The Silent Tempest (Book 2) (35 page)

“Are you ready, Sister?” asked Ryan as
they stepped onto the field still holding hands.

Emma stopped a moment before stretching up
on her toes to kiss him lightly on the cheek, “Always, Brother. I will protect
you until the end. Win or lose, they won’t soon forget this day.” Together
they marched toward their starting position.

Tyrion’s eyes widened when he saw their
opponents coming out from the other side of the field, four men and two women,
all wearing brown leathers and bearing the wooden swords that marked them as
wardens. “What the hell is this?!” he swore, looking toward Byovar.

The lore-warden held up his hands, “Even I
was unaware of this particular.”

“Dammit!” cursed Tyrion. Wardens were
normally exempt from arena combat, being long time veterans of many battles.
He could also see that their aythar was stronger than that of the average
She’Har slave, which wasn’t unusual given their experience and past successes.
The wooden swords were also troublesome. Even at this distance, he could see
that the weapons were unusual. A She’Har spellweave enwrapped each blade,
giving them far greater cutting power. His children’s enchanted shields might
be vulnerable if their strength ebbed.

Any two of the wardens were enough to
match either Emma or Ryan, and six—his children were overmatched.

“Ryan was right,” muttered Tyrion. “I
should have sent Ian.”
But who would I have been willing to send out to die
with him?

“I can’t understand you when you mumble,”
complained Kate.

“I’m just worried,” he told her, and then
he noticed a rough line in the dirt marking the place where Emma and Ryan had
entered the field. It extended across the ground to where they now stood. His
heart jumped as he realized what they meant to do.
It might have worked, if
those were normal slaves. If they didn’t have those swords. Now…?

He sent his mind outward seeking to warn
them, but the shield that protected the arena had already gone up, blocking any
communication with the combatants.
Shit! They’re going to get themselves
killed.

Kate gasped, “Daniel, you’re hurting me.”

He realized he had been squeezing her hand
too tightly, and he relaxed his grip with conscious effort. “Sorry.”

“It’s bad isn’t it?” said Kate.

Layla coughed, “Bad doesn’t begin to
describe it. They’re fucked. Each one of those wardens is well known. That’s
Braden the Butcher, Daggoth Demonfist, Laeri the Cold, Tibbon the Terrible,
Shayla the Merciless, and Hesta,” she said, naming the wardens one by one.

Tyrion knew the names if not the faces.
He had faced none of them before, obviously, or they would have been dead
already. They had earned their current status as wardens in the years after he
had been retired from the arena.

“Why doesn’t Hesta have a special title?”
wondered Kate.

Layla shrugged, “She has a bad temper and
a habit of killing those who talk about her.”

“How about Hesta the Irritable?” suggested
Kate.

The female warden laughed, “I wouldn’t say
it within her hearing.”

“Hesta the Mildly Annoyed then. Surely no
one could take offence at that,” commented Kate.

“Be quiet,” snapped Tyrion. “I’m trying
to concentrate.”

“Sorry,” said Kate. “I’m just nervous.”

The lights around the arena changed, and
the chime sounded. The match had begun.

The moment the match began, Ryan took to
his feet, racing toward the six wardens. He had a tight shield around himself,
and one of his arm blades was active. He kept that arm down and slightly
behind him as he ran, cutting a thin line in the dirt as he ran. Emma remained
behind, standing at their starting position, seemingly passive.

It probably would have worked
too,
thought Tyrion,
if it weren’t for those
damn swords.
He knew his son was making a fatal mistake. Ryan’s defense
wouldn’t be enough to withstand all six wardens, not with the deadly weapons
they carried. He and Emma obviously hoped to split the arena, using a
reinforced shield to separate some of them from each other temporarily.

As it stood now, however, Ryan was simply
rushing into the lion’s teeth. Once he was dead, the others would simply
surround Emma and wear her down. The match would be a short one.

The six wardens spread out, forming a ‘v’
to welcome Ryan and funnel him between them, with three on either side. Their
swords were out, and some of them were grinning already.

Ryan was within mere feet of the first two
when he exploded. Dirt and soil shot up and outward from beneath his feet, and
in the confusion, a concealing mist filled the area. The two wardens closed on
his position, ignoring the distractions as their blades swung wildly, trying to
connect with their momentarily unseen opponent.

It was an aythar laden mist, the sort that
Tyrion had taught them to conceal themselves from magesight, but it didn’t last
long. The two wardens farthest from him were summoning a wind to disperse the
mist almost as soon as it had appeared.

The ones attacking found nothing to
connect with, however, for Ryan’s body was flying backward through the air,
pulled as if on an invisible string. Emma had remained attached to him with a
thin line of aythar, which she used now to jerk him back from the enemy’s
deadly trap.

