Richard Byers - The Reaver

“Easy,” she said, “I’m a friend. I heard about what you did in the marketplace, and I’ve come to set you free.” She pulled the gag from his mouth. “What’s your name?”

“Stedd,” he croaked. “Stedd Whitehorn.”

“And I’m Wydda.” It would have been unwise to give her true name. He might have recognized it as Thayan and questioned whether anyone hailing from Szass Tam’s realm, particularly a wizard, could truly wish him well.

“Can you really get me out of here?”

She smiled, drew her dagger, and sawed at his bonds. “I got in, didn’t it? And I have a ship waiting in the harbor to take you away from Westgate.”

“I need to go east.”

“Then you will.” All the way to the Thaymount, she suspected. “My friends and I are here to help you however we can.”

“Thank you.” He rubbed his wrists and then his ankles.

“Ready to stand?” she asked.

He nodded and she hoisted him up. He gave a little hiss of pain, but after that he seemed to be all right.

She kept hold of his hand. “I’m going to cast a spell to help us sneak away,” she said. “It might make you feel strange for a moment, but it won’t hurt you.”

Stedd nodded. “All right.”

He trusted Umara, and while that was what she wanted, something about it gave her a twinge of disgust not unlike what she’d felt when killing the dying rower. Pushing the useless emotion aside, she cast another enchantment of invisibility.

Just as she finished, a fork of lightning flared across the sky. The illumination alleviated the gloom in the tower and gave Stedd a good look at his body fading away. He shot her a grin that reminded her of how wonderful wizardry had seemed when she first started learning it as a girl no older than he was.

She repeated the spell and veiled herself. “Remember that we still need to be quiet,” she said, “and hang onto my hand so we don’t get separated. Now let’s get moving.”

It was awkward negotiating the dark, cramped, twisting stairs while, in effect, towing the boy behind her, especially when they had to maneuver around the corpse. Stedd sighed in a way that made her wonder if he was sorry she’d killed the guard. If so, she couldn’t imagine why.

Once they left the little tower behind, the going was easier. She hoped Stedd wouldn’t want to leave by the front way and join his true followers when they reached ground level. If he did, she’d have to persuade-

A horn blared from the spaces below, the brassy note echoing through the temple. In its wake, a thick voice called out, and a door banged open.

Scowling, Umara wondered what had gone wrong. Maybe someone had found the two dead guards outside the back entrance. Or spotted the rival hunters sneaking around. In any case, somebody had raised the alarm.

“What do we do?” Stedd whispered.

“Keep making our way out,” Umara replied. “We’re still invisible, and there can’t be that many guards. This is a temple, not a fortress.”

She gave his hand a gentle tug. “Come on.”

They made it a few more steps. Then golden light shined through the dimness, and silvery figures shimmered into being in the lofty open space in the middle of the temple. They looked like women forged of metal. Feathery wings beat slowly to suspend them in midair, and long, straight swords gleamed in either hand.

Like many Red Wizards, Umara knew more about devils, demons, and elementals than she did about the denizens of the so-called higher planes. But she took the silver creatures to be angels, archons, or something comparable. Someone, most likely the First Sunlord himself, was doing his utmost to make sure Stedd didn’t escape; he’d summoned supernatural help to prevent it.

It was possible, though, that the temple’s celestial allies were no more able to see the invisible than were its mortal protectors. Umara crept onward, and to her relief, Stedd moved with her. Despite the fearsome spectacle that had just materialized, he hadn’t frozen.

The entities peered this way and that. Then one with a golden circlet on her brow abruptly looked straight at Umara and Stedd. She pointed with the sword in her right hand and extended the one in her left behind her back.

A beam of argent light leaped from the blade aimed at the mortals. A hot prickling danced over Umara’s skin as the ray caught her, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Stedd pop back into view. No doubt the winged outsider’s magic had just put an end to her own invisibility as well.

Wings beating more rapidly now, all the flying women oriented on her and the boy. Rattling off hissing, crackling words of power, Umara hurled fire at the entity crowned with gold. The blast rocked the spirit and charred patches of her silvery body black. But afterward, she flew at the fugitives, and her sisters followed.

Anton and the Fire Knives had been about to ascend a staircase when the winged women appeared. Now they stood motionless. The creatures had spotted them immediately but seemingly dismissed them as of no importance, and they were reluctant to do anything that might prompt the entities to reconsider that initial judgment.

But they couldn’t stay put much longer. Voices were calling, and footsteps were scuffing and thumping. The temple’s human guardians would arrive soon, and now that they were on alert, they were unlikely to take Anton and his companions for anything other than the trespassers they were.

He was still trying to decide what to do when a silver spirit cast light from one of her swords. The beam cut across a bit of the gallery above, and suddenly, Stedd and a tall, slender woman in a brown hooded cloak were standing there. Presumably, they had been all along, and countermagic had just ripped a charm of invisibility away.

The sight of Stedd resolved Anton’s uncertainty. He drew his blades and charged up the stairs, and after a moment of hesitation, Dalabrac and the other two Fire Knives pounded after him.

A booming burst of flame engulfed one of the winged beings. Apparently, the stranger in brown was a mage, and Anton was glad of it; his chances were at least a little better than they’d seemed a moment before.

When he reached the top of the stairs, there were five brown-cloaked women, the original, presumably, and four illusory duplicates that mirrored her movements perfectly to flummox the silver creatures. It worked, too. She pierced one of the flying spirits with ragged shafts of shadow, and when the being sought to retaliate, her sword simply popped one of the phantoms like a bubble.

But while the mage’s two winged assailants kept her occupied, another swooped across the balcony at Stedd. The boy turned tail and dodged as he ran, but his pursuer compensated.

Anton sprinted, leaped, cut, and caught the silver creature’s wing. He half expected the stroke to ring like metal striking metal, but it didn’t. Rather, the saber scraped on bone. The celestial being slammed down on the gallery floor and started to scramble to her feet, but he slashed the side of her neck before she could. The blood that sprayed from the wound was clear as spring water.

Anton pivoted. The mage in brown, Dalabrac, and the other Fire Knives were busy fighting silver spirits and seemingly holding their own. But more foes were winging their way toward the gallery. The gods only knew how many the high priest had summoned altogether.

Anton turned to Stedd. “Get back against the wall!”

Stedd balked. In the excitement of combat, Anton had forgotten that the boy no longer had any reason to trust him.

“Do it!” the pirate urged. “It’s the only way we can protect you. The creatures won’t be able to use their wings or get around behind you.”

Stedd stared back for another heartbeat. Then, evidently seeing something in Anton’s face that persuaded him, he gave a jerky nod and scurried to put himself where his former traveling companion wanted him.