“You lying bitch!” Ceybold attempted to lunge at her, then thought better of it as Daggermen closed in on him. He struggled and begged forgiveness when the Hiearch again signaled to his minions. “Muzzle him.”
With Ceybold gagged and things much quieter, the Hierarch reached out and helped Disaris stand. “If what he says is true, then you’re even more valuable than I thought. Who is this Moon Raven?”
She stood her ground, ignoring how her stomach twisted itself into knots. “Let me see my sister.”
A short time that felt like forever passed as Disaris waited. Her patience was reward by the much-desired appearance of her sister, escorted into the grand foyer by a half dozen more Daggermen.
Luda screamed her name when she saw Disaris and rushed to her. “Disa!”
The two women embraced, holding each other tightly until Disaris loosened her grip and stepped back to better see her sister. “Are you all right?”
The girl nodded and made to answer, but the Hierarch interrupted her. “Of course she is. Luda is the key to many things, including your cooperation.”
This revolting excuse of a human being sickened her more than Ceybold did, but once more she made a wager. “Let her go, and I will translate the rest of your grimoire and show you how to use the stones as a portal. I do know to open them. I can show you the way through.”
“Disa!” Luda squeezed her arm and shook her head. “No!”
The Hierarch’s mocking chuckle only inflamed Disaris’s fury. “Why would I let either of you go? You’re the chinks in each other’s armor.”
He wasn’t wrong, but Disaris refused to only see it that way. A weakness was also a strength. Loving Bron had taught her that.
“Who is this battle mage, and what are his powers?” His question alerted her to the fact that while he didn’t believe everything Ceybold had told him, he didn’t discount everything he said either. She was about to stall, to lie and insist that no one followed her through the gate when suddenly the entire building rocked on its foundation under the force of a booming thunder. Daggermen rushed to protect their master as sconces and pictures fell from the walls, while other things unseen crashed to the floor with shattering noises. Another boom followed the first, and this one blew out the windows, sending showers of glass raining down on them from every direction.
Luda grabbed Disaris’s hand and pulled. “Hurry,” she yelled over the chaos of falling furniture and the bellowed orders of Daggermen telling each other to protect the Hierarch.
The two women raced through the trembling house, Disaris following Luda down unfamiliar corridors and through rooms cluttered with toppled furniture and broken glass. Heavy footsteps sounded behind them. They were being pursued.
She dared not look back, afraid of stumbling and falling, and bringing Luda down with her. Or losing Luda altogether. She cannoned into her sister’s back when Luda came to a sudden halt. A Daggerman stood in front of the door they were running toward, his smile wolfish and murderous.
“Bastard!” Luda screamed at him.
Disaris didn’t say anything. She grabbed the nearest item to her – a wooden ewer half full with liquid—and hurled it at the man’s head. His eyes widened as he tried to dodge the missile and the cascade of wine arcing toward him. The ewer smashed against the door, and was followed by a plate, a loaf of bread, and an eating knife.
The Daggerman knocked the projectiles aside and advanced toward them. He made it two steps before the door behind him slammed open with enough force to throw him forward and rip away from its hinges.
A powerful gust of wind blew inside on a howl of rage and with it a concussive wave that knocked the two sisters against a wall and the guard through another shattered window.
Terror singing through her veins, Disaris leaped up and helped Luda stand. A glimpse of outside revealed a patch of wholesale chaos, but they couldn’t hide inside a house that heaved and shuddered and was crowded with fanatics wanting their enslavement or their death.
It might have been morning, or noon, or even twilight. Disaris couldn’t tell. Black clouds roiled overhead, and out of their depths a trio of whirlwinds spun down, twisting ropes of howling wind that ripped trenches through the estate grounds, ripped trees up by their roots and hurled them inthe direction of the house. Slate tiles snapped off the roof, spinning like sharpened crescent moons. One embedded its edge in a Daggerman’s belly while another decapitated a Daggerman trying to escape the maelstrom of flying shrapnel alongside his comrades. His headless body staggered drunkenly before collapsing, while the head rolled to stop and stared at the grotesque spectacle with blinking eyes.
Bolts of lightning cleaved the clouds to spear the ground. One struck a group of Daggermen clustered together. Behind the questionable shelter of a pair of ale casks, Disaris and Luda hid their eyes from the brightness. When they could see again, a pile of smoking corpses lay where the Daggermen had once stood.
With the lightning came fire, graceful arcs of flame that encircled what remained of the fencing surrounding the property. What the wind didn’t take, the fire consumed with a ravenous roar. It washed toward the house in a blackening wave.
In the madness, Disaris saw Cimejen standing with a vortex of flame, unharmed by its destroying touch. His hands moved in a carefully choreographed dance as the fire flowed around and away from him like a dancer teasing her lover.
Bron, she thought. Where’s Bron? That thought was followed hard on the heels by the surety she and Luda were about to be burned to ash as a tide of flame rushed toward them and the house behind them in a wall of heat.
Suddenly both she and Luda were yanked to their feet and hurled to one side. She was lifted a second time, the world around her pitching one way, then the other. Bron held her in one arm with Luda thrown over his opposite shoulder. He sprinted away from the house, which had become an inferno. He set them both down a short distance away, where the heavens didn’t spit out vortexes of death and a battle mage didn’t sling fireballs at anything that moved.
Blood streamed from Bron’s nostrils, and he panted as hard as a lathered horse. “Are you both all right?”
Before either she or Luda could answer, the chilling twang of an arrow being fired sounded. Bron pivoted, shoving both women to one side. A second soft “thwump” followed the first. The first arrow embedded itself in the ground next to Disaris’s foot. She turned at the sound of an agonized scream and spotted the archer who’d fired the arrow. He was a column of flame, staggering in a zigzag pattern before falling to the ground, still clutching what remained of his bow. She spun away from the grotesque sight, only to face one far worse that made her heart seize in her chest.
Bron stood before her, looking down at the arrow extending from his right side. He touched the shaft, then looked up at Disaris. The blood pouring out of his nostrils was joined by that bubbling past his lips. She caught him as he fell to his knees with a wet exhalation.
“Bron!” She cradled him as he sank to the ground, all his strength draining away as quickly as his blood. “My gods, Bron! Look at me.” She stroked his face, impossibly paler than before. “Don’t you dare die.” Inside, she screamed and screamed until she thought her head might burst. “Do you hear me, my love?” she said softly. “I will marry Ceybold again. I swear it.”
