Magisterium

24

At the head of the pack ran Kevin Kapoor.

Glenn grabbed a dead soldier’s spear off the ground. It was broken in half but was perfect for what Glenn had in mind. Abbe Daniel turned when she heard Glenn approach, but was too late. She swung the butt of the spear and caught Abbe square on the back of her head. The witch crumpled to the ground.

All but two of the soldiers had left Aamon’s side. Garen was on his way to him, roaring, claws out. Aamon pushed the soldiers away and ran to meet him. “Go!” he shouted at Glenn. “Destroy it while you can!”

Aamon and Garen fell into a blur of claws and fists. Glenn

scooped an abandoned knife off the ground, but she knew there was nothing she could do to help Aamon. All she could do was run.

Glenn caught sight of Merrin Farrick as she fled. He was writhing and gasping at the end of his noose, his face shading from red to a deadly blue. Someone had pushed him off the platform as they ran to the fight. Glenn paused, knife in hand.

His people are here now, she thought. If they want to rescue the man who murdered her grandparents, they’re welcome to.

Glenn tucked the knife in her belt, keeping her eyes locked on the green of the border, until the fighting was behind her and she wound into a warren of buildings.

To her left rose a rattle of footsteps, the leading edge of a squad of metal-clad soldiers. Glenn dodged right and through a set of iron-banded double doors. The company passed outside and continued on up the street.

The inside of the building was dark and hot. The sounds of

fighting were muted by its stone walls. Everything smelled heavily of smoke. Once her eyes adjusted, she saw orange flames glowing in iron ovens set along the walls. Piles of coal and metal and lines of heavy wooden tables sat all around her. She was in one of the foundries. Who knew, maybe even Kalle Bromden’s? Wherever she was, it seemed the perfect place to hide while the battle blew over. She could wait until dark, slip out, and cross the border. Glenn retreated into a corner and dropped down in the darkness, pulling her knees up into her chest and waiting for her heart to stop pounding.

She could hear the war outside dimly. She tried to guess the story of the fight, but it seemed impossible. The Magisterium’s forces fought Farrick’s, Farrick’s retreated, only to surge again with Kevin in the lead?

It didn’t matter. All she had to do was wait. It would be over soon.

Glenn buried her face in her knees and closed her eyes. She kept seeing Garen launch himself at Aamon, whose last words were still echoing in her ears. “Hopkins.” Her small knight. His nose tipped back to accept her appointment. She tried to brush the images away, but it was no use, and soon it was joined by the picture of Kevin running into town and throwing himself into the fight. Where were they both now?

In pain? Dying while she fled for home?

The doors to the foundry creaked open, letting in a bright shaft of light and then closing again. Glenn’s hand went tight on her knife as she pushed herself farther back into the corner. One set of footsteps scratched tentatively across the dirt floor. Glenn tried to stay still, to slow her breathing, telling herself that whoever it was would soon be gone.

But the visitor didn’t leave. After exploring the far corners of the foundry, the footsteps grew louder. Glenn was wedged between two rows of heavy workbenches, a wall at her back. The rear of the building was to her right. She searched it until she saw a few thin lines of daylight that marked a back door.

The footsteps moved closer, stopping two rows of benches down to Glenn’s left, maybe twenty feet away. Glenn held her breath. A man’s body was outlined by the orange fire of the ovens. His head slowly moved side to side, reminding Glenn of the slink of a cobra as it searched for prey. Glenn tipped forward onto the balls of her feet, ready to bolt to the door. With the wall at her back, if he got close and turned down her row of benches, she’d be trapped. The man shifted, paused, then moved toward her.

Glenn ran from her hiding place and made for the door. She

pulled at the handles, and the door gave slightly but didn’t open.

Locked. A pair of hands grabbed her shoulders and spun her around.

Glenn cried out until a hand slapped onto her mouth, silencing her. A face loomed out of the darkness, a wrinkled gray plain lit by the fires and the sliver of daylight behind her.

Merrin Farrick.

“Who are you?” he said, his voice a horrible rasp. The scarlike line of the noose encircled his throat. He slowly moved his hand aside and Glenn gasped for air.

“No one. I’m just — ”

Merrin grabbed Glenn’s wrist and jerked it up into the firelight.

The red jewel glowed between them. When Merrin saw it, his eyes sparkled with greed. “This is what Kapoor was talking about, isn’t it?

What does it do?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! Please let me — ”

Merrin shoved her into one of the wooden tables. Glenn’s spine slammed into its corner and she cried out in pain.

“We have lived for too long under that monster’s boot,” Farrick said. “If you think I’ll let our chance at freedom get melted down to slag, you’re out of your mind.”

Glenn’s hand slipped behind her to the knife at her back. There was a crash outside the foundry. Merrin turned to investigate it, and Glenn saw her chance. When Merrin turned back, Glenn’s blade was hovering at the rise of his Adam’s apple.

“Now, I said — ”

Merrin grinned, then there was a flash of movement as he

snatched the knife out of her hand. He turned the blade over and rested the point just under Glenn’s chin, lifting it to expose the soft flesh of her throat.

“You come here and think you know what’s best for us,” Merrin growled as his free hand grabbed at the bracelet.

Glenn tried to pull it away from him, panicking at the memory of the power rising inside her, overcoming her, wiping her away.

“Don’t,” Glenn pleaded. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Merrin got hold of her hand, but Glenn yanked it to her chest, dragging Merrin forward until she was just inches from his hatchet-like face and stringy hair.

“She’s my mother,” Glenn said. “The Magistra. This bracelet is the only thing that keeps me from becoming just like her. So take it if you want, but you’ll be dead before you can walk to the door.”

