Gathering of Shadows (A Darker Shade of Magic) (48 page)

The stands let out a cheer as Lila entered the arena. From the balcony, the stadium had looked considerable. From the floor, it looked
massive.

She scanned the crowd—there were so many people, so many eyes on her. As a thief in the night, Lila Bard knew that staying out of the light was the surest way to stay alive, but she couldn’t help it, she
relished
this kind of trick. Standing right in front of a mark while you pocketed their coins. Smiling while you stole. Looking them in the eye and daring them to see past the ruse. Because the best tricks were the ones pulled off not while the mark’s back was turned, but while they were watching.

And Lila wanted to be seen.

Then she saw the Veskan.

Sar entered the arena, crossing the wide space in a matter of strides before coming to a stop in the center. Standing still, she looked like she’d grown straight out of the stone floor, a towering oak of a woman. Lila had never thought of herself as short, but next to the Veskan, she felt like a twig.

The bigger they are
, thought Lila,
the harder they fall. Hopefully.

At least the armor plates were sized to fit, giving Lila a bigger target. Sar’s mask was made of wood and metal twined together into some kind of beast, with horns and a snout and slitted eyes through which Sar’s own blue ones shone through. In her hand hung an orb full of earth.

Lila’s teeth clenched.

Earth was the hardest element—almost any blow would break a plate—but it was also given in the smallest quantity. Air was everywhere, which meant fire was, too, if you could wrangle it into shape.

Sar bowed, her shadow looming over Lila.

The Veskan’s flag rippled overhead, a cloudless blue marked by a single yellow X. Between Sar’s letter and Lila’s knives, the crowd was a sea of crossed lines. Most were silver on black, but Lila thought that probably had less to do with rumors of Stasion Elsor’s skill, and more to do with the fact he was Arnesian. The locals would always take the majority. Right now, their loyalty was by default. But Lila could earn it. She imagined an entire stadium of black and silver flags.

Don’t get ahead of yourself.

The arena floor was dotted with obstacles, boulders and columns and low walls all made from the same dark stone as the floor, so that the competitors and their elements stood out against the charcoal backdrop.

The trumpets trailed off, and Lila’s gaze rose to the royal balcony, but the prince wasn’t there. Only a young man wearing a green cape and a crown of polished wood and threaded silver—one of the Veskan royals—and Master Tieren. Lila winked and, even though the
Aven Essen
probably couldn’t see, his bright eyes still seemed to narrow in disapproval.

A tense quiet fell over the crowd, and Lila twisted back to see a man in white and gold robes on the judge’s platform that cantilevered over the arena. His hand was up, and for a second she wondered if he was summoning magic, until she realized he was only summoning silence.

Sar held out her sphere, the earth rising and rattling inside with nervous energy.

Lila swallowed and lifted her own, the oil disturbingly still by comparison.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright …

Her fingers tightened on the orb, and the surface of the oil burst into flame. The effect was impressive, but it wouldn’t last, not with so little air in the sphere. She didn’t wait—the instant the man in white began to lower his hand, Lila smashed the orb against the ground, sending up a burst of air-starved flame. The force of it jolted Lila and surprised the audience, who seemed to think it was all in the spirit of spectacle.

Sar crushed her own orb between her hands, and just like that, the match was underway.

* * *

“Focus,” scolded Alucard.

“I
am
focusing,” said Lila, holding her hands on either side of the

“You’re not. Remember, magic is like the ocean.”

“Yeah, yeah,” grumbled Lila, “waves.”

“When waves go the same way,” he lectured, ignoring her commentary, “they build. When they collide, they cancel.”

“Right, so I want to build the wave—”

“No,” said Alucard. “Just let the power pass through you.”

Esa brushed against her. The
Spire
rocked slightly with the sea. Her arms ached from holding them aloft, a bead of oil in each palm. It was her first lesson, and she was already failing.

“You’re not trying.”

“Go to hell.”

“Don’t fight it. Don’t force it. Be an open door.”

“What happened to waves?” muttered Lila.

