Stolen Chaos: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Cardkeeper Chronicles Book 1) Page 11

  “You’re damn right, baldy.” I flicked out a hand to my side and let a blizzard brew there for a moment. “Step down right now, or I’ll put you down.”

  I regretted my choice of words immediately.

  Victor’s eyes lit up. Black smoke clouded them as thunder cracked inside the hall. His arms shot out and smoke snaked around a purple light, shooting at me like water from a hose, only louder, faster, and far more dangerous.

  I brought my hands up in front of me. Frost blasted from my palms, falling right in front of my body and turning to crystalized ice. The second it hardened, the smoke hit it and blew it to thousands of tiny shards.

  At least it worked as a shield, I thought, as I dove behind the nearest pillar.

  The smoke came again, cracking in the air like thunder. With shaking hands, I constructed another wall of ice between myself and the next pillar. Before it was too late, I ran along the wall just as the pillar exploded behind me, and I slid across the marble floor to my next cover.

  “You’re a persistent little bug,” Victor cried, his voice shrieking at me like surround sound. “But like all bugs, you can be easily stepped on!” The smoke came once more, but this time it was louder, darker. Angrier.

  I knew it was a dumb move, but I poked my head out from the security of the pillar and saw that Dalton was no longer there. That was good – it must have meant he’d scrambled away while I was keeping our friend occupied. Victor, on the other hand, hadn’t moved an inch. Instead, he stood on his storm cloud with his teeth bared, a large purple ball of smoke growing between his hands, until it was the size of a yoga ball. When his shoulders came back, I knew he was going to throw that thing at me.

  I ducked back behind the pillar to protect myself.

  As much as I wanted to hurt this guy, it didn’t look like I would get the chance. If I was really lucky, I might have made it out of there alive. I began to think about Link and wondered if he was okay, when the pillar behind me burst into a rain of stone.

  I was tossed into the air like a bowling pin, dazed, confused. The pillars had weakened and the Grand Hall began to collapse around me. In my adrenaline haze, all I could think to do was conjure some pillars of my own. I thought that if I worked fast, I could keep this place from caving in before Victor turned us all to ash.

  “You’re pissing me off!” I heard him yell, as he threw more balls of Chaos at me.

  I’m not your biggest fan either, I thought, juggling icy constructs between my palms. I raced to form a pillar where the last one had been demolished, and then created an icy barrier around myself. Chaos smoke shot at me, smashing it to smithereens. I quickly formed a new one, and got to work on the second pillar while Victor continued his rampage.

  Weak and overwhelmed, I couldn’t keep up. Every time I tried to support the ceiling, my barrier got blown away and I had to stop to create another. I was getting pinned down, and I had no form of attack. Victor was too strong. Too fast. All I could do was get ready to die, knowing that I had tried my best to defeat him.

  “Leave the girl alone!” Dalton reappeared from nowhere, screaming at Victor, reaching toward the air with his fingers spread. Dust and rocks formed a whirlwind in front of him, spinning around while they picked up speed, growing faster, faster, until he finally let them loose at our assailant.

  Victor turned his attention toward Dalton, dodging the incoming rock-fire as best he could. While he was distracted, I quickly got to work on making new constructs, ensuring the stability of the Grand Hall. As soon as I could breathe, I turned to witness the ongoing battle between the two powerful mages, where Dalton was actually holding his own. Of course, he stood a chance of winning now that it was two against one.

  But still, Victor held the winning card. The Chaos card.

  I quickly summoned a handful of icy needles, lined up my shot, and hurled them at Victor’s back. The moment seemed suspended in time as I watched, expecting to see the shards pierce his skin and put an end to all this madness.

  At the last moment, he turned.

  A wall of smoke rose before him, collecting the ice and causing it to shatter in front of his eyes. There was no getting past this guy – he seemed to anticipate anything we could throw at him. But with Dalton on one side and me on the other, we double-teamed him, and that split his attention in two directions.

