Mage's Blood (37 page)

The plaza which had been so dark and silent a few seconds ago was in chaos. Lanterns were appearing in windows and faces peered wide-eyed at the debris strewn everywhere. The cobblestones of the plaza were shattered, and wooden beams jutted here and there from the piled rubble like the bones of some giant fallen beast. There were only a few bodies – the Moon Tower was not used for general accommodation. She could see the shattered body of a serving woman, and an Argundian, Rutt Sordell’s personal guard, Fuls. She sprinted down the currents of air, sending gusts ahead to clear the dust and reveal her prey.

She found Terraux first. The nasty little snot was already dead, pulped beneath a shattered wall. She couldn’t find Benet at all, but she’d felt him die; no loss there either. But where was Sordell?
There!
She landed lightly and fired a gnosis-bolt into the broken body. It jolted the prone, twisted form, but Sordell didn’t stir. She still approached cautiously, though his body was a pulped mess of torn flesh and shattered bone. He’d been trapped inside the falling tower and unable to use Air-gnosis to fly free. With no affinity to Earth-gnosis, all he’d been able to do was wrap himself in shields and hope. Such protection might work for instantaneous impacts, like weapons or missiles, but shields couldn’t withstand tons of rock raining down, and the result was the broken shape before her.

But Sordell had other resources: he was a Necromancer, and they were tougher to kill than cockroaches. She had seen him rise from apparent death before and she was taking no chances now. She fired another bolt into him, and this time she heard a tiny sigh even as Artaq closed in on him.

‘Artaq, stay back!’

‘He’s dead, lady. I’ll take his—’

Black light flashed from a twitching finger and caught the Jhafi warrior in the face. He screamed, his back arched and he fell. Even as Elena ran towards him she fired more bolts of energy at Sordell. His flesh was quivering in some unseen wind, rising up with jerking,
unsteady movements.
A soul-drain! Rukka!
There was no help for Artaq; she could see that already.

As Sordell’s eyes opened she flung herself at him, her sword gripped in both hands. She punched through his shields in a flare of coruscating sparks and buried her sword in his gut. Blood sprayed and his flesh writhed frantically, trying to close itself. Sordell hurled a soul-drain at her too, but she met it with healing-wards, which weakened his attack. But she could not escape his ferocity unscathed: she felt the skin on her face dry, felt her hair wither like desiccated grass. Her lips split as she screamed in defiance and her fingers twisted, even as she threw her weight onto the pommel of her blade and drove it into his chest, through his heart. He flailed beneath her, and the skin on his face peeled away to reveal the muscles and tendons and sinews beneath, pulsing red and purulent yellow, as he howled.

‘Take his head!’ she screamed. ‘
Cut it off!
’

Sordell tried to climb up her blade, his heart spitted but his body, fuelled by Necromancy, fighting on. One purple-lit hand reached for her and gripped her throat, and as it tightened it seemed to be drawing the blood from her veins. Energy throbbed down into his arms, healing them, reviving him even as she struggled to counter his attack. ‘Kill him!’ she croaked as the fangs of his spell sucked her vitality away. He grinned madly up at her, his body reforming about him despite her efforts.

A blade swung, a sweep of silver that cleaved Sordell’s neck in two, wielded by a man screaming in fury. As the steel severed the neck it struck the stone beneath and the blade shattered. Sordell’s dreadful visage emptied and his fleshless skull rolled sideways. Elena fell to her knees over his body, propped up on the blade that still skewered his heart. Her hands were twisted with age, like knotted firewood. She felt hollow, broken, and it took all her strength just to look up at Lorenzo, who stood beside her, his broken sword in his hand.

‘Lori—’ Her voice was a withered croak. He backed away, raising a hand.
Gods, how bad is it?
Beyond him, Luca was backing away from
the fallen Artaq. There was a hole in the Jhafi’s head where his face had been. That would have happened to her without her shields and healing-gnosis. All around them bells were ringing and voices shouting.

Luca gasped, ‘Donna Elena!’ and he pointed to Sordell’s head.

She half-glimpsed an eight-inch-wide multi-legged insectoid thing sliding from his mouth. She raised her twisted right hand and sent a weak bolt, but she was too slow; the hideous thing scuttled into the rubble and was lost from sight.
Damn!

‘What was that?’ Luca gasped.

