Cruickshank watched them, his eyes burning a hole in the back of Natalia’s head. She shifted to keep him in her periphery.
‘Am I thinking right then? If a Myriad portal tracks Myriad creatures, a black-magic portal might track anything from the Murk that passes through it? We might be able to follow Cole?’
Nessie nodded, but something still didn’t make sense.
‘But we still can’t open a black-magic portal, even if it’s here.’
Nessie was silent, stepping briskly away from the wall and toward Cruickshank. ‘Be ready to move, Cruickshank, double time. Natalia goes through first. Hold your fire until she gives the command. We do not engage until engaged. The wytches are not to be harmed unless absolutely necessary.’
Cruickshank stared past them, giving no indication he had heard anything. Nessie moved into Cruickshank’s eyeline. ‘If you or your men open fire before we are engaged, Natalia and I will mete out field justice, do you understand?’
Cruickshank spread his free hand in mock honesty. ‘Looking forward to having your back, Commander. And the lady’s. I’ll be all over your back, princess.’
She turned from him. ‘How are we going to do this, Commander?’ She could ignore Cruickshank’s juvenile routine for now; there was something pathetic about him that came out in swagger and goading.
Nessie looked around the street. ‘Cruickshank, make space. I’ll have to cut us a crossing.’ Cruickshank fell back, a look of loathing on his face.
Nessie glanced around, checking they were alone. ‘I believe it is no accident that when you cut your own portal to escape the Mother, you came out at the same place the wytches then crossed over to, in pursuit of you. I think the black-magic portal is here. Portals need to be joined in twin, Natalia. If you had tried to make a portal entrance and exit, it is very likely you would have failed. But since the black-magic portal on this side existed already, when you made your exit from the wytches’ fortress, I believe your portal must have twinned with this one, temporarily.’
‘Commander, that goes against everything I know, all the Council’s teachings. Why am I only hearing of this now?’ There was an uncomfortable implication in that logic. A truth that couldn’t be. Black magic and Myriad magic were wholly separate, she knew it in her heart.
Nessie scowled. ‘Call it an educated guess, apprentice, and do not push for knowledge of the forbidden. Consider all I have done for you to be for your benefit, and you will not be wrong.’
She winced. For Nessie, that was the equivalent of a tongue-lashing. She was a fool; who was she to call him into question, and what choice did they have anyway? ‘Well, your educated guess is as good as we’ve got.’
Nessie nodded. ‘Indeed.’
She stood back, trying not to think about the possible results of a broken portal connection, or that Nessie was deliberately creating a broken one. Or that she may have unwittingly created one already. She chewed her lip. Nessie’s magic tingled along her skin. The temperature dropped, a seaborne wind gusting in around them. Nessie’s harsh invocation of his key to the Old Woman of Winter’s power caused the men to turn and stare at him. There was a slow-burning, calculated hate in their eyes. Cruickshank spat on the ground.
A freezing cold rocked Natalia back a step, as Nessie drew from deeper within the realm of winter. The power rolled from him in waves. Natalia shivered uncontrollably but stood her ground. Cruickshank backed off quickly, hand coming to his concealed gun. There was fear in the line of Cruickshank’s stance. That’s right, scumbag; the filthy mages could end you with a thought. Nessie’s voice boomed, echoing in a maelstrom of furious elemental power which he drew into himself. Within seconds, the air shone and split like fractured ice, and a moment later, a hole spun silently.
The portal was haloed by white war magic energy. Nessie stood, his breath even, his eyes shining, irises gone blue from the invocation. His power still made her awestruck. Natalia hid her admiration by preparing to go through.
‘Chimalli.’ Her shield appeared on her wrist.
‘Protection detail!’ Cruickshank’s barked order caused the men to break into motion, converging on Natalia and Nessie until the soldiers encircled them both. Natalia started toward the portal. ‘Let me through! I go first, Cruickshank! That’s an order!’
Cruickshank winked. ‘Sorry, princess, you officers are too valuable to risk; it’s for the good of the mission. How will we get back if you’re both dead, eh?’
