North Star Guide Me Home (56 page)

Rasten didn’t have the energy to reply. He took a step, only to have his left leg give way beneath him. It burned with a searing pain that wrenched a groan from his lips. He gritted his teeth against it and forced himself forward.
Keep moving. Don’t stop. You’ve had worse than this and pushed through it. One breath at a time, just keep moving.

Cam started up the stairs again, glancing back at him with a worried frown. ‘What in the hells is going on?’

‘Third mage … knows others are dead … he’s tearing the place down.’ Rasten forced himself to set his left foot down. It was feeding Sierra, he told himself. He could feel her up above, feel more power flaring. Was that … was that more mages? Stalking her? He tried to reach for her, but her mind was occupied, full of power. She already knew.

Cam hurried ahead to Marima and the girl. Rasten could just see them, huddled against the wall, the woman shielding the child with her body as rubble and grit rained down. ‘Climb!’ Cam yelled. ‘Quickly! This whole place is coming down …’ Cracks were spreading through the stone around them, and with a sudden, sickening lurch, Rasten felt the rock under his feet shift, sliding like gravel on a steep slope.

He gathered his power and sent tendrils of it questing into the cracks to lock it all together, like ice keeping a cliff face from crumbling until the thaw.

For a moment, the shuddering eased, and in the lull Marima snatched her daughter up and scrambled up the listing, sinking treads. Cam hurried after her, but when he realised that Rasten wasn’t following, he turned back.

But Rasten could already feel power building beneath them. The third mage had felt him counter the destructive forces working through the fort. Rasten had shown him where they were, and now the mage focused his attention on that spot.

He struck at them with a hammer of power, pounding at the central pillar of the staircase, and as Rasten tried to shield against it, he was forced to divert some of the energy binding the fractured stone together. With his strength divided, Rasten couldn’t keep a man-sized chunk of the column from falling away.

It tumbled down into a black void — the levels below them were gone, crumbled into rubble.

Without the supporting spine, the sharp-edged stairs began to sag, and Rasten didn’t dare divert power to shore them up. When Cam turned back, he set one foot on a listing tread, only to have it give way beneath him and fall into the pit.

Cam almost went with it, throwing himself down on the stairs, skinning his fingers on the rough stone as he scrabbled for a handhold. Beside him, one of the dead men slowly slid off, falling like a rag doll into the blackness.

Breathing hard, Cam scrambled upwards, but once he had steady ground beneath him, he held a hand out to Rasten. ‘Come on,’ he shouted.

Rasten swallowed hard and tried to stand, while still holding the stones together and keeping up the shield. The Akharian struck again and as the force met Rasten’s shield it flashed with light, a brilliant, pure white from the Akharian and the deep flush of flame from Rasten, lighting up the ruin of the stairwell and setting the walls around them shuddering again.

He couldn’t stand. His leg gave way again with a searing flash of pain, so bad that for a moment he felt he was back in the stocks. The leg was broken.

The pain drew Sierra’s attention, and he felt her awareness focus on him like a hawk’s sharp gaze.
Rasten! You’re hurt?

At once, Isidro was there, too. He’d pulled away once the Akharians were dead, but Rasten knew he hadn’t gone far.
I’ll help him, Sirri. You focus on the two you’re facing.

Rasten felt her brief assent as she pulled away.
She’s facing more mages?
he asked Isidro.

Yes. I’ll send her power if she needs it.

Can … can you spare any for me?

Isidro replied with a rush of energy, heady and golden. Shuddering from the strength of it, Rasten poured it into his shields as the mage pounded against them, again and again.

Rasten raised his face to Cam, frowning down at him in the gloom. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Run! Get the woman and the girl out. The mage is fixed on me, he can’t sense you.’

‘Can you hold on?’ Cam said.

If he said no, Cam wouldn’t leave. Rasten knew it right down in his bones. He nodded, just as a familiar noise echoed down from above — the crack of thunder, loud enough to make them both flinch out of reflex.

‘I’ll get help,’ Cam said. ‘We’ll come back for you. Just hold on, alright? That’s an order.’

