A flaming arrow smacks into the side of Vale’s shield and is instantly incinerated in a crackling, spitting ball of blue lightning.
“Ruus’fayn,” Vale curses in Alfsigr, one arm wrapped around my bound body, pulling me tight against the side of his chest. With the other arm he points his wand straight out, a stream of glowing blue feeding the shield.
“We’re outnumbered,” I tell him, my teeth chattering dully. My fingers and toes are starting to feel numb again. I look toward the distant Mage-shield, knowing that my brother and grandfather are likely inside it—but how long will it hold up under such a fierce attack? “They’ll kill us all.”
“Oh, you think so, do you?” Vale states drily.
I huff out a small sound of despair, tears stinging my dust-caked eyes.
Another arrow smashes into our shield, and I flinch back.
“How long can you maintain this shield?” I challenge him, my voice rough with tears.
“About one hour,” he replies, each word succinct and calm.
Anger rises in me. How can he be so unconcerned?
Three explosions of orange illuminate the tops of the mountains. The mammoth, circular puffs of light cast a sputtering amber glow over the entire field.
“What’s coming?” I demand roughly. “What can possibly save us from them?” I jerk my chin hard toward the Kelt-Urisk army.
“Their worst nightmare,” Vale says. He spits out a short, jaded laugh. “A force much stronger than their dragons and their demons and their flimsy arrows.”
“More Mages?” I croak out, disbelieving. We already have at least three high-level Mages trying to help our people, and yet here we are, cowering in a ditch with decaying shields.
Vale spits out an incredulous laugh. “No. Not more of us. We’re child’s play compared to her.”
Her?
He’s mad. He must be mad. There’s never been a powerful female Mage.
Despairing, I glare at him. “What do you mean, ‘her’?”
He cocks an eyebrow and sets his fierce eyes on me. His voice, when he speaks, is dangerously calm.
“You’re about to meet my mother.”
Alarm horns trumpet, echoing over the valley. Another round of orange explosions erupts just past the mountains, then fades to nothing.
The mountains fall eerily quiet, the sound of the alarm horns fading.
I crane my neck to look at Vale, but his eyes are fixed north.
A loud bang ruptures the air, and I flinch back against the hard length of him. Light bursts into being, the entire mountain ridge suddenly limned gold, bright as Yule candles.
The alarm horns blare again as the center of the mountain’s glow flares brighter. A thin, golden line scythes out from it, straight across the sky. It slams into an advancing dragon, exploding the beast into a churning ball of flame that writhes and plummets toward the earth.
Cries sound from the ground below the beast, and the Urisk geomancers send up streaks of sapphire, catching the hurtling creature in an intricate web. The flaming dragon hangs suspended just above a battalion of soldiers. The men scatter away in panic, a spot of budding chaos on the orderly field.
The other dragons circling overhead turn and arrow toward the north. Toward the strange glow.
Golden lines strike out again from the mountain’s center, spearing the night air in regular bursts, left to right and back again, fast as the beat of a hummingbird’s wing. Dragons all across the sky burst into flame, and the night lights up orange.
Full-blown chaos erupts as flaming dragons rain down from the sky, one pinwheeling diagonally above us.
“Great gods,” Vale exclaims, teeth gritted, his arm extended and braced by his other hand as he forces more power into our shield.
The gargantuan dragon crashes down next to us, the ground shaking, painfully jarring my tailbone against Vale’s hip. Stones and dust and flame course over Vale’s shield, briefly casting us into foggy darkness.
When the air around us clears, I look toward the Mage-shield across the field, where my family is most likely to be. Two dragons crash to the ground near their shield, and a third rolls down the remaining bluff to collide with a group of screaming soldiers.
And then there are no more dragons in the sky.
Men yell orders, cry out and run aimlessly in all directions. There are tents on fire all over the field, everything lit up orange and yellow. Smoke rises in an amber fog, filling the valley.
The line of gold along the mountaintop constricts toward the center, the glow becoming fuzzy and muted. A black mass levitates inside the golden cloud, like a cobra raising its head, highlighted by the ethereal glow.
Tight lines of glowing orange flash from the black mass and strafe down the mountain in a series of flaming spears.
The black mass swoops higher, then down, over the avalanche of fire. As it moves ever closer, advancing straight toward us, I suddenly realize what I’m seeing.
Gardnerian soldiers in dark uniforms. On dragons. Our dragons.
Like a flock of geese, they’re arranged in a V. Fire rains down from the V’s lead point. A shield courses back from this point over the rest of the V like a flowing, golden current.
“Ancient One,” I gasp.
Order breaks down completely in the face of enemy dragons and the advancing Magefire. A young Kelt clambers up the bluff nearby, his eyes wide and terrified, his face streaked with sweat and soot. Kelt and Urisk soldiers are running south, fleeing, climbing up the bluff we slid down, scrambling for safety. Trying to escape the murderous flock now coursing over the field.
And the advancing river of fire.
A Kelt clips our shield, then howls in agony and falls to the ground, his arm exploding into sparking blue flame. Haphazard flashes of geomancy spear out from all over Crykes Field to no effect, the lines of color exploding in a harmless kaleidoscope of puffs against the shield surrounding our dragons.
They’re flying low now. Low enough for me to see her.
She’s astride the lead dragon, wand raised and throwing down fireballs with a passionate vengeance. A golden shield flows from the palm of her other hand and streams backward over the other dragons like a flaming current of air. Her face is twisted into a bloodthirsty war cry.
The fire of her bloodlust rocks through my magic-stripped body.
Like a dark flame, her long black hair flickers behind her as she swoops in close and fills the
