She was an accomplished healer and had often used her skills in Brochena, healing wounds or cysts or broken bones, but it was exhausting, exacting work and she could never do enough. She asked nothing in return but some new vocabulary. She thought it was appreciated: a tiny victory for communication and understanding. In Yuros people believed a magi’s powers were beneficial, gifts of the Kore, but here in Antiopia everyone, even the Rimoni, started with the assumption that she wielded demonic powers.
She sighed and combed her fingers through her filthy hair. Waiting for something to explode was wearing her down: she needed to wash and sleep.
What is Gurvon doing now
, she wondered.
What has he told Samir? What’s happening back in Brochena?
The not-knowing gnawed at her.
They wound through the streets to the old market and circled the emir’s palace before climbing the hills to the Nesti fortress. Krak al-Farada’s tumbledown dome turrets had been replaced with crenelated fighting platforms holding spear-hurling ballistae, and the walls had been thickened and renewed. Armoured men peered down between the violet banners as trumpets greeted the caravan.
Paolo Castellini was awaiting them in the courtyard. He was reckoned the tallest man in Javon. He had broad shoulders, and a lank, grey-streaked moustache and hair framed his mournful face. He opened the carriage doors for the royal family himself, and Fadah, emerging first, accepted Paolo’s obeisance graciously before hurrying her children up the stairs, anxious to see her sister Homeirah.
Paolo turned to Elena and nodded formally.
He still doesn’t trust me
. She dismounted, her legs aching abominably. Lorenzo was already directing his men towards the stables. Everyone looked pleased to have arrived, even Samir, who tossed his reins to a servant and followed the royal family into the keep. As he vanished, she felt a sudden tremor of apprehension.
Time to move
. She waved at Paolo and hurried up the steps herself, glancing back as she heard someone follow her:
Lorenzo, as anxious as she was.
Always have a plan
, Gurvon said. Well, she had a plan. Magi with a strong Affinity were less versatile than other magi, and she had been observing Samir for four years. Certainly he was formidable in Fire-gnosis, and very capable with Earth and Air, but that was a narrow repertoire. He relied on incinerating his enemies with irresistible flames. If he caught her with a full blast, she would spend her last seconds screaming in agony as the flesh on her bones crisped, even if she presented her strongest shields. If she could avoid that, she might have a chance.
Samir had been gone half a minute, that was all. She hurried past the guards on the front doors with Lorenzo clanking behind her, emerging into the foyer, where twin stairs descended four storeys on either side of a well of space. Walls of carved teak were hung with tapestries and paintings and lined with statues in marble and stone. Opposite, the doors to the great hall were open, the room filled with supplicants and well-wishers, at least one hundred people. She looked around, frightened: she could see neither the Nesti children nor Samir.
A low chuckle sounded above her. Samir was leaning against the balustrade, flexing his fingers, smirking at her.
There will be no warning
, his laughter told her.
No warning at all
.
There was no warning.
Elena rose before dawn, worn out from anxious dreams. She crept softly down through the keep from her small room outside the nursery area, clad only in her nightshift. Her best tunic and breeches were over her arm, but her weapons in the bundle also, something she wouldn’t have done back in Brochena. She still felt stiff and battered from the journey, and the thought of a bath before having to get the children ready for morning services was enticing.
She was tiptoeing along the corridor to the bath-house, when she heard Queen Fadah’s voice, carrying from the sickroom. Elena had checked on Homeirah last night; she looked nearer to ninety than her actual forty-eight years. She was riddled with cancers, could
scarcely breathe, and no longer kept down anything but fluids. She would die soon, nothing was surer.
As Elena glanced down the corridor, a voice, quite distinctly, said <
Begin
>. It was not in her ears, but in her head, like something overheard in a dream: a mental call.
Spoken by Gurvon Gyle
.
