Soulblade (45 page)

A snapping noise sounded in the ceiling above her.

Ridge grabbed her hand again, this time pulling too hard for her to resist. He yanked her off her feet and dragged her toward the hallway. More snaps came from the ceiling, and rocks tumbled down where she had been standing. Therrik yelled as a head-sized rock slammed into his shoulder, knocking the sword from his hands. With Sardelle distracted, the barrier around him had disappeared.

Therrik lunged for the sword right away, but his fingers never reached it. He was lifted from his feet, as if caught in a tsunami, and hurled all the way to the back of the room. He struck so hard that Ridge was certain he would be knocked out, if not killed outright.

Before he consciously knew what he was doing, Ridge sprinted across the chamber and dove for Kasandral. He was terrified it might turn Sardelle into an enemy to him, but he prayed he could keep it focused on Eversong.

As he landed, an angry force tightened around his windpipe, invisible fingers wrapping around his neck. A vision of his head being torn off flashed into his mind, but his hand wrapped around the sword hilt first. It flared to life, pale green light bathing the rubble pile. The force around Ridge’s throat disappeared, and he scrambled to his feet, the weapon in hand.

Rage and hunger filled his mind, emotions that did not originate with him. They came from the sword, along with instructions that beckoned him to attack the rock pile. Without hesitating, he thrust the weapon into the boulders, thinking he might skewer the sorceress buried within, the sorceress who had killed everyone in that room. The point dove in as if thrusting into a pile of sand instead of a pile of solid rock.

Don’t make this choice
, Eversong’s voice spoke into his head.
I
will
kill you.

Ridge hoped that was a bluff, that Kasandral would protect him, that she wouldn’t be able to touch him or manipulate him. Still, afraid some mental attack was forthcoming, he stabbed faster, harder. It did not seem honorable, thrusting a sword at a wounded foe, but this foe could hurl rocks—and people—even while buried. A hunger coursed through him, again seeming to come from the sword, and he didn’t know if he could have stopped if he had wanted to.

After one of his strikes, a muffled gasp came from somewhere under the rocks. Several boulders lifted from the back of the pile, and Ridge ducked. They flew toward him, but struck a barrier and bounced off before coming close. Sardelle stepped up beside him, her face caked with dust, but her eyes clear and bright. An angry feeling flowed up his arms from the blade, and for a second, Ridge struggled to see her as an ally.

“Keep going,” she said. “I
will
protect you.” She glared at the rubble, then spread her hands toward it, fingers splayed, intense concentration burning in her eyes.

She
is
an ally, Ridge told the sword, though he had no idea if it understood. With will as much as with muscle, he thrust the blade into the pile, aiming for the spot where the gasp had originated.

The entire pile trembled, as if an earthquake were striking. Even the floor shook. Would all of those boulders fly at him at once? Could Sardelle’s shield stop that?

She growled deep in her throat, her eyes squinted shut as she made a tamping motion with her hands. Air swirled past Ridge, as if a breeze blew through the room, and the rocks settled.

Ridge thrust into them again. For a moment, nothing happened, and he thought Sardelle had won some victory. Then wind blew past Ridge again, this time more like a hurricane than a breeze. Strangely, it did not affect him, but Sardelle was flung backward, just as Therrik had been. Ridge reached for her, but was too late. She slammed into the wall and crumpled to the ground next to Therrik.

Therrik had risen to his hands and knees, but another wave of energy pushed him back against the wall. He might as well have been shackled there.

Sardelle surprised him by rising to her feet. She stared at the open area above the rubble pile where a ceiling had once been. Her eyes narrowed and a gust of wind swirled through the room. Dust and fine bits of rock swirled through the air, pelting everyone’s skin. Then the force seemed to sharpen and focus. It struck the ceiling on the floor above theirs. Groans and snaps sounded, and more and more rocks tumbled down onto the pile.

Ridge staggered back, pulling the sword out and shielding his eyes from flying shards of rock. As he did so, he glimpsed blood on the tip of the glowing blade.

“She’s injured,” he said, scarcely hearing his own voice over the roar of falling rock.

Squinting, he stumbled back toward the pile. Maybe dropping more stone on her head would finish her off, but they couldn’t assume that. Only the sword had proven that it could hurt her.

