Ascendant's Rite (The Moontide Quartet) (57 page)

‘Who the Hel are you?’ Alyssa demanded hoarsely. Satravim, his breath suddenly shallow and hot, pulled Ramita against him. His knife-point, shaking alarmingly, filled her gaze.

‘I am Lillea Sorades, if that name means anything to you,’ Corinea replied mockingly. She twisted her fingers, her eyes flashed violet, and the next Hadishah, the one standing beside the nursery door, screamed and collapsed. The remaining two assassins standing behind Alyssa and Satravim squeaked with fright and backed away.

Alyssa was still reacting to the name
.
‘
Lillea Sorades?
That’s impossible!’ She looked frantically at Satravim, then back at Corinea. ‘
Stop there! Or the girl dies!
’

It was time to act.

From the moment that Satravim had put his dagger against her face, part of Ramita had been trying to follow her training: to find the right spells for the situation. And now everyone was looking at Corinea . . .

With her left hand she
shoved
, using kinetic-gnosis to thrust the dagger violently up and away. Satravim gasped as the bones in his wrist snapped, but that wasn’t her
real
blow; that came from her right elbow, which she drove backwards into the assassin’s midriff. She was already inside his shields so he couldn’t do anything to weaken the blow – but even if he had, it would have done no good, for her elbow wasn’t just an elbow any more. In the instant between preparing the blow and striking, a nine-inch spur of bone had erupted from the joint; it was that which speared into Satravim’s stomach.

Satravim gagged as hot blood erupted over her, and for a moment Ramita was aghast at herself – but that lasted less than a moment.
They threatened my son!
The assassin staggered, his eyes bulging, his scarred face stretched into the beginnings of a scream, but she caught his knife with her gnosis and stabbed it into his chest, pouring energy along the blade as it went into his heart and he collapsed, his mouth gaping silently. In the brief moment as their eyes connected, the image was burned onto her brain. She’d never deliberately killed before.

But why stop now?

She whirled and found Alyssa Dulayne staring at her as if she’d never seen her before.
Well, she hasn’t . . .

Then gnosis flared behind her: Alyssa too had been preparing her spells, but hers were to find a way out, and that went through the walls: into the nursery . . .

*

It’s impossible!
I refuse to be gulled
, Alyssa told herself, but her mind was fixed on that dreadful name:
Lillea Sorades?
Corinea?
No – it’s just a lie to scare me!
But when Alyssa saw the look on Ramita’s face as she turned from Satravim, drenched in blood, fear took over.

She’d once been told that in peril, there were two gut responses: to fight, or to run. She’d always been one of the latter – in fact, she accounted it a virtue. Heroes fought and died; smart people ran, and lived to run again.

All the while she’d been threatening Ramita, she’d been working at that overpowered lock; it was strong, certainly, but also simple, and that meant a skilled counter-blow would break it. She thrust and the locking-spell came apart, the door swung open and she dashed through, feeling Ramita’s dagger scouring her shields as she sought an escape – a window to the outside. Someone moved in the dimly lit room and she loosed a mage-bolt, blasting the face off a young Lokistani woman. In the corner a baby boy sat up in bed, blearily opening his mouth—

A hostage! That’s what I need!
She reached out with kinesis to draw him to her—

—when something picked her up and hurled her towards the far wall. She spun in the air, trying to protect herself, and saw Ramita Ankesharan in the doorway, shining like a small sun – then she struck the wooden shutters and smashed through, keeping her shields tight around her as the timber splintered – and then she was falling through darkness, plummeting into the ravine amidst wooden splinters and shards of ice . . .

*

‘
NO
—
!
’ Ramita roared. She ran to Dasra, to make sure he was unharmed, then glimpsed Corinea even as the ancient sorceress flashed past the door. Two Keshi voices cried out in terror, then there was silence and her eyes went back to the broken shutters, and the wind howling through. She’d not meant to throw Alyssa out; she’d wanted to keep her right here. The smell of blood was in her nostrils, as well as warm and sticky on her skin, and she wanted
more
; she wanted that Rondian
kutti
to
suffer
for threatening her son.

