LITMIR.BIZ

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of a house, her long, narrow swords flashing silver and gold as she fought.

      “Goddesses of day and night protect us all,” Hallow swore, jerking the black staff from his back, aware that it wasn’t as potent as it should be without Thorn atop it, but focusing his arcany into it even as one hand danced, drawing blood magic symbols that hung in the air before slowly forming into a chain. He flung the chain on the Eidolon who had crippled him at the same time he slammed down his staff, blasting the spirit with arcany.

      “What the—” There was an answering explosion from the south that for a moment, had him turning in surprise. Had Deo suddenly mastered the magic of the Starborn? He’d been threatening as much during the entire trip from Eris, but Hallow had no time to ascertain what had happened. “Stay strong, my heart! I’m coming to help you.” He ran as fast as he could with his injured leg, his eyes on Allegria while she fought the Eidolon who had climbed onto the roof with her. Over the heads of other Eidolon, Hallow could see the crowned head of the thane, indicating the king was working his way toward Allegria.

      Hallow gritted his teeth against the pain and weakness in his leg, slashing out with the staff at the same time he alternated between sending balls of pure arcany into the mass of Eidolon and drawing the blood symbols that formed into chains taking down every Eidolon within range.

      Another blast sounded from the south, this one closer, strong enough to rock the buildings.

      “That was not from Deo,” he growled to himself. He wanted desperately to see whether it was friend or foe who was wielding arcany, but greater still was the need to protect his love. A half dozen Eidolon stood between him and the thane, who was even now starting to climb the crumbled wall that gave access to the collapsed roof. With effort, Hallow stood still, gathered up every last morsel of arcany he could, and released it in a blast that not only sent the spirits around him flying, but knocked the thane down the wall at the same time. Rock and dust exploded around them, showering down in a painful rain. Hallow ignored the debris as he stumbled forward, slamming bolts of magic into the fallen Eidolon attempting to rise.

      The thane snarled something in a language foreign to Hallow, leaping up the wall and lunging toward Allegria at the same time she sliced off the head of the Eidolon nearest her.

      “Allegria!” Hallow yelled again, but she had seen the approach of the thane, and spun around to face him. He noted quickly that although she held both swords in her hands, her chest rose and fell rapidly, and her face was dirty with dust and sweat. She’d told him that she had barely escaped with her life the last time she’d met the thane, and now here she was facing him when she was clearly tired from fighting what seemed like a never-ending wave of spirit warriors.

      Hallow started chanting as he climbed after the thane, his injured leg buckling under the strain, slipping out from under him and causing him to fall forward. He swore profanely, calling on Bellias to give him the strength needed to wield her magic as he tried to rise. To his surprise, strong hands grabbed him by his arms, jerking him upward.

      “Master Hallow, I assume?” one of the two men grasping him asked. He was a short, stocky man with a close-trimmed beard, and the blue eyes of an arcanist. “I’m Tygo. That’s Aarav. You called for us, and here we are. Just in time, it would appear.”

      “The thane,” Hallow said, struggling to get up the fallen wall. “That’s my wife up there with him. Help her!”

      Aarav, a tall, thin man who was one of the arcanists Hallow had summoned upon leaving Eris, leaped forward, a blue-white ball of arcany in his hands. Allegria, with a cry that warmed Hallow’s heart, leaped to the side, her swords slashing as she turned toward the thane, positioning him so that Hallow—and the other arcanists—could blast him back to his crypt.

      Hallow stood at the top of the wall, his breath ragged and rasping while he summoned the last of his strength, holding the staff as arcany rippled down his arms onto the wooden shaft, little white and blue tendrils of magic snapping in the air, making the fine hairs on his arms stand on end. The thane, glancing toward them, hesitated a minute, giving Allegria the opening she was clearly waiting for. She lunged toward him, but just as her sword was about to pierce his throat, he turned, one hand grabbing her hair and yanking her up close to his body, using her as a shield even as Hallow and the other two arcanists prepared to destroy his corporeal form.

      The thane’s gaze met Hallow’s even as his heart seemed to stop. “You will not succeed!” the thane snarled. “This time, I will have redemption!”

      And then, in the length of time it takes for one moment to pass to another, the thane was gone, clearly having returned to the spirit realm.

      And taken Allegria with him.

      Chapter 3

      “Any news, Lord Israel?”

      Israel Langton, leader of the Fireborn, turned from where he had been staring out into the night, his eyes on the bonfires that dotted the town of Abet, and cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at the woman before him.

      “I saw your headman return earlier,” explained Sandorillan, head priestess at the temple of Kiriah Sunbringer. Although her brown eyes were downcast, and her demeanor was suitably placid and contemplative as befitted her profession, Israel was not deceived. He’d known Lady Sandor for several hundred years, and a fiercer protector of her people—short of Queen Dasa herself—he had yet to find.

      “Marston traveled as far as the Neck,” he answered, glancing back at Abet. He and his handful of men and women were all that remained of his company. They were camped on one of the three heavily forested hills ringing the east side of the capital city, ostensibly to await further members of his force, but in reality he feared it was more a matter of licking their wounds. The battle that his arrival at Abet had triggered had been quick and decisive, leaving him well aware that Jalas had not been idle during the time Israel had spent in Eris rescuing the queen and their son. “He found none but the infirm and elderly, those unable to raise a sword, or indeed, even to sit upon a horse. Crops lie untended, houses are abandoned, and the towns are empty of all but those who are least able to care for themselves.”

      “Jalas has taken them for what purpose?” Sandor asked, disbelief and horror in her eyes. “Do not say he has put to death all of the Fireborn?”

      Israel returned to the small camp table at which he’d been sitting, writing messages. “Not slaughtered them, no. Marston said that great trains of people, horses, oxen, and other such beasts were reported to have passed through the Neck and onward north, to the High Lands.”

      Sandor’s eyes widened. “Jalas has taken prisoner all of Aryia? How can he do so? What does he intend to do with everyone?”

      “Put them to work as slaves is my guess.” Israel spilt the wax of a candle onto one of the messages, sealing it with his signet ring. “Which makes it much harder for us to retake Abet.”

      “Is it hopeless, then?” the priestess asked, her stillness making Israel feel twitchy.

      A veteran of many battles, most of them against the Fireborn’s long-held foes, the Starborn, Israel was well aware that times of inactivity were as necessary as those when fighting exhausted his body and mind. And yet, the fact that he had been denied entry into his own city, the one he had built over the course of the last two hundred years, grated on him. He felt restless, driven to action, but knew that until his small company received reinforcements, it would be folly to try to drive Jalas from Abet.

      The last such attempt had cost him two men and Idril.

      “If it was hopeless, I would have withdrawn immediately,” he answered after giving one of the men-at-arms the sealed parchments to pass along to the messengers. “Marston told me that it is rumored several towns along the west coast escaped Jalas’s tribesmen; the people hid in the caves that dot the shoreline. If that is true, and Marston can convince them that Aryia has need of their service, then

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