Prodigal Steelwielder (Seals of the Duelists Book 3) (28 page)

Not after everything my hexmates and I went through two years ago, you bloody hypocrite.
“Don’t worry, sir. I willna hold it against you. I’ll defend the Hall of Seals as best I can, but you must know that it’s a tempting target with all these red roofs and shiny sint-fingers. I may need to relocate you and the seal at a moment’s notice.”

“Understood, Taban.” Langlaren turned toward the seals, and the surface of the topmost circle sank inward, revealing a detailed image of the campus, as if the Warmaster looked straight through the wall and the cliff beyond it.

Though Taban itched to watch the Warmaster at work, he already smelled smoke. He leapt from the dais to his wind disc and tore outside, throwing the double doors open ahead of him.

Indeed, a passing Corona caster with a mouth full of flame spells must have spewed in the direction of the Hall of Seals, for its far end was burning from floor to ceiling, and the flames scrambled up the multiple roofs toward the topmost, smallest floor. Nothing drew enemies like a fire in the night, so Taban hastily smothered the fire by shifting the air away from it and worked Wood and Earth into the beams and tiles to repair the damage.

He risked a quick peek over the three-tunneled cliff that separated the Hall of Seals from the rest of campus. To his delight, the boys’ barracks was stumping across the grass on its foundation pillars, crushing fleeing steelwielders into red fertilizer. A Corona caster zipped past and set the barracks roof alight, and Taban launched an arc of ice spears after him, hoping he’d at least draw blood.

He sank down and hovered near the hall’s roof in time to see three new enemies slip down out of the darkness and spew spells toward the stacked roofs. Taban narrowly avoided getting spat on by leaping at one of the attackers. They tangled in midair, and Taban felt a dagger graze his ribs. He slammed a quick Earth punch beneath the man’s square jaw then hexed his teeth together with a combination of Earth and anima. “Spew through that, you bastard.”

The man fell, grunting and writhing, and landed with a crack on the multicolored stone seal that decorated the vast portico in front of the hall. Taban sprang off the doomed fellow and landed on one knee atop a wind disc.

Flames roared from the top two levels of the Hall of Seals by the time Taban gained altitude. He unleashed his Water avatar, Coralscraper, in midair, hoping the tsunami would prevent more damage than it caused. But he spent too long watching his avatar work. A green rain of deadly vipers tangled around his head and shoulders, and their lithe bodies thudded against his wind disc.

Snakes? Anima!
Frantic and disgusted, Taban burned the serpents to ash with panicked bursts of blue flame.

A pair of enormous boulders rolled across the great seal, leaving cracked trails across its inlaid stonework and bashed against the hall’s front doors.

This isna working for me. I canna let those vomit-casters keep—what in all the sints…?

Warmaster Langlaren must’ve come to a similar conclusion about the quality of Taban’s defenses thus far, for the Hall of Seals rose a good stride from its stone foundation, releasing two rippling arms of water from beneath the battered doors. The water captured the boulders in foaming whirlpools that eroded the stone to sand and washed it across the flagstones.

The two remaining Corona casters fumbled at their belts for fresh steel vials. Taban shot back up to the roof and clung to a partially burnt beam. “Go home, boys. You’ve attacked an empire so advanced, our buildings defend
themselves
. This isna going to be your day.”

As the enemy casters spit forth twin gouts of roaring fire, Taban situated Coralscraper in a defensive position, ready to absorb the heat.
Aye, well, they probably don’t speak Waarden anyway
.

As he hurled a Wood and anima hexling meant to entangle their limbs and drag them to their deaths, the building beneath his feet bounded across the carriage roundabout. Taban clung to his beam, hoping Langlaren hadn’t just gone off squint and lost his ducats. Then a nearly unbearable wave of heat reached him, and he saw the heart of a volcano waterfalling toward him. “Faster, old man!” He thumped the beam with his fist. He packed solid rock into the narrowing gap between the fleeing Hall of Seals and the thundering lava flow, which briefly held back the liquid death. As the molten rock overwhelmed his barricade, Taban slammed another cliff between him and his approaching demise. It thudded onto the middle of the roundabout and shattered the cobblestones, flinging them aside like flicked buttons.