  The purple smoke continued to enlarge around him, creating a kind of hurricane. Rocks and rubble swirled as the cyclone continued to spin, tearing through the air like a freak of nature. I watched in horror, hands at the ready to defend myself, but the smoke evaporated, flooding from the room and leaving nothing but the chill of a haunting breeze in its wake.

  Dalton and I stood, each collecting our breath and preparing for a second bout. When I realized Victor wasn’t coming back, I let my tired arms drop to my sides, panting hard and struggling to breathe.

  “Are you okay, Lady Keira?” Dalton called across the hall.

  I nodded. Was I really okay? No – not really. I had survived my first encounter with Victor Kronin and lived to talk about it. But what if he returned? What if he found a way to summon this demon of his, and came back with a minion of hell at his side? We wouldn’t stand a chance then. I just hoped that we could stop him before that happened.

  I observed my surroundings. Everything had been demolished in the path of this madness. Ice fused the ceiling and who knew how long that would last? Dirt and stones covered the entire floor. Two of the Elders lay dying in the rubble, and all we had to show for this battle was an extra breath of life. And was it worth it? I barely thought so – after everything we had done to stop this from happening, we had already lost so much.

  And, yet, the worst was still to come.

  Chapter 23

  The cleanup was a long and painful process. Rubble had to be shifted, structures had to be stabilized. My ice came in handy during the rebuild. The wounded were triaged and provided medical treatment. Some of them had a chance of surviving, but not all. The two Elders, for example, had been so badly beaten that their lives were hanging by a thread.

  I wasn’t sure why Victor had attacked the Vault. I could only guess that he was testing himself, pushing his limits to see if he could bring us to our knees without the aid of a demon. To be completely honest, if he had been any stronger, he would have blown the place to smithereens. With a demon at his side, he’d be unstoppable.

  At least Jasper would be punished for helping him. Guards from the Sacred Temple had been sent to escort him to R’hen, where he would face trial for his sins. Last time anyone had been accused of treason, a man named Harold Olsen had led an army of witches to the pillar in Geneva. The Lords of R’hen had sentenced him to a realm – a space between spaces – no bigger than a coffin. Every second on Earth was the equivalent to twelve years in the coffin, and his sentence had begun twenty years ago. The idea of Jasper facing the same fate was terrifying, but it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve it.

  After seeing Jasper dragged through the dark hallway to the back, Link was shown into the Grand Hall. When he saw me, his expression brightened and he ran to me, climbing up my leg like a squirrel up a tree. I had to take a break from creating ice structures for a moment, and cherish my diminutive friend.

  “Are you all right, Keira?” he asked, leaning his warm and clammy face against mine.

  “I’ll survive. Did Jasper give you any trouble?”

  Link shook his head.

  “Good. Well, he won’t be a problem anymore.” As soon as I said it, I turned to inspect the devastation of the hall. Robed men shuffled around, working together to help the place recover. They reminded me of an army of ants marching.

  In time, the Vault would heal itself. Much like a broken bone, a little TLC was all it needed, and the structures would begin to reform. Fallen beams would grow back, like snapped branches on a tree. Bricks would regenerate. It would take some time, but we would get through this. As long as Victor Kronin didn’t return.

  Please don
’t let him return.

  “Lady Keira.”

  The voice startled me, and I turned to see Dalton not five feet from me.

  “May I speak to you for a moment?”

  “Of course.” I followed him to a nearby door, passed through, and climbed a winding staircase in silence. Link gripped my shoulder, his nails digging into my skin. I wondered what awaited me, and felt more uncomfortable with each passing second. I bit my tongue until I was fit to burst, and then said it – just so I could say something.

  “I’m sorry about what happened.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” said Dalton, without turning around.

  I stared at the heels of his boots, watching him climb one step at a time, as if he had aged years in the past few days. Was it his use of magic that had caused it? I knew that all the Elders tended to refrain from casting spells, but was that the reason? “Even so, nobody deserves to have their home torn apart like this.”

  “We will endure.”

