Барб Хенди - First and Last Sorcerer

“Hurry!” Leesil whispered.

Chane clenched his teeth against a retort. Magiere hung close at his right shoulder and studied the stones of the end wall. He finally felt the pebble with his forefinger, pinched it, and began to withdraw his hand.

A loud creak carried in the quiet.

Chane hesitated, thinking it was more of Leesil’s fidgeting. When Magiere whirled and Chap snarled, Chane twisted around to look up the passage.

A tall hooded figure in a shimmering gray robe, backed by five guards, stood halfway down the cellar stairs ... having arrived too soon.

Osha let fly another arrow when he gained a clear shot. Imperial guards scattered and ducked along the street below, scurrying between market stalls up the way or into side streets and cutways, trying to run along the buildings’ sides below him.

He had not expected so many and began to worry in counting off the shots—the arrows—he fired. He did not know how many arrows Brot’ân’duivé had scavenged from his previous victims.

Osha had wounded and put down two men. Another three lay dead with shorter shafts upright in their face or chest, and those had not been his targets. The longer this continued, the more likely he could not avoid a kill. And worse, the robed figure and five guards had breached the house too early. Chane could not possibly get Magiere and the others into the secret room before they were caught.

Osha had no chance to wonder what came next as Wynn, Shade, and the domin rushed from hiding and charged toward the house. He quickly swung his aim in their direction. Two guards ran from cover to follow them. One closed on Wynn from behind, and Osha released his bow’s string.

The arrow struck true in the guard’s shoulder as Osha drew and nocked another. As he aimed for the guard rushing the domin from the other side ...

An arrow appeared to sprout from the guard’s face, and he fell.

Osha did not look for Brot’ân’duivé or at another of the greimasg’äh’s victims.

The men below only followed orders, just as Osha had, first under Most Aged Father and then under Brot’ân’duivé. He had once been ignorant of how tainted—how stained in spirit—both had become ... and how close he had come to that black stain upon himself.

Osha focused only on protecting Wynn.

He would kill again—stain his spirit even more—if he had to. But only for her, and not for the mad “father” of his lost caste, or for that tainted greimasg’äh.

Brot’ân’duivé’s spite fractured his calm as he put down the guard rushing the domin.

Osha’s reluctance to kill had slowed the process of clearing the street. Every guard left alive, even wounded, was still a threat. Did the young fool not realize this?

It was no mistake that Osha had been stripped of his place among the Anmaglâhk, dissident or loyalist. That the Chein’âs had done this, and not a superior of the caste, was the only mystery. Osha lacked what was necessary to protect his people.

Another imperial guard broke from cover and charged for Wynn. The black majay-hì snarled but did not break stride as yet. Even Shade understood that purpose overrode all else—but not Osha.

Brot’ân’duivé fired again.

His arrow struck the guard in the throat at the same instant a black-feathered one sprouted from the man’s shoulder. This time, Brot’ân’duivé hissed a curse at the young one’s wasted shot.

He already knew how many arrows he had left. At least one had to be kept in reserve until all threats had been neutralized. He had instructed Osha to do the same before they scaled to the rooftops. Soon enough, whoever commanded the forces below would send one or more up to take out the archers that harried them.

Brot’ân’duivé reloaded to cover the domin’s final charge for the door. Five guards had already succeeded in following the gray-robed figure into the house. Eight had been killed or disabled in the street; at an estimate, seven more hid out of sight in the market area.

An order was shouted below. Brot’ân’duivé had learned enough Sumanese to understand.

“Do not let them reach the house!”

Men in gold sashes rushed out around market stalls and from dark places along the street. As il’Sänke approached the front landing, Wynn and Shade were close behind.

Brot’ân’duivé pivoted on his knee, aimed at the nearest guard, and fired again.

Leesil stared at the tall figure, now at the bottom of the stairs; he couldn’t mistake that robe even for not seeing any face in the hood’s deeper dark. The gray robe that shimmered with shadowy, glinting, strange symbols was the same as the one worn by the one who’d visited their cell and spoken inside his head.

Leesil heard Magiere’s breaths stop, but he didn’t dare turn his eyes from that robe. Chap began rumbling and snarling beside him. Everyone stood poised and waiting for ... something.

The robed one suddenly shifted left.

Two imperial guards rushed down the stairs with curved swords drawn.

Leesil jerked the ties on both winged blades. Magiere and Chane—dhampir and undead—were the ones safest to engage the specter, and Chap was a natural hunter of the undead. That meant Leesil had to deal with the guards.

—Force them back ... and do not let ... that thing ... touch you—

At Chap’s warning, Leesil drew both winged punching blades. He felt Chap brush by his left knee as the dog charged. He hoped Chap was right about the choice of opponents they each had to face—and that the specter couldn’t get into the head of a majay-hì.

Leesil slammed into the first guard before the man made it off the stairs, and he heard Chap rushing at the gray robe.

Chane panicked, for everything had gone wrong too quickly. If il’Sänke had seen the robed man approach the house, then the domin was already on the move with Wynn and Shade. Or had Khalidah finished with them?

Leesil hit the lead guard head-on as Chap charged for the gray-robed figure on the left side of the bottom step.

“Leesil!” Magiere called and started after him.

Chane grabbed her cloak and jerked, but before he said a word ... the robed one vanished before his eyes.

He was too stunned to move when Chap ended his lunge and nearly tripped off the empty step. Magiere slapped Chane’s grip away, but he focused on the second guard shifting position to get around the lead guard—likely to find an opening to attack Leesil as well.

That guard suddenly recoiled and nearly toppled, as if he had rammed into something solid.

“Behind me, now!” Chane rasped at Magiere.

He shifted the pebble to his off hand holding the crystal, and then pulled his shorter blade. In the corner of his sight, Magiere locked eyes on him. He could not look away from the whole passage, but had her irises suddenly flooded black?

“It is invisible to our eyes!” he snarled at her.

Chane lunged two more steps down the passage and set himself, putting Magiere at his back. He could not believe what had happened—not to him. Sorcery, the lost art of mental magic, should not affect him. Or so he had thought by the “ring of nothing.”

As the ring masked his undead presence, it also hampered some of his inner abilities. Tampering with his mind—and thereby his senses—should not have been possible while he wore it.

Chane grew warier of how powerful the specter might be. The sound of Magiere’s falchion ripping from its sheath brought him back to awareness. He was trapped in a narrow passage with his most hated enemies as his only allies. And the specter had blocked its presence from his—from everyone’s awareness.