by Isabo Kelly
She obviously doesn’t want you hurt, Arlana, so maybe we can come to some arrangement. Wonder if she’s a gambling woman? With a cocky grin, Vic stepped from behind the pillar, placing herself closer to the window.
The sorceress snarled. “A woman? How disappointing.”
Vic chuckled. “Oh, I think we can still come to an arrangement.”
“Really?”
The white-haired woman took a step closer, and Vic shook her head. “Uh huh. I know you need the child alive.” She took two steps backward. “I even suspect why she’s been brought here. And I know that, if she’s harmed, it’ll be very bad for you.”
The sorceress froze, her eyes narrowing to mere slits. “You won’t harm the child,” she said.
But Vic’s trained eye detected her uncertainty. “Oh, I’m prepared to kill her if I have to.” She moved backward a few more steps, never taking her gaze from the woman.
“The babe’s mother is in the courtyard. She would not have come this far to let her daughter be killed.”
“I’m not the child’s mother.” Vic stopped. She felt the cold air from the window just behind her, felt the first touch of sunshine on her back.
The sorceress paused, studying her.
“An arrangement then,” she agreed after several silent minutes.
Vic nodded.
“And what would you like, girl? You want power? Wealth?”
She shrugged. “You’re offering power? Wealth? Until I set the child down. Then you’ll offer me death. Yes?”
The sorceress smiled. “I like you, girl. You have a quick mind. Too bad. This would have been easier if you were a man.”
At that instant, both doors came to life. The one leading back to the stairs began to shudder as something large pounded against it. The other, leading to nowhere, began to glow with a subtle brownish light.
The sorceress’s gaze flicked to both doors. Vic took advantage of her momentary distraction to step onto the window’s low sill. She could still stand at her full height inside the frame. When the sorceress turned back, she said, “Looks like mom wants her daughter back.”
Arlana began to whimper again.
“We’re still at a standoff,” Vic said as casually as she could manage, but her heart pounded loudly against her rib cage. She shifted the baby into a more comfortable, one-armed hold, freeing one hand. “Mine are at one door. Yours are on their way,” she nodded to the glowing door. “And I still hold the child.” Her wrist knife dropped into her hand. She set it lightly just beneath Arlana’s neck.
“Standoff?” The sorceress tilted her head to the side and pursed her red lips. “I don’t think so.”
Vic sent her knife flying before the sorceress finished her sentence. She swished her hand absently at the air. The knife skittered harmlessly to the floor. But it was all the distraction Vic needed.
She was out the window and up the first several stones when she heard the sorceress’s bellow of rage. Without looking behind her, she negotiated the perilous steps to the top of the tower. Her only hope was to keep out of the sorceress’s way until the king’s soldiers could break into the tower’s upper room. She didn’t want to consider what would happen if the sorceress’s allies arrived through the other door first.
She crawled over a crenel, Arlana still held firmly in one arm, and onto the wooden roof of the tower just as a flash of light exploded in the air over her head. She ducked instinctively, then raced to the opposite side of the roof where she could look into the courtyard and down to the tower’s western window. She couldn’t see any movement from within the window, but a glimpse of black material revealed that the sorceress was already heading up the exterior stairs.
Damn! Gauging the distance back to the window, she frowned. She wouldn’t be able to climb that far and still hold onto the baby. She glanced back over her shoulder to the point where the stairs reached the roof and jerked her black sash from around her waist with her free hand. She looked over the roof, hoping for signs of a secret hatch, the type that would open back into the room below and have a ladder extension. But the wood planking was unbroken.
Her focus returned to her only other option. She fumbled, working to form an improvised sling for Arlana when the sorceress crested the battlement. Slipping effortlessly between the merlons, she gained the roof. Her face was set in lines of controlled fury. Vic watched her closely, warily, even as she continued tying a sling with her sash.
“Now what, girl?” the woman snarled, her voice harsh. Sweat beaded her forehead, dripping down her jaw. Her eyes were sunken in her pretty, oval face.
