by Kyra Halland
“I love you too, darlin’.” He bent his head down and kissed her, not long but deep and full, and she pressed back with the kiss, trying to tell him everything there was no more time to say. Then, hand in hand, they walked out of the burned office into the crossroads to face Elspetya Lorentius and her gang.
Slowly, the gunmen who were able to get back on their feet arranged themselves in a wide half-circle around and behind Lainie and Silas, cutting off any escape to the side and rear. They needn’t have bothered; despite the weakness of her knees and the pounding of her heart, running was the last thing Lainie meant to do.
Fixing her awareness on the feel of the ground under her boots, she tapped into the magic flowing beneath the earth and began drawing a stream of it into herself to supplement what remained of her own power. She wasn’t ready to attack yet; she wanted to get a sense of what they were dealing with first and form a strategy instead of draining herself in a blunt, unplanned assault. But when the time did come to fight or defend themselves, she wanted to have plenty of power to hand. Beside her, she could also feel Silas drawing power from the earth as he waited and watched.
Beams from the setting sun over the mountains to the west slipped beneath the clouds, washing Madam Lorentius’s stern, pale face in golden light. She looked so like Lainie’s Pa, yet entirely unlike him in her proud, haughty expression. “Merlovan, darling,” she said to Lord Astentias, whose white suit, hair, and hat were likewise brushed with gold in the sunset, “I am glad you were wrong and that my granddaughter does not lie buried beneath thousands of barrel-weights of snow in the Gap. Although I am not happy that you were foolish enough to believe any reports put out by the Mage Council after that ridiculous raid.”
“My apologies, my dear,” Lord Astentias replied in his deep, mellow voice. “I don’t know which I found harder to believe, that anyone could survive that avalanche, or that Venedias and Miss Banfrey would perish so easily and so pointlessly. I was just as glad as you to learn that the report was false.”
“Indeed.” Madam Lorentius looked at Lainie now. “You are looking well, granddaughter, all things considered.”
“Is my Pa okay?” Lainie demanded.
“Your father is unharmed. He has been gracious enough to allow us the use of his home. Not willingly, at first, but he eventually saw reason.” Lainie felt a sudden probing at her mind and spirit, not rough, but firm and no-nonsense, with no effort to be polite about it. She didn’t bother to resist it; she had nothing to hide from her grandmother.
“You are strong,” Madam Lorentius said when she finished her inspection. “Stronger than I would have guessed – even stronger than you were at our last encounter. Had I known that my youngest son was capable of siring a mage of such power, I would have kept him with me. I see you have even managed to undo the fertility block on Mr. Venedias. That is, I assume the child is his?”
“Of course it’s his,” Lainie said. “Unlike some people, I know how to be faithful to my marriage vows.”
“Don’t judge me, girl,” Madam Lorentius snapped. “I have only ever done what was necessary.”
“Like throwing your husband and children off his own family’s land and giving it to that man’s son?” She jerked her head towards Lord Astentias.
“I was entirely within my rights. Do you think it was easy for me, a half-Plain bastard, to make my way in mage society? That gift cemented an alliance that has been vital to my ability to survive and thrive among mages, in addition to bringing me a great deal of happiness for nearly forty years. Now, leave off this vindictive foolishness, this pointless dwelling on the past. Join with me, both of you. Join your strength to ours in defending our people against the murderous foreigners who threaten our future. Help me turn this gods-forsaken wilderness into the rich and powerful homeland for our kind that it should be.”
“Did you hear that?” Lainie called out to the Plain men around them. “She don’t care about any of you! She wants to take the Wildings for mages. You’d be worse off here than your folk were back in Granadaia!”
A few of the men shuffled where they stood, looking uncertain, but one of them said, “She saved us from the blueskins. She said she’d treat us fair if we helped her.”
“More like, she said if you didn’t obey her, you’d end up like those folks hanging from the gallows, or worse,” Lainie retorted.
