Heritage: Book Three of the Grimoire Saga (4 page)

Gray fire ignited in his palm and raced up his arm. Smoke curled around his face, snaking upward in hundreds of thin coils. He bent the hovering wisps with his mind until they each took the shape of a dagger. At his command, they all twisted toward the wall in a single blur. His army of blades hovered midair, every point aiming for a different crack in the mortar. The smoking knives fizzled, shifting in the low light of the forest as Braeden doubled his focus. The edges of the small swords sharpened.

Stelian techniques required concentration, but that effort was always rewarded with an incredibly powerful attack.

Braeden released the flurry of knives. A hundred smoke daggers shot forward, whizzing by his ears. He held his breath as they flew toward the barrier—waiting, hoping he’d done it right this time.

Nothing is unbreakable. You just have to find its weakness,
he thought.

The daggers hit the wall with the force of a lightning bolt. The ground shook. Braeden’s hair stood on end. A tremor raced through the stones. Dust shook from the ancient wall in a cloud that hovered in the air. Braeden dug his nails into his palms. Breath caught in his chest.

But when the dust cleared, the wall still stood.

Braeden cursed yet again and shot a ball of fire at the dragon statue. It sailed into the dragon’s open mouth, the gray flames casting a pale glow from between the beast’s teeth. The ruby eyes brightened.

A blip of panic skittered through Braeden’s chest.

The dragon regurgitated his attack and shot the fire back at him. He dove into a somersault to avoid the blow. Even though fire he conjured couldn’t hurt him, he had no way of knowing if the statue’s magic could alter it somehow.

Something roared behind him. He turned in time to see the flame hurl toward a six-foot-tall, black creature with silver talons—his vyrn, Iyra. Her eyes went wide. She lunged into the forest, the fire missing her rear end by inches. The blast ignited a nearby bush, engulfing its leaves in seconds.

Braeden sighed and stifled the fire with a wave of his hand. The flames faded into nothing, but the bush’s charred trunk sizzled. A few black coils of smoke slunk into the sky.

Iyra shot a wave of air through her nose and growled.

Braeden frowned. “Sorry. It’s not like I did it on purpose.”

He stepped back and examined the stone wall, a new idea forming on the tip of his tongue. Hitting the wall with attacks had done nothing at all. Hitting the statue, however, got a reaction. Fire in a dragon’s mouth worked. But why? He must have missed something in the journals. There had to be a clue here somewhere.

He glanced at the other statue—the sea serpent. Besides extinction, these beasts only had one thing in common: magic. Dragons were creatures of fire, just as the sea snakes were creatures of water.

A smile crept across his lips. So what if he repeated himself, but shot water into the serpent’s mouth before the dragon could shoot the fire back?

He inspected the sea creature, trying to gauge the angle he would need to make this work. If he leaned forward just right, and dove away at the end—

Iyra nudged his back and kept her nose against his shirt, since physical contact was the only way the two of them could communicate.

Calm down, Prince. You’re going to get us killed,
she said.

“But I think I figured it out. You might want to step back, Iyra.”

She huffed again and trotted off to the treeline. Her rear hit the forest floor with a
whump
.

Braeden cracked his knuckles and tensed. If he didn’t get this right the first time, it would probably hurt.

Braeden didn’t get it right the first time. Or the second time. Or the fifth. He managed to burn most of the foliage within a quarter-mile radius before his sixth attempt, when he somehow managed to get fire in the dragon’s mouth and water in the sea serpent’s mouth before both shot back out at him.

“Finally!” he yelled.

He waited on the tips of his toes, ready to dodge the attacks again, but the forest settled. The air stalled. Nothing moved through the trees. Nothing chirped or squeaked. Somewhere behind him, Iyra caught her breath. Braeden didn’t dare breathe for fear of jinxing his only idea of how to break the seal on this irritating lichgate.

The dragon’s ruby eyes glowed. The sea serpent’s sapphire eyes glimmered not long after. A shiver raced through the statues, knocking dust from their scales.

The crunch of splintering stone broke through the clearing. The sea serpent’s neck slithered, unwinding itself from its perch. It moved like a living creature, save for the incessant groan of rock scraping against itself. Dust fell from its body and hung in a cloud around its face. From the recesses of its throat, the statue’s mouth glowed blue.

The dragon dropped to all fours. The ground shook. Braeden spread his arms to brace himself. The dragon darted to the wall and stopped mere feet from it, claws digging into the dirt. Orange light spilled from the corners of its mouth, casting a warm glow on the wall. It tucked its wings in close and tensed like a hunter preparing to attack.

Braeden inched backward, not wanting to attract either statue’s attention.

The serpent drew up next to the dragon and braced itself as well. Both statues hissed, something within their bellies crackling. A gust swept through the trees, but the stone creatures’ humming overpowered it with a sudden roar of thunder.

Flame shot from the dragon just as a spiral of water burst from the sea serpent’s mouth. Both streams hit the wall in the same spot. Steam raced through the clearing like a dense fog.

Braeden coughed and tried to wave the mist away, but it clung to him the more he tried to lift it. He took shallow breaths in an effort to not breathe much of it in. Seconds crept by, too slow for his comfort. Nothing happened. Nothing moved. Not a single cracking twig broke the thick silence. It was all he could do to stand still. At any moment, either statue could barrel through the haze and turn its magic on him. He didn’t know what he would do if that happened. If they were anything like the wall, no magical technique he knew could stop them.