Vic’s eyes narrowed. The climb couldn’t have been that hard.
When Vic didn’t answer, the sorceress took a step toward her and bellowed, “Set the child down. Now!” Her voice dropped to a hiss. “Or you’ll die a slow, painful death. I promise you that.”
“I don’t think so,” Vic said evenly, trying to get the sash around one shoulder without taking her attention from the raging magician. She nodded at the woman’s sweat-soaked features and smiled. “Bit out of shape? Or is it the altitude?”
The sorceress screamed in a language Vic didn’t know and flung her hand outward. The gesture gave her just enough warning to duck to one side as the merlon behind her exploded in a shower of stone. But her movements were clumsy and off balance because of the extra weight of the child. In her haste to dodge the blow, she dropped her sash.
Before she could snatch it back, a second merlon erupted just to her left, forcing her into another clumsy dive. Arlana shrieked once, then fell eerily silent. Vic didn’t have time to worry about the baby’s silence as another flash of power blackened the wood in front of her.
The sorceress’s features, creased with strain and concentration, suddenly relaxed. She smiled. And Vic’s stomach dropped. She took a step back toward the shattered battlement, away from the grinning woman.
“I should have guessed,” the sorceress said, her voice ragged and raspy. “That onyx only works on my mage sight.”
She laughed, not the maniacal laughter Vic expected, but a rueful, self-mocking chuckle. Vic’s gaze darted to the discarded sash, then down at Arlana before meeting the sorceress’s blue-eyed gaze again. She took another step toward the edge of the roof. And froze.
She tried to move, tried to lift her feet, to turn her body. And couldn’t. Just like in her nightmare, her body refused to respond to mental commands. Panic flared, chilling her skin and paralyzing her mind. She watched helplessly as the sorceress approached and took Arlana from her motionless arms.
“So much energy wasted on you, girl,” the woman breathed. “Energy I do not have to spare. I should have done this sooner. Ah well.”
A bead of sweat dripped down the sorceress’s pale cheek and dropped onto Arlana’s forehead. Arlana never uttered a sound. Vic wondered absently if the baby was under the same spell as she, but the thought vanished quickly beneath her fear.
The sorceress shook her head, sighed and turned, walking back toward the external stairway. Vic had a split second to wonder if she’d simply be left there when her body lifted from the ground.
Just before stepping through the crenel and onto the stairs, the sorceress turned to look at her. “Seems a shame to kill you, girl. You’d have made an excellent sacrifice. Such strong will. Such arrogance. But…”
The last thing Vic saw was the back of the woman’s head before her world spun and her paralyzed body went tumbling over the edge of the tower.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jacob grunted with the effort to stand. Pain shot through him, blacking his vision and stealing his labored breathing. He settled against the wall, sweat pouring over his face, and ground his teeth together, trying to remain conscious against the draining flow of blood.
He closed his eyes. The sounds of nearby battle swirled with the ringing in his own ears, building a discordant but lulling music. The heavy scent of blood, sweat and fear enveloped him like a blanket. Where his right hand pressed into the packed e
arth, he felt the cool edge of steel.
Blinking open his eyes, Jacob glanced at the tower where Victoria had disappeared, then he looked down. The dagger the white magician had used to try and kill him rested between his hand and his thigh, dark with his own blood.
Victoria’s dagger.
He closed his fingers over the hilt, cradling it fiercely. Victoria had to live. She had to!
The bright crisp winter day suddenly dimmed. He looked up, the dagger still firmly held in his palm, to see a huge GeMorin staring down at him. This goblin was bigger than any he’d seen. A blue tattoo circled his biceps, but his dress and saber were of the same caliber as the rest of the GeMorin.
For a long, calm moment, they stared at each other, gazes locked. The GeMorin nodded his head, a strange, unreadable expression in his dark, heavy-lidded eyes. “You are General Marin.”
Since it wasn’t a question, Jacob didn’t bother to answer.
“I am GeRon, clan chief of the GeMorin tribe.”