Begin
…
Fadah stepped from the sickroom, still talking to someone within. She turned as Elena shrieked a warning. Then the queen was thrown backwards and clamped against the wall by unseen forces. Elena dropped the towel and clothes and grasped her sword and dagger. Her mouth was forming a call for help when a burst of flame blossomed about the queen with lurid, horrible beauty. For a second all Elena could see in the brilliant flash of the explosion were Fadah’s bones, visible through translucent flesh, then the concussion of the fire-blast blanketed the entire corridor. A wave of hot force threw her onto her back and her head hammered against the wooden floor. Her vision swam as she fought for purchase on the smooth floor. A liquid rush of flame scorched the air above her and when she looked up, all that remained of the queen was a pile of burning bones.
Samir the Inferno stepped from the sickroom. Behind him, women were crying out in shock, and their cries became agonised screams as he pointed and another gout of flames filled the room. But his eyes were already on Elena. He walked slowly towards her, drawing his sword. He was fully dressed in robes of scarlet, the ruby at his throat gleaming like an ember. She choked back a cry as scarlet gnosis-light gathered in Samir’s hands.
‘Gurvon said I could screw you before I kill you if I want, but I really can’t see the point.’ He stabbed a finger at her and flames gushed down the corridor. They were deflected by her shields, but the heat washed through, crisping her feet and singeing her hair and nightclothes. ‘You’re not my type. I’d rather just watch you burn.’ He drew himself erect, gathering a full-powered blast, as she flung up renewed shielding, downward-sloped and anchored to the walls. She could see her feet blistering; they felt like a thousand needles had been rammed into them. She crawled backwards, away from the
advancing mage, until her head and shoulders hit the wall: she’d reached the T-junction of the corridor behind her. She had one instant to take in the immensity of the fires playing about Samir’s hand, then she dived sideways. A wave of white-hot energy washed over the place where she had stood, but the flames swirled against her shields and were channelled downwards, turning the wooden floor to ash. For a second, she glimpsed Samir’s bemused face as his own fires backwashed, disintegrating the floor at his feet, then he was gone, tumbling through the space where the floor had been. She leapt up, wincing with pain as the seared soles of her feet touched the ground, and tore towards the stairs she had just descended, screaming warnings to whoever could hear.
The castle came to panicked life, Rimoni voices calling questions, answered by a roar from below and screaming. With a crash the floor in front of her burst upwards, a geyser of fire blasting through the timbers to incinerate the staircase she was making for. Samir was firing blind through the wooden floor from below.
Her mind raced as he bellowed, ‘You can’t escape me, Elena!’
She had to get between him and the children: that was her only function. She threw herself off the ground like a diver, and flew the length of the burning corridor on Air-gnosis as another blast shattered the timbers of the floor where she had been standing a second before. Then she heard Paolo Castellini’s voice below, calling the guards to him.
‘Paolo! The children!’ she called as she powered down the smoke-filled corridor, shot like a hawk into the foyer, three flights up, and poised in mid-air to see Samir, below her, facing Paolo Castellini and a guardsman standing beside the main doors. She fired a bolt of blue gnosis-light at Samir and watched it crackle against his shields even as she began her next working. He roared, and his fires flew amiss, blasting apart a stag’s head mounted above the door instead of incinerating Paolo as he’d intended. She rolled in the air and conjured images of herself heading in three different directions, each firing a bolt of gnosis-energy.
Samir chose wrong; smoke and flame roared behind her and extinguished
one of the images. The Fire-mage laughed mockingly as she soared up to the top level.
Lorenzo di Kestria emerged from a corridor, clad only in breeches, with a buckler over his left arm and holding his broadsword in his right hand. He gaped at Elena, hovering before him in mid-air, but she ignored him as she made a slicing gesture – and severed the ropes holding the chandelier beside her. The glass-and-metal monstrosity plummeted, and she saw Samir’s upturned eyes widen as the whole weight smashed against his shields and flew apart. But it left him untouched, shattering around him in a cascade of flying glass and shards of iron.
Rukka mio! How can he be that strong?
‘Lori, the children!’ she cried, darting towards the nursery even as Cera emerged, clad only in a white shift, with a pale-faced Timori clinging to her. They took in the burning ceiling and the great plume of smoke pouring upwards.
Cera looked at her desperately. ‘Where’s Mamma?’ Her face was stricken. Elena flashed towards her as Samir flung Paolo aside like a toy and turned his face upwards again.
