EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (29 page)

Looking up, she saw three deadly arrows heading straight for her.

If she had ever doubted the arrows were unnatural, she didn’t now.

Any fool could dip an arrowhead in poison to spread sickness to the opposing forces. It would be a bit much to assume a fool could also manage to use a deadly disease that acted so fast that the poisoned foe was dead in minutes. But that was why relatively smart apothecaries-turned-poisoners were employed by the imperial army.

But this? This was different. These arrows didn’t hit the ground. They never targeted the soil and they swerved
around
wagons to hit targets to the side. They were guided. Guided to hit targets with blood—human or animal, it made no difference.

As she watched the three come down on her, she raised her shield arm calmly.
 

With one internal command the shield bloomed from a small round object to a mighty transparent disc of orange fire that incinerated the arrow on impact.
This
is what Sara had been looking for. She had used to own one, and thanks to the benevolence of the mercenary who had died, she did again. An expanding shield fueled by magic.

With a spring in her step, Sara headed back to Nissa. She needed to collect her and they needed to get to the woods. Once there, Sara had plans that involved tying the troublesome prisoner to a tree and finding her own way to the Kade mages. She was ready to lop off their heads. Running with the strength of her battle magic and dodging missiles with the dexterity of something unhuman, she came to an abrupt stop when she heard a sharp whistle.

A whistle she recognized. It would be hard to forget after nearly bursting her eardrum.

Sara searched as she turned looking for its source. She managed to blast two arrows coming directly at her with her mage fire before she could locate the direction.
 

“Sara, over here!” came the cry of her one friend on this side of the world. Halfway between Sandrin and the annexed principalities, Sara stood on the ground as her eyes pierced the gloom. She knew where he was, but it was tough to pinpoint one body among so many. Then she spotted Ezekiel. Half-buried under a mound of bodies. She felt her heart flip. Not exactly terror, but close. What if the idiot had gotten himself hurt?

She took off at a run.

When she finally reached him, he popped up so fast that she nearly stabbed him in the chest before she swung her sword wide.

“What were you doing under there Ezekiel?” she asked, exasperated. She noticed that he seemed to have lost his glasses somewhere, but otherwise no cuts or scrapes marked his body. Ezekiel Crane was a lucky bastard.

He tutted. “You
have
noticed that the arrows are targeting living beings only, right? The horses, the elephants,
people.
”

Sara heard the whistling warning of the thin missiles coming through the air. She whirled around and extended her arm to ward off an incoming blow. The arrows, ten of them, bounced harmlessly off of her extended shield like flimsy sticks.

“I have noticed that, yes,” she said dryly.

“Oh, well, good then,” Ezekiel said, peering over her shoulder. “Nice magical shield. Where’d you get it?”

“Off a mercenary,” Sara said as she scanned the skies warily for more threats.

“He was dead when you took it off him, right?”

“Practically.”

“You didn’t bother helping him?”

“You
have
noticed that anyone dead or dying around here is doing so by poison, yes?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Good, then you know there wasn’t a dratted thing I could do to help out, then.”

“Perhaps.”

“I’m not a healer,” she said, exasperated.

“No, you’re a battle mage.”

Sara extended her shield until it formed an almost perfect sphere around them. The edges met the mound of bodies behind them.

“Exactly. Now, if I can get you to safety, I can do my
job
.”

Affronted, he said, “No one asked you to come after me.”

“I was just supposed to leave you here?”

“If that’s what you would have preferred.”

“Don’t get snooty on me, Ezekiel. We’re in a battle, for god’s sake. You’re my friend. You needed my help. I came. End of story.”

He softened. “You just called me your friend.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t eat a damned dragonfly for anyone less.”

A smiled cracked his expression, then his weak eyes widened as he shouted, “Watch out!”

Sara turned just as an enormous ball of battle fire exploded on the exterior of her shield. She fell to her knee on the force of the impact, but she didn’t falter. Her shield felt weaker, though, as she stood.

“I’m not so sure we can stand much more of this,” she said.

“I’m surprised we survived that one,” Ezekiel said frankly.

