Daybreak (72 page)

That was precisely the problem: Elena had no idea where she was going. They’d checked the mages’ chambers, but found them empty. The libraries and the spell rooms were vacant as well. All of the obvious places had turned up cold. Now there was no guessing where Jake might be.

But Elena refused to give up. She waited until the soldiers finally wandered down the hall before she waved the others forward.

“Ah, let’s rest here for a moment more,” Argon pleaded, his stare roving to the window. “Yes, just a moment more.”

“I’m all for that,” Jonathan agreed.

Eveningwing resumed his crouch with a shrug.

Elena was about a
moment
from killing them all. “No, we haven’t got time to take another rest. The wildmen are going to come bursting in here before too much longer, and if they find Jake …”

She stopped the moment the window started to rattle. A deep gust of wind nearly shook it off its pane — but it was actually the wall that took the brunt of the damage.

Elena threw an arm over her head when a chunk of the wall exploded, showering them with bits of stone and dust. The heaviest pieces slammed against the chamber door beside them, along with something that wasn’t a part of the castle, at all.

A figure dragged itself up from the rubble. There were bits of stone lodged in the wild, red crop of her hair, and a thick layer of grit all but covered the painted swirls across her face. Gwen swore profusely as she pulled herself up from the ruins. Her legs wobbled for only a moment before she steadied — and her eyes sharpened.

When she thrust the golden axe at them, Elena saw that its twin edges hissed with a thin layer of steaming blood. “Which way to the nearest tower?” she growled.

Argon pointed over his thin shoulder to the hallway behind them. “You’ll find a set of stairs to your right. Take them all the way to the top.”

Gwen replied with something that was halfway between a snarl and a grunt before she shoved past them and went sprinting down the hall.

Jonathan gaped after her. “What —?”

“Dragon!” she barked.

Eveningwing fidgeted excitedly. “Will the wild ones bring him down? I wonder —”

“There’s no time to wonder,” Elena said hoarsely. If Gwen was already here, the others wouldn’t be far behind. She started to pick her way over the ruins when the chamber door beside her swung open.

A guard nearly ran her over. His eyes widened through the slits in his gold-tinged helmet as they scraped across her black and crimson armor. A hoard of other guards packed in behind him, heads craning for the source of all the noise.
 

Elena swore when the lead guard raised his spear. She snatched the weapon and shoved back hard, using it to knock him off his feet. He stumbled into his companions and once they were off-balance, the weight of their armor did the rest: they collapsed in a flailing pile upon the floor.

There was nothing for it. These guards would have to be dealt with. “Get back to that chamber we passed — the one with the lion pelts, and the extra bolts on the door. Close the window and stay out of sight. I’ll meet you as soon as I’m finished here.”

Elena didn’t wait for her companions’ reply: she stepped inside and locked the door behind her.

Most of the guards were still struggling to right themselves when she attacked. Elena drove Slight between the gaps in their armor, leaving deep puncture wounds behind. Shadow slid across their throats the moment they arched back in pain. The cuts her blade carved across their flesh ended them quickly … and silenced their screams.

All the while she worked, Elena was careful to keep her body between the guards and the door. Not a one of them slipped past her. Slowly, they fell — until each one lay unmoving in a ring of his own gore.

It was only after the battle cleared from her eyes that Elena realized what she’d done. These guards would never speak a word about what they’d seen — but they wouldn’t have to. The next man who opened the door would see it for himself …

Elena stopped breathing. For a moment, she thought she might’ve heard something. But when a long few seconds passed and the sound didn’t come again, she convinced herself that she’d only imagined it.

“
Ahem
?”

She spun around and pressed Shadow against the throat of the man behind her — a steward who had somehow, inexplicably, managed to slip his way through a locked door unnoticed.

There was a large gap between his two front teeth, and the black space between them was easily his most interesting feature. The rest of his face was about as memorable as a weathered board.

“Would you kindly remove your blade? There’s no need to chop up the messenger.”

