Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks [219]
“Second, Third, Fourth battalions, circle behind!” Logan shouted. Vi threw up the signal, but getting an army to change direction wasn’t a quick process. The Fourth Battalion might arrive in time to stop the Khalidoran force from retreating, but nothing could save the thousand men trapped with Logan in this garden.
Vi began attacking the ferali again, but now she was throwing a stream of balls of light toward the ferali’s eyes. She wasn’t trying to hurt it now, merely blind it, distract it, slow its killing. In moments, a dozen other magae followed her lead and dazzling streams of light flowed toward the great armed blob in the garden’s center.
For moments it was paralyzed, then it picked up a horse from the Khalidoran side of the garden, where it could still see. It hurled the horse toward one of the magae, crushing her and half a dozen others. It extended an arm, and dozens of swords and spears bubbled to the surface and floated into its hand. It hurled all of them at the next maja.
Logan craned his neck to see how much the press had eased. Not enough.
“Jenine!” someone yelled. It was the man on the promontory with Solon, and it was a cry of utter despair. His arms were spread out, each hand swimming with intricate weaves—Logan wondered for a brief moment how he saw them; he’d never been able to see magic weaves before—then the man brought his hands together, squeezing the weaves into one ball. Magic leapt from his hands like an arrow and hit the ferali, and unbelievably, stuck. Magic never stuck to ferali.
The ferali was lifting another horse from the Khalidoran side of the circle. There was a woman in the saddle, clambering back, trying to throw herself off the back of the horse, but the ferali’s hand was clamped over her dress. It was Jenine. Logan’s heart jumped into his throat, but there was nothing he could do.
The man on the promontory screamed, and the magic in his hands went taut, like a rope tied to the ferali. Shrieking, he yanked.
The horse dropped from the ferali’s hand and Logan lost sight of his wife. The ferali’s gray skin was shimmering. In a wave of black smoke, the skin evaporated. With a hiss of escaping gases, the ferali slumped, died, and burst apart, the maze of magic that held it together clipped like a Fordaean knot.
Logan’s heels were into his destrier before the ferali’s last arm hit the earth. He rode over mounds of stinking entrails and crashed into the first Khalidorans he saw between him and where Jenine had fallen. Logan caught a glimpse of the Fourth Battalion coming into place and sealing the northern exit from the garden.
A Ladeshian and two dozen men had dismounted and climbed onto a raised stone balcony. The mansion the balcony had been attached to was a ruin, but the balcony itself was pristine, commanding views of the whole garden. The Ladeshian raised his arms and threw fire into the sky. It faded slowly until it burned around him, forming the outline of a dragon.
“Behold!” Moburu shouted. “The High King is come! King Gyre, come make your obeisance!”
Moburu had no more than thirty men left, all of them stuck on the balcony with him. Logan ran up the steps. When he reached the top, he saw Jenine. Her rich velvet clothing was torn and dirty, smeared with black dust like soot, but she appeared uninjured. Her arms were bound to her sides and a spell sat around her neck and head, with vicious teeth dimpling her skin. The jaws were held open only by a thin weave Moburu held. If Moburu were killed, the jaws would snap shut and crush her skull. Logan didn’t question how he knew it, but he did.
Seeing Jenine, Logan’s heart surged with a mix of feelings too powerful for words. To see her alive after giving up hope took his breath away. No one would take Jenine away from him again. No one would hurt her. Logan held up his hand, forestalling those following him from attacking Moburu.
Moburu