body. Sonoe thrashed and shrieked, a hideous high-pitched keening, like a tortured animal. Relentlessly, the spirit pushed until it had inserted its entire substance within the struggling woman.
Ashinji turned his head and retched.
The screaming stopped.
Ashinji dared to look again and the sight of Sonoe’s lifeless body, contorted from her death throes, made him wish he had not.
“Ashinji!” His head snapped around at the sound of his name. “Get ready! We are going to need your energy again!” Taya called out. She held the White Griffin between her thumb and forefinger, seemingly unaffected by the gruesome death of her erstwhile colleague. “Now, sisters!” she cried.
Ashinji braced himself, but even though he expected it, the pain still proved almost unbearable. He thought about what Gran had told him, about how to control his Talent, and imagined a filter between himself and the full power of the remaining three Kirians, a barrier of sorts that would lessen the pain while still allowing his own energy to flow.
It seemed to help, for the pain eased. He could concentrate now on what the Kirians were doing. All three mages chanted in unison, their eyes fixed on the ring, which rested on Taya’s palm. The Key hovered just above, and its light pulsed to the rhythm of the incantation. Slowly, Taya raised her free hand until she had both the Key and the ring cupped between both palms. The Kirians fell silent.
Ashinji looked down at Jelena’s face. Her lips had already begun to lose their color in the chilly air. The terrifying rush of blood from the wound in her chest had slowed to a trickle. Even though he knew it would do no good, he couldn’t make himself stop pressing his hands against her stilled heart.
A whisper of sound from behind made him turn his head.
Too late, he saw a blur of white rushing toward him, swinging. He shouted a warning just as Sonoe’s fist smashed into the side of his head with the force of a war hammer. He slumped to the floor, consciousness shattered.
For a time, he drifted, lost amid a whirlwind of confusion. Shouts, screams, Words of Power-all swirled around him in a deafening cacophony. An explosion shook the floor beneath his cold-numbed body. He heard someone crying his name. Struggling against the dark that fettered his senses, he managed to wrench himself free and regain full consciousness.
He lay sprawled on the floor, in total darkness. After a few heartbeats, he groped his way into a sitting position, afraid to move much farther.
“Mother?” he croaked.
Silence.
“Gran…Princess!”
He heard a soft moan to his left. As quickly as he dared, Ashinji slithered across the slick floor toward the thread of sound. His questing fingers soon touched cloth and worked their way along the unseen form until they found skin. A voice whispered his name. “Yes, Gran, it’s me,” he replied.
“Can you conjure a light?” Gran rasped.
“I think so.” Conjuring magelight proved much simpler now that he had done it already. A silvery orb flared to life on his palm-small, but much brighter than his first attempt.
The sight of Gran’s blood-covered face made him curse in dismay. “What happened, Gran?” he whispered as he slipped his arms beneath the elder mage’s shoulders and helped her to sit up. She sucked in a sharp breath and her hand flew to her side. “Are you badly hurt?” Ashinji’s chest tightened in alarm. “Tell me how to help you!”
Gran shook her head. “I’m not important right now.”
Ashinji looked into her pale eyes and saw the terrible truth.
“No!”
Gran nodded, her face grim. “The Nameless One has possessed the corpse of Sonoe and escaped.” She pressed a shaking hand to her forehead. “I was such a fool, Ashi! I should have trusted my instincts and your Talent! All those months ago when we were slaves in the de Guera Yard…you asked me about the red-haired woman you’d seen in your visions, the one surrounded by shadow. Why did I not
“Please, Gran,” Ashinji pleaded. “You mustn’t blame yourself.”
“Who else, then?”
“There must be some way to stop it…stop
“Help me up, Ashi. We must see to the others.”
Ashinji held steady while Gran pulled herself to her feet. The blood on her face had dripped from a cut on her forehead. It looked shallow, but it extended past her hairline.
“Your mother and Taya are still alive, but they were both rendered unconscious in the struggle,” she said. Ashinji breathed a sigh of relief. Together, they limped to where Amara and the princess lay sprawled on the stones, loose as rag dolls.
“Does the Nameless One have the White Griffin?” Ashinji asked. He crouched beside his mother and stroked her face. She moaned, her head rolling from side to side.
“He does,” Gran replied. She eased herself down on the altar beside Jelena’s body. “Poor, child,” she murmured, gazing at Jelena’s bloodless face. “We failed you.”
“If we don’t get that ring back, my wife will have died for nothing!” Ashinji felt he would choke on his despair. Just as he started to lift his mother’s head to his lap, she stirred and sat up.
“Son…” she mumbled, a swollen and bruised lower lip slurring her speech.
“There is a way to retrieve the ring, but you are the only one who can do it, Ashi,” Gran replied.
“No!” Amara cried. “He’s not trained! He can’t possibly…”
“He can, Sister, and he must!” Gran insisted. “The Kirians have failed! Your son is the only one left standing with the necessary Talent.”
“Chiana is right,” Taya added in a rough whisper, awake now. The princess climbed laboriously to her feet and shuffled over to the altar where Gran now sat. “We must send young Sakehera and there’s no time to lose.”
“What are you all talking about?” Ashinji asked, confused.
“You must go after The Nameless One and stop him from executing the spell that will open the Void,” Taya answered. Ashinji stared at the three mages in turn.
“But how?”
“I’ve never trusted Sonoe, and with good reason, as it turns out, but even I never dreamed her capable of such duplicity!” The princess paused to wipe a thin trickle of blood from her mouth. “I kept watch upon her mind during the Ritual,” she continued. “I have the skill to monitor others undetected-but I now realize, to my everlasting sorrow, that I grossly underestimated her.”
A tiny, bitter smile touched Taya’s lips. “Before Sonoe turned on us, she let slip a very important piece of information. I suppose the anticipation of her victory made her careless. She did not know I gleaned from her mind the one thing that can save us.”
“What, Sister? Tell us,” Amara said.
The princess replied, “I now know the true name of the Nameless One.”
Aftermath
Ashinji sat on the edge of the altar and lifted Jelena’s hand to his face. “You’re so cold, already, my love,” he sighed, pressing his cheek to her palm.
Though he had wielded the knife, her death had not seemed real to him, until now. The agonizing realization
