by Jordan Rivet
Vine was shouting something at her, but Dara couldn’t respond. On the island below her, Siv pulled his horse up sharply, halting inches from the barrier that still hadn’t opened for him. The men following him didn’t stop as quickly. Horses skidded and screamed. Reins tangled, and men fell to the mud, their shouts lost in the chaos.
Dara gripped the battlements, trying to keep her body in one piece. It felt as if every ounce of her flesh were being rearranged. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. She was stronger than this. Why couldn’t she focus?
She lost sight of Siv in the tumult. Fingers of silver and white began to shoot out from the Watermight wall, seizing men and horses, wrapping nets around their faces. Some were pulled into the seething barrier, where they struggled and drowned. Others fell, scrabbling at the silver nets pulling tighter around their faces. This was a disaster. Dara had to stop it!
But still the Fire and Watermight dueled within her, occasionally bursting out in flashes of force. A chunk broke loose from the wall as her power careened into it. The struggle ruled her body now. Pain lanced through her fingers as she dug them into the stone. Silver tears leaked from her eyes.
Suddenly, a hand closed around her arm. She saw a flash of green, a curtain of dark hair.
“Dara! Pull yourself together!” Vine peeled Dara away from the wall and slapped her across the face.
“I . . . can’t—”
“It’s too late for excuses,” Vine said. “We have to go right now.”
Vine dragged her away from the battlements and down the steps to the courtyard. Latch and Vex had already mounted. Extra horses waited for the two women. Dara barely registered the details. Her bones had begun to burn, and ice filled her veins. That’s not good.
“I—”
“No time to argue, Dara,” Vine said, shoving her toward a tall bay mare. Dara stumbled, the paving stones cutting into her bare feet, and the horse tossed its head, eyes rolling wildly. “They need you out there.”
Dara hauled herself into the saddle. The power was still spinning within her, and she nearly threw up as she pulled herself upright. She couldn’t recapture the tenuous control she had worked so hard to learn. She floundered, lost within the torrent of power. The horse danced beneath her. She wondered if it could tell how near she was to combusting.
Dara wasn’t a particularly good rider in the best circumstances, but her mare knew to follow the others out of the gates. Vex led the way, and Vine and Latch rode on either side of Dara to keep her in the saddle. Both still seemed to think Dara could help them fight through the Watermight. They must not know how close she was to losing her grasp on the powers entirely. Vex’s red coat served as an anchor, the only way she could tell forward from back.
Mud squelched beneath their horses’ hooves as they galloped across the little island—which was smaller than it had been a few minutes ago. The chaos she’d seen from above was even worse at ground level. Captain Lian’s soldiers had scattered when the opening she promised never appeared. Riderless horses flailed across the island. Men struggled inside the shimmering Watermight wall, trying to break free from cords of silver that had pulled them in. Others floated like dead fish in a glass goblet. They should never have left the tower, not when Dara couldn’t save them.
And where was Siv? She had last seen him on horseback at the head of the company, following her fiery battering ram. She had planned to send a stronger blast of the combined powers after that gold bar, but she’d long since lost control of even that. Fire sizzled on the ground, the puddles shrinking rapidly as the Watermight ate away at it.
Dara spotted a shock of dark hair, but it was Captain Lian, not Siv. He had regained mastery of his horse, and he was attempting to rally his men for a retreat. He must see that they were doomed. Dara had failed them.
“Dara!” Vine screamed. “You have to do something!”
Dara tried to draw in some of the Fire that had fallen to the muddy ground. Slowly, too slowly, it came to her. Latch shot more Watermight at her as the Fire seeped back into her veins. She spit out the silvery substance at once, coating her horse’s steaming flanks in discarded magic. Couldn’t he see this wasn’t working? Getting more power into her system wasn’t going to help.
She looked back, her breathing ragged. The tower gate was blurred and fuzzy. At first she thought her vision was impeded—until she realized the wave of Watermight had curled all the way over their heads. The power was descending behind them, cutting off any hope of retreat. They were being swallowed up in a vicious, slow-moving mouth of water.
