Apparently neither did Ezekiel, as his face paled and he said, “No, no, I don’t think so.”
“Good,” she said grimly. “Let’s go. I’ve got someone to introduce you to. Stay close to me and don’t wander off.”
“You met someone else? Who?”
“You’ll see,” she grunted.
She turned quickly and sheathed her sword. Then she grabbed his clammy hand.
For a moment Sara wondered how he could be cold on the battlefield, then she realized it was blood and she said nothing.
“What are you doing?”
“Not losing you again.”
“Oh, right.”
They took off, running for their lives.
Chapter XXIII
AS SARA WEAVED BETWEEN BODIES, she was careful to keep her speed to a manageable level. Lucky for her, even with her mage abilities, Ezekiel made up what he lacked in mage boosts with his ability to leap over fallen comrades and turn corners like there was no tomorrow.
Panting they came back to where she had left Nissa. Her stomach dropped when Sara saw that she wasn’t there.
She had just lost the most infamous prisoner the Algardis Empire had ever come across.
And then a loud hiss interrupted her thoughts.
Nissa’s head popped around the corner and then jerked back when an arrow nearly took out her eye.
“Where have you been?” shouted the woman from the other side of the pile. “Who is that?”
“I was searching for a shield,” shouted back Sara.
Ezekiel hurried to intercede. “I’m the friend. A friend. Her friend.”
Sara snorted as he stumbled over his words. She had to wonder why he decided to get nervous now. Then Nissa poked her head around again and Sara didn’t have to wonder. The glare of numerous balls of battle fire striking the ground illuminated her and revealed a lot that had gone unnoticed in the cramped prisoner’s wagon. The woman’s hair was a black so metallic that it was like staring at the night sky without moon and stars. Her skin was unblemished except for those torture scars on her chest, and Sara would bet money that wouldn’t deter Ezekiel. She also had a dainty look about her, even though it was obvious she was at least six feet tall. In other words, Nissa was startlingly beautiful, even covered in a now-grimy white gown and dodging poisonous arrows.
“Come on,” Sara urged as she pulled Ezekiel by the hand and they rushed around to where Nissa crouched.
For a moment they were silent while Sara’s two compatriots assessed each other with wary eyes as arrows streaked overhead. She wondered what each thought of the other.
In her mind she introduced them as, Treasure hunting curator, meet cold-blooded mage killer.
Instead, Sara said aloud, “Ezekiel, meet Nissa. Nissa, meet Ezekiel.”
Ezekiel nodded stiffly. “Curator.”
Sara looked at him, thinking, Is he on something? Or just reading my mind? She didn’t ask him anything.
But apparently Nissa didn’t mind as she listed her profession flippantly. “Sun mage.”
Ezekiel stiffened. He looked to Sara, who raised an eyebrow. He looked back at Nissa, who gave a small smile.
Turning to Sara, he leaned over and said, “Is she insane?”
Sara turned to him. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you?” asked Nissa rudely.
He turned to her and tried to push his non-existent spectacles up the bridge of his nose. Realizing the futility of his gesture too late, Ezekiel hastily dropped his hand.
“You have to be pretty insane to think you can claim the title of sun mage and not have it challenged,” he said. “Everyone outside of the principalities wants all eight members of the Kade mages dead. Including you.”
“I’m well aware of those ungrateful pigs’ opinions of me and my compatriots,” Nissa said stiffly.
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead anyway?” Ezekiel asked, baffled.
Sara said at the same time, “Ungrateful wretches? You—you and your cohorts have torn our empire apart.”
Nissa gave her droll look. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Hundreds are dead,” said Sara stiffly.
“And thousands more will be. I have seen the future, and this conflict is far from over,” said Nissa softly.
A blast of battle fire landed in the not too far distance. They were safe under Sara’s shield, especially since it came nowhere close to being a direct hit. Instead, the light of the combustion lit all three of them in an amber glow.
