Divided against Yourselves (Spell Weaver) (33 page)

I could smell the lightning in the air before it struck. Somewhere nearby, Morgan was milking electricity out of the already-prepared storm clouds. As far as I could sense, the guys all dodged successfully, but without Shar nearby, they were vulnerable.

“Shar, go back!” I shouted. “I’ll take care of Alcina.” Shar stopped dead in his tracks, clearly skeptical. Given what had happened last time, I couldn’t really blame him.

“I’m protected this time, Shar. Just go!”

Reluctantly, he turned back as thunder roared and there was another lightning flash.

“Running to see me, lover?” asked Alcina mockingly as I got closer. “And here I thought you wanted to get away from me.”

I let White Hilt flare and then demanded her surrender. She just laughed. “Are you really going to burn this Carla you care so much about? Go ahead, if that is what you really want.”

Well, she had me there—I obviously couldn’t kill her. However, if she were as tired as I guessed from traveling between worlds and summoning huge armies of sea creatures, I should be able to restrain her.

I was at the end of the pier, and she stood only a few steps down it. I started singing, pouring every ounce of magic I had into the song, willing her into immobility. Given how strong her own will was, an attack on her body made more sense than a direct attack on her mind.

Of course, Alcina had wanted me to get close enough for her to enthrall me with fake love again, and I could feel her seductive energy twisting all around, probing my defenses, eroding them one grain at a time. Yes, I was protected, but only for a little while, though I avoided looking into her eyes, slowing down her magic at least a little bit.

I could feel Alcina trying to push back my attack, resisting the paralysis I was throwing at her. She was weak, not as weak as I had hoped, but probably enough. The strain of both attacking and defending at the same time would wear out a caster twice as fast as doing just one or the other. Both of us were strained by that same burden, but I felt her wearing out just a little faster than I was.

Focused as I needed to be right then, I could only be dimly aware of what was going on to the west, where the guys and Nurse Florence were once again fighting Morgan. From what I could tell, they had reached another impasse, but I could feel more ocean spray hitting me as the waters around the pier became more agitated. It would not be long before Morgan had created some major disaster. I had to overcome Alcina before that happened.

At that moment I realized there was a way to win our magical duel much more quickly. I could cast the awakening spell on her again, knock her back into a coma, and throw myself into the battle against Morgan. We would drive Morgan off, and we would have Alcina—no, Carla—we would have Carla again, and this time when we peeled off the second casting of the awakening spell, we would be ready. Alcina would not be able to take control of the situation the way she did the first time.

The problem was that the results of hitting someone with the second casting of the awakening spell were unpredictable. The fact that Carla had been rendered comatose the first time didn’t mean that the effect would be the same this time. The spell could just as easily kill her.

It wasn’t that I had started loving Carla again. Those feelings were still gone, perhaps forever…but at the very least, she was a friend, Gianni was still like a little brother to me, and her parents treated me like a member of the family. Anyway, hell, whose life would I be willing to risk? Anyone’s? I doubted it.

On the other hand, I remembered how much I hated being enslaved to Alcina—and I wasn’t even aware of what was happening at the time. For all I knew, Carla was conscious of every second and screaming silently for help, any help. Would I want to live like that? No, I would choose death for myself rather than being a spectator to the evil someone was creating using my own body. Yeah, I know—it was easy to say something like that when I wasn’t actually faced with the choice, but I really thought I would pick death under those circumstances.

It was one thing, though, to make a choice like that for myself; it was a completely different thing to make that choice for someone else.

I stood for a while, keeping up the magic battle, but paralyzed inside, uncertain what to do. Then, in one white-hot instant, those thoughts were stunned away as lightning struck me—literally.

