Mercedes Lackey - Fairy Godmother

But if she didn't, Alexander, and everyone else, would die.

The Sorcerer could reign unchallenged for generations. He would engulf all of the nearby Kingdoms, her Kingdoms, and rain death and terror down on the people she had vowed to help.

And The Tradition would help him.

They had to stop him now, or his conquest would not stop at all for some time to come.

Of all of the spells here, this one was the simplest. It did not need to be able to recognize the person activating it, it did not need to be warded, for it could only do one thing, and that one thing was always, always, to the Sorcerer's advantage, and had no potential to harm him.

He thinks.

It only took a touch of power. She gathered up a tiny mote of it, inserted her wand into the cage of steel, and touched it to the tangled tail of the spell.

"Go home," she whispered to the heart inside the diamond.

It vanished, and there was only one place where it would be "home," only one place for it to go.

She took the last of her power, the very last; she stole the last of the power remaining from her invisibility spell and she saw herself in all of the reflective surfaces, blinking back into place. Then she took all of her own strength, all of her energy, everything she had. She took a deep breath, raised her wand over her head, and cast —

This spell, too, required no finesse. It was simple, and crude. It did one thing; it would engulf the castle and grounds in a single, overwhelming shout that would be heard no matter how loud the fighting.

And as the glittering room blacked out, as she felt herself falling over onto the box, she, too heard it. Three words, in her own voice, if she'd had the voice of a giant and the lungs of a dragon.

"Strike the heart!"

And then she knew nothing more.

"Strike the heart!"

It was Elena's voice, and Alexander was so startled that he missed his stroke.

But so had the Mage.

And Alexander's reactions were those of a fighter. As the Evil Mage, distracted for that crucial second, glanced to the side, looking for the source of the shout, Alexander dropped his own shield, seized his sword-hilt in both hands, ducked under the Sorcerer's guard and rammed the sword-point home against the Sorcerer's breastplate. As he did so, he willed every particle of magic, every bit of his own strength, into the blow.

As the Mage flailed at him, the sword glowed white-hot. There was a moment of resistance, then it slammed home.

The Mage froze.

With a great clap of thunder, the Evil Mage fell.

He went over like a statue, carrying Alexander's sword with him.

And a silence descended like a hammer, as everything, and everyone, just — stopped.

Alexander fell to his knees, the last of his strength running out of him. He remained there, panting, as a howl shattered the silence, as the sound of great wings rose all around him, as the gate behind him burst open, and as every torch illuminating the courtyard where he and the Mage had fought was blown out, leaving him in darkness.

He could not think; he could only feel. Hammered by the pain of his injuries, fighting for each breath, with sweat running over his face and down his back, he was barely aware that there were people swarming around him until two of them seized his biceps and hauled him to his feet, pounding his back, which he barely felt through his armor. That blessed, blessed, blessedly light and strong armor that had saved his life over and over again in this fight —

"Alex! Alex! Is that really you in there?"

It was his brother Julian's voice. He tried to get enough breath for an answer (the Mage had struck him a blow towards the end of it that had knocked him off his feet and left him with, at the least, a bruised chest) but someone was already fumbling with the straps holding his helmet on. The straps came undone, the helmet came off, and he gasped in great, glorious breaths of cool, clean air, and looked bewildered, into Julian's battered face.

Which he could see only because the other person holding him up, that same grizzled old man who had raised so many doubts during his rallying-speech, was holding a torch in his free hand and peering at his face as if he did not quite believe what had just happened.

"Jules?" he gasped.

"Alex?" said Julian. "My God, man, you've saved us, you and that weird army of yours — "

"Army? What — "

"Let me take him, friend Julian," rumbled a deep voice, like thunder on the mountains.

Then he was scooped up, as a gentle child would scoop up a toy, and he was staring into the face of the sheepherding giant. "Champion," the giant said, slowly and carefully. "Where is the Godmother? When last we heard, she was in the guise of a squire, going in through the Princess's tower. But we cannot find her."

"I don't know," he replied, gathering his wits about him. "I — "

"Aaaaaaaalexanderrrrr!"

It was his name, in a long, feline wail, like a cat calling her kittens.

"Aaaaaaaalexanderrrrrr!"

He located where it was coming from; the top window of the tower nearest him.

"Take me to that window! Please!" he shouted to the giant, who obligingly stretched out his arm.

There was a small, black shape in the black of the open window. A cat.

"Aaaaaaaalexanderrrrrr!"

"That's me!" he called to her. "I am Alexander."

"Tell the mountain to hold still!" came the reply.

"Hold still!" he shouted to the giant. "I think a cat — "

A cat flew out of the darkness to land on his chest and slide off the slick surface of the armor into the palm of the giant's hand. She spat and cursed at them both for being fools.

"I'll put you both down, then?" said the giant, hastily, and he carefully lowered Alexander and the cat back down beside Julian. By that time, Alexander had picked up the cat and was cradling her as carefully as his armor would allow. Her claws slipped and scratched on the metal of his armor, and she mewed her irritation until he managed to place her on the stones again at his feet.

"The Godmother said, if she did not appear, to find you!" the cat said when she had all four feet on solid ground again. "Come! Now!"

She ran off; he ran after her, pausing only long enough to snatch a black sword out of the hand of the dead man who had been holding it.

The cat kept glancing back at him over her shoulder to make sure that he was following. There were still knots of fighting men and monsters in the rooms that he passed; he and the cat dodged around them. They emerged into an enormous room that held more fighting; a few of Julian's men with enchanted boar-spears, but also three Unicorns, an armored Elf in elaborate armor, and a bleeding, enraged Gryphon, all fighting hideous spider-men that glittered blackly as they moved and shed black blood from their wounds.

The cat rushed past them. He followed.

And stopped dead in the final doorway.

It wasn't the piles of gold and gems that arrested his attention, although that might have, under any other circumstances. It was the terrifying black spider thing bending over Elena's unconscious body.

He had thought that he had no strength left. He had been wrong.

Terrible strength and energy coursed though him, as if he had been struck by a bolt of lightning that had energized him instead of killing him.

The creature was only just starting to turn as he leaped upon it with a scream, sword in both hands, attacking like a mad dancer, a threshing-fiend, a man-machine of death.

His first blow sliced the thing's right arm off. His second took the left, and the third cut the head cleanly from the body, sending it to the top of one of the piles of treasure where it remained, eerily staring out into the room with its sightless, unblinking black eyes.