Twilight of Kerberos - [Shadowmage 01-03] - The Shadowmage Trilogy (Shadowmage; Night's Haunting; Legacy's Price) (57 page)

He saw the threads of magic react to Adrianna’s sorcery, bucking and twisting as she drew off vast amounts of energy. Then the strand fuelling the arcane forces of nature that she was attempting to control throbbed and exploded, eclipsing all the others with its radiance. It flashed and strobed as Adrianna took its power and shaped it.

The sound of waves crashing on the harbour defences, a constant noise in the city, disappeared. Mouth gaping, Lucius stared at Adrianna, seeing her eyes alight with the power she controlled. Even at the sea’s calmest, when ships dared to negotiate the narrow gaps between the defences, still the waves smashed and thundered. Now, they were utterly still. The magic required to influence something so mighty dwarfed his understanding.

As the sea wind began to blow steady, its usual choppy motion calmed by Adrianna to aid the ship’s passage into the harbour, she gave a wolfish smile, and once again Lucius felt the buildup of arcane force as she prepared to unleash her next spell, that would send the vessel to the seabed.

He looked at her curiously now, wondering why she had insisted he join her in this venture. Adrianna’s power and ability clearly exceeded his own, by several orders of magnitude, and she certainly did not need him to scare away a handful of dock workers. So why was he there? Did she want to demonstrate to him what Shadowmages could be capable of? Or was this some lesson in compliance, a warning if he refused her wishes in the future?

Whatever the answer, he resolved to ride her anger out for the moment, and find another way to get through to her later.

As the prow of the ship came into view, appearing from behind the central monolith that dominated the harbour, Lucius frowned.

The ship was a three-mast Vos merchantman, a broad vessel contoured to slice through the largest of rogue waves. He had been expecting to see one of the five-mast frigates the Empire favoured to move soldiers long distances around the coasts of the peninsula, bedecked with weaponry to hurl spears and blazing rocks onto a hostile shoreline.

The merchantman negotiated the harbour defences with deliberate care, sailors crossing the main deck and through the rigging and making adjustments to ensure the large ship did not approach the piers too quickly. As they caught sight of the harbour and cliffs, the sailors cheered, grateful to have survived another voyage across the churning seas. The deck soon filled with more people, streaming from belowdecks. Shielding his eyes from the sun, Lucius squinted to get a better look, as he could not imagine Vos discipline breaking down just because a friendly port had been sighted.

“Something’s wrong,” he said under his breath. None of those on the main deck were in uniform, and he was puzzled. It then struck him that there were children in the crowd. Some stood atop the railings that ran alongside the main deck, while others were being hoisted onto their parents’ shoulders for a better look at their first sight of Turnitia.

“Adrianna, stop,” he said. “You’ve made a mistake, that isn’t the ship you think it is.”

In return, she shrugged. “It will sink just as well.”

Lucius looked at her uncomprehendingly until he realised that this was what she had been planning all along. The tale of more soldiers being brought in to completely flood the city was a fabrication to manipulate him into doing what she desired. Right now, she just wanted to kill.

He took her arm, forcing her to face him. Her attention diverted from the ship, she gave him a mixed look of disgust and irritation.

“Let go of me,” Adrianna said.

Suppressing the impulse to swallow, he stared levelly back at her.

“I am not going to let you do this.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You will. One way or another, Lucius, you will, that I promise.”

“More innocents?” he shouted back, losing his patience. “How much more blood are you looking to cover yourself in, Adrianna? All those families, all those children in the market not enough for you?”

“It will never be enough, don’t you understand? Whether the Empire chooses to take over this city by force of arms or by colonisation, it makes no difference! Soldiers or civilians, they are both weapons used by Vos, and whichever weapon they choose to employ, I will destroy!”

Lucius could see she was serious in her decision, and cursed himself for seeing a rough sort of logic behind it, but he remained adamant.

“No, Adrianna. Just... no.”

For a split second she stared balefully back at him, and he prepared himself for a blast of magic. When she did strike, she caught him completely by surprise. Balling her fist, Adrianna caught him hard on the left side of his chin.

Reeling under the forceful blow, Lucius staggered back until he found his feet. He immediately felt a surge of magic as Adrianna began building up the power to fuel a spell, aimed directly at him. He dragged on a thread, and aimed a bolt of raw energy at the ground before her feet, much as he had done with the labourers.

The crackling energy exploded as soon as it hit the ground, and knocked Adrianna back a step. As Lucius had hoped, the distraction had been enough to stall her spell, but she immediately resumed gathering energy, with far greater speed than he expected. Watching her build up to the spell’s peak, he pulled on the power of two threads, more out of instinct than design, crudely fashioning them into large, wide shields that interposed themselves between the two Shadowmages.

Screaming with the intensity of its speed, the sea wind was whipped by Adrianna into a living tornado. The air currents swept past her, barely ruffling her hair, then turned and sped, arrow-straight, toward Lucius. This piston of air smashed into his hastily erected shield, and he struggled to maintain its cohesion as the invisible barrier was flayed by Adrianna’s attack. Desperately, he flooded the shields with more energy, opening up a direct conduit from the magical threads.

Lucius was losing. The first shield vanished suddenly, its hold on reality vaporised by Adrianna’s attack. He felt a surge of energy as she directed her attention to annihilating the last barrier between them. Gritting his teeth with the effort, he commanded the shield to become tighter and narrower, focussed against her continuous blast. It was whittled away, inch by inch, the energy he was pouring into the arcane defence sapped away quicker than it was filled.