The goblin never moved, but Jacob sensed a slight shifting of muscles, a settling of his stance, a tightening of his hold on the saber’s grip.
“You should not die by the efforts of a magician, warrior.”
Jacob felt GeRon’s deep, quiet voice in his bones, like the beginnings of an earthquake.
He stared into the goblin’s face, seeing what could almost be called respect. Respect mingled with unreserved determination and cool calculation. There was no regret, only resignation. The expression of a warrior, Jacob acknowledged with a deep breath. He nodded to the goblin clan chief as the saber swung into the air.
He’d experienced this before, the detachment, the lack of fear, the rapid, clear movement of thought, the crystal sharpness of reality. But he’d never felt the edge of sadness as keenly as he did facing death this time.
GeRon might not regret what was about to happen, Jacob thought as his fingers circled the hilt of Victoria’s dagger for the last time, but he would.
Vic struck the step with a crunch, pain exploding along her side, ripping her breath from her lungs. Several heartbeats passed as she sucked in air, before she realized her fall to the ground had been intercepted by the stepping stones along the tower wall. She looked along the steps, expecting at any moment to see the sorceress. Then she realized she could move again.
The fall had left her just below the western window, one of the last stones still intact before the wall sheered away. A few feet to the right and she would have tumbled all the way to the ground below. She swallowed hard but pushed aside the rolling fear of what could have happened. She couldn’t spare the time to think about it now. Instead, she scrambled painfully to her feet, her breath exploding again at the shock of pain from her side. Teeth gritted, she climbed the remaining two steps to the western window and tumbled inside.
The door leading nowhere was glowing brighter. The sickly brown color of its light had deepened to an almost black. The door leading to the main stairway inside the tower still shook under the onslaught of the king’s soldiers trying desperately to break in. From the window, she heard the first wailing cries of the baby.
And those cries grew closer.
Biting her lip against the ache throughout one side of her body, she ducked behind one of the wooden pillars across the room from the west window. She unsheathed her second calf dagger and the dart that rested near the small of her back, swallowing a groan at the movement. The sorceress entered moments later. Arlana’s wailing voice echoed in the open room, mingling with the thudding from the stairwell door and a new, low rumbling Vic felt more than heard.
Dust shook loose from the wooden ceiling. She blinked it away, wiping her eyes and face with the back of one hand as she listened to the sorceress move through the room. When those movements stilled, she held her breath. Silence. She spared a quick glance around the pillar.
The sorceress stood with her back to the thief, her head bowed, her shoulders rising and falling with heavy breaths. Arlana was once again in the stone cradle.
Knowing that her daggers could be stopped if the magicians saw them coming, she flipped the dart so she held the point in her fingertips. And aimed for the middle of the sorceress’s neck. She’d only get one shot. It had to count.
She took a deep breath and let the dart fly though her injury screamed in protest. Pain seared her body, disrupting her aim and nearly doubling her over. She clamped one hand to her side and gulped a few quick, shallow breaths. The sound of an outraged scream snapped her gaze back to the sorceress.
The dart protruded from the back of the woman’s right shoulder. A painful, but not fatal, wound.
Instinct sent Vic plunging forward, despite her pain, her calf dagger raised. She had to kill the sorceress before the woman acted. Or Vic would be the one to die.
But the sorceress was quicker to recover than she’d hoped. The woman spun, blue eyes glistening with pain and anger, and flung her left hand out. Vic froze, once again paralyzed by the sorceress’s magic. Inside, she started to tremble.
“You should be dead,” the woman hissed.
Her attractive features were now drawn, making her skin look too small to span the bones of her face. Sweat beaded her forehead, dampening the edges of her short white hair. As Vic watched helplessly, she pulled the dagger from her shoulder and snarled at the bloodied dart. Then she chuckled, a low, evil sound.
“You’re really quite amazing, girl.” Her voice was quiet, but not as ragged as it had been on the roof. “You thought to deal with a magician? With no more than a set of daggers and that trinket at your neck?” She tsked, shaking her head. “Amazing,” she murmured, “but not very smart.”