“I will die before seeing one more father not come home to his child,” said Sara.
Nissa looked around outside the shield above them and said, “Then you have already failed. Because you live while your comrades fall at your feet.”
Sara’s hands twitched towards the woman’s neck. Ezekiel hastily put a warning hand on her shoulder.
He quickly asked, “Can you prove it?”
Nissa looked at him with a bored air.
“That you’re who you say you are, I mean?”
She raised her hands. “Take these mage-binding bracelets off and let’s see.”
Ezekiel looked a little too interested in taking Nissa up on her offer. Sara poked him harshly to snap him out of the glazed look that had drifted into his eyes.
Ezekiel rubbed his side without looking over as he said, “You know, Sara, there hasn’t been a sun mage in so many years.”
“No,” Sara said.
“But they have really cool gifts. Like healing with the power of the rays of the sun, for one.”
Sara turned to him in disgust.
“It’s for the science of it all.” he yelped. “To study such a rare mage.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “No.”
“But—”
“Do you know how many people she’s purported to have killed, Ezekiel?”
“Well…”
“Exactly,” said Sara flatly. “I’m not letting her loose. You’re not letting her loose. I’m don’t care if she’s a lying chimpanzee in disguise. We can’t risk it. Do not under any circumstances touch those manacles.”
Ezekiel slumped in a pout.
“My, she has you wrapped around her little finger,” said the sun mage mockingly.
Both Sara and Ezekiel turned their glares on her.
Nissa rolled her eyes unafraid. “Speaking of which, aren’t you supposed to be taking me somewhere? Like to your captain?”
“Why do you want to see Simon?” said Sara, immediately suspicious.
“Let me spell it out for you,” said Nissa. “Wherever he is, it’s safe.”
“If he’s not already dead,” said Ezekiel.
“If he were dead, all of the defense mechanisms keeping this entire field from erupting into one big blast would be gone. We would be fried,” said Nissa.
Sara snapped. “What do you mean?”
“Do you honestly not know?” said Nissa.
Their tense, blank faces told her everything she needed to know.
“Well, well, well,” she said as she leaned back with a satisfied purr.
Sara noticed that her garment spread open further on her chest as she did.
Good, she thought with a snarl as she brought her knife to Nissa’s porcelain skin. The better to cut her throat with.
“Careful, battle mage,” said Nissa. “You wouldn’t want to kill the only person out of the three of us here who knows more than you do.”
“Speak up, then,” said Sara in a tense growl.
She was aware of Ezekiel’s hands twisting and turning in his lap, but for once he said nothing.
Nissa said, “There’s a reason we attacked you here. This entire piece of land sits above a natural pocket of gas a few hundred meters below the surface.”
“‘We?’” squeaked Ezekiel.
“Figure of speech,” Nissa said with a shrug. “I align myself with the Kade mages even when I had nothing to do with the planning.”
“Go on,” prodded Sara.
�
�With enough blasts of battle fire,” Nissa said, “and the past ten rounds were certainly enough, this field should have blown you, your company, and the surrounding land for miles to smithereens. But from what I can see, mages’ battle fire can’t pierce a few meters below the surface.”
“And you know this because we haven’t been blown to bits yet,” said Ezekiel.
“Precisely,” said Nissa with a gentle smile.
Sara tilted her head. “You think Captain Simon has someone with him blocking the mages’ efforts?”
“That would be my guess. Or he is. I suspect your young captain was appointed the position of lead mercenary on the warfront not just for his good looks,” said the sun mage.
“And if he’s the one preventing this field from swallowing his men whole,” murmured Sara as she let her blade drift down to her lap, “then he needs to be in the safest place around here.”
“Exactly,” said Nissa.
Sara ignored her and turned to Ezekiel. “You know this layout pretty well?”
Ezekiel nodded.
“If you were the captain and wanted a safe place to hunker down, maybe even form a counterattack, where would you go?”
