It wasn’t a hard blow but whatever power lay behind it did more damage than a broadsword through the side of his head. Olret’s face was ripped askew, left twisted like a child’s clay model crossly squashed for not coming out right. The woman slapped him again and the colour began to bleed from his clothes, brown, grey and copper running together into dull and muddy uncertainty. She struck him a third time, no harder than before and now he began to fade. Not all at once, not like an evil dream as you realise you’re waking but with great rents appearing in his head and body, soon big enough to see through to the room beyond. His simulacrum tore into sinking fragments that vanished as they hit the floor. His distorted head was the last to disappear, eyes rolling wildly, lolling tongue lashing.
The bald-headed man looked down then turned to Frala. “We come,” he said simply and all three of them vanished.
“I can’t stay,” Guinalle gasped and her image fled into nothingness, leaving me collapsing. I ripped my hands free of the grandmother’s merciless grasp and from the girl on my other side. As soon as the circle was broken, everyone fell to the floor, panting like animals. The only one left standing was the little girl, bemused as she looked at the crumpled figures around her.
“Mama?” She knelt to push at Frala’s shoulder.
I was on my knees and couldn’t have got to my feet if Saedrin himself had asked for it but there was still the noise of fighting in the corridor. I scrubbed at my eyes so fiercely it hurt but I was determined to clear every vestige of aetheric blurring from my vision. I fumbled at my belt, reaching for darts, dagger, anything to use against whatever might come through the door.
I forced my head up, blinking furiously as tears filled my eyes. Olret stood just beyond the doorway; the real Olret. He was held stock-still and from the flickering patterns of many hued light wheeling round him, this was some magical coil worked by the nexus of wizardry. His remaining men were doing their best to reach him but Ryshad and ’Gren stood on either side, barring their way with lethal effectiveness.
That bastard wasn’t dead yet no matter what had happened to his aetheric counterpart. I took a deep breath and reached carefully for a dart, reminding myself that poisoning myself by accident would be a monumentally stupid thing to do. I need not have troubled.
Sorgrad threw a handful of lightning at Olret and this time it scored him from head to toe, raising blisters down his blackened face and shattering his forward foot. If wizardry hadn’t held him up, he’d have collapsed. Even with the magic pinioning him, he cried out in agony.
“Nothing to save you now, shithead,” crowed Sorgrad.
“Let’s just kill him,” said Shiv wearily.
The wheeling light closed in around Olret and he burst into flames. The fire burned odourless and so hot I could feel it on my face and the brightness of the ruby, emerald, amber and sapphire in the flickering blaze was too painful to behold.
Ryshad and ’Gren stumbled in through the door as everyone fighting them fell away, fear more potent than loyalty for Olret’s men. Both were bleeding or covered with someone else’s blood, I couldn’t tell which.
“Burn him, burn every bone in his body. Scatter him on the winds to be lost in the trackless ocean.” It was the grandmother, crouching on her hands and knees with more of the poised cat than the whipped cur about her. The white fire consuming Olret reflected in her hungry eyes.
Ryshad staggered towards me, falling to his knees, bleeding from a handful of shallow nicks on arms and legs. I clung to him and together we watched Olret die. The old woman got her wish. When the flames closed in on themselves to finally vanish, all that was left was a twisting column of ash. Shiv shattered the windows with a rattle of hailstones and Sorgrad swept all that was left of Olret out to oblivion on a rush of icy air.
“Are we done?” I was shaking so much I could barely get the words out.
“Dast’s teeth, we’d better be.” Ryshad wrapped his arms around me, cruelly tight but I didn’t mind as his strength damped down the tremors wracking me. I could do without breath for the moment. He pressed his head close to mine and whispered words for me alone. “It’s all right, it’s all right. I know, I know.” That was no meaningless reassurance and I clung to the distant promise of calm. Ryshad knew. I heard the truth of it in every beat of his heart hammering beneath his ribs. He’d been imprisoned by Artifice, used by another’s will. I’d never be impatient with his distrust of enchantments again, I vowed. I should have stuck to my old beliefs; all magic brings is trouble.
“I need clean linen and water!” Sorgrad’s urgent shout roused me from these incoherent thoughts.
“What?”
“Where?”
Sorgrad was kneeling over ’Gren. He was face down on the filthy floor as Sorgrad sliced off his jerkin, already ripped through and soaked in blood. “One of them got him as he turned,” he explained tersely.
“Shit.” Ryshad tried to wipe away the blood coating ’Gren’s back but there was just too much, soaking his breeches, pooling on the floor around Ryshad’s knees. Sorgrad was already bloodied to the elbows.
I lifted ’Gren’s head out of the muck, cradling his face, biting my lip so hard I drew blood, welcoming the pain as it cleared my mind enough to still my shaking hands.
“Just hold on.” I told him with a smile that hid pain twisting inside me like a hot knife. Drianon, Halcarion, Saedrin, Poldrion, any cursed god who might be listening, please don’t let this happen, please don’t let him die. We’d won, hadn’t we? Why couldn’t we just walk away with our victory? Why did it have to be stained with blood?
’Gren squinted up at me with one blue eye glazed with pain. ”It hurts, girl. Curses, it hurts.” He tried to grin but could only manage a puzzled grimace.
“Give me some room.”
Ryshad moved to let Shiv get closer and water poured from the wizard’s hands on to ’Gren’s naked back. Washed clean, we all saw a deep, ragged gash slicing deep into his side just above his hip. It vanished again as ’Gren’s lifeblood came welling out. Ryshad ripped off his jerkin and shirt, Sorgrad doing the same and bundling the linen tight.
“Come on, you skinny little bastard,” Ryshad muttered. “Put that bloodymindedness to good use for a change. Tell Poldrion where he can stick his ferry pole.”
’Gren meant precious little to Ryshad but Aiten had been his closest friend for ten or more years and I could see the memory of that loss darkening my beloved’s brow.
“Let me see him.” The grandmother was at my side.
“You don’t touch this wound with those foul hands,” snarled Sorgrad and if he hadn’t been fully occupied trying to staunch the flow, I swear he would have hit her.
But she didn’t want to touch the wound. Rather she laid a gentle hand on ’Gren’s head as it rested in my hands. “What manner of man are you?” she wondered softly.
’Gren was barely conscious. ”What Misaen made me.”
“And that is—”
I knew the reason for the grandmother’s sharp intake of breath. I loved ’Gren like a brother but that didn’t blind me to his blithe lack of conscience. Then there was the uncomplicated delight he took in bedding any girl willing and fighting any man fool enough to think ’Gren wouldn’t kill him just for the excitement of proving his prowess and filling his purse by way of a bonus.
“He’s my friend,” I begged her. “And he risked his life to save you all.”
The woman looked at me stony faced. “Which might count for something if he valued what he risked, if he valued what he fought for, if he ever looked beyond the moment he dwells in.”
All at once I was furious with the skinny old crone. What did she know about ’Gren and what he meant to me, no matter what he was? Nor was I about to leave someone else dead on these god-cursed rocks, not after losing Geris and Aiten to this horrible place and its cruel people with their ice-coated hearts.