His utter indifference caught her off-guard. Elena moved Shadow away — but kept Slight poised at her hip. “What message?”

“The King wishes me to send reinforcements to the western wall. He wants to make absolutely certain his new battlemage will be protected, once the gates fall. But, as these particular guards appear to be …” he leaned around her to pass an unconcerned look across the pile of corpses staining the chamber floors, “
indisposed
, I suppose you’ll have to do.”

Elena could hardly believe it — no, she
couldn’t
believe it. There was no way this odd-looking steward could’ve possibly mistaken her for a Midlan soldier. But she didn’t have the breath to worry. “A new battlemage? Where?” she demanded when the steward nodded.

“At the western wall. I’ve already said it.” He sighed at her glare and started what looked like the rather burdensome process of digging through his coat. “I think I may … ah yes, here it is.”

He pulled a neatly folded sheet of parchment from one of his pockets and handed it to her. Elena opened it carefully, and was surprised to find a rather detailed map packed within its edges — a map so detailed that she could count the number of bolts on the door in the lion pelt room.

She found the western wall quickly. It was already marked with an inkblot. “Why would I need to know about the tumblers in the locks?”

The steward’s hand dipped into his pocket once more, returning with a small, silver key. “Why, indeed?” he muttered as he passed it to her. Then he glanced around the room a final time. “Don’t worry — this sort of thing happens in the fortress far more often than you’d think. The King has a frightful temper. I’ll send someone along to mop it up.”

He turned on his heel and strode out the door — disappearing before Elena could even think to be baffled.

*******

Getting through the castle was only the half of it. There was another courtyard between Elena and the door that led to the western wall — and it was absolutely packed with soldiers.

They stood in unflinching lines while their officers paced about them. Their barking commands echoed against the walls, hardly rising above the noise of the storm. Rain lashed against their armor in warm, gusting waves. It spattered upon the courtyard and turned the ground into a murky swamp.

After a few moments of deliberation, Elena had decided to leave her companions behind. She convinced herself that they would be safe in the lion pelt room — and once she found Jake, she would return for them.

Now that she saw the task ahead of her, she knew she’d chosen right.

The great fortress loomed behind her, and the rising sun struck its back — casting a heavy shadow across the courtyard. Elena felt at home inside the darkness. She wove her way between the soldiers’ ranks: drifting along the edges of the flood, sliding around the light of their braziers.
 

When she passed the main door, she saw it was heavily guarded. There were so many eyes upon it and backs pressed against it that she would’ve never been able to slip through unnoticed. Fortunately, there was another entrance marked on her map.

Elena ducked into a tower to the right of the main door and wound up its narrow flight of stairs. There was a guard stationed before the window, but he didn’t notice her approach … and by the time Shadow touched his throat, it was too late.

Once she’d dragged the guard’s body aside, Elena stepped up to the window. She leaned over the ledge, quickly planning her descent. There were enough holds to carry her safely to the bottom.
 

Beyond the tower’s base stood another line of guards. She didn’t take the time to count them all, but wagered there weren’t many more than a dozen. They were pressed against the tower, packed together on a slight hill of dry earth.

Everything beyond them was covered in water.

It was like a tempest dropped into the middle of the fortress: thick black clouds swarmed above the western courtyard and beat it mercilessly with a downpour of rain. The rows of barracks were gone, swallowed up by an army of white-capped waves. They pressed the gates and slapped against the walls, rising about a man’s height from their tops.
 

Debris from the soldiers’ barracks rode across the wastes — their shattered bits jutting out like the spines of creatures lurking beneath the swells. The hill the soldiers stood upon was the last dry strip of land in sight. Their heads moved up and down, cutting between the sky and the row of people at the waters’ edge.

Mages.

Lines of different colored lights arced from the tips of their staffs and into the clouds, where they swirled in a blackened mash. The mages stood in water that came up to their waists. When one of them turned to look down the row, Elena’s chest clenched tightly.