Desperation flooded her. She tried to harness the feeling to help her Wield, but control remained elusive. For some reason, she found herself remembering duels she had lost, times when the focus she needed to win had skittered just beyond reach. Times she had failed.
The wave of power descended.
You can’t lose. Not now.
Then Dara’s hand closed around the hilt of her Savven blade. The warmth in the steel whispered to her, urging her to seize the Fire within.
A voice rose nearby.
“Here! This way!” Siv had disentangled himself from the tumult at last, somehow still on horseback. He stood up in his stirrups, waving a sword overhead as if to challenge the silvery maw closing over him. “Rally for Pendark! For the continent! Rally for your burning lives!”
Captain Lian was the first to join him. He was covered in mud from head to toe, but he lifted his fist and repeated the cry. “Rally! Rally against the water-loving bastard who killed our king!”
Soon, the others followed, taking up the call. “Rally for Pendark! Rally!”
One by one, the men found their feet, picked up their weapons, seized their reins. They rode toward Siv, a sharp black beacon against the silver-white wall of power.
“That’s it, men. You’ve taken enough terrerack bullshit from Waterworkers,” Siv shouted. “We’re going to fight our way through this thing. Rally!”
Dara felt Siv’s pull. He had no way to push through the Watermight, but he was rallying the men anyway, pulling them toward him, forging them into a company once more. They formed up around him, becoming a cohesive unit. The horses tossed their heads nervously, but the men raised their heads high as they rallied to Siv. He made it look as if they had a fighting chance.
Dara was the only one who could give them that chance. She tightened her grip on the Savven, trusting the bay mare to stay with her friends, and focused on the heat. She had to get hold of the power she knew best, like returning to the simplest dueling fundamentals. A few drops of Fire responded to her command, but it still wasn’t enough.
Suddenly, Latch was at her side again, a trembling ball of Watermight hovering over his saddle. “Now or never,” he said.
“Give it to me.”
The Watermight floated toward her mouth. At the same time, Dara snatched up the last of the Fire pooling on the ground. Her skin felt as if it were boiling, and her bones felt as fragile as glass, but she yanked the powers into her anyway. Siv met her eyes over the heads of the men gathering around him. For an instant, she saw the desperation he was hiding from the others. She couldn’t let him down. She pointed at the Watermight barrier once more.
Siv took off at once, uttering a wordless cry, and the men followed. They charged straight at the spot Dara had indicated. Still barely in control, she forced the two powers to braid together at last and hurled everything she had at the barrier.
The fist of combined Fire and Watermight punched deep into the silver-white wall with incredible force. The wall rippled as if a sinkhole had opened on the other side, and a tunnel expanded straight through the center. Siv charged into it with a wild shout. The soldiers on horseback followed close on his heels, hollering like madmen as they rode through the wall.
All too soon, the tunnel began to contract. One after another, the men charged through, but they weren’t fast enough. Dara couldn’t hold it for long. She needed more power.
She was vaguely awar
e of Latch beside her, knocking away silvery tendrils with his own power. A hundred Watermight vipers tried to snatch them from their saddles, and it was all Latch could do to fend off the attacks. He was too busy to send any more power, Watermight or otherwise, to Dara.
She could no longer see Siv. He had been the first through the breach. Had he made it out the other side yet?
She concentrated harder, managing to draw some Watermight toward her and suck it into her body despite the pain it caused, but with only one of the substances, she was just another Worker. She needed more Fire.
Dara and the others rode toward the shrinking tunnel on the heels of the last of Lian’s men. They weren’t going to make it! Behind them, screams rose from those already overcome. Dara felt as though the cries were burning into her skull. Why did she think she’d be able to save them?
Then a flash of red appeared at her side, and Vex Rollendar’s horse reared up beside her. Dara shied away from him, wondering if he had decided to betray them now that they were about to lose.
