She sighed, the map crumpling in her hand. It had revealed only one way into the ritual chamber in the catacombs—steps beneath the ancient temple at the heart of the palace. They’d rounded the temple at least once.
It was through the ritual chamber that they’d get to the dungeon, too. Unless they wanted to traverse the entire palace to enter through the barracks. But Gilles’ best sigiled troops incoming made that no option at all.
There was no one to ask either. Not that the Crag would tell them, but she and Leigh had dispatched the few guards they’d encountered. The temple should have been heavily guarded, but it appeared deserted. Perhaps the Crag Company had sent out too many troops to reinforce the Chardon District. The Crag's long trek back to the palace was supposed to be a blessing, if she and Leigh could find the damn stairs.
“Divine’s flaming fire,” she blurted, and kicked the tapestry. She kicked too far, and her boot thunked against wood.
Wood? She glanced at Leigh, who shook his head and pulled the tapestry aside. A heavy door wrapped in iron.
“Welcome to your stairs,” he murmured.
“Why behind a tapestry?”
“Would you want the door leading into an ancient ritual chamber out in the open?”
Probably not. Her cheeks heated. The thought should've crossed her mind, but she’d been too busy looking over her shoulders for Crag, staying alert—
He held up a hand, distorting the air, and curled his fingers.
When he pulled his arm back, the door ripped free, flew across the hall, and thudded into the other side.
Shouts echoed from the distance. Had the Crag already arrived? Time was dwindling.
They entered, carefully replacing the tapestry over the entrance. Her candlelight spell guided their way down as they carefully avoided broken stairs; stray cobwebs caught fire above them and smoked away like ephemera.
As they neared the bottom, a faint glow emanated from the corridor outside the ritual chamber. It should have been abandoned. Perhaps it was. Perhaps a mere torch shone at the bottom, left behind by some singular visitor.
But she spelled a wind wall before her. Leigh followed suit with a repulsion shield.
Their defensive spells intact, she enchanted her eyes with earthsight.
No fewer than two hundred men awaited them.
Chapter 64
Rielle froze. Two hundred men stood in their way.
“Well, now we know where all the guards went,” Leigh murmured.
Turning back wasn’t an option. Somewhere past them was Olivia, and the Lunar Chamber.
“Welcome, Marquise Laurentine,” a man’s gravelly deep voice bellowed, his arrogance rumbling down the corridor. “Come join us. We won’t hurt you. Yet.”
Leigh extended his repulsion shield before her. But if the Crag had arcanir weapons and arrows, neither Leigh’s repulsion shield nor her wind wall would mean anything. With a swallow, she descended step after painstaking step, the heels of her boots clicking like isolated, discordant notes.
At the bottom of the stairs, she looked through an archway.
A mountain of a man stood at the front of the large company of men, holding his five-foot flambard across his shoulder. He wore a plumed helmet and a massive suit of armor with a black, silver-trimmed cloak. The General of the Crag Company, Evrard Gilles.
He wasn’t the leader of the most sought-after mercenary organization for nothing; his men maintained perfect formation behind him. At least two platoons of doubles stood with him, bearing their iconic two-handed swords.
“I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay,” he drawled. “It’s about to come to an end.”
“The reception could have been warmer,” she replied, with forced bravado.
Gilles laughed. “Yes, I’ve heard you like playing with fire,” he replied, chuckles rippling through the company of men. “Don’t look so upset,” he teased. “I’m not entirely heartless. You can still turn around and leave.” More laughter accompanied his words.
An offer to leave.
He’d just given her something useful.
“If you intend to break the peace here, it would save me the trouble of having to clean my blade of your blood,” he quickly added. Perhaps he’d seen the epiphany on her face.
No matter. He’d already given away that this show of force was born of necessity. A soldier of fortune, he wouldn’t offer her a way out unless he knew the battle would cost him.
