Stealing Sorcery (11 page)

And then he opened his hand.

The arrows shot straight toward his target as a cluster, slamming into the barrier and piercing through it. A cheer erupted from the crowd as the handful of arrows impacted the target, half a dozen of them embedding into the neck. Only one deflected to the ground – the remaining five simply stuck to the bits of metal they impacted with.

Taelien turned toward her and Landen and winked.

Velas rolled her eyes.

“Well, wasn’t that exciting? Well done, young man, quite the spectacle. You all still have one round left, however! Go retrieve your arrows!”

The contestants moved to pick up their arrows, Taelien walking with renewed swagger. Velas was pretty sure she saw him blow Keldyn a kiss.

Taelien pulled his arrows away one at a time, tapping the arrowheads, which seemed to remove the magnetic effect he had placed on them.

Interesting. Is he going to try the same trick twice?

Once again, the applicants returned to their bows, and the paladins returned to the arena and restored the barriers around the targets.

Taelien readied his bow this time, but Keldyn did not.

“Begin!”

The archers loosed their arrows again, several of which performed better than in the previous rounds. Taelien’s archery was still sub-par; his sole face hit deflecting off the barrier spell.

Keldyn had closed his eyes, pressing his hands together in front of him in concentration. As the last of the other archers finished, Keldyn raised his right hand – and a glowing golden sword appeared in the air above him. Velas heard a series of murmurs and gasps from the crowd.

The Gift of Aendaryn. The Dominion of Blades.

Keldyn lowered his hand. The sword shot forward, gold sparks flickering as it tore through the barrier around the target and paused, floating in the air.

The blonde-haired swordsman smiled and slashed his hand through the air.

The straw dummy’s head fell, severed by the golden blade.

As the crowd stood and cheered, Keldyn opened and closed his hand, causing the golden blade to vanish. Then, he grasped all of his arrows in a hand as Taelien had – turned around, and carelessly tossed them over his shoulder and past the chalk line.

“With all of the arrows past the line, I do believe our first test –”

Taelien was drawing the sword on his right hip.

The sword’s vermillion blade reflected in the dawnfire’s light, drawing the eyes of the crowd. Taelien raised it reverently, kissing the blade, and took a step back.

Then, he reversed his grip on the hilt and dragged two fingers from his other hand across the blade.

The sword’s blade ignited with brilliant blue fire. Taelien took two more steps back, adjusted his grip, then stepped forward and hurled the sword like a javelin.

The crowd fell deathly silent as the flaming blade soared through the air. As it struck, the flaming sword penetrated the barrier and continued forward, piecing straight through the dummy’s breastplate and all the way through the back. The flames surged and spread, quickly engulfing the entire body.

Once again, the crowd rose and cheered.

“Wonderful! This is wonderful! I must give my commendations to both of the sword-throwers below.” The announcer’s gleeful laughter echoed throughout the stadium, amplified by sorcery. “Goodness, I’ve rarely seen such things, and it’s only the first group! Well, the stage has certainly been set. First group, well done, all of you. You may return and let the second group come forward.”
Not bad, Sal. Not bad at all.

How can I do better?

“Um, so, that was interesting,” Landen mumbled.

“Yeah, we’re kind of screwed, aren’t we?” Velas chuckled, watching the second group of applicants come forward. She recognized the Rethri twins, Terras and Lysen, in the group.

Sorcerers have a huge advantage here. A shame my dominions aren’t really ideal for the situation – and Landen isn’t a sorcerer at all. A burst of motion sorcery would add a lot of punch to one of my arrows, but I couldn’t guide it accurately that way. And there’s no way I could throw something that distance – Taelien must have guided his sword with magnetism, like he did with the arrows.

When the order to fire was given, Terras and Lysen didn’t pick up their bows – apparently Taelien had started a trend.

Terras lifted her hands, pressing her forefingers and thumbs together and creating a triangular shape. After several seconds of no apparent effect, a bolt of lightning arced from the cloudless sky and smashed into her target, melting the armor to slag and setting the dummy ablaze.

To add to the effect, she launched each of her arrows into the flaming wreckage. She didn’t miss a single shot.

Lysen, conversely, pressed his palms together, his fingers crossing each other and making a “V” shape. Mist rose from below his dummy, growing thicker with every passing moment. By the time the other archers had ceased firing, his dummy was completely obscured.

He launched a single arrow into the mist, and then discarded his remaining arrows as Keldyn had.

As the mists lifted, the audience saw the remains of his dummy – frozen solid and shattered into pieces by his arrow.

More cheering for Terras and Lysen. Velas joined half-heartedly, feeling more nervous by the minute.

The remainder of the round passed largely uneventfully – there wasn’t even enough left of Terras and Lysen’s targets for them to bother continuing to fire. While several of the archers in this group were talented, none of them directly attracted Velas’ attention.

And then it was her turn.

Velas and Landen moved to the staging grounds, where they lined up with the twenty-three other applicants who would be going at the same time they were. Velas recognized Bertram Colt, one of the somewhat suspicious applicants from Selyr, among her group.

Landen brightened as soon as they walked into the arena – he loved a crowd, regardless of the odds. She let his enthusiasm wash over her, and the pair of them waved as they approached the archery stands.

We’ve beaten worse odds together in the arena before.

Wait. Together.

I’m an idiot.

“Archers, bows at the ready!”

She grabbed Landen’s arm as he was preparing to raise his bow. “Don’t fire yet.”

Landen blinked at her. “Okay?”

“Archers, fire when ready!”

