EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (30 page)

“That would be my guess. Or he is. I suspect your young captain was appointed the position of lead mercenary on the warfront not
just
for his good looks,” said the sun mage.

“And if he’s the one preventing this field from swallowing his men whole,” murmured Sara as she let her blade drift down to her lap, “then he needs to be in the safest place around here.”

“Exactly,” said Nissa.

Sara ignored her and turned to Ezekiel. “You know this layout pretty well?”
Ezekiel nodded.

“If you were the captain and wanted a safe place to hunker down, maybe even form a counterattack, where would you go?”

Ezekiel turned and pointed. “To the Azure Forest. The trees themselves halt any magic from penetrating its darkness and well…there are things that most people have never dreamed of seeing inside.”

“And you have?” said Nissa.

“Actually, yes,” said Ezekiel in a measured tone.

Nissa gave a snort but didn’t challenge his statement further.

Sara stood from her crouch and watched as they did.

“Then let’s get to this forest,” she said.

At the determination in her voice, neither one of them said anything different.

Sara started trotting away and they came up on either side. The two tall figures ran to the left and right of the small woman with a sword.

When they got to the forest edge, Sara pointed at a long piece of knotted brown rope attached to a long abandoned wagon on its edge.

“Grab that rope,” Sara told Ezekiel.

“What are you going to do with it?” he asked suspiciously.

She turned to Nissa with a smile. “Bind this insufferable wench, of course.”

Nissa gave her a sassy smile and raised her hands while clasping her fingers together. “I thought you’d never get around to it.”

Sara gave her a glare. Ezekiel gave her a smile that she didn’t want to decipher and Nissa kept her hands held out willingly.
 

They walked into the forest untouched by the battle raging behind them.

“Why are you so interested in this war, anyway?” Nissa asked as they walked into the forest.

“My father died because of this war.”

Nissa didn’t sound particularly sorry when she said, “By Kade hands?”

Sara stopped, clenched a fist, and released it.

Nissa came up close behind her but stopped far enough away that the rope between them gave some distance. She seemed to realize she might have gone too far.

“No,” said Sara darkly. “By his own forces.”

The sun mage behind her said nothing.

Sara turned and looked at her. “I’d wondered why my father came here.”

Her hand tightened on the rope perceptibly as she tried to rein in her emotions and failed.

She saw out of the corner of her eye, Ezekiel watched the exchange with open curiosity.

Sara continued, “I’ve wondered why he risked his life once more to serve in a far-flung province on a campaign no one cared about. Because, make no mistake, my father might have died for what he uncovered, but when we first started this…skirmish, no one in the capital thought it would blow up into a war.”

Ire flashed in Nissa’s eyes. “You underestimated us.”

Sara threw back her head with a laugh. “So we did. Not anymore, though.”

Nissa gave her a brittle smile. “You’re out here escorting a sun mage with a curator for help. Your captain is nowhere to be found. And most of your company of five hundred is dead. I’d say your empress is doing a bang-up job of underestimating the Kades.”

Sara stiffened as she spoke. “A mere technicality.”

Nissa shook her head slowly. “No, it’s the reason you will lose this war.”

“More of your prophecies?”

Nissa gave her a sharp smile. “Merely a promise of what is to come.”

Sara sighed, tired of the tête
-
à
-
tête. “Do you know
why
my father risked his life?”

“For honor?” said Nissa mockingly.

“Because of evil filth like you,” snapped Sara.

When Nissa didn’t react, Sara stepped forward to
make
her react. Then Ezekiel was between the two women on edge. He looked firmly into Sara’s eyes with his vulnerable back no more than a few feet away from Nissa’s conniving but bound hands. Sara didn’t care if she said her magic was shackled, she didn’t trust her.

She pushed Ezekiel out of the way. He grabbed her shoulder so that as he turned she did as well.

Then Ezekiel said, “What are you doing, Sara?”

“What does it look like?”

Worry flashed over Ezekiel’s face at her tone. “This isn’t like you. You aren’t abrasive and angry. Not since I’ve known you. Calm, unemotional, and fiercely unafraid, yes. But not this. Yet since the moment this attack started, you’ve been nothing but.”

