Prodigal Steelwielder (Seals of the Duelists Book 3)

by Jasmine Giacomo

  ***

  “No, Dakila, you don’t understand. Your men are here to keep you alive in case you need to depotioneer witten Oost. I’m here to keep them alive. And you. And even him, sints help me.” Eward huffed in frustration, eyeing the burly warrior.

  Dakila rolled his shoulders. “If you say. I still think we’d be of good use against those steelwielders. They’re just men with swords. No magic.”

  Eward scanned the sky, then checked each of his hexlings. Neither magic nor man approached. “I doubt you’d fare much better against them, either. Their swords are steel, an alloy stronger than your iron.”

  Dakila’s hand worked at crushing the hilt of his sword. “Do their hearts beat liquid gold instead of common blood as well? For Bhattara’s sake, Eward, we are being wasted here!”

  One of Eward’s hexlings shrilled an alarm, then another and another. Eward spun, flinging spells, and shot into the sky, leaving the conversation unfinished. Sints will, we have time to finish it later. Corona casters descended from above, swirling around him with their invisible airborne spells then darting down toward the structure.

  They’ve found us. They must know of the emperor’s contingent plan.

  But the enemy did not attack. They swooped off into the sky, disappearing around nearby cliffs. Puzzled, Eward stopped his wind disc in midair. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He glanced overhead, but no volcano poured down on him.

  It opened below him. As lava spread across the grass, burning it to ash, Eward slammed a crevasse between it and the building, and the liquid stone poured into the gap. The portal winked out. A few moments later, it opened on the far side of Ignaas’s office, and its lava seeped out again. Eward managed to create another gap to swallow the lava and shove his Flame-and-Earth hex avatar through the portal before it shut.

  “You want to sing for the enemy? Try singing with a mouthful of lava.” Eward let his distant avatar explode before the traitorous singer beyond could open another portal to threaten Dakila and his men. Eward didn’t give a copper ducat that witten Oost was threatened. It rankled that somehow, at least a few singers had managed to turn coat without the First Singer or anyone else noticing. But he had no copper ducats for them either.

  ***

  From Tarin’s perspective high over the eastern edge of campus, the Wood arena was the last building that hadn’t either been destroyed or clambered off its foundation to do battle at Warmaster Langlaren’s—or Taban’s—behest. Most landmarks, even the seemingly permanent tunnels and valleys, had changed, moved, or been transmuted into something unrecognizable. A long spine of enormous granite crystals bifurcated the eastern third of the campus. Several areas smoked or burned outright from portal contact with volcanoes, and many other campus features had collapsed, transmuted, or been blown apart. Someone—whether duelist or Corona caster, Tarin couldn’t tell—had peeled a strip of stone from the top of the tunnel to the girls’ barracks, leaving the pathway inside exposed to the brightening sky.

  Sints and terrors, what a mess. At least a lighter sky made the enemy casters easier to spot. They had realized that detail shortly after Tarin had etched a Corona caster’s shadow onto the cliff behind him with a fireball. Now the Corona’s magic folk lurked in cliff shadows or darted across the ground. Their attacks had fallen off noticeably, yet pockets of intense conflict still raged around Tarin. She took a few deep breaths and nodded. At least Kipri was safe in the caverns.

  An arrow of roaring flame as wide as her entire duel den almost knocked her off her wind disc as it shot past her into the sky. Tarin spun and dived, spells at the ready. No one outdid the Mistress of Flame with Flame magic. But she spotted no battle. The fiery rocket had risen from within solid rock. As she arced around its slag-lined exit hole, it became obvious the blast had come from deep within the caverns.

  Kipri!

  Tarin landed prone atop the wind disc and steered it through the broad, straight tunnel, throwing Wind and Water spells around her to fend off the heat remaining in the stone. As she approached the nether caverns, distorted, chaotic sounds met her ears. Battle had commenced, and only Flame Instructor Takozen stood between the enemy and hundreds of Peace Villagers and newniks. And Kipri.

  As she swirled downward, she reached into a pocket for the small vial Odjin had prepared. Water magic. Sure an’ he’s gone and given the Mistress of Flame Water magic. Although, when she considered the limited amount of air in the caverns, she had to admit Flame magic probably wasn’t a good idea.

