The woman thrust the energy at Ran and he ducked and rolled. He crashed through a door and stumbled into the next room as the wall behind him exploded in a shower of splinters and flame.
He turned and brought his hands up to shield against the next attack, a brilliant flash of blue heat bursting from them to engulf what remained of the doorway and a day lounge. The energy scoured through him—blistering, shocking and violent—but he had no way of stopping it.
The mage staggered back and laughed between gulps of air. ‘Good form, boy, good form! Let’s see if you can do it again, shall we?’
She sent another cracking bolt across the room. Ran crouched and imagined a wall of blue light between them, a defence she couldn’t penetrate. Her shot hit something beside his head and dissipated with a loud zap. Ran’s ears filled with a high ringing and he glanced over his outstretched hands.
The mage-woman crawled to her feet and glared, her once perfect robe shredded down the left side, revealing a thigh puckered with the scars of an old burn. His mouth went cotton-dry and he edged away, aware that the woman knew this power better than he could possibly hope to. The darkness in her eyes deepened and she limped forwards, hands generating and weaving strands of crackling magic.
‘It strikes me as amusing, young prince, that you’ve no clue what’s happening in that tiny brain of yours. You might as well be sprouting tits for all the use this gift will be in your clumsy hands. You’re a black-blood Orthian, not worth the cost of feeding. I will never understand why the gods insist on blessing errant scum like you with magic.’ She shot another withering bolt of lightning at Ran and he dived for cover behind a nearby sofa. The sustained stream of energy carved through the wall and an already broken window, following him as he scrambled to escape.
‘I heard them call you Black Prince. Is that because of your curse?’ the mage-woman shouted over the furious sound of magic. ‘It might be best if I do all Coraidin a favour, and eradicate you! It should save us all an enormous amount of—’
Ran launched at her from behind a solid timber desk, hands wide and full of wild magic. He closed them around her neck and slammed her back onto the stone floor, his full weight on her chest.
Her ribs snapped and she screamed, magic vanishing from her desperate hands which were clawing his face. Her nails bit into his cheeks, her teeth snapping at the inside of his wrists as she fought to break his hold. Ran dug his fingers hard into the creamy flesh of her neck and let go of the energy coursing through his bones.
Under the force of his clenched hands, the woman jerked and shivered, beating wildly at Ran while his magic tore through her skin and pierced the bones of her spine. There was a jolt and his magic shattered the walls of something within her. The tendrils of his energy burrowed into the source of her power and pulled, drawing away what remained of her magic.
‘No!’ she screamed, her voice harsh through the grip of Ran’s large hands. He was covered in her blood up to his elbows, but she flailed against him without weakening at all. ‘I—won’t—let—you!’
The claw of a hand found purchase in his dark hair and yanked down hard. Ran ground his teeth and bit back a scream as her fingernails dug into his scalp, desperation shaking her clenched fist. She pulled harder and drew him towards the floor. If she brought him any lower his balance would tip and she could well throw him off.
Ran lifted the mage by the neck and slammed her head back to the cold floor with as much force as he could manage. He lifted and hammered her skull into the stone again, thumbs and fingers buried in her flesh. Blood splattered across his face as his magic seemed to swirl, entirely out of control, building with intensity like a fire-storm roaring through a tinder dry forest.
The excess magic pulsed up and down Ran’s arms, his muscles bulging with added power, his chest heaving with strain. She continued to thrash like a fish out of water, and again he lifted her head then drove it down onto the floor. This time it cracked like an egg, split from the back of her skull to between her wild eyes.
The pulsing spark of her magic went out.
The thrashing stopped.
Her arms fell with a wet slap into the expanding pool of blood and her legs slid away from where she belted Ran’s back with her knees. A final breath escaped her pale, blood-flecked lips and her chest caved under his weight with a sickening crunch. Ran pulled his shaking hands from the wounds in her neck and rolled away, blood leaking in a slow dribble from the holes left behind.
