03 - Sworn (58 page)

Kel tilted his head back toward camp. I was about to nod when Severn said, “No, I wouldn’t do that. We’re surrounded here. I’ve instructed my Sorcerers not to interfere. You might wish to keep yours out of it as well, for your sake and theirs.”

“Of course,” Ulric said, as though this were the most reasonable request imaginable. “Shall we?”

I reached out my awareness, but sensed no one else in the area. Either he was bluffing, or they had strong enough magic that I couldn’t sense their presences. I wasn’t about to risk anyone’s life on a bet that it was the former.

Movement caught my attention, and I turned to see Rowan take Kel’s hand. He pulled her closer to him, away from the Sorcerers preparing for their battle, and put an arm around her. She glared at Severn. I fought back the urge to scream at them to run in spite of Severn’s instructions.

If Severn took Ulric down, and then me, Rowan would be next. He hadn’t forgiven her for what she did to him the last time they met, and she’d said that her magic needed time to replenish. She’d be defenseless.

I won’t let that happen.
I remembered Rowan’s words from the last time we’d met Severn in the woods.
This isn’t how it ends.

Not if I had any say in it.

The two bowed. Before Ulric straightened, Severn swung his arm around and sent a blast of power out. Ulric was ready. He deflected it with some magic unfamiliar to me, which set the air and the earth shaking around us. It was powerful, frightening.
Thank you, Nox,
I thought, as the two squared off again.

And then the former king fell to his hands and knees, gasping for air.

The surprise on Severn’s face told me this wasn’t some new trick of his. The potion had shored up Ulric’s strength, but his magic was still hurting him. His skin turned blue around his lips, and the wrinkles around his eyes deepened, aging him before my eyes.

Severn laughed. “Well. This is interesting.” He crouched in front of Ulric, just a little more than an arm’s length away. “I think I have something back in the city that would take care of that for you. Pity you won’t make it there.”

Ulric’s sunken eyes burned.

“Go ahead,” Severn said. “Take my strength, if you can.”

Ulric’s already wrinkled forehead creased further as he focused. Severn gasped, and a surge of hope flowed through me. It was dashed as soon as it came. Ulric cried out and released whatever of Severn’s magic he’d just drawn, but the damage was done. Blood streamed from his eyes like tears, and he struggled again for breath.

Severn sighed. “I won’t say I’m sorry. You taught me not to. You taught me all of this.” He leaned in closer and spat on the ground next to Ulric’s face. “I hope you’re proud.”

Ulric’s lips were no more able to form words than his lungs were capable of delivering the necessary air. He collapsed face-first into the stony ground. Severn watched for a moment, but Ulric didn’t draw another breath.

My own breath stilled for a moment as I processed the idea that he was gone.
But Nox hasn’t come back,
I thought, completely irrationally.
It’s not time yet.

I forced my mind to turn back to Severn. If Ulric were dead, everything rested on me. No time for mourning, for mixed feelings, or for fear.

Severn got to his feet and looked to me. “Aren. I do wish this could end differently.”

“It’s a little late for that, I think.”

Kel stepped forward, apparently unafraid. “May I move him?”

“You’re the mer, aren’t you?” Severn asked, and frowned. “By all means. Take him.” He stepped back.

Kel flipped Ulric’s body over and rested a hand on his chest. A look of deep sadness came over him. He hadn’t cared for Ulric, had never claimed to see goodness hidden deep inside of him, but he understood what we’d lost.

Kel wrapped his hands around Ulric’s wrists and dragged him behind a bush. He brushed his hands off on his pants as he returned to stand next to Rowan.

“You’re far from home,” Severn observed.

Kel’s expression remained perfectly neutral. “I have loyalties here.”

Severn’s lips tightened. “I mean your people no harm, and I have no quarrel with you. It is out of respect for your people that I ask you to leave now. Avoid the camp, speak to no one. Return to where you belong.”

Kel didn’t answer, but took Rowan’s hand again. Cold fingers wrapped around my heart as I watched him pull her back a step. Not far enough. It never would be, as long as Severn lived.

I felt a hint of her magic on the air. Weak, but ready to join mine, to do whatever she could to help. I shook my head. Her magic faded, but she continued to fix an ice-cold glare on our enemy. He ignored it.

