Island Shifters: Book 02 - An Oath of the Mage (42 page)

Beck turned and reached out to pat Reilly Radek on the head and then traded enthusiastic grips with Rogan with the deep affection of long-time friends.

Seeing Baya laying on the ground, Beck dropped to his knees and placed his hands on the cat’s body. After a few seconds of Beck’s ministrations, the Draca Cat stirred and then sat up onto her haunches dazedly.

What did he do?

Without another word, Beck turned directly into the whirling mass of the tornado and disappeared within its depths.

The sight panicked her, and she felt like she was losing him again. “Beck!”

As if in response to her shout, the roar of the wind came to an abrupt halt and the swirling air slowed. Kiernan covered her head for protection as the debris-filled murk fell to the ground with a relentless pattering on the stone.

Then, there was silence.

The space around them cleared and Kiernan saw Arlen and the other Cyman who had been caught up in the cyclone, lying on the ground.

Beck was standing directly in front of Avalon and Kenley. Her daughter, still leashed, covered her face as tears still poured from her eyes.

“How did you do that?” she heard Avalon demand of Beck.

He held a palm up in front of her. “Before you think for a single second more that you can use my daughter as a tool for evil, let me explain the truth of your situation. You stand before a Mage.”

Even from the distance, Kiernan could hear Avalon suck in her breath. It mirrored Kiernan’s own. Beck was a Mage? In such a short time?

“Kiernan, come here, please.” He did not turn around when he said it, but she heard him clearly. She hurried over to his side. “Take Kenley back to your camp. I will be along in a moment.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the leash fell from Avalon’s hand.

Kenley, freed from her constraint, ran to Beck and threw her small arms around his legs. He smiled and wrapped an arm around her. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone, Daddy. I could not stop what I was doing!”

“I know, darling. This is not your fault. Please go with Maman now.”

Kenley peered around Beck’s legs at the Cyman called Arlen lying on the ground and began to cry. “I killed him!”

“No, Ken, you did not kill him. He still lives, and I will heal him in a few moments. I promise. Can you be a big girl and run along with Maman now?”

She nodded and reluctantly let go of Beck’s legs to take Kiernan’s hand.

Kiernan looked at Avalon. She was standing rigid and her mouth was wide open as though a ball of cloth had been stuffed into it, but there was nothing there. And, while everything else looked frozen in place, her eyes were spinning wildly.

“You…you will be along in a moment?” Kiernan questioned him.

He nodded, but still had not taken his eyes off Avalon.

As she led Kenley away, she heard him say, “You have committed your last act of violence on this island, Avalon Ravener.”

In the now clear and calm twilight, Beck stared at the woman who had caused such devastation on the island and to his family and yet he hesitated, his two oaths at war inside him. As a shifter, it was difficult to take a human life—any life—but as a Mage he had vowed to defeat evil utterly and without remorse. Killing an enemy in battle was one thing, but to stand here and kill a woman in cold blood was quite another.

He knew that Arias Sarphia would not approve, but he lifted his hand and released the ball of air inserted in her mouth, and let the invisible ropes around her body slip away.

Avalon instantly sucked in a deep breath and rubbed her arms. “A Mage you may be, but a very inexperienced one.”

He tipped his head in agreement. He knew he still had much to learn.

“Looking back on this very moment, you will remember that it was your hesitation to kill me that proved fatal. You never should have released me from my bonds.” Avalon disappeared, seemingly into thin air.

Beck cursed and spun around searching for the sorceress. With a shake of his head, he remembered the little girl he killed during Mage training. His blood oath and compassion for humanity had led him to make the same mistake twice, but he now realized the error in his thinking. Avalon Ravener was not human. What humanity she may have once held had been destroyed long ago when she invited evil into her heart, and she deserved neither his charity nor his mercy. The words of his Mage oath flared in his mind.

Destroy evil utterly and without remorse.

His unqualified acceptance of that phrase came to him at the same time that Avalon’s spell slammed into his back. His body flew through the air, but he now had his own spell to use.

“
Pilloni
.”

A pillow of air caught and cradled him inches before he would have slammed into the hard sandstone floor of the valley. He jumped to his feet. Avalon must have cast an invisibility spell because he could not see her. The landscape was so flat that even in the growing darkness, he could see the profiles of Kiernan, Rogan, Reilly and the Cymans walking to their camp, but Avalon was gone.

“I am here, Mage!”

Avalon was standing on the ledge of the cave entrance.

He uttered the hover spell, and his arms windmilled through the air as his body zoomed toward the cave. He would definitely need more practice with this spell.

Avalon laughed and disappeared inside.

Beck made the ascent at a high rate of speed and landed hard, skidding across the floor and crashing into Avalon’s mahogany table in the center of the chamber.