People can be killed or badly injured by being struck by lightning, but Morgan had carefully crafted this lightning so it was only a pale reflection of what lightning usually is. Still, every hair on my body stood straight out, every nerve tingled, my concentration shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, and I fell to my knees. Alcina, freed from having to defend herself against me, attacked me full-force with every ounce of magic she had. In seconds I could feel the defenses I had put up wearing thin, and I was still too stunned to reinforce them. Barring a miracle, Alcina would have me again in a few minutes. The guys, still dodging Morgan’s lightning, would be hard-pressed to come to the rescue, even though they were agonizingly close. Nurse Florence was too far away to feel.

I focused what little concentration I had left on resisting Alcina’s influence. I probably couldn’t buy myself very much time, but even a few seconds more of freedom was better than nothing.

Suddenly a felt a different presence very nearby. Khalid! He had moved fast enough to dodge Morgan’s lighting and was rushing at Alcina with speed far greater than her human body could match. By the time she realized he was there, he had drawn his dagger and was poised to thrust it into her breast.

“Don’t kill her!” I whispered urgently. I don’t know if he heard me, if his aim was terrible, or if Alcina managed to shift out of the way a little, but he stabbed her in the arm instead of in the heart. She shrieked and stumbled backward, but Khalid stayed on her. I felt her power recede and knew she was trying to aim it at Khalid, but I sensed it wasn’t working. Alcina had fashioned her control spell around sexual love, and she probably saw Khalid as too young, blunting her ability to cast the spell on him successfully. Either that, or his half djinn nature gave him some protection. He struck again and again, wounding her several times.

From somewhere Morgan was trying to hit Khalid with lightning. He dodged successfully, but that gave Alcina enough of a breathing space for her to run a few paces away and try to open a portal. She almost succeeded, but a combination of fatigue, pain, and blood loss caused her to lose control of the portal, letting it collapse after just a few seconds.

I managed to struggle to my feet and tried to sing in an effort to speed my recovery. The sounds I produced sounded more like croaking than singing, but I did feel myself revive just slightly. A little more, and I could begin to help Khalid.

He was going to need reinforcements of some kind—and soon. Morgan had shifted her focus toward the pier as soon as Khalid had attacked Alcina, and lightning was striking often enough to rattle the windows in the nearby seafood restaurant. I wondered idly if the restaurant was still open. If it was, the patrons seated near the beach-side windows had been getting quite an eyeful, but fortunately the place looked dark—probably closed. I also wondered if enough lightning strikes would set the pier on fire. Since Alcina was still on the pier, I hoped Morgan would avoid that kind of mistake.

Even as I was thinking about Morgan, she appeared overhead, and I could hear the guys behind me as they surged in my direction. Alcina was still having trouble sustaining a portal; perhaps Khalid had wounded her more deeply than I had imagined. There was fresh blood on her gown, lots of it. I shuddered at the implication of that, but either Nurse Florence (if we were lucky) or Morgan (if we were not) could certainly still heal her. I tried to move in her direction but staggered and felt dizzy. Clearly, I was trying to move too soon. Much as I hated the delay, I kept on singing, which made me feel better, but at an agonizingly slow rate.

Again Morgan had no difficulty creating an impasse with the guys, who clustered around Shar and touched Zom to keep from getting zapped. However, she needed more than that. At minimum, she needed to rescue Alcina, but she probably wanted to snag me again as well.

I could feel Nurse Florence reaching out to me, examining my condition, but I knew she needed to be closer to heal me effectively. At almost the same time, I felt Alcina’s power engulf me, much weaker than the first time, but still unmistakable. Then that power faded. Looking over at the pier, I saw Alcina stagger again.

While I was watching Alcina, I realized that Morgan had switched tactics. The guys were moving in fast on Khalid’s position. Once they arrived, Shar would have him touch Zom, and he too would be immune to Morgan’s lightning, so, instead of keeping up that attack, Morgan created a little whirlpool in the air, not really a tornado, but enough to pull Khalid’s body up into the air.