She was too busy scoping the battlefield to pay attention as he stammered. “Not that I don’t have faith in your abilities. It’s just…I’ve never seen anything survive battle fire like that.”

“First time for everything.”

Ezekiel gripped her shoulder tightly from behind. “I don’t think you understand, Sara. Battle fire is supposed to be indestructible.”

“I know. I’m a battle mage, remember? My father taught me.”
 

“Did he teach you that only a war mage could command the shield that you’re holding in your hand as well?”

Sara turned to him with a frown. “What are you muttering about, Ezekiel?”

He glared at her through a squint. “Something important.”

“More important than us sprinting for our lives before that second ball of enormous flames comes down on us?” she said while pointing up. She watched him turn to look at a ball the size of an elephant coming for them. The previous one had only spanned the width of the wagon. She didn’t think her shield would survive a direct hit of that magnitude.

Apparently neither did Ezekiel, as his face paled and he said, “No, no, I don’t think so.”

“Good,” she said grimly. “Let’s go. I’ve got someone to introduce you to. Stay close to me and don’t wander off.”

“You met someone else?
Who
?”

“You’ll see,” she grunted.

She turned quickly and sheathed her sword. Then she grabbed his clammy hand.

For a moment Sara wondered how he could be cold on the battlefield, then she realized it was blood and she said nothing.

“What are you doing?”

“Not losing you again.”

“Oh, right.”

They took off, running for their lives.

Chapter XXIII

A
S
S
ARA
WEAVED
BETWEEN
BODIES
, she was careful to keep her speed to a manageable level. Lucky for her, even with her mage abilities, Ezekiel made up what he lacked in mage boosts with his ability to leap over fallen comrades and turn corners like there was no tomorrow.

Panting they came back to where she had left Nissa. Her stomach dropped when Sara saw that she wasn’t there.

She had just lost the most infamous prisoner the Algardis Empire had ever come across.

And then a loud hiss interrupted her thoughts.

Nissa’s head popped around the corner and then jerked back when an arrow nearly took out her eye.

“Where have you been?” shouted the woman from the other side of the pile. “Who is that?”

“I was searching for a shield,” shouted back Sara.

Ezekiel hurried to intercede. “I’m the friend. A friend.
Her
friend.”

Sara snorted as he stumbled over his words. She had to wonder why he decided to get nervous now. Then Nissa poked her head around again and Sara didn’t have to wonder. The glare of numerous balls of battle fire striking the ground illuminated her and revealed a lot that had gone unnoticed in the cramped prisoner’s wagon. The woman’s hair was a black so metallic that it was like staring at the night sky without moon and stars. Her skin was unblemished except for those torture scars on her chest, and Sara would bet money that wouldn’t deter Ezekiel. She also had a dainty look about her, even though it was obvious she was at least six feet tall. In other words, Nissa was startlingly beautiful, even covered in a now-grimy white gown and dodging poisonous arrows.

“Come on,” Sara urged as she pulled Ezekiel by the hand and they rushed around to where Nissa crouched.

For a moment they were silent while Sara’s two compatriots assessed each other with wary eyes as arrows streaked overhead. She wondered what each thought of the other.

In her mind she introduced them as,
Treasure hunting curator, meet cold-blooded mage killer.

Instead, Sara said aloud, “Ezekiel, meet Nissa. Nissa, meet Ezekiel.”

Ezekiel nodded stiffly. “Curator.”

Sara looked at him, thinking
, Is he on something? Or just reading my mind? She didn’t ask him anything
.

But apparently Nissa didn’t mind as she listed her profession flippantly. “Sun mage.”

Ezekiel stiffened. He looked to Sara, who raised an eyebrow. He looked back at Nissa, who gave a small smile.

Turning to Sara, he leaned over and said, “Is she insane?”

Sara turned to him. “I don’t think so.”

“Are
you
?” asked Nissa rudely.

He turned to her and tried to push his non-existent spectacles up the bridge of his nose. Realizing the futility of his gesture too late, Ezekiel hastily dropped his hand.

“You have to be pretty insane to think you can claim the title of sun mage and not have it challenged,” he said. “Everyone outside of the principalities wants all eight members of the Kade mages dead. Including you.”

