Winged Pursuit

by Lucia Ashta

  There was nothing I could do to help, that much was evident right away. For a beat I wondered whether I should sneak back down the stairs before anyone noticed me. It would have been the wise thing to do.

  But I didn’t do it.

  Magicians, whom I assumed were part of this Sorcerers for Magical Supremacy sect, attacked in the dark of night. They rode firedrakes, who were almost the same size as their riders, and I wondered how on earth the firedrakes managed to support all that weight. The creatures had to be as strong as they looked. Muscles bulged beneath multi-colored scales, and flame and smoke puffed from their nostrils.

  There were more of them than I could count since they were in continual motion, swooping here, diving there. Their attack was dizzying. With a terrifying start, I realized that was exactly the point of it. They sought to overwhelm and disorient. At least with me, they were accomplishing their goal superbly.

  But those magicians housed at the Acquaine estate didn’t look terrified or overwhelmed. Even Brave and Gertrude, who couldn’t have been all that much older than I, looked capable of taking their attackers on. They were both armed with swords like Nando’s, but unlike me, they knew how to use them.

  Several of the sorcerers had jumped onto the roof, leaving their firedrakes circling it, shooting fire at us from above. Brave and Gertrude stood back to back, parrying, lunging, deflecting, and landing blows.

  They were the youngest and I presumed least experienced, and even they were holding their own against the SMS.

  It was chaos. The sounds, sights, and overall sensations threatened to overwhelm me. I tamped the sensations down so that I’d notice one thing at a time.

  To my right, Brave and Gertrude, dealt with some of those who’d managed to descend onto the roof.

  My eyes moved toward the center. Marcelo and Clara, fought back to back like their nephew and sister, but not with swords, though Marcelo wore one strapped to his belt. Marcelo’s mouth was moving a mile a minute while his hands flickered with colored lights. He aimed the stream of magic from his hands to the sky, nailing a sorcerer right in the chest. He went into a spin until his firedrake regained control.

  The sorcerer slumped forward.

  Clara’s lips were pursed into a grim line, unmoving. A ball of colored energy, much like the balls of magic I’d seen Mordecai build on our way here, formed at her side. She swiveled in a blur of motion, grabbing and launching it into the sky. It wrapped around the firedrake with the collapsed rider, and encompassed the creature in a blue, crackling light. The firedrake plummeted into a dead fall.

  I gasped but managed to see the pained expression on Clara’s face. She hadn’t wanted to hurt the firedrake. She’d had little choice.

  She turned to the side and shared a regretful look with Marcelo. It lasted only a beat before they began to build more magic to face those others who continued to dive and descend from above. There seemed to be no end to them.

  When Clara turned, I noticed something extraordinary that consumed my attention despite all the distractions.

  Clara’s chest glowed beneath her nightwear.

  I stared, useless, mouth agape, until she turned her back toward me to stand side by side with Marcelo.

  Just then a large and terrifying dragon swooped through the skies. My lungs and heart stopped working entirely until I saw that that gigantic beast was actually the scarlet dragon, Humbert, and that he was plowing into firedrakes in the sky.

  Humbert was circling back around for another swoop when I noticed the two figures atop him. Arianne, with her flame-red hair trailing loose behind her, and Gustave right behind her, facing the dragon’s tail.

  She directed Humbert while Gustave hurled small balls of magic at the riders of the firedrakes.

  My eyes were bugging out of my head, and I struggled to keep my mouth closed. To go from only just discovering that magic is real to this... well, it was a heck of a lot to take in.

  I was pretty useless just standing there, ogling. Get it together, I scolded myself. I might not have magic, and I might not be a skilled fighter, but surely I could do something to help, however small. We were outnumbered.

  I continued my scan of the roof and saw Mordecai nearing the left corner. All alone, he fought off three sorcerers. He didn’t even have a sword or other weapon of the physical world; apparently, he didn’t need one.

  His lips in a continuous motion and his face one intense, determined mask, he launched ball after ball after ball of magic, straight at his attackers. Had it been me, I wouldn’t have stood a chance against him. His movements were lightning fast, especially for a man of advanced years. I would have been slumped dead where the sorcerers stood.

