The Curse of the Blessed

Chapter Forty-Four

The Magician cast curse after curse at Bran and me, but between the deathbirds that flapped in between us and the spells, and our own quickness at dodging, we managed to avoid most of them. Shock still numbed my body. My thoughts wouldn't work properly, grating against each other like roughly cut rocks.

Lark was gone. She'd been turned to stone, just like Reed before her. If I'd only seen what the Magician intended before it was too late and not after. She'd be all right. Again, a companion lost. Again, my fault. This time, though, I had hope. More importantly, I had anger, and loyalty.

With a feral yell, I charged the Magician, summoning another flock of deathbirds as I went.

He smiled as he turned to meet me. "Come to surrender?"

I ignored him. One of my birds dove and hit him in the chest at full speed. He fell to the ground, gasping for air.

"Give Lark back!" I shouted from a safe distance.

"Why?" he asked. "You haven't won yet."

"How are we supposed to win? Given time, you can get out of any bad situation we put you in. Unless we kill you, there is no way to beat you."

"Well." He sat up and shot a cheeky grin my way. "I suppose you should have thought of that before you challenged me to a fight. As I remember it, you were the one who made the rules."

Annoyingly enough, he was right. There was a serious loophole in our plan. And we'd overlooked it.

I paused, hand hovering over the hilt of my dagger, mind whirring with thoughts. I could kill him. I wasn't sure I had the willpower to go through with it... but I could certainly try.

A deathbird's frantic squawk alerted me, and I threw myself into the darkness of the Magician's cave just in time to avoid a curse he'd thrown at me. I landed on my hands and knees. Before, I'd noticed that the stone making up the walls and floor and ceiling of the tunnel was slick—now, as I slid backward on it, I realized just how true that was. It took me a few seconds to stop completely.

Outside, the Magician had focused all his firepower on Bran. My deathbirds were—thankfully—keeping him safe for now, but if I didn't hurry to get back out there and summon another flock, there would soon be no more birds left to protect him.

I pulled myself to my feet. My ankle touched something, and I startled, squinting in the darkness to try to make out what that thing was.

A rope. Strewn forlornly across the ground like a dead snake. There was something... strange about it, like it was there and also not there. Like it was fading.

I reached forward and picked it up. My hand went through the bits that were fading, but the bits that weren't were solid enough for me to grasp. I ran my fingers along its length. Suddenly, it hit me. I knew what it was. I knew why it was fading.

This was the rope Reed had drawn for us.

Hadn't he said, long ago, that after a while, things he'd drawn began to disappear? I thought I remembered him telling us they only lasted a day, but perhaps this strange cave had given it enough pure magic to keep it alive a little longer. After all, if it put out enough magic to muddle Bran's magic-sensing powers... wasn't it also possible that this rope could have siphoned off a small supply of magic?

The rope seemed to be fading slightly quickly now that I'd picked it up. I needed to think of a plan—and fast.

If I could just get Bran and me inside the rope, with a good, tight, quadruple knot tied at the ends, the Magician wouldn't be able to see us. He might still be able to find us, or hit us with a randomly aimed spell—but it would be unlikely. The only difficulty was that I'd have to get Bran inside the rope, tie the knot, and keep moving quickly enough that the Magician wouldn't be able to curse us.