Algardis Series Boxed Set

by Terah Edun

  Nearby perhaps, because there weren’t too many areas of the greater holding were fifty or more people could be gathered comfortably at once and that left only two options now that the mercenaries had rounded up her entire family according to those ogres in the great hall. The great hall was out for obvious reasons. The outer bailey was too exposed. But the library would be the perfect place. Plenty of seating and access with only one entrance and exit.

  At least that they know about, Mae thought in sheer delight.

  She and her cousins however had long ago worked out that there was a secret entrance behind the stacks of parchment in the furthest corner. She could get in, check on her family, get those together who could resist and then…off to confront the person who had started this all. The foreign woman they’d invited with welcoming arms into their midst would have no idea what had hit her when Maeryn Darnes was through with her. Having made her choice, Mae decided to head in that direction and then use her gifts to figure out the rest.

  “I can’t believe you’re just going back. We’ve nearly escaped!” Rivan said in a disgruntled voice behind her.

  She turned to see him standing on the second landing. Not quite up to the top but no longer in the underground anymore either.

  She said, “I never agreed to escape. We just happened to stumble upon an underground passage that would get us out quickly while hiding. If I can come back and take advantage of it, I will.”

  She didn’t say it but she was desperately hoping that he didn’t take advantage of it now. She may have been more confident in her gifts of fire at the moment but there was still so much she had to learn and she couldn’t take on a whole mercenary troop and coterie of mages by herself.

  “We found it thanks to the blessing of the gods,” Rivan pleaded desperately. “Why not take advantage of it?”

  “Because I don’t believe the gods are looking out for us,” Mae said truthfully. “I’d rather go through the rest of my life knowing I did the right thing than the most expedient.”

  “And you know for sure they’d do the same for you?” he asked spitefully.

  Mae shrugged. “That would be the hope and you and I both saw the sacrifices my father, stepmother, cousin, and sister tried to make for me back in that room. What makes you think I would do any less for the myriad of relatives I have left?”

  Rivan stirred uneasily.

  He didn’t have an answer.

  “Besides as we’ve discussed before, this is my fight,” she said softly. “And if I can make it right, I will.”

  “Or get captured trying,” Rivan pointed out. “Even if you find your family, you still have the problem of four mages coming after you. In fact, they’re probably laying in wait wherever your relatives are gathered.”

  Feistily Mae said, “Which is why I’m going to take care of Donna Marie first.”

  Rivan narrowed his eyes. “Do I even want to know what that means. Do you even know what that means?”

  Mae shrugged. “Probably not.”

  Rivan sighed in disgust from his lower landing as he crossed his arms and asked in a patronizing tone, “Do you even know how to find her if she’s separated from the others?”

  Staring down at Rivan with a proud look on her face, Maeryn Darnes answered him sweetly as she said, “You might not have taught me much but I can find Donna Marie on my own now thanks to that little line heading off my core.”

  Rivan slapped his forehead, leaned back and groaned.

  “I knew that was going to get me in trouble,” he grumbled.

  Mae rolled her eyes.

  “You coming?” she asked with a bit of hope in her voice.

  “Not a chance,” Rivan said flatly as he crossed his arms in defiance. “I got you out of there, if you want to get back in, that’s your own problem.”

  Mae frowned but she didn’t let him see.

  Determined not to show weakness she squared her shoulders and said, “If they capture me—”

  “When,” Rivan interrupted with dry wit.

  She glared at him.

  “If,” she repeated loftily. “I promise I won’t tell them you were involved in my escape.”

  He scoffed. “Promises are all well and good but it’ll come down to when you’re tortured as to whether you can stand the heat.”

  Mae said quietly, “I won’t falter.”

  Rivan looked at her askance but he didn’t do her the disserve of laughing at her or mocking her again.

  Instead he said somberly, “I do believe you might have the stones to get through it. But you’re just a human, there’s no shame in admitting to weakness.”

  Mae shook her head.

  “It’s not about shame,” she said consistently. “It’s about being strong enough to fight for my family. The fight I’ve been heading towards since the beginning, though back then I was arming myself against the wrong enemy.”

  Rivan tilted his head to the side and sighed.

  “I can see I’m not going to change your mind,” the young man said regretfully.

  “No, you’re not,” Mae said surety in her voice.

  “Well best of luck to you Maeryn Darnes,” he said softly. “You’re going to need it.”

  With that the only friend she had in the entire greater holding turned and stepped out of the range of her light and down the stairs into the underground darkness.

  She watched until she couldn’t see him at all anymore and she turned then to do her duty.

  Because no one else would.

  19

  Mae took a deep breath and tried to figure out what she was going to do now that she was alone.

  First things first, she thought to herself firmly. Surveillance.

  “I need to know where the threats are before I can tackle how to take them out,” Mae muttered to herself as she deliberately set aside the question of how she was going to overcome full mages at a later date.

