Palace of glass, p.39
Palace of Glass, page 39
“The Mageguard are coming,” Riyyen said. “We’ve moved Mieshka farther down the street. You have to get her out of here before they find her. It’s the safest thing.”
Allish’s brow dipped as she processed his words, but she relaxed her grip on her Element. There was still a lot to figure out, but this, at least, was familiar territory. “Where is she?”
“Down the street, roughly two hundred meters. They took a white van.”
The Sylph pulsed in her blood and then leapt off, already on the trail. Allish squeezed her left hand tight until the nails bit into her palm, fighting the sudden compulsion to let herself go. “Where do I take her? The back-up?”
Ivern’s group had organized a meeting spot in case things went bad. A warehouse deep in the South district. A picture of its derelict walls rose in her mind.
“Yes,” Riyyen said. “We’ll—”
“Mageguard,” Orrist said. “Get away from the windows.”
They shrank back, the two nearest the right-hand door retreating into the hallway while the Earth Mages quietly backed against the walls. The Sylph snapped back into her as she unraveled, blending into the shadows in the corner as they all turned their attentions outside.
The Earth Mages undoubtedly had the best view. Not only did they directly face the window, but, this close, their power stretched through the floor. Just like Cris, they would be able to sense anything that crept toward the house.
She held her breath, listening, waiting. Then, movement through the window caught her eye.
Three black SUVs pulled up to the curb in front of Orrist’s house, the rain on their glossy, curved sides gleaming under the nearby streetlight. Headlights cut across the street in front of them, their glare bright, colorless, and so harsh that it turned the trunk of a nearby tree into a vivid dichotomy of light and shadow.
“We should move,” Riyyen said. “Allish, can you go collect the others—”
“There’s a fourth,” Orrist interrupted. “Coming straight for them.”
His eyes had caught some of the light from the window, reflecting the paleness of his irises as he stared into a middle space. They focused on the middle distance in front of him, flicking back and forth as if watching something. An errant Earth sigil flickered across his knuckles.
“Shit.” Riyyen stood. His hands went to his head, more Earth magic flickering on them. “We have to lead them off. Distract them. If they see them—”
“Just wait it out.” Orrist had also stood. “They may be hidden.”
“Fuck that.” A click of metal sounded as the red-haired Mage came back into sight from the hallway. “Let’s give them something to look at.”
A second click triggered a change in the atmosphere. A dart on the tip of her gun glowed to light, changing color like an ember in a hot fire. Allish caught the smell of smoke and dryer heat. Soft pops sounded from outside as car doors closed. Three Mageguard now stood on the boulevard, their heads turned toward the house. A fourth made his way around the car’s front, briefly obscuring the headlights as he crossed in front and joined the others. One of the men bent his head to his lapel, probably talking into one of the microphones she’d seen them wear.
Allish shrank further into the shadow.
If they see me… If they tell Amerand I’m not collecting his Earth Mage…
“Well, providing a distraction was the plan,” Orrist said dryly, watching them. “I moved a couple of propane tanks farther down the hillside. Think you can reach them?”
“I’m not like you Earth Mages. I sense Fire, not the location of every potentially flammable thing around.” She stepped further into the room, the strained mix of irritation and focus clearly visible as the light from the front windows fell onto her face.
“I wasn’t speaking to you.” Orrist lifted his head, his gaze falling behind her. “Eric? They have switch boxes on top.”
“Got ‘em,” came a muffled response from the hallway. “Give me a second.”
Power prickled across the back of her arms. Allish stepped away from the wall as it built, allowing the Sylph to unravel them a bit more.
A second later, an explosion rocked the back of the house.
Fire roared up into the night. For a second, she felt like she were in two places—outside, where the Sylph felt the burn of heat in the air, the hiss of resident water evaporating in an instant, the violent throws and rips in the air currents above Orrist’s back yard, and inside, where the gleam of firelight rose as a reflection on the wood of the room’s back doorway, where she felt the hiss of static, unrealized power in the air, where the floor shuddered and shivered from the blast and its aftermath.
But, under the rage of heat and fire, another crackle of magic caught her attention—in the complete opposite direction.
Everyone in the room turned toward it.
“Oh, shit.” The Fire Mage took a step toward the door, her face blanching. “Is that—?”
“Yes. They’ve found them, which means this whole plan is a bust,” Orrist said. Sigils flared on his knuckles as his face twisted, skittering into thick, organized lines bright enough to be seen beneath the material of his sleeve. “Go. Get to them, if you can. If you can’t…”
The Mages powered up, preparing to leave. Riyyen caught her eye. “Go. Find Mieshka. Get her out.”
Allish didn’t need to be told twice. She gave him a curt nod, already half-vanished into the air.
A second later, she was flying.
The air was cold and fierce outside. Allish flew up, feeling the pinpricks of rain that fell through her insubstantial body. The Sylph took her high enough to scrape the bottom of the lowest clouds. Wetness seeped into her hair and slicked against her skin. She tumbled through the night, rain and mist pricking at the insides of her ephemeral body.
From up here, it was easy to spot the firefight that lit up the ground.
