Chapter Two
“Papa!” She practically tripped down the stairs in her haste to reach him.
The sound of his groans were music to her ears, but when she helped him into an upright position, she realized that blood covered the right shoulder of his jacket. “What happened?” she asked in a low tone, although the goblin was bellowing so ferociously it never could have heard her.
“It bit me!” her father exclaimed. “Forty years of magical training and this creature just comes along and bites me!”
Elizabeth smothered a smile; if her father could be so indignant, he could not be too badly injured.
She peeled away the jacket sleeve, revealing a linen shirt plastered to her father’s body with his own blood.
Five enormous tooth marks were freely oozing new blood onto his shirt.
Elizabeth shuddered at how close she had come to losing her father.
“You should not endeavor to fight a hobgoblin,” she remonstrated.
“I might have attempted to fight it—if I had noticed it first.” Her father managed to chuckle despite his grimace of pain. “But I did not. I was returning to the hall when it crept up behind me and bit me. Just me—not any of the nearby coachmen.”
“Perhaps it liked the smell of your blood,” she teased.
“I tried a repulsion spell, but it was not terribly effective. Fortunately, it was rather uninterested in me. It was rushing toward the hall when those two paladins emerged. I would like to think that I slowed it down long enough for them to arrive. Goodness knows I was not terribly helpful in any other way.”
Thank goodness the paladins had arrived in time. And clever of them to drive it away from the assembly hall. Elizabeth could only imagine the damage a hobgoblin could wreak among the defenseless people attending the ball.
Still, the assembly hall offered the only safety. Hopefully there was a healer inside who could help her father. She draped the ruined jacket around her father’s shoulders to provide some meager protection from the cold and helped him struggle into a standing position. “Can you manage the steps?”
The goblin interrupted his reply with a triumphant roar.
Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder; it had knocked both paladins to the ground and was stalking toward the hall.
“Lizzy, you must flee!” her father cried.
Only then did Elizabeth notice a long gash down the back of her father’s right thigh; he could barely walk with such an injury.
But she was not about to abandon him. She wedged her shoulder under his uninjured arm and pulled him up the first step.
No. Their pace was too slow. She glanced back at the battle again.
The hobgoblin’s progress had been arrested by Mr. Bingley.
Back on his feet, the paladin hurled himself toward the goblin with an upraised sword.
However, with a swipe of one enormous hand, the hobgoblin sent the paladin flying ten feet away, where he crashed into a shrub and fell still, either stunned or dead.
Now the goblin confronted Mr. Darcy’s sword—waving before its eyes. The beast lunged for the paladin faster than Elizabeth would have thought possible. Mr. Darcy only just managed to jump backward out of its reach, but a swipe of its claw deprived him of his sword and opened a gash on his arm.
The goblin glanced toward the hall again, but Mr. Darcy yelled to grab its attention and used magic to hurl handfuls of gravel from the drive into the creature’s face.
His actions had the desired effect. The goblin lowered its massive head menacingly as it stalked toward Mr. Darcy.
The paladin’s lips moved as he tried to cast a spell.
But Elizabeth doubted he could manage sophisticated magic while his attention was so divided.
This was not her fight; she was not a paladin—or even an official mage. Moreover, Mr. Darcy had been quite rude to her, but nobody deserved to be killed by a goblin. He might be a jerk, but he was risking his life to protect everyone in the hall.
She lowered her father onto a step, ignoring his pleas for her to run.
She could not carry him up the stairs and he could not walk, but perhaps she could save him by assisting the paladins to defeat the goblin.
Despite the agitation singing through every vein in her body, she experienced a touch of exhilaration.
Few mages had an opportunity to pit their magic against a hobgoblin.
The creature loomed over Mr. Darcy, dwarfing him despite his tall stature. The paladin backed away even while he chanted the words to a spell.
There had to be something she could do. If she could distract the goblin, it could give Mr. Darcy time to complete whatever spell he was attempting.
Distraction….
Elizabeth gathered strands of ether from the air and braided them into an illusion, chanting a few words of Latin under her breath.
She had some practice with creating illusions, but capturing the goblin’s attention would require something very realistic—not like the flat silhouettes on the ballroom walls—and sufficiently threatening to a goblin.
