Odjin’s heart stuttered with a combination of terror and hope. Anima avatar. It’s an anima avatar! Is it Sivutma’s? No, it must be Iulan! The cat leapt and pounced, devouring enemies left and right, heedless of their tiny bright swords. The armored riders jerked their horses’ heads around, trying to escape. After the anima avatar had consumed a dozen in a row, she planted her clawed feet, raised her sleek, furred head, and roared to the sky. Odjin clapped his hands over his ears at the terrible onslaught of sound. The surviving steelwielders bolted in terror back toward the nonexistent portal. Two of them rode directly toward Odjin, and he flung tiny balls of flame at their heads as they dashed past, not daring to further expose his position. The steelwielders toppled to the edge of the field, lifeless. Their swords thudded into the dirt. The horses screamed and kept running.
The earth trembled once more from the direction of the portal. Odjin flipped onto his hands and knees and stared through the short, nearby shrubbery. The Corona casters had decided to fight fire with fire, or rather, to fight an enormous cat with an enormous Flame-beast. The devilish monstrosity stamped a pair of house-sized, flaming hooves toward the cat. Its body, wreathed in smoke and flame, rose in a jumble of dark planes and shadowy angles. Odjin couldn’t make out much of its features, save for a heavy snout with fire instead of fur, blazing eyes—four of them—and four twisting horns that streamed back from its head like hair in the wind. The creature opened its mouth and bellowed a challenge toward the cat. Heat poured from its mouth as from a foundry furnace. Odjin raised a Wind barrier against the creature’s baking, fetid breath. The cat’s fur had stiffened on her arched back. Her tail had tripled in size, and her face bore a vicious expression that revealed all her swordlike teeth.
That cat’s not going to last long against something that can set her afire. Odjin slammed Pestle together with Potion, his Water avatar, put them behind the flaming monstrosity, and expanded a new blobby hexling—Quicksand—until he towered higher than the hideous flame creature.
From wherever the Corona casters were hiding, they directed their creature to spin and defend itself. As its bony, smoking arm lunged forward, spraying fire from its claws, Odjin threw Quicksand at the flaming creature. The hexling wrapped himself around the demon’s body, smothering the fire. The horned creature struggled and staggered, its hooves leaving deep pits across field and road. The ground trembled with its howling rage.
Quicksand grew weaker and weaker as the flame creature’s heat baked him to death, and Odjin felt the moment when the avatar lost cohesion, and his physical construct collapsed. But, unlike all other avatar deaths, Quicksand left some of himself behind—a thick, smooth coating of rock baked onto the fiery creature like a heavy winter coat, turning the horned beast into a statue.
The cat, which had wisely bided her time, leapt from hundreds of strides away, screaming as she came in for the kill. Despite the knowledge that she fought on his side, Odjin hunkered down in instinctive fear as the large beast’s shadow passed over him.
The cat slammed—claws first—into the newly formed stone statue and toppled it to the ground, worrying at its neck with her enormous fangs. For a moment, Odjin feared that the cat would break through the stone and release the fire within. But apparently the Corona casters had decided to conserve their energy. As the cat ripped open the statue’s neck, Odjin’s shoulders slumped in relief. It was hollow, the flame creature gone.
A hemisphere of ice formed around the cat, freezing her in place, and Odjin had to roll out into plain view to avoid getting trapped by its outer edge. He leapt onto a wind disc and took shelter in a nearby copse of trees, where he found Bas and the corpse of a strangely dressed man who could only be a Corona caster.
Odjin’s eyes widened in surprise and relief. “You killed him? Well done. How did you find him? Is there a way to detect them?”
Bas gave him a rueful smile and held up his metallic arm—his symbol of savant freedom. “He was hiding here when I arrived. He took a gulp of something from that flask there, then tried to spit it at me. I extended my arm over to him, clapped his mouth shut, and smothered him. It was kind of a surprise how easy it was. They’re just as mortal as we are.”
“That’s a relief. Have you seen any of the others on our side?”
Bas shook his head.
Odjin pointed back at the glinting hemisphere. “Let’s get the ice off that cat. Somewhere, Iulan has a real cat that will die if we don’t hurry.”
