The Sentinel Mage (57 page)
The prince turned his head and looked at her. His face was ashen.
Innis swallowed.
I’m sorry I made you do that.
She pushed to her feet, grabbing the torch. “Come! We must hurry!”
They scrambled from the wall, dropping the last few feet to land in a hot pile of cinders and ashes. Innis ran, skirting the largest of the fires, plowing through the charred bodies. Heat burned through the soles of her boots, through her trews. “Here, sire! The anchor stone!”
A
SMOKING SKELETON
lay across the anchor stone. The witch tried to push it aside with the torch, but the skeleton disintegrated into ash and embers. She swept them away with her sleeve.
Harkeld stepped closer. He looked down at the stone. He was shaking, trembling. Panic sparked and twisted inside him. He tried to concentrate on what was in front of him—not the fires, not the smoke and the burning corpses, not the flames that had roared through him. This was the anchor stone? It looked so ordinary, a lump of black basalt, pitted with tiny holes.
The witch put down the torch. She drew her sword. The blade slid from the scabbard with a sleek, hissing sound. She took a pace away from the stone and stood facing outwards, guarding him.
Harkeld fumbled for his dagger. Tiny spurts of flame still seemed to sizzle under his skin. His hands shook so violently he almost dropped the dagger. Memory of the rush and crackle of fire roaring through him, bursting from his skin, was vivid.
He inhaled a deep, shuddering breath—trying to push back the suffocating panic, trying to hold his hands steady—and sliced across his left palm. There was a sharp sting of pain. Blood welled from the cut.
The blood of a Rutersvard prince. The blood of a witch.
He laid his hand on the anchor stone. The basalt was hot to touch, almost scorching. “How long?” His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been screaming.
“I don’t know. A minute?”
Harkeld flattened his hand against the basalt. He counted the seconds in his mind. His palm felt like it was burning, blistering.
“There are more coming.” The witch’s voice was tense.
The stone radiated heat, but at the same time it seemed to suck at his palm, as if the tiny pores in the basalt tried to inhale his blood.
Harkeld counted ten more seconds and lifted his hand. He had to wrench slightly, as if his skin had adhered to the stone.
“Sire?”
He looked at his palm. It was pink from the stone’s heat, smeared with blood. “Done,” he said.
A few drops of blood lay on the anchor stone. As he watched, they sank into the basalt. In a few seconds, the blood was gone.
Harkeld wiped the dagger on his shirt and sheathed it. He clenched his hand to stop the flow of blood and turned away from the stone. The witch was right: more corpses were emerging from the shadows. Not just one or two, but dozens, scores, stumbling through the smoldering remains of their fellows, converging on them.
Fear kicked in his chest. He stepped up alongside Innis and drew his own sword, gripping it with both hands. The flames engraved on the blade seemed to dance in the firelight.
“You must use your magic again, sire.”
Harkeld gripped the sword more tightly. He felt blood leak from the cut on his hand. “No.”
“Sire!” she said fiercely. “You must—”
He turned his head at sound behind him. A piece of basalt broke off the anchor stone and tumbled to the floor.
The witch stopped speaking.
Another piece broke off and then, with a faint, dusty sigh, the anchor stone crumbled into grit and fragments of stone.
As the stone crumbled, so did the corpses, falling where they stood, disintegrating as the witchcraft that had animated them departed.
For a long moment he and the witch stood side by side in silence, then Innis re-sheathed her sword. She glanced at him, her dark eyes reflecting the firelight. “It’s done,” she said.
Harkeld didn’t reply. He slid his sword into his scabbard and turned away from her.
“Your hand,” she said, reaching to take it. “Let me heal—”
Harkeld snatched his hand from her grasp. “No.” He bent and grabbed the torch and strode back the way they’d come—crushing embers and charred bones beneath his boots. He plunged into one of the aisles, his pace quickening as he scrambled over the rubble and skeletons littering the ground. He had to get away from smoldering fires and the choking smell, away from the memory of burning alive.
“Let me go first,” the witch said, as they approached the sliver of daylight.
Harkeld didn’t look at her, didn’t slow down, didn’t acknowledge her words.