“There is no need,” Madam Lorentius cut in, “for you to concern yourself with my arrangements with these gentlemen. Your concern is, or should be, the future of your family and our people. If you ally yourselves with me, your child will grow up in comfort and luxury, in far better circumstances than you can provide for him living as outlaws in this wilderness. Of course, he must be born on Wildings soil; as you’ve learned, Merlovan has had some very interesting results with breeding mages of Granadaian blood on Wildings soil.” She indicated her white-haired lover with a nod. “But you may raise him wherever you wish, here or in Granadaia. Conceived and born on Wildings soil of two powerful mages, one with the Wildings strain herself and the other of pure Island descent, and trained in the Granadaian manner, he will be a mage of unprecedented power and will command the best of everything in life.”
A growl rose in Lainie’s throat as Silas’s hand tightened around hers. She spread her other hand protectively over her belly. “Don’t you dare touch my baby. I won’t let you turn him into a monster like you.”
Madam Lorentius’s eyes narrowed. “You dare to insult me after what I’ve offered you?” Deep purple flared in her hand. The mages in front of her quickly moved aside, and she flung a wave of shimmering power towards Lainie and Silas. Immediately, they raised a shield, rose and blue mingling with amber. Madam Lorentius’s attack hit the shield with stunning force and Lainie and Silas staggered back, holding on to each other to keep from falling.
The noise and light of the magical explosion faded. Lainie and Silas pulled what remained of the power from the shield back in, then Silas moved to put himself between Lainie and Madam Lorentius. “I guess you’re having trouble understanding,” he said, “so I’ll make it clear. You’ve got nothing we want. You are a threat to everything we care about. We’ll send you to the hells before we let you destroy this land and everything that’s good about it. This is your last warning; you can still give this up and go back to Granadaia.”
Lainie added, “If you think I’m going to side with you after you hurt Silas and killed my brother and so many other people, you’re dead wrong. Oh, and by the way, his name was Blake. You never even asked.”
“Even after that, you defy me,” Madam Lorentius said, a snarl entering her voice. “I told you, I have only done what was necessary. I would have preferred to keep you alive so you can join us, but if you and that man insist on standing in our way, I will do what must be done to move forward with my vision for this land.”
Lainie let rose-colored power mixed with amber flow into her hand. “And we’ll do what we have to do to stop you from destroying the Wildings and see justice done for all the people you’ve killed.” She shaped the power into a mass so dense it almost had physical weight, and drew back to throw it.
“Now!” Madam Lorentius shouted.
Half a dozen different-colored magical attacks flew towards Lainie and Silas. Lainie heaved her own attack, which was joined by a flare of dark amber glowing blue at the edges. The attacks met halfway in an unearthly explosion of noise and light.
The shockwave sent Lainie flying back to hit the ground with a hard jolt. Her senses briefly blanked out, then she came to herself again. She and Silas were sprawled on the ground a good three or four measures back from where they had been standing. On the other side of the crossroads, Madam Lorentius and her mages also lay scattered, and the Plain men surrounding Silas and Lainie had been flattened as well. A few of them and a couple of Madam Lorentius’s mages were stirring and starting to get up. Lainie pushed herself up onto her hands and knees as Silas groaned and rolled over then also sat up.
&nb
sp; From the corner of her eye, Lainie saw a man behind Silas sit up and aim a gun at him. In one motion, she turned, drew, and fired. The gunman shouted in pain and clapped his free hand to the shoulder of his shooting arm.
One of the mages staggered to his feet now, a bright yellow-green ball forming in his hands. Silas fired and hit him square in the chest, and he fell back. A second mage, this one shielded, began preparing another attack. Unsteadily, Lainie forced herself to her feet and started shaping her own attack.
A crack of gunfire sounded behind her; pain pierced her right thigh, and she staggered and lost her hold on her half-formed attack, the power dissipating in her hands. Silas spun and fired at whoever had shot her. A choked-off cry of pain told Lainie he had hit his target.
