Rule by Rowenna Miller

Author:Rowenna Miller [Miller, Rowenna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2020-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

37

AS SOON AS I RECOGNIZED THE STRAINS OF MUSIC AND SAW THE dark, sparkling cloud over a section of the field, I began to look for Sianh. I stood and ran behind the supply wagons, earning judgmental glances from the oxen, trying to see where the casting was coming from. The music was fainter than the music we’d been cursed by from the ship, but I expected that. The Serafans didn’t want to curse the Royalists still holding positions close to the manor house itself.

Sianh met me on the road toward the ford.

“We cannot locate him,” he called. “There is a reason they are employing him. They have lost, even if he plays that damned song forever. But we cannot move past that section of the field while he plays.”

“Covering someone’s retreat?” I suggested.

“Very likely, and in that case covering the retreat of someone valuable.” The king, we both acknowledged silently.

I scanned the hillsides, the forest edges, everywhere, searching for the telltale dark sparkle. Finally, I spotted a thin stream, which spread over the field but had, I realized as I squinted, a distinct point of origin under the cover of a large brush shelter.

“There,” I said, pointing.

Sianh pulled out his glass. “And I spot a piper and another man.” He nodded once. “Very good. I do not believe the riflemen will be able to aim effectively upon them, so we will press a foray toward them.”

“Can you?” The curse would be stronger the closer they got, and those it affected would be hardly capable of standing upright, let alone fighting.

“Perhaps.” He exhaled through his nose. “Can you do anything?”

“I’ve never tried,” I confided. “Curse and charm don’t like to be near one another, though,” I murmured. I swiftly gathered a spike of bright white charm and drove it toward the stream of darkness. It severed through the line and the dark sparkle receded from it. The music faded, briefly, but there was a rapid if temporary effect on the men on the field.

“Very good,” Sianh said. “Keep doing that.” Before I could ask anything else, he spurred his horse forward. I kept driving spikes of pure light into the darkness as he thundered across the ford, and I realized—he meant to eliminate the threat himself.

As though the curse casters recognized what I was doing, or what the horseman bent on them intended on doing, or both, they intensified their efforts, the dark cloud growing thicker. But it pulled back, coalescing on a narrower and narrower part of the field.

Coalescing, I saw, toward Sianh.

I pulled all the light I could, with all my strength. The jabs and spikes of charm magic weren’t going to suffice, I knew. Not now. And I couldn’t sustain the same degree of magic that these two did, working in tandem and, I conceded, far fresher than me. I summoned a projectile of charm magic, and began to aim it at the base of their stream of dark curse, hoping, desperately, that if I cut it off at the source Sianh would have a chance.

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