Breaking Stars (Book 2) (19 page)

Mikelle raised her hand to release the water-warp, but Nolen turned and saw her. His wide green eyes furrowed in a moment, and he swung his arm around to knock her hand loose as she fueled the pattern. Water gushed between them, wrapping around his hand, down his leg, and across the front of her dress, freezing as it hit.

She reeled, but Mikelle was not a women who took defeat easily. She leaned forward and punched Nolen as hard as she could manage in the throat. The impact threw both of them apart, sending searing pain up her hand and pushing him away. But the ice held him fast, and he buckled to his side flailing his arms. The collapse made him gasp in a loud breath, and with it the shield faded away.

With a triumphant smile, Mikelle laid the blood-boil pattern when she heard Gabriel inhale sharply. His arm on her shoulder tightened as he violently jerked back and broke her connection on his neckpiece. He stepped forward and he twisted around her, pushing her behind his back in a motion so sudden she did not realize she stood behind him until he let out a cry and his body gave a solid jerk.

Somewhere far below a woman’s scream cut through the battle noise.

Chapter 17

Gabriel knew as soon as the shield dropped, they would surely be assaulted with the battering meant for Nolen, and he watched the foray carefully as Mikelle laid her pattern. Mages spread out all around them, some trying to get behind the shield while others focused over it. A continuous hum of fighting against the legion reigned. The faceless soldiers were swift and agile, their blades solid and sharp. He thought he glimpsed his father heading four other Mages in a forward attack, but he lost him as a blast of ice struck the shield.

Mikelle suddenly attacked as Gabriel’s attention was elsewhere, and ice and water flung in every direction. Strength left him swiftly, leaving him with precious little energy and drawing the color from his face. Nolen retaliated, but that motion proved useless. Mikelle jerked Gabriel forward as she punched the Prince and abandoned the pattern.

As the Prince hit the floor, the shield fell, and with it came shards of ice and hot rock that spattered around them, hissing and skittering. A bolt of twisted vines soared overhead while a disc of compressed air shot past Gabriel close enough to flick the ends of his hair.

Gabriel saw the danger sailing towards him before Mikelle. He could not bear to let another woman be hurt in his charge.

‘Do you understand the price?’
his mind whispered as he grabbed Mikelle and jerked her behind him, stepping forward to receive the attack.

It came in the form of a black spear, expertly wrought by an Earth Mage, hurled at just the wrong moment at the wrong angle. There was no time to set a pattern to move it, no time to think, no time to move anywhere but forward.

It struck him squarely in the stomach, thrown from a downward angle to enter below the ribs. He staggered backwards from the force and felt the breath pressed from him. Pain rushed everywhere as a thousand nerves broke, and instantly the blood bloomed across his skin and shirt. Someone screamed.

Mikelle’s hands grabbed him as he fell to a knee and quickly to his back, knowing he could no longer stand, and she put both hands opposite the black spear and pressed down.

He cried out. “Leave it, leave it,” he gasped, and blood came to his lips as he struggled for breath.

“Spirit Mage!” Mikelle screamed. “Nolen, please!” But Nolen was gone. Broken free of the ice, he and Tabor had grabbed Kindle and began cutting their way to the left staircase with a new shield up.

Gabriel stared up at the sky as he gasped, feeling the color leave his face, and knowing,
knowing,
he was too far gone for a Spirit Mage to heal. Healing was a mixture of three energies, one of the person healing, another of the energy they drew from, and lastly of the person being healed. Gabriel had nothing left to give.

He grabbed Mikelle’s arm. “Tell Robyn,” he sputtered blood over his cheek.

“No, no,” Mikelle muttered and tried to put on a comforting face though her eyes brimmed with tears. “She’s coming. Hold on, she’s on her way.”

‘They won’t let her run through a battlefield.’

“You shouldn’t have,” Mikelle whispered, and he saw tears on her cheeks. “I would have been able to—”

“Hush,” he replied softly.
‘It has to be this way.’
“It was you or me,” he coughed again, “and I was already—on my way out.” He wiped blood from his lips, but more came with every breath.

“If I live to never die, I will never see a man more selfless,” she whispered.

