The Fragile Tower - Book 1 of the No.1 magical fantasy series

The Fragile Tower Chapter 12 - The Biting Cold

The world around her dimmed to almost total darkness, and Grace's eyes were drawn to the only remaining light beyond her little circle. It was a sickly green glow on the top of the ridge she had fallen down, and silhouetted against it she saw a massive wolf-like shape poised on the edge. As she watched, frozen, it was joined by a second and then a third and a fourth.

"Aren't you going to run?"

She heard the words as if they were spoken next to her ear, sibilant and whispering, and she twisted round sharply. There was nothing there.

She heard chuckling laughter in the wind, and she looked back at the ridge, where the wolfish shapes were standing their ground. Why weren't they rushing at her?

He's trying to scare you, Grace told herself. But perhaps he didn't need to try.

She didn't know whether to run, breaking the circle and leaving herself defenceless, or to stay and fight, where his magic would almost certainly overwhelm hers. Both courses felt hopeless. The book couldn't tell her enough to let her fight someone who knew how to wield possibility.

The voice sounded again in her ear, and she could swear she could feel his breath on her cheek.

"My creatures and I haven't fed off a girl-mage in so long, we've almost forgotten how one tastes."

One of the wolf-shapes on the hill howled, and the evanescents made a hissing noise of pleasure. Grace shuddered, revulsion running through her. She pulled the book out again, searching for help from it even though she knew it was useless.

It was almost pitch dark now, and she squinted at the cover, unable to tell which way round she was holding it. But the book glowed gently and she was reminded of the way Dad's car turned the interior dashboard lights on once it got dark.

She flicked the pages at random. She didn't really know what to look for, but it fell open on one of the later chapters and she glanced over the pages.  They illustrated and explained the symbol of shielding, and it seemed to grow larger and larger as she looked at it.

"Right," she said, feeling like she knew what she had to do. She replaced the book, swung her pack onto her shoulder and picked the rowan-wood staff up with her right hand. In her left she still held that little glass vial.

She wasn't even sure that what she was planning was possible, but she was going to do it anyway.

Isn't that the point of this world? She thought to herself. Everything is possible...

At the same moment that she raised her staff, the cold mage grew tired of waiting. The dogs bounded forwards, baying. The sickly green glow increased and then seemed to solidify around a tall, black figure which stood on the top of the ridge and looked down at her.

She had to act quickly. Holding out the rowan-wood staff towards the snow beneath where the evanescents now stood, she traced it swiftly through the air in the shape of the symbol of fire. It left the shape burning in the air, and she willed it forwards and downwards.

Fire bloomed in a roaring circle, spreading from the floating symbol and increasing to become a great cone of heat. It melted the snow for fifteen feet around in the same instant that Grace flung her left hand out and scattered salt into the misty shapes.

She kept shaking it back and forth, seeing those wolf-shapes hurtling down the slope behind them but carrying on anyway because it was working. Wherever the salt touched the evanescents they seemed to hiss and boil, and became liquid, and within a few seconds they were nothing but pools of water which were rapidly soaking into the ground.