Taban expected the Hall of Seals to turn sideways and shimmy down the narrow road between the cliff above and the thousand-stride dropoff below, but instead it flung itself into thin air like a suicidal cliff diver. Shocked into incomprehension, Taban could only laugh.

The scorched roof tiles formed into a semblance of Langlaren’s face. “Hexmagic Savant, we seem to be falling to our deaths. Anything you’d care to do about that would be worth—” the face vanished.

“Warmaster?”
Sure and he’s not pausing to consider how to reward me for saving his life at a time like this!

The Hall of Seals began to tumble through the air. As Taban’s perch angled more steeply toward the swiftly approaching the valley floor, laughter overtook him again. The wind swept tears from his eyes.

The Hall of Seals sprouted long, delicate wooden wings. Taban had the strangest impression he was riding a wooden swan. The building’s stacked red roofs stretched forward like a swan’s neck. Taban focused and willed his shiny new hex avatar upward. The hall’s wooden feathers flared in the whipping wind as the building tried to slow its descent and turn downvalley.

Less than ten strides from the ground, the Hall of Seals finally gained altitude, its heavy wings flapping ponderously. Taban crowed his success, throwing his fists out and letting the wind stream through his hair.

Once he knew he wasn’t going to die, Taban slowed the hex avatar and landed it in a grassy sward half a league from campus. He floated down until rustling stalks surrounded his boots. His elation fled. He stared at the winged hall for a long moment, then let the magic that sustained it dissipate from his mind, erasing it from existence. Walls, ceilings, floors, furniture, and all other contents vanished, leaving a single figure lying still on the grass twenty strides away.

Taban had known from the second he’d turned the Hall of Seals into a hex avatar that Langlaren was dead. He wouldn’t have been able to assume control of the building, else.

He strode to the inert figure. Warmaster Langlaren rested face up, eyes open, his expression peaceful, nearly smiling. A broad hole pierced his chest, and a heavy bloodstain coated his blue tunic. Taban knelt by his side and frowned at the wound. Its edges were preternaturally smooth.
Portal work. The traitor singers took Langlaren down with his own name—sang a portal directly into his chest. Suppose I can forgive Tala for portaling in when I was using the necessary that once. She should’ve peeked first—this assassin must’ve, to get the overshoot distance right and strike Langlaren’s heart.
He placed a hand on the Warmaster’s shoulder. “You fought well, Warmaster. Rest, now. We’ll see it through.”

Taban stood and closed his eyes, recalling every detail of the Hall of Seals as if he were floating from room to room. When he reached the great hall, he envisioned the third seal, then hexed it into existence. He balanced the seal beside him on his wind disc and lifted off, hovering a few strides above the grass. A flick of his mind drew the grassy earth into a gentle mound over Langlaren’s body, disguising it from those who might desecrate it during the battle. “I’ll call that one Waarden’s Grave then, shall I? Now, if you’ll excuse me, Warmaster, I have a few more graves to distribute.”

***

Kiwani had just taken to the air on the southwestern side of the Academy mountain, leaving behind a Corona caster who was receiving the full experience of Tegen’s Grave, when she spotted Aleida on a clifftop facing a few dozen steelwielders who poured through a portal, blades gleaming. Though she arrowed in to help, Kiwani was too late to do anything but witness Aleida’s defense. A long, dark tunnel slurped its way over the soldiers, writhing like a throat in mid-swallow. No one tumbled out its far end.

Did she just make a portal like Bayan?
Kiwani hovered over the panicked men as they tried to turn back and sent miniature Shock bolts down the blades of their swords. Eventually, someone on the far side realized their invasion was going poorly and closed the portal, leaving only a few more screaming victims for Aleida’s tunnel to gulp.

“Where did you send them?” Kiwani asked as her feet touched down on the cliff top.

Aleida’s face was serene. “‘Send’ is the wrong word.”