  She was nervous but strangely enough she wasn’t afraid. Maybe it was because she was on her home turf, inside a home she had spent her whole life exploring. Mae had the advantage. She knew where all of the out of the way corridors, rooms, and hallways were located. She just had to get close enough.

  Now that she was only looking out for herself Mae snuck through the greater holding walls like a ghost. She was already close to her destination, she just needed to get an idea of how many guards and mages were watching over her family, if any.

  She managed to listen in on a few more conversations but gained nothing conclusive about the location of her family. She had a guess but it would take a lot of work to get around the patrols and soldiers she’d seen loitering in hallways, basically forcing her to retrace the broad majority of her steps to find another way into the room they were most likely held.

  In a normal scenario she could have walked there in five minutes.

  Dithering as she hid behind a rather large stone carving in an interior hallway, Mae weighed her options again. She would be going on a guess and even then, have to take the long route to get there. If she was wrong, she’d wasted far too much time.

  Deciding to go with something a little more substantial than her gut she took a careful look around, determined no one was coming, and dove into her core.

  She quickly found the line that was different from the rest and discarded it.

  She wasn’t trying to go to the Aether realm at this moment.

  Similarly she found a thin line glowing strong and bright. That one had to be the line to Rivan’s magic. He was the only mage she’d spent so much time with that her own magic had built an innate bond with it regardless of her own desires.

  Finding the last line then was easy. It was small and pale, a direct contrast to Rivan’s bright and hale line.

  Reaching out she thrummed the magical connection she had determined would lead her to the foreign woman Donna Marie and hoped she was doing the right thing.

  It was her only trick at the moment and she had to risk it.

  Swallowi
ng deeply Mae rose up from her magic and saw that the line was still glowing in her vision. With a deep sigh of relief she took off following it, keeping to the sidelines and ducking around corners when it called for it. But the line kept going without error, straight for the main offices of the Council of Elders. The very place she had stolen a grimoire from in the weeks before. It was ironic that she was heading back to the scene of the crime but she didn’t shy away from it. In fact, there was another way into the offices and she knew just the route to take.

  Pushing down on her magic to collapse the line, Mae raced to her grandmother’s private sanctum with all the confidence of a young woman who had snuck in there more than a time or two. It didn’t even take her long to reach the outside access panel behind a tapestry that her parents and her elders hadn’t thought she knew about. With a quick look around the corridor she was in, Mae darted behind the tapestry fast enough that she was sure no one saw her.

  Looking around she saw that it was as her grandmother had left it, papers strewn across the desk and armchairs. A general air of chaotic disorder but everyone in the family knew there was a method to the woman’s madness.

  Ignoring the mess, Mae went straight to the peephole into the other room. She knew it was behind a stone carving of an ancestor’s likeness. Moving the bust aside with a grunt, Mae peered into the place she thought was where the foreign woman was holed up. She wasn’t disappointed. Donna Marie strode back-and-forth across the larger room like she owned it. Ava sat on a chair and seemed to be fiddling with a bit of magic in her hands.

  Ava would occasionally look up and converse with Donna Marie when she came back into Mae’s line of vision and then turn back to her pet project calm as can be.

  That was all Mae could see but it was really all she needed as well. She had confirmed their placements and from this she could at least make a plan.

  Surprise the mage before she surprised her.

  Confidence rising, Mae darted back the way she came. She had plans to put in place now.

  Halfway across the office though Mae froze at her great-aunt’s desk.

  Another grimoire? She thought incredulously.

  “Impossible, I saw you destroyed not even a week ago,” she whispered to herself in shock.

  Still on the off-chance her eyes weren’t deceiving her she picked up the heavy tome and read the cover. It matched the name of the grimoire she had before, even the color and age of the pages were the same.

  Not believing her eyes Mae hastily flagged through the heavy text to the one page which held the incantation she had needed for her siblings to recover. Not that she even knew if they were alive. The last she had seen of her two youngest siblings they’d been left on their beds in the sickroom while their parents battled against outsiders in Mae’s name. To her astonishment the page was back where it had been originally found. Of course, here she could see some differences. There was a clear and jagged line all along the edge of the paper binding it to the spine of the book. It had been torn out then bound back in again with a combination of stitching and some kind of sticky residue.

  Not professional at all but as long as there’s not a missing page viewable from the outside of the book perhaps whoever returned it was hoping no one would notice, Mae thought curiously.

  But who could that be? The last time she’d seen the full grimoire it had been in the hands of the strange collection of her relatives practicing a dark ritual over her siblings’ bedside. The page itself had been saved and handed over to Donna Marie much later…albeit willingly in that case. The former group might have performed a sleight of hand and not really burned the tome, only to return it to its home, but the latter? What did they have to gain by adding the casting back into its original home? Especially after they had killed off members of the family who had put it there.

  It was a puzzle, Mae thought.

  But one she had no time to solve. Besides, the only person who’d been in the same vicinity in both instances was Richard and he wasn’t alive to tell her.

