Her magic flooded into her.
It always came like lightning. She could feel the stones around her singing with their emptiness, an endless note reverberating not just through the walls, but through every part of the structure. The heat of the candles slid over her skin like warm water, flickering in time with the unpredictable rhythm of the flame. Bethany felt like a storm.
She knew she was supposed to refrain from using her magic when she was alone—she knew because D’Jenn had taught her that word, ‘refrain’. Bethany thought that was a stupid word, that it sounded like something you did to a piece of armor, or a wagon wheel.
“Just going to get my wagon wheel refrained,” she said aloud.
Such a stupid word—refrain.
But what was she supposed to do? If she took the candles from the wall, she’d have no way to measure where she was. It was like when Leyton entered the Labyrinth of Carcas, and was given a string by a fair maiden to take with him, to show him the way out. Bethany didn’t have a string, but if she took the candle, she knew she’d get lost. The candle was her string.
If she couldn’t take the candle, then she had to use magic. D’Jenn was always telling her—Bethany, there’s always an option, you’re only stuck if you want to be stuck. Bethany didn’t want to be stuck. She thought D’Jenn might be proud of her, come to think of it.
She was only doing what he’d taught her to do.
Besides, she wouldn’t use her magic, not exactly. With her Kai singing to her, she could feel every speck of dust on the stone around her. She could see, in a way. Bethany’s eyes pierced the darkness like daggers with her Kai singing, but there was little light for her eyes to see. Her magical senses helped, though she was still learning how to use them.
“Pirate-Queen of the Seas,” she whispered.
Then, she ran into the darkness.
**
For one single, impossibly long second, Dormael crouched on the ground, feeling his magic sing through him like a torrent of fire, his naked body sweating and dirty, his hands still shackled to a length of rusty chain. The Taker’s ember eyes bored into his, its tongue still lashing at the air around its triangular head. Inera was still screaming, and he could feel her gathering her power for some sort of attack. The three guards behind him were reaching for their swords.
Dormael weighed his options for a split second, surrounded by enemies, completely naked—and there was just something embarrassing about that on top of everything else—but far from helpless. Would it be worse to be killed by the sword, burnt to a cinder with magic, or whatever the Taker planned to do with him?
It will crawl into your body and eat your insides, then wear your skin, the ancient power had said.
Dormael liked his skin. He’d rather keep it, given the option.
He screamed his anger at the ugly thing before him, reaching deep inside his being for the magic. Tiny fingers of iridescent lightning began to arc up from his body, touching the stone around him in quick flashes. His hair began to stand and his skin tingled with anticipation, his muscles tensed for the explosion of power. The lightning rushed up from his feet, through his shoulders, and down his arms as he sent his magic forth.
The bolt of lightning slammed into the Taker, lifting its wet, quivering body from the floor and sending it flying back toward the yawning blackness of the gate. The Taker uttered no cry as it was hit, but it left behind the smell of acrid, burnt flesh. As Dormael’s lightning slammed through the gate, pushing the Taker back to wherever it had crawled from, the black substance began to crack and sputter. The gate burst like a bubble, and the Taker was gone. The dark fluid that the gate had been made from bled into the cracks in the stone, and all was silent for a short moment.
Then the door burst into the room in a shower of shattered wood.
Dormael had to cover his face and turn away, shielding himself from the flying debris that pelted him. Inera was blown from her feet, having been standing near the doorway, and she tumbled across the floor until she smacked into the far wall. She let out an angry, incoherent noise as she tried to climb to her feet. Dormael rose and began gathering his magic for another attack. He heard D’Jenn’s song ringing through his Kai, and it was the most welcome noise he’d ever heard.
Dormael turned toward the door in time to see D’Jenn and Allen rush into the room and take a quick look around. Their eyes alighted on Dormael, and he could see relief written over their faces. In the next instant, they sprung into action.