Landen lowered his arm, raising an eyebrow at Velas.

Velas gestured at the quiver. “Arrows aren’t going to hit hard enough to guarantee we win this. And, let’s be serious here – I can’t shoot for shit.”

“No need to be so hard on yourself, Vel.” He glanced from side to side. Some of the other archers were watching them, but most were already firing.

“I’m not being hard on myself. I’m being realistic. Hand me your first arrow.”

Landen reached into his quiver and retrieved an arrow, handing it to her gingerly.

She tapped a finger on the tip.
You’re not the only one who can play this game, Sal.

“Don’t touch the tip. Be very careful. Go ahead and fire it.”

The swordsman took the arrow from her carefully, still looking dubious, and assumed a firing stance. Then, after a few moments of aiming, he loosed the arrow.

The resulting explosion of concussive force rippled across the barrier, putting visible cracks in the shield and shattering the ground around the dummy.

“Ooh, nice. Let’s do that again.”

The next arrow shattered the remains of the barrier.

The third slammed into the dummy’s center, bursting through the mail and embedding in the straw man’s chest.

The fourth hit the post that was holding the dummy, the explosion shattering the post and knocking the dummy to the ground.

The fifth hit the fallen dummy and carried it back another dozen yards, tossing it like a doll.

Velas didn’t use sorcery for the rest – Landen just shot his remaining arrows at the fallen target.

Then, the pair moved to where Velas’ bow and arrows awaited – and again, Landen raised the bow.

Velas smirked. “Let’s repeat that, shall we?”

Landen’s arrows each struck true, the first two shattering the barrier and the third piecing the dummy’s shoulder. The fourth shattered the post, sending the dummy to the arena floor. After that, Landen laughed and handed her the bow. She only managed to hit the fallen target once, but the crowd laughed and cheered when she did.

“Contestants, retrieve your arrows!”

After the arrows were retrieved, the paladins moved Velas and Landen’s fallen dummies back into line with the others. Since the posts that held them up were shattered, they simply left the targets on the ground, but once again reinforced them with protective sorcery.

Landen walked over to her this time while the other archers opened fire. “Okay, Vel, that was fun. Any clever ideas for this round?”

Nothing that wouldn’t give away more of my abilities than I want to demonstrate this early.

“Not really. If I thought we could throw our swords accurately, I’d put the same kind of effect on our blades, but…”

“Yeah, I don’t think we can get that kind of distance, either. And you can’t control a throw that well with your sorcery, right?”

She shook her head. “I can try to shoot something straight ahead, but I wouldn’t even be confident about hitting my target with that while it was standing. Now that it’s on the ground…”

“Guess I could just fire off each of our quivers and hope to land a few more hits, then. I think our targets are probably in bad shape at this point, but a little more damage wouldn’t hurt.”

She chuckled at his terrible joke, offering him an arrow. “After you, then.”

Landen launched another dozen arrows at each target, but with the dummies on the ground, not many of them hit any particularly vulnerable spots. He did manage to put a couple arrows into the area just underneath the breastplates for each dummy, but Velas doubted those were worth many points.

As they retrieved their arrows for the last time, Velas glanced at the other targets. One target had been incinerated by a flame sorcerer, and a pair of skilled archers had reduced their targets to pincushions. Bertram, it seemed, was not one of them. His dummy was all but unscratched and his expression was of shame. Velas felt for him – if she hadn’t had Landen with her, she might have been in the same situation.

And
, she considered,
we still might not have done enough. Landen hit the chest on his dummy, which probably counts as a kill – but mine is still relatively intact.

Landen seemed confident – this time he started firing as soon as the order was given, successfully planting a few more arrows in his fallen target. None of them hit vital spots, but she was convinced the judges would consider his target killed from attrition, if nothing else.

When he turned to her, however, she shook her head.

“I’ve got this one.”

He grinned warmly at her, giving her an old Queensguard salute with his left hand.

This is going to be really embarrassing if it doesn’t work,
she considered, snatching her arrows from her quiver.
But here I go.

Velas stepped back away from the line, further and further, keeping her quiver of arrows in her left hand. Then, with her right hand, she drew her sword – and charged.

She heard gasps from the crowd – and she grinned. Just before she reached the chalk line, she jumped.

Surge.

She focused the burst of motion into launching her further into the air, carrying her higher and further – but it wasn’t enough. So, as she began to descend, she did it again.

Surge!

The essence slammed into her legs, carrying her back upward before she touched the ground, sending her in a soaring arc toward her target – and in a trajectory that would carry her over it.

Fuckthisisgoinghurt.

Surge.

Velas called the last blast of force to push down on her, smashing her downward, her sword pointing downward. As she plummeted, she called on the Dominion of Motion to slowly apply upward force to control the speed of her descent.

She landed with a crushing impact, plunging her sword into the dummy’s neck as she fell. The force of the fall threw her off her feet, sending her tumbling to the ground in a roll, never losing her grip on the sword.

As the crowd cheered, she shuddered on the arena floor, pulling the dummy closer to her by tugging on her sword. When the straw man rolled close enough, she plunged all dozen arrows into its face.

And, with the dummy slain, she wobbled slowly back to her feet.

***

After Velas’ scrapes and bruises from her encounter with the arena floor had been patched up, she returned to the stands to observe the remaining teams. Taelien was sitting next to Landen. He had stolen her seat.

She sighed and sat on Landen’s lap. He grinned and affectionately tousled her hair.

“That was pretty impressive back there, Vel.” Taelien nudged her arm. “I mean, not as impressive as what I –”