He drew back his arm for a mighty thrust when a new attack came. Not rocks or wind this time. A torrent of images cascaded into his mind. He was aware of Sardelle gasping behind him, but the images felt like daggers scraping across his brain, and he couldn’t do anything to help her. He fell to his knees in front of the settling rocks, grit and stone jabbing through his trousers. He barely noticed. His mind was locked in the past, in the barn that Mara had lured him into, to the hay bales that she had pushed him against. He saw what he’d forgotten from that night, them tearing off their clothes and having sex, her whispering into his ear, promising to make him king. Even though the engagement had been lust-filled rather than love-filled, it made him question what he was doing. Was he truly trying to thrust a sword into the woman he had slept with? What kind of monster was he?

His determination to kill her wavered, the sword drooping in his hands. Rocks shifted and tumbled away from the spot where he had been stabbing. A blood-streaked and dust-caked hand reached up from the pile.

“Ridge,” Sardelle whispered from behind him. “You have to finish it. She’ll kill us all if you don’t.”

“I...” More images rushed into his mind of him entwined with Mara, of kisses shared, of thrusts of desire met with eagerness.

“Angulus is buried under there too,” Sardelle said stepping up behind him. “He arranged this trap, risked his own life to bury her under the rocks, in an attempt to kill her, to protect the castle and this country. He’s still alive, but he won’t be if she crawls out of there. Remember, she killed all of the council leaders already. She doesn’t care about you. Even if she did—”

Ridge swallowed. “I know.” She was manipulating him, as she had that night. None of this was real.

Kasandral thrummed in his hands, almost pulsing with indignation. Indignation and rage. It wanted him to kill the sorceress. Images of the dead councilmen leaped into his head, mixing with the scenes of his night with Mara. Through the confusion, Ridge managed to keep enough of his wherewithal to thrust the sword into the rocks one more time.

A scream sounded, as the blade cut into more than stone this time.

Horrified, his mind still full of images of him and Mara naked on the hay, Ridge dropped the weapon and stumbled back. As soon as Kasandral tumbled from his grip, he knew he had made a mistake. He reached for it, but it was too late. The images disappeared from his mind at the same time as an invisible force struck him. As it had with the others, it hurled him all the way across the chamber.

The landing drove all of the air from his lungs as he slid down the wall to the floor. His body wouldn’t work, and he couldn’t breathe or even think about getting up. He couldn’t do anything except feel pain and look helplessly toward the rubble he’d been flung away from.

Sardelle was still there, on one knee, also having suffered some attack. She glanced at the sword, its glow dim now that nobody held it, but she didn’t reach for it,
couldn’t
reach for it.

More rocks sloughed away from the pile. The hand that had reached out turned into a head, and then Mara’s dusty upper body rose into sight. Only it wasn’t Mara, not the Mara he had known. Her skin and hair were darker under the dust. This was the woman from the flying fortress, the woman who had tried to kill him and his squadron. She lifted a sword that Ridge hadn’t seen since that day. Wreltad. The blade wasn’t glowing, not the way Kasandral’s was, and he remembered Wreltad’s parting words, that he would choose death over continuing to work with her. Did she know yet? Did she care?

Blood trickled from Eversong’s mouth and saturated the front of her shirt, but she found the strength to attack Sardelle. Ridge couldn’t
see
that attack, but Sardelle’s response was unmistakable. She dropped onto her back, clutching at her throat. She tried to gasp for air, but only a gurgling sound came out.

Ridge tried to make his body respond, wanting nothing more than to run back over there and pick up the sword. His numb limbs did not respond. Eversong looked over at him, a triumphant sneer on her lips.

Therrik was the one to climb to his feet and sprint out of the shadows for the blade. Eversong saw him and lifted an arm, but too late. His hands wrapped around Kasandral’s hilt, and with impossible speed, he leaped to his feet. He swept the blade at her so quickly, Ridge barely registered the movement. It was only when her head tumbled off, cleanly removed from her neck, that he realized what had happened. The soulblade fell from her fingers, clanked down the rubble pile, and lay still.

