CHAPTER 39 #2
The lance smashed into Isadau. Flames and light exploded, turning the tiny island into a giant fireball. Water and steam geysered in the air. Heat slammed into us, and I turned my back to it. The blast wave rocked the boat.
Clover gasped.
I turned back and raised my head. The flames washed over the water and drained down, revealing Isadau unharmed at the top of the hill above the steaming river. She hadn’t even moved.
The magic lance hovered a foot from her head, stopped by some invisible force. Isadau raised her hands to the side and thrust them straight down. The steam swirled around the island, thickening, twisting, sliding, and spiraled up, solidifying into a pure white serpent with Isadau’s amber eyes.
Holy shit.
The enormous snake lunged at the lance, coiling about the shaft. The scaled body flexed.
The lance shattered. Thunder pealed. Magic slashed at me, and every hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.
A glowing sphere swirling with purple flames appeared above where the butt of the lance would have been.
The flames melted, revealing a man’s silhouette inside a vertical ring of magic.
Its rim sizzled with black and electric purple, like some twisted antithesis of a sun’s corona against a spray of distant stars.
The snake struck.
Damaes flicked his hand. Black orbs tore from the rim of the ring and sliced through the steam serpent. For a millisecond, its body hung in the air, severed in three pieces, and then it crashed into the river, breaking into liquid.
I wished Everard could see this. It was amazing.
Isadau was doing something complicated and pretty with her hands.
Sushi squirmed out of my arms. The Magnar brothers rowed like a well-oiled machine, putting more and more distance between us.
The ring tilted with Damaes inside it. More orbs tore from the rim, like gobs of black ink, and sped toward Isadau.
She raised her head. A circle of ruby blades flared in front of her, like a windmill made of swords. The windmill whirled, shredding the incoming projectiles.
The ring around Damaes spun, spitting a barrage of dark orbs.
Behind me Will swore.
The ruby fan of blades collapsed on itself bowing inward, toward Isadau, catching the orbs in the funnel of its blades, sparked with bright white, and sprang taut, firing a torrent of brilliant red at Damaes.
The current of magic hammered the ring, breaking against an invisible wall.
The impact careened the spell, shaking the Archmage inside.
“Kick his ass!” Lute yelled.
The red current died, exhausted. The ring around Damaes flared with purple and shed a copy of itself. The second ring expanded around the first and copied itself. Again, again . . . Three, four . . . eight.
“The Scream of Undensos. That fucker is actually trying to kill her.” I clenched the side of the boat with my free hand.
The rings rotated, some faster, some slower, each glowing with furious purple.
Isadau stared at the spell above her.
The rings snapped still. Purple lightning streaked forward from their rims, merging into a single ball of magic in front of Damaes. The Archmage raised his hand.
Isadau waited, defiant.
Damaes paused. The spell crackled in front of him. He was giving her time to escape.
Move, Isadau. Move, damn you.
She stood still.
The lightning popped, expanded into a circle, and tore a hole in the fabric of existence. Darkness churned inside the ring, primordial, terrifying, alien, so terrible that I didn’t want to look straight at it.
Isadau tilted her head.
The darkness tore out of the spell in a horrifying beam, searing the air with a deafening hiss and smashed into Isadau. The top of the hill disintegrated. It didn’t catch fire. It didn’t break. It just became nothing.
She was dead. That was an eighth-circle spell. It didn’t just kill, it undid the very matter we were made of. She couldn’t possibly—
The beam vanished. Isadau floated above the ground, her form translucent and glowing slightly.
The Fade! She had achieved the Fade!
I screamed and clapped my hands.
Isadau solidified. A fountain of bright red sparks burst from her, twisting into a glowing red flower. The flame-bloom—her signature spell.
The flower expanded. Fire and magic surged toward Damaes, wrapping him in a curtain of red. He fired back with an icy-blue meteor shower.
The river dragged us downstream, farther and farther. Soon we could no longer see the two mages, only the glowing explosions of light from their magic.
“Will she win?” Kaiden asked me.
“I don’t know,” I told him.
“You know everything.”
“I wish.”
“You’re asking the wrong question,” Clover told him. “Can she win?”
“Possibly.” Both Damaes and Isadau were monsters. He was more skilled, but she was beyond furious. It was anyone’s guess who would win.
“Let’s hope she does,” Lute said.
We glided into the night, our boat filled with our loot.
When Gort opened the secret door to us, the relief on his face was so obvious, it wasn’t even funny.
“See,” I told him. “Back in one piece.”
