North Star Guide Me Home

by Jo Spurrier

  At the sight of Marima, Ricca squirmed in his grip and held her arms out to her. Marima took her automatically, settling the child on her hip.

  ‘Where did they go?’ Ricca said.

  Cam spoke before Marima could find her voice. ‘You chased them away. You did a good job, Ricca, you kept your mama safe, and me too. Thank you.’

  As he spoke, Cam circled around the chamber, avoiding the slippery gore until he reached the door through which Rasten had vanished. Here, the heat was even worse, and Cam licked his fingers to touch the iron ring of the latch.

  The metal hissed, and he flinched back before it could burn. Pulling his sleeve over his hand, he tried the door anyway, but it wouldn’t even rattle in the frame.

  Marima edged towards the other door. ‘He said we should go on without him.’

  Cam took a step back. ‘So he did.’ He glanced around at them, scowling. Ricca’s eyes were closed, her head lolling on Marima’s shoulder. The child was worn out. I’m not surprised, Cam thought. I’d be ready for a nap, too, if I’d just killed a dozen men in the space of a few moments.

  From beyond the wall came a massive, percussive blast, a noise like the earth itself was bursting open, and the room shook, trembling right down to the roots of the earth, threatening to knock Cam off his feet.

  He turned to the door again, and bit his lip. He knew from watching Sierra that Rasten wouldn’t have gained much power from the men who’d died, and he was wounded to boot. He couldn’t say what Rasten’s chances were, and Marima and the child were depending on him to get them out.

  Cam knotted his hands into fists. ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘follow me.’

  He slipped into the stairwell with Marima at his heels. The noise dropped away with another wall between them, and the air here was cooler and more fresh, smelling of sunlight and earth rather than the tingling, clay-like scent of the deep underground.

  Cam took one look back at the sealed door, and started up the stairs.

  He made it to the next landing before his feet refused to carry him any further. ‘Shit,’ he said.

  Marima gave him a wide-eyed look. ‘What’s wrong?’

  I can’t leave him behind.

  He’d spent years hating Rasten, he’d lain awake at night dreaming of hunting him down, but Rasten had come into an enemy stronghold to find him, had taken a wound fighting for him and was prepared to sacrifice his life. Not only for king and kingdom, but for a pair of innocents.

  By the Black Sun, Cam thought. Whatever else he may be, he’s my man now, and I have a duty. I won’t leave a man behind if I can help it. If he died now, what would it achieve? What comfort would it bring to those who’d suffered at his hands?

  It might be too late. He could be dead already. But I have to try.

  He turned back down the stairs. ‘Stay here,’ he said to Marima. ‘Shout if anyone appears.’

  There was a long-handled axe near the chamber where they’d sheltered. Cam hadn’t noticed it on the way out. The soldiers must have brought it in case he’d found a way to barricade the doors. He picked it up, hefting it between his hands, and marched up to the door, now charred at the edges and giving off wisps of smoke.

  Cam raised the axe and noticed tendrils of Black Sun’s Fire rippling over the blackened steel and flickering between the nailheads on the door.

  The axe bit deep, and by the sixth blow Cam felt it rattle with the impact, and on the tenth it finally broke loose. The door flung open, only to be brought up short by the axe head which was snared on the bronze banding and the heavy, dense wood. Cam set his boot against the wood to wrench it free, sending the door crashing against the wall.

  The heat of the chamber was like stepping into an oven. It stung his eyes, drying the sweat on his face.

  In the centre of the chamber Rasten was struggling with the Akharians. They’d forced him to his knees, wrapping him with bands of power while Rasten fought back with sheets of rippling flames. Cam’s entrance had provided a distraction, for in that instant, all three of them had turned his way.

  One thing Cam knew about mages was that surprise was his best and only weapon. With a roar he charged with the axe raised high, heedless of the heat, the spreading flames of Rasten’s power and the bright white cords of the Akharians’ workings.

  Within the space of a heartbeat Cam felt something settle around his shoulders. It was soft, and cool, like a blanket of freezing mist, driving away the oppressive heat. He paid it no mind. In the long trek from the west he’d grown used to Sierra casting shields over him.

