EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (16 page)

She didn’t turn around to Ezekiel. Neither did Captain Simon spare him a glance. He kept his eyes firmly pinned on hers.

She nodded.

“I’ll be honest, Fairchild. I’ve heard of your exploits on the streets and know of your sterling record in the training school. I don’t believe in superstitious nonsense and I’m looking for good mercenaries to have my back in the war.”

Her back stiffened. A mercenary was offering her a job. He had to be joking. Fairchilds never took merc gigs, and for good reason.

Stiffly she said, “What are you asking me?”

He watched her with a calm demeanor. “I’m offering you the chance to join the finest mercenary company in the empire. If you take the offer, you’ll be fighting beside two seasoned battle mages, including myself, and will become a Corcoran.”

She didn’t want to insult the man, but there was no way she would join the mercenary guild with either company. She had problems with the two separate mercenary companies of the Red Lions and the Corcoran for entirely different reasons. But mostly she knew that she couldn’t leave her mother. She couldn’t leave the city of Sandrin. And she wouldn’t tarnish the family honor any more than it already had been.

Files held tight in her hand, she said, “I’m going to have to decline.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not going to accept your pass so easily. You have a little more than twelve hours to think it over. If you want to join us, my company is leaving out of the city through the west gate at dawn’s rise. Be there and we’ll fill out your paperwork then.”

He turned and left to go over to a practicing mercenary pair.

She watched as he laid into the men without pause.

“You call that a block, Smith?” the captain yelled, swiftly grabbing the staff and upending Smith on his bum. “I’ll show you a block!”

“Wow,” said Ezekiel.

“What?” Sara said as she watched the captain demonstrate some impressive talent.

“I wish I had that kind of luck,” he said.

She turned and looked at him in amazement. “I’m not taking the offer. Let’s get out of here.”

He nodded and they left, their new watcher trailing behind them.

After leaving the medallions at the front, Ezekiel asked, “Why wouldn’t you join? Decent benefits and square meals.”

She gave him a cutting look. “Family and honor.”

“Family and honor don’t put food on the table,” he muttered.

She ignored the comment as she said, “Besides, why now?”

“He told you.”

“No, he told me what I wanted to hear. An honorable place in an honorable company, but there’s more to it than that,” she said testily. “None of the fighters in this city wanted me in their ranks. Why now? Why right after we came to the mercenary guild?”

“I don’t know,” said Ezekiel as they emerged on the steps that descended into the plaza. “But at least you have what you came for.”

As they walked down the steps, she murmured, “At least there’s that.”

She shaded her eyes from the blazing morning sun as they crossed the central plaza and came up the stairs to exit into the city opposite the south entrance to the imperial palace.

Turning when they reached the peak, she said, “Well, I guess this is it.”

“What’s it?” said Ezekiel, oblivious.

She watched him with amusement. “This is goodbye, Ezekiel.”

He turned to look at her with wide eyes. He opened his mouth and closed it again. “I suppose it is. We’ve accomplished what we set out to do.”

She nodded in agreement.

“Remember, you go in first and open the warehouse’s door,” she said. “Once you do that, the death’s touch spell will falter and it’ll be like it was before.”

He gulped and raised his hand as if to embrace her before dropping it just as quickly.

“Goodbye, Ezekiel,” she said softly.

He looked as if he wanted to say something but changed his mind.

He backed away slowly, waving his hand as he followed the new watcher back to the warehouse. “Goodbye, Sara.”

When he tripped and quickly righted himself, she was careful to hide a grin.

Sara made her way home slowly with a bag of coins for her service in her pocket. Her mind was awhirl with thoughts. Concern for Ezekiel, relief that they had made it out, and wary anticipation for what the records of her father held for her.

When she walked into the front door, she did as she always did—put her weapons on the side table and called out to her mother.

“Mother?”

As always, her mother answered, “In the kitchen, dear.”