Ezekiel turned and pointed. “To the Azure Forest. The trees themselves halt any magic from penetrating its darkness and well…there are things that most people have never dreamed of seeing inside.”
“And you have?” said Nissa.
“Actually, yes,” said Ezekiel in a measured tone.
Nissa gave a snort but didn’t challenge his statement further.
Sara stood from her crouch and watched as they did.
“Then let’s get to this forest,” she said.
At the determination in her voice, neither one of them said anything different.
Sara started trotting away and they came up on either side. The two tall figures ran to the left and right of the small woman with a sword.
When they got to the forest edge, Sara pointed at a long piece of knotted brown rope attached to a long abandoned wagon on its edge.
“Grab that rope,” Sara told Ezekiel.
“What are you going to do with it?” he asked suspiciously.
She turned to Nissa with a smile. “Bind this insufferable wench, of course.”
Nissa gave her a sassy smile and raised her hands while clasping her fingers together. “I thought you’d never get around to it.”
Sara gave her a glare. Ezekiel gave her a smile that she didn’t want to decipher and Nissa kept her hands held out willingly.
They walked into the forest untouched by the battle raging behind them.
“Why are you so interested in this war, anyway?” Nissa asked as they walked into the forest.
“My father died because of this war.”
Nissa didn’t sound particularly sorry when she said, “By Kade hands?”
Sara stopped, clenched a fist, and released it.
Nissa came up close behind her but stopped far enough away that the rope between them gave some distance. She seemed to realize she might have gone too far.
“No,” said Sara darkly. “By his own forces.”
The sun mage behind her said nothing.
Sara turned and looked at her. “I’d wondered why my father came here.”
Her hand tightened on the rope perceptibly as she tried to rein in her emotions and failed.
She saw out of the corner of her eye, Ezekiel watched the exchange with open curiosity.
Sara continued, “I’ve wondered why he risked his life once more to serve in a far-flung province on a campaign no one cared about. Because, make no mistake, my father might have died for what he uncovered, but when we first started this…skirmish, no one in the capital thought it would blow up into a war.”
Ire flashed in Nissa’s eyes. “You underestimated us.”
Sara threw back her head with a laugh. “So we did. Not anymore, though.”
Nissa gave her a brittle smile. “You’re out here escorting a sun mage with a curator for help. Your captain is nowhere to be found. And most of your company of five hundred is dead. I’d say your empress is doing a bang-up job of underestimating the Kades.”
Sara stiffened as she spoke. “A mere technicality.”
Nissa shook her head slowly. “No, it’s the reason you will lose this war.”
“More of your prophecies?”
Nissa gave her a sharp smile. “Merely a promise of what is to come.”
Sara sighed, tired of the tête-à-tête. “Do you know why my father risked his life?”
“For honor?” said Nissa mockingly.
“Because of evil filth like you,” snapped Sara.
When Nissa didn’t react, Sara stepped forward to make her react. Then Ezekiel was between the two women on edge. He looked firmly into Sara’s eyes with his vulnerable back no more than a few feet away from Nissa’s conniving but bound hands. Sara didn’t care if she said her magic was shackled, she didn’t trust her.
She pushed Ezekiel out of the way. He grabbed her shoulder so that as he turned she did as well.
Then Ezekiel said, “What are you doing, Sara?”
“What does it look like?”
Worry flashed over Ezekiel’s face at her tone. “This isn’t like you. You aren’t abrasive and angry. Not since I’ve known you. Calm, unemotional, and fiercely unafraid, yes. But not this. Yet since the moment this attack started, you’ve been nothing but.”
She didn’t want to listen to him. She wanted to go back to fighting Nissa.
Ezekiel snapped his fingers in front of her face, like one would a toddler that disobeyed. She almost bit his fingers off.
It was that urge to tear into his knuckles that sent fear like ice-cold water down her spine. She stepped back with horror written on her face, mistakenly pulling Nissa with her.
“No,” said Sara.
