Web of Lies

30

“A duel?” I asked.

He nodded. “A duel. That’s how I take care of my problems. Haven’t lost one yet in more than two hundred years.” He looked over his shoulder. “You boys might want to step out of the way for this.”

The giants moved off to either side of the cavern, leaving Dawson standing by himself in the middle.

The two men looked bored, as though they’d seen their boss do this a dozen times before. They probably had.

The dwarf stood relaxed with his knees slightly bent.

He tipped his cowboy hat back on his head to give himself a clearer look at me, and his hands hung down by his sides, fingers flexing and unflexing. He reminded me of some Old West gunfighter who’d just called the town sheriff out into the dusty street for a noon showdown.

Yeah, I could see how elemental dueling would fit right in with Dawson’s cowboy fetish. Too bad it was going to be the death of him.

“A duel, huh?” I asked again.

“A duel,” he repeated. “You and me. Right here, right now. Think about it, how strong your magic is. You might beat me.”

But Dawson didn’t sound too concerned by the possibility.

Bastard was trying to goad me into making the first move. Into doing something sloppy. Oh, I was going to do something all right, but it wasn’t going to be what he expected.

Still, I had to play this out to its inevitable conclusion, so I reached for the cool power deep inside me. Gathering it up, letting it fill every part of my being. Although I couldn’t see them, I knew my eyes were glowing a bright silver with my elemental power. All around me, the stones’ murmurs intensified, sensing my command over them.

But the dwarf wasn’t worried. If anything, my reaching for my magic amused him. Tobias Dawson grabbed hold of his own Stone magic. Power poured off him like the water sliding down the cavern wall, and his eyes glowed a dull, slate blue. The dwarf was strong, and his magic felt old and well-worn, like a horse he’d broken in over the years. No wonder he wanted to duel. One burst of magic from him would be enough to take down most elementals.

Maybe even me.

The dwarf let out a low laugh. “You have power, bitch, I’ll give you that. A lot of raw power. I’m going to enjoy this.”

“So why give me this chance, if I’m so strong? If I could beat you?”

“Because I like challenges.” Dawson grinned and spit out another stream of tobacco juice. The foul brown mixture landed at my feet.

“Do you know what I like, Tobias?” I asked.

“What?”

“Playing dirty.”

I smiled at him and threw my magic at the cavern ceiling.

——

There was no time for finesse, restraint, or even patience. One shot was all I had, and I took it. I threw everything I had at the cavern ceiling. All my Stone magic and all my Ice power, weak though it was. The water that had been dripping off the formations and sluicing down the cavern wall immediately froze. The resulting crystal droplets glistened like the diamonds embedded in the walls. The sudden surge of Ice caused bits and pieces of the cavern to crack and sheer off from the rest of the walls and ceiling.

Dust and dirt puffed up into the air.

Jo-Jo Deveraux had always told me I had more Stone magic than anyone she’d ever seen before. I hoped that meant Tobias Dawson too. But I’d been weakened by Dawson’s punches, and I wasn’t at full strength. Even if I had been, I was still hammering at stone that had been around long before I’d been born — and would be around long after I was gone. Layers and layers and layers of it. But I used my magic, my Stone power, like a hammer, smashing at everything I could feel with raw, brute force.

Across from me, Tobias Dawson frowned, not sure what the hell I was doing, why I wasn’t attacking him. I had maybe another two or three seconds before he figured it out and hit me with everything he had.

I drew in a breath and threw another blast of Stone magic at the ceiling, even as I reached for my Ice power, making the frozen droplets and stream of water expand in size. I forced the Ice into the stone like a chisel. Ice, stone.

Chisel, hammer.

My vision became a field of silver. Sweat dripped into my eyes, my knees trembled, and my whole body felt weak. It felt like I’d been toiling away for years, decades, even though only a second, two tops, had passed. I wanted to let go of my magic, wanted to rest. Every part of my aching body screamed at me to just let go and fall into the blackness that was threatening to overwhelm me.

But if I did that, if I gave Dawson a second of opportunity, he’d throw his own magic at me, and I didn’t have the strength to ward him off. Not now. So I gritted my teeth, pushed the pain away, and kept hammering at the stone. Bringing the ceiling down might be the last thing I’d ever do, but the fucker was going to fall.

Crack! Crack-crack!

It started to work. A large stalactite broke off from the ceiling. It plummeted down like a knife and speared one of the giants in his shoulder. He howled in pain and fell to the cavern floor. Crimson blood splashed everywhere, and the stone underneath my feet took on a darker vibration.

Dawson’s head snapped around at the giant’s screams. Sloppy, sloppy of him to get distracted like that.

I kept working. Ice, stone. Chisel, hammer.

Another second passed. Another piece of the roof broke off, this time above Dawson’s head. His Stone magic gave him enough of a warning for him to leap forward to get out of its way. The dwarf hit the ground hard.

It didn’t even daze him.

“Kill her!” Dawson screamed at the other giant even as he scrambled to his feet. “Kill her before she collapses the whole ceiling—”

Too late.