She didn’t want to listen to him. She wanted to go back to fighting Nissa.

Ezekiel snapped his fingers in front of her face, like one would a toddler that disobeyed. She almost bit his fingers off.

It was that urge to tear into his knuckles that sent fear like ice-cold water down her spine. She stepped back with horror written on her face, mistakenly pulling Nissa with her.

“No,” said Sara.

Ezekiel didn’t let her panic. “It’s all right. You’re all right.”

“I’m not all right. You don’t
know
that. Stay back.”

“No,” he said calmly, stepping forward and taking her clenched hands in his. The flesh-on-flesh contact was like a balm to her nerves. “I don’t know. But I do know you’re speaking, you’re listening, and you’re comprehending. All things you wouldn’t be able to do if you had already changed. You just have to calm down.”

Sara swallowed deeply.

Nissa spoke up with a perceptive look in Sara’s direction. “Changed? As in gone berserk?”

“Shut up, Nissa!” shouted Ezekiel.

“I don’t think…”

Sara was starting to see spots of red in her vision.
 

What’s happening to me
? She thought anxiously.

“That’s right, you don’t think,” Ezekiel snarled as he whirled around. “Because I won’t be the first person she kills in her rage. Enemies first. Friends second.”

That shut Nissa up.

“Sara,” coaxed Ezekiel. “Stay with me. The battlefield was pushing you over. You were using your magic then, right?”

She didn’t say a word. Just stared in the distance, the rope binding Nissa’s hands clenched tightly in her own.

“Sara, answer me,” pleaded Ezekiel.

She turned to him with tired eyes. “Yes, I used it.”

“Okay, are you still using it?”

She took stock of her power. She saw a reserve of power just inside her reach to boost her magic for the shield in case of an emergency as well as the standard boost of her eyesight and hearing.

She nodded.

“Fine, shut it off,” Ezekiel ordered. “Now.”

Sara looked at him. “We
need
those gifts. We’ll be wandering around the forest blind if we don’t.”

“I’d rather be alive than dead,” he said grimly. “Let them go. Please. For me.”

Reluctantly she did as he asked. Her body let go of the tension causing her to stiffen as the magic flowed out of her reach with each breathe.

Finally, the ire and tension related to the use of her magic drained away. But something else replaced it. Normal human doubt. Her vision had faded to normal perception. She felt half-blind.

It irritated her. But with a start, Sara realized she didn’t feel like killing Nissa so much now. Before, when the woman had said something that nearly set her off, Sara wouldn’t have hesitated to draw her blade across her neck. Now the wariness and caution were still there, but the eagerness for blood had dimmed.

She blinked and stared from Ezekiel to Nissa. “That was not how I imagined drifting into the blood rage.”

“How did you imagine it?” asked Nissa softly.

“Like a quick and fast descent into hell—from one moment to the next I would snap,” answered Sara honestly. “Instead it felt like I was slowly going mad with each increasing breath.”

Ezekiel nodded in sympathy. “Well, we learned something today.”

Sara raised an eyebrow.

He grinned. “Don’t make you mad. Although I kind of knew that already.”

She punched him in the shoulder lightly and rolled her eyes. “Why don’t we find Barthis Simon before we get into any more trouble?”

Ezekiel nodded and they set off with Nissa trailing behind like a recalcitrant dog.

As they crested a small hill, Sara said softly for Ezekiel’s ears only, “Thank you.”

He whispered back, “You’re welcome.”

Chapter XXIV

T
HEY
WALKED
FOR
WHAT
FELT
like hours. Stumbling over roots, slippery moss, and bumps on the forest floor. Never running into another soul or animal. For that matter, the entire forest was eerily silent. The hoot of an owl didn’t meet their tired ears, the wary gaze of a crouched fox didn’t meet their eyes, and they didn’t see a hint of any of the denizens that usually occupied such a verdant land.

It made Sara outright uneasy.

“Where are the forest creatures?” she muttered as she stumbled ahead. Ezekiel walked directly to her right where she could keep an eye on him and he could keep a wary gaze pinned on her. She wasn’t a forest expert by any means, but had spent a good part of her youth hunting on her father’s land. She had expected something to show up by now. Or at least the sound of something skittering through the bushes or flying through the trees. And yet nothing came but the whisper of the wind through the leaves.

