Wind Magic

by Nicolette Jinks

  That ward hurt.

  There came the grinding click of Mordon's scales, a hard bump across my thighs. I flinched, realized it was his nose. He inhaled.

  Someone yelled, “Oi, Drake, tail off the ward!”

  Mordon snorted in response, but I felt his body shift. He'd put himself on the ward to hide me.

  “Thanks,” I whispered near his small ear.

  Mordon snorted again and resumed his original position. Something about him, maybe it was the stiff body posture, told me what he didn't say.

  You shouldn't be here.

  I wanted to tell him off, but didn't dare make the noise. First I needed to hide my activity. I pried at his paw, trying to get him to uncurl it. After a long sigh, he did as I wanted. I sat on his claws to inspect the shackle about his neck.

  From the hard edges—no, sharp edges—on the band about his neck, this was what had damaged the scales on his throat. Whenever he moved, it caused the angled end to slip beneath his scales. Straightening his neck would cause it to slide down; bending caused it to ride up with its painful consequences.

  Carefully, I reached toward the iron shackle. A red symbol rose to its surface. “They've enchanted it. Dang,” I muttered under my breath. I waved my hand as high along the band as I could reach. Heat radiated under my palm. Scales hissed, the sink of burning nails. I was about to pull back when shouts startled me.

  Three men were laid out flat before Barnes. Other were responding.

  “Intruder!” came a cry from a woman who had her wits about her. “Intruder! Constable!”

  The word ended in gargles. Barnes had punched her in the throat. Collapsed trachea, if I were to guess the reason for the panic on her face.

  I caught the surprised expressions right before they were replaced by action. The man nearest us, the one minding Mordon's ward, moved his hand in a frantic motion. Barnes's fists collided against both temples, crushing the man's skull.

  Too late.

  Electricity clipped through the ward, making it brighten, an illuminated wall encircled us. Shouts came from outside, and spells, as noise echoed all around.

  We were shut in.

  “Well, I guess we can talk now,” I said.

  Mordon narrowed an eye at me. He turned his head away.

  “Fine, be that way. Fill me in on what this ring about your neck is and what has happened in this clearing. I understand that Cole has Death.”

  Mordon surprised me by talking. I half expected a continuation of the cold shoulder.

  “They are preparing the exchange spell. He's determined not go give Death time to escape. As for the shackle, it is called the Dragon's Demise. I cannot pry it off with my claws. I cannot shift. The more I work it, the deeper it slices. When it cuts my jugular, I am finished.”

  A sobering reality, one I didn’t wish to linger upon. “Why does it get warm when I come near it?”

  “Anti-tampering.”

  “I see.” I thought about it. “Dip your head down. Wear it around your jaw.”

  He shook his head to slide it forward. Part of the reason it wouldn't come off altogether was Mordon's set of horns. They were small enough I normally paid them no attention, but they were a problem now.

  “You can't fit your claw through the gap?”

  “If I did, the edge would cut into the weaker scales around my head.”

  “So you need to work it down by your chest.” I frowned. “If you had something to cut it with...” A thought struck me. “Which do you think is stronger? The fairy chain you tied me up with, or your Dragon's Demise?”

  “The fairy chain.”

  “Right, I'm going to wrap the loose end through your necklace. If we tie each end to your paws or something, you can pull it taut and sever the shackle.”

  Mordon snorted.

  I added sweetly, “Unless you have a better idea.”

  “Do it.”

  I unwound my chain 'bracelet' and threaded it once through the shackle. One end I slipped over the widest part of a paw. The other I wrapped on his remaining forepaw, making sure to take up the slack until it was as low and tight as I could get it. The chain held me very close to his paw, since one end was still tied to my wrist.

  Mordon strained. Some of my end of the chain slipped; I had to pull on it, too. He heaved. The chain bit into his claws. His muscles quivered. The chain lodged into a chink in the shackle. Mordon relaxed, took a deep breath, and heaved again. The chink grew deeper, but it wasn't enough.

