Quintessential Tales: A Magic of Solendrea Anthology (17 page)

Just when Tiadaria was sure that she couldn’t control the power of the sphere any longer, she reached Tionne. With a final burst of speed and power, she launched herself toward the younger girl, tackling her and sending them both tumbling through the grass. Tionne was quick to react to the assault, snatching a whip from her belt as she rolled to her feet. Tiadaria had drawn both scimitars as she rolled upright, facing her adversary.

“It’s over, Tionne. You’re caught. Save yourself some pain and humiliation and come quietly.”

“I don’t think so. It’s going to take more than some clan runaway with delusions of grandeur to bring me down.” Tionne uncoiled the whip, letting the braided leather pool by her feet. “Are you so desperate to see your beloved Captain again that you want to join him in the sphere?”

“I’m warning you, Tionne. This is your last chance to make this easy on yourself. Return to the Imperium, to Dragonfell, and I’ll see that you’re treated fairly.” The girl’s derisive laughter sent a chill up Tiadaria’s spine.

“Fair? What about any of this is fair? I’m stronger and more powerful than all of you. You should all be bowing before me.”

“There are people who can help you, Tionne. Faxon can teach you how to control the power you have.”

Tionne snorted.

“All Faxon wants to do is render me impotent. I’d rather die…and I’d kill him first. But not before I kill his handmaiden.”

The whip moved so fast that Tiadaria didn’t see the initial strike. It slashed across her midsection, parting the rings of the witchmetal tunic with little popping noises. The silk of her armor parted as easily as the flesh beyond and blood welled. Tionne’s weapon took on a sinister crimson glow and a quick slip into
sphere sight confirmed what Tiadaria already suspected. The weapon was enchanted. That was no ordinary whip. It grew stronger with each wound it inflicted.

Being in
sphere sight gave Tiadaria the advantage when the next attack came, she saw the whip twitch a moment before Tionne mad her move and managed to leap back, outside its reach. The ring of her scimitars leaving their scabbards was reassuring and painful. Tiadaria had to fight to keep a firm grip on the weapons. Their effect on her so soon after drawing so much power from the sphere was nearly crippling. She forced the pain to the back of her mind and focused on the girl side-stepping in a wide circle around her.

Tionne’s eyes blazed in the moonlight
, and it was hard for Tiadaria to believe that she was facing off against a child that was three years younger than she was. The hatred and anger that consumed the girl had transformed her into a monster every bit as terrifying as her creations. The whip snapped out again and Tiadaria raised a sword to block it. She’d been expecting the razor-sharp blades to cut through the whip easily. Instead, her arm was knocked away with the force of the impact. It was as if she’d countered the strike of a claymore, not a thin piece of leather.

Obviously the girl’s weapon had secrets that ran deeper than appearances would suggest. Tiadaria shook her arm, trying to rid herself of the numbness that coursed into her shoulder from the unexpected impact. Tionne pulled her arm back, preparing for another strike. This time, Tiadaria was ready. The whip flashed out
, and Tiadaria put her blade into its path, allowing it to wrap itself around the length of her blade. With a burst of strength drawn from the sphere, she yanked her scimitar back, hard, and pulled Tionne off-balance.

In that moment of opportunity, Tiadaria leapt forward, closing the distance between herself and her young nemesis. Tiadaria dropped the scimitars, grabbing Tionne by her long, dark hair and forcing her shoulders over. She brought her knee up in a sharp blow, burying it in Tionne’s stomach. Breath whooshed out of the smaller girl and her hands went slack. The whip dropped to the ground. Tiadaria clasped her hands together and heaved them over her head, as if chopping wood. She brought them
down on the base of the rogue Quintessentialist’s neck, snapping her head back.

Tionne wavered there a moment, then her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped to the ground. Tiadaria kicked the whip away. She was pretty sure that the girl was unconscious, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. Grabbing one of her swords from the ground, she prodded Tionne with the tip of the blade. She didn’t move. Cautiously kneeling beside her, Tiadaria felt on the girl’s neck for the life beat. It was there and it was strong. She’d be able to return to Dragonfell and answer for her crimes.