She ran to the window, rage coursing through her.

The goddess Parvasi, Sivraman’s wife, the mother, was Ramita’s patron – but Parvasi-ji had a wilder aspect: Darikha, the warrior-woman who rides the tiger, and it was Darikha-Ji who was in her mind as she roared in fury, flashing to the window in time to see the comet-trail of Alyssa’s aura as she fell away into the darkness.

She’s a pure-blood – that fall won’t kill her . . .

She threw herself out the window.

*

The novices fanned out in all directions, only a dozen or so still upright, but no one hesitated. Even thoughtful souls like Aprek tore into their foes. Yash was blazing with aggression, Fire-spells pouring from him with increasing intensity as his inhibitions fell away. They were all growing into the fight, taking confidence in their skills.

They were still outnumbered. Alaron found himself facing two of half-blood strength, judging by their spells, and though his power dwarfed theirs, facing two foes was always a deadly game. Then his fighting instincts rose.

Twice before in his life, in deadly situations, he’d reached the mental state that magi called ‘trance’, when instinct took over and utilising two or even three gnostic skills at once became possible. Though he’d tried to achieve it in training, he’d never managed to – but now, in the heat of the fight, it began to happen again.

He engaged
divination
, to see his enemies’ blows even as the intention formed; and with
illusion
he blurred his form to conceal his footwork, which any trained fighter could use to anticipate the next blow. And with
kinesis
, he locked and layered his shields to parry more than one blow. Raw energy blazed at both tips of his kon-staff and he glided between his foes, parrying two thrusts in successive moments before flowing into a flying kick aimed at one while simultaneously slashing the staff at the other, drawing them into his wake as he spiralled by and slammed his staff at the left-hand assassin’s skull. The concussion of his blow pierced the assassin’s shield and sent him staggering straight into Yash’s reach. Yash shoved his own assailant back, then smashed his staff on the off-balance Hadishah. Gnosis-fire exploded and the assassin flopped bonelessly, the back of his head blasted open and smouldering.

The second Hadishah spun and slashed back at Alaron, who parried effortlessly and launched a rapid-fire attack, striking in a succession of blows that a single blade could never hope to follow – but a knife appeared in the Hadishah’s left hand and he blocked deftly, kindling energy on the blade as he riposted. Alaron parried again as power throbbed through the dagger, scouring his staff – then the Hadishah’s dagger snapped.

The assassin staggered backwards and Alaron followed, divining a sweeping scimitar cut at his head and ducking under it, then hurled a burst of illusory darkness at the Hadishah’s eyes. The assassin bellowed in alarm, suddenly blind, and began flailing about desperately and seeking to flee – the wrong way. Alaron drove his staff into his chest, gnosis-energy concussed through his foe and he flew backwards, landing in a broken limp-limbed heap.

Alaron had already moved on. Now the Hadishah captain was before him: a burly, brutal man who very obviously knew his business. He attacked with ferocity and skill, his scimitar and dagger flowing in perfect unison, scouring Alaron’s shields and almost taking his fingers off when the scimitar scraped down the shaft of his kon-staff. The next instant he lashed out with his boots and drove his blade at Alaron’s face, an attack designed to skewer his skull while his shields were fused elsewhere.

But it didn’t happen; Alaron’s shields were too strong. Instead, he hurled the man away and threw mage-fire at him, then battered at him with kinesis before wading towards him again.

All round the courtyard, the Hadishah were beginning to die. Like young lions realising hitherto unknown strengths, the novices were flexing their muscles now. Some remembered their first lessons as a Zain, fighting with restraint yet still battering the weakest Hadishah into submission. But the young monks also made mistakes. Though the assassins were far weaker than them, half-bloods and quarter-bloods against Ascendants, they’d been trained since childhood not just to fight, but to survive. Rather than kill his foe, one young Zain tried to take a wounded Hadishah prisoner, only to suddenly stagger away with a knife in his chest. The assassin ran for the doors – and was immolated from three sides. Mercy was forgotten.