Lainie threw a shield around herself and Silas and looked down to see blood coming from a wound in her thigh. A wet warmth was spreading down the back of her leg, as well. She twisted to look; the bullet had gone clean through the muscles of her outer thigh. Silas grabbed a kerchief from his duster pocket and bound it tightly around her leg. “You going to be okay?”
Her leg throbbed, and she felt a little dizzy, but she didn’t think she’d lost that much blood already. More likely it was just fatigue, pregnancy, and the shock of the injury. “I’ll be fine.”
Madam Lorentius was on her feet again, supported by Merlovan Astentias and the big hybrid mage. A shield went up in front of the three of them and the A’ayimat wiseman. “I am ashamed that a mage of my own bloodline would use those barbaric foreign weapons!” Madam Lorentius said.
“You don’t seem to have a problem with your men using them against us!” Lainie retorted.
“You are an insolent little snip. I would almost think you want me to kill you.” A ball of power began forming between Madam Lorentius’s hands. Several of the other mages, now recovered, also started preparing new attacks behind their own shields.
The confrontation was about to heat up again. Lainie thought fast to come up with a plan. Against a dozen mages plus a dozen or more Plain gunmen, her and Silas’s best bet was to take control of the fight before it went on any longer and reduce the odds to something more in their favor. In Sandostra, she had fought with guns first to conserve her power, but here, she and Silas could draw on more Wildings magic if they needed to, though Silas had told her he had discovered that the layer of amber magic could run thin if too much was taken in a short space of time. Even considering that limitation, if they started with magic, they could hit several enemies at once and reduce their numbers, while bullets could only strike one person at a time. And magic was more effective if their enemy was shielding.
“Magic first?” she asked Silas in a low voice.
He nodded. “Take out as many of them as fast as we can and wear down the rest, then guns to finish them off.”
“Okay. Get an attack ready. As soon as I take the shield down, hit them as hard as you can, and when they go to counterattack, I’ll push as much of their power back into them as I can.”
“Got it.” Power began to swell in Silas’s hand, blue mixed heavily with dark amber and brown.
“Don’t go too deep,” she reminded him. Had the amber magic beneath their feet already started to thin out? She hoped not; the fight had barely even begun.
Silas nodded once, absently, his face closed in concentration. The sphere of magic swelled to fill his arms. “Ready,” he said.
Lainie let the shield down. As soon as it disappeared, Silas heaved a wide wave of blue and brown towards the enemy mages. In the same instant, the shield in front of Madam Lorentius split and she threw a bolt of purple magic through the narrow gap. The purple bolt pierced Silas’s wave and flew on towards Lainie. She and Silas scrambled aside, barely dodging the bolt, as the blue and brown wave slammed into the enemies’ shield, which had already re-formed to protect Elspetya and her companions.
“How’d they do that?” Lainie gasped.
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen that before.”
Two mages on the right had let down their shields, attacks at the ready. Before they could launch them, Lainie thrust out with her hands and her power, driving the power in their attacks back inside them. Then her own power hit a barrier and rebounded back into her. Internal shields, she realized, preventing her from suppressing their power all the way. Elspetya had been expecting that trick.
So much for her strategy. Lainie called up a normal attack and threw it against those two mages before they could recover. Three mages on the left dropped their shields and launched attacks; Silas heaved an enormous ball of power back at them, then Lainie threw another shield around herself and Silas. Silas’s attack plowed into the three mages as their attacks smashed into Lainie’s shield with a bone-jarring impact. Her hold on the shield slipped; it fell apart, and Silas took advantage of the opening to launch another attack.
At the same instant, a rope of entwined purple and silver power whipped around Lainie’s left ankle, sending a burning shock up her leg. With a mighty pull, Elspetya and Astentias yanked her foot out from under her and started pulling her towards them.
“Lainie!” Silas lunged to grab her; a blast of power from another one of the mages sent him tumbling away from her.
Lainie dug her heels into the ground, trying to fight against the pull as her Elspetya and Astentias dragged her closer. Several of the other mages added their power to the purple and silver rope, and the pull got even stronger.