Someone ran into his vision. “Oh, boy,” the man breathed. He looked familiar, and it took Gabriel a moment to recognize Councilman Markus. He knelt, putting a hand on Gabriel’s forehead. “Please hold on as long as you can. I know it is hard, I know it hurts, but please resist the darkness.” He looked away. “The Head Mage is coming. Silex!
We need it now
!”

“You can fix him?” Mikelle’s hopeful voice said.

Blood came to Gabriel’s throat as he gasped. “No, I cannot,” Markus whispered.

Gabriel did not think the Councilman cruel. He had no energy to lend to the healing. He was certain one pattern more could kill him, so what would a healing do? Gabriel’s vision fuzzed and his breathing became harder with every breath. Half of every inhale coughed which sent spasms of pain through his stomach. The tip of the spear sat well up in his chest, pressing against organs that should not feel such pressure.

He realized in that moment of struggle that he wanted to live. Death was such a constant, and life so fleeting and unpredictable. He desperately wanted to see as much of it as possible. He was so foolish to ever wish death upon himself or even hasten its approach.

“The blood,” Markus whispered. Gabriel felt another hand clamp down around the wound, sending a shock of
wrongness
through his sensations. “I do not think he could handle a healing.”

“I don’t know the patterns to hold blood in,” Mikelle replied, her voice heavy with emotion. “I’m not a strong enough Class.”

Gabriel’s grip on Mikelle’s arm loosened. He could feel something warm trickling down his sides and pooling in the dips in his stomach. The familiar sensation of something going…
wrong
…inside his head flushed his senses as blood seeped from him. His veins were parched, and his face hot as his body struggled against something he could not quite understand. His head felt heavy and foggy, and he knew in an instant he had to fight to retain hold of his consciousness. He knew this was the end, and he desperately wanted to spend every second in the living world…but it was so difficult to keep his grip. Every bit of him wanted to relax and finally release.

“Gabriel, stay here,” Mikelle yelled, but her voice was distant and echoing.

Gabriel turned his face aside as a wracking spasm of desperation rushed through him. It flushed his face with ice as his chest shuttered, rising, and falling as his lungs drank in gasps of oxygen. Blood spurted from his lips liberally now, coming up with every parched breath that was as painful as it was sweet.
‘No,’
his mind spun.
‘Not yet.’
He sucked in a breath that rasped in his head as shocks of this new pain radiated from inside his chest.

“Boy, hold on
please
. A few more moments,” Markus pleaded. “The Head Mage needs the Silex….
Nolen, DO NOT!
”

Gabriel tried to raise hand to touch Mikelle’s arm but felt the energy leave him. Blood beating in his head felt so faint, and he struggled to keep his eyes open. The cold sensation of darkness was welcoming. He looked up to meet her eyes, blurry as they were. “Tell her.”

“No,
she’s
coming
, you tell her.”

Her voice sounded so far away. The metallic taste of blood was heavy in his mouth, filling it with every breath. “Tell her I’m sorry.” His face felt cold as his vision darkened. The noises around him faded away, and the blue of the sky above him turned gray as his breath escaped.

Chapter 18

Ryker kicked at a clump of dirt with his boot, giving the underside an inspection as he waited. Arch Mage Pike would know what the different colors and textures in the soil meant, but Ryker was without him and had no way of knowing if the dark colors meant minerals were present, a glacier once moved through, or if there were human remains beneath it. The night was chilly, and a steady breeze blew through the tall pines, but he was warm in his red coat and Mage cloak.

“Well?” he asked quietly, his voice breaking through the silence of the forest. The young girl beside him gave a start, the green patterns sunk deep into the ground jumped. They walked slowly through the pine leaves that bent and cracked beneath their feet, filling the air with earthy sap.

“Nothing yet, m’lord,” she replied with a timid voice. Sarya had been timid from the beginning of her capture, taken from the second largest city in Anatoly, Hawklin. In the south, people’s faces were streamline and sharp with tilted eyes and pointed chins and noses. He thought her pretty, but she was weak, and there was nothing attractive about that though she made a swift tailor with her Class of Four in Earth. He garbed her in a long green dress that was too loose, so he did not have to remember her Element. Shalabane Mages always wore the colors of their Elements, and he never understood why people this side of the world did not do the same—they were so much easier to tell apart.

“Here,” she said softy and moved to a patch of earth, but shook her head and continued on. “There’re so many remains.”

“Do it be so hard t’ find human ones?” he asked harshly.

