Chapter 33 #2
It wasn’t Havelock—the man’s frame was too bulky, and even with the enchantment I could tell he didn’t move like Havelock, who had an eerie grace. The man didn’t notice us hiding among the trees, and within seconds he and his light were gone.
“Who do you think he was running away from?” élise murmured.
“Was he running away?” I said. The man’s furtiveness had put me in mind of someone preparing an ambush. “Havelock said he was hunted by other magicians after Valérie cast his spell. They thought if they killed him, the spell would break.”
élise cursed under her breath. “What are we getting in the middle of?”
We moved deeper into the trees. The black kitten, which I’d tucked into my sweater, leaving only her head showing, gave a discontented mewl. It was an uncomfortable position—the earth was damp from the rain and roots poked at my ankles. But we didn’t have to wait long this time.
Something was brewing in the trees below us. A wind, fierce and cold and smelling of magic, rose unnaturally from the ground, dashing dead leaves in our faces. An orb of light was careening up the path, and behind it ran a figure, moving as swiftly as the wind.
It was Havelock.
I recognized him from the way he moved more than anything else.
He was running with the wind; he must have summoned it and it was sweeping him along.
He travelled at a much quicker pace than the other magician, but it came at a cost: the stairs switched back and forth, and the wind didn’t always give him time to correct his course.
A branch slapped him in the face and he gave a curse, and then, just below us, he tried to veer left to avoid a tree, but ran right into it.
The wind carried on up the mountain without him, sweeping the orb of light along with it like a will-o’-the-wisp.
Havelock gave a groan. In the darkness, he looked like a pile of shadows against the tree, his tangle of dark hair only dimly visible.
I moved towards him—this was my chance. If I could grab the lantern from him before he recovered—
The tree he had collided with gave a horrible crack and began to plunge towards him.
I shrieked. The tree had been wrenched up by the roots, and soil sprayed across my face.
It was a moment before I could see anything else, but once I’d finally wiped the grit from my eyes, I saw that Havelock had somehow evaded the tree, which had fallen over the path, and was duelling two magicians.
The first, a woman with a long black braid, had a bow pointed at him, an arrow nocked.
It must have been an Artefact, and one of the more straightforward ones I’d encountered, for when she loosed the arrow, it sailed directly towards Havelock’s heart, adjusting course as he moved.
Havelock had his cloak half-off and held in front of him like a shield, which it seemed to be.
The arrow struck the fabric and bounced off it like stone.
The second magician, a tall, elderly man, had a globe of fire cupped in his hand; he tore pieces off and flung them in Havelock’s direction. One hit his cloak and caught at the hem, forcing Havelock to wrench it off and stamp the fire out. Clearly he hadn’t thought to make it fireproof.
Havelock tugged a pendant from beneath his shirt and spoke an incantation.
The woman with the bow and arrow screamed as the earth beneath her feet exploded, sending her sailing into the forest darkness.
Undaunted, the other magician threw another handful of fire at Havelock, forcing him to dive to one side.
“Give up, Witch King,” the elderly man spat in such a mocking tone that I guessed they’d known each other, before. “We’ll keep coming until you’re dead, or until you end this darkness you’ve wrought upon the world.”
“Not that anyone bothered to ask, but that’s what I’m trying to do.” Havelock seemed to be rummaging in his pockets, and I caught a flash of light as several coins tumbled free. He made a frustrated sound and wrenched one of the rings off his hand, letting loose another enchantment.
The other man’s flame went out and he began making a peculiar sound, as if he were trying to scream but had lost his voice.
When the breeze touched him, I realized that he’d become two-dimensional, or near to it.
In width he was perhaps the thickness of a crêpe.
The breeze lifted him off his feet, still making that tiny screaming sound, and sent him drifting through the forest in an almost peaceful way.
He ended up wrapped around the trunk of a tree like a loose flyer.
Havelock looked displeased by the effects of his enchantment, which to my eyes had been horrifically effective.
“Shoddy, second-order knickknack,” he said, hurling the ring into the forest. I realized that he must be running out of defensive spells.
I didn’t know how many enchantments a magician could carry on their person, but if Havelock had been battling magicians all night, no doubt he’d already cast the more useful ones in his possession and was now forced to make do with whatever was left.
