by Spurrier, Jo
‘Well then,’ Delphine said. ‘Let’s go see what we can find.’
Boots crunched through the snow towards her as Sierra scrambled out of the drift. Three men sauntered out of the forest, all Ricalani like her, and all marked with the priestly tattoos of flowering vines curling across temple and cheek. They were dressed in plain and worn clothes, not the brilliant orange robes of the temple.
Two of them carried strange devices, something like crossbows without the bowstrings and only a pair of stubby arms jutting from the head instead of the graceful sweep of the bow. The third, at the rear of the group, fumbled with another device — he seemed to be fitting a harness of wire and stones over the contraption, which was charred and giving off wisps of smoke.
A noise behind her made Sierra turn, and there she found more people approaching — three more newcomers, herding before them a handful of her ragged fellow slaves, some of them nervous and fearful, others weeping in relief. Two of the strangers also bore those strange devices and, as they drew nearer, Sierra saw that the stunted crossbows were covered with an odd arrangement of twisted wire and polished stones.
Sierra backed up until she was standing beside the slave who’d confronted her. ‘Stay close by me,’ she murmured. The woman heaved herself up and dabbed at a bloody lip while she looked around in bewilderment.
Rasten, what are those things? They were weapons of some sort, but Sierra could tell nothing more. Have you ever seen anything like that?
No, he said. The devices from the old days were said to look like siege weapons. These are far too small.
There was one woman among the strangers: a priestess. Only one of the six was without the tattoo; instead he bore a knotted red scar on his forehead. It was a brand from a hot iron — the mark given to those convicted of sorcery.
The priestess came forward. ‘We’ve come to take you to safety,’ she said to the slaves. ‘But you must move quickly, and do exactly as we say —’ Then, she saw the fallen guard, blood still oozing from the pit in his chest and flames licking the charred edges of his coat. Scowling, she turned to the man Sierra thought had loosed the shot. ‘You said to avoid the guards!’
‘I changed my mind. Besides, he was going to rape the girl.’
‘But how are we going to deal with the body?’
The man shrugged. ‘We’ll get this lot to haul him away. I have everything under control, my dear, leave it to me.’
Sierra was thankful for the sentiment, but the way the man gazed down at the corpse with a kind of gloating satisfaction put her on edge. His expression didn’t change as his gaze swept over the gathered slaves — not until his eyes met Sierra’s as she studied him. Then, his gaze turned flinty and cold.
She’d made a mistake. She’d just been saved from a beating and rape by mage-craft that hadn’t been seen in Ricalan in a century. She ought to be overcome with shock, weeping with gratitude, not watching the newcomers like a tiger sizing up a pack of wolves.
The look he turned on her made her power thrum within her like a harp string. There was something predatory in his gaze, something sharp and keen and vicious. She knew it well. Her power seemed to recognise it, too, for beneath her skin it pulsed and flexed its claws in response.
‘Who are you?’ she said, taking a step forward and glancing down to the device in his hands. ‘What is that thing?’
He shifted his grip on it as the other men spread out to surround them. The one at the rear, who had been fumbling with wires and the charred device, seemed to finish his task, for he twisted one last knot of wires together and settled the contraption in his arms, with one hand on the trigger and the butt settled against his chest.
The woman looked Sierra up and down with a sudden narrowed gaze. ‘Landro,’ she said in a low voice. ‘She’s … she’s different. She has power pouring off her … it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen …’
I told you, Rasten said. You need to work on that.
Hush, she snapped. How could the woman sense what she was? The Akharians couldn’t — Rasten had taught her to hide her powers as the Blood-Mages did, and she passed under the gaze of their mages daily without detection.
The man called Landro tipped his head back to regard her. ‘So she is. What are you, child? What’s a bright star like you doing collared and chained like a dog? You don’t belong here, sweet child. Come with us, and we’ll teach you how to master the talent the Gods gave you.’
Rasten snorted inside her head. Good luck.
Will you hold your wretched tongue?