Frantically, Vic tried again to move, knowing it was futile but unable to stop herself. She looked at the baby, her little face pinched and red as she continued to wail. I’m sorry, Arlana. In the next instant, panic supplanted rational thought as her feet left the ground.
Air whipped past her face as she flew toward the tower wall. Helpless to bring her arms up to block the impact, she slammed hard against the stones and dropped to the floor like a bird shot with an arrow. Air exploded from her lungs. Fresh pain coursed through her body.
And she still couldn’t move.
Before she could draw more than a single breath, she was rising from the floor again, flying toward another wall. This one she hit shoulder first. She felt a bone crack and would have screamed, but her mouth wouldn’t open. Blackness edged her vision, pulling her toward unconsciousness.
The scream she couldn’t push past her lips echoed in her mind through the fog of pain, joining the deafening chorus of pounding and shouting from behind the door, the cries of Arlana, the hysterical laugh of the sorceress, and the strange rumbling sound she felt more than heard. Too much noise. Bile rose in her throat, choking her. She tried to cough and failed. Breaths came in shallow gasps, but not enough. She could move her eyes, but the pain and noise were too much. When she felt her body come off the ground again, she clenched her eyes shut, not wanting to see the wall coming toward her.
Then a silence, sudden and complete, filled the tower room, and she knew she’d died. She had enough time to be relieved that death had come so quickly. An instant later, she dropped with a grunt to the wooden floor. Beneath her, the entire tower trembled. Her eyes flew open in time to see the sorceress staring down at Arlana, eyes wide with astonishment and horror. Then the room exploded into sharp shards of light, cutting the air like broken glass. Vic shut her eyes again, covering her face with her uninjured arm.
Her eyelids glowed red for two heartbeats and then the light faded. Spots of blue and red danced against her lids. She blinked, slowly opening her eyes. She looked at her arm for a long moment before realizing she had control of her body again. Lowering her arm, she looked around the room.
Arlana lay atop the stone cradle, cooing to her fingers as if nothing had happened. The door leading nowhere had vanished. In its place, only a stone wall and the red stains of what had once been
candles. The sorceress had vanished as well. The air was heavy with the smell of something burnt.
From across the room, the remaining door burst open. Kevin charged in and stopped. He stared blankly at the scene for a moment. Then he dropped to his knees beside the stone cradle and lifted his daughter into his arms. Tiya pushed through the soldiers blocking the doorway and ran to her husband’s side. Tears streamed as she laughed in relief. Kevin handed the baby to her and wrapped both wife and daughter in his arms.
Vic made an effort to sit but collapsed back to the floor, blackness once again threatening the edges of her vision. She released a slow breath, thinking that maybe passing out wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Kevin was at her side by the time her vision cleared. “Victoria, are you hurt?”
She smiled wanly. “I think I’ve broken some things.”
He helped her to a sitting position, an effort that stole her breath and brought tears to her eyes, then he looked around the room.
“What happened?”
She watched the now happy baby cooing at her crying mother. “Arlana must have decided it was time to see her mom again.”
Kevin’s forehead creased, his mouth hitched up in disbelief. She just shrugged with her uninjured arm. She scanned the soldiers filing into the room. Garath limped in, his sword still unsheathed. She smiled weakly at him when he started toward her and Kevin.
But she didn’t see the one person she hoped to see and fear once again grabbed her. “Jacob?” she whispered to Kevin, not meeting his gaze.
“He’s with Henry.”
She let out a slow breath and closed her eyes. “He’s okay?”
“He’s hurt, but he’ll heal.”
Something in his voice caught her attention. “Henry?”
The young giant exchanged glances with Garath, then looked down at the floor and shook his head.
He whispered, “He’s alive, but he won’t survive the day.”
Her shoulders slumped on an exhale. She bit her bottom lip and looked at Garath. His expression mirrored the sad resignation in Kevin’s.