But instead of knocking her from her horse, Vex held out a hand.
In his gloved fist was a single Everlight.
Dara snatched the power from it. There was no time to thank him, no time to think. She whirled the power through her body, coating it with icy Watermight, and spun it out of the palms of her hands.
The crude Work hit the tunnel opening. It spun around and around, pushing back the Watermight like a flame held to parchment. As the Watermight curled away, the last of the riders plunged into it. Vine and Latch galloped through side by side, and Dara and Vex took up the rear.
The tunnel was longer than she expected. Grotesque forms appeared in the walls, drowned men that Khrillin had already pulled inside. A horse was partway into the wall, silvery tendrils wrapped around his powerful chest. Latch thrust out a fist, and the tendrils turned to ice and shattered. The horse burst from the barrier, a gasping rider still clinging to his back.
The way ahead was closing rapidly. Tendrils of silver snaked toward Latch again, but he held them off, using every ounce of power he possessed to push back Khrillin’s Watermight snares.
Dara clung to her saddle, trying to keep her Fire and Watermight spiral moving for as long as possible. How far away was Khrillin from their current position? Did he know how close he was to swallowing them up?
Vine and Latch burst through the opening ahead, free of the tunnel at last. The Fire in Dara’s spiral was burning out. Her power was spent. She and Vex weren’t going to make it. The Watermight closed in on them, the gap narrowing faster than ever.
Desperately, Dara drew her Savven. It was a Fire Weapon with a spark in the blade, even though it couldn’t be withdrawn like the Fire in a simple Everlight or Firebulb. Dara waved the sword overhead, slicing into the Watermight.
The power peeled back like cut flesh. Dara leaned forward over her saddle, thrusting the blade forward and stabbing at the walls of the Watermight tunnel. The barrier shied away from it—not by much, but it was enough.
Dara and her horse shot through the opening, Vex following closely on her heels. No sooner had they cleared the gap than the Watermight wall snapped shut behind them.
4.
Escape
SIV emerged from the tunnel onto a narrow strip of swampy land. A canal blocked their escape route, the bridge across it now a ruin of floating splinters. They were trapped.
Siv wheeled to face the seething silver wall, waving his sword overhead and shouting his rallying cry as the men rushed out of the gap. He counted the survivors, swallowing a curse when the numbers came up short.
They had been stuck between the tower and the Watermight wall for far too long. Dara was supposed to make an opening, but she hadn’t done it soon enough. She’d managed in the end—but barely. Captain Lian had gathered sixty fighting men back in the courtyard. Only thirty-six made it through, including Rid and Lian.
Siv tightened his grip on the reins, hoping some of the others had survived. And where were Dara and their friends? They should be through by now.
As the thirty-sixth soldier exited the tunnel, Siv took stock of their situation on the narrow strip. The canal wasn’t too deep, but the horses balked at the edge. He didn’t blame them after all that water just tried to kill them. Still, they needed to cross before Khrillin realized where they were and sent more tendrils of Watermight to snatch them up. Where were his Wielder friends when he needed them?
As if on cue, Latch burst through the shrinking hole in the barrier, wild-eyed from the fight. Vine followed closely on his heels, looking as graceful as ever as her horse pranced to safety.
“I need a boat, Latch!” Siv called. “And calm those horses, men!” There were far too many jammed onto this narrow bank, but the animals still refused to enter the water. “We’ll be on our way in a minute.”
Latch pushed through them to summon a vessel at the water’s edge while Siv turned expectantly back to the Watermight wall. The gap was almost gone. Fear thudded into him as if it were an arrow—the first coherent feeling he’d had during the mad rush of the past few minutes. The wall couldn’t close. Not yet.
“Vine!” he said, suddenly panicked. “Where is—?”
Then a black aura shimmered on the surface of the wall, and Dara charged out of it, wielding her Savven blade like a warrior princess from a story. Vex rode out after her, and the Watermight wall closed right on his horse’s tail. They skidded to a halt, splattering mud on the nearest soldiers.
