Mzatal was descending the stairs as I rushed into the atrium, his shirt and face spattered with blood from a nosebleed.
“Rhyzkahl arrived in the grove,” he said with dark intensity as he approached. “I have cast him back and bound the blades so that he cannot use his, but this also means I cannot use mine. And he will return.”
Belting my robe more securely around me, I stopped at the base of the stairs and looked up at him. “What do you need me to do?”
“Seek Idris in the summoning chamber. He lays support,” he said as he passed. “Shield yourself. Draw all that you are able from the grove.”
I started up the steps, then paused. No. That wasn’t right. I knew it in my essence. I couldn’t simply cower and hide and shield myself. I pivoted back to Mzatal. “I’m going with you.”
He stopped and turned to me, mouth drawn to a tight line. “It is Rhyzkahl,” he said. “And I do not wish to risk you while there is a safer alternative.”
“Yeah. And I don’t want to hide in a corner and hope for a good outcome,” I said, eyes narrowed. “I can shield near the grove as well as in here. Maybe better. So I don’t think it’s safer.”
“Kara,” he said with urgent intensity, as he backed down the corridor. “I will be in open conflict and unable to adequately protect you.” He shook his head. “Rhyzkahl’s initial attack and my counter drained most of my reserves, and he is near untouched.”
“All the more reason for me to go with you,” I said as I strode toward him, my eyes locked on his. “If he gets past you, nothing’s going to stop him getting me, whether I’m out there or in the summoning chamber. And it feels like I need to be out there, where he is. Where you are. Trust me, okay?”
Still he hesitated, but finally gave a tight nod. “So be it,” he said, turning to move with me. “Stay close.” We continued down the corridor to the main entryway and out, heading toward the grove at a brisk pace.
“Vahl knew,” I said with a quick glance to him. “He was with me at the pool, and he told me to run and find you, right before I felt the grove activate.”
Mzatal’s jaw somehow tightened more than it already was. “Vahl has cast aside much.” He bit the words out.
I frowned. “What do you mean? Was he here as a mole for Rhyzkahl? If so, he seems to have changed his mind.”
“I suspect Rhyzkahl increased pressure on him,” Mzatal said, “and recently.”
But he warned me. A shiver raced over me. If he hadn’t, if he’d held me or taken me while Rhyzkahl kept Mzatal occupied…. I shook my head, refusing to speculate on what might have happened.
“Aren’t you worried that Vahl will join up with Rhyzkahl and help him fight us?”
Mzatal gave a sharp shake of his head. “Such is not our way,” he said. “We do not war as on Earth. Engagements are qaztahl to qaztahl. Vahl may go to Rhyzkahl but will not engage, and we need only counter Rhyzkahl.” But the tight set of his mouth told me it would be ugly no matter what.
“What about me? Does that mean I can’t help?” Though that didn’t make sense if Idris was laying a support diagram.
“No,” he said. “Summoners are an accepted resource in engagements.”
Resource. Hmmf. My palms were sweating, and I wiped them on my stupid flimsy robe. This was not at all how I envisioned eventually facing Rhyzkahl again—barefoot and dressed in a goddamn bikini.
Mzatal stopped about ten yards away from the entrance of the tree tunnel. He called the pygah and began laying the sigils of the first ring of the shikvihr.
I stood out of the way then did my own stupid pygah and extended to the grove, drawing energy to shield and trying to get a sense of what I could do to help.
Mzatal moved fluidly within the circles. “Once I have the shikvihr set, stay behind me. It will give you additional protection.”
My stomach tightened as I nodded. “Mzatal, if this goes bad, don’t let him take me.”
He paused in his movement, looked over to me. “I will not.” He shook his head. “Kara, I will not.”
“You do what you have to do,” I said with no compromise in my tone despite the knot of cold in my gut. “If it looks like he’ll win, you fucking kill me. I mean it.”
“I will do what I must,” he replied quietly, then resumed his flowing dance of the rings. “He will not have you.”
