His Ancient Heart (23 page)

"He has a heart."

Spyne laughed. "No. He doesn't."

"If you're going to kill me, then kill me."

Spyne considered for a moment. "What's in the bag?"

"The truth."

"What you think is the truth," he said. "The truth is what we make it, not relics of a past that nearly destroyed us. The books, the artifacts... lies. All of it. Garbage. We burn garbage. We destroy it. Like we destroy traitors." He took another step forward, drawing back the sword.

"General, wait."
 

Overlord Prezi appeared in the doorway. She looked pale and weak, but she was standing on her own.
 

Spyne paused, turning his head to regard her. "Why should I?"

"
His
orders are to find and capture Talon.
He
didn't say anything about the girl."

"She just tried to kill you, fool."

"That doesn't matter. The orders are to capture Talon." She came forward and took Eryn by the arm. "Wherever he is, what better way to draw him out?"

Spyne stared at her, his eyes burning. "Trying to save her life?" he asked.

"Trying to stop the Liar," Caela said.

"You had Talon. You let him go."

"What?" The Overlord was a convincing actress. Her eyes narrowed in anger and her jaw tightened. "Where did you get that foolish idea?"

Without warning, Spyne shifted his weight and leaned towards her, his free hand rising up and slapping the Overlord hard in the face. She turned her head but refused to fall again. A red welt started rising from her cheek.

"Show some respect to your betters, bitch."
 

Caela's face softened. She bowed her head. "My apologies, General."

"You hung a man, a tall man with blue eyes, and a much larger man with a massive sword. I've been tailing Talon, and I know for certain he's traveling with someone that meets that description. Do you think that's a coincidence?"

"My Lord, please," Caela said, keeping her eyes down. "You know how rumors are twisted as they spread through the populace. The man I hung was not Talon Rast. I served with him. I would know him anywhere. The larger man was carrying a handmade weapon. The men may have said it was a sword, but in truth it was a crude device."

Only the sound of Spyne's breathing broke the silence as he considered her words. "How did this one get the drop on you?"

"My niece, the Lady Valerie. She was to come up from Portsmouth to learn of provincial affairs. I sent that man, Captain Fehri, to retrieve her." She looked over at the body of the Captain, not letting any of her emotions show. "He must have been in league with Talon. I can only assume Valerie is dead. He brought her to me instead, and once we were alone, she took my by surprise with her Curse. She meant to kill me, I think, but she doesn't have enough control over it."

"And now you want me to spare her?"

"I want you to use her, my Lord. If we make it known that we have Eryn Albion, Talon is sure to come back to Varrow to help her."

"No, Caela. He won't. Not the Talon I knew. He's on his way to Edgewater in search of
him
. If he sent this girl to kill you, he would have known there was a chance she wouldn't succeed." He paused, rubbing his beard with his meaty fingers. "Why would he send her to kill you? What value is there in the death of one Overlord?"

"Perhaps he hoped to incite rebellion in Varrow," Caela said. "A distraction."

"A distraction, what?" Spyne looked over at her again.

"A distraction, my Lord," she replied.

Spyne gained a small, pleased smile. Eryn was disgusted by the way he seemed to treat people as little more than poorly tended tools.

"You are fortunate, Overlord, " Spyne said, "because I believe you. Heden help you if I discover you've tried to trick me." He looked at Eryn again, his eyes down on her cleavage, and then rising back to her face. "As for you - I know Talon is traveling with another Cursed. Perhaps his use for you is at an end? I don't need you as bait; my Historians are more than capable of hunting him down.

"Which means my use for you is also at an end."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Eryn

Eryn's heart raced. She started struggling again, trying to break free of the painted man's grip. It was no use. She was going to die, here and now.

At least I'll never change. Never become a monster, like Malik. Talon, Wilem, I love you. I will watch over you. Fehri, I'm sorry.

She took one last breath and closed her eyes, waiting to feel the cold pain of Spyne's ircidium blade sinking between her ribs.

Instead, she felt the gathering of magic in her senses, coming from the Overlord. What was she doing?

She understood when it happened. Her Curse was defending her. It rose inside her like a tidal wave smashing against the shore, throwing out a massive burst of energy. Caela was thrown back into the wall a second time. General Spyne's eyes widened, and then he too was pushed away, sent tumbling down the corridor and slamming into the stone with enough force to crack it. His sword fell away, unable to absorb the blast.

She felt the grip on her vanish, the man behind her also thrown loose. The magic subsided, and she felt dizzy. She fought against it. There was no time. She bent down and retrieved the pack again, taking only a moment to glance at the Overlord one more time, and hope that the second time had the same result as the first.

She took a few stumbling steps, her head spinning, her eyes unable to focus. She knew where the dungeon was, she just had to reach it.

She heard something behind her. She turned her head and was able to make out the shape of the tattooed man behind her. He had been thrown back by her magic, but he had already recovered, and was giving chase.
 

Who is he?

She pushed herself to move faster, but the heavy gown she was wearing made such movement difficult. She paused for just long enough to drop the pack, rip the dark cloth from her shoulders and squirm her way out of it. It fell in a heap at her ankles and left her in nothing but her underwear, a tiara, gloves, and boots.
 

Better to be naked than dead.

She lifted the pack again and started running, faster now. She looked back, seeing the man was only a dozen feet behind her. The chase seemed to be returning her energy faster than resting on the desk had, and free of the gown she gained speed as she reached the end of the corridor and turned left towards the antechamber.
 

She was halfway to the door when she looked back again. The painted man had stopped running. He watched her with a look of... Admiration? Lust? Confusion? It was hard for her to tell.
 

She kept running, reaching the door to the antechamber. She saw Reema pressed against the wall, her entire body shaking.
 

Then she saw the soldiers.

