Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (36 page)

“I don’t
know
!”

Another thud, and Luna cried out. I sped up, pushing the limits of how fast I could safely move. Griff knelt down next to Luna, giving me a clear view of her. Luna’s lip was cut, drops of blood staining her skin. She looked up at Griff, afraid, but Griff’s voice when he spoke was suddenly gentle. “Luna,” he said. “I really don’t have anything against you. You’re obviously in over your head here, and it looks to me like you don’t have any idea what you’re dealing with.” Griff looked at her, his voice steady. “But you see, I need that barrier opened, and if you can’t do it, you’re no use to me. So I’m just going to keep hurting you until you try.”

“You said it’d kill me if I pick the wrong one!”

Griff raised his eyebrows. “Then you’d better make sure you get it right.”

I’d covered half of the distance to the centre. Across the room, I could sense Rachel and Cinder closing in. Onyx hadn’t moved. Luna was lying awkwardly on the stone chains that trapped her, breathing quickly.

Then Luna’s head came up, and I caught my breath at the look in her eyes. “I always hated my magic,” Luna said quietly. “It’s taken away my life. But it’s what I am. It’s part of me and I’m not hiding from it anymore.” She stared up at Griff and spoke softly and clearly. “Die.”

I felt something shift, and I realised that all of a sudden I could actually feel Luna’s curse radiating from Griff, an aura of doom that was almost tangible. I reached the dais, swift and silent, as Griff looked down at Luna and the futures flickered and changed.

Then the futures settled as Griff made his decision. “You know,” he said, and his voice was quite calm, “you don’t need to be healthy to use that cube. You just need to be alive.”

I saw then what Griff was going to do. Normal people, when something bad happens, get to tell themselves that they couldn’t have known. Diviners don’t. I knew what Griff was about to do, and I knew that if I tried to stop him he would swat me like a fly.

I held still.

Griff broke Luna’s wrist.

Luna’s scream was physically painful, like knives scraping down my spine. Griff waited for it to trail away into sobbing, then spoke again. “Try the cube.”

“I—I—I—”

“Try the cube.”

“I won’t. I won’t. I—”

There was the sharp
crack
of another bone and Luna screamed again, a heartbreaking sound. I clenched my fists, a fine tremor going down my arms. “Try the cube,” Griff repeated.

Luna only sobbed.

Griff made an exasperated noise, and I felt him channelling earth magic. I couldn’t see what he was doing; the pedestal was in the way. All I could see was the faint brown glow. Then Luna shrieked, and kept on shrieking. It was earsplitting, but underneath it I could hear a grinding,
scraping
noise, like rock grating against rock. Griff spoke again, but this time I couldn’t make out his words. I dug my hands into the stone until they bled. I knew Cinder and Rachel were right on top of Onyx’s hiding place.
Come on
, I prayed,
come on, come on, come on—

There was a roar and a flash of flame. The glow from the
other side of the pedestal snapped out, and Luna went silent. Griff whirled, searching for the noise, and for an instant his back was to me. It was long enough.

Griff felt me coming. You don’t catch a battle-mage totally off guard, no matter how quick you are. He was turning back towards me when I reached him, a shield of energy coming up to block my attack, but I wasn’t using a weapon. I slammed into him in a bull rush, and as I did I felt Luna’s curse suddenly
take
, hard. Looking into the future, it was as if every strand but one were extinguished. The one strand that led to Griff’s fate pulsed brightly, becoming real.

Griff staggered backwards, off balance, on the edge of falling but not quite going over. He kept going much farther than he should have and was halfway across the room before he came to a halt.

The shadows around Griff moved. Onyx strode out to his right, Rachel to his left, Cinder behind. The three Dark mages formed a triangle with Griff at the centre. Sea-green light flowed at Rachel’s hands; fire burned around Cinder’s. Onyx showed nothing at all. All three noticed Griff at the same time and turned to stare at him.

Griff looked up, and there was just enough time for his eyes to go wide. “Oh, shi—”

Battle-mages have a frightening amount of destructive power. Mages fighting a duel spend most of their energy preventing the other from landing a solid hit. It’s very rare for a mage to hit an opponent with all his strength, but when it happens, it’s always fatal. One spell from a battle-mage can shred a human body like tissue paper.

