Winter Wren Read online

  An arcanir shield wall.

  Her eyes widened before she regained her composure; she had never seen the spectacle in person, let alone in such close quarters. The formation protected against a first salvo of direct spells to follow with an attack of deadly, arcanir-tipped crossbow bolts. As long as the metal remained in contact with a mage, anima became inaccessible—no magic could be cast. And then, it was the swordsmen’s turn. She shuddered.

  The formation, of course, could not defend against indirect environmental spells. They could do little if she toppled the alley with a quake spell or if Leigh dropped a building on them. But both geomancy and force magic were rare; the commander of these men staked them on probability.

  In the corner of her vision, part of a battering ram peeked from behind a wall.

  So the paladins were taking the castle.

  “Surrender, and you will not be harmed,” the commander among them bellowed. All shoulders, he somewhat resembled an ox, but his intricate gilded armor could not be mistaken for anything other than that of an officer.

  Leigh chuckled under his breath. “You could not harm me, clod, if you tried.”

  A tense silence formed and lingered. She held her breath, but Leigh stood his ground. If this continued, he’d bait a fight. But these paladins were here to help, and there was no need for their blood to be shed.

  “We’re here on the king’s business,” she blurted.

  The commander’s gaze shifted to her and back to Leigh. She nudged Leigh to present their orders, but he wouldn’t move, scowling at the paladins.

  Despite his lingering scowl, she reached into his coat for the orders herself, then slowly unrolled the parchment and held it out to the commander, the king’s seal clearly visible.

  The commander scrutinized the orders from afar, then sighed. “Bring that here, girl.”

  Leigh blocked her path with his arm. “Move and you will regret it.”

  Her mouth fell open. He’d rather fight these paladins than allow her to show the commander a piece of parchment?

  “What are you going to do?” she asked through gritted teeth. “Punish me?”

  “A demerit in your records for insubordinate conduct.”

  She and Leigh did not have to help the paladins, but antagonizing them was cruel and hindered the mission.

  Running steps echoed from the alley and grew louder.

  “Commander Noren!” The runner, a willowy paladin, doubled over to catch his breath, holding his close helm in one hand and his shield in the other, a sheathed sword at his hip. “Commander Marcel needs reinforcements in the square. Gilles and his doubles are fighting us in force. They’ve locked hostages—women, children, elders—in the shrine, sir. It’s on fire.”

  Two squads of paladins couldn’t both put out a fire and help defeat the best fighters the Crag Company had to offer. But she could.

  Noren’s face tightened as he stood silent, but at last, the tightness went slack.

  The runner rolled his shoulders. The firmness of youth still in his face, he could be no older than his early twenties. The distant fires shimmered warm reflections in his short, golden hair. He could have passed for one of the knights from the romantic tales of old or one of the libertine bards who spun them. He closed his eyes, his lips moving in silence. A prayer?

  The image of a few hopelessly beleaguered paladins defending innocents invaded her mind once more.

  Too dangerous. Unsanctioned. Unnecessary.

  She stepped forward. “I’ll go.”

  “Divine’s tits you will.” Leigh turned the full force of his livid scowl upon her.

  Holding his gaze, she raised her chin.

  “I’ll—” he growled, the threat snarling in his voice.

  She laid her hand on his upper arm. “Do what you must, but these people don’t need to die to save the viscount. I have to do this. For all the times we didn’t.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Not all lives have the same value. Some are worth more. The ones that come with money, power, influence. Those are the lives that can truly fight the evils of this world. Like the viscount’s.”

  Leigh was more than able to save that one himself. What harm was there in her directly saving the many?

  Before Leigh could say anything else, she turned to Noren. “I am an apprentice quaternary elementalist with the Emaurrian Tower. I possess both the power and the skill to extinguish the fire and to support the paladins in the square fighting the Crag. I offer my assistance freely and willingly. Is that acceptable to you, sir?”