  But the SMS possessed skills I didn’t. The sorcerers evaded his attack almost flawlessly—almost. Three sorcerers lay in heaps like litter on the roof around Mordecai’s swirling night robe.

  The still-standing sorcerers were quick, but the strain of maintaining that speed of defense was showing. Every time one of Mordecai’s balls hit its mark or met with one of the sorcerers’ defenses, a burst of light illuminated them all. When it did, I made out sweat along the sorcerers’ hairlines, starting to drip. But I could also see the same on Mordecai’s face. He was obviously a formidable wizard, but he still had limits.

  A ferocious dragon roar ripped through the cacophony, dragging my attention upward. There were fewer sorcerers astride firedrakes now, but there were still several, who darted in and out trying to attack while avoiding counterattack.

  For the first time, I spotted Sylvia and Mathieu flying amid the enemy firedrakes. They circled above a firedrake and its rider. While their attention was diverted by Humbert, Sylvia and Mathieu nose dived from above. Mathieu’s gaping jaws clamped down on the rider’s neck from behind, while Sylvia’s mouth opened wide enough to close around the firedrake’s neck from the side.

  The firedrakes and the sorcerer dropped like dead weight, fighting while they fell.

  I gulped, working to push down the waves of emotion threatening to completely incapacitate me while I watched people—and creatures—I’d only just met, fight to the death. I realized in that moment that even though I barely knew them, I already cared very much what happened to them.

  I looked to the right again and swept my gaze across Gertrude and Brave, and then Clara and Marcelo. I caught Clara shooting concerned glances at Gertrude, but otherwise things seemed the same. They were fighting. The sorcerers kept coming, but there were fewer of them.

  Only one advanced on Gertrude and Brave, and a couple on Clara and Marcelo.

  When I swept my attention back toward Mordecai, panic hit me with fury. One more sorcerer had fallen. Mordecai fought only two, but he was starting to look tired.

  And worse, much worse, I noticed another sorcerer slinking along the shadows of the roof. He must have rounded the castle to drop from the other side, opposite the stairwell, because I hadn’t noticed him. It was clear no one else had either. He crept slowly, carefully, sword held by his side.

  He didn’t make a sound, his eyes trained only on Mordecai. At this rate, he’d come around his back, and Mordecai wouldn’t notice him, all his attention fixed on the relentless attack of the remaining two sorcerers. Neither Clara nor Marcelo, nor the others, would notice either. They had their hands full, and Arianne and Gustave flew too high up, battling too many firedrakes and their riders. Even Sylvia, Mordecai’s firedrake companion, wouldn’t see. She’d dropped completely below the roof line.

  It’s up to me. I gulped and feared I’d start hyperventilating. It’s just a little evil sorcerer, you can do this. But my internal pep talk was a pure lie, and I knew it. There was nothing little or innocuous about the sorcerer creeping through the shadows of the roof. His determined features promised murder; I had no doubt that’s exactly what he’d accomplish if I didn’t get my heart to stop hammering erratically and my feet to move.

  He hasn’t seen you yet. You have an advantage. But my hand shook on the hilt of Nando’
s sword. I wouldn’t allow myself to dwell on it, but the only option was for me to sneak up on the sorcerer and kill him. If I screamed out a warning, Mordecai—and maybe the others—would turn and divert their attention toward me. If Mordecai turned from the two sorcerers attempting to pound him with their own barrage of magic balls and streaks of what looked like lightning, he’d be dead.

  Any distraction now would be fatal. For all of us.

  Just move your feet. Don’t think, move. All right. I can do this. But I really wasn’t sure I could. Nando was the fighter, not me. Nando was brave and selfless.

  My palm started sweating around the hilt of the sword, and I tightened my hold with a death grip.

  Don’t think about anything else. Just be quiet and surprise him.

