Chapter 29
Ivy
At the head of our procession, Sulla draws her horse to a stop amid the trees. She turns her head, the fragmented sunlight glowing off her lined face. “You can feel that, can’t you?”
I hadn’t until she halted us. Now, as I concentrate on the sensations around me, a faint tingle of magic brushes over my skin.
I tense, swiveling my head to try to track its source.
I don’t get the impression of any specific direction or purpose. It’s more like the energy is simply drifting in the air.
Just behind us, my men shift in their saddles. None of them can pick up on supernatural eddies the way I can.
“There’s magic being worked somewhere nearby,” I say for their benefit as well as to answer Sulla’s question. “Are you sure it’s from the scourge sorcerers?”
The older sorcerer purses her lips. “I can’t tell for certain. But it gives me the feeling of a large cistern dribbling water as it overflows. That much power in one place… I would expect a temple, but there are none nearby.”
Alek speaks quietly. “But a group of sacrificial accomplices could also wield that kind of power.”
“Exactly.”
He and the rest of our procession—royal soldiers, noble staff, Pimanian rebels, even my former general—look to me for confirmation. Whatever some of our allies might think of my magic, they see me as the expert on that subject. They barely know Sulla.
I wet my lips and turn my head again. Another whiff of energy quivers over me.
What are they working on out here for traces of their magical practice to be seeping through the woods? What new threat are they conjuring?
We’re only a couple of hours’ ride from our current stronghold. If there are scourge sorcerers performing their darkest magic nearby, it’s better for us to root them out and determine what new schemes they’re setting in motion before they have a chance to discover our presence.
If we can free more of their accomplices and weaken Lothar’s power that way, all the better. The more we can diminish the threat of retribution from the Order of the Wild, the easier it’ll be for our allies to take a stand with us, however Petra decides to make it.
On the other hand, I don’t want to lead two dozen followers into a battle on totally uncertain ground. My comrades came prepared to fight but expecting me to guide them.
I consider for a moment, uneasiness twisting in my belly. “Let’s move closer to get a better idea of what we’re dealing with. We should go ahead on foot—just a few of us to start.”
Stavros nods and makes a couple of gestures to the rest of our company that those with military training must understand. As I slide down from Toast’s back, he, Sulla, Rheave, and one of the soldiers follow suit.
We set off through the forest, Sulla and I remaining in the lead. I tread forward carefully so I can adjust my route with the minute shifts of the magic lacing the air.
For a few moments, it seems to grow stronger to the east. Then the impression dwindles, and I find myself backtracking onto a more northerly route. I can see what Sulla means about the magic feeling like stray dribbles rather than a focused effect.
But after maybe half an hour of rambling, a more solid sensation brushes my face. I ease toward it even more tentatively than before and stop in my tracks at its swift thickening.
I motion toward the terrain ahead of us. “This part of the forest is warded. If we go much farther, whoever set those wards will probably set off an alert.”
More proof that whatever the sorcerers are working on, it’s important. Or maybe they’ve simply become increasingly cautious after the raids we’ve already pulled off in the north.
Rheave steps up beside me without hesitation. “Let me see if I can break the magic so we can get closer.”
He glances over at me with a brief flick of his gaze toward Sulla as well. “There isn’t much chance anyone other than the scourge sorcerers would be protecting themselves like that, is there?”
Sulla shakes her head before I can answer. “The enchantment they’ve laid down is stronger than any I’ve felt from even a devout. No ordinary homesteader would have the means to place that kind of magic.” She shivers. “Our foes are formidable.”
As Rheave reaches his hands toward the wards, I study my former mentor. Sulla told me that was why she’d come—because even on her mountain, she became aware of the tragedies and violence spreading across the country. The Haven no longer felt secure.
She remembered what I’d said to her about us standing up to the blight of scourge sorcery together and decided to seek me out. Her magic led her to me.
I’m glad for her help, but I remember how she stole our equipment and tried to bar us from leaving the Haven. How she insisted that it was too dangerous for me to leave—not for my safety but everyone I’d encounter in the outside world.
She’s declared her loyalty to Petra and her siblings. She warned us of the magic she’d sensed on her journey so we could investigate it. But I have trouble completely trusting her just yet.
Rheave’s face hardens into a mask of concentration. His fingers twitch, sparks leaping between them.
The aura of magic in this part of the forest ripples and then fades away.
Stavros scans our surroundings. There’s still nothing visible but trees and underbrush.
“We should proceed cautiously but quickly from here,” he says. “We don’t know how long it’ll take before the sorcerers notice that their wards have been disabled.”
He motions to the soldier. “Hovi, return to the others and have them follow. The sooner they can catch up with us, the better.”
The guard bobs his head and lopes off in the direction we came from. We continue onward at a faster pace, but all my senses stay vigilant for further magical protections.
