To Kill a Wizard: Rose's Story (The Protectors of Tarak Book 1) (17 page)

I’d been afraid as we’d stepped carefully over them, with our sacrifice of expensive wine, and approached her statue. Haida was carved from the same rare marble as her temple. She stood tall and thin, her inhuman beauty breathtaking, but as instinctual frightening as the black lizards surrounding us. Scales decorated parts of her exposed skin, as stunning as jewels. The priest, seeing my fear, reminded me only the dying need fear the Goddess of the Dead in her temple.

A chill went down my spine, and I looked up to find Norma watching me, waiting for my response. My thoughts had scattered, so I refocused them on Marcalus and the wizards. “What did he request from the goddess?”

Norma’s face was stony. “Revenge.” Her fist came down upon the wooden table, and I jumped. “And goddesses’ tooth, she granted it.”

Sickness bubbled in my stomach. “Revenge against The Protectors?”

“Revenge against The Protectors,” Norma growled, “and the queen who ordered their deaths.”

In all the many tales our village storyteller weaved, only a few people were ever granted a request from Hadia. And to grant a wish for revenge against your own people? What goddess would agree to such a thing?

“We’ve managed to keep them at bay using a magical shield they can’t get through.” Anger smoldered under Norma’s words. “But just recently, we’ve been weakened.”

“We are not sure how much longer we can keep them back,” Meisha added. “Blair has prepared us that if the wizards realize it, we may only have days or weeks before they get through.”

I looked from one woman to the other. “Can they be defeated if they get through?”

Norma shrugged. “If they don’t use Blood Magic like their Head Wizard ordered them not to. But…”

I chewed my lip. “You don’t think they’ll follow his orders?”

She sighed. “Marcalus and I’ve been fighting for a long time. No one likes to admit something like this in war, but he’s not all that bad.” She gave a sheepish shrug. “I actually knew him back in the day. We weren’t friends or anything, but I never had an unkind word about the man.”

My mouth hung open, but she seemed not to notice my shock, because she kept on talking. “He got killed just for being a wizard. There’s a lot of men and boys who were good as gold in life, before they became all Undead and everything. But he’s also got the worst of the worst fighting with him. The kind of men who don’t have anything to lose now.”

I waited.

She met my gaze. “Sazar and his brothers.”

I gasped.

“Yeah,” she paused. “And the handful of other cursed men who killed until their souls twisted into something more beast than man. You’ll know what I mean when you see them. That kind of magic does things to a person.”

Her words turned my stomach. “But we stopped them once.”

She laughed, humorlessly. “We stopped them, because we didn’t play fair, not something they expected. And because they could be killed. This time, they won’t give us a chance to trick them.”

“They’ll enslave people again,” I said, numbness washing through me.

She nodded. “Those cursed Blood Wizards aren’t going to play fair just because Marcalus tells them to.”

I stared at my palms, feeling empty. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

Meisha’s calm voice added to my horror. “It will be much worse this time. If they break through, they cannot be stopped. Everywhere they go, they will steal the life-force from plants, animals, and people. They’ll create armies of enslaved humans. There will be no stopping them.”

I hated the pictures that formed in my mind. But more than that, I hated knowing the world I lived in was even less safe than I’d come to accept.

“This all just means that—” Norma’s words were interrupted as Ugar threw open the door and flung back the curtain.

“The storms almost here.”

Norma cursed, shoving her chair and standing. “Perhaps you’ll just have to see for yourself.” She strode to the door. “Come. And stay close.”

I turned to Meisha, who was already rising. Something in her eyes made my blood run cold. Fear.

Outside, the crowd of unwashed people stood with swords, spears, and bows in hand. Clouds gathered. The smell of rain hovered just above the smell of death. Lightning split the sky off in the distance, a visual warning of the coming storm.

“It’ll create an unnatural night,” Norma whispered, gripping the hilt of her sword. “There are lots of storms in Sereus.”

“Are they dangerous?” I asked, as the first drop of rain fell on my cheek.

Norma didn’t answer. She straightened, and the warmth of her magic vibrated in the air. It prickled against my skin, agitating every inch of my flesh. It was like the coming storm, dangerous and unknown.

“People of Sereus!” Norma shouted. “They come again. An unwelcome tide of destruction. Only we stand in their way.”

My pulse raced. It seemed impossible that the only thing protecting me, and the people of Tarak, was this small group of battered warriors. But even more so, it seemed impossible that these people had any chance of winning.

“Each battle,” she continued, unaware of my doubts, “may seem like a grain of sand on the ground. But without each grain, we’d have no ground beneath our feet. So go out, and fight as you always do, as if you are the ground beneath Tarak’s feet!”

A couple unenthusiastic cheers rose from the crowd, but the mood remained unchanged. Most of their scarred faces were set with expressions of grim determination.

Ugar nudged me and nodded at the warriors. “She gives that speech for the handful of new recruits they’re always sending her way. They need something to give a little steel to their stomachs.”

“Gather at the edge,” Norma commanded, and her people hurried from the town, eager to obey. Ugar moved to follow, but her hand closed around his arm. “And may the goddesses watch over you.”

Ugar brushed the back of her hand with his fingertips. “And you.”

The exchange only lasted a moment. Then, he was gone, yelling orders at the crowd who scattered to obey.

I was certain something significant had occurred. A blush blossomed over my cheeks as I remembered Asher’s touch.

But it was the wide-eyed shock clearly evident on Meisha’s face that brought my thoughts back to the moment at hand. “You can’t,” she whispered.

Norma crossed her arms. “Find someone willing to stop me.” Her statement was a challenge, but she turned her attention to me. “Do you know the Goddess of Fire, Promethia’s name?”

