Trials

by Kady Cross

  Damocles hadn’t scored any direct hits against Teratos, but neither had the fallen seraph been able to prevent the attackers from advancing. Their progress was punishingly slow, but it was also inexorable.

  Phineas began to shout, but his words were cut off. Spinning to face his friend, Damocles was momentarily shocked to look through one of the now-translucent Ravens, and even more stunned to see only the body of his warrior champard on the trampled ground, dismembered, the ends of his limbs smoldering, his head rolled a short distance away. Gigantic crabs advanced on Damocles and the seraphs, sparks flying from the demon iron-lined edges of their claws. The battle mage disintegrated the demon iron with a seraph-enhanced Metal conjure and then turned back to Teratos.

  Cleopatra and Mosiah repositioned themselves to try cover the gap left by Phineas’s death, but even assuming that Damocles would handle all threats within his field of vision, the task was too much for only two of them. “Dam, if you’re gonna do something,” Mosiah yelled back over his shoulder, “you’d better do it soon. We don’t stand a snowball’s chance.”

  “A snowball’s—” A suspicion had been growing at the back of Damocles’s mind for some time. He opened himself wide and examined Teratos with the powerful full-senses scan he’d developed. He saw the aura around the fallen seraph, and deeper he saw the braided filaments of creation energy that made up its otherworldly nature: Earth, Air, Water, Stone, Metal, Light, all the magical elements—all the elements but one.

  Damocles knew no Fire conjures—nobody did, really. A simple cantrip to start or put out a campfire, sure, but nothing like what he’d need now. He’d have to improvise, take the basic fire spell, power it with elemental Fire from the Ravens. Creation energy flowed into him from the Ravens through Taharial—Fire energy he was never meant to touch. Damocles doubled over in pain. It had to be released before it consumed him, but unlike the other power he’d drawn from the seraphs, this energy resisted his attempts to channel it through his prime amulet. It burst forth uncontrolled, like fireworks shooting randomly at monstrosities to the left, one of his champards to the right, and ineffectually into the sky.

  He had to bind it into a form. Without an appropriate conjure, he returned to Scripture—“Uh, ‘The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of smoke and by night in a pillar of fire!’,” and a writhing serpentine torrent of flame sprang forth from the point of Damocles’s sword, while the crystal in the pommel began to glow from within, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. The flame didn’t seem to want to lance directly at Teratos, but Damocles experimentally shifted it around and found that aiming it at a point on the roof of the arena above the fallen seraph’s throne brought a pillar of fire pouring downwards onto the icy demon.

  With a scream of pain, Teratos tried snaking to the side, but Damocles easily followed his movements with the pillar from above. The fallen seraph raised shields of ice, snow, rain, and freezing fog, but the fire punched through them, raising new screams as the flames renewed their consuming thaw. Damocles echoed his enemy’s screams, the pain he’d felt at first when the Fire entered his body turning into burgeoning strength, his cries turning into cheers of exultation. “We have him! I have him! Nothing’s going to stop me! His fate is mine, and I condemn him—”

  A thunderous explosion threw Cleopatra, Mosiah, and every mortal monstrosity unconscious to the ground, and blasted the battered remains of the roof away in all directions. Twisted steel girders and hundredweight boulders of ice fell onto the bodies below, crushing many animals, but miraculously missing the two champards.

  When Cleopatra and Mosiah awoke uncounted minutes or hours later, they saw Taharial, armor- and weapon-less, wearing robes of unblemished white, standing within the triangle formed by three scars scorched into the concrete beneath his feet. A fourth circle of blasted rock still smoked at the far end of the arena. The seraph offered no words of consolation or explanation or excoriation to the mortals. They would have to wrestle on their own with what they saw, heard, and felt that day, and then decide how they would tell the story to the people of New Orleans, now and in coming generations, on their return home.

  After a moment’s consideration of the omega mage’s ashes already scattering on the wind, his remaining champards picked up his sword, remarkably unscathed by the energies that had rushed through it. Reverently, they carried it away. And through it all Taharial silently wept.