  I reached for the place the chain was, held my had over the iron. It began to warm. Soon my hand was radiating heat and I had to let it cool.

  When I smelled burning scales, I saw that the chain was cutting through the metal. “It's working! The metal is softer now. Can you move it to a different place on your neck so you don't get royally burned?”

  “Can't,” he said. “It has warped around me.”

  “Oh. Best keep this up, then.”

  Halfway through the shackle, I regretted ever proposing this idea. A band of burnt scales wrapped around his neck. Nearby scales were brittle. I felt the pain even if he didn't. For Mordon, this had turned into a battle of wills. He knew the shackle was surrendering, and he wouldn't stop until he defeated it. My hands, forearms, and face were red and stinging. The band near the bottom had turned a deep, dark red.

  The chain snapped.

  Hot metal struck my arms. I jerked, shaking slag off me. It left rounded pits in my skin.

  “What happened?” I asked, astonished. The chain hadn’t broken at all, it only felt as if it had, which meant one thing.

  “We're through,” Mordon said. He pried the tips of two claws into the oval shaped end of his Dragon's Demise. When he pulled them apart, the shackle's top bent and snapped. It fell into two pieces beside him, sizzling as hot metal met mud.

  I felt my stomach flop at the sight of Mordon's raw neck. Whole scales had burned to ash. His hide showed through, black and blistered.

  “Mordon,” I whispered.

  “It is a scar of pride.” He spread a toothy grin. “This will go down as legend.”

  “Alright,” I said, determined not to think about this. “What next?”

  He shook the chain off his claw. I wrapped it around my wrist. Mordon grasped me in one paw, faced the electric ward, and launched himself at it. I braced myself for a shock.

  It didn't come.

  Of course not, I thought. We didn't complete a circuit by touching ground. The sight beyond the ward was one to behold.

  People had come to help. We were still outnumbered, but it wasn't all terrible. Sorcerers clashed head to head, in duels, in fist fights. Werewolves howled, and I caught a glimpse of dark fur followed by screams. Spells ignited, sending a dazzling reflection against my eyes.

  A crash echoed through the market and everything went dim, dark, illuminated by flashes of spells and the lights from the distant decks above. Despite my best attempts not to, I shivered, and my spirits sank with the chill of premonition.

  This wasn’t going to end well. I felt it in the air. The tension, the anger unleashed, the violence, all of it too much to keep contained any longer.

  “Find Death!” I yelled to Mordon.

  He grunted in response, as if I'd asked for a dumb thing indeed. We tore through the fight. A single lash of Mordon's tail sent people flying.

  Then I saw Cole on the spot of land which had been dedicated for a dance floor, all around him were concession stands. Cotton Candy Floss Art, read one with samples of various shaped flowers in yellows, reds, blues, and greens. Kissing Booth read another, tied up in girly bows and blue silk ribbons. Fizzy Dragonfruit Juice was another, a pail of shaved ice still sitting where it had been abandoned.

  The circle with Death in the center.

  The people outside were making the spell.

  Others fending off those who came too near.

  What made me wince was who stood at Cole's right hand.

  It was Leif.

  I tried t
o calm the pang of betrayal, tried to stop the humiliation coloring my cheeks, but nothing could keep me from feeling very dumb. The others had tried to warn me. They'd said he had turned. I'd let nostalgia get in the way. Who knew how much of today's destruction could be blamed squarely on me, if Mordon’s imprisonment was my fault because I trusted the wrong person. I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  The final stretch to the grassy slopes where Death lay seemed to take ages as I navigated between booths featuring small-games and their respective prizes, though Mordon grasped me in a claw to glide over the top of duels crowding the space immediately below.

  We had to stop this.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  It was a ludicrous scene, all these bright tents with their alternating stripes and animations of shooting stars, all this that had been set up for happiness now a backdrop for brutality. People had come from who knows where to engage in the rabble, the fighting progressed far enough along that sides and motive no longer mattered so long as there was something to get in a scrap about. Mordon surged forward on strong wings, quick beats that sent my stomach into my mouth at every crest.