His faux simpering tone bit her mask of calm. She meant to shoulder her way to the portal, but the men closed and hemmed her in, jostling, trying to use their bulk to keep the mages pinned in place. The ones in the front of the formation went through the portal. Anything could happen while she and Nessie were stuck on this side. They might emerge into a gun battle, with no way to ever prove who shot first.
‘Move, or I’ll move you!’ The men around her parted as she invoked her spear key. They would pay for their insubordination later. Natalia reached the portal gate and stepped through, transitioning. She emerged, landing on her feet, right on top of one of the men who had not braced correctly, and probably face-planted when he reformed on this side of the portal. His breath huffed from him as, with a grind of her feet, she stepped off and tried to look as though her vision wasn’t hazy from the portal transition.
Merciful silence reigned under the bruised purple sky surrounding the wytches’ fortress. No gunfire, shouts or explosions. She ignored the relief welling up and pushed aside the uncomfortable questions that the portal’s co-operation with its black magic twin evoked.
‘Cruickshank!’ This had gone far enough. The lieutenant ignored her, his weapon free as he shrugged off his long coat, his backpack already dropped on the ground. The men secured the perimeter around the portal while more came through. Nessie would come last, in case there were any issues with the unstable, temporary doorway. The men were fixed on the fortress, rearing up in pinkish stone from the weak, brown soil. ‘Lieutenant, here, now!’
She felt the tingle a moment too late. Magic exploded as a jet of molten fire leapt from nowhere and melted one of Cruickshank’s men. A wytch emerged from behind a veil, right in amongst the men like a flamethrower in a trench, casting long jets of searing fire. The perimeter folded as men dived and ran to escape. Cruickshank barked for the men to reposition, shouting threats and instructions in a steady stream.
She might have seen the veil, if she hadn’t been so focused on controlling Cruickshank. Three wytches strode out. It would be a slaughter. Natalia levelled her long spear and leapt forward, invoking the key for the grace of the jaguar, ‘Oselotl!’
The lead wytch, an elementalist, strode on, confident; her molten tower shield repelled a rain of bullets from her front. The elementalist roared with the power of an inferno, and her shield jetted flame into the men ahead of her, catching two of the retreating soldiers who burst like kindling. Roasted meat and screams filled the air.
The squad folded completely, men scrambling back to get out of the way of the scouring fire. Natalia leapt high, clearing the fire mage’s shield, and launched her spear. So intent was the mage on burning the men before her, she didn’t see the spear of Mixcoatl arc through the air, aimed for her throat. A yell went up, warning the fire mage. Natalia saw the seer – the one who had been at the gatehouse during her earlier escape. The seer was bending the future, sending Natalia’s thrown spear sliding into misalignment and lancing harmlessly past the fire mage.
She invoked her spear key and readied her positional advantage key, crying ‘Cuāuhocēlōtl,’ holding the great bird of prey in her mind and offering a chunk of her consciousness to Mixcoatl. The wind picked her up and she soared, the aspect of the eagle holding her on wings of magic. She launched spear after spear in a staccato rhythm of invocation and hurling. It was a game she’d played with Cole hundreds of times in his efforts to become faster, stronger and better without siphoning.
The seer’s probability shield leapt up, all the dizzying pos
sibilities of the spears’ futures reflecting from its turtleshell patterned surface, but with so many missiles, the chance of a good outcome for the seer’s shield was marginal. The seer spun her shield, spears missing as she read the futures in a flurry and picked those where Natalia mis-threw. Natalia increased the pressure, hurling more spears, aiming for the seer and the fire mage both. The shield vanished when one of the spears found the seer’s throat, and she died in a gurgle of blood.
Some part of Natalia’s mind registered that the fire mage was the red-haired woman who had at least looked pained to ignore her on guard duty, when the Mother had thought to incarcerate her. The fire mage’s face was changed now, twisted in destructive malice, her eyes shining like gleeful coals. She boiled with barely contained elemental force. No sane mage would throw that kind of power around.
These women were gone. The Anvil’s corruption stuck to them, wrapping them in cling film, cutting them off from the oxygen of sense and restraint. The wytch flanking the fire mage was Little, Astrid’s friend. She was shielding herself from the deluge of heat, her own maniac gleam written on her face.
