Renegade Wizards (24 page)

“Ladonna?” Par-Salian said carefully. His attacker pressed the knife to his throat.

“Shut up,” Ladonna said. “Let me do the talking.”

Sutler smiled and nodded to Par-Salian. “And who is this, little thief? Your boyfriend? Too pretty for your tastes,” he said. The knives in his hands danced between his fingers. “We simply can’t have you courting someone prettier than you.”

Tythonnia’s eyes widened. Par-Salian was in trouble; they all were. She looked to Ladonna for help, but the cool, calm gaze of her compatriot was gone. In its place was a feral expression: anger, hatred, pain. The real Ladonna was
showing through, Ladonna the street urchin, Ladonna the animal, Ladonna the hurt.

“We can’t all like little girls,” Ladonna said; her voice seemed to chill the air.

In an instant, the mood changed. Tythonnia felt her assailant inhale ever so slightly, a small, panicked gasp that was shared in the glances of the other thieves. Whoever Sutler was, he was not a man to cross. Everyone there feared him, down to his own foot soldiers.

Sutler’s face contorted in anger. He bared his yellowed teeth and strode up to Ladonna. She stood her ground, however, her face turned up to his in defiance. The rogue’s blade flashed in his hands and across her face. Ladonna yelped in pain and immediately pressed her palm against the cut on her cheek, but the blood flowed freely over her fingers. His hands danced again, and another cut appeared on her exposed arm, then another.

Ladonna stumbled back and the woman behind her pushed her forward. Sutler caught Ladonna by the jaw.

“What was that, little thief?” Sutler said.

Despite the cuts to her face and her arm, Ladonna stared at him with an unflinching gaze. “I’ve suffered worse at your hands,” she said then looked at Tythonnia. She smiled. “And one more thing,” she said, turning her gaze back to Sutler. “I’m no longer ‘little thief.’”

As Ladonna’s claws dug into Sutler’s chest, she cried,
“Halilintar sentu!”

Electricity sparked and danced between her fingers and into Sutler. He screamed and jerked as the threads of static leaped across his body and plunged between the links of his chain armor.

Tythonnia kept her hands in front of her as she locked her fingers in three quick movements.

“Sihir anak!”
she whispered. One dart of light curled back and struck the man holding her. He screamed and pulled away
without drawing her blood. Another struck the man holding Par-Salian. He, too, stumbled back as Par-Salian shrugged him off and prepared his own spell. The final two darts struck the man and the woman behind Ladonna, stopping them from falling upon her.

Sutler slashed out, cutting Ladonna across the ribs with his blade. She dodged another swing, but already her hands and mouth were moving with the dance of another spell. Par-Salian cracked his wrists together, producing a bell-like clang from the bracers around his wrists. The air around his body shimmered with heat, and three blazing arrows appeared. They shot out, their paths straight and true.

The first arrow repaid Tythonnia for her favor by striking the man behind her. He cried out in pain as a patch of clothing caught fire. The second arrow caught the woman behind Ladonna in the abdomen. She gasped and went limp, falling to the ground. She didn’t stir again. Unfortunately, the third arrow missed its mark. The other man flanking Ladonna barely managed to twist away, avoiding the bolt that struck the stone wall behind him. It vanished in a blazing pop. The cutthroat stabbed at Ladonna, catching her across the back. Whatever magic she had in store vanished from her lips in that moment of pain. The spell was lost. Ladonna was defenseless against Sutler and the other attacker.

Tythonnia saw everything happening too quickly, her own reactions too slow. The man behind Par-Salian was already at his back again, his dagger poised to strike; Ladonna fell into the mud, bleeding and flanked by two men who eyed her throat with a predatory gleam. The man behind Tythonnia scrambled to get up.

Who do I save? she screamed to herself. Everyone was within reach, everyone was too far to save.

