Living with Your Past Selves (Spell Weaver) (36 page)

And then Winn spoke to me through the thunder, no doubt an attempt to be intimidating. “Taliesin, surrender yourself, or your friends will suffer!”

“Your attacks have failed,” I shot back through the wind. “My friends have nothing to fear from you. It is you who need to fear them!”

“I don’t need to hurt them physically to make them suffer. I can just awaken all their past lives and watch their minds shatter. I did it with you, after all. You had a strong personality like the original Taliesin in there to help you hold everything together. They may not. Do you want to take the chance?”

“You can’t hurt them mentally or physically,” spoke Nurse Florence in the wind. “If anything happens to them at your party, you could ruin the life you’ve built.”

Only one row of shifters stood between my men and Carrie Winn. I was surprised she was continuing this conversation rather than making good her escape. But perhaps she had been too arrogant to have an escape plan.

“Really? For such clever people, you are incredibly dense sometimes. I have enough shifters downstairs to double for all of them. That was the plan to begin with, you know—they all end up dead, and the shifters fill in long enough to divert any kind of suspicion from me.”

Yeah, I know—we hadn’t taken that strategy into consideration. All our calculations about the safety of my friends went up in smoke in seconds.

“I see we need a demonstration,” thundered Winn. I switched to “Stan cam” and realized to my horror that she was aiming right at him. Fortunately, so did Shar, and Zom swept between Stan and Winn, dissipating the reddish blast of her spell before it could strike him.

One of the shifters had managed to become a nine-foot giant and had a sword—Mordred’s sword, Clarent, to be exact. It rang against Dan’s blade and pushed him back. Unfortunately, the shifter should have thought more about speed than strength. Yes, he could deliver a mightier blow than even Shar or magically muscled Stan, and he could have beaten any one of them, but he was facing all four by this point, and he couldn’t move fast enough to parry all of their thrusts. He focused on Shar to ensure that Zom couldn’t touch him and shift him back to human form. His skin was toughly scaled enough to deflect Dan’s and Stan’s blades, but he had no defense against Carlos’s blade’s drowning effect—one nick, and he started running out of oxygen. Winn managed to heal that wound and stop the effect, but Carlos struck again and again and again, faster than Winn could heal him. The few surviving shifters were imitating his example, though, which meant more work to get to Winn than I thought. I had to consider moving up closer and bringing White Hilt to bear on the remaining shifters while I still had the energy.

Winn realized that she couldn’t heal her minion fast enough, and knowing also that she couldn’t hit anyone near Shar with her awakening spell, she shot a wild blast in our direction, catching us by surprise. Apparently this spell was not as influenced as most by distance. I had time to realize it was pulsing toward Carla and moved to step in front of her.

What might have happened if someone already awakened had been hit by that blast I didn’t get to find out then, because Vanora tripped me. I was out of position, and Carla took the full blast. Her scream tore my heart in half, and she clutched wildly at her temples. The other band members stopped singing and looked at her in horror.

“Carla, Carla! I’m here!” I tried to yell over her screaming, but my attempted yell came out like a hoarse croak.

Then I got a psychic blast of the chaos in Carla’s mind. If her earlier broadcasts had been uncontrolled, these were a thousand times worse. Used as I was to this kind of thing from my own experience, the collision between my mind and the fragmented pieces of what used to be hers almost made me lose my grip. They did shatter the energy-sharing ties Vanora and Nurse Florence had built up so laboriously, and my fatigue crashed into me so hard I almost dropped Carla.

“I’ll take care of her!” said Vanora, trying to pull her away from me. “Focus on the battle!”

“You, you did this! I could have…”

“Died,” said Vanora firmly. “I don’t think you could have survived a second shot of a spell that powerful.”

I wanted to question how she could possibly know that, but I was too furious to really have a coherent conversation, and Vanora was right about one thing—I needed to focus on the battle. That would be hard to do even if I cared nothing about Carla, given the amount of psychic static she was putting out, but other lives might be at risk if I didn’t find a way to shield myself from her. Vanora was trying to put her to sleep, which at least took the edge off the chaos.