  She took a gulp from the vial, swished the salty mixture around her teeth, and spat it to the side. It coalesced into a vortex of water that washed down the tunnel around her, gaining in strength, sound, and foaminess. As she burst through the mouth of Takozen’s alarm tunnel and into the cavern, her water peeled away and coated the perfect arch of the songwork dome, slithering toward the floor.

  A portal opened on the left side, and dozens of steelwielders poured through, hacking and slashing. Takozen stood atop Ignaas’s old throne and hurled all manner of Flame spells as close as he dared to his own people. Many moved slowly due to injury, and several others didn’t move at all, trampled by those who had nowhere to flee.

  Tarin couldn’t see Kipri anywhere.

  She twisted some of her water down and froze it across the portal, trapping three or four soldiers in the ice. Takozen glanced up and waved in greeting, his smile bright against his dark, sunburnt skin. Tarin waved back, then zoomed toward the center of the fight.

  A large wedge of ice led the way as she plowed through the second row of steelwielders. Clunks and snaps followed in her wake: helmet collisions, broken limbs, debladed swords. Tarin spun and crouched as her wind disc continued away toward the far wall. She blew a scalding cloud of steam through the swiftly narrowing gap in the enemy ranks, followed by a waterfall, which she froze in place as it drenched the enemies’ feet.

  A cry arose from the villagers, and they raised fists and makeshift weapons to rush the flailing soldiers. A brazen few even picked up discarded steel swords. But Tarin wasn’t going to let anyone steal glory from the Mistress of Flame. She spun down and dismounted in front of the mob, raising her arms. “No, stop! If you must take up arms, then I have failed. Just as it is your duty and your privilege to cook, or build, or transport goods, it is my duty and my privilege to defend you. Though the battle still rages on high, we havena forgotten you down here.”

  Tarin finally spotted Kipri by his height and deep red wig. Much of her tension drained away, replaced by tingling confidence. “I will spend every last drop of my blood in your defense if I must. Thankfully, today that wasna necessary.” Her smile blazed at Kipri, and she felt the heat in his returned gaze. Gasps peppered the crowd, and Tarin knew the work her Flame hexlings had crafted behind her had finally become visible. Without turning to see the black scorch marks around the steelwielders’ eye sockets, she gave the crowd a bow, saluted Takozen, and flew over the slumping enemy corpses and back up the scorched tunnel.

  ***

  Calder released his feet from the stone, hopped adisc, and flashed toward the helpless singers. As he approached, the air seemed to move toward the portal of its own accord, dragging him ever faster. Singers disappeared through the ring of light, their screams cutting off as they crossed the threshold. He had lost sight of Tala, though he spotted Liselot, who clung with each arm to another singer, grasping one by the forearm and the other by the back of his tunic. Calder angled toward them and gathered them onto his wind disc, then veered into the less dangerous air currents behind a nearby rock spire before landing.

  He steadied the First Singer, who gasped in the strong breeze. The other two singers leaned on each other and rested against the stone’s base. “What’s happening? Where does that portal lead?”

  Liselot shook her head. “Somewhere I’ve never seen. It seems to have neither gravity nor air. Please, save my singers! I’ve lost so many.”

  Calder’s teeth threatened to shatter from the te
nsion in his jaw. He jammed a finger toward the airborne portal. “It seems you have traitors singing for the Corona. Where are they, to sing a portal from such a place?”

  Liselot’s expression cleared. “No, they can’t be there. No air to sing. They must be close!”

  Calder leapt backward onto a new wind disc. “Sing them down if you can. I’ll find the traitor.”

  Though her choir numbered three, Liselot issued urgent directions to her exhausted singers. Calder left them to it, veering across the landscape, scanning for anyone trying not to be seen.

  He flashed past a couple dozen sheltered spots from which it would be safe to sing a sucking portal and not become its victim but found no one. Frustrated, he belatedly activated Lifeseeker. Bloody Tala, bloody disappearing on me. Distracting wench. She’d better not be dead, or I’ll sic Aleida on her. Behind him, the First Singer had begun wrestling singers out of the sky, though a few landed lifelessly thanks to the interfering efforts of Corona casters.

