Trial of Shadows (Order of the Elements Book 3) Page 9

  “Are you out of your mind?” Dex hissed in my ear, ever the pessimist. “You can’t beg the vampires to spare fire-boy’s life. They’ll laugh you into the grave.”

  “I saved them from the Crow,” I pointed out. “If not for me, they’d have been hit by one of his spells and decayed into ashes. Besides, the Death King was going to campaign on my behalf by the week’s end anyway. I just got there first, on the off-chance that I accidentally get myself fired before then.”

  He snorted. “His Deathly Highness has got under your skin again? Ooh, I recognise that face.”

  I followed his line of sight and spotted a ragged WANTED poster affixed to the wall, adorned with Davies’s grinning face. He might have disguised himself, of course, but I had my doubts he’d stayed in the city at all. He knew how the Death King punished traitors.

  “Bet he’s pissed at being replaced,” Dex said.

  “That’s one way of putting it.” I let my gaze pan across the town square and halted at the sight of a figure slipping out of sight, past the vampires’ council house. It was Bria. “What’s she doing?”

  “Going into the citadel, apparently.”

  I drew to a halt. “What the hell?”

  Nobody went into the citadel. Even the vampires didn’t. I glanced towards the council house, but nobody appeared or reacted to the unnatural sight across the square from me.

  “Liv!” Dex howled and clung to my shoulder as I trod out into the square after Bria. My heart thumped louder the closer I drew to the citadel. The door remained sealed, but Bria had disappeared from sight.

  “She went through a side door,” Dex muttered in my ear. “I am not going inside.”

  “Keep watch, then.” I trod around the corner of the citadel’s towering form and towards the dark shape of a door set in the shadows.

  My hand closed on the handle, and a shock went through my bones. The world flipped over, and images flashed before my eyes.

  “You… ruined… everything…

  Dirk Alban’s voice faded, to be replaced by Dex’s frantic yelps. “Liv! Liv! Don’t just stand there.”

  I reeled on my feet. “Ow. Did you hear that?”

  “No!” He grabbed at me until his grip burned my skin. I wasn’t all that keen to get another shock, so I backed away from the tower.

  “How in hell did she get in there without being shocked?” I shook my throbbing hand.

  “Maybe she has a special password to get in.” He gave a whimper and hid behind my shoulder. “That place is pure evil.”

  “It’s also an old spirit mage haven.” Not that anyone living existed inside of it. I reached for the front door instead, but a warning buzz in my ears halted me before I gave myself another shock. “What’s the betting that the Death King has his own personal key?”

  “Of course he does.” He gave a weak chuckle. “Tell you what, if the vamps agree to spare fire-boy, you can ask for a trip into the citadel of doom as a reward for your services to His Deathly Highness instead.”

  “Thanks for that one, Dex.” I wasn’t in the mood to joke around. You’d think a place once built by the spirit mages would have let me in and not a simple fire mage.

  Unless she was something else entirely.

  I left the door behind after ten minutes of trying to get it open, with my head pounding and my temper fraying worse than ever after a number of shocks which rattled my teeth in my skull. Then I headed for the warehouse where the main market was held, but the crowd outside only served to make my headache worse. Besides, there was nothing to find in there. The Collective of Spells was Order-approved, and now the Crow and his allies were dead, there wasn’t anyone making illegal spells on the side to reverse life and death. At least, I bloody well hoped not. The only remaining enemy who wasn’t behind bars was Davies.

  I headed around the back of the warehouse and towards the tunnels, and Dex groaned audibly. “Liv, please tell me you aren’t going down into the tunnel. There are revenants down there.”

  “I’m not going into the tunnels. I’m going to try out an experiment.”

  I made for the nearest node and stepped into its path, picturing Bria’s face in my head. Nothing happened.

  “What was that in aid of?” Dex wanted to know.

  “I wanted to see if I can travel somewhere I’ve never been before,” I said. “If, say, I wanted to follow a specific person.”

  “Not if you can’t picture it, I wouldn’t think,” he said.

  “I did it once,” I said. “When I followed that water mage and brought you to Earth.”

  “As if I could ever forget it,” he said.

  I thought back. At the time, I’d been hot on his heels. Bria, I hadn’t seen go through the node at all. She’d gone into the citadel instead, and even a node couldn’t get me through a locked door. The only other option I could think of was astral projection, but the citadel was spirit mage-proofed. People like me had built the place, after all.

  But that didn’t mean I was giving up. If the Death King refused to teach me spirit magic, I’d learn it on my own terms.

  That night, I slid out of my body and floated through my bedroom ceiling, hovering above the house. The night sky hid me from the world below, though few people would have eyesight good enough to spot a floating transparent woman hidden in the darkness.

  If the spirit mages had enjoyed this as much as me, no wonder they’d created the Parallel to avoid exposing the magical world in front of normal people. I floated through the node and emerged in the streets of Arcadia. Then, I drifted until the Citadel of the Elements stood before me, looking even more forbidding in the darkness. With nobody around to bar my path this time, I ought to be able to give it another try.