He laughed as the woman moved towards her, frowning, as though she could half-hear the conversation inside Sierra’s head.
‘Who are you?’ Sierra asked again, glancing between Landro and the woman.
‘All in good time, my dear,’ he said, and the priestess gave him a sharp look.
Sierra’s power was churning more fiercely now, swelling with every passing moment — and that made no sense, as there was only the pain from the other woman’s beating to feed her. The guard was dead, and the brief flare of pain as the bolt struck him had long since faded. There was a foul taste in her mouth, too, the taste of blood and iron and old, spoiled meat. There was one other thing Rasten had told her about those tricks of concealment. An ordinary mage would be fooled by it, but a corrupted mage would not, for they sensed power in a different register. Rasten, can you feel that? Something strange is going on here. I … I think they might be Blood-Mages.
He snorted. Have you lost your wits? Of course they are. Kell suspected there might be a fledgling or two in the far north, but he never got around to investigating it. They’re only weak things, self-taught, I’d say.
But … they’re priests!
Think about it, you witless oaf! A remote temple like this is a good place to hide; and the temple servants are criminals — who cares if the odd one goes missing? They’ve no power to speak of, you could swat them in your sleep, but don’t toy with them too long — I don’t like the look of those weapons.
Landro turned to the man on his right. ‘Catch the horse and pick up that body. Get them moving. It’s time we left.’
‘It’s a shame you killed him,’ the man said. ‘If you’d let him finish, he could have been useful.’
‘Hold your wretched tongue,’ Landro snapped, glancing at the gathered slaves. Then, he turned to them with a smile, showing far too many even white teeth. ‘Sisters, we have a nice little shelter where we can sit out the fighting and let the army pass us by … but let us go quickly, before more guards come to interfere.’
For a moment, she was tempted. Not to join them, but to let them take her away, her and these other helpless prisoners. She could deal with these Blood-Mages once they were away from the Akharians. But what then? The Slavers would not let the loss of a soldier and a half-dozen slaves go without investigation. These priests were fools to think they could get away with it — or perhaps they were simply desperate.
‘Stay where you are,’ Sierra said to the slaves at her back. ‘They’re Blood-Mages: they only want you to fuel their power. If they get you back to their lair, you’ll get far worse than the Slavers have ever done to you.’ Now that she focussed on it, the power raking through her skin and the jagged, brittle jangling of her nerves were all familiar from her time with Kell, but she’d never separated any of that from the pain echoed from the torment of his victims.
‘Landro, I think I know who she is,’ the priestess said hurriedly, pitching her voice low. ‘Before I came north, I heard the lord magister’s apprentice had escaped. It’s got to be her — there’s no one else in Ricalan who would have that much power.’
From the corner of her eye, Sierra saw the surrounding priests train their weapons upon her. She could sense their tainted power clearly now: a lingering foulness that clung to them like the odour of spoiled meat.
‘Don’t listen to the lying wench,’ Landro said to the slaves, his eyes fixed on Sierra with a hard, narrow gaze. ‘She’d have you back playi
ng whore to the Slavers by nightfall.’
‘And they’ll play just the same for you, but on the rack as well,’ Sierra snapped. ‘You’re not taking them.’
Landro gave her a thin, tight smile and raised his weapon. ‘You think you can tell me what I will and won’t do? You’ll come with us, willingly or not.’ He aimed the weapon at Sierra’s shoulder and activated the device.
Red-orange sparks swarmed from the weapon’s two stubby arms, twisting together into ropes of power as they reached the tip. Sierra watched with idle curiosity as the stones, flickering with shifting sparks, flared with power and then popped with a sharp crack and flash and a puff of dust, turning crazed and dim. As each stone burst, a pulse of red-orange light swept down the wires to the weapon’s tip, until the last stone burst and the gobbet of light shot towards her.
Sierra cast a shield to catch the ragged missile, meeting it with a bolt of lightning that crackled like wildfire and left the clearing smelling like a thunderstorm.
Muttering a curse, Landro tossed the spent weapon over his shoulder, while the young fellow at the rear snatched it out of the air and hurried to shove his fresh device into his master’s hands.
