Magic coursing through her, Rielle focused on the paladin’s path and formed a circle with her hands, straining to cast five hundred feet away. Anima flowed from inside her, powering her spell.
Beneath the paladin, the ground cracked into a web thirty feet in diameter. He wouldn’t be able to jump clear of it in a full suit of armor.
He glanced down, then ran.
It was too late.
A great rumbling filled the air as the ground broke and collapsed, leaving the downed, injured mages gasping and coughing in the dust cloud.
Her spell transmuted the soil to stone, some twenty feet deep—she hoped.
She cast an updraft and jumped from the battlements. After landing on the soft grass, she cast candlelight, summoning a small flame to her palm to light the way through the darkness.
Ahead of her lay the pit she’d created, and within it, the man of the hour.
His little invasion would cost her information on Olivia tonight, and no doubt punishment from the Proctor. Besides the unquestionable fun of cleaning garderobes and scouring pots and pans, punishment meant having to stay in the Tower instead of going on mission. She’d enlisted with the Divinity to do some good in this world, not to play chambermaid.
All for some paladin’s whim. She huffed and shook her head.
Well, her last chance to avoid—she sighed—minimize her punishment was to handle this impeccably.
Paladins considered themselves mankind’s last defense against the so-called perils of magic. It had been centuries since there had been an official clash between the mages of the Divinity of Magic and the paladins of the Order of Terra. However, their relations had never been friendly.
But five years ago, during a mission in Signy, she’d healed a young paladin on the brink of death. They clung to honor. She could use that.
She approached the pit and knelt, crumbling dirt in from the rim and the freshness of earth into the air.
The paladin grunted. She poked her head over the edge to watch his futile attempt to scale the sides, his face contorted with the effort through his helm’s open visor. He kicked out, pounded his armored foot onto the stone bottom, his hands clenched into fists.
Without help, he’d be going nowhere. When she held the flame out, he glared up at her and planted his hands on his hips.
“I demand that you free me.” A deep, authoritative rumble of a voice.
She met his gaze squarely. “And I demand that you surrender.”
He snorted and looked away, scanning the confines of his prison. “Surrender? What about ‘no quarter’?”
No quarter. Yes, on missions, the Divinity required that mages give no quarter—take no prisoners.
“This isn’t a mission. You will not be harmed if you comply. But if you are so eager to die, that can yet be arranged.” When he didn’t look her way, she shrugged: a waiting game would end only in her favor. “Suit yourself. I can wait. I’m not the one trapped in a hole.”
The paladin pressed his lips together, still and staring into the shadows. His gaze meandered back to hers. “This has nothing to do with the Tower. I’m just passing through on my way to Monas Ver on the Order’s business.”
Perhaps his words would have had an effect where the Order held sway, but not here. “That means nothing to me.”
He should have submitted at the western gate. The guards let nearly everyone through without so much as a question, and they would’ve let even a paladin through after questioning. An hour or two, and he could’ve been on his way. Everyone knew. If he didn’t like it, he could’ve gone farther south around the Tainn Mountains through the duchy of Maerleth Tainn and its pass. But two hours lost beat several days.
The paladin exhaled a harsh breath. “Terms.”
At last, a practical response. “If you harm no one, you have my word that I will allow no harm to come to you. You agree to meet the Proctor of this Tower of Magic and submit to his questioning.”
He paced the dark pit for a moment and then paused. “I accept.” Although he didn’t seem pleased, the word of a paladin was renowned as ironclad. “I am your prisoner.”
“Wise choice.”
The paladin raised his head. “Well?”
“Sit.” Geomancy leveling spells were not known for their smoothness, and she didn’t want him unconscious.
He grimaced. When she simply waited, he heaved a sigh and sat on the bedrock with a clatter of armor.
She acknowledged his cooperation with a contented shrug. “Brace yourself.”
She took a few steps back before dismissing her candlelight spell. Calling upon her magic once more, she formed a circle with her hands, tying her gesture to the invisible threads of anima in the earth.
When she raised her arms, the ground beneath her feet shook. Dust rose from the ground, shimmering in distant torchlight. A deafening rumble filled the air.
Off to the side, Jacqui and Luc struggled to remain standing.
The bottom of the pit rose, bedrock turning to loose earth and churning upward, raising the paladin with it.
At last, he was at her level, and she completed the spell. He scrutinized the ground beneath him with a frown.
He was a tower of a man, about six-and-a-half feet tall, and the full arcanir plate armor made him massive. It was rare that, at her own significant height, she felt so small.
