“I’m crazy, and you’re fat,” Feir said. But he picked up Solon and put him on his back.
“Magically too. I’ve got a plan. And I am not fat.”
For all that he second-guessed plans when they were all safe, Feir knew to obey in battle. He opened himself quickly, and Solon dipped into Feir’s Talent. He lashed himself onto Feir’s back with magical bonds. Then he quickly readied five thin weaves. It still hurt, but not nearly as much as using his own Talent.
“Now,” he said. “Jump.”
Feir leaped over the side of the bridge. The rope was in the perfect place—not because of the wind or the power of prophecy, but because Solon pulled it there with magic. As Feir grabbed the rope, Solon activated the other weaves.
Holes were torn in the sides of each of the fire pots and air inside them suddenly compressed, jetting the oil in the pots out onto the bridge. The last weave dropped a little spark in middle of the oil.
There was a satisfying whoosh. The river suddenly lit orange and white and heat washed over the falling mages.
Then things were happening too rapidly to follow. Feir had caught the rope with both hands and a leg. He immediately flipped upside down. The sudden change in direction caught Solon’s arm across Feir’s shoulder and snapped it. If it weren’t for the magical bonds holding him, he would have dropped like a stone. The rope, anchored on both sides of the bridge, first stretched, bowing down toward the middle. Because Feir and Solon hadn’t made it to the middle of the bridge, that meant they zipped headfirst for fifteen paces. Then the rope tore loose at the castle end.
Solon was watching light explode over them, distantly aware that they were swinging with terrific speed toward the river. The bridge was engulfed in flames leaping merrily into the night. Or maybe that was pain exploding in his head. Then they slapped into something cold and hard.
He took a breath. It was bad timing. The cold hard stuff had become cold wet stuff. They were under water. He coughed as Feir came to the surface, and Solon thought dimly that the man was either a hell of a swimmer or something was dragging them out.
Feir was on his knees in the shallows, holding up his hands. From his perch on the man’s back, Solon saw that Feir’s hands had been torn to bloody pieces by the rope. He could see bone.
“Ah, you’re better off than I thought you’d be,” Dorian’s voice was saying as his magic hauled them out of the river. “Stop lollygagging, you two. We need to get going if we’re going to make it to Khalidor in time.”
“Lollygagging?” Solon asked, glad to find that he had strength to be outraged.
“Khalidor?” Feir said.
“Well, that is where my bride is waiting. I can’t wait to find out who she is. I think Curoch is going to find its way there, too.”
Feir cursed, but Solon—broken arm, purple vision, and all—just laughed.
65
As they came within the arc of his sword or the reach of his lashing feet or striking fists, men went down like grain in a summer storm. To Kylar, who had always been gifted at fighting, battle suddenly made sense. The chaos unfolded into beautifully intricate, interlocking, and logical patterns.
Just by looking at a man’s face, he could judge instantly: parry left, hesitate, lunge, clear. A man died and fell far enough away that he didn’t impede Kylar’s movements. Next, sweep right, roll in, bear fist to nose. Spin, hamstring, throat. Parry, riposte. Stab.
Parsed to the individual percussion of each chamber of his heart, battle had a rhythm, a music. Not a sound was out of place. The tenor of ringing steel layered over a bass of the fists and feet hammering flesh—soft to hard, hard to soft—and the baritone of men’s curses, punctuated by the staccato percussion of rending mail.
With his Talent singing, Kylar was a virtuoso. He fought in a fine frenzy, a dancer possessed. Time never slowed, but he found his body reacting to sights he didn’t consciously see—turning, dodging under blows his mind never registered, striking with the awesome speed and grace of that angel of death, the Night Angel.
The highlanders sought to overwhelm him by force of numbers. Their blades caught the air within an inch of Kylar’s ear, within half an inch of his stomach, a quarter of an inch from his thigh. He rode the front of each beat, cut the margins closer and closer, until the bodies he was killing were being pushed forward instead of falling back, and pressing in closer on him.
He sheathed Retribution and grabbed the hand holding a blade aimed at his belly and yanked a skinny highlander across the circle to stab his fellow. Reaching around his own back with a knife, he diverted a sword thrust while his other knife found an eye socket.
Two spears came for him and he dropped to the floor, yanking both forward. As each impaled a body, he swung up, destroying another highlander’s face with a kick.
But the situation was hopeless. Within a cage of tangled weapons and thrashing, dying men, he’d be trapped in moments.
Light as a cat, he sprang to the back of a man dying on his knees and vaulted off the shoulder of one of the impaled spear bearers.
As he flipped sideways through the air, a ball of green wytchfire the size of his fist streaked through the air at him. It caught his cloak and broke into pieces. He landed on his feet and ducked under a sword cut. His cloak burst into green flame. Kylar tore the cloak off as he dove between two spears.
Holding one edge of the cloak, he came to his feet and wrapped the cloak around another of his attackers. The green flame raced for the man’s skin, and there burned a fierce blue as he screamed.
Another ball of wytchfire sizzled through the air and Kylar dove behind one of the pillars supporting the high ceiling.
There were two beats of rest. Kylar had killed or disabled more than half the Khalidorans, but now the others played to their strengths. Point, counterpoint.
“To the captain! Keep a meister in view!” Roth shouted. Men streamed to the captain to form a wedge between Kylar and Roth, who had retreated to the throne to watch.
But Kylar wasn’t wasting his time as he stood in the protection of the pillar. He knew that if he wanted a chance at Roth, he had to kill the wytches. Both of them were eyeing the spaces between the pillars where he would have to run.
He pooled the ka’kari in his hand, and keeping the feel of those fingers of magic in his mind, willed it to dribble down the length of his sword. Seeming to sense his urgency, the ka’kari coated the steel instantly. Both ka’kari and steel shimmered out of visibility.
Kylar dodged out from the pillar and the fingers were on him instantly. He cut in a quick circle and felt them shrivel and die out of existence. Grabbing the edge of one of the long tapestries that covered the walls of the throne room, Kylar moved toward the pillar, but not before wytchfire leaped from a wytch’s fingers.
If he’d had time to think about it, Kylar wouldn’t have tried to block with his sword—it was insanity to try to block magic—but it was his ingrained response. The flat of his blade hit the green globe of fire. Instead of bursting, the fire whooshed into the blade.
Kylar dodged around a pillar with the tapestry in one hand and a sword now visible because of the green flame crackling through it. With all the strength of his Talent, he leaped.
He soared into the air in the middle of the throne room, and then as the tapestry met a pillar, it abruptly changed his trajectory and launched him up the steps.
The other wytch must have thrown wytchfire that Kylar hadn’t seen, because the tapestry gave way and tore a moment before Kylar was going to release it. He hit the landing between the flights of stairs with eight feet of burning tapestry in his hands. He hurled it toward the highlanders and slashed at the wytch chanting not two steps away.
The top of the wytch’s head opened, exposing his brain. The man spun, but his lips completed his incantation. The thick black tendrils that had been squirming under the skin of his arms fattened grotesquely like rippling muscles and tore free of the wytch’s arms, bursting through his skin.