A sharp pain exploded in his head as the last barrier broke apart, and Lucius felt a solid punch on his chest as the column of air blasted into him. He was lifted bodily off his feet and flung from the cliff, spiralling through the sky as Adrianna’s magic lifted him higher and higher on a terminal arc. Then, her spell dissipated.

Lucius tumbled from the sky, his vision blurring as the world flashed past him: sky, cliffs, piers, sea, ship. Falling with mounting speed, he desperately sought to regain control of his magic but, for the first time, the threads did not appear in his mind’s eye. His attention was rooted firmly on the sea as it rushed up towards him with lethal acceleration.

Lucius was falling so fast that he was struggling to breathe. Closing his eyes, he concentrated hard and dimly made out the threads of magic. They appeared, faint, but calm and serene, as if undaunted by his worldly concerns. Despite their stillness, he had difficulty in reaching out to trap one, as if they receded as he approached. Unconsciously, he opened his eyes a fraction, and saw the surface of the sea was much closer now, and moving swiftly.

Squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his fists in concentration, Lucius groped mentally for the thread he needed. It responded reluctantly to his summons and, as he tried to shape the air beneath him into an invisible platform that would arrest his descent, it fractured then danced away from him.

Panicking now, Lucius screamed in terror, knowing his life would end shortly. The scream echoed in his mind and he desperately clawed after the thread, finally grabbing the strand.

Later, he did not remember actually fashioning a spell; one moment he was fumbling with the thread, then he was in the water and sinking. The force of the impact smashed the air out of his lungs, but whatever magics he had manifested had done enough to slow his fall to a survivable level.

He was carried deep under water and, for a moment, was content to let it be so, mind and body both stunned into inaction. As his lungs began to burn, he kicked out, then reached for the surface, guided only by the dulling light of the sun. Lucius clawed his way upwards, his lungs feeling as though they were about to explode, his world becoming lighter.

As his head burst free of the water, Lucius gasped and choked. He closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing, hardly daring to believe he was still alive. A sharp splintering sound brought him back to the present.

Looking across the harbour, he saw Adrianna’s magic destroying the merchantman. He felt the concussion as bolts of compressed water, summoned by Adrianna, punched into the ship’s hull. As each one struck, it holed the hull below the waterline, causing splinters to spiral away from the impact. Already, the ship was listing toward the cliffs, the people on board screaming as they grabbed for support.

Feebly, Lucius tried to summon the threads of magic to their aid, though he knew he would never be able to bring enough power to bear to break Adrianna’s spells. The threads remained elusive, his control over them shattered by terror and exhaustion.

Water reared up either side of the merchantman, like two huge waves that were held immobile. As one, they came down upon the deck of the ship with shattering force, and with a grinding of wood upon wood the vessel split in two. The masts smashed together in a tangle of rigging and sails as prow and stern both rose to point at the sky, while the crew and passengers on board were crushed inside the wreckage.

Some managed to escape, and Lucius started to swim to a family who had leapt clear of the ship as it broke up, the father gathering his wife and two children closer to him as they began to swim to the piers. More waves of concussion swept over Lucius as bolts of compressed water, smaller than those before but still utterly lethal, started to streak through the remaining wreckage, smashing the life out of anyone who had survived the initial attacks. Lucius stopped, treading water as he gaped at the sheer callousness of what he was witnessing.

Within minutes, all that was left floating on the calm harbour waters before him were jagged pieces of wood and sail cloth – few now recognisable as once having been part of a ship – and bodies. Sailors floated alongside families, all twisted and shattered.

Turning back to see the cliffs, he saw Adrianna, dark and indistinct. She stood motionless for a few seconds, then turned and walked back towards the city, out of sight. Lucius stared after her long after she had gone, knowing that one way or another, she had to be stopped.

He just had no idea how that was now even possible.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A
S HE APPROACHED
the entrance of the Red Lion, Lucius deliberately slowed his step. While this meeting of the Council was critical in planning the guild’s next steps, he had no wish to confront Elaine just yet. He had seen the look in her eyes, directed at both him and Adrianna, and he knew there would be no mercy there when the time for settlement came.

It was selfish, he knew, to be more concerned about Adrianna telling Elaine of their brief liaison than about Elaine’s abduction. After all, Adrianna was anything but predictable now, and there had been no guarantee that either of them would have walked out of her lair alive. Yet his infidelity, as loose as his relationships with both women had been, seemed the greater betrayal to him. It surprised him to find he actually felt ashamed.

Putting a hand on the latch of the Red Lion’s heavy door, Lucius took a deep breath, then entered. The mid-afternoon crowd was light, with just a few scattered patrons nursing their drinks, and Lucius guessed that the Empire’s sudden reversal of finances, courtesy of the thieves’ raid on their silver train, was beginning to impact the poorer people of the city already. With a sudden tightening of alms, there was less to spend in the Red Lion.

Myrklar glanced up at Lucius as he delivered tankards to two ragged looking men, die-hard drinkers who would spend their last silver on beer even if it meant going without food. He nodded to Lucius, indicating the coast was clear of anyone he deemed suspicious.

Climbing the stairs, Lucius hoped no one would notice the feeling of dread that fell over him. He had deliberately arrived a little later than normal so Wendric and Ambrose would be there, having no wish to be alone in a room with Elaine just yet.

Before opening the door to their ad hoc meeting room, he took another deep breath, then entered. Only Elaine and Wendric were inside, and he cursed Ambrose silently for being even later than he was.

Wendric smiled his greetings, and Lucius nodded in return, but Elaine refused to look him in the eye, taking a deep interest in a stack of parchments she held on her lap. Examining each sheet in turn with great care, she seemed oblivious to Lucius’ arrival.

“Well, Lucius, we certainly created a stir with that raid,” Wendric said with a smile.