Sara did hear Nissa stumbled directly behind her. The woman was doing as best as she was able, but it was pitch-dark and Sara could tell she’d never set foot in a forest without a retainer by her side before. They were going slowly, trying not to slip and fall, but it was blasted hard when she couldn’t even call upon a mage light to guide their way for fear of slowly tipping further into madness.

Sara had never felt so vulnerable before in her life. If this was what it was like being a battle mage in war—living in fear of your own body and on edge to use your powers at all times—she doubted she would be able to stand another week of it. The stress alone would kill her.

Father, how did you survive it
?
How did you thrive
? Sara wondered in a silent prayer.

She knew it would go unheard. She didn’t necessarily believe in the old gods like her father had, but she did hope his spirit was watching over her. She needed some guidance because she was doing a pretty bad job of solving his death on her own.

Then a bright, white light was visible in the distance. Just ahead and behind a few more trees.

“Sara?” said Ezekiel, seeing it at the same time she did. “What do you want to do?”

She crouched low and pulled Ezekiel down with her. “Find out what it is.”

“I doubt you want to do that,” Nissa said in a low hiss between their shoulders.

“And why is that?” Sara said, looking over at her.

The sun mage pressed her mouth into a thin line.

Sara smiled. “I think I’ll go find out, because if it makes you unhappy it might be the solution to our problems.”

Nissa gave her a scornful look. “Go then, battle mage. Go to your death. I don’t need you anymore.”

Sara stared at her hard. Trying to read the calculation in Nissa’s eyes for what it meant. She didn’t know the woman, didn’t know her motives, and didn’t know how to react or tell if she was lying.

Sara turned to Ezekiel and said, “What do you think?”

Softy, he said without turning back, “I think I should go explore.”

Nissa let out a soft sound of disgust.

“Not happening,” said Sara.

Ezekiel turned to her urgently. “
Think
about it, Sara. If you’re killed, we all die. If I go and report back we might have a vital clue and wouldn’t risk much in the process.”

Sara stared at him in disbelief. “Wouldn’t risk much? You
do
happen mean something to me, you know.”

Ezekiel chuckled. “Finally. I was dying to get you to admit your one true love. Now that I have it, I can die happy.”

Sara was vastly tempted to swat him into the next world, but she couldn’t. Her left hand was occupied by her sword and her right held the rope binding Nissa.

More seriously, Ezekiel said, “It’s only ten paces that way. I’ll be there and back before you know it. Besides, we don’t have much of a choice. What were you planning to do? Leave me alone with Nissa?”

Sara thought about it. He was right. They were out of options. Hastily putting Nissa’s rope in his hand, she reached up over his shoulder and grabbed one of the three remaining arrows in the quiver. Then she grabbed his hand holding the weapon and put it into position.

“Load it,” she ordered firmly.

He did so with shaky hands.

She smiled. “Now you’re ready.”

“Let’s really hope I don’t have to use it.”

She nodded solemnly and gripped the rope back. He stood and darted off into the woods.

As she watched her friend disappear into the night, Sara had to wonder what her life had come to that she was sending an untrained mercenary on a scouting mission.

“Wonder of wonders,” Sara muttered to herself in disgust.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. No sound of Ezekiel was forthcoming.

Sara tensed. Then she said, “Come on.”

The sun mage planted her feet and wouldn’t budge.

Sara whirled on her, sword in hand. “Let’s go, Nissa.”

But she turned to see that Nissa wasn’t the
only
one behind her. Dark shadows of people emerged from the forest. Sara dropped the rope and moved into a fighting crouch.

She couldn’t do anything before they were surrounded. Then Nissa laughed. “Sorry, sweetheart.”

“The light?”

“I haven’t the faintest clue what it means,” the sun mage said as she held out her bound hands to one of those surrounding them. He quickly cut the ropes from her. To Sara’s relief, he didn’t touch the shackles binding Nissa’s lower arms and containing her magic.

“I just needed a diversion to get you away from here,” Nissa said with humor. “I was certain you’d take the bait and investigate yourself with a little judicious prodding. I never suspected you’d send that bumbling fool in your place.”