Sierra strode into the main keep with Ardamon at her side, bare steel in his hand. ‘Can you tell where they are?’ he hissed.

‘No.’ She could feel Rasten, scorched and aching, and Hespero, slowly regaining consciousness, but not the mages. There was power in the air, but it was all-pervasive, everywhere, and she was nowhere near sensitive enough to distinguish the background noise from a pair of mages trying to hide. ‘Be patient. They’ll show themselves.’

They knew she was injured, they knew she was weak. And they knew they’d never get out of this place alive. In their shoes, she’d do her best to take her enemy down with her.

Her eyes were still adjusting to the gloom. The fort was full of deep shadows, and she felt half-blind as she searched through halls and chambers.

When one of the mages finally decided to show himself, Sierra didn’t see him until it was too late.

The dark hall grew suddenly bright, awash with orange-hued light. Sierra grabbed Ardamon by the arm and cast a hasty shield, turning to find a wave of flame crashing down upon them. She reached for Isidro and found him already there with power waiting.
Ah,
he said,
they’ve found you.

One of them.
She pulled Ardamon down with her as she dropped into a crouch, as though her shields were threatening to give way.
I want to see them both before I strike. They think I’m on my last legs. I —

The ground beneath her began to tremble, then, and Sierra broke off the thought.

What was that?
Isidro said.

I … I don’t know.
A shower of grit rained down, and the walls gave voice to a rumbling groan.

A second wave of flame crashed over them, fiercer than the first. Whatever it was, the mage hadn’t been taken by surprise.

Inside her head there came a flash of vertigo, the sensation of falling, and then a sharp pain in her left leg, as though she’d been stabbed. She fell to her knees with a hiss of pain, even as the shaft of fire striking through her melted away into a golden stream of power. She could feel Rasten lying winded on sharp stone, every inch of him aching.

She started to reach for him when another figure strode out of the darkness, wrapped in a shield fashioned to look like armour, glowing as pure and brilliant white as snow.

Sierra tightened her grip on Ardamon’s arm.
Issey? I see him.

She felt him behind her eyes as the men approached, one from either side, and she huddled on the ground like a slave cowed and helpless.

There came a fresh rush of pain and power in her leg, and Sierra squeezed her eyes closed.
Rasten! You’re hurt?

At once, she felt Isidro’s attention turn Rasten’s way as he shoved his power towards her.
I’ll help him, Sirri. Focus on the two you’re facing.

She couldn’t argue. There was no time for it. The one in the ice-white shield was standing over her now.

Sierra gathered the power into a single, blazing shaft and sat up on her heels. She might lack in subtlety and finesse compared to other mages, but she made up for it in brute strength. In one swift movement, she thrust the shaft into the mage’s chest, shattering his shields, which came apart in a storm of power, spawning small whirlwinds of lightning and fire that scattered through the deserted hall. With his shields gone Sierra converted her spike into a claw, wrapping it around his chest and squeezing until she felt his ribs crack. Then she released him, and stood slowly, carefully, while the mage lay gasping on the floor, his chest crushed and skewered on shards of bone.

Those few seconds had burned through half the power she held, but Sierra paid it little mind. Her chest was already bathed in a delicious, luxurious warmth, a comfort since the would-be assassin had driven a knife into her chest in the temple courtyard. While the mage on the ground writhed, gasping with his rib-cage shattered and his lungs collapsed, her breath came without effort, for the moment, at least.

She turned her back on the dying man, and when Ardamon hesitated, she beckoned him to follow her with an imperious gesture.

The first of the mages had given his location away with those waves of flame. He’d thought her weak and he hadn’t bothered to hide his position. Now, it was too late, but he tried to run anyway.

Sierra snared him with a thread of power, sending a flickering strand of lightning to catch his feet and send him sprawling on the flagstones. Once he fell, she pinned him there with a net of power.

The fortress was still shaking, the tremors growing more violent, as though the structure had been built on the back of a great beast that was trying to shake them off. With the mage still pinned, Sierra turned her attention back to Rasten — only to find him in the dark, clinging to a broken slab of stone.

Rasten, where’s Cam? What’s going on?

He’s heading for you. Go find him, and then get out. Hurry. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this place together.

