Marsh didn’t like the sound of that and pulled out of Tamlin’s head fast enough to face a shadowy attack from Roeglin.
Not bad, but you let go of the shadows.
She had? Marsh reached for them and found Tamlin banishing the darkness from the trail again.
“Oh no, you don’t.”
She pulled the shadows back down, but the moment of inattention had cost her. Claws raked the inside of her skull, and her world blurred red and then came back into focus. Keeping a firm grip on the shadows, she turned back to Roeglin and caught his next strike, deflecting it.
Not. Nice.
He laughed, and Marsh gave him a mental smile.
Uh-huh. Let’s see how you like this, then.
She gave it less than a moment’s thought, then called lightning from the shadows in her head.
“No!” That cry came from outside, and Marsh looked around. As she did, a shield of white light slammed into place between the lightning and Roeglin’s presence in her mind. Tamlin dropped the shadows and looked around for the danger, and Marsh shrouded them all in darkness so thick they could feel it.
Inside her head, the lightning struck the shield and was pulled into it. Outside, she was so startled by the total loss of light that she let the shadows go. They stayed.
“That’s enough for today.” Gustav didn’t sound impressed, and Marsh couldn’t blame him. She could feel her mule trembling beneath her, frozen by the sudden onslaught of the dark. Marsh didn’t respond, though. She was too distracted by what was happening inside her head.
She didn’t even hear it when Tamlin gave a heavy sigh and said, “I’ll do it.”
In her mind, the shield had caught the lightning and dipped, almost touching Roeglin’s mental presence, which had dropped flat beneath it. As she stared, the shield flared white and then turned gray, cracks sharding through it as it split and crumbled apart.
A shockwave echoed through her mind, and her world faded just as Roeglin cried out and vanished from her head.
Her world came abruptly back into focus as she slid off the mule, then bounced off a clump of brown noses and onto a patch of rosebud toadies. The brown noses gave off small clouds of gray-green spores before disintegrating into slime and the rosebuds squelched beneath her.
“Eww!” Aisha exclaimed as a smell that had nothing to do with roses drifted up around Marsh. Tamlin snickered, but Marsh ignored them both.
She rolled onto her knees and looked for Roeglin.
“Ro?” Her voice quavered, and she shook her head. Immediately, she regretted it and slammed her palms onto the cavern floor to help her keep her balance. “Ro? You all right?”
He groaned and she lifted her head, tracking the sound to where he lay. Scrambling to his side, she pulled his head into her lap.
“Ro? I thought I’d killed you...”
“Damn near did...” he managed, his voice creaking as he tried to focus on her face. From the way his eyes flickered he was having trouble resolving her into one space, and Marsh watched him anxiously until he closed them again. “I’ll be okay.”
Gustav dismounted, landing beside her. “What did you do?”
Marsh looked up at him. “I...” She let the sentence die. “I called the lightning...”
“In your head?” Gustav might not know how it all worked, but he was very good at making guesses.
“Yes.”
“But how did that...” He gestured at where Marsh and Roeglin sat on the ground. “How...”
“I intervened,” Elise interrupted, riding her mule over to them. She gestured toward Roeglin. “He’d be dead if I had not.”
“Dead?” Marsh felt mildly dizzy, and Elise regarded her with solemn brown eyes.
“Yes. Without the shield, he would have died.” Elise frowned. “How did you not know?”
“Apprentice...” Roeglin muttered, his words slurred and his eyes closed.
Elise raised her eyebrows. “With that much power?”
“Reasons...”
“We’re camping here tonight,” Gustav announced and those gathered around them groaned.
Elise hadn’t finished. She turned to Marsh. “And you’d be dead too.”
“I...”
“Dumbass,“ Henri chimed in, taking her mule’s bridle and leading it away. Izmay led Roeglin’s.
Zeb and Gerry came alongside her, Zeb sliding his arm under Roeglin’s shoulders while Gustav looped his hands under her arms and pulled her to her feet. Gerry took Roeglin’s legs, and he and Zeb carried the fallen mage to a patch of stone floor under a stand of callas. Gustav guided Marsh in their wake.