So he’d gathered troops here, but were there enough sigiled men among them, enough arcanir to give him the favorable odds he needed? Maybe most, if not all, of his sigiled men had gone to the Black Rose’s diversion at the southeastern gate. Maybe they had fewer arcanir weapons and projectiles than he required. Maybe he’d never expected her to get this far.
Or... Maybe that’s what he wanted her to think. Maybe he was toying with her. Maybe all these men were sigiled. Like paladins.
With the Lunar Chamber here, she couldn’t risk indirect magic that might collapse the walls or the ceiling.
The walls or the ceiling...
She examined the stone floor tiles between them. An inward grin. “I’m not entirely heartless either,” she called out, pushing that forced bravado as far as it would take her. She couldn't lose her nerve now. “You and your men can still leave. It would save me the trouble of having to wade through your corpses.” She made a show of narrowing her eyes. “But if you don’t, no quarter.”
Leigh relaxed next to her. Perhaps he’d realized it, too. He dipped his chin ever so slightly in her periphery. A simple yes.
Even if the company was sigiled, they still had options in the environment to use against them. There was a chance.
Across the corridor, Gilles stood in silence.
But no answer came. No, the Crag Company couldn’t afford to retreat, to gain a reputation for failure. Not Gilles. And if his men didn’t know her reputation or Leigh’s, they wouldn’t know what awaited them. If they did, they’d flee... unless they all bore sigils and wore arcanir. Gilles relied on their ignorance to bluff now and try to retain his reputation.
She and Leigh blocked the exit, and the mercenaries wouldn’t trust two strange mages to let them pass by peacefully.
It would be battle. And a prayer to the Divine that they survived any arcanir arrows.
Gilles raised a hand and gestured toward them. The doubles with crossbows readied shots in their direction. How many were arcanir?
Leigh’s repulsion shield remained in place. He’d hold it.
She raised a brow at Gilles, smiled coyly, and raised a hand. A quick spell extinguished the candles. Every last one hissed out of existence in a blink. The chamber echoed with silence as if every last member of the Crag held his breath. Let them feel fear. Let them know doubt.
In the pitch black, she and Leigh darted apart and crouched. Quickly, she visualized the anima threads glowing in the stone tile underfoot, grasped them and brought them together, amassing the stone between them and the repulsion shield. She wove the threads into a large orb, nearly the size of the corridor. The stone tiles clenched together like an enormous fist.
The bolts hit. Most glanced off the repulsion shield. A few made it through—dispelled the shield that Leigh continually recast—and hit the stone orb as it grew in size. The darkness’s gift.
Shouts rang out from the company.
While Leigh protected her and himself, she bathed the stone orb in fire and sent it rolling toward the mass of men, a fiery, stony inevitability that filled the corridor.
Flame and stone lumbered toward the mercenaries, larger than life, eclipsing the other side. Smoking, cracking, bright. Firelight shone on their contorted faces. If they wouldn’t surrender, they had to die. Olivia would wait no longer.
“Mercy!” A shrill voice cried from the other end.
She cringed. That time had passed.
A great rumble filled the corridor, the very floor trembling with the massive moving weight. Orders echoed.
> The screams.
The orb wheeled over the Crag forces.
The squelch of mangled flesh joined the crunch of pulverized armor. As her creation meted out crushing violent death, flames crackled and licked steel, searing flesh and singeing skin. The stench of gore and burning hair thickened. So much loss of life. Senseless loss of life. Gilles could have surrendered. Should have.
Dust and fragments crumbled from the ceiling. She cast a wind wall above them, and it repelled the debris in all directions.
The flame-stone orb struck the end of the corridor with a reverberating thud that rattled the walls. She channeled fire in her free hand and immolated target after target with unyielding torrents. Firelight fought a pitched battle with the dark, granting enough sight to hit a target and then snatching it away.
Gilles and some of his men had squeezed between the orb and the walls, their number reduced to little more than seventy bodies. Roaring, they charged through the bloody, fiery mass that had been their comrades, their faces grotesque in desperate determination.
Leigh held the shield with one hand. With his other, he spelled tiles from the floor and hurled them at their enemies.