The words came unbidden, as though possessed of their own voice. Her fingers darted into place, her hand motions swift and concise. She touched the pouch strapped to her
wrist, the one with her eyelash trapped in tree sap. As the magic rode the shiver up her spine, she cried the words,
“Tak’kelihatan lingkaran.”

And everyone vanished.

Flight

T
ythonnia quietly stepped forward, as lightly as she could muster, given the adrenaline racing through her. She could hear the others breathing, the sudden panicked inhalation of shock, the shifting weight on the cobblestones. The inn remained quiet, the courtyard dark; the world seemed to be waiting, and so was she. Her only hope was that Ladonna and Par-Salian had heard the words of her spell and understood what to do next.

To wait.

Gently, carefully, Tythonnia began preparing the next spell. She did not want to cast it just yet, but to ready the words rolling around her tongue, the weight of the magic balanced in her skull, balanced for the tipping. She inhaled softly and felt the air drag across her lungs. Any moment …

… any moment.

“H—hello?” someone cried out. It was a man’s voice, unnatural against the empty courtyard, haunted. It belonged to one of the rogues. There was more shuffling about, though the courtyard appeared empty of everyone but Tythonnia herself.

“Where’d you go?” another voice cried, almost relieved.

“I’m right here! Where are you?” The voice seemed to come from close to where Ladonna stood.

“Here!” the voice cried. It came from behind Tythonnia. She turned to face it, ever so carefully.

More shuffling was followed by a snarl. It was Sutler who spoke out with a rough whisper. It was hard to pinpoint his voice. “I can hear them breathing! They’re still here! Attack, damn you!”

Tythonnia braced for the chaos about to erupt. Her spell was prepared, the words pacing in her mouth like an eager dog. She could only hope the others realized what was happening and had prepared accordingly.

The first thief suddenly appeared. It was Tythonnia’s attacker, his short sword swinging wildly while his other hand was outstretched, as though blindness gripped him. The second and third rogues appeared as well, the one who had attacked Par-Salian and the one who had attacked Ladonna. They all swung blindly; then they spotted one another, their eyes widening.

Tythonnia didn’t know whether their horrified expressions came because they realized they had broken the constraints of the invisibility spell, or because they were now visible to attack. Sutler had yet to appear, but Tythonnia knew she had to press the advantage before the trio of cutthroats could somehow regroup. She prayed her companions had come to the same conclusion. The words spilled from her mouth.

“Keajukan ut saya.”

The rogues hesitated. Tythonnia reappeared, but now there were seven manifestations of her, each of them interspersed through the area, each of them seemingly as real as the other. Six copies mimicked the moves of one, another of her skillful illusions.

As the thief struck at one of the illusions with his short sword, obliterating the image into a mist of glittering powder, Tythonnia began another spell. The other illusions
simultaneously mimicked the sway of her arms and twist of her fingers. The cutthroat near Par-Salian struck at the Tythonnia nearest him, shattering that illusion as well. Five Tythonnias left to kill.

And there was still no sign of her companion wizards. They must have been waiting for Sutler to show himself, but he seemed smarter than his ilk. He wasn’t doing anything that would reveal his position.

Tythonnia had to act again; the rogue nearest her had shattered another illusion, bringing her down to four Tythonnias. She was too close to him not to be attacked next. In unison, the four Tythonnias completed a fresh spell; in unison, they called:

“Sihir anak!”

Four bolts of light zipped from each of the four Tythonnias, sixteen daggers in total that stitched zigzag paths over and under each other. Only four bolts were real, but the effect was the same as if all sixteen carried menace. They peppered the attacker like arrow fire and sent him lunging to the floor. He uttered a groan but stayed down.

Par-Salian materialized behind his attacker, his spell spoken as barely a whisper. A sphere of fire unfurled between his puppeteer-like fingers and the cobblestone ground. He flung the sphere at his attacker, caressing him with flames. The cutthroat screamed and batted at the sphere to push it away, but his sleeves caught fire. He cried even louder as the blaze engulfed his arms. Then he ran out of the courtyard as if his legs could carry him away from his burning body. His cries echoed through the alleys.