Ridge tore his gaze away from it and avoided looking at the decapitated body. He felt cowardly, but he was relieved that Therrik had been the one to kill her. Even knowing all he knew about her now, he doubted he could have done it. He looked toward Sardelle, his heart breaking at seeing her on the floor, though at least she had lowered her hand from her throat and no longer seemed to be in pain. He longed to go to her and engulf her in a hug.

“Seven gods, Zirkander,” Therrik panted, wiping the sword off on his trousers. “You screwed that witch
too
?”

Silence filled the room after that statement. At first, Ridge could only look at him in confusion, but from the way Therrik and Sardelle stared at him, he realized they knew every detail. Eversong hadn’t just shared those images with him. She had flung them out into the room. They had been meant to manipulate him. He wasn’t sure why they’d been foisted on the others. To make them hate him? To not trust him? To hurt Sardelle?

He winced and forced himself to meet Sardelle’s gaze. Even though that night hadn’t been his choice, and he believed she would understand, that didn’t keep the sorrow and hurt from her eyes now. He wanted to slither under that rubble pile and disappear. Sardelle blinked several times and looked away from him.

“The king is still alive under here,” she said, a slight quaver to her voice. She wiped her eyes and swallowed before continuing. “I suggest we figure out how to get him out.”

A distant crash came from somewhere above, the walls shivering in response. Ridge forced his sore body into motion and pushed himself to his feet. If more of the castle fell atop this room, they might never find Angulus.

Chapter 19

S
weat ran down Sardelle’s spine as she lifted rock after rock off the pile, forming cushions of air under them to levitate them across the chamber. After the battle, her entire body ached, though not as much as she would have expected. She almost felt invigorated and wondered if she had Bhrava Saruth’s so-called blessing to thank. Still, after that mental battle, she wanted nothing more than to collapse somewhere and relax—and to forget the images Eversong had stuck into her head. She’d seen enough of Ridge’s thoughts earlier to know Eversong had drugged him to get him in that barn, but that didn’t make those images any less vivid.

Ridge dragged rocks away by hand, his face hard to read. He hadn’t spoken since Therrik blurted that accusation. Now and then, he paused to rub his back and watch the boulder-sized slabs drifting past, but he avoided Sardelle’s gaze when she looked at him. She didn’t blame him for what had happened, and had been warned earlier when she had gotten the gist from Ridge’s surface thoughts, but it was still hard to accept with any degree of equanimity, especially when the damned woman had shared everything in vivid detail.

Therrik hadn’t put away Kasandral yet. He stood in a wide-legged stance, breathing heavily and glaring down at Eversong’s soulblade. He kept mumbling under his breath. The control words for Kasandral? Sardelle did not like the way the dragon-slaying sword continued to glow green. Was its thirst still not quenched? Was it trying to convince Therrik to attack Sardelle too? Or maybe it wanted to find a way up to the courtyard—what remained of it—to attack the dragons?

She could feel Bhrava Saruth fighting the female up there. A flier squadron was also in the air, trying to find a way to help. She worried the pilots would do more harm than good, confusing friendly dragons for enemies. As soon as she could, she had to go help, if only by telling whoever led that team to get out of the dragons’ way. But for now, her senses told her that Angulus still lived under the rocks at the back of the pile, as impossible as that seemed. She couldn’t leave until they recovered him.

“Will the sword do anything?” Therrik asked, sneering slightly as another boulder floated by. He would probably never get used to having magical allies.

“The soulblade?” Sardelle wiped her damp brow. “Possibly, yes. They’ve been known to finish battles when their handlers have died, though eventually they lose their power and go dormant without a link to another sorcerer.”

Jaxi, can you tell if Wreltad is making sinister plans toward us?

Taddy isn’t talking to me. Perhaps because I call him Taddy. He prefers to talk to your soul snozzle.

Ridge?

“He won’t attack us,” Ridge said quietly. “He could have helped Eversong there in the end, but he didn’t.”

“Why not?” Therrik prodded the soulblade with Kasandral. Light flashed around both swords, the air snapping and hissing angrily, like when droplets of water were flung into a hot pan. Therrik stumbled back. He switched Kasandral to his other hand and shook out the right. “It’s definitely not dormant,” he said.