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The light dimmed as a strange gray twilight filtered through the leaves, the wind died, the birds fell silent as if the world waited for what was to happen next.
Killer lifted his head, eyes closed. Elisabeth almost expected him to sniff at the air like the dog he had been—or was—or . . . something. She’d worry over this new revelation later.
“We must go,” he said. “Quickly.”
“Go where? Rogan’s dead.” She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “He was the one who could follow Brendan’s trail. I’m lost.”
“But I am not. And together we can save Brendan before Máelodor uses him in the summoning.”
“Uses him—”
“Later. For now, we must go.” He held out a hand, again with that strange formal gallantry. She took it, feeling the cool roughness of his palm, the strength in his wrestler’s body.
And followed him into the wood.
Brendan reached out, sensing the ley lines running outward beneath the earth from the toppled slab like spokes upon a wheel. Feeling his way along the potent river of mage energy as a sailor might take readings to chart his depth. Here and there dipping deeper as he wove his magic into the pattern. Carefully. Skillfully. Too much and one ran the danger of losing one’s very humanity in the fierce hurricane storm of Fey power. The trick was to manipulate the streams of mage energy in ways that channeled its might, yet did not diminish it.
He hoped to the gods that, after so many years lying dormant, his skills remained, or this would be an extremely short-lived attack.
The spell he finally called upon was one he’d found in a Greek grimoire, the parchment translucent with age, the writing faded to near-illegibility. Father had bought it from a bookseller in Venice during one of his extended tours of the Continent, but it had been Brendan who’d spent a year transposing and translating. Six months mastering the unfamiliar technique. He could still smell the musty aromas of age and ink and old paper that made up the Belfoyle library. Feel the fragile softness of the pages beneath his fingers. See the light spread and shrink over the shine of polished oak floors in the long days devoted to unraveling the secrets contained within.
This must be what they meant when they spoke of one’s life flashing before one’s eyes.
As he stretched with his mind and his magic, he uttered the words of the spell beneath his breath. “Esemynest agesh kavesha. Hweth d’esk mest.”
Immediately the magic rose within him like a spring tide. Easing the pain of his injuries, healing the numerous wounds he’d incurred last night under Máelodor’s maddened gaze.
Brendan closed his eyes as his body renewed itself, the rising pressure spilling over, dazzling his eyes, crackling along his arteries, sparking new and wild pathways in his brain.
As he felt the power crest, he released it with a sure flick of his fingers, casting it out like the thrust of a sword. Honed to a steel brilliance, the spell cut the air on a whistle of wind and buried itself in Máelodor like a dagger to the back.
The mage screamed, high and thin, his mouth gaping black, his face paling to a sickly gray. He whirled around, losing his balance as he fumbled with crutch and peg leg and the uneven ground. The Sh’vad Tual dropped from his hand to roll free, its fire extinguished.
Brendan’s guard grabbed for his pistol, but Brendan was faster. He tore the weapon from the man’s hand, pulling him close as he fired into him. The man jerked and grunted before falling to the turf with a dull, wet thud.
Máelodor’s response came swift and certain. A savage explosion of ripping power, severing veins and crushing bones. The hiss of his slithered words a mutilating combination of Other force and Unseelie atrocity.
Brendan panted through his teeth against the pain unleashed by the dark magic, forcing his mind to focus on the ley lines, on the healing energy centered in the tomb. But even as he struggled to hold on to the Fey power, it ran between his fingers like water. His spell unraveling beneath the blacker, stronger, fiercer demon spell.
Shielding himself against the worst of the curse, he groped his way toward the Sh’vad Tual. Reaching for it, he dodged Máelodor’s fanged and venomous bite. And never saw the deadly bull-like fist of Oss until it blindsided him, striking him in the head. Rattling his teeth. Breaking his focus. The mage energy draining out of him in one sucking whirlpool rush.
He lay upon the turf, staring up into a sky riven with cloud and fire and a sweep of circling birds. There was a fraction of a second when he saw the slit-eyed malevolence of Máelodor and the blur of his descending staff.
He rolled aside, but not before the tip of the staff scored a bloody gash along his upper arm. Immediately, his fingers numbed and his arm went dead as the poison entered his bloodstream. And time and chances wound down.
twenty-six
Máelodor lifted the Sh’vad Tual high above his head in both hands. “Mebyoa Uther hath Ygraine. Studhyesk esh Merlinus. Flogsk esh na est Erelth. Pila-vyghterneask.”
The stone ignited in a wash of color. The words of the dark spell beating against Brendan’s brain. Each syllable pounding in his chest like the tolling of an enormous bell.
Fire and light poured out over Máelodor’s hands and down his body. Sparkling over his skin and clothes in drifts and eddies before burying thems
elves into the ground at his feet.
Brendan cried out, the visions cascading through his mind. Arthur, his face black with sweat and blood and dirt, his sword broken as he fell. Aidan’s lifeless body one of thousands beneath a crow-filled crimson sky.
“Klywea mest hath igosk agesha daresha!”