Vomit surged into his mouth and he hurled his lunch across the floor. He heaved and retched until nothing remained but acidic bile burning his tongue. Ran gasped and sniffed, his eyes watering with tears of exhaustion, and he sat against the legs of a crumpled chair, his hands drawn to his chest. Her blood dripped from his elbows, once hot, now as cold as ice in the wind and smoke swirling through the room. A white speck landed on his cheek and melted into a tear; the first of winter’s snow blowing through the collapsed exterior wall, the heavy clouds finally relinquishing their cargo.
*
For a good while he sat and stared at the cooling body of the Woaden witch. She’d been sent to assist the Imperial Army in their invasion of Orthia and if not for her encounter with Ran, she might well have succeeded. Now she lay motionless on the floor of some unknown Orthian’s home, bleeding into their fine woven rugs.
Despite the crack in her skull, her intense beauty remained in her unseeing gaze. Those grey eyes, the colour of a midwinter storm, pale as the stars, stared through the torn ceiling into an abyss Ran’s vision couldn’t penetrate. He should have felt relieved, victorious, even glad, but he trembled with guilt. It took all his strength not to collect the woman’s lifeless body and cradle her against his chest while begging for forgiveness.
They were entirely alone in the upper level of the house. There were no witnesses to the battle or the outcome, nor to his lack of a stomach for killing. Yet as the snow fell, he became aware of another, crouched across the room, watching. In his right mind he would have been terrified, but he was too numb, too exhausted to feel anything but empty. After what he’d just witnessed, the appearance of a ghost in the corner of the room hardly felt unusual at all.
‘You did the right thing, Ran.’ Her voice slid across his frayed nerves like cool silk, and he shivered. The ghost girl sat in deep shadows, as broken as she’d been in the house of skulls and bones. Her white blonde hair fell past her shoulders in a sheet of rippling silver, her torn shift all she had to cover her nakedness, if only slightly. ‘She would have killed you and massacred your people without a second thought. They don’t let sane mages go to war, Ran. They send the rogues; the ones they know will lose control as they grow.’
‘What?’ Ran’s voice, harsh from the exertion of the fight, did not squeak or break. It was a man’s voice now, though he wasn’t sure the price was worth paying. ‘Did you say grow?’
‘Yes,’ the ghost watched him with a vapid blue gaze. ‘She was fifteen.’
The mage-woman’s—no—the mage-girl’s slight build made sense now. How had he not seen it before? She lay there on the flagstones and the puzzle fell into place.
‘She was an apprentice mage; too young to be fully trained.’ The ghost continued, unmoved by his shock. ‘The Woaden send children to the front, those who are already showing signs of rebellious powers and an inability to control them. They are called derramentis—without control of their minds. The Disputed Territory is a guaranteed death sentence. They are always cut down before they do much damage because they are so inexperienced.’
The witch’s poisonous words, spat hatefully while she tried to kill him, suddenly became the desperate, angry cries of a child struggling to understand her powers and ready to fight for her life. Did she fear the magic bubbling up from the depths of his soul? Did she sense he might be her end?
He threw up again.
‘Prince Ranoth, you mustn’t mourn something that is not lost.’ His ghost girl didn’t move, but her clear eyes followed him car
efully. ‘She would have burned this city to ash and enslaved anyone she was too bored to murder. She had nothing to lose and the world has lost nothing in her death.’
‘When someone dies, they ought to be mourned,’ he snarled. He wiped a trail of vomit from his chin and sat back heavily. ‘Did anyone mourn you, shade?’
The ghost shrugged and glanced at the dead girl and the damaged room around them. ‘The gods are at fault, Ran, not you. You must understand that.’
He glared at her. ‘Are they responsible for turning me into this? Or was it you?’
He lifted his shaking, bloodied hands and a spark of lightning arced between his fingers.
‘I had nothing to do with it.’ She shrugged again. ‘You might have lived your whole life without your magic ever surfacing. For magic to appear, one must first be exposed to it.’
‘I was exposed? Where?’ snarled Ranoth. The ghost girl raised a brow, as if the answer were obvious. He searched his fractured, haunted memory to recall the first time he felt the aching heat in his hands, the first sign of his magic stirring. ‘The house?’