  Three orange glows lit in Calder's mind: two strong, one weak. Deep foreboding rattled his soul, though he had no conscious explanation for it. Exercising an unusual level of caution, Calder sheltered on the leeward side of an uneven granite spire.

  He bored two small holes through the stone and filled their far ends with wind lenses. The three figures on the far side of the giant spire sprang into near focus, and Calder's guts clenched.

  Tala lay on her back, her face a grimace of focus and pain. A man crouched over her, his hand positioned over the center of her chest, yet he seemed to ignore her, looking instead toward the third figure, a young, raggedy woman who cowered on her knees beside him.

  The scar on Calder's cheek twitched. He should go to Tala immediately and kill everyone else. But the group’s unfamiliar dynamic gave him pause. He snaked a small wind tunnel around the crystal and across the grass.

  The first sound to reach his ears was Tala’s humming. She’s alive, thank the sints, and she’s doing songwork. But her breaths were thin, panting.

  “Refresh again. Stop your blubbering. You know what happens if that portal closes. I’ll pull it out.”

  A pair of notes graced the air, but they didn’t come from Tala. Calder still heard her humming. A shiver shot down his spine, and he extended every magic he possessed toward the group on the far side of the crystal.

  Sensory details such as clothing, stomach contents, and jewelry paled in comparison to the fact that Tala had a steel dagger jammed in her heart. The tiny bursts of Shock that kept her heart beating were erratic and weak. His beloved was humming herself back to life with every breath she took.

  And the scum crouching over her was threatening to let her bleed out.

  I reject this situation. The thought slammed into the back of Calder’s eyelids as every bead on his necklace went molten. The man’s body crystallized into salt, desiccating and shriveling in on itself until there was no palm to touch the throbbing steel blade. The enormous granite crystal that hid Calder disintegrated into dust, and he darted to Tala’s side, lifting her ever so gently on a bed of Wood and Wind, preparing to whisk her to the First Singer.

  The huddled figure at his feet belatedly drew his attention. Heavy shackles bound her wrists together using a single metal bar that held her forearms at shoulder width. Sickly pink crystals balanced atop thin metal shafts that seemed permanently attached to the shackles. Her dark hair hung tangled and matted, obscuring her face, but something about her seemed terribly, horribly familiar.

  “Sanaala?” Calder breathed. She dinna die… This is far worse.

  The girl twitched and cowered lower. “I serve, I serve. Good singer serves, master.”

  Tala’s humming hitched, and her body spasmed with a cough.

  Calder splintered Sanaala’s rose crystals, and the sky produced a loud whump as the vast portal overhead snapped shut. The wind died. “Stay here, Sanaala. You’ll be safe, and someone will come for you soon.” Shaken, he aimed his wind disc toward the First Singer.

  Dozens of tumbling bodies plummeted earthward as Calder flew across the battle-scarred Academy landscape. He sensed the weak air-thickening spell Liselot and her two singers were crafting and slammed a crystalline hex avatar in place at the spell’s origin point. Instantly, the air around him thickened to a custard-like consistency.

  You’re bloody welcome. His teeth ached from the bunched muscles in his jaw as he forced the air ahead of him to thin and speed his passage. Not nearly soon enough, he lowered Tala to the ground beside the hem of Liselot’s torn, grass-stained robes.

  The First Singer’s eyes widened at the sight of Tala’s injury. “Make me another crystal ring, this wide, right here.” She extended her arms as far as they would go. A moment later, Calder suspended a new crystalline hexling before her, its hollow center framing her face. Liselot and the other two singers broke into a new song, and she gestured for Calder to remove the dagger.

  He did so swiftly, then buried the vile thing up to its hilt in the nearby cliff with a flicker of Wind. Tala shuddered and breathed deeply, but the incipient smile on Calder's face faltered at the sound of myriad voices raised in an unfamiliar language. He bolted upward on a fresh disc and searched for its origin. He spotted it to his left: a vast steelwielder army poured through a portal. But to his right, a strange, unearthly green glow swarmed over the landscape.