‘What’s left of Sordell,’ she rasped. She tried to find Vedya mentally, but she had no strength left. ‘We must go – Vedya will come, and if she catches us, we’re done.’

Luca bent over Artaq, said a few words, then left him where he lay. Lorenzo was still staring at her. ‘Elena, can you—? What happened?’

‘This is … nothing. I’ll be fine … just took all I had.’

‘Your hair,’ he said. He looked almost nauseous.

‘What?’ She tugged a strand from her ponytail and sucked in her breath. It had gone silver-grey. ‘It’s nothing, Lori … could have been much worse.’ She climbed to her feet, feeling desperately frail. Sordell’s attacks had pushed her to the very limit.

Lorenzo came over and reluctantly put an arm about her and helped her up. He looked like he could scarcely bear to be touching her. ‘Sorry, Lorenzo,’ she cackled mirthlessly. ‘I guess you won’t be wanting my kiss any more.’ She grimaced inside at how hysterical and hideous her voice sounded – and at the self-pity of her words. As she clung to the young knight, he looked at her, his face unreadable, but he didn’t let go of her. ‘I’ll claim one later,’ he said in a low voice.

‘Get us out of here and I’ll freely give it,’ she croaked, her sword shaking in her clawed hand.

Luca Fustinios suddenly took to his heels, leapt a pile of broken masonry and started rummaging around amidst the strewn rubble. ‘Lady Elena –
look!
’

‘What? Luca, we have to get out of here, now—’

But the little Javonesi was ignoring her. He bent over something, then straightened carefully, holding something in his arms. He turned towards them with a beaming grin. He was holding Solinde Nesti. The princess was unconscious and battered, but she was undeniably alive.

Lorenzo squeezed Elena’s arm and whispered, ‘Sol et Lune, the princessa!’

Elena stared, stunned.
She must have been in a lower room of the Moon Tower
, she thought,
but how could she possibly have survived? Was she shielded, or imprisoned in a warded cell?
But all her questions could wait; right now they had to get out of there. ‘Let’s get her away from here,’ she rasped.

<
Elena – is that you?
> Vedya’s mind teased hers.

Damn
. ‘We’ve got to go, now – Luca, can you carry the princessa? Come on—’ She tottered free of Lorenzo’s arms and poured what last scrap of energy she could summon into her legs, trying to counter Sordell’s spell. She felt utterly stricken – an unwanted preview of old age. Her limbs felt like frail twigs, and it hurt her tortured throat to breathe.

But fear whipped them all along and they broke into a slow trot. At first they ran through empty streets, then hooves clattered behind them and they swerved into an alley. After another block Luca handed Solinde to Lorenzo and loaded his crossbow. He ran back a few steps, dropped to one knee and fired down the alley they had just left.

A horse shrieked, and they heard it crash to the cobblestones, its rider screaming.

Elena? Ah, there you are
. Vedya’s tinkling giggle filled her mind.

‘Faster,’ she croaked, screaming inside in frustration and terror.
We can’t survive Vedya, not when I’m so far gone
…

Booted feet echoed behind them. Luca had already reloaded; now he fired again, and as they heard another death-cry, someone yelled, ‘It’s a dead-end! They’re trapped!’ from somewhere nearby.

It better not be a rukking dead-end
, Elena thought as her mind filled with images of what Vedya would do to her if she caught her. ‘Run!’ she whispered.

<
I’m coming, Elena
,> that insidious whisper cooed in her mind again, and she sensed the Sydian witch’s approach, three hundred yards above and behind them and closing by the second. ‘Get through the walls, Lori, and then run,’ she croaked calmly. ‘Take the princessa to safety.’

Luca ran past them, guiding them to the gap in the walls where they had slipped through, one of the many points Dolman hadn’t had time to fix. He pushed Elena through, then helped Lorenzo carry Solinde through. An arrow flew out of the darkness, struck the wall and pinged away, followed by another that flew through the gap. Luca grasped a support strut in the half-completed structure and pulled with all his strength until a section of the wall fell inwards, sealing the gap. They turned away from the blockage and found themselves at the top of a slope that led down to the close-packed shacks of the Jhafi.

Lorenzo led the way, Solinde in his arms, mercifully still unconscious. Luca helped Elena down. Though his eyes betrayed his horror at what Elena had become, he didn’t falter. Barely had they reached the Jhafi shanties when an incandescent shape appeared above the walls. Vedya wore a silk dress, red as blood, and her waist-length black hair flew about her like the wings of a raven.

