‘I can’t believe it.’ Marcel scowled.

  ‘Can’t believe what?’ Ariane said as her mages gathered on a low rise behind the army, as before.

  ‘They asked Vayles to fight again!’

  It had been two days since the confrontation with the soldier.

  ‘He’s an extremely gifted mage!’ Ariane said hotly. ‘They’ve planned around his powers this time. It’s hardly Cadel’s fault if Thierry Reynard doesn’t use his powers properly!’

  ‘He burned our own soldiers!’

  ‘Only a few, mostly he did hit the Lakashans.’

  Marcel turned and shook his head in disgust.

  ‘Alright, everyone get into position!’ Ariane called.

  Julietta turned and walked to the furthest point of the line. She’d be at the end again. Once again, she saw Cadel waiting not far. As before, he was barefooted and dressed only in his underclothes. Julietta had a hard time believing all the Walmese wizards went into battle dressed like that. She felt more composed than last time she’d seen him dressed like this though. She was going to keep her eyes to herself this time.

  ‘Did you hear all that?’ she called curiously.

  He looked up and walked over. ‘I wasn’t listening. Complaining about me are they?’

  Julietta nodded.

  ‘They’re all people, exactly the same. It’s not as if burning Lakashans feels any better. I’m surprised you haven’t complained.’

  ‘You get angry easily.’ she replied, earning a narrow glare from him.

  ‘I haven’t been parted from my wife since we married, and the way this is going I might not be around when our son is born, so yes, I’m not in a good mood.’

  ‘Are they going to use you properly now?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Seems that way, though this location isn’t too good either. I need a tower, or at least a mountain! The Walmese strategists know how to use wizards properly.’

  ‘We don’t have many wizards-’

  ‘You’d think they’d use their sorcerers properly. You’re all so timid, the Lakashan sorcerers too which I suppose is good for you lot. You, in particular, are being wasted. Your peculiar condition means you could be a truly powerful sorceress, much more so than any of these others here. You ought to be able to draw in all the Lakashan mages magic on your own, leaving the rest of the group to actually make a successful counter.’

  Julietta didn’t know what to say to that, though she wasn’t surprised he’d noticed her condition, as he put it. She’d had those thoughts herself. She decided not to mention that while the major school of Lakashan magic was similar to sorcery, it was not exactly the same and Lakashan mages referred to themselves as moghs, which was commonly incorrectly translated as the general term mage. ‘I’m supposed to support the group.’ she said finally. ‘I can’t go off and do my own thing while being part of a link...’

  ‘Wouldn’t make you much of a team player. It’s tough when your leader is an idiot.’

  Julietta was in no mood to defend Ariane. Instead she said, ‘I’m surprised you’re speaking so civilly to me.’

  Cadel narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re friends with Asmara, and Asmara is Emerré’s friend. Besides, there’s no one else to talk to.’

  ‘I told Ariane that you’re really very horrible and don’t like her.’

  ‘If they don’t care when Emerré is standing right next to me they’re certainly not going to care when you say something. The woman probably thought you were jealous.’ he said. ‘And I’m only horrible to people who are rude to Emerré.’

  ‘I’m glad you agree that you’re horrible.’ she replied primly.

  ‘Just like Belix...’ he murmured with an amused smile.

  An hour before noon, the battle started. It began much the same as the one before. Julietta didn’t know enough about warfare to be able to distinguish any sort of strategy amongst the milling mass of people below. The Lakashan mages probed carefully and did not attack immediately. Julietta had the distinct feeling they were looking for something. Were they planning something?

  Ariane called no order and so Julietta continued holding the link with her fellow mages.

  While the battle raged below, all activity ceased from the Lakashan mages. Suddenly magic blasted at them. Fast and powerful, they had no warning. It was not directed at the soldiers, it was aimed firmly at them.

  ‘DRAW!’ Ariane screamed.

  Julietta felt protection spells fizzle out as she hurriedly drew through the link. They couldn’t draw it all in, and black flames erupted on the hill. She felt Cadel drawing on his magic and realised that he was being attacked too. She could do nothing for him.