Any hope of talk or leniency died. Cruickshank’s men burned and ran. There could be no saving the wytches now – they had declared war.
‘Tepoztopilli,’ she invoked, a new spear appearing in hand while the eagle’s wings faded and she landed. She lobbed her spear in an arc, over the fire mage’s defence.
The spear struck the elementalist who blazed furiously, her chest fractured and life draining from her. A pillar of blistering heat consumed the fire mage as she became an avatar of the realm of fire itself. Her death throes threw Little into a blaze of updraft, burning Little’s flesh to char and buckling her shield spell. Little’s screams were ragged things. It was a waste of life, power and talent, burning in the dying fury of her mage-kin.
Sweat lashed Natalia instantly – her Aztec shield was vulnerable to fire. Heat scoured the ground, robbing the air of breath. The men fell back further or burned where they stood, flailing. The fire mage, now reduced to a tiny kernel of white-hot heat, twitched and stuttered on the ground, a wick cut at the root, her body exploding in molten puffs as bullets struck home.
The ashes of those caught by the heat wafted on the thermals and fell like snow on the wretched soil of the bruised land. Cruickshank and a few men had flanked the elementalist’s position. They braced their rifles with professional competence. Short, controlled bursts of gunfire jerked and twisted the fire mage’s body.
‘Hold.’
Cruickshank’s command halted the fire. He walked toward the piles of ash that were all that was left of his fallen men and knelt, retrieving their dog tags and brushing them clean with surprising care. Cruickshank stood. ‘Conserve ammo. Every bullet saved is another dead wytch. For these men, we will kill them all.’ Cruickshank held the tags aloft. Natalia turned away. They couldn’t see her like this; it would give them too much of a thrill.
A soft rain began to fall, combining with the ash in the air and sizzling on the ground. Nessie had finally stepped through the portal which blinked out of existence. Nessie’s questioning gaze found Natalia. Her head shake must have conveyed more than she wanted because the Commander’s grim-set mouth seemed to acknowledge her pain. It was such a fucking waste.
The men eyed the fortress warily, their guns trained on the crenellations and arrow slits. As they approached, a rain of darts spat down toward them. Nessie bellowed and the wind of winter picked the magic projectiles up and flung them back across the castle wall. One of the men aimed an RPG at a silhouetted form in a window and loosed a rocket which detonated in a shower – not of brick and stone, but of pulpy mush. The fortress creaked as though in pain.
A wytch stepped into the hole made in the wall, blackened, charred and missing an arm. She raised her other arm, gathering dark, blood-fuelled Myriad power to her.
‘Natalia!’ She knew what the Commander saw. The wytch meant to throw a curse, fuelled by her own death. It was forbidden magic – a truly mad act that would chain the wytch’s hatred to them, poisoning their future. The wytch boiled with red light.
Natalia threw her spear. It rocketed a hundred metres, straight and true, finding the woman’s throat and silencing her gurgling pleas to the undergods. Nessie’s colour drained, and he looked to Natalia.
‘We’ve lost them. A third of the planet’s mages corrupted.’
Were all these wytches in the thrall of the undergods?
Nessie bowed his head. ‘Lieutenant, weapons free. We have to find the armiger. End these mages quickly, some of them have given in to the lure of the undergods.’
A curse was a terrible thing; Cruickshank’s face said he and his men knew it. There would be no mercy for these mages, but at least Cruickshank’s animals wouldn’t risk taking their time with the butchery either.
The cost of Cole’s recklessness piled up. Natalia would have sensed the presence of fallen magic; the corruption of the wytches had happened after they’d been stripped of her protection. She watched the fortress gatehouse collapse under more rocket fire.
Half wild with Murk corruption, three wytches poured through the fire, lightning crackling, bows drawn, clothed in madness. Death would be a mercy, but it didn’t stop the ache in Natalia’s chest. She would have been one of these women, were it not for her gift.
The battle was a flurry of hard killing. Soldiers hacked with machetes and shot their rifles as wytches stepped out of hiding to ambush them. They died brutal deaths, the threat of fallen magic lending savage intensity to their murder. Nessie kept the men hidden behind a veil, while he cut the veils of the wytches.