The wardens were momentarily surprised by
his sudden retrieval. Tyrion had no doubt that since arena matches were
normally one on one no one had ever seen one mage fling another about in such a
manner, at least not for any purpose other than to harm them. Still, something
didn’t seem right. He frowned as he tried to figure out what was bothering
him.

“That wasn’t a trap,” said Layla beside
him. “He was the one that flung the soil up, not his opponents.”

That doesn’t make sense,
observed Tyrion.
Unless he knew he couldn’t handle the wardens
before he got to them.

Ryan had landed next to his sister, and
the two of them separated once more, this time running in opposite directions,
one to either side, as though they planned to flank their opponents. They both
had activated their shield enchantments now, and their armblades were out,
making them each a serious threat, but if the wardens broke away to take them
on, three to one on either side it wouldn’t be much of a fight.

Something was wrong with Ryan, though.
His shield enchantment didn’t feel right. It didn’t have the proper solidity.
Tyrion’s magesight focused on him for a moment, and then he realized his
children’s ruse.

Some of the warden’s figured it out at the
same time. “He’s an illusion!” shouted Hesta from her position on the far
right.

Emma released her spell, and Ryan’s
illusory form vanished just as the ground shot skyward once more, this time
directly in front of the two most central wardens, Daggoth and Laeri. Longtime
veterans of the arena, they both understood the nature of the ambush
immediately. The boy had used the distraction and the mist to conceal himself
under the soil, while his sister had created the illusion to keep them from
realizing the subterfuge. As the ground erupted they leapt backwards
instinctively.

What their reflexes failed to consider
though, was that the ground hadn’t shot upward from the position where Ryan had
disappeared. As they jumped back he rose from the earth behind them, armblades
out and sweeping toward their backs. Laeri’s shield split, and his body fell
away in two pieces, but Daggoth was luckier. The two of them had been too far
apart, and Ryan’s right arm hadn’t had enough reach to kill him. Instead he
lost his left arm, screaming in pain as he fell to the ground.

Layla clucked in appreciation, “That was a
three layered trap.”

Tyrion nodded, amazed by their
cleverness. If he had been one of their opponents, he might well be just as
dead as Laeri was now.

“Remind me never to take on your son in a
serious fight,” added Layla.

The destruction of his shield had nearly
rendered Daggoth unconscious, losing most of one arm made matters even worse
for him. In a smaller match the best option would have been for Ryan to pursue
his advantage and finish Daggoth before the other mage could recover his
senses.

But this wasn’t a small match, and the
wardens knew what his most likely course of action was. Ryan created a new
mist even as he started toward Daggoth. Three intensely focused beams of
fire-like aythar ripped through the mist from different directions as Braden,
Tibbon, and Shayla used their swords to direct attacks at Daggoth’s location.

Seconds later they dispersed the mist, but
Ryan wasn’t there, he was fifty feet above, falling toward the ground. Daggoth
was dead, having been skewered by at least one of his comrade’s attacks.

“I didn’t know they could jump like that,”
said Kate.

Tyrion was worried about something else,
though. While he fell, Ryan would be unable to change directions, and the
three wardens were already taking aim once more. There would be no more
dodging now.
And Hesta is nowhere to be seen…

That confused him, until his mind found
her, she was at the far end of the arena. She had teleported as far as
possible to the area she was least likely to be noticed during the confusion.
In the heat of a battle with multiple foes, it was almost as good a method of
hiding as invisibility.

Emma stretched out her hand toward her
skyward brother, using her aythar to jerk him back for real now, barely in time
to avoid the fresh attacks that tore through the air where he had almost
passed. She had no time to react to the female warden who appeared behind
her. Hesta’s wooden blade pierced her shield and tore through her back before
erupting from her abdomen.

The attack had been intended for the
heart, but Hesta had dropped a foot farther down after she teleported,
splashing into a hidden pool of water surrounding Emma. She and her blade
vanished immediately after the attack as she teleported back to her comrades
before Ryan landed beside his sister. His counterattack missed her completely.

Hesta laughed, standing beside Braden now.
The male warden reached out his hand, and the two of them disappeared. Braden
was a Prathion by birth, although he was owned by the Mordan Grove. A second
later Tibbon vanished as well.

“Tibbon isn’t a Prathion,” muttered Layla.

“Hesta teleported herself and Braden to
him,” explained Tyrion. “Now Braden is making all three of them invisible…”

“… and if she’s teleporting them, they
could be anywhere,” finished Layla, understanding suddenly.

Ryan caught his sister as she began to
crumple. The feedback from her broken shield along with her terrible wound had
overwhelmed her. He was careful to avoid stepping in the newly revealed water
that surrounded them like a moat for several feet in every direction. He knew
he had only seconds before the wardens might renew their attack.

