“We would have followed them in at that entrance,” the soldier who’d first spoken when they came out of the trees said, “but one of my men tripped a line. The mountain came down over the opening.”
“I felt the tremor in the earth,” Thorn said. “I’m Thorn St. Croix.” She held out her hand and the soldier took her tiny one in his battle-toughened paw.
“The battle mage,” the grizzled soldier said, “Master Sergeant Vonn, ma’am. Big fan here of your battle against the Dark. My team and I spent two weeks watching the footage on SNN. Pretty amazing.”
Audric was amused as Thorn turned red under her mage glow. All she had been through and she still blushed at the oddest times.
“Ma’am,” Vonn said, still holding her hand. “My men and I would really appreciate the protection of a moving Shield. Our mage can do a lot of things, but she isn’t a battle mage.”
Audric would have missed Claire’s reaction had he not been watching for it. She gripped an amulet, her eyes narrowing for an instant in fury before smoothing to calculated neutrality. Claire had the canny, crafty mind of a predator trapping prey. Thorn was in danger. He knew it.
“I will help in any and every way I can, Master Sergeant,” Thorn said.
Audric shifted his body to face the priestess, and stared, catching Claire’s eyes as he walked across the frozen snow to her. When he was close, he leaned down and said, “If something happens to my mistrend, and I track it to you, I will make certain that the seraph knows.”
“Who are you to speak to me in such a manner?” she hissed.
“I am your death if you mis-step.”
THORN’S TAKE
I looked back at my champards, Eli and Audric. I’d left the others at the train, to mount a last-ditch defense should the Darkness get past us and attack the humans there. Ciana wasn’t happy at being left behind, but she accepted the necessity. Before we departed, she placed her hand on my brow in what was clearly a blessing, and I’d felt the imprint of her small, warm palm on my forehead for hours. I touched the place now—long cooled, but holding the promise of her love for me. From there, my hand moved to my amulet necklace, and the Shield talisman that hung from it.
I knew my amulet didn’t have enough power to protect and cover all the humans with us, but I could draw power from the stone of the mountain and store it in the empty amulets I carried just for that purpose. I could—if I wanted to risk contamination from the Darkness taint.
I had deliberately not used any of my mage gifts up until now, not wanting to see the Dark power. It often physically hurt for me see so much Darkness and I . . . well, I was so tired of fighting the energy ranged against us. I knew that was foolish. I knew that, but it didn’t make it any easier to mind skim the mountain.
I moved away from the soldiers and found a stone outcropping jutting from the snow. The top was rounded and wide enough for my backside. I leaped to the top and sat, crossed my legs yogi-fashion. Between my thighs, I piled all the empty amulets and the one holding the moving Shield. I closed my eyes and opened my mage sight.
Around me the energies of snow and frigid air glared at me, looking pale and dull, green, gray, and the soft lavender shade of old bruises—the hues of mold and fungi and dead things. The leafless trees were likewise sickly looking. Not because they were tainted with Darkness, but because I was a Stone mage and only the energies of stone were truly beautiful to my mage sight.
Bracing myself, I turned my attention to the hellhole and the energies blasting from it. The trampled snow at the entrance was sicklier yellow-tinted gray, speaking of sulfur and brimstone and disease. Splatters of black and deepest purple surrounded the stone maw, a brownish, mustard-yellow under-glow indicating the power moving like maggots through the rock. Below the sparkling energies was a heavy thrumming power, almost a sound, almost a vibration, almost pain, but not quite.
I knew by looking with mage sight that the major Darkness nesting in the lair was not Stone-linked. His was an Air power. He had tried to weave protections into the rock, and perhaps had Dark Stone mages adding incantations to reinforce his workings, but they were poor at best, and dangerous at worst. No wonder half the mountain had crashed down when the soldiers tripped the wire. The stone was riddled with cracks and fissures. It was an unholy mess. If it tried to come down while we were inside, it would crash on top of us. So, while it felt strange (and was probably stupid) to reinforce an enemy’s stronghold, I did just that.