Their magic wasn’t subtle. Streaks of light snapped around like laser weapons in a science fiction movie, albeit with different shapes and compositions—and it was impossible to tell who was who. She couldn’t be sure if a Fire spell was one of the Fire Mage’s or something conjured up from one of the Mageguard.
Fire was, as it happened, a popular theme of the night. Orange spells shot around the street like darting, purposeful embers.
She frowned. It shouldn’t be that scattered. If they’d told her right, Aiden and Mieshka were the only ones with magic in their group, and unless they or Orrist’s group had managed some tricky duplication effects in the time she’d teleported—something that seemed unlikely since she was, by far, the fastest mover of the group—then there were more contenders in the battle going on below than they’d accounted for.
But… who else was fighting the Mageguard?
A flash of green, closer than the rest, caught her eye. She dropped down and threaded herself through the rain toward a rocky outcrop that stuck out from the dark, treed hillside like a broken thumb.
Magic pulsed on the wind. Familiar magic. Magic she’d encountered recently.
The Sylph bared her teeth.
They drove down to the ground with the force of a hurricane.
There were three Mages attacking Orrist: Fire, Electric, and Earth. They had him backed up against the side of the rocky cliff, timing their attacks in a series of quick, snappy strikes that lit up his shield like the screen of a thermal camera.
Allish slammed down behind them.
The Earth Mage turned first, his fingers lit up in green symbolry, and the ground beneath her gave a shake. She side-stepped. A rock the size of her head flew through the spot her chest had been.
Then, the Sylph took over.
They were getting better at this, getting better at fighting. She’d trained enough with Cris and Riyyen to predict some of the attacks. Earth Mages liked rocks, or anything that could, in a pinch, become a rock. This included chunks of granite, concrete, metal ripped out and compacted down to throwing size—anything they got their Elemental hands around.
They liked to throw them, or drop them on your head, or encase your foot in them.
If you could avoid all that, you could avoid all the instinctual attacks they employed—the attacks they didn’t have to think about.
The Sylph was very good at avoiding things.
She was even better at attacking.
Allish felt herself unravel into the wind. She stretched out, spread, her body shivering apart. The Sylph side-stepped another attack—a flurry of loose pebbles this time—and pushed her into the air as the earth below made to snap up around her ankle.
Her Element pulsed once, twice. She had a sensation of falling, of drifting, of moving fast.
A second later, she was in her attacker’s face.
He stumbled back, clearly startled—but not before the Sylph scraped their power across his shield, leaving deep, claw-like tracks gouged into its surface.
They’d been practicing this, too, in their little sessions with Cris and Riyyen.
Allish stretched her power, turned for another strike. If she just got her fingers under his shield, she—
Pain erupted up her back, bright and hot.
She hissed, grabbed at her shoulder. Her attack fell flat. She faltered, stubbing her fingers hard against his shield.
That was all the time he needed.
A column of rock snapped shut around her ankle, and she felt a binding spell slam her back into her body.
She was stuck.
She staggered in her new prison, the rock pressing painfully against her bones. The smell of singed flesh rose in the air. Blood trickled down her back. Her skin throbbed, an ugly pain that seared across her upper spine. Now that the binding had made her corporeal, she felt every agonizing pull of it against her burnt skin. Every bump and ache and bruise, no longer dulled by the slight immunity her pseudo-spirit form gave her.
She looked up to see the Earth Mage turn slowly, the smile on his face small and victorious. He lifted his hands. Green symbols gathered, lining up on his knuckles as her imprisonment gave him time for the Mages’ more complex spells.
She straightened, tried to step back. Pain shot from her foot. Her hands shook. A cold sweat shivered over her skin, half from pain, half from fear. The Sylph jangled at her senses, worrying at the binding on her foot the way a rabbit might a snare.
Given time, they would break it.
But the Mage was not giving them time.
The air rushed to her, and she raised her hands instinctively as she pulled the shield around her. This was another thing they had practiced, and something that had proven effective in the past—but it was not something that came naturally. Shields were an Earth property spell, not Air. It was harder for her, required more focus, like teleportation required more focus from them.
She wouldn’t be able to attack like this, especially when the man already had her foot caught, and especially with the Sylph busy with the binding. Her foot tingled, as if hundreds of ants were crawling over her skin. She felt the Sylph’s focus down there, working, worrying.
Without her power and mental support, the shield pulled together like cold molasses.
Allish would have chided the spirit for that, except she didn’t have time.
His first attack slammed into her shield like a minivan. She rocked back, grimaced as the bones in her shin twisted against their rock prison. Her shield faltered. A crack appeared, fracturing the air in front of her like glass.
On the other side, the Mage’s smile grew. His hands rose, full of symbols, the power of his spell practically humming with energy. The wind trembled in her grasp.
Then, energy pulsed in the ground. The earth cracked. Allish caught the brief, startled, half-panicked expression on the Mage’s face—then, he dropped into a sudden hole that opened under his feet, the light on his hands making him look like a falling cave flare.
The hole closed back up without a seam, locking the Mage inside.
The Sylph paused in her attempts to free them. Tension flooded Allish’s blood, and her pulse pounded in her ears as she turned around, suddenly noticing how quiet the fight had become.