To either side of her, red-orange light flared and stones flashed and popped as the other men activated their devices, but what truly caught her attention was the young man at the rear, who scraped the melting and tangled wires and ruined stones off the device with a knife, brushing out flames with his thick leather mittens. Then, he pulled a fresh harness of wire and stones out of his satchel and began to fit it over the charred and smoking frame of the weapon.
Sierra reached to either side of her and wrapped shields around the men, just as the weapons reached their full charge. She clamped down on the weapons before they could launch their missiles and, with nowhere else to go, the blasts splattered back against the men wielding the weapons.
The priests fell, shrieking and screaming; Sierra threw her head back at the sudden rush of power as the corrosive energy burned through their clothes and ate into their skin like acid.
Sierra turned her attention to Landro, who held his replacement weapon raised, the stones already flaring with light. With a slender thread of power, she reached out and snapped his neck. He fell, the weapon dropping from his limp fingers. As her power spilled, threads of blue lightning swarmed over the bow and, instead of the chain reaction that had led the other devices to fire, at the touch of her power the stones all flared at once. With a shriek of tortured rock, they shattered in unison, tearing the weapon apart in a burst of red-orange light and an explosion of rocky shards and gobbets of molten metal.
Then, a thin thread of fire streaked across Sierra’s chest, sending a sudden thread of warmth flowing into the power seething along her spine.
She turned to find the priestess pulling one of the slaves out of the huddled group at Sierra’s back. She’d chosen the smallest of them, a girl barely sixteen, who struggled weakly in her grip. The priestess held a knife in her hand and had pushed the girl’s worn coat aside and sliced the blade across her chest, scoring a line beneath her collarbones.
‘Let her go!’ Sierra commanded, rounding on the woman.
The woman ignored her, her eyes searching out the two Blood-Mages still standing. ‘Join me!’ she said as she pulled the struggling girl to the ground.
She had real power, Sierra belatedly realised, not just the tainted strength a Blood-Mage could wring from his victims. She’d cast a kind of shield around the other slaves to keep them from fleeing. Dimly, for her power was roaring in her ears like a river in flood, Sierra felt the three fledgling Blood-Mages link their power together as the priestess plunged her knife into the girl’s chest. Sierra reached out to stop her, flinging ropes of power towards the priestess and her victim, but her power was already crazed and wild, charged with the energy of blood and pain. While her writhing strands of lightning wrapped around the woman, they also sank deep into the girl shrieking beneath the knife. Horrified, Sierra tried to draw back, but she knew it was too late in any case — the blade had struck the girl’s heart. Sierra felt the searing shaft of fire in her own chest.
Her moment of hesitation let the priestess spin her power into a shield, and the other two Blood-Mages came to her side — the scarred man and the young lad still fumbling with Landro’s discarded weapon. For the first time, Sierra truly took in the satchel slung across his shoulder, bulging and heavy with replacement stones and wire.
The girl was dying. Every thud of her heart and every panicked breath sent a torrent of power searing through Sierra and, with a wordless cry of rage, she turned it loose, tearing through the shield just as the woman snatched the reloaded weapon from the youth’s hands, aimed it into the crowd of trapped women and activated the device.
The first one Sierra’s frenzied threads of lightning reached was the boy with his heavy satchel. As her power streaked through the stones, primed and ready in their harnesses of twisted wire, they flared and popped and burst, scorching through the old leather of the bag and sending a rivulet of molten metal running down the boy’s side. He shrieked and convulsed in pain.
SIRRI, SHIELD! Rasten thundered in her head. The stones will blow!
She cast an anguished glance towards the trapped women, and tried to spin a shield over them as she wrapped it around herself, but it was too late — the priestess’s weapon had launched its bolt a bare second before the stones began to burst. The power flooding into Sierra was a torrent: far more than she could control. It was pouring down on her, drowning her, as a shattering roar of stone and steel swept the world away in a shimmering blast of power and noise.
