Page 83 of Homeward for a Spell

“Don’t go with them, Bard!” Sage shouts, her gaze meeting Araphi’s.

“Promise you’ll let her go?”

“You have my word,” Remy says, stepping forward.

Winning this impossible fight would have made such an excellent addition to their ballad…Gods, she never got to play it for Sage.

“Fine.” Araphi wrenches her eyes away from Sage. “You can take me. But no one hurts the ranger.”

“We have a deal,” Remy says. “Someone’s waiting to see you inside the gates.”

Regret flashes through her, swift and sharp as any blade to the heart. She squeezes her eyes shut, and despite the awfulness of their situation, a vision of Sage in the moonlit hot spring appears before her and she can’t help but smile.

It has been a very good adventure.

With one last desperate look at Sage, Araphi lets herself be pulled away. This has to be the right thing. She’s saving Sage in the moment, even if it means being marched back to her family. And wherever the Claunecks take her, even if they lock her away, Sage will find her.

They’re in this fight together.

31

Sage

The first time death came for Sage, she hadn’t seen it coming.

One moment she was nearing the end of a simple mission with her party, and the next she simply wasn’t. Or if she was—if any part of her left this plane for elsewhere before Webar brought her back—she’s no memory of it. There was pain and then nothing and then, miraculously, a second chance in a world she was determined not to leave again without making her mark upon it.

This time, Sage sees her fate coming, even if the bard doesn’t. Rather, Sage suspects she doesn’t want to believe it. They both know Menorath won’t want a loose end like Sage running around the kingdom with the Claunecks’ secrets on her tongue, any more than she’d leave Araphi to roam the Northlands. Still, they might have fought their way through to the gate, drawn the notice of the Queensmen, made their case. There was a chance as long as they were together. But even if Sage had the artifact to hand over, and even if she were willing to abandon Araphi (she isn’t), the mercenaries never meant to let her make it so far as the gate, nor to slip away north.

When Araphi cranes around to look back before the mercenaries hustle her around the bend toward Briarwall, Sage gives her an encouraging nod as though to say, Go on, I’ll see you shortly.

Then she’s gone.

The two hovering over her with an iron grip on her shoulders step back, but only to join the dozen mercenaries who step carelessly over their comrades on the ground to cage her in. Sage casts her bow and quiver aside as she scrambles to her feet. They’re useless in these close quarters, too awkward and flimsy even to whack a mercenary with. Instead she draws her daggers, which are only nearly useless. At least she stands a chance at taking one or two of them down with her. None seem eager to break the circle and risk their own throats first, but then, there’s no need to rush with Sage thoroughly penned in.

“Here now, don’t make this harder on yourself than it has to be,” reasons a mercenary with chips of gemstone and copper coils braided into his long beard. An ugly welt speckled with blood swells across his cheekbone from one of Araphi’s flying rocks.

“Wait…this isn’t right, Remy,” Nura cries from outside the circle, her young voice high-pitched with urgency. “They’re not supposed to hurt her! I don’t care if they stole, she’s going to be—”

“Hush, now,” the Agent says, though with less certainty than Sage would expect from him.

She dares a glance back at the path into the Northlands but can no longer see the pair nor Bramble beyond the bristling hedge of mercenaries. “It’s all right,” Sage shouts for her to hear. “Just stay back.” There’s no point in the kid going down with her.

At least she got to mend things between her and Araphi.

At least she got to love her.

At least she found a home at the end of the road.

Out of the corner of her vision, a man darts forward, clearly hoping to capitalize on her distraction and put her down for good. She spins just in time to block his downward swing. With their forearms locked together, the tip of his shortsword is hovering inches from her face. She draws her second dagger up to slash across his side, then plants a boot in his chest, sending him falling back into his own ranks. But as she dashes forward, hoping to leap through the gap, a stave swings out of nowhere to clip her in the shoulder. Though it doesn’t truly connect, sparing her a broken collarbone or shoulder blade, it sends her crashing to the dirt, where she rolls away from her attacker and into the boot of another, knocking the breath from her body. Sage lies there gulping as the mercenaries swarm forward all at once, like sand pouring into a pit to bury her alive. Her own heart pounds deafeningly in her ears, frantic as the beating of wings.

Wait…

Sage flops to her back just in time to watch the owls—scores of them, perhaps a hundred in number—slam into the huddle of mercenaries above her. They batter themselves against helmets and sword hands and faces until the scene descends into chaos. There are barn owls with rust-colored wings, great horned owls with wingspans near as wide as she is tall, and palm-sized elf owls just the right size to peck at the eyes of the scattering mercenaries while avoiding swords and shields. And circling above them all, a golden-eyed snowy owl screeching like a battle commander to their troops.

“Goway?” Bewildered, she climbs cautiously to her feet to watch Goway dive through the chaos and come to perch on his master’s shoulder, preening her wild red curls and his feathers in turn.

As the mercenaries scatter to dodge claws and beaks, Wren stands perfectly still, the eye of her own hurricane.