The goblin pulled back two arms as it prepared to strike Mr. Darcy. There was no time to waste. Elizabeth cast the illusion forward, willing it to appear in front of the hobgoblin.
A phoenix burst into existence, a riot of gold, red, and orange—with feathers made of flames.
It swooped down from the sky directly at the goblin’s face before circling away again.
Elizabeth had observed this rare and glorious bird when traveling with her father to Cornwall, and she used this memory to fashion the illusion.
The phoenix burned a line of fire as it ripped through the air toward the goblin once more. It grabbed for the bird, which swooped away just in time. Elizabeth grinned. Her ploy was working!
She had to keep her eyes on the illusory bird, not allowing her concentration to waver for even a second.
As the phoenix again flew at the hobgoblin, the monster lunged forward swiftly and swiped at a tailfeather, nearly overbalancing when the claw encountered no resistance.
The hobgoblin stared in confusion at its own claw as though it were the reason the creature had missed the bird.
Well, nobody accused hobgoblins of being great thinkers.
Still, it would not be long before the creature recognized the nature of the illusion.
There was some movement from the shrubbery where Mr. Bingley had fallen.
Thankfully the paladin was alive, but he was not yet standing.
However, Mr. Darcy had taken advantage of the goblin’s distraction to continue casting his spell, drawing down massive quantities of etheric threads while watching the phoenix apprehensively.
“The phoenix is an illusion!” she shouted to him. His head jerked in acknowledgement.
Elizabeth caused the phoenix to swoop in once more, low enough to be threatening to the goblin but too high for it to reach.
However, the goblin jumped up unexpectedly just as the phoenix passed overhead.
Its deliberate swipe sailed straight through the illusory bird, slicing through empty air.
The goblin screamed with fury at the deception and immediately bowed its head to mount an attack on Mr. Darcy.
Elizabeth allowed the phoenix illusion to dissipate. Perhaps there was something else she could do to fight the beast.
Mr. Darcy had retrieved his sword with a truly magnificent diving somersault and was on his feet instantly. As the goblin lunged for him, the paladin ducked under its wildly grasping claws, inside the circle of its arms where the goblin could not easily reach.
He stabbed upward, aiming for the place where a human’s heart would be.
The bespelled sword slid through the goblin’s thick hide as if it were water.
Mr. Darcy’s spell must have been designed to ensure a swift and sure strike.
The hobgoblin stared down in astonishment at the blade protruding from its chest. A second later, the skin of its chest turned to gray ash.
The gray color spread rapidly through the beast’s torso, arms, legs, head, giving it the momentary appearance of a living statue.
Then it collapsed inward as the ash disintegrated into a cloud.
Moments later nothing remained but an enormous pile of ashes.
Elizabeth briefly wondered who would clean up that mess.
Mr. Darcy sheathed his sword, rendering it invisible once more and hastened to his friend’s aid.
She allowed herself to sink onto the bottom step, creating the illusion had required a lot of her energy.
She shivered as the cold air penetrated her light ball gown.
Servants ventured out of the hall. “We require a healer!” she shouted to the first man.
“My father is injured! We must take him inside the hall for the healer.” The man nodded his understanding and hurried back into the hall.
Mr. Bingley had managed to disentangle himself from the shrubbery, but he was moving rather stiffly as spoke to his friend: “I am fine, Darcy. I was just momentarily stunned.” Still, Mr. Darcy took Mr. Bingley’s arm until he was satisfied his friend could walk unaided.
Pushing inky black curls away from his forehead, Mr. Darcy cast his gaze at Elizabeth. She gave him a smile; they had defeated a goblin together. She rarely had a chance to use her magical talents for anything so meaningful.
He and Mr. Bingley carefully skirted the pile of ashes as they strode toward Elizabeth and her father. She clambered to her feet while her father remained propped up on the bottom step. Mr. Darcy glanced down at him. “Mr. Bennet, my thanks for the timely intervention.”
Her father snorted a laugh, indicating his bloodied shirt. “You vastly overestimate my abilities if you believe I could create such a spell in my current state.” He threw a meaningful glance at Elizabeth.
“You cast it?” Mr. Darcy’s voice was thick with disbelief.