Exhaling, I returned my focus to the grove and delved into the power, expanding my awareness and exploring the energies as I got a feel for its properties. I cursed under my breath as I felt the grove activate. There was no mistaking who was coming through.
“He’s coming!” I said. “But I think I can seal the tunnel to stall him.”
“If the grove will respond to you thus, do it,” he said, words clipped by his intense focus on the dance. “With my reserves tapped and my blade inaccessible, I need the augmentation of the shikvihr, and any time you gain for me will be invaluable.”
I concentrated on the grove, asked it to guide me even as I guided it to shape its power into a means to slow or stop Rhyzkahl. I felt the grove’s assent, its desire to assist, yet even with its touch my efforts felt clumsy and fumbling, like playing on a cathedral organ after barely learning “Chopsticks” on a piano.
Movement near the grove caught my attention. Vahl edged his way to the treeline then crouched, facing us, about ten paces from the tunnel. Crap. I sure as hell hoped Mzatal was right about him not interfering.
Through the grove sense, I felt Rhyzkahl’s full arrival. My heart gave a sick double-beat. Not just Rhyzkahl. “Mzatal!” I called out. “Amkir’s here too!”
Without pausing in his tracings, Mzatal gave me a nod as he began the tenth of the eleven rings. “He will not engage,” he said with a surety I didn’t feel.
Shit. We sure as hell needed every bit of time I could buy. With a blend of intuition and the arcane principles I’d learned so far, I awkwardly shaped an energy barricade over the exit of the tree tunnel. It sparkled there, a convex film of transparent purple and green iridescence reminiscent of a soap bubble but far more capable of stopping Rhyzkahl. At least I sure as hell hoped so.
Rhyzkahl stalked down the tunnel, a glowing mass of azure potency already prepared in his right hand. He stopped a pace beyond my barrier, his eyes first on Mzatal, then on me.
Shit shit shit. My heart pounded as I saw him, felt him again. Terrible memory whispered to me, the icy mask of his expression as he touched the blade to my flesh. I forced the images down, gritted my teeth, and called upon the grove for more energy to reinforce the seal.
Amkir stopped a few feet behind Rhyzkahl and folded his arms across his chest, looking as hard and angry as ever. Just stay there, asshole.
Rhyzkahl lifted his left hand to the barrier and began to work at unweaving it. For all its flimsy appearance, I knew the damn thing held a lot of power, and, to my relief, he wasn’t able to push straight through it. Yet I also knew it wouldn’t stop him for long. Sweat dripped down my sides with the struggle to maintain hold as he picked away at it. I continued to assess and reinforce my construct, but I realized my inexperience left inherent weaknesses in the shield, like a steel door hinged with duct tape.
Rhyzkahl lowered his head, gaze penetrating me. “You are mine,” he said, his voice clear and resonant.
“The fuck I am!” I called out as I braced myself to hold the seal. “I belong to myself, asshole.”
“This is a new trick for a summoner,” he said, working his hand into the barrier, his aura radiating angry, focused confidence. “Mzatal has trained you well for me.” His eyes narrowed as he sneered. “Do you spread your legs as readily for him as you did for me, chikdah?”
“Name-calling and slut-shaming?” I asked. “Is that the best you can do?” I struggled to keep the power flowing despite the growing fatigue from the effort. “Would it bother you if I’d slept with him?” I knew that it would, and right then anything that might distract him from unweaving my barrier seemed like a good idea. “Would it piss you off if I told you he sucked on my tits then bent me over the table in his chamber and fucked me?”
Rhyzkahl’s aura flared, striking me like wind off the desert. Oh, shit. Baiting him had refocused rather than distracted him. Bad move.
“Kara!” Mzatal called out in a warning, but it was too late for me to take the words back. Rhyzkahl bared his teeth, gave a sharp cry of anger, and tore at the barrier.
I backed hurriedly. Damn it. “Boss!” I called out. “No time left!”
“Ten heartbeats,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Don’t have it!” I swallowed heavily and took another step back.
