She shook her head. Maybe Sergei could explain it later. Right now —
She circled around the throne and came at it from the back, somehow not wanting to approach from the front. Those rubies all felt — however irrational that was — like sleeping eyes. She didn't want them to wake up and notice her.
The back of the throne was plain, unornamented gold. Beneath the throne was a box.
She tried to move it; it was heavier than it looked. She tried again, and discovered that she could make it move, though with great difficulty. Carefully she slid it out, making as little sound as possible. She didn't know if those black spidery things could hear anything from this room, but she didn't want to find out that they could, the hard way. The box was horribly, horribly heavy, and if the floor of this room hadn't been of very slippery marble, she would never have been able to manage it. As it was, she could only ease it out a little at a time, biting her lip with the effort.
She'd been afraid that the box would be locked, but it wasn't — because the lock had, at some time in the past, been broken. The hasp that held it shut had broken off. Not a surprise, really; if someone was foolish enough to make a lock and hasp out of soft gold, it should be no great shock to discover it breaks after very little use....
Which made no more sense than this room.
She opened the lid of the box — and there it was, embedded in gold that filled the box, protected by a steel cage.
"It" was a diamond. A diamond the size of her head.
And inside it, seen through the glittering facets, something the size of her fist, something wet and red, pulsed rhythmically.
Her heart sank.
The diamond was embedded in the box. The box was too heavy to lift. The cage prevented her from smashing the stone, and even if she did, she wouldn't be able to get at the heart immediately —
— and by then, it would be too late. Alexander would have lost the fight. In fact, the only reason she knew that he hadn't was that the Sorcerer would have made short work of Julian and his "army," and from the faint sounds penetrating the walls of this room, the fighting was still going on.
Seconds ticked by as she tried her dagger on the steel cage, on the gold, and finally broke the tip off trying to shatter the diamond through the cage anyway. Nothing worked, and she became more and more frantic. Dark magics wove a web around it as impervious as the steel cage, preventing anyone from getting at it without shattering the diamond. She didn't have enough magic to get the thing out —
— or — did she?
Surely the thing was proof against any spell meant simply to remove it from the diamond.
But the Sorcerer had to put it back where it belonged from time to time, and he wouldn't want to bother with dispelling and resetting the magic around it.
Carefully, feeling as if she was wading through sewage, she tried to work her way through the ugly, vicious magic used to protect the heart. Bit by bit, she unraveled the close-woven spells with her mind and identified them — or at least, their purpose. Since she wasn't trying to dispel or break them, the magic left her alone, allowed her to worm her mental probe deeper and deeper into the noisome ball, until finally —
— she touched and identified the last spell.
Which was not a protective spell. Just as she had thought.
She rested for a moment, her stomach heaving, fighting against throwing up. Wading through sewage? This was more like swimming through it, a torrent of sewage and rot and despair, and it engulfed more of her, the deeper into it she went. And she was going to actually have to do more than touch this — stuff.
There was one chance here to save them all. One chance; it would leave her helpless, and if it didn't work, the Sorcerer's minions would find her.
If that happened, if she was lucky, they'd kill her, and if she wasn't lucky, she would spend days, weeks, or months wishing for death with every breath she took.
Even if it did work, the Sorcerer's minions might still find and kill her before Alexander killed the Sorcerer.
All or nothing.
But if she didn't, Alexander, and everyone else, would die.
The Sorcerer could reign unchallenged for generations. He would engulf all of the nearby Kingdoms, her Kingdoms, and rain death and terror down on the people she had vowed to help.
And The Tradition would help him.
They had to stop him now, or his conquest would not stop at all for some time to come.
Of all of the spells here, this one was the simplest. It did not need to be able to recognize the person activating it, it did not need to be warded, for it could only do one thing, and that one thing was always, always, to the Sorcerer's advantage, and had no potential to harm him.
He thinks.
It only took a touch of power. She gathered up a tiny mote of it, inserted her wand into the cage of steel, and touched it to the tangled tail of the spell.
"Go home," she whispered to the heart inside the diamond.
It vanished, and there was only one place where it would be "home," only one place for it to go.
She took the last of her power, the very last; she stole the last of the power remaining from her invisibility spell and she saw herself in all of the reflective surfaces, blinking back into place. Then she took all of her own strength, all of her energy, everything she had. She took a deep breath, raised her wand over her head, and cast —
This spell, too, required no finesse. It was simple, and crude. It did one thing; it would engulf the castle and grounds in a single, overwhelming shout that would be heard no matter how loud the fighting.
And as the glittering room blacked out, as she felt herself falling over onto the box, she, too heard it. Three words, in her own voice, if she'd had the voice of a giant and the lungs of a dragon.
"Strike the heart!"
And then she knew nothing more.
"Strike the heart!"
It was Elena's voice, and Alexander was so startled that he missed his stroke.
But so had the Mage.
And Alexander's reactions were those of a fighter. As the Evil Mage, distracted for that crucial second, glanced to the side, looking for the source of the shout, Alexander dropped his own shield, seized his sword-hilt in both hands, ducked under the Sorcerer's guard and rammed the sword-point home against the Sorcerer's breastplate. As he did so, he willed every particle of magic, every bit of his own strength, into the blow.
As the Mage flailed at him, the sword glowed white-hot. There was a moment of resistance, then it slammed home.
The Mage froze.
With a great clap of thunder, the Evil Mage fell.
He went over like a statue, carrying Alexander's sword with him.
And a silence descended like a hammer, as everything, and everyone, just — stopped.