Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks [36]
Jenine would think he was a coward, running away from fourteen-year-old boys. Maybe she wouldn’t come with him at all. Maybe she would come, but despise him afterward. What kind of man makes the woman he loves crawl through shit?
Vic stepped closer. Five paces away now. Dorian was frozen, one eye exposed. Surely Vic would see them. He had to! And if Dorian didn’t raise some defense, Vic would murder them where they stood. But if he did raise a defense, Vic would sense it. Either way was a decision.
It wasn’t the voice of the God. It was the voice of fear. I can take them.
Dorian stepped out of the crevice and lashed out at Vic with fire missiles.
He recognized his mistake the moment the missiles diverted and flew down the tunnel toward Vic’s brother. The boys were twins. Fraternal twins or Dorian would have recognized it at once. Twins could make a weave to protect each other at the expense of protecting themselves. That defense, if given fully, was far stronger than a meister could give himself.
The counterstrike came from Vic, much stronger than he should have been capable of. It was a hammerfist, a spinning blue cone that in his youthful enthusiasm Vic had actually embellished to look like a flaming fist. Rather than dodge it, Dorian had to stop it completely to make sure it didn’t kill Jenine behind him. Another fist came a second later from Vic’s twin, rattling stones down from the low ceiling of the tunnel. Dorian blocked it, too, suddenly aware of how much magic he’d used today. He was getting exhausted.
With fingers of magic, he reached beneath Vic’s shield and twisted it onto himself. It surprised the boy so much that he abandoned his next attack. Down the hall, his twin did not. His next hammerfist was whipped in a tight circle by the shield that was now protecting Dorian, and arced into Vic instead. It crushed his body flat against the tunnel wall.
Dorian flung a single fire missile down the hall. With Vic dead, the twin was now unshielded, and the fire missile pierced his chest. He grunted and fell.
Picking up Vic’s staff—the damn thing was an amplifiae, it was what had made the aetheling’s blows more powerful than they ought to have been—Dorian pulled Jenine down the hall. They could still make it to the bridge. It was close now. The last hallway was clear, and though the mighty gate was closed, the sally port opened from the inside.
Almost there!
With a boom, the mighty double gates were flung open. The rancid stench of vir washed over Dorian and Jenine. Four young men stood before them, their skin awash with the knotted dark tattoo-like vir. They were ready; they’d sensed Dorian coming.
Dorian threw up a hurried shield, as thick as he could manage with the rest of his Talent, and turned to flee. The damned amplifiae didn’t help at all; it was attuned to vir. In rapid succession, the shield absorbed a hammerfist, eight fire missiles, the staccato jabs of a needler, and the diffuse flame called a dragon tongue, meant to finish an opponent after his shields were down. But Dorian’s shields weren’t down, he could survive another wave so long as none of them dared a pit wyrm.
“Draef!” a young man called out triumphantly from behind Dorian. It was Tavi, with three of his own aethelings, blocking the hall’s other exit. The first group stopped attacking Dorian instantly.
Dorian looked from one camp to the other, and they looked at him. He and Jenine were trapped between them. “Hold!” Dorian shouted. “I am Dorian Ursuul, the Son-That-Was. I know they expunged my name from the records, but I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors. I’m real, and you can’t afford to attack me.”
Tavi spat. “You’re not even a meister.”
“Why?” Draef asked at the same time.
“Even if I were only a magus, I won’t go down easily. If either of you attack me, you’ll leave yourselves open to be attacked by the other. But I am an Ursuul of the twelfth shu’ra.