“Channel everything you can into the barrier,” Mzatal said. “Then move behind me.” In a furious swirl of his hands, he slurred the last three sigils together and called for the union of the rings.
“It’s going. Shit!” I felt as well as saw my barrier disintegrate as Rhyzkahl ripped through it. I scrambled to move fully behind Mzatal.
Rhyzkahl lifted his hand the instant the barrier cleared and made a vicious cast at the shikvihr. Mzatal swept his arm to ignite the pattern even as the attack struck it.
The shikvihr flared blindingly, then collapsed on itself with an earsplitting crack and a concussive jolt that threw me to my hands and knees. I gasped in pain and shock, watched a drop of blood from my nose splat on the stone beneath me as if in slow motion. Mzatal staggered back in the aftershocks, clearly off balance and at a disadvantage. I lifted my head and saw Rhyzkahl look from Mzatal to me, then…hesitate. My gut told me he didn’t want to hurt me. Not that I had any illusions about it being because he gave a shit about me personally, but because he didn’t want to damage his “tool.” Cop-mode set in, looking for the advantage and finding it. Maybe.
I scrambled to my feet and staggered to Mzatal. Rhyzkahl stepped forward as he called potency to his hand again, beautiful features hardened to ugliness by what could only be hatred.
“Kara,” Mzatal said, his breath coming heavily, but his voice strong. “Get behind me.”
“The hell I will,” I said. “I don’t stand a chance without you, and he needs me alive.” I only shook a little as I pulled Mzatal’s left arm over my shoulder and across my chest in the same way he’d held me when I faced Vahl. Except that now I was a human shield. And though I sure as hell wasn’t ready to die, it also positioned me such that Mzatal could easily kill me if things got even worse. Going to Rhyzkahl was not an option.
Dissonance abruptly flooded me, as though every cell in my body suddenly awoke and vibrated at an uncomfortable frequency. I nearly gave in to the impulse to pull away from Mzatal, then stopped as a strange familiarity wound through the discomfort. “What the hell?” I said through gritted teeth, eyes locked on Rhyzkahl as he stood statue-still. Hopefully the human shield bit was causing him to reconsider his strike tactics. “Mzatal?” My hands gripped his arm. “Why does this feel so weird?”
Mzatal tightened his arm across me. “I do not know,” he said, his breath hissing as though in pain. “But I…feel the grove.”
Even as he said it I could almost, almost, see the interplay of my grove energy and Mzatal’s aura, like trying to see something through a fogged window. Rhyzkahl lowered his head and pulled more potency to him. He’d obviously figured out some way to get around my oh-so-noble defense and didn’t plan on giving us leisure time to figure out this dissonance.
The familiarity abruptly clicked into place. The sigil series on the beach, the discordance I’d experienced there. “Boss,” I gasped. “It’s like a series out of alignment.”
He inhaled sharply, and in the next instant I felt him mentally shift, even as I reached through the fog to him, as if tuning a ring of sigils and clasping Mzatal’s mental hand all at once. The dissonance faded, and though I felt that more harmony waited just beyond my perception, I couldn’t reach for it right then. Adjustment to the overlap of my grove-fueled power with Mzatal’s potency required all my focus. “We can do this together,” I told Mzatal with newfound confidence as I leveled my gaze at Rhyzkahl.
Mzatal pulled me tightly to him. “Kara,” he said, the richness of that single word conveying his understanding of what I’d done—what we had done—on all levels.
Rhyzkahl cast a strike at us, and Mzatal deflected it as if it had been no more than a wiffleball. I drew more power from the grove, intaking breath at the ease with which it flowed into me, into us. I shared that power with Mzatal, offering him a deep reservoir to use as needed. I felt as much as saw the shimmering potency coalesce in Mzatal’s right hand.
He extended his hand before us, opening his fingers wide as he channeled power into a wall of interwoven green, gold, and purple strands of light, erected between us and Rhyzkahl. Breathing deeply, Mzatal exerted arcane pressure on the wall, pushing.