“You foolish child,” a cold voice said from behind Tiadaria. “What have you done?”

Tiadaria whirled, but she was too slow. A bolt of force summoned by Nerillia slammed into her middle where the skin still burned from Tionne’s assault. With nothing to stop her flight, Tiadaria sailed away from the
Lamiad, but managed to keep a grip on her blade. She landed hard on her back, but struggled with some effort to return to a fighting stance. Nerillia was closing on her, taking long, even strides. Her eyes glowed with crimson menace.

Lowering the tip of her blade to charge, Tiadaria managed to take a step forward before the
Lamiad stretched out her hand. With a simple motion, Nerillia yanked the sword from Tiadaria’s grasp and flung it aside. Her survival instinct kicked in and Tiadaria decided to run, but it was too late. Nerillia had her cool hand around Tiadaria’s throat and was lifting her into the air. Narrow fingers dug into the sides of her neck, cutting off the precious air she needed to live.

“Drop her, now.”

Tiadaria had never been overly fond of Adamon’s voice, but right now, the sound of it was the sweetest music she had ever heard. Nerillia seemed not to have heard him, or didn’t care, as she squeezed ever tighter. The roar of Adamon’s dwarven hand cannon shattered the night and Nerillia’s grip loosened, if just a little.

“Let her go now, or I promise that I will return you to whatever corner of the Deep Void you crawled out of.
The next shot goes through your head.”

The bronze hammer quivered in anticipation, waiting to spring forward and set off the explosion that would drive the projectile out of the miniature cannon and into the flesh of the
Lamiad, lifting Tiadaria off the ground. The pressure of Adamon’s finger on the trigger was almost, but not quite, enough to trip the hammer and fire the remaining shot.

The
Lamiad tensed, and Adamon put an almost infinitesimal amount of additional pressure on the trigger. He could feel the resistance of the tiny gears that drove the mechanism that lifted the hammer from its resting place. Any further movement on his part, and the weapon would discharge. That would almost certainly kill the Lamiad, and possibly Tiadaria as well. He wouldn’t be heartbroken over the first, but the latter would cause no end of problems, investigations, and inquiries.

“What assurance do I have that if I free her, you won’t kill me anyway?”

“I’ve given you no assurance of anything,” Adamon replied. “In fact, if you don’t do as I say, I’ll kill Tionne first, just so you know she’s dead, then I’ll kill you anyway. It matters little to me.”

Nerillia turned her head just a fraction so she could see the Grand Inquisitor out of the corner of her eye. Adamon suspected that she was appraising how truthful he was being. He hoped that her intuition was good. He had no qualms about killing both of them
there in openness of the field. It would solve so many problems. Tiadaria’s insistence that they be returned to Dragonfell for “justice” chief among them.

The
Lamiad must have realized that he was serious, for in the next moment, she released her hold on Tiadaria’s throat and dropped her unceremoniously onto the ground by her feet. The Swordmage scrambled across the damp earth, snatching up her weapon and pointing it in the direction of her recent captor.

“Where’s Selma?” Tiadaria asked.

Adamon snorted. At least she had the good sense to think about her charges first. Perhaps there was hope for this reckless creature yet.

“Safe.”

“I’m here, Tia.” The young girl stepped out from behind the inquisitor, still clinging to his traveling cloak. Her pale white face shone like a second moon, and it was obvious that she’d taken no lasting harm from their escape from Havenhedge or their arrival at Tiadaria’s rescue.

“What now?” Adamon asked. He knew how he wanted to proceed, and it ended with two graves dug deep in the earth at the edge of the field, but he doubted Tiadaria would allow that. She was, after all, nominally in charge of the operation since it fell under the purview of the Grand Army of the Imperium. Of which, by all the gods that were, are, or would be, she was the Captain.

“Censure them both and return them to Dragonfell to answer for their crimes.”

