The Crosser's Maze by Dorian Hart

Author:Dorian Hart [Hart, Dorian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dorian Hart
Published: 2017-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Someone pounded on the door with a fist, more loudly and more times than necessary. “Aravia! It’s time to go!”

Aravia looked down at her book one last time; it contained the formula for conflagration, a spell unlike anything she had tried learning before. Given Aravia’s propensity for experimentation, as well as a sheaf of kingdom law proscribing the use of such, Master Serpicore had been highly reluctant to teach her true destructive magic, particularly pyrokinetics. But recent events, most notably her assault by rats in Djaw, had prompted her to take up the study.

Conflagration was a much trickier spell than she had first assumed. Yes, the book borrowed from Abernathy included the full formula, but to master it properly she should also have taken the companion volumes on incendiary theory and general thermodynamics. Not for the first time she regretted asking only Tor to carry extra books for her; surely Kibi and Grey Wolf could have fit a few each into their packs.

With lingering regret she snapped the book closed and hastily packed the rest of her belongings. Today they would begin the next leg of their journey, this time to the southernmost of the Jewels of the Plains, a city with the uninspiring name of Levenmud. That was the nearest major city to the Stoneguard Mountains, which they would need to cross to reach the Tangled Green. With luck, someone in Levenmud would have a good idea how that might be accomplished.

With Certain Step accompanying them, it would take almost a week of carpet-shuttling to reach Levenmud, and even from there it would be another two hundred miles to the foothills of the Stoneguards. Reading on the carpet was problematic, with the wind whipping the pages, but she could still use the time to practice the hand gestures. Conflagration required some truly wicked contortions of the wrists, but nothing she couldn’t—

Boss, you feel that?

What—?

Aravia experienced a second of sourceless terror. She whipped her head around frantically, expecting that some dreadful horror had found her, but there was nothing. All of Pewter’s fur stood on end, and he hissed at empty air.

Something bit her head off.

Fangs sheared right through her neck. She fell to the ground, writhing and screaming, grasping for Pewter while a distant part of her mind wondered why there was no blood.

This was not the pain of a crossbow bolt through the shoulder or the teeth of mindless rats tearing her skin. This was a soul-deep agony, as if an angry god had torn out everything beneath her skin in one swift jerk, leaving behind a raw, dead shell. Aravia saw nothing but red, felt nothing but pain and loss, couldn’t stop screaming.

Pewter yowled at the ceiling with anguish that matched her own.

The door opened, and multiple voices shouted her name, but it was just noise. Only the agony mattered. A spike had been driven not just through her heart, but she sensed Pewter’s as well and a million others’ besides. She was alive, impossibly, though she hadn’t stopped screaming and sobbing, and neither had Pewter.

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