There were four of them arranged in the room, two facing in either direction. They noticed her at the same time she saw them, and she pulled to a stop while they fought to recover from the sight of her in near undress and covered in blood.

The General might have been able to join the distortion field. These men surely weren't. She would only have a few seconds, but it was all she needed to get past them and out the door.

The magic came to her so easily. Almost too easily. It was as though the Curse knew she was in trouble, and was aiding her escape. She whispered the word and created the field before the soldiers could even move, slipping out of their timeline and running past them while they remained frozen. Once she was outside, she waited until she was halfway to the dungeon entrance before dropping the field.

She began to feel dizzy as soon as the field was gone. From the magic? Or was it because she had lost so much blood?
 

"I don't have time to be dizzy," she cursed, putting her hand down to keep herself from falling over, straightening and bolting for the bastion that covered the stairs down into the dungeons. The nobles and commoners who were in the palace courtyard screamed at the sight of her, and the other soldiers there joined the chase. How was she going to get out of this, even if she made it to the dungeon? It would take a miracle from Amman.

The miracle came in the form of a juggernaut.

She saw the door to the bastion fly open, pushed so hard that it bent and twisted on its guide, hanging off at an unnatural angle. Oz ducked through it, moving out into the courtyard. It pulled its huge sword from its back, shifting a small package over its other shoulder in one smooth motion. The people's screams grew louder at the sight of it rampaging across the courtyard towards her.

A soldier tried to intercept it, and was met with a kick that sent him rolling through the air, landing ten feet away and staying on the ground. An alarm bell started ringing, a call to arms to the hundreds of soldiers in the palace barracks.
 

Perhaps not a miracle at all. A joke from Heden.

Eryn looked back and saw that the Historians were out of the palace. Two were running after her while the other two unslung their bows and worked to string them. The painted man was standing behind them, still watching her with the same strange expression.

She met Oz near the center of the courtyard. The juggernaut used its elbow to push her beneath it, bending over her and catching the first volley of arrows from the soldiers. A pair on horseback broke through the gates and charged them. Oz let the sword of the first slide off its armor and speared the second from the saddle, steam pouring from its mouth. The second horseman whirled. He saw what had happened to his partner, and paused to reconsider his attack.

"We need to get out of the city," Eryn said. She took the chance to rest on one knee, staying beneath the juggernaut.
 

"It is pleased to leave the city," Oz said, catching more arrows off its ircidium hide.

"Start moving towards the exit. I wish I had a horse."

"It would shoot it," Oz said.

The two Historians arrived. They were big men, closer to Oz's size than most men could claim. They attacked in a paired ferocity that left the one-armed juggernaut twisted and shifting, using his sword to keep one at bay, and taking the strikes of the other. Each hit from the blades put a chip or a dent into the armor, getting through the top plate of ircidium and down into the steel, slowly destroying his immunity to magic.
 

 
More than that. They were keeping them pinned in the courtyard, giving the soldiers time to arrive. The juggernaut was fierce, but a thousand men could surely bring it down.

Eryn called on the magic, feeling it fill her. There was no difficulty in it, no effort. A thought was all it took to bring it to her control.

"Ignatus," she said, waving her hand in front of her. Two missiles of light streamed from her fingers, making the short trip from her to the chests of the Historians, and through.

The two men fell back, dead.

Eryn scooted forward, picking up one of the swords, and then scrambled back under cover just in time to avoid another volley of arrows.

"Oz, start moving," she said again.

The juggernaut began taking quick steps backwards. The soldiers were becoming more organized, gathering into a line to charge the creature all at once. Eryn aimed her hands at them and called on her magic.

"Incaendium," she shouted. A wall of flame rose in front of the soldiers, reaching a dozen feet into the air. She heard them shout in fear, and could see them backing away through the flames.

She tried to step back again and stumbled. Oz leaned down and offered its elbow, and she gripped it to get back to her feet. She turned towards the gate. It was beginning to close.

"They mean to trap us," Eryn said. "We need to move faster."

"It cannot move faster," Oz said.

"Yes, you can."

"It cannot."

Eryn realized the juggernaut was referring to her. She was too slow, too tired.

An arrow whistled past her, planting itself in the dirt right next to her feet. She looked up, seeing a row of archers had gained the wall. They might not have been able to harm Oz, but if they could get their aim right, they would kill her.
 

"Ignatus," she said again, sending the bolts towards three of the archers. The men dove behind the parapets. Two managed to escape the attack, but one was struck in the neck and fell off the wall.
 

More arrows rained in.
 

Eryn dropped the pack at her feet. She bent over it and tugged it open, reaching in, digging through the cans of liquid, past the books.

Wilem's wand is in here somewhere.

She found it resting at the bottom. She gripped it and pulled it from the pack, the green stone at the end sparkling in the light of her flames. She let them die out and held the wand up instead, pushing her magic through the ircidium and into the crystal.

"Crescat," she said.

The ground began to shake.
 

The magic kept coming, the tingling in her ears so sharp she could almost hear it. The feeling was electric, exciting. It left her entire body warm as it poured into the crystal.

The shaking intensified. The soldiers stopped. The commoners and nobles either tried to hide or simply lay down on the ground, hoping to escape the apocalypse. A vine burst through the surface, and then another, and another. They rose from the lawn, growing to twenty feet or more in a matter of seconds. They lashed out at anyone who was near with thorny tips, wrapping them up, lifting them to the sky, and squeezing them to death.
 

The soldiers joined the people in their panic.
 

Oz and Eryn were almost forgotten.

"Eryn!"
 

She turned in the direction of the cry and saw Trock and the jailers dressed in their full armor, hanging to the sides of a barred prison wagon that Trock was trying to guide through the vines. They lashed out at him, too, threatening to kill the old Commander before he could rescue her.