“Very well.” Severn turned back to me. “Aren, you can’t win this any more than the old man could have. You know that.”

I stepped to the edge of the dip in the clearing that had become Severn’s arena and dropped my knife as required by the rules of magical combat. I blocked everything but Severn and his magic from my awareness. “Are you offering again to let me join you? Nice position in Darmid, perhaps, if I come back to work for you?”

Severn chuckled. “Hardly. You’ve had your last chance, and I’ve given you far too many. Tell me, would you take it if I offered you one?”

A strange sense of calm settled over me. “No. You ran out of chances with me long ago.”

“Very well.”

Without preamble, without ceremony, his magic lashed out at me. Flames erupted from his hands, a wall of fire that covered the space between us in a moment. I sent my own fire out, larger than anything I’d attempted before. It didn’t burn as hot as Severn’s, but it didn’t need to. The power was what mattered. Our magic collided between us. Severn’s flames could come no closer, but it took all of my strength to keep them at bay. He pulled his back. I stumbled forward, pulled by the force of my magic, which faded as the flames washed over him without causing harm.

“That’s new,” he observed, and paced sideways. Considering. No showmanship this time, not so much as a flick of his hand as pain blasted into my shoulder hard and fast, washing the world away in its bright fury.

Fight back,
I ordered myself, barely able to hear my own thoughts under the screams of agony that shot through my body.
Block him. Build a wall.

As I attempted to form a shell around my body as Nox had around her mind, Severn’s magic pressed harder. Slowly I became aware of my own breath, coming in gasps. My teeth should have cracked under the pressure of my clenched jaw, which couldn’t hold back the animal noises rising from my throat as brighter pain than I’d ever felt before slashed deeper into my body, tearing me apart. Rocky ground dug into my knees and the palms of my hands. I hadn’t realized I had fallen.

I forced my magic to act in new ways, to reach its greatest heights and depths to protect me, blocking the pain from my mind, if not my body. The air grew cold. Frost formed on the ground beneath my hands as the undeveloped skill robbed the surrounding air of its energy. I raised my head as the pain receded, if only by a fraction.

More.

The world solidified, though the pain still kept me from moving. Severn’s face contorted with effort, and something else. A few breaths later, I realized it was panic.

I forced myself to my feet, though a thousand hot knives of pain cut into my back. The agony radiated out from there until every part of me screamed that I should beg for death.

Slowly, fighting the searing agony every movement, I commanded my body to stand straight.

“Beg for mercy!” Severn screamed.

“No.” Tears coursed down my cheeks and froze there, but I stood with my feet planted firmly.

Severn drew his power back to himself, but the pain lingered.
Change,
I thought, and thought better of it when I remembered my last fight in that form. He would be ready for it, and I would be left without other magic.

“Enough.” Severn’s voice had become hoarse. “I’ve been merciful for too long. No more games.”

A blast of raw, destructive power shot from his hands. I collapsed, allowing it to pass overhead, and the magic splintered the middle of a pine behind me. The top half of the tree crashed to the ground, sending out the sharp scent of sap from the shattered wood.

Rowan let out a startled cry that barely registered in my mind.

Severn snarled. “Don’t be a coward, Aren.”

The pain tried to return, and I found that this time, I blocked it a little more easily—at least enough that I could keep moving, though every motion made the agony flare. A flame shot toward me, and I sent my own out. I fought to clear my mind, to recapture the way I’d felt when I put out fires before. When our flames met, I allowed them to mingle, wrapping his in mine. He grinned as his fire reached toward me, singeing my skin. The grin faded as my fire encompassed his, and I doused both.

My power sang through me as it never had before, alive and awake and willing to fight, sharpened by my pain and rage. For the first time, I understood that I was strong enough to defeat him.

I stepped closer to Severn, and his eyes widened. “Do you want to see what else I’ve learned?” I asked, and let him feel my energy building. Panic flashed over his features. He sent out another blast of magic. I moved again, but it caught my left hand, and pain flared as skin split and several bones cracked under the force.