Alucard ignored her. “All elements are inherently connected,” he rambled on while she struggled to summon fire. “There’s no hard line between one and the next. Instead, they exist on a spectrum, bleeding into one another. It’s about finding which part of that spectrum pulls at you the strongest. Fire bleeds into air, which bleeds into water, which bleeds into earth, which bleeds into metal, which bleeds into bone.”

“And magic?”

He crinkled his brow, as if he didn’t understand. “Magic is in everything.”

Lila flexed her hands, focusing on the tension in her fingers, because she needed to focus on something. “Tyger Tyger, burning bright
…”
Nothing.

“You’re trying too hard.”

Lila let out an exasperated sound. “I thought I wasn’t trying hard enough!”

“It’s a balance. And your grip is too tight.”

“I’m not even touching it.”

“Of course you are. You’re just not using your hands. You’re exerting force. But force isn’t the same as will. You’re seizing a thing, when you need only cradle it. You’re trying to control the element. But it doesn’t work like that, not really. It’s more of a … conversation. Question and answer, call and response.”

“Wait, so is it waves, or doors, or conversations?”

“It can be anything you like.”

“You’re a wretched teacher.”

“I warned you. If you’re not up to it—”

“Shut up. I’m concentrating.”

“You can’t glare magic into happening.”

Lila took a steadying breath. She tried to focus on the way fire felt, imagined the heat against her palms, but that didn’t work, either. Instead she drew up the memories of Kell, of Holland, of the way the air changed when they did magic, the prickle, the pulse. She thought of holding the black stone, summoning its power, the vibration between her blood and bones and something else, something deeper. Something strange and impossible, and at the same time, utterly familiar.

Her fingertips began to burn, not with heat, but something stranger, something warm and cool, rough and smooth and alive.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
she whispered silently, and an instant later, the fire came to life against her palms. She didn’t need to see what she’d done. She could feel it—not only the heat, but the power swimming beneath it.

Lila was officially a magician.

* * *

Lila was still trying to wrangle the fire into shape when Sar’s first ball of earth—it was basically a rock—slammed into her shoulder. The burst of light was sharp and fleeting as the plate broke. The pain lingered.

There was no time to react. Another mass came hurtling toward her, and Lila spun out of Sar’s line of attack, ducking behind a pillar an instant before the earth shattered against it, raining pebbles onto the arena floor. Thinking she had time before the next attack, Lila continued around the pillar, prepared to strike, and was caught in the chest by a spear of earth, crushing the central plate. The blow slammed her back into a boulder, and her spine struck the rock with brutal force, two more plates shattering as she gasped and fell to her hands and knees.

Four plates lost in a matter of seconds.

The Veskan made a chuckling sound, low and guttural, and before Lila could even get upright, let alone retaliate, another ball of earth struck her in the shin, cracking a fifth plate and sending her back to her knees.

Lila rolled to her feet, swearing viciously, the words lost beneath the cheers and chants and snapping pennants. A puddle of fire continued to burn on the oil-slicked ground. Lila shoved against it with her will, sending a river of flame toward Sar. It barely grazed the Veskan, the heat licking harmlessly against the armor. Lila cursed and dove behind a barrier.

The Veskan said something taunting, but Lila continued to hide.

Think, think, think.

She’d spent all day watching the matches, making note of the moves everyone made, the way they played. She’d scraped together secrets, the chinks in a player’s armor, the tells in their game.

And she’d learned one very important thing.

Everyone played
by the rules.
Well, as far as Lila could tell, there weren’t that many, aside from the obvious: no touching. But these competitors, they were like performers. They didn’t play dirty. They didn’t fight like it really mattered. Sure, they wanted to win, wanted to take the glory and the prize, but they didn’t fight like their
lives
were on the line. There was too much bravado, and too little fear. They moved with the confidence of knowing a bell would chime, a whistle would blow, the match would end, and they would still be safe.

Real fights didn’t work that way.

Delilah Bard had never been in a fight that didn’t matter.

Her eyes flicked around the arena and landed on the judge’s platform. The man himself had stepped back, leaving the ledge open. It stood above the arena, but not by much. She could reach it.

