Mircea's head lifted, as if scenting the air. All I could smell was rotting fish and evidence that maybe clean-water laws hadn't come into effect yet, but Mircea must have been able to filter those out. He started for the gaping mouth of another street, but before we could get there, a nearby hay-filled cart burst into flames. It sat beside the road, burning merrily for a moment, then hurtled straight at us.
Mircea pushed me out of the way, but lost valuable seconds in the process and ended up not quite clearing all of the flying bits of hay. I'd seen him handle fire before with aplomb, but there must have been something different about this one—maybe some potion residue still clinging to it—because it didn't go out. Instead, it caught on the heavy fabric of his shirt and started to spread.
He tore off the shirt and flung it into the river, where it hissed and went out, but by then the fire had spread to his hair. Before I could reach him to try batting it out with my hands, he was suddenly gone, and I heard a splash. I whirled around to see ripples spreading over the water.
A moment later, his head broke the surface. The fire was out, but I didn't have time to breathe a sigh of relief before a knife slid against my throat. I froze.
"I do believe I mentioned that it would be unwise to follow me," Pritkin said.
"It would be equally unwise to injure her," Mircea said. I didn't see him move, but Pritkin tensed.
"Stay where you are, vampire!" I felt the knife blade dent my skin, and a tiny trickle of warmth ran down my neck. Mircea halted, dripping, only a couple of yards away.
"You wish a very painful death, mage," he said, and despite being covered in river slime that was slowly oozing down his chest, he made it sound believable. The orb had fallen from his hand when he went in the water, rolled against a too-tall cobblestone and stopped. As far as I could see by its low light, other than a few nasty-looking burns on his chest, he appeared to be okay. That did not make me any less furious with Pritkin.
I struggled, too mad to care that this wasn't the same man who had held a knife to my throat once before. That Pritkin had had no reason to hurt me; this one, on the other hand, rightfully assumed that I wanted to steal from him. "Are you crazy? You could have killed him!"
"And may yet. I have given you fair warning; if you refuse to heed, I must and will have recourse to other means."
"Like killing two people over a stupid spell? For God's sake—"
"And which deity would you be invoking?" Pritkin asked, as the knife blade bit a little deeper. I was starting to feel blood pooling in the hollow of my throat. Even more worrying were Mircea's eyes, which had flooded amber and were currently brighter than our substitute for a lantern. He was pissed. And that was so not good.
Mircea rarely lost his temper, but when he did, it was scary. I'd already seen it twice and really didn't want another demonstration. Especially since Pritkin couldn't die tonight. Neither of these men knew it, but one day, they would work together to make some pretty impressive history. Some of which would be mine. I needed the Codex, but my life depended on having them both alive when the dust cleared.
"Listen to me," I said, my voice low and urgent. "We'll leave you alone. You can have the damn book. All we need is one spell. Give it to us and we'll go."
"One spell," Pritkin mused, while starting to move us backwards. I couldn't imagine what he was doing; with Mircea's speed, a few extra yards were meaningless. "And I wonder which that would be?"
I would have told him, but he'd increased the pressure enough that I was afraid the next thing I said would be the last thing. "Release her, mage, and I will consider allowing you to survive your punishment," Mircea said, very softly.
"And if you refrain from dogging my heels, I will consider letting her go, once my work is done," Pritkin replied. He sounded calm, but the heartbeat in the chest behind me was a little too loud for that. Mircea started to say something else, but Pritkin didn't give him the chance. He reached up with his hand as if grabbing something in the air, and the night ripped open like a wound, all pulsing red against the dark. Mircea jumped, but too late; the ley line snatched us off our feet and we were gone.
The tumbling torrent spewed us out on what felt like a dirt road a moment later, but before I could even start to focus on the surroundings, we'd caught another line, this one blue, and vanished again. I lost track of how many we crisscrossed after that, the colors all running together—blue, white, purple, back to blue, and then red again. It was a much more turbulent ride than with the empress's shield, and most of the time I barely had a chance to take a few stumbling steps before we were off again.
My eyes didn't have time to adjust, but my other senses picked up on random clues at each stop: the pungent smell of rotting seaweed and the call of seagulls; the scent of manure and the bleat of sheep; the heat of some enclosed space and the stench of spilled wine. We'd just arrived at the last one, with afterimages still dancing in front of my eyes, when there was another crack and a brilliant flash of red and Mircea stepped out of nothing.
Pritkin swore and a fireball appeared in the air in front of us. I yelled, Mircea dodged and the fireball exploded—against the orb, which had been its target all along. For some reason, I expected the gold ball to shatter like glass, but it was made of sterner stuff. When the flames cleared, it looked exactly the same. Pritkin had used the moment of the explosion to tear open another ley line, this one yellow. It pulsed like a small sun right above our heads, and I could feel the pull of it, even as Mircea grabbed for us.
He got a hand on Pritkin, but the heavy folds of the cape made it hard to tell where the mage's body was, and instead of an arm, he wrapped a fist around a handful of black cloth. The cape tore away as Pritkin made a flying lunge for the orb, scooping it up right as we were sucked into a golden void.
After a brief, tumultuous ride, a slap of wind hit my face and we dropped onto a surface that oozed wetly around my shoes. I leaned against something that felt like stone, my eyes refusing to focus on anything except leaping shadows, my lungs threatening to rebel against the sharpness of the night air. It was like jumping in the deep end of the pool when it's not quite warm enough to swim, and the shock is all you can feel until you break the surface, gasping.
When I could focus again, all I saw in place of that jumping stream of vivid color was a world of black, stretching out around me in every direction like Pritkin's missing cloak. But I could hear him gasping somewhere nearby, sounding about as frazzled as I felt. And I remembered Mircea saying that extended travel isn't recommended without some kind of advanced shield. Maybe that's why we'd stopped; maybe all the jumping around before he stole the orb had exhausted Pritkin. Too bad I was in no shape to capitalize on it.
I hung on to the frigid rock until it slowly came into focus. It was part of a stone and wood fence bordering an empty field, with nothing to see in the distance but charcoal smudges that might have been trees. Gray streamers of mist curled up from the wet ground, twisting around our ankles clammily, as Pritkin fumbled in his clothes for something. At his feet, the orb shone dimly through a veil of caked-on grime, having been treated to a mud bath when we landed.
It looked like I was on my own.
I sized this new Pritkin up as my heartbeat cautiously returned to normal. There were no fashionable knee pants, embroidered waistcoats or powdered wigs in evidence. He was dressed simply in a white shirt with long, full sleeves that, despite the weather, had been rolled up to show muscled forearms, and slim gray trousers that wouldn't have looked that out of place two hundred years later. Of course, they were crisscrossed with a load of armaments, differing from his usual stash only in the lack of automated weapons.