I sent my power creeping out in fingers of intent, to slide into the fractures, propping up the roofs of caverns, sealing stalactites in place, bracing tunnels. It was dangerous on several levels, mostly because I couldn’t use my own power. To keep from being noticed, I had to draw on the power of the Dark itself and curl it back on the stone, shifting, adjusting, sealing, and restoring. I had to move slowly, which was tiring. And I was taking on some of the Darkness, which was . . . tempting. All that power, there for the taking. I could defeat my enemy with its own workings and its own might. I could. If I was willing to become something not much better than it was. I could feel the Darkness clinging to me, a slimy, acidic second skin, burning like nettles and fire ants.
But now I had a pretty good map of the tunnels to get us into the upper levels of the lair. And I knew how to get out if we had to make a run for it.
Before I pulled my conscious mind out of the hellhole, I took a steadying breath and prepared to open a mind skim too. I’d never heard of anyone else who could use a blended scan, and neither had Cheran Jones or Audric, though the seraphs had a name for it, omega sight, so it must not’ve been unique to me.
The blended scan rocked me, a nauseating vertigo that left me sick and sweating. I didn’t get nearly as sick using the scan as I used to, but the scan itself wasn’t the only thing making me ill. The stink of rot and Darkness slammed into me, the reek of the reptilian evil lurking deep within the mountain. I took a shallow breath, parsing the different energy elements of it all, knowing that it wasn’t really smell I was scenting, but the signature of the hellhole and its owner—and the blood of a watcher and a kylen, sickly sweet and rancid from days of torture, and fresh and copious from today’s cruelty. My stomach refused to settle, and I knew that I’d be some time recovering. But now I also knew the position and matrix of the conjures that guarded the tunnels.
It was going to be easy getting in. About twenty feet in past the entrance, though, the tunnel narrowed and a spiderweb of Shield energies was laced across the opening. On the other side of the web the tunnel branched and branched again. Working alone, it would take time to break the Dark Shield, and whichever of us did the work of dissecting and dismantling it would be there alone. Which meant that once it dropped we’d be attacked.
Of course, I could allow the pretty little priestess access to my mind, creating a circle and letting her work with and through me. That would speed it up. Or I could merge with Raziel again. But neither was something I wanted. Being raised alone, away from the Enclave of my birth, I wasn’t skilled at joint conjuring. And I wasn’t myself after merging with Raziel.
I dropped the blended scan and opened my eyes. And nearly fell off my rock. Claire was standing about six inches from me, her spread hands to either side of my head and a look of intense concentration on her face. I slapped her hands away and bounded from the stone, drawing my sword and a Shield amulet. My face must’ve looked fierce, because she slammed a Shield of her own in place. It glowed a greenish gold and melted the snow in a circle around her.
“Audric?” I said, not taking my eyes from her. The name came out a growl and I drew a second sword.
“I could do nothing, my mistrend. She is a priestess.”
“You ever do that again—” I started.
“What were you doing?” Claire demanded. “You were using something new. Doing something new.”
“—I’ll cut you in two,” I finished. “Do you understand?”
Claire lifted her chin, her shoulders going back stiffly. “Y
ou could try. I am not a battle mage, but I am not lacking in skills.”
“Do not touch me.” I wanted to add, “you little witch,” but didn’t. I resheathed my swords and dropped the Shield, turning my back on her. I heard her gasp, and I figured she wasn’t used to being dismissed as unimportant. I strode across the ice to my seraph—not that I’d call him that aloud. He watched me, his eyes warm in welcome.
“Raziel,” I said, “there’s a spiderweb-style trap about twenty feet in. Can you see it?”
The seraph turned his gaze to the tunnel and a moment later said, “The Dark have shared their defensive and offensive workings. We have fought this before, in the hellhole above your town. Beyond the web are other workings and something dead. And two who must be rescued.”
“Yeah. That’s what I got. Can you break it alone?”
“No. The kylen and I can tear it apart, if he is willing.” He looked at Eldratos. “My brother-son, will you work with me?”
“Yes, my brother-father. But we will be incapacitated while we work. Will your mage protect us and battle the Darkness that will attack when the Shield falls?”