“Luc, Jacqui,” she called. The two novices shuffled over. She inspected the paladin’s weapons belt; he carried a sword and a dagger. “Disarm.”
He didn’t move.
“I can’t allow you to enter the Tower, much less the Proctor’s quarters, armed.” Although she preferred his compliance, her fingers tingled, ready to cast should he refuse.
“If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t need weapons.”
A threat. She grinned. “Then you should have no objection to handing them over.”
After a ponderous silence, he threw off his sheathed sword, dagger, and sword belt.
“Luc.” She cocked her head toward the weapons, her fingers still ready to cast. If the paladin dared attack Luc, she’d spell every stone in the outer bailey’s walls to crush him.
Luc collected the weapons, gaping at them as though he held magic itself; it had to be his first encounter with arcanir. He moved behind her once more.
“And the armor,” she ordered.
The paladin narrowed his eyes. “I will not relinquish my armor. It’s not a weapon and poses no danger.”
No danger? She raised an eyebrow. She’d seen him punch Rainier with his knuckle-dusters. The conjurer was still out cold.
His armor, shimmering a faint sage green over steel gray, showed some wear but appeared well maintained. It had seen a significant amount of combat.
But the paladin’s armor wouldn’t save him if he attacked her or the Proctor. There were plenty of surroundings to funnel into a whirlwind to crush him. And the Proctor, a force-magic magister, could do far worse to him.
“Come.” She inclined her head toward the Tower.
His face hard, the paladin moved in the direction she indicated. From his shoulders hung a long, heavy woolen cloak of pure white—not unlike her own meticulously maintained immaculate mage coat—with the Order’s moon-shaped coat of arms adorning its back.
A crowd of mages hurried toward them, voices raised in commotion. She grimaced. So now they came, when the work was nearly done? She held up her hand.
One stopped directly in their path.
Of course it was Kieran Atterley—a master singular elementalist, a hydromancer, and her bitter rival.
She cut around the paladin and faced Kieran. With his tall lean build, wavy copper locks, and bright sapphire eyes, he was the oft-cited handsomest master in the Emaurrian Tower.
But that handsome face masked ruthlessness. He’d been a thorn in her side ever since she’d won the coveted apprenticeship to Magister Leigh Galvan seven years ago. Four years after that, when she was nineteen, Kieran had reported her to Magehold for m
aster–apprentice misconduct, with nothing to gain but the satisfaction of ruining her master’s life and hers. And last year, he’d pushed her down the spiral stone stairs from the Tower’s second floor.
His ire seemed insatiable.
He sneered down at her. “I’ll take it all from here.”
Now, seeing a possible commendation in the capture of a trespasser, he wanted to take it all from here?
She leaned in toward him, narrowed her eyes. “You can take one thing. A knee to the jewels. You want it?”
He huffed a sharp breath.
“Then get out of my way.”
He spat. “You—”
Before he could touch her, she gestured a flame cloak over her entire body. It flared to life, wreathing her in protective fire, ready for battle. She wasn’t exactly the notorious Flame of the Crag Company, but she’d more than earned her four-bar master chevron. If he wanted a fight, she was ready. And he’d lose.
She strode into his path, her shoulder colliding with his. His black mage coat caught fire there, and he beat at the flames. She looked over her shoulder at the paladin. “Follow. Luc, Jacqui, you, too.”
Taut as a harp string, Kieran stood aside as the paladin, Luc, and Jacqui moved past.
Luc outran them to the open Tower doors, and spilled the light from within. At the entrance, she dispelled her flame cloak.
When the paladin raised his hands, her muscles contracted, but he only removed his helmet.
The light of the Tower’s sconces revealed a handsome visage: mid to late twenties, a few years older than she. Close-cropped brown hair and eyes a familiar blue, the color of the Shining Sea in a storm. A scar slashed through his left eyebrow. And like all paladins, he was clean shaven, but his lack of facial hair did nothing to diminish him; it only complemented a decidedly masculine jaw.
She turned away. He might have a handsome face, but she’d seen handsome faces before. Falling for their appeal rarely ended well. Especially when they belonged to unattainable men who’d sworn a vow of celibacy.
In her periphery, he scrubbed a hand through his hair and then rubbed his neck.
Low on the right side below his jaw, there was a scar about the width of a blade. Another just behind his ear—an exit wound. Healed, but poorly.
It couldn’t be.
No, it was him. From five years ago.
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No Man Can Tame Page 30