  The nearest of the Akharians turned to him, white mist condensing around his raised hand. He pulled back as though to fling something at Cam, but Rasten slewed around to face him, lunging forward to knock him off balance.

  As his hand made contact, the swelling of the mist abruptly reversed, and the building power drained away. The Akharian froze, his eyes widening with sudden fear.

  Cam’s axe fell, aiming for the spot where the man’s neck became his shoulder. The mage tried to cast a shield, and for an instant it covered him, like armour made from light turned solid, but only for an instant before it winked out — and Cam’s axe bit deep, severing his spine and throat in a single stroke. The mage fell in a spray of blood.

  Rasten was already turning away from the dying man. The other one threw himself back, breaking off the attack to shore up his shields, covering himself in a veil of light so thick that it was opaque.

  It only bought him a few more moments. Even as the mage recoiled, Rasten grabbed for his neck and at his touch that shield, too, began to drain away. Rasten seemed to be at a disadvantage, on his knees and off balance, wounded and gasping for breath. Cam circled around the pair, axe raised for another swing, but before he’d taken more than a few steps, Rasten lashed out with a rope of power and yanked the Akharian’s feet from under him. At once, Rasten was on top of him, with one knee across the man’s throat and a knife in his hand. The mage tried to ward him off, scrabbling with both hands flickering with light and energy as he tried to cast his shield again, panic growing in his eyes as his power refused his call. His hands locked around Rasten’s arm, but Rasten leant against the knife with all his weight, and though the Akharian strained and fought, he couldn’t halt the blade’s descent. There was no sound but the harsh, panting breath of the struggling men, and then a low, wrenching groan as the knife slipped between the mage’s ribs.

  It was only when it struck his heart that the mage’s knotted, white-knuckled hands grew slack. Rasten gave the knife one vicious twist, and at last the mage fell still.

  Rasten shuffled off the limp corpse in its spreading pool of blood, and sat on his heels, shoulders slumped with weariness, breathing hard. After a moment, barely a moment, he reached for the knife again, trying to pull it from the dead man’s chest, but he hadn’t given himself enough time to recover. His hand, slick with blood, slipped from the leather-wrapped hilt.

  Cam dropped the axe, and holding the corpse in place with his foot, wrenched the blade free. Reversing it, he offered the hilt to Rasten. ‘That was quick work with that shield.’

  Rasten met his eye only briefly before his gaze slid away, but after a moment he seemed to catch himself and turned back. ‘That wasn’t me, it was Isidro. He … he came to help me.’ He cleaned the blade on the Akharian’s shirt and returned it to its sheath. He tried to stand, but the effort left him staggering until Cam grabbed his shoulder to steady him. The fight had been hard on him — his face and hands were scorched, and his exposed skin was flecked with tiny, fine cuts, as though he’d been caught in a storm of glass shards.

  ‘Are you steady?’ Cam said. ‘We’re close now, we need to move.’

  Rasten shook himself. ‘I can keep going. Lead the way.’

  Sirri? They’ve dealt with two of the mages, and they’re up again and moving towards you. Any sign of the others?

  Not yet.

  He was still in the Akharian camp, with Nirveli and Delphine piling stones
into bushels and a small knot of scouts and officers crowding around a map nearby.

  By the Black Sun, Sirri, don’t go hunting them, not in your condition. Lay a trap and let them come to you.

  If they get away —

  Then we’ll track them down later. There can’t be many of them left, and they’re a long way from home. We can afford to take our time.

  A scant handful of mages can cause an awful lot of havoc, Sierra said. Just look at the damage we did.

  To be fair, that was mostly you, Isidro said. And none of the Slavers have anything like your talent for destruction. What’s going on?

  She opened her eyes to let him see the charred remains of the stables. A fire sparked by mages cared little for snow and ice still clinging to the shingles. The whole of the roof had been alight before Sierra smothered the flames to spare the beasts trapped inside.

  And now Ardamon faced off against Hespero in the middle of the courtyard. Ardamon had his sword drawn, while Hespero had only a makeshift staff, an old stable broom with the head snapped off, which he’d snatched up as his men spilled out to escape the flames. The garrison trapped in the burning barn outnumbered her small party rather more than two-to-one.

