Sorceress of Faith (44 page)

“I
don’t like this,” a woman said. “I’m only a Scholar, and wasn’t told of this. I
won’t do it. An Exotique is a precious resource, and this is gross betrayal.”

Damn
right. Marian struggled to break free of the bonds again, this time buffeting
the forcefield with her mind. Her Power fluttered like a butterfly inside a
killing jar, though she saw sweat running from the Circlet’s headbands down
their faces.

One
against far too many. She could hardly breathe. She didn’t know what was going
on, but sensed it was very, very bad.

“Where
are her teachers—Bossgond, Jaquar?”

Good
questions. Venetria raised her voice and began an intricately toned spellchant
that drowned out others, and the Power wove thick around her. Marian’s palms
dampened. Where was Jaquar?

“This
was Jaquar’s plan in the first place,” Chalmon said. “He’s been informed of the
danger of the nest opening shortly, and is on his way.”

Oh
God. Doomed.

Just
like that first premonition she had when she arrived in Lladrana. She wanted to
shriek. She fisted her hands and flung mental bolts of Power toward the shield,
fueled by sheer hurt and anger and fear. The invisible trap held.

“We
must link and conduct the Ritual
now
. Join us or not.” Chalmon stepped
into place, slapping his right hand into Venetria’s left. All around the circle
people linked hands.

The
Song swelled, added harmonies. Marian was caged with pulsing beams of red light
sounding like the rush of a mighty river. She swayed, glassy-eyed, as if not
only her body was captured and controlled, but her mind, too.

When
she saw Jaquar running toward her, she sent him loathing, her mouth open with a
silent shriek of horror and betrayal.

He
stumbled. His gaze bored into hers. His face was all angles, tight expression.
She couldn’t read him.

She
couldn’t face him, either. Underlying her fear, her rage, her desperation was
the burning acid of his lying and treachery.

S
he’d turned her
back on him! Jaquar’s fury at the others dimmed beside his anger at himself. He
should have told her what he’d originally planned, but he hadn’t wanted to see
her respect for him destroyed.

Fool.

He
had to reach her, prevent the others from Sending her, or go with her into the
maw.

No
price was too much to pay.

Her
head tilted away from him. The Song between them ceased with a sudden, sharp
shock. She’d cut the link.

Agony
whipped through him—pain at the severing of the sex bond and all the emotions
that had attached to it and spun delicately between them.

She
shuddered time and again, hunched her shoulders, but did not face him.

He
reached the outer circle of Circlets and Scholars and they blocked him—moving,
dancing, arms linked. With gritted teeth he grabbed the clasped hands of a man
and a woman passing by, inserted himself into the energy stream and winced when
a crash of cymbals ripped through him.

But
they hauled him up, kept him on his feet, moving forward in the circle. His
mind wheeling to find balance, to
think
.

The
loud chant diminished as it transformed to a voiceless Songspell that traveled
mind to mind and was below hearing. He reached for the meaning of the words,
struggled to comprehend, to counter.

But
he could not stop it. The melody being forged was too great, created by
Powerful, determined people, for once in concert. They were Sending Marian to
explore and harm the nest—atop the shoulder of her gown was a tiny crystal ball
that would relay the sights and sounds of the Dark’s headquarters to waiting
observers.

He
broke from the outer circle, ignoring the cries of the participants as he
wrecked their energy flow, and staggered toward the inner circle. One glance at
the five people and he had another thing to be thankful for.

Bossgond
wasn’t there. They had spent some time discussing the rumors he’d heard of
Jaquar’s original plan, then how to watch the nest. They’d come to no
conclusions about how to attack or destroy it quickly. Then the old mage had
drawn Jaquar into a long discussion about the Dimensional Corridor and Sending
Marian back to Exotique Terre. Jaquar had returned to his Tower later than he’d
planned, to hear Chalmon’s curt call. Doubt had crept into Jaquar’s mind as to
whether Bossgond had delayed him on purpose. But no,
he
hadn’t betrayed
Marian. Her mentor hadn’t betrayed her.

No,
Jaquar, her lover, had.

Narrowing
his eyes, Jaquar gauged his timing to push into the inner circle, past the swirling
figures to the pentacle and Marian. The Sorcerers and Sorceresses of this round
danced with hands clasped but arms outstretched between them. And with each
step, the music rose, nearing a crescendo.

There!
Jaquar flung himself between two tall men, under their arms, into a stinging,
ear-pounding thump of a drum.
Bang!
He pushed, penetrated the field,
fell to his hands and knees, felt warm blood run from his nose.

He
lurched to his feet, hurtled forward to the red-sphere cage surrounding Marian.
He reached it, tried to penetrate the forcefield. Cacophony pounded through
him—hissing, screaming, noise. He pressed onward. He had just touched Marian’s
fingers when Venetria ordered, “Go!”

Chalmon’s
deep voice followed. “Go!”

Jaquar
grabbed for Marian’s hand. Missed.

“Go!”
chanted a third Sorcerer.

The
spell cloth encasing the weapon-knot Jaquar had snatched from his Tower fell
from his fingers into Marian’s palm. It was the strongest weapon he could give
her.

Her
hand jerked closed over the thread.

Once
again she turned terror-filled eyes upon him, and he knew in that instant that
she thought his actions, too, had been part of the spell, of the plan.

“No!”
he screamed, but he didn’t know whether she heard him before she vanished.

Utter
silence descended—except for the echoing of his last
no
, around the
stone theater of Parteger Island.

A
t the last
minute, when terror overcame the haze in her mind, Marian understood that the
Power flow was uneven, flawed. Unlike the Marshalls, this group wasn’t
accustomed to working together. Further, none of them entirely trusted one
another or the process of connection.

