One of the apprentices fell; the other staggered into the wall and braced himself, but managed to stay awake. Unable to run because she was being held up onto her toes by the taller youth’s grip, Rexei was forced to grab at his fingers in the effort to pry them off her neck. The metal collar prevented only two of his fingers from squeezing painfully into her throat; the rest dug in deep enough to choke.
Stearlen shook her even as he tightened his grip, growling, “Don’t you dare try any more spells! You will come with me and stand where I tell you, and you will not move from that spot until we tell you what to do, you little grease stain!”
Dragging her forward, he didn’t wait for the last apprentice to finish shaking off the dizziness imparted by her spell. Forced to stumble in his wake, Rexei continued to try to pry his fingers from her neck. It hurt to keep humming the warding spells in the back of her mind, but she was so close to escape, she had to get them back up and running strong so that she could . . . step out between the slanted steps of the tiers ringing the power room, endure another shake from the novice, and be ordered to stand still and be silent.
Yanking his hand off her throat, Stearlen stepped away, leaving her with an unobstructed view of the power room. Instead of crystals topping spikelike pedestals, all surrounding a huge throne at the very center, the power room had been smoothed flat and painted with ring within ring of runes and wards, symbols and sigils. Painted, not just chalked, in several hues. The foreign mage had been busy in the intervening days; if she hadn’t realized within seconds that this piece of spell-crafted artistry was going to be the source of her demise and the center of a plan to throw the world down into chaos and despair with a Netherhell invasion, she would have admired the jewel-tone lines and pastel swirls.
There were more details to see, all of which she took in quickly as Stearlen moved a few steps away. Most of the apprentices and lesser-ranked priests were scattered around the room in random clumps. Those who had strong magic, fourteen of them, had been spaced around the chamber at regular intervals, while the Aian mage who had started this mess stood in one of the cleared circles painted on the floor. Spaced between pairs of chanting mage-priests were mirrors.
They did not reflect the power room, however, but rather peered into other, mostly unfamiliar locations. For a moment, she thought she recognized one as the courtyard of a high-ranked priest’s manor which she had once upon a time delivered a sack of scrolls and letters to as a journeyman in the Messengers Guild. She only had time for a brief, angled glimpse of that mirror, though. The novice standing nearest her drew in a deep breath.
“Grandmaster Torvan!” Stearlen called out, his voice cutting through the chanting, though not stopping it. “He’s a mage!”
Rexei paled and closed her eyes, humming hard. Stearlen had said any more spells, but the ones she was using to thwart the compulsion, those technically weren’t more, they were simply the same ones as before. The hard part lay in changing their melody enough to break the controlling magics, not just shove them aside, without triggering a blinding headache.
The Aian male turned, one of the few in the chamber not chanting. “What did you say?”
“I said, he’s a mage. He knocked out Ervei, Talos, and Doric with some sort of sleeping spell,” the apprentice priest added. “Almost got Frankei, too. He’s shaking it off outside, still.”
Stepping over the painted lines, his face a pale, tight mask of fury, Torven stalked up to Rexei. Just as Stearlen had, he grabbed the wool-clad captive by the throat. “What else do we not know about you, boy?”
His magic flowed into the collar, reinforcing its obedience spells. Rexei snapped her eyes open, compelled to speak . . . but she could still direct what she had to say. “Almost my whole life?”
For a moment, his fingers tightened, hurting her throat even more than the apprentice had. With the physical force came a rush of magical energy, too. It was brief, though; just as she reached up to try to pry his fingers off, maybe even break his thumb, Torven shoved her back far enough that she swayed and staggered. Rexei winced in pain as the compulsion to stay in one place attacked her nerves for daring to move half a step back. She quickly stepped forward again.
Torven grimaced, mind spinning rapidly through the choices. “Light blue paint!” he snapped at Stearlen—then jabbed a finger at their captive’s metal-banded throat. “You, Rexei Longshanks, or whatever you call yourself, will stay right here until one of us commands you to move. You will obey our commands, and you will do nothing to disrupt this ritual.
“I said, get me the light blue paint,” he repeated impatiently, whirling on Stearlen. “I have to add in the fact that this idiot is a mage and reword the oathbinding contract to account for anything else this idiot is that we do not yet know and don’t have the time to find out—now, or I’ll sacrifice you to bind Nurem, instead!”
The only relief Rexei had from the despair of her situation was the abrupt shift from gloating to pallid fear on the apprentice’s face. He stumbled backward, then turned and dashed for a collection of pots and jars located on one of the lower tier risers a third of the way across the room. The Aian followed him at a more normal pace, hands fisted at his sides. Rexei struggled with her countering harmonies, trying to restrengthen them, but the mage had imbued extra energy into her collar, making it hard to concentrate.
The priests spaced around the edges of the room continued to gather energies via chants and gestures that were at odds with the horror of the moment, given how graceful the slow swoop and scoop of their hands and arms looked. They collected those energies into crystals vaguely similar to the ones she had seen when getting the prisoners out of this horrid place. Using some sort of hovering spell, Torven Shel Von floated above the painted runes lining the smooth stone of the floor and carefully applied new symbols around the edge of a medium-sized circle set right next to the edge of the largest one in the center.
As much as she did not want to be surprised by what was coming, Rexei forced herself to close her eyes and concentrate. Humming the base melody under her breath, adding in the harmonies in her mind, she struggled to break the collar. A slight shift of her weight, half a foot’s length back . . . another foot . . . Her head ached, but she—bumped into someone.
“So you can cast in spite of that thing,” a male voice said.
She belatedly recognized the quiet murmur as Frankei’s voice, the novice she had not successfully put to sleep with her second spell. She hadn’t had much contact with him during her Servers Guild efforts, but she did know him as one of the quieter priest apprentices. Now she felt his hand on the back of her neck, sending a shiver of fear down her spine as he spoke.
“Cast and move . . . despite being told not to go anywhere.” He did not throttle her from behind, but he did do something that nudged at the side of her throat. “Don’t shout, and don’t fight,” he ordered softly . . . and eased away the collar. His hand gripped her shoulder, holding her still even as hope exploded upward in her heart. “You’ll still need a huge distraction to get out of here . . . and from what these men have planned, you’re going to need a friend hidden among them. Frankei Strongclip. That’s my name. Remember it.”
She didn’t turn, didn’t look at him. Not that she needed to; Frankei was one of those young men who had a bland, ordinary, forgettable face, with the typical rectangular face and dark brown hair of most southern-born Mekhanans. Even his dark brown eyes weren’t too unusual, though they were several shades darker than her own. But she did whisper, “Why?”