What? But … Issey, are you there?

I’m here, Sirri. I’m feeding him power, but he’s wounded.

Sierra checked on the enemy mages. The first was nearly dead, the other unharmed except for the headlong fall that had rattled his skull. When her gaze fell upon him he spat a curse in his own tongue, though Sierra couldn’t hear him well enough to understand it.

She lifted her gaze to the roof. Grit and dust rained from the levels above, and it seemed the floor was listing, sinking like rotten beams under the weight of ice and snow.

Then, somewhere very near, she heard Cam shout her name.

Sierra reached for the ceiling with a thread of power, and brought it crashing down onto the enemy mage.

She felt every moment of it, every thump of stone, every chipped and cracked bone, the great weight of the rubble pressing him down onto the flagstones, the sudden hot seep of blood from torn skin. She was already turning away, heading towards the shout, and at first she stumbled. For the space of ten or twelve heartbeats she thought she was dying … but then it eased, carried away on a rising tide of power, and her faltering steps grew steady. ‘Cam?’ she shouted, putting a touch of power into her voice to let it be heard above the roar of the convulsing stone.

‘Sirri? Here!’

She ran with Ardamon on her heels, past the body of the Akharian mage, lying twisted on the stone with blood trickling from his mouth.

As soon as she turned a corner, she found him together with a woman and a little girl, their faces oddly familiar. Sierra threw her arms around his neck, and he returned the embrace with one hand.

‘What happened to Rasten?’

Cam was covered with dust and grit, splatters of blood drying on his face. ‘He … the stairs collapsed. I couldn’t reach him, Sirri. I promised we’d come back.’ Cam started to turn away, but Ardamon grabbed him by the shoulder.

‘By the Black Sun, no. You’re getting out of here, both of you.’

‘But —’ Sierra started.

Ardamon cut her off. ‘Listen! This whole cursed place is coming down, and I’m not losing a king or queen on my watch. Move! You two, as well,’ he said to the woman with the girl clutched to her hip.

Cam shook himself, and sheathed his sword. ‘I made a promise,’ he muttered to himself, but he let Ardamon pull him away.

The trembling of the fort never ceased, and as they turned back, the crumbling fragments of stone grew larger, from grit and gravel to cobbles and jagged boulders tumbling down around them. Sierra cast a shield to catch the falling chunks and bounce them away, but no sooner had she’d cast it than the rain of rubble grew thicker, pounding down so fiercely that she had to pour more power into the shield with every step.

Someone wrapped an arm around her to hurry her along. The floor had grown treacherous with rubble, jagged chunks of stone that shifted and turned under her feet. Sierra could pay it little mind, however, for the choking dust was making her breath short and her chest tight, and Isidro’s awareness came crackling into her mind once more.
Sirri, your shields — the last mage is still alive down there, and your shields are drawing him to you.

She stumbled, but strong hands kept her from falling.
I can’t take it down, Issey. The cursed roof is caving in.

I know, I know. We need to kill him.

How? I don’t even know where he is.

Rasten has found him. I can drain his shields and leave him vulnerable, but we need you to crush him. I’ll tell you where, but first you need to get Cam and the others clear.

But Rasten’s still trapped!

It’ll be alright, Sirri. I can give him power to shield himself. Once it’s over, we’ll dig him out.

We?

I’m riding to join you, and I’ll bring Nirveli and Rhia with me. We’re a hundred and fifty miles away as the crow flies, and with fresh mounts we’ll be there by sunrise. Are you clear?

She lifted her head, squinting bleary-eyed through the stinging dust. Cam was talking to her, but she couldn’t understand him. Her head was spinning for want of air. The second mage had died, and Rasten … the power she was taking from him was growing weaker.

There was daylight ahead, a clear and brilliant blue sky. The spitting rain of earlier had all blown away. Summer was almost here.
Almost,
she told him.

The men had cleared the courtyard — the only one remaining was Hespero, lying facedown on filthy cobbles with his hands bound behind his back and Ardamon’s second standing over him with a crossbow. Ardamon veered off to haul his elder brother to his feet and drag him through the gates.