Chapter 45

I stepped out into the cavern and directly into the path of a well-timed fireball that hurled me into the wall.

It felt like I’d flown into a mountain. My clothes were little more than burning shreds, and the skin of my chest was charred and raw, the flesh glassy and curling with smoke. For the second time that day it felt like my entire torso was being crushed in an invisible fist when I tried to breathe. The wizard who had hit me was shouting at Navar now, or was it the other way around? I knew I should be more concerned about it, but it was difficult to concentrate.

I gritted my teeth and looked up, wincing as the cavern spun and tilted around me. I saw the wizard, a half-starved creature with a long and unkempt beard, lifting his staff once more. A dark red light glimmered around the end, like sunlight glimpsed through blood, and the whining in my head sharpened to a painful pitch as he lowered it at me. I tried to pull what was left of my wards into place, but they slipped away from me. I had no defences other than to try to shield myself with the thick meat of my arms.

The sound stopped as I lifted them. I lowered them and looked at the wizard, but his attention was fixed on the sword protruding from his chest. He fell to his knees, mirroring my current pose, and let the now smoking staff roll from his twitching fingers. Blood welled from his mouth, drenching his beard, and a moment later his unfinished spell burst his head with a silent flash of crimson light.

I sucked in a painful breath as the pressure on my chest loosened, then another. The cavern stopped spinning as the air hit my lungs, and I felt reality snap back into focus a heartbeat later. Ignoring the painful pull of my scorched and blistered flesh, I pushed myself to my feet as Navar floated towards me, his cape flaring out around him and his bone staff clutched in his iron gauntlets.

I shot a glance over my shoulder and saw Tatyana sitting with her back to the wall, the smallest movement of her chest telling me that she yet lived despite the burns that blackened most of the right side of her body. It was, of course, her sword that had slain the wizard and saved me, a debt that I hoped I would have the chance to repay. Lucien lay sprawled awkwardly next to her, the edges of his tunic burning with a steady orange flame.

‘Pathetic.’ The word rolled across me like thunder. He had stopped not twenty paces away, his robes slowly swirling around him as if he stood in a river, his eyes burning pits of silver within his hood. Behind him the rest of his cabal maintained their chant as if I wasn’t even there.

I could not look away from him, not even if I had tried. I could feel the power brimming within him, and it almost took more strength than I had not to step back from him.

‘Yes,’ he said, his voice becoming that of a man once more rather than a god. ‘You feel it.’

‘I’m here to end you.’ My voice was a child’s compared to his, and he roared with laughter.

‘You? And is this the mighty army you have brought to help you?’ He tilted his head and I felt his magic flex, almost lazily, lifting both Tatyana and Lucien into the air. She screeched as her burned skin folded and stretched, but Lucien seemed entirely insensate, his limbs swinging limply. ‘A prince and a failed paladin. A woman.’

‘Fuck you.’ Tatyana spat the words at him, a remarkable effort given the pain she must have been in.

I gasped in naked relief as his gaze switched to her, while she stiffened as if struck. I felt his magic ripple as he studied her.

‘Interesting,’ he said, spinning her in the air as if she were an insect caught in a web. ‘Is that your handiwork?’

‘Let them go,’ I said.

‘I don’t think I will,’ he said. ‘Not until I’ve peeled every secret from her flesh.’

His hand twitched and they were thrown against the nearest wall, where they fell in a tangle of limbs, unmoving and silent.

‘Now, did you really think that wearing that suit of skin would save you from me? You’re a shambles. Look at you. Too pathetic to maintain even one enchantment, but you dare to walk in here and challenge me?’ His voice rose in volume as he spoke, the tone hardening and bringing with it a rush of unpleasantly painful memories. ‘Look upon me, wyrm. Look!’

I squared my shoulders and faced him, my claws and sorcery held ready. He rose another yard into the air as the space around him glimmered and shone, and I could not help but take a step back as he flexed his power. It was staggering to behold. He had been quick and strong when I was his captive, but the strength he now brought to bear was of an entirely different magnitude; it was as if a wolf cub had grown into a cave bear. I could feel the mere promise of it curdling reality around me.

‘You begin to understand,’ he said, lowering himself to the ground. ‘It is not too late. Come, you know that you cannot win.’ His voice softened. ‘Surrender yourself to me, and we can rule this world together.’

His words were a baited hook, and had Leopold’s fondness for using the same trick not recently hardened me to it, I might have succumbed to its false promise.

I spat a gobbet of blood and phlegm at him. ‘Surrender to you? A charlatan who has mistaken brute force for actual talent? You’re little more than a cruel child who thinks himself strong because he has pulled the legs from an insect.’

I doubted it was the reaction he expected, as for a long moment he simply stared at me, the light in his eyes dimming.