‘I told you to run,’ the ghost girl murmured. ‘I said they would find you if you didn’t run.’
‘I ran!’ Ranoth shouted as she faded into the shadow.
‘Not fast enough…’
Chapter Thirteen
Usmein, Orthia
The blood on Ranoth’s hands cracked and peeled away in flakes as he scooped the limp body of the Woaden mage from the floor and cradled her across his arms. Her frame was parchment-light, but the dead weight still pulled on his shoulders and back. Unable to open the chamber’s door, he kicked the handle until the timber splintered and swung away to reveal a dark, empty corridor and the landing of a flight of stairs.
By the god’s mercy, the stairs were wide and he only once smacked the mage-girl’s head into the balustrade, stumbling around another landing to descend the final flight to the ground floor. A small door under the stairs creaked open and two cautious faces emerged, their wide, bright eyes trained on Ran. They remained still and silent, watching him shuffle across the foyer to the front door. He put his back to the door, his boot resting on the timber.
‘You’ve got a hole in the ceiling,’ he said to the observers, and kicked backwards at the door. The lock gave easily and the door opened to the chaotic street outside. The girl’s limp body folded enough at the waist to fit through the threshold and they emerged into a gathering of soldiers milling by the gate and the crumbled wall.
The fight was over, swords sheathed and bows silent, but the activity in the square was frenetic. Folk ran beside horse carts and worked quickly to clear the rubble of the wall. Loads of broken stone left through the open gate alongside carts heaped with the dead, all in various states of injury. The muscles in Ran’s arms began to ache with the weight of the corpse, but in the din, he couldn’t think where to put her.
Beyond the wall, through settling dust and falling snow, the trench continued to burn merrily, blanketing the city with thick smoke. It would take a week to burn out the fuel and extinguish itself, unless heavy snow choked it. Judging by the blue-grey clouds, the sky seemed fit to unleash a sizeable blizzard, so the city might be relieved of the miasma after a few days.
On the steps before the house, gazing wearily at the marketplace teeming with soldiers, Ran wondered if the home’s owner knew their door could be so easily breached, with no more force than a stout kick. Usmein’s citizens placed too much faith in the height of the outer wall and the defences in the Territory. Today proved a rude reminder that, given the right circumstances, such barriers were easily surmounted.
‘Ran?’ His father’s throaty voice, savaged by screaming commands, reached through his fatigue to grasp his attention. Duke Ronart trotted his horse through the market square to the steps of the half-demolished house and stopped short, staring at the body in his son’s arms. ‘What in the name of the Rider happened, boy?’
Ran blinked and separated his cracked lips to taste blood on his tongue. ‘They brought a mage…’
‘I know, son. We’re looking for him now. Need to make sure the cursed creature isn’t lurking in the city or making a run for it back to the Territory.’ Ronart dismounted and approached slowly. ‘I meant, what happened here? Who is this girl?’
‘This is her… This is the mage, Father.’ Ran’s knees gave out and he slumped to the cold stone of the top stair. The duke lurched forwards to steady his son but did not take the weight of the girl. He retreated as soon as Ran sat with the body in his lap, her blood dribbling down his trousers. ‘She came with them and broke the wall, then came after me.’
‘She is the mage?’ breathed Ronart in disbelief. Ran nodded and his father bellowed over his shoulder for someone to find Marshal Gregon.
They waited, the noise of the recovering city shifting in and out of Ran’s mind, at times so loud he thought his ears would burst, then fading until nothing remained but a piercing ringing fit to shatter glass. His eyes grew dry and itchy, no matter how often he blinked or rubbed them and his mouth had all the moisture of a sandy desert wasteland.
Gregon arrived, panting, with a bandage wrapped about his forearm. ‘Sir?’
‘Prince Ranoth tells me this girl was the Woaden mage brought in from the Territory.’ The duke turned his back on his son.
Gregon nodded with his hands on his hips, still regaining his breath. ‘Aye, sir, that’s her. She tried to knock out the fire trench and used the flames to blast the hole in the wall.’