I wondered what the original purpose of the spell had been, or if it was some half-baked experiment of his.
élise was suddenly at my side, shaking me, and I turned to see the magician who had run past us earlier hurtling down the mountain path like a boulder. He was astride a horse that looked as if it had been summoned from the underworld, huge and misshapen, with fire-bright eyes.
“Havelock, behind you!” I shouted.
Havelock whipped around. The other magician was bearing down on him impossibly fast. Too fast for evasion. Havelock began to shout an incantation, and it wasn’t clear if he’d finished before the horse knocked him down, trampling him underfoot.
“Havelock!” I cried.
élise was screaming, too. Havelock might have been a ragdoll beneath the horse’s bulk, and the snow where he had fallen was ominously dark in a way that made me grateful there was so little light to see by.
The thunder of hooves mingled with the snap of bone was a sound I doubted I would ever forget.
I dashed out from the tree cover, heading for Havelock’s mangled form, a sob in my throat. But when I reached his side, the bloodied face staring sightlessly up at the sky wasn’t Havelock’s.
It was the other magician.
“Agnes!” élise was gesticulating. Havelock had turned the horse around, so that its head was facing us.
Somehow, he’d switched places with its rider and taken control of his spell.
The horse didn’t seem to appreciate the swap, however, and shied first one way and then the other. It turned its head, teeth gnashing.
“Leave off, you brainless monster,” Havelock said, sounding winded as he tried to keep his hold on the reins, and then he wrenched a button from his cloak, sputtering out another spell.
The hellish horse went still with a sort of urk and then, abruptly, it was gone.
In its place was an enormous box covered in gaudy wrapping paper and tied with a green bow.
For a moment, I could only stand there, blinking.
The black kitten, which through all this had stayed in my sweater, gave a long, heartfelt hiss.
The horse was clearly still inside the parcel, for I could hear it gnashing its teeth, and it seemed to be banging its head against the walls, but this only had the effect of making the box shuffle forward a few inches.
Unfortunately, my hesitation cost me dearly.
I stood in full view on the path, and so when Havelock leapt off the box and came towards me, there was no possibility of hiding myself.
Nor was there any possibility of convincing him that I was a friend, not yet another magician who had come with the others to end him.
He didn’t look like Havelock at all. He looked like a nightmare—or, rather, he looked like the all-powerful Witch King of his reputation.
His feet didn’t stir the forest leaves as he came forward, as if he were entirely spectral.
His hair was slightly longer than it would be in three years, but just as dishevelled, giving him the look of some wild creature.
I felt as if I were meeting him for the first time—which, I realized with a shudder, I was.
He held up a coin, speaking an enchantment before I was fully conscious of what was happening, but suddenly élise was there, shoving me back. I felt the spell hit her, a sort of dull whump like a bird hitting a window.
“élise!” I screamed as she sagged to the ground.
She’d shoved me so hard I had no hope of catching her; I staggered backwards, arms windmilling.
Havelock stepped over élise and advanced on me.
Likely he would have already enchanted me, but he seemed unable to locate a useful spell, and was sifting through the inner pockets of his cloak.
I’m not proud of what I did next. But I had to keep Havelock from enchanting me, though I had no power over him, no spells I could throw his way.
So, I threw the cat.
The black kitten gave a yowl as I launched her at Havelock. He began to yowl, too, flailing his arms as the cat’s claws made contact with his face, before his shouts became a strangled sort of sneezing fit. He tripped over a root and landed hard on his back.
I was at élise’s side in an instant. To my immense relief, she was still breathing, and her eyelids flickered. “élise,” I said, shaking her. “élise!”
“So tired,” she mumbled. “Agnes, run…That bastard…”
The rest was half-intelligible cursing. élise tried to push herself up, but she only fell back, head lolling. Had Havelock placed a sleep spell on her, as he’d once threatened to do to me?
Behind me, Havelock let out a groan. He’d shoved himself up on one hand and had the other pressed to his cheek, which seemed to be bleeding. I couldn’t see where the cat had gone.
“Havelock, it’s me,” I pleaded. It was nonsensical; Havelock didn’t know me yet. But I couldn’t stop myself.