  SPIKE Y JONES is a long-haired, tie-dye-wearing Canadian editor, writer, and trained philosopher. There not being a lot of money in philosophy, he’s concentrated his energies on his other talents.

  As a writer, Spike’s work has ranged from write-ups of Dungeons & Dragons monsters in the ’80s all the way to stories about different sorts of monsters in this collection three decades later.

  As an editor, Spike started by editing a presidential campaign game in 1992, and now in his day job edits 2016 presidential campaign transcripts. Rogue Mage: TRIALS and Rogue Mage: TRIBULATIONS are the first short-story anthologies he’s edited.

  Wheels in Motion

  52 PA / 2064 AD

  Faith Hunter

  Daria bent over the fire, feeding green branches to the flames, a sort of living sacrifice to the night. Power grew in the fire and she absorbed the released energy. Using the life stored in the branches was only one step away from becoming a death mage, but, unlike a neophyte, Daria had control over her power lust. She would not steal the life-force of another mage or a human, or rape the life from the flora and fauna on the face of the Earth.

  Beside her was Evelyn, a Moon mage. They sat so that Daria’s right shoulder brushed Evelyn’s left. Daria faced north; Evelyn faced the rising Moon in the east. The moon mage lifted her face to the Moon, drawing in power, transferring it to the boulder buried beneath the ground a scant ten paces from them.

  To Daria’s left, facing west, was Woodrift, a River mage. A stream gurgled nearby, swollen by melting winter snow. He had stood in the icy water for hours, filling himself with energy and creating a power sink in the ground water below them. Even Daria could feel the hum of energy he had gathered, whispering in the earth, counterpoint to and energizing her own life-force gift.

  Beside Evelyn and Woodrift, facing south, his back to Daria, sat a first generation kylen, Emilel, whose gift was rare—the gift of Fire. He was Daria’s son, one of her first-born. Emilel had borrowed a sigil from an angel of punishment, and, though he was fully grown and full of the energies of the High Host, he could be in their presence for four hours before they all gave in to mage heat. If it was discovered that he had taken the sigil, he would be severely punished, perhaps denied access to the Earth until the end of time. But he was willing to risk it to set into play the incantation that would save his father, the watcher Barak, who had been captured by the Darkness.

  The incantation should be finished by then, the genetics of the two unwilling ones merged, drawing them together. With Fire gift, drawing on the seraphic energies of the newly created Realm of Light, they could create an incantation of unimaginable power. And as long as they didn’t slip into the use of Scripture to empower the conjure, the Most High might never notice. Might not. They all risked their lives on that hope.

  In the distance, an owl called, a lonely hooting sound followed by abbreviated hoots as it sought the presence of its mate. Taking that as an omen, Daria lifted her arms, her dark skin glistening in the light of the fire, her curly hair reflecting the flames.

  “I seek the sound of lovers, heavy beneath the moon,” she said of Evelyn’s gift, threading her power through the Moon mage’s, gathering it up into her own.

  “I seek the echo of passion, bright as flaming wings,” she said of Emilel’s element, accepting as he gave over his gift to her use.

  “I seek the timbre of ardor, essential as the water of life.” She pulled Woodrift’s hoarded power into her, feeling the energies rise up through the ground like a mist.

  “I seek the song of devotion, heartbeat of the earth.” Daria
wove the massed power together, into a skein of energies, a tapestry of a working.

  She repeated the chant, over and over, as they all sank into the working, merging the powers of creation energy into one purpose, one function.

  With a small part of her consciousness, she sought out the watcher, knowing he was waiting for her, eager; knowing he had just been tortured yet again, and that his blood flowed; knowing that he resisted the blandishments of the Dark for her, for the power of their love, and for their children, the kylen.

  Barak, his mind so clouded with pain it was like a ruptured dam, spilling out, destroying all in its path. But the spirit hand she held out offered respite, and he looked up from the pallet of his shorn wings, from the floor of the barred cave that kept him prisoner. Mentally, he took the hand and sighed as the massed power of the elemental ring eased his pain. “Tell me,” he said softly.

