Master and Apprentice (42 page)

“You disgusting little … no. I won’t destroy you yet.” He pointed two fingers down and spread them in an upside-down V.

My busted arms rose. Bone fragments jarred and ground against each other. It hurt too much to scream. I squeezed my eyes shut—and saw Akila.

Ian had freed her. She was streaked with filth, and her eyes
were sunken and haunted, but she was alive. The vision moved down. Ian’s fingers rubbed the last of the blood from her tether.

Good thinking, Ian. Now get your ass back here and help me.

“Wake up, Doma.”

My eyes wrenched open against my will. I was still seeing through Ian, but as a faded image laid across Nurien’s smug features. Ian was moving across the cavern, headed this way. I’d have to keep distracting the asshole. “What?” I said. “Are you going to make me do jumping jacks now?”

Nurien’s momentary astonishment gave way to a sneer. “You must be too stupid to fear me,” he said. “It’s almost a shame you won’t be able to appreciate what I’m going to do.”

I laughed, though it sounded like rusted nails rattling in a tin can. “I bet it’s something really clever. Like you’re going to keep talking and bore me to death.”

“I believe I can do better than that.”

“Oh, I’m quivering with anticipation. Seriously.”

“You would be, if you had anything resembling a brain.”

For an instant, everything blurred and doubled. I saw Nurien’s front and back at the same time. Ian was twenty feet away and closing in, utterly silent.

Nurien flexed one hand, then the other. “Good-bye, little mage.”

Five feet. Keep him talking. “Are we going to Disney World?”

“You are going—”

Ian clamped a hand on his shoulder. Nurien’s mouth opened, but he didn’t even get a single syllable out before Ian spun him around and drove a sledgehammer fist into his jaw. The crack of the blow echoed through the cavern. Nurien folded like a used tissue.

And I went tumbling after.

The ground felt a lot farther away than it looked. Especially when I landed on my side and transformed my right arm from splintered to pulverized.

“Tether,” I gasped after I finished screaming. Like Ian wouldn’t think of that himself.

In fact, he’d already grabbed the crown, and Akila was headed toward our little gathering. “You are hurt,” Ian said. “Perhaps I should—”

“Finish him. Don’t worry about me.” I planted my feet on the ground, then pushed and slid on my back to a safe distance away from the imminent explosion, and started healing myself.

Ian took a few steps back. Akila stopped just behind him. Without a word, he handed the crown to her. He was still too drained to perform the spell. I was getting there myself; I managed to fix my shattered bones, but my body protested using the power. A few more spells and I’d be done.

As though he’d heard my thoughts and sensed weakness, Nurien opened his eyes.

Before I could shout a warning, he launched into the air, pointed at Akila and said,
“Ela na’ar.”

Fire immediately engulfed her arms, white-hot flames a foot high, and spread quickly to her dress.

Ian cried her name. He stripped his vest off and beat at the flames, brought her to the ground and tried to roll them out. The fire caught his pants. And the crown tumbled away from them.

I scrambled up and headed for it. Unfortunately, Nurien noticed it too. He threw a lockdown at me, then gestured at the crown. It floated up and across the cave to settle on the now-flattened top of the rock spire he’d impaled Ian on earlier. He cast another fire spell.

Flames circled the base of the spire and swirled up, all the way up, forming a floor-to-ceiling column of fire.

Nurien touched down. Ian and Akila still struggled to put out the flames. I’d almost freed myself from the paralysis spell, but I was out of ideas. This guy was too strong. He was older than Ian, had a bunch of scions running around boosting him, and he’d drained four of them and drunk a few gallons of blood.

Just as I broke free, Nurien threw his head back and lifted his arms like a preacher beseeching the heavens.
“Ela rey’ahn!”

A wall of wind slammed into me and sent me tumbling through the air. I caught glimpses of Ian and Akila rocketing in the opposite direction. When I collided with something solid, at least it wasn’t with enough force to break bones. But the back of my head cracked stone, and I collapsed in a woozy heap.

“I’ll take your tether now, Gahiji-an. And my prize.”

Nurien sounded a hundred miles away. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to clear the black spots that wobbled through my vision, and made myself stand. Ian and Akila, considerably scorched but no longer burning, had hit the far wall near the tunnel. And Nurien stood halfway between me and them, silent and motionless. Scrying.

