who’d been trying to come in. I sagged against the sill with relief: we’d stopped Solya’s fire, we’d stopped Marek’s advance. He’d already spent so much magic, more than he could afford surely, and we’d still halted him; surely now he’d think better of—
“Get ready,” Sarkan said.
Solya was casting another spell. He held his hands up into the air at an angle, all the fingers pointed with his eyes looking straight along them, and silver lines lanced out from each finger and split into three. The arcing lines came down over the wall, each one landing on a different target—a man’s eye, a chink in his armor at the throat, the elbow of his sword-hand, the place directly over his heart.
The lines didn’t seem to do anything, as far as I could see. They just hung in the air, only barely visible in the dark. Then dozens of bows twanged at once: Marek had three lines of archers ranged up behind his foot-soldiers. The arrows caught onto the silver lines and followed them straight home.
I put out a hand, a useless gesture of protest. The arrows flew on. Thirty men fell at once, cut down at a stroke, all of them defenders at the breach. Marek’s soldiers shoved into the gap, spilling into the trench, and the rest of his army crowded in behind them. They began to try and push the baron’s soldiers back towards the first passageway.
Every inch was hard-fought. The baron’s men had put up a bristling thicket of spears and swords pointing out ahead of them, and in the narrow space, Marek’s men couldn’t come at them without driving themselves onto the blades. But Solya sent another flight of arrows going over the walls towards the defenders. Sarkan had turned away: he was shoving through his papers, looking for a spell to answer this new one, but he wasn’t going to find it in time.
I put my hand out again, but this time I tried the spell the Dragon had used, to bring Kasia in from the mountainside. “Tual, tual, tual,” I called to the strings, reaching, and they caught on my fingers, thrumming. I leaned out and threw them away, down towards the top of the wall. The arrows followed them and struck against stone, clattering away in a heap.
For a moment, I thought the silver light was just lingering on my hands, reflecting into my face. Then Sarkan shouted a warning. A dozen new silver threads were pointing through the window—right at me, leading to my throat, my breast, my eyes. I only had one moment to grab up the ends in a bunch and blindly heave them away from me. Then the flight of arrows rushed buzzing in through the window and struck wherever I had thrown the lines: into the bookcase and the floor and the chair, sunk deep with the fletched ends quivering.
I stared at them all, too startled to be afraid at first, not really understanding that I’d nearly been struck by a dozen arrows. Outside, the cannon roared. I’d already begun to be used to the noise; I flinched automatically, without looking, still half-fascinated by how close the arrows were. But Sarkan was suddenly heaving the entire table over, papers flying as it smashed to the floor, heavy enough to shake the chairs. He pulled me down behind it. The high-whistling song of a cannon-ball was coming closer and closer.
We had plenty of time to know what was going to happen, and not enough to do anything about it. I crouched under Sarkan’s arm, staring at the underside of the table, chinks of light showing through the heavy wooden beams. Then the cannon-ball smashed through the window-sill, the opened glass panes shattering into fragments with a crash. The ball itself rolled on until the stone wall stopped it with a heavy thud, then it burst into pieces, and a creeping grey smoke came boiling out.
Sarkan clapped his hand over my mouth and nose. I held my breath; I recognized the stone spell. As the grey fog rolled gently towards us, Sarkan made a hooking gesture to the ceiling, and one of the sentinel-spheres floated down to his hand. He pinched open its skin, made a hole, and with another wordless, peremptory gesture waved the grey smoke into the sphere, until all of it was enclosed, churning like a cloud.
My lungs were bursting before he finished. Wind was whistling noisily in through the gaping wall, books scattered, torn pages riffling