Dormael felt Inera’s song ring out with an attack, and D’Jenn’s answered. The two of them squared off between warring energies, steam and flame and water flying in all directions between them. Dormael wanted Inera himself, wanted to ask her why, wanted to find out so many things. He couldn’t get between them now, though—not without risking D’Jenn’s life. The conflagration forced him to back away from their fight.
Dormael snarled in frustration.
Allen rushed the three guards standing nearby, ripping Dormael’s attention away. He held a long dagger in one hand, and his Orrisan-style axe in the other. The first man stepped forward, whipping his sword from his waist in a smooth horizontal slash. Allen rolled to the outside, putting the man between himself and the other two guards. With two vicious movements, Allen’s axe chopped into the back of the man’s knee, eliciting a scream of pain. It ended with a gurgle as Allen rose to his feet, shoving the dagger into his throat. Blood welled over his hands as he pushed the man into his comrades, forcing them to stumble backward.
The second guard snarled and quick-stepped to the side, whipping his own sword free of his sheath as he did so. He stepped toward Allen with a feint, testing the gladiator’s reflexes. Allen returned the feint with one of his own, and then the two were dancing around each other—step, parry, thrust, and swing, steel ringing from steel. Allen fought with a wolfish grace that set him apart from the other man, his movements like a predator flowing through its natural environment. The guard looked amateurish by comparison, struggling through the steps of a dance that came natural to Allen.
The third man was the one who had taken that jagged little knife to Dormael’s skin. He’d been the one who had beaten him while he hung from the chain. Dormael felt his anger rise, heating his blood to a boil as the man tried to step in and stab his brother in the flank.
Dormael reached out and snatched him from the ground with his power, wrenching down on his chest. The man screamed as Dormael ground his power against him, feeling the satisfying crackle of ribs stretching to their breaking point resonating through his power. The man floated in the air, his limbs spread out as far as they could go. He tried to scream, but nothing could come out of his mouth—Dormael crushed the air from his chest, and kept the pressure on. His eyes found Dormael’s, and the two of them shared an understanding about what was to come.
With a flick of his wrist, he sent the man hurtling through the air, smashing him against the wall with a wet thump. He grimaced, but he couldn’t scream—Dormael pushed him hard into the stone, holding him high against the wall with the weight of his power. Splitting his consciousness, he sent two of the discarded short swords hurtling from the ground, and slammed them through the man’s shoulders, right into the stone. They rang as the force behind the thrust caused them to vibrate, and the man’s face was a mask of agony. Dormael let his body hang from those blades, and took the pressure off his chest.
The screams came out like they had been closed up in a sack, and opening them had let it all out at once. Dormael felt a moment of vindictive elation at the sound, and vaguely heard his brother dispatch the other guard somewhere off to the side. Dormael only had eyes for his torturer, and since D’Jenn and Inera were still busy, he had a little time.
He glanced over to the table, where the jar of water rested beside that jagged little knife.
**
The tunnels beneath the Conclave, as it turned out, weren’t so easy to navigate.
Bethany had lost sight of her candle a long
time ago, and had wandered down endless corridors. She’d even gone down a flight of stairs once, then back up when she found another, but still she was lost. She tried to think of what Leyton would do, how he would get himself out of this situation, but there was nothing in the stories to give her a clue.
Pirate-Queen of the Seas, she grumbled. Right.
She felt sure that if she kept walking, kept looking, that eventually she would find her way out. There could only be so many staircases, so many intersections, so many old doors. They all looked the same to her, though, and that was the major problem. No matter which way she turned, she got turned around. Whenever she thought to backtrack, she ended up in a new place.
Bethany had called out once. Her voice had fled from her, pealing down the halls and bouncing from the stone. Her Kai still sang, but returned nothing to her that she knew how to use. She was awash in a world of darkness, sound, and silence all at the same time.
She was utterly lost, and she knew it.
Bethany had no idea how long she’d been down in the tunnels. The shadows yawned to either side of her, darkness in both directions. Fear beat a tight rhythm against her ribcage, and her mind started to play tricks on her. Did she hear something in the dark—a boot scuffling over stone, a rat skittering through the corridor?
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 separa
ted 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.
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