Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Margo Bond Collins

  “We’re getting close,” Tere said. “I think it’s wise that we only travel during the day.”

  “Isn’t that thinking backward?” Aila asked him. “Shouldn’t we travel at night so we won’t be seen and hide during the day? In this massive plain, we will be visible for miles from one of the higher hills.”

  “Normally, that would be the way of it, yes,” Tere said. “But these creatures are of the darkness. They see better at night than they do in the daylight. They also seem to rest in the day and are more active at night. Does that seem right, Fahtin? You have spent more time in close proximity to them than the rest of us.”

  “Yes,” she said. She shivered visibly. “We did travel during the daytime, but their power seemed diminished, and they didn’t seem to want to do it. I got the sense from many of them that they wanted to find a dark hole somewhere and wait out the light. It…irritated them, it seemed.

  “As for resting, though, they don’t seem to need it. I have never seen one of them sleep. But they do slow down in the daylight.”

  “We will travel in the daylight, then,” Aeden said, dropping his pack and preparing to set up camp.

  An hour into their travels the next morning, the broken spire of the fortress at Broken Reach appeared on the horizon.

  Chapter 55

  Khrazhti considered her general. Slizhk was the most cautious of the three she had brought with her from Aruzhelim. She had to tilt her head up to look him in the face, even though he normally slouched as if ready to spring…or strike. His cold, reptilian eyes met hers, and the slits in his smooth face widened as he took in a breath. As was his custom, he wore only a cloth covering his loins. The fine black scales that covered his body were protection enough from the elements.

  “The others are still out looking for the Gneisprumay?” she asked.

  “Yesss,” he hissed. “We have had no word from the others.”

  “I see.”

  “The assassins you sent, Koixus and Maenat, they are very skilled. They will find him and destroy him. The others are unnecessary.”

  “Perhaps,” Khrazhti said, “but this foe has been slippery, and I do not want to take chances. If Koixus and Maenat do not find them, the others will. He must be found and eliminated. How many troops are still in the fortress?”

  “Nine hundred thirty-six,” her general said without hesitation, “not including myself. I do not like having so few. What if one of these human armies attacks us?”

  “There is little chance of that,” Khrazhti said. “This is an isolated area where the humans do not go. They seem to be afraid of it. Besides, no army they could bring to field could defeat almost a thousand of the animaru. These creatures are weak.”

  “Of course, you are right,” Slizhk said. “I am accustomed to the warfare back on Aruzhelim. At times I forget how fragile, and fleeting, these humans are. Most of them, in any case.”

  “Yes. We are finished, General. Inform me immediately if any of the others return. I would have news of how our search is progressing.”

  “Yesss, High Priestess.” The general snapped his slender arm into a salute, hand going to his chest. He made the sinuous motion strangely elegant.

  Khrazhti looked out over the landscape, as she so often did, and wondered when she could go back home. She had an important mission to accomplish for her god, but once that was finished, she wanted to return to Aruzhelim. This land of light and exotic creatures was not to her taste.

  Scanning the jagged hills, the rocks, and the strange plants of this place, she wondered where the Gneisprumay was. Had her assassins killed him already? Had he evaded them and been caught by the forces commanded by her other generals, Treclus and Daosa? Once he was eliminated, her plans could go forward, but until then, she would have to bide her time. So strange, this world. She could hardly wait for it to be changed to be like Aruzhelim. All it would take was the death of the One.

  The tower resting on a high hill, poking into the sky in defiance of gravity, grew larger as the party continued on. There were some smaller buildings on surrounding hills, and some sort of fortification and complex of buildings at the foot of the spire, but they lacked detail at this distance and seemed insignificant when compared to the high pinnacle.

  If anything, the terrain was even rockier, seeming devoid of soil at all. Aeden wondered if it had always been like this, or if it had once had trees and fields. He knew the land changed through the centuries, but it was hard to imagine the landscape he saw as anything other than solid stone, inhospitable to life. A fitting place for animaru, who had no life in them.

  “That’s Broken Reach, then?” Aeden asked Tere.

  “Yes. It’s ancient, nearly a thousand years old. It has been abandoned for two hundred years. Some have tried to settle there, take advantage of buildings that still stand, but it never lasts long. Even bandits don’t find it useful. Why have a headquarters several days away from the closest road where you can ply your banditry? There is not enough food or water, and there are much easier places to set up camp. If it wasn’t for us knowing how to extract water from the plants, we might not have even made it here alive.”

  “It sounds like the perfect place for them,” Fahtin said.

  “Aye,” Aeden agreed.

  “If we push the pace,” Tere said, “we can be at the spire by tomorrow. We can find a place to hide and spend the night, and then try to infiltrate it the next morning, when it’s light out.”

  Aeden nodded and pushed onward. One more day. What would they find then? He left the question unanswered, not wanting to hazard a guess.

  As Tere had said, they reached the area within the hills with the outlying buildings by late afternoon. Watch towers with small barracks that could hold a few dozen troops grew up from the tops of the smaller hills in a rough circle around the main fortress. There were what looked like mirrors on the top of each of the towers, easily visible from the ground level.