Tiadaria’s answer came far too easily to sit well with Adamon. He almost wanted her to struggle with it. To realize that not everything in the world was black and white. However, he knew that arguing with her would be pointless. Once her mind was made up about
something, it stayed made up about it. All the horses in the Imperium wouldn’t drag her away from it.

“Very well.” Adamon eased the hammer down on the cannon and dropped the weapon into the holster hanging on his hip. He flexed his hand, which felt extraordinarily empty. It was almost as if
the heavy brass and leather of the weapon had become an extension of his arm. He missed it, but he couldn’t perform the censuring ritual with it in his hand. Tiadaria still had her scimitar pointed at Nerillia’s throat. That should be sufficient deterrent against any rash actions on the Lamiad’s part.

As soon as Adamon’s hand had retreated from the handle of the cannon, Nerillia dove toward where Tionne lay. Tiadaria was only a split second behind her
, and Adamon reacted only a moment after that, but it was still too late. By the time Tiadaria had landed at the spot where the unconscious girl lay, both she and her Lamiad protector had disappeared in a swirl of cold darkness.

“What?” Tiadaria asked. She seemed unable to find words to elaborate on the question.

Adamon really couldn’t blame her. He scrubbed at his face with both hands.

“Gatewalk,” he said, slipping into
sphere sight just long enough to catch the last faint echo of their departure in the living memory of the field in which they stood.

“But there’s no gate!” she exclaimed. “Did you know they could do that?”

“No,” Adamon admitted. “But the Pheen can do it. We’d be fools to expect that no other creature on Solendrea could mimic that ability.”

“Where did they go?”

He shrugged. “No way of telling. At least not quickly. And they’re smart. By the time we figure out where they went, they’ll have moved on. She was one step ahead of us this time.”

“I don’t like that one bit,” Tiadaria said, her tone savage. “I don’t like that they’re out there together. Tionne is bad enough. Tionne with Nerillia in tow is the stuff of nightmares.”

“We’ll catch up to them eventually. We have larger problems to attend to at the moment. Like ridding Havenhedge of the rest of those…things.”

“Good, I could work out some of this aggression,” Tia said, flexing her arms. She shot a comically savage look at Selma, who giggled.

Adamon rolled his eyes.

The three of them started across the field, back toward Have
nhedge and the task that waited for them there.

~

“This is it?” Tiadaria nudged the lifeless body of one of the creatures with the toe of her boot. “I wanted something I could fight.”

Adamon knelt by another body laying on the cobbles not far from where Tiadaria stood. The pumpkin-creatures seemed to have collapsed where they stood. He rolled the inert thing over. It left a long string of black ooze that connected the body to the street where it had lay. They were rotting already.

“It seems that when Tionne and Nerillia departed, they took the animating force of these creatures with them.”

“Filthy blood magic, no doubt.” Tiadaria snorted, giving the body a savage kick that sprayed ichor across the littered street.

“A likely hypothesis.”

Adamon’s pragmatic response did nothing to improve her mood. She’d wanted to work off the frustration of losing both Tionne and Nerillia. She wanted to know where they had gone, to be able to pursue them and bring them back to Dragonfell one final time. Once she got hold of them, she’d ensure they never saw the light of day again. She’d see them censured and dropped in a pit deep enough that they’d never again see the light of day. That wouldn’t bring back the scores of innocents they had killed or make Tiadaria whole again, but it would be a start
, and that would have to be good enough.

That thought put her in mind of Wynn and she swiped at a tear that appeared, unexpectedly, at the corner of her eye. She blinked back another and turned toward the location of the farmhouse where she’d seen the specter of her former love. She caught Adamon looking at her and quickly looked away. She’d arrived at the burned out ruins of the farmhouse last night after returning from the field. She had stayed with the burning wreckage until Adamon had threatened to remove her bodily if she didn’t go of her own volition. Tiadaria had tried to explain what had happened, but he’d just dismissed the entire occurrence as a product of her overstimulated nerves and the peril of her situation.