Wandfasted. Laurie Forest

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СКАЧАТЬ elderly wife clings to him, white strands of her hair flying around like unworked wool, her eyes wide and terrified. Mage Cooke, the quiet widow who scrapes by selling herbs and teas, is cowering, her arm raised protectively in front of her face. Young, sour Rolland is shaking his fist and stupidly yelling back at the crowd. He falls back as a large rock hits him square in the head. Mage Cooke ducks and cries out, her hands flying up to her face as more rocks are hurled at the wagon. When she lifts her head again, blood is streaming down her temple.

      The voices swell as a young blonde Keltic woman is dragged onto the central dais by the village smith and his strapping son, Orik. Her head is shorn, and there’s a sign around her neck that reads CROW WHORE. My heart lurches into my throat as I realize it’s meek Daisie, the smith’s own daughter. She struggles in vain as they thrust her into the wagon with the Gardnerians. A limp, black-clad Gardnerian youth is dragged up next—quiet Gramm, who’s been sweet on Daisie for years, his face bloodied, his sign reading FILTHY CROW. I lose sight of him as the miller hurls him off the dais and into the bloodthirsty crowd, their voices surging.

      The sea of voices is one loud blur, but some of their rage-filled words sound out clearly.

      “Kill the Mages before they kill us!”

      “Keltania for Kelts!”

      “Smash the Roaches!”

      “Kill him!”

      “There’s another one! Hidin’ back here!”

      I cry out as a large hand clamps down on my arm and I’m wrenched out into the open, the nearest edge of the crowd turning to face me in a sickening, murderous wave.

      Terror stabs through me, filling me with feral desperation.

      I stomp and claw at my attacker, struggling to free my arm. My other arm is grabbed tight by another man, stretching me out between them. I kick and twist wildly in a futile effort to break free.

      Then an ear-shattering shriek rends the air, and the entire crowd gasps and ducks. The hands restraining me fall away, and I almost stumble to the ground.

      I flinch as a mammoth black dragon bursts into view overhead and thunders across the sky.

      There’s another collective ducking-down as a series of shrieks echoes out from above. Two more dragons slice through the clouds, their dark wings expansive. The dragons are ghoulishly skeletal, their wings covered with sharp feathers. They push air down onto us in a heavy stream that blows my hair flat against my scalp. A foul stench washes over me, like rotted carrion set on fire.

      A cheer goes up from the crowd.

      My gaze is torn from the sky as another hand grabs my arm, but my panic recedes when I see Jules standing beside me, a finger to his lips. He pulls me backward into an alley, and I stumble to keep up with him as more dragons shriek by overhead.

      They’re all flying in same direction. North. Toward Gardneria. Toward my homeland.

      Jules’s pace is furious, his bow slung over his shoulder, bobbing up and down as we run. It almost slides off as we dart down the narrow alley, then take a sharp left behind the Guildmarket.

      He practically hurls me behind the clutter of damaged barrels, torn jute sacks and other mercantile debris that’s piled up. My elbow makes painful contact with a large crate as I duck down for cover. Then the light is snuffed out as Jules throws an old grain sack over the both of us, and not a moment too soon.

      Heavy boot heels thud down the alley and across the dirt ground right in front of us. “She ran back here!” a man yells.

      “Must be headed for the Roach Bank,” another answers.

      My breath seems outrageously loud. I cover my mouth and nose with my arm to stifle it. I start to feel faint as my pulse hammers in my ears and fear threatens to crack me into a million jagged pieces.

      More boots thud by, but the voices begin to recede. “She went this way! Toward the river!”

      The alley finally falls silent, and Jules peeks out. Weak twilight seeps in under the sack.

      My head is spinning, my heart thundering in my chest. My brother. My grandfather. My entire universe constricts to one singularity: a suffocating fear for my family.

      I murmur a fire spell and pull up a ball of magic from the ground.

      The spell sizzles up in a buzzing thread to curl tight inside my chest. A vibrating pain grows, prickling like a rotating ball of needles in the center of me. I can’t do anything with this power, not without a wand, but it emanates a steadying warmth that stays my mounting panic.

      “We need to get to the top of the peak,” I rasp out breathlessly to Jules, jerking my head toward the small mountain at our backs. “We can see everything up there. And it’s the quickest way to my cottage.” I give him a significant look. “If we can get there, I can get hold of the wand.”

      Jules’s eyes widen, but he nods in assent. He knows I’ve experimented with Grandfather’s wand, even though I’m not supposed to. The wand once belonged to my father, but when he died, our Mage Council gifted it to my virtually magic-free grandfather in tribute. It’s ill-constructed, this wand, the laminated wood unevenly layered and of substandard wood, but we’re lucky to have it. Most Gardnerians, especially poorer ones like us, don’t own wands. Even a coarse wand like ours is outrageously expensive—difficult to craft and even harder to obtain.

      But I know how to wield it.

      Unlike most females of my race, I’ve some magic in me.

      Every muscle tensed and on high alert, Jules quietly pulls the sack off us entirely. Hunched down, we slip into the brush behind the refuse, into the slice of forest at the edge of town that quickly slants upward to form Crykes Peak.

      It’s our small mountain, Jules’s and mine—one of the only places where a Kelt and a Gardnerian can go together and not be noticed. We’ve whiled away more than a few summer evenings at the top, reading, laughing, talking about history and alchemy, Jules sharing stories of the University with me.

      It’s getting darker, and the sunset through the trees is lovely and peaceful, a mockery of the terrible chaos that’s been unleashed. There’s a hard chill seeping into the air, autumn beginning to dig its claws into summer.

      I grasp Jules’s hand as he half pulls me up the sheltered, rocky path that cuts through the trees, my heavy black skirts slowing me down. We know just where to go—we’re familiar with all the footholds, and my dark clothing blends into the long shadows.

      When we reach the jagged peak, my chest hurts like I’ve swallowed cut glass and my stomach is a painful knot.

      More fiendish dragons soar overhead, racing across the sky. Jules and I flatten ourselves among the surrounding rocks to avoid being sighted. One dragon flies so close to the top of the mountain that I can make out the black scales of the creature’s underbelly, its taloned feet curled up underneath, tipped with terrible claws.

      Then the air around us goes quiet again, and we rise, trembling, to our feet. My heart lurches as I take in the sight before us.

      There’s a whole host of dragons in the air now, soldiers astride them as they wing their way north. They’re like a flat, black swarm of mammoth insects, screeching СКАЧАТЬ