  ‘DRAW!’ Ariane yelled again, and Julietta felt some of her fellows start to falter under the constant barrage of the magic and the encroaching magical fire.

  Frustrated, Julietta began drawing in more, but she was stymied by the limits of the others in the link with her. They couldn’t handle as much foreign magic coursing through them as she could. If only I led the link! She thought in frustration, then I could draw as much as I could handle and control the flow of magic to the others!

  The flames were getting closer. She could keep them away from herself, but the others... A sorcerer collapsed. The link faltered, snapped. And then one by one, the rest of her colleagues followed, dropping to the ground. The black flames flared up, until they were all she could see.

  All on her own, Julietta drew in as much magic as she could, grabbing everything the Lakashans were throwing at her and Cadel as well, who was still defending himself. The flames began shrinking. How many of them are there? she thought, dazed, she had never had so much magic flow through her. The black flames were gone. She barely noticed. She directed the magic through her and then into the ground and the air and where else was she going to put it all? There was nothing else to do but direct it back at the Lakashans as an attack.

  She chanted and moved her hands by rote, barely aware of what she was doing. I can’t do this all on my own! There are so many more of them than before!

  Fire flashed, she barely noticed, it was red, not black. All she knew was that magic was all around her, she was throwing it back at the Lakashans and then they were catching it and throwing it back at her. Her gloves were getting warm. In disbelief she saw smoke rising from them. And then suddenly the attack softened. She saw fire in the air, smoke rising from far away. Was Cadel helping her?

  She didn’t know how long she continued. Sometime later she realised she was lying on the ground, her face warm. She shifted and saw flames not far away. Cadel’s on fire again...

  The flames took shape and became the form of a bird. That can’t be!

  She heard Cadel’s voice from far away, ‘...go now, my friend, I appreciate your help, but if you stay they will try and capture you. They’re sorcerers... thank you for coming, it has been too long...’

  His voice faded, as did the fire. Slowly, her face cooled. It was nice, she hadn’t realised how hot it had become on the hill. Then Cadel’s face appeared above her, a big smile on his face.

  ‘Good job!’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll tell you later.’

  ‘What do you mean...?’ her voice sounded funny in her ears. Cadel’s face wavered, as if he was underwater. And then everything slipped away into night...

  Sometime later, Julietta sat up with a jolt. She looked around and scrambled to her feet, and instantly regretted it as a wave of dizziness nearly sent her back to the ground. Her regret was short lived however, as her attention was caught by the state of the land around her. The dull grass was gone, replaced by blackened and cracked rocks. She looked up slowly and saw the damage to the earth spread out in a circle around her. Only down at the bottom of the hill were the grass and earth normal. She looked up and saw heavy grey thunderclouds, and the air felt oddly dense.

  ‘You didn’t stay out for long.’

  She looked back down and saw Cadel sitting on the blackened earth.

  ‘The others are still out of it.’

  ‘Others?’

  He pointed and she turned and saw the rest of her group sprawled out on the ground unconscious. The robes of the Royal Mages were glossy black puddles atop the rough and blackened earth.

  ‘Are they alright?’

  ‘Yes, but they’re not very good sorcerers.’

  ‘The sky...’

  ‘There’ll be a storm tonight. It’ll be unpleasant for everyone.’ he shrugged. ‘Nothing we can do about it.’

  ‘A magic storm!’

  ‘Yes. Air spirits and everything.’

  ‘How much magic did I send up there?’

  ‘A lot. They had most of their mages out there fighting us today. They were trying to get me.’

  They must have taken mages away from other areas to try and take out Cadel. I wonder, did that allow our other sorcerers to successfully attack their soldiers? No, they wouldn’t have left their other units completely unprotected, still...

  ‘You handled at least fifteen mages all on your own, that’s impressive.’

  ‘I... I did?’

  He nodded and gestured for her to sit too. She took his suggestion and couldn’t hide her relief. She was still exhausted, she felt light-headed and ached all over.