The fight had clearly turned, but Alaron knew he had to finish it quickly. Ramita was upstairs, and he’d heard nothing from her. Cym was now lying motionless on the ground. Others were wounded, needing attention before they died.

The captain saw him glance at the Rimoni girl and spat out words in broken Rondian, clearly trying to goad Alaron into a false step. ‘Your woman? I fuck her! I shoot her!’ He grinned evilly.

It worked: Alaron saw red, all finesse vanished and he launched himself at the man, gripping the staff with both hands at one end and wielding it as if it were a broadsword, trying to belabour the Hadishah to death.

I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you
—

The man parried, again then again, and though his gnosis was less, his power wasn’t being wastefully squandered. He blocked Alaron’s staff, hacked it in half, then riposted with a straight-armed drive that pierced Alaron’s shields. Suddenly Alaron was gasping at a foot of steel plunging through his right shoulder, straight into the joint and out the back. He staggered, his shields dissipating.

An old Arcanum lesson echoed in his brain:
A good fighter remains calm . . .

Then someone rose behind the Hadishah captain and buried a dagger in his back amidst a scarlet starburst of shattered shields. The man’s brutish face went slack, his mouth fell open, then he collapsed, his scimitar torn from Alaron’s wound in an agonising wrench and clattering to the ground.

Behind him, Gateem stood staring aghast at his bloody knife. He dropped the weapon and stepped away as if trying to disassociate himself from it entirely.

Alaron gave him a grateful look, then the pain hit him. He shielded hard, lest he leave himself vulnerable, but those few Hadishah still standing, realising they were trapped, were dropping their weapons and holding up their hands in surrender. For a moment, carnage beckoned, then Mercy regained her grip on the minds of the young novices and they withheld their weapons.

Alaron’s eyes went back to Cym.

Oh no . . .
He staggered to her, dropped to his knees. ‘
Cym?
’

She opened one eye. Her lips tried to move, but nothing came out. His mind caught the word
.

—
!>

Her mental voice sounded resigned, and horribly faint.

He looked about wildly
.
‘
GATEEM! GATEEM!
’

The novice looked at him helplessly. ‘Already done all I can, Al’Rhon-sahib.>

‘
No! No you haven’t! We’ve got to do more
—
!
’
He gripped Cym’s arm, shouting at her as he flooded the wound with all the healing-gnosis he could, skills he’d not learned until recently, from Corinea’s sporadic tutelage.

Stop the blood-loss, reconnect the veins, bind the flesh, seal the wound, cauterise!

All the while he was shouting into her brain
,
<
Cym? Listen to me! You’re going to make it – just keep listening to me. Keep talking – you can’t die if you’re awake! You can’t die if you’re awake! You can’t die
—
!
>

Her eyelids fell, her head flopped sideways and her gaze emptied.

Alaron stared, disbelieving, as something broke inside him.

He turned to Gateem. ‘You’re our best healer!
Do something!
’

Gateem’s face was awash with tears of futility. ‘I
can’t
do anything more . . .’

‘
Then get Lily!
’ Alaron cast his eyes upward.

The sorceress arrived a minute later, tight-lipped and angry, Dasra cradled in her arms. She looked at Alaron’s face and her expression softened, and she bent over Cym dutifully, but by now even Alaron could see she’d already gone. And then he realised, when he thought nothing could be worse than what had already happened, that Ramita hadn’t appeared . . .

*

As the ravine opened beneath her, the air ripping past as she plummeted towards the icy rocks and frigid water, it occurred to Ramita that she had never really learned how to fly.

She’d principally been an Earth-mage, until Master Puravai’s teaching had opened her up to the other Studies, and though she’d been broadening her skills in what little spare time she had, flying was one of the more challenging aspects of Air-gnosis.

Below her, Alyssa Dulayne’s aura flashed blue, and suddenly the Ordo Costruo traitor was no longer falling but gliding, heading down the valley. Ramita screamed in fury. She tried to gather the air and control her fall, but nothing made any impression.