  “Can we not simply lift you,” she murmured, “and take you from this cell?”

  “The rock walls are woven with Darkness,” he said. “It would render me nigh unto death, a husk until the end of time.”

  “Then know this,” she whispered. “In two generations there will be born a litter of mages capable of merging with a seraph, mind to mind, without mage heat, without danger of censure from the Most High and the High Council of the Seraphim. I will send one to you—trade one for you, if need be—but send one close, so that you might sense him, know him, and merge with him. The weapon you create together will surely bring you to the notice of the Most High.”

  “And our hopes will be fulfilled,” he said. “Souls for the neomages, redemption for the watchers.”

  “And permission for our union,” she pressed.

  Barak folded his mind against hers, a purr of love and need sparking and sparkling through her. “Always that, my love, in this world and in the one to follow. Soul to soul, mind to mind, spirit to spirit. Forever.”

  Daria pulled her thoughts from him, easing away, retreating like mist from sunlight. This time, she saw the energy mesh that rested just below the surface of the cell walls, like a sieve that would disrupt the life-force of any who sought to pass through. She had been lucky not to be trapped by it, burned by it, and mentally she shuddered at the thought of what so much Dark energy would have done to the circle of power.

  Returning to the tapestry they were weaving, she considered the genealogy of the candidates. And she chose two who seemed most likely to produce an omega mage, a mage who could force her will upon the High Host—and perhaps upon the Most High as well. Dangerous. Dangerous indeed. And a sin worthy of a horrible death, or, worse, a never-ending half-life of eternal pain. A sin that Evelyn and Woodrift had no idea they were contributing to. Deception, thy name is Daria.

  Bait

  53 PA / 2065 AD

  Faith Hunter

  Achmed bowed his head. “All glory be to the one creator god, Allah, and to His holy ones.” His chains rattled softly, the demon iron burning his wrists, in spite of his affinity with metals. The scent of gangrene was only faint at the moment, but if help was long in coming he would lose the use of his hands.

  Deliala laughed softly. “Not exactly a traditional response, Achmed. There is no need to feel hurt or shame at being bested by a succubus. You are, after all, only human.”

  He closed his eyes against the allure of her voice. “Allah refines me in the fires of Hell. Allah seeks to teach me strength and great use of creation energy. Allah is one and Mohammed is His prophet.”

  “Allah has abandoned you,” she said tartly, “to me, to do with as I will. You are familiar with the ancient story of Job, as told in the tales of the sons of Judah, your enemies.”

  Allah has not abandoned me. He has not. He shivered as Deliala trailed her fingers across his naked chest. Her nails raked, drawing blood close to the surface of his skin, welts that ached in the cold air of the hellhole. Achmed knew that to engage in discourse was foolish, perhaps even deadly, but to stay silent left him with only the scent of her to focus on. And his need of her was growing. He had been chosen for the role of bait because he was strong in the Prophet. He was the least likely of all his Enclave companions to give in to temptation, the one most likely to resist, allowing then others to carry the battle into the deeps before they were discovered. Yet he wanted this woman who was neither human nor mage. He wanted this image of physical perfection, though he knew she was immoral, iniquitous, a sister to the Darkness who slept in the deepest chamber of the cave.

  He licked his lips, tasting her on his mouth where she had kissed him with an unholy kiss. Desperate, he whispered, “My people and the people of Judah are enemies no longer. The seraphs have willed it so.”

  “Enemies forever,” she spat. He heard the spittle land and the soft sizzle of acid on the dust at his feet. “The infidels and the false seraphs have brought you only pain and loss of life. I—my master can give you victory over them all.”

  “Allah is great. Before Him there is no other.”

  The stone to which he was chained vibrated, a faint tremor. Deliala tilted her head, as if she too felt the quake and was puzzled by the sensation. But Achmed knew what it was, and triumph shot through his veins like lightning. It was the sound of rescue. It was the sound of battle. Finally, at long last, they had come.