Moving more sluggishly than I wanted, I looked out through Stan’s eyes. He and the others were on the verge of finishing off the shifters, and the lightning storm was fizzling out, so Shar had used his enhanced speed to outflank the shifters completely and was throwing himself straight at Carrie Winn, whose shield of fast moving air would not stop him. In seconds Winn would be dead.

As focused on Winn as Shar was, I missed until it was too late the fact that Morgan had been making herself inconspicuous nearby. Shar never saw the blade coming, but it dug deep into his side, and he crumbled to the ground. I switched to his perspective long enough to realize that his hand was still clenched tight on Zom’s hilt, so at least no one could hit him with a spell while he was down. I could feel warm blood leaking from his side at a frightening rate, though, and he was very near to losing consciousness. I had to get closer!

This time it was Jackson and George who helped me reel in the direction of the battle. Everyone else was moving, except for Vanora, who was still tending the now sleeping Carla, but they moved in slow motion. Gordy was up and carrying his sword, with Nurse Florence cautioning him that he was not fully healed yet. The others, drained of energy as a result of their contribution to the battle, were half staggering, half walking, like zombies in a cheesy horror flick, but they were all moving, as I was, toward what was left of the battle.

When I got close enough, I used what fire I could muster to help finish off the shifters. Carrie Winn, her own strength fading, her own reflexes slowing, was not fast enough to stop me.

She was, however, fast enough to zap Stan with what I recognized, with a sickening jolt, was the awakening spell.

He too screamed and fell to his knees, dropping the sword of David and becoming just plain old Stan again. Well, physically at least. Psychologically he was dissolving into recollections of hundreds of past lives.

I grabbed him and forced his head in my direction. “Stan, I will help you get through this,” I said, my voice trembling, but with just a little undercurrent of magic to back me up. I think he heard, but I wasn’t sure.

Surprisingly, Nurse Florence and Gordy were almost upon us. Carlos and Dan were both poised to take on Winn, but she was holding them at bay with the threat of the awakening spell, though it was clear they would charge her anyway. Morgan lay nearby, seemingly unconscious. I realized that, even having seen her stab Shar, Dan and Carlos had both still hung on to the fact that she was human and tried to avoid killing her.

“You can’t take down both of us before we can get to you,” said Dan, softly but menacingly.

“Fighting your way through this high wind? I can take down both of you without giving it a second thought.”

“Stop this!” I said, cautioning Jackson and George with a glare not to follow me. “All right, Ms. Winn, I’m ready to bargain.”

This time Stan was in no position to argue, but Dan said, “The hell you are,” and it was clear he and Carlos might try to block me if I moved forward. I could feel Nurse Florence’s scrutiny, but her real focus was on Shar, whose side she reached while I was still contemplating my options. That also put her in between me and Carrie Winn. Well, she would probably have to focus all her energy on Shar to save him, particularly in her current state. That just left Dan and Carlos, both tired and relatively sluggish. Gordy had finally made it to the scene, but he was even more sluggish and completely focused on Stan. Gordy held Stan in big brotherly arms and whispered reassurance to him. Stan seemed to be twitching more or less mindlessly. I forced my attention back to Carrie Winn.

She had dropped any pretense of friendliness or even civility. “Why should I bargain for something I can now so easily take? The awakening spell is a surprisingly low drain on me. I can just cast it on the rest of your friends, and then you will be alone, and you will be mine.”

“Surely it would be easier without all that spell casting. Same deal as before?”

“Oh, you mean before you and your allies killed almost all of my shifters? I think not. The best I could do now would be an oath to use the awakening spell on no one else here.”

Carla and Stan would be stuck coping with what Winn had done, probably without my support, because whatever Winn wanted, I doubted I would ever be free to just walk away, if I were even still alive. But at least no one else would suffer the same fate. I had to put my faith in Nurse Florence and Vanora to be able to nurse Carla and Stan back to health. I had made it back on nothing but emotional support from Stan and my parents. With more help, surely they would eventually be all right.

“Everyone here also goes free, and you never make a move to harm them again?”

“This grows tiresome,” said Winn irritably. “Call off your little foot soldiers, and come to me.”

