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

The Fragile Tower Chapter 29 - The Cold Raiser

***I've split this chapter in half, once again, as it was going to be rather long. 

I hope you enjoy them. And if you are willing to vote on both if you really like them, I might even whoosh back into the top 10 ;-) ***

 

Afi met her eyes, and she felt as if the link led to him instead of the sleeping boys. His pain and anger reverberated through her, drowning out the presence of the cold mage.

We'll help him somehow, she said, speaking the words straight into his mind and trying to infuse them with certainty. But he flinched away from her, not believing that she could.

Why would he believe it? she thought bitterly. I don't think I can either.

"Who's here, Edin?" he asked, his hands stretching out uselessly to comfort someone who didn't want comfort. "Who's here?"

"Cartheno," Edin told his brother.

What? Grace thought.

But before she had a chance to wonder how an ages-dead King could be here, there was a voice in her head. It boomed in her ears and thudded into her chest and her throat like a bass-beat turned up too loud.

Yield, it told her. Yield all this. To fight me will destroy you, and them too.

For a moment, she saw a vision of the boys screaming in pain as she sucked power away from them and hurled it against an impassable wall, blood pouring from their noses and their ears, and then it vanished, and she was left breathless and shaking.

You see?

Grace tried to think, to plan.

He's trying to intimidate me, she thought. Just like the cold mage I defeated.

Edin suddenly scuttled towards her across the floor, moving more like an animal than like a boy. She took a step backwards and settled into a defensive pose, her weight on her back foot so that she might kick. But he didn't move any closer. He settled into a crouch, and smiled up at her.

"He's speaking to you, isn't he?" he asked. And he smiled. It was such a childish smile, so guileless and delighted, that Grace shivered.

My acolyte, the deafening voice told her. He's right to worship me. What other choice is there?

Grace put her hand up to her head, willing the pain away and willing herself to keep thinking.

You have the link still, she realised. You can see him if you try.

She drew her mind up to the very top of the tower and felt the magic there, wrapped around that crystal spire lovingly. She chose a strand of it and poured herself into it, stretching out until she floated free in the air. She could see the whole kingdom again, every city turned shadowy beneath the storm the mage had conjured up. Their beautiful and eccentric patterns of buildings and streets were no longer breathtaking, but seemed ominous, as though each had been slashed apart by its own roads.

She tore her thoughts away from them and looked down at the capital city where it stood around the tower. The shock almost drove her back into her body. There was a swathe of destruction leading up to the palace, a path of crumbled and crushed buildings, standing echoing and empty now in the false night cast by the storm. Snow rained down on them again, and it was beginning to settle in a rim of white around holes and openings.

There would have been people in there, she knew. People hiding from his creatures. Were there even any townsfolk left now? The city was a silent, huddling mass of greys and whites and blacks, and the only living creatures she could see stood in front of the palace.