  With her attention on the fight underground, Sierra had ignored the squabble playing out in front of her, but now she could afford to see to this matter. With Isidro watching through her eyes, she swung down from her horse and strode towards the brothers, Ardamon’s men stepping aside to let her through.

  She walked right up to Hespero. He saw her coming, but he didn’t keep his eyes on her, giving most of his attention to Ardamon and the sword in his hand.

  Even if he had recognised her as the greater threat, it wouldn’t have done any good. Sierra gathered power into a crackling sphere of lightning in her palm and hurled it at him. It struck him full in the chest and drove him to the ground, bursting into a tangle of jagged strands that set him writhing and convulsing on the filthy cobblestones.

  The moment he fell, Sierra turned her attention to the men arrayed behind him. ‘Drop your weapons!’ she roared.

  Inside her head, she felt Isidro reach for another pair of stones. The jolt as they dissolved into pure power, pouring through his veins like molten fire, made her heart feel like it would burst from her chest.

  The men did not obey. Some of them looked to their commander, still convulsing on the cobbles. A handful started towards her, weapons raised.

  Sierra flung them back, hurling them across the courtyard. It brought her a surge of power, a flash of pain that swept through her, followed by a riding, golden tide of warmth. There would be some broken bones to bind once this was done.

  Ardamon came to stand by her side. ‘Floren,’ he said. ‘You, Grallic and Tarro, stay here and watch them. Shoot any man who moves.’

  Floren gave him a sharp salute. ‘Yessir.’

  ‘And one of you bind my brother’s hands before he wakes. You know he won’t stay down, and I’d rather let Cam and Mira deal with the traitorous wretch.’ He gave Sierra a crisp nod. ‘What now, my lady?’

  Cam and Rasten reached the stairwell as a tremor rippled through the stone. It began as a shudder, as though the earth itself was shivering, but in the space of a heartbeat it grew to a convulsion. From somewhere below them came a roar of sound, a deep and angry rumble.

  The violence of it set them stumbling — Cam caught himself with a hand on the wall, but Rasten, still reeling from the fight, was too slow to do the same. He staggered, stumbling into the slick pool of blood from the men they’d killed before.

  His boot skidded and he fell, tumbling down the sharp-edged stairs, thrown down by the trembling earth. The fall knocked the breath from him and struck his head against the stone with a stinging scrape along his scalp. When he landed, for a moment he was aware of nothing but pain and the teeth-rattling shaking of the narrow world around him.

  He tried to move, tried to push himself up, but the fall had rattled his skull and struck his nerves numb. His muscles wouldn’t obey his command.

  There was power all around him … with his wits too scrambled to think in words, the cords and nodes of power scattered through the fort seemed to snap into focus to his weary mind. There was a node of power in each of the twisting spiral stairs, and several others besides. They had been dormant, but now each of those knots of power unfolded like a sprouting seed, and sent thick tendrils of energy questing into the very bones of the fortress. Then, like a fungus that rots out the heart of a tree, they were tearing the structure apart.

  It had to be the mage, the last of the three who’d followed him in. If he’d been waiting by the hidden entrance, guarding their retreat, he would have been within striking distance of the weapons they’d left behind as surety. If he’d felt the other two die, he could have moved to set them off. The Akharians couldn’t win at this point, and the survivor must know it — so he was doing everything he could to be sure Cam and his kin didn’t survive either.

  A pair of hands seized Rasten under the shoulders and heaved him up. ‘Come on!’ Cam bellowed over the roar of splintering stone and falling rock. ‘Move!’

  Rasten didn’t have the energy to reply. He took a step, only to have his left leg give way beneath him. It burned with a searing pain that wrenched a groan from his lips. He gritted his teeth against it and forced himself forward. Keep moving. Don’t stop. You’ve had worse than this and pushed through it. One breath at a time, just keep moving.

  Cam started up the stairs again, glancing back at him with a worried frown. ‘What in the hells is going on?’