Henri and Izmay had already tethered the mules and unsaddled them. They dumped their gear to one side of the space and spread Roeglin’s blankets so he could be set down. Henri looked at Marsh and rolled his eyes.
“I suppose you want to be tucked in as well.”
Marsh blinked at him. She was still feeling nauseous and her head was starting to pound, but really?
“Gustav’s got it,” she managed, and Henri snorted.
“Doesn’t Roeglin have the privilege?”
“He’s kinda out of it right now.”
Henri smirked. “Fine. I won’t tell him if you don’t.”
He might have said more, but Izmay thumped him in the chest. “What?”
“Mules need grooming.”
Henri glared at Marsh as though the mules were all her fault. Marsh closed her eyes. The man had a point.
“You owe me another dinner.”
This time, Marsh was too tired to argue. “Fine.”
Henri took two steps and stopped.
“But you’re only preparing it. I don’t want to eat with you.” Marsh stared at him, and he continued, “Yup. Dinner for two, but for Iz and me. Four of them.”
Marsh continued to stare, her reply almost lost amidst the catcalls from around them. “Uh-huh.”
He glared at her, but Izmay grabbed him by one arm and smacked him in the chest with a grooming brush. “Enough!”
“I agree,” Gustav said and set Marsh on her blankets. “Enough.”
He glanced at where Elise was standing close by. “Can it wait until after they’ve slept?”
The dark-eyed woman nodded, pulling a small bottle from her tunic with slender fingers. “Everything can wait until after they’ve slept, but they both need a mouthful of this so their minds rest, too.”
She held it out and Gustav took it, raising his eyebrows in an unspoken question.
“Sleeping draft,” Elise told him and he nodded, uncorking the flask and raising it to Marsh’s lips.
“You heard the lady.”
Too tired to argue, Marsh obeyed, not making it into her bedroll before the draft took effect. When she woke, it was to the warmth of Mordanlenoowar curled up behind her and Aisha’s small form against her chest.
She propped herself up on one elbow, ignoring the mutter of complaint from her head as she took a look around. The camp was starting to stir, figures moving slowly around the mules tethered on the other side of the trail. Recognizing Gustav’s stocky outline, Marsh looked for the others.
This hadn’t been the ideal campsite, and it took her a little while to make out another two clusters of mules. That only by the figures moving around them.
“You okay?” Roeglin’s voice made her jump, and it worried her that he’d spoken out loud instead of mind to mind, as he’d started to do.
A lump formed in her throat and she nodded, taking a moment to gather herself before she spoke. “You?”
“Feels like Mordan and the kits chased a horde of shadow monsters through my skull, but I’ll live.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “You weren’t to know.”
“I should have guessed.”
“I didn’t give you time to think.”
“That’s no excuse.”
A new voice intervened. “No, it’s not, but you both lived and got to learn from your mistakes. Others have
n’t.”
Elise stepped out from the shrooms behind the blanket rolls, stooping to scratch Mordan’s head. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” came as a chorus, and she smiled.
“You’re both terrible liars, you know. Let me take a look.” They stilled, and she knelt beside Marsh. “You first.”
Fear woke in Marsh’s chest, but she swallowed, kneeling before Elise and resting her hands on her thighs. The mind mage was surprisingly gentle, her presence feather-light and silent. Marsh felt her for but a moment and then she was gone.
“Now you,” she told Roeglin and Marsh held her breath.
For a very long moment, there was silence, and then Elise spoke.
“You’re both incredibly lucky,” she said, “but you need to refrain from exercising your magic until at least tomorrow.”
Marsh wanted to ask her how she knew, and the woman gave her a soft smile.
“Child, I have been a mind mage for longer than you have walked the caverns, and I have three children who all have the gift. I know.”
Three? But...
“If you don’t keep your mind still, you’ll need to sleep again.”
Marsh tried hard not to think as she pushed to her feet. Elise reached out and steadied her when her head protested and her vision swam.