  Not wanting to do more damage than before and hoping perhaps that the tome could be of some use to her, Mae closed it with a hefty smack and got ready to leave, taking it with her. She had been reading back-and-forth through this same text for days before the foreign woman and her outsiders had first showed up. There were defensive incantations in there she could use.

  It’s better than nothing when going up against skilled mages, Mae thought ruefully as she reached the secret panel into the room and slipped back out with a satisfied smile. She hadn’t really come here for this, but it was turning out to be a more fruitful surveillance trip than she had previously thought possible.

  With a satisfied smile as she slipped out from behind the tapestry, Mae was careful to keep to the corners again. Just as she prepared to turn down a new hallway, she stopped. She had no choice as she felt a cold bit of metal poking her directly in the throat.

  “Not so fast,” a voice growled from behind her. “Hands above your head.”

  Mae quickly did what they asked as a new hand reached forward and snatched the grimoire out of her grasp.

  Grimacing Mae thought, I’m getting heartily tired of people snatching that thing from me.

  “Turn around now,” the voice ordered.

  Mae did so silently and she smoothed her face in an unreadable mask as she met her new captor face-to-face.

  It was a mercenary. Not one of the mages who had come into the sickroom before, she was relieved to note. But a warrior still.

  He looked her up and down and when his gaze returned to her face a smirk was plastered on his lips.

  “You’re the girl that escaped last night,” the mercenary said with a smug look. “The captain’s been wondering where you got to.”

  Mae shifted uncomfortably but she kept her hands held high above her head. Wondering if he’d notice, she slowly let a glow build in the small of her palms. Just calling on the tiniest bit of magic. But the mercenary was quick to recognize her work. He pressed forward on the blade until a bead of blood showed at her throat and dripped down the length of his weapon.

  “Ah ah girl,” the mercenary warned. “Don’t be doing anything I wouldn’t like.”

  “I was just trying to bring some light into this dark hallway,” Mae assured. “Just to see a little better.”

  “There’s nothing you need to see other than a small cage,” the mercenary admonished. “Told the captain not to leave you alone in that room but the mages insisted. Thinking they know better and all.”

  Mae gave a careless shrug but didn’t argue with him. His complaints about his suggestions being ignored seemed to have taken his mind off the glow in her hands at least.

  “Care to place a bet you won’t get a chance to put me anywhere,” Mae trying to keep the distraction going.

  “Oh, and how is that?” the mercenary said as he lowered the point of his blade from her throat to her heart.

  Not precisely better placement from her perspective but workable.

  She wasn’t a fighter but she wasn’t going down without resisting either.

  Before she could think things through and tell herself this was a stupid idea Mae lunged forward and used both glowing hands to grip his blade. She nearly speared herself in the heart in the process, but she’d managed to lunge to the side just enough that it would just leave a glancing scar.

  Still it was worth it because this time the glow in her hands was heated up red hot. Putting the minor wound out of her mind, Mae sent not just heat but flames up his blade with a furious blast. The weapon heated up so fast that the warrior was surprised and she smelled his burning flesh on the sword’s handle even before he yelled out in pain.

  Mae grinned and waited. It didn’t take long before he let his weapon go and as the blade clattered to the floor she kicked it away. She could have picked it up herself but she knew less than nothing about wielding a sword and feared she was more liked to harm herself than him in trying it out for the first time.


  Instead Mae took advantage of her opponent’s pain and quickly drew her hands together and thrust out with a forceful push in front of her.

  As her hands thrust out, so did her flames. In the form of two thick columns that hit him directly in the chest. He whirled away partially aflame and screaming. She hadn’t been trying to physically push him off his feet. He was too big and large for her to offset his balance. Instead she let her fire do the work for her.

  Mae grimaced as he screamed and screamed.

  She’d gotten too used to Rivan being practically immune to her flame. If the noise hadn’t brought down scouting parties on their heads, his painful shouts certainly would.

  Trying to keep a wary eye out for newcomers and not let her current opponent gain advantage, Mae danced on the balls of her feet anxiously as she tried to think up her next move.

  She was actually winning. That never happened and honestly, she wasn’t precisely sure what to do now.

  Try to grab a statute and bash him over the head, rendering him unconscious?

  Pick up the sword he’d discarded and…slash until it connected with flesh?

  At this point she had only her wits and flames, so she elected to go with those. They hadn’t steered her wrong yet.

  20

  While she was figuring all that out, her opponent however was recovering well enough to make himself a threat again.

  But burned as he was, she thought that the mercenary should still be curled up in a corner somewhere.

  She was wrong.

  Although he was hunched over a lot with his hand cradling his charred chest, he wasn’t out of the fight yet clearly. Then he moved to the center of the room and glared at her. He looked to be in immense pain but whatever training he had as a warrior was helping to overcome that. If Mae hadn’t just come from the coffin side of her dead stepmother, she might have even been able to summon up some pity for his state.

  But she was all out of pity these days.

  Just revenge and fury remained.