Only the vague, drifting impression of magic remains. It intensifies as we continue, until the trees start to thin up ahead and I make out a couple of squat wooden buildings in a clearing some fifty paces away.
We all go still, peering between the trunks. We have a little illusionary magic wrapped around us to deflect attention, but that won’t hide us from magical surveillance or particularly attentive guards. We don’t have enough of the more potent charms to conceal much of a fighting force.
And whoever strikes the first blows will automatically become a target.
As we study the buildings, the rest of our force catches up with us. Most of the group hangs back several paces, but Casimir and Alek tread carefully over to where the four of us are standing.
A couple of men emerge from one of the buildings and amble around it with only brief glances toward the trees. They look as if they’re pretty confident that their magical protections are all they need to fend off intruders.
Rheave sucks in a breath and speaks under his breath. “One of those is a captured daimon. This is definitely a place of scourge sorcery.”
“Then we need to find out what they’re up to,” I mutter. “But we don’t know how many of them are here right now or what kind of magic they can wield.”
A few deep gouges mark the ground farther out from the buildings. Their edges gleam with a sheen that doesn’t look like soil or grass. When I squint, I make out a mottling of ruddy gashes on some of the nearby tree trunks around the edge of the clearing.
Whatever magic they’ve been experimenting with, it doesn’t look like the peaceful type.
Sulla offers a small smile. “It shouldn’t be difficult to create a distraction with our own magic.”
I stifle a laugh. “I don’t think we want Rheave setting the forest on fire. That would be bad for us too.”
A crease forms in her brow. “I was thinking the two of us could manage enough of an effect.”
Oh. With a lurch of my pulse, my body stiffens even more than it had already.
Since she arrived, I’ve avoided talking with Sulla about the exact results of my magic usage, but I can hardly hide it now.
I force my hands to unclench, willing my voice to remain steady. “I’m only releasing my power when it’s absolutely necessary. I—I’ve already felt the madness coming on. I don’t want to push myself farther toward it unless there’s no other option.”
The older woman stares at me for a few heavy thuds of my heart, the color leaching from her weathered skin. “You only left the Haven a matter of weeks ago. You’ve already let yourself go so far— You threw aside everything I taught you?—”
I wince. “I didn’t throw it aside. I followed your teachings as well as I could. But there was so much we needed to do, and I didn’t know it would affect me so quickly.”
“I warned you!” Sulla’s whispered voice sharpens into a hiss. “After all that insistence that you knew what you were doing?—”
Stavros cuts her off with a sharp sound. His voice comes out low but fierce. “Ivy risked her life and her mind to protect this country from the scourge sorcerers. If it wasn’t for her, the entire Melchiorek family would be dead right now.”
As Sulla jerks around to stare at him, Casimir dips his head where he’s standing by my shoulder. “And as soon as she realized she was in trouble, she restricted her magic to ensure she wouldn’t lose control. As she’s shown just now. You should be pleased that she recognizes her limits.”
The courtesan’s normally gentle voice takes on a chiding edge with that last sentence. Alek rests his hand on the small of my back in reassurance, and Rheave has bristled as if he thinks he might need to leap to my defense with more than words.
Their automatic support brings a flood of warmth into my chest, but a pang of guilt resonates alongside it.
What they’ve said is true… but it’s also true that I pushed myself past what I should have known I was ready for. What any riven sorcerer would ever be ready for.
Sulla takes in their expressions and mine, and her stance gradually relaxes. The smile she gives me next looks tight but also sad.
“All right. Maybe I shouldn’t judge. I wasn’t there, because I was hiding away on my mountaintop. I still think…” She shakes her head with a sigh. “Let me handle this. For when you do extend yourself in the future… It’s important to remember that even very small acts can have a large impact.”
She scans the trees around the clearing and points to a broad oak with mottled greenish bark. “That tree’s sick—the branches will be weakening. With just a small nudge…”
Her eyes narrow in focus. Her fingers twitch at her sides—and one of the thickest branches on the tree cracks off the trunk.
It plummets with a thunderous crash. With another magical nudge, Sulla sends a second branch tumbling after it.
Shouts reverberate through the buildings’ walls. Several more figures slip from the doorways while the two guards we already spotted jog over to the tree to investigate.
A few of their colleagues join them while the rest of the group hangs back near the buildings. But now we can see them—and they haven’t noticed us yet.
Stavros raises his hand. “Those with the concealment charms first. The rest follow behind. Take them down as quickly as you can… Now.”
Rheave, Hovi, one of the women from Pima, and I have already yanked the charms on their thin chains over our heads. As my companions disappear around me, I hurtle forward and snatch my knives from their sheaths.
We burst from the trees, invisible to the confused guards, amid arrows flying from unseen sources. More than half of them sizzle with Rheave’s daimon energy, launched from the new bow Alek brought back for him.
