Voice of Life (The Spoken Mage Book 4) by Melanie Cellier

Author:Melanie Cellier [Cellier, Melanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Luminant Publications
Published: 2019-06-06T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Lucas and I both reacted at once.

“Stop!” he yelled, thrusting one hand into his robes and the other back, sweeping me behind him and using his body to shield me within the alcove.

I ducked beneath his arm, keeping my eyes on the girl.

“Shield!” I screamed, and power poured out from me.

It raced across the short distance and enclosed the servant. I could only hope it would be enough to contain the blast.

Those close enough to hear our shouts turned, confusion and disapproval on their faces. If my shield failed, they would all be dead. Without hesitation, I gasped out another word.

“Drain.”

My power raced across the crowd, searching for any unshielded source of energy, drawing small drops from many places. Lucas seemed to have anticipated my action before I had even thought of it myself. Ripping a parchment, his power swept out, not shielding but pushing back the crowd, creating a ring of empty space around the servant girl. And ensuring no one would notice my own strange working brushing against them.

But a breath passed and then another, and nothing happened. No explosion. No fire. The servant girl had dropped the pen, staring wide-eyed at the commotion around her, but I could see two full words on the parchment.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered.

Lucas stood rigid beside me, his eyes focused on the girl, wide and disbelieving.

The ripple of disruption spread, flowing through the crowd, and murmuring sounded, a counterpoint to the final climax of the music. As the ending notes rang out and the light display finished, the streams sinking back into their original positions, Phineas thrust through the crowd toward us.

I had dropped my shield, and both Lucas and I stepped forward, approaching the girl. Seeing us together so far from the others, Phineas frowned, but Lucas didn’t give him time to speak.

“Do you see those words?” He pointed at the parchment. “That servant wrote them. We saw her.”

A gasp sounded from the Ardannians who had arrived in Phineas’s wake.

“Impossible,” he said. “There was no explosion.” He looked between me and Lucas. “Did you contain it somehow?”

Lucas shook his head. “Nothing whatsoever happened.”

Chen appeared from the crowd. “If you will please come with me. The emperor would like to speak to you.”

“Good.” Lucas’s voice sounded hard. “We would like to speak to him also.”

Chen led us through the murmuring crowd and past the now empty thrones. A door in the wall behind them led us through to a smaller, more intimate audience chamber. The empress and princesses had disappeared, but the emperor awaited us there in an elaborate wooden chair. We stopped before him.

“You have made a disturbance at my banquet,” the emperor said, his voice flat and without emotion.

“We sought only to protect your people from what appeared to us a threat,” Lucas said. “It seems you have not been entirely open with us.”

Phineas stepped forward. “We do not wish to question the way you choose to run your empire, Your Majesty, but is it possible you use mages as servants?”

I could hear the incredulity in his voice.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.