With a smile Sara came forward, happy to see her again. She couldn’t see her puttering around at the fire and thought she was in the nook reserved for their makeshift table. Just before Sara turned the corner, she felt her battle instincts warn her. But she didn’t drop into a crouch or duck back out the door. No matter what was on the other side of that corner, her mother was definitely there.

So she warily took the next two steps and turned to view the kitchen nook.

To her surprise, three people stood there—two alive and one dead.

The dead person was her mother.
 

Standing upright with stiff posture and pasty skin, her mother wasn’t alive. Sara stared at her mother’s neck as horror filled her mind and tears filled her eyes. A red grin of death gaped on her mother’s throat where her head had been almost severed from its body. It was still attached by grisly muscle and bone. As well as the force that Sara could feel emanating from the necromancer standing behind her mother with dead eyes.

Sara took it all in. She could see his arm on the back of her mother’s head. She knew that he was using his gift of death magic to control her mother’s body and her vocal cords. In effect, causing the dead woman to speak out to her living daughter. He had even accessed her mother’s memories to know just what to say to Sara to get her off-guard.

What a special touch.

Chapter XIII

B
ESIDE
HER
MOTHER
’
S
DEAD
BODY
and the necromancer who controlled it stood a man. A man she didn’t know, but she did recognize something about him. The metal badge he wore on his lapel was shaped in the figure of male lion with its paw raised to strike. Sara knew that the rampant lion was the badge of the Red Lion guard. A mercenary company that was based out of the ancient city of Baen to the west and only loosely affiliated with the Corcoran guard. Affiliated in the sense that they both paid dues to the mercenary guild, that is. They were more like rival businesses.

Sara still hadn’t spoken. She stood frozen. Waiting for this nightmare to end. For her mother’s body to not stand there in such a grisly display in the midst of their kitchen with two strange men behind her. For once, Sara Fairchild wished she could just dream away her current life. She hadn’t broken when her father’s ashes had been handed to her. Hadn’t broken when everyone from the lamp lighter to the carrier had turned their backs on her and her family. As they said it was shameful that she and her mother had elected to stay in Sandrin and not retire to the countryside in shame.
 

Whatever that meant,
Sara thought ruefully.
Who retires from shame?

She had held her head high no matter what. When things got bad, she didn’t wish away her situation, and when the whispers of the family’s shame had only grown louder, she had taught the naysayers a thing or two about respect. Her father had done
one
thing wrong in his entire life. One. He had paid with it with his life. In Sara’s mind, that didn’t entitle the crowds of Sandrin to mark her entire family and her father’s legacy as one to be smeared. But at this moment she couldn’t help it. She wished her whole life was dream. That she would wake as someone else. With parents whole and alive. At this moment she would give anything for wishes to be reality and dreams to come true.

For the moment, silence reigned. The three in front of her eyed her standing before them and she watched them, until she couldn’t take it anymore. The stench of blood in her home became overwhelming.

“What do you want?” she cried out.

The Red Lion guard member smiled. “Those files in your hand will do.”

Sara felt shock hit her system. Shock that her mother was dead before her eyes. Shock that was rapidly turning into rage.
 

She dropped the file on the ground with a weighty
plop
. Then she unsheathed her sword with a quick jerk and ran straight at him with a war cry. They wouldn’t be able to put the pieces back together after she was done with him and his necromancer. But Sara got the second biggest shock of the night. Because the necromancer wasn’t the only mage standing with her mother. The man who had spoken raised up a hand and splayed his fingers. As he did so, her body became rigid and stopped obeying her commands. First her arms snapped outward, and then so did her legs. Her body made a cross shape with her arms spread to either side of her straight torso. When she tried to move, her muscles trembled and strained as if they pressed against a great weight and were losing the battle. She kept trying to move unsuccessfully, until a sharp pain arced through her body. The kind of pain that came when a body over-exerted itself or she hurt a muscle trying out a new weapon she hadn’t used before.
 

She screamed at the sharp arc of pain that ran through her taut muscles.
 

The man laughed.
 