Memories of the battle on Samhain flooded back to me. What Morgan was doing with Khalid looked a lot like what Ceridwen had done with me. Khalid could not fly like a full-fledged djinn, or even like me, now that I had a little practice. Nor could he manipulate the air currents that were holding him the way I had on Samhain. Had I not had that skill, I would have died then. With a shudder, I realized that Khalid might well die tonight. He was helpless, the guys could not reach him from the ground, and I was still too dazed to be of much use. Nurse Florence, who had been chanting to ward off the lightning, was now at my side, but could she heal me fast enough? I tried to point out Khalid’s dilemma, but she told me to relax, and then I felt her healing energy sweeping through me.

Morgan was maneuvering herself toward Alcina’s position. The guys tried to move forward, but Morgan pointed to Khalid, thrashing about uselessly in the air, and they got the point. No one wanted to lose Carla again, but no one wanted to see Morgan hurt the kid, either.

As Morgan floated in the direction of her nearly fallen sister, she pulled Khalid along with her, and it dawned on me that she would take him hostage in an effort to force me to go with her, if not immediately, then certainly later.

“Don’t try to heal me right now,” I mumbled as insistently as I could to Nurse Florence. “Stop Morgan somehow! Whatever else happens, we have to keep Carla and Khalid…” My throat felt too raw to continue, but Nurse Florence had gotten the point, and by now she could see that I was not in any immediate danger of dying.

“I’m no match for Morgan, Tal. The bulk of my training has been in healing and defensive magic. Yes, I can counter some of what she does, but that won’t be enough to stop her from getting away with at least one of them.”

She paused for a moment, looked me in the eye, and said, “There may be one way. Do you trust me?” I nodded. She put her hands on me, and I felt a sudden, tremendous rush of power revitalizing me, energizing me, giving me a shot at stopping Morgan myself. But she was giving me too much strength too fast, exhausting herself, letting herself drop to a dangerous level. I started to resist, but she shot me a strong mental reiteration of the need to trust her and just kept pouring her power, even her very life-force, into me. Only when she was nearly unconscious did she stop, and by then her vital signs seemed so low I actually feared for her life. Could she, the incarnation of cautious decision-making, really have taken such a huge gamble?

She managed to lie down on the grass rather than falling down. “Go!” she whispered, right before her eyes closed.

Talk about dilemmas. She didn’t seem as if her heart was going to stop or anything like that, but she was so fragile that leaving her alone seemed like too big a risk. On the other hand, if I didn’t do something, she would have risked her life in vain. Reluctantly, I looked around. In the short time Nurse Florence had emptied practically everything except her very soul into me, Morgan had gotten to Alcina on the pier and was probably checking her condition to decide whether or not she needed any emergency healing before Morgan opened a gateway back to Alcina’s island or somewhere else far away from us. Khalid was floating right above, still struggling futilely to escape. If I was going to act, I had to do so right away.

I shot diagonally into the air, heading both up and over, toward the pier. As I did so, I grabbed the air around Khalid and pulled Khalid free before Morgan realized I was back in action. I had intended to set him down gently next to the pier, but he was thrashing so much that instead he fell out of the air, hitting Morgan with considerable force and throwing her off balance. Less frightened than I might have expected, he pulled his dagger, but Morgan, nearly as fast as he was, slapped him out of the way. However, in the seconds that defense took her, the guys thundered down the pier, with Shar in the lead, Zom’s emerald flash lighting the way. I landed a little further south on the pier, wedging myself between Morgan and Alcina, drawing White Hilt, and shouting, “Surrender!” as White Hilt’s flames lit up the night.

Morgan might have been able to fly away before the guys got to her, she might even have been able to simultaneously dodge my fire, but she couldn’t possibly grab Alcina with me standing between them. I also saw in her eyes more than a little fear, despite her attempt to mask it. She wasn’t as sure as she had been that I wasn’t going to incinerate her on the spot. In fact, much to my amazement, she fell to her knees before me.

“I surrender, Taliesin, but as a member of one of the ruling families of Annwn, I invoke the right to have my fate decided by a ruler of Annwn.”

“To what ruling family do you claim kinship?” I asked, already suspecting the answer.