Sovereign of the Seven Isles 7: Reishi Adept (15 page)

Abigail drew the Thinblade and hastily cut a hole in the wall
close to the top of the stairs. Sheathing her sword, she pushed the roughly circular chunk into the room and unslung her bow.

Two more
blue spheres struck the shield Magda was struggling to keep in place. Dalia positioned herself on the stairs, her shield stopping several crossbow bolts fired by the first squad of soldiers. She shoved the men to the ground with a force-push.

Abigail looked
through the hole in the wall and saw her target. It wasn’t Peti … she would remember that monster for the rest of her life … but it was unmistakably a Sin’Rath witch. Her hideous deformity and demonic features gave her away in a glance. Torin stood between her and the door, his sword drawn as if he meant to protect her with his life.

In the commotion, the Sin’Rath
witch hadn’t noticed the breach in the wall. Abigail selected an arrow, one of the three with white feathers sent by Mage Gamaliel. Time seemed to slow as she nocked her arrow, pulling the feathers back to her cheek.

“I’ll protect you, Lady Agneza,” Torin said, over the din of battle.

Abigail loosed her arrow. It leapt at her target, glowing bright white as it flew, cutting through Agneza’s shield as if wasn’t even there and finding its mark in her black heart. Surprise and pain registered in her eyes. She looked directly at Abigail, then down at the still-glowing arrow running through the left side of her chest and out through her back. The light pulsed, brighter than any natural light, yet gentle to the eyes. Agneza screamed in wild desperate pain, then seized up, standing frozen for a moment before she toppled to the floor, dead.

Torin and the four wizards
stood stock-still, stunned and confused as the demonic grip on their will began to fade.

“Now!” Abigail shouted.

Magda dropped her shield and all four Reishi witches cast force-push spells into the hallway.

In their confusion, the
wizards lacked the concentration necessary to sustain their shield spells and were blown to the ground. Magda silenced the nearest wizard with a spell. Cassandra rushed him, laying her hands on him and rendering him unconscious before he could react.

Bree bound his hands and feet, while Kat gagged him, leaving him lying in the hall as Magda and Cassandra pressed forward, taking full adv
antage of the wizards’ disorientation.

Within a few minutes, the four wizards and Torin were
all subdued, while Dalia held the staircase against the soldiers, her shield easily defeating their crossbow bolts and her force-push easily defeating them.

“What have you done?” Torin asked, weeping.

Abigail slapped him across the face, hard.

He blinked at her in silent shock.

“Torin, where’s Abel?”

“You killed her … why would you kill her?”

“Where’s Peti?”

He smiled with relief. “At least she’s still alive.”

“Where is she?” Abigail asked, slapping him again.

He seemed to come to his senses a bit, though still not fully.

“In the cellar. Will you take me to her?”

“Bree, Kat, take Torin and the wizards to the balcony and signal Amelia,” Abigail said.

Both witches went to work dragging the subdued men outside into the night.

“Dalia!” Abigail shouted.

Moments later, she came around the corner at the top of the stairs.

“They’re right behind me,” she said, racing down the hall.

Magda began casting a spell, tossing a green orb that looked like a ball of thorns past Dalia into the far end of the hall at the top of the stairs. It hit and began to grow a tangle of brambles, quickly filling a section of hallway from floor to ceiling.

Abigail took a moment to decapitate Agneza, even though she was relatively sure the witch was dead, then went to a spot in the room
and cut a hole in the floor. She slipped through, hanging for a moment before dropping into the kitchen.

Magda, Cassandra
, and Dalia followed. The cellar door creaked as Abigail lifted it, revealing a dark and dank room below.

Magda brought three glowing orbs into existence
and sent them down the wooden stairs, casting dim illumination into the room. Several moments later, she descended cautiously.

The
cellar was lined with crates and barrels but devoid of life. Behind a set of crates, they found a place where the wall and floor had been dug away, opening into a passage descending steeply into the earth. Crude stairs had been cut into the compacted dirt and the ceiling was shored up with rough-cut timbers at irregular intervals.

“It won’t take the soldiers long to find us,” Dalia said after casting a spell
securing the trapdoor to the kitchen above.

“We’ll move with very dim light,” Magda said, dismissing two of her illuminating orbs with a wave of her hand and bringing the third into a close orbit over her head.

“Mage Lennox is still unaccounted for,” Cassandra said. “If he’s with the witch, Magda and I should be in the lead.”

Abigail nodded,
slinging her bow. The air was cold and still. Magda’s light was so dim that Abigail found herself feeling her way along the rough wall, testing each step before putting any weight on it. After fifty feet of steep stairs, the passage leveled out, meandering in seemingly aimless fashion through the bedrock. A few minutes of walking brought them to a fork, one passage larger than the other.

Cassandra cast a spell while Magda knelt to examine the floor. Both silently agreed that the larger path was the
better choice. Another few minutes brought the first hint of life in the still, quiet darkness. Magda stopped and dismissed her glowing orb, plunging the tunnel into darkness.

Abigail froze, straining to hear the enemy.
Distant echoes of some ancient and angry language reverberated softly off the earthen walls. Magda continued in the darkness, Abigail right behind her with one hand on her shoulder and the other on the wall. As they rounded a bend in the corridor, light reached Abigail’s eyes, flickering like fire in the distance. She unslung her bow.

The light grew as
they moved closer, and the guttural chanting became more distinct and disturbing. Slowly and cautiously, the four of them crept up to the edge of an opening high on the wall of a large natural cave. Crude stairs were freshly cut into the wall allowing easy access to the floor twenty feet below.