  Without another word, we continued up the cold, stone staircase until we reached a single door. Dalton unlocked it and we walked out onto a balcony, where the icy winds roared at us from over the mountains. My muscles tightened as I suffered the biting chill. Even my magicard didn’t seem to protect me from the bitterness.

  Across the wide space of the balcony, two beds lay parallel to one another with a burning fire between them. An elder lay on each bed, hands together as if they had been prepared for burial. Had they died? I assumed they couldn’t have – their bodies hadn’t gone through the interference process.

  “I ask,” Dalton said, and stopped. He shook his head, and for the first time in my presence, reached up and removed the hood, revealing himself to me. He looked nothing like how I had expected – I’d imagined a beardless Gandalf the Grey, but he was different, smaller somehow. He had kind features with piercing blue eyes. On the other hand, it looked like you wouldn’t want to cross him. “You have served us faithfully for many years, Lady Keira, and I offer my sincerest gratitude for that.”

  I sensed a big old ‘but’ coming my way.

  “But,” he said, looking at me with a steady gaze. “I’m afraid I must ask more of you. Tell me, how is it you were able to stand your ground against Victor Kronin? With the power he displayed, you should have been killed within seconds.”

  Honestly, I didn’t know what to tell him. I mean, it surprised me, too. During the battle, there wasn’t a single moment that I didn’t think I was going to die. At this rate, there was a chance I still would. I settled for a noncommittal shrug. “I guess I got lucky.”

  Dalton stared me down, studying me. In time, he grunted and walked around the two beds, looking down at his wounded brothers. He reached out and touched the forehead of one of them, but I still couldn’t see the brothers’ faces under their hoods. “The Elders are dying,” he said without emotion. “Victor’s power continues to grow, and with it, so could you.”

  Die? I felt uneasy, imagining a version of the Vault where the Elders didn’t stand as three. Although I’d had no personal attachment to the two who lay dying, it seemed terrible that their deaths should be taken so lightly.

  I shifted uncomfortably. “What do you want from me?”

  “I would like…” Dalton took a second, choosing his words with care. “I would like to send my brothers into a single magicard, and bestow that card unto you.”

  “Oh,” Link said, climbing into my pocket.

  You’re damn right, ‘oh’. The Elders’ power could barely be contained by each of them, but now I was being asked to submit to both? I supposed that if I was going to defeat Victor, this would be the only way. But that didn’t necessarily mean I could handle it. “You truly believe I can sustain it?”

  “I believe you can.”

  “Can’t you just–”

  “They are dying, Lady Keira,” Dalton snapped, cutting me off. “Their bodies will pass before long, and we need to move quickly if we are to do this. All I need is your approval, and your commitment to the security of the Vault.”

  Giving my blessing sounded easy, but it wasn’t. Not at all. If I took the card and faced Victor, I would essentially be signing a contract to state that I would get the job done, because if I didn’t, and I died in action, that son of a bitch could take the new magicard from my corpse. Then, he would be entirely unstoppable.

  The hardest decision I’d ever had to make stared me straight in the face. I felt Link rummaging around in my pocket, but even he was too smart to voice his thoughts. Unfortunately, the way I saw it, I had no choice but to accept. “I’ll do it.”

  Dalton gave a curt nod, and produced an empty magicard from inside his robe. He held it out between the bodies and stepped back, while the card remained suspended in mid-air. It began to glow and vibrate. The bodies of the Elders exploded in a bright light as the souls were sucked up into the card, faster than a speeding train.

  I felt the wind rush past me, but it wasn’t the wind of the sky – the souls flew so violently into the magicard, roaring and hissing at a deafening volume. It sounded like a million pages turning at once, folding and flapping around me.

  The noise suddenly stopped. The bodies had vanished, and their faces appeared in the image of the card. The light in the center began to dim, and Dalton stepped forward to take it, tears moistening his eyes. “Handle it well, Lady Keira.”