  A mage was the paladins’ only hope—the hostages’ only hope. Both the commander and his men would need to be at the castle. Even if he were inclined to turn back, three squads would be unable to both put out the fire and help defeat the Crag.

  Noren nodded. “Terra have mercy, apprentice, but I pray you keep your word.”

  She folded the orders and held them out to Leigh. When he didn’t move, she tucked them back into his coat and patted the spot. Leigh’s scowl followed her every movement, making her shiver.

  She approached the runner, but Leigh grabbed her hand.

  His dark eyes were stern, but they softened. “If you die out there—”

  “I won’t.”

  He held her gaze her a moment longer before giving her a solemn nod and releasing her.

  “Paladin,” he called to the runner, whose fair head popped up in reply. “Watch her back.”

  “I will.” The runner brought his right fist to his heart and inclined his head. “You have the word of Sir Bastien Proulx.”

  “Rielle,” Leigh called, his posture stiff. “Meet me at the castle.”

  “Yes, Magister.” She inclined her head.

  A hint of a smile tugged at his mouth.

  She turned to the runner. “Take me to the square, Sir Bastien.”

  A massive gray cloud hovered over Signy’s center, and beneath it, chaos stormed. Amid the fires, arcanir clashed against steel. A paladin commander bellowed orders over a mercenary captain’s shouting. And at the heart of the fighting, the Terran shrine blazed, its billowing smoke feeding into the shroud covering the town.

  Rielle gasped. Great Divine, everyone inside would die. If they weren’t dead already.

  “I’ll cover you.” Sir Bastien took up a defensive stance at her back.

  Ignoring the clang of his long sword behind her, she held out her hands and willed the flames from the shrine. They dissipated, leaving the building charred.

  In the square, the mercenaries outnumbered the paladins. At this rate…

  She wound her fingers, twisting a fiery cyclone spell, then directed it toward a dense mass of mercenaries and paladins. The paladins—thanks to their arcanir and sigil tattoos—would be protected.

  A paladin crossbowman trained his weapon on her.

  Sir Bastien moved to cover her. “The mage is with us!”

  The man turned his aim away. Sir Bastien warily returned to his position at her back.

  Flexing her nervous fingers, she looked back at the shrine. It was no longer aflame, but the doors were nailed shut. A whirlwind spell would—

  “Use your sorcery to open the shrine!” Sir Bastien cut into a mercenary wielding a short sword.

  “Magic,” she corrected, scowling over her shoulder, and a glimmer flickered in his eyes before his sword met another. Teasing her, at a time like this? Paladins’ disdain for mages had to run deep.

  Her muscles relaxed.

  Clever man. His teasing had been to settle her nerves.

  She cast a whirlwind in front of the shrine, strong and controlled to pull off the boards and the doors. A loud screech rent the air, followed by the crunch of splintering wood as the boards and doors broke away. The whirlwind spat them out, sending them flying into buildings, and drew the smoke from the shrine.

  Her feet were already moving. With the grace of the Divine, someone inside would be alive.

  A mercenary sped toward her. With a gesture, she shot an ice
spike through his gut. He collapsed before the entryway.

  His life bled into the threshold.

  She stepped over him to enter the shrine. Bastien kept close behind her, bringing his shield up to deflect Crag arrows as they entered, and paused only to pierce the dying mercenary’s neck.

  “No man who besieged this town is innocent,” he whispered.

  True enough. Had he noticed her hesitation?

  The light of the burning town illuminated the ruined shrine. Inside the blackened walls, burnt tapestries dangled by mere threads. Paintings had melted, and beams from the ceiling had collapsed. At least her spell had cleared the smoke.

  There, in the back, a huddled mass moved. As she neared, she made out soot-covered faces.

  Bastien gasped behind her. “Terra have mercy.”

  A large shadow darkened the doorway. Rielle spun toward it, but Bastien was already charging the intruder, his long sword meeting metal in a resounding clang. Bound blades screeched against one another, echoing in the shrine.