  Was he trying to bargain Death already? How long do we have?

  If he had just started on the ritual, I had plenty of time remaining, but if Cole was midway through, then we could be in real trouble. The image of the Market turned into a dystopian wasteland filled with magic-wielding zombies haunted me.

  But what can I do? I wondered.

  How can I change things?

  All of a sudden we jarred to a halt at the edge of the white circle which looked like it had been spray painted onto the grass. Mordon’s head swung and collided with a stray sorcerer who had been shocked by our appearance, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open in a wide ‘o’ right until the instant his chest met Mordon's skull.

  I bailed out of his claw before Mordon came to a complete stop, the ground skidding beneath my heels. A person in a black hood turned to face me, wand raising at my face level.

  The word to attack lodged in my throat; I couldn’t think of what it was.

  I clenched my fingers into a fist and let it swing. His face met my knuckles, a hard and boney collision when sent tingles immediately to my wrist. From the wet gush and scrape of teeth, I knew that I’d hit my target even before the blood flew. He wouldn’t be able to speak his spells after that.

  He reeled backwards, dropping his wand as he tried to stem off the pain. I followed up with a rapid succession of punches until he was doubled over. The red haze faded from the fringes of my vision, and I saw what we were up against.

  The air around Death’s white spray-painted circle was thick with power, the heaviness of an afternoon before a monsoon swept over the desert to pelt hail and rip up the trees along the way. Words weighed down the wind, words that tickled the spine and felt sharp, crystalline, precise. It was so very potent. There was no doubt in my mind that this spell was an Unwritten come real.

  Cole stood at the head of the star point that spiked off from the circle containing death. Leif was to his right, then a woman. The other two had greeted Mordon and me, and were now sprawled in their respective positions across the ground. Mordon's attacker was not bleeding, unlike mine. That fact was not lost on the next person in my trajectory, a tall woman from her frame beneath the cloak, her arm raised in the middle of an incantation.

  I did not hesitate. Interrupting a spell-caster would destabilize the spell further, but it would also keep additional power from pouring into it. Should the spell recoil on all of us now, it would be better than waiting another minute longer when the recoil would be greater. The percussion wave could blow even Mordon off his feet, and stun us long enough for Cole’s forces to rally around him. Not to mention the inconvenient fact of my warrant …

  Without pausing to think up of a spell, I launched myself at the sorceress. She saw me and took a step towards me, then stopped, realizing that one step closer would bring her outside of her point.

  Leif and Cole both saw me and picked up the pace of their speech; then those in the distance became aware of the interruption. Everyone noticed except Death, who was kneeling with his hands gripping his head in evident agony.

  As I reached the edge of the painted line, I realized that the wind had increased with their words, and that it was building itself for a final push at the conclusion. At least that meant the sorceress couldn’t divert her attention to address my assault.

  “No!”

  The cry came from all around me, with many people’s voices, Cole’s amongst them.

  The mud slipped underfoot, and I was soaring through the ashen-scented air a split-second before I hit the sorceress’s outstretched arms. Leif reached for me, but there was nothing he could do, and it would have been an instant too late. The last thing I saw was her wide, white eyes, as we crossed out of the triangle. The sorceress’s body passed over the line and brought the force of the spell down on us. Then I felt our bodies collide and both of us hit the ground.

  Power crashed through the air first, drawing together into a tight ball in the center above Death’s head, leaving the outside a massive void. Wind rushed to fill the void. Dirt filled the spaces between my teeth, an elbow the space between my ribs. The ball of power in the middle exploded, colliding against the external power and triggering a harsher recoil than it would have normally been. A burst rammed through both of us, cracking through my head as thunder tears through a stormy sky, lightning flashing my eyes until I was blinded and dizzy.

