Wicked As You Wish (A Hundred Names for Magic #1) - Rin Chupeco Page 0,58
Kay with no visible effort despite the man’s bulk.
“I’m sorry,” Ryker said, and a glowing ball of ice appeared in between his hands. “I can’t let any of you get—”
Tala took in every frustration and fear and anger currently tearing through her like a roller coaster, and flung it back out at her former crush.
The ball exploded in Ryker’s hands. With a stunned shout, he sprawled backward, the ice he was intending to release pinning him to the ground.
“Shit,” Ken groaned, “we gotta move. They’re here!”
“They?” But any further questions died on Tala’s lips when she saw a mass of people heading their way. Like her classmates back at Elsmore, they all walked with the same rigidity, sporting the same blank expressions and pale eyes.
“Surely they don’t expect us to fight them?” West protested. “They’re not the bad guys!”
“That’s exactly why they want us to!” Loki grabbed at West’s collar. “Move!”
“Let’s go, Tala!” Alex yelled, but she hesitated, staring at Ryker. The boy’s eyes opened, focused on her.
“Why?” Tala choked, though she already knew what his answer was.
Ryker held her gaze for a few seconds, then turned away. “You should have stayed at the bonfire,” he said. “Solaaci cortra mei, Atu garu nek as sol.”
Ice warped around him, spinning so fast that Tala would have been caught up in it if her father hadn’t acted quickly. He grabbed Tala around the midsection, then a startled Loki with the other hand, and physically flung them all out of range just as the spell crystallized into a large sphere, with Ryker and the rest of the agents trapped within.
Tala rolled back to her feet, hammered at the new barrier with her hands until they were numb with frost. “Ryker!” she shouted. “What are you doing? Ryker!”
“We have to get out of here, Tally,” her father said, reaching out to her. “The boy’s lost. We need to get to th’ sanctuary before they—”
Tala brushed him off. “Get away from me.”
“Tally, I…”
“Get away from me!” They called him the Scourge of Buyan because he had wiped that country off the map. The Scourge had waged most of the Snow Queen’s wars, had killed millions in her name.
The Scourge was her father.
“Get away,” she repeated, and ran off in the direction Ken and Zoe had gone, without looking back.
14
In Which Objects in Mirrors Are Closer Than They Appear
The Casa Grande domes were most definitely haunted. Tala had little reason to think about the place despite its proximity to Invierno, because the unofficial consensus of people in town who’d actually gone to visit was that there was nothing to see there but the smell of urine and walls filled with rough caricatures of people’s junk—two of her least favorite things.
That didn’t explain the moans she was now hearing, as another tore through the air.
“It could just be the wind passing through the trees,” West suggested.
“This is a desert,” Loki replied. “There aren’t any trees.”
“I know what’s making that noise,” Zoe said, glaring at the dome as if it could collapse from her gaze alone. “And I really wish he would shut up.”
Another wail bounced off the walls in response, as if trying to wring maximum sympathy for anyone still listening in.
“We’re wasting time,” Alex said. “Tala, we need your help.”
“What exactly do you want me to do?” Tala began, Alex already tugging her toward the largest of the domes.
“It’s easier to let you handle this than have Zoe dispel the illusion,” the boy said.
“Handle wha—” Tala felt something solid brush against her palm despite there being nothing physical in front of her. She reached forward again, and a strange rippling effect spread across the space, the dome in front of her warping and twisting until a tower now stood before them, old and decrepit and made of interlocking stone and tightly packed sand. There was no visible entrance, save for a smooth slab of rock blocking their way.
“Holy crap,” Tala said.
“Now comes the hard part.” Ken rapped against the uneven surface with the hilt of his sword. A voice rose from inside the rock, thin and wavery.
“Password?”
“Open sesame, Cassim!” Zoe snapped. The sounds of battle were drawing nearer. The titos and titas were reluctantly giving ground, fighting off arrows of ice with their fans but unwilling to attack the Deathless that were starting to close in around them. The firebird was bringing up the rear, sending retaliatory jets of flame in the ogre’s direction.
“Wrong password!” the voice squealed, sounding terribly pleased with itself.