  No big deal. I tried to pretend I wasn’t about to kill a man. Dark sorcerer or not, he was still a person. No matter. So was Mordecai, and I couldn’t allow this sorcerer to stab him in the back. No one should go down like that, especially not the man who’d rescued me and claimed to want to do good in the world. Not a man who cared so much for a brother that he’d fight for him even after death.

  Another few steps and the loud sounds of magic crackling and swords clashing muted, until it felt as if I were underwater, and the world was very far away, where evil couldn’t touch me. Only it could, of course.

  A few steps more and I was almost upon the slinking sorcerer. Even the flashes of light and magic faded into background stimulus. I barely registered it.

  I only noted that while I was closer to the sorcerer, he was closer to Mordecai.

  I moved quickly and silently, easier to do when the sounds around us were so loud.

  The sorcerer pulled his sword into both hands and lifted it above his head. In two quick steps he’d be close enough to bring it down into the back of Mordecai’s heart.

  I imitated the assassin’s movements. I raised Nando’s sword overhead as I sensed the attention of one of the sorcerers Mordecai faced land first on his comrade, and then on me.

  His mouth opened to issue a warning to his friend.

  But it was too late.

  I pushed away all thought and all fear, took three quick steps forward, and brought the sword into the assassin’s back with all my might.

  Chapter 5

  A gasp of surprise escaped the assassin’s lips before he began to crumble. He tried to turn around to see who’d stabbed him, but he didn’t manage it before he fell to his knees, then slid forward. His grip on his sword loosened and it fell in a clatter next to him.

  I let go of Nando’s sword, embedded deep within the man’s back, and it went with the would-be assassin as he stooped into his final fall. The man’s face pressed against the back of Mordecai’s calves, and the wizard startled, whipping his head around in a flash before turning it forward to meet his attackers again.

  But in that brief moment he registered the situation, and must have understood what happened. His eyes studied me for an instant, but in that instant I felt his surprise.

  Then he was back at it, fighting for his life—fighting for all our lives.

  The sounds, images, and smells slowly began to regain their actual intensity. As if I brought my head above water, the sounds of explosions, yells, and clanging metal seemed louder than before. The flashing of magic was so bright I sensed an impending headache, and I smelled what could only be the scent of fresh blood, of people dying.

  I looked to the man I’d killed. The full horror of what I’d done hit me with the force of one of Mordecai’s balls of magic. I stumbled backward, tripped over my own feet, but managed to hold myself upright as I crept back toward the stairwell door.

  Perhaps now I’d go back inside and try to forget all that I’d seen—an impossibility, I feared.

  Then something strange happened in an already bizarre night that capped the weirdest day of my life.

  As if the dark sorcerers all received a command at the same moment, they sent a final blow toward their opponents, then turned on the spot and rushed toward the edge of the roof.

  What firedrakes had survived the onslaught of our defense adjusted in mid-air, pumped their wings, and dove toward the edge of the roof.

  As sorcerers jumped, firedrakes caught them. Some landings were smooth, others awkward, looking as if the sorcerers might slip to their death. But in the end they all managed to wrap their legs around the firedrakes and speed off into the sky.

  The riders, who’d remained airborne, circled around and followed the others in retreat.

  Arianne and Gustave hesitated for a beat. They were confused. What caused the retreat? I had no clue.

  Until a frazzled pygmy owl flew over to Mordecai. His breathing was frantic. He beat his wings, trying to steady, trying to find the breath to speak.

  “What? What is it?” Mordecai pressed with urgency.

  “They’ve... they’ve taken the boy,” Sir Lancelot said.

  Denial beat through my veins as strong as my heartbeat when Mordecai looked up toward Humbert and called, “They have the boy.”

  Arianne and Gustave flicked a look at me, nodded at each other, and pointed Humbert toward the beating retreat of the sorcerers. Gustave swiveled to face forward while Humbert pumped his wings and took pursuit.

  After a few moments, Sylvia and Mathieu rose from below and trailed after Humbert.

  I sensed the prickling sensation of someone’s awareness on me. I turned to the right to see all of them staring at me, looking defeated. Marcelo and Clara, Brave and Gertrude, they looked at me as if Nando were dead already.