Timori, his eyes uncomprehending, asked ‘What’s happening?’ and stepped forward to peer through the wooden railings at the scene below, where the echoes of the fallen chandelier were still reverberating.
‘Timi!’ they all yelled, but Lorenzo was fastest, slamming into the bewildered boy, his buckler interposed an instant before fire engulfed them. The knight howled in agony as the flames washed over him, catching everywhere the balustrade and buckler were not covering: his shoulder, his left leg, the left side of his face.
But Timori had escaped the blast, and now Cera grabbed the boy and dragged him away from the convulsing knight. Elena threw herself towards them, vaulting the burning railing. Crossbows sang below, then two guards roared in agony amidst Samir’s laughter.
Cera clutched Timori to her, pouring all her hope and terror into one word: ‘
Ella!
’
Elena shoved Cera towards the nursery. ‘
Inside – now!
’
She checked over the railing and quailed: Samir was a devil
unleashed. He was walking horizontally up the stone wall, his feet sinking effortlessly into the brickwork. His face looked carved from lava, glowing ember-red; his beard was a tongue of flame. She pulled Lorenzo to his feet. ‘Come on, Lori, we need you,’ she cried as he gasped for breath.
The main nursery bedroom, Cera’s room, was large, with a bed against the far wall and views through windows north and south. She blasted away the glass from both sets of windows, then wrenched a mirror from the wall and set it on a chair. ‘Climb through the window, onto the ledge,’ she ordered, then shouted, ‘Go!’ as Cera, still holding Timori, froze. ‘
Go
,’ she screamed again, and thrust the girl towards the windows. ‘Lorenzo, get them out of here—’
She spun and slapped her hands together and gnosis-strands gripped the doors, slammed them shut and locked them.
‘What the rukking Hel is happening, Ella?’ the knight shouted at her.
‘It’s Samir – he’s after the children!’
I never thought … damn you, Gurvon
— She pulled another mirror from the wall, setting it opposite the other one, facing the door. Smoke rolled under the cracks. She looked at herself in both mirrors at once, moved them with subtle finger-movements, aligning them, marked her position, then darted to one side as the door rattled.
Lorenzo pushed the children out onto the window-ledge, then turned, his face resolute: the look of a man who expected the next minute to be his last. She had no time to do anything but scream, ‘Hide, Lori!’
There was no calling out this time, no gloating or threats, just a coal-like fist punching a hole in the door just as Elena placed herself on one side. She could only see the door through one of the mirrors, but in the reflection she saw it burst open, then smoke billowed into the room, obscuring everything. She stepped into the shadows and began her next working.
Samir grimaced. Gurvon had warned him that the bitch was quick, and so she was, but she was only a half-blood, and a dried-up prune to boot.
I have absolute Fire-Affinity
, he thought gleefully.
Few on Urte could survive even a single taste of his power, and he’d been preparing all night, building up his powers with meditation.
Just before dawn, be ready
, Gurvon had said.
We’re going to kill them all
.
That was an unexpected bonus!
So not just running out on them, Gurvon?
No, we’re killing them all: Sordell and I will do the king; you kill the queen and the children
.
What about Elena?
She can’t be trusted on this, Samir. She’s gone native. Do whatever you need to
.
Everyone knew Gurvon was screwing Vedya these days; Elena was nothing to him now.
It’ll be my pleasure, Gurvon
– and he’d meant it. He’d been hovering close to that fat dumpling Fadah when the order came. That first burst, the one that crisped the queen to dust, had been
orgasmic
. Then Elena had shown up, and Gurvon had been right: she was damned quick, and cunning – the way she’d angled her shields so that he’d destroyed the floor at his own feet? That’d been clever; he’d remember that trick.
He smashed open the nursery door.
Time to finish this
. He let the first rush of smoke pour into the nursery and held his shields ready, but nothing came at him. She was quick, yes, but she had no firepower, and she was running out of places to hide. Somewhere in the dark he heard Lorenzo di Kestria gasping in pain and he grinned widely. That was the great thing about fire – it didn’t just damage, it also left mind-scrambling pain, the sort that made master torturers wet with envy. The sort of pain he was going to visit on that prunefaced Anborn bitch before he started on the children …