I smiled as Mzatal forced Rhyzkahl back a step, and I opened myself more to the grove, feeling the murmurs of its semi-sentience. Rhyzkahl’s gaze slid over me, and a ripple of sensation set my skin itching faintly, as though the sigil scars had goose bumps. The memory of the torture rose again, and I dove into the connection with the grove, immersing fully. Power flickered in sparkling green iridescence over my skin and through my being as I focused, added a layer to the arcane wall, and pushed with Mzatal.
Rhyzkahl fought to move against the dual force, face hard and determined, neck muscles and braced stance revealing the extreme physical effort that accompanied his resistance. Half-step by grueling half-step, he retreated into the tree tunnel, unable to stand fast in the face of our united effort.
“I will have you,” Rhyzkahl growled, the words carrying to us and the mountains beyond.
The threat speared me, igniting pure hatred like a fountain of flame from my gut to my head. “Never!” I shouted. The grove power scorched through me, welcome and unhindered. Mzatal channeled it into a devastating strike that lanced forth in a scintillating burst of green and gold. Rhyzkahl took the blast fully in the chest, and his strangled cry twisted with the sharp crack as it took him down.
I bared my teeth, feeling power like a vast, still sea respond to my deep need as he sprawled to his back. Now I had him at my control. I wasn’t the one writhing in pain this time. Power suffused me. I bore down on him with the grove energy, willing him to suffer. Willing him to die.
I leaned back against Mzatal, smiling as I watched Rhyzkahl struggle to shift from the supine position. Amkir stepped toward him, and I raised a barrier of shimmering grove potency between the two lords. Rhyzkahl was mine. I opened the floodgates to the sea of power and, through the grove awareness, I knew what Rhyzkahl felt: invisible pressure closing in on him, crushing, taking his breath. I tasted his first flickers of fear, and my smile widened. I dimly felt Mzatal telling me I had to release Rhyzkahl, but the song of the grove washed it aside, raw and wild and torrential. My breath came in shuddering gasps as power seared its way through me. Vahl sought to enter the tree tunnel, to reach the Tormenter, but I held the grove inviolate, allowing none to enter. No one would touch him but me.
I heard Mzatal shouting my name, but the words burned away as soon as they reached me. He shouted to Vahl, to Ilana, to Amkir, but my focus was on the vile sack of shit who even now could barely draw a breath.
A sudden resistance slid between the Tormenter and my power, blocking my vengeance. My eyes narrowed and I pushed harder.
Kara! Kara, you must let go!
Awareness hit me like a slap. The resistance was Mzatal as he fought to keep me from killing Rhyzkahl. No. He deserves to die!
Kara!
Mzatal called to me on all levels as he maintained the shield on Rhyzkahl. The loss of even one lord would throw all of the arcane perilously out of balance. Turek had shown me, and Mzatal sought to remind me now. Mzatal. I realized with horror that I was about to hurt him as well. Aghast, I hurriedly sought to disengage, but the power rushed through me in torrents, responding only sluggishly to my efforts. Mzatal swayed behind me, his arm locked across my chest. Rhyzkahl went still. Amkir stood in the tunnel beyond the fallen lord and my barrier, face flushed and anger palpable.
Vahl strode toward me, but I had no time to spare for him in my desperate bid to curtail the flow. His eyes narrowed, then he drew back his arm and slugged me hard.
White pain exploded in my face. The power dropped away from me like water from a burst balloon, and I sagged heavily in Mzatal’s grasp. As the world spun around me, I thought I heard Mzatal yell to Vahl to get Rhyzkahl out of our grove.
Our grove.
Mzatal went to his knees, breathing heavily and still holding me. “Kara?”
I groaned. Pain throbbed in my jaw, and everything dipped and tilted around me. “Here. Ugh.”
His hand came up to cradle my face, easing the worst of the throbbing and the spinning-world effect. “Rhyzkahl is gone.”
Somehow I managed a woozy smile. “And you’re here,” I slurred.
He looked down at me. “We are here.”
I gave him a radiant smile.
And then I passed the fuck out.