the water started to win the struggle. The fire disappeared, and D’Jenn pushed his barrier of water into the whirling cloud, combining the two spells with all the power left in that part of his concentration. His mind slid back into one focused purpose with ease, and he pushed the whirlwind of sewage and debris at Inera with all the strength he could muster. Such a thing should have ripped her apart.
Since she’d abandoned her attack, however, Inera was able to concentrate on keeping the detritus away from her body, and her shield stabilized around her. Once again, the two of them were locked in a struggle of pure magical strength, and were almost evenly matched. D’Jenn was a bit stronger than Inera, and he was able to gain a little ground, but her defense was simpler than his attack, and he had to expend more effort than she did. She grimaced at him, and he felt her bend more of her will into the spell. His cloud thinned and widened, pushed away from her body. D’Jenn returned her stare and poured his magic into the spell, but could gain no more ground against her.
She snarled a word in a guttural language, and tossed her hand upwards.
Blood sprayed up from her palm, whirling into the cloud of water and debris. A black smoke-like substance congealed into the cloud, whirling into his spell and obscuring D’Jenn’s view of her. He felt the spell begin to come apart, as if it were being eaten from the inside, corroded by that same greasy power he’d felt her using before. D’Jenn cursed and abandoned his attack, and the debris evaporated into black smoke.
The cloud roiled up from Inera, gathering above her like an angry thunderhead. She was smiling now, holding her bleeding hand above her head, the smoke leaking from her wound as if her own blood were the source of the dark, misty substance. D’Jenn tensed himself for another attack, but he’d never seen this before, and wasn’t sure what to expect.
She snarled again, and multiple tentacles whipped out from the cloud, flying at D’Jenn faster than he would have thought possible. He fended them off with flashes of his magic, but every time he forced one of them aside, another whipped at him from a different direction. He danced over the floor, slick with blood and sewage, trying to gain an advantage by finding a more defensible position. The cloud floated after him, chasing him around the room.
Inera cackled, and disappeared through the doorway. D’Jenn cursed in frustration, but he was pinned down by the reaching tentacles. Inera’s laughter echoed through the tunnel beyond.
“Dormael!” he
shouted.
Dormael’s magic rang out, slicing into the cloud as D’Jenn fended off the tentacles. The strange mass of oily darkness fought them, but it was no match for both of them. Even as D’Jenn sliced the tentacles to pieces, Dormael brought his magic to bear against the cloud itself. With a combined effort, the two of the crushed the thing out of existence. The destruction of the spell left an odd shriek sounding through the ether, like the echo of a dissonant chord.
In the wake of the fight, all was quiet. D’Jenn could hear his own labored breathing in his ears, his heart beating against his ribs. Dormael stood beside him, his visage covered in blood.
All three of the guards were dead. Two of them had been killed and lay on the ground, pools of blood spreading out beneath them. The third hung four hands off the floor, pinned to the wall by swords driven through his shoulders. His innards were spilled onto the floor, grayish, slimy ropes that cascaded from a jagged rent in the man’s stomach. There were multiple stab wounds in him, but some of them appeared to have been made from the inside, rather than from outside—as if something had crawled into the man’s gut and then back out again from another place. Atop the pile of gore sat a single jagged knife.
D’Jenn had to bite back the bile that had risen to his throat at the sight. Allen and Dormael both were ignoring the body. Dormael turned and spat blood to the side, but D’Jenn didn’t know if it was from a wound, or if it had simply run into his mouth. The man was covered in it.
“Do you see my clothes anywhere?” Dormael asked, looking around the gore-riddled room.
Allen snapped his fingers and stepped into the antechamber. In a few moments, he returned with a pile of clothing. He nodded to his brother as he handed them over.
“Saw them in the corner, before we came in here,” Allen said. “Are you alright, brother? You look like the Six Hells came over and had you for dinner.” He adopted a jocular posture, but D’Jenn could hear the relief in his voice.
The Seven Signs: Three Book Collection Page 70