‘She’s a child!’ exclaimed Ronart in a hard whisper, pointing at the girl’s body as if Gregon hadn’t noticed the thin frame and soft features. The marshal’s hazel eyes met Ran’s, bordered by a deep frown.
‘I know, sir. I would doubt the tale myself had I not seen it with my own eyes. I commanded my archers to take her down but not one arrow touched her. She appeared on the wall and knocked the prince straight across the street into this house.’ Gregon shook his head and glanced up at the ruined corner of the building’s roof. ‘It’s a wonder he survived, your Grace…’
The duke’s eyes darted between Gregon and Ran. ‘Magic is not easily defeated… and she came after you specifically?’
‘Yes, Father,’ Ran nodded. ‘She said she knew who I was, that she could “smell” me.’
Ronart crouched and scanned the girl’s body, her torn robes and shattered skull, the ripped flesh around her neck. His hand hovered over the black bruises inflicted by Ran’s fingers before pulling away.
‘If she was truly a Woaden mage, then she was indeed a grave threat to Usmein, if not all Orthia. What she did here was powerful and deadly, not a party trick. If Gregon is right, neither my garrison soldiers nor a team of my best city archers could bring her down. Yet here she is, dead as a doornail, dripping all over the market master’s front stairs.’ The expression in the duke’s eyes turned Ran’s stomach. For the first time in his life, his father looked upon him with fear. ‘Who killed her, if she was strong enough to survive my army and breach my city?’
Terror and uncertainty rolled through Ran. If he told them the truth, they would know what he’d become. The words tore themselves from his throat, unheeded by his anxiety.
‘I did, Father.’
*
Duke Ronart ordered soldiers to take the mage-girl’s body and quickly herded Ran into an escort of guards three men deep. Marshal Gregon’s expression as they departed left Ran with a sense of heavy foreboding he could not shake. The look in the older man’s eyes, his furrowed brow and shaking, bowed head signalled a kind of sad resignation. Gregon had guessed, as had his father, as soon as he’d told them the truth. He’d seen the realisation carve its way across their features. He’d seen the knowing glance they’d shared.
In the crowd of gathered soldiers, he heard whispers, ‘The Black Prince?’ ‘That him…?’
The mage’s words bit into him. Did the soldiers know about his magic too? Had news of what he’d done rippled through th
e ranks, telling all and sundry of the curse that had awoken in him? The fatigue in Ran’s head and limbs consumed his thoughts, leaving room in his mind for little else on the long walk back to the palace.
The guards surrounding Ran ushered him through the palace doors behind the duke. When they did not remain outside, or return to the wall, he realised the guards were not to protect him, but to contain him. He staggered to a stop under the weight of his understanding and stared at his father, stalking ahead and yanking off his gloves. A guard shoved him in the back and he tripped forwards on shaking legs.
‘Father?’ he called, but the duke did not turn.
‘Harkon! Have the stewards fetch the duchess and Tutor Master Perce. Bring them to my apartments.’ Ronart’s order to his chief steward silenced the crowded atrium and stopped everyone cold.
They stared at Ran, surrounded by the escort and covered in dried black blood, and their duke, equally filthy and trailing a dark cloud of fury behind him. The duke continued, unperturbed by their attention and turned right to march down the echoing gallery of the south wing.
Up four flights of wide, carpeted stairs, Ran struggled to keep the relentless pace of the soldiers and his father. His heart pounded, his mind frantically scrambling to catch up. He had magic now. Magic was forbidden. Magic was evil and awful and derided in Orthia and now he had it, like a disease that gripped him in a burning fever that he could not shake.
He tripped more than once and was recovered by the hard hands of the escort, dumped on his feet and hurried along without a word. Obviously, they didn’t fancy falling behind the duke as he raced up the stairs to the fourth floor and the private apartments he shared with his wife. Despite the system of platforms and pulleys, the duke enjoyed the challenge of the stairs. Ran didn’t appreciate the sentiment today, his legs were almost numb from exertion.
They arrived to see Chief Steward Harkon waiting by the door to the main reception chamber overlooking the atrium and the arching marble dome. He’d come via the platform lifts and bowed as the duke approached.
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