“You missed it, old man,” Lute said. “It was a show to remember.”
“Once in a lifetime,” Will said.
“Shut up and get inside, before someone sees you.”
“Empty everything on the floor in the basement, please,” I asked.
“And one of you tell your mother you’ve survived!” Gort growled.
The Magnar brothers, Clover, and Kaiden dragged our stolen loot past me. Sushi had ditched us as soon as we pulled up. She was probably back in my room now, in her nest under the bed.
“Where is the mage girl?” Gort shut the door and slid the heavy bar in place.
“She was still fighting when we left.” I hefted my sack.
Gort took it from me and carried it into the basement.
“Think she’ll survive?”
“I don’t know.”
Fighting this duel was Isadau’s choice. The thing between Damaes and her was so complicated and screwed up, even the two of them couldn’t make sense of it.
It took us only a couple of minutes to dump everything on the floor, and we began sorting through it. I had already shown Tillmar’s contract to everyone so they would know what to look for.
I picked up the first scroll. Some sort of bill of sale . . .
An IOU . . .
Another IOU . . .
The letters crawled across the scroll. I blinked, trying to focus. There were other scrolls left in the vault. Other papers. We hadn’t gotten everything. There had been no time. What if the Butcher’s contract was left behind? What if . . .
It hit me all at once. The floor tried to slide sideways. I landed on the bench. It was that or I would pass out.
Gort’s heavy hand settled on my shoulder. “Breathe.”
I was trying.
“My lady!” Clover jerked upright.
I tried to say something and couldn’t.
“She’s fine,” Gort said. “If you want to help, find those damned papers.”
Clover bit her lip, crouched, and went back to digging. She and Will almost bumped heads.
“Even if the contracts aren’t here, we will find a way,” Gort said quietly.
“There is no other way. Not in time.”
“You will think of something. You always do.”
In my head, the city was burning.
Moments dragged on, slow and viscous, like cold syrup.
“Got Otrade,” Lute reported.
He leaned over a pile of papers and thrust a scroll at Gort. Gort took it and held it in front of me. Exactly the same as Tillmar’s contract, except for the names. I ran my hand over it.
“It’s inert. The spell is gone, and there is no magic in it.”
“Otrade is dead,” Gort said.
That made sense. There was no life bound to this paper because that life had already ended.
I raised the contract to the light. The contours of the spell were still there, woven into the paper. We could still use this. A qualified mage would be able to tell what the spell did even if it wasn’t active. We had Tillmar’s blank contract, too . . .
“Another mercenary,” Will reported.
A second scroll made its way to me. Exact same contract. Also dead.
Another. Another.
Kaiden scrambled to his feet, leaped over the papers, and stuck a scroll under my nose.
Let it be known to all who read or hear these words that on this day, a covenant of duty is forged between the undersigned:
Lord Ulmar Hreban, Baron of the Realm, Lord of Lower Berem, Vaterna . . . (hereinafter referred to as The Liege)
and
Serem Vor, a knight of sound mind and unwavering resolve (hereinafter referred to as The Contractor).
Article I: The Task
The Liege, acting under the authority of his station, does hereby commission the Contractor to deliver the death of Lord Colart Jenicor, the Sun Margrave, now deemed a threat to the prosperity and interests of the Liege and the stability of the realm.
The Contractor shall employ whatever means deemed fit, provided the act is carried out with due discretion . . .
I scanned the last line. Here it was, the Butcher’s signature. I yanked the scroll up. The contours of the spell were distinct and clear.
It was here, right here, in my hands. The key to eliminating Ulmar Hreban. There would be no reign of terror.
Something wet my cheeks.
Kaiden’s eyes went wide. “Maggie, don’t cry. Don’t cry!”
I passed the scroll over to Gort before my tears fell on it. I’d held it together all this time and now the tension was leaking out. There was no stopping it.
“Give me a scroll case!” Gort ordered.
A cocoon of red light popped into existence right by the basement stairs.
Gort yanked me off the chair and shoved me behind him.
The light exploded into nothing, leaving Isadau. She stared at us. Her hair stood out from her head, smoking slightly. Strange glowing dust peppered her face.
We stared at each other.
“Did you win?” I asked.
She raised her chin. “No. But he didn’t win either.” She wiped the shiny dirt off her cheek. “I’m going to my room to take a nap.”
Mage naps and normal-people naps were two different things.
“For how long?” I asked.
“Two weeks. Maybe more. Don’t bother me. Don’t try to feed me, and don’t call a physician. I’m not dead.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I don’t know what that means. Remember: not dead.”