I took the moment to release the fire I had been furtively preparing. It flashed between us and struck him square in the chest, where it burst and rolled over him, shrieking tonelessly as it sucked in air and bloomed into its full intensity. I roared as it enveloped him and walked forward, my claws twitching in anticipation.

I had crossed half of the distance when the flame simply winked out of existence, leaving Navar standing in front of me, entirely unhurt. The only sign it had ever happened was that his staff was cracked, which gave me some hope, but he tossed it aside with a careless gesture and raised his hand. I felt his magic shift around me, the touch of it cold and oily, and a moment later the air in front of him rippled and coalesced into another staff. This one was slightly longer than the other, and wrapped in strips of glittering grey leather that weren’t so much tied to it as part of it.

‘You will learn your place, wyrm,’ he said in the same calm tone of voice he had always used before visiting his cruellest punishments upon me and, the stars forgive me, I felt the cold hand of fear crawl through my gut.

‘You think yourself a match for me? For me?’

I ignored his ranting and instead used the time it gave me to get my focus back. I was ready when he levelled his staff and sent a whip of energy uncoiling towards me; it seemed that he had not given up the needless affectation of gesturing with his tools.

I leaped out of the way of the whip and sent an experimental bolt of lightning arcing towards him. He didn’t even blink as it fizzled away a yard or more from him. Instead, he smiled that same sickening smile and spun his energy whip out once more, but this time with two coils of energy.

I dove out of the way as they lashed the ground where I had stood, opening two sharp furrows in the earth. I had barely got to my feet when a bolt of kinetic force smashed me backwards into the crystal-lined walls, the jagged minerals tearing a swathe of skin from my back. I hit the ground as hard as I had the wall.

The arrogant bastard stood there, simply watching and waiting as I clawed my way back onto my feet, clinging to the wall until my vision righted itself.

‘Come then, do your worst,’ he said, holding his arms open. ‘Let us see if your bite is as vicious as your bark.’

I wasn’t about to ignore an invitation like that. I pushed the pain away and raised my fists, and with a roar that blew his hood back, I unleashed what power I held. A bolt of lightning as thick as my leg flashed between us, smashing into his wards with a boom of thunder that I felt in my bones. I fed the lightning as it writhed and burrowed around the edges of his wards, seeking their weaknesses, and amidst the eye searing flare of it I glimpsed sparks of red light as it began collapsing his wards.

Hope swelled within me, then faded. Despite the nexus of the Songlines being so close I could draw no more power than I held within me, and the bolt eventually stuttered as my reserves rapidly emptied themselves. The final arc of energy vanished, leaving only the memory of it in my vision each time I blinked.

Navar was still standing. His clothes were smouldering, but there he stood, his hands on his hips and his laughter filling the cavern.

‘Is that all that you have? A bolt of lightning?’ He took a step forward and I matched it with a step back. ‘The human body was a novel idea,’ he said in that same calm tone. ‘I had not appreciated your cunning, and I will admit you did have me flummoxed at first. But then I heard a story about one of my pets trying to heal a strange man not twenty miles from the university.’

He uttered a swift incantation and invoked a ball of red energy that looked remarkably like crystalline blood. He tilted his head, then thrust the staff forward, sending the glob shooting towards me, fire sparking within it. I threw myself sideways and it splattered against the rock behind me, melting several inches of the surface to glowing slag in mere moments.

‘I thought you wanted me alive,’ I gasped, circling around him, desperate to win some time.

He gestured, and a bolt of shimmering energy slammed into me. The wards that I had managed to erect deflected a measure of it but it still hit my gut with the force of a catapult shot, emptying my lungs of air in a loud huff. My priorities suddenly shifted from evasion and planning to simply getting air back inside me.

‘I did, at the beginning,’ he said, now circling me while I gasped like a landed fish, three gleaming bolts of power hovering over his shoulder, awaiting his command. ‘I thought your power would be so much easier to mould if it was freely given. A mistake my master warned me of, and one I have no intention of repeating.’

His master? I had no more time to wonder about that. The first of the bolts brightened and blinked into motion. I braced for the impact against my wards, but they parted like old papyrus and I felt his magic smash into my ribs, breaking several and sending a wave of nausea rippling through me.

I fell backwards against the spiky surface of the wall, the taste of blood in my mouth and the ground as unstable as mud under my feet. I could feel his magic burning into my flesh, through it, the touch of it as foul as it was corrosive. But it wasn’t only burning my innards, it was also mixing with my sorcery, burrowing into it like a predatory worm from within me. I cried out at the unspeakable horror of the sensation, clutching at the wound like an animal.

I didn’t see the second bolt fly towards me and only knew it had struck when the world suddenly spun into a coloured blur that only stopped when I hit the ground a dozen yards away from where I had been. I tried to stand, but my leg folded and I fell again. I pushed myself onto my elbows and watched as Navar strode towards me, the final bolt glittering next to him and his teeth bared in a predatory smile.