Using a combination of warm Wind and Water magic, Bas and Odjin held the ice at bay long enough for the cat to stumble out, shivering and mewing. The spell snapped back into place as soon as they let go of it.
Odjin swore under his breath. “Is that ice block going to sit there for all eternity? How are we supposed to fight eternity?”
Once again, the ground shook. Odjin spotted a vast plume of dust leaping into the air near the river ravine as the ground was rent asunder. The destruction moved directly at them in an ever-widening swath that could easily gobble down the entire town. Odjin grabbed Bas’s sleeve. “To the air! We need to find that caster!”
Both potioneers leapt onto wind discs and jinked out of the trees into clear air. Odjin scanned with Lifeseeker, finding a scattering of life forms in the fields west of town. He couldn’t tell which were allies and which were the enemy casters.
The river of mauled earth rumbled ever closer, looking like nothing so much as a baker swiping a hand full of flour across his kneading board. Trees tumbled, fields vanished, and even Iulan’s giant cat, still slow from cold, couldn’t quite leap to safety before she was plowed under.
Odjin winced for the real cat’s fate, then signaled to Bas. Together, they zoomed ahead of the destruction. “Bond with me,” Odjin urged. They merged their magics. Odjin seized control of Bas’s Earth magic and raised a sturdy wall of sheer stone out of the earth, curving around the front of the Corona casters’ encroaching ruination. The Corona spell slammed into Odjin’s wall, and its stone rang like a bell. To Odjin’s relief, the wall and its clarion call drew his allies out of their hiding spots, and he was soon surrounded by Sivutma and seven others, all adisc.
“What now, O great one?” Sivutma gazed down at the shredded earth.
With allies at his back, Odjin dared a direct strike. Lifeseeker showed him two life lights burning between him and the distant river. He jabbed a finger in their direction. “Behind that dark gray boulder beneath the alder tree and over in the jagged hollow at the edge of the ravine—kill them.”
Everyone zoomed forward on their discs, flinging fire and lightning. But it seemed duelists weren’t the only casters who could blend their magics. From each location, a tornado-like rotation cloud rose, and the two vortices blended together, lashing forward toward Odjin’s friends. The debris cloud boiled dark and heavy, stretching high into the sky. Its rotation was unimaginably fast, a blur of speed. Sivutma and the potioneers tried to veer around it, but it shot small cyclones after each of them. To Odjin’s horror, they hurled several potioneers from their discs. Only Sivutma and Bas escaped them unscathed and flew on to attack.
“Oi, there! Floating lad!”
Startled by the nearby voice, Odjin looked down. Iulan was dismounting another cat’s back atop the narrow wall. The cat, a wiry black creature with a long face and masculine jaw, balanced atop the wall’s narrow rim with unsintly ease then sat and licked his paw. Odjin descended to join the anima caster.
Iulan’s face was a dark cloud of focus. “Ye want tae end this quickly? Ye have tae break the rules. Bond with me, hex with me, whatever term ye like. I’ll get ye intae the casters, and ye drop whatever elements ye like inside them. That’ll stop the vortex before it kills yer friends.”
Odjin glanced across the fields. In the distance, Sivutma and Bas tried in vain to get close enough to fire magic at the casters, but the vortices deflected their strikes and menaced them at the same time. Meanwhile, everyone else was possibly already dead. Odjin nodded.
He h
ad never bonded with an anima caster before, but he found that the spell worked exactly the same as it had with any elementalist. Iulan took control of the bond, and Odjin felt his focus dragged down across the fields and inside the bodies of the enemy casters. He sensed their hearts thumping, their lungs heaving. They were scared, far from home, fighting for their lives.
Odjin’s mind turned to steel. Then they shouldn’t have come invading. With a flick of his magic, he turned one man’s heart into a perfect stone replica and lined the other man’s lungs with lightning. The first man dropped, already dead, and the other jerked and spasmed, unable even to cry for help.
To Odjin’s relief, the great storm vortex did indeed fade away with the casters’ deaths. He took that to mean that all the Corona casters in the area were dead. As it dissipated, Odjin let Iulan take control of Lifeseeker, searching the skies for signs of life from those who had been sucked in. “I see only two survivors, very high in the sky. That was a powerful spell. Ye’d best fetch them down before they land on their own.”