  A sob tore at my throat.

  Clara ran toward the edge of the roof.

  “Clara, no!” Marcelo screamed.

  She turned and shared a look with him that spoke of things I didn’t fully understand. There was sadness, yes, plenty of it, but there was also something else. Resolve maybe. Hope.

  She peeked over the edge again, then turned back to him. “We have to get him back. I’ll be careful, I promise.”

  Marcelo ran toward her, but he wasn’t fast enough. She stepped off the edge.

  A scream split the night until I realized I was the one screaming and I stopped. Only then was I able to hear Marcelo’s own cry, lower than mine, like a growl, and Sir Lancelot’s small, startled shout.

  Marcelo was looking over the edge, but he wasn’t stepping off of it as she had. He wasn’t that crazy.

  Mordecai, Brave, and Gertrude ran toward the crenelation, snapping me into motion. My feet felt like blocks of lead, but I got them to move.

  Sir Lancelot reached the edge of the roof and flew past it. His small wings beat with fury, hovering him in place.

  He brought a wing to his chest in a human expression of relief, and started to drop. Flustered, he beat both wings to regain flight. “She’s fine. Oh dear, oh dear. I wish she wouldn’t do that. She nearly gave me a heart attack. I haven’t lived this long only to be killed by her recklessness. Why does she do this to us?”

  He swiped at his brow and faltered again. “She leaves me all flustered and upset. Why does she do this to me? She knows I can’t take it.”

  None of the others paid Sir Lancelot much mind, moving to peer over the edge. I was fascinated by the talking owl and his human expressions. If he hadn’t been in the body of the bird, I’d have expected him to glide across this roof with all the grace and elegance of a man of high society. His accent was a mix of, what? High Irish and English nobility?

  Then Clara swooped from below, riding astride one of the sorcerers’ firedrakes. The firedrake seemed angry to be dominated by someone other than his master until Clara bent down and whispered in his ear, trailing a caressing hand along his neck.

  The firedrake’s eyes lost much of their fury and he allowed her to turn him toward the form of Humbert, growing smaller with each flap of his wings toward the lightening horizon.

  As the firedrake pumped his wings to shoot forward, a blur of orange slid by me.

  “No!” Brave and
Marcelo yelled at the same time.

  But Gertrude, now a cat, landed behind her sister on the firedrake, her claws digging into him to avoid sliding off.

  The firedrake snapped his neck around to complain until Gertrude stuck her claws into Clara’s nightgown instead of the creature’s back. Clara soothed another hand along the creature’s neck, and he shot forward, his flight smoothing out, drawing him quickly away from us.

  Sir Lancelot landed awkwardly onto the roof, bringing both wings to his beak. “Oh my. Why—? Why would Gertrude do something like that? Has she lost her mind?”

  No one answered, but from the expressions of all the men, they echoed my thought. Yes, yes she has.

  We watched Clara, Gertrude, and the firedrake retreat in near silence. Only the sounds of Sir Lancelot’s slowly settling unease marred the night, its quiet heavy after the sounds of fighting for our lives.

  Chapter 6

  I continued to stare off into the lightening sky even though I could no longer make out Clara or Gertrude. The dawn had swallowed them up, and I feared she might never spit them back out.

  “Search the bodies,” Mordecai announced from behind me.

  I bristled at what sounded like a cruel order until I turned around and took in the pain of loss—even of those who sought to kill us—all over his weary face. Then I understood. He didn’t want to search the bodies any more than he’d wanted to kill anyone.

  He caught me looking at him and met my eyes. “Look for anything unusual. Anything that might help us win this war they seem determined to wage no matter how many times we tell them we don’t want to fight them.”

  He moved to the body of one of the sorcerers he’d killed and knelt in front of the body. “So much senseless loss,” he said, maybe to himself. “Why won’t they just listen to us and back off?”

  Mordecai was angry, the beads in his braided beard shaking with emotion. “These are skilled magicians, trained in the magical arts. We shouldn’t be fighting each other. Why don’t they ever want to coexist in peace?”