“I will.” I said.
“She will,” Raziel said at the same time.
So much for me being able to speak on my own. I raised my voice. “Audric, will you see to the placement of men so they’re protected under a Shield?” I looked up at the sky to gauge the amount of daylight we had left. Never enough, even if we were going in at dawn. But there was a watcher and a kylen down there; I wasn’t going to leave them down there another night.
“Vonn,” I called, and the soldier jogged up, looking light on his feet, even with forty or fifty pounds of gear on his back. I picked up a stick and drew in the snow, making a sketch map of the upper tunnels as I remembered them from my scan. “We’re going in. Once the seraphs and kylen blow the web-trap away, it’ll be hand-to-hand fighting. What major armament do you carry?”
“In addition to our personal arms, we’ve got one SMAW rocket launcher and a new-model ARC-DK, Dragon Killer. The SMAW fires standard 83mm rocket rounds and the DK uses the new AIMs—Artificial Intelligence Missiles filled with seraph steel fléchettes and frags.”
“Can any of them shut down a tunnel, say one of the branchings that we don’t want to leave open behind us?”
“No problem, ma’am. But it might bring down the roof of the tunnel we’re in,” he said with a grin.
I shook my head. “We don’t want to bury ourselves or our retreat. Raziel? I strengthened the tunnel as best I could. Can you keep the stone above us from collapsing?”
“Of course, my mage.”
“Okay. Then, Vonn, we need these three tunnels closed off,” I pointed on the map in the snow. They were the ones with no scent of seraph or kylen, and the strongest reek of devil-spawn and Darkness. “And that’s just to get us in the door.”
“Can do, ma’am.”
“Thank you. And these are for your men.” I pulled the rest of my Healing amulets out of a pocket. “One stone for each soldier. If they get injured, they can press it with a thumb and the energies stored inside will stop bleeding, decrease the chance of shock, and shore up immune defenses.”
Vonn took the amulets with a small smile. “These things are worth their weight in gold back at base. Thank you, ma’am.”
“If we find ourselves in dangerous fumes . . .” I started.
Vonn held up a gas mask. “We got that covered, ma’am.”
I handed him two more amulets. These were roughly faceted and polished labrodorite. “These are small traveling Shields. If someone has to be taken back to the surface, two soldiers can fit under one. But that’s all I have. Use them at your discretion.”
The smile that lit Vonn’s face warmed me so much that I added, “Whether you use them or not, keep them when we’re done. And the Healing amulets too. They can be recharged by any Stone mage.”
Vonn gave orders to his troops, then gathered the train’s volunteers at the cavern opening to explain how we would enter the hellhole. With the soldiers present, we wouldn’t need to take the untrained men into the Darkness’s lair. That meant the kid, Garrick, would remain on the surface, safe, along with his boss, the fifty-year-old geezer. They’d’ve been a liability in the hellhole, but might actually do some good on the surface, shooting anything that tried to escape or that tried to block our escape. The railroad employees weren’t happy at being left on the surface, thinking that battle against Darkness was some kind of heroic experience and not the blood and guts and gore it actually was. They grumbled, but agreed to follow Vonn’s orders.
I looked for the prickly, spoiled priestess, and wasn’t surprised to see her sitting on a log off by herself, stiff-shouldered and shivering, even with the Warm-Me incantation she was using. I sighed. She should have brought winter clothes, but most Enclave-raised mages had no sense about outside weather, and they were too dependent on amulets and creation energy to be practical.
Claire wasn’t much older than I was, but she was by far less experienced. And as the political creature I now was, instead of swatting her across the back of the head, I needed to unruffle her feathers. If I could. I went to her and bent into a squat, bringing my head below hers. “I can’t do this without you,” I lied.
Her head lifted, her nose in the air. She didn’t look at me, but stared off into the trees. “You are a battle mage—the only rogue mage ever found who wasn’t torn apart by terrified humans or put down like a rabid dog by the kirk—the only mage to have a seraph who comes when you call—the first mage to have a seraph stone. You don’t need me.”
