Cato exhaled. No sense wasting his last hours alive by dwelling on things he’d already spent too long dwelling on. But what else could he do? The guard had made it clear he wasn’t going to allow Cato to strike up a conversation with him. Must have learned that trick from Acantha. He shifted restlessly on his bed, mindful not to jar his arm. An odd contradiction, to be simultaneously bored and desperate for the time not to pass…
“Could you at least tell me what time it is?” he asked the guard, when the silence had begun to press so hard on him that he couldn’t resist. The man ignored him so thoroughly that for a moment he doubted that he’d even spoken at all. His boredom intensified, his restlessness growing with no outlet through which to expel it. He could probably get out of the manacles if he really worked at it. Acantha still had the key—assuming, of course, that she hadn’t destroyed it just to be safe—but the mechanisms were old and poorly maintained. It had been a while since he’d practiced the non-magical art of lockpicking—he hadn’t seen the point ever since the early acquisition of an artifact that did the job by magic instead—but he had a feeling he could still get the manacles off if he really put his mind to it. It’d pass the time, at any rate.
And then what, he wondered? Unlock the manacles, and then… what? Take them off? Let the gem surge to life again, banish the awful pain in his arm in exchange for being reconnected to Haspar? It wasn’t worth it. Not only would his boss make the remainder of his life so miserable that he’d likely wish he’d been killed with the manacles still on, he’d also make it harder for the dragons to defend his home. He couldn’t be certain, but he had a feeling that the gemstone being blocked from Haspar’s perception would make it harder for the mages to locate the cavern. At the very least, it would mean they had to attack through the actual entrances, instead of transporting themselves inside the way Cato had that first day. That had been daring and reckless even for him… and not only had he had weeks of preparation, he’d also had his staff, which bore the coven’s most powerful navigational artifacts. No, without those—and without access to Cato as a compass—Haspar and his mages wouldn’t risk teleportation.
The manacles stayed on, then. And they stayed locked, too, just in case one of his fellow mages found him and thought to ensure that he rejoined them. Cato just wished that didn’t also mean that his arm was going to feel more and more like it was rotting off.
It was hard to say how much time passed before the first, distant sounds of battle reached them in the palace prison. Oddly enough, it was the guard who alerted Cato, not his own instincts—the pain in his arm was reaching the point where it was hard to think about anything else, and it must have filtered out the sounds that the dragon was reacting to now, his head turning in the direction of the door and his hand moving automatically to the hilt of his sword. Cato tensed, wondering exactly what the order had been. Kill the prisoner as soon as the fight started? Maybe. That’s what he’d have suggested, if he’d been asked what the best course of action was. Don’t risk the mages getting to him…
Still, he was grateful when the dragon let go of his sword. Cato might have talked a big game back before the Queen, telling them to kill him before he could do any more damage, but the truth was that the closer his death came, the more he hoped to push it back just a little further. Another few hours, maybe. Another few minutes. Honestly, he’d taken another few seconds if that was all that was on offer …
Cato closed his eyes, wishing he could go out and see what was going on but settling instead for the next best thing. The sounds of battle were muffled but unmistakable—dull thuds and thumps as draconic bodies struck their foes, the occasional piercing cry of a voice through the hubbub, and the odd, hard-to-place sounds associated with the use of magic… he heard rushing wind, the distant crackling of the fire, the splash of water and the brassy, outraged bugling of dragon voices. What he couldn’t make out, among all the noise, was who was winning.
He hoped, with everything in it, that it was the dragons. They were good people, and they didn’t deserve what he’d brought down on them. But most of all, as the battle continued on outside his eerily quiet little prison cell, he thought about Acantha. He’d been trying to keep her out of his mind all day, not wanting to get distracted from the important task of getting as much information out as possible… but with that done, there was nothing to stop him from going back to her in his mind. The ache it put in his chest was almost enough to drown out the pain in his arm.
If anyone could take on those mages, he told himself, it was Acantha. They might have magic, but she had decades of experience with that sword, and the strongest fighting spirit he’d ever encountered. He’d also seen her teeth and claws firsthand, and he knew that even Haspar would think twice before going up against that much firepower. She hadn’t been among the dragons who’d come to listen to his all-day lecture on the strengths and weaknesses of mages, which was more than fair (for all that he’d been selfishly hoping for one last glimpse of her before the battle.) He trusted that the information had gotten to her regardless, and he trusted that she—more than anyone—would know exactly what to do with it.
Maybe she knew everything she needed already, he reasoned. After all, she’d zeroed in on his weaknesses pretty quickly in the time they’d spent together. Maybe that was how he’d spend the rest of his life, he thought as the sounds of battle echoed on the edges of his hearing. Maybe he’d simply disappear into the memories of the best weeks of his life… the moments he’d shared with her.
What else was left for him to do, while he waited for death to claim him?
Chapter 21 - Acantha
Acantha was with the forces stationed in the depths of the Palace when the attack came, exactly as scheduled. Her sword moved in her hand like quicksilver as she led the charge from the tunnel out into the forest beyond, barely pausing to assess the situation before she and her soldiers were diving into the fray. Dozens of mages, if not hundreds, all wearing the same dark gray robes Cato favored, all with identical gray-eyed faces… and her suspicions were confirmed when she drove a killing strike into the heart of one and felt the flesh give way at once, as though it was only an inch thick. The mage she’d struck vanished into a cloud of smoke—and emboldened by this, her soldiers swarmed forward.
