Rise of the Seven (16 page)

As we walked from the castle, my eyes met
Steed’s where he waited with the horses. I’d barely had time to
process his expression before we heard the sentry call out.

All eyes fell on Edan as he sprinted across
the yard. When he had our attention, he yelled a warning. “The fey
are attacking Camber, as many as seventy, no structure,” he paused
to take a breath as he reached us, “just rioting.”

We stood in shocked silence for one moment
before the lot of us swung into motion. Chevelle clapped the sentry
on the shoulder before he mounted and without another word, eight
horses were running through the gates. Steed took the lead, setting
a fierce pace and keeping to the path.

I couldn’t believe I’d neglected to sweep the
skies this morning, knowing that the fey were aware of our plans. I
fell in behind Grey and dropped quickly to the horse’s mind, urging
him to keep pace before finding the hawk. It was perched on a
castle wall, tearing meat from a rodent beneath its claw, and I had
to force it to flight.

I had intended to make a broad sweep of
Camber, but when it took wing, everything fell apart. I froze at
what I’d seen, and then heard the clatter of rocks the instant
before I opened my own eyes to find Chevelle and Rider had been
forced from the path, nearly tumbling into my horse when we went
from full run to abrupt stop without warning.

I swallowed hard, unsure what to do as they
stared at me, waiting.

We shouldn’t split up, it could be another
trick. The elves at Camber could handle the fey, would likely have
it done before we arrived. But it wasn’t right to leave them to it,
either. I cursed myself for not having more animals at the castle.
It would be all I needed to resolve the issue in a matter of
minutes. The cats had ended badly and I’d not wanted a repeat.

“
Frey,” Chevelle called and
I grimaced, knowing I could wait no longer.

“
Council trackers are
stealing up the mountain. They are almost to the castle.” I glanced
at the others, who had backtracked when they’d heard the commotion
of the sudden stop. “Anvil, Chevelle, with me. The rest of you go
on, we will join you as soon as the castle is secure.”

No one looked happy with the idea, but they
nodded their assent.

“
Rhys,” I added, surprised
at the intensity of my own voice, “save one for me.”

They turned back to the path, resuming the
run with a new drive. I dropped from my horse and ran, knowing
Chevelle and Anvil would follow. They were faster, but I knew the
secret paths and tunnels. We hadn’t ridden far before I’d found the
intruders, but hopefully any spotters they had thought we were well
gone.

I cut from the path and through a narrow pass
between boulders, climbed a rock wall, and slid behind a tattered
group of thorn bushes before stopping to check the trackers’
progress.

“
There are four,” I
whispered. “One is scaling the north wall. Two outside the east
wing... they appear to be waiting for a signal. The fourth is
farther down, hiding among the rocks.”

The instant my eyes opened, I was running
again, darting through crevices and climbing over stone. I would
lose the tracker once he was inside the castle walls, but I
couldn’t stay with him and keep moving. I had to figure out where
he was going, what he wanted within. They knew we were gone,
surely. They had waited for this opportunity. But why?

I slipped on a loose rock and narrowly caught
myself in time. Cool moss beneath my palm signaled we were nearly
there, and I glanced up, searching the wall for the entrance. I
nodded, confident now, and Chevelle pulled a dagger from his belt
as we began again. We were through the entry and sprinting down the
dark corridor when I realized where the tracker was headed.

“
The vault,” I said,
breathless from running.

Anvil cursed. “I’ll take the two on the east
wing. We’ll catch the fourth before he swings back around. There’s
nowhere for him to go.”

I nodded. “Here.” It was the only warning I
gave before throwing myself through the end wall where the corridor
turned. I felt Chevelle and Anvil falter at my use of magic, as it
was, but they recovered quickly, Anvil splitting from us toward the
east wing as we kept on for Asher’s vault.

The hallway was too quiet. The pad of our
boots seemed to scream in the silence. But that didn’t matter as
soon as Chevelle busted the door to the vault. The seal had been
broken, so he must have expected the tracker to replace it with a
new one.