  ‘Wait...no, you helped.’

  ‘Only after you drew away the majority of their attack.’

  Fifteen? She thought incredulously. She’d never used so much magic or been so exhausted in her life. She thought briefly of her escape from Lakasha with Bo. Three mages gave me so much trouble then! She frowned. The situation had been entirely different though; here the magic she’d performed had been relatively simple and repetitive, there had been nothing to draw her attention from her task. In Lakasha her focus had been split between Bo, the mages, and the soldiers. She hadn’t fainted then either, it would have been her doom if she had. I wonder if I got better at focussing under situations like that whether I’d eventually be able to handle many more mages and soldiers at once...

  ‘What was that... I thought I saw a...a...’ Julietta murmured, her thoughts coming back to the present.

  ‘A phoenix.’

  ‘It was real?’ she squeaked.

  He nodded. ‘Using that much fire magic tends to attract them, and I’ve met that one before. I sent him away though, I didn’t want him getting involved in this war, it has nothing to do with him.’

  ‘I heard...I’ve never seen one before...’ she breathed in awe. The memory in her mind was blurry, and she couldn’t help being annoyed at herself for missing it! I could have talked to it! If only I hadn’t been so tired!

  ‘Of course not. You’re a sorceress, you can’t add any magic to the world, only take away from it.’

  For the first time in her life Julietta wished, just for a moment, she had more magic of her own. She quickly pushed those thoughts away. There was nothing she could do about it.

  ‘Have you met any other magical beasts? You must be better than ‘good’ to summon a phoenix!’ Not just summon, it helped him!

  ‘Very good, if you prefer, but not the best.’

  ‘Where do you rank?’

  He sighed, ‘oh, I don’t know, up there.’

  Julietta frowned.

  ‘My magic changed several years ago. My skills are rather limited at the moment and so comparing my abilities to other wizards is difficult.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s none of your concern, little busy-body. Now, do you want to hear about magical beasts or not?’

  ‘Oh, yes please.’ Julietta relented, though she was still intensely curious about his magic.

  ‘One of the other wizards at the Imperial College managed to summon a wind dragon. The dragon didn’t stay for long though, it was too strong for him.’

  ‘A dragon!’ she gasped in awe.

  ‘And the Master of the Imperial Wizards goes riding on a thunder bird every Solis. Though he did fall off once...’

  ‘He rides on it?’

  Julietta passed the time listening to Cadel talk. She knew the soldiers were still fighting below, but she was exhausted. There was nothing else she could do. They were eventually interrupted by Ariane’s loud yelling.

  ‘Julietta! What in blazes is going on here?’ Ariane stumbled over, her legs shaking. Her usually neat hair was askew, her bun half undone. The front of her black robe was dirty, and her face was pale and sweaty. Seeing her, Julietta wondered what sort of state she was in herself.

  She stood slowly, pleased she didn’t wobble. ‘Well-’

  ‘You broke the link!’

  ‘No! I didn’t!’

  ‘This is your fault!’

  Cadel, who was also now standing, said, ‘Ariane, you all fainted. Julietta was the only one left, how could she have been the one to break the link?’

  ‘And now you’re just standing here! We could have died!’

  ‘It’s unlikely they would have killed you, though they would have attacked the soldiers if they’d succeeded in knocking you all out.’ Cadel replied calmly, in a way that only further infuriated Ariane.

  ‘Be-be quiet!’ Ariane snapped at Cadel, to everyone’s surprise. ‘I felt you, you were drawing in more magic-’

  ‘I tried to take more of it-’ Julietta tried to explain.

  ‘You took too much, the rest couldn’t handle it!’

  ‘I didn’t!’ Julietta remembered, or she thought she did. They hadn’t been able to draw in all the Lakashans’ magic, their attack was getting through, she remembered the protection spells failing, the black flames coming closer... ‘they were succeeding! We weren’t drawing it all in!’

