Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) (35 page)

Then I was across the room, forcing my way through the opening the monsters had been pouring out of. It abruptly closed, an armored bulk I couldn’t see clearly through Grinder’s flame moving to seal it off. For a moment a ball of violet plasma formed in the air in front of me, trapped between the barrier and my own force field. It was blindingly bright, roiling violently as Grinder’s plasma beam fed more and more energy into it.

I stabbed out with an improvised counterspell, and broke the barrier’s fire resistance aura.

There was a deep bellow of agony, and the creature evaporated. The trapped plasma exploded out into the room behind it, burning away paper and furniture and the flesh of the gathered monsters, and filling the air with superheated vapors. I caught a glimpse of a huge, heaving mass of flesh filling the middle of the room, and turned off the plasma beam.

Most of the room’s occupants were already dead, and the few that remained didn’t last long. A dark shadow flashed across the room and became Leo, already bisecting an ungainly-looking bipedal thing with his glowing sword. Then lightning filled the room for a moment, bending around us to strike all of our enemies at once, and the other survivors dropped.

Lukas Steelbinder strode into the room, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that the floor behind us had melted into lava a couple of inches deep. He observed the mass of charred flesh in the middle of the room, and nodded sharply.

“That’s it.”

Grinder, Leo’s sword and Steelbinder’s lightning made short work of the thing.

When I was sure it was dead I shut down Grinder, and blessed silence fell. Steelbinder drew a handful of something that looked like little steel snowflakes from a pouch, and sent them floating around the room. The temperature quickly began to fall.

“Well, that was a brisk little affair,” Steelbinder commented. “That flash step is a new achievement for you, isn’t it Leo?”

“Yes, sir. Just got it working a few weeks ago, sir.”

“Congratulations, that’s a big step. I see your reputation for brutal overkill is well deserved, Daniel. I haven’t seen flame of that intensity in years.”

“Yeah, I really should get around to making better dial-a-yield attacks someday. But with Ragnarok approaching I’ve been spending all my time on more power instead, so I didn’t have anything else that would get the job done without bringing down the whole building.”

“Yes, well, I was counting on something like that in any event. They would have adapted to a more measured attack, and bogged us down again.”

“Lukas!” The voice of Prince Caspar roared from behind us. “What in the Nine Worlds are you wizards playing at?”

I turned, to find the prince and a ragged-looking band of knights gingerly standing on the half-molten stone of the tunnel I’d blasted through a few minutes ago. Well, now, that was unexpected. I’d been impressed enough that the other wizards had been able to follow me. If the royal bodyguards had magic items that could cope with walking on lava I needed to upgrade my evaluation of their threat level.

“Someone summoned a devourer here,” Steelbinder said mildly. “We just finished killing it.”

“Someone?” The prince snarled. “Those damned beasts killed the whole temple delegation, and most of the city government as well. Someone wants this city in chaos, and that someone is a wizard. This is treason, Lukas.”

“This is Loki’s daughter, Caspar,” Steelbinder replied evenly. “None of my people have the power to summon a greater demon from the Stygian Abyss, let alone command it. She obviously hopes to set us at each other’s throats.”

“This was your ritual chamber, Lukas! It was you who persuaded me to allow your wizards to work right next to the war room, and look what has come of it! Find this bitch, and kill her, or I’m holding you responsible. And what is he doing here?” He jabbed an armored finger at me.

“Adept Black was with my delegation,” Steelbinder said, sounding a bit exasperated now. “Surely you’re not going to blame him for this? He helped us kill the beast, and besides he had no opportunity to cast such a spell.”

“I wouldn’t have a clue how to summon a demon anyway,” I put in. “You’ve seen my magic, Your Highness. If I was trying to sabotage the city I’d be using earth spells and explosions.”

He glared at me. “So you say. Get out. The meeting is cancelled. I’ll make my own plans to deal with this army, without any more interference from wizards. Lukas, the Conclave’s only task for now is to find me this demigoddess. I want her head on a platter before the enemy reaches our gates.”

The implied ‘or else’ hung in the air.

Steelbinder nodded stiffly. “As you wish, Your Highness.”

We returned to the street where we’d left our escort in silence. They were still there, thankfully, although they looked like they’d seen a bit of action after we left. I spent a few minutes patching up the injured there, while Steelbinder conferred with Ward.

“It’s probably best if you lie low for now,” Steelbinder told me.

I nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be in my tower if you need me. He isn’t handling the pressure very well, is he?”

Steelbinder shook his head. “He’s steady enough in a normal fight, but I fear the end of the world is a bit much for him. Still, he’s the only man the nobles will follow. We can’t hold the city without their manpower, so we’d best do what we can to placate him. Can you ready a power talisman for the Conclave?”

“I’ll have it ready to pick up tomorrow morning. I understand the Conclave has quite a library for its membership? How does access for me and my apprentices sound, as payment for the first one?”

“Agreed.”

The Conclave wizards rode off on their golems, and Gronir and I boarded the transport. It was a relief to get out of the cold.

“Looks like there wasn’t any trouble you couldn’t handle, Marcus?”

“Not this time, sir. But I don’t like the looks of things. Those demons killed hundreds of people in a matter of minutes, and that was just a quick bit of sabotage. What’s going to happen when there’s an army besieging the city? If another menace like this appears while they’re storming the walls the garrison will never hold.”

“I know. But I don’t have any way to find the Unraveler, and we have our own problems to deal with. We’ll just have to trust the Conclave to handle her.”

The rest of the trip home was filled with discussion of our own defensive situation. We had enough food on hand to last for a few weeks now, and the new smithy was up and running. But our men would be stretched thin trying to defend the whole island if there was a serious attack, and most of them were recruits with only a few days of training.

