Variam jumped, and as he did bolts of fire and ice slammed into him. His shield flared, absorbing the attack, but he was sent flying into the wall behind. The roar of automatic weapons filled the room, shadows twisting and falling. Sagash disappeared in a bloom of multicoloured light and Caldera was knocked back a step as a dozen bullets hit her.
The light faded to reveal Sagash standing, unharmed. He raised both hands, sparks flashing as bullets sank into his shield, and I felt magic gathering, dark and terrible. A point of darkness appeared above his head; it grew quickly, spinning as it did, becoming a ball of black fire.
I felt what was coming, images and movement, a hundred things at once. ‘Hoarfrost, right!’ I shouted over the noise. ‘Travis, down! Sanders, get—!’ Even as I spoke, I knew it wasn’t enough. Too many people; too many conflicting directions. I caught Ji-yeong’s arm and yanked her aside just as the black sun above Sagash flared, bright enough to cause pain.
Beams of black light flashed out, spearing through the crowd. I saw one barely miss Hoarfrost, his eyes going wide as it cut through his shield and went over his left shoulder; Travis ducked as another went over his head. Others weren’t so lucky. Sanders screamed as a beam burned through him, his shoulder and chest flaring into ash.
The black sun twisted and the beams scythed across the room; I ducked and more screams sounded behind me. Over the comm I heard Landis snapping out orders; spells sprang out to touch the black sun and it guttered, its beams going out.
Behind Sagash something appeared in my magesight, a lattice of power, some kind of magic I’d never seen before. It formed a column linking the platform to the hole in the roof. Variam jumped up through it, lifted on fiery wings.
Hydroblast spells flashed out, aimed by Tobias. They struck Variam with perfect accuracy . . . and winked out as they hit the column. They weren’t deflected, as by a shield: they just vanished. Variam disappeared through the hole in the roof.
Shit! I knew where he was going. Luna, Ji-yeong, I’m going after Vari. Stay alive. I crouched, calling upon my headband, and leapt.
Air magic wrapped around me, carrying me upwards. I had a brief panorama of the battle below, soldiers fighting shadows and spells flying back and forth and Landis engaged with Sagash in a deadly long-range duel, orange-red fire meeting black death. Caldera saw me and flung out another stream of flaying sand, but the range was too long and I was already bending the futures; the sandblast flashed past below. I alighted on the window ledge, the sun dazzlingly bright after the gloom of the tombs.
As my vision cleared, I saw a small dark figure, soaring on wings of flame. He was heading for the castle walls, angling west towards the windmill.
I tightened my grip on the sovnya and leapt into the sky.
13
Air rushed around me as I soared. I’d never pushed the headband to see just how far and fast it could go, and now I gave myself over to it. I felt the item come alive, exulting in the open sky.
The bridge was far, far below, Landis’s rearguard black specks against the stone. ‘Verus to command group,’ I called as I flew. ‘A marid jinn has broken away and is inbound towards the accumulator.’
‘Did you say a marid?’ Sonder asked.
‘Gamma team,’ Nimbus said. ‘Status on the accumulator.’
‘Sixty per cent,’ Lumen said, her voice tense. ‘We need at least five minutes.’
‘Acknowledged,’ Nimbus said calmly. ‘Beta team, engage the marid and slow its advance.’
Now that I was out of the tombs, I could feel the accumulator clearly, a glow of power behind the castle’s western corner. Up ahead, I saw Variam dip out of sight beyond the walls.
The castle’s north wall was coming up to meet me. I was reaching the top of my arc, and my eyes were telling me I was going to slam into the ramparts and fall. Despite myself, I glanced down: the castle’s walls fell away sheer and vertical, down and down to the rocks and crashing surf far below. My stomach lurched and I pulled my eyes up towards the crenellated wall, closer, closer—
My feet sailed in between two of the merlons and I touched down on the rampart, turning the landing into a run. I searched for Variam and found him, below me and to the left. He was soaring westward on fiery wings, jumping from walltop to walltop.
He wasn’t moving as fast as me, but he was fast. He’d reach the windmill in much less than five minutes. And once he got there, he was going to level that place and everyone around it.
The sovnya tugged, pulling in Variam’s direction. I shut it out; instead, as I ran along the rampart, I searched through the futures, calculating angles. There. I leapt, then leapt again, off the wall towards Variam.
Variam was flying towards a towertop that would give him a view over the western castle. I soared high, my arc carrying me over his. As I flew, I unclipped a grenade from my belt, pulled the pin, waited two and a half seconds, then threw it downwards just as I passed over Variam’s head.
The grenade went off in Variam’s face with a flat boompf. His shield absorbed the impact, but while Variam might be immune to shrapnel, he wasn’t immune to Newton’s laws of motion. The blast slowed his momentum, and all of a sudden the arc that would have carried him onto the towertop was falling short. Variam slammed into the wall and fell out of sight.
I alighted and jumped again. ‘Verus to gamma team,’ I said. ‘Stalled the marid for thirty seconds.’
A pause, then Sonder replied. ‘Can you do that a few more times?’
‘No,’ I said shortly. ‘Verus to accumulator team, friendlies coming in, repeat friendlies coming in, hold fire, hold fire.’
I came flying over the western walls and down towards the windmill. I saw the muzzles of light machine guns turning towards me; they tracked me all the way in but Little’s team were veterans and no one pulled a trigger. I landed on the grass by the millpond and turned and ran for the windmill. Men stationed by the building stood aside as I threw open the door.
This close, the accumulator’s power was like a furnace, filling the windmill with leaking energy. The focus looked like a thick white cylinder with a rounded top, connected by some arcane mechanism to a polished blue disc that I knew was the gate linkage. On the right side, Sergeant Little was speaking into his comm, his voice low and tense. The far wall held a big flat-screen monitor, and on it I could see Sonder and Lumen against a background of ramparts and sky. Below the monitor, a camera was pointed at me.
I strode into the room. Just being around the accumulator felt tense, like being in a room with a ticking bomb. ‘How long?’ I asked.
‘Four to nine minutes,’ Lumen said through the video link, her voice strained. She was holding a focus the size and shape of a spearhead that I knew would channel the blast; a silvery wire led away from it out of view. ‘What’s going on with the marid?’
‘Still coming. Two minutes out.’
Across the room, Little looked up and shook his head. ‘No reinforcements,’ he told me. ‘Orders are to hold with what we have.’
I hesitated, futures and battle plans unfolding. Little and me and twenty-two more, with rifles, three light machine guns and a handful of grenades. Against a marid . . .
We couldn’t win. Not even close.
I turned to the video screen. ‘Sonder. I need you here.’
Sonder’s eyes widened. ‘What?’
‘We don’t have enough to stop this thing,’ I said. Mentally I was tracking how long we had until the marid landed. One minute, forty seconds. ‘Your magic could do it.’