  Hesitant at first, I held out a hand to take the card. It was hot to the touch, pleasantly warming up my palm. But I instantly felt the weight of the power inside. The raw intensity of the Elders’ souls slipped into my own, feeding knowledge into my brain. Extreme kindness enveloped me… but it wasn’t just that. There was something else I couldn’t quite decipher. Was it… a burden? No… a responsibility, perhaps. Whatever it was, it filled the holes of my life, as though I suddenly understood the importance of my existence.

  “You now have everything you require,” Dalton said.

  I flinched as he reached out to take the Ice card, which floated at head-height beside me. I hadn’t even noticed it leave my pocket – it must have abandoned me when it sensed the presence of the Elders’ power.

  “Tell me what to do.”

  Dalton’s eyes narrowed on me, and they gleamed with seriousness. “Go now, I beg. Take the magicard with you, and stop Victor Kronin…” He turned, and I noticed his hands shaking by his sides, one clutching the Ice card and the other balled into a frail, wrinkled fist. “Stop him, before it’s too late.”

  Chapter 24

  Link was on the other side of the abandoned warehouse, setting up a row of empty tin cans. They were almost as tall as he was, and I grinned as I watched him raise them above his head, thinking how much it looked like a low-budget production of Hercules.

  “Are you ready?” he yelled across the distance.

  “Just as soon as you get out of the way, yeah.”

  The truth was, I was frightened. I didn’t yet understand the magnitude of the power I held in the palms of my hands. It could have been anything from world destruction at the click of my fingers, to inhuman speed. All I had to go on was the tingling sensation in my arms, which indicated projectile capabilities. Hence, the tin can firing-range.

  Link ran quickly across the concrete and stopped under a warm ray of light that shone in from the hole in the roof. It looked like a spotlight, keeping the attention focused on him while he introduced the show. “All right, go ahead.”

  I closed my eyes at first, trying to arrange my thoughts in an order that made sense. No luck. There was no safe way to do this. No right or wrong, good or bad. There was only the deep end, and lucky old me got to jump right in head first.

  “Here goes.” I opened my eyes and willed a surge of magic to flow through me. The tingling sensation that had been present before developed into something else. My shoulders went numb. My joints ached. I glanced down to see a red light streaming through me, like a shining flashlight behind a bat’s wing.

  Link’s mouth hung w
ide open. He gawked and pointed, moving his lips, but no words came out. I wanted him to talk, to say anything that would make this… thing seem okay. I tried to find my voice, only to realize that I couldn’t talk either. My entire body seemed to act out on its own, until nothing else mattered. Nothing else truly existed. There was nothing but this extraordinary pain, tearing me apart as I did nothing to stop it.

  An intense whistling sound like a kettle roared through my ears until my teeth rattled. Pain slid through my arms, like a snake slithering across my bones. My shoulders seemed to recover as the sheer agony paused, lingering in my forearms like a deadly poison.

  “Let it out!” Link finally screamed. Urgency and desperation laced his voice.

  I tried all I could to make that happen. Controlling this thing was harder than I’d ever imagined. My arms glowed with the blinding red, as it slipped through my wrists, my hands, and finally, my fingers. All I could do was aim toward the cans and hope for the best.

  The light exploded in front of me, sounding like a laser rifle in an old Star Wars movie. Smoke hissed from my mouth. Ash poisoned my sense of taste. Ahead of me, at the far end of the warehouse, all ten tin cans exploded at once. Don’t ask me where they went – I had no idea. My mind was focused on the enormous hole in the ground where the blast had struck.

  Link shot up and scrambled across the floor, coming my way and waving his hands. He was shouting something at me, though I couldn’t make out what he was saying. It sounded like, ‘No trying!’ but that didn’t seem to make sense.

  I didn’t care, anyway. All I could do was try to endure the pain as my arms cooled down, the insufferable red light flowing back through my shoulders and residing in my chest like a bad case of food poisoning. I looked down at the searing heat, and then, as I caught sight of my feet, I finally understood Link’s words.

  “You’re flying!”