He was too late. Huge black teeth fastened high on the carpal joint of one of her wings. Bone snapped, the sound sickeningly audible. Aryal gave a high, wild shriek of anguish and rage. She tried to whirl, to shake the shadow off of her, but it held on. Blood fountained as it ripped through her flesh. Two more shadows attacked, one tearing at her heel and the other ripping through her thigh muscle. She staggered and collapsed.
Quentin roared and lunged, flinging a repel spell at the shadow wolf that was still latched onto her wing. It tumbled away, even as she rolled over onto her hands and knees. Head lowered, she tried to get to her feet, while her savaged wing lay in an awkward sprawl. She couldn’t get her injured leg to support her weight.
Shadow wolves poured into the space between them before he could reach her, too many for him to knock away. Fiery pain exploded in one of his calves as a wolf sank its teeth into him. He twisted to fling a repel spell at it.
By the time he had turned around, shadow wolves had torn Aryal’s other wing, and the largest one held her pinned with its teeth at the back of her neck.
A woman wearing jeans and a tank top walked out of the alley. She was human, of average height, rounded at breasts and hips, and she looked to be perhaps in her late thirties, with dark hair and eyes, and a Slavic face with high cheekbones.
She also carried more Power than Quentin had ever felt before in a human, and more than most of any of the magic users he had met of the other Elder Races.
She gestured with one hand. All the shadow wolves halted their attack, except the largest one that kept his hold on Aryal’s neck.
The woman said in accented English, “Now is a good time for you to surrender.”
They were outnumbered, and he knew he was outclassed magically, but Quentin still gathered up his Power. He couldn’t throw a repel spell at the shadow wolf that held Aryal pinned, or its teeth might very well snap her neck. He could sure as fuck throw something offensive at the woman though.
The woman looked at him. “If you cast another spell at me or my wolves, you will kill your partner. Release your Power.”
And there it was, everything he had once thought that he wanted to achieve.
All it would take is one more spell, and Aryal would die by someone else’s hands.
A hot, furious feeling shook through him.
No. NO.
He released his Power. “Tell your creature to let her go.”
“Not yet. I have to make a decision first.” The woman crossed her arms and sighed heavily. “I know who she is. And I can guess who you are. You have presented me with a pretty problem. I do not have anything against the Wyr from America—yet.”
“I know who you are too,” Aryal whispered hoarsely. Her hair hung down over her face, and she had dug her talons into the cracks between the cobblestones. “Galya Andreyev. Only I thought you never left Russia.”
The woman frowned and said, “It is really unfortunate that you have recognized me. Now you have increased my problem, and that is not at all pretty.”
The woman made a throwing motion with her hand, and flung out a dark web filled with stars. Instinct took over and Quentin lunged sideways, attempting desperately to avoid it. But as fast as he was, he couldn’t move fast enough, because the web wasn’t any more physical than the shadow wolves had been. It settled over his head to cover him completely. He tried to throw off the spell, but it sank underneath his skin before he could cast a counter-measure.
He thought he caught a glimpse of a night sky as he tumbled headlong into darkness.
Something dripped.
The sound was making him crazy. He needed to get up to turn off the faucet. He rolled over on the remarkably hard, cold bed, and woke up.
He was alone, and he lay on the floor of a prison cell. No weapons, no backpack.
The cell was dry and very plain, just the ceiling and floor, three stone walls, and a fourth wall made of metal bars that radiated some kind of dull-feeling magic. In one corner of the cell, a shallow hollow in the floor with a hole constituted a primitive latrine. Faint light spilled in from somewhere, throwing deep shadows, but his feline sight did very well in deep shadows and even in full darkness. Instinct told him he had not been unconscious for very long. He thought that the light could be the last of the day’s sunshine.
He looked outside of his cell. He could see two cells across from him. One was empty, and the other one held a long, still length with gray-to-black wings spilled over the floor. Aryal. There was red too, a great deal of it, and he could smell the coppery tint of both her blood and his.
Water still dripped somewhere nearby, and there were voices.
“That was a harpy,” an Elven male said. “And I don’t know what the man was, but he wasn’t human.”
“That was Quentin,” a light, female Elven voice said. Relief flooded Quentin as he recognized Linwe’s voice. “At least I think it was. He’s part Elf. And if that was Quentin, I bet the harpy was the sentinel Aryal. She looked bad.”
“I wonder when they’ll wake up,” said a third Elf, another male. That was Caerreth, the bookish male.
“I’m awake,” Quentin said hoarsely. He rolled onto his stomach with difficulty and sat up. “Linwe?”
“Yes, it’s me,” said Linwe. “Oh thank the gods. I mean, not that you’re here locked up too, but that you’re you and awake. It’s good to hear your voice. Are you all right?”
He inspected himself. The worst wounds were the bites on his biceps and his thigh, and as he probed at them, he discovered they hadn’t yet closed. He frowned. Given his Wyr abilities, they should have closed over by now. “I think so,” he said. “I’ve got a few wounds, but they aren’t too bad. You?”
“I’m okay—there’s three of us, and we’re okay. We’re really hungry though.”
“There were four in your party,” he said. He eased off his T-shirt and tore it into strips. Then he used the strips to bind his wounded thigh tightly and, with considerable more clumsiness, the bite on his upper arm. “What happened to the fourth?”
There was a small silence. Then Linwe said bleakly, “She didn’t make it.”
Linwe said “she,” which meant it would have been Cemalla. Damn. He closed his eyes. He was getting tired of hearing about Elves dying. He said, “I’m sorry. How long have you been here—and do you know where here is?”
One of the male Elves answered him. “We’re in the prison underneath the palace in Numenlaur. We’ve been here for almost two weeks.”
Elves could survive a long time without food and almost as long without water, but if they hadn’t had any liquid or nourishment in all that time, they had to be feeling poorly. He asked, “How long has it been since you’ve eaten or drank anything?”
“The witch who imprisoned us has been bringing us wayfarer bread and water every three days,” Linwe said. “But the last time was three days ago, and she didn’t leave any food or water when she brought you and the harpy in. We’re wondering if that means she’s decided to stop feeding us.”
“I met the witch,” he growled.
“Of course you did.” She sounded dispirited and listless. “I’m not thinking very clearly.”
“Don’t worry about it, Linwe. If I were you, I wouldn’t be thinking clearly either.”
Getting food and water every few days was barely sustainable. The thought of them imprisoned for almost two weeks, getting hungrier and thirstier as they listened to that water drip, infuriated him.
He pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the bars. He wasn’t familiar with the exact spell that had been smelted into the metal, but it would be something to contain dangerous prisoners with a possible proficiency in magic. Every Elder Races prison had something of the same, some sort of way to dampen a prisoner’s magic.