The pain would have been unbearable had I not just suffered worse, and had I not been so completely focused on what I felt in Severn’s magic, which I was so intimately and disastrously connected to.

His magic was weak for the briefest moment, just after the blast and before he drew again on the ambient magic of the land. Taking the only chance that would ever present itself, I pushed my pain aside and slipped into his mind. He was still too strong for me to break him, but he felt me there. I pushed harder, cracking his ever-strengthening defenses as a root breaks a stone wall.

Screams filled my mind. Images of torture, of blood. Panic. Fear. The scent of smoke. He tried to pull away, but I held on. I could have had his heart gripped in my fist for all the power he had against me at that moment.

I pushed harder, willing my way past his surface thoughts. His eyes darted to the side as he searched for something to break my focus and my control.

Toward Rowan.

His thoughts focused on her destruction.

“No!” My voice came without bidding from me, and I struggled to keep my focus on Severn even as he sent out another blast of magic—this time at someone who couldn’t defend herself. I might have got deeper then, broken him, but Rowan’s scream ripped my focus away from my task. Severn’s mind slammed closed, and he shoved me away with another blast of magic, though this was more like a strong wind than raw power.

We stood there, both of us shaking. I wouldn’t look away. Not if there might be another opportunity. I could still feel his mind, just out of reach.

Severn’s eyes darted to my right, and widened. A flash of terror radiated out through the thin connection that still existed between us.

And then he was gone, body and mind, leaving only an echo of his magic and a pile of clothing to make it clear that the visit hadn’t been a horrible dream.

His horse shook its head, then glanced across the clearing. “Florizel?”

“Murad!” Florizel cried, and raced toward him.

The black horse blinked slowly, and then his eyes widened. “No!” he screamed. “Stay away! He calls to me.” His head whipped back and twisted on his neck, forcing him to turn. “Don’t follow me there!” he cried, and then stopped, entranced again. In a graceful, unhurried movement his hind muscles bunched, and he launched himself into the air.

Florizel ran after him and took off. Both horses disappeared behind the trees.

Severn was alive, then, but likely weak.
If I follow now I might—

“Aren.” Rowan’s voice came out a thick sob, full of agony and fear. “Please, help.”

I forgot about Severn, and about my own lingering pain.

Rowan sat on the ground with Kel’s head cradled in her lap. Tears streamed down her face as she stroked his hair—as much of it wasn’t soaked in blood from the broad gash that revealed the bone beneath, crushed and mangled. Blood soaked his shirt, which had been torn open, revealing another irreparable injury to his chest. He had been shattered by Severn’s magic. He lay still, and then his body convulsed, and he groaned.

The injury would have killed a human immediately, and it would have been a mercy. A mer’s body was so much stronger. His body trembled, then went stiff as his muscles tightened.

I ran to them and fell to my knees beside Kel. A chill filled the air, and he gasped. His eyes rolled, showing white, and then focused on me. Otherwise, his face had gone slack and expressionless, overtaken by pain.

“I can’t—I can’t heal him,” Rowan sobbed, and pressed a bloodstained hand to his chest. “I can’t stop it. I can’t fix it. I’m trying, but I can’t—”

Kel’s breath hitched, and he seemed to return to himself. “Don’t,” he whispered. “I know you can’t—” He cut himself off with a sharp breath. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” she said, and brushed away one of her tears that had fallen onto his face. “Don’t lie. But merfolk are strong, right? You’re going to live. When Nox comes back, or if we could find a healer… Maybe Morea can help.”

Kel closed his eyes. His face contorted as another spasm gripped his body, lifting it nearly off the ground.

Rowan looked to me. “I don’t think Kel even thought about what he was doing. He pushed me away when Severn threw his magic.” She placed her hand back on Kel’s face and stroked his eyebrows. The spasm calmed, and his face relaxed.

“Help me.” Rowan unbuttoned Kel’s shirt, further revealing the gaping wound in his side. His ribs lay exposed and splintered. “We can try to stop the bleeding, get him back to camp.” There was little hope in her voice.

“Rowan,” Kel said, and reached up to take her hand. “It’s no good. Sometimes being strong only means a slower death. Don’t chase it off.”

Her chin trembled. “You can’t leave us.”