  The glint of firelight reflected off the intruder’s lengthy two-handed sword. A double’s weapon. It measured a baffling five feet, much longer than Bastien’s long sword, with a wide crossguard and a pair of parrying hooks at the top of the ricasso. The fiery reflection danced along the blade’s undulating, waved edge.

  A flambard. The man bearing it towered head and broad shoulders above Bastien in massive plate armor. Armor befitting a Crag Company captain.

  Gilles.

  All instinct, she threw an ice shard at him, but it dissipated upon impact. How?

  Green-tinged, his armor had to be arcanir, but looked nothing like the Order’s make—black market.

  “To me!” Gilles called over the din. “The hostages!”

  An order. If the Crag couldn’t escape, the hostages would be their last bargaining chip. The shrine could be overrun at any moment.

  “Get them out, mage!” Bastien called through clenched teeth, meeting a strike of Gilles’ massive flambard.

  Her heart pounded in her throat. It was a losing battle. She knew it. Bastien knew it. He had to.

  “Go!” he bit out.

  Ignoring the pressure behind her eyes, she forced herself away to face the hostages. Both she had Bastien had come here for them, and she couldn’t cast an indirect spell here to fight Gilles without endangering them, too. The burnt shrine was crumbling, unstable.

  A young woman with a mass of brown curls fumbled with a string of wooden focus beads, healing those around her, exhaustion dulling her eyes. A hedge witch. They all needed a way out, and fast.

  The roof groaned.

  No time. Rielle turned her attention to the doors behind the group and called the wind to blast them open.

  She darted to the huddled survivors, urging them on while she held up a wind wall to deflect any Crag arrows. They stumbled through the debris.

  The peal of clashing blades sounded behind her. If Bastien could hold out a little longer, the survivors could escape, and he would fall back. She had to believe he would.

  At last, only the hedge witch remained with three small, unmoving bodies. Children. Rielle bent to check for signs of life.

  Heartbeats. She let out a relieved breath.

  “They’ll recover…” The hedge witch hefted the two smaller boys. “But I hadn’t the power to keep them awake.”

  “I understand.” Rielle eyed the remaining girl lying on the floor, no older than twelve, who would need to be carried out.

  The hedge witch nodded to her and bore the two boys from the shrine.

  Rielle glanced back at Bastien. He had lost ground but parried another strike. Her life, the lives of the hostages—he saved them all.

  A joist cracked above.

  “Divine forgive me.” Tearing herself away, she dropped her wind wall, took hold of the girl, and hefted her over her shoulder.

  Unused to bearing so much weight, she staggered but recovered her balance. She proceeded with caution outside and found it clear. As quickly as possible, she needed to get her charge to safety so she could return for Bastien.

  The sounds of battle continued in the square. Her shoulder and back rebelling, she traced the wall of the shrine, rounded the corner, and came face-to-face with a spearman.

  Close quarters. A mage’s worst nightmare.

  She grabbed the spear and angled the girl away from him. If he pulled away, he’d have all the room he’d need to kill her.

  Divine help me.

  But he pulled her in, too. He punched her stomach, violently sending up its contents.

  She vomited all over him but didn’t let go, wheezing for breath. She exploited his momentary disgust to palm his face, her casting gesture instant. His flesh melted beneath her touch.

  He jerked away, screaming. It was all the opportunity she needed—an ice spike squelched through his head.

  Warm blood coated her palm. He was dead.

  Wiping her mouth, she staggered away, then checked the girl for injuries.

  She was unharmed. Divine be praised.

  Rielle backed up and, when her palm found the shrine wall, scrambled to regain her composure. Screams, the crackle of flames, and the clang of metal against metal came from the square, distant reminders of a battle not yet over.

  No time to regroup. Her anima was still bright enough for spellcasting. She would support the paladins in battle as promised, but she couldn’t just leave this girl here. She needed to get her somewhere safe.

  A moment to gather her courage, and Rielle skirted the commotion in the square toward the castle. Burning buildings edged the area, their smoke climbing to join the darkness of the night sky. She caught glimpses between them of the center, where mercenaries swarmed around paladins, engaged in bitter warfare upon a field of lifeless bodies.