  Tere pointed at one of the towers, on the closest hill. “When the fortress was occupied, these would hold watchmen. They would signal to the other towers and to the main fortress if anyone approached. In the daylight, they would reflect the sun with the mirrors. At night, they would reflect the fires they kept burning just underneath the reflectors.”

  Raki and Aila went up one of the hills to investigate the buildings while the rest of them waited in the shadow of the hill. The two could virtually disappear when they wanted to, Raki with his natural ability and Aila from long practice. They returned shaking their heads.

  “Nothing up there,” Aila said. “The structures are surprisingly sound, though. If some of these others are also empty, they would make a good place for us to spend the night.”

  They continued into the afternoon, checking each of the watchtowers in their path, finding all of them empty. When they reached the closest hill to the fortress and found it empty also, the entire party climbed the hill—on the side opposite the spire in case someone watched—and settled into one of the buildings to pass the night.

  Aeden looked down onto the fortress from a window in one of the watchtowers. The spire looked even more impressive at this distance, rising two hundred feet in the air. Surrounding it were buildings, a complex of them, and around those were a wall that must have been formidable when it was whole. Now, it had great rents in it, large enough to drive a wagon through. Still, the fortress as a whole was impressive, more impressive than many of the other fortifications Aeden had seen on his travels with the Gypta.

  Darkness fell and the vast landscape gradually sank into its inky embrace. The moon was only a sliver, and Aeden only saw faintly by its light and that of the stars. He hadn’t really expected the animaru to light lamps, but the almost complete darkness shocked him as he looked toward where he knew the main fortress stood.

  Within an hour of nightfall, harsh noises started to emanate from behind the shattered walls of the fortress.Aeden listened carefully from his window in the watchtower and realized they were voice
s. One in every twenty or more words seemed to be similar to ones he knew, but no more than that.

  “Alaqotim,” Raki said at Aeden’s shoulder. The Croagh almost jumped. Raki had become very good at sneaking around.

  “What?”

  “Some of the words, ones I can just barely make out, sound like Alaqotim, but different, too. Nani taught me some of the language of power along with Dantogyptain. She always wanted me to be a scholar.”

  Aeden closed his eyes and strained his ears. He did recognize a few words, ones he had learned to cast his clan magic. He didn’t know what most of them meant, but he could hear them faintly when one voice or another became louder than those around it.

  “I think you’re right, Raki,” he said. “I assumed their chattering was like what animals do, not a real language. I should have figured they had some intelligence from what we’ve seen, especially from those two leaders. Do you think you could understand them enough for it to be to our advantage?”

  “Maybe,” the boy said. “I’m not very good with it, but I’ll do my best. I wish I had paid more attention to my lessons. Nani would never let me hear the end of it if I told her that.” He made a nervous chuckle.

  The two came away from the window and stepped into the interior room where the others were gathered. It wasn’t very cold this time of year, barely into summer, for which Aeden was thankful. They could not build a fire because even though the light could be hidden, the smell of smoke could not. So they sat there in the dark, eating their dinner cold, silent for the most part.

  When Aeden volunteered what he and Raki had learned about the animaru language, Tere Chizzit nodded.

  “Yes. Thinking back, I can recall a few words here and there I understood. I don’t think it is Alaqotim, but probably closely related. The other times we were near the creatures, I was too preoccupied with battle to listen. I know a bit of the old language. I’ll keep my ears open for anything important as we go. Good job, Raki. That is a valuable bit of information.”

  Raki blushed and studied his boots, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Aeden patted his shoulder. It was a good discovery. Hopefully it would give them an edge.

  Early the next morning, just after dawn, the party gathered their weapons. They left their packs and supplies in the guard post building. If they survived the battle to come, they would return for them. If not, they would have no need of any of it.

  Aeden reached over and impulsively pulled Fahtin into a hug. “Be safe, okay.”

  “You too,” she said, holding him for several seconds before letting go.

  They each hugged Raki, too. The three of them had been together since the beginning. Aeden worried about them, but with all they had been through, he knew they were competent combatants.

  “What, no hug for me?” Aila said, noticing the exchange. Raki lunged toward her with such speed, Aeden almost drew his swords. The small woman hugged Raki, then Fahtin, and looked at Aeden, arms wide. He sighed, put his arms around her, and squeezed.

  “You be safe, too, Aila,” he said. “I know you can take care of yourself. Make sure you do.”

  “Yes sir,” she said, reaching around and slapping his backside and then releasing him. Aeden sighed again. Better not to react.

  For Tere and Urun, Aeden had a firm handshake and his thanks for coming with him.

  “Are we ready, then?” he asked his friends. They all nodded. “Then let’s end this thing. For my clan, for my adopted family, for all those these dark creatures have killed or displaced. Let’s show them this is our world, and they are not entitled to it.”

  With a last look at their packs lying on the floor of the room, they left the watchtower and headed toward the main fortress.