As both Tythonnia and Par-Salian turned to confront the last of their visible attackers, one of the glamours burst into mist, and a sharp pain slammed into Tythonnia. She fell backward to the ground, her scream and agony-twisted face mirrored in her two remaining doppelgangers. Looking at them she realized there was a dagger lodged in her shoulder.
The cutthroat nearest Ladonna was pulling another pair of daggers from his belt.

Par-Salian sent the sphere hurtling at the rogue, but as before, the villain proved nimble. He dived out of the way and rolled back up to his knee. His arm flashed forward, and two more daggers were suddenly embedded in Par-Salian’s thigh. The wizard cried out and clutched his leg, as he crumpled to the floor.

Tythonnia tried to ready a spell, to unleash it before the rogue could attack them again, but pain and nausea made it hard to focus. Somehow, between the seconds spent in agony, another two daggers appeared in the attacker’s hands. He prepared to throw them underhand, and neither Par-Salian nor Tythonnia could stop him in time.

Ladonna appeared behind the cutthroat, her hands pressed on either side of his head, her mouth moving. He gasped, first in surprise then at the sudden rush of pain. Ladonna’s fingernails glowed with cold, blue light, and her victim’s face seemed to go white. Tiny, blue veins appeared across his flesh, his skin growing terribly pale and thin. The wounds on Ladonna’s arm and face stopped bleeding and scabbed over. She gained strength as the rogue withered; finally his eyes rolled up into his head, and he dropped away, dead.

Tythonnia fought to concentrate, to ready one last spell. She knew what was coming; Ladonna had made herself vulnerable to save them; Sutler was still invisible. But Tythonnia couldn’t think straight with the dagger still in her shoulder. She needed to remove it.

With a cry of pain, Tythonnia gripped the dagger and pulled it out. She screamed and almost collapsed from the sickening rush that filled her stomach. The spell, she thought, she must prepare it before—

Everything went silent as Ladonna arched out, her black eyes wide in shock and her head thrown back. Sutler appeared behind her, both fists buried deep into her lower back, the
blades drinking of her blood. A wild grin cracked his face open, an eagerness for the kill that bordered on frenzy.

Tythonnia saw the solution clearly, the one spell she knew that she was loath to ever use, the one spell in her repertoire of illusions that marked the pinnacle of her understanding of those particular arts. The spell called out to her. If ever a situation existed—a person, even—to inflict that spell upon, that time had arrived, that person was here.

The words came easily, the gestures unbidden, from years of practicing the patterns and motions. If she should die fifty years later, never having practiced magic again in the meantime, the interlocking finger and hand patterns would remain with her.

As her fingers flew and her mouth uttered,
“Khalayan ut matithat,”
her mind became a mirror. And in that mirror stood Sutler. Also in the reflection, standing behind him, was the very thing to augur his doom.

A shadowy cloud, its edges tattered and bleeding wisps of smoke, appeared between Tythonnia and Sutler. He finally saw it, his crazed eyes unable to register it at first. He glanced at Ladonna then snapped back to the shape. His mouth dropped open, and the lunacy evaporated from his face. The shape remained the same as far as Tythonnia could see, but to Sutler, it took on terrifying dimension and weight. The details became clearer, and it turned into that thing in the mirror, the thing that would undo him.

Tythonnia couldn’t see it, but she knew it was something stitched together from the fabric of all Sutler’s fears, a patchwork monster to embody his every greatest terror. Ladonna slid to the ground as Sutler stepped back. He tried to raise his blades, to fend the creature off, but his arms barely budged. The daggers clattered to the cobblestones, and a strangled cry escaped Sutler’s lips.

The shadowy form darted forward; a tendril touched Sutler. He clutched his chest and inhaled a terrible, ragged
gasp. He dropped to his knees, his fingers scrabbling over his heart as though seeking to tear it out. The look of horror deepened, and there he died, on his knees, the fear forever etched on his face.