Sara forced herself to stop screaming. She took in deep breaths to regulate the pain and to gain control. He had caught her by surprise once. He wouldn’t do again. She stared at him as she felt him command her body to rise in mid-air. Trying to figure out his trick. Searching her mind for clues to what his power was. Every mage had a signifying trait. Abilities that were unique to their particular gifts. Some traits were easier to discern than others. His were subtler, but in that subtlety was a revelation. Very few mages could command a person’s body to do as they wanted, and less could move that person around without using a natural element for their bidding like the wind tunnel Cormar had used on Ezekiel.

He’s a rithmatist
, she realized.

A mage with the ability to both control minds and move objects around through telekinesis. The combination was a fairly impressive one. As she struggled to move, Sara tried to process all she knew about the rithmatist’s ability. She felt her muscles bunch and twitch in her arms and legs. They
should
be moving, but nothing was happening.
Nothing
was working. The only part of her that he’d left unfettered was her mouth and she couldn’t talk him to death. Not to mention the fact that she still hovered spread-eagled in the air in front of the man with no apparent effort on his behalf. That was what scared Sara.
 

Some mages made big displays of their magic. Calling in fierce winds, igniting roaring fires, or even creating objects out of thin air. But this foe was quiet. He was assessing her and she knew he found her weak. Why wouldn’t he? It was his quiet strength that made him so powerful.
 

But at the same time,
she realized,
it makes him vulnerable. I see it in the gloating of his eyes and the boredom of his face. He is overconfident.

She obviously couldn’t move, but that wouldn’t stop her. Time and again she’d faced opponents on the training field. Opponents two times her size, with longer swords, with swifter feet, and sometimes better defenses. Each time her father had said, “Look for their weakness. There you will find your way in.”

She knew that even if she called on her battle magic at this moment, it would be a useless endeavor. A battle mage who couldn’t move was as defenseless as a babe in swaddling.

She watched with hate-filled eyes as he sauntered up to the files on the floor beneath her feet and picked them up. It was then that she had a brilliant and desperate idea.

With nothing to lose, Sara called out to the beast that hid in her loft. Like a demonic curse, the chattering voice of her pet immediately responded. Her mother had hated the thing and had tried to kill him more than once with her broom. Which was why he lived in the rafters. She heard his squeaky voice and she commanded him with a scream, “Chrimrale, attack!”

The rithmatist looked up at the rafters with incredulity on his face. He didn’t think that anything that was lurking up there on the thin beams could do him damage. He was wrong. Chrimrale was
fast.
Too fast for the rithmatist to grab a hold of him with his magic. The flying squirrel didn’t hesitate and launched like a squirrel out of hell straight at the rithmatist’s face. With a yowl, the man fell back while clawing at the demonic squirrel whose claws were latched onto his face. He couldn’t fight a mad, demonic squirrel,
and
keep Sara bound in mid-air at the same time. The rithmatist’s concentration broke and Sara fell to the floor in a crouch with her blade still in hand. With a snarl, she stood up just as the man threw the flying squirrel from his face with such force that Chrimrale smacked against the far wall with an agonized squeak.

But the squirrel hadn’t sacrificed himself in vain. His opponent was blinded by the blood streaming into his eyes. Sara could tell from the way he was stumbling backward with one hand to his face and the other in front to ward her off. Too bad for him—his talents were useless if he couldn’t see his target. Moving fast, she took off his head with her sword. But she didn’t have time to turn to the necromancer and finish him off before she heard him give a command that froze her heart. He did the one thing that she couldn’t fight against.
 

He ordered her own mother to attack her.

Sara fell back under the assault from the dead body. Her mother’s head flopped around in a gruesome display with congealed blood smearing on both of them as she grabbed on to Sara’s limbs. As she was forced back against the wall, Sara couldn’t breathe from the stench of death in her nose. What was worse was that her sword lay useless between them, its owner unable to force herself to bring it up and stab the blade into her dead mother’s body.