He was a … child. They were all children. Their arms shook as they struggled to hold their spells aloft. The sleeves of their robes slipped back, revealing the iron shackles clamped around their wrists. As the storm raged on, they glanced more frequently down the row — watching the man who stood at their center.

This mage was taller than the rest. The water rose to near the top of his thighs. And instead of a staff, he wore a pair of tight leather gloves.

Jake
.

Elena nearly shouted his name. She had to clamp a hand over her mouth to keep from yelling after him. Jake stood with one hand raised towards the storm, an arc of bright green bursting from his fist — while the other held the gates.

He’d conjured one of his blue shields against it, no doubt to keep the water from leaking through the cracks. One of the child-mages said something to him, and Elena nearly jumped out of her skin when Jake’s voice boomed across the courtyard.

“No. Hold your spells. Do not stop until our enemies breach the gates.”

A red line bloomed across Jake’s wrist as he spoke. There was a heavy length of chain wrapped around the base of his glove. When the chain burned, all of the mages’ shackles flared up along with it. Their arms straightened and they forced their staffs higher.

Jake controlled them — or rather, that
chain
controlled them. Elena had a feeling that Jake was just as trapped as the child-mages. And she knew there was only one way to set them all free.

She swung over the ledge and climbed hand over foot to its bottom, moving faster than ever before. Her eyes swept across the guards’ backs before she ripped Slight and Shadow from their sheaths.

There was no way she could hope to keep them all silent. The guards were spread too far apart to control. All she could do was kill them quickly and make sure none of them escaped into the courtyard behind her. If they alerted the soldiers on the other side, Elena would be overwhelmed before she had a chance to reach Jake.

She couldn’t let that happen.

The world slowed as she darted in among the guards. Her blades danced across their throats in calm and deliberate arcs — each one marking the end of a life. Their gold-tinged bodies and the red spurts of their blood were nothing more than shades at the edge of her vision. All the while she fought, Elena kept her eyes on Jake.

She watched as he turned at the noise of the guards’ faded screams, watched as his eyes tightened upon her mask, as they widened in recognition … as his gaze turned dark with a maddened scowl.

No sooner had she cast the last body aside than Jake attacked her. She rolled out of the path of a fiery spell and ducked beneath the roar of the next. The magic wouldn’t harm her, but she feared she might go mad if it struck her face. She might wake to find Jake slaughtered beneath her — a victim of the whisperers’ curse.

So she forced herself to be patient.

Spells whipped past her on all sides. Jake was impossibly quick: he slung bolt after bolt, singeing the ground her boots left behind. Elena’s breath rasped from her lungs and her muscles screamed each time she forced them to twist away, but she was quickly gaining ground.

Finally, she came within reach. When she sprang to tackle him, Jake was ready. He raised his fist and a wall of earth peeled up from the ground at his feet, swelling into a hill.
 

Elena struck the hill chest-first. Her body sank inside its muddy flesh and the breath
whoosh
ed from her lungs. She could feel the earth gathering beneath her. It tightened along with Jake’s stare. He bared his teeth and stretched his hand towards her, preparing to fling her back.

She knew she might not get another chance to save him. She might never be this close again. Elena took a deep breath and, in the moment before he could toss her aside, she lurched forward — throwing a wild punch for his face.

The hill collapsed when her fist struck true. Elena landed in a crouch as the hill gave way beneath her. Tears swelled in her eyes. The scent of magic came through the slits in her mask and tried to cover her sight with darkness.

Across from her, Jake had fallen to his knees. Blood poured down his face, weeping from his broken nose. Though his eyes were clouded with pain and dulled without his spectacles, there was a message carved deep inside his stare:

It’s all right
…
do it
.

Every inch of her wanted to stop his blood. A cool relief flooded her limbs at the very thought of tearing his throat away — it dulled the horrible, aching madness that washed her eyes in red. But there was one thing she wanted more than that. She wanted it more than anything …