  Sints preserve my sorry arse. Of the two, the green emanation was by far the most concerning. Calder veered in its direction to track its source. I intended never to release this sint in my pocket. I hope I don’t have to change my mind so quickly. Tala’d tease me endlessly for such inconsistency.

  ***

  Kiwani circled high above the ruined campus and hissed in frustration. Portals had opened almost everywhere, and fresh new streams of invading steelwielders blanketed the entire campus. Despite everything she and her hexmates had thrown at the Corona army, they were stronger than ever—her latest spell had even bounced off an invisible shield. Her mind was tiring, her focus slipping. As the day rose in the east, she feared the Waarden Empire was sinking in the west, overwhelmed by sheer, ordinary numbers.

  How fascinating that I care. I thought that part of me was dead. Perhaps it’s my fresh new Waarden blood. But whether I care or not, we need an endgame.

  Her eye fell on a small structure on a finger of land surrounded by a crevasse, smoking pools of lava, and glistening ice stalagmites entrapping shadowy figures in poses of agony. Eward fought well. A heartbeat later, her small wind tunnel politely requested entrance at the door to Ignaas’s old office.

  “Is the coast clear?” Eward’s voice queried.

  Kiwani glanced at the nearby armies spilling around the shattered remains of battle. “For the next short while. The campus is swarming with steelwielders, and the casters have resorted to subtler attacks.”

  “Then be welcome, Kiwani.”

  She angled her disc downward, letting it dissipate in the doorway. As she landed with a small hop on the crowded floor, she covered her nose at the powerful stench of humanity. “Eward, you couldn’t freshen the atmosphere a little? It smells worse than a duel den shower room in here.”

  “It doesn’t smell worse than mine. But you only have three duelists at yours. What do you need?”

  Kiwani pointed. “Him.”

  Ignaas witten Oost whimpered on his padded chair.

  Eward drew closer. “Is it as bad as that? I thought we were holding our own.”

  Kiwani matched his quiet tone. “Langlaren’s dead. Virtually the entire campus is destroyed. A good number of singers are dead, as are most of the nonsavant students who fought and some of the Peace Villagers. I’m not sure how many instructors have survived. Lifeseeker nearly blinded me when I tried to count the steelwielders just now. They’re going to take the mountain. A quarter of it has already walked off. With their casters biding their time, we have no idea when, where, or how strongly they’ll strike next.” She met Ignaas’s watery eyes. “Tactics dictate t
hat we must act now. If we don’t, this battle will become a protracted war, and it will spread across two empires. I give our side a one-in-twenty chance of success. But we probably won’t live to see it.”

  Dakila stepped forward. “If the situation has gotten that dire, why do you think this prisoner can help? I thought you were more powerful than he is.”

  Kiwani approached the potioneered duelist and crouched before him. She ran her fingers along her black beads, feeling the crystal nubs Bayan had infused. “Because Ignaas has a destiny. Don’t you, Ignaas?”

  The former instructor’s pasty face shifted through several emotions, finally settling on a burning anticipation that lit his eyes from within. Kiwani raised her eyebrows at him—don’t let me down—and returned to the door. “Dig it out, Dakila.”

  Eward grasped her arm above the elbow. “We get this wrong, the empire dies.”

  Kiwani merely nodded. Maybe I don’t care as much as I thought.

  A pair of Dakila’s men clamped their hands on Ignaas’s shoulders, pinning him against the back of the chair. Dakila stood behind him, blade in hand. Soon, the knife’s surface flashed red, and Ignaas tensed with pain, but the fanatical light in his eyes never wavered.

  When Dakila moved to place a rough bandage over the wound, Ignaas raised an imperious hand. “Let it bleed. It won’t kill me.” Doubt wavered on the caravan guard’s face, but he backed away.

  Ignaas performed the Elemental Revocation, freeing him from focused magic, then approached Kiwani and Eward. He offered an ironic half-bow, never breaking eye contact.

  Kiwani heard Eward swallow noisily, but she merely smirked at her reinstated enemy. “Get this wrong, Ignaas, and I’ll turn you into an anima hexling and direct you myself. I’ve puppeted before.”