by Hiatt, Bill
Then a darkness blacker than the night sky hit me from all directions, extinguishing the fire of my blade and suffocating me. It was much like Morgan’s magic from earlier, but this time clearly fueled by Winn’s much less exhausted magic.
What’s the old saying? “Prayer is always answered, but sometimes the answer is ‘no’”? I kept praying nonetheless, at the same time reaching as far into myself as I could, pulling out every remaining ounce of energy, focusing and singing, the latter much harder now that it seemed the darkness was almost solid, pouring in through my mouth and nose, racing to my lungs, smothering me in a surprisingly literal way.
With my fire out, I knew that Stan, Dan, and Carlos would be quickly overwhelmed, that Shar would probably be hit by another arrow. I had at most seconds to beat this spell.
I spent those seconds picturing who I was fighting for: for Stan, who had been by my side unfailingly; for Dan, my rediscovered childhood friend; for Gordy, whose loyalty would put most people’s to shame; for Shar, whose integrity ran deeper than I had ever thought; for Carlos, newly joined to us but already risking his life alongside us; for Nurse Florence, ever self-sacrificing; for my band, who taught me to love music even before I was any good at it; for Eva, my first love; for Carla, perhaps my next one; for other friends, and even for Coach Miller, who certainly deserved better than to be murdered in some back hallway in Awen. They would be a lot to lose, too much to lose.
I could feel the energy building in me as my blood filled with adrenalin, as my heart pounded like a drum. I focused everything on driving back the darkness yet again. I sang, and my voice ripped through the darkness. I swung White Hilt, and it flared to life. Precisely at that moment, Zom cleaved the air around me, and the attempts by the darkness to rally itself against my attack dissolved. Shar was at my side again.
I was unsteady now, visibly unsteady, but I had to get closer to the others. Shar, understanding, took my left arm, and we half-ran, half staggered, toward where Stan, Dan, and Carlos, drenched with the mingled blood of shifters and themselves, were making what was all too clearly a last stand. Nurse Florence had somehow managed to reach them and was standing in their midst, doing everything she could to keep Gordy from slipping away, but she herself was wounded and would clearly not last much longer.
When we were close enough, I surrounded all of us with flame. I could no longer handle raising such a barrier from a distance, and I did not know how much longer I could guide White Hilt’s flame at all. Still, for the moment this was not a bad defensive position. We were all together and shielded from physical attack, and Shar could ward off magical attack with Zom.
The problem was, a defensive position was not enough. We needed a way to beat Winn, not just have a standoff with her—and I couldn’t think of a way to beat her under the present circumstances.
“Winn!” I yelled. “Carrie Winn!”
“What are you doing?” hissed Nurse Florence, her eyes never leaving Gordy.
“What I have to!” I whispered hoarsely. “Carrie Winn!”
“You wish to surrender?” She spoke to me through the wind rather than shouting back, so I answered the same way.
“After a fashion. It is me you want. I know that. If you let everyone else go, I will surrender myself to you for whatever purpose.”
“NO!” Stan shouted. The others agreed as forcefully. Even Gordy seemed to be muttering “no” over and over again.
“This is the only way I can save you now,” I told them.
“Perhaps,” Carrie Winn mused, “with their memories properly cleansed, I could free your friends.”
“I would require a very specific oath,” I replied. From Taliesin 1’s memories I knew how tricky supernatural beings could be and how careful one had to be in negotiations with them.
“And I would require the same, of course,” she said in a gracious tone I was sure was completely fake.
“Viviane!” called an unfamiliar, Welsh-accented female voice so close at hand it made me jump.
“Vanora! It’s about time!” It was then I realized this must be the one member of Nurse Florence’s order who had had to take a later flight and thus survived the plane crash. Not exactly the cavalry, but she just might do in a pinch, especially if she was a decent spell caster.
“Some shifters spotted me downstairs, and that slowed me down a bit. Taliesin!” Vanora called out to me directly. “Open this side of the flame wall and make room for several more people in there.”
Several more people? Perhaps the cavalry after all!
But the people who came through, aside from Vanora, filled me with horror: Coach Miller, with all the students who should have been hiding downstairs. I was so shocked I almost forgot to close the wall behind them. Winn was speaking to me on the wind again, but I told her I needed a minute.
“What the f…” I began.
Even Nurse Florence looked shocked. “Van, these people shouldn’t be here!”
“Neither should you,” said Coach Miller, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Once your friend took your spell off, I knew exactly where I needed to be. To hell with where I should be.”
“Vanora!” said Nurse Florence angrily. “I sent them away on purpose.”
“You know as well as I do that if you lose up here, they are all dead anyway,” replied Vanora simply. “Eva and I have told them what is really happening, and they want to help.” I looked daggers at Eva, but she ignored me. “There are musicians here to back up Taliesin, and the rest are willing to lend as much energy as they can. You know we can use that.
“Taliesin, organize your volunteers,” she continued. “I got them on to the roof under an invisibility spell, but it won’t be long before Winn senses what is happening.”
I had the band members stand close to me for more a capella reinforcement. Not accidentally, Jackson stood to my right and Carla to my left, with her arm around me.