“It do—does—it is.” Licking her thin lips she carried on, sifting through the soil with a pattern.

They had been at this past two nights, and Ryker was growing anxious. The other Earth Mage he whisked away from Parion had hung herself the night before, and he was without time to search for another he could easily bend to his will. Prince Nolen was close to the Silex, he could feel it, and he itched to check in on the Prince again as he had twice daily without Nolen’s knowledge. The Class Ten was looking more pale and drawn with every visit, and Ryker had seen enough Mages dying in Castrofax to know his time was close. He would be most remiss if he had to step in to fetch the Silex himself. No one knew the wards protecting the ancient pieces, but he knew the Silex would not be given away freely.

“Here,” Sarya whispered. “Human, a skull and…ribs, arm….”

“Pull them up.”

Sarya set another pattern, and pushed soil away from a central location, digging deeply into the dirt. Graves were usually a few feet below the surface, but she continued much longer until a brown bone poked out of the black loam. After that, it was easy to push dirt aside, and she revealed a complete skeleton, lying on its side. It was missing a foot and an arm, but Sarya found them not far away.

“What happened to it?” the girl whispered.

“Him,” Ryker corrected. “He was tortured t’ death by Jaden Mages, ac his body buried without care. Collect them up them; time’s wasting.”

The girl shuttered as she climbed down into the grave and gathered the bones into a canvas bag.

“Find every single one, even the little ones. I need them all.” The girl nodded and grimaced as she dug through the black soil to come up with a handful of finger bones.

“Why was he killed?” she asked, picking through the vertebrae.

“He knew a great lot about mineself ac mine plans.”

Sarya looked up with her wide round eyes. “You knew this man? When did he die?”

Ryker looked up at the broken star far above them. It shone with similar intensity as the full moon. “An Age ac a half ago.”

“Who is he?”

“Do y’ ne know already?”

The girl looked back down at the scattered bones and put a clavicle into the bag. “Is it Arch Mage Dorian Lark?”

“Nay.”

“Then it is Pike Bronwen.”

“Y’ should be more careful t’ use his salutation.”

It took her a while to find the tiniest bones and discovered broken parts of the skull deep in the soil.
‘Did the bones break with the years or did the Jaden Mages do this?’
Ryker wondered as she picked fragments of his skull up.
‘Cowards in their victory.’

“There is nothing else here but animal bones,” Sarya said as she stood, twisting the soil with one last pattern. Ryker extended his hand to help pull her out, knowing he had to maintain some courtesy to his captives if he ever wanted them to love him. While his words would remain forever harsh and bitter, he had been known to offer a gentle gesture from seldom time to seldom time. He let her carry the bag over her shoulder though.

He fueled the pattern and sped the world along to transport him to Atrox Manor, dropping the Void wards around it to keep captives in and attackers out. He set them in a dark room with a creaking wooden floor and tall ceilings. The walls were unadorned with whitewash, but left exposed rough stone. Four tables sat in the center, one covered by a thin cloth and the others empty. Sarya broke her connection with him and set to work by one of the blank tables as Ryker lit the sconces on the walls to give her light.

Digging into the bag, she took out the largest of bones and aligned them on the table under Ryker’s careful watch. Periodically he would adjust the bones or instruct her which end went up. She remembered most of the correct placements from the first time they set a few bones. Ryker looked over her shoulder at the shrouded table where the bones of his beloved Maxine laid, mummified under preserved wrappings.

He and Maxine had never been lovers in the traditional sense, but she was his favorite of followers. She had been beautiful and bright with a sexuality that instantly drew men to her. She was able to pull anything she wanted out of men. They would do everything she asked, but it was her confident radiance that pulled them in. Talented in her patterns, she knew Void better than any of his followers and most people of the Age. She relied on her Elements to get her what her body could not.

Ryker smiled at the thought. She used to manipulate webs all around them. They wrapped around her fingers so tight, he could not tell if she was for or against him, but by the time she finished, he knew she was forever loyal to him.

Sarya set the skull and bones at the head of the table before stepping back. “Is it alright, m’lord?” she asked.

“It’s fine. Y’ are free t’ go.”
‘It won’t be long now, Maxine. Y’ll be first, then my dear Pike. Ac Dorian, ac Evony as soon as I find them.’