The effect of
three
of those spells hitting at the same time doesn’t bear thinking about.

I won’t try to describe what it looked like. All I’ll say is that it was over very fast.

Then Onyx and Rachel and Cinder turned their attention to each other, and I dived behind the pedestal as the room lit up with death and fire. “Luna!
Luna!
”

Luna was leaning against the pedestal, her eyes fluttering.
Griff’s stone chains still locked her ankles to the pedestal, her right arm was twisted at a horrible angle, and her face was dead white. “Don’t touch me,” she said, her voice faltering. “It’s different, I—”

From the other side of the pedestal I could hear the roar of flame and the flat, deadly
wham
of Onyx’s force magic. “It’s okay. Don’t move.” I looked around, trying to figure out some way to get Luna out of here. “We need to—”

I only had a second’s warning. I dived sideways off the dais, rolling, just as something swept through the spot I’d left with a
swoosh
of air. As fast as she had struck, Thirteen was gone. I came to my feet and slipped one hand in my pocket, tense, waiting.

Less than a hundred feet away a furious battle was raging as Rachel and Cinder hammered Onyx with all of their power, trying to break down his shields and kill him, but I couldn’t spare the time to look. I stood on the open stone, and it was Thirteen I was watching for, waiting to see how she would come at me: from the left or from the right or straight above. I couldn’t see her, but I could see into the futures where she killed me, and I could see how to move to make sure that didn’t happen. Not yet…not yet…

…now
.

As Thirteen swept in I pivoted, and her claws missed my throat by inches. I kept turning, and as Thirteen flashed past next to me my hand flung a handful of glittering dust over her.

Thousands of the glowing grains of light fell to the floor and winked out, but hundreds more covered the air elemental and clung to her. Thirteen darted away, trying to shake the stuff off, but it had stuck. She was visible now, an outline of glittering particles in the shape of a woman. “What’s the matter, Thirteen?” I asked. “Shy?”

Thirteen made a final effort to rid herself of the dust, then gave up. As she looked at me her invisibility faded and the lines of her body came into view beneath the dust. Pale white eyes looked at me, and she began to glide forward.

I backed away, a nasty feeling in my stomach. I could
reveal Thirteen, but I had nothing that could harm her. “Listen,” I began, “maybe we got off on the wrong foot. The truth is, I actually really like air elementals.”

Thirteen kept advancing, and I kept backing away. Thirteen was pushing me back in a tightening spiral, coming closer and closer to the pedestal. I could feel Luna slumped against the base, fighting to stay conscious, the battle still raging behind me. “You want the fateweaver, right?” I said. “You need us to get it. If we’re dead, you can’t take it back to Levistus.”

Thirteen didn’t answer, and with a sudden chill I realised that she wasn’t listening to me because she couldn’t. She’d been made to follow orders and nothing else, and right now her orders were to kill me. Thirteen was getting closer and closer. “Wait—” I said urgently, and Thirteen sprang, claws reaching for my throat.

Something flashed across my field of vision and hit Thirteen in midleap, knocking her sideways. I caught one glimpse of Starbreeze’s face, then the two air elementals were rolling away in a blur of motion and slashing claws.

I stared after them for a moment, then turned back. “Luna!”

Luna had managed to pull herself up against the pedestal, her crippled arm cradled in her lap. Her head was right next to the three receptacles for the cube, and the force barrier holding the fateweaver glowed silently above her, casting a faint white halo around her hair. “Go away,” she managed.

I crouched down next to her. “Luna—”

“Go
away
,” Luna said. Her eyes were cloudy with pain, but her voice was clear. “Not you as well.”

“Put the cube in one of the holders.”

“I don’t know which, Alex, just go, I—”

“Close your eyes and guess.”

Luna stared at me. Her eyes were clear again—I think the sheer craziness of what I was saying had shocked her lucid. “Alex?” she said carefully as the battle raged around us. “This isn’t a good time for making jokes.”

From the far side of the room, there was a hollow
boom
and Cinder came flying through the air. He slammed into one of the pillars with the
crack
of breaking bone and hit the floor. A moment later Onyx appeared. His eyes had gone pitch-black and wisps of darkness trailed from his hands as he turned on Rachel. Rachel faced him, and there was no fear in her eyes; beneath her mask, her lips were curled in a silent snarl. From the other side, Starbreeze and Thirteen were a whirlwind of deadly motion.