“I knew,” Jackson whispered to me, “I knew I wasn’t crazy, despite what I saw at Founders’ Day.”
Carla’s presence was strong, and at that moment I knew for certain that she had magic of her own, though she did not seem to be aware of it. Fortunately, she wasn’t broadcasting her sexual fantasies at the moment, but instead using visualization techniques it was obvious Vanora must have shown to all of them, sending me images of light, images of friendship, images of strength. Almost despite myself, my mood lightened, and again I dared to hope.
The others clustered around Nurse Florence and Vanora, who would channel their energy wherever it was most needed.
“Well?” asked Carrie Winn impatiently.
“Well,” I said, as my fellow musicians began to sing with me and new power poured into me, “Deal’s off!”
During the last few minutes I had managed to locate the archer, apparently invisible. His mind, though, was not invisible to me, and I used it to aim a bolt of flame that incinerated the bow in one stroke and left the archer, hands badly burned, unable to use another if one happened to be at hand.
My mind reeled as shifters indiscriminately threw themselves against my fire. Just a few moments before, their onslaught would have overcome me, but now, reinforced by the music of my friends and refreshed by their energy flowing into me, I gathered myself together quickly, made the flames even hotter, and sent them exploding into the ranks of shifters standing far from where the wall had been only seconds before. The smell of burned flesh sickened us all, but the shifters had suffered massive casualties. Gordy was still in too bad shape to join the attack, but Dan, Stan, Carlos, and Shar flung themselves into the confused ranks of the surviving shifters, wreaking havoc. I yelled to our new backup crew not to watch what was happening. Some had already seen and were shaken, but I gave them credit for continuing to concentrate.
With the shifters suddenly finding themselves on the losing end of the battle, I started launching fireballs at the far end of the roof, where Winn and Morgan were standing. I knew they could probably shield themselves with rapid wi
nd to deflect the flames, as indeed they did, but as they long as they were occupied that way, it would be hard for Winn to strike back with magic at my fighters, who were advancing steadily in her direction. At least, that was what was supposed to happen. I ought to have known there would be at least one more hitch that night.
Yeah, I could see clouds forming with unnatural speed above us, but I thought it was just another effort to rain on White Hilt’s parade, and I was ready for that. What I didn’t see coming was a barrage of lightning. Thank God it started slowly, but I knew it might speed up as Carrie Winn got rolling.
After one uncannily close lightning strike, Vanora directed all her attention to countering the storm, but it was more intense farther away from us, where our four champions had been beating the shifters until they had had to start dodging lightning bolts. I was so proud of how much they had learned to work as a team when I realized that they moved into tight formation around Shar. Zom would prevent a lightning hit close enough to affect him, and he could swing the blade to cover someone else if the need arose. Supporting his tactic, I cast a major burst of speed into him, giving him a better chance of deflecting the blasts. He probably still wasn’t literally fast enough to deflect oncoming lightning, but his rapid footwork effectively prevented any lightning strikes nearby.
Then the rain poured down in gallons, soaking all of us in seconds, pounding us harder than any natural rain would have. However, this tactic produced mixed results, since the shifters were as much affected as we were. To be sure, it was harder to keep White Hilt going, but I had it blazing with such intensity that so far even such a heavy rain was creating massive amounts of steam—and also creating weather I could exploit to create another hurricane. Winn must have remembered that, because pretty soon the rain stopped abruptly, though the lightning continued, more or less a waste of energy on Winn’s part, since Vanora was keeping it off us, and Shar was still keeping it off the fighters.
By now the shifters had realized that simply increasing size and muscle mass wasn’t enough to win this battle, especially as their numbers were becoming depleted at what to them must have seemed an alarming rate. One of them farthest away from our advancing fighters was even trying to become a dragon, an effort that was clearly beyond him, and the result so far was more like a slowly churning blob. Others more realistically seemed to be trying to grow dragon scales as a way of protecting themselves from sword blows—not a bad idea, except that we had Zom, and no magic countermeasure could prevail against that. A few tried becoming gigantic, but that too was a transformation requiring time they did not have, and if some seemed close to succeeding, I redirected my fireballs.
I was tiring, however, and I could feel the energy reserves ebbing away. After all, I had been burning through magic like crazy for the better part of an hour, and I had already been nearly spent before this battle started. It was a miracle that the extra help I was getting had lasted this long. I looked at the students standing behind me, and the strain showed clearly on their faces, not only in their expression but also in their pallor.
I looked back at the battle. The shifters were nearly done. Seeing through Stan’s eyes for a moment, I could see that Winn looked nearly as exhausted as I was, and Morgan was spent. We had clearly given Winn more than she had bargained for. Yes, we could not keep up the magic much longer, but neither could she, and at this point the physical side of the battle was ours. It would not take longer than five minutes for my brave friends to reach her, and her wind defense could not hold back Shar. Check and mate.
And then Winn spoke to me through the thunder, no doubt an attempt to be intimidating. “Taliesin, surrender yourself, or your friends will suffer!”
“Your attacks have failed,” I shot back through the wind. “My friends have nothing to fear from you. It is you who need to fear them!”