“I’m well aware of those ungrateful pigs’ opinions of me and my compatriots,” Nissa said stiffly.

“Aren’t you supposed to be dead anyway?” Ezekiel asked, baffled.

Sara said at the same time, “Ungrateful wretches?
You
—you and your cohorts have torn our empire apart.”

Nissa gave her droll look. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Hundreds are dead,” said Sara stiffly.

“And thousands more will be. I have seen the future, and this conflict is far from over,” said Nissa softly.

A blast of battle fire landed in the not too far distance. They were safe under Sara’s shield, especially since it came nowhere close to being a direct hit. Instead, the light of the combustion lit all three of them in an amber glow.

“I will die before seeing one more father not come home to his child,” said Sara.

Nissa looked around outside the shield above them and said, “Then you have already failed. Because you live while your comrades fall at your feet.”

Sara’s hands twitched towards the woman’s neck. Ezekiel hastily put a warning hand on her shoulder.

He quickly asked, “Can you prove it?”

Nissa looked at him with a bored air.

“That you’re who you say you are, I mean?”

She raised her hands. “Take these mage-binding bracelets off and let’s see.”

Ezekiel looked a little
too
interested in taking Nissa up on her offer. Sara poked him harshly to snap him out of the glazed look that had drifted into his eyes.

Ezekiel rubbed his side without looking over as he said, “You know, Sara, there hasn’t been a sun mage in so many years.”
“No,” Sara said.

“But they have really cool gifts. Like healing with the power of the rays of the sun, for one.”

Sara turned to him in disgust.

“It’s for the science of it all.” he yelped. “To study such a rare mage.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “No.”

“But—”

“Do you
know
how many people she’s purported to have killed, Ezekiel?”

“Well…”

“Exactly,” said Sara flatly. “I’m not letting her loose. You’re not letting her loose. I’m don’t care if she’s a lying chimpanzee in disguise. We can’t risk it. Do not under any circumstances touch those manacles.”

Ezekiel slumped in a pout.

“My, she has you wrapped around her little finger,” said the sun mage mockingly.

Both Sara and Ezekiel turned their glares on her.

Nissa rolled her eyes unafraid. “Speaking of which, aren’t you supposed to be taking me somewhere? Like to your captain?”

“Why do you want to see Simon?” said Sara, immediately suspicious.

“Let me spell it out for you,” said Nissa. “Wherever he is, it’s safe.”

“If he’s not already dead,” said Ezekiel.

“If he were dead, all of the defense mechanisms keeping this entire field from erupting into one big blast would be gone. We would be fried,” said Nissa.

Sara snapped. “What do you mean?”

“Do you honestly not know?” said Nissa.

Their tense, blank faces told her everything she needed to know.

“Well, well, well,” she said as she leaned back with a satisfied purr.

Sara noticed that her garment spread open further on her chest as she did.

Good
, she thought with a snarl as she brought her knife to Nissa’s porcelain skin
. The better to cut her throat with
.

“Careful, battle mage,” said Nissa. “You wouldn’t want to kill the only person out of the three of us here who knows more than you do.”
“Speak up, then,” said Sara in a tense growl.

She was aware of Ezekiel’s hands twisting and turning in his lap, but for once he said nothing.

Nissa said, “There’s a reason we attacked you here. This entire piece of land sits above a natural pocket of gas a few hundred meters below the surface.”
“‘We?’” squeaked Ezekiel.

“Figure of speech,” Nissa said with a shrug. “I align myself with the Kade mages even when I had nothing to do with the planning.”

“Go on,” prodded Sara.

“With enough blasts of battle fire,” Nissa said, “and the past ten rounds were certainly enough, this field should have blown you, your company, and the surrounding land for miles to smithereens. But from what I can see, mages’ battle fire can’t pierce a few meters below the surface.”

“And you know this because we haven’t been blown to bits yet,” said Ezekiel.

“Precisely,” said Nissa with a gentle smile.

Sara tilted her head. “You think Captain Simon has someone with him blocking the mages’ efforts?”