I felt a weakness in the stone, a little sliver of vulnerability caused by years of water seeping into it. I gathered my strength a final time and forced all the magic I had left into that pocket of air. It wasn’t as wide as a needle, but it was big enough.

CRACK!

The bottom of the cavern ceiling blew out with an enormous roar, as though a bucket full of grenades had just exploded next to it. The trickles of water became a rushing torrent that cascaded everywhere, and violet tremors shook the ground under my feet. Dust and dirt and rock zipped through the air like shrapnel. I dived to the ground and rolled back, back, back — away from Dawson, the two giants, and the stalactites that ringed the ceiling over their heads. My eyes latched onto a recess in the cavern wall, and I scrabbled over and into it. The space was just barely big enough to shield my body, but the rock here was harder than that above, which had been weakened by the water.

The stalactites that had been hanging overhead dropped to the ground like pointed guillotine blades. The first wave skewered the giant who’d been injured before, until he resembled some sort of oversize voodoo doll with a mass of rocky pins stuck in it. The second man got half a dozen steps back toward the mine entrance before one of the rock spears split his head open. I saw his blood hit the wall even through the spray of water, dust, and falling rock.

Tobias Dawson was smarter than his minions. Tougher too. Like me, he dived forward, avoiding most of the deadly stalactites. The dwarf bounced up onto his feet.

He saw me cowering in the recess, and his blue eyes narrowed in hate.

“I’ll kill you for this, bitch!” His roar echoed through the cavern even above the hiss of water and thunder of the splintered stones.

The dwarf ran in my direction, still dodging the falling rocks and cascading water. His blue eyes burned with magic. He stretched out his hands, ready to throw his power at me or to drag me out of the recess and into the falling debris. Probably both. The dwarf might survive the punishment of the ceiling collapse, but I wouldn’t.

My body wasn’t as tough and strong as his. I didn’t have my knives, so there was only one thing left I could do to fight him off.

This time, I threw my magic at him.

My Ice magic. It was all I had left. I’d exhausted the Stone to collapse the ceiling. So I focused on the water droplets flicking through the air in front of the charging dwarf, freezing and flinging them at Dawson. I was already weakened from the effort of drawing on so much magic, so instead of the knives I’d imagined, the droplets turned to shards of Ice that did little more than prick the dwarf ’s thick skin. It didn’t slow him down. Another few feet, and he’d be able to reach me. And then I’d get dead.

Determination rose inside me — cold, hard, unflinching.

I reached for my Ice magic again. It was harder this time, so fucking hard, like trying to scoop up water with wide fingers. Every time I gathered up enough power, it slipped away. So I reached for it again, clenching my hands around the trickle of magic inside me. It tried to slip away, but I held on tight and pulled, yanking it to me, bending it to my will.

And something inside me wrenched.

For a moment, I felt like a raw egg that had been dropped on the floor — broken, messy, oozing. But then magic filled me. More Ice magic than I’d ever felt before.

I didn’t stop to think about where it had come from or whether this was all some sort of deathbed hallucination on my part. I used the magic to freeze more of the water rushing through the air and threw it at Dawson.

This time, the droplets formed long, slender icicles that zipped through the dusty air like daggers. The dwarf saw them coming. He stopped in his tracks about five feet away from me and brought his own Stone magic to bear, trying to block my attack, trying to use his elemental power to harden his skin against the crude weapons, as I’d done so many times before.

But it didn’t work.

Maybe he was too distracted by the chaos around him.

Maybe I’d wrecked his concentration with my initial sneak attack. Maybe I’d upset the order of his perfectly arranged duel, and he just didn’t know how to recover from the unfairness of it all.

Whatever the reason, my icicles slammed into Dawson’s chest with all the force of one of my silverstone knives. The blue glow of magic snuffed out of the dwarf ’s bulging eyes, and he opened his mouth to scream. The rest of the ceiling began to collapse, drowning out his hoarse cries.

It should have been dark in the cavern, which was choked by dust, debris, mud, and water. But it wasn’t.

There was a light on — me. I stared down at my hands.

The spider rune scars on my palms, the ones that had been caused by the silverstone metal burning into my flesh all those years ago, were on fire — with icy flames.

And I felt the power surge through me again, greater than before. Ice magic that felt almost as strong as my Stone power did.

Not good.

For a moment, my eyes met the dwarf ’s. Panic, fear, pain, and awe flashed in Tobias Dawson’s gaze. And then he was gone, swallowed up by the falling rock, rushing water, and suffocating dust. I curled into a tight ball and huddled in the wall recess as the earth and stone shook around me. The stones’ vibrations roared a violent, unending scream inside my head. I’d shattered the cavern ceiling with my magic, caused it as much pain as Dawson and his mining equipment ever had. The sound made my stomach clench. But it had been the stone or me, and I’d choose me every single time.

So I closed my eyes and listened to the stone wail as the cavern collapsed on top of me.