The arrows streak through the air, felling foe after foe. A few of the figures topple into clay statues. Others crumple limply like the mortal men and women they are.
Blood splatters the grass before the remaining few have finished whirling around.
I race straight toward them, swinging one knife in a deadly arc and plunging the other into the nearest chest. Hollers from behind tell me that the rest of my comrades have flooded the clearing.
A blast of magic slams into me from the direction of one of the buildings—and the charm lying against my chest cracks. Suddenly the scourge sorcerer to my left is staring at me.
I’m visible again.
My magic blares through my body so forcefully I bite my tongue clamping down on its call. The battle around me blurs in my struggle for control.
Another body barrels into me from the side. Rheave heaves me out of the way of a sharper bolt of magic, shielding me with his well-muscled frame.
He spins us around and manages to send his final arrow soaring into the air, through an open window on the nearest building. A thump on the other side confirms that it hit its mark.
My power lashes out at me again, this time in pure frustration. A stabbing pain spikes through my gut.
As the momentary agony fades with my restrained gasp, the daimon-man remains poised next to me. Other magic flares around us in a muddled barrage of light.
“I freed more of my kind,” Rheave says. “And killed many of yours.”
His gaze slides to me with a hint of concern and longing. As if he needs my approval, even after everything we’ve already been through.
I give his arm a quick squeeze. “You were amazing. We just have to topple the last few of them and?—”
Another supernatural attack rains down on us with a roar of flames. This time, I shove Rheave to the side.
As the two of us roll across the grass away from the now smoldering patches, a cry breaks through the air. One of Voleska’s men kneels by a woman who’s slumped on the ground, her body charred from head to waist.
My stomach flips over. His friend won’t be getting up again.
A man who joined us from Baron Cyris’s staff jerks his hand toward a second-floor dormer. “Up there. Someone’s?—”
A glinting bolt slices through the air before he can finish his warning. It gouges straight through his neck. He crumples backward.
I inhale in a hiss through my teeth and launch myself forward. The first-floor window frame gives me enough of a foothold. I wrench myself up the side of the building and plunge through the upper window feet-first.
My heels slam into a body that didn’t dodge fast enough. Ignoring the renewed clamoring of my magic, I jab out with my elbow, smack a cheekbone, and whip around the knife that’s leapt back into my palm.
The sorcerer slumps beneath me into a pool of blood from her slit throat.
I crouch there, panting silently, listening for any other signs of attack. My magic’s call reverberates through me, but it’s more a simmer than a boil when there’s no direct threat.
A clatter rings out below me, followed by Stavros’s voice shouting, “All clear!”
Cautiously, I move back to the window. My comrades are still scanning the clearing warily, but no further attacks batter us.
Blood streaks several sleeves and pantlegs. To my relief, no one appears to have taken fatal wounds except for the woman from Pima and the baron’s man.
My throat tightens. That’s still more losses than I’d prefer.
How are we ever going to confront Lothar’s full force? Eventually we’re going to have to go head to head with him… and we’ve just witnessed how much damage even a few scourge sorcerers can do.
Sulla looks up and catches my eye. “I see you get plenty done even without turning to your magic.”
Her tone is dry, but I can’t summon enough amusement to form a smile.
I lift my voice to carry to our companions who remained in the forest. It comes out ragged. “Come on. Let’s give this place a thorough search.”
I decide to take the stairs down rather than flinging myself back out the window. Along the way, I peer into the other rooms along the hall.
The door right by the top of the stairs is locked. I break the deadbolt and peek inside to find myself gazing at three mutilated forms draped in gray shrouds.
“Mistress?” one of them mumbles.
My heart sinks. We were hoping to find more of the sacrificial accomplices, but it still horrifies me to see the results of the scourge sorcerers’ greed.
“We’ll be taking you somewhere else,” I say. “Somewhere safer.” Then I hustle down the stairs in search of Casimir, who’ll know how to reassure the Order’s victims leagues better than I can.
“Cas—” I’m calling out as I reach the bottom of the stairs, and jar to a halt at the sight of Stavros, Alek, and a couple of the royal soldiers leaning over a table on the other side of a nearby doorway.
Alek’s face looks grimmer than I’ve ever seen it. Stavros’s jaw is clenched tight.
I march over to join them. “What did you find?”
Alek taps the papers scattered across the table. “I think these are some of the Order of the Wild’s plans for their kingship trials. They’ve been testing out different strategies… If they go through with something like this, Petra won’t stand a chance. They’re setting everything up as a trap.”
A chill races through me. “Then she’ll refuse to compete.”
“And Lothar will say that proves she isn’t worthy.” Stavros lifts his head. “He must intend to move forward with them soon if they’ve gotten this far with their plans. We’re going to need far more allies than we’ve already pulled together—and quickly. If we don’t present our own version of the trials soon, the scourge sorcerers will steal the chance right out from under us.”