Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
DRYSTAN
High Priest Helmar has escaped.
– Correspondence from Stynguard forces to Lord Pavel.
Drystan – Western Sultira
My blood froze. Windsor was not who he said he was.
High Priest Helmar raised a grayed brow at me, and I forced my lips into a thin smile as I locked down the part inside me screaming in terror and rage.
Nightmares lunged from the depths of my memories.
The high priest’s sinister grin as his kingsguards pinned me down…
The blade on my skin… The water over my head… My lungs screaming…
My short nails cut into my palms, and I willed my hands to unclench. I offered the old man a soft wave and forced myself to take a couple slow steps as I moved to where my blade leaned in the corner, a desperation urging me toward the weapon.
Why was one of the most powerful mages in Sultira, King Saros’s most trusted adviser, the high priest, here, hiding in the forest? He should be dead. He deserved to be dead. I saw him staring blankly at the ceiling in Stynguard when Nivis attacked… When Cyril took Lyvia and the Obscura Bone…
Helmar’s opaque blue eyes tracked my movement as his dry lips cracked into a welcoming smile.
A smile I’d grown to dread in the months he’d held me captive in Stynguard, the months he tried to force my connection to magic through fear and pain, the months he tested the darkness of the Obscura Bone on his prisoners… .
I forced breath from my lungs as the hazy images of bloody rooms and festering wounds encroached on my vision.
Mount Telum’s rubelline is activated. He cannot hurt me here if he has no magic. I’m more than a scholar now. I’m a trained soldier. I’m a mage. I’m a Bellator.
Helmar looked as if he’d aged a century since I last saw him in Stynguard. Had King Saros been using the Aeterna Bone to keep him young all these years? How old was the high priest?
Helmar stepped farther into the small cottage and leaned his head to the side, as if trying to get my attention…
As if he were someone who didn’t know the signs, and he needed to get the attention of a man without working ears.
I forced the rage down, knowing High Priest Helmar could very well speak my language with his hands.
His years of playing politics in the Court of Two Moons taught him well.
The old actor was convincing, masquerading as an innocent old hermit in the woods.
My gaze darted to his lips as he spoke slow and deliberate words.
“Your friend took down a large stag… Asked me to bring horses to haul it back. Join me?”
Ezrich.
We had to get the hell out of here. I gave the high priest a nod and motioned to the door, tucking my dagger in my waistband as he led the way.
Sunshine slipped through the trees, leaving harsh shadows along the line of the forest.
Tempest was edgy. Her feathery charcoal ears flattened as I approached with the high priest. Helmar’s gray robes flapped as he mounted Anchor with surprising ease, given the permanent hunch in his upper back.
I could feel the creek of my saddle as I swung onto Tempest’s back, gathering her reins in one hand and doing my best not to rest my other on the concealed dagger at my hip. Haunted memories crept from the dark corners of my mind, Helmar’s presence luring them into the light.
He cannot hurt me here.
Fear crawled over me despite the reminder. Helmar urged the gelding into a trot down a dark lane of the forest, and I lifted my reins as my legs gently pressed against Tempest’s sides.
Her ears flattened, and she huffed a breath through her velvety nose. I rubbed her withers before urging her forward with a soft cluck of my tongue, and we trotted after the high priest.
Minutes stretched as the woods became thick, the trees close and the undergrowth crowding the narrow path. Thick moss crawled over the fallen trunk of a tree the horses clomped over, gray mushrooms peppering its sides.
Where was Ezrich?
I scanned the dark forest, uncertainty slinking over me.
I should have killed the high priest at the cottage.
The thought had barely formed before Helmar craned his neck to look back at me. His yellowed teeth peeked through his lips as he offered a thin smile. He gestured ahead of him with his frail hand, the bones of his fingers curving in toward one another.
“Little farther,” his lips read.
Our horses led us through a tangle of branches, the thick leaves in the canopy a blockade against the strangled rays of sun. A waft of iron-laced wind curled its way through the winding path, shoving up my nostrils and churning the limited contents of my breakfast.
Blood.
My hand moved to the dagger at my waist as I recognized the scent, and Helmar’s shoulders rocked as Anchor stepped cautiously over a damp boulder before picking up speed as the angle of the path inclined.
Tempest’s head bobbed, and as she stepped onto the boulder, something prickled beneath my palms.
Helmar and Anchor disappeared as they crested the ridge, dim light filtering into the space they abandoned. Tempest picked up a jaunty trot as she hurried up the hill, and as we reached the top, panic rushed me.
My legs were hard on Tempest’s sides and I gripped my dagger as a circular clearing opened before us.
My eyes landed on Ezrich’s bloody body stretched between two thick trees, where arrows impaled his dark forearms to the trunks.
His muscles stretched and oozed blood as his weight dragged his body away from the thick shafts.
High Priest Helmar urged Anchor over a small line of rocks spread across the clearing just as I flung my dagger at his face.
Helmar’s hunched form moved faster than I expected, and with a sweep of his gaunt arm, the familiar buckle of wind brushed against my face as he snapped a shield into place. My dagger bounced off.
Shock coursed through my system, and my attention snapped to the line of stones in the dirt.
High Priest Helmar had found the edge of the rubelline zone.
My thighs pressed against Tempest’s sides, but she was already moving, as if she knew our only chance at surviving this sat on the other side of those stones—outside the edge of the rubelline zone where I could access my magic.
Helmar’s lips cracked into a smile, his long white hair swaying as he swung off Anchor’s back. He held his withered hands to each side, palms facing me, and flicked his fingers upward.
An arsenal of forest debris rose into the air, riding his wind with ill intent, before he rotated his wrists and fired at us.
My arm flung up to shield my face as sticks and small rocks stoned us.
Tempest’s pained whinny reverberated through her body and into my legs.