  A shadowy figure appeared, stopping me in my tracks. Of all the luck. It seemed flying around the city centre back home wasn’t the Death King’s only nightly hobby. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I could ask you the same question.” The Death King studied me. “Practising spirit magic, are you?”

  “What else?” I eyed the tower. “What’s in there?”

  His gaze drifted to the citadel. “Any reason?”

  “Oh, we’re playing this game again?” I said. “I saw one of your contestants walking in there earlier. Couldn’t follow. The door gave me a shock when I tried.”

  “I see,” he said. “Which contestant?”

  “Bria.” At least he hadn’t accused me of lying outright. “Why would anyone go into that tower?”

  “Why would anyone go to the Court of the Dead?” he said. “Perhaps she intended to get in some practise at killing phantoms.”

  “Then how’d she get past the door?” I looked more closely at the tower, which emanated a faint glow which was more noticeable at night than it was during the day. “She can’t be a spirit mage and a fire mage, right?”

  “No.”

  Someone was in a talkative mood tonight. I floated up to the door and extended my hand as though reaching into a node—

  A shock went through my nerves, sending me flying back a good five feet. The Death King watched me land in an inelegant sprawl without moving to help me.

  “You might have warned me not to do that,” I said.

  He glanced behind him. “Someone’s coming.”

  I ducked out of sight, towards the node I’d come in by. Whatever was out on the street at night was either a vampire or something nastier, and even in my transparent state, I wasn’t in the mood to be harassed by a revenant.

  I didn’t really expect him to follow me, but when I floated out of the node and into the middle of the city, I found the Death King on the other side. For some reason, we’d come out in the same placee.

  “Were you planning on meeting with the Order?” I asked. “Or do you have a secret contingent of spirit mages who you meet on Earth when everyone else is sleeping?”

  “No, I don’t,” he said. “What were you doing yesterday? After your unplanned interrogation of all my potential Fire Ele
ments?”

  “Unplanned? You left us to deal with the flooded castle alone.” I should have figured he’d wanted to question me about my unorthodox way of sniffing out intruders. “One of your potential Fire Elements tried to drown me, so I think the interrogation was justified.”

  “Tried to drown you?” His tone contained enough surprise for me to know that he hadn’t realised I’d nearly died during the flood. “Who?”

  “I didn’t see who,” I said. “Hence the interrogation. Have you ever heard of the Houses of the Elements?”

  “Any reason?”

  “They came up in connection with the fire mages,” I said. “During the questioning.”

  “Yes, I expect they would,” he said. “The House of Fire is the largest of the four Houses, so I assumed at least a few of my contenders would be from there. Davies himself was.”

  My mouth fell open. “You knew? Do you also know who flooded your castle?”

  “No, because I wasn’t there,” he said. “From the reports, it’s more likely to be a contender than not.”

  “I figured, but it would have been nice to hear a little reassurance from the person who’s supposed to be running the show,” I said.

  “I did warn you the job would be dangerous.”

  “You didn’t mention you were going to leave the castle altogether,” I said. “I’d have thought you’d be spying on the contenders, not traipsing around the city while everyone else is asleep.”

  “Spying on the contenders?” he said. “I’ve already learnt everything I need to know about who might have been involved with the sabotage, so there’s nothing more to do but wait and see if they give themselves away tomorrow.”

  “Sneaking into the Citadel of the Elements seems pretty suspicious to me,” I said. “Don’t blame me if you get back to find she’s swiped your soul amulet, too.”

  “Nobody but me can get into the hall of souls at the moment,” he said. “You removed all cantrips and weapons from the contenders when they arrived, did you not?”

  “I did, but it doesn’t mean a thing if she picked up more while she was in town.” Though it wasn’t the first time he’d taken a major gamble with his own safety. “The last two times you let your security lapse, I ended up having to save you from certain death.”

  He didn’t respond for a moment. Got you there, didn’t I?

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree on our methods, then,” he said. “I’d advise you not to linger here for much longer. The Order might not take kindly to your presence.”

  “You’re the one who brought me here,” I pointed out. “And you promised me magic lessons. More than one.”

  “Have you practised what I taught you last time?”

  “No, because I haven’t had a surfeit of opportunities to practise draining someone’s life force,” I said. “How do you do that thing where you freeze someone so they can’t move?”

  “Lich trick.” He extended a hand, and ice-cold chills stiffened my limbs. “How did you escape when Hawker did the same to you?”

  Hawker? Oh, he meant the lich who’d betrayed him. I’d never got his name.

  “Dex,” I said, through chattering teeth. “He loaned me some of his power. There’s no other way.”

  “Maybe after an hour or two, you’ll find a way out.”

  “Don’t you even think about it.” Alarm blared through my nerves as he turned his back on me. “Death King, I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” He didn’t turn back. “You should know, my powers don’t work as well on this side of the nodes.”

  “Shouldn’t you fall to pieces here?” I fought the invisible chains binding my limbs, but they wouldn’t budge. “I thought most liches couldn’t survive.”

  “I’m safe when I’m astral projecting.”

