Lisa Shearin - Armed & Magical

The Magh’Sceadu drifted almost within touching distance, as if feeding on those kids’ fear. I never thought I’d be grateful for sadistic behavior, but it bought us a few critical seconds.

Tam took one look at the ward close up and snarled a string of guttural goblin curses.

I looked where he was looking. “What? You can’t do it?”

“The wards are rooted in bedrock,” Tam told me. “If I rip into it, the ceiling comes down.”

“Any other way?”

“None.”

We were at least a hundred feet underground, with an embassy on top of that. If Tam tore into those wards, all of that was going to be on top of us.

If we did nothing, those spellsingers were worse than dead.

I’d held up a stage full of mages two days ago. No Saghred, just me. But that stage was wood, not untold tons of rock. Dammit. I didn’t want to die squashed like a bug, but if I screwed this up, a lot of other people would be dying along with me.

I snarled my favorite about-to-meet-Death four-letter word.

“Do it!” I snapped.

“The ceiling—”

“Is my problem.”

Tam knew what I was saying. He stared at me, his expression unreadable. “I need you to support the ceiling above the tear I’m going to make.”

“Yeah, yeah. I got it. You pull; I push. Let’s go!”

“I need control and delicacy, Raine.”

I snorted. “Too bad you’re stuck with me.”

He held out his hand to me. “And we have to work in unison.”

So there it was. I knew it wouldn’t be just Tam and me. The Saghred was going to want a piece of the action—and a piece of us. The Saghred had given me power when I’d used it. Would it do the same for Tam? I didn’t want that power. Did the dark mage in Tam not only want it, but crave it?

Triumph was the only way I could describe what I felt coming off the Saghred. The rock was about to get what it wanted. If we all got out of this alive, I’d have what I wanted.

A win-win for everybody. Yeah, right.

Tam called his power and I felt it: dark, potent, rushing up from the deep, primal core of him. My own magic coiled and flared through my body, serpentine, seeking the source of Tam’s dark power. I found it and touched it: the dark well, its source unknown, its depths unexplored. The Saghred wanted to know those depths. I just wanted to explore.

“I knew I couldn’t leave you two alone.”

Rudra Muralin stood smiling at a tunnel opening next to the Magh’Sceadu’s cell, manacles dangling negligently from one finger.

“Always have a backup plan,” he told us. “And an extra set of keys. I hope you didn’t pay your two lackeys in advance, Tamnais. Gold is wasted on dead men.”

Muralin laid his hand on the ward of the Magh’Sceadu’s cell. It opened seamlessly and Magh’Sceadu poured out, flowing around him like a black tide. They wanted nothing to do with him. I guess evil repels evil.

“Impressive work, Piaras,” Muralin called. “You have even more potential than I thought. Too bad you’re about to be overrun.”

“Rip it now!” I snarled at Tam. I turned my head toward Piaras, Talon, and Katelyn. “Run!” I screamed.

I grabbed Tam’s hand, and his power exploded through my body; my own surged upward to meet it.

A roar tore itself from Tam’s throat. His eyes were solid black orbs, his lips pulled back from his fangs in a bestial snarl as he sank his fingers like claws into the wards and tore them open. The wards screamed as if Tam was ripping into living flesh, not magic.

I gathered my will and my arm extended toward the rock above where Tam had shredded the ward. My fingers flared out to focus my magic and I pushed with everything I had. My arm shook with the effort and my shoulder was on fire.

A spiderweb of tiny cracks appeared on the ceiling where wards met rock.

Oh hell.

Tam had flung open the door to the cell and was pulling the spellsingers out and all but throwing them toward the door to the tunnel beyond. Ronan and two of Tam’s mages were herding the kids, including Piaras, Talon, and Katelyn, into the tunnel.

Rudra Muralin was gone.

All that power came at a price. I was panting and tasting blood. Either I’d bitten my tongue or ruptured something. Black blooms danced on the edges of my vision. If I didn’t stop soon, I was going to pass out.

Silence hung in the air, followed by a low rumbling. A crack appeared in the ceiling at our end of the cell block and started to spread.

I was all that was holding up that ceiling and if I let go…

I couldn’t speak. I frantically motioned for Tam to go.

His black eyes blazed. “Like hell!”

A tremor shook the room. The crack in the ceiling was as wide as my hand and expanding fast. Chunks of ceiling began to crumble and fall. Tam tightened his grip on my hand.

“Drop it!” he screamed over the din. “Now!”

I dropped it.

Tam and I ran.

The tremors turned into a thunderous roar, and the ceiling simply crumbled. Dust and debris chased us in a billowing cloud.

We didn’t have to run faster than the Magh’Sceadu behind us. We just had to run faster than the Khrynsani shamans in front of them.

Tam and I had a head start, and survival was a strong motivator. In fact, my motivation knew no bounds. I didn’t think I could run any faster, but a panicked shriek in the tunnel behind us proved me wrong.

There had yet to be a time when I couldn’t outrun a magic user wearing robes. Robes were just a pretty way to an early grave—stylish death traps in your choice of silk, brocade, or velvet. Flowing sleeves got in your way during a fight, and flowing hems tripped you when running away. Behind us, a shaman tripped over his hem and went down screaming. A Magh’Sceadu caught up to him and the screaming stopped. I quit looking back at that point. What was behind us didn’t matter unless it caught up to us.

The rumbling faded and the tunnel ahead sloped up and presumably led out, and best of all, whatever was behind us wasn’t going to catch up with us—or anybody else.

I smelled the salt air from the harbor. We were almost out. Problem was, I didn’t know if out there was any safer than in here.

Piaras, Ronan, and the spellsingers were waiting at the exit. Tam’s mages were guarding them. Ronan didn’t look particularly comfortable with that arrangement, but he hadn’t spellsung any of Tam’s men to death yet, either.

Piaras spotted me and swept me off my feet in a rib-crushing hug. I wrapped my arms around his neck and just hung there happily. Piaras was warm and alive, just the way I liked the people I love.

I felt him smile against my cheek. “We still have all of our pieces and parts intact,” he said.

“See, I told you my plan would work.”

“I still require an explanation, Master Rivalin.” It was Ronan and he didn’t sound amused.

I felt Piaras sigh; then he put me down. “Sir, I read the spell in a songbook in the citadel’s music room. Since I’m not very good at repelling songs, I thought—”

Ronan’s expression was both appalled and disapproving. “You thought you’d just teach yourself something stronger.”

Piaras met his eyes. “I didn’t teach myself, sir. I just read it once. I didn’t see the harm—and there was a need.”

Ronan was incredulous. “You read an unmaking spellsong in Old Goblin once and you could use it down there in that hellhole?”

“Yes, sir. I memorize quickly.”

“So it would appear,” Ronan muttered. The maestro searched Piaras’s face for something only he knew. “I understand you want to be a Guardian,” he said quietly.

Piaras shot a quick glance at me. “I did, sir. Perhaps I still do.”