As he crouched to spring aside, Syla pulled another explosive from the bag. He was fast enough to escape being run over, but she hurled Tibby’s weapon after him.
Distracted by dodging the wagon, he didn’t see it in time to escape. It exploded, light flashing, and he screamed as he was hurled across the mine. When Syla glimpsed limbs torn off and flying free, she looked away, her stomach churning. It would have been kinder to kill him with her magic.
“I don’t want to killanyone,” she said with frustration, but her feelings didn’t keep her from driving toward Fel to make sure he would survive his encounter.
One of the stormers he’d shot lay still—probably dead—but the man with the shoulder wound rose and ran toward Fel with a sword. Syla steered right, putting him in her sights.
Like the other stormer, he was agile enough to time a leap to escape being hit. And, as soon as the wagon passed, he jumped toward Syla in the cab. She ducked low, pulling her foot from the acceleration pedal, but there wasn’t room to dodge. He slammed into her, knocking her onto her side, his weight crushing down on her. Metal rasped as he drew a dagger, but she once again summoned her power, the magic eager to spring forth. Silver light bathed the cab and his face as he lowered the dagger toward her throat. She struck first, tendrils of power tightening around his heart and his trachea.
This enemy seemed to expect her attack and didn’t stop. His dagger continued its inexorable descent toward her throat. Terrified, she squeezed his heart with all her power. The dagger grazed her skin but didn’t cut deep, and she got a hand up to knock it aside as the man tipped off her, grabbing his chest.
“Syla!” Fel blurted, leaping into the cab and grabbing the stormer. He hurled the man outside and to the ground, but their enemy was dead before he landed. Fel raised his mace as he faced the stormer but must have seen the man’s eyes frozen open in death.
Panting, Syla pushed herself to her knees and gingerly touched her throat. The cut hurt, and blood trickled down her neck, but it wasn’t serious.
“I forgot you’re not as helpless as you look.” Fel gave her an expression somewhere between reverence and fear, but at least he didn’t make any superstitious gestures this time.
“I’m more helpless than I’d like.” Syla rose to her feet and vowed to find someone to teach her self-defense if not how to fight the way her great-great grandmother Queen Erasbella had. With her new ability to hurl herself about with far more speed and strength than usual, she was as dangerous to herself as to others. Probablymore soto herself. “And that one didn’t get the word that I’m the backup moon-mark.”
That was only a hypothesis she’d come up with, she reminded herself.
“I still think they were here to delay us. Which way to the chamber?”
There are many more stormers arriving than I expected,Wreylith said.They are overwhelming your Kingdom troops. Since your enemy had taken over the fishing boats to fire upon your reinforcements, I flew over to light them on fire, but now the building through which you entered the mine is compromised. Stormers are climbing down the entrance shaft. Many stormers. I can light the building on fire to prevent more from slipping in, but…
We have to take the lift cage out that way!
Yes, I believed you would desire the building to remain in an unburned state.
I do, yes.
I’m also having difficulty stopping your enemies now that they’re so intermingled with your troops.Sounding frustrated, Wreylith added,You should be up here with me.
I’m sorry. I wish you were down here withme.
I will focus on the enemies on the lake. I believe that only stormers remain on the boats, so it is simpler to attack them.
Good.
“Syla?” Fel poked her arm. “Which way?”
“I got an update from Wreylith, and there are more stormers entering the mine. A lot of them. We need to hurry.”
Fel cursed.
“Follow me.” Syla stopped the wagon and climbed out of it, stepping over the man Fel had downed. All four stormers were dead, but greater threats, she had no doubt, lay ahead.
As they hurried down an ancient passageway carved into pure salt, the distant thuds of Tibby’s drill, relentless and impossible to miss, trailed them. Syla hoped that none of the stormers were drawn to investigate the source of the noise. The two soldiers with Tibby weren’t enough, not to deal with such well-trained fighters.
A distant boom came from the same direction as the drill noises.
“Is she throwing explosives?” Fel looked over her shoulder, though darkness, distance, and the rows and rows of thick pyramid supports blocked the view.
“If she is, it’s because she’s in trouble again.” Syla was half-tempted to take the wagon and drive back to check on her aunt, but magic flared ahead, something dormant suddenly coming to life. No, something that had been hidden behind an insulated door abruptly being revealed. “The shielder,” she blurted, doubting Fel, who had no power of his own, would sense it.
She picked up the bag of explosives and hurried in the direction of the magic, trusting Fel would stick with her. The tunnel curved, and they came to an intersection marked by statues and carvings in the salt walls. Silver light seeped from the leftmost passageway, and Syla turned, Fel right behind her, mace and crossbow in hand.
Syla pulled out one of the explosives, but she realized, as she spotted the open door that had been hidden within the sea-god carving, that throwing one of Tibby’s booby traps in the tight tunnel wouldn’t be wise. Out in the open, with the ceilings high overhead, there hadn’t been as much risk, but here… here, she could collapse the passageway.
