David Dalglish - The Prison of Angels

And then the spell passed, and she stood alone before the survivors. Blowing them a kiss, she stumbled back into the room, collapsing in the arms of one of the soldiers.

“Buy me time,” she said, pushing herself off him.

The four stood side by side, swords ready. It seemed even they were afraid of the carnage she’d unleashed. It almost made her laugh. If only they’d seen her in Woodhaven, dueling the prophet. Now that had been a fight.

She stepped back, already feeling better. It felt like forever since she’d been forced to battle in such a way, pushed to her very limits to protect the lives of those she loved. She wouldn’t say she missed it, but she couldn’t deny the thrill it gave her. The four guards tensed, but it seemed like the remaining soldiers had no desire to challenge her…though she wasn’t certain just how many soldiers she’d even left out there to fight.

Just when she was thinking things might be easier than she hoped, she saw a small, painfully familiar sphere roll to a stop just before the soldiers’ feet.

“Get back!” she screamed, knowing it was already too late. Her magic useless, she could do nothing as a man and women wearing matching red and gray outfits vaulted into the room, twisting and turning to avoid the guard’s useless defenses. Their twin daggers lashed out, finding openings in their armor. Desperate, Aurelia ripped a chunk out of the wall and hurled it with her mind, the momentum continuing on despite coming into range of the voidsphere. One of the soldiers had his throat slit, and as he fell the stone slammed into him, knocking him into the hallway. The assassin before him tumbled aside at the last moment, avoiding the hit. Aurelia held in a swear as she readied her staff.

With the guards dead, the two assassins rolled a second voidsphere toward her, chasing after it with frightening speed. Aurelia twirled her staff, reminding herself that Harruq was faster. She’d fought him before, which meant she’d faced the deadliest there could be. With her elven grace she shifted and spun, her body like water as she avoiding a combination of thrusts and slashes. Her staff continued spinning, knocking aside the attacks she could not avoid. The exhaustion, the pressure of such intense focus, wore on Aurelia quickly, and it took all her willpower to fight down the panic she felt rising in her. There was no way she could win. Retreating with each step, she would soon have nowhere to go, no way to fight back. With such proximity to the voidsphere, she felt naked, deprived. Twice she tried to shift the fight toward it, so she could smash it with her staff, but the assassins seemed to be aware of her ploy.

At last she couldn’t keep up the necessary speed. She shifted her body left when it should have gone right, and with a cry she felt the tip of a dagger pierce her shoulder. A heel connected with her midsection, and then an elbow struck her across the face. When she fell to her knees, fists rained down upon her, knocking her to the ground and stealing the breath from her lungs. Fighting back tears, she pushed herself off the floor, only to be beaten again.

Defeated, she lay there, struggling for air. The stone cold against her cheek, she stared at the entrance to the room as one of the assassins sat atop her, binding her wrists together. Mere feet in front of her lay the voidsphere, glowing its soft, mocking rainbow of colors. As if from another world she heard Aubrienna and Gregory crying, and the helplessness, the inability to go to them, gave her far more pain than the bleeding wound in her shoulder. Through her tears she watched Lord Kevin Maryll stride into the room, dragging the queen along by the arm.

“Even knowing you’d be difficult, you still surprise me with your tenacity,” Kevin said, shaking his head and smiling at her.

The female assassin grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head up. As she let out a cry, the assassin scooped up the voidsphere and jammed it into her mouth. Her slender fingers pushed, overriding her gag reflex to shove the object farther down her throat. Her body heaved, followed by an unstoppable coughing fit as the assassin pulled away her fingers, but there was little Aurelia could do as she swallowed the voidsphere, bringing its accursed denial of magic down into her very stomach.

“Harruq will kill you,” Aurelia said as her face was shoved back to the floor.

“Will he now?”

Kevin moved aside, his grin spreading. Behind him were two more of his strange assassins. Into the room they stepped, and with a heave they dumped before her the unconscious body of her husband.

The first thing Harruq realized when he came to was that for some reason he was still alive. The second was a distant sound, like a wailing, that he couldn’t place. The third was that his chest hurt worse than any sword wound he’d ever suffered before. When he opened his mouth to cry out, he felt something hard strike him across the face.

“Stop your screaming,” he heard a voice say from the darkness. Harruq didn’t recognize it, but he knew it was the voice of someone he hated. Forcing his eyes wider, the darkness became a blur of gray, followed by color. Realizing where he was, and what was going on, the world suddenly came into focus with shocking clarity and speed.

Kevin Maryll stood before him, holding a sword in his hand. With his other hand he held his sister, whose wrists were roped together before her. All around Harruq were the strange assassins with the gray masks over their faces. More stunning to Harruq, besides being alive, was that he was unbound in any way. His temper flaring, he moved to attack Kevin, assassins be damned, but Kevin took a step back and pointed to the side.

“Now, now,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to do something we’d regret.”

Harruq hesitated just long enough to glance in the direction Kevin pointed. His heart froze when he saw Aurelia being held by one of the assassins. Her arms were behind her back, and the woman holding her kept a dagger pressed against his wife’s throat. Behind the gray mask the assassin’s eyes glinted, as if hoping he would make a move. He wondered why Aurelia made no attempt to free herself with a spell. Even with a dagger at her throat and rope around her wrists, he still trusted her to be resourceful enough to escape. Did one of them hold a voidsphere? That had to be it, despite the fact he didn’t see one anywhere.

“Fair enough,” Harruq said, remaining put. He felt his insides churn, the pain in his chest flaring up again, but he forced himself to ignore it. “I’m here, we’re all here. We can talk, right?”

“Yes, we can,” Kevin said. He shoved the door shut behind him, leaving him alone with his four assassins. “This is private, but you can trust my friends here to keep their mouths shut. As for you, Harruq, I’d ask you to keep quiet as well, difficult as it may be. For once, I need you to listen.”

Harruq nodded. He glanced around, trying to find his daughter, and he spotted a strange stone dome in the far corner of the room. Muffled crying came from within. As if following his gaze, Kevin let go of Susan and approached the magical creation.

“Clever, if a bit crude,” Kevin said, looking it over. “A good maul should break through in time. Your daughter is in there, isn’t she, Harruq?”

“Leave her out of this,” Harruq said.

“I will, if you do as I say. This is a historic day, a chance for humanity to save itself from its captors. But you’ll need to do something for me, you half-blood freak.”

Harruq shot a glance at his wife. Her eyes were glassed over, but when she met his gaze, he saw the helpless fury in them.

“What is that?” Harruq asked.

Kevin put his back to the stone dome and gestured to Susan.