“Slowly, now.”
As if she needed to be told.
Across from her, Roeglin groaned and rolled slowly to his knees. Elise let go of Marsh and moved alongside him.
“You need to stay still,” she told him, and he raised his eyes.
“We need to get moving,” he replied. “I’ll stay as still as I can in the saddle.”
“What if we get attacked again?”
“I’ll knock both of them out of their saddles if either of them does more than pull a sword,” Gustav rumbled, his boots crunching over the stone as he approached, “but the mage has a point. We need to move.”
Elise’s brow creased, but she didn’t argue. “I’ll get the children ready,” she told him and held her hand out. “Come, Aisha. You’ll ride with me today.”
The girl scrambled to her feet and wrapped her arms around Marsh’s waist. “Be good,” she instructed and took Elise’s hand. “Mina?”
Elise smiled. “Yes, let’s go and find Mina. You can wake her.”
Aisha gave a yip of delight that summoned both Scruffknuckle and Perdemor from the shadows, and the three of them bounded off in search of their friend. Marsh smiled, watching them go, and Elise followed in their wake. Her smile died as Gustav laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Sit,” he instructed. “You’re on light duty today—and that does not include saddling a mule or chasing children.”
Marsh contemplated arguing, then caught the look on his face and decided she didn’t want latrine duty for the next six months of her life. She sat, catching Roeglin’s chuckle as she did.
Gustav caught it, too, and turned toward him.
“I’m sitting. I’m sitting,” the shadow mage managed, raising his hands.
He’d have been falling if Gustav hadn’t grabbed his arm and lowered him back to his blankets. The captain turned and gave Marsh a fierce glare. “Never again,” he ordered.
Marsh wanted to ask if she could do it to an enemy, but he was way ahead of her.
“Take out the enemy, but no more practicing head combat until Elise and Felix can show you how to do it safely.” He paused. “And that’s only if it can be practiced safely.”
2
No Kind of Welcome
It took them longer to get back on the road than usual, and by the end of it, Marsh owed Henri another dinner. She noticed Izmay wasn’t complaining.
“I really like candy shrooms,” the female shadow mage confided when it was her turn to ride alongside Marsh to make sure she didn’t fall.
Marsh shot her a sideward glance. “Uh-huh.”
“And chocolate. I like that, too.”
Marsh was about to reply that chocolate was in short supply and she could take what she was given when Mordan growled. The mule’s ears twitched and it raised its head. Marsh shortened the reins before it could do anything more, like get the bit between its teeth and bolt into caverns unknown.
Fortunately, it did nothing more than tense beneath her, its ears moving as it tried to identify the threat. Marsh caught herself reaching along her link to the kat but was jolted back by both the stab of pain in her head and the fact that Izmay slapped her on the shoulder—hard.
“No mind magic!” the shadow guard snapped, “or I’ll dump you on your ass myself.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Marsh muttered, and Roeglin snickered.
She heard the scrape of steel being drawn and followed his example, pulling her own sword from its scabbard. “Well, this is going to be fun.”
Turns out it wasn’t. The arrow humming out of the dark might have hit her if Mordan hadn’t come racing out of the dark. The mule danced away from the kat, then bucked, dumping Marsh out of the saddle and onto the path.
“By the Deep’s dark-assed—”
Mordan came and crouched over her as a second arrow flew through the space she had been. The mule brayed in surprise and started to bolt, only to have Zeb reach out and snag its reins. Marsh watched their hooves disappear and listened to the thud of boots hitting the ground around her.
Mordan left her, pushing her way past the legs surrounding her as she headed out into the dark. Marsh wished she could follow the kat’s progress, riding her mind, looking through her eyes and listening through her ears. She was almost surprised when Mordan pushed her gently back into her own head.
Silence descended, and the boots around her did not move. The only sound came from a single murmured instruction. “Be still.” Then a solid thump followed by Roeglin’s startled yelp.
“Quit your bitching. I’m saving your life.”