“Fine. We can do it alone. But if you add your Shield to mine, it will help cement your relationship with the soldiers—and the kylen.”
Claire’s eyes widened. “They are forbidden.”
“I noticed. But they are fascinating.”
Claire turned to stare at Eldratos. She unconsciously gripped the seraph stone hanging from her belt.” Yes,” she murmured. “They are.”
I waited, and after her eyes had drunk their fill of the beautiful kylen she said, “I will help you.”
“Thank you.” I held out my Shield amulet to her and watched as she closed her eyes, studying its energies and the working it contained.
She tilted her head and murmured, “Interesting.” She pulled up one amulet from among those hanging from her belt, a well-worn wooden carving of a babe in a manger. My eyebrows rose. I would never have taken the woman for a Christian. She studied the amulets closely, aligned them carefully, and touched the wood to the stone once. Even with mage sight off, I could see how the energies aligned. “Done,” she said and handed mine back to me.
“Nice work,” I said, and let my brows rise again when she blushed. Now that was weird. “You’ll need to stay within fifteen feet of me when we get inside the hellhole.”
Her shoulders stiffened again. “I am well aware of the parameters of my own working.”
I sighed and left her, calling Vonn. “Ready when you are.”
We stood at the entrance to the hellhole in a tight grouping, the untrained and poorly armed humans left at the entrance as guards, under the command of a single corporal. Claire and I held our Shield amulets, ready to thumb them on. The soldiers assumed a formation that would fit within the confines of the overlapping Shields when we activated them, moving with weapons at ready. They kept their weapons aimed outward, but I was still nervous. If they fired before the Shields dropped, the bullets would ricochet inside the Shields, and I wasn’t wearing a flak jacket. Vonn nodded to me and I activated my mage sight and stared into the hellhole.
“Flames,” I said, not knowing if they needed reminding, but not taking chances, “I ask, not demand, that you join in this fight.”
The flames bobbed up and down and spun in dizzying circles of light too bright to look at directly. I turned my head and stepped inside the entrance. The flames shot ahead in two groups of three, with one flame at my back, staying close but out of my l
ine of sight, as if trying not to blind me. Behind me I heard a female soldier mutter, “Saints’ balls. She really can make them do things.”
Raziel and Eldratos stepped forward, and when they were far enough ahead I said, softly, “Claire? Now, please.” We pressed our amulets and the merged Shield flickered on with a tiny electric jolt. The air was noticeably warmer inside the hellhole, and the stench of sulfur, rot, and old blood was much stronger. The soldiers pulled gas masks over their faces. I thumbed on an amulet with a new conjure that would block the worst of the fumes. From the corner of my eye, I saw Claire do the same and wondered how she knew to make one; I had only recently figured it out myself. But that question vanished as the darkness of the cavern closed in on us.
In their threes, the flames darted all around, testing the boundaries of the entrance, and skirting around the soldiers, who started when they came too close.
Behind the seraph and kylen, we moved forward as one unit, like a many-legged insect whose body shape was determined by the environment, flowing toward the web of energies that protected the lair. The soldiers guarded our backs as Raziel and Eldratos stood side-by-side and pulled their swords. The seraph steel cut through the Dark magic spell as easily as it might have butter. The flames darted through and danced in the shadows. The one at my shoulder buzzed with delight.
“So not fair,” I muttered. The last time I’d tangled with this type of construct, it had nearly killed Raziel and me, and that was saying something when a seraph could be brought down by a working, no matter how advanced.
Raziel must have heard, because he laughed and looked back at me. “We have studied the web that trapped the cherub. We learned much. My sword is now proof against it and all similar workings of the Dark. But I hear an echo in the deeps. An alarm has been sounded, my mage. We must hurry.”
“Move,” Vonn said.
We raced ahead, the flames and seraph leading the way, until we reached the first of the side-passages I wanted brought down. Raziel raised his arms. With mage sight, I followed the movement of his seraph energies as he shored up the ceiling directly above us. As he worked, the flames flashed down the stone corridors and back, sizzling with distaste at whatever they found.