  In the distance, he heard the clang of clean steel on demon iron—a scream of pain. With a sudden hard crunch of his jaw, he broke through the false tooth, revealing to his tongue the nugget of pure gold hidden beneath. With the power of his mind, he activated the amulet and felt the surge of creation energy that in an instant replenished his body’s vigor.

  With one hand, Deliala reached for her knife. The other grew talons. But it was too late. Power wrapped around and threaded through Achmed. “Death to the infidel,” he screamed. He completed the incantation. Fierce glee roared through him. “Whoever seeks power should know that all power belongs to Allah!” he shouted, reciting from the Koran. Fire blasted from his bound hands, leaping out to engulf the succubus.

  A whirlwind of flame roared to the stone ceiling of his prison chamber. The demon iron shackles crackled and cracked and fell at his feet. For the first time in untold hours Achmed was free; the succubus mere ashes at his feet. Naked, he rooted in the corner for his robes. He would not shame his god by appearing clothed only in his sin. Dressed, he wiped his mouth free of the kiss of evil. And he raced into the hallway, shouting his battle cry, “Praise be to Allah!”

  Karida met him in the darkened hall, her body glowing bright with mage attributes. Her tribal Bedouin mage-warrior tattoos glistened with gold and copper, the precious metal dust having been thrust beneath her skin with both needle and incantation. Hilt first, she tossed his sword high into the air, followed by his kris-knife, and he caught both, whirling into the walking horse stance of savage blade as the first of the spawn scampered into the tunnel.

  “Allahu akbar,” she crooned, the words the opening to her favorite battle incantation, “Allah is able to do all things.” From her tattoos burst fire and light. Left-handed, she threw a vial of oil into the flame. The scent of rosemary and myrrh filled the long narrow space. Spawn crisped into dust.

  Ashes and Dust

  57 PA / 2069 AD

  Diana Pharaoh Francis

  1.

  Mistral smelled the daywalker long before he saw him. He was overdue for his so-called schooling, and he’d been expecting someone. A messenger of his slavemaster: a dragon chained but not helpless. Never helpless.

  Mistral’s stomach tightened with dread memories. His lips peeled from his teeth in a silent snarl. Anger, frustration, fear. No point in running. Trees crowded the excuse for a road, making it impossible to turn around. Not that he would run. He’d not leave his mules to be torn apart.

  Not much time. He pulled the team to a halt. He’d been leading them up the steep grade to Tarrytown, the last stop for trading before heading for the hellhole. The tires on his brightly painted caravan were mostly bald. He hoped
to replace them in town.

  The mules protested, tossing their heads and snorting, eyes rolling white. They could smell the Darkness closing in. Mistral spoke softly to them, reaching out to stroke their necks and scratch behind their ears. Gradually they lowered their heads. Ben rubbed his head up and down Mistral’s shoulder, rubbing at the itch beneath his halter. Buck thrust his nose against the man’s chest, demanding a treat. The pair’s bridles hung loose around their necks. Mistral tended to lead the team, rather than drive them. The caravan was already heavy enough and the hardy beasts had pulled it many miles this season.

  Once they calmed, Mistral dropped the ropes. "“You two stay here."”

  He’d long ago taught them to ground-tie and trusted they’d not run off without a good reason. The coming daywalker provided a better than good reason, though creatures of Darkness were no strangers to them. Darkness clung to Mistral like a shadow. His master kept a close watch on him wherever he went. Mistral would not be allowed to slip his leash.

  He rolled his shoulders, the memories of unending pain shooting fire down his nerves. His entire existence was pain. Day and night punished him for living. Only the twilight of morning and dusk and the gray of overcast days granted him any ease at all.

  Mistral strode back to the caravan, reaching up under the seat to touch the wooden amulet he’d placed there. It throbbed with ready power. He activated it. Magic rolled outward from the spell inlaid in the wood, pulsing through and around him and the mules. The two shifted uneasily, but remained where they were. It wasn’t the first time he’d used the protective amulet. Hopefully it wouldn’t be the last.

  He returned to the front of the mules. Picking up their leads, he clicked to them. "“Let’s go now, boys. Not far now."”