  We rolled across the ground, a distant feeling at first, as if my body were wrapped up in several layers of blankets. Then reality snapped into place, and the rolling hurt. A sting reverberated through my senses even after the ground held still. It felt as if a hot iron had burned me from shoulder to calf, spared in the places where the sorceress’s body shielded mine. Unconsciousness buzzed at the edge of my mind, like the drowsy temptation of an extra snooze. I forced myself awake.

  Ringing echoed through my ears; it wasn’t until it was done that I realized the noise had been the woman’s screams. When the sound stopped, so did the tug and release of air in her lungs. I shoved her lifeless body off mine, sat up stunned, to find everyone else doing the same.

  My shaking hand was brilliant red with spell-burn, and I consciously knew that it was spread throughout a wide portion of my body. Others who had started to approach were sprawled across the landscape, all too stunned to cry out or moan just yet. Some I thought wouldn’t ever move again. Leif was moving, but located several feet away from his point in the star, acting stiff and sore. Cole had his back to us, was kneeling and cradling his head in an imitation of what Death had been doing earlier. I found Mordon last, although he had been the least influenced by the recoil out of all of us.

  A short gouge in the mud showed where his claws had dug into the dirt. His wings were folded tightly against his body, his head had been tucked between belly and the far front leg. Those scales which had come into contact with the recoil had a black tint to them, a slight bit of charring. There was no doubt in my mind that he had come out of this the best. Unfortunately, Cole was just as resilient as Mordon. He seemed accustomed to having spells recoil. Or maybe it was that the monster within him was raising its ugly head yet again.

  I’d purged the sight from memory. That was my only rationalization for why I was now gaping at Cole as he towered over the heads of any normal-sized man. His mouth sawed open to reveal great big teeth, his skin pocked and peeled everywhere his robes did not offer protection. Soon even those struggled to fit him, his bones elongating, his skin becoming taut over his frame. A trickle of wind brought his scent to me. Dead. Long, long dead. Creature and blood and decay.

  Wendigo.

  One flurry of spell-ducking later, I found myself separated from everyone else with a wendigo on my tail. I knew better than to try shifting to dragon body—I’d tried that once against Cole, and had no significant luck with the attempt. The wendigo reared onto h
is legs and charged.

  A claw struck. I twisted, but it caught me full in the ribs. I slammed into the ground, landed against something hard with a pointed tip that caught me in the stomach. Breathless, muscles seized, I realized I’d dove straight into a blacksmith’s anvil. Rolling off it, I saw the sign: Jarnskeggy’s Forge – Imbuements.

  Shadows moved over the carpet covering the stall’s front. Cole’s breath came as mine could not: ragged and reeking of rodent roadkill.

  He loomed over the top of me, all teeth and claws and emitting wave after wave of coldness. His clavicle was clearly highlighted through his skin, his neck a rope of tendons, and his mouth, when he parted it, oozed yellow foam that sizzled when it hit ground. Though he was bigger than when I’d last seen him as a monster, he wasn’t massive, which implied he hadn’t eaten much. And that implied he was very hungry now.

  Wolflike fangs bared.

  From the rage wrinkling his eyes, he thought of revenge. Not his next meal.

  Well, I would be neither. Even as my body was tormented with its first whooping breath I struggled to my knees. The shadow moved, a paw withdrawing to strike again. I sheltered behind the anvil, my gasps mixing with his outraged huffs. To my shock, I realized that by knocking the air out of me, he’d also cut me off from my element. A weak tendril touched me, stronger with every breath, but not fast enough.

  One raging blow sent the anvil tossing end-over-end into the next booth. A table crunched. I was left one knee in the mud, one leg trying to stand, facing the frothing-mouthed wendigo. Everyone else, so far as I could see, was preoccupied with their own opponents. The harder they pushed for me, the more resistance they met. I grabbed a fistful of mud and flung it into Cole’s face.

  Some got into an eye. Enough to make him howl and rake a claw down his face, not enough to manage a getaway. Desperation filled me.