I did, but not well enough to use as a weapon, so I shook my head.

“Do you know any names that could help you in battle?”

Again, I shook my head.

Norma sighed, and pulled a blade from beneath her sleeve. “Take this, and pray to the goddesses they don’t come at you.”

My fingers trembled as I took the blade. “Who?”

She opened her mouth, but a scream echoed through the air, cutting off her words. More clouds gathered above us, swallowing the town in darkness. Norma raced through the nearly empty buildings and past the few people who remained to strike torches to life. Meisha followed, moving with grace even as she ran.

I hurried closely behind them both, the horrors of my imagination running wild. There was no doubt that I was moving towards danger, but I hoped I wasn’t about to see things that would change me forever.

Just beyond the village, past a scattering of oddly shaped trees, lay blackened earth. It was like a great fire had blazed, scorching the dirt, and killing even the promise of life. A scent drifted on the softly bellowing wind.

I coughed. Smoke. And death. “What is this place?”

Meisha didn’t look at me. “This is what threatens to swallow all of Tarak if we cannot stop it.”

“But what is,” I struggled finding the right word, “
this
?”

Her hands balled into fists. “The wizards are not like us. They can fuel their magic as we do, with the magic inside themselves, but they can also steal the life force from any living being.”

My stomach turned. “So the reason everything is black and dead is because they killed it to fuel their own magic?”

She nodded. “But if they can reach us… we are a wealth of life-force to them.”

My legs shook as I looked out at the scorched earth. What would a person look like after the wizards got to them? Like the girls back at The Glass Castle, or something far more twisted and inhuman?

A woman came to an unsteady stop before us, drawing my attention. She was young, perhaps as young as me, but terror left her haggard. “They were here a moment ago,” she whispered, clinging to Norma’s arm.

Norma shook the girl free. “Back to your post.”

The girl lowered her gaze and shuffled to the edge of the scraggly trees, peering from behind one, to the blackened world.

Lightning split the sky, radiating with power and danger, followed by the threatening boom of thunder. A second or two passed before a cold drop of rain kissed the flesh at the back of my hand. The slight
pit-pat
of rain falling filled the silence.

Electricity charged the air. The scarred and filthy warriors scattered, their gazes trained on something unseen just past the girl at her post. I swore their rapid breathing grew louder than racing horses, betraying the acceptance in their faces.

Norma and Meisha came forward, and I followed, standing just behind the line of stunted trees and amongst the larger, healthy ones. I squinted, not wanting to miss what was about to happen, even while the shard at my neck warmed.

In between one blink and the next, a dark shape flickered at the edge of the abyss. A cry escaped my lips as my feet propelled me backwards.

Meisha gripped my arm, keeping me firmly by her side.

Shrouded in darkness, he stood, an unmoving shape of terror. Power radiated in such strength, a hazy orange glow smoked the air around him. Blue eyes, tiny pinpoints of light in an otherwise dark figure, glowed like the eyes of a beast lurking in the shadows.

“Today will be the day.” His voice was like the thunder. It came from everywhere, and yet, his mouth didn’t move.

Norma’s lips curled. “You say that every time.”

“Do not look,” Meisha whispered, turning away. Then, more quietly. “The sights of war will change you forever, in ways you may regret.”

But I couldn’t look away. I needed to understand.

The warriors spread out around us. Their torches were flickers of bright light in the near-darkness. The dancing light highlighted the determination in their expressions as their gazes fixed on the wizard.

But nothing happened.

“What are they doing?”

Meisha spoke, misery lacing her words. “Norma will enchant the lands. This is her skill. To make herself, and those warriors who’s True Names she holds, transform into whatever she wishes… whatever can fight the way she desires.”

Icy tendrils crawled along my flesh. I was about to see what a person of magic could do with someone’s True Name. I rubbed at the goose bumps racing down my arms. It couldn’t be any worse than the many tales I’d been told, could it be?

Confused, I looked to Norma for guidance.

She pulled her blade from her sheath and yanked her leather shirt up to reveal her stomach, covered in deep scars. Magic gathered as she murmured words in a language unknown to me. Her voice deepened as the spell grew more powerful. Jerking wildly, her head fell back. She screamed like an animal dying, before slashing open her stomach with her blade.

My heart stopped as the coppery scent of blood struck me. I pressed my hands to my mouth, trying to keep the scream inside from exploding.

She fell against a nearby tree, holding her belly to keep her insides from slopping out. A dark stain of blood slid down the tree and onto the ground. Where it touched, a white glow shot out, covering the forest floor.

The soft glow lighting the ground could mean only one thing, Norma had enchanted our lands. With what, I didn’t know. Her powers chilled me, but some small part of me was grateful there was some sense to the violence I’d just witnessed.

Behind me, shrieking and wailing rose up like a chorus. I turned to face the warriors, my body shaking.

They mutated before my eyes.

Ugar stood nearly as tall as the trees, and as broad as a house, his skin the color of oil. His pupils shone, all a milky white. More beast than man, a snarl escaped his lips.

My gaze skidded away only to spy the tall creatures, covered in silver spines, screeching as they stretched. They no longer clutched blades, instead it seemed their whole bodies had become sharp and deadly.

Wolves with scales howled, arching their backs. The musky scent of serpents hit me like a wave, combined with the equally powerful scent of wet dog. Salvia dripped from their lips, and hunger filled their gazes.

My stomach dropped. I turned back to Norma as she rose, no longer human. With red skin and two white horns twisting sharply on her head, she resembled a she-demon straight from the Underworld. Taller than most houses, with thighs as thick as trees, and long wicked claws, she was every nightmare come to life rolled into one.