The Commander’s magic was many centuries strong – books were filled with the things Nessie knew that Natalia didn’t. As they moved along a narrow corridor, Nessie halted and, within moments, cut a veil ahead of them.
‘Do not engage.’
Nessie’s hiss stopped the soldiers. The two wytches lying in wait peered around. One of them was a binder. Nessie invoked. As his magic leaked out from under his veil, the binder invoked and was swallowed whole. A whirlpool of black water opened behind her, sucking both her and the other wytch into its depths, where sleek shapes moved, barely visible. The tear closed quickly, leaving an empty corridor and a smell of the sea on the wet floor.
They moved on. The men cut down more mages from behind the soft cover of Nessie’s veil, and cheered. The soldiers’ glee at the slaughter of the wytches spun Natalia on her heel.
‘Enough. Carry on like this, and we won’t hide you anymore. We’ll see how you get on without us to keep you safe.’ Nessie’s hand on her shoulder spun her back, her mouth full of fight for him too, but he only looked drawn and grim. She was sure the bastard soldiers gloated behind her.
That was when she felt it, coiling out from the heart of the fortress. The Mournanvil. She wished she didn’t need these brutal, heartless soldiers. A dose of the Anvil without her protection would show them why the wytches had been so twisted out of shape.
When she sensed the Anvil, she sensed Cole, sharp and clear. He was fading. The unsettling presence of the monster inside him leaked out along the corridor toward her. Ethan was about to fall.
‘Go!’ They pushed the last few hundred metres, jogging. Cole was fading like a thready pulse. It was skipping in his offbeat, stronger and stronger.
‘Move!’ The wide corridors leading to the great central room were empty. Could the wytches unbind Cole? The thought was tantalising. Could he be saved, finally? It wouldn’t matter if they didn’t hurry.
They reached the hall before the central chamber. She broke from the cover of the veil, moving at a dead sprint toward the great doors. Mixcoatl howled within her as she yelled, ‘Stay behind the veil!’
She would be the distraction. The feint before the hammer blow of the Northern Lodge and Nessie. She hit the great double doors, leaping into their weight, dead centre, and throwing them in with her feet, rolling as she hit the bridge on the other side.<
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The chamber was a riot. The Anvil was powered up, the Mother bathed in its sickly light, her arms stretched above her head, holding the cup she used for the unbindings. The thin bridge that fell away into the room’s void was no obstacle for the grace of the jaguar. Natalia ran, ignoring the invoking wytches, who were so held by the monolith presence above them, they didn’t even register her arrival.
The Mother stood on the platform at the room’s centre. Cole was there, beneath the Anvil. Hovering beside Cole was another helpless form; it was impossible to make out who. Cole was struck by the Anvil’s power while the Myriad magic around the room was unleashed and flooded the Mother. The freshness of the wytches’ deaths scalded Natalia’s veins with hate. Astrid and Millie: this was for them.
She leapt, the hammer of vengeance about to fall, the wind of the eagle under her as she soared, calling the hunter’s spear to hand while the hammer of gunfire ripped behind her, beating a rhythm of butchery.
The wytches wouldn’t stand a chance, cut down as they stared at the Anvil in pain. It was the Mother’s fault, and the Mother was right in front of her. Justice was about to be served.
Chapter 27
Cole lay on the floor, Natalia standing over him, her hand extended. Cole’s heart burst in his chest.
‘Nat! You’re here; you came for me!’
He stood with her help, drawing her in, hugging her even as relief for her protection sheathed him. It was caged back up in his guts, where It belonged. Nat felt wrong; she was tense. Her hands patted his sides.
‘She’s no happy wi’ ye.’ Cole felt his cheeks burn. Of course, they were in a war zone; there was time for that later. They were on the platform, beneath the Anvil. Henry lay a few feet away. Cole reached down, lifting the kid up gently. Millar was groggy and disoriented, but alive. He waved Cole off, and sat. What had the kid experienced while Cole had been confronting It?
The Cost of Magic (The Ethan Cole Series Book 1) Page 30