Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks [37]
Dorian reached down, and the vir rushed from the depths like a leviathan and rode the surface of his skin in great knots that obscured almost all of his skin. Quickly, he pushed it back.
The aethelings, all of them sixteen or seventeen years old at most, looked at him with awe. Several of the boys standing with Tavi looked on the verge of bolting.
“An illusion!” Tavi shouted, hysteria edging his voice.
“An illusion that smells?” Draef asked contemptuously. Yes, Draef is the first of this seed class. Tavi’s the pretender. “What do you want?” Draef asked.
“Just to leave. I’ll go, and then you can slaughter each other to your heart’s content.” As he addressed Draef, Dorian let his eyes go to the staff amplifiae he carried. He hadn’t used the aetheling’s hand speech in years, but with his body blocking Tavi’s view, he moved his hands to signal over the amplifiae—for you.
Draef’s eyes glittered. The amplifiae would be enough to turn the battle.
“Dorian,” Jenine whispered. She was still slouched unassumingly by his side, trying to look like a body servant, and Dorian wasn’t about to draw attention to her.
“Fair enough, get out,” Draef said. His fingers signaled when?
Through clenched teeth, Jenine whispered, “Tavi’s looking at me funny.”
Dorian was trying to remember the finger speech vocabulary he hadn’t used for so many years to answer Draef’s question. There it was, he remembered. When we get to the bridge.
Draef looked satisfied, though tension still stood stark on every feature, and Dorian and Jenine started walking. Only now did Dorian risk a look back to Tavi. He was afraid that the young man’s quick hatred might be roused even by meeting his eyes. Dorian had won, but with the overweening arrogance this aetheling possessed, it was best not to appear to take any joy in the victory.
The eight aethelings all had their eyes jumping from Dorian to their opponents on the opposite side of the hall. For them, any move Dorian made might be the distraction they or their enemy might take advantage of. And whether he made out of the hall alive or not, they would fight. Soon.
Out of the side of his mouth, Dorian said, “Remember to walk like a—” It was too late; Jenine had been drilled on proper comportment for far too long.
“She stays!” Tavi shouted suddenly and reached out with vir to grab Jenine.
The move set one of Draef’s boys off. He threw up a crackling shield reflexively.
That unleashed a magical firestorm. Dorian threw a shield around himself and Jenine. A fire missile made it through before the shield formed and scored his ribs. He hunched and almost lost the shield. Jenine grabbed him and held him upright.
The hall filled with magic, stroke and counterstroke, gouts of fire, lightning bolts that smote the rocks as shields diverted them, the rocks cascading from the ceiling turned into missiles themselves and hurled down the hall. Most of the attacks weren’t directed at Dorian and Jenine, but they were in the line of fire.
Dorian’s shield thinned, layer after layer snapping, melting, withering. The aethelings were all fresh. This battle would last long after Dorian’s shields finally gave way. He was going to die, and worse, he was going to let Jenine die. He had failed her.
No, not while I have breath. God, forgive me for what I’m about to do. It was no true prayer to beg forgiveness while choosing to sin—but he meant it fervently all the same.
Dorian reached to the vir. It came, joyfully.
Someone was screaming, a terrible scream compounded a hundred times by the vir to shake every hall and tunnel of the Citadel. Dorian stood and flung his arms out. As they passed in front of him, he saw that his skin had totally disappeared beneath the all-absorbing, wriggling blackness. Nor did the vir stop at the bounds of his body. They lashed out from his arms—out farther and farther, like great wings—and came down on either side, barely registering the aethelings’ last desperate attacks.
He felt the boys crunch beneath those