Curse the Dawn

A few moments later, Richardson started maneuvering us toward the side of the line again. I braced myself for what was usually the bumpiest part of the ride, which turned out to be a good thing. Because we hadn't even started to exit when something smashed into his shields, shuddering them all around us.

For a split second I thought it was another flare until a weirdly distorted face appeared in front of me. It was bathed in jumping blue light, like a photograph taken underwater, and was squashed into the mage's shields as if pressed against a glass bubble. But the wild blond hair and furious green eyes were the same as ever.

Shit.

The mage stared at Pritkin for a startled second, apparently as shocked as I was, and then he scowled and jerked us hard to the left. We bounced off a thick band of power ru

I screamed, knowing what it meant if Pritkin's shields failed. But before the blast even cleared, he plowed into us again, hard enough to almost force us out of the line. Unfortunately, Richardson recovered quickly and hit back, bouncing Pritkin's bubble of protection so far into the distance that it was lost from sight among the jumping blue maelstrom.

"Pritkin! Get out of here!" I yelled, the need for subtlety over. I received no reply. I really hoped that, for once, he'd been sensible and retreated. He was at a serious disadvantage otherwise. He couldn't hit Richardson hard enough to risk rupturing his shields and killing us both, but the mage could attack him with impunity.

Make that mages. A flicker of movement caught my eye and I glanced behind us to see a dozen or more ripples in the energy stream, like sharks slicing through water. And off to the left, something dark appeared against all that jumping color. I deliberately didn't look directly at it in case I tipped Richardson off. He didn't see it, but apparently one of the mages following us did. A bolt of energy—red instead of blue—flashed past to explode against Pritkin's shields.

"No!" Richardson yelled. "Not inside the line!"

Nobody paid him any attention. Two more bursts screamed by us moments later, barely missing Pritkin, who dodged out of the way at the last second. Leaving the spells to burst against the river of power below.

I didn't see what they did—we were moving too fast and were almost immediately beyond them—but I felt it. The line trembled and wavered all around us, and energy bands that a moment before had been straight and more or less steady were suddenly arcing across our path. The already dangerous flow of the ley line became a raging torrent, tossing us around like a speck of dust in a cyclone. Lightning or something equally energetic sparked off the mage's shields as we spun, rolled and bobbed uncontrollably, swimming on wild currents of power.

I caught a glimpse of Pritkin barely avoiding being speared by a tower of blue flame. But he ducked under a fiery arch the size of a house and it surged past him. We weren't so lucky. Richardson swerved to avoid a stuttering mass that had erupted right in front of us and ran straight into another one hard enough that the impact reverberated through my bones.

Glowing streaks and odd swirls of light curled all around us. For a moment, all I could see were bursts of power exploding everywhere, burning through our bubble of protection like acid, before the mage made a sudden, violent motion and tore us free. The current tossed us to the side of the line, where a thick band of power threw us back once more, straight into the path of the granddaddy of all fissures.

It covered half the line's width in a towering column of angry blue fire. A tidal wave of prickling energy rushed over me as we breached the outer skin, and then it flared into a blinding brightness. I couldn't see anything, blue-white light filling my vision and my brain, overwhelming and unbearable.

My eyes slowly adjusted to show me the inside of the flare. Power pulsed everywhere in glowing blue-white streams that sheared chunks off Richardson's remaining shields every couple of seconds. They couldn't last at this rate—and as soon as they were gone, so were we.

Richardson must have had the same thought, because he started prying my arms off his waist. "I regret that there will not be a trial," he said as I struggled and fought. "I looked forward to hearing you beg for your life."

My fists bunched in his suit coat, trying to hold on, but he tore them loose and got his hands around my wrists. "Please! You can't do this!" I screamed, my eyes on the leaping wall of fire outside.

"I suppose that will have to do," he said regretfully. And with a brutal shove, he sent me flying backward, straight into the heart of the flame.

Chapter Six

My scream lodged in my throat as reality whited out and I was consumed by a pain so pure that it took over everything: my body, my thoughts, even my name. I tried to breathe through the panic that was threatening to choke me, but I couldn't even tell if I had lungs anymore. I tried to reach out, desperate to feel, see, do something, but if I still had a hand it didn't co

And then it was over.

The pain was gone between one breath and the next, leaving me shaken and very, very confused. I gasped in air and it tasted wrong, sharp and bitter, but I could breathe. My head was spi

I risked opening my eyes and looked down in disbelief at my unmarked hands, at my body that for some reason was not being incinerated. But once my eyes adjusted to the intense light inside the flare, I didn't have to wonder why. A familiar golden haze surrounded me on all sides, pushing against the jumping blue field, keeping it back.

The field was in the shape of Agnes' stolen ward, the one passed onto me by my mother before she died. It was given only to the Pythias or their heirs, and it was designed to be powered by the collective energy of the Circle. That wasn't true anymore—they'd cut me off as soon as they realized that it might interfere with their plans for my early retirement—but a friend had managed to fix it. He'd set it to draw from the only other power source of that magnitude available: that of my office.

It was the same pool of power that should let me shift out of here, if the null net had stopped working. I tried to access it again but went nowhere. Yet the ward burned brighter than I'd ever seen it, with an almost blinding golden light. I decided I didn't much care about the reason right now—I was just grateful for it.

Especially considering what the fissure was doing to Richardson's shields.

The column of pure energy tore through his remaining protection like it wasn't even there. For an instant the light haloed him, with every eyelash, every seam on the tailored suit, every ghostly freckle on the bridge of his nose clearly visible. He screamed, eyes opened blind and dilated, mouth wide and soundless, as light spilled through him, bright enough to give me a glimpse of dark bone inside incandescent flesh.

Then he was gone, with nothing to show that he'd been there but a few ashes that the current snatched away.

Even when I squeezed my eyes shut, the image was there, burnt in white-hot light behind my eyelids. My stomach rebelled and bile burned my throat. I pressed my arms over my stomach and waited for the same thing to happen to me, for my ward to fail, for the end. Then something hit me, sending me spi