Барб Хенди - First and Last Sorcerer

Chane quickly surveyed the whole space before him.

Leesil drove the lead guard back up one more step, slashing with both punching blades. That blocked the other guards above from descending, but this would not last. Then the air before Chap darkened for an instant.

Chane stiffened in a half step, and then Chap looked normal again as he spun to lunge in behind Leesil to help against the guards.

But Chane fixed on what he had seen ... or almost not seen.

It was as if a shadow had passed between him and the dog, and he tossed il’Sänke’s pebble back toward Magiere’s feet.

“Find and open the door! The specter is still here.”

Sweeping the passage with his eyes, he now knew something to look for, or so he hoped. Something had half blocked his crystal’s light for an instant. Could the ring have held off part of whatever the specter had done to him—to all of them?

Leesil slashed forward with one blade while simultaneously shifting to allow Chap in beside him, and both appeared to darken in Chane’s sight. Something had passed quickly and close behind them.

Chane tossed the crystal halfway to the stairs and lunged another step while slashing his shorter sword again. He could not draw and use his longer one in this narrow space, and he watched carefully for anything that blocked the crystal’s light, even for an instant.

Wynn almost reached the steps to the front landing when a deep voice shouted in Sumanese.

“Do not let them reach the house!”

She nearly broke stride but glanced back. Imperial guards emerged into the street at a run, and a tall one with hawkish features came at her. She was caught between running onward or stopping to face the man with Shade at her side.

The guard suddenly began convulsing and went down with a short anmaglâhk arrow through his left eye. He didn’t make a sound as his back hit the street. Shade wheeled beside Wynn, growling, though she hesitated at running on.

“Do not stop!” Ghassan ordered from ahead.

Too much happened all at once.

At another cry from Wynn’s right, she couldn’t help but look. An oncoming man toppled, one short arrow in the side of his throat. Another guard tried to grab for her before she even saw him, and a longer arrow with black feathers appeared to sprout in his chest. She’d known this would happen. Seeing it so close was something else. Ghassan had less violent methods, but there was no time here and now. Their defense had to be left to Brot’an’s methods—and Osha’s.

Wynn took a step to rush on and something jerked her off her feet from behind. She barely kept her grip on the staff. Frantic and choking as her cloak cinched across her throat, she reached over and back with her other hand. She was so shocked that she didn’t see Shade coming until the dog leaped right at her.

Somewhere above Shade’s snarls, Wynn thought she heard whispering, and then the dog’s forepaws hit her in the chest. She felt and heard her cloak tear as she went down on her back. Shade leaped off and beyond her. Then came snarls, snaps, and shouts too guttural to understand.

Wynn thrashed over, still clinging to the staff, and looked back to see three guards beyond the one Shade put down. They were somehow frozen along the street looking everywhere but at her. Hearing the whispers again, she twisted around toward that sound.

Ghassan stood upon the landing’s steps, his eyes fixed above and beyond her, perhaps at those guards. The whispers came out through his clenched teeth.

Wynn could only guess what he was doing. As she was about to grab Shade’s tail before the dog disturbed the domin’s concentration, she heard ...

One arrow strike ... a second and a hacking choke ... and a third with a shriek.

Wynn pushed up to her knees as the first guard hit the street, dead; he fell forward and shattered the short arrow in his heart. The second one choked and dropped with another through his throat. The third stumbled, clutching a longer, black-feathered shaft impaled through his thigh, front to back.

A shorter arrow sprouted from his neck behind his jaw; he dropped and didn’t move.

Wynn felt suddenly so cold. Most of the guards she could see were dead or at least down. Two still tried to crawl away, wounded and bleeding. They were the enemy, but they were ignorant of what this all meant.

Some part of her wanted to scream out for all this to stop.

“Up and run!” Ghassan barked.

Shade grabbed Wynn’s sleeve in her teeth and wrenched her toward the domin.

Magiere eyed Chane’s back where he stood between her and Leesil as well as Chap. It would be so easy to finish him. But whatever fire of hate he ignited in her had turned toward something else. It wrapped around that figure in gray who had winked out before her eyes.

Her rage came back ... and swallowed all reason.

The robe, its symbols, the darkness in the hood that hid his face, and the spindly form beneath all of that had stood still and calm as when he had visited her cell. There was flesh inside the robe that she could tear, bones that she could break.

There was suffering to crush out of him for everything he had done to her.

Chane slowly turned his head, peering about. The crystal’s light began to burn Magiere’s widened sight, but she didn’t see the robe—the prey—she wanted. No one was getting to it before she did, and the burning in her stomach lurched up into her throat.

It was still here—she could feel it.

Leesil and Chap still fought the guards on the stairs, but Magiere didn’t go to help them. In trying to find that thing some way other than by sight, she almost closed her eyes ...

Chane lunged to the right, and Magiere’s eyes snapped wide.

His hand shot out. His fingers appeared to wrap around nothing, but his grip didn’t fully close. She saw his arm straighten as if what he held tried to jerk free.

Magiere fixed on the emptiness in Chane’s grip, dropped her sword, and charged. Her fingers closed on nothing, unlike Chane’s.

She shrieked and slammed him aside to claw at ... nothing.

Magiere lashed out wildly beyond Chane’s grip, but her fingers—her hardened nails—only gouged the wood of the passage’s wall.

Leesil knocked a guard’s sword aside with his right blade, and both weapons bit the side railing. He heard Chap snap and snarl but didn’t dare look at the dog. Somehow, he had to break through and get everyone out of here.

Reaching the hidden room wouldn’t work anymore. The specter in its host was gone, and even that didn’t matter. What did matter was never going back to that cell ... never letting Magiere be taken again.

He heard her guttural shriek like a feral animal somewhere behind him. A shudder passed through him, beyond panic, and he grew still inside.

Leesil rammed his forehead into the guard’s face.

The man’s head recoiled and struck the next guard up the stairs. Leesil thrust with his legs to topple forward as he shouted, “Chap—over!” As he fell, he rammed the wedged point of his left blade into the gut of the stunned guard beneath him.

The weight of Chap’s paws landed on his back as he looked into the gaping eyes of the man beneath him.

The instant Chap leaped off and up the stairs, Leesil pulled his legs under himself.

He saw Chap go at the next guard, snarling, clawing, and snapping for the man’s throat, and he thrust upward, pulling his legs up.

He caught the right railing with the sole of his right boot, and that instant of grounding was enough. A third guard’s sword came overhead and down at Chap amid the second guard’s screams and the dog’s snarls.

Leesil deflected the sword with his left blade as he thrust his right into the third guard’s throat.