A Dagger of the Mind (The Imperial Metals) (5 page)

Chapter
4: The Sun and the Moon

Vye and Nuria had felt the same thing, but closer and stronger. A magical presence. A malicious force. Something was closing in on them in space and time. A conflux of mystical energy. An arcane ambush.

Suddenly, Vye saw the attackers. Two of them. A man coming down the corridor in one direction with flowing, blond hair, albino skin, and a robe of gold. A woman approached from the other direction, bald, her skin an odd grey tone, with pitch black lips and a silver robe. They were named Helios and Selene, though they didn’t introduce themselves. Instead, without warning, they both raised their palms and fired death hexes at Vye.

Her first instinct was to protect Nuria. She wrapped the girl in a cocoon, a shell of energy that kept her safe. Vye was confident she could resist the death hexes. She always had. But she hadn’t taught Nuria that lesson yet. It hadn’t seemed necessary.

When the flares of death magic hit Vye, she lost faith in her own fortitude. The two strange attackers were definitely using a spell very similar to the spells the Turin had used against her, but they were stronger. Each blast shocked her with pain. Each hit felt like a punch to the gut.

“Get Duncan!” Vye shouted to Nuria. And she swung her hand out and blasted a hole in the nearest wall. Bricks and dust cleared away, and Vye rolled Nuria, magical shell and all, into the next room. She didn’t care where the girl was, as long as she wasn’t in the line of fire. Every second, Helios and Selene kept hitting her with the life-draining spells.

But once her pupil was clear, Vye drew her sword. These guys didn’t know whom they were dealing with...

Except, actually, they did. Vye charged right at Helios, and bashed at him with her sword again and again. Helios only swiped his hand in response, deflecting the blade with sharp bursts of force. Vye wasn’t only failing to hit him. With each parry, she took a shock of pain to her hands and wrists. She was actually losing ground, even though she was the aggressor.

And, of course, Selene wasn’t idle. She used her magic to lift some of the loose rubble from the wall Vye had knocked down. She barraged Vye with the debris, forcing her to bat away the stones.

Vye didn’t have time to process all that was happening. But she recognized one thing. One truth that cut through her mind, solely for its tactical value. These weren’t the Turin-Sen. It was obvious that they weren’t ethnically Turin, but more than that, the magic they were using wasn’t the same as the Turin. Not exactly the same anyway.

It’s not that it was more brutal, per se. The Turin, under Argos’ instruction, had plenty of brutality in their spells. But these two opponents were much more powerful. There was no exertion in their attacks. Helios waved aside Vye’s sword swings with lazy swats of his hand. Selene chucked boulders at her with terrifying serenity.

Vye managed to catch the bricks and mortar before they hit her, but it took a lot out of her. And while her back was turned, Helios grasped her shoulders, one in each hand, and pressed into her. Vye’s body wracked with electrical death energy. Like being hit with one of the Turin death hexes, but one that didn’t end.

Vye didn’t have a lot of time or a lot of options. She was pressed up against Helios as he zapped her to her knees. She couldn’t throw any boulders at him. They would hit her first. And she couldn’t contend with the might of his magical energy. He was way too strong.

There was only one thing she could use as a weapon.

Vye focused on her own body, sending it airborne, backwards, bashing against Helios. Both of them flew down the hallway at an alarming speed. Right at the dining room...

Vye felt the impact as they crashed through the entrance, splitting the double-doors wide open. Helios landed on the table with a clatter and a smash, breaking dishes and cups. The servants scattered out of the room as Vye landed on him. His grip loosened when they touched down, and she used her momentum to backflip off his body, landing on her knees with her fists closed around his skull.

So she unleashed her will on Helios’ brain. Crackling energy spouted forth from her fingers, forcing the intruder to scream at the relentless pain.

But Vye didn’t have enough time to finish the job. Selene came running into the dining hall. Vye sent Helios airborne at his partner in crime. And while Selene caught him in midair and landed him upright, Vye still had enough time to flee out of the opposite end of the hall.

Vye
scurried up the stairwell, heading for the catwalk. She had been hit with a dozen overpowered death hexes, parried away by shocking bolts of energy, grappled with a draining grip, and been thrown through the dining hall
doors
.
She had landed a solid hit against one of her opponents, but all she could think of was her fight against Argos...

It was the last day of the Argosian War. Vye and Count Michael had followed the Turin general to the Lunapera, his home. It was the most brutal fight she had ever experienced, even coming on the tail of three other fights with Argos’ pupils and an encounter with a dragon. Michael died. Vye only defeated Argos by reaching into a dark recess of her mind.

But she could tell, fighting Helios and Selene that these two were each as powerful as Argos, at least. And now there was only one of her, and two of them. She didn’t think she could survive this fight.

She reached the parapet. The Guards could immediately tell that something was amiss.

“Countess?” one of the guards shouted.

“Sound the alarm!” Vye yelled. “Evacuate the castle. Now!”

The Guards of the Castle Hartstone were not cowards. They would have fought to the death alongside Countess Vye if she had asked. But Vye had made it very clear to them. The last time a battalion of castle guards took on one of the magic-users, forty of them died in less than ten minutes. There were powers in the world against which they would be useless.

So Vye had left an order with her guards, “If I tell you to evacuate the Castle, your job is to make sure everybody gets out safely. No acts of bravery. No asking questions. Get. The Fuck. Out.”

And so the guards did just that. In another Castle, questions of chivalry and courage would run rampant. But when the Countess tells you to clear out of the way, you run. Fast.

The bells sounded, echoing around the courtyard. And Vye barely had a chance to catch her breath before Selene emerged from the stairwell. And immediately the spells started flying. Sparks and lights and booms shattering across the catwalk, sending clouds of dust across the suspended passage.

Vye only spent as much energy as she absolutely had to, deflecting Selene’s attacks. Vye knew this was the distraction. The other one would be there, coming from a different direction, and Vye didn’t want to get caught off guard.

She scanned the other entrances, bobbing and weaving around Selene’s spells. As long as Vye kept from taking a hit, she would be prepared for the ambush. But nobody was emerging from any of the other entrances to the parapet. Where was he?

Helios answered the question by soaring into the air in the middle of the courtyard. Vye spotted him out of the corner of her eye, just in time. He fired a bolt of lightning at her, but she deflected it, sending the energy blasting into the North Tower. Bricks crumbled off the structure, rolling down the smooth surface, bursting on the ground below.

Vye drew her sword again, chucking it at the airborne villain. It spun like a boomerang, hacking into his side and drawing blood. He tumbled out of the air. Selene tried to take advantage of the opening, firing another death spell at Vye...

Vye dodged out of the way, but the impact of the green light against the parapet sent her tumbling over the side of the walkway, free-falling into the courtyard. Helios was still descending in front of her. Vye once again used her magic to push her own body right up beside Helios.

She grabbed her sword, plucked it from his body, and hacked off his left hand. She used what little of her magic she had left to catch herself before she crashed into the ground.

That’s when she heard it. It was a sharp cracking sound. It wasn’t loud in the traditional sense. It wasn’t deafening. You felt it almost more than you heard it. Your sternum picked up the deep baritone sound of the crack almost more than your ears registered the sound.

Vye turned to the North Tower. It was already damaged from Helios’ lightning bolt, and Selene had finished the job. She had simply removed the bricks that supported the middle part of the tower.

Gravity kicked in. The Tower could not support itself with a hole that large. In about three second, the Tower lost a third of its height, as the top of it tried to slide down and reestablish itself. Of course, as Towers hadn’t been built to do this sort of thing, and the gap in the bricks was uneven, the Tower didn’t quite settle correctly. It started leaning over.

Into the courtyard. Right on top of Vye.

And not just Vye. Ever since the alarm had sounded, many of the Castle’s staff and servants were fleeing across the open yard. They were about to get clubbed to death by a very large, stone mallet.

Instinctively, Vye held her arms up and commanded her magical might to hold the Tower still. It stopped coming down toward her, but Vye could feel the strain of it trying to obey gravity. She wouldn’t be able to hold it for very much longer. But she needed to wait for everyone to clear out...

She decided that she could hold on for ten more seconds.

Ten…

Nine…

No, it was going to be more like three seconds.

Three…

Two…

And that’s when things got worse. Because Selene had joined her on the ground. Vye hadn’t even seen her come down. Selene stood over Helios, keeping anyone from hurting him further. But in the meantime, Selene was firing death hexes at Vye. It was like getting punched in the gut over and over while trying to hold your hands above your head.

Vye was now on borrowed time. It turned out she could hold it for ten seconds.

Eleven…

Twelve…

Vye’s ears popped. Everything sounded distant. Everyone else was clear of the falling stones, but Vye couldn’t move...

Fourteen…

Fifteen…

More crackling as the death hexes impacted on her flesh, draining what little reserve she had left. She turned to look at her assailants, but her eyes started doing that thing where they took a couple of seconds to catch up to the direction in which she was looking.

Eighteen…

Nineteen…

Every muscle in Vye’s body was burning. Everything was going white. Her torso split open, a scar tearing down from her right shoulder to her left hip. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head. The North Tower rediscovered gravity.

Selene grabbed Helios’ remaining hand. She opened a smoke door and shadowed out of the Castle. Her job was done.

The stones descended on Vye as her body went limp, flopping to the dirt.

And just as she was about to get crushed to death, a knight in armor rolled in, wrapped her in his steel-plated body, and rolled her out of the way.

Of course, it wasn’t an actual knight in armor.
There’s
no way a knight in armor could have rolled and moved so
adroitly
.
So it was actually just a suit of armor. Knight not included.

The suit of armor went limp. Duncan and Nuria dashed into the courtyard. There was Vye. Eyes wide open. No breath. No movement. Her chest cavity torn open with a scar. Bleeding.

Dead.

Nuria was too young to understand what death was. So she refused to accept it. She was exhausted from virtually running in that suit of armor. And she wasn’t as good a healer as Vye. But if Vye could hold up a tower long enough to save her people, then Nuria was just going to have to be strong enough to save her mentor.

Nuria pressed her hand over Vye’s heart and reached out. Imagining a heartbeat. Picturing the wound closing. Just as Vye had taught her. Though they had only ever practiced on small cuts and bruises. The sorts of things that people suffered from when they weren’t prepared for war.

But nothing was happening.

“Nuria,” Duncan said, resting his hand on her shoulder. Great Halinor, how she would have wanted his hand on her shoulder any other time in the history of existence. But right now she wanted nothing more than for Vye to wake up. There was only one person powerful enough to deal with what they had just encountered. And it was Vye. And now she was gone...

No. She didn’t have to be gone. Vye said she had healed people on the brink of death.
She
had recounted to Nuria many times the battle with the
Great Wyrm
Devesant. And she had explained how, after returning to the House of Vye, she had restored King Michael, Queen Sarah, the pirate Corthos, the historian Jareld, and herself to full health.

Hearts could be stopped. But Nuria was sure they could be started again. And then she had a crazy idea. It was the sort of desperate thought that only occurs to people who are crying over a dead body. It was the sort of thing that, if it had been debated about with a Council of Wise Elders, would have led to laughing and drinking. “What a crazy idea that would be, wouldn’t it?” they would muse. “Good thing nobody would ever do that sort of thing in real life.”