“It’s about time,” Siv said.
Dara bared her teeth at him in what might have been a grin, but her eyes looked desperate, haunted. Siv winced. He’d worry about that later.
A large, flat cargo barge sped up to the narrow bank, spraying them with murky canal water. Silver-white foam bubbled beneath the hull. Latch clambered in, taking the helm and siphoning more power from the wall to spirit them away.
“All aboard!” Siv hollered.
The barge shuddered as the soldiers forced their horses to board. It wasn’t big enough to hold all forty of them safely, but if Latch could propel the boat with his power, he could probably keep it afloat too.
And he’d have to do it fast because a company of Khrillin’s Waterworker thugs was speeding toward them in another boat.
“Let’s go, people,” Siv said. “Who knows the quickest way out of the city?” He spotted another boat charging after the first one, both traveling unnaturally fast. “On land, if you please.”
“I’ll get us out of here,” Captain Lian said. He turned to a soldier on a mangy dappled stallion. “Detsin, we lost Brill. You’re my new second. Keep everyone calm, and don’t distract me.”
He rushed over to Latch to show him the way. They powered the boat across the canal and up a smaller channel. The water churned beneath them, more silver than green now. The other boats were gaining on them. Khrillin didn’t intend to let his prize go easily.
Siv looked back at the Watermight barrier swallowing the base of the King’s Tower. He hated to think of all the innocent people they’d left behind. Maybe they could still help before they fled. He dismounted and pushed through the men to where Dara clung to her horse in the stern of the barge.
“Good work back there,” Siv said. “While you’re at it, can you do something to . . .”
Siv trailed off as he took in Dara’s state. She was holding tight to her Savven blade and shuddering violently. She had no visible injuries, but she barely looked conscious. Siv took her hand, and she stared down at him, her eyes coated in a silver-white film.
“Hey,” he said. “Dara, can you hear me?”
He shook her hand gently, and she nearly toppled out of the saddle. He grabbed her thigh to steady her, noticing she still had bare feet. Her body was both icy and burning up beneath his hands.
“Dara,” he said again, trying to massage some life back into her rigid flesh. “Come back to me.”
She blinked, and frost appeared on her eyelashes. Where were those fierce
Dara eyes he knew? Had he finally asked too much of her? Fighting that much power must have taken a lot out of her, but she had gotten them through. Mostly.
He glanced at the boats pursuing them up the channel. They looked farther away than before. Latch had pulled ahead, but they weren’t safe yet.
When he looked back at Dara, her eyes had cleared at last. She squeezed his hand, her grip weaker than usual.
“Are you okay?”
“Did everyone make it?” she asked.
Siv’s chest tightened painfully. “Enough.”
Dara moved as if she wanted to dismount.
“Better not,” Siv said. “We’re disembarking soon. You look like you might not make it back on your horse if you get off now.”
“Agreed.” Dara gave him a fragile smile, then she turned and vomited a rush of silvery Watermight over the back of the boat.
Siv held her in place as she got the power out of her system. What she did with the Watermight and Fire wasn’t natural, and this was an unpleasant side effect. But Dara was strong enough to get through anything the magic threw at her.
The barge lurched as it bumped into a bank. Captain Lian whooped and led the first of the soldiers off the vessel. Siv made sure Dara had a firm grip on her saddle once more before turning to the nearest man. It was Vex Rollendar.
“Make sure she doesn’t fall off,” Siv said.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Vex said smoothly. Siv met his eyes for a split second, wondering if he could trust the man. Vex had held his cards close to the chest over the past week, and Siv still didn’t know whether to believe his change of heart was sincere. He had no choice now. Siv left Dara in Vex’s care and ran back across the barge to vault onto his own horse.
Khrillin’s Waterworker thugs reached the bank seconds after the last of Siv’s company disembarked. But they were all on foot. Even with their power, they couldn’t outrun terrified horses on dry ground. They quickly fell behind.