Solyrian Conspiracy - C M Raymond & L E Barbant Read online

  It wasn’t his standard armament, but he knew his way around weapons of any sort.

  The pirate charged again, and this time Karl let him. He played defense, moving in a circle as the pirate’s hatchets smashed uselessly on the shield. Karl lashed out with his sword whenever there was an opening, and within seconds, the pirate was covered in the blood that was pouring out of a dozen small cuts. He redoubled his efforts and made even less progress.

  “Come out from behind that shield and fight me like a man!”

  Karl stepped back, his only response a laugh, which fueled the pirate’s rage. He charged, and Karl shoved the shield toward him, knocking the unsuspecting pirate on his ass.

  It was only then, while on the ground, that the pirate realized where Karl had maneuvered them: to precisely where his hammer had landed.

  The pirate scrambled to his feet, but it was too late. Karl dropped the sword and shield, and with one smooth motion, he grabbed the hammer and swung. The pirate managed to raise his hatchets in a feeble act of defense, but the force of the hammer was too great.

  Karl heard at least one wrist shatter, along with the splintering of the pirate’s tools.

  Karl drew out a cloth and wiped his hammer off as the pirate pulled himself to his feet, grabbing a spear off the ground with his good arm.

  “I made ye a promise,” Karl said, polishing the hammer meticulously. “Do ye remember?”

  The pirate sneered. “Go to hell.”

  “I promised,” Karl continued, “that I’d do ye the favor of cleaning me hammer before I rammed it down yer throat.” He gripped the hammer tighter. “Well, it’s clean, and I’m about ready to shut ye up forever.”

  “Do your worst,” the pirate cried, his spear held before him.

  Karl raised his hammer high, but before he could strike, a spear hurtled past him, skewing the pirate as if he were made of cheese. The large man gaped at the spear sticking out of his chest dumbly before falling to the ground.

  Karl stared in awe, then turned around to see Aysa smiling at him.

  “Too slow, old man.”

  “Fuck, ye blasted Baseeki! I’ve been waiting for that kill since we got here! Since before we got here! That kill was all I been lookin’ forward to.”

  Aysa smiled wider. “I was worried you’d throw your back out. I was always taught to help my elders. You know, old ladies across busy streets. Kitty cats from trees. Elderly, incontinent mountain men from the hands of dangerous foes.”

  Karl shook with anger. “If it wasn’t fer them bloody innocents to save, I’d teach ye some damned respect, ye smart-mouthed lil’ brat.”

  Aysa laughed, then ran back into the melee. “Then finish your job already. This thing’s not over yet.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The melee raged on around Hannah. She stood, eyes darting in every direction. Mylek fought Myrna, and the pirates battled both of them. It was impossible to know who would come out on top, if anyone. In all her years battling injustice, there had always been two groups—the bad guys and her team. But now, she stood in the middle of a mass of innocents fighting each other, their rage inflamed by the rhetoric of Aliz and the idealism of Kirill.

  Once she broke through Kirill’s mental facade, she saw the truth of his plan to work with the pirates. Even if Aliz hadn’t pulled her trick, war would have broken out today. Kirill would have used the attacking pirates as all the proof he needed to secure the power he craved. He would have stood strong in front of a united Solyr. But Aliz had stuck first, and now the pirates were descending upon a city torn apart from within.

  And they were happy to join in the fun.

  A broadsword arced in front of her, and she parried it with her knife. A blast of ice from her left hand froze the pirate dead in his tracks. She ran and leapt onto a merchant’s cart above the battling hordes.

  Looking over the crowd, she focused her mental attention, just like Hadley had taught her years ago. To all the people in the gathering, she sent a message. Myrna. Mylek. You must stop killing your fellow citizens. This is what they want! Work together. Defend your neighbors! Death is at your door.

  Even as she intended the words, she could feel them bouncing back at her. There were still no results from her mental magic. No transmission.

  She turned to Kirill, but the mental wall wasn’t coming from him. He was too busy screaming orders.

  Fuck, she thought. Who could it be?