  On the outer rim, a small group of priests tended the wounded civilians.

  She made her way there and, when she caught their attention, held up her hands in peace. A blood-stained priest shouldered through and accepted the girl from her. With a nod, Rielle turned back toward the shrine.

  “Young woman!” the priest called. “It’s dangerous!”

  Dangerous. She ignored the heat of illness in her belly.

  With the paladins immune to her magic, she could unleash her power without fear of hurting them.

  Casting with both hands, she blew a chill spell into the fray. Pure cold, it quickly wound into a focus until it became the size of a dozen men.

  Then it crystallized—a moment of gleaming, icy perfection—and shattered.

  A deep freeze bled from the center outward, rippling cold and frost that climbed the mercenaries’ legs. Their feet froze to the ground. Fractals of ice scaled their armor and multiplied.

  Sluggish but sharp-eyed Crag archers searched the outskirts of the square for the source of the magic. She cast her wind wall with one hand and, with the other, threw an ice shard at an archer flanked by a paladin. A distraction.

  He dodged. The paladin ran him through from behind.

  Arrows glanced off her wind wall and dropped to the ground. One by one, she targeted the archers. An ice shard went through a mercenary’s neck.

  With the archers dead and the paladins’ numbers overwhelming in the square, she could return to Bastien.

  Nimbly, she ducked behind a ruined merchant stall and made for the shrine, tracing the outside toward the front. Although Gilles wore arcanir armor, the flambard had looked like plain steel. She’d render it molten and useless.

  The clangor of battle grew louder. A fight. Bastien was still alive. Her breath bottled up in her chest as she rounded the corner, channeling fire in her palms.

  A young, brown-haired paladin dueled Gilles, losing ground. But rage blazed in his every ferocious strike, in his madding eyes.

  Not Bastien.

  The paladin stumbled over a body, landing flat on his back. Air oomphed out of him. His wide gaze fixed on the flambard as Gilles plunged it into his neck.


  There was a body beneath the paladin.

  Short, golden hair.

  “No,” she whispered. Her vision blurred.

  With his life, Sir Bastien Proulx had secured the hostages’ escape. And her own.

  A hoarse battle cry cut the air. An outsized paladin commander charged Gilles, wrath incarnate, his long sword clashing with the Crag captain’s flambard, strike after strike.

  On the ground, the bleeding paladin held a gloved hand to his throat, his eyes frozen wide in shock.

  She rushed to him and fell to her knees at his side. Wild, he grasped one of her arms, regarding her with wordless desperation.

  An elementalist, she had never healed anyone but herself before.

  Think, think, think. To calm her nerves, she hummed the familiar notes of a song from home, “Winter Wren.”

  Healing magic—did it work on paladins? Arcanir dissipated magic. Contact with arcanir prevented a mage from casting. But did mere contact prevent the receipt of magic?

  His grip weakened, and his eyes dulled. The luminance of his life was quickly fading. Tears dropped onto his face. Hers.

  Her heartbeat thrashing in her ears, she ignored the black spots in her vision, the battle around her, and everything else. She laid hands on him. Pure anima rushed against her inner gates, swelling to be used for non-innate magic.

  “Sundered flesh and shattered bone, by Your Divine Might, let it be sewn.” A simple incantation, it was the only healing spell she knew.

  Blood pooled beneath him, and his head lolled to the side.

  “Sundered flesh and shattered bone, by Your Divine Might, let it be sewn,” she repeated, rocking on her knees, willing her anima against the gates of her elemental magic.

  His hand slipped from her arm. He paled, but a faint pulse still beat in his blood-soaked neck. Death hovered over him in patient expectation. Divine help me, she pleaded, glancing at Bastien’s lifeless body behind her charge. Please.

  Images of Papa, Mama, Dominique, Viviane, Dorian, Liam—her family—all dead. If she had known healing magic then, could she have saved them?