A squirm of unease wound around the base of Kiwani’s spine. She didn’t really want to know what had happened to her hexmate when she’d wrought her impossible magic and brought her husband back into the world. Part of Kiwani was afraid it would happen to her if she used too much magic at once, and part of her was afraid it had already happened, that it was only a matter of time until her face lost all expression.

Aleida’s eyes opened wide. “Fly.”

The ground trembled under Kiwani’s feet, intensifying to the point where she couldn’t stand up. She blew herself onto a wind disc and followed Aleida. Wherever the responsible Corona caster was hiding, she would find and destroy him.

“That’s a large avatar.”

Kiwani followed Aleida’s gaze. She frowned in confusion, not seeing any avatar, Earth or otherwise, on the cliffs edging the southern rim of the mountain. A sudden quake tipped all the cliffs downward and to the left. The pit of Kiwani’s stomach went cold, and her eyes dried as she stared, unblinking.
That row of cliffs isn’t experiencing a quake. It’s experiencing a shoulder.

Aleida seized control of Kiwani’s wind disc and dragged her up and away. As the limestone monolith that supported the Academy shrank with distance, Kiwani made out a head, a pair of arms, and a torso. They were soon followed by a thick pair of legs and feet that ripped out some of the mountain’s very roots. Rumbling echoes rolled across the dark landscape as the creature rose from its hunched position and turned eastward. It seemed a good quarter of the Academy’s supporting mass had achieved sentience and sought an early-morning stroll.

Kiwani gaped at the changed mountainside before her. She squinted, seeking a particular spot, and her heart sank. The flat spot she sought was somewhere on the head and shoulders of that walking island. “He stole the place where Bayan and I dueled! I loved that little plateau. That insufferable little ear weasel!”

“Trap or battle?” Aleida asked.

Focused on the walking mountain, Kiwani merely tipped her head in Aleida’s direction. “Battle takes too long.”

“Trap it is. Bond with me.”

Kiwani shoved aside her last scruple and cast the bonding spell toward Aleida, but the feel of her hexmate’s mind within her own was nothing she’d expected. Aleida was neither crazy nor afraid. If anything, she seemed more enmeshed in her magic than ever before. Kiwani was a mere potion in her hand, a tool to deliver power to accomplish what must be done.

As they zoomed closer to the hulking creature, Aleida’s serene expression hardly changed. Her eyelids lowered, but if she had any concerns, they were beyond Kiwani’s perception.

Aleida’s plan took shape in Kiwani’s mind, and Kiwani practically shoved her magics into her hexmate’s control. Ahead, the monstrous stone avatar swept an arm down across the slope of the mountain. Kiwani’s panic bead nearly went molten.
Now! Before he kills them all!

Aleida slipped her vast black portal around the avatar’s feet and drew it up around his body like a tunnel of cloth. Without earth to support its feet, it tottered then sank, roaring, out of sight. The abomination’s hands scored deep furrows through the rock of the cliffs as it sought purchase. Aleida angled the portal against the cliff face, swallowing the creature’s hands before it could stop its descent.

Breathless and exhausted by the drain on her magic, Kiwani panted. “Where is it going to land?”

“On tens of thousands of steelwielders. I sensed them waiting on the far side of one of the enemy’s portals.”

Kiwani’s darkness thrilled at the thought of crushing out so many enemy lives at once. “Let’s find more of their portals.” They veered back toward campus through the dying night.

***

Seeing a cluster of savant students in trouble near the center of campus, Bayan jinked his disc and spun a Blue Bolt spell hexed with Water at their attacker. His spell arced around the foundation of de Rood’s history classroom—the rest of it had marched off to do Langlaren’s bidding—and struck the enemy caster just as the man pursed his lips and blew. To Bayan's horror, the resultant spell became infused with lightning—all the more terrifying since it involved hundreds of shiny steel swords flying point-first in all directions.

The students hurled defensive spells, resulting in a chaotic mix of clinging vines, chunks of ice, wooden panels, and the like entangling with many, but not all of, the flying weapons.

Bayan, nearly directly overhead, shot further into the sky in a bid to outdistance the swords and outwait gravity. To his dismay, the swords never slowed, and as he veered to the side, they followed.