I couldn’t worry about who the tracker had
killed to get here, where the fallen might be, because once the
door was open, flames burst into the hallway. They died down after
a moment, and I could see Chevelle again, forced to the opposite
side of the opening.

He gave me a look.
I thought you said they were
trackers
. I turned my palms up. They had
been dressed as trackers. And they had moved like trackers. Someone
with this kind of power shouldn’t have bothered learning
stealth.

The wall beside Chevelle blew out, large
chunks of stone flying into the corridor, and he jumped back,
pressed farther from me. Had council been cross-training their
strongest fighters all along, or had we given them too much time to
regroup? The next blast opened the wall beside me and I leapt out
of the way, flinching as pieces of rock pelted my side.

I glanced back at Chevelle, whose expression
left no doubt he was about to pummel this nasty interloper. But
just as he shifted to move on the entrance, a cyclone of paper,
Asher’s precious documents, swirled into the corridor. I bit down
hard. This was one man. And we were wasting time.

I stepped in front of the opening in one
swift move, just as Chevelle did the same. The documents parted,
Chevelle’s magic, and the tracker’s arms and legs broke at the
bicep and thigh, mine. He fell back against a shelf, gritted his
teeth, and threw a vicious strike toward me, which met my power and
dissolved to nothing. He threw another, and then another, to no
avail. I stepped forward, ready to question him, and recognized his
face. Archer Lake.

He smiled at my recognition. It was an ugly,
hate-filled smile and I wanted to destroy it.

Flames returned with the memory. I felt the
heat surround us as I watched her burn. He had been the one who’d
finally overtaken her. They had all killed my mother, but this man
had possessed the strength to overwhelm her, an energy of legend.
He had burned her.

And he had taken pleasure in it.

I would make him suffer. He would blister and
burn in agony. Dark hair whipped my face as I drew air into the
room to feed the flame. He would boil. He would suffer. He threw
another blast of power toward me, but I couldn’t even feel it now,
the collision was nothing. He was nothing.

“
Frey!” Chevelle’s voice cut
through the anger, and I was startled by the inferno. We were
surrounded by flame. Had he been yelling?

I glanced at him, beside me, unburned but
clearly in pain, and shook myself. The fire extinguished while I
let out a long breath, as if blowing out a flickering candle, as I
released the magic. My eyes connected with Chevelle and we stood
for a moment, understanding passing between us. He was right. We
had to get to Anvil.

I looked for one last time at the man who had
killed my mother. He was badly burned, but seemed relieved. As if
he were saved now. I shook my head in disbelief and then severed
the large vessels of his heart. He wouldn’t die slow enough, but he
would die.

Chapter Nineteen

Myst

We found Anvil among a large pile of rubble
that used to be the east wall. He was winded and between that and
the chaos of stone, I knew the two here had been no mere trackers
either.

“
What happened?” I asked,
glancing at the destruction surrounding us.

He shook his head. “Not trackers. They were
waiting for whoever was inside to return.” He took a deep breath.
“They were going to ruin what they could of the castle and
grounds.”

I eyed the remaining section of wall. They
hadn’t done a bad job of it, even now.

A few sentries were running toward us,
finally aware of the attack. I couldn’t fault them, it had all
happened rather quickly. Chevelle gave them a brief explanation and
instructed them where to search for the fallen and what to repair
first. I took the opportunity to find my hawk.

When I opened my eyes again, Anvil was
recovered. “Where is he?”

“
Bunkered down on the
northeast crag. No doubt he heard this,” I gestured toward the
wall, “so he must have known better than to run.”

“
Or he has some agenda,”
Chevelle said.

I shrugged. “We can find them here or at the
temple. It will end the same.”

From the east tower, we heard a sentry call
out when he’d found a fallen comrade. The three of us looked toward
the sound.

Chevelle’s voice cut through the silence that
followed. “Then let us end it.”

