The Shadowmage Trilogy (Twilight of Kerberos: The Shadowmage Books) (60 page)

Lengthening his stride, Lucius caught up with Adrianna as they approached the cluster of cliffside cranes and lifts that served the docks. He cleared his throat.

“You may be right about working together, Aidy,” he started. “Maybe I have been concentrating too much on the thieves. You and I could target the Vos leadership of the city, maybe take out the Citadel’s commander, and the Preacher Divine too – he would be a very visible loss for the Empire.”

“Now you are starting to think properly, Lucius,” Adrianna said. “That is a good idea, and one we will attend to in due course. However, the leadership will be weakened without their soldiers. Trust me, this way is better.”

He was silent for a moment.

“So why come to me through Elaine?”

Adrianna shrugged. “Over the past few months, you have reverted back to your old ways. You have become... unreliable. She seemed the simplest route to guarantee your obedience.”

“You told her about us, didn’t you?”

Adrianna flashed him an amused look.

“I thought she would be interested. It hardly matters, either way,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “She might have cared for you quite a lot, I think. But she was not right for you. Don’t pretend you were in love with her.”

He looked at Adrianna curiously. “Do you think I love you?”

“I think you fear me. For the moment, that is enough.”

Lucius sighed in desperation. “I can understand your anger towards Vos – I have lost at least as much myself. But you are courting madness with these attacks, Adrianna.”

“Fool!” she spat. “You think me insane? You are not seeing this as I do. There is a wider world, Lucius, one beyond the petty concerns of thieves and their whores. Do you still not understand? There is a chance, a very real chance, for a better future for the Shadowmages. We just have to reach out and take it! We have suffered from leaders who have been too blind to events in the outside world, who have believed that the pure study of magic can fend off the interference of others.”

“Isn’t that what the Shadowmages’ guild is all about?”

She ignored his question. “I will
not
fail. You, you are no different from those doddery old men, the so-called masters. You are no better. You have no gift for leadership – you handed the entire thieves’ guild to that bitch because you did not know what else to do.”

“Then why invest this time in me?”

“Your training as a Shadowmage is far from complete. It is time you saw exactly what we are capable of.”

As they approached the nearest crane, they attracted the attention of the sweating labourers. Two decided that Adrianna would be impressed by cat calls and overly loud comments on her physique, growing lewder when she ignored them.

“I can’t work with this noise,” she said to Lucius. “Get rid of them.”

He looked at the labourers blankly, and then back to her.

“What do you want me to do with them?”

“I really don’t care,” she said distractedly, and Lucius realised she had already begun to prepare her magic. “Blow them off the cliff for all it matters, though I presume you’ll choose to do something less lethal.”

Turning to face them, Lucius tried hard to keep an apologetic look from his face.

“Get out of here,” he said to them, jerking his head in the direction of the city.

“You what?” said one of the cat callers, standing up straight from the wooden strut he had been slouched over, letting Lucius see his full height.

Looking him directly in the eye, Lucius flooded his hand with raw magical energy and hurled it to the ground just in front of the labourers’ feet. With a crashing boom, it exploded, showering them in clumps of earth.

One raised his hands to show he had no argument with Lucius, and ran past him. He was quickly followed by the others, though the cat caller looked surly as he departed.

Adrianna had walked to the very edge of the cliff, where she stood, motionless, the sea wind tugging at her clothing. Eyes half-closed, she seemed serene and calm. Lucius, however, saw something very different.

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.