Finally, a pale ray of sunlight broke through the white steam. A few more followed suit as the cloud dissolved. Braeden sucked in a deep breath, but he didn’t dare relax. A trickle of fear swept down his spine as he examined the thinning fog. Not far off, the silhouettes of the two statues caught the light, both hunched toward the ground, frozen in a bow. Neither moved. Braeden inched closer, step by tiny step. An archway appeared just beyond them, two streams of light now blazing across the black stones that still blocked Braeden’s way.

A hot breath rolled over Braeden’s neck. He turned, tensed for a fight, but Iyra’s massive black eyes stared down at him, inches from his face. He sighed and shook his head, brushing a hand across her nose so that he could communicate with her.

Don’t sneak up on me like that,
he snapped.

Sorry.

Braeden took two cautious steps forward with Iyra on his heels. As he neared, a dull glow snaked across the stone wall barring the archway. The glow became two strings of light: one red and one blue. As he watched, the lights became snakes, each blazing with the intensity of a star. They wound around each other in the crude shape of a clover, their tails intertwined. Their heads met in the middle.

Is that—?
Iyra asked.

Braeden nodded.
I think that’s the symbol of Ethos. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it. I’ve just heard it described.

It looks like the Vagabond’s clover symbol.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he got some inspiration from Ethos.

The snakes slithered away from each other. Braeden tensed and stepped back. The two beams of light raced around to the other side of the stone bricks. As soon as they disappeared, cracks broke along the mortar. A rumble began somewhere deep in the wall. The charred remnants of nearby trees rattled. Pebbles fell from the black stones first, followed by entire blocks.

Iyra grabbed a loose bit of Braeden’s shirt with her teeth as the rocks continued breaking apart. She tugged him backward. He allowed it, transfixed as he was on the tumbling seal keeping him from the Stele. His jaw tensed as he watched the melee, hoping with all his might that this would somehow work.

The rumble faded. Pebbles and the occasional brick still tumbled to the ground, so he and Iyra kept to the outer rim of the clearing. It took a few minutes for the air to clear, but each grain of dust glittered like a small fire as the sun’s orange glow trickled through the haze. The clearing glimmered with light.

Braeden shielded his eyes with his arm until the glow faded. When the brilliant light finally disappeared, he relaxed and let himself look, daring to hope he’d done this right.

The archway still stood, but only mountains of black rubble on either side of the lichgate remained of the wall that once blocked his way underneath. The muted blues of a lake appeared through the lichgate, diluted by the portal’s sheer face. Braeden peeked around the archway for good measure, only to find the endless forest beyond. No lake. He couldn’t find a recognizable piece of the statues, though he suspected the four gemstones that served as their eyes lay somewhere beneath the piles of rocks.

He grinned. “About time we got past this!”

Iyra grunted in agreement.

He’d really done it. A sigh of relief crept into his throat, only to die midway. He’d done it, which meant he would actually have to go back into the Stele to spy on his father’s troop movements and uncover any new fortifications. Even though this was his idea, a small and terrified part of him had expected to never make it this far. He feared returning to the Stele when his father ruled it—at any moment, he could walk into a trap.

Braeden took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. If he would ever be free of his father, he would have to face the man again. He would have to fight, and he would have to kill. Otherwise, he would forever be his father’s slave.

Iyra nudged Braeden’s arm and knelt. He forced a smile and hopped onto her back, preparing himself for what lay ahead. He would have to return at least a dozen times over the next few weeks to track the Stele’s progress, so he might as well take it easy today. He wouldn’t go too far. He wouldn’t stay too long.

Iyra walked through the lichgate and into the Stele. Blue light flashed in Braeden’s peripheral vision, and his stomach twisted with a sudden burst of nausea. Though he recognized the telltale signs of walking through a lichgate, another tremor shot through him as his body recognized its home. Without a doubt, he’d just walked into the Stele.

Great.

They stood on the edge of a lake high in the mountains. Flies buzzed near the water. An otter dipped out of sight, leaving ripples on the still surface. The sun blazed overhead, its rays setting the lake’s surface ablaze with shimmers of golden light.

The Stele offered all its subjects protection, but the grounds spoke to Braeden in an entirely different way. Without ever having visited this lake before, he could sense a submerged network of caves in its depths. And though the distant crash of a waterfall drifted toward him, he knew it would be exactly three quarters of a mile to his left. It was instinct. He and the kingdom shared a connection, one he guessed it shared with every royal before him as well—even Carden.

A silent command for troops to assemble outside the barracks drifted through the Stele from none other than Carden himself. A weight settled on Braeden’s shoulders to obey—by right, he was Carden’s general and should be leading those soldiers. The desire to sprint toward the castle flickered within him, but he suppressed it just as quickly. At least he could disobey his father, even if the desire to obey became stronger when Carden was close. The other Stelians had no choice.

If Braeden’s plan to attack the Stele worked, he would kill his father and finally know freedom. And when the Stelian people were his, he would allow them their first taste of independence as well.

CHAPTER THREE

INHERITANCE

Someone toyed with the locked handle to Kara’s office. The latch wriggled, metal scraping against the gears, but Kara didn’t move from her place on the floor. She sat cross-legged, shoulders hunched as she stared at the cracks in the hardwood. Flick, however, jumped out of her lap and trotted to investigate.