The mages may have been shadows, but the blows they delivered before they were dispatched were all too real, and any false confidence on the part of the dragons was quickly put to rights as wounds began to be delivered. She called her forces back into the mouth of the tunnel, mindful that their role here was to prevent the entrance from being breached, not to chase down shadows. The number Cato had given them was burning in her mind—eleven mages, eleven enemies to put an end to. No matter how many of these shadows they destroyed, it was those eleven they had to keep at the front of their minds.
She could hear the distant howls of wolves out in the forest, and was grateful to know they were out there, hunting the enemy in their own way. But even with that support, the shadowy mages began to push the dragons back. Acantha gritted her teeth as they gave ground inch by inch, pushed back into the long tunnel as the tireless waves of shadowy, blank-faced mages just kept coming. Who was sending them, she wondered? Surely this work was occupying at least a few of the eleven they had to worry about… every time a shadow fell, she checked to ensure that no flesh-and-blood human had been beneath its robes.
Her soldiers were taking care to avoid the mages’ blows, now, and she was relieved to see no fresh injuries. That relief quickly gave way to suspicion as yet another mage fell before her blade.
“This is too easy,” she growled to the soldier at her right. “Hold them here, fall back if necessary.”
The woman nodded without so much as glancing at her, her twin shortswords flashing as she felled another of the seemingly endless wave. Acantha nodded once, then turned on her heel, leading part of the group back through the tunnel towards the Palace. When it came down to the heat of battle, instinct was all a leader had to go on—instinct honed by decades of experience. Her instinct that told her the tunnel wasn’t the main thrust of the mages’ attack. She had to trust that… and if she was somehow wrong, she had to trust the soldiers she’d left behind to handle the situation.
But she hadn’t been wrong. She knew that as they hurried through the silent chambers of the Palace, from the other end of the tunnel that opened in the forest, presumably built as a secret escape route for the royals in case of an attack. They moved through the Palace, Acantha noting automatically that her soldiers were still in place outside the Archives. She could only hope that the additional guards she’d deployed to protect the Queen were in place, too… and that she’d struck the right balance between having firepower on the front lines, and plenty of support in the rear.
They stopped on the steps of the Palace, and Acantha narrowed her eyes as she took in the scene with nothing but a soldier’s calm.
Dozens of dragons were aloft, scattered throughout the whole cavern and locked in airborne battle with what looked like great, shadowy beasts… three of them in total. These were no mindless drones like what they’d been turning back at the other end of the tunnel, that much was clear from the urgency with which the dragons were fighting. Three mages accounted for then, she thought, tearing her gaze from the airborne battle and studying what was closer at hand. There—on the great expanse of stone in front of the Palace, standing four abreast in gray robes, their eyes glowing with that strange, silvery light that was so like the Fog. As she watched, one of the figures struck out with one empty hand, curled as though around an invisible sword handle… and an unwary dragon to her right screamed, a wound opening in one wingsail. Acantha ordered the soldiers behind her forward to join the fray, her heart thudding in her chest.
Three in the air, four down here in front of the palace, at least two sending the shadows at the other end of the tunnel, if her understanding of magical resource distribution was accurate… that was nine. There would be ten, with the leader bringing up the rear once the initial wave had broken the back of the defenses. So where was the last one? She scanned the airborne battle again, then looked down at the scene before her, where the fresh reinforcements seemed to have reinvigorated the defenders. As she watched, she saw a squad of wolves, moving like one mind in six bodies, circling around behind the group of mages to flank them. She hadn’t miscounted. It was possible that there were three mages attacking the tunnel, that all ten were accounted for here.
But her instinct wasn’t telling her to wade into the fray here. It was telling her she was missing something. What were the powers Cato had told them about? Transformation into great monsters, that was evident up above her. Summoning elemental devastation out of thin air, she was witnessing that firsthand. He’d even warned them about the armies of shadow enemies she’d left defending the tunnel.
But what of deception? What of trickery? Acantha followed her gut into the palace, breaking into a run as she headed for the chamber in which the Queen was being protected. Grim certainty arose in her as she heard distant groaning… and when she rounded the corner, horror struck her. Blood streaked the floor, half-destroyed furniture scattered everywhere… among the unconscious bodies of at least half a dozen guards. At a groan, she hastened to the side of one of the guards, who grabbed her wrist in a vise grip when she reached down to him, blood coating his face from a wound on his scalp.
“Captain, it’s the Prince,” he rasped. “He’s working with them. I saw him—saw him drive his sword into one of his own guards—”
“No,” Acantha breathed, barely able to comprehend what the man was saying.
“Save her, Captain. The Queen—”
“I’m on it. Good work,” she told him firmly, rising to her feet and hoping like hell she wasn’t leaving a man to die. But if she didn’t get into the Queen’s chambers, even more people were going to die…
She kicked the door down, adrenaline and fury lending enough power to the blow that the lock splintered as well as the hinges, knocking the entire door out of its frame and sending it slamming onto the stone floor beyond. Sure enough, there was Prince Conrad, covered in blood, a sword in one hand and a calculating look on his face as he spun to see who’d come to interrupt him.
“Acantha!” That was Queen Lana, her voice desperate. There was a deep, bleeding gash in her side, her dress torn where the blade had struck. “Something’s wrong, Conrad’s lost his mind—”