Odjin nodded, let the bonding spell fade, and dashed upward. He caught Sivutma with Swallow, his Wind avatar, and Bas landed in Mortar’s big wooden bowl. He deposited their inert forms on the undisturbed side of his wall, and Iulan and his cat rushed over to meet them. Iulan examined both unconscious duelists then declared they would survive. “They’re nae injured, only starved for air. They just need to breathe for a bit. Then they will wake.”
A small bundle of black feathers toppled to the ground next to Iulan’s knee. Iulan’s cat attempted to slap a broad paw on it, but the anima caster shot him a quick look, and the cat sat primly and twitched his tail. Iulan scooped the small, crumpled bird into his hands with great reverence.
“Is that the hexbird that lives with you?” Odjin asked.
Tears formed in Iulan’s eyes. “Aye. I’ve named this one Griogair. He’s dying. He gave too much.”
“What do you mean?”
Iulan fixed him with a severe look. “Och, bloody geniuses, ye lot are. Dinna ye ever realize? There’s nae such thing as a hexbird.”
Odjin shook his head in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
Iulan cradled the bird close to his chest and smoothed the feathers on its head and back with his index finger. “Odjin, ye know that yer sints choose homes in which to dwell for all time? Caves, trees, and the like?”
Odjin nodded.
“This one, he chose a murder of crows on the Academy campus. The entire flock. Tis why yer birds have always been so special. Tis nae the nearness of yer elemental magic infusing them with greater skills and awareness. Tis the sint within them. The only anima sint I have ever heard of. He lived amongst ye, and ye knew him nae. He sacrificed hundreds of his own birds to bring ye and yer potioneers to aid me town. All those portals he made, they cost his birds’ lives. Ye dinna see, but while ye were fighting by the river, more hexbirds came tae fight with yer friends. Many of them died as the sint cast his spells at the enemy. Now there is but one hexbird left in all the world, and he is dying, Odjin. Me heart, it breaks. Why would such a great and eternal being choose to sacrifice himself for me and mine? For mortals? I doona understand, and it makes my grief all the sharper.” Iulan met Odjin’s eyes. The older man’s cheeks were wet with tears.
Odjin’s mouth moved soundlessly for a few moments. “Can you heal him? A little anima magic?”
Iulan shook his head. “I could heal his body, but I canna replace the greatness that was the sint within. Too many of the vessels for his consciousness have simply gone. I canna simply will hexbirds into being. Would that I could. But I canna.” To the bird, he murmured, “Ye have me eternal thanks, Sint Kah. And eternal apologies.”
Odjin sat in stunned silence, even as Sivutma stirred beside him. Kah was a sint. Kah had always been a sint. The crazy bird had been in contact with him and his hexmates nearly constantly since Bayan had been exiled. Odjin had always thought the hexbirds were simply extra-intelligent birds that somehow communicated concepts to each other. He’d never once dreamed that they were all one, all the same great eternal mind. Why did he die for us? Why would he do that?
“Nae, I canna bear the shame of it. I canna live knowing that I let a sint die in me place. Tis nae the way the world should work.” Iulan lifted the dying bird in his cupped hands, as if offering it to the sky.
Odjin felt massive waves of anima magic pulsing from Iulan’s body, and he scrambled backward, dragging a semiconscious Sivutma and a completely limp Bas with him. “Iulan, what are you doing?”
The Tuathi didn’t answer. Darkness swirled around him, more slowly than the vortex, but blacker in hue, nearly obscuring him from sight. The bird in his hands twitched, then rolled to its feet and flapped its wings. It let out a great caw, louder than should have been possible within such a tiny body, and took wing, veering into the blackness swirling around Iulan. The bird dived in tight circles round and round, sometimes barely visible through the blackness.
Sivutma grabbed Odjin’s arm. “What am I seeing? Did we win, or is this still the fight?”
Odjin pressed his hand over hers. “We’re safe now, but Kah is dying, and Iulan is trying to save him.”
“Kah was here? I thought he was back on campus. Did he come with all those other birds?”
“Sivutma, Kah is all those other birds. He’s a sint living in a murder of crows.”