The threads of power grew stronger, denser, weaving and melding together into a miasma of tainted energy that wrapped around his arms and his throat like a strangling vine. The touch of it brought sweat breaking out across his shoulders, prickling around the fresh scars on his back, and made his blood prickle and fizz in his veins. It was at once a distraction and a torment, a beguiling, shimmering song that drew him onwards, toxic and intoxicating, summoning old spectres of horror that he’d sought to bury in the depths of memory. ‘We’re getting closer, madame.’
‘Which way?’ Delphine asked.
The axes were louder now, nearer, but there was no other sign of the slaves and soldiers scattered in the fog. Isidro closed his eyes to concentrate on the power that tangled around him like cobwebs. As he emptied his mind, he realised why the trail seemed so confused. There were two sources of power calling to him — one led towards the cliff, while the other trended southwards, between the valley wall and the river.
While Isidro was trying to decide which to take, an awful, tearing noise rang out across the forest: a deep, spitting crackle, something born of a fusion of fire and lightning. It startled the horses, and Isidro’s pony shied violently, wheeling as though to bolt. He snatched up the knotted reins and pulled the beast’s head in firmly, murmuring to it in a low voice while it snorted and fought the bit, dancing uneasily on the crusted snow.
Once he had the beast under control he turned to find one of the guards had slipped down to take Delphine’s pony by the bridle while she clung to the saddle with both hands.
‘Madame?’ he said. ‘What in the hells was that?’
‘I don’t know, but it wasn’t natural. That power source you’re following — could it have come from there?’
He didn’t have to speak. She read the answer in his expression. ‘Well, then, what are we waiting for?’
‘Madame, are you sure that’s wise?’ the soldier asked. ‘Perhaps we ought to wait for the Battle-Mages —’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Delphine told him. ‘I may not be military-trained, but there’s nothing out here I can’t deal with. Get back on your horse, man, and let’s go.’
As she spoke, the dreadful sound came again, accompanied this time by a flicker of red-orange light that lit up the fog like a lantern. Then another sound joined the awful cacophony, a noise that made Isidro�
�s stomach clench in sudden anxiety — the crack and boom of thunder. That sound haunted his dreams; for months he’d longed to hear it again, but not here, not now. It was too soon.
The orange flicker was drowned out by a brilliant blue flash that he knew all too well. A wave of power washed through him, radiant and furious, and seemed to leave the air prickling in its wake. Isidro went cold all over, as though he’d been turned to ice. By the Black Sun, no! She can’t be here.
Power pulsed in his head and Rasten came roaring through the connection and into Isidro’s mind. GO! he bellowed, the sound echoing endlessly within Isidro’s skull. I can’t feel her! You have to find her! Hurry! In his heightened state, Rasten’s defences were down, and what spilled through the connection was pure panic and gut-churning fear. It filled Isidro’s consciousness, overwhelming his thoughts so that he couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe — his lungs felt choked with fear.
Delphine’s pony tossed its head in fright, but she clamped her hands to the saddle and frowned at him with sudden concern. ‘Aleksar, what —?’
Go now! Rasten roared again, but with a gasping breath Isidro shoved that invading power and emotion aside enough to speak. ‘Something … something’s wrong, madame, we have to find them …’
With narrowed eyes, Delphine nodded. ‘Ride,’ she said. ‘We’ll be right at your heels.’
Isidro wheeled his horse and booted it into a gallop. Rasten fell silent, but Isidro could feel his presence as clearly as if he were riding alongside him. What in the Black Sun’s name is going on? Isidro demanded. She’s here? Why? How long? Why wasn’t I told?
You didn’t need to know, Rasten snapped. You’re too close to the enemy, it was too great a risk.
What in the Fires Below happened?
He felt Rasten’s reluctance with every word. There was a cabal of Blood-Mages at the temple. Just a handful, weak as piss, but they had some old devices …
It took long moments to reach the scene of the unearthly noise, but Isidro smelled it before he saw it. It stank of the dark, iron scent of blood, and also the sharp smell of thunderstorms.