A sting ripped across my face as I lowered my arm, the edge of a branch drawing a fresh line of blood across my cheek.
Tempest reared, her rage funneling into her agrippa nature, and she plowed toward him.
Helmar’s lips stretched into a wide smile as he cackled, and he swept his arms to the side before raising them above his head.
My gut lurched as a downed tree trunk lifted into the air and rotated, aiming straight for us.
I jerked on the reins, craning Tempest to the side as the trunk hurtled toward us. The momentum sent her hooves slipping beneath us, and I tumbled off her back and onto the cool ground.
High Priest Helmar blasted Tempest back, his wind pushing her over the crest of the ridge.
Her hooves slipped against the damp ground as she struggled to stand.
The whites of her eyes flashed as a vicious line of wind cut across her chest, and her mouth opened as her large form disappeared down the ridge.
I surged to my feet, hands moving to my sides as Helmar slowly turned back to me.
“I’m surprised you didn’t recognize me sooner, Drystan Amando.” Evil leaked from the high priest’s smile as he signed the words with practiced precision.
A quiet rage ignited behind the door to my pained trauma.
I kept my eyes up, not daring to risk revealing what I prayed the high priest remained ignorant of.
That I had been able to access the lost arts, to whisper with the wind and the water, to perform spells of my own.
That I was not only a mage, but a Bellator.
And my powers reached toward that line of stones.
Ezrich’s head lolled to the side, and an intense wave of relief struck me as I crossed one foot over the other, moving as casually as possible to the edge of the rubelline zone.
“You’ve changed,” I signed back, forcing the tremors from my hands.
The high priest’s head tilted back, and his chest heaved as he laughed.
“Yes,” he agreed, holding his hands out before him as if examining their aging. “But not for long. It is time for us to get reacquainted, I think. Your dear friend Lyvia has much to answer for. And now that I have you—”
I lunged, my boots digging into the mud as I sprinted to the line of stones. High Priest Helmar’s face went slack for a glimpsing second before his wrinkled lips curled over his teeth, and he raised both hands.
A grunt slipped from my lips as the jagged edge of a broken branch ripped through my wrist, and I slid across the line.
My body crashed to the ground, scattering the stones.
A weight lifted as the rubelline’s wall began to crumble, and my power raced to the surface in freedom.
My breath escaped in a sigh, and I resisted the urge to close my eyes in relief as the rubelline’s shackles fell away in wisps of a cloud.
Helmar twisted toward me, wrath morphing his smile into an ugly snarl, and I reached for my connection to the wind. My mind quieted as its presence surrounded me. I flicked my wrists, chanting the shield spell in my mind and merging it with the force of nature that gives us breath.
My shield snapped into place as Helmar hurtled a volley of rocks at me, the old priest pausing as his mouth fell open in shock when they bounced off. A slow, dangerous smile slipped across my lips as I pushed off the ground and got to my feet.
“You were such a disappointment,” he signed, catching his breath safely behind his shield. “If you’d just—”
A snarl ripped from my lips as pressure built in my chest. The Advetis roared as I wrapped my intended location around the power and prayed like hell it would take me where I wanted to go.
Darkness smothered a blinding flash as the pressure exploded in me. My consciousness siphoned into a single thought before the wind whipped itself from my lungs. One moment, I was standing feet from Helmar, and the next, my boots slipped against the bloody mud beneath Ezrich’s heavy body.
Helmar’s momentary confusion was the only time I needed to snap off the arrows’ fletchings and heave Ezrich forward. My body crumpled beneath his massive weight as he fell.
The high priest’s robes flashed in my periphery, and I snapped my shield into place, twisting as I threw a blast of wind back at the old priest. Ezrich slid to the ground as I lifted both hands, ready to battle the monster who had tortured me for months in Stynguard.
A flash of charcoal, and Tempest was back and lunging at the high priest. He whipped his hands toward her, and the massive agrippa’s hooves hammered down a magical shield instead of the priest’s face.
Her ears pinned against her head as she bucked. I let out a sharp whistle, and the pressure of the sound pushed against my inner ears. A blast of wind ripped from my hands, bouncing off the high priest’s shield, but I pushed. His boots slipped against the mud as my magic forced his shield back.
Tempest cantered toward us before slamming her hooves in the ground and snapping her head back to the direction we came, her head high and alert.
What the—
Ezrich’s gelding bolted as trees crashed to the ground and the head of a sand serpent lunged from the underbrush. My stomach dropped as the massive snake surged forward, likely drawn by Ezrich’s blood.
High Priest Helmar’s eyes widened, and he shifted his attention, reinforcing his shield.
I slapped Ezrich’s face to wake him, and his head bobbed in unconsciousness. I wrapped my arms around him, my muscles shaking as I tried to lift him to Tempest’s back while Helmar was distracted. Panic took root, and I allowed the feeling to wrap around the Advetis, zapping through my body.
Pressure seized me, and we were sucked through space, landing on top of Tempest’s back. The snake turned its massive head toward us, its diamond-shaped pupils dilating as it opened its mouth.
A frantic fear coated my desperation as the snake stretched its lips, and long fangs raised like blades in the final blow. Helmar’s robes billowed as he turned toward us once more, the snake’s distraction enough to refocus him.
Ezrich’s form slumped over Tempest’s thick neck, and he began to tip.
My arms barely reached around his broad frame to grip Tempest’s mane and hold him upright.
I snaked my hands through her thick hair and succumbed to the safe pulse I felt all those months ago before I harnessed the Advetis power for the first time.
Friendship.
Lyvia.
I threw my focus into the building pressure, latching myself onto that safety. The snake lurched forward as I held Tempest and Ezrich in an iron grip. My power exploded, the view of the forest spinning in my vision as the pressure locked me in its grip, and everything went dark.