Chapter 6
Syla ducked out of the way as Fel battled one of the two stormers they’d found when they rushed past her crumpled cousin, Teyla, and into the shielder chamber.
There hadn’t been time to check if Teyla was dead or simply unconscious.
How the stormers had found her and dragged her down to use her moon-mark to open the door, Syla had no idea, but she couldn’t worry about that now.
Fel swung his mace, doing his best to battle an agile young stormer with a fresh burn on half his face. Syla hoped one of her aunt’s booby traps had been responsible and that it hurt. A lot.
“You’ll not attack the princess,” Fel snarled as their weapons clanged together.
But the stormer wasn’t trying to get to Syla.
Neither was the second man. This time, when she and Fel had rushed in, the two invaders had been in the process of shoving the broken shielder toward the door and examining the mounted and operating one.
Probably trying to detect and remove the camouflaged traps.
One stormer had turned to defend against Fel’s attack, but the other was only glancing at Syla as he pulled scrolls out of a nook in the stone wall. Were those the same scrolls that Aunt Tibby had brought from Harvest Island and had been studying?
Syla wouldn’t let him get away with them—with anything. Though she had no weapon, she dodged the fight and rushed toward the stormer. “Release those scrolls, you thief.”
He started to reach for a dagger sheathed on his belt, but then looked dismissively at her and didn’t draw the weapon. In her dress and with her hair swept up to greet the diplomatic party, she couldn’t look like a threat. Let him believe that.
Syla gripped his arm and summoned her power, the power she’d trained from an early age to use for healing. But twice before, she’d used it to attack, and, as the back of her hand tingled and the moon-mark flared silver, she willed its energy to flow into the intruder.
“Back off, princess,” the stormer said, “if you want to live another day.”
“Tie her up,” the man battling Fel said. “The general will want her for a prisoner. They’ll negotiate a lot more if we’ve got their heir.”
“You’ll not touch her,” Fel snarled and increased the speed of his attacks. His mace almost took off his foe’s head as the half-distracted stormer barely ducked in time.
Syla did not back off. As the stormer reached for her with his free hand, she sent her magic toward his trachea, the airway that allowed precious air to flow into his body. At the same time, she tightened her power around his heart, clenching the beating muscle.
He froze, his expression at first stunned and then… afraid. His face grew ashen.
“Get off me,” he rasped, his constricted throat tightening the words so they were almost unintelligible.
Using his body, he shoved at Syla, then spun her about to press her back against the wall. She hit it hard, but she kept her grip on his arm and sent even more magic into him.
His heart fluttered, beats turning erratic.
With her power wrapped around it, she felt it, and his face had turned from ashen to red as he wheezed, trying to get air past her constriction.
She could have killed him, but she shied away from the thought.
He was an enemy and wanted her people to die, but her gods-gift was for healing. She’d always believed that.
Afraid he would gain the advantage if she lessened the constriction, she kept it in place, but she didn’t apply more pressure. She didn’t squeeze his heart so much that it stopped altogether.
A sword clattered to the stone floor, and the stormer that Fel had been battling flew across the chamber. He struck the wall between two sarcophagi and crumpled, blood leaking from his nose and his eyes rolling back into his head.
Fel spun toward Syla, taking a step toward her to help, but her stormer dropped to his knees, his face turning from red to purple.
Fel gaped, not at him but at Syla. He had his mace up, ready to fight, to come to her defense, but as he watched the oxygen-deprived man tip over onto his side, Fel touched two fingers to his chest to indicate the eyes of the moon and drew a circle around them.
The superstitious gesture was meant to request protection from the gods.
Seeing the bodyguard who’d defended her and stood by her side these past weeks look at her like she was a terrifying gargoyle or griffin made Syla jerk her power back. She hadn’t killed the stormer, but he didn’t move.
“What are your orders, General?” came a clear and familiar voice from the tunnel outside.
Vorik. And… was he speaking to General Jhiton?
“Close the hidden door,” Syla whispered to Fel.
There wasn’t anywhere to run. Vorik sounded like he was right outside the door.
Fel reacted instantly, rushing toward it, and Syla ran after, realizing she would have to use her moon-mark to close it.
“Get the shielders,” came General Jhiton's cool reply, his voice farther away but not nearly far enough.