And dark, too. Without all the Mage light, the hillside was nothing but a piece of treed wild on a cloudy night.
Orrist stepped out of the shadows toward her, wearing a blasé expression. When he got to where the Mage had been, he paused, looking down through the earth as if to check on the man.
“He forgot who he was up against,” he said, his lip curling. After a beat, he glanced back up. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she said. “Could you…?” She waved a hand to indicate her foot.
Orrist followed her gesture. “Ah. Yes.”
He waved his hand. The rock retreated from her skin like a receding tide.
The Sylph sped back into her veins—and suddenly, she was getting a payload of information about her surroundings, about Orrist, about the two combatants that had also vanished from the hillside—but she resisted as she felt the familiar unraveling sensation. Instead, she focused on the wet ground beneath her feet, on the pain in her back and ankle, and made an effort to ground herself with her body.
She needed to be human, for a little while at least.
Allish turned to the cliff. They faced the city, though the low clouds, and the rain blurred the lights from this high up.
She frowned down the hillside. “What’s going on? There seems to be more than just us?”
“There are,” he confirmed, joining her in staring down the cliff’s side. “I don’t know who they are. Your lot, perhaps?”
“Maybe Riyyen sent a message,” she said. “Do they still have Mieshka?”
“Yes.” His lip curled. “What a fucking waste.”
Without Orrist’s Earth Mage senses, it was hard to see exactly what was going on down below. The Sylph’s images spoke of chaos to her mind. She smelled fire and magic, heard the hiss and howl of wind, the stale lake-water scent of a Water Mage, felt the low, deep rumble of Earth magic, the static hiss of electricity.
For her, it was impossible to locate anything.
“Can you show me where they are?” she asked.
Orrist’s head tilted, as if searching. Then, he lifted an arm, a finger pointing down into a copse of dense trees that blocked her view of the street below.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, already shifting herself into the air.
Orrist grunted. “Don’t get caught.”
Chapter 50
Shingles ground into the soles of her shoes as she landed on top of one of the neighborhood houses, a low, single-level bungalow that, with its pushed-back position from the street, high, old-growth hedges on the closest property line, and sprawling, multi-tiered roofline, provided ample cover for her to duck into the shadows of an eave and catch a closer look at the fight that was happening on the street.
Moss soaked her hands as she crept down the slope. The cool air made the burned wound on her back sting as she shifted between levels of corporeality, but it lessened to a dull ache after a few seconds. She tucked herself close to the nearest eave so that her profile was hidden.
A shot of magic hissed across the street in front of her.
It acted like some kind of subdued firework—a shifting blue color, which marked its user as a Water Mage. All of her instincts expected it to spark and fizzle and create a large bang, but instead, it simply undulated and folded, casting an eerie light over the wet string, its whispery passage the only sound it made.
It lifted all the hairs on the back of her arm.
Even the Sylph, with all her other-worldliness, found it unnatural.
In a second, it vanished beyond her sight, and she heard a strangled, garbled yell come from the far left.
But she turned her head the other way, squinting through the thick bush—holly, some part of her realized—and directed her attention to where her Element caressed the top of the next house over.
If she couldn’t see Mieshka from here, then she might as well keep roof-hopping until she could. If she kept away from being seen from the street, she would probably go undetected while she searched.
This was hoping, of course, that all of the enemy Earth Mages had much better things to do with their time than wonder about random sets of feet teleporting across roofs that she very much knew they could sense.
Allish slipped through the space with barely a whisper, gritting her teeth against the aching wound on her back that stretched as she moved. The wet smell of moss greeted her again on the other side, soaking her fingers as she braced against the edge of the roof and peeked out from under the gable.
Her jaws ground shut tightly as she spotted the wreckage.
Well, that didn’t look good.
The van was shredded. Metal twisted away from its frame in broken, mutilated fragments, catching the yellow glow from a nearby streetlight in sharp glints. It had been blasted on its side, the chassis and undercarriage visible and as trashed as the rest. The Mages’ magic had ripped gaping holes in it.
She froze for a minute, awestruck at the power that could tear it apart. After a few seconds, she lifted her gaze up from the mangled vehicle to the group of people who lay unmoving on the slope of the nearby lawn, guarded by two Mageguard who held their assault rifles to their waists and kept a keen eye on their surroundings.
Probably waiting for a pickup vehicle, she thought, adjusting her stance on the roof and bringing her Element to call around her.
Well, she wouldn’t give them that luxury.
She shifted off the roof, bared her teeth, and sent a command to her Element.
A breath later, she was between the two Mageguard on the other side of the street.
A slight tingle in her feet made her think of warding as she landed, but it had no effect on her. Both nearly jumped out of their skins when they saw her, one giving a half-strangled cry as he lifted his gun, but she had already prepared herself. A gust of wind picked him up and launched him a good fifty meters down the street, limbs flailing as he fought for balance. A whisper of magic murmured in her ear from the other Mage, but she and the Sylph deflected his spell before it had fully formed, cracking a slash of wind against his knuckles so that the pain interrupted his cast.
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