The scene unfolding was something out of a nightmare. A magic circle had been cut into the floor. Three young women lay dead, their throats cut and their bodies positioned so that their life’s blood would flow into the circle, staining it red under the torchlight.

A rough stone altar occupied the center of the circle. Mage Lennox was lying prone and still atop it. Straddling him was a hideous demon-spawn witch. Her skin was ashen black. She was nearly bald save for a few wispy strands of hair. Two small bone protrusions occupied each side of her forehead. And her mouth was lined with sharp, fang-like teeth as black as night.

She
stretched her arms toward the ceiling, her head thrown back as she chanted a series of words entirely alien to Abigail. Blood was smeared around her mouth and dripped from her chin onto her deformed chest. Lennox was bleeding profusely from the throat, crimson flowing into a groove cut into the stone around the edge of the altar.

As b
lack streamers began to flow from Lennox into the young witch, her chanting became more strident … then exultant as the mage’s power flowed into her.

Peti stood with Abel against the far wall. She looked pleased as she watched her sister complete her final rite of passage into the Sin’Rath
Coven. Two other equally hideous young women stood with her, envy and lust almost radiating from them as they watched their sister become more than she had been before.

Magda and Cassandra started whi
spering. A second later, Peti looked straight at them.

“Intruders!” she shouted.

Abel drew his Thinblade and stepped in front of Peti, shielding her as she backed into a nearby passage. The two uninitiated Sin’Rath growled and hissed before retreating with Peti. The witch atop Lennox seemed oblivious to the events unfolding around her, completely enthralled with the transfer of power taking place.

Magda hit one of the two uninitiated Sin’Rath with a light-lance, burning a hole through her back and out her chest. She fell with a thud. Cassandra cast a bubble of liquid fire at the witch atop
Lennox. Light flared when it burst, filling the magic circle with orange-hot flame and igniting the would-be Sin’Rath in a whoosh. Her dying shriek could barely be heard over the fire’s roar.

Abigail raced down the stairs, staying close to the wall to ward against the heat. She reached the passage
just as the ceiling several dozen feet away collapsed, sending dust billowing out into the room.

Magda reached her
a moment later.

“I’m really starting to get tired of her,” Abigail said.

Magda nodded.

“We should go,” Cassandra said, shielding her face from the heat of the fire.

Abigail stared for a moment longer before shaking her head and heading back toward the surface. When they reached the smaller fork, Abigail and Magda shared a look. They took the passage without discussion but were disappointed to find that it led to an underground stream, nothing more than a source of water.

“Where do you think
the passage Peti took comes out?” Abigail asked as they retraced their steps.

“Probably somewhere outside the command fortress,” Magda said.

“So will she run or fight?”

“That’s hard to say
. She’s cunning but not entirely rational.”

“Soldiers!” Dalia said, c
utting their conversation short, pointing to torchlight flickering in the distance.

“I need light,” Abigail said, drawing the Thinblade and stalking
forward. Light grew behind her as Magda brought seven illuminating orbs into existence over her head. They rounded a bend and encountered a cluster of soldiers filling the passage with raised shields and spears.

“Surrender,” one said.

Abigail ignored him, striding up and casually lopping off the spear point of the nearest weapon, then holding up the Thinblade as the three Reishi witches came up behind her.

“Do you know what this is?” she demanded.

There was a murmuring among the soldiers.

“My name is Abigail Ruatha. You will stand down and lead us out of this warren. If you even hint at attack, I will cut you all into tiny little pieces and leave you here to rot. Is that clear?”

“Yes, My Lady,” the leader said, turning to his men and barking orders.

“
Huh,” Magda said, “the Sin’Rath’s charms must be limited by distance.”

“How did you know they wouldn’t attack?” Cassandra asked.

“I didn’t,” Abigail said, following the soldiers with her sword still drawn.

They
returned to the kitchen. As the soldiers filed out into the main room, Abigail heard a brief but tense conversation that ended with a shouted command: “Seize them!”

The few soldiers remaining in the kitchen turned to raise their weapons. Abigail cut three spears with a swipe of the Thinblade, then backed away
while the witches began casting spells. More soldiers entered the room, fanning out with shields and spears raised. General Brand strode in behind them.

“You will surrender or die,” he said.

“He’s bitten,” Magda said.

“As are many of his men,” Cassandra said.

Several soldiers looked back and forth between Abigail and General Brand, confusion and uncertainty in their eyes, but more were possessed of righteous determination.

“You try my patience,” Brand said. “Surrender now.”

“Retreat,” Abigail said, backing through the door to the servants’ hallway.

“Attack!” Brand commanded
just as Magda, Cassandra, and Dalia each cast a force-push into the van of the soldiers, shoving several back into their companions and causing many to fall in a jumble.

Cassandra spelled the door after closing it behind her.

“It won’t hold for long,” she said.

Abigail cut
through the wall, kicking a large chunk of it into the alley behind the building. Once outside and into the dim light of rising dawn, she shot a whistler arrow into the air. It was answered with the roar of wyverns.

“Can you get us up onto the roof?” she asked.

“Of course,” Magda said. “Hold hands.”

All four of them clasped hands, forming a circle. Magda whispered the words of her spell and they began to rise into the air, slowly, only a few feet every second, but quickly enough to put them on the second
-story roof well before the soldiers breached the door and stepped into the alley.

Brand emerged
from the building, shouting for his men to find the intruders. Abigail ignored him, scanning the guard towers and smiling with satisfaction. All four of the wizards were gone. Most of her plan had worked. All that remained were Peti and Abel. Her smile transformed into a grimace when one of the soldiers on the nearest tower spotted them and shouted an alarm.