Sivutma stared at him for a long moment. Finally, she rolled her eyes. “One of us hit our head. I think it’s you.”
Griogair flew past Odjin’s shoulder. No—the bird was fuller in the breast and longer of wing, like Kah. Another bird flashed by. Then another, and another. Soon, the black whirling mass around Iulan was full of wings and beaks and tails. Joyous calling, robust and loud, filled the air. Kah shot straight up into the sky, followed by several dozen smaller hexbirds. They swirled and dived with the exuberance of playful kittens.
Baffled, Odjin dropped his eyes to the spot where Iulan had been. The man was gone. Nothing remained. He scrambled over on hands and knees, disbelieving, and found a pair of faint knee impressions where Iulan had knelt in the soft soil. Wonderingly, he brushed his fingers against them. The anima caster had given his entire being over to the sint, and Kah—Sint Kah—had created from Iulan’s body enough hexbirds to sustain himself.
Odjin’s head snapped up as the small mystery of hexbirds flew right over his head. Kah—Odjin was certain of the bird’s identity—affectionately dragged his claws through Odjin’s hair. Odjin turned and watched them fly, then looked at Sivutma, who stared back at him with wide eyes and raised brows. He stood and helped her up. Together, they stood beneath Kah and what used to be Iulan swirling around the sky, shrieking their avian joy.
Warm lips suddenly pressed against Odjin’s. Sivutma pulled back and smiled up at him. “Have you practiced that one yet? Me neither. Maybe we can work together on it sometime.”
Odjin’s eyebrows rose. If such a powerful and demanding elementalist wanted to work on bonding lust to her savantism with him, who was he to say no? “You know, my schedule is rather busy, with all the humiliating potioneering I have to do. But I will see if I can squeeze you in.”
She smirked and nodded, and he was pleased to see that she didn’t take things any more seriously than he did. “No one is going to believe this.”
Odjin raised his eyes and followed Kah’s mystery across the sky once more. “Which part?”
Sivutma gave a brief laugh. But her face sobered quickly, and she leaned against Odjin’s chest for a moment, going limp against him.
A part of Odjin went cold. Such needy, intimate contact wasn’t like her. He put an arm around her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
Sivutma rocked her head gently against his chest. “I don’t want to be the one to tell Bayan.”
Odjin glanced around and realized what he hadn’t seen. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. “Tell him what?”
“Sabella is dead.”
&nbs
p; The Hexmagic Collective
Bayan began to wish the cetechupes’ lava-heated steel dome would end his agony. Were they intending to torture everyone before death as some kind of punishment for daring to rely on supposedly inferior magic? Somewhere deep within him—beneath his anger, beneath his Balanganese origins, beneath his disgust at being considered property—the very core of his soul was affronted. How dare the Corona judge his magic? Had he not taught himself anima magic and then learned, against all convention, to hex it with his elementalism? Why could he not learn the magic of the cetechupes as well? They were no better than he was.
We’re all just casters.
He’d been running from his insatiable curiosity about the history of his own empire’s magic: the secret techniques, the alternate methods, the shortcuts and tricks. For nearly two years, he had avoided any investigating that might have gotten him in trouble. But as he writhed beneath foreign magics, he regretted setting a piece of his own soul aside for the sake of blending in.
As always, Bayan’s rage surged first, a black tower of roiling smoke within him. An equally thick white mist swirled and blended with it, resulting in myriad shades of gray. I refuse to die defending an empire that doesn’t defend me. I refuse to die in the palace of the man who exiled me for saving his life. I refuse to die at all.
Bayan wrenched his eyes open. Whirling fire twisted around him on all sides like miniature Firewhirl spells. The familiar sight encouraged him, and he raised a charred arm, emphasizing his will with an old-style sacred motion: the circle. A chill wind blasted down from high above the forum. The icy draft swirled down and dispersed the fiery storm surrounding Bayan, his Hexmates, the emperor, and his loyal subjects. Bayan created a half-dome of pure ice, holding the permanent fire spell and its lava at bay and encasing the injured in a chilly safety zone. Gasping with the freezing air, shivering with several layers of pain, he felt his body failing. I might need a chanter.
Prodigal Steelwielder (Seals of the Duelists Book 3) Page 19