while your lands are crushed beneath the boot of Enslavement? Have you given up even the pretense of being a responsible Spiritualist, Hern?”
“That is a delicate political situation,” Hern said. “Not that you’d understand anything about those, seeing how, yet again, you’ve barged in and upset a stable and delicate system to satisfy what?” He sneered at her across his glass. “Some childish need for revenge? Or do you just enjoy helping Monpress upset kingdoms?”
Below the edge of the stairwell, out of Hern’s line of sight, Miranda clenched her bucket of water. “Enough lies, Hern,” she said. “Hide here all you want, but I’m taking my spirits back, and then I’m going to put a stop to this. If you won’t do your duty to your lands, I will.”
She took a step toward the box containing her rings, but she stopped at the familiar whoosh of flame. Hern was standing now, his outstretched hand wreathed in blue fire.
“You forget yourself, Miranda,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “You are in my tower, on my land. You are powerless, spiritless, and trapped. You are in no position to be making demands.”
The flames licked at his fingers in long, threatening waves. It was just what Miranda had been waiting for. In one sweeping motion, she flung the bucket at him. Hern barely had time to understand what had happened before the bucket, and the wave of water flying out of it, struck him straight across the chest. The flames on his hands sputtered out and Hern yelped, leaping back and toppling his heavy chair as he did so.
It was only a momentary interruption, but it was enough. From the second the bucket left her hands, Miranda was running for her rings. By the time Hern had his feet back under him, she had the box in her hands. Roaring with rage, Hern made a throwing motion, and a wave of fire leaped from his hand.
Clutching the box to her chest, Miranda dove behind a long couch upholstered in gold and blue silk. The fire flickered out inches from the couch’s surface, and Miranda grinned. She’d known Hern would never risk his nice furniture, not even to get her, and that hesitation would be her victory. She looked at the box in her hands. It was small, about the size of a hat box, and she could feel her rings inside jumping and clattering against the wood, trying to get to her.
Miranda checked the lock, but it was enormous, heavy, and dead asleep. So were the hinges, and the wood itself. Still, she thought, grimacing, there was no point in being subtle anymore. So with a whispered apology to the sleeping box, Miranda closed her eyes and opened her spirit. Power flowed into her, and she caught it as it surged, sharpening the raw wizard’s will to a needle-thin point that she forced through the crack in the box and into her spirits.
The moment the surge of power hit her rings, she felt their power echo back along the connection. The box in her hands burst into a shower of splinters as Durn, her stone spirit, exploded out of his ring. He rose to his full height in the blink of an eye with her rings clutched gently in his enormous stone hands. Almost sobbing with relief, Miranda took her spirits and slid them back onto her fingers, quaking as the connections roared open again as they met her skin. Durn stood guard until she’d fit every last one back on her fingers. Then, her rings awake and flashing like embers on her hands, Miranda stood again and turned to face the man responsible for all of this.
Hern, however, was ready. He stood across the room, his rings blazing like small suns, and a calm, concentrated look on his face.
“So,” he said. “It’s come to this.”
“You were the one who started it,” Miranda growled, standing firmly beside Durn’s hulking form. “If you’re too scared to finish it, then you shouldn’t have called that trial in the first place.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about the finish,” Hern sneered, lifting his hand so Miranda could see not only his rings but the glittering bands of his bracelets set with large, colorful stones, all sparkling with suppressed power. “You might be Banage’s protege, but I’m the older Spiritualist, more experienced, and master of a larger retinue of spirits. No, I know exactly how this will finish. I’m only sad because I’ll probably have to kill you, as that seems to be the only way to keep you down.” He sighed. “I was so looking forward to parading you in shame before Banage and the Court, but at this point, I’ll take what I can get. However”-his face broke into a thin, hateful smile-“with you dead, I can probably blame this whole Enslavement mess on you, seeing as you won’t be around to defend yourself, so the situation is not without its silver lining.”
“Don’t count your victory so easily,” Miranda growled, planting her feet and raising her glittering, jeweled hands. “You may have more spirits, but even if I had only one I would count it against all of yours. It’s quality and loyalty of spirits that matters, Hern, not quantity, and we have no intention of losing to a man like you.”
“Well, then,” Hern said, “let’s not waste any more time.”
