Her hand moved with a speed that surprised even him. A knife shot not toward him—but rather where Malfurion hid.
A branch shifted seemingly of its own accord. The knife struck deep—and something hidden on the handle flew free.
The forest in that direction exploded into flames.
Jarod gaped. The inferno spread so quickly, he could not see how Malfurion could have protected himself in time.
Even as she tossed the knife, Maiev used her other hand to throw something else at her brother. However, Jarod had already moved by then, lunging toward his sister and not away as she had evidently expected.
Behind him he heard a crackling sound. Ignoring the distraction, he threw his own knife at his sibling.
Maiev, her crooked smile taunting Jarod and her hand reaching for her crescent, vanished. Her helmet, released as she went for the weapon, fell to the ground.
But Jarod, aware that as warden she had the ability to teleport herself short distances, and having made a calculation of her viable directions—not to mention her insidious thinking—turned his lunge into a roll.
Maiev reappeared only a short distance away and at an angle that would have given her a clean strike at her brother. However, she had only a moment to finish drawing her weapon when Jarod bowled her over.
The two sprawled together. Maiev lost her grip on her crescent. The blades in his sister’s cloak cut Jarod in several places but caused only superficial wounds. Jarod tried to stop his momentum. Unfortunately, he sensed that Maiev had recovered first. Again she vanished, reappearing a few yards from him.
“You are getting sneakier!” she jested madly. “That is more like it! That is how you survive when those above send you on one hellish journey after another! That is how you live when demons torture you or the people you are fighting for spit on everything you swore to uphold!”
As she spoke, another pair of Watchers trotted into sight. They were not armed with umbra crescents, as he would have expected, but rather glaives. Their murderous gazes fixed on Jarod. One then looked to Maiev.
“Oh, by all means, kill my brother,” she commanded. “He came here to save them, which makes him as guilty!”
“Maiev—” But before he could try to reach whatever sanity might remain within his older sibling, her two followers threw their weapons. He saw why they had glaives now; the crescents were deadly but could not be tossed. Skilled as they were, the Watchers could adapt to whatever weapons worked best for the moment.
Jarod managed to completely dodge the first, but the second cut into his right calf. Although he still proved sufficiently dexterous to avoid more than a glancing cut, the pain was enough to throw him off balance.
“I had actually hoped you would see the truth of things, Jarod,” Maiev said with mock sadness as she turned back to the imprisoned Highborne. “You sacrificed so much in the beginning. But I guess the same thing that made you decide you could just leave behind your duty and go off merrily with some trollop from the temple makes it impossible for you to appreciate what I have been doing.”
She eyed the magi. Jarod, trying to find some sort of shield as the glaives returned to his two pursuers, saw that in addition to Archmage Mordent and the other Highborne, there was a corpse of another mage a short distance away. His body was absolutely white, as if covered in frost.
Jarod had no time to wonder at the cause of the Highborne’s demise. He knew that Maiev was responsible, and that was all that mattered. Worse, from the way she studied the other captives, it was clear that she intended to speed up the executions.
Another glaive went flying at Jarod. He judged its speed and dropped to the ground. At the same time he brought his foot up and kicked the soaring glaive from underneath.
He only barely missed having his boot and the toes inside sheared off. Still, Jarod accomplished what he desired: the glaive wobbled, then crashed to the ground fairly close to him.
But getting the weapon was another question. As he moved toward it, the second glaive came at him. He also saw that the owner of the first weapon now had a long dagger drawn and was heading in his direction.
Jarod rolled to the side as the second glaive passed. The spinning blades flew back toward their wielder. He used the moment to reach his objective.
However, instead of using it to defend himself, he threw the first glaive in the direction of his sister.
One of the other Watchers called out the alarm. Maiev vanished, reappearing next to her umbra crescent. She need not have been concerned with his attack, though, for she had not been his true target. That distinction went to a small golden cone that she had been bending down toward—a cone with four stones the color of pearl.
The glaive struck head-on. The cone shattered and the stones flew off in different directions.
Jarod had hoped that by destroying the artifact he would free the Highborne, but such was not the case. They remained prisoners, although he saw that there was relief on the face of more than one. At the very least, Jarod appeared to have either stopped the executions or somewhat delayed them.
His sister answered that question. “So clever, my little brother. I will fix it soon enough, though.”
He had no chance to worry about that, for the Watcher with the dagger then attacked. She slashed back and forth at Jarod, in between each slash kicking at either his midsection or his legs. He managed to stumble out of her way each time, although the gash in his calf grew increasingly painful with each movement. Out of the corner of his eye, Jarod saw his second foe calculating the aim of her glaive.
Aware that the second Watcher did not know that he saw her, Jarod pressed his defense against the first. Yet, he kept the other ever on the edge of his gaze.
His immediate foe kicked again. Risking getting sliced through the throat by her dagger, the former guard captain bent forward and seized her ankle.
Although taken aback and off balance, she nevertheless used the dagger as best as she could, cutting at the hand that gripped her. Jarod grunted with pain as the dagger’s tip scraped along his wrist to his hand. Despite the danger, he pulled as hard as he could, bringing her to him.
At the last, Jarod spun her around. The Watcher twisted.
But it was not the oncoming glaive that struck. The glaive flew past the pair, then rose up as it began its return to its wielder. Rather, what cut his foe through the back, regardless of her armor and severing the spine in the process, was his sister’s umbra crescent. Maiev, her helmet on and using the glaive as a distraction, had teleported up to her brother in order to catch him from behind.
A permanent glare across her lifeless face, the Watcher collapsed in his arms. Maiev disappeared.
The other Watcher reached for the approaching glaive. Scooping up the dagger, Jarod threw it. As the second Watcher started to rise, the blade hit her in the chest. The small weapon did not penetrate the armor but did distract the Watcher.
The glaive spun past her hand and tore through the less protected area at the neck . . . then took the Watcher’s head immediately after.
Jarod paused for a badly needed breath—and felt a terrible pain in his left arm. He looked down to see what seemed a long, sharp pin sticking out. Lifting his gaze, he met Maiev’s eyes.
It was clear from the dark intent in them that she had not meant to merely wound him. Only fortune had kept her from killing him. His steady gaze on his sister, he plucked out the pin and, with clear indifference, tossed the bloody missile aside. “Another failure. You made a mistake when you did not kill me after the trap caught me, Maiev.”
“A mistake quickly remedied,” she remarked as she drew something from a pouch. “Just as I have already dealt with our friends. . . .”
Jarod peered at the magi. They were writhing in pain, yet no sound escaped them. A dark aura was slowly surrounding them.