“I don’t need to hurt them physically to make them suffer. I can just awaken all their past lives and watch their minds shatter. I did it with you, after all. You had a strong personality like the original Taliesin in there to help you hold everything together. They may not. Do you want to take the chance?”
“You can’t hurt them mentally or physically,” spoke Nurse Florence in the wind. “If anything happens to them at your party, you could ruin the life you’ve built.”
Only one row of shifters stood between my men and Carrie Winn. I was surprised she was continuing this conversation rather than making good her escape. But perhaps she had been too arrogant to have an escape plan.
“Really? For such clever people, you are incredibly dense sometimes. I have enough shifters downstairs to double for all of them. That was the plan to begin with, you know—they all end up dead, and the shifters fill in long enough to divert any kind of suspicion from me.”
Yeah, I know—we hadn’t taken that strategy into consideration. All our calculations about the safety of my friends went up in smoke in seconds.
“I see we need a demonstration,” thundered Winn. I switched to “Stan cam” and realized to my horror that she was aiming right at him. Fortunately, so did Shar, and Zom swept between Stan and Winn, dissipating the reddish blast of her spell before it could strike him.
One of the shifters had managed to become a nine-foot giant and had a sword—Mordred’s sword, Clarent, to be exact. It rang against Dan’s blade and pushed him back. Unfortunately, the shifter should have thought more about speed than strength. Yes, he could deliver a mightier blow than even Shar or magically muscled Stan, and he could have beaten any one of them, but he was facing all four by this point, and he couldn’t move fast enough to parry all of their thrusts. He focused on Shar to ensure that Zom couldn’t touch him and shift him back to human form. His skin was toughly scaled enough to deflect Dan’s and Stan’s blades, but he had no defense against Carlos’s blade’s drowning effect—one nick, and he started running out of oxygen. Winn managed to heal that wound and stop the effect, but Carlos struck again and again and again, faster than Winn could heal him. The few surviving shifters were imitating his example, though, which meant more work to get to Winn than I thought. I had to consider moving up closer and bringing White Hilt to bear on the remaining shifters while I still had the energy.
Winn realized that she couldn’t heal her minion fast enough, and knowing also that she couldn’t hit anyone near Shar with her awakening spell, she shot a wild blast in our direction, catching us by surprise. Apparently this spell was not as influenced as most by distance. I had time to realize it was pulsing toward Carla and moved to step in front of her.
What might have happened if someone already awakened had been hit by that blast I didn’t get to find out then, because Vanora tripped me. I was out of position, and Carla took the full blast. Her scream tore my heart in half, and she clutched wildly at her temples. The other band members stopped singing and looked at her in horror.
“Carla, Carla! I’m here!” I tried to yell over her screaming, but my attempted yell came out like a hoarse croak.
Then I got a psychic blast of the chaos in Carla’s mind. If her earlier broadcasts had been uncontrolled, these were a thousand times worse. Used as I was to this kind of thing from my own experience, the collision between my mind and the fragmented pieces of what used to be hers almost made me lose my grip. They did shatter the energy-sharing ties Vanora and Nurse Florence had built up so laboriously, and my fatigue crashed into me so hard I almost dropped Carla.
“I’ll take care of her!” said Vanora, trying to pull her away from me. “Focus on the battle!”
“You, you did this! I could have…”
“Died,” said Vanora firmly. “I don’t think you could have survived a second shot of a spell that powerful.”
I wanted to question how she could possibly know that, but I was too furious to really have a coherent conversation, and Vanora was right about one thing—I needed to focus on the battle. That would be hard to do even if I cared nothing about Carla, given the amount of psychic static she was putting o
ut, but other lives might be at risk if I didn’t find a way to shield myself from her. Vanora was trying to put her to sleep, which at least took the edge off the chaos.
Moving more sluggishly than I wanted, I looked out through Stan’s eyes. He and the others were on the verge of finishing off the shifters, and the lightning storm was fizzling out, so Shar had used his enhanced speed to outflank the shifters completely and was throwing himself straight at Carrie Winn, whose shield of fast moving air would not stop him. In seconds Winn would be dead.
As focused on Winn as Shar was, I missed until it was too late the fact that Morgan had been making herself inconspicuous nearby. Shar never saw the blade coming, but it dug deep into his side, and he crumbled to the ground. I switched to his perspective long enough to realize that his hand was still clenched tight on Zom’s hilt, so at least no one could hit him with a spell while he was down. I could feel warm blood leaking from his side at a frightening rate, though, and he was very near to losing consciousness. I had to get closer!
This time it was Jackson and George who helped me reel in the direction of the battle. Everyone else was moving, except for Vanora, who was still tending the now sleeping Carla, but they moved in slow motion. Gordy was up and carrying his sword, with Nurse Florence cautioning him that he was not fully healed yet. The others, drained of energy as a result of their contribution to the battle, were half staggering, half walking, like zombies in a cheesy horror flick, but they were all moving, as I was, toward what was left of the battle.
When I got close enough, I used what fire I could muster to help finish off the shifters. Carrie Winn, her own strength fading, her own reflexes slowing, was not fast enough to stop me.