Bloodwalk - James P. Davis [99]
A single shard caught the reflection of her chosen victim and froze in the tempest of falling glass. She stood alone, dark-haired with pale skin, a single pulse growing stronger as the spell gripped her heart and mind in its vile embrace. The blush was weak in her, only the root of the infection that would make her vulnerable to the spell Morgynn wove. Her blood-born voice roared in the girl's ears as the magic was completed.
The blood magus released the bowl from her power, panting and wringing her hands as the magic drained from her body. The scroll had burned away, leaving only a thin dusting of gray ash coating her hands. Gooseflesh rose and fell in waves across her flushed skin and she steadied herself before returning her gaze to the water.
"My lady." Khaemil's voice rang with concern as he stared out the tower's window into the darkness of the field and forest beyond. "Something is happening outside."
He held his mace in a tight grip, squinting to make out movement near the forest's edge and growling absently through slightly bared fangs.
Morgynn barely heard his voice above the torrent of her own heartbeat and was annoyed at the intrusion on her moment of pleasure. She watched the reflection in the bowl as her magic took effect, then reluctantly turned away from the image to join Khaemil at the window.
In the rippling waters of the scrying bowl, the young savant stared blindly into a twisting cyclone of crimson razors with eyes that grew clouded with red as cold sweat poured down her face and neck.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Most of the oracles retreated to the edges of the chamber, screaming and praying for release from the magic that descended from the ceiling. A glittering whirlwind of spinning glass forced the shards to crash into one another, pulverizing them into a fine dust of flying razors. Sameska took faltering steps backward, her mumbled prayers for forgiveness lost in the tempest of wind and glass.
Startled at first, Dreslya gathered her wits and concentrated to think of a spell to counter the intruding magic. She dropped her bundle to the floor and gripped her holy symbol tightly before her. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead as she watched one ensorcelled savant walk closer and closer to the falling doom of shredding glass. If the other oracles would add their power to mine, we might have a chance, she thought in despair. But most still accepted the prophecy and would not violate its edict.
The wheeling cloud centered itself over the ancient rune-inscribed circle of before the altar, the sacred place of the high oracle where the most powerful visions had been born in ages past. Large chunks of glass fell from the tempest's center, shattering as they crashed to the stone of the circle, covering it in sharp slivers. Something about the whirlwind's movement nudged Dreslya's memory and she quickly realized that the thing was not merely a magical wind, but an air elemental.
The dark-haired savant edged closer still to the perimeter of the circle, gazing upward into the spinning gale with blood-rimmed eyes and a blank stare. Dreslya held back an empathic gasp as the girl's foot crunched on the glass, her sandles merely padded cloth that offered little protection from injury. The imagined pain cleared Dreslya's head and she hurried to cast a spell. Conjuring a gust of swift wind, she directed it toward the circle, sweeping away the fallen glass, though it could not loosen the shards that already pierced the savant's bleeding foot.
The dark maelstrom lowered menacingly, hovering just above the girl's upturned face, bits of glass scratching her cheeks and forehead as they whipped past. The cloth that covered the blood-stained statue of Savras was ripped away and carried into the