Merrin stopped. His eyes narrowed on Glenn’s. He leaned

forward so Glenn could feel his lips alongside her ear.

“Well, then,” he whispered. “I guess I’ll have to sort you out before I take it.”

He raised his hand, and the pulse in Glenn’s throat beat against the blade of the knife. Glenn sucked in a breath, waiting for the cut.

“Merrin!”

The voice came from behind him. As Merrin turned, still holding the knife to Glenn’s neck, Glenn saw Kevin standing behind him. The sword in his hand gleamed red in the fires of the foundry.

“Get away from her.”

Merrin laughed. “Well, well, the hero of the hour.”

“I said — ”

“You don’t have it in you, boy. If you’d been able to do your job and get the bracelet from her before, we wouldn’t be here now. Serves us right sending some outsider child to do our work for us.”

“Put the knife down,” Kevin ordered.

Merrin sneered and pressed the blade into Glenn’s throat. But before it could break her skin, Kevin rushed toward them. Merrin turned, knife in hand, but Kevin was faster, driving his blade into the thick of the older man’s stomach. Merrin cried out and crumpled to the dirt floor of the foundry. A pool of blood grew beneath him.

The sword slipped from Kevin’s hands as he fell backward,

crashing to the floor. His face was pale and drawn, no different from Aamon’s as he stood in that river, the horror of what he had done dawning on him. Glenn stepped over Merrin’s body and knelt beside Kevin. She wished she could say something to him, tell him he had no choice, but she knew it wouldn’t make any difference.

“We should go,” Glenn said quietly. “Now.”

Kevin’s body jerked as if he was waking from a dream. He stood and turned to the glowing ovens. “We can still use it,” he said, almost to himself. “We don’t have to destroy it. We can — ”

Glenn pulled at his hand. “There’s no time for that. We have to go.”

Kevin’s hand stiffened as he drew away from her. “No time? You came here to …” Kevin’s eyes went sharp as he trailed off. “You weren’t coming here to destroy it.”

“Kevin — ”

“What were you going to do?” His voice rose. Glenn backed

away from him as he came at her. “You were going to give it to him?

To Sturges?”

Glenn turned to run but Kevin grabbed her wrist. She cried out and tried to escape, but he was too strong. Her terror grew. Had the last vestige of Kevin Kapoor disappeared?

Kevin yanked Glenn toward him, and then, instead of taking the bracelet, he ripped opened his shirt and clamped her hand down on his side, covering it with his own. Beneath her fingers, Glenn could feel the heat of his skin and the long rough edges of his barely healed wound.

“You were going to give it to the man who did this?”

Glenn tried to tear her hand away, but Kevin kept it tight against his skin. Their eyes met.

“Kevin …” Glenn began, but was stopped by a deep boom from

somewhere outside. A second later the ground shook.

Kevin’s head cocked to one side. “What was that?”

There was a shrieking whistle overhead, then another boom. The whistle began to fill the foundry, growing louder by the second, turning into a scream. Something clicked in Glenn. She grabbed Kevin’s arm and pulled him toward the door at a run.

“Where are we going?”

“Just run!”

Glenn slammed through the front door with Kevin close behind.

The sound was deafening now. Glenn made for a building across the street. Its front door was open and she hoped it would be enough. Once they made it inside, Glenn threw both of them to the floor.

As soon as they landed, a series of explosions rocked the town, shooting tremors through the earth. All Glenn could see through the open door was an expanding wave of smoke and debris. A rain of bricks and shards of iron and glass and burning wood fell all around them.

As the smoke wave passed, Glenn saw that the foundry had been reduced to a pile of broken stone and wood and mangled iron. The fires from its shattered ovens had spread, setting the surrounding buildings aflame. There was a second’s pause and then another boom somewhere else in the town. More crashes followed with barely a pause, seemingly everywhere at once. Soon the air was filled with the sound of cracking wood and shattering glass and screams.

“What’s happening?” Kevin screamed over the din.

Glenn didn’t know. Some weapon of Garen Tom’s? Her mother’s?

Glenn looked up at a crackling sound and saw that the roof above them was burning.

“We’ve got to get out of here!”

Glenn took Kevin’s hand and dragged him out of the house and down an alley along the side of the building, nearly blind from the smoke. Glenn had no idea where they were going. She was guided by nothing but animal terror, falling face-first to the ground at each new crash, then forcing herself up again to run harder and faster.

The town was shrouded in thick gray smoke. As she ran, Glenn saw buildings that had been reduced to rubble and bodies fleeing in every direction. There was debris everywhere too, piles of brick and wood and here and there bodies lying on the road and on porches and hanging out of burning windows. The smell of it was overwhelming.

Glenn’s throat and lungs ached.

She didn’t know how long she ran but finally the smoke slowly began to clear. The road opened up ahead of her and she saw figures out in the gray. A group of ten or more — some standing, some holding others up, some slumped on the ground. At the center was a single hulking figure. As the smoke parted, she saw slate gray fur and then a snowy patch of white. Glenn ran and threw her arms around Aamon and he pulled her close. His face was swollen and streaked with blood and dust.

“What’s happening? What was that?”

“Did you do it?” Aamon asked. “Did you destroy it?”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t.”

A crunching sound came from all around them, boots on the

gravel road. Glenn turned, and from every direction, bodies moved in the smoke. She couldn’t guess how many but they seemed to be everywhere, converging on them.

Kevin snatched a fallen sword off the ground. Aamon moved in front of Glenn, pulling a handful of others to their feet to form a tight ring around her. All of them were injured. Some could barely stand.