  Chapter 56

  The outer walls of the fortress were crumbled in places, but Aeden could imagine them when they were whole. They were at least thirty feet high and ten feet thick. He marveled at them as they passed through a breach in the wall. How must this place have been when it was whole and in use? The towers on each junction of the wall provided good visibility and coverage to fire missiles at any approaching enemies. He couldn’t help but to glance up at those towers, wondering if an alarm would be sounded.

  None was.

  Where were all the animaru? Aeden knew they were here. Somewhere. He had heard them the night before. How many were there?

  “Do you think maybe they’re just letting us enter before they bottle us up in an ambush and surround us?” Urun said.

  “Just full of confidence and positive thoughts, you are,” Tere Chizzit said to the priest.

  “Sorry. It just seems too easy. If we walk right up to the main fortress tower and find none of the creatures here, what then?”

  “There are some here,” Aeden said. “We heard them last night. Keep your eyes open for traps.”

  Urun didn’t answer, but kept walking with the rest of them, head swiveling.

  The buildings were laid out in a relatively simple design. Inside the walls and towers, a courtyard separated them from squat, square buildings. These were attached to each other either by a shared wall or short stone tunnels. The outer buildings led into interior halls and rooms, the center of which was the stairs to the upper floors of the spire itself.

  Tere Chizzit had told them that it was a common design for fortresses built more than a thousand years ago. All they had to do was enter the outer buildings and work their way to where the pinnacle’s stairs were in the middle. Easy enough.

  They saw their first group of animaru just as they were about to enter the buildings on the outer ring. It was a group of no more than twenty, and they were moving around the building when they caught sight of the humans. Aeden imbued the weapons with magic before all of the creatures had even turned toward them.

  Four of them went down immediately with Tere’s arrows in their eyes. The last one had not even fallen yet when Aeden reached the group, slashing with both swords and felling another four. It seemed only seconds after they had spotted the black creatures until they were all lying on the ground, some with projectiles in vital areas, some missing important parts, like their heads.

  “Did any of them get away?” Aeden asked Tere.

  “No. A couple tried to run for it, but I got them.”

  “Good, then we still have surprise on our side.”

  The sound of pounding feet crashed and echoed in the courtyard like a thunderstorm.

  “Yeah, well, maybe not,” Aila said as she spun her weapons back into her hands and turned toward another group of animaru coming around the edges of the building. This one was much larger than the first, maybe three or four times larger.

  With a dozen seconds still until the leading creatures reached him, Aeden began the slow dance to cast his magic.

  “You’re probably going to want to stand back a bit,” he said to the others. “I’m going to use Dawn’s Warning.”

  They did as he asked, recognizing it as the spell he had used in the battle against the hundreds of animaru barely more than a week before. The enemies approaching didn’t seem to care one way or another. They came straight for him as if sensing who—or what—he was. He moved his feet precisely, hands exactly as he had choreographed. All the while, he spoke the words of power, punctuating each with emphatic gestures. As he came to the end of the casting, he slowed down, waiting for as many of the creatures to surround him as possible.

  It was difficult to move slowly enough to postpone the completion of the spell while still evading or striking at his enemies. He would have to practice inserting motions between the gestures of the casting. His friends were no help in this, none but Tere Chizzit, who could shoot some of the creatures from afar. The others stayed back as he had asked them to do.

  Finally, the bulk of the swarm surrounded Aeden. He finished off the spell, pronouncing the final word, “Ekosin!”

  Light exploded around him, from him. As before, it utterly destroyed those animaru closest to him. Those further away from him were affected
less, but still could not withstand the force of the magic.

  When the light faded and Aeden looked around him, only a handful of the creatures remained. They rushed him mindlessly, and his friends moved in to help. He hadn’t taken more than a handful of breaths before their black bodies littered the courtyard in front of him. He let out a breath and felt as if some of his energy left him with it.

  Fahtin was there at his side, her hand on his shoulder. “Does it take a lot out of you, casting powerful spells like that?” she said as she looked into his eyes. A searching look, as if she was trying to see something wrong.

  “A bit. It makes me a little tired, but not as much as if I killed them all with my swords one or two at a time.” He smiled and she grinned at him in return.

  “Right,” Tere said as he replaced the undamaged arrows he had retrieved from the bodies in his quiver. “We better get moving. No telling how many more there are.” Raki handed Fahtin three of the knives she had thrown while stowing his own projectiles in their respective sheaths. Urun and Aila waited near the doorway they had been aiming for when the first creatures attacked.

  “It would be better to be inside when we meet the next group,” Urun said. “Their numbers won’t count as much then.”

  The heavy wooden door was still serviceable, obviously not the original. It was made of heavy boards banded with iron and swung easily on its hinges at Aeden’s push. Through the portal was a fair-sized room, twenty feet or so long and thirty wide. There were rough wood tables, arranged as if the chamber had been some kind of reception area. No living thing was present.

  Aeden scanned the walls, tapestries crumbling on them, discolored parts of the wall indicating where others had hung. Even the tables and straight-backed wooden chairs in the room looked suspect. He kicked at a stool in front of one of the tables, and it cracked as it turned over.

  “Which way?” he asked Tere. The tracker looked up sharply, having been studying the scene on one of the few still-comprehensible tapestries.