Dagan made a strange little noise, as if he was surprised and confused, before falling backwards from me and hitting the floor, a wide circle of blood quickly pooling underneath him. The dagger was stuck in his chest as I saw that, horribly, he wasn’t even dead yet. He gave me one last blink, and a sneer twisted the corner of his face, before his eyes finally closed.
No last words, I thought to myself. Not even at the very end – he had nothing to say to defend himself. Only hatred.
I had seen other people die before, of course. Death was not an unnatural thing after all – but back on the Plains it had been the deaths from accident or illness or of those much older, who had been surrounded by their loved ones and friends. I had also seen people die here in the mines. Horrible, terrible, tragic accidents that had crushed limbs and stolen breath.
But somehow, despite this life that I had lived – one where I had walked so close to death on a daily basis – I was still unprepared for this one.
“He was your rival,” I heard the dragon beside me whisper into my mind. And I knew that Ymmen was right. Dagan had dominated my life in a way that Inyene hadn’t – she had been a distant shadow, a background menace always – but nothing more than that.
It was Dagan who had made my life hell. And now he was dead. I didn’t quite know how I felt about that. In fact, I didn’t actually feel any different about myself, or what I had to do – which in itself was strange.
But my dark thoughts were broken by the clamor of bells and the high-pitched pheeet-pheeet of the guard whistles. “We have to get out of here!” I whispered, as bonfires exploded into life beyond the dragon’s shoulders on the opposite wall.
WHAM! There was a sudden explosion of sound from beside me as Montfre’s door was blown open in a cloud of splinters, and the bodies of two guards literally flew through the air across the corridor to tumble against the floor, and for the young mage to follow it out, lurching, with the fresh-cut staff that I had found for him glowing an eerie blue at one end, and smoking.
“Montfre!” I gasped. The young mage’s clothes were ripped and torn, and it looked as though he had one hell of a fight.
“We must leave, fierce one!” Ymmen was saying in my mind as he clutched onto the edge of the window.
Yes, I thought. We had to get everyone out – my heart thumped an instant later, Abioye! I spun around to his open reception room and ran forward.
The reception room was completely, entirely destroyed by the fight that must have raged in there. The ridiculous spindly-legged tables were all smashed and in splinters about the place, and even the wall hangings had been torn from the walls.
But my attention wasn’t on the room – it was on the two mine guards who were lying dead on the floor – and on Abioye himself lying in the middle of them. In his hand was his fine, slim-bladed rapier, and it was drenched in blood.
“Abioye!” I said, running to him.
“Hgh… Nari?” he whispered as he opened his eyes. He had a graze down one side of his face, and when he tried to move he winced and hissed in pain, as I saw that there was a tear on his shirt, and the fine linen was dyed a deep red.
Thank god he’s alive, I thought, and was surprised at the sudden strength of my emotion.
“Dear stars!” I gasped as I saw the size of the jagged wound on his chest. I didn’t even give him a moment as I placed my hands above and below the cut and gently pushed at them. It was a nasty cut – but the blood wasn’t flowing from it, I was grateful to see.
“Your ribs protected you,” I whispered. I had seen similar grazing injuries when any of the tribe had lost a fight with one of the wild bull deer of the Plains. If the blade had been turned just a fraction in a different angle then it would have punctured straight into the young man’s chest, and probably taken his life.
“Stand back,” Montfre whispered urgently, as he lurched and stumbled in behind me. The clamor of the keep alarms were only getting louder, and I could feel Ymmen’s agitation in my mind.
“Bolts! Fiends!” I heard him roar. The wall guards were firing on him – on my friend! But as I crouched here with Abioye, looking up at what Montfre was about to do, I heard a mighty, thunderous crack that I recognized as the wings of the mighty dragon snapping. I don’t know if he was using them to blow the crossbow bolts out of the sky, or whether he was merely folding their thick, protective leather over his body.
“Uria-isia, las-vitae…” Montfre whispered above me, and then I felt as though all of the hairs on my neck stood up at once. I felt that strange breath of a wind that didn’t move any hair on my head or the clothes on my body. The feeling of this mage’s magic made my teeth grate in my jaw – but it wasn’t the same, sickening nausea that I got from the magic of the mechanical dragons.
Montfre stepped lightly in at my side and lowered the end of his staff towards the groaning, wide-eyed form of Abioye.
“What are you doing?” I heard him whisper.
But Montfre’s face was flushed, and his eyes were filled with a whitish radiance as he concentrated, and the very tip of the staff glowed a pale and hazy blue as he dropped it lightly onto Abioye’s wound.
Abioye hissed and winced in pain before the blue radiance spread out across the cut, sealing it and leaving a wide, silvered scar. Magic doesn’t heal as well as a body can, I saw. But it works faster.
“Up,” Montfre said, and I could see just how clearly the effort that casting the magic had taken from him. He panted as he took his staff and slid it into the belt at his tunic, and even that effort appeared to cost him.
“Montfre?” I asked questioningly, as there came the clatter of running feet.
“No time! Hurry – I’ll be fine!” the young mage snapped.
So, I hurried. I reached under Abioye’s arms and pulled him unsteadily to his feet, allowing him to lean on me. Despite the fact that the young lordling was healed, I got the sense that it wasn’t a true healing. Abioye was breathing shallowly as I almost had to drag him to the door.
Ahead of us, Montfre had seized up Abioye’s sword and was hurrying in his loping, gasping weakness to Dagan’s body. I saw the young mage wince, then pull the Lady Artifex’s blade from the dead man’s chest. He returned to slide the Lady Artifex’s blade into Abioye’s belt before standing back and raising the sword at us both – the sword wobbling slightly in the air as he did so – just as the first wave of guards appeared in the stairwell.
“Montfre!” I gasped. “No!” I could see precisely what he was intending to do. He was making it look as though he had been the one to attack Abioye and kill the guards. He had already killed two of them by blowing out his door with the staff – and it wouldn’t be any great stretch to the imagination to assume that the dangerous young mage – who had already defied Inyene and destroyed her workshop before – would have acted again.
“It has to be this way,” Montfre whispered as the guards surged into the hallway, raising their cruel black-handled crossbows to fire.
“Dear stars!” One of the guards fainted at the sight of Ymmen’s giant head and coiled, hunched neck just inside the windows. The dragon had shielded us from the bolts of the wall guards and was doing his best to keep his head down and keep an eye on us at the same time. The other guards saw Ymmen and fell into a panicked commotion – as no one had clearly ever prepared for this.