Hard fingers gripped his arm, halting him.
He swung around to face her, the torch flaring, his free hand clenching into a fist. His panic, his terror, transformed into fury. “Don’t touch me!”
She pushed past him. “Let me go first. We don’t know if the assassins are still here.”
I hope they are
, he thought savagely.
I hope they kill you
.
“Innis!” A female voice called from the entrance. “Prince Harkeld! Are you there?”
I
NNIS BLINKED AS
they emerged into daylight. The sky was an unbearably bright blue, the sand a dazzling orange. Bodies lay sprawled on that orange sand: men, horses.
She saw one of the archers lying with his arms outstretched and a throwing star protruding from the top of his head in grotesque mimicry of a cockerel; she saw an assassin’s body, scorched and smoking.
Where’s Petrus?
“There you are, Innis!” Cora cried, her voice high with relief. “Over here! We need you!”
Innis hurried to where Cora knelt beside a soldier. His leg was laid open from hip to knee, exposing muscle and bone. Prince Tomas crouched on the man’s other side. A cut slashed across the prince’s cheek. Half his right ear was gone. Blood flowed from these wounds, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. Another assassin lay smoldering on the sand nearby.
Innis knelt hastily, placing her hands on either side of the gaping wound.
“Will he be all right?” Prince Tomas asked.
“Yes.” She glanced up, seeking Petrus, her gaze jerking from one sprawled body to the next: soldier, assassin, soldier, soldier, assassin—
There.
Petrus sat with his back to the outcrop. He was healing himself, his hands gripping his left thigh, his face furrowed in concentration. The last assassin lay a few yards from him, an arrow jutting from his throat.
Petrus looked up and caught her gaze. “You all right?”
She nodded.
“The anchor stone?” Cora asked.
Innis glanced at the prince, remembering the roar of flames, remembering the expression on his face afterwards: a mingling of terror, panic, despair.
Prince Harkeld’s mouth tightened. He turned away and looked out across the desert. His back was rigid, his hands clenched at his sides.
“The anchor stone is destroyed,” Innis said. She looked down at the soldier’s leg. She was aware of the man’s fear—not of being touched by a witch, but of dying.
As if in response, fear kicked in her own chest. One anchor stone had crumbled into dust, but two more remained.
How many of us will die before Ivek’s curse is broken?
Foreboding prickled over her scalp. Her skin tightened in a shiver. “You’ll be fine,” Innis told the soldier as she reached for her magic and began to heal him.
HERE ENDS BOOK ONE OF THE
CURSED KINGDOMS TRILOGY
Aided by the magic which courses through her veins, Melke is able to walk unseen by mortal eyes. When a necklace she has stolen holds the key to both saving her brother’s life and breaking a terrible curse, she must steal it back from a den of firebreathing salamanders. Things are about to get very tough for Melke, especially when she comes to realise she may have to trust the very people who were out to kill her.
Thief With No Shadow
is a rich, romantic fantasy tale set in a world where the ordinary and extraordinary co-exist, where nightmarish creatures live alongside men, and magic runs in the blood of mortals.
“From its all-too-human quartet of main characters to its ominous, other-worldly magical creatures, Gee’s story is compelling in its simplicity, engaging in its honesty.”
—Mindy Klasky, author of
Season of Sacrifice
and the
Glasswright
series
“Dark and compelling,
Thief With No Shadow
is a stunning debut. Emily Gee is a storyteller to watch.”
—Nalini Singh, bestselling author of
Slave to Sensation
Available to buy from the Kindle Store
The Corhonase citadel is a place of virtue and debauchery – and deadly secrets. For the Laurentine spies embedded there, every day brings danger. Nothing is as it seems, whether in the ballrooms and salons of the nobles’ court or the catacombs beneath the citadel.
Saliel has many secrets; her spying is one, her past as a pickpocket in Laurent’s slums is another, but her most deeply guarded secret is the magic she possesses. She walks a narrow path between discovery as a spy and being burned as a witch.
With a sadistic Spycatcher closing in, Saliel and her fellow spies are tested to the limits of their endurance. In the fight to stay alive they must trust each other – or die. Magic may be their only hope of survival...
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