“He doesn’t give me orders,” snapped Dan. “And I’m under a
tynged
to protect him.”

“Pity,” said Winn, raising her hand to strike him too with the awakening spell.

“NO!” I yelled, trying to move forward, but doing so with frightening slowness. “This is between you and me, and I’m surrendering. Just let them go.”

Winn seemed hell bent to hex Dan, but at that moment Carlos threw his sword straight at her. His strength plus the inertia of the sword traveling forward kept the blade from being completely deflected, though it struck Winn in the shoulder instead of the heart as he had probably intended. Having prepared no protection against the sword’s drowning effects, she immediately began struggling for breath. She was also bleeding fairly profusely from the wounded shoulder. Her air currents began to subside as she labored to heal herself.

Dan saw his opportunity and moved in, but just as he reached her, she demonstrated she had been faking to some extent. With uncanny speed, she scratched Dan in the arm with Carlos’ sword, and Dan immediately fell backwards, gasping for breath, though at least his own sword kept him from bleeding. Winn was not even short of breath, so clearly she had already healed the wound inflicted by Carlos’s sword. Carlos moved forward, but now Winn’s magically animated air began to stir again, and she waved his own sword at him, forcing him to back off. Nurse Florence, still working on Shar, whose bleeding she had at least stopped, lunged for Dan to heal him before he drowned.

I was close enough to see how old and tired Winn looked. Perhaps my bargaining position was better than I thought. I’d bet my tired fire could kick her tired wind’s butt. Morgan was still unconscious, and I had at least the currently unarmed Carlos, who, even exhausted from the fight, was still easily able to overpower Winn. Together we stood at least a chance of getting the sword away from her.

“Maybe,” I said to myself, “I don’t even need to surrender. Maybe we can still win.”

I noticed Winn was backing up a little. Carlos followed, which worried me, but he was being cautious, ready to dodge a spell if the need arose, and Winn’s attention no longer seemed directed at him, or even at me.

It was then I noticed what was behind Winn, what she was trying to inch toward inconspicuously.

Or rather, which two things—I wasn’t sure which one was her immediate objective.

Right behind her appeared to be an ancient altar carved from dark gray stone. I could see it vaguely; most of it was in shadow. But there was something disquieting even about its outline. No, not disquieting, downright sinister. Something more than merely optical, something instinctive. I wanted to get away from that altar. It was taking me every ounce of will I had not to run screaming in the opposite direction. Instinctively I knew that this altar had been the source of Carrie Winn’s new, very un-Celtic forms of magical attack.

Almost next to the altar was an enormous cauldron, faintly glowing, at least to my magically attuned eyes. It was not so much frightening as oddly familiar, tugging at a very distant memory.

Carlos tried to charge the seemingly preoccupied Winn, but the storm around her held him back. I moved forward, running various plans over in my mind.

From somewhere Winn had picked up a darkly gleaming
athame
, and before we really knew what was happening, she slashed her own left palm, then slammed her bleeding hand down on the altar surface.

The whole altar began throbbing redly, radiating a light that seemed more like darkness, a hot color with a bitingly cold feel. The air filled with screams, and I knew with absolute certainty that this was some kind of sacrificial altar. Well, not some kind. The human kind.

Bathed in that reddish glow, Winn no longer looked old and tired. Too late I realized that she was drawing power from the blood sacrifice. I raised White Hilt, and its flames pierced the darkness, but I had already waited too long. The wild winds around Carrie Winn intensified and expanded, knocking Carlos aside effortlessly, blowing White Hilt’s fire almost sideways. I doubted her renewed energy would last long, but it didn’t seem as if it would have to.

Then I remembered Zom. It should still be near where Shar lay. Perhaps he was even still holding it. If I could find it fast enough, I could counter whatever Winn had planned. I cursed myself for not remembering it sooner.

I turned away from the altar. My eyes had started blurring, and I tried to remember where Shar had fallen in relation to where I was now. It should be a relatively straight line, if I could manage one in this wind. I took a few uncertain steps forward—and then a darkness blacker than the night blocked my path.