Maoz snorted. “I forgot you did that. How did someone find it and release you?”
“As if yours was any better, Maoz.” Enyo drawled, tossing the horn up into the air and then catching it over and over again. “Just propped up in the hall of some human warrior, gathering dust.”
“The clan was strong when I left it there. My intuition was right. They kept it safe for three hundred years, did they not?”
Enyo ignored Maoz’s remark. Typical. She couldn’t admit he had proven her wrong.
“I suppose we need to find another human, though… One that would be to Aryus’s taste…” Her eyes flickered to Va'al.
Va'al shrugged. “If we can find one.” Besides, that would take more time. Weeks or moons walking in human bodies all to find Aryus a shell they would dispose of anyway.
Gods, he was so tired of masquerading as a mortal.
“Let’s just go grab the first mortal we come across.” As they turned to exit, Va'al clapped a hand on Maoz’s shoulder. “And, on the way, I’ll tell you the story of how this mortal idiot braved the Sky Keepers for my artifact. It's a good one. Even won a competition a few moons ago.”
Maoz only turned to leave the way they had come, but Enyo smirked up at Va'al as she tossed Aryus’s artifact into his hands. She wasn’t the type to haul about supplies after all.
“I wasn’t in that competition. Had I been, your paltry ‘dragons burned me’ story would have lost.”
⥣ ⥣ ⥣
Tenth Moon, New Moon, Western Isle, Unnamed
It had taken three days and three nights of lashing the barrier around the island with lightning and gales of wind, but it had finally begun to crumble. The Old Gods who had erected the invisible structure to keep him tied to this pitiful hunk of rock hadn’t been around to renew the wards. With that weakening and his unbreakable will, the last embers of power in the cage flickered and died.
Mascen stepped across the beach into warm waters for the first time in a millennium. No longer bound to the land itself. Waves crashed against his shins, and he smiled in exultation.
Now he was free.
Now he could return to Rhosan and his beloved parents and begin to set right all those wrongs from so long ago.
A roar of triumph echoed through the island, sending birds flying into the skies and making the humans shudder in terror.
Chapter IX
Tenth Moon, First Quarter: North of The Tower
“Try it again.”
Etienne nodded, running his hands back through his hair so that it stuck up at odd angles. The rune he was trying to replicate was a simple one—the same one he had seen Delyth use every night on the tent she shared with Alphonse— but still, the magic eluded him.
Carefully, he traced the swirling character in his own blood once more, looking up at Delyth when he was finished so that she might test it. She had explained to him a few nights ago that not only would the caster feel the warding break, but so would the person breaking it if they were trained in the old ways.
She stepped through his tent, shaking her head. He was starting to hate that look. “It didn’t hold.”
Etienne sighed.
“It isn’t the rune that is the problem.” Delyth sat down beside him, pointing to the mark in blood. “It is as perfect as any I’ve ever seen. The problem is with your intent. This isn’t a mental exercise, Etienne, but one of feeling. You must believe you are protecting what you ward.”
Etienne nodded miserably. It hadn’t been the first time he’d heard that advice. From the very beginning, this magic had been less about learning rules than using his body, his feelings. In some ways, it was even harder than staff training.
Delyth must have recognized his discouragement because she lifted a hand and placed it on his shoulder. “Don’t lose hope. Only a couple weeks ago, you made your first rune fire, and already we are starting wards. You’ll get it.”
Etienne smiled weakly. This must have been the Delyth Alphonse had seen on the way to Thlonandras. Too often these days, she was distant and angry, but she seemed more herself in these lessons. “I just hope it's in time.”
She nodded, turning away without saying anything to assuage his fears. They both knew there was too much at stake and too little time. “Let’s stop there for tonight. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
And with that, she disappeared into her tent, leaving Etienne to clean up dried blood by the light of the fire.
Meirin was sharpening her dagger on the other side of the fire. Dark eyes flickered in the dim light of the flames, and she tested her work by running a hair across the edge. It split, fragile ends falling away from the blade like feathers or snow. Meirin put her dagger back in its sheath and settled back to gaze up at the stars overhead.
“I can show you a different ward, if you like, Etienne. More immediately effective.” She grinned up at the sky and then looked across the fire, expression hidden in the shadows.
The mage looked at Meirin a little apprehensively, trying to read her face in the dark. “I thought you said that you don’t practice the old ways.”
Listen to him, using Delyth’s term for the Wildlander blood magic she was teaching him. He didn’t even want to think about what the Moxous masters would say if they could hear him now. But, he needed to learn this if he was going to aid their fight with Enyo. And if Meirin knew a faster way…
She yanked her pack open to pull out supplies. Heaving herself to her feet, Meirin handed Etienne a stake. She found a large stone and hefted it. “Hit the stake into the ground in front of your tent—There.” She pointed to a