When his body came to a rest, he looked up and caught a glimpse of Avalon’s black robe disappearing into the next chamber. He chased after her.

Chained to the wall in the main chamber for the duration of his last visit, he had never ventured this far into the cave. Pallets for sleeping lay scattered throughout the room and at the back wall three more passageways. He picked the corridor on the left and sprinted through, casting out with a detection spell for the presence of life. It was empty, so he did not slow until he saw the light of the opening up ahead.

At the exit, he stepped out of the tunnel and found himself in a cavernous chamber split by an unfathomable, dark chasm. A stone bridge spanned the gap between the ledge he was on and another, much wider ledge on the other side.

He looked to the right. A woman was lying there, and he ran to her.

It was Sapphire.

He ran his fingers over her body in a healing probe and found that the only recent injury was a very hard blow to the head.

“Sapphire! Wake up.”

The sorceress began to stir. When her eyes focused on him, she scrambled away as if afraid of him.

Beck held out his hands to calm her. “It is just me, Sapphire. Relax.”

“What happened?” she asked, looking around at her surroundings.

He shrugged. “I just came in here and found you like this. You don’t remember?”

She shook her head. “Where are the others?”

“Back at their camp, but why would they leave you in here?” He reached out a hand to help her to her feet.

“I don’t know. I really cannot remember anything.”

“Well, you did take quite a wallop. Do you think you can walk?”

A guttural laugh cut through the cavern. Across the abyss, Avalon appeared from behind a boulder.

Beck pushed Sapphire back with one arm and moved to stand in front of her. “Stay behind me.”

Avalon was shaking her head. “And, you call yourself a Mage? Let’s see,” she said holding up her fingers to count. “Your sorcery is rudimentary and pathetic. You let me go when you should have killed me. And, you have committed your second fatal mistake of the evening.”

“Such as?”

“You turned your back to a sorceress.”

A powerful kick to his back sent him sailing over the ledge and out into the air. Stunned over the fact that Sapphire was conspiring with Avalon Ravener, it took him a moment to recover. He fell over twenty meters before casting a spell to stop his descent, and he shot back upward through the air.

He landed smoothly this time, in the middle of the stone bridge with Avalon on one end and Sapphire on the other. Standing sideways, he held one hand, palm out, to each sorceress and took a deep breath. Time slowed as he drew on the power of his magic to calm his mind and body, and every minute detail of the cavern came into sharp focus. The faded detail etched into the stone balustrade, the tiny cracks that peppered the surface of the bridge, and even a larger fault line that ran deep under the mountain floor.

He would not hesitate again.

There was a lesson in every failure, and every lesson would make him a better man, a better Mage.

Lowering his head, he sought the power of the earth, harnessed its strength and brought it forward, drawing it in. He directed his magic at the fault line deep within the core of the rock and struck at it with every bit of power he held.

The mountain trembled.

The cracks in the surface of the bridge fractured and spread with ominous snapping sounds as the fault began to quake and widen.

Beck looked up and time slammed back into place. Although it felt longer, the span of one heartbeat occurred since he landed on the bridge from his fall.

With a strenuous scream, he pushed out with his palms and both women sailed back through the air. The bigger threat was Avalon so he turned and sprinted toward her first. Hand out, he pinned her to the ground in a sorcerous grip of steel.

The reluctance was gone.

He approached the woman who had killed Gemini Starr, Citrine, Bajan, the dark-haired girl whose young face stared back at him now, and the countless other nameless souls just for the use of their bodies. He could not forget that the woman also tried to kill him, his wife and his daughter.

Destroy evil utterly and without remorse.

Leaning down, he took her head into his hands and she screamed in denial. In the end, he did show some mercy. Avalon deserved much worse. She deserved to suffer.

“
Morbendi
.”

Her head rolled to the side, lifeless eyes wide, and her mouth still open in a soundless scream.

Turning, he sprinted back toward the bridge and it was now swaying dangerously from the threatening grumble of the mountain. He felt one end collapse and had to jump in a running leap to the other ledge as the surface of the bridge disappeared beneath him.

He landed in a crouch and scanned the cliff.

Sapphire was gone.

He ran through the center, narrow passageway and came out into the room with the pallets just as the sorceress erupted out of the corridor on the left.

She skidded to a stop when she saw him and held up her hands when he walked toward her. “Please, Beck. Do not do this.”

Destroy evil utterly and without remorse.
“Beck, please.”

He kept walking.

“I ask for your forgiveness! You are a shifter, Beck Atlan! Remember that! Remember your blood oath to serve and protect!”

“You forfeited the right to ask for forgiveness when you sided with evil.”

As she lowered her head and cried, Beck cast the killing curse for the second time.

C
HAPTER
26

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