Even a circle reinforced shield would be
of little use against whatever power the wardens were using to focus their
ranged attacks, and it would put him at risk of being stunned if his shield were
destroyed, so instead he raised a thick dome of earth from the ground just
beyond the water around them.

“That won’t protect them for long,” noted
Layla.

“It’s better than nothing, though,” said
Tyrion. Before he could say more, Hesta reappeared. She was standing close to
Ryan’s earthen defense, but she wasn’t attacking. Instead she fell to the
ground, screaming and writhing. She scratched at her legs as though she was
trying to get something off of them.

Then Tyrion saw the blisters appearing on
her legs in places where her leathers had started to come apart. Smoke was
rising from her boots.

“I don’t think that was water,” muttered
Layla.

“Lye maybe?” said Kate. “Where would she
have gotten something like that?”

Whether it was caustic lye or some sort of
acid, it was clear that Hesta wouldn’t be able to focus on matters at hand.
The warden was desperately trying to remove her boots and scrubbing at her legs
with handfuls of dirt. The skin was coming away under the rough treatment, and
her hands were beginning to burn as well, for she had gotten some of the liquid
on them in her haste.

Shayla had been left unmolested for some
time, and now Tyrion noticed that the Centyr mage was still standing close to
where she had started. Beside her were two enormous bear-like spellbeasts.
Grinning, she started across the field to join her remaining comrades; her
aythar was much weaker, for she had invested most of it in her new guardians.

Given more time Shayla’s aythar would
recover, and with the beasts by her side she would be difficult to deal with.
Time was never a friend when facing one with the gifts of the Centyr.

“It’s over,” said Layla. “Ryan can’t face
three of them alone, especially not with those monsters in play.”

Hesta was still screaming, begging her
allies for help as Shayla joined Tibbon and Braden.

Tibbon laughed and mocked her misfortune.
“That’s what you get for trying to hog the glory, Hesta!” jeered Tibbon.
Braden and Shayla ignored her completely, they had no use for a wounded companion.

Inside the earthen dome Ryan still held
his dying sister. Tyrion thought he might have been working to seal her wound,
but it was hard to tell and as he focused on them Ryan brought up a tighter
inner shield. This one was small, encompassing just the two of them, with the
deadly liquid outside of it.

The spellbeasts were tearing at the
earthen dome, and Tibbon and Braden were preparing to help them. Rather than
use their swords, they leveled broader blasts of aythar to help shatter and
disperse the tightly packed earth.

Then the dome exploded. Ryan’s will drove
the explosion outward, flinging the dense earth and small stones in all
directions. The strange liquid followed immediately after it. Tyrion’s son
had heated it to boiling, and now his power tossed it into the air as a steaming,
caustic fog.

Hesta screamed even louder, clawing at her
eyes. She had been unshielded, and the mist was killing her as she inhaled it.

The other three were still protected,
keeping the mist from reaching them, but as they flinched away from the assault
of soil and mist Ryan followed his attack with a blow like a battering ram,
shattering Tibbon’s defense. The warden who had been laughing only moments
before began to choke and cough as he collapsed.

Braden went invisible before a second
attack could do the same to him. Shayla was backpedaling quickly, trying to
get out of the deadly mist as well. The spellbeasts were tearing at Ryan’s
circle reinforced shield, putting a serious strain on Ryan’s reserves. The mist
didn’t affect the magical creatures at all.

The greatest risk now was that either the
spellbeasts or one of the remaining two wardens would penetrate Ryan’s
protective shield, letting the mist back in to kill the two young mages.
Shayla was raising her sword even as she retreated, preparing to use its
special ability to focus her remaining strength into an attack that would
almost certainly do just that.

Before she could fire, she fell back,
collapsing to the ground. A fine hole had been drilled through her head.

Tyrion recognized Emma’s handiwork. She
was much more capable of such precision than Ryan was, in fact it had become
her signature attack in the arena over the past month. Still, he was unsure
how she had managed it. Within another mage’s shield, she should have been
unable to attack the outside.

Then he noticed that they were holding
hands once more. By joining their wills, they had somehow timed it perfectly.
Ryan had opened a tiny hole in the shield just as she had sent a fine lance of
power through Shayla’s head.

With Shayla dead and Braden in hiding,
Ryan took a necessary risk. Raising a powerful wind, he scattered the deadly
mist around them. Once it was gone, he lowered the circle shield and used a
wide blast of aythar to toss the spellbeasts away. Before they could charge
back, he stepped outside the circle and then brought the shield up again,
protecting Emma and trusting to his enchanted body shield to save him from the
beasts.

Long experience had taught Tyrion that
Centyr spellbeasts were troublesome to deal with. They survived the death of
their masters, and they were notoriously difficult to kill. Very little
affected them. Most common attacks passed through their aythar bodies without
harm, but Ryan’s enchanted armblades would do the trick.