We moved swiftly across the yard and down the
jagged black rock to where I’d seen the council member.

As we neared the target, Anvil shouted, “Show
yourself.”

There was no response, so we stepped
carefully closer, the three of us spread out along the
mountainside. I could barely see the colors of his robe where he’d
concealed himself, and a surge of apprehension prickled my skin.
This felt like a trap.

“
Hold,” Chevelle said from
across the rock.

I glanced at him, and then heard the
chanting. That wasn’t fear prickling my skin, it was the edge of a
spell. I stepped back involuntarily.

“
You cannot protect
yourself,” Anvil called to the mass of rock. “Will you go out like
a coward?”

The chanting grew louder and I had to fight
not to move back again.

Anvil’s gaze fell on Chevelle, silently
questioning whether he recognized the words. Chevelle grimaced, the
gesture conveying we’d not be able to cross the bounds of the
protection spell. He glanced at me, and I immediately shook my
head. There was no way I was going to let him battle a council
member with castings.

I sat on the rock behind me, careful to
secure my foothold among the looser pieces below my feet, and
closed my eyes. It took longer than I would have liked, but I tried
to focus solely on bringing the animal in with as much speed as
possible instead of the attack on Camber or that I should be with
my guard, not here in the broken shards of the crag with one
council member.

The cat had been hunting at the base of the
cliffs, so it came from below us, agile form moving swiftly up the
treacherous granite to the saw-toothed rock where we waited.

From that vantage point, I could see the him;
it was Clay of Rothegarr. He had not bothered protecting the back
side of his enclosure.

His face changed when he saw the golden fur
of the mountain lion rushing toward him. It was some mixture of
wonder and dread. He hurried to defend himself, drawing a thorn
bush toward him and heaving as much energy as he could into
expanding its size. The cat struck, clamping its strong jaw around
the council member’s leg, and I could feel the muscles of his thigh
tearing under the biting grip as he struggled against it. The cat
hadn’t been able to reach his neck in time, but this was instinct.
It would wait for him to die, never easing its grip until it was
over.

I felt my own body jerk as the thorns pierced
the cat’s hide. Through its eyes, I hadn’t seen the vines growing,
only the blood as it poured from the councilman’s wound and bubbled
up beneath our muzzle. We bit harder, twisting, tearing, and lost
our footing as the vines pushed us from the ground. A thorn ran
through the pad of our paw, breaking through the top, and we yowled
before striking again, but we missed, our jaw snapping shut against
air as the vines caught our neck and held us in place. We
struggled, furious and desperate, but the tree only tightened
around us.

A hand on my shoulder, a
word in my ear brought me back to my own body, gasping for
air.
Right
. It was
the cat. Not me.

“
Can you get my lion out?” I
whispered to Chevelle.

He knelt beside me. “Not without
casting.”

I swallowed hard, my throat dry, and then
shook my head. It was too risky.

A high-pitched cry escaped the cat, now
wounded and trapped within the thorn tree, and I acted without
thought, placing my hands to the ground in front of me, cursing the
council member to death.

“
Frey,” Chevelle warned from
beside me, moving to stand as the ground shook beneath
us.

Rock crashed into rock as it tumbled down the
steep mountainside and I could hear Anvil swear as he and Chevelle
worked to protect us from the avalanche. But I couldn’t stop. This
was wrong. We shouldn’t be here, trying to drive out this one
remaining nuisance instead of fighting against council in a proper
clash. We had given them time to regroup and they were fighting
dirty. Like the fey. The fey, who were, as we sat here, attacking
Camber. We were being assailed from all sides when we should have
been avenging the massacre, setting the wrong to right.

“
Frey!” Chevelle’s voice was
a command this time as grabbed me by the shoulders and hoisted me
to standing. But I didn’t fight him. I was done.

The mountain fell quiet as the final rock
settled, and Chevelle spun me around to face him. He was angry, and
I knew he’d intended to ask me what I thought I was doing, but
whatever he saw in my expression stopped him.