Servant Mage by Kate Elliott

Author:Kate Elliott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

8

Shey slid through as easily as he might step through an Eye of his own making, and he too was gone. A monstrous rattle thundered in the distance like boulders grinding shards to dust, a portent of doom. Hot rain sprayed out from the gap to spatter Fellian’s face with the taste of hopelesness. She could not move. Could not go in. She could not. It was demonland.

“Move! Go!” Invi shoved her hard.

Thus propelled, Fellian’s body hit what felt like an invisible wall with a tear in it that she had to squeeze through. The slit pressed around her, slippery and tight, as if to swallow her whole down a constricted gullet. Pressure popped in her ears as she was spat out.

She stood on a massive square pillar of black granite. Its flat top was the exact same dimensions as the foundation of the shrine. Below, the pillar’s length disappeared into clouds of metallic feathers whose churning whirlpools hid the ground. Above, the heavens wore a sheen like the underside of blood-soaked ice. Freezing wind battered her with icy hail, succeeded by a bellows blast as from a furnace’s maw thrown open.

Demon-wraiths writhed past, borne on powerful gusts. Here in this otherly world they appeared as benign clumps of pale filaments, like wispy roots. Yet for all they seemed insubstantial and frail, any living creature they touched would die.

Where was the captain?

Lightning crackled across the heavens as if through a vast net. The searing brightness revealed Lord Roake standing a stone’s throw ahead on the ribbon path, which floated in the air like a bridge supported by unseen pillars. He was soaked to the skin from a downpour, although no rain touched her. He had halted where the ribbon path split into four strands. Was the splintering of the path his doing or the Wheel’s unraveling? Each path wound a separate way into the turbulent landscape.

He stood with a booted foot on one of the middle branches, as if he hadn’t made up his mind about which path to take. Instead of a baby, a tiny silvery-white dragon clung to his chest, wings furled and foreclaws gripping his shoulders to leave both of his arms free.

Shey moved cautiously forward on the ribbon path toward the captain, as if fearing he might tumble off. Fellian knew she had to follow but her boots weighed like lead, trapping her on the stability of the pillar.

The aether mage shoved past Fellian, her face twisted with fear. “I’d rather die in demonland than take another breath as their servant.”

After pushing rudely past Shey, she ran to the captain, heedless of the violent sky above and the long drop to a surging ground below. Still Fellian could not make herself move. Behind, a shriek chased through the cleft that led back into the garden. The sound scalded the air, gusted past her in hot waves, as if cries of pain manifested in demonland as physical blasts of heat.

Invi squeezed through the wound, dragging a half-fallen Haolu.

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