Page 63 of Seducing the Sorcerer
Whatever it was, it was still clinging to the tower. Maybe that meant something. Maybe it had crawled there. Maybe it couldn’t fly. Morgrim had said the power of flight was almost unheard of.
Fine.
If Morgrim was trapped in the tower, maybe hurt, maybe unable to use magic, Fenn was going to find him. He had to stop flapping about and look in every hole. Systematic like.
There was a hole. A big one. Fenn slowed the horse, guided it inside to great cavernous room, like the hall, but empty. The floor was partly smashed out, but the boards that remained were covered in complex patterns of multi-coloured paint. Not runes, but lines and swirls, knotted together. Clearly magic. But no Morgrim.
Right. Next hole.
Squab swept out into the open. They turned left, spiralled around the tower until they found the next hole, stones still crumbling away from the raw edges of smashed masonry. This hole was smaller. Fenn slowed the horse, forced to duck as they went in.
And there was Morgrim.
He clung to a smashed beam, a nub of stone beneath one foot, a ruined stairway to his right. He had no staff. Perhaps he’d been on the stairs when a hole had been punched through beneath him. The stairs above were choked with rubble. He could move neither up nor down, so was trying to clamber sideways. He was drenched, robe clinging to his legs, hair in rattails about his face.
Fenn shouted his name and put Squab towards him.
Morgrim glanced over his shoulder, his face a grey mask of stone-dust. Fenn reached him, got his wrist, tried to manoeuvre Squab closer. Morgrim clasped Fenn’s forearm in a stinging grip and Fenn fought to save himself from being unseated.
Then Morgrim was on the horse, his arms about Fenn’s waist.
“Go. Go!” he gasped in Fenn’s ear.
Fenn put Squab at the hole. They were nearly there when the roaring came like a great rapid in a mountain river. The thing was in the room with them. Above them. Squab put its ears back, snorting, eye rolling. Morgrim gave a muffled shout and there was a sharp tug as something grabbed him from behind. He was going to be dragged from the horse. Fenn glanced round. A mass of white and brown water hung above them, as if a waterfall was stuck there. Water seethed over Morgrim’s head and shoulders. He was clinging to Fenn’s shirt.
Fenn tried to hit the water with a fist, but it was an impossible angle and anyway was like punching a river.
Squab lowered its head. Fenn knew what was coming a split second before it came. He leaned back and gripped tight as the horse bucked. Despite having no hooves, it made contact with something because they shot forwards, through the hole, Fenn struggling to find his balance, Morgrim coughing and spluttering but holding hard to Fenn’s waist again.
Fenn glanced behind again. A blunt white faceless lump was questing forwards through the cloud like a giant earthworm. It grazed Squab’s tail, but then they were out of reach and out of sight, hurtling across open sky. Morgrim was leaning against him, gripping like a limpet.
Fenn put Squab at the first thing he saw—the needle of rock called the Lonely One. It was tall as the tower rock but to the south, away from the city across a strip of sea and a bare headland.
They landed on top. There was nothing there but weathered rock and a few clumps of coarse wind-whipped grass. The sea churned white around the base. Fenn turned Squab so they could see the tower and the space between. The sky was clear. No pursuit.
Yet.
“You all right?” Fenn tried to turn around, desperate to see Morgrim’s face, to assess whether he was hurt, but Morgrim was clinging to him so tightly that all Fenn could see was Morgrim’s shoulder, robe torn to expose the flesh. Fenn looked down at Morgrim’s hands instead; they were clasped together in front of him, knuckles white and bloody.
“Gods. Fenn...” Morgrim’s voice shook.
“Safe enough here for now, I reckon. You hurt? Anything broken?”
“No.”
“Good. That’s good.” Fenn took a deep breath. “That thing. Can it fly? Do you know?”
“I...” Morgrim took a breath. And another. Fenn could almost feel him willing himself to calm down.
“No. Don’t think so,” Morgrim said.
“What is it?”
“A hex. Hexed river water.”
“Can it get us here?”
Morgrim took another gasping breath. “Maybe. It can’t fly but it can crawl. It can probably swim.”