Deep
inside, Marian screamed. It was bad enough that she was the puppet and the tool
of this group. To know that they might be incompetent in their spell was terrifying.

What
would happen to her?

Off
balance, the Circlets’ minds and will yet managed to merge for one clear
moment, and they flung Marian to the Dark maw. She shivered and shuddered and
spun through planes of existence she hadn’t known about but recognized through
the touches of minds against hers.

Wind
didn’t take her—she could have mastered it. Lightning didn’t sweep her through
the night—she could have bent that to her will. She traveled on the
push
of minds, on the waves of sound of a mighty Songspell.

Mordantly,
Marian realized their aim was off. They had not shared a common vision of their
target.

She
rubbed the cloth Jaquar had given her and the outer covering fell away. The
weapon-knot twined around her right middle finger.

Betrayed
. Emotional pain
stabbed her, tears backed behind her eyes. They were sending her to the heart
of evil, and Jaquar had given her the weapon to destroy it—though she didn’t
know how to use it. It probably would kill everything, including her.

She
flew through gray landscapes, through black space studded with a glistening
swath of stars. Then she plummeted down, down, down to a seething black place
with an open maw that looked like unhealthy red flames, like a scabby, open
mouth with razor-sharp teeth.

She
hit a Powerful shield that slimed her as she plunged through, screaming until
fear took her very voice.

Tuck
squirmed in her chest pocket. Just the feel of him calmed her. She wasn’t
alone. She had someone to protect. As she fell through rocky darkness and saw a
stone floor rising, she twisted and landed hard on her side. Again.

“Oomph!”
Her breath thumped from her body and she lay stunned, gasping.

The
smell
—of putrefaction, burning, dead things rotting. She didn’t want to
inhale, but her lungs struggled to suck air. All this time on Lladrana she’d
become more and more aware of sounds, but now odor overwhelmed her. She flopped
an arm over her nose to try to limit the stench. Already she felt it seeping
into her clothes, her hair.

Her
mind cleared enough to take stock of her surroundings. Dark brown cavern walls,
oozing damp. A pitted, rocky path upward, blackness shrouding the cavern and
any passageways beyond her feet. The air was hot, sulfuric, laden with the
horrible odor.

All
too familiar from her nightmares.

Chittering
frantically, Tuck popped from her pocket and scrabbled to her neck, where he
patted her face. “You are okay. Okay. Okay!”

Just
the sound of the English term steadied her. Her next breath succeeded; she drew
air into her lungs.

It
tasted vile.

She
choked and coughed and doubled over. Tuck clung to her hair, patting,
whispering, “We are fine.”

She
didn’t think so, but couldn’t spare the breath to tell him.

A
horrible
thud
came from the dark corridor beyond her feet, followed by
scratchy, ragged breathing.

Not
her own.

Her
heart beat hard enough for her to feel it. Just like in the dream, something
huge lumbered at her. Ready to eat her. Or worse.

She’d
been in Lladrana long enough to know there was worse.

Marian
scrambled to her knees and found that her magical dress had ripped and showed
no signs of mending itself. She couldn’t spare the Power to fix it. She’d need
all her wits, all her energy, all her Power to escape this.

The
maw of the Dark. The center of the evil that was invading Lladrana. They’d sent
Tuck, innocent Tuck, with her. Bile coated her tongue and the back of her
throat.

She
would survive, and they would
pay
.

Jaquar
would pay the most.

An
awful croaking echoed in the cavern. Slow, slithery movements sounded, closing
in. Marian hopped to her feet, swept up Tuck, thrust him in her pocket. But he
wriggled and escaped.

“No,
I want to be out. I want to
see
.”

Marian
didn’t.

She
had to move!

Grabbing
her gown, she straightened it with a flip of the fabric, saw that the tear was
mending threads one at a time as if the spell labored against the noxious
atmosphere.

A
small crash of rock behind her made her jump.

Which
nightmare would this be—the vicious, huge monster she couldn’t see, or the evil
once-human Sorcerer? The master that Jaquar had told her of.

Not
one of them—not Bossgond, not Jaquar, not any of the others—had given her any
real information about this place. She had no knowledge of her enemy, of his
weaknesses, nothing she could use to craft even a half-assed spell, let alone a
perfect spell, or at least a competent spell.

Tuck
set his claws in the shoulder of her gown.
Run!
he cried mentally.

Marian
ran
.
She had no breath to spare for prayers. Her feet thudded up the cavern. There
was enough reddish glow-light for her to see as she ran.

Which
nightmare? Would she break out onto a cliff edge and see Andrew lying dead? How
could she? What were those fearsome dreams—predestined truth, or fiction?

They
seemed all too real right now.

She
bumped off the wall, and an odoriferous slime-smear decorated her sleeve, her
arm hurting where she’d hit the rock. Like in her dream. Pumping lungs, pumping
legs. Her shoes seemed loose, not tight around her ankles or cushioning her
soles.
Flop. Flop
. The more she thought about her shoes, the more she
felt them slip.

Chhrrrhh
. The hot breath
of the creature touched her back. Adrenaline flooded her and she ran faster
than she’d ever thought she could.

The
passage twisted, and she careened from one wall to the other, no pain now. Too
frightened. Ran into something that gave before her—cloth over a doorway? And
she was through. Was this the cliff edge? She pivoted, slammed against the
wall.

Beside
her, the tapestry went up in flames.

She
stood on a huge ledge, but it wasn’t outside. She was near the top of a cavernous
room on a great balcony. To her right was a wooden rail that looked all too
flimsy. Roars and rumbles came from below.