At once, he pivoted to face me. “Little mage,” he said. “Give it to me, or I’ll tear you to pieces and feed them to your master.”

I threw up a shield spell. And ran.

The terrain wasn’t exactly suited for speed. Uneven ground and random rock formations conspired against progress. I kept the bigger rocks between me and him as much as possible. Nurien threw a lockdown, then a fire spell, but either my shield held or he missed completely. I dove behind a boulder and tried to catch my breath. The flame column was on the
far side of the cavern, and I’d gotten about a third of the way there. If I could reach it, I’d just go into the fire and destroy his tether right there.

I could heal burns. I couldn’t heal dead.

Nurien had stopped casting spells. The silence unnerved me. I suspected he was coming my way, ready to launch some horrible magic that would make my teeth explode or boil all my blood, or otherwise plunge me into excruciating pain.

“Ela rey’ahn!”

Panic seized me. I tried to brace myself, anticipating another bone-shattering collision—and then my brain caught up with the sound and I realized the voice had been female. Akila had cast the spell.

I peered around the boulder, just in time to catch Nurien thud to the ground. He sat up almost immediately, his features a mask of fury.

Ian tackled him back down. Fists flew.

Akila approached them, stopped a few feet back, and looked in my direction. She nodded. I took that to mean they’d keep Nurien occupied while I got the tether.

With a backdrop of blows and thumps and flying spells, I moved toward the fiery vortex. Halfway there. Assorted shouts echoed through the cavern, but I didn’t look back. Every second counted. Nothing short of destroying Nurien would stop him.

Fifty feet. I splashed through the shallow pool Ian had scried, tripped over a jutting rock below the surface, and went sprawling. Damn. I got myself back up and slowed down a fraction until I cleared the water.

Ian shouted a warning. I looked back—and saw Nurien casting a spell at me.

He managed to finish whatever it was, then took to the
air and flew toward me. Fast. I could still move under my own power, and I wasn’t on fire or in pain. What the hell did he do?

I faced forward again, and my gut oozed into my feet. Now there were multiple flame columns, fifteen or twenty of them, all exactly alike. And I had no idea which one concealed the tether.

Nurien had gained a lot of ground, and I was out of hiding places. I searched the immediate area for loose rocks. I’d have to try throwing stones at him, and hope I could knock him out. I’d never be able to find the right tower of fire in time.

A piercing whistle filled the air and a dark shape streaked toward Nurien. A hawk. Akila’s bird form was slightly smaller than Tory’s, with paler feathers—and twice as pissed off as Ian’s wolf. She fluttered around Nurien’s head, shrieking and beating powerful wings. Talons clawed at his face. She snapped at him once, twice. The third time, her beak caught his ear. And ripped it off.

Nurien fell screaming to the ground.

While Akila circled and landed, Ian came charging across the cave. The hawk glowed and became Akila, kneeling, gasping, streaked with Nurien’s blood.

Ian caught up and grabbed the writhing Nurien. The blade I’d given him was clutched in one hand. He slammed Nurien on his back, straddled him with knees pinning his shoulders, and drove the knife under his chin and straight up through his jaw, tacking his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

A weak gurgling sound bubbled from Nurien’s throat. One hand twitched, tried to move. Ian grabbed his wrists and pushed them against the ground. “Find his tether!” he shouted.

“How?” I yelled back.

Akila rose to one knee. “They are illusions,” she said in halting tones. “Powerful ones, and they will burn like fire. I can scry the false flames, but … it will take time …”

“Yeah. We don’t have that.” Nurien’s struggles were already stronger. I felt Ian straining to hold him down. At least Akila had really done a number on his face. It was gouged to hell, and there was blood everywhere …

Blood. Ian’s blood soaked the spire with Nurien’s tether.

I knelt and placed both hands on the ground. The blood was a whisper, a hum, a vibrating wire pulling at me. I let it take the lead and sank into the ground. The brief trip sizzled my veins and steamed my flesh.

But the heat was summer in Antarctica compared to what pounced on me when I emerged.

Inside the flame column, superheated air feasted on my flesh. I couldn’t keep my eyes open or they’d melt. I grabbed the stone, and my palms fried instantly. Jaw clenched, I slid my scorched hands up until they found the top and touched white-hot metal. I had the tether.