  ‘You don’t understand how to work as a team, Julietta, you never have! If you hadn’t tried to show how much better you were, if you hadn’t tried to draw more in, the others would have been able to hold on.’

  ‘No!’ Julietta cried, hating the way her voice faltered. She remembered it correctly, she was sure. Had she done the wrong thing?

  ‘That’s ridiculous, Ariane.’ Cadel cut in coldly. ‘I was feeling the attack, so you sorcerers certainly weren’t stopping it all, or did you not see the black fire? Go check your protection spells, you’ll find them all broken. What was Julietta supposed to do? Just let the attack continue? How would that have helped?’

  Julietta wasn’t sure how she felt about having Cadel defend her, but it didn’t seem like she had anyone else. She thought she’d done the right thing. But was Ariane right, had she somehow made it worse? Had the link failed first, or had she drawn on too much magic and forced it to fail?

  Ariane made a noise of disgust and turned on her heel and stumbled away. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll let Thierry Reynard handle this!’ she called back, her voice shrill and wavering in her tiredness. ‘Don’t you worry!’

  Bo stared up at the sky as fat drops of water rained down onto his face.

  ‘Bloody hell, it’s coming through my tent!’ he heard a soldier cry out.

  ‘It’s crawling out of the pot!’

  ‘Why are you collecting it in a pot?!’

  ‘I’m not, the pot’s just there, and look!’

  ‘Lakashan, Lakashan, do you know?’

  Bo looked towards the desperate young man who was calling his name. The soldiers were gathered around their empty campfire, wet and shivering and miserable.

  ‘You’ve travelled all over, do you know?’

  ‘Probably water spirits.’ he said finally.

  ‘Water spirits?’

  ‘You see them a lot in Sontmor.’ He pointed at the pot. Water was trickling up the inside and flowing out onto the ground. If you looked closely you could see the drops were almost human shaped. ‘That’s what they do. Unless we have a mage who’s used to talking to spirits we’ll just have to wait it out.’

  ‘But... but what are they doing here?’

  Bo looked up at the sky again. Lightning cracked and thunder boomed, and the rain pelted down harder.

  ‘It’s coming through the tents!’

  ‘Did you see the magic during the battle?’ Bo asked.

  They all nodded. It had been impossible to ignore. Great waves and ripples across the sky, as if viewing it through water or wavy glass. Buzzing in the ears that drowned out the sounds of battle. Then fire, blooming across the sky.

  ‘Probably because of that.’

  ‘Damn mages.’ someone muttered.

  Bo glanced at Darcel and saw the boy was looking at him. Darcel looked away quickly and Bo sighed. Bo had stayed with his unit this time, having no intention of getting separated again. It seemed the other young men, whose names he still refused to remember, were feeling less animosity towards him, whether because of the horrible weather or because he’d fought by their side, he didn’t know. Not Darcel though.

  He wondered how long it would last.

  CHAPTER 48

  21 Mai, 1353

  Quince couldn’t contain his excitement. The wall of the Imperial Palace came into view, and then tilted sharply. Briefly, he saw blue sky, tall towers and red rooftops, before the vision blurred.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know why it’s blurry-’ An assistant murmured, his voice jarring Quince from the stream of images.

  ‘She jumped.’ Quince interrupted, his lips pulled wide in a smile. ‘How old is this?’

  ‘From yesterday. I stopped it here-’

  ‘Good.’ He was going to be the first to see his spider’s glimpse of the Imperial Palace, no one else. He turned his attention back to the cloudy crystal, set in a base of silver. The crystal was cool to the touch, his fingers frozen on its slippery surface. The inscribings on the silver base glowed faintly and he was irresistibly pulled back into the whirl of images.

  What followed was a confused tumult of greenery, trees, shrubs and grass as the spider crept across the gardens to the palace. She entered the palace by an open window and hid in a dusty corner.

  A young, brown face flashed into view. Quince felt a moment of fear. No, he reminded himself, they both still live. The girl, a servant probably, opened her mouth to scream. And then she froze. She shut her mouth and turned and walked from the room, her movements awkward and stilted.