‘Do you have a plan, Ella?’ Lorenzo whispered, pulling her into the lee of a half-built wall. Luca knelt and reloaded his crossbow, as his eyes tracked the witch.

Not really
. ‘Get under cover, damnit, before—’

Vedya swooped over them and a vivid blast of blue fire erupted from her finger and struck Luca even as he fired. His bolt was snatched away by the torrent of energy that picked him up and flung him against a mud-brick wall. His mouth was open in voiceless agony and he started twitching, as if being moved by the invisible strings of some puppet-master.

Vedya vanished behind a roof, no doubt wary of a counter-strike, but Elena didn’t have the energy.

Lorenzo put Solinde down and stood over her, his broken sword in hand, scanning the skies. ‘What is the plan, Elena?’ he demanded.

I had a plan, but in that plan I was fresh and undamaged
. ‘We have to draw her in, Lori, and take her down with weapons. She isn’t a fighter.’

‘But all she has to do is stay up there and the Gorgio will be on top of us!’

‘I never said it was a good plan.’ She struggled to put one foot beneath her. On the ground Solinde moaned.
I do this for you, Princessa
. She grimaced in pain as she stood, then tottered out into the narrow alleyway. A bright shape swooped towards her like one of Kore’s angels.

Vedya Smlarsk first met Gurvon Gyle at Northpoint, the tower placed by the Ordo Costruo where the Leviathan Bridge was anchored, south of Pontus. She had come with her man, Hygor, to look upon the great tower – the Tower of the Eye, the Sydians called it,
Ureche Turla
, where the hated magi gazed out eternally over the Bridge. The Bridge itself was deep beneath the waves, midway through its tide-cycle. Ureche Turla was a mighty sight: as delicate as an ivory carving, yet a mile high, festooned with massive cables and platforms where windships could dock. The blue light in its uppermost tower room shone like a star.

Vedya’s mother had seduced a Bridge Builder mage nineteen years previously, though she was already married. There was no shame in the seduction – all knew that to bear a mage-child was to bring wealth and status to the clan. Her mother had been nubile and skilled in the arts of the flesh. She was often called upon to consecrate the sacred union with the priests on feast days, when they would mate before the tribe to bring blessings upon the harvest – though they were nomads, horse herders, they would settle in spring to grow a single harvest of barley, oats and wheat to sustain them through winter.

Vedya grew up a privileged child, one whom men fought over. The few magi the tribe had managed to breed lived together in the Sfera, or Circle, sharing an intense rivalry and kinship, teaching each other what snippets of mage-craft they learned. All the Sfera were
part-Rondian, of course, mostly quarter-bloods and eighth-bloods, but Vedya was a full half-blood, with affinities to water and animals. When she bled, she was married off to a powerful man, Hygor of the Armasar Rasa clan, as his fourth wife. He took her virginity before the whole clan at the height of the wedding celebrations while his three other wives watched her with dark unreadable eyes. He was twice her age. She was thirteen.

That night in Pontus she became aware of another man watching Ureche Turla. Hygor had already noted him, wary hunter that he was. At first she thought the stranger, clad in Sydian leathers, one of the clan, but as he approached, the wind pushed back his hood, and the moonlight revealed that he wasn’t Sydian at all; he was Rondian. And he wasn’t watching the tower. He was watching
her
.

Hygor growled: an outsider looking openly upon a Sydian woman was an unacceptable challenge to her husband’s manhood. This man didn’t look like a fighter, but neither did he cringe when Hygor strode angrily towards him. He was smallish for a Rondian, with a ferret-like face and a compact body. Hygor no doubt intended to kill him – until he saw the crystal pulsing at his throat. The man was a vrajitoare, a mage.

Vedya had feared for Hygor. He was a good mate: he was virile and protective and he favoured her above his other wives. But the vrajitoare had raised a hand in peace, and he and Hygor had talked. The vrajitoare knew the Sydian tongue. When Hygor returned, it was with a stunned look upon his face. In his hands were three woven leather bracelets, each set with twelve diamonds, each stone alone worth one hundred horses. She remembered the tremor she felt when she saw them. Hygor reached out and broke her bridal necklace, spilling the pottery beads onto the rocky hillside. ‘Wife, you are no longer my wife. You belong to this man.’ His eyes were like plates, luminous in the moonlight.