And I couldn’t draw blood. The heat would cauterize the wound before I could squeeze anything out.

Keeping my back to the flames, I pushed the crown toward the edge until I could slip a hand through. I let it slide down my arm, an oversize bracelet, and stumbled backward. Agony flooded me as I passed through the fire. I cleared it, dropped on the ground, and rolled. Most of the flames snuffed out. I thought my hair was still burning, but I couldn’t feel anything specific. Everything was a uniform screaming pitch.

I’d lost my knife somewhere between getting smashed into walls. Fortunately, Nurien’s crown had plenty of fancy, pointy bits. I let it clatter to the ground, knelt, and drove the tip of it into a patch of raw, blistered flesh on my arm. Blood, and something much nastier that I didn’t even want to consider, flowed over hot metal and baked onto the surface.

Good enough.
“Ana lo ’ahmar nar, fik lo imshi, aakhir kalaam.”

My voice creaked like a windmill, but I managed to enunciate. The crown glowed, spit sparks, caught fire.

I heaved it away from me and curled on the ground with my brain rapidly diving toward oblivion. I didn’t even hear the explosion.

S
omething pulled me back toward consciousness, but I didn’t want to go. It hurt too much out there. I finally convinced myself that Nurien was dead, and if I didn’t rejoin the land of the living I’d never be able to drink a cold beer again. At the moment I wanted that more than anything else.

I opened my eyes. It must’ve been worse than I thought, because I couldn’t feel a thing except the cool stone under my back.

Which I wouldn’t be able to feel if I was still charcoal.

I lifted a hand. Pain failed to spike through me, and my palm wasn’t blackened and sloughing off my bones. There was just a hand attached to an arm … a bare arm. My jacket was gone. So was everything else I’d worn. Transformation healing restored clothes, but I didn’t have that—and I was lying here naked.

“Shit!” I moved to cover myself and hoped Akila wasn’t anywhere nearby. “Um, Ian … you still alive? I could use a little help.”

“Donatti.” Ian loomed over me. He looked a lot less beat up than he should’ve. He must have absorbed the tether’s
destruction—something I apparently still couldn’t do. His lips twitched, and his gaze traveled to my cupped hands, over my groin. “You seem to have lost something.”

“Yeah. Fire and cloth don’t mix.”

“Well then. I believe it is time you had proper clothing.” He gestured over me and said a few words. Smoke drifted from the ground and circled me, covering me from the neck down. When it cleared, I had on brown pants, brown boots, and a brown vest. No shirt.

I almost mentioned that I didn’t share Ian’s distaste for shirts—but then I realized this was what every Dehbei in Akila’s thought-form had been wearing. And what Ian wore now. I was part of his clan … and damned proud of it. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t make a fool of myself, and said, “Thank you.”

Before he could respond, my empty, snarling stomach kicked the moment out.

“Got any food on you?” I said. “I’d prefer a nice thick burger, but I’ll take crispy bat in a pinch.”

Ian laughed. “Have you lost what is left of your mind?”

“What? I’m hungry.”

“You are lucky. A few moments ago, I was not certain that charred lump was you. I cannot begin to guess how you got through that fire.”

“Magic.” I grinned and sat up. “I take it Akila healed me.”

“No. You healed yourself.”

“I did?” Damn. Now I was running spells in my sleep. I hoped this ability didn’t go beyond basic survival, or I was going to be in serious trouble with Jazz when I started casting lockdowns in bed.

Then I remembered there was a good chance we weren’t sharing a bed anymore, and a different kind of pain lashed me.

Ian crouched in front of me. “I feel your sorrow,” he said. “What is troubling you?”

“I’m all right.” I forced a smile and concentrated on anything but Jazz. Relationship advice from Ian wasn’t something I really wanted right now. “Where’s Akila?”

“She is retrieving her tether.”

I nodded and stood. “Great. When she comes back, let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Agreed.”

Neither of us spoke for the next few minutes. When Akila approached, fully healed and holding the tiara between thumb and forefinger as far from her as she could get it, I couldn’t help smirking. “Did Nurien have cooties or something?”

“If these cooties are something unpleasant, then yes. It is likely he did.” Akila made a face, and turned it into a smile that lit her angelic features. “It is good to see you, Gavyn Donatti.”