The Spell Realm (The Sorcery Code #2)(40)
The idea should work, she decided.
Getting up, she hurried toward Ganir’s chambers, and as she rounded the corner, she saw Barson’s right-hand man Larn and two other soldiers pass by. She stared after them in disbelief, her fury spiking. Barson had not kept his promise to her. He was supposed to have his men in hiding, and yet here they were, strolling through the halls of the Tower right next to Ganir’s quarters.
Taking a calming breath, she put the matter out of her mind for now and focused on the task at hand. Stopping a few feet away from Ganir’s door, she fed a few cards into her Stone to implement some defensive spells, paying particular attention to mental defenses.
Then she knocked decisively. Once. Twice.
The door swung open. Ganir stood there, his face calm and expressionless.
“Did you go see Blaise?” Augusta asked sharply, not bothering with any niceties. “Was the creature there with him?”
The old man’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and Augusta knew that it was true—that Barson hadn’t lied. Ganir had indeed betrayed her and the Council.
“Don’t bother to deny it,” she said when Ganir opened his mouth. “I know the truth. You’re nothing but a traitor—”
“You dare call me a traitor?” Ganir sounded incredulous. “You, who consort with your ‘dead’ lover? I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but now I see that you must be in league with him—”
Augusta’s eyebrows snapped together. So Ganir already knew the Guard were not dead. Had Barson betrayed her to the Council Leader? Was that what the old man meant by her being ‘in league’ with her lover? Her anger intensifying, she saw Ganir taking a few steps back, and she realized that, in a moment, he would be near his desk, where his Interpreter Stone lay.
There was no more time to waste.
Loading the card she’d prepared earlier, Augusta closed her eyes and braced herself. When she opened them, she and Ganir were standing on the roof of the Tower, with all of Turingrad laid out far below.
Without giving Ganir a chance to get his bearings, Augusta went for her first prepared spell.
It was pure kinetic energy, focused all on one spot. It should’ve caused him to fly off the roof—yet Ganir barely flinched. He must’ve had a defensive spell on himself, she realized, watching him fumble as he took out cards from his pockets and began changing a spell at the same time.
Seeing those cards, she clutched her own stone, her biggest advantage right now.
Ganir’s first verbal spell was an elemental fire attack. It hit the shield Augusta had prepared, and waves of fire spread around the roof. It was the most powerful spell of this kind she had ever encountered.
Swiftly loading the pre-written card into her Stone, Augusta retaliated with a lightning bolt. It hit Ganir’s defense, causing the smell of ozone to permeate the air. The old man, however, was still unharmed.
He was also still attempting to write something on his cards. Why would he do this, when he had no Stone? There was no way he would be able to get Augusta’s Stone—and it wouldn’t work for him, anyway, since she had it customized for herself.
At the same time as he was writing, Ganir was saying the words to some verbal spell. The fact that he could do both at the same time was impressive; Augusta didn’t know anyone who could do two such concentration-intensive tasks at once. It made him even more dangerous, she thought as she loaded more cards into her stone.
Her next spell was designed to blast Ganir with sudden changes in temperature. As the spell began working, the air around him shimmered, turning from boiling to freezing and back to boiling within seconds. His shield held, but Augusta knew it would begin to weaken soon.
Suddenly, a triumphant expression appeared on Ganir’s face. To her shock, Augusta saw that he was now holding his Stone. He must’ve summoned it with that verbal spell he was chanting earlier, she realized with dismay, even as she quickly loaded more defensive spells into her own Stone.
It didn’t help. All of a sudden, she felt a debilitating fear—a nebulous, undefined fear of anything and everything. When she was a young girl, she had been dreadfully afraid of spiders, and it was like that fear, only multiplied a thousand fold. There was a silent scream in her throat, her panic irrational, yet overwhelming. Her vision darkened, her heart pounding like a drum, and cold sweat broke out over her body. She couldn’t even scream, her vocal cords paralyzed by terror. If she hadn’t had her shield in place, this would’ve been a thousand times worse, she realized dimly, battling the nauseating terror that crippled her thinking.
Ganir was literally trying to frighten her to death.
The fear intensified, waves of it washing over her at the knowledge that if he succeeded, the Council would think she died of natural causes. They wouldn’t even look for her killer. Fury, sharp and healing, seized her at the thought, giving her the strength to move her arms. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ganir writing something else on a card.
She didn’t have much time. His next spell would be the end.
Gathering herself, Augusta reached with trembling hands for a spell she’d prepared for another purpose. A new wave of fear hit her, causing her to nearly drop the card, but she managed to fit it into the Stone before collapsing to her knees.
Time seemed to slow. She could hear her own ragged breathing and the heavy pumping of her heart. Somewhere at the back of her mind she registered the fact that Ganir swayed on his feet and then sank down to the floor, and that the waves of fear battering her abated slightly.