If Marsh hadn’t known he had a point, she might have thought Henri had enjoyed the opportunity.
No one answered that, and she found herself missing Roeglin’s smartassed presence in her head. She even missed it when he didn’t respond to that thought with something like, “I’ll remind you you said that.”
Tired of not being able to see anything, she went to roll into a crouch, only to have two boots push her quickly back down.
“You’re not in the clear yet,” warned Gustav.
“Stay,” asserted Gerry, sounding like his attention was elsewhere.
She was half-tempted to dump them both on their asses, but she let them keep her down instead. The silence stretched. Finally, Henri spoke. “Looks like they were only after her,” he observed, and then added, “The only way to know if they’re gone is to let her get back up and see if anyone tries to shoot her again.”
Both boots kept the pressure on as Marsh tried to do exactly that, and she waited while Gustav sorted through his options. Mordan’s frustrated roar at the empty dark decided him.
He lifted his boot. “Man has a point.”
Gerry’s boot followed and both of them scanned the dark, doing their best to see what was out there. Marsh rolled to her feet slowly, since she felt like she’d been hit by a cave-in.
That’s gonna leave a mark, she thought, taking a breather before pushing to her feet. Gustav’s hand under her arm was helpful but not necessary. Marsh straightened, the skin between her shoulder blades crawling, anticipating the next strike.
It didn’t come.
Zeb returned, leading her mule and holding an arrow in one hand. “Pulled this out of him. No wonder he ran.”
“It’s a wonder he’s still following you,” Marsh commented, and the shadow guard held up a candy cap ball.
“Gustav is magic,” he said. “You’d be surprised what a mule would do for one of these.”
He passed the reins over to Marsh. “Not sure you can ride him,” he told her. “It was in far enough to stick.”
“Thanks, Zeb.” Marsh took the reins and rubbed the mule’s face. “It’s
okay, boy. We can lean on each other.”
This drew snorts of amusement from those around her.
“He leans on you, and you’ll both fall over,” Roeglin told her coming alongside. “You can ride with me.”
Henri smirked. “Make sure you hold him real tight,” he snickered. “Ain’t a man alive doesn... Ow!”
“You’ll have to pardon him.” Izmay smiled. “I’m not sure he knows what manners are.”
She rode her mule in between them and slugged Henri again for good measure, her smile never wavering.
“And I’m not learning them from you,” he muttered rebelliously, subsiding to silence when Izmay fixed him with a stern stare.
“No, but you can pretend...” she suggested and leaned toward him. “I can make it worth your while...”
From the way she said it, she was looking forward to doing exactly that, and Marsh watched Henri’s face turn crimson. It didn’t help that she felt her own turning a similar shade.
“Let me help you up,” Gustav offered, coming alongside her. “That was quite a fall.”
Marsh nodded, focusing on getting back into the saddle before looking for Mordan. Gustav followed her example as he mounted, the pair of them not relaxing until the hoshkat came padding out from a clump of calla, looking disgruntled.
She cast a glance at Marsh and flattened her ears to the side, lashing her tail in irritation. A short moment later, Scruffknuckle bounded out beside her and Perdemor by her side. Pup and kit paused to look at her and Scruffy shook himself before bounding back out into the dark.
“Guess that means they came up empty too,” Gustav observed. “Let’s keep going. Those three will watch the perimeter and hopefully stop the next attack before it starts.”
Mordan cast him a look before turning and making her leisurely way out into the dark. Gustav frowned at her departing form and then turned his mule along the trail. “We’ll be sleeping at the Grotto tonight.”
Marsh hoped he was right. She wished she could touch minds with the kat but didn’t dare. She wished she could scan their surroundings for life signs, but that was too close to mind magic to risk...and Gustav had forbidden her using any magic.
She wondered if that included asking the shadows to tell her what they touched.
Magic Below Paris Complete Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 8): Trading Into Shadow, Trading Into Darkness, Trading Close to Light, Trading By Firelight, Trading by Shroomlight, plus 3 more Page 100