  “Yet you still have all your magic.” My fingers and toes had gone completely numb. Why had I goaded him again? Some use I’d be if the Order caught me transparent and frozen in the middle of town.

  “Not compared to the amount of power I wield in the Parallel,” he said. “That remains unmatched.”

  “So modest,” I said. “Okay, forget the freezing trick. How do you teleport yourself between realms without needing a node to be nearby?”

  “As a spirit mage, you have access to a larger store of power than most,” he said. “You can draw the node’s strength into yourself and hold onto it, and if you take enough of that strength, then you should be able to use its power to escape any situation.”

  I momentarily forgot the frozen sensation binding my limbs. “I could teleport? From anywhere?”

  “If you absorb enough power from a node beforehand, without using it all up,” he said.

  Well, damn. “You use that node by your castle as a recharge point, don’t you? Wait, is that why you’re always astral projecting around the city at night? You’re recharging your batteries.”

  He inclined his head. “It’s also how I kept that barrier going when we were up against the Crow.”

  I’d figured that much out already. He’d fed his own life force into the shield until it had formed an unbreakable barrier no magic could get through. “You also gave me your life force.”

  “That,” he said, “is a rare type of magic that is only possible for two spirit mages. One can take in the energy of another and direct it elsewhere the same way you might use a node. The risk is that if you take on too much, the other mage dies.”

  “A last resort, then,” I commented. “What if the person is like you, and is already dead?”

  “Even then, I’m capable of burning out,” he said. “As long as my soul remains in its anchor, I will not permanently die, however.”

  But you will if someone takes your soul again. I heard the unspoken words and dread clutched at my chest. He’d intentionally given the soul amulet to the Crow so that he wouldn’t take anyone else’s, which meant if I’d drawn too much life force out of him, all the Crow would have needed to do was destroy the amulet and then the Death King’s desperate move would have ended his life.

  At the same time, I could see why spirit mages were so fractious. Someone like us could determine the outcome of a war even if we hadn’t caused it. The original spirit mages must have thought their victory was assured, but in the end, they’d only managed to seal their own doom.

  I scanned the dark buildings before me. “Can I travel anywhere on this side? Even the other side of the world?”

  “I wouldn’t advise it,” he said. “The distance increases the risk of death.”

  “But not for you,” I said. “Seeing as, you know, you’re already dead.”

  “I had no idea,” he said dryly. “I’d advise you to head home before someone sees you.”

  “But—” Dammit, my limbs were still frozen. “You can’t leave me out here.”

  “I think it’s a useful exercise.”

  And with that, he vanished. I yelled curses after him until I spotted a drunk below looking blearily up at the sky as though wondering where the shouting was coming from.

  Just great.

  9

  It took me a good twenty minutes to unthaw enough to make it to a node and transport myself home, and I fell into dreams with relief which swiftly turned to horror.

  Blood covered the walls, covered my hands, and the floor of a metal-walled room. Dirk Alban’s voice spoke from nearby. “You ruined everything, Olivia.”

  Light bloomed around my bloody hands, revealing the transparent shape of a humanoid figure. A soul, held in my palms.

  In the seconds between sleeping and waking, the figure came into focus. The soul in my hands tilted its head back, and the Death King’s human gaze met mine.

  I jerked awake, gasping for breath. Shuddering, I fell back onto my pillow, my breath coming out in sharp gasps. Not cool, subconscious. Not cool at all.

  I pressed my knuckles to my mouth, willing my heart rate to slow down. I should have known openly pursuing spirit magic would bring back the worst memories I c
ould dredge up from the abyss the Order had left in their place. That, though, had just been a bad dream, no doubt born from my encounter with the Death King last night.

  Once I’d dragged myself out of bed, showered and dressed in my new armoured uniform, I went downstairs to find Devon working on a cantrip.

  “You look even worse today,” Devon told me. “Are you sure this job is a good idea?”

  “No,” I muttered. “In fairness, it’s my own fault. Every time I learn more about spirit magic, I send my subconscious into overdrive.”

  “Bad dreams, then?”

  “Yep,” I said. “And now I have to go back to my worst nightmare. Oh, and find out if Lord Blackbourne agrees to talk to me about Brant or not.”

  Despite my best efforts yesterday, I couldn’t help feeling I’d made no progress on finding the interloper. Or that I should at least have found a way to get into that damned citadel.

  “You’re treading a thin line,” she said. “What will you do if the vampires say yes?”

  “Ask if they’ll help Brant out as a favour for saving their lives from the Crow,” I said. “And use that as an excuse to give them a questioning about which spirit mage might be after the Death King. It’s worth a shot. The worst they can do is say no.”

  “The worst they can do is rip your throat out,” she corrected. “Don’t get me wrong, I think the Death King is being a dick, too, but the vampires?”

  “They’re who I’ll have to ask to save Brant’s life no matter what,” I said. “Besides, they have contacts. And if I establish an agreement with them?”

  Then I’ll have leverage to hold over the Death King. I won’t have to rely on him to help me.

  She shook her head. “I know the people in the Parallel are nasty pieces of work, but you don’t have to turn into one of them to win this.”