He clapped his hands and then thrust them apart, and every stick of furniture in the room suddenly slid back to the tower walls, leaving a large, open space at the center of the room. Hern, the blue fire still flickering on his fingers, took up position on the far end, while Miranda stepped up to stand opposite, Durn hovering over her. They stood for a moment, studying each other, and then, sick of waiting, Miranda attacked.
Durn launched forward on her signal, skidding across the floor in a wave of spiked stone straight for Hern. The Spiritualist flicked his finger, and vines, the same vines that had trapped Miranda earlier, exploded across the rock spirit’s surface. Durn’s charge ground to a halt as the plants doubled and tripled, trapping him beneath a swirling nest of woody growth. But Miranda was already moving. She crooked her left thumb where Kirik’s ruby flashed. At her signal, the stone glowed like a forge and crackling heat poured off of her hands. A moment later, Durn, and the vines tying him down, burst into a pillar of orange flame that blackened the tower’s peaked stone roof. The vines fell away instantly, shriveling in a cloud of resinous black smoke and tiny screams before pouring back into the deep green stone on Hern’s middle finger. Hern paid them no attention, raising a large blue-green stone on his opposite hand that began to flash blue-silver as he whispered to it.
Miranda jerked Kirik’s fire away just in time, as a massive torrent if icy water drenched the place where the pillar of fire had been. The fire poured back into her ring, but Durn, now free from the vine trap, ignored the water that was raising great clouds of steam from his scorched surface and went straight for Hern. Just before the enormous, enraged rock pile reached him, Hern grabbed a heavy crystal hanging from his neck and shouted a name Miranda couldn’t make out. As the word left his lips, the entire tower shook, and the stone wall behind Hern burst open, punched open by a great stone fist. Miranda could only stare in amazed horror as she realized what it was. That hand belonged to the stone spirit that was wrapped around Hern’s tower. With amazing speed, the enormous stone hand grabbed Durn midcharge and lifted him in a crushing grip. Durn cried out as the hand tightened and chunks of him began to crumble and fall to the ground.
Miranda thrust out her hand, calling the rock spirit frantically back, but as she moved to help him, Hern made a throwing motion with both hands, and a ring of blue fire roared up around her. Miranda shrank back from the blistering heat and shouted for her wind spirit. Almost before she’d said his name, Eril burst from his pendant and hit the fire full force. He spun in a circle, crushing the flames under a roaring wall of wind so that Miranda could jump out. As she jumped, a cool mist flowed out of the round sapphire on her ring finger. The mist fell like a blanket, smothering the blue fire in an oppressive curtain of water. By the time Miranda landed, the inferno was nothing but a circle of scorch marks on the floor. Panting, she whirled to face Hern, bringing her right hand up. Skarest, her lightning bolt, was already crackling. But as she prepared to launch him, Hern snapped his fingers and a wall of water sprang up in front of him.
Miranda hesitated. Striking water was dangerous for her lightning. At best, it would be horribly painful for the spirit; at worst, it could diffuse Skarest permanently.
Hern caught her hesitation and seized the opportunity. “Enough!” he said. “With that lightning bolt, you’re out of spirits, unless you’re going to bring your little moss spirit into the fight. I, on the other hand, am just getting started. I’ve already shown I can counter everything you throw at me. If we keep going, I’m going to have to start breaking your spirits one by one, beginning with that pile of rocks.”
As he spoke, the enormous fist holding Durn tightened, and the rock spirit made a gritty, pained sound. Miranda clenched her teeth, but did not lower her hand or stop the arcs of lightning crackling over it. From behind his wall of water, Hern arched an eyebrow at her.
“Fire at me,” he said, “and your little lightning spirit will fizzle before he gets ten paces.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You know that, and so for all your posturing, you won’t shoot. I’m calling your bluff, Miranda Lyonette. The day of your trial, you were willing to throw away everything to save your spirits. You wouldn’t risk killing one of them now, just to get to me. Lower your hands and I’ll let the rock spirit live.”
“Don’t do it, mistress!” Durn cried, struggling against the larger stone spirit’s grip. “You fought for us; we’ll fight for you!”
“The rock is right,” Skarest crackled. “You came for us like we knew you would. We’re not going to be the