“Lainie!” Silas shouted again. She twisted over onto her stomach and saw him get to his feet. Gunshots rang out; he dropped to the ground.
“Silas!” She dug hard with her fingers into the cold, packed dirt until her fingernails tore and bled. Still, handspan by handspan, the magical rope relentlessly hauled her closer to Madam Lorentius and her gang. “Silas,” she sobbed.
He moved. She caught her breath; he was alive. He got up on his knees and held still, his hands flat on the ground. Beneath the earth, Lainie felt a massive shifting of power. Then he turned about sharply, flinging a wide arc of utter blackness at the gunmen behind him.
They died screaming like all the damned in all the hells.
Chapter 26
SILAS TURNED TO face Elspetya and her mages, darkness pouring off of him. Fighting against the relentless pull of the magical rope, Lainie frantically tried to think of a way to keep him from falling deeper into the Sh’kimech’s control.
First, though, before she could help him, she had to free herself. She twisted around onto her back and lashed out at the rope with a blade of power. It cut through the rope, but even as the blade passed through, the rope grew back together and more strands of power joined it, strengthening it. She called up more power and blasted the rope apart with a burst of magic that sent another shock up her leg. The last piece of the rope, wrapped around her ankle, dissolved.
She threw a shield, rolled over onto her hands and knees, set her palms flat on the ground, and reached deep into the earth. Her own power wasn’t running too low yet, but these mages were too strong, and there were too many of them; she needed more than her own power if she was going to beat them and take command of the Sh’kimech who were possessing Silas. She breathed in, pulling power into herself, the warm, amber-colored magic of the earth of the Wildings, shading darker the deeper she went until it turned black. Ice filled her veins and darkness veiled her vision.
She dropped her shield. With a thrust of her arms, she pushed the power she had taken in out towards the enemy. Attacks in a rainbow of colors met her own, then gave way before it. She drove the enemy mages’ magic back into them until she hit resistance – the internal shields. They buckled, but didn’t give way completely. Still, it was enough to leave the other mages stunned for the moment. She drew the unspent power from her attack back into herself, threw another shield, and got to her feet.
Her body felt heavy with power; the world wavered behind the darkness that veiled her sight. Beside her, she sensed a presence, a dense, pulsing mass of power
that felt intimately familiar. Silas. She reached for him and took his hand. To her distant physical senses, it felt warm and sticky, as if with blood. But the power surging through both of them made such physical concerns seem trivial.
Sister, you are ours, said the voices of the Sh’kimech, many and one at the same time. And he is ours as well, since he is yours. You two are one; join us, and be one with us also. None will dare harm or threaten you, for we will destroy all those who do.
A sharp, painful yearning flared to life inside Lainie to dwell in safety and darkness, hidden away from their enemies, to be one forever with Silas and with these her kin. No one would try to hurt them or tear them apart again, and she would never need to fear losing him. Silas’s grip tightened on her hand, and she sensed the same desire within him.
Deep inside of her, though, rebellion rose up against her longing. Something bright and alive defied the darkness that filled her, opposed it, rejected it…
Her child. Growing within her body, nourished by her blood, yet a living being in his own right, not simply a piece of her. It was her child’s life force and her motherly heart and instincts that fought against the Sh’kimech’s offer. She had no right to condemn her baby to an eternity of darkness, no right to deny him the chance to draw a free breath, to walk under the sun, to know life in all its sorrows and joys, hardships and pleasures.
No, she said. Refusing the Sh’kimech and their seductive promises was as hard as if she was starving and had to push away a table loaded with food, or dying of thirst and turning away from a stream of clear water. Only the sense of her baby warm and alive inside her, and the love for him that had taken root in her heart and soul, gave her the strength. I’m your Sister, it’s true. I’m grateful for your help against my enemies. But I don’t belong to you. Neither does my husband, or our baby. We belong on the surface of the world, in the sunlight, not in the dark with you. You chose the dark, a long time ago, but I choose to live in the light. She put every shred of her will into her refusal and began dragging herself back up out of the darkness.