Some dodged, but not all. The stone squares plunged through the attacking force. Men were sent flying through the ranks. Crossbow bolts glanced off the repulsion shield.
Some made it through—arcanir tipped.
A bolt flew past her neck. A sharp sting—
She recast the wind wall. No arcanir poison—just a mere cut to her neck.
Their spells flew and struck, but the mercenary army forged onward, now numbering about fifty.
No good. The mercenaries would reach them before she could call the flame-stone orb back to crush them.
Still, she tried, willing it forward again, but her anima was dimming. The massive weight and fire claimed some of the back line, but not enough.
Gilles and just over two dozen men closed in on them, some with sage-tinted weapons and armor.
A few ran past to the exit. Cowards. Survivors.
Swaths of black flew in from behind her and Leigh, dark wool gliding on air. Two men charged past, blood drenched and fierce.
Jon and Brennan.
With them came a breath of relief. Jon was alive. Alive, and he’d kept his word.
Her heart swelled at their arrival, but there was no time. They took on the arcanir-clad Crag at the front with deadly determination. The rest of the company closed in on them in force.
Leigh threw spell after spell at any available target.
“Rielle!” Jon screamed a warning at her, his wild eyes darting ahead. His blade bound with a Crag mercenary’s, he was stuck.
Half a dozen more closed in around him.
Gilles charged her, a massive two-handed sword drawn.
Just as he brought it down mere feet from her, she pulled up a stone wall from the floor to block him, and rolled away.
He rounded the wall, and she shot a torrent of flame at his face.
Unburnt—sigiled, probably. But the enormous blade’s waved edge glowed orange. The flambard. She hadn’t forgotten it from five years ago.
It lacked the sage tint of arcanir and had no sigils inscribed on it. Opportunity.
He brought his sword back up. She directed fire at the blade, heating it to a molten red from tip to guard.
It tumbled from his gloved hands like a hot coal. “Couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?”
“I could say the same to you!”
He bridged the distance and caught the side of her face with a backhand.
Sent flying, she felt like her eye would burst from its socket. Agony bolted through her face, rippling and blinding and dazing while she clutched her cheek. It throbbed beneath her hand.
“Sundered flesh and shattered bone,” she whispered, but the words were slurred. Her jaw, it—“By Your divine might, let it be sewn.”
Over and over, she tried to heal it as she crawled away. The words were wrong, and she couldn’t—
“You don’t know what it is to have your life, your destiny controlled by lesser men with greater titles,” he said. A step thudded closer. Then another. “No more. My family will want for nothing.”
His family?
No, she couldn’t think about that now. She had precious little time to kill him before he killed her.
Blood ran down her broken face, and she spat a mouthful of red onto the floor. Men with sage-tinted weapons cornered Leigh. Jon and Brennan disappeared behind a wave of blades.
She rolled onto her back, the blinding white light clearing. Cast a wind wall.
The trembling—No, not now, her anima—
He walked through it. Dispelled it. “That’s right. You’ve lost. Surrender.”
He picked up a dead double’s two-hander.
Never.
She clawed for a dead mercenary’s short sword. She would not die on her back. Not here. Not like this. To her last breath, she would fight. Her hands closed on the hilt. Gilles’s sword came down toward her arm.
Sword clashed against sword. Jon stood between her and Gilles, unyielding, pushing back against the general.
“Go,” he bellowed at her. “This is my fight!”
Gilles broke away, but Jon followed. The two men measured each other.
He’d anticipated this moment for five years. Justice for Sir Bastien.
The Moonlit Rite and Olivia awaited. Clutching her throbbing jaw, she clad herself in a flame cloak. Fire had always been second nature.
She scrambled to her feet, feeling for the pouch of rowan ash secured to her belt and the vial of king’s blood around her neck. Amid the chaos, the doors to the Lunar Chamber were on the far wall.
Her anima was dim—only a couple spells left.
