“Miranda,” Eli said, his voice cutting cleanly through the panic. She barely felt his hands as he grabbed her shoulders and dragged her to her feet, but his voice was clear and commanding. Somewhere in her garbled mind, she realized that he was speaking to her like she was a spirit. “Leave right now.”
He let her go, and she nearly toppled over. Only Gin’s cold nose pressed into her back kept her from falling.
“He’s right,” the hound whined, ears flat. “That thing is insane. We leave now.”
Miranda opened her mouth to protest, but Gin didn’t give her a chance. He ran for the forest with Miranda clutched like a pup between his teeth and the still-unconscious king bouncing on his back. Miranda was screaming something about Eli, but the hound didn’t stop, and he never once looked back.
As soon as the ghosthound disappeared into the woods, Eli turned and ran as hard as he could in the other direction, nearly colliding with Josef and Nico.
“What are you doing?” Eli yelled, grabbing them both. “I told you to get to the boulder!” He did a double take when he saw the bloodstain across most of Josef’s shirt. “What happened to you?”
“Never mind that!” Josef shouted. “Where’s the gold?”
“I’ll explain later!” Eli shouted back, yanking them both toward the rock at the clearing’s edge. “Just run!”
Josef nodded and started running. If the situation was serious enough for Eli to abandon cash, then this was not the time to argue. They tore across the clearing, ignoring the growing roar behind them. Even Josef could hear it now, a high-pitched screaming that rubbed his nerves raw. It was like an injured child’s scream, but there was nothing human in this sound and it did not stop for breath. Josef shuddered and kept running.
Eli was shouting at the rock even before they reached the clearing’s edge. However, the rock didn’t seem to be answering, because Eli slid to a halt just in front of it and started to gesture frantically as a dark shadow fell across them.
Josef whirled around, grabbing one of his remaining knives just so he didn’t have to face whatever it was empty-handed. But even a blade in his hand didn’t make him feel better when he saw what was behind them. Across the clearing, an enormous tower of black cloud loomed over the blasted ground where Renaud had been standing only moments ago. Billows of dark dust, black and glistening like volcanic glass, spun impossibly fast in the windless sky, rising in great swirls that blotted out the sun. As if it had been waiting for him to turn around, the cloud’s wailing reached a frantic pitch, and it began to move forward.
“Eli,” Josef said over his shoulder, “whatever you’re doing, could you do it a little faster?”
Eli gave him a biting look before turning back to the boulder. Josef backed up a step, pressing Nico into the stone. The cloud was not heading at them directly. Instead, it skirted the edge of the clearing, keeping close to the forest. The trees leaned back when the billowing black dust came near, lifting their branches high in the air, as if they were trying to get out of its way. Then the screaming storm touched a tree that had the misfortune of growing too far out, and Josef saw why. As soon as the spinning black gusts connected with the branches, they disintegrated. The cyclone passed over the tree as if it were not there, reducing it to sawdust without effort or notice, and without slowing its progress toward the huddled group by the boulder.
“Eli,” Josef said again, “now would be good.”
“Got it!” Eli shouted. “All right,
“Go where?!” Josef yelled frantically. The cloud was almost on top of them, filling his vision from ground to sky. That was the last thing he saw before the rock swallowed him.
CHAPTER 14
Miranda didn’t realize she had passed out until she woke up sore, stiff, dirty, and uncomfortably damp. She was propped on Gin’s paw, and as soon as she moved, his long snout filled her vision.
“How are you feeling?”
Miranda thought about it, and winced. “Like someone’s beaten me, eaten me, and thrown me up again.”
She ignored his disgusted look and pulled herself up by his fur. “That went well,” she muttered, cleaning the grit out of her mouth with a less dirty corner of her riding coat. “Somehow, I’m not surprised Coriano was there. I’d love to know what that enslaver’s paying him to make him toss out his good reputation with the Spirit Court.”
“I don’t think it’s always about money with that one,” Gin said thoughtfully. “He smells more of blood than gold to me.”
Miranda grimaced. “Well, that’s a problem for later,” on top of the mountain of problems they already faced. “Right now, we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do about Renaud.”
Gin laid his ears back. “Men like that don’t deserve to be wizards. Sandstorms may be stupid, but no spirit deserves what he did. It’s even worse than being eaten by a demon. At least then you’re just dead rather than jabbering insane and balled up in some maniac’s pocket.”
Miranda looked up. “Is it still around?”
“I can’t hear it, but that’s no guarantee he didn’t put it back in his pocket.”
Miranda groaned and rubbed her temples. “An enslaver with an ax to grind and a throne to grind it on, it doesn’t get much worse than that.”
“Wait,” Gin said. “What about that Banage thing? The thing he sent us here to stop Eli from getting?”
Miranda blanched. “Gregorn’s Pillar…” She put her knuckles to her mouth, thinking madly. “No,” she said at last. “I don’t think he knows about it. Gregorn’s Pillar is a pretty obscure piece of wizarding history. Banage wasn’t even sure Eli knew about it, but it was the only thing he could think of that Monpress would want from Mellinor. Anyway, Renaud was a jilted wizard in the castle for sixteen years. If he knew about the Pillar, he would have enslaved his way to it years ago, wouldn’t he?”
“I’d think so,” Gin said. “But can we count on that? I mean, I’m pretty good against enslavers usually, but Renaud had me down in the dust before I knew what was happening. He’s got a strong soul, and he’s not afraid to use it full tilt. Now, that’s bad enough, but if that pillar is half of what Banage made it out to be, Renaud really will be able to put the spirit world under his boot if he gets his hands on it.”
“That may be true,” Miranda said and nodded, pulling herself up by his fur. “But Renaud getting the pillar is not a possibility we can handle, so there’s no point in dwelling on it. Let’s just focus on getting him off the throne quickly before he figures out what’s in his treasury.”
“It should be simple enough,” Gin said. “Jump the gates, eat the prince, and get out.” He snapped his teeth. “An enslaver is only human, after all.”
“Out of the question.” Miranda shook her head. “We’d just get flattened again if we tried a direct attack.”
Gin snorted, and Miranda ignored him, pacing little nervous circles around the hound’s paws. “What we need is help,” she said. “But there’s no time to send to the Spirit Court for backup, and with all of Mellinor thinking I murdered their king, we’ll get no aid from-” She stopped suddenly, looking around. “Wait a minute, where
“He’s here,” Gin said. “He’s actually been awake for some time. I didn’t want to bother you, so I asked him to wait.”
Miranda stared, confused. “You asked him to wait?”
“Yes.” The hound grinned, showing all of his teeth. “Nicely.”
Miranda put her aching head in her hands. “Gin, let him up.”
Gin feigned innocence for a few more seconds and then lifted his back rear paw, allowing the king, who at this point looked more like a pig farmer with a good tailor than royalty, to wiggle his way to freedom.
“Honestly,” Miranda said and sighed, giving her companion a final glare before running to help the dirt-caked monarch. “As if things weren’t bad enough.”
Gin lowered his head and began cleaning the mud off his paws, completely unconcerned.
The king’s clothes were nearly black with dirt, and if he’d had a jacket, he’d lost it somewhere, leaving him with nothing but the thin, dirty remains of a white linen shirt that had a large burn mark down the center where Skarest had hit him. Miranda winced at that, and at the marked resemblance between him and his brother. There
