Page 126 of Time's Fool

Yet the covens had fought on; there had been no other choice, or else all of this would have been for nothing. But it had been a fell slaughter, with hundreds falling in the forests and thousands in the open fields beyond, where the Mothers had had to set the spell, to avoid it focusing on the wrong thing and spending its fury uselessly.

There could be nothing above it but air until it reached the apex of its power and was directed at the Spanish fleet. But that had meant holding lines of shields against a constant barrage with no cover. And trying to keep even more Circle mages from joining the fight by attacking their flanks, peeling off masses of them into the ferocious battle in the trees.

And with the trees.

Because the covens hadn’t fought completely alone, after all. The forests were theirs and always had been, which was why Gillian saw a Corpsman grabbed up by a thrashing oak and beaten against a rock until his shield popped. The man looked around wildly and spotted her, throwing a curse her way, probably thinking that she had done it.

But there had been no need.

There wasn’t even any necessity to block his spell, which was blown away by a magic-laced wind and carried off course before it had eaten up half the distance between them. The world felt alive tonight, with power on the air so thick that she could taste it, and could see small pieces of it blooming on her skin before being absorbed into her own. Wild magic, the potent power of the Earth that the covens had always used and that the Mothers were summoning in unprecedented amounts tonight.

She’d forgotten how heady it had been, and how they’d laughed as they fought, drunk on it and heedless of the danger.

Until Randall fell.

“Rand!” she screamed, using a magically enhanced voice, only the wind blew that away, too.

Spells were being shredded on all sides, as the wild magic of the night tore them to pieces. Magic called to magic, and there had never been more of it in one place at one time on Earth, not since ancient days and maybe not even then. Gillian found it hard to imagine more being possible as the air was already saturated with it, to the point that half the forest had woken up.

Limbs crashed and smote and fell on invaders, crushing them beneath the immense weight of old growth wood; storms of leaves blinded them at just the right moments, saving fleeing witches from being seen and disrupting attacks; and massive roots reached up from the ground like clawed hands and dragged men under.

Some of the mages fought their way free of what would have been their graves, cursing this land and everything in it. Others were so panicked that they used the wrong spells, ones absorbed by the earth and negated as the roots drew them further down. And stabbed them over and over, opening up their bodies and spilling their blood to nourish the soil.

Mages were dying on all sides, but so were witches and wizards, who had lost their greatest weapon to the skies.

They could not borrow the wild magic blowing everywhere, or risk weakening the spell it was feeding. Yet that was how they’d fought; how they’d always fought, using the natural magic of the world to supplement their own. But that was all going to a greater cause this night, and without it—

It wouldn’t be long.

They were running out of time, and so was Gillian, darting from shadow to shadow, trying to see something familiar. Where was he? Everything looked the same under the trees, and even using a spell to enhance her vision didn’t help much.

“Randall! Rand!” she screamed, but no one heard.

Or maybe she was wrong about that, because twin spells came at her from opposite directions, blindingly fast. One to pop her shields and another to finish her off, a common Corps tactic. And there was no time to dodge, no time for anything—

Except that, she thought, as the oak above her sacrificed two limbs, crashing them into the spells and going up in flames, while another bark-covered appendage swept her back against the trunk and away from a squad of mages that ran by a moment later, only to encounter a rain of burning leaves.

The leaves blinded them to her presence in the shadows, which suddenly seemed even darker than they should have been. Gillian put out a hand to steady herself on the hoary old trunk, an immense thing as wide as a barn, intending to flee this area whilst she could. Only it felt like her hand immediately grew to the wood.

She looked down and it looked the same as always, a pale blur in the darkness, but her mind contradicted the witness of her eyes, showing her a different sight.

In her mind’s eye, she saw bark flowing from the trunk over her skin, tinting the pale expanse gray and replacing her freckles with clumps of green moss. And then continuing up her arm before she could react, a great wave of it that overwhelmed her body, turning it stiff and hard and unyielding. And when she tied to scream, bark filled her mouth and rushed down her throat, stopping her voice.

In an eyeblink, she was somewhere else.

* * *

Morgan cackled, the wind howled, and Kit stumbled after his lady as fast as his jelly legs would carry him. He should have caught her before she hit the fight, should have taken her down almost immediately. But his body was only half obeying his commands, and before he knew it, he was in the middle of a raging magical battle and had lost sight of her completely.

“Gillian!” he yelled, and had the word torn away by the wind almost before he’d uttered it.

Spells were flying, dark figures were jumping at him from all sides, and then a witch dropped a potion bomb from a broomstick that might well have suffocated him in its smoke, except that breathing was optional in his case. He picked it up, still spewing some noxious substance, and tossed it at a squad of mages running his way, causing them to shield and just keep coming.

But a bunch of witches ambushed them on the way and he scrambled up and fled, running in the direction that his lady had gone, only to have to go to his knees and bend backwards to slide underneath a glowing net spell thrown by yet another mage.

The forest was made up of more men than wood tonight! And whilst he wasn’t a wizard, they didn’t seem to care. They were targeting anyone they saw that didn’t have a Circle pin on his cloak.

So, he tried falling into slow time in order to grab one, only to discover that he was already there. He hadn’t noticed because the magic workers were using enhanced speed. Everything was going full tilt, and his vampire swiftness was largely negated as a result.

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