  ‘Third mage … knows others are dead … he’s tearing the place down.’ Rasten forced himself to set his left foot down. It was feeding Sierra, he told himself. He could feel her up above, feel more power flaring. Was that … was that more mages? Stalking her? He tried to reach for her, but her mind was occupied, full of power. She already knew.

  Cam hurried ahead to Marima and the girl. Rasten could just see them, huddled against the wall, the woman shielding the child with her body as rubble and grit rained down. ‘Climb!’ Cam yelled. ‘Quickly! This whole place is coming down …’ Cracks were spreading through the stone around them, and with a sudden, sickening lurch, Rasten felt the rock under his feet shift, sliding like gravel on a steep slope.

  He gathered his power and sent tendrils of it questing into the cracks to lock it all together, like ice keeping a cliff face from crumbling until the thaw.

  For a moment, the shuddering eased, and in the lull Marima snatched her daughter up and scrambled up the listing, sinking treads. Cam hurried after her, but when he realised that Rasten wasn’t following, he turned back.

  But Rasten could already feel power building beneath them. The third mage had felt him counter the destructive forces working through the fort. Rasten had shown him where they were, and now the mage focused his attention on that spot.

  He struck at them with a hammer of power, pounding at the central pillar of the staircase, and as Rasten tried to shield against it, he was forced to divert some of the energy binding the fractured stone together. With his strength divided, Rasten couldn’t keep a man-sized chunk of the column from falling away.

  It tumbled down into a black void — the levels below them were gone, crumbled into rubble.

  Without the supporting spine, the sharp-edged stairs began to sag, and Rasten didn’t dare divert power to shore them up. When Cam turned back, he set one foot on a listing tread, only to have it give way beneath him and fall into the pit.

  Cam almost went with it, throwing himself down on the stairs, skinning his fingers on the rough stone as he scrabbled for a handhold. Beside him, one of the dead men slowly slid off, falling like a rag doll into the blackness.

  Breathing hard, Cam scrambled upwards, but once he had steady ground beneath him, he held a hand out to Rasten. ‘Come on,’ he shouted.

  Rasten swallowed hard and tried to stand, while still holding the stones together and keeping up the shield. T
he Akharian struck again and as the force met Rasten’s shield it flashed with light, a brilliant, pure white from the Akharian and the deep flush of flame from Rasten, lighting up the ruin of the stairwell and setting the walls around them shuddering again.

  He couldn’t stand. His leg gave way again with a searing flash of pain, so bad that for a moment he felt he was back in the stocks. The leg was broken.

  The pain drew Sierra’s attention, and he felt her awareness focus on him like a hawk’s sharp gaze. Rasten! You’re hurt?

  At once, Isidro was there, too. He’d pulled away once the Akharians were dead, but Rasten knew he hadn’t gone far. I’ll help him, Sirri. You focus on the two you’re facing.

  Rasten felt her brief assent as she pulled away. She’s facing more mages? he asked Isidro.

  Yes. I’ll send her power if she needs it.

  Can … can you spare any for me?

  Isidro replied with a rush of energy, heady and golden. Shuddering from the strength of it, Rasten poured it into his shields as the mage pounded against them, again and again.

  Rasten raised his face to Cam, frowning down at him in the gloom. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Run! Get the woman and the girl out. The mage is fixed on me, he can’t sense you.’

  ‘Can you hold on?’ Cam said.

  If he said no, Cam wouldn’t leave. Rasten knew it right down in his bones. He nodded, just as a familiar noise echoed down from above — the crack of thunder, loud enough to make them both flinch out of reflex.

  ‘I’ll get help,’ Cam said. ‘We’ll come back for you. Just hold on, alright? That’s an order.’

  Sierra strode into the main keep with Ardamon at her side, bare steel in his hand. ‘Can you tell where they are?’ he hissed.

  ‘No.’ She could feel Rasten, scorched and aching, and Hespero, slowly regaining consciousness, but not the mages. There was power in the air, but it was all-pervasive, everywhere, and she was nowhere near sensitive enough to distinguish the background noise from a pair of mages trying to hide. ‘Be patient. They’ll show themselves.’