She ran, all the while scanning the battle for Leigh. A crossbowman loosed a bolt. She threw herself to the ground to avoid it. Leigh caught her gaze as he threw a spell at the attacker.
Her heart pounding, she struggled to her feet and charged the entrance to the ritual chamber, finding the double doors closed.
Chapter 65
Jon stared down Gilles, holding Faithkeeper in low guard as they circled each other, shouts and the hissing of blades and spells surrounding them. Broad-shouldered with massive arms, the General of the Crag Company stood level with him, over six feet in imposing heavy plate.
Gilles was infamous—a mercenary for three decades, he had taken hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. Both his blade and his pockets ever thirsted for more.
Gilles wielded a two-handed sword five feet in length—as long as the glowing flambard on the ground. He assumed high outside guard, and Jon matched. With the length of the blade, Gilles’s reach exceeded his own, but with a few feints, he’d test the man’s measure.
Since Signy five years ago, he’d fought Gilles in his mind a thousand times. He’d been learning the sword his entire life and training all the more rigorously for the past five years. Faithkeeper, in his grip, had become an extension of his own body. He hadn’t been ready five years ago.
But he was ready now.
Gilles wore a firm but focused expression. The battle blazed around them—Leigh and Brennan cut a bloody path of carnage through what remained of the company.
“Arcanir sword but not the Order’s armor,” Gilles observed, eyes slitted. “James’s bastard, is it? Amazing what torture can elicit. You know, my men found him after he’d killed your mother. To silence her about you, no doubt. He was about to off himself, too, when we caught him.”
Gilles wouldn’t distract him. Couldn’t.
“Surrender. You’ve lost.” Jon studied the man’s movement. It hadn’t changed much since Signy.
Gilles smirked. “Not to you.” Battle ready, he nonetheless cocked his head toward the Lunar Chamber, where Rielle had gone. “Not to her.” He laughed. “Broke her face, in fact.”
Jon set his jaw. The general tried to rile him, nothing more. But if he only spoke of Rielle and no
t Bastien, then clearly Gilles didn’t remember him.
“Does that make you angry?” Gilles spat. “I watched your pathetic father die, too. There’s not enough left of him to bury.” He sneered.
His heart thundered in his ears, but Jon fought it. Rage would make him careless, a liability he couldn’t allow.
When a force-magic spell darted past, Gilles struck high. Jon blocked. Their swords crossed, Gilles pressed his advantage and advanced, but Jon matched him step for step with retreating footwork.
They disengaged.
Angling, Gilles transitioned to middle guard and immediately struck again, fast. Jon met his strike and closed the distance between them to strike under Gilles’s arm. Weak point. His opponent fought back with ruthless efficiency.
Jon turned and parried Gilles’s follow-up attack, and coupled it with a riposte. Gilles counter-parried flawlessly.
Impervious. Jon growled. They broke away, circling each other once again.
Gilles laughed. “I’ll kill you easily.”
“Try hitting me first.”
Gilles roared through clenched teeth. He lunged, looking to Jon’s left. Signaling. But his shoulders betrayed the feint. Jon bound Gilles’s sword aimed for the chest.
I’ll defeat you even if it kills me.
Metal chimed in strike after strike, Gilles meeting his every effort. Jon raced through his options. He parried a thrust. Immediately, he reverse-gripped Faithkeeper and closed the distance between them to deliver a heavy pommel strike to Gilles’s helm.
A clang resounded. No time to hesitate. Moving Faithkeeper over his shoulder, he struck.
Gilles recovered. The pommel strike should have dazed him, but Gilles worked through it.
The general’s experience would prompt him to conclude the fight as soon as possible. More time meant more time for mistakes. Jon’s gaze darted to the fallen men surrounding them. Vengeance.
Gilles lowered the point of his sword, taking advantage of his sword’s greater range. Jon couldn’t match it and win.
Risking all, he brought Faithkeeper down in a crown strike to the top of Gilles’s head. The general would be forced to block instead of striking. Or he’d risk taking the blow.
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