Ezekiel didn’t let her panic. “It’s all right. You’re all right.”
“I’m not all right. You don’t know that. Stay back.”
“No,” he said calmly, stepping forward and taking her clenched hands in his. The flesh-on-flesh contact was like a balm to her nerves. “I don’t know. But I do know you’re speaking, you’re listening, and you’re comprehending. All things you wouldn’t be able to do if you had already changed. You just have to calm down.”
Sara swallowed deeply.
Nissa spoke up with a perceptive look in Sara’s direction. “Changed? As in gone berserk?”
“Shut up, Nissa!” shouted Ezekiel.
“I don’t think…”
Sara was starting to see spots of red in her vision.
What’s happening to me? She thought anxiously.
“That’s right, you don’t think,” Ezekiel snarled as he whirled around. “Because I won’t be the first person she kills in her rage. Enemies first. Friends second.”
That shut Nissa up.
“Sara,” coaxed Ezekiel. “Stay with me. The battlefield was pushing you over. You were using your magic then, right?”
She didn’t say a word. Just stared in the distance, the rope binding Nissa’s hands clenched tightly in her own.
“Sara, answer me,” pleaded Ezekiel.
She turned to him with tired eyes. “Yes, I used it.”
“Okay, are you still using it?”
She took stock of her power. She saw a reserve of power just inside her reach to boost her magic for the shield in case of an emergency as well as the standard boost of her eyesight and hearing.
She nodded.
“Fine, shut it off,” Ezekiel ordered. “Now.”
Sara looked at him. “We need those gifts. We’ll be wandering around the forest blind if we don’t.”
“I’d rather be alive than dead,” he said grimly. “Let them go. Please. For me.”
Reluctantly she did as he asked. Her body let go of the tension causing her to stiffen as the magic flowed out of her reach with each breathe.
Finally, the ire and tension related to the
use of her magic drained away. But something else replaced it. Normal human doubt. Her vision had faded to normal perception. She felt half-blind.
It irritated her. But with a start, Sara realized she didn’t feel like killing Nissa so much now. Before, when the woman had said something that nearly set her off, Sara wouldn’t have hesitated to draw her blade across her neck. Now the wariness and caution were still there, but the eagerness for blood had dimmed.
She blinked and stared from Ezekiel to Nissa. “That was not how I imagined drifting into the blood rage.”
“How did you imagine it?” asked Nissa softly.
“Like a quick and fast descent into hell—from one moment to the next I would snap,” answered Sara honestly. “Instead it felt like I was slowly going mad with each increasing breath.”
Ezekiel nodded in sympathy. “Well, we learned something today.”
Sara raised an eyebrow.
He grinned. “Don’t make you mad. Although I kind of knew that already.”
She punched him in the shoulder lightly and rolled her eyes. “Why don’t we find Barthis Simon before we get into any more trouble?”
Ezekiel nodded and they set off with Nissa trailing behind like a recalcitrant dog.
As they crested a small hill, Sara said softly for Ezekiel’s ears only, “Thank you.”
He whispered back, “You’re welcome.”
Chapter XXIV
THEY WALKED FOR WHAT FELT like hours. Stumbling over roots, slippery moss, and bumps on the forest floor. Never running into another soul or animal. For that matter, the entire forest was eerily silent. The hoot of an owl didn’t meet their tired ears, the wary gaze of a crouched fox didn’t meet their eyes, and they didn’t see a hint of any of the denizens that usually occupied such a verdant land.
It made Sara outright uneasy.
“Where are the forest creatures?” she muttered as she stumbled ahead. Ezekiel walked directly to her right where she could keep an eye on him and he could keep a wary gaze pinned on her. She wasn’t a forest expert by any means, but had spent a good part of her youth hunting on her father’s land. She had expected something to show up by now. Or at least the sound of something skittering through the bushes or flying through the trees. And yet nothing came but the whisper of the wind through the leaves.
FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy Page 323