Lila drew the fire in and tight, ready to strike. And then she turned, mounted the wall, and jumped. She made it, just barely, the crowd gasping in surprise as she landed on the platform and spun toward Sar.

And sure enough, the Veskan hesitated.

Hitting the crowds was clearly not allowed. But there was no rule about standing in front of them. That hitched moment was all Lila needed. Sar didn’t attack, and Lila did, a comet of fire launching from each hand.

Don’t fight it, don’t force it, be an open door.

But Lila didn’t feel like an open door. She felt like a magnifying glass, amplifying whatever strange magic burned inside her so that when it met the fire, the force was its own explosion.

The comets twisted and arced through the air, colliding into Sar from different angles. One she blocked. The other crashed against her side, shattering the three plates that ran from hip to shoulder.

Lila grinned like a fool as the crowd erupted. A flash of gold above caught her eye. At some point, the prince had arrived to watch. Alucard stood in the stands below him, and on her own level, the judge in white was storming forward. Before he could call foul, Lila leaped from the platform back to the boulder. Unfortunately, Sar had recovered, both from her surprise and the hit, and as Lila’s foot hit the outcropping, a projectile of earth slammed into her shoulder, breaking a sixth piece of armor and knocking her off the edge.

As she fell back, she flipped with feline grace and landed in a crouch.

Sar braced herself for an attack as soon as Lila’s boots struck stone, which was why Lila launched the fire
before
she landed. The meteor caught the Veskan’s shin, shattering another plate.

Four to six.

Lila was catching up.

She rolled behind a barrier to recover as Sar stretched out her thick fingers, and the earth strewn across the arena shuddered and drew itself back toward her.

Lila saw a large clod of dirt and dropped to one knee, fingers curling around the earth the moment before Sar’s invisible force took hold and pulled, hard enough to draw the element, and Lila with it. She didn’t let go, boots sliding along the smooth stone floor as Sar reeled her in without realizing it, Lila herself still hidden by the various obstacles. The boulders and columns and walls ended, and the instant they did, Sar saw Lila, saw her let go of the ball of earth, now coated in flame. It careened back toward the Veskan, driven first by her pull and then by Lila’s will, crashing into her chest and shattering two more plates.

Good. Now they were even.

Sar attacked again, and Lila dodged casually—or at least, she meant to, but her boot held fast to the floor, and she looked down to see a band of earth turned hard and dark as rock and fused to the ground. Sar’s teeth flashed in a grin behind her mask, and it was all Lila could do to get her arms up in time to block the next attack.

Pain rang through her like a tuning fork as the plates across her stomach, hip, and thigh all shattered. Lila tasted blood, and hoped she’d simply bitten her tongue. She was one plate shy of losing the whole damn thing, and Sar was gearing up to strike again, and the earth that pinned her boot was still holding firm.

Lila couldn’t pull her foot free, and her fire was scattered across the arena, dying right along with her chances. Her heart raced and her head spun, the noise in the arena drowning everything as Sar’s ultimate attack crashed toward Lila.

There was no point in blocking, so she threw out her hands, heat scorching the air as she drew the last of her fire into a shield.

Protect me
, she thought, abandoning poetry and spell in favor of supplication.

She didn’t expect it to work.

But it did.

A wave of energy swept down her arms, meeting the meager flame, and an instant later, the fire
exploded
in front of her. A
wall
of flame erupted, dividing the arena and rendering Sar a shadow on the opposite side, her earthen attack burning to ash.

Lila’s eyes widened behind her mask.

She’d never spoken to the magic, not directly. Sure, she’d cursed at it, and grumbled, and asked a slew of rhetorical questions. But she’d never commanded it, not the way Kell did with blood. Not the way she had with the stone, before she discovered the cost.

If the fire claimed a price, she couldn’t feel it yet. Her pulse was raging in her head as her muscles ached and her thoughts raced, and the wall of flame burned merrily before her. Fire licked her outstretched fingers, the heat brushing her skin but never settling long enough to burn.