Syla slapped her hand to a copper plate on the wall that emanated magic. It flashed silver when she touched it, and the door started to shut, but Teyla’s body lay in the passageway, an obstacle. Her spectacles lay near her face, surprisingly not broken.
“Get her,” Syla whispered to Fel.
Fel hesitated, spotting Vorik standing at attention in the tunnel outside, not yet moving other than to look at them. Fel hefted his mace. Syla awkwardly grabbed her cousin, but she wasn’t strong enough to pull her out of the way without help.
The door caught on Teyla’s hip. Syla had been worried her cousin would be crushed, but its magic prompted it to halt.
“Fel,” Syla whispered as she tugged under Teyla’s armpits, glad to notice heat in her body. And did she groan slightly? At least she was alive.
Fel looked like he would spring at Vorik, but he spotted a second man coming from the side. General Jhiton. And there were two more stormers—two powerful riders—right behind him.
Not taking his eyes from them, Fel crouched, wincing as his knee or another joint in his leg pained him, and grabbed Teyla. Together, Fel and Syla pulled her back. She managed to snatch up her cousin’s spectacles, knowing she would be blind without them.
The door resumed shutting, but when it was inches from closing completely, a hand thrust through, halting it.
Fel swore. He and Syla pulled Teyla into the chamber, barely moving her out of the way before the door ground back open.
As Syla set her cousin’s spectacles atop a sarcophagus, and Fel tucked her out of the way near the wall, General Jhiton strode into the doorway with his swords in his hands and death in his eyes.
Syla glimpsed Vorik in the passageway behind the general but knew he wouldn’t attack his own brother to help her. He couldn’t.
She lifted her hand, thinking she might use her power on Jhiton, but she would have to touch him. And even that might not be enough.
No, she decided, recalling her attempt to stop Captain Lesva’s interrogation by using her power.
It definitely wouldn’t be, not if he was bonded to his dragon and magically enhanced.
Though he wore the fingerless gloves that so many of the riders favored, he radiated power and she knew without a doubt that he was also bonded.
And the two riders striding in after him? They probably were too.
Fel sprang in front of Syla, stepping into the passageway to block the stormers from entering the chamber. But he wouldn’t have the power to beat Jhiton either.
Syla glanced at the shielder, wishing she hadn’t had Aunt Tibby do such a good job of camouflaging the explosives.
They blended in so well that she couldn’t pick them out any better than the intruders had.
And she would have to be careful searching.
More than a slight impact, and the booby traps would explode.
“The stormers!” came a shout from the tunnel beyond the hidden entrance. “There they are. Get them, men!”
Jhiton and his riders paused at the arrival of Kingdom troops, keeping an eye on the dangerous Fel but also glancing back.
Searching for the booby traps, Syla gingerly patted around the orb, its power tingling against her palms. She willed Jhiton and his men to run out to face her soldiers.
That might be a death sentence for the Kingdom men, but she had to be willing to sacrifice people to keep the shielders safe.
Just as she was willing to sacrifice herself to do so.
Unfortunately, Jhiton and one of his riders rushed into the chamber.
With a few swift sword slashes, they drove Fel back.
His mace clanked as he managed to parry the blows, but, pressed by superior numbers, he had to give ground.
Soon, his back was to the ancient sarcophagus in the center of the chamber, a few feet in front of the shielder.
As footsteps thundered in the tunnel outside, Syla’s fingers brushed over one of the camouflaged traps.
She tugged it away from the curving surface of the orb and lifted it to throw, but Fel blocked her view as he tried to keep Jhiton from reaching her.
Syla stepped to the side, hoping to line up a safe throw.
Vorik ran into the chamber.
“Let the door close,” he said to one of the riders who’d paused to put his back against it to keep it open.
The stormer released it and ran inside with Vorik, but the Kingdom troops, a mix of Royal Protectors from the castle and black-uniformed Royal Fleet men, reached the passageway and charged inside before the door ground to a close.
Jhiton knocked Fel’s mace out of his hand and hurled him into a wall, but he then had to turn to face the new threat. Syla’s heart lifted as her troops rushed in. A dozen of them? Two dozen?
“Yes,” she cried, feeling they might be enough to defeat even the enhanced riders. “Protect the shielder. And get the general!”