Two mages, two elementals, two battles; as soon as Onyx or Thirteen won, we were finished. “Don’t choose,” I said to Luna, raising my voice over the sounds of battle. “Leave it up to luck.”

“I don’t—” Luna began, then stopped. Her eyes went wide as she understood.

From behind, I heard Starbreeze give a yelp of pain. “Alex! Hurts!”

Luna took a deep breath, then pulled herself to her knees, gasping slightly as her right arm shifted. My hands itched to help her, but I stood my ground. Carefully Luna drew out the crystal, closed her eyes as the sounds of battle raged all around us, then reached out blindly.

The crystal slotted neatly into the leftmost holder.

There was no fanfare this time. The crystal pulsed, and the force field over the fateweaver pulsed with it. Then the barrier was gone, and the fateweaver was clearly visible: a simple, unmarked wand of ivory. I snatched it up, and—

—silence.

I didn’t hesitate. As soon as I felt the momentary dizziness, I stepped back, looking around. I could see my body crouched over the pedestal, Luna slumped beneath. “Abithriax!”

“Well, well.” I spun to see Abithriax walking towards me across the floor, picking his way through the battle in his red robes. Onyx and Rachel were duelling all around him, and a blast of force passed straight through Abithriax’s image without touching him. “Things
have
gotten lively.”

“I need to use the fateweaver!”

“Yes, you do,” Abithriax said. “Listen carefully. To use the fateweaver, you and I must merge. I will open my mind to you; my knowledge and skill will be yours. The link requires your willing consent.” Abithriax’s eyes held mine. “Hold back even a little, and it will fail.”

Behind Abithriax, Onyx shattered Rachel’s shield into shards of sea-green light. I knew the kind of mind magic Abithriax was describing was dangerous. If I went along with this, I wasn’t sure who I’d be when I returned to my body. I looked down at Luna. She was crouched down on the dais, trying to hide from the battle raging around us. “Do it.”

Something flickered in Abithriax’s eyes, then they were smooth again. He nodded and walked up to the dais. “Then hold out your hand.”

I lifted my right arm. Abithriax reached out, then paused. “I suggest you brace yourself.” He looked into my eyes. “This will feel…a little odd.”

Abithriax grasped my hand, and everything went white.

W
hen I came back to my body it was like waking up for the first time.

Luna was saying something, but I barely noticed. I knew exactly what was happening without needing to look. I started walking down off the dais, twirling the fateweaver absentmindedly in my right hand. “Starbreeze,” I called. “Break off.”

Starbreeze tore herself away from Thirteen. Her form was tattered, mist leaking from her wounds. She shot me one terrified look and fled. Thirteen didn’t pursue, instead turning back to me, her primary target. She’d shed the last of the glitterdust, and as she moved she faded into invisibility again.

Thirteen was the greater threat; I should eliminate her first. I turned my back on her and looked to the other side of the room. “Onyx!”

Onyx had crippled Rachel, sending her limping into the darkness of the pillars; now he turned to me. “Rules changed, Chosen,” I told him. I kept walking, placing myself between the two killers. “Surrender or die.”

Onyx didn’t waste time answering. A whirlwind of razor-edged discs of force flashed towards me.

I sidestepped and the attack hit Thirteen just as she swept in at me from behind. She flashed into visibility as the force blades chewed her to pieces. Her mouth opened in surprise, and she looked at me with wide eyes, and for a moment I thought she was going to speak. Then she was nothing but wisps of drifting air.

I looked back to see Onyx staring at me in shock. That attack should have hit me; I knew it, and he knew it. “Last chance,” I said.

Onyx threw a lance of force at me, followed by a spinning saw blade that could have cut me in half. Next was a series of hammer blows, then a force wave, then he just blasted the entire area in a thirty-foot radius.

He might as well have saved his strength.

The power the fateweaver gave me was beautifully simple. My divination magic let me see what might happen; the fateweaver let me pick what
would
happen. Together, they were invincible. Fighting Onyx was like a chess match where I got to play both sides of the board. Each attack had a hole, a flaw; I lined up each flaw with my own movement so that it would miss. I didn’t even move fast enough to break a sweat.