I wasn’t too worried about that, though. Trying to cross the icy river and a moat of melt water to storm my walls would be a nightmare for any attacker, especially since my walls were too tall for scaling ladders and far too strong to breach with siege engines. Unless their magic was a lot stronger than I expected it would take a giant engineering project to build some means of getting over the wall, and I could improve our defenses to counter anything they tried.

Kozalin, however, was a lot more vulnerable. With the moat frozen its walls were open to assault, and in most places they were less than ten feet thick. Not to mention they were built from blocks of stone, instead of being one seamless mass like my own construction. With the right magic it wouldn’t be too hard to breach them, and I didn’t want to think about how many lives it would take to throw back an army of monsters if they got inside the walls.

But there was nothing I could do about that now. Hopefully the prince would come to his senses and let me help once the Unraveler was dealt with, but for now I had my own problems to deal with.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I returned home, intending to put in a few hours in my workshop. I found the outer rooms empty, with even the maids missing. But there was a subtle tang of magic in the air as I passed into the private area.

I followed it to the room Avilla had designated as our future ritual chamber, and frowned. The magic I was feeling wasn’t just the witches. There was Elin’s warm, deep river of power mixed in with their spice and shadow, and something else as well. Elemental passion wrapped in leather and cold steel, entwined with roots sunk deep in the earth. Pelagia? What the hell?

The magic was fading quickly, so whatever they were doing they’d finished it a few minutes ago. I eased the door open, and found myself looking at a completely unexpected scene.

An intricate design of chalk and candles stretched across most of the floor, with three points radiating out from it. Avilla knelt on the stone floor in the middle of the symbol, crying her eyes out in Cerise’s arms. Elin and Pelagia still stood at two of the points, looking on sympathetically, while Tina stood to one side wringing her hands.

“What did I miss?” I asked.

Avilla looked up at me with wide eyes.

“Daniel? I… I… I’m s-sorry!” She wailed, and buried her face in Cerise’s chest again.

“I thought you’d want us to continue the investigation, sir,” Elin told me. “Avilla conceded that our suspicion might well be correct, as her newfound passion for the prince is oddly irresistible in its intensity. None of our arts were suited to investigating such things, so at first we were stumped. But Pelagia is intimately familiar with magics of the heart, and she was kind enough to help us construct a ritual to lay bare the nature and origin of the subject’s desires.”

“I see. What did you find?” I asked carefully.

Avilla choked off a sob. “I was never anything but a pawn in granny’s plans. A walking honey trap. The love spell was baked into me when I was made, just waiting to trigger when I met him. I’m so sorry, Daniel. I wanted to be yours, but I’m a treacherous bitch in the end. I can’t fight a spell that’s part of me.”

For a moment I wanted to learn the secrets of necromancy, so I could drag Lysandra’s spirit back from Hades and make her suffer for what she’d done.

I knelt beside Cerise, and put a hand on Avilla’s shoulder. “It sounds like you’re fighting it now.”

“With Cerise’s strength, and Elin’s will,” she countered morosely. “It can’t last for long. I hate being nothing but a puppet for that woman’s schemes, but her spell has eaten my heart. There’s hardly anything left in me to even try to fight it. You should just kill me now, before I turn on you again.”

“No!”

My arms were around her, hugging her and Cerise both against my chest. “God, no. I could never kill you, Avilla. No matter how mad or hurt I might be, and it wasn’t even you.”

“But it is me,” she protested. “I’m a poison apple, Daniel. I don’t want to be, but I can’t help myself.”

“We’ll find a way, honeydew,” Cerise insisted. “Magic fucked this up, and magic can unfuck it. There’s got to be a way to fix this, somehow.”

I couldn’t think. God, Avilla was under a compulsion? And I’d just stormed off and left her to deal with it alone? How could I have been so blind?

“I don’t have a good solution to offer,” Pelagia said gently. “I could show Daniel how to enchant you with a love spell of his own, and drown Lysandra’s work under superior power. But you’d always be one dispel away from reverting, and the conflict would haunt your dreams and slowly drive you mad.”

I squeezed my witches tighter. “I can’t do that to her.”

“Then I shall take my leave, so you may consider what to do without an outsider’s presence. But I stand ready to help, if there is anything I can do for you.”

Pelagia left, and quietly closed the door behind her.

“I don’t understand,” Tina said plaintively.

“Avilla is under a love spell,” Elin told her. “It was woven into her when she was made, so we can’t just break it without killing her.”

“What? But that’s terrible! Isn’t there something we can do?”

“I don’t know, Tina,” I admitted. “This isn’t the kind of magic I’m good at. Maybe I could unravel it somehow, one piece at a time? If you want me to, Avilla?”

“Yes! Oh Daniel, I’d like nothing better. We were going to be so happy together. But it won’t work. The spell is corrupting my own magic. If you start picking it apart it will drain me to rebuild itself. If you refill me you’ll just be feeding it, and if you don’t it will kill me.”

Damn it, she was right. I wasn’t sure I could do anything about it, anyway. I still couldn’t even see what part of her magic was the enchantment, and what was her magical metabolism. It could easily take me weeks to map out what needed to be done, and we didn’t have that kind of time. If we were going to fix this we had to do it quickly.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Elin said. “Lysandra was going to steal your body, but surely she didn’t mean to subject herself to an unbreakable love spell? How did she plan to keep it from affecting her?”

Avilla wiped her eyes, and looked up at the homely girl. “I don’t know? You’re right, though. If she stole my body she’d be bound by the love spell, and she’d never want that. She must have left herself some kind of loophole.”

Oh. Of course.

“She was going to found a coven,” I pointed out.

Avilla and Elin looked at me blankly, but Cerise’s eyes lit up. “You’re right! Avilla, this is technically a binding, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, I think so.”