  Her head throbbed, the source of the headache right behind her ear. Hannah could tell someone in the immediate vicinity was blocking her. Blocking her thoughts. Vitali had told her Aurel was a powerful mystic. If Kirill had inherited the gift, maybe his illegitimate child had as well.

  Her eyes scanned the crowd, looking for her mental assailant. As far as she could see, there was none.

  Until her eyes landed on the top of a turret looming over the gathering.

  Aliz.

  Her arms raised over the multitude. Hannah tried sending another message to all the citizens, but it failed. Aliz smiled wider.

  "Holy shit," Hannah spat. She realized the young leader of the Blue Scarves was the source of the blockade. It was the only answer.

  Aliz was Aurel’s daughter.

  Hannah jumped off the cart and fought her way through the crowd. She shoved a blue bolt of energy at the wooden door at the base of the turret since she was unwilling to take the time to check the knob. Its wood burst into flame as though it were dry tinder. She charged through, taking the stairs two at a time.

  Her heart beat like a drum as she made her way to the top of the turret. As she crested the last step, she paused at the door leading out toward the young girl she felt incredibly connected to. The girl who seemed to be another version of herself back in Arcadia, fighting for the good of her people. The girl who had sparked this riot. Finally, Hannah grabbed the knob, turned it, and pushed her way through.

  Hannah expected to see a sole figure overlooking the square filled with Mylek, Myrna, and pirates, all engaged in bloody warfare. She was surprised to find another person on top of the turret engaged in a fight with the young woman.

  Irmand had beaten Hannah to their foe, and now he fought Aliz with an energy she had hardly expected the man to have. He delivered blow after blow with his club, but Aliz parried with a set of long daggers. Her yellow eyes flashed as she moved with the speed and grace of the gymnasts Hannah remembered watching in the Noble District in Arcadia.

  It was as if every move had been coordinated between the two of them. Just as she expected the dance to go on into eternity, Irmand pivoted and spun down with an attack toward Aliz’s leg.

  Hannah held her breath. Time slowed. She knew Irmand’s attack had swung in beneath the defensive blades of the leader of the Blue Scarves. But before his steel had a chance to get a taste of flesh, Aliz’s eyes turned black, and Irmand’s club melted into thin air.

  Irmand stood dumbstruck.

  “Always underestimating me,” Aliz taunted.

  She took the opportunity to counter with a blast of brilliant white energy from the tips of her fingers. Hannah’s heart leapt as the captain of the guard’s massive body hurtled across the rooftop. The woman had the powers of Myrna, Mylek, and mystic.

  “Hey, megadouche,” Hannah shouted. Aliz turned toward her. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

  A sneer spread across the Mylek’s lips and her eyes turned as black as onyx. “With pleasure.”

  “The pleasure is all mine,” Hannah assured her.

  Summoning the Etheric energy of the nanocytes inside of her, she walked toward her foe. The girl was strong, and Hannah knew not to take that for granted. She twisted a hand in front of her and brought a glimmering ball of energy into her palm. Keeping it small, she focused a mass of power into the little package. Something to finish the fight.

  Hannah launched it at her and watched the girl spin to her side. Shards of stones bit at the air as the ball of energy made contact with the knee wall of
the rooftop.

  “A little slow, but not bad,” Aliz remarked. “Nice to fight somebody worth respecting.”

  Shooting to her feet, she shoved her hands in front of her. Hannah watched the girl’s lips move as a sparkling red orb appeared and churned between her fingers.

  “I save this for special occasions.” She held the bulb in her left hand and pushed the top of it with her right. Instead of shooting like a projectile, the ball expanded toward Hannah, slowly becoming an elongated form, like the tentacle of some deformed sea monster.

  “Really?” Hannah laughed.

  The red appendage picked up speed as it approached. With a flick of her wrist, Hannah raised an Etheric shield to ward off the attack.

  On contact, the red line didn’t even seem to strike the shield, but moved right through, as if it wasn’t even there.

  Hannah’s eyes widened as the red cord struck her in the gut. Warmth spread through her stomach and radiated through all her limbs. Her throat constricted, and she could feel her heart revolt against her will, crawling to a stop.

  “What have you…”

  Aliz walked slowly toward Hannah as the Master Magician from Arcadia dropped to the stone floor. Aliz knelt next to Hannah. Even with the pain tearing through her body, she could feel the Aliz’s warm breath on her neck.

  “There are things you haven’t seen. Many things. My father once told me hubris paves the road to destruction. I think, for you, this is the truest of truths.”

  Hannah fought to control her body. Not since she was a child had she felt so out of control. She could feel a warm, dark line of blood leaking out of her nose, down toward her mouth, but she could do nothing about it.

  “You see,” Aliz continued, “it’s only appropriate to use my special gift on you, the servant of the Matriarch. It’s the same spell I used on my father. It ravaged him from within. Caused him to bleed out with no wounds. It is clever, isn’t it?”

  Aliz laughed as her eyes turned back to their pale blue. Hannah stopped fighting the power tearing her apart on the inside; her body lay limp.

  “He was a man of the people, or that was what they said. He cared for the powerless. The poor. But all the while, he locked me away from the world. Hid me from their view. I was his shame, a bastard child born of lust and power. A tryst between the great Myrna Lord and a simple Mylek girl could not be tolerated.”

  Hannah could feel a battle going on inside her. Everything she had fought for survival. For existence.

  “He came to visit, lavishing me with gifts. Sure, I would smile. Thank him. Honor him. But it was all a game designed for his demise. They all loved him. Loved what they thought he was. But the son of a bitch was an actor on Solyr’s stage, and my power dropped the curtain and turned out the lights. He got everything he deserved.”

  "Like hell, he did.” Irmand’s impassioned voice cut through the night sky. He stood over Aliz, his cloak charred from the energy of her magical assault. “Your betrayal will meet the due process of my blade. Tonight, you will see your father face to face before your descent into hell!”

  He clenched his teeth and raised a sword.

  She gave a wicked laugh. “Irmand, your loyalty to the old man blinds you. Aurel cared only for the one thing I’ve never had—power. But power shifts. Now it is time for me to take that which is rightfully mine. Aurel is gone. Kirill is a damned fool. This city is in my hands.”

  “Prove it,” Irmand spat, stepping toward her.

  Aliz met him with arcing swings of her daggers. He knocked her advance away with the experience of years in military service and then launched his own attack. But she was ready for it. The young woman stepped aside and knocked the captain off-balance.

  Hannah watched them engage in martial combat. Aliz was playing with him like a cat with a mouse. She could destroy the man with less energy than a sneeze, but this fight was for nothing but pleasure. Hannah realized that she had met, for the first time in a long time, a formidable foe. Aliz had the strength and ingenuity of the matter-shifting Mylek, able to craft her body into earth-wrecking forms. She had the physical magic of the Arcadians and the psychic magic of the mystics, and then there was the mysterious strength that was currently shredding Hannah’s body beneath the skin.

  But there was one thing she didn’t have.

  The gift overlooked by many, lauded by few.

  The gift of the druids.

  Chapter Fifty

  Hannah concentrated on her on corporeal being. Focused on her body. Her eyes grew faintly red, but the redness grew, hotter and stronger. She focused her will, all the energy she’d had from birth, matched and accelerated by the power of the Matriarch. And as she focused, the energy did its job.

  It began a rapid accelerated healing process.

  She could feel the internal bleeding stop and life coming back to her limbs as she purged Aliz’s magic.

  Hannah looked up and saw Aliz moving in to finish the fight.

  Her eyes blazed black. She directed her hands toward Irmand’s feet and cast an enormous surge of blue energy toward the ancient rocks beneath them. The floor of the turret crumbled beneath the Etheric energy.

  Irmand disappeared in the blink of an eye.

  The girl smoothed her cloak, grinning with a quiet sense of satisfaction.

  "The enemy is vanquished?" Hannah asked as she stood, Etheric energy buzzing through her body.

  Aliz's head snapped toward Hannah. Her face was twisted with shock and rage, eyes narrowed. “Impossible.”

  “I thought we were so alike, both of us weapons forged by the injustice of our homes. But you have learned only to kill and manipulate and destroy, which is why you’ll never lead this city. A true leader knows how to heal.”

  Aliz stared at Hannah. "You’ll find it hard to heal when I’ve ripped your head off. This is my destiny, and you’re just some foreign bitch."

  “Damn straight, I am.” Hannah grinned. "I've said words like those before. You know where this road leads?"

  "I not only walk this road, but I laid the bricks on which I trod. Kirill needs to meet his end, and no one is going to stand in the way of my people taking back the city. It's rightfully ours. Rightfully mine. Don't you dare try to deny our destiny.”

  Hannah remained on high alert, but she cocked her head to the side. "Your birthright? This world owes you nothing. Your gift is strong, stronger than I imagined. It’s you who owe something to the world, but you’d rather waste it with your petty political intrigue.”

  “Enough talk!” the girl shouted as she crouched.

  She tilted her head back and let out a guttural yell that sounded more animal than human. As she did, her forehead expanded before Hannah’s eyes, and two massive horns, like those of the steers on the streets of Solyr, expanded from her skull into deadly points.

  “Impressive,” Hannah said, moving into a defensive position. “I bet you get all the guys.”

  Aliz launched toward her.

  Hannah gasped at the speed of her first step.

  “Shit,” she shouted as she launched her hands out in front of her, casting a giant wall of ice between her and the she-steer.

  But the twelve inches of frozen barricade did little. On contact, the wall burst into tiny frozen bits of shrapnel.

  Aliz didn’t slow.

  Just before they connected, Hannah jumped, shooting a stream of Etheric energy toward the stone rooftop below her. The blast gave her just enough extra lift to clear the charging horns.

  Hannah landed and got on one knee as Aliz stopped and spun toward her.

  “O-fucking-le,” Hannah murmured as she got to her feet.

  “Last chance,” Aliz growled. Her voice had dropped an octave. “Flee now and leave me to my business.”

  Hannah couldn’t help but laugh. “You have no idea how this works. The Bitch and Bastard Brigade never runs, and Justice is our business. Now, be a good little calf and call it a night. Turn yourself in, Aliz. Throw yourself on the mercy of the council. They
might go easy on you.”

  Aliz stood up straight. As her shoulders rolled back, her horns shrank and her head returned to normal. “Before the sun rises, the council will be no more.”

  She raised a hand, and a massive ice spear grew in her palm. Aliz used her Mylek magic to elongate her arm until it was longer than Aysa’s. Drawing it back, she launched the ice spear at Hannah with inhuman strength.

  “Oh, hell, no!” Hannah screamed, blasting the javelin from the air. “Ice spear is my move.”

  Aliz drew her hands apart, and a fireball appeared in each palm. She volleyed them at Hannah, who swiped them away as if they were gnats.

  Hannah walked slowly and purposefully toward Aliz, and the girl’s eyes grew as wide as the harvest moon. Hannah knew she was starting to understand exactly what, exactly who, she was up against.

  The girl spun her hands in front of her chest, as she churned a massive swirling stew of energy in front of her. The cloud grew. Hannah could feel the pulsing between them.

  “This isn’t going to end well for you,” Hannah told her. The girl’s face twitched, and a flash of emotion swept over her brow.

  “That was what Aurel said just before I killed him.” She let out an ungodly sound—a cry mixed with laughter and pain. “The bastard thought I loved him. Can you imagine? After a lifetime of being locked away? Of receiving gifts, but having no chance to live outside that room? That prison? Once my powers manifested, I knew it was only a matter of time before he would meet his end at my hand. His death brought me nothing but pleasure. Now yours will be the same.”

  She screamed and shoved